Quote from Australian Senator, Nick Xenophon : “Scientology is not a religious organisation. It is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs. What you believe does not mean you are not accountable for how you behave”

Wow. Now, that should put the cat among the proverbial pigeons!

In his speech - the full video and transcript of which is here - he says what many have believed for years but were too afraid of the scientology lawyers to say. He questions the ‘churches’ tax exemption status, maintains that questions should be asked about the various deaths within scientology families and brings to light all the allegations by former members that should be properly investigated by a parliamentary enquiry in this country.

Even our P.M, Kevin Rudd has voiced his ‘concerns’ over Scientology’s practices.

It will be very interesting in the coming weeks to see the responses by the ‘church’. I’ll keep you posted with developments - by all accounts Senator Xenophon is a bit of a terrier when it comes to following through on whatever he takes on. Let’s hope this one is no exception…

Daylight Atheism posted this on 12th August. He started with explaining that he understood why the world’s religions existed and why people chose to believe. He ended with the very concise and powerful few paragraphs that I’ve quoted below:

“I understand, but I do not believe. No matter how comforting these faiths may be to their followers, they are still based on supernatural claims for which I see no good evidence. Worse, most of them make assertions that are plainly based on the superstitious ideas of primitive people, and are flatly contradicted by everything we’ve learned about human history and the laws by which the cosmos works. I understand the appeal of culture and tradition, but these are not good enough reasons for belief when these religions make factual claims that are so plainly untrue.

If these factual falsehoods were all that was wrong with religion, one might still argue that it’s worth believing for the sake of the comfort that belief brings. But religion has also wrought terrible evil in the world. And the unnecessary pain, suffering, and destruction that faith has caused is too high a price to pay for comfort. A total catalogue of these harms would be impossibly long, but I can list a few of the major ones: the terror of children who are taught they’ll be tortured eternally if they stray; the monstrous crimes of predatory clergy that were long concealed and abetted by their superiors; the suffering and degradation of women whose faith teaches them that they are inferior; the bloody holy wars waged in the name of God; the violent censorship of free speech and free minds; morality based on fear and obedience rather than reason and conscience; the opposition to the advance of human rights; the opposition to science and knowledge; the propping up of kings and theocracies; and most grievous, the stifling of curiosity, teaching people to be satisfied with ignorance.

Whatever comfort religion brings, whatever solace it brings, it isn’t worth it if this is the price we must pay. There are other, better ways to find comfort, ways that have just as much potential for good without so much potential for evil. There are countless philosophies that, like religion, accentuate the positive traits of humanity, but that, unlike religion, don’t intensify the negative ones.”

The experience of setting up the site, writing posts and responding to comments has been a cathartic exercise for me. I’ve got it all out of my system and for now, I’ll leave the writing up to others.

Am I having second thoughts? Absolutely not. In fact, the process has helped me get over any lingering doubts I might have had.

Do I have more tolerance for those who choose to believe in an invisible father figure in the sky? Nope - in fact, I’ve probably got less now. I can have some tolerance for the under 40’s, but anyone - anyone who gets to forty and hasn’t worked it out yet, I just lose patience with.

For believers of any adult age who hold to the belief that they have a right to indoctrinate their (or other) children in this nonsense - I say to you stop this. You don’t have this ‘right’ any more than I have the right to tell them there is no god. I am free to express my opinions and you are also free to express yours - but you must ensure that you tell them that they are your beliefs - not theirs. That while you believe what you do, there are many others who believe different things and many who also have no beliefs at all.

If they choose to believe anything, that is up to them - not you.

So, that’s it from me for now. I’ll keep the site up (heck, I’ve just paid to renew the domain name) as it is for visitors to stumble upon and place comments if they like - not that I’ll moderate them regularly but the odd great one will probably get through!

I really have much better things to do with my time than point out the bleeding obvious…

Our future information provider, Gary the Geek, has found a worrying lack of news from after the early 23rd Century.

He said in a brief garbled phone conversation (he was still trying to get over a photo of Sydney he found after the devastating floods of 2057 in an Australian newsfeed. See the photo to the right) that so far, he has been unable to find any news ‘css/rssxmtl headers’ - a term he uses to describe the technology used to deliver news in the future - from after September 11th 2201.

He said that it may just be that the technology changes to a new format that he can’t view yet, but we both share the view that the date is ominous…

From ‘The Florida EvChristian Daily’ newsfeed dated 23rd February 2027.

The University of Saint George W The Redeemer released a press statement today condemning plans to reduce federal funding for smaller prayer universities. The spokesman, His Most Reverent Majestic Knob, said “While we acknowledge that our modest university has not yet received the same blessings from God in areas like medical and mental health breakthroughs we don’t have the same prayer staff.

The large institutions, with their 50,000 plus prayer scientists are obviously able to achieve much more as our blessed Lord takes more notice of them - but we are still able to contribute. Among our notable achievements are the increased rainfall for two consecutive years that has been praised by Kansas wheat farmers who have said that our university saved their farms.

We would strongly object to any funding cuts, after all, a 3.9 billion funding package and tax breaks are chicken feed these days”

Wow. Sounds like the future of the educational system in the US will be interesting to say the least.

Stay tuned for more from the … FUTURE

The first post is still as popular with visitors from Europe, but Billy Conolly’s Take on Religion is nearly as popular - what that tells you about the European sense of humour I’m not sure.

So, what can we deduce from this? Are there a large number of visitors from the US bible-belt who are having doubts about what they have been indoctrinated in? Are they searching for arguments to put to their local pastor or minister? I somehow doubt this myself - that would make you as popular as a fart in a space suit as that famous line from Billy goes.

Maybe this is the danger that free speech has - if the likes of Billy Connolly, Bill Maher, Ricky Gervais and the rest are free to say whatever they like about religions on TV, movies and live shows, people sit up and take notice. Comedy and comedians can reach people who don’t buy books on atheism or seek out philosophical  discussions or interviews.

If more websites like this are available that provide the facts about the world’s religions and point out the ridiculousness of what is done in the name of religion, then that can lead people to question their own beliefs too.

Regardless of what you may have been told, questioning what you are told is normal and healthy and should be encouraged. It doesn’t lead to anarchy or the breakdown of morals - it leads to intelligence.

Anyone or any book that makes statements like ‘you must suspend your intelligence to be able to have belief’ or similar and make this out to be a good thing,  just make me want to vomit.

From ‘The Arkansas Blessed Light’ newsfeed dated 21st October 2052:
The Arkansas Church Court has found two middle aged women guilty of lewd and abominable criminal behaviour. The two perverts were apparently neighbours who were caught in a disgusting situation (the court has censored the details) by one of their husbands.

They received lenient sentences of 17 and 21 years (one was considered to be under the influence of the other) and the husband of one has shown incredible Christian charity by not taking up the permitted flogging option. The other husband made a statement after sentencing of the satan-infected women saying “You know, I was finding it more disturbing every week that the evil harlot would pretend to have headaches and period pain whenever our weekly conjugal sex was scheduled.”

The local Majestic Blessed Pastor of their church also gave evidence that both women had recently refused to participate in their monthly women’s cleansing and instructional seminars at the Pastor’s home.

Stay tuned for more from the … FUTURE

I should have looked into it more closely and so, I agree with him - I did get it wrong. This is not an accurate illustration of natural selection, there are far better examples to use.

However, the commenter finished his remarks with this: “The main beef that anti-Darwinist people secular and religous have with evolution is the lack of proof for Macro-Evolution, which would be like a fish turning into a frog or intermediary for a frog, for example. This is a big hole that even Darwinists acknowledge.”

Sorry, but no, Darwinists (don’t you hate that word - it’s commonly used by believers to imply belief. But I digress) don’t acknowledge anything of the sort. There is an abundance of proof that natural selection is the driving force behind evolution - micro, macro, tiny, big - call it what you like it’s all the same thing. I suggest some research into the following areas: anatomical homologies, RNA codes, endogenous retroviruses, embryology, pseudogenes, chromosome fusion and the like will help with the understanding of how species evolve from a common ancestor.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in any field, I just ask questions, investigate as widely as I can and draw my own conclusions. It’s easy to draw different conclusions if the only ‘evidence’ you look at is from those who have an agenda.

I’m not certain about many things in life - I’m only 99.99 percent certain there is no god or gods for example - but life isn’t about absolute certainty.

It’s about accepting rational, researched and scientific arguments. It’s not about saying ”Science can’t prove it therefore god did it”.

Sorry, no I don’t accept that. It’s settling for the mediocre and the dumbing-down of life and the experience of it.

What? I hear you say. But, yes it is true. A talented geek (who shall remain nameless but I’ll call him Gary the Geek) has come up with an amazing invention. While looking into the area of future css and xml formats - whatever they are - he intercepted part of a news bulletin/feed which seemed to come from the future.

No, I’m not kidding - the content of the feeds seem to indicate that they are real and while I don’t pretend to have any idea how Gary the Geek is locating (if that’s the right word) this information - I feel that it is my duty as a citizen of the world to release what he finds.

It seems that the ‘feeds’ have many large gaps in them. I guess you have to expect that coming from this many years into the future - and Gary isn’t known for his dedication to accuracy (and tidiness, you should see his room…) - but he promises to be able to give me more in the coming months.

Here’s a fascinating newsfeed he pieced together from May 1st 2078:
The newly elected Liberal Evangelical Party government has announced today that it will be building secure containment areas within the major universities to hold the despised atheist scientists (REBUKE THE DEVIL!) who will be used to assist our blessed, sacred scientists in finding a cure for some of the horrendous plagues that currently beset our nation. The LEP stressed that at no time would these mentally unwell, but still apparently capable, elderly men and women be allowed to mix with the EvanChristian mainstream scientific community. The universities have conceded that since the introduction of mandatory evangelical-only studies, discoveries in most fields (with the wonderful exception of advances in Advanced Prayer Science of course) have been a little sparse.

Stay tuned for more from the … FUTURE

In reality, scientists hardly ever use the terms as they describe the same process that happens in the same way and for the same reasons. The basic evolutionary mechanisms—mutation, migration, genetic drift, and natural selection—can produce major evolutionary change - or ‘macro’ evolution if given enough time.

Of course if you believe the planet is around 6000 years old, then discussing evolution with you is a wasted effort.

Various arguments are postulated by creationists to ‘prove’ that major - ie: species changing - evolution cannot occur. Among those is the Crockoduck - a half duck half crocodile that Kirk Cameron (just Google him, I can’t be bothered putting up a link to this fruitloop) insists must exist for evolution to be true. Unfortunately for him and the other creationists, crocodiles did not evolve from ducks, ducks did not evolve from crocodiles, and nobody is proposing that they did. Crocodiles and ducks both have known evolutionary lineages. In fact, to find a “crocoduck” would contradict both theories of lineage and it would actually be a huge problem for the theory of evolution. Recently, a fossilized skull of a giant, bony-toothed seabird that lived up to 10 million years ago was found on Peru’s arid southern coast and has been named a Pelagornithid. Not a crockoduck but yet another example of a transitional fossil. Wait a moment! They don’t exist! Sorry Kirk, wrong again.

The argument that most ‘educated’ creationists pin their hopes on currently is the grandly named ‘Irreducible Complexity’.

The claim is made that irreducibly complex systems cannot be produced directly by gradual evolution. The reasoning goes this -
(a) Direct, gradual evolution proceeds only by stepwise addition of parts.
(b) By definition, an irreducibly complex system lacking a part is nonfunctional.
(c) Therefore, all possible direct gradual evolutionary precursors to an irreducibly complex system must be nonfunctional.

Of course the argument is invalid since the first premise is false: gradual evolution can do much more than just add parts. For instance, evolution can also change or remove parts. In contrast, irreducible complexity is restricted to only reversing the addition of parts. This is why irreducible complexity cannot tell us anything useful about how a structure did or did not evolve. Gradual Darwinian evolution can easily produce irreducible complexity. All that is required is that parts that were once just favourable become, because of later changes, essential.