God's Latest Press Release

INNER DISK, ANDROMEDA GALAXY—Thanking the spiral-shaped celestial body for its 6.8 billion years of tireless service, Our Lord and Divine Creator announced Thursday His "very difficult decision" to close down the Andromeda galaxy for good. "Nobody ever wants to have to do something like this, but operating Andromeda on a daily basis has grown impractical and I can't in good conscience keep it going," God said of the incomprehensibly massive nebula, which is home to more than 1 trillion stars and an untold number of planetary objects. "So much has changed since I brought it into being, and to be honest, it's just not working out the way I'd hoped." A spokesman for the Supreme Being issued an apology to Andromeda's 750 quadrillion resident life-forms, who as of midnight Eastern Time on May 15 will cease to exist.

source: http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-shuts-down-andromeda-galaxy,17335/

Critique of Dawkins, rebuttal

The theologian John F. Haught strongly criticizes the "new atheism"-movement of Dawkins et cetera. All his main points seem to look at the perception of faith that Haught claims the new atheism-movement to have; a clear-cut rejection of all faith and ignorance towards their own hypotheses based on faith.

I claim this to be false and a distortion of what the new atheism actually proposes. To be a thinker at all, one has to realize that thinking basically begins with faith or the concept of “I know that I don’t know anything.” The faith that new atheism rejects is not the faith in science, thought, or knowledge but rather only the faith in a God. 

I really do not understand what Haught (or most truly in-depth religious people that are not part of the extremist/fundamentalist agenda) means when he talks about self-surrender, being carried away, or another dimension of reality. I wish – particularly for the sake of argument – that I would understand his concept of the faith of new-age theologians. Maybe someone here (Blogger/Facebook) can explain? 

Due to my lack of understanding of this form of religious faith I am only left with pointing out that science does not claim that the multiverse is finite. Haught claims that atheism is a narrow corridor without the grand themes of infinity and divinity religion seems to "possess." Science actually has to conceive of the concept of infinity, as many math equations proof. To reduce the realm of atheistic views to a “squeezing” into a small frame of two dimensions is an incorrect, ignorant, and quite frankly a fairly arrogant proposal by Haught that lacks just as much tolerance and open-mindedness as he claims the new atheism to be lacking.




Above is a slightly edited part of a homework I just finished. It made me so riled up, I just had to share on my diary/Bloggidy-Diggidy (even if no one else understands what I am writing about OR what I am mad about). :)

Einstein's Morality

"Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."
- Albert Einstein

Without thinking about how genes/natural selection explain morality of any being (human or not), I feel this is a nice way to think about it. Pretty easily disables the religious argument of the satan-worshipping (probably dumbest thing I heard here: "So, you don't believe in god... do you believe in satan?" - "No, actually you believe in satan because you believe in god. I do in neither."), evil-doing atheist that does not have any moral guidelines, because he doesn't have god.
It should be more questioned how good moral guidelines are that tell me to keep slaves and that women are inferior beings. Or talking about less extreme examples (which doesn't make them less dumb):

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from Jack Black

"You pick and choose!"
Can't get it out of my head.
"You pick and choose!"

Religion-forming on steroids.

Dawkins devotes a couple of his pages to these little interesting movements.

They really made me smile, and I just had to share. 

It sounds like such a plausible way of how any (yeah, any) religion has been formed at one point:

"We don't know what the fuck is going on! It's probably god(s) doing some work... lets worship 'em! Maybe we will be in their favor then, too/more often!? Praise the Cargo/Trinity/Buddha/Allah/Flying Spaghetti Monster/iPhone/Tim Lincecum!" 

And it goes on, and on, and ooooon...

And again the Vatican celebrates not punishing rapists.

Disgusting.

Apologies, no penalties

So, as we know some priests around the world keep raping boys. The church (catholic that is) has to act. But again, as it does act, it acts without penalties, but merely with words.

As the catholic church constantly has to deal with this openly in the media (being one of the largest), I don't even want to know what can be assumed that is going on behind closed doors of any church.

“It’s all about protecting the institution and, above all, its wealth. The greatest contribution the pope could have made was to stop the abuse of victims, and he’s not even done that.”
Word up, victims' group founder.

“I know some of you find it difficult even to enter the doors of a church after all that has occurred.”

Yipp, Pope Daddy.

ManBearPig, where are you?

We are having snow in late March. And a bunch of it, too.

Makes me think back to the good ol' days of this blog.

Come on!

This is going to explode!

OMG... What is!?


This Blog, at least I think so. At least for a couple of weeks.

For a religion class I am currently reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion". And I have to say I love it quite a bit. Everyone in the world should read it.

For now I will just quote something he quotes, that I think is very double-quotable.

Talking about the whole Muhammed-cartoon issue in 2005/2006 he quotes journalist Andrew Mueller talking about the assumptions of religion/Islam:

"the values of Islam trump anyone else's - which is what any follower of Islam does assume, just as any follower of any religion believes that theirs is the sole way, truth and light. If people wish to love a 7th century preacher more than their own families, that's up to them, but nobody else is obliged to take it seriously..."

... Or a 0th century preacher...?

Here are some interesting stories I never heard about before:

Religion as a legitimization for drug use -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._O_Centro_Espirita_Beneficente_Uniao_do_Vegetal

Tolerating religious values taken a little too far -
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,474629,00.html

More passages and interesting thoughts will follow.

I Heart Googling...

... for interesting Bible quotes.

"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."
- Deut 25:11-12

"No one who is emasculated or has his male organ cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD."
- Deut 23:1

"There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
- Ezekiel 23:20

"And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."
- 2 Kings 2:23-24

2 Kings 2:11 - "As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind."
John 3:13 - "No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man."

Matthew 5:16 - "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven."
Alright, Jesus! Yeah Baby!
Matthew 6:1 - "Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them."
Ugh... what now?


John 5:31 - "If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid."
John 8:14 - "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid."


These were just some of the results after 10 minutes of looking around. Now tell me how anyone can seriously take the bible literally and I will buy you a chocolate bar.

My point, exactly...