There certainly seems to be no end to the crazy shit you can stumble upon when roaming the Internet. Here’s one of those things that you might wish you didn’t know about. Apparently, an audio recording of the final act of the Jonestown death cult was caught on tape and later recovered. And naturally, it has found its way onto YouTube. It’s infinitely disturbing on several levels, from the progressively louder cries in the background to the comments by the brainwashed cultists about how excited they are about committing mass suicide. Not recommended for those with a weak stomach.
There’s this new site called texts from last night that basically works like a text-message-quoteboard. Its sole purpose is to preserve the most shameful text messages sent while under the influence, such as:
I puked in a mailbox on the way back from your house.
Gayer than 8 guys blowing 9 guys
wow, that really makes you stop and think.
Let’s just say there is a bloody hand print above my bed and it’s not mine. Literally.
Do you think they could tell I was high on that conf call?
Christopher Hitchens’ bestselling treatise on atheism, god is not Great, is a book I highly recommend for anyone with even a passing interest in the religion debate, regardless of which side of the fence you’re on. As you might expect, I managed to dig up a couple of quotes worthy of sharing:
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted.
Who but a slave thanks his master for what his master has decided to do without bothering to consult him?
As an added bonus, check out Hitchens’ moving eulogy for the late Jerry Falwell:
Do you often find yourself down at the local coffeshop, listening to the latest album by Obscure Emo Band, puffing a clove cigarette, lamenting the fact that you are the only one who “gets it”, and yet confident with the knowledge that one day you will be recognized as a misunderstood genius of your time, even though you work part-time at a vintage clothing store?
If this sounds like you, then don’t waste another minute. Grab your ratty messenger bag, jump on your bright yellow ten-speed, and make haste over to lookbook.nu. Here you can share and compare your latest ironic outfit, all the while taking smug pleasure in your indifferent uniqueness. Just like everybody else.
While you’re there, be sure to meet and greet some of our notable members, including:
I’ve re-released my Sunlamp SNMP library as version 1.0.0. Sunlamp now features two similar SNMP client packages, one designed for Maven2+snmp4j projects, and another designed for use in an OSGi runtime environment.
All the talk about religion, belief, and disbelief on here lately has put me in a pretty serious mood. Questioning everything, looking for meaning, searching for answers to the hard questions in life. Fortunately, I’ve stumbled upon an invaluable source of wisdom:
If you’re in the mood to have your IQ dropped by a few dozen points, then sit back, grab a beer, and load up this steaming pile of self-assured, anti-intellectual garbage. On the other hand, if you’re the type who has a weak stomach for blatant ignorance and superstition masqueraded as debate, I’ll give you the lowdown.
Be prepared to do this a lot. I sure did. No bald jokes.
These two girls, Blair and Nyasha, as part of the site Passion for Christ Movement, each made a video in which they set about “exposing” atheism. However, when they say they’re debunking “atheism”, they’re actually cherry-picking bits of info about evolution, genetics, and cosmology, then criticizing all of it as “atheism”. This should be your first warning that the scientific acumen on this site leaves a lot to be desired. But I would be wasting my time on low-hanging fruit if I were to sit down and deconstruct all of the “arguments” they attempt to make on this site. My real motive in writing this post is that these bullshit videos started up a long rant in my head, one which I thought might be worth committing to some semi-permanent form.
The nonsense that gets passed off as logic by sites like this is just a small slice of a wider school of thought that has no place in 21st century America. I’m talking about the anti-science, anti-progress ideology of unapologetic ignorance that these people pin on themselves like a fucking merit badge. You’ll find it right there, in between “Leatherworking” and “Rowing”: “Old World Fundamentalism”. To earn this particular merit badge, you must first pledge unwavering allegiance to the Republican party, fail 3 science classes, and denounce anyone who disagrees with your particular strain of Christianity as being unpatriotic, if not outright evil. You also get bonus points for dropping words like “godless”, “evolutionist”, “abomination”, and “small-town values”. Needless to say, for many people, this is one of the easiest badges to earn.
Or you can buy one of these awesome shirts. It basically serves the same purpose.
One of the favorite pastimes of these ultraconservative nutjobs is taking potshots at the dreaded theory of evolution evil-ution. Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me how the loudest critics of the “evils” of science are those with the weakest understanding about how the scientific method actually works. Listening to their arguments, you’d think that all scientific research is performed with some kind of agenda or vendetta in mind, that the scientific community gets together and votes on which ideas they like best. I think this whole ridiculous scenario can best be summed up with a jigsaw puzzle analogy, since that’s basically what scientific progress is; you accumulate your evidence, see where it fits in with other facts and measurements, and eventually you end up with a better picture of how the universe actually works.
Anyway, so we have this scientist slowly piecing this jigsaw together, bit by bit. Eventually, after an extraordinary amount of time and effort, a recognizable image starts to take shape. Handlebars, two wheels, a chain. It’s starting to look a lot like a bicycle, and every new piece put in place reinforces this “bicycle theory”. The puzzle isn’t finished though, and the scientist is starting suspect that a few of the pieces are missing. There might even be a few pieces from another jigsaw mixed in with this one. We still can’t tell what the front brake looks like, and we definitely don’t know what color the seat is, but it’s pretty clear that the puzzle depicts some kind of bicycle. Our scientist responds to this situation by saying, “Ok, obviously I have some more work to do before this puzzle is complete, but I think I can safely conclude from the evidence at hand that the picture on this puzzle is that of a bicycle.” Suddenly, our creationist steps in, takes one look at the jigsaw, sweeps it from the table with his arm, and declares, “NO! Your ridiculous ‘bicycle theory’ is flawed and incomplete! You deceptively arranged those pieces so that they would resemble a bicycle, because you’re secretly biased towards bicycle jigsaw puzzles. Your bicycle theory is an evil lie, and therefore we must logically conclude that the jigsaw puzzle, by default, is a picture of sunset.” The creationist then takes things one step further by forcing the local schools to present both sides of the “argument”, insisting that there is an actual debate as to whether the puzzle depicts an incomplete bicycle, or a sunset by default.
Ok, so my analogy is a bit contrived and by no means subtle, but it gets the point across. These creationism intelligent design advocates, rather than showing themselves to have a shred of intellectual honesty and admitting that they might be wrong, would rather silence all dissenting voices, regardless of the cost to human progress. They attempt to paint the scientific community as some kind of biased democracy, failing to understand the seemingly straightforward fact that where the evidence points, science follows. You’re perfectly within your rights to throw your hands up and declare that some mysteries of the universe are impossible and unsolvable, and that the default answer in such cases is the Christian God of Abraham. Just be forewarned that there is absolutely nothing scientific about your theory, so don’t be surprised when the “give-up-and-say-god-did-it” argument fails to gain much traction among those who demand real evidence. As usual, a brilliant dead guy sums it up far better than I could ever hope to:
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
–Hippocrates
Now I don’t want to come across as someone unwilling to take my own advice, so I want to take a moment and assume that the creationist argument is right, and that evolution and atheism are bullshit. Let’s assume then that every aspect of our reality has been meticulously created according to the plan of some benevolent, celestial, all-knowing, all-powerful being. The beauty of nature, the fact that we have a planet perfectly suited for our existence (ignoring that virtually all of creation is a deadly, radiation-filled vacuum), the wonder of genetics and mathematics and physics, all perfectly detailed in some kind of vast cosmic blueprint. All of it put into motion by this creator. These are the kinds of arguments you typically hear from those advocating some form of creationism. What you don’t hear are answers for the more horrific aspects of human existence that a design argument must ultimately account for. I’m talking about things like the mother fucking Holocaust. Slavery. Tsunamis. Nine fucking eleven. Virginia Tech. Cancer. Indiana Jones 4. Because if we’re assuming that all reality is the work of some divine creator, then you have to explain why these things happen. And the sad fact is that they represent just a tiny fraction of the misery and barbarity that the human race has witnessed through the ages.
So the real question is why? Why, in a world created according to the divine plan of some all-powerful being, do these events take place? I see two possible answers: either this “benevolent” creator allowed these things to happen, or this “all-powerful” creator couldn’t prevent these things from happening. I don’t know about you, but neither of these answers puts me in a mood to get my worship on. I guess what I’m getting at is, if you’re going to insist that all reality is the product of a divine creator, you better have a damn good explanation for the existence of evil. And I’m sorry, but “God works in mysterious ways”, while it makes for an epic rock song, is not an answer. It’s a cop-out. It’s a rationalization.
I want to end this massive rant with a few footnotes. First, I don’t mean to single out Christianity for its fundamentalist strains that preach repression, hatred, and ignorance. Saudi Arabia employs fucking religious police (I wish I was making this up) that they use to enforce their bullshit Sharia Law. You just write about what you know. Second, I am by no means trying to tell anybody what to think. If you don’t agree with me, fine, more power to you. But just because you might not agree with what someone thinks, that doesn’t give you the right to suppress their ideas. That kind of behavior usually starts with civil rights violations, and usually ends with human rights violations. Finally, there’s just no getting around the fact that there are a lot of tough questions in life. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? But anybody who tells you that they have clear-cut, definitive answer to these kind of questions is either lying to you, or was lied to by someone else.
