There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good- will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us. --David Hume*
On Wednesday, my colleague Maggie and I went to an advance screening of Ben Stein's upcoming documentary, Expelled: No intelligence allowed. It purports to be about threats to academic freedom, but it seemed more like a pro-religion, pro-intelligent design propaganda film that looks like a bad Michael Moore rip-off.
By The Science Channel
When you're sick you may feel that certain body parts are more trouble than they're worth. And in some cases, you'd be right. While the human body has evolved and adapted significantly since the caveman days, a few biological traces of our prehistoric ancestors still remain with us in the form of freeloading body parts we lug around with us, but have no use for.
Take a gander at the top offenders!
10. Plica semilunaris
You may not know it, but you have a third eyelid. Pull open the two more noticeable eyelids and take a look -- it's located right in the corner by the tear duct. This small third eyelid is left over from what's known as a "nictitating membrane," which is still present in full form in some animals including chickens, lizards and sharks.
9. Body hair
No doubt we were once hairier. Up until about 3 million years ago, we were covered with body hair. But by the time Homo erectus arrived, the ability to sweat meant we could shed our woolly ways.
8. Sinuses
Doctors don't really know much about sinuses -- only that we have a lot of them. Possibilities for their function range from insulating our eyes to changing the pitch and tone of our voice.
7. Adenoids
Adenoids trap bacteria, but they're also prone to swelling and infection. Just ask any 7-year-old. Luckily, our adenoids shrink with age and are often removed, along with ...
6. Tonsils
Also prone to swelling and infection. If you still have them when you reach your 30s, it's almost an accomplishment.
5. Coccyx
More useful as a game-winning Scrabble word than as part of the anatomy, the coccyx or tailbone, is made up of several fused vertebrae left over from the olden days when we had tails.
4. Arrector pili
When we were hairier (see No. 9), the arrector pili made the hairs stand on end when we needed to appear bigger and scarier. Now, it just gives us goose bumps.
3. Wisdom teeth
Back in the day, when we ate mammoth meat off the bone and didn't floss afterward, our teeth tended to fall out. Therefore, when those reserve molars, aka "wisdom teeth," came in, they were welcomed. Nowadays, fluoride and dental plans have made them just a huge pain.
2. Appendix
Darwin claimed the appendix was useful for digestion during our early plant-eating years; it's dwindled down to little since we started eating more digestible foods.
1. Male nipples
Because, why?
If you are an educated Christian, I would like to talk with you today about an important and interesting question. Have you ever thought about using your college education to think about your faith? Your life and your career demand that you behave and act rationally. Let’s apply your critical thinking skills as we discuss 10 simple questions about your religion.
Here is an example of the kind of thing I am talking about: As a Christian, you believe in the power of prayer. According to a recent poll, 3 out of 4 doctors believe that God is performing medical miracles on earth right now. Most Christians believe that God is curing cancers, healing diseases, reversing the effects of poisons and so on.
So here is question 1: Why won’t God heal amputees?
It’s a simple question, isn’t it? We all know that amputated legs do not spontaneously regenerate in response to prayer. Amputees get no miracles from God.
If you are an intelligent person, you have to admit that it’s an interesting question On the one hand, you believe that God answers prayers and performs miracles. On the other hand, you know that God completely ignores amputees when they pray for miracles.
How do you deal with this discrepancy? As an intelligent person, you have to deal with it, because it makes no sense. In order to handle it, notice that you have to create some kind of rationalization. You have to invent an excuse on God’s behalf to explain this strange fact of life. You might say, "well, God must have some kind of special plan for amputees." So you invent your excuse, whatever it is, and then you stop thinking about it because it is uncomfortable.
Here is another example. As a Christian, you believe that God cares about you and answers your prayers.
So the second question is: Why are there so many starving people in our world?
Look out at our world and notice that millions of children are dying of starvation. It really is horrific. Why would God be worried about you getting a raise, while at the same time ignoring the prayers of these desperate, innocent little children? It really doesn’t make any sense, does it? Why would a loving god do this?
To explain it, you have to come up with some sort of very strange excuse for God. Like, "God wants these children to suffer and die for some divine, mysterious reason." Then you push it out of your mind because it absolutely does not fit with your view of a loving, caring God.
Third question: Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible? Look up these verses:
- Exodus 35:2 – God demands that we kill everyone who works on the Sabbath day.
- Deuteronomy 21:18-21 – God demands that we kill disobedient teenagers.
- Leviticus 20:13 – God demands the death of homosexuals.
- Deuteronomy 22:13-21 – God demands that we kill girls who are not virgins when they marry.
And so on… There are lots of verses like these.
It doesn’t make any sense, does it? Why would a loving God want us to murder our fellow human beings over such trivial matters? Just because you work on the wrong day of the week, you must die? That makes no sense, does it? In fact, if you think about it, you realize that it is insane. So you create some kind of rationalization to explain these verses.
Question 4: Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense? You have a college degree, so you know what I’m talking about. You know how science works. You happily use the products of science every day: your car, your cell phone, your microwave oven, your TV, your computer. These are all products of the scientific process. You know that science is incredibly important to our economy and to our lives.
But there is a problem. As an educated person you know that the Bible contains all sorts of information that is total nonsense from a scientific perspective.
- God did not create the world in 6 days 6,000 years ago like the Bible says.
- There was never a worldwide flood that covered Mt. Everest like the Bible says.
- Jonah did not live inside a fish’s stomach for three days like the Bible says.
- God did not create Adam from a handful of dust like the Bible says.
These stories are all nonsense. Why would an all-knowing God write nonsense? It makes no sense, does it? So you create some type of very strange excuse to try to explain why the Bible contains total nonsense.
Question 5: Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible? Look up these Bible verses:
- Exodus 21:20-21 – God says that it is OK to own slaves, and it is also OK to beat them.
- Colossians 3:22-24 – Slaves need to obey their masters.
- Ephesians 6:5 – Slaves need to obey their masters just as they would obey Christ.
- 1 Peter 2:18 – Slaves need to obey their masters, even if their masters are harsh .
And so on…
And why do all intelligent people abhor slavery and make it completely illegal? You have to come up with some kind of weird rationalization to explain it.
Question 6: Why do bad things happen to good people? That makes no sense. You have created an exotic excuse on God’s behalf to rationalize it.
Question 7: Why didn’t any of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence? It’s very strange, isn’t it? You have created an excuse to rationalize it.
Question 8: How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? Jesus is all-powerful and timeless, but if you pray for Jesus to appear, nothing happens. You have to create a weird rationalization to deal with this discrepancy.
Question 9 – Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood? It sounds totally grotesque, doesn’t it? Why would al all-powerful God want you to do something that, in any other context, sounds like a disgusting, cannibalistic, satanic ritual?
And finally, Question 10 – Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians? Christians get married in front of God and their Christian friends, all of whom are praying to God for the marriage to succeed. And then they say, "What God has put together, let no man put asunder." God is all-powerful, so if God has put two people together that should seal the deal, right? Yet Christians get divorced at the same rate as everyone else. To explain this, you have to create some convoluted rationalization.
So, we have looked at 10 fascinating questions. In order to believe in God, you have had to create all sorts of strange rationalizations and excuses. If you are an intelligent, college-educated person, all of these excuses and rationalizations probably make you uncomfortable. If you think about it honestly, using the critical thinking skills that you learned in college, you have to admit that your answers to these questions make no sense at all.
Now, let me show you something remarkable. What if you instead assume that God is imaginary? A funny thing happens: the answers to every one of these questions make complete sense. Just look at all ten questions as an intelligent person:
1) Why won’t God heal amputees? Because God is imaginary, and he doesn’t answer any prayers. Every "answered prayer" is actually a coincidence. All scientific evidence supports this conclusion.
2) Why are there so many starving people in our world? Because God is imaginary, and he is therefore unable to answer their prayers.
3) Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible? Because God is imaginary, and the Bible was written by ridiculous, ruthless men rather than any sort of loving being.
4) Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense? Ditto. Primitive men wrote the bible, not an all-knowing being.
5) Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery? Ditto.
6) Why do bad things happen to good people? Because God is imaginary and bad things happen at the same statistical rates to everyone.
7) Why didn’t any of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence? Because God is imaginary, and Jesus’ miracles are myths.
8) How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? Because God is imaginary.
9) Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood? Because God is imaginary, and this bizarre ritual came from a pagan religion.
10) Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians? Because God is imaginary.
Do you see what has happened here? When we assume that God exists, the answers to these ten questions make absolutely no sense. But if we assume that God is imaginary, our world makes complete sense.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Actually, it’s more than interesting – it is incredibly important.
Our world only makes sense when we understand that God is imaginary.
This is how intelligent, rational people know that God is imaginary.
When you use your brain, and when you think logically about your religious faith, you can reach only one possible conclusion: the "god" that you have heard about since you were an infant is completely imaginary. You have to willfully discard rationality, and accept hundreds of bizarre rationalizations to believe in your "god."
Now, let me ask you one last question: Why should you care? What difference does it make if people want to believe in a "god", even if he is imaginary?
It matters because people who believe in imaginary beings are delusional.
It matters because people who talk to imaginary beings are delusional.
It matters because people who believe in imaginary superstitions like prayer are delusional.
It’s that simple, and that obvious. Your religious beliefs hurt you personally and hurt us as a species because they are delusional. The belief in any "god" is complete nonsense.
You are a smart person. It is time for you to use your intelligence to free yourself from these delusions. It is time for you to begin thinking like a rational human being, rather than clinging to imaginary friends and childhood fantasies.
I am not sure what to make of the message in the video...never the less, it is funny as hell.
MOSCOW - Seven women who had holed up in a cave for months with other members of a Russian cult awaiting the end of the world emerged Friday night and were being treated by emergency workers, regional officials said.
More than two dozen others remained behind but were expected to come out as early as Saturday, the governor's office said.
About 35 members of the Christian cult entered the cave near the village of Nikolskoye, 400 miles southeast of Moscow, in early November to await the end of the world, which they expected in May. They threatened to detonate gas canisters if police tried to remove them by force.
The vice governor of the Penza region, Oleg Melnichenko, said in televised comments that the seven women came out voluntarily, carrying satchels with their belongings. He said the cult leader, the self-declared prophet Pyotr Kuznetsov, was brought from a local psychiatric hospital to help persuade the women to leave.He said the women walked on their own nearly a mile to a prayer house, where emergency workers were talking with them, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.
"There is no reason to urgently hospitalize any of them," Melnichenko was quoted as saying.
Four children still reported in cave
Another official in the governor's office, who gave only his first name, Alexander, said the other cult members still in the cave were expected to give up their vigil, perhaps by Saturday. He said four children, reportedly under age 2, were among those in the cave.
Melnichenko said officials feared that melting snow could eventually lead to the collapse of the cave, but there was no immediate threat to those who remained behind.
Officials had repeatedly enlisted the help of priests from the Orthodox Church in an effort to persuade the group to leave, communicating mainly through a small chimney pipe that poked up through the snowy hillside.
Earlier this week, Melnichenko told reporters that some of the cult members had indicated they might leave the cave on Orthodox Easter, which is April 27.
Leader in psychiatric hospital
Kuznetsov has been charged with setting up a religious organization associated with violence. Earlier this week, officials said they had seized literature that included what appeared to be extremist rhetoric. He has been confined to a psychiatric hospital since November.
An engineer from a devout family, Kuznetsov, who goes by the title of Father Pyotr, declared himself a prophet several years ago. He left his family and established the True Russian Orthodox Church and recruited followers in Russia and Belarus.
He reportedly told followers that, in the afterlife, they would judge whether others deserved heaven or hell.
Followers were not allowed to watch television, listen to the radio or handle money, Russian media reported.
I just got back from the American Atheist Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I had a great time, and was completely surrounded by the company of intelligent and enlightening personalities. The convention started with an impassioned speech by Ellen Johnson (president of American Atheist). She reminded those present, that we non-believers comprised 11% of the voting population in 2004. She declared that we should remind politicians of our influence and demand that they cater to our voting block (which is larger than the Hispanic and Jewish block).
(Nicole Smalkowski and myself at the convention)
(Discussing the future)
3 Atheist Musicians (Cello - Piano - Cello)
Eddie Tabash gave a variant of his famous 1stAmendment speech – This speech had the whole of those present standing in ovation to his amazing message.
Here is a link to version of it:
Richard Dawkins was of course a crowd favorite. Richard started his speech with a recounting of the Expelled movie screening, he and fellow biologist PZ Meyers attended the previous night. Dawkins announced that PZ Meyers had been expelled from the screening of Expelled! Apparently the film’s producer threatened to have PZ arrested if he attempted to enter the theater. You can read more about that story here:
A few authors present at the convention were Rene Salm and Lawrence Krauss.
Rene’s new book is called The Myth of Nazareth – The invented Town of Jesus. In the book, Mr. Salm claims that new archeology has conclusively shown the town thought to be where Yeshua was born to not have been in existence at the time of his so called birth. It was a very interesting presentation and peeked my interest enough for me to buy the book.
Lawrence Krauss’s presentation was 2nd only to Mr. Tabash at the convention. Krauss is a world renown cosmologist and has recently been featured in Scientific American for his “End of Cosmology” piece. His new book is titled “ Hiding in the Mirror “ and was highly sought after following his humorous but enlightening presentation on the subject of Cosmology.
(Will Lardinois, Margaret Downey and myself)
Last but not least, I have to say the brightest light at the convention was the ever charming and eternally witty – Margaret Downey. Two minutes with the Goddess of Reason can change any man’s life – She is the most openly friendly, charming and intelligent woman I have ever met. Even though this was my second encounter with her, the Siren was just as enthralling as ever.
(36 Oz Fat Tire - L'chayim!)
Overall, it was a great time and I look forward to the AAI convention in Sept.
In reason,
Rich
P.S. This is what happens when your the first to pass out:
From the Huffington Post:
Barack Obama delivered a truly brilliant and inspiring speech this week. There were a few things, however, that he did not and could not (and, indeed, should not) say:
He did not say that the mess he is in has as much to do with religion as with racism--and, indeed, religion is the reason why our political discourse in this country is so scandalously stupid. As Christopher Hitchens observed in Slate months ago, one glance at the website of the Trinity United Church of Christ should have convinced anyone that Obama's connection to Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. would be a problem at some point in this campaign. Why couldn't Obama just cut his ties to his church and move on?
Well, among other inexpediencies, this might have put his faith in Jesus in question. After all, Reverend Wright was the man who brought him to the "foot of the cross." Might the Senator from Illinois be unsure whether the Creator of the universe brought forth his only Son from the womb of a Galilean virgin, taught him the carpenter's trade, and then had him crucified for our benefit? Few suspicions could be more damaging in American politics today.
The stultifying effect of religion is everywhere to be seen in the 2008 Presidential campaign. The faith of the candidates has been a constant concern in the Republican contest, of course--where John McCain, lacking the expected aura of born-again bamboozlement, has been struggling to entice some proper religious maniacs to his cause. He now finds himself in the compassionate embrace of Pastor John Hagee, a man who claims to know that a global war will soon precipitate the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (problem solved). Prior to McCain's ascendancy, we saw Governor Mitt Romney driven from the field by a Creationist yokel and his sectarian hordes. And this, despite the fact that the governor had been wearing consecrated Mormon underpants all the while, whose powers of protection are as yet unrecognized by Evangelicals.
Like every candidate, Obama must appeal to millions of voters who believe that without religion, most of us would spend our days raping and killing our neighbors and stealing their pornography. Examples of well-behaved and comparatively atheistic societies like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark--which surpass us in terrestrial virtues like education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality--are of no interest to our electorate whatsoever. It is, of course, good to know that people like Reverend Wright occasionally do help the poor, feed the hungry, and care for the sick. But wouldn't it be better to do these things for reasons that are not manifestly delusional? Can we care for one another without believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now listening to our thoughts?
Yes we can.
Happily, Obama did a fine job of distancing himself from Reverend Wright's divisive views on racism in America, along with his fatuous "chickens come home to roost" assessment of our war against Islamic terrorism. But he did not (and should not) acknowledge that the worst parts of Reverend Wright's sermons, as with most sermons, are his appeals to the empty hopes and baseless fears of his parishioners--people who could surely find better ways of advancing their interests in this world, if only they could banish the fiction of a world to come.
Obama did not say that religion's effect on our society, and on the black community especially, has been destructive--and where it has seemed constructive it has generally taken the place of better things. Religion unites, motivates, and consoles beleaguered people not with knowledge, but with superstition and false promises. Surely there is a better way to bring people together in the 21st century. The truth is, despite the toothsomeness of his campaign slogan, we are not yet the people we have been waiting for. And if we don't start talking sense to our children, they won't be the ones we are waiting for either.
Obama was surely wise not to mention that Christianity was, without question, the great enabler of slavery in this country. The Confederate soldiers who eagerly laid down their lives at three times the rate of Union men, for the pleasure of keeping blacks in bondage and using them as farm equipment, did so with the conscious understanding that they were doing the Lord's work. After Reconstruction, religion united Southern whites in their racist hatred and the black community in its squalor--inuring men and women on both sides to injustice far more efficiently than it inspired them to overcome it.
The problem of religious fatalism, ignorance, and false hope, while plain to see in most religious contexts, is now especially obvious in the black community. The popularity of "prosperity gospel" is perhaps the most galling example: where unctuous crooks like T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar persuade undereducated and underprivileged men and women to pray for wealth, while tithing what little wealth they have to their corrupt and swollen ministries. Men like Jakes and Dollar, whatever occasional good they may do, are unconscionable predators and curators of human ignorance. Is it too soon to say this in American politics? Yes it is.
Despite all that he does not and cannot say, Obama's candidacy is genuinely thrilling: his heart is clearly in the right place; he is an order of magnitude more intelligent than the current occupant of the Oval Office; and he still stands a decent chance of becoming the next President of the United States. His election in November really would be a triumph of hope.
But Obama's candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason?
Sam Harris is the author "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." He can be reached at www.samharris.org
ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2008) — If you are reading this, you did not start your life by hatching from an egg. This is one of the many traits that you share with our mammalian relatives. A new article explores the genetic changes that led mammals to feed their young via the placenta and with milk, rather then via the egg, and finds that these changes occurred fairly gradually in our evolutionary history. The paper shows that milk-protein genes arose in a common ancestor of all existing mammalian lineages and preceded the loss of the genes that encoded egg proteins. There are three living types of mammals: placental mammals (you, me, dogs, sheep, tigers, etc.), marsupial mammals (found in Australasia and South America, including kangaroos and possums), and monotremes (the duck-billed platypus and two species of Echidna). The reproductive strategies of these three groups are very different. Placental mammals have long pregnancies and complicated placentas that provide nourishment to the embryo, followed by a relatively short period of lactation. Marsupials have a simpler form of placenta and much shorter pregnancies, followed by an extended period where the offspring is fed milk that changes in composition to meet the baby's altering nutritional needs. Monotremes--once a diverse group, but now restricted both in species number and distribution--have a much more reptilian beginning, as they lay eggs filled with yolk. While they do feed their young with milk, it is secreted onto a patch of skin rather then from a teat. How did these different strategies arise from our reptilian ancestors?
A new paper by David Brawand, Walter Wahli, and Henrik Kaessmann investigates the transition in offspring nutrition by comparing the genes of representatives of these three different mammalian lineages with those of the chicken--an egg-laying, milkless control. The authors found that there are similar genetic regions in all three mammalian lineages, suggesting that the genes for casein (a protein found in milk) arose in the mammalian common ancestor between 200 and 310 million years ago, prior to the evolution of the placenta.
Eggs contain a protein called vitellogenin as a major nutrient source. The authors looked for the genes associated with the production of vitellogenin, of which there are three in the chicken. They found that while monotremes still have one functional vitellogenin gene, in placental and marsupial mammals, all three have become pseudogenes (regions of the DNA that still closely resemble the functional gene, but which contain a few differences that have effectively turned the gene off). The gene-to-pseudogene transitions happened sequentially for the three genes, with the last one losing functionality 30-70 million years ago.
Therefore, mammals already had milk before they stopped laying eggs. Lactation reduced dependency on the egg as a source of nutrition for developing offspring, and the egg was abandoned completely in the marsupial and placental mammals in favor of the placenta. This meant that the genes associated with egg production gradually mutated, becoming pseudogenes, without affecting the fitness of the mammalian lineages.
Journal reference: Brawand D, Wahli W, Kaessmann H (2008) Loss of egg yolk genes in mammals and the origin of lactation and placentation. PLoS Biol 6(3): e63. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060063
Machines 'to match man by 2029'
2008 02 19
By Helen Briggs | news.bbc.co.uk
 Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted. Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil. The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health. "It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil explained. "But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us." Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said. Man versus machine "I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said. "We're already a human machine civilisation; we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that." Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence, predicted Mr Kurzweil. "We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons," he told BBC News. The nanobots, he said, would "make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system". Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering. The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter. The 14 challenges were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, which concludes on Monday. Challenges Facing Humanity Make solar energy affordable Provide energy from fusion Develop carbon sequestration Manage the nitrogen cycle Provide access to clean water Reverse engineer the brain Prevent nuclear terror Secure cyberspace Enhance virtual reality Improve urban infrastructure Advance health informatics Engineer better medicines Advance personalised learning Explore natural frontiers |
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ATLAH World Ministries
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Pastors name: James David Manning
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