Honest question. Is this site a religious site?

[follderol]

It seems to me there's a large amount of Christian posts. I've also noticed a fair amount of disapproval for other religions.

I am an atheist. I don't really want to be part of a christian site posing as a parenting site.

So is this actually a Christian place?

Ok. I'm gone till Friday at 10 or 9. Whichever. Just lacerate me if you see me at other times. Really not meaning to cast aspertions on anyone else for posting. I know you lot all achieve loads. I'nm just crap at getting stuff done.

It has taken a rather eucharistic turn. Of course the physical source of the deliciousness is as you describe. The agnostic biscuit demands that deliciousness is understood in both physical and metaphysical terms however.

I think that's my problem right there, Iorek. you say tomayto, I say tomarto. You say metaphysical, I say fantasist..

Thoroughly enjoying this thread but three glasses of Prosecco have rendered me incapable of adding anything except some rather humanist Fox's Party Rings.

lol weblette.

Oh dear Threadie, I'm sorry. What a dumbkopf I am. But it appears to have gone into classics, which is the second in under a week! Surely that proves to you that MN is a worthwhile enterprise, which without your input will flounder and die?

One can say that God "very probably" doesn't exist without having to use a mathematical sense of the word "probability".

Replace God with "silly-sounding made-up deity of your choice" and it all becomes clear. Does the Great Invisible Benevolent Pink Gerbil exist? No "proof" one way or the other. Ansolutely fair game, if "proof" is your bag. But those of us who have moved on from that particular argument know that attempts to establish "proof" are doomed to failure - you can't prove something doesn't exist.

But the likelihood is not 50-50, because you use your common sense and the knowledge of the rest of the evidence (or lack of it). And you know it's more than probable - in fact, very very probable, and in fact so close to true as any human endeavour to establish the truth can possibly be, almost within an atom's-breadth of that point known as "certainty" - that he is a product of my deranged imagination.

A question with a yes-no answer doesn't always have a 50-50 likelihood/probability. (In fact, it almost never does unless it's something really simple like flipping a coin. )

But onebat, although the delicious thing and the consumer who perceives its deliciousness are both physical, deliciousness itself is not physical. We can give a detailed physical account of the biscuit and the eater that explains the mechanisms by which one elicited the response in the other, but it brings us no closer to explaining the pure experience of deliciousness.

(Weblette - I'm not convinced Fox's party rings are humanist. Are you sure you're not from the United Reformed church?)

But deliciousness is physical, Iorek. It's subjective, but nevertheless physical. It depends on the education of one's palate, as well as the sensitivity of one's taste-buds.

biscuit related question, honest.

Why are some people moved to tears by a certain piece of music and others tone deaf? It can all be explained by brain chemistry presumably, are there studies on this? I'd be interested...

I'm a Hare Krishna so I offer my biscuits (choc chip cookies, Jaffa cakes, choc digestives) to Krishna before I eat them. Hare Krishna!!

Must go to bed!

It also depends, crucially, on our consciousness. And it is unknowingness about the source of consciousness that makes the agnostic position.

deliciousness, that is

perhaps that's the solution to my diet woes, pispiris. Find a greedy deity and offer each biscuit to him/her first. You gotta get a high strike rate with that one, surely?

But Iorek, why should unknowingness about the source of consciousness require a different approach to unknowingness about anything else?

Well, onebat it's good for your karma but not for your thighs IYSWIM...

Iorek - the online tests would maybe say so, in that case I offer some Nairn's Fruit and Spice Oatcakes.

ruty, I'm very interested in this too.

I think that music is very very closely related to language, and that our most basic responses to music are very similar to our responses to the spoken word. For example the rising inflection heard in a question and the cadence heard in a statement are replicated and formalised in tonal western music, and understood as question and answer in the same way. Similarly in both speech and music we read high pitched rapid sounds as anxiety or excitement, and read low, slow sounds as calmness or depression, depending on the inflection (if speech) or the tonality (if music).

As to why particular types of music elicit responses in a particular people, I would think this is very much culturally determined. I think we learn music through exposure as we learn language, and will only respond to that in which we can recognise meaningful elements.

(Someone gave me Oliver Sacks' book, Musicophilia for Christmas, but I left it at my mum's house and haven't read it - I think it might touch on all this stuff. He looks at cases where brain injuries have resulted in some odd musical responses. You are very welcome to borrow it when I get it back.)

Not so stern and actually quite funny atheism? 'Tis Prof Dawkins hisself.

Oh yes, he's had that T-shirt for a while. People under-estimate the Prof's capacity for humour...

Meanwhile, this is interesting, and also rather amusing. Essentially "we want you to stop believing in your woo, and believe in our woo instead, 'cos it's better."

Do you mean it is culturally determined by one's personal/familial upbringing Iorek? Because a piece of music does not have the same effect on every individual who share other common cultural values.

I think if you're going to diet by offering biscuits to a deity, it would be most efficient to first of all declare your cat (or dog, but less Egyptian) to be a deity. I think that would up the strike rate to the point where your calorie intake would be affected.

Or you could believe in fire as the manifestation of the deity of your choice - any crumbs not entirely incinerated by the deity as a sign of acceptance of the offering would of course be sacred, and therefore you would not eat them. I think you could manage a 100% biscuit-calorie reduction by that method.

I hope this is not another pop at The Rev, oh ye of ODD choice of username. Which has been noted on another (some might say) provocative thread you started.

Lol AMIS!

Gosh. Richard Dawkins relaxing on his hols . He looks all sun-kiss'd.

"We want church to be a verb not a noun"

No. No. Don't do that, Christians.

For a start, it would reduce the chances of turning me (and any other pedant) to precisely those mentioned in AMIS's patented biscuit/inferno thigh-reduction
method (success guaranteed or your money back).