religion is phony II

And old high school friend of mine has been posting a bunch of junk bulletins on MySpace about how evolution is a “lie.” I sent him a fairly nasty response, but i thought it worth posting here, at least for the links at the end. I have corrected it for capitalization to make it easier to read; and added emphasis, because adding HTML code in MySpace (the first time around) might have janky consequences.

I’m sorry dude, but that kind of idiocy is pure mind-pollution. Face it: religion has ruined history, and it’s threatening to destroy humanity even now.

You can not debunk so many fields of natural science with one broad swath of a very dull blade. Science is what it is: an exploration of truth. Sometimes science is wrong, and then it ceases to be science. It is science’s goal to continually reevaluate itself and update its data when better facts come into focus. Science’s entire agenda is based on questioning – gasp! – ITSELF in the search for more and more accurate answers! Can the same be said of religion?

Evolution, however, is testable, and its evidence is all around us. Natural selection is simply a process that happens, not unlike the semi-millennial phenomenon of millions of overzealous Christians propping up a mad buffoon in some leadership role because they’re sure he’ll help to bring about the so-called “end times.”

How about this one: if the world is only a few thousand years old, then how come we can see, with the naked eye, objects in space, such as galaxies, that are clearly millions of light-years away? Can light, originating from these objects, suddenly travel faster than itself? Or, if the universe was “created” whole (the distance between objects vast from the beginning), then why is it expanding, with everything rushing away from everything else at incredible speed?

If god is trying to “trick” us into thinking the world is more than a few thousand years old by planting evidence of creatures hundreds of thousands of years in the past (which we can easily verify by measuring the amount of atomic decay of carbon-14, which has already been proven to have a half life of 5730 years), then what kind of a sick bastard is this deity, anyway?

No, sir, the biggest lie ever told is that there is some mystical figure up in the sky who can (through his human – and presumably fallible – interpreter, of course) get you to DO anything and, even worse, BELIEVE any stupid idea, out of pure primal fear of some terrible “eternal” punishment.

Religion is phony. An outright lie – which has cost untold millions of lives throughout history. Think for yourself and you’ll see what i mean. It’s time to put the toys away and stop playing a sick game of pretend with the goal of destroying all of humanity. That’s just evil.

No one can save us but ourselves. If you think there is some god who, in the whole of the universe, would bother saving the practically infinitesimal inhabitants of a tiny speck floating in the inky black void of space from themselves, then ask yourself where this god was throughout all the genocides and holocausts, all the tragedies and disasters of human history. Testing our faith? That’s just fucked up. If that’s the Christian idea of “god,” then “god” is one seriously warped asshole and i don’t want anything to do with it.

Sorry, R***. Just THINK about it, man. Don’t be duped by hustlers and con-men making big promises about things they ultimately know nothing about.

And now, i present to you some recommended reading:
http://www.ex-christian.net/
http://www.exchristian.org/
http://www.christianism.com/
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html
http://www.losingmyreligion.com/

Lookin’ out for you, friend,
~jer

New page: Tutorials

Because I seem to be the only person in my local circle of friends who understands web code, I receive lots of requests from people to help them jank up their MySpace pages. In response, I’ve created the first tutorial: MySpace: the DIV element. This tutorial assumes you know a little bit about HTML and CSS going in. In future tutorials, I’ll cover basic HTML and CSS.

And i’ve just finished adding the comments functionality to pages (as opposed to blog posts), so if you have any questions or need help, I’ll do my best to clarify. This is a work in progress.

The Roi of Clubs!

Elbo’s is under new, IMPROVED management! In fact,

  1. the name has changed to The Roi
  2. no previous staff will be working there
  3. no meatheads at the door
  4. Craig is a musician
  5. Libby went to my alma mater

$www$.myspace.com/roiofclubs

This is the greatest news to hit the Dayton music scene since Bob Pollard started screwing around with Radio Shack microphones.

UPDATE, 15 Sept 2006: Sadly, there will be no Roi of Clubs. Not entirely sure what happened.

link roundup

The Secrets of Rennes-le-Château; Notes on a Strange World (Skeptical Inquirer November 2004) This is a must-read for fans of Holy Blood Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.

National Geographic: The Lost Gospel of Judas Found in the 1970s, and recently pieced together and translated. Paints Judas not as a traitor, but as the best pal, handpicked by Jesus to turn him in.

And MySpacers, please read this: Hacking a MySpace Layout by Mike Davidson of Newsvine. Complete with downloadable sample CSS and a tutorial, this post is easily the best thing referencing MySpace in a long time. Here’s what i did to mine. (Note the banner up top: Latin for “this place is terrible”.)

WikiTruth: censored Wikipedia articles, retrieved from the digital void and set out in the sun again. No editing, natch.

Even Generals want to see Rummy quit.

10 Wackiest e-commerce sites, from Wired.

Great works of art, as the artists might have done them as children. (Check out the Escher!)

Nahuelito, presumably a close cousin to Nessie, recently spotted and photographed. Clever hoax, or real?

Make those cool stickers like the feed linkifiers on the sidebar.

California Department of Corrections (not the Billboard Liberation Front, as was previously stated) salutes US Military in Iraq.

Big Brother has his eyes on you, NYC.

link roundup

The universe just gained a lot of weight: Neutrinos evidently have mass after all.

Speaking of fat: Homer now has to have a bigger screen.

Prayer probably powerless. Having heart surgery? Prayer won’t help you. Looks like regular exercise and a healthier diet is all that can save us now.

“Only three things are certain in life. MySpace, Taxes, and Death.”

Coolest. Case mod. Evar.

Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) on The Future of the Web (w/ mp3).

From the WTF!? files: Flying Spaghetti Monster (anti-ID spoof) on Al-Jazeera. Do not adjust your set; you read that correctly.

“Respectfully missing” David Byrne/Brian Eno …Bush of Ghosts track “Qu’ran” turns up as mp3 on blogs.