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Losing My Religion: Why I'm Raising My Child to Believe in Science, Not God
Every two or three blocks on the avenues of downtown Brooklyn, a big old stone church rises from the ranks of the brownstones. A couple of weeks ago, my little boy Felix pulled his trike to the curb and squinted at the steeple of one.
“What’s that castle, Da-da?”
“It’s not a castle, it’s a church.”
“What’s a church?”
“It’s a place where people go to worship god.”
“What’s god?”
“God is a concept some people believe in. A creative force, I guess you’d say.”
“Huh.”
(via teachthemhowtothink)
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High ResolutionHow much money are you willing to spend to prove you love God? (For a related video, click here http://christiannightmares.tumblr.com/post/1467785130/pastor-ed-young-asks-church-members-for-their)
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Atheists at the Creation Museum (by TheThinkingAtheist)
Such an education hahaha
This is a great video … we watch it utter disbelief!
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Christopher Hitchens - Religion is Sadomasochism
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AZ Lawmaker In Charge Of House Prayer Tells Colleagues He’s An Atheist
A lawmaker put in charge of delivering the opening prayer at yesterday’s session of the Arizona House of Representatives surprised his colleagues by using the opportunity to talk about his atheism and quote Carl Sagan.
USA Today says Juan Mendez (D-Tempe) put in a request to have Secular Coalition of Arizona director Serah Blain speak before the house during yesterday’s “prayer time,” but his request was somehow misplaced, so he decided to address the House in her stead.
“Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads. I would like to ask you not to bow your heads,” Mendez told his fellow legislators at the start of yesterday’s invocation. “I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and of dedicating ourselves to working toward improving the lives of the people of our state.”
He continued:
This room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration. But this is also a room where, as my Secular Humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human, we have much more in common than we have differences. We share the same spectrum of potential for care, for compassion, for fear, for joy, for love.
Carl Sagan once wrote, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” There is, in the political process, much to bear. In this room, let us cherish and celebrate our shared humanness, our shared capacity for reason and compassion, our shared love for the people of our state, for our Constitution and for our democracy - and let us root our policymaking process in these values that are relevant to all Arizonans regardless of religious belief or nonbelief. In gratitude and in love, in reason and in compassion, let us work together for a better Arizona. Mendez went on to point out several Secular Coalition for Arizona members watching from the House gallery, and said he hoped Arizona’s non-believers would now be able to “feel as welcome and valued here as believers.”
The Phoenix New Times reports that one of the Coalition members in attendance “said she was ‘witnessing history.’”
In related news, the Supreme Court this week announced its plans to review the constitutionality of holding prayer sessions at legislative meetings.
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High ResolutionSwedish Politician tweets about Christianity.
Perfect reblog from atheist-god.
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Wolf Blitzer Asks Tornado Survivor If She Thanked the Lord; Tells Him She’s an Atheist
There was a moment of levity in Oklahoma Tuesday when CNN host Wolf Blitzer, concluding an interview with a woman named Rebecca and her 19-month-old son Anders who survived the devastating tornado, asked her if she thanked the Lord for a decision that saved her life.“I’m actually an atheist,” she replied, laughing.
She added she wouldn’t blame other people for thanking the Lord, though.
Rebecca said she decided to leave her house with Anders, a fateful move as it was later destroyed by the tornado. She returned after it hit to see her husband Brian searching the remains of the home for her and their son, leading to a tearful reunion.
(Source: freebeacon.com)
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"
On its face, defeasibility is a modest concept, with roots in logic and epistemology. An inference is defeasible if it can potentially be “defeated” in light of additional information. Unlike deductively sound conclusions, the products of defeasible reasoning remain subject to revision, held tentatively no matter how firmly.
All scientific claims are held defeasibly. It is a hallmark of the scientific process that claims are forever vulnerable to refinement and rejection, hostage to what the future could bring. Far from being a weakness, this is a source of science’s greatness. Because scientific inferences are defeasible, they remain responsive to a world that can reveal itself gradually, change over time, and deviate from our dearest assumptions.
The concept of defeasibilility has proved valuable in characterizing artificial and natural intelligence. Everyday inferences, no less than scientific inferences, are vetted by the harsh judge of novel data—additional information that can potentially defeat current beliefs. On further inspection, the antique may turn out to be a fake and the alleged culprit an innocent victim. Dealing with an uncertain world forces cognitive systems to abandon the comforts of deduction and engage in defeasible reasoning.
Defeasibility is a powerful concept when we recognize it not as a modest term of art but as the proper attitude toward all belief. Between blind faith and radical skepticism is a vast but sparsely populated space where defeasibility finds its home. Irreversible commitments would be foolish, boundless doubt paralyzing. Defeasible beliefs provide the provisional certainty necessary to navigate an uncertain world.
Recognizing the potential revisability of our beliefs is a prerequisite to rational discourse and progress, be it in science, politics, religion, or the mundane negotiations of daily life. Consider the world we could live in if all of our local and global leaders, if all of our personal and professional friends and foes, recognized the defeasibility of their beliefs and acted accordingly. That sure sounds like progress to me. But of course I could be wrong.
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High Resolution(Source: strawthoughts, via political-cartoons)
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Afghan Mullah Marries, Kills 8-Year-Old Girl on Wedding Night
This is a pretty horrific story that comes out of Afghanistan. The source for it is Mustafa Kazemi, an Indian war correspondent, who has been operating in Afghanistan since 2010 and has worked for AFP.
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The dark side of home schooling: America's Christian right tried to train up 'culture warriors'
The fundamentalist home schooling world also advocates an extraordinarily authoritarian view of the parental role. Corporal punishment is frequently encouraged. The effects are, again, often quite devastating. “People who experienced authoritarian parents tend to turn into adults with poor boundaries,” writes one pseudonymous HA blogger. “It’s an extremely unsatisfying and unsustainable way to live.”
In America, we often take for granted that parents have an absolute right to decide how their children will be educated, but this leads us to overlook the fact that children have rights, too, and that we as a modern society are obligated to make sure that they get an education. Families should be allowed to pursue sensible homeschooling options, but current arrangements have allowed some families to replace education with fundamentalist indoctrination.
As the appearance of HA reminds us, the damage done by this kind of false education falls not just on our society as a whole, but on the children who are pumped through the ideology machine. They are the traumatized veterans of our culture wars. We should listen to their stories, and support them as they find their way forward.
(Source: azspot)
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High Resolutionabvh:
Praise the Roman
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High Resolution(Source: ummagumma-)
Divine Irony
is a rich archive of religious delusions, scientific truths and political implications.
"Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
-George Carlin
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”.
-Albert Einstein
