It just so happens that Texas and Louisiana have more of these idiots than most.
Okay that headline is of course not entirely accurate since evolution has been in effect since the very first cells formed, however it was on 1 July 1858 (150 years ago today) that the idea of natural selection was first presented to the public.
Of course don’t tell anyone in Texas or Louisiana because they’ll just get all upset that you’re making them think too hard.
The Beagle Project has a summary of the significance of this day in scientific history.
Happy Darwin Day!
Damn right bitches! That and the world is only 6,000 years old.
(Credit to Derek Chatwood who created the original artwork. Brilliant stuff)
However if the religious out there do accidentally see it (funny, I thought this was the theater for Narnia) there will be a lot of people saying “Well my religion makes perfect sense …but boy all those OTHER religions sure are silly.”
Um, right.
Today I ask the faithful the question:
“Do you believe the story of Noah and the flood? Why or why not?”
Sounds simple enough, but I imagine there is a broad spectrum of opinions on this well known story. Not to ruin the surprise but I think the story is completely ridiculous. I know, you’re shocked to hear that. But I’ve heard young earthers talk about the flood in the context of ridding the earth of dinosaurs and creating the Grand Canyon. Hell, there’s a whole section of the creationist museum in Cincinnati devoted to convincing people that the Noah story is true.
So c’mon people, what am I missing here? Convince me God pulled off this amazing story…or are you just going to wuss out and tell me this is yet another example of the Bible teaching in parables?
Evangelically yours (in a completely heterosexual way),
Super J.
Some think an adjacent image resembles Ben Stein. You be the judge.
I’d try to write something else funny but I’m sure it would just come across as corny.
This might turn into a new series of questions and maybe the faithful out there will bring some answers to the table. To begin this series then I didn’t want to throw out some recent or obscure scientific question that nobody has researched. No, to be fair I thought I’d give them an easy question that’s been around for a while. Something they should have had time to work out by now.
Today I ask the faithful the question, why is there evil in the world? Of course the Greek philosopher Epicurus asked this question over two thousand years ago:
“If God is willing to prevent evil, but not able…then He is impotent.
If He is able, but not willing…then He is malevolent.
If He is both able and willing…then whence cometh evil?”
Two thousand years is a long time and yet I have yet to hear a good answer to such a basic question. I do hope someone out there can clear this up for me once and for all.
Evangelically yours (in a completely heterosexual way),
Super J.
There has been a long standing debate about Einstein’s views on Religion. The devout will rightly point to quotes from Einstein saying “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” or even his dismissal of the randomness of Quantum theory stating “He [God] does not throw dice”. To the less theistic these quotes always seemed to be flamboyantly hollow rhetorical devices used by the great thinker.
Now there is proof that our suspicions were correct.
The philosopher Eric Gutkind sent Einstein a copy of his new book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. Einstein sat down and on January 3 1954 penned a reply stating:
“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”
…
“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”
Perhaps science isn’t so lame without religion after all.
The handwritten letter will go on sale at Bloomsbury Auctions in London later this week and is expected to fetch up to $16,000.
(source: The Guardian)
Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten–just the same before as after. . . .
So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.
According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction, if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one, we have but one. . . .
Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.
– Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), “The Trinity” (from “The Foundations of Faith,” The Works of Ingersoll).
No wonder Christians believe in intelligent design, if you can be convinced that this absurd idea is true then ID will sound absolutely inspired.
When the British naturalist George Shaw first saw the platypus in 1799 he thought it was a hoax.
Now a team of scientists has finally determined the platypus’s entire genetic code and its DNA is as odd as the animal’s exterior bearing genetic modules that are in turn mammalian, reptilian and avian.
The animal’s reptilian roots provide the genes for egg laying and for making snake venom (which the animal stores in its legs) but its mammalian genes provide for making milk (despite not having nipples).
Then there are the ten sex-determining chromosomes that scientists still don’t know what to make of. Most mammals have two sex chromosomes, X and Y but not only do platypuses have 10 instead of two, but some of those resemble the Z and W chromosomes of birds.
“It’s such a wacky organism,” said Richard Wilson, director of the genome center at Washington University in St. Louis, who led the two-year international effort, described online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Yet in its wackiness, Wilson said, the platypus genome offers an unprecedented glimpse of how evolution made its first stabs at producing mammals. It tells the tale of how early mammals learned to nurse their young; how they matched poisonous snakes at their own venomous game; and how they struggled to build a system of fertilization and gestation that would give rise to the first humans.
Update: There is a very informative video here from the journal Nature about this new finding.
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