Sad

It was a shock for me today to read about my blogging friend’s husbands death by leukemia.

So this painting is for Carol, it’s called ”Waiting at dawn”

Religion and the corruption of morality

As God does not seem to mind me being blasphemous, at least I haven´t been struck down by lightning, Yet…

I will now muse on morality. Unlike the usual comment made by religious people: ”Without religion the world would be in chaos, there  would be murder rape and all kinds of crime… etc.”, I am of the opinion that there is good and bad, and that all sane people know what’s what.
Really.
Truly.
In their heart of hearts.
Everybody just knows, really, really knows what is good and what is bad. For example:

Bad:
Killing somebody else is bad. Torturing people is bad. Raping people is bad. Abusing and/or having sex with children is bad. Marrying close relatives is bad. Eating other people is bad. stealing is bad, hurting people is bad! Lying and backbiting is bad, etc.

Good:
Helping others is good. Looking after orphans is good. Being kind to children and animals is good. Nursing the sick is good. Teaching other people important knowledge is good. Learning and increasing your own knowledge is good. Saving a drowning person is good. Giving is good, speaking the truth is good, etc.

These examples are to me so clear I don’t know how anybody can not see this as well. Unless they are sociopath and/or homicidal maniacs of course. But then they are dangerously, mentally deranged and very, very abnormal.
So why is that religious people think they are really deranged homicidal maniacs and rapists, but luckily God came along and told them what is right and wrong and now they are good people?
And to go into more detail: why do some people tell me that their particular brand of religion has got ”morals” right, and all other brands of religion have got it wrong???
Kindergarten logic: ”My God is better than your God, therefore our morality is better than your morality, nah-nahnahnah-nah”. Hum, I see a post on religion and infantilism coming on…
Back to religion and morality. Because for the most part good and bad are universal truths, most religions get that, and put up sets of rules and write them down as God’s rules. So far everything is fine. But then comes the snag…

Religion actually screws and twists and corrupts our innate morality.

Let’s pick an example of a bad thing to do, let’s take killing people. Most people know that killing other people is bad, but when religion comes into the equation the moral gets corrupted: Killing people is bad unless it’s in Gods name. Killing people is bad but if they don’t believe in God it is good. Actually it gets more and more bizarre as religion gets more powerful and gains more influence on peoples lives. We see often enough now a days especially in Islamic countries: Killing people is bad, except if they are women who do not confirm to God’s rules. (the interpretation of God’s rules differ extremely person to person as God has never made them clear in the first place.)  Killing people is bad but people who happen to be born (made by God) to have a preference for the same gender should be killed because God (who made them so) wants them dead.

Everything which is bad, which we know is bad, is condoned or even ordered by God in one or most religions for one reason or other, but it’s always a religious reason. How about abusing and raping children? Men of God abuse and rape children entrusted to their care all over the world. Safe in the knowledge that the Religious hierarchy of their faith will protect them. Women are unnaturally suppressed and their lives and minds thwarted because some misogynist made it ”God’s rule”. Old man marry by force very young girls/toddlers and have sex with/rape them, and claim that as Islam allows this disgusting crime, it is God’s will.

Devout followers of religion kill and maim indiscriminately innocent people including women and children. Something they would never have done if Religion had not told them God wanted them to kill and maim. Suicide killers wouldn’t blow themselves up in the middle of a marketplace full of innocent fellow humans if the weren’t convinced that in doing so God would reward them with heaven and sex with ”the Black-eyed”.

Men kill their daughters and sisters because they do not wrap their heads in a piece of cloth, or because they want to get out of a marriage which consists of daily torture and rape, or because they have been talking to a boy, or even just because they want their inheritance or another dowry.

No sane person would kill a woman on such trivial grounds, except a religious person. No society would allow and support such heinous crimes, unless it is a religious society. And no society, unless fuelled by the conviction of religion, would consider 50% of humanity as disposable, the killing of a woman as a minor offence, not warranting special punishment.

No, I’m sorry to be so utterly blasphemous, but God, and religion, are the corrupter of our natural morality, God and religion is the root of evil, not the deliverance thereof.

I shamelessly paste-copy this info to the following video:

A Nazi doctor at Bergen Belsen finishes off torturing the last handful of the day’s batch of emaciated concentration camp children in the name of medical research. Without so much as a second thought he fires a shot into the brain of the 13 year old girl whose ability to remain conscious during the terror of non-anaesthetised amputation has failed and she is of no further use to him. He walks calmly back to his comfortable townhouse and asks his wife how the day has gone and how his two delightful children are. She informs him that Hans has ridden his first pony and Ingrid has been practising her clarinet all afternoon. The Nazi doctor wanders through to the music room and quietly opens the door. There is his daughter picking her nose. He tears into the room and slaps her hand so hard that she starts to cry. “Stop that disgusting habit else I will take your clarinet off you for good! Now go to your room!”

A group of Muslim boys and young men drop the last of the breeze blocks on to the head of their 15 year old relative – to some she is the sister, to others a cousin, to one she is the daughter. While she gives her final twitch of life, he skirt rides up on her naked, bruised thigh and everything stops while one of the suddenly disgusted father reaches over and pulls her skirt back down towards her twisted feet. The final breeze stops her from further twitching.

What is moral to one person is not moral to another. But we all possess a moral sense.
A child can be taught that anything is true – anything! Morality is simply one more of the areas of the human psyche, the human family and the human society that is a blank sheet waiting for the writings of dogma or of free thought .
Dogmatic religion does not own morality. I want to engage with you in some common-sense arguments that might make you think a little more widely about where your morality originated.

Independent thought: Sex? or Stork?

If you have the time I would like for you to watch this brilliant and funny lecture of Richard Dawkins. It explains a lot. It takes 50 (glorious) minutes.

Richard Dawkins is saying something really good, read this well for it explaines all in two short sentences:

The ”Discovery Institute” a very well funded lobby for Creationists, do not publish research papers in defence of their position, they shamelessly bypass the peer review process, and appeal directly to a public which is unqualified to assess the matter. Unqualified precisely because the very same activists deny them a proper education in science and the scientific method.

He goes on by explaining the use of diversity, so you have the following diverse  options

• Intelligent Design versus The Theory of Darwin.
• Intelligent Falling  versus the Theory of Gravity
• The Stork Theory  versus the Sex Theory of Reproduction

So, blog-buddies who have children, I would love to hear your opinion of how you got those kids, did you have sex? Or did you have a stork? And which ”Theory” are you going to teach your children? Sex? or Stork?

Riding in the snow

Today was a day of such beauty, it was magical! Beautiful! Everything was white, with the sun going down there were beautiful colours everywhere, and there was a snow-mist softening the landscape!
Al Tarq was happy to be out. Not much to amuse him at the moment.
It very cold of course. For tips on dressing and drawings of what to wear, and a drawing of an angry, fluffy Tarq, see my art-blog!

This is how I look when fully dressed for winterriding:

Sundown behind the trees

The world looked a very mysterious place

Zora in the snow. She walks fine in the snow, actually has less trouble with her elbow.

Within half an hour all our hairs were covered in a thin layer of ice.

Tarq wanted to go ludicrousspeed here, and although I loved a fine trot, I did think ludicrousspeed was a bit too dangerous. The icy slippery frozen remnants of the last snow period are still hidden under the fresh snow.

Zora’s hairs are also covered in ice!

Back at the village

Blog anniversary!

I have forgotten my anniversary! Clouddragon forgot to celebrate it’s third anniversary yesterday!

The New Years Dip

It is a tradition in the Netherlands to have a dip in the ocean at 12 o’clock on the first day of the new year.

Yesterday it was a very comfortable 4′C, and the sea water a whopping 7”C!!!! So much more comfortable as last year…
I still felt no inclination to try it myself….

Happy 2010 to everybody!

Here I am, new years eve, and watching ”Dinner for one” as usual,  the unbreakable tradition. There has been some fireworks already today and I am covered with shivering alsatian. Zora is always very nervous on Newyears eve, with all the fireworks. It’s really funny: all through the day she has become more clingy and for the last two hours she is literally glued to my legs. I really can’t do one step without Zora being stuck to my legs! I nearly fell over her twice! Woehahahahahaa!
She’s now sitting on my lap.
Well, half a Zora. There’s too much dog, some parts spill over.

A very scared Zora, a tiny bit of me, and a tiny bit of a very relaxed Simsalabim

Update:

It is 2010!!!! Hurrayyyyy!!!!

I’ve been outside looking at the fireworks! Considering the amout of expensive fireworks people blew up you wouldn’t think there was a recession going on!
I am a leech: I don’t buy fireworks, I just go out and enjoy other people’s fire works!

I made this arty photo.

A wish balloon was released by some of my neighbours, so beautiful and romantic!

How to get to America

Of course you have all heard about the Nigerian student to whom the American government gave a visa despite his family having alerted officials about his strange behaviour and who tried to mix an explosive aboard a plane from Amsterdam to America.

Instead of wondering about the apparent laxity of the American’s screening, full attention is now aimed to Schiphol Airport security. Maybe because they want to divert attention from the American failure to spot this man even though his own family send out warning signals???
The result is that flights to America are now subject to more stringent security measures. Although I find the current measures farcical, for instance the confiscation of a nail-clipper while once in the airplane the grannies are allowed to keep on knitting? Now I cannot really imagine a scenario where you can successfully kill somebody with a nail-clipper, but I can imagine about 10 where you can kill people with only one knitting needle.
No, my problem is that the Schiphol security have used this incident to finally bring out their super technological body scan machines and force them on the passengers.

Until now it was considered a breach of our privacy and bodily integrity to force people to undergo the scan, but now they have been given a good reason to scare people again they took advantage and now all passengers flying from Schiphol to America will be forced to allow themselves be scanned starting end of January.

The millimeter wave scan uses terahertz radiation to see through your clothes and identify foreign substances. The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material. It cannot see through flesh, and the waves don’t travel far inside the body.

Due to the terahertz photons not being energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise atoms or molecules, the chief reasons why higher energy photons such as x-rays and UV rays are so bad for us, the health risks are easily dismissed.
But these waves do infiltrate your body, and there maybe other mechanisms at work here. I do not believe that you can mess with our body in any way without changing, and usually damaging something.

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. “Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none,” say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they’ve found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That’s a jaw dropping conclusion.

And it also explains why the evidence has been so hard to garner. Ordinary resonant effects are not powerful enough to do this kind of damage but nonlinear resonances can. These nonlinear instabilities are much less likely to form which explains why the character of THz genotoxic effects are probabilistic rather than deterministic, say the team.

I find this greatly disturbing. Of course, terahertz waves are a natural part of environment, just like visible and infrared light. But these new generation of cameras do not only record terahertz waves but also bombard us with them. And if our exposure is set to increase, the question that urgently needs answering is what level of terahertz exposure is safe.

Besides the invasion of my privacy and bodily integrity, which I by no means  want to surrender to a lazy cost-aware security system, I find it a flippant disregard of the health and safety of the passengers to bombard them on a regular basis with terahertz waves without their knowledge and consent. Believe me I have looked into this and there was only one person on several Dutch forums who wondered about the terahertz waves’ health implications instead of privacy matters. Apparently awareness of the possible implications of the use of terahertz waves on our health is virtually non-existent. Of course none of the information sites about the”body-scan-machines” even mentions terahertz waves.

It may be a very long time before I can travel to America again and be with the Q…
For the afore-mentioned reasons I do categorically refuse to be scanned by terahertz waves.

And the Nigerian who tried to blow up the plane was not stopped by the American government, who gave him a valid visa, he was not stopped by Schiphol security, he was stopped by a courageous Dutchman, Jeroen Schuringa, who jumped the man, brought him down, and doused the fire.

Maybe instead of subjecting us to more humiliation, invasion of our privacy, and exposure to terahertz waves, they could prepare the passengers with some martial arts lessons while we wait for boarding. A well-trained and prepared to attack, group of passengers seems to me of far more value than all the dodgy invasive and possibly dangerous technology they are so enamoured with now.

Religion, blasphemy and evolution 3

Teaching Evolution at schools

So if thinking a scientific theory is not as good a primitive bronze age myth from a primitive tribe of goat herders isn’t bad enough, the American Creationists want their ”Theory”/myth taught at schools as an equally good alternative to real science. Now there is one thing which can save American schoolchildren: America is not a ”Christian” nation. America is a secular country where everybody is free to practise his/her religion of choice.
As such it is not allowed to put religion into the school curriculum. A very wise decision. At school you learn science. That science has been carefully tested and is peer-reviewed before it is allowed into the school-curriculum. To re-label Creationism into ”Intelligent Design” and exchange ” God the Creator” for the rather insipid ”Intelligent Designer”, does not really change the fact that there is not one scientific proof for intelligent design, a creator, and/or an intelligent designer. It just isn’t science!
As far as Human Design is concerned I think the word ”Intelligent” is completely off-track anyway. Humans are a crap-design. We are weak, we have all kinds of health troubles, with our backs, with our knees, we get cavities, cancer, etc. An industrial design student once told me: ”If I designed the human knee I would be thrown out of College”.
And what about our sad loss of the one enzyme which would allow us to synthesise Vitamin C as all other mammals do? It’s just guinea pigs, fruit bats, and the higher primates who cannot. With the result that we are in a constant state of sub-clinical-scurvy unless we take vitamin C supplements.
And yes, higher primates includes us. You see it was our common ancestor which had the extremely rare mutation and lost the capability of synthesising vitamin C. And as a result so do we humans. Together with our nearest evolutionary relatives, the other higher primates.

To see the attempts of slipping religious doctrine into the American school curriculum, watch this brilliant documentary on Google

And do the Creationists realise that if their pet-”theory” should be taught at school as an ”alternative”, that there are actually quite a lot of other alternatives which then should be taught also? Why stop at the Christian theory? There are many more theories, that we all came out of an egg, or a clam, to name just two.

And the most convincing one is of course that the universe was created by The Flying Spaghetti Monster after a bout of heavy drinking. This explains the flaws in the universe. As this is the only theory which actually does explain why the universe is so flawed, I am strongly inclined to favor the Pastafarian theory of creation above all others.
Btw, The Church of the Flying spaghetti Monster is currently the fastest growing religion on the planet.

Religion, blasphemy and evolution 2

Part 2: Darwin, science and theories

The other side, the people who like scientific, tangible proof, are called, well anything really, ”realists”, ‘’scientists”, ”Darwinists”.
Or ‘’sane”.

They think that Darwin’s theory is, has been, and will be, proven to be the truth about the diversity of life on Earth.

Let’s put the two sides side by side, there’s creationism, very strict:

• the bible is literally the TRUTH
• God created everything from scratch, in exactly 6 days
• all life was created exactly as it is now, fish, birds animals, and us (the ”crown of creation”)
  (according to: us)
  (oh, no: according to the bible)
  (written by us though)
• it stops here because we are perfect, and in the image of God
  (according to us, and what we imagine God to be, eg an old bloke with a beard)
  (which seems silly as I am a beautiful youngish woman without a beard)
• the earth is 6000 years old
  exactly
• faith is all the proof we need

and Darwin’s theory of evolution:

• the Earth is billions of years old, geological fact. This can be scientifically proven, I mean really proven. Has nothing to do with the theory of evolution but supports it.  The Earth is not 6000 years old.
• life ”evolved” slowly, from the simplest of organisms into more and more advanced organisms, culminating in ultimate perfection: the horse
  (according to me)
• life forms on earth evolve to fill a niche.
• The theory of evolution explains the diversity of life forms on earth
• this ”theory” is proven by… well the whole world really, animals, islands, fossils, genetics, carbon dating, and new science. True to a correct scientific theory, new discoveries in science affirm predictions made by the theory of evolution

Before I go on there is one very important problem I need to clear up before we go on. This is also symptomatic for the utter stupidity of creationists. I am very sorry to call it stupidity, but I have been going through the dictionary and it’s the only word which fits the bill.
The creationists stupidity for me is really represented by their stupid use of the word ”theory”

Theory:

–noun, plural -ries.

1.	a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein’s theory of relativity.

2.	a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.

3.	Mathematics. a body of principles, theorems, or the like, belonging to one subject: number theory.

4.	the branch of a science or art that deals with its principles or methods, as distinguished from its practice: music theory.

5.	a particular conception or view of something to be done or of the method of doing it; a system of rules or principles.

6.	contemplation or speculation.

7.	guess or conjecture.

So when we say: ”Darwin’s theory of evolution”  the word ”Theory” is meant in the truly scientific way. A scientific ”Theory’:  Theories are analytical tools for understanding, explaining, and making predictions about a given subject matter.

For example: the ”Theory” of gravity.
This ”theory” predicts, and that prediction can be proven by experiments and results. For example: if I throw a Creationist from the top of a church tower, he will drop, crash into the ground, and splatter the pavement. This experiment can be predicted, implemented, and verified.
Try it out!

Now the Creationists call ”intelligent design” a ”theory”, but in this case the word means ”guess or conjecture”. Because they don’t understand the nature of the scientific use of the concept of a ”Theory” they think that if they use the same word  for ”Creationism” or ”Intelligent Design” the concepts are therefore equal.
They are not. Darwin’s ”theory” of evolution is a verifiable scientific explanation, predicting events which are proven again and again to be correct. The Creationists ”theory” of Intelligent Design, is a conjecture based on ”faith” in a bronze age creation myth. It is demonstrably wrong in its conception, there is no scientific tangible proof for any of its claims, and it does not predict anything.

Moreover, Genesis, the book on which Creationists base their ”theory” of intelligent design actually gives us two creation myths, the other one is completely ignored by Creationists who claim to take the bible by the letter. The grammar of Genesis is ambiguous as well, it could either mean

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void…” (King James Version), or as “At the beginning of the making of heaven and earth, when the earth was unformed and void…”(Rashi, and with variations Ibn Ezra and Bereshith Rabba). The second reading supposes a pre-existing cosmos which God uses as the raw material for his work. The phrase “heaven and earth”, for example, is a set phrase in Hebrew denoting “everything,” and the word commonly translated as “created” (in “God created the Heavens and the earth”) is commonly associated with molding something from already-existing raw material.

So lets see, creation myth 1:
God created the Earth and the heavens and on successive days fish, birds, animals, culminating with us, created in God’s own image.

And then there is the other creation myth 2 from the very same book of Genesis:
It begins with God creating Adam and Eve who live with God in the garden of Eden until they gain knowledge of good and evil (in Hebrew it was ”knowledge of everything”) and are kicked out. No mention of 6 days.
Now the early church was not literalist and considered these as allegorical anyway.
Choosing one of the Genesis creation ”theories” literally is a recent development.

So what the creationists want is that American schools teach both ”Theories”, so the ”theory” of ”Intelligent Design” should be taught to schoolchildren as an equal to the scientific, proven, and accurately predicting theory of evolution. For the beginning, because the eventual goal is that the bronze age creation myth of faith  should replace the scientific proven and provable and predicting ”Theory” of evolution.

I’m not finished , there will be a part 2 of part 2.