It doesn’t surprise me that there is yet another poll about god beliefs right around the time of another Christian mythology season. On the front page of MSN is a misleading headline that reads “Poll finds 90% believe in God” and the link is to a Newsweek article that states, “The latest NEWSWEEK poll shows that 91 percent of American adults surveyed believe in God—and nearly half reject the theory of evolution.”

What gets me about this particular poll is this little bit:

Although one in ten (10 percent) of Americans identify themselves as having “no religion,” only six percent said they don’t believe in a God at all. Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist, suggesting that the term may carry some stigma. Still, the poll suggests that the public’s tolerance of this small minority has increased in recent years. Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents felt the country is more accepting of atheists today that it used to be and slightly more (49 percent) reported personally knowing an atheist.

Now, I admit I am not a math wizard, but if 49% of god-botherers claim to personally know an atheist, how does the percentage of atheists come out to only 3%? (Or there are a lot more atheists than these polls are admitting to.)

The last paragraph at the article where few readers will ever see states:“The NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted March 28-March 29, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for questions based on all registered voters and plus or minus 6 percentage points for results based on registered Republicans and Republican leaners. In conducting the poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed 1,004 adults aged 18 and older.”

I’ve selected parts of the LA/Times editorial by Sam Harris. You can read the full text via the link. Harris is no Dawkins, and I have a problem with him rating Islamic fundamentalists as a greater menace than RaptureRight christianists. But I recognize that’s just selfishness on my part…

God’s dupes: Moderate believers give cover to religious fanatics — and are every bit as delusional.

Mythology is where all gods go to die, and it seems that Stark has secured a place in American history simply by admitting that a fresh grave should be dug for the God of Abraham — the jealous, genocidal, priggish and self-contradictory tyrant of the Bible and the Koran…

Within every faith one can see people arranged along a spectrum of belief. Picture concentric circles of diminishing reasonableness: At the center, one finds the truest of true believers — the Muslim jihadis, for instance, who not only support suicidal terrorism but who are the first to turn themselves into bombs; or the Dominionist Christians, who openly call for homosexuals and blasphemers to be put to death…

Outside this sphere of maniacs, one finds millions more who share their views but lack their zeal. Beyond them, one encounters pious multitudes who respect the beliefs of their more deranged brethren but who disagree with them on small points of doctrine…

Out further still, one meets religious moderates and liberals of diverse hues — people who remain supportive of the basic scheme that has balkanized our world into Christians, Muslims and Jews, but who are less willing to profess certainty about any article of faith…

The problem is that wherever one stands on this continuum, one inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism. Ordinary fundamentalist Christians…inadvertently support the Dominionists — men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin’s Geneva. Christian moderates…protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals — who aren’t sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally — deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society…

Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.

And I’ve got the perfect quote to finish on:

“If one accepts that art is the expression of Truth and Beauty (T&B), one can argue that there’s more art in a Hubble photograph of the Horsehead Nebula (which nebula was discovered, incidentally, by a woman) than in the whole of the Sistine ceiling. Both are depictions of creation, but only one glorifies a lie.” Twisty Faster, I Blame the Patriarchy blog

Wow! Where have we heard that before?

The Great Vast Left (whose entertaining Bible Study for Atheists blog has FINALLY finished with Genesis) invites you to join him (when you can) for the next exciting stage (Number Two of Sixty-five!) on the glorious journey into Never-never-land Tales: The holy bible.

Port-side staterooms are completely sold-out, but some are still available on Starboard-side. Reserve yours now!

If you miss this opportunity, you’ll be sorry!

VL is an amiable host; I like to go there to mock the book–and he manages to keep a straight face when I act up. You should go try his patience, too!

(Don’t tell him I said this, but I sure as hell hope that Exodus is more exciting than Genesis was! I know it wasn’t his fault–but Genesis WAS as dry and dead as Pharaoh’s seven years of want.)

From here:

“Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

“The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

“Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s foetus.”

Science has finally created the ‘One True Christian’.

Can you say, “MMM-Baaah!”, boys and girls? I got a feeling somebody’s going to get fleeced.

When I was a Christian, how often I sat in church listening to the sermons and scripture readings week after week, month after month, year after year. I was always incredibly bored and that hour seemed like a day as the pastor droned on and on reciting some silly analogies like how “life is like an Oreo cookie, hard-shelled on the outside and the creamy sweet reward at the center” or hearing the same old message that “life sucks, and you suck, but God is good.” “God loves us even though we are very bad, and there is a place called Hell we can avoid being condemned to after our deaths by simply saying the magic words…”I believe”. Most of you who were Christians before “seeing the light” have listened to similar lectures.

We have often discussed how Christians cherry-pick from the Bible according to what suits their own thinking, and to support their version of the oxymoron “Biblical truth”. Looking back to the 1600s, we can read in most history books how Christians would use “evidences and justifications” from the “Good Book” such as “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18) for their cruel and barbaric acts against other human beings. Today’s fundamentalist Christians and many moderate Christians use passages from their mythology books to support their bigotry against homosexuals. Leviticus 20:13 “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Thank human goodness we now have laws that (ironically in a “Christian” nation) prevent Bible literalists from carrying out most of the horrendous acts that are prescribed by the evil commands of an ancient text.

In all the years I sat in church services in a number of different churches of varying denominations, I heard numerous variations of Hell, where one would go if we did not say the magic words before our deaths that would get us a ticket to heaven. However, looking back, I realize I never heard from the pulpit “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother…all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die…. (Deut. 21:18, 21), or Leviticus 20:18 “And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people..” or Leviticus 20:10 “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Just to name a few of hundreds of passages that are regularly ignored by clergy and congregations alike, thank human reason and goodness!)

We have had discussions with Christians where we bring up the point about the atrocities of the Bible and are blown off, or some make excuses like “that was then and this is now” and “those parts don’t apply to today’s world.” I remember during Bible studies when people brought up certain violent and cruel passages and they received responses like those mentioned above, or they were conveniently ignored and they would sidestep the subject and move on to other more pleasant topics.

Mark Twain, in his “Letters from the Earth” wrote a little story which illustrates just what I am talking about.

Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, “Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him.” The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way.

Mark Twain’s “Letters from the Earth” were withheld from publication until 1962. The biting criticism of religion was considered so inflammatory by his daughter that she prevented its publication for more than 50 years.

Awhile back, maybe a month or two or four? I saw someone had replied to a question about the Pensacola Christian College. I can’t find the post or comment but it went something like this. “Who would want to go to a nonaccredited college”? Well for starters People who would matriculate to “Regent Law school”. And people who had political aspirations.

The graduating class of 1989 of the CBN law school brought a suit against the American Bar Association (ABA) because of the ABA’s reluctance to give full accreditation to the law school. The ABA was reluctant to accredit the school because its funding is dependent upon the “fluctuating fortunes of Mr. Robertson’s television ministry,” and because its professors are forced to sign a statement of faith, which may compromise their academic freedom to present a broad range of ideas. (56) The Supreme Courts of the states of Virginia and South Carolina agreed to permit CBN’s law graduates to sit for the bar exams regardless of the ABA’s decision. (56) The law school was given temporary accreditation in June 1989. The Law School eventually received full accreditation and increased its enrollment by 50 percent to 165 students. (78) The CBN University reported a $1. 8 million operating loss for the year ending June 30, 1988. CBN University changed its name to Regent University in January 1990. (78)

OK, so you might be wondering what I’m getting at and it is this.

Who is Monica Goodling?
By Ron Hutcheson
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Monica Goodling, the Department of Justice official who said Monday that she’ll invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than talk to lawmakers, is a frequent figure in department e-mails released so far as part of the congressional investigation into the firings and hirings of U.S. attorneys.

Goodling, 33, is a 1995 graduate Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., an institution that describes itself as “committed to embracing an evangelical spirit.”

She received her law degree at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. Regent, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, says its mission is “to produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world

You can find out more about Monica Here.

And while Monica went to Messiah College which is accredited, there are more of the same in all levels of government. Right wing Christian educated. Creationist believing Dominionist loving and above all Rapture ready and willing to sacrifice your life (not their own) to their gods glory. Fuckwits one and all. From Gonzales on through the justice department. And on to the other anti-science appointments. I wonder where those idiots came from? The full recognition of what they have done is apparent in the fact that there are so few attorneys appointed that one graduating class from Regents could fill all the positions. Even more curious, most of the graduates of these Christian Colleges go on to government positions or some type of political affiliated endeavour. They are being groomed for it.

Didn’t Stalin insert himself into Communist leadership simply by aggressively insinuating himself into the leadership? In Post Czarist Russia that is the way things were done. Today in the US maybe the above is the way to gain power and dominion. By guile and deception.

Read the Regent Law School link above and you’ll see that the current state of US governance is a direct result of right wing religious leadership. If this is the best they got then no wonder most of us would rather suffer the eternal hell than comply with them. As if. They are nothing more than intellectually retarded and emotionally inferior children, even though they have lived far more years than what we would normally regard as children.

So while most of us consider Robertson to be a loon. We must remember that he is a very wealthy and successful loon. With Christian political action commitees frelling everywhere. Including foreign nations. This is what one man can do with a plan. Think what we could do with a plan. Our plans ought to be better.

And a Salute to SEAN about altruism;The Evolution ofGoodness.

“Defining entropy as disorder’s not complete,
’cause disorder as a definition doesn’t cover heat.
So my first definition I would now like to withdraw,
and offer one that fits thermodynamics second law.
First we need to understand that entropy is energy,
energy that can’t be used to state it more specifically.
In a closed system entropy always goes up,
that’s the second law, now you know what’s up.”

“  - MC Hawking, Entropy

When first I began blogging, I had nary a clue about thermodynamics, outside of the laymen’s version (energy can’t be destroyed, etc). And almost inevitably, that worn out, tired canard gets trotted out for the umpteenth millionth time, you know the one, ‘evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!’  (Herein referred to as 2LoT) Never mind that there’s just as many web links that prove this incorrect. Even the panspermiatists agree.

I can attest that I have at least one gray hair that can be named 2LoT - the problem is that it’s always viewed (by the creationists, wouldn’t you know?) as strictly linear - that is, it’s a straight line from point A to B. But, as the first link says, “In fact, as hot systems cool down in accordance with the second law, it is not unusual for them to undergo spontaneous symmetry breaking, i.e. for structure to spontaneously appear as the temperature drops below a critical threshold. Complex structures, such as Bénard cells, also spontaneously appear where there is a steady flow of energy from a high temperature input source to a low temperature external sink. It is conjectured that such systems tend to evolve into complex, structured, critically unstable “edge of chaos” arrangements, which very nearly maximise the rate of energy degradation (the rate of entropy production).”

Never mind that it applies to closed systems (which the earth most distinctly is not, and the universe? Jury’s still out).

Theists typically place their deity outside the realm of falsifiability. That is, said critter is immortal, outside the Einsteinian laws of physics (i.e., beyond time and space, citation of Psalms 90:4), aforementioned beastie is immutable, perfect, ergo unchanging (which would make it impossible to interact with us ‘imperfect’ beings). Nor can we find an instance in nature where the creator is free of the laws of physics that bind the created. Not to mention that it would violate the 2LoT, would it not?

But wait! There’s also the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics. Put simply, it’s “as a system approaches absolute zero of temperature all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value.” Therefore, said deity would have to be frozen, since there’s no hint of entropy, right?

So, in order for there to be any kind of perfect deity, in the interests of symmetry and correlation with any of the laws of thermodynamics (note that the 3rd law stipulates that absolute zero cannot be reached, even though they’ve come within a billionths of a degree), said god would need to thaw itself out before it could ever, ever interact with said creation. And, since this god’s entropy would be restored upon the exchange of heat for cold, it would be mutable, mortal, and imperfect, having been shorn of its superconductivity, superfluidity, and Bose–Einstein condensation.

Got all that? Short version: take gawd out of the freezer, and thaw it out. Oh, whoops, that was the hamburger I made from the sacred cow.

Anyways, next time you hear that hoary old chestnut about 2LoT, do feel free to bop them with this one. It should send them all a-flutter.

Have you seen these?

They are in most of the country, but you’ll see them mostly in the south. In fact, one of them has “Texas United” at the bottom. Yes, Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma have more than most other states, except Florida.

One says:

If you died right now, where would you spend eternity?

My reply is: Anywhere where I don’t have to see fucking billboards that ask me where I’m going to spend eternity! Where churches aren’t so desperate for new members they must erect stupid billboards with “clever” words to bring in the Smart, since the Stupid already belong!

There is a movement to remove billboads all over. If this happens, expect the RaptureRight to fight it–how else would they get their ill-informed abortion message in our faces?

And truckers won’t know which exits have diesel fuel–like in Vermont…