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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 132133
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Posted: 10 November 2019 at 11:10am | IP Logged | 1
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He was the 15th Governor General of Canada, and he died in 1940. If, like me, you’ve never heard of him before today, you may wonder why I mention him here. Well, it’s because of this quote from him I found online:“An atheist is someone with no invisible means of support.” Apparently, there are those among my fellow unbelievers who take offense at this, but it strikes me as a pretty solid summation. If Buchan’s intent was to mock, I think he struck an entirely different bullseye.
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Phil Frances Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 August 2009 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 338
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Posted: 10 November 2019 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | 2
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I'd certainly heard of John Buchan, being author of The Thirty-Nine Steps which featured his semi-regular hero Richard Hannay ( I recall especially the 1978 TV version staring Robert Powell )
What I didn't know was he was Governor General of Canada, or that he held the title His Excellency The Right Honourable The Lord Tweedsmuir, GCMG GCVO CH PC, being raised to the British peerage as part of the process of becoming Governor General.
I really should look out the Hannay books, as my only exposure has been the TV movie and subsequent follow-on series ....
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Doug Centers Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 February 2014 Location: United States Posts: 5436
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Posted: 10 November 2019 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | 3
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I like that quote, and will now use it to describe myself.
"What you see is what you get"
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 132133
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Posted: 11 November 2019 at 8:00am | IP Logged | 4
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On the topic of atheism vs intelligent design, I came across an interesting analogy. Imagine a puddle of water somehow became self-aware. Lacking any other data, it would quickly realize that the hole in which it was lying fit its every contour so precisely that it (the puddle) would only be able to conclude the hole was actually created specifically to be its home. Pretty much how the IDiots view the Earth and the Universe beyond.
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Michael Penn Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006 Location: United States Posts: 12406
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Posted: 11 November 2019 at 9:03am | IP Logged | 5
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As a little kid, I loved watching "Wild Kingdom" in great part because everything in nature seemed to just fit perfectly. Nothing but a fairy tale, I learned later. Those kinds of so-called documentary programs sought primarily to tame nature. Can't! Nature is, as the poet put it, red in tooth and claw. Violent, brutal, random, suffused with suffering on a scale impossible to contemplate.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 132133
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Posted: 11 November 2019 at 9:56am | IP Logged | 6
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I’m once again reminded of my fourth grade teacher telling us about how plants used animals, including humans, to scatter their seeds. So, for instance, a person picks an apple and eats it, discarding the core. Those seeds are thus “planted” at a distance from the parent tree. “So,” the teacher said, “the apple tastes good so that we’ll eat it.”That thought nestled in my brain for years, until one day I suddenly realized it was backward. The apple doesn’t taste good so that we’ll eat it, we eat it because it tastes good. But our hubris dictates that all the world exists FOR us. Like the hole does for the puddle.
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Doug Centers Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 February 2014 Location: United States Posts: 5436
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Posted: 11 November 2019 at 10:27am | IP Logged | 7
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"The apple doesn’t taste good so that we’ll eat it, we eat it because it tastes good."
...
Yes, and the gall of some plants to produce berries that are poisonous to humans. Nevermind that the preference for such plants is to use birds to spread the seeds miles away, thus not edible to mammals.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 132133
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Posted: 12 November 2019 at 10:32am | IP Logged | 8
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Meanwhile:Abdicated Intelligence Depressing.
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Rebecca Jansen Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018 Location: Canada Posts: 4410
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Posted: 12 November 2019 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | 9
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While I was brought up with some Christianity of the protestant variety (and a few dashes of Buddhism), and while I am open to there being some kind of creator, I doubt it is anything like what we may want, need or even be capable of imagining. I don't want to say that 'believers' are inherently addled or juvenile, any more that atheists are damned to Hades... it just seems a bit of this and a bit of that, something in the middle as usual to me. The muscular old dude on a dirty flaking ceiling is not my God, I question if I have a God as often as I might speculate if there could be some greater order behind anything... a wise person has some grasp of what we can't know and as in Taoism, perhaps both can be true at once? There are more things than dreamt of in my own philosophy?
Blaming someone who 'believes', has 'faith'... it's not as simple as that. Yes, we see such people do incredible harm. There is also the old lady in the salvation Army putting a drunk to bed for the umpteenth time on a freezing cold night in a city that 99.999% of people will never know about. The salt of the earth can either poison the land or, at a more modest level, be the thing that makes society civilized. Think of the mathematicians of the ancient Greek and Islamic world preserved by some Irish monks writing things down, all things, just in case they might be important when you think of the self-righteous 'servant' of the Lord banishing The Gospels of Mary or Thomas to eternal oblivion as non-canonical in their enlightened view.
Atheists vs. 'believers'... in the Buddhist teachings "all beings are untied to create one from the universal point of view" which is to say an alien observer would check out the Earth and see life, not esoteric non-visual subdivisions of the minds of that life.
“An atheist is someone with no invisible means of support.” is a healthy challenge for all. I think any adult should face that challenge at some point. To know the light you will have to stand in darkness, and it might be what you thought of as darkness is light and what had seemed to be the light was actually a kind of dimness. None of us knows where we will each end up yet. :^)
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 12 November 2019 at 12:11pm
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