Positively Non-Religious

A west bank man was secretly posting to a blog and facebook his anti-religion views.  So naturally his family thinks he should spend the rest of his life in prison or just be killed.  ”Religion of peace” in action.

 As much as I complain about religion in the U.S., I guess its good to keep some perspective.  Here at least I don’t fear for my life for posting to this blog. Here is a quote

“Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for ‘insulting the divine essence.’ Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.” 

OK if you read the article you will note it is not new, it is from 2008, but I just saw  it so I hope you all enjoy.  However if you get into a pseudo scientific debate with a creationist they frequently deny that anything new can arise from evolution.  At most they will go along with natural selection, but deny anything new comes from it (yes its an odd twist of logic but I’ve heard it many times).

Heres a quote from the article “ ’The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events,” he says. “That’s just what creationists say can’t happen.’ “

So one of the ideas that I am  passionate about (much more than simply deriding religions) is “How best to live our lives?”  I obviously do not agree with a pastor / religious institution making up arbitrary things for me to do supposedly dictated from a mythical being, but it does not exactly answer what SHOULD be done.  

I’m increasing in favor or just using common sense and looking to scientific studies to help gather data on those supposedly unanswerable questions.  I’ll skip the “ethics stems from rationality and data” stuff for now and just point out this survey.   What makes people happy?   Are happy people born happy or can you make decisions that influence this.   This study certainly points in the direction that, yes, we can make decisions that effect our happiness.  So if science can explain life, the universe, and even how to live our lives… what was the point of religion again?

Oh and I’d like to point out the study found “Attending church is regularly associated with increased long-term life satisfaction, although the study did not directly measure the effect of religious beliefs on happiness.”   I am actually not surprised by this at all.  I don’t think this contradicts my previous statements though.  Church gives a supportive social network and I think this certainly can be a great thing.   Its all the other BS in church I think is harmful.

Interesting blog from the Washington Post.  ”Sexual minorities are often the easy targets of politicians because it is hard for them to defend themselves. But if religion lets politicians get away with that, it is religion we first need to examine.”

technipol:

Think Progress:

O’DONNELL: Well, as the senator from Tennessee mentioned, evolution is a theory and it’s exactly that. There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put — that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it’s merely a theory. […]

Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.

Oh. My. God.

This seems a good follow up on my previous post.

So why is it that scientists take evolution as a fact but the average Joe doesn’t buy it?  In a recent pew survey it turns out its people believe what they want to believe, instead of what has been shown to be true.   Here is a quote “So, it’s not just a matter of the public not understanding the expert opinions of places like the National Academies of science; they simply discount the expertise associated with any opinion they’d rather not hear.”

The results are not terribly surprising, but the better you understand why people refuse to accept science the better we can be about fixing it.  If this is correct, then it is not a matter of we need to get the information out, its a matter of we need to get people to open up and be willing to think.  No one said it would be easy…

Local news article about new billboards the Freedom from Religion Foundation are putting up in Atlanta.  There is a video, photo, and a poll box to the left of the article.  Currently the poll is at 60% of people “support the message” so far.  We can do better!  feel free to reblog and get people to vote!