Archive

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God in America

I have not watched this yet, but it looks interesting.

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We get mail

While we prepare to launch into another year of religious nut-bagery, superstitious mumbo jumbo, and pseudo scientific shenanigans, I thought I might share an email we received:

From: susan kabila <susankabasa@yahoo.pl>
Subject: My Good Will
Date: 9 December 2010 7:29:08 PM AEDT
To: Susan Kabasa <susankabasa@yahoo.pl>
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Greetings in the name of the Lord,

After going through your profile i decided to contact you for friendship and assistance for distribution of my inheritance towards charity. My name is Susan Kabila; I am a dying woman who has decided to donate what I have for the good work of charity. I am 60 years old and I was diagnosed for breast cancer for about 2 years now.

I have been touched by God to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to you for the good work of God, rather than allow my husband evil relatives to use my husband hard earned funds ungodly. They don’t care about man kind, all they care is how to robb some money from me and spend them ungodly. Please pray that the good Lord forgives me my sins. I have asked God to forgive me and I believe he has because He is a merciful God. I will be going in for a surgery soon and I want to make sure that I make this donation before undergoing my surgery.

I decided to donate the sum of $5,500,000 (Five million five hundred thousand dollars) to you for the good work of the lord, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows and unfortunate mothers. At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the fact that my husband’s relatives are always around me and trying to see if they can overhear my conversations and my health status as well.

I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly, and please use the funds well and always extend the good work to others. I have informed my consultant about the ($5,500,000.00). it is true that I dont know you and you don’t know, but I have been directed by God to contact you for this. Thanks and God bless. I will direct you further after hearing from you.

NB: I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is accomplished as I don’t want anything that will jeopardize my wish. Also I will be contacting with you only by email as I don’t want my husband relations or anybody to know because they are always around me.

Reply me through this my most private email: (susankabasa@yahoo.pl)

Regards,

Mrs. Susan Kabila

Naturally I replied in my trademark cool, calm, and collected manner:

Are you so fucking stupid you think I am working for the non-existent, violent, bigoted, genocidal, petty, and jealous spirit you call “god”?
Oh, and don’t even THINK about asking me for money to pay for legal fees to make this mythical “$5,500,000″ donation happen.

Retard.

Yours faithfully,
Godless Business.

To my surprise, we actually received a reply:

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for you response to my letter to you, dear i want to know why you speak with so much hatred in your heart about your creator? don’t beleive in God? if you don’t beleive in God what do you beleive in? i must say it there must be a reason why you speak with such words against the almighty. secondly the money for this project is by force i am not forcing you to take this money and do the work but i will like to correct the impression you have about God, i believe i am older than you and i will like to teach thing about life, kindly give the reason why you call God non-existence and i tell you after meeting with me you will have a rethink about your though and word.

Your name is Andrew and i know that your parents are good christains and also beleive in God.

Thanks and remain blessed.
Susan Kabila

Of course I replied, but I have not heard from them since:

I apologise for my direct and honest appraisal of your beliefs, but the truth of reality does not care what you think of it.  Despite your wishful thinking there is a sum total of zero evidence for the existence of a supernatural creator of any sort, let alone any one in particular.

It is also a fallacy to present the false dichotomy “either you believe in god, or you believe in nothing”.  I believe in friends, family, love, charity, happiness, joy, laughter, kindness, and humanity.  None of these things require a god to instil – especially one outlined in many of the “holy texts” on offer.  The god of the Bible is no exemption.

I do not see how my age has any bearing on the situation.  You have claimed a deity exists, and have even specified which one out of the thousands humanity has worshipped over the ages is the one true god ™.  You bear the burden of proof to substantiate your claims, and to date I have seen no persuasive  arguments for the extraordinary claims of religion.

Either you present your evidence, or sit down and shut up.  There is no requirement for me to adopt you ridiculous superstitions, nor believe as you do.  Grow up and stop waving the “oh, I am offended flag”.  No one cares.

Andrew

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Questions for Gnu Atheists

In conversations with many believers it becomes immediately apparent their definitions of key terms are fundamentally wrong.  For example, take Michael Egnor’s asinine list of questions posed to atheists which Jack Scanlan recently responded to.

While Jacl’s list is concise and accurate, I will go into a little more detail in responding to Mr. Egnor’s specific questions – even when they do not address a lack of a belief in a deity.  Behold!

1) Why is there anything?

No idea.  Why not?

Of course, we could also turn this around and ask “why is there a god?”  Some things are simply assumed, although atheists do not assume there is a god without sufficient evidence for one being produced.  It is the lack of evidence for such transcendental beings which is the source of atheists disbelief.

2) What caused the Universe?

No idea, but I do not see the need to invent anthropomorphic transcendental beings to account for things we do not fully understand.  This is nothing more than an argument from ignorance leading to a first cause argument.  If we are to believe a god created the universe then evidence for such a mechanism should be presented.

3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?

Why not?  Of course, many believers to maintain there is a realm where pure chaos reins and those who reject their all loving deity will be cast into this place for the remainder of eternity.

4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?

No idea.  My personal view is that final causes do not exist, although I will freely admit to having no evidence for that at all.  I find more poetry in an eternal causal chain than simply terminating it with a god (and not explaining why he is outside causation).

5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?

Because we are individual animals with brains.

6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?

Mental state ARE about things – the sensory inputs of our nervous system combined with the particular and myriad bio-chemical reactions within the brain.

7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)

“Moral law” is not a thing – it is a description of human behaviour.  If you believe morality exists as a real substance, then show me a jar of it.

8) Why is there evil?

Because people can be shitty.

Thank for listening.

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Morality Without God

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The word of God.

Christianity is, and always has been, a religion of the book.  The 66 books which comprise the modern Bible contain the stories, prophecies, actions, and acts of the characters on which the Christian faith is built.  From Adam to Abraham, Moses to Jesus – they are all contained in those 823,156 words.

Continue reading

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Who am I?

The universe is amazing. Through careful observation and measurement we have, so far, been able to determine the universe sprung from quantum foam and rapidly expanded, cooling as it went. As matter coalesced into gigantic balls of gas they ignited under the intense pressures forming the first stars. In these giant nuclear furnaces the first heavier elements were formed. When the star eventually lost enough matter to hold it together with the forces of gravity it exploded and formed new gaseous clouds. These elements were the basis of a new generation of stars, and the first generation of planets.

The emergence of life is a process under examination and we do not have all the details yet. However, once life started it branched into an amazing array of interdependent species which fill every possible crack capable of supporting life. We are simply one example of the extraordinary series of events.

As humanity developed his senses we started to ask how we came to be here. What lead to the world around us? Why did it suit as so well? Not having any methods to determine this objectively, many simply decided a God was responsible. Fearing death we figured we were special and our God had a purpose for us during our lives and after our deaths. Thus the spirit was born.

However, thing did not always go our way. Many times the seasons transpired against us, hordes of locust ate our crops, the sun would burn the land, and the rivers would wash our villages away. Why were the God angry? Were we meant to sacrifice animals to him? Was it the fault of the tribe across the plains? Should we sacrifice them?

Strangers were to be feared. They had other gods and different practices. These were not to be tolerated and were the cause of our suffering. Surely they must die to please the gods?

In our modern world we have developed the capability to murder millions in split seconds. The thinking of the past fizzles, spits, and reacts with our new found knowledge. One of them has to go. Which do you choose?

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What kind of world?

Gary Ablett was probably not well known outside of Australia but today that all changed, although I am not convinced he would be thoroughly pleased with the reputation he has rightly earned.

“Today, our newspapers, televisions and computer screens are full of shocking and horrible crimes, detailing a very serious decline in morals and values in our community.” – Gary Ablett

Up until today Mr. Ablett was known for not being too bad at chasing inflated balls of animal skin round a patch of grass, being a drug addict, suffering from depression, beating people who have the unfortunate privilege of sitting next to his wife, giving a 19 year old girls heroin in his hotel room (she later died), and being assaulted by a man who later jumped from a Melbourne high rise apartment block the day before he was due in court to defend himself.  Convenient.

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