B3-BibleC.txt Graham L. Kendall Modified 11/16/2008 Email grahamkendall74135@yahoo.com I am found on IRC Efnet/Undernet/Dalnet as glk http://www.grahamkendall.net/ ******************************************************************************* ====== Let us keep in mind the according to Christians and the Bible, God knows the past, present and the FUTURE. So, everything that is about to unfold, God foresaw ahead of time. Judges 11:29-40 -- our story is found here. So, if some lame ass Christian gives you crap, just give them this reference. At that time the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah... OK let's start right here. When the spirit of God comes upon you, that means everything you do, say, etc., is from God and under god's control and influence. ...and he went throughout the land of Gilead and Manasseh, including Mizpah in Gilead, and led an army against the Ammonites. Hmm, killing in the name of God. Yep, the spirit was on him alright. Are we surprised? And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD. He said, "If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering." OK, making vows to a deity, BAD! Ignoring the deity and living a decent life, GOOD! Notice how he promised to sacrifice the first thing that came out of his house to greet him. What exactly was he expecting to come out? Makes you wonder doesn't it? When you come back from a war who usually is the first out the door to greet you? FAMILY! Wife, kids, etc. So what was this guy thinking? Why not just promise the best calf or something like that? So he goes out and wins the war and this passage even says GOD GAVE HIM THE VICTORY!!!! As he walks back to his house what comes out the door first? His daughter!!! God knew this from the very beginning and yet allowed this promise to be made! THIS IS SICK! Plain sick and anyone who denies it is just as sick and perverted and just plain stupid! But it doesn't stop there. His daughter begs to live two months in the hills so she can cry and say goodbye to her friends. She is even upset she is going to die a virgin. Hell if it was me that would be the first thing I would fix. Well actually the second, the first would be to get the hell out of there and not come back. When she returned home, her father kept his vow, and she died a virgin. The New International Version (NIV) says, "After the two months, she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed." She came back! Not only that she allowed her father to kill her! Even she was messed up in the head. I don't know which is sicker, him killing his daughter or her actually coming back and letting him do it. But that's not all. She spent two months with her friends who also knew what was to come. They did nothing!!!!! Most important of all GOD DID NOTHING! God let this promise be made, God filled his end of the bargain so it could follow through, and God let it happen! == If people feel that they lost control they become desperate to make sense of the situation. They perceive patterns that don't exist and rather grab for any fast and simple explanation - however absurd - than considering that there could be none. This is the result of a study, published in the latest issue of the magazine Science, that sheds new light on "the psychology of superstition, urban legends and conspiracy theories." == The Italian Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, revered for bearing what he claimed to be Jesus' bleeding wounds - but what stands exposed by documented testimony of his pharmacist (till recently neatly tucked away in the Vatican archives) to be nothing but self-inflicted needle work. == Lev25:44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. (KJV) == Lev20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. == Some of the other books that the RCC base their theology on are ... Mary, The Protevangelion, 1 & 2 Infancy, Christ and Abagrus, Nicodemus, The Apostles' Creed, Laodiceans, Paul and Seneca, Paul and Thecla, 1 & 2 Clement Barnabas, Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans (not Paul's epistle), Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans, Poly carp, Philippians (not Paul's epistle) 1, 2, & 3 Hermas, the Lost Gospel of Accordi == The Prophet Muhammad said: "If a fly falls into your drink, you should dip it in the drink, and then dispose of the fly, because one of its wings bears a disease, and the other wing bears the cure." This hadith was included in the Al-Bukhari collection. This hadith makes it absolutely clear that the Prophet Muhammad confirmed a clear scientific fact: If a fly falls into a vessel--before a person drinks from this vessel, he should dip the fly in his drink, before disposing of it. Then he should drink the beverage, because it won't do him any harm. Why? Because one of the fly's wings bears the disease, and the other one bears the cure. == GREENVILLE, S.C. — A priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and should not receive Holy Communion until they've done penance. == Church is like a drug. You go on Sunday and get your fix, then it starts to wear off and you have to go back for more. You just can't make it on your own and need that constant fix. == 'Child-witches' of Nigeria seek refuge Mary is a pretty five-year-old girl with big brown eyes and a father who kicked her out onto the streets in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Her crime: the local priest had denounced her as a witch and blamed her "evil powers" for causing her mother's death. Ostracised, vulnerable and frightened, she wandered the streets in south-eastern Nigeria, sleeping rough, struggling to stay alive. Mary was found by a British charity worker and today lives at a refuge in Akwa Ibom province with 150 other children who have been branded witches, blamed for all their family's woes, and abandoned. Before being pushed out of their homes many were beaten or slashed with knives, thrown onto fires, or had acid poured over them as a punishment or in an attempt to make them "confess" to being possessed. In one horrific case, a young girl called Uma had a three-inch nail driven into her skull. Yet Mary and the others at the shelter are the lucky ones for they, at least, are alive. Many of those branded "child-witches" are murdered - hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul. The devil's children are "identified" by powerful religious leaders at extremist churches where Christianity and traditional beliefs have combined to produce a deep-rooted belief in, and fear of, witchcraft. The priests spread the message that child-witches bring destruction, disease and death to their families. And they say that, once possessed, children can cast spells and contaminate others. The religious leaders offer help to the families whose children are named as witches, but at a price. The churches run exorcism, or "deliverance", evenings where the pastors attempt to drive out the evil spirits. Only they have the power to cleanse the child of evil spirits, they say. The exorcism costs the families up to a year's income. During the "deliverance" ceremonies, the children are shaken violently, dragged around the room and have potions poured into their eyes. The children look terrified. The parents look on, praying that the child will be cleansed. If the ritual fails, they know their children will have to be sent away, or killed. Many are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they "confess" to being a witch. The ceremonies are highly lucrative for the spiritual leaders many of whom enjoy a lifestyle of large homes, expensive cars and designer clothes. Ten years ago there were few cases of children stigmatised by witchcraft. But since then the numbers have grown at an alarming rate and have reached an estimated 15,000 in Akwa Ibom state alone. Some Nigerians blame the increase on one of the country's wealthiest and most influential evangelical preachers. Helen Ukpabio, a self-styled prophetess of the 150-branch Liberty Gospel Church, made a film, widely distributed, called End of the Wicked. It tells, in graphic detail, how children become possessed and shows them being inducted into covens, eating human flesh and bringing chaos and death to their families and communities. Mrs Ukpabio, a mother of three, also wrote a popular book which tells parents how to identify a witch. For children under two years old, she says, the key signs of a servant of Satan are crying and screaming in the night, high fever and worsening health - symptoms that can be found among many children in an impoverished region with poor health care. The preacher says that her work is true to the Bible and is a means of spreading God's word. "Witchcraft is a problem all over Nigeria and someone with a gift like me can never hurt anybody," she says. "Every Nigerian wants to watch my movies." She denies that her teachings and films could encourage child abuse. One British charity worker is fighting to help the children stigmatised as witches. Gary Foxcroft, 29, programme director for the UK charity Stepping Stones, Nigeria, first came to the country in 2003 to research the oil industry for his masters degree. But he was so shocked when he learned about the children's plight that he decided to help raise money for the refuge - the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network (Crarn) - and try to persuade the parents to take their children back. He has also helped to build a school for the children who are refused places at local schools. "Any Christian would look at the situation that is going on here and just be absolutely outraged that they were using the teachings of Jesus Christ to exploit and abuse innocent children," says Mr Foxcroft whose expose of what he describes as "an absolute scandal" will be screened in a Channel 4 documentary on Wednesday. The Niger Delta is an oil-rich region but the wealth does not reach the people who live there. The locals blame their hardship on the Devil but international analysts point to the oil industry's large-scale contamination of air, land and sea. In the documentary, the charity worker visits one of the pastors, a man who calls himself "the Bishop" and who claims to be able to drive evil spirits out of "possessed" children. At his church in Ibaka, the Bishop pours a homemade substance called African mercury, a potion of pure alcohol and his own blood, into the eyes of a young boy lying on a table. "I want this poison destroyer to destroy the witch right now, in Jesus' name," he says. The priest charges 170 - in a country where millions of people are forced to live on less than 1 a day - for "treating" a child every night for two weeks, and holds them captive until the bill is paid. He has recently refined his techniques for dealing with child witches. "I killed up to 110 people who were identified as being a witch," he says. He claims there are 2.3million "witches and wizards" in Akwa Ibom province alone. The children's shelter was started five years ago when Sam Itauma, a Nigerian, opened his house to four youngsters accused of witchcraft. Today, he and his five staff are caring for 150 youngsters. "Every day, five or six children are branded as witches," he says "Once a child has been stigmatised as a witch, it is very difficult for someone to accept that child back. If they go out from this community... there is a lot of attacks, assault and abuses on the children." Children often arrive at the shelter with severe wounds, but few clinics or hospitals will treat a child believed to be a witch. "Christianity in the Niger Delta is seriously questionable, putting a traditional religion together with Christian religion - and it makes nonsense out of it," he says. "If you are not rich and don't have anything to eat, you look to blame someone. And if you don't get anything, you blame it on the witches." Christians have been in Nigeria since the 19th century and the Niger Delta area claims to have more churches per square mile than any other place on Earth. The vast majority of the country's 60 million Christians are moderate, but an influx of Pentecostals over the past 50 years has led some churches to be dominated by extremist views. Five years ago, the Nigerian government passed a Child Rights Act, which made abuse illegal, but not every state has adopted it. At the refuge, a baby girl called Utibe and her five-year-old sister, Utitofong, are dumped at the gate by their mother because a "prophet" told her that Utitofong was a witch and had passed the spell to her sister. The mother, who spent four months' salary on an unsuccessful exorcism, left them at the centre because she feared they would be killed. The police are called but locals offer them no help. Mr Itauma goes to the village to try and convince the locals to accept the daughters' return, but the older girl is threatened by a man with a machete. "Get away from our food - I'll kill you," he shouts. Utibe is allowed to stay, but the older girl has to go back to the refuge. At the end of the film, Mr Foxcroft and all the "child-witches" stage a demonstration at the Governor's residence in the state capital, Uyo, and urge him to adopt the Child Rights Act." After four hours the Governor comes out and says the Act will be adopted. It has since been adopted, but so far not a single pastor has been convicted of any offence. And the rescue centre still takes in up to 10 children a week. Mr Foxcroft took Mary back to her village where he was told that her father left a year ago to find work in Cameroon. A cousin says: "She is a witch, we don't want her here." Mary is now back at the refuge. Story Link Related: African Christians declare war on child witches Comments: 'Child-witches' of Nigeria seek refuge Mary is a pretty five-year-old girl with big brown eyes and a father who kicked her out onto the streets in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Her crime: the local priest had denounced her as a witch and blamed her "evil powers" for causing her mother's death. Children from Crarn accused of being witches and wizards, protesting outside the Governor's headquarters. Ostracised, vulnerable and frightened, she wandered the streets in south-eastern Nigeria, sleeping rough, struggling to stay alive.Mary was found by a British charity worker and today lives at a refuge in Akwa Ibom province with 150 other children who have been branded witches, blamed for all their family's woes, and abandoned. Before being pushed out of their homes many were beaten or slashed with knives, thrown onto fires, or had acid poured over them as a punishment or in an attempt to make them "confess" to being possessed. In one horrific case, a young girl called Uma had a three-inch nail driven into her skull.Yet Mary and the others at the shelter are the lucky ones for they, at least, are alive. Many of those branded "child-witches" are murdered - hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul.The devil's children are "identified" by powerful religious leaders at extremist churches where Christianity and traditional beliefs have combined to produce a deep-rooted belief in, and fear of, witchcraft. The priests spread the message that child-witches bring destruction, disease and death to their families. And they say that, once possessed, children can cast spells and contaminate others.The religious leaders offer help to the families whose children are named as witches, but at a price. The churches run exorcism, or "deliverance", evenings where the pastors attempt to drive out the evil spirits. Only they have the power to cleanse the child of evil spirits, they say. The exorcism costs the families up to a year's income.During the "deliverance" ceremonies, the children are shaken violently, dragged around the room and have potions poured into their eyes. The children look terrified. The parents look on, praying that the child will be cleansed. If the ritual fails, they know their children will have to be sent away, or killed. Many are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they "confess" to being a witch.The ceremonies are highly lucrative for the spiritual leaders many of whom enjoy a lifestyle of large homes, expensive cars and designer clothes.Ten years ago there were few cases of children stigmatised by witchcraft. But since then the numbers have grown at an alarming rate and have reached an estimated 15,000 in Akwa Ibom state alone.Some Nigerians blame the increase on one of the country's wealthiest and most influential evangelical preachers. Helen Ukpabio, a self-styled prophetess of the 150-branch Liberty Gospel Church, made a film, widely distributed, called End of the Wicked. It tells, in graphic detail, how children become possessed and shows them being inducted into covens, eating human flesh and bringing chaos and death to their families and communities.Mrs Ukpabio, a mother of three, also wrote a popular book which tells parents how to identify a witch. For children under two years old, she says, the key signs of a servant of Satan are crying and screaming in the night, high fever and worsening health - symptoms that can be found among many children in an impoverished region with poor health care.The preacher says that her work is true to the Bible and is a means of spreading God's word. "Witchcraft is a problem all over Nigeria and someone with a gift like me can never hurt anybody," she says. "Every Nigerian wants to watch my movies." She denies that her teachings and films could encourage child abuse.One British charity worker is fighting to help the children stigmatised as witches. Gary Foxcroft, 29, programme director for the UK charity Stepping Stones, Nigeria, first came to the country in 2003 to research the oil industry for his masters degree. But he was so shocked when he learned about the children's plight that he decided to help raise money for the refuge - the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network (Crarn) - and try to persuade the parents to take their children back. He has also helped to build a school for the children who are refused places at local schools."Any Christian would look at the situation that is going on here and just be absolutely outraged that they were using the teachings of Jesus Christ to exploit and abuse innocent children," says Mr Foxcroft whose expose of what he describes as "an absolute scandal" will be screened in a Channel 4 documentary on Wednesday.The Niger Delta is an oil-rich region but the wealth does not reach the people who live there. The locals blame their hardship on the Devil but international analysts point to the oil industry's large-scale contamination of air, land and sea.In the documentary, the charity worker visits one of the pastors, a man who calls himself "the Bishop" and who claims to be able to drive evil spirits out of "possessed" children. At his church in Ibaka, the Bishop pours a homemade substance called African mercury, a potion of pure alcohol and his own blood, into the eyes of a young boy lying on a table. "I want this poison destroyer to destroy the witch right now, in Jesus' name," he says.The priest charges 170 - in a country where millions of people are forced to live on less than 1 a day - for "treating" a child every night for two weeks, and holds them captive until the bill is paid.He has recently refined his techniques for dealing with child witches. "I killed up to 110 people who were identified as being a witch," he says. He claims there are 2.3million "witches and wizards" in Akwa Ibom province alone.The children's shelter was started five years ago when Sam Itauma, a Nigerian, opened his house to four youngsters accused of witchcraft. Today, he and his five staff are caring for 150 youngsters. "Every day, five or six children are branded as witches," he says "Once a child has been stigmatised as a witch, it is very difficult for someone to accept that child back. If they go out from this community... there is a lot of attacks, assault and abuses on the children." Children often arrive at the shelter with severe wounds, but few clinics or hospitals will treat a child believed to be a witch."Christianity in the Niger Delta is seriously questionable, putting a traditional religion together with Christian religion - and it makes nonsense out of it," he says. "If you are not rich and don't have anything to eat, you look to blame someone. And if you don't get anything, you blame it on the witches."Christians have been in Nigeria since the 19th century and the Niger Delta area claims to have more churches per square mile than any other place on Earth. The vast majority of the country's 60 million Christians are moderate, but an influx of Pentecostals over the past 50 years has led some churches to be dominated by extremist views. Five years ago, the Nigerian government passed a Child Rights Act, which made abuse illegal, but not every state has adopted it.At the refuge, a baby girl called Utibe and her five-year-old sister, Utitofong, are dumped at the gate by their mother because a "prophet" told her that Utitofong was a witch and had passed the spell to her sister. The mother, who spent four months' salary on an unsuccessful exorcism, left them at the centre because she feared they would be killed. The police are called but locals offer them no help.Mr Itauma goes to the village to try and convince the locals to accept the daughters' return, but the older girl is threatened by a man with a machete. "Get away from our food - I'll kill you," he shouts. Utibe is allowed to stay, but the older girl has to go back to the refuge.At the end of the film, Mr Foxcroft and all the "child-witches" stage a demonstration at the Governor's residence in the state capital, Uyo, and urge him to adopt the Child Rights Act." After four hours the Governor comes out and says the Act will be adopted. It has since been adopted, but so far not a single pastor has been convicted of any offence. And the rescue centre still takes in up to 10 children a week.Mr Foxcroft took Mary back to her village where he was told that her father left a year ago to find work in Cameroon. A cousin says: "She is a witch, we don't want her here." Mary is now back at the refuge. == There are 33,000 Christian denominations and sects in the world. === Religion: Bound to believe by Pascal Boyer http://naturereprin ts.com/nature/ journal/v455/ n7216/full/ 4551038a. html Atheism will always be a harder sell than religion, Pascal Boyer explains, because a slew of cognitive traits predispose us to faith. Is religion a product of our evolution? The very question makes many people, religious or otherwise, cringe, although for different reasons. Some people of faith fear that an understanding of the processes underlying belief could undermine it. Others worry that what is shown to be part of our evolutionary heritage will be interpreted as good, true, necessary or inevitable. Still others, many scientists included, simply dismiss the whole issue, seeing religion as childish, dangerous nonsense. Such responses make it difficult to establish why and how religious thought is so pervasive in human societies an understanding that is especially relevant in the current climate of religious fundamentalism. In asking whether religion is one of the many consequences of having the type of brains we come equipped with, we can shed light on what kinds of religion 'come naturally' to human minds. We can probe the shared assumptions that religions are built on, however disparate, and examine the connection between religion and ethnic conflict. Lastly, we can hazard a guess at what the realistic prospects are for atheism. In the past ten years, the evolutionary and cognitive study of religion has begun to mature. It does not try to identify the gene or genes for religious thinking. Nor does it simply dream up evolutionary scenarios that might have led to religion as we know it. It does much better than that. It puts forward new hypotheses and testable predictions. It asks what in the human make-up renders religion possible and successful. Religious thought and behaviour can be considered part of the natural human capacities, such as music, political systems, family relations or ethnic coalitions. Findings from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, cultural anthropology and archaeology promise to change our view of religion. Based on assumption One important finding is that people are only aware of some of their religious ideas. True, they can describe their beliefs, such as that there is an omnipotent God who created the world, or that spirits are hiding in the forest. But cognitive psychology shows that explicitly accessible beliefs of this sort are always accompanied by a host of tacit assumptions that are generally not available to conscious inspection. For instance, experiments reveal that most people entertain highly anthropomorphic expectations about gods, whatever their explicit beliefs. When they are told a story in which a god attends to several problems at once, they find the concept quite plausible, as gods are generally described as having unlimited cognitive powers. Recalling the story a moment later, most people say that the god attended to one situation before turning his attention to the next. People also implicitly expect their gods' minds to work much like human minds, displaying the same processes of perception, memory, reasoning and motivation. Such expectations are not conscious, and are often at odds with their explicit beliefs. Research has shown that unlike conscious beliefs, which differ widely from one tradition to another, tacit assumptions are extremely similar in different cultures and religions. These similarities may stem from the peculiarities of human memory. Experiments suggest that people best remember stories that include a combination of counterintuitive physical feats (in which characters go through walls or move instantaneously) and plausibly human psychological features (perceptions, thoughts, intentions). Perhaps the cultural success of gods and spirits stems from this memory bias. Humans also tend to entertain social relations with these and other non-physical agents, even from a very young age. Unlike other social animals, humans are very good at establishing and maintaining relations with agents beyond their physical presence; social hierarchies and coalitions, for instance, include temporarily absent members. This goes even further. From childhood, humans form enduring, stable and important social relationships with fictional characters, imaginary friends, deceased relatives, unseen heroes and fantasized mates. Indeed, the extraordinary social skills of humans, compared with other primates, may be honed by constant practice with imagined or absent partners. It is a small step from having this capacity to bond with non-physical agents to conceptualizing spirits, dead ancestors and gods, who are neither visible nor tangible, yet are socially involved. This may explain why, in most cultures, at least some of the superhuman agents that people believe in have moral concerns. Those agents are often described as having complete access only to morally relevant actions. Experiments show that it is much more natural to think "the gods know that I stole this money" than "the gods know that I had porridge for breakfast". In addition, the neurophysiology of compulsive behaviour in humans and other animals is beginning to shed light on religious rituals. These behaviours include stereotyped, highly repetitive actions that participants feel they must do, even though most have no clear, observable results, such as striking the chest three times while repeating a set formula. Ritualized behaviour is also seen in patients with obsessive-compulsiv e disorders and in the routines of young children. In these contexts, rituals are generally associated with thoughts about pollution and purification, danger and protection, the required use of particular colours or numbers or the need to construct a safe and ordered environment. We now know that human brains have a set of security and precaution networks dedicated to preventing potential hazards such as predation or contamination. These networks trigger specific behaviours such as washing and checking one's environment. When the systems go into overdrive they produce obsessive-compulsiv e pathology. Religious statements about purity, pollution, the hidden danger of lurking devils, may also activate these networks and make ritual precautions (cleansing, checking, delimiting a sacred space) intuitively appealing. Finally, studies of social and evolutionary psychology demonstrate a specifically human coalitional capacity, which has an impact on religion. Humans are unique among animals in maintaining large, stable coalitions of unrelated individuals, strongly bonded by mutual trust. Humans evolved the cognitive tools to achieve this. They know how to gauge others' reliability. They can recall episodes of interaction and infer what people's characters are like. They can emit and detect costly, hard-to-fake signals of commitment. This coalitional psychology is involved in the dynamics of public religious commitment. When people proclaim their adherence to a particular faith, they subscribe to claims for which there is no evidence, and that would be taken as obviously wrong or ridiculous in other religious groups. This signals a willingness to embrace the group's particular norm for no other reason than that it is, precisely, the group's norm. Cognitive cache So is religion an adaptation or a by-product of our evolution? Perhaps one day we will find compelling evidence that a capacity for religious thoughts, rather than 'religion' in the modern form of socio-political institutions, contributed to fitness in ancestral times. For the time being, the data support a more modest conclusion: religious thoughts seem to be an emergent property of our standard cognitive capacities. Religious concepts and activities hijack our cognitive resources, as do music, visual art, cuisine, politics, economic institutions and fashion. This hijacking occurs simply because religion provides some form of what psychologists would call super stimuli. Just as visual art is more symmetrical and its colours more saturated than what is generally found in nature, religious agents are highly simplified versions of absent human agents, and religious rituals are highly stylized versions of precautionary procedures. Hijacking also occurs because religions facilitate the expression of certain behaviours. This is the case for commitment to a group, which is made all the more credible when it is phrased as the acceptance of bizarre or non- obvious beliefs. We should not try to pinpoint the unique origin of religious belief, because there is no unique domain for religion in human minds. Different cognitive systems handle representations of supernatural agents, of ritualized behaviours, of group commitment and so on, just as colour and shape are handled by different parts of the visual system. In other words, what makes a god-concept convincing is not what makes a ritual intuitively compelling or what makes a moral norm self-evident. Most modern, organized religions present themselves as a package that integrates all these disparate elements (ritual, morality, metaphysics, social identity) into one consistent doctrine and practice. But this is pure advertising. These domains remain separated in human cognition. The evidence shows that the mind has no single belief network, but myriad distinct networks that contribute to making religious claims quite natural to many people. The findings emerging from this cognitive-evolution ary approach challenge two central tenets of most established religions. First, the notion that their particular creed differs from all other (supposedly misguided) faiths; second, that it is only because of extraordinary events or the actual presence of supernatural agents that religious ideas have taken shape. On the contrary, we now know that all versions of religion are based on very similar tacit assumptions, and that all it takes to imagine supernatural agents are normal human minds processing information in the most natural way. Knowing, even accepting these conclusions is unlikely to undermine religious commitment. Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions hardly the easiest ideology to propagate. FURTHER READING Boyer, P. Religion Explained: Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (Basic Books, 2001). Boyer, P. & Lienard, P. Behav. Brain Sci. 29, 156 (2006). Wilson, E. O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (Little Brown & Co., 1998). == The Gospel According to the Apostles, by John MacArthur. End Times Fiction and Last Days Madness, by Gary DeMar. The Evolution of a Creationist, by Dr. Jobe Martin. New Complete Works of Josephus, The New Complete Works of Josephus, by Flavius Josephus, translated by Paul L. Maier, with William Whiston. The Gospel and the Greeks, by Ronald H. Nash. The Consummation of the Ages, by kurt M. Simmons. == As Bertrand Russell pointed out, they regard these actions as the supreme morality. That's because they regard morals as having nothing to do with the sum total of human happiness. == Pascal Boyer "Religion Explained" == Prehistoric shaman found buried with leopard, human foot Archaeologists have found the 12,000-year old skeleton of a female shaman buried in northern Israel alongside 50 tortoises, body parts of a leopard, a boar and other animals as well as a human foot. The burial site is among the earliest known of a shaman, or healer, according to the archaeological team led by Leore Grosman of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "The grave was constructed and specifically arranged for a petite, elderly, and disabled woman, who was accompanied by exceptional grave offerings," the archaeologists wrote in this week's edition of the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The grave goods comprised 50 complete tortoise shells and select body-parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, and two martens, as well as a complete human foot," the experts said. "Several attributes of this burial later become central in the spiritual arena of human cultures worldwide." The grave was found during excavations of a 12,000-year-old cave site of the Natufian culture in Hilazon Tachtit, in the Galilee area of northern Israel. Analysis of the bones show that the shaman was 45 years old, petite and had an unnatural, asymmetrical appearance due to a spinal disability that would have affected the woman's gait, causing her to limp or drag her foot. The burial site was unlike any from the Natufian or the preceding Paleolithic periods discovered to date, said Grosman. "Clearly a great amount of time and energy was invested in the preparation, arrangement, and sealing of the grave," she said. "This was coupled with the special treatment of the buried body, which was laid on its side with the spinal column, pelvis and right femur resting against the curved southern wall of the oval-shaped grave. The legs were spread apart and folded inward at the knees." The Natufians lived in the eastern Mediterranean region 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. Grosman suggests the grave could point to shifts from foraging to farming that took place in the region at that time. == Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman == job 2:3 And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause." == Col2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. == The Catholic Church didn't think that abortion was so important until 1869, when Pope Pius IX condemned abortion from the moment of conception. But some Catholic church scholars continued to teach that abortions performed to save the mother were morally acceptable. In 1895 the Roman Catholic Church declared that abortion is never justifiable. When a human causes a miscarriage, it's an abortion and wrong. When God causes a miscarriage, it's acceptable. Also, remember that only about half of fertilized human eggs implant. This makes nature/God the biggest abortionist. == In Peru, when "witches" were discovered, the Catholics got half the property .... and the ACCUSERS got half the property. So...there was of course no shortage of witches. == Some of the local nutters round where I live ban car radios for their employees on the grounds that somewhere in the Bible it says that the devil is in the air. == The fundamentalsts cannot stand the liberalism of the modern liberal democracy - theo only system that works. They see democracy only as a tool to impose their views on everyone else. When they can't get their way, they go screaming with the martyrdom complex. At the end of the day, they hate liberals because they don't believe in the rules democracy. == The Christians in control of government funds spent $200 million promoting abstinence only education. It has totally failed to change teen behavior. It is only money. == There were over 60 avid historians alive during Jesus' time, and those were the only possible accounts that could be related to Jesus. Unfortunately, they never mentioned the name Jesus == The word 'replenish' used to mean fill, back in 1611. == When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off." ~Stephen King == Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage. There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, JF Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: "There you go again." His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks. It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin? On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two- thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies. One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing. Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti- rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for instance, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary. Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of social Darwinism. But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. "In the south", Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order." The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time. This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self- education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln's career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment, it is a recipe for confusion. == The Assyriologist and Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer in his 1959 book History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine "Firsts" in Recorded History (1956) == According to the Greeks, There was first Nyx, the black-winged bird in the darkness. She laid an egg with the wind. The egg eventually hatched, producing Eros, the god of love. One half of the egg, the Sky, well in love with the other half, the Earth. They had many children - the Titans (giants). One of these Titans was Kronos, who fathered the first generation of Olympians. PROMETHEUS was the Titan god of forethought and crafty counsel who was entrusted with the task of moulding mankind out of clay. == Several South African churches, in the days of apartheid, demonstrated on biblical grounds that apartheid was right, and that indeed, such things as interracial marriages were sinful. Nowadays, those same churches can demonstrate on biblical grounds that apartheid was a sin. Go figure. == Karel van der Toorn "Scribal culture and the making of the Hebrew Bible". == Religion belongs to the terrified childhood of our species, before we knew about germs or could account for earthquakes. It belongs to our childhood, too, in the less charming sense of demanding a tyrannical authority: a protective parent who demands compulsory love even as he exacts a tithe of fear. This unalterable and eternal despot is the origin of totalitarianism and represents the first cringing human attempt to refer all difficult questions to the smoking and forbidding altar of a Big Brother. This, of course, is why one desires that science and humanism would make faith obsolete, even as one sadly realizes that as long as we remain insecure primates, we shall remain very fearful of breaking the chain. Christopher Hitchens is the author of "God Is Not Great" and the editor of "The Portable Atheist Early man did not know why trees grow or what the sun is. Religion was a way of looking at the world without facts. It made man sleep better at night to think there was a purpose for his life and gave him something to live for. So they made up some stories and passed them down from generation to generation until we come to the modern era. Today we have facts. Today we have science: a way of looking at the world with curiosity and factual knowledge. == ACCORDING TO GREEK MYTHOLOGY, there was once a bandit named Procrustes. He had a special bed which he would offer guests. This bed, he told them, would be exactly the right length for any person who slept in it. Anyone foolish enough to try to spend the night with Procrustes would discover that the bed was made of iron, and the kind host would either stretch them out or amputate them down to the precise length of his bed. == "Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedanism, extermination and tyranny ... " --George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952), Little Essays, No. 107, "Christian Morality" == Jon 1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. == Psa137:9 May the Lord bless everyone who beats your children against the rocks! (CEV) Psa137:9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (KJV) == http://friendlyatheist.com/ == French philosopher Michel Onfray: "Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam" Victor J. Stenger's book: "God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" i == On October 19, 1928, Alton Lemon, who would go on to win a major state/church victory before the U.S. Supreme court, was born in McDonald, Ga. He grew up in Atlanta, Ga. As a youth, Alton played on the same basketball team as Martin Luther King, Jr. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Morehouse College in 1950. He was an aerospace engineer for the Naval Air Development Center in Pennsylvania, and an automotive design engineer at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Md. Mr. Lemon also worked as an Equal Opportunity Officer for the U.S. Department of Energy. He was a Citizen Participation Advisor for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and he was at one time the program director for the North City Congress Police-Community Relations Program in Philadelphia. Alton also served in the U.S. Army and saw duty in the Korean War. Alton Lemon served both as president and vice-president of the Philadelphia Ethical Society at one time, served on the board of the Parents Union for Public Schools and was an active participant in the American Civil Liberties Union. He has been married to Augusta Lemon for more than 50 years. Alton Lemon is an "honorary officer" of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a position reserved for freethinkers who have won Supreme Court cases in favor of the separation of church and state. He received a "Hero of the First Amendment" award at the 2003 FFRF convention (although health problems at the last minute prevented him from accepting it in person). Alton Lemon won the case, Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971, which successfully challenged a Pennsylvania law, the first such law in the nation providing public tax funds to religious schools for teaching four secular subjects. As a member of the ACLU, Mr. Lemon volunteered to challenge the law, which resulted in a decision that is a watershed for the Establishment Clause, and which historic decision bears his name. The United States Supreme Court unanimously invalidated the parochial aid. In one of the enduring legacies of the Burger Court, it also codified existing precedent on the Establishment Clause into a test--called the "Lemon Test." Despite attacks against it and attempts to modify and chip away at it, the Lemon Test endures. aIf any of the three prongs of the Lemon Test are violated by an act of government, it is unconstitutional: 1) It must have a secular legislative purpose; 2) Its principal or primary effect must neither advance nor inhibit religion; 3) It must not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion.a? -- The Lemon Test, promulgated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 US 602 (1971) ____________ _______ == John W. Loftus "Why I Rejected Chrisitianity: A Former Apologist Explains" == 1 Kings 4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. Littlefoot: 2 Chronicles 9:25 And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem. == circular logic. "God inspired the book." How do we know? "The book says so." Why can we trust that? "Because god inspired the book." And around and around she goes. == "Overall, translators know that the Bible is the product of cultures whose modes of life and thought were very different from ours. In some cases, the Bible's philosophy is so barbaric and violent that it defies explaining why anyone would consider it sacred at all." - Bible Scholar Hector Avalos == Vatican Bank Plaintiffs www.vaticanbankclai ms.com The Greatest Sins of Pius XII & The Genocide of Orthodox Christians Croatian Nationalism & Roman Catholicism are Intermeshed With the 50th Anniversary of the death of Pius XII, the Vatican is again pushing for his sainthood. While Pius can be legitimately criticized for his tepid condemnations of the Nazi Holocaust there is no question he was complicit in the deaths of at least 500,000 Orthodox Christian Serbs, Jews and Roma murdered in Croatia , Bosnia , and Krajina during the Second World War by the Axis allied Croatian regime. The First Sin of Pius Genocide The first sin of Pius, complicity in genocide of at least 500,000 Orthodox Christian Serbs, Jews and Roma in Croatia , Bosnia , and Krajina 1941-1945 by the ultra Catholic fascists known as the Ustasha. The mainstream Orthodox Christians (Pravoslavni) were killed because of their religion, the main difference between Croats and Serbs. The Ustasha ranks were swelled by clergy particularly Franciscan monks, priests and seminarians. A Franciscan monk known as Fr. Satan was commandant at Jasenovac, the chief Croatian concentration camp, where hundreds of thousands perished and the source of much of the gold in the so called Ustasha Treasury. The Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic was welcomed to the Vatican by Pius during the Second World War and his representative Fr. Krunoslav Drganovic became a fixture at the Holy See. While the Ustasha were busy butchering coreligionists, Pius praised Pavelic for outlawing abortion in Croatia . The Papal Legate Marcone in Croatia and October 15, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Vatican Bank Plaintiffs www.vaticanbankclai ms.com resistk@yahoo. com +;1-202-318-2406 Cardinal Stepinac of Zagreb kept Pius and the Vatican well informed about the extermination and forced conversions of the Serbs. Pius instead of condemning the Ustasha blessed them. The Second Sin of Pius Obstruction of Justice and Money Laundering After the collapse of the Ustasha regime in May 1945, the Ustasha leadership fled towards Italy with their plunder, 200 million Swiss Francs mainly in gold, robbed from their many victims. Waiting in Rome for the Ustasha Treasury and Pavelic were two high ranking churchmen. One was the former Ustasha official Fr. Draganovic now Apostolic Visitor for Croatia reporting directly to Pius Undersecretary of State Montini (later Paul VI). The other was the former treasurer of the Franciscan Order (OFM), Fr. Dominik Mandic, an Ustasha sympathizer who promoted bizarre racial theories of Croatian superiority. Pavelic and his associates were hidden at safe houses in Rome until they could flee to Argentina and the Ustasha Treasury was taken to the Vatican Bank for safekeeping. The Third Sin of Pius Historical Cover Up The Vatican hid Pius secret connection to the murderous Ustasha for decades. In 1998 the US State Department released the Eizenstat Report linking the Vatican to the Ustasha Treasury. This in turn led to the class action lawsuit, Alperin v. Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order, still pending in the US federal court system for an accounting and return of the Ustasha Treasury to its rightful owners, the victims of the Ustasha. The testimony of former US intelligence agent, William Gowen, who reported on the Ustasha in 1947, has aided the lawsuit. Gowen stated that his investigation in 1947 led him to believe that the Ustasha Treasury had been concealed at the Vatican Bank and that the Vatican was implicated at the highest level with Pavelic. Professor Michael Phayer followed in 2007 with a well researched book, Pius XII & The Cold War, setting the record straight. However, instead of seeking truth and reconciliation the Vatican and Franciscans have fiercely defended against the lawsuit on technical grounds while the few remaining survivors of the Ustasha atrocities dwindle to handful. For more information contact: Dr. Jonathan Levy Co-counsel for Plaintiffs Alperin v. Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order United States District Court for Northern California , Case No. C-99-04941 MMC == Kepler had been condemned by the Inquisition more than a decade before the Galileo trial == In a 1640s law code for the Puritan colony of New Haven, Connecticut in the 17th century "blasphemers, homosexuals and masturbators" were eligible for the death penalty. == DYNAMICS OF FAITH by Paul Tillich == I badly harassed a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses that came to my door this morning... . > > Neither could answer when I asked, if the Protestant Bible was > > the word of God, why it had taken God so many tries to get the > > book selection right, or why he needed a profit-minded > > publisher to do His work in finalizing it. I don't think > > they'll be coming back. > > What exactly are you referring to? The Protestant canon was > formalized before there were printing presses, much less > publishing companies. Here's the story: The movable type printing press, courtesy of Guttenburg, was a major advancement that revolutionized the world, but it wasn't the beginning of printing technology. Wood-block printing existed long before that, primarily limited to Bibles because nothing else was in demand enough to justify the expensive process of creating wood- blocks. When Martin Luther was putting together the trimmed-down Protestant Bible, one of the books he wanted to remove was Revelation. He argued vociferously that there was nothing of the Holy Spirit in the book, and that it should be removed forthwith as a travesty. But, he ran into a snag. There was only one printer in his area converted to protestantism and willing to print Martin Luther's new Bible, but he wasn't willing to kick out Revelation. Most of the people who might buy a Bible from him were illiterate, which meant that the pictures in the Bible were a major selling point. Revelation is a very visual chapter, and the vast majority of the illustrations that he had came from either Genesis or Revelation. Removing Revelation would have meant removing the Revelation pictures, and they didn't have the money to hire an artist to make new woodblocks to illustrate things from other chapters. A Bible without Revelation would look too much less snazy than the Catholic bibles from other printers, and simply wouldn't sell. So, Martin Luther swallowed his zeal and allowed them to include Revelation in the Protestant Bible. Not because he wanted it there, but entirely because of profit motive. It remains there to this day on the account of one publisher afraid of losing money. I mean, I've heard God moves in mysterious ways, but to this just strikes me as unbelievable. If you want to hold that the Protestant Bible, or the KJV specifically, is The Inerrant, Perfect, Intended Word of God, then what's with all the fiddling around? Why did the Catholics get it wrong/why didn't God make them get it right? Why was God's chosen selection of books the result of Martin Luther getting ALMOST right and then having to have his printer fix the last bit? So, the JW's today told me I was lying and left it at that. Must be nice. I've had fundamentalists explain to me in painstaking seriousness that everytime the Bible says "wine" it means "Non-fermented grape juice". Except, of course, when the Bible mentions wine in the context of drinking alcohol (to excess) being bad. It's the same word! But, clearly, Jesus would have never, ever turned water into wine, because Jesus would never touch the abomination that is alcohol! Pity about all those centuries of Christians getting confused about that, mistaking the Greek word for wine to mean wine. How one can call oneself a literalist while reading the same word two different ways based on nothing but your dislike of alcohol completely baffles me. == A letter \In the late 70s/early 80s, Falwell developed the idea that he was going to run the US, with his zombies carrying out his orders. At that time, I was living in Jackson, MS. The only way to get real news was to go to one certain newsstand and get the New York Times. This was also a porn shop, with the only access behind the counter, so it was constantly watched. About 1979/1980, I started noticing nerdy looking men in black suits standing by the door and making notes, just like the NKVD used to do. So I started asking them if they were NKVD, and how was Comrade Stalin doing, etc. They were unable to understand what I was talking about, and totally refused to say what they were really doing there. This was also happening at other booksellers. \Once Raygun was installed, we found out. MM had a number of model laws they were trying to force on city governments around the US. One was an obscenity law. Behold an obscenity law which never mentions pornography. It amounted to any individual could go to any media, libraries, booksellers, newstands, theater, whatever, and if this individual found anything he/she/it found personally offensive, obtain a copy, bring it to the City Court, which was mandated to stop distribution of it and hold a hearing to determine whether it was really offensive. MM dictated this law to the Jackson City Council. They insulted the City by saying that the City was not able to enforce their law the way they wanted, so MM had lined up 30 churches, names held secret, whose congregations would constantly patrol the city. Jackson City Soviet instantly passed it unanimously. \Now, MM was on record for opposing many authors, including Mark Twain and Shakespeare. They also blared a highly inflated membership. This was due to members also belonging to other Falwell front groups. He just added the rosters together, without regard to shared members. \The first to rebel was the City Library system. Some mainstream churches jumped in, the booksellers, and individuals, including me. I was quite adept at pointing out the real MM agenda, and satirizing the city government. The Jackson City Soviet finally met in secret with MM to amend the new law, which was also kept secret. They promised to unveil it just before the enforcement date. Louisville, KY sent representatives to talk Jackson out of the law. Seems they enacted it, and were instantly swamped with cases, making legitimate court business impossible. Finally Jackson came to their senses, and let the law drop. == http://www.asa3.org/ science and religion == Religion kills teen This is why religion is dangerous: The parents of an Oregon City teenager who died during attempts to heal him with prayer have pleaded not guilty to charges of criminally negligent homicide. A grand jury indictment accuses 50-year-old Jeffrey Dean and 46-year-old Marci Rae Beagley of failing to provide adequate medical care, in violation of their duties as parents. They made no statement in court Friday and were released on bond. The Beagleys belong to the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City. It favors spiritual healing and prayer over medical treatment. Their 16-year-old son, Neil, died in June from complications of a urinary-tract blockage that triggered heart failure. Doctors said a simple procedure could have saved his life. == You cannot reason with someone who does not really understand the intricacies of reasoning. Reasoning is a talent that man is capable of developing but it is not natural innate. If it was, we would have much less religion than we do. People have to be open to learning. He was not because this would have meant he had to concede part of what he believed with passion. == Now, one of the basic underlying concepts of modern Western science is that the proponent of an idea must prove her/his thesis, not that critics have to "disprove" it. This is quite different from traditional theistic approaches to science. For example, see Augustine's City of God, where this very logical and thoughtful man demonstrated that, while the earth was obviously a globe, there could be no land elsewhere than that known to the people of his time, i.e. Eurasia and Africa, but, he argued, if there were, then such places couldn't be inhabited, and so on, covering all his bases. What I believe Augustine was trying to get at was that our behavior towards one another (and for him this included a god) was more important than geological formations or climate or probability theory or anything that we associate with the sciences. Augustine was more focused on the "qualitative" than the "quantitative," it seems to me. == http://www.twoprophets.org/ == You have to rely on faith because reason and evidence proves the bible wrong in so many different ways. The biblical account of the development of both the physical and biological world is self-contradictory and contradicted by an overwhelming amount of science as well. == OFFICE OF PUBLIC POLICY OBJECTS TO PROPOSED HHS REGULATION In a bold move in the waning days of the Bush administration, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has issued a proposed regulation that would greatly expand the ability of health care workers to refuse to provide services because of their religious beliefs. This regulation could have a serious adverse impact on patient care. The thin rationale for the proposed regulation, known as the "Provider Conscience Regulation," is that supposedly there is confusion about the requirements of federal law and some individuals might be reluctant to enter the health care professions because they fear they would be forced to perform procedures to which they object. In announcing its proposed rule, HHS supplied no empirical data to support these assertions. The proposed regulation effectively gives health care workers an absolute and broad right to refuse to provide or participate in any service to which they object. The regulation states that it will apply to "any activity with a reasonable connection to a procedure" to which the health care worker objects. The regulation itself indicates it could cover a worker who refuses to clean surgical instruments because they may be used in an operation that offends his "conscience. " Moreover, the regulation makes no effort to balance the needs of the patient with the objections of the nurse, pharmacist, or technician. This places the regulation in stark contrast to other laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion, which do not permit workers to refuse to provide services if that refusal has significant adverse consequences for others. The regulation also would impose onerous reporting and certification requirements on health care institutions resulting in tens of millions of dollars in extra expenditures. The proposed regulation would affect all those with health care needs, but would have an especially severe impact on women and their reproductive rights, especially in light of the recent trend by pharmacists and others to refuse provide emergency contraception based on the erroneous and scientifically unsupported belief that this means of preventing pregnancy results in an abortion. Because the regulation provides no definition of "abortion," the "conscience" of the objecting health care worker can define it as s/he sees fit. The Office of Public Policy for the Center for Inquiry has vigorously opposed the Provider Conscience regulation since it was first announced, and has helped to organize pubic opposition to implementation of the regulation. On September 25, 2008, the OPP submitted official comments analyzing and criticizing the proposed regulation. The OPP's comments, for example, pointed out that there was no factual record to support the proposed regulation and the proposed regulation is inconsistent with existing federal law on employment discrimination. == Hosea 13:16 Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.0 (King James Version) == Religiously motivated virtuous behaviour has likely played a vital social role throughout history, said Shariff, a doctoral student. One reason we now have large, cooperative societies may be that some aspects of religion such as outsourcing costly social policing duties to all powerful Gods made societies work more cooperatively in the past. == But I will, for sure, continue to flail my little sword of rationality 'every which way' hoping to smite the dragons of every irrational, unreasoned, faith based, evidence barren body of belief including liberal theology. I am a Naturalist.. ..I care about what is true. As Clifford stated in the quote at the end of my first post....It is "wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."? Credulity can never be a virtue. It's never desirable to live in a "cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies"? I'm sorry, I have a hard time conjuring up a case for the individual or humanity at large benefiting from wallowing in unfounded beliefs nor for it's inevitability. When the perversion of faith, whether individually or culturally, is allowed to infect our interpretation of reality and conveniently and comfortingly fills in the gaps of our knowledge, especially of the hereafter, the results have been historically hideous. We can and should and MUST tolerate the believer, but never tolerate the unfounded belief. We should no longer be expected to respect and grant deference to beliefs of the unseen and unknowable, that demand exemption from critical thought and propose nonsense. Faith is the acceptance of the irrational, it virtually renders inevitable the exploitation of the delusions of the masses. It allows the buffoons (Falwell comes to mind) and aspiring despots among us to dupe those whose wishful thinking has been coddled and respected by the rest of us. Faith should be regarded as an evil, perverted abomination to be denounced, ridiculed, mocked, disparaged, belittled, insulted and generally derided at every opportunity. "Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits." -- Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist === David Linden wrote The Accidental Mind.  He quite convincingly suggests that our propensity for religion comes from the structure of our brains, our natural tendency to create narratives that fill in the details in order to create a certain coherence to our vision of the world. The "sense" made by believing in demon possession, evil spirits, deities causing thunder, lighting, pestilence, famine, infertility and floods simply allowed us to stop inquiring and thinking didn't it? Magic and superstition do not yield REAL sense of the world; they aren't true. == The root word of witch, in English is the teutonic "wik" meaning flexible, referring originally to flexible branches used for divining for water. == Eccl. 9:5,10: "The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all . In the gospels, a dead man is quite talkative in hell. == Acts2:19 And I will shew wonders in the heaven above, and signs on the earth beneath: blood and fire, and vapour of smoke. (DRV) Acts2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and manifest day of the Lord come. (DRV) == "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. "No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper. Einstein == Deu7:2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. (NIV) Isa13:15 Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword. (NIV) Isa13:16 Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished. (NIV) == Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography by Marincola == "Textual criticism, in fact, has helped destroy any notion that there was ever a stable entity called "the Bible"." - Bible Scholar Hector Avalos == "Many translations do not convey exactly what the orginal biblical languages - Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek - say. In this way translators avoid shocking people by making the Bible seem like one book with internal consistency, rather than an anthology, exhibiting developments of doctrines and a concomitant inconsistency" - Bible Scholar Michael Coogan == Luther made an attempt to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon == The Gospels 45.4 Percentage of Verses with Variants The Acts 32.7 Percentage of Verses with Variants Pauline Epistles 24.4 Percentage of Verses with Variants The Catholic Epistles 29.9 Percentage of Verses with Variants Revelation 47.1 Percentage of Verses with Variants Total 37.1 Percentage of Verses with Variants == If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. == Although the Church officially rejected the Nazis extreme racism, Catholic teachings tolerated hostility toward Jews by blaming them for Christ's crucifixion. == HITLER'S PRIESTS: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (Hardcover) by Kevin P. Spicer (Author) == Actually, the first animal called a unicorn (actually, monokeros) was the Indian rhinoceros, but the Greeks had only a vague second-hand description of it. That vagueness served well, for when the Old Testament was translated into Greek in the 3rd century BCE, "monokeros" was used to translate the Hebrew word "re'em" (now thought to refer to the auroch). The word was later translated into Latin as unicornus, and then into English as unicorn. == This is where science is at a great disadvantage in relation to religion, science is tied to concrete facts whereas religious meanings can be interpreted to anything that the proponent wishes even to the point of duplicity. Another advantage to religious 'proof' is knowledge after the fact, both the bible and koran are often claimed to have predicted complex scientific breakthroughs from the past couple of centuries by quoting vague passages. It is rare to prove a religious person wrong and even rarer for one to have the grace to admit that they are wrong even in the face of overwhelming proof. == Actions caused in the name of a church, religion, or religious belief are certainly open to criticism: it is not being intolerant or bigoted to castigate criminal, unethical, and immoral behavior. Indeed, it is a human being¹s duty to oppose criminal acts regardless of who commits them. Crimes committed in the name of religion are still crimes, and must therefore be denounced. Molko v. Holy Spirit (46 Cal. 3d 1092; 762 P.2d 46; 1988 Cal. LEXIS 236; 252 Cal. Rptr. 122) to wit: "However, while religious belief is absolutely protected, religiously motivated conduct is not." (Sherbert v. Verner (1963) 374 U.S. 398, 402-403 [10 L.Ed.2d 965, 969-970, 83 S.Ct. 1790]; People v. Woody (1964) 61 Cal.2d 716, 718 [40 Cal.Rptr. 69, 394 P.2d 813].) "Such conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society." (Cantwell v. Connecticut, supra, 310 U.S. at p. 304 [84 L.Ed. at p. 1218].) == Anthropologists note that storytelling could have also persisted in human culture because it promotes social cohesion among groups and serves as a valuable method to pass on knowledge to future generations. But some psychologists are starting to believe that stories have an important effect on individuals as well‹the imaginary world may serve as a proving ground for vital social skills. == I submit that anti-religious rhetoric is counter-productive. It actually hampers science education. By setting up an ³us verses them² environment, the New Atheists are forcing non-scientists ‹ those with no training in hypothesis testing (and perhaps very little training in critical thinking) ‹ into a false dilemma. Consequently, a concept like biological evolution, which may run counter to someone¹s deeply held religious beliefs, will automatically be considered irrelevant to that person, and the individual will be unlikely to discard any misconceptions related to the concept. The individual will not want to learn. == Defending Science ‹ Within Reason, Susan Haack == I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent' (1 Corinthians 1:19). == Here are some things that disturbed me about the Christian faith: 1) Doctrine of Hell. God chooses whether to save people or not. So if you're one of the billions who are not chosen, you never have a chance to save yourself from Hell. Thinking in human terms, what would you think of a person who would invent Hell, and send billions of strangers there because they don't love him enough? You'd think he's a tyrant, maniac, not to mention evil. 2) Book of Revelation. I read through this book and was appalled. Amongst many other atrocities, God wants to send locusts with human faces and scorpion stingers to do nothing but torment people for months as punishment for not loving him enough? How cruel and sick. How can anyone worship a god like that?? 3) Tower of Babel. Read this passage in Genesis 11. Really read it and think about it. Nothing is more clearly a myth than this segment. It also reveals a weirdly paranoid God who wants to slap humanity back down right when they're starting to show great teamwork and get things done! == The Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a halfway house between heaven and hell, inhabited by unbaptized infants and holy men and women who lived before Christ, was only a theological hypothesis and not a definitive truth of the faith. == The complaint that the theory of evolution "encourages people to lead reckless and materialistic lifestyles" neatly exposes the true basis of religion - social control. Just because evolution doesn't keep people cowering in fear of eternal damnation, doesn't make it any the less true. Sadly pursuit of truth doesn't seem to be of much importance to religious leaders. == Why, when evangelical christians in America praise god for smiting their invented foes in Iraq or plead with god to make them rich is it called religion, whereas when people gather in animist churches in West African rainforests and call for god to smite their foes and make them rich it's called witchcraft? == If you viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist, you would observe it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well. == (Henry Louis) Mencken, was born in Baltimore. Although his father was agnostic, his Lutheran mother sent him to Sunday School, which he later defined as, "A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents" == http://www.KCFreeThinkers.org/ == Deities (called devas by the Hindu) do battle against demons (called ashuras by the Hindu) to protect the world against them. == John9:3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. (KJV) 1Pet2:22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: (KJV) All have sinned? == As W. K. Clifford states in his essay The Ethics of Belief "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" (Burr and Goldinger 1992, p. 176). == Hell is unbridled, unrelenting torment and anguish for "the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death" (Rev. 21:8). Jesus also taught that those who reject him (Mt. 11:20-24), and the prophets reap hell as their "reward." Also those guilty of hypocrisy (Mt. 23:15), hateful language and intent (Mt. 5:22), unfaithfulness (Mt. 24:45-51), unrepentant (Mt. 5:29-30), and the disobedient (Mt. 7:19) are liable to its judgment. == Deu22:21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you. (KJV) == Job 1 6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. (KJV) Satan a son of God? == The Catholic Church correcting itself about the heliocentric solar system without acknowledging that it took the church the better part of four centuries to make that concession and express any regrets. == Eze28:13 In Eden, the garden of God, thou hast been, Every precious stone thy covering, Ruby, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, Sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle, and gold, The workmanship of thy tabrets, and of thy pipes, In thee in the day of thy being produced, have been prepared. (YLT) == "Does the theology of Sarah Palin compromise the separation of church and state?" Early in June, Governor Palin used state money to fly to her Pentecostal home church in Wasilla to speak to a group of ministers in training. She suggested that sending soldiers to Iraq is God's will. Should political leaders defend policy with such religious convictions? Does anyone know God's will? She has also suggested that a gas pipe line in Alaska is God's will. This sort of theology is not uncommon, but problematic for a national leader." --Ian Lawton == Slavery "Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ." (Ephesians 6:5) "Slaves, obey your human masters in everything; don't work only while being watched, in order to please men, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord." (Colossians 3:22) "Slaves are to be submissive to their masters in everything, and to be well-pleasing, not talking back ." (Titus 2:9) "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel. " (1 Peter 2:18) == Superstitions often seem irrational, even stupid, but they a widespread and pervasive part of human life. Why is this? Using a mathematical model, we investigated whether superstitious behaviours are a predicted product of evolution by natural selection. The results are clear: superstitions are a part of adaptive behaviour in all organisms as they attempt to make sense of an uncertain world. Humans are heavily affected by culture as well as evolution. Nevertheless, our analysis suggests that cultural effects are shaped by an evolved tendency to readily associate events, so readily that individuals often make superstitious mistakes. == Graham Robert Oppy :Arguments about Gods" Peter A.Angeles "The Problem of God: a short Introduction." == Calvin didn't convict Servetus. the Genevan State did. the same State that ignored Calvin's request for mercy on Servetus, to behead him instead of burn him. Calvin wanted Servetus dead. "Servetus has just sent me a long volume of his ravings. If I consent he will come here, but I will not give my word for if he comes here, if my authority is worth anything, I will never permit him to depart alive " Calvin's letter to Farrel == Believing in something beyond the self can have a hugely beneficial psychological impact, even if the belief is fallacious. == Muhammad Ali once asked: ³How can I lose when I have Allah on my side?² == Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ‹ 1 Corinthians i, 20 Science is the wisdom of this world and has great validity. == "We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours...the scientific treatments are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than the alternatives (like prayer). Even when the alternatives seem to work, we don’t actually know that they played any role." - Carl Sagan == So much of the debate turns on The Big Questions that involve Origins: the origin of the universe, the origin of the 'fine-tuned' laws of nature, the origin of time and time's arrow, the origin of life and complex life, and the origin of brains, minds, and consciousness. From theologians and philosophers to creationists and intelligent design theorists, the central core of almost all of their arguments centers on filling these origin gaps with God. But now science is making significant headway into providing natural explanations for these ultimate questions, which leaves us with the biggest question of all: Does science make belief in God obsolete? == Which arguments should definitely not be used? Darwin recanted on his deathbed. Many people use this story; however, it is almost certainly not true, and there is no corroboration from those who were closest to himeven from Darwins wife Emma, who never liked evolutionary ideas. Also, even if it were true, so what? If Ken Ham renounced the Bible, would that disprove it? See Did Darwin recant? and Did Darwin Renounce Evolution on His Deathbed? Moon-dust thickness proves a young moon. For a long time, creationists claimed that the dust layer on the moon was too thin if dust had truly been falling on it for billions of years. They based this claim on early estimatesby evolutionistsof the influx of moon dust, and worries that the moon landers would sink into this dust layer. But these early estimates were wrong, and by the time of the Apollo landings, NASA was not worried about sinking. So the dust layer thickness cant be used as proof of a young moon (or of an old one, either). See Moon-dust argument no longer useful and Moon dust and the age of the solar system (Technical). NASA computers, in calculating the positions of planets, found a missing day and 40 minutes, proving Joshuas long day [Joshua 10] and Hezekiahs sundial movement [2 Kings 20]. Though this story is not promoted by major creationist organizations, it is a hoax in wide circulation, especially on the internet. Essentially the same story appeared in the somewhat unreliable 1936 book The Harmony of Science and Scripture by Harry Rimmer. Evidently an unknown person embellished it with modern organization names and modern calculating devices. Also, the whole story is mathematically impossibleit requires a fixed reference point before Joshuas long day. In fact, we would need to cross-check between both astronomical and historical records to detect any missing day. And to detect a missing 40 minutes requires that these reference points be known to within an accuracy of a few minutes. It is certainly true that the timing of solar eclipses observable from a certain location can be known precisely. But the ancient records did not record time that precisely, so the required cross-check is simply not possible. Furthermore, the earliest historically recorded eclipse occurred in 1217 BC, nearly two centuries after Joshua. So there is no way the missing day could be detected by any computer. See also Has NASA Discovered a Missing Day? for historical and scientific documentation that this alleged discovery is mythological. (Note that discrediting this myth doesnt mean that the events of Joshua 10 didnt happen. Features in the account support its reliabilityfor example, that the moon was also slowed down. This was not necessary to prolong the day, but this would be observed from Earths reference frame if God had accomplished this miracle by slowing Earths rotation. See Joshuas long day.) Woolly mammoths were flash frozen during the Flood catastrophe. This is contradicted by the geological setting in which mammoths are found. Its most likely that they perished toward the end of the Ice Age, possibly in catastrophic dust storms. Partially digested stomach contents are not proof of a flash freeze, because the elephants stomach functions as a holding areaa mastodon with preserved stomach contents was found in the western USA, where the ground was not frozen. See also The extinction of the woolly mammoth: was it a quick freeze? The Castenedolo and Calaveras human remains in old strata invalidate the geologic column. These are not sound examplesthe Castenedolo skeletal material shows evidence of being an intrusive burial, that is, a recent burial into older strata, since all the fossils apart from the human ones had time to be impregnated with salt. The Calaveras skull was probably a hoax planted into a mine by miners. For the current AiG view on human fossil stratigraphy, see Where are all the human fossils? from the Answers Book. Dubois renounced Java man as a missing link and claimed it was just a giant gibbon. Evolutionary anthropology textbooks claimed this, and creationists followed suit. However, this actually misunderstood Dubois, as Stephen Jay Gould has shown. Its true that Dubois claimed that Java man (which he called Pithecanthropus erectus) had the proportions of a gibbon. But Dubois had an eccentric view of evolution (universally discounted today) that demanded a precise correlation between brain size and body weight. Dubois claim about Java man actually contradicted the reconstructed evidence of its likely body mass. But it was necessary for Dubois idiosyncratic proposal that the alleged transitional sequence leading to man fit into a mathematical series. So Dubois gibbon claim was designed to reinforce its missing link status. See Who was Java man? The Japanese trawler Zuiyo Maru caught a dead plesiosaur near New Zealand. This carcass was almost certainly a rotting basking shark, since their gills and jaws rot rapidly and fall off, leaving the typical small neck with the head. This has been shown by similar specimens washed up on beaches. Also, detailed anatomical and biochemical studies of the Zuiyo-maru carcass show that it could not have been a plesiosaur. See Live plesiosaurs: weighing the evidence and Letting rotting sharks lie. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics began at the Fall. This law says that the entropy (disorder) of the universe increases over time, and some have thought that this was the result of the Curse. However, disorder isnt always harmful. An obvious example is digestion, breaking down large complex food molecules into their simple building blocks. Another is friction, which turns ordered mechanical energy into disordered heatotherwise Adam and Eve would have slipped as they walked with God in Eden! A less obvious example to laymen might be the sun heating the earthto a physical chemist, heat transfer from a hot object to a cold one is the classic case of the Second Law in action. Also, breathing is based on another classic Second Law process, gas moving from a high pressure to low pressure. Finally, all beneficial processes in the world, including the development from embryo to adult, increase the overall disorder of the universe, showing that the Second Law is not inherently a curse. Death and suffering of nephesh animals before sin are contrary to the biblical framework above, as is suffering (or groaning in travail [Rom. 8:2022]). It is more likely that God withdrew some of His sustaining power (Col. 1:1517) at the Fall so that the decay effect of the Second Law was no longer countered. See Did the 2nd Law begin at the Fall? If we evolved from apes, apes shouldnt exist today. In response to this statement, some evolutionists point out that they dont believe that we descended from apes, but that apes and humans share a common ancestor. However, the evolutionary paleontologist G.G. Simpson had no time for this pussyfooting, as he called it. He said, In fact, that earlier ancestor would certainly be called an ape or monkey in popular speech by anyone who saw it. Since the terms ape and monkey are defined by popular usage, mans ancestors were apes or monkeys (or successively both). It is pusillanimous [mean-spirited] if not dishonest for an informed investigator to say otherwise. However, the main point against this statement is that many evolutionists believe that a small group of creatures split off from the main group and became reproductively isolated from the main large population, and that most change happened in the small group which can lead to allopatric speciation (a geographically isolated population forming a new species). So theres nothing in evolutionary theory that requires the main group to become extinct. Its important to note that allopatric speciation is not the sole property of evolutionistscreationists believe that most human variation occurred after small groups became isolated (but not speciated) at Babel, while Adam and Eve probably had mid-brown skin color. The quoted erroneous statement is analogous to saying If all people groups came from Adam and Eve, then why are mid-brown people still alive today? So whats the difference between the creationist explanation of people groups (races) and the evolutionist explanation of people origins? Answer: the former involves separation of already-existing information and loss of information through mutations; the latter requires the generation of tens of millions of letters of new information. Women have one more rib than men. AiG has long pointed out the fallacy of this statement, which seems to be more popular with dishonest skeptics who want to caricature creation. The removal of a rib would not affect the genetic instructions passed on to the offspring, just as a man who loses a finger wouldnt have sons with nine fingers. Any skeptic who tries to discredit the Bible with this argument must be a closet Lamarckian, i.e., one who believes Lamarcks thoroughly discredited idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics! Note also that Adam wouldnt have had a permanent defect, because the rib is the one bone that can regrow if the surrounding membrane (periosteum) is left intact. Archaeopteryx is a fraud. Archaeopteryx was genuine (unlike Archaeoraptor, a Piltdown bird), as shown by anatomical studies and close analysis of the fossil slab. It was a true bird, not a missing link. See Q&A: Dinosaurs. There are no beneficial mutations. This is not true, since some changes do confer an advantage in some situations. Rather, we should say, We have yet to find a mutation that increases genetic information, even in those rare instances where the mutation confers an advantage. For examples of information loss being advantageous, see Q&A: Mutations No new species have been produced. This is not truenew species have been observed to form. In fact, rapid speciation is an important part of the creation model. But this speciation is within the kind, and involves no new genetic information. See Q&A: Speciation. Earths axis was vertical before the Flood. There is no basis for this claim. Seasons are mentioned in Genesis 1:14 before the Flood, which strongly suggests an axial tilt from the beginning. Some creationists believe that a change in axial tilt (but not from the vertical) started Noahs Flood. But a lot more evidence is needed and this idea should be regarded as speculative for now. Furthermore, computer modeling suggests that an upright axis would make temperature differences between the poles and equator far more extreme than now, while the current tilt of 23.5 is ideal. The moon has an important function in stabilizing this tilt, and the moons large relative size and the fact that its orbital plane is close to the earths (unlike most moons in our solar system) are design features. Paluxy tracks prove that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Some prominent creationist promoters of these tracks have long since withdrawn their support. Some of the allegedly human tracks may be artifacts of erosion of dinosaur tracks obscuring the claw marks. There is a need for properly documented research on the tracks before we would use them to argue the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs. However, there is much other evidence that dinosaurs and humans coexistedsee Q&A: Dinosaurs. Darwin mentioned the absurdity of eye evolution in The Origin of Species. Citing his statement at face value is subtly out of context. Darwin was talking about its seeming absurdity but then said that after all it was quite easy to imagine that the eye could be built step-by-step (in his opinion, with which AiG obviously disagreessee Darwin vs. The Eye and An eye for creation). Earths division in the days of Peleg (Gen. 10:25) refers to catastrophic splitting of the continents. Commentators both before and after Lyell and Darwin (including Calvin, Keil and Delitzsch, and Leupold) are almost unanimous that this passage refers to linguistic division at Babel and subsequent territorial division. We should always interpret Scripture with Scripture, and theres nothing else in Scripture to indicate that this referred to continental division. But only eight verses on (note that chapter and verse divisions were not inspired), the Bible states, Now the whole earth had one language and one speech (Gen. 11:1), and as a result of their disobedience, the LORD confused the language of all the earth (Gen. 11:9). This conclusively proves that the earth that was divided was the same earth that spoke only one language, i.e., earth refers in this context to the people of the earth, not planet Earth. Another major problem is the scientific consequences of such splittinganother global flood! This gives us the clue as to when the continents did move apart: during Noahs Flood. See also comments on plate tectonics below. The Septuagint records the correct Genesis chronology. This is not so. The Septuagint chronologies are demonstrably inflated, and contain the (obvious) error that Methuselah lived 17 years after the Flood. The Masoretic Text (on which almost all English translations are based) preserves the correct chronology. See Some remarks preliminary to a biblical chronology. There are gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, so the earth may be 10,000 years old or even more. This is not so. The language is clear that they are strict chronologies, especially because they give the age of the father at the birth of the next name in line. So the earth is only about 6,000 years old. See Biblical genealogies for exegetical proof. Jesus cannot have inherited genetic material from Mary, otherwise He would have inherited original sin. This is not stated in Scripture and even contradicts important points. The language of the NT indicates physical descent, which must be true for Jesus to have fulfilled the prophecies that He would be a descendant of Abraham, Jacob, Judah and David. Also, the Protevangelium of Gen. 3:15, regarded as Messianic by both early Christians and the Jewish Targums, refers to the seed of the woman. This is supported by Gal. 4:4, God sent forth His Son, coming (genomenon) from a woman. Most importantly, for Jesus to have died for our sins, Jesus, the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), had to share in our humanity (Heb. 2:14), so must have been our relative via common descent from the first Adam as Luke 3:38 says. In fact, seven centuries before His Incarnation, the prophet Isaiah spoke of Him as literally the Kinsman-Redeemer, i.e., one who is related by blood to those he redeems (Isaiah 59:20 uses the same Hebrew word goel as used to describe Boaz in relation to Ruth). To answer the concern about original sin, the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary (Luke 1:35), preventing any sin nature from being transmitted. The phrase science falsely so called in 1 Timothy 6:20 (KJV) refers to evolution. To develop a scriptural model properly, we must understand what the author intended to communicate to his intended audience, which in turn is determined by the grammar and historical context. We must not try to read into Scripture that which appears to support a particular viewpoint. The original Greek word translated science is gnosis, and in this context refers to the elite esoteric knowledge that was the key to the mystery religions, which later developed into the heresy of Gnosticism. This was not an error by the KJV translators, but an illustration of how many words have changed their meanings over time. The word science originally meant knowledge, from the Latin scientia, from scio, meaning to know. This original meaning is just not the way it is used today, so modern translations correctly render the word as knowledge in this passage. Of course AiG believes that evolution is anti-knowledge because it clouds the minds of many to the abundant evidence of Gods action in creation and the true knowledge available in His Word, the Bible. But as this page points out, it is wrong to use fallacious arguments to support a true viewpoint. On a related matter, it is linguistically fallacious to claim that even now, science really means knowledge, because meaning is determined by usage, not derivation (etymology). Geocentrism (in the classical sense of taking the earth as an absolute reference frame) is taught by Scripture and heliocentrism is anti-scriptural. AiG rejects this dogmatic geocentrism, and believes that the biblical passages about sunset and sunrise, etc., should be understood as taking the earth as a reference frame, but that this is one of many physically valid reference frames; the center of mass of the solar system is also a valid reference frame. See Q&A: Geocentrism and Geocentrism and Creation. Ron Wyatt has found much archeological proof of the Bible. There is not the slightest substantiation for Wyatts claims, just excuses to explain away why the evidence is missing. See Has the Ark of the Covenant been found? Missing solar neutrinos prove that the sun shines by gravitational collapse, thereby proving a young sun. This is about a formerly vexing problem of detecting only one-third of the predicted number of neutrinos from the sun. Also, accepted theories of particle physics said that the neutrino had zero rest mass, which would prohibit oscillations from one flavor to another. Therefore, consistent with the data then available, some creationists proposed that the sun was powered one-third by fusion and two-thirds by gravitational collapse. This would have limited its age to far less than 4.5 billion years. However, a new experiment was able to detect the missing flavors and seems to provide conclusive evidence for oscillation. This means that neutrinos must have a very tiny rest mass after all (since experimental data takes precedence over theory). Therefore creationists should no longer invoke the missing neutrino problem to deny that fusion is the primary source of energy for the sun. It cannot be used as a young-age indicatornor an old-age indicator, either. Einstein held unswervingly, against enormous peer pressure, to belief in a Creator. Using the normal meaning of these terms, Einstein believed no such thing. See also Physicists God-talk. What arguments are doubtful, hence, inadvisable to use? Canopy theory. This is not a direct teaching of Scripture, so there is no place for dogmatism. Also, no suitable model has been developed that holds sufficient water, but some creationists suggest a partial canopy may have been present. For AiGs current opinion, see Noahs Floodwhat about all that water? from the Answers Book. There was no rain before the Flood. This is not a direct teaching of Scripture, so again there should be no dogmatism. Genesis 2:56 at face value teaches only that there was no rain at the time Adam was created. But it doesnt rule out rain at any later time before the Flood, as great pre-uniformitarian commentators such as John Calvin pointed out. A related fallacy is that the rainbow covenant of Genesis 9:1217 proves that there were no rainbows before the Flood. As Calvin pointed out, God frequently invested existing things with new meanings, e.g., the bread and wine at the Lords Supper. Natural selection is a tautology. Natural selection is in one sense a tautology. Who are the fittest? Those who survive and leave the most offspring. Who survive and leave the most offspring? The fittest. But a lot of this is semantic wordplay, and depends on how the matter is defined, and for what purpose the definition is raised. There are many areas of life in which circularity and truth go hand in hand. For example, what is electric charge? That quality of matter on which an electric field acts. What is an electric field? A region in space that exerts a force on electric charge. But no one would claim that the theory of electricity is thereby invalid and cant explain how motors work; it is only that circularity cannot be used as independent proof of something. To harp on the issue of tautology can become misleading, if the impression is given that something tautological therefore doesnt happen. Of course the environment can select, just as human breeders select. But demonstrating this doesnt mean that fish could turn into philosophers by this means. The real issue is the nature of the variation, the information problem. Arguments about tautology distract attention from one of the real weaknesses of neo-Darwinismthe source of the new information required. Given an appropriate source of variation (for example, an abundance of created genetic information with the capacity for Mendelian recombination), replicating populations of organisms would be expected to be capable of some adaptation to a given environment, and this has been demonstrated amply in practice. Natural selection is also a useful explanatory tool in creationist modeling of post-Flood radiation with speciation (see Q&A: Natural Selection). Evolution is just a theory. What people usually mean when they say this is Evolution is not proven fact, so it should not be promoted dogmatically. Therefore people should say that! The problem with using the word theory in this case is that scientists use it to mean a well-substantiated explanation of data. This includes well-known theories such as Einsteins Theory of Relativity and Newtons Theory of Gravity, as well as lesser-known ones such as the DebyeHuckel Theory of electrolyte solutions. It would be better to say that particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture. There is amazing modern scientific insight in the Bible. We should interpret the Bible as the author originally intended, and as the intended readership would have understood it. Therefore we should be cautious in reading modern science into passages if the original readers would not have seen it. This applies especially to poetic books like Job and Psalms. For example, Jobs readers would not have understood Job 38:31 to be teaching anything about the gravitational potential energy of Orion and Pleiades. Rather, the original readers would have seen it as a poetic illustration of Gods mightthat God, unlike Job, could create the Pleiades in a tightly-knit cluster, which is what it looks like, while God created Orion as a well spread-out constellation, again something well beyond Jobs ability. Similarly, Job 38:14 is not advanced scientific insight into the earths rotation, because the earth is not being compared to the turning seal, but to the clay turning from one shape into another under the seal. The speed of light has decreased over time. Although most of the evolutionary counter-arguments to this idea, known formally as c-decay, have been proven to be fallacious, there are still a number of problems with it (many raised by creationists). AiG currently prefers Dr. Russell Humphreys explanation for distant starlight, although neither AiG nor Dr. Humphreys claim that his model is infallible. See How can we see distant stars in a young universe? from the Answers Book. There are no transitional forms. Since there are candidates, even though they are highly dubious, its better to avoid possible comebacks by saying instead: While Darwin predicted that the fossil record would show numerous transitional fossils, even a century and a half later, all we have are a handful of disputable examples. See Q&A: Fossils. Gold chains have been found in coal. Several artifacts, including gold objects, have been documented as having been found within coal, but in each case the coal is no longer associated with the artifact. The evidence is therefore strictly anecdotal (e.g., This object was left behind in the fireplace after a lump of coal was burned). This does not have the same evidential value as having a specimen with the coal and the artifact still associated. Plate tectonics is fallacious. AiG believes that Dr. John Baumgardners work on catastrophic plate tectonics provides a good explanation of continental shifts and the Flood. See Q&A: Plate Tectonics. However, AiG recognizes that some reputable creation scientists disagree with plate tectonics. Creationists believe in microevolution but not macroevolution. These terms, which focus on small vs. large changes, distract from the key issue of information. That is, particles-to-people evolution requires changes that increase genetic information, but all we observe is sorting and loss of information. We have yet to see even a micro increase in information, although such changes should be frequent if evolution were true. Conversely, we do observe quite macro changes that involve no new information, e.g., when a control gene is switched on or off. == "When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint". Hesiod, 8th century BC == The New Testament, Its Background, Growth, and Content, 1965, p86, by Bruce Metzger == "Religion Explained", by Pascal Boyer == Ge30:37 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. Ge30:38 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. Ge30:39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. Ge30:40 And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle. (KJV) dburzy: !kjv 30:41-44 Ge30:41 And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. Ge30:42 But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's. Ge30:43 And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses. (KJV) == According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary, "The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round, covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11, 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen 1:6,7, cf. Psalms 24:2, 148:4, Deut. 5:8). floydfp: The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12,8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20;Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33;Isa. 14:9,15). == rsv mat 4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; == "that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? (From the NIV Bible, Job 38:13)" == It has been estimated that between 50,000 B.C. and today, about 106 billion people were born. The Earth's population is presently about six billion. Of the 100 billion people born before us, every one of them has died, with not one returning to assure us that life continues beyond deathat least not to the high evidentiary standards of science (and we don't count the TV psychics that claim to talk to the dead)l. == The Catholic catechism calls masturbation "an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried, a popular 19th century Jewish theologian, called it "a graver sin than any other in the Torah." Mormonism teaches that "masturbation is a sinful habit that robs one of the Spirit," while Shi¹a Islam forbids it completely, quoting sect founder Imam Ali as saying, "one who masturbates commits a sin equal to killing me eighty times." == http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/ atheism == http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=A&artid=2052 Bible astronomy == There are so many different religions - each of them claiming to have the truth, each saying that their truths are clearly superior to the truths of others - how can someone possibly take any of them seriously? - Arthur C. Clarke == Pigliucci, Massimo. Tales of the Rational, Freethought Press, 2000. Shanks, Niall. God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory, Oxford University Press, 2003 (paperback, 2007). Shermer, Michael. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, Times Books, 2006. Stein, Gordon, ed. An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, Prometheus Books, 1980, pp. 55-59 and 88-104. == God tested Job for no apparent reason[a bet with Satan is given as to why] and as God himself confirmed Job was a completely righteous man. == Former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef stated that the victims of the holocaust were the souls of former sinners reincarnated. == Consider A god so stupid that he had himself tortured to death to save humankind from his own wrath. A god so masochistic that it would conceive of eternal torment . An omniscient god who could experience jealousy , rage, the need for vengeance , or require anything from its creatures. An omnipotent god who could be denied anything, want for anything or have its creatures fail at anything. == In the letter, Einstein states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." == Dawkins "What matters," he declares in The God Delusion, "is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does. == J.G. Frazer's survey of the myths of primitive peoples, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. For Frazer, religion and magical thinking were closely linked. Rooted in fear and ignorance, they were vestiges of human infancy that would disappear with the advance of knowledge. == "Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief" by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili, and Vince Rause David Kuo Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity by Charles Marsh (Hardcover - Jun 11, 2007) John A. Paulos Irreligion The Religious Views of our Presidents Franklin Steiner == The early Christians acknowledged that Dionysus (his Greek name) / Bacchus (his Latin name) came before Jesus How? The Christian Father Justin Martyr, writing in the 100s AD, wrote that the Devil reading the Old Testament prophesies of the Messiah sent Bacchus early, to trick men about Jesus: "The devils, accordingly, when they heard these prophetic words, said that Bacchus was the son of Jupiter, and ...having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven." [Justin Martyr, First Apology, 54] == Kjv 2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. How many gods are there? == Rev19:17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; == Jer8:17 For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the LORD. == Rev19:14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. (KJV) Horses in heaven? == The whole idea behind Christian Zionism is to align America with the nation of Israel so as to "hurry God up" in his efforts to bring about Armageddon. As Hagee tells it, only after Israel is involved in a final showdown involving a satanic army (in most interpretations, a force of Arabs led by Russians) will Christ reappear. On that happy day, Hagee and his True Believers will be whisked up to Heaven by God, while the rest of us nonbelievers are left behind on Earth to suck eggs and generally suffer various tortures. == The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life" Adolf Hitler, 'My New Order'. Proclamation of the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933 == Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament (Hardcover) by Jason David BeDuhn (Author) == Mark 2:25-26 Jesus says "in the days of Abiather, the high preist, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread"...Jesus is citing 1 Samuel 21:1-6, but if you read 1 Samuel closely, Abiather was NOT the high preist at that time. The high preist was Ahimelech at that time, not Abiather == Mat27:52 The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. (NIV) Mat27:53 They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people. (NIV) == "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment." -- Albert Einstein == In 897, Pope Stephen VI accused former Pope Formosus of perjury and violation of church canon. The problem was that Pope Formosus had died nine months earlier. Stephen worked around this little detail by exhuming the dead pope's body, dressing it in full papal regalia, and putting it on trial. He then proceeded to serve as chief prosecutor as he angrily cross-examined the corpse. The spectacle was about as ludicrous as you'd imagine. In fact, Pope Stephen appeared so thoroughly insane that a group of concerned citizens launched a successful assassination plot against him. The next year, one of Pope Stephen's successors reversed Formosus' conviction, ordering his body reburied with full honors. == Job1:7 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it." (NIV) God asks questions? I thought He knew everything. == God killed 70,000 innocent people because David ordered a census of the people (1 Chronicles 21) . == Philip Davies: "The gap between the Biblical Israel and the historical Israel as we derive it from archaeology is huge. We have almost two entirely different societies. Beyond the name 'Israel' and the same geographical location, they have almost nothing in common." == What was the purpose of totally wiping out the Caananites? Gaining some farm land? How loving of God! == Religion a figment of human imagination Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination. That's the argument of anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists. Instead, he argues that first, we had to evolve the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, and the possibility that people somehow live on after they've died. Once we'd done that, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. The transcendental social also allows humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct associated with religion. "What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," Bloch writes. "One can be a member of a transcendental group, or a nation, even though one never comes in contact with the other members of it," says Bloch. Moreover, the composition of such groups, "whether they are clans or nations, may equally include the living and the dead." Modern-day religions still embrace this idea of communities bound with the living and the dead, such as the Christian notion of followers being "one body with Christ", or the Islamic "Ummah" uniting Muslims. Stuck in the here and now No animals, not even our nearest relatives the chimpanzees, can do this, argues Bloch. Instead, he says, they're restricted to the mundane and Machiavellian social interactions of everyday life, of sparring every day with contemporaries for status and resources. And the reason is that they can't imagine beyond this immediate social circle, or backwards and forwards in time, in the same way that humans can. Bloch believes our ancestors developed the necessary neural architecture to imagine before or around 40-50,000 years ago, at a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age. At around the same time, tools that had been monotonously primitive since the earliest examples appeared 100,000 years earlier suddenly exploded in sophistication, art began appearing on cave walls, and burials began to include artefacts, suggesting belief in an afterlife, and by implication the "transcendental social". Once humans had crossed this divide, there was no going back. "The transcendental network can, with no problem, include the dead, ancestors and gods, as well as living role holders and members of essentialised groups," writes Bloch. "Ancestors and gods are compatible with living elders or members of nations because all are equally mysterious invisible, in other words transcendental." Nothing special But Bloch argues that religion is only one manifestation of this unique ability to form bonds with non-existent or distant people or value-systems. "Religious-like phenomena in general are an inseparable part of a key adaptation unique to modern humans, and this is the capacity to imagine other worlds, an adaptation that I argue is the very foundation of the sociality of modern human society." "Once we realise this omnipresence of the imaginary in the everyday, nothing special is left to explain concerning religion," he says. Chris Frith of University College London, a co-organiser of a "Sapient Mind" meeting in Cambridge last September, thinks Bloch is right, but that "theory of mind" the ability to recognise that other people or creatures exist, and think for themselves might be as important as evolution of imagination. "As soon as you have theory of mind, you have the possibility of deceiving others, or being deceived," he says. This, in turn, generates a sense of fairness and unfairness, which could lead to moral codes and the possibility of an unseen "enforcer" - God who can see and punish all wrong-doers. "Once you have these additions of the imagination, maybe theories of God are inevitable," he says. Journal reference: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, (DOI:10.1098/rstb.2008.0007) == Wis. parents who prayed as diabetic daughter died charged WESTON, Wis. (AP) Two parents who prayed as their 11-year-old daughter died of untreated diabetes were charged Monday with second-degree reckless homicide. Family and friends had urged Dale and Leilani Neumann to get help for their daughter, but the father considered the illness "a test of faith" and the mother never considered taking the girl to the doctor because she thought her daughter was under a "spiritual attack," the criminal complaint said. "It is very surprising, shocking that she wasn't allowed medical intervention, " Marathon County District Attorney Jill Falstad said. "Her death could have been prevented." Madeline Neumann died March 23 Easter Sunday at her family's rural Weston home. Her parents were told the body would be taken to Madison for an autopsy the next day. "They responded, 'You won't need to do that. She will be alive by then,'" the medical examiner wrote in a report. An autopsy determined that Madeline died from undiagnosed diabetic ketoacidosis, which left her with too little insulin in her body. Court records said she likely had some symptoms of the disease for months. The Neumanns each face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. The couple and their attorney did not immediately return messages left Monday by The Associated Press. Falstad said the Neumanns have cooperated with investigators and are not under arrest. They have agreed to make an initial court appearance Wednesday, she said. Randall Wormgoor, a friend of the Neumanns, told police that Dale Neumann led Bible studies at his business, Monkey Mo Coffee Shop, and believed physical illness was due to sin, curable by prayer and by asking for forgiveness from God, the complaint said. Wormgoor said he and his wife, Althea, were at the Neumann home when Madeline _ called Kara by her parents died. Wormgoor said he had urged the father to seek medical help and was told the illness "was a test of faith for the Neumann family and asked the Wormgoors to join them in praying for Kara to get well," the complaint said. Althea Wormgoor said she "implored" the parents to seek medical help for the girl, the complaint said. Leilani Neumann, 40, told the AP previously she never expected her daughter to die. The family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God, but they have nothing against doctors, she said. Dale Neumann, 46, a former police officer, has said he has friends who are doctors and started CPR "as soon as the breath of life left" his daughter's body. According to court documents, Leilani Neumann said in a written statement to police that she never considered taking the girl, who was being home-schooled, to a doctor. "We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her. My husband Dale was crying and mentioned taking Kara to the doctor and I said, 'The Lord's going to heal her,' and we continued to pray," she wrote. The father told investigators he noticed his daughter was weak and slower for about two weeks but he attributed it to symptoms of the girl reaching puberty, the complaint said. A day before Madeline died, according to the criminal complaint, the father wrote an e-mail with the headline, "Help our daughter needs emergency prayer!!!!." It said his daughter was "very weak and pale at the moment with hardly any strength." The girl's grandmother, Evalani Gordon, told police that she learned her granddaughter could not walk or talk on March 22 and advised Leilani Neumann to take the girl to a doctor. Gordon eventually contacted a daughter-in- law in California who called police on a non-emergency line to report the girl was in a coma and needed medical help. An ambulance was dispatched shortly before some friends in the home called 911 to report the girl had stopped breathing, authorities said. One relative told police that the girl's mother believed she "died because the devil is trying to stop Leilani from starting her own ministry," the complaint said. The Neumanns said they moved to Weston, a suburb of Wausau in central Wisconsin, from California about two years ago to open the coffee shop and be closer to other relatives. The couple has three other children, ages 13 to 16; they are living with relatives. The family does not belong to an organized religion or faith, Leilani Neumann has said. Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said the parents once belonged to the Lighthouse Pentecostal Church but later became what he called religious "isolationists" involved in a prayer group of five people. "They have gone out on their own," he said. "... They have a very narrow view of Scripture and I would say not many people hold to that narrow of view." In March, an Oregon couple who belong to a church that preaches against medical care and believes in treating illness with prayer were charged with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month-old daughter. The toddler died March 2 of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection that could have been treated with antibiotics, the state medical examiner's office said. == Freethought http://ffrf.org/day/ == "Theism reduces God to a less than omnipotent creator who has to work miracles to keep his creation running in accordance with his will, while deism reduces God to a less than omniscient architect or designer whose design has resulted in endless generations of human misery". == A Good Boy Tomorrow: Memoirs of A Fundamentalist Upbringing (Paperback) by Charles Gidley Wheeler (Author) ex-fundie == Now the trouble starts, because if you believe in an infinitely powerful and wise creator who stands apart from the universe, you are presented with a choice. Either you believe in a theistic God who intervenes in human affairs, or you believe in a deistic "intelligent design" God who, having formed the universe out of nothing and issued immutable laws for it to follow, withdraws and leaves it to run on without further intervention. You can't consistently believe in a God who intervenes in human affairs and yet does not interven