Richard Feynman, the Rules of Chess

Internet Amazement.

Sometimes things really take you by surprise. I would like to show you an amazing thing that just dropped my jaw. I give you an example, found in the wild, the word 'something' spelled with not one but *two* Qs.

if Somethinqq As Incredible as God wasnt Involved??

This makes me want to hunt the Loch Ness Monster.

Ray Comfort, Odd Admission

If you speak with an atheist on logic you're going to get resistance. But if you deal with their conscious then there's a level playing field. So apparently logically Christianity is at a disadvantage.

Oh, and do check out pulltheplugonatheism.com it has some classic videos like this one that asks Was Galileo an atheist?



A youtube comment on it says it best:

No one claims Galileo was an atheist.


Fail.

Religious piety and the girls trapped in your backyard.

Apparently nonbelievers are damnable shames and everybody is trying to enlighten us when it comes to God. Here's a prime example from Voices Revealed:

THIS WITNESS IS TO GAIN THE ATTENTION OF UNBELIEVERS WORLD WIDE, INCLUDING SCIENTIST, PHYSICIST AND EDUCATORS. WHY? TO BEGIN A MAJOR WAKE UP CALL THAT ALLOWS THE REST OF THE WORLD TO TURN AND KNOW THAT HE EXISTS AND IS DESIRING THAT EVERYONE COME TO KNOW HIM.

THE CREATOR'S WORK IS ALL OVER THE WORLD AND BELONGS TO HIM ALONE, TO SPEAK FOR HIMSELF, AND NOT FOR ME, OR ANY ONE PERSON TO ACT AS THOUGH WE SPEAK FOR HIM.

But, Tatarize, you say, why care? I mean this is the typical fundy capped nonsense we see every where. See, but not everybody has had a kidnapped 11 year old living in the backyard for near two decades.

One of the interesting things is that the blog he had, isn't shut down so there's a bunch of comments from people who scampered over there. I don't know how anybody tends to think he isn't going to ask Jesus for forgiveness and receive it. Where is the infinite mercy of their supposed God when it comes to child pedophiles who kidnap girls and have children with them over the course of several decades.

Checking various other bits, if you check his name and look at his other blank blogs, we run into one that has a side panel he actually filled out. That surprise only contains some cut and pasted Bible quotes. However he did highlight the section of 2 Cor. 12 "I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses." -- He also doesn't seem very internet savvy. He left a bunch of blank blogs and on the blog he did occasionally use he posted a lot of personal information. Doesn't he know, there are total creeps on the internet?

I keep saying good things in obscure places...

To rectify this injustice, I shall, like a mouse bringing you a half dead lizard that you neither want nor asked for, repost my brilliance here to be evaluated and praised (or perhaps validly critiqued allowing for personal growth).


SomeGuyOnMyspace

you blame the idea of religion instead of human being nature of exsistance lol fun stuff. the idea of religion is to bring a group of people with common interest together, and have them follow a higher power its human being who use the idea of religion as a weapon just like a gun/sword/rock/words whatever you can use to convince the other person into believing your right...

Me:

I don't blame human nature for anything. By and large, human nature is a positive force for good. Humans, when they aren't feeling threatened, are some of the most lovely and interesting animals in all of nature. My point is that religion isn't suppose to bring together a group of people with common interests. That is the domain of knitting circles and book clubs. Religions are beliefs in things unseen, without evidence, on the word of people you don't know for reasons you cannot fathom.

Religion seems to be largely a product of the human proclivity towards confabulation with regard to agency. Humans will make things up and believe them with the slightest impulse to do so. If we see something in reality that we do not understand, we make up stories. Whether it's Apollo riding across the sky on his fiery chariot, God punishing snakes by taking away their legs, or Odin making man out of driftwood. Humans are remarkable story tellers. The problems arise when these stories are enforced by inquisition, defended by crusade, and protected by rejecting basic science.

Saying that it's humans faults for defending their false myths and lies too vigorously is simply wrong. The fault lies in epistemology. How do we know what we know? Is that a good reason to accept that belief? Could you be wrong about that? -- The only valid epistemology we've ever encountered is that of science. Rather than depending on what we think might be the case or what we are told, we test our ideas against reality, we test our hypothesis against the actual world, we check our theories about the universe within the universe.

There in is the problem of God. There's no good reason to accept it. If we were to accept God on such reasons we should equally accept werewolves and vampires. So long as the evidence of goblins, fairies, and werewolves is on par with the evidence of gods E.G. none... we should be atheists. If religion were just a hobby and the only problems were believing those lies and defending them with violence, then your comments would be apt. However, the better way of knowing and the way we should be if we want to believe the most true things and the fewest false things is to accept those things that we have reasons to accept. To remain open to evidence and argument and allow for a real battle of ideas... in this arena religions tend to lose. Perhaps they are just very unlucky, but more aptly they are just untrue.

Christian Source Code.

bool sin;
if ( !VirginMary )  sin = true; //Original sin;
else sin = false; 
//Doctrine of Immaculate conception. Pope 1854.

while ( existence) {
     if ( !VirginMary && !Jesus ) sin = true;
     if (existence
          && deadNextIteration
               && VirginMary) goto heaven; 
     //Doctrine of The Assumption of Mary. Pope 1950
}

if ( !sin ) {
     if (Jesus) {
          setTimer(3 * 24 * 60 * 60, goto earth);
          if (Jesus.type == Mormon) goto America;
     }
     goto heaven;
}

if ( sin ) {
     //goto hell; //Deprecated by Jesus 33 AD
     if (believesInJesus
               && acceptsJesus
                    && Christian
                         && CorrectVersionOfChristian) {
                              goto heaven;
                              }
     //if (child) goto limbo; //Deprecated by Pope 2007 AD.
     goto hell;
}


:hell
while (true) {
     burn;
     torture;
}

:heaven
if (Jesus.type == Catholic) purgatory();
while (true) {
     state = happy;
}

//:limbo
//while (true) { }

function purgatory() {
     while (sin) {
          sinLevel--;
     }
}

Atheist Experience #617

Even understanding as much taxonomy as I do...

Rabbit Order (Lagomorph).



Mouse Order (Rodent)



View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I know rabbits and rodents are pretty closely related sharing a common ancestor some 86 million years ago (not that that seems that related). But, come on! This thing jerboa thing is more of a "mouse-rabbit" than a pika is and pikas are apparently as related to jerboas as mice are related to rabbits (sharing the same common ancestor). Somehow that just seems completely flipped. I suppose both could be eaten by this freaky new plant (things don't exist before we discover them, even if they, like us, are the product of several billion years of evolution).

Also for other fun critters...

The invisible hand of the market, Darwinism

I have long based my beliefs in favor of market regulation on what seems to be a significant flaw in basic economic theory. It turns out others are starting to come around. The analogy of an invisible hand within economics seems to be a firm parallel between the blind watchmaker of evolution. That economics is, at it's core, a Darwinian process where the system that makes the most money tends to survive. So from humble beginnings we end up with an amazing system that is intricate and impressive that self-regulates in basic ways like many simple biological evolutionary processes.

The laissez faire belief is that the market works best when governments and society keep their hands off and lets the hand of the market decide. What they don't seem to understand though is that nature is full of parasites, from worms that live in your eye, to plants that choke to death other plants, to viruses that take over your cells and mold that grows on your feet. Nature is largely a web of parasites. Organisms that devour plants for all the added energy and eat and leech and prey upon each other. And where nature gets along and works in some cooperative fashions the economic parallels are those of monopolies and trusts and market collusion. It isn't a dog eat dog world out there, in fact, dogs are pack animals and work together to devour various other kinds of prey. Rather than fight each other and yield benefits to the consumer, they work together in order to help each other and thus themselves.

There is a long relationship between the theory of evolution and economics. In fact, Darwin borrowed from and saw the light because of the economist Malthus. If the economies of nature were like the economies of humanity, then there is a required curbing of the exponential growth of all species and so any tiny advantage that crept into an individual would quickly become extremely important. The error behind laissez faire thinking is similar to humanity without society.

It is no coincidence that many of those who adhere to a firm belief of hands-off when it comes to the market also tend to oppose societal equality as well. The idea being, we should simply stay out of everything and let reality decide. These individuals show a strong adherence to the social Darwinistic idea that if somebody is poor, it is because he or she simply isn't the fittest when it comes to society.

The claim is that we should exist within a state of nature, within society, within economics, within the world. Such unbending faith is akin to Nietzsche heralding that coming prophesied Uberman, or Ayn Rand lamenting the evil of taxation as a scourge on the creative people. However, much as Hobbes' state of nature where there is "No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"-- the adherence to the belief that the invisible hand of the market is a benevolent Deus ex Machina leads to societal outcomes equally as disturbing. And while there is a certain draw to the idea of letting the chips fall where they may, the truth is that the strongest indicator of where you will end up in life is where you started in life. Much of business is successful but parasitic. Success in the realm of buisness is not indicative of a healthy econosphere or a satisfied consumer.

Prior to the regulations of the markets, we suffered collapses every decade or so. It was boom and bust like algae blooms, and a modicum of domesticating the markets to actually work for us rather than blindly accepting quasi-mystical beliefs in the unerring nature of the market, ushered in a long standing era of prosperity. When these regulations were reversed, we started to suffer the market blooms again in the form of various economic bubbles.

It is certainly true that nature designed a marvelous sheep, but with the human domestication of sheep, the benefits to mankind are pronounced, woolly, warm, and scratchy. The advocacy for regulations is an advocacy for domesticating the market. To make it work for us, rather than for its own self interests, which may or may not coincide occasionally with those of the consumer.

The parallels between economics and evolution are deep and far reaching. It is simply one of many directions the universal acid of evolution flows. I think it's actually a minor one (comparatively) but, as a result sheds considerable amounts of light.

PZ Myers at the Secular Student Alliance Conference 2009

Bibleman!

Which is least related... results...

Sparrowhawk: 2
Mike: 2

Tie goes to Mike for having every proper guess he made correct.

1: The sabretooth cat is related to the cat or tiger.
2: The bear is less related to the hyena or sabretooth cat.
3: The horse is the less related to the pig and whale.
4: The dog is less related to the rabbit or chimpanzee.
5: The fish is less related to the whale or rabbit.

Mass murderer... always saved?

So some 48 year old who was pissed that women didn't just walk up and fuck him, went into a gym and shot and killed three women. Even in my most jaded I wouldn't have suspected any role for religion in the mind of a sick anti-social raving nutjob. But, apparently he was religious. Why, didn't religion steer him away? Isn't always watching sky father suppose to keep people in line? Well he was saved. He adhered to the concept of once saved always saved. Which is different from the other interpretation: once you lose your faith, you were retroactively a faker all along.

That's right, heaven baby. He goes there, he does not pass go, he do not collect $200 dollars, pearly gates and fluffy clouds, and eternal bliss. I hear the plumbing in heaven drains into hell. Because it simply wouldn't be a Christian place if you weren't allowed to shit on other people.

I wonder if anybody has ever just be struck with the epiphany that any system of beliefs that says a mass murderer gets eternal bliss but Gandhi is burning in hell, has to be batshit insane. Hitler condoned the burning of Anne Frank for being Jewish, we call him evil. God condones the infinite burning of Anne Frank for being Jewish, and magically he's good? -- Wow. Freaky.

*thanks for the correction, sparrowhawk.

Which of the three is the least related? Final Part.

Scores will be tallied by this Friday (the 14th) and I'll announce the winner. You don't win anything really, but it should be fun.

Which one is the least related? Part Four.

You can usually win these by imagining a 3d image and morphing one skeleton into another and see which one needs the most change. Also, if you think you know what they are you can use http://timetree.org to look it up.

Which of these three is the least related? Part Three.

Which of the three is the least related? Part 2.

Which of the three is the least related? Part 1.