No kidding. How are a bunch of little electrons running through wires and switches supposed to result in the video display in front of me, the ability to carry out tasks I write out, and long-distance communication of text, video, and sound?
Thank almighty Zeus that He uses the Cyclopes’ gift to keep all this technology running! 
I take exception to: “The star in the east is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which, on December 24th, aligns with the three brightest stars in Orion’s Belt”. The spatial relationship of the stars from our view changes at a glacial pace. The position of the Sun changes daily, from our view. So the stars happen to point to the Sun once a year. Sirius doesn’t appear to wander around the constellation Orion very much.
Interesting stuff. But I think I might have seen some other muddled thinking in there.
ETA: How the true astronomers have not only looked at the skies once, but again and again, to consider how things change.
It’s only tangentially related, but I found this story from yesterday distinctly … odd.
Short version: President’s kids bored and show it. Self-important PR flack tries to scrore points, ends up reaping some backlash. Apologises.
But it was the manner of her epiphany and eventual apology that was odd. Let me quote her:
“After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents, and re-reading my words online I can see more clearly just how hurtful my words were … I pledge to learn and grow (and I assure you I have) from this experience.”
Many hours of prayer? WTF? For one thing, she really shouldn’t have required any prayer to realise what an asshat she was being. Secondly … hours? Really? What this is I don’t even. Either she’s just flat out lying, or she’s mainlining some hardcore delusion.
Akin to the scary prospect of the moralist who only does good for fear of retribution from an invisible agent visible only to authorities.
It is tangentially related, but there’s a whole thread on that topic 
Also invite to @Willondon
Whoops, missed that one 
edit: and I’m glad to see we found exactly the same thing highly dissonant
What does it feel like in there? I imagine it like drifting on a warm caramel ocean, above you floating clouds in hot pink with faces contorted into eternal happy grins. You can hear them giggling softly, the sound mingling with a senseless background singsong of three year old children´s voices that incessantly permeates your entire world. Coherent thoughts float by every now and then through the slow moving, sticky syrup, but it´s usually too bothersome to grab them. They´re covered in goo, and you don´t care either way.
My hat is off to you! I could only take 17 seconds. Probably the damned shaky camera, tho.
The 4th point listed: “Taken to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod.” manages to attribute to Jesus an event from the life of Moses. Wrong Testament entirely!
As regards the overarching breadth of religion, & the universal impact that religion brings to bear upon civilizations, cultures & even one single individuals very personal experience of life, I suggest that it’s extremely unfortunate whenever religion is cursorily & summarily dismissed as no more than a detrimental, delusional palate used by the ignorant to paint comical answers & fairytale explanations to the questions of existence.
Undeniably, it is “shooting fish in a barrel” easy to tee up Megan Fox as a “comic target” for the ludicrously simplistic, fundamentally flawed, uneducated, shallow belief systems she puts on display through this recording.
Likewise, if one were to cite say, Richard Dawkins (among others), as being an exemplar of enlightened, rigorously applied critical thought on matters of religion, then that person is committing mistakes that rival those of the recorded Megan Fox; different mistakes, to be sure, but errors that are certainly of similar magnitude.
Sadly, we are provided an endless supply of examples where persons have co-opted religion & the religious to achieve their own, decidedly unholy, often villainous & vile objectives.
If a person is interested in understanding something about faith & religion as a vehicle of transcendence, some excellent resources are available from authors like John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg & especially Karen Armstrong.
Sad, but it’s nearly impossible to find or maintain any sort of meaningful, insightful public dialogue on faith & religion. It seems that it’s all too quick & convenient for most of us to simply lob our signature flavor of snark & certitude. It’s a slightly different, more circuitous path to conveying the meaning we ultimately intend, which of course is; Hey, Fuck You!
While I agree with what you said, I almost, almost have more respect for the people who really believe their religions instead of more selectively reading their holy books. After all, any God that would choose evolution, of all things, as the means of their creation of life forms is more than a bit of a jackass. It makes the problem of evil so much worse, when you add billions of years of suffering before anyone even had the possibility of salvation.
“So if someday we visit other worlds and find life not of Earthly origin, precisely which parts of your religious beliefs will you be forced to give up?”
I doubt she would give and real thought to such a question, but I’d be curious to know what she would say.
No, that one’s in Matthew, 2:13-15.
Although the narrative of hiding the child from the tyrant appears, in legend, with regard to Moses, Romulus and Remus, and Iesus, among others, and in myth, with regard to Horus, Zeus, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, and who can keep track. It makes me think the author of Matthew probably made that bit up, but not that the author of Matthew was copying Horus in particular.
No, Kind Herod lived until 4 BCE, about 1200 years after when Moses is supposed to have lived.
The incident being referred to is the Massacre of the Innocents, when (according to the Bible) he had heard that the King of the Jews (i.e. Jesus) had been born, so had all infants in Bethlehem killed.
Hmm, as I get older and have less time left in my life to waste any of it arguing with creationists and their ilk, I’m tempted to regard Dawkins’s approach as reasonable.
I’ve found that, on the whole, religious people aren’t interested in learning what the truth about something is, if that truth tells them that what they believe is wrong. There’s no point in being nice, they won’t accept any of your arguments. The only thing that I suspect works is to make an outrageous but truthful claim, and to get them to try to refute it.
Nosiree Bob, almost all of the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, is lies, made up, and totally unsupported by history, by archeology, and by basic high-school physics.
Transcendance? It’s just an illusion, Bob. There’s no point in peeling off THAT band-aid slowly, it really needs to be ripped off quickly and brutally - it results in much less pain.
That’s really too bad. Because if you’d got to minute 20, then you’d see the part where she shows us that dinosaurs are dragons, and scientists just like to hide that because they like to make children sad.
Every day for the rest of my life I will be grateful that person is not part of my life.
Apparently punctuation mystifies you as well.
/Sarc
(Please don’t hit me too hard! I agree with your point, it’s just hard to keep track without punctuation.)
Well, from the perspective of a lot of the more coherent Chrisitan viewpoints, death isn’t something that happens to souls, it just happens to bodies, which are flawed and fragile because we live in a world dominated by evil. Most animals aren’t capable of having souls, which means they are kind of like machines made of meat - no chimp, no matter how intelligent, makes a truly moral choice in life. From the Christian POV, evolution has a goal, and that is to make a creature capable of moral choice, and that creature is uniquely us. (I sometimes wonder if this would be different if there existed other hominid species on the earth, but sadly…)
…and the moment we were created and allowed that moral choice, we chose Evil, which is why we keep suffering and dying. God gave us a second chance via the incarnation, where He came to love and understand us.
From a certain flavor of Christian, the suffering of all those cells and animals that lead up to the creation of humans is what it looks like when God creates a creature truly capable of moral choice. And now that we have that choice, we can make the world different…if we want…
Which means that what this lady is saying is deeply sinful in intent. Our intellects are gifts from God, that we should use to understand evolution, so that we can do things like prevent illness and become good stewards of the planet. Our scientific understanding is something we should treasure, and not squander.
Her relationship with god is so remote that what might take her several hours takes a devout Christian just a few seconds; “Hey god, it’s Margaret here. Just wanted to know, was I being a jerk yesterday when I tweeted about Sasha and Malia? I was? Okay, sorry. How many Hail Marys? 10? Okay, that seems light, but I’m cool with that.”
Yes, I’m aware of that. And not that any believer would care, but my response is - God, was already capable of moral choice, and such a Christian is claiming that God chose an incredibly, unnecessarily cruel and amoral process for achieving a good end, when he didn’t have to. That makes Him at best incompetent, and more probably evil. I would never willingly worship such a being, and would do whatever is in my power to thwart His goals.
