Into the Void

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Speaks for Himself - New York Times

“… he mimicked President John F. Kennedy’s Boston accent and also mocked Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s speech. “Nobody says to a Kennedy, ‘You speak bad English,’ ” he said. “Only to a black child was that said.”

“Errrrr eh, errrrr eh…” But we do make fun of Ted Kennedy’s Boston accent! Pretty much everybody does. In fact, I think I’ll call it Bobonics.

I’m starting to really like Rev. Wright.

I occasionally interfere in the perpetual misconception that science is
somehow more than a quasi-objective reality check. The other day a
questioner postulated that the continued existence of homosexuality
effectively disproves “survival of the fittest” I give the fellow credit
for understanding that homosexuality is more than a lifestyle choice.
Nonetheless, I left a steaming pile for the questioner to ponder. I’ll go
back next week and vote for myself.

Survival of the Fittest applies at the population level, not at an individual level. It isn’t a “rule” in the way you’d think of a rule, it is about how environmental factors affect the diversity in a population. For instance, there has been an upsurge in asthma deaths since the US has relaxed air pollution standards.

Homosexuality is a continuum of desires whose expression is modulated largely by social forces. (I’m purposely leaving out the nature-vs.-nurture aspect. The jury is still out on genetics and in-utero exposure to hormones.) At one low point in our history, there was wholesale witch burning using homosexuals as faggots to light the fire.

For all you know, you are completely surrounded by homosexuals who are maintaining heterosexual relationships and reproducing just to “fit in.” You’re familiar with the concept of a “beard,” right?

I think this is a perfect adaptation, one that Evolution would be proud of if Evolution had intelligence. What intelligence is killing asthmatic children, again?

Modern women often prefer sensitive guys. Who knows? Maybe homosexuality confers a great breeding advantage on men who carry the trait.

;-)

“Vocatus atque non vocatus… deus aderit
Called or not called , GOD will be present.”
– Inscription on Gravestone of Professor Dr. Carl G. Jung, Kusnacht, Switzerland
Quoted from Heaven’s Register

Have you read any Jung? Jung was a medical doctor whose father was a philospher and pastor. Jung believed that God is not “out there” but is inside us all. God is our subconscious mind! You feel deep down what is right, now don’t you?

Jung pointed out that God evolved morally over the course of biblical history. That’s right, God got better and better. He had to, to keep up with his children’s moral evolution.

Being the firstborn is a curse for a lot of reasons, and it didn’t start with that whole “Dad forgot to paint the lintels” thing.

It can be deduced from the concept of a morally evolving God that Jesus Christ was the manifestation of this evolution. the “God made flesh.” God hoped that a physical manifestation would convince the Pharisees, the NT version of the Religious Right, to evolve too. It didn’t work, though. The Pharisees, like any hierarchical structure heavenly or temporal, were notoriously inflexible. Anything the Pharisees disagreed with was a sin, Evil, abomination. As a child Jesus was almost stoned for breaking one of the old rules.

If God is within us, then the fight between good and evil is going on inside us too. In Jung’s words, “from the psychological point of view demons are nothing other than intruders from the unconscious, spontaneous irruptions of unconscious complexes into the continuity of the conscious process.”

Here’s a simplification derived from Alan Watts‘ Tribute to Carl Jung. Satan isn’t in me, it can’t be, because I am Good. The Evil and the hate must be over there in you! (That’s the non-self-aware speaking, the one with Blind Faith and no reason.)

Look in your heart. Both good and evil are right there inside your own subconscious, making you act out their presence. Like a projector you are shining your own ugly thoughts onto the blank screens of the A-theists. This is the psychology of evil.

And until you discover your self-contradictions, you will always hate anyone who disagrees with you.

As for me, I’m not afraid of the guru. I’m afraid of the people who threaten me with eternal torture in his name.

Today I learned that the Arabic word for mental illness has the same etymology as the Arabic word for evil spirits. This has an unfortunate effect on how the mentally ill are perceived in the Middle East.

Language is an odd thing. It enables you to express your innermost thoughts and feelings. BUT it almost guarantees that the thoughts and feelings you express have been totally shaped by the language itself. In the words of comedian Lenny Bruce,

“Believe me, I’m not profound, this is something that I assume someone must have laid on me, because I do not have an original thought. I am screwed. I speak English. That’s it. I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to somebody else.”
– Lenny Bruce, quoted on Rakes Progress: Lenny Bruce is not afraid

So what’s happening is that as long as the doctors use that old-fashioned
word to describe mental illness, demon-possessed the mentally ill will remain.

Arabs don’t have a monopoly on superstition though. The following TinyUrl will take you to a google search for “mental illness exorcism.”
http://tinyurl.com/5gwe4p

Charlton Heston died yesterday. They’re still trying to pry the gun out of his cold, dead hands.

Click for larger picture.

I have to give a speech on evolution…help? - Yahoo! Answers

My nephew would tell you that a shark doesn’t turn into a chair.

Darwin and Wallace were the first guys to write about evolution.

Darwin got his ideas while traveling around the world and seeing all kinds of animals. The ship was called the “Beagle.” You’ll want to talk about Galapagos Island, where he saw different species of birds in a place so far from the continent that they had to have all come from one ancestor. He thought that their beaks were shaped by what food their ancestors ate. Seeds vs. berries vs. bugs, etc. Don’t forget the tortoises.

There are different theories of how evolution occurs.

**Lamarck** said that species evolve because acquired traits are passed down through the generations. Like giraffes stretching their necks up to get leaves makes their offspring have longer necks. (not true)

Darwin believed that evolution was a slow process of population drifting in response to the environment. The average height of a giraffe changes each generation because the short ones all died. (closer, but not quite)

Basically, evolution occurs when something in the environment - Nature - kills off certain animals and let others live. So if the short-necked giraffes always died there would only be taller giraffes left to reproduce. But the next valley over the trees might be really short so the tall giraffes have trouble reaching down and after a couple of generations only short giraffes are left. So now there are two different animals. This is called “Natural Selection.”

Darwin, like most people of his time, believed that offspring were a blend of their parents traits, like a black cat and a white cat have grey kittens and after that all kittens are grey. (not true) He had trouble believing his own theory, and waited many years to publish it. Actually, he published it only after he found out that Wallace had the same ideas.

**Mendel** came up with modern genetics, where there are dominant and recessive genes. So black cats can have white kittens, orange tabby kittens, and black kittens.

Another theory is that small mutations - like birth defects - might make an animal better suited. Maybe a horse had a long-necked colt that could eat from taller trees so it survived. After enough generations the mutations add up until the horse looks like a giraffe. Obviously some mutations don’t help at all, or even kill. It’s random. Some folks can’t handle randomness - everything has to be planned in advance or they freak out.

Still another theory is that small changes aren’t good enough - there had to be a miracle to change one species to another. They always say that the eye had to be a miracle because it’s so complex, but they forget to tell you about lizards with light-sensing patches in their skin instead of eyeballs, or about lower mammals whose species can’t see colors yet. ANY eye is an evolutionary advantage over no eyes at all, even if it’s only a light-sensing patch.

The main thing is that to be scientific, you have to be willing to change your theory to match what you observe. It’s not enough for some scientist to tell you “THIS IS TRUE.” You get to go out and prove it for yourself - or even disprove it! Anybody who doesn’t let you question their theory is trying to control your mind. And that, my young friend, is politics.

Darwin loves you, man.

Technorati: Charles+Darwin evolution LaMarck Galagapos+Island Origin+of+Species acquired+traits mutations natural+selection Gregor+Mendel genetics scientific+theory

Of course the soul is energy. The body - the vessel we live in - runs on electrochemical reactions that have EM fields around them just like any other electrical conductor does. Halo, aura, nimbus.

“The Egyptians recognized many degrees of immortality. The Ren and the Sekem and the Khu are relatively immortal, but still subject to injury. The other souls who survive physical death are much more precariously situated. Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast? If humans and animal souls are seen as electromagnetic force fields, such fields could be totally disrupted by a nuclear explosion. The mummy’s nightmare: disintegration of souls, and this is precisely the ultrasecret and supersensitive function of the atom bomb: a Soul Killer, to alleviate an escalating soul glut.”
– William S. Burroughs & Material, Soul Killer from the Seven Souls CD.

moar funny pictures

2008 handsome priests calendar - Calendario Romano

Not just for kids any more - now you too can have your own hunky priest… calendar.

Piero Pazzi’s Calendario Romano features handsome Roman priests and beautiful Vatican churches. The calendar helps raise funds for London HIV charity The Food Chain.