Michael's Blog : Science, Religion and Atheism

Welcoming 2006

michael — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 03:44:00 GMT

Well, 2005 has been one hell of an interesting year. Well, Ok, it’s been one truly fucked up year.

From God’s wrath on the poor heathen Asian countries this time a year ago to the senseless murder of a helpless brain-dead woman, to the introduction of Intelligent Design Creationism to public Schools, to God’s wrath on the sinful city of New Orleans, to the mythical, secular “War on Christmas”, all under-shadowed by a very real war on those evil missionaries of Islam (read terrorists), the religious right has had one hell of a year this year. I can’t remember a time in my admittedly limited life span where Christianity has enjoyed such large support and publicity by media and government. Yet they continue to cry persecution.

Sorry got on a rant there … I’m really trying to reel back the anti-religious stuff, but it’s just sooo difficult!

Additionally we’ve seen the public support for his holy Chimpiness and his pet war dive bomb into near nothingness all the while the Republican Elite are self-imploding in scandal and corruption. (There have been some upsides this year)

We’ve seen human rights violations in spades, civil liberties lost, and traitorous acts all done in the name of protecting the “American People” at any cost.

So I just wanted to take this moment to sit and reflect and say Damn! I’m glad this year is over!

Happy New Year Everyone! Here’s to hoping the coming year brings some sanity back to the world. (It can’t possibly get worse, can it?)

Ramblings on Cloning

michael — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 12:03:00 GMT

I’m up a little late tonight having a little trouble sleeping because I’m still messed up from the time fluctuation that occurs when you spend a week across country. So I’m catching up on my reading and ran across this post from Andy at World Wide Rant.

I just watched The Island myself last week and was also pleasantly surprised at how good it was as compared to what I was expecting. Andy has some interesting insights into the connections between this movie and many others (you might find some of them a little contrived, but I think he’s onto something), but more importantly he touched on a subject that I’ve thought a lot about.

Would a human clone have a soul?

The simple answer I would give is absolutely, positively not. However, my reasons for believing this are far simpler than you might think. I don’t think that a clone would be anything less than human, I think that a clone of myself, besides being an absolutely wonderful thing to release on this world (I mean who wouldn’t want two of me?) would have just as many rights, and be just as human as myself (regardless of those who might disagree with my status as a human being).

My reason is simply that I don’t believe in the idea of a soul. I don’t believe that I have one, I don’t believe that you have one, I don’t even believe that my own children have been endowed with this mysterious soul thing. A soul would imply that there was an existence of being outside of these physical bodies our consciousness inhabits, and without evidence of such a thing, I just can’t believe in it.

However, I realize that the vast majority of people on this planet do believe in such a thing, and as Andy points out, this could pose a problem for human cloning in the future.

Let me get straight, that I am 100% in support of research and experimentation in the field of human cloning. I think that the understanding and advances in science and the medical benefits that can be gained by this line of research are enormous. I realize that there are ethical considerations, but I also believe that most of those ethical problems are not so much real problems as they are religious concerns.

Take for instance, embryonic cloning. Many people are concerned with the wholesale cloning of human embryos that will be subsequently destroyed, tantamount to abortion. Well, the truth is, this happens on a regular basis today in fertility clinics across the world. When dozens of eggs are fertilized for implanting into a mother’s uterus, what do you suppose happens to the embryos that are not implanted? Well, they sure as hell aren’t being used for stem cell research!

The concerns of safely bringing a clone to term and the health and life expectancy of a fully termed clone are of real concern, and I don’t think it should be attempted until those concerns can be addressed, however, those can’t be addressed until we can get passed the ethics problems of embryonic cloning.

But to me the most important ethical concern would be societal. In today’s highly religious environment, would clones be accepted as fully human if a large segment of the population believed they weren’t blessed with a godly soul? Could a situation such as described by The Island occur where clones are produced for organ harvesting? Is it possible we could justify a new race of slaves, using these “soulless clones”. I think that it’s quite possible that the first waves of clones could in all likelihood face the same human rights issues or worse that have plagued our past.

Let me know what you think, comments are always open and welcome no matter what your stance.

What have we missed

michael — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:46:00 GMT

Ok, so it's going on a month now since my last post. I'm sorry! I've been pretty busy. I still can't imagine how the daily bloggers do it. How do they find the time to read the entire internet daily and comment on it several times throughout. I just don't get it, don't these people have jobs?

Moving on ... so in the past month a lot of shit has gone down that I've just let slide on right by without comment. So let's recap shall we?

More hurricanes, more natural disaster. God Bless America indeed.

Evolution on trial ... Again! - Even after the whole Kansas debacle, un-Intelligent Design is make it's case in Dover, PA and losing badly. The dullards at the Discovery Institue are showing themselves to be the ideological religious fanatics that they are, and that their "theory" (which scientifically speaking it is nothing of the sort) is simply a rewording of Creationist Dogma and does not belong in public education.

Harriet Miers - Here's a woman with NO experience as a judge whatsoever, never even played one on TV, yet President Bush says she's the best person for the job and James Dobson publicly endorsed her. What in Christ's name did the dissenting Republican have a problem with? Hell, the Democrats put up less of a fight over her! Oh well, NEXT!

Samuel Alito - Next in line for the supreme court seat, if Harriet was the best person for the job, Salito must just be ... umm what's the term I'm looking for ... Sloppy Seconds. Nevertheless, Harriet didn't want the job, so it now falls to a man with a history a deteriorating the line between church and state and who also believes that women are the property of their husbands. You know what? Bring back Harriet! This is a life-time appointment and at least she was OLD!

Plamegate - It's Christmas for the democrats! The first endictments are in and Scooter's going down! The administration is finally starting to implode, and all fingers are pointing in the direction of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Ugghhh ... More on military mistreatment of prisoners - So it's looking like Abu Ghraib wasn't the only atrocity. Now there are apparently secret prisons set up all over the world, throughout the former Soviet Union as well as Thailand, Afganastan, and surprise, surprise Gauntanimo Bay. And again it's looking like all fingers are pointing directly at Dick Cheney. What's with this guy? As pointed out by the Poor Man Institue the Vice President has about as much Executive authority as the mayor of Spokane, Washington. Why does he get to make all of these really bad decisions? Who the hell is running this country?

And finally ... Democrats finally find the key and unlock the storage closet where the Republicans have been storing their balls for the last 5 years. Of course, nothing much has come of the surprise closed session to investigate the misleading intelligence leading to the war, nothing much except for a bunch of Republican huffing and whining.

So, it's been an eventful month and I've just been letting it slide on by with nary a word. I really suck at this blogging thing!

Been on a slump lately

michael — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 07:26:00 GMT

I know I haven't been very consistent with updating my blog. But hey I've been busy ... no really ... I have, I swear.

I was in Florida for a week getting my head stuffed with Microsoft marketing, then I was visiting my parents in Hudson, FL, went fishing with my dad, and since I've got back I've been busy nursing a horrible sunburn, and lately I've been filling my time peeling the dead and crusty skin off of nearly my entire body.

Sorry if I just grossed you out.

Other than that I have been busy with a little side job I picked up, performing a CommunityServer install for a Online Learning Community. (For those in the know, I'm not just installing it, I'm developing a few addons and skinning the thing too)

The honest truth however is that after that week at TechEd in Florida, I just kind of needed to clear my head a bit. I didn't have any time to do much of anything while I was there, and when I got back and started to catch up on what was going on in the real world, well, I just kind of gave up. It's very tiring to actually care about some of this stuff.

For instance Terri Schiavo's back in the news! Why?!?! What the hell? The autopsy came out, it proved her brain was mush, what the hell is the problem? Why can't these people drop the goddamn subject?

Intelligent Design, which is just a transmogrification of Creationism, has regressed slightly into Divine Design and is pulling the same shit that it did in Kansas, in Utah. Keep the shit out of our Schools!

Some fuck-head orthodox Christian preiest in Romania tried to excorsize one of his nuns by binding her up, locking her up with no food or water for 4 days, and then crucifying her. She subsequently died, and the priest claims victory by saying that God has delivered her from evil. Turns out the poor girl was just a schitzophrenic and probably could have done just fine with a little medication.

See! See what I mean, this is just scratching the surface, it's too much to keep up with, and if you let it all get to you, you start to turn all black inside, angry and bitter and mad at the world.

Is there any hope for humanity? Will we ever get past this religious superstitious bullshit and just see and appreciate eachother, the world, the universe for what it really is? An amazing, beautiful and wonderful coincidence. I think if everyone looked at it the world that way, there might be less of this self-righteous, right-to-priveledge shit going on.

Anyway, sorry for the rant.

What did Jesus Look Like as a Child?

michael — Fri, 20 May 2005 10:02:00 GMT

So, I saw this last night on the local news here in CT, and have been looking around the usual blogs and it seems no one is commenting on this.

So, I'm going to step in and for once be the first (at least amongst the blogs I read)

It seems that an "elite" team of forensic investigators have taken it upon themselves to reconstruct the face of Jesus as a child.

Here's the link: http://cbs2chicago.com/special/local_story_129200940.html

Now, I just want to take a moment and point out how ridiculous this effort was in the first place, and why it was a huge waste of time, money and resources. The reconstruction of the face was done from the image on the Shroud of Turin. This is an artifact that holds NO evidence of actually being the shroud that was used on Jesus, and in fact is likely only 600-700 years old. Additionally computer reconstructions of what an adult may have looked like as a child are usually pretty bad, and pretty far off.

So, what I'm seeing here is a computer reconstruction of a child's face rendered from a computer reconstruction of an adult's face, reconstructed from a blurry image on a piece of cloth that in all likely hood wasn't even around until 1400 years AFTER a man who may or may not have even existed, allegedly died!

WOW! People are absolutely amazing in the shit they'll swallow sometimes. What a collosal waste of time.

Much Closer to Home

michael — Wed, 11 May 2005 05:12:00 GMT

The disease is spreading, and it's getting uncomfortably close to home. If there was one place that I thought would be immune to this bullshit, it was the NorthEast. I guess I was wrong.

Via Pharyngula: Please, make it stop. Will the lunacy never end?

General Disclaimer

Entire Kansas School Board Swept Away By Freak Tornado

michael — Tue, 10 May 2005 05:20:00 GMT

One can wish can't he?

Oh well, now that the whole grueling experience of having to be creative under a deadline is over, I can get back to my soapbox. I know I’m a little late to the party on this one, (that the problem with blogging current events, by the time you get to them, someone else has already done it and invariably, done it better) but the fact of the matter is that besides the blogs I frequent and a few blips in the media, this story is not getting nearly as much coverage as it should. So I’m doing my part to spread the story to those few that read my words and may not be aware, or at least sufficiently outraged by what’s going on in Kansas.

There is a trial going on in the state of Kansas right now. It’s not being held in a court of law, and the judges presiding over the case are about as unqualified to be making these decisions as anyone could be. It’s a Kangaroo court set up with a predetermined outcome, and that outcome is going to come down hard on the wrong side of logic, reason, and the Constitution of the United States.

There are many that are hopeful that Science will win out, but the way I see it, these Judges had their minds made up long before the farce of a trial started.

Oh, yeah, in case you didn’t know, it’s about teaching Intelligent Design (ID) vs. Evolution in the Public School system. The Kansas State School Board is deep in the muck and mire of this debate right now, bringing in witnesses to testify on behalf of ID, even an extremist Muslim who has been successful in forcing (and yeah I mean in a terroristic sort of way) creationism to be taught in Turkey. There is a lot of crazy shit going on down there right now.

I have been reading and reading, and I just can’t seem to wrap my poor little head around it all. All I keep coming back to is WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!?!?!

To get a better understanding of what I’m talking about, let’s have a listen to the loudest of the crackpots heading up the School Board down there, one Kathy Martin.

"Evolution has been proven false. ID is science-based and strong in facts."

"We are not going to give up until the standards say what we want them to say."

"Of course this is a Christian agenda. We are a Christian Nation. Our country is made up of Christian conservatives. We don't often speak up but we need to stand up and let our voices be heard."

"Why shouldn't theology be taught in the classroom? Morality ought to be taught in every class. Prayer ought to be allowed. Whenever a child wanted to pray in class, I prayed with them. All children believe in God. Even little children whose parents don't take them to church believe in God."

"Microevolution is change within the species: there are adaptations that make it easier for the species to live. Macroevolution is change between the classes: reptiles turning into birds, for example. Man has changed and evolved, but we are not going to change back into monkeys."

Note: I stole these quotes directly from UTI, but they are widely available everywhere, so I don’t feel too bad about it. By the way go read UTI, there’s a lot of good stuff there.

And it’s not just evolution that they’re attacking, they’re broadening their attack to include all theoretical sciences, what they call “historical” vs. “experimental”, which basically is calling out Biology, Astronomy and Geology as well, note that these are all sciences which marginalize God's invlolvement in our history, to the point where "He" isn't necessary.

It’s obvious that this is so much more, it’s that theocratic movement I was talking about oh so many posts ago. It’s happening little by little, and they’re getting bolder and becoming nearly ubiquitous, these fundamental, theocratic, fucking god-sucking conservatives, are undermining everything that We as a Nation, no, no We as the Human Race have accomplished in the last 200 years. They are sucking us back into the dark ages, what’s next? Shall we return to a Geo-centric universe? Perhaps a flat Earth? Or as the logical and reasonable citizens of Kansas are now asking, what’s next, Gravity?

If you’re interested, and you damn well should be if you have or plan to have children and plan on educating them in America, here are some links to people who are doing a way better job of covering this than I could ever possibly do.

Religious Groups Oppose HPV Vaccination

michael — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 18:18:00 GMT

I don't know what to say, first the pharmacies with the birth control, then the schools and the sex education, now this.

New Scientist is reporting that a new vaccine against HPV (Human Papoloma Virus), which can prevent up to 90% of HPV infections, including venereal warts, and 70% of cervical cancer cases, is getting ready for FDA approval. The thing is, since HPV is so prevalent, for the vaccine to be effective, children have to be vaccinated at a young age, before they are sexually active.

Wouldn't you know it, some religious groups are already gearing up for opposition against the vaccine. Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council (A religious group promoting abstinence over protection), has this to say: "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV, giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex". Guess what Bridget! They are going to have premarital sex anyway! It's a fact, ABSTINENCE DOESN'T WORK!

Not vaccinating your children for this when it becomes available amounts to placing your child in unnecessary danger for future health issues, and regardless of your religious beliefs, at some point your children will be having sex, marital or premarital, protected or unprotected (condoms provide little protection from HPV). If you haven't done all you can to protect them, including vaccination and education, it's your fault when they become infected. Male children should be vaccinated as well, because while they don't run the risk of cervical cancer, they certainly run the risk of venereal warts, and they also run the risk of passing HPV to an un-vaccinated female, placing her at risk for cervical cancer.

Tolerance is out the Window

michael — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 19:32:00 GMT

A while ago I posted an article on Why I'm an Atheist and a large part of the post was dedicated to promoting tolerance of others religious beliefs. I argued that while we don’t have to accept each other’s beliefs, we should tolerate them. That is after all, one of the principles that this great country was founded on, freedom of religion.

Screw that. It’s one thing to believe in a silly fairy tale, it’s quite another when you take your illogical, unfounded, stupid belief system that goes against EVERYTHING we know about the world around us, and start jamming it down the throats of people who don’t believe the same things as you, and even worse, force-indoctrinating our children into your world of gods and spirits and make believe.

Today a friend accused me of being in danger of becoming a cranky old man, because I let things upset me. That particular conversation was around the TV show “Medium” where my argument was that the show was a danger because it was supposed to be based on the real life events of the so-called Psychic Investigator Allison Dubious, who by the way is an outright fraud. I pointed out that many people believe these events actually took place. She countered by saying that nobody believes that it’s real because nobody could be that psychic. I hope you didn’t miss my point there.

But she’s right, in the grand scheme of things, that is a little thing to get upset about. There are so many more things, so many more important things that are bringing this country to a level of stupidity that it hasn’t seen in 120 years.

The real danger to this society are the Fundamental Conservatives (who from this point forward I will just label the “fundacons” because I’m lazy and I like the sound of it. update: I just realized that this wasn't as original as I had imagined it to be, I think I got the idea from Pandagon where several people refer to these people as theocons, or Theocratic Conservatives. Damn, and I thought I was so clever.). These fundacons have managed through this administration, to take a powerful and dangerous position in the policy making decisions of our government, and their influence is rippling through every corner of our nation. In just the last few months there have been countless cases of religious infiltration into places where it just doesn’t belong. So here are some examples of why I get so upset, and why everyone who values education and human rights should be upset as well.

We of course have the recent Terri Shiavo case, which is so over-done, I’m not going to go into it any more except to say, that there’s a much deeper agenda behind it for the religious right than just saving Terri’s life. It’s a spearhead to taking away people’s rights to choose at all. If you can’t choose your own right to life, why should you be able to choose over the right to life for that fetus growing inside you, or choose to prevent conception at all. Call me crazy now, but it’s all part of the same agenda.

There are pharmacists who, based on their insane fundamental Christian beliefs, are refusing to give women not only morning after pills, but even birth control, and there's a push to get more of these misogynist bastards into these positions. There are people vehemently opposing a bill in Colorado that would make it mandatory for hospital employees to inform rape victims of their option to take emergency contraception, because it would violate their religious rights. What about the rights of the poor woman who has just been violated!

We have school boards deciding that they don’t want to teach sex education anymore. They are promoting abstinence as the ONLY sexual education, despite research that proves an abstinence-only approach could actually puts kids at higher risk for sexually-transmitted disease.

Additionally we have school boards deciding that they don’t want to teach evolution anymore. One Pastor complains "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture". Umm…. And that makes you what? The problem is that there’s this crazy new “theory” called Intelligent Design, that in all it’s technical mumbo jumbo is a load of horse-shit and a not so cleverly disguised attempt at bringing Creationism back into schools. These people want to make our Public schools into Bible schools!

We have Science Museums afraid to show IMAX films that even hint at the topic of Evolution because they are afraid of Christian backlash.

We have our God-fearing President making National and International policy decisions based on his faith. This administration has stood in the way of good science throughout it’s entire course, banning government funded stem-cell research, banning any kind of human cloning, even at just the cellular level which wouldn’t result in a full human form, but could be used to help all sorts of medical ailments. They’ve funded environmental research, and then fudged the results to fit their needs. He spends government money on faith-based organizations, which on the surface may seem helpful and humanitarian until you realize that these halfway houses and institutions are really just fronts for Christian ministries, and require as part of rehabilitation that those in need accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. The government funding of these operations is only a small part of the destruction this administration is doing to the Constitutional Separation of Church and State.

The hypocrisy of this administration is absolutely astounding. They claim all sorts of moral grounds when it fit’s their needs and garners votes from the unintelligent, uneducated segment of our culture, yet when held to scrutiny, hold no right to moral authority at all!

President Bush passed a law in Texas while still governor there, that allows hospitals to make the decision to terminate life support, even if only for reasons of funding, regardless of the individuals or family’s wishes. During this whole Schiavo fiasco, a 6 month old boy was removed from assisted breathing, against his parent's wishes. Tom Delay, hard-core Christian, and Schiavo grandstander, took his own father off of life support 16 ago, years after only a few days of vegetative state!

They have relegated Americans to second-class citizenry merely because of they’re sexual orientation, and are now taking this "sanctity of marraige" to a whole new level, discriminating against unmarried heterosexual cohabitators. They’ve taken away bankruptcy, the only financial refuge for people in real trouble, while leaving huge gaps and loopholes for people who don’t need it.

The fundacons have vilified war heroes, senior citizens, gays, liberals, and nearly anyone of a non-Christian sect or religion.

The list goes on and on. There is so much to be upset about, so much at stake if these fundacons succeed in what they’re trying to do, which make no mistake, is to turn this country into a bona-fide Theocracy. I can't be tolerant anymore. The term “One Nation Under God” has never before been so chilling.

Note: I will link to more of my claims above as I find them, just so that you don't think I'm spewing out unfounded opinions.

Creationist Crackpots

michael — Sat, 05 Mar 2005 19:30:00 GMT

I was clued into to this site from what I consider one of the coolest blogs out there, Pandagon.net in a posting on what he calls Christian Right Wingnutery. And after reviewing the site, and the evidence presented, I'm inclined to agree, these guys are wingnuts!

Take a look at this page, http://www.creationists.org/mananddinos.html, take your time, there's a lot of "evidence" there, and then come on back here so we can discuss this rationally.

You done? Good. First let's consider the "evidence" presented there on the main page. And I quote:

Eye witness accounts by many people of creatures that are exactly like dinosaurs in appearance. The descriptions include not only sightings, but people actually hunting and killing the creatures. These stories have been documented all over the world in many different cultures. They exist in the writings of several well-known ancient people, and have been documented by scientists as recently as a few years ago

First and foremost, eyewitness accounts in the field of cryptozoology are dubious at best. People have been claiming to see the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot for years. There has never been a single shred of viable evidence for either. Yet these stories are well documented as well. As far as people hunting and KILLING these creatures, where the hell are the bodies?

Now, I don't want to suggest that maybe there's a huge conspiracy to cover up this information, but I would think that the fresh corpse of a modern day dinasour would make big news! I think that kind of news would be splashed all over major media.

Stories of sea dragons, and flying dragons used to haunt sailors up to just a few hundred years ago, hell you still get a crackpot every now and then that claims to have seen one. Should we consider this viable scientific evidence?

Ok, next argument:

Art work and various ancient artifacts depicting live dinosaurs by themselves, or interacting with humans. These include burial stones, burial cloths, clay figurines, cave drawings, etc.

I would like to point out that forgeries of Incan artifacts run rampant in Peru. And it looks as if this is again the case with these "burial stones". Look here for a full in depth analysis on these stones.

Fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together. While some of these particular discoveries may be questionable, others may be more reliable.

I love how he debunks his own argument within his argument. Where's the evidence of reliability? The one photo they have here depicting a so called footprint is a fuzzy black and white that doesn't even capture the whole print and has it off in the top right corner as if it wasn't even the primary focus of the photograph, but something someone looked at later and said, "Hey that could be a dinasour footprint!" Even then it's a far stretch of the imagination to see a footprint of any kind there.

On this page, they promote video that supposedly contains evidence that a dinasour attack occurred as recent as 1966.

4 teenagers will killed by what appears to have been a plesiosaur, the partial body of a plesiosaur washed up on a beach, etc.

I love the inclusion of "etc." at the end of that statement, as if just nochalantly claiming that the body of a dinasour washed up on a beach requires no further explanation. Again, I have to ask, WHERE THE HELL IS THE BODY?

The whole idea that dinasours are still living among us or have ever lived among men, is ridiculous. The REAL scientific evidence clearly shows that the dinasours died out over 65 million years ago. The REAL scientific evidence shows that modern man has only been walking this planet for about 400,000 years. That's a pretty big frickin gap!

These people take ancient (and not so ancient) stories mixed with less than circumstantial evidence, obvious forgeries, and create an unbelievable hypothesis with absolutely zero real evidence. But I guess those Christian wingnutters have been doing that for a couple thousand years.

General Disclaimer

michael — Mon, 01 Jan 2001 05:03:00 GMT

I make no effort to check sources, it is not my intention to present evidence, it is not my intention to be an accurate source of information. I am not a large scale political blog, nor do I aspire to be. If my sources are innacurate, it stands to reason that I am also inaccurate. Do not take anything I say at face value, if you are so inclined, check the sources yourself, find the evidence yourself.

What I do intend to do is comment. I comment on anything I find interesting or outrageous. I present my personal opinions and nothing more.

If you find anything contained herein offensive, then I'm truly sorry you don't see things my way.