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!"

My Photo
Name: Beep Beep
Location: Australia

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"

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Wednesday, May 30, 2007

"Clothes make the man, but nakedness makes the human being."

Spencer Tunick - Melbourne

A while ago I wrote a piece about Spencer Tunick and his photography. It was called "Now lies the earth all Danae to the stars." What I failed to include was this video when he organized some of the people from Melbourne, Australia to be part of one of his nude photographic sessions. The day was enjoyed by all who participated it seems, except for a lonely protester who wanted to use the photographic session to voice his religious opinion. There's one in every crowd apparently, but to the cheering of the crowd he was removed from the scene. Even the police at the end of the shot seemed a little sad for the poor man and gave him a consoling pat on the back. What needs to be remembered is that this was a legal photo shoot with willing participants who were not paid for getting naked. But at least according to the lone protester, god was upset with this display of nakedness. What do you think?


By the way, those of you who may be offended by naked Australian wobbly bits bouncing around in full view, should avert their eyes from the video.


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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Tu Quoque Fallacy: Or Atheism is a Religion Too.

~*~
I am going to start a series of posts which just involve a few lines of either my own thoughts on a specific subject, or a few lines of someone else's thoughts on various subjects. Comments are welcomed.

My understanding is that a religion would require an explicitly stated set of beliefs. There is no explicitly stated set of beliefs for someone who calls themself an atheist. However, if someone calls themselves a 1. Materialist 2. Naturalist 3. Existentialist 4. Humanist 5. Secular humanist - it could be argued that these philosophies display an explicit set of beliefs.

Would the evidence of explicitly stated beliefs mean that these philosophies were a religion? For that you would need to be able to demonstrate how a philosophy differs from a religion, or more pertinently, how it doesn't differ. Off the top of my head, I would suggest that a philosophy involves itself with arguments primarily based in reason and that a religion involves itself in arguments primarily based in faith.

Faith, in this context means that regardless of the argumentation or the processes used, that the argument would not under any circumstance change the position of the person of faith. Faith, in this sense, is an unwavering belief, which is not ameliorated or mitigated in the light of new or contradictory evidence or information. Secular humanists, materialists, naturalists or philosophers do not have "faith" of this nature. They may endorse a variety of beliefs, but those beliefs are open to review and to change in light of evidence to the contrary.



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Friday, May 25, 2007

'Praise the Lord' - Hill$ong Celebrates the National Day of Secularism

National Day of Secularism May the 26th




"Praise the Lord" - Hill$ong Parody - Brought to you by "The Chaser's War on Everything"


Introduction: - " Ladies and Gentlemen in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit let me hear you say "A - men." Let me hear you say "Praise the lord." Let me hear you say "I will empty the contents of my wallet into that little collection plate when it comes around. And it's all Tax free! Hallelujah! "


Lyrics: -
"Praise the lord for all the cash I've got. Praise him for my Rolls Royce and my yacht.


Serving god ain't hard with a credit card. Jesus died so I could make a lot.


Praise the lord he's made us millionaires. Wave your donations in the air.


We've replaced our hymns with ATMS. And soon we'll charge a fee on every prayer.


Jesus Christ was a poor man don't you know. He should have used our accountants for his cash flow.


Stop the sermon on the mount he should have had a bank account.


Two thousand years with interest he'd be rolling in the dough.


Praise the lord this song's out on CD just $40.95 plus GST.


Hallelujah plenty of moolah. Solid gold baubles on my christmas tree.


I've got all of heaven's riches thanks to all you stupid b*tches.


Praise the lord for modern christianity. Whoever said religion should be free."

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Hillsong Church (formerly Hills Christian Life Centre) is a Pentecostal Christian church. Its primary location is in Australia where it is headquartered at its "Hills" campus near Castle Hill, to the north-west of Sydney in Baulkham Hills' Norwest Business Park.


The Hillsong Church has attracted support from high profile politicians, especially from the conservative Liberal Party of Australia. The Prime Minister, John Howard, opened its Baulkham Hills campus and the Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, spoke at its annual conferences in July 2004 and 2005. Mark Latham, the former Leader of the Opposition, declined Hillsong's invitation to the 2004 conference, although Bob Carr, the then Premier of New South Wales, (from the Australian Labor Party), did attend the 2005 conference. The former New South Wales Liberal Party state director, Scott Morrison (to November 2004), is a prominent member of Hillsong Church.


The Anglican Bishop of Western Sydney, Ivan Lee, has expressed concern that the extreme emotion of Hillsong services could be manipulative and said that "... their worship is in danger of being experience-centred rather than Bible teaching-centred".


Of course it is manipulative. It wants people to have an emotional experience, which will encourage them to part with their cash.


In the Australian Constitution - Section 116 - (Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion), it states that: - "The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth."


Unfortunately, the constitution doesn't say - "And no politician will kiss the arse of corporate religion in order to gain a few more votes."


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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

This Is Australia Too

"This Is Australia Too"

I mentioned before I went on holidays how I would take a few pictures and post them when I got back. Well, if you click the youtube presentation, you can view those photographs. I didn't take all that many pictures when I away, so you will see similarities in some of the shots. Usually, I would only select a few from each roll and use those, but in order to make the presentation of a reasonable length, I had to use all of them - even the less visually appealing ones. Anyway, to those who read my blog, I hope you enjoy them.

One of the reasons I decided to punctuate some of my writings with aspects of my own life, feelings and ideas, is so that people may get an understanding that skeptics, freethinkers, non-christians, non-muslims are real people who have real lives. They are just people who do not share your religious beliefs.

"Shoot straight you bastards. Don't make a mess of it." - Harry (Breaker) Morant - executed Australian soldier and poet.


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Blog Against Theocracy: National Day of Secularism May 26th

I have been tagged by Arthur @ Five Public Opinions for the National Day of Secularism on May 26th.

National Day of Secularism May 26th

Tagging stage:
If you are tagged by the meme, then it’s the same old format; mention this entry so people can see the rules and then tag five other bloggers (preferably Australian given the nature of the NDoT.) You can link back to these rules and display the banner.

Blog against theocracy stage:
If you have been tagged then in addition to tagging others, it is also hoped that you will write a blog entry about the separation of Church and State in Australia. It could be a critique of Pell’s “normative democracy”, the historic anti-democracy sermonizing of Archbishop Daniel Mannix, inevitable discrimination by the funding of (approved) chaplains in public schools, the state backed imposition of bans on forbidden women’s dress or whatever Church-State issue you find important.

Preferably, such a blog entry would be published on the 26th, but there is no deadline as such. Just a couple of caveats:

1) the church-state anti-theocracy blog entry should mention the phrase “National Day of Thanksgiving”, possibly mentioning that the entry is a response to the NDoT, and
2) feel free to add the (again admittedly modest) banner.

I, in turn, tag the following:
1. Dikkii's Diatribe
2. Plonka's Blog
3. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
4. Dissecting Leftism
5. Talking Squid


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Saturday, May 19, 2007

There's A Sucker Born Every Minute

"Money: That's What We Want."


"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase often credited to
P.T. Barnum, an American showman. The entire quote is "There's a sucker born every minute...and two to take 'em." The source of the quote is most likely famous con-man Joseph ("Paper Collar" Joe) Bessimer.

"When Christianity went to Athens, it became a philosophy. When it went to Rome, it became an organization. When it went to Europe, it became a culture. When it came to America, it became a business."


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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

"This Is Australia" or "Now For Something Completely Different."

"This Is Australia"


I was wandering through some of the photographs stored on my PC the other day and decided that I would make a video snap shot of some of the places in Australia that I have visited. It also made me think about how our environments effect and reflect our cultural beliefs. I have been fortunate to have had ancestors who decided that they would make Australia their home. I also acknowledge at this stage that their decision and the decision of many other settlers to move here has not been so fortunate for the indigenous people who lived here first.

This video is just a snap shot of some of the places along the east coast of Australia, yet there is a focus upon one particular little farming community which was also my home town for many years. The music which accompanies the video was specifically written by an Australian group about that little cane farming community. The photographs were taken in a ten year period and also reflect the technology I used at the time, which was an old Canon SLR, so don't expect high quality digital resolution. In fact, I still mostly use the old SLR even though it weighs a ton and the quality of the image certainly isn't as crisp as a modern digital camera. Using the SLR is, however, much more fun.

Anyway, sit back and have a peek at the east coast of Australia through the lens of one who lives here.


PS: - I am heading off for a few days rest and recreation. Hopefully, I will take a few snaps of my holiday and if I get any which are fit for publication, I will make a short video and post it when I get back.

(The ones of me where I discuss with Beelzebub how to genetically mutate cute little puppies into ravenous hounds from hell will not be published at this time.)

So, to the readers of this blog, I hope to see you soon. Have fun and may Darwin confer upon you and your descendants many beneficial mutations. Toodle oooo.

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Saturday, May 05, 2007

Are Theists More Superstitious Than Atheists?