An atheists BELIEF there is no supreme being(s) is based on his/her BELIEF that logic and reasoning can answer that question.

You BELIEVE rational inquiry can and should be applied to discover the supernatural.  I BELIEVE rational inquiry can not and should not be applied to discover the supernatural.

Okay, you’re missing one huge difference and I’m not sure I can explain it to you, but I’m willing to give it a go.

It stems from the initial suposition that there is a supernatural to discover. Nothing exists to lead anyone to that conclusion. Religions were brought about at a time when man didn’t understand the world around him and were his way to answer questions like why does the sun rise or why is fire hot. It all evolved out of a quest for knowledge. As real knowledge became available, the need for those stories went away.

Now, in the world we have today, there is nothing to lead anyone to believe that the supernatural exists, and no reason to believe that the stories in the bible were in any way real.

So, it’s not a question of reason ability to understand the supernatural, but a question of the existance of the supernatural at all.

I maintain that reason is more than adequet to the task and it has nothing to do with BELIEF and everything to do with fact.

Originally posted by KPatrickGlover:
So, it’s not a question of reason ability to understand the supernatural, but a question of the existance of the supernatural at all.

And because it is a question of the existence of the supernatural, naturally then…

Originally posted by KPatrickGlover:
Atheists like to search for the other 99% because they think that’s fun.

You will search for the other 99% using the method of logic and reasoning because you believe they will give you that answer.  You can only maintain that you believe logic and reason are adequate to the task.  It has everything to do with your belief in your ability to fact find.

First, you misquoted, the 99% comment was someone else, not me.

Second, logic and reason have been adequate for every task they’ve been presented with, there is no reason to conclude that they won’t be adequate for all future tasks. It’s about facts, not belief.

How do you abandon logic and fact find at the same time?

I honestly do not mind when people question my beliefs.  But when people make statements like Christianity cause people to lose their intellect and cognitive ability, or Christians are ignorant, etc. I get frustrated because none of that is true or can be blamed on a belief system.  it is true that many people make themselves ignorance as a response to adopting a belief system, but that is the problem of the people, not the belief system.

In MY experience, in a lifetime I think is roughly twice as long as yours, I have seen the same disconnect with reality in the drug addicts who’ve crossed my path as I have in the Christians of my acquaintance.  Some of these people were once drug addicts, and then became Christians.  Should I ignore my observation that there seem to be a huge number of rather rabid Christians who were once drug addicts (not least of all, in our GOVERNMENT), and not say that it might be one of the reasons we’ve got what appears to be an inordinate number of quite vocal religionists screaming their fool heads off in media and trying to make LAWS according to their shared delusion?

I am a fundamentalist Christian.  I BELIEVE the Bible to be inerrant and inspired by God.  I BELIEVE God created the world in six days, there was a flood, a bunch of miracles happened, Jesus came, changed how we should view our relationship with God, died, was resurrected, lives in Heaven, and will come again to reign for a millenium.  The fact that I believe these things to be true does not make me by default ignorant of the fact that evolution has a lot of evidence for being factual, that miracles are very unlikely since they can not be recorded or measured, that Jesus may be similar to many other God figures, or that God has yet to provide substantial, credible, and measurable evidence that He exists.  I know these things.  We differ in our beliefs that you BELIEVE knowledge can discover the answer to God’s existence and I BELIEVE that knowledge and reasoning are not sufficient to decide whether God exists.

Some of us couldn’t give two shits whether gods exist or not.  We don’t think about it at all, nor care to “apply reason and logic to the supernatural” because to us it simply doesn’t exist.  I don’t think about miracles or invisible beings any more than I think about astrophysics, and the only reason I give a shit what other people think or believe about invisible beings is when their beliefs are encroaching on my life and liberty—which is what’s happening now, and I’ve been railing against since I saw it starting to happen back when all my former-crackhead, current-fundy friends (and GW) were still fucking around with cocaine in the early 80s.

I wouldn’t shut up then and I’m not going to shut up now, when it’s the worst I’ve ever seen… I have a kid to raise, goddammit.  I refuse to be complicit in her being indoctrinated.

I can respect you as a person without respecting your silly beliefs.  There’s a difference, y’know?

How do you abandon logic and fact find at the same time?

Damned if I know!

I view anyone who believes in God they same way I view adults who believe in the Easter Bunny or those that believe they’ve been abducted by aliens

Noted idiots whom we should accord such respect as one gives to an adult that believes in the Easter Bunny:

Martin Luther King
Gandi
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Thomas Aquinas
Thomsa Jefferson
John Adams
Thomas Paine
George Washington
Benjamin Franklin
Abraham Lincoln
Jimmy Carter
William Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Ted Kennedy
John Kerry
John McCain
Patrick Leahy
Christopher Dodd
Tom Harkin
Daniel Patrick Monihan
Clarence Thomas
Lech Walesa
C.S. Lewis
Tolkien
Henry Connick Jr.
Bing Crosby
Otis Redding
Aretha Franklin
Vince Lombardi
Kant
Descartes

The list could go on and on.  As much as I disagree with some of those that I listed, I respect their intellectual prowess.  Take what I say with a grain of salt though, because I’m just as delusional as an adult that believes in the Easter Bunny.

The hubris of the statement, well, it is truly astounding.  I stand in awe of ego. 

Regards,

What you don’t have is evidence to support your BELIEF that using reasoning and logic is able to discover that there conclusively is or is not a supreme being(s).

Perhaps this is the fundamental problem here. NO ONE is making the argument that you believe they are. No one has said that logic and reasoning will conclusively tell us that there is or is not a higher being. What has been said, time and time and time and time and time again, is that logic and reasoning give us no reason to ASSUME the existence of a higher being. Theo, no method of science is able to discover conclusively that there is not an invisible omnimax rainbow unicorn sitting behind you as you type, waiting to feast upon your soul the second you hit the enter key. There is literally no way to prove that this isn’t the case. However, I sincerely doubt my suggestion that there is an omnimax soul-eating rainbow unicorn standing behind you will cause you any concern, because there is no reason for you to believe that there is other than my telling you so. Had you been raised from birth to believe in all-powerful unicorns of doom, however, then you would probably never hit that enter key.

Why did you have to stop believing in God in order to go to a therapist?  Anyone that told you God and therapists don’t mix is off their rocker.

No one told me to stop believing in god.  I stopped believing because he didn’t help me, he didn’t give me a “sign”, and because believing in him left me unsatisfied.  Because religion made me feel worse about myself, among other things irrelevant to this point.  My point is this: theists believe that if you really open yourself to god, he’ll come to you and help you and you’ll experience some enlightenment (obviously this is different from The Enlightenment ) In my time of greatest need, I repeatedly opened myself to god according to how religious people told me and read the Bible and went to church and bible study and still, there was never any solace in it--God never revealed anything to me and I realized that I was alone to find my own way.  So I took a more realistic and active approach, got some help, and I am far happier than I ever was as a Christian.  Things I can see and feel are more relevant to my life than things in my imagination.

I never once mentioned creationism in my posts.

I was really referring to ellie, sorry.  I have found your posts to be well thought out, though I disagree with their contents.  You’ll find that none of my attacks were directed at you, but that they were for posts lacking in well-thought-outedness.

You will search for the other 99% using the method of logic and reasoning because you believe they will give you that answer.  You can only maintain that you believe logic and reason are adequate to the task.

Yeah, that was my quote about searching being fun.  Logic and reason have been tons more profitable than belief.  The main evidence for me is in the little personal account of becoming an atheist that I gave you.  But I could grossly abstract it here:  believing that it’s raining men does not make it happen.  Picking up a whole bunch of men and throwing them off a bridge is a more reasonable and logical way to make it rain men, and indeed it is the only method that would work.  (besides being disgusting)

You can not be sure that your quest for the answer to the existence of God can be found through logic and reasoning.  If it could then why haven’t humans found him by now? 

Maybe that would be because he doesn’t exist.
If you meant “Why havent humans found out yet whether or not he exists?”, then my answer is that it’s because god is not testable.  In that way, yes, reason cannot address the matter of god.  But I think it imprudent to judge belief and reason as equal means of “knowing”.

As for logic and reasoning being a belief:
If you mean that religion and reason are both paradigms, I would agree...but you’ll have to excuse me for favoring things I can see and feel over things I can’t.

Consig, perhaps instead of shying away from a real response and providing a list of noteworthy people who have believed in a god (and I noticed a few people on that list who quite probably didn’t), perhaps you should have actually demonstrated why your delusions (and those of the famous examples you listed) are any different from those that beleve in the Easter bunny or Santa Claus or Little Green Men from Alpha Centauri, because I honestly don’t see any difference between Descartes and yourself believing in a god and the guy down the hall from me believing that the government is cooperating with extraterrestrials in an effort to enslave us.

Picking up a whole bunch of men and throwing them off a bridge is a more reasonable and logical way to make it rain men, and indeed it is the only method that would work.

Not a bad idea, shana, providing you pick the right men-
“I have a little list
They never will be missed"…

I honestly don’t see any difference between Descartes and yourself believing in a god and the guy down the hall from me believing that the government is cooperating with extraterrestrials in an effort to enslave us.

Mick, the guy down the hall is right.  And we all know who these extraterrestrials are…

As a bit of an aside, it occurred to me that one possible argument that might work for the theist is to note that in the past there have been those who made wacky claims that have proven to be correct. 

For example Newton, when he introduced the idea of a force, this notion was generally laughed at by his contemporaries who were ardent mechanists who rejected the idea of action at a distance.  However, now we take the notion for forces for granted.  We accept that magnetism, gravity, and various other phenomena occur as a result of the action of forces.  It seems that the theist could use this argument to get a little wiggle room. 

Then again it seems that Newton had good empirical reasons to suggest the existence of forces, and I’m not sure that the theist can make that claim.  However, I’ll leave this part for an actual theist to deal with.

Backing up a bit here as I’m coming in late on this one, Theo wrote:

I am tired of the general lack of respect going on between all theists and atheists.  We have reasons for what we believe and so do you.  Philosophically, none of these reasons are better than another, therefore why can’t we have discussions on this site in a respectful manner to everyone elses beliefs?

Because not every belief is worthy of respect. What of the beliefs of a white supremest? They have their reasons for their beliefs that, according to you, are philosophically no better or worse than the beliefs you or I hold, yet I don’t know too many people who can hold much respect for those beliefs because they are, generally, pretty heinous.

I respect your right to believe whatever the hell you want no matter how silly or ignorant I think those beliefs happen to be, but that doesn’t mean I have to respect the beliefs themselves or the person who tries to claim them as being equally valid to any other belief.

There are plenty of believers that I have the utmost respect for despite the fact that I think their beliefs in a God are silly. Religious belief is only one aspect of a person after all. If you’re generally a decent person and content to let me find my own way while you go yours then you can believe whatever nonsense you want to if it makes you happy to do so. But if you’re going to tell me my point of view is wrong or that yours is as equally valid then you’re going to have to back that shit up with some solid reasoning.

I’m irritated at the lack of respect shown for a belief system just because it does not fit your standards.

As someone else pointed out, ridiculous ideas deserve to be ridiculed lest others mistakenly assume they have some value.

Faith in your own ability to logic and reason to give you answers is a belief system and when you put down other belief systems because they do not fit your standards of faith that makes you no better than any other Christian, Muslim, Hindu or anyone else doing the same thing.

It’s not a matter of having faith in my ability to logic and reason. Logic and reason are tools one uses, not external forces one appeals to like in the case of God, and as such don’t require faith in them to utilize. They have also repeatedly demonstrated their usefulness in determining the truth enough times that having confidence in them is as faithless an act as having confidence in your favorite hammer to get the job done. Sometimes hammers break and so does logic, but this doesn’t make my trust in their usefulness an act of faith on par with your faith that God will enlighten you with the truth as long as you continue to believe without question and ask nicely. Logic and reason are basic tools that make the whole of science possible and look what it’s managed to accomplish over the years in determining the “truth” about reality. Was it God that revealed the truth about the Earth revolving around the Sun? No. Was it God that revealed the truth about viruses and bacteria being the basis for disease? No. Was it God that revealed that mental illness was not demon possession? No.

It was science built with the tools of logic and reason that brought these discoveries to light. Not one pope nor one preacher nor one imam woke up one day and said, “God has revealed to me the truth about genetics! Here’s the details as I wrote them down from God’s dictation!”

As a means of determining “The Truth” about anything that’s been particular beneficial or useful to mankind, God’s track record is pretty piss-poor compared to Logic and Reason.

There is more I want to cover, but I’ll be late for work if I do at this time. I’ll continue later.

Hell with clothes altogether!  I say we go nekked!

I’d go along with that, ellie, but it’s a bit nippy here at 48 degrees North in winter… BTW, I brought up your infamous “terrorist” comment just now, not because I haven’t forgiven you, but just as an example of how we all get carried away from time to time.  P.S.- sharp new avatar! Hubba hubba!

Moving right along-

KPG said:  I view anyone who believes in God they same way I view adults who believe in the Easter Bunny or those that believe they’ve been abducted by aliens

Consi replied: Noted idiots whom we should accord such respect as one gives to an adult that believes in the Easter Bunny:

Martin Luther King
Gandi

etc., a long list of not-stupid people who presumably (although this remains to be proven) do not believe in the Easter Bunny.

In the first place, KPG did not say in what way he views such adults.  He said nothing about idiots or lack of respect- consi, “thou sayest"(Matt.27:11).  Possibly, he meant something like (don’t let me put words in your mouth if this is not true, KPG) “I view people who believe in God the same way as adults who believe in the Easter Bunny- namely, as people who have a false belief, perhaps amenable to education.”

Anyway, that’s what I would mean by it.  And while a long list of intelligent people who believe(d) in God is some indication that you don’t have to be an idiot to believe,
a) a lot of intelligent people have believed the Earth is flat; and
b) there’s less and less excuse to believe in God nowadays, with the tools to defenestrate this pitiful hodgepodge of old superstition available to just about everyone.

Les- great job, as usual, of clearly defining the issues.  Kudos.

I respect your right to believe whatever the hell you want no matter how silly or ignorant I think those beliefs happen to be, but that doesn’t mean I have to respect the beliefs themselves or the person who tries to claim them as being equally valid to any other belief.

There are plenty of believers that I have the utmost respect for despite the fact that I think their beliefs in a God are silly. Religious belief is only one aspect of a person after all. If you’re generally a decent person and content to let me find my own way while you go yours then you can believe whatever nonsense you want to if it makes you happy to do so. But if you’re going to tell me my point of view is wrong or that yours is as equally valid then you’re going to have to back that shit up with some solid reasoning.

Les, thanks for a much more detailed and eloquent phrasing of my final comment above.

What it boils down to for me is that while I respect people’s right to believe whatever they please, and will continue to support their Constitutional right to do so, my respect and support ENDS at the point where one group’s beliefs are favored above all others in matters of law that are applied to ALL citizens regardless of whether they subscribe to those beliefs.

Which is, after all, what the initial post addressed.

An article written by a teen columnist here:

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=opinion&story_id=020105b5_teendonna

is evidence that this girl neither understands the details of the Cupertino case, nor the purpose of the DOI - which is NOT as the foundation of our system of government, but an explanation as to why we were telling King George and his Divine rulership to “fuck off.”

The action was taken on the basis of separation of church and state. I’d be happy to inform that principal that the Declaration has much more to do with the state than the church.

Heaven forbid there is an absolute on which this government was founded. It’s our country’s history, like it or not. Citizens have got to deal with it mentioning God.

People can argue the founders’ intents all they want, but the fact is, the Declaration of Independence is the foundation of independent America. The fact is, it mentions God, a Creator, a Supreme Providence. Read the whole thing, and you’ll see He’s mentioned four times. An accident? I think not.

I pity the children in that school. As much as they will learn about the Constitution and our government, without knowing its foundation, they won’t know the rights to which they’re entitled. Worse, they won’t know if their rights are taken away.

An uninformed population would allow our government to slowly become more and more autocratic - the very thing it was set up to prevent. If we discard our foundation, our government becomes distorted, and our Constitution can be made to say anything people want it to say. That is scary.

Call me biased, but for me, religion only adds to the need to save the Declaration. I would hope atheists and all people alike would want to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

An uninformed populace is indeed scary.  Scarier still is an uninformed populace insisting that the American ideal of individual liberty and freedom of conscience are rooted in THEIR particular sytem of ancient superstitions, and the infiltration of government by subscribers to that belief system who are doing all they can to systematically dismantle the Constitution - the TRUE foundation of American government.

KPG said:  I view anyone who believes in God they same way I view adults who believe in the Easter Bunny or those that believe they’ve been abducted by aliens

Consi replied: Noted idiots whom we should accord such respect as one gives to an adult that believes in the Easter Bunny:

and followed it with a list of alleged believers.

Zilch responded with: KPG did not say in what way he views such adults.  He said nothing about idiots or lack of respect- consi, “thou sayest"(Matt.27:11).  Possibly, he meant something like (don’t let me put words in your mouth if this is not true, KPG) “I view people who believe in God the same way as adults who believe in the Easter Bunny- namely, as people who have a false belief, perhaps amenable to education.�?

And thnak you for the help, Zilch. Let me clarify my original statement.

I view anyone who believes in God they same way I view adults who believe in the Easter Bunny or those that believe they’ve been abducted by aliens. Peculiar. Eccentric. Odd.

All of these are fine, I have many friends who are one of the above for various reasons and I’ve even been accused of eccentricity myself.

But, and here’s the big issue with me, such beliefs call their ability to make rational judgments into question and if they are in a position that a judgment that they make could affect my life in some way I don’t trust them.

Period.

Religions were brought about at a time when man didn’t understand the world around him...As real knowledge became available, the need for those stories went away

So ou actually think we understand our world with real knowledge now???

logic and reason have been adequate for every task they’ve been presented with

Including how to comfort those who have lost loved ones.  “S/He was only a collection of molecules, that’s all you are, & you will never have contact with him/her again.  P.S. the meaning of life is to realize there is no meaning except to have fun & prove you are more reasonable & logical than many others before you cease to exist.”

How do you abandon logic and fact find at the same time?

You don’t abandon it anymore than you abandon crutches when your legs heal, you move beyond needing them.  This goes back to my premise that atheism is based on an emotional need for personal control.  Since I do not feel or have given up that emotional need, I can’t understand the rest of atheist knowledge, while many atheists percieve me to have an emotional need whatever role they percieve God to fulfill in my life, so they can’t understand my knowledge.

Les, didn’t Gregor Mendel work with monks?  What if God gave us reason & logic as tools?

The constitution is based on the magna carta & Reussau & Locke...try reading Locke without a belief in God!

You don’t abandon it anymore…

I know that I don’t abandon logic, but you did.

How and why do you “fact finding” after abandoning logic?

Ellie, y’ gettin’ bitter?  This whole, “Oh, you people all think you’re so smart” routine is pretty weak.

Your right to believe in the UPU (Universal Pink Unicorn) is not in question.  Nor can it be questioned that many important people in history have been theists (not as many as some would like to believe.)

The role of religion in comforting human anxieties is hardly in question either.  But comfort is not proof - it isn’t even evidence.  Ditto that lots of people have believed in the UPU - again not proof of anything.

What do you want, exactly? 

By the way, Mendel worked with peas - he was a monk.  Though if the peas were monks too - vegetable initiates - then you could say he worked with monks.  Alternatively, maybe he did some genetic experiments we don’t know about.

ellie,

Your post made me think.  It occurred to me that there are other monks whom we should discuss in regards to the topic of logic, reason and their relationship to religion.  If monks such as St. Augustine of Hippo (he’s not a monk, but he was a priest), St. Thomas Aquinas (Dominican), Duns Scotus (Franciscan), William of Ockham (Franciscan), and Peter of Spain (Dominican)were all logicians (indeed, some credit them with providing the basis for modern formal logic).  Moreover, they all believed that one cannot have appropriate faith without rational examination of one’s religious belief. 

They thought that simple acceptance of doctrine based on the authority of the Church wasn’t in fact faith but idolatry.  To have faith one must develop one’s beliefs through rational examination of the world.  It seems from reading them that they would be considered to be proponents of science nowadays rather than proponents of scriptural inerrancy.

Ah, SS, you have struck upon my favorites!  I own nearly all of Augustine’s works, although once I came upon the realization that he is the father of modern mysogyny in the church I was slightly perterbed.  Aquinas was nearly as tough as Kant, but he dealt with the inerrancy in the Suma Theologica.  Luther’s works are great also, I don’t really know the others.  But their premise was exactly as you describe

one cannot have appropriate faith without rational examination of one’s religious belief....simple acceptance of doctrine based on the authority of the Church wasn’t in fact faith but idolatry.  To have faith one must develop one’s beliefs through rational examination of the world.

Their approach to Scripture was clearly “innocent until proven guilty” & they said often that to stop at the Scriptures rather than questioning our own thinking & experience would be like reading about eating yet never doing it yourself.  In the last 3 years I’ve meditated lately on the nature of the soul vs. the will, differing souls of men & women, whether Satan is actually fallen or is performing his function to bring balance & Predestination vs. Free will.  But clearly one cannot go there unless you 1st accept the premises & purposes of the Scriptures.  I can’t imagine what there is to meditate on if there is nothing greater than myself…

They also saw the hypocracy & corruption within their church & knew that the only healing for human depravity lie within the inerrant Scriptures, not science.  The natural world reflects God’s order & love, & sometimes His/Her Justice & Mercy, but most of His/Her justice & mercy is laid out in His/Her laws & Scriptures, with the gift of our reason, logic, soul, will & hearts to explore.

Now let’s all just hold hands & sing kumbaya...J/K

ellie,

Indeed, I grant that there are some base assumptions you have to accept to accept the arguments made by the early Christian philosophers.  Also I grant that Augustine was a misogynist, but he was also very much a momma’s boy.

That said, I do agree with the approach to religion espoused by the list of people I cited in my previous post.  If more people were to approach religion in such a manner I would probably get involved in far fewer debates.

However, it does seem that there are a fair number of people who do treat scripture as the alpha and the omega.  They read the bible, decide that’s all one must do, and go around spouting often silly claims (which is their right, but when they try to force other people to accept their position qua the dissolution of the state/religion division, I do think that one must say something).

I don’t want you to take any offense, but it seems to me that there are moments in which you are guilty of lack of reflection upon your positions.  In particular I think that you do have a bit of a blind spot for science.  In the past it has seemed that you too readily dismiss science in favor of catechism.  Now I don’t want you to interpret this as an attack or rejection of your general position regarding religion.  Indeed, I do think that your positions are often well considered, even if I don’t generally agree with them.  I just think that perhaps you might be more open to secular inquiry and scholarly work, it might inform your faith (indeed, Kant, Descartes, and Newton all thought that natural philosophy, i.e. science, is the best way to understand the will/hand of God).

As for meditation, there are a great number of Christian groups that believe that meditation upon one’s self is the best way to gain a relationship with God.  Some examples that come immediately to mind are the Quakers, Gnostics (some might deny that they’re Christians), and various historic Christian mystic groups.

P.S.  I forgot to mention my further point.  My last post was also intended to address your comment about logic and reason being crutches.  From the perspective of the theologians I mentioned earlier, logic and reason serve a much more central role than as a crutch.  Indeed, they would argue that reason and logic should be the legs of faith being the foundation leading one to the most sound available beliefs.  Fear of logic and reason strikes me as a fear of possibly being wrong and having one’s cherished beliefs be demonstrated as faulty. 

As a theist friend of mine has put it, honest faith requires the “dark night of the soul” in which you examine your beliefs honestly and try to find fault in what you believe.  If your faith survives that, then you know you have some justification.  Personally, I’ve never been able to find a position regarding religion that survived such questioning intact.  However, you might, and then your faith will be all that much more sound.

P.S. the meaning of life is to realize there is no meaning except to have fun & prove you are more reasonable & logical than many others before you cease to exist.

Sounds about right to me, ellie…

Now let’s all just hold hands & sing kumbaya...J/K

I took part in a nonstop singalong for peace (in Berkeley-where else?) years ago.  Around four in the morning we were getting pretty silly, and kumbaya devolved to stuff like:
Someone’s jogging, my Lord, Kumbaya
Someone’e flossing, my Lord, Kumbaya
etc.

By the way, Mendel worked with peas - he was a monk.  Though if the peas were monks too - vegetable initiates - then you could say he worked with monks.

DoF!  BTW, when statistical analyses were done on Mendel’s work in the ‘30s, they found that his numbers were too good to be true.  In other words, the good monk knew what the ratios were supposed to be, and cooked his data.  When this became public, an anonymous wag penned the following:

Peas on Earth

In the beginning there was Mendel thinking his lonely thoughts alone.  And he said: “Let there be peas,” and there were peas and it was good.  And he put the peas in the garden, saying unto them “Increase and multiply, segregate and assort yourselves independently,” and they did and it was good.  And now it came to pass that when Mendel gathered up his peas, he divided them into round and wrinkled, and called the round dominant and the wrinkled recessive, and it was good.  But now Mendel saw that there were 450 round peas and 102 wrinkled ones; this was not good.  For the law stateth that there should be only 3 round for every wrinkled.  And Mendel smote the table in righteous wrath, saying “Depart from me, you cursed and evil peas, into the outer darkness where thou shalt be devoured by the rats and mice,” and lo it was done and there remained 300 round peas and 100 wrinkled peas, and it was good.  It was very, very, good.  And Mendel published.

That’s my best screwup to date with quotes.  The previous post should of course contain:

Now let’s all just hold hands & sing kumbaya...J/K

I took part in a nonstop singalong for peace (in Berkeley-where else?) years ago.  Around four in the morning we were getting pretty silly, and kumbaya devolved to stuff like:
Someone’s jogging, my Lord, Kumbaya
Someone’e flossing, my Lord, Kumbaya
etc.

By the way, Mendel worked with peas - he was a monk.  Though if the peas were monks too - vegetable initiates - then you could say he worked with monks.

DoF!