ZAVibes

With each meticulous turn of the screw in science, with each tightening up of our understanding of the natural world, we pull more taut the straps over God’s muzzle. From botany to bioengineering, from physics to psychology, what is science really but true Revelation — and what is Revelation but the negation of God? It is a humble pursuit we scientists engage in: racing to reality. Many of us suffer the harsh glare of the American theocracy, whose heart still beats loud and strong in this new year of the 21st century. We bravely favor truth, in all its wondrous, amoral, and ‘meaningless’ complexity over the singularly destructive Truth born of the trembling minds of our ancestors. But my dangerous idea, I fear, is that no matter how far our thoughts shall vault into the eternal sky of scientific progress, no matter how dazzling the effects of this progress, God will always bite through his muzzle and banish us from the starry night of humanistic ideals.

Science is an endless series of binding and rebinding his breath; there will never be a day when God does not speak for the majority. There will never be a day even when he does not whisper in the most godless of scientists’ ears. This is because God is not an idea, nor a cultural invention, not an ‘opiate of the masses’ or any such thing; God is a way of thinking that was rendered permanent by natural selection.

As scientists, we must toil and labor and toil again to silence God, but ultimately this is like cutting off our ears to hear more clearly. God too is a biological appendage; until we acknowledge this fact for what it is, until we rear our children with this knowledge, he will continue to howl his discontent for all of time.

JESSE BERING

I saw this on the website of Religious Tolerance :

Biblical scholar Raymond Schwager:
“… has found 600 passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew Bible [a.k.a. Old Testament], 1000 verses where God’s own violent actions of punishment are described, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people, and several stories where God irrationally kills or tries to kill for no apparent reason. Violence … is easily the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.”

The idea that God is love, but also committed these acts (atrocities?), have never been succesfully reconciled.

In reaction to my previous post: Blasphemy Case To Appeals Court :

A completely victimless crime, there is no God and Mohammed died centuries ago.
Clearly intimidation has displaced intellect, such abysmal depths of mediaeval barbarity…do these people belong in the 21st Century at all? I don’t think so, this certainly showcases Islam as a gravely retarded culture.

Today in East London I saw a woman with what looked for all the world like a regular rectangular sugar sack over her head, light brown and with a covered grille for her to sort of see where she was going, she looked like she had a paper bag on her head, where the corners of the rectangle flopped down it looked like she had flappy ears …it made me feel sick to think that women are coerced by religion into wearing such ridiculously humiliating outfits in public…what’s going on here? why do I have to confront such outrageous exhibitions of religious fetishism just walking down the street? It is thoroughly disturbing, it tears at my guts, nothing within me wants to tolerate this, but of course I must it seems…why?

I’ve converted to EVERY religion (just in case)

We all know the “Pascal’s Wager” argument a lot of Christians use to convince people to believe in God. Well this dude explains the falacy in that, since, if you believe in the WRONG god, you only make the “real god” madder and madder every time you pray!