You’d never guess who the second largest religious group at Missouri State University might be. And they get hate mail and threats just for existing!
If that link doesn’t work, try this:
Thanks, Greg!
You may have heard about the 21-foot long half-scale model of the X-Wing that was built to actually fly, using solid fuel rockets. It was launched yesterday. The results were caught on video, and it is spectacular. There were lots of kids watching this thing, the announcer does the countdown, it lifts off on beautiful columns of flame and smoke, gets about 50 feet in the air … and did the announcer just say “Holy shit!” over the loudspeakers?
The kids are thrilled. We shall enlist them in the Empire’s legions.
This is getting ridiculous. Now I’m accused of “trying to drive a wedge between those who are against evolution” … because I think belief in angels and demons is absurd.
Damn. Just because someone accepts evolution doesn’t automatically make them a good guy, and if they’re praising evolution and at the same time babbling about demons causing appendicitis or angels warding off curses, they aren’t on my side in the cause of increasing rationality.
I’m beginning to wonder if there is some psychological transference going on here. People who think that merely believing in Jesus grants them redemption must also think that believing in evolution is a magic charm that grants them exemption from criticism of any nonsense they might hold. It doesn’t work that way. There is no get-out-of-criticism-free card.
Omnibrain provides the proof. We live in a universe ruled by chance, the product of chaos, where reason simply does not matter.
Now that that has been established, I find myself with the sad thought…is this a world I want to live in?
Take a look at the winners of The 49th International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest. It’s itty-bitty art and weirdness!
I don’t just get ranting hate mail. I also get conversion stories and invitations to believe. These are saddest and most pathetic emails of them all—you just want to weep for the credulity of the poor victim.
Wired has funny little poll: 3 rounds of quotations from Collins and Dawkins, and you get to judge who wins each round.
So far, Collins is reeling and staggering, battered badly, and especially in the last round, is fading fast. I don’t think he’s going to pull a Rocky on this one — especially since I’m now sending everyone here to go do a Raging Bull on him.
Just two days ago, I caught Skatje snacking on bacon, and also there on the counter was a bar of chocolate…and I joked to her that she ought to whip up some chocolated-dipped bacon. Who knew that bacon-flavored chocolate actually exists?
I’m afraid it doesn’t sound too tasty to me, and I mentioned it in a “eww, gross” sort of way … maybe some chocolatier somewhere needs to tap into my prescient talents, because I sure wasn’t going to actually try that stuff.
Although his agony still comes through clearly.
First it was me, now it’s God. God is being sued by State Senator Ernie Chambers of Nebraska.
Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.
The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is “Omnipresent”.
In the lawsuit Chambers says he’s tried to contact God numerous times, “Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant (“Come out, come out, wherever you are”) has been unable to do so.”
The suit also requests that the court given the “peculiar circumstances” of this case waive personal service. It says being Omniscient, the plaintiff assumes God will have actual knowledge of the action.
The lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.”
It says God has caused, “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.”
The suit also says God has caused, “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.”
Chambers also says God “has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that Defendant “will laugh” when calamity comes.
Chambers asks for the court to grant him a summary judgment. He says as an alternative, he wants the judge to set a date for a hearing as “expeditiously” as possible and enter a permanent injunction enjoining God from engaging in the types of deleterious actions and the making of terroristic threats described in the lawsuit.
This may surprise you, but God should call upon me to defend him. After all, I’ll show that God is neither omnipresent nor omniscient, and that those are just vague rumors spread by people who actually don’t know him. I’ll also demonstrate that God is utterly ineffectual, that not only doesn’t have the power to cause those horrible events that harm people, he doesn’t even have the capability to help anyone. And that he doesn’t show compassion or remorse, and contrary to Chambers, won’t laugh … because he is an entirely nonexistent, fictional character.
When the case is dismissed, we will then go on to sue all the priesthoods of Earth for misrepresentation of my innocent and entirely harmless client. We won’t countersue Ernie Chambers, though — I think I like that guy.
(Hat tip to the Lincoln Secular Humanists)
