On the internets, porn is where the money is

My daughter typed in the url youytube.com instead of youtube.com

Check out youytube.com. Does everything on the internet have to lead to porn? I'm a big fan, don't get me wrong, but it seems anymore that any mistyped url will redirect to some generic type porn site. Try it yourself.

I guess that's where the money is. When cute puppy dogs make money on the internet I guess we'll be directed to the humane society. For now, be ready to feast your eyes on some, well..use your imagination.

Jesus' so called sacrifice

Anytime someone comes up to you and starts squawking about Jesus dieing for us, God sacrificing his son, or any sort of variant of that, ask them to really explain what they mean.

For example, let's take a look at this statement: "Jesus died for your sins"

Atheist: Ok, if Jesus died for my sins then he is still dead right?

Christian: Well, no, not exactly. He actually rose again.

Atheist: Ok, so he didn't die for my sins then?

Christian: Stop trying to twist things around. He DID die, and then he came back to life.

Atheist: Mmmm...seems he never really died to me then. Once you're dead you're dead. How exactly does an omnipotent being die anyway? I mean if Jesus is God and God is all powerful how can it suffer and die? I would happily get beaten and whipped if I knew for a fact that it was just a temporary thing and that I was eternal. How do we know that this so called "suffering" Jesus did was real? If it's God, how do we determine that real suffering was done? What's the big deal? What REAL sacrifice was made? I just don't see it.

Christian: I'll pray for you.

Atheist: Sigh

The so called "fine tuning of the universe"

Sorry fan (Hi Mom!) for the delay in posting. I've been looking for a job. That sort of takes precedence. Feel free to check out some of my side links (wink, wink)

Anyhoo, what I want to talk about today is the "fine tuning argument put forth by some Christians. They squawk:

"Well, I heard that if the weak forces were like .00000001 different life as we know it wouldn't exist. How do ya splain that?!!?"

Well, first of all I don't HAVE to explain it. Just because I can't explain something doesn't then by default meant your god dun it. I could ask you, well how exactly did your god create the universe from nothing? WHAT??? you don't KNOW?!! well, by default that means your god doesn't exist.

See, that's not really true, it works both ways. A persons god may exist but they have to show that and not just claim some sort of victory if their god is not "dis proven".

Ok, I sort of got off on a tangent. I've heard people just throw out astronomical type odds on life existing as it does now. I'm not sure where or how that they come up with these numbers, they probably just "heard it somewhere". I'm going to make a point about this here:

Let's look at a situation where someone (let's just say a pro golfer) is going to swing his driver to drive the golf ball down the fairway. There are about 300 dimples on a golf ball. There is about 100mm's along a blade of grass. Each golf ball dimple is about 3mm, so let's just say there is about 30 different locations along the blade of grass that ONE of those dimples may lay. Maybe the pro golfer is having a bad day and he could either slice, hook, hit it down the center, basically anywhere in between. Let's make a CONSERVATIVE estimate that there are a million possible blades of grass that the ball can roll and lay on.

My probability calculation may not be precise but that's not important. Basically the odds of having one specific dimple of the golf ball roll up and touch a specific spot along a blade of grass is...drum roll.....

300x30x1000000, or 9 billion to 1. So, when the golfer hits the ball, and the ball eventually does roll up on a blade of grass on one specific dimple, do we say that it was IMPOSSIBLE because the odds were so high against it? Of course not, the ball had to land SOMEWHERE. Now if somehow before humans existing something/some being predicted that we would be like were are now...that would be impressive.

To sum up, what I'm saying is that we are what we are. We could have very well developed into something else. We could have 8 eyes and no legs. We could all live in volcanoes, we could have not evolved at all. BUT we did evolve to what we are and there isn't really anything special about it. It's no more special than the golf ball.

The "debate" on whether the United States was founded as Christian Nation

Every now and then I'll see a debate going on somewhere about whether or not the founding fathers wanted us to be a "Christian Nation". The secular side will bring out the Treaty of Tripoli, which in part of it states in Article 11:

ARTICLE 11.

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 Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan 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.

The secular side also brings out that "god" is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.

But wait!! The Christians will say that God or "God Almighty" is mentioned in EVERY states preamble! Doesn't that make us a Christian Nation?

What I am saying today is that it DOES NOT MATTER if the founding fathers said or stated in someway that we are a "Christian Nation". The Constitution is not a set in stone/static document that can never change. Times changes, new information is discovered, societies morals change.

Here is an example. When the founding fathers drafted the Constitution, owning slaves was a very common thing, and really wasn't seen (at least by the majority of the time) as a bad thing. Our founding fathers could have easily put something in the Constitution that our nation was a "slave nation" and all people in the country had the right to own at least 2 slaves per household.

Do you believe that in the year 2009 we'd still have slaves just because it was written in the Constitution? Of course not. We would have had amendments passed that would have changed all of that.

And what does it really mean to be a "Christian Nation"? Would that mean that it would be the official religion and you couldn't practice any other religion? If you did would you go to jail, or get fined perhaps? Would that mean that the laws would be based on the Bible only? Would that mean that the only science taught had to conform to biblical teachings only? I really don't see why it matters whether or not we are Christian Nation or not. I just don't see our actions and behaviors being much different than they are now.

So all of you STOP IT with the Christian Nation stuff. It just doesn't matter.

Google Ad Sense is nuts

I wanted to start a blog to post my thoughts about my life and more specifically my atheism.

I thought "hey, why not moneytize the blog, everyone else is?". So I setup a Google Ad Sense account.

Instead of "atheist type ads" they have "religious type ads". Why would someone come to my blog and want to go somewhere that supposedly offers proof of God's existence? My reading audience (all TWO OF YOU! thanks by the way!) is to smart for that. I wonder if I called Google they would change it just for me...probably not.

Atheist's - Please start having more children!!

Have you ever noticed that the HUGE families are always Christian? Have you noticed that whenever someone is "blessed" (cough, gag, cough) with quadruplets/quintuplets and now the latest octuplets (to show how crazy this is, "octuplets" is not even a word that Blogger recognizes in the spell checker), they are all some sort of denomination of Christian?

The simple answer to why Christianity is still a driving force in this country is that the Christians are the one having the babies. It gets passed down the generations.

Now, I know you atheists out there are responsible people and don't want to have more children than you can realistically support. I applaud you for that. BUT, until we have a law in this country that says women can have so many children (please don't hold your breath) it's going to make the uphill battle of fighting the religious zealots that much tougher. So atheists, if you feel you can have that 3rd or 4th kid please do so. Let's raise as many critical thinking children as we can.

Continuation of me talking to myself

Please feel free to leave a comment on any post :)

How to be sure your kids don't grow up religious

Army of God PJ's

For the Christians that want to give their kids some protection against the scary noises coming from the attic, and the invisible monsters ready to pull them under the bed to eat them....you now have the ARMY OF GOD PJ's!!! (ominous music starts to play in the background)

If you are not familiar with this here is the website. Go over there, but I must warn you it may cause some nausea (fair warning). Come back here if you're able.

http://www.armorofgodpjs.com/

Ok, I hope you're ok, glad you made it back.

There is a thread over at Facebook which some people claim that this is some form of child abuse. I guess it all depends on your perspective. As an atheist I do believe it's a "form" of mental abuse because it perpetuates not understanding and knowing. I think a better way to handle scared kids at night is to continually convince-show them that there is not anything hiding in the closet or under the bed. Take them up in the attic and show them there are no monsters living there. Kids eventually grow out of that stage, and by giving them some sort of "magical armor pj's" you're not fostering good critical thinking skills which will be beneficial to them later on in life.

But, I digress. Someone over at Facebook thinks this is no big deal and thinks us atheists are blowing it way out of proportion. They're just fricking pajamas he says. He does have a point, in the same way that if a Klu Klux Klan member dressed his kid in pajamas with a picture of a negro hung from a tree, the kid wearing a hood over his head, and instead of a shield which says "Faith" holding a rope shaped like a noose, they're just pajamas right!?

It goes back to perspective and social acceptance. Unfortunately (at least from MY perspective) we still live in a world where promoting the "god meme" is completely ok to pass on to your kids. We do not live in a world (at least most of the world) where it's ok to pass along that hanging a negro is ok. I dream of a world where the former is not ok as well.

When does ignorance become an answer Part 2

Earlier this week I said I'd comment on the following blog entry from the atheistexperience.blogspot.com website.

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-does-ignorance-become-answer.html

Go read the above and come back.

Ok, nice to have you back.

I wanted to expound on what Traci is trying to say. Her point can be summed up in a few words. Basically she is saying that Christians in general, when they don't have an answer for something, just make something up that "seems right", or perhaps, makes them feel comfortable.

I will agree with that completely. However, I don't believe that her example was a good one. Her example about fairies in the garden is not at the same level of "understanding" as the origins of our universe. We do have explanations for how plants grow that can be easily understood by most people. I would venture to say that most Christians can "wrap their brains" around the mechanisms that allow plants/gardens to grow.

Unfortunately what happens when a Christian is presented with something that they can't explain, and as far as they know NO ONE else can either, (or they are not satisfied/comfortable with the explanation) they fall back on "god must of did it" explanation. Of course, this is not a good answer as it really doesn't answer any questions, then you have the questions of how did the god do it? Where do the god come from? Basically "god" becomes a place holder for things yet not understood.

As, I mentioned in a previous post, we are not going to advance as a species if we do not try to figure out the "seemingly" tough questions that we still do not yet fully understand. History has shown again and again that things that were once unknowable are now knowable. 20,000 years from now if we don't kill ourselves off there may be some things that are still not known. I would hope that they don't just punt, give up, and go home. We must keep plugging away to find the answers.

When does ignorance become an answer?

A friend of mine who is a big contributor in the atheistexperience.blogspot.com blog wrote up a recent piece called "when does ignorance become an answer?" check it out. I will comment on it and give my thoughts mid week:

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-does-ignorance-become-answer.html

Oh No! I accidently killed the invisible fairies living in my shoe!

In an unfortunate lapse I have accidentally killed the family of invisible fairies living in my shoe. I am really distraught about this and have asked family members to help deal with my pain. They keep trying to convince me that there were not any invisible fairies living in my shoe. When I insisted that they were and I KILLED them they wanted to see the fairy bodies.

I told them that even though they couldn't be seen, couldn't be detected or observed in anyway known to man-kind, my strong belief and feelings that they were there was good enough to convince me. I found 3 stones in my shoe one time and I'm 100 percent sure they didn't get there by themselves. Those stones must have been brought there by the fairies, I'm SURE of it. I used to think that when things would show up in my shoes, like rocks, bits of dirt, I thought that maybe they got there by accident, by some random chance. But, the more I thought about that the more stupid it sounded! There must be some intelligence putting that stuff in there and the only thing that made sense was a family of fairies!

What I would always do before I put on my shoes was to grab each shoe, speak softly into each one, and let them know that they needed to leave temporarily (I have a really comfortable second pair for them when I need to wear my work shoes). This particular morning one of my daughters distracted me, and I forgot to let them know. Once I put my foot in I realized what I had done.

I really hope that there is a fairy heaven. If so, I hope they are there, looking down, and will forgive me.

How do you explain all this stuff?

When pushed into a corner a Christians last ditch effort usually just throws up their hands and exclaims, "well, how do you explain all of this??!" This usually refers to the universe in general, they just can't wrap their heads around how the universe came about. It can also be worded "how can something come from nothing"? Some physicists have said that there HAS to be "something" and that nothing is a lot more unstable than something.

Many physicists have tried to work on this question and are getting a lot closer to finding out an answer. But, we may never find out the answer to that question. By not knowing does not by default allow you to insert the god of your choice. It's a non answer as you're trying to explain something complicated by something even more complicated. If you are going to make the assertion that the god in question didn't have to be created and as always existed, I can make the assertion to say that the universe in one form or another as always existed. I can wrap my brain around that easier than a god that has always existed. Do I know that 100 percent? Of course not. I prefer to say that "I don't know, but am trying to work on it" than, "nope, can't figure it out, must have been some sort of god"

This video posted on YouTube really addresses the above points well, really takes hold of the "god of the gaps" argument and makes the point in an entertaining way.

The video is called "The thing that made the things for which there is no known maker."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbnciQYMiM

Enjoy!

Aren't you afraid of roasting in hell for an eternity?

Fortunately I've never had this question lobbed at me, but I've seen it come across many a discussion on different websites.

To answer the question, YES, I would be afraid of roasting in hell IF I had some evidence that hell existed, and that my lifestyle was going to lead me there. As of now I have not seen any credible evidence that hell (or heaven) exists other than assertions by religious people. Basically this is just a threat to get people to be scared into believing something without any evidence.

I would rather believe something by evidence than by threat. I personally believe that early in the church they decided that they weren't going to get people to believe the dogma on its own merit. They decided they had to create some sort of unimaginable pleasure if they buy it, and on the flip side create some sort of unimaginable torture if they don't.

Am I afraid of going to hell? I'm just as afraid as the person that has been told that they are going to the Flying Spaghetti Monster hell of strippers with VD and stale beer for not believing in it.

What does it mean to be a "God Fearing Man"?

I've seen that term used before and it got me thinking about it after I saw an old high school acquaintance put that in his "religion" category on Face Book.

It got me thinking about the concept of needing to fear God. This is the God that is supposed to care for, love you more than anything. Unfortunately there are a lot of stipulations for that love like unending worship, adoration , obedience, etc.

Even though Christians in general may not consciously think about it there are a lot of analogies to God being a father type figure. I'm really not sure what Jesus is supposed to be, your brother perhaps? I saw something on the side of a church today which said something like "so all may know him". I guess when they say him they mean Jesus but I'm not for sure.

But I digress. Something that is supposed to love you dearly you shouldn't have to fear at ALL. Can you truly love something back that you also fear at the same time? How it would it sound if someone called Betty a "husband fearing wife"? What would come to your mind? Probably that Betty wishes she was out of the marriage, and did not truly love her husband. We'd probably want to help Betty get out of the relationship. So, if anyone ever tells me they are a "god fearing man" I'd do my best to try and help them get out of that relationship, especially since God is imaginary anyway. Why be fearful of something that doesn't exist?

How are there still local tv weather people employed?

I'm watching Lost tonight and Mark Murray shows up at the end of a KVUE 24 commercial with some sort of "tease" to get you to watch the newscast tonight.

That sort of stuff may have worked up to the late 90's but nowadays you can find out your local weather instantly on the internet. Do they not realize they look stupid by doing this? I can maybe understand watching a local newscast for local news that you may have a harder time finding online...but the weather?! give me a break.

Can Christianity and Evolution Co exist?

I was reading PZ Myers blog today and one of the posts caught my eye. It's titled "Kook fight"

You can read it here:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/kook_fight.php

Basically it's about two prominent apologists arguing between each other whether or not there is a "conflict" between Christianity and evolution. Ray Comfort says that there is and I ABSOLUTELY agree with him.

I believe that you can believe in some type of god and have no issues with evolution at all. But, when you bring Christianity into it (getting into stricter definitions of your "god") the two can not both be true.

Either the Christian God made Adam and Eve, they sinned, God sent down a man version of himself, a "savior" (I still laugh at this concept) to die for us..........or he DID NOT.

By agreeing with the evidence of evolution you MUST chunk out the bible story of the creation, Adam/Eve, the fall from grace, Jesus needing to come, etc.

The bible was written many 100's of years ago when we had no clue of our origins. It was quite OK back then to make up a story about a god creating us because at that time there really wasn't a better explanation!

It still amazes me how people can still believe that stuff with all of the evidence that we have showing otherwise. More on that on a future post.

A couple of questions for atheists and christians

Mostly for the Christians, but I'd like to get comments from atheist's as well.

Number 1 - If you were suddenly bestowed the power (and you do not know what or whom bestowed you with this) so that you could live forever (and you couldn't be killed..period) would you still worship your god? Keep in mind you are only now living forever, you do not get the extra stuff as omniscience, omnipotent, etc.

Number 2 - What exactly would it take for you to consider yourself a god? What powers and abilities would you feel necessary to give yourself that classification?

Thanks for any feedback!

The Amazing Atheist

I just love that guy, he posts videos all the time, I just don't see how he does it. It must be his full time job to post videos on YouTube.

I just put a video bar up featuring his last 4 videos. Enjoy!