Ricky Gervais on Twitter.... "If you discovered ANY evidence for the existence of God, you would be proclaimed, BY THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY, the greatest genius ever. Go!"
Go on then....
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The Real Wizard wrote:
A hi res version, just for you :-)
Ha! And they say size doesn't matter.
:-)
mooghead wrote:
Ricky Gervais on Twitter.... .
Speaking of Ricky Gervais -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ln64DYflGT4#!
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ln64DYflGT4?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
That is a reference from 2009. The Snopes article on Easter last updated two years ago states "Contrary to some modern claims, the term "Easter" was not derived from the name of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex." The Wikipedia articles on 'Easter' and 'Ishtar' each contain no references to each other. Most key in relation to the specific recent meme posted on this thread is that every internet reference to it in the last week that seeks to explore it rather than regurgitate it debunks it. No articles or blog entries I have seen reference the meme to affirm its conclusions with facts. Multiple sources claim it was redacted from the Facebook page of Richard Dawkins' Foundation for Reason and Science when it was challenged on fact. The debunkings have come from sites concerned with liberalism, science and reason. Here:
From Scientific American, written by an anthropologist:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/2013/03/31/beyond-ishtar-the-tradition-of-eggs-at-easter/
From the left leaning Daily Beast with the title "Department of Awful Facebook Memes":
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/29/happy-easter-which-is-not-named-after-ishtar-okay.html
From RationalWiki, whose tagline is "Pseudoscience, cranks, fundamentalisam and the eternal battle against public stupidity" (emphasis mine)
http://rationalblogs.org/rationalwiki/2013/03/31/no-its-not-all-about-ishtar-some-mythbusting-easter-facts-from-your-friendly-pagan-sceptic/
GratefulFan wrote:
Multiple sources claim it was redacted from the Facebook page of Richard Dawkins' Foundation for Reason and Science...
Richard Dawkins is my God and His word is law.
Seriously, what I find amusing is that in just a few minutes, one can find a dozen sites claiming truth to one side and/or disproving the other. Maybe that's not really amusing. Or surprising. It is the internet after all. Still, the truth is that Easter, like Christmas, was a pagan holiday hijacked by christianity. Though, in all honesty, I really don't care since my 'celebration' consists of cleaning the house and preparing the garden.
Lame. You put up a misleading and unsupportable bit of smug nonsense and can't even be arsed to care.
GratefulFan wrote:
Lame. You put up a misleading and unsupportable bit of smug nonsense and can't even be arsed to care.
Perhaps I will care tomorrow, I can't say for sure. Today, however, I am in a particularly light mood and even this thread cannot bring me down.
I hope you do care at some point. By far the most hurtful, overwhelming and psychologically battering aspect of these religion/atheism threads for me has been the disturbing and unsettling proximity to the mechanics of negative stereotyping and prejudice. To be caught under that over time was a mentally and emotionally crushing experience. The religion aspect is almost incidental because it could be anything dividing the few from the many here. When we see people as 'other' and 'different' we don't even use the same part of our brain as we do in relating to those 'in group'. The things that slip away are astonishing. Empathy, responsibility, granularity of thought, all numbed in a haze of being unable to relate and connect, and thus being unable to give much of a crap.
GratefulFan wrote:
I hope you do care at some point. By far the most hurtful, overwhelming and psychologically battering aspect of these religion/atheism threads for me has been the disturbing and unsettling proximity to the mechanics of negative stereotyping and prejudice. To be caught under that over time was a mentally and emotionally crushing experience. The religion aspect is almost incidental because it could be anything dividing the few from the many here. When we see people as 'other' and 'different' we don't even use the same part of our brain as we do in relating to those 'in group'. The things that slip away are astonishing. Empathy, responsibility, granularity of thought, all numbed in a haze of being unable to relate and connect, and thus being unable to give much of a crap.
She will never care. The hatred of Militant atheists is more poisonous than any right wing religious cult.
Panchgani wrote:
GratefulFan wrote:
I hope you do care at some point. By far the most hurtful, overwhelming and psychologically battering aspect of these religion/atheism threads for me has been the disturbing and unsettling proximity to the mechanics of negative stereotyping and prejudice. To be caught under that over time was a mentally and emotionally crushing experience. The religion aspect is almost incidental because it could be anything dividing the few from the many here. When we see people as 'other' and 'different' we don't even use the same part of our brain as we do in relating to those 'in group'. The things that slip away are astonishing. Empathy, responsibility, granularity of thought, all numbed in a haze of being unable to relate and connect, and thus being unable to give much of a crap.
She will never care. The hatred of Militant atheists is more poisonous than any right wing religious cult.
Exactly. Atheists have been responsible for countless wars, soldier funeral protests and encouraging people in Africa not to use condoms because they'll lead to AIDS. Thanks for that ever-needed sobering reminder.
Panchgani wrote:
GratefulFan wrote:
I hope you do care at some point...The things that slip away are astonishing. Empathy, responsibility, granularity of thought, all numbed in a haze of being unable to relate and connect, and thus being unable to give much of a crap.
She will never care. The hatred of Militant atheists is more poisonous than any right wing religious cult.
LOL! Wow. Sometimes the craziness is so extreme one can only laugh.
The Real Wizard wrote:
Exactly. Atheists have been responsible for countless wars, soldier funeral protests and encouraging people in Africa not to use condoms because they'll lead to AIDS. Thanks for that ever-needed sobering reminder.
Careful. There are websites that prove the opposite of this.
On topic:
GratefulFan, I think a pretty poor case is made both by the Dawkins gang and by the blog you refer to. The exact origins of easter are very unclear - the only thing all serious historians agree on is that it is a Christianized version of some pagan festival. Very likely, it is derived from festivals celebrating the arrival of spring, which is pretty much universally celebrated. As such, fertility is a vital aspect, mostly in the form of spring representing the time when the earth itself is again becoming fertile and animals are forming couples. The egg as a symbol of fertility is so self-evident that I won't even go into it here.
As nearly every culture had its own spring festival, it is likely that the Christianized easter had different origins in different places. In Germania, germanic antecedents would be likely, whereas the countries of the Levant would be more likely to incorporate Babylonian and Assyrian aspects. Ishtar is apparently identical with the older Sumerian Inanna. Of Inanna we know that she was celebrated on a special festival on the tenth day of the new year (i.e. the tenth day after the spring equinox), so she does tie in with easter.
The problem with both the Dawkins-post and the blog you cite is that they assume a single origin for easter, which is a complete historical fallacy. The origins vary according to geographic, social and historical conditions.
GratefulFan, I think a pretty poor case is made both by the Dawkins gang and by the blog you refer to. The exact origins of easter are very unclear - the only thing all serious historians agree on is that it is a Christianized version of some pagan festival. Very likely, it is derived from festivals celebrating the arrival of spring, which is pretty much universally celebrated. As such, fertility is a vital aspect, mostly in the form of spring representing the time when the earth itself is again becoming fertile and animals are forming couples. The egg as a symbol of fertility is so self-evident that I won't even go into it here.
As nearly every culture had its own spring festival, it is likely that the Christianized easter had different origins in different places. In Germania, germanic antecedents would be likely, whereas the countries of the Levant would be more likely to incorporate Babylonian and Assyrian aspects. Ishtar is apparently identical with the older Sumerian Inanna. Of Inanna we know that she was celebrated on a special festival on the tenth day of the new year (i.e. the tenth day after the spring equinox), so she does tie in with easter.
The problem with both the Dawkins-post and the blog you cite is that they assume a single origin for easter, which is a complete historical fallacy. The origins vary according to geographic, social and historical conditions.
thomasquinn 32989 wrote:
On topic:
GratefulFan, I think a pretty poor case is made both by the Dawkins gang and by the blog you refer to. The exact origins of easter are very unclear - the only thing all serious historians agree on is that it is a Christianized version of some pagan festival. Very likely, it is derived from festivals celebrating the arrival of spring, which is pretty much universally celebrated. As such, fertility is a vital aspect, mostly in the form of spring representing the time when the earth itself is again becoming fertile and animals are forming couples. The egg as a symbol of fertility is so self-evident that I won't even go into it here.
As nearly every culture had its own spring festival, it is likely that the Christianized easter had different origins in different places. In Germania, germanic antecedents would be likely, whereas the countries of the Levant would be more likely to incorporate Babylonian and Assyrian aspects. Ishtar is apparently identical with the older Sumerian Inanna. Of Inanna we know that she was celebrated on a special festival on the tenth day of the new year (i.e. the tenth day after the spring equinox), so she does tie in with easter.
The problem with both the Dawkins-post and the blog you cite is that they assume a single origin for easter, which is a complete historical fallacy. The origins vary according to geographic, social and historical conditions.
I cited four sources in totality. As they were in essence written specifically to debunk the Ishtar meme it was appropriate that there was a degree of focus on the likely Anglo Saxon origins of the word "Easter". However without exception each source explicitly explored the breadth of historical influences on the modern Christian celebration of Easter and it's pagan roots. Your assertion that the initial blog assumed a single origin for Easter is simply not correct. In fact she said "Look. Here’s the thing. Our Western Easter traditions incorporate a lot of elements from a bunch of different religious backgrounds. You can’t really say that it’s just about resurrection, or just about spring, or just about fertility and sex. You can’t pick one thread out of a tapestry and say, “Hey, now this particular strand is what this tapestry’s really about.” It doesn’t work that way; very few things in life do."
Any implication that the four sources which responsibly sought to communicate factual information and the richness and complexity of the related history should in any way be considered to have failed equally to that smug and factually incorrect credit card sized graphic developed specifically to encourage hard line atheists to roll around in the mud of their own misplaced sense of superiority is simply unsupportable.
Apparently, you are not interested in the origin of easter at all. You are interested in finding something to beat the atheists with. I think that's more than a little sad. I also think the hostile tone of your last post is uncalled for and more than a little sad.