Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout
From: North Coast Brewing Co. in California, United States
Style: Russian Imperial Stout
overall: 3.2
appearance: 4 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 2.5 | mouthfeel: 4 | drinkability: 3

A- A nice, rich opaque black pour. Not too thick of a head, but a nice soft tan. Doesn’t last long, but keeps a lacing a decent time.

S- A toasted chocolate coffee smell. Rich, deep smell. Not complex, per se, but the notes change as you smell it and as it warms up.

T- Just like it smells, rich chocolate coffee–but a HEAVY toasted nut taste as well. Very bitter, almost burnt nut taste. Like a coffee brewed with ground burnt nuts with a touch of chocolate.

M- Very creamy, rich, thick. Chewable. Bitter on the back of the palate but doesn’t stay around longer than appreciated.

D- Can only handle one, being very thick, stout, filling. You want to drink it slow and savor it (I dare anyone to drink it fast,) which helps that the taste and aroma changes as the temperature changes. Unfortunately it gets TOO bitter toward room temperature.

[ serving type: bottle ]
[ read my online review ]

Someone close to me reminded me, again, and rightfully so, that I’m an angry person when it comes to debunking religion (Christianity in particular), and it appears as though I revel in it. Sincere soul-searching leads me to honestly say: maybe a little.
Yet not because of the subject matter, but whatever pleasure I get out of being an apostate solely comes from the intellectual discovery and revelation involved. And until I started back to grad school, the exploration of the knowledge and facts surrounding religious fallacies was all the intellectual pursuit that I had. Fortunately, I’m starting to be able to engage in intellectual and philosophical debate, growth, and development thanks to my work toward my English MA. However…a great deal of my intended career and educational focus is going to be on cultural studies and likely with some focus on religion. So, there’s more danger ahead.

As I’ve said before, Read the rest of this entry »

John W. Loftus has a post today over on Debunking Christianity in which he highlights a site by a former seminarian: Craig Lee Duckett:

<> 25 Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Christian

As for me, only about 5 of those reasons were enough to bring me away from being a true believer to a non-theist. Although I’d learned about another 10 reasons in the last couple of years since.
Here’s a few of the ones that did it for me:

1) The world simply does not behave the way described in the Bible
4) The concepts of Heaven and Hell are equally morally and ethically reprehensible
5) Historical Evidence shows much of the Old Testament was appropriated from earlier Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Canaanite, & Persian Myths
6) The Account of the Flood and Noah’s Ark bears striking similarities to the Epic of Gilgamesh and other pre-dating Creation/Flood myths
10) The ancient gods and goddesses that were assimilated by the Hebrews to become Elohim EL & Yahweh YHWH
11) Myths of Dying-Resurrecting God-Men Born of Virgins that Pre-Date the Story of the God-Man Jesus
12) The Problem of Evil (Theodicy) and the Hiddenness of God
13) Natural (Empirical/Scientific) vs. Supernatural (Faith/Language-Based) Belief Systems
14) The Gospels are not ‘eyewitness’ accounts but anonymous third-person narratives
15) The ‘Evolution’ of the Christian Canon and Jesus’ Godmanship
17) Archaeology and Biblical claims
22) Examined objectively, the Bible is rife with errors, contradictions, misstatements, and inconsistencies
23) Belief, Doubt, Disbelief and Critical Thinking

The site has each of these reasons linked to a description of what is meant by that reason as well as a reading list to help one learn about it.

I just recently posted a blog article: Jesus didn’t exist. Sorry. in which I go over how the utter lack of any contemporary historical notation of Jesus, his contemporary followers, nor events as described in the gospels, makes the likelihood of Jesus having even been a historical reality extraordinarily slim. This was one of the biggest reasons why stopped believing, and I really only started finding out about the lack of history through listening to Robert M. Price on podcasts. Price also was the one through whom I discovered the ridiculously abundant similarities between the Jesus figure and pre-existing myths, such as Mithras, Dionysus, Horus, etc. (I also talk about that in: Jesus didn’t exist. Sorry.)

I was just working on a new post delving deeper into the history of the Judaic myth, sparked by the horrible intellectual dishonesty I encountered at an adult Sunday School class this last weekend. I hope to have that posted soon. The actual history of the Hebrews, which is significantly different than what is portrayed in just the Old Testament, is quite fascinating!

The Friendly Atheist has a recent article:
<> Questions Your Pastor Will Hate
He links to this site that has a list of questions and typical but altered for humor answers that will drive a pastor crazy.
The author of this page is a former pastor himself–former fundamentalist and now an advocate for helping people recover from pastoral abuse.
<> Questions Your Pastor Will Hate by Dennis Diehl

I like these:

“Why, no matter what, is it always the human’s fault and God never gets any blame for not making good on his promises?” Answer…It’s a mystery. Have faith. God’s ways are not your ways.
.
“Why does the Apostle Paul, who writes most of the New Testament, NEVER quote Jesus, tell a story of his life or death, discuss a miracle or teaching?” Answer…Where do you get this stuff?
.
“Why does neither Mark nor John know anything about Jesus birth, while Matthew and Luke do but tell contradictory stories?” Answer…Because the Gospels are like four people who see a car wreck…
.
“Why does Paul only say Jesus was born of a woman like everyone else?” Answer…Paul was concerned about the risen Jesus, not the earthly one. He was too busy to check up on the details.
.
“Isn’t it strange the man who writes most of the New Testament and tells us all how to live, think and believe about Jesus, never met him, while the Twelve who did, vanish into thin air and write nothing/” Answer…You ain’t from around these parts are you boy.
.
“How could Mary leave town after being warned of Herod’s intentions and never tell the women in the town, their kids were about to be butchered?” Answer…she was under oath not to tell the Angel story.
.
“Do you think Mary thought, ‘I know something you don’t know,’ as she left town?” Answer…you’re sick.

The blog “Classically Liberal” has a post regarding referendums in Massachusetts regarding their same-sex marriage law:
<> Applause for Massachusetts! The hook for Romney.
He discusses how the supporters for overturning and banning same-sex marriage laws want a general vote of the issue of what’s fair for other human beings. I like this take:

The argument has been that the public should vote, it’s only fair. Why? Why is it fair for majorities to vote on whether or not minorities should have the same rights as them? Should a town with a majority population of fundamentalist Baptists be allowed a vote on whether Catholic marriages would be recognized? When it comes to equality before the law, on any issue, is it ever proper for the majority to have the opportunity to deny this equality of rights to a minority? Could a majority white state deny rights to black people? O’Malley’s political lobbying statement would seem to indicate he’d support that.

And that brings me to this article on The Friendly Atheist:
<> Christians Won Court Case; Now Upset About Aftermath
He talks about a case of a school that was forced under pressure by a Religious Right group to be allowed to send home with kids religious based information under the auspice of “being fair.” However, now pagan and atheist groups are using this ruling to also send their materials home from school as well–and the religious Right don’t like that.
(Another good article on this issue:
<> Backpack Blowback: Religious Right Activists Want Preferential Treatment From Public School Forum They Created)

So the question is who decides what’s “fair”? How in a democracy do we decide fairness for all people? Is voting not the proper, democratic way? But isn’t that inherently unfair when deciding things for the minority, as discussed above?
One answer, from a legal point of view, is not to make ANY laws regarding how people live their lives. (Aside, obviously, for behaviors that harm others such as murder, robbery, etc.) Why make any laws regarding marriage, for example, unless it’s to control behavior some people with political clout dislikes? Personally, I couldn’t care less if someone has multiple wives (or husbands) assuming it’s completely consensual. (Some of these fanatic Mormon cult-like marriages absolutely fall outside of consensual decisions, especially the cases when teens are being forced to marry men not of their choosing, etc.) There was a time when people of mixed races were legally prevented from marrying. That was a result of religiously pressured political maneuvers. Shouldn’t that be avoided? Shouldn’t that not even be a possibility, legalizing and criminalizing behavior that doesn’t harm or even affect another person outside of the consensual decisions of those directly involved?

Two interesting blog entries I read this week, one with some old news put in a very compelling way, but another that took the topic of secular “belief” and closely examines it. But first, the fundamentalism topic to get that out of the way….

Valerie at Debunking Christianity has a short post:
<> Harris Hedges Debate
In it, she discusses a debate had between the author of Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris) and the author of American Fascists:The Christian Right and the War on America (Hedges). The crux of the argument is that Harris believes religion innately creates violence and divisiveness, while Hodges contends that only the fundamental factions of religion are responsible for the crimes of religion.
What Harris says, and Valarie agrees with, is that fundamentalism is simply one facet of a flawed and fundamentally brutal and superstitious belief system. Religion will have its moderates and liberals, sure–but as long as there is belief in religions that come from an ancient, barbaric people who advocated great violence and intolerance–violent and intolerant fundamentalists will always exist as an active component of religious belief.

Valarie makes a fantastic point:

As a psychologist, I find it fascinating that so many smart people refuse to admit in public (or perhaps to themselves) that we need to scrap our tribal traditions and rework our sacred texts if we are to serve peace, love, and life itself. Rather, they try to redefine Jehovah or Allah or Christianity or Islam, so that the evil flows not from these constructs but from something outside of them. They sing the praises of belief while denying its power.

She has her own book that looks interesting: The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.

The other topic is that of secular religion, as discussed in the Skeptico post:
<> Adopting Secular Religions (Or Not)
This article talks about a critic of those who attack faith, a Karl Reitz, and his belief that eliminating religious belief will only lead to secular religions–such as was seen with Stalinist Communism, Maoism, Nazi fascism, etc.

Religious defenders often use Communism and Nazism as examples of atheism, and the horrors and crimes atheism propagates. Of course they ignore that the majority of the Nobel Prize winners have been atheists (and agnostics. But they also don’t get what Reitz is talking about in his criticisms: Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Pol Pot, et. al., created cults of personality around themselves and their ideologies. They created, in effect, secular religions. Stalinist Communism wasn’t a result of atheism or even an example of an atheistic society–it was one religion being replaced by another. It was a mass of people absolving themselves of reason and critical thinking, and replacing the blind faith in a god with blind faith in Stalin and Lenin and the Soviet Union. And that’s what Reitz believes will happen when ancient religions are finally gone.

However, the article on Skeptico reveals his argument to be a false dilemma. He believes it’s an either-or situation: believe either in ancient superstition or atrocious secular fascism. There’s a third option: neither. Putting trust in the scientific method, in reason, and critical thinking. When people do that, even godless fascists can’t win. As this quote from the article explains:

Secular leaders such as Stalin or Mao could only stay in power and keep their “faith” alive with an iron fist. Such measures, contrary to the will of the people, are ultimately doomed to fail no matter how brutally they are applied. Contrast that with (for example) Islam. Muslims didn’t have to be forced by their leaders to riot in the streets to protest the Muhammad cartoons and demand an end to free speech; they did it because they believed God wanted them to. That’s why Islam is still going strong after 1,300 years (and Christianity after 2,000 years), while the Soviet Union collapsed in about 70.

I’m coming to the end of tirades against superstitious religious beliefs. If you notice, there were weeks not long ago I didn’t say anything–and there were many opportunities to do so: Jerry Falwell’s death, the Creation Museum opening, the stoning of a girl in the Middle East just like the Jews were commanded to do 3000 years ago (wait, I think I did talk about that one.) In any case, it’s getting to become a non-issue for me (until the next religious murder comes about, I suppose.)

But I do feel compelled to blog an update to the Jesus-as-fiction topic. Mainly because of a recent discovery of the term “midrash”. I’d mentioned before that the first (canonized) gospel, Mark, from which the other three (canonized) gospels are based, have all the hallmarks of storytelling, a fiction, and not someone trying to impart history. This is something that many Biblical scholars, including one of the members of the Jesus Seminar, Robert M. Price, have concluded. I wrote about this in my entry:
<> Did Jesus Exist?
But if this word, midrash, was used in my studying the topic, which surely is must have been!, I missed it until recently.

I found it in this article: The ‘Gospels’ are ‘Midrash’.
Midrash is: “Any of a group of Jewish commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures compiled between A.D. 400 and 1200 and based on exegesis, parable, and haggadic legend.” (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition).
Or, more precise:

Some Midrash discussions are highly metaphorical, and many Jewish authors stress that they are not intended to be taken literally. Rather, other midrashic sources may sometimes serve as a key to particularly esoteric discussions. Later authors maintain that this was done to make this material less accessible to the casual reader and prevent its abuse by detractors.
-Wikipedia

The purpose of midrash was to teach about the Mosaic Law in the form of parable, or story. A Judaic form of fiction, even entertainment, that is based on religious teaching. Why are the gospels likely this kind of fiction? There’s the similarity Mark has with other midrashic stories in form and function, but also, because the evidence for the actual existence of Jesus as a historical figure is completely lacking when, if the gospels are true, there should be as much contemporary evidence for Jesus as there is for Julius Caesar. yet, there’s not one iota.

I started a couple of years ago with this article: “Did Jesus Exist.” In it the author discusses various contemporary historians who lived at the time of Jesus who make no mention of Christ or his followers.
Then I heard interviews with Robert M. Price and his discussions of various “pagan” mythical figures that predate Jesus and contain the same elements of his story, from virgin birth and visitation by kings (elements, which by the way, don’t exist in Mark,) to crucifixion and resurrection to save the world! I discuss these figures like Dionysus, Horus, Mithras, in the articles: “Jesus in ancient Greece and Egypt?” and “Jesus-Come-Lately; God, the Sower of Confusion“. But the best accumulated information of the absurdly blatant non-existent evidence for Jesus when, according to the gospels it should be rampant, is this Web page:

<> A Silence That Screams- (No contemporary historical accounts for “jesus)

It is a very detailed account of the events in the Bible which would demand notice (crowds and crowds of followers, so many Jesus has to stand in a lake, has to feed multitudes, crowds line his path with palm leaves, miracles are performed and word of his coming passes from town to town, people healed and risen from the dead, people have to be lowered down to him from temple roofs, the heads of the Jewish people summon him, the king of Judea for goodness’ sake has audience with this great religious prophet and leader, the Roman governor sees him twice and has him executed in place of a murderer (these last three, Herod, Pilate, and the Pharisees, were heavily recorded by contemporary historians,) earthquakes occurred and the sun goes dark and dead people rise from the dead–all of this in the gospels and NONE of it is recorded by contemporary historians. Not one jot.

Now, we know absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You can’t prove someone didn’t exist. But what does Occam’s Razor seem to indicate here? You have a book, a collection of religious stories written by people with an agenda to spread a religious faith, about a man who by all accounts was ridiculously famous and dangerous, and caused a great many events both natural and supernatural to occur. Yet, his birth, life, death, and resurrection all mirror existing myth from Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Sumeria.
On the other hand, there is no record from any of the historians of the time of any of these events.
What can one safely assume?

The religious response would (and generally is) something like this:
The Devil arranged to have those similar myths exist centuries before Jesus’ appearance in order to sow confusion and doubt.
The Devil blinded all the historians to the truth going on around them in order to sow confusion and doubt.

Here’s my response: Wow, what a powerful and awesome character the devil must be! Must be much more powerful than God. After all, God is supposed to be a loving, just, merciful father in heaven who WANTED us to know Jesus, right? He so loved the world that he sent him here to be killed for us (why exactly? How does that work? Sorry–tangent…) and wanted the message to be spread all over the world so everyone would be saved! But if the devil can sow so much confusion and doubt in God’s creation, the devil MUST be more powerful than God!
Or else, God really doesn’t care.
Which is it??

Instead of some debate regarding which ancient, supernatural character is more powerful or involved in the world, characters that suspiciously only exist in one particular religious faith that came out of one particular piece of land on this Earth–isn’t it more reasonable that it’s all myth? Just as Pele, Odin, Horus, Zeus, Athena, Thor, The Great Spirit, Vishnu, Bahmet, Baal, The Coyote, Jupiter, Mithras, are all myths?

As John Loftus has said in: “What would convince me Christianity is true?” and other articles, a loving and involved God chose a VERY poor, if not the worst possible method to get his message of love and salvation out–a historical document (viz a vis, the Bible.) A book written by ancient people in very primitive and superstitious times. God, in his infinite wisdom, chose a book written in a time in which disease was thought to be caused by supernatural agents and the sun revolved around the Earth, to be the agent of his word? Seriously?

For the believer, it all comes down to a willful hold on what they would call faith. Faith is the belief of something unseen, and I support faith. I have faith. But the belief in something patently absurd is delusion. For the Christian, you’re asked to believe in:

• The validity of a book that on the one hand professes great love and forgiveness while at the same time commanding killing your family for lack of belief, killing your children if they’re disobedient, killing the victim of rape in a town, advocates slavery and selling daughters (including to their rapist.)
• The validity of a book that claims the Earth was created several thousand years ago, despite the fact human civilization (not even talking about prehistoric animals here, but actual humans,) existed for tens of thousands of years. And the entire world was repopulated by a boat holding everything from the Australian koala to the American coyote despite absolutely no evidence for it (not tomention its just plain biological/mathematical/physical impossibility.)
• That we’re to be blamed and punished for a) the sin of Adam, or b) being created the way we are by God, with the desires and drives and cravings God created in us, and put in a world God created. That we’re doomed to hell by default by a loving and just God, for being the humans he created in the first place given the capability and motives to commit “sin” which he put in us.
• That the only way to avoid hell is believe in a book–because that’s the ONLY way you’ll find out about Yahweh, Jesus, sin, and salvation. Because God decided a book was the best way to show his just and forgiving love, as there’s no way you can learn about these things without coming in contact with a book that didn’t exist before 2000 years ago, in a small patch of dirt, and spread slowly around the world by the hands of men.

The liberal Christian would say, in contradiction to the Bible in both word and spirit, the Bible is right only in places, is poetry in others, is not the only way to God, etc. That’s all rationalizing, to hold onto a belief they were raised into by the luck of the time and place of their birth. The only reason Christianity is the predominate religion of America is by the very human dynamic of it being the last official religion of the Roman Empire as it spread its beliefs across Europe at the point of a spear. Again, the preferred means of spreading the ONLY word of love and forgiveness by an all-powerful god?!

If the Bible truly is valid in only places, who picks and choses? The advocating slavery and genocide and racism, and killing family members–OK, we’ve learned that’s immoral (in spite of what the absolute source of morality says,) so, what other parts are wrong? The sexism and relegating women to property? The homosexuality? The miracles? The Jesus story? If the book is party right and wrong, who knows; if it’s a book about a Sumerian turned Hebrew god(s); and a “son” who has no evidence of even existing; and is spread not through supernatural love for the world but by the hand (and sometimes fist) of humans–why have faith in its “rightness”? Why?!

It makes no sense to me. There is so much more to have faith in, to have belief in, than a Bronze Age myth from a superstitious time, which has no more validity to it than the religious beliefs of the Aztecs nor the Australian Aboriginals. Faith and belief in the human spirit. In our natural goodness and abilities. In our advances and our curiosity, and the discoveries they reveal! The progress they lead to. In love and empathy we’re capable of. When one spends so much time trying to live for an imaginary friend, study the words of an ancient and barbaric people, you miss out on living for reality. Reality is so much more interesting than schizophrenic book about a psychotic god.

(I’m posting a few things today, so be sure to scroll down and take a look at my other posts today: The existence and morality exist w/o the need for deity, Religion and deteriorating societies, and Steampunk magazine.)

So last night was the first episode of the new reality show: “Pirate Master“, from the makers of “Survivor.” I’m a huge pirate fan, so of course I had to watch it.

I’m not a “Survivor” fan. I did watch the very first season, back when “reality TV” was new and interesting, and found it fascinating! Then the second season, I stopped watching after a few episodes, and now I don’t watch any “reality show” that throws some random mix of people together into some contrived situation (like “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” and the like.) However, I do occasionally watch the odd reality program that is either pseudo-documentary-like and involves a pre-existing “cast” (such as “Work-Out“) or puts together people who have a shared talent who are in competition to win something that is directly related to their shared skill instead of just a money prize (such as “Project Runway” and my favorite: Food TV’s “The Next Food Network Star“). Granted, these shows are also often plagued with excruciatingly annoying people and embarrassingly stupid personal conflicts and issues which are the reasons I don’t watch “Survivor” and “Amazing Race” and “The Apprentice,” but the context of the competition based on a shared talent and skill (like clothing designer or chef,) makes up for the rest.

In any case, because of this I was very apprehensive about this Survivor-on-a-pirate-ship series. Especially when the first few minutes revealed one of the contestants was a “Scientist/Exotic Dancer” (oh puh-leeze!) with a really whacked-out idea of what makes for a mysterious appearance. Yikes. However, the show ended up to be rather entertaining. The challenge for the first episode was piratey, and had an interesting twist to sabotage the opposing team.
Also surprising was the inclusion of a couple of nods to actual pirate culture. For example, the winning one of the two teams elected the ship’s captain–which was the actual way in which pirate captains (in general) lead their ships. Pirate ships were little bastions of democracy in that they elected in and out their captains. However, in the TV show, they made the captain and his two hand selected “officers” into something of a naval ship’s way of operating. That is, the captain commanded the entire ship and his officers were second in command, and that’s not real pirate tradition. The “captain” on a pirate ship generally was only in charge of the military aspects of the ship–the attacks upon ships and raids upon targets on shore. When it came to the day-to-day operations of a ship, the man in charge was the ship’s pilot. In fact, oftentimes, the pilot outranked (so much as the idea of “rank” was observed on pirate ships) the captain. But in most cases, the captain, pilot, and the ship itself received an equal share of treasure acquired (the “ship’s share” was the funds needed for supplies and repairs.)

Some ships would have “officers” of a sort in the form of sergeant-at-arms who carried out the orders of the captain and/or pilot, and a quartermaster and/or carpenter who were/was in charge of stocking, repairing, and maintaining the ship. They usually received either equal share to the captain and pilot or something in between them and the rest of the men. In the TV show, the captain received half the loot! In actuality it was usually divided as: the men got 1 share, the captain and pilot and “officers” received 2 or 3 shares at most. Although, actually I am OK with their giving the captain half since he’s expected to use it for bribes and payments and other ways which may add to the dramatic element of the show–and that’s cool. Oh, and back to the ship’s democracy, the crew on the TV show can actually, if it’s unanimous, vote the captain off the ship, and that’s cool.

The show is edited in such a way as to make it appear as though the contestants (and the host I guess) are the only people on the ship (which is a real barque class ship.) I was wondering if that was all “magic of TV” and in fact they did no actual work on the ship and a real crew did everything, and in fact if the ship actual sailed at all. However, I’ve found non-CBS affiliated sites that confirm the contestants actually did do a lot of work sailing and maintaining the ship–even though, of course, there was a real crew doing the important work. Like this page written by the real captain of the ship the show was filmed on:
<> The Picton Castle’s Very Own Pirate’s Passage Through the Caribbean
It adds, for me, to the enjoyment of the show knowing the contestants actually did work and perform some of the duties actual pirates would have done.

So, I’m looking forward to this series; I hope it fulfills the promise I see in it so far.

(I’m posting a few things today, so be sure to scroll down and take a look at my other posts today: Religion and deteriorating societies, and Steampunk magazine.)
A couple of recent posts on The Friendly Atheist are rather good–and both are content from other people, so this is like 3rd level hearsay.

From: <>Oh no! Mommy’s Going To Yell At Me! is a link to The Atheistic Rights and Responsibilities, reprinted here w/o permission:

As a moral atheist you have a number of rights and responsibilities. These include (but are not limited to):

1. Have no gods.

2. Don’t worship stuff.

3. Be polite.

4. Take a day off once in a while.

5. Be nice to folks.

6. Don’t kill people.

7. Don’t cheat on your significant other.

8. Don’t steal stuff.

9. Don’t lie about stuff.

10. Don’t be greedy.

Remember, theists may condemn you for living by this code because you are doing it of your own free will instead of because you’re afraid that if you don’t a supreme being will set you on fire.

The other post is <>The Evidence Available in Our Universe Shows That God Really Does Not Exist. In it, he reprints the chair of the First Amendment Task Force for the Council for Secular Humanism’s Eddie Tabash’s evidence for there being no (Christian) god. They’re a summary of the various points that are brought up to Christian apologists to answer, as is their burden of proof–but none ever do satisfactorily. I myself would love to hear some convincing answers to these questions; I know so long as these questions remain unanswered, “belief” in the Christian myth is impossible:

The Evidence Available in Our Universe Shows That God Really Does Not Exist
.
The Supernatural Does Not Exist.

It’s not just that cows don’t jump over skyscrapers, it’s that they physically can’t. Many believers say that science does not rule out the supernatural. Science applies an empirical method of looking at the evidence in our physical world. Upon examination, the scientific method results in rejecting the supernatural claims of religion the same as it results in ruling out all other paranormal claims. The supposed miracles of the Bible do not have any greater claim on reality than do the claims of UFO abductions. In fact, claims of UFO abductions may be more believable than the supernatural assertions of religion, because a visitation from another planet may not require violation of the laws of nature as do supposed Biblical miracles.

.
Miracles Didn’t Happen Then and Don’t Happen Now.

If miracles occurred in Biblical times, why don’t they occur now? It is highly suspect to claim that all the shock and awe stuff was only performed for the benefit of ancient primitive people, but denied to us modern folk today. Miracle claims initially bear witness against themselves, as they claim to violate the very laws of nature that should not be violated.

.
Dependence of Consciousness on the Physical Brain Makes Life After Death Unlikely.

If even Alzheimer’s Disease or an anesthetic can totally eclipse consciousness, how much more will self awareness be annihilated by death? Everything we know, all expansions of our field of awareness, come about by sensory input into a physical brain. How can this persist when there is no longer a physical body and brain?

.
Existence of Evil in the World, Both Human-Created and Natural, is More Likely in a Godless World.

An all powerful God would be able to get points across and teach lessons and improve our character without placing us in a world of such tremendous suffering. What benefit is there to the Ebola virus that eats away at people’s flesh? Why did we need Auschwitz? Couldn’t something less horrendous have gotten whatever point across that God was trying to make? For God’s existence to be compatible with the evil in the world, there would have to be no occurrence of evil that is gratuitous and beyond justification.

.
Evolution is More Likely in a Godless World.

While one can simultaneously believe in Darwinian evolution and in God, evolution is more likely in a Godless world. Evolution by natural selection is sloppy and wasteful. More than 99% of all species that ever existed on Earth are now extinct. Matches of DNA sequences show that humans and gorillas shared a common ancestor.

.
Divine Hiddenness: A Personal God That Wanted Loving Relationships with Human Beings Wouldn’t Be So Hidden.

Why is God so stingy with direct evidence? Again, the supposed miracles that attest to a supernatural power all happened in ancient pre-scientific times, in which there existed no means of reliable verification. These supposed miracles are not being duplicated today so that we could see that such things are possible. Scientific errors in the Bible and its other flaws, including the commanding of atrocities, all make Scripture much harder to believe. A loving God would not erect such high barriers to belief and then further compound the difficulty in believing by providing us with such strong evidential circumstances against the supernatural, such as the inviolability of the laws of nature.

.
The Religious Confusion in the World is Incompatible with a God That Wants Us To Get It Right.

If God wants us to choose the best mode of worship or communion, why is there so much reasonable confusion in the world regarding religions? Why do the yogis of India and the Dalai Lama bring back from their meditations a sense of some all-loving cosmic soup, and yet many Christians believe that anyone who tries to approach God, other than through Jesus, will burn in hell eternally? Biblical contradictions also exacerbate the problem of confusion. A loving God should have commissioned a clearer and less confusing Bible.

.
God’s Existence Cannot Be Rescued By Claiming the Need for a First Cause.

As best as we can determine, time and space began with the Big Bang. Prior to the Big Bang, there was no time or space in which sequential causation could have occurred. So we cannot speak of the universe’s coming into existence as needing a “cause” in the same sense that a tall building in the middle of a city needed a cause.

.
God’s Existence Cannot Be Rescued By Claiming That Life is so Improbable That It Could Only Come About if the Universe Were Fine Tuned by a Supernatural Force.

Believers claim that the constants in the universe that made it possible for life to emerge are so unlikely that the stage could not have been set by [anyone] other than a divine being. However, we have nothing to compare our universe to. We cannot point to a million universes and note that they are lifeless and thus affirm that the appearance of life in our universe was so unlikely that a supernatural force had to jump start it.

.
God’s Existence Cannot Be Rescued By Claiming That the Emergence of Life on Earth Demonstrates an Underlying Intelligent Design.

The claim that some biological organisms are irreducibly complex fails to account for the redundant gene, a duplication of an existing gene that can experiment with a new function while the old otherwise identical one continues to do its standard work. The claim that the existence of specifiably complex organisms demonstrates the need for an intelligent designer fails because these can be accounted for by the mutations of natural selection.

Speaking of ideologies harming the world (see my last post: “bush’s stubborn ideology tearing the world down“), a recent article in the UK’s Times Online:
<> Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
.
According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems. …

The article goes on to show how the very religious United States has one of the worst crime rates and record on teen pregnancy and abortion among western, modern countries–while those with the lowest religiosity have some of the lowest civil and social ills.

To be fair, though, the article only compares the US as an example of a modern religious country against the UK, Scandinavia, France, Japan, and other modern non-religious countries. To have a fair comparison, one would need to look at the rates and numbers of the same social ills of some other modern religious country, such as… uhm, are Spain and Italy considered “modern”?
Let’s see, countries as religious as the US… Turkey. Afghanistan. Iran. Maybe India. …

A “Dallas News” op-ed piece called:
<> “A spreading terror”

… But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.
.
Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”
.
The truth of the steadily deteriorating situation in the Middle East is, of course, quite different. The Palestinian people of 40 and even 30 years ago were formal, conservative people who remained closely tied to their families, clans and religious groups. Theirs was a highly stratified society, which has now been shattered. …

I recently discovered a magazine on the genre of steampunk, which looks really interesting:
<> http://www.steampunkmagazine.com/
I’ve had a vague interest in steampunk for some years–probably when I first read William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine, which is a mystery that takes place in an alternate history of 1885 when a computer age hits the steam age.
In any case, you can buy a print copy of the magazine for only $3 (one reason I’m sure why it’s called a magazine and not a ‘zine), or download it for free. The introduction to the second edition is really interesting…

… Others referred to how technology, as is currently applied, serves as a buffer between us and wonder: monocropped farms, car culture, omnipresent air-conditioning and heat, etc. The homogenization of technology is indeed a travesty, a pox of our own infliction.
Of course, it is a false claim that technology itself is “unnatural.” We must think only of the lens that allows us to peer into the heavens—or at the chaotic dance of single celled critters—to realize that invention need not be evil. But if technology, as it is applied, has separated the vast majority of us from the natural world, then it is time that we misapply it. Let us be diverse and inefficient! …

BoingBoing often has new articles about people having developed some “new” steampunk item, such as a guitar, a computer, or drawings of Star Wars in a steampunk setting. (One of my favorites.)

A new genre in fiction is emerging called “clockpunk”, and I’m kind of excited about this one. It’s in the setting the Renaissance, specifically from the mind and creations of Leonardo da Vinci’s time and place. That’s a theme I plan on exploring in some of my own writing, especially as I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)