Against The Bible: May 2009

Jesus Will Kill Children

"Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works." (Revelation 2:22-23)

What you really need to know about Ida (The Missing Link)

Genesis Revisited

What Would Jesus NOT Do?

League of Reason

Christian Apologetics

Normal people are annoyed by Christian apologetics, a fact which in having never been acknowledged by Christian apologetics, more or less proves the point.

I wonder why.

League of Reason Main Site

Religion 101: Final Exam

1) Which of the following is the most compelling evidence for the existence of an intelligent and loving Designer?

1. A Caribbean sunset
2. The screams of a baby seal as it is torn apart by a shark
3. The first time your perfect new baby smiles at you
4. The speed of the Ebola virus converting an African child's organs into liquid

3) You are a product tester and frequently bring your work home. Yesterday, while dressed in a flame resistant suit (up to 3,000 degrees) and carrying the latest model fire extinguisher, you discover your neighbor's house is on fire. As the flames quickly spread, you stand and watch your neighbor's new baby burn to death. Which of the following best describes your behavior?

1. All-powerful
2. All-knowing
3. All-loving
4. Mysterious

5) You are the incarnated Son of the all-powerful and all-loving Creator of the universe. What would be a good way to demonstrate your compassion and power?

1. Cure cancer forever
2. Cause all the earth's deserts to bloom with food crops
3. Unite the world with a common language and an end to poverty
4. Conjure up a jug of wine and follow it up by walking on water

Take the Exam

The rise of the non-believers

I have no belief as to whether intelligent life exists on other planets. Furthermore, I don't care. I don't bother reflecting on the matter. It's utterly irrelevant to me. Similarly, I have no religious beliefs. None. When Homer said "all men need the gods," he was wrong. Like roughly 34 million other people in this country (more than the population of Canada), I don't.

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Mysterious 'ice circles' in remote Siberian lake baffle scientists

This strange almost perfect 'ice circle' has appeared on a frozen lake in Siberia. While scientists have ruled out UFO involvement, they are puzzled as to how the mysterious, 2.5mile-wide geological phenomenon has formed in Lake Baikal.

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Romania Targets Moon with Balloon-Launched Ball

Nearly 40 years after Americans first set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969 with NASA's historic Apollo 11 flight, a host of private rocketeers are hoping to follow to win a $30 million prize. Here, SPACE.com looks at ARCA, one of 17 teams competing in the Google Lunar X Prize:

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In Hot Pursuit of Fusion (or Folly)

In theory, the facility’s 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a star, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

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Animals Can Tell Right From Wrong

Animals possess a sense of morality that allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong, according to a controversial new book.

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Coral almost as genetically complex as humans

Advances in the study of coral in the last few years has led a group of scientists to conclude that corals almost rival humans in their genetic complexity and their relationship to algae is key to their survival.

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Basil Wolverton's Bible: putting the grotesque into the Old Testament

Last month, I discovered that underground grotesque comics virtuosoBasil Wolverton had produced a series of Biblical illustrations, collected by Fantagraphics in a volume called The Wolverton Bible. Fantagraphics were kind enough to send me a review copy of the book and all I can say is "Holy cats!"

Checkout the Original Post with Pictures Here

The female orgasm is a puzzle for evolutionary biologists.

While female orgasm has been the subject of so many myths and folk beliefs, scientists are trying their best to know more about the mystery behind the phenomenon. And now, after some intense field research, a team of experts have uncovered six facts about the female orgasm, as revealed by modern science, reports New Scientist magazine.

The six facts are as follows: Continued Here

Is There An Alternative To Religion?

Finding the right religion may be less important than finding the alternative to having one.

Link Between Religious Coping And Aggressive Treatment In Terminally Ill Cancer Patients

In a new study of terminally ill cancer patients, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that those who draw on religion to cope with their illness are more likely to receive intensive, life-prolonging medical care as death approaches –– treatment that often entails a lower quality of life in patients' final days.

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Healthy human skin is crawling with 1,000 species of bacteria.

Your skin is crawling with hundreds of kinds of bacteria, NIH researchers find. There are up to 100 times more kinds of bacteria thriving in "vibrant communities" in Healthy skin than previously known, report NIH researcher Elizabeth A. Grice, PhD, and colleagues at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Read More Here

Virtual Reconstruction Of A Neanderthal Woman’s Birth Canal Reveals Insights Into Evolution Of Human Child Birth

Researchers from the University of California at Davis (USA) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) present a virtual reconstruction of a female Neanderthal pelvis from Tabun (Israel).

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Evolution Of Modern Humans

Watch all 5 Parts

Why do people laugh at creationists?

Watch all 30 parts

Chris Comer: Expelled for Real

Christine Comer was the Director of Science for the Texas Education Agency for nine years, until she was forced to resign for failing to remain neutral on creationism.

Jephthah (Judges 11)

Yahweh apparently demonstrated kindness to Abraham by changing his mind about whether he wanted Isaac sacrificed. What happened when it was Jephthah's daughter's turn under the knife? I made this new video to remind everyone of what a lovely character the god of the bible is. I'm sorry, folks, it is just too easy to pull out verses, chapters, and even books, to show him up as an insane psychopath. Characters just don't get as evil as this very often.

Glowing Green Monkeys Illustrate Important but Controversial Advance

Scientists have created the first genetically modified monkeys that can pass their new genetic attributes to their offspring, an advance designed to give researchers new tools for studying human disease but one that raises many thorny ethical questions.

Glowing Monkeys

'If We Now Kill Schoolgirls, You Shouldn't Be Surprised'

Responding to threats from the Taliban, at least 10 girls' schools have shut down near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Visiting the schools is a dangerous proposition -- a trip leading directly into the heart of Islamist territory.

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Atheist bus campaign gains support, funds

The Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign is gaining support and momentum. The Center for Inquiry of Indiana is supporting the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign because it agrees with the message “You Can Be Good Without God.” The center donated $2,000 to the organization.

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Was Jesus Raised from the Dead? : A Response to William Lane Craig's Resurrection Argument

Christian apologist William Lane Craig offers four facts which he believes show that Jesus was raised from the dead. I will list them and explain why he believes that these facts can be trusted, even if the rest of the gospel narratives cannot be:

Continue Reading Here...

The Evolution of House Cats

Unlike other domesticated creatures, the house cat contributes little to human survival. Researchers have therefore wondered how and why cats came to live among people. Experts traditionally thought that the Egyptians were the first to domesticate the cat, some 3,600 years ago. But recent genetic and archaeological discoveries indicate that cat domestication began in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture was getting under way. The findings suggest that cats started making themselves at home around people to take advantage of the mice and food scraps found in their settlements.

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Flawed Thinking by Numbers

A look at some of the ways in which people go wrong when they try to use statements of probability in arguments for supernatural beings, divine plans and dismissing evolution.

Here is an interactive version of the Monty Hall Dilemma for those who want to see the results of sticking versus switching: Jump

News From Mars

Geographic Isolation Drives Evolution Of Hot Springs Microbe

Sulfolobus islandicus, a microbe that can live in boiling acid, is offering up its secrets to researchers hardy enough to capture it from the volcanic hot springs where it thrives. In a new study, researchers report that populations of S. islandicus are more diverse than previously thought, and that their diversity is driven largely by geographic isolation.

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Fossil beds still teaching about diversity of life

Clad in wool britches, a collared shirt, vest and tie, Charles Doolittle Walcott was the very picture of a gentleman scholar 100 years ago when he discovered -- some say stumbled upon -- the Burgess Shale, one of the most important fossil finds in history.

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Fuzzy Logic and the Definition of Species

The definition of "species" is a confusing and nebulous one. Creationists have the wrong idea about it--and so do many other people. This video uses the Computer Science concept of "Fuzzy Logic" to illustrate a better way of thinking about them.

Link Between Sociality And Brain Increase In Carnivores Questioned By Evolutionary Biologists

Packs of hunting dogs, troops of baboons, herds of antelope: when people observe social animals, they are often struck by how intelligent they seem, and recent studies suggest that sociality has played a key role in the evolution of larger brain size among several orders of mammals.

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Evolution: Fact and Theory

Scientific understanding requires both facts and theories that can explain those facts in a coherent manner. Evolution, in this context, is both a fact and a theory. It is an incontrovertible fact that organisms have changed, or evolved, during the history of life on Earth. And biologists have identified and investigated mechanisms that can explain the major patterns of change.

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Mitochondrial DNA Clarifies Human Evolution

“Where do we come from?” This has been one of the fundamental questions asked by humans for thousands of years. Physical anthropologists have been providing an answer for over a hundred years by studying morphological characteristics, such as skull shape, of the fossilized remains of our human and proto-human ancestors.

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Microbes: What They Do & How Antibiotics Change Them

Microorganisms — bacteria, archaea, fungi, algae, viruses and protists — are often easy to overlook. For the most part (except fungal fruiting bodies seen as mushrooms) we can’t see microbes. The effects of microbes we feel are usually associated with an illness. Most people know that bacteria and viruses can act as “germs” and cause disease.

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Science of the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ Is Losing Force

The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes’s dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” loses its force.

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Children of a Stupid God

This video contains a small inaccuracy that biblical scholars will doubtless pounce on. The phrase "lake of fire" actually comes from Revelation, not from Jesus, but he's still responsible for the Christian idea of eternal damnation, the bastard.

Gregory Stock: To Upgrade is Human

Axe that clove creationism found at museum after 150 years

A lump of flint that challenged creationist history and was dubbed by an eminent archaeologist "the stone that shattered the time barrier" has been tracked down after 150 years in the vast stores of the Natural History Museum in London.

On 26 May 1859, six months before Charles Darwin shattered the biblical creation story when he finally plucked up the courage to publish his theory of natural selection, the stone hand axe from the bottom of a French quarry was presented to the world at a lecture at the Royal Society in London.

More after the Jump

Top 10 New Species - 2009

Each year the IISE announces a list of the Top 10 New Species for the preceding calendar year. The Top 10 New Species described in 2008, are listed below with links to additional details about each species.

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2008 Top 10

The Science of Orgasm

What's the Harm?

This site is designed to make a point about the danger of not thinking critically. Namely that you can easily be injured or killed by neglecting this important skill. We have collected the stories of over 670,000 people who have been injured or killed as a result of someone not thinking critically. More..

What's the Harm?

No Sex For 40 Million Years? No Problem

A group of organisms that has never had sex in over 40 million years of existence has nevertheless managed to evolve into distinct species, says new research published today. The study challenges the assumption that sex is necessary for organisms to diversify and provides scientists with new insight into why species evolve in the first place.

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It could just be coincidence

A poor understanding of probability leads many people to put forward supernatural explanation for events that are far more common than they think. This video shows how probability theory is sufficient to explain even seemingly remarkable coincidences.

Evolution In A Test Tube: Scientists Make Molecules That Evolve And Compete, Mimicking Behavior Of Darwin's Finches

A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute has set up the microscopic equivalent of the Galapagos Islands—an artificial ecosystem inside a test tube where molecules evolve to exploit distinct ecological niches, similar to the finches that Charles Darwin famously described in "The Origin of Species" 150 years ago.

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Asteroid Attack 3.9 Billion Years Ago May Have Enhanced Early Life On Earth

The bombardment of Earth nearly 4 billion years ago by asteroids as large as Kansas would not have had the firepower to extinguish potential early life on the planet and may even have given it a boost, says a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.

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Disease Hunters Add Swine Flu Genome to Arsenal

The genetic portrait of the novel swine flu strain that’s still spreading around the globe has been completed, but some mysteries remain.

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Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets.

Few if any astronomers expected the sheer diversity of planets beyond our solar system. The most extreme systems are those that orbit neutron stars, white dwarfs and brown dwarfs. Neutron stars are born in supernova explosions, and planets orbiting them probably congealed from the debris. The bodies orbiting white dwarfs are the hardy survivors of the demise of a sunlike star. And brown dwarfs, themselves barely more massive than planets, nonetheless appear to be sites of planet formation.

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Greenhouse Gases Drop Lowest in 19 Years.

Carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels recorded their largest drop in 19 years last year, the federal government's chief clearinghouse for energy information reported, adding new fodder to the debate in Congress about how -- or whether -- to reduce greenhouse gases.

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In the beginning, God created injustice.

The story of Adam and Eve is one of two unknowing souls who never stood a chance. In this video, I look at the impossible situation they were in and the unjust treatment they suffered from the 'merciful and loving' god I was brought up to believe in.

Beauty of Science

Motivational Poster of the Day

How to tell if you have an open mind:

A look at some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to advise others who don't to be more open-minded.

The Missing Link - Ida

Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor - The Missing Link In Evolution narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Why women and the bible don't mix.

After thousands of years of recorded history, we’re just now arriving at a point where women are starting to receive fair and equal treatment in many societies. It’s an irrefutable historical fact that some of the major sources of this unsolicited oppression were drawn from references of women’s treatment in the Old and New Testaments.

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Religious Terrorist Groups

Why aren't you afraid yet?

Christian Terrorism Wiki

Christian Atrocities

Events that solely occurred on command of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity.

A short list after the Jump

Bible Mistakes from the book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel consists of twelve chapters of which only the first half, the narrative portion concerns us here. Like Jonah, it pretense at being a historical work is foiled by the author’s poor knowledge of history. That he profoundly ignorant
of the history of 6th century BCE can be seen in the following errors he made:
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God is Imaginary

It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:
Proofs
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Atheism Magazine

A large collection of Atheist Videos.
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Genetic signature for Darwinian evolution

All true toads (the Bufonidae family), including the infamous cane toad, produce toxins that cause muscle contraction, especially around the heart. The toxins are produced in glands on the back of the neck of the toad and circulate in the toad's blood at lethal levels.
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