Throughout Science Fiction there is always a belief that man will be ‘Mankind’ while evoking a rational and reasoning mind. And it’s disturbing to think that reason, and considered actions will be how Humans will be perceived. If there is a considered, planned rational approach to traveling among the stars, it will be from an AI consciousness not a Human one, and there by hangs ‘humanity’ if we show who we are, we may not survive, but if we survive without all the elements that make us human, emotions, excitement, joy anger and sadness and wonder, it won’t be us. It will be ‘them’.
Religion
The next moment, a new World.
Almost all religion speaks of a next world, a heaven if you will. If their followers uphold the values that religion espouses. Christianity, Islam even Norse speaks of Valhalla. But time and space in the real world is a very different place. Each moment a branch in space-time, each moment, a new world. And while in most religions, you must die to enter heaven, in space time that is only a next moment, a new branch. You die, you don’t die, each on it’s own branch. Each a possibility, taken or not.
If you assume that each religion has fundamental elements that provide a moral framework to betterment of society, and the individual. Then each positive action that person betters, improves, does good in the world, betters the next world in the next moment. So each individual, makes the next world a heaven, or a hell of the next world in the next moment. Each branch an upward movement, or a downward one. Good, or not, betterment or not, each leading to a better or worse world for everyones next moment.
Any practitioner, priest, cleric or minister that preaches the worst elements of their religion, calling for any of mankind’s worse traits, they are wishing for the hell, striving for the worst world in the next moment for everyone. And any, who are not religious, who by their actions uplifts, that does good, that betters, are saints, and righteous for they uplift all mankind, in the next moment, in the next world.
ED:Republishing this.
The very first Higgs Boson
Yup! The first of many Higgs Boson’s, just like the early Greeks predicted, particles within particles within particles ad infinitude.
The Banking Crisis is Our Fault!
I heard all the arguments, and if I were in a position to actually have made the decisions, or been allowed to tender an opinion on the actions taken. I know I would have made different choices. But in the end;
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BANKING CRISIS!
We the people of Ireland are personally responsible for the crisis, for WE voted on the corrupt and idiotic government, the bad bureaucracy and bribed banked owned politicians who put us into this position. AS IN PERIOD!
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE!
There is no getting around it, so stop talking about a banking crisis, it’s a crisis of a democratic majority more concerned with trifling personalities, and historical artifacts that have no basis in fact. A Nonsensical political system that reenforces the rich, and dumps the poor and middle classes.
Real Democracy for the Tea Party.
Before the last big election in the U.S.A. I managed to get on to a great deal of political Email lists, as I’m sure many of you did. And while they all managed to end up in the Junk email box, as I have very little vested interest in U.S. Politics anymore. I have seen a great deal of anguish about the emergence of the Tea Party Movement and the Radical and apparently irrational candidates demands.
I have worried as many that these people represented the worst in U.S. politics, the radical Right Wing elements who are being manipulated by ultra-conservative GOP millionaires. However, and I mean some how, however, they have managed to get off the leash from the directions of their handlers and appear to actually believe in their, from my perspective, misguided ideals. And there by hangs the tail on the political animal.
Democracy! It’s not just for mainstream (managed) Democrat or Republican candidates, those willing to say or do anything to get elected to office. Those who, with party backing, pay millions of dollars to get elected to political positions that really only pay a pittance. Just so thay can exert influence for those who paid to put them there. They are not really representing their electorate who voted for them, not representing the views and opinions of the people they were elected to serve, but those who paid to put them there. And we both know that is wrong.
So from another perspective, if a Tea Party candidate, who might believe in Pink Faeries who deliver chocolate cookies, receives enough votes from people who also believe in Pink Faeries. Then that person has every right, democratically, to server in the U.S. government. They would be doing exactly what they were elected to do, represent those who believe in Pink Faeries. In fact they would have more right to be there than those who were bought and paid for by lobbyist with an agenda.
And the worst case of this Pink Faerie representative in the Senate, or the House, nothing, except that they would not be beholding to anyone, except those who believed in Pink Faeries. Do you, for a minute, believe that legislation would ever be created to effect the U.S. regarding Pink Faeries? Would they be capable of generating the votes in congress to pass such legislation? Then what does anyone have to worry about, with ANY other belief that ANY candidate might profess during an election. They will first have to gather enough votes to get elected, then manage to promote any such idea in congress to a majority vote. And they have the right to try, in fact that it part of the problem with the two party system of politics in the U.S., not enough parties to represent all of the views of the differing sectors of American voters.
So while I don’t believe in the Tea Party, I will defend their right to make the attempt put forth their ideas and views to the vote of the people of the U.S. and discover for themselves the measure of acceptance of those ideals from the voting public. And if they are elected, so be it, this is the voice of the electorate, let it be heard.
Underground War – Whistle Blowers strike back.
I may be the last to see this, a war, underground and undeclared, but a war. The opponents are a bit undefined but there is a clear and escalating combat in the world. I’m not talking about Terrorists, (although the establishment who is under assault may declare their attackers as such) I am talking about the the established order, The Multi-Nationals, the Big Press, Governments, Military establishments, Religious organizations. The big anonymous bodies that have been abusing their positions to detriment everyone else.
On the opposing side, are all the little people, groups and oppressed, or the perceived oppressed. Your fellow ‘pissed off’ worker setting next to you, who will explode in a fountain of Whistle blowing. A venting of frustration that will result in the next big internet explosion.
The WikiLeaks is merely the first oozing pustule on the face of the corporeal Corporations of the world. The World of Blogging has for many years undermined the world press both broadcast and print to the point that now the majority of the population now refer to the Internet for real news rather than the handful of corporation owned ‘News’ services.
Control has now slipped out of the hands of those who for years have managed the information flow. Evidence of this ‘management’ appears almost daily in the presentations of ignorance passed off as ‘News’. And where ‘Fair and Balanced’ openly bribe governments to maintain control, religious organizations openly attempt to promote such myths as Creationism at the scientific Truth.
The tide has turned, and the failing newspapers are only the start. Watch for more WikiLeaks and Whistle Blower sites springing up, more Lawsuits more Smear campaigns as the giant attempts to swat the Whistleblowers who are biting it to death.
Religious ‘Tight Ass’
I was reminded of this ‘West Wing’ after all the bull shit about the Mosque near the World Trade Center And tried, as I might, to remember that the United States was founded on the constitutionally guaranteed right of Freedom of Religion. Who knew?
Atheism in the world
I was reading a Digg article about atheism, and I was sure the percentages of the population were incorrect. So Googleing up an answer gave me the best answer yet.
There is a great deal of room for debate as to the accuracy of any method of estimation (of atheism), as the opportunity for misreporting (intentionally or not) a category of people without an organizational structure ( read church) is high.
That about said it all, no way to count them!
( (editorial) )
Brian the Coward leader of the Lost!
I almost never link to Twenty Major, more because I have no comment on what he comments on, but this posting Brian Coward is probably worthy of another award. And I could not recommend it more.
Catholic Church in Ireland
If you are interested in the Catholic Church in Ireland Please read that link, and perhaps rethink the Idea that Religion is a Moral Authority to be respected.
The Real, root of all evil.
I’ve been just watching The Root of All Evil on RTE, of all places, I’m surprised that the Catholic Church allow them to broadcast it.
I more or less believe this to be the case for years, there is Reason and then there is Religion, Good verses Evil. Christian Fundamentalists, Islamic Jihadist’s and any other religious belief system taken to an extreme is evil. Plain and simple, lesser measures of religion are merely irrational.
You can have morals without religion, you can have the rule of the laws of man without religion.
The Guise of truth
Israel lost the last war with Hezbollah and I Blogged about it here when I wrote that Israel loses the War on Terror and it looks like the Israeli government has learned to change their propaganda to alter perceptions but are we trusting what we see?. Can we recognize a YouTube campaign when we see one? Not likely, but what is worse is that this ‘war’ may be more about upcoming elections in Israel than anything Hamas has been doing.
UPDATE:
Kinda says it all!
Dark Energy / Dark Matter The Devil incarnate
I’m just waiting for the first fundamentalist religious group to propose that mysterious dark energy and Dark Matter are manifestations of the Devil and that this Darkness is the Biblical metaphor for Hell That We in the universe of Lightness and Matter, are opposed by this Dark Energy and Anti-Matter universe.
Would this improve scientific efforts, or make Astronomy and Physics a Religion?
Indian violence in Mumbai is a guise
This article Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India’s Muslims in Crisis pretends that the Muslim outcry of violence is over Indian mistreatment of Muslims. Then why the targeting of Americans, and British? Something does not ring true here. This is a guise for something more, a threat of Jehad with a mask of righteous religious zeal? Something, it’s not clear, and early pronouncements of it’s cause, premature.
The (subtle) war on Science
Outside of the blatant Anti-Science attacks like Sarah Palin’s War on Science! There are more subtle attacks, a smearing of Science research that undermines Science such as this article; The world’s smelliest magnets I call BS on these sort of studies, any farmer knows that cows face away from the Sun when grazing. No Magnets involved. But the assertion is that this is what constitutes ‘Science’. The attempt is to make a mockery of more Hard Core Scientific Research. Science has a hard enough time getting funding, but to allow anyone to point at magnet cows as an example of ‘Fundamental Scientific Research’ undermines all scientific research. So the next time you muse at a ‘Scientific Study’ of why Men find red-clad women hotter you will know that you are being manipulated against Science.