Candide
roman catholic by birth; scientific atheist by choice; sinner by merit. blogging on brains, evolution and language. gaidhlig-speaking neuroscience student at oxford. likes to Question Everything!
Question Everything
Willing to answer questions on science, philosophy, language, religion, politics, history, gaelic and scotland.
I’m quite knowledgeable (though no expert) on neuroscience, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, linguistics, minority languages, gaelic, catholicism, moral philosophy, the philosophy of biology, british politics, scottish history, polynesian history and general European history.
I always make the effort to provide long interesting answers. Why not ask me? You’ve got nothing to lose!
Also, if you’re that way inclined, I will answer personal questions!!!
Question Everything
Willing to answer questions on science, philosophy, language, religion, politics, history, gaelic and scotland.
I’m quite knowledgeable about neuroscience, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, linguistics, minority languages, gaelic, catholicism, moral philosophy, the philosophy of biology, british politics, scottish history, polynesian history and general European history.
Also, if you’re that way inclined, I will answer personal questions!!!
Anyone? I got some good ones last night…
His Dark Materials
The first time I read His Dark Materials, I wandered around for five days thinking Metatron was going to spear me to death at any moment for reading such heresy. I was actually afraid. That, my friends, is why telling an eight-year old boy that if he dares disobey Catholic teaching he will go to Hell is always wrong.
“
“And when death comes to call me,
I’m soothed by the everlasting sleep
Of being buried as a Christian
With a headstone beside the sea.
My only wish is there be hundreds
Of every kind of flower giving life at the grave.
With that thought, thank God
My soul, at least, will be smiling.”
”Domhnall Eirisgeach, Crowned Bard 1949.
Translation from Gaelic by Candide.
“Here at least
we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”
Satan
[Milton, J., Paradise Lost, Book 1: 258-63]
“Some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies – which was neither planned nor sought – constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”
Pope John Paul II
In that last point, the late Pope has expressed in a nutshell how scientific enquiry works. For a hypothesis to be verified, you need confirmation from repeatable, falsifiable, and, crucially, independent experiments, observations and trials. Evolution has these aplenty.
Just because God exist doesn’t make him right…
If the God of the Bible existed, I’d do my best to make him not exist.
If he knew everything and could do anything, I know I’d probably fail. But hey! Better to die than live under that kind of tyranny.
If he had the power to create me with the free will to defy him, he has the power to take that free will away. That’s a worthless form of free will!
If he was all-good and loved me, I still wouldn’t forgive him. Because, you know what, my mother loves me and would do anything in her power for me, but we still don’t let her have the power to do whatever she wants for me, do we? We value our independence!
A benevolent dictator is still a dictator.
I don’t believe in God, but let me tell you this, if a scientific experiment proves tomorrow that the God of the Bible is real, it doesn’t follow logically that I need to worship him. There’s truth in that adjective God-fearing. If God is real, I’d be really afraid, because no matter how good his intentions, no matter how much he loves me, that much power concentrated in one person can’t be good.
God is the ultimate police state. He see and hears everything. God is the perfect totalitarian. He has complete control.
What life would be worth living if it’s not your life to live? If your life is just in the hands of God?
If you can show me God exists, the first thing I’ll do is make the Case For Satan!
“Just say the word and I shall be healed”
(via la-java-de-cezigue)
“The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and MY SERVANT shall be healed.”
[Matthew 8:8]
And from the new version of the Catholic mass -
“Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and MY SOUL shall be healed.”
I must say what a lovely inversion of traditional Cartesian dualism. Usually we get the image of body serving soul, now get this hint at soul serving body. In Catholic belief, God created man in his image. Man’s body is but the servant of Man’s mind - the physical is always below the spiritual. However, this (accidental?) new formulation: the idea that the mind, or brain, serves the body, is positively evolutionary! That is, if the brain is a product of natural selection, then all things that make us human, are but the result of the differential survival of alleles in the human genepool coding for various cognitive and emotional functions. In evolutionary time, the brain - the soul!! - is simply the slave of the changing selective forces acting on reproductive fitness. Its beautiful to think how a gradual algorithmic process, how the Blind Watchmaker, can make a mind!
(Source: death-on-a-pale-horse)
Is it possible for any religious person to argue against the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster without arguing against their own faith? Answers on a postcard, please.
“Why I Am Not A Christian”
A man who was his own father impregnated his own (virgin) mother, grew up and went about giving well-meaning but impractical advice while planning to get himself tortured and crucified to sacrifice himself, to himself, to exploit a loop-hole that he created to save humanity from an arbitrary rule that he created, after which he rose from the dead and became a man in the sky who loves you and who will do worse than kill you if don’t love him back.
You’re not a Christian because you make straw man arguments to get out of understanding, or even trying to understand, what we actually believe.
There is no such thing as a “man in the sky” for one, because God is incorporeal. Just for one thing.
Jesus is not the Father, and the Father is not Jesus, but both are God. So no, again, you are factually incorrect about that.
“well-meaning but impractical” advice? It’s only impractical if you don’t find ways to make it practical. Because treating others how I would like to be treated is pretty practical. It means you don’t be a douchebag to other people, basically. You don’t treat them like shit. you respect them.
“Will do worse than kill you”. Uhm… No. God doesn’t send people to Hell. People send themselves. If you don’t want to be around God, God isn’t going to force you to be with God. That would completely undermine free will.
Is this not the second time you’ve reblogged my rather tongue-in-cheek post??? And also: having been raised by devout Catholics, and myself still a churchgoer (for family reasons I can’t help), I feel that is quite a reasonable summary of Christian belief. And of course, because this is an exercise in religious discourse, I am can quite simply say this is what I [=my Church] believes and you have no right to question it. I have faith that this is why I am not a Christian, I have faith that this is what most Christians believe. You have faith in Christianity. Let’s be religious and respect each other’s views cos, well, we believe ‘em don we?
Well, you’ve admitted now that you only go because you’re made to go. You probably haven’t taken a theology course beyond the high school level, and if you have, I find it probable that you didn’t take it seriously.
This post is insulting to me for being a Christian. You think it’s tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not. It’s derisive and inflammatory. I’m not questioning what you believe, I’m saying that what you said is insulting.
Well, I am in high school so that can’t be helped. For what its worth I spent this afternoon discussing ‘what is life’ with the school chaplain (who has a doctorate in philosophy) and he seems to think I have a decent head on me…
Insulting?
May I ask: so what???
If I were to write a post, say, criticizing Marxism by taking its doctrines and theories literally in a tongue-in-cheek fashion , would ‘but you’re insulting my beliefs’ be a satisfactory response? In a free society one has the right to criticize, possible offend, the political beliefs of others. Why not the religious beliefs? Science progresses by self-criticism and peer-review - why is it only religion that is allowed to get rid of criticism by calling it ‘insulting.’???
