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.

In response to Conspiracy Theorists' concept of a literal and personal God granting them authority over government.

In an ongoing discussion/debate on another website, I felt compelled to leave the following comment. (This was partially in response to a comment by James Madison, and primarily in response to a comment by Uber Highwayman)

Oh man... this is getting out of hand.

For the record, I'm a devout atheist. And I find it a bit sad when people cannot differentiate from the natural laws, such as laid down by the Roman empire, and which our legal system is based on... and the so called "God's law", which in all actuality has very little to do with morality, even less to do with civil issues and is even in reality contradictory to true freedom in the natural sense.

Christianity teaches absolute obedience to authority, without question and without skepticism of contradictory evidence and falsehoods etc. This very same mindset lends itself to abuses by governments who use it to rally the people behind God's cause... "One nation, Under God", "In God We Trust" etc... if you don't believe in God, you're not a patriot. And that is used to group people into one mindset... one of obedience and "patriotism" under a moniker which in itself is divisive within its own people. Those very statements and mottoes serve to divide the people between believers and non-believers instead of acknowledging us as we were meant to be, individuals with inherent natural rights. Rights not granted by any particular God... but natural rights that transcend any particular religion's God's word on which rights you do and don't have.

The idea of "Divine Law" is the very same belief that allows the theocracies in the middle east to publicly execute people found "guilty" of homosexuality, sex before marriage, and any number of other things that might offend the particular deity of some of its people... when no rational "crime" has been committed. In the natural world, an adult has the right to sleep with another adult, in or out of wedlock, should they so choose. You don't have to personally approve of it, but they have the right as human beings to do so... and unless that robs you of your property or does you personal injury, you have no right to deprive them of their life, liberty or property for merely offending your personal moral beliefs.

E Pluribus Unum. Out of Many, (come) One. A celebration of the diversity of our culture, the diversity of our beliefs, the diversity of our ethnic roots... and through that a celebration of our unity as Americans. Stronger as a result of that diversity, not in spite of it.

The fact that our founding fathers were wise enough to understand that strength and celebrate it... and take measures to ensure the freedom of the people to believe as they wished, as human beings with inherent natural rights... that is something that we should take heed of.

God isn't going to grant you any benefit in a battle. You have to do that for yourself. The mere fact that you imply that your idea of a God somehow grants you some authority greater than that of another man who might believe in a different God, inherently impedes upon that man's freedom.

And to believe in a God that forbids you to believe in anything he does not approve of, regardless of rational merit... a God who commands you to kill people of different beliefs or sexual orientations, in spite of no rational crime being committed... a God who names himself a Jealous God that commands you to obey and never to question, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary... that God is the epitome of our modern government. A Genocidal egomaniac responsible for mass genocide of people who committed no crime other than believing in a different God, or no God, or in believing they had the very same natural rights that you do... to live, govern themselves and choose their own paths as individuals or as a society.

I dislike entertaining ridiculous conspiracy theories, so I'm loathe to start debunking the ridiculous nature of many of Madison's claims... much less the fact that he presumes to use the name of one of the founding fathers as though he in any way resembles such a great man.

But I feel it is important to remove the idea of "natural law" from that of some divinely derived authority. Am I to have no inherent liberties as an atheist? Am I somehow not a patriot or exempt from the same freedoms afforded to the faithful?

No. The founding fathers understood this and wisely exempted religion from any official place in government. A man or woman are free to hold their own beliefs and free to have them serve as a moral compass... but those beliefs fall short when they infringe upon the natural liberties of all men, regardless of their beliefs in much the same way that even if the government believes it has a legal right to deprive you of your property, you have a natural right not to be extorted, threatened at gunpoint and made a slave of a relatively small group of people who claim that authority over you, regardless of their justifications. And no God is going to come down and change that for you. You must stand upon the same principles our founding fathers did in their various backgrounds and beliefs and come together in an understanding of the fundamental principles of liberty and freedom that predated your Abrahamic God by millennia and strive to return man to his natural state.

As Einstein said:

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

In losing focus on the fundamental reality of the matter at hand, you place power back in the hands of the authority figures who in the same manner as religion, demand obedience without question. Authority over you and subservience by you in the face of violations of your natural right to true freedom in the face of contradictory or fallacious evidence to the contrary of their claims.

Cogito, percipio.

I've been having other related religious discussions on another forum as well in the past few days and seem to be reaching another point of frustration at which I feel compelled to speak out.

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

Congratulations and Thanks to Borders Book Stores.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/the_bookstores_have_noticed_us.php

Borders book stores have finally added an "Atheism" section to many of their stores. Let's just hope that Barnes&Noble will follow suit and start acknowledging the rest of us.

One thing I've noticed is that it seems to be only an "End Cap" so far, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

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.

Discrimination against Atheists

Another post from my discussions on another forum that I felt should also be posted here.

I know the story is from a couple months ago... but it begs discussion. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHnXrU5JzU

One of the first, and most ridiculous, things I noticed was the fact that on a show about discrimination against Atheists, they make a panel that includes no atheists. How stupid is that?

That aside, the black guy came the closest to getting the point... the two ladies were total idiots. This is not a Christian nation and was never intended to be one. The Supreme Court has even begun to partially accept that fact and rule according to the Constitution. There is to be no establishment of religion and that is precisely what was done in the mid 1950's to counter the "Godless heathens of Communism" during the McCarthy era "Red Scare". "In God We Trust", "Under God" etc. All added between 1954 and 1957 in violation of the Constitution by acts of Congress.

Many of our founding fathers were Deists, not Christians, and understood the importance of maintaining a secular and neutral government in order to facilitate the equal treatment of all beliefs, religious or not religious. As Thomas Jefferson said: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Jefferson, for those who don't know, wrote the Declaration of Independence.

And while he made a few deistic references in it, such as divine providence and man's creator, these are distinctly absent from the Constitution save for the parts where religion is specifically mentioned solely to note it's willful exclusion, as in the cases of there shall not be any religious litmus test for office and specifically spelling out the oath of presidency, conspicuously lacking any religious reference etc.

Those points aside... the two women in the video repeatedly state that they should have the right to have prayer in school etc. What they are obviously too stupid to understand is that as fellow American citizens, we have the right NOT to be forced to participate in your religious beliefs. You cannot legally force a child to say "under God" in the pledge and the supreme court supported this. Our problem is with the stupid Christian belief that they have the right to force Christianity on non-believers, but non-believers don't have a right to speak up against it. I don't trust in God and my government is not supposed to be speaking for me or promoting such a belief. The founding fathers understood this and it wasn't until almost a century after its inception that the larger blows were stricken against freedom of religion.

She is patently wrong is saying that freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom to not believe. That's precisely what it means! It means the freedom to believe in what you want, even if that means no God... as Thomas Jefferson himself plainly stated!

Atheists are tired of being forced to recite religious statements when they don't believe in them. Of having their children forced to recite religious observance statements in school, or participate in religious activities. Of having science replaced by religion in schools etc.

Atheists have just as much of a right to have their opinions heard and to be free of being forced to participate in another persons religion just as much as those stupid bitches on that show whining about the Atheists speaking up about their rights.

It honestly shocks me how they could make such obviously completely hypocritical statements without batting an eyelash! It belies the fact that they don't see Atheists as fellow American citizens. They don't understand the concepts of Freedom and Liberty... of a Neutral and Secular government protecting the rights of ALL of its people to believe as they will... to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. They believe that THEY are right and Atheists are wrong, so Atheists need to shut up and not have any rights.

*sigh*

It's this kind of ignorant Christian bullshit that makes me hate Christianity and religion. I have to applaud the black guy for at least understanding the concept that Freedom means that even if you don't like what the other person has to say, you have to allow them the right to say it. They have just as much of a right as you do. Freedom doesn't mean "only what I want to hear" or "only what I want you to believe". Freedom of religion is the freedom to believe what you want to believe and not suffer oppression or persecution for it. And that is most certainly precisely what the Christians are trying their damnedest to do.

PS: I just remembered.. I also hate the egregiously ignorant statement "Atheists don't believe in anything."

How fucking ignorant and stupid is that? Atheists most certainly do believe in quite a number of things. They specifically believe that the idea of a extra-dimensional omnipotent, omniscience man in the clouds who created the universe in 7 days etc... and generally most of the garbage written in the bible, is ridiculous and flies in the face of common sense, logic, and centuries of scientific advancement and human understanding. They believe a whole variety of individual things... they vary from person to person. But them believing, for good reasons, that the mythology of the bible is self-contradictory, evil and ridiculous to say the least... is a belief in itself based on facts and evidence. It is diametrically opposed to a "belief in nothing". As a matter of fact, given the juxtaposition of Christians and Atheists, it is in fact Christians who could more accurately be said to believe in nothing... having a belief in a whole slew of things with cannot be seen, touched, smelled, tasted, tested for, proven, or disproven. Their belief is in the utterly unseeable and unknowable, and goes so far as to not only be unseeable, untestable and undetectable in any way, but also flies in the face of everything that mankind has learned in the millenia since the mythology was written.

Now who believes in "nothing"? It is painful just how stupid Christians can be.

I realize I get a little snitty in my wording, but I don't feel like rewriting it. The points are very clear and stand on their own.

Case in point.

Discovered: the missing link that solves a mystery of evolution.

Quirky "fishapod" crawls onto our family tree. (Thanks Jen!)

Let's see how many creationists want to talk about this. ;-)

(Not to mention Archaeopteryx etc...)

It should also be pointed out, as someone else commented, that there really isn't such a thing as a "missing link". This terminology was invented by creationists trying to find a way to argue against science. It takes a rather in-depth ignorance of the subject to think that evolution is a single chain from *poof* having life begin, and *tada!* having us as the end of the evolutionary chain. And that is putting it -very- nicely.

Starting with the concept of "life", which is something religious wackos have essentially no real grasp of... we have something that is actually a progression of proteins, molecules etc... those which "work", stay. Those which don't... don't. For instance, the protein that causes mad cow disease (and mad deer) isn't a living thing... although it acts like one. It's simply a protein that has found a way to travel and reproduce as such... where does this fall?

Religious nuts like to think of "life" as this magical gift from god that just starts... magically... at some point... when God chooses to give you a soul or something... (explain plants? explain bacteria? are they alive? how about viruses? where do you draw the ARBITRARY line?)

In actuality, those with any real scientific understanding know that "life" is an arbitrary classification we give things that portray certain characteristics. For instance, let's look at the criteria listed on Wikipedia's Life page:

Although there is no universal agreement on the definition of life, the generally accepted biological manifestations are that life exhibits the following phenomena:

1. Organization - Living things are comprised of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
2. Metabolism - Metabolism produces energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (synthesis) and decomposing organic matter (catalysis). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
3. Growth - Growth results from a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
4. Adaptation - Adaptation is the accommodation of a living organism to its environment. It is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the individual's heredity.
5. Response to stimuli - A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. Plants also respond to stimuli, but usually in ways very different from animals. A response is often expressed by motion: the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
6. Reproduction - The division of one cell to form two new cells is reproduction. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

I don't see any mention of a magical gift from God... or a soul in there... do you? I do however, see a set of scientifically testable criteria. Funny that...

Moving on...

From these beginnings, fitting the theory of "Survival of the Fittest", as atoms followed the laws of physics and molecules formed... and proteins etc... and these continually followed the mantra of the best "surviving" and the imperfect ones failing... we grew. "Life" grew. There was no magic moment when Life Began^TM. Things simply progressed... and this progression, from the start... was as a tree with a multitude of branches... ever growing. Not a single chain... but each "offspring" having it's own offspring... and essentially all of them slightly unique... and as these branches grew... some grew ever further apart from each other as each found different traits beneficial to survival... either through reproductive traits... or survival traits.... depending on geography, habitat, "food", mate availability etc... any number of different factors... and so we progressed from organic compounds... proteins... single celled organisms... multicellular organisms... towards things like primitive plants and animals as the first "major" branches of the tree of life started diverging in more dramatic ways. (See Wikipedia's article on "Evolution" for another thourough explanation.)

Many of these branches exist simultaneously, in similar forms. Some reach essentially efficient stable forms and remain unchanged for millions of years, such as Sharks. Some have been merely a twinkle in the eye of time... some have held sway over the earth for millions of years... only to be eventually unseated by a different form... such as the transition from the dinosaurs to mammals as we now know them as the dominant life forms (leaving out insects and such, who ridiculously outnumber us).

But back to what I was saying... as someone earlier said... as much as such a "missing link" is a transitional life form... which essentially all live on earth is... then we must not forget that we are simply a transitional life form between our more ape like ancestors and relatives, and some future "super-human" form. We are a chronospecies... one that will inevitably cease to exist simply due to the passage of time. Any real study of the fossil record will demonstrate innumerable species that have changed so dramatically over the course of time, that if you took the animal now, and one of it's ancestors from millenia past... they would not be able to interbreed, having changed so dramatically in the interim.

I have no problem addressing these complex issues scientifically, and adjusting the models as evidence and data requires... but oversimplification and rote denial of mountains of factual data and scientific evidence in pursuit of elevating a belief, based on ignorance, to the level of supposed credibility... I have a rather serious problem with that.

For instance, there has been an issue of an evangelical nutcase archaeologist who claims to have discovered organic "tissue" inside T-Rex bones etc... while I think that she is a nutjob, given many of her public statements... I won't discount her findings over it... I simply want to see more research done along those lines. If the models of biological material decay were wrong, address them... if there really is some other problem with the models... address them. Failure to address an issue when it doesn't fit the expected guidelines, out of a fear of what it might mean, is to completely fail the goals of science.

(Read this article about the T-Rex, from the perspective of some Creationists, to get an idea how ridiculous these people's beliefs are. For instance, take every living species of animal alive today, and take a single male and female from each (not to mention that the bible specifies that SEVEN of every type of clean animal and SEVEN of every type of bird... AND food enough for themselves and every single animal... aside from "every kind of food"... or the fact that the waters were so deep that they covered the entire earth COMPLETELY, 20 feet deeper than the tip of the highest mountain on earth... or that all mankind was killed except for Noah, his wife, their 3 sons, and their wives... and all of humanity is supposedly now descended from those 8 people... or maybe more, as polygamy was accepted in those days... the list goes on and on and on...) and see if you can fit them all onto a single boat of the size Noah built. Not to mention ignoring the fossil record and archaeological evidence concretely dating when these animals lived. Or ignoring the fact that due to inbreeding, almost all of these species would die off etc... it's simply scientifically ludicrous bullshit... but that doesn't stop these nutjobs from throwing mountains of science out the window, while clinging to straws... even scientific ones... to try to prove they're right.)

We have creationists scrambling to cling to this issue as supposed proof of young earth theory etc... and others denying the evidence outright, without even looking into it, for fear that it might give the young earthers ground to stand on.

(Let's not forget that the bible explicitly lists the animals created during creation; cows, birds etc... and fails to mention the kind of life we know actually came about, billions of years after the formation of our planet, which in turn came billions of years after the beginning of the universe as we know it... to put this a little more clearly for you... sit down in front of a nice old analog wall clock, and starting at midnight, watch the second hand sweep around... second after second... as it travels around the face of the clock 1,440 times over the next 24 hours... and just before midnight, 24 hours later, as the second hand ticks off that one final second... that single second, in relation to the previous 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds, represents more time than cows as we know them, and ourselves, have existed in relation to the age of the universe as we know it.)

UPDATE - WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2006:
Please see my later post Visual timeline of evolution that has a link to a much better visual example then my clock metaphor. (Evolutionary Timeline)

I think it's pretty safe to say that fundamentalist Christians are broken in the head... but let's not let our fear of their delusional rantings prevent us from addressing what could be shocking findings about fossilization and such. Keep our eyes on the truth for the sake of the truth, the whole truth, wherever it may lead us.

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")