It's Over, Part II

This report from Yahoo News is really the last nail in the Creationism/Intelligent Design coffin. This one's got to hurt, though. My post of a week or so ago details the discovery of the missing link in dinosaur evolution. This one confirms the missing link in humans and I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth. I've been hoping that something like this would come out since the last major news story of this kind. There's no way to make people believe if they don't want to but if some one is really sincere in finding out the truth, this ought to do it for them.
In other news, I am starting to get a bit more worried about Bush and his ilk. He has a lot of people around him who are "born agains" and it seems as though they are on a mission to bring about Armageddon. I think they really believe that it's their purpose in life. These people think that if they can stir up things in the Middle East enough, the Rapture will occur and they'll all get swept up into heaven as the select. I got news for you - it ain't going to happen. Armageddon and the Rapture and the Seven Seals are just scare tactics the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists use to keep their followers in line. My experience is that any organization that uses fear as motivation is usually hiding something or not telling the whole truth. Does it strike anyone as odd that the whole time Jesus was on earth, all he talked about was how loving God is and that we could all guarantee our place in heaven by sharing that love with our fellow man. Then the book of Revelations comes and turns everything on its head(or so it seems). When the founding fathers of the Catholic Church put together the Bible in 300 AD or so, they obviously had a reason for including this book. Everyone of that time and age knew what that book was about. It's not a book of prophecy, it's a history book. Apocalyptic writings have been a staple of Jewish literature since the Babylonian exile. It was used to communicate information amongst the faithful without their Babylonian captors knowing what they were talking about. In fact, the book of Daniel is exactly this and most theologians don't think there was a Daniel at all. The whole number of the beast thing in Revelations is not even about the devil although it is about an evil man. The Jews of that time were very involved in a sort of numerology. People's names where often translated into numbers by combining the numbers that corresponded to the letters in people's names. 666(or 616 as we recently found out) is the numerical equivalent of Nero, who was the emperor of Rome during the time the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. If you look at the conditions the Christians were living under at that time, it's no wonder they felt they had be surreptitious with their communications. They were being fed to lions, their homeland had been destroyed and most of their countrymen spread to the four corners of the earth. It's amazing what an intelligent reading of something will reveal.

What are you afraid of?

On my way to work this morning, I saw a BMW M-3 with a bumper sticker that said "Don't let the car fool you, My treasure is in heaven". First of all, what kind of idiot puts a bumper sticker on a BMW. Bumper stickers and BMW's are mutually exclusive. Secondly, what are you afraid of? Don't apologize for buying the car. Many people took pride in the job they did to produce that car so that you could enjoy it. You've made it possible for them to continue to do the craft they were trained to do and support their families. I think the real issue here is that this person had to put the sticker on their car so that they could feel better about themselves. It's not about their "treasure in heaven" it's about their own ego. This person obviously felt guilty about buying the car and so that had to do something that said to everyone else that "Don't judge me" . The sad truth is that I don't care and if the bumper sticker hadn't been there, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I wonder how many other people saw that and thought the same thing.

On a different note, I've finally decided to address the immigrant issue. The absolute audacity of some public figures that are pandering to the illegal immigrants is enought to make me sick. Two years ago, Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying that we needed to do a better job of policing the borders, holding employers accountable for hiring and so on. Last week at some rally, she was pointing out that these are the people that are cleaning our hotel rooms, picking up our trash, cooking our food at restaurants and that we should be more appreciative of them. My take on this issue is that we don't need more laws to control immigration. We need better enforcement of the laws we currently have. That includes spending enough money to hire more agents to patrol the border and investigate employers. The congress can't make any political hay, however, if we just do what we've said we would do. The only way they can justify their positions is to make new laws. Our political system is going to collapse under all the laws and regulations if we don't take action and elect people who will strive for a leaner, meaner government. The status quo is going to bankrupt us both economically and culturally.

It's over, It's over, It's OVER

Check out this article - Click here It seems as though we've driven the last nail into the coffin of creationism/intelligent design. I'm sure that there will be some "Well, what about this?" and "Oh yeah, I bet you forgot about that" but it'll all come out in the wash. My stance on this issue is that while I believe the theory of evolution without reservations, I also absolutely believe that God is responsible for it. Nothing fits the definition of an all knowing, all powerful God better than being able to set one thing in motion and letting the hand play out, all the while knowing exactly what the next card would be. Most people want to limit God by saying that he wouldn't have had us evolve from ape-like creatures because we are too important to have had such humble beginnings. I would go so far as to say that religions that put for such ideas are really humanist philosophy in religious clothing. In their eyes, God is only capable of creating one intelligent species in the whole universe - human. My don't we think a lot of ourselves. When I contemplate the wonder and vastness of the universe and the probablity that somewhere out there there are other beings doing the same thing, the only thing I can feel is humility and gratitude. Finding out that other fellow species have intelligence was simply a confirmation in the absolute perfection of God. Evolutionists and creationists are really the opposite sides of the same coin. One is too proud to admit that there is a God and the other, too proud to admit that God is actually capable of producing the universe we inhabit as a result of the Big Bang and evolution. In fact, scientists just discovered that neutrinos must have mass and that once they figure out how much, it will probably solve the problem of all the missing mattier in the universe. What this does is once again bolster Einstein's theorys and the ramifications they imply. I really couldn't have been born at a better time to experience the death of an entire philosphy(if you can call it that, to me philosophy requires independent thought).

Our government at work

Some one put this great .pdf file together using warning signs the Homeland Security Dept. came up with. It's amazing how the government can spend millions of dollars and still not get the message across. I guess some concepts are too difficult to simplify into these kinds of signs. For what they really mean go to www.ready.gov and click on one of the topics on the left hand side of the page. It will then show you the symbols relating to that particular threat.