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http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/louisiana-whats-the-big-deal/

Louisiana – what’s the big deal?
DaveScot

So Louisiana has a new law allowing science teachers to teach the weaknesses of time & chance evolutionary theory.

What’s the big deal? Evolution by time and chance is as well tested as gravity for Pete’s sake. How long does take to convince a kid that when he throws a baseball into the air gravity will pull it back to earth?

According to the theophobic evolutionists there are no weaknesses in their theory.

So the teacher will quickly present just a small fraction of the “overwhelming evidence” that time & chance turned mud into Mozart, he’ll have a list of zero things to present to argue against it, and all will be well with nothing lost. The biology teacher can then go straight on to teach really important specific things like how fish grew legs and lungs, dinosaurs became birds, and hippos became whales. These are things kids need to know in order to be successful, productive members of western civilization. Without knowing these things all of science will surely collapse and with it all of civilization itself. We can’t let that happen. Failure to convince children of the fact of evolution by time and chance is a risk that makes global warming look like small potatoes. This is Really Important Stuff.

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Let’s take this one step at a time if you’d like to know what the “big deal” is.

1) There’s that pesky seperation of church and state thing. Intelligent Design IS Creationsism.  Stop lying about it.

2)”time & chance evolutionary theory” : It’s actually called natural selection kthxbai.  It’s not “chance”, but rather evolution finds a path to forms that will be most efficient.  This doesn’t always mean that old forms go away, but its how we end up with a vestigial tail when we’re in the womb.  Explain THAT by your God.  Either he’s an idiot, or there isn’t one.

3) Your argument does nothing to show that there is actually a controversy.  It’s simply sarcasm that we don’t need Evolution to live life.  Well, I suppose by the same argument you don’t need any more education than what is necessary to flip burgers. So I guess I’ll take a Baconator.

This last year was definitely a year of change and self discovery. I became involved in communities I never thought I would be a part of, and it has reinvigorated me musically. While Rhyme Torrents and Nerdcore has its issues, I found myself creating music and performing again for this first time in quite awhile. This has led to numerous new friendships, musical collaborations, and very productive year, with 2 EP’s and an Album released, and 2 more albums already at work in the lab with the help of TyT.

And I also spent the year doing quite a bit of soul searching. I tried christianity, judaism, deism…but frankly, none of it really made a whole lot of sense to me. Then I got turned on to the Skeptics Guide To The Universe. (thanks Ham-Star)

I discovered a world or rational thought, of common sense and critical thinking that I never knew was out there. And from there I discovered Skepticality, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and of course James Randi. It was like someone flipped a switch and light flooded over something I knew was always there, but didn’t know how to find in the dark.

I am a skeptic. And I am an Atheist.

And with that said, will come a new purpose for the site. Blueglowy will no longer exist as a record company per se (since it never really was one anyway) other than as for something to put on my kunaki cd’s. What this will be, is my place to share thoughts on skepticism, atheism, and living as an Atheist in Sin City.

I may not post every day. I may not stick to these topics, because life is full of variety, and it should be enjoyed rather than put off in hopes of a better life somewhere else. So let’s see where this goes.

The Zombie Saints

According to all three of the New Testament’s Synoptic gospels, miracles attended Jesus’ death: a mysterious midday darkness over all the land and the veil of the Jewish temple torn in half. (The Gospel of John omits these miracles, differing with the Synoptics in this point as in others.) However, there’s one miracle that only one gospel records.

“And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”

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Matthew 27:52-53

It’s amazing that more attention isn’t paid to this, considering it arguably qualifies as the most incredible miracle in the Bible. Miracles like Jesus’ healings were small, local in scope, easily missed or overlooked by those who weren’t actually present. Old Testament miracles like Noah’s flood or the fall of the walls of Jericho, dramatic as they would have been, could theoretically have been attributed to some confluence of natural forces.

But this, if it had really happened, could not possibly be explained except as the result of a purposeful intelligence with the power to suspend natural law breaking into history. No natural event can raise the dead, much less explain why only Christian believers would be raised and not others. And the sheer scope of the miracle – a mass resurrection from the dead, witnessed by the entire population of Jerusalem! – would rule out trickery and ensure that no one could possibly have overlooked it.

Yet, as I said, nowhere else in the Bible is this event referenced. None of the other gospel authors know about it. None of the New Testament epistles mention it. Even the Gospel of Matthew itself seems curiously uninterested in this stupendous miracle – it writes it off with the few curt lines quoted above and then never refers to it again. And, of course, no historians of the time record it. I’m not even aware of any church fathers or early apologists claiming that this had actually happened. As with the twelve apostles, the resurrected saints get only this one brief, shadowy reference and then disappear from history.

Neither the gospels nor the Book of Acts have any follow-up information on the fate of the resurrected individuals. Did they die again naturally, did they ascend to heaven, did they disappear from the earth? Did they become evangelists? Did they found any churches? Did they write any books or letters? Did they have first-hand knowledge of the afterlife that they were willing to recount? How could they not have been followed everywhere they went by eager, desperate crowds wanting to know the answers to these and many other questions?

If this resurrection had really happened, it would be the most famous and best-known event in all of human history. As I wrote in “Choking on the Camel“:

Events such as these create historians. To assume that not a single person who witnessed these monumental events would have felt compelled to write them down, or that no one bothered to preserve those records if they had, violates all standards of credulity…. if they really happened, [they] would have left a vivid imprint on humanity’s collective memory and would have produced a flood of awed and astonished records. To suggest that the succeeding generation simply let all memory of them disappear crosses the line from unbelievable to absurd.

In light of the extreme implausibility of such an incredible event happening and then being immediately and completely forgotten, there’s only one reasonable conclusion: the resurrection of the saints never happened. It’s a complete fabrication, invented by the author of Matthew as a rhetorical flourish. But if the gospel authors were willing to make up details – especially details that could so easily have been checked, even in ancient times – then we must ask what else they might have made up. As much as believers may dispute this conclusion, the alternative is untenable. This biblical tall tale is too obviously a fiction, and so I ask: do you really believe that?

 

 

Now at Borders, the Atheism books at smack dab between Christian Fiction, and Judaism.  So as you can imagine, it can be slightly uncomfortable, because you’re there looking for books that deny God in the middle of God central.  I noticed one gal who was nearby also in the section, but didn’t happen to see what she was reading.  I figured that in typical fashion it was a God person picking up Left Behind or some other such typical thing.  I saw Christopher Hitchens book “The Portable Atheist” down at the bottom of the shelf, so I kneel down and am taking a look at it.

As I’m checking it out, this lady walks up from behind me, excuses herself and puts that exact same book back on the shelf, points out “God Is Not Great” (also by Hitchens), and says “that’s a great book” and heads out.

Always a pleasant surprise to find another critical thinker where you least expect it.

A headsup courtesy of the Friendly Athiest: Help the Secular Student Alliance by Watching a Movie 

If you watch the four-minute movie below until the end, the Secular Student Alliancewill get a small donation from the producers! It’d be nice if those cents could add up. Only views that occur before December 23^rd will count!

What is the movie? It’s called Heart of the Beholder:

Heart of the Beholder is based on a true story of religious censorship, intolerance, and political corruption. Heart of the Beholder was written, produced, directed, and funded by Freethinkers from around the world and has won more Best Feature Film awards than any other independent movie ever. The producers tell me that due to the controversial topic, distributors are afraid to pick the movie up.

 

More information on how this arrangement works is here and here.

If you like what you see, link to the video and help the promo video spread! The SSA’s percentage will go right back to supporting secular campus groups across the country.  And if you’re feeling particularly generous, you can always donate straight to the SSA by going here