September 16, 2008

Church Of England (Anglicans) Takes Giant Step Into The 21st Century

Around a year ago, the new Pope, Pope Whatshisname, oh wait, is it Pope Arnold?, no no no, Pope Benedict, yeah that's the ticket, embraced evolution.

Now the Anglicans have finally decided to embrace evolution too. In fact, they have gone a step further and apologized to Charles Darwin.

Really, they should apologize to the Anglicans, who have been told by many an Anglican priest, to deny evolution. In other words to deny reality.

I think the Anglicans are understanding that by deny evolution in today's computer world is slow suicide:

"
Anglican leaders fear that “noisy” advocates of a literal interpretation of the Bible - especially in the United States...are infecting the perception of Christianity worldwide.
"

I love the term "noisy creationists." Every science or atheist blog gets comments from them. They are all over Youtube too. And the best part is that they are getting clobbered in cyberspace. Clobbered, because they are arguing against fact.
And lurkers, who assumed everything they heard in church or from their parents is true, are now questioning everything to the point that they realize that they are being lied to.

If faith is presented as genuine faith, it isn't a lie. But if faith is dependent on the earth being flat or evolution being false, then it is a lie, and especially the young people are getting it.

Back to the Anglicans. I really get lost when I try to figure out the differences between different Christian sub cults, like Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews for Jesus, Anglicans, etc.

I read that Anglicans are sort of between Catholics and Baptists, whatever that means. I was also told that Anglicans are really Catholics who believe the King or Queen of England is the Pope. In other words, they must be more progressive towards science than the noisy Fundy Baptists.

Anyway, the Church of England has a web site, and yesterday they officially devoted a few pages to Charles Darwin and evolution.

September 7, 2008

Question For Macro Evolution Denying Creationists

Everyone has heard the feeble creationist argument that they have no problem with micro evolution, which allows for humans to collectively change heights over the years, or for new generations of frogs to have longer legs than their predecessors in Australia, and even to allow for a pair Ark dogs to be the common ancestor for all dogs on the planet today. But this is where they conveniently stop allowing for evolution to happen, because they say "how can man and "stinking apes" share a common ancestor? Besides, a literal translation of the bible doesn't allow for it, so it can't be true."

Ok, so here is my question (assuming you agree with the examples of micro evolution I cited above):

If microevolution can occur but macroevolution cannot, then what biological or logical barriers prevent the former from becoming the latter?


If this is your answer.....

.......maybe you need to educate yourself some more on the topic.

Evolution is evolution. Micro evolution is just a classification for small changes, while macro evolution describes lots and lots of micro evolution that happened over usually a very large time period.

For a more scientific response, please watch this video. It explains how evolution happens. And you'll notice that there is no scientific reason for fins to not be able to change into limbs, for example:


H/T to Austin Cline from About.com Agnosticism/Atheism, for coming up with the question.

September 5, 2008

Did Sarah Palin Do A Nude Scene On Family Guy?

I just can't help myself, but Sarah Palin reminds me of the white collar woman found in many porn movies who looks sort of plain until she lets her hair down and winds up doing the pizza guy or football team.
This X-rated Family Guy clip shows what I mean (I'm not sure if Family Guy was responsible for the extra part that has never made it to the TV screens or not):

Family Guy Video - Never Released to the Public - Funny blooper videos are here

But seriously, of the four Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, she is by far the most dangerous.

Sure, most politicians try to comfort the Cretards (I love that word), by mentioning that they are personally against abortion and gay marriage, and say stupid things like that USA was founded as a Christian nation, but Palin seems to also be one of the Cretards:



She actually thinks that Iraq is God's Will. Some can say that is an opinion, but she seems to have an "opinion" that resembles a member seeking Rapturist. If her opinion is that the Rapture is going to happen, what is going to stop her from trying to make it happen if McCain wins, and gets sick while in office?


She is not opposed to teaching creationism in public schools either. And she gives a disingenuous answer as to whether or not she accepts evolution:

'Asked for her personal views on evolution, Palin said, "I believe we have a creator."

She would not say whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact.

"I'm not going to pretend I know how all this came to be," she said.'

********************************************
Evolution explains what happened after all this came to be. She wasn't asked what happened the second before the Big Bang.

How about this? If someone doesn't understand Biology 101, they are not qualified to push their opinion on abortion or gay marriages, onto the public.


Now for a joke I made up that is in really really bad taste:

Why did Sarah Palin CHOOSE to go through with her pregnancy once she found out that she was going to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome?:

She wanted to guarantee that at least one of her kids would grow up to be a Young Earth Creationist.

August 31, 2008

The Only Proof That God Exists Is The Bible

Which one? All of them of course:) But seriously, that is all theists have, and if you don't believe me, ask Edward Current:



I know I post a lot of Current's videos, but that is because of his comic genius, not because I have a crush on him. I can't have a crush on him because I'm not gay.

Even if I was gay, I wouldn't have a crush on him because he doesn't have boobs and a vagina...oh wait, if I was gay he wouldn't need that stuff.

August 28, 2008

Did Mohammed Exist?

The one thing that seems consistent when one analyzes the historical roots of religion is that there doesn't seem to be any contemporary evidence that the key people involved in the biblical stories existed.

This is true of Abraham and Moses. It is also true of Jesus. The fact is that you can find parallel myths and real history that existed prior to the time that the bibles were written, and these myths seem to always get to be part of the biblical figures real life story.

Many mythological stories seem to be part of the stories, but in the case of Jesus, the connection to Osiris-Dionysus is very apparent.

Much of the myth of Moses seems to parallel the real life of Hammurabi.

The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Koran have one big thing in common. They were each written at least 100 years "after the fact," and there exists no contemporary evidence of the main players (other than the OT in regards to around 750-450 BC).

The evidence, in fact, proves the Exodus couldn't have happened. Watch The Bible Unearthed series here, if you haven't already.

As for Jesus, there wasn't a word mentioned about him until Josephus noticed Christians (his followers), 50 years "after the fact." No Greek, Jewish, or Roman historian wrote about Jesus from 1-50 AD.

My "theory" is that Jesus was invented by Paul or someone like Paul in a dream. There were many Christian like cults around at that time, and the Jews were on the verge of getting their asses kicked out by the Romans, so their God was not doing the trick for them.

Over a few decades, Jesus morphed into a real person with a family and friends, all of whom were not around to confirm it by the time this happened.

Again, I'll refer my readers to this article by Scott Bidstrup regarding real history and the birth of Christianity.

Why is a myth easier to believe in? Simple. Since there have been no supernatural acts recorded since the bibles were written, and especially in our information age, where almost everyone has a camera that can record such an event if it happened, one can conclude that supernatural events don't happen.

By inventing (and not on purpose either) people who have supernatural powers and those around these people years after these events supposedly occurred, you basically eliminate all witnesses, which means that no one can say the stories didn't actually happen.

OK, so what about Mohammed aka Mohammad aka Mo aka Muhammed, etc., etc.?

You have to understand that I assumed Jesus and Moses were historical figures until I hit the age of 41 or 42 when Mel Gibson announced he was doing a movie called the Passion. I started out doing Google searches to try to find out what Jesus looked like. What I found was astonishing. Not only was there nothing but speculation as to what Jesus looked like, there were a tremendous amount of Google matches that led me to sites that doubted Jesus existed period. And these sites made fantastic and logical points.

History isn't my number one forte. I still took the historical Mohammed for granted.
I always thought that the conquests began as soon as Mo got out of his cave and spread his word (apparently, not the case).

A discussion at Kafir Girl's blog where Mohammed's existence was doubted got my interest. I decided to go on a Google rampage.

I always wondered what the pre-Muslims predominantly believed in. Apparently most believed in the Sun God or some variation of it. Hello Hammurabi.

By the time Mohammed supposedly lived, the middle east was full of New Testament and Old Testament stories, where Christians were looking for converts, and so were Jews:

From the 4th century AD, Christian bishops made notable conversions of the Kings of Himyar , Aksum and of Ethiopia generally. Narjan, an ancient pagan pilgrimage spot in a fertile valley on the trade route became a Christian stronghold. Medina became a centre of Jewish influence. Christianity and Judaism entered into competition in Arabia, encouraged by the Persians. In 522, King Dhu Nawas Yusaf "Lord of Curls" became the last elected Himyar king, descendent of a Jewish hero, who made war on the Christians. He offered the citizens of Naryan the choice of Jewry or death. When they refused he burned them all in a great trench. Afterwards Narjan as named "the trench". In response the Ethiopians overcame them and Abraha made San'a a Christian pilgrimage point which rivalled Mecca. This led to an expeditionary force of Christians to try to destroy the Ka'aba. In turn Persia invaded and for a short time the country became a Persian satrapy. This confused situation laid the seeds for the emergence of Islam.


When exactly the Arabs started actually buying into the bull that they were descended from the illegitimate son of Abraham and his concubine lover is a bit of a mystery, but I can see where this belief would lead to animosity towards the Jews, and I can also see how the writer of the Quran aka Koran would do his darnedest to spin the Arab bloodline in as positive a way as possible.

But the reality is the Mohammed supposedly had quite a few supernatural experiences, and no contemporary evidence of these experiences exist.

Many historians believe that it took 100 years after caveman Mo's supposed death, for the Koran was written. And there is no contemporary evidence (evidence during the time of Mo's supposed lifetime) which mentions Mo in any way shape or form. It took at least 13 years after his alleged death for that to happen. This leads me to believe that Mo was most likely a fictional person as well.

Here is a video that goes into detail regarding the questioning of whether Mo existed or not: