A godless band of unrepentant heathens has released a new album — and is donating a portion of the proceeds to the SSA. You can listen to samples and order the album on Amazon. Get more music for your iPod and help atheists at the same time!
In a previous “I get email” post, I mocked this bizarre list of 50 “proofs” that god exists: they were all nonsense and non sequiturs and bizarre falsehoods. The author actually dragged out the Lady Hope story as evidence for a god! Take a look and you’ll see how genuinely stupid the list was.
But there’s a stalkerish element to all this, too. Ever since, the author periodically writes me these weird pleading/sneering emails. She was very upset that I called her out on her raving foolishness, and has to remind me of that every once in a while. It’s rather stupid, since I’d basically forgotten the post — it was almost four years ago — but she can’t let it die and has to stir it up now and then.
So here we go again, to oblige the bizarrely obsessed Debra Rufini, here is one of her latest emails. I’ve posted it below the fold as a screen capture because there was no way I was going to try and imbed all those silly smilies.
A German priest is on trial for numerous cases of child rape. The one thing that is truly remarkable about the case is how unaware the priest is of simple human morality.
A German Catholic priest has admitted 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys in the past decade, saying he did not think he was doing harm.
The priest said it had not been his intention to get close to the boy sexually, and that it had never occurred to him that he was doing harm.
“It was never my impression that the children did not consent,” the priest was quoted as saying at the trial.
When asked in court if he was a paedophile, he replied, according to local newspaper Braunschweiger Zeitung: “It would be wrong to say No but to say Yes would also fall short of the truth.”
He was molesting 9 year old boys. He had pornographic pictures of them on his computer. But he had no idea that what he was doing was wrong.
What exactly do they teach in Catholic seminaries? How can anyone grow up in European society and be unaware that raping children was wrong?
The Vatican must have a special program to seek out ethically blinkered sociopaths and make them priests.
The Missouri is considering HB1227, a bill that would require public schools to teach intelligent design creationism. It’s a descendant of a similar bill that was previously allowed to die, and it shares some of the same properties as the previous version: an amazing opacity and astonishingly pompous attempt by a few blithering lawyers to redefine science.
Read this crap. It begins with a long, long list of eleven bogus definitions, as if making the law into a dictionary will make it irrefutable.
2. As used in this section, the following terms mean:
(1) “Analogous naturalistic process”, a verifiable process which is either a present-day naturally occurring process similar to a past naturalistic process or the human-directed duplication of a process similar to a past naturalistic process. The verifiable process uses similar natural materials, mechanisms, and conditions as the past naturalistic process and produces an equivalent end result;
(2) “Biological evolution”, a theory of the origin of life and its ascent by naturalistic means. The first simple life was developed from basic elements and simple molecules through the mechanisms of random combinations, naturally occurring molecular structures, other naturalistic means, and millions of years. From the first simple life, all subsequent species developed through the mechanisms of random variation, mutation, natural selection, adaptation, segregation, other naturalistic means, and millions of years. The theory is illustrated by the evolutionary phylogenic tree. Theory philosophically demands only naturalistic causes and denies the operation of any intelligence, supernatural event, God or theistic figure in the initial or subsequent development of life;
(3) “Biological intelligent design”, a hypothesis that the complex form and function observed in biological structures are the result of intelligence and, by inference, that the origin of biological life and the diversity of all original species on earth are the result of intelligence. Since the inception of each original species, genetic material has been lost, inherited, exchanged, mutated, and recombined to result in limited variation. Naturalistic mechanisms do not provide a means for making life from simple molecules or making sufficient new genetic material to cause ascent from microscopic organisms to large life forms. The hypothesis does not address the time or sequence of life’s appearance on earth, time or formation of the fossil record, and time or method of species extinction. The hypothesis does not require the identity of intelligence responsible for earth’s biology but requires any proposed identity of that intelligence to be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation. Concepts inherent within the hypothesis include:
(a) The origin of life on earth is inferred to be the result of intelligence directed design and construction. There are no plausible mechanisms or present-day experiments to prove the naturalistic origin of the first independent living organism;
(b) All original species on earth are inferred to be the result of intelligence directed design and construction. There are no significant mechanisms or present-day experiments to prove the naturalistic development of earth’s species from microscopic organisms;
(c) Complex forms in proteins, enzymes, DNA, and other biological structures demonstrated by their constituent molecules in regard to size, shape, quantity, orientation, sequence, chirality, and integration imply intelligent design was necessary for the first life on earth. Intelligence is capable of designing complex form;
(d) Complex functions demonstrated by growth, reproduction, repair, food metabolization, waste disposal, stimuli response, and autonomous mobility in microscopic organisms imply intelligent design was necessary for the first life on earth. Intelligence is capable of designing complex function;
(e) Within the history of human experience, all exhibits of recurring discrete symbols from a set of symbols arranged in a specific sequence which store information and can be read by human intelligence, is itself the result of intelligence. DNA contains stored information for the assembling of proteins and enzymes which can be read by humans and is the result of intelligence. The recurring discrete symbols sequenced within DNA which store information are the molecules adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine;
(f) Intelligence-directed design and construction of all original species at inception without an accompanying genetic burden is inferred rather than random mutational genetic change as a constructive mechanism. Random mutational genetic change results in an increasing genetic burden and species degradation rather than species ascent;
(g) Intelligence-directed action is necessary to exceed the limits of natural species change, which is a combination of autogenous species change and environmental effected species change. Multi-generation breeding experiments illustrate the limits of natural species change and its inadequacy for developing required genetic information found in dissimilar species;
(h) The irreducible complexity of certain biological systems implies a completed design and construction at inception rather than step-by-step development, as indicated by the structures observed for sight, hearing, smell, balance, blood coagulation, digestion, and hormone control;
(i) The lack of significant transitional forms between diverse species existing today and in the fossil record implies all original species were completed at inception rather than by a step-by-step development from other species. A lack of transitional forms is illustrated by the appearance of large complex life forms in the Cambrian fossil record without any significant previous fossils;
(j) Common designs and features evident in different species imply the intelligent reuse of proven designs analogous to the reuse of proven designs by human designers;
(k) The lack of significant present-day observable changes in species due to random variation, mutation, natural selection, adaptation, segregation, or other naturalistic mechanisms implies intelligence as the cause for all original species;
I would not want to debate the author of this mess; just reading it, I felt my eyes glazing over and eyelids drooping. It’s an argumentum ad snooze-a-rooni.
I’ll say one positive thing about it, it does have a useful clause further down.
(6) If a scientific theory or hypothesis proven to be false is taught for historical, illustrative, or other reasons, the theory or hypothesis shall be identified as false when taught orally or in writing.
OK. (a) through (k) of section (3) above are all false. Can we dismiss the kids and go home now?
With any luck, the other legislators in Missouri will be able to recognize that this noise blows chunks, and it will once again languish and die.
(Also on Sb)
I was brought up with a sort of “good-stuff” version of Christianity: heaven, but no hell; Golden Rule, but no rules about homosexuality or masturbation; love, joy, and sweet treats at Christmas AND Easter, but no “original sin” or “he died for your sins.” My mom considered herself a Christian although she didn’t (and doesn’t) toe the line on almost any of Christianity’s teachings, and my dad considered himself an agnostic.
My dad leaned toward a more emphatic version of atheism when my little brother died of cancer while we kids were still in elementary school. Where some parents would turn more firmly to certainty of an afterlife when dealing with this sort of tragedy, I think my dad thought that my sweet little brother’s death was one more piece of evidence that prayer doesn’t work, good deeds buy you no consideration from the universe, and there is no God.
But he didn’t tell us kids that. Many, many people assured us that our little Stanley was up in heaven, with God and Jesus, and very happy. I had comforting dreams about him being up there.
Flash forward to me as a teenager. I was exposed to the hippie version of Jesus. You know, Jesus Christ, Superstar stuff. Jesus with long hair, long robe, and a lot of peace and kindness and acceptance no matter who or what you are. Still a good-stuff version of the religion—and very appealing. I didn’t want to be the kind of hippie that had rampant sex and took a ton drugs, so I became the kind of semi-hippie that sang Christian songs in huge groups of happy-hippy people. Big group hugs and acoustic guitars and circle folk dances and love and peace.
The next step was to actually learn something about the religion I’d adopted. Read the Bible. Find out about apologetics and church history.
At this point, having been a “Jesus freak” for almost two years, I was now in college, enrolled in The Bible As Literature, and part of a Bible study group that met every single night. There was so much appalling stuff in the Bible—I was shocked! Also, even though the kids in my group were really wonderful people, there was an appalling LACK of critical thinking when it came to the Bible and what they thought of as God’s voice (through the gifts of the spirit: prophecy and speaking in tongues and interpretation of such). I met my husband at these Bible study meetings—and we were the only two, often sitting opposite each other, saying, “That doesn’t make sense!” or “That’s a really rotten thing for Jesus to say!” We got together partly because of our shared shock about what Christianity was really all about, and we drifted away from the Christian group for the same reason.
I didn’t stop studying. The more I read about religion, including Christianity, the more I didn’t believe anything like that stuff. The more I turned away from Christianity and religion, the more I was interested in what science said about deep mysteries and complicated issues. It took a while for me to self-identify as an atheist—but really, about three quarters of the way through my freshman year of college, I became an atheist.
C. Earle
United States
Oh, Ben Stein. How I love to laugh at you. You really are a great comedian.
His latest stunt: Kyocera was negotiating with him to hire him as a professional pitchman for their products, when they learned that his reputation wasn’t exactly suggestive of intelligence and technology — quite the opposite, actually. He’s a global warming denialist and professional buffoon.
So they retracted their offer.
Ben Stein’s response was to sue them. It wasn’t for violation of contract, though — he hadn’t been contracted yet. Ben Stein is suing a Japanese company for violating his Constitutionally mandated freedom of religion.
Also, according to Stein, he has a right to the $300,000 under the Constitution, which guarantees him freedom of religion. See, Stein believes that global warming isn’t real because "God, and not man, control[s] the weather." When Kyocera declined to pay Stein $300,000 to represent the corporation in part because it doesn’t want to be associated with that belief, it violated Stein’s constitutional right to $300,000. He also accuses Kyocera of violating his "freedom of speech" and "political freedom." Stein has no political freedom, because Kyocera robbed him of the freedom when it refused to pay him $300,000.
You can read the whole complaint, if you can stomach the self-serving fluff at the beginning (yes, Ben Stein is still bragging about his bit part in a movie 26 years ago). He really does make the argument that “BEN STEIN’s questioning of whether man makes the weather or God makes the weather is a matter of his religious belief.”
The man is a total loon with a Republican sense of entitlement.
The decision that the prayer plastered on the wall of Jessica Ahlquist’s high school was, in fact, a religious prayer to a divine being, is now getting challenged in the most important venue of all — a newspaper’s online poll. The vote is currently split between people who can see the obvious, that that thing is a prayer, and the dumb and dishonest, who want to pretend that a “prayer” to a “heavenly father” is a secular document.
Which side are you on?
Did Judge Lagueux get it right in ordering the Cranston West prayer banner be removed?
Yes: 49.4%
No: 49.1%
Not sure: 1.5%
I know there are a few gay contributors here. I want to know why you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about your grand plan! You were willing to spill the beans to the Vatican, but to me? Nooooo.
The Spanish Catholic Church is also concerned about homosexuality. During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. "The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools."
I had no idea we even had a way to “make” people homosexual, but heck, if a Catholic priest says it, you know it’s got to be true. They take vows, you know, and believe in the ten commandments.
Religion really hates it when you tell its proponents that they have to live up to their promise to be good. It’s so unfair!
Last year, New York enacted the Dignity for All Students Act, effective July 1, 2012. (See prior posting.) In addition to prohibiting bullying, the law (Educ. Law Sec. 801-a) requires schools to include in their K-12 curriculum instruction in tolerance and respect for others of different races, weights, national origins, ethnic groups, religions, religious practices, mental or physical abilities, sexual orientations, genders, and sexes. According to Yeshiva World, on Monday the New York Board of Regents voted to exempt yeshivas and parochial schools from this requirement to the extent that the school has a religious or moral objection to the requirement. Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz said that parents of students in such schools "may now feel secure that … their children will not be subjected to lessons that are inconsistent with their religious doctrines."
Yeah, like what? Now their children don’t have to hear those horrible messages like, “You don’t get to beat up that kid for being gay” and “Atheists are human beings, too” and “Yes, the girls are allowed to speak in the classroom”?
