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

Magazine Preview – How Christian Were the Founders? – NYTimes.com

The one thing that underlies the entire program of the nation’s Christian conservative activists is, naturally, religion. But it isn’t merely the case that their Christian orientation shapes their opinions on gay marriage, abortion and government spending. More elementally, they hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions.

News-Dailies

Every show has to have a Halloween episode – this is mine. Mine isn’t funny and it is only scary if you think that human stupidity will kill us all. It might be more informative, however.

Ghosts stories are a popular form of entertainment and Halloween is the official day for such stuff, so we might as well talk about it. If you look at things from a rational, analytical point of view, there’s nothing to any of the stories of the supernatural that people like to tell. Ghost stories, UFO abductions, angels, fairies and Jesus – it’s all the same: Stories that help people feel like there is something bigger to life than just our brief moments of existence here on earth – but completely lacking in reality. – Scientifically Haunted House Suggests You’re a Sucker.

To test whether it’s possible to artificially induce paranormal experiences — or, from a different perspective, to technologically summon a spirit — researchers at London’s Goldsmith College and architect Usman Haque designed a scientifically haunted room.

I enjoy a good story but I’m disgusted by the wide-eyed credulity with which alleged NEWS programs report on hauntings and spooky stuff at this time of year. Come on, people, at the very least I would say that lying to your audience makes calling yourself “news” a bit of false advertising.


Let’s make this clear – how you feel about things is not evidence for those things. Feelings are generated internally and can be triggered my many things including your expectations. From the article, “People tend to think about what they’re told to. Asked to track strange feelings, they started noticing them. And the participants’ response rates indeed followed what’s predicted by models of suggestible behavior.”


If you missed that, I will reiterate; people experience hauntings at the rate predicted by scientific models of behavior. Which means, there’s nothing to it – it really IS just you.


It reminds me of the boredom of my youth… I remember as a young teen picking up a random ceramic jar with a cracked lid. It was a recent acquisition from my aunt Marcella. Nothing to it, but I just started telling a story how it was supposed to be cursed so you really couldn’t open it without bad things happening to you. That was how my aunt died, I said. …Well, I guess I told the story well because I couldn’t talk any of my friends into opening it.


We need to grow up. Remember Kiri-it-tha’s first law of metaphysics: That which is unreal does not exist.

Whatever we choose to call “the supernatural” is nothing more than cognitive dissonance as far as anyone can tell and by its own definition, the supernatural does not exist. Yes, I know we’d all like to feel that there is something more out there. Living in a universe that is just a physical realm where things exist for a while and then cease to exist doesn’t seem like much fun or particularly edifying but it is reality.

That which is unreal does not exist.

News-Dailies

Back in the good old world of pareidolia, we have a minister who wins the award for seeing something in nothing: Minister sees Jesus in her curtains | 10connects.com | Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater. I mean, I talked about MANY stupid stories with Jesus on toast, Mary in a driveway stain. You name it. It’s all about the same but at least in most of them you can sort of see where there is an optical illusion of a face. In this case, though, I can’t even vouch for that much!

As I’ve also said, though, we know it must be true because 25,000 children starve to death every single day, and hundreds just got killed by a tsunami in the very-Christian Samoa …clearly God must be extremely busy doing something other than helping people in desperate need of a miracle.

Making vague faces on curtains may be the only viable explanation as to why God doesn’t really give a shit about all the suffering in the world – Not even devout believers with dying kids for that matter, as yet another child is sacrificed on the altar of Christian faith healing: Faith-healing parents charged in death of infant son | Philadelphia Daily News | 10/08/2009

On the last day of Kent Schaible’s life, his parents and pastor intensely prayed over his 32-pound body, which, unbeknown to them, was ravaged by bacterial pneumonia.

When the 2-year-old boy finally died at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 24 inside the family’s Northeast Philadelphia home, the pastor called a funeral director to take the boy’s remains to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office.

Yep, that Jesus, what a comedian! You think he’s going to heal your kid but he’s really going to kill him. Oh what a sense of humor. After all, you’re just doing what HE told you to do, right? But haha, the joke is on you.

You’ve got to think that God and Jesus are just fucking with you when they have you pray for your child to live. They are God, after all, so they already know they aren’t going to do jack shit – they just didn’t bother to tell you about it!

Or you know, maybe that stuff is all just stories people like to tell each other to try to make sense of the world and there is no objective reality involved…. that works really well, too.

REAL FERAL CATS 2010 Raw…Gritty…Real. The REAL FERAL CATS & KITTENS calendar by Oregon photo-documentarian Chriss Haight Pagani. Collectible!

News-Dailies Pareidolia

Before I start hearing all those, “it’s a sign of the end” hysterics, or any of the self-righteous holy folk confidently telling us that some earthquake happened because God hates Samoans or something – I thought I’d pass this along: Two Deadly Quakes: Is Earth Unusually Active?

Between the earthquakes that struck the Samoas and Indonesia yesterday and the temblor that devastated L’Aquila, Italy earlier this year, it might seem like Earth has been particularly shaky this year.

But that’s not the case: “This is not out of the ordinary as far as the year goes,” said John Bellini, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

I know, we’ll get that bullshit anyway, but I have to do what I can!

News-Dailies

I’ve mostly given up on doing these stories because they are so depressing. If you really want to read about innocent kids killed for Christ, though, you don’t have to look that hard: On a very regular basis you’ll find some story about a poor kid who died of a treatable illness because his/her religious fanatic parents believed that Jesus would heal their child. And of course, they were wrong as usual. Hey you know, there’s a reason medicine was invented.

Before the modern age of antibiotics and vaccinations, people didn’t have much better than a 50/50 chance of making it from birth to adulthood. What, you think they were just all heathens or God would have healed them?? My, you ARE delusional. Religious fanatics have always been a dime a dozen.

Well, we had a similar case to this one in my home state. They convicted one of the parents of a lesser charge but then jurors complained they were misled into thinking this would teach them a lesson so they’d never do it again (it didn’t).

In the case cite here, the parents probably don’t have anything to worry about because they live in one of many states where there is a religious exemption to homicide laws: You’re allowed to kill your kids as long as you say Jesus told you to do it. Questions still linger over Carlton boy’s death.

News-Dailies Christianity

I know, like this is news? Intelligent Design aka creationism has always functioned at the edge of knowledge. It exists to say… “Oh, you don’t understand how this particular thing works. Well then, it must be GOD!!!” It’s a simple formula, really; one answer for every question. Its only problem is that those questions tend to get answered eventually. So now ID/creationism retreats yet again…. More ‘Evidence’ of Intelligent Design Shot Down by Science.

Intelligent design mavens once cited flagella as evidence of their theory. Scientific fact dispelled that illusion. The mitochondria study does the same for protein transport.

“This analysis of protein transport provides a blueprint for the evolution of cellular machinery in general,” write the researchers, led by molecular biologist Trevor Lithgow at Australia’s Monash University. “The complexity of these machines is not irreducible.”

Yes, I realize that facts never get in the way of a good creationist story but we have to keep repeating the facts ANYWAY in hopes that they will sink-in with those who value truth over creative fiction.

News-Dailies

While in the area for a conference anyway, a group of scientists decide to drop by the Creation Museum for a tour. The same folk that run the “Answers In Genesis” web site have the same answer to every question: God did it.

When you can make up answers then it’s pretty easy, right? If I substituted “The Flying Spaghetti Monster” for “God” the creation museum folk would be offended, but they could not offer a plausible explanation as to why I can’t use that term instead of theirs. It’s all “faith” after all… also known as superstition.
Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum

While visiting this post, I wanted to address a sincere but ignorant commenter:

“I have personally witnessed irrefutable miracle healings (i.e. stunted limb growing out to full length spontaneously in a matter of seconds,) in respone to prayer in the name of Jesus. I would guess there were close to 40 witnesses to this miracle healing, many of whom, including myself, were standing only 2 or 3 feet away from the man who was healed; some of whom I still know by first and/or last name.”

The short-leg illusion is one of the oldest tricks of faith healers. I’m surprised people still fall for it today since it is so well known but I will briefly address it here.

FAITH HEALING: LEG LENGTHENING ‘MIRACLES”

The set-up for the trick: The subject/victim/mark is told to sit in a chair and then lift their legs straight toward the “healer” … lo and behold, one leg is shorter! That must be the source of all of their problems! The “healer” then does his/her incantation, grabs the legs and tugs.. and miraculously, the “short” leg “grows out” to match the “normal” one! Proof of God! Give money!

More experienced “healers” may simply command the leg to grow, usually followed by some other exclamation, like “LOOK, IT’S GROWING!” And suddenly a “miracle” happens…

Here is the simple basis for why this short-leg growth trick always works as it does; people don’t sit perfectly straight when they sit down. They usually lean slightly toward one ass cheek or another and in fact it is hard to sit perfectly straight and balanced even when ordered to do so. Uneven weight distribution causes ones pelvis to tilt slightly, which of course also affects how long your legs APPEAR to be relative to each other. If you don’t understand this, you should probably read a first year anatomy book before proceeding.

So when the mark/victim/subject holds his/her legs out straight, the pelvis angle will make it appear that one leg is shorter than another. When the “healer” tugs on the legs it causes the victim to shift his/her weight and sit straighter, changing the angle of the pelvis, so the short leg “grows.”

In the command (no touch) method of this trick, there is some loud declaration of a miracle happening right now! This is screeched so that the victim/subject/mark will lean forward to see if his her leg is actually growing – it is the leaning forward that causes the victim/mark’s weight to shift so the miraculous “growth” can occur.

In the unlikely event that the victim/mark accidentally manages to sit completely flat in the beginning so that both legs are viewed as the same length, the Christian miracle worker always has a backup plan: The faith healer simply pulls slightly on one shoe as he/she lifts the legs up, pulling one heel out and making one leg appear longer temporarily than the other. The Man/Woman of God then slides the shoe back into place again as he/she prays, making the legs suddenly appear the same length. This takes a little practice at sleight of hand work so that nobody sees what you are doing, but it’s still pretty easy.

A certain amount of showmanship is required to make this trick work well: You have to get everyone watching to believe that one leg is shorter FIRST, then you have to make enough noise and motion with your hands as the “miracle” happens so that nobody sees what you are really doing.

This is an observational trick easily confirmed by YOU: The reader can get together with his/her friends and try it. But please don’t be unethical – don’t be a liar – like these Christian “healers” and claim it is a miracle of God. It’s just a trick and a pretty cheesy one at that.

As a former ardent religious zealot, I was present and personally witnessed this trick being performed on a number of occasions. Some of these events were performed by famous evangelists including the healing duo popular in the 80’s, “The Hunters” – Charles and Frances.

This particular piece of cheesy stage magic is covered in the book “The Faith Healers” by James Randi (pages 128-130, complete with pictures). As bad as it is, however, it appears that tens of thousands of people are still fooled.

The faith healers, of course, have to learn how to do the trick before they can perform it. Not that this is hard – I mean, I just taught you how to do it in three paragraphs! But that also means that they KNOW it is a trick and they KNOW they are fooling the believers into thinking they have power from God.

I realize that some people would say f’ em for being that gullible, but I don’t think that you should take advantage of people just because they really want to believe in something.

You should ask yourself – If these faith healers have real power, why can’t they make an amputated leg grow back, hmm? Why is it that a “true miracle” can only be performed by stage magic methods? Believers dare not ask themselves this question, I guess.

Unfortunately, this reliance on stage magic strongly suggests that Christianity itself is false, because the proponents must resort to to the use of tricks to prove the validity of their faith. If what they claim to believe had any truth to it whatsoever, stage magic would not be required.

As a side note; although most people’s legs aren’t exactly the same length, pelvic tilt compensates for any differences in 99 percent of the cases. For people who have a difference that is really a medical problem, faith healers can’t do a thing.

How can we be sure? All you have to do is see the daily “Jesus on toast” stories that inundate the TV and print news to realize that if there were even one genuine miracle – EVER – it would get 24 hour news coverage. The fact that Christians have to lean on the “I saw someone tug on a leg once and it got longer” stories strongly suggests that they have nothing real to offer.

Additional discussions of the Scientists at the Creation Museum story: Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh – NYTimes.com and Daily Kos: Scientists Visit the Creation Museum

News-Dailies Christianity

Once again, we have the evidence of God’s mysterious ways. You know, miraculous appearances in stains and grilled cheese but no saving the 25,000 children who starve to death every day: Grounds for hope in a stained coffee mug

“God reveals himself in some very mysterious ways,” we’re told. Indeed, God must be revealing his priorities to us – and his priorities are sick and disgusting.

News-Dailies Pareidolia

Now, WHAT was the difference between the Taliban and American Christianity again? The violence in the name of Jesus continues….

Approving of war and torture (see previous post) isn’t that far a step from murder: Doctor murdered in Church and right-wing fundamentalist Christians are celebrating. … And lest you think that this is an isolated nut I remind you that there is a murder-target Christian hit list on the web, and Randall Terry who runs this says his only regret was that the doctor didn’t have time to convert to Christ first and that the President might use this to crack-down on ‘Pro-Life’ terrorists.. You know, the murder victim was a Lutheran, not a real Christian as defined by the dominant forces of Christian America.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really know what horrible evil cancer ate up American Christianity and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if it CAN be fixed or if it will remain a menacing and violent force in our country forever.

I DO know that once again we have proof that the so-called “Pro-Life” movement is anything BUT …the same people who overwhelmingly approve of torture and war are celebrating murder. No surprise. We need to start calling them what they really are; the “FORCED PREGNANCY MOVEMENT” – that’s what they want. The ‘pro-life’ name is just a bullshit cover story. That, or Christian Terrorists – also apt.

News-Dailies Christianity, Hypocrisy