There Is NO Controversy

Dr. Joshua Swamidass, “a Christian and career scientist,” wrote in the Wall Street Journal  last week:

“First, the age of the Earth and the rejection of evolution aren’t core Christian beliefs. Neither appears in the Nicene or Apostle’s Creed. Nor did Jesus teach them. Historical Christianity has not focused on how God created the universe, but on how God saves humanity through Jesus’ death and resurrection. . . .

…there is simply NO controversy in the scientific world about the age of the Earth or evolution. Evidence points to a 4.5 billion-year-old planet.

The evidence for evolution is just as strong. In the past, evolution rested on ambiguous fossil evidence, but now it rests on much clearer DNA evidence that increases exponentially every month. Fully appreciating this evidence takes a lot of time, reading and patience. And it is not appropriate to “teach the controversy” in science class because there is NO ongoing debate in the scientific community comparable to the theological debate.

The evolution debate is NOT a scientific controversy, but a theological controversy about a non-central Christian doctrine.”

(My emphasis throughout)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324469304578141673721798486.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

YEC’s just need to get their logic and good-sense on.  Think…we (science) have actual real evidence…you are fighting a loosing battle

Advertisement

Jesus

.

“In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or roman scholar, politician, philosopher or poet.

His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references.”
Dr. Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Yeah, Paul invented Christianity.

Religious / Political Skulduggery

“Silicon Valley, the politically liberal technology hub is an unlikely incubator of conservative Christian activism.

But a group of its venture capitalists is backing an ambitious project that seeks to affect the 2012 election by registering 5 million new conservative Christians to vote.

The nonprofit organization ‘United in Purpose’ is using sophisticated data-mining techniques to compile a database of every unregistered born-again and evangelical Christian and conservative Catholic in the country.

Through partnerships with Christian organizers and antiabortion groups, United in Purpose hopes to recruit 100,000 “champions” to identify unregistered Christians and get them to the polls as part of its Champion the Vote project. Profiles drawn from its database, which numbers more than 120 million people, will enable organizers to target potential voters with emails and Web videos tailored to their interests.

Most of its financial supporters remain anonymous, but one of its main backers is technology entrepreneur Ken Eldred, a generous Republican donor. Its board includes Reid Rutherford, a Silicon Valley solar-energy plant developer.

“Our goal is to raise up a body of believers and that they elect a lot of godly leaders,” said Bill Dallas, chief executive of United in Purpose.”   From the LA Times Here  My emphasis.

Well that’s kinda’ scary…a group of some of the richest people on the planet are going to enable millions of heretofore unregistered religiously conservative (read evangelical fundamentalists) people to vote…but only for GODLY candidates.  This in combination with the religiously controlled Republican Party candidates will mean hard times for Democrats and Obama supporters next year.

Now I am truly not advocating for a godless country (well, maybe that) and/or the suppression of political advocacy for a chosen candidate.  That would be UN-American and devious.  What I would advocate is that we make our best effort to expose what is going on here.  This is an attempt to take over a Democratic Republic by religious thugs…and make no mistake, we are talking about thugs here.  The stated goal of the leadership is to take over America in the name of the Christian Religion and rule as if we were living in Old Testament times.

That sounds to me like the scenario for Margaret Atwood’s book, The Handmaid’s Tale.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where my sex-life is under control of the government, or if a women, my reproduction rights were controlled by religious zealots, a world where women are once again reduced in status, homosexuals were summarily executed by the state, and heresy and blasphemy were also capitol crimes.  You know…like the Dark Ages.  Leviticus 24:16 states that those who speak blasphemy “shall surely be put to death”. 

This country is inching closer and closer to a religious war.
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Adam and Eve Are Dead…Finally

Well actually they never existed…and the proof is available for all to see.

Christian scholar Dennis R. Venema is the BioLogos senior fellow for science and the biology chairman at Trinity Western University.  He writes that the chimp genome displays “near identity” with the human genome as detailed by (Francis) Collins’s team.  The detailed analysis involves sequences of genes and the makeup of individual genes, but especially important are the locations of “pseudogenes” that are seemingly no longer active. The cumulative evidence, Venema concludes, shows that “humans are not biologically independent, de novo creations, but share common ancestry” with prior primate species.””

Atheist-turned-Christian Francis S. Collins is the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a federally funded organization. Collins’s wrote a 2006 bestseller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, where he said there are scientific indications that anatomically modern humans emerged from primate ancestors perhaps 100,000 (currant science says 200,000) years ago, long before the apparent Genesis time frame, and that they originated within a population that numbered something like 10,000, not two individuals. Far removed from the traditional belief that God specially created man and woman in the Garden of Eden, and they were biologically different from all other creatures alive at the time.

In his recent (2011) pro-evolution book, The Language of Science and Faith, Collins and co-author Karl W. Giberson step up matters, announcing that “unfortunately” the concepts of Adam and Eve as the literal first couple and the ancestors of all humans simply “do not fit the evidence.”

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis has long been subjected to scientific challenges, but “there was a lot of wiggle room in the past. The human genome sequencing took that wiggle room away” said Randall Isaac, executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation.  DNA science is totally changing what many believed about human beginnings.

Will the Adam and Eve question become a groundbreaking science-vs.-religion dispute, in the 21st-century? The modern day equivalent of the once disturbing argument about whether the Sun orbits the earth or vice-versa?  The possibility is there: the emerging science could be seen to challenge what Genesis records about the creation of humanity and also the species’ unique status of being created in the “image of God,” Christian doctrine on original sin and the Fall, the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, and, perhaps most significantly, Paul’s seminal teaching that links a historical Adam with redemption through Christ.

The fall-out from the non-historicity of the Biblical Adam and Eve will be huge.  Many people in the earth sciences have known for some time that the Genesis stories are just myth, the science behind the notion is just too darn strong to endlessly ignore.

South Carolina pastor Richard Phillips, chair of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology worries, “Can the Bible’s theology be true if the historical events on which the theology is based are false?” If science trumps Scripture, what does this mean for the virgin birth of Jesus, or his miracles, or his resurrection? “The hermeneutics behind theistic evolution are a Trojan horse that, once inside our gates, must cause the entire fortress of Christian belief to fall.”

All these years Christianity has been working under the assumption that Genesis is true and that all humans who lived in the past, and are alive today, are descendents of Adam and Eve.  The whole dogma of original sin and the blood sacrifice of Jesus to redeem humanities sin goes out the door.  Combine the fact that DNA, and other evidence, says that Adam and Eve did not exist…with other revelations that science is making about the Biblical myths, and I predict that Christianity is facing a real crisis of belief.  
.

see more dog and puppy pictures

Did a Divine Jesus Really Exist or Was He Just Human

The following list is of the historians and writers who lived in the same area and within Christ’s alleged lifetime or within a hundred years after his death

Apollonius         Persius
Appian                Petronius
Arrian                 Phaedrus
Aulus Gellius    Philo-Judaeus
Columella           Phlegon
Damis                  Pliny the Elder
Dio Chrysostom     Pliny the Younger
Dion Pruseus       Plutarch
Epictetus              Pompon Mela
Favorinus             Ptolemy
Florus Lucius       Quintilian
Hermogones         Quintius Curtius
Josephus                Seneca
Justus of Tiberius     Silius Italicus
Juvenal                    Statius
Lucanus                   Suetonius
Lucian                      Tacitus
Lysias                       Theon of Smyran
Martial                     Valerius Flaccus
Paterculus              Valerius Maximus
Pausanias

However, aside from two passages in the works of a Jewish writer mentioned above and two heavily disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there just isn’t any contemporary–or soon after his death, mention of Jesus Christ in the writing of scholars and historians.

Philo (20 BC-50 AD) was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived well after the reputed death of Christ.

Philo was the one who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate (Jesus himself) supposedly dwelt in that land, and in the presence of multitudes he revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers–Philo apparently never knew it.

His writings include an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ was said to exist on earth.  He lived in or near Jerusalem when Christ was supposedly born and when the Herod massacre occurred. Philo was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem; he was there when the crucifixion and reputed earthquake, supernatural darkness, and the resurrection of the dead zombies in the graveyard took place. – He never wrote about it.

Had these events really taken place you would think the word would spread all over the Middle East and Mediterranean world which at the time was teaming with religious fervor and many many stories going around about a Messiah.  Here was a man who would be the Messiah, who raised the dead and cured incurable diseases and yet no one wrote of him.

Justus of Tiberius was a Jewish author and historian who lived in the second half of the 1st century AD and was a native of Christ’s own country, Galilee. He wrote a history covering this time of Christ’s reputed existence. Sadly the original work has perished, but Photius, a Christian scholar and critic of the ninth century who was acquainted with it says: “He (Justus) makes not the least mention of the appearances of Christ, of what things happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did” (Photius’ Bibliotheca, code 33).

“Josephus:  (37 – c.100 AD) Late in the first century, Josephus wrote his celebrated work, “The Antiquities of the Jews”, giving a history of his race from the earliest ages down to his own time. Modern versions of this work contain the following passage:

“‘Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was (the) Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Book XVIII, Chapter iii, Section 3)

For sixteen hundred years or so Christians have been citing this passage as a testimonial, to the historical existence, and the divine character of Jesus Christ. However most all Biblical scholars agree that the sentence is probably a pious forgery written by a scribe or zealous Christian many years after Josephus.

Consider:

“Its brevity disproves its authenticity. Josephus’ work is voluminous and exhaustive. It comprises twenty books. Whole pages are devoted to petty robbers and obscure seditious leaders. Nearly forty chapters are devoted to the life of a single king. Yet this remarkable being, the greatest product of his race, a being of whom the prophets foretold ten thousand wonderful things, a being greater than any earthly king, is dismissed with a dozen lines.”– The Christ, John E. Remsburg, reprinted by Prometheus Books, New York, 1994, pages 171-3.

I’m divided on this…the man may have existed, but I really doubt he was the Messiah or divine in any way.  Just myths like the Old Testament.  Too much stuff just doesn’t add up…the whole story is incoherent and flawed…not a sign of a God inspired work.

“The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus… The library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us: all of these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information — not one! By accepted tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians flourished; poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident in his life”…Moncure D. Conway, Modern Thought

 YEAH!!!…I just heard that bastard  Osama bin Laden is dead 
.

see more dog and puppy pictures

Catholic Priests Keep Raping Young Boys

It just keeps rolling along.  Those damn Catholics just can’t seem to get it through their heads that raping young boys is a no-no.

“Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (CNN) – Three Philadelphia priests and a parochial school teacher were charged Thursday with raping and assaulting boys in their care, while a former official with the Philadelphia Archdiocese was accused of allowing the abusive priests to have access to children, the city’s district attorney’s office said.”

CNN Senior Vatican analyst John Allen said the charges against the former church official appeared to be unprecedented and could have national implications.

“This is apparently the first time that a Catholic leader has been charged criminally for the cover-up as opposed to the abuse itself,” he said. “It sends a shot across the bow for bishops and other diocesan officials in other parts of the country, who have to wonder now if they’ve got criminal exposure, too.” See the full story from CNN: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/10/three-philadelphia-priests-teacher-charged-with-sexually-abusing-boys/?iref=obnetwork

I’ll repeat: The Catholic Church no longer has any moral authority.  They are a danger to our youth and should be disbanded.
.

see more dog and puppy pictures

Now Teaching Muslim Evil in Schools

I’ve said it before…there’s hardly a day goes by when I don’t find further proof that the Muslim  religion is purely evil and out to take away all the advances that the modern civilized world has achieved. They don’t care about human rights or woman’s rights, they are out to kill the homosexuals, the blasphemer, the heretic…anyone who says bad things about their religion is dead meat. If you are Jewish they want to kill you, if you are Christian they will try to convert you, if that fails they want to kill you.

Now BBC news comes up with the story of Muslim schools in England that are teaching Muslim children the evil crap that their parents espouse.

The full BBC story here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11799713

An excerpt below:
“One of the text books asks children to list the “reprehensible” qualities of Jewish people. A text for younger children asks what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam – the answer given in the text book is “hellfire”.

Another text describes the punishment for gay sex as death and states a difference of opinion about whether it should be carried out by stoning, burning with fire or throwing the person over a cliff.

In a book for 14-year-olds, Sharia law and its punishment for theft are explained, including detailed diagrams about how hands and feet of thieves are amputated.”

Yeah sure, Islam is a religion of Peace and Love…not
.
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Religion Takes Over House of Reps.

Well congratulations to the evangelical fundamentalist Christians, they have apparently taken over the House of Representatives…I can see lots of religiously inspired legislation heading our way again.  Maybe the Democrat controlled Senate will be able to tone them down some.

The Republican party needs to change their name to the “Fundamentalist Religion Party”.

At least Christine O’Donnell lost in Delaware, so those folks inclined to masturbate can breath a sigh of relief…federal SS troops won’t be going after them anytime soon.

I can see federal funding for “abstinence only” training starting up again.
.
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

What is the Purpose and Meaning of Life For an Atheist

About a year ago a evangelical Christian wrote to me and wanted to know how my life could have purpose or meaning without God

He writes:
“Hey, I have a question for you. What is the purpose and meaning of life?”

A big part of my purpose is to love and support my family and friends.

I think my purpose in life is kind of Darwinian…to pass on the knowledge of the past and present and to further the dispersion of the species, and to work to insure the survival of not only my offspring, but all of humanity. Further I think it is incumbent on all of us to work to alleviate pain and suffering in our world, to help those in need, to continually be learning and working to make our world safe for all of us.

We have only this life and we need to make the best possible use of it. We as a people need to learn that life is a fragile and beautiful thing and needs constant reinforcement and support from all of us from the greatest to the most vulnerable. We must learn to treat our world and environment with greater respect and do our part to stop the degradation of our only home in the cosmos.

I can tell you what it is NOT…”Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Just how egotistical is your God anyway?

If it were all up to Christian and Muslim religion we would be setting around on our butts waiting for Armageddon or some such crud. Research and learning would be a thing of the past…why research anything…God did it. We would enter another dark-age and the spirit of mans intellect, that glow in the dark vastness of the universe, would be extinguished forever…all for nothing…as there is no God.

I truly fear for this world as there are forces afoot conspiring to end civilization as we know it, and there is serious effort behind this plot. If religion is allowed to stand we are doomed as a people.
.
.

Russell’s Teapot

Russell’s Teapot
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
.