Creation on FaceBook

I recently volunteered to serve the data mining company, FaceBook. That is, I have joined this social networking site, fed them my stats, and regularly post information that FaceBook incorporates into its marketing database. Anything you write or post, they claim as their personal property so they can resell it.And there is the reputed link between FaceBook and the CIA. But I figure that since the FBI launched Carnivore in the 1990's, we're all scrod, anyway. But the real point of this post is to show you this funny version of Biblical Creation, as it might have manifested in FaceBook. They even have Sarah Palin, you betcha! And it isn't actually on FaceBook. No worries. Excerpt:

  • God: Don't worry, Cobra, you get to stay here. Just hang out in the garden.
  • Cobra: Ok. You mean on the beer trees?
  • God: Er, sorry, for budgetary reasons, we had to replace the beer trees with apple trees. But it's ok, apples are good for you. Just go play on those, ok?

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It’s About The Women

And now for a romantic interlude in the otherwise dangerous realm of Afghan social morays vis-a-vis the Taliban. A young couple whose families disapproved of their union ran off to get married. Married, mind. Not live together outside wedlock or anything so dramatic, but married. The result? They were shot outside their mosque after a tribunal of mullahs condemned them. Here is the story. It is difficult seeing this to remember that this sort of thing is really not consistent with mainstream Islam. But, just as with certain splinter groups of so-called christian sects, the Qu'ran is continually used to justify the persecution of women. Yes, women. Even though the young man was also killed, it is fairly clear that the main issue the Taliban and other groups like it embrace is the control of women. They bar them from school, they bar them from conversation, they bar them from public view, they bar them. All, it seems, they want from women is to be sex slaves for the males selected to possess them and anything---anything---that threatens that is condemned and, as usual, the women pay the price overwhelmingly. There are other issues covered by strict Sharia Law, but we hear little about that, probably because a lot of it is also covered by more tolerant, liberal interpretations of the law. The dividing line is over the women. It is over giving women a voice, a choice, any freedom at all to say no, and defenders of this who deny that it is a mysoginist pathology seem either to not Get It or are lacking any comprehension that women are people. To be clear, as I stated, christian groups do this, too. Maybe they don't kill them in the street, but that's only because in the West, the police really will arrest them for that. To paraphrase James Carville, "It's all about the women, stupid." There is no compromising on this, as far as I'm concerned. To allow this is to make all of us a little less human.

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Bill Moyers discusses disbelief with Jonathan Miller

I recently had the opportunity to view Bill Moyers' 2007 interview of British intellectual Jonathan Miller, who produced the PBS series, "A Brief History of Disbelief." It’s a lively and thoughtful interview (it lasts about 20 minutes). Here are some excerpts, but it is well worth watching the entire thing:

For a very long time, atheism was not an affirmation; it was accusation. I mean, it was talked about, that there were atheists, in those same ways that there were Communists under the bed. You know, there were they were they were around, but no one knew where they were or what they looked like, or and so forth. For me, I am only a disbeliever by virtue of the fact that I'm surrounded by people who make assertions to which I cannot lend my assent. -- BILL MOYERS: When you hear the word "God," what goes off in your head? How do your brain cells fire? JONATHAN MILLER: Well, I mostly, I haven't the faintest idea what people are talking about. -- I hate the word, "spiritual," anyway because it's been hijacked by this ghastly sort of new age lot, who talk about "spirituality." What I would say is, I have moments of - I suppose you might call them transcendent feelings; feelings which rise above what is immediately in front of me. -- I'm reluctant to use the word 'atheist' to describe my own unshakeable disbelief and that's not because I'm ashamed, afraid or even embarrassed, but simply because it seems so self evidently true to me that there is no God that giving that conviction a special title, somehow dignifies what it denies.

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Kenneth Miller’s unrelenting attack on creationism

Kenneth Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University. He is also a widely published author (co-author of high school and college biology textbooks used by millions of students). He is also a practicing Roman Catholic who has served as an expert in several court cases concerning creationist school boards that have tried to muzzle classroom science. In his most recent book, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul, Miller makes an unrelentingly strong case against creationists of all stripes, including those who advocate "intelligent design." I did not realize the strength of the scientific case based upon the analysis of the genomes of human beings and other animals. How strong is it? It is at least as strong as the fossil record, arguably much stronger. I already knew a few things about the arguments based on genome analyses. For instance, I had often read that the genomes of chimpanzees and humans were 99% the same (or, at least, 96% the same). I also knew that all animals possessed Hox genes, essentially "toolkits for generating body form." Miller reminds us that "it is the same kit whether that animal is a honey bee, a fish or an elephant." The Hox genes prove "deep connections between animal groups." Miller points out that these similarities are even much more striking than Haeckel's (admittedly exaggerated) embryonic drawings. In fact, Haeckel "actually understated the evolutionary case each of these embryos possesses the same developmental toolkit, revealing both are common ancestry and the similarity of form and function produced by the workings of the evolutionary process." These profound Evo-Devo findings (the combination of development and the study of evolution) show that we "no longer need to make a distinction between the two types of change known as macro evolution and micro evolution. We don't need to attribute special mechanisms for large-scale changes. Evo-devo "reveals that macro evolution is the product of microevolution writ large." According to Miller, these should be "chilling words" to the ID crowd.

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