"Begin at the beginning,and go on till you come to the end: then stop." (Lewis Carroll, 1832-1896)
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked."Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat."I don't know," Alice answered."Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
"So long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. "Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"
I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe. Like Arthur Dent from "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", if you do not have a Babel Fish in your ear this blog will be completely unintelligible to you and will read something like this: "boggle, google, snoggle, slurp, slurp, dingleberry to the power of 10". Fortunately, those who have had the Babel Fish inserted in their ear, will understood this blog perfectly. If you are familiar with this technology, you will know that the Babel Fish lives on brainwave radiation. It excretes energy in the form of exactly the correct brainwaves needed by its host to understand what was just said; or in this case, what was read. The Babel Fish, thanks to scientific research, reverses the problem defined by its namesake in the Tower of Babel, where a deity was supposedly inspired to confuse the human race by making them unable to understand each other.
Beepbeepitsme has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts.
"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat." - Sir Julian Huxley
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax; Of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot; And whether pigs have wings." - Lewis Carroll
"Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" Alexander Pope
"The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal." Ann Oakley
"Some treat their longing for God as proof of His existence." Mason Cooley
"The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises only to break them; who sends them pestilence and disease in order to heal them; a god who demoralizes mankind in order to improve it. A god who created man 'after his own image', and still the origin of evil in man is not accredited to him." Johann Most
"In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words." Mason Cooley
"My philosophy is such that I am not going to vote against the oppressed. I have been oppressed, and so I am always going to have a vote for the oppressed, regardless of whether that oppressed is black or white or yellow or the people of the Middle East, or what. I have that feeling." Septima Clark
"Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it." Tom Flynn
"If the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape." Thomas Henry Huxley
Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. The collection was produced by hundreds of volunteers.
"Give the right man a solar myth, and he'll confute the sun therewith." James Russell Lowell
"Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone. Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon. Show me slowly what I only know the limits of. Dance me to the end of love." Leonard Cohen
"If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination." Mary Daly
"If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish." Robert Green Ingersoll
"In other words (so to speak): not two and also not not two." Magellan's Log V
"History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology." W.H. Auden
"Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been." Jim Bishop
"To excavate is to open a book written in the language that the centuries have spoken into the earth." Spyridon Marinatos
"Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed." Thomas Henry Huxley
"The place has changed but little since Diana received the homage of her worshippers in the sacred grove. The temple of the sylvan goddess, indeed, has vanished and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough." Sir James George Frazer
"Babylonian king (1792BCE–1750BCE) who made Babylon the chief Mesopotamian kingdom and codified the laws of Mesopotamia and Sumeria." The American Heritage
"We are ourselves history and share the responsibility for world history and our position in it. But we gravely lack awareness of this responsibility." Hermann Hesse
"Astrology: do we make a hullabaloo among the stars, or do they make a hullabaloo down here?" Mason Cooley
"Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare." Harriet Martineau
"The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun." Thomas Paine
"Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their fullest logical coherence.†- Mary Boyce
"My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy ... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it." William Lamb Melbourne
"With reason one can travel the world over; without it it is hard to move an inch." Chinese proverb.
"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents. . . . The end of the world is evidently approaching." Sound familiar? It is, in fact, the lament of a scribe in one of the earliest inscriptions to be unearthed in Mesopotamia, where Western civilization was born. C. John Sommerville
"The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago ... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands." Havelock Ellis
"It (myth) expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values... Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one." Ann Oakley
"Starry, starry night. Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze, reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue." Don McLean
"NOT from the stars do I my judgment pluck, and yet methinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality..." William Shakespeare
"Moreover, the universe as a whole is infinite, for whatever is limited has an outermost edge to limit it, and such an edge is defined by something beyond. Since the universe has no edge, it has no limit; and since it lacks a limit, it is infinite and unbounded. Moreover, the universe is infinite both in the number of its atoms and in the extent of its void." Epicurus
"Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy." Hannes Alfven
Anyway, here is the documentary "The Corporation" courtesy of Youtube. It has been uploaded to Youtube in 10 minute segments with 15 segments in all. Enjoy :)
"In the early years of the 16th century, to combat the rising tide of religious unorthodoxy, the Pope gave Cardinal Ximinez of Spain leave to move without let or hindrance throughout the land, in a reign of violence, terror and torture that makes a smashing film. This was the Spanish Inquisition... " from "The Spanish Inquisition" by Monty Python.
I make no apologies for this excerpt from "History of the World Part 1" as it is one of the few movies I can watch and always get a laugh. Mel Brooks is a completely and utterly delightful lunatic. Nobody takes the piss out of "The Spanish Inquisition" like he can.
Comparison of the Human and Great Ape Chromosomes as Evidence for Common Ancestry ~ When one looks at the chromosomes of humans and the living great apes (orangutan, gorilla, and chimpanzee), it is immediately apparent that there is a great deal of similarity between the number and overall appearance of the chromosomes across the four different species.
You're hot and smart, and ready for sex, but since you are just too independent, you're forever stuck as the Mistress, the woman men use to cheat on their wives and girlfriends with.
You scored higher than 0% on bitchiness
You scored higher than 0% on atttractiveness
You scored higher than 66% on intelligence
You scored higher than 11% on sexuality
Oooops. This appears to be yet another test that I have failed.
More than 3,000 mothers packed a Philippine sports stadium in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for simultaneously breastfeeding their children.
The event was organized by the Manila city government along with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and local health officials to promote public awareness on breast feeding, and wean mothers away from using baby formula.
I like this story. Can you imagine the hullabaloo by thereligious rightwing in the so-called "free nations" if such an event was held? There might be rightwing religious fundies bombing breastfeeding mothers for being lewd and ungodly. Same thing would most likely happen in the so-called "unfree nations" of course. If exposing your ankle is bad, exposing a breast would be an abomination before the male god whose word on sexual organs is "Here a chop, there a chop, everywhere a nip and tuck." (Sorry, that is my obscure reference to male and female circumcision.)
In patriarchialsocieties the breast is seen primarily as a sexual organ designed for the pleasure and arousal of the male. Thousands of breast enhancement surgeries are performed annually as a result of this mentality. Women in the west claim these surgeries make them feel better about themselves. In reality, many have these surgeries performed because they have succumbed to the pressure to meet the standard of the "female stereotype." One of the female stereotypes is the impossible youth standard set for women and their organs, which is concocted by all sorts of businesses in order to generate cash flow.
The primary biological function of the female breast and its primary reason for existence is to suckle an infant. This seems to have escaped the collective bee mentality of "god's police", aka the religious rightwing. I am here to remind them of it. If, as a male, you find watching a female publically breastfeeding her baby to be sexually overpowering, you need to stay home permanently and read "Superman Comics."
The use ofinfant formula particularly in the developing world, is somewhat contentious and it has come under scrutiny. Many scientists believe that infant formula exposure increases the risk of several conditions including insulin dependent diabetes mellitus asthma, and eczema. It is well-established that non-breastfed infants suffer significantly more middle ear infections, respiratory, intestinal and other bacterial infections. An association with lower cognitive development has also been shown in several studies. The U.S. government has identified breastfeeding as an important measure of infant and maternal health.
If the US government has identified breastfeeding as an important measure of infant and maternal health, then why is the US the biggest producer of baby formula worldwide? Surely we in the west would not be interested in selling products to developing nations regardless of the known deleterious consequences?
If poor infant nutrition is the reason for the use of baby formula in developing nations, perhaps it makes more sense to increase the nutrients in the diet of mothers so that when breastfeeding occurs, the infant is receiving theknown benefitsassociated with mother's milk. One positive benefit of infant formula is its use as a replacement food supply when the infant could be infected with HIV/AIDS via breastfeeding. It's widespread use seems inappropriate though, if the use of said product produces no benefit medically.
Sometimes the Catholic Church gets it horribly wrong. (Think the Inquisition and in the modern era, no condoms to control the spread of aids.) Sometimes they almost get it right. This is one of the times they have got some of it right.
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.
Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a supernatural one, a belief that had led the clergy in the past to become involved in science to seek natural reasons for phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which had been previously attributed to vengeful gods.
"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."
Any criticism of creationism is fine in my "secular humanist book". Personally, I think religions are all "superstitious mumbo jumbo" including the tenets of catholicism. But, at least the catholic church recognises that creationism as a fundamental christian belief, is a dangerously ignorant position in a modern scientific world. LINKS: ~
Since 1950, the Roman Catholic Church has asserted that a belief in the natural evolution of biological diversity (including the human body) through material processes is not inconsistent with Church teaching. The Church explicitly endorses neither an evolutionary nor a special creation view of the origin of biological diversity.
The official Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as ''correct'' the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution.
(It is compelling to watch Dawkins in his very english-way, remain composed, when the arrangement of his words suggests to me that he is at once amazed and appalled by the people he interviews.)
The Origin of the Phrase "The Root Of All Evil": ~
"The love of money is the root of all evil" ~ All wrongdoing can be traced to an excessive attachment to material wealth. This saying comes from the writings of theApostle Paul.
1 Timothy 6:10 (New International Version) ~ "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
1 Timothy 6:10 (King James Version) ~ "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."
Greek Lexicon ~ ριζα γαρ παντων των κακων εστιν η φιλαργυρια ης τινες ορεγομενοι απεπλανηθησαν απο της πιστεως και εαυτους περιεπειραν οδυναις πολλαις
"The Root Of All Evil?" is a four part TV series hosted by Professor Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins uses the phrase to suggest the question: "Is implacable and intractable faith the root of all evil?"
Richard Dawkins is astounded that religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth based on hard evidence. He describes his astonishment that, at the start of the 21st century, religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth. Science, based on scepticism, investigation and evidence, must continuously test its own concepts and claims. Faith, by definition, defies evidence: it is untested and unshakeable, and is therefore in direct contradiction with science. In addition, though religions preach morality, peace and hope, in fact, says Dawkins, they bring intolerance, violence and destruction. The growth of extreme fundamentalism in so many religions across the world not only endangers humanity but, he argues, is in conflict with the trend over thousands of years of history for humanity to progress – to become more enlightened and more tolerant.
Please consider watching all 3 sections of "The Root Of All Evil?" whether you are religious or non-religious, theist or atheist. And please leave a comment concerning your opinion of the programme. MORE LINKS: ~
There is currently a nationwide movement to use pop culture to bring teens to God through use of a video game called Halo 2. Halo 2 is based loosely on themes found in the Bible, mainly good versus evil. Halo 2 is rated mature for violence, blood and gore, and language. Does this sound like church material?
It does sound biblical. Hard to find a story more violent, sexually depraved, bloodied and gory than the old testament. Christians continually deny the history of violence associated with their belief system while they actively promote violent religious games in order to gain conversions. While playing the game Halo 2, the Christian kid is supposed to bait his other kids into sharing his beliefs. Conversion by video game. You can figure out the rest.
I love the irony of this, or the hypocrisy, depending on how mean you want to be. I will go for hypocrisy today as the religious rightwing are pissing me off. Sections of the religious community like to harp on and on about video game violence and its deleterious effects upon society. How can they then decide to use video violence to promote their religious agenda without expecting shit loads of criticism? Someone pass the air freshener. The stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming.
The Babylonian creation story is called by its first two words "Enuma Elish." According to archeologists, it was originally written circa 1120 BCE. It was discovered in 1875 CE. It bears many points of similarity to the first creation story in the Bible.
The many points of similarity between the two traditions suggests that one story was derived from the other (or that both were derived from a still older original).
According to liberal theologians, the Babylonian account of creation was written in the 12th century BCE, centuries earlier than the Biblical account. According to conservative Christian theologians, the opposite happened: the Babylonian account was written after the Biblical account.
So who is right? I have always thought that the Babylonian Creation Story occurred first. If this is so, and the biblical account is an evolution of a pre-existing account; it not only means that the christian tradition is based on babylonian beliefs, but that of the jewish tradition as well.The delightful irony of all this is that we may have invaded the country where our creation myth (the account in genesis) originated. But then, I guess, for once and for all, the conservative religious right can rewrite history the way they like it.
Not sure they will actually be fooling many people though.
However, there are simply too many similarities between the accounts to deny any relationship between the accounts. There are significant differences as well that should not be ignored. Yet there is little doubt that the Sumerian versions of the story predate the biblical account by several hundred years. Rather than opting for either extreme of complete dependence or no contact whatever, it is best to see the Genesis narratives as freely using the metaphors and symbolism drawn from a common cultural pool to assert their own theology about God.
(This is a polite way of saying it was plagiarised.)
Published in the October edition of the journal Molecular Brain Research, the UCLA discovery suggests that sexual identity is hard-wired into the brain before birth and may offer physicians a tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia. "It's quite possible that sexual identity and physical attraction is 'hard-wired' by the brain," he said. "If we accept this concept, we must dismiss the myth that homosexuality is a 'choice' and examine our civil legal system accordingly."
The religious right should take notice of these findings. If people have no say about their sexual orientation, it would suggest that religions which marginalise and persecute homosexuals are committing a human rights violation. To have specific laws against homosexuality would make as much sense as it would to have specific laws against heterosexuality. I recommend a reading of the origins of christianity's condemnation of homosexuality.
