Mt. Redoubt in Alaska is erupting apparently.

In my last post, I basically talked about why I don't think atheists should shirk away from any debate about religion they can, if they think religion is dangerous or wasteful. The central point here that most people get upset about is the idea that you can think your beliefs are right and other people's beliefs are wrong ( Read more... )

Back from my trip. I had a great time.

My coworker linked me this as soon as I got to the office. It's a typical armchair commentary on atheism: Basically, assuming atheists really want to go to church and reap the 'benefits' of religion but don't because they want to be 'elitists'. My coworker, at comment #220, made the following excellent reply ( Read more... )

Picking up some audiobooks for the trip, and found more ID debate:

Amazon reviewsThe front page of reviews all gush at the book which proclaims that 'Darwinism' is going out the door; and that 'evolution' is just change within a species, not changing into other species ( Read more... )

I've been listening to these astronomy lectures in audiobook by James Kahler, and though it's pretty introductory stuff, no matter how many times I've heard about massive stellar bodies I can't help but just be amazed ( Read more... )

Thanks everybody for answering my poll! If you want to still answer it, it's still open. I think you all selected some of the very best reasons people give, and everybody avoided the utterly nonsensical ones.

I was reading Wikipedia the other day and came across a paragraph on the intro to Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, which said:

( Read more... )

Poll Reasons for Belief in Gods

I have been tagged repeatedly for this stupid meme, but I don't really get it. I mean nobody cares if I broke my pinky when I was 14, got a sharpshooter pin for hitting a bunch of the targets in boot camp, or one shattered a glass window pane by bouncing into it repeatedly and then was extremely shocked when it shattered. Man that is just totally ( Read more... )

Human reproduction serves to create new human beings and with these human beings comes a soul. The soul appears with the person at the moment of conception, making him a complete human being from the very start. This is why abortion is considered murder: the abortionist has rent the soul from a living human body, the soul being the source of a full ( Read more... )

A dwarf's life is a hard one. I have started a new fort on Dwarf Fortress, this time with some hand crafted scripts to automatically manage some of the more complicated tasks I set about the previous encounter. My old for was randomly named 'Beachbells'. You can actually look through it there. This new one, I am aiming for fixing all the mistakes I ( Read more... )