Here is a great article that is very well written and worded looking into the apparent need of many to have religious guidance in their lives.  This draws some parallels with the book I am reading now: Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth.  I find it fascinating that people will do anything to force themselves to accept a fantasy as presented in religion.

 

criticising[sic] religion was not enough. I needed to understand why religion becomes an integral part of a person's life - and doesn't cease to be so when such beliefs cause the person much pain and guilt, or lead him to commit murder, even to the point of genocide.

No religion accepts us as the person we know ourselves to be. Rather, we are told that we are inadequate, unsatisfactory and helpless. We fear that this is so, and to give us hope we, like Ella, construct a fantasy about how we are superior to those who do not share our views.

On these grounds we feel entitled to force our views on non-believers, and, if they resist, to kill them. I was taught that we Presbyterians were infinitely superior to Catholics and all the rest, while Aboriginals were not even human.

 

ARTICLE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/30/scigod130.xml

I am so excited for this movie!  Not just because it pokes at the countless holes in religous faith, but because it appears to do it from a new angle.  By asking 'sane' people to defend their views by asking them rational questions; not necessarily accusing them of being wrong, but letting them figure that out for themselves.  Bill also brings up a great point by showing that there is a large percentage of Americans that do not believe in god (sadly, it's only 16%, one of the lowest numbers in the world) but yet they do not seem to have a voice.  Hopefully this movie can push us to start making some changes.

 

It’s not propaganda, because Maher isn’t running out and finding weirdos to use in smear tactics against the devout. Typically anyone trying to make a case against God goes right to the pedophile priests and the suicide bombers, but Maher makes it a point to focus on normal, reasonably sane religious people. He’s not stacking the deck in his favor, because he doesn’t need to. He talks to truckers in a roadside chapel, he chats with random, middle-class tourists at a Christian-themed amusement park. He talks to religious shop owners, small town preachers, televanglists, Jews for Jesus, fundamentalist U.S. Senators, Vatican priests, religious scientists, secular Muslims, gay Muslims, people in America, Utah (come on, we all know it’s not really America), Europe, and even in Jerusalem. Though those fumbling for an excuse to discredit him may claim otherwise, these aren’t extremists or lunatics. These are for the most part sane, rational, even intelligent people who believe something which Maher believes is insane.

Maher lets these people talk, but he doesn’t let them get away with fooling anyone, including themselves. He asks about their beliefs, and then refuses to follow the cultural taboos which demand he let it go when they say something ridiculous. He talks to them plainly and without fear, asking the tough questions for which religion, any kind of religion, seems to have no answer. Some of them get angry, most of them simply, and politely, shut down; their brains refusing to go any further when he brings up a point of view which might cause them to objectively consider their blind faith. Others, unable to cope with his queries, admit to being genuinely stupid, as did an Arkansas Senator who awkwardly excuses his flawed thinking by admitting that his job as an elected official doesn’t require an IQ test.

 

LINK: http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Religulous-3380.html

Man this scares me... this guy talks like Christianity was at some point the root of the United States Government, and some heathens came in and took it away. Apparently he needs some refresher on his US history.  

 

Oh yeah, he hunts witches too...

 

VIDEO:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAWM7E_WMfo

When VH1 can make fun of you... you might want to step back and re-evaluate what you believe in.

Young people are often exposed to temptations and pressures to experiment with things that seem popular. Here are some likely scenarios.
...
A well-intentioned teacher urges you to pursue higher education at a university.
...

Wow... just wow  Now I am not sure how I am supposed to interpret this, but isn't this painting higher-education as a bad temptation to be avoided?  Something of the devil?  Does this go back to the good old serpent story where knowledge is a threat tot he well-being of mankind?

 

Is knowledge reall a threat to mankind?  Or just a threat to those that try to control it through ancient fairytales.

 

SOURCE: http://www.bestweekever.tv/2008/09/09/jehovahs-witnesses-are-still-ridiculous/

I was shown a great site today: Why God Won't Heal Amputees and I want to share it with the masses.  Here are some great excerpts:

 

Jesus did not provide any concrete proof of his divinity. For any normal person, that makes things simple -- Jesus is not God. To believe that anyone today is God, we would need concrete proof. Jesus does not get a pass because he lived 2,000 years ago. 

Why is it that human beings can detect fairy tales with complete certainty when those fairy tales come from other faiths, but they cannot detect the fairy tales that underpin their own faith? Why do they believe their chosen fairy tale with unrelenting passion and reject the others as nonsense?

It is not like there are two laws of probability -- one for Christians who pray and the other for non-Christians. There is only one law of probability because prayers have zero effect. Jesus has no effect on our planet no matter how much we pray. 

 

I really like this site!

 

LINK: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

All I can say about this is WOW... are we living in the year 1300?  This show airs on satellite television all over the world.  But don't worry, even though the host

vows to kill and eat all Danish people over the cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad which appeared in a newspaper

the other host (11 year old girl) says

We are against the death of civilians on all sides.

...apparently, no one in Denmark is an innocent civilian?

ARTICLE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1037512/Pictured-The-TV-rabbit-preaching-hatred-telling-young-Muslims-kill-eat-Jews.html 

In an interesting article at Slate, it is explained how Saudi Arabia freely distrubutes government produced textbooks that openly tell their readers to hate non-believers [in the Muslim faith] and that you are not a true believer if you do not hate them (this is pointed at you as well Christians/Jews).

Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question that appears in a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, Monotheism and Jurisprudence, in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish "true" from "false" belief in god:

Q. Is belief true in the following instances:
a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers.

The correct answer, of course, is c). According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn't enough just to worship god or just to love other believers—it is important to hate unbelievers as well. By the same token, b) is also wrong. Even a man who worships god cannot be said to have "true belief" if he loves unbelievers.

READ MORE: http://www.slate.com/id/2195684/

A very interesting discussion on how underground salamanders with vestigal eyes make a strong claim against ID (though it is almost pointless to use logic against an illogical claim).  I would love to hear the arguments against that are not the old: "they are put there by God to test your faith" because that one is getting really lame...

Vestigial eyes, for example, are clear evidence that these cave salamanders must have had ancestors who were different from them—had eyes, in this case. That is evolution. Why on earth would God create a salamander with vestiges of eyes? If he wanted to create blind salamanders, why not just create blind salamanders? Why give them dummy eyes that don't work and that look as though they were inherited from sighted ancestors?

READ MORE: http://www.slate.com/id/2195683

Stuff like this makes me fear that we are approaching a new Dark Age.  We may as well live in the Middle East (which I do right now) with all of their overboard fanatacism; ours is becoming much the same.  This is in response to a Florida student who took a communion wafer out of the church and was quickly followed up with death-threats and cries of hate-crime from those 'good' Catholics.  Funny thing is that Fox (who originally ran the story) took down the story... Here is a sample:

 

"We don't know 100% what Mr. Cooks motivation was," said Susan Fani a spokesperson with the local Catholic diocese. "However, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it."

We just expect the University to take this seriously," she added "To send a message to not just Mr. Cook but the whole community that this kind of really complete sacrilege will not be tolerated."

 

The saddest part is that Webster (the student) actually feared for his life for what he 'did'. How is this any better than threatening a cartoonist for a portrayel of a prophet? Answer: IT ISN'T!

 

Webster just wants all of this to go away. Especially now that he feels his life is in danger.

 

Things like this make me fear for the US.

 

ARTICLE: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php

He somewhat quote Jefferson; I bolded the part he seemed to have forgotten...

 

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

 

Isn't it odd that he forgot just that one line?  Then again, in one of his many discussions with God he might have been told to leave it out, because that's probably not really what Jefferson meant anyways.

 

READ MORE: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/07/bush_edits_out_jeffersons_reli.php