I thought Google had changed their algorithms to prevent Google bombing, but evidently not. Enter the term “dangerous cult” into Google search and check out the first hit.
No doubt this will further add to Scientology’s feeling of persecution (which they share with many American Christians), and while I hate to see any of their delusions validated, things like this are fun while they last.
Quotes to ponder and music to tap your toes to, unless you’re a Congressman in a public restroom.
Theists often ask atheists if, since they don’t believe in life after death and that death is the final end of life, life is pointless?
Why does acknowledging where you’re headed make the trip pointless? Life is a journey that ends at death. Everything in between birth and death is ours to make the most of.
This is why I suggest it’s evident that religions were invented to really only answer one question; does life end at death? Death is so final, so off-putting, that most people can’t accept it. They want and need to believe that life goes on. Even a person who has lead a miserable life and is convinced they’re headed to hell will embrace that belief over accepting that life ends at death.
So no, accepting that life ends with death does not make life pointless. It makes it absolutely precious. Every moment should be cherished and enjoyed to its fullest, as it will never come around again.
Amen.
Why do we only require disproof of an unproven hypothesis when it comes to religion?
If I claimed I had built a machine that generated energy out of thin air and ran forever, is anyone obliged to spend time disproving that claim? Wouldn’t any rational, sane person simply say, “Let me know when you have proof of that” and dismiss such nonsense out-of-hand? Is there even a need to be agnostic about such a claim? Of course not. Not even the PC crowd would insist we respect this claim as possible. It’s nonsensical, and anyone who paid attention in school after the third grade would know that.
That’s why we debate religion. It’s been given a free pass for too long. It’s time those of us who remain unconvinced by theistic claims that defy reason and nature explain and defend our reasons for not buying this silliness.
Gods, magic, superstition, all are relics of our ignorant past. We come not to praise religion, but to bury it.
I suggest if anyone wants to disprove evolution they use as an example the members of Florida school boards.
Board Opposes Evolution Being Taught As Fact
Four of five members of the School Board of Highlands County oppose the proposed change in the state’s science standards that would present evolution as fact to students.
Some school board members across the state have opposed the proposed revisions to the science curriculum that specifies that evolution be taught as “fact” as opposed to a “theory,” School Board Attorney John McClure said at a recent school board meeting. School Board Chairman J. Ned Hancock said Thursday he would support the resolution to encourage the state not to approve the science standard of evolution as fact.
School Board Vice Chairman Andy Tuck said Thursday, “as a person of faith, I strongly oppose any study of evolution as fact at all. I’m purely in favor of it staying a theory and only a theory. “I won’t support any evolution being taught as fact at all in any of our schools.”(Source)
North Florida weighing in against evolution
A growing number of North Florida superintendents and school boards are objecting to the state’s proposed new science standards, saying the standards give too much credence to evolution and leave no room for alternative theories.
Evolution is “going to be taught as fact, and everyone knows it’s not fact,” said Dennis Bennett, the superintendent in Dixie County, west of Gainesville. “There’s holes in it you can drive a truck through.”
At least seven of Florida’s 67 school boards – all north of Ocala – have passed opposition resolutions, according to the Florida Citizens for Science, a group that supports the standards and has been methodically searching board minutes.
That number could double by the time the state Board of Education votes on the standards Feb. 19, said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association.
Dominated by Baptist churches and dotted with military bases, most of North Florida makes no bones about its political and cultural conservatism. Throw an election year into the mix, Blanton said, and it’s no surprise that school officials in places like Bonifay and Macclenny are “going to try to do some things their constituents want.”
“We just wanted to get it on the record that we’re a Judeo-Christian community, and we believe in academic freedom,” Bennett said.
“I’m a Christian. And I believe I was created by God, and that I didn’t come from an amoeba or a monkey,” said Ken Hall, a School Board member in Madison County, east of Tallahassee.
The St. John’s resolution says the standards should “allow for balanced, objective and intellectually open instruction” that doesn’t treat evolution as “dogmatic fact.”
“Anybody with half a brain can see that natural selection takes place,” said Beverly Slough, a St. John’s board member who is president-elect of the Florida School Boards Association. “But to make great leaps from a fish to a man … the fossil record doesn’t support all that.”(Source)
Half-a-brain indeed. That seems to be the only requirement to be a Florida Board of Education member.
A lonely voice of reason:
Schools Should Teach Evolution
Florida children may soon be the laughingstock of the nation, especially if they have a public school education.
There’s a move afoot to include the Bible story of creation as part of our science classes — you know the one: God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh?
Instead, Florida children should be learning about evolution in science class. The theory of evolution is just that, a scientific theory, with facts and fossils and proven timelines and carbon dating.
I’m sorry. The Bible story, the fable of creationism, has no place in official science class. No place in public school altogether, unless you’re taking some sort of comparative religion class. What’s next? Jonah and the whale instead of marine biology?
Teaching fables as real science does our children a disservice when they get out in the real world. Save the religious stories for Sunday school and let our Florida science teachers use real science to educate our students. (Source)
The Raw Story reports; I just shake my head in profound bemusement,
The United States Constitution never uses the word “God” or makes mention of any religion, drawing its sole authority from “We the People.” However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it’s time to put an end to that.
“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”
Huckabee has every right to believe whatever he wants to believe, just like any citizen of the United States of America. But that’s not enough, nor is it a satisfactory condition, for candidate Huckabee. He envisions an America where everyone is forced by law and Constitutional amendment to believe as he believes. Not just in an invisible super-being who lives in the clouds and demands praise and devotion from his subjects, but the Baptist interpretation of this god.
Could anything be less American, more unconstitutional, than an avowed theist openly advocating turning America into a theocracy? Could there be any suggestion put forth by a presidential candidate that could do more to further discredit the U.S. in the eyes of other nations, alienate our allies, increase tensions throughout the world, turn every combat situation America engages in into a religious war, than to suggest we amend, no, corrupt the Constitution to create an American version of Iran or Saudi Arabia? If a Muslim suggested we amend the Constitution to conform to Muslim teaching, he couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Los Angeles.
This ought to immediately disqualify Huckabee from any further consideration as a presidential candidate.
The fear of the number 666 is known as hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.
I knew you’d want to know that.
I’d like to apologize for the strange goings-on around here the last few days. I’m hoping the worst is behind me and I can settle down to re-posting what has been displaced and creating a few new posts as well.
Movable Type had become unbearable. I don’t mean to disparage MT. There are many good blogs that use that platform. It was an update that did me in and left me with the ability to type a heading but unable to type the body of a post. The update also destroyed the only style that I really liked. I’d made a lot of modifications to the look of that layout, and I hated to lose it all. But no simple alternative presented itself. I did save the posts, all 112 of them, and hope to, over time, get them put back in order here.
The changeover to Word Pad also makes my life a bit easier in that all my blogs now use the same software. There’s a familiar user interface greeting me no matter where I go. This style is acceptable, and allows me to modify the look well enough.
I thank you for your patience and continued attention. I’ll do my best to reward your clicks.
I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “Atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘Agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god - in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It’s easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously.(Douglas Adams)
