The Julie Blog

Random Atheist Tag Game

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:47:00 +0000

After a 4 month absence, I have decided to actually post again.

So I am going to join in on a tag game from ERV.

So here we go.

Q1. How would you define "atheism"?

The lack of a belief in any Gods/Goddesses. Normally accompanied by a lack of a belief in other crap such as New Age bollocks, Fairies, Ghosts, Fate, "Every thing happens for a reason" (I hate these people most of all, they wouldn't think that if they had cancer. They just like to say it because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside to not have to contemplate that the world doesn't give a shit about them.), etc.

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

None of my family are religious, but one of my schools was very religious. They got to me too late, I wasn't going to accept their bullshit.

Q3. How would you describe "Intelligent Design", using only one word?

Abracadabra!

Q4. What scientific endeavor really excites you?

I have to pick one?

Almost all physics I come across in my degree is exciting at some level. (Except vibrations and waves, but that may be more down to the lecturer). I also find lots of biology interesting.

Probably would go with nano-tec, just because I was really excited by imaging an atom on a Scanning Tunneling Microscope, during one of my first Labs. Even though it just looked like a fuzzy grey blob, I still really enjoyed it. So being able to manipulate individual atoms, and even see the electron waves is just awesome.

Q5. If you could change one thing about the "atheist community", what would it be and why?

Get rid of the whiners, who constantly claim that we shouldn't tell people that, the idea that an invisible sky wizard rules the world, is rather retarded.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said "I'm joining the clergy", what would be your first response?

Why was I not informed of your existence? Are you SURE that I am your dad?

But if I did have child and they wanted to join the clergy. I would probably inform that that they are wasting their lives, helping people talk to themselves, when they could actually do many more useful things.

Q7. What's your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?

Any version of the argument from design.
I refute with SCIENCE! (It works BITCHES!)

Q8. What's your most "controversial" (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?

Apart from the view that there is no God, there aren't many standard atheist views. so it is hard to be too controversial. But I do spend more time arguing with theists than most think is healthy.

Q9. Of the "Four Horsemen" (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?

Dawkins, I only very rarely seem to disagree with most things he says, and when I do most of the disagreements are relatively minor.

Hitchens, is great sometimes but I despise most of his politics, and find that many of his arguments against God, lack enough science.

Harris, I agree with more often than Hitchens, but there is something about his style of communication that bugs me a bit.

Dennett, I really need to get round to reading something by him.

So Dawkins wins.

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

Probably the Pope. I would love for him to suddenly stop and think.

Why the hell did I just wast my entire life here talking to nothing?
Why do so many people follow me when I have been talking such utter vacuous bollocks?
Why the fuck am I wearing these stupid robes, I look like a complete tit?
Hmm I should probably start campaigning for contraception and gay rights to make up for being a complete ass for the last 80 years.

So yeah, that's my answers. At this point I am meant to tag people. But I would be rather surprised if anyone with a blog reads this. But anyone reading this can consider themselves tagged.

Best article ever!

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:36:00 +0000

Read this! Read it slowly and take it all in. It is brilliant. The same logic from the article, equality for all and integration not segregation, can be put towards other issues like faith schools. Anyone who reads this blog (Laurence is about it I think! Hi Lozz!) will know that I have tried to raise these issues before, but I am not too eloquent.

In conclusion, if you still haven't read the article GET ON WITH IT!

Arch-nutjob replies (Not to me personally)

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:35:00 +0000

Yes, the stupid crazy fool who we all love to mock, Dr Williams, has replied to everyone who pointed out that what he said last week was a load of shit.

Let's see what he said.
Well he starts off with the usual, "I didn't really say it like that.", "Taken out of context.", etc. He also apologised and admitted it may have been his fault in being unclear.
Taking responsibility for being misunderstood is probably a compromise position. As if he carried on denying any fault people would get annoyed at him, yet if he admitted he was wrong then he would be admitting he said something stupid. So this way he can sneakily pretend he has apologised without actually apologising for what actually caused offence.

Moving on:

"I believe quite strongly that it is not inappropriate for a pastor of the Church of England to address issues about the perceived concerns of other religious communities, and to try and bring them into better public focus."

True in a free society anyone can address anything, what people were saying was not, "Don't comment on that!", but "That is a really really REALLY REALLY stupid comment." Most then went on to explain why it is such a stupid comment. So to claim that people aren't letting you address issues is bullshit. Just as you have the right to make a monumentally stupid comment, we all have the right to tell you are stupid.

OK, there isn't much more that I know of of the speech except:

The relationship between law and religion was a subject on which "Christians and people of other faiths ought to be doing some reflecting together", he added.

Apparently us immoral bastards, who need evidence before we believe in things, are not allowed to to comment on the relationship between laws (That affect us too) and religion. Maybe it is because we may make things fair for everyone, ruining their special status under the law?

In conclusion his reply was slightly more well though out but still extremely stupid, which makes me wonder about these kind of comments:

"We have probably one of the greatest and the brightest Archbishops of Canterbury we have had for many a long day. He is undoubtedly one of the finest minds of this nation. "

Finest minds? I have seen finer minds, behind the till at McDonalds, yes he has a lot of theology qualifications. This doesn't make you clever, with theology the whole idea is not to give a good argument but to

Give a good excuse they you have no argument.
OR
To think of an idea you want to be true, then think of a eloquent way to pretend a contradictory book agrees.
OR
To disguise your lack of argument using very complex language, so people just assume you know what you are talking about.

In general NOT an academic subject. Just an exercise in linguistic gymnastics.

In lighter news Gordon Brown has said he believes religious law should be subservient to UK law.
Which is in principle the same as my position, "I don't give one hoot of a flying fuck what you want to call a religious law, as long as it isn't an official law and doesn't break the actual law."

Arch-nutjob being nutty again.

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:04:00 +0000

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Rowan Williams) has said the government should let Muslims have the choice of using Sharia law instead of British law for some issues.

Let's hope not the right to kill apostates and adulterers.

Dr Rowan Williams said the UK had to "face up to the fact" some citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Well that doesn't give them the right to have their own legal system, if you choose to move to a new country with a completely different legal system, then you should be prepared to abide by it, if you want to live by a legal system like you had before, then stay where you are or move somewhere with a similar legal system.

I am not against immigration, but I am against giving immigrants different rights to everyone else, whether that is more rights or less rights. Democracy is built on equality, for this reasons no one should be exempt from the law.

Unfortunately Dr Williams, with his stupid views, has a position in our Government, let's hope we vote him out next election. Oh wait, he never was elected they just gave him a position in government just because he is a ranking member of a group of people who believe an invisible sky daddy is supreme dictator of the world.

My opinion on moderate Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:14:00 +0000

I have to say it is one of the hardest things to have a fixed opinion on, as moderate Christianity is so vapid and wishy washy it is hard to pick anything out to form an opinion on without it disappearing as soon as you start to question it.

But then recently one of my friends suggested I read a little book of his, which I am currently halfway through, and I think I have finally managed to form an opinion on moderate Christianity.

The book is called “Bacon sandwiches and Salvation” (I plan to review it fully when I finish) and is written by Adrian Plass, it claims to be and A-Z of Christian life. It is written in a style like a dictionary, taking a word or phrase then giving a short explanation for each. The book starts off funny but with about 6 puns and anagrams per page the humour quickly subsides (and turns into irritation) and I actually started to get a feel for the message in the book.

One of the main messages that stuck out like as sore thumb was, the message favoured by fundamentalist evangelicals, the message that if you don't die “with Jesus” you will be eternally tormented. But I found it more sickening from this source, as normally the fundamentalists are deadly serious when talking of this disgusting subject, they are trying to help you (in some sick perverted way), where as this Adrian bloke actually thought the subject, that 2/3 of the world will be eternally tormented when they die, was something of a light idea to joke about. Now I was hopeful that he didn't actually believe it but he does clarify himself:

Hell: (1) place of eternal unhappiness for those who have decided to refuse God's invitation to come home to him (2) a concept that has been denied or significantly diluted by many modern teachers and theologians. But before getting too excited by cheery optimistic views, it might be well to check with God that he actually goes along with them. The Creator of the universe can be very slow and (let's be brutally honest) a little dense when it comes to staying au fait with new exciting theological advances. (See also Good News)

I have many problems with part 1, especially the fact that I “have decided to refused God's invitation”, sorry but I don't thing this God guy exists, if I did then I would be in the position to refuse to go to the home of a genocidal maniac. As it stands though, I no more refused God's invitation than I refused the genies invitation to turn me into a prince (for those of you who are unsure I never met a genie!).

And the second part, well that is just disgusting, using light hearted language to explain that anyone who says I wont be eternally tormented is just wrong. Thanks Adrian, at least I am glad the subject of us non-believers in Hell is amusing to someone.

Now of course none of this talk of damnation scares me, it is like threatening to behead me with an invisible sword, it just isn't scary. The reason it bothers me so much, is the fact that this whole religion, is based on a central theme of, “We Christians are super, as long as we are fairly nice and apologise for our mistakes we will be eternally rewarded. Everyone else is going to be eternally tortured because they aren't one of us.” A theme which runs through the New testament and is normally visible somewhere even with the moderates. And this is taught to children before they are old enough to see it is just a disgusting tactic to keep people in line by fear, and soon enough we have a new generation of indoctrinated people to carry on the sick cult.

Now I should probably stop here and address the anyone saying “I am a Christian, I don't believe in any of that.”
There are many people who claim to be Christian, but when you question them they really are far from it.
Ask them directly on just about any story of the bible, and eventually they will conceded it isn't true, even while holding onto their core belief.
But it gets to a point where either they do actually believe that Jesus died for them, or they don't.
If they do then they have to explain why he was dying for them, if it wasn't so save them from the “lake of fire” mentioned in the same book that tells of this sacrifice.
If you can find me anyone with that answer I will add them to my list of Christians with out a sick cult-ish belief, which is currently zero.
The other option is no they don't really think Jesus died for them, but they like some of the things Jesus supposedly said, and they have some kind of feeling that there is more than just the material world. As far as I can see these people aren't Christians, they are 'spiritual' people who, while I still think are completely wrong, their beliefs are much less perverse.
Now of course, who am I to say these people are or aren't Christians? I am no one of course, but it seems to me to use a rather extreme analogy that these “Christians” are like people who are claiming to be Nazis because they think blonds are hotter than brunettes, they almost agree with one little bit while rejecting all the other completely vile bits. I do apologise again for the extreme analogy, I just couldn't think of a better one.

So in conclusion my opinions of moderate Christianity is that it is just as sick and twisted as the fundamental version, while trying to focus on making cakes and growing pretty flowers, instead of thinking about the implications of believing that 2/3 of the world are doomed wile they can carry on baking and gardening in eternal bliss. And none of them think that this God guy is a colossal DICK for damning most of the people in history to eternal torment for such a petty thing as not believing in one specific message from a bronze age book that got most things completely wrong.

Save Physics Petition

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:46:00 +0000

The UK government is planing to cut Physics funding considerably, affecting most UK Physics departments, some may even be facing closure.
Please sign this petition to the UK Prime Minister to reverse this devastating decision. (Open to UK residents only, I think.)

Link:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Physics-Funding/

Petition Text:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reverse the decision to cut vital UK contributions to Particle Physics and Astronomy.

Due to cost overruns the UK's funding agency for particle physics and astronomy, STFC, is recouping £80M with deep cuts to UK physics operations in these areas. These include ending the UK's involvement in the International Linear Collider - the next generation of particle physics experiment. This risks relegating the UK to second tier involvement in future research and critically damaging the country's standing within the community. Furthermore UK Astronomy will be seriously hit with up to a 25% cut in grants. This is incompatible with the government's stated aim of making Britain a world leader in science. A review of this decision has recently been announced and we urge the Prime Minister to press for another solution to this problem before UK physics is set back by decades.

Extra information:
(From an internal email at the Physics Department of Nottingham University, edited slightly)
The Science and Technology Facilities Council has announced huge cuts to support of particle physics and astronomy in the UK. There are also major consequences for mainstream physics in terms of the level of support available for running national experimental facilities. Some areas of the subject, like ground-based solar-terrestrial physics, are being axed entirely.

Nottingham's exposure to these disastrous cuts is fairly limited, but some of our colleagues in other physics departments, which depend on STFC for up to 80% of their funding, are facing serious cutbacks if not complete closure. Given the Government's commitment to supporting science, this seems a perverse position in which to find ourselves.

(From BBC News: Full article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7210342.stm)

UK astronomers will lose access to two of the world's finest telescopes in February, as administrators look to plug an £80m hole in their finances.
Observation programmes on the 8.1m telescopes of the Gemini organisation will end abruptly because Britain is cancelling its subscription.
...
Gemini is one of the international "science clubs" in which Britain has been a major partner and investor. It has a 23.8% share in the project (which also includes the US, Canada, Chile, Australia, Brazil and Argentina) and to date has invested some £70m in construction and running costs.
...

Britain will incur a penalty of about £8m for cancelling its Gemini membership early; but this would still save more than £15m in "subs" that no longer needed to be paid between now and 2012, according to the STFC's statement.

A stupid agnostic.

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:44:00 +0000

Now I don't really have much against agnostics, they normally seem to be wishy-washy people who for some reason can't decide if there is a dictator-wizard in the sky. Of course a rather strange position, but a far less bizarre one than the theists, who actively think there IS a dictator-wizard in the sky.

But I have found a very special agnostic, one who seems to know about as much about science as your average creationist. The author of AgnosticWeb.com.

In the beginning, we are told, was the Big Bang.

Correction: Scientific evidence shows the universe started in "The Big Bang", whether that was the beginning we still do not know. Also you have the problem of defining beginning as time started with the big bang. The main thing I object to is the "we are told" as the author is attempting to make it sound as though it is taken on faith not evidence.

After aeons, everything calmed down, cooled down, settled down, until conditions were just right for life.

The universe was just right for life? No. Part of one planet, orbiting one of the hundred billion suns in our galaxy, which is just one out of billions of galaxies, had the correct conditions for life (I should point out it is only correct for a certain type of life, as there may be other types of life we don't know about).
When you explain it properly it sounds far less of a coincidence, as it is far less than on billionth of a percent of the universe that was "just right for life".

Next, various inanimate globules of matter suddenly became animate and, at the same time, managed to reproduce themselves. They were very simple and very primitive, you understand, so you needn’t think too hard about them. A flash of lightning, perhaps, and the little bits of what’s-it came alive and straight away knew how to produce new generations of living what’s-its.

Now he if just getting stupider, I know many creationists who would love to be able to be this stupid, but just can't quite manage it.
Abiogenesis, the study of the formation of life, is actually a very interesting field of science, and is not a place where people make assumptions about spontaneous generation of "what’s-its". We know from experimentation that if you simulate the early atmosphere, with the correct gasses, water vapour and lightning, this produces amino acids (amino acids being the building blocks of life). Now to get evolution started we need self replicating entities, and there are many hypotheses for how this happened. To characterise abiogenesis as "globules of matter suddenly became animate" is just bollocks.

These simple, primitive life forms, which were totally unconscious and mindless, managed (over aeons) to combine themselves into new forms, and out of the blue developed sensitivity to light (= sight), sound, touch, smell, taste, organs that enabled them to eat, drink, move, and even reproduce in new ways. “Out of the blue” because these things had never existed before. The very concepts were totally new. Pick up a pebble, and ask yourself how you would make it see. Where would you, conscious though you are, even begin the process? And “out of the blue” also because if they hadn’t worked straight away, even in their most primitive form, they wouldn’t have survived. What is the use of something that doesn’t work? Imagine a primitive, blind eye reproducing itself and trying to perfect itself over thousands of years until at last the umpteenth generation of this particular creature is able to cry out (in its own language, which is another of the amazing inventions of the unconscious, mindless ones): “I CAN SEE!”

This nutjob didn't even do the slightest bit of research for this article, the evolution of the eye is actually rather easy to explain. Anyone who doesn't believe me please read Climbing Mount Improbable of if you cant be bothered then at least read the wikipedia article on the evolution of the eye. I would go into it my self but I am actually rather poor at explaining science when I am not in the mood, and also it would make this post way too long.
Also, no it wouldn't have to come "out of the blue". If no other organism has any form of sight, then any organism with just the ability to sense the presence/absence of light gains an advantage over others, remember these organisms had to survive in the conditions of those days, not the conditions now. Sight built up slowly from: being able to detect light; to beg able to detect which direction the light is coming from; to forming fuzzy images, to forming clearer and clearer images. Not: nothing...nothing...nothing...nothing... FULL SIGHT!
Similar arguments can be made for the other senses.

Or imagine a rudimentary penis hanging around for aeons, unable to perform, and of course waiting for a suitable, self-made vagina to insert itself into.

I would love to be able to mind read just so I could see what goes on on inside this morons head. Does he really believe that scientists think that first the penis formed and then by a stroke of luck a vagina formed aeons later. Evolution happens as very small changes, and it is not hard to think of a path from "fish sex" (female lays eggs on the sea floor, male sprays his semen all over them) to "mammal sex" (I hope most of my readers know how this works) where each step is tiny and is beneficial to both the male and female.

This is only the first paragraph of the stupid article and my brain has almost melted from the stupidity. So I send out a message to any sensible agnostics out there to tell the author of AgnosticWeb.com that he should modify his arguments for agnosticism, as not to tar all the agnostics with the brush of mental retardation.

Mesage to all faith schools:

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:45:00 +0000

FUCK OFF!

OK, now I have got that out of the way I should probably clarify my position in politer language. I would have started in a nicer way, but this is just one of those issues that is ridiculous.

I would like to divide up my complains about faith schools into four categories:

Why should we (the British public) have to contribute to schools that would discriminate against some of us.
Why should we have to pay for indoctrination.
Why is our government supporting a system that breeds "In group vs. Out group" thinking.
Why is it illegal to have a secular school?

Why should we (the British public) have to contribute to schools that would discriminate against some of us.

In this country faith schools are publicly funded, which means that everyone, whether of the faith or not is contributing to them equally. But these schools are allowed to discriminate against people of other faiths, by not allowing them entrance to the school (often unless they are baptised in the particular faith), or even one they are accepted they can still be denied the free school bus pass by the council (another example at the same school!).

Now you may think why the hell would anyone of a different faith (or no faith at all) want their child to be sent to a faith school? The answer for people of no faith is because it is not possible to have a secular school in England (see part 4), and almost a third of all schools are faith schools. The answer for people of different faiths is either because the other school has a better rating in the league tables, or because there is no school of their faith near by.

The better ratings a school has, the more popular it is, leading to a harsher entry program, which often leads to people of other faiths being excluded from the better schools. As almost one third of all schools are faith schools* in some areas this can lead to all children whose parents have no faith (or the wrong faith) will end up excluded from the best schools.

Now this is a ridiculous situation for any civilised country to be in. Everyone should be eligible for entry to every publicly funded school. And entry should be decided on academic merit, geographical location (It is wrong to force a child into a 2 hour trip to school when there is a school 5 minutes down the road), etc.

Of course the system isn't as bad as it sounds, in most areas the schools are not over subscribed, and Church of England schools will let children of non C of E parents in. Still of course you are more likely to get in if you are C of E, and they support the right of other schools to not let you in. Not to mention that you will have to pray to their god and go to their church as though you were part of the C of E.

(* 6,850 out of 21,000 British schools are technically faith schools, but by law in all state schools pupils must take part in a daily act of worship)

Why should we have to pay for indoctrination.

Religious schools teach that their religion is true, and often even teach you ideas such as "if you don't believe in God you will burn in hell". I can show you no statistics backing these points up, as I don't have access to any, and I severely doubt anyone has even collected data on what percentage of schools teach about hell and other horrific bible stories (such as Sodom and Gomorrah). I can tell you this however, that my school did, and so did the schools of many other people I know.
Also I know a few people from Catholic schools who were all taught that contraception, premarital sex, and masturbation are all sinful and dangerous!

Why is our government supporting a system that breeds "In group vs. Out group" thinking.

Many people support faith schools as "Multiculturalism" which I have to say is nothing but utter bollocks.
Multiculturalism is surely, many cultures getting on, and combing to from a society of diverse ideas. Which is the diametric opposite of what faith schools are creating, faith schools divide us up into small groups of people with the same cultures, stopping children of different cultures mixing and indirectly (possibly directly in some cases) teaching that they are a separate group from the others.

An extreme example of the problem of faith schools is Northern Ireland, a place where from a young age everyone was separated by their faiths because the faiths were fighting. Everyone then grew up without properly interacting with the people of the other group, making it easier for extremists to convince them to fight the other group.

Why is it illegal to have a secular school?

Now here is the most ridiculous idea of the lot. It is legally impossible to have a school that favours no religion. I am not talking of an atheist school that teaches their is no God and only accepts people with atheist parents, that is just a stupid as a faith school. I am talking about a school that devoted equal time to teaching about every religion, or lack their of, a school which does not force anyone to pray (or force them to not pray), a school that doesn't take religion into consideration when someone wants to join.

Dr Paul Kelley tried to create such a school but failed. Why did he fail you may ask? As this is obviously a school that would be fair to everyone.

One senior figure at the then Department for Education and Skills, told Kelley that bishops in the House of Lords and ministers would block the plans.

Those fucking nutjobs again? Those self-righteous bastards refuse to let anyone live their lives without the Christian sky daddy.

Not only this, schools who don't force pupils into daily acts of worship loose marks in Ofstead inspections, meaning they go down in the National league tables.

In conclusion our education system is shit, and I haven't even got on to the syllabus (which is also shite).

Christian Leadership Univeristy

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:00:00 +0000

A.K.A Nutjob diploma mill

I love it when I find crazy Christian websites. This one offers you a "Doctorate of Theology Degree". Which you of course have to pay for (approximately $4,000 which is about £2,027).

But it is good enough to tell to 10 reasons not do their stupid course, now most of the reason are strange:

I do not believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, and I cannot tolerate those who hold this intolerant belief.
I believe true education needs to be boring, meaningless, and have no relevance to my life.
I believe that speaking in tongues is of the devil.

But I have a feeling this is all fluff to disguise the main reason not to go to their "university":

I feel that my discipleship experience with Jesus must be accredited by the U.S. Department of Education if it is to have any value.

I love how they phase that sentence, it makes it appear that you are being up your self if you actually want your Doctorate to be officially accredited, instead of just certificate saying that some website classes you as one. Without it being accredited your title doesn't change to Dr.

Well they are accredited by the "Worldwide Accreditation Commission of Christian Educational Institutions"(WWAC) and "Apostolic Council for Educational Accountability" (ACEA).
But the WWAC and ACEA are both non-recognised accreditation agencies, so they may as well not be accredited

But then the do have 'good' reasons to encourage you to join them.

ou can hear God's voice every day of your life. You can be sure it's really Him. You can carry on an extended two-way conversation with Jesus Christ on a daily basis, and it's easier than you ever imagined.

Yes the teach you to actually hear an invisible wizard who doesn't exist talking to you. Now to me this seems to be:

(Who needs photoshop when you can get GIMP for free)

Another reason to join this crazy place is

The fast track to your degree

You are much closer to your Doctorate of Theology Degree than you realize. Bring in up to 50% of your degree through the combination of transcripts from other colleges and a Life Experience Portfolio. Put your past studies and experiences to good use and earn your Distance Learning Doctorate of Theology Degree faster than you ever thought possible!

Now I understand that experience or other college courses may help, but 50% of your Doctorate for them is a bit insane, no wonder they aren't accredited!

But worst of all, one of the things you have to complete for this doctorate, is on-line quizzes about he bible, each of which you have to get 70% on.
Worst of all? (I hear you say) That doesn't sound bad!
It is bad because they are multiple choice, with unlimited time, and most of the questions are very easy to google (I achieved 90% in little over 5 mins, on a part of the bible I mostly haven't read.). You can also do these quizzes if you are not a student (This is how I did one), there is only one quiz for each block, and it tells you the correct answers at the end. So you could do the quiz without submitting your "university" information, then get the answers and use them when you do the quiz for real. (Now the site doesn't look clever enough to check your IP for this behaviour, but even if it was, you could got to an internet cafe for the first go, and write the answers down.)

To conclude, this is a funny place, until you realise that these cranks may have ripped hundreds (there are hundreds of testimonies, though they could be made up) of people off, and become rich.

Wankers

(Well probably not that would be 'sinning')

{On second thoughts, probably, as I am sure ripping gullible people off is also probably a sin, and they do that}

[Actually on third thoughts it probably isn't a 'sin' to rip gullible people off, seeing as that is the basis of most religions.]

How is this news?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:12:00 +0000

Apparently the Guardian though that a religious person suggesting that atheists can be moral was news.
I suppose a Bishop going public with a statement that isn't stupid could be considered news? But still I do find it rather insulting that people even feel the need to make statements such as "You can be moral without God."

But the Bishop of Oxford seems a bit mixed up over the whole issue. He admits you can be moral without God, but then tries to back pedal and link our morality to God at the end.

He first briefly mentions the evolutionary roots of morality (as laid out in the God Delusion), and seems to agree with them.
Then he goes on to look at some studies, on how moral judgements are similar across many different cultures.
Then instead of following a logical conclusion that if we have evolved certain aspects of out morality then that explains why we share it across many cultures, he says:

This is no surprise to monotheists who believe that all of us, whatever we believe or do not believe, have been created in the image of God and this means we have an ability not only to think, but to have some insight into what is right and what is wrong.

What he seems to forget is this comes as no surprise to atheists either seeing as it is what you would predict from the theory he mentioned at the start of the article. I don't expect him to take this as evidence against God, or anything of the sort, I just think he misrepresented the evidence as being contradictory to the evolutionary theory.

Then he complains about atheists "slagging off" theists for "stopping people acting with moral maturity" but gives doesn't address the claim that maybe theists ARE stopping people acting with moral maturity.
For instance when religion get involved with blocking stem cell research, banning condoms, etc. Instead he takes it as obvious that these statements are incorrect.

Then he tops it all off. In response to another part of the God Delusion, he says.

But this overlooks a number of points. First, many people who have strong moral commitments without any religious foundation were shaped by parents or grandparents for whom morality and religion were fundamentally bound up. Moreover, many of those in the forefront of progressive political change, who have abandoned religion, have been driven by a humanism that has been essentially built up by our Christian heritage

Now wait a second, he seems to be backtracking here. Infact he has backed him self 2 miles of the nearest logical cliff and fallen into a deep ocean of stupidity.
He has now claimed that, atheists can be moral, but they have learned there morality from religion, either directly or indirectly.
But this makes no sense, look at the religious morality at the origin of the religions, as spelled out in the holy books, it is diabolical, it is bronze age madness. Look out our morality today, it is very different, and it has been shaped by both religious and secular people over the years. There is no conclusive evidence that our moral shift came from religion, even when the moral progressives were religious their ideas could have equally come about through empathy and moral philosophy rather than theology.
Not only this, but look at the difference between the morality today of religious and non religious people, it mostly the same apart from in religion, especially among the more fundamental, we have much more homophobia, we have people trying to decide for you if you can use contraception, etc. We have churches refusing to accept moral advances and hanging on to the ideas that most of us see as immoral. This directly contradicts the Bishops hypothesis.

In conclusion, while the Bishop of Oxford is not an insane nutjob like the some of his peers (Bishop of Carlisle being a shining example), he still is throwing around the idea that morality needs religion, using diabolically poor arguments. The only reason he can have his opinions spread around the country by one of our biggest newspapers, is that he is a bishop, if such an article was presented by anyone else it would have never reached such a place on merit.

Edit: The article was by Richard Harries, who was the Bishop of Oxford from 1987 - 2006 but no longer is.

Maybe it is cause for concern.

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:11:00 +0000

After a tiny bit of reading around it seems that the Pope's decision out create exorcist squads could well be very bad news.

There are cases of mentally ill teenagers spending years having hundreds of exorcisms, including ones by the Pope himself, instead of them seeking proper psychiatric treatment.

There are cases of people being killed in exorcisms, and of the nuns and priests involved not feeling any remorse.

We already have cases of English doctors attempting exorcisms on patients.

According to another article on the nun who was killed.

In 1999, when the Vatican issued its first new guidelines since 1614 for driving out devils, it urged priests to take modern psychiatry into account in deciding who should be exorcised.

Let us hope that the new "exorcist squads" are trained to follow this, as it will hopefully minimise the damage.

But it would be easier is if the superstitious bastards just moved out of the middle ages. This shit is ridiculous.

Blogger isnt retarded, it was me.

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:50:00 +0000

Template problems solved.

It looks like I made a cock up with the html.

Oh you silly, silly Pope.

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:55:00 +0000

Now I may be wrong here, but I thought that most people in these enlightened days had stopped blaming the Devil and demons for bad things. That people who believed the Internet and rock music caused people to get dangerously involved in the occult and start channeling demons through them, were just lunatics that post people giggle at and ignore.

But the current head of the 'Institute for Child Rapists and Christian Fascists' aka the Catholic Church, believes otherwise. You know, that guy who walks around carrying a metal staff with a dying/dead man on the end.Yes, Mr. Nazi Pope himself had decided to "to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism."

Now this isn't really a big deal, especially compared to when he tells people not to use condoms, or not to trust science, or when he hides child rapists from the proper authorities. It is just a slight cause for concern that he has 1 BILLION followers, but it more important to laugh at the old fool.

They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness."

Satanism isn't Godlessness, for if you are a satanist you would logically believe in God, but just thing that God is more of a c*nt than the devil. (If you take the bible literally then you would be correct, god kills, maims and tortures far more people in the bible than Satan does.)
Godlessness, as far as I can see, is believing that "The chump ain't real."

What do the other Catholics think about, "His Holiness' " comical decision?

Father Gabriele Amorth:

"Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on,"

"Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.

"Thankfully, Benedict XVI believes in the existence and danger of evil - going back to the time he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."

This man seems like he is just as crazy as the Pope, but then he is the senior exorcist of Vatican City. So it isn't really a fair target, but it is a funny target. In the past he has asserted many crazy things such as.

"A curse can originate from such things as maledictions by close relatives, a habit of blaspheming, membership in the Freemasonry, spiritic or magic practices, and so on."

Well let that be a lesson to us all. If you don't want to be "cursed" stay away from magic, just don't try it, you know stick to just reading about it in happy children's books? Oh...

Father Amorth was also one of the voices that made public warnings to parents about J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, noting that the books attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in fact, the distinction "does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil.

Oh, this guy makes it too easy to mock him, he is actually insane. He also believes Hitler and Stalin were possessed by demons.

Maybe everyone at the Vatican is this nutty, but I will have to investigate that another day.

Song

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:45:00 +0000

Now I guess the only people who read this blog are people who I have bugged to read it, and therefore are people who i already have forced to listen to this song.
But on the off chance that I am wrong, this song is brilliant:

Listen to it!

Blogger is being retarded

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:59:00 +0000

Blogger is being retarded, so for some reason, the template only works on the main page, and all posts are screwed.
Hopefully it will be sorted soon.

Barry Morgan puts the Mor in Moron

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:55:00 +0000

I recently wrote a post about how stupid the Archbishop of Canterbury was, but I should have waited a few days, because the slightly less senior Archbishop of Wales is much more openly a retarded nutjob.

The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, has described a rise in "fundamentalism" as one of the great problems facing the world.

A very true statement here, just look at the facts.

Fundamentalist Islam attempting to blow the world up to rid it, free speech (especially in cartoons) and of inappropriately named teddies.
Fundamentalist Christianity bombing abortion clinics and trying to teach religion in science classes.
Or perhaps most comically,
Fundamentalist Hindus stopping the development of canals because the land bridge was built by a army of sacred monkeys.

But let's look at what Dr Barry Morgan (Another doctorate in the non-subject of theology) was most worried about.

He focused on what he described as "atheistic fundamentalism".

Holy shit! Now I have never heard that one before, (well except that that exact phrase returns about 10,700 websites on google and "atheist fundamentalism" returned 38,500 websites, sarcasm rules again) the clever doctor must have thought it up all by himself.
Before we go into what these fundamentalists (I suppose Dr Nutjob would probably put me into this category) have done to destroy society. Lets just look at his terminology.

Noun

fundamentalism

(religion) The tendency to reduce a religion to its most fundamental tenets, based on strict interpretation of core texts.
(finance) The belief that fundamental financial quantities are the best predictor of the price of an instrument.
The beliefs held by those in this movement.
Strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles.

So Atheism being just the lack of a belief in god, nothing more nothing less.
1. has to be obvious bollocks because we have no sacred texts
2. Is about finance so is irrelevant
3. Atheism isn't a movement, we hold no beliefs in the supernatural that is all that links us.
4. Atheism itself has no ideas or principles, except that lack of existence of the supernatural, all other ideas and principles an atheist has are their own.

So the term "atheistic fundamentalism" makes no sense in any context of the word fundamentalism. Thank you Dr Morgan for making your stupidity so upfront it was easy to expose.

Well, even though his terminology is stupid, what truth is there in his argument that "atheistic fundamentalism" IS one of the greatest problems in the world.

He said it led to situations such as councils calling Christmas "Winterval", schools refusing to put on nativity plays and crosses removed from chapels.

OH NO! They called Christmas Winterval? Forget, war, terrorism and openly lying to children someone renamed a Christian festival.
First of all how is this a great problem? I know Winterval is a stupid name, I call it Christmas, most atheists call it Christmas, including famous Atheists like Richard Dawkins. The people who are changing the names of religious festivals are nor the irreligious, we don't care, it is being renamed as to not offend people of other religions in a case of political correctness gone mad.

Second, this is pretty bloody hypocritical of the Chirstians to complain when people rename their festivals, seeing as their festivals are just renamed pagan festivals, with a couple of new ideas thrown on top. What does mistletoe and holly have to do with Jesus' birth? Pagans used it as decorations celebrating fertility, the white berries of mistletoe represented semen and the red berries of holly represent menstruation fluid. The bunnies and eggs at Easter also represent fertility, bunnies represent "going at it like bunnies" and eggs, well that is obvious. Also the Christians even failed to rename Easter when they hijacked it, it was originally a festival celebrating the Pagan Goddess Easter.
Now Winterval is a stupid name, and Merry Christmas is in my opinion much nicer sounding than Happy Holidays, but Chrsitans are in no position to complain about people changing their festivals.

Right back to what "atheistic fundamentalism" has done to the world.

He said it advocated that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance, and that some view the faith as "superstitious nonsense".

OK, this one is defiantly aimed at people like me, again I must point out:

WAR
TERRORISM
MURDER
CHILD RAPE (You reading this Pope Beny 16? Child rape is bad!)
ALL OTHER RAPE
ASSAULT
BANNING CONTRACEPTION IN AIDs RIDDEN COUNTRIES
ETC

I wonder what kind of world Dr Morgan lives in, where someone calling faith nonsense is on par with the above things.

Now onto my defence. If Dr Morgan, or anyone else, can give me a good reason why Christianity is any less stupid than believing that a pack of Gnomes are running around in my computer to make it work, then maybe I will stop thinking it is so stupid. Normally the only arguments that are given are:

Arguments from personal experience - Normally dubious ones with other explanations much more likely than an invisible man controlling the universe.
Argument from personal incredulity - "I can't imagine how this would happen without a higher power," which is a backwards explanation as it is postulating something more complicated than the original problem.
Argumentum ad populum - Basically, "Many people believe it, therefore it must have some merit." This is a logical fallacy, if the argument had merit then you would be able to explain it with appealing the large numbers of suporters.
And other equally useless arguments.

So in conclusion Dr Morgan, if you want me to not call your faith nonsense, you will have to show me that it isn't nonsense. Not that it is true, just that it is more likely to be true than anything I could just make up.

What other terrible destruction has "atheistic fundamentalism" caused?

As well as leading to Christmas being called "Winterval," the archbishop said "virulent, almost irrational" attacks on Christianity led to hospitals removing all Christian symbols from their chapels, and schools refusing to allow children to send Christmas cards with a Christian message.

Well I don't agree with the, removing of religious symbols or stopping children sending religious cards. (I don't want to sound repetitive but, war? famine? HIV?) He has offered no evidence that it was atheists at all. It sounds like another instance of political correctness gone mad.

Any more?

He also said it led to things like "airlines refusing staff the freedom to wear a cross round their necks" - a reference to the row in which British Airways (BA) suspended an employee who insisted on wearing a cross necklace.

Can you believe it, because of us atheists, religious people have to follow the dress code of the job that they applied for. The problem wasn't the cross, but the fact that the dress code didn't allow any necklaces. If you MUST wear a miniature Roman execution device around your neck, then don't apply for jobs that don't let you wear things around your neck. Problem solved.

Dr Morgan said: "All of this is what I would call the new "fundamentalism" of our age. It allows no room for disagreement, for doubt, for debate, for discussion.

Fundamentalism? No, we have been through this.
Atheists shut down debate and discussion? It is Christians, not all Christians but many, who say that they are 100% sure, that doubt is bad (parable of doubting Thomas), that what ever way the evidence turns they will still believe. Where as most atheists say "show me evidence", so on the contrary, it is the religious who allow no room for debate.

Then we have some pointless waffle about how lovely the story in Luke's Gospel is, irrelevant and questionable. Then he says:

"God is not exclusive, he is on the side of the whole of humanity with all its variety."

I guess he never read the old testament where God was happy to kill anyone for the crime of not being an Israelite, the Racist.

I will leave it there, and conclude that the Arch-nutjob of Wales doesn't even understand the concept of global problems.
The Anglican church is meant to be a calm reformed church, without crazy nutjobs, yet the the Archbishop of Wales and the Bishop of Carlisle are trying very hard to put an end to that.
Or maybe it is hard to have an organisation that worships an invisible man creating the universe without harbouring nutjobs?
But I think this makes it very obvious that Anglican Bishops don't deserve a privileged place in the House of Lords any more than drunk homeless men with a dogs and a harmonicas.

Less evil, just as stupid.

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:04:00 +0000

Has anyone even heard of Dr Rowan Williams? He is the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Head of the Anglican church. As far as I can see he is less evil than the pope, but just as stupid. In this respect both he and Joe Ratzinger, accuratly depict their churches.

First of all he has a doctorate, who am I, just an undergraduate, to call him stupid?

Well I am doing a real world subject (Physics) which relies on your ability to understand the world around you. He has a doctorate in a subject where you start with an ungrounded assumption (God exists) then use fuzzy language to "show" whatever you originally wanted to show. Which isn't a way of finding out about the world, but more a way of pretending to be sophisticated when claiming what ever the hell you want to.

Anyway we decide if someone is stupid not by their qualifications, but by what they have to say, so here I plan to show what Dr Rowan says is really stupid, then from that conclude that HE is stupid.

So here we go.

First of all, recently Dr Williams said a few things on the Jesus story.
He said most of the story we are taught as children is a myth, and how did he decide which bits are really true and which bits aren't?

The archbishop said his approach was to stick strictly to what the Bible says.

Now normally the correct thing to do at this point would be to show how many things the bible got utterly wrong, therefore showing you cant trust is to tell you what is and isn't accurate. But in this case we don't need to, for he isn't a biblical literalist, I will put a supporting quote later. This puts him in a rather stupid position, he could have claimed the Bible to be infallible and then decided what is correct based on what is inside, or he could have said the Bible is not meant to be taken at face value and then looked for other evidence when deciding what is true and what isn't.

But apparently if you have a doctorate in theology you can claim the bible is a source of all knowledge, except for the bits we know are wrong. With no other book would people accept thing inside as true, with no supporting evidence, when so much of the book had been shown to be incorrect. It is insanely stupid.

OK my promised quote of Dr Williams denouncing biblical literalism, in this case creationism:

"I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... so if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's - there's just been a jar of categories, it's not what it's about."

I promise you I did not purposefully pick an example of him being extra waffly, he just talks like this. It is a common trick in theology to say as many words as you can without ever actually saying anything of substance. (A really master of this is Alistair McGrath who can give an hour long talk without actually saying anything at all.) The benefit of such a way of talking is you can say very, silly things, or very obvious thing, but make them sound intellectual. So lets dissect this quote and see what he is actually saying.

Removing the fluff, and the speaking error,

"I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... so if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's - there's just been a jar of categories, it's not what it's about."

We get,

I think creationism is a category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... so if creationism is presented as an alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's just been a jar of categories, it's not what it's about.

Taking the bit in green, he is saying the creationism is mistaken to think the bible is a theory like other theories. Which could be expressed as "The bible is not a theory like other theories."
So we now have:

The bible is not a theory like other theories, so if creationism is presented as an alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's just been a jar of categories, it's not what it's about.

Next we have to deal with the fuzzy language like "jar of categories". Taking the whole green bit I think he is implying that: if we present creationism as an alternative to science then we are dividing them into separate categories, and we shouldn't. Or more simply that "We shouldn't make people decide between science and creation."
So we can condense the waffle down again to give us:

The bible is not a theory like other theories, we shouldn't make people decide between science and creation.

Now when you look at it the first part is rather useless, so we can discard that. And for clarity, (a theologians worst nightmare) it is normally best to use positive language when explain things.
So I think (though you can never be too sure), what Dr Williams really said was.

People can believe both evolution and creation.

Well, now we can see what he is saying we can look at if it is true. Which as far as I can see it is and it isn't. I kno this is unclear, but unlike a theologian I will try to clarify my opinion.
While it is possible to believe both if you are happy with believing two contradictory things at the same time, as many religious people are. Or if you only accept part of each of them.
But if you are going to fully accept the science, then creation goes out the window, because evolutionary theory explains everything from the start of life. So if you wanted to add creation to the science you would have to have a God who made the first replicating "thing", then got bored and left. But this is just putting God in the gaps of science, which in the past has shown to fail because as scientific knowledge grows, God shrinks. Also it is not like we have no idea how life started, there are many hypotheses and many supporting experiments, look it up, the field of science which studies life's origins is called abiogenesis.

Anyway I was getting off topic, the point is that Dr Williams dresses up simple statements with so much fluff it is hard to show he is incorrect because you don't really know what he said.

Ok. What other stupid things has this man
said?

I will just do one more and I will do a quick one, for as you saw above it takes a long time to dismantle theological babble.

According to a The Sydney Morning Herald:

He went on to say that while he believed in it himself, new Christians need not leap over the "hurdle" of belief in the virgin birth before they could join the church.

He said the virgin birth was "part of what I have inherited".

I thought this was worth quoting because it shows how thinking is not an important part of becoming a doctor of theology, or head of a church. While I can see his point in the first bit, to believe in the fundamentals of a religion you need not believe all of it, and personally I think the virgin birth is far less ridiculous than some of the other things that you do have to believe to be a Christian, but who is asking me. The important part is the second bit, his reasons for believing.

How can you inherit a belief? The only way I can think of is by being told it when you are young enough to believe anything, and never fully questioning why you believe it. Now this is a pretty poor reason for anyone to believe anything, but much worse for someone with so many qualifications in the field of religion. For someone of his "status" to not even question the things he was taught as a child doesn't say much for his field of study, surely if theology was an intellectual pursuit it would encourage thinking and discussion on all these points.
That someone can have have been a lecturer on a subject and still have not questioned what he was told about it as a child has to discredit theology as a proper degree, can you imagine an authority in any other subject claiming the reason why they support a certain aspect of it is because there family always believed it?

In conclusion, Dr Rowan Williams is just another religious nutjob, who doesn't deserve the title Dr as his subject, theology, doesn't deserve a place in any university (or even deserve a place in any colleges, schools or nurseries for that matter).

**CORRECTION: He is the is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, but not actual Head of the Anglican church, that is the British monarch. - Thank you Alex.

That scary evil dude (The pope)

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:07:00 +0000

The Pope.
Should we listen to what he has to say, or dismiss him as a crazy man who is out of touch with reality and the modern world?
I mean he did wear this hat...

not to be festive, but because he thought it was a nice hat.
In my opinion when you start wearing red hats with white fir in the winter, and don't even think it may be mistaken as a Santa hat, you have started to loose touch with the world.

Moving on what does the Darth Sidious look alike have to say on important issues? This is more important than making Ad Hominem attacks on the poor guy, but I may slip in a few more because it is so easy when he looks like this...

So lets look at what he has to say about real world issues (please remember people listen to what he has to say).

Using condoms to prevent HIV:

"The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids."

The Pope warned that contraception was one of a host of trends contributing to a "breakdown in sexual morality", and church teachings should not be ignored.

Great, so based on his interpretation of a bronze age book that doesn't even mention contraceptives, as they hadn't been invented, he is willing to advise millions of people not to use condoms, even though it would save their lives. This is what is known as genocidal stupidity.

What else has the evil pope said/done?

On a minor note he believe that Harry Potter books are evil. (I will agree that 6 and 7 were pretty crap, but I don't know about evil!)

"It is good that you, esteemed and dear Mrs. Kuby, enlighten the people about Harry Potter, because there are subtle seductions, that act unconsciously, deeply distorting Christianity in the soul, before it can properly grow"

And people believe this nutjob is infallible?

Next, a big one.

Crimen Sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope.
It instructs bishops on how to deal with allegations of child abuse against priests and has been seen by few outsiders.
Critics say the document has been used to evade prosecution for sex crimes.

Crimen Sollicitationis, was a confidential document which tells church officials to move priests, who are suspected of crimes such as child abuse, to a new area so they wont be caught and shame the church. It also goes into details on how to silence the accusers. Don't take my word for it, read it, I have linked to it above.
Not only this but Vatican City hides convicted priests and fights the extradition orders of countries where they are wanted.

In my opinion, anyone who can enforce a document that helps child abusers avoid the law, is a sick twisted individual. This man is someone who is happy to let children be sexually abused as long as no one finds out.
You can watch the panorama documentary on the subject on google video.

Now it is possible to go on all day about the things the Nazi Pope has done/said, so I will stop after just one more.

His recent papal encyclical not only attacks atheism with too many logical fallacies for anyone to consider. (His argument basically consists of: Communists were atheists, communists killed many people, therefore atheism is to blame for many deaths. Which is as logically sound as: McDonalds is a business, McDonalds have made many people fat, therefore business itself is to blame for the obesity.)
What I was more annoyed about was what he said on the subject of technology.

In the second encyclical of his papacy, Benedict urges Christians to put their hope for the future in God and not in technology, wealth or political ideologies which can often be deluding.Post Options

Now, quickly skipping over the old claims of money being evil and politics being corrupt, which I can't be bothered with. What the hell does "His Holiness" have against technology? There was a time when we valued God over technology, it is known as the Dark Ages! A time where everything was pretty fucked up from every ones point of view.
Oh except that the Pope had just as much power, if not more, than most of the world leaders. Hmm I wonder why he wants the world to return to the Dark Ages?

In conclusion the Pope is a selfish man who cares more about the power of his church than of the suffering of abused children, people suffering from AIDs and the benefits of modern technology. What a great man to be leader of 1billion Catholics, and no wonder they have to claim he is infallible, otherwise no one would ever listen to a crazy word he said.

War or CO2 Neutral electricity?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:55:00 +0000

A recent estimate for the total cost of the Iraq war to America is $2.4TRILLION, which to be honest is a pretty hefty sum of money for a failed war. Now I admit Saddam Hussein was a dick of immense proportions, but the state of affairs as they stand are worse than when he was alive, he had no WMDs and the oil the American government wanted has gone significantly up in price.

So instead of going to war, what could the USA have done with $2.4trillion? (Inspired by cdk007) Well I was inspired by the my local university which is spending £8million on a CO2 neutral power plant running on woodchips, which it gasifies.
So converting the $2.4trillion into GBP we get £1.188trillion. At £8million a power plant, that is 148,500 power plants.
Each of these power plants produces 1.4MW of electricity and 2MW of heat (which can be used to heat local buildings).
So 48,500 power plants could produce 1.82trillion kWh of electricity a year, and 2.6trillion kWh of heat each year.
Even if the heat was wasted, instead of being pumped into buildings, the electricity produced is 11.5% of the World's 15.81 trillion kWh yearly usage, (Based on the CIA world factbook.) or 47.7% of USA's 3.816 trillion kWh yearly usage.

Now USA attacked Iraq for oil, and oil is only used for 38% of the world wide power generation (I don't know the exact statistics for the USA), assuming the USA is approximately the same, not only could they stop using oil for electricity, they could also use the gasified wood not used for electricity generation and condense it into liquid fuel for transport, using the Fischer-Tropsch process.

So in conclusion, If the USA wanted to spend its money wisely, instead of wasting it failing to get oil from Iraq, it could have significantly reduced its need for the oil in the first place. Also it could sell these CO2 neutral power plants to power companies, or keep them and use them for income. Where as they definitely can't sell the Iraq war to anyone, the money is wasted.

That Bible thing

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:01:00 +0000

You know that big thick book that is probably lying around in your house gathering dust? The one that seems to follow you to every hotel room? The thing that apparently contains ultimate truth, as long as you ignore all the contradictions, factually incorrect statements and immoral rules?

Well I decided to try and read the whole thing, I am currently in Exodus (second book), and I thought I would talk about the bits that never seemed to make it to the first school assemblies. From the obvious ones, Cain killing Abel because God didn't like his carrots, to the obscure ones, Noah condemning his grandson because his dad (Noah's son) saw him naked (accidentally because Noah passed out in his tent after drinking too much wine).

So I though I would quickly list the assholes so far.

God - For apparently punishing EVERYONE, because someone once ate the wrong fruit.
Cain - For killing his brother because God preferred meat over vegetables.
Lot - For offering his daughters to an angry mob who wanted to rape angels.
God - For destroying two cities because some of the inhabitants were "sinful".
God - For killing Lot's wife because she thought "don't look back was metaphorical".
Lot daughters - For raping their dad.
Abraham - For being willing to kill his son for God.
Jacob - When his brother came to his house, dying of hunger, he refused to feed him unless his brother traded his birthright. (All he gave him was lentil soup and bread!)
Jacob - Because he tricked his blind father into giving him his brothers blessing. (Bit of a bastard thing to do, even if the blessing is worthless!)
Simeon and Levi - For killing an entire city, because the king's son had slept with their sister. (He didn't run off, he had asked to marry her, he had been circumcised for her, his dad (the king) had been circumcised for her, even everyone else in the city had been circumcised! But they still killed them all.)
Joseph - Famous for being the nice guy who saved Egypt from the famine, but he didn't do it out of kindness. He and the Pharaoh used the 7 years of good harvest to cheaply buy all the excess grain, waited till the famine and sold it to the poor farmers for inflated prices. By the time the famine ended, everyone in Egypt was bankrupt except Joseph and the Pharaoh.
God - He caused the famine in the first place.
Moses - For killing an Egyptian who beat one of the Hebrews.
God - Who remembers the story of the plagues of Egypt where the Pharaoh was too stubborn to let the Hebrews go, and waited until thousands, maybe even millions had been killed in the plagues? Well that is actually not what really happened. Actually every time the Pharaoh tried to let them go God used his mind control magic to change his mind. So really he was just doing the plagues for fun, because the Israelites had been free to go after the first 2 or 3.
God - For changing the Pharaoh's mind yet again, so he sent his army after the Israelites.
God - For convincing the Pharaoh's army to follow Moses into the Red Sea, so he could drown them all.

Well that is all I can think of off the top of my head. As you can see God by far wins on the being an asshole count, even if we take in to account his advantage of being alive the longest.

Stay tuned for more bible stories as I get further through the book. Currently I am at a boring bit where it just lists rules, and gives instructions for how to build God a tent with a gold table, made out of everyone gold.

Until then, goodbye!

Creationist nutjobs invade the UK

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:23:00 +0000

(Apologies for the strong language.)

Right, we all know there are many retarded (or willfully ignorant) English people who still don't accept science, but normally these nutjobs have the courtesy to SHUT THE FUCK UP! But now they want to build a Christian theme park. Now this doesn't sound too bad, I mean the religious already have schools and churches to indoctrinate their children into their beliefs, so why not let the children have fun while they loose their grip on reality? Why? Because they are not only teaching them that:

An invisible man in the sky runs the universe.
He will decide if you will be tortured forever, based wholly on what you believe.
That belief without evidence is better than REALITY!
That by saying a prayer over bread and wine you can REALLY turn it into flesh and blood that, looks, tastes, smells and has the exact chemical make up of the original bread and wine.
That your brain doesn't really control your thoughts and memories, that is just an illusion, it is actually your immaterial soul. And the fact that drugs, hits to the head, Alzheimer's, and other things that affect you brain CHANGE these functions, is merely a "disconnection" between you and your soul? WTF?
That a bronze age book is the source of morality, as long as you ignore the immoral bits!
That is is a nice thing to decorate your houses with miniature roman execution devices.
That someone else can, two thousand years ago, be a scapegoat for all your "sins" along as you apologise.
ETC

Along with all this SHIT they...

will champion the book of Genesis and make a multi-media case that God created the world in seven days.

Seven days? Now before someone, somewhere, even thinks about possibly saying: "We can represent the days as periods of time, because of the original Hebrew meaning of the word day." Lets do what we always get told to do. Read it in context.
So lets look at a KJV:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Now what time period has both morning and night? You got it, a 24 hour day.

So back on topic, these nutjobs want to claim the earth was created in: 168 hours, but he rested for the last 24, so really the world was created in 144 hours.
STUPIDITY ALERT!!!
Now this isn't the time for me to go into the REASONS why this is stupid, though it should be blatantly obvious to anyone with more than 4 brain cells, I will try to go into this in more detail on the main site, when I finally get round to moving it onto serif. (Which I started yesterday.)

So the main point is there may be a theme park in England, promoting NOT-THINKING, and SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE. This is so backwards it is unbelievable.

Now who is funding this £3.5 million venture of stupidity? We don't know, but people think it may be Sir Peter Vardy. The man who owns religious school, that TEACH CREATIONISM, but the government is fine with it because they got a good ofsted report. (Surly all that means is that someone should investigate ofsted for incompetence.)

So now all that there is to do congratulate Wigan Council for refusing permission for them to build it there, and to let our concerns be known to any other council that considers it!

</rant>

The Julie Blog has arrived

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Stirling) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 23:35:00 +0000

The day the whole world has been waiting for is here, the day of The Julie Blog is here!

It will be no ordinary blog, it will consist of: lots of ranting, some science, way to much complaining about religion, terrible humour, terrible spelling errors and most importantly ME.
Now I hear you say, "But that IS an ordinary blog."
And you would be correct, but hopefully I now have your attention.

Now probably anyone reading this is one of my friends, who already knows (and of course loves) me, but if you don't know me, there is an 'About Me' on my main site (link in side bar). I must warn you that this, and the entire rest of my site is horribly out of date because the program I wrote it on is incompatible with Vista and I have never got round to re-doing it.

Welcome to Julie Blog!