Christopher Hitchens…

He was a hero of mine…I tried to emulate his wit, his intelligence, his brilliant writing, and his composure under fire.  Of course I failed, I doubt that anyone can come close to the multiple talents the man possessed.

The man could see over the horizon and visualize the past and future as one long line of human triumphs and follies.  He fought his personal battle with his immanent death with courage and unfailing determination, and in my eyes died a hero.

I mourn his passing.

Prayer…Does it Ever Work?

“…In addition, history has served as a de facto test of alternative forms of healthcare. Until approximately the last two centuries effective medical techniques to treat and cure serious illnesses were largely absent.  During that period prayer and other religious rites were commonly employed medical interventions.  Juvenile mortality rates were probably over 50% (they still exceeded 25% in 1900 Britain and the United States), young adult mortality rates were high, and average life spans were as low as two decades.  The number of children lost probably exceeded 50 billion; only a modest minority of those born made it to old age.  Significantly higher rates of mortality would have probably collapsed the human population and lead to extinction of the species, so it appears that death rates were near their highest sustainable maximum.  The evidence indicates that supportive prayer whether remote or in the presence of or by the patient has been a largely or entirely ineffective treatment for most or all of human history.  G. Paul, Journal of Medical Ethics, November, 2008 Here My emphasis

So for all of human history…up to about the 1800’s, all we had to combat disease or sickness was prayer or the witch doctor.  We, as a species, barely survived.  Enter modern science and medicine and we start to overrun the planet.  So do you think prayer (or the witch doctor) were ever effective?

We know for a fact that prayer is never effective against medical problems that are not subject to spontaneous remission or placebo effect. Medical problems such as Down’s syndrome, Spina-bifida, amputated limbs, etc. cannot, and have never been cured by prayer.

We know that prayer can never restore a heart damaged by heart attack, never restore lungs damaged by emphysema.  Humans are working on many of these medical problems, and if we survive the growing religious wars of this world, we will probably cure them.

Meanwhile, we can seriously doubt that there is a God who answers prayers, or if there is even is a God.

Addendum
Regarding that “Inerrant Bible” instructions about the efficacy of prayer:

Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:
“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

The message is restated in Mark 11:24:
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

In Matthew 17:20 Jesus reiterates that same message:
“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”

In John chapter 14, verses 12 through 14, Jesus speaks to all of us about how easy prayer can be:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

In Matthew 18:19 Jesus says it again:
“Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Really???
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We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Probable Cause

A law that’s been on American books (and in the Constitution) forever is now biting the dust because of Presidents Bush and Obama. Breaking his campaign promises to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security the Obama administration is continuing the screwing over the American Constitution that Bush started.

“The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.”  From the Washington Post.

The use of National Security Letters is equivalent to the old ‘Writs of Assistance’ the British used against us here in America in pre-revolutionary times

From Wikipedia
“In practice, customs writs of assistance served as general search warrants that did not expire, allowing customs officials to search anywhere for smuggled goods without having to obtain a specific warrant. These writs became controversial when they were issued by courts in British America in the 1760s, especially the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Controversy over these general writs of assistance inspired the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids general search warrants in the United States.

The NSL’s are the modern equivalent to general search warrants which are constitutionally forbidden.  Good luck on getting the administration to admit this.    The American government just keeps pushing the envelope regarding how much the citizens will put up with. I think the general feeling among top officials is that they can get away with pretty much anything…if they mention terrorism.
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Towel Day

All you heathens remember that today is Towel Day. May 25th. 2010
Follow this link for list of celebrations country by country. HERE

The Bible and Neanderthals

A team of biologists led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have concluded the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence and determined that the Neanderthals did contribute to modern mans genes through interbreeding.  As many as 4% percent of modern humans in Europe, Asia and some other parts of the world have Neanderthals for distant relatives.

My question is how do you think this will affect the creation vs. evolution debates? The fact that “God’s People” have the blood of pre-humans that weren’t even thought of or explained in the Bible.  How does Christian apologetics reconcile an incredibly old (28,000 to +350,000 year old) race of people that could probably talk, as they had the requisite physiological parts, and we know they did make tools and bury their dead with personal items and flowers, and may have made jewelry, contributing to our gene pool.

So far it looks like the intermixing occurred in the Middle East about 50,000 to 80,000 years ago or maybe longer.  No indication yet of any mixing in Europe where modern humans entered about 45,000 years ago.  There is also no sign of mixing in any of Africa’s indigenous peoples. It is truly amazing what DNA science can tell us, don’t you think?

Someone locally ask me if I thought that the Neanderthal might be the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible and I told him I didn’t think so as the Neanderthals were short (5’2” to 5’ 4”) in stature.

Could this be the people that Cain drew his wife from?  No no no, just being silly, as we all know that Cain wasn’t real, and the last Neanderthal died out about 30,000 years ago.  

Quote of the day

If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.  Baron D’Holbach

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Let’s All Die of Starvation

Quote of the Day

“And talking of male chauvinism — for centuries the church has kept women in bondage: women are unclean when they have babies, they have to go and be ‘churched’ afterwards so that they are fit for human consumption again. They don’t have rights; the church has kept women in total subjugation. So I, male chauvinist pig that I am, I want to grant them emancipation, because I think they can’t compete. The church wants to keep them down, because they think a source of ill-paid labour for the males of this world is useful to have.”

“I could go on and on about the church and its relations to sexual attitudes, but I won’t. I’ll merely say that those idiots, like the Archbishop of Canterbury and this fool who calls himself a Pope and sits in the Vatican, who say you can’t have birth-control — let’s all die of starvation — are doing far more harm than Genghis Khan, Attila, and Adolph Hitler all rolled into one. People like Attila and Hitler were benevolent despots compared to these idiots who utter and pontificate and say: this is the word of God, this you shall do, this you shall not do. When a war starts, the priests of England start praying for victory over the Germans, and the priests of Germany start praying for victory over the English.”  From an interview with Edmund Cooper (UK Sci-Fi writer) By James Goddard here: http://www.bondle.co.uk/edmund_cooper/misc_files/interview.pdf accessed 4-21-2010

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Apologist for Evil Pat Condell

Blasphemy Laws Not Dead After All

Well the new Irish Blasphemy law is effect in Ireland now. Here’s what some think about the law.

“Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.” Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009
Perhaps the atheists should incorporate as a religion and all the religious zealots would have to stop calling us “not fully human”…in Ireland anyway.

“May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote was attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427. And the Muslims just keep on lying as usual about their being a peaceful religion. Tell a big enough lie, long enough, and people start to believe it…well, stupid people will believe it.

Michael Martin, who is the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime…at the United Nations level in 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.”  Not much later the Blasphemy law was proposed in Ireland by one of Mr. Martin’s colleagues.  The Irish, Brits and Scots legislators have a long tradition of not listening to their common folk and passing BAAAAD laws.

This blasphemy law is for all intents and purposes aimed at protecting the Muslim religious adherents of Ireland from badmouthing from the largely Christian English components of the country. This is basically the same law that Muslim countries in the UN are trying to pass off on the whole world.  This is another sign of how evil the Muslim religion is.  From any other religion there would be a tremendous outcry if an attempt was made to pass off this evil plan on the world.

We are still at the beginning of Islamic attempts to openly conquer the Christians and Jews  and eventually any others who disagree with their religious dogma, and make-over the world in Muhammad’s vision. The first step was the Twin Towers  on 9-11 to electrify and wake up their people to the power they can wield by unconventional warfare. Now we are in the second phase…make it illegal to criticize them.  Kinda what Hitler did…passed laws making it illegal to criticize the party.

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Evolution vs Creationism…Again

After almost losing out to public opinion where 54% of those polled thought Intelligent Design (ID) should be taught in British schools, the officials in charge of such stuff decided to teach evolution only.

Contrary to many school boards here in the US, it seems they actually listen to and believe their scientists in the UK.  The Guardian.UK reports:

“It’s a great birthday present for Darwin in his 200th anniversary year. For the first time, evolution will be on the national curriculum for primary schools when the new version is published later this year. It was initially excluded from the draft curriculum when it was published for public consultation but sometimes, if not always, it seems government will listen to scientists and experts, many of whom were signatories to an open letter (pdf) to Ed Balls organised by the British Humanist Association in July which called for evolution to be included.”

The scientists rightly argued that teaching such a travesty of true scientific thought would totally confuse young children and seriously hamper England’s future.

“The new primary curriculum, together with the 2007 government guidance that prohibits the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in science lessons, should put English schools in the forefront of education about evolution. Coming in the month which marks the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species and at a point when good science education is a matter of urgency, it could not be more timely.”

Those evangelical fundamentalist creationists here in America and abroad should be ashamed of their efforts to screw over our school children and cripple their education and development in our modern world.  I just can’t fathom what they want of the rest of the world.  Do they really want all of us to go back to how the world was at the time of Jesus, 2000 years ago?

Some religions discourage their children from going on to higher education so that they will not learn the truth of how our world works.  Do they seriously want everyone on earth to think and act like they do?  Do they want to overthrow our secular government and install a theocracy?  We know they want to burn Darwin’s books (and many others) and totally blot out any reference to them and him.  Would we want to live in a world controlled by their kind?  I know I wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t want my children and grandchildren living in it either.

And just who the hell do they think they are… trying to decide how I and my family and friends live our lives and educate our children?

Smack em’  down I say.

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Atheists are Killing A Continent

Lord Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth in the UK, is blaming Europe’s falling birthrate on a culture of Consumerism, instant gratification, and neo-Darwinism.

“Europe is facing a population crisis because of attacks on religion by secular writers,” Britain’s chief rabbi said. “The major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians.”  He added.

He said the continent was dying and accused its citizens of not being prepared for parenthood’s sacrifices.

The 61-year-old rabbi said: “Wherever you turn today – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – the more religious the communities, the larger on average are their families.

Lord Sacks stated that Europe is the most secular region in the world and the only continent seeing populations fall.

He said parenthood involved “massive sacrifices” of money, attention, time and emotional energy.

Lord Sacks asked: “In Europe where will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not born?”

He continued: “Europe is dying, exactly as Polybius said about ancient Greece in the third pre-Christian century.”

“We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no-one is talking about it.”

Well that’s one more burden us poor atheists must bear. We are constantly accused of having no morals or reason for living; we are depraved because of lack of belief in some “floaty thing” in the sky, we must be disguised killers and rapist.  Now we are killing a whole continent…Oh the shame.

Some people have said that the earth is overpopulated by about 6 billion people…we’re just doing our part to lower population.

Seriously, that order of God to go forth and populated the world is really not PC anymore, we have to stop growing, not only in Europe but the rest of the world.

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Christianities Contribution to Civilization

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.

The word religion is used nowadays in a very loose sense. Some people, under the influence of extreme Protestantism, employ the word to denote any serious personal convictions as to morals or the nature of the universe. This use of the word is quite unhistorical. Religion is primarily a social phenomenon. Churches may owe their origin to teachers with strong individual convictions, but these teachers have seldom had much influence upon the churches that they have founded, whereas churches have had enormous influence upon the communities in which they flourished.

To take the case that is of most interest to members of Western civilization: the teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians. The most important thing about Christianity, from a social and historical point of view, is not Christ but the church, and if we are to judge of Christianity as a social force we must not go to the Gospels for our material. Christ taught that you should give your goods to the poor, that you should not fight, that you should not go to church, and that you should not punish adultery. Neither Catholics nor Protestants have shown any strong desire to follow His teaching in any of these respects. Some of the Franciscans, it is true, attempted to teach the doctrine of apostolic poverty, but the Pope condemned them, and their doctrine was declared heretical. Or, again, consider such a text as “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” and ask yourself what influence such a text has had upon the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan.

What is true of Christianity is equally true of Buddhism. The Buddha was amiable and enlightened; on his deathbed he laughed at his disciples for supposing that he was immortal. But the Buddhist priesthood – as it exists, for example, in Tibet – has been obscurantist, tyrannous, and cruel in the highest degree.

There is nothing accidental about this difference between a church and its founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress. The church opposed Galileo and Darwin; in our own day it opposes Freud.

In the days of its greatest power it went further in its opposition to the intellectual life. Pope Gregory the Great wrote to a certain bishop a letter beginning: “A report has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends.” The bishop was compelled by pontifical authority to desist from this wicked labor, and Latinity did not recover until the Renaissance. It is not only intellectually but also morally that religion is pernicious. I mean by this that it teaches ethical codes which are not conducive to human happiness.

When, a few years ago, a plebiscite was taken in Germany as to whether the deposed royal houses should still be allowed to enjoy their private property, the churches in Germany officially stated that it would be contrary to the teaching of Christianity to deprive them of it. The churches, as everyone knows, opposed the abolition of slavery as long as they dared, and with a few well-advertised exceptions they oppose at the present day every movement toward economic justice. The Pope has officially condemned Socialism.

Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?,  By Bertrand Russell–1930

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