What is the experience of faith?

Have just read "What is faith?" on Digital Bits Skeptic and have to admit some disappointment. Great title but sadly a rather short article whose focus is on the pronouncements of faith rather than the experience of faith. My feeling is that looking at the ejaculations of the religious faithful under a rational microscope merely defines the linguistic boundaries between faith and reason but tells us little about what it means to have faith.

I think that what we need to look at is the experience of faith rather than the articles of faith.

from Asylum Joy, "What is the experience of faith?"

Future Shock 1972 Video

Future Shock, the 1972 documentary based on the book by Alvin Toffler, narrated by Orson Welles.

Thanks to Plausible Futures.

Camels With Hammers

The main foci of Camels With Hammers are contemporary ethical paradigms, normative theories, moral psychology, secularism, Nietzsche interpretation, general philosophical education for non-specialists, commentary on politics and other current affairs from philosophical perspectives. Additionally, the blog is concerned with being part of the project of creating a constructive atheism which can be a force philosophically, culturally, and, where appropriate, politically. The blog also occasionally reviews and promotes independent film and music. Occasionally more mainstream music and films are of interest—but usually that’s when Tom Petty, Batman, or Spider-Man are involved in said music or films.

— I encourage non-specialists in philosophy to use this blog as a place to try their hand at serious philosophical debate, to seek clarification of obscure philosophical terms or concepts that are stumbling block to their participation, and all around to use this blog as a place to learn philosophy. Please read more of how I view the educational potential of the blog in this post I wrote on the subject.

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Good to see an unashamedly philosophical blog. Any others out there please let me know.

Egypt Bans GM Food

CAIRO (Reuters) – Any agricultural imports to Egypt must have a certificate from the country of origin that the product is not genetically modified and the rule will also apply to Egyptian exports, the official news agency said on Wednesday.

The debate in Egypt over food quality has become politically heated after some Russian wheat was rejected over quality concerns. Members of parliament have been calling for stricter rules and greater agricultural self sufficiency.

from Aftermath News.

I suspect there will be a lot of lobbying against this move but I hope the Egyptians stand firm. The aim of the GM food companies is to control the world's food supply thereby holding both farmers and countries hostage to increasing prices for sterile seeds.

The Vision Thing and Brain Mapping

Knowledge about brain organization and development is rapidly evolving, partly due to new tools we have for research, such as various MRI techniques. One type of question being investigated is the degree to which brain organization is pre-programmed in the genes vs a result of the process of development.

Our current models of visual organization in the brain is that there are two streams of visual information: the ventral stream relates to object recognition (and lesions of which result in visual agnosia, or the inability to recognize objects), and the dorsal stream is for planning actions. Lesions of the dorsal stream result in what is called optic ataxia.

The dorsal stream of visual information is therefore related to seeing an object heading in your direction and getting out of the way, or to the act of catching a baseball. While the ventral stream will tell you that what you are catching is a baseball and not a rock.

However, the processing does not stop there and the ventral stream also separates living and non-living objects. The distinction is obviously vitally important to our survival. One recent piece of research looking at the brain activity of sighted people compared to those blind from birth shows that such categories are hard-wired into our visual cortex. In those blind from birth the visual input data is missing but the reaction algorithm still exists. The article doesn't explore whether this ventral stream is, in such cases, receiving inputs from other senses such as sound.

In our attempts to evolve into something more than irascible simians, it is worth knowing which of our reactions are due to hardware and which to software. But our brains are somewhat plastic so that the distinction is not as clear-cut as in silicon-based computers. We can be programmed, deprogrammed and reprogrammed, but some things are harder to change than others.

Have some ancient brain structures passed their usefulness? Or is our consciousness doomed to witness a mere fraction of what is really going on inside our minds?

full article at Neurologica blog.

Our Future: Truth or Lies?

Is it possible that our future will consist of less religions and theism?
Or…

* Will we evolve into a non-superstitious society or will we continue to cling to these myths to justify our preferences and prejudices?

[...]

I hope that there will be a time when the majority of our population realizes that the answers lie within our physical means? We humans can find the answers that will not only aid in our existence, but will help us progress as an ongoing race and a better world.

from Proud Atheists.

I would just add that we must also retain a mental dimension and be able to look both inwards and outwards with the same scientific outlook of detached observation. Faith is ultimately a physiological state and we can deprogram, but in our society having power over others seems more important than having power over our own mind.

Everything Happens for a Reason

This is a rather lightweight op-ed piece from the Friendly Atheist which, however, has generated a fair amount of comment. If a friend starts confiding in you about some tragedy in their life and then slips into,“This is all happening for a reason.” or “It’s part of God’s plan.”, how do you react?

If you believe in a god - any god - you may be able to sympathize. The search for some consoling meaning in the randomness of the universe is often natural. But to build up one's personal problems into some grand cosmic plan seems largely unhelpful, both practically and emotionally. Sure, shit happens! Why did lightning strike here and not there? Complex system. Why has my partner lost interest in me? Complex system.

The universe is a complex system; some parts behave in good old fashioned cause and effect whilst others appear random and unpredictable. We've known this for some 100 years - in just the last 40 years we've even come to understand how simple systems can exhibit complex structures. Perhaps it's just time for human psychology to catch up with human science.

Taking a drug may relieve the pain but it won't heal the wound. Would you rather your friend kept taking the drugs, or would you rather be genuinely helpful?

Natural Born Atheists

An interesting short article from the Proud Atheists blog. Not merely a rant about the lunacy of the Pentecostal church with its unwavering message of "you're going to hell!", but picks up on the idea that there are people just born unbelievers. Religious indoctrination starts at such an early age that it is very difficult to investigate how, or even whether, the average human goes through phases of religious thinking and development. From the comments, there are a few out there who do not recall lapsing from any religion but rather have always been faithless skeptics.

As some religions would dearly love to find some 'God spot' in the brain, thereby connecting us mere mortals to some alleged metaphysical eldorado, so they wish to claim that we are all 'wired for God', thereby adding yet another lame metaphysical proof of God's existence. I mean, if you find a door then it must lead somewhere - building a door on a brick wall is slightly surreal but does evolution include such aesthetic pranks? I'll come back to this door in a minute.

So are people born with a natural sense of religion or are they just indoctrinated into their parents' cult? There are some for whom belief is just not part of the program. I, for one, do not recall ever believing the stuff spoken by priests. Not only did the words not mean anything but I saw how people behaved in both church and outside it and, apart from the rampant hypocrisy, I was left bemused as to what exactly they were doing. Kneeling down in a gesture of prayer was easy to imitate but what was going on in their heads?

I suspect - or perhaps hope - that most young children go through a process of thinking through who they are as their brain goes beyond learning how to walk and starts to focus on where to walk to. I also think parents do their kids an injustice by not listening to what they try to tell them about life, the universe and their dreams. I do recall having an intense period in which it was very important for me to figure out who I was, what was it that made me conscious of being me, and so on. I had nothing that could be called 'faith' in any great gig in the sky. I was the doubting Thomas - show me! However, the revelation that eventually appeared was very interesting and best described in Buddhist terms as naked awareness - a kind of atomic consciousness. Unfortunately, I knew nothing of Buddhism at the age 6 or 7 but I did know that such experiences were not part of the Catholic canon. My natural born faithlessness grew into a conscious rejection of the whole racket. Not only was Christianity wrong (people are wrong about many things all the time, it's called learning) but it was actually a lie, which struck me as a more serious charge.

So coming back to that door. The attempt by some religions to distort neuroscience into locating some God-terminal in the brain has already started. The structure of our mind is a fascinating and important area of research, both from a scientific and personal point of view. The structure of our deepest and most basic part of the mind is normally left unconscious and yet in some individuals under some circumstances it does manifest. Such experiences are often life-changing and hence should be treated with respect. In my opinion, the delusion propagated by religions is not the delusion of such experiences but in the mind-map propagated to explain such experiences. The mental door is not a gateway to a metaphysical deity but the opening up of previously secret areas of our mind.

Are we, in the end natural born fideists or atheists? We are undoubtedly conscious. We can choose to open those doors and explore our consciousness - explore what it means to be human - or we can get faith and close all those doors, lock them up and throw away the keys. Thankfully, those keys can always be found again if one starts to wonder about those locked doors.

The Secular Thinker

The Secular Thinker is a blog about many things, mainly politics, society, philosophy, and religion, written from the perspective of a secular atheist. My goal when creating the blog was for it to become a place of discussion, a source of information, and a small step in the very long journey towards truth. The internet brings many people together, and I think that though debate and argument, those people can come to a better understanding of the world. Alone, we can accomplish little, but together, the possibilities are boundless. We live in a society where so much of the world's population believe in some sort of supernatural being, and, knowingly or otherwise, these beliefs influence daily interaction. I believe the in the potential of humanity to achieve greatness, but this pursuit is so often hindered by the presence of religion. I would like The Secular Thinker to become a place of education, information, fact-finding, debate, argument, discussion, understanding, contemplation, and cooperation that will ultimately lead us in the right direction to creating a better world for ourselves and each other.

God and Science Don't Mix - My Thoughts

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.
— J.B.S. Haldane, “Fact and Faith” (1934)

"Last week, I [Lawrence M. Krauss] had the opportunity to participate in several exciting panel discussions at the World Science Festival in New York City. But the most dramatic encounter took place at the panel strangely titled “Science, Faith and Religion.” I had been conscripted to join the panel after telling one of the organizers that I saw no reason to have it. After all, there was no panel on science and astrology, or science and witchcraft. So why one on science and religion?

I ended up being one of two panelists labeled “atheists.” The other was philosopher Colin McGinn. On the other side of the debate were two devoutly Catholic scientists, biologist Kenneth Miller and Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno." [Science and God Don't Mix]

Krauss has some experience in defending science, especially biology, in the face of religious fundamentalists who see science as an atheist Trojan horse that will destroy their children's faith. He accepts Haldane's view that for science to work it must do so in an atheistic mode, in the sense that supernatural beings are left out of current theories. However, the two catholic panellists prove that it is possible to have faith and reason at the same time. But what was also striking was that neither Catholic was able to rationally defend the virgin birth apart from on metaphorical or symbolic grounds. This shows to me that to restate the science versus religion argument as one of reason versus faith is overly simplistic; it becomes somewhat of a caricature of the head versus the heart. Yet this latter play of opposites is possibly close to the truth.

The problem is not that a believer cannot be a scientist - after all, much of the history of science is filled with devoutly religious individuals - but rather that the rational part of the mind does not turn its scalpel towards the fideist part of the same mind. In this sense, I think it useful to categorize faith as an emotional state, very much like being in love. Humans enjoy (or are possessed by) numerous emotional states, some of which are short term whereas others are so long term as to appear to be inextricably part of that person. It is also not possible to be entirely rational whilst in a rage or overcome with fear. Love is also far from rational. It is impossible to argue with someone that the love they feel for their partner is somehow not real, an illusion. Cataloguing a list of flaws is also unlikely to diminish their love. As for human love, so for supernatural love.

Although the emotional state of faith, as of love, can switch on and off, the balance between a fideist state and rationalism seems more a continuum with some tipping point. The rationalism of the two Catholic speakers shows how far that balance can be stretched so that faith can be maintained whilst, in their minds, keeping some semblance of intellectual honesty. Yet again, this shows to me that we are dealing with two very different functions of our mind that, however, obviously interact. Changing one's basic state of mind is a major event for an individual. Testimonies from people who have flipped from being faithful to atheist or vice versa show how closely it resembles falling in and out of love. But it often takes a major crisis to precipitate this mental tectonic shift.

Krauss ends his article with,"So while scientific rationality does not require atheism, it is by no means irrational to use it as the basis for arguing against the existence of God, and thus to conclude that claimed miracles like the virgin birth are incompatible with our scientific understanding of nature." I still think that arguments for and against a metaphysical being are largely pointless. It is like trying to use the knife of reason to do an autopsy on a ghost. It is true that rationality does not require an atheist stance, but for the sake of truth it is worth using both science and rationality on this state of being we call faith. Treating faith as an emotional state also removes any truth about the propositions supported by being in such a state. It may also serve as the key to unlock those minds who are having real turmoil in somehow keeping their childhood faith whilst trying to reconcile it with either science or just life in general. People fall in and out of love all the time without being branded as 'loveless'. It is therefore possible to fall in and out of faith - just don't claim that it says anything about the universe apart from describing your state of mind.

Unknown News

Unknown News posts a once-weekly digest of news, mainly from mainstream sources, that warrant more public attention. With the wealth of daily news items churned out by the internet, it is true that some items are ignored even though they do get published. Some stories even get pulled once the ramifications become clearer, but that's another story.

Some quotes from the Unknown News owners are interesting.

"We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated." It is complicated when there are people who think they are free to impose their rule on others - just look around at the world today.

"We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery." True.

With a non-partisan approach Unknown News likes to skirt around the usual labels of left-wing, right-wing, libertarian and so on. "Our suggestion is: think." An oh-so-rare quality!

Creationists Freak Out Over Google Fossil Logo

Yesterday, 20 May 2009, Google's homepage had a logo design based upon the discovery of Darwinius masillae, an important transitional form of early primate.

Creationists that frequent the Rapture Ready forum were foaming at the mouth. This was not just about the news but also about Google - the liberal search engine - promoting evolution. The news media didn't help matters by screaming that this was the 'missing link' and proof of evolution. The Pharyngula science blog picks up a tiring but necessary point, that public scientific knowledge is never going to get beyond slogans and cartoons if science journalists and their publications continue to wilfully misguide how science is reported.

Atheist Film Festival

Atheist Film Festival

An Atheist Film Festival will be held in San Francisco on Sunday 28 June 2009.

The schedule has not been completed yet but does include "Deliver Us From Evil", a documentary exposing how the Catholic Church protected pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady. The Festival closes with something a little more light-hearted with Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life".

INFOWARdocs.org - Documentation for the war on your mind

In spite of the name this website is not related to infowars.com but is a project to collate all information on the internet related to mind control, conspiracy theories, population control and pretty much anything related to covert operations and coverups by governments and their agencies.

The homepage is divided into two columns, one showing the most recent news and the other showing the latests posts, which could be old news that needs to be archived. Will be interesting to see how long INFOWARdocs can keep going and whether it does become a useful research tool in the sometimes vain quest to discover who did what and when.

Sadly there is no RSS feed hence has not been added to our aggregator.

Agora at Cannes - Hypatia, First Woman Scientist and Philosopher

Set in the 4th century CE in Alexandria the epic film "Agora" tells of a story that is famous in the history of science but perhaps little known outside that field. It is the story of a world in transition, of a Mediterranean culture shifting from Hellenic to Christian ideals. The history of science has not been blessed with too many women and Hypatia stands out as scientist, philosopher and head of the Library of Alexandria as much as for her gruesome end at the hands of fundamentalist Christians. It was one of the last stands of philosophy against the tide of messianic faith. Philosophy lost.

The dating of the Christian calendar from the alleged birth of Jesus can give the illusion that Christianity was born fully formed. This is, of course, far from the truth and the 4th and 5th centuries were crucial in its development, especially the rise of the expansionist Roman Catholic Church and its triumph over Hellenic culture. There can surely be no more symbolic death than that of a female scientist inflicted by a patriarchal religion.

The film's director, Alejandro Amenabar, takes great pains to say that this is not specifically anti-Christian in its message but rather against fundamentalist religious thinking in general. In our current age, where we see certain powerful factions determined to create a synthetic clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam, it is worth being reminded that there is a much deeper clash of cultures that runs through the whole of human history - the clash between knowledge and indoctrination. Hypatia was a champion of the former and a victim of the latter.

Agora was screened at Cannes and seems to have had mixed reviews. I don't know if this is for cinematographic reasons or because of the uncomfortable message.

Angie The Anti-Theist

AngieTheAntiTheist.blogspot.com is my blog about dangerous cults in America, faith healing, medical neglect of children in the name of prayer, and my general views on religion and atheism. It's also where excerpts from my upcoming book "Exodus from Zion" appear. This book details my life growing up in a faith healing cult, Home in Zion Ministries, with it's founder, my grandmother, Carol Balizet.

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Should be interesting! I've met people who have had close dealings with cults: one was being terrorized by one; and another was trained to abduct and deprogramme cult members (which somehow never seemed to make anybody happy!)

Rumsfeld's Top Secret Intelligence Reports Were Covered in Biblical Quotes

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld routinely used militaristic passages from the Bible on the cover pages of White House intelligence documents, according to new revelations by GQ magazine.

It said Rumsfeld displayed the passages over photographs of U.S. forces in Iraq to curry favor with then president George W. Bush, despite concerns about the incendiary impact on the Islamic world if they were ever made public.

One republished on the GQ website came from March 31, 2003, showing a U.S. tank roaring through the desert about 10 days after the United States invaded Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Over the image was printed a verse from Ephesians: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

Read full article at Alternet.

This seems fairly typical, manipulating Bush's beliefs for an agenda which, post-911, Bush was forced to follow. This meant he could do so with a vestigial conscience while Rumsfeld, Cheney and their mobsters could terrorize the whole world.

Oregon Church Allowed to Brew Hallucinogenic Tea for Religious Use

According to a US District Court ruling, the Church of the Holy Light of the Queen in Ashland, Oregon, can use their "Daime" tea during their religious services.

The church, which blends Christian and indigenous religious beliefs in Brazil, uses tea brewed from the ayahuasca plant in their services. The tea contains trace amounts of the chemical dimethyltryptamine or DMT.

The judge also ruled that federal drug enforcement agencies are prevented from prosecuting the church for possessing the drug so long as the church abides by guidelines set down.

Members of the church believe that "only by taking the tea can a church member have direct experience with Jesus Christ." They could also have experiences of many other deities, depending on how the hallucination was guided. This is merely proof of how susceptible people are whilst tripping and that religious experiences can be manufactured.

"Why I Write This Blog"

I write this blog because losing my religion was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I want to share that with people. When I finally got critical thinking, and really allowed myself to challenge everything I believed and loved, and hold it all to the same standards of reason and evidence - that’s when I really came alive as a person. I was finally willing to accept the universe, however it was, and live the best life I could here and now, in reality. That’s a wonderful thing, and when you encounter something wonderful you want to share it with people.

This is not me but Common Sense Atheism speaking.

I write this blog because I because I really enjoy this stuff. I enjoy the search for truth. I enjoy finding out where I’m wrong, or where I’m ignorant, or where I’m right. And I enjoy these topics, too. The questions of God and meaning and morality are some of the biggest questions one could ask, and it’s pretty epic to make some progress in finding the answers.

Read the whole post, and the comments.

Every Intelligent Man Dreams of Being a Gangster

The quote is from the French existentialist author Albert Camus:"The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone."

Perhaps too many people cling on to their morals as an antidote to the news. As swine flu has infected our consciousness it has also sidelined the continuing financial crisis. But both are manifestations of the same covert quest for power and control.

Paul Farrell predicts the new film Public Enemies will be a big hit because it will tap into what many people would love to do to all those who have been ripping us off for years - be they bankers, politicians or pharmaceuticals.

Unfortunately, the truth is that it is us who are staring down the wrong end of the barrel. "Yes, this time the banks are the gangsters. They're robbing Main Street's Treasury. And it's an inside job. Hank Paulson, the "Goldman Conspiracy's" Trojan Horse, plays a "Dillinger," leading a much bigger conspiracy, the "Happy Conspiracy," that robbed America's 300 million citizens and taxpayers. They made off with trillions, while our "guards," a clueless Congress, laid down their guns and surrendered the keys to the vault."

Except that in our oh-so-civilized world we see no guns, no masks, no hold-ups - just the silent theft of our ration of freedoms. Whether it is the WHO or the SEC, the first lesson is that none of these organizations exist for your benefit; they are funded, often covertly, by people for whom your well-being is measured in how much profit you can make for them. The consequence is that your future depends on disempowering these public enemies of their trade.

Forget computer games, forget virtual reality, here is a game we can all play. The targets are shadows, behind which lurk real people with flesh and bile. But the shadows are worth chasing for without them the shadow-masters would have to step into the light of day. Remember how effective was the boycott against South African goods all those years ago? Yes, it was politically approved by the media, which made it easier, but it still shows the power of the masses when focussed.

We can all train our sights on these shadows that darken our lives. We all need to protect those dear to us. Camus was not so wide of the mark.

Qi is a Human Construct Says Feng Shui Expert

Qi is a Human Construct. It’s also an assumption. That is to say, it’s just made up. Of course, we always knew that. But now we’ve had it confirmed by Howard Choy, a Feng Shui practitioner, and practising Feng Shui Architect.

"There are quantifiable qi like tianqi (weather) and qixi (breath), etc. The there are also unquantifiable qi like gua qi which is a human construct but we still use them because it is a useful tool by experience, like art, philosophy and religion."

from Skeptico.

This strikes me as one of those philosophies that has tried to expand into the external universe something that is entirely within the human body or experience - see the Body Electric by Becker. What really needs some investigation is the chakra system, which is also within the Taoist system.

Inductive Reasoning In Science

I’ve been debating with a friend about the nature of science, and he brought up the following argument:

1. All inferences from experience to conclusions about the future presuppose the principle that the future will resemble the past. (Principle of the Uniformity of Nature)
a. If we suspect that the course of nature may change and that the past is no guide to the future, then all experience becomes useless and does not support any conclusion about the future.
2. Therefore, no argument from experience can support the principle that the future will resemble the past.
3. No deductive argument can establish the principle that the future will resemble the past.
4. Therefore, the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature cannot be rationally justified.
5. If the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature cannot be rationally justified, then inductive reasoning in science cannot be rationally justified.
6. Therefore, inductive reasoning in science cannot be rationally justified.

Your thoughts?

The reply is at NeuroLogica.

However, one issue not discussed, probably as does not appear as one of the questions, but which is also often aired is that induction requires a leap of faith. Therefore science is no better than religion in requiring faith. In this case it is more revealing to look at mathematical induction, in which case it is necessary to start with one statement of fact then to show that a second fact is true, after which the method of induction proves the general case. Note firstly that induction is also used to prove the general case false, for example, in the proof that there are an infinite number of prime numbers we start off with the conjecture, or hypothesis, that there are only a finite number of primes. Secondly, induction requires that established facts are used to then drive the general case. In religion there are no such empirical facts and therefore is not subject to the method of induction, save as a metaphysical device to generate more metaphysical truths from initial metaphysical premises. In such cases religion has jumped off into faith well before the inductive steps.

Celebrity Pseudo-Science Exposed... kinda!

"Behold, the most serious challenge to the Royal Society in that august body's 350-year history - the medical musings of Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Stella McCartney. These women are not just singers, or actresses, or fashion designers. They are distinguished professors at the University of Celebrity, and are coating your understanding of science like a totally amazing organic body oil.

On top of this, they are best friends, so we can say their pronouncements are peer-reviewed in the best sense of that term. Can you imagine their gatherings? It must be as if Isaac Newton were taking antioxidant tea with Robert Koch and Marie Curie." Strident stuff from Marina Hyde.

OK, we've got the picture, now where's the organic meat on the bone? Madonna's Kabbalah water... yep, that's flakey! "And then there's Stella, who launched her organic skincare range with the warning that "lots of skin products use the same petrochemicals as the antifreeze in your car!", and is one of those celebrities who thinks they eat "chemical-free" food and use "chemical-free" products. I beg you not to tell her that water and trees are made of chemicals. The shock could finish her off." Here Marina Hyde is on shakier ground. Surely anybody but the purest pedant knows that "chemicals" here stands as a short-hand for synthetic and most likely toxic chemicals. Yes, everything is made up of chemicals, it's just that some of them are not very good for human beings.

So what's Gwyneth Paltrow's crime? Well, her concern is, yet again, those nasty chemicals and the inability for young children and foetuses to metabolise them. "The research is troubling; the incidence of diseases in children such as asthma, cancer and autism have shot up exponentially ..." Hyde yet again shoots down our celeb by stating that "there has been very little change in the rate of childhood cancers detected in recent years". How "recent" is that then Professor Hyde? So the impression given is that we shouldn't worry ourselves about the environment being polluted to the point that it is unfit for human habitation. After all, our scientists are doing a jolly good job looking after us, so these celebs should just get back into character and stop impersonating science writers.

Science Punk also quotes the above story but adds that Kelly Osbourne believes that microwave ovens cause cancer. How we laugh at such superstitious nonsense! Except that the Soviet Union banned the sale of domestic microwave ovens because of their carcinogenic effects. Once the FSU turned capitalist they dropped the ban as sales are more important than health.

What strikes me is that most of these celebs are unable to properly articulate any science that they may have learnt and so it comes out as opinionated ramblings. Most of their concerns have legitimate scientific research to back them up - apart from Madonna, who is just morphing into a new species. That they may not always be mainstream views shows the power of corporate science rather than that those concerns are unfounded.


also posted at TrendWagon.

Imaginary Phantom Limb and Our Delicate Grip on Reality

The brain can be a freaky thing. We live in this illusion of reality created for us by our brains. This is not to say there is no objective external physical reality - there is as far as anyone can tell - but our experience of ourselves and the world is a neurologically generated illusion.

The brain processes sensory information so that it is a useful, and not necessarily accurate, depiction of the world. This sensory input is also highly selective, giving us that slice of reality that proved to be most evolutionarily adaptive. That part of our brain that pays attention then attends to a tiny slice of that highly processed selective sensory information and mostly ignores the rest.

This neurogenic cacophony of data and information processing are woven together into a seamless narrative we experience as our waking consciousness. It is a useful and adaptive approximation of reality - but it is not reality.

I think those words need rereading and digesting. We don't really know what's going on most of the time.

The bulk of the article is about one particular phenomenon that happens when this neurologically manufactured reality breaks down - supernumerary phantom limb. It is one of several types of disordered that have been described after a stroke leading to neglect of the paralysed limb - the lack of recognition the limb. These can include simple lack of recognition that the weak limb belongs to them, the belief that the limb belongs to someone else, or the false belief that the limb is normal and functional.

One striking example of how internalist is our world view comes from the claim that someone scratching an itch with their phantom limb actually relieves that itch! Great article, and worth being reminded of how tenuous our grip on reality really is. The concluding paragraph sums up how this leads to a serious problem when discussing so-called religious, or just plain weird, experiences.

Further, this means that when people have bizarre experiences that are far outside what they are used to, especially when they involve features that are now known to be neurological, it must first be considered that their experiences result from altered brain states - not external reality. However, we seem to have evolved to make the opposite assumption - that whatever we experience is real. This disconnect is one of the primary fuels for belief in the paranormal.

Complete article at Neurologica.

Atheism on the Rise Among Canadian Teens

Project Teen Canada has been conducting surveys on the religious affiliations of teenagers since 1984. Its latest findings show that Canadians are becoming more polarised into believers and non-believers. The number of faithless has grown almost three-fold whereas Christians have dropped below 50% for the first time. There has also been a steep rise in believers of other faiths, although this is largely due to immigrants. One minor point is that the new data for 2008 only adds up to 93% rather than 100%.

One interesting trend is that the grey area of uncommitted believers and agnostics is emptying out leaving the two poles of practising believers on one side and atheists on the other. The article writer obviously thinks this is a "bad thing", but that just exposes her own beliefs. Indeed there is a huge statistical blunder near the end of the piece. "For instance, 95 per cent of young people who “definitely” believe in God or a higher power also think this entity “expects us to be good to each other,” while just three per cent of atheists agree. As the percentage of religious teens falls, Bibby wonders just how that will affect our ethics and behaviour."

It doesn't seem to enter the writer's mind that as atheists do not believe in God then they can hardly then agree that God "expects us to be good". Indeed, perhaps 3% of atheists didn't understand the question, or perhaps as is seen in other surveys the category of atheist hides a lot of different philosophical positions.

Sadly, the article seems to think this is a worrying trend and the road to moral corruption. A tired and boring argument that somehow a carrot-and-stick deity is the best humanity can do to live a civil life. As one commenter says, kids nowadays want to be smart, they want to know, they want to be rational and scientific - I hope the Canadian education system satisfies these desires. If at some point in the future these kids also need to look inside themselves for some esoteric knowledge, then that too can be done scientifically without recourse to a phantom in the skies.

Texas on the Road to Idiocracy

"Originally in the Texas school standards was this phrase: "concept of an expanding universe that originated about 14 billion years ago." However, board member Barbara Cargill thought this wasn't good enough. It was too definite. The standards now read, "current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe." You can bet that the age of the earth is not listed in the Texas curriculum as about 4.5 billion years old -- in spite of the fact that most of the people my age and older have known (or rather, estimated) this for years."

from Physorg via Pharyngula.

As Myers says, what science classes really need to teach is methodology, logic and mathematics (on the assumption that the maths classes are also not up to speed - no joke, I've had to do this too!) Some things may well be out of date by the time the student leaves school. So what? That's the point; to equip the student with a discriminating rational faculty to understand what changes and what stays the same. Swallowing myths from religious propagandists will just lead to a nation of morons.

Obama Says U.S. Not a Christian Nation

Despite whatever shortcomings Obama may have, it is nice to have a president with some knowledge of history and recognition that he is tasked with representing all Americans and not just the Christian ones.





Thanks to Atheist Revolution.

This flipping around trying to be everyman may well come to haunt Obama if he ever lays himself open to being pinned down under questioning. He is, of course, historically correct; the USA as a nation was not founded as a Christian state. This does not preclude it from being hijacked by any religion.

The Tavistock Institute

The ideology of American foundations was created by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. In 1921, the Duke of Bedford, Marquess of Tavistock, the 11th Duke, gave a building to the Institute to study the effect of shellshock on British soldiers who survived World War I. Its purpose was to establish the "breaking point" of men under stress, under the direction of the British Army Bureau of Psychological Warfare, commanded by Sir John Rawlings-Reese.

Tavistock's pioneer work in behavioral science along Freudian lines of "controlling" humans established it as the world center of foundation ideology. Its network now extends from the University of Sussex to the U.S. through the Stanford Research Institute, Esalen, MIT, Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, Center of Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown, where State Dept. personnel are trained, US Air Force Intelligence, and the Rand and Mitre corporations. The personnel of the corporations are required to undergo indoctrination at one or more of these Tavistock controlled institutions. A network of secret groups, the Mont Pelerin Society, Trilateral Commission, Ditchley Foundation, and the Club of Rome is conduit for instructions to the Tavistock network.

Tavistock Institute developed the mass brain-washing techniques which were first used experimentally on American prisoners of war in Korea. Its experiments in crowd control methods have been widely used on the American public, a surreptitious but nevertheless outrageous assault on human freedom by modifying individual behavior through topical psychology. A German refugee, Kurt Lewin, became director of Tavistock in 1932. He came to the U.S. in 1933 as a "refugee", the first of many infiltrators, and set up the Harvard Psychology Clinic, which originated the propaganda campaign to turn the American public against Germany and involve us in World War II. In 1938, Roosevelt executed a secret agreement with Churchill which in effect ceded U.S. sovereignty to England, because it agreed to let Special Operations Executive control U.S. policies. To implement this agreement, Roosevelt sent General Donovan to London for indoctrination before setting up OSS (now the CIA) under the aegis of SOE-SIS. The entire OSS program, as well as the CIA has always worked on guidelines set up by the Tavistock Institute.

Read the full article here.

Go to The Tavistock Institute.

The Fraudulent War - free ebook on the 'War on Terror'

The Fraudulent War - The facts about the Bush Administration's 'War on Terror' by Richard W. Behan is a quick but thorough dive through the dark waters of the scam that is America's war on terror. Well documented it shows that the wars against both Afghanistan and Iraq were purely and simply a land-grab for oil. They were planned well before the WTC attack with bin Laden serving as a convenient patsy.

Although the oil fields in Iraq are vastly richer than those in Afghanistan the story about the demonization of the Taliban is perhaps the more interesting. The Taliban repeatedly offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to the USA but stubbornly refused to renege on a contract they had signed in 1996 with Bridas Corporation of Argentina to build the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline. The USA didn't care about bin Laden; they just wanted the oil and pushed for American Unocal to steal the contract away from Bridas. In 1998 Unocal asked the House Committee on Internation Relations to remove the Taliban from power. Five weeks before 9/11 Bush informed Pakistan and India that he would be launching an attack on the Taliban. That very week after 9/11 Taliban negotiators repeated that they could hand over bin Laden. Bush refused - it was the oil, stupid! On 7 October 2001 the carpet bombing of Afghanistan started with the excuse of hitting both bin Laden and the Taliban for harbouring him!

With the Taliban removed, the first US appointed head of an Afghan interim government was Hamid Karzai, who later became elected President. Hamid Karzai was a consultant to Unocal. The first US envoy to Afghanistan was John Maresca, former Vice president of Unocal. The next Ambassador to Afghanistan is Zalmay Khalizad, a former consultant to Unocal and founder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). You can read about PNAC in the ebook.

And all of this funded by the American taxpayers for the profits of big oil and military contractors.

In the past I have referred to it as the War on Ghosts... and so it seems.

Colin Andrews - Crop Circle Research

Author/Researcher/Photographer. www.ColinAndrews.net Colin is best known for his research into the crop circle subject since 1983. He provides the only continuity between the past research era and the present, along with his friend and colleague, Busty Taylor. His long view of both the genuine phenomenon and the human-made phenomenon provides unique insight into the subject. His research results indicate the intelligence behind the phenomenon is interacting with both crop circle researchers and many of the people who make the hoaxes.

Go to Colin Andrews blog.

Common Sense Atheism

What do I mean when I say atheism is “common sense?”

I do not mean that religious people are stupid. Believers can be doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, philosophers, entrepreneurs – some smart folks.

Usually when someone says, “It’s common sense!” he really means “This is the way I think about it; isn’t it obvious to everyone else?” That’s not what I mean by common sense. I’m going to argue for atheism using your common sense; the way you already think about most things in life.

See, believers have two ways of thinking. In most situations, they think with the same logic as most people do: this is our “common sense.” Tell a believer that the bank stole his money, or that an ancient book says you can heal disease by dancing around a fire, and he will ask for evidence. That is common sense.

But believers think in a different way about their religious beliefs. This is “special thinking.” A believer reads in his religion’s ancient book that a man walked on water and rose from the dead, and that is enough for him to believe.

The whole point of my book is this: If a believer applies his special thinking to any other area of life, it becomes clear how irrational that special thinking is. And if he applies common sense to his religion, it becomes clear how irrational that religion is.

Go to Common Sense Atheism.

Ad Absurdum

The blog of Bjorn and Jeannette, a freethinking couple in Saint Paul, MN.

Much of the blog is about the activities in Minnesota with links to the Minnesota Atheists, the largest and most active atheist organization in the state.



Go to Ad Absurdum.

Aces Full of Links

A blog written by Dr Momentum. Includes all sorts of stuff, like politics, economics, science and mathematics, some humour and random thoughts and comments from an atheist perspective.

Go to Aces Full of Links.

20 gram Soul

Welcome to 20 gram Soul. Here we discuss issues relating to religion, science and spirituality through links, reviews, general ramblings and (with any luck) some intelligent discussion.

The name “20 gram Soul” refers to the experiments of Duncan MacDougal in 1907, where he “weighed the soul” by measuring the weight of people just before and after they died. His results determined the soul weighs approximately 21 grams. Since I’m still on a journey to further my own spiritual views, my soul is a little bit lacking, and by my powers of “guesstimation“, what I lack weighs exactly 1 gram.

Go to 20 gram Soul.

1 2 3 Religious Comics

This is the blog companion site to http://www.religiouscartoons.net which is a photo-album site available to everybody to upload religious cartoons. This blog will display some of those cartoons and go into more detail about what they mean.

It is the authors belief that although religion can sometimes perform valuable social and psychological services, all religions are based on absurd premises.

For instance, there being an afterlife is merely human wishful thinking. And even if there were an afterlife, how arrogant is it of us to think we have any idea what it would be like or whether or not there is any criteria or prerequisite to gain admittance.

And the ultimate audacity is to ask people to give their time, money, and children to a church that preaches to put “God first” or you will burn burn burn for all eternity.

Lets break this spell religion has over us.

Go to 1 2 3 Religious Comics.

A-Deistic

Let us be clear, we are atheists opposed not to mild-mannered deism or theism, but to the menace to logic, knowledge, and humanism that has been promoted by fundamentalists and the Religious Right.

Christian apologists repeatedly demonstrate that it is insurmountably difficult to develop a worldview free of philosophical tension when one begins and ends all thinking with an inculcated-a-priori assumption of the existence of supernatural agencies.

This blog, then, is an appeal for rational thinking.

Go to A-Deistic.

You Can't Make This Shit Up XII

CALLER: I hope you all are not playing politics with this. People in South Carolina are hurting. You know how unemployment rates are high right now and going up higher. We are running out of money in the unemployment bank — we need money for that, the people that need help. And I’m one of them, I can’t get no help. […]

SANFORD: Well I’d say hello to Charleston because its home and I’d say hello to this fellow this morning and say that my prayers are going to be with him and his family because it sounds like he is in an awfully tough spot.

That is Sanford’s plan. Prayer.

You Can't Make This Shit Up XII from (((Billy))) the Atheist

Quotations

A random list of quotations that I found either interesting or amusing.

"I want the general public to know that science isn’t run the way they read about it in the newspapers and magazines. I want lay people to understand that they cannot automatically accept scientists’ pronouncements at face value, for too often they’re self-serving and misleading. I want our citizens, nonscientists as well as investigators, to work to change the way research is administered. The way it's currently funded and evaluated, we're learning more and more about less and less, and science is becoming our enemy instead of our friend." - Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one." - Hitler

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead, anthropologist

Daily Atheist

The intentions with this blog is to provide Atheists with useful content from various sources. We can all ramble about religion in a blog, but I think our ramblings become better with more facts. And also, I need to be inspired to ramble so I'd rather just present the news! (I do ramble a lot on forums though!)

Well, I decided to gather all the good and important stuff I come across here as safekeeping for myself and for everyone else. What's important and not important is not always so easy to say, although I tend to like science and the occasional good argument. I also have a fetish for statistics.

Some articles fall outside of what consider most pressing to post here, and since Google reader has a real nice "share" button and a page where my shared items go, I have decided to use it when I see stuff I like. You can of course subscribe to it.

Being Norwegian, I occasionally come across good articles in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish so I've set up a Scandinavian blog too at Dagens Ateist.

Go to Daily Atheist.

Daily Bite of Disbelief - A Guide to Christian Clichés and Phrases

This is one of the most popular posts at Unreasonable Faith. I copy here just a small sample from A Guide to Christian Clichés and Phrases. It's worth a read and there are lots of comments too.

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“Save sex for marriage.”

Translation: “If I can’t have consequence-free sex, neither can you.”
Acceptable Response: “I pledge myself! Give me a promise ring!”
Unacceptable Response: “So how did that work out for you?” Or, “Where exactly does the Bible say that?”

“God is in control.”

Translation: “I only believe this about overwhelming situations. The rest of the time, I believe things are up to us and I act that way.”
Acceptable Response: “Amen.” Sometimes followed by an anecdote about some unexplained or coincidental experience that you attribute to God.
Unacceptable Response: “If God’s in control, then relax and don’t do anything about it! In fact, you don’t have to do anything at all ever, right? But that’s not right, and people still have to do everything, so what does it mean for God to be in control and why does it matter?”

“Here’s my testimony…”

Translation: “I was a guilt-ridden sinner until I hit rock-bottom and then believed in Jesus and my sins were forgiven!”
Acceptable Response: “That’s a great story, how can I have my sins forgiven and go to heaven?”
Unacceptable Response: “The reason you’re telling your story is because it’s impossible for me to say you didn’t have that experience. Unfortunately, people have religious experiences all the time, and many of them have nothing to do with Jesus. Your story is nice, but it’s easier to fool yourself than you might think. You don’t know the truth about God and Jesus and the Bible through an emotional experience, but through evidence, and you’ll find that lacking.”

“Atheism is a religion.”

Translation: “Atheism is a religion because everyone believes there is a god, right?”
Acceptable Response: “They know there is a God and they reject him and hate him! They will burn in hell forever!”
Unacceptable Response: ”Calling ‘atheism’ a religion is like calling ‘bald’ a hair color.” (Don Hirschberg) Or, “If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.” (Mystyk)

=

OK, you get the drift. Now go read the whole article at A Guide to Christian Clichés and Phrases.

State of Protest

State of Protest is an online journal run by skeptics, atheists, and other alleged undesirables dedicated to the dissemination of pertinent rational activist information. We maintain the idea that information and critical thinking are key elements in making progress against the status quo of a religiously controlled and threatened society and world.

Go to State of Protest.

Trufax - Leading Edge International Research Group

Contrary to popular social belief systems which portray reality, the nature of reality is quite different and more expansive. Reality is an infinite multi-nested complex of overlapping energies, intents and purposes, within which a "dance" of consciousness and spiritual being occurs. In fact "Life on Earth" is a miniscule "grain of sand on the beach" . The "reality" picture humans are fed in terms of commercial media is both synthetic and suppressive, for the population, the planet, and all incarnated Spirit interacting on it.

How did it get this way, anyway? We examine many things on this website, including how subjective social reality perspectives are programmed into a population through cultural paradigms, how these are constructed and how they can be seen through. We examine a lot of suppressed information, alternative reality viewpoints, and add in contemporaneous discussions on the objective aspects of how realities, both local and general, appear to be laid out, based on experience involving non-local movement of consciousness and being and other sources, for your general evaluation, so that you may relate it to your own experience or use it to further your own experience, in the search for Self and a more accurate picture of reality.

We examine historical events and timelines, people, places and most importantly ideas, for ideas and information are what will shift the current stage of activity from one of conflict and polarity, to one of balance. This planet is the way it is at any one time, and because it is the way it is, we are all here to experience and learn "what not to do and how not to live", as well as personal objectives on a more expansive Spiritual basis.

Notice that most of the material on the internet, the libraries and all 'educational systems', ALL new age paradigms, governments, politics, focus on alien races, channeling, new age information, 'the light' bullshit and virtually everything else on this planet represents a fixation grounded in fear, polarities, and distractions that are intended to divert your attention from the real pursuit of the big questions in life: who you are, where you came from, why you're here, why what's going on is going on and what's next. Most of the internet, from an advanced perspective, is absolute bullshit.

=

Trufax is one of the strangest websites I have ever come across. Once upon a time they had a lot of material on there but slowly a lot of it, and certainly much new material, is to be paid for by buying their publications. Having said that, there is still a lot on psychological manipulation and electromagnetic and biological weapons.

BlackListed News

BlackListed News is an independent news media bulletin board. Our mission is to provide our readers daily world news, information and analysis that is not given the media exposure it often deserves.

The articles published on BlackListedNews.com cover a BROAD RANGE of topics, with a primary focus on politics, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues. We post news and information from many different perspectives and independent media sources; although, the majority of our articles originate, or are directly derived from mainstream media news services.

Of course we do not necessarily agree with, or endorse, everything on our web page. We often publish articles we specifically disagree with. We trust and respect our readers ability to form his or her own opinion.

We hope that BlackListedNews.com is a helpful resource for researchers, bloggers, concerned citizens and philanthropists alike.

American Free Press

The MEDIA IS THE ENEMY

Find out why maverick, independent grass-roots media voices such as American Free Press have declared all-out war on the elite-controlled Big Media Monopoly in America and around the globe . . .

In the old Soviet Union, the government controlled the media. Not a word of substance could be published without prior approval from the Bolshevik commissars. Today, in the United States, the situation is starkly similar. But most Americans don’t even know it.

In the United States today, it is a select handful of super-rich families and tightly-knit financial interests—a plutocratic elite—who own the Big Media and who control the government through their ownership of that media. . . .

Every single one of the major media outlets is controlled by this powerful interlocking combine.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune—even such “regional” giants as The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Miami Herald, The San Diego Herald-Tribune. . . . The list goes on and on.

And these media powerhouses control dozens—actually thousands—of other daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, and radio and television outlets across America (and around the globe).

PLUS: Did you know that every single supermarket tabloid is owned by just one, super-rich Wall Street banker?

To consolidate their influence, the Masters of the Media and their international corporate allies reward obedient journalists with membership in the Council on Foreign Relations or the Trilateral Com mission where they rub shoulders with others in the international policy-making networks. A handful get promoted to the higher ranks of the secret Bilderberg Group.

The so-called “mainstream” media is very much a “closed shop” and only those willing to do the bidding of the global power elite need apply. Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and other puppets are just the public faces that the American people see.

Behind the scenes are the shadowy owners and corporate power brokers who dictate what you will (or will not) see in your daily newspaper or on the evening news.
[...]

As we said: THE MEDIA IS THE ENEMY.

And that’s why American Free Press is right here on Capitol Hill taking up the challenge against this enemy. We’re in the forefront of the battle to reclaim America.

But American Free Press couldn’t exist without the support of its readers. That’s what makes this populist newspaper unique.

Aftermath News

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

- Seneca the Younger

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

- Henry David Thoreau.

News for independent thinkers in the “Post 9/11″ era

If you are too scared, too dumb or too corrupt to think for yourself, then this blog is not for you. If you are a sheep or a sheepherder, a victim or a persecutor, a prey or a predator, you will probably hate this blog because I challenge you to question your own cherished beliefs, think about what you are doing and how you are existing. I challenge you to stand up and be a real human being instead of a dumb animal, predator or prey. If you are truly an individual who is not the slave of any religion, cult, government or political party, and who understands the value of rational independent thought, then it might just interest you.

This site is a catalogue of evil in high places, and a guide to how that evil trickles down to infect the general population. Unfortunately, I do not have enough hours in the day or days in the week to sit here and share it all with you. The evil done by the elite aristocracy is so massive, so all-encompassing and so unfathomable to the averge person, that it is impossible to come anywhere close to describing just how diabolical these psychopaths really are.

We are all born into an essentially Masonic New World Order matrix that uses social-engineering which results in social-degeneration with most living in delusion, out of contact with reality. The latest phase of this New World Order system is moving us into the fulfillment of “predictive programming” presented in sci-fi horror books and films of the past. It is the enslavement of the human mind despite the warnings of George Orwell’s 1984. It is a time where most people are subject to mental or physical slavery to some degree, under the domination of the Illuminati.

These masters of manipulation rule with such pervasive influence that the majority of people do not even know they exist. Even though prominent historical figures like Carroll Quigley, Woodrow Wilson and Benjamin Disraeli have openly admitted they exist and that they have a secret agenda which they never openly share with the public, many people seem to think they are nothing more than a “conspiracy theory”. And that, of course, is by design. They are supposed to think that way and so they follow along like sheep headlong to their own slaughter.

The Illuminati have destroyed man’s ability to think for himself and question what is going on. They have accomplished this through the use of terror, psychological operations, media propaganda, manufactured wars, legal and illegal drugs, television, music, “education”, religion, masonic ritual initiation and other methods of mass mind-control.

This phase of history is known as “Aftermath”, the fifth and final stage in Adam Weishaupt’s scheme of total revolution, the deliberate building up and destroying of society that would condition humans to willingly submit to a ruthless and cunning elite. Aldous Huxley referred to it as learning to enjoy your servitude. Hitler said that man could be indoctrinated and conditioned into seeing hell as a paradise.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, protegé of David Rockefeller, CFR member, founding member of the Trilateral Commission, and National Security Advisor to five presidents puts it this way in his book “Between Two Ages” written in 1971:

“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values…”

The purpose of Aftermath News is primarily to educate people as an antidote to the massive whitewashing and brainwashing provided by mainstream media whose primary function is to put people to sleep.

I urgently encourage you, the reader, to open your mind, to step out out of your programming and conditioning. Let go of the Left/Right paradigm and try harder to see the big picture of Reality. You can only achieve this by realizing that you are an individual human being with your own mind, able to think your own original thoughts.

Ideally, an informed public can come together to find ways to stop all the madness and chaos before it gets completely beyond our control. Informed people are empowered to both stand up to abuse and to pro-actively work for positive outcomes. We must not give in to fear, cynicism or fatalism and we must not give up hope for a better future. Study the New World Order. Pick your battles and act constructively with a positive mindset. This is the basic spirit behind Aftermath News.

This blog is authored by Paul Walker.

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com is a web site that explores the existence of God. This blog accompanies the site and explores God and religion in our world today. For more information:

• Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? - Exploring God and his existence
• WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com Forum - a great place to talk to believers and non-believers about religion.
• God is Imaginary - 50 proofs showing that God is imaginary

Atheist Revolution

Welcome to Atheist Revolution - a blog dedicated to breaking free from irrational belief and opposing Christian extremism in America.

"I use the handle vjack, and I write this blog as a hobby. It reflects my interest in atheism and my commitment to improving the position of atheists in a world dominated by religious belief. If you would like to learn more about my personal journey to atheism, you can read my Journey of an Atheist series."

Atheist Revolution was started in 2005 and is an active popular blog with well-written articles.

"After some initial struggle over goals and priorities, I settled on a mission for Atheist Revolution. The blog would be devoted to overcoming irrational belief and opposing Christian extremism. Atheism would be the primary focus, and atheist activism would be a big part of this. I recognized that I had two primary reasons for being an atheist and that they were often reflected in my writing. The precursors of atheism (e.g., reason, secular education, critical thinking, etc.) deserved promotion every bit as much as religious belief warranted criticism.

However, I also recognized that I would not be satisfied writing about atheism all of the time. My political convictions were too deep to be ignored. I couldn't be honest with the readers unless I gave voice to my progressive values in some way. After all, they derived from the same sources as my atheism. I would focus on atheism but would not avoid political topics which interested me."


Go to Atheist Revolution

CyberLizard

CyberLizard's Collection

Exposing stupidity to the light of day and watching it scurry around like a cockroach before I squash it under my heel. Or at least make fun of it. Whichever provides more lulz.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.
-Thomas Jefferson

The blogger is a computer programmer, and guess the above quote sums up pretty well his take on religion.

Go to CyberLizard