Hot dogs and buns... no condiments.

Hot dogs and buns... no condiments!

I am so smart. I am so smart. S-M-R-T... S-M-R-T....

You answered 33 out of 33 correctly — 100.00 %

Antitheism summarized.

Why do you think religion is harmful?

When you do stupid things, people get hurt. Religion is one of those stupid things you can do.

Robert Sapolsky: The brilliant thing I've seen in a while.

I understand that not everybody shares my interests in the most boring and stupid things. So here's some awesome. I know nobody reads this, but I'd hate to keep subjecting you to things that are admittedly completely stupid.

Short Film: The Atheist -- Dumbest thing I've seen in a while.

God doesn't want a good world he wants a super good world so he makes evil exist. And evil is like the hole in a doughnut or simply the absence of good. So let me get this straight, God is required by freewill to make a world where suffering can eventually exist. But what about natural disasters? Is it really the product of free will to kill tens of thousands in Haiti (what ever happened to that place, I assume it all turned out okay if they stopped paying attention on the news) or a quarter million during the Boxing Day Tsunami. What free will brought that about? And what logical contradiction is wrought by not allowing a young child to be tortured, raped, and killed? If I endeavor to stop such things, am I denying the rapist his free will? And if this world is suppose to be the greatest world God could create without a logical contradiction (Plantinga's argument) then certainly I could do nothing to make this world better, but I really think I can. Further, Christian doctrine suggests that there is something called "Heaven" which is suppose to be a better world, so if true then this can't really be the best world possible.

I've always been an advocate that the best theodicies (proposed answers to the problem of evil) are all themselves worse than the problem of evil. They try to violate one of the premises without seeming too terrible. If God is all-powerful, all-good, and is able to remove evil, then there should be no evil. Since there is evil, it must be the case that God is not all-powerful or god is not all-good. Also, fun side note Isaiah 45 has god say "I create evil." a few lines before insisting that nobody is besides him (a pretty silly notion for a God who sacrificed himself to himself to sit at his own right hand).

Such apologetics even jazzed up in a video are still crap. Go figure.

Geekgasm. Dr. Horrible in NES-style.

Omg. This is the geekest things I've ever loved more than breathing. That's right inhale comes after exhale.



(via ERV)

Near Death Experiences are not Death Experiences.

It turns out it's probably CO2 overdose rather than O2 deprevation that causes NDEs. But still the obvious problems that there is a rather central fallacy at the center of NDE claims. Mainly that near death experiences are like almost-death experiences, so death is like an NDE only longer and stranger and grander. That isn't very likely. When an electronic device is damaged and starts sparking all over the place is it proper to conclude that a completely broken electronic device is a massive fire or bigger sparks? No. The the damaging and sparking go away and it ceases to function. Why people claim that death is like when your brain is very damaged and throwing sparks and crazy things around only more escapes me. The far more likely conclusion is that brains go a bit wonky when they aren't given proper air.

I reply to some jackasses.

It's seems a sign of boredom a little bit like throwing my holy relics to the dogs. As I doubt anybody more than a couple people will see my reply to some aforementioned jackass buried deep on the interwebs I'll repost it here, upping that count by about 4.

I admonish you to start living a principled life. Stop using a Christian date to cash your checks and take a stand young man!

You are a parasite to living order. As the Soviet Union and China have shown us, when a parasite gets control of government, bad things happen. Only when a society is full of living philosophy can an Atheist flourish. The proof is in how the greatest Atheist thinkers have come from nations that have majority Christian populations and deep and rich histories of Christianity. There are no great Atheist thinkers coming from any other culture, even Atheist cultures!

... *grumble*

I've lived a very principled life for many many years. It's rather silly to admonish me to do such things. What do you think I do? I'll stop using BCE/CE dating systems when you stop using the names of pagan gods for the days of the week. This being Wotan's Day and really close to Thor's Day, that might be hard.

Atheist thinkers known to people in the west come from, typically, the west. As such the claim that only Christian cultures produce "thinkers" is rather silly because most cultures are going to be tainted with a good deal of Christian history. That said there are Salman Rushdie was born in a primarily Hindu culture Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes from a Muslim culture, Epicurus and some of the atheistic ancient Greeks came out of Pagan culture. On top of that, most of the major atheist thinkers throughout history and the history of opposition to religion finds its roots firmly in Enlightenment thinking.

There was once a time when everybody believed in God and the Church ran everything, it was called the Dark Ages. If democracy and secularism and Enlightenment freedoms were the result of Christian thought, why didn't they arise during the dark ages? Today in Europe there are a number of quite secular countries that are majority atheist and have the highest standards of living in Europe. Denmark, Sweden, etc score the lowest rates of violent crime, the lowest rates of infant mortality, the highest rankings as far as happiness, and some of the lowest numbers in religiosity. Likewise the United States has some of the highest infant mortality, the highest violent crime rate, the lowest levels of education, some terrible societal happiness scores and the highest religiosity. And even between individual states we find that the states with the highest religiosity have the highest infant mortality, the lowest education, and the highest crime rates. Much of history and social science seems to tell us that religion doesn't go hand in hand with happier people or healthier people. In fact, it seems rather clearly as if the more atheistic peoples of the world might have better idea of how best to live as a functional society.

There do seem to be some ways to live that are notably better and more conducive to good people than others. It may be true that putting women in burkas and preventing them from leaving the house without a male escort might lead to a more peaceful society, but I don't think it will, and I think that such things could be measured and quantified and some people may not have good things to say about the topic. We don't listen to the Taliban on subjects like genetic engineering or quantum physics because generally we don't think they have any good ideas on the subject. Likewise they may well not have good ideas when it comes to suggestions on how best to live as a happy healthy people, and furthermore it seems that the suggestions of religion might well be equally problematic and not conducive to living a good life, after all people who live according to the Bible seem to do notably worse than those who try to live a good life and do right by their fellow man.

To wit, it might be a bit of a better world if you weren't a jackass. And somehow I tend to think that you feel it's your prerogative to be a jackass because of religion, because certainly living a good life and doing right by your fellow man would notably exclude being a jackass.

I wish there was some easy job that involved detailed replies requiring a lot of information about a lot of different things to give snarky replies to jackasses on the internet. Somehow I think I'd be better off building super-intelligent robots to do my bidding. That's just my fall back plan for now.

Scholarly papers on TV shows...

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in't!

What Has Your Free Will Gotten You?

It's sort of strange that some analysis of TV shows are absolutely fantastic, but I suppose I did one read a collection of essays about Firefly and was floored by Mercedes Lackey's take on the problem of providing food and support to the outer colonies and the need for black market trade.

Pope's in hot water. Republicans buy things. And life is fine...

Sorry I've been a bit down on my blogging duties. Nothing's really caught my eye. There are plenty of interesting stories out there, but few I care enough to echo around to my two or three readers.



... let them eat awesome.

Jesus Loves Me.

Ah, godless parodies. They are great.

Sam Harris is back and lucid.

Asimov and the Relativity of Wrong

I love this Asimov essay so much. I've been pimping it for years. I love it so much, I love videos about the essay. When ever somebody has a misconception about science or the nature of science, I am quick to toss the essay because it's great (even back 5 years ago and such). It's a great argument and it really does address the rather strange flaw in people's understanding of the way science works.

Peter Hitchens Book

The ten commandments are a thorn in my side and hinders my plan to be the sole source of good? WTF?

How stupid is that? If I draw a picture of a horse my great great grandkids are doomed as God will visit the iniquity of my sins on to even the 4th generation, is somehow a thorn in my side? Seriously? The ten commandments are barbaric, and just because he "can say so" doesn't mean he's right in so saying.

Chris Hitches buys into a lot of insane nonsense and God just happens to not be one of them. However defending Communism (back in the day) or right wing neoconservatism today are not far from the same general failures of logic. A plague on both their houses for various reasons but largely Peter seems to be a little slow on the uptick.

Do you know what "Under God" in the pledge is intended to convey?

According to the recent 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision on Newdow v. Rio Linda Unified School District, it means that we have a limited form of government. That's right, being "under God" means that our government is limited, it draws a stark contrast to those totalitarian theocracies which are not very limited forms of government. I know this doesn't make much sense, but the entire majority decision in question doesn't make a lot of sense. Apparently if you pass legislation which specifically adds two words which seem roughly religious and serving a religious purpose it's really about limited government.

Congressman Rabaut:

From the root of atheism stems the evil weed of communism and its branches of materialism and political dictatorship. Unless we are willing to affirm our belief in the existence of God and His creator-creature relation to man, we drop man himself to the significance of a grain of sand and open the floodgates to tyranny and oppression.

Congressman Bolton:

The significant import of our action today . . . is that we are officially recognizing once again this Nation’s adherence to our belief in a divine spirit, and that henceforth millions of our citizens will be acknowledging this belief every time they pledge allegiance to our flag.

 To put it bluntly, no judge familiar with the history of the Pledge could in good conscience believe, as today’s majority purports to do, that the words “under God” were inserted into the Pledge for any purpose other than an explicitly and predominantly religious one: “to recognize the power and the universality of God in our pledge of allegiance;” to “acknowledge the dependence of our people, and our Government upon the moral direction and the restraints of religion,” 100 Cong. Rec. 7590-91 (1954); and to indoctrinate schoolchildren in the belief that God exists, id. at 5915, 6919. Nor could any judge familiar with controlling Supreme Court precedent seriously deny that carrying out such an indoctrination in a public school classroom unconstitutionally forces many young children either to profess a religious belief antithetical to their personal views or to declare themselves through their silence or nonparticipation to be protesting nonbelievers, thereby subjecting themselves to hostility and ridicule.

Nope. Hogwash. According to the majority it means that we have a limited form of government. Yes, because "Under God" conveys to "Godless Communists" who are "Atheistic" and "Atheist Americans is a contradiction in terms" we are to take the fact that people who expressly said this added the words "Under God" to the pledge to convey how limited our government is.

http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/03/11/05-17257.pdf
You know, school is hard enough without being outed as an atheist by a silly recited pledge hijacked by religious fervor in the 1950s to force children to be told that their parents beliefs are wrong and that God and patriotism go hand in hand.

To recite the pledge is not to describe the United States; instead it is to swear allegiance to the values for which the flag stands: unity, indivisibility, liberty, justice and -- since 1954 -- monotheism

-- 9th Circuit decision in Newdow v. Elk Ridge

Feynman, the scientific method and evolution.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but science is an evolutionary algorithm. And I love how well Feynman's explanation of science fits into the algorithm itself.

Guess -> Compute consequences of guess -> Agrees with reality?

If it fails to agree with experiment, the guess is absolutely wrong, even if it's beautiful. That's very closely akin to the typical algorithm employed by biology:

Mutation -> Develop organism out of DNA -> Dies?

If it fails to thrive, the mutation was less fit. The fact is that without the unforgiving nature of science or the unforgiving nature of nature, things don't work at all.

B.C. or BCE, a plague on both their houses

If you're not going to correct a damned thing, then don't change it. There should be one number and it should be positive or negative. Something like "astronomical year" and replace 1B.C. with a fracking 0. The lack of a year zero is a pretty critical problem in the calendar system. We teach kids good basic math involving zeros and negative numbers and telling them that Julius Caesar was born in year -43 (AY) rather than 44 BC is a far better idea. Then if you talk about things that happened in 111 AD or rather 111AY then can properly know that there are 154 years between those two dates rather than tell them 44BC to 111 AD and have them say 155 and let some snooty bastards correct them, or just remain wrong. I know a few places that are wrong about such things. I've seen it said that there's a ten year gap between 4BC (before which Matthew (and a phrase in Luke) suggests Jesus was born, via Herod the Great) and 6AD (during which Luke suggests Jesus was born). When in reality there's a 9 year gap. I've also seen some people claim that based on Ussher's calculation the universe was created in 4004 BC and thus (this being 2010) is 6014 years old. When in reality the correct answer is that according to that the universe is only 6012 year and 5 months. Because it is not beyond October (when Ussher said it was created) and because there's no year 0.
I was going to link to an example of the problem as the site...
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/jesus_born.html
... used to say 10 years.
I sent them an email, and I guess they fixed it.

Now I just wish I could tell the people at Talk Origins that Galen was a Roman scientist.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CJ/CJ533.html

ATM error, nom nom nom $80

This ATM jammed giving me a chunk of cash, and seemed to be unable to roll out the money properly and I grabbed as much as I could but the damned thing ate $80 before I could grab it. It was rather strange to say the least and now I have to go back tomorrow to ask for my money. Hrmf.

It was kind of weird. I suppose it's also strange that gussied-up vending machines that give out money don't screw up that often. Other than once adding a zero (which I might have just pressed anyhow) and giving me $600 rather than $60 dollars, they seem to be very reliable machines... and then they strike. 

Smut for Smut...

Some other groups have had fiction for fiction booths, but rarely does it get any press.

It seems like right-wing news is the only place to carry such things. The Washington sign protest wouldn't have been remotely successful if there wasn't a tizzy against it.  And those silly bus campaigns are always rather banal but good for a story or two.

It's good to see such things balloon up.

What if your wrong, south park style.

It's considerably better than the previous South Park style Richard Dawkins that was actually done by the South Park folks. And has a lot to recommend it, but the strangest thing is why do people like this? I saw this years ago as part of a Q and A in a pretty straight forward talk/reading. It sounded boiler-plate to me but it seems to have be rehashed and rehashed and is much beloved.