* Not only did I receive a fine
product, but my mother now has a way to express her belief of the
Evolutionist theory to drivers tailgating her on the 401. Very high quality,
a must-have for any adamant evolutionist!
* I was a little concerned how
well it was going to stay on the car but that little adhesive strip does the
job nicely. heavy rain, sleet, snow, car wash's, the occasional disgruntled
southern protestant, this little guy is a trooper :) Screw you
Intelligent Design, and see these cute little guys multiply, usually on
college campus's near you.
"This can be a
life changing book. If life has you wondering about
incompetence,
hypocrisy and dishonesty, if you feel like you have
to compromise your
beliefs just to get by, this is definitely a must
read book! Rand
allows her characters to live and enjoy life without
guilt. Raises the
complex question: At what price do you set your art,
your life, your
soul? How unusual is it to find a person that will not
sell out at any
cost? You won't be disappointed if you read this
book."
This is a very STUPID book --
not recommended
...a paper
originally presented in the Summer of 1994 at the meeting of the C.S. Lewis
Society, Cambridge University.
Buy it
here if you are a GOOFY person.
A review
--
I suppose this, of Behe's
conclusion, is the meat:
Behe re-states what's known about molecules and infers the existence of a deity from that.
Behe is smarter than most
religionist apologists who so glibly employ the old 'ad ignoratum' to trick
us into believing his way. Usually the argument goes something like this: We
don't know how life works, therefore there must be a creator who made living
things. Of course, not knowing how "X" works says absolutely nothing about
the existence of gods. Many find this convincing, though, when the "X" is a
difficult question, like the cell, the Big Bang, or the particle-wave
duality of matter. But this kind of argument should not fool anyone. Simply
not knowing says nothing about the existence of creators. Behe prepares us
for this trap, by cleverly telling us to ignore it. Here is the language in
which he ensconced the trap: "We are not inferring design to account for a
black box, but to account for an open box." To convince us further, he
assumes that the so-called "primitive man", when confronted for the first
time with an auto-mobile would immediately lift up the hood in order to
discover its motive force. Why not the door or the trunk? Would it not seem
that the wheels are the prime candidates of first inspection? How can this
primitive skeptic "immediately realize" from looking at the engine that it
was designed? I don't think Henry Ford or Gottlieb Daimler had this design
in mind! The modern automobile is much more a product of evolution than of
design, Mr. Behe. In fact, automobiles reproduce very much like some
biological systems -- retroviruses, for example. Cars are made in places
called factories, with organelles called parts, assembly lines, designers
and salesmen. AIDS viruses are made in factories called T-cells whose
reproductive machinery is employed to make more viruses. I don't think Gods
made viruses. Self-assembling systems do not require designers. Molecules
are the building blocks of self-assembling systems, and their environment
"votes" whether they are allowed to self-assemble more of the same. Mr. Behe
does not play fair in the exposition of his god-theory; here is a good
example that shows to what lengths religionist apologists will go in order
to avoid the great paradigm shift, for many, that god is not needed to
explain how thing work. Fundamentalist religionists, however gravitate to
this view in the faith that they have found a man of science who supports
them.
Outside, Looking in
by Gil Gaudia
Paperback
This is an atheist
novel, not merely a secular novel. Many novels, including whodunits, science
fiction and romance novel are secular, in that religion is not mentioned or
does not play any role. But that merely means, the author does not bring up
the topic of religion, as we mostly don't in everyday life. This book is
about the main character having no religion and god being an illogical
construct. This first-time novel, written by an Atheist, is about one man's
struggle to find a sense of place in a religious society.
Grand Jury Prize at 2004
Sundance Film Festival An unexpected result in a process for traveling
back several hours in time. The men initially use these rewind sessions
to succeed in the stock market. But a dark consequence of their daily
journeys eventually complicates matters. If this sounds like a very
commercial, science fiction thriller, Primer is anything but that. The
film has a tantalizing, sealed-in logic, akin to Memento, that forces
viewers to see the fantastic with a certain dispassion. One may be
tempted to sit through Primer again to more fully understand its
paradoxes and ethical quandaries. --Tom Keogh
The genesis of
Churches ad hoc was the photograph I
made of a cross that seemed to rise up out of a tree. The cross, located
in a park overlooking Eugene, Oregon, created a controversy regarding the
separation of church and state. Proponents of the cross called it a war
monument Others saw it as a religious symbol I titled the photograph
"Propagation on the Mount" Thus began the series of captioned photographs
with a cross as the unifying element. The series was first exhibited at the
PhotoZone Gallery
in Eugene.
Churches ad
hoc was
introduced on the Internet in 1996. Since then, references to it have
appeared in a large number of Christian as well as
atheist web sites. Each group seems to find a
reflection of their own views in the captioned photographs. Excerpts from
the series have appeared in places as diverse as the Internet edition of
The
New
York
Times, a
Methodist church calendar, a rock band cassette cover, the religion page of
the Stockholm Svenska
Dagbladet
newspaper, and a Cornell Law School poster for a national conference on
The
Constitution and Religion: Theory and Practice.
I
take photographs to amuse myself as well as the occasional spectator.
Exhibiting photographs for mutual pleasure is similar to a comedian telling
jokes to an appreciative audience. But comedy is more serious than
photography.
by Bart D. Ehrman
(Commentary)
Rodolphe Kasser (Editor),
Marvin Meyer
(Editor)
Gregor Wurst
(Editor)
Hardcover
During the first centuries
A.D. Christianity grew from humble origins
to become the official religion of the
Roman Empire. The newly discovered Gospel of
Judas gives a
different view of the relationship between
Jesus and Judas, offering new insights into
the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Unlike the
accounts in the canonical Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in which
Judas is portrayed as a reviled traitor,
this newly discovered Gospel portrays Judas
as acting at Jesus' request when he hands
Jesus over to the authorities.
With The Da Vinci Code, Dan
Brown masterfully concocts an intelligent
and lucid thriller that marries the gusto
of an international murder mystery with a
collection of fascinating esoteria culled
from 2,000 years of Western history.
A murder in the silent after-hour halls of
the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot
to uncover a secret that has been protected
by a clandestine society since the days of
Christ.
The
victim is a high-ranking agent...
"In the
overall, Macmullen usually argues his case well, and give a lot of evidence,
brushing a convincing explanation, for example:
- showing how
Christians would refrain from '(publicly) evangelizing' because of the
persecutions - rejecting the role
of Christian love and support; this was also present within the pagan
cults (for their members) -showing the key
role of apologetics and the conversion of the intellectuals and philosophers,
and of influential people, until the conversion of Constantine, which
resulted in the conversion of the empire."
"From the
evolution of mankind to the origin of ice cream, this refreshing
and upbeat
complement to the bestselling The Pessimist's Guide to History
provides dozens of
stories of success and triumph from which optimists
can draw
strength."
Why I Am Not a Muslim,
by Ibn Warraq
Raised in the Muslim faith, Warraq came to reject religion and
now spends his time lecturing and writing. He recently authored a piece "Islam,
The Middle East and Fascism" which critiques the Islamic Holy Book, the
Qur'an.
The Quest for the Historical Muhammad
by Ibn Warraq
Publishers Weekly: "... Warraq has provided a
highly readable critical survey of the literature of this quest..."
The Origins of the Koran:
Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book
by Ibn Warraq
85. A Brief History
of Science, John Gribbin (Editor)
"From Galileo
to Newton, Copernicus to Darwin, Faraday to Einstein, here is the
inspiring story of the men and women who removed the mysteries of the
world from the hands of alchemists, philosophers, and frauds, sweeping
away the accumulated clutter of myth and magic. Essays from a
gallery of distinguished scientific writers explain the emergence of the
theories behind such world-shattering ideas as wave theory, natural
selection, DNA the Big Bang, and quantum physics-- celebrating the
sheer genius of pioneers who created a foundation of experimentally
verified laws to explain the complex and dazzlingly beautiful reality
around us. 9" x 11". Color & b&w illus."
Lerner lays bare some painful and embarrassing features of the Big Bang Theory.
He covers the history of science in a nutshell, and ventures into other fields related to the
human condition, fields that may yet be accessible to inquiry by the scientific method -- the
nature of life and other self-organizing systems, Quantum Mechanics and the idea of free
will, and the role of echo systems in filtering energy in a cooperative and
competitive-cooperative, game-of-life, Gaia world.
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