A curious message from God

I’m having a hard time understanding what the message from God might be in this situation:

A 3-year-old boy died on Sunday after he was accidentally left in a hot car parked outside a church, according to police.

You can read the story here, here or here.

I mean, there the good god-fearing family is, in church, worshipping the almighty creator of the universe, no doubt thanking Him for various glorious things, all the while the good Lord is outside murdering their youngest child.

“Murder“, I hear you gasp, “isn’t that a bit over the top?!”

Well, God is all-knowing and all-powerful which means he knew the child was dying, could do something about it, but chose not to. That, is criminal negligence at the very least.

Is it not just a little curious how the all-good(?), all-loving(??), all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe lets a small child, die from heat in a car parked at His house, while the parents and siblings of that child are literally worshipping that bastard inside His house?

The apologies for God Almighty will no doubt be really good. I look forward to reading them.

Prayer, God’s will and other preoccupations

If Christians have prayed to their God to stop mass shootings, and there still are mass shootings, does that mean their God approves of mass shootings?

His plan sure is… what’s that excuse again? Mysterious? His plan is mysterious, yes, that’s it.

I’m pretty sure there have been plenty Christians – American or not – who have asked their deity to stop mass shootings that seem to have become a daily part of American life and culture. I can only conclude that His response – based on 294 mass shootings in 274 days this year – is a resounding “nope”.

Let us consult the Good Book of words that the Almighty allegedly blessed us with:

Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Matthew 21:22 And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

John 14:13-14 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it

So… Ask aaaaaanything and you’ll get it… ask for the murder of innocent children to stop… mass murder of children doesn’t stop, it gets worse… Strange. Now, If I were a Christian that would make me think (to be fair, I sort of was and it sort of did).

If American Christians prayed for Mitt Romney to win the 2012 election and he didn’t, why do they hate Barack Obama? Didn’t their God make his will clear by saying “no, fuck Mitt Romney, Barack is the man”.

Ah, Christians. Who can say how their closed little minds word. Or don’t work, as it were.

Darwin Day – 12 February 2015

A comic about the life and legacy of Charles Darwin. Which you should read. Obviously.

I thought I’d put this up now since I’ll be travelling to ‘murica on Wednesday and probably won’t have the time nor the inclination to post a thing on Thursday. On the other hand, it will be Darwin Day – the 206th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth (unless I’m horribly mistaken, which, to be fair is quite likely) – so I might.

Anyway, I was made aware of the comic strip (the one started above) by Ardziv Simonian who presumably works for Exodus Travel, had a look and thought it was great. You should check out the page and read the rest of it: http://www.exodustravels.com/nz/evolution-darwin-day

As far as marketing ploys go, it works for me! Now I’m waiting for a nice comic strip detailing the life and times of Isaac Newton…

Happy Darwin Day! From the future, obviously.

Video science quote: Masuka on science.

Start watching at 17 seconds…

Precisely so Masuka. Precisely so. Science does not care about your feelings. Science does not care about your beliefs. Science does not care about your hopes and dreams. Science only cares about the truth, about what is fact, and what is. Feelings, beliefs, hopes and dreams be damned.

Quote for the day: Bertolt Brecht

The chief cause of poverty in science is imaginary wealth. The chief aim of science is not to open a door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error

– Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo

I can’t think of a better way to put that.

The Bible, read through not-rose-tinted glasses: Sodom and Gomorrah

If you’ve never seen a DarkMatter2525 video then you’re missing out. This one, in particular, is a gem. One of the best stories from the Bible (you know, that collection of writing that is the infallible words of the almighty creator of the universe…) told by a man whose perception of it isn’t clouded by self-imposed religious idiocy. Watch the video, it’s fantastic.

And billions of people actually believe this shit to be the inerrant words of the almighty creator of the universe. Seriously.

Quote of the day: Thomas J. Watson

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crack-pot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.

— Thomas J. Watson

Mr. Watson, eponym of the IBM Watson artificial intelligence project, sounds like he was quite a man. I have to point out, however, that if ever I saw a man with a face crying out for a beard, or a ‘tache at the very least, Thomas J. Watson is that man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson

Census 2013 – religious diversity

New Zealand: Census 2013 – religious diversity – a post by Open Parachute

The short? Less than 50% of my country identify as Christian and nearly 40% identify with ‘no religion’.

By the next census, it seems the non-religious will outnumber the Christians and by the following one, probably all religions.

Tick tock religion. Tick tock.

On morals, actions and humanity.

Consider the following. For the sake of argument, assume you had to choose between these two options:

1. The ability to take action and the taking of action to prevent one man – Sam Adams – from murdering another man – John Smith.
2. The ability to, and taking action to punish a man – Sam Adams – for murdering another man – John Smith – by whichever means you’d like.

I suspect the skew toward the first option will be dramatic across every demographic. Why is that? Because no amount of punishment will bring Mr. Smith back to life? Probably – that’s my opinion at least. So as far as I can tell, the near universal moral choice would be to not have the murder take place instead of punishment after the fact.

Consider this example – choose between these two options:

1. Having the ability and taking action to save a child – Mary Smith – from being gang raped to death over several hours.
2. Having the ability and taking action to punish a gang of child rapists after the rape and murder of Mary Smith by whichever means you’d like.

Again I suspect the skew towards option 1 would be common across every demographic. Why? Because no amount of punishment will undo the suffering and death of Mary Smith? There is nothing one could do to a gang of child rapists that would undo the damage they did. Not having the damage done in the first place is clearly a better option.

Preventing the atrocity is the universal moral option.

Consider these articles:

• 8-year-old child raped to death: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/09/bride-aged-8-dies-internal-sexual-injuries-wedding-night-_n_3892892.html
• 5-year-old child anally raped to death: http://onefuriousllama.com/2013/02/05/islamic-cleric-rapes-tortures-and-kills-his-daughter-and-pays-a-fine/
• Tens if not hundreds of thousands of children abused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
• More child abuse: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/nyregion/after-sexual-abuse-case-a-hasidic-accuser-is-shunned-then-indicted.html?_r=0
• Over 3 million children starve to death each year: http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats

There is a quote that says:

“If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your god.”

Human morality is clearly superior to that pushed by, at the very least, the religions of the Abrahamic tradition.

The little gods of limited people.

Have a good look at the map below. There are two shapes on that map: a circle and an irregular area around the circle. Look at it. Compare it to the rest of the map. Think about the scale of that little circle. I’ve driven the distance equal to the diameter of that circle in less than a day.

The massive expanse covered by middle-eastern religions.

That little circle encloses every action the god of the Christians, Jews and Muslims ever performed on earth. Every prophet he chose came from inside that circle. Every personal appearance, inside that circle. Every burning bush, stone tablet, wrestling match, unexpected darkness and alleged zombie horde – right inside that little circle.

The irregular shape around the circle? Inside it is every place mentioned in the Bible. Most of the mentioning occurring after the god-man Jesus allegedly – ‘bodily’ – flew into heaven.

Think about that for a bit. That little circle is the totality of the history of three major religions followed by billions of people today. Inside that little circle when the almighty creator of the universe visited? Mostly desert. Mostly populated by illiterate goat herders. Possibly the best place in the world to magically appear so that – conveniently – no reliable, believable evidence could survive, even if there was any.

The creator of the universe, after trillions and trillions of years of existence, after handily creating the entire universe and everything in it in 6 days, picks that little circle as the stage for literally everything he is ever going to do on this earth. Omnipotent, omnipresent god doesn’t show himself to everybody on the planet at once – well within the power of the almighty creator of the universe, surely. He doesn’t choose to reveal himself to the Chinese who were literate and could reliably record his appearance. He doesn’t reveal himself to the aborigines in Australia, the Inca’s in South America, the  Inuit in North America, the many tribes of Europe. No, he picks only one small blot of the map of earth and reveals himself to bronze age goat herders. He does everything he’s ever going to do in that little blot and then leaves, never to be seen again.

Sound legit? Can any thinking person honestly make a case for this? It’s so hideously obvious that it’s bullshit… words fail me.

This quote comes to mind, recently and more often than it should:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about th’universe!

Often attributed to Albert Einstein but it probably wasn’t said by him. True though. So much stupidity. So much.