This is such a sad story of a 12-year-old boy who lost his battle with brain cancer. When I read the headline above I figured it was another crazy Christian family withholding medical treatments from their child while just relying on their faith, and “God’s will”. But this story is totally opposite and involves an Orthodox Jewish family. The parents had been fighting to keep their son alive via a ventilator despite him being declared brain dead and that his bodily functions had ceased. The only thing a ventilator was doing was keeping his lungs working, but the parents demanded that the machine not be turned off.

NEW YORK – A 12-year-old New York boy with brain cancer has died after his family battled a hospital to keep him on a ventilator.

The lawyer for the Orthodox Jewish family says Motl Brody’s bodily functions ceased Saturday. A machine had continued to work his lungs after he was pronounced dead Nov. 4 at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The boy had already been declared brain dead, but some adherents of Jewish religious law say death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning.

The family had asked a judge to prevent further tests for brain activity. The hospital argued that its “scarce resources” were being used “for the preservation of a deceased body.”

This is an odd twist, in their extreme heartbreak, of treating a machine of medical science as some sort of god. Because no god comes to comfort. No god comes to save the children. No gods come.

Once again it is that time of year when we all can look forward to The Science Network’s; Beyond Belief Series. This years edition is entitled; “Candles in the Dark”

Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark is the third in an annual series of conversations: an ongoing project to foster and promote the use of reason in formulating social policy. This year, we asked participants to propose a Candle — a potential solution to a problem that they have identified in their area of expertise or informed passion.

There are 44 individual talks and discussions that you can listen to. I found the lecture by Peter Atkins to be particularly inspiring. He states regarding the two types of prejudice:

Bad prejudice which shuts our minds, such as religious prejudice. Religious prejudice offers the presumption where human minds are too puny to achieve ultimate understanding. The presumption that any explanation will be beyond our comprehension. Religious prejudice despises the power of human understanding. This is the sort of prejudice we need to be on the guard against in public policy

Good Prejudice. The prejudice that spreads light into dark domains. The prejudice that the scientific method is the only road to true comprehension. And through comprehension, guarded toleration. Scientific prejudice is flexible prejudice not rigid prejudice…. All we scientists have prejudices in the sense that although we have Revolutionaries, Conservative Revolutionaries. We base our attacks on ignorance, on the bridgeheads of established science. Where we favor the reliability of the seemingly established. But unlike the prejudice of religion. We are content to discard our prejudice when the experimental evidence (testable evidence) is overwhelming.

Max Plank got it right when he said that ” Experiment is the only true way of understanding and the rest is imagination.

We should demonstrate the superiority of our prejudice by presenting evidence in support of opinion. And by showing doubters that modern science is a reticulation of understanding. Where Elementary Particle Physics informs Cosmic Physics, where Chemistry informs Biololgy and so on. That Science does not consist of little warring tribes of independent knowledge. It consists of Great Rivers of knowledge that enhance each other where they mingle.That supportive intermingling is a sign that we are correct in our prejudice in favor of science.

We should have and we should display and we should broadcast our confidence in this extraordinary product of the human mind. And stand four square with confidense in our science. In that way we will display the majesty of this extraordinary , wonderful world.

You can hear all of Peter Atkins talk here.

These talks always energize me and give me talking points that are hard to refute when used properly. Some of the brightest minds in our world are here. Listen to them and take what you can from their knowledge and experience. Use what you learn to make your own life better and pass it on. When confroted by the irrational and superstitious you will find new ways of changing their minds. I found that by listening to these talks previously that I have gladly eliminated lots of irrational thinking that had been programed in me.

It has been a long couple of months and I am real happy to be back.I’m glad to see so many are still here as well as new members.

So this has been on my mind for a few days:

Can a molecule be moral? Of course not, no more than a particle can be political. Or particular – ask any carbon molecule (it bonds to just about anything…almost promiscuously, one might say).

Herein lies the crux the religious folks have with evolution. It infers that besides having no guiding principle, since we are all particles, we can just bounce about doing as we please. The scarier intimation being, if these so-called ‘good religious folk’ were stripped of their fantasies, the streets would run crimson, and rapine and pillage would be common.

While in search of an appropriate image for this post, I stumbled across this bit of idiocy, and like the rest of you probably do, I managed the interesting feat of the stunned open-mouthed grin.

Hardwired Nonsense

Evolutionists claim that morality is a product of evolution. As we saw in yesterday’s article, Marc Hauser claims that “evolution hardwired us to know right from wrong.” How did evolution, which is not a person, place, or thing, know what is morally acceptable? Of course, “it” didn’t, since there is no such “thing” as “evolution.”

Lie #1: Evolution doesn’t need to be a ‘person, place or thing’.

Lie #2: Evolution is reality.

Evolution is the backbone of modern biology.

 For the sake of argument, let’s suppose, following Hauser, that evolution did hardwire moral clarity.

Holy crap, did this guy actually use the term ‘moral clarity’? Are you kidding me? History shows that there’s never been any such critter.

 Why is it morally acceptable for a lion to kill and eat a gazelle but it’s not morally acceptable for a human to kill and eat another human being?

It’s not acceptable for any species to prey upon itself. Of course, I don’t consider the actions of the Donner party to be immoral: it’s not like they were planning a barbeque. “Hey, throw a little more Earl on the barbie!”

Forces, ideas, concepts don’t have the ability to “hardwire” anything. Hardware requires software that is designed. What’s true in the lesser case (software designed for an inanimate machine) is ultimately true in the greater case (the creation of human beings with the capacity to think and create analogically).

Wow, a completely inadequate grasp of human psychology. Rates right up there as some of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Any advertisers or marketing experts should be rolling on the floor right now. Ever heard of Pavlov? Skinner? Brainwashing? Hell, anyone acquainted with religion should know better than to babble this inanely.

 How did evolution figure this out? There’s a more fundamental question that is rarely asked. Looking back over billions of years, how does the evolutionist account for the idea of morality based on the spontaneous generation of the cosmos?

This is a reference to another stupid article here, where Gary Demar insists that evolution has to be a person to be able to figure this out – he’s got teleology on the brain, this one. Further, the jury’s still out on this ’spontaneous generation of the cosmos’ nonsense – that is, if anyone can actually prove the existence of non-existence.

The question “How did life originate?” which interests all of us, is inseparably linked to the question “Where did the information come from?” Since the findings of James D. Watson . . . and Francis H. C. Crick, it was increasingly realized by contemporary researchers that the information residing in the cells is of crucial importance for the existence of life. Anybody who wants to make meaningful statements about the origin of life would be forced to explain how the information originated. All evolutionary views are fundamentally unable to answer this crucial question.

While abiogenesis is a semi-separate field of sorts, it doesn’t invalidate evolution at all. In fact, this is somewhere between a non sequitur and a false dichotomy. Again, religious people think that attacking the source has some sort of validity.

Consider the computer. Not only must all the physical parts work flawlessly—parts which were designed and manufactured by people with minds and hands—the programming necessary to run the parts also must function without error. No one would ever propose that the computer evolved spontaneously or that the programming appeared out of thin air and found its way into the computer’s internal parts without some form of outside design and directive to operate the machinery in a specific way.

And of course, the non sequiturs keep on flowing. Comparing a machine to a biological unit is indeed apples to oranges. Machines don’t grow. They have no offspring. A computer isn’t born as a Commodore 64, and grows up to be a Cray Supercomputer.

Here’s this idiocy…again.

In an article titled “The God Debate” that appears in the April 9, 2007 issue of Newsweek, atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, dialogs with Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and pastor of Saddle Church, over the existence of God. Here’s how one series of exchanges went after Warren said that he believed in the biblical account of creation:

HARRIS: I’m doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience; I’m very close to the literature on evolutionary biology. And the basic point is that evolution by natural selection is random genetic mutation over millions of years in the context of environmental pressures that selects for fitness.

WARREN: Who’s doing the selecting?

HARRIS: The environment. You don’t have to invoke an intelligent designer to explain the complexity we see.

WARREN: Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions. . . .

Warren did a great job in asking the question “Who’s doing the selecting?” It’s unfortunate that he did not press Harris after he answered “the environment.” Warren asked “who,” and Harris answered with a “what.” How did the environment get here? Does it have a mind? Why is it always imbued with personality?

That ‘God Debate’ thing obviously settled nothing. The atheists cheered for Harris, the theists cheered for Rick ‘I got a brain disease’ Warren – it’s idiotic. The answer wasn’t a ‘who’ (His Holiness Hears A Who – the latest in children’s books from Dr. Zeus), because there isn’t a who. No, the environment doesn’t have a mind. No, it’s not ‘imbued with personality’. Personify much?

These evolution articles remind me of a Danny Shanahan cartoon that appeared in the June 14, 1999 issue of The New Yorker. A Pterodactyl is perched on a limb talking into a tape recorder. The caption reads: “Memo to self: ‘Feathers?’” In his attempt to be humorous, Shanahan points out a fundamental flaw in the theory of evolution. There needs to be some personal intelligence behind the process. How did reptiles conceptualize the need for feathers? Of course, they didn’t. They couldn’t. Harris claims that it was “environmental pressure” that caused favorable evolutionary results to take place, including morality. The problem is evident: How does he know this? He doesn’t.

It’s a lame effort. No, there doesn’t need to be a personal intelligence behind the process. Further, there isn’t. We’re hardwired for a lot of items, some of them anachronisms. We’re constructed originally to move about on all fours: we became bipedal, and ended up with back problems. We have unnecessary teeth, vestigial organs, and if we were to judge how much the ‘intelligent designer’ loves us, well, it likes squid better because their eyes are better constructed, and it loves dolphins better, because they breathe and eat through separate holes. The Heimlich maneuver escapes another species altogether.

I can break down all the poor engineering flaws in our bodies, but this is supposed to be a short post, not a novel-length criticism.

So the nutshell analysis, Mr. DeMar, is this:

1. Either your watchmaker is a retard, OR
2. your watchmaker is blind.

Really, it seems as if religion is an excuse for lazy people not to think at all.

While this was an eye-roller, it’s been fun.

Till the next post, then.

SC priest: No communion for Obama supporters

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.” The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote. [...] “Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

Yeah, Jay, you’re not being a dick at all…

Here is something Geoff of Stupid Git Says So brought to our attention in a comment thread, but I thought it needed to be brought to the main page. This is God-damn appalling the way the Saudis are ever so sly in how they are wording their UN proposal to criminalize blasphemy against religion (making it sound as if they want respect for other religions they will not even allow to exist in their own nation), and I can see where this is going to go if they get their way.

(Geoff, I hope you won’t mind if I copy and paste parts of your blog post here?)

Is God a Pussy? By Stupid Git

[SG]Apparently the creator of all has a fragile ego and his followers are out to protect their delicate deity:

“Saudi King Abdullah is quietly enlisting the [UN] leaders’ support for a global law to punish blasphemy – a campaign championed by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conference that puts the rights of religions ahead of individual liberties. If the campaign succeeds, states that presume to speak in the name of religion will be able to crush religious freedom not only in their own country, but abroad.”

Discussions touched upon a number of hot issues including … Prophet Muhammad lampooning cartoons …

More:

[SG]Lest we blame this all on the barbarian mindset of Theocratic Islam, we in the “enlightened” West should look in the mirror. A few highlights:

• Offensive Jesus remark cut from Emmy show
• Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons
• Everyone’s favorite – the supposed War on Christmas! To that I say, “Merry Horusmas!”

I can see where this is all going, and the Christian fundies will all say it’s meant to be, (the coming of the End of Times). If global blasphemy laws are initiated at the UN, then what next? It won’t end there because Islam and Christianity each believe that the other is wrong, and must be defeated for the glory of their imaginary friends.

(Thanks Geoff!)

First of all before I get started, thanks to all for the get well messages during my recent ordeal. I had spinal fusion in two places in the lumbar spine which makes it difficult to do what I love to do best . . . blog. But, stubborn as I am, and thanks to no god of any sort, I am slowing getting back to normal.

During the past couple of months, I have written a few posts on bigot, Pastor Mondo Gonzales, whose rants against gays and atheists are allowed to be featured in the Pastor’s Corner of our local community newspaper. Along with Mondo, other church leaders take their turns and most are benign “Gob is with you” sort of fluffy messages for the general public to read. But the fundamentalists never fail to provide material for a post.

This time I focus on Pastor Jeff Robinson of the Lincolnway Christian Church just up the road from me. The title of his Pastor’s Corner message is Being ‘Unshakable’ in shaky economic times

God never intended us to build our lives on money. Money is to be managed wisely. But, money makes a lousy foundation on which to build one’s life. Even if you manage your money wisely, economic forces outside your control can shake you to the bone. A major sickness or injury, a job loss, or uncertain financial times can financially devastate all but the very wealthy. Building your life on a financial foundation is unwise.

You are leaving out a very important point, Pastor Jeff . . . People cannot pay doctor bills after a major sickness without money. People cannot rebuild after a natural disaster without money. Physically, people cannot be “saved” without help from other humans. People’s property cannot be replaced without insurance policies paid for with money. People cannot buy a home unless they save their money for it or establish a mortgage loan. People cannot replace their property, or recover from illnesses or injury without other people and charity and financial institutions because no god comes.

Lincolway Christian Church was once located on a busy corner of our town, where two big streets intersect, and also where developers are paying big bucks for residents and existing small businesses and churches to move elsewhere so they can build their strip malls and banks, etc. In the past, Lincolnway Christian Church always boasted about how God blessed them to be on such a busy corner where many people would notice them and come in to “fellowship” with them. As businesses built up around them, and the persistent offers of cash for their land, the big final money offer must have been just too tempting to turn away from. They called it “God’s will” that they sold their church for a huge sum, and they used all that money to build a large modern facility for all of their country club church activities. The new church sits on a large plot of land of many acres, away from heavy traffic and surrounded by farmland and ranches. In our area, it had to cost them a fortune for that plot (of which they pay no taxes and the rest of us watch our mortgage payments rise as taxes go up and up). The money they spent on a fancy meeting place, which stands empty much of the time, could have been used to help all those people they are praying for week after week to no avail. Money can help where prayer and their god cannot. Money could definitely help those in need in the Will County region and beyond.

In his article, Pastor Jeff writes,

“Jesus tells through a story that there is only one sure foundation. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash,”

To build a house on rock or sand costs money. If one has a lot of money, they can well afford to build their house of stone on a foundation of rock. But there are those in the world who have less money and can only afford to build their modest home on a lesser foundation.

One question I would love to ask these pastors when they preach about money from the pulpits of quite comfortable and even elaborate temples is “Why does Jesus need your money?”

Why the need to beg for money, often using guilt as a tool to swindle as much as they can from the pockets of hard-working people? Why do they need money from an all-powerful creator who they say provides everything?

Every church tells it’s members every Sunday morning when they pass the plate that Jesus is the all-powerful creator of the universe and everything in it, he will answer all of your prayers, but he has no money. Many people I know often complain about that. That the church passes the collection plate at every gathering, begging people for their offerings, saying how Jesus needs their money to help others, and no one ever speaks up about it. They receive their pledge sheets in the mail on a regular basis and feel compelled to budget part of their income and pledge that amount to a God who is supposed to be the creator and provider of everything.

Here’s a little message I found at Why Won’t God Heal Amputees that should be sent to every church pastor or those who find themselves in a church for whatever reason to stick in the offering plate instead of money:

“Hello. My name is Jesus, and I am God. I am the all-powerful creator of the universe. I created everything that you see before you — the galaxies and stars in the heavens; the oceans, the mountains and the plains of earth; the sun and the moon and the skies; along with every living thing on the planet. I created you personally, and I gave you your unique soul. I created everything!

Everything of value on earth I created. I buried thousands of tons of gold in mines around the planet. I placed billions of gallons of oil under the sands in the Middle East. I created the millions of carets of diamonds being mined in South Africa.

And I will answer your prayers. Pray to me for anything and I will hear and answer your prayers. I say it in dozens of places in the Bible, but I like the way I say it in Mark 11:24 the best: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Anything you need — money, love, happiness, you name it — I am here to provide it for you.

Now, there is just one thing I need in return. I need your money. I need lots of your money. The Bible specifies that you send me ten percent of your gross income, but think of that as a starting point. Feel free to give more! When they pass the offering plate at church, be sure to give generously!

Because even though I created the universe and everything in it, and even though I will give you everything you ask for in prayer, I can’t give a cent to any church, ever.

So, please give generously at your place of worship today! I thank you for your support!”

Despite the good feelings from seeing Obama’s victory, the election was still a letdown for me due to the fact that Proposition 8 passed in California. I’m a native Californian and was sick to my stomach when Proposition 22 passed several years back with its bullshit propaganda of “protecting marriage” by not letting them durned queers get hitched. Earlier this year when the California supreme court struck down this discriminatory piece of legislation, I was thrilled. There was actually a step being taken to afford equality and I was proud to tell people that I’m from California. But then prop 8 came along.

I was watching early polls and was heartened to see that it stood a good chance of being voted down. Then things got ugly. Outright lies from the yes side came out telling voters that their kids would be exposed to homosexuality in school (since we all know there are no gay people in education) and that if gay people were allowed to keep getting married, what would stop polygamists from marrying multiple people or from someone marrying his dog.

I was hoping my home state would see through the bullshit, but it didn’t. The rhetoric and leaps of logic from the yes on 8 side are pretty amazing if you think about it. The amendment to the state’s constitution is all about denying people rights yet the supporters of 8 cast themselves as defenders. Aside from all the gawd talk surrounding bans on gay marriage, they somehow made this about saving society from its uneasiness about all things gay.

About a week before the election I got an email from a friend’s religious zealot of a sister asking me to donate money to the yes on 8 cause. She told me that this was to protect my own marriage. I wrote her back and pointed out to her that denying gay people the right to vote is no different than the laws that would have prevented her father (a white man) from marrying her step-mom (a black woman). As with those prohibitions, this is all about legislating bigotry. Laws banning gay marriage do nothing but tell people that their intolerance and hatred are okay. Today, I am deeply ashamed of my home state.

Oh, and the friend’s sister? Well, she’s praying for me. Too bad that didn’t keep her away from the polls.

One more thing, the largest contributor to the yes on 8 side was the Mormon church. If you weren’t already aware, there is a movement going to strip the LDS church of their tax exempt status. If you want to join the cause, follow the instructions listed below.

Download this form and then print, fill out, and mail the form.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f3949a.pdf

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_10839546
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10842051

List the taxpayer as:

Thomas S. Monson, et al
50 East North Temple
Salt Lake City, Utah 84150

List his occupation as President and the business as The
Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Check the boxes for False Exemption and Public/Political
Corruption.

Then in the Comments section demand that the LDS Church be
fined and
their tax-exempt status revoked for repeated and blatant
violations of
the IRS’s separate of church and state rules, and for
conspiring to
interfere with a state’s political process.

Check Yes under “Are books/records available?”
and write in “campaign
finance records.”

You don’t have to provide any of your own personal
info. Mail the form
and the printed articles to:

Internal Revenue Service
Fresno, CA 93888

Edit: I have the other two links up.

“If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

The elections are over, I’m back from my trip to China. I’m thoroughly pissed off that proposition 8 went through. I’ll be ranting on this soon enough, but I have some other item I wish to share.

Recently, not only have I had a death in my family, but I’ve had some pretty close shaves myself. I was in the hospital about a month ago, for a procedure called a stent. I was experiencing shortness of breath, needle-like pains in the heart, dizziness, and the sense of impending doom. While some of you might be getting wide-eyed at that, I’ve been experiencing these issues for about a year. The doctors can’t give me a fix on it. Still can’t: I was told it was possibly a myocardial infarction, but the heart specialist turned out to be wrong.

I can field most of this fairly well, but the pounding of one’s pulses in the eardrums as well as the sense of impending doom are sensations I can do well without.

And this last Monday, I came down with a very bad case of food poisoning, so much so that walking across a room for a few feet left me weak as a kitten. I had to lay over in Shiyan as the rest of my tour group went on to Xi’an, and I took a sleeper train over to join them the next day. Not an experience I want to have again.

And contrary to the popular stereotype (’no atheists in foxholes’ horse manure, you know the drill), I didn’t collapse to my knees begging for life. Nor did I weep bloody execrations to the skies above. I saved my breath and my energy, and survived without ‘divine intervention’. Like most fancy themselves, I am made of sterner stuff.

Do I ever question my position on the afterlife? Of course I do: uncertainty shrouds this cloak of flesh we wear, always. Questioning everything is the way of the logical being.

If perhaps I were a weaker individual, I would draw solace from the superstitions of the past. Imagine some external force comforting me, filling me with life, power, survival. What a nice comic book sensation that would be.

But alas, no such luck. No hand was laid on me from on high. No ghost whispered ‘Strive! Survive! Fulfill your destiny!’ in my ear. No visions, visual or otherwise. Just fevered sweat, gushing liquids and the scrabbling mendacity to march forwards.

But I am here, that was another country, and besides, no wench is dead. (A no-prize to the reader that gets that esoteric reference!)

Life is good while I still have it. While I’m not afraid of that void that claims all, I’m in no rush to meet it headlong.

Till the next post, then.