I'm an art student in Philly who is kind of obsessed with dying my hair. I enjoy learning about body modification and drawing naked people. Ah, and my name is Sarah.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
If my son hated me and refused to accept me but was in trouble, I would still save him. Why am I a better dad than god?
(Source: goodreasonnews)
Gay marriage a threat to humanity’s future: Pope
Pope Benedict said Monday that gay marriage was one of several threats to the traditional family that undermined “the future of humanity itself.”
The pope made some of his strongest comments against gay marriage in a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican in which he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today.
He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper “settings” and that “pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.”
“This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,” he said.
The Vatican and Catholic officials around the world have protested against moves to legalize gay marriage in Europe and other developed parts of the world.
One leading opponent of gay marriage in the United States is New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, whom the pope will elevate to cardinal next month.
Dolan fought against gay marriage before it became legal in New York state last June, and in September he sent a letter to President Barack Obama criticizing his administration’s decision not to support a federal ban on gay marriage.
In that letter Dolan, who holds the powerful post of president of the U.S. Bishops Conference, said such a policy could “precipitate a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions.”
The Roman Catholic Church, which has some 1.3 billion members worldwide, teaches that while homosexual tendencies are not sinful, homosexual acts are, and that children should grow up in a traditional family with a mother and a father.
“The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue,” Benedict told the diplomats.
Gay marriage is legal in a number of European countries, including Spain and the Netherlands.
Some Churches that have allowed gay marriage, women priests, gay clergy and gay bishops have been losing members to Catholicism, and the Vatican has taken steps to facilitate their conversion.
In 2009, Benedict decreed that Anglicans who leave their Church, many because they feel it has become too liberal, can find a home in Catholicism in a parallel hierarchy that allows them to keep some of their traditions.
The Vatican has since set up “ordinariates,” structures similar to dioceses, in Britain and the United States to oversee ex-Anglicans who have converted and be a point of contact for those wishing to do so.
Yet more despicable evidence that the Vatican is unwilling to grow up.
Also, that Pope Benedict hasn’t done his history. Marriage has only recently become a religious thing, old boy, please get your head around that. Before religion got it’s hands on marriage, it was predominantly a loveless legal contract between families.
If you want to talk about ‘traditional marriages’ - how far back do you want to go? To the 50’s, perhaps? Where it was legal to rape your spouse? To the 1800’s where women had little to no say in their marriages, and if they ended up pregnant out of wedlock, they were shunned by society as a whole? Even earlier? To when pre-pubescent girls could be married off, specifically for land, goods and money? When as soon as they started menstruating, they were considered eligible to produce heirs?
And which particular cultures ‘traditional marriage’ do you want to fall back on? White, Christian Europeans aren’t the only ones who have marriage, you know. So?
And when it comes to children, the sex, gender, age, skin-colour, creed or what have you, makes no difference. If the child is brought up in a stable and loving environment, be that with a mother and father, two mothers, two fathers, a single parent, their grandparents, their elder siblings, cousins, Foster carers, non-binary carers/parents, mixed-orientation carers/parents - whatever - the child will be fine.
It is stability and nurturing that children need. Not one mother, one father, married in a religious setting.
Get the fuck over yourselves Catholics - and other conservative religions.
The world is starting to grow up and realise that people come in all shapes, sizes, colours, genders and sexualities. You are lagging very far behind indeed. If you persist in this bigoted, backward way of viewing the world, you are going to find yourselves in a hell of a lot of trouble - of your own making, even!
~Mooglets
“In GOD We Trust.”
——-
A little boy was walking to school with his dog, but the school administration wouldn’t let him in.
As the dog sat there and whimpered, God appeared next to him. “Don’t feel bad, they won’t let ME in either.”
——-
Why is our culture degrading? Because we are being told that prayer is wrong, that our FAITH is just conjecture, and other lies from people who have nothing else to do than take away our rights. Don’t accept what they’re doing to our beautiful country, which was founded by our Christan founding fathers.
I’m not telling you that you’re a bad person if you don’ reblog, but if you do, then just maybe we can make a difference.
I’m a good person, and I’m CERTAINLY going to reblog.
Few minor corrections here.
It seems you’ve been fed a re-constructionist history of our founding fathers. Here’s a link that gives you some quotes of what our, “Christian,” founding fathers had to say about religion and the separation of church and state. Please take the time to read the link and educate yourself. I’ll wait.
Oh, and as for prayer in the schools? I’m a little surprised that you would believe in a God so weak that he would let a human law keep him out of a school. Kids are certainly allowed to pray in school, but the school just isn’t allowed to endorse religion. Kids are allowed to pray in church, at home, on the sidewalk, in the bathtub, at the mall, in the car…in fact, your kids is allowed to pretty much pray 24 hours a day if he or she wants. No laws at all banning it.
Well, you want the preachers to lead your kids in prayer? Okay. Let’s have a nice Muslim prayer. Or maybe a Morman one? How about a Hindu prayer? No? Well, in Morman dominated Salt Lake City, that’s what your kid would pray to.
What about a Catholic prayer? Not a Catholic? Just a seven-day adventist one then.
Am I being ridiculous? Just a non-denominational prayer? I’d argue that there’s no such thing. Just let the Muslims and the Hindus and the agnostics and the atheists sit out in the hallway if they don’t like it? Nah, that doesn’t promote discrimination at all.
Please realize that NO ONE is trying to take away your rights. But we do get a little tired of your trying to push your beliefs down our throats.
Oh, and I really think “E Pluribus Unum” is much more patriotic than the 1954, “In God We Trust.” Kinda more all inclusive. Personally, I would never trust the Biblical God at all, not with that “Blessed are those who smash babies heads against walls,” stuff. That kind of thing upsets me. Fortunately, I’m an atheist, and I don’t believe a word of it.
Peace.
I didn’t see any sources for the quotes you gave. I thought ‘evidence’ was your guys’ panic word.
Okay…I’ll do that for ya.
I must admit, I was disappointed with the context and the veracity of the Franklin quotes. While he was certainly not a Bible thumper, these specific quotes are a bit suspect.
But as for Adams, Jefferson, and Paine, the quotes are quite clear, and not at all taken from context. Paine, in particular, seems to have a rather distinct animosity.
Also, just as a test, I’d like you to count the number of times the word, “God” or any of his synonyms are used in the Constitution. I’ll give you a hint, you won’t need to use any fingers or toes for this one.
The Europeans are all deeply tainted with prejudices, both ecclesiastical and temporal, which they can never get rid of. They are all infected with episcopal and presbyterian creeds, and confessions of faith. They all believe that great Principle which has produced this boundless universe, Newton’s universe and Herschell’s universe, came down to this little ball, to be spit upon by Jews. And until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.
- Letter to Thomas Jefferson (22 January 1825). The section in bold is often attached to fragments from an earlier letter from Adams to Jefferson (17 January 1820).
In the gospel history of Jesus, Jefferson discovers what he terms “a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticism, and fabrications” (Works, Vol. iv, p. 325).
(Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.) True, not a direct quote from Franklin, but more likely a paraphrase of a letter to his wife. ”The bell ringing for church, we went thither immediately, and with hearts full of gratitude, returned sincere thanks to God for the mercies we had received: were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint, but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a light-house.”
The Way to see by Faith, is to shut the Eye of Reason:The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle.
.I looked around for God’s judgments, but saw no signs of them.
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
Peace
10 Myths about Evolution
1 If Humans Came From Apes, Why Aren’t Apes Evolving Into Humans?
Humans, apes, and monkeys are only distant evolutionary “cousins.” We come not from apes but from a common ancestor that was neither ape nor human that lived millions of years in the past. In fact, during the last seven million years many human-like species have evolved; some examples include Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis. All of these went extinct at different times, leaving just us to share the planet with a handful of other primates.
2 There Are Too Many Gaps in the Fossil Record for Evolution to Be True
In fact, there are lots of intermediate fossils. Archaeopteryx, for example, is one of the earliest known fossil birds with a reptilian skeleton and feathers. There is now evidence that some dinosaurs had hair and feathers. Therapsids are the intermediates between reptiles and mammals, Tiktaalik is an extinct lobe-finned fish intermediate to amphibians, there are now at least six intermediate fossil stages in the evolution of whales, and in human evolution there are at least a dozen intermediate fossil stages since hominids branched off from the great apes six million years ago. Considering the exceptionally low probability that a dead plant or animal will fossilize it is remarkable we have as many fossils as we do. First the dead animal has to escape the jaws of scavengers. Then is has to be buried under the rare circumstances that will cause it to fossilize instead of decay. Then geological forces have to somehow bring the fossil back to the surface to be discovered millions of years later by the handful of paleontologists looking for them
3 If Evolution Happened Gradually Over Millions of Years Why Doesn’t the Fossil Record Show Gradual Change?
Sudden changes in the fossil record are not missing evidence of gradualism; they are extant evidence of punctuation. Species are stable over long periods of time and so they leave plenty of fossils in the strata while in their stable state. The change from one species to another, however, happens relatively quickly (on a geological time scale) in a process called punctuated equilibrium. One species can give rise to a new species when a small “founder” group breaks away and becomes isolated from the ancestral group. This new founder group, as long as it remains small and detached, may experience relatively rapid change (large populations are genetically stable). The speciational change happens so rapidly that few fossils are left to record it. But once changed into a new species, the individuals will retain their phenotype for a long time, leaving behind many well-preserved fossils. Millions of years later this process results in a fossil record that records mostly stability. The punctuation is there in between the equilibrium.
4 No One Has Ever Seen Evolution Happen
Evolution is a historical science confirmed by the fact that so many independent lines of evidence converge to this single conclusion. Independent sets of data from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics, molecular biology, developmental biology, embryology, population genetics, genome sequencing, and many other sciences each point to the conclusion that life evolved. Creationists demand “just one fossil transitional form” that shows evolution. But evolution is not proved through a single fossil. It is proved through a convergence of fossils, along with a convergence of genetic comparisons between species, and a convergence of anatomical and physiological comparisons between species, and many other lines of inquiry. (In fact we can see evolution happen—especially among organisms with short reproductive cycles that are subject to extreme environmental pressures. Knowledge of the evolution of viruses and bacteria is vital to medical science.)
5 Science Claims That Evolution Happens by Random Chance
Natural selection is not “random” nor does it operate by “chance.” Natural selection preserves the gains and eradicates the mistakes. To illustrate this, imagine a monkey at a typewriter. In order for the monkey to type the first 13 letters of Hamlet’s soliloquy by chance, it would take 26 (to the 13th power) number of trials for success. This is 16 times as great as the total number of seconds that have elapsed in the lifetime of the solar system. But if each correct letter is preserved and each incorrect letter eradicated, the phrase “tobeornottobe” can be “selected for” in only 335 trials, or just seconds in a computer program. Richard Dawkins defines evolution as “random mutation plus nonrandom cumulative selection.” It is the cumulative selection that drives evolution. The eye evolved from a single, light sensitive spot in a cell into the complex eye of today not by chance, but through thousands of intermediate steps, each preserved because they made a better eye. any of these steps still exist in nature in simpler organisms.
6 Only an Intelligent Designer Could Have Made Something as Complex as an Eye
The anatomy of the human eye shows that it is anything but “intelligently designed.” It is built upside down and backwards, with photons of light having to travel through the cornea, lens, aqueous fluid, blood vessels, ganglion cells, amacrine cells, horizontal cells, and bipolar cells, before reaching the light sensitive rods and cones that convert the light signal into neural impulses, which are then sent to the visual cortex at the back of the brain for processing into meaningful patterns. For optimal vision, why would an intelligent designer have built an eye upside down and backwards? This “design” only makes sense if natural selection built eyes from available materials, and in the particular configuration of the ancestral organism’s pre-existing organic structures. The eye shows the pathways of evolutionary history, not intelligent design.
7 Evolution is Only A Theory
All branches of science are based on theories, which are grounded in testable hypothesis and explain a large and diverse body of facts about the world. A theory is considered robust if it consistently predicts new phenomena that are subsequently observed. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are explanatory ideas about those data. Constructs and other non-testable statements are not a part of science. The theory of evolution meets all the criteria of good science, as determined by Judge William Overton in the Arkansas creationism trial:
• It is guided by natural law.
• It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law.
• It is testable against the empirical world.
• Its conclusions are tentative.
• It is testable and falsifiable.
If you can find fossil mammals in the same geological strata as trilobites then evolution would be falsified. No one has ever found such contradictory data.8 Evidence for Human Evolution Has Turned Out to Be Fake, Frauds, or Fanciful
Eager to discredit evolution, creationists ignore hominid fossil discoveries and cherry pick examples of hoaxes and mistakes in the belief that mistakes in science are a sign of weakness. This is a gross misunderstanding of the nature of science, which constantly advances by using both its mistakes and the successes. Its ability to build cumulatively on the past is how science progresses. The self-correcting feature of the scientific method is one of its most powerful assets. Hoaxes like Piltdown Man, and honest mistakes like Nebraska Man, Calaveras Man, and Hespero-pithecus, are, in time, corrected. In fact, it wasn’t creationists who exposed these errors, it was scientists who did so. Creationists simply read about the scientific exposé of these errors, and then duplicitously claimed them as their own.
9 The Second Law of Thermodynamics Proves That Evolution is Impossible
The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to closed, isolated systems. Since the Earth receives a constant input of energy from the sun—it is an open-dissipative system—entropy may decrease and order increase (though the sun itself is running down in the process). Thus, the Earth is not strictly a closed system and life may evolve without violating natural law. As long as the sun is burning, life may continue thriving and evolving, just like automobiles may be prevented from rusting, burgers can be heated in ovens, and all manner of things in apparent violation of Second Law entropy may continue. But as soon as the sun burns out, entropy will take its course and life on Earth will cease.
10 Evolution Can’t Account For Morality
As a social primate species we evolved a deep sense of right and wrong in order to accentuate and reward reciprocity and cooperation, and to attenuate and punish excessive selfishness and free riding. As well, evolution created the moral emotions that tell us that lying, adultery, and stealing are wrong because they destroy trust in human relationships that depend on truth-telling, fidelity, and respect for property. It would not be possible for a social primate species to survive without some moral sense. On the constitution of human nature is built the constitutions of human societies.
An Eskimo asks a priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”
“No, not if you didn’t know.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
pretty much.this bit of insight and slapping together a ragecomic is by Harodan on Reddit :)
oh my sagan! I love this!
