Wednesday 25 May 2011

The Armageddon that wasn't. PZ is angry . . . .

"Sure, everyone is laughing at Harold Camping now, except his followers, who are undeterred. But you're missing the real joke. Look at every Abrahamic religion, with their myths of prophets and favored peoples and fate. Look at the crazy conservative church in your town, that preaches homophobia and anti-science and supports Israel because of the Armageddon prophecy. Look at the liberal Christian church down the street from you that has the nice Vacation Bible School and puts on happy plays for the older kids, and also teaches that one day you will stand before a great god and be judged. Look at your family members who blithely believe in death as a mini-apocalypse, in which they will be magically translated into another realm, again to be judged.

It's the very same rot, the poison of religion that twists minds away from reality and fastens them on hellish bogeymen. They're demented fuckwits, every one, and the big lie rests right on the fundamental beliefs of supernaturalism and deities, not on the ephemera of one crank's bizarre interpretations."

Complete post here.

Saturday 21 May 2011

Monday 9 May 2011

Saturday 7 May 2011

Nietzsche lays it on the line . . .

"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty -- I call it the one mortal blemish of mankind." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Monday 2 May 2011

Prayer can make things worse

The next time some faithhead offers to pray for you best be on the safe side and try and convince them not to. The scientific study summarised here demonstrates that: if you don't know that they are praying for you it doesn't make any difference; but if you do know they are, it can actually make things worse.  True this has only been investigated for patients recovering from a cardiac bypass, and one can find oneself the subject of offers of prayer for all kinds of reasons, but why take any chances. . . .?