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Testing the system

Well... I'm almost recovered from one of the worst "common" colds I have ever had.  It is truly the nastiest thing this side of pneumonia, which, fortunately, I actually didn't have! A friend in Denver says that just about everyone she knows has this bug, while I know of no one here, besides me and RV, who got it. The worst of the symptoms are the sore throat at the beginning, followed by the...

Yesterday, my fifth grandchild was born.  It has been a very sobering pregnancy, as he was diagnosed early on with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome , affecting his heart and aorta. By early evening on the day he was born, he had already undergone two surgeries.  One was done in utero, to implant a stent to increase blood flow through his heart.  The second was done right away after his...

Polytheism It is not clear why the change from polytheism to monotheism should be assumed to be a self-evident progressive improvement. But it widely is - an assumption that provoked Ibn Warraq (author of Why I Am Not A Muslim) wittily to conjecture that monotheism is in turn doomed to subtract one more god and become atheism. The Catholic Encyclopedia dismisses polytheism and atheism in the...

 Why there is almost certainly no God. The Priests of the different religious sects...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivisions of the duperies on which they live' Thomas Jefferson The Ultimate Boeing 747 The argument from improbability is the big one. It is the traditional guise of the argument of design.,...

A deeply religious non-believer I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe to at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it. Albert Einstien Deserved respect The boy lies prone in the grass , his chin resting on his hands. He suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a heightened awareness of the tangled stems and roots, a forest...

I have begun to publish sections and segments of the Popes letter on OUR network of blogs (NatuRedux.com) as well as on Linkedin & Quora & Newsvine & NewsTalkers and will add my comments over time. Pappa francescos 180 page letter is much less about religion than it is about nature and the planet earth. He proposes some fairly radical yet simple and understandable solutions...