tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86094081995489239762024-03-21T09:37:27.348-10:00Hammock HighlightsMy analysis of those who wish to hold dominion over the human race.Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-37113714708161615892021-05-30T20:28:00.001-10:002021-05-30T20:28:43.062-10:00You Say You Want to Get Along--I don't believe You, Any of YouIf you want the world on the same page, all of us pulling in the same direction, all of us heading for the same goal and getting along, then you want evidence to be the only authority and the source of all facts, so we all get closer to a universal truth, on the same--page so to speak.<div><br></div><div>The barrier to this is ideologies: baseless claims proffered as foundational truths. Religion and politics are full to over flowing with these, in fact, religion and conservatism are anthologies of these baseless ideologies.</div><div><br></div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-89544524417326221262021-02-17T10:40:00.001-10:002021-02-17T10:40:57.132-10:00A Confutation of Creationism<span ;="">An irrefutable confutation of creationism and its modernized mockup, with the serial number filed off, intelligent [<i>sic</i>] design.</span>
<br><br><span ;="">Name one thing that isn't evolving before your eyes this very instant. Everything is evolving all the time. Everything around you is changing, either developing or deteriorating. Every new cell, seed, and egg is slightly different from the host. Evolution is not only an observable fact; it is an inescapable fact. And, what is more important, we can see it working over near time, through the fossil record, and over extended time, through telescopes that pick up light cast many billions of years ago. Some would argue from stubborn ignorance that this has little to do with the evolution eliminating the validity of their primitive dogma and demonstrating the insanity of their beliefs. Their biblically fictionalized description of life. The narrative with mud-man and rib-woman even evolved into a scenario where seeds in the male were sewn in the fertile soil of a female. </span><br><br><span ;="">What is life? Creationists claim that their god-fraud created life without even knowing what life is, so what is life? Anti-choice activists falsely claim life begins at conception when both the male and female components are alive during their respective stages long beforehand. In fact, life has been continuous for more than four billion years. So, what is life? By any definition of life that I can think of, viruses, like many forms of cells, are alive. Some may want to believe the difference between alive and mere autonomous growth can be exemplified by the distinctive characteristics of viruses and quasicrystals, respectively. But can it? What quasicrystals, RNA, DNA, viruses, and cells as the basic units of life shows us is that these distinctions are arbitrarily delineated in this respect, which generates numerous inconsistencies, pseudo-paradoxes, and irrationally rationalized exceptions. Furthermore, note the similarities between viruses, which need the media within a cell to reproduce whereas humans need the media within this planetary system's atmosphere for the same reason. So, what is life? What is the distinction, if there is one, between our Earth's ecosystem (as an organism in symbiotic stasis), the balance of our solar system, the galaxy, and our body as a system of cells and organs in symbiotic balance? At the scale of microbiological entities, there is no distinction between biotic chemistry and abiotic chemistry except for the proliferation of carbon compounds in the former. </span>
<br><br><span ;="">Life is an autonomous system generated by replicating, organizing, and reproducing complex constructs with simple biotic and abiotic material constructs in symbiotic balance. Furthermore, because the god-fraud would, if true, insinuate the authoritarian imposition of structure upon the natural balance of everything in the universe, one would find discontinuity and imbalance, at least, but chaos definitely, across the microbial universe if anything could exist at all. This is because the imposition of structure by any entity would have that entity's perspective, designs, goals, and available resources with all the limitations inherent in such a system wrecking the balanced development through reiterating perpetual feedback loops of mutually beneficial and eventually balanced interaction. And in an existing system, further creation of something new would require the destruction of the existing material system with pollution, excess, and waste adding to the chaos and imbalance. Therefore, since balance exists and the imposition of any form of control would destroy the mutual beneficence of perpetually balancing interactions, </span><span ;="">gods not only cannot and do not exist according to previous proofs, they could not interfere and by extension creationism cannot be true. </span>
<br><br><span ;="">A demonstration of these points is as simple as witnessing the desolation caused by civilization and the healing facilitated by the pause in civilization's capitalistic exploitation of the environment. </span><!--/data/user/0/com.samsung.android.app.notes/files/clipdata/clipdata_bodytext_210217_090631_219.sdocx-->Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-76452359877888707602019-06-29T15:19:00.002-10:002020-10-03T13:52:06.129-10:00INGERSOLL'S VOW<span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Few have expressed their feelings of freedom from that dungeon, which is "revealed" religion, better than Robert G. Ingersoll. I only ask that while you read this courageous vow, you remember that Col. Ingersoll lived in the Free Thought era that would produce another great thinker who would evince the comparatively superior importance of imagination as a trail blazer for those pursuing knowledge, actual knowledge, based on objective facts; and this individual was concerned with actual science "the effort to get to the truth has to precede all other efforts", not the epistemological pretentiousness of faith, not the beliefs, traditions, or fictions inculcated from youth, when he stated:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif">"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.</span>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;">—Albert Einstein</span><div>
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<div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) was a famous attorney, served as attorney general of Illinois, and orator whose brilliant lectures drew thousands. As a political figure, he came close to achieving the Republican party's nomination for governor of Illinois, but prejudice and intolerance denied him the opportunity because he was <span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">ostracized</span> as an atheist by religious revivalists driven by capitalists and the bigoted reaction of Confederates to Reconstruction.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><i>When I became convinced that the universe is natural—that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world—not even in infinite space.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><i>I was free—free to think, to express my thoughts—free to live to my own ideal—free to use all my faculties, all my senses—free to spread imagination's wings—free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope—free to judge and determine for myself—free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past—free from popes and priests—free from all the "called" and "set apart"—free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies—free from the fear of eternal pain—free from the winged monsters of the night—free from devils, ghosts, and gods.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><i>For the first time, I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought—no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings—no chains for my limbs—no lashes for my back—no fires for my flesh—no master's frown or threat—no following another's steps—no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><i>And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain—for the freedom of labor and thought—to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs—to those whose flesh was scarred and torn—to those by fire consumed—to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><i><br /></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 16px;">—</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif">so much for that lie about atheists in foxholes</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 16px;">—here expresses better than most, the feeling of shedding those shackles, or should I say mind vice (vise works well, too), but it is a memetic virus, a cultural meme that spreads like an STD, debilitates and deranges the thinking, and is as addictive as the worst of drugs. And, like all addictive substances, it serves only the purposes of the pusher while sapping the life from the user. </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">From a time long before I realized just how different I was from most others, for I have always been an atheist, I know the tragedy that is the change in once bright minds that comes from inculcation into these superstitions. From almost the day the addiction takes hold, that all too familiar dishonesty predominates. </span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Imagine what humanity could have achieved, the suffering that could have been eliminated, if only our thoughts were free to soar without the shackles of superstition, without the limits of tradition, and without the retrogressive reaction of conservatism anchoring our institutions, or dragging us all back, to some primitive past.</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Reject religion. Reject tradition. Reject conservatism. Reject any and every attempt by authority to impose structure upon society. Our society can only grow to attain and maintain balance and stability when our social structure is built through mutually supportive interests, cooperative and collaborative interactions, and global beneficence. </span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">In a country quickly sinking into the depths of Nazism, becoming a failed democracy, with nationalistic vultures circling overhead and quickening the country's demise where they can, the facts were never more important. So, why do so many in this country reject facts? Why do so many follow fascist frauds like lost sheep? Besides being a white supremacist, neo-nazi, narcissist, fascist, capitalist, corporatist, themselves, perhaps religious conservatives fear freedom. To understand this psychological state try reading <i>Escape from Freedom,</i> by Erich Fromm. I found it helpful.</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Thanks for reading.</span></div>
</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0Waikoloa Village, HI, USA19.9372484 -155.791068117.871812065071381 -157.988333725 22.002684734928621 -153.593802475tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-62339523997660882722017-10-06T05:57:00.001-10:002020-10-24T06:11:25.671-10:00Sailing Into the Future Requires Weighing Anchors to the Past<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">If you want human progress toward world peace, then you must stop thinking like the establishment wants you to think. First, and this should be obvious, the establishment wants war and conflict to the degree humanity tolerates it because they are the ones who profit from it. Do not tolerate it at all and it will not exist at all. But, ignore it, and it will never go away. Apathy is the friend of the establishment. Second, it is the current thinking that is war and conflict-centric. Patriotism, nationalism, statism, and the means of manipulation through enforced subjection and peer pressure to genuflect before symbols like a flag and icons like some national anthem is how a mindless majority tyrannizes a minority of thinkers. Forcing respect for symbols of ideologies is only one step from forcing respect for the ideology and the ideologue, so no one should submit to it. Forcing respect for symbols of authority like flags of countries and governments, iconolatry, or patriotism is worse. Never forget that we are seldom the people the Exploiter Class is talking about when they are discussing benefits but we are almost always the people who must give to preserve the "rights we hold so dear," which is, of course, a sham.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">What is loyalty but subservience? What is obedience but servility? What is conformity but compliance, and what is complacency but surrender?</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">A country is a tool of oppression and respect for the flag is the symbol of your compliance when neither should be idolized. Government is something we should be moving away from as our intellect and individuality develop. But any government of the people by the people needs to emphasize the power of the people who should be strong in the face of iconolatry and manipulation by power hoarders until we eliminate ideological loyalty and oligarchical power.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">If you want to progress toward a better society, you will have to give up old world views that have kept us fighting and supporting oppressive regimes for security's sake. As soon as you give up security concepts, you will find that authoritarians are rarely anything but self-serving, what you think you own actually owns you, that community and sometimes family exist to force conformity that will repress innovation, retard all progress, and insist on the status quo until retrogressive acts are used to reestablish obsolete old world orders that serve the self-serving. Then one day you awake to realize that security concepts like strong leadership, consumer-centric ideas, and community are a trap and that death looks like your only escape until it hits you that even religious constructs are nothing more than a collection of security concepts.</span></div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-74606328209886694812012-07-01T17:44:00.001-10:002012-07-01T17:44:24.677-10:00The Hiddenness Argument<div class='posterous_autopost'><p><span style="font-size: small;">The Hiddenness Argument, for the nonexistence of God, as quoted from John L. Schellenberg's 1993 book, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size: large;">The Hiddenness Argument</span></p> <ol> <li><span style="font-size: small;">If there is a perfectly loving God, all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationships with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God are in a position to participate in such a relationship, that is, able to do so just by trying to.</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: small;">No one can be in a position to participate in such relationship without believing that God exists.</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: small;">If there is a perfectly loving God, all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationships with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God believe that God exists (from 1 and 2).</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: small;">It is not the case that </span><span style="font-size: small;">all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationships with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God believe that God exists: there is non-resistant nonbelief; "God is Hidden."</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: small;">It is not the case that there is a perfectly loving God (from 3 and 4).</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: small;">If God exists, God is perfectly loving.</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: small;">It is not the case that God exists (from 5 and 6).</span></li> </ol> Beachbum's Mountain View</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-68905100690381739702012-03-20T12:51:00.001-10:002012-03-20T12:51:01.856-10:00My Response to a Theist's Six Questions for Atheists<div class='posterous_autopost'><p> <p> <p>I ran across this ministry blog and attempted to answer these six questions they asked of us atheistic types but it seems the comments were disabled. So, I'll answer them here. From: <a href="http://www.rzim.org/community/engagingconversations/tabid/105/entryid/14/default.aspx" title="Six Questions to Ask an Atheist" target="_blank">Six Questions to Ask an Atheist</a> (Questions are inset and italicized.)</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">1</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">. </span><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">If there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">, so how do we answer the following questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? This question was asked by Aristotle and Leibniz alike – albeit with differing answers. But it is an historic concern. Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to this life? If there is meaning, what kind of meaning and how is it found? Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all in vain since death is merely the end? How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a transcendent signifier? If these concepts are merely social constructions, or human opinions, whose opinion does one trust in determining what is good or bad, right or wrong? If you are content within atheism, what circumstances would serve to make you open to other answers?</span></em></p> <p>My response to 1. Why do you assume nothing ever existed? What makes you think nothing is the default state? The sum total of energies (mass+energy+(-energies)) in the universe still equals zero. The question presumes a theistic creation narrative which is false. But the answer comes with our understanding that from simpler forms comes complexity. Evolution is the development of current states from an accumulation of less complex forms in, for instance, the physical and biological realms. Human history progresses away from the dictatorial, the primitive, and we become more intelligent and humane as our collective understanding develops. It is this societal comprehension of well-being, of justice, of what it is to suffer that gives our morality a foundation. This consensus is what progresses and is the property that transcends the individual life which must end so new life can come into existence and continue the progression.</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">2</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">. </span><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">, so why don’t we see more atheists like Jean Paul Sartre, or Friedrich Nietzsche, or Michel Foucault? These three philosophers, who also embraced atheism, recognized that in the absence of God, there was no transcendent meaning beyond one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or tastes. The crisis of atheistic meaninglessness is depicted in Sartre’s book Nausea. Without God, there is a crisis of meaning, and these three thinkers, among others, show us a world of just stuff, thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.</span></em></p> <p>My response A2: Crisis of meaning? This mantra, repeated by the religiose ad nauseam, is actually a misdirection, a diversion. With a deity your life has no meaning. You are a drone manipulated for its plan. You are a pawn. With only this life, one's life has immeasurable value, meaning is one's family, friends, purpose is procreation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Morality is what propagates well-being. With a deity this is all arbitrary and meaningless.</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">3</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">. </span><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">When people have embraced atheism, the historical results can be horrific</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">, as in the regimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot who saw religion as the problem and worked to eradicate it? In other words, what set of actions are consistent with particular belief commitments? It could be argued, that these behaviors – of the regimes in question - are more consistent with the implications of atheism. Though, I'm thankful that many of the atheists I know do not live the implications of these beliefs out for themselves like others did! It could be argued that the socio-political ideologies could very well be the outworking of a particular set of beliefs – beliefs that posited the ideal state as an atheistic one.</span></em></p> <p>My response A3: Again, this oft repeated falsehood is religious propaganda. Stalin was educated in seminary school. They never mention that Mother Teresa was also an atheist according to her own correspondence. Stalin's problem with the Russian Orthodox Church was political as it backed the Czars in both the revolution and counter revolution. Beliefs were irrelevant. Stalin re-opened the churches during WW2 even though he saw religion as a means of manipulation of the masses for ill effect. Marx wrote that religion would fall under the weight of its own dogma. So, it wouldn't need to be abolished. Mao had his country's traditional belief system Christianity was seen as an outside intrusion. The same goes for Pol Pot. None of these tyrants killed in the name of atheism. In fact, in Stalin's case most of the death was caused by two Christian sources,a) Hitler was a Catholic fundamentalist who invaded in WW2, and b) the Lysinko Famine was caused by a creationist's view of biology, a Lamarckian evolution by acquired traits; that is, pseudo-science, not science. </p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">4</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">. </span><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">If there is no God, the problems of evil and suffering are in no way solved,</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"> so where is the hope of redemption, or meaning for those who suffer? Suffering is just as tragic, if not more so, without God because there is no hope of ultimate justice, or of the suffering being rendered meaningful or transcendent, redemptive or redeemable. It might be true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or comfort. Why would we seek the alleviation of suffering without objective morality grounded in a God of justice?</span></em></p> <p>My response A4: Another diversion, another misdirected view as suffering of all life forms would make any omniscient deity complicit in the premeditated act of causing the suffering in the first place. After the fact, the religionist's view turns life into a long wait for revenge which makes no sense. Suffering, as horrible as it is, for all life forms, at least makes sense in the natural view. Also, in the naturalist's view it is up to us to relieve, even remove, suffering which is why we have medicine, ethics that evolve as we come to understand what causes suffering, civil and animal rights, and the whole concept of humanitarian aid. It was the ubiquitous suffering that caused Mother Teresa to be an atheist.</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">5</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">. </span><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"> If there is no God, we lose the very standard by which we critique religions and religious people,</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"> so whose opinion matters most? Whose voice will be heard? Whose tastes or preferences will be honored? In the long run, human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway? Who is to say that lying, or cheating or adultery or child molestation are wrong –really wrong? Where do those standards come from? Sure, our societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences for things that are not socially acceptable, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun; from slavery, to interracial marriage, from polygamy to monogamy. Human taste, opinion law and culture are hardly dependable arbiters of Truth.</span></em></p> <p>My response A5: We have no god. We merely have those who claim to represent, and be in contact with, a supernatural absolute authority. There is never any evidence provided to support this claim, but they continue to make it, laughably.</p> <p>Our morality progresses with our intellect; that is, our ethics evolve in parallel with our understanding of suffering, well-being, justice, and what propagates these in the pursuit of life's betterment. Never again will slavery be promoted, as it was by Popes Alexander VI and Nicholas V, as good because the indigenous peoples are "ungodly," or not under the command of the Christian deity. In short, we have much better metrics for morality than those stagnated in the Bronze Age and dictated by misogynistic, desert dwelling goat herders who claimed their deity mandated everything from forced abortion (NU 5:11-31) to burning one's daughter for fornicating (LE 21:9), from human sacrifice (LE 27:29, NU 31:1-40, JG 12:31-39) to cannibalism (LE 26:29). Society has progressed beyond these atrocious dictates which show that this claimed absolute authority is no more than the command to submit to the imaginings of egotistical patriarchs and primitive tribesmen.</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">6</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">. </span><strong style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">If there is no God, we don’t make sense,</strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"> so how do we explain human longings and desire for the transcendent? How do we even explain human questions for meaning and purpose, or inner thoughts like, why do I feel unfulfilled or empty? Why do we hunger for the spiritual, and how do we explain these longings if nothing can exist beyond the material world?</span></em></p> <p>My response A6: Another meaningless mantra that evinces an evidentiarily vacuous falsehood. Humans have a desire to know, and when they can't know they will speculate. It's called curiosity. When we don't know some humans replace their ignorance with words like supernatural, spiritual, or miracle; they replace confusion with a longing for a father figure who has all the answers; they replace the fear of dying with concepts like the transcendent which only works with the cognizant (i.e. ideas, logic, etc.), thereby making their God, their existence; and their dream of an afterlife an idealized concept originating as a function of some mind. This both defers responsibility to an intelligent agency and puts that agency deep into an Orphic Abyss out of the reach of science and naturalism; only, this isn't the deity of the Bible which is written to have needed time (GE 1) to build the world (not the universe, but reality) while moving across the face of the waters, had sons that mated with human daughters (GE 6:1-4), and ate lunch with Abram (GE 18). We give our life meaning. Our families give our life meaning. Defending our life, liberties, and well-being against tyrannical oppressors claiming irreproachable absolute authority from divined knowledge of some supernatural entity gives our lives meaning when submitting to their imagined authority would turn us all into subjugated automatons.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">####</span></p> <p>Now, I have a question for you. Why hasn't, in the more than 2 millennia of the Abrahamic faiths dominating mankind, the subject of these beliefs brought heaven to Earth, eliminated suffering among life forms, or even performed anything, at all, unless one counts the most absolutely heinous atrocities ever committed against humankind at the hands of those claiming its divine authority?</p> <p>Christianity, in particular, has an atrocious history, with Islam coming up hard and fast. It wasn't until the advent of this monotheistic belief system that beliefs could be considered wrong as pagan beliefs in many gods were inclusive, not exclusionary. It also wasn't until Theodosius I mandated Christ belief throughout the Roman Empire and killed off millions who didn't convert from pagan beliefs that the concept of a holy war was born. I don't think I want anything to do with your meaning of ...well, actually, your view only has meaning after death now that I think about it — I want nothing to do with that.</p> </p> </p>Beachbum's Mountain View</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-61237099658207079782012-02-14T08:46:00.001-10:002012-09-15T15:04:02.262-10:00The Continuing Battle Against Christian Supremacist Propaganda<div class="posterous_autopost">
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In the only two places in the Constitution where religion is discussed (first line in the First Amendment and Para.3 of Article VI), the first eliminates the validation (establishment) religion receives from the Government and the second then removes religion's influence over authority imbued upon the Offices of Government.</div>
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<b>Article VI Paragraph 3:</b></div>
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The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.</blockquote>
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<b>First line of the First Amendment:</b></div>
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Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791.</div>
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment [in the sense of validation] of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;</blockquote>
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In the <b>Declaration of Independence</b> which is not a governing document but an announcement, a declaration, to foreign nations of this nation's proclaimed sovereignty. A deity is mentioned twice. Both of which are in reference to the deistic deity prevalent in the Enlightenment era. The first equates Natures God to and parallels this deity's "Laws" with the Laws of Nature. Definitely not the Christian Old Testament deity of the Protestant English which was an important point for the Founding Fathers to make. As is apparent in the following:</div>
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"...and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,..."</blockquote>
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Giving top billing to the Laws of Nature is definitely a stroke of genius, but calling this deity "Natures God" as opposed to the author's God, or Europe's God, or Almighty God, or even the Lord God is rock solid evidence that it isn't the Christian God, but more closely related to Aristotle's Prime Mover or some Deistic Creator force. Which brings us to the second mention of a deity.</div>
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"...that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,..."</blockquote>
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Recalling that nowhere in the Christian Bible are unalienable Rights mentioned, let alone elucidated, I would conclude that this Creator is none other than Nature's God from the opening paragraph. And, considering that Thomas Jefferson had been the key attorney in the court ruling holding that England's Common Law was not derived from scripture, it is obvious that this scripture is not the origin of the Rights he, as the author, had in mind. Again, showing that this Nation is in no way a Christian Nation.</div>
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But, their are two key phrases in the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution that more than make this quite clear, yet they are seldom discussed, and the first, from the Declaration of Independence, is: </div>
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"That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,..."</blockquote>
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Governments as institutions of men, meaning not divinely ordained, but deriving their powers of authority from the consent of the people is in stark contrast to that garnered from the absolute divine authority of the Christian deity. The same deity which had ordained, sanctioned, so many despots of Europe. </div>
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Then the last phrase is from the <b>Preamble </b>of <b>The Constitution</b> and it is the clearest of all:</div>
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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.</blockquote>
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<i>"We the People ...to... secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves ... do ordain and establish..."</i></blockquote>
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Nowhere in this document is the idea of a Christian deity in evidence. In fact, the word God is never used in the whole of the Constitution. It is, We the People who possess the authority from which our Government derives its power. It is We the People who "ordain and establish" the authority of the Constitution to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves. It is not ordained by some deity. This concept is a crowning achievement of the Enlightenment Era. And the reason our Founding Fathers are considered Giants of the Age of Enlightenment.</div>
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Which makes <b>Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli 1797</b>: </div>
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"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..."</blockquote>
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as unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams, seem almost redundant. This does show conclusively that these United States owe no quarter to those claiming the sanctity of religions are to be in any sense respected as part of our secular legislation. For they are in effect attempting to take the authority of <b>We the People</b> away from the US.<br />
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Beachbum's Mountain View<br />
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Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-4865689560653837572011-08-03T10:35:00.000-10:002011-08-03T10:35:36.088-10:00Debunking the Kalam Cosmological Argument of William Lane CraigI found this video at the great site known as <a href="http://new.exchristian.net/2011/07/debunking-kalam-cosmological-argument.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=ExChristian.Net+--+encouraging+ex-Christians&utm_content=ExChristian.Net+--+encouraging+ex-Christians">ExChristian.net</a> (please give them a visit), then with my usual vigor I investigated all its claims and links I possibly could to my own delight. I found much of the documentation accessible, and I am still finding interesting connections.<br />
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Kodos to SkydivePhil<br />
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This video shows, with dramatic clarity, the gaping holes in the Kalam Cosmological Argument. By evidencing and evincing the contradictions, theistic claims contradicted by the evidence, and apologetic claims contradicted by the scientists themselves this argument is laid to rest.<br />
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If you follow along with Alan Guth's dialog you will here mention "pocket universes" and if his writing is consistent with my understanding of what he is saying here (which I have no doubt it will be) I will show documented agreement with my accumulation of expansion concept caused by multiple black hole bursts as each one releases the matter as it becomes too weak to hold the singularity of compressed matter due to Hawking Radiation, the dissipation of the energy needed to contain matter in that state of compression. Have you ever asked yourself why the cosmos has Black Holes? Could it be that it is merely the balance of matter and energy that necessitates their existence? That is, too much matter in too close a proximity and gravity does the rest, well that is until the energy (gravity in this case) equals the atomic energy of the accumulation of electrons in the singularity that are being pulled around the nucleus of the atom much like the stator windings being pulled around the anchored armature of a electric motor. This is the point where distance between the electron and the nucleus is proportional to the energy of the orbit and bang massive instantaneous expansion. Oh, this also works in consideration of string theory as the vibrating strings unfold the membrane in a similar massive expansion; I would think.<br />
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I will be updating this post as I read the documentation and books that I have discovered in this video.Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-23478162959342970282011-08-02T15:06:00.000-10:002011-08-02T15:06:22.202-10:00A Note to Self-Proclaimed Pro-Life ProponentsOnly in America can one be pro-draft, pro-war, pro-drone strikes, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-guns, pro-torture, pro-landmines, pro-death-penalty, and still call yourself pro-life.<br />
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Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are some of the inalienable rights which the Founding Fathers decided we were all entitled. So, there is a balance to be attained with life and happiness in the elimination of suffering. Suffering in the form of pain, poverty, starvation, serfdom, and slavery. And if one honestly stood with limited government, they would vote to keep government out of the private decisions of a mother trying to make a very difficult choice concerning her baby's well-being at a point of no suffering: 1st trimester of embryonic development. They, would vote to enable the government to defend against corporatists practices and policy manipulation that produces an overpopulation of unprotected consumers wherein competition for a living wage would be usurped by self preservation and the immediate need to survive. Why else would one think killers (see above) like Conservative Republicans give a crap about abortion; a flooded consumer and labor market suits their needs and goals. Might those professing to be pro-life actually be anti-choice?<br />
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Now even a limited government still needs to be strong enough to ensure that someone's rights and views stop where another's rights start. Since "We the People" are our government many prefer a stronger government that protects our rights from strong greed motivated capitalist interests, strong international oligarchies like churches, and strong national & international corporate interests, etc. —these are all the enemies within. The afore mentioned Inalienable Rights are why regulations that protect the populace from the poisonous profit driven shortcuts regarding safety, environmental protection, financial gaming, etc. are in place.<br />
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Yes, if you're thinking this would make Social Conservatives, the Religiose, T-Partiers, and Libertarians mindless tools of corporate ambitions to install their own servitude (not to mention poisoning), you're getting warm. Opinion manipulation through rhetorical ploys that are emotionally charged appeals to the baser reactions to xenophobia and mob mentality is the oldest form of politics known to man.<br />
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Further, many would suspect most cultural conservatives don't even know what life is, if, as we also suspect, they have a clergy's eye view of it. The time table resulting from Roe v. Wade is tied to consciousness, that is, the ability to suffer.<br />
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Lastly, some seem to think that liberals don't defend the free market, when in fact, we do. The free market of ideas that Thomas Jefferson idealized and the free market competition that improves the qualities of commerce. But, the free market that libertarians and capitalists rale on about is subordinate to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that We the People are entitled.<br />
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Now, I have a question for you dear reader: Does anyone think the German people thought for a minute that the fascist they were putting into power, the man supported by the Catholic, Protestant (and eventually the Central) churches, a man that hated all the same people they hated (ie. homosexuals, Gypsies, Jews, outsiders, etc.), was the Hitler we know today, or do you think they thought he was just a good Christian, and a patriotic German?<br />
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The reason I ask is because we have a portion of the population that idealizes Austrian economics (Hitler's home country and an economic foundation of fascism), a party (Republicans, & same portion of the population) that uses religio-political concepts as evinced by the Nazi state thinker, Carl Schmitt, and that same party is obviously protective (if not outright sock-puppets) of the same international corporatists (the political foundation of fascism). Then, as the judicial practitioners of Nazi Germany later found out, it is the lack of protection of a fellow citizen's civil rights that permits, and not only through compounding, the atrocities that we now know decimated Europe. Maybe, conservatives should think harder about imposing their opinion on the the very people who's fate they will share.Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-61821648274834045402011-07-31T02:12:00.001-10:002011-07-31T02:19:54.940-10:00An Anachronistic Message<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">On </span>07-28-11, I had an interesting conversation with a Christian <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy">@lauramzy</a>. She did the usual bible quoting and <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96735692301938689">unsupported assertions</a>, followed by <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96739055659782145">ranting in all capitals</a>; you know, generally losing her cool. Only, in so doing the usual quoting et cetera, she gave me an opportunity to see where people get that their deity is<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96722622770974720"> a loving peaceful deity</a> contrary to everything I know about it.<br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The first Bible verse I received was 1 John 4:7</span></div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Now the first thing one will notice is that this verse is claiming in the third person to know god and further to know god is love. Ok, interesting observation considering the content of the books that precede this particular verse. This is not, however, evidence that the Christian god is love; it is merely a claim of such. And in the context in which this verse was written it seems to be a sermon of praise and platitudes. No one, well except Christians grasping at straws, would expect this to be factual anymore than public comments at a wedding reception.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Now, this <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96729337964937216">next one</a> contradicts her claim in that her deity is professing to do the fighting as opposed to diplomacy. Deuteronomy 3:22</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Ye shall not fear them: for the LORD your God he shall fight for you.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The previous verse has an interesting assertion about:</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> <span class="Apple-style-span">Thine eyes have seen all that the LORD your God hath done unto these two kings</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So, this just doesn't sound like a peace loving god which is directly contradicting her claim. Is she confusing her own feelings of security for those of peace? I don't understand why she would use it unless it just fit her search criteria and she didn't read further. Most importantly, this is a case of a first person narration of a particular opinion not that of direct observation, nor is it a record of any deity making such a claim. In the <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96731559780024320">next</a> verse <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2014:14&version=KJV">Exodus 14:14</a> is the same problem:</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It is starting to look like my interlocutor searched for the word peace and love in an attempt to find confirmation for her theses regarding her deity's disposition. Again, the verse she has chosen shows not diplomacy but vigilante violence. So far, no sign of a loving, peaceful god even in her choice of verses.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Then in her <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96731733847838721">next exchange</a> she actually asks if I am embarrassed about my stance. This as she proffers a verse straight out of the battle of David and Goliath <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2017:40-49&version=KJV">1 Samuel 17:47</a></span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hands.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">This deity offers the enemy up for slaughter. I would not consider this peaceful under any circumstance. In the verse preceding the above David is bragging about the Lord delivering Goliath so that David will take his head. If this is a peaceful, loving deity, what would a violent deity be? In my view this is a nationalistic god of war. It should not be surprising as Yahweh Sabaoth means God of War or Armies, yet it is the rare fundamentalist that knows these facts.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Still haven't seen evidence of the peaceful god of which my interlocutor writes. I hate to tell her that after many decades of study, nothing even close to a peaceful, loving deity has emerged. The verses she has presented so far are not evidence of anything of the sort. From what I have learned from reading the bible, Yahweh is a god of war, and even considering her quoted verses this still stands, so far. Many of her quoted verses were clipped. Out of 1Samuel 25:33 she removed 33b & 33c but cited 33a & 33d.</span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But this verse isn't talking to, or about, Laura's deity; rather, it reflects David's thanking of Abigail for calming him down. While it is claimed in a previous verse that the Lord sent Abigail, this is not what the cited verse is about as David mentions the advice. Considering that David is also a literary construct, as are most of the main characters of the Bible, this verse is, at most, a bit in the mythology of David. I can't help but to think that there has to be better examples that <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy">@lauramzy</a> could have cherry-picked in her attempt to frustrate my case.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Psalm 11:5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Now Psalm 11:5 as she quoted it: "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">The soul of the Lord hates those who love violence," is close enough, but the next verse shows that the Lord hateth those that mirror himself. </span></span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Psalm 11:6 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> Of course, these are verses of lyrical poetry, so their value as to factual anything is vacuous. Still, it is easy to see that the authors viewed their deity as, well, violent. In my opinion, this character of Hebrew polytheistic mythology reflects the barbarity, to be precise, of the era.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Psalms 33:16 A king is not saved by his great army...</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">This is talking about being saved spiritually not by armies but by favor in the eyes of the Lord. Only, it is but a few verses later that the violence of this deity are highlighted in that mankind should be in fear of this god of war. Psalm 33:18</span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy;</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I was 6-years-old when I first realized that no one should fear a loving deity. I read <i>The Book of Mormon</i> in the second grade after reading<i> Wagons West</i> about Joseph Smith & Brigham Young. I was then convinced that religion was a fantasy; it was started by the idea that no one should fear someone that loves them. I finished the Bible the first time at 11 (my sixth grade teacher said she could read it in a year). I was never so credulous as to believe Santa or the Easter Bunny—that I can remember (I told my 4 and 5 year old brothers that those things were pretend just before my sixth birthday). I was motivated by the word fear in all the ecclesiastical discourse to start finding my own evidence, and I never looked back. The next <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96732052593971200">proffering</a> was:</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalms%2020&version=KJV">Psalms 20:7</a> Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">While this is another case where mankind's war power is put in a secondary position in relation to faith, it says nothing of the deity's passiveness or love. And in a verse just previous to this one:</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> Psalm 20:3 Remember all thy offerings, and accept thy burnt sacrifice; Selah.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Burnt sacrifices have never struck me as something needed by a loving entity of any kind. Am I missing something? I know we are taking about lyrical verse that describes someone's perception and their practices in relationship with this entity not the acts of the entity themselves, but it is indicative of the verses being presented as evidence of a peaceful loving deity. Then she <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96732179958210560">sends</a> <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%20140&version=KJV">Psalm 140:1-2</a> along with the typical insults of those suffering from cognitive dissonance and the fear engendered in their faith as a deterrent from apostasy.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Protect me from the violent who...stir up wars continually. r u satisfied yet? do u feel stupid yet?</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">As far as a relationship with the deity goes, this verse is asking for protection from violent sorts. Then in just a few verses after, this author is asking the deity to: <span class="Apple-style-span">Let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again (140:10). Again, an appeal to the violence innate in this belief system, and that vengeance seemingly expected from their deity. So, to this point Laura Ramzy has shown nothing evidentiarily to support her claim that her deity is a peaceful loving entity, and I have used the same chapters or psalms to show that she is, in fact, wrong in her stance without, as yet, referencing my own material evidence.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">If she had done as I and many others have done and actually read the books, she would know what I and others know about this war god of Hebrew mythology, but she, like many of her mindset, have let interpreters, middlemen, woo woo salespeople, and charlatans tell her what they want her to know concerning this deity regardless of the literary evidence and historical facts. People read into the verses what they want to see instead of reading the verses as they are written.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span">People need to understand that the Bible really is <i>that bad</i>, and the reason it is <i>that bad</i> is because the book was trapped by the advent of the Gutenberg printing press in 1440 (Gutenberg Bible, Vulgate, 1450s) in the configuration that it's currently in after almost a millennium of exclusively priestly interpretation. This is the translation from which the King James version was taken in 1611. It wasn't even until the Council of Trent 1546 CE</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> that the Catholic Church canonized the books in the Bible and still there are many different canons (ie. Greek, Ethiopian, Syriac, etc.). Prior to this, even long after, the public was not permitted to read the Bible; in fact, many English translations were destroyed for this very reason.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Maybe, it is because of this betrayed trust, by those she accepted interpretations from, that she is motivated to <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96732565179871232">get so</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96739055659782145">violently</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96739133459927041">defensive</a> of <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96739564735045633">her view</a>: <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96739656305082368">misdirected</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96739656305082368">anger</a>? Alas, this is nothing we haven't come to expect from the <a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/07/anders-breivik-stieg-larsson?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+|+MoJoBlog%29">professed Christians</a> of the world. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Please note that there are many of these maxims I whole-heartily agree with, for instance, this next bit on wisdom.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%209&version=KJV">Ecclesiastes 9:18</a> Wisdom is better than weapons of war</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Actually, other than the idea of sin expressed therein the rest of the verse is quite compelling if one merely replaces <i>sinner</i> with bungler (NRSV), delusionally dishonest, malcontent, or psychotic, etc. Ecc 9:18 "Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one <i>sinner </i>destroyeth much good." As <i>sinner</i> encompasses much considered thought crimes and innately human drives as commanded by supposedly absolute moral dictate. This is not, however, the words of my interlocutor's deity. No! The words are those of the "Teacher" or 'Gatherer," so some assume it is the mythical character Solomon son of David (also a literary construct), yet, even though these are words to live by, they are not evidence supporting Laura's claim of a peaceful loving deity.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hosea%201&version=KJV">Hosea 1:7</a> I will save...not by bow, sword, battle, horses, horsemen</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">A few verses before this one the author puts the words,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Hosea 1:4-5</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">1:4 And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">1:5 And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel, in the valley of Jezreel.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">1:6b ... for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">into the mouth of this deity. Also, the <i>saving </i>expressed in 1:7, if somewhat ambiguous, is by mercy on a favored people. Only, in light of the previous verses expressing revenge, I'm not seeing peaceful at all, and if we ignore the Documentary Hypothesis, the polytheistic origins of Hebrew mythology, and the constant redaction by the Deuteronomists et al. this Yahweh is supposedly the creator of all people; so why is it not love but nationalism being expressed? I see literary evidence of what is believed to be a nationalistic regional deity, a local war god—not a loving anything. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The next verse she quotes in her continued attempt to assail me with her <i>proof </i>is:</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Zechariah 4:6 Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Only the whole verse reads "Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts." Where Lord of Hosts translates as God of Armies, and this is supposedly an angel conferring this information. And what is it that is by spirit transmitted? In Zech 5:3 it says: "Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth," again, not peaceful or loving is it?</span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96732992315195394">Matthew 5:44</a> Love your enemies; pray for persecutors</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">This is obviously <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205:30-50&version=KJV">Mt 5:44</a> not 5:43 that she marked it as. This is from the Sermon on the Mount which is actually taken from a much older (maybe 7 centuries older, Buddha) philosophy than this narrative which was written after the beginning of the second century from the evidence I have gathered. This verse also follows a narrative in which it is commanded to pluck out an eye if it should offend one. That the Earth is this God's footstool; so, although it has its applications in the real world, the philosophy is not practiced by this narrative character nor his father as exemplified in Matthew 10:34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."</span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Mark 9:50 Be at peace with each other.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In a continuation of the verses from Mark 9:43 that have this Jesus character telling the congregation to "pluck an eye," "cut off a foot," or "the hand." What could be more violent, even barbaric, than this? This is a case of the writer's request put in the mouth of Jesus, not that of a deity. Also, it can be argued that this is in the context of nationalism, the in-group, actually the believers themselves not humanity at large.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Romans 12:17 "Return no one evil for evil...live at peace with everyone" did i make a point now too?</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> This is a sermon transmitted via Epistle by Paul/Saul not any recount of a deity's actions. People are being told how to act not shown how their deity has or does act. This has real world applications but is not the evidence for a peaceful loving deity. It is an ethic that some humans practice without the sermon.</span><br />
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<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Romans 12:21 Overcome evil with good </span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">This is still Paul communicating through the Epistles his own ethics (In fact, Chapters 12 & 13 are full of ethics that are not attributed to the Gospel Jesus character. Could this be because Paul knew of no historical Jesus?) </span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Romans 14:19 "Make every effort to do what leads to peace..." how about now?</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Again, a sermon, but this is concerning restrictions of food, the eating of meat, and being thought highly of by one's peers. Laura has not produced one iota of evidence showing the peaceful loving deity. So far, only the snide remarks of an arrogant, if not a little frightened, Christian showing all the symptoms of mindlessly adhering to socially supported inculcation with culturally accepted dogma.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">1 Peter 3:11 "Turn from evil; do good; seek peace; pursue it." next time u speak of my religion do ur research.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> This isn't talking about her deity. This is in reference to the subjection of women to their husbands, and the husband's piety as a result of the wife's practices while both of them can attain higher levels of morality by thinking before reacting. In historical context this is a lesson in ethics that common people of this time will not find, for educational systems serving the masses are still some 1600 years hence. Note that my interlocutor displays the arrogance of ignorance quite prevalent in most theistic discourse with the fundamentalist adherent. Also note that it is all too obvious that she has yet to read the book she claims as the base for her world view. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Relying instead on the woo woo merchants I made mention of earlier. And, yes, I do pity her.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Then after some time to reflect, I'm guessing, Laura Ramzy <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96806263341584384">sends</a> <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+9:7&version=MSG">Proverbs 9:7-12</a> to me. Does anyone think it was not because of the words "arrogant cynic" in her choice of translation. Only, a more accurate translation would be "scoffer" in historical context. Alas, I tried very hard not to be either. And if one actually reads <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=179109875">Proverbs 9</a> and considers it in historical context, that is, noting that Hebrew scripture was the basic education of most commoners of that era. Realizing, still further, that if one was a Jewish shepherd of the Diaspora, even a Nomad, this was Higher Education as there was nothing better to know 2200 years ago. Though Laura takes it out of historical context, and, for that matter, context in general. This whole proverb is a call to those searching for wisdom, and even though I disagree with the god claims in it, because we have far to much evidence to the contrary today, we can all agree that it is a good idea to seek out wisdom. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;">Proverbs 9:7-12</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div><h2 class="plus-S" style="font-size: 1.2em; width: 600px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">General Maxims</span></h2><div style="width: 600px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="ii" />Whoever corrects a scoffer wins abuse;<br />
whoever rebukes the wicked gets hurt. <br class="ii" />A scoffer who is rebuked <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/lauramzy/status/96969023291523072">will only hate you</a>;<br />
the wise, when rebuked, will love you. <br class="ii" />Give instruction<a href="http://bible.oremus.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"></a> to the wise, and they will become wiser still;<br />
teach the righteous and they will gain in learning. <br class="ii" />The fear of the <span class="sc" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span> is the beginning of wisdom,<br />
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. <br class="ii" />For by me your days will be multiplied,<br />
and years will be added to your life. <br class="ii" />If you are wise, you are wise for yourself;<br />
if you scoff, you alone will bear it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left; width: 600px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Here is a <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/lauramzy%20Beechbum">link to the search</a> of all, or most, of our correspondence. I will let you, dear reader, decide who this verse could help the most. And I still recommend reading this entire proverb about Lady Wisdom, who could have been Asherah, wife of El, at one time. Tomorrow, because this post is already too long, I will discuss the heinous acts that won Yahweh his title as a blood soaked deity of mythology.</span><br />
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</blockquote>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-78583141643704784792011-07-14T11:23:00.002-10:002011-07-14T11:35:06.829-10:00Why Rupert Murdoch Love$ God: World's Biggest Sleaze Mogul Also Getting Rich from Christian Moralizers | | AlterNet<div class="posterous_autopost"><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"><blockquote><div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Arial, Sans-Serif;"></div><div name="paragraph1">Murdoch knows something I found out way back in the 1970s and 80s, when I was still my founder-of-the-religious-right Dad’s sidekick and a right wing evangelical leader/shill myself: There’s gold in them-thar God hills! James Dobson alone once gave away 150,000 copies of one of my evangelical screeds that sold more than a million copies. (I describe why I got out of the evangelical netherworld – fled -- in my book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Mom-God-Strange-Politics/dp/0306819287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1310321876&sr=1-1">Sex, mom and God</a>.)</div><div name="paragraph2">So here’s my question to Rob Bell of the God-loves-everybody school of touchy-feely theology and/or to the right wing "family values" crowd who worry about gay marriage between responsible loving adults <em>while </em>they perform financial <span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">fellatio on the mightiest and most depraved/pagan media baron to ever walk the earth</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">: </span></div><div name="paragraph3">What serious, let alone decent religiously conscious person – left or right, conservative or liberal -- would knowingly work to enrich this dreadful man who will go down in history as the epitome of everything that all religion <em>says</em> its against: lies, greed, criminality, and sheer disgusting exploitation of the defenseless that would shame a sewer rat?</div><div name="paragraph4">Secular “un-saved” and "godless" and "liberal" authors like Jeff Jarvis have pulled books from Harper Collins because it’s owned by Murdoch as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/a-real-threat-to-privacy_b_893018.html">he writes</a>: “[my] next book, <i>Public Parts</i>, was to be published, like my last one, by News Corp.'s HarperCollins. But I pulled the book because in it, I am very critical of the parent company for being so closed. It's now being published by Simon and Schuster.”</div><div name="paragraph5">Where are the big time religion writers like the "I-give-all-my-royalties-to-the-poor" Rick Warren to be found refusing to publish with Zondervan, Harper One or write another word for Beliefnet? What’s mildly lefty Rob Bell’s defense for enriching Murdoch and helping to finance Fox “News” via publishing with Harper One when he could publish with anyone? </div><div name="paragraph6">For that matter where are the evangelical/Roman Catholic/Muslim—or just minimally decent -- people, religious or irreligious guests and commentators now refusing to be interviewed by Fox News even if it will help sell their books?</div><div name="paragraph7">Knowing what we know about the union-busting, slime-spreading Murdoch empire and it's disgusting and criminal actions can a moral person work for or use the products of this all-encompassing web of profit, far right politics and corruption?</div><div name="paragraph8">I don't think so.</div><div name="paragraph9">But of course the religion writers have plenty of company.</div><div name="paragraph10">What about journalists working for Murdoch’s <i>Wall Street Journal</i>?</div><div name="paragraph11">What about Deepak Chopra? </div><div name="paragraph12">He publishes with Harper One. Thus Chopra is helping finance Fox News. And so is Desmond Tutu. He’s also a Harper One author. </div><div name="paragraph13">And what about all the “progressive” stars, producers and writers doing deals with the Fox movie empire? Such Hollywood moralists used to boycott working in the old apartheid South Africa, but <i>will </i>work for/with Murdoch today as he empowers the far religious racist right through Fox News! Desmond Tutu used to call for boycotts of far right religious nuts in South Africa oppressing blacks in the name of God, and now he’s a Murdoch contributor!</div><div name="paragraph14">Go figure! </div><div name="paragraph15">Why should the people – religious leaders, writers, actors, agents, producers et al -- who help Murdoch wreck America and the UK -- remain respectable in our countries? </div><div name="paragraph16">Okay, they deserve a second chance. </div><div name="paragraph17">Mea Culpa! </div><div name="paragraph18">I published two books with Harper Collins some years ago after Murdoch had taken over. I had a deal with the Smithsonian that was tied into Harper Collins for distribution, then the Smithsonian backed out but my books stayed at Harpers. After they were published I thought about – and regretted -- helping Murdoch. I've never published with them again. </div></div></blockquote><div class="posterous_quote_citation">This is merely a sample. Please see the whole write up at <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/151585/why_rupert_murdoch_love%24_god%3A_world%27s_biggest_sleaze_mogul_also_getting_rich_from_christian_moralizers?page=2">alternet.org</a> and remember:<br />
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</div>With the sleazeball Rupert Murdoch attracting, or maybe I should say sticking to (in the slimiest sense of the word), the likes of Deepak Chopra, Rick Warren, and Rob Bell, who enrich the News Corp Empire with their supernatural snake oil chicanery, falsified feel good stories, and of course it's too good to be true world view, it should be easier for decent people to see their way clear to boycott Fox News, Beliefnet, Zondervan, Wall Street Journal, Harper Collins and any other institution that profits from the gullibility or credulousness of a large section of the populace. Follow the evidence and you too can avoid the knavery of these charlatans.</div>Beachbum's Mountain View</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-951455683081918152011-07-11T13:03:00.001-10:002011-07-11T13:03:33.654-10:00All I Say Is, God Is Not.<div class='posterous_autopost'><p> <p>Our Founding Fathers concluded that God was not an intercessory god.</p> <p>And, of course, I respectfully agree; God is not.</p> <p>Still others conclude that God is not anthropomorphic.</p> <p>And they will get no argument from me, God is not.</p> <p>Still more assert that God is not discernable through science,</p> <p>and by way of the evidence, I conclude, God is not.</p> <p>Patriarchal authorities say: God is not female.</p> <p>With this oligarchy, I seldom agree, but God is not.</p> <p>Others argue that God is not responsible for evil.</p> <p>Again, I agree, God is not.</p> <p> </p> <p>When I'm enraged by those claiming God is telling them to hate,</p> <p>I quell my temper and merely state: God is not.</p> <p>When the priests were calling for their congregations to support the Reich,</p> <p>There were those, I'm sure, that knew: God is not.</p> <p>When the Generals scream men charge that wall knowing God is on our side,</p> <p>I have dusted my sights while thinking, God is not.</p> <p>When they've told me their God is love,</p> <p>I cite Bible verses, after verse, clearly showing their God is not.</p> <p> </p> <p>When they ask if, to their prayers, God is listening,</p> <p>I remark, the evidence shows: God is not.</p> <p>When they ask if God is the creator of all things,</p> <p>I say my parents made me, so no; God is not.</p> <p>And, when they say they see the evidence for God all around,</p> <p>I know evolutionary reproduction is responsible for what they see; God is not.</p> <p> </p> <p>Everyone seems to have their own version of what God is,</p> <p>And, like me, they all have visions of what God is not.</p> <p>So, when they ask me what God is,</p> <p>I must conclude, God is not.</p> <p> </p> <p>So, when they claim an atheist couldn't possibly understand what God is,</p> <p>All I say is, God is not.</p> </p>Beachbum's Mountain View</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-76602330412039222762011-07-02T18:00:00.001-10:002011-07-02T18:00:56.166-10:00Of Falsification and Fabrication, A Christian Tradition<div class='posterous_autopost'><p> <p>A brief on the falsifications of actual history that went into the fabrication of what would become the state religion of Rome just before its demise. And much of it can be attributed to a single church historian. This is a small sample of what we now know and an even smaller sample of what is the probable case against self proclaimed historian.</p> <p> </p> <p>A history of the Commission (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2028:19&version=KJV" title="Matthew 28:19">Matthew 28:19</a>)</p> <p> </p> <p>Eusebius of Caesarea read and recorded the text of the verse we know as Matthew 28:19, so we have an extant version from 411 CE written as:</p> <p> </p> <p>"Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name, teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I commanded you."</p> <p> </p> <p>Eusebius regularly cites it again and again in his works written between 300 and 336, namely in his long commentaries on the Psalms, on Isaiah, his Demonstratio Evangelica, his Theophany only preserved in an old Syriac version in a Nitrian codex in the British Museum written in AD 411, in his famous History of the Church, and in his panegyric of the emperor Constantine I.</p> <p> </p> <p>My point is, if it can be changed from what Eusebius knew it to be (above) to its current form:</p> <p> </p> <p>28:19 "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:"</p> <p> </p> <p>Then;</p> <p> </p> <p>1. The current version is obviously a later addition to the gospel, for 2 reasons:</p> <p> </p> <p>First; It took the church over 200 years of fighting (sometimes bloody) over the doctrine of the trinity before this baptismal formula came into use. Had it been in the original gospel, there would have been no fighting. Think about it, why do we also have Greek Orthodox and Ethiopian sects now?</p> <p> </p> <p>Then there is Acts, and its claim that when people are baptized they are baptized in the name of Jesus (Acts 8:16, 10:48, 19:5). Peter says explicitly that they are to "Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). This is a redemption, a purification, not an initiation as evinced in the Matthew version.</p> <p> </p> <p>2. This contradicts the Jesus character's narrative statement that his message was for the Jews only (Matthew 10:5-6, 15:24-27, and many others). The gospels, and especially Acts, have been edited to play this down, but the contradiction remains. It was the apostle Paul who originally wanted to extend the "Anointed Savior" myth (at least Paul's version of it that is evinced in the Epistles) to include the gentiles. This was later rejected by those who wrote the words for the Jesus character in the Gospel narrative. This may be due to the fact that Matthew was written from a different Anointed Savior tradition than Paul's.</p> <p> </p> <p>The fact that it contradicts Matthew 10:5-6 & 15:24-27 shows simply that this gospel's core rests on a regional tale recorded by those wishing to capture an apocryphal, as well as nationalistic, story that they most likely knew wasn't historical, let alone, factual. I still contend that due to the chronological implications of both the Gospel Jesus character's proclamation that he would return to take the throne of David before the disciples were finished teaching (Matthew 10:23, Luke 1:32-33) and Paul's assertion that he would be taken up to heaven while he still lives (1 Thess 4:17), shows that the whole of this Christology is mutilated and manipulated into the concept used by Catholicism as a populist political conveyance by Eusebius for the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great well after it lost all of its original meaning. The Romans had long known the politically cohesive power of these nationalistically uplifting and superstitious stories. Which is why they rarely interfered with and sometimes even incorporated the religious views of the local inhabitants of places they conquered then occupied. So, Constantine the Great knew full well what was to be done at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. He took Paul's idea and tried to use it to incorporate many regions under one religious banner. Which brings me back to my original point that the verse in Matthew (we know as Matthew 28:19) that Eusebius knew was redacted, possibly by Eusebius himself, for Rome's political reasons.</p> <p> </p> <p>The above is just one of many cases, in evidence, concerning the dishonest practices of the church fathers that facilitated the religio-political institution that is Christianity and the origins of the Jesus of Nazareth myth.</p> <p> </p> <p>Eusebius is also accredited with fabricating the Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus' History of the Jews 18.3.3. While someone else could be responsible for 20.9.1, I personally think Eusebius was the church authority on the project, in any case.</p> <p> </p> <p>This along with what amounts to a rationalization of the act in his Praeparatio Evangelica (book xii, Chapter 31), which says how fictions (pseudos)—which the historian Edward Gibbon (c. 1776) rendered 'falsehoods'—may be a "medicine", which may be "lawful and fitting" to use in the pursuit of convincing young people [the context evinced in the platonic dialog from which this Eusebian passage was derived]:</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>"That it is necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a medicine for those who need such an approach:</strong></p> <p>[Here Eusebius quotes Plato’s Laws 663e, words spoken by the Athenian character:] “And even the lawmaker who is of little use, if even this is not as he considered it, and as just now the application of logic held it, if he dared lie [pseudesthai] to young men for a good reason, then can’t he lie? For falsehood [pseudos] is something even more useful than the above, and sometimes even more able to bring it about that everyone willingly keeps to all justice.” [Then, quoting words spoken in response by the character Clinias:] “Truth is beautiful, Stranger, and steadfast. But to persuade people of it is not easy.” [Followed by Eusebius’ further comments:] You would find many things of this sort being used even in the Hebrew scriptures, such as concerning God being jealous or falling asleep or getting angry or being subject to some other human passions, for the benefit of those who need such an approach. [Translation by Richard Carrier, in “<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/NTcanon.html#6" title="The Formation of the New Testament Canon">The Formation of the New Testament Canon</a>” note 6]</p> <p> </p> <p>In other words, Eusebius of Caesarea claims it is fine to use falsehoods to create Christianity to appease the political whims of Constantine the Great (c. 327 CE) from what was originally the claimed revelations of apostles working the Jewish anointed savior sects among the Jewish diaspora.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is one of the strongest of the ever growing evidences supporting the claimed fabrication of Christianity which facilitated the political agenda at the heart of the reunification of the Roman Empire, in supporting the Mythicist's case regarding the non-Historicity of the Jesus character, and in the fabrication of the whole of the early Christian history, as Eusebius was the official Historian and conscripted creator of the first 50 Bibles of the soon to be state religion of both the Eastern and Western Empires of the newly reunited Roman Empire.</p> <p> </p> <p>So, does it matter that some argue over whether Eusebius was a fictionalizer, fabricator or just a liar supporting a political agenda? Of course not! And it seems to have become a tradition.</p> </p>Beachbum's Mountain View</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-67868870327680656822011-07-01T12:54:00.001-10:002011-07-01T12:54:29.882-10:00It Always Hurts When You Laugh<div class='posterous_autopost'><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Jesus_and_mo_7-01-11" height="500" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-07-01/JfhoGqDcrisnfkGgsjfIhndihCckDcpxeihllFwwwwFjgqxBvAaewAphAGzB/Jesus_and_Mo_7-01-11.png.scaled1000.png" width="500" /> </div> It's their sore spot!</p>From: Beachbum's Mountain View It's their sore spot! ... http://beechbum.posterous.com/it-always-hurts-when-you-laugh</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-41916101108867437182011-06-11T12:46:00.001-10:002011-06-11T13:26:56.902-10:00Ingersoll's Vow<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Few have expressed the feeling of freedom from that dungeon, which is revealed religion, better than Robert G. Ingersoll. I only ask that while you read this vow of a courageous man, you remember that he lived and died before another great mind would evince the comparatively superior importance of imagination over knowledge; and this individual was talking about actual knowledge not the pretend knowledge of faith when he stated:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Imagination is more important than knowledge."<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;">—Albert Einstein</span></span><br />
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<div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) was a famous attorney and orator whose brilliant lectures drew thousands. As a political figure, he came close to achieving the Republican party's nomination for governor of Illinois, but prejudice and intolerance denied him the opportunity because he was an atheist.</span></i></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 16px;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I became convinced that the universe is natural—that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world—not even in infinite space.</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was free—free to think, to express my thoughts—free to live to my own ideal—free to use all my faculties, all my senses—free to spread imagination's wings—free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope—free to judge and determine for myself—free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past—free from popes and priests—free from all the "called" and "set apart"—free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies—free from the fear of eternal pain—free from the winged monsters of the night—free from devils, ghosts, and gods.</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought—no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings—no chains for my limbs—no lashes for my back—no fires for my flesh—no master's frown or threat—no following another's steps—no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain—for the freedom of labor and thought—to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs—to those whose flesh was scarred and torn—to those by fire consumed—to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.</span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Imagine (a powerful function & freedom of the mind when supported by evidence) what humanity could have achieved by now, if only our minds were free to soar without the shackles of superstition holding us back.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">From a time long before I realized just how different I was, for I have always been atheist, I have seen the tragedy that is the change that comes from inculcation into the superstitions. General Robert G. Ingersoll—so much for that lie about atheists in foxholes—here expresses, better than most, the feeling of shedding those shackles, or should I say mind vice (vise works well, too), but in actuality, it is a virus, a cultural meme that both spreads like a virus and acts like a drug.</span></span></div></div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-83138778104440347032011-06-07T23:11:00.000-10:002011-06-07T23:11:21.622-10:00A Creationist's Sophistic Argument<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;">While in a conversation with a fellow philosopher, I noticed this exchange slide by on my computer screen and found it interesting, then somewhat disturbing, and finally, typical of the sophistic mind set. But not the mind set of the one I've recorded here, no. The pictured comments that follow are the result of inculcation and indoctrination, not thinking, maybe rationalization, but not thinking.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">You make a claim, therefore you need to support it with evidence. It is a consequence of the properties of logical, honest discourse that the one asserting the premise be able to support it with evidence, otherwise there is no case to be made for your assertion. The veracity of a claim is directly connected to, and wholly a function of, the quality and quantity of the evidence. Even in informal discourse there is the need for the one asserting a claim to support it.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">This is the first sign that the argument which is to follow will in no way be an honest discussion, but rather an attempt to deride that which shows his world view to be untenable. This is typically a creationist tactic, but<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the deluded. Noting the mention of 'naturalistic' very early in the discussion, it indeed suggests a sophist of a creationist bent; this tact is typically their only means of argumentation as the fundamentalist creationist world view has no supporting evidence.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWiB2F78g_57EMXK2cVd4v_Z-FfLcPel9rOSxeucJ7-Q7YukZHuAtcYn-77FcQt073pbhC_YvOyW99PE1WvRyZlGF422rooFLuA2F2vSgoQF8y-nNUoU_LlvhrCeVl0owirUCAY27bJqy/s1600/melton+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWiB2F78g_57EMXK2cVd4v_Z-FfLcPel9rOSxeucJ7-Q7YukZHuAtcYn-77FcQt073pbhC_YvOyW99PE1WvRyZlGF422rooFLuA2F2vSgoQF8y-nNUoU_LlvhrCeVl0owirUCAY27bJqy/s1600/melton+2.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">I think it is diagnostically informative to analyze how this person views and defines the atheistic worldview. For instance, his inference in the above claim that atheism has some bearing, one way or the other, on the logical, conceptual, or immaterial is asinine taken at face value. It is merely a feeble attempt at conflating atheism with some sort of philosophical stance (a caricature of an irrational form of materialism supposedly representing evolution, a relatively simplistic strawman, actually) by asserting it holds to some claim. I don't think it's based on his confusing the supernatural with the immaterial. It may be that he has been inculcated into believing that the atheist is in a state of irrational denial of the immaterial aspects of the world. Or, is it because he thinks he can obfuscate the atheistic worldview with something negated by his God's logic? I think it may simply be that he has no idea that the atheistic worldview is comprised of a mere lack of belief, or he is just a creationist sophist conflating atheism with that which negates his creationist view and eliminates the need for a deity, evolution by natural selection.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Now this is the crux of his obfuscation. Not the argument, per say, but I think he is either claiming that evolution (without exactly stating it, of course) while calling it atheism (actually mischaracterized as a worldview), cannot account for logic (a tool of cognition, the function of an evolved brain, a conceptualization, used to discern the logical parameters, limits of material interaction, by which the material universe is integrated), or he is attempting to use his caricature of atheism (elucidated above) to claim that atheistic views of a material universe are incompatible with the existence of thought. Of course, both are absurd.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">By denying that logic is a product of cognition in the material world he hopes to both deny atheists their ability to use logical argumentation and claim that logic is only in the realm of his god. Of course, neither of these are true, for I am using logic, the conceptual principles for reasoning, as it is part of the thought process of a material brain. As I just explained <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">without </span>appealing to the existence of any deity, and thereby <b><i>not</i></b> contradicting atheism; which is merely a lack of belief in god(s).</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Here, he is just making unsubstantiated claims similar to any delusional claims one might hear during a stroll through any asylum full of psychiatric patients. In accordance with the typical fear motif common to delusions based on phobias, in this case theophobia, we are all supposedly in danger from his platonic monster. Notice his immediate attempt to give it force from this delusion's source of propagation and pseudo-authority. A book, necessary for fundamentalists, which is actually a collection of books most of which were written pseudonymously for different Jewish sects. Collected then accepted or rejected based on their political value and ease of conformity through redaction and interpolation to the conscripted mandates of a 4th century Emperor through his church historian, a confessed liar and fabricator: Eusebius.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Remember it is easy to show that this individual's beliefs are basically based on ignorance. Ignorance of the history and evolution of deities and their mythos in the Judeao-Christian tradition. Ignorance mimetically inherited from antecedents professing to know that which is impossible to know.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">From this authority, he goes on to mischaracterize the actual stance of atheism which is that there is no evidence for a deity, one version of which is the Abrahamic deity. Again, this is done without his proffering any evidence for the claim; it is merely a bold assertion of his opinion as based on a book of fiction. This is similar to those that claim that the end of the world is nigh based on interpretations of that same collection of fables. Absurd!</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Notice that he seems to be projecting the unsubstantiated existence of his deity on the mind of atheists, something that is impossible for him to know, even if he presumes to know every non-Christian has read his delusion's authoritative source, he can't possibly know the level of their comprehension. This is an excellent example of delusion in the mind of a fundamentalist. The authority of his delusion's sacred book above all else. This mind set is truly dangerous.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">In the above comment, he is trying to hide the actual authority of an atheist which is evidence. Notice when he did use the word evidence, and then only once, it was seemingly to deride the scientist's insistence upon it. This exemplifies his deceit better than any prior comment. He may be attempting to inject Cartesian dualism (we are all god's automatons) into his derision of, his obfuscation of evolution (characterized as atheism). Science and the naturalistic view are based on reasoning supported by empirical evidence. While his delusion is only extracted by the rationalization of ancient myth.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Again, this comment asserts unsubstantiated claims that seem to stem from his mischaracterization of atheism and misconceptions regarding atheists' use of scientific concepts. This is actually easy to explain when one realizes that he is using the word atheist to represent, first, evolution and evolutionary concepts that contradict his pet belief of creationism, and second, those concepts of logical empiricism in opposition to claims which appeal to the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>supernatural. It could possibly be a comment evincing a miscomprehension of the unguided properties of a natural universe, an over emphasis of random and chance, a creationist's favorite effigy of evolution. This would explain his almost insulting caricatures of the atheistic stance as the result of his being excruciatingly ill informed. This is no surprise considering the religiose have an almost disdainful view of evidence and education in the sciences. While there is little doubt this interlocutor is insane, he is at the same time inculcated with enough disinformation that his rationalizations can be somewhat complex in their structure, but nothing that can't be sorted out by an over-achieving fifth grader.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">####</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">In a discussion with someone else, this fundamentalist expressed a view that scientists' assumed uniformity could not come from chance. In his view it had to come from design. In his view he further evinced a notion that it was an atheistic view that was untenable as it held to that chance. I think he may be using an <i>atheistic view</i> to represent <i>evolution</i> which means he is a creationist sophist.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">This confuses a couple of issues as I see it. First, scientific assumptions of uniformity are concerned with the continuity of physical parameters over time and space. A magical friend would interfere with this uniformity in several ways, for instance, answering prayers or intercession, a preference for one life form over another, or one people over another, etc. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Even with the universal application of physical parameters being uniformly distributed through time and space, there is still mostly chaos in the universe. It is from chaos that the universe is formed, and reformed. If this creationist were sincerely pursuing the facts he would know this, at least generally.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Since this individual is most likely a creationist, his main complaint is just as likely to be against evolution, and therefore what he is hiding behind the scientifically supported notion of "uniformity" is actually design. To show the fictitiousness in his assertion with this in mind, one need only point out the laryngeal nerve, the appendix, parasitic worms, or the fact that the world is full of suffering. Animals eating animals, insects eating animals and other insects, in a never ending cycle of feast, famine, or flood.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">It is, in fact, his world view that cannot explain these occurrences in a world created by a supposedly benevolent god; the idea is absurd. And as a sophist he would know it, but as a fundamentalist he may not.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">In discussions on the theory of evolution, a creationist is commonly found to be fond of over-emphasizing the role that chance plays in the evolutionary process. The truth of the matter is that chance plays a role in the random formation and distribution of mutations, but this is a very small part of the puzzle. By far, the majority of evolving is done by the recombining of well tested, and well utilized, genetic material. But try to tell this to creationists.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">####</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Now this interlocutor thinks he has disarmed the atheist argument with his unsupported assertions. While at the same time allowing him to presume that he needn't adhere to the mutual concessions of logical discourse. This presumption<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>can, of course, be defeated in one sentence: Any assertion put forward without evidence can be ignored without evidence, or even an explanation, for that matter.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">This is, of course, where it starts getting ugly from my point of view. Following in the line of his obfuscation concerning atheistic supplication</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">to reason as an ultimate authority, when, in fact, it is the evidence that holds the authority. A point he is loath to admit given that faith is evidentiarily vacuous. Considering that his god is also evidentiarily untenable and definitely a construct of his own ego, whether he realizes it or not, his ultimate authority becomes himself. The power of the creator of the universe which this commenter imagines as agreeing with his own whims, values, and opinions. This is the ultimate in arrogance. In claiming that his ultimate authority—as he imagines it, as supported by equally arrogant writings of Iron Age theologically bent politicians—an authority that is irreproachable, he has set himself up as the dictator and his ilk as his advisors. Hitler did it; Stalin did it, too. As has every Monarch in human history, but none exemplifies the horror of this power better than the Popes: Innocent VIII of witch trial infamy, Nicholas V of industrialized slavery and genocide infamy, and Alexander VI for adding indigenous peoples of the Americas to the genocide and slave trade. Granted, there are far too many despots to mention; but none that contradict the evidence that absolute power corrupts absolutely.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNIWwyl-tFszf_43MWF9EGkG0RUhky0ug6bj4gmRnL0wGyBL6wlE5VXV1cKcN_qh0R17nXkOJa5bX8q3abSHPBMos24vuIASAw64hEVzqDvEnPfLoBdts1C5ve70juH4V-lR0BgpxPqFxN/s1600/melton+10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNIWwyl-tFszf_43MWF9EGkG0RUhky0ug6bj4gmRnL0wGyBL6wlE5VXV1cKcN_qh0R17nXkOJa5bX8q3abSHPBMos24vuIASAw64hEVzqDvEnPfLoBdts1C5ve70juH4V-lR0BgpxPqFxN/s1600/melton+10.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Now this, astonishingly, is the most powerful argument <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">against </span>an ultimate power of which I can imagine. Imagining—then by some illogical extension of an illusion, claiming to know—the opinion or thoughts of a supreme power, and interpreting the related sacred texts in a way that supports your delusion is mainly why Thomas Jefferson said, "<span style="color: black;">In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.</span>"</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">The question is: how is this supposedly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>authoritative knowledge communicated to mortals here on Earth? Answer is, it's not. It's imagined by those that stand to gain the most from their utterances, such as, priests, preachers, imams, bishops and popes. Meaning that this interlocutor's "ultimate authority" is none other than the very same, and all too human, despots who would enslave him with their opinion. Pretending to know the mind of some deity is a short cut to positions of tyrannical power over those with theophobia, the god-fearing or devil-dodgers, as I have seen it written recently.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">This is exactly why our Founding Fathers use the words "We the People" in our Constitution so as to give the ultimate power back to the consensus of the people of this country. It is why the power of religion was effectively neutralized by not only religious freedom and a wall of separation, but also, freedom from religion. In this way our Founders took all claims to ultimate power away from those despots who imagined, or pretended to imagine, they knew its opinions; their claims to such knowledge are, of course, absurd for far too many reasons to list. Not the least of which is that this supposed deity is not, nor has it ever been, in evidence. Jefferson knew this, and he also knew that morality came from the people as a cultural consensus that progressed as human intellect improved and understanding increased while evolving over time.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">This comes very close to defeating his argument as he actually states it. Then he goes on, shamelessly...</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Alas, without the first shred of evidence in support of any of the previous assertions, he argues that Christianity, biblical Christianity no less, is the only source of knowledge of the universe. Ignoring the centuries of history that attest to exactly the opposite; that era we now know, and refer to, as the Dark Ages. (Also, I'm sure it's creationism, to which, he is actually alluding.) But this isn't his approach, as he evinced earlier, he is convinced what he terms an atheistic view (evolution), as he defines it as some sort of unrealistically strict even irrational caricature of a naturalistic or materialistic view, means that atheists (actually scientists and evolutionary biologists) deny the very logic that we use in concert with evidence to support everything from the steam engine to space flight.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">His problem is that science works; as evidenced by this very computer with which I am working. His religion's claims concerning the universe have been soundly refuted by the great minds of knowledge for longer than his religion has been in existence.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">The point of this blog isn't to refute this person's claims. It is not his inane claims, which, of course, it is beneath me to even give credence to via respectable debate. No! I'm concerned about his delusion coupled with what appears to be a very lopsided education. I don't think I would be too far off in thinking it to be of an extreme<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fundamentalist bent.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNGAUYzSGJYapCr5Mwm3wkekx6yWDjpThwNGzhU6mktsZWqi7j3cdhbH_8IUknTjFtd8aWuYhaWgZSiruBGJ7cLqJ7mbPALswSh1H1sHE6T-lArVGQfHxJD2LSx9ONRFUWSEdtfuGZIbw8/s1600/melton+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNGAUYzSGJYapCr5Mwm3wkekx6yWDjpThwNGzhU6mktsZWqi7j3cdhbH_8IUknTjFtd8aWuYhaWgZSiruBGJ7cLqJ7mbPALswSh1H1sHE6T-lArVGQfHxJD2LSx9ONRFUWSEdtfuGZIbw8/s1600/melton+12.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">In making this point, he obviously sets himself up for a logical comparison; for he could be said to be a rebel for his imagined deity, and fall under the same claim of bias concerning truth. Only, this is a smokescreen; his whole argument ignores the actual atheistic stance, which states, there is no evidence for the existence of his, or any other, deity. The atheistic stance is a neutral position, as it is the evidence that determines the current view. And, considering he has neither alluded to, nor proffered any evidence in support of his claims, I would say this appears to be an inculcated rationalization that we are to accept <i>a priori </i>from his ultimate authority. Which is, of course, himself. Further, it is, however, his continued denial of the idea that people could actually not see any evidence for the existence of his imagined ultimate authority that suggests his delusion is of a deleterious nature.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-K5RvtMDFRvfdP_6d3YBLWN0G2JvVpHJI3XokJO7V6oaPcGzPKtyGjvXTDslJk6n1GXSwON4Vr1AcahVGVH5lMb0v27ljoZC_C_F8Oj94GGHJzJL136qJhQBG8RcABSeuTNfDrWtf7re7/s1600/melton+13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-K5RvtMDFRvfdP_6d3YBLWN0G2JvVpHJI3XokJO7V6oaPcGzPKtyGjvXTDslJk6n1GXSwON4Vr1AcahVGVH5lMb0v27ljoZC_C_F8Oj94GGHJzJL136qJhQBG8RcABSeuTNfDrWtf7re7/s1600/melton+13.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">Considering that his premises are false, hence the charge of sophistry for this excruciatingly unsound argument, his conclusion, as an extension, is as well. And this is as far as the argument goes. But, it is the cocoon that his inculcators have constructed around his delusion that is the most interesting. By misrepresenting the atheist world view as somehow ultra materialistic and illogical, he has deluded himself, or has been deluded into seeing his imagined ultimate authority as the only possible truth.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; margin: 0in; mso-outline-level: 1;">The delusion itself need not be dangerous, but it can be due to the protective encapsulation of this particular mindset, and the bigotry that inevitably ensues, in more than a few cases. There will be no debating this individual, or those like him, to a productive conclusion. His fundamentalist brainwashing has done its job, as this poor wretch is thoroughly deluded and all but unreachable with reason.</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-13783903440559302302011-06-02T20:15:00.001-10:002011-06-10T12:17:47.301-10:00Creationist's Fictions Rehashed, Again!On June 1, '11 I fired up tweetdeck to see what follows in my timeline. To be honest, I expected something of the sort. I had communicated with this individual the night before. I am sorry to say creationism isn't dead, yet! What I want to do here is bring into stark relief the number one intuitive oversight that is displayed by the typical creationist. They don't seem to realize that creationism, like religion in general, is worthless because it has no supportive relationship with any epistemological endeavor. It doesn't help in medical research, zoology, biology, anatomy, even botany or anything else for that matter. It is not supported by any scientific claims, at all. Furthermore, fact is creationism doesn't even support the claims of the Bible for which it was contrived to support. This new-ish ID only wants to make religion more scientific[ee] by discrediting scientific claims. They want to replace science with religion like in the good old days of the Dark Ages. Creationism stands as another belief system, just something else to take on faith, which is nothing more than denial in the face of overwhelming evidence.<br />
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I know I've debunked these same claims hundreds of times. Only, it fascinates me that the religiose, in general, and creationists in particular seem not to comprehend the fact that the truth of a claim is directly related to its supporting evidence, and to the claims of which it stands in support, but the true strength of a claim is in its predictive power. Since religion's core claims have no veracity, are supported by absolutely no evidence, and since creationism shares this weakness while not being able to make any predictions that can be used in medicine, say virology for example, it seems clear to me that the only reason the two exist is to support each other in flim-flamming the credulous. Now, I know these are obvious claims, but I have lately been thinking about the implications of this resurgence of the two in concert, worldwide. Considering the last time this happened in world history was in Nazi Germany with Herbert Spencer's elitist eugenics, a spin-off from Lamarckian evolution by acquired traits, in concert with Hitler's fundamentalist Christian Supremacy, I see something horrendous building in the atmosphere. If you are familiar with the creationist's arguments, you may as well stop reading after this introductory paragraph because it is the same claptrap that creationist demagogues have been proffering for decades.<br />
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What follows is a long tweet in response to a video [below] I sent to... well see for yourself. But like I said, we have had previous conversations. I have edited it for clarity, only.<br />
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From: @TertiusIII <a href="http://t.co/UIqwrQx">Top Ten Creationist Arguments</a> Enjoy! <-- Cute, but not really very enlightening. It was also a little confusing as whose arguments were being presented against what. It was called the Top Ten Creationists arguments, but it wasn't clear if the point was really theist arguments against atheism or creationism arguments against evolution or what the real point was. It just seemed to take claims that some (may have) made in the past against either atheism or evolution. But for the purposes of engaging in honest discussion, I will note that there were a couple of 'creationist' claims that I personally would never make, such as if evolution were true, why are there still monkeys. I have never heard a creationist make that argument, though honestly, I do remember having that question asked in a high school biology class where we were taught evolution and had to explain why we really do have monkeys, and why we don’t have monkeys turning into humans continuously. In my mind, this is not an argument against evolution. Nor is the argument that Hitler was an atheist an argument against atheism. The video did (correctly) note that Hitler's true religion is still in dispute, but clearly to imply atheism is somehow false or necessarily evil because Hitler may have been one is not a valid argument against the veridicality of either atheism or evolution. Now, having said all that, several of the arguments (I believe) are legitimate arguments against evolution, (up to now, we haven't been debating the merits of theism vs atheism, we can do that if you want, though I would prefer to defer that one until after we have vetted this one further). Let's look at some: 1. Radiometric dating methods are not valid. The video basically said 'yes they are and scientists use them all the time.' Actually, while it is the case that scientists use them, this does not negate the fact that ALL radiometric methods are based on several assumptions which, to the extent that they are reliable, will produce accurate dates, but to the extent that they are unreliable, will produce faulty dates. These assumptions are:<br />
a) We know the rate of decay and it has always been constant. For uranium-lead with a multi-billion year half life, which we've only been measuring for 75 years or so, we cannot possibly know it's been constant for 4.5 billion years. But of all the assumptions, this one's probably the safest.<br />
b) We know the ratio of parent to daughter elements when the rock formed. This is critical, because to the extent that daughter elements are present at the rock's 'birth' the results will be biased towards greater age. Since the decay process occurs when the elements are both embedded inside a rock or when free outside the rock, this is a highly suspect assumption since a rock, when solidifying may trap numerous previously existing daughter elements as it hardens.<br />
c) Over the life of the specimen, there has been no migration of parent elements or daughter elements into or out of the rock. Ours is an extremely dynamic planet and this assumption is absurd on its face. To assume that the specimen has been sufficiently isolated from its environment to prevent highly mobile elements from this migration becomes even less likely the older we assume the planet to be. The fact that we find sea shells on mountain tops is a pretty clear indication that there are few places on our planet that were not once very different in the past. (But then, I believe in a global flood, a fact which these sea shells tend to support.)<br />
d) When a rock is born, it can be dated and will be shown to be 0 years old. Of all the assumptions, this is the only one that can actually be tested as there are numerous active volcanoes today producing rocks we can examine. Your own local University of Hawaii tested this a number years ago with rocks known to be produced recently by local volcanoes and all tested out to be many millions of years old. This is pretty clearly a false assumption.<br />
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The truth is, when a rock is dated, the geologist (technician) doesn't simply take a sample with instructions to "please date this for me." The specimen is described by the scientist who also identifies the layer in the geologic column from which the specimen was taken. Since the column was constructed assuming evolution is true, the rough age of the specimen is already known by the technician before the 1st radiometric test is performed. The technician will then use numerous radiometric methods which will typically give a very wide range of ages, all of which are discarded except the ones consistent with the layer in which the rock was found. Hence evolution is used to prove an old earth which is necessary to prove evolution. This is absolutely how it is done. Verify this. It is very circular and very bad science.<br />
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Now, as it turns out there are other fundamental weakness of radiometric methods and that is that they are necessarily local in nature. I.e. at best they may tell us something about the local environment from which the specimen was taken. There are however other, global phenomena called 'geo-chronometers', almost all of which yield significantly younger ages for the earth. A couple of examples include the amount of helium in the atmosphere, the amount of salt in the oceans, the rate at which the moon's orbit recedes from the earth, the decay of the earth's magnetic field intensity and magnetic field reversals, and on and on.<br />
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2. Next, chance. To claim that evolution is not supposedly driven by chance is lunacy. Yes, since the fall of man, the competition for scarce resources is fierce, so what you call natural selection is observed (it is after all a tautology - what are the 'fittest' if they are not the ones that 'survive'?), however what are random mutations if not chance events? 3. Thermodynamics - As I have already tweeted numerous times, even Stephen Hawking argued in his book "A Brief History of Time" that the 2nd law doesn't always hold. The fact that neither most creationists, nor most atheists, nor most evolutionists in general can recite the other laws of thermodynamics is completely irrelevant. And while it is the case that the earth is not a closed system, the universe is, and yet we see an incredible order present in the structures of the universe. In fact, part of what the big bang cosmological model seeks to explain is how these structures developed (i.e. how we got this order we see.) There are other flaws in the video I could address, but as this tweet is already too long, I'll just leave it at that.<br />
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A subsequent comment:<br />
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From: @TertiusIII It is easy to understand why a people of one book; the Bible, Qur'an, etc., would not comprehen… (<a href="http://deck.ly/~fuOp5">cont</a>) <-- Very foolish tweet @beechbum. The Bible explains my theology, but to claim that Christians reject science is tantamount to the "atheism is false/bad because Hitler was an atheist argument." As your (otherwise) silly video showed, many prominent scientists of the past were Christians. Then, to further indict yourself, you claim: "evolution is a fact, while it is a theory that is supported by many facts which actually makes it stronger than a fact." Dude, I'm sorry, but 'a theory supported by many facts makes it stronger than a fact' - that's just plain stupid. You need to start trying to be honest in our debate. I invite the others who have been following our tweets on this topic to weigh in on this one. Is a theory supported by many facts made stronger than a fact?<br />
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To which I replied:<br />
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To: @TertiusIII Your whole argument against radiometric dating displays the number one weakness of AiG and ICR based assumptions as suffered by all would-be creationists and religionists, the mindset of one book, you do not want to accept the strength, through support via corroborating results, of multiple testing procedures (see listing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating</a> ) many different types (eg. ice cores, tree rings, varves, annual-layering methods, thermoluminescence, Electron Spin Resonance, Cosmic Ray Exposure Dating) of dating methodologies, each of which confirms the accuracy of radiometric dating and our understanding of the geologic column due to the cross corroboration. What I am saying is: you are in denial, as is, every creationist I have encountered to date. Alas, since you don't want to accept the evidence as proffered by an atheist, then, try this: <a href="http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/wiens.html">http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/wiens.html</a> a Christian perspective. Also, you underestimate me in that you do not seem to realize that all of your claims have been refuted by me and many others over the years. Oh, and one more thing, sea shells don't float which means that mountains were once at the bottom of the oceans. It also means that the trilobites are a direct refutation of your world view <a href="http://goo.gl/69KhT">http://goo.gl/69KhT</a> and your disdain for fossil evidence for evolving phyla. What you and your ilk do not want to apprehend is that we use evolutionary theory to understand fossils, so much more than, we use fossils to substantiate evolutionary theory; the Genome Project does a far better job at that endeavor.<br />
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Your claim about some University of Hawaii tests is a fabrication of the Discovery Institute, ICR, if it is the tale I have encountered before. Details of those tests were, in fact, manipulated by means of contamination, but were actually discovered and corrected by subsequent tests of various methods to bring the dates to a more accurate conclusion. Also, of course, there are test results that give erroneous results, those are thrown out when they are not corroborated by many other testing means; it is these discarded test results that ICR et al. jump on in an attempt to discredit radiometric dating, to no avail.<br />
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This "when a rock is dated" testing scenario you anecdotally proffered in the next paragraph is so familiar, and inaccurate, that I'm sure it is born of the Discovery Institute, via AiG or Conservapedia (and uh, no! that's not how it is done). The funny thing is, creationists never attempt to contradict the findings with data, nor do they submit, for peer review, findings of their own (you know, we found this fossil in the ground and... uh, god did it). It is a simple process, anyone is able to test the results of scientific findings for themselves (see Dr. Richard Lenski's work with E. coli verifying evolution by natural selection via observed data and the conflict with that fraud at Conservapedia, Andrew Schlafly). It also neglects the fact that many paleontologists, for example, are in competition with each other and at the same time in cooperation all across the world making discoveries and corroborative links to past and contemporary findings that overlap, even intertwine. Also, a young scientist (as most post-docs see themselves) would like nothing more than to correct a Senior member of the faculty, talk about keeping the findings honest. A factual anecdote: tree rings from petrified trees correspond to rings in ice cores which line up with climatic events as recorded in strata via particulate fossils (eg. pollen, etc.) showing archaeologists clues as to, say, why a people migrated to the coast some 9-12,000 years ago across the Andes Mountains. This is also how Israel Finkelstein developed very strong evidence against the historicity of the tales about David and Solomon and most of the rest of the Old Testament. Hell, we have trees that are older than YEC creationists, like you, think the entire Earth is: <a href="http://bit.ly/j4J58E">http://bit.ly/j4J58E</a> This is why people laugh at creationists.<br />
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Only, this corroborative power is nothing compared to the predictive power of the dating methodology as it is being perfected today. Few instances exemplify this better than the discovery of the specimen Tiktaalik roseae which was discovered in the Devonian strata as stratigraphy, zoogeography and paleontology predicted (see Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish <a href="http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/">http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/</a> ). And this transitional (as if any fossil could be anything else) fossil is at the cusp of sea-to-land animal transition and it already shares many anatomical features of most extant animals in its lineage. Very strong evidence for the accuracy of our dating methodology—if you're asking me.<br />
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Geochronometers, which is what we've been talking about all along, have nothing to do with your connivance with ICR knavery. Let's take the helium falsehood first, shall we. It is a lie. To you and most other creationists they have lied. Like every other word that has spewed forth from those mountebanks of mythology. The claim is that helium doesn't escape from the exosphere as put forward by one L. Vardiman and Morris in 1974, but the truth of the matter is that helium does escape from the atmosphere at the rate of 2 to 4 x 10 ^6 ions/cm^2.sec of 4He. This is almost exactly the same as the decay rate production flux of (2.5 ± 1.5) x 10^6 atoms/cm^2.sec Calculations for 3He lead to similar results, i.e., a rate virtually identical to the estimated production flux. And since there is also another possible escape mechanism of direct interaction of the solar winds with the upper atmosphere during the short periods of lower magnetic-field intensity while the field is reversing, Sheldon and Kern estimated that 20 geomagnetic-field reversals over the past 3.5 million years would have assured a balance between helium production and loss." —Dalrymple, 1984, pg. 112.<br />
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I'm afraid the rest of the creationist flimflam falls under the weight of similar scrutiny. An example in my opinion, would be the mere mention of saltwater should be avoided by creationists due to the fact that it puts the fatality of saltwater fish getting emersed in rainwater and vice versa, in stark relief. Which, of course, eliminates Noah's flood as an excuse for sea shells floating up the side of a mountain, which they don't, of course. Such as your claim that fittest and survive are somehow a tautology, which it is not, especially in the context of reproductive fitness and survival of the genome; that is, in the context of evolutionary theory.<br />
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Or, as I wrote earlier concerning your bit about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, Stephen Hawking was expressing, on page 103 of his <i>A Brief History of Time</i>, the relationship of entropy as a closed system passed over the event horizon of a black hole. At that point the entropy may decrease. These are not Laws that someone or something makes the universe follow, but descriptions of parameters that nature appears to follow as matter interacts. As it seems your idea of entropy is somehow related to visible order in the universe, which only displays your lack of understanding of entropy, generally, and the 2nd Law specifically, I would urge you to read Peter Atkins on the subject. Simply stated, the entropy described in the 2nd Law is the decay of the quality of energy through its dispersal. This means that the 2nd Law in no way supports creationism nor weakens evolutionary theory.<br />
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Regarding your next assertion in which you claim that I "claim[ed] that Christians reject science" is unfounded and misses the point, because my statement was: "It is easy to understand why a people of one book ... would not comprehend the incredible strength of many books ... being in full and complete agreement, ... ." This is not me stating that Christians reject science; this is me stating that fundamentalist Christians in general, and creationists in particular, are so enamored with the idea that the claims expressed in the Bible as being the absolute truth, and the idea of absolute authority generally (which is 'tantamount' to evidencing a very real (and low) upper limit to the ratio of honest analytical capabilities to the overriding cognitive compartmentalization due to the cognitive dissonance present in a mind torn between wishful thinking and the observable facts), that they can't comprehend a concept which holds that the more supporting evidence there is concerning a claim, the more likely, the more powerful the veracity, of that claim, of a theory, of an observation becomes.<br />
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This agreement, this corroboration across all sciences, across all epistemological disciplines is exactly what makes the Theory of Evolution so powerful, and such an untenable state of affairs for science deniers (typically they only deny the facts that are inconvenient, which is where the charge of hypocrisy comes into play), like creationists. Notice that I didn't write Christians. Further, claiming this is tantamount to "atheism is false/bad because Hitler was an atheist argument" is totally unrelated and untenable for many reasons; the first of which is, obviously, that I am concerned with the creationist's lack of understanding regarding the accumulation of facts as evidence in ever increasing support of claims made. This is exactly the methodology in our legal system. Second, I am not claiming to know the opinions in a dead man's mind (see note 1 below), nor am I generalizing one person's presumed beliefs across a whole group of people. It seems you have also incorrectly labeled atheists with a philosophical identity, by the way. Atheism is not a belief, so it cannot be false or bad.<br />
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This "scientists of old were religious" assertion is usually a very telling claim. Of course, many scientists of the past were Christians, Muslims or Jews, or at least claimed to be. In those years before the Enlightenment, even for many years afterwards, one would be the evening's entertainment for claiming otherwise. If one had the smell of burning heretics in their nostrils, yet none of the evidence that we have garnered since the days when philosophers regarded intuition and introspection more reliable than observation and experimentation (per the Church's insistence, of course), ie. Newtonian physics, Darwin's natural selection, the scientific method's track record of success, Einstein's Relativity, or space travel, etc., it would be a fatalistic act of defiance to claim what would have been an illogical, and not an evidentiarily supported view. Your claim displays a projecting of today's knowledge back on historical figures, first. This, in turn, shows you know the strength of knowledge as garnered by science today. As if claiming, "scientists know all this stuff, and they still believe"; or as you've projected, "they're scientists, and they were religious"; thereby, empowering the very discipline you are illogically attempting to refute using religious means. Yes, very telling.<br />
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What you did concerning my statement, "at your level of understanding, evolution is a fact, while it is a theory that is supported by many facts which actually makes it stronger than a fact" is known as quote mining. It is a typical creationist ploy when attempting to cloud an issue or an idea. It is an evasion of honest discourse, a lie, and should be derided as such.<br />
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Concerning the matter at hand, a claim of innocence by the accused, in a court of law, is ever more substantiated as evidence accumulates in support of that claim, a theory as substantiated by more and more facts; making your assertion pathetically absurd through example. Evolutionary theory like electrical theory, gravitational theory, and cosmological theory, etc. etc., is solidly substantiated by facts at all but the very cutting edge of new knowledge on the subject. Moreover, this, much like your previous claims, is an example of a mindset; you seem to have a cognitive block regarding evidence that is not in support of your views, again, very telling.<br />
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You know @TertiusIII on a personal note, as I read your writing, I am reminded of an observation shared by the wickedly astute Dr. Peter Medawar about the spread of secondary, and latterly, of tertiary education which has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.<br />
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Notes:<br />
1. Hitler was not an atheist by any evidentiary model of which I am aware. (Hitler was a fundamentalist Christian acting as a soldier of god in eliminating the Jews according to his own words and writings in Mein Kampf. <a href="http://bit.ly/kcyKWK">http://bit.ly/kcyKWK</a> & <a href="http://bit.ly/laRWck">http://bit.ly/laRWck</a> & <a href="http://bit.ly/k2ksoO">http://bit.ly/k2ksoO</a> This is what most would call evidence that Hitler was by no means an atheist. You see, the only reason there is any controversy concerning Hitler's piety is, again, Christians are in denial. That is, Hitler's <a href="http://youtu.be/iyYwo7X4zck">religiosity</a> is just another denial that Christians cling to in a feeble attempt to defend their delusions. Only, what they seldom want to talk about is the fact that, regardless of Hitler's views, the people of early 20th century Germany (and surrounding countries) were enthusiastic about putting him in power, complicit in horrendous atrocities because they were motivated by dreams of National, racial, and Christian Supremacy into supporting his agendas. Furthermore, the Catholic, that is Universal, Church was complicit in many of those atrocities as the exemplar (Spanish Inquisition), as an accomplice and supporting authority (Concordat of 1933 with Hitler's regime) and the active involvement of the church through the atrocities committed by the likes of Fr. Jozef Tiso and Ante Pavelić, and after the fact, via the Rat-Lines through which the Vatican shuttled Nazis out of Europe to places like America by way of South America. Point being that regardless of Hitler's personal views (about which I have no doubt based on the overwhelming evidence), Christianity, by way of its claims of divine authority, played a major role in the atrocities of the mid-twentieth century, not to mention the entirety of its history of inhumanity.<br />
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I know this is uninteresting to most people, but if it gave you some ideas or information you didn't know before maybe it was worth the trouble. Thanks.Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-70906556322135753872011-05-28T12:35:00.000-10:002011-05-28T12:35:55.755-10:00Brilliant Defense of ... Wait, what?I was invited to view a video by someone calling themselves Chosen Rebel which was proffered on his blog by the below title.<br />
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Calling this video a "<a href="http://chosenrebel.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/brilliant-defense-of-the-historicity-of-the-gospels/">Brilliant Defense of the Historicity of the Gospels</a>" only displays your lack of familiarity with the Gospels, their content, their history, and their origins. The apologists in this video had a very bad case of tunnel vision. Dr. Williams was it? Anyway, there are much better explanations for the points the good Dr. brought up. And these explanations don't need an hour at a podium evincing historical contortions, nor displaying the mental gyrations evident in the afore mentioned video, <a href="http://vimeo.com/21393890">Lecture with Dr. Peter Williams</a>.<br />
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The following is a response to the claims and arguments put forward in that video.<br />
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Originally, every word in the Gospels came from scripture. Period. It is called midrash, but the Gospels themselves are orated stories (from, say, a podium) as generated from that midrash technique. In fact, there is strong evidence that The Gospel According to St. Mark was adapted from a play narrative for a Jewish Graeco-Roman audience (eg. Triumphal March 15:15-19). The Gospels were motivated by the platonic descending-ascending theological explanations expressed by those with a need for a new covenant. This Son of Man theology accorded by the platonic Anointed Savior sects as was communicated by apostolic writers (similar to the likes of Paul/Saul et al.) through the Epistles to the congregations of the Jewish Diaspora, who were dispersed around Europe and Asia Minor from the onset of the Roman conquest and occupation. The Gospels are post hoc prophetic narratives as humanized and historicized from Jewish anointed savior sect's theological explanations of imagined platonic (spirit world) representation at the right hand of Yahweh, that is, his begotten son. That's it.<br />
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The oppressed of the Diaspora needed a new mythical hero, so like all religions in such straights, it accommodated them with a spiritual emanation and spiritual mediator for a new covenant with Yahweh whose wrath the Sons of Man (Man being the Fathers) felt they did not deserve, for the old covenant was with, and broken by, the fathers. Only, they had to stay within there sacred writings, the scriptures, when looking for prophecies that would foretell the coming of such a savior. For Yahweh would have had to have known that this would be the case, right? Actually, it's more than likely that for the concept to be generally excepted the Torah, Mosaic Law, and Jewish histories would have to be respected in just such a way.<br />
<br />
The reason the names statistically correlate (besides the obvious fact that the main place to find names for such a study now would be from extant documents, most of which are primarily religious text of the time) with the names in the Gospels is because the Diaspora got their names from the same place the Gospels got theirs, OT scripture, or more specifically the Greek Septuagint. This also explains the Sycamore tree, sycomore (Latin) in 8 verses of the KJV, 7 of which are in the OT. This explanation continues to clarify why the cultural centers, villages, and place names are used in the Gospels but relative distances and directions are absurdly misrepresented. Such cases as the pigs of Gadarene running more than 11 kilometers to the water, or the itinerary of this Jesus character taking a tact equivalent to Pensacola to Atlanta by way of Tampa, on foot. The absurdity of the nativity narrative in Luke in which a woman, and the subject of a different Ruler, is dragged across to 2 provinces on the back of an ass on the eve of the birth of her baby—to do what? To be counted in a city they are not from to pay taxes for which there is no historical evidence were ever called for—no! It is for the same reason every word of the Gospels were written. To be post hoc prophecy fulfillment of the scripture, to bring about an apocalyptic revenge against, and purging of, the usurpers and occupiers of the homeland of Yahweh. The Gospels even admit as much in many places.<br />
<br />
Such as, John 19:36, "For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, ..." . Or, there is the revenge angle,<br />
<br />
Luke 21:22<br />
"For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." How about a verse that ties the descending-ascending platonic (spirit world) anointed savior theology with OT writings and epistolary expressions thereof (see: Hebrews 1:5 and many others) to the Gospel post hoc fulfillment of scripture:<br />
<br />
Acts 13:33<br />
"God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee."<br />
<br />
Yet, by far the best evidence for the scriptural origins of most, if not all, of the details of the Gospels is in the last words of this mythical Jesus character's narrated life, in Matthew 27:46 the words, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" or "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Which is contradictory to the narrative that claims he was sent to be sacrificed and is made to say he knew it. But more to the point, it is, in fact, a quote from the first verse of Psalm 22. If there were ever a time for someone to be original, I am sure the words from the dying breath of an illiterate carpenter would rank very high on a very short list of examples. No, of course, this never happened.<br />
<br />
I hope this puts those of you with the predisposition off the habit of believing mythology as fact, and misjudging others as incompetent for not sharing in those delusions. Thanks.<br />
<div><br />
</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-15264867384572396572011-05-26T15:20:00.000-10:002011-05-26T15:20:15.221-10:00How Do You See Modern Religion?What is modern religion, really?<br />
<br />
Should it not be obvious to civilized minds that someone who thinks that it is permissible to repress a woman's right to choose in a very difficult matter concerning her own body; that it is feminism which is somehow one of the greatest threats to society; that affirmative action is a worse form of racism than the heinous atrocities instituted by the papal bulls of June 18, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V, (Dum Diversas) which is credited with ushering in the West African slave trade, the papal bull written January 8, 1455 by Pope Nicholas V (Romanus Pontifex) giving King Afonso V a monopoly on the slave trade and furthering those atrocities to include indigenous peoples of many other regions then there is the papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, (Inter caetera) extending those previous sanctions to include the indigenous peoples of the Americas, because they "were not under the protection of God"; that homosexuality is something other than a natural occurrence caused by inherited genes of a living organism which is as uncompromising as any biological drive (ie. to alleviate hunger, thirst, loneliness, pain, or suffering etc.) including heterosexuality, therefore eliminating it as a choice of any kind; that everything public should be turned over to oligarchies (eg. privatized, ie. corporatism, libertarianism), that is, corporate kingdoms, would be perfectly fine with submission to an unsubstantiated supernatural dictator as an adherent of an oligarchical patriarchy, and would be thrilled if everyone on Earth was forced into submission under such an oppressive tyranny.<br />
<br />
What is modern religion?<br />
<br />
It is a political organization that makes it easy to hide repressive ideologies behind pseudo-morality. It is an authoritarian organization that makes it simple to hide tyranny behind tradition, fear and conservatism behind iron age mythology, and replaces the minds and views of the many behind the unsubstantiated opinion of the few or the one. It is a community organization in which populism pacifies those who haven't apprehended the ramifications of having faith in the words of for-profit prophets and makes it easy to replace ignorance with happiness so as to forget what it is that's causing their cognitive dissonance and confusion. It is missions of inculcation and institutionalization hiding behind words like salvation. It is a for-profit industry thinly veiled behind charity. It is the power of a mob through control of thought, opinion and limited education.<br />
<br />
What is modern religion? It is an institution that candy-coats the submission to tyranny.Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-84987068854114118562011-05-21T19:28:00.000-10:002011-05-21T19:28:14.660-10:00The Insanity of Christian Inanity It is quite common to be blown over by the undaunted absurdity in the claims made by the adherents to faith-based institutions of superstitious iron-age politicians. But, rarely do I get such a clear cut example of the angst from which the religiose are belabored in their attempt to deny science, especially evolution. This interlocutor on twitter was just such a case.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgoCqbyFfwdospZ3-1ss3IpozwOYjqlvoTkcHj2nXhUdZv8P3OocLQyHyo59-V2vDAsoMCmwJbXjI9kN33tFyBJdoOUg27emtzy_OM0QM51wN5qGnOQh_w_3TcuCl67YZQJGWA1uDLDss5/s1600/11-05-21Citizen+Cain1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgoCqbyFfwdospZ3-1ss3IpozwOYjqlvoTkcHj2nXhUdZv8P3OocLQyHyo59-V2vDAsoMCmwJbXjI9kN33tFyBJdoOUg27emtzy_OM0QM51wN5qGnOQh_w_3TcuCl67YZQJGWA1uDLDss5/s320/11-05-21Citizen+Cain1.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8am 05-21-11</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now, all I asked for was the evidence he had for his claimed deity. But, his first sentence out of the gate is a obfuscation of his own feelings. I don't think any Christian is happy that their chosen deity can't be proven —quite the contrary. Why else would they spend millennia making up pseudoscience in the pursuit of just such an end. They wish, more than anything, that their deity would make himself known in the most horrendous fashion. More on this in a bit. No, this is a lie to cover up the fact that my interlocutor is suffering from cognitive dissonance from the fact that he has yet to find <i>any </i>evidence for his chosen deity.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">First of all, he is lying to himself, and secondly, he lies to all he confronts, because he wishes more than anything that the entity that would validate his claim to ideological supremacy was in evidence somewhere—hell, anywhere. Only, all he sees is the evidence against such supernatural claims and propositions. Also, the faith he writes of is that of denial, denial in the face of overwhelming evidence. This is evidenced in the very next sentence. Christian doctrine does, in fact, claim to know the origins of everything as evinced in creationism. Many people have been tortured to death for even supposing a different scenario. Complete and utter denial.</div><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5lhsdQnTgB0Qz5ujvZpxhX_lNh8IQHDfkTo9XZR3VirTQthIz3I87YXir9hiluZE7q2Sm3B2DjviTPpKR46KOV2owrTCfcagHwcEHKxFm0wEOhr8unBIJNw-1U5W3RaLp4ejusEjySjXB/s1600/11-05-21Citizen+Cain3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5lhsdQnTgB0Qz5ujvZpxhX_lNh8IQHDfkTo9XZR3VirTQthIz3I87YXir9hiluZE7q2Sm3B2DjviTPpKR46KOV2owrTCfcagHwcEHKxFm0wEOhr8unBIJNw-1U5W3RaLp4ejusEjySjXB/s320/11-05-21Citizen+Cain3.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8am 05-21-11</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In citizen Cain's second proffering is so very much more than just the example of a denial of science I mentioned earlier. There is also the judgement of evolutionists, that we "just don't want to submit to a good God." There are more than a couple of things about this statement that I find glaringly offensive to my intelligence. Not the least of which is the fact that an evolutionist can be the scientist that works in a field relating to, or requiring the data from, the findings of evolutionary biology, genetics, anatomy, medicine, physiology, behavioral science, etc. etc.; or an evolutionist can be someone that accepts the overwhelming evidence of the phylogenetic trees from many different disciplines, embryology, zoology, the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetics, and animal husbandry that natural selection is the motive force of evolution. The sciences of evolution are merely after the facts, there is no conspiracy to falsify our understanding of nature—this is what religion does as a means to manipulate public opinion so as to garner power, wealth and control of thought.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then there is the assertion that said evolutionist doesn't "want" ... hold it right there. How does this citizen claim to know what anyone "wants?" Absurd! Why wouldn't someone want to live forever in Cain's simplistic, even childish, understanding of an eternity in what would eventually become eternal prostration, eternal worship, and illogical eternal boredom to ad adsurdum? Who wouldn't want that? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The claim of a "good god" shows that my interlocutor doesn't know anything about the religion under the banner of which he claims superior knowledge of the natural world, even more than scientists that have actually done the work to get the education, the research to get the facts of the matter, to only then submit their findings for public scrutiny by peers in their respective fields. No! Citizen Cain obviously doesn't realize that his religion's god, Yahweh Sabaoth (Yahweh, God of armies), was concocted as a god of war, a god of revenge. But, am I being fair in placing the responsibility of citizen Cain's misunderstanding of his chosen deity squarely upon his shoulders? Besides religion, in what other spectrum of life are we not expected to vet our sources or pay the consequences of our mistake? No! The good god that Cain insists evolutionists do not want to submit, is a god that answers to Cain's own imaginings. This is, in fact, Cain's own god. His personal creation from his own mind. And as such only good by Cain's own standards. I bet this god even hates all the same people that Cain hates. Cain's god is the god to which he wants all evolutionists to submit. How is that for arrogance. But, submit is the word he used, and a key word it is.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">See, this is the point about blind faith in a divine authority. Be it represented by, interpreted by, or propounded by an all too earthly human, we are to take it on faith that this figurehead of divine authority, this imaginer of a personal deity, to whom we are to submit in all credulity, forsaking our intellect, our experience, our reason and rationale is the person on earth who has imagined the one true god, as if such a thing could even logically exist. Do you see what is happening? We are being asked to submit to an imaginary concoction of Cain's own making, Cain's own opinion, and Cain's own views, in effect, we are required to submit to Citizen Cain. This is the submission that faith requires. Without evidence of an actual deity, we are required to submit to the misrepresentation of the Christian deity. We are to suspend our rational faculties of disbelief and submit in blind faith. But, most importantly, we are to <b>submit</b>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">After declaring that we should submit, his first assertion about "all the evidence for evolution [he] has seen" seems quite timid. Only, how am I to have any idea what, if any, evidence for evolution he has seen. Though, Evolutionary Theory is supported by many, many facts and literally tons of evidence. Not to mention it has been belabored by every bewildered theologian, every pious pundit, every misinformed school magistrate, and Sunday school teacher, as well as, the scientific community at large and is still the strongest theory in the sciences. For example, <a href="http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/">Tiktaalik </a>was found in exactly the spot where the evolutionary data predicted. All the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_trees">phylogenetic trees</a> agree. If they didn't agree, evolution would be falsified. Medicines work. Why else would medicines be tested on (not that I agreed with the practice) animals if we're not all anatomically similar? No! The evidence for evolution is overwhelming, so much so, that it is in the face of <i>this </i>evidence that denial must be maintained for faith, the submission of one's intellect, to hold any sway.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggNCRPNILQx1NMgN5Kb2_a_zDssOPr-znKBnAAymEthV2N_yKsYcSMifLoPp6AlJZY2klAQWNbvku9Rn_ZkxAAbTby6gLC3oiZtvO9QzS9UNdc0iUVGwpVFuRIE45IDuRQcAWblt0GFPA6/s1600/11-05-21Citizen+Cain2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggNCRPNILQx1NMgN5Kb2_a_zDssOPr-znKBnAAymEthV2N_yKsYcSMifLoPp6AlJZY2klAQWNbvku9Rn_ZkxAAbTby6gLC3oiZtvO9QzS9UNdc0iUVGwpVFuRIE45IDuRQcAWblt0GFPA6/s320/11-05-21Citizen+Cain2.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8am 05-21-11</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The denial in this particular statement is profuse with self-deception. First, no one has "seen it all" (the previous statement was qualified as to the amount that he had seen). How can someone "think they know?" One either has a considered stance or knowledge of the fact, but not both. The fact of the matter is that evolution is supported by many facts that can be known. Now evolution is verifiable everyday by the discipline of animal husbandry, the manipulation of varieties of breeds. Darwin determined that there were natural motivators of phylogenesis similar to human intervention and manipulation of gene pools. So, my arrogant interlocutor must have something in mind, maybe Macroevolution, it's usually a favorite of the "AiG" crowd. Only, we have plenty of evidence for that as well. The vestigial limbs of whales; the laryngeal nerve in all mammals, most notably giraffes; and the location of parasitic genes across phyla that acts as a fingerprint of the animals ancestry are all very strong evidence for macroevolution. Strong evidence of evolution is what we <i>know </i>we have.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8am 05-21-11</td></tr>
</tbody></table>It is only through the denial of the evidence that this statement can be made, especially the oxymoron in the hashtag. But at this point I would like to bring the date at the bottom of all these clips to your attention. It is the date of the famed rapture of 2011 as pro<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">fessed by one Harold Camping. This is, to my mind, the only assertion evincing more arrogance than that of citizen Cain. Some may think rapture theology is merely an </span>epitome of Christian doctrine. I think it is the supreme example of the political revenge innate in all the monotheistic faiths. Especially, as expressed in recent Christian conceptualizations, while not forgetting its origin in Hebrew mythology.<div><br />
</div><div>What started out as a nationalistic revolution against an occupying force in Asia Minor and the Near East of the 1st century BCE. Where a people were hoping for an Anointed Savior to solicit a new contract with their deity and relieve them of their Roman interlopers through a vengeful overpowering via supernatural entities billowing through the clouds on chariots of fire, has become revenge against descent from the orthodox beliefs. Christians revel in the idea of watching everyone who disagrees with their unsubstantiated claims suffering in a lake of fire. Yet, even more disturbing than this is the fact that rapture theology is based on poor reading comprehension as best as I can tell. But, I will save that for another entry. For what I would term an exposé on rapture theology see: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-does-rapture-tell-us-about.html?spref=tw">Rosa Rubicondior: What Does Rapture Theology Say About Christians?</a> </span><br />
<div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div>Note:<br />
Originally, I thought it might be best to cover the identity of citizen Cain, to show some compassion for the ignorant, but then I thought better. Shouldn't people be held to account for their views, falsehoods, and claims?</div></div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-15774752528563373472011-05-09T09:56:00.001-10:002011-05-09T16:55:42.169-10:00In Response to Christian Criticism<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I seem to have started a running gun fight with Christians at the </span><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/04/16/how-easter-killed-my-faith-in-atheism/" style="font-family: inherit;">Wall Street Journal</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> over what is basically a book advertisement blogged in connection to this past Easter. The entry is the typical Lee Strobel </span>spongy<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>assertions<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> based on absolutely no evidence, and, of course, none is provided, nor forthcoming. If one wishes to read all of my comments on that blog text search Beachbum on the threads page, as they are all entered under my name. But I could not get this particular comment to load so I have put it here for those interested. I have also included the comment from William Munney (unaltered, as would be expected) in which my comment is a response.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">From William Munney:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 11px;">1:21 am May 8, 2011</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">“If people believed as I do, maybe we could finally have peace on Earth. Religions have had thousands of years, thousands of blood-soaked, hate-filled years. Let’s give reason and rationality a chance; superstitions have had theirs and failed miserably.”</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Right BB, because atheists and other “rational” people of that kind never hate anyone, right? Apparently you have either not seen or have turned a blind eye to the real hatred(having an opinion opposite to yours is not hatred, much to liberal’s chagrin), in the form of anti-Christian hatred from people who hate you(or try to intimidate you, or discriminate against you, or kill you) just because you believe in Jesus. Just as Jesus said would happen. Why don’t you rally against the real bigots?.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">“for as Einstein said, genius is limited, but ignorance is infinite.” Indeed. And maybe you should take a cue from him. Einstein also said: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">If you have such faith in your atheism, why do you come here to try and persuade others to abandon God, whom you think is nonsense? Just be confident in your religion(which is what atheism is). Your “god” doesn’t ask you to spread it’s gospel to “non-believers” – as Jesus did for Christians – and there is no hope for salvation in your religion, thus no reason to “help” others reach salvation, so why do you come here to try “to pervert the right ways of the Lord”, “oh child of the devil “?</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And My Response:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I am truly sorry that you and many like you have been inculcated into the "suffering Christian" mythology. As you put it, "...anti-Christian hatred ... try to intimidate ... discriminate against ... or kill you ... just because you believe in Jesus." This is, in fact, Christian propaganda.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Have Christians been persecuted as a result of their adherence to their particular dogmas and doctrines? Of course, mostly by other Christian sects. Have Christians gone to war over the belief in a particular god or prophet? Again, yes! Only, it was with every other institution of superstitious claims known throughout history, and they persecuted as harshly (even more so, that's why Christianity disseminated) as they were persecuted. Worst of all, Christians have persecuted their own, based on claims of supernatural authority, ie. God(s) commanded it, eg. the Bible says (Exodus 22:18) we should not suffer a witch, (or Sodomites, or Amalekites, ect. ect.) to live.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">You see, first and foremost, religions, all religions, are tools of politics and have been since their inception. This is not to say all governments, as should be the case in the US, but it is manipulation through fear, segregation through in-group vs. out-group (ie. racism, nationalism, denominationalism, Christian Supremacy, etc.), as well as most of the other baser emotions such as xenophobia, homophobia, etc. Also, thought control so that, "it doesn't matter what the evidence shows via science, history, anthropology, archaeology, palaeontology, etc.; the (pseudo) facts are as this Evangelist, Politician, Mormon, Creationist, Capitalist, Libertarian, Corporatist, etc., etc., purports," is something other than totally [insert expletive here] laughable. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Politicians have known for millennia that nothing turns a group into an easily manipulated mob (for fun and profit) like claims of persecution from those belonging to an out-group. (By using fictitious claims of persecution about the Roman Emperor Nero, a Roman Church of some 3 centuries hence was able to simultaneously get Romans to denounce their Roman-ness and embrace Catholicism; thereby, converting Roman citizens into Roman Catholics in short order.) They've also known, for almost as long, that similar claims have worked preemptively to justifying the implementation of policies that lead to atrocities whether those claims are fabricated, exaggerated, or merely elaborated, for the mob mentality is nothing, if not, frenzied impetuousness amplified to the point of mindless violence. Yes, the persecuted Christian is a fabrication.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But, to answer your question: "Why don’t [I] rally against the real bigots?" Considering that a bigot is a person with strong and prejudiced views who will not listen to opinions differing from their own, I can only conclude that—I am, all of them.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">From my point of view, a person's opinions should be held up to the light of verifiable knowledge and weighed in the free market of ideas against the evidence and the facts gleaned therefrom. That's what I like about logical thought, it strives to eliminate opinion from the conclusion by putting a high value on evidence. This actually puts a twist on an idiom that is currently circulating in the zeitgeist that "a person is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts." In my view a person is entitled to their opinion, or belief, if they can substantially support it with facts based on evidence. Furthermore, because people act on their opinions in ways that affect us all, ie. the political, commercial, environmental, as well as public arena, those opinions, those beliefs, should be scrutinized, debated, in the free market of ideas by people with respect for evidence. Else, a self-proclaimed prophet that believes he can claim several pre-teen and teenaged girls would be free (from jail) to do as he pleased, or maybe, like Mohammad, become the mythological basis for a world religion. Or, how about misquoting famous figures out of context to gain authoritative appeal?</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Your quoting of Albert Einstein is nothing short of an appeal to authority made worse by your misapprehension of its meaning as to be, in some way, referring to one of the Abrahamic religions. It was not.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It is from, Science, Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And I quote, in part:</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So it is that many religiose misinterpret Einstein's famous statement suggesting that Einstein was evincing respect for religious credulity. Science without religion is lame, merely because "science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion." Whereas religion without science is blind because religion has no access to the truth—it was, as Einstein expressed it—nothing other than the "source of feeling" this aspiration toward something greater than itself cannot be generated via the scientific method that is gleaned from the same sphere as religious aspirations. A purely human motivation in my view that when combined with an educated faith in the concept that the natural parameters we currently understand through evidentiary means can very easily be projected over space and time that is currently understood to be exactly like the here and now. This statement both removes any claim to truth from religions, and at the same time, imbues the human psyche with both the origins of higher aspirations, and the foresight to discern and understand truth of our universe.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Nowhere is this sentiment more succinct than in this statement: "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</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">You have obviously garnered your misapprehension of atheism from those of a biased bent on the subject. Understanding that there isn't any evidence supporting anything supernatural, let alone a personal deity, is not even remotely religious. Alas, I understand that your comments are an attempt to elevate your belief system by equating atheism with it; do you not see the logical absurdity? Do you not see that religions have used this same method, either purposefully or unconsciously, with everything that has always been human, natural, even culturally innate? You write of salvation as though it was something "out there" something that is attained from a religion; it is not. Humanity is the guardian of its own authority, creator of its own morality and it has always been so. We are the guardians of our universe. I have no lord, no master and neither should you.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">As one with an atheistic view and the education that supports it, I understand that the characters portrayed through the Abrahamic religions, which is how you most likely understand them, are, in reality, literary constructs, which have only survived due to their political usefulness. So, in addition to stopping the manipulation of you by way of your emotions and opinions, through evidentiarily unsupported claims, known as religious dogmas, which I addressed above, there is but one reason why I am here: to help others!</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, I am attempting to free our priest-ridden civil government from the lowest grade of ignorance of which religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. Thanks.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">EOB</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Now, if you're not interested in my previous comments, I can understand as I am honestly <i>over-it</i> myself. But, I would recommend reading some of them as I didn't bother responding to the absolutely moronic cracks. Hopefully, they have been, and will be, educational.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Thanks</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-14629852462038118532011-01-15T13:38:00.002-10:002011-01-15T14:01:25.577-10:00Research On a ConversionAfter reading the book written in his name, I have been investigating the conversion and writings of this once philosophical mind, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew">Antony Flew</a>. The first thing a reading of the book made very clear was that it totally lacked a counter argument for Flew's own views. Considering the history and bibliography of this man, I would think that this alone represents a ridiculous circumstance of the book's writing. A circumstance that has an obvious explanation; it was not written by the man named on its cover, nor could he have had any input into its authoring. An idea shared by many other reviewers of this work. Which is why I originally opted to not blog the results of my research. There were many other blogs on the topic appearing on the web at that time. I only proffer this minor blog on the topic as a listing of some of the points I found on the net over the years.<br />
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Now, after being put in the position of reading an argument that begins as a misrepresentation (Isn't it funny how so many religious apologetics begin life this way?), I thought I would consider the presented arguments on their own merit—just for giggles and grins.<br />
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First, I'll say that the book, <i>There Is <s>No</s> A God</i> qualifies, and Richard Carrier concurs, as the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/RNEW5PVRTSVCK/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#RNEW5PVRTSVCK">weakest argument</a> put forward that I have ever read. Ok, I must admit that I have actually been reading on this conversion of an "atheist" for many years and trying as much as possible to understand Antony's motivation, reasoning, or lack thereof. As such, I come across many opinions on this subject but, none are as coherent as <a href="http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/11/antony-flew-bogus-book.html">Richard Carrier's Blog</a> and Richard brings up many points due to his correspondence with Flew since 2000. There are many links to insightful writings by Flew and others on one of Richard's other postings at <a href="http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=369">Infidels </a>not to mention the most complete history of this whole sorted story. Also, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04Flew-t.html?_r=2">New York Times</a> cover by Mark Oppenheimer is a good piece on the unfolding of this book's back story. The story actually starts in 1950 with the publication of Flew's <a href="http://people.stfx.ca/wsweet/Flew-Mitchell.pdf">Theology and Falsification</a> and ends with the publication of this junk. In the words of Richard Dawkins, "it's sad." Some examples of the writings on the subject, from <a href="http://www.nzarh.org.nz/journal/2006v79n4sum.pdf">Open Society Journals</a> between <a href="http://www.nzarh.org.nz/journal/2005v78n4sum.pdf">Antony Flew</a> and <a href="http://www.nzarh.org.nz/journal/2005v78n1aut.pdf">Raymond Bradley</a> even the hard to find <a href="http://www.nzarh.org.nz/journal/2005v78n1aut.pdf">replies from both</a> gentlemen.<br />
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Of course, there are a plethora varying opinions on the book's authorship, veracity, and strength of argument, but that is all they are—opinions. Let the facts—and only the facts—speak for themselves.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Personally I feel Antony Flew is owed an apology, but it is not mine to offer.</div>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-51426063147728171812010-12-14T17:44:00.001-10:002010-12-14T17:44:40.395-10:00formspring.meAsk me anything <a href="http://formspring.me/Beechbum" target="_blank">http://formspring.me/Beechbum</a>Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-14796502113363078552010-11-27T13:25:00.000-10:002010-11-27T13:25:55.993-10:00Questionable SophistryI ran across an example of sophistry recently in the form of questions that I suppose are meant to confound the issues related to a religious adherence to primitive superstitions and supernatural claims. So I thought I would answer them as best as I am currently able.<br />
What follows are five questions that should be understood as coming from a religious fundamentalist who assumes that they know better the answers than, say, someone that doesn't share their world view. And therein lies the background for this Q & A. Questions are obviously numbered and italicized.<br />
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<i>1. Is it possible that God could reveal some things to us, such that we can know them for certain? If not, why not, and how are you certain of that?</i><br />
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First one must be making the presumption with this question that a god exists. And of course, this has never been verified. Throughout human history, far too many of those that have claimed they received a revelation from some supernatural authority ascribed the most heinous of atrocities to its commands. And at the same time, many of the most benevolent as well as the most despicable have claimed revelatory authority with equal veracity only with vastly different consequences. From this point of view, along with a comprehension of all the errors, contradictions, falsehoods, and redactions in works that were once claimed as divinely dictated, it is easy to see that revelation is indistinguishable from imagination as used in the act of a fabrication.<br />
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From an anatomical standpoint, living organisms have no supernatural transceiver that has been found to date. Also, there is little structural difference between a human brain and any other mammalian brains. And concerning certainty, I'm as certain that no god could communicate with those that claim one has communicated with them as I am that supernatural claims have never been verified, ever. To begin with, there is no such thing as a supernatural realm from which to communicate. This is just the overly simplistic explanation for those unknown causes; until, we discover those mechanisms that actually cause the phenomena in question. The concept of a supernatural realm will be the mystical Orphic abyss of sophists and charlatans, until it is understood as nothing other than that of which we are ignorant. For the sake of argument, lets assume the impossible is now possible. Revelation is Descartes' dualism (c. 1641) which was debunked just after his own time by his peers on the grounds that evil exists. With all things considered, the existence of evil from a dualistic view puts the onus of every atrocity on that deity's self indulgent head. But in my view, the main nail in the coffin for the concept of Cartesian Dualism, and therefore revelation or divined knowledge, is our ability to be introspective while reaching all but an infinite number of different conclusions. So, no is the answer to the question. Furthermore...<br />
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To know something "for certain" is a claim from the domain of ignorance. It is the deep thinker that realizes there may be unexplored alternatives, a refinement of accuracy, or a revision based on new evidence. To claim something "for certain" only shows that one's knowledge is based not on evidence but on dogma. The accumulation of knowledge is the assimilation of relationships and the elimination of alternatives; therefore, knowledge is best understood as in a constant state of melioration through the accumulation of facts.<br />
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One brief point on the topic of seeing the evidence for god(s) all around us, as the assertion goes. All anyone actually sees is the evidence of procreation. Every tree had a seed; every creature had a mother or clone as the case may be. So, when someone claims that a god reveals itself through the surrounding ecosystem, they are actually ignoring the fact that in nature all living organisms have an antecedent. And, of course, this is better explained through evolution as well as other branches of natural science. As supernatural claims are unrealistic by association, I see appeals to the supernatural as nothing more than an admission of ignorance—pathetic actually.<br />
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<i>2. How are you able to know anything for certain according to your worldview? </i><br />
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By world view in this case, I assume the author is referring to atheism. And by the qualifier, "for certain," I'm assuming they are not taking into consideration that atheism is an evidence based viewpoint. This must mean that they don't accept the human brain or the mind as an innately cognitive faculty. In light of the first question, it would seem that the author is holding to the Cartesian Dualism of René Descartes or some variation thereof. But if that were the case, how would one expect anyone to drive a car, write a play, rape young boys or be anything other than an automaton. One cannot have free will based on divined information. We would be nothing except puppets on a string. This would be the ultimate in control, and the most sinister of deceptions; especially, considering the suffering throughout human history for which this divine authority would be responsible.<br />
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The fact of the matter is that evidence is accepted by our judicial system for a very good reason. Evidence is the basis for the very successful scientific method for a very good reason, as well. The value of information as knowledge is directly proportional the amount of evidence supporting that information; while critically considering the weight of all contravening evidence. It is the only way we "know anything for certain."<br />
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Again, your question is based on an intrinsically false assumption. You assume there is a god or gods that would alter human perception for their own enjoyment. This is one thing I know I would find despicable—for certain. Quite to the contrary, the human mind is quite capable of perceiving reality under nominal circumstances.<br />
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The question is actually an attempt to hide the fact that absolutely nothing is gleaned from appeals to the superstitious, supernatural, or religious dogmas.<br />
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<i>3. Does our discussion have to comport with the universal, abstract, invariant laws of logic? If so, how do you account for them according to your worldview? </i><br />
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You obviously do not realize that an atheist view is the rational view, the logical stance as opposed to the supernatural stance of the theist which is not based on anything but faith. Faith, or denial in the face of over whelming evidence, is not logical. Faith is an emotional adherence to an evidentiarily unsupported claim.<br />
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Furthermore, logical absolutes (ie. Law of non contradiction, Law of identity, Law of excluded middle, etc.) are the parameters (or framework) within which the physical universe operates. Like the principles of thermodynamics, these logical parameters of the natural universe are how relationships of physical entities occur as a consequence of the existence and interaction of these physical bodies. Logic, on the other hand, is a system, like mathematics or physics, that we use to conceptualize these parameters, so as to better understand and communicate that understanding. In fact, logic is a form of mathematics, and much like mathematics, logic, physics, and chemistry etc. are only our conceptualization, our understanding, of these parameters within which the natural universe operates. Logical parameters exist whether or not there is a universe, or inhabitants of that universe to observe those parameters. They are how physical entities will behave and have behaved in the universe as we now know it. Properties of a logical universe operate within these parameters just as these properties also operate within the confines of mathematical parameters as well as physical parameters, etc.<br />
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Therefore, one's world view is irrelevant when considering what was termed above as "laws of logic." Also, don't make the mistake of conflating a concept with its mental abstract conceptualization. Nor can one honestly correlate any logical parameter (Logical Absolute as it has been termed) of the natural universe with its mental representation, its conceptualization. This is where the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God, TAG failed miserably while being shown as another pathetic apologetic contrivance. No sane person would try to claim that gravity needs a mind to exist. The same is true for the principles of logical parameters, mathematical parameters and physical parameters, etc. within which the natural universe works. Sixteen of something exists whether someone is there to count them or not.<br />
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Actually, this question misdirects attention away from the fact that claims of supernatural interaction with a logical universe are, in short, unsupportable and untenable.<br />
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<i>4. On what basis do you expect the future to be like the past (i.e. the uniformity of nature, the basis for inductive reasoning)</i>.<br />
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This is actually a minimal assumption of scientific inquiry but a favorite canard of the less scientifically inclined. Due to a lack of experience with statistics, religionists are less aware of the concept of probability. Based on substantiated historical facts, the probability of the future being exactly like the past is indistinguishable from 100 percent; though, while not being perfect, there is no evidence that physics has been anything other than what it is today. So, considering historical consistency along with the total absence of any contradictory or contravening evidence makes scientific testability and predictability consistent enough to warrant sound expectations with inductive reasoning.<br />
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Also, along with the linear support for predictable expectations there is lateral support as well. The universe has shown itself to be bound by logical parameters, consistent with mathematical principles, and amenable to physical properties. The evidence suggests that this is consistent throughout the universe in both time and space, as any rational world view would suggest. This is also why the concept of a supernatural realm as well as a supernatural entity are logically impossible, physically unsupportable, even scientifically falsifiable per any given location.<br />
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The reason religion and science have been at odds for centuries is because of this very problem. For as science investigates supernatural claims, one hundred percent have been shown to be either completely natural, indeterminable, or false. Furthermore, while almost every scientific advance (all of them concerned with the as yet unknown) contravenes the claims of the worlds religions as well as all supernatural claims along with greatly reducing the indeterminable category, there are always those that claim the impossible and hide it deep inside the Orphic abyss of the indeterminable or some sophistic rhetorical ploy.<br />
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There is an obvious slide-of-hand in this question, as it attempts to coverup the fact that this historically substantiated predictability would have never been the case in a supernaturally amenable universe. It is this simple fact which is the main reason many people come to their senses in regards to religious claims. One of the main reasons why countries consumed by the Muslim faith went from a scientific world leader to a theocratic backwater of humanity is because of the concept of occasionalism (Allah can change the laws of nature at his whim). This ludicrous dogma convinced Muslims that studying nature was a waste of time; since, their deity could stop or alter its principles at any time. Hence, science and technology fell by the wayside in the Muslim mind.<br />
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<i>5. How do you know that your reasoning about anything is valid?</i><br />
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Without restating answers to the first four questions, of which this overtly generalized inquiry is only a restatement, I will start with the fact that our reasoning works as evidenced by the computer with which I'm writing. Although, it is obvious that you are looking for something else. Assuming that these questions were written using a computer, I will move on to the idea that the reasoning may be invalidated if counterfeited by some Dualistic Cartesian Theater from some deity for its own sadistic entertainment. Only this would mean that every sadistic thought, every evil act by every despotic tyrant, pedophile, rapist, murderer, capitalist, etc. was under the explicit control of this narcissistic sadomasochist. And if one thinks that the devil made them do it, maybe worship of this deity is wasted; since, it is obviously not the most eminent power in the land.<br />
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When the gods (especially the Abrahamic God) wielded great power in the ancient days of infantile man's philosophical development, humanity suffered greatly at the hands of nature while leading short brutish miserable lives in fear and servitude to those who knew that divine authority was an irrevocable, non-falsifiable, and irreproachable—if handled correctly—means of subjugating the masses. Now that man has gleaned a comprehension of nature, the natural universe and our place within it an enhanced understanding from science, of medicine, and nutrition etc, have greatly enhanced man's lot in life. When God's revelations were claimed to be divine dictate of those in power, the pious servile man was the one to suffer the greatest. Since the Enlightenment and the rejection of divine dictate, freedom, freedom of inquiry, progress of individual civil rights, freedom of speech, and pursuit of happiness have replaced serfdom, slavery, servitude and capitulation of thought by force. The evidence supporting man's reasoning abilities is vast and incontrovertible, but one point will make it abundantly clear that our reasoning abilities are a direct result of our cognitive faculties as witnessed by brain damaged patients under the care of competent physicians with access to fMRI scanners.<br />
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This is also a question that attempts to hide from the interlocutor the inescapable antithesis that in the days when divine revelation reigned supreme substantially fewer ideas, arguments, or conclusions were even close to correctly reasoned. It tries to camouflage the fact that man's philosophical prowess evolved exactly as one would expect given a total lack of divine intervention. Though the question overlooks the fact that man's morality improved as a direct consequence of his own investigations into the natural world and the discovery of our place within it, authors of such a question invariably claim that morality is the prerogative of their imaginary friend.<br />
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Now, I have a question: When have supernatural claims ever been validated, verified or substantiated? A hint:—Never, not once.<br />
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No, the power of god(s) is directly proportional to the ignorance of man as evidenced by the following: When man's ignorance was great, fear of the power of god(s) was greater still; but when man's knowledge overcame his fear and ignorance, the power of those mythical god(s) waned. And now that knowledge has brought humanity to the point where those that claim to wield the power of the gods are institutionalized, it is time to put childish things aside.<br />
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Thanks for taking the time to read this Q & A. Feel free to leave a comment if you wish.Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8609408199548923976.post-48422074860683326622010-11-17T21:23:00.004-10:002011-01-14T19:22:14.645-10:00Bertrand Russell<object height="360" width="580"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2aPOMUTr1qw&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2aPOMUTr1qw&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="580" height="360"></embed></object> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: tahoma, sans-serif, Arial, verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Bertrand Arthur William Russell</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: tahoma, sans-serif, Arial, verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: tahoma, sans-serif, Arial, verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">(1872 – 1970)</span><br />
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It was my pleasure to learning about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell">Bertrand Russell</a> at a very young age. However, it was the worlds loss when he died in 1970. He was, in my personal opinion, one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He influenced many brilliant people through his philosophy. People of the highest cognitive caliber, such as, Albert Einstein or the nimblest of thinkers, Wittgenstein for instance, knew and worked with Bertrand Russell.<br />
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One can find out about the details of his long career many places over the net, in books, especially his own copious corpus. I only wish to put a person to the work. Enjoy.Beachbumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16872466812837980647noreply@blogger.com1