Recently there was a Supreme Court decision that the Westboro Baptist Church was within its First Amendment rights to protest a military funeral. This is a very interesting case because the First Amendment not only protects free speech but also the idea that the government can not do anything that favors one church over another. This case is about free speech and the government is not doing anything to endorse the ideas and hatred that the Westboro Baptist Church is preaching. If this was another church doing the protesting, then the Supreme Court would have ruled the same way and this is why they are not endorsing this specific church. The great thing about this case is that the freedom of speech was upheld. Do not get me wrong, I do not agree with the Westboro Baptist Church in any way, shape or form. Actually, I think that Fred Phelps is an evil man. However, the freedom of speech also allows me to write this blog without fear that the government will feel the need to shut me down. The freedom of speech does provide us with a great freedom, and it should not be taken for granted. There are many people that I am sure that we all would like to silence, but what happens when they come to silence you or me?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/westboro-baptist-church-w_n_830209.html
The other part of the First Amendment stating that Congress should not make any law respecting the establishment of religion brings about some very interesting questions in this case. What would this country be like if the practices of the Westboro Baptist Church were the standard religion? Would this church have been able to come into existence without our freedom of religion and the separation of church and state? I think that the mentality of the Westboro Baptist Church can be very dangerous. The reason why this church is scary is that many people believe that all they need to do in order to get into heaven is simply believe in Jesus Christ and in the meantime do any nasty act they wish, however it seems that they do most of their protesting just for the publicity. This church is a great example of how crazy some religious people can get. Ultimately, if this was the one true way to worship a god, I would actively choose not to worship him for I do not find the god of the Westboro Baptist Church is simply not worth worshiping.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am1.html
Friday, March 4, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Chance
One argument against the THEORY of evolution is that there is no way that humans could not have evolved by mere chance. This argument is faulty on so many levels. However, I would like to take a look at some happenings of chance. An average man ejaculates around 180 million sperm (the number was higher before). If we just took this number, the odds that one of these sperm fertilizes an egg is at least 1 in 180 million. Now we can start to look at the number of eggs that a woman produces. If a woman only has 100 eggs the odds are a whopping 1 in 180 billion for each of us to come in to existence. A woman only ovulates briefly each month. If a couple were to try to create a baby once a day for a month, the odd would multiply to a whopping 5.4 trillion. This is simply the odds that a baby is created in one months time. Yet somehow we have overcome these odds to enjoy the reality that there are over 6 billion people on the planet. The chances that each person is who they are are very slim, yet the chances that a couple gets pregnant is not that slim. If we were to look at the lottery the same thing could be found. Usually as a jackpot gets larger, more people buy tickets. As more and more people buy tickets, the odds for each individual ticket becomes much more bleak. However, the odds are increased that someone will have the winning ticket because more combinations of numbers will have been drawn. Even though the odds are slim for each individual is very slim, some lucky ticket holder may find that they hold the winning ticket. The more a couple has sex, the chances for each sperm becomes slimmer, yet the odds that the couple will get pregnant is increased.
Well, I am sitting here typing this. So much for odds.......
Well, I am sitting here typing this. So much for odds.......
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Polyploid speciation
Yesterday was Darwin Day and I hope that everyone had a good one. In the spirit of Darwin Day I am going to again talk about an aspect of evolution. This aspect is polyploid speciation. This usually occurs in plant species as two plants form a hybrid. The reason why this happens in plant species frequently is that they can self fertilize themselves. The hybrids or daughter plants can no longer reproduce with either of the parents, yet they can reproduce with themselves. Not only is this evolution happening within one human lifetime, we can also test it and reproduce the results. The amazing thing is that I really do not remember hearing about this in many of the books that I have read. However, Jerry A. Coyne has mentioned this in his book Why Evolution is True. Now, one of my hobbies is gardening. I love to grow peppers and use them in my cooking. One of the hottest peppers is a hybrid of the habanero pepper. Many watermelons are hybrids as well. The seedless ones are designed so that the fruit is unable to produce seeds. However, there are also other watermelon hybrids that are able to produce seeds. The banana is another plant that can not reproduce. I once saw an argument that the banana was made by God as the perfect fruit. However, the person who made this argument was not aware at the time that the plant was manipulated by man to create the commercial banana. (This is also discussed in Jerry A. Coyne's book. If you want to see the argument for the banana being the perfect fruit, it is on YouTube and has Kirk Cameron in the video. I encourage you to watch it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4) Then it was pointed out that the banana was manipulated by man and the "proof" then became that God gave us the knowledge to formulate the useful banana. Plus, look at bananas and they don't all fit the "divine" design that was described in the video. We can manipulate many plants just like we have done with dogs. This does not mean that the peppers or watermelons have become new species, but it just shows that we do as much artificial selection with plants as anything else. One argument against the idea of artificial selection providing evidence for evolution is that their are no new dog species, they all can interbreed. However, this can no longer refute evolution since we can create new species of plants that are able to self fertilize and are no longer able to fertilize either parent species. Evolution is a wonderful and interesting science.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Geology
Geology is a wonderful thing. We can actively see changes to the earth that support the THEORY of plate tectonics. Thanks to the man made satellites orbitting our planet, we can measure the distance of the continents and actually measure the distance that they are moving each year. We also see a large number of fault lines and volcanoes around the Pacific Rim that outlines the Pacific Plate. The island of Hawaii sits on a hot spot on the Pacific Ocean. We can see the course that the plate has taken throughout history since the older islands used to sit on top of this hot spot. The rocks found on the islands can be tested to show that they are volcanic in nature. We can also see the seafloor spreading in the Atlantic Ocean. The amazing thing is that we can actually see evidence of the seafloor spreading without going below the surface. The island of Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This means that as the sea floor is spreading so does the island. All of this provides evidence that the earth is much older than 6-10 thousand years old and that the continents used to be joined together in a large supercontinent. This also helps to explain the distribution of animal and plant life seen in the world as evolution explains.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
What if you're wrong?
This question is kind of amusing to me. Basically the question is asking, what if you spend all of your life as an atheist saying that god does not exist and then you die and find out there is a god? Well, I have to ask all religious people, what if you are wrong? What if instead of God we should be worshipping Allah or Yahweh? Or even if we should be still worshipping Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, or any number of other gods that Americans do not worship. Ultimately, I guess that a christian asking this question is wondering why an atheist may say there is no god and risk spending all of eternity in hell. If anyone happens to ask this question, I think that it should be redirected at them. Most people will invariably say that they are not wrong, they know that the one god that they have chosen to worship is the right one to pray to. The crazy thing is that this god is usually the same god that their parents worship as well. Most people do not even give any thought to why they pray to this particular god.
However, to really answer this question, I don't worry about it. I do not believe in god or hell so there is nothing to be scared of. When I die, that is all there is. And really, this life is all that I could ever ask for and that makes me the Happy Atheist.
However, to really answer this question, I don't worry about it. I do not believe in god or hell so there is nothing to be scared of. When I die, that is all there is. And really, this life is all that I could ever ask for and that makes me the Happy Atheist.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
February 12th
This day is one of extreme historical significance. The 16th President of the United States was born on this day in 1809 in Kentucky. He later moved to Indiana and finally found himself in Springfield, IL. He became a lawyer and state legislator. Finally he became the first Republican president in 1861. This man was shot at Ford's Theater in April 1865 by John Wilkes Booth after the South lost the Civil War. Yes, this man was Abraham Lincoln.
On the same day in the same year, but a whole ocean away in England another man was born. This man actually studied to be a doctor and clergyman and soon found himself as the naturalist of the "Beagle". The ship set sail in December of 1831 and finally returned in 1836. He travelled to South America and even the Galapagos Islands. Here he studied the finches and noticed the slight differences among the species. The "Beagle" circumnavigated the globe before returning to England. In 1859 he published On the Origin of Species. This man is one of the most celebrated and most despised men today even though he died in 1882. This man was Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin is associated with the theory of evolution that it is also called Darwin's Theory of Evolution or even just Darwinism. However, we almost would be calling it Wallace's Theory of Evolution or Wallacism. Alfred Russel Wallace was also a British naturalist who independantly came to the conclusion that species evolved through the process of natural selection. Wallace sent Darwin a letter stating that he was going to publish his findings. This prompted Darwin to finish his book.
Another player in the field of evolution was Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck had the idea that traits that were acquired in an animals lifetime would be passed on to the organism's offspring. An example would be if you cut off a rat's tail then its offspring would have short tails. This is not how evolution works and no scientist who studies evolution seriously would suggest as such. I recently read a book by Kenneth Poppe, an advocate of Intelligent Design, who suggested that Darwinists spread the idea that evolution works according to the ideas of Lamarck instead of Darwin himself. If you look at Dr. Poppe's book you can see that he has shows his true colors. He is trying to discredit evolution by misrepresenting facts in order to spread his own false creationistic beliefs. He wants to believe in god so evolution must be false. However, if you look at Richard Dawkins's books or Jerry Coyne's book "Why Evolution is True" you will see two examples of "Darwinists" not explaining evolution as Lamarck viewed it, but as Darwin viewed it using natural selection.
And we can test both ideas of evolution. No matter how many times we cut off a rat's tail, its offspring will never have offspring with shorter tails as a result. This we can test by actually cutting off a rat's tail and then breeding the rat. This is how and why Lamarckian evolution was proven false, by testing its predictions. Darwinian evolution using natural selection has been tested using the fossil record, DNA, and lab experiments (justs to name a few) and has not been proven false yet. Intelligent Design is not even science because it can be tested and it can not be falsified. I do believe evolution to be a fact, however if there was evidence against evolution (and creationists have not found any even though they claim they have, all they do is quote from the bible and misrepresent evolutionary facts while presenting no new facts or ideas of their own) and for a creator, I would change my mind. Claiming that there are gaps in the fossil record, that scientists disagree on certain aspects of evolution and that we don't know how life originated doesn't disprove evolution since all of these are commonly admitted to in the scientific community. Science uses evidence to help tell the story of human origins. When new evidence is found, the story changes. Creationists already have a set story and new evidence must fit into this story, if it doesn't it must be discarded. The rational for this is that god is testing the believers faith. What I see is a believer so desperate to believe in a god that they lie to themselves about the evidence. An example is the way that fossils have been laid down in the sediments of the earth. Evolution predicts that you would find simpler organisms followed by some more complex ones. Creationists must fit this information into their predetermined story. They do this by saying that after Noah's flood the animals were laid down in the order that we see from the fossil data. (The bible says nothing about the fossils being laid in any certain order. The reason for this is that the people who actually wrote the bible (and it wasn't god) didn't know about the fossils that later generations would discover.)
Another important player in the study of evolution and genetics was Gregor Mendel who studied the traits of peas. His findings were revolutionary and gave great insight into how traits are passed on from parent to offspring.
Anyway, on February 12th I will celebrate Abraham Lincoln's birthday because he was one of the greatest American presidents and is unlikely to be topped anytime soon. Plus, he gave his life for his country. He gave his life to keep the United States as one country and did what was ultimately best for the country, stopping the practice of slavery. Coincidently, slavery is condoned in the bible. I have not yet found a passage saying that slavery is bad. So, based on this issue alone I would not want to believe in the god of the bible.
However, more importantly I will be celebrating the birthday of Charles Darwin. He represents the truth of evolution and the lies the creationists tell themselves. So have a happy Darwin Day.
On the same day in the same year, but a whole ocean away in England another man was born. This man actually studied to be a doctor and clergyman and soon found himself as the naturalist of the "Beagle". The ship set sail in December of 1831 and finally returned in 1836. He travelled to South America and even the Galapagos Islands. Here he studied the finches and noticed the slight differences among the species. The "Beagle" circumnavigated the globe before returning to England. In 1859 he published On the Origin of Species. This man is one of the most celebrated and most despised men today even though he died in 1882. This man was Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin is associated with the theory of evolution that it is also called Darwin's Theory of Evolution or even just Darwinism. However, we almost would be calling it Wallace's Theory of Evolution or Wallacism. Alfred Russel Wallace was also a British naturalist who independantly came to the conclusion that species evolved through the process of natural selection. Wallace sent Darwin a letter stating that he was going to publish his findings. This prompted Darwin to finish his book.
Another player in the field of evolution was Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck had the idea that traits that were acquired in an animals lifetime would be passed on to the organism's offspring. An example would be if you cut off a rat's tail then its offspring would have short tails. This is not how evolution works and no scientist who studies evolution seriously would suggest as such. I recently read a book by Kenneth Poppe, an advocate of Intelligent Design, who suggested that Darwinists spread the idea that evolution works according to the ideas of Lamarck instead of Darwin himself. If you look at Dr. Poppe's book you can see that he has shows his true colors. He is trying to discredit evolution by misrepresenting facts in order to spread his own false creationistic beliefs. He wants to believe in god so evolution must be false. However, if you look at Richard Dawkins's books or Jerry Coyne's book "Why Evolution is True" you will see two examples of "Darwinists" not explaining evolution as Lamarck viewed it, but as Darwin viewed it using natural selection.
And we can test both ideas of evolution. No matter how many times we cut off a rat's tail, its offspring will never have offspring with shorter tails as a result. This we can test by actually cutting off a rat's tail and then breeding the rat. This is how and why Lamarckian evolution was proven false, by testing its predictions. Darwinian evolution using natural selection has been tested using the fossil record, DNA, and lab experiments (justs to name a few) and has not been proven false yet. Intelligent Design is not even science because it can be tested and it can not be falsified. I do believe evolution to be a fact, however if there was evidence against evolution (and creationists have not found any even though they claim they have, all they do is quote from the bible and misrepresent evolutionary facts while presenting no new facts or ideas of their own) and for a creator, I would change my mind. Claiming that there are gaps in the fossil record, that scientists disagree on certain aspects of evolution and that we don't know how life originated doesn't disprove evolution since all of these are commonly admitted to in the scientific community. Science uses evidence to help tell the story of human origins. When new evidence is found, the story changes. Creationists already have a set story and new evidence must fit into this story, if it doesn't it must be discarded. The rational for this is that god is testing the believers faith. What I see is a believer so desperate to believe in a god that they lie to themselves about the evidence. An example is the way that fossils have been laid down in the sediments of the earth. Evolution predicts that you would find simpler organisms followed by some more complex ones. Creationists must fit this information into their predetermined story. They do this by saying that after Noah's flood the animals were laid down in the order that we see from the fossil data. (The bible says nothing about the fossils being laid in any certain order. The reason for this is that the people who actually wrote the bible (and it wasn't god) didn't know about the fossils that later generations would discover.)
Another important player in the study of evolution and genetics was Gregor Mendel who studied the traits of peas. His findings were revolutionary and gave great insight into how traits are passed on from parent to offspring.
Anyway, on February 12th I will celebrate Abraham Lincoln's birthday because he was one of the greatest American presidents and is unlikely to be topped anytime soon. Plus, he gave his life for his country. He gave his life to keep the United States as one country and did what was ultimately best for the country, stopping the practice of slavery. Coincidently, slavery is condoned in the bible. I have not yet found a passage saying that slavery is bad. So, based on this issue alone I would not want to believe in the god of the bible.
However, more importantly I will be celebrating the birthday of Charles Darwin. He represents the truth of evolution and the lies the creationists tell themselves. So have a happy Darwin Day.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Call to Action
I am asking that everyone, whether they believe in a god or not, to be nice to someone today (and every day). Do a good deed. Call a family member or friend and just ask how they are doing. Open the door for someone, smile, pay someone a compliment. Try to volunteer some time to a cause that you believe in strongly. Donate some clothes or food for those less fortunate. Offer someone a light or buy someone a drink. Be a friend.
Each of us has a great ability to make someone's day a little brighter. Life is an amazing gift and everyday should bring us at least a little bit of joy. So enjoy your day and help someone else enjoy their day as well.
Each of us has a great ability to make someone's day a little brighter. Life is an amazing gift and everyday should bring us at least a little bit of joy. So enjoy your day and help someone else enjoy their day as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)