I love the irony. A BBC report of research in the Journal of Obesity suggest that children are more likely to overeat if they are fed low-calorie diet foods.
Yes, OK, it’s pop science and it’s based on rats rather than actual children. Still..
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Do what thou wilt
One thing is certain – it is not at all about doom and gloom. Above all, Satanism is fun!
Can’t you picture a vicar in jeans exhorting the youth club? But it’s in today’s New Statesman in an article with the title A brief musing on the nature of Satanic ritual
Visitors to The Church Of Satan website are often bewildered when confronted by an image of Anton LaVey fronting a group of black-robed Satanic ritual participants, their faces concealed by the donning of animal masks. When juxtaposed with the pragmatic philosophy that Satanism is purported to be founded on, the question that the curious are prompted to ask is: “well, if you don’t believe in the Devil, why all the demonic imagery?â€
Well, it’s all just psychodrama and “therapy” apparently, according to the writer, but, to be honest, I don’t think that really answers the question….
The image in the aforementioned example depicts a ritual outlined in The Satanic Rituals known as Das Tierdrama. The rite was originally performed by The Order Of The Illuminati founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, and the purpose of the ritual is for its participants to willingly assume the animalistic attributes of purity, honesty and increased sensory perception.
Isn’t that as much bovine excrement as any religious appeal to authority? Secret teachings from the Illuminati, hmm? Hmm.
The Church of Satan website is ugly (purple text on black, argh, it hurts, it hurts) and so apparently self-parodying that it must be a joke.
Can we even trust these people to get their demonic backwards messages on rock albums right? No wonder it’s impossible to find the things, nowadays.
Feral Speech
Following links from the site of Foehammer, because he’d commented pretty threateningly to a post by the blameless hellshandmaiden I was led instantly to this post in the Irish Independent.
Right, if you are UK resident, don’t conjure up a vision of the pleasant smiling British Independent. This is obviously quite a different paper. The post url is http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/
forget-lilylivered-liberalism-time-to-take-stand-and-say-we-dont-want-muslim-immigrants-1038583.html
(Was overcome by a strange urge to not actually link there….)
The article by Keven Myers – which meets with MC F**hammer’s approval as a sign that people like him are writing for official mass media – has the title
Forget lily-livered liberalism, time to take stand and say we don’t want Muslim immigrants
I guess you have already got the flavour of this post. The clue’s in the title. In fact, it is, if possible, more offensive than the headline suggests, so I’m not going to repeat any of this stuff here.
Hmm. Ignoring the content, with a shudder, I thought “Surely this is illegal?” The Commission for Racial Equality is about to be subsumed into some Diversity Ministry, but it does still exist. There are definitely still laws against stirring up people against minorities in the UK. (I’m not saying this is definitely the solution or that a prosecution would do any good. It would probably just make people like this feel martyred and persecuted and make them even more dangerous … hmm, this argument sounds familar from when I was posting about the cartoon demonstration arrests….)
Maybe they don’t have hate-crime laws in Ireland?
Light bulb comes on above my head
Ahha, so maybe that’s why he published this stuff in Ireland?
Hmm, Ireland, with its massive displaced Muslim population? Not. When on earth did this Muslim immigration to Ireland take off? I suspect that the percentage of the Irish population of Pakistani, Bangladeshi or North African origin is minute (Don’t make me Google the Irish Census.)
So, let’s look directly at this article and say “Hmm, targetted at the UK, then. But he hasn’t got the face to publish this here because he knows he would be prosecuted”
Now, I guess you are thinking “Kevin Myers? Traditional Irish name. Must be a local lad. Why would he even think of publishing in England?”
Well, Kev is no stranger to the higher reaches of UK publishing, either. And, in case you think I got a Dublin broth of a boy confused with some Oxbridge-graduate journalist, this is the title of a piece in the UK’s Daily Telegraph a paper widely seen as a “quality” daily.
I wish I had kicked Susan Sontag
And this appears to be an obituary, ffs. It was written a week after her death and, basically, exults in it.
After sneering at her for being an “intellectual”, he genuinely says that he wished he’d kicked her, basically for being intellectual. He refers to Dr Johnson and Bishop Berkeley to make this seem more of a literary reference than a threat. Can’t say it convinced me. Wasn’t Dr Johnson himself the ultimate 18th century intellectual?
Bear with me here, I am going somewhere with this. He met her in Bosnia, where she was putting on Waiting for Godot.
Meanwhile she ostentatiously disdained us hacks even as she sedulously courted us. It was a grotesque performance. My real mistake was not radioing her co-ordinates to the Serb artillery, reporting that they marked the location of Bosnian heavy armour. My own life would have been a cheap price to pay.
Funny you should say that Kev.
Because Bosnia, Kosovo et al also come into this blog, pretty well by accident. I’ve started to notice how free fanatical anti-Muslim folk are making with the-bits-of-former-Yugolavia story. And not in a good way.
Quick history lesson. What happened in the-bits-of-former-Yugoslavia in the late 1990s? Attempted Anti-Muslim genocide. Well not actually “genocide”, because these people were all pre-war neighbours – Yugoslavs – of very similar genetic background. The word will have to do though. I’m less than happy with using the “ethnic cleansing” eupemism of the time.
So, I think you can assume that mentions of Serbia or Bosnia are in themselves calculated to cause actual fear in Muslims.
Well, on the site of the bafflingly monikered 1389, who is right in there with MC FoeHammer in growling at hellshandmaiden, I see the full flower of this in the signatures to a petition.
This take sup about a third of the blog,
Notice that most names that are not publicly anonymous carry the surname of a Serbian leader &/or war criminal. (Maybe these are just very common names in Serbia. My point stands)
There are two possible explanations. The far-fetched one is that the members of hate-dynasties are just instinctively drawn to this sort of thing, as flies are to excrement. And are all given to reading blogs in English and signing US petitions … Hmm.
The second one is that the people adding names here have deliberately used the names of genocidal Serbs. Even on the most charitable interpretation – that it’s what passes for a joke in these circles – it’s going to cause fear to Muslims. It certainly strikes the fear in me and I’m an atheist.
MC F**Hammer told hellshandmaiden to remember 1938. Oh look. “1389”. Phew, I can stop googling 1389 to find out if it’s a word in some impenetrable new version of l33t. It’s an anagram of 1938. I have to hand it to them as the first time I’ve ever seen a number turned into an anagram. Well, except for people trying to store phone numbers secretly. Surely they aren’t trying to hide the 1938 reference.
Well, what happened in 1938? Buggar, my school History lessons are so out of date. I learned History before the GCSE syllabus was mostly about the Third Reich, so I can’t be certain. Well, I can’t be more than remotely certain. Reichstag Fire? Krystallnacht? Invading the Sudentenland? Annexing Austria? I don’t know lads. You tell us.
By the way, I am not saying these people are connected and I’m not building a conspiracy theory out of it. I am just picking a few threads from the Web.
New enemy of reason?
Melanie Phillips discusses Dawkin’s new series in the Daily Mail, today. She starts by agreeing with Dawkins about New Age woo, but, then, oddly argues that this has become popular because reason-based Christian faith (no, really) has declined. The title:
Arrogance, dogma and why science – not faith – is the new enemy of reason
If you’ve ever read the G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown books, this was a constant theme. Ironic, when the voice of reason was a fictional Catholic priest invented by an extreme right-winger. Bizarre when the voice of reason is a Daily Mail columnist.
Echoing my thoughts about where she got the idea from, Mel P refers to Father Brown:
It was GK Chesterton who famously quipped that “when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.” So it has proved. But how did it happen?
So, her argument here is believe in the biggest myth so you don’t believe in the little myths, like aromatherapy? In that case, so far, the little myths have much less blood on their hands. So, in soem ways, New Age nonsense might be a slight improvement – if equally as absurd and even more self-obsessed than traditional religions.
No, as it turns out, for Melanie Phillips, it’s non-believers who are irrational.
The big mistake is to see religion and reason as polar opposites. They are not. In fact, reason is intrinsic to the Judeo-Christian tradition
Ranting about Dawkin’s opposition to belief in miracles leads her down some wierd logically inconsistent alleyways.
E.g. The Judeo-Christian churches are based on truth. However, the Biblical miracles are just metaphor or misunderstanding…. Oh, so not actually truth, as such, then?
The culmination seems to be that science can’t tell us anything because it leads to “scientism” a dubious “ism” that may have been invented for the purpses of the column.
The most conspicuous example of this is provided by Dawkins himself, who breaks the rules of scientific evidence by seeking to claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution – which sought to explain how complex organisms evolved through random natural selection – also accounts for the origin of life itself.
OK, my level of science knowledge is rudimentary, at best, but I am pretty certain that the Big Bang doesn’t feature in any consideration of the theory of evolution.
The BBC’s fascinating new Atoms series mentioned last week that Fred Hoyle disliked the Big Bang Theory on the grounds that to him, as an atheist, the idea smacked too much of the Hand of God.
Dare I suggest that Mel P watched the same programme? And understood even less of the physics than I did? So the mention of atheism and Big Bang in the same sentence got them confused in her mind? So she assumed that physicist was approximately equal to biologist? And that Dawkins was somehow involved in promoting the Big Bang theory?
Wait, here’s the punchline. From the flawlessly logical mental processes of Mel P, here comes Intelligent Design, the REAL SCIENCE..
Moreover, since science essentially takes us wherever the evidence leads, {My intrusive comment= does anyone else get a whiff of CSI dialogue here?} the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research – which have revealed the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life – have thrown into doubt the theory that life emerged spontaneously in a random universe.
These findings have given rise to a school of scientists promoting the theory of Intelligent Design, which suggests that some force embodying purpose and foresight lay behind the origin of the universe.
And blimey, those brave truth-seekers are being hounded for their beliefs….
……people such as Prof Dawkins and others have gone to great lengths to stop it being advanced at all, on the grounds that it denies scientific evidence such as the fossil record and is therefore worthless.
Yet distinguished scientists have been hounded and their careers jeopardised for arguing that the fossil record has got a giant hole in it. …
Oh, this magical power of Dawkins to say who gets academic jobs everywhere …. There’s no point in discussing the ins and outs of this stuff in detail. Let me just say “Distinguished scientists stifled for speaking the truth, my arse” and leave it at that.
their scientific argument about the absence of evidence to support the claim that life spontaneously created itself is being stifled – on the totally perverse grounds that this argument does not conform to the rules of science which require evidence{my emphasis} to support a theory.
As a result of such arrogance, the West – the crucible of reason – is turning the clock back to a pre-modern age of obscurantism, dogma and secular witch-hunts.
Irony laid upon irony, to form a pretty solid mattress of irony that even the most sensitive princess could get a good night’s sleep on.
Secular witch-hunts? As opposed to the real witch-hunts that ended up with people dead. And were definitely not secular. Hmm, what’s the opposite of secular?
Dogma? Hmm, if I could be bothered to look in a dictionary, I’m pretty certain it would define dogma as a set of prescribed beliefs that are part of a religion. Religion, please note.
OK, maybe she’s doing the metaphorical thing she talked about. She does say that believers don’t have to actually believe the stuff. They can treat metaphor as truth and it’s still true. But, isn’t that treating a Holy Book as just another work of fiction? Which makes perfect sense to me. Though, I somehow suspect that really isn’t what she wants to say.
All the same, it’s pretty priceless that the metaphors she has to use when she wants to talk about intolerance and blindness and stifling independent thought are all straight from the history of religion?
The pawn’s English
Getting a comment here from Steve Sutton, I looked at his blog.. There is some really funny stuff there. There’s a great comics page called Internet Earl and some brilliant Voyager spoof scripts that might almost have been actual episodes. And lots more, youtube videos etc, that I haven’t had a chance to look at.
In case, you are wondering, the headline above is a great phrase that appears in one of the comics. It makes sense in the context. You have to go there.
Following our self-imposed rules for comments week, we should have commented on his blog but I couldn’t find a comment form, although there is a full-blown forum.
New Photo Collection
I have been editing some more photographs to within an inch of their lives recently and trying out a few new effects. The wonders of things you can do with Photoshop may never amaze me and, as I have said in the past, you would be mad to think the camera never lies…
[piflasa]http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/data/feed/base/user/tas.spaceholder/albumid/5095261742046817249?kind=photo&alt=rss&hl=en_US|400[/piflasa]
I will upload more to this collection as I get the chance.
Are you trying to be funny?
Wow. Is this, like, totally, serendipity or what?
I was sent a link to a May 2005 paper on APA site, about brain-lesions that stop people recognising sarcasm At the same time I get a link to Baptists for Brownback and their take on the Scarlet Letter.
Even here in Yoorp – where Southern baptists often seem crazed beyond our wildest imagining, so it’s hard to distinguish parody from reality – it’s obvious that this is a pretty blatant spoof site. There are posts with titles like “Update: Some kilt-wearing men might be heterosexual after all.” It is really funny.
Also, some comments on the Scarlet A post are double funny. There are some commenters, atheists and believers alike, in whose brains the sarcasm-detecting function seems to have completely atrophied.
Some atheist responses seem so stupid that I suspect that they were in on the joke and just playing an “outraged atheist” part. For a laugh. Though by that time, the joke is getting too abstract to be comedy and may have achieved high art.
I start to assume Pharyngula has masterminded the whole thing anyway. He has posted this on his site, gathering a collection of outraged responses, even after almost the first comment points out it’s a joke.
The Christian responses tend twoards being so off the wall that most are obviously sarcastic. I naturally assume this is a spoof post:
# Connie Mack Says:
What I see is a whole bunch of satan worshipers coming here to try and steal the souls of Christians. Guess what? You are SOL because we are born again in the Blood of the Christ you don’t believe in – yet. In case you are too ignorant to read this is a Baptist website which mneans that we are saved. So your hate speech won’t be tolerated here.
But it links to a real site “CWA” which I’m absolutely not putting a link to. I have no reason to believe it’s real, other than someone else’s authority (and they were guessing). It’s actually noticeably much more ludicrous than the Baptists for Brownback.
Don’t make me mention looking glasses again, please.
Today’s sermon
Scientists have bred mice to be schizophrenic, according to the BBC. What? Well, “mimic schizophrenia?” What? In mice?
There seems to be an ingrained monotheistic-religion-originated view that man is master of the universe and everything else is here just for us to pull its wings off. This isn’t a particulalrly heinous example but it ‘s set me off….
US scientists have genetically modified mice to exhibit both the anatomical and behavioural defects associated with the complex condition schizophrenia.
Previous studies that rely on drugs can only mimic the symptoms of the disease, such as delusions and paranoia.
Well, straight off, I am impressed that the anatomical basis of human schizophrenia seems to have been clearly identified and even located in genetics. Or is that not the implication? This seems to be
a key gene – dubbed DISC 1 – which makes a protein that helps nerve cells assume their proper positions in the brain.
So messing about with this protein in mice, by genetic engineering, makes them also “schizophrenic”?
In what meaningful sense can a mouse be said to be “schizophrenic”? I am completely baffled. Isn’t schizophrenia characterised by a whole collection of feelings and behaviours that are most definitely human? So how did these manifest themselves in the mad mice?
As these mice matured, they became more agitated when placed in an open field, had trouble finding hidden food, and did not swim as long as regular mice – behaviours that echo the hyperactivity, smell defects and apathy observed in schizophrenia patients.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) also revealed characteristic defects in brain structure, including enlarged lateral ventricles, a region that circulates the spinal fluid and helps protect against physical trauma
OK, on the Frankenstein Scale (TM me) of mad science, this scores relatively low (say, a mere 2 out of 10.) This might prove that the observed brain damage relates to the actions of that specific gene.
But on the WTF scale (TM me) this scores pretty creditably (say, 8 out of 10)
In what way can the mouse behaviour be seen as “schizophrenic?”
Anxiety? I can’t even hazard a meaningful guess about how you determine this in mice ( “So do you feel agrophobic about being in an open field, Jerry?”)
Swam for a shorter time? Well, that’s me buggered then, if anyone tries to extrapolate back from the mouse “schizophrenia” to humans. Because I can barely swim at all. My best attempts lead to me going backwards at a rate of knots for a few minutes. Then giving up. In fact, giving up several hours before any of the people I’ve ever accidentally been “swimming” with who swim at national club level. (One of whom was once diagnosed as schizophrenic ….)
Trouble finding hidden food? Hmm, don’t think I’ve looked recently. Make that lost keys and I could probably out-mad the mice again.
These behaviours may indeed be wierd for mice. They can’t apply to humans or, if you try, they don’t correlate with “schizophrenia” at all. So, why breed some unfortunate mice to suffer brain disease, then kill them to check if their brains were damaged?
Is the scientific ethics bar set so high that a stilt-walker could pass through without needing to bend at the knees?
WordPress Upgrade Time
Just a reminder for all WordPress users out there. Version 2.2.2 has now been released and, as this is a security upgrade, it probably makes sense to upgrade now.
When Technology Goes Bad
Comically, it seems Technorati has died a death again this weekend. This is becoming a regular occurrence now (read through some of the posts here about it) and, given the nature of the industry in which Technocrappy wants to compete I really did think they would try harder. It seems they don’t.
Still, I am as fickle as the next person and more than happy to bask in the temporary brilliance of their current mistake. It seems that, today, this blog is ranked Number 1 in the world. If you don’t believe me, have a look at this screenshot:
As you can see, this is recent and we are, indeed number 1 in the world 🙂 Sadly, I am not convinced this will last for long… (Check out the ranking yourself and see if has reverted to our normal, low, position) [tags]Technorati, Page Rank, Technorati Rank, Technorati Monster, Technology, Bad Technology, Web Service, Web 2.0, Social Web, Blogs, Blog Aggregators[/tags]
Wikisky.org
I haven’t fully explored this yet, but Wikisky.org looks like an interesting and entertaining science / astronomy site.
I am short on online time at the moment, but I will try to check this out a bit more in the future.
[tags]Wikisky, Science, Astronomy, Wiki, Education, Entertainment, Sky Map, SDSS, Space[/tags]
Sentimentality and murder
There’s a really chilling story on the BBC site about a couple who killed the man’s 17-month old son. What really strikes home with this one is the stomach-turning mixture of sentimentality and complete disregard for life.
(Plus the Myra Hindleyesque mentality of the woman, who seems to have been more or less totally unconcerned by what they had done to the toddler, She even comes across as the prime mover from the reports – allegedly – but I’ll skip her as being so willfuly evil that there is nothing to say.)
I have nothing to say on this one. It’s not religion. It’s not politics. It’s just people. I have no idea what to do about it. No idealistic formula or social organisation suggestion or anything. Just add it to the game of Top Trumps where you score one for every mindnumbingly bad event.
This headline gives the strange flavour of this story
‘Caring father’ tortured son to death
Ok, is this one of the creepiest things you could read as an example of ‘caring’?
(And , yes, a lot more like the serial killers in US cop shows who keep ‘mementos’ than like what normally passes for caring on planet earth.)
He still kept as mementos the tissue papers he used to wipe the boy’s tears after his circumcision and the plaster casts that “slipped off” his son’s leg the month before his death.
I’ll step away from the normal human reaction to this (which is incoherent rage)and try to rant about it in the abstract.
It’s the sentimentality that gets to me. Sentimentality is the ****’s substitute for sentiment. People who don’t really feel empathy seem to be those who set the most store by the overt expression of their senstivities
There’s no simple dividing line but there are plenty of people who make so much of their feelings that you start to suspect these vaunted feelings are just displayed to manipulate.
Obviously, when the sentimentality is accompanied by torture or murder, the authenticity of the sentiment is easy enough to spot……….
Needs no imagination
Servicing the ever-open maw of a blog can be pretty tough sometimes. But lo, help is on the horizon.
According to Wallop CEO Carl Jacob* at a Stanford conference, reported in the Register, we’ll be soon able to buy in self-expression…
He wants people to know that they don’t need imagination to have personality. “Self-expression is a very powerful concept,” he explained. “We want to take people away from the idea that they have to do it themselves and that they can buy forms of self-expression in the virtual world.”
* No, I’m pretty certain this bit isn’t actually a command, although it may be a temptation.
Christian Confusions
Now the ongoing (eternal?) debate between Christians and Atheists is somewhat repetitive and some of the common arguments work along the lines that apparently Richard Dawkins (or Sam Harris et al.) are not Professors of Divinity so they can have no opinion on theology. Atheists quite rightly respond that most atheists know the holy scriptures of several religions better than that religion’s adherents. Another of my favourite arguments is that Atheists take the bible too literally and Christians know it is all allegory. I suspect, again, the Atheists are correct on this one…
With all that in mind, thanks to the wonders of Stumble! I came across some brain numbing posts on the eternally entertaining Rapture Ready bulletin board. Now, I know that I shouldn’t expect anything resembling intelligence on Rapture Ready, but this made me laugh out loud — it was part of a discussion about Mother Teresa, and followed a post saying she was a Catholic Nun: (post link — Emphasis mine)
Wow, I’m suprised and sorry to hear that. I thought she was a Christian. Look at all the things she did that the world would consider good and saintly. Yet, if she truely was not converted (I hope she was!), her good works were dead and ultimately filthy menstration rags before God.
Seriously. So it seems Catholics are not Christians. Some one really needs to let the Hitler Youth Pagan High Priest Pope know.
The rest of the thread is equally entertaining and well worth reading but I suggest you don’t have any hot drinks in your mouth at the time. It degenerates a little bit as more and more of the evangelicals start to declare Mother Teresa a “non-Christian” because she did not force conversions onto those she saved. Saved by Grace (author of previous bit of hilarity) posts:
I took a qick read at the article and it seemed that she isn’t in a very good place. But, I agree with you, only God knows if she truly repented and trusted Jesus. If she did not however, but believed in her own goodness, however many “good” deeds she did in peoples estimation, she could not have been saved.
To God be the praise and glory. If trusting in Jesus alone isnt enough for God, I’m going to hell faster than Hitler and Husine and the Anti Christ put together.
Which was quite funny, but not in the same league as this snipped from Eve_ann_Gelical (the clue is in the name methinks):
What good does it profit it a man if he is given a piece of bread for his stomach and to have his brow wiped ? Mother Theresa did not share the “gospel” of Jesus Christ with those she “served”, her own words declare she believed that there are many paths to God. You can feed a man a piece of bread but let his eternal soul headed for an eternity seperated form God by not telling him the Truth. She fed the flesh not the spirit. The flesh dies the spirit will not. Can you imagine the scene when those Mother Theresa “feed and cared for” meet her in eternity as they are seperated from God, they may ask her why she did not share the Truth with them that could have brougfht them knowledge of salvation of the soul, not merely the caring for thier since dead body. Heavy.
As for those who say she may have had a personal relationship with Jesus, which Jesus is that ? The Bible says there are counterfeit Jesus’…
As for good works, there are many Mormons, JW’s, Muslims and even atheists who do “good works”.God Himself knows where Mother Thersa is and I am not the judge. But what I can judge is that the “gospel” she believed in was not the saving gospel from God’s Word. She left these people to their false gods, and hoped they would become “better” Hindi’s or Buddists etc. She was allowed a place in history in the lives of thousands and thousands and she wasted that gift by not seeking to share the salvation that is through Jesus Christ alone with those who crossed her path. I believe the Enemy of men’s souls was quite pleased that she fed the poor and left them to starve to death spiritually. And he may find it humourous that mankind finds her such a hero.
You know, if this is the standard of person who gets into Heaven, I am really glad to be an atheist. I can think of no worse hell than an eternity listening to brain dead, obsessive, nasty, simpletons like this. I wonder what these people, who seemingly spend their entire lives devoted to minute study as to what is required for entry into Heaven, will actually do if they get there? What will their eternity be spent doing when they can no longer preach and convert (or irritate, as I suspect is really the case) others to their crackpot cause?
Entertainingly, the crackpots Christians on Rapture Ready often quote scripture to prove their point. Out of curiosity I followed some of the quotes and found out they were completely irrelevant to the point being made. Try it yourself, it is really funny. In one bit Saved By Grace is trying to point to a quote which says that unless people are saved by Jesus their works are “unclean” to God and he links to a book of the Old Testament. Sadly, I suspect the true irony of his quotes are missed by Saved By Grace… (I suspect “Saved By Grace” is quite young)
Anyway, Rapture Ready almost pales in insignificance compared to the crackpot, obsessive contradictory nonsense spewed out in a web page titled ‘“Mother” Teresa – General Teachings/Activities.’ As an example of the things this site states:
She was instructing these staunch Hindus to pray sincerely to their own Hindu idols and she felt that if they did this, God would certainly not judge them! No matter how plausible from man’s earthly vantage point, when good works are conducted by unregenerate religious people, what is promoted is a cursed false gospel, encouraging the lost heathen to have hope in their false gods, even as they lay upon their death beds. In God’s eyes, therefore, the entire endeavor was a cursed one, and no Christian should have supported, assisted, or praised a work cursed by God!
While this may well be technically true, it seems to miss the whole point of “Christian goodness”…
[tags]Christian,Nutcases,Nonsense,Stupidity,Old Testament, Christ, Mother Teresa, Catholics, Evangelicals, Born Again, Rapture, Religion, Belief, Religious Idiots, Crackpots, Hatred, Philosophy, Society, Culture,Idiocy[/tags]
The War on Science
Over on Random Intelligence there is an excellent video of a Horizon documentary from a while back. For some reason I never found this first time round, so getting to see it here was pretty handy.
Unlike lots of Horizon episodes, this is quite a well put together one which stays true to the science. Well worth watching. Sadly Random Intelligence blocks non-Blogger comments so I was unable to comment there. [tags]Science, Horizon, Evolution, ID, Intelligent Design, Dawkins, Attenborough[/tags]