Mocking Atheists

This video is absolutely hysterical:

I Just Don't Get (some) Christians

I have never understood why some christians place a higher value on a fetus' life than an actual human's life. War is exalted and dying and killing others even if it occasionally includes women (who probably every once in a while are pregnant), young men and women, and children is generally acceptable to them, yet an abortion is against god's will. I just can't connect the dots behind the logic in that thought. If you want to claim a fetus should not be killed because it is a human life, wouldn't you oppose war because war kills far more children and human lives than abortion?

I came across this picture on a website today and thought it perfectly summed up just why I think this view is so absurd...

"Protect our troops - from the womb to the war. What if the fetus you were going to abort would grow up to be a soldier bringing democracy to a godless dictatorship?"

I remember last year I had a post on facebook that commented on this question when the white house released this statement on 'National Sanctity of Human Life Day'

"We are vigorously promoting parental notification laws, adoption, abstinence education, crisis pregnancy programs, and the vital work of faith-based groups. Through the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002," the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003," and the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004," we are helping to make our country a more hopeful place.

One of our society's challenges today is to harness the power of science to ease human suffering without sanctioning practices that violate the dignity of human life. With the right policies, we can continue to achieve scientific progress while living up to our ethical and moral responsibilities.

National Sanctity of Human Life Day serves as a reminder that we must value human life in all forms, not just those considered healthy, wanted, or convenient. Together, we can work toward a day when the dignity and humanity of every person is respected.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Sunday, January 21, 2007, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being."

To me this statement seemed like pretty empty rhetoric since in practice it seems to only apply to a fetus and not the humans that we torture at Guantanamo...

Faith 'n' Science

I've been so busy with papers and exams lately that I really haven't had time to scan the news, which means that I've fallen behind the crest of reactions to new articles and items in the media that cause a buzz amongst the blogosphere, like Paul Davies article Taking Science on Faith in the NYtimes, which brings up the argument that scientists have the same faithy relationship with science that theists have towards their theology.

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

I personally think that Davies is pretty wrong headed in thinking that scientists base their claims on faith, but maybe Davies has a much looser definition of faith than I do. My defintion of faith is most accurately and eloquently described by Bertrand Russel who defines it as such:

"Faith" - the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence.

This is the very antithesis of science. The scientific claim or theory with the most cred on the scientific street (yes im trying to make scientists sound cooler) is the one which stands on the highest mountain of empirical data or evidence. What makes a claim or theory attractive in theology is usually directly correlated with the rewards it offers if embraced, or worse, the justification it provides if you want to target and torture a minority group (thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was at one point, the John 3:16 of today's world--popularly recited and referred to).

Anyways Edge posted several reactions criticizing Davies' thesis which are worth reading. Most of the responses seem to align with me any my definition of faith:

1. Contrary to Davies' assertion, science is not based on "faith" that physical laws will apply forever, or in different places in the Universe. This is an observation—an observation that has not been contradicted by any other data. Davies is completely off base when claiming that "to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You've got to believe that these laws won't fail, that we won't wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour. " This is not a matter of faith. It's a matter of experience. In contrast, the tenets of religion are truly based on faith, since there is no empirical data to support them.

2. Davies claims that the "faith" of science is based on something outside the universe, like "an unexplained set of physical laws. " The lack of a current explanation for why the laws are as they are, however, does not make physics a faith. It only means that we don't have the answer. Indeed, Davies thinks we might be able to come up with an answer, one that does not involve supernatural intervention. So what, exactly, are scientists taking on faith here? What do we believe to be true without any evidence? I don't get it. -Jerry Coyne

You Gotta Fight, For Your Right, Toooo

have a few helpful aids while partaking in the solitary-vice of onanism*...?

What happened to the 'Support Our Troops' motto so vehemently espoused by the far right?

Via USA Today:

WASHINGTON — Ten years after Congress banned sales of sexually explicit material on military bases, the Pentagon is under fire for continuing to sell adult fare, such as Penthouse and Playmates In Bed, that it doesn't consider explicit enough to pull from its stores.

Dozens of religious and anti-pornography groups have complained to Congress and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that a Pentagon board set up to review magazines and films is allowing sales of material that Congress intended to ban.

"They're saying 'we're not selling stuff that's sexually explicit' … and we say it's pornography," says Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, a Christian anti-pornography group. A letter-writing campaign launched Friday by opponents of the policy aims to convince Congress to "get the Pentagon to obey the law," he adds.


On a tangential note there was a time period in America, referred to as "masturbation hysteria", when all sorts of weird and whacky, religiously affiliated ideas emerged concerning the horrible sinful, shameful, self-gratifying act of masturbation. People like Sylvester Graham (yes father of the graham cracker) or John Harvey Kellogg, (yes, Corn Flakes cereal inventor) who believed and argued in his books that masturbation could lead to blindness, epilespy, atrophy of the testes, heart disease, cancer of the womb (yes masturbation applied to ladies too), urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, extreme mental and physical deibility, oh and was the primary cause of acne. In his book Plain Facts For Old and Young he wrote "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism."

Kellogg's and Graham's prescriped remedies--which were dieting (only 2 meals a day) and not eating meat--in order to avoid the temptation of masturbation were, however, much more kosher (from an adolescent boy/man's perspective) than some of the other more, umm, shall we say barbaric methods such as straitjackets, cauterization, or the Chastity belt, seen in the picture below:


Or Albert V. Todd's contraption which was "designed to prevent masturbation by inflicting electric shocks upon the perpetrator, by ringing an alarm bell, and through spikes at the inner edge of the tube into which the penis is inserted."


I can't even imagine that people would actually make their sons do this...Im glad Alfred Kinsey came along to tell us that there was no need for spike tubed, electric shocking, metal panties...cause otherwise I think I can safely say that I would have had a much more tramatic childhood compared to the few emabrassing incidents of 'being caught in the act'.

Wikipedia has an entire history of masturbation article which you can access here.
(I love the fact that the ancient Egyptians creation story was that the god Atum masturbated them into existence. God the Egyptians were cool.)


*I wonder if the word 'onanism' derived from someone who went oh no--splurt--and then decided to make it an -ism...

Spelunking In The Cave of the Unknown

Letter to Religion:

Dear Christianity,

Throughout history your theologian’s arguments have been based on such things as faith, un-knowledge, and the unknown, but thankfully science has been slowly illuminating these dark question-marks of religious sanctuary by continuously shining the light of inquiry and torch of explanation deep down into the depths of life's mysterious mine, exploring and uncovering the shadowy blanket of the unknown and leaving in its place a luminous wake of percipience and veritably knowable understanding.

For (theologians take note) the chief aim of Science is to plant a flag of explanation and understanding on the mountaintops of empirical data and not a flag of faith, which quells all further inquiry, in front of every deep question or seemingly bottomless mine of mystery which presents itself to us.

So please stop, I beg you, claiming god exists everytime you find a shadow of mystery to hide him in. It would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Your faithful non-believer

Adam


In the meantime the rest of us who have picked up on this pattern and apparently tacit fact can occupy ourselves with the enjoyment of watching the laudable efforts made by theologians to find unexplored caves of mystery to plant their flags of faith in front of. (whether quantum mechanics, consciousness, life before the big bang, etc. Caves of mystery which remain so until they are explored and exorcised of mystery by those irritatingly irritant spelunking (and debunking) party of scientists, with their pesky headlamps of inquiry…for faith cannot find comfort living in a world of knowledge.)

God may not play dice, but it appears He plays ball

No wonder the world's been such a chaotic and violent place as of late, God has obviously been preoccupied with ensuring that the Colorado Rockies pitch strikes and hit home runs...

From the Washington Post
The Colorado Rockies believe in the Church of Baseball, too, and right now, many of the players and staff think God has smiled on their particular congregation. After winning 21 out of the last 22 games and ascending to the World Series for the first time in franchise history, the only way several team members can explain what's going on is to cite divine intervention...General Manager Dan O'Dowd, in an interview with USA Today before the streak, said: "You look at some of the moves we made and didn't make. You look at some of the games we're winning. Those aren't just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this."

The shadows of superstition sure are popular amongst the cave-dwellers who have yet to step out into the bright light. (I had a recent lecture on Plato's Republic in class, hence the pretentious reference)