Group Discussion

Religious and not News Chat: Aiming to limit damages, Catholic hospital argues a fetus isn’t the same as a ‘person’ - @gordy327

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 10:20:20 -0400

Full story here:

Aiming to limit damages, Catholic hospital argues a fetus isn’t the same as a ‘person ’

Excerpts from the article:
Catholic Health Initiatives-Iowa, a faith-based health care provider, is arguing in a medical malpractice case that the loss of an unborn child does not equate to the death of a “person” for the purpose of calculating damage awards.
In recent court filings, attorneys for CHI and MercyOne argue that “finding an unborn child to be a ‘person’ would lead to serious implications in other areas of the law.” They also argue the Andersons’ unborn child should not be considered a “patient” for purposes of calculating damages.
“There is no statute or binding case law finding an unborn child to be a ‘patient’ under the law,” attorneys for the hospital have told the court, citing an Iowa Supreme Court ruling in a 1971 case that held “there can be no recovery (of damages) on behalf of, or for, a nonexistent person.”

Implications to other areas of law is likely one reason why no state has ever granted full personhood with rights to the unborn. For those who believe a fetus is a person, both the law and the church disagree with you. But this just shows what is really important to some religions, money!

Religious and not News Chat: Women Impacted By Abortion Bans Share Gut-Wrenching Stories at DNC - @devangelical

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 10:11:20 -0400

maga republicans will never be able to outrun this issue that affects 51% of the electorate. defenders of the constitution my ass...

Religious and not News Chat: UPDATE: After pushing Bible on dancing teen, Louisiana public school principal takes leave of absence - @sandy-2021492

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:32:22 -0400

Religious and not News Chat: A rational argument for no restrictions on abortion - @gordy327

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 17:35:55 -0400

Since the Dobbs decision, some states gave set various and seemingly arbitrary restrictions on abortion, such as at 6, 15, and 20 weeks gestation. There seems to be no rational rhyme or reason for such restrictions. Many who do advocate for restrictions or prohibiting abortion seem to do so based on emotion or feelings. However, there is no rational or logical reason to restrict abortion at all. Briefly, here's why:

1. Women have bodily autonomy and can choose what they want to do with their bodies or in matters of health. This includes abortion.
2. A zygote, embryo, or fetus (ZEF) is not a legal person and therefore has no legal rights or protections. But a pregnant woman is a person with rights. Therefore, hers is paramount.
3. No one can be compelled to have their body used for the benefit of another without consent. This is established legal precedent.
4. Pregnancy & birth can have negative (but not limited to) physical effects. While most states have some kind of exceptions in place for abortion, this can also be a case of preventative medicine before issues arise.
5. the pregnant woman is able to make the decision based on what her medical and life circumstances are.
As a side note, Canada has no laws restricting abortion, as it is deemed an issue between a woman and her doctor and Canada's abortion rate is less than the US.

Religious and not News Chat: Is there a logical or rational argument against abortion? - @gordy327

Fri, 05 May 2023 19:11:35 -0400

When Roe v. Wade was decided back in 1973, abortion was allowed in all states while both sides of the abortion debate continued to battle it out. Abortion rights opponents wanted to restrict or even prohibit abortion with few, if any, exceptions while abortion rights advocates wanted to maintain a woman's right to choose. Since the Dobbs decision, many states have significantly restricted abortion and even included legal penalties for those who perform abortion. Some state laws like those in Florida or Oklahoma result in women's health being threatened or their lives otherwise being severely disrupted. As the Dobbs decision is fairly recent, I think we are likely seeing the beginning of a trend of disruption against women's health or life. I have previously argued ( here , h ere , and here ) why abortion rights should be preserved and allowed. But I have not yet heard any logical or rational argument why abortion should be restricted or prohibited, especially before viability. Most arguments against abortion involve ignorance, misinformation, and/or emotional rhetoric and appeals or personal bias. So without resorting to emotion, personal bias, or misinformation, can anyone make a logical and rational argument against abortion?

Religious and not News Chat: Creationism as a mental illness? - @gordy327

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 21:07:01 -0400

Here is a somewhat old, but still relevant article published in Psychology Today briefly explaining why creationism is actually a mental illness.

Creationism as a mental illness:

In Cockney rhyming slang, the word ‘believe' is represented by ‘Adam and Eve'. When faced with something baffling, shocking or plain peculiar, you might use the rhetorical expression, ‘Would you Adam and Eve it?' It's ironic, then, that one of the great debates of the day is about the literal truth of the bible story; or in other words, the extent to which we should Adam and Eve in Adam and Eve.

It's a question not just of belief but of denial . The phrase ‘in denial' has become so commonplace it's hard to still hear its power. In common with the ostrich which, as danger approaches, buries its head in the sand, those who are ‘in denial' prefer a false but subjective sense of security to a true but objectively scary reality. Denial brings short term, if illusory, comfort.

Hence creationism, the theory/ superstition that, contrary to massive scientific evidence, the world began exactly as described in the Book of Genesis. Instead of deriving from millions of years of patient evolution, Adam and Eve popped out, fully formed, like characters from a Swiss cuckoo clock. Would you Adam and Eve it? Of course not. It's a myth, but like many myths it serves a psychological purpose which is to provide a storybook sense of simple origins, which allays people's fears. Those who believe this myth to be the truth are in a state of denial.

Along with denial, two other factors connect creationism with mental illness. The first is psychosis, which is an extension of denial. If psychosis is marked by the discrepancy between one's personal view of the world and the consensual view, creationism holds onto the personal view at all costs, refusing to accept what is abundantly clear. True, if creationism became the majority view, its psychotic character might be mitigated. Except that this majority view would have no more valence than the belief so widely held about the relationship between the sun and the earth before Copernicus proved how the latter orbits the former, and not vice versa.

Finally, creationism shares with autism an alleged lack of ability for irony. Creationists take the bible story as literally true, unable to recognize that it might be working on those other, mythic levels. If tests for madness include talking to yourself and looking for hairs on the palm of your hand, then here's another: do you Adam and Eve in Adam and Eve?

Religious and not News Chat: Abortion is good. - @gordy327

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 00:30:30 -0400

Abortion has always been a hot button topic, with advocates on both sides of the debate making various arguments. Many arguments tend to devolve into emotional rants or become very narrow in their focus, sometimes to the point of being uncompromising, as some take a hard stance that abortion is a bad thing. But I have decided to try and remove the emotional aspect (as much as possible anyway) and briefly provide purely practical reasons why abortion is a good thing.

1. It’s safer than pregnancy or childbirth : Most abortions, especially if done earlier, are generally safer and easier than enduring a pregnancy and childbirth. According to a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology (2012), “ Legal induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion. Similarly, the overall morbidity associated with childbirth exceeds that with abortion .” After all, an abortion can be as simple as taking an abortifacient while pregnancy and childbirth can come with a whole host of problems , both minor to severe and even life threatening. While abortions can have complications , especially if done later during gestation, they are still safer overall than pregnancy and childbirth. Keeping abortion legal, where a woman can obtain an abortion in a clinical setting with qualified personnel, will help ensure that an abortion procedure remains as safe and easy as possible.

2. Abortion is cheaper than pregnancy and child rearing : Any parent knows raising kids is expensive. We’re talking tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially when eventual college costs are factored in. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation , “ The average total cost for prenatal care throughout a typical pregnancy is about $2,000 .” It’s likely more if there are pregnancy related issues to deal with. By comparison, an abortion costs up to $750 in the first trimester, and up to $1,500 later in pregnancy, according to Planned Parenthood . Birth alone can cost thousands of dollars, especially if a C-Section is required or other birthing complications arise, necessitating additional healthcare costs and resources. Again, there are various factors which might affect actual costs. But by and large, abortion is certainly cheaper, especially when considering the costs of child rearing.

According to the USDA (2015), "a family will spend approximately $12,980 annually per child in a middle-income ($59,200-$107,400), two-child, married-couple family." That's not even counting expenses towards college. This may not be so much an issue for those earning a higher wage, but it is an issue for lower to middle income individuals, where some people live paycheck to paycheck and every penny counts. Factoring in child costs (food, clothing, education, healthcare, ect.) can break the proverbial bank. Economic costs is one factor women might take into consideration when deciding on abortion. Can they afford to have a child? Sometimes, the answer is no.

3. Abortion can benefit society : Given to economic impact of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing, many women may have difficulty making ends meet, especially if they are of limited financial stability. Many women in such situations also do not have the time or resources to better their own lot in society and may fall into or remain in poverty, which is also not a good environment to raise a child. In addition, pregnant women in economic hardships may not seek prenatal care due to costs, which might result in or exacerbate other medical conditions, thereby incurring even greater costs and use of resources. In such situations, government assistance might be utilized, which only costs taxpayers and creates economic hardships. According to Rutgers (2022),

Women who are denied an abortion because of restrictive laws not only are less likely to be employed full time, they are also more likely to live in poverty and to require public assistance compared to women who obtain abortions. Women who are able to delay childbirth until they have greater economic and emotional security are able to have closer relationships with their children and raise them in relatively better economic circumstances, with fewer indicators of delayed child development .

Socioeconomic concerns are a significant reason why a woman might choose to have an abortion, and it makes sense why. According to the US Census Bureau, there are over 10 million children living in poverty in this country (365 million in the world). Why add to that number by forcing women to give birth if they do not have adequate means to support children? Poverty can adversely affect the growth, development, health, and wellbeing of a child. Abortions will help reduce that and reduce financial burdens and difficulties. For those that do have a child, they may rely on government assistance, which economically impacts the taxpayers and probably doesn't boost income by a large amount. In effect, a child might grow up poor, and probably in a poor neighborhood with limited means and opportunities. Parental opportunities might also be limited, as time and energy are now used to earn a living wage and pay the bills. Therefore, having an abortion can break one's fall into or cycle of poverty and make life better for them. If a woman chooses to have a child later, then she might be in a stronger economic position at that time to have a better life for herself and the child.

4. Abortion is more convenient : Let’s face it, no one likes to be inconvenienced. It’s rather annoying and frustrating, to say the least, whatever the circumstances might be. Any parent who loses sleep to change or feed a baby at night, who misses work because of childcare issues, who gets called to the principal’s office at school, ect., knows what I am talking about. Some women may not want to be inconvenienced (physically, emotionally, economically, ect.) with pregnancy, childbirth, and/or child rearing, especially since the latter is a lifetime commitment. There are those who complain about women having abortions for convenience, to which I say, “who cares.” The reasons a woman may choose to have an abortion are varied and personal. But they are all equally valid to the woman in question and really no one else’s concern or business.

This is a basic list of why abortion is a good thing. It does not cover the concepts of woman’s individual autonomy and rights, as that can be an entirely different debate. There are probably other reasons why abortion is good, such as the issue of overpopulation and probably other factor I have not offered or considered. But I figured this would be a sufficient starting point. But what do you think? Are there other reasons why abortion is a good thing that should be included in the list? Can a logical, preferably non-emotional argument be made for or against the reasons offered?

Religious and not News Chat: BREAKING! FFRF with students, parents sues Huntington, W.Va., schools over Christian revival - @sandy-2021492

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:58:42 -0500

Religious and not News Chat: The "Pro Abortion" Argument - @gordy327

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 23:24:43 -0500

Let me make it clear from the start, I am not "pro-abortion." In other words, I am not advocating women should or must have an abortion. Anyone who has read my posts on the subject of abortion knows I am pro-choice. I have consistently said that the decision to continue a pregnancy or not is strictly and entirely a woman's choice. Neither is it anyone else's decision, business, or concern! But there are those who erroneously equate pro-choice with "pro-abortion," either out of ignorance or probably as a derogatory dig at pro-choice individuals. I have heard arguments made on both sides of the abortion debate. But I have never heard a "pro-abortion" argument. If there are those who are indeed "pro-abortion," they are likely on the fringe and not mainstream or are otherwise silent on the issue. In response to anti-abortionists who want to forcibly take away or severely restrict a woman's right to choose (I have not seen a rational reason why abortion should be restricted before viability), I came up with a "pro-abortion" argument. I have tried to present a general argument (specifics of the argument and its points can be saved for the discussion) based on practical reasoning.
1. You (a woman) have a right to choose. Exercise that right! This is more a matter of personal choice rather than simply telling someone "You should get an abortion." It's not so much a pro-abortion stance as it is a reminder of the individual rights one is free to exercise or not. People have the right to vote and every election, some will say "exercise your right to vote," or "go out and vote," or something to that effect. A woman has the right to choose, and she should also exercise that right. In this context however, the implication is a woman should choose to have an abortion, since she has the right to begin with. With voting, you shouldn't let a vote go to waste. Likewise, with abortion, you shouldn't let an abortion go to waste. But it's really up to the woman.
2. Abortion will reduce economic strain: Let's face it, raising children is expensive and if one is not financially secure enough before having them, they risk becoming or continuing to be impoverished. This causes a lower standard of living and quality of life for both mother and child. If a woman is forced to continue a pregnancy while she has inadequate resources to be self-sufficient, then there is risk of financial, social, emotional, educational, and physical harm to both mother and child. According to the USDA (2015), "a family will spend approximately $12,980 annually per child in a middle-income ($59,200-$107,400), two-child, married-couple family." That's not even counting expenses towards college. This may not be so much an issue for those earning a higher wage, but it is an issue for lower to middle income individuals, where some people live paycheck to paycheck and every penny counts. Factoring in child costs (food, clothing, education, healthcare, ect.) can break the proverbial bank. Economic costs is one factor women might take into consideration when deciding on abortion. Can they afford to have a child? Sometimes, the answer is no.
According to the US Census Bureau, there are over 10 million children living in poverty in this country (365 million in the world). Why add to that number by forcing women to give birth if they do not have adequate means to support children? Poverty can adversely affect the growth, development, health, and wellbeing of a child. Abortions will help reduce that and reduce financial burdens and difficulties. For those that do have a child, they may rely on government assistance, which economically impacts the taxpayers and probably doesn't boost income by a large amount. In effect, a child might grow up poor, and probably in a poor neighborhood with limited means and opportunities. Parental opportunities might also be limited, as time and energy are now used to earn a living wage and pay the bills. Therefore, having an abortion can break one's fall into or cycle of poverty and make life better for them. If a woman chooses to have a child later, then she might be in a stronger economic position at that time to have a better life for herself and the child. By the way, the majority of abortions are from women with limited means.
3. Adoption is not always the answer: I have often heard anti-abortionists say a woman can simply give her child up for adoption if she doesn't want it or that adoption is a better alternative than abortion (as if that solves everything?). But that is naive and not always the case. Don't get me wrong, adoption is great and all the more power to those who do adopt. But adding more kids into the system does not solve the problem of where to put children. It makes the problem grow. Let's say a woman decides to give her child up for adoption. Well, the child still needs to be housed, fed, clothed, cared for, ect., right? Well guess what, that's going to cost you. They might be placed in foster care until adoption occurs, assuming they even get adopted. Foster care also requires recruiting individuals to be foster parents along with all associated costs. In addition, not all foster care environments [ special thanks to fellow NTer mocowgirl for the information ] are benevolent or altruistic in nature. According to the Administration for Children & Families (ACF) , there are an estimated 407,000 children in foster care and 117,000 waiting to be adopted. Clearly there are not enough people able or willing to adopt. Abortion will help bring those numbers down. So it is a practical solution.
4. Overpopulation is a problem. As the human population grows, it places a great strain on resources and the environment. According to the US Census Bureau , the current world population is around 7.9 billion with 333 million in the US (the 3rd most populated country in the world). Humans require a lot of resources to not only live, but to have a decent quality of life. As the population grows, humans encroach on or destroy natural habitats and consume farmed, mined, or other natural resources until the environment is destroyed. This is why we see vast swaths of land, forests, jungles, seas, ect decimated or disappearing. Humans also produce a lot of pollution, which only harms the environment and other humans.
5. Quality over quantity: The more people there are, the more demand for resources (food and materials), jobs, housing, education, healthcare, ect there is. As all of these things and more come in greater demand, the less there is to go around adequately for everyone. As a result, the quality of life suffers. The previous points mentioned all feed into this paradigm. One only needs to look at areas with a large population density to see this effect. Having children or forcing women to remain pregnant will not alleviate this effect. It will only be exacerbated. So if you want to do your part to help yourself, others, and possibly the world, get an abortion.
I'm sure there are other reasons to support a "pro-abortion" argument which I missed. Feel free to present them. I might include them in the argument list. I'm sure some reactions will be dismissive or possibly hostile. But all thoughts on the matter are welcome. Just mind the CoC please. Thank you.
6. Abortion is safer for a woman than a full-term pregnancy and delivery . Pregnancy and childbirth can be fraught with potential complications, some of which can be life threatening. According to an article [Thank you to fellow NTer sandy-2021492 for the article reference] in Obstetrics & Gynecology (2012) , " Legal induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion. Similarly, the overall morbidity associated with childbirth exceeds that with abortion ." Abortions are generally safe, easy, and quick, especially in the earlier stages of pregnancy. Choosing to end a pregnancy can be as simple as taking a pill.

Religious and not News Chat: Why abortion must remain legal and safe - @gordy327

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 22:56:02 -0500

Abortion has been a hot topic ever since the Supreme Court's landmark ruling Roe v. Wade (1973). The abortion issue has polarized the American people for nearly 50 years now, with both sides of the issue never seeming to waver or give a little. The pro-choice side generally sees abortion as something that should be an individual choice while the pro-life side generally sees abortion as ending a life. Currently, elective abortions are generally allowed up to the point of fetal viability, approximately 23-24 weeks gestation, which seems like a reasonable limit and compromise between the two sides of the issue. However, with the recent passing and legal challenging of the Mississippi and Texas laws limiting the time allowed for elective abortions, the SCOTUS is poised to take up the abortion debate (again). This is also concerning for some, as the SCOTUS is currently a conservative majority and conservatives have generally not favored abortion rights in the past. Regardless of one's own position on the issue, abortion is something which must remain legal and safe for women. Here are general explanations as to why:
1. Outlawing or significantly restricting abortion does not eliminate abortion or the need for it. All it will do is make abortions unsafe and potentially lead to criminalization of women who obtain "illegal" abortions and those who perform them. Our society has already dealt with such a scenario in the pre-Roe years, when women seeking to end a pregnancy obtained clandestine "back alley" abortions, often in unsafe and unsanitary conditions outside of the healthcare system and regulations and provided by some who may not be skilled in the procedure. This led to many women becoming maimed or even dying from the procedure. According to an article in Obstetrics and Gynecology , " w orldwide, some 5 million women are hospitalized each year for treatment of abortion-related complications such as hemorrhage and sepsis, and abortion-related deaths leave 220,000 children motherless....The median rate of unsafe abortions in the 82 countries with the most restrictive abortion laws is up to 23 of 1000 women compared with 2 of 1000 in nations that allow abortions. Abortion-related deaths are more frequent in countries with more restrictive abortion laws (34 deaths per 100,000 childbirths) than in countries with less restrictive laws (1 or fewer per 100,000 childbirths) ." Is that what we really want for this country? Another factor is the potential criminalization of women who either have abortions or are accused of having an abortion if they miscarry. A real world example of this is seen in El Salvador, where abortion has been banned. Many women have been accused and/or convicted for having an abortion after they miscarry. Also, 5,000 illegal abortions are performed there annually, with an 11% mortality rate. A pro-life individual might argue about the "life" of a fetus. But they ignore the life and possible death of the woman seeking an abortion. Again I ask, is that what we really want here?
2. Women have rights and autonomy . The Roe decision established that a woman had the right to choose an abortion. That right has only been affirmed and expanded upon in subsequent rulings regarding abortion. Reversing Roe or placing unreasonable or severe limits on abortion effectively means the state can revoke a right that has been granted. That begs the question, what other rights can the state then revoke? Individual rights are something that is recognized and protected, either explicitly or implicitly, and historically fought for. In a country which places such high value on rights and liberty, the very idea that the state can limit or revoke a right or that someone is forced to surrender their rights to the state should be abhorrent. A woman does not surrender her rights when she becomes pregnant. Neither does an embryo/fetus have rights which cancels the woman's rights. When pro-lifers argue about "life," they fail to acknowledge that no one is required to surrender their rights or themselves for the benefit of another. We do not force people to donate blood or organs to save a "life." So too is a woman not required to remain pregnant to support a "life," even if it's parasitically inside her.
3. An embryo or fetus is not a person . Just as a car is not yet a car until it rolls off the assembly line, a fetus is not yet a person until it is born. An embryo/fetus is not legally recognized nor considered a person and does not have rights. Neither is there anyway rights can be conferred to it without limiting or removing the rights of the woman in question. Some states have attempted to pass "fetal personhood" laws in the past. But such attempts have fortunately always failed. A fetus can be a potential person if it is carried to term and delivered. If a fetus were considered a person, then our birthdays would be based on our date of conception, not birth. A fetus before the point of viability is incapable of surviving independently or being self-determinant. Much like how a brain-dead person is no longer considered "alive" or a person, so too is the fetus.
4. Abortion can help reduce or end a cycle of poverty. While women can have an abortion for any reason, in many cases it is because of financial difficulty. This can be cases of women in low paying jobs, unemployment, or women who have not finished school (such as teenagers) which may limit their opportunities later. Raising children is expensive and if one is not financially secure enough before having them, they risk becoming or continuing to be impoverished. This causes a lower standard of living and quality of life for both mother and child. If a woman is forced to continue a pregnancy while she has adequate resources to be self sufficient, then there is risk of financial, social, emotional, educational, and physical harm to both mother and child. According to the US Census Bureau , there are over 10 million children living in poverty in this country. Why add to that number by forcing women to give birth if they do not have adequate means to support children? Some worry about the idea of the government paying for abortions? Well, the government will pay for an unwanted impoverished child via social programs, and that's usually much more expensive than an abortion.
5. A fetus does not experience pain until after viability . One argument against abortion is that the fetus can feel the pain of an abortion procedure. That is one reason why anti-abortion advocates try to have abortion prohibited or at least significantly restricted. However, such claims are founded in emotional appeals, not science. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists ( ACOG ), a fetus is incapable of perceiving pain until at least 24 weeks gestation, which is past the point of viability. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) , "a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until 28 to 30 weeks after conception, when the nerves that carry painful stimuli to the brain have developed. Before that, the fetal reaction to a noxious stimulus is a reflex that does not involve consciousness." ( JAMA 2005; 294:947-954 ). Even Britain's Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (RCOG) states that the human fetus cannot feel pain until 24 weeks' gestation. If a fetus must be aborted past the point of viability, Federal law requires doctors to use medications to manage pain of the fetus. So if some are worried about fetal pain, then logically the same standard of pain management can be used at any stage of aborting a pregnancy, including before viability. Although, that might put the woman more at risk. Regardless, that makes the whole fetal pain argument moot and invalidates it as an excuse to reduce the time frame when abortions are allowed to be performed.
Moral arguments aside (which are irrelevant anyway), there are real world deleterious effects which have happened and can be observed if abortion were made illegal or restricted. Abortions must always be legal and safe so women are not risking their health, their personal and financial independence, or be criminalized or marginalized by society. The decision to continue a pregnancy or not is a personal one which every woman has the right to freely choose and it is no one else's business or concern but hers! If you don't like abortion, then don't get one. But no one gets to make that choice for anyone else!

Religious and not News Chat: Correlation between religiosity and scientific illiteracy or hostility - @gordy327

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 21:29:53 -0400

Back in 2017, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson gave a presentation in South Carolina where he addressed the issue of scientific illiteracy. The summary of his presentation is below:
Americans overall are bad at science. Scared of math. Poor at physics and engineering. Resistant to evolution. This science illiteracy, is a threat to the nation. The consequence of that is that you breed a generation of people who do not know what science is nor how and why it works. You have mortgaged the future financial security of your nation. Innovations in science and technology are the (basis) of tomorrow’s economy. America’s decline isn’t unprecedented. Just look back 1,000 years ago at the Middle East, where math and science flourished in Baghdad. Algebra and algorithms were invented in the Middle East. So were Arabic numerals, the numbers we still use today. But when a new cleric emerged during the 12th century, he declared math and science to be earthly pursuits, and good Muslims should be concerned about spiritual affairs. The scientists drifted away, and scientific literacy faded from that part of the world. Of 655 Nobel Prizes awarded in the sciences since 1900, Tyson said, only three have been awarded to Muslims. Things that seem harmless can have devastating effects.
Dr. Tyson is correct too! Back in the first half of the 20th century, America was a scientific and technological powerhouse. We knew how to innovate, to create and improve on technologies. But as time went on, our scientific and technological innovation waned. To the point where other countries are matching or exceeding us in science and scientific education. There are many factors which may have contributed to this. But a significant cause can be attributed to religious influence, especially when it pervades politics and law or otherwise filters down to other areas of society and culture. Interest and general knowledge in science has decreased. It makes sense too. For many, religion is introduced early on in one's formative intellectual years, most likely due to family influence. People are taught (or indoctrinated) from an early age to accept god and the bible as factual or "truth" on various issues and that anything which challenges or contradicts it is not to be accepted or tolerated. For example, according to a 2019 gallup poll , 40% of American adults believe in creationism over evolution. This is more prevalent in more religious and/or less educated individuals. It boggles the mind that in the present day, with scientific information and evidence easily available, that people accept religious myths over established science based on evidence or facts. Many people flat out reject sound scientific theories like evolution or the Big Bang in favor of something along the lines of "God did it." There is not evidence to support their position (much less refute science) and no critical thinking involved in such claims. It's a case of belief over fact.
Essentially, the greater one's religiosity is, the more scientifically illiterate and/or hostile towards science they become. This has also been demonstrated in four studies published in the Public Library of Science (PLOS). All 4 studies reached and affirmed similar findings, which generally stated:
The findings from these four studies show that religiosity is negatively related to science knowledge and is associated with more negative attitudes towards science. Importantly, these results were obtained while controlling for a large number of demographic variables, and after deleting contested portions of science knowledge. All four studies are correlational. However, the relation of parents’ reports of their religiosity and the religious upbringing of their children with (some 20 years later) their children’s attitudes toward science (Study 2) implies that religiosity may impact attitudes towards science, and thus science knowledge, later in life (General Discussion Section, Para 1).
There are other studies demonstrating this as well. One study published in Social Science Quarterly (Vol. 92, Vol. 5, Dec 2011, pp 1134-1150), also found " Religion plays a sizeable role in the low levels of scientific literacy found in the United States, and the negative impact of religious factors is more substantial than gender, race, or income ." Science and religion both try to perform the same function, to provide an explanation of the world around us. The difference is, science tries to provide explanations based on evidence and the process of the scientific method. Religion tries to provide explanations based on religious beliefs or "authorities." And religion may become quite hostile towards science when religion perceives science encroaching on what they feel is its turf. This is historically demonstrated too, gong back centuries when religion branded people heretics and even imprisoned or had them killed. Remember Galileo (just 1 example)?
Again, the correlation between religiosity and scientific illiteracy/hostility is just a general trend that is observed and demonstrated. Individuals themselves may vary. But it is a trend that should have us all very worried, especially in regards for the future of our nation, scientifically, intellectually, and technologically.

Religious and not News Chat: Federal appeals court upholds Texas ban on standard abortion procedure - @gordy327

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 12:08:09 -0400

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 9: Sodom and Gomorrah - @gordy327

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 03:20:46 -0400

Hi everyone, it has been a long time since I last posted an article in my fallacy of biblical stories series. So, I thought now might be a good time to do so. If you reviewed the previous articles in the series, you might have noticed the bible often takes a rather dramatic flair with its stories. And there are few biblical stories with more dramatic flair than the biblical story of Sodom & Gomorrah (hereafter referred to as S&G). This story has God being pissed off and blaming his creations (as usual), debauchery, attempted angel rape, death, destruction, and of course, magically turning people into kitchen condiments. This story has it all, playing out like a big budget Hollywood disaster film. Without further delay, I will summarize the story and then dive right into the evidence to see if this story is worth its salt (see what I did there, Lol) in veracity.
According to the bible, S&G were 2 especially sinful cities. Apparently, things there were so bad, God decided they needed to be wiped off the map. Some theists argue that the primary “sin” prevalent in the cities was homosexuality, while some claim it was inhospitality, or other deviant acts. And they didn’t even have internet porn back then. But as we’ve learned by now, God hates it when his humans have a good time and party. But rather than simply snapping his fingers and literally erasing S&G from the map, because God could totally do that with His omnipotent powers, He got all dramatic and rained fire and brimstone down on the cities, destroying them and everyone who lived there. Apparently, this included children and animals, because kids and pets are totally wicked and ripe for divine retribution, right?
Even God’s biggest fan, Abraham, took issue with God’s plan of ancient urban renewal and pleaded with God to spare the inhabitants, including Lot & his family. So God told Abe He would spare the cities if 10 righteous people could be found. Because a supposedly omniscient God does not know if there are 10 decent people living in the cities. Go figure! To this end, God assigned 2 angels to the task. Of course, when the angels arrived, a mob wanted a piece of angel poon, for which they were promptly blinded. So the angels tell Lot & Co. to flee the city while God threw one of His classic temper tantrums and not look back. While fleeing, Lot’s wife looked back on the devastation unfolding and was turned into a pile of salt. Kind of like what happened to the crew of the USS Exeter from the Star Trek: TOS episode, “The Omega Glory.” But I digress. Oh yeah, Lot’s daughters later got Lot drunk and raped him. So I suppose that means rape and incest are not at a city-worthy-of-destruction “sin” level? Because that doesn’t sound very “righteous” to me. But apparently, God was ok with it.
That is the biblical story of S&G. Now let’s look at any evidence to see if the story occurred as depicted in the bible. Was it God’s doing? Or perhaps some natural phenomenon or other explanation?
1. Location, location, location: Archaeologists from the Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project (TeHEP) have discovered ancient ruins that may have been (according to their opinions) the actual cities of S&G in the eastern Jordan River Valley north of the Dead Sea. Their findings coincide somewhat with biblical descriptions of where the cities may have been located. However, there is not definitive proof that the cities discovered were the actual S&G, or that they existed at all. But I am willing to accept the opinions of the research team and accept that S&G existed. In addition, the TeHEP team also discovered other towns or cities in a 500 km area similarly destroyed approximately around the same time as S&G, 1700-1900 years ago, give or take a century. So the archaeological evidence does circumstantially support the biblical mention of S&G. The Industrial site of Sedom, Israel is presumed to be near the site of S&G.
2. Maybe it was an earthquake or a gas leak: An earthquake would explain the level of destruction caused, especially over a wide area as archaeological discoveries have found. Nothing flattens a city better than an earthquake. Except for maybe an asteroid (more on that later). But what about the fire and brimstone aspects of the story? Petroleum and petroleum deposits around the Dead Sea may have ignited due to the earthquake and provided the “fire and brimstone” in the story. Fissures and hot springs in the ground around the region have been known to erupt petroleum gasses. Seismic upheaval could certainly cause a release of said gasses. It fits the story.
3. Maybe God was playing Cosmic Missile Command? Or it was an asteroid: Another explanation as to the actual cause of S&G destruction was an asteroid or meteor explosion over the cities. According to Universe Today , an asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded before impact. The resulting blast wave, heat, and pressure would have been enough to level the cities and kill its inhabitants. This is not an unknown occurrence either. One example of such an occurrence is the Tunguska Event of 1908 in which an asteroid exploded over the Podkamennaya River in Russia and flattened 2,150 square kilometers of forest, without leaving an actual impact crater. Imagine if that happened over a city? The zone of destruction would also explain the other towns or cities destroyed in the general region of S&G, as mentioned in point 1. More recently, there was the Chelyabinsk Meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013. The blast was more powerful than a nuclear bomb detonation and brighter than the sun. People reported feeling intense heat too. To ancient people, this might appear like a fireball in the sky raining down divine justice. But it is instead a naturally occurring catastrophe rather than a divine one. which we’ve observed multiple times too. An article in Forbes also details evidence supporting an asteroid impact event.
4. Pass the salt! I mean, my wife: This is probably the most ludicrous part, but also probably the most easily explained part of the story; Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt. Mt. Sodom along the Southwestern part of the Dead Sea in Israel (in the region where S&G supposedly existed) is a hill composed of 80% salt, with actual salt caves. Salt deposits would have been quite common in the area, including those resembling Lot’s wife after her sodium makeover. It is not unsurprising that a superstitious people in a moment of panic would think a person turning to salt is a perfectly acceptable explanation as to why one’s spouse would go missing in the chaos. Therefore, the idea of Lot’s wife literally being turned to salt is probably just biblical exaggeration or storytelling.
So there it is. While S&G could have existed, rather than being destroyed by divine forces, it is more likely and plausible they were destroyed by natural forces. Natural phenomenon explains this story just it does with other biblical stories like the Great Flood , celestial events , or the Plagues of Egypt. What are your thoughts?

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Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 8: God, the biggest fallacy of them all? - @gordy327

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 00:50:29 -0500

Up until now, the fallacy of biblical stories series has focus on specific biblical stories. For Part 8, I will examine the one thing that connects them all: God. After all, God is the central figure in the bible. He's the main man. The head honcho. The big Kahuna. The top banana. Numero uno. Well, you get the idea. But he's always broke and needs money (George Carlin reference). In the bible, God is purported at times to actively intervene (or interfere) with people and events. Other times, he takes a back seat and observes while someone else plays his middle man. I think Al Pacino's character said it best in The Devil's Advocate (1997, Warner Bros.):
" Well, I tell ya, let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear, for His own amusement, His own private cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Aha ha ha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is He doin'? He's laughin' His sick, f*ckin' *ss off. He's a tight-*ss. He's a sadist. He's an absentee landlord .
But that begs the question: Does the God of the bible exist? Is the God of the bible real? Or is God just another fallacy like the stories I've covered thus far? After all, God is a concept which has permeated human cultures and societies throughout history. The belief and worship of God can be traced back thousands of years. While the belief in God helped bring communities closer together or used to explain natural phenomenon which ancient humans did not understand (it also divides communities and societies too), it's unlikely that the God of the bible actually exists. After all, the previous bible stories covered did have possible alternative explanations for their particular events that did not necessitate God. That means God isn't actually necessary and casts doubt as to the actual existence of God. While the focus of this article will be on the monotheistic God, it can also be applied to any gods that other cultures believed in and worshipped. So let's look at God and see if he's just another fallacy. I'll try to keep the explanations as brief as possible.
1. There is no objective, empirical evidence for God : Religion and belief in God has existed in human societies for thousands of years. Yet, in all that time, not one religion or person has ever substantiated any claim for the existence of God. One would think that over thousands of years of belief and worship of god/s, one would at least be able to come up with a shred of empirical evidence to substantiate the basis of belief and/or claims made based on it. But that clearly not the case. The best anyone can come up with is usually along the lines of belief, a feeling, or simply accepting God exists because someone told them so. But that is subjective and anecdotal and is not actual evidence. Without any evidence, there is no logical reason to assume God exists, or has ever existed.
2. God is a supernatural entity : That is an explanation I sometimes hear explaining why there cannot be evidence of God. God exists outside of our physical universe (in another dimension perhaps?). But if that is the case, then God cannot interact or appear in our physical universe, as he is often depicted of doing (frequently) in the bible. If God could interact and affect our physical universe or our world, then by default he is no longer supernatural and can thusly be detected or evidenced. We can observe and explain natural phenomenon. But there is nothing to empirically suggest a divine entity is behind it. The more we are able to explain our world and understand it, the less God is needed as an explanation.
3. The bible says so : That is perhaps the weakest "evidence" for God. R eligious texts or sources are often cited as "proof" of God. What some people fail to understand is that citing such works as "proof" is not actually proof of anything. It's a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies like that do not make a compelling case for the existence of god/s. It's essentially ancient people writing down their beliefs and trying to sell it to you, nothing more. Or maybe because such individuals are "authorities" on God or their religion, people simply accept whatever they claim, no questions asked. Also, many cite "miracles," unusual or extreme events, or their own "experiences" as proof of God. Of course, such things are subjective and anecdotal, based on something along the lines of "because I (or they) said so." Such experiences are often personal and based on emotion and/or ignorance. And no, using the bible to prove god does not count, as that is circular reasoning.
4. God as a contradiction or paradox: God is depicted with certain attributed befitting a deity of his status, namely: all powerful (omnipotence), all knowing (omniscience), and everywhere (omnipresent). However, these attributes comes certain logical contradictions. First, regarding omniscience, it is apparent that god becomes surprised by the actions of us mere mortals in the bible. He says don't do this or do that and then seems angry when we do not obey, even though he already knew we wouldn't. Of course, an omniscient god also negates the possibility of free will. But that is an entirely different discussion. Also, if god is all knowing, can God learn anything new? Does God know what he's going to do tomorrow and can he change his plan? Being omnipotent, God is essentially a cosmic He-Man. One would need to be all powerful to create the universe and all of existence, right? But I am reminded of a paradox: can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it? Can God create a square circle? Think about that carefully before you answer. If God is omnipresent, does that mean God is in Hell too (irony alert here)? Mark Noble brings up an interesting point regarding omnipresence, " If said entity [God] was to be in all possible places at once, said entity would occupy every single occupiable location in both the cosmic and the quantum. Every component, of every thing would be entirely occupied by one thing.
Therefore everything would have no other ingredients than this sole-entity. Would not everything then be ONE thing? leading to the truth that - everything is said entity. If god is everywhere, then God is Everything, And if God is everything, then everything is God ?" Now there's an interesting thought. God is the ultimate peeping Tom too. I guess omnipresence means God does not need a mirror to check himself out. God has himself covered.
Basically, the bible portrays God as performing feats that are logically contradictory or impossible, based on the attributes assigned to God. Now, if you take away those attributes so God is not infinitely powerful, knowledgeable, or everywhere at once, then there are no contradictions or paradoxes. A God without a God-Mode is more plausible than the one as depicted in the bible.
5. There were lots of other gods before God : I know I said I would focus on the monotheistic God and not on other gods. But bear with me on this one. Before the idea of a singular God became popular, many cultures such as the ancient Greeks and Egyptians believed in and worshipped other gods. Many of these gods has specific functions or duties in their respective societies. And there was often a "ruling" god over the other gods, like Zeus in ancient Greek mythology. So it's not implausible that somewhere along the way, someone decided to streamline the pantheon by having one God do everything. It certainly simplified belief and worship practices. Essentially, it's an ancient one God fits all sale. And clearly many people bought it. Since these gods predate the monotheistic god, it's not surprising that they would lead to the concept of only one God.
6. But billions of people worldwide believe in and worship God : An argumentum ad populum fallacy . 'Nuff said.
So, if the God of the bible is capable of existing outside of our space-time universe as a supernatural entity and/or is capable of performing feats that are logically impossible, as God is not beholden to logic, then that means God is unknowable. That means no one, including biblical authors or the people of then and now, are capable of knowing or understanding God in the slightest. Especially if there is no evidence of God. So any claims, writings, or explanations about God are totally unfounded and lack and support or credibility. It's basically pure guess work or pure imagination that caught on and became popular. However, if God does exist within our space-time or has limitations, then it is possible to evidence God and understand something about God, even if a little. But that means God is not the God of the bible as God is portrayed. Either way, the fallacy of God is quite apparent.

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 7: The Virgin Birth - @gordy327

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 22:48:41 -0400

Up until now, I've have been focusing on the biblical stories of the Old Testament. For part 7 of the series, I will look at what is one of the most famous and celebrated stories of the New Testament, The Virgin Birth. After all, it does have its own national holiday. Never mind the actual origins of said holiday, as that is a separate discussion all its own. But it seemed God needed a makeover from his smite-happy Old Testament self into a kinder, gentler, less smitey New Testament form (at least until Revelations-again, a different discussion). And what better way to do this than by selecting a human vessel to carry and give birth to his progeny, because why not? Anyway, the Virgin Birth story goes something like this:
Mary was a Jewish woman living in Nazareth with her betrothed/husband Joseph. Mary was selected by God because she was supposedly righteous and a virgin. Because apparently, women back then were valued based on their sexual activity, or especially the lack thereof. I suppose a new car is at its most valuable before it is driven off the dealership lot. Regardless, the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary with God’s seed and without sexual intercourse (when you think about it, God made Joseph became a cuckold). I suppose that was the ancient theological version of artificial insemination. Mary later gave birth to Jesus, who would later grow up to be Savior of mankind and even a “decoration” hung in churches or on some necklaces.
Christian religions and denominations accept this story as authoritative because, religion/faith/feelings. And apparently, some people are programmed to never question religion. Fortunately, I am here to examine this story from a more logical and rational standpoint to see if it is plausible by examining any available evidence. So let’s get to it!
1. Is a virgin birth possible? Well, yes and no : First, a quick biology lesson. Mammals (including humans) reproduce through sexual reproduction. The male inseminates the female and when a sperm fertilizes the egg, a zygote (a single undifferentiated cell) is formed (not yet a human or child, just saying) and after becoming a blastocyst/embryo, implants in the uterus of the female, where it is gestated until birth occurs. The key to this is “sexual reproduction,” as in both a male and female is required. But Mary was impregnated without sexual intercourse. Therefore, she reproduced asexually. Some organisms can reproduce asexually. But here is the catch: While some reptiles and fish can reproduce asexually, humans cannot! Of course, religion explains this away by what is essentially magic. Sorry to break it to theists, but humans are biologically incapable of parthenogenesis. As Professor Jenny Graves of La Trove University (2015) states, “So the answer to the question of whether virgin birth is a real possibility is: yes, unless you are a mammal.”
2. The Virgin birth (unsurprisingly) borrows from other ancient sources : Like many other biblical stories which clearly borrow from previous cultural sources, the Virgin Birth is no different. Egypt is always a good go to source. According to John D. Keyser of Hope of Israel Ministries, about 2,000 years before Jesus, the Egyptian Virgin Queen Mut-em-ua supposedly gave birth to the Pharaoh Amenkept (or Amenophis) III, who built the temple of Luxor, on the walls of which were represented. First was the Annunciation, the god Taht announcing to Mut-em-ua that she will become a mother. Second was the Immaculate Conception, where the god Kneph (the holy spirit) mystically [magically] impregnated Mut-em-ua by holding a cross to her mouth. Third was the birth of the Man-god Amenkept. Fourth was the Adoration of the infant by gods and men, including 3 kings, who offer gifts. Is this story starting to sound familiar?
Egyptian mythology is not the only source of such stories. Hindu myth has the Ramayana, where Rama was conceived by his mother drinking a potion prepared by god Vishnu. Buddhism holds that Buddha was born from a virgin mother, Queen Maya (Mary) after she had a vivid dream in which four angels carried her high into white mountain peaks and clothed her in flowers. A magnificent white bull elephant (a symbol of fertility) bearing a white lotus in its trunk approached Maya and walked around her three times. Then the elephant struck her on the right side with its trunk and vanished into her. Greek and Roman myths are full of stories where the gods visit mortal women for some nookie, resulting in the births of demigods. To be fair, the Greek & Roman gods still needed to engage in sexual intercourse to produce their offspring. The Christian version just skips the mechanics of the process. In certain Native American stories, Deganawida (The Great Peacemaker) was born a Huron and his mother was supposedly a virgin. There are other similar examples from other cultures. But you get the idea. The Virgin Birth of the Bible is not a unique or original idea.
3. Other alternative explanations : What are other possible explanations for the "virgin birth?" Well, Mary was betrothed to Joseph when she became pregnant. It's possible that they did the Bronze Age boink before they were married. As such an act was frowned upon in those times, Mary could have simply claimed it was an immaculate conception. Or maybe they were married and simply copulated like a married couple, resulting in pregnancy. The flair of the story was simply added later. Or it might have happened like this . Perhaps the midi-chlorians in her body were powerful and numerous enough to create life. After all, that's about as plausible as the biblical version.
Considering that it is biologically impossible for a human to asexually reproduce and given that the Virgin Birth story is similar to, if not outright taken, from numerous older sources, it's quite unlikely that the story as depicted in the bible actually happened. It also makes no logical sense that God, who can create an entire universe from nothing, would need a human vessel to create an offspring. When one looks at such stories without religious blinders or emotional needs, one can see just how absurd stories like this actually are!

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 6: The Day the Sun Stood Still - @gordy327

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 20:58:17 -0400

Welcome to Part 6 of the fallacy of biblical stories series. This one will focus on a supposed celestial event described in the bible. Namely, the time God caused the sun to stop moving for almost a whole day, and all because one guy asked him too. I will admit, that seems like quite the favor to grant a mere mortal. But how plausible is it? Well, just like the other parts of the biblical fallacy series, I will look at the science behind the phenomenon and determine the veracity of the story or if there are other possible explanations.
According to the story, Joshua was leading the Israelites into battle against the 5 Emorite kings at Gibeon because they were laying siege against the Gibeonites, whom Joshua promised to protect. Realizing that a prolonged battle would go into the night, thereby allowing the 5 kings to retreat under the cover of darkness, Joshua asked God to make the sun stand still: On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon .” (Joshua 10:12, the Bible, NIV)
Talk about pulling out the big guns to win a battle. It seems it would have been easier for God to simply smite the 5 kings and their armies. After all, God always did seem to love a good smiting. But I digress. At any rate, the sun supposedly stopped, and Joshua was able to win the battle. Oh yeah, God also hurled “giant stones” (or hail) at the Emorites, killing many. Which probably helped too. See, I told you God loves a good smiting. So let’s bring out the BS meter and see how this story holds up against scrutiny.
1. Maybe it was midday : If you ever look up into the sky at noon, the sun is directly overhead. From that perspective, it may appear to be still and unmoving. However, that "illusion" is short lived, as it will become noticeable that the sun is continuing to move across the sky (not to mention vision damage from staring at the sun). So unless Joshua only needed about an extra hour or so to win his battle (before he noticed the sun is actually moving), the sun won't be still for him.
2. The Earth and moon stopped moving. Not the sun : So, as everyone (hopefully) knows, the sun is not moving relative to the earth. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun, and the moon revolves around the Earth. But the appearance of the sun "moving" in the sky is due to earth's rotation. That is why we have the day/night cycle. For the sun to appear to stand still, the Earth itself must stop rotating. The same is true of the moon’s revolution around the Earth if the moon was supposed to be still too. Surely an omnipotent deity could pull off such a feat. Maybe God is spinning the Earth on his finger like a planet sized basketball and he suddenly grabs the ball, bringing it to an immediate stop for Joshua. There's just one small problem with that scenario; the Earth rotates 1,037 mph at the equator. Then it comes to a sudden stop. The problem is not the stop itself, it's everything on the earth (including people) still travels 1,037 mph relative to the earth. Do I even need to explain what kind of calamity that would cause? So the premise of the Earth stopping, while it would explain the long day, is not possible as such an occurrence would probably render us extinct.
3. Perhaps it was during the Solstice: If the sun "stopped moving," then the daylight hours would naturally be longer, right? Well, there is a natural phenomenon that causes that exact event to occur every year (longer daylight hours, not immobilizing the sun): the summer & winter Solstices. During the solstice, the Earth's pole has its maximum tilt toward the sun (depending on the hemisphere). This causes the greatest amount of daylight to occur (the "longest" day of the year), even though the day is still 24 hours. However, extra daylight hours is what Jacob wanted and maybe he happened to pick the right day for a battle for extra light hours to occur. However, the bible says the sun did not set for almost a full day and the solstice doesn't add that many hours of daylight. But sunlight can occur for 24 hours (never completely dropping below the horizon) in the arctic/antarctic regions of the earth due to earth's axial tilt. However, the Middle East region is closer to the equator than it is to the poles. So that idea is out!
4. There was an eclipse : This might be the most logically plausible explanation. This is also where context becomes crucial. What is actually being described? According to some English translations, this might be taken to mean the sun and moon actually stopped their motion. Indeed, one would probably assume that is what is meant when it is said the sun and moon stopped moving. But if one goes by the Hebrew translation, it can be taken to mean they stopped shining. According to Professor Sir Colin Humphreys of the University of Cambridge (2017, para 4), “ In this context, the Hebrew words could be referring to a solar eclipse, when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, and the sun appears to stop shining. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Hebrew word translated ‘stand still’ has the same root as a Babylonian word used in ancient astronomical texts to describe eclipses .” In addition, the oldest recorded eclipse occurred in 1207 BC, which was around the time of Joshua. So the story in the Bible was probably describing an eclipse. An eclipse would give veracity to the biblical interpretation of the sun and moon not shining. But it does not support the interpretation that the sun and moon stopped their motion, much less resulted in more daylight hours or a longer day. Based on that, the story of Joshua and the sun stopping falls apart.
What this all seems to boil down to is an ancient guy making an observation of a natural event without understanding how the event occurs. Naturally, the bible picks this up as a “miracle” and essentially that “God did it.” As fellow NTer TiG pointed out in another discussion [emphasis mine], “ the Bible expresses the perspectives of ancient men trying to interpret their environment. If it were divine, we would not see 'sun stood still' but rather an enlightened description of an eclipse .” Fortunately, science can explain an eclipse. So divinity or magic is not required to explain the occurrence. As we can see with this particular story, as well as the other biblical stories presented in the biblical fallacy series, there are alternative and scientific explanations (or refutations) for the events presented. But continuing to stick to the belief that it was a divine event or a “miracle” (based on the bible) is just a confirmation bias as well as intellectually lazy! Confirmation bias = seeing only what one wishes to see and, in so doing, missing the truth (courtesy of TiG).
So what do you think? How does this story hold up? Comments, thoughts, and analyses are welcome. And remember, follow the evidence to where it leads, not to where you want it to go.

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 5: The Tower of Babel - @gordy327

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 03:40:47 -0400

Welcome to Part 5 of the biblical fallacy series. Today we are looking at the ancient skyscraper wannabe, the Tower of Babel. It's an ancient construction project that is supposed to explain the existence of different languages in the world, from a biblical perspective. It also supposedly occurred after the Great Flood and Noah's Ark event as depicted in the bible (See Part 1 of the series). Just like with the other parts of the series, I will be looking at the evidence for the Tower of Babel and determine the veracity of the story based on the evidence. So the Tower or Babel story goes something like this:
The ancient Babylonian versions of Donald Trump wanted to work in real estate and build a really big tower. This was going to be a really big tower. The biggest tower anyone has ever seen. A real bigly, bigly tower. Let me tell you, nobody was going to have a tower like this . This tower was going to be terrific! So, the Babylonians began work building a tower tall enough to "reach to the heavens." Well, God apparently did not like their ambition, as they thought if they could build the tower, they might not need God. After all, God seems to like his creations to be co-dependent. So rather than his usual method of mass smiting, God (channeling his inner Loki) decided to have a laugh and instantly have them all speak different languages. And since they did not seem to have blueprints to follow in building it and rather went by telling each other what to do, they simply abandoned that particular pork project. So they simply left and dispersed around the world. Never mind the possible psychological impact of suddenly speaking a different language than you did before.
So there it is. A megaproject abandoned because they could no longer speak the same language. I wonder how many shekels that set them back? Let's look at the evidence and see if the Tower of Babel was really a thing or not.
1. Size of the tower: So, for a tower to "reach the heavens," it must have been really tall, right? Unfortunately, the bible doesn't specify the dimensions of the tower. So we have to rely on secondary accounts (that should be a red flag regarding the story right there). According to Bibleview.org , the tower was 90 meters high or about 300 feet. That's it! The tower was actually smaller than modern skyscrapers (by almost half). By definition, a skyscraper is a building taller than 150 meters. By comparison, the Great Pyramid of Giza is just over 146 meters. The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, is 828 meters (2,717 ft). That's 30x the height of the Tower of Babel! Yet, God didn't seem to have a problem with the construction of that building, the pyramids of Egypt, or any other tall structure. But he took issue with the tower of Babel? That simply doesn't make sense.
2. The materials used in construction: Building such a tower might require quality materials for construction. Well, one would think so. But the only building materials used for the tower of Babel was mud bricks and tar (not roofing tar, which most might be familiar with). That makes sense, as those materials were probably plentiful in the region and easily manufactured and assembled by hand. Many ancient structures were constructed with the same methods. So what is the issue with mud bricks? Actually, nothing really. Mud bricks, if crafted right, can be quite strong and support a lot of weight. The major obstacle to a brick tower would be the lateral forces of winds at higher elevations. Weathering forces would also be an issue, but probably not immediately. There is a way around the lateral force issue: build the tower with a wide base and incrementally narrowing as it is built up, just like a pyramid. The Tower of Babel was probably constructed like a ziggurat (a step pyramid), which was an ancient architectural design and already existed at that point, as there were many such structures constructed such as Etemenanki in Babylon. So it is possible that a tower made of mud bricks can be constructed high enough to “reach the heavens,” but only if it has a base large enough to provide stable support for the entire structure. Otherwise, the whole thing will topple once it gets too high.
3. Architectural and human limitations : There is a reason why tall skyscrapers are not built out of mud bricks: they will collapse. There are two reasons for this. First, as I previously stated, the higher a structure gets, the greater the wind speed it must endure. As a ziggurat was constructed higher, its walls would still need to be thick enough to withstand the winds. This in turn requires a larger base to support the walls. Not to mention more time and material would be required for construction. I suppose if the base was miles in length and width, it could support an ever expanding height with thick enough walls to eventually reach heaven. But there is no archeological evidence to support the existence of such a large tower. According to Archinect , a tower of only mud bricks would require walls to be 150 feet thick once it gets to 500-1000+ feet in order to endure the 300+ mph winds at higher elevations. The second reason is the soil base. As the tower gets taller, more mass is pressing down on the soil base. The soil may not be able to withstand the immense amount of pressure being exerted on it. There is another factor one may not have considered: the human limitation. Ancient people not only had to craft all the bricks by hand, but they had to carry the bricks up the tower, which might become increasingly labor intensive as the tower rose higher and higher. That’s like asking someone to carry a stack of weights up dozens, if not hundreds, of flights of stairs. They didn’t have cranes or other modern construction equipment. I’m not saying they couldn’t do it per se. Only that it’s highly unlikely they would have been able to. Especially if they reached higher altitudes. At 8000 feet, people start suffering from altitude sickness, as the air starts to get too thin to breathe. That might make carrying bricks quite difficult. Then there’s the issue of the aforementioned winds and increasing cold at higher elevations. See, God didn’t have to do anything. He could have sat back and waited until the people passed out from oxygen deprivation and hypothermia. Assuming the wind didn’t blow them off the tower. That might have deflated their ambition.
4. Inspired by Babylonian structures : Like many biblical stories (some of which I covered in the first 4 parts), the Tower of Babel seems to be inspired or taken directly from another source or myth. In Babel’s case, it is probably from the aforementioned Etemenanki of Babylon, which was dedicated to the Babylonian god Marduk. There are also many other ziggurats present in southern Mesopotamia, where the Tower of Babel was supposedly built. Now, there may have well been a “Tower of Babylon.” But it is not likely how it is depicted in the bible. In other words, it’s just a story based on real events or structures. Namely, ancient people building large pyramids.
5. Humans learned to be multilingual : A major point of the Tower of Babel is that God made people speak different languages so the tower could not be built. It’s also supposed to be the explanation for all the different languages in the world (only in religion, right?) That seemed like a short sighted and temporary measure by God, as humans have learned to speak and translate multiple languages. Today, getting a workforce composed of individuals with different languages to cooperate and build a giant tower is not quite the obstacle it was in ancient times. And modern humans have already constructed very tall buildings. In effect, humans outsmarted God and beat the limits He set on us. Perhaps the only thing preventing us from building an actual Tower of Babel is the cost. Oh well, I suppose there are some things humans can not overcome. And that’s monetary limitations.
6. Languages gradually change over time: The idea that people suddenly started speaking different languages does seem rather absurd. Did god give everyone instant knowledge of the linguistic translations? And why would people who suddenly spoke different languages just scatter all over the world? No one could figure out what the other was saying where they were, given enough time? Modern humans probably became physically capable of our level of language about 100,000 years ago. According to the Linguistic Society of America ,
researchers suspect that the special properties of language evolved in stages, perhaps over some millions of years, through a succession of hominid lines. In an early stage, sounds would have been used to name a wide range of objects and actions in the environment, and individuals would be able to invent new vocabulary items to talk about new things. In order to achieve a large vocabulary, an important advance would have been the ability to 'digitize' signals into sequences of discrete speech sounds - consonants and vowels - rather than unstructured calls. This would require changes in the way the brain controls the vocal tract and possibly in the way the brain interprets auditory signals (although the latter is again subject to considerable dispute).
So given the vagueness of the actual Tower of Babel itself in the bible, coupled with the architectural and physical limitations associated with constructing a tower tall enough to reach Heaven, and what is known about the physical and neurological processes involved with language, it is highly unlikely there was ever a biblical Tower of Babel, nor did humans suddenly start speaking entirely different languages spontaneously. The biblical Tower of Babel seems to be based on earlier myth coupled with actual structures.

Religious and not News Chat: Bible Trumpers | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - @krishna

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 01:38:40 -0400

Important Related Seed & Discussion:
The Problem With Religion

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 4: Jonah and the Whale - @gordy327

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 00:32:51 -0400

For Part 4 of the series, I will be examining the story of Jonah and the Whale (or is it a "big fish?"). On the surface, this story seems like it came directly from a children's fairy tale book. Popular culture portrays Jonah being swallowed by a whale. Some religious texts use the term "great fish" instead of whale. But the idea of being swallowed by a whale is one which has been a part of popular culture for decades, probably most notably, in the 1940 Walt Disney animated feature "Pinocchio." Other media has portrayed the scenario in different forms one way or another. But I'm going to look at the biblical version of being swallowed by whale and see if the evidence actually makes this tale plausible or not. So let's briefly look at the story as follows:
In the Book of Jonah, God orders Jonah to go to Nineveh (why does God always need a middleman to do his dirty work?) to preach to the people there and warn them that God is pissed off at them. Apparently God hates it when his mortals are having fun. But Jonah, feeling a little rebellious (and has no love for Nineveh to begin with) did the biblical version of flipping God off by not following God's instructions and instead sailed to Tarshish. Naturally, God becomes irate about it and overreacts as usual by creating a big storm at sea, which threatened the ship Jonah's was on and its crew. The crew become convinced it is not a natural storm (this was before meteorology became a science) and decided to toss Jonah overboard after drawing lots (and people say Carnival cruises are bad?). Afterwards, a "great fish" (other sources say "big fish" or "huge fish") appears and swallows Jonah whole, where Jonah spends 3 days and 3 nights in the whale/fish belly. During that time, the smell of fish becomes too much for Jonah to bear. So he prays and repents to God, after which the whale vomits Jonah out. After Jonah falls in line, he fulfills God's earlier command and travels to Nineveh.
So that's the gist of it. Now lets look at the circumstances surrounding the story and examine the evidence to determine if this story is hard to swallow (cue bad pun groans) or not.
1. Was it a whale or a "great fish?" : This is an important distinction to make, as whales and fish can be vastly different sizes. They must also be large enough to swallow an adult human male whole, without chewing him up. According to Jean Paul Morel, director of the French archaeological team at Carthage Byrsa, the average height of a male in biblical times was approximately 5' 6" tall, give or take 2 inches. Granted, there are other factors to consider for height. But to keep it simple, we'll use the 5" 6" as a baseline. Let's start by assuming it's an actual whale in the story. Most whales are generally incapable of swallowing a human and will not include humans in their diet.
The largest whale (and largest animal) in the world is the blue whale , capable of growing over 100' long. These enormous mammals have a mouth capable of taking in a human. But it's esophagus is too small to swallow a human whole. Not to mention Jonah would likely be crushed by the mouth or baleen of a blue whale when it closes its mouth, assuming it didn't spit Jonah back out. Even if Jonah did survive that, he would quickly reach crush depth when the whale submerged. The second largest whale in the world is the sperm whale, reaching a length of over 60'. Sperm whale s typically feed on cephalopods and not humans. They must dive deep to feed and only surface to breathe, usually for about 10 minutes. Jonah would have to have bad timing to be thrown overboard only to be swallowed by a sperm whale. However, sperm whales do have large throats for swallowing and can be capable of swallowing a human whole . But a sperm whale has 4 stomachs full of digestive enzymes and no air (except for methane). So if Jonah was swallowed by a sperm whale, he would basically suffocate before being digested, which is precisely what does NOT happen in the biblical story . What about a humpback whale? They can grow to almost 60' long and have a maw capable of sucking in 20,000 liters of water-definitely capable of sucking in Jonah. But their esophagus is too small to swallow a human or other larger marine animal. They are filter feeders and will likely spit a human out.
If we assume the aquatic beastie in question is a fish, then it too must be capable of swallowing a tasty human. The whale shark is the largest fish in the world. It can measures up to 40' long. The largest confirmed length was 62' (talk about the catch of the day). It's mouth can be 5.1' to 5.6' across. That seems to be within the Jonah swallowing range. The whale shark is also a filter feeder. So it doesn't have teeth for man-chewing. So far, it fits the story: a big fish with a big mouth and no teeth. Check! Here is where it falls apart though: a whale shark esophagus only measures several inches across . Which means it is incapable of swallowing a human. According to an article in Smithsonian Magazine , a whale shark closes its mouth around larger fish and would probably spit a person out if it did swallow someone. They also tend to be picky eaters and will refuse man-meat. Also, their feeding habitat is not in the Mediterranean Sea, where Jonah would have sailed. The second largest fish in the world, the basking shark , can also reach lengths up to 40' long and live within temperate zones and along coasts, including the Mediterranean. However, like the whale shark, the basking shark is also a filter feeder and only has a mouth size of 1 meter, less than your average Jonah. So it too is unlikely to make a meal of Jonah. It's also non-aggressive and generally calm around humans. The third largest fish in the world is the Great White Shark. While the Great White can reach a length of up to 20', their rows of serrated teeth will ensure Jonah is swallowed in chunks, rather than whole. Based on the characteristics and anatomy of these 3 large fish types, it is unlikely that any of them would be capable of swallowing Jonah whole.
2. No confirmation of whales/fish swallowing humans whole : Aside from the bible, there is no proof or confirmation of Jonah (or anyone) ever being swallowed by a whale/fish, much less living through it. There are a few old stories of people (see: James Bartley ) being swallowed by whales and living to tell the tale. However, like the Jonah story, there is no confirmation or proof of this ever happening. Such stories, while dramatic and entertaining in their own right, are spurious at best.
So there it is. I looked at the 3 largest species of whale and the 3 largest species of fish to determine if Jonah could have been swallowed, lived, and then be regurgitated. Out of all 6 aquatic animals, only the sperm whale is physically capable of swallowing a human whole. And if Jonah did take the gullet ride, he would have died in short order by the lack of breathable air, the pressure or weight of the water and other gastric contents pushing on him, and the travel through the digestive tract and digestive enzymes which probably would have given the whale some serious indigestion. On top of that, there is nothing to collaborate the biblical story. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely Jonah was swallowed whole and escaped relatively unscathed to tell the tale. I think most theists would agree this story is too fantastic to be taken literally and is meant as an allegory.

Religious and not News Chat: Why many societies still expect women to be subservient to men and the connotations in relation to religion / religious belief: - @msaubrey-aka-ahyoka

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 11:55:30 -0400

Let me just start off by saying that my family up to the generation before me were baptized and raised Catholic. I was, according to my mother, “baptized” by my great-grandmother, because my mother and father didn’t “belong” to any church parish and wouldn’t allow them to get me baptized by anyone at any church until they would agree to join a parish. Toward the end of her life, my grandmother even began questioning her own faith for several reasons, but I still made sure that she received the Catholic mass and funeral that she would’ve wanted. I was the one that called the Catholic church down the street from me; it’s a gorgeous one at that, by the way. I was the one that spoke with Father Ptak and made the arrangements. I explained that most of my family had left the church; however, my grandmother had belonged to a church up north, where she’d recently moved from, but also explained that this wasn’t for the living family, it was for my Catholic grandmother. He was very understanding and said that if everyone can simply donate what they could, he wouldn’t charge us anything for her mass. The family and friends that attended raised more than $1000 that day. That church is very old and needs constant upkeep, I still donate to them from time to time even though I don’t attend.

See... I was taught to question everything. And despite my household being “traditional” in the sense of gender roles [my mother being a stay at home wife and mom to me, an only child], I bucked those traditions in several ways. At 7, my mother and father separated, and I was forced to live in a home with people I didn’t even know because my mother has/had no marketable skills to financially support us. I swore then, that I would never be financially dependent on another person and I would do whatever it took to never be in such a position. I started doing odd jobs at 8; helping my now stepdad collect on news routes, helping the neighbor weed their garden, shoveling snow, etc. I began working at 14 on paper as a hostess at a restaurant; that was pretty short-lived because they were terrible to their staff. However, at 15 / 16, I started working at Burger King at the drive-thru window... this was before fast food places had more than one drive-thru window. I worked as much as I was allowed. When someone called off, I was the first to volunteer to take their shift. I worked all summer. I saved up for my first car and the first payment of insurance, which was in my own name. At 17, I did co-op through my auto shop class and worked at Firestone changing oil and tires. That’s when I started my automotive journey. Fast forward a little, I went to school for aircraft maintenance and repair immediately after graduating high school. That got me into prototype automotive work. Fast forward a little more, I was working for a military contractor, making decent enough money, but I was doing the work of an operations supervisor and the only one that would recognize the work I was actually doing was my immediate supervisor. His supervisor wouldn’t even change my title to operations coordinator, because God forbid, I get a raise. I was the only female in that shop as well as every other shop I’d worked in. I decided then, it was time to return to school and get a degree. Keep in mind, I had already been married, had my daughter, divorced, and then remarried and had my son; so I was married with two kids and returned to school. Upon my graduation, during the exit interview, I was asked, “What do you attribute to your astonishing achievements,” [I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 3.97 GPA] and my reply was, “I was already doing the job that I was getting my degree in.” Yes, I ended on a preposition.

Now, let’s bring us to today. My husband has been the stay at home parent in our household while I work to be the financial provider. This is not “traditional” by any means and we have received a lot of flack for it. Even from our own families. My mother is the only one that has NOT made any sort of comment in regard to our unconventional home even though several generations in our family have been “traditional.” However, as I previously stated, there’s been no religion involvement since the generation before mine [my mother and her siblings were all raised Catholic and ditched the faith once adults]. I’m not the first of my family to “buck society” though. A great aunt of mine was in love once, but her love never returned from WWI. She never married but was financially comfortable. She was a steno clerk at a Detroit courthouse. She revealed later in life that she was never “lonely” despite never marrying. She even purchased her own first car in 1910. She was one of only a few back then that chose not to accept religion as it stood / stands. She scoffed at the notions that religion offered.

This article is spurred by a few discussions in articles written by Gordy. I have found a couple scholarly articles on the title subject. I will first state how I feel and what I’ve personally witnessed in regard to gender roles and religion. I have witnessed the evolution of those gender roles being ignored in those that are NOT religious [I say religious as in organized religion], while those that still follow and practice religion in their homes also still following the “traditional” gender role situation. By that I mean, woman / wife either staying home or having some menial job, while the man / husband being the primary, if not sole financial provider. I’m not only speaking of Catholicism, but rather many Christian-based religions. Those of Islamic faith are another “animal” altogether. I will not be going there in this article. I’ve been to Catholic churches and Baptist camps. I’ve had long discussions with a Rabbi. I’ve even had long conversations with Chaldeans, which are middle eastern Christians. I’ve witnessed “Christian” men / husbands treating their women / wives as subservient.

It appears that my assessment on this subject is not the only one. From a scholarly article on the subject, “Religion and gender inequality: The status of women in the societies of world religions,” by Kamila KLINGOROVÁ, Tomáš HAVLÍČEK: “All world religions today maintain male social dominance within societal structures (Young, 1987). On the other hand, women are more inclined to participate in religious life (Hamplová, 2013, 2011; Renzetti and Curran, 1999).”
“Also, religious norms and prejudices may reflect patriarchal values (Nešpor, 2008), which are characteristic of all societies of the world religions (Seguino, 2011). The role of God, or a creator of a religion, is always taken by a male and the woman is primarily valued as a mother, especially as a mother to a son. Her place is in the household, less so at religious ceremonies or in public positions. The real status of a woman in a religion is more complicated, however, as in some religions certain women have acquired significant posts (Holm, 1994).”
“In the histories of religions, the voice of women is rarely heard, due to the patriarchal dispositions of societies in which these religions emerged, and which eventually stifled some of the changes in the status of women triggered by these new religions. The world religions all agree on the respect for women and their crucial role in family life, especially with emphasis on women as mothers and wives. They do not, however, advocate emancipation in the sense of total equality with men.”
Despite religion not being part of the workplace, there’s still connotations that point to that social structure; more so in the US and former communist countries... at least in my experience [I work for a global company]. Oddly enough, the countries that seem to be a bit more progressive include but are not limited to Germany and Sweden. It wasn’t until a man from Sweden became CEO of a local steel mill in 2007 that women became part of the executive board beyond secretarial services. Similarly, until Mary Barra became CEO of GM in 2014, that women were appointed to the executive board. I have theories in regard to why Mary Barra became CEO too; especially considering that was about the time that GM was under investigation for their knowledge on the ignition cylinder issues and subsequent recalls and the majority of the executive board retired almost immediately after Mary Barra took her position. She dealt with that blame [she was blamed even though she was not in charge during production of the failed product] and debacle with grace and dignity.

I guess my question to you is, in your experiences, do you notice a correlation between religion and gender roles as I have in mine? Lastly, this article is to discuss experiences and thoughts. This is NOT the place to discuss whether or not you believe God does or does not exist. Nor is this the place to discuss actual religions themselves. I WILL delete posts that discuss the aforementioned as well as any scripture.

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 3: The 10 Plagues of Egypt - @gordy327

Sat, 18 Jul 2020 22:57:53 -0400

For Part 3 in my series on the fallacies of biblical stories, A few individuals have suggested I explore the veracity of the 10 plagues of Egypt, as it seems quite fitting since we are all dealing with a modern day plague in the form of Covid-19. As far as biblical stories go, the plagues of Egypt story is probably one of the more likely possible occurrences. Although, probably not in the way the bible or biblical proponents describe. Many of the plagues are also easily explained. Taken as a whole, the plagues of Egypt also show God as He is oft depicted in the Old Testament, that of a malevolent deity with little concern for anyone caught in his retributive blast radius. So lets get into it. The 10 Plagues of Egypt story goes something like this:
In ancient Egypt, the ancient Hebrews were enslaved and ruled over by a rather cruel Pharaoh. Moses, who apparently won a lottery to be God's representative (why does god need a middleman?), asked the Pharaoh to allow all the Hebrews to be set free and return to their homeland. Naturally, the Pharaoh didn't want to give up his free labor force (after all, building pyramids is an expensive project when one has to pay the laborers). As a result, God decided to show off his cosmic vanity by unleashing 10 plagues on Egypt to show everyone just how powerful he is (talk about overkill). Because a single, precision lightning bolt strike to the Pharaoh somehow would not have been an effective demonstration. Apparently, God also decided to "harden" the Pharaoh's heart (so much for free will) which cause the Pharaoh to refuse to release the Hebrew people, even after each plague occurred, until the 10th plague hit. At that point, the Pharaoh would be free from God's mind control and decided that the Hebrew slaves were too much trouble to have around. Even free pyramid construction just wasn't worth it.
Now let's look at each of the 10 plagues and see the evidence for them and how plausible they are. Bibleinfo lists the Plagues in the bible, as I will briefly address each below. A report in Time Magazine , suggests a volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini in the south of Greece around 1620-1600 BCE resulted in the chain event of the plagues:
Winds would have carried the volcanic ash to Egypt at some point over the summer, and the toxic acids in the volcanic ash would have included the mineral cinnabar, which could have been capable of turning a river a blood-like red color.... The accumulated acidity in the water would have caused frogs to leap out and search for clean water. Insects would have burrowed eggs in the bodies of dead animals and human survivors, which generated larvae and then adult insects. Then, the volcanic ash in the atmosphere would have affected the weather, with acid rain landing on people’s skin, which in turn caused boils. The grass would have been contaminated, poisoning the animals that ate it. The humidity from the rain and the subsequent hail would have created optimal conditions for locusts to thrive. Volcanic eruptions could also explain the several days of darkness — which means nine plagues are accounted for.
Well, that does explain things. But I'll look into the plagues a little bit deeper and try to offer other logical possibilities.
1. Turning water into blood : Two words to easily explain this one: "Red Tide." A red tide is an algae bloom which occurs when conditions are favorable to the algae growth. The ancient Egyptians may have been fantastic engineers to design and build the pyramids. But apparently, they knew little about ecology. So to them, a red algae bloom would have looked like the water turning to blood. Red algae blooms can also be toxic to local marine life, as well as release toxic fumes that can affect people and animals nearby. There is another possible explanation: The Ethiopian highlands are made up of red clay. So it was possible that torrential rains could have started a mud-red flood that turned the Nile red and choked out the fish, which got infected with disease.
2. Lots and lots of frogs : The second plague involves vast quantities of frogs that effectively swarmed everything. This is not an unknown phenomenon. It occurs even today. Thousands of frogs have been known to emerge from their watery habitats in search of food or due to ecological changes. There's nothing to suggest this could not have been a similar occurrence in ancient Egypt. It's possible that the "blood water" from the first plague caused all these frogs to flee from their altered environment, where they subsequently died from the toxins.
3. Lice and Gnats : The third plague involved lots of insects. This is also an easy explanation: Once all the frogs were dead, the bugs had a smorgasbord feasting on the dead frogs (and later dead livestock and dead humans. But I'll get to that soon). And there were no frogs left to keep the bug population in check. In addition, the insects might have been vectors for the transmission of disease, which infected people and animals. Insects causing the effects of disease as described in the 10 Plagues story is supported by science, in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (2008).
4. A plague of flies : This one could have been combined with the third plague. I suppose biblical writers needed to pad the numbers a bit to get 10 plagues (which follows George Carlin's thoughts on the number 10, ala the 10 Commandments). Still, dead frogs and rotting frog (and later cattle) flesh means more flies. It's quite simple really. In addition, flies could also have been vectors for disease transmission, which also contributed to the later pestilences.
5. Pestilence that killed livestock : The fifth plague saw lots of cattle bite the dust. Which isn't really surprising considering the previous three plagues contributed to it either by livestock becoming infected with disease and/or their grazing areas turning toxic. There was a real viral disease called Rinderpest ("Cattle Plague" in German), which is known to have devastated livestock in Europe and Africa in the 18th-19th centuries. The disease is thought to have originated in Asia and spread to Egypt around 5000 years ago. As a side note, the resulting mass death of livestock could also contribute to starvation and death of the populace. Notice how each plague seems to segue into the next naturally? No magic required or necessary.
6. Boils : So what happens when you have diseased, dead, and rotting animals around, with insects travelling between them and people? Yep, you get diseased people. And boils are a sign of a person infected with a disease. Boils are commonly caused by Staphylococcus aureus, which is naturally on the skin. However, there are strains which can cause severe illness and even death. Boils are also famously associated with the appearance of smallpox , which is thought to have affected communities in Egypt at least 3,000 years ago, based on evidence of smallpox scars found on several mummies dating back to that period. The boils could have been the symptoms of the same disease which infected livestock or other animals.
7. Hailstorm : This one is explained by the aforementioned volcano eruption. Volcanic ash could have mixed with storm clouds above Egypt and result in a destructive hailstorm. That must have been quite a sight.
8. Locusts : While locusts are a "plague," they are hardly "biblical." Swarms of locusts are common in the world today, including Egypt, especially after storms in in high humid conditions. It's not surprising this plague would occur right after a hail or thunder storm. The Weather Channel recently reported the threat of a large swarm of locusts in the Middle East. If locust swarms occur today in the region, it should come as no surprise that it might have occurred during the Plague events too.
9. Who turned out the lights (Darkness) : Uh, maybe it was just simply nighttime? Ok, I'm kidding. But there are a couple explanations for this one, again including volcanic activity. Ash clouds from a volcano would certainly block out any sunlight and cause darkness. Another is the possibility of a large dust storm. Winds may have blown dust and sand from neighboring regions and made worse by the loss of crops (i.e. Dust Bowl). Another possible explanation, put forth in a study by Iurii Mosenkis , states that the darkness coincided with an eclipse on March 5, 1223 B.C., which is supported by NASA . If an eclipse was the case, then that might explain the 10th and final plague (see below), as ancient cultures often viewed solar eclipses as an ill omen or harbinger of doom.
10. God commits infanticide : Now this shows just how evil god really is. He orders the death of all the firstborn infants (and some people take issue with abortion?). Apparently, God had some angels swoop down and kill first born babies. But the angels couldn't distinguish friendly "targets" from enemy ones without lamb blood smeared on the doors of the Hebrews' houses, indicating a no-kill zone. Why God couldn't do this himself is anyone's guess. Although, it's probably better that way, as God has biblically historic bad aim and doesn't worry so much about collateral damage. I mean, just look at the previous plagues. God doesn't take out the one guy responsible. Instead, he takes out the country. But looking at this objectively, one possibility is that when all the other plagues are going on (especially the darkness plague), the Egyptian people probably thought it best to sacrifice their newborn children in the hope that it would appease the angry god/s (human sacrifice was practiced in various cultures throughout history). Another might be the possibility that infant mortality was raised to new levels, considering all the plagues that happened before it.
Unlike Part 1 or Part 2 of the Fallacy of Biblical Stories series, which has empirical evidence to contradict the veracity of those respective stories, The 10 Plagues of Egypt story is actually explained and supported by logical and scientific analysis. However, that does not mean that God was the cause of the plagues or directly controlled them. Each of the plagues has occurred and been observed naturally over time and even today. No divine intervention needed or required. To the ancient Egyptians, it may have seemed to them that some deity was super pissed off at them. But in reality, it was probably just natural world occurrences.

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 2: Adam & Eve - @gordy327

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 19:30:56 -0400

Welcome to Part 2 of my series exploring the veracity of some biblical stories. If you missed Part 1: The Great Flood & Noah's Ark , feel free to check it out and comment, thanks. The focus of this part will be on what is one of the most well known stories within the bible, Adam & Eve. The bible not only begins with Creation and the creation of Adam & Eve, but the story itself has been a significant influence to art, literature, and poetry. One thing to note is that while the story itself is central to the Abrahamistic religions, each religion seems to have a slightly different take on on the story with regards to the details and interpretations or meanings. For this article, I will focus on the "popular" version of the story (We'll ignore the whole Lilith thing) and break it down, looking at any evidence to determine the veracity of the story. As always, comments and thoughts are welcome. Please try to address the points made and remain on topic. Thank you.
So the story goes something like this : In the beginning (the Genesis account), after God created the Heavens and the Earth, he made a garden (Eden) on Earth where he proceeded to create the first man, Adam, from dust. Adam was bored and wanted some nookie, so God took one of Adam's ribs and created Eve (which makes Eve a transgendered clone of Adam). So Eve is walking around the Garden when a talking serpent (yes, a talking serpent) convinced Eve to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil (the forbidden tree). It should be noted that God previously told Adam not to eat from that tree. God may be omnipotent, but he's apparently a poor landscape planner. He plants a tree in the garden that he does not want them eating from? That's like someone planting poison ivy in their own garden. It won't go well.
But apparently, Eve didn't get the memo about no fruit eating. So the serpent convinces Eve to eat the fruit from the tree. Eve, naked and holding the fruit, offers it to Adam. Adam, apparently being compelled by the power of boners (what else could possibly compel a guy to disobey God?) due to a naked Eve, eats the fruit too. They gain knowledge, including knowledge of evil, shame, and whatever else. As a result, God curses them, expels them from Eden, has angels guard Eden so they cannot reenter, and shows that he can really hold a grudge. And thus, the rest of the human race is born from them. At least Adam got his nookie.
Like I did in Part 1, let's look at the problems associated with the story and examine the evidence. As far as the story goes regarding God creating Adam from dust, if one wants to get reeaalllyy technical about it, that would be an accurate statement, as we are essentially composed of "star dust." All the elements that make us up was formed in stars: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, ect.. Also, whatever happened to the Garden of Eden?But I digress.
1. Evolution makes Adam & Eve impossible : According to Genesis, humans appeared suddenly and practically spontaneously, because God. Never mind that one would have to first prove there's a god to make that assertion credible. The lineage of the human species can be traced back millions of years via the fossil record. Fossils show a clear progression from our earliest species ancestors up to what is now modern humans. The Adam & Eve (whom I will abbreviate as A&E) story states that God created them (modern humans) as we are now. But that flies in the face of Evolutionary theory and there's no evidence that God poofed modern humans into existence.
2. Not enough genetic diversity for a viable population : According to the myth, A&E had 3 male offspring. So we have a starting human population composed of 4 males and 1 female. Correction: 3 males and 1 female (Cain and Abel had a, shall we say, falling out). According to some accounts, Cain & Abel had sisters (possibly from Eve, as she is the "mother of all"). So that evens the playing field a little. But now we're left with incestual nookie ( Giggity ) taking place to perpetuate the species. This poses a problem. Between A&E & family, the human population is now bottlenecked. There is not enough genetic diversity to make the species viable. As a result, generations resulting from inbreeding with cause homozygosity, thereby increasing the chances of progressive genetic problems and recessive traits to appear, which will leave an unhealthy population, less ability to adapt t environmental changes, and ultimately resulting in the reduction of biological fitness and the extinction of the species.
3. Possible death from exposure : Once A&E we're expelled from Eden, they we're left out in the open, lightly clothed, but with no food, no supplies, and no shelter to protect themselves from the elements. Oh yeah, they we're fully mortal too. Sure they now had knowledge and let's assume that knowledge included basic survival skills like building a fire or shelter. They still had no medical care or provisions. Even a minor injury could be fatal, such as an infection from a scratch (I doubt A&E had their vaccinations). It's like if you were to suddenly find yourself deposited in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the clothes you are wearing. Would you be able to survive, let alone reproduce? Let's not forget that before the advent of modern medicine, the maternal/child mortality/morbidity rate was higher than it is today. Eve giving birth to 3 sons is like playing reproductive Russian Roulette. Now, I'm not saying this discredits the A&E story. It is certainly possible that they could have developed the means to continue surviving in the wild. But given the circumstances, the cards were stacked against them.
4. The A&E story is borrowed from other sources : Many biblical stories are borrowed from other sources and A&E is no different. Much like the Noah's Ark story, the A&E story borrows elements from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Basically, Gilgamesh had a plant of immortality which he lost due to a devious snake. He was also lonely so the gods created a companion for him. Also, a woman comes along and causes them to lose their idyllic lives. Is this starting to sound familiar?
So there we have it. The biggest nails in A&E's coffins is our knowledge of evolution and genetics. A literal 2 individuals could not have produced the entire human species. So perhaps it's best to treat the A&E story for what it is, a story and one which may convey some kind of morality tale. And it works just fine like that. But as a literal story, then it falls apart completely.

Religious and not News Chat: The Fallacy of Biblical Stories, Part 1: The Great Flood & Noah's Ark - @gordy327

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 19:38:25 -0400

This article is the first in a series of articles I plan to write (depending on my available time and interest) objectively examining popular biblical stories to establish their veracity or likelihood of having actually occurred. While many people might view the stories as fables and allegories, some do view them as actual, literal events that have occurred (Looking at you Ken Hamm, lol). These stories have significantly influenced people and societies throughout the centuries. So I will analyze the empirical evidence which either supports or refutes the stories as portrayed. For this Part 1, I will examine the biblical Great Flood and Noah's Ark mythos.
In a nutshell, the Great Flood/Noah's Ark goes like this: God was ticked off at humanity's shenanigans and decided the best way to deal with the situation was genocide via mass drowning (save for Noah & few of his followers, along with certain animals). So God instructed Noah to gather two of every animal and build a great ark to house them during the 40-day/night deluge that would flood the world and kill virtually every living thing on the planet. Afterwards, he would release the animals and themselves to repopulate their respective species.
This story has so many problems with it, it's difficult to know where to begin. To simplify, I will not be focusing on other cultures earlier flood myths, which probably influenced the creation of the biblical flood myth. Neither will I be focusing on God's own imperfection (or incompetence), as his Creation had some major design flaws forcing him to essentially reboot Creation over again. I also won't delve into the implausibility of rapid repopulation over a short time after the flood either. So here are some problems with the Flood story:
1. The sheer number of animals that had to be aboard the Ark : For this, I'm going to assume that the animals on the ark were all land animals. According to the California Academy of Sciences, there are approximately 6.5 million species of land animals. I'll be conservative and round down to 6 million, give or take a million. Since we have two of every animal, the ark must be capable of holding and supporting 12 MILLION animals for an extended duration, without additional support. That alone makes the Flood story quite implausible (even more so if one includes dinosaurs as passengers). Anyone who has been in a pet store will know housing many animals takes up quite a lot of space and resources. To put that into perspective, a single adult elephant (the largest land mammal in the world) can weigh upwards of 14,000 pounds, grow up to 35 feet long, and eat 200-600 pounds of food and drink 50 gallons of water PER DAY! And Noah had 12 million animals to feed and water daily, which is an impossible task for the relatively few people aboard the ark (never mind cleaning up after the animals too). In addition, it is supposed to believed that many of those animals traveled thousands of miles, some over the ocean, and from remote places like Antarctica, outside of their natural environments and ecosystems, in time to board the ark before the flood. Really?
2. The lack of paleontological evidence : Once the flood occurs, that means EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL not on the ark dies (and PETA takes issue with people wearing furs? They should have quite the issue with God's cruelty to animals here). Not only land animals left behind, but this also includes all land based plant life, insects that feed off of plants, amphibians and avians that feed of the insects, ect.. Essentially, the Flood would destroy entire ecosystems, collapse the food chain, and cause a sudden mass extinction event. This would also include sea based plants and animals, as the sudden influx of freshwater rain would dilute the salinity of the oceans, thereby disrupting the environmental conditions ocean based life requires to survive. If such an extinction event occurred, we would expect to see LOTS of fossils or remnants of the deceased lifeforms all at the same geological strata evenly distributed all over the earth. But we clearly do not observe that being the case. To be fair though, fossilization would require a burial in sediment layers thick enough to preserve them. But we're not seeing that in any sediment layers going back approximately 4000+ years (the time of Noah). Another thing to consider is, when the flood receded and the Ark landed, we should see a large collection of fossils or remains of all the animals that lived and died within a region around the ark. In other words, we should expect to find (for example) penguin remains mixed in along with kangaroo remains in the same general area. Needless to say, we do not see that.
3. The lack of geological evidence : So if a worldwide flood did indeed happen, there would be geological evidence of the event. However, geologists have not discovered any evidence to support the flood story. Just the opposite actually, current geological evidence directly contradicts the idea of a world wide flood covering landmasses. If there were such a Flood event, we would see mountains and other rock formations have a relatively uniform smoothing or massive erosion from the receding Flood water equally around the world. Of course, that is not the case. We would also see erosion and sedimentation occurring simultaneously, which we do not. Not only would we find even sedimentation layers around the world if there were a flood, certain sedimentation layers we see today could not exist.
4. The amount of water needed to flood the earth does not exist on earth : The volume of water on Earth is fairly constant: it evaporates form oceans, lakes, rivers, ect., condenses in the atmosphere into clouds, and falls back to Earth as rain, where the cycle repeats. So 40 days & nights of rain would have to drop enough water to cover ALL of Earth's landmasses, up and including Mt. Everest, at 29,028 feet above sea level (God wouldn't want to have a little animal stay safe on the peak of Everest while he's trying to smite every living thing, right?). The problem with that is there is not enough water on Earth to actually flood it to the level described in the bible. According to certain estimates , it would take 813,875,076 CUBIC MILES of water to sufficiently cover the entirety of Earth. That's a lot of water. By comparison, all of Earth's oceans, which cover 70% of the planet, equals approximately 321,000,000 cubic miles. I would expect that volume of water to fall in 40 days would be less like being constantly under rain, and more like constantly under a waterfall. Then there's the problem of where all that extra water went after the flood (I know, some people might invoke God's magic and all that).
5. The Ark itself is implausible : Now we get to the centerpiece of the Flood Story, Noah's Great Ark itself. By now, many people are probably familiar with Ken Hamm's Ark Encounter park in Kentucky, where Mr. Hamm built a supposedly accurate, full-size replica of Noah's Ark. For the purposes of this discussion, I will use Mr. Hamm's Ark as a "functional" duplicate of Noah's Ark. So the Ark itself is 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high, smaller than the Titanic (and yet 12 millions animals were housed on board? Really?). I don't think the bible states Noah was a master carpenter or ship builder with the skill to construct a vessel of this magnitude or for the conditions it would face. Presumably, Noah only had wood and the simple tools of his time to construct the Ark. The problem here is, wood is not the ideal material to construct large seagoing vessels. The largest wooden vessels built by master shipbuilders of the recent era was the 6 mast schooner Wyoming, which had an overall length of 450 feet. The problem with such large wooden vessels is that sea travel would cause the wooden hull to twist and warp, resulting in leaks or even structural failure. So the Ark, built by unskilled individuals with primitive tools, meant to remain stable on water rather than actually sail over it, somehow, even with all it's gross tonnage of material, animals, and any cargo, was able to withstand stormy weather and oceans without breaking apart or becoming water logged enough to cause sinking? That seems highly unlikely to me. as does the Great Flood story itself.

Religious and not News Chat: The Problem with Religion - @gordy327

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 16:59:59 -0400

The late, great George Carlin probably said it best: " Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money. "
That simple, yet comically (and philosophically?) profound statement illustrates some problems generally associated with religion. These problems do not apply to all people practicing a religion or having a belief. But they can and do apply to some. While religion can do some good and benefit people to some degree, I will focus mainly on the problems of religion itself.
First, religion makes statements of "truth" without actually supporting them with anything empirical. The easiest example is the claim that "god exists!" But there is no evidence or proof of any god/s existing outside of someone saying they do. Some even go so far to claim their god, beliefs, and/or religion are "true" and all others are false. That's just a downright arrogant statement. If someone makes a claim for something, especially an outrageous claim, would you not want some kind of evidence? So why are claims of god generally accepted, no questions asked (or explanations offered)? That segues into the next problem of religion:
Second, religion requires the suspension of rational or critical thinking. This is easily seen with biblical stories, especially if someone takes such stories seriously or literally. Religious myths like young (or flat) earth creationism, the Great Flood, or Intelligent Design are not only lacking any supporting empirical evidence, but they are either logically impossible or even discredited by current scientific knowledge. So accepting religious myth requires the rejection of established science and logical contradictions, which is both irrational and intellectually dishonest. It's saying mere stories are elevated above or taken more seriously than reality. People are often introduced into religion (especially at an early age) by family, or accept it to fill some emotional need, or perhaps as a psychological disorder. Either way, it becomes irrational which requires blind acceptance over evidence and rational thought.
Third, religion declares either punishment for disbelief (or the wrong belief/religion) or reward for belief. Never mind that some religions even invoked actual punishment and torture for a lack of or "false" belief and thought. This is essentially intellectual and emotional manipulation (and possibly even abuse) to play on peoples fears or desires. Some people also invoke a Pascal's Wager , which in itself is a logical fallacy and an irrational position. After all, promising someone an eternal heavenly reward for believing and following a religion's tenets does seem appealing. And the threat of eternal damnation in Hell for not believing or following (the "correct") religion is certainly a scary thing to contemplate. But people also blindly accept the "reality" of such consequences, no questions asked either. It's certainly a great way for religion to impose obedience and control over people and to discourage them from looking elsewhere for answers.
Fourth, religion can cause one to become sanctimoniously arrogant or have a superiority complex. How often do we see certain theists proclaim moral superiority because they have a belief in god, or believe god is the source of morality? The idea of god being the source of morality raises logical contradictions itself, but I digress. Some theists will even go so far to declare atheists or non-believers are inherently immoral or amoral because they do not believe in a god. That's quite a smug attitude, in my opinion. Or some honestly believe their religion is right and all others are wrong. Or they try to use religion as some kind of justification for various things. One example is when people declare they will pray for somebody (regardless if the other party wants it or not) who dissents from their religious way of thinking, with the intention of causing some kind of change or conversion for someone to align more with their belief or way of thinking.
Fifth, religion is about dogma over science. Throughout history and even today, religion has been resistant to science. Science seeks to discover new knowledge and answers to problems and questions. Religion generally goes with "god did it" as an explanation, which is not really an explanation for anything. We see this with religious pushback against sound scientific principles such as evolution or the Big Bang, where some theists advocate and even attempt to impose ID or creationism, respectively. Some might flat out reject scientific evidence or explanation for no other reason than because it contradicts someone's personal beliefs. Or they think they can "foil" science by invoking logical fallacies like an irreducible complexity style argument. Religion will often not accept evidence which contradicts its dogma, but neither offer any evidence to support it. Where science wants evidence, religion wants blind acceptance. This harks back to religion's declarations of "truth."
There are other problems associated with religion and if anyone wants to discuss them, feel free to bring it up and discuss below.

Religious and not News Chat: Knights of Columbus sue Delaware city for banning Nativity: 'Blatantly unlawful' - @gordy327

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 21:45:36 -0400

Religious and not News Chat: Are Evangelicals Christ Like? - @eat-the-press-do-not-read-it

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 12:32:10 -0500

Jesus did not speak his parables in "Tongues", nor did he pray in "Tongues" to His GOD! Evil-Genitals do!
Jesus did not HATE the poor, or, chastise them for being poor. Evil-genitals do!
Jesus didn't extol his followers to take up arms against the "Evil Government". Evil-Genitals do!
Jesus did not ask his followers to cast their votes as he ordered them to do. Evil-Genitals do!
Jesus did not condemn prostitutes, entertainers, or, Liberals. Evil-Genitals Do.
Evangelicals Are Not Christ-Like!
When they speak in "Tongues," who are they communicating with? The Devil?

Jesus did not address his followers in "Tongues," he spoke in parables.

Why do Evangelicals call themselves "Christians," when their principles are derived mostly from the Old Testament, which Jesus came to change.

We No Longer Stone Women accused of adultery.

Nor do we promote the concept of an Eye For An Eye.

Wives are no longer required to walk three paces behind their husband, nor, divorce merely by the husband repeating the phrase three times, "I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you." Then, sent off with nothing from that marriage.

In the Old Testament soldiers were instructed to kill their enemies, including the women, children, and grandparents.

It seems to this humbled by the years' observer, that Televangelists have co-opted the Teaching of Jesus for their own financial gain.

Humanity is gifted with "Free Will," it is not a license to do as one please, regardless of how it affects others. It means that we have the ability to make choices, not blindly follow those who tell us that they miraculously KNOW THE MIND OF GOD.

Religious and not News Chat: What about the Bible? - @tig

Thu, 21 May 2020 02:17:33 -0400

The essential message of this video is that it might be wiser to learn about the creator (if one exists) through its creations rather than attempting to find truth in collections of repeatedly transcribed / edited books written (and carried by oral tradition) over thousands of years by ancient men.

Religious and not News Chat: Trump Cabinet Bible Teacher Blames Coronavirus Pandemic on God’s Wrath — Somehow It Involves China, Gay People, and Environmentalists - @trout-giggles

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 11:10:45 -0400

Religious and not News Chat: Do God/s exist? Probably not. - @gordy327

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 13:24:32 -0400

God/s is a concept which has permeated human cultures and societies throughout history. The belief and worship of god/s can be traced back thousands of years and it's not unreasonable to assume that even primitive humans in individual tribes may have had a concept of gods before the establishment of permanent settlements and civilization. While the belief in god/s helped bring communities closer together or used to explain natural phenomenon which ancient humans did not understand, it's unlikely that any god/s actually existed. Here's why:
First is the obvious lack of any objective, empirical evidence or proof. Religion and belief in various god/s has exited in human societies for thousands of years. Yet, in all that time, not one religion has ever substantiated any claim for the existence of god/s. One would think that over thousands of years of belief and worship of god/s, one would at least be able to come up with a shred of empirical evidence to substantiate the basis of belief and/or claims made based on it. But that clearly not the case. Without any evidence, there is no logical reason to assume any god exists, or has ever existed.
Second, which god is "real" or "true?" Many religions around the world believe in different god/s or claim their god (and by extension their religion) is "true," which also implies all others are false. But not all gods and religions can be "true." Neither have any religion ever been able to establish their particular god/s to be the "true" one. It's quite arrogant to think, not to mention claim, that one's god/s is true and everyone else is false or wrong. Some will go so far as to even vilify differing beliefs, religions, or god/s. By the same token, many societies believed in and worshipped various god/s at some point in history. The Greek and Roman Pantheons is a well known example. But today, those gods and belief in them are relegated to mythology. The same holds true for other religions and gods in history. At some point, many religions and gods are abandoned, possibly supplanted with newer or different god/s. They believed in their pantheon of gods. So if they "got it wrong," as it were, then who's to say the same isn't true for all god/s?
Third, religious texts or sources (ex. the bible) are often cited as "proof" of a god/s. What some people fail to understand is that citing such works as "proof" is not actully proof of anything. It's a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies like that do not make a compelling case for the existence of god/s. It's essentially ancient people writing down their beliefs, nothing more. Also, many cite "miracles," unusual or extreme events, or their own "experiences" as proof of god/s. Of course, such things are subjective and anecdotal, based on something along the lines of "because I (or they) said so." Such experiences are often personal and based on emotion and/or ignorance.
Speaking of ignorance, the lack of understanding of the natural world and phenomenon is a good reason why many thought there's were gods. It's a convenient explanation. Primitive people saw the sun rise and "move" across the sky while providing light and heat. They had no concept of a star's fusion process or the Earth's rotation. So naturally, there must be a god pulling the sun across the sky (i.e. Apollo of Greek myth). Thunder and lightning? Yep, a god is angry. Crops and plants growing? Definitely the work of a fertility god/dess. Seasonal or weather changes? You better believe it's due to a god. Get the idea? Many religions had similar kind of gods to explain all sorts of natural phenomenon. But as science developed and our knowledge and understanding grew, people learned how or why such things happened. Science can even refute certain religious claims. God/s are no longer needed as an explanation. As science continues to learn more, the less and less god/s are needed as an explanation for anything, making them less and less plausible. But then, god/s were never really a valid explanation for anything. But rather a failure to explain anything. It boggles the mind that in today's technological and information era, there are still those who cling to silly superstitions like god/s as real or true or as an explanation for things.

Religious and not News Chat: Biblical Covenants in Christianity - @tig

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 15:21:22 -0500

Christians routinely speak of the OC† and the NC (old and new covenants, respectively) when equivocating from the harshness of the Mosaic laws in the Old Testament such as Leviticus 20:13 which calls for the death penalty for homosexual acts or the various rules on how to properly enslave another human being, etc. In particular, moral, ritual and ceremonial laws such as those found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy which are directly attributed to God ("The LORD said ...") are deemed to be obsolete by some Christians due to Jesus' death and the NC which was brought forth. Other Christians believe that only some of the OC is replaced and the rest intact. (Note those who deem homosexuality an abomination in the eyes of God.) Others even claim the entire OC is part of the NC.
The problem, of course, is that unlike the OC where one can list 613 laws, there is nothing definitive about the NC. This ambiguity (and, indeed, absence of definition) allows Christians to make any vague claim they wish about the NC.
In short, the claim 'that was the OC, we are now operating under the NC' is meaningless because nobody has a specific definition of the NC. The New Covenant is a concept devoid of defined content. It is a contract with an opening paragraph but no details. Christians fill in the blanks however they wish and thus the specific meaning for the New Covenant is all over the map.

† the OC in Judaism has a very different meaning than how Christians use the term.

Religious and not News Chat: The Meaning of Life - @al-jizzerror

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 04:43:32 -0400

I'm a big fan of robots. They can do more than vacuum your floor.
Battlebots are very entertaining.

Religious and not News Chat: Atheists at the Creation Museum - @tig

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 00:48:10 -0400

A way to virtually tour the Creation Museum and get a dose of Young Earth Creationism.

Religious and not News Chat: Who Created God? - @al-jizzerror

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:28:15 -0400

Theists believe God created the universe.
Many theists believe in creationism although some now call it "intelligent design".
So the next logical question is "who created God?"
Can "atheist creationism" answer that question?
The following documentary published by DarkMatter2525, a creative atheist, actually answers that question.
The answer is revealed near the end of the documentary.

Religious and not News Chat: Slavery in the Bible is Disingenuous - @tig

Sun, 23 Jun 2019 11:14:47 -0400

Matt was very triggered in this video. Not the presentation I would prefer, but he made points that I have made using examples I have used and got the kind of response I have witnessed. In spite of Matt's often emotional presentation, this video has a lot to offer.
Matt Dillahunty's bio , by the way:

I was raised in a loving, Southern Baptist home and was a fundamentalist Christian for over 20 years. After 8 years in the Navy and several years in the hi-tech game, I set out to re-affirm my faith with designs on attending seminary and continuing with a life in the ministry. What began as an attempt to bolster my faith became a continuing investigation into more topics than I ever suspected I'd enjoy.

After the first couple of years, reason forced me to acknowledge that my faith had not only been weakened by my studies - it had been utterly destroyed. The thoughts, writings and wisdom of people like; Robert Ingersoll, Voltaire, Dan Barker, Richard Dawkins, Farrell Till and many others, helped free my mind from the shackles of religion without a single moment of despair. I continue to study philosophy, religion, science, history and the many other topics which have helped me to understand reality and enjoy my life.
Having spent the majority of my life compartmentalizing my religious beliefs to keep them safe from skepticism, it's thrilling to leave the critical, investigative, hungry portion of my brain turned "on". While my own pursuit of knowledge is a powerful driving force in my life, I'd also like to prevent others from wasting another day on irrational beliefs. Education is the key ...and if my work manages to educate even one person, I'm satisfied.

Here is an excerpt from the video:

I wake up every day, every single day, in a world where the majority of people believe in batshit crazy stuff that is also evil and contributes to the destruction of society. And when I talk to people who believe this who want to talk about ' oh you're getting it out of context you're just not considering that ' that's fucking bullshit.

I read you the verses when we're not looking at the verses you don't necessarily get them right but you agree that this is immoral that people aren't property; that you shouldn't be allowed to beat them as long as they don't die; that you shouldn't be buying them from the people around you, and yet you are sitting here bending over backwards and accusing me of being disingenuous and ' taking it out of context ' in order to make excuses. Why not just acknowledge that book is grossly immoral and you and I are both better than that book? Why is that so hard?
There are, by the way, Christians I've talked to who say hey those verses are immoral I don't think those verses even necessarily came from a God. The God I believe in would not do that. The Bible is not de facto perfect; it is the result of men. Why not do that and then you don't have to embarrass yourself and and contribute to a culture that is amplifying immorality and pretending that it's moral that is permissible?

Religious and not News Chat: Ricky Gervais And Stephen Go Head-To-Head On Religion - @tig

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 23:33:34 -0400

Ricky in his usual soft-delivery of brutal candor offers a clear description of agnostic atheism (i.e. the position of most every atheist) and demonstrates why he is an agnostic atheist.
Here is the operative part of the short video:

Stephen:         Talking about hell before, about this tweet about you going to hell. And I know that you're an atheist, correct?
Ricky:             Yeah. ( applause ).
Stephen: People have been debating-- that's the devil waiting for you in hell, by the way. Did you want to debate this? So Ricky Gervais, why is there something instead of nothing?
Ricky:          That's-- that's-- that makes no sense at all.
Stephen: You have to answer my question.
Ricky:            That's not the two choices.
Stephen: Those are the choices I'm giving you. I'm the host. ( laughter ).
Ricky:             Well, I don't --
Stephen: Do you want to concede the debate. Why is there something rather than nothing?
Ricky:          What do you mean out of nothing?
Stephen: Why is there something instead of why is there nothing? Why does the universe exist at all? Why is there something?
Ricky:          But surely the question is not why but how? Why is irrelevant.
Stephen: Another fine, how is there something? If you think of god as the prime mover.
Ricky:          I don't.
Stephen: Is there a prime mover. Is there a demi-urge that started everything.
Ricky:          Outside of science and nature I don't believe so. So the interesting thing is-- that's the thing I'm an agnostic atheist. Agnostic means no one knows if there's a god. Everyone is technically an agnostic because we don't know. An agnostic atheist is someone who doesn't know there is a god--
Stephen: You're not convinced of your atheism.
Ricky:          I am. Atheism isn't a belief system. Atheism-- so this is atheism in a nutshell. You say, "there's a god.". I say, "you can prove that?". You say, "no." I say, "I don't believe you then." So you believe in one god, I assume.
Stephen: Uhhh, in three persons, but go ahead. ( laughter ).
Ricky:          Okay, so you believe-- okay. But there are 3,000 to choose from, you know, of people --
Stephen: I've done some reading, yeah.
Ricky:          So basically, you believe in-- you deny one less god than I do. You don't believe in 2,999 gods. And I don't believe in just one more.
Stephen: Right. ( laughter ) ( applause )
Stephen: Do you do you do you ever have a feeling of great gratitude for existence?
Ricky:          Of course,.
Stephen: Do you ever have--
Ricky:          I know the chances are billions to one that I am on this planet as me and never will be again.
Stephen: I know I can't convince you that there is a god, nor do I really want to convince you that there is a god. I can only explain my experience which is I have a strong desire to direct that gratitude towards something or someone.
Ricky:          Of course,
Stephen: Ask that thing is god.
Ricky:          We want to-- we want to make sense of nature and science. It is too unfathomable-- everything in the universe was once crunched in some small atom--
Stephen: But you don't know that. You're just believing Stephen Hawking and that's a matter of faith in his abilities. You don't know it yourself. You're accepting that because someone told you.
Ricky:          Well, yeah, but science is constantly proved over time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, and any holy book and any other fiction, and destroyed it, okay. In 1,000 years’ time, that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in 1,000 years they'd all be back because all the same tests would be the same result.

Stephen: That's good. That's really good. ( applause ) that's really good.
Ricky:          So don't need-- I don't need-- I don't need faith in science. I don't need faith to know probably if I jump out of a window, every other time someone jumped out of a window they smashed to the ground because of this thing called gravity.
Stephen: And then Satan would be raping you.
Ricky:          This is why I'm a good boy.

Religious and not News Chat: Online supplier of abortion pills defies FDA order to stop providing them in US - @gordy327

Sun, 26 May 2019 23:38:55 -0400

As abortion becomes increasingly inaccessible in parts of this country, a Dutch physician is defying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s order to quit providing abortion pills using the internet and the mail. The doctor, Rebecca Gomperts, has for years run Women on Web, a Netherlands-based nonprofit that ships mifepristone made in India to women in countries where abortion is illegal. Last summer, she launched Aid Access to provide the same pills to U.S. customers. Aid Access claims to be growing quickly, with more than 21,000 U.S. orders in the last six months, according to the Guardian newspaper. The organization filled between a third and half of the requests, despite shutting down for 10 weeks after the FDA sent a warning letter on March 9. The warning letter said Aid Access was violating U.S. law and endangering customers by selling “misbranded and unapproved new drugs."
In response, the organization’s Idaho-based lawyer, Richard Hearn, who is also a physician, sent a letter to the FDA on May 16. ″Because access to medical abortions in the U.S. has been so restricted by the FDA," he wrote, “women have been forced to attempt to exercise their right to abortion by way of the Internet.” Aid Access resumed service the next day. The FDA declined to discuss its next step. “We cannot comment on a potential future action at this time,” the agency emailed, “but we remain very concerned about the sale of unapproved mifepristone for medical termination of early pregnancy on the Internet, because this bypasses important safeguards designed to protect women’s health.” The abortion-pill regimen, which is effective through the first nine weeks of pregnancy, actually involves two drugs. Mifepristone, sold in the U.S. by Danco Laboratories and branded Mifeprex, disrupts the pregnancy, then misoprostol triggers uterine contractions and expulsion of the grape-size fetus.
The FDA requires women who want the regimen to make two visits to the doctor, and they can’t get mifepristone from pharmacies. It can only be dispensed in clinics or medical offices by specially certified health-care providers. Aid Access, in contrast, provides pills after a woman consults online with the prescribing doctor and gets a blood test. She receives instructions for taking the drugs, what to expect, and when to see a doctor if a problem occurs. Numerous other international websites ship abortion pills — without prescription or any medical oversight. That’s why a group of researchers who support abortion rights created Plan C, a website with a “report card” that rates such websites on product quality, price, and shipping time. "The combination of very safe and effective medication abortion, and the pervasiveness of global commerce, make Internet access virtually unstoppable,” said public health researcher Elisa Wells, codirector of Plan C.
She believes the proliferation of ultra-restrictive state abortion laws is fueling demand for online abortion pills. Earlier this month, Plan C’s web traffic spiked from 1,000 hits a day to eight times that many after Alabama’s governor signed a law that bans abortions in almost all cases, including rape or incest. Governors in Kentucky , Mississippi , Ohio, and Georgia have recently approved bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can happen in the sixth week of pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. Missouri’s governor on Friday signed a law outlawing abortions after eight weeks. Other states are considering similarly restrictive measures. Although the laws are not being enforced because of legal challenges, abortion foes hope this sets the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit and even overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide.

Religious and not News Chat: Alabama Lawmakers Vote to Effectively Ban Abortion in the State - @gordy327

Wed, 15 May 2019 13:14:49 -0400

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Senate approved a measure on Tuesday that would outlaw almost all abortions in the state, setting up a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the case that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy. The legislation bans abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalizes the procedure for doctors, who could be charged with felonies and face up to 99 years in prison. It includes an exception for cases when the mother’s life is at serious risk, but not for cases of rape or incest — a subject of fierce debate among lawmakers in recent days.
The House approved the measure — the most far-reaching effort in the nation this year to curb abortion rights — last month. It now moves to the desk of Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican. Although the governor has not publicly committed to signing the legislation, many Republican lawmakers expect her support. In an email on Tuesday night, a spokeswoman for the governor, Lori Davis Jhons, said Ms. Ivey would “withhold comment until she has had a chance to thoroughly review the final version of the bill that passed.”

Opponents have vowed to challenge the measure in federal court if it becomes law. Even the legislation’s supporters expect that a lower court will block the measure. But it was drafted with exactly that in mind. The ban’s architects, reflecting the rising confidence of abortion critics nationwide after the appointment of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, hope that the justices will use the case to reconsider the central holding in Roe and allow the Alabama measure to take effect. “Until now, there was no prospect of reversing Roe,” said Eric Johnston, who founded the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition and serves as its president, and has spent more than 30 years trying to ban abortion.

Mr. Johnston, who drafted the Alabama bill and sees himself as a purist on the abortion issue, said he did not support the spate of restrictive legislation that other states have enacted in recent months, including so-called fetal heartbeat bills. These bills essentially ban abortions starting at six weeks after conception, a time when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.
Given the current leanings of the Supreme Court, Mr. Johnston said, making such a measure, which does not directly challenge Roe, the subject of the court’s next major abortion case would be a wasted opportunity. “Why not go all the way?” he asked.
The Senate gallery was full before the debate started on Tuesday afternoon. A long line of people waited to take seats when people left. Many in the audience were abortion rights activists, and at times they laughed when male lawmakers spoke about pregnancy and other female health issues. Senator Rodger Smitherman, a Democrat, told colleagues that during his wife’s pregnancy with their son, doctors had told him it was unlikely that the child would be born alive. Mr. Smitherman said that he and his wife had decided to have the child anyway, and that his son had been born with significant health problems. “The significance,” he said, “is I had the choice.”

Democrats and abortion-rights advocates say that the Alabama measure would drive the procedure underground, endangering the lives of women and girls and disproportionately affecting poor and minority Alabamians. “We want abortions to be safe, and we want them to be few, but it should be legal, because there will be abortions,” said Senator Linda Coleman-Madison, a Democrat and one of the four women in the 35-member Senate. “The people who have the wherewithal will fly out of state,” she added. “Not everyone can afford to do that.” The Senate took the bill up again on Tuesday after an earlier attempt to debate the measure last week descended into shouting and chaos. Tensions erupted, including some within the dominant Republican Party, over whether to include exceptions to the ban in cases of rape or incest. A Senate committee had amended the bill to include those exceptions, prompting a bitter dispute that postponed consideration of the bill for days.
Even so, the fate of the bill was never in much doubt, and it did not take long for the proposal to return to the Senate floor. It passed after lawmakers rejected the amendment adding rape and incest exceptions. Senator Clyde Chambliss, a Republican and sponsor of the bill in the Senate, defended the omission of those exceptions. “When God creates the miracle of life inside a woman’s womb,” he said, “it is not our place as human beings to extinguish that life.” Other state measures to restrict abortion rights have advanced in the South and the Midwest this year and invited legal fights. Already, the governors of Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio have signed fetal heartbeat bills. And Arkansas moved up the cutoff point for legal abortions to 18 weeks of pregnancy, from 20 weeks.

The Alabama measure, though, goes farther. In addition to the potential 99-year sentence for performing abortions, doctors face the threat of a 10-year term for attempting to perform one. Women who receive abortions would not be prosecuted.
The timing of any litigation over the bill is uncertain. Opponents of the measure intend to argue that Alabama will have unlawfully restricted a right that the courts have repeatedly reaffirmed since Roe. Alabama, a conservative state where Republicans control the Legislature, has repeatedly sought to enact limits on abortion. In 2018, voters overwhelmingly endorsed an amendment to the
Alabama Constitution declaring that the “public policy of this state is to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.” In the past, state lawmakers imposed a 48-hour waiting period for abortions; mandated that women receive counseling before undergoing the procedure; and required minors to receive consent from a parent or legal guardian to have an abortion. Emboldened by the passage of the state constitutional amendment, lawmakers set out this year with a far more aggressive strategy in mind. Senator Greg Reed, a Republican who is the State Senate majority leader, said in a statement after Tuesday night’s vote that the measure “simply recognizes that an unborn baby is a child who deserves protection — and despite the best efforts of abortion proponents, this bill will become law because Alabamians stand firmly on the side of life.”
Supporters of abortion rights took a grimmer view. “Today is a dark day for women in Alabama and across this country,” said Staci Fox, the president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates. “Banning abortion is bad enough. Imprisoning doctors for providing care goes beyond the brink. Alabama politicians will forever live in infamy for this vote and we will make sure that every woman knows who to hold accountable.” Even as some states have moved to limit abortions, other states with Democratic-leaning governments have rushed this year to fortify legal protections for the procedure. Vermont recently took steps toward a state constitutional amendment enshrining a “right to personal reproductive autonomy.” And in January, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York signed a measure that guaranteed a “fundamental right” to abortion in the state.

Religious and not News Chat: A Serious Question: How is abortion anyone's business? - @gordy327

Sat, 27 Apr 2019 16:04:50 -0400

Over the last several months, there have been news reports of certain states trying to prohibit or severely restrict abortion rights, impose legal penalties for women seeking abortion, and even judicial interventions regarding the government's funding of health providers who also perform abortions. While such instances are not new, the current round of abortion arguments probably started with New York's Reproductive Health Act at the beginning of the year. While opinions about abortion are divided, there is one question that largely remains unanswered in all of this: How is abortion anyone else's business?
Seriously, how is a woman's choice seeking and/or obtaining an abortion anyone's business? We don't generally pry into another individual's medical health or health interventions. So why is abortion anyone's business or why does anyone think another person's abortion is their business? After all, no one cares if someone has cosmetic or other type of elective surgery. So why does someone suddenly care if a woman wants an abortion? It's simply none of their business.
Your thoughts?

Religious and not News Chat: In The Beginning There Was No Yahweh - @perrie-halpern

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 22:25:40 -0400

In the beginning, there was no Yahweh.
I will repeat, In the beginning, there was no Yahweh .
No this will not be about if God either exists or doesn't, but rather you can't discuss the bible if you don't understand its simplest concept. The name of God.
The problem does not lie within the Jewish faith. Jews understand that there are two words for god that are spoken, one is used for prayer and the other for daily usage. These words are Adonai or written in Hebrew as אדוני (read the Hebrew going this way <----), meaning Lord, and the other is Hashem ( השם) , the word used for everyday usage. The word literally means “the name.” The problem arose with the word Adonai אדוני, as written in the Torah (aka the OT), is spelled as:

To confuse everyone more, this is also written in Hebrew as:
making both words unpronounceable. It is to remind Jews that one should not ever speak the name of the lord and thus Adonai is used instead even in prayer. Think of it this way: Jews generally substitute the word Adonai for the four-letter un-pronounceable name of God. Outside of reading Torah and praying, God is often referred to as Hashem, a creative way of not saying God’s name. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, it’s kind of referring to Voldemort as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
So right from the start referring to God as Yahweh is wrong. It is trying to pronounce a word never meant to be pronounced and in fact, would be profane to pronounce ever.
This leads to a common problem in the Christian bible. Because it is based on multiple translations, (Hebrew>Greek>Latin>English) much is lost in translation and entire concepts that were built around these bad translations are wrong if you're not taking the translations straight from the Torah.
The Garden of Eden and "Orginal Sin"
There is a reason that Jews don't believe in the concept of "Orginal Sin". That's because it's not mentioned in the Torah.
For this, please start at the bottom of this page, when we first meet Adam:
https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/8166/jewish/Chapter-2.htm
and continue to the next page.
You will clearly read nothing about original sin. That is because this story, as much of the Torah, is not meant to be read literally but rather as a parable. Now I can go on with all the different interpretations of this story.. but maybe we should leave that for the discussion.

Religious and not News Chat: Conservative Christians Just Retook the United Methodist Church - @bob-nelson

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 07:47:07 -0500

The United Methodist Church has fractured over the role of LGBTQ people in the denomination. At a special conference in St. Louis this week, convened specifically to address divisions over LGBTQ issues, members voted to toughen prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy. This was a surprise: The denomination’s bishops, its top clergy, pushed hard for a resolution that would have allowed local congregations, conferences, and clergy to make their own choices about conducting same-sex marriages and ordaining LGBTQ pastors. This proposal, called the “One Church Plan,” was designed to keep the denomination together. Methodist delegates rejected its recommendations, instead choosing the so-called Traditional Plan, which affirmed the denomination’s teachings against homosexuality.
This is a consequential vote for the future of the United Methodist Church: Many progressive churches will now almost certainly consider leaving the denomination. It’s also a reminder that many Christian denominations, including mainline groups such as the UMC, are still deeply divided over questions of sexuality and gender identity. While the UMC in the United States is roughly evenly divided between those who identify as traditionalists and those who identify as moderates and liberals, it is also a global organization. Many of the growing communities in the Philippines or countries in Africa are committed to theological teachings against same-sex relationships and marriages.
Self-described traditionalists in the United Methodist Church got the outcome they’ve been fighting for. Still, “I think there’s a lot of grief on all sides,” said Keith Boyette, the head of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and a main proponent of the Traditional Plan, in an interview on Tuesday. Methodists are in mourning for a United Methodist Church that might be on the brink of a mass exodus.
For years, LGBTQ Methodists, clergy, and their supporters have argued that people of all sexual orientations and gender identities should be fully included in the denomination as leaders, and that their families should be recognized. “As someone who has grown up in our Church, as someone who is gay and goes to one of the least religious colleges in the U.S., my evangelism on campus has grown,” said J. J. Warren, a senior at Sarah Lawrence College who hopes to become a Methodist pastor, during the conference on Tuesday. “We have brought people to Jesus … They did not know God could love them, because their churches said God didn’t … If we could be a Church that brings Jesus to people who are told can’t be loved, that’s what I want our Church to be.”
Others in the denomination, however, see LGBTQ issues as a proxy for bigger divisions over biblical teachings. “This is not a political or social kind of difference. It is primarily, for us, a theological difference, and the truth that the Church has been raised up to share,” Boyette said. “When a Church begins to fracture around its compliance with its doctrine and ethics and discipline, it becomes a house divided. It becomes dysfunctional.”
According to its Book of Discipline, the denomination’s collection of laws and doctrines, Methodist pastors are not allowed to conduct same-sex weddings, and “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot be ordained. In practice, however, a number of Methodist clergy and churches have made clear that they disagree with this teaching, at times openly defying it. A lesbian pastor, Karen Oliveto, was even elected a bishop in the Church , a position she still holds even though the denomination’s judicial council later ruled that her marriage to a woman violated Church doctrine. At the same time, other churches remain deeply committed to UMC teachings against same-sex marriage and relationships.
The United Methodist Church, which was formed in a 1968 merger between two denominations, has known for a long time that it would eventually have to address these deeply felt disagreements over LGBTQ issues. At the denomination’s 2016 General Conference, delegates asked UMC bishops to produce recommendations for how the Church should resolve divisions over LGBTQ issues. Over the next three years, Methodist leaders developed the One Church Plan, which would have allowed local pastors and regional conferences to make their own decisions, keeping the denomination together but allowing for diversity in its ranks.
Read more in the Original Article...
Lead image: Delegates at the United Methodist Church General Conference react to the defeat of a proposal that would have allowed pastors to perform same-sex weddings and LGBTQ people to serve in ministry in some areas. Sid Hastings / AP

Religious and not News Chat: Richard Dawkins interviews Saudi Arabian atheist author Rana Ahmad - @tig

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:52:44 -0500

Rana Ahmad was brought up as a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. She has escaped both her culture and her religion and currently lives in Germany. Her reasons for leaving is that she was oppressed. She could not act freely as a human being in Saudi Arabia given she had limited rights and essentially were controlled by the men in her family (a function of culture, religion and law). Further, she was not convinced by Islam - she is an atheist.
Now she is an apostate of Islam (for many this is a crime punishable by death), a refugee and culturally brings dishonor upon her family. She continues to be looked down upon by fellow refugee Muslims in Germany and fears 'honor killing' by the hand of her own brother.
Happily she appear to be an accomplished, published writer. This may be her passage to a free life.
It is good for us who take our freedoms for granted to appreciate what countless billions of people deal with in their lives.

Religious and not News Chat: Misconceptions about New York's "Abortion Law" - @gordy327

Sun, 27 Jan 2019 23:50:03 -0500

With the signing of Senate Bill S2796 , otherwise known as the "abortion bill," into law by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, there have been some misconceptions about what the law actually entails. The entirety of the bill can be viewed using the preceding link. But many pro-lifers have gone on to claim that the law will allow late term abortions "up to birth" or imply woman can electively obtain such abortions "on demand." Of course, none of that is true and anyone's claim that such late term abortions would be permissible "on demand up to birth" is either a flat out lie, or at the very least woefully misinformed and inaccurate. Late term abortions are only performed when the woman's health/life is at risk.
According to an article in the Timesunion (Jan. 2019, para. 11), here is what the new law actually does:
The Reproductive Health Act does three things. First, it strips abortion from the state's criminal code and places it entirely within the realm of public health law. Second, it expands who can perform the procedure from beyond just physicians to any licensed, certified or authorized health care practitioner for whom abortion is within their scope of practice.
Finally, it legalizes abortion after 24 weeks in cases where it would protect a woman's health or where a fetus is not viable. State law previously only allowed abortions after 24 weeks if the woman's life was in jeopardy .
As anyone can see, no where does the law allow elective late term abortions past 24 weeks. So women will not be able to suddenly obtain an abortion at 9 months gestation because they want to (as some pro-lifers like to claim with a mountain of hyperbole). I hope this clears up any misconceptions and misunderstanding about the new law. And remember, abortion is a woman's right and choice, and is NO ONE ELSE'S BUSINESS!

Religious and not News Chat: The More We Evolve, The Less We Need God - @tig

Sun, 08 Apr 2018 17:32:49 -0400

CLICK HERE FOR THE DEBATE
IQ 2 offers well moderated thoughtful debates. This debate has a number of interesting points. But be warned that the opposing side led by Deepak Chopra will get very tiresome and repetitive (typical of Deepak Chopra). The opposing side's argument style is also reminiscent of the typical pro-religious argument. In style only - certainly not in substance.
Offered for those interested in intelligent debate. I would focus on the affirmative side since the negative side (opposing side) was mostly meta-physical, circular nonsense.
Of course the title is the topical question so feel free to opine on the subject defined by the title without referencing the associated debate.

Religious and not News Chat: God Would Not Use Natural Language to Communicate His Word - @tig

Sat, 05 May 2018 01:10:40 -0400

An excerpt from The Age of Reason regarding God using natural language to communicate His Word:

If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or accident whatever, in that which we would honor with the name of the word of God; and therefore the word of God cannot exist in any written or human language.
The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject , the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration , are of themselves evidences that the human language , whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the word of God . The word of God exists in something else.

Here Paine (a deist) argues that due to the evolving meaning of words over time, the need for language translation, human transcription error, etc. the true Word of God cannot possibly be represented in the form of natural language. In effect, he is describing why (in part) there are so many interpretations of the Bible and, in so doing, arguing that the Bible is not divine.
An ancient argument that applies today.

Religious and not News Chat: Closet Atheists - @tig

Fri, 18 May 2018 13:02:28 -0400

The USA is one of the most religious nations on the planet. Statistically 78% of USA citizens claim to be religious (~70% of USA citizens are Christian). Yet, anecdotally, it is easy to observe many going through the motions - playing the role of the routine theist. Pretending to be more religious than the truly are. Some of the 'religious' are in-effect atheists going through the motions. A study last year suggests that even in religious surveys (much less real life) USA citizens tend to overstate their religious views:

Yet, religious nonbelief is often heavily stigmatized, potentially leading many atheists to refrain from outing themselves even in anonymous polls .
Widely-cited telephone polls (e.g., Gallup, Pew) suggest USA atheist prevalence of only 3-11% . In contrast, our most credible indirect estimate is 26% (albeit with considerable estimate and method uncertainty).

Stigma of Atheism

In the USA, an atheist is considered by many to be evil incarnate, lost soul, devil worshiper, etc. Even the word 'atheist' is a pejorative that brings forth negative emotional reactions based on years of indoctrination: Politicians have excellent reasons to not claim to be atheist (regardless of qualification).
A family of Christians will be upset to learn that one of their own is actually an atheist. Reactions range from concern for the soul to disowning.
Friendships (including those with co-workers and affiliates) are strained or severed ("I cannot believe _____ is a heathen").
Of course there are an increasing number of individuals with the intellectual maturity to process the concept that some people are not convinced there is a God, but in the USA they are still a small minority.
Discussion Question

The question for discussion is: Should All Atheists Come Out of the Closet?
To set the stage, here is a contrived scenario explaining why some would choose to keep their lack of belief to themselves:
Mom and Dad are legacy Catholics ( chosen in this scenario because of prominence and its acceptance of evolution ) having been raised as such by their parents. They have continued the tradition by going to church (albeit sporadically). They have enrolled their children in church programs to be religiously educated and ultimately confirmed. They figure that Catholic teachings are mostly good moral lessons and that their children are free to make up their own minds regarding religious views. At home, the parents gently guide their children to resolve inconsistencies with known realities - largely explaining that scripture is not to be taken literally and emphasizing the good moral lessons.
Privately, Mom thinks her religion is man-made, evidenced by the changing rules, and is entirely unsure about God. But she still thinks there must be a God behind it all. Basically an agnostic theist on the edge. Dad has long since realized the indoctrination at play and is an agnostic atheist - no longer even thinks about God.
The couple, because of their personal assessment (probably many factors), decided to raise their children as Catholics. They are not trying to cause harm to the church (presume they even donate and participate in charity drives). They have simply chosen to not upset their social fabric by enabling family, friends and co-workers to (emotionally) fret and fume about them as godless heretics.
This couple has decided that disclosing their private religious views would cause more disruption in their social circle than it is worth. Are they wrong for keeping their views private and ' going through the motions ' as ' normal ' USA theists?

Religious and not News Chat: A Journey from a Homosexual Lifestyle to Christ - @tig

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 23:03:45 -0400

This is an article from a 'former' lesbian who found Jesus. A few interesting comments triggered this seed. This seems like a worthy discussion:
Jesus Christ drew me to Himself in 1999. I broke up with my partner because I was convicted that living as a lesbian was a sin and so put me outside of the kingdom of God, but my heart was a mess.

It may surprise some readers, but conversion to Christ did not initially change my attraction for other women.

Indeed, I was not converted out of homosexuality; I was converted out of unbelief. Suddenly, my mind was on fire for the Bible and I could not read enough of it or enough about it.

But if I was a true believer, why did my flesh crave what God abhorred?

If I was lesbian enough to go to hell for my unrepentant sin, or if I had been fornicator enough to be cast into hell for heterosexual sin, then I am still lesbian and fornicator enough to share with you what it means for me to submit my desires to Christ each day so that, by his grace alone, I can be obedient to Him.

Thoughts?

Religious and not News Chat: Glossolalia - Speaking in Tongues - @tig

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 00:39:40 -0400

This is intriguing. A common religious belief is that some human beings extemporaneously receive a gift from God - the ability to 'speak in tongues' - to speak fluently in a new language. This new language is also unknown - it is not any language known to human beings.
Not many studies have been done on this phenomenon even though millions of Christians believe this actually occurs. One study conducted in 1972 [ Samarin, William J. (1972). Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism . New York: Macmillan ] (a 5 year analysis) determined that these odd languages seem like they are legit but when one studies the linguistic structures, the languages are basically gibberish. The utterances lack the necessary semantic patterns found in real languages - pretty much what one would expect if someone is simply pretending to speak a brand new language.
Here is a third party summary of the analysis:
The author, an eminent linguist, professor of anthropology and linguistics at the University of Toronto, attempts to answer the question: Why do so many educated and well-established members of society "speak in tongues"? He first examines glossolalia from a linguist's point of view and shows "what Christians, at least. do when they talk in tongues" (p. 2).

His examination is based on a large sample of glossolalia recorded in private and public meetings over a five-year period in Europe and North America. In-depth interviews and questionnaires provided further information about the people and their beliefs. The book is a sympathetic analysis, showing respect for the beliefs of these people as "sacred ground" (p. 236).
Samarin dismisses such frequently mentioned psychological causes as repression and emotional release. In some sense glossolalia is "learned behavior" (p. 73), yet not learned as foreign languages are learned. "The tongue speaker is the product of considerable instruction, whether or not glossolalia comes suddenly or gradually" (p. 72). Thus, tongue-speaking is not a "supernaturally acquired skill." Samarin analyzes the speech of tongue-speakers in the same manner that a linguist analyzes a foreign language. He makes a phonetic and semantic inventory, and describes its prosodic and paralinguistic features. The discourse "is divided into units of speech . . . through accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses" (p. 78). "The breath group itself can often be divided into subgroups through phonological features" (p. 79). It consists of syllables made up of consonants and vowels taken from the speaker's native language or a foreign language known to him, with much repetition, alliteration, and rhyme. However, the "syllable string does not fall into words" (p. 81), even though one gets the feeling that "words are almost emerging" (p. 82).
In comparing glossolalia to real language, Samarin shows how the two differ in form and function. In form, real language is a systematic relationship between the segments of speech and concepts, a relationship which is missing in glossolalia . While language has communication as its function, there is no meaning to individual strings of syllables in glossolalia. The resemblance to real language is superficial: "It is verbal behavior that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels . . . in a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart and rearranged pseudo-grammatically . . . with variations in pitch,volume,speed and intensity" ( p. 1 20). It is "only a facade of language, although at times a very good one indeed" (p. 128). Yet it is not "a specimen of human language because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives" (p. 128). Yet glossolalia has meaning to the speaker; the meaning is in the area of emotions (joy, concern, anxiety). Thus Samarin defines glossolalia as a " meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead "

Many who 'speak in tongues' believe they are really speaking a new language. And, of course, many who hear this accept this to be the case.
The question for discussion is 'how wide spread is this belief in 2018?'. Is this a commonly held belief or do most Christians dismiss this as rather extreme?
How many people did Robert Tilton fool with this?:

Religious and not News Chat: Is Creation “Very Good” in the Face of Climate Change? - @tig

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 11:04:07 -0500

EDITORIAL : This is one of the key problems with organized religion. People listen to their religious leaders and behave accordingly. Instead of taking seriously the scientific findings on anthropogenic factors (e.g. carbon emissions) that are negatively (and seriously) impacting our environment, those who 'trust' the likes of Ken Ham will behave as though God has our backs and would never allow anything bad to happen to our environment.
Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.

By Ken Ham:
Can we call creation “very good” in the face of climate change? That’s the question posed by “eco-theologian” and Presbyterian minister Dr. Neddy Astudillo in a recent article . She describes the alleged challenges our world will face—food shortages, wildfires, heat waves, coastal flooding, and poverty—if climate change continues and then writes, “this impending reality challenges my understanding of creation as good.” But does she have the correct view of what “very good” means in the first place?
Dr. Astudillo whole-heartedly believes climate change is caused by humans and that it will be devastating to life on earth. Now, climate change is real. We can observe that climates change. But much of climate change science is driven by an erroneous interpretation of the past. You see, if you approach the evidence with an evolutionary worldview and the idea that climates have remained relatively stable since the last ice age 12,000 years ago, you will interpret the small changes in our climate today as a result of modern human activity and be much more likely to extrapolate these into huge changes for the environment.
But believers must start with the history in God’s Word. And that history tells us something very different. And Dr. Astrudillo would do well to pay heed to that history. She writes, “If human presence in this land led the Genesis writer to declare God’s creation as ‘very good,’ how can I hold the findings of this report alongside my statement of faith in humanity?”
First of all, it wasn’t only human presence that made God’s creation “very good” (although humans, uniquely made in his image, are the pinnacle of his creation and it was only after the 6th day when land animals and then man were made, that God called all of creation very good). Genesis 1:31 (the sixth day) tells us God saw everything he had made, and it was very good (throughout Genesis 1, at the end of each day, with the exception of day 2 , God looks at what he has made and declares it good ). All of God’s completed creation was very good in the beginning.
WHEN ADAM AND EVE REBELLED AGAINST GOD, CREATION WAS BROKEN.
But all of that changed with sin (something Dr. Astrudillo never mentions). When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, creation was broken. It was no longer very good—and that includes the climate! As Romans describes, the creation today groans because of sin—it’s a fallen creation. Then the global flood of Noah’s day (about 4,300 years ago) radically changed the climate, resulting in a post-flood ice age shortly thereafter. Earth has been slowly settling down since this catastrophic event. So, from a biblical perspective, small changes in the climate are not alarming and not necessarily directly caused by man’s activities. And such changes have been going on ever since the flood.
Dr. Astrudillo appears to be claiming that God’s creation is no longer “very good” because of recent human-caused climate change. But, the truth is, God’s creation—including the climate—is no longer “very good” because of man’s sin 6000 years ago. It’s our sin that is responsible for creation’s brokenness.
While we should certainly strive to protect our planet and care for it, we as believers can look forward to a day when we will have a new heavens and new earth that will not be affected by sin. What a glorious day that will be!

Religious and not News Chat: God vs. ET - @tig

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 21:41:57 -0400

Consider the following logic: There is no direct evidence of extraterrestrial life

It is, however, probable based on our empirical understanding of life and the number of planets suitable to host life, that extraterrestrial life exists somewhere in the universe
It is thus reasonable to assume extraterrestrial life does exist
∴ If it is reasonable to assume extraterrestrial life exists, then it is reasonable to assume a creator of the universe exists ('God')
What are the problems with this reasoning? Premise 1 is correct. We have zero evidence -not a shred- that extraterrestrial life exists.
Premise 2 is correct. Given our empirical and theoretical understanding of the size and variability of the cosmos, it is statistically more likely than not that at least one extraterrestrial life form exists in the universe.
Premise 3 is correct. Given the probability, it is reasonable to assume extraterrestrial life exists. This is not a fact, it is a reasonable speculation.
The conclusion, however, is a non-sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the premises. At the very end, the argument leaps to a logical equivalence of God and extraterrestrial life in terms of existence. That is, it hijacks the assertions for extraterrestrial life and -at the last moment- substitutes in 'God'.
To see the flaw, let's look at the premises with 'God' (sentient creator of the universe) properly used instead of extraterrestrial life. There is no direct evidence of a sentient creator of the universe

It is, however, probable based on our empirical understanding of life and the number of planets suitable to host life, that sentient creator of the universe exists somewhere in the universe
It is thus reasonable to assume a sentient creator of the universe does exist
Premise 1 is correct. We have zero evidence -not a shred- that a sentient creator of the universe exists
Premise 2 blows up. The empirical factors for determining the likelihood of extraterrestrial life have nothing to do with the likelihood of a sentient creator of the universe.
Premise 3 is false because premise 2 is false.
Substituting God for extraterrestrial life equates the most supreme possible entity - the creator of the universe - with a single life form. Extraterrestrial life could exist as a lowly single-cell organism in a minor planet in a distant galaxy. That is all it takes for the extraterrestrial logic to work. Not so with God.
So in simple terms: The likelihood that extraterrestrial life in even the most primitive form exists says nothing about the likelihood that God exists. One can reasonably assume that extraterrestrial life exists (this is not fact, it is simply an educated guess) and commit resources to explore the cosmos looking for evidence to support this hypothesis. The God hypothesis, however, is profoundly different and needs its own argument and supporting empirical data.
Hijacking the extraterrestrial argument is absurd on its face.

Religious and not News Chat: Who is the Best Movie Monster Slasher? - @gordy327

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 11:32:47 -0400

As Halloween approaches, there is a gluttony of scary Halloween movies on television and in theaters. The new Halloween movie is out, 40 years after the original. In the spirit of Halloween, let's look at which slasher is the best of them all. For this list, I will be looking and briefly comparing the various slashers of Halloween movies: the guys who often wear a mask and chase horny teenagers around with a bladed weapon. They must also be or have been human at some point. I will not be considering the "classic" movie monsters like Dracula or Frankenstein, as they deserve a list of their own. If I forgot any slasher, feel free to mention it and explain why you think a certain slasher deserves to be considered the best. Here are the various slashers up for consideration: Michael Myers (Halloween)
Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th)
Freddy Kruger (A Nightmare on Elm Street)
Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
Ghostface (Scream)
Pinhead (Hellraiser)
1. Michael Myers: An emotionless, pitiless, and remorseless individual, Michael got his start in slashing by murdering his own sister as a boy. His imposing and ominous presence is possibly scarier than the large kitchen knife he wields. The William Shatner mask he wears is his signature trademark and only adds to the psychological fear. But he typically only focuses on a single target/victim, namely his younger sister Laurie Strode. Other victims are usually killed due to them being in his way or closely affiliated with Laurie. He is also slow moving and easy to avoid. For this, he loses points.
2. Jason Voorhees: A drowning victim who gets his revenge on anyone staying at Camp Crystal Lake, especially teenagers engaging in sexual activity (that really seems to set him off). He is physically powerful and nigh indestructible, able to shrug off virtually any injury inflicted on him. With his iconic hockey mask and machete, he makes for a formidable and scary opponent.
3. Freddy Kruger: A school custodian who was a child killer, he was burned alive by the angry parents of his murder victims. Now he continues to terrorize children in their dreams, often concluding in their death both in the dream world and real world. Arguably the most popular and famous of the slashers (played to charismatic perfection by Robert Englund), his red and green striped sweater, fedora, and clawed glove makes him easily recognizable and feared. While he can get up close and personal for the kill with his glove, it's the psychological terror he dishes out in peoples dreams that really sets him apart. As he is in the dream world, you do not know he's coming for you until it's too late. Once he's in your dreams, he is in total control and loves to play with his victims first.
4. Leatherface: The granddaddy of the slashers, few things are more terrifying than a crazed guy running after you with a loud, large chainsaw while wearing the skin of his victims as a mask. Unlike the previous slashers, this guy will run and chase you down. His is a truly terrifying presence. However, he is still only human and can be injured or killed by a resourceful potential victim. Still, the thought of being dismembered or eviscerated by a chainsaw does send chills down one's spine.
5. Ghostface: A more generic slasher, whose identity is taken up by multiple individuals. Ghostface prefers to taunt his victims first and relies on a large kitchen knife for the kill. As far as slashers go, he is less terrifying or imposing than the others. While he is memorable for his white "scream" mask and is a more recent addition to the slasher lineup, he is probably the weakest and least terrifying of the bunch.
6. Pinhead: The leader of the Cenobites and a sadomasochist to the extreme, Pinhead derives pleasure from the sheer suffering and pain of others, often through the use of otherworldly chains with hooks which rip one's skin and body apart in what appears to be a most excruciating fashion. His intelligence and sophisticated mannerisms belie a fearsome supernatural power and menacing intent. However, he can only be summoned by a mystical puzzle box and banished the same way. While intelligent, he can be bargained with (although he'll almost always double-cross you) and even outwitted if one is cunning enough.
Conclusion: The best slasher of all is arguably Freddy Kruger. Being able to invade one's dreams and mentally torture and kill someone from within makes him a most difficult opponent to fight, much less defeat. He is in total control in the dream world, which makes escape difficult and takes delight in his creative ways of killing in dreams. After all, one cannot remain awake forever.
Sop what do you think? Thoughts, comments? Let me know, thanks.

Religious and not News Chat: Slavery in the New Testament - @tig

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 19:41:13 -0400

Slavery in the Roman Empire was a fact of life. Most people could not imagine a society without slaves. Some people spoke out against the mistreatment of slaves, and there were slave revolts, but no abolitionist movement existed.
The fate of a slave depended largely on the temperament of his or her master. Masters could punish slaves brutally for real or perceived infractions. Sexual abuse of slaves was also common. Slave work included hard labor as well as skilled service like tutoring, bookkeeping, and estate managing. Masters often freed slaves—and for numerous reasons, including as a reward for obedience and loyalty. Written contracts, however, commonly enforced continued work by freed slaves for their former masters. A wide range of circumstances dictated whether a slave would be educated, illiterate, poor, wealthy, abused, or comfortable.
New Testament writers lived in the Roman Empire and likewise adopted widespread attitudes about slaves. Some New Testament passages rely on negative stereotypes, such as slaves being lazy ( Matt 25:26 ). Other passages use slavery as a metaphor for faithfulness. Paul calls himself a “slave of Jesus Christ” as a sign of devotion ( Rom 1:1 ). Jesus compares the impossible task of a slave serving two masters to followers who must choose between wealth and God ( Matt 6:24 , Luke 16:13 ). Several passages address slaves directly, which is evidence that they were attracted to the early Jesus movement ( 1Cor 7:21 , 1Tim 6:1 , 1Pet 2:18 ). Christian slaves navigated the complex world of enslavement with their new faith.
The most famous slave in the New Testament epistles is Onesimus, the slave of Philemon. In a short letter, Paul implores Philemon to receive Onesimus as “a beloved brother” (). Whether Paul intended freedom for Onesimus is a matter of debate because Paul never explicitly requests his freedom. Other New Testament letters forcefully instruct slaves to obey their masters ( Eph 6:5-8 , Col 3:22-24 , 1Tim 6:1-2 , 1Pet 2:18 , Titus 2:9-10 ). Some passages tell masters to treat slaves better—an indication that some Christians treated their slaves poorly ( Eph 6:9 , Col 4:1 ).
Slaves appear occasionally as minor characters in the Gospels and Acts. Jesus heals an ill slave of a Roman centurion ( Luke 7:1-10 ). At Jesus’ arrest, one of his followers cuts off the ear of the slave of the high priest. Though Jesus censures this act of violence in all four Gospels, only one records Jesus healing the slave ( Luke 22:51 ). The incident underscores how easily slaves could become victims of free people’s anger. In Acts, the slave Rhoda runs to tell the others that Peter is freed from prison. They do not believe her, perhaps owing to the stereotype that slaves were untrustworthy ( Acts 12:12-17 ).
Jesus refers to slaves often in his parables. Slaves in the parable of the prodigal son perform routine work in the background of the estate ( Luke 15:22 , Luke 15:26 ). Other parables depict cruel treatment of slaves, such as the parable of the wicked tenants. Slaves are disposable: they suffer beatings and death at the hands of tenants ( Matt 21:33-44 , Mark 12:1-12 , Luke 20:9-18 ). Some New Testament writers accepted violence against slaves as normal as seen in these parables (see Matt 18:23-35 , Luke 19:11-27 ).
The New Testament does contain several passages that demonstrate resistance to slavery. Slave traders are included in a list of those who are lawless, probably because many acquired slaves illegally ( 1Tim 1:10 ). Another passage condemns the immoral trade of luxury goods in the Roman Empire, concluding with “bodies,” a common euphemism for slaves ( Rev 18:13 ). These indictments of the slave trade are unusual but welcome voices in the New Testament.

Religious and not News Chat: A doctor is taking over Planned Parenthood — and she’s ready to fight - @gordy327

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 13:49:22 -0400

In May, the country’s most polarizing provider of reproductive health care lost its most visible leader.
After 12 years as president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards left behind an organization that claimed nearly 12 million supporters and more popularity than Congress, but faced attacks from all sides. Republicans sought to block taxpayer money from funding the group. Red-state abortion restrictions caused Planned Parenthood clinics to close across the country. As the threats mounted, supporters of the organization wondered who would be capable of replacing its fiercest defender. Should it be someone in the image of Richards, a political powerhouse who stared down lawmakers during congressional hearings? Or as some advocates urged, a leader of color who could understand the needs of the diverse communities Planned Parenthood serves? Later, the search committee added experience in health-care delivery to the list.
On Sept. 12, Planned Parenthood dropped a video message introducing its new president — a woman who somewhat improbably checked all three boxes, and then some. She’s Leana Wen, the wunderkind daughter of Chinese immigrants who grew up poor in Compton, Calif., at one point relying on Medicaid and Planned Parenthood services herself, and a fearless advocate for women and marginalized people who once sued the Trump administration — and won. At 35, Wen is also an emergency room physician, an author, a Rhodes Scholar, a former Harvard Medical School clinical fellow and George Washington University professor. For the last four years, she’s been health commissioner for the city of Baltimore, a role she is leaving this week after earning national plaudits for her work in reducing health care disparities.
Her appointment marks the first time in nearly 50 years that Planned Parenthood has chosen a physician to lead the 102-year-old organization.
To Planned Parenthood’s supporters, that choice signals an emphasis on health care over politics, serving to highlight the full range of services the organization provides, including birth control, Pap smears and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, in addition to abortions.
“She’s fundamentally a patient advocate,” said Wen’s good friend since medical school, Kao-Ping Chua. “That’s what drives everything.” But Planned Parenthood’s critics view Wen’s appointment as an attempt by the organization to mask its focus on abortions under a guise of medical credibility — a “shell game,” as Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee put it. “Putting a new face on the old game isn’t going to make anything different,” Tobias said in a phone interview. “They are abortion, that’s their goal.” Wen is quick to assert that she is not, by nature, a politician.
“My identity, first and foremost, is always as a doctor,” she says as she sits in her office at the Baltimore City Health Department, surrounded by her academic degrees and medical accolades, coughing occasionally after catching a cold from her infant son. She has a doctor’s calmly confident demeanor combined with a brisk sense of urgency. She’s fond of emergency room analogies, comparing a project in crisis to a patient in extremis. She often tells stories about her patients.
Yet while Wen may not be a politician in the mold of Cecile Richards, her identity in some ways mirrors Planned Parenthood’s — that of a medical provider forced to become a political combatant in a war over reproductive health. And she is fully aware of what’s at stake. With the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, Wen fears the possibility that Roe v. Wade could be overturned or further eroded. More than a dozen states have laws that could be used to restrict the legal status of abortion in the absence of Roe. “Standard medical care should not be political,” Wen says. “The fact that it is political means that we as Planned Parenthood need to stand up and fight for it.”
Experience with stigma In many ways, Leana Wen’s decision to make her voice heard culminated four years ago when she stepped on a stage in Foggy Bottom. For most of her life, the-then-31-year-old physician and professor had been hiding something, she told the audience at the TEDx talk in February 2014. She stuttered. “My stutter was often so bad that I couldn’t get out any words at all,” she said.
It began when she was very young, with specific letters such as W, N and L. To some members of Wen’s family, a stutter was a personal failure. She tried everything in her power to hide it.
Meanwhile, Wen and her family battled other stigmas as immigrants adjusting to life in America. Wen was 8 years old when she, her mother and her father, a political dissident in China, fled their hometown of Shanghai and received asylum in the United States. They arrived first in Utah and eventually settled in Los Angeles, living in Compton and East Los Angeles. Her parents worked menial jobs to pay the rent and relied on food stamps for groceries. They were, on multiple occasions, evicted from their home and forced to beg the landlord to let them stay. “Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t,” she said. Sometimes they ended up at homeless shelters. Wen said she consciously avoids many memories from those years. But she still remembers the time in fourth grade when she stabbed herself in the leg with a pencil to get out of a lesson on the Roman Empire because couldn’t pronounce the word “Roman.” The lead is still in her leg.
Yet at age 13, Wen tested into college at California State University in Los Angeles, a commuter school, where she started taking classes with Don Paulson, then a chemistry professor who had never had a student so young in his research lab. Wen, who graduated at 18 with a major in biochemistry, ended up being among the top five best students he ever had in his 36 years at Cal State, he said in a phone interview. “It was almost like I had a colleague rather than a student,” Paulson said. “I think back on it and I go, where did this person come from?” Looking back, Paulson never noticed that Wen had a stutter.
The whole time, the prodigious teenager was performing mental somersaults to skirt around words she couldn’t pronounce. She once chose not to register for a class in neuroscience, because the word started with an N. She avoided saying her own name. She became, she said, “a master of overcompensation,” doubling down on studies and camping out at libraries, but barely making friends. “I became so good at hiding that people rarely heard me stutter,” Wen told the audience at the TEDx talk, “but they also rarely heard me speak.” She hid her stutter well into her 20s, even as she became president of the American Medical Student Association. When she started working with speech therapist Vivian Sisskin during medical school, Wen offered to do whatever it would take to rid herself of her stutter, even if it meant doing exercises for hours on end. But the speech therapist urged her to do what she dreaded most — show her stutter, “walk into the wall of shame,” Sisskin said. Wen gradually stopped substituting words. She started stuttering to strangers in grocery stores, and even to her family. She challenged herself to stutter in her interview for the Rhodes Scholarship, Sisskin recalled. And by embracing her stutter, it gradually improved. She started speaking out more professionally, both in writing and in public speeches. After her mother’s death from breast cancer in 2010, when she was 27, she wrote a best-selling book and launched a nationwide medical transparency campaign.
Even as Wen’s career skyrocketed, she never publicly discussed her experience with stuttering. She was terrified of what her students and peers would think. But in February 2014, on that stage in Foggy Bottom, Wen publicly came out about her identity as a person who stutters. “Each person that I stuttered to became a success, because it meant that I finally got to say what I wanted to say,” Wen said.It took Wen years to see that the biggest source of her shame was also a major part of her identity. Living this stigma informs so much of what she does every day, and what she will do at Planned Parenthood, she says. Whether it’s a patient struggling with opioid addiction, or a woman seeking an abortion, Wen said she understands the stigma they face — and how to fight against it. “What is the worst that will happen if you go for it?” she asked. The same year, a job opened up for Baltimore’s health commissioner. Wen at first questioned whether she should apply for it. She had no experience with city politics. She’d be running a staff of more than 1,000 employees tackling public health crises in a poverty-stricken city she barely knew — and have to take a huge pay cut.
But Wen felt limited by simply treating sick patients once they were already in the emergency room, instead of tackling the disparities in the system that prevented them from getting the care they needed.
“She felt like she wasn’t being tested,” recalled her longtime mentor, Josh Sharfstein, who formerly held the role. He urged her to apply. Her only limit in the job, he told her, would be her ability to stay awake.
He was right. Months into the role, Baltimore erupted in riots. Freddie Gray had died after suffering a spinal injury in police custody. When pharmacies were looted and burned, Wen personally delivered prescription medicine to elderly residents who couldn’t otherwise access them. She seized on the news coverage of the city, quickly churning out op-eds arguing that Baltimore’s underlying problems were rooted in substance use, mental health problems, and historical policies of mass arrest and incarceration. To Wen, there’s no societal problem — poverty, violence, drug abuse, racism — that can’t be confronted through public health. To combat Baltimore’s opioid epidemic, she issued a standing order for naloxone, allowing her to prescribe the overdose-reversing drug for all of Baltimore’s 620,000 residents. She helped launch Maryland’s first 24-hour stabilization center, a place where drug addicts can go to get medical treatment and social services, as an alternative to the emergency room — or jail.
She’s also taken her fight to Washington. She’s testified to Congress about the opioid epidemic. She’s protested the Trump administration’s proposed nationwide “gag rule,” which would ban providers from referring patients to centers that perform abortions. She sued the Trump administration for cutting off $5 million in funding for two Baltimore-based teen pregnancy prevention programs — and won.
Wen had no intention of leaving the Baltimore health department. But then she gave birth to her first son, Eli, now 13 months old and named after her one of her heroes, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), a man she hopes her son can “model his life around.” Her pregnancy turned out to be high-risk, and required her to meet with her doctor for a physical exam every two weeks. It also coincided with Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and gut Medicaid. She thought about what her pregnancy would be like without access to stable health insurance, a job, a partner, a car. She thought about the privilege she has now that her family didn’t have growing up, “and what that means in terms of my responsibility.”
After the search committee approached her, she couldn’t think of anything more important than serving at the helm of Planned Parenthood.
It’s an organization her mother had relied on for health care. Wen herself had depended on Planned Parenthood as a teenager to learn about birth control. Becoming the face of an organization vilified by many Americans would place a target on Wen and on her family, including her husband of almost six years, Sebastian Walker, an information technology consultant, and 13-month-old Eli. In her first meeting with Cecile Richards, in New York over the summer, the two mothers talked about what the job would mean for Wen’s family. Richards urged her to trust her gut, she recalled. “For a lot of women, it’s what we need to do,” Richards said. “Focus on what you believe is the most important, and just don’t let up.”
Making it personal On a Monday morning during her last few days as Baltimore’s health commissioner, Wen was straddling two worlds. She would be traveling to New York later that week for meetings with Planned Parenthood. The country was in the midst of a debate over a Supreme Court nominee that could someday cause millions of women to lose access to abortion. But in meetings with her health department staff, Wen was still the most energetic, enthusiastic person at the table.
She moved quickly from one item to the next, constantly jotting down bullet points on her multiple to-do lists, but still taking the time to ask a colleague about his wife, who was expecting a baby. Wen was formal and focused, yet sincere and self-deprecating, calling herself out for rambling, and for using a metaphor that didn’t quite connect. She spoke with her hands, occasionally pausing a train of thought to say things like, “this is why we do what we do!” In an afternoon meeting, Wen planned what would be one of her last acts as health commissioner — responding to a Trump administration rule, proposed this week, that would make it more difficult for immigrants to stay in the country permanently if they use Medicaid, housing vouchers or food stamps. Wen, as she often does, made it personal. She told the story of how her mother, as a new immigrant in the U.S., had to rely on Medicaid while she was pregnant with Wen’s sister. If faced with a trade-off like this one — medical care or legal status — what kind of choice would she have had to make? “How could this not be a public health issue?” Wen said.

Religious and not News Chat: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - @gordy327

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 09:41:28 -0400

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 158 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere—except in the public imagination. Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as “intelligent design” to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. When this article first went to press in 2002, the Ohio Board of Education was debating whether to mandate such a change. Prominent antievolutionists of the day, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Darwin on Trial, admitted that they intended for intelligent-design theory to serve as a “wedge” for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God. The good news is that in 2005 the landmark legal case Kitzmiller v. Dover in Harrisburg, Pa., set binding precedent that the teaching of intelligent design in U.S. public schools is unconstitutional because the idea is fundamentally religious, not scientific. The bad news is that in response, creationists have reinvented their movement and pressed on. When they lost the ability to claim that creationist ideas are valid science, they switched to arguing that they were only supporting “academic freedom.” Worse, to further obscure the religious roots of their resistance, they now push for “critical analysis” of climate change, cloning research and other scientific endeavors that they paint as culturally oppressive.

Consequently, besieged teachers and others are still likely to find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism, by whatever name. Creationists' arguments are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution. Nevertheless, even if their objections are flimsy, the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage. The following list recaps and rebuts some of the most common “scientific” arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom. These answers by themselves probably will not change the minds of those set against evolution. But they may help inform those who are genuinely open to argument, and they can aid anyone who wants to engage constructively in this important struggle for the scientific integrity of our civilization.
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty—above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution—or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter—they are not expressing reservations about its truth. In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.’” The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling. All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning:
The fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. “Survival of the fittest” is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In pioneering studies of finches on the Galpagos Islands, Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild. The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

3. Evolution is unscientific because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created
This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time—changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related. These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in the Grants' studies of evolving beak shapes among Galpagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms—such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization—can drive profound changes in populations over time. The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 200,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominin creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not—and does not—find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.
Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on Earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence. New species evolve by diverging away from established ones and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. Credit: Science Picture Company Getty Images
It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.
No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept. Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist, then at the University of Washington, surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. Surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss, now at Arizona State University, were similarly fruitless. Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.
Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology. Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals—which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs. Fossil record shows a succession of hominins, with features becoming progressively less apelike and more modern. When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor. The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, “If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?” New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on Earth.
The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to Earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young. Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on Earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.
Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving “desirable” (adaptive) features and eliminating “undesirable” (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.
As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence “TOBEORNOTTOBE.” A million hypothetical monkeys, each typing out one phrase a second on a keyboard, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison, then at Glendale College, wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.
This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts. The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.
More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.
On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)—bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.
Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses. Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species. Nautilus shell has become a symbol of evolution and biological change. As the creature that occupies the shell outgrows one chamber, it builds another, larger chamber next to it, creating a growing spiral pattern. Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations—sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership. Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection—for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits—and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California, Davis, demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils—creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.
Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. An amazing fossil creature from 375 million years ago named Tiktaalik embodies the predicted and long-sought transition of certain fishes to life on land. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominins (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans. Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds—it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record. Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the “molecular clock” that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features—at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels—that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.
This “argument from design” is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.
Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution—what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even “incomplete” eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.) Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.
“Irreducible complexity” is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap—a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems. Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells. The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California, San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all. Complexity of a different kind—“specified complexity”—is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of author William A. Dembski in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life. Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.
Misleading Semantics of Creationism: Only methodological naturalism can determine how all life came to be
“Creation science” is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism—it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover—their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics. In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?) Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion—that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain. Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas. Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort. —J.R.

Religious and not News Chat: Climate change could affect human evolution. Here's how. Global warming will likely alter the internal workings of our bodies — and cause a noticeable shift in our appearance. - @gordy327

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 21:39:43 -0400

As climate change brings rising temperatures, droughts, shifting patterns of precipitation and longer growing seasons, plants and animals are evolving to keep pace.
Biologists have observed squirrels and salmon developing at an accelerated pace, causing them to reproduce at a younger age. Earlier summers have caused some flowers to bloom earlier in the year. And corals are forging new relationships with microscopic algae to survive in warmer, more acidic seas. As the planet continues to warm, evolutionary changes are expected in other species as well — including Homo sapiens. Climate change will alter the internal workings of our bodies in subtle but significant ways and will likely cause a noticeable shift in our appearance.

Inside the Body:
A warmer climate means malaria, West Nile virus and other diseases long confined primarily to the tropics will spread into temperate zones. As a result, people living in the U.S. and other developed nations will be exposed to these illnesses, and our immune systems will be forced to evolve new defenses. That, in turn, could cause other, noninfectious diseases. Two blood disorders — sickle cell and thalassemia — arose and continue to exist because they have a beneficial side effect: resistance to malaria. Such disorders, or new ones, may soon appear if malaria moves into populated areas of North America, East Asia and Europe. Similarly, our digestive systems will evolve in response to shifts in food availability — where crops and livestock can be cultivated. The ability to digest milk in adulthood evolved among groups in the Middle East and North Africa that began raising cattle. Future generations may evolve better abilities to tolerate sugar or fat. Changing diets will also trigger changes in our microbiomes — the bacteria and other microorganisms that live in our guts and help to keep us healthy. Vegetarians tend to harbor a different mix of bacteria than meat eaters, and these changes could be exaggerated if prolonged droughts make it too costly to raise livestock for meat.
External changes
While these changes will be of enormous interest to biologists, they will be largely invisible. But as we change on the inside, we’ll also be changing on the outside. Evidence suggests that a warming planet could melt away differences between human races — or population groups, as scientists more accurately call them.
The reason why climate change could reduce racial differences is that it will trigger massive migrations. In recent decades the world has become more urbanized, with people moving into large cities in coastal areas. But as polar ice melts and sea levels rise, large numbers of people will be forced to flee the coasts. And as droughts become more common and more severe, people living in more arid areas will have to move to places with more reliable sources of water.
Environment
These migrations will erode the geographic barriers that once separated human populations. In fact, this process is already underway. As of 2017, 258 million people were living in a country other than the one they were born in — an increase of 49 percent since 2000, according to a report from the United Nations. A World Bank report released in March predicts that climate change will cause 140 million people to migrate by 2050, with those now living in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America especially likely to migrate. One consequence of large-scale migrations is what biologists call gene flow, a type of evolution caused by the blending of genes between populations. When people from different populations mate and reproduce, their genes intermingle in their children. That can lead to combinations of traits not seen in either parent or in the populations they come from — like the dark skin and blue eyes of Cape Verde islanders, the result of interbreeding between Portuguese and West Africans.
Shifting skin color
One of the most obvious effects of gene flow may be greater similarity in skin color. Skin color differences came about a result of natural selection in different human populations. The pigment eumelanin makes skin darker, which helps protect against harsh sunlight. But too much eumelanin can make it hard for the body to produce vitamin D, which is needed to build healthy bones. So over many thousands of years, human populations evolved varying levels of skin pigmentation as they spread across the globe, with natural selection balancing the cost of having too much eumelanin (which can indirectly cause bone deformities) versus having too little (which can lead to cancer and birth defects). As a result, skin color came to closely match the intensity of sunlight in different regions — darker near the equator and lighter near the poles.
But in today’s world, with sunscreen and vitamin supplements, natural selection is less relevant to ongoing changes in human skin pigmentation than gene flow. Because skin color is controlled by many genes, parents whose skin color differs tend to have children with intermediate skin tones. And so in five to 10 generations (125 to 250 years), we may see fewer people with dark skin or pale skin and more with a brown or olive complexion. Having both dark skin and light eyes may become more common. Blending of races is already well underway in ethnically diverse countries like Brazil, Singapore and the U.S. A Pew report from 2017 found that the number of multiracial births in the U.S. rose from 1 percent in 1970 to 10 percent in 2013. And the increase will continue — the multiracial population is projected to grow by 174 percent over the next four decades.
The bottom line? As people around the world become more physically similar to one another, it's possible that racism might slowly fade.

Religious and not News Chat: Slavery in the Bible - @tig

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 01:37:02 -0400

The God of the Bible (hereafter 'God') is oft cited as the arbiter of objective morality. In other words human morality is a gift from God and God is the one who determines immorality. The immediate problem with this position is that the Bible then becomes the written record of this morality.
The Bible, for those who have studied it, clearly reflects a morality of ancient men. What was considered moral in biblical times is often at odds with what most human beings consider moral today. Worse, the Bible presents at best a confused moral code with plenty of vague notions and contradictions. Using the Bible as the source for moral lessons is replete with challenges. At the pinnacle of the Bible's moral challenge is the subject of slavery and the topic question:
Does God Consider Slavery Immoral?

In the Bible, God weighs in on owning a human being as property yet does NOT condemn it as immoral. The fact that God speaks to slavery proves that He has rendered an opinion. But instead of taking the opportunity to condemn slavery (and actually provide a little evidence that the Bible might be divine) God chose instead to make rules for proper enslavement. A characteristic (albeit not unique) passage illustrating this is as follows:

Exodus 21:20-21 20 Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property .

It should not be necessary to explain the above. But note the blue. This passage is clearly talking about a master beating a slave (potentially to the point of death). So this is serious stuff. Now look at the ending part of the quote:
... since the slave is their property .

Here God deems a human being as the property of another. No small declaration.
Back in biblical times slavery was commonplace. It was the core of the economic system. People lived their entire lives with slavery so it seemed very normal to them. That includes the many ancient men who penned the content we collectively call 'the Bible' today. So it is no surprise that the Bible (if written by men without the guidance of God) does not condemn slavery. Not only was slavery considered normal to these ancient men, but condemning slavery would disrupt the economic base of the times. Of course ancient men would not - on their own without the guiding wisdom of a supreme entity - condemn slavery. And, as we can see, they did not.
But if the Bible were divine - the word of the grandest possible entity - the creator of everything - the arbiter of objective morality, then one would expect God would not make rules for slavery but would instead condemn it. After all, slavery is immoral. We all 'know' this to be true do we not?
Condemning Slavery would Wreak Havoc with the Economy

Yes it would! It would create quite a problem for biblical societies. But God has demonstrated a willingness to interfere in many ways. One can cite Adam & Eve and the subsequent impact on all generations of human beings. No tiny thing. And then there is the Tower of Babel where God intentionally confuses people with various languages to prevent them from growing too arrogant. And, of course, note that Noah's flood ostensibly interfered with society in the most severe possible way - by wiping out all life on the planet save Noah and his passengers. So it is a weak argument to suggest that God chose to remain silent on the immorality of slavery so as to not upset the apple cart. The omniscient, omnipotent God of the Bible is not known for being silent, for not messing with his creations or for lacking power.
You Are Twisting The Meaning Of Scripture

One can always resort to cheap tactics such as merely declaring ' you are mangling the meaning of the scripture ' or ' you are ignoring the context ' or ' but God would never condone slavery ' or any number of feeble excuses. But there are select passages of the Bible that really speak for themselves. Exodus 21:20-21 rather clearly states (per God) that one human being is the property of another. No point trying to deny it. Further, one can go to the Hebrew version (more 'original') and we will find this:
And should a man strike his manservant or his maidservant with a rod, and [that one] die under his hand, he shall surely be avenged. But if he survives for a day or for two days, he shall not be avenged, because he is his property .

The scripture does a fine job of laying this out all on its own. No twisting required.
Take Away

It probably is best to not try to define the Bible as providing moral guidance. That will get you into trouble very quickly. But if the topic is Slavery in the Bible it is highly advised to not try to mount a biblical defense. Not only does the Bible never show God condemning slavery as immoral but it actually shows God acknowledging and allowing the practice of one human being owning another.

Religious and not News Chat: Why There Is No God: Quick Responses to 10 Common Theist Arguments [for the existence of god] - @gordy327

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 16:05:40 -0400

I have been in many conversations where the debate turns into a discussion about whether God exists or not. Often times, theists will cite some "proof" for a God, which often turns out to be a logical fallacy, a vague explanation, or convoluted attempt at a rationalization. Others simply cite "faith," and that's it, which is a total intellectual cop-out and also irrational. Here is a list of common arguments (courtesy of Atheist Republic) theists give for a God:
1. "Science can't explain the complexity and order of life; God must have designed it to be this way."
First, when considering this position, it's important to recognize the difference between complexity and design. Complexity itself does not require an intelligent creator. It's easy to impose a design upon things that exist by chance or developed through a natural process like evolution. To an extent, this argument gains traction because of wide misunderstanding of science and especially evolution. Everything in the universe conforms to certain simple scientific rules that have been repeated over billions of years. While this can be awe-inspiring, it by no means suggests a creator. Failure to understand the scientific principles guiding the creation and development of the universe does not mean that a deity must exist to explain the natural world.
2. "God's existence is proven by scripture."
This argument presupposes its premise. People believe in scripture and place value in the words because they already believe in the religious principles the text describes. There is no inherent value to the Bible, Quran or any other religious text; these documents are not self-authenticating in any way. In fact, many factual inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be found within religious texts themselves. For example, the Bible contains two separate creation stories, each of which provides a very different explanation. Similarly, there is no historical, archaeological or scientific evidence to support many of the stories in the Bible and the Quran. Ultimately, religious texts are infinitely fallible because they are man-made products of whimsy, poetry, mythology and some history woven together into a new whole. The texts in the Bible have been gathered from many oral sources over thousands of years and compiled arbitrarily into a single document; it's hardly surprising that the narrative would be so inconsistent. Other religious texts have similarly convoluted histories. Aside from the problems with individual texts, there's also the obvious issue that the very presence of multiple scriptures negates the authenticity of any single religious document. It's impossible for every religious book to be true; it's highly presumptuous to assume that one's own preferred scripture is the single "true" scripture while all the others are false accounts. It's far more likely that every religious book is equally fictitious and unreliable.
3. "Some unexplained events are miraculous, and these miracles prove the existence of God."
A miracle is typically understood as an extraordinary event or happening that is explained as being the work of a divine agency and having a supernatural origin. However, before miracles can be used as irrefutable proof of God's existence, the cause or origin of so-called miracles must be proven. There is currently no evidence to suggest that miracles truly exist....It's curious to note that the miracles performed by an "all-loving" and benevolent God so often involve sparing a handful of people from a tragic accident, devastating disaster or deadly disease. God is rarely held accountable by believers for all of the deaths that occur when people are not saved by a "miracle." On the whole, the tiny percentage of "miraculous" recoveries would be greater evidence of a deity's arbitrary cruelty than his benevolence, but this is never something believers seem comfortable discussing.
4. "Morality stems from God, and without God, we could not be good people."
So-called "moral" behaviors, such as altruism and reciprocity, are not inherently human. In the natural world, they can be observed in a variety of animal species, especially social animals. Science shows that such behavior has an evolutionary benefit: creatures who learn to interact well with their kin will have a stronger likelihood of survival and passing on their genes. All of this means that, from a scientific viewpoint, morality does not stem from God. Instead, it has its roots in brain chemicals and is supported by strong cultural conditioning. Parents pass their morals along to their children, and individuals take social cues regarding "right" and "wrong" behaviors from friends, family, media influence and more. Religious texts are just an attempt to codify acceptable behaviors into a set of laws. Unfortunately, these rules can quickly become outdated, irrelevant and even painfully arbitrary. It's fashionable for religious people to claim that atheists are immoral hedonists, but a quick survey of real people shows that to be false. By and large, atheists are no less moral than any other group of people.
5. "Belief in God would not be so widespread if God didn’t exist."
This type of claim is called an "argumentum ad populum" or “appeal to the majority,” and it's simply not true. Many beliefs are popular or widely held without being true, and things that are true exist whether anyone believes in them or not. Alchemy, at one time, was extremely popular and widespread, but few people today would seriously claim that lead could be transmuted into gold. There are similarly few people who still believe that the earth is flat or the center of the universe despite those also being very popular beliefs at one time. Furthermore, the widespread nature of religion says little about the veracity of any given religious belief. While it's true that many cultures around the world all hold religious beliefs, those beliefs themselves are widely variable and often at odds with each other. When every religion states that it is the one true path to salvation, it by necessity claims that all others are false. If religion were true by virtue of widespread belief, it would certainly make more sense for all people to at least believe the same thing.
6. "God answers prayers; therefore, he must be real."
Just as miracles are impossible to prove without resorting to unreliable anecdotes, the power of prayer is certainly not supported by science. Belief in prayer relies on confirmation bias. Essentially, people remember the times that prayer seemed to "work" but conveniently forget the many occasions that they prayed and saw no response or received the opposite result of what they'd wanted. These unwanted results are often ignored completely or rationalized away. Prayer is a type of magical thinking. Its appeal is undeniable; it feels empowering and makes individuals feel as though they have a measure of control over the world around them. But there is simply no evidence that prayers are anything more than a placebo. And unlike many placebos, prayer can actually be harmful. The "power of prayer" is one of the most insidious and even harmful beliefs proffered by religion. When faced with any sort of tragedy or misfortune, prayer is one of the least helpful responses imaginable. When tragedy strikes, prayer may make people feel better, but it doesn't actually help the victims. Donating blood, giving money to the Red Cross or volunteering with a relief organization would all be far more beneficial than praying to the same hypothetical deity who ostensibly caused the disaster in the first place.
7. "I feel a personal relationship to God, so I know that he is real."
Such personal testimonies are difficult to refute because they are completely subjective. They're also impossible to prove for the same reason. When individuals report a private revelation or communication with God, it's never about factual information that could be confirmed or denied. These religious experiences are always personal and emotional, which makes them count as nothing more than anecdotal “evidence”.
The human brain has evolved to be particularly sensitive to patterns and causality. It's so effective at this, in fact, that people often see a pattern or purpose in things that are actually random. This is why it's easy to identify objects or faces in the clouds, for example, or why white noise can be interpreted to resemble human speech. This same sensitivity can make random or unrelated events seem like the presence of God, especially if the person experiencing them has a predisposition toward wanting those beliefs to be true. In other cases, a religious experience can be triggered by any number of outside forces, including drug use or mental illness. Indeed, many people in multiple cultures have experienced similar symptoms but variously attributed them to a variety of different sources, both religious and secular.
8. "It's safer to believe in God than be wrong and go to Hell."
This concept, called Pascal's Wager, does not actually support religious beliefs. Instead, it acts as a way to coerce belief out of unwilling participants. The logic goes something like this: if I believe in God and am wrong, then nothing bad will happen. But if I renounce God and am wrong, I will be punished in Hell. There are several problems with this line of reasoning:
-- Religions are inconsistent. In order for Pascal's Wager to work, the believer would need some assurance that believing in God would, in fact, save him from punishment. When multiple religions exist with conflicting messages, however, this is impossible. What if you choose to believe in the wrong God and go to Hell anyway?
-- A truly benevolent God would not punish his creations simply because they did not believe in him. God could just as easily reward his creations for being skeptical. Because there is no way to ascertain what a deity's motives might be, there's no way to know that Pascal's Wager would even work.
-- If a person believes in God only out of fear of punishment, that belief would be thin and false. Surely an omniscient deity could see through that act and choose to reward only true believers.
9. "I have faith; I don't need facts. I just want to believe."
This argument would be perfectly valid if the believer was willing to concede that their God is a social construction or metaphorical concept. Most believers aren't comfortable with that, though, and faith simply does not stand up in the face of scientific scrutiny. Believing in something does not make it true. Truth is not subjective or democratic. It does not need belief to make it work. Gravity, for example, works the same whether you have faith in it or not. You do not need to choose to believe in gravity because it's an immutable fact of the universe. Faith is often lauded as a positive quality, but it is, in fact, very intellectually lazy. Faith precludes scientific thinking and the natural wonder of discovery; it stops people from searching for answers to questions about the real world. Faith is little more than the glorification of willful ignorance.
10. "There's no evidence that God doesn't exist."
This argument is often offered as a last line of defense in religious debates, and the person posing it might feel very clever coming up with it. However, the premise of the argument is both flawed and ridiculous. The failure to disprove something does not constitute proof of its existence. The burden of proof is always on the person making a claim, especially in cases where the claims are unsupported or unfalsifiable. With no enduring evidence that a God exists, there is simply no reason to believe in a deity, even if it's not possible to irrefutably disprove his existence. Many thought experiments have been created to show the absurdity of these claims, such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn, Carl Sagan's "The Dragon in My Garage," Russell's Teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. All of which are absurd claims without evidence and yet impossible to disprove. Familiarizing yourself with these thought experiments can give you a clear picture of exactly why the burden of proof should always be on the person making a claim.

Religious and not News Chat: What happens when a patient says, 'Doc, help me die' - @gordy327

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 12:11:06 -0400

A CNN article from March 2018:
My 54-year-old patient was alone in the intensive care unit, with no family or friends in his life. He slumped in his bed, gasping, staring up at me. Admitted with lung fibrosis and pneumonia, he had scars and infection aggressively replacing his airways, despite our best treatments.As a newly minted doctor years ago, my mind was usually occupied with beeps and buzzers providing me technical information to help calculate choices about patients' care. Having developed gray hair over many years at the bedside, my first priority is now more straightforward: to hear the voices of the vulnerable people looking up at me from their bed. That is what I try to do as a physician, including, of course, what they tell me in the silences.
I pulled a chair next to his bed so we could talk at eye level. His face was blank. "I want euthanasia. I'm going to die soon, so what's the point of living longer? I'm just wasted space."
I felt nauseated. The illegality of euthanasia was not what ran through my mind. Instead I thought about how Paul had lost his sense of personhood. I thought about how I had chosen to become a doctor in the first place.

I chose medicine as my calling after a childhood spent in the Deep South: Shreveport, Louisiana. My mother taught English there after my father, an engineer, had left her for another woman. I remember it was so hot that my siblings and I would fry eggs on the sidewalk. No joke. On most days, we'd walk to a nearby bayou and catch baby alligators for fun and fill up coolers with crawfish for dinner. That last part is important because we had no money at all. Dad wouldn't pay anything to Mom, who didn't make much as a teacher. So I started working at the farm of a man who wanted to marry my mother. I worked 14-hour days from about five in the morning doing square bales of hay until seven at night picking vegetables and running the country store.
While I cherish those years and the formation that grueling work provided, I was determined to do something different with my life. Mom told me that Dad had loved math and science, and she taught literature. So I figured it must come naturally for me to split the difference and do something with people, science and the arts. To me, that meant medicine.
Dr. Wes Ely assessing a patient in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Vanderbilt.
I remember our first big assignment in sixth grade was to write a research paper on what we would be when we grew up. I rode my beat-up bicycle to the local library and began reading about how to become a physician: What was the process and what would it all mean? I walked out of the library that day having spent most of my time reading a long medical essay about truth. The author insisted that to be a physician, one has constantly to seek truth about the patient's diagnosis, the best treatment, and the best way to serve each and every person. What I learned from the essay was that truth doesn't change depending on our ability to stomach it. As I progressed through Jesuit high school and Tulane, this became a common theme in my pursuit of a life as a doctor: "Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong. Right is right even if nobody is right." Numerous people are credited with some version of this quote, from actors to philosophers to theologians. That sense of truth drove my study and training and my realization that each person's life has value beyond measure.
I knew long before I met Paul that I couldn't kill another person just because he or she wanted me to, but I still had to find a way to respond to Paul's request to die.
'Just don't abandon me.' My response came in parts over my days with him. First, I explained that, as his physician, I wanted to be with him through the dying process. I told him that I considered us to be in a mutual covenant. We both had a degree of autonomy that had to be respected, but I would never intentionally harm him. "Paul, our covenant includes my limiting your suffering," I said. "You are the best judge of when you need more meds for pain, anxiety and breathing. All of us will work day and night to end your distress, but we won't deliberately end your life."
With our eyes locked, Paul gave his instruction: "Just don't abandon me." And we sat there, as partners.
As a physician, there is no better place to be. Perhaps especially amid the uncertainty, we must learn to partner with each person in the bonds of this two-way relationship. He in need of help and me in need of helping.
Paul was receiving excellent palliative care for his physical symptoms, but it wasn't enough. It never is. Emotional isolation and despair can cast a shadow darker than disease. Physicians fail our patients on a human level. We forget that our patients are more than the sum of their medical conditions, so I asked Paul about other types of therapy — art, music, spirituality, pets, sunshine — that might help him.
'He who has a "why" to live can bear almost any "how"'
"I want my music. Can you get me the soundtrack for 'Lord of the Rings'?" Within minutes we had the songs playing in his room, and his demeanor changed from desolate to alert and engaged. "I love music. It's always been a motivator, but now ... I don't know." He shifted in his bed. "My goals are gone."
Nietzsche's words came to my mind, "He who has a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how.'"
Viktor Frankl, as a physician-survivor of Auschwitz, used Nietzsche's quote four times in his crucial analysis, "Man's Search for Meaning." I think this book should be required reading for medical students.
As with many patients, Paul's story needed unpacking. "Paul, what did you do in life?"
He smiled and shrugged. "I'm a rare beast: a plumber who acts. I do Shakespeare festivals. You know, 'The quality of mercy is not strained.' I've been mulling over that line. Years ago I didn't understand it. I do now. Mercy should not be forced. It's better as a natural infusion, one person to another."
I described for Paul the many years I spent alongside my single-mom-turned-Shakespeare-director, helping her cue actors. As we talked, I watched his erratic oxygen levels fall and then partially recover, obliging us to take breaks. Sweat would build up on his forehead, and, more than once, I worried that our conversation was too much of a strain. But we were unpacking, and it was essential.

That night I asked Christine, a nurse who loves theater, to sit and talk with Paul. Soon their lives were interwoven, too. "I think I helped Christine," Paul said the next day. "My own illness made me forget that one of my 'things' is seeing when someone is hurting. And Christine is. She came to help me, but it turns out some really personal things in our background are weirdly similar. I told her my way through the worst of it." He paused, his thoughts far away. It seemed like a good time to return to his previous request. "Paul, you've asked for euthanasia, and you brought up Portia's line from 'Merchant of Venice' about mercy. Can we talk about these things?" He nodded, and closed his eyes.
"We all want to be here with you in your suffering. I want your opinion: I don't think injecting you with a lethal drug would be truly merciful, but it would, in every sense of the word, be 'strained.' It would be a forced and unnatural 'false' mercy. Whenever possible, mercy must also be lifting and healing. I don't want to abandon those key elements in serving you."
His eyes opened wide. "Doc, talking with you and Christine about life's best and worst times has helped." He took a deep breath, and I heard the whoosh of high-flow oxygen into his nostrils. "Things I confided to Christine are helping her sort through her own struggles. She said she's coming back tonight, and that means the world to me." Then, unwittingly, Paul paraphrased Nietzsche: "When we met, I was afraid of being a burden and not mattering. Now I feel different. I'm not a believer like others, but I guess I remembered the 'why' to live." Short of a war zone, there are few settings as raw as an ICU. Yet treasured moments of human transformation come when people like Paul rediscover their "why," even if just for an hour or a day.
'I'm glad I didn't miss this time."
I see many paths toward survival in the ICU, and for non-survivors, myriad paths toward death: sudden, prolonged, stuttering, reluctant, stoical -- and these paths are dynamic, not static.
It is a rare patient who asks me for euthanasia, but it is nearly universal that dying patients seek help with suffering. Sitting on their beds brings me right up against their fears, the greatest of which is usually not intolerable pain. Lack of control is what bothers people the most, and it drives most requests for euthanasia, which is predominantly a first-world phenomenon. As we have gained more and more ability to dictate so many aspects of our lives, looking ahead in uncertainty has become something people are not willing to tolerate. As a physician, I find this is a very important "teachable moment" for most patients: helping them (and me) to live in the moment. Whitewashed along a wall in the home for destitute and dying in Kolkata, these words of Saint Mother Teresa became emblazoned in my mind, and I recalled them for Paul: "Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." He nodded in agreement.
Paul reminded me that the best remedy for angst is human relationship and community.
The problem with assisted suicide and euthanasia for Paul — and for others — is that it presented him with an illusion of 'cure,' when in reality it would have left him devoid of the healing he received.
And alongside the patient, of course, sits the physician. The problem for me with intentionally administering lethal medications to end the life of another person is that it would rob me as a healer. I would be qualitatively changed. If I were ever to assume that I had authority over life to take it deliberately, it would, for me, create an irrevocable cavern of emptiness. The infinite worth of every person outprices autonomy: What you and I want is less important than who we are. Obviously, the approach I took with Paul won't be an answer for everyone, yet it is too often left untried. Some will say Paul's story is merely an uplifting anecdote. Nevertheless, I hope to embrace the lessons I learned at his bedside for most of my patients, and I hope my colleagues do the same. Caregiving is a partnership. We are sent to heal even when cure is not possible. What we should be trying to heal is often not physical disease or clinical depression, but a person's sense of insignificance and hopelessness, which we cannot heal by eliminating the person. Paul died a week later. By then he realized his life was of value even with a terminal disease. In fact, the last thing he said to me, between gasps, was: "I'm glad I didn't miss this time. I never saw it coming, Doc. ... In losing my breath, I gained it."

Religious and not News Chat: NC Church stoked tithing with unemployment scam, ex-members say - @jeremy-in-nc

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 12:41:57 -0400

SPINDALE, North Carolina --

When Randy Fields' construction company faced potential ruin because of the cratering economy, he pleaded with his pastor at Word of Faith Fellowship church to reduce the amount of money he was required to tithe every week.

To his shock, Fields said church founder Jane Whaley proposed a divine plan that would allow him to continue tithing at least 10 percent of his income to the secretive evangelical church while helping his company survive: He would file fraudulent unemployment claims on behalf of his employees. She called it, he said, "God's plan."

Fields and 10 other former congregants told The Associated Press that they and dozens of employees who were church members filed bogus claims at Word of Faith Fellowship leaders' direction, and said they had been interviewed at length about the false claims by investigators with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The unemployment allegations were uncovered as part of the AP's ongoing investigation into Word of Faith, which has about 750 congregants in rural North Carolina and a total of nearly 2,000 members in its branches in Brazil and Ghana and its affiliations in Sweden, Scotland and other countries.

Some of the ex-members said they turned critical documents related to the unemployment claims over to authorities, even though they knew they could be charged with defrauding the government.

The former members estimated the fraudulent claims - some filed by the business owners' wives and other family members - would have drawn payments totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over a six-year period.

The Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the U.S. attorney's office in Charlotte, which cited an "ongoing investigation into allegations against Word of Faith Fellowship" and would not elaborate. The State Bureau of Investigation said the agency would not comment "due to the overall investigation" involving the church.

Whaley and church attorney Josh Farmer did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

In February, the AP cited more than three dozen former Word of Faith Fellowship members who said congregants were regularly punched and choked in an effort to beat out devils. The AP also revealed how, over the course of two decades, followers were ordered by church leaders to lie to authorities investigating reports of abuse.

Last month, the AP outlined how Word of Faith created a pipeline of young laborers from its two Brazilian congregations who say they were brought to the U.S. and forced to work at businesses owned by church leaders for little or no pay.

The AP's stories have triggered investigations in both the United States and Brazil.

Over the years, church leaders have owned and operated more than two dozen businesses. The interviews with former followers, along with documents reviewed by the AP, indicate at least six companies owned by leaders were involved with filing fraudulent unemployment claims between 2008 and 2013. Most of those businesses' employees are congregants, the AP found.

The AP reviewed individual checking account records that showed unemployment benefits deposited by the state, along with income tax records summarizing how much money some of the former followers interviewed received annually in such payments.

Fields, who spent 24 years in the church before leaving in 2015, said his employees kept working without pay while collecting unemployment benefits. "Basically, their unemployment checks would become their paychecks," he said.

It is illegal for employers or employees to knowingly file fraudulent unemployment claims. Since Dec. 1, 2012, violators in North Carolina can face felony fraud charges if the illegal benefits totaled more than $400. Before Dec. 1, 2012, filing false claims was only a misdemeanor.

If investigators believe employers or employees were involved in a conspiracy, however, they could be charged with serious state and federal felony charges.

Fields said he knew the plan was illegal but went along with it because of intense pressure from Whaley, who founded the church with her husband in 1979.

"I'm not proud of what I did, but I have to make this right," he said.

The price of the refusal, Fields said, could be beatings administered by fellow church members and public shaming by Whaley. The church also might mandate that he be cut off from any contact with his family, he said.

"You knew it was wrong, but you knew you couldn't say a word," said Rick Cooper, who acknowledged falsely filing for unemployment from April 2011 to April 2012.

In North Carolina, companies pay a quarterly unemployment tax based on the number of their workers, with the money going into a fund used to pay out claims, according to Larry Parker, spokesman for the Division of Employment Security, which oversees the program.

When a worker files for unemployment, the agency checks with the employer to learn the reason. If an employer says a worker was let go because of the poor economy, payments usually are approved quickly, Parker said.

During the recession, which started in 2007 and was driven by the housing meltdown, laid-off workers could receive state and federal extensions increasing unemployment to 99 weeks with a maximum weekly check of $535. But in 2013, North Carolina legislators tied benefits to the state's unemployment rate. Currently, laid-off workers can receive up to 26 weeks of unemployment, with a maximum payment of $350 a week, Parker said.

And, he emphasized, a worker must have been laid off to collect unemployment.

"If a company is trying to make workers work while they collect unemployment, that's a potential fraud situation," Parker said.

The former congregants said that not only were they coerced into continuing to work while collecting unemployment, the money fell short of what they needed to pay their bills.

"The unemployment checks never equaled what you were making," said Cooper, who worked for Diverse Corporate Tech Inc., a manufacturing company owned by church leader Kent Covington.

"I was making about $700 a week, but I only collected $235 a week in unemployment," Cooper said. "So I'm working the same hours - many times, much longer hours - for less. It was devastating for my family."

Church members were expected to keep tithing regardless of their financial situations and Whaley kept close tabs on "who was giving what," Cooper said.

Some of those interviewed by the AP said they learned about the practice at meetings with company officials, but that Whaley herself also promoted it.

"Jane was heavily involved. She was always asking questions about it," said Rachael Bryant, who calculated that she had received unemployment benefits of about $200 a week for 18 months while still working for a Word of Faith minister.

"I remember after I was on unemployment for a few months and Jane said, 'You're still on unemployment, right?' And I said 'yes.' And she said, 'Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!'" Bryant said.

Workers receiving unemployment benefits must check in every week and demonstrate they are actively seeking work by providing the names of businesses where they filed job applications, and the former Word of Faith members told the AP that church leaders had a plan for that.

"Every week we'd go to the unemployment office and put down that we looked for work at other companies operated by Word of Faith Fellowship leaders," Rick Cooper said. "Those companies would vouch for the Word of Faith members at the unemployment offices. It was a conspiracy. What's amazing to me is that this went on for years and no red flags ever went off."

Cooper said Whaley told him Covington's business needed the money because "the devil had been attacking the company's finances" and the minister might lose his house.

Rick Cooper's son Jeffrey, an attorney and accountant who also has broken with the church, worked for Covington's company, too. Jeffrey Cooper said he was so uneasy about the practice that he called the Division of Employment Security to ask what he labeled a "hypothetical question."

"I said, 'Can an employee file for unemployment while they were still working for a company?'" he told the AP. He said the state official replied that he hoped it was only a hypothetical question because the practice was illegal and anyone involved with it could face serious charges.

Cooper said he relayed the information to Covington, who exploded. "He started screaming at me at the top of his lungs that I was wicked," Cooper said.

As a result, Cooper said he was publicly rebuked by Whaley and completely segregated from his wife for six months. Other church members interviewed by the AP corroborated his story.

Rick and Jeffrey Cooper that they and nearly three dozen employees at Diverse Corporate Tech and Covington's other company, Integrity Marble and Granite, filed false unemployment claims over the course of several years.

Covington did not return several phone messages from the AP.

Benjamin Cooper, Jeffrey's brother, told the AP that Whaley touted the success of the unemployment tactic from the pulpit in 2009.

"There was a church service and Jane got up and started saying that Kent had heard from God of a means to save God's companies' money," Benjamin Cooper said. "She needed to have a meeting after church with all the business owners. I knew what she was referring to. That's why I remember it. We were already on unemployment at that point."

Rachael Bryant said she was pressured into filing false unemployment claims in 2008 after her boss, a medical professional who was a leader in the church, was audited by Medicare and told he owed money because of coding errors.

Bryant said one of her boss' sons told her the company wouldn't be able to pay her for a while, but that Whaley refused to let her look for another job. Eventually, she said, Whaley said they had a plan to help both the doctor and his employees.

"She said, 'Rachael, God found a way where you can make some money. Kent's done it with some of his businesses. So we're going to put you on unemployment,'" Bryant said.

Some of her boss' family members also filed for unemployment while continuing to work at the business, she said.

"I remember that I went to Jane after being on it for like three or four months and I remember asking her if I could apply for a job opening in another doctor's office. Well, she started screaming at me, 'You're wicked! There's nothing but the money devil in you!'" said Bryant, who had been making about $500 a week before being reduced to only unemployment checks.

Bryant said she was too scared to leave.

Looking back, Fields - whose oldest daughter and grandchild remain in the church - said he struggles with his decision to knuckle under pressure and participate in the plan. And he regrets it.

"The businesses helped support the church," he said. "We would make large donations. Without the businesses, they would have been in trouble."

He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.

"At the time, it just seemed like the right thing to do. But I was wrong," he said. "We were all wrong."

Religious and not News Chat: From a cultural tradition devoted to deicide: A open lament for modernity - @kpr37

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 21:29:24 -0400

Early 17th century: from ecclesiastical Latin deicida ‘killer of a god’, or directly from Latin deus ‘god’ + -cide

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/deicide

I come from a long, illustrious and distinguished philosophical tree. One embedded with a deep abiding cultural tradition, that has been habitually, and instinctively devoted to deicide for centuries. (people had to do something before video games) Cynics, we intellectually and logically, killed off hundreds of gods, goddess, and various demigods back in the day.(middle third century-bc to the Council of Nicaea in 325 ad)
These acts of deicide, likely lead to the sudden fall of the cultural traditions and religious practices for all the citizens of the Roman empire by 400 ad.

https://thenewstalkers.com/kpr37/blog/1287/from-a-cultural-tradition-devoted-to-deicide-a-open-lament-for-modernity

Religious and not News Chat: danu-rejoices-at-americas-sudden-and-unexpected-rejection-of-gaia - @kpr37

Sat, 05 Aug 2017 23:57:15 -0400

I believe it was Al Gore who first said to the American budding pagan congregation.

Hi, I'm the prophet of the Goddess Gaia, My name is chicken little. I hate to inform you the sky is falling, and the earth is in fact warming at an alarming rate Oh my, Oh my.... From on high, I command unto you in my goddess name, that thee in an accelerated, expeditious manner sacrifice willingly any means of industrial production, warm houses, air conditioning , individual transportation, individual refrigeration, solo showers and baths, red meat, and your children's future economic well being at the earth's altar in supplication of me (Gaia) It's only when we are all cold, hungry, and in sitting the dark that that goddess can truly be known or appreciated. What gifts the divine can can reward the believer with. Surely gaia loves her children and only wants what is best.

If thee do not heed the words of the Divine Goddess she will burn your little planet to ashes. Woe is thee who ignores the wise words of the holiest Apostle the Goreical. Let's just hope the goddess is satisfied with material sacrifice. She has demanded much more in the past. But don't worry, I'm sure she has mellowed with age. So many were consumed with the dangers of Christianity in America, they never saw us pagans coming. Secularism my ass. It says separation between "church" and state. It says nothing about sacrificing the future of America at the altar of the Goddess Gaia. She is the earth, she is the nation, she is the firmament that we stand upon.

https://thenewstalkers.com/community/discussion/33124/danu-rejoices-at-americas-sudden-and-unexpected-rejection-of-gaia

Religious and not News Chat: Are Human Beings "Fallen" Creatures ? - @john-russell

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 14:14:10 -0400

Can people ever be all good?
Are we not "fallen" in the sense that our natures are constantly being torn between right and wrong?
The creation myth is that God created human beings in his likeness, but the mere insertion of them from the supernatural (God's home) into the natural (our earthly home) led them to temptation and then a "fallen" status. Although this may be a "mythological" explanation, is it not true?
People say, why do we need government? Why do we need law? Why not let everyone be free to follow their nature?
The answer may be "because our nature is fallen".
What say you?

Religious and not News Chat: America was NOT founded on christian principles - @gordy327

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 01:09:30 -0400

NOTE: I've posted this article a while back and I thought it might be nice to revisit. Enjoy.
I've have on occasion been engaged in articles and with individuals who proclaim that America was founded on "Christian principles" (or is a Christian nation). Often, such claims are made to promote one's own religious beliefs above others or seek to validate those beliefs. Of course, such an assertion is not only based on Christian apologetic nonsense, but it is also factually and historically erroneous. Proponents of the "Christian principle/nation' position may also attempt to quote the founding fathers to support their position. But the quotes cited are often edited, misquoted, or outright false and are usually taken from religiously biased sites or secondary sources. David Barton and the Wallbuilders is one such example. Using such questionable sources and positing the "Christian principle" (or the similarly erroneous 'Christian nation') idea is either willfully ignorant and/or dishonest at best, and clearly demonstrates a lack of credibility on their part. So, to be perfectly clear, America was certainly NOT founded on Christian principles or as a "Christian nation," or any other religious ideology for that matter. Here's why:
Let's start with the document that establishes the foundation of our laws and system of government, the United States Constitution. Many theists will claim the Constitution is divinely inspired or influenced by the religious beliefs of its authors. Nothing could be further from the truth, and a simple review of the Constitution makes this abundantly clear. The Constitution itself is based on English Common Law and the principles of Enlightenment, along with earlier documents of similar concepts such as the Magna Carta. Also, there is (very deliberately) not any religious ideology (Christian or otherwise) or deity referenced within the Constitution or even in the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution. Neither did the Founding Fathers have religious ideas in mind when drafting the Constitution. Those points are strongly supported by John Adams in his work (emphasis mine), “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1787-1788):
The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
Mr. Adams could not have been more clear in stating that religion had no place or say in the formation of this country or drafting of the Constitution. If indeed the Founding Fathers had aimed to found a nation based on "Christian principles," it would seem highly unlikely that they would have forgotten to leave out their Christian intentions in the Supreme law of the land. Given that the Founding Fathers did not incorporate any religious ideology or "Christian principles" within the Constitution itself is quite damning and directly opposes any notion of America being founded on "Christian principles."
In addition, the fact that the United States is not founded on Christianity is bluntly stated in Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, drafted in 1796 under George Washington, passed unanimously by Congress (unusual for the time), and signed by John Adams in 1797 (emphasis mine): "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
A legal treaty with the force of the Constitution behind it (see Article VI, Sect. 2) only further supports that "Christian principles" played no part in the foundation of America, as it is a clear admission by the United States that our government did not found itself upon Christianity and fully demonstrates the feelings and intentions of the Founding Fathers. The First Amendment of the Constitution also drives the point home with the establishment of the separation of church and state. However, for the purposes of this article, I will treat the concept of separation as a separate topic (although, still worthy of discussion in its own right).
Next, let's look at the Founding Fathers themselves. It is common knowledge they had various religious beliefs to varying degrees of devotion. But they also understood the necessity and wisdom of keeping religion and government separate from each others affairs, while at the same time preserving the individual's rights and freedom of religion. James Madison, the father of the US Constitution, had this to say in his letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822:
"There has been another deviation from the strict principle in the Executive Proclamations of fasts and festivals, so far, at least, as they have spoken the language of injunction, or have lost sight of the equality of allreligious sects in the eye of the Constitution. Whilst I was honored with the Executive Trust I found it necessary on more than one occasion to follow the example of predecessors. But I was always careful to make the Proclamations absolutely indiscriminate, and merely recommendatory; or rather mere designations of a day, on which all who thought proper might unite in consecrating it to religious purposes, according to their own faith & forms."
In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments: "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
Mr. Madison sure seemed quite opposed to the notion of religion (explicitly Christianity) being made part of the government or as the basis of this nation. Thomas Jefferson also had similar feelings: "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." ---Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814.
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." ---Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.
When it comes to the question of whether America was founded on "Christian principles" or not, perhaps Mr. Jefferson said it best:"Our principles are founded on the immovable basis of equal right and reason." --Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1797.
Regardless of the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers, they were clearly passionate secularists who believed that the religious beliefs of individuals (especially the President), or lack of them, were entirely their own business. Based on the US Constitution and the writings and intentions of the Founding Fathers, it's safe to conclude that the United States was never founded on "Christian principles." Speaking of "Christian principles," I have yet to see anyone elaborate precisely what those "principles" are that theists claim America was supposedly founded on.