BEEP! BEEP! IT'S ME.

"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!"

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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.

"DIFFICILE EST SATURAM NON SCRIBERE"

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.

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Sunday, July 29, 2007

Abortion, And Other Sundry Religious Amusements

How to Get Laid at an Anti-Abortion Rally

Firstly, I would like to apologise for not posting on my blog for a while. I have been lazy and should be severely chastened. So, if there are any regular readers left out there please accept my apology for not being here to discuss the controversial subjects which you know I do like to do.

Anyway, back to the game at hand. This response of mine on a blog triggered a few responses.

"It amazes me sometimes that theists will fight tooth and nail to protect a bundle of cells, but dropping thousands of bombs on sentient adults doesn’t seem to pose much of a problem."

Is an acorn the same as an oak tree? Should we ascribe the same rights, value and meaning to a bundle of cells as we do to a fully formed sentient human being? I think that the majority of people who are opposed to abortion are opposed to it because of a religious belief that a clump of cells contains a soul. People do disagree with abortions for many reasons, but the primary reason I think is because of a religious belief associated with the idea that a clump of cells has a soul. Under those circumstances of belief, I would suggest that those people who believe that should not have abortions. However, if their primary reason for opposing all abortions is a religious one, then they are by default, requiring that everyone share that religious belief if they demand abortions to be illegal on that basis. I agree that there are times when it is right to take life. And so do most people on the planet. War certainly wouldn’t be as popular as it is, if human beings didn’t find ways to justify it. Capital punishment wouldn’t be as popular if people didn’t believe for various reasons, (many of them religious ones) that they were doing the right thing.


There may be reasons why I would oppose the termination of pregnancy but a religious one wouldn’t be persuasive for me. And I suspect that the reason that the majority of people oppose the termination of pregnancy IS a religious one. So, any ideas other than religious appeals to the supernatural, would be considered - but not perhaps accepted. If, you believe that there is NEVER an instance where it is appropriate or right to kill another human being including that of self-defence, capital punishment or during times of war, then I can accept the consistency of your position even though I may not agree with it myself. I don’t believe that people have souls. So, if you oppose all killing on that basis, then I wouldn’t agree with this reason - perhaps I would find some other reason acceptable though.

If the major reason you have for all abortions being illegal is your belief that a soul inhabits each or most human beings, then you are in effect demanding that I also have faith in said supernatural concept. It is within your rights to believe that demons inhabit trees, rocks, and people if you so desire. I have no legal desire to remove this delusion from you. If, however your major reason for opposing abortion is because of your faith that human beings have an incorporeal mind which survives death you may not demand that I also consider this to be a valid or true reason to ban abortion. Otherwise, you are in effect demanding that religious beliefs which I do not share, should be able to decide for me.

If a belief in the supernatural is a persuasive argument for you, then you really should be doing your outmost to make sure that not only men, but women also lead responsible sexual lives. But the argument that tikki tikki tembo inhabits a bunch of cells is not persuasive to me. As abortion in the majority of circumstances is legal, it is not up to me to provide reasons why it should be illegal. That job is for those who disagree with it. Until then, no supernatural appeals to souls will be considered a persuasive argument by myself.

And what does the Bible have to say about abortion?

Very little, except:

22 “If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely [or, as the endnote says, she has a miscarriage] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows.
23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life,
24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:22-23)

And God doesn’t seem to have any trouble with abortions, as Numbers 5 says.

Perhaps in its crudest terms of expression, the topics of abortion, euthanasia, suicide, infanticide and rape are basically asking the question - “who owns what?” (A crude way to express it perhaps, but I think it may devolve to this concept.) A person who believes in a god would probably say that god owns us and our individual lives. A person who believes in god and the state reflecting the wishes of said god, might believe that god owns our individual lives and that the state acts on god’s behalf. A person who doesn’t believe in a god or gods might say that the state, as highest authority, owns our individual lives. For me, I don’t believe that a god owns my individual life, nor do I believe that the state can act on a supposed god’s behalf. I also don’t believe that the state can own my life. As a result, I would neither support laws (either from a god or the state), which made abortion compulsory or illegal.

What authority outside of yourself, do you believe has the ultimate say over your life, if any? If you do not own your own life it would seem to me that you are in servitude to either a god or the state. Neither of those ideas appeals to me much.



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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Who put the “BOMP” in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? Who put the “MEEP” in the beep beep its me?


With thanks to BEAJ at Bacon Eating Atheist Jew for this little titbit of information.

Apparently, I am much older than I thought. Shocking I know. And I mean MUCH older.

"Skeletal remains from a 220-million-year-old dinosaur reveal a prehistoric road runner of sorts, whose svelte figure and long legs allowed it to evade predators lickety-split." (I must say that I hold my age remarkably well under the circumstances. 220million years old, who would have thunk it? It appears to be so much like me that I am gob smacked.)

"The creature stood about 12 inches tall at the hips and weighed just 4.4 pounds. Its head-to-tail length was about 3 feet, with about half of that taken by the tail. The new species is aptly named Eocursor parvus, meaning 'early little runner.'" (Obviously I won't be requiring that people refer to me by my latin name of Eocursor parvus. Perhaps only on formal occasions or at fancy dress balls. It is also evidence of how the vocalization of this particular dinosaur has changed over time from the classic "meep meep" to the more modern, "beep beep."

Anyway, I am ecstatic that my predecessor has been found and so rigorously identified, after all, as a dinosaur, I would hate to have a type of primate as my common ancestor. We dinosaurs have our pride, you know.




"Who Put The Bomp"



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