Eight Minutes Old

Damn it. Scientist have worked so hard to get the wonderful evolutionary biology, and they can describe the development of life successfully with it. So good, actually, that the absurd creationists try to cover up their religious worldview in scientific-sounding terms by re-branding their ignorance “Intelligent Design”. While that works as well as promoting the virgin Maria’s immaculate conception as an alternative to in vitro fertilization, everybody has something to argue about and some discussions with reality-resistant people can be quite funny from time to time. But that is over now!

The reason: Laucence Topliffe has written a book, and an email to me. A book that ends the whole debate. That’s why it has the cautious title “The Irrefutable Proof of Intelligent Design” and I should buy it for 18.50 US Dollars. He does not reveal what is insdide, but does this with a lot of words:

I thought you might be interested in this new book on Intelligent Design.

Hm… well, it depends …

It proves beyond any doubt, once and for all, that intelligent design must be true.

… no, thanks. I don’t think so.

The knowledge in the book is not covered by either side and when it is included in the discussion, it inevitably leads to only one conclusion.

Oh, a new argument? What is it?

The premise is that human beings have an ability that cannot be the result of evolution alone. Also, humans are the only being on Earth that has this ability and it is impossible for any other being on earth to develop it. This is not known by very many people.

Ok. But tell me, what is the argument?

It is not necessary to use the idea of irreducible complexity or any other scientific research to conclude that ID is true. It is also not necessary to try to rely on belief or the bible. One only has to know what’s in the book.

I’m afraid he will not reveal more …

You will discover something about human beings that I think you don’t know anything about, or if you do know don’t realize the implications.

Anyway, I have a feeling what the “argument” will be about. Laurence Topliffe looks like a big fan of transcendental meditation, and he seems to run the website www.forworldpeace.info. This movement, some kind of religion, was a fashion when the Beatles were following it. Since then it lost most of it’s followers. Wheather that is related to a reduced cannabis consumption or the diversification of the esoteric sector, or some other reason I don’t know. But it is all about consciousness. On the site selling the book there is a picture with the following sentences, which tells us a little bit more about the theme of the text: “Evolution alone would not result in a brain that has the abilities that only humans have. Humans have the ability to contact directly the home of the Laws of Nature, an infinite field on consciousness.” That seems to be a rather simple-minded field of consciousness, because Topliffe also offers T-Shirts besides the book, with statements like “Human beings were designed by an intelligence” or the shrewd “Intelligent Design is true”. Whoever wears this kind of T-Shirts has to have arrived at another state of consciousness.

The Email goes on:

I guarantee that you will not be disappointed in what you discover. The title of the book is absolutely correct. You will not be able to refute the proof. You will be forced to agree that an ability that humans have could not have happened or developed through evolution alone. The only way humans could have this ability is that at some point in the processes that resulted in human beings, design was necessary. You may feel that you do not need the knowledge in this book but you will realize you did after you read it. I’ll even give you your money back if you can solidly refute the conclusion.

Dear Laurence Topliff, I have a counter-proposal: You send me the book for free and I pay for it when it really convinces me of Intelligent Design. When the argument is as good as you say, that will be no risk, right?

But, wait a second. As a sceptical scientist I did my homework in in the philosophy of science. You can never prove a theory to be 100 percent correct. For that, you would have to rule out each and every alternative, even those nobody has thought of. That is simply impossible (especially on 137 pages). Even the theory of evolution can not be said to be 100% true. The possibility of falsification is what defines a scientific theory.

There you go. I already refuted the conclusion, without having to look into the book. So, do I get the money for the book before even buying it?

A 12-year-old French girl found a creative solution to how to deal with the theodicy problem*: Revenge. The little girl’s sister died in a car accident. As, obviously, god did not protect her sister, in contrast to what she was told, the girl tried to burn down a church. And not only once. After her first attempt, distributing wax on the church’s floor and trying to set it on fire, failed, she tried again at the altar. In total, she made four attempts until she was discovered.  Luckily, they all did not lead to substantial damage. Sure, god knows how to protect his house.

I can only hope that she will soon find out that there is not mighty man in the sky protecting anybody. Then, though, she can still be angry at the people who taught her this nonsense. But please, setting fire is no solution. Better start an atheist blog or so.

*: Also known as the “problem of evil”. The paradox how an all-mighty, good and kind god can allow all the suffering and bad things to be in the world.

Tags: Atheism, Church, Family Tragedy, France, God, Religion, Theodicy-Problem, Tragedy

Finally, Bishop Mixa, one of the most conservative catholic bishops in Germany, is resigning from his position. Now, the pope only has to accept his request. His opinions and his behavior reflects most of the radical religious believes there are in today’s catholic church. He…

• … compared the number of abortions with the Holocaust. Compared to six million killed Jews, nine million embryos were killed in the recent decades.
• … thinks that the German government is making birth machines out of women, by supporting them to work in their jobs again after having children.
• … stated that in the Palestinian areas occupied by Israel there is a “Ghetto-like situation” which is “almost racism”.
• … would like to see the Christian creation as described in the Bible being taught in school biology classes.
• … declared that the sexual revolution is in part responsible for the cases of child molesting in the catholic church.
• … said that an atheist society would be “the hell on earth”.
• … falls to the wrong statement that communism and fascism were atheist systems, and that they have shown the inhumanity of atheism.
• … is of the opinion that people are commercially and morally exploited due to god-less behaviors in today’s society.
• … has beaten children in a care home in his past, and first denied this. Finally, he tried to relativise this, saying it was common behavior at that time.
• … is faced with the accusation of defalcation of money from a catholic orphanage foundation.

And this list could probably be extended even more. So, I think you understand that I will be very happy if he and his unacceptable statements will really vanish from the public.

Happy Halloween everybody. Except you also think that “Demons may be lurking in our Halloween candy“.

Kimberly Daniels writes in a Christian Broadcasting Network’s Web site that “[M]ost of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.” Furthermore she writes:

It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon.

Well … ok.  Could you just give me some of this delicious demonic candy, please? Or best: give me a year’s supply. I don’t like the non-cursed sweets.

Tags: Halloween, kimberly daniels, Baton, Candy

Professor Michael Schulz of Bonn  University is going to marry. I think this is nice, I married just some weeks ago and it was wonderful, I don’t have any regrets. But why write about this personal decision of some professor don’t know? Well, I am not the only one writing about this in Germany.

The reason: Schulz is professor for Catholic Theology. Expert for Dogmatic*. Even dean of the catholic-theological faculty and he became a member of the commission on catholic theology of the Vatican some month ago. That is why he has to live in ‘priestly celibacy’. But now love was stronger.

He therefore loses his position as a priest in the catholic church (he was immediately suspended by cardinal Karl Lehman, of his Mainz diocese). But there is more to come: The cologne archbishop cardinal Joachim Meisner, responsible for the faculty in Bonn, will notify Andreas Pinkwart, the minister for scientific affairs of the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia, that the professor made a ’severe or annoying violation’ of the priestly moral conduct. This forces the minister to replace the professor. Because of a contract (German) between Prussia and the Holy See, dated to 1929. Obviously nobody cared to replace it in the past 80 years!

Luckily for the professor, he will keep his job, because as a federal employee he can not be fired. But he will not be allowed to teach catholic theology, so the university has to find him another position. They are thinking about philosophy. I am not sure, but I think I get it right when I say that the university now has to pay another professor to replace him. I agree that nobody should loose his or her job because of the highly private decision to marry and not stick to the silly celibacy-stuff. But I don’t accept that the church can demand his removal from a state-run university forcing it to probably have extra costs. It can not be that in the 21st century our state is so strongly influenced by the church, via an ancient contract. The minister for science is told by the church what to do! Because of a decision by a professor concerning his private life. Ridiculous.

It is time to effectively separate church and state in Germany.

*: Funny what kind of professorships there are. To me this seems to be the complete opposite to science, both paid by the state to teach at the same university, but maybe I miss something here …

Tags: Preußenkonkordat, Professor Michael Schulz, Bonn, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Cardinal Karl Lehman, Catholic Church, Catholic Theology, Catholic, Celibacy, Church, Cologne, Germany, Priest, Prussia, Religion, Sceptic, University of Bonn, Vatican

I’m getting a real traffic surge currently. Must have started a few hours ago, this morning everything was still normal. On average, I get 30 to 60 visitors per day now, but today there are already 291 and counting. This makes today my busiest day already, and it’s midday only.

I think I can track down how this came about. Yesterday night, the blog “The Little Things” mentioned my “Pareidolia Study, the List” in a post on Seeing Jesus and the Virgin Mary everywhere. There are no visitors coming from that site, but someone at spiritdaily.com (sorry, I don’t link to this kind of sites) seems to have seen the link there. Now I’m at top of their site, resulting in hundreds of visitors to that post.

So, what is bad with more traffic you may ask. First of all, I’m not here to have lots of visitors. I’m absolutely satisfied with some 30 people a day. Of cause it’s fine to see people are interested in what I write. But I also look at the “quality” of these visitors. That site, spiritdaily.com, is a catholic link collection with some really strange opinions. PZ Myers said about it:

Spirit Daily is one of the best places to go if you want to see spiritual wackaloonery — they glean the web for the craziest stuff.

Great, now I’m among the web’s craziest stuff …

At least the link mentions that my blog is sceptic, but of what use is that? What’s worst is that only four below mine is a link to the article of Gingi Edmonds (on christiannewswire.com) on a tragic plane crash that killed the family of an abortion clinic owner.  You can think of what the article is like, knowing that the author seems to be a deluded, over-religious, pro life person. I really don’t find words for my disgust concerning this article. Luckily, PZ did.

Now, what do you think? I could protest and demand them to remove the link, but it’s their right to put up links. I don’t support censorship. I think I have to hope that some of the visitors start thinking about these many, absurd sightings.

BTW: They are up to 400 now.

Tags: Blog, Blog Specific, Christians, Jesus, Religion, Traffic, Virgin Mary

This annoying virus* keeps me busy: first as a “nurse” for one week, now it got me for another one. I should be fine within a few days I hope. In the meantime, I’d like to point you to a very funny new blog, combining criticism of religious fundamentalists with photography, kind of:

god hates protesters

I’d love to contribute to it, but there aren’t many sign-holding Christian protesters in Germany. Too bad on the one hand, but on the other I think it’s better like this.

*: one of these old-school, non-digital ones …

Tags: Blog, God

This is a sad story, but again shows the errant “logic” of the catholic church when dealing with women and humans in general. And it shows that some Italian Prime Minister is a puppet of the Vatican.

17 years ago, Eluana Englaro had a car accident and fell to coma. since then, she is merely vegetating, her brain is severely damaged. Still, her body is kept alive with life support and feeding tubes. She effectively died long ago, her by now 38 years old body now already lives nearly twice as long as her brain. Her family wishes to stop the life support, but had to go through a decade long court battle. Not only did their daughter die, they even had to fight to let her body die, too. Even though the doctors say there is absolutely no chance that she might ever awake again.

Now finally they won and as the medical staffs reduces the life support, the Italian Prime Minister, infamous Silvio Berlusconi, tries to stop them. He issued an emergency decree after consulting the Vatican! What? What has the Vatican to do with all this. But that’s not the real scandal. Even worse is the reasoning. Berlusconi is cited with having said that Eluana Englaro is “in the in the condition to have babies”!

I’m speechless. What is Berlusconi’s (and definitely the Vatican’s is similar if not worse) image of women? Breeding machines? Are they defined according to that? To have a mind is negligible? In a possible future in which breeding-machines like in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” exist, would they be considered to be on the same level as women?

Eventually, all these questions lead me to one I very often encounter: How can anyone take this bunch of people serious?

Yesterday, Eluana Englaro died. Berlusconi claims this to be murder.

Tags: Silvio Berlusconi, Church, Coma, Italy, Life Support, Pope, Vatican, Women