#7865: Charles Rozier — 10/29  at  10:49 AM
What, exactly, is meant by 'freethought' as y'all use it?

#7868: PZ Myers — 10/29  at  11:02 AM
Ask Tom. I use it to mean thought free from all of that religious, revealed knowledge, veneration of old dogma, piss-poor silly foolishness of the churched.

Some people have definitions that are a bit more sympathetic to the deluded.

#7869: — 10/29  at  11:05 AM
When you think about it, it's pretty stupid to be an aetheist. It defies the odds, here's why:

1. A person is either an aethiest or not;
2. Heaven exists or not
3. If Heaven exists, aetheists aren't going there.
4. If Heaven doesn't exist, aetheists and believers end up in the same place (worm bait).

So, there's 4 possible scenarios:

1. Yes Heaven, Aetheist = No going to Heaven
2. No Heaven, Aetheist = No going to Heaven
3. Yes Heaven, Believer = Possible go to Heaven
4. No Heaven, Believer = No going to Heaven

So, a believer has up to a 25% chance of going to Heaven, while an aetheist has no chance, other than to end up as maggot food, like the pea-brained midgets found by those archaeologists.

So, even if there ain't no God, and, hence, no Heaven, the odds suggest you should be a believer, anyway, since there ain't a real downside.

#7870: — 10/29  at  11:11 AM
Bob,
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't have a degree in mathematics, and that it seems unlikely that you've taken (or passed, rather) a course in statistics.

I'll give you a C- in Trolling 101, though.

#7871: — 10/29  at  11:13 AM
You're assuming a 50% chance of heaven existing. I'd like to see you defend that number.

This is Pascals wager . I've always figured that a) if God exists and would send me to hell for not believing, he would likely see through me trying to fake it, and b) if God exists and will send me to hell for not believing, then God is an asshole unworth of my worship anyway.

#7874: — 10/29  at  11:22 AM
Man, I sure confess ignorance about Mr. Pascal, but he seems to be saying some of things I'm saying

JSM,

Yes, it is true, I am not a math geek! Now, go crawl back to your dorm room, son.

Evan Murdock,

It seems like you have some anger at God to process. But I don't git it. If you don't believe in God, why are concerned about his hypothetical rules and regs?

#7876: — 10/29  at  11:29 AM
I need a little button which turns off the displaying of certain commenters' comments.

#7878: — 10/29  at  11:30 AM
Bob,

I'm afraid I'm going have to downgrade you to a D at this point. Successful trolling requires a little more adherence to the topic at hand in addition to slags. If you don't have at least a basic understanding of the principles that are the foundation for what you present as an argument, you're certainly no "thinking geek" either. Geeks can usually think their way out of paper bags.

#7881: — 10/29  at  11:39 AM
A little checkbox could say

Display Retards: _On/Off

#7882: Hank Fox — 10/29  at  11:43 AM
Welp.

Bob, you win.

The rest of you, it's been fun. Bye.

#7883: — 10/29  at  11:45 AM
Kids are fortunate now. If they get a clue that the religion of everyone around them is just a stupid fairytale, they can be hanging around atheists in minutes via the internet. Being 28, I grew up just before the internet, in a small redneck town, and was pretty isolated as far as that topic went. It wasn't until I moved to the somewhat big town of Raleigh that I found myself around people who openly admitted to being atheists. I'm sure I'd been around other atheists before, but in parts of the south at least, there are headaches and repercussions to being known as such.Even here, I'm still somewhat careful about admitting it.

#7889: PZ Myers — 10/29  at  12:34 PM
People, please don't rise to the trollbait.

Steve, I think this is an important development. In these ingrown small towns in rural America, you'd rarely encounter an open atheist (or a gay person, or in many places even a non-white person). On these here internets, though, we're here, we're loud, and we may even be over-represented relative to the population as a whole. And that's a good thing. A kid growing up with doubts can find plenty of places that say doubting is OK.

I know my daughter was ostracized a bit when we first moved here because she wasn't shy about plainly stating that she never went to church and didn't believe in that gobbledygook. She's since found her own little online community, and has also found friends at school -- maybe they're learning, too, that atheists aren't evil.

The downside is that this is also why conservative parents are so enthusiastic about filtering software for their kids' computers. I caught a few AOL commercials the other day, and was shocked to see them advertising extensive 'parental controls' as a selling point. I don't know about others, but I trust my kids, and there is no censoring software anywhere in our home network.

#7898: Tom Morris — 10/29  at  02:20 PM
Okay, I define freethought as coming to reasoned decisions about the world around you free from revelation, church dogma and faith alone. It is used as an umbrella term for atheists, agnostics and those who are not really in to the whole religion thing and prefer a rejection of it. The site is a way of keeping up to date with what's going on in the world as it pertains to this situation of lack of belief.

Covered on the site will be topics as varied as science, philosophy, political issues and stuff just for living.

With that bit done, I'll respond to Pascal's Wager. I am presuming that most people who do it reject natural theology (they wouldn't have to use such a weak argument if they believed in natural theology). Surely, though, they are then labouring under the delusion that it's Christian God or no god. Surely, if you worship the Christian God and it turns out to be that Hinduism is correct or, maybe, the Muslims are correct, then your chances are severely diminished.

If you are also stating that God is omniscient, then surely that God would be able to see through Pascal's Wager - that the only reason you are religious is that you are trying to protect your butt from going to this mystical hell. Put yourself in that position - would you prefer someone who sat in pure ignorance of your existence and didn't bother you or would you prefer someone who worshipped you solely to curry your favour. What a crock.

You are also grossly underestimating the loss that a believer suffers if there is no God - all those wasted Sundays in church, all that Bible reading. And worst of all, the loss of honesty and integrity.

Pascal's Wager is a simplification - the situation is not one of a simple coin flip (either god exists or he doesn't). With the supernatural, there are so many possibilities that it branches out from the coin flip until it's like a Vegas casino. The slot machines represent theistic belief, the craps tables represent New Age, the roulette wheel is ghosts, the poker players near death experiences, the football pools players are really betting on reincarnation. Pascal was wrong - there is so much that simplifying it to a binary option is silly. The very existence of thousands of different Christian denominations is evidence that this binary option is a near-infinite chicane of guesses.

(And they condemn evolution as a "chance" process!)

#7899: — 10/29  at  02:26 PM
Maybe another way to look at Freethinking is to focus on the THINKING part of the term. I, as Steve says, had to go away to college to find a community of thinkers/atheists in Eugene (now there were some freethinkers!). My children also were never subjected to blocking software and instead were encouraged to explore, analyze and think about what they found out there on the internets. I am quite proud of how they are turning out. Aint a churchgoer or Republican in the bunch.... well there is the one that went astray before I married her mom, but she is only 30 so there is still hope for her too.

Pharygula rocks today, even moreso than usual.

#7900: — 10/29  at  02:26 PM
Translation on latest Osama tape coming soon folks, some excerpts "Your security is not in the hands of Bush or Kerry or even Al Qaeada, your security is in your own hands." "We won't attack you if you don't attack us" and a jab at Bush for "Freezing up reading a childrens story about a goat while 9-11 took place" or something like that.

#7901: — 10/29  at  02:27 PM
... oops, dropped the n ... Pharyngula rocks ....

#7902: — 10/29  at  02:29 PM
And Bob needs to weight the value of his options ... i.e. who wants to spend eternity with Bob. I pick worms if they will have me.

#7903: PZ Myers — 10/29  at  02:32 PM
It's an odd thing, but if Pharyngula rocks today, I can't take too much credit -- site visits are just soaring recently, probably drawn in on searches for good ol' Homo floresiensis. I really think a weblog is a product of the community of commenters it draws in, and we've got a pretty good bunch here (with a few exceptions, of course).

#7905: — 10/29  at  02:43 PM
The pea-brained, 18,000-year old midgets are a real magnet for blogging, I would suggest.

#7906: — 10/29  at  02:51 PM
"I can’t take too much credit..."

Bosh. If I had a blog I'd have titles like "Check out my keen new notebook" and "I'm hungry".

And there'd be no one there.

#7908: — 10/29  at  03:18 PM
Evan Murdock wrote:

"b) if God exists and will send me to hell for not believing, then God is an asshole unworth of my worship anyway."

That's always been the aspect of religion that boggles my mind the most. Well said.

Dr. Meyers wrote:

"I caught a few AOL commercials the other day, and was shocked to see them advertising extensive ‘parental controls’ as a selling point."

I had the same reaction. I thought the commercial was gearing up to be a satire/parody of web censorship and couldn't believe it when it became clear it was all supposed to be taken at face value. A report card for your kids web viewing activity? Krikey.

#7909: — 10/29  at  03:22 PM
site visits are just soaring recently

Sorry. I've been evangelizing. I think this site totally rocks. So much cool information...

#7913: — 10/29  at  04:33 PM
You are far too modest PZ .... You are building a great environment for us to create in, the subjects and presentation encourage thoughtful exchanges ... sounds a lot like successful parenting, or teaching (read, Not AOL parenting )

#7915: — 10/29  at  04:46 PM
OT

This just cracks me up. Our friend Kent Hovind is selling the Holy Word of the Lord (KJV) in Donald Duckese. That's right, he's offering for sale the very Sacred Writ as a CD narrated by Donald Duck.

http://www.drdino.com/Ministry/NewsLetter/index.jsp

CTRL-F for "Donald Duck".

#7916: PZ Myers — 10/29  at  05:03 PM
For $99 plus shipping and handling. I think I'll pass.

But it does sound appropriate.