In Which Poly's Religious Contingent Gives Lori a Big Fat :rolleyes:

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's not an argument against religion; it's an argument against using supposed miracles as evidence for any particular god. And in that sense, it works very well. There are exceedingly plausible mundane explanations for basically every well documented miracle, but oftentimes they require us to resist our pathological desire to find patterns.

Like I said...

Ah... so this guy is like the silliest of the New Atheists in the depth of his "argument" against religion.

You'd hope that by now these folks could actually, you know... read a theologian. At least one.

[Elok]

I'm still on a bandwidth limit here. But universe/muttered verse, in particular, defies comprehension. The only way to make it read like a rhyme is to jam "muttered" up against "verse" in a way that's just fantastically offensive to tongue and ear alike. If you're going to stretch it that far, you should just not rhyme. Line length and meter are coming across all wrong too. Stuffing all those long words together is a recipe for awkwardness. This is the language of Shakespeare, Swift, Twain, and Dickinson we're talking about.

[Lorizael]

You'd hope that by now these folks could actually, you know... read a theologian. At least one.

I've read theological views on what miracles mean and why they might occur, but I've never read a theological piece showing why divine providence is a good explanation for seemingly unlikely events.

[Kidlicious]

Why should a person of faith look for natural reasons for perceived miracles? I'm just asking to get a discussion going. I'm not saying there isn't a good reason.

[Lorizael]

I'm still on a bandwidth limit here. But universe/muttered verse, in particular, defies comprehension. The only way to make it read like a rhyme is to jam "muttered" up against "verse" in a way that's just fantastically offensive to tongue and ear alike. If you're going to stretch it that far, you should just not rhyme. Line length and meter are coming across all wrong too. Stuffing all those long words together is a recipe for awkwardness. This is the language of Shakespeare, Swift, Twain, and Dickinson we're talking about.

Minchin does tend to stuff his lines full of words. It doesn't always work perfectly, I'll admit.

[DaShi]

I'm still on a bandwidth limit here. But universe/muttered verse, in particular, defies comprehension. The only way to make it read like a rhyme is to jam "muttered" up against "verse" in a way that's just fantastically offensive to tongue and ear alike. If you're going to stretch it that far, you should just not rhyme. Line length and meter are coming across all wrong too. Stuffing all those long words together is a recipe for awkwardness. This is the language of Shakespeare, Swift, Twain, and Dickinson we're talking about.

They would all cringe reading your sentences. I know, I do. At least this paragraph doesn't suffer from the drastic tonal shifts that most of your writing does. However, it's clear that you have no idea what you are talking about and simply reacting to the subject matter. Your appeal to authority takes the cake. How about from now on, I compare everything you write to those authors?

[ricketyclik]

I'm still on a bandwidth limit here.

I've always suspected as much.

Nick Minchin

Maybe you have to be au fait with the Australian accent to appreciate it. We do jam our syllables together, as well as avoid consonants and pronounce all of the vowels the same as each other

It's to keep the flies out of our mouths

[ricketyclik]

Nick Minchin

TIM! I meant TIM!

Nick Minchin's an altogether different beast

[Lorizael]

Why should a person of faith look for natural reasons for perceived miracles? I'm just asking to get a discussion going. I'm not saying there isn't a good reason.

As far as I'm concerned this is equivalent to asking why a gambler should look to statistics to explain winning streaks.

[Elok]

Minchin does tend to stuff his lines full of words. It doesn't always work perfectly, I'll admit.

Well, perhaps it does work better in Streen. Anyway, I prophecy that, in two pages or less, this thread will be an argument between Ken, Sava, BK and Kid, probably about Occam's Razor.

[Lorizael]

Seems likely. My other favorite from Minchin at the moment contains almost no religion bashing but fits very well with my skeptical outlook.

I debated which of these two videos to post, but eventually settled on the more overtly offensive one for some reason.

[Sava]

I haven't watched these yet. But just from the preview image, this guy looks like a magician or something. And the orchestra in the background?

is there music?

WHAT IS HAPENING?!

[ricketyclik]

I debated which of these two videos to post, but eventually settled on the more overtly offensive one for some reason.

[Lorizael]

He's just a comedic musician. Or musical comedian.

[ricketyclik]

WHAT IS HAPENING?!

He's a singer/comedian. He did a gig recently with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (?) so that might be it. Famous at the moment for having written Matilda the musical.