alwyn!
raffles junior college
08 08 '89
leo
star wars fan
Judoka

wishlist :

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume
The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
Matter and Consciousness by Paul Churchland
Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin
Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
The Sacred Balance by David Suzuki
Star Wars Legacy of the Force: Betrayal
Star Wars Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines
Star Wars Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice

Games:
Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne by Triumph Studios
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic by Triumph Studios
Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood by Spellbound
Myth III: The Wolf Age by MumboJumbo
The Bard's Tale by InXile Entertainment
Dragon Age by Bioware
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir by Obsidian Entertainment
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

Places I'd Like to Visit:
Sweden
Switzerland
Italy
France
Thailand
Brazil
South Korea
Japan (again!)
Norway
Costa Rica

click for more =)

blogger
violation**

the image was not made by violation**.

Monday, May 30, 2005

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

"Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."

Mary: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss his ass?"

John: "If you kiss Hank's ass, he'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, he'll kick the shit out of you."

Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shakedown?"

John: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropists. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do what ever wants, and what he wants is to give you a million dollars, but he can't until you kiss his ass."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Mary: "Who are you to question Hank's gift? Don't you want a million dollars? Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ass?"

Me: "Well maybe, if it's legit, but..."

John: "Then come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me: "Do you kiss Hank's ass often?"

Mary: "Oh yes, all the time..."

Me: "And has he given you a million dollars?"

John: "Well no, you don't actually get the money until you leave town."

Me: "So why don't you just leave town now?"

Mary: "You can't leave until Hank tells you to, or you don't get the money, and he kicks the shit out of you."

Me: "Do you know anyone who kissed Hank's ass, left town, and got the million dollars?"

John: "My mother kissed Hank's ass for years. She left town last year, and I'm sure she got the money."

Me: "Haven't you talked to her since then?"

John: "Of course not, Hank doesn't allow it."

Me: "So what makes you think he'll actually give you the money if you've never talked to anyone who got the money?"

Mary: "Well, he gives you a little bit before you leave. Maybe you'll get a raise, maybe you'll win a small lotto, maybe you'll just find a twenty dollar bill on the street."

Me: "What's that got to do with Hank?"

John: "Hank has certain 'connections.' "

Me: "I'm sorry, but this sounds like some sort of bizarre con game."

John: "But it's a million dollars, can you really take the chance? And remember, if you don't kiss Hank's ass he'll kick the shit of you."

Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to him, get the details straight from him..."

Mary: "No one sees Hank, no one talks to Hank."

Me: "Then how do you kiss his ass?"

John: "Sometimes we just blow him a kiss, and think of his ass. Other times we kiss Karl's ass, and he passes it on."

Me: "Who's Karl?"

Mary: "A friend of ours. He's the one who taught us all about kissing Hank's ass. All we had to do was take him out to dinner a few times."

Me: "And you just took his word for it when he said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to kiss his ass, and that Hank would reward you?"

John: "Oh no! Karl's got a letter Hank sent him years ago explaining the whole thing. Here's a copy; see for your self."

John handed me a photocopy of a handwritten memo on "From the desk of Karl" letterhead. There were eleven items listed:

From the desk of: KARL
1. Kiss Hank's ass and he'll give you a million dollars when you leave town.
2. Use alcohol in moderation.
3. Kick the shit out of people who aren't like you.
4. Eat right.
5. Hank dictated this list himself.
6. The moon is made of green cheese.
7. Everything Hank says is right.
8. Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
9. Don't drink.
10. Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
11. Kiss Hank's ass or he'll kick the shit out of you.

Me: "This would appear to be written on Karl's Letterhead."

Mary: "Hank didn't have any paper."

Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."

John: "Of course, Hank dictated it."

Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"

Mary: "Not now, but years ago he would talk to some people."

Me: "I thought you said he was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist kicks the shit out of people just because they're different?"

Mary: "It's what Hank wants, and Hank's always right."

Me: "How do you figure that?"

Mary: "Item 7 says 'Everything Hanks says is right.' That's good enough for me!"

Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."

John: "No way! Item 5 says 'Hank dictated this list himself.' Besides, item 2 says 'Use alcohol in moderation,' Item 4 says 'Eat right,' and item 8 says 'Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.' Everyone knows those things are right, so the rest must be true too."

Me: "But 9 says 'Don't Drink,' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is made of green cheese,' which is just plain wrong."

John: "There's no contradiction between 9 and 2, 9 just clarifies 2. As far as 6 goes, you've never been to the moon, so you can't say for sure."

Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon is made of rock..."

Mary: "But they don't know if the rock came from the Earth, or from outer of space, so it could just as easily be green cheese."

Me: "I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory that the Moon came from the Earth has been discounted. Besides, not knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese."

John: "Aha! You just admitted that scientists make mistakes, but we know Hank is always right!"

Me: "We do?"

Mary: "Of course we do, Item 5 says so."

Me: "You're saying Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic. That's no different from saying 'Hank's right because he says he's right.'"

John: "Now you're getting it! It's so rewarding to see someone come around to Hank's way of thinking!"

Me: "But... oh, never mind. What's the deal with wieners?"

Mary blushes.

John: "Wieners, in buns, no condiments. Anything else is wrong."

Me: "What if I don't have a bun?"

John: "No bun, no wiener. A wiener without a bun is wrong."

Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"

Mary looks positively stricken.

John: (yelling) "There's no need for such language! Condiments of any kind are wrong!"

Me: "So a big pile of sauerkraut with some wieners chopped up in it would be out of the question?"

Mary sticks her fingers in her ears: "I am not listening to this. La la la la la la la la."

John: "That's disgusting. Only some sort of evil deviant would eat that..."

Me: "It's good! I eat it all the time."

Mary faints.

John: "Well, if I knew you where one of those, I wouldn't have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the shit out of you, I'll be there counting my money and laughing. I'll kiss Hank's ass for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater."

With this, John dragged Mary to their waiting car, and sped off.

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/30/2005 11:51:00 pm :)

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plus, check out the banner at the bottom of the page =)

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/30/2005 11:01:00 pm :)

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Thursday, May 26, 2005

Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant
As the Religious Right tries to ban the teaching of evolution in Kansas, Richard Dawkins speaks up for scientific logic

Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: “Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.” Science mines ignorance. Mystery — that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand — is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do.

Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name.

It isn’t even safe for a scientist to express temporary doubt as a rhetorical device before going on to dispel it.

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” You will find this sentence of Charles Darwin quoted again and again by creationists. They never quote what follows. Darwin immediately went on to confound his initial incredulity. Others have built on his foundation, and the eye is today a showpiece of the gradual, cumulative evolution of an almost perfect illusion of design. The relevant chapter of my Climbing Mount Improbable is called “The fortyfold Path to Enlightenment” in honour of the fact that, far from being difficult to evolve, the eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom.

The distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin is widely quoted as saying that organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed”. Again, this was a rhetorical preliminary to explaining how the powerful illusion of design actually comes about by natural selection. The isolated quotation strips out the implied emphasis on “appear to”, leaving exactly what a simple-mindedly pious audience — in Kansas, for instance — wants to hear.

The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors. But such Telling Lies for God (the book title of the splendidly pugnacious Australian geologist Ian Plimer) is not the most serious problem. There is a more important point to be made, and it goes right to the philosophical heart of creationism.

The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.”

Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty. Today’s scientist in America dare not say: “Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frog’s ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. I’ll have to go to the university library and take a look.” No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: “Weasel frog could only have been designed by God.”

I once introduced a chapter on the so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: “It is as though the fossils were planted there without any evolutionary history.” Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the reader’s appetite for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context. Creationists adore “gaps” in the fossil record.

Many evolutionary transitions are elegantly documented by more or less continuous series of changing intermediate fossils. Some are not, and these are the famous “gaps”. Michael Shermer has wittily pointed out that if a new fossil discovery neatly bisects a “gap”, the creationist will declare that there are now two gaps! Note yet again the use of a default. If there are no fossils to document a postulated evolutionary transition, the assumption is that there was no evolutionary transition: God must have intervened.

The creationists’ fondness for “gaps” in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.

Richard Dawkins, FRS, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, at Oxford University. His latest book is The Ancestor’s Tale

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/26/2005 04:59:00 pm :)

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Sunday, May 22, 2005

Only A Theory

By Bob Truett

Education is a family value! But education is not a Christian family value. It never has been. Christianity has almost unanimously opposed the teaching of evolution for more than a hundred years. Recently the more moderate Christian sects may have softened this opposition, but opposition from the less cerebral sects has increased and bristled.

Present efforts by the cross folks (pun intended) involve watering down the teaching of evolution by insisting it be taught as "only a theory" while also insisting on the teaching of something called creation science. An example is the recent action of the Alabama Department of Education in adopting a policy that public schools should not teach evolution as a fact. A dedicated and knowledgeable science teacher could use this action very effectively. The best weapon such a science teacher has is the presentation of Natural Selection as a theory. The use of this weapon requires that the science teacher must really understand what evolution is and what a theory is.

During my years as a zoologist and a zoo director in Alabama I was often asked "Do you believe in evolution?" The proper answer is "No, I do not." But this requires some explanation. I do not believe in the sun rising each morning, nor do I believe in oak trees growing from acorns. I do not believe in pussy cats licking the faces of their kittens nor in children laughing and playing pranks. "Believe in" implies faith in something for which there is not evidence. It is not necessary to believe in something which we can all see happening and which constantly manifests its own truth.

Stripped of all misconceptions, evolution is like the growth of an oak or the laughter of a child. It is a natural phenomenon that is abundantly apparent to everyone who has an open eye and an open mind. Thousands of persons have observed it and used it to their advantage. Evolution was observed and remarked in ancient times by Democritus, the laughing philosopher; by Heraclitus, the obscure philosopher; and by Aristotle, the father of zoology. Evolution simply means change. The growth of the oak and the laughter of the child are familiar examples of natural change that is going on around us at all times. Nature has no other phenomena that are more ubiquitous and easily observed than change.

There is really no such thing as the "Theory of Evolution." There are theories about how evolution works but these are not properly called the theory of evolution. The best known theories about how evolution works are those that were proposed by Charles Darwin. They are properly called the Theory of Natural Selection and the Theory of Sexual Selection.

The wise teacher also needs to know the meaning of the word theory. The average person might say "I have a theory that wearing red socks always brings me good luck." Used like this the word theory means a wild guess. Wild guesses are not the stuff of which science is made. In science a good, educated guess is called a hypothesis. The purpose of a hypothesis is to provide something to submit to experimentation and evidence in an attempt to learn the truth.

So what is a theory? A proper definition of a theory in science is this: A working explanation of natural phenomena based on available evidence. The three key words in this definition are working, explanation, and evidence. These are the keys to the strength of a scientific theory. And they are the keys to teaching evolution as a theory.

The first key is working. A valid theory in science must work. We still speak of the theorem ( theory) of Pythagoras. This theory has been used thousands of times in all kinds of construction and engineering. It is a theory because it works. Even in the study of music, when you get to the part about how music works it is called music theory. The Theory of Relativity worked when the atomic bomb was detonated.

The natural selection theory about evolution can be demonstrated to work in the school laboratory. Humans will do the selecting to produce changes instead of nature doing the selecting. Using ripe banana peels the teacher can show her students how to catch Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. These flies are easy to maintain in captivity, they reproduce rapidly, and this is a very changeable species. Within one semester the teacher can help the students to use selective breeding to produce flies with no wings, or with green eyes, or other spectacular variations. On the farm you can start with Anas platyrhynchos, the mallard duck and in a few generations you can change your stock of ducks to white pekin ducks by selective breeding. For centuries farmers who never heard of evolution have used selection to produce new varieties of domesticated animals and even to produce entirely new species.

Many times when teaching about evolution I have been asked, "If living things changed in the past why aren't they changing now?" It is quite evident that many species are changing right now. There are changes occurring naturally in the fields and forests. In laboratories and on farms people are controlling the changes and causing them to happen more rapidly. The Theory of Natural Selection is valid because it works.

Let us ask that same question of creation science. If god created living things in the past why can't he create something alive now? I don't mean birth because that is life from life. It is stated that god created all kinds of living things from nothing or from dust. Try this in the laboratory. Put some sterile dust into an empty cage and let the kids pray about it. They should, of course, do their praying silently or in privacy at home. Suggest that they should use great faith, even invite their ministers to help them pray. Let them demonstrate whether creationism is a valid theory by a controlled experiment to see if god can create a mouse. Saying that god did it all in six days and won't do it again is not valid because the Bible has additional creation stories such as the special preparation of a great fish to swallow Jonah (Jonah 1:17). If god made a great fish then, he can make a small mouse now. Will it work?

The next key word is explanation. Theories about evolution explain hundreds of kinds of natural phenomena for which there is no other explanation. A few examples include Batesian and Mullerian mimicry, secondary sexual characteristics as spectacular sexual dimorphism, centers of distribution, and vestiges. Creationism has no explanation for any of these things. Ask the creationist why different species of butterflies mimic each other, or why the male Scarlet Tanager looks so different from the female, or why a human has a vestige of a tail. The best he can say is "because god made it that way." That explains nothing. If all humans were satisfied with such a non-explanation there would be no science at all and we would all still be living in the Dark Ages. The purpose of science is to explain nature.

The final key word is evidence. Evidence shows us the importance of theory. In science everything should always be taught as theory. Dogmatic statements of absolute truth are the antithesis of science. The theologian is absolutely certain he is right while the scientist always questions everything and looks for the evidence. In the past science, and everything else, was controlled by the church. So scientists had to believe, or at least pretend to believe, that god ordained laws which are in control of nature. In those days when a scientist explained something he called his explanation a law. Examples include the Law of Gravity and the Laws of Thermodynamics. We still speak of these as laws even though they have been drastically changed by modern theories. They were not really laws at all.

Actually there is no such thing as natural law. When a scientist finds an explanation for natural phenomena she should never call that explanation a law. Every scientific explanation that works and fits the available evidence is a theory and every theory should be subject to revision as more evidence becomes available. The very essence of science is its reliance upon the latest and best evidence. The strength of evolution is in the fact that it is theory. It is flexible enough to change when more and better evidence becomes available. The weakness of creationism is that it rests only on faith and not on evidence. Theologians can not rewrite the Genesis story to conform to new evidence. Therefore the creationist must constantly be hiding evidence, altering evidence, or trying to refute and explain away evidence which conflicts with the creation story.

That is the reason education is not a Christian family value. Throughout this land Christians fight bitterly against real education because it conflicts with their inflexible fables. They do not want evidence based teaching about evolution, nor about sex, nor about distant galaxies, nor about the religious views of those who wrote our constitution, nor about what persons of other religions believe, nor about the history of Christian mayhem, nor about the disaster of human overpopulation, nor about the tragic cost of criminalizing victimless behavior, nor about the religious causes of the war in Bosnia, etc. Christians like indoctrination, not education.

There are ways for any teacher to show her students how to use their brains in spite of the boundaries imposed by religion-controlled school boards. The way to make them really think about evolution is to emphasize that it is "only a theory." Then show them that only a theory is based on evidence, can be shown to work, and can explain the biology of the world around us.

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/22/2005 12:46:00 am :)

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Saturday, May 21, 2005

i've just watched x-men 2! for the dunnowad time alrd... but it's still one of my favourite shows so far... so i think it's really quite fitting to post this review that i've just found on the net:

"X2: X-Men United"

Mutation and Secularization

By David Condo

Despite the lack of serious intellectual stimulation that standard Hollywood cinema tends to offer, the anticipated blockbusters for this Summer have some surprisingly complex themes interwoven between the action, comedy, and special effects. In Matrix Reloaded, we are treated to the mythological and philosophical ideas of fate, destiny, the nature of reality, and the promise of a savior; even creationism gets a plug - we get to meet the "Architect" of the Matrix. In the comedy Bruce Almighty, we get to see what happens to a skeptic (Jim Carrey) who doubts and curses God - God appears before him as Morgan Freeman and grants him absolute power! Even in the special effects extravaganza Hulk there are underlying issues about scientific ethics and humanity that are central to the character's development.

Unexpected depth was also found in the summer's kickoff event: X2: X-Men United. This film deals with the adventures of mutants: individuals "in the not too distant future" who have extraordinary gifts and powers - with both beneficial and dangerous potential. Whether marketed by the story as "good" or "evil", all mutants are struggling to survive in a world in which they are misunderstood and feared by the rest of humanity. It is this persecution and how different mutants choose to deal with it that creates the drama and action which has captivate comic book fans for decades and which made an impressive transition to the big screen with the first X-Men film in 2000.

The first film dealt with a government plan to force all mutants into registration of their identities and abilities (with the implications of eventual isolation and imprisonment). X2 showcases mutants joining forces to oppose a National Security Director who wishes to abuse his government position and destroy the entire mutant race. There is drama, there is triumph, there is tragedy - but most of all, there is relevance.

Being an atheist, I resonated with several aspects of this movie. The distaste and distrust shown towards the mutants are indicative of many modern attitudes towards whomever is different (whether their anomaly is a mutant power or just a skeptical mind). The mutant persecution parallels that of the secular community: it brings them together, although many want to stay hidden. It unites them towards liberation and equality - but they disagree among themselves on how to achieve these goals.

The film also does a good job showing how the "normal" majority tends to demonize and dehumanize what they fear instead of trying to face and understand it. Citizens refer to the "mutant problem" and label all mutants as the same in the impersonal manner needed to deny them of their individuality and their humanity. It is a lesson which unfortunately has ample historical precedent and one with which a variety or persecuted minorities can identify. In one particular scene, a young man tells his parents that he is a mutant, only to have them respond, "We still love you (in spite of this problem)" and "It's all my fault". It's a telling seen for anybody who has "come out", and the filmmakers don't pull many punches in showing the grief and tragedy that can come from stubborn, uninformed rejection.

The movie also promotes evolution, describing it as a very long process responsible for the development of all life on Earth. In addition, it promotes scientific inquiry, heroic but ethical resistance to tyranny, and a tolerance and appreciation for diversity. Ironically, some of the most "humanist" individuals in this film are the mutants.

The only annoyance of X2 was its equally enthusiastic promotion of religion. One of the new mutants - the otherwise likeable "Nightcrawler" - is very religious, and in several scenes he preaches about the virtues of faith or the angelic signs tattooed on his body. Worse yet, the film does nothing to suggest that this preaching is anything but completely credible. Yes, the film certainly can have both secular and religious mutants, but focusing on a life-sized crucifix in one scene is a bit much. I was most irritated when, during a major dramatic, emotional moment, Nightcrawler starts reciting bible verses - and the other characters do nothing about it. It was the perfect time for somebody to use their mutant powers to shut that guy up, but there were no takers.

Overall, however, it was a great movie - very fun, with fantastic action and special effects, and with a storyline and dialogue that is enjoyable for adults and kids. It was one of the few times I have been in a theater where adults have been cheering in the aisles time and again for the heroes. Whether you see it on the big screen or on video, the X-Men movies are good for a lot of entertainment and a little insight on what it's like being different.

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/21/2005 06:33:00 pm :)

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America Growing More Secular

According to CUNY's definitive American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), the number of "Nonreligious" American adults more than doubled between 1990 and 2001 while the number of "Religious" and "Christians" declined. The "Nonreligious" are now the fastest growing segment of the population.

	1990*	2001**
NONRELIGIOUS	8% (14.3 million)	14.3% (29.4 million)
Religious	90%	81%
Christian	86%	77%
Mormon/LDS	1.4% (2.5 million)	1.3% (2.8 million)
Jewish	1.8% (3.1 million)	1.3% (2.8 million)
Muslim/Islamic	0.3% (0.5 million)	0.5% (1.1 million)
Refused to reply	2.3%	5.4%
Regarding religious affiliation, the authors note: "Often lost admidst the mesmerizing tapestry of faith groups that comprise the American population is also a vast and growing population of those without faith. They adhere to no creed nor choose to affiliate with any religious community. These are the seculars, the unchurched, the people who profess no faith in any religion. ". . . the present survey has detected a wide and possibly growing swath of secularism among Americans. The magnitude and role of this large secular segment of the American population is frequently ignored by scholars and politicians alike." ARIS survey shows 16% of Americans are "secular" Regarding religious views, the authors of CUNY's survey note: "In all, sixteen percent (16%) described their outlook as secular or somewhat secular while seventy-five percent (75%) described their outlook as religious or somewhat religious. . . . [A]t least ten percent of the population clearly and unambiguously considers itself 'secular' rather than 'religious.' Another six percent regard themselves as 'somewhat secular.' " Overall, the authors note: "The greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification." * 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). 113,000+ samples ** 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). 50,000+ samples Graduate Center, City University of New York www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/aris_index.htm This information provided by: Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. PO Box 750 Madison WI 53701 (608) 256-8900 www.ffrf.org

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/21/2005 06:01:00 pm :)

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No Other Superstition But This One

Organized superstitions might be more socially supportable if their creed included a provision accepting the organized superstitions of others. Unfortunately, modern religions do not practice tolerance. For example Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore gained widespread fame and even adulation when he refused to obey court orders to remove from the Alabama Courthouse a huge stone tablet on which was inscribed the Ten Commandments. When he was asked how he would react to the suggestion that a monument to the Koran or the Torah also be placed in the Courthouse he brusquely declared he would prohibit such an installation.

A few months later, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence explained why he knew he would win his battle against Muslims in Somalia. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."*

(*fyi, he DIDN'T win the battle against the muslims...)

The creationism vs. evolution debate also illuminates this intolerance. Christians insist that their creation myth represent the creationist side. But there are many creationist myths, many of which predated both Christianity and Judaism. If evidence is not needed, why exclude any superstitions? As Sam Harris notes in The End of Faith, "there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existence of Yahweh and Satan than there was to keep Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning the seas."

The impact of moving towards "superstition-based institutions" would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary. Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:

I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.

Fanatics and Zealots Destroying the Liberty of Thought

In her magnificent book, Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby describes the 230-year-old battle in the United States between reason and superstition. She discusses the post-Civil War period in which the battle may have been most evenly matched.

Robert Green Ingersoll, possibly the best known American in the post Civil War era and the nation's foremost orator, traveled around the country arguing about the harm that comes from self-congratulatory, aggressive and assertive organized religions.

He explained why the word God does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man."

Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of 'inspiration,'" he insisted. "It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized."

In 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton explained how organized and assertive religions around the world have restricted women's rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord', of course he can do it."

Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth."

During the era when Ingersoll and Stanton spread their own form of the gospel, the Church was making ever-more explicit its own hostility to reason as a guide to human behavior. In 1869, Pope Pius IX convinced the First Vatican Council to proclaim, "let him be anathema ... (w)ho shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine."

His successor, Pope Leo XIII, in one of his best known encyclicals maintained, it "has even been contended that public authority with its dignity and power of ruling, originates not from God but from the mass of the people, which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanctions, refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its own free will."

Other churches agreed. In 1878, geologist Alexander Winchell was dismissed from the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville for publishing his opinion that human life had existed on earth long before the biblical time frame for the creation of Adam. Most Methodists supported the dismissal, arguing that Vanderbilt was founded by Methodists and dedicated to the goals of the church.

Some 45 years later, the famous Scopes trial opened. Most of us know that William Jennings Bryan was the lawyer for the prosecution of Scopes, a biology teacher who in his classroom violated Tennessee law forbidding the mention of evolution. What we may not know is that William Jennings Bryan was a three-time democratic presidential candidate and Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. After the Wilson administration Bryan devoted himself to campaigning around the nation on behalf of state laws banning the teaching of evolution. For Bryan faith always trumped science. "(I)t is better to trust in the Rock of Ages than to know the ages of rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father than to know how far the stars in the heaven are apart."

That was then. This is now. A few months ago, a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, refused to show Volcanoes, a science film funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The film was turned down because it very briefly raises the possibility that life on Earth may have originated at undersea steam vents.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said that many people said the film was "blasphemous." Lisa Buzzelli, director of the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, told The New York Times, "We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public."

Buzzelli's probably right. And that cannot bode well for America's future economic and technological leadership. A 1988 survey by researchers from the University of Texas found that one of four public school biology teachers thought that humans and dinosaurs might have inhabited the earth simultaneously. A recent survey by Gallup found that 35 percent of Americans believe the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe it is the "inspired" word of the same. Some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation; another 40 percent believe God has guided creation over the course of millions of years.

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/21/2005 05:50:00 pm :)

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Friday, May 20, 2005

wonderful background image taken from a photo by miki soo.

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/20/2005 11:15:00 pm :)

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Friday, May 13, 2005

OMGWTFLOL!!!

Go Here http://www.godlovestheworld.com/

OMGWTFLOL!!!

*omg can be interpreted to stand for "oh my goodness"... or for theists who'd rather people not use His name in vain, then it stand for "oh my god" then. silly fuckers. haha.

okay not in right frame of mind to blog now. will update more after results are received. tata!

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/13/2005 01:01:00 am :)

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Thursday, May 12, 2005

i must say, dave silverman, communications director of American Atheists, is real good stuff.
you can catch him in action at http://nogodblog.com!
so here's his latest post. behold, for he speaketh the truth.

Why do so many believe?

OK so here's a question someone just asked me; Why do so many people -- the vast majority of humans, believe in a deity of one kind or another?

Let's ignore for a moment the argument for the "God part of the brain". This does well to presuppose why gods existed in the days gone by. But TODAY, in 2005, when we have more knowledge than ever, and none of it pointing to a deity, why do people still believe? Why do they lie just to support their belief, instead of admitting that gods are mythology and moving on with their lives?

I say many of the people who CLAIM to be religious are as nontheistic as I am, they are just in denial. After all, it is really pretty picture to say everyone lives forever and all the bad guys get punished and all the good guys go to heaven, so people half-deliberately PRETEND to believe in it, even though they do not.

Case-in-point, let's look at Bill Clinton. Now, I like President Clinton, and I strongly wish he was still president.

He's very smart -- everyone knows how intelligent he is. If, as he claims, he is a religious Christian, then he believes he will go to Hell for eternity if he dies while committing repeated adultery. that's really bad, right? Why would a smart man take such a stupid chance? Look at Swaggert (or was it Roberts?) who had sex with the prostitute ("I have sinned against you my loooord"). I mean, how stupid would you have to be to risk eternity in Hell just to get your rocks off? Pretty darn!

Indeed, look at every so-called theist who sins (affairs, gambling, etc) on a regular basis. They say they believe, they say they fear hell, yet they behave as if they do not. Why?

My opinion: They are all faking it. Deep down, they are Atheists, each and every one of them. And, much like the sometimes violent reaction that a drug addict has when confronted with the reality of his addiction, they lash out at those who pose a threat to burst their fragile bubble of fantasy.

The bigotry against Atheists doesn't always come from religion -- it comes from the fear of reality creeping in the way of a pretty picture.

Look, I'm not much different. I wish I was immortal too. I wish all my grandparents were waiting for me in Heaven, and I wish all the bad guys in the world got punished, even if they don't get caught. I also wish the World Trade Center was still standing, AIDS and hunger didn't exist, and we were a world at total peace. Sorry, folks, wishing doesn't make it true. Maybe it's time to burst your own bubble.

-nogodblog.com

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/12/2005 10:15:00 pm :)

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Monday, May 09, 2005

Creationism and vacating the Age of Reason (Ron Reagan)

The state of Kansas is poised to vacate the Age of Reason. If all goes according to brain-addled plan, the Kansas school board will soon vote to water down the state’s public school science curriculum, minimizing Darwinian evolution and giving credence to a half-baked, non-scientific notion variously called “creationism” or “intelligent design.”

Evolution debate
May 4: MSNBC-TV's Monica Crowley and Ron Reagan discuss the controversy in Kansas over evolution and the role it should play in state schools' curriculums.

MSNBC
We dealt with the issue recently on our show and I got a little steamed, as I’m prone to do when faced with shameless lies told at the expense of innocent children. Evolution, of course, has mountains of evidence on its side—the fossil record; genetics; observations of rapidly mutating species in nature in the lab, as well as some compelling new computer models. I challenged our creationist guest to provide similar evidence for his point of view. He couldn’t... because there isn’t any. But it got me thinking: education that ignores the facts could be a lot more fun.

For instance, generations of school kids have been taught that George Washington and his troops defeated the British after crossing the Delaware River in wooden rowboats. Plenty of scholarship backs that up. But we don’t have any of the actual boats, do we? Who’s to say that Washington didn’t ditch the watercraft and instead cross the river on the backs of specially trained dinosaurs? No evidence for that - but in Kansas, we don’t need no stinkin’ evidence.

How about math? The diameter of a circle equals twice the radius? Nah, in my new new math, the diameter of a circle equals time to order out for pizza. Doesn’t sound like mathematical science to you? Yeah... and what’s your point?

All that’s necessary for ignorance to triumph is that people who know better step aside and get out of its way. We might want to consider that as we sit back twiddling our thumbs and playing politics while Kansas spirals into the Dark Ages, dragging its unwitting children with it.

and ripped this offa lefire's blog. might not be totally, true, but good for laughs nonetheless.

Taoism: Shit happens
Hare krishna: Shit happens Rama Rama Ding Ding
Hinduism: This shit has happened before
Islam: That shit happens is the will of Allah
Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?
Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit is
Buddhism: When shit happens, is it really shit?
Confucianism: Confucius say, "Shit happens"
7th day Adventist: Shit happens on Saturdays
Protestantism: Shit won't happen if I work harder
Protestantism: If shit happens, it happens to someone else
Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserved it
Jehovah's Witnesses: Knock, knock, "Shit happens"
Jehovah's Witnesses: No shit happens until Armaggedon
Unitarian: What is this shit?
Mormon: Shit happens again & again & again
Judaism: Oy vey! Why does this shit always happen to us?
Pentacostalism: Praise the shit!
New Age: Shit happens and it happens to smell good
Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit
Jainism: Please don't step on the poor shit!
Agnosticism: You can't really tell if it's shit.
Sai Babaism: Doesn't matter if you call it shit or sai as long as you believe.
FACTS: opening the country to shit will send the message to our children that's it perfectly ok to shit.
Aum Shinrikyo: we don't believe in shit, only gas.
Cao Daism: Behold the Great Universal Shit!
Christian Science: Pray and the shit will heal you.
Creationism: Don't tell me this shit evolved from some other stuff!
New Ageism: Hidden in that shit is a pure crystal of love!
Atheism: There is no shit!

oh and i recently watched kingdom of heaven. it's not that bad for a movie with a theistic nature, and christians could well learn a thing or two from it. i thought salahadin and the main character were really really cool though.

* Buddhism: If shit happens, you did something bad in your past life.

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/09/2005 08:59:00 pm :)

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Thursday, May 05, 2005

[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
oh
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
omg~
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
i realise something.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
atheism is a religion!
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
haha
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
hi
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
eh?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its not technically
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
u did my quiz issit
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
hi
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
no i didn't
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
oh
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
atheism is as much about believe there is no god as the religious belief in one
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
atheism isnt a belief per se
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its a deduction based on logical reasoning and available evidence
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
blind belief that there is no god is satanism i think
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and christianity is a deduction based on logical reasoning of a different set of evidence?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
no, satanism believes in a god.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
nah christianity is faith
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
well, the anti-god ><
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
haha
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
there is no evidence for chritianity
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
yes, no one is disputing that
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its just faith passed on thru the generations
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
but can you claim strongly that there is evidence AGAINST God?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
god may or may not exist
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
ya
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
empirical studies have shown that some events cannot be directly attributed to science as well
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
theres no evidence against god
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
likewise as how events cannot be attributed towards religion
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but thats not to say they can never be attributed to science
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i think its only a matter of time before science explains everything
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
who is to say religious works cannot be attributed to god?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
that maybe god exists, only he is perceived differently?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
theres no evidence for such a thing- god is merely a product of antiquated superstitions... theres no logical rationale for believing in god going by the ockham's razor
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
perceived differently? like how?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its pointless talking about god then if we can never figure out if he exists
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
he may live within the bounds of our world and our physical laws
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
the universe can still go on without the notion of a creator
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
then he can be detected
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but he hasnt.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
however, since it was beyond the understanding of the previous civilisation, we perceived his acts as godly
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
like, if i were to travel back in time and strike a match in front of prehistoric cavemen, i would be perceived as god-like
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
uhhuh
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
god is collection of all things that we cannot explain
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
is the*
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
exactly
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
since things exist that we cannot explain, god must logically still exist
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
no
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
u cannot say that god must exist because there are things that we cannot explain
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
atheism, the believe in the non-existance of all manners of higher beings able to exert a limitless degree of control of space, time and matter, is just that, believe
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
god should exist, religion shouldn't
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
then god might disappear in the future if we can explain them?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
where is the objective truth here?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
god would always exist, to represent the grey areas in science
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
why do the existence of grey areas warrant a need for higher beings?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
i think the point is that reckless disregard for any other forms of being or existance other then what we can understand is arrogance
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
why cant they just exist as grey areas waiting to be resolved by science
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
exactly my point
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
in this case, science becomes a religion, don't you see?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
the faith that everything will be resolved by science?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
the believe that everything must be rationale?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
no, based on evidence
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
haha, christians would argue that too
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
science has been able to progressively explain stuff that used to be classified under magic before
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
that their works were based on "evidence"
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
so logically that should continue to be the trnd
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
understandably so
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
trend
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
i do not disregard logic and science
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
neither do i favour religion
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
but i think atheism, the believe of the non-existance of god, or rather, the faith in the superiority of science, is the modern religion.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
no i think its more of acceptance of scientific truths
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
the belief that science is the objective truth is actually a logical deduction based on experience
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
see, in the 15th century, before the renaissance, before the concept of science appeared, the understanding was that Christianity will explain everything
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
uhhuh
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so waking up in the morning was God doing something to you
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
by attributuing everything to an omnipotent creator
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
now, we understand that waking up is a shift in hormonal balances within the body
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
a perfectly logical statement based on current observation
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
now we know that there is no rationale for faith in such a creaotr as there is no evidence that a higher being exists
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
what we fail to note is the argument of the possibility of different points of view
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
exactly
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and maybe 2 millenia later, we will "know" once again that science was a set of sensory deception or something
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and that is something we cannot as yet disprove
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
that what we observe is what is, per se.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yes
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but speaking about things that can never be observed is really quite meaningless
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
like solipsism
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
science is the most logical and accurate explanation of our observable experience
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
only in the context of our OWN perception
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
that's where my idea of grey area comes in, you see
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
it is based on logic and reasoning and does not require faith derived from baseless assertions
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yeah
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
logic, or our perception of it, is purely a human creation
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and therefore as likely to be baseless as anything in human history -__-
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but speaking about anything that might exist beyong our own perception has no meaning to it
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
it does
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
it is the acceptance that perhaps, our level of intelligence is not necessary as of yet to explain everything
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
sufficient u mean
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
not necessary
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and also that our level of technology is not sufficient to uncover all the, as you said, necessary evidence
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
yea, sufficient ><
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but id say there has been an accumulation of intelligence throughout the ages
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
exactly
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and who are we to say that we are at the peak of it?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
newton might have been more intellectually gifted than most physicists today
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but he couldnt deduce special relativity due to lack of already accumulated intelligence
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
my point exactly
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yes
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
what we are doing is that we have closed the system
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i dont think anyone is saying we are at the peak of it though
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
we officially say, "We are at the epitome of understanding, our system of logic and reasoning as well as empirical studies is the ultimate way to go."
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
what we need is the believe that there are things that are beyond our current system
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
since as you very well know, logic has paradoxes
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
well, we are at out peak compared to previous ages
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
how can a system that can explain everything contradict itself?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but that is not to say that peak cannot increase
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
haha, read Godel
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
his incompleteness theorem.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
give me a logical paradox
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
many many
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
logical paradoxes usually stem from one or more inherently flawed assumptions
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
umm, do you want the mathematical proof for the inevitability of a paradox, or just an example?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
example
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but yah, i agree that our current system cannot explain everything
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yet.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
my point exactly
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so the believe in science is still a faith
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
the faith that our system will eventually explain everything
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
i think a clearer perspective is rather to understand that we have a working model for observation, but the model is lacking
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i think its more of a logical conclusion that because it has been able to explain veerything so far it will continue to do so
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yah
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i agree
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
to the 13th century bible scholar, the same could have been said ><
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
hte model is lacking yes
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but thats not to say it wont be lacking forever
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
thats the whole point of scientific pursuit
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
same as the degree in bible studies?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
bible studies is centred upon faith
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
theres a big diff between faith and science
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
there is
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
bible studies is the study of how ancient people thought the universe worked
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
but there is no diff between faith and faith in science.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
historical cosmology
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
that cosmology has since evolved.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
scientific pursuit aside, the faith that eventually, all will one day resolve to be explained by a single theorem is like saying that god will explain everything.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
what we see is people and scientists who utter disregard things they cannot empirically document and explain
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
for example, god.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
god is not an unexplainable phenomena
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
it is not even a phenomena
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
i think a clearer perspective is rather to understand that we have a working model for observation, but the model is lacking
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i agree with that
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
exactly
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
our "owrking model" has always been lacking
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but it has always been improving
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and within that model, we must have room to accept other possibilities
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yes
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
thats how scientific revolutions come about
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
when all other possibilities has been expended, and when left with a choice of an impossible explanation against a highly improbable one, the impossible explanation is the more likely
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
what?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
how can an impossible explanation even be an explanation?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
oh u mean
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
impossible based on our current assumptions?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
exactly
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
then its not impossible in the objective sense
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
something deemed impossible
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its like galileo saying that the earth revolves around the sun is an impossible explanation because current assumptions at that time said that the sun revolved around the world
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
not entirely
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but a seemingly impossible explanation cannot be adopted if there are no empirical evidence that support it
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
its rather like saying that light travels a constant speed in all frames of reference, or that space is comprised of a grand summary of nothing.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
explanations deemed impossible and perposterous in their time.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
mmhmm
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
no lah
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
everyone thought that matter permeated the universe
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
improbable
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
brb
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
back
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
yes, in retrospect, everything is possible, everything is easy
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
but as i said, specific examples is not my point
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
i think that what we need to see here is the fundamentals
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
what's your fundamental reason for rejecting religion?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
it requires blind faith in the existence of a creator?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its not necessary in this age of science and reason
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so you believe that religion surpresses pursuit of knowledge and objectivity?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yes
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
well, it does
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
how can one argue aginst that?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
what is more important to you, the fact that religion surpresses knowledge, or that it requires the faith in a creator?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
having blind faith in the unqualified existence of a creaot is pretty much the same thing as denying the absence of an objective truth
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
*creator
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
is it?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
does the fact that it is a singular identity, a singular creator disturb you?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
there is no correlation between the existenc eof hgiher beings and observations in reality
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
the fact that there is no evidence for such a thing does
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
if there were scientific evidence for the existence of a creator, i wouldnt be ble to say no to it, would i?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
in other words, is it because you don't like placing your bets on someone else holding knowledge, or because you feel that knowledge is being kept from you?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so your disbelief for the creator is based purely on a logical argument against the claims of the church?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yes
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
you see the point i'm driving at here?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its not a gut feeling that says the notion of a creator is bullshit
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
on the contrary
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
it is a gut feeling.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
no matter how well grounded, you will not except a highly implausible explanation for god, whereas as you said earlier, you would except a highly implausible explanation for scientific phenomenom
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
because god is a philosophy. no less.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
the only thing that causes me not to believe is the lack of evidence and therefore, rationale
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i will accept a highly implausible explanation for scientific phenomenon only if it is supported by observations in reality
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
and creation theory pretty much isn't
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
no one is saying the creation theory is.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
that is bullshit
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
we all know it
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
it is the christian's way of trying to explain theology through science
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
which time and time again has proven to produce nothing but the purest form of crap.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
theology and science go together as chimpanzee and hair gel does.
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
mmhmm
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i will have to accept that a creator exists in the event that there is unrevocable evidence for it.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
exactl
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
exactly
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
you demand unrevocable evidence
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yes, i require congruence between assumptions and reality
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
whereas for scientific phenomenom, you would except an explanation as long as it has its groundings in science?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
irrevocable requires all other explanations to be passed through
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i will not accept it totally as objective truth
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but since it is grounded in logical reasoning
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
haha
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so you would not accept string theory as objective truth?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
it is the best possible explanantion
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
not talking abt string theory
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i for one
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
do not believe in the existence of hidden dimensions within our 3 spatial dimensions
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so everything to you must conform within a set scope of logical definitions?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
like rules?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
like rules that describe how reality works
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
anyone that asserts that string theory or loop quantum gravity is true is exercising as much blind faith as a theist in believing in God
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and somehow rejection is superior to acceptance?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i am not rejecting the existence of a creator, i am simply not considering it due to lack of evidence or logical basis
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but if string theory is the best possible explanation we have for the way the universe operates, and if it has not been proven false, then i will accept it as a matter of convenience
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but not label it as absolute truth
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
and therefore you believe in this system is that since the creator, or the string theory, does not fit your current system of logical and scientific understanding, they should be disregarded?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
string theory does fit in with logical and scientific understanding
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
it just has not been verified
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
verified as in?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
its like modern day religion
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
as in in terms of empirical evidence
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
right
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so you believe that empiricism and logical and scientific thoughts are the ONLY avenues for knowledge?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i am accepting it as the best possible explanation, for it is based upon intelligence that has been accumulated throughout the ages
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
u mean empiricism and rationalisation?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
yes
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
something along those lines
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
sounds like the scientific method to me
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
you see, atheism, in its purest form, is no better then religion.
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
it surpresses the gain of knowledge as well
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
philosophical deductions and rationalisation is disregarded and ignorned
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
well, it is not rejected outright
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but the most plausible theories are the ones that are generally accepted
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
and the ones that have the most groundings in accumulated intelligence and rules of logic
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
pure empiricism alone does not result in scientific progress
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
you have to formulate theories, like our ancestors did with religon, and either prove them right or wrong
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
at the very beginning, there was no accumulated intelligence
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
and therefore the only things man had to go along with was blind faith
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
interesting theory
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
but today that is not the case
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
so is your enemy intellectual apathy? or religion?
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
as in, do you think the problem is with people disregarding the pursuit of knowledge or because of religion's counter explanations and stuff which are corrupting minds?
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
religion is the result of intellectual apathy isn't it...
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
religion strives to bring mankind back to the ancient times
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
now that's serious apathy
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
i am reminded of industrial inertia
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
actually it isn't, that'll be intellectually disanthrophy
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
oh alright
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
refusal to move on despite new and more accurate explanations
|agentquantum| http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/ says:
bith religion and intellectual apathy are counterproductive to scientific progress
[Cogito Ergo Doleo] Ave Maria <ωαηġ> For he today who sheds his blood with me says:
haha yea

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/05/2005 11:56:00 pm :)

[ + + + ]

back for a bit, then off again to mug bio.

Tests of faith

Religion may be a survival mechanism. So are we born to believe? Ian Sample reports

Thursday February 24, 2005
The Guardian

First for some figures. Last year, an ICM poll found 85% of Americans believe that God created the universe. In Nigeria, 98% claimed always to have believed in God, while nine out of 10 Indonesians said they would die for their God or religious beliefs. Last month, a survey by the market research bureau of Ireland found 87% of the population believe in God. Rather than rocking their faith, 19% said tragedies such as the Asian tsunami, which killed 300,000 people, bolstered their belief. Polls have their faults, but if the figures are even remotely right they illustrate the prevalence of faith in the modern world.

Faith has long been a puzzle for science, and it's no surprise why. By definition, faith demands belief without a need for supporting evidence, a concept that could not be more opposed to the principles of scientific inquiry. In the eyes of the scientist, an absence of evidence reduces belief to a hunch. It places the assumptions at the heart of many religions on the rockiest of ground.

So why do so many people believe? And why has belief proved so resilient as scientific progress unravels the mysteries of plagues, floods, earthquakes and our understanding of the universe? By injecting nuns with radioactive chemicals, by scanning the brains of people with epilepsy and studying naughty children, scientists are now working out why. When the evidence is pieced together, it seems that evolution prepared what society later moulded: a brain to believe.

One factor in the development of religious belief was the rapid expansion of our brains as we emerged as a species, says Todd Murphy, a behavioural neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Canada. As the frontal and temporal lobes grew larger, our ability to extrapolate into the future and form memories developed. "When this happened, we acquired some very new and dramatic cognitive skills. For example, we could see a dead body and see ourselves in that position one day. We could think 'That's going to be me,'" he says. That awareness of impending death prompted questions: why are we here? What happens when we die? Answers were needed.

As well as providing succour for those troubled by the existential dilemma, religion, or at least a primitive spirituality, would have played another important role as human societies developed. By providing contexts for a moral code, religious beliefs encouraged bonding within groups, which in turn bolstered the group's chances of survival, says Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist turned psychologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Some believe that religion was so successful in improving group survival that a tendency to believe was positively selected for in our evolutionary history. Others maintain that religious belief is too modern to have made any difference.

"What I find more plausible is that rather than religion itself offering any advantage in evolutionary terms, it's a byproduct of other cognitive capacities we evolved, which did have advantages," says Boyer.

Psychological tests Boyer has run on children go some way to proving our natural tendency to believe. "If you look at three- to five-year-olds, when they do something naughty, they have an intuition that everyone knows they've been naughty, regardless of whether they have seen or heard what they've done. It's a false belief, but it's good preparation for belief in an entity that is moral and knows everything," he says. "The idea of invisible agents with a moral dimension who are watching you is highly attention-grabbing to us."

Childish belief is one thing, but religious belief is embraced by people of all ages and is by no means the preserve of the uneducated. According to Boyer, the persistence of belief into adulthood is at least in part down to a presumption. "When you're in a belief system, it's not that you stop asking questions, it's that they become irrelevant. Why don't you ask yourself about the existence of gravity? It's because a lot of the stuff you do every day presupposes it and it seems to work, so where's the motivation to question it?" he says. "In belief systems, you tend to enter this strange state where you start thinking there must be something to it because everybody around you is committed to it. The general question of whether it's true is relegated."

While some continue to tease out the reasons for the emergence of religion and its persistent appeal, others are delving into the neuroscience of belief in the hope of finding a biological basis for religious experience. As a starting point, many studies focused on people with particular neural conditions that made them prone to experiences so intense, they considered them to be visions of God.

At the University of California in San Diego, neuroscientist VS Ramachandran noticed that a disproportionate number of patients - around a quarter - with a condition called temporal lobe epilepsy reported having deeply moving religious experiences. "They'd tell me they felt a presence or suddenly felt they got the meaning of the whole cosmos. And these could be life-changing experiences," says Ramachandran. The feelings always came during seizures, even if the seizures were so mild, they could only be detected by sensitive electroencephalograms (EEGs). Between the seizures, some patients became preoccupied with thoughts about God.

Ramachandran drew up three explanations he thought might explain why the patients with epilepsy seemed so spiritual. First, he considered that the upwelling of emotion caused by the seizure might simply overwhelm, and patients made sense of it by believing that something extremely spiritual was going on. Second, the seizure might prompt the left hemisphere to make up yarns to account for seemingly inexplicable emotions. The ability of the brain's left hemisphere to "confabulate" like this is well known to neuroscientists. Third, he wondered whether seizures disrupted the function of part of the brain called the amygdala which, among other tasks, helps us focus on what is significant while allowing us to ignore the trivial.

Ramachandran decided to test a couple of patients using what is called the galvanic skin response. Two electrodes are used to measure tiny changes in the skin's electrical conductivity, an indirect measure of sweating. In most people, conductivity goes up when they are shown violent or sexual pictures, or similarly loaded words. In the test, Ramachandran found that patients with temporal lobe epilepsy responded very differently from others. Violent words such as "beat" and sexual words produced not a flicker, but religious icons and the word "God" evoked a big response.

With only two patients involved in the study, Ramachandran says it is impossible to draw any conclusions, but if the results stand up to future testing, it might indicate that seizures in the temporal lobe strengthen certain neural pathways connected to the amygdala, meaning we attribute significance to the banal objects and occurrences. "If those pathways all strengthen indiscriminately, everything and anything acquires a deep significance, and when that happens, it starts resembling a religious experience," he says. "And if we can selectively enhance religious sentiments, then that seems to imply there is neural circuitry whose activity is conducive to religious belief. It's not that we have some God module in our brains, but we may have specialised circuits for belief."

At the University of Pennsylvania, radiologist Andrew Newberg has cast a wider net to scan the brains of people performing all manner of spiritual activities. By injecting radioactive tracers into the veins of nuns, Buddhists and others, he has constructed brain maps that show how different practices affect neural processing. "What comes out is there's a complex network in the brain and depending on what you do, it is activated in different ways," says Newberg. "If someone does Tibetan Buddhist mediation they'll activate certain parts of their brain, but if you have a nun praying they'll activate slightly different parts, with someone doing transcendental mediation activating other areas again."

Newberg uncovered the neural processing behind the religious experience of "oneness" with the universe. Blood flow drops off in the parietal lobe, a brain structure that helps us orient ourselves by giving us a sense of ourselves. "We think this latter step is critical," says Newberg. "What seems to be happening is that as you block sensory information getting into the parietal lobe, it keeps trying to give you a sense of self, but it no longer has the information to do so. If that happens completely, you might get this absolute feeling of oneness."

"For my money, I'll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am wrong
I will have enjoyed my life, the existence of which is under little dispute."

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/05/2005 07:03:00 pm :)

[ + + + ]

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

i'm back! just had this thingy taken from vivien's blog:

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

We all have experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in the belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions through the most devastating attacks.

But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced about the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.”

- “When Prophecy Fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world”, Leon Festinger, 1956

ok, going back to mugging now. 3 more tests... 3 more tests...

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/04/2005 01:42:00 pm :)

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Tuesday, May 03, 2005

I made a Quiz for you! Take my Quiz! and then Check out the Scoreboard!

revamped quiz! for those who haven't done the earlier ones, have too much free time, or both.

spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 5/03/2005 10:32:00 pm :)

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click for more =)

Only A Theory

By Bob Truett

America Growing More Secular

ARIS survey shows 16% of Americans are "secular"

Why do so many believe?