Tag Archives: religion

Intelligent Design, or Someone Else’s B Material

This is probably someone else’s B material; whatever…

The problem with intelligent design is that it’s not really intelligent. Any omnipotent would have to be a complete idiot to have designed a lot of what exists in reality. I’m sure you just thought of one example. What was it?

For me it’s kangaroos. Ima create a creature whose only form of travel is hopping and its children sleep in an exposed pouch on its belly. There is nothing intelligent to the design of kangaroos.

I’m sorry. I must take exception.

Monkey Heresy, Monkey Heredo

What is going on with God these days? I mean, isn’t God supposed to be all-powerful? And yet, if many of God’s followers would have you believe, God is about as powerful as a 98-pound wimp getting sand kicked in his face at the beach and as precious as a baby in a cradle hanging tenuously from a tree branch on the side of a cliff.

The guys from South Park got death threats recently because apparently they depicted Mohammed in a mascot bear suit. To the people who issued these death threats, I would love to ask, “Is the perception of your deity so weak that it cannot withstand mockery?”

After all, it is mockery – the second lowest form of comedy. And you want to kill someone over it? Really? I submit to you that perhaps you just want to kill someone. And South Park is simply your raison d’etre du jour.

Elsewhere, I read a comment in a discussion thread that sprouted from an article about Stephen Hawking’s recent revelation of his fear of alien contact. The comment was from a Christian who was complaining about all the heresy he had to endure in reading the article and the discussion that followed.

Again, just as with the issuers of Islamic death threats, I would love to ask Christians who complain of heresy, “Is the perception of your deity so weak that it cannot withstand an idea?”

After all, it’s only an idea – it doesn’t actually exist. No one’s putting your deity in the middle of a street in Pamplona, where actual trampling does occur. And you want to shut someone down about it? Really? I submit to you that perhaps you just want to shut someone down. And square pegs make for the easiest of targets, don’t they?

We can put a man on the Moon but we can’t cure the lowest common denominator.

Pity for Darwin

“I cannot think that the world as we see it, is the result of chance.”
– Charles Darwin

Oh Chuck D, that’s because to understand the probability of what did happen, you also need to understand the probability of the innumerable events that did not happen. Possibility demands it. (Possibility even demands impossibility.)

The myriad intelligent life forms that did not evolve do not attempt to find meaning in their existence. Because, obviously, they do not exist.

Hypothetically, if they did exist, having the knowledge of having not existed, they would be well aware of how their existence is completely the result of a near infinite amount of chances, just as their non-existence currently is. Life is weather permitting.

That Darwin could not let go of intelligent design (in 1860) only goes to show how powerfully the human brain can make us believe a thing, when all the physical evidence they’ve personally discovered points in a different direction.

Poor guy.

And All The Ayatollah’s Men Couldn’t Put Him Back Together Again

picture-8

Why is it that the political right always castrates itself? Given that all they really have is balls, it seems painfully ironic.

Yesterday, in response to the recent electoral protests in Iran, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i addressed a circus tent full of men who all looked relatively the same – much like a Republican convention, where even the women look like stodgy Caucasian men desperate to hang on to their semblance of Old World power. But I digress.

Thomson Reuters reported on the speech by Khāmene’i, excerpting several pieces of the monologue that seemed noteworthy, such as, “… I am urging them to end street protests, otherwise they will be responsible for its consequences, and consequences of any chaos…” and “… If there is any bloodshed, leaders of the protests will be held directly responsible.”

While – yes – Thomson Reuters is a Western news source that is not necessarily friendly to the Iranian establishment and – yes – these quotes are excerpted from their original context, neither of these facts affect the point I am about to make.

Cause watch me now; I’m going to except them even further.

“… they will be responsible for its consequences…”

“… leaders of the protests will be held directly responsible…”

Did you catch that? Did you hear what just happened?

Essentially, what Khāmene’i has done is placed all the responsibility for the outcome of these protests – all of it, positive and negative – on to his adversaries. No matter how many people are killed by riot police or secret police, no matter how many are left maimed or made into refugees, no matter how much bloodshed results, there ain’t no flies on the Ayatollah.

But if his adversaries have all the responsibility, then Khāmene’i must have no responsibility. And if Khāmene’i has no responsibility, then dig this – he has no power. Allow me to italicize this for emphasis – the Supreme Leader of Iran has abdicated all power. In much the same way, the wielder of a gun has no power if they cannot take responsibility for (i.e. control) their weapon. Eventually, they will shoot themselves in the face.

And like most right-wing extremists, he did it to himself. All that’s left to happen now is for several thousand individuals to be murdered so that these fundamentalist numb skulls can express their fear with bullets. Because the Ayatollah has no responsibility, I assume the triggers will simply go off by themselves. Good luck to all those in their line of sight.

Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i, the Ayatollah of… fizzle fizzle ssssssssss…

Keeping Mumbai

140 dead so far in terror attacks in Mumbai… I’m listening to BBC news. And a reporter on the ground in Mumbai quoted some lady as saying, “Only God can help our country now.”

So I’ve got 2 problems with that.

First – I’ve heard this sort of blurt of trauma before, over and over again, every time one of these conflagrations occur. And you know what? Maybe not only God can help your country. Maybe you can help your country. Maybe you can help the entire world. Maybe you can be the change you want in the world. Does that sound familiar to you? Click here if it doesn’t.

Second – the BBC reporter who allowed this shocked woman’s fear-mongering statement to perpetuate needs to have her ass fired. This is the sort of theological shirking of societal responsibility that allows criminals to go in and murder 140 people (thus far).

I’d like you to consider the possibility that there are no “instruments of God”. I’d like you to consider the possibility that whatever deity you follow does not “control” you. Perhaps whatever omnipotence in which you believe is just that – omnipotent. If it needs to control you or use you as an instrument, that doesn’t really sound very omnipotent. Actually sounds kinda desperate.

Omnipotence don’t need no cutlery.