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Which, of course, only holds true IF all religious beliefs are bogus. If they aren't, Mr. Jilette might be wrong.
Since that remains more or less unprovable, what he said holds no more factional truth than any religion he could think of.
So your counter argument is that God wants us to believe something, but God isn't saying what it is and it is so unclear than the vast majority of people are wrong?
Or, that the universe is governed by laws that can be tested and replicated.
Is that about right? I mean, I know the second part is what I believe, I am very unclear about the first part, so feel free to clarify.
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No, I never said god wants us to believe something.
Nor do all religions.
I don't know if all laws of the universe can be tested and replicated. If they can, that still doesn't answer all questions about the universe.
Every scientific law we discovered, every scientific breakthrough pushed the limits of our knowledge further, at the same time more questions about our universe and our existence pop up.
As long as there remain questions, there will be people that believe in a god, whatever shape it has.
Of course, not every answer religions gave to questions were right, neither were all answers science gave. Sadly, most religions (especially those that hold to the thought that all the answers they gave were words of a god without any human failure in the equasion)are too hesistant to move on - but that is sadly very human (and not so unknown in science, either).
I don't believe in religions - but I believe in god(s).
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No, I never said god wants us to believe something.
Nor do all religions.
Really?
So is your god omnipotient, or at least omnicient? Is there an afterlife and things we need to do to achieve said afterlife, or worse a risk for punishment if we do or do not do things.
Because if so, my point remains.
And if not, who cares. It would be like fleas worshiping us, because we provide them food and warmth. Relative to them, we are "gods". But we certainly are not worthy of worship, and are incapable of providing rewards in another life.
I saw a post like this on facebook, but it was about how the leaflet changed this one family's life and they're attempting to now get rid of the hatred in their small town. Just a drop in the ocean, but without that drop the ocean would be that much empty. I believe that's how the quote went, can't remember where it was from.
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Sorry, I expanded my post after you repeated to it.
Not all religions are about sins, punishment and rewards in an afterlife. I think it would be far too expansive to elaborate on this on these boards (and frankly, I am not really interested in writing a few pages about religious beliefs here - it is easy to discover the basics of some other religions/believes on your own, if you are interested in that at all).
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[ It would be like fleas worshiping us, because we provide them food and warmth. Relative to them, we are "gods". But we certainly are not worthy of worship,and are incapable of providing rewards in another life.
Aren't we? - As you wrote, we provide food and warmth, and a home for another generation of fleas - which may, if fleas believe in reincarnation, well be an afterlife - they might even hope to become (again reincarnation) like us,themselves. If they act carelessly, we act against them and destroy them, their families and their future.
To them that could be worthy of worship.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Then Penn, though I have a lot of respect for the man, is wrong. The reason he is wrong is that our scientific knowledge is not truth. It is a useful approximation of the truth. If all of science were to be wiped out and we started again from scratch, we'd still only have a useful approximation of the truth. However, our approximation would be different from the original approximation (to make an analogy, if the first approximation is off by +1, the second approximation might be off by -1).
To quote Penn Jillette "If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."
Let me sum up every argument you make and its implied conclusion.
"Science isn't truth, it's a very good approximation of truth. Even the best science rests on the faith in a natural order, and that we don't in fact live in the matrix. Thus science is no better than religion. Therefore atheism is a religion."The first two points are extraordinarily nitpicky in light of the gross falsehoods and chasms of logic inherent in every practices religion, and the conclusion is nonsensical. It rests on a false equivalence between the "faith" put in concepts like parsimony or causality and the faith put in strong belief in a deity (or other supernatural force). The magnitude of these beliefs is very different.
You also are nitpicking one part of Penn's statement while dismissing it in its entirety. If the chain of custody, so to speak, of religious ideas was broken by some catastrophe, do you honestly believe the precise same religious would emerge again? Every decontextualization is a recontextualization!
Yeah, everyone in here (or the other thread) that equates religion with monotheism makes me sort of cry inside. I mean, you're MY team and I KNOW we're right, but this sort of mischaracterization of religion as a whole does no one any good.
Yeah, everyone in here (or the other thread) that equates religion with monotheism makes me sort of cry inside. I mean, you're MY team and I KNOW we're right, but this sort of mischaracterization of religion as a whole does no one any good.
At least you got to pick your team first and didn't get stuck with that Pat Robertson kid.
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[ It would be like fleas worshiping us, because we provide them food and warmth. Relative to them, we are "gods". But we certainly are not worthy of worship,and are incapable of providing rewards in another life.Aren't we? - As you wrote, we provide food and warmth, and a home for another generation of fleas - which may, if fleas believe in reincarnation, well be an afterlife - they might even hope to become (again reincarnation) like us,themselves. If they act carelessly, we act against them and destroy them, their families and their future.
To them that could be worthy of worship.
And that worship would be pointless, since we aren't gods.
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Are you finished with your straw man yet?
If you're singing and dancing about how you could be another Lincoln you can't complain about being called a strawman.
You CONSTANTLY denigrate science as just another arbitrary ideology that's no more valid than religion or any other belief system.
Of course, you got stuck with people like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins, so I'll consider it an even trade.
So you want to Equate an Oxford biologist with someone that thinks god sets up magical force-fields around righteous christian nations that can only be pierced when its weakened by abortion having liberal feminists...
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** spoiler omitted **
I guess in the end the only thing we can really do is our best to not let it slide when we see it and teach our own kids how to handle it. Like many social issues personal responsibility is the only real contribution we can probably make.
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Then Penn, though I have a lot of respect for the man, is wrong. The reason he is wrong is that our scientific knowledge is not truth. It is a useful approximation of the truth. If all of science were to be wiped out and we started again from scratch, we'd still only have a useful approximation of the truth. However, our approximation would be different from the original approximation (to make an analogy, if the first approximation is off by +1, the second approximation might be off by -1).
To quote Penn Jillette "If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."
The accumulated knowledge is not truth, but the process is the most truthful thing we have.
You say that science is not the ultimate authority on truth. That implies you consider something else to be more truthful.
I don't think that science has all the answers. I do think that the scientific method is the best method for finding an answer to something that is unknown. Just because something doesn't have all the answers, doesn't mean it isn't the best thing we have.
No one has all the answers. But science has more than anyone else. Science's answers are more accurate than anyone else's. Human beings are by nature fallible, limited and imperfect. Anything created by human beings can't completely defeat those limitations. I'm not disagreeing with those and so I am not claiming science is perfect.
It is however, the most truthful human endeavor in our entire history and to claim otherwise is to be either disingenuous or ignorant of how science works.
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What is he best known for? Talking about cultural science.
Its like having a top mechanical engineer weighing in on psychology.
He's best known for "this is why evolution is right and creationism is idiotic". While that has some cross over with cultural "science" to explain what the creationists are doing and why they are doing it, the fact that they are not only wrong but their arguments are so out of synch with reality that they have to be dishonest is well within his field of expertise.
Biology shapes society. The individual is shaped by biology, and society is shaped by the individual.
There's a HUUUUUGE difference between having some snark mixed in with facts in an argument and having an argument that is nothing but a vicious vitriolic diatribe against people who haven't come to your arbitrary religious conclussions, be they atheists or homosexuals.
Are you finished with your straw man yet?
How the shit is that a strawman? I practically quoted you word for word?
What part of that do you claim is mischaracterization?| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's right. He's an Oxford biologist. Now, tell me what degree he holds in cultural science. As far as I'm aware, he holds none. What is he best known for? Talking about cultural science.Its like having a top mechanical engineer weighing in on psychology.
And, to be clear, I've NEVER denigrated science. Its helped us get a lot of useful stuff.
No. He's best known for being a champion of a pro-evolution and anti-creatonist ideology. That that gets a bunch of backwater idiots up in a huff is hardly his concern, really.
And, to be clear, you HAVE denigrated science, repeatedly, when you reduce it explicitly to an act of faith. Which it is NOT.
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First, people have a right to discriminate. Make no mistake, it sucks and it hurts, but that's their right and its your right as well and sometimes it needs to be done.
In Europe that sort of discrimination is actually illegal and you can be prosecuted for it.
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I didn't say that the reason atheism is a religion is that science is an approximation of truth.
Are you finished with your straw man yet?How the s~%$ is that a strawman? I practically quoted you word for word?
What part of that do you claim is mischaracterization?
Nor did my alleged strawman. I am saying you continue to create a false equivalence between dogmatic religion and science based on the notion that all science is based on faith.
You continue to try to equate science and religion, as well as atheism and religion, on multiple levels. When I try to argue with one point, you dodge and bring up another.
Tell me, Meatrace, just how much firsthand experience have you had with religion? What has it been?
First I want to say you can't have firsthand experience with religion, since it's a concept. I have had firsthand experience with religious practices, religious individuals, and religious places of worship, however.
Well, my mom was raised catholic but has become a sort of neo-pagan. She made a big deal of introducing me to a variety of religions as a child, including going to catholic school for a few years. UU is a big one, but also shamanism and native american culture/myths.While UU isn't dogmatic, per se, they aren't very welcoming to atheists. I only say this from the 6 or 7 different UU churches I've attended over the years. Quakerism still has belief in A god, a specific god, so that's dogmatic.
I tried to go to a service with a Muslim friend once, but wasn't allowed in the mosque. I've attempted to befriend members of different religions, but in the end their world view ends up being so skewed it strains the friendship. The friends I have that are buddhist or daoist don't give me grief, because they're atheists as well at heart.
I made a friend of a pretty devout christian a few years ago, he was going to school for a masters in theology and could read and write in greek, latin, and hebrew, and was working on his own personal translation of the bible. I was impressed! When talking about religion I of course had to ask "haven't you ever doubted the existence of god?" which was met with a resounding "no". No, doubting would be an unforgivable sin. I just couldn't even have a conversation past that point.
I understand religion. I understand why people are religious, I understand how religion arose and how it's an (almost) intrinsic part of being human. It is in understanding it that I see where the problems arise. Religion isn't what bothers me, in that it is a method of maintaining cultural and ethnic cohesion. It does have its uses. But those uses almost universally give rise to the worst excesses, like religious wars. Like most people here I mainly have a problem with dogmatic monotheistic religions. Especially their inability or unwillingness to accept scientific progress.
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Yeah, everyone in here (or the other thread) that equates religion with monotheism makes me sort of cry inside. I mean, you're MY team and I KNOW we're right, but this sort of mischaracterization of religion as a whole does no one any good.At least you got to pick your team first and didn't get stuck with that Pat Robertson kid.Oh God, that's the truth!
Of course, you got stuck with people like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins, so I'll consider it an even trade.
I'd take Dawkins and Maher over Robertson every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
And of course, we had Hitch...
"Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.
"Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there.
"This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person."
Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so."
"Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too.
"If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true."
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Tell me, Meatrace, just how much firsthand experience have you had with religion? What has it been?
Having grown up in a fundamentalist cult that would make Jack Chick happy, I was very interested in finding out and understanding religion. That's one of the reasons I got a degree in anthropology. Then, I attended multiple denominations (everything from Quakers to MMC to Lutherans) and had prolonged discussions with Buddhist priests, Taoists priests, ministers of various sorts, etc. I attended a couple of Wiccan gatherings, studied the Bible in Greek, and even studied Hermetic magic.
And, I'll say again, as an INTP I'm not someone for whom faith comes easily. I'm not aware of ever having faith in any of the services/meetings/faiths I explored. I was purely curious about the cultural dynamics involved.
What's your firsthand experience with religion?
I'n glad you lived a song by the Indigo Girls and all, but that doesn't give you any more credibility in the realm of common sense and reason than anyone else.
It sounds to me like you are someone who is seeking something, and so it isn't surprising you've developed something in your mind, much in the same way it isn't surprising that when I went to the kitchen for a sandwich and found I was out of bread a few minutes ago, I was still able to find something to sate my hunger (Yay cereal).
But some of us aren't seeking anything. So we approach the question with an open mind and realize it all makes a lot more sense if you don't start from the false assumption of a higher power in charge of it all.
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Yes, some of us aren't seeking anything. That doesn't have anything to do with having an open mind. A closed mind can be just as misleading.
I'n glad you lived a song by the Indigo Girls and all, but that doesn't give you any more credibility in the realm of common sense and reason than anyone else.
It sounds to me like you are someone who is seeking something, and so it isn't surprising you've developed something in your mind, much in the same way it isn't surprising that when I went to the kitchen for a sandwich and found I was out of bread a few minutes ago, I was still able to find something to sate my hunger (Yay cereal).
But some of us aren't seeking anything. So we approach the question with an open mind and realize it all makes a lot more sense if you don't start from the false assumption of a higher power in charge of it all.
Not believing in the Flying Spagetti Monster isn't an indicator of a closed mind, but of a rational one.
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I'm not going to stick around this thread, but I wanted to post one thought that's been nagging me.
Just because it's legal does not mean it is right. Just because it is illegal does not mean it is wrong. Men are fallible and governments are made of men. I love my country like a father loves his son: unconditionally. We have a heritage in this country of the laws benefiting the good. Our nation was founded on the idea that a man will be free to think and act how he chooses so long as he does not become a danger to society. However, we Americans have an obsession with things being legal and therefore permissible. It's legal to scream and shout obscenities and racial slurs on a sidewalk outside a school, but it's not right to do so. It is legal to shun, hate, and disparage someone because of their race, gender, creed, sexuality, or taste in music, but it is not right to do so. In other words, stop being a dick just because you can.
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Nor did my alleged strawman.
Yes, you did as seen below
"Science isn't truth, it's a very good approximation of truth. Even the best science rests on the faith in a natural order, and that we don't in fact live in the matrix. Thus science is no better than religion. Therefore atheism is a religion."
I am saying you continue to create a false equivalence between dogmatic religion and science based on the notion that all science is based on faith.I've been talking about religion. I've attended Quaker meetings as well as UU services and I've not seen any dogmatism in either one of them. Not every religion is dogmatic.
You continue to try to equate science and religion, as well as atheism and religion, on multiple levels. When I try to argue with one point, you dodge and bring up another.I've said and will continue to say that both science and religion are founded on certain principles taken on faith (for example, parsimony, empiricism, and repetition of experiments for science) and that both have provided useful things.
If you've got a problem with that statement, then that's your problem, not mine. You've yet to prove that empiricism, parsimony, and repetition of experiments aren't taken on faith. You've, also, yet to prove that either science or religion has not provided anything useful.
Except science doesn't take these things on faith. You keep implying it does, but it doesn't.
If you can prove they don't work, my advice to you is to write up a paper and get it published. You will become very famous.
Science uses the best tools of understanding that we have. It uses them because they can be demonstrated to get excellent results. If you know of a way in which they fail our understanding of how the universe works, you should share it with the rest of us. Remember, you're going to need to show your work.
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I've said and will continue to say that both science and religion are founded on certain principles taken on faith (for example, parsimony, empiricism, and repetition of experiments for science) and that both have provided useful things.
Are you seriously trying to say that all of those ideas are as unfounded as karma, the immaculate conception, the existence of spirits in objects, Jesus' resurrection, or the infailability of the Qu'ran?
You're being completely binary. Something is either absolute philosophical certainty or "faith". Someone is either a paragon of wisdom or on equal footing with Robertson. It doesn't work like that, there are degrees, important degrees, in reality.
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Refusal to accept empirical evidence or permanence of objects results in solipsism.
From that point, all discussion becomes moot.
Until proven otherwise, one may reasonably assume the natural order of things (or the underlying causes for observable phenomena) remain consistent from moment to moment.
So, I'm supposed to disprove parsimony, empiricism, and repetition of experiments rather than you prove them? That's not how things work. It'd be like me expecting you to disprove God rather than me prove God. You have to prove that these things are right and proper for understanding the universe.
You claim that these are the pillars of science.
Science has been used to produce the internet, electricity and computers you are using to engage in this discussion. The process of science has been used to evaluate and refine every medication which can directly be linked with treating a disease. The process of science has put men on the moon.
I believe that the body of evidence that science works and produces verifiable results is pretty broad. If you would like to watch a documentary, I would recommend Carl Sagan's Cosmos, here's a clip.
Seriously, the proof that the scientific method works is the entire body of work of science of the past 200 years. Even the stuff that is wrong, specifically because the process of science has proven that it is wrong. This is not to say that there isn't more that we don't know. We know there are things we don't know.
So far, I haven't claimed that there is no value in religion. In fact I do believe there is value in religion. But if you want me to talk about that, you're first going to have to stop claiming that science is a belief, because until you do, I have to keep pointing out that you are wrong. If you aren't wrong and have proof, I'm serious, you should publish a paper, for you will change the world for thousands of years to come.
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I remember when I became a Christian, it immediately created a controversy within my family. One of the things I realized early on was that there was a lot about my faith that I hadn't known or thought about. I hadn't considered the ramifications of my actions, and the decision to become a Christian, nor did I consider the impact on my entire family, including my new beliefs regarding what does, and does not, constitute sin.
Then I found out that a number of people I knew, including my brother, were gay, and I think, more than anything, I wanted to have an emotional crisis regarding the matter. "Well, engaging in homosexual acts is wrong!" I would think to myself. "They're buying into a bunch of hype!" I would think to myself. However, when push came to shove, I found myself looking at my friends, and at my brother, and thinking, "You know, they really aren't any different than they were before." And it's true.
Sure, I could go on about how I believe engaging in homosexuality is sinful, but I sin too. I lie sometimes, I have impure thoughts sometimes. It's part of being human. Why should I call out the sins of others when I haven't exactly thrown a few stones at myself?
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Philosophically, all arguments can potentially be traced back to "observable phenomena".
Since noone can positively state, with certainty, that this entire universe is not an imaginary construct being dreamt up by a single consciousness, arguing back to this point is fruitless.
Yes, there is no way to know the sun will appear tomorrow, but it is extremely probable for that to happen.
This one time, a dropped object may fall up, rather than down.
Light might act in an inconsistent manner, or water freeze at 50 celcius.
These things are all "possible", theoretically, but extremely improbable.
Thus, the "useful fiction" of "empirical observation" continues to be the preferred methodology by which to understand the universe.
Other models may exist. They may be more "correct", even. So far, however, they have yielded less precise, inconsistent, or unparseable results.
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It's not a bad approach, I guess,
Isn't the difference though that you are aware of your sins and try to avoid them and repent, while they, presumably, don't. They don't think they're doing anything wrong. Nor should they, IMO.
Well, the thing is, people don't usually respond well to being told they are wrong. I certainly didn't when I was a Christian for part of my youth, which is why I became an atheist for several years. However, part of my faith is recognizing my own weaknesses and infirmities, and that's not something I expect of other people.
That's not to say I'm totally helpless. I do have strength and the ability to make reasonable decisions. However, that having been said, I don't often have the strength to do what's right on my own every time, which is where my faith comes into play.
When it comes to things like gay marriage, I don't agree with the idea that it is not sinful. If there are churches that encourage homosexual couples to get together, then by all means, go to those churches. As for myself, I'm not going to support any legislation that allows for pursuing an act that I consider to be sinful, but I'm not going to oppose it for the same reason that I wouldn't oppose a legislative ban on, say, lying. I feel that, looking at these ideas from an atheistic perspective, it's true that there would be little to no reason to not allow gay marriage, as well as the understanding that not every person shares in my faith.
Rather than force my faith via political means, I'd rather do my best to live it and show it to others. Besides, Jesus died for everyone whether you like it or not :P
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To quote Penn Jillette "If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."
Then Penn, though I have a lot of respect for the man, is wrong. The reason he is wrong is that our scientific knowledge is not truth. It is a useful approximation of the truth. If all of science were to be wiped out and we started again from scratch, we'd still only have a useful approximation of the truth. However, our approximation would be different from the original approximation (to make an analogy, if the first approximation is off by +1, the second approximation might be off by -1).
If mankind were wiped out by a plague, to the last person, and selective processes managed to produce another dominate species prone to symbolic logic, that species would eventually discover the Pythagorean Theorem and General Relativity.
But if, in this scenario, Earth became a water planet, and the species in question rose from the depths of the Marianas Trench, the equivalent theology would be water-based rather than desert-based.
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Yeah, everyone in here (or the other thread) that equates religion with monotheism makes me sort of cry inside. I mean, you're MY team and I KNOW we're right, but this sort of mischaracterization of religion as a whole does no one any good.
It becomes more than difficult trying to speak in general terms that encompass every belief system. I think it's safe to argue amongst ourselves with generalities all (or certainly most) of us understand. Our general common denominator is likely the Judaeo-Christian faiths; and what I may say conceptually about the Abrahamic God may generally be echoed for any other god(s)- or spirits-based faiths.
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You all keep missing the point.
No. We're not. We get you. We really do.
But you're wrong. Flat out, objectively and seriously wrong.
and we can't prove that parsimony and empiricism are legitimate principles of understanding nature (even though they are the basis of science), but does that prevent any of those things from being useful?
Can't prove them legitimately how... with philosophy?
Philosophy doesn't show Jack or his cousin.Every time i show you how to conclude empiricism and repeatability you ignore it and continue with this mantra of yours.
I'm not the one being completely binary. You all have made arguments that since there are bad things in religion (such as the traditional Jewish brique) that all religion is bad. I can't imagine anything more binary than that.
No one is saying that.
Religion simply falls far short of demonstrating that its doing better than anyone else. If a dowser does as well as finding water as a chimp throwing darts at a map then a reasonable conclusion is that dowsing is bunk, even though both will find water sometimes and even the best geological survey is going to turn up a dry spot on occasion.
Stop judging religion by the wrong criteria. Just as atheism is not comparable to science, religion is not comparable to science. Atheism in one use of the word is a form of religion. None of this means that religion has been any less useful than science - it just applies to a different part of life.
You're the one making the comparisons on a factual basis: that both are unsupported and unsupportable fictions, so its ok to hold to your own fictions since the science types are holding to ours.
Just because religion does not do facts well does not mean that it must do morality well.
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I don't believe in 2+2=4. I know 2+2=4.
Silly Prole: 2+2=5