By Skeptic on
9/19/2008 12:20 PM
 How propheic was Carl Sagan's statement from the Introduction to Broca's Brain in October of 1978.
This book written just before-at most, I believe, a few years or a few decades before-the answers to many of those vexing and awesome questions on origins and fates are pried loose from the cosmos. If we do not destroy ourselves, most of us will be around for the answers. Had we been born fifty years earlier, we could have wondered, pondered, speculated about these issues, but we could have done notheing about them. Had we been born fifty years later, the answers would, I think, already have been in. Our children will have been taught the answers before most of them will have had an
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By Skeptic on
8/17/2008 11:37 AM
My wife and I attended her high school reunion last night. I don't have much to say about it on the whole as I did not really know anybody at her high school however, she did relay something to me which I veiwed as a positive. She attended a Catholic High school, in fact this was a "real" catholic high school. Her first year there was the first year in which girls attended and browsing through the yearbooks there was a disturbing number of preists who served as teachers in a variety of subjects. Not just religion as I would have expected.
Anyway, back to the positive occuraence. Earlier in the day my wife attended a tour of the school and memorial for fellow students and faculty who had passed away. I was happily able to avoid this part of the day. Upon returning to my inlaws house she mentioned that the classroom where religion had been taught for years had been turned into a science classroom. I know this is not the big ending to this post that you may have b ...
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By Skeptic on
6/17/2008 2:49 PM
Why am I an atheist? Because I have seen no evidence of a god.
Why am I an activist?
This is the more pertinent question. The first question has an obvious answer especially to fellow atheists. I do not believe in god for the same reason that I don not believe Elvis is alive. There is no evidence. Being an atheist is easy and frankly it is intellectually honest. It does require one thing that faith does not; it requires thought. Faith does not require thought. Faith requires…well…faith. The word itself is almost immoral and I would not take anything in my life on faith. Sure, I have h
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By Skeptic on
5/23/2008 9:35 AM
Ah... the the intellignet arguments presented by those annonymous email "debaters". I am sure Amanda Mathis is not this persons real name and if it is I am certain its not the professional golfer.
As usual these people leave me at a loss for words. Although it is only because they are too cowardly to allow me to respond.
Well said Amanda :
from: Amanda Mathis
date: Fri, May 23, 2008 at 4:07 AM
subject: best
cont ...
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By Skeptic on
5/22/2008 8:51 AM
I spent much of last Saturday with my wife and daughters (1 and 4) at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. I had not been there in probably 15 years and was looking forward to the opportunity for my 4 year old to see the dinosaurs. The ROM is not a one day activity unless you are running and it is even slower with kids in tow. At most I figured we would have a 4 or 5 hour window before the youngest completely lost it. We were there from about 11 to 3:30 so my estimate was bang on. What brought me out to the museum in the first place was the American Museum of Natural History’s Darwin Exhibit.
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By Skeptic on
4/8/2008 1:52 PM
All honest people are agnostic. This is the statement I am making. Whether you are a believer in god or not, if you are honest with yourself you are an agnostic. The following is pulled from Dictionary.com:
An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven but holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. The term agnostic was fittingly coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge. He made up the word from the prefix a-, meaning "without, not," as in amoral, and the noun Gnostic. Gnostic is related to the Greek word gnōsis,
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By Skeptic on
3/27/2008 2:13 PM
Madeline Kara Neumann is dead beacause of of religion. This is the only reason. I am disgusted when I hear stories like this. In the past it has been Johova's Witnesses refusing blood transfusions on behalf of their children in the name of some imaginary friend. These morons who this girl had the misfortune of being the daughter of chose to put their faith in...well, faith. Faith, what a stupid premise.
I do not have faith in anything. I do not have faith in science or in the love of my children or in the sun coming up tommorrow. For these things and all others happenings I have evidence. My children tell me they love me, that is my evidence. The sun has come up on roughly 24 hour intervals for billions of years, that is my evidence(it is repeatable). Insulin was discovered through science and it has saved thousands of lives over most of th
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By Skeptic on
2/15/2008 2:17 PM
In the province I live the government is proposing to remove the Lord ’s Prayer from daily proceedings. While this is a move which I fully support I cannot help but wonder why is is still being recited as it was removed from public schools 20 or 25 years ago. Of course this move has created much debate among the talk radio crowd and has further highlighted the blatant discriminatory position that many Christians who advocate for the status quo assume.
Christians, in great numbers seem unable to mount a rational discussion on issues of faith. I guess if you don’t think rationally it would be hard to debate rationally as well. As faith requires faith and by definition really means accepting something in spite of what anyone else says or contrary evidence it would therefore seem rather diff ...
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By Skeptic on
10/26/2007 7:37 AM
I have a new cause. It may not seem overly important but it is becoming my pet project and it was in know way a conscious decision to take this on but it is a thing that has always kind of bugged me so I am going to mention it when it happens.
I always come across atheists who say things like I became an atheist at the age of 7 or 11 or 25 or even 40. While this may seem like a valid statement and it correctly implies that the believer has likely given up on a faith based life because of rational thought; here is what bugs me. This statement puts atheism in the position of choice; it implies that you have always believed because that is the natural state and after much time you have chosen to abandon those beliefs. You made a choice to be an atheist. This is wrong, you made a choice to be a believer or in many cases the choice was made for you through indoctrination. The fact is atheism is the natural state. Atheist is how you w ...
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By Skeptic on
10/24/2007 9:04 AM
Ben Stein talks nonsense on Bill O'Reilly.
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