Monday, February 25, 2013

Why Creationists are so Bully on "Kind"

Creationists really know how to take all the fun and creativity out of life.  Many of them will not admit that there are constellations in the sky, except for the Zodiac.  I guess astrology can live on, but astronomy cannot!  It does not take much thought to figure out why they want all of astronomy forgotten:  not only because it unlocks the answer to our origin and our age, but also the constellations have myths of earlier gods attached to them.  How devious of them to try to erase humans' history.

In a like manner, they want to erase taxonomy and phylogeny; any classification of animals and plants, including the human animal.  That is precisely the reason - they want to get rid of any evidence that humans are animals and are related to other animals.  Their idea is to teach that humans are a "kind," the human kind, and there is a dog kind (how inaccurate of the dog's origin), and a cat kind.  According to Ken Ham, they went on the ark and populated their species when they departed.  (We know that dog originated from the asiatic wolf, which came from earlier animals, but Ken Ham apparently cannot allow himself to learn anything but what facts he makes up.)

If our classification system is erased, we will not have our history and we will not be able to point to all the characteristics we share with other animals or do not share, such as opposable thumbs and mammary glands, forward facing eyes, etc.  When I find a site that explains all of our like characteristics in a manner that is easy to understand and is exactly what I desire, I will post it.  For now, I will post the Creationist's human history, and then two different scientific histories of humans.

1.  CREATIONIST'S HISTORY

Kind:  Human

(*How would anyone get graded in science class - everyone would receive an A!)



1. SCIENTIFIC HISTORY  (Linnaean Classification of Humans

Kingdom:   Animalia      
Phylum:   Chordata
         
 Subphylum:   Vertebrata
              
 Class:   Mammalia
                   
 Subclass:   Theria
                         
Infraclass:   Eutheria
                              
Order:   Primates
                                  
 Suborder:  Anthropoidea
                                        
Superfamily:  Hominoidea
                                            
 Family:   Hominidae
                                                  
Genus:   Homo
                                                       
Species:  sapiens


2.  SCIENTIFIC HISTORY BROKEN DOWN FURTHER (From first organisms to present day homo sapiens.  All of this is wiped out with Ken Ham's version.)  I copied this list from Wiki!
(*The first two should have bullet points and be in the list - I can't seem to put the bullet points back)

Biota [all life on Earth, including precellular life]
Clade - Cytota [all cellular life; LUCA, Prokarya, Bacteria]
  • Clade - Neomura [like Archaea, also included, oldest neomura, common ancestor with them]
  • Domain - Eukarya [like Bikonta, also included, oldest eukaryotes, common ancestor with them; cellular nucleus; first eukaryotic multicellular organisms; plants]
  • Clade - Unikonta [only one flagellum; like Amoebozoa, also included, common ancestor with them]
  • Clade - Opisthokonta [like Fungi, also included, oldest opisthokonts, common ancestor with them]
  • Clade - Holozoa
  • Clade - Filozoa
  • Kingdom - Animalia/Metazoa
  • Subkingdom - Eumetazoa [remotest origin of animal motility]
  • Clade - Bilateria [having bilateral symmetry]
  • Clade - Coelomata [Animals with body cavities]
  • Superphylum - Deuterostomia [anus gets formed first, and mouth gets formed opposedly and after]
  • Order - Primates [arboreal prehensile locomotion; terrestrial bipedal leaping in some cases; Strepsirrhini, Prosimians, also included, oldest living primates, common ancestor with them]
  • Suborder - Haplorrhini [anthropoidea; like Tarsiiformes, also included, oldest living haplorrhini, common ancestor with them]
  • Infraorder - Simiiformes [earliest documented tool ethology; like Platyrrhini, American Monkeys, also included, oldest living simiiformes; monkeys and apes included here]
  • Parvorder - Catarrhini [land extended locomotion; like Cercopithecoidea, Old World Monkeys, also included, oldest living ones]
  • Superfamily - Hominoidea [tail loss, arboreal locomotion reduced to forelimbs (Brachiation); apes, lesser apes, hominoids; like Hylobatidae, Gibbons, also included, oldest living ones]
Species - Proconsul africanus
  • Family - Hominidae [great apes, hominids; fist-walking; family with Ponginae, Orangutans, also included, oldest living ones, common ancestor with them]
  • Subfamily - Homininae [or hominines; knuckle-walking; includes gorillas but not orangutans]
Species - Pierolapithecus catalaunicus
  • Tribe - Hominini [or hominins; includes chimpanzees but not gorillas]
Species - Sahelanthropus tchadensis, possible common ancestor with chimpanzees[citation needed]
Species - Orrorin tugenensis, may be an early species after split with chimpanzees[citation needed]
  • Subtribe - Hominina [or hominans; orthograde (upright) bipedalism; humans are the only surviving species]
Genus - Ardipithecus [Human lineage]
Genus - Kenyanthropus
Genus - Australopithecus [Human lineage; made tools found]
  • Genus - Homo [or humans; specific and specialized development of memory/learning/teaching/learning application (learning driven ethology)]
Species - Homo habilis [refined stone technology; earliest fire control]
Species - Homo ergaster [extensive language, complex articulate language]
Species - Homo erectus [fire control, cooking; aesthetic/artistic refinement of tools]
Species - Homo heidelbergensis [possible earliest sanitary burial of dead, accompanied with symbolic/formal supplement]
  • Species - Homo sapiens [further development and specialization of learning application; active environment transformation, acclimatization and control; infrastructures and advanced technology]
Subspecies - Homo sapiens idaltu

Saturday, February 23, 2013

"Personal Relationships" with God and Brain Development

Phrases such as "I have a personal relationship with God" and "Jesus talks to me all the time" should be questioned, especially since all communication takes place in a person's head.  Not only do they ask God  questions in their heads, but God answers them in their own heads. 
Do you remember what voice God used in your head?  Was it a lower, echoey sounding voice, with the same cadence as your own voice and the same accent as yours, but a little slower and more formal?  Did God chuckle and think you were the apple of his eye? 

Ironically, the Christian's very religion is due to brain development in humans.  Religion most likely developed from fear of nature, guilt, death and feeling small in the grandness of existence.  As brains developed, all abilities sharpened such as the ability to think, "If I tell that person I will bring home a huge animal to eat and I can't catch one, what will she say to me?" The human began to be able to picture such conversations in their heads.  Talking in imaginary scenarios took hold. 

But this is another reason why Christians cannot believe in evolution or admit any animal origin.  They would not be able to point to the point where God could not be worshipped without brain enlargement and development, and they would realize Christian's very religion is due to evolution.

Some of the theories set forth about brain development do not make sense to me.  It is widely publicized by meat eaters that brain development and enlargement might have been due to them catching and cooking meat.  However, this does not coincide what how nature actually was dispersed.  Early human's diets differed depending on location, with more fish near the waters, and not much meat anywhere, because it was very difficult to catch an animal with crude spears and man's less developed abilities on the ground, especially before brain development! 

Early humans mostly were fed by the women, who gathered nuts, seeds, berries, and some grains.  Many men do not want to admit this, because it is a part of what they are taught that they were strong cavemen who provided for their women on courageous hunts.  But in reality, they might have brought back a few mouse sized creatures as an addition to the food the women gathered, and only occasionally did they score a larger animal.

If brain development came from foods it is more likely it came from early humans learning to cook tubers like onions, potatoes and other underground foods they dug up and cooked.  It was digested easily and eaten quickly so they could focus on other things. This is also a theory proposed about why the brain enlarged, but is not sent all over the Internet like the meat cooking theory.  I want to make it clear that I have no idea why the brain grew, but that the meat cooking theory makes little sense in light of actual history.

Did this brain development cause humans to be "special and exclusive" to God?  Before the brain development, were people chosen?  How did they know?  Did they have souls?  As usual, the Christian's speciesistic ideas about humans fall apart upon examination.




 

Friday, February 15, 2013

My Life As a Facebook "Radical"

Doesn't it just sting when someone you think really cares for you, unfriends you on Facebook?!  I hadn't heard from my cousin in awhile, and checked his Facebook page and found I had been unfriended.  It was such a shock.

I may come off just way too liberal, even for other people who are liberal!  I thought he and I were "on the same page."  Guess not.

I reviewed my posts, and either they are way too voluminous, they are too vegan oriented (as non-vegans get sick of hearing about what they should not eat), or what most likely made him hit the unfriend button are my few anti-religious posts.  Part of me wants to tone everything down, and part of me argues with myself that religious people never tone it down - why should I?  Still sorting out what is right regarding all my relationships on Facebook - just kind of disappointed right now.

I guess I am destined to be disliked by some and shut out of many people's lives for my views.  Too bad I am a sensitive person - I should just accept my life as a radical!

Ever feel this way?

Barb

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Christians and Animal Sacrifice - Confused Minds

Christians often say that Jesus died for your sins and was “the ultimate sacrifice,” taking away the need for all other sacrifices.  There are a few problems with that statement.  The first is the acceptance by Christians that there ever was a need for sacrifices. Christians, to this day, actually believe sacrifices were necessary because they were “foreshadowing the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus,” so they see them as fine, and a way to take away sins before Jesus came along.  Have they ever thought about how there is no connection between murdering some animal and committing a sin, except that logical people realize murdering some animal is committing a sin!   Christians are so speciesistic, they might have to think about this subject in completely human terms in order to understand its ludicrousness.  If a neighbor “lusted after a woman in his heart” and felt he was sinning, would it be right to take your child and sacrifice it, kill it to give to God, in order to get right of the sin of lusting after a woman?

There is the problem of using animals as a scapegoat because the focus is not on what the person did wrong and making amends directly, but instead the focus is on a quick fix of getting rid of sin. It does nothing to right the wrong committed, and only commits another wrong.  This is a very unhealthy practice and a wrong concept to teach people. 

Animal sacrifices are still going on.  I would say they happen all over the world every day, because I feel the way the farm animals’ hearts are kept beating after the throats are slit is too similar to the old sacrificial ways.  Halal meat is a horrible way for an animal to die and it is a religious ritual, and the Muslims slaughter animals during Eid al-Adha every year.  There are bull fights, cultures where bulls are stuffed with sand, kicked and tortured as a right of manhood (even though all of them gang up on one bull at the same time so it seems even more ridiculous to call it manly), and so many other unbelievably cruel festivals all over the world. 

But back to Christianity:  Jesus never said he was ending animal sacrifice, unless I am missing something in the Bible!   People just loosely interpret the crucifixion that way because animal sacrifices did ease up during that time period, as more and more people were feeling guilty about the sacrifices and gentler ways such as vegetarianism took hold in other cultures. 

Vegetarianism was popular with several groups, including a group of which James, the brother of Jesus (if Jesus actually existed and if James was actually his brother) was leader.  Someone named James who called himself the brother of Jesus (according to Paul and a few other sources) was a more powerful person than Jesus was during his lifetime, and James was vegetarian.  Most of this came to a halt, however, when Paul started writing several books of the New Testament and since he detested James, he promoted meat eating in the Bible.  The Council of Nicea threw all the books such as the Gospel of the Nazarenes and anything to do with vegetarianism on the cutting room floor and they did not make the “final version” of the Bible.  Further killings from the 300s A.D. all the way through the Inquisition wiped out many of the vegetarians.

The interesting part of Christianity is that most Christians follow Paul and are therefore Paulists.  Paul was the one who claimed that the Old Testament laws need not be followed any longer.  Jesus explicitly said the laws of the Prophets were to be followed!  (This should be a clue to Jesus having a vision little bigger than his culture.)  If Jesus did return and realized Christians were eating bacon, all those pork eating Christians would join the rest of us in Hell! (D. Hump)

If you Google “vegetarian heresy” you will find current articles written by Christians and Pastors actually encouraging meat eating, with the excuse that ‘animals are here for our use.”  Two Pastors claimed that it is a sin not to eat meat because God put them here for your food and He will be insulted if you do not eat them.  The truth is, the Pastors just like women bringing them BBQ.  Vegetarianism has been around since around 800 B.C. with the ancient Buddhists and Hindus.  Pythagoras was a vegetarian.  (Many ate fish, because of their lack of knowledge about fish, but that’s another story!)   

Jesus had little influence around the world if it was his idea to end animal sacrifice with his crucifixion (again, I don’t think it was his intention), and if God had any kindness, he would have sent Jesus earlier to try to stop all the animal sacrifices that went on.  How strange to take a step back and think just how insane this idea is, of taking a life away from a precious animal to erase something you did wrong.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Science and Religion Are Not Compatible!

 (This blog is what I just wrote to Letter to the Editor in my town's newspaper.  I hope it gets published, because we see a "God and Bible" boring article published every week.  I got the idea for this from one of Philhellenes' videos on YouTube.)

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were extremely proud when they formed a secular government with a diverse people; yet from our country’s inception, Christians have wanted to take away the freedoms of other Americans by breaching the separation of church and state. Creationists want science to be taught from a religious perspective, but I think instead, we should look at religion from a scientific perspective. The Resurrection, the very basis for Christianity, fails scientific scrutiny.
Christians claim that “God suspended the physical laws” to allow Jesus to float up to Heaven, because they know Jesus could not be a spirit floating in the sky with our constant physical laws of the Universe. If Jesus were a spirit with no physical matter then he would have no momentum, and would be whisked away tens of thousands of miles per hour due to the earth’s rotation and its motion around the sun. 
But Jesus must have had mass and matter, because Jesus was seen by the people in the sky!  In order to see an object, it must have photons to reflect light, so Jesus had mass.  To make Jesus elevate, what physical laws did God suspend?  If He suspended the law of gravity, one would think Jesus would float like an astronaut, upside down and sideways with no control; but actually, zero gravity in the atmosphere would once again zip Jesus away at the speed of light. Add to that the fact that “God suspended the physical laws” (notice the plural), so the Higgs and Relativity laws would be suspended.  Therefore, all people, including mass/spirit Jesus, oceans and the surface of the earth would disperse into particles and zoom away at the speed of light! 
We have not even examined how Jesus would go to Heaven but leave his gut bacteria behind since creatures are not supposed to go to Heaven. The “humans only” rule has never made sense, since there are rivers of milk and honey in Heaven. Jesus would need the gut bacteria for digesting milk, and honey would mean there were stinging bees in Heaven! 
Animals must be allowed since Jesus will return with his sword on a white horse, through poisonous gas clouds, to wage war as the Prince of Peace.  The Bible tells us His blade is sharp, which is good since He will be knocking it against tanks, drones, long range missiles and all of the children of the world who are in the military, fighting religious wars that make no sense. 
No, science and religion are not compatible.