Tag Archives: evolution

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’25 A To Z Challenge – X

I have previously whined opined that I accept the inevitable evolution of the English language.  I just don’t want it to be led by guys with their name on their shirt.  HOLY SHIT!!  It just got even worse.  I recently ran into the Newspeak word

XERTZ

At first, I thought it might have something to do with new, electronic, micro-circuitry.  We should be so lucky.  The Earl of Sandwich invented a new type of food, because of his addiction to, and his refusal to leave, the gambling tables.

This word, which means, Xertz means to gulp or swallow something quickly, often in a greedy or hurried manner, similar to chugging or scoffing down a meal or beverage.

It is a (mostly) slang term, invented by gamers, who are addicted to, and refuse to leave, their precious keyboards, barely taking time to eat, drink, sleep, or attend to basic bodily needs and functions.

Heroin is not toxic, and by itself, will not damage the body.  All of the harm – physical, emotional, social, financial – is caused by distraction from immediate reality.  JUST SAYIN’!!

 

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Lack Of Proof And Proof Of Lack

SHOULD CHRISTIANS FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE, WHEREVER IT LEADS?

Is there any evidence of the Jews being held in slavery in Egypt?
Is there any evidence of the Jews escaping their slavery – The Exodus?
Is there any evidence of them wandering in the desert for 40 years?
Is there any evidence that the Earth is ten thousand years old?
Is there any evidence of a global flood?
Is there any evidence of the Jews conquering the Promised Land?

In order, the answers are
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO, and
Other than unsubstantiated Biblical claims, there is no evidence that ANY God ever promised any land to the Jews.  The cities that the Israelites took over were financially, socially, and militarily failed mini-kingdoms, where the populace welcomed new, more efficient, less corrupt administrators.

I agree that there is no good evidence for these Biblical events. I have learned that Christianity is not an evidence based faith, as some like to claim. Rather, Christianity is a spiritual experience based faith. When one encounters God through the reading of Scripture, then the Lord imparts that necessary knowledge of himself. Christians know these things happened, not because of the evidence, but because God has revealed it in his word. The Divinely self-authenticating Scriptures are all the evidence we need.

But then, why don’t we find the evidence for these things? My conclusion is that God is testing us, to see if we really love him, to see if we are willing to trust what he says in the face of doubts and contrary evidence.

So, you don’t actually follow the evidence.  You follow delusion, desperation, and pre-supposition.  You frantically try to make facts fit fiction, fantasy, and Faith.

If you go looking for something that you expect to find – that you’ve been told, over and over and over, that you will find – that you want to find – that you need to find….  You will probably find it – whether it exists or not!

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Well Known One-Liners

I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting….
….Anonymous, hell, I knew everybody there.

I work as a lifeguard….
….It is my job to actively fight natural selection.

On the internet, you can be whatever you want….
….It’s amazing how many choose to be stupid.

Attention drama queens….
….Auditions for today have been cancelled.

I am so in debt….
….I could start a government.

Now that we’ve got hand sanitizing down….
….Next stop, turn signals.


Everything is a conspiracy theory….
….when you don’t understand how anything works.

Are we great yet?….
….Cuz I just feel embarrassed

If money is the root of all evil….
….why do churches beg for it?

How do you keep Canadian bacon from curling in the pan?….
….Take away its broom, eh

What constitutes 50% of Canada?….
….The letter A

When a Canadian went for a blood test….
….the results came back Eh-positive.

I used to love hockey, but switched to a less violent sport….
….Now I’m into MMA.

What do you call a sophisticated American?….
….A Canadian

Scientists are baffled by Canadians’ ability to watch movies and play video games….
….and not shoot other people.

Canada could have had it all: American industry, British Culture, and French Cuisine….
….Instead, they got: French Industry, American culture, and British cuisine.

In Canada, we use BCE, instead of BC….
….It stands for Before Christ Eh.

In Europe, it’s called a lift.  In Canada we call it an elevator….
….I guess we were raised differently.

In Canada, you are more likely to die….
….from a moose kick, than a terrorist attack.

My wife says I’m mean when I drink whiskey….
….Now I drink Canadian whiskey.  I’m still mean – but I apologize.

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Confirmation, And Conformation, Bias

If you go looking for something that you expect to find – that you’ve been told, over and over and over, that you will find – that you want to find – that you need to find….  You will probably find it!  😮

Despite there being naturalistic explanations for almost every claim, Christian Apologists insist that “God” is responsible for everything – everything good that is.  If it’s bad, apparently we cause it.  I’m sure that the lady who wrote the following is very comforted by it, but I have some serious problems with her assumptions and definitions.

It really is a simple argument that, understanding God as the greatest conceivable being and our creator, seems to me irrefutable. Here it is in syllogism form:

  1. The moral law is founded on God’s nature, i.e. something is good if it aligns with who God is.
  2. Because God is the greatest conceivable being, all good qualities find their perfection in him and every expression of his goodness is much greater than any of us could ever express.
  3. Love is a good, moral virtue.
  4. Therefore, God loves and his expression of it is much greater than ours.

Morals do not prove God.  God proves morals.  Show me evidence of such an entity, and I will accept its right to assign “Morals.”  Until then, your morals are merely the mostly-agreed-on communal ethics of individuals, and a social species, attempting to survive and prosper.  The morals of the Biblical God align with slavery, genocide, rape, favoritism, and stoning independent children to death.

There is no indication that “the greatest conceivable being” exists, or needs to exist.  There is no indication that such a hypothetical entity would be ‘our creator.’  All indications are that any such theoretical being would not be the Christian God that she imagines.  I’m not moving the goalposts; I’m just trying to keep up with this argument as it flounders.

‘Love is a good moral virtue’ is a soft, sweet, mushy, marshmallow-type statement that even non-believers agree with.  Like ‘morals,’ it doesn’t prove God’s existence.  That requires something stronger and more rigid.

If you keep repeating the same, tired, inane statement often enough, sooner or later you will come to accept it as truth.  Government calls that brainwashing.  The Church calls it catechism.

Jesus loves me, this I know
‘Cause my pastor told me so.

All the repetition, and desperate hope, and circular thinking, don’t make it true.

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Fibbing Friday #263

Last week’s questions from Pensitivity101 were provided by our friend Jim Adams. Thanks Jim!

  1. Who was buried in King Tut’s tomb?

General Ulysses S. Grant.  Only Grant’s horse, Bucephalus, is buried in his tomb.

  1. Why did the Sphinx have a lion’s body and a human head?

Because the Egyptians didn’t believe in Darwinian evolution

  1. What month of the year did the Nile River overflow its banks?

Thirty days hath Septober, April, June, and no wonder
all the rest eat peanut butter – except Grandma, and she drives a new Buick.
It was the month when the new shipments of beer began arriving, and the river became a little more yellow.

  1. How many gods did the ancient Egyptians worship?

Every one they could find – and a few they made up.  No internet back then!  No porn?  No Home Shopping Channel?  No online gaming?  They had to have something to do!

  1. How much makeup did Cleopatra wear?

Girl… She was the first influencer for the makeup brands of the day!
Using all the pretty layers to look and feel her best, not to mention protecting her skin from the ravages of the sun.

  1. How long was Nefertiti’s neck?

As long as she was alive.  She wanted to be head and shoulders above the commoners, but she only accomplished the head part.

  1. Why did the Egyptians walk so strangely?

Sand in their burnoose

  1. How many pyramids did they build?

Oh wouldn’t you like to know!  The sands of time have hidden more than we have found and we’ll just have to wait until they decide if we are worthy of getting them back!

  1. What was Ramses II known for?

Condoms

  1. What did the Egyptians do in Karnak?

They watched Johnny Carson’s Tonight show, on Funk and Wagnall’s front porch.

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Religious Thoughts From Atheists

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

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When people share their beliefs, they also share their insecurities about their beliefs, and sharing is a way to harvest validation.

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“Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself.” Simone de Beauvoir

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For those who claim that the Bible is inerrant – Jeremiah 8:8 – “How can we say that we are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us?”  But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.  This is the Bible itself, saying that the Bible is intentionally dishonest.

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Religion poisons everything.
Christopher Hitchens

We are all Atheists about most of the gods that mankind has invented.  Some of us just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins

God is dead.  God remains dead.  And we have killed him.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived.
Isaac Asimov

I would rather live my life as if there were no God, and find out there was, than live my life as if there were a God, and find out there wasn’t.
Albert Camus

All thinking men are Atheists.
Ernest Hemingway

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world.  It is simply a refusal to deny the obvious.
Sam Harris

You are—your life, and Nothing Else.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Beliefs don’t change facts.  Facts, if you are rational, should change your Beliefs.
Rickey Gervais

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Carl Sagan

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built, instead of a church.
An Atheist believes that a deed should be done, rather than a prayer said.
Madeline Murray O’Hair

Religion is just mind control.
George Carlin

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
Voltaire

If you’re an Atheist, you don’t have to explain why bad things happen to good people.
Salman Rushdie

One can’t prove that God does not exist, but science makes God unnecessary.
Stephen Hawking

For an Atheist, all religions are the same.  He is against the very institution of religion.
Javed Ahktar

Religions are like fireflies.  They require darkness to shine.
Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.
Mark Twain

I think all the great religions of the world are both untrue, and harmful.
Bertrand Russell

 

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’25 A To Z Challenge – A

AGATE

Is a way through afence – unless you go in stile.

Marbles were originally made from little broken pieces of marble – hence the name.  Now, most ‘marbles’ are molded from glass.  Hmmm, glass marbles??!  That’s as self-contradictory as plastic glasses – both kinds.

“Aggies,” the more often and more roughly-used playing marbles, also known as taws, were made from agate, a super-hard, super-strong, ultra-compressed type of sandstone.  The pleasing stripe/swirl patterns were created when the original sand was disturbed by waves or water currents, before it became extra-compacted.

I recently saw a video where an excited man pulled a dinner-plate-sized stone from the edge of some water.  He took it home and split it in half with a special saw. (Video agate coral)  The pattern inside was gorgeous.  He claimed that it was a special type of agate, composed of fossilized coral.

I thought agate was only the sandstone type, but I guess I was wrong.  (Hey, could happen??)  I suppose that the same thing occurring, in the same place, under the same conditions, to two similar materials, rates the same name.

I’m gonna roll on out of here.  Be careful on your way out.  I think I picked up all the aggies, but….  😉

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Truckin’

I recently wrote about smelling the aroma from a French-fry truck.  A reader asked if they really exist..  The answer is – Yes!  No!, and not really, anymore.

In my youth, there was one in my hometown, and in the next town.  Both were built on, what is now a century-old pickup truck equivalent.  In the 1950s and ‘60s, mine sat on what had been a 2-cylinder, 1928 Whippet Estate Tote-Truk.  The problem with the small trucks was that there was really only enough room to cook and serve French-fries.  Soon, customers also wanted hamburgers, hotdogs, sausages and ice cream.

Here, in my adoptive city, there used to be 5 or 6 fry-trucks, about the size and shape of ambulances.  Slowly, the ones that didn’t close, morphed into 20, and 25-foot Airstream trailers.  One of the 20-footers still sits on wheels, but hasn’t moved in 15 years.  Another has the wheels taken off, and sits on concrete blocks.  A small, enclosed wooden porch was added at one end, to contain condiments and dips.   A 25-footer had the entire carriage removed, and was lowered onto a concrete pad.  An enclosed, aluminum, window/screen porch lines one side, as well as shaded patio, outside.

One of the “trucks” was a brick, stand-alone, little, ex-Dairy Queen store.  After twenty years, it’s being torn down to make room for an 18-story apartment building.  Perhaps the proprietor will be allowed a spot in the main-floor commercial space.

From all the recent roadside signs, I thought that, “John’s Dogs” was a breeder, groomer, or walker.  It’s a tiny teardrop camper trailer, outside a hardware store in a strip mall, carrying regular and foot-long hotdogs, and cold drinks.  If he does well, a sign promises Italian, Polish and German sausages with sauerkraut, to come.

There are still a bunch of food-trucks, which dash from music concerts at the City Hall courtyard, to the Multicultural festival in the park, or line the main street with the antique cars, during Cruise Night.  There’s one which serves gourmet Mac and cheese with specialty cheeses, and pulled-chicken, pork, beef or chili.

One sells artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches, again, with special cheeses and breads.  There’s an Indian truck, with roti or naan bread, tandoori or curried chicken, and lentils.  One sells upscale pizzas.  Another exactly duplicates a police SWAT truck – large and black, with big white SWAT letters on the sides, because it sells Sandwiches With A Twist.

None of these sell French-fries.  With my portly figure, angina, and clogged cardiac arteries, it’s probably just as well.  😮

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Click Truckin’ here to listen to The Grateful Dead describe touring, life on the road for a rock group.

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Roses Are Read – So Are These Books

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants….

Some books that are good for the mind, some books that are good for the soul, and some books that are good for just passing time.  I read ‘em all last year.

1491
A description of indigenous societies and empires in North and South America before the white man arrived.  Aside from the lack of iron and steel, many of them were as complex and technological as anything in the Old World.

A Harvest of Short Stories
A 1960 Ontario English textbook, complete with notes and questions, and the names of three girls who had owned it.  16 short stories, mostly Canadian and British, including a couple of O. Henry ironies, and Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado.  I didn’t have to download a free PDF.  Two Sherlock Holmes, including The Speckled Band, where I found three errors.  You can’t train a snake.  They do not drink milk, and they are deaf, and will not respond to a whistle.  The notes found one more, where Holmes refers to Watson’s pistol by a company which only ever produced ammunition.

A History of the World In 10 ½ Chapters
Not what it claims to be.  A collection of short stories intended to make fun of blind religion, especially Christianity.

Count Zero
Book number two of a trilogy about surfing the internet, but written 40 years ago, when most of us didn’t know the internet existed.

Dead Moon
A premise that large areas of the moon are used as cemeteries.  Seemed energy-inefficient to me.  Along comes a space rock which re-animates the dead, with no explanation of how, or why.  Still, escapist fun.

Even
Lee Grant’s (Jack Reacher) younger brother writing in the same genre.  Heavy on the thinking and planning, but not averse to a little required violence.
Genellan – First Victory
Again, the second of three sci-fi books about three, then four, then five alien races, including us, who band together to defeat another powerful one, intent on controlling the galaxy.  Think Star Trek Federation versus The Borg.


Gilgamesh
A book written before you were born:  This one was written before almost anyone was born – 5000 years ago.  Book review to follow.

Kingdom of Bones
An excuse to while away some time in retirement.  This one shows a place in darkest Africa where Gaia-energy caused animal life and intelligence to develop.

No Plan B
While ‘Lee Child’ is busy developing the Jack Reacher TV series, (They’re filming the third season in Toronto, where the lead actor, from Minnesota, complains about the cold weather) it falls to his younger brother (see Even above) to keep pumping them out.

One Minute Out
Another Gray Man time-passer.  In the first novel. he got so beat-up and shot-up that I didn’t see how he, or the series, could survive.  This is the ninth, and they both seem to be feeling their age.

Rasputin’s Shadow
Many people are still fascinated by Rasputin.  Even a hundred years later, he’s a good MacGuffin to hang a modern action/suspense novel on.

Relentless
This is number 8 in The Gray Man series.  Same as above – only slightly different.

Run
Same basic plot as Even, above.  An innocent bystander gets screwed over, and works like Hell to get his life back.  Good for a week of casual reading.

Sapiens
A description and illustration of how humans climbed down from the hominid evolution tree.  We – the race  – may have made a great mistake in inventing farming and technology to feed an ever-increasing population.  Hunter/gatherers spend only 18/20 hours a week feeding themselves, with much less stress.

Shatter War
Number two of a trilogy about how areas of Earth are jumbled from different time periods, ranging from ice age, to 200 years in our future.  With a canvas that broad and blank, anything is possible.  From a husband/wife team like the Childs.  He determines the plotline and story arc, and she provides the development prose.

Sierra Six
This is number seven in The Gray Man series.  I’m presenting my titles in alphabetical order, but that inverts the published order.  This book is out of plotline order.  It’s a flashback story to explain how it all started.

Target Acquired
Ghost writers help the ghost of Tom Clancy-past to keep pumping out these Jack Ryan Junior, second-generation novels.

The Kaiser’s Web
If Raymond Khoury can hang a tale on Rasputin, then Steve Berry can hang one on the German Kaiser.  Everything old is new again.

The Kill Clause
A police detective, whose young daughter is raped and murdered, is offered a spot on a vigilante squad to bring justice to those who escape on technicalities.

The Last Orphan
A Jason Bourne-type agent is finally showing some signs of being human.  I am hoping for more books in the new direction.

The Program
The above vigilante policeman, (temporarily) off the force, rescues a rich man’s daughter from a Scientology-type cult.

The Runaway
A missing,16-year-old, female agent trainee, and the possibility of a relationship with a lady DA and her young son, help scrub a few letters off behind his assumed name –  ADD, ADHD, OCD, PTSD.  He may become part of civilized society, even while he’s still knocking off bad guys.

The Span of Empire
Similar to the Genellan book, again, there are more and more interstellar races, joining together to resist the galactic bully, who would ‘cleanse’ them all out of existence.

There Is A God
Lies!  Damned lies, and more desperate Christian Apologetics lies.

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One Flew Over The Ego’s Nest

The most famous Atheist of the 20th century found God.
(Writer’s note – No he didn’t! – Rebuttal below)
He Wrote a book about it.
I read the book.
Tickets to the Pity-Party are available for a nominal fee, at the box office in the lobby, as you exit the blog-site.

For fifty years, Antony Flew was the world’s best-known, and most vocal Atheist, a legend in his own mind.  He wrote a book titled There Is No God.  But he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Atheist.  He didn’t merely not believe because he had not been presented with sufficiently convincing evidence.  He wanted to use words and debates and arguments and philosophy to prove that he was too smart to be gullible.

Just before he died, at age 80, he wrote another book.  The cover was identical to his earlier book, with the cutesy twist that, the word No was stroked through, and the word A was added.  The first half was about him.  Atheism was just an excuse to prove his brilliance.

He wrote and published a paper making some unsupported Atheist claim.  A year later, he wrote another paper, supporting the unsupportable.  He debated with a well-known Theist, and of course, won.  He wrote a paper rebutting and debunking another Theist.  He engaged in an ongoing correspondence contest with a Christian Apologist – and trounced him.  I’m surprised he didn’t dislocate his shoulder, patting himself on the back.

When he published the, There Is A God book, the Christian Apologist and Debater Society immediately adopted him.  The book’s blurb says, “The world’s most famous Atheist changed his mind.”  They clasped him to their bosom, and erected a life-sized cardboard cut-out of him, like Iron Man, despite the fact that his book specifically denies the existence of the needy, personal Christian God who knows your every thought, answers prayers, performs miracles, and hands out morality, and penalties for not obeying it.

He didn’t really change his mind; he just refined his reference points, and therefore his conclusion. He very unscientifically decided that there was some sort of underlying order and control to the cosmos.  He had ‘discovered’ Spinoza’s Deistic “God,” or Einstein’s.  He had found a (incorrectly spelled) Copernician, non-personal “God”.  He still had 26 angels, dancing on the head of a pin, but these ones were black-clad Goths, not golden, white-robed, haloed ones.

His statements – claims – were all null, because they had no referents.  The book is full of philosophical and debate buzzwords, open to interpretation.  He made claims based on ungrounded assumptions from unproven methodology.  The most common word in the book is IF!  If there is order in the Universe, GOD must have put it there.  If objective morals exist, then GOD must have commanded them.

The ‘Laws of Nature’ are descriptive, not prescriptive.  They are established by Mankind – scientists – who state observed reality.  Light does not travel at 300,000 Km/sec because God stands out in the cosmos with a crossing-guard paddle and a radar gun, yet Flew wanted to know “Who wrote the Laws of Nature?” with no evidence, no proof, that such a thing was even possible, or if it was, that it was a WHO that did it.

He firmly declared that he could not believe in Abiogenesis and evolution, that life – intelligence – could come merely from matter.  I guess that he was so busy being famous, that he missed the Miller-Urey experiments which proved that it was possible.

Yet another ‘Religious’ book that I was unimpressed, and underwhelmed by.  It seems that the only thing that Philosophy and debate prove, is that Philosophical debaters can be some very uninformed, ivory-tower assholes.

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Later, I learned that the book was actually written by a Christian Apologist, with a Religious bias, who blamed credited Flew with having actually penned it.  After the cover claims that There Is A God, it shows Antony Flew as author, with Roy Abraham Varghese, as if he was only there to sharpen pencils, make coffee, and look up definitions.  Varghese wrote and published the book without Flew’s knowledge or authorization – Standard Practice!  😦  😳