Natural selection and evolution

What never ceases to amaze me is how some people can't get their heads around natural selection/evolution. With three simple, obvious facts, you can explain natural selection in its entirety.

• Features are inherited from parents
• Parents with certain features can be more likely to survive
• Parents who don't live to maturity cannot have children.

The other thing is that creationism explains what MADE organisms, and says that they haven't changed. If you look at fossil records, you'll see that things have definitely changed. How can people say that bones taken out of the earth are all fakes?

Halloween Corrupts our Young Kids

I personally don't like Halloween that much. Never have. But when I heard that Underwood (a school in Newton) actually isn't celebrating it in school because "some people claimed the holiday offended their religious beliefs." I have to wonder... what does Halloween do to hurt anyone?

To prove my point a little better, I've looked up the origins of Halloween. It has roots in a Celtic celebration of the new year (5th century BCE). Romans later adopted the traditions and many years later, it was brought to the US by Irish immigrants in the 1840's. The original ritual involved the disembodied spirits of the dead coming back and inhabiting some living bodies so they could get to the afterlife. The living people would parade around so that the spirits wouldn't come back to haunt them.

Okay, how many people can seriously believe that Halloween will corrupt young souls? The modern day incarnation is kids walking around in fun costumes getting candy. It's a very benign and innocent holiday that doesn't do any harm at all. A quote from an Underwood parent:

"All I can say is what a shame. I watched the news this morning and am also glad my children don't attend there. First, saluting the flag was a controversy, now Halloween? Oh please! I understand we Americans have free rights and it is all being taken away by allowing everyone with religious issues to take over. This is not about religion for the kids, Halloween is about tradition and fun. Can't kids be kids anymore? What's next?"

What's next to go? Maybe Valentine's day will become too romantically heated and sacrilege to celebrate. It's ridiculous, it almost makes me want to go out trick or treating to defy these stupid people who think that Halloween is such a bad thing.

Check out the articles:
Halloween History & Controversy

Clarification

Okay, just to make sure I've got this right. I want to know about your definitions of atheism. Like what specifically don't you believe in.

Example:
I don't believe in a biblical interpretation of God, as in, that guy with a beard who micromanages and controls our everyday lives.

I don't believe God is a physical or spiritual omnipotent reality either.

What I do believe is that "God" is an ideal and a moral standard to which we hold ourselves. I'm a religious humanist. To me, "God" is merely a useful term to describe an idealism that hopefully humans want to strive toward. To be godly instead of know "God."

The purpose of life is to understand yourself and your relationships with other people and with nature. Whether or not you believe in God is irrelevant; one should just attempt to be godly. This is still a Jewish theology that's widely accepted in more liberal movements.

My point being, it's highly possible that the more a-religionistic of us have condemned religion as being a horrible thing without properly looking at all of its more flexible aspects. Atheism and religion can coexist.

A Realization

I don't want to steal the spotlight, but I have to jump in before I forget.

I just realized something while I was driving home tonight, over the debate of the same-sex marriage amendment that is about to go to vote in Texas. I was running through the arguments that the other side might use, and then it hit me. Something that Christians sometimes say is that the Constition is based upon Christian ideals. No, I still know that they aren't right. The older Christian ideals differ alot from more modern ones. Its not against the law to work on the Sabbath, its not illegal to express ideas against church ideas anymore. This is because that the Christians ideology has been assimilated (some of it anyway) with the Constitution. This means that Christians will see their modern ideas in the Constitution, though the ideas of Christians at the time aren't really there.

Sermon on the Mount

There are in the scientific world, some true great people. I'm not just talking about the people who make discoveries, but the people who convey our message. One of those people is Sidney Harris, a cartoonist. He has drawn some of the most amazing science cartoons I have read. And this is his sermon from a scientist about "Genesis":


Preacher:Brothers and sisters, at the time of 10^-33 seconds after the big bang, the heat was enormous!
Crowd Member: Verily! It was over 10^33 degrees!
P: Matter and anti-matter arose!
CM: Halleluja- They annhilated each other!
P:And the universe was filled with particles!
CM: Amen! Quarks!
CM: And Gluons!
CM: Yea Leptons!



hehe.

He also published a hilllarious cartoon that can be typed out here

. <--- The Universe before the Big Bang (actual size)

Sidney Harris is a great scientific mind. Here is my salute to him.

See the light, yo.

So there's a contest. This is the first draft of my entry:

"And the LORD spake unto his disciples, commanding, 'Thou shalt boil thine Holy Noodles, and stir them three times hitherto; four shall not be the number of stirs you stir, nor two. Unless, of course, thou shalt stir unto three times shortly thereafter. And then you shall hurl thine Holy Noodles unto thine heathen enemy, in His Noodliness's mercy.'" Noodleonomy 24:16-24:17

I once deserved to have Holy Noodles hurled at me. In fact, I probably do now. Hell, maybe everyone deserves to have Holy Noodles hurled at them; aren't we all sinners?

Ah, but some of his sinners have indeed seen the light, and lo, it is Noodly. It was not long ago that I was first touched by His Noodly Appendage. He touched me in my sleep. I was dreaming, as usual, of penguins. As I dreamt of sliding down snowy slopes with my furry friends, I tripped…over a meatball. In my dream, I looked into the sky, and behold! His Noodliness was reaching towards me! Then I woke up, and saw that actually––well, that's a different story.

Of course, I was first a skeptic. But I was soon bogged down by the mass of evidence there is for His Noodliness. I was naturally swayed by the ('coincidental') universal appearance of pasta throughout history. However, I was tipped over the edge when four-thousand year old noodles were discovered in China. And they were, as the prophecy said, rolled from dough of millet grains! And I quote:

"Behold! When the LORD brings the Earth to a simmer, and the sauce melts, shall the LORD's son be discovered. And lo! He shall be of no taxonomic group, as the LORD had not created taxonomy when he gave birth to his son. And lo! The phrase 'gave birth' is a general term, and shall not be interpreted to assign a specific sex to the LORD; his Noodliness may very well have impregnated the earth through nonsexual means, or maybe caNoodled with some sort of easily-seduced female being." Pastalms 137:2-137:3

How can anyone deny this eyewitness testimony to the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? As usual, the only excuse for non-belief is non-education. The heathens should all be ashamed. They should be forbidden from EVER eating Ramen noodles. No! Angel-hair pasta! No! Linguini! Why, let us forbid them from ever consuming ANY sort of comestible produced by rolling and cutting dough, or, as in some cases, forcing dough through holes in a plate, known as a "die." Yes! Let that be the course of action we take! And while we're at it, let us hurl Holy Noodles at them!

Well, I don't want to be labeled as a firebrand. All I want is equality; and for me to have more of it than others. Ramen.

Something that happened today

This is a really, really short post. This introduction is only to make it longer.

This evening, my mom said, "Would you like to go to services with me?" She was referring to the night-before-yom-kippur services, aka Kol Nidre. I say no. My dad says, "C'mon, you know he's an atheist." Thanks, dad. Then my mom says, "Don't say that! It's Yom Kippur!" What the hell?

Living on a Single Philosophy

A question that I've gotten a lot is: How can you be an atheist Jew? It seems totally impossible. It's really not impossible at all; here's the way I think about it.

If you tried to live your life by a single moral, would you be able to do it? Let's take the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would like done unto you. Suppose I lived my entire life just by following that moral until one day when a lie just slips out inadvertently. What do I do then? I don't want people to lie to me, but according to my one and only moral, it's their prerogative.

Basically, I don't feel that I can live my life without having a more than one basis in philosophy. Just as a good research paper needs many good sources and not just one source, philosophy in my mind, requires the same thing. Without having knowledge or a decent understanding of other philosophies, how can you accurately choose your own? The previous post does touch upon this topic slightly.

I don't feel like I can live without religion. And by religion, I mean a set of moral values that happen to come from religious doctrine. However dated the doctrine may be, there's some good lessons to be learned in there. Like during Rosh Hashana when we read the binding of Isaac, where Abraham is so zealous, he's ready to kill his son. I realized that it really is bad to believe blindly in something where there's no proof. Quite a different message from the one that the Rabbi wanted me to take away from that service.

That's the beauty of this whole thing. I've taken the best of both worlds. Or rather, accepted my history as a Jew and just left God out of it.

So my point is, philosophy is much stronger when it's drawn from multiple sources because you're getting a more objective view of the world and of other people's philosophies without necessarily compromising any of your own personal beliefs.

Religious indoctrination of children is nothing short of brainwashing

If I had a nickel for every time I have uttered that phrase. . .well, I say it a lot. It's frustrating how so few people understand what I mean.

Children are impressionable. If parents teach their children something when they're very young, it will stick. Look at Santa Clause: How many young children in America do you think are convinced that Santa exists?

The same goes for religion. Parents, for some strange reason, are allowed to teach their children that one religion is better than all others, and raise them with it. So many American children believe in a god simply because their parents do, and because their parents sent them to Sunday School, or Hebrew School, or whatever. When a three year old is brought to church and told that god loves him/her, he/she is going to get sucked in.

For example, I have a theist friend who said he started going to church at a young age. When I questioned him, he went on about his god's powers, and how much his god loves him. At one point he even admitted omnipotence is an illogical idea, but that doesn't matter if his god is omnipotent.

Similarly, I have a friend who told me she started going to church around the age of three, and is a rather firm Catholic. She says that indoctrination of kids is not brainwashing. . . "it's religion." Obviously, faith suspends normal social rules.

Sadly, it's going to be a looooong time before anyone in power recognizes that it is a bad thing for parents to raise their kids with a religion. The only thing children can do about this is spread the word themselves.

Fides

As an atheist and supporter of science, I have been told time and again by theists that science is a religion. They inform me that scientists put faith in their instruments' ability to function, and have faith that their instruments are in fact telling them the truth, blah blah blah, and so on.

Well, those statements are right. Science does require faith. But what it does not require is blind faith, one of the most dangerous things in existence.

If I am a meteorologist, and I'm setting up my tools in a new place, I have faith that I am doing my job correctly, and not damaging the instruments. However, I will have previously set up said instruments in other locations. I have experience, and have observed my anemometer working in the past. Thus, since I have my experience to go on, I am not believing blindly that I will succeed in setting up the weather station.

Similarly, if my barometer tells me that the air pressure is going down, I have faith that it is correct. However, if a storm follows shortly thereafter, I will have confirmation that my barometer is functioning properly.

Religion, on the other hand, requires blind faith. Nobody has observed a god creating the earth, a flood enveloping the planet, Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt, or some carpenter being crucified. Theists place trust in a book that was written thousands of years ago, after being orally passed down through generations of people. They suspend all logic and reason for the sake of eternal salvation, as promised by the aforementioned book. They kill other people for the sake of eternal salvation. Religion is the ultimate idiocy.

I'll Stand Up for you God!

The biggest party is when you get through the gates of heaven... because you'll be eternally living with GOD


96% OF TEENS WON'T STAND UP FOR GOD...
REPOST THiS iF YOU'RE ONE OF THE 4% WHO WILL

Wow, I really don't think there are that many people that can truly explain atheism. Great stuff ain't it?

Thank you myspace bulletins for being so amusing.

Morality in Choice

One of the common perceptions of God is of this omnipotent being who micromanages human life. Herein lies the first problem in all religion. "Is God watching me all the time, like when I'm in the shower? Do I have free will? Does God punsh me for thinking bad thoughts?"

If there is one religious person who honestly believes that were are punished for every single bad thought in our heads, I'd love to hear from you. The implications of that are incredibly huge.

God punishes you when

• you want to commit suicide
• you swear
• you laugh at others' suffering
• you get into a fight with a friend or sibling
• you make a sarcastic comment about your peers
• etc etc

If you seriously believe that God cares about every one of these "sins," large or small. I ask you, does God really care? Is God pissed off at you because you did a bad thing, or do your religious superiors tell you that God is pissed so that you decide to become a better person. God is a threat, a method by which people can be brainwashed to do the "right" thing according to your specific religious doctrine.

C'mon people, do we really need a God figure to start thinking about our daily actions? Do we need to have the threat of eternal damnation dangled in front of us in order to choose the right path? I say no. People can make their own choices. Before any of us even were aware of the "existance" of God, we were choosing a course of action. The morality of the action is irrelevant; it's the fact that we can make choices and determine ourselves how moral they really are.

So I guess you could say that the choices we make are both good and bad, it's all relative. If you need the guidance of God to make your choices, get a little self-confidence please.
We're all going to "hell" anyway.

Common Contradiction

There is a common contradiction in Christian belief. Most Christians that I have talked to recently, claim that their Christ came to repeal the old laws enforced in the Torah (first five books of the Bible). Well, I've found a verse that defeats this common misconception.

Matthew 5:17, 18- "Do not think that I [Jesus] have come to abolish the old law or prophets; I have come not to abolish, but ot fufill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until it is accomplished."

I always remind my Xtian friends when they speak of Christ repealing the old laws of this verse, so they know what their own Bible actually says.

Anyone know anymore verses that contradict current Christain beliefs?

Seeya later,
Mesoforte Nebulous