Hello and welcome to my blog about my life (science) and whatever else takes my fancy (hint: it's more science). You may call me Redford and I'm 19 Earth years old, currently double majoring in physics and chemistry in New Zealand. In reality I have no idea what I'm doing or what I'm going to do though so you'll find a little bit of everything.
Every account of a higher power that I’ve seen described, of all religions that I’ve seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that higher power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson [source]
The Greeks’ Christian successors rejected the idea that the universe is governed by indifferent natural law… …and religion a far worthier study than the phenomena of nature. Indeed, in 1277 Bishop Tempier of Paris, acting on the instructions of Pope John XXI, published a list of 219 errors or heresies that were to be condemned. Among the heresies was the idea that nature follows laws, because this conflicts with God’s omnipotence. Interestingly, Pope John was killed by the effects of the law of gravity a few months later when the roof of his palace fell in on him.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design
Had people asking for a rebloggable version. Why they couldn’t make their own I don’t know…
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
- Charles Bukowski
(Source: quotationspage.com)
When you think about it this is actually more of an argument for evolution. Most people counter this ridiculous logic by saying “Well so is gravity you n00b”. I think a much better approach would be “Yes, it is a theory, and do you know what a theory really is? The brilliant part about a theory under the positivist scientific method is that it can’t actually be proven, it can only ever be disproven. Evolution being a theory is really a testament to the fact that it has not be disproven despite rigorous scientific scrutiny”.
“But what was there BEFORE the big bang?”
This sentence is very probably the most ignorant and stupid question a creationist can ever ask me. First off I can retaliate with “What was there before God?” and that’s possibly the best way to answer it. It may turn out that the big bang theory wasn’t correct but it is a lot more probable than the hypothesis that some sentient being made the universe.
My second great problem with it is there was no “before the big bang”. Time and space cannot exist independently of one another, this is why it’s called space-time. As soon as space began so did time. There was no time before the big bang and therefore no before! The idea that there was a before is really just an illusion brought about by human perception.
When I get a time machine this will be one of the first people I visit. This brilliant woman is Hypatia of Alexandria (Yes the Alexandria with the library) and to me she represents all the beauty and power of mathematics. Hypatia lived around about 400 AD and is known as the first prominent female mathematician, she worked at the museum of Alexandria as a director and probably wrote several books on mathematics, philosophy and astronomy. However these were all lost when the great library was destroyed. From what we do know she invented the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydrometer and the hydroscope.
However Hypatia met with a horrible end akin to that of the Library of Alexandria and is a reason why deep down I will always abhor religion. Hypatia was by all accounts a pagan (Atheist) and her role both within the sciences and in society (She wore scholarly robes rather than traditional woman’s wear and drove her own chariot) placed her in opposition of Christian thoughts and traditions. One day her chariot was overcome by Christian monks and Hypatia was dragged from it, she was then stripped, flayed with broken pot shards rendering flesh from bone and then burnt alive. The man who preached against Hypatia, Cyril, was then made a saint.
I’m sorry, but there is no difference between having severe delusion and believing in a God. I don’t know why people are so tolerant of it, we should be taking these people and giving them the help they need rather than letting them persist in their self-destructive delusions. They should be locked up in mental institutions or getting therapy or something. If I claimed to have a friend who could read thoughts, communicate telepathically, controlled the universe, punished people, oh and created the universe from nothing, you’d think I was batshit insane, but if I claimed to believe in God (You’d still think I’d gone nutty if you knew me) you may be more tolerant of that.
I’d give him a few pointers on how to make a universe.
What would you do?
So we now have a scientific answer for how the universe came into being?
And how complex organisms can evolve?
And mechanisms to explain a whole range of natural occurrences?
Why do we still have God?
![Discovery Rocks Creationists’ Claim That Humans Lived with Dinosaur
Ancient images that creationists claim are evidence of humans living alongside dinosaurs are at best just smeared pictures, scientists find.At the site of Kachina Bridge in Utah — an immense sandstone formation resembling an arch more than 200 feet (60 meters) high and wide that was formed by the undercutting of a rock wall by flowing water — prehistoric cultures decorated the walls with paintings and engravings known as petroglyphs. Among them are what young-earth Earth creationists, who believe all life was created on the same day about 6,000 years ago, have said are depictions of dinosaurs, claiming these images as proof of their beliefs. [Scientists Hunt for Signs of Earth’s Earliest Life]Now, closer investigation reveals these ideas are just wishful thinking.
Read full article.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_livzk6HI961qfqcw0o1_500.jpg)
Discovery Rocks Creationists’ Claim That Humans Lived with Dinosaur
Ancient images that creationists claim are evidence of humans living alongside dinosaurs are at best just smeared pictures, scientists find.
At the site of Kachina Bridge in Utah — an immense sandstone formation resembling an arch more than 200 feet (60 meters) high and wide that was formed by the undercutting of a rock wall by flowing water — prehistoric cultures decorated the walls with paintings and engravings known as petroglyphs. Among them are what young-earth Earth creationists, who believe all life was created on the same day about 6,000 years ago, have said are depictions of dinosaurs, claiming these images as proof of their beliefs. [Scientists Hunt for Signs of Earth’s Earliest Life]
Now, closer investigation reveals these ideas are just wishful thinking.
I personally believe evolution should not be taught in schools because of the immense amount of evidence suggesting that evolution is false.
Oh really? What evidence is that? Or are you just mindlessly repeating what other mindless Creationists that don’t know what evidence is (or even what evolution is) tell you?
In fact, why don’t you explain evolution to me before providing me with this evidence that it is false.
I just found out that a teacher at my old school said that church is single minded and wrong. This seems pretty ignorant of him. What evidence does he have to provide that church and creationism are wrong? Even Darwin acknowledged that there is proof discrediting evolution. “There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.” (Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 348). To me this ‘appearing’ sounds more like ‘creating’. Darwin had hoped that future science would be able to account for this finding, but this did not happen. “Evolutionary biology’s deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven’t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable?” (Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution,” Scientific American, Vol. 267, November 1992, p. 84). So if evolution is the way to go then where did the fossils found in the Cambrian strata evolve from? And if you cannot provide that answer (which science has yet to do) then why on earth is evolution being taught in public schools yet creationism is deemed wrong? Because the alternative to evolution is creationism and for some reason or another evolutionists can’t be bothered to believe in God.
THERE IS NO VALID EVIDENCE DISCREDITING EVOLUTION, IF THERE WAS WE WOULDN’T BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION AS A SINGLE THING DISCREDITS THE ENTIRE THING.
As for why the animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, well this makes sense when you consider how fossils form, by replacing hard body parts with minerals which then form casts as the organic material decays away. However with basic non-hard shelled animals the process is too quick for the replacement of hard tissue by minerals. That and organisms before this point would have been quite small. As I believe there are also up to this point small casts left by organisms, but not very many and not particularly good. At any rate the fact is that even if they were magically created it wasn’t in the genesis way as obviously there aren’t in humans in the fossil record before a certain point.
And I think Jeffery S. Levinton there doesn’t quite even come close to understanding evolutionary biology. Evolution in fact does not predict the arrival of bizarre new alien body plans, especially over the short period of time implied in that quote. The fact is all the skeletal and in fact all systems found repetitively in biology and there because they work pretty well and because a complete overhaul of structure is something so nonsensical that it shouldn’t even be contemplated. Evolution is gradual, if there’s no selection pressure that supports for a change, it will not happen. In most organisms there is no pressing need for a severe structural overhaul and there most likely never will be. Coincidently I find it hard to believe that a God would have so very little imagination in his design of vertebrates and especially mammals. I also don’t understand why he’d make the air and food tracts the same narrow tube, or why we’d have appendixes or vestigial eyelids and I especially don’t understand the recursive laryngeal nerve which in giraffes by passes the larynx by about 4 cms before going about 15 feet down the neck around an artery and back up to the larynx. All of this makes perfect sense if you simply look at how we had to evolve with out making catastrophic changes to body plans. If you make one rapid sizable change, you have to change something else to fix that problem, and then maybe you have to make another, and another and so on indefinitely. The chances of genetic mutations that support so many structural and biochemical changes in organisms without fucking it up completely is so rare that it’s not even worth considering. It would effectively be instant speciation.
AS FOR GAPS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD. THESE SHOULD BE EXPECTED FOR THE SHEER RARITY OF FOSSILS. Fossils have to be created under quite rare circumstances and soft tissue is remarkably hard to find.
Now riddle me this? If God is so omniscient and perfect, then why did he bother making organisms that just went extinct? Or why make animals that have imperfections that cannot be fixed due to severity? Or why make 99% of genetic material “junk” that doesn’t code for any protein? Why make everything effectively the same?
Honestly, everything in biology makes perfect sense when you look at it with evolution. I challenge you to find something that truly and utterly or even slightly discredits evolution.
Wow, holy crap, that was a rant. Inb4 someone complains about it not making sense. I am not going to reread all that, if you don’t understand it I encourage you to conduct research on the ideas I brought up! yay!
(via skunkitty)
They decided to spell out YMCA when standing next to this painting. The Y is supposed to Jesus’ arms spread out on the cross…
Pretty hilarious actually. If I ever go to that museum I’ll be unoriginal for once and do the same. Blasphemy FTW!
What about this one? It’s called Piss Christ. Andres Serrano (the artist) peed all over Jesus on the cross. :-O Personally, it’s one of my favorites.
BTW. What was it that the Bible said about worshiping idols…? Oh yeah, it said not to do it.
”You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
Exodus 20:4-6
Turns out I’d been getting this one wrong for years… And apparently so has Christianity.
(Source: anch0redsouls, via ordinaryrevolutionary-deactivat)
