Can We Believe In Polls About God beliefs?

It doesn’t surprise me that there is yet another poll about god beliefs right around the time of another Christian mythology season. On the front page of MSN is a headline that reads “Poll finds 90% believe in God” and the link is to a Newsweek article that states, “The latest NEWSWEEK poll shows that 91 percent of American adults surveyed believe in God—and nearly half reject the theory of evolution.”

What gets me about this particular poll is this little bit:

Although one in ten (10 percent) of Americans identify themselves as having “no religion,” only six percent said they don’t believe in a God at all. Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist, suggesting that the term may carry some stigma. Still, the poll suggests that the public’s tolerance of this small minority has increased in recent years. Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents felt the country is more accepting of atheists today that it used to be and slightly more (49 percent) reported personally knowing an atheist.

Now, I admit I am not a math wizard, but if 49% of god-botherers claim to personally know an atheist, how does the percentage of atheists come out to only 3%? (Or there are a lot more atheists than these polls are admitting to.)

The NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted March 28-March 29, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for questions based on all registered voters and plus or minus 6 percentage points for results based on registered Republicans and Republican leaners. In conducting the poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed only 1,004 adults aged 18 and older.

Peeps

Jesus peep

“A pleasant tale with a touch of pathos”

When I was a Christian, how often I sat in church listening to the sermons and scripture readings week after week, month after month, year after year. I was always incredibly bored and that hour seemed like a day as the pastor droned on and on reciting some silly analogies like how “life is like an Oreo cookie, hard-shelled on the outside and the creamy sweet reward at the center” or hearing the same old message that “life sucks, and you suck, but God is good.” “God loves us even though we are very bad, and there is a place called Hell we can avoid being condemned to after our deaths by simply saying the magic words…”I believe”. Most of you who were Christians before “seeing the light” have listened to similar lectures.

We have often discussed how Christians cherry-pick from the Bible according to what suits their own thinking, and to support their version of the oxymoron “Biblical truth”. Looking back to the 1600s, we can read in most history books how Christians would use “evidences and justifications” from the “Good Book” such as “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18) for their cruel and barbaric acts against other human beings. Today’s fundamentalist Christians and many moderate Christians use passages from their mythology books to support their bigotry against homosexuals. Leviticus 20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Thank human goodness we now have laws that (ironically in a “Christian” nation) prevent Bible literalists from carrying out most of the horrendous acts that are prescribed by the evil commands of an ancient text.

In all the years I sat in church services in a number of different churches of varying denominations, I heard numerous variations of Hell, where one would go after we died if we did not say the magic words prior to our death to get us a ticket to heaven. However, looking back, I realize I never heard from the pulpit “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother…all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die…. (Deut. 21:18, 21), or Leviticus 20:18 “And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people..” or Leviticus 20:10 “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Just to name a few of hundreds of passages that are regularily ignored by clergy and congregations alike, thank human reason and goodness!)

We have had discussions with Christians where we bring up the point about the atrocities of the Bible and are blown off, or some make excuses like “that was then and this is now” and “those parts don’t apply to today’s world.” I remember during Bible studies when people brought up certain violent and cruel passages and they received responses like those mentioned above, or they were conveniently ignored and they would sidestep the subject and move on to other more pleasant topics.

Mark Twain, in his “Letters from the Earth” wrote a little story which illustrates just what I am talking about.

Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, “Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him.” The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way.

Mark Twain’s “Letters from the Earth” were withheld from publication until 1962. The biting criticism of religion was considered so inflammatory by his daughter that she prevented its publication for more than 50 years.

The Galaxy Song Revisited

Edited by ArchieAA

The superstitious will be all over this one!

From: SPACE.com Tue Mar 27, 1:30 PM ET
Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn

One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole.

Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon.

The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity.

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds.

At Saturn's south pole, Cassini recently spotted a freaky human eye-like feature that resembles a hurricane.

"It's amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn's poles," said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at the University of Arizona. "At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different."

The hexagon appears to have remained fixed with Saturn's rotation rate and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26 years ago. The actual rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain, which means nobody knows exactly how long the planet's day is.

"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and perhaps the interior," Baines said.

• Video: The Hexagon on Saturn
• Wildest Weather in the Galaxy
• Earth's Weirdest Weather

• Original Story: Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn

Crikey, mate! He's HUGE!

Steve Irwin would have loved this great find!

Group finds toad the size of a small dog

DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog.

With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.

"It's huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male ... I would hate to meet his big sister."

Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its so-called "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen.

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.

Family Guy theory of evolution

Bullet Pillars in Orion

click on image to enlarge

Credit & Copyright: Gemini Observatory, AURA, NSF

Explanation: Why are bullets of gas shooting out of the Orion Nebula? Nobody is yet sure. First discovered in 1983, each bullet is actually about the size of our Solar System, and moving at about 400 km/sec from a central source dubbed IRc2. The age of the bullets, which can be found from their speed and distance from IRc2, is very young -- typically less than 1,000 years. As the bullets rip through the interior of the Orion Nebula, a small percentage of iron gas causes the tip of each bullet to glow blue, while each bullet leaves a tubular pillar that glows by the light of heated hydrogen gas. Pictured above, the Orion bullets were captured in unprecedented detail by the adaptive optics technology of the Gemini North telescope. M42, the Orion Nebula, is the closest major star forming region to us and filled with changing dust, gas, and bright stars. The Orion Nebula, is located about 1,500 light years away and can be seen with the unaided eye toward the constellation of Orion.

A story from African Mythology

I just love African and Native American Mythology...there is so much humor in it.

Here is today's feature from Godchecker.com

HEITSI-EIBIB: Nature and Animal God.

He had a strange birth. His mother, a cow, ate some magic grass which turned out to be full of maleness. She became pregnant and soon gave birth to this fully-formed God. It's not everyone who can claim their father is a tuft of grass.

A great shape-changer himself, he became involved in animal evolution and did his bit for conservation by putting species in their right environment — taking fish out of the desert, stopping lions building nests in trees, that kind of thing. (He could tell David Attenborough a thing or two).

He is also something of a folk hero, having sorted out GA-GORIB, a nasty taunting demon who used a large pit to trap and devour animals. When HEITSI-EIBIB fell in the pit, he changed into we don't know what, but when he emerged he seemed to be licking his lips and the demon was never seen again.

Humans are his favorite animals, and he gave them lots of freedom to run wild and do their own thing. Which may have been a little over-indulgent. Now he lives in graves and caves, and can be approached when people need good luck in hunting.

Asteroid may hit Earth in 2036

An asteroid, headed our way

By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Humans live in a vast solar system where 2,000 feet seems a razor-thin distance.

Yet it's just wide enough to trigger concerns that an asteroid due to buzz Earth on April 13, 2029 may shift its orbit enough to return and strike the planet seven years later.

The concern: Within the object's range of possible fly-by distances lie a handful of gravitational "sweet spots," areas some 2,000 feet across that are also known as keyholes.

The physics may sound complex, but the potential ramifications are plain enough. If the asteroid passes through the most probable keyhole, its new orbit would send it slamming into Earth in 2036. It's unclear to some experts whether ground-based observatories alone will be able to provide enough accurate information in time to mount a mission to divert the asteroid, if that becomes necessary.

So NASA researchers have begun considering whether the US needs to tag the asteroid, known as 99942 Apophis, with a radio beacon before 2013.

Timing is everything, astronomers say. If officials attempt to divert the asteroid before 2029, they need to nudge the space rock's position by roughly half a mile - something well within the range of existing technology. After 2029, they would need to shove the asteroid by a distance as least as large as Earth's diameter. That feat would tax humanity's current capabilities.

NASA's review of the issue was triggered by a letter from the B612 Foundation. The foundation's handful of specialists hope to demonstrate controlled asteroid-diversion techniques by 2015.

Last Wednesday, representatives from the foundation met with colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to review the issue. The foundation's letter marks the first time specialists in the asteroid-hazard field have called for a scouting mission to assess such a threat.

"We understand the risk from this object, and while it's small, it's not zero," says David Morrison, the senior scientist at NASA's Astrobiology Institute at the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The call for a reconnaissance mission also illustrates how far the field of asteroid-hazard assessment has come.

"Ten years ago, we would have been blissfully ignorant," says Donald Yeomans, who heads NASA's near-Earth object project at JPL. Today, at least five programs worldwide are hunting down near-Earth objects. NASA is well on its way toward achieving its goal of cataloging 90 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than 0.6 miles across by 2008. And it is devising ways to ensure that information about potential hazards reaches top decisionmakers throughout the government.

Based on available data, astronomers give Apophis - a 1,000-foot wide chunk of space debris - a 1-in-15,000 chance of a 2036 strike. Yet if the asteroid hits, they add, damage to infrastructure alone could exceed $400 billion. When the possibility of the asteroid passing through two other keyholes is taken into account, the combined chance of the asteroid hitting the planet shifts to 1 in 10,000, notes Clark Chapman, a senior scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

"A frequent flier probably would not want to board an airliner if there's a 1-in-10,000 chance it's going to crash," he says.

The asteroid in question was discovered last June. Initially, it looked as though it might strike Earth in 2029. But additional observations eliminated that possibility. Instead the asteroid will come within 22,600 miles of Earth - just inside the altitude where major communications satellites orbit. The asteroid will be visible to the naked eye in the night skies over Europe and western Africa, where it will appear a bit dimmer than the North Star.

But this estimated distance carries an uncertainty that spans several thousand miles either side of its expected path - a region of space that includes three gravitational keyholes.

JPL's analysis will look at several factors. One involves estimating whether additional ground observations will be sufficient to resolve the question of whether the asteroid will pass through one of the keyholes. The asteroid belongs to a class known as Atens, which orbit the sun in less than a year and pass through Earth's orbit. Because Atens spend so much of their time in the direction of the Sun, observations from Earth are difficult. After next year, the next opportunity to gather data on the asteroid from the ground will come in 2012-2013.

In addition, questions remain over how long a tagging mission - and if necessary a deflection mission - would take to plan and execute. If missions can be mounted in six years or less, NASA could postpone a decision to tag the asteroid until 2014. This would give astronomers time to incorporate their latest observations as they refine calculations of Apophis's orbit. But if a tagging mission took seven to eight years and a diversion mission took another 12 years, the case grows for launching the tagging mission sooner rather than later.

Dr. Yeomans, the head of the near-Earth-object program at JPL, says the next step is to examine whether additional ground-based observations are likely to solve the collision riddle in a timely fashion.

"I can't stress this enough: The overwhelming most-likely scenario is that radar and optical data this year and next or in 2012 and 2013 will completely remove the impact probabilities," he says.

"If this is the case, why are we worried now? If it's a 1-in-15,000 shot and we come up a loser," there's still time to mount a tagging and a deflection mission, he says.

(I hope they are right and can prevent a catastrophe.)

France opens 50 years of secret UFO files

UFO ethusiasts are all over this news.

After France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades, the website itself crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic.

France opens secret UFO files covering 50 years

PARIS (AFP) - France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.

The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists.

"It is a world first," said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of "non-identified aerospatial phenomena."

Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption.

"Cases such as the lady who reported seeing an object that looked like a flying roll of toilet paper" are clearly not worth investigating, said Patenet.

But many others involving multiple sightings -- in at least one case involving thousands of people across France -- and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.

A phalanx of beefy security guards formed a barrier in front of the space agency (CNES) headquarters where the announcement was made, "to screen out uninvited UFOlogists," an official explained.

Of the 1,600 cases registered since 1954, nearly 25 percent are classified as "type D", meaning that "despite good or very good data and credible witnesses, we are confronted with something we can't explain," Patenet said.

On January 8, 1981 outside the town of Trans-en-Provence in southern France, for example, a man working in a field reported hearing a strange whistling sound and seeing a saucer-like object about 2.5 meters (eight feet) in diameter land in his field about 50 meters (yards) away.

A dull-zinc grey, the saucer took off, he told police, almost immediately, leaving burn marks. Investigators took photos, and then collected and analyzed samples, and to this day no satisfactory explanation has been made.

The nearly 1,000 witness who said they saw flashing lights in the sky on November 5, 1990, by contrast, had simply seen a rocket fragment falling back into earth's atmosphere.

Patenet's answer to questions about evidence of life beyond Earth was sure to inflame the suspicions of those convinced the government is holding back: "We do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena."

But then he added: "Nor do we have the least proof that they aren't."

The CNES fields between 50 and 100 UFO reports ever year, usually written up by police. Of these, 10 percent are the object of on-site investigations, Patenet said.

Other countries collect data more or less systematically about unidentified flying objects, notably in Britain and in the United States, where information can be requested on a case-by-case basis under the Freedom of Information Act.

"But we decided to do it the other way around and made everything available to the public," Patenet said.

The aim was to make it easier for scientists and other UFO buffs to access the data for research.

The website itself -- which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic -- is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports.

To visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr. (will apply the link whenever I can get onto their website...it's been busy indeed!

God-fearing villagers afraid of "satanic" bar codes

The superstitions people who continue to cling to ancient beliefs in the year 2007 is mind boggling!

God-fearing villagers snub "satanic" bar codes

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A hundred residents of a Russian village have refused to switch to new passports because they believe the documents' bar codes contain satanic symbols, state television reported Wednesday.

I guess they just won't go anywhere now, will they? (Maybe they don't care. It's easier to believe this stuff when you don't have money to go anywhere anyway.)

"We believe these new passports are sinful," Valentina Yepifanova, an elderly resident of the village Bogolyubovo, told Rossiya television as she clutched an old, tattered passport she said she wanted to keep.

Well, I wonder how rapidly her mind would change should a disaster come and she needed that evil passport to get to a safe place?

"They have these bar codes and people say they contain three sixes. We are against that."

Some residents of Bogolyubovo, which means "God-loving" in Russian, have also stopped collecting their pensions at the local post office because the payment slips also have bar codes that might contain the mark of the devil, Rossiya TV reported.

The last part of this is so sad...they would go without their money they need to live because of a superstitious belief? Incredible!

Boston Legal - Alan Shore Greatest trial (Scientology)

This clip is hilarious. . . the far-out things people believe are too funny (but one is no more stranger than the any other)

Religion is self-centered hope for magical self-preservation

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anyone but himself.”

-- (This quote is widely attributed to Sir Richard Francis Burton.

I had thought about this often before leaving Christianity. How many people would hold any god beliefs if there wasn't something in it for the self? How many people would worship any kind of god, or go along with any kind of supernatural beliefs if there was not some kind of "reward" involved? Is there one religion out there that honestly exists where people just worship a god without expecting anything in return?

"I choose not to believe that's the way.'

“Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are dying forms. They were all very important when we didn't know why the sun moved, why weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or volcanoes happened. Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology. But there are people who interpret the Bible literally. Literally! I choose not to believe that's the way. And that's what makes America cool, you know?”

-- Bruce Willis, interview, George magazine (July 1998)

FREETHUNK!

Do humans possess a "sucker" gene?

Earthmen rule against moon real estate bid

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese appeals court has upheld a ban on a company from selling land on the moon, ruling that "celestial bodies" could not be anyone's property, state media said on Saturday

Lunar Embassy to China, a Beijing-based company that sold plots of lunar land to individuals, sued the Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce which revoked its business licence and fined it 50,000 yuan (3,300 pounds) in October 2005.

Haidian District People's Court ruled against the company in November 2005. On Friday, the Beijing First Intermediate People's Court upheld that decision, Xinhua news agency said.

The court cited an international treaty that China signed in 1983.

"The treaty states that outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by other means... The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries," Xinhua said.

The company offered to sell individuals ownership of an acre of lunar land for 298 yuan each.

"Within three days of opening for business, it was reported that 34 clients had bought 49 acres of land, earning the company more than 14,000 yuan.

"There was no indication if the company provided discounts to clients who bought multiple plots."

Click on cartoon to enlarge

CHASE SUCKS!!@

Keep a close watch on your bill statements each month...these bastards are sneaky! We have found added sneaky fees on our Chase bills, and they are big assholes to talk to on the telephone and it wasn't just one person...ALL the people we talked to while trying to clear up some sneaky fees that were added on were assholes. AND while our bill was in dispute they kept adding late fees when their own agreement says they will not. No one knew what their agreement says, and no one cared. They seemed to make up the rules as they went along and seem to think they can do whatever they want. We kept getting letters back that basically say "you owe us this, tough shit." We have since cancelled our CHASE card, but others are just as bad. We have always had a squeaky clean credit rating, and have not been late with payments so don't know why they are suddenly dicking with us.

St. Patrick's Day In Chicago

Everybody in Chicago is Irish on St. Paddy's Day. Every year on St. Patrick's Day, the Chicago River is dyed green. The Pipefitters Union uses fluorescein dye which can also be used to study moving water. While in 1962, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dye were used, more recently the amount has been decreased to about 40 pounds (18 kg). This video gives a bit of history about why St. Patrick's Day is so special for the Windy City.

“If you’re evil and blind, then I’m sexy. Call me.”

I try to avoid giving attention whore, Mann Coulter any kind of publicity, but this ROCKS. LOL! Too funny!

Outlaugh-The Nellie Olesons: Ann Coulter Spoof

Barred Spiral Galaxy M95

Credit & Copyright: Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CFHT), Hawaiian Starlight, CFHT

Explanation: Why do some spiral galaxies have a ring around the center? First and foremost, M95 is one of the closer examples of a big and beautiful barred spiral galaxy. Visible in the above recent image from the CFHT telescope in Hawaii, USA, are sprawling spiral arms delineate by open clusters of bright blue stars, lanes of dark dust, the diffuse glow of billions of faint stars, and a short bar across the galaxy center. What intrigues many astronomers, however, is the circumnuclear ring around the galaxy center visible just outside the central bar. Recent images by the Chandra X-ray Observatory have shown that X-ray light surrounding the ring is likely emission from recent supernovas. Although the long term stability of the ring remains a topic of research, recent observations indicate its present brightness is at least enhanced by transient bursts of star formation. M95, also known as NGC 3351, spans about 50,000 light-years and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Lion (Leo).

Dying woman loses marijuana appeal

Even though I have never used marijuana, I think that the laws prohibiting marijuana are ridiculous. Why not just legalize pot, and regulate it under the same laws as alcohol? From what I understand, marijuana leaves no lasting effects, and helps relieve pain and suffering of cancer patients and those with chronic conditions, while alcohol kills the liver and causes other medical problems, and is far more addicting. While many people die from alcohol poisoning, there have been no reported deaths or permanent injuries sustained as a result of a marijuana overdose. Some of our laws make absolutely zero sense.

Dying woman loses marijuana appeal

SAN FRANCISCO - A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The case was brought by Angel Raich, an Oakland mother of two who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments. On her doctor’s advice, she eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster a nonexistent appetite as conventional drugs did not work.

The Supreme Court ruled against Raich two years ago, saying that medical marijuana users and their suppliers could be prosecuted for breaching federal drug laws even if they lived in a state such as California where medical pot is legal.

[this is so unreasonable!]

Because of that ruling, the issue before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was narrowed to the so-called right to life theory: that marijuana should be allowed if it is the only viable option to keep a patient alive.

Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug.

“I’m sure not going to let them kill me,” she said. “Oh my God.”

Why would a god create gay people in the first place, then proclaim it to be immoral?

Furor over Baptist’s gay-baby article

NEW YORK - The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has incurred sharp attacks from both the left and right by suggesting that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven, and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified.

You can read the article for yourself at the above link and from Albert Mohler himself at his blog. Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?

On this date in 1879, Albert Einstein was born in Germany

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.”

A scene from one of my favorite movies, Inherit the Wind

Fundamentalism vs. Freedom of Thought


From Wikipedia: Inherit the Wind is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes Trial (the "Monkey" Trial), which resulted in Scopes's conviction for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to a high school science class, contrary to a Tennessee state law that mandated the teaching of a form of creationism. The fictional characters of Matthew Harrison Brady, Henry Drummond, Bertram Cates and E.K. Hornbeck correspond to the historical figures of William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, John Scopes, and H.L. Mencken, respectively.

Despite numerous similarities between the play and history, the play was not intended as a documentary-drama about the Scopes trial, but as a warning about the evils of McCarthyism, which some see as one of the darkest moments in American history. The play has been hailed as one of the great American plays of the 20th century, and its themes of religious belief, religious tolerance, and freedom of thought resonate down to the present day.

Respect ALL living things?

I love the “Odd News” section of Yahoo News, and run across the most bizarre and interesting things there. Today this story caught my eye:

Ants test nonviolence of Buddhist monks

My first instinct would be to grab a can of RAID and then call the Terminex man, but these monk dudes will allow themselves to be seriously harmed by ants before they would intentionally kill the little fuckers. It seems that these monks want humans to put aside their own natural survival instincts that all animals possess.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Buddhist monks, who are bound by faith to nonviolence, are grappling with how to rid a temple of a severe ant infestation without killing the insects.

Stinging red ants have plagued the Hong Hock See [say that ten times fast!] Temple in northern Penang state for a year, causing one worshipper to be bitten so badly last month that he had to receive hospital treatment, said Elma Lin, a temple volunteer worker.

A temple disciple tried using a vacuum cleaner to gather up the ants before freeing them in a nearby forest, but the method failed to purge the insects, Lin said.

“We haven’t found a solution so far,” Lin said. “Nothing has worked.”

The temple’s chief monk, Boon Keng, was quoted by The Star newspaper as saying that the monks had to “respect other living things” in the temple.

“When an ant drops on you, you must not flick it away or blow on it,” he told the newspaper. “If you do, it will bite to hold on. You just have to shake it off.”

The newspaper published a photograph of Boon Keng standing beside a sign at the temple that read: “Beware poisonous ants. Do not sit under the tree.”

The decades-old temple has more than 10 monks living there and hundreds of devotees, Lin said.

Like other religions, there are varying forms of Buddhism, but this video gives a brief summary of what modern “westernized” Buddhism is about. Are these people living in la-la land, avoiding problems in society, or is it possible for their influence of this kind of thinking to do any good for humankind?

DNA and brains

As Naomi from GifS and Martian Anthropolgist said when she emailed me this one, “too wonderful to miss out on–especially as it shows the flexibility of science and evolutionary theories!” From Newsweek: Beyond Bones & Stones

excerpt: The science of human evolution is undergoing its own revolution. Although we tend to see the march of species down through time as a single-file parade, with descendant succeeding ancestor in a neat line, the emerging science shows that the story of our species is far more complicated than Biblical literalists would have it—but also more complex than secular science suspected.[my emphasis] By analyzing the DNA of today’s humans as well as chimps and other species (even lice), scientists are zeroing in on turning points in evolution, such as when and how language and speech developed, and when our ancestors left Africa. DNA can even reveal how many pilgrims made that trek. At the new Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, DNA gets equal billing with fossils. And by comparing the impressions that brains left on the inside of skulls, “paleoneurology” is documenting when structures that power the human mind arose, shedding light on how our ancestors lived and thought. Whether or not you believe the hand of God was guiding these changes, the discoveries are overturning longstanding ideas about how we became human.

Not that fossils are passé. new discoveries are pruning and reshaping humankind’s family tree as radically as bonsai. The neat traditional model in which one species gave rise to another like Biblical “begats” has been replaced by a profusion of branches, representing species that lived at the same time as our direct ancestors but whose lines died out. It’s like discovering that your great-great-grandfather was not an only child as you’d thought, but had a number of siblings who, for unknown reasons, left no descendants. New research also shows that “progress” and “human evolution” are only occasional partners. More than once in human prehistory, evolution created a modern trait such as a face without jutting, apelike brows and jaws, only to let it go extinct, before trying again a few million years later. Our species’ travels through time proceeded in fits and starts, with long periods when “nothing much happened,” punctuated by bursts of dizzying change, says paleontologist Ian Tattersall, co-curator of the American Museum’s new hall.

Read the entire article here (also link above). It’s long, but well worth your time. Let me know what you think...especially those biology and archaeology experts out there.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) - Author of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

From FFRF

“If you describe yourself as 'Atheist,' some people will say, 'Don't you mean "Agnostic'?" ' I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god--in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It's easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it's an opinion I hold seriously. It's funny how many people are genuinely surprised to hear a view expressed so strongly. In England we seem to have drifted from vague wishy-washy Anglicanism to vague wishy-washy Agnosticism--both of which I think betoken a desire not to have to think about things too much.”

-- Douglas Adams, interview, American Atheist (Winter 1998-99)

On this date in 1952, science fiction/comedy writer Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge, England. He was educated at Brentwood School, Essex, and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1974, and later earned his Master's in English literature. Adams worked as a writer and producer in radio and television. In 1978, "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" ran as a series on BBC Radio, and was published as a novel in 1979. Fourteen million copies of the cult scifi novel have sold worldwide, followed by sequels. The satiric novel chronicles the adventures of an alien, Ford Prefect, and his human companion, Arthur Dent, as they travel the universe looking for the meaning of life after the earth's destruction. Adams became the youngest author to be awarded the Golden Pan in 1984. Adams was also an Internet pioneer. He married Jane Belson in 1991 and they had a daughter, Polly, in 1994. He was at work on a screenplay for Hitch Hiker when he died unexpectedly at age 49 of a heart attack. Adams called himself a "committed Christian" as a teenager, who began to rethink his beliefs at age 18 after listening to the nonsense of a street preacher. He credited books by his friend, Richard Dawkins, including The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, for helping to cement his views on religion. In one of his speeches, Dawkins quotes Adams, who said: "Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever." ("Emperor Has No Clothes" Award acceptance speech, reprinted in Freethought Today, October 2001.) In The Salmon of Doubt, a compilation of Adams' writings published posthumously in 2002, Adams wrote of religion: "But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." D. 2001.

The Venomous Blotoad

As you can tell, I have been enjoying the Non Sequitur Political Zoology Field Guide series enormously!

Bullsheep

Sun of God?

Thanks to BEEP! BEEP! IT'S ME for this one. This brief video brings up many points that I have pondered over the years about the formation of religions and where these ideas all stemmed from. It makes sense since our whole existence depends upon the sun. The sun sustains life and our world. The sun is so bright we cannot look upon it with the naked eye without being blinded. We cannot stay in the sun for very long before we are burned. “There is the Father, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see; of such transcendent glory, of such all-consuming brightness of holiness, that no man could look upon Him and live. ” Exodus 33:20


Thanks Beepbeep!

Amazing Conjoined Twins

I have posted this as a link before, but thought I would put it as a main post. These girls are indeed amazing. So, what is so "intelligent" about this accident of nature?

Eclipsed Moon and Stars

Credit & Copyright: Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory)

Explanation: This dramatic image features a dark red Moon during a total lunar eclipse -- celestial shadow play enjoyed by many denizens of planet Earth last Saturday. Recorded near Wildon, Austria, the picture is a composite of two exposures; a relatively short exposure to feature the lunar surface and a longer exposure to capture background stars in the constellation Leo. Completely immersed in Earth's cone-shaped shadow during the total eclipse phase, the lunar surface is still illuminated by sunlight, reddened and refracted into the dark shadow region by a dusty atmosphere. As a result, familiar details of the Moon's nearside are easy to pick out, including the smooth lunar mare and the large ray crater Tycho. In this telescopic view, the background stars are faint and most would be invisible to the naked eye.