Moving Beyond Ignorance

I ran across a quote today that I felt compelled to share... it so powerfully sums up the issue of promoting credulity above reason.

"Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck." --Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.

Preposterous wishful thinking.

I noticed a link to a blog in a Google ad earlier while reading my e-mail and decided to have a look. What I found both saddened and angered me while simultaneously causing me to laugh out loud at its claims.

Answer The Skeptic

I felt compelled to write a lengthy comment denouncing what I read, which led me to notice something else; almost every overtly religious blog I've run across moderates their comments and tends to only allow comments that they agree with. This shouldn't really be a surprise, considering that it is precisely the mentality of such religious people; to only acknowledge points of view and information which seem to support their belief while willfully avoiding at all costs acknowledging any information or facts to the contrary. Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance at their most pronounced.

With that said, I'm including my comment below as I'm not sure it will show up on the other site. Here is the original post that prompted my initial response (which grew to encompass other points on that site etc.): Humans are different from other animals

I think the important thing to note here is the obvious statement that "I don't care if the evidence proves that we are related to monkeys and just another animal, I don't want to believe it because I don't like it, so I'm going to argue that my feelings are more important than factual reality."

Science proves that we are related to the great apes etc, and are just another animal in the animal kingdom, evolved in the same way as the rest. Religion on the other hand is still trying to cling to the ancient mythology that we are some magical, divine being created wholly separately from the rest of the animal kingdom.

They only grudgingly, and wholly hypocritically, admit pieces and parts of the truth while still trying to hopelessly cling to the ancient myths.

My frustration with this behavior is such things as teaching Evolution still being outlawed in more socially behind the times areas such as the southern states etc... Creationist mythology being dressed up to pretend that it's not just religious wishful thinking and pawned off on our children under the false pretense of it being scientific... a claim which has been soundly disproven in courts of law.

This kind of primitive and dishonest thinking is slowly turning our country into an intellectual backwater where scientific research and education is taking a backseat to primitive mythology and superstition. Modern technological and medical advancements are now being made overseas and the United States is losing its place at the forefront of human scientific progress. Our children are left a mockery to more educated industrialized countries, left unable to fully comprehend global scientific, political, social and cultural issues... being blinded by the cognitive dissonance and fog of internally conflicting facts and myths, reality in front of their eyes and heads full of ancient fairytale stories about the world they perceive. When these things inevitably conflict, they are left in a sort of cognitive daze.

It's not hard to look and see what this religious wishful thinking and desperate denial of reality is doing to our country.

As final food for thought in response to some of the desperate and off-base claims made by the article referred to in the post... consider that dolphins have been shown to understand time, the concept of future rewards in relation to investment etc... and other animals such as elephants and gorillas have been shown to understand the concept of mortality. The dolphins were trained to pick up litter in the pool and return it to the trainers for a reward. The dolphins on their own came up with the idea of hiding a piece of litter at the bottom of the pool and tearing off pieces of it to get more fish at later times. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jul/03/research.science

Here is another good article that covers this general theme: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/23/10551/6579

In short, your wishful thinking, despite the reality around you, is a problem. If you simply started accepting the facts of reality around you, you could open your eyes to the vast and mind boggling wonders of the universe that REALLY EXISTS around you. This is vastly more wondrous and awe inspiring than the small minded myths invented by ignorant and primitive sheep herders thousands and thousands of years ago when people still thought the earth was flat, the sky was a mechanical dome, the sun was a light that orbited the earth, that the world was only a few thousand years old, that knew nothing of other continents, dinosaurs, atomic structures, physics, sickness and health, flight and on and on and on.

Putting that mythology behind us and pursuing real knowledge of the world around us has enabled mankind to fly, to leave the bonds of mother earth and step foot upon other worlds, gazing back at our planet through the vastness of space... to understand the world we cannot see in provable ways which enable us to harness atomic energy, to create the very computer you're reading and typing on at this very moment, that allowed us to send out probes which have flown far beyond the reaches of our solar system into the vast expanse of interstellar space...

Clinging to primitive myths despite facts and evidence proving otherwise is blasphemous to the very nature of the human mind. Reprehensible to human progress. Such religiously based willful ignorance and defiance of reality would have all of us still living in mud huts, fearful of a vengeful sky god who would smote us with spears from heaven if we were bad, or strike us down with plagues for our sins... sicknesses which we would be ignorantly praying for salvation from rather than harnessing our scientific knowledge to cure them ourselves.

Religion is the ceaseless denial of the greatest accomplishments of mankind, of mankind's greatest potential. It would have us all remain servile and ignorant sheep and that, to me, is an abomination.

Reading some of the other articles on this blog saddens, frustrates and even angers me with the insult it does to humanity and our own common sense at the very least. Arguing about evil when the bible itself states that God CREATED evil... a vengeful, jealous god that creates good and evil, creates sin, lives in darkness, lies to his creations, creates a flawed angel whom he allows to rebel and take one third of all the angels with him to earth to further torment his less loved creations, angels being held closer to him in both favor and locale, allowing humanity to sin and then punishing them for it when he created that sin to begin with... refusing to forgive the sin or simply remove the sin, but preferring to subject humanity to an eternity of suffering for what HE CREATED... then creating a son to be sent to earth to suffer and die horribly for nothing more than a show... STILL not removing that punishment for sin... leaving humanity no better off than the moments after Eve ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... the list goes on and on... and what's worse is that it's ALL A STORY! A provably ridiculous myth written by primitive people thousands of years ago! And you people still cling to it as FACTUAL REALITY!?

Articles about science not being able to YET fully explain the origin of the universe, or FULLY understand the physical functioning of the human brain... SERIOUSLY!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? Science has taken mankind from believing the ignorance of the bible to being able to travel between planets! To fly through space! Science has allowed us to map the functions of the brain, enabling advanced brain surgery and greater understanding of mental impairments and diseases etc...

Your desperate claims to point to Science not FULLY explaining some of the most profoundly complex problems of our time when you have NO PROOF WHATSOEVER for your beliefs, and not to mention that they are even more ridiculous in light of the MOUNTAINS of scientific PROOF to the contrary... you have the audacity to point to modern astrophysics and call it a fundamental failure that they haven't PROVEN the creation of the universe when the best your ignorant shepherds millennia ago have come up with is that a man in the sky created everything one day!? LISTEN TO YOURSELF!

If the Universe requires a creator because of its complexity, then how can the creator, being necessarily more complex than the universe, not also require a creator? And if the creator does not require a creator, then the universe, being less complex, would certainly not either and would be more likely to have simply sprung into existence.

The logic behind that simple statement is enough to explain the foolishness of your beliefs to even a child. And fortunately we have mountains and mountains of scientific evidence and proof from centuries of research and understanding and human achievement to bring us, through a preponderance of convergent evidence, to the enlightened understandings we have today of the REAL WORLD AROUND US, an understanding that compels us to leave the ignorant and primitive myths of our ancient ancestors where they belong... by the wayside along with all the other gods and myths man has worshipped, believed and inevitably left behind on the road of human progress.

Where did God tell the truth and where did the serpent lie?

Let's do a little analysis of Genesis chapters 2 and 3 and see if we can't ascertain where God told the truth and where the serpent lied.

We start with Genesis 2:8-9:

8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

and Genesis 2:15-17:

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

With that, the stage is set. God creates Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden he has 2 trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Of these two trees, he forbids them to eat from the second tree (the tree of knowledge of good and evil), but makes no mention of the first (the tree of life). He tells them that if they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will die.

With this God has created the first temptation, the first command and the first deception.

This brings us to Genesis 3.

First let's look at Genesis 3:1-5:

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Pay close attention to what the serpent says here. He says that while God has told them they will die if they eat from the tree, and Eve affirms that if she touches the tree she will die, the serpent clarifies that she will actually not die, but instead gain the Knowledge of Good and Evil like God.

Which brings us to Genesis 3:6-7:

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Here Eve, prompted by the desire of knowledge and wisdom planted in her by God, listens to the advice of the serpent who tells her that she will not die if she eats from the tree, but will instead gain God's knowledge. She eats from the tree, shares with Adam and they both gain the knowledge of their own nakedness and clothe themselves.

Which brings us to Genesis 3:8-10:

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

Here we have God actually walking, as a physical being, through the Garden, where Adam and Eve hear him coming and hide themselves. God cannot find them and calls out to them, upon which they emerge and explain why they had hid themselves.

This brings up a few interesting points. First the question of why an omnipotent God would not be able to find them. Second, why was he physically strolling through the garden? We'll get to the latter point, and another related point, in a bit.

Next we have Genesis 3:11-13:

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Here God questions how they gained the knowledge of their nakedness and Eve places the blame on the serpent for deceiving her. (A bit humorous, given the context, as we'll see shortly.)

Upon hearing this, God proceeds to damn both them and the serpent for disobeying him, and in the process catching him in a lie.

Genesis 3:14-15:

14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.

15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."

We see that God curses the snake to be reviled for eternity and be the enemy of man to be crushed under foot etc.

Then God proceeds to curse Adam and Eve for their part in the discovery...

Genesis 3:16-19:

16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

Here he not only curses Adam and Eve and all their descendants for eternity to suffer in every aspect of lives through pain and toil, as an added bonus he makes sure to point out that Eve (and all women thereafter) will be subservient to her husband as the master who will rule over her.

And this brings us to the key verses that tie it all together...

Genesis 3:21-24:

21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

And there we have the clincher... God admits that instead of dieing, they did indeed gain his knowledge of good and evil just as the serpent said would happen, and that lest they eat from the other tree which he neglected to mention and become gods themselves, he makes sure to banish them from the garden and plant an angel with a flaming sword at the gate to make sure they can never get at that tree and gain the other half of what he has and become gods themselves.

So the question stands in its simplicity... Where did God tell the truth, and where did the serpent lie?


In case you missed it, notice that God specifically speaks of "one of us". Early Hebrew religion was polytheistic and anthropomorphized. The Gods were physical beings who strolled about the garden with Adam and Eve. They had human emotions and acted as humans, albeit with great knowledge, power and eternal life.

The particular God referred to in these chapters first creates Adam, then Eve, then tries to keep them from gaining his knowledge by threatening them with certain death if they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He avoids mentioning the tree of life, as if they ate from that they would gain eternal life. The serpent then comes along and points out that God had lied, and that they would not die like he said, but gain his knowledge if they ate from it. When they ate from it, instead of dying like God had said, they did in fact gain his knowledge. God was enraged when the game was up and cursed the lot of them and all their progeny for eternity to lives of suffering, torment, enmity and death and then quickly cast them out before, by his own words, they could gain eternal life on top of the knowledge of the gods and become one of them (the gods).


A few points in closing. The Hebrew religion did not become a unified, monotheistic religion with a God that transcended this world until the time of Moses, when the Hebrews fled from Egypt. There are also a number of other glaring contradictions in the first two chapters of Genesis such as two conflicting stories of the creation and the more modernly understood errors of considering the sun and moon to be two of the same objects, and the stars something different from the sun. Or the fact that the light appeared before the objects, which were thought to be two different things, the sun and the stars, were created to give that light.

Let's address these points as well, just for thoroughness' sake.

In Genesis 1:6-10 we have God separating the waters into the ocean of the sky and the ocean of the Earth, which were believed to be as two oceans. He then further separates the ocean of the Earth from the land beneath it and creates the oceans and continents.

6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

See Psalm 148:4 for another verse that backs up this stance:

4 Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies.

The heavens were considered a type of physical dome that separated the oceans on earth from the oceans of the heavens. Upon this dome were the stars that moved fixed in their rotations.

Then we have Genesis 1:11-13:

11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Here God first creates plant life, which relies on photosynthesis to survive, before he gets around to actually creating the Sun which they depend on for their nourishment. He also states that days are passing when there is not yet a Sun created to facilitate the passage of days. This belies the obvious lack of knowledge of photosynthesis, and a puzzling disregard for what had been known for millennia at this point as the cause of the passage of days, beyond the other glaring errors I'll address momentarily.

Which brings us to Genesis 1:14-19:

14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Here we have God creating the Sun and the Moon as two like bodies that create the day and the night, after already pronouncing day and night previous to their creation, and then creating the stars as separate entities. He then specifically notes that due to the creation of these, there was evening and morning, the fourth day. Which specifically clarifies that the days spoken of in creation were the literal days as we know them. The rising and the setting of the sun and the traversal of the moon during the night.

First let's have a look at Genesis 1:11-13:

11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Here all plant life is created on the third day, with Man not created until the sixth day.

Then, let us contrast that with Genesis 2:4-9:

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

This further clarifies that the biblical authors had no concept of photosynthesis, but instead believed in their primitive ignorance that plant life relied solely upon water for its nourishment. So by their reckoning, there was no problem with creating the plants before there was ever a Sun to provide light for photosynthesis.

Beyond that, if we look specifically at verses 4-7 above, we see that in this tale of the creation man is created before the plants. Whereas in the previous tale of creation, only one chapter prior, the plants were created a full 3 days prior to the creation of man.

Now as we move beyond these first contradictions and fallacies, we come to the first instances of things in which man, in his original state, should have had no interest, being devoid of knowledge and of worldly things...

Genesis 2:10-17:

10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

Here God extols the inherent values of the lands being replete with Gold and Onyx, although Man at this point is supposedly bereft of the knowledge of such material things. Then God explicitly claims the aforementioned curse of death upon eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

This basically brings us full circle, without delving into even more issues such as the animals of creation being specifically the livestock (cattle, sheep, goats etc) of the contemporary biblical authors, as well as numerous other aspects that have been proven to be absolutely impossible as written in the bible.

Apologists will try to claim a variety of things to reconcile these biblical narrations with the reality we live in, but it takes very little effort indeed to relegate them to the inconsequential realm of primitive mythology where they belong.

A simple example is thus: "If all the supernatural claims of Christianity, and the requisite Hebrew religion, are nothing more than metaphors, then why should we ascribe any inherent supernatural power or godlike authority to a teacher who came along and contradicted the teachings of his own religion and created his own sect, and whose only authority comes from its explicit link to that prior Abrahamic God?"

We can go on at length, book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse and debunk this belief system as the conglomeration of shams that it is.

(I've been doing some further research into various aspects of early Christianity, its links to astrology, formation under Constantine, lack of any resurrection story for the first several centuries, lack of any virgin birth story for the first several centuries, lack of any contemporary mention of Jesus whatsoever for the first several centuries. It's rather easy to state at this point that the New Testament as we know it is a wholly fabricated and plagiarized collection of stories that retroactively created the Jesus Christ we know today. A person who never existed in reality, but was instead a creation of a vast array of authors over the centuries, pulling often times verbatim excerpts from other previous historical and religious texts.)

Never be afraid to question.

A meta-post on Atheism, Agnosticism and Faith.

I've been having another discussion/debate on another forum and felt like sharing some of the exchanges. All quotes are written by myself unless otherwise specified.

This was written as part of an ongoing debate on a forum and is simply copied from there verbatim, so the language used may reflect that.

Justifying the existence of God by saying that the Universe requires a creator is nothing more than creating a problem in order to find something for your "solution" to solve. And your solution is to create something necessarily even more complex than the universe to create it. Which would then require an even more complex creator, ad infinitum of increasing complexity.

It's simple to say that the Christian God simply does not and cannot exist. And even the God of the "The universe requires a creator" cannot logically exist. And if the universe could just spring into being, or have always been in some form or another, then there is no requirement for a God, and no reason to create an infinitely more improbable and complex "God" to fit a problem that doesn't necessarily exist in the first place.

"That which can be claimed without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." and as I've said before, we have a hell of a lot of evidence that says that God doesn't exist. And frankly your excuse is rather simple minded and childish.

Calling something like that "God" implies that you have a need to have some "god" figure, so you're willing to call anything "god" just to fill some gap in your brain so you can feel comfortable. You're absolutely inventing something out of thin air without even the "benefit" of a bunch of other people's shared wishful thinking. Just your own over active (and sadly off kilter) imagination.

Just because something is here doesn't mean it required a creator. A rock lying in the street didn't need a creator. Natural forces create all kinds of things around us. Sand dunes, mountain ranges, forests, entire planets formed from the naturally occurring physical forces of the universe. Gravity, atomic attraction, atomic reactions etc.

As it's said "we are all made of stars". Everything you see around you today was once a part of a star. All the complex elements etc.

Just because you might not yet know the answer to something, doesn't mean that you can come up with some utterly improbable or downright impossible reason off the top of your head and think that makes your idea somehow valid or even plausible.

That's the funny thing about this universe and this world we live in. There are certain physical laws and natural rules that govern everything around us. You can't physically be both where you're sitting right now and sitting here at the table with me. 5 is not equal to 0. If you walk outside and toss an apple into the air, it is going to fall back to the ground, unless you physically tie a balloon full of hot air or helium or hydrogen or something to it to counteract that very real force of gravity.

In reality those forces have to be taken into account and they are on a daily basis. You don't drive your car into a tree at 70 miles per hour because it's going to smash it horribly and those very real physical forces have a good chance of killing you. Wishful thinking doesn't make them go away.

In a nutshell, if the universe requires a creator, so does God, which creates an infinitely more complex recursion (which is even more improbable than the universe just springing into being, for the record). If God doesn't require a creator, then neither does the universe, negating the need for God in the first place. So God is impossible and irrelevant either way.

Atheism. From it's Greek roots simply means "without theism". A lack of religious belief, or even active disbelief. It doesn't denote the "evil" tones that Christians would like it to. It simply means you know enough to make a rational, logical and informed decision not to believe in absolutely unprovable and impossible fairytales that cannot ever, by their very nature, be proven or disproven because they simply do not exist. They are figments of the human mind, created by simple minded and ignorant people to assuage their fears of the unknown.

M.I.N.A.S. said:
and the fact still remains that stars wouldn't exist without some sort form of creation. A world of -completely nothing- is unimaginable by the human mind. You can just picture a huge white space...but the problem there is that a world of completely nothing wouldn't even have black or white colors. Colors wouldn't exist either. It's something beyond human comprehension.

And that justifies your impossible and childish "god" "answer" how? :)

Just because you can't understand the real reason for something yet, doesn't make your made up fairytale answer correct by any stretch of the imagination.

The problem here is with the definition of "creation". Stars were produced as a result of physical forces after the Big Bang. And right now scientists are working on what preceded the Big Bang.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Speculative_physics_beyond_the_Big_Bang

Just as our knowledge has moved from the primitive and ignorant explanation of a father figure that created the universe, and life specifically as we know it, meaning cows, pigs, sheep, birds and us, in 7 days, around 6,000 years ago... to the modern understanding of actual cosmology, astrophysical forces etc that enables us to ascertain the actual age of the universe and the bodies within it etc... which led to our understanding of the Big Bang... so does science continue to progress and broaden our knowledge to the point where in the future we should have an even greater understanding.

We now understand the actual age of our planet and the vast array of life that has evolved here over the course of millions of years... long before cows and sheep of the bible's creator. The life that the primitive and ignorant authors of the bible did not, and likely could not have, known about. They wrote their fairytale explanation based on what they saw around them and their incredibly limited understanding of the world around them, much less the workings of the "heavens" above them.

The solution is not found in clinging to utterly unprovable and impossible ancient fairytale explanations, but instead on actual scientific and empirical studies. Ignorance of science is in no way proof of primitive superstitions.

If you contrast what we know today with what we knew then, you get an idea of how far we've come, and how far we can still go in our understanding. That should be our noble goal. Not wallowing in the ignorant superstitions of the past.

M.I.N.A.S. said:
It's a metaphor. I even stated I was just using that as an example so I could get the point across. I hardly consider the big bang a legitimate answer to the existence of either life nor matter.

It's the best answer we have right now. :) A hell of a lot better than using primitive metaphors for men in the clouds.

And what point do you think you were getting across? You haven't made a valid point yet.

What you've tried to describe so far could only by stretching even be called deism at best and certainly not theism. Aside from the fact that I've already shown how incorrect your assertions are even on that front.

Even Einstein who made figures of speech about God was expressly non-religious and resented having his words taken out of context.

The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task... --Albert Einstein

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. --Albert Einstein

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. --Albert Einstein

As I believe I said in the beginning... Agnosticism is nothing more than the juvenile form of Atheism. As you grow to understand the reality you live in, and the facts involved... your primitive supernatural idea of God becomes a veritable impossibility.

If you understand medicine, how it works etc... you don't continue to call it magic. You have grown beyond the primitive wonder at something which you did not understand and hence ascribed to it a supernatural power.

The same goes for the world we live in and the universe we live in. When you grow to understand these things, you no longer need to use ignorant and primitive language to describe it.... you simply call it what it is and address the unknown as the unknown, but only in the context of all that you do know to be factual. You take a holistic view of the body of human and scientific knowledge and see that such primitive notions have no place in an educated, rational mind.

Childish metaphors are for children who cannot understand or speak of the reality of things. The Stork for child birth for instance... when you grow up you forget that childish explanation for the wonder of pregnancy and birth. You speak of it in educated terms. So it should be for your childish metaphor of the birth of life and everything as we know it.

More polls excluding Ron Paul, followed by confusion among the clueless.

In response to http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/jul/17/election_central_morning_roundup

Poll: Other/Undecided Leads GOP Race
In a new AP/Ipsos Poll, 25% of Republican respondents say they are either undecided or would prefer someone other than the current field — more than the vote share of any actual candidates listed in the poll. Compare this to the Democratic side, where only 13% of respondents are undecided or prefer none of the above. In the horse-race numbers, Rudy Giuliani leads the GOP side with 21%, followed by Fred Thompson at 19%, John McCain at 15%, and Mitt Romney at 11%. Among Dems: Hillary Clinton 36%, Barack Obama 20%, Al Gore 15%, and John Edwards 11%.

How hard is it to figure out that the "Other" category is getting so many hits because you're not putting Ron Paul as an option?

At this point in the race it's really starting to seem like they're excluding him intentionally out of a fear of him actually winning. It's undeniable that he's a strong contender and a viable candidate who is participating in the debates, is all over the news, and wholly dominates almost all on-line or text in votes that he's actually been included in etc. Not only that but he tops John McCain in campaign finances and is the top candidate in financial support from the US Military branches.

This has gotten to the point where polls can no longer claim ignorance of him or pretend that he's not a viable candidate.

Why not to vote for Rudy Giuliani and instead vote for Ron Paul.

I've seen a number of examples in the past few months of why not to vote for Rudy Giuliani. Shining examples of his lack of knowledge of international issues, foreign policy, our own military history, and even the most fundamental issues regarding the mayorship of his own City.

First we have the infamous case of Giuliani's attack on Ron Paul at the May 15th Republican "debates", which included the following exchange:

Ron Paul: So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the founders and following the constitution. And my argument is, that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly. When you do that, the wars don't end.

Wendell Goler (FOX News panelist): Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

Paul: What changed?

Goler: The non-interventionist policies?

Paul: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East. I think Reagan was right: we don't understand the irrationality of Middle-Eastern politics. So right now, we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican, we're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.

Wendell: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attacks, sir?

[muted applause]

Paul: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it. And they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They've already now since that time have killed 3400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

Rudolph Giuliani: Wendell, may I make a comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11.

[15 seconds of loud applause]

Giuliani: And I would ask the Congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that.

Wendell: Congressman?

Paul: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the Shah, yes, there was blowback. The reaction to that was the taking of our hostages. And that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

Given the short amount of time allowed for responses, Paul was not allowed to adequately rebut this ridiculous claim on Giuliani's part, but the following day Paul offered several responses, and a reading list for Giuliani. Paul explained that Giuliani's assertion that he had never heard of anything like the blowback scenario that Paul spelled out was odd considering that the CIA themselves had covered the concept no less than 8 times in the 9/11 Commission report, which he would have thought that Giuliani, as mayor of New York at the time, would have read.

From the 9/11 Commission Report (As written on http://ronpaul.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/ron_paul_and_th.html):

• pg. 57- The Persian Gulf War, seen by many as perhaps the most effective military victory in American history, had unintended consequences that American policymakers could never have predicted. When Saddam invaded Iraq, the US gathered a coalition, based out of Saudi Arabia, to liberate Kuwait. At this time, Bin Ladin "proposed to the Saudi monarchy that he summon mujahideen for a jihad to retake Kuwait." The Saudis said no and jumped in bed with the Americans. After further protests, Bin Ladin was booted from his homeland and went into exile. This cemented Bin Ladin's hatred of both the Saudi monarchy and the US, as they were now in partnership desecrating the holy lands.
  
• pg. 59- Bin Laden's first fatwa against the US (1992) was first and foremost a protest against American occupation of Muslim holy lands, specifically Saudi Arabia. It was not a call to kill Americans because they were rich and free, it was a call to expel American troops from Arab lands.
  
• pg. 48- Bin Ladin's 1996 fatwa against the United States was not a blanket condemnation of America and a call to arms to destroy the American nation. The fatwa declared the limited aim of driving US soldiers out of Saudi Arabia. The American presence in Saudi Arabia, a byproduct of America's promise to protect the Saudis from Saddam during the Persian Gulf War and beyond, infuriated Muslim fundamentalist because in their eyes, infidels were occupying the holy land. Bin Ladin also spent significant energy condemning the Saudi government for allowing this occupation.
  
• pg. 49- In discussing the grievances aired by Bin Ladin against the United States, the 9/11 Commission Report specifically calls out "the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of the sanctions imposed after the Gulf War". Listen again to Guiliani's rebuke of Ron Paul over the idea of our involvement in Iraq playing in part of motivating al-Qaeda to attack America. If this is the most absurd explanation Guiliani has heard regarding the motives behind the planners and implementers of the 9/11 attacks, then I wonder (with dread) what he has been listening to.
  
• pg. 49- also lists American support of Israel as a major grievance of Bin Ladin.
  
• pg. 51- al-Qaeda's ultimate ambition is not specifically the destruction of the US- it's the establishment of the Caliphate to unify all Muslims. To Muslim fundamentalists, America's extensive involvement in the internal affairs of sovereign Muslim nations (the Shah, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, etc) props us secular governments and delays the future ascendancy of the Caliphate. Attacking America is not an end in itself, just a means (one of many) to another end. If they hated countries just for their freedoms, you would expect enormous terrorist attacks in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Iceland, and dozens of other countries. You don't, there's a reason.
  
• pg. 147- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and the Bojinka Plot, attended college in the United States and lived here for several years. Obviously, someone who lived here and then later orchestrated a murderous assault on our country hated us because of the freedoms, pleasures, and raunchy behavior we enjoy? No, it was because he hated our strongly favorable foreign policy preference for Israel.
  
• pg. 362- The Report reiterates that Muslim fundamentalist's hatred for America stems from "grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world." These grievances are absolutely political- US military presence in Arab lands, favoritism towards Israel, and policies perceived as anti-Muslim. The 9/11 Commission Report does not list our freedoms or wealth as a contributing motive for terrorist attacks against our nation.

The reading list that Paul offered to Giuliani was as follows:

• The 9/11 Commission Report


• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson


• Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer (the former Chief of the CIA’s bin Laden Unit, Alec Station)


• Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Professor Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago

I should also point out something interesting that I've noticed. I've checked MSNBC, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, The LA Times etc... and there is no record of the article. What makes this odd is that the article was there. On the Washington Post site, the article was under the title of "Candidate Paul assigns reading to Giuliani - washingtonpost.com", on MSNBC the article was under the title "Paul offers reading list to Giuliani" and oddly Paul's main page on MSNBC still links to the article which no longer exists.

I hate to cry conspiracy, but when an article that was on many of the major media sites suddenly disappears from them, and searches of those respective websites returns no new URL for the page, and even links to the article from other articles on that same site report that the pages no longer exist, it bears the question "what happened to the article?"

Fortunately the article was widely quoted and covered on numerous other sites, but it's curious that it's now notably absent from many of the major media outlets.

Luckily Reuters still has the article. We can also see a video of Wolf Blitzer's interview with Ron Paul the following day on YouTube.

Following that debacle, we have yesterday's news that Guiliani is yet again making absurd and ignorant claims about US foreign policy and military matters.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/06/giuliani-vietnam/

As the article clearly illustrates, Giuliani yet again couldn't be farther from the truth. This time his error is even more blatant than the last.

It seems to me to be increasingly evident that Giuliani has a fundamental lack of knowledge and understanding about our own government, our foreign policy, our military history and a variety of other pertinent issues, while in contrast Ron Paul has consistently demonstrated a deeper knowledge of our own history, the foundations of our government, our foreign policy, our economic system etc. The contrast should be clear to anyone who does even a cursory investigation into the facts.

For the sake of our nation, please vote for Ron Paul in 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
http://ronpaul2008.com/
http://ronpaultv.om/
http://ronpaul2008.typepad.com/
http://ronpaul.typepad.com/
and many more.

Get informed.

On Stem Cell Research

I'm bringing yet another article of mine back from the grave to cover a topic that came up again today.

Originally posted on Sunday, June 26, 2005 @ 4:37 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_research

Make special note of the section entitled "Blastocyst stem cell ethical debate" around half way down the entry. Notice that these Blastocysts, from which the stem cells are extracted, are already being legally used by in vitro fertility clinics, "and when not used in additional therapy or in embryonic stem cell research are destroyed or frozen indefinitely by the thousands."

So... rather than actually try to help humankind by destroying a 5 day old clump of cells with no nervous system etc, which will absolutely be destroyed anyway if not used in an actual fertility procedure... let's just hose the whole thing because we're a bunch of bleeding heart religious conservatives with a personal agenda who can't put 2 and 2 together to see how stupid we're being.

Bush pledges to veto stem cell bill - May 23rd 2005

US stem cell research in jeopardy - January 24th 2005

Make special note of the last two sentences in that article: The existing rules cited are designed to prevent the destruction of further embryos from which stem cells are extracted. The process has provoked considerable polemic in the US, with George Bush coming down firmly on the side of the antis.

*ahem* Let me make this clear...

They're going to be destroyed anyway. Now because of your ignorant dogmatic politicking, we're going to lose all the possible benefits that might be had.

Have I made myself clear?

Thanks Chief.

Now, I'm going to head one argument off at the pass by playing the devils advocate here.

<devils_advocate> Being frozen indefinitely does not mean destroyed. Doing the stem cell extraction procedure on the blastocysts will actually destroy them, whereas being frozen indefinitely doesn't. </devils_advocate>

Fair enough I suppose.

However, we know that not all are even frozen indefinitely (or as the following article states, "for a long time"), but that at least some, if not most are destroyed under the current procedures, and they have been handled as such for awhile now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_fertilization

From that we know that this has been going on since roughly 1978. 27 years now. While we see that many of the same "concerns" being raised, obviously this procedure has been allowed to continue because of it's obvious, directly observable, desirable effects... namely, allowing parents who might not be otherwise able, to conceive and bear their own children.

That's the trouble with ignorant people... the more abstract or complicated an issue is, the less likely they are to understand or accept it.

Put simply, some of the issues here are:

• Lack of knowledge of all the pertinent information.


• Lack of ability to comprehend the pertinent information even when available.


• Lack of ability to perceive long term benefits.


• Desire to adhere to the religious/conservative group ideology.

Put very simply, fear of the unknown.

Warning, sarcasm and a bit of aggravation ensues beyond this point.

Remember kids, the following things are wrong! Now can you tell me why?

• Bypassing the natural method of conception.


• Creating life in the laboratory.

Because only the imaginary sky god is supposed to be able to do that! If we can create life ourselves, we're heading down the path of making the imaginary sky god obsolete.

We just can't have that! We need to stay in the dark ages where intellectual thought and literacy were suppressed to maintain belief in the church (And yes, I know that there were mainly "political" motivations behind that, to maintain a power structure dependent on the absolute belief in the Catholic Church as the sole means of communication with God, the sole channel of biblical learning and hence the sole means of salvation.), the bible, and it's imaginary sky god and outdated, backwards, and downright heinously erroneous ignorant fictitious world view.

Based on a true story!

The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Hrrrmmmm.... how about... allegedly based on a story heard from some newspaper articles about a speech a priest gave to a parapsychology society about an excorcism he had supposedly performed on a 14 year old boy 20 years prior.

*sigh*

It's nice to see that they at least on the surface seem to present both sides of the story in this fictional account. At least from what I see from a cursory glance through the website.

Moving on to a little more reality based...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism

"In June 2005, in Tanacu, Bacău County, Romania, Father Daniel Petru Corogeanu, a Romanian Orthodox priest who ordered the crucifixion of Maricica Irina Cornici, a 23-years old nun because she was "possessed by the devil" and "had to be exorcised", faced murder charges, and was unrepentant as he celebrated a funeral mass for his alleged victim."

From the article:
Priest unrepentent after crucifying of nun.

And a nice gem from that article:

Claps of thunder from an approaching storm were sometimes the only sounds to break the silence.

"This storm is proof that the will of God has been done," Daniel said.

*shaking head sadly*

"See!? The lightning is Zeus! He is angry with us!"

Has humanity really progressed so little in the past several thousand years?

*sigh*



(you might remember this story from my previous posts, including the original " and while we're at it... yay religion! :-D")