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God an the Military

via videosift.com

God's army: the U.S . Air Force.

Here's an example where people in authority - and we know how hierarchical the military is - can push their beliefs unto subordinates. Something I'm very intolerant about.

To allow such a piece of propaganda to be shot on their premises also shows the Pentagon's interest in religion as a control tool. Now try to do the similar atheist propaganda or just an honest documentary with soldiers who are atheists or who have become atheist following their war experience...

Plus we trust incredibly powerful weapons to these irrational people and that's a scary thought.

New Religions!

Quantum Theology and Quantum Spirituality!

Something hinted at by the great fraud Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation inventor, parasite of Beatles fame) is now becoming more widespread. The book review for "Quantum gods don't deserve your faith" by Amanda Gefter on New Scientist Opinions is revealing.

Maharishi claimed that transcendental meditation gave practitioners access to the "quantum field of cosmic consciousness". This, he said, was identical to SU(5), the model physicists were then investigating in their search for a grand unified theory. Sadly for cosmic consciousness, real experiments later falsified SU(5).

As for the notion of creating our own reality, this relies on brains in some sense operating quantum mechanically - and there is no evidence for this. As Stenger says, the scales of distance involved in brain processing are more than a thousand times too large for quantum effects to necessarily come into play. Likewise, physicist Max Tegmark has shown that the timescales of events in the brain are 10 or more orders of magnitude longer than the timescales of "decoherence", the process by which quantum effects "leak" out of the quantum system.

Let's get real! Let's not grab any new idea and flex it into our needs for imaginary food without some verification or validation...

How Should We Call Them ?

It would be nice to have name, a monicker, an appellation or designation, for those who really profit Big Time from their lies and their siblings' ignorance and gullibility.

Other than priests, pastors, shamans, frauds, thiefs or the Federal Reserve Bank for that matter. An original nickname - could be funny ironic sarcastic or just plain factual.

It could also be a completely made-up word. Like Beliefants, for instance.

Atheism Logo Study

A litttle while back, on Twitter, Michael Nugent, who hosts an atheist blog on Atheism, Happiness and Life suggested the idea of creating a visual symbol for Atheism.

There are already existing icons on the web representing atheism or certain aspects of the worldview, the FFS, Dawkins' A, the Skeletal Fish and others. But it started me thinking and I came up with the above design and the following argumentation:

My proposal for an Atheist Logo:
1 - Since everything either spirals in or out in this Universe, here's the Spiral.
2 - It also represents a Birdsnake, a fantasy hybrid link between reptiles and volatiles. Evolution.
3 - It has an organic sketchy-like irregular rendering, indicating the finest any (known) given star can produce: Life.
4 - Also suggests a galaxy... of like-minded thinkers.

Any opinions or suggestions?

Souls Don't Exist After Death

Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist.



So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist.



Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to befrauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

From Matt McCormick's blog Proving The Negative

Just A Quote

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'this is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' this is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for'

Douglas Adams

On The Importance Of Philosophy

I'm Just An Amateur Philosopher

Philosophy examines and studies existence, as well as knowledge, action, force and the arts. At the root it stems from the need to understand existence and the nature of existence. Life and death, as far as we, conscious and sentient living things are concerned.

Well, as far as I'm concerned. But I'm a real amateur philosopher. A newbie, not because I'm young - I'm not - but because I wasted too much time dabbling with the same fundamental issues that philosophy deals with but without the proper tools. And without a solid framework such as the one presented for instance here, on The Importance Of Philosophy.

It is based on an Objectivist worldview, first laid out by author and philosopher Ayn Rand, who said:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute....

And we, the self-aware, can't escape philosophy. On this other website, Objectivism 101, it says

...that everyone has a philosophy, even if they don't know it. There's no way to avoid it. It's the way you make sense of the world. It's how you put your knowledge together into an understanding of the world. It's how you make choices, weigh costs and benefits, and decide how to live your life.

A statement with which I wholeheartedly agree. For years I developped "a" philosophical point of view without my knowing it. As I was examining the development of my own condition, in itself and within human society, as I was searching for answers and more knowledge on this universe I found myself in, ideas somehow organised themselves around a few pivotal concepts and I slowly became an amateur philosopher...

One who's trying to attain a little more clarity from whithin this chaotic and entropic life he woke up in, fifty eight years ago....

Evolution Is Wrong

via videosift.com

According to the simplistic arguments presented in this clip - based on the ideas of Adnan Oktar, the islamist creationist - because some species have not changed in hundreds of millions of years, all life was created at once. He uses numerous fossil examples and compares them with almost unchanged living species today to prove that evolution did not happen.

We estimate that there are between seven to one hundred million different living species today - numbers vary because of issues categorising species - some of them are bound to not need to evolve. To be so well niched at one point that major changes become unnecessary and the form stabilises.

Of course he doesn't mention the fact that there are no human fossils dating hundreds of millions of years, but oddly, and contrary to Bible-bound American creationists, he admits to those millions of years.

Here's a nice example of propaganda for you. It uses all the tricks in the book to sustain Oktar's fallacious argument that Darwin was wrong. About a third of the program is spent on pseudo-scientific explanations of the process of fossilisation, another third tells without giving any facts that all sciences have proofs against evolution and the last consist of enumeration of species that haven't changed.

All with dramatic music, fast editing, lush 3D animations, quality graphics and diagrams, lies and wide approximations, and a smirk in the narrator's voice.

A Good Sermon

Amazing! What the power of a good sermon can do. And on any subject. This excellent and hilarious demonstration of arguing convincingly against food shows how one can, in more serious fields, with words, intonations and attitude, influence and manipulate other people towards any ideology imaginable. Gain an advantage over siblings.

Good to know about that trick and have a good laugh at the same time.

A Belief

My only faith:

There will be one more day for me.

My only certainty:

And once, there won't!

Status: So far so good.

Momentous Event

The Hate Syndrome

Hatred is many things. But in very general terms it is attention targeted at an idea, an objet or person, with intent to do damage. The foundation of which is usually pain, past or current. Hate features ignorance of all other angle on or concern about its target. It fuels focused imagination and eventually actions to resolve itself.

The picture above was taken in Montreal, Quebec, a few weeks ago during an annual yet impromptu march against police violence. Hatred is often but not always mutual. And it is sometimes caused not by directly by pain, where the object of hate is unrelated to its subject, as in the case of acute mental illness. Or when hatred is directed towards a symbol, an image that incorporates what the subject feels. To hate is to feel intense dislike, or extreme aversion or hostility, always with a reason. Hatred is not evil, it is a syndrome of many emotions, attitudes, views, intentions, and it burns everything it touches. Hatred is animal.