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The Prophetic Physician

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Uncritical faith is rampant, especially in this country. America tries to focus its energy on affording individuals the freedom to pursue whatever endeavor they wish (unless its a gay endeavor). This means that people can claim just about anything they want and expect no obstacles blocking that claim from generating money.

A perfect example is Bishop Womack.

Dr. Shammah Womack-El is a world class Naturopathic Holistic Scientist and Master Herbalist of Drugless Medicine, which he calls God’s Natural Pharmacy. He believes that God has a cure and a remedy in the earth for all dis-eases. Dr. Womack-El can help you with supervision to rejuvenate your life and detoxify your body tissues for improved health and longevity.

Most doctors spend time trying to suppress symptoms instead of treating root causes of problems. At the Chapel of Miracles my approach is just the opposite, my holistic team and I offer our clients a serene, supportive and skillful environment, where advanced natural techniques support healing and HIGH LEVEL HEALTH, rather than settling for the shortsighted goal of mere symptom suppression.

Poor saps come to people like this expecting miracles and willing to pay through the teeth for it. Womack need not supply his customers with evidence or logic because most Americans have lost the ability to care. What this means is hard working Americans lose their money to schemes and tricks and never become the wiser. The imagination is a powerful thing, and it is easily manipulated.

However confused you are, whether it is believing in magical Jews walking on water or that the cure for MS and ALS can be found in plants growing in Asia BECAUSE SOMEONE TOLD YOU SO, you will always be able to ask questions and form logical opinions. This ability is present in all humans of sound mind, yet so few use it.

If one were to look at Womack’s page carefully, one could see logical flaws right off the bat. For example:

Thousands have reversed chronic and degenerative diseases through our all naturopathic healing approach.

A sentence like that convinces almost all average thinkers of just about anything. But it is a logical fallacy. It even has a name, its called the bandwagon fallacy. Just because x number of people believe that y is true doesn’t make y true.

Another slightly more complex logical flaw in Womack’s ‘argument’:

There is a remedy in the earth for every dis-ease.

If this were true, why would we still have diseases? Earth is also the source of a lot of death. Consider arsenic, a natural but extremely fatal element found on Earth. How about Earthquakes? Volcanoes? Tornadoes?

People are all too often fooled by the word “natural”. Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it is healthy. There are many natural mushrooms that are poisonous.

The most hilarious has to be:

Also, see our products for holistic living, such as our Supernatural Manna, which works your body out without you going to the gym. I call it “THE GYM IN A BOTTLE”, which shapes your body into a healthy, fat-burning machine. It’s a Magic Green Superfood that works you out and into shape.

Isn’t it amazing that people will just believe something like that? Without evidence, without proper support or logical reasoning? This is absolutely rampant in this country. And it is this uncritical thinking which can lead to wars, injustice, crimes, violence… Imagine believing someone is a terrorist because someone told you to. Without evidence or logical reasoning you continue believing this person to be a terrorist and treat him as such. This happens all the time.

Womack is an extreme example of someone taking advantage of REALLY stupid people. Like everything in life there are varying degrees of mysticism and superstition. But if you can remain critical and skeptical of any claims without proper peer reviewed evidence, than you can spot these shams very easily. In fact, purchase my new magical book for only $4509.78 where I teach you how to channel spiritual energy from the 98th dimension to see schemes and scams easily! Learn it in just minutes a day!

P.S. – If you were to look closely at this website you can find MANY spelling and grammar errors.

Enjoy.

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Posted in Health, Religion, Science | 1 Comment »

America the Greek

Monday, December 17th, 2007

In the ancient Greek times, familial ties were everything. If your father was a traitor, then you by definition were also a traitor, and so were your kids and their kids and so on. You couldn’t escape it. You could be a wonderful human being, a saint among men, and still be seen as a “son of a traitor”.

This is what we would call an archaic practice. It makes no common sense and really inhibits the progress of human kind in its own small way.

But it seems that America, the land of regressing hundreds of years into the past in a mere instant, has done just that.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president Sunday but stirred a continuing controversy by noting her chief rival’s name is “Barack Hussein Obama” and that Obama had Muslim ancestors.

And while Kerrey’s comments were ostensibly made as a compliment to Obama, they resurrected a troublesome issue for the first-term junior senator from Illinois.

Obama’s attendance Sunday at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Mason City, Iowa, was as much an observation of faith as it was a rejoinder to baseless e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the United States.

What is even more ridiculous is that he has to assure people that he is a Christian, because otherwise he would be an infidel and an enemy to the holy state of America. Our country is so far behind in so many ways. The whole notion that a person’s religion should have some kind of influence on any public matters is beyond stupid and belongs in the middle ages.

No matter how bad the crazy middle state Christian right-wing conservatives want it, we are not and never will be a holy country. If these same people had any sense or maybe some good education that included history, they would see that such a thing leads only to violence, corruption and eventually collapse. We cannot be a great nation if we collapse. Are we going the way of Rome? We very well could be.

What happens when a country’s majority of his inhabitants believe that they are closer to a deity and are correct in worshiping him, and that another country is wrong and blasphemous; and that same other country simultaneously believes the opposite? Each side thinks God is on their side, and that the eradication of the other religion is righteous and highly moral. This results in violence, war, and death. This is why religious beliefs are so dangerous. Christians have been fighting Muslims for thousands of years because of this, and continue to do so today. It is disgusting that some humans remain so unenlightened.

It REALLY should not matter that Obama is a Christian or has Muslim parents or whatever, it really shouldn’t, but I know and you know that, sadly, it does. Obama could be the most faithful Christian in the land, but because his grandparents were or are Muslim, he is condemned to live his life as a ‘traitor’. I am sorry, but those who do this have no place in modern times or in this country. I can’t think of anything more unpatriotic than to be a Christian-conservative hell bent on their Jihad against Muslims, and on occasion, Jews.

Again, this is why uncritical beliefs are so dangerous. Keep in mind that billions have died because of tenants that are supported by NO EVIDENCE. These people question nothing, and can (and have) been brainwashed into believing anything, because they do not demand evidence or a reasonable explanation. Jews are an inferior race? Okay, lets kill them. Islam and Muslims are infidels and must be eliminated? Alright, lets invade their land and kill the non-believers… I mean shit, its in the bible!

Obama staffers and volunteers say they periodically encounter voters who say they cannot support Obama because they’ve heard he is Muslim, a claim that has been making its way through Internet sites and blogs since he announced his candidacy for president.

The issue gained prominence earlier this month when Clinton’s campaign forced the resignation of two Iowa volunteer coordinators who had forwarded e-mails that falsely tried to tie him to Islamic jihadists.

On a side note, it is common for the conservatives on this site to dodge issues and invent arguments. I know that these people will try and argue that Obama has said that he doesn’t think politics and religion should be totally separate, but I will head these people off at the pass. I know that Obama has said that, and you know what? I don’t agree with it. I think it makes him less of a good candidate in MY EYES. Of course, those who are religious but not as conservative will like that… in fact, conservatives who are sick of too much of their own medicine will like that as well. I do not like it. But if you are going to argue my points in this post, focus on my actual points, not on Obama. I know this will be tough for some of you who are so entrenched in faith without evidence that the whole act of arguing is beyond you, but try.

Enjoy.

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Posted in Politics, Religion | 2 Comments »

Jihad Jihad Jihad!

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

Can anyone tell me what Newton’s third law of motion is? I’ll give you a hint, it has something to do with “equal” and “opposite”. Thats right! For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

In physics, that means that every force you apply to another mass is met with equal and opposite force. For example, gravity is a vector force pointing downwards towards the Earth. You standing on the Earth represents a downward force onto the Earth’s surface, but you know what keeps you from sinking right through the surface? The fact that the surface is pushing back on you with equal and opposite force. If you increase your weight, the surface increases its push back. So the harder you push, the harder it pushes back.

I’m not trying to be deep or philosophical here, but I see the same trend in a more ephemeral sense… with religion.

In America, we are supposed to enjoy freedom from religion, meaning, the state and the government is supposed to refrain from picking an official religion to side with. Why is this important? Because 250 years ago there were many difference religions that people believed, and among those religions were many sects that often contradicted each other. If the government had picked one sect of one religion, they would have alienated everyone else. The whole point of America was supposed to be the opposite of that. It was and still is supposed to be a place where you go to be free of any kind of state sponsored religion.

Now, Oatney recently wrote a post that condemned those who have problems with public displays of Christianity. This shows us that Oatney is unpatriotic, in the sense that he doesn’t agree with the original purpose of this country.

If you happen to be one of those religious people who feel that A) Your religion is really the correct one B) Public displays isn’t forcing religion onto anybody; then you should know that A) You’re wrong and B) you’re wrong.

To think your religion is the only correct one, and the billions of other religious people out there are just simply wrong is arrogant and weak. People in history took that position when they felt the need to oppress and conquer, often over compensating for some inadequacy issues. Secondly, public displays are forcing religion because tax payer’s money goes into it. Lets say you’re Jewish, and you live in an apartment complex where the manager used rent money to upkeep the place, including putting a nativity scene in the lobby. This is forcing the acceptance of Jesus unto those who do not recognize him as the Messiah. When one does this, its hard not to get the impression that the oppressor needs to validity their religion by forcing it onto others.

Pghremodeler in response to Oatney’s post on this subject said:

Where did you get the idea that spending tax dollars to advance the views of one religion over another is a good idea? You must worship a weak and stupid god. I wish you xtians would learn to embrace God
By the way your definition of conservatism is just sick and twisted.

Oatney appeared to be waging a religious holy war against those who were not of his religion. It reminds me of the old testament where the Israelites are commanded to slay the non-believers. This is obviously archaic but also extremely unsophisticated. Oatney shows us that he isn’t capable of critical thought nor is he capable of putting himself in other people’s shoes (a problem all conservatives seem to have). Oatney didn’t even consider how he would feel if public displays of Menorahs and other Hanukah symbolism were the norm. Would he get all uppity about the war on Hanukah? No, because he isn’t Jewish.

Arguments like Oatneys always come off very weak and rather pathetic. When someone can’t think or see beyond their small xenophobic views, that person is lost to the past, and we must ignore or move past them.

Enjoy.

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Posted in Politics, Religion | 1 Comment »

Ignorance with Wings Part 4 ::embryonic stem cells::

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Embryonic stem cells:

ES cells are pluripotent. This means they are able to differentiate into all derivatives of the three primary germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm. These include each of the more than 220 cell types in the adult body. Pluripotency distinguishes ES cells from multipotent progenitor cells found in the adult; these only form a limited number of cell types.

I’m sure you know what this means. ES cells have a wondrous potential to treat or even cure some very debilitating, paralyzing, or fatal diseases and conditions. At this moment, there are millions of men, women and children who are alive and breathing that suffer from one of a number of these diseases. Their lives are torturous, painful, and barely worth living. It seems rather ridiculous then that we don’t fund or expand our research with embryonic stem cells. It fact, it is extremely ridiculous.

The uncritical religious, who’s decisions and beliefs require faith (a principle that has no evidence to back it up) to exist, do everything they can to stop embryonic stem cell research. Why, you ask? The reason is surprisingly absurd.

The religious think that life begins at some point before the embryo, and that destroying an embryo for the stem cells is killing a life. These very same people will turn around and fully support the death penalty keep in mind! For some reason, they are obsessed with controlling people and their choices, and therefor wish to remain on the side of the argument that lacks reason and evidence.

Let us consider some facts, shall we?

1) Embryos consist of 50 to 150 cells IN TOTAL. They are nothing but a collection of microscopic cells that you could count with your eye. At this stage, the embryo is known as a blastocyte, which forms 4 to 5 days after fertilization. In fact, some scientists don’t consider a blastocyte and embryo. You have to understand that there is NO human qualities in a blastocyte. It is literally a simple collection of cells that can be counted by the human eye. 2) Embryos abort naturally ALL THE TIME. In fact, more than half of all embryos die naturally. Embryo destruction is actually the norm, rather than the exception. So that puts an enormous hole in the religious or faith-based idea that embryos are lives that should not be knowingly killed. 220 million embryos die a year naturally, that is more than any other cause of death that we know of. Keep in mind that; Cancer, in all its forms, kills 7.6 million people per year, In six years, the Second World War killed around 60 million people…

We don’t defend an embryo’s right to free speech, because it cannot speak, in fact, it cannot do anything. It has no neurological system, no consciousness, no thoughts, no mind, no brain… no nothing. Yet some would ascribe more rights to it than a black man on death row. This is the ultimate contradiction of the religious right in the United States. Infuriatingly stupid, isn’t it?

There are certain moral questions that are common, that test one’s true morals. For example, consider the train that is flying out of control at break neck speeds. If it continues on its current track, it will fly off of a cliff a la Back to the Future Part III and kill everyone on board; men, women, children… embryos. But you are standing at a switch on the track, and you can switch the track to safely divert the train away from the cliff, however, there is a man tied to the diverted track. If you flip the switch, you kill the one man tied to the track but save the hundreds of passengers on board.

This is not meant to be an easy decision, but no one would call you immoral if you were to flip the switch.

The point is, we have millions of people today who are alive, breathing, have nervous systems, thoughts, dreams, the right to free speech and so on, who suffer and are at risk of death. Trying to save the life of a group of cells over these living breathing human beings is like not switching the track to save the one man tied to the diverted track. In fact, it is much worse. It is as if instead of another man tied to the track, it was a cockroach, and you saved the roach at the expense of everyone on the train.

So how come we don’t consider all 220 million naturally destroyed embryos loss of human life? Because it isn’t loss of human life. You cannot die if you were never born.

If Christians really cared about the lives of children, we’d see a stronger push for decreasing infant mortality in developing worlds. But we don’t see that. We see anti-homosexual bills, sodomy laws, and fighting Islam.

Obviously the potential for life is not the same as life itself, because then every time we wore a condom, every time we used spermacide, every time we went to the sperm bank, every time we masturbated, we would be killing hundreds of millions of people. Does this sound right to you? No. Of course not. An embryo is not a life, a zygote is not a life, a fetus is not a life. Potential life is not life, hence the word “potential”. You don’t put people in jail before they commit the crime.

But MisterE, why not cut the controversy and just stick with adult stem cells? Well, adult stem cells may not have the potential the embryonic stem cells have. We of course need to do more research on this, but science is under the impression at the moment that adult stem cells are unlikely to be nearly as useful as embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are obtained from human embryos. They have the capacity to turn into any cell type in the body. Adult stem cells have been found in some mature human tissues, including the brain and bone marrow. There is a scientific debate over whether their ability to become specialized is limited to their tissue of origin, or whether they can turn into other types of tissue.

Adult stem cells have proven their value to medicine. For example, bone marrow transplants are routinely used to treat some cancers and blood diseases. But it’s unlikely that bone marrow stem cells can replace all of the different types of cells that are damaged by disease. Embryonic stem cells are the only ones that are likely to do that.

You have to understand that science does not recognize most, if any religious tenants as fact. But science is where we get our medicine, our help, our computers and advancements and so on… so its obviously the area of reality that we can be sure is real. We have no scientific definition for a human life, and obviously, it has to start somewhere. Since ethereal ideas such as spirits and life creation by a deity are extremely unlikely, we avoid them as explanations. To define a human life, we can only turn to science for the answer, and if science doesn’t have an answer then there may be no answer.

If you look at it purely from a scientific and natural perspective, we are mammals. We are simply organisms that live on this planet that have evolved some very fancy brains. However, a mammal can only live when separated from its chromosomal donor, physiologically. As long as it is a part of the mother, it cannot survive as its own entity, and perhaps remains simply a part of the mother. A human fetus doesn’t develop a nervous system and a brain-stem until very late in the game, and even then it is uncertain whether or not they can comprehend or understand pain, for they are not yet alive. They are being made, like bread in an oven. The question can then become: “Does life start when consciousness starts”? Again, science does not yet have a theory that tells us the precise moment consciousness begins. It is entirely feasible that someday we may find that moment, for it is becoming increasingly clear that consciousness is merely the result of incomprehensible numbers of neural connections in our brains. Without neural connections like that, are we conscious? Are apes conscious? Are cockroaches conscious?

These are all very interesting questions that science may or may not some day answer (and will adhere to script scientific scrutiny so it can be considered fact, unlike religious tenants that can withstand no scrutiny and have no supporting evidence). In the meantime, we are sure (to a statistically significant degree) that an embryo cannot feel pain, is not a human life, and should not be considered so over the well beings and mortality of those we KNOW to be alive.

Enjoy.

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Posted in Family and Society, Health, Law, Politics, Religion, Science | 1 Comment »

Ignorance with Wings Part 3 ::intelligent design::

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

It is no joking matter that many people, nay, most people in the middle and southern states of this country actually believe that man was designed by some grand architect in the sky, and that evolution is nonsense.

The problem with their beliefs is that there is no evidence backing up their claims. Not one single shred, in fact, ignoring the theory of evolution, there is so much evidence AGAINST intelligent design that its a miracle it still is considered ’seriously’ by some. You’d really have to be quite blind to the world to dismiss evolution for a magical explanation.

But the fact remains, evolution is the single most likely theory in science. We are more sure evolution occurred than we are that cells divide the way we think they do, that gravity exists, and that the big bang occurred. Mind you, this is no small feat. The theories of gravity, cells, and the big bang have HUGE amounts of evidence, observation, independent confirmation, and reliable analyzed data behind it. HUGE.

I’m not going to make this a long post simply because I would be repeating myself over and over. But I will repeat some basic things. 1)Geologic record mixed with carbon dating confirms evolution 2)Scientific observation of species at present confirms evolution 3)Mutation of viruses such as Avian Flu or SARS confirms evolution etc…

Most confused people tend to think micro-evolution occurs without macro-evolution. These people haven’t thought it through enough, and probably dismiss logic regularly. Macro-evolution, very simply put, is micro-evolution over a period of massive amounts of years. What frustrates the creationist is that understanding evolution requires the acceptance of change over time. Very little, with the exception of bacteria, occurs over night in the context of speciation. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

Most creationists are so far removed from reality that science means very little to them. This is why I.D. and creation are considered myths, because 1)No evidence supports them 2)The people that insist on their veracity have extremely low standards and scrutinizing abilities

Now, one should note, claiming that something is wrong simply because the person who claims it to be right is an idiot, doesn’t make that claim wrong. But what does make it wrong is ENDLESS evidence against it. Creation is so implausible that it is sometimes infuriating that people still believe it. Some would simply have to accept the fact that many people still have below average intellectual capabilities.

You see, every branch of science has evidence and proof that all point to evolution being true. Independent sets of data from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, herpetology, entomology, biogeography, comparative anatomy, physiology, genetics, physics, biology, microbiology,  epidemeology, and so on, all support, nay require, the theory of evolution to be true.

How can you ignore the fossils for Christ’s sake?  Most creationists are unaware of how extremely unlikely fossilization is. In order for a specimen to be fossilized, very specific and rare circumstances must converge on a single unlikely point in time. Yet we have millions upon millions of fossils dating back billions of years. Life and speculation was so common and affluent on this planet for billions of years that the laws of probability require there to be fossilized remains. We have evidence, that we can see and touch, that we descended from a common ancestor. Yet, the creationists resist.

I’ve heard everything from arguments like “How could Earth be so perfectly suited to man” to “Why don’t we see dogs turning into bees in the lab”? These are some VERY stupid arguments to be made, and barely ever deserve a response, for the person asking them is merely demonstrating how little they understand science and reality. Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote “Critics [of evolution] exclusively trained in classics or in mathematics, who have never determined a scientific fact in their lives by induction from experiment or observation, prate learnedly about Mr. Darwin’s method, which is not inductive enough, not Baconian enough, forsooth for them.”

Basically, criticizing science without knowing science is ridiculous, yet it is what the creationists and I.D. proponents do all the time. Science is undeniable, unbiased, and not subject for argument. That is the whole point of it. Science is the search for truth, and truth can only be found when large amounts of people agree that something is true with a %99.9 certainty. This can only be achieved if your sample size is large enough, your data is wide enough, and your analyzing is done independently by many different people.

This is how we arrive upon a scientific THEORY. Theories are as close to laws, fact, or truth as you will ever get. Creationism is so far behind that, so immeasurably low on the level of scrutiny that it hardly belongs in the thoughts of intelligent men and women. In fact, it doesn’t.

You see, not only do we have NO reason to believe that creation occurred, we have mountains of evidence to suggest that something else occurred. Its a double-team!

Enjoy heathens.

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Posted in Religion, Science | 2 Comments »

Ignorance with Wings PART 2 ::sex::

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

If you’ve ever had sex, then you know it can be one of the greatest experiences on Earth; better than chocolate, videogames, and even certain episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation (I know… ridiculous). I know since I became sexually active in High School, I’ve had a wonderful time, and I feel that I’ve grown from it (no pun intended).

Unfortunately, I wish I could maintain a light-hearted air about sex with this post, but I cannot. For there are atrocities of sex perpetrated by the uncritical and faithfully religious, covering a broad spectrum from condemning pre-martial sex to stoning your daughter because she was raped.

Abrahamic religion has been against sex (and therefor against human life) for its entire history from what we can tell. Influencing generation after generation of lemmings to fear it and abstain from its wonders. Like drugs, a righteous orgasm can be and has been described as a spiritual experience, and it is for that reason that the religious condemn it. How dare you know pleasures greater than accepting Jesus into your heart. Those who control others know that accepting Jesus into your heart amounts to no amount of pleasure when compared to fornicating with two hotties in your college dorm room. They know that if they don’t condemn it forcefully, they will lose converts and lose their control over them. But why? Why do millions of people remain so confused and tortured by their uncritical faith-based lives? Because they know no other.

Let us explore how this is dangerous. Why don’t we start with the tamer side of things. In America, we have a serious lack of critical thinking. Most people here believe in things without evidence, without rationality, and without logic. This is very dangerous for a number of reasons, but when you focus on sex, you can see how dangerous faith really is. You see, faith is simply a word used by those who can’t rationally explain their feelings or judgments. When evidence and logic are absent, one has to either admit they are probably wrong or play the faith card, which gives them the license to believe whatever they want without evidence. When it comes to sex, these people believe that doing it before you are married is somehow bad or harmful. In additional, these very same people believe that certain forms of sex are just plain wrong, i.e. anal sex, oral sex, group sex, etc…

Smarter people ignore such tenants on the grounds that there is no evidence to these claims. Smarter people know that faith is crap in this situation, at least. To date there have been NO studies that suggest that anal sex is bad, wrong, or harmful to anyone. The same holds true for pre-marital sex, oral sex, kinky sex, BDSM, group sex or masturbation. So the question remains, why ban, shun, or insist on denying these pleasures to people who wish to seek them? The answer is that there is no good reason, so one must play the faith card. One will quote from an antiquated text that is poorly translated and contradictory, one will invent some kind of wishy-washy moral rule or law that they insist is omnipresent but is really just a bunch of bullshit, and one will simply invoke the irrational faith-based religion that they subscribe to.

Let me make it clear that I am NOT SAYING THAT every example of the usage or invoking of faith is dangerous or harmful, I’m simply focusing on sex for now.

Let us do what the religious hate most and look at facts: 1)Human beings are sexual 2)The human brain derives enormous amounts of pleasure from sexual contact 3)Sexual attraction is different for every person 4)Marriage is a human-created entity (Apes don’t get married) 5)Without sex, nobody would be here 6)Sex is beneficial to your health, if safe

I can hear the straw-man and red herring arguments blasting from the religious already: “But STDs kill people, and women shouldn’t have sex with more than one man in their life, and teens having sex is bad, and…” yada yada yada.

The reason why teen pregnancy and STDs remain prevalent is because of lack of education regarding sex. We have found that the more educated about sex people are, the lower the incident of abortion and STDs. It makes sense. If you are taught very frankly about sex, about how to have it safely, you will be less likely to spread STDs, more likely to control urges and hormones, and more likely to be safe and careful. This is true with anything in life. The more you know about something, the less mistakes you make!

Therefor, the problems we face are actually CAUSED by the religious who cite them so frequently when arguing against sex. They create the taboo and the abstinence only education, which in turn creates uneducated kids, which in turn creates abortions, teen pregnancies, and the spread of STDs, which in turn pisses off more religious people who in turn create MORE taboo and MORE pushes for abstinence only education.

Let us also not kid ourselves. Anti-sodomy laws are in place expressly for the purposes of making homosexuality illegal. Now, we know that NO ONE obeys these laws because they aren’t respectable laws. They are a travesty and direct threat to the very idea of a free country. But we know that Christians use faith to explain away their discomfort with homosexuals. Their uneducated and irrational fears include a fear of conversion by gays (they recruit straights to become gay) and not having children. Aside from the FACT that many straight couples either choose not to or can’t have children, the idea that homosexuality is wrong because they can’t produce children is seriously lacking in any merit. Similarly, the idea that gays recruit others to be gay is even more ridiculous. Intelligent people actually laugh at the less reasoned, under-educated religious who think this.

This is bad, wrong, and has got to stop. When we now turn to the more severe side of things, we see this very same dogmatic approach to sex by the uncritical and the religious and the results are much worse. People are dying by the hundreds of thousands. Small girls are being stoned to death by family, men in Africa are being restricted from access to condoms, women in the middle east are being treated like breeding machines instead of human beings, and teenage girls are having their genitals mutilated. Does ANY of this sound good, beneficial towards society or bettering of humankind? Fuck no!

President Bush cut off funding to any overseas family-planning group that provides INFORMATION on abortion. His actions, according to the New York Times “has effectively stopped condom provision to 16 countries and reduced it in 13 others, including some with the world’s highest rates of AIDS infection.” One third of the U.S. government’s AIDS prevention fund was wasted and squandered on abstinence-only education … as a result millions of people will die. If you have any sensibility in you, any interest in human kind, any kind or caring feelings; this should make you furious. Here we have tenants and claims WITH NO EVIDENCE ruining the world… literally. Christianity continues to kill people, just like Islam does with the promise of 49 virgins in heaven after slaying the non-believers. Go to the website I linked above and see what the effects have been. Maybe, if you supported this before or continue to support this now, after reading FACTS and EVIDENCE, you’ll change your mind. If not, then you need serious help.

In Islam, an adulterous wife or a raped girl are to be punished by death. This is another terrible consequence of the religious fear of sex. Sex has become so shunned and terrible that its a wonder any human beings remain. It doesn’t matter if you are Christian and condemn the act of stoning your 15 year old daughter for being raped, the point is that the same uncritical faith or untested ‘theories’ about reality that include how to treat sex is at play.

In Africa, Christians incorrectly believe that abstinence-only education will work in the prevention of AIDS. Christians prove their inability to regard evidence by ignoring the fact that this increases the prevelance of AIDS. Maybe they know this and they don’t care, maybe they want black men to die of AIDS, I can’t say WITHOUT EVIDENCE.

People will always have sex, no matter what. It is a biological function, a basic human need, and something that is stupid to ignore. For ignoring our sexual urges is ignoring the very thing that makes us human. In general, humans will not abstain from sex, no matter how many nights you stay up thinking about other people’s private lives, so the best and logical thing to do would be to work with the flow, not against it. We improve sexual education, improve condom distribution, increase funding for family planning, abolish abstinence-only education, have all contraception covered on medical insurance (including birth control and the morning after pill), and rid ourselves of irrational faith and belief without evidence.

Enjoy.

Posted in Health, Law, Religion | 11 Comments »

The benefits of religious faith

Monday, November 26th, 2007

It is clear that uncritical faith, or blind belief in anything without question is dangerous to society. It is and has been the source of violence and death ranging from the Holocaust to the Crusades.

But these beliefs are almost always about what happens to you after death. It would seem that there is no greater fear than simply ceasing to exist once you die. I admit, the idea is frightening to me. It is also not comforting at all to think that a loved one is not going somewhere special to spend eternity.

This is part of the reason why religious faith is so popular I believe. It is soothing and peaceful to think of these souls ascending to a paradise. On the flip side, some people take solace in believing that those who have wronged them will have their souls eternally tortured.

In response to my post, the benefits of atheism, Paul wrote:

I watched my mom die last February. She was basically unresponsive for a day or so. When I called our pastor he came over and talked and prayed with my mom. She perked up. After that she returned to the dying process Tell me in that incident there is no God.

You talked about no evidence or existence of God or the power of Jesus. Strange you would mention those terms. Talk to people who have experienced the power of Jesus or felt the existence of God. I believe they would speak differently.

Prayer has no measurable effect. My sister had a liver transplant a number of years ago. Many people prayed for that surgery. She’s still here.

You enjoy science. But have you ever stopped to really, really think about science. How did science happen? Who created science? How about God?

A very unfortunate comment. I of course have great sympathy for Paul and his loss, as I would anybody who has to suffer the pain of losing someone they love. But his conclusions are so flawed that I almost feel too guilty to point it out.

But this is when it counts. This is where the split between religion and modern reality originates.

Paul says that he has witnessed two instanced in which prayer had a beneficial effect. This, to an uncritical religious individual such as Paul, is absolute proof of prayer’s beneficial and divine effects. And that is precisely why religious faith is so dangerous. It takes almost NOTHING of any merit to convince these people that something is true. No questioning, no critical thinking, no nothing, just straight up blind belief. Extremely unfortunate.

Paul must be made aware of, one way or another, that there is in fact no truth to his claim.

The first known experiment was conducted by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. In England, every Sunday, Galton knew that enormous hordes of people were in churches praying for the health of the royal family, therefor, there should be some measurable effect on their health on Sundays. He found no such correlation.

In 2006, a much more scientific and reliable study was supported by Rusell Stannard, one of three religious scientists in Britain. He was funded by the Templeton foundation to find out if praying for sick patients improved their health.

The patients were randomly divided into two groups, the control group and the test group. The control group received no prayers and the test group did. To have any test be conclusive or scientific, it needs to be double blind, so neither the patients, the caregivers, or the doctors knew who was being prayed for and who wasn’t. People who were doing the praying were given the first name and the last initial of the people they were supposed to pray for. Dr. Herbert Benson was leading the group, spending $2.4 million and was quoted in a press release, “believing that evidence for the efficacy of intercessory prayer in medicinal settings is mounting”. Nice unbiased researcher!

The team monitored 1802 patients at six hospitals who were receiving identical coronary bypass surgery. The patients were then divided into three groups, group 1 received prayers and didn’t know it, group 2 received no prayers, and group 3 received prayers and were aware of it. Obviously, group 3 tests for psychosomatics, or, the power of the placebo effect.

Three churches were charged with the act of praying. One in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts, and one in Missouri. Every one praying was told to pray “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications”.

And the results? Published in the American Heart Journal in April of 2006, the study concluded that there were no differenced between groups 1 and 2. Of course, there was a difference between group 3 and the other two groups, but it isn’t what you think. People who knew they were being prayed for suffered more complications than those who did not. The experimenters suggested that this was due to ‘performance anxiety’ of those who knew they were being prayed for.

As you can see, Paul continues to argue as someone blind and immune to logic and reality, as most religiously devout people do. There seems to be nothing that can penetrate their schizophrenia because the belief grows to be too strong. If you are used to convincing yourself or being convinced that something is true with no evidence, than it becomes very easy to ignore truths with evidence. These people are lost in their magical worlds where humans can walk on water, omnipotent beings interfere with the lives of some and not others for mysterious reasons, and man was invented by an intelligence less than 10,000 years ago.

Enjoy.

Posted in Health, Religion, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Benefits of atheism

Monday, November 19th, 2007

A lot of the religious on this site have been pressuring me to explain the benefits of being an atheist. I’m not entirely sure why they are so caught up on this concept, in order to understand it one only needs to be critical, skeptical, and have the ability to question. None of the religious on this site have demonstrated such abilities.

However, I will continue despite my slight confusion as to why it needs to be spelled out.

SKEPTICISM
Being an atheist isn’t just about refusing to believe unjustified claims and baseless tenants, its about being skeptical. An atheist knows that it is very easy to convince someone of something, no matter how crazy that something is. Most people just simply don’t question. Being a skeptic about religion for example, saves you from being caught up in religious fervor and eventually limiting people’s freedoms because they aren’t in the same religion. A skeptic knows that there is no valid argument (let alone any evidence) for restricting gays from getting married, in fact, no religious argument is valid. Why? Because its predicated on the false idea that certain things are true without evidence, such as the existence of super magical beings and floating Jews. The existence of God and the power of Jesus are two very good examples. These things have absolutely NO evidence to support them, NO rational theories that can be tested to explain them, and NO consistency within the communities of people who believe them.

As a skeptic, I also don’t waste my money on cold remedies, psychics, herbs, acupuncture, and other mythical things because I can say with 99% certainty that they don’t exist or work. Why? Because I asked questions and I refused to be led blindly by very convincing people. I did research, looked up studies, thought about it rationally and logically and concluded that none of those things mentioned above have any scientific or valid claims of veracity. They simply don’t. And if one day they do, then I’ll change my tune, but until there is proper evidence and testable hypothesis, they will remain pseudo-scientific and false.

SCIENCE
Many have tried to debunk science, and all have failed. Pure science is the most foolproof method of understanding reality there is, and NOTHING comes close to its stature. I have challenged people to prove me wrong and no one has come even close. Do you know why? Because everything in science is testable. If you looked at a list of scientific theories, you would find a list of very testable and predictable things. (Don’t make me school you on the difference between the word ‘theory’ and ’scientific theory’).

Sure, some hypothesis in science seem very nutty, and to the untrained layman almost religious or magical in nature. But that is where the line is. Take quantum mechanics for example. Sub-atomic particles behave completely independent of Newtonian physics. An electron can jump from one valence to another without actually traveling in between states. Obviously, a baseball can’t jump from the pitcher to the catcher without traveling in between. If you were skeptical and free from being led blindly, you would question this left and right no matter how convincing the person is who told you. The first step is to read peer reviewed scientific articles on the subject. These articles get reviewed by very skeptical people who usually don’t take any bullshit. The excellent part of science is that you can read multiple studies on the same thing and compare conclusions. You can check the methods and controls, read about the authors, combine analysis and see if there is indeed something conclusive.

You see, this is how laymen hear about things like quantum mechanics. So many independent researchers will conclude very similar things, and then, and only then, does it start to become a viable and testable hypothesis.

And if you still don’t believe it, you are more than welcome to test it yourself.

You may think that this is no different than being brainwashed into believing that 47 virgins await you in heaven and that God watches your every move. However, there is no equivalent to science in religion. There are no independent, double blind studies in religion. In fact, every study of prayer, for example, has concluded that prayer does nothing of measurable effect. So why should you believe in something so outrageous and contrary to BLARING evidence as creation? There is no bible in science. Take the bible away from Earth and suddenly everyone would be touting different tenants and truths of faith. Even with the bible, people tout different tenants and truths of faith. There are many different sects of Christianity alone, each with a different interpretation of the bible. The inconsistency in the bible alone leads us to believe that it is invalid as a source of information. The moment science is applied to religion, all of religion disintegrates. That is why there is so much opposition to science amongst the religious, which actually doesn’t make any sense.

You cannot oppose science. Science says nothing. It has no voice, no bias and no opinion. It is simply the study of reality. Photography doesn’t have a voice or a bias, it just is. You can’t oppose photography. Scientists themselves may develop biases or bad habits such as misinterpreting evidence or interfering with results. It does happen, but the beauty of science is that it will swallow that up. It accounts for human error. Science is really just about statistics. How likely is X to be true? It is logical to assume that X is true, we have 150 independent studies that concluded that X is true, we can predict X with, so far, 100% accuracy, therefore, X is more than likely true.

No such thing in religion.

PEACE
I know, as an atheist, that I can’t be convinced that gays are bad, that we went into Iraq for WMDs, and that woman shouldn’t have the choice to abort their fetuses; because the evidence all points to the contrary. But aside from that, I don’t have any alternate or hidden agendas. I live my life knowing that the likelihood of there being a super powerful being floating somewhere watching my ever move, or that I could go to heaven or hell depending on my sins is so low that I can safely assume it non existent.

I don’t have to worry about someone not being of my religion and finding ways to condemn them or oppress them, that I don’t distrust someone or seek to discriminate against someone because they aren’t acting in the divine way that I would have them act… I just don’t have to worry about that.

I can be kind and giving without the hidden agenda of scoring points with Jesus. I do it to better humanity, not to serve some mythical divine purpose. I know that there is nothing wrong with sex and I enjoy it thoroughly, enriching my life and others. I don’t keep myself from eating certain foods, from enjoying wonderful things in life just because I think magical beings will condemn me later. I can make my own damn choices, not have a preacher do it for me. I can tell myself what to think, what is right and what is wrong, I can concern myself with the pursuit of happiness, and not the oppression of other people’s happiness. I know that my moral compass is pure and righteous simply because I follow one basic rule; don’t interfere with someone else’s happiness.

I see on the news every day about bombs going off in the middle east, people dying, being murdered by U.S. soldiers, Iraq soldiers, sectarian violence and so on… all because of religion. Jerusalem will never be peaceful until religion is a thing of the past.

THE DOWNSIDE
Religion can be therapeutic, especially in times of duress. I don’t take solace in the idea that when my mom dies she goes to some kind of paradise. I know the hard and unpleasant truth that she simply just rots in the ground as decaying organic matter. Its terribly sad, and if my mother died I’d cry for a long time. We are animals, creatures composed of organics, and we are bound to them, at least for now. When the brain ceases functioning, it dies, meaning that electrical impulses no longer pass through it. This results in the inability to keep the rest of the body alive, and the person dies. The person’s memories and thoughts are encoded physiologically in the brain in trillions of neural pathways. We have no technology that reads that, so when the brain can’t sustain itself it is lost. The pathways decay and the person is gone.

As I write this I grow very sad because death is such a permanent and cold thing. There is no mercy in death, and its very hard to deal with that. Religion can soften the blow, but I honestly would rather be privy to the truth than treated like a child, no matter how painful it is. But that is just me.

Enjoy.

Posted in Religion, Science | 2 Comments »

The Dangers of Religious Faith

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

I recently wrote a post on the benefits of atheism, but it was right before the site switched over, so I’ll have to re-paste it here as soon as that is available, so stay tuned.

In the meantime…

Given the history of faith, we can safely assume that looking at the world uncritically, as the religious do, only leads us to an eventual path of destruction. If you ever look at the Koran, you can see on almost every page that that book demands its readers to hate the nonbelievers and to take action upon them.

If we only made the same evidentiary demands of the religious as we do EVERYTHING else. If we could show them that it might be okay to question whether or not the bible or the Koran were written by a powerful deity. Maybe, just maybe, they were written by men.

If you were to look at an individual who believed that an alien power was sending him feelings and emotions through a wormhole located in his house you would have that man committed. He has no evidence nor any logical reason to believe what he believes. However, it would seem that madness is sanity in numbers. The religious have no more of a claim to a ‘truth’ than our alien-message-receiving friend. Its only the fear of what happens after death that holds it all together. If the religious believed or understood correctly that when a human dies, it dies and there is most likely nothing left of the consciousness, then hundreds of millions of lives may have been spared.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam represent the greatest dangers with regards to uncritical blind faith. Christianity was the inventor of anti-semitism, for anyone who doubts the divinity of Christ is wrong. From such belief rose the witch trials, the Spanish inquisition and the Nazi party. From the Percy Anecdotes:

The condemned are the immediately carried to the Riberia, the place of execution, where there are as many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt. The negative and relapsed being first strangled, then burnt; the professed mount their stakes by a ladder, and the Jesuits, after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the church, consign them to eternal destruction, and then leave them to the fiend.

Christians believe that the Jews murdered Christ, and that their current existence is a living denial of the existence of Christ as the messiah. Look up The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Christian text now coveted by the Muslims. Al-Akhbar, a Cairo newspaper, once published the following:

Thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians took revenge in advance, against the most vile criminals on the face of the Earth….Although we do not have a complaint against him, for his revenge was not enough.

But like I said, it was bred a long time ago.

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judae are in Christ Jesus: for ye also like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. (Thesalonians 2:14-16)

It sounds like whoever wrote this was a little jealous or pissed at the Jews. Here are a group of people who think they are special, and that everyone else is normal. That would make me mad… mad enough to write about it anyways. You can read more antisemitism in John 8:41-45 as well, and I am sure elsewhere. Then of course, the ultimate danger of religious faith has already played out in living memory. The holocaust.

The National Socialism of all of us is anchored in uncritical loyalty, in the surrender to the Fuhrer that does not ask for the why in individual cases, in the silent executions of his orders. We believe that the Fuhrer is obeying a higher call to fashion German history. There can be no criticism of this belief.

-Rudolf Hess, in a speech, June 1934

Nazism emerged out of implausible ideas that were never questioned. This is exactly what religious faith is. And as a result of millions of people remaining uncritical and lacking skepticism, too many innocent people died. Some might say that religion had nothing to do with this, but those people clearly need their head examined. Outlandish dogmas and terrible claims without evidence are at the very heart and soul of the holocaust. This was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. The Germans have viewed the Jews as vile trash for centuries, one only needed to find those people and bring them together. Secular hatred of the Jews obviously arose from non-secular hatred of the Jews, and either way you slice it, it requires faith without evidence. In 1896, two third of all people polled believed that the solution to the Jewish problem was physical extermination. (Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Execution). I also don’t want to mention the fact that the Catholic church helped the Nazi party look up family histories and find out who as Jewish and who wasn’t.

Obviously, it has been a long time since the Catholic church condemned and tortures Jews, witched, and other non-believers. You could applaud that, or take pity in knowing that if it weren’t for the Catholic church, the dark ages and the middle ages would have gone much differently, and the internet could have been invented in 1654. Imagine where we would have been now?

And interesting fact to consider is that at the end of the nineteenth century, the Vatican had rigorous scholarship commence on the Bible. They wanted these scholars to apply modern critical thinking to prove that an exhaustive study of the Bible was show the world that it was truly God’s work, and we shouldn’t deny it. Hilariously, the scholars, after their study involving the application of ‘modern’ critical thinking, became skeptical of the literal truth of the scripture. In 1907, the Pope banned it all, declared the scholarship heresy, excommunicated all who were skeptical and proscribed a bunch of books.

Instills a lot of confidence in Catholicism, doesn’t it?

The dangers of unquestioned faith, lacking skepticism, and ignoring the scientific inquiry remains very dangerous for humans. For thousands of years, people have been killing each other over their beliefs, and there still is no end in sight. Imagine how peaceful the Middle East would be if suddenly Islam and Judaism were wiped from everyone’s minds (Christianity would also have to be wiped as well). This would represent not the denial of the ‘truth’ of these religions, but the refusal to accept outrageous claims with no evidence. I can hardly believe that there are still people, in this country, who do just that. Who think that humans did not evolve from lesser mammals, that the Earth was created 5000 years ago, and that there is a omnipotent power who concerns himself with the whereabouts and feelings of 6 billion people, whilst simultaneously affecting carbon dating outcomes and falsifying scientific data.

Get your minds straight and maybe we can have a better world.

Enjoy.

Posted in Religion | 3 Comments »

The Passion of the Idiot plus Some History!

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

We all know that christianity is just a sect of Judaism, so its always a little silly when a Christian makes hurtful comments about Jews. Well… here is the important difference, there is Jewish the religion and Jewish the race. Jews are in the same category as Blacks or Asians, meaning they are a race. There are genetic differences, and like me, you can be both atheist and Jewish.

So that is why Mel Gibson’s comments are hurtful not only to the religious, but also to the race.

CBS/AP) Actor Mel Gibson apologized again yesterday, specifically for the anti-Semitic remarks he made last week after sheriff’s deputies stopped him in Malibu. But some public relations experts question the impact his drunk-driving arrest and tirade may have on his career.

The sheriff’s report said Gibson told the arresting deputy: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and asked him, "Are you a Jew?"

Whats ironic is that its the Christians who are responsible for most of the wars in the world, but thats another post.

No one really ever took Gibson seriously, his racist movie "Passion of the Christ" was pretty ridiculous, and I think the intelligent community agrees. Braveheart was good but its difficult to fuck up that story.

Gibson’s over oppressing religion just attributes to the fact that most celebrities just aren’t very bright. Look at the Scientologists for instance. A lot of people are dumb, but celebrities harbor a high percentage of them.

Mel Gibson is in a phase of major apologizing, but thats not going to erase what he said. What he said he said while he was drunk, and an impulsive comment like that is rarely a lie… the man is genuinely racist, and I have no doubt in my mind. I heard his father was a big bigot, so I think there is some believability to it. I mean, look at his movie, vilifying the Jews like that, making the Romans look like good guys… it was hilariously bad. If I took christians seriously or celebrities with half brains seriously, I would probably be more than hurt. I’m only hurt because I don’t like being reminded of the true nature of some humans out there.

Are these conservatives the Neanderthals to the liberal Cro Magnons? I think so.

Here is a little bit of information about the genetics of being Jewish.

… These observations are the biological equivalent to the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, suggesting that despite 2000 years of Diaspora, the relatedness of the Jews of Eastern European ("Ashkenazi"), North African ("Sephardic") and Middle Eastern ("Oriental") origin can be demonstrated by genetic marker analysis.

In the course of conducting research in this area, a few surprises have been found. The existence of a priestly line of males ("Kohanim") is shown as a distinctive set of genetic markers on the father-to-son transmitted Y chromosome. Limited variation of these markers among Kohanim males is compatible with a 3300-year-old origin in a single male or group of related males, possibly from the family of Aaron. These Y-chromosome genetic markers can even be found among the Lemba, a South African tribal group claiming patrilineal kinship with the Jews of Yemen.

As judged by the shared mutations for certain genetic diseases, including Gaucher disease, Connexin 26-based deafness and familial Mediterranean fever, considerable historical contact can be demonstrated between Ashkenazi Jews and the Christians of Spain, Italy and other Mediterranean countries. The legacy of the Spanish Inquisition can be found in Latin American populations. Mutations of Jewish origin for the rare genetic conditions of Laron dwarfism and Bloom syndrome have been found among Christian peoples residing in remote communities in Latin America.

Just for your information, I am a Kohan (and my name is also Aaron… weird). I am also an Ashkenazi Jew, and I have some curly ass hair, a funny nose, and my… nevermind.
 Enjoy.

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