Bertrand Russell On God.

How militant and strident!

Reality, belief, and evidence.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. When you believe that elves cause it to rain, each time it rains, you'll see evidence of elves. If you believe that rain is caused by condensation of water vapor in rain clouds, each time it rains, you'll see evidence of condensation of water vapor in rain clouds. The thing is, when you stop believing in elves, you'll stop seeing evidence of elves. And when you stop believing in condensation of water vapor in rain clouds, you will still see condensation of water vapor in rain clouds.

That is why belief as a prerequisite of seeing evidence for something is obviously suspect.

The Origin of God, Douglas Adams

Edward Current: God's Nonexistence Proves God's Existence

So perfect.

Carl Sagan: The Awe of Religion and the Smallness of Gods

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." - Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot.

The Sceptic, by Robert Service

The Sceptic

My Father Christmas passed away
When I was barely seven.
At twenty-one, alack-a-day,
I lost my hope of heaven.

Yet not in either lies the curse:
The hell of it's because
I don't know which loss hurt the worse --
My God or Santa Claus.

Vatican says alien life possible.

According to the Vatican, alien life is possible and does not contradict a belief in God, and may actually be free from original sin.

If, for example, belief in God was contradicted by the existence of aliens would that make it impossible? I'm seriously wondering this. If the existence of aliens directly contradicted a belief in God would it possible? I think they based the conclusion on an unstated premise "God exists" and anything which contradicts the premise that "God exists" is flawed. The logic goes like this:

God exists.
Aliens do not preclude existence of God.
Aliens do not create a contradiction in worldview.

God doesn't exist! Everything is permitted.

As society decays into a mass of people doing immoral things due to the lack of divine guidance all things will become legal.

As single folks are not going to be able to trump the immoral behavior of other single people, we should form bands in order so that we are the mightiest group.

Now, it stands to reason that there will be other large bands of people and going to war with them would be costly for ourselves and themselves so we should best avoid each other. As hostile actions from my group will cause the other group to respond in kind, hostile actions must be kept to a minimum.

Further, as I don't want to be killed and other people won't want to be killed we should probably avoid the murdering of people. This will also allow for the threat of murder to be more successful. Pirates, for example, would let you go if you surrendered so this sort of kindness without laws has historical parallels.

There's little point in stealing a lot of stuff if I cannot be secure in keeping it. Why steal something that somebody else is going to steal again. At the very least within the group stealing and murder must be abolished. Further, other groups are not to be attacked and merging with other groups or treaties with other groups should be established and maintained.

Without God we'll descend into chaos... and necessarily form the exact same structures we formed before.

Science in Fifteen Words

Global Warming: We are polluting the atmosphere with heat trapping gases according to statistics and basic science.

Evolution: Sometimes screw-ups help. Evolution preserves anything that helps an organism compete with its species brethren.

Big Bang: Galaxies are flinging apart have been for 12 billion years, multiple independent lines of evidence.

Ghosts: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.

Souls: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.

Gods: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.

Aliens: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 is a big number. Space is too big to come here to molest cows.

Ricky Gervais' deconversion story.

That's pretty sharp.

(Via Pharyngula)

Dear God...

Dear God Letters via Goosing the Antithesis.

There is *still* no God.

Just thought my blog was getting to random trivial stuff filled and politics. This is God Snot after all: Ssnot (it's like swounds meaning God's-wounds)! And I figured I would make this public announcement there is still no God.

The Bible is still stupid and still evil. Atheists still say brilliant things. Creationism is still hogwash. People are still not healed by deities. Prayer still does not work. Wrong is still wrong. Earthquakes still happen, still cause suffering, and still have nothing to do with free will. And kissing asses doesn't get you prizes.

God Punishes Tennessee et al. for voting for Huckabee.

Union University was nearly destroyed. Science gave people ample warning as to the potential destruction and thus the fatalities were down from what they would have been.

However, is it any wonder that the exact states who voted for Huckabee were the worst hit? Clearly, Huckabee is slated for the presidency and is the Anti-Christ. God is trying to stop this. As it says in the Bible, the Devil will quote scripture. Huckabee quotes scripture. The only people ineligible to be the anti-Christ are those people who don't know the Bible, or as they are called... run of the mill Christians.

Something to think about.

;)

Brick Testament: Proving God is evil in Legos.

The last CotG had an entry about a loss of faith in faith when the individual in question (skullsinthestars) encountered Deut. 29:19-21 in Lego form.

It's quite funny... the reasonableness of the first frame and then the bad-guy Yahweh the following frames.

According to the content notice: " The Bible contains material some may consider morally objectionable and/or inappropriate for children." -- Praytell how does one morally object to anything in the Bible. I thought that's where I morals came from?

Creationist literature vs reality.

Creelman’s TEE Revision:

via, Podblack

"Many equiangular spirals can be found in the animal kingdom; examples include the horns of wild sheep, spider webs… and the path of an insect approaching light. It seems to be further evidence of design in the creation of species."

That is so compelling. I mean, to understand that the Golden Ratio is part of the spiral flight of a moth as it flies into a fire, immolating itself, in what must be a pretty painful death... is telling of the benevolence and perfection of God.

God does not play dice with the world...

The old Einstein quote, "God does not play dice with the world." -- He was apparently wrong. It looks like the world is composed entirely of little dice.*


No, there isn't a point to this post, I simply wrote that as a comment at debate.com and thought it was hella clever.

The Offical God FAQ

The Official God FAQ.

For a small site, it's remarkably complete.

A Family Tree: God driven Evolution.

So simple.

God grants Georgia prayers, then attacks some kids for giggle.

God granted the prayers of the Georgia governor by producing one inch of rain which will do nearly nothing for the extreme drought experienced by the region. I question why a state with access to ocean water and strong evidence of climate change isn't investing a lot of money in desalinization plants and rather is resorting to begging mythological characters.

Certainly this is evidence of God, in the same sense that if you believed elves caused it to rain, every time it rains you would see evidence of elves.

Also in the same news story in Tennessee, it turns out that storms knocked out a Baptist church sending glass into children's faces and them to the hospital to have secular doctors patch them up.

*Update: In case anybody was slightly impressed, note, the rain was forecast by scientists prior to the event of praying for rain (again). A cynic would note that he prayed for rain previously and this second call for rain came seemingly out of the blue, but just after the prediction of some rain was forecast, and that he just saw the forecast and quickly arranged a prayer for it in order to give credit to God... at least a cynic would say that.

God's Checklist... I could do that...