Reality Hackers Net

Oh, the humor of God! He’s a real cut-up, that’s for sure. A comedian’s comedian. Nobody can play practical jokes like kids being born with no face or with a condition that causes them to eat their own lips. Nope, no human could (or would) come up with the practical jokes that God invents. A caring god would not have designed us like this. He is the Master of Comedy.

We’ve talked about the teenage girl who looks like an old woman or another whose muscles are mutating in to bone. These things don’t come from people but from the nature of creation itself. So if God is the creator of the universe, then all of these things come from God. So He’s quite the practical joker.

We all just hope to avoid being the butt of His jokes.

Oh yes, I’ve heard silly arguments about how it’s all the victims’ fault. Sin, you know. Adam’s DNA was perfect, but it became polluted because of sin… totally missing the point that DNA is what MAKES us. Either God made DNA or he didn’t (assuming God exists, of course). If he made us, then he made DNA, which means he made all the bad stuff that’s in there -the things that cause conditions like we’ve talked about. If he didn’t make the DNA with all its built-in horrors then He didn’t make people. The whole argument wreaks of desperation: It is saying, “I’ll do anything – ANYTHING – to avoid admitting that my faith in fantasy fiction has been misplaced.”

All of that twisted, sick back-flipping “logic” is only designed to avoid the obvious conclusion that humans evolved and were not created by anyone. If they were created by someone then that someone would have be be a sick asshole or incompetent.

Left with no logical argument, some believers will say something like, “Well, why wouldn’t God design life with built in flaws? I mean, those uncertainties are part of the flow of life, we wouldn’t know what to do without them.” The problem is, that’s not what your storybook says about your God. Now we’re talking about a whole different being than the one you claim to worship (if you believe in the Bible, Torah, Quran, etc.) … I am no longer a promoter/purveyor of these stories so I can’t help you with this.

News-Dailies Knowledge, Religion

The University of Kansas decided to map sexual depravity by measuring STDs per capita. No surprise, the Bible belt is the filth and perversion capitol of America. We already knew it, but here is your map: The Daily Dish

News-Dailies Religion

From our friends at The Daily Mail, we have another article on the biology of belief. This is same conclusion I reached some 20 years ago and I’m delighted to see that science is now catching up. Brains ‘are hardwired to believe in God and imaginary friends’

“The evidence includes studies of babies and children which have shown the brain is programmed to think of the mind as being separate from the body.

“This distinction allows us to believe in the supernatural, to conjure up imaginary friends – and to conceive of gods, this week’s New Scientist reports.”

It should come as no surprise that there is a biological cause for religion: everything we do comes from our biology. I know this bothers some people, particularly militant atheists. I think, however, that these curmudgeon atheists are probably victims of the same brain-mind dichotomy that infects and deludes believers since they prefer to believe in reason as if it were derived from some force separate from the collection of chemicals that defines us.
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News-Dailies Religion

The folks over at AlterNet have decided to have an intellectual discussion about Why Do People Believe in God?. Oh, wait …you missed my air quotes around “intellectual” didn’t you? An example of the masquerade …

Atheists claim (as I am doing here and as Richard Dawkins did in the title of his book) that God is a delusion.

A delusion is, pretty much by definition, dysfunctional.

Then it goes on to say how atheists aren’t happier than religious people and they don’t breed more, therefore religious beliefs can’t be delusional. …Eh? It’s hard to know if this writer is extremely stupid, or if he is merely trying to construct a straw man for the purpose of knocking atheism. I suspect it is the latter.

Delusion – an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary (Princeton)
– A fixed false belief and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception. (Wikipedia)

Dysfunctional – impaired in function; especially of a bodily system or organ (Princeton)

Okay, game over. The Alternet article starts out from page 1 by being false, misleading and deceptive. We do not know if this is by design or through ignorance but it certainly makes this article a waste of time.

And if you think THAT bit of equivocation is idiotic, wait until you read the comments. Better yet, don’t bother. It’s like talking to toddlers.

Ignorance is rampant. In England a Hospital calls in exorcist after ghost spotted … One shudders to think what sort of medical service these people offer! Leeches and potions?

Meanwhile, in BC schoolteachers are being directed to a Scientology front group called Youth For Human Rights International. I’m sure B.C. kids need Scientology’s help … perhaps next year the school will be offering classes in necromancy.

The world just keeps getting stupider and stupider.

News-Dailies Religion, Scientology, Superstition

I wrote about this contemporary Jesus a year or more ago.  I guess since then things have gone downhill for him and now Jesus’ wife wants a divorce..and the church assets.

Now, the interesting thing is not that he claimed to be Christ (or the Antichrist as the case may be) but the fact that people believed him and followed him.  This proving that there is no supernatural claim that is so stupid and ridiculous that nobody would believe you.

Self-proclaimed Antichrist loses bid in divorce court to protect church assets.

“Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, who gained international notoriety by declaring himself first to be Jesus Christ, then the Antichrist, roundly lost his divorce court bid to protect his church from financial claims by his most recent ex-wife.”

News-Dailies Religion

Many of you have seen the news reporting on the death of John Travolta’s son, Jett. The early reports mention that the teenager’s death was apparently caused when he had a seizure and struck his head.

A tragic accident. Or was it? Perhaps, but the unspoken contributor to this death was the deranged founder of The Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.
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News-Dailies Religion, Scams, Scientology

A simple, concise view of the battle between science and religion…

…Also known as the battle between rational thinking and superstition. Presented for entertainment purposes. Click the image for a larger, more readable version.

News-Dailies Religion

No, not that Jesus – who, if he existed at all, was probably born in the early fall or late spring. No, this one is just the other day…. Peruvian Jesus born to Virgin Mary on Christmas

“Virgin Mary, a 20-year-old Peruvian woman, gave birth to a baby boy on Christmas day and named him Jesus, Peru’s state news agency said on Friday.

“The baby’s father, Adolfo Jorge Huamani, 24, is a carpenter. Religious Peruvians compared him to Joseph the Carpenter in the Bible.”

These people don’t appear to be super-serious…for now. But who knows what this story will evolve into after a hundred years? This is part of how you get a religion in the first place.

News-Dailies Christianity, Religion

From time to time I get myself into these stupid arguments about the relative merits of religion. I’m “bashing religion,” they say, when I point out the negative its aspects. You’re not supposed to do that…. and besides, “what about all the good stuff religion does, huh?”

Yes, what about that?

Does religion do any good? Sure! Here’s the bottom line of the good that religion does for the world: It gives people a sense of value that is bigger than themselves and their community. Religion imparts a sense of purpose, however artificial, and a sense of self-importance (YOU, after all were personally chosen by GOD!).
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Articles Reality-Checks, Religion

There are thousands of religions in the world. I’m not talking about denominations of Christianity (of which there are also thousands) but different religions. And these religions each have their own god or gods and each represents the ONE TRUE FAITH in the minds of believers.

How did this happen?

Recent studies have suggested that there is a biological component to religion. This religiosity seems to lie in the temporal lobes. The more active a person’s temporal lobes are, the more religious they will be. But this does not explain how any particular religion – with all its rituals, rules and complexities – can develop apparently from nothing.

I began wondering about the many varieties in religion about the time I received my first Bible Studies diploma – around age 11. I couldn’t answer the question then, but I certainly found it to be perplexing. Over the years I continued to poke and prod at this issue.

Religion clearly flows from the nature of humans, as suggested, but the form of each particular faith is created initially by one person (the founder) and then taken in new directions by his/her disciples (the Inspired ones). So what we now see is that religion is created from two components: One socio-psychological and the other neuro-psychological. In this article, we will concentrate on the sociological process for the creation of a religion.

It has taken a lifetime of study for me to discover that a religion typically happens/arises/becomes “reality” in one of two ways. When you read about this process, you will immediately see just how natural it is.
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Articles Beliefs, Reality-Checks, Religion