Dawkins on Evolution

Evolution Fact or Theory

Don’t know the didfference between a scientific fact or theory or hypothesis…watch this video.

It’s Cooties

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Religion vs Death

Anyone who still thinks religion has been a benign force in this world need to read the compilation that James Haught made in a 1990 edition of the Skeptical Review.  Below is a segment to whet your appetite:

“– The Thirty Years’ War produced the largest religious death toll of all time. It began in 1618 when Protestant leaders threw two Catholic emissaries out of a Prague window into a dung heap. War flared between Catholic and Protestant princedoms, drawing in supportive religious armies from Germany, Spain, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France and Italy. Sweden’s Protestant soldiers sang Martin Luther’s “Ein ‘Feste Burg” in battle. Three decades of combat turned central Europe into a wasteland of misery. One estimate states that Germany’s population dropped from 18 million to 4 million. In the end nothing was settled, and too few people remained to rebuild cities, plant fields, or conduct education.”

I’ve had people tell me that it is men doing these dastardly deeds and not God or the religion.  I have to disagree with this interpretation.  There are passages in the Bible and Koran that are constantly interpreted / misinterpreted and used as an excuse to maim and kill those who believe differently.  The Catholics and Protestants still barely talk to each other, and the Muslims still kill anybody that disagrees with them.  The Muslims kill the Hindus and the Hindus kill the Muslims

“It’s fashionable among thinking people to say that religion isn’t the real cause of today’s strife in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, India and Iran — that sects merely provide labels for combatants. Not so. Religion keeps the groups in hostile camps. Without it, divisions would blur with passing generations; children would adapt to new times, mingle, intermarry, forget ancient wounds. But religion keeps them alien to one another.

Anything that divides people breeds inhumanity. Religion serves that ugly purpose.”

Remember this was written before  9-11

A passing thought as I go to close this post.  The Republican Religious Right wing wants to return a measure of religious control to America