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Facts:
1) The Bible is internally inconsistent.
2) The Bible is historically inaccurate.
3) The Bible was subjectively written by men.
4) The Bible has been and is poorly translated.
5) The Bible was subjectively put together by men.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Facts, Thought of the day | 1 Comment »
Miracles do conflict with science. But we can still discuss them. Well, most of us.
1. All theologies that accept miracles admit they are exceptional events. That’s what “miracle” means. So if there’s a possible natural explanation of an phenomenon, we go with the natural explanation.
2. If you stand to gain from explaining something away as a miracle, you don’t get to play.
* If you’re from Enron, you don’t get to claim your documents disappeared miraculously. It only happened if the FBI and the SEC said it did.
* If you’re a defendant, you don’t get to claim your fingerprints miraculously appeared at a crime scene. Only the DA is allowed to say that.
* If you’re a bookkeeper, you don’t get to say money miraculously disappeared from your company. If the auditors conclude that’s what happened, all right, but not you.
* If your religion needs to postulate a miracle to keep some doctrine from going south, guess what? You don’t get to do that. Only someone with nothing to gain from claiming a miracle can say that.Filed under: Religions | Tagged: Miracles | 2 Comments »
It was an awesome experience and I highly recommend it. Ya know, at least if you like flying 2500 feet over New Hampshire, looking into Vermont (the far side of the river in the picture), then I suppose you should do it.
Contact Morningside Flight Park and go.
Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: Morningside Flight Park, Mt Ascutney, Tandem hang gliding | Leave a comment »
There’s an amazing interactive application I just came across which shows the scale of the Universe. It ranges from strings up to the entirety of the Cosmos (i.e., beyond merely what we can observe). Give it some time to look through all the graphics; it’s pretty mind boggling.
via Starts With A Bang.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: Scale of the Universe, Starts With A Bang | Leave a comment »
As usual, religion is spurring divide in the world. And, without surprise, Christianity is the aggressor.
Germany’s attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country’s immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.
Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made “more stupid” by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.
“Multikulti”, the concept that “we are now living side by side and are happy about it,” does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.
“This approach has failed, totally,” she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany’s culture and values.
“We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here,” said the chancellor.
Hitler’s (creationist) Christian values didn’t work out too well for Germany. Nor have Christian values led to better nations, families, or individuals in general. The fire of this religiously-based divide that Merkel is stoking isn’t going to lead to a better world; homogeneity is a concept foreign to the religious realm. Every attempt to attain such a state has led to death and suffering and evil.
Oh, and the “Christian values” Merkel wants would mean she couldn’t be a world leader.
Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: Angela Merkel, Christianity, Germany, Muslims | 2 Comments »
Thank goodness atheist Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to New Jersey schools.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Mark Zuckerberg, Thought of the day | 7 Comments »
Anthony and Willie Mills opened up a restaurant in Grand Rapids. It wasn’t much of a place, but it was making them enough money to stay open, give them some autonomy, and do a little to help out the local economy. But then an unnamed officer came in one night, made erroneous claims, and shut the whole operation down.
Here are two brothers who came and tried to open up a legitimate business. They weren’t in violation of the law. There wasn’t criminal activity going on in the business. They were just doing the best they could here in Michigan and because of what happened they have lost that dream. They have lost that opportunity to succeed,” said Benjamin Mills, a partner at Gruel, Mills, Nims & Pyleman who is now representing Anthony and Willie Mills.
The Mills brothers opened the now vacant restaurant called Chili Willi’s on Eastern and Burton 5 months ago. They say the new business was just making enough money to keep the doors open then on August 30th a Grand Rapids police officer came in and improperly shut them down for not having a license they in fact did not need.
“He closed me up and told me if I sold anything that I would go to jail,” said co-owner Willie Mills.
After this story first got press, the city looked into what was going on. They’ve admitted guilt.
After losing their business the Mills brothers needed to know why this happened to them and wanted someone to be held accountable. They contacted 13 On Your Side and we went to police and city leaders to get some answers.
“Well after your story it brought this whole thing to our attention. We realized a mistake had happened. We are not out trying to hurt any type of business,” said Lt. Ralph Mason, Spokesperson for Grand Rapids Police Department. “A mistake happened. We are humans. We now have to figure out how to get this thing behind us.”
First, a police officer should know better than to admit error publicly. It’s just as bad as a citizen talking to the cops. I suspect if the city is sued, Mason’s statements will be thrown back in his face. In all likelihood, by admitting his guilt he just forced a settlement by the city (which should be at least $25,000, the amount the Mills brothers are out). Second, really? He wants to “figure out how to get this thing behind” the city and police department? How about he gets the Mills brothers back in front of all their debt? That would be the decent thing to do, at least.
Filed under: News | Tagged: Anthony Mills, Chili Willi's, Grand Rapids, Lt. Ralph Mason, Willie Mills | Leave a comment »
Andre Sougarret is the engineer called upon by Chilean president Sebastián Piñera to save those 33 miners. It is his heroic efforts and the efforts of those he directed that deserve praise.
The mission was unprecedented. No one had ever drilled so far to reach trapped miners. No one knew where to find them.
From the first confusing days to this week’s glorious finale, the 46-year-old Sougarret was the man with the answers.
Sougarret’s management of the crisis was so successful that nearly all the rescued miners walked out of the hospital yesterday perfectly healthy.
People have been blindly and stupidly thanking their particular god for the saving of these miners. Even the miners themselves held on to their faith, disregarding the grandeur of human action that took place. One miner, Jimmy Sanchez, said this:
There weren’t thirty-three miners down there, there were actually thirty-four of us, because God has never left us down here.
This ought to force us to ask, what about all the other miners who have died this year? And why did more miners in the past die than they do today? What is it that people like Sanchez believe God has a grand plan that is infallible, yet if they pray and have faith, they can alter that plan? Or, why the hell don’t mooks like Sanchez and everyone else with blind faith recognize that they’re gaming the system? No matter what happens, good or bad, it’s all going to be chalked up to somehow being part of God’s plan. I’d say there’s a massive quantity of intellectual dishonesty going on here but 1) faith blinds people to rationality and 2) most of these people probably aren’t curious enough to consider these basic problems with what they believe; bringing intellect into the equations seems a rather moot point.
Drilling through would risk provoking another collapse, crushing anything below.
So, an entirely new shaft would have to be drilled to try to reach the men. And they needed to call in more expertise: the miners who had narrowly escaped being crushed in the Aug. 5 collapse.
It was this recruitment of expertise and knowledge combined with modern technology that saved these 33 lives. If these miners were trapped 150 years ago, they would be dead. There’s no good way to fit a god into this radical difference in outcome: people are more knowledgeable and have better technology than in the past; that raises the odds of being saved.
Thank goodness for Andre Sougarret.
Filed under: News | Tagged: Andre Sougarret, Miners, Sebastián Piñera | 11 Comments »
Astronomers have discovered a massive cluster of galaxies in the early Universe.
The most massive conglomeration of galaxies ever spotted in the early universe has been found, astronomers say.
This behemoth galaxy cluster contains about 800 trillion suns packed inside hundreds of galaxies. And it’s not even finished growing.
The newfound cluster, called SPT-CL J0546-5345, is about 7 billion light-years from Earth, meaning that its light has taken that long to reach us. Thus, astronomers are seeing this clump as it was 7 billion years ago.
By now, it likely will have quadrupled in size, researchers said.
How one can imagine there is no life dancing amongst those 800 trillion (and by now, 3200 trillion) stars is beyond me.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: Galaxies, SPT-CL Jo546-5345 | 2 Comments »
For the Sake of Science 