I wish we didn’t have to defend atheism as a point of view

Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist linked to this article to poke some fun at the poor writing, as well as the poor arguments. I’ll pick out a couple other pieces:

From all the evidence I’ve seen, read and have heard from talking with atheists, many of them are not even interested in knowing the truth.

This is because we’ve all heard the arguments before and can discount them all as unprovable and unlikely. Your “truth” is a state of mind that suits where you are in life. Atheists are somewhere else, seeking verifiable truths about people, the world, and the universe at large. In some points we’ll find we are in agreement with religious points of view. In others we won’t be.

Given a method for them to honestly seek and find the truth about Christ Jesus the atheists I have encountered could care less and mock and scoff at it.

This is a common boo boo. You mean we couldn’t care less. If we could care less, we would try. Many of us do seek the truth of Christ and find the bible lacks a lot in the way of verifiable fact and history. The whole Christmas miracle thing has bundles of holes, as does the whole resurrection section. Hey, that rhymes! We are not content to pick a gospel at random and believe it without question. Nor will we believe anyone else who believes without question.

To me, their mocking and scoffing seems proof enough to me of their refusal to believe that God exists thus they deny, that God exists and that they freely choose to not even find out the truth for themselves.

I think a comma has been sacrificed for the greater stupidity here. I freely admit that I don’t think any gods exist and I don’t think there is any “fact” that could be tossed my way that would prove otherwise, no matter how true it may seem to the believer.

Many of the atheists I’ve encountered could care less if God truly exists or not because these atheists are only interested in not having any rules to follow and they have focused their attention solely on themselves in their own desires.

How many atheists has this person encountered? I’m getting the feeling that it will never matter how many people we don’t kill, how many laws we don’t break, how many children we don’t molest, how many dollars we raise for charity or how many churches we don’t burn down. People like this will still insist we must be anarchists. I’ll pull a few pieces from the American Atheists Aims and Principles page now.

American Atheists, Inc., is organized

* to stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals, and practices;

* to collect and disseminate information, data, and literature on all religions and promote a more thorough understanding of them, their origins, and their histories;

* to encourage the development and public acceptance of a humane ethical system stressing the mutual sympathy, understanding, and interdependence of all people and the corresponding responsibility of each individual in relation to society;

* to develop and propagate a social philosophy in which humankind is central and must itself be the source of strength, progress, and ideals for the well-being and happiness of humanity;

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a life-style and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.

Not every atheist knows about this group, nor would every atheist want to join it. It’s great to see it exists, though. Many of us agree with these principles and promote them in our own way already, either with blogs, or by joining other groups with similar goals in mind.

They in their denial are overlooking the fact that their main focus in lacking a belief in gods is opening them up to a huge problem in that their primary repudiation is focused against Christ Jesus. Yes, they say that they lack belief in any gods yet to their denial is focused squarely upon on the one true God, Christ Jesus.

I’m pleased to see someone knows how to use a thesaurus. Why say “reject” when you can use “repudiate” instead? Atheists reject all religions and all gods. We say they are unnecessary for living a moral and ethical life and to prove it we live moral and ethical lives without crediting deities for our good fortune or blaming demons for bad luck.

As an atheist, your apathy to not seek and find the absolute truth is a choice you make for yourself and you alone bear burden of on your own. For you to demand evidence from someone of God’s existence is showing just how much you do not want to know nor experience the evidence of God’s existence.

I could use Kirk here again, but I think I’ll just point out that if we’re demanding evidence, it’s because nobody has shown us verifiable evidence of experiences that can prove gods exist. All we get are miraculous marvels delivered by word of mouth, and video footage of clouds or trees or windows or water stains that are vaguely people shaped. Holy Pareidolia, Batman! They’re everywhere! Does this really mean God is everywhere, or is belief so strong in some people that they’ll jump to ridiculous conclusions rather than look for sensible explanations? I’m going out on a very sturdy limb here, and saying it’s the latter.

Again, this is a choice you make to want to honestly know God or not and not my or anyone else’s responsibility to take for you.

And for that, whatever that means, I’m grateful. (I’m also grateful to Live Granades for loving Star Trek enough to LOL my most favourite episode! Thanks and big hearts to you!)

Natural sleep paralysis or evil demon? You decide…

Chris French has article in the Guardian about the nature of sleep paralysis and the feelings of utter horror the experience often creates for those afflicted. He mentions Dr Stephan Matthiesen’s new book, The Normality of Altered States of Consciousness but French writes mostly about his study of this strange phenomena and the sufferers.

One of our students, Peter Moore, used to suffer from sleep paralysis on a regular basis. One night, for example, he awoke to find himself unable to move and with a strong feeling of tension across his chest, making it almost impossible to breathe. He could see his bedroom and managed to tilt his head, only to see an evil-looking black cat sitting there hissing at him.

But what was most terrifying about this vision was that the cat’s white skull was inverted and dripping some sort of black goo. By a huge effort of will, he finally managed to break out of his paralysed state with the intention of attacking his visitor, only to find himself delivering a right hook to thin air.

Other people in the study have suffered from the same sleep disturbances. Hallucinations that turn the ordinary into extraordinary monstrous things, the sensation of paralysis, a feeling that one’s body is vibrating, or having difficulty breathing. Another student claimed to have some ability to control the experiences, and some of them could be relatively pleasant with sexual or floating sensations taking the place of hideous creatures wearing dirty laundry. Says Jeremy Deane,

“Common images are bearded, goblin-like demons laughing or whispering sinister speech, a faceless girl (usually covering her face with hair, moving around in bed moaning and feeling my body), hands appearing from the wall and attempting to strangle me. A hung man talking in the corner of the room, and some of the most bizarre experiences may include up to a dozen ‘critter’ entities (think Gremlins movie) laughing and talking about me. The environment tends to feel like a holographic dollhouse, the experience peaks and then the hallucinations mysteriously vanish when I regain control of my body.”

As weird as all that is, sleep researchers have had some luck in figuring out why the brain fucks with us so bad when we’re trying to get some rest.

During the dream cycle of REM sleep, the body is fairly paralyzed anyway, at least in terms of acting out dreams. But some people experience this sensation more lucidly than others, and a few of those wind up hallucinating all kinds of weird shit to explain it. French’s team at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit has been able to confirm earlier surveys of how common this is – up to 40% of people could suffer from some form of sleep paralysis, and of that bunch, one in 20 might report sightings.

Sufferers can be just as terrified by the experience even if the episode does not involve any ostensibly paranormal content, sometimes experiencing their unwanted intruder as a burglar, a murderer or a rapist. Even sufferers who are well-informed about sleep paralysis and do not experience the more florid symptoms described above still experience intense fear unlike anything they experience in waking life.

And for the people who truly believe demons exist? It must be an experience worthy of The Exorcist. Indeed, many cultures seem to prefer blaming some supernatural element (hags, unbaptized souls, ghosts) to the feeling, rather than swearing at their own brains.

In our study, we are interested not only in the degree to which such high levels of belief affect the tendency to interpret the experience in supernatural terms but also the degree to which pre-existing belief systems can affect the content of the hallucinations themselves. Sleep paralysis offers an almost unique opportunity to study the reciprocal interaction between biology and culture.

It seems likely that the core experience has itself played a role in the development of belief systems relating to the spirit world in many cultures and that those very belief systems, once elaborated upon, are then capable of influencing the hallucinatory content of sleep paralysis episodes in subsequent generations.

Good luck on the work, Professor French. It sounds fascinating and will hopefully provide some people with a measure of relief. And now I’m going to count my lucky stars because this stuff never happens to me!

Do you see what I see? No, I’m stumped…

I’m stumped at how people can look at this stump of a tree and see the Virgin Mary in it.

Workmen made the discovery after cutting down trees at Holy Mary Parish Church in Rathkeale, County Limerick. Scores of people have since gathered there to pray.

Local shopkeeper Seamus Hogan said that a petition calling for the stump to be left there has been signed by hundreds of villagers and visitors.

“People have been coming from Kerry and Clare to see this tree, which we believe shows a clear outline of Our Lady,” he said

Looks like a wood shaped blob, to me.

“It’s doing no harm and it’s bringing people together from young and old to black and white, Protestant and Catholic, to say a few prayers. So what’s wrong with that?”

But parish priest Father Willie Russell has urged people not to worship the tree.

“There’s nothing there . . . it’s just a tree . . . you can’t worship a tree,” he told a local radio station.

I applaud Russell’s sense here. He’s not promoting something so retarded as all that. Nevermind that he eats the implied body of Jesus every mass and drinks his blood besides… that’s real religion, right there. Heaven forbid they go all pagan and start worshipping nature instead of the real virgin Mary. Talk about cuckoo.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Limerick said its reaction to the discovery was “one of great scepticism”.

Despite the Church’s reticence, it seems the petition will eventually be successful.

Noel White, who sits on Rathkeale Community Council’s graveyard committee, told reporters that the stump will stay.

“Nature has a funny way of showing things up and let it be a freak of nature or something else, whatever it is, surely it is a wonderful thing to see so many people coming out to pray.

“Maybe this is Our Lady’s way of getting people back to the church.”

A prayer vigil was held at the stump on Thursday night where locals have erected a temporary shrine.

It’s stories like this for why, by and large, I think religion has to go the way of the dodo. There’s nothing miraculous here except the lengths to which humans will delude themselves.

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New Humanist Blog also wrote about this today.

Virgin Mary agate leaves man agape

But at least he’s thinking of others and not just wanting to sell the thing off to better himself. He wants to sell the stone to help a friend with hospital costs and hopes his “prayer” agate will interest buyers who want a rock that looks like Mary is cradling Jesus inside.

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I found this in with my drafts. I wonder why I never got around to posting it in January. Ah well. Hopefully someone compassionate bought the thing. Waiting for an organ transplant must be a horrible ordeal.

Cinema that’s 3-Delicious

Holy sweet superdoughnut, you have to go see Coraline. Ignore every plug for Monsters VS Aliens as the be-all-end-all 3-D extravaganza of the year until you’ve seen Coraline. New words need to be coined that can adequately describe how fantabuliciously awesome that movie is.

The story itself is a dream to watch. It’s one the smartest story lines I’ve seen on film in years. It would play very well even without the 3-D superglee, but holy fuck, it just adds such a fabulous extra .. well, dimension to the whole thing. It’s phenomenal, frankly.

I was concerned that I’d be forced to try and watch the show with those silly paper red/blue thingies that never really worked very well but huzzah for new digital technology – the glasses look just like Buddy Holly’s and fit over my own glasses without any noticeable ill-effects for the picture watching.

James Berardinelli mentioned it in his review and I agree with him on this – Coraline uses the 3-D technology not with the intention of wowing audiences with over the top shit. Instead, it augments and enhances the sets where the characters are interacting so it’s far less about things popping out at you and more about adding depth and nearly real physical presence to everything on screen. It’s not used to distract the audience away from the limited story; the story stands well enough on its own. But you really get into the show because it literally invites you deeper into it. Come closer, look closer, see this? See that? Closer still…. and you can’t help but be wowed.

See it done well before the technique becomes tired and cliched and poorly imitated by hacks just after your money. Yes, it costs a bit more, but it’s worth it. This one is totally worth it.

I’ll have a Virgin Mary on ice…

but not like this one.

Lionel Gonzalez says he wasn’t the first to notice the ice shaped like the Virgin Mary outside his home. His friend, Jose Perez, did.

Perez stepped into his mobile home Wednesday afternoon and said, “Hey, you know you got the Virgin Mary out there!”

“Don’t be playin’ about that,” Gonzalez responded. “You don’t play about that.”

But Perez insisted. So outside they went and found Mary, in ice, at the base of the hitch on his home at Northgate Mobile Home Park, head tilted down, hands clasped in prayer at her chest.

When Gonzalez told people about it, they asked whether he’d carved it. No, he hadn’t, he said. It’s smooth and rounded. It’s also frozen to the wall of his home, so no one put it there, either. No water drips onto it; it’s too cold. In fact, it is under a window cover, which itself is under an eave. So he can’t explain how Mary arrived there.

There is a picture of it available and it just looks like a lump of ice to me.

In Orlando back in 2007, a similar icy Mary was discovered in a store freezer.

Morton Thrifty Foods employee Alma Avalos said when she went to the back she noticed that some drops of water from the ceiling had frozen.

As more and more people began to hear about the Virgin Mary, they started traveling in droves to see the ice.

Some people cried when they spotted the ice and others said it answered their prayers.

“I had a lump in my breast and yesterday when I went home it disappeared,” a woman said. “I don’t have it no more.”

Others said they believe the ice formation is the real thing.

I don’t know what to make of stories like these. I get the desire to believe in something, but really, a slab of ice isn’t something to worship unless it’s a really really hot day and the air conditioning is shot.

I think human beings are generally nuts and adding religion to the mix brings a whole new flavour…

Groovy man! Mary and Jesus found in lava lamp

The first picture for the article shows off how exactly the owners of the lamp came to this bizarre conclusion:

It does kind of look like a wax figure holding something but why is it automatically Mary and Jesus?

AN Australian man says the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus have appeared in his lava lamp and ever since the “miracle” his life has been blessed.

The man who identified himself only as John Smith of Sydney has set up a shrine to the lava lamp in his home and also the holymarylamp.com website.

“This is a true, tangible miracle that is not just an optical illusion. It is visible in all directions and permanently frozen in this shape,” he told news.com.au.

“This happened about a year ago and I have kept the lamp hidden since. I now want the world to know of its existence.”

The website has a few more images of the thing and some inanities about how it gives him goose-bumps and is so life altering, yadda yadda.

“Only a couple of weeks after Holy Mary appeared to me in the lava lamp every facet of my life began to miraculously transform,” he said.

“I met the most incredible woman, my angel here on earth.”

Mr Smith believes there is no doubt that the lava lamp led him to his soul mate who had been praying for a miracle herself on the other side of Sydney.

“Since then we have gotten engaged, phenomenal job offers have come flooding in, money keeps presenting itself and we are blessed by the warmth and love of angels constantly protecting and guiding us.”

But for Australian Skeptics vice president Richard Saunders the Virgin in the lava lamp is simply another case of a phenomenon known as pareidolia where the mind sees patterns and objects in random shapes.

Canadians not immune to silly Jesus sightings

The Windsor Star had a story a couple days ago about a painter who insists Jesus’ face pretty much appeared out of the blue and green and red and whatever other colours she used for her landscape art.

Jackqueline Whitson said she had been working on the painting on and off for months, but it wasn’t until Dec. 7 that her husband, Harold, first noticed what appears to be Jesus’s face on the canvas.

“He literally jumped out of his seat,” said Whitson, 64.

The couple said they refrained from telling anyone else at first because they didn’t want to appear crazy. But after waiting several days, having photos developed and showing about 20 or 30 close family and friends, they said it became clear they weren’t the only ones who could see it.

“This came to us,” said Harold Whitson.

Up close, the painting appears to be a conventional landscape scene with a forest, river and sunset.

The Whitsons say that viewed from three metres back, an image of Jesus Christ’s face appears, from among the trees, complete with beard, crown of thorns and radiant aura.

Sharon Miller, a psychic from Avenue Psychic in Toronto, said the painting is most likely a sign from above.

“When God wants to talk to you, God sends a picture, a sign, a miracle. Sometimes God wants to warn you or prepare you for something that is going to happen,” she said.

Didn’t want to appear crazy.
A psychic agrees with them.

Credit to the writer of the piece, here. You just know an American “journalist” would have ended with the psychic. Not Amber Bellaire. She actually gets a skeptic’s point of view:

Justin Trottier, executive director of the Ontario Centre for Inquiry, a group that promotes critical thinking, said “there are psychological explanations for things like this.”

He suggested this may be a case of a mind trick known as apophenia, the process of connecting the dots.

“People sense what they’ve sensed before,” he said.

Pareidolia, a type of apophenia, is the belief that human beings are “hard-wired” to identify other people’s faces so they can identify them even when only little detail is available. This is a survival mechanism.

The Whitsons see the painting as hope for the future and the artist herself feels at peace just for painting it. They also feel that if it were hung in the local gallery, religious people might come from all over just to see it and the additional tourist dollars would help revitalize their city’s faltering economy. I have to say it’s nice to see they aren’t thinking of auctioning it off to benefit only themselves. But, would they donate it to the gallery, or would the gallery have to buy it off them? I have no idea how galleries work.

I’m going to poke around the Centre for Inquiry website now. A local chapter would be nice, but I’ll take what I can get…

Is this the first silly Jesus “sighting” of the year?

A pita Jesus.

Personally, I don’t see it. I think it looks like a cartoon character. Maybe it’s Obi-Wan, like out of Clone Wars. Didn’t he have a beard and weird hair too? I’d pay a buck or two for Pita Obi-Wan.

If god can put the virgin Mary in a brain scan…

… why doesn’t he get rid of all the diseases in this woman’s body at the same time? That’d be the real miracle. Or, god could miracle a way out of her economic troubles so she wouldn’t have to sell the MRI scan on eBay to pay for hospital bills. Oh wait.. I suppose that’s the angle they’ll go for, isn’t it? He put it there so I could pay my hospital bills, thanks be to god and the gullible…