July 04, 2007

• 
• Insulting.
• Heathens! There is only ONE TRUE FAITH!
• Come on. Do you really think Shep Messing is the greatest player ever?
• Oh guarrrrd!
• Isn't he one of the stooges?
• You're thinking of Sheppo Marx.
• And he was Karl's little brother... no?
• When I first saw this post I thought that this was something like the flying spagetti monster or the church of the subgenius, an inside joke. After clicking the links, my first assumptions appear to be wrong. Only in Argentina.
• Let us pray.
• I've known a lot of sports worshippers in my day. At least these fellers are being honest about it.
• Since time immemorial folks from around Mexico and southwards have taken their ball games quite seriously.
• I think that for a set of beliefs to be a "religion", they need to have at least one aspect, if not a whole lot of it, made up of completely absurd, nonsense parts. Walking on water, creating the earth in seven days, evil spirts from another planet inhabiting our bodies, etc... I can't think of one religion that doesn't have something absurd to it. Seems we have a need to believe the impossible. If it doesn't contain some sort of wacky, nut ball stuff, then it isn't really a religion, no?
• Why can't people have a church of ordinary things? I can somewhat see where you're coming from, but there is a difference between atheism and worship of the mundane.
• I suppose one can have a church of the ordinary, but so far in human civilization there hasn't been a dominant "religion" of reality. And science doesn't really count as it isn't worship, but method. I suppose zen buddhism could possibly be put into a "reality" category, but there are certain aspects that smack of the supernatural. And zen also mentions gods and ghosts, although some argue that these are cultural, period descriptions of psychological states. Still, I think to be a religion, you need to have as part of your belief system aspects of the supernatural, the unreal, the absurd.
• fr.wikipedia link
• Damnation. I'm having severe connection problems today. That was supposed to link to Notre Dame du Rugby. The same story with some pictures.
• Still, I think to be a religion, you need to have as part of your belief system aspects of the supernatural, the unreal, the absurd. Reality is pretty hard to believe sometimes. It's even harder to know. And isn't that all that it is: believing that something is real? And supporting it with "truth"?
• Huh? So far I haven't been presented with a genuine, with a cherry on top, capital M, Miracle. You know, walking on water, water into wine, parting the waters, etc... The kind which are real to believers and nonsense to the rest of us. Admittedly, technology creates some really cool, and at first, unbelievable things, but each when parsed out reveals the mechanisms that created it. That makes it science and engineering, not the hand of god. And to know, to really know for certain without a shadow of a doubt, is logically impossible. But that doesn't stop us from forming concepts that can be tested and proven highly likely. Gravity for instance, inertia, the sun will rise in the morning, etc... The Heaven's Gate people truly believed, with all their hearts, that a UFO was going to come and take them all away. Churches and cults throughout history believed in the end of the world, prepared for it innumerable times and it didn't happen. I may believe that I can levitate, and even convince myself that I did so. But others observing me might have another opinion. No, just to believe something is real "isn't all that it is".
• MonkeyFilter: a genuine, with a cherry on top, capital M, Miracle That's us!
• No, just to believe something is real "isn't [...] all that it is". I don't understand how you've gotten to this point. Sooooooo... what else is there to religion if it isn't belief and dogma?
• Perhaps we aren't understanding each other due to these internets. My response to you was that reality isn't just what you choose to believe, which is what I thought you were implying. I was arguing that there are verifiable truths out there. I was also arguing that any given belief system and it's implied "truths" or "reality" are as valid as anything any other truth or reality is incorrect. "Reality relativism," so to speak, that one view is as valid as another, doesn't hold water. Certain things make sense and can be verified. Other things do not make sense, are complete nonsense and people still believe in them. If just one person believes in this sort of stuff we call him insane, if enough people believe in it we call it a religion. If this is not what you were implying, I apologize.
• Okay, I see where we're differing now. I was implying that belief in reality, which can be stranger than fiction, is good enough for me to tag as somewhat absurd enough for religion. Ha! I'm not talking about "reality relativism", but intent: For most people, verifying reality takes the form of rote education, not method. Science, in this case, is taken for granted due to a more or less educated decision to increase efficiency by eliminating repetition - repetition which would only strengthen verification. Instead, what occurs is belief in the work of others. Christians believe in the works of Jesus. Whether or not any of these works actually occur or have been validated (through whatever avenues) is moot concerning the existence of belief that they have occurred. Therefore, enough belief exists for a church of the mundane. I don't think religion has to be absurd on the surface or in the dogma for it to be absurd. While I do agree with you on the existence of verifiable truths, I don't necessarily believe that permanent truths exist; which, in a way, invalidates the former, but I can deal with the contradiction. It works for me as well as accepting that light is both a particle and a wave. There's some of my brand of relativism in action for ya. This is a really silly thing to discuss, isn't it?
• Yes, it is silly, but isn't that what we do around here? I think we are on the same page. I just haven't seen a church of the mundane, or it's ilk, get any traction on the level of say Islam or Christianity. Zen can be practiced that way, i.e. "chop wood, carry water," but even it has a certain amount of dogma weirdness attached to it. And I think we both stated (more or less) that nothing is a "permanent truth" or to know with absolute certainty is logically impossible. Hope you are having a nice Sunday!
• IC, I am ready to join your Church of the Mundane. Is some sort of donation required?
• I think religion exists to provide answers to the unanswerable. Many thousands of years ago we needed it to explain how the sun and moon cross the sky and why lightning flashes from the clouds. When science answered those (now) simple questions, religion focused on the harder ones - Why are we here and what happens after we die? That's exactly why there are no mundane religions. Religion itself is all about the non-mundane questions...the ones that don't have a mundane answer yet. Those questions will always exist. And for people who can't be happy not having answers, religion will provide them.
• Maybe they feel that this feller's athletic gifts are a sign of some kind of divine spark?
• So, can a religion give me answers to why my life is so mundane?
• Yes! Because we are sur-ROUNDED by so many ordinary things! The trees and rocks are a-calling for y'all to take up arms and mine faith from the sap and mineral of the bored! Pah-raise something! Lara, please give chemical chance a hefty sigh! Can I get a TV!? Can I get a Hollywood, ya!? And though I walk through the valley that I've walked through so many times before I will stare at something new so as not to be so bored! Pah-raise cheeses! Today's sermon was brought to you by asphalt and the letter E.
• That's exactly why there are no mundane religions. Maybe not nowadays, but the Romans, before adopting other peoples beliefs, had some really mundane beliefs: the spirit of the hinge, the spirit of the foyer and the spirit of the good meal etc. I'm sure they would have loved football.
• Mundane?!? In the immortal words of the Blessed Shankly: 'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.' Until you understand this, you're in no position to appreciate the significance of the hermeneutics of Maradonian theurgicalism. The evil, satanic significance...
• The Shankly quotation puts me in mind of this t-shirt. Not sure if the site has been posted before: Philosophy Football.
• I saw that the other week, roryk. There's a lot of good stuff, but unfortunately, none too cheap...
• Oh -- Welcome back, Pleg!
• It wasn't the spirit of the foyer, it was the spirit of the Atrium, Porta Janua. Pfff! Get it right. /slap
• Atrium shmatrium, speak English and keep your chapeau on. /papa spank
• I think religion exists to provide answers to the unanswerable. Many thousands of years ago we needed it to explain how the sun and moon cross the sky and why lightning flashes from the clouds. When science answered those (now) simple questions, religion focused on the harder ones - Why are we here and what happens after we die? Except that religions started exploring those metaphysical questions 2,500 years ago, well before anything we'd recognize as science arrived on the scene to explain natural those natural phenomena. Just sayin'.
• Our prayers have been answered: Maradona named as Argentina coach.
• This will be interesting...