Category Archives: Sophia Irreligulosa

No More Young Earth, Please

This article, written by a christian, outlines all of the different methods currently used to age geological phenomena as well as how they are used in conjunction with one another.

Radiometric Dating:  A Christian Perspective

It is all one needs presently to understand that the Earth is very much older than what young Earth creationists are likely to contend.  Read it and carry this knowledge with you into your future.

JamesIsIn

Christopher Hitchens Modernizes Some Famous Commandments

Here they are plainly stated:

  1. Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color.
  2. Do not ever use people as private property.
  3. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations.
  4. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
  5. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature.
  6. Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly.
  7. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.
  8. Turn off that fucking cell phone.
  9. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions.
  10. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.

Here you can find his exposition:

JamesIsIn

Here I will offer reinterpretations of things humans say.  The purpose is to show how odd the original thing said was.  We’ll see how well these translate.

My imaginary friend has a purpose for your pain, a reason for your struggles, and a gift for your faithfulness.

With my imaginary friend, all things are possible.

I never thought sobriety could be this satisfying.  Since I put down the drugs, my imaginary friend has blessed me in immeasurable ways.

Don’t worry, my imaginary friend is never blind to your tears, never deaf to your prayers, and never silent to your pain.

JamesIsIn

Into the Shadows from Whence They Came

Yea, verily I say unto you be kind, respectful, and loving toward thine own self, thine own helpers and servers and protectors, thine own kin and friends and relations, thine own species and kindred species, and thine own home and home world.  Or, basically, don’t be an asshole, wipe your ass, and help everyone clean up once in a while.

I came across a terrific article on the decline of religiosity, the advancement of anti-secretism, and our position in this historical flow.

This is my favorite quote:

If we are lucky—if human health and security continue to rise and spread around the globe—churches might evolve into humanist communities and social clubs, dedicated to good works, with distinctive ceremonies and disappearing doctrine, except for a scattering of reclusive sects marked by something like institutional paranoia.

You can read the entire article here:

Why the Future of Religion Is Bleak

Get thee out of the nunnery, Ophelia!  Get out there and do something good in the world.

JamesIsIn

I Asked the Magic Sky Man for a Favor and Nothing Happened—Again

Yeah, you know, when the Monkees sang about being a believer they were not thinking “… and my amputated limb will miraculously regrow itself”.  You know why?  Because even the Monkees weren’t complete idiots.

The alleged power of prayer in medicine has consistently proven itself to be equal to the placebo effect; in other words if you can get better by thinking about getting better and prayer happens to give you those thoughts, you win.  To my taste sugar pills are sweeter and easier to swallow.

When it comes to matters rational, the religious among us have given themselves a free-pass to be irreverently irrational.  This happens in spite of the steady stream of evidence against any position that the Magic Sky Man is looking out for anyone on good old planet Earth.

As a telling example we have Herbert and Catherine Schaible who have allowed their second child to die while on probation for refusing to seek medical care for their first child (already dead, manslaughter, guilty)—preferring instead to rely upon prayer and faith to heal their child.  The court had, as a single condition of their probation, ordered the couple to seek medical treatment for their remaining child should appropriate conditions arise.

They arose.

You can read about that here.

Can there be any doubt that at least some religious observance qualifies as child abuse?

JamesIsIn

Voodoo Joe v Dr Doctor

I have a bad attitude. I am of the opinion that it’s science and medicine that make modern medical miracles possible and not the Magic Sky Man. Not only that but I think that one ought to thank the doctors and nurses for their roles in saving the ill and feeble when they have done all the work.

Voodoo Joe
Voodoo Joe

Here we have a clear case of confusion between places and actors. I was under the impression that the surgery-fu was to take place at a hospital and was to be performed by medical professionals each with a decade of medical training from an accredited university. Everyone else seems to understand that the liver magic will be taking place at Voodoo Joe’s Temple of Crazy by blind seers and a handful of witches.

I was also under the impression that this surgery was made possible by the extreme advances in medical science of which we are the benefactors, while everyone else seems to understand that removing a liver and replacing it is an act of magic only the Sky Man could facilitate.

I have even tried mocking the general position that the Magic Sky Man does shit that effects our petty lives.

Wishful Thinking
Wishful Thinking

This was taken literally. So all the folks who know me and my bad attitude interpret this as though, what?, I’ve converted over to their particular brands of crazy—rather than read it as sarcasm. C’mon. Wishful Thinking?

Somehow this annoys the fuck out of me. Ergo bad attitude.

I’d feel bad but I’m kinda busy right now using subatomic particles to make complex communications possible across the entire planet and even into space.

Thanks, Magic Sky Man.

JamesIsIn

Thou Shalt Not Suffer an Idiot to Live

A while back I read an article over at CNN:

Indian ‘witch’ tied to tree, beaten by mob

I know what you’re thinking: “Why were you at CNN and not The Drudge Report?”. Sometimes these things happen. I get to following a trail and like any good sleuth I follow it until it reaches the end. The end in this case was Dumaria (New Dehli, India).

What is shocking to me about this incident is not so much the mob violence nor the police inaction, which are about as predictable pop lyrics. No I am much more interested in the odd fact that witches should be of interest in 2008.

I believe it was Jesus who said “Let he who is without brain cast the first stone”.

Don’t get to thinking that I am pointing my fingers at the denizens of New Dehli alone.  Nowhere in the article do they deviate from one vital assumption: witches are a real category of being.

The facts they report include the notion that she is accused of using black magic as opposed to white magic.  Are their laws in India which regulate the use of magic?  Perhaps we ought to write laws here governing the boarding of unicorns or the fishing of mermaids.  What possible value is there in reporting the category of magic she was accused of using?

A couple of years ago I found a two volume set of essays:

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

This book was published more than a hundred years ago (1886 I believe). One of the many subjects the author (Andrew Dickson White) embarks upon is the subject of witchcraft. His essays are quite revealing of what happens when reason is set aside in matters of fact, and his assessments of the witchhunts in history are no exceptions.

The very idea that our reporters are granting validity through their reporting to the idea that witches are a category of being which may or may not require regulation and which may or may not be vicitimized by injustice is itself an injustice.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be known as the candidate who is soft on witches.

We may have sent all of our tech support to a country that beats witches, but we don’t deserve much better if we are going to work to protect witches as a class of being.  Protect humans equally under the law, but abide by reason and good sense.  It is no more possible that this woman from Dumaria is a witch or is capable of employing magic (whether black, white, or green) than it is possible that I am a merman or that the Easter Bunny lives in my back yard.

If you would like to feel a little pain at the impending revolt of the massively irrational check out this odd god site.

What Century do you live in?

JamesIsIn