On Accepting and Understanding

“Evolution is almost universally accepted among those who understand it, almost universally rejected by those who don’t.”

– Richard Dawkins

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In 2015, Norwegians started a Facebook campaign to give Finland the Norwegian part of the Halti mountain as a gift for the centenary of its independence.

There is a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo called Banana.

There are seven classifications of snowflakes: plates, stellar crystals, columns, needles, spatical dendrites, capped columns and irregular.

The wife of noted evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins is called Lalla.

In 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs called for the extermination of all Mormons in the State by means of an executive order. It was rescinded 138 years later.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

World History with the Pope

Scene 1. “Atheism has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice.” says the pope, quite emphatically.

Scene 2. “We will spread rational inquiry by the sword!” thus shouts an angry broadsword-wielding crusader on the burning field of battle, his devout chest adorned by the Darwin adaptation of the Ichtus fish.

Scene 3. “Denounce Creation Theory and you will die quickly.” grins a pointy-hooded sinister figure in the shadows, wielding the controls to a breaking wheel on which a spreadeagled naked man is barely coping with the blinding pain of his torture.

Scene 4. “Of course slavery is justified: we live in an amoral, godless universe!” thus yells a proud Confederate soldier, his eyes bulging with anger and indignation at the impertinent question that was directed at him.

Scene 5. “Praise Richard Dawkins!” hail the atheists who are about to crash a hijacked commercial jet into a tall New York skyscraper.

Scene 6. “Let’s read Nietzsche and cuddle.” says a sweaty elderly priest, trying to comfort an underaged boy with an embrace.

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Adapted from a comic by Matt Bors (2007, December 12) “World History with the Pope” distributed by UFS. Inc.

Church Marquees

Listed below is a collection of church marquees that provide us with an interesting insight into the minds of various Christian movements all over the North-American continent. Church marquees are also telling of the messages these various movements like to communicate to society. Their diversity is enormous, being either oblivious to the most obvious innuendos, too clever by half, or hopelessly bigoted:[1]

• A 4 inch tongue can bring a 6 foot man to his knees. (Word of Life – Church of Christ)
• All churches & members that support homos cursed be thou with cancer syphilis HIV stroke madness itch then hell. (Atlah World Missionary Church)
• Cars aren’t the only thing recalled by their maker. (Pea Ridge Free Will Baptist)
• Christmas: easier to spell than Hanukkah.[2] (Cross of Christ Deliverance Temple)
• Does life stink? We have a pew for you. (Calvary Baptist Church)
• Do not criticise your wife’s judgement – see whom she married. (First Presbyterian Church)
• Don’t be so open-minded; your brains fall out. (Glad Tidings Assembly)
• Don’t make me come down there. – God (Cornerstone Christian Church)
• Easter comes once a year. How often do you? (Kingsley Lake Baptist Church)
• Face powder may get a man, it takes baking powder to keep him. (North Buncombe First Church of God)
• Get off of Facebook and into my book – God (Fall Creek Baptist Church)
• God didn’t create anything without a purpose. But mosquitoes come close. (Bethany Lutheran Church)
• God does not believe in atheists, therefore atheists do not exist. (Palm Heights Baptist Church)
• God, help me to be the person my dog thinks I am! (Northgate Baptist Church)
• Have trouble sleeping? We have sermons, come hear one. (Benton Heights Presbyterian Church)
• Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to meet him. (Stonebridge Church of God)
• I hate this church – Satan (Faith Baptist Church)
• I kissed a girl and I liked it. Then I went to hell. (Havens Corners Church)
• I wish Noah had swatted those two mosquitoes.[3] (Unknown)
• If evolution is true, why help the poor? (Christian Fellowship Church)
• If man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? (New Deliverance Evangelistic Church)
• If ur’ faith is big enough, facts dnt count. (Victoria Tabernacle Holiness Church)
• If you don’t love God, go to hell. (Unity Christian Church)
• Jesus had two dads and he turned out just fine! (St. John’s Anglican Church)
• Jews killed the Lord Jesus. (Lovingway United Pentecostal Church)
• Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer – God (First Reformed Church of Bethlehem)
• Now is a good time to visit, our pastor is on vacation. (Cape Coral Community Church)
• Obama Osama (Jonesville Chuch of God)
• Open your mouth and I will fill it. (Grace United Church of Christ)
• Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has. (Beryl Baptist Church)
• Santa Claus never died for anyone. (Apostolic faith Church)
• Staying in bed screaming ‘oh God’ does not constitute going to church. (Church of Redeemer Lutheran)
• Suffering is the soil in which faith grows. (Greensboro Grove Church)
• Surfers, Skateboarders, Musicians, Artists, Vegetarians, Dawkins, Activists, Addicts and Fornicators all go to hell! Repent Now! (Orange Church of God)
• The best gift a mother ever gave was time spent on her knees. (Moler Avenue Church of the Brethren)
• The best way to the top is on your knees. (Hickory Flat Fellowship Church of God)
• Unless you are White, Anglo, and Republican. Stay away! (Scofield Baptist Church)
• Vote for the Mormon, not the Muslim; the Capitalist, not the Communist! (Church in the Valley)
• Wal-Mart isn’t the only saving place. (Faubion United Methodist Church)
• What happens in Vegas is forgiven here.[4] (Unknown)
• Whoever is praying for rain can stop. (Lake George Bible Church)
• Whoever’s praying 4 snow, pleez stop! (McDonaldsville St. Paul)

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[1] In some cases, punctuation has been added to make the message more understandable.

[2] The Jewish feast of Hanukkah is misspelled here as “Hannukah”, we have corrected this error.

[3], [4] Even though the location of this marquee is unknown, the authors felt this message could not be left out of the final list.

Arrogant Scientists?

‘As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution.

The truth is that no one knows how or why the universe came into being. It is not clear that we can even speak coherently about the creation of the universe, given that such an event can be conceived only with reference to time, and here we are talking about the birth of space-time itself.[5]

[5] The physicist Stephen Hawking, for instance, pictures space-time as a four dimensional, closed manifold, without beginning or end (much like the surface of a sphere).

Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be appreciated in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other non-believers for their intellectual arrogance. There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell. …

An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse—and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists.

Over 99 percent of the species that ever walked, flew, or slithered upon this earth are now extinct. This fact alone appears to rule out intelligent design. When we look at the natural world, we see extraordinary complexity, but we do not see optimal design. We see redundancy, regressions, and unnecessary complications; we see bewildering inefficiencies that result in suffering and death. We see flightless birds and snakes with pelvises. We see species of fish, salamanders, and crustaceans that have nonfunctional eyes, because they continued to evolve in darkness for millions of years. We see whales that produce teeth during fetal development, only to reabsorb them as adults. Such features of our world are utterly mysterious if God created all species of life on earth “intelligently”; none of them are perplexing in light of evolution.’

– Harris. S. 2006. Letter To A Christian Nation p. 24

Exaptation

An exaptation is just one example of a characteristic that evolved, but that is not considered an adaptation. Stephen Gould and Elizabeth Vrba proposed the vocabulary to let biologists talk about features that are and are not adaptations:

Adaptation
A feature produced by natural selection for its current function (such as echolocation in bats).

Exaptation
A feature that performs a function but that was not produced by natural selection for its current use. Perhaps the feature was produced by natural selection for a function other than the one it currently performs and was then co-opted for its current function.

For example, feathers might have originally arisen in the context of selection for insulation, and only later were they co-opted for flight. In this case, the general form of feathers is an adaptation for insulation and an exaptation for flight.

“Contrary to earlier prejudices, there is nothing inherently progressive about evolution.” – Richard Dawkins

A Liberal Decalogue

British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and social critic Bertrand Russell endures as one of the most intellectually diverse and influential thinkers in modern history, his philosophy of religion in particular having shaped the work of such modern atheist champions as Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins.

The following list is a vision for responsibilities of a teacher, in which Russell touches on a number of recurring themes from pickings past — the purpose of education, the value of uncertainty, the importance of critical thinking, the gift of intelligent criticism, and more.

It originally appeared in the December 16, 1951, issue of The New York Times Magazine, at the end of the article “The best answer to fanaticism: Liberalism.”

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Degree Argument For God

This proof, formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274), originates from the degrees discovered in things. There is discovered greater and lesser degrees of goodness, truth, nobility, and others – this is no ground-braking statement.

Aquinas argues, there exists something ‘truest’, which, in consequence, is the greatest ‘being’. He then argues, based on the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, that these superlatives – the things that are most true, beautiful, et cetera – are the greatest truths and therefore the greatest beings, as is stated in Metaphysics Book II.

Furthermore, that which is the greatest in its way, is, in another way, the cause of all things belonging to it. Therefore, there exists something that is the cause of the existence of all things and every perfection whatever. Aquinas calls this ‘God’.

Over 700 years later, there is little credibility left of Aquinas’ proof.

The most prevalent criticism of this argument considers that we do not have to believe in an object of a greater degree in order to believe in an object of a lesser degree. Richard Dawkins, the most (in)famous Atheist thinker of our time, argues that just because we come across a “smelly object”, does not require that we believe in a “preeminently peerless stinker”.

“Something does not necessarily prove something else, let alone something less or more.”

For instance, a fire does not necessitate another hotter fire, nor a cooler one. The hottest fire does not necessitate any other cooler fire (for it could be the only fire in existence and therefore both the hottest and coolest fire, or all fires in existence could have the same temperature). But above all else, if the hottest fire of all fires would indeed exist, it does not necessarily have to be the cause of all smaller fires.

See other: Arguments Concerning God