Friday, November 26, 2004

Bible Verses

I was going to write about ridiculous bible verses in the next couple of days, but this e-mail I received has saved me the trouble. Feel free to verify these, they are all in the bible.

Dear President Bush,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you and understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said "in the eyes of God marriage is based between a man a woman." I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18: 22 clearly states it to be an abomination . . End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25: 44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21: 7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a air price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev. 15: 19-24. The oblem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev. 1: 9. The problem is, my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35: 2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11: 10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there degrees of abomination?

7. Lev. 21: 20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11: 6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19: 19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and aspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24: 10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20: 14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, as well, you have a direct line to God so I am confident you can help
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

My Favorite Person to Quote.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
- Carl Sagan

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
-Carl Sagan

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.
-Carl Sagan

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?
-Carl Sagan

"People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe." -Hippocrates, (2500 years ago)

A Speech by Ann Druyan

I'm deeply honored to accept this.

I'd like to tell you, briefly, why science it so important to me and why the notion of freedom from religion and freethought is, I think, so centrally important to our society.

My interest in science comes from the moment I discovered one of the pre-Socratic philosophers, a man named Hippocrates who's known to most people as the person who developed the Hippocratic Oath that physicians take. He was an Ionian scientist of 2,500 years ago. He wrote: "People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe."

If you are going to pick a moment when science was formally invented you might go back to this insight of Hippocrates, because it's a great aperture to the universe, revealed by science, to the magnificent images that Alan Hale presented to us moments ago, to that image of billions of galaxies, a trillion stars.

Science really delivers the goods. One of the billions and billions of reasons why I revere and cherish Carl Sagan's life is that he felt that it was his personal responsibility as a scientist to share with everyone the revelations, the great liberating power, the powers of demystification that science makes possible.

Not just as scientists but as citizens also, it's our duty to create a society in which everyone has that bologna-detection kit inside their heads, everybody can tell a good argument from a bad argument, can know when their buttons are being pushed, when they're being manipulated, when they're being lied to.

I see a quote up there from the great Margaret Sanger: "No Gods - No Masters." And this notion of no masters is almost in violation of our evolutionary heritage. We are primates, just like the other primates. We share more than 99.6% of our active genes with the chimpanzee. As we've begun to study natural chimpanzee society, not in zoos, but in the wild as Jane Goodall pioneered, we recognize that there is such a thing as chimpanzee politics, chimpanzee social organization. And so it is with us. We have certain tendencies to worship an "Alpha," to look for a leader who will tell us what to do and keep us in line.

The Bill of Rights and the method of science are error-correcting mechanisms that we've devised to compensate for these evolutionary tendencies that we have. The notion of no masters, the notion of a Bill of Rights that protects us from the Alpha pushing everyone else around, the notion of the method of science which says no argument from authority, that each of us should be equal in some sense, have equal access to the information, be able to determine on our own, independently, what is true, these are the great achievements of human society, the most precious thing that we have.

Very often you encounter in our society a kind of resentment and a fear of science. In fact, virtually all of the scientists depicted on television or in popular culture are monsters, really. Either they're socially completely alienated from everyone else, or they've made some pact with the devil, some Faustian bargain in exchange for this arcane information, they've sold their souls, and they're a threat to all of us. This is true in virtually every movie that you see.

We fear science. And for good reason. It has a kind of secret language and a methodology which is very ungiving, which is saying that it's not what makes you feel good, it's what's true that matters.

I think that Carl's voice in this regard was a great, great service to our culture and to our society, because not only did he convey the importance of skepticism, but also the importance of wonder, too, to have both wonder and skepticism at the same time. People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say that's completely opposite of the truth. The fact is that the real thing is far more dazzling, far more goose-bump-raising, than any myth or childish story that we can make up.

I think, in fact, that the idea that our species has begun to do science earnestly and consistently only in the very recent past is an indication of a kind of adulthood maturity, that we can bear to receive the great demotions that science offers us. We're not at the center of the universe. We're not even at the center of our tiny solar system. We're very young, very new to the universe and to our investigations of nature. But the fact that we are willing to accept these great blows to our narcissism, to our need to be the center of the universe, is a sign that we are growing much more secure. It's something that gives me a lot of hope for the human future.

I remember that one time Carl was giving a talk, and he spelled out, in a kind of withering succession, these great theories of demotion that science has dealt us, all of the ways in which science is telling us we are not who we would like to believe we are. At the end of it, a young man came up to him and he said: "What do you give us in return? Now that you've taken everything from us? What meaning is left, if everything that I've been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?" Carl looked at him and said, "Do something meaningful."

I believe that is one of the great lessons of his life. I'd like to tell you how much this award means to me, and how much it means to me that you gather as a community of people who are determined to think independently. I know that in some of the communities that you come from, this can be a somewhat unrewarding and lonely kind of experience, but the fact that you're willing to do this moves me tremendously. I'm very grateful to be honored by you.

Thank you so much.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Imagine no religion,
I wonder if you can?
Nothing to kill or die for,
A brotherhood of man.

-John Lennon

Charlotte Observer | 11/10/2004 | Evolution on trial

The following article that appeared in the November 10th edition of the Charlotte Observer is a precise view of the fudamentalism that is trying to influence the view of Americans. This ideology, based entirely on mythology will prevent the next generation of Americans from forming intelligent opinions about the world around them. This is akin to book-burning, and exactly what we accuse other fundamentalist countries of doing. Perhaps these stickers do belong on a book, that book is the bible.

Evolution on trial

Ignorance of science hazardous to next generation

In Cobb County, Ga., a trial is under way. The nature of the dispute draws a smile: disclaimer stickers about evolution placed on public school textbooks. But the overriding question is serious: how evolution should be taught in public schools.

The fundamental issue is intellectual honesty in public education. That's a fight worth fighting.

The Georgia lawsuit arose after a school board in a suburban Atlanta school district placed stickers inside the front cover of science books used in middle and high schools. Here is what they said:

"This textbook contains material about evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

That warning seems harmless, but it must be viewed in a larger context. Across America a debate rages over whether schools should also acknowledge an alternative view of development of life on Earth -- the biblical view. Certainly that view should be respected, but it should not determine what is taught in school as science.

In fact, though not all of Charles Darwin's ideas about evolutionary mechanisms have held up, much in biology makes no sense without evolution. As with all science, knowledge evolves as new discoveries are made, but discoveries haven't discredited the fact of evolution. A community that sends its young people into the world ignorant of that fact does them no favors.

Cobb County is expected to argue that the purpose of the stickers is to teach tolerance, not discount evolution or endorse religion. But the act of adding a disclaimer is a way to discredit a high school biology text used by more than a million students in all 50 states. It's part of a nationwide effort to chip away at evolution. Witness the push in Texas last year to revise textbooks to include evolution's so-called "flaws."

The record in places like Iran and Afghanistan speaks clearly. When religious beliefs dictate what the schools teach as fact, the honest search for knowledge is endangered. That's what the conflict in Georgia is about.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever
conceived." - Isaac Asimov