Yess!!

An Atheist's Christmas

In my wanderings around the net I came across two seasonal poems by Cuttlefish over at the Freethought Blogs I thought I'd share with you:


An Atheist’s Christmas
We’ll all open presents, and cook a big dinner,
And share in traditions we learned long ago
But Christmas is different for this humble sinner,
No “birth of the saviour”, just people we know.
It has nothing to do with a babe in a manger
Or kings being led by a star up above,
But rather in family, friend, and in stranger,
In kindnesses done for the people we love.
A spirit of hope, and a spirit of giving,
A promise of peace in a troubling day,
A chance to examine the way we are living–
The courage to say what we’ve wanted to say.
You don’t need to think there’s a god up above you
To want to be good to your fellows on Earth.
To give to your friends, and to tell them “I love you”
Has nothing to do with some son of god’s birth.
For love, and for giving, we say “tis the season”
For caring, for kindness, for sharing good cheer
But why limit ourselves? I mean, what is the reason?
Why can’t we be giving the rest of the year?
This Christmas, my wish for each sister and brother,
To you, and to everyone you may hold dear;
Remember, this Christmas, to love one another—
Not only this season, but all through the year!


Here is Cuttlefish's version of an atheist Christmas card:


[front] 
As we battle our way through the line at the store 
And think to ourselves “there has got to be more” 
And wonder where “Christmas of long ago” went, 
When the meaning of Christmas was what it first meant… 


 [inside] 
It was stolen by Christians from heathens, of course— 
From Greeks and from Romans, from Celtics and Norse— 
Why, Christmas is pagan, from yule-log to tree 
To mistletoe waiting for you and for me 
The meaning of Christmas—the good stuff, at least— 
The ornaments, stockings, and “rare Who roast beast” 
Has nothing to do with a Son of God’s birth 
But rather the changing of seasons on Earth 
The nights now grow shorter, the days will grow longer, 
The rays of the sun (and our spirits) grow stronger! 
So celebrate Solstice, rejoice in the season, 
And love one another whatever the reason!

Peace and joy to all.

No, Virginia, There Is No Santa Claus

Came across a wonderful answer to little Virginia's letter asking if there really is a Santa Claus. This time Greta Christina replies No, Virginia, There Is No Santa Claus. Of course for Virginia the letter is a century late but it's right on time for the rest of us.

Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker

Came across another quote very similar to the one I posted yesterday this time by the writer/philosopher Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950) in his seminal work Star Maker:

In time it became clear that we, individual inhabitants of a host of other worlds, were playing a small part in one of the great movements by which the cosmos was seeking to know itself, and even see beyond itself.

I seem to be late to this discovery that others have previously stumbled upon but the more I think about it the more I believe it might hold true. I will contemplate on this further.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Came across this wonderful quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson that fits beautifully into what I believe:


Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnace within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.


from "The Greatest Story Ever Told". Natural History Magazine. March 1998. 

Santa vs God

I wrote a post few months ago titled Santa Claus - the Gateway Drug. Today I found that someone else had much the same idea: 

What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth?

This is a...time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.


It's said that many of those who have been in space have felt the Overview Effect which has been described as a transcendental, euphoric feeling of universal connection reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from orbit or from the lunar surface. Since I have never been in space it's vids like this that convey a slight glimpse of what they might be perceiving; that and sitting in a planetarium watching a sky show or on the rare nights when the sky is dark enough (in the vid you can see the large mass of manmade light that hinders our seeing the stars these days) and clear enough to see what some call the backbone of the night. Our Earth is small and fragile compared to the enormousness of the universe as we can see here and we must take care of it as it's the only planet we have, at least for the foreseeable future.


I wonder if this feeling of a "cosmic connection", this view that the whole cosmos is an interconnected quantum web, where consciousness is not separate, but a part of the Universe, is a true phenomenon or simply something that can be explained by neuroscience? But as Carl Sagan said, we are starstuff and I believe we are driven to journey out there, to connect...if the religious far right doesn't hinder this, or our desire to take care of our homeworld, with their anti-science attitude.

A Moral God?? Continued

I wrote an earlier post on the morality of the biblical deity; over the weeks I've done a bit more thinking on the subject and found even more reasons why the Biblical deity is not up to my moral standards: 

Here we have a deity who punishes billions of women with painful labor because of one gullible woman. Is that just? Is that fair?

He condones human sacrifice as in the case of Jepthah, a judge, who promises to sacrifice the first thing he sees upon returning home if he has victory over the Ammonites. He is victorious and upon his return his daughter rushes out to greet him and so he sacrifices (murders) her and, unlike Isaac, god does not spare her.

He encourages mass rape as seen in Numbers when he tells the Israelites: "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves." Can you imagine the terror of those girls as they are raped by men who killed their mothers and their fathers and their baby brothers? It's sadism on a massive scale. (Plus Deuteronomy 22:23 says that you have to execute rape victims so were they later killed anyway?)

This deity does not meet my standards for a just and moral being so for me the question is not how can you be moral without the Bible, the question is how does one manage to be moral with it?

Truth About Religion

A friend from NYCAtheists gave me the links to these vids that explore in great detail the earlier myths that lie behind the myth of Jesus (thanx Rad):

I knew some of it earlier but never with the details given here. A fascinating look at what morphed into Christianity (it really should be called the Truth About Christianity).

The Prophecy of the Popes

According to legend, St Malachy O Morgair, a 12th‑century bishop of Armagh in Ireland, had the gift of sight and created a list of 112 popes to come. Since it was never mentioned before it appeared in 1590, there are those who say it's a 16th-century forgery; whatever the provenance, it appears that the prophecies could be valid. The list of popes covers over four centuries and we are now down to the penultimate pope described as Gloria Olivae, "the glory of the olive", and, as the olive is a symbol of the Benedictines, it fits Pope Benedict. If the prophecies hold true, the last pope will be Petrus Romanus (Peter of Rome). Whether or not the list was written in the 12th or 16th century, it does eerily fit in with what has happened in the history of the church. 


Since I first read about it many years ago I couldn't see how there could only be a few more popes as the Catholic Church seemed to be such a power in the world. However, things have changed; with all the scandals concerning the abuse of children and women by priests still going on, and the cover up by their superiors, who often disregard civil law under orders from the Vatican, which is coming to light in Ireland and elsewhere, I think that, along with the decreasing number of priests, all these factors may bring about an end to the Catholic church as we now know it. It may transform itself and do away with the papacy all together to be ruled by a council of cardinals or something...or the Prophecy of the Popes is wrong and there will be many more popes after the next one but wouldn't it be impressive if St Malachy, or whoever actually wrote it so long ago, was right?

Santa Claus - the Gateway Drug

It's 5 months until Christmas but I wanted to get this out now: I think one of the reasons that Bill O'Reilly and the other fundies have taken this so-called "war on Christmas" so much to heart is that teaching kids to believe in Santa Claus makes it easier for them to then believe in their god. I mean here we have two white, bearded guys who supposedly know when we are good or bad and reward us for being good and punish us (at least by not leaving presents or leaving coal in the stockings) for being bad. With Santa the reward is immediate with lots of presents at Christmastime while children have to take it more on faith that if they're good they'll go to heaven but the idea has been planted for further cultivation. Another reason for their insistence that Christmas not be interfered with is that our capitalist economy is geared to big spending at this time of year. The news goes on and on about whether we are spending more or less than previous years as it allegedly demonstrates how robust our economy is but it really is less important than we are led to believe. Yes stores want to sell lots of stuff to us during the season but, in order to do that, they have to hire more people and spend more for wages, security, insurance etc. and then the day after Christmas the returns start coming in. We seem to be worshiping Mammon at this time of year with all the buy, buy, buy, spend, spend, spend rather then observing the birth of a man who cared about the poor and the outcasts. Maybe the fundamentalists should try to get people to actually adhere to what was in the NT...see how far they'd get with that! Do we really need all this craziness? In fact this so-called war is bogus for reasons O'Reilly and company don't want us to think about as: 1. Nowhere in the New Testament is the date of the birth of Jesus mentioned; in fact in Luke it says the shepherds were watching their flocks by night which happens in the lambing season which is in the springtime. 2. In the early years of Christianity there was a rival religion - that of Mithras, son of the Persian sun god who was born on December 25th of a virgin, in a cave (which was often used as a stable in those days) and visited by magi...sound familiar? 3. December 25th was also the date of the Saturnalia, a major holiday way back then when good times were had by the Romans and others. 4. In 1582 there was a switchover from the Julian calendar to the current Gregorian which threw things off by 10 days which is why some churches celebrate Xmas in January 5. Those most pious of Christians, the Puritans, knowing how spurious it all was, actually made it against the law to celebrate Christmas. 6. Things like St. Nick/Santa Claus, mistletoe and Christmas trees have no basis in the New Testament. The latter two are remnants of pagan worship. We look in askance at any adults who still believe in Santa Claus, an imaginary being who rewards us for good behavior yet we don't do the same with adults who still believe in another imaginary being.

Carl Sagan, Sage

I'm loving the late Carl Sagan more and more; take a look at this:

Forget patriotism; become a matriot, a protector of our Mother Earth...after all it's the only planet we have.

We're in the Universe and the Universe is in Us.

Since the passing of Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson has become the spokesman for that view of the cosmos and our place within it: We are all connected to each other biologically, to the Earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically...We are part of the universe; we're in the universe and the universe is in us. Lovely.

One More

So True

The Big Religion Chart

Came across this fascinating chart of the Earth's major religions. There are apparently over 40* of them!!! I never realized there were that many that are considered major; there are even a few I've never heard of. I now wonder how many minor ones there currently are. Going back to an earlier post, let's teach the creation myths of all of them in school and we will see the truth of Robert Heinlein's saying that One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. Perhaps it will open the eyes of those brainwashed by their parents, church and communities that there are many so-called truths out there, all unverifiable, and because of this, not one is more valid than another.


*It does include atheism which atheists will deny is a religion. 

Are We Predisposed to Believe in Gods and the Afterlife?

The result of a three year international study finds that humans appear to have natural tendencies to believe in gods and an afterlife. One of the researchers said that the project did not set out to prove god or gods exist. Just because we find it easier to think in a particular way does not mean that it is true in fact. Finally part of the conclusion of the study is that both theology and atheism are reasoned responses to what is a basic impulse of the human mind.


The study could also be read as demonstrating that as countries develop economically and more people live in urban environments feeling more secure, atheism increases. As I currently feel very insecure is that why I still have remnants of belief? Is my belief that there might be something beyond us all in my head, a result of my insecurity and/or a survival trait from long ago so that we would be bound by religious ties and therefore be more likely to cooperate? Is there something beyond us or are the true atheists correct that there is nothing beyond us and when we die there is only oblivion? We probably will never know this side of the grave. I've come to the conclusion that, since we can never know for certain who is correct, all we can do is to try to live moral lives, caring for each other (as many religions posit) and not kill and torture each other for beliefs that are, by their very nature, unverifiable.

Symphony of Science

This is my day to find all sorts of vids out there that compliment my quest including this one:

This and many others can be found at the Symphony of Science website. Go explore.

Science Saved My Soul

Came across this vid which sort of echoes what I'm going for and does it with a lovely British accent (why do things sound so much better that way?):

A Moral God??

As I wrote earlier, I am now a member of the NYCAtheists and in their current newsletter there is this quote by MarieAlena Castle: I have great success by telling people I'd be happy to believe in god if I could find one that is up to my moral standards. As jaws drop, I explain that if I were god, I would never allow all this suffering--"and neither would you!" I go on to tell them how decent they are and wonder why they worship a god that's not as nice as they are. Works every time. One of the myriad reasons I lost faith (though I might not have had any to begin with) was the unjustness of the Biblical god. He forces Abraham to kill his son though he lets the poor guy off the hook just in time, he wreaks havoc in the life of Job and his family for what is little more than a bet, punishes billions of innocent women with pain in childbirth because of one woman's disobedience and he lets countless injustices go unpunished eg the Levite in Judges who hands over his concubine to be gang-raped to death. When all the controversies about the Ten Commandments arose I looked them over. The one that bothered me the most was: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour's. Now if you stole his house or ox you'd be breaking the "thou shalt not steal" commandment or if you killed him for his belongings you'd be breaking the "thou shalt not kill" commandment. In fact coveting is sort of the basis of life in America, that is keeping up with the Joneses; all ads are geared to making you covet stuff that your neighbor might own. Since it forbids thought, not action, it is basically a useless commandment. The commandments were supposedly given to Moses by god after he and his fellow Israelites escaped from slavery in Egypt. Now wouldn't a "thou shalt not enslave others" commandment be a far more just commandment? It would have placed Israelites on the moral high ground as the people who, remembering the misery of their own enslavement, didn't enslave others and would've spared untold millions the misery and death caused by slavery? But nooo we get "thou shalt not covet" :( Another injustice stemming from the way fundamentalists see things, is that everyone who doesn't know Jesus is condemned to hell no matter how decent they were. This includes everyone who lived and died before his birth. Now who is to blame for their ignorance? Why god is, as he didn't have Jesus come to Earth in the beginning. To make things fair, Adam and Eve should've given birth to Cain, Abel, Seth and Jesus. So god is responsible for sending all those innocent people to hell for something that is his fault as is his failure to connect the Old World with the New thereby condemning all those innocent Native Americans born before 1492 to hell for not knowing Jesus but then how could they? How just a god is this? Ms Castle has it right - not one of our gods* lives up to the moral standards we now strive for especially the Biblical one. *I'm not about to go into all of the religions of the world but from the amount I've read it holds true for them too.

In the Dark

Years ago, when people were being urged to drink a lot of milk, it became clear that some were lactose intolerant. As scientists did further research they found more and more adults unable to digest dairy products. The scientists wondered why so many people seemed to have this defect until it was realized in fact that they looking at it all wrong. These scientists were mostly Caucasian and had assumed they were the norm when if fact the majority of adults in the world cannot digest lactose easily. It turns out that only people of European descent, those descended from a few African tribes and a few other groups may be able to digest dairy as adults. What was assumed to be normal was in fact an anomaly.


We may be making the same error when we are looking at the universe...we are assuming we are the norm when in fact the matter and energy we are made of and are familiar with may make up a very small part of the universe! It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.


This is turning our view of the universe upside down, that we are in the minority and something that we know so little about, and possibly can know so little about, comprises most of this universe. It's a scary thought...if true.


For decades physicists have been trying to tie everything up into a Grand Unified Theory. The current great best hope has to do with string theory or should I say theories as there is not one but dozens. Unfortunately I don't believe the physicists working with string theory have taken into account the new discoveries of dark matter and energy...heck even the Big Bang and the professed 13.7 billion years of age of our universe may be overturned as astronomers believe they have discovered stars older than that, mature galaxies when the universe was supposedly young and the giant walls of superclusters of galaxies that are believed to have taken more time than that to have developed.


OTOH dark matter and energy may not exist at all. It could be that we are running out of time. Or our theories of gravity are all wrong especially on the large scale.  Or that even the speed of light has changed over the eons. I find it amusing when pundits claim the end of science is near as everything has been learned and it's just a matter of fine-tuning the details. It seems to me our knowledge of the universe is like an onion or a matryoshka doll where we see/know one layer only to find another beneath, having been there all the time, only hidden from us by ignorance. The science established by the Greeks and Romans suited our needs for centuries; then came Sir Isaac Newton who revealed further workings of reality. We found his laws useful for centuries until along came Albert Einstein followed shortly by Werner Heisenberg and others who showed the effects of quantum mechanics underlying the Newtonian world view. Now we are coming to realize that there may be still more to the universe then we have thought. It turns out we may indeed still be in the dark as we take out first steps out of our cradle into the dark.

The Problem with Uncertainty

Atheists have suggested that the drive behind religious belief is a fear of death, the cessation of being; this may very well be true. We will never know the truth of any religion (or lack of belief) until we die when we may find Jesus or Allah or the Light or something humans have never conceived of awaiting us or it will be like the finale of "Terminator 2" where the T-800 descends into the vat of molten steel and its CPU starts to fail, finally fading to black. There can be no absolute certainty this side of the veil between life and death and that, I believe, is the major cause for war between various religious factions. Believer One worships his god his way; nearby another worships the same god but in a different manner and there is still another who worships an entirely different god. They are all happy and prosperous, perhaps more prosperous than Believer One. Doubt creeps in; perhaps the others have the right of it. How can I prove that my worship of my god is correct? asks Believer One. I know. If I fight these others surely my god will side with me and I will be victorious thereby proving that I am worshiping the true god in the correct manner. It seems to me that when you examine history much past bloodshed has been rooted in that sort of uncertainty - why don't others worship my god and do so in the manner I do as it should be so obvious to all that I'm right? In order for all doubt to be eradicated, all non-believers of that god and the "incorrect" manner in which that god is worshiped, must be eradicated. I truly think all fundamentalists consciously or unconsciously feel that way and, if we give them any further leeway, the inevitable result will be disastrous for our planet.

Life is Written into the Laws of Reality

From today's Daily Galaxy:

"To the best of our knowledge, the twenty-one original chemicals chosen by known life do not constitute a unique set; other choices could have been made, and maybe were made if life started elsewhere many times." Paul Davies - leading authority in astrobiology, director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and co-director of the ASU Cosmology Initiative.
A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality. DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids - the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.
For those unfamiliar with thermodynamics, it's the Big Brother of all energy equations and science itself.  You can apply quantum mechanics at certain scales, and Newtonian mechanics work at the right speeds, but if Thermodynamics says something then everyone listens.
An energy analysis by Ralph Pudritz, a theoretical astrophysicist and director of the Origins Institute at McMaster University shows that the first ten amino acids are likely to form at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and the calculated odds of formation match the concentrations of these life-chemicals found in meteorite samples.
They also match those in simulations of early Earth, and most critically, those simulations were performed by other people.  The implications are staggering: good news for anyone worried about how we're alone, and bad news for anyone who demands some kind of "Designer" to put life together - it seems that physics can assemble the organic jigsaw all by itself, thank you very much, and has probably done so throughout space since the beginning of everything.
The study indicates that you don't need a miracle to arrive at the chemical cocktail for early life, just a decently large asteroid with the right components.  That's all.  The entire universe could be stuffed with life, from the earliest prebiotic protein-a-likes to fully DNAed descendants. The path from one to the other is long, but we've had thirteen and a half billion years so far and it's happened at least once.
The other ten amino acids aren't as easy to form, but they'll still turn up - and the process of "stepwise evolution" means that once the simpler systems work, they can grab the rarer "epic drops" of more sophisticated chemicals as they occur - kind of a World of Lifecraft except you literally get a life when you play.  And once even the most sophisticated structure is part of a replicating organism, there's plenty to go round.
Early Earth was covered with carbonaceous material from meteorites and comets that provided the raw materials from which first life emerged. In his new book, The Eerie Silence, astrophysicist Paul Davies of Arizona State University suggests that the original cells would have been able to pick and choose from the early Earth's organic cocktail. To the best of our knowledge, he writes, "the twenty-one chosen by known life do not constitute a unique set; other choices could have been made, and maybe were made if life started elsewhere many times."

I'm certain in our universe there are countless planets teeming with life and possibly even intelligent life. There is a drive in us to journey out there and discover the awesome results of billions of years of evolution elsewhere (the billions of years of evolution here on Earth has been pretty awesome too). Ad astra we will go if we don't do something stupid and, unfortunately, that something stupid would probably be instigated by the theomaniacs we are currently plagued with. We have to chose to live up to our name - homo sapiens sapiens (wise wise man) - and put away childish things and finally grow up. 

NYC Atheists

Well I went and joined NYC Atheists. I feel slightly hypocritical as I feel there might be something beyond us; OTOH I'm certainly an atheist in regard to all the man made deities that still plague us and, of the world religions that now exist, I suspect it is only Buddhism that may hold a few truths. 

Teaching The Bible in School

Well bad luck has struck Louisiana again as a repeal of the Louisiana Revised Statutes 17:285.1 failed. These statutes imposed the inappropriately named Louisiana Science Education Act which, as Barbara Forrest recently noted "was promoted only by creationists.

I'm all for teaching Biblical creation in school...in a class on comparative theology. What I dislike most about Biblical literalists is that they want us to believe the only other option to evolution is the Biblical account of creation. Well teach Biblical creationism...as long as the creation myths of the Hindus, the American Indians, the Chinese, the Aboriginal Dreamtime and countless other stories of creation are taught as well. How then can anyone declare that their set of fantastic, unprovable myths are anymore valid than another set of fantastic, unprovable myths? Oh, they'll try but while they keep each other busy, science can get on with its work figuring out how the universe actually works and came into being. 

Spaceship Earth

Though most of us don't realize it we are living on spaceship Earth as it, and the star it orbits, wanders the cosmos. This is one of the best vids I've come across that conveys a sense of movement through the universe: 

Proof?

Many years ago I was in the library and came across a book titled something like Archeology Proves the Bible True. I said "hmm" and settled down to skim the book. I found to my astonishment that there was no proof that King David ever lived. Now I have no problem believing that David and Solomon or a host of other biblical characters actually existed - I just don't believe in their deity - so the fact that, according to the book, an archaeologist found the remains of an ancient stable with a brick or plaque with the name David didn't seem to me to prove anything. I mean when Heinrich Schliemann dug up Troy I don't recall reading about anyone declaring that this meant that Zeus or Apollo or the rest of the Olympians were real. So David existed; so what? It didn't mean his deity existed.


I thought about it and wondered what it would take to get me to believe in the biblical god. Currently there are people roaming Mt Ararat looking for the remains of Noah's Ark. Now even assuming they are exploring the correct Mt Ararat (it came to rest on the Mountains of Ararat - what's the matter don't these true believers read their Bible?) how would they prove the remains were that of Noah's ark? They'd have to leave it in situ to show archaeologists that it's been there for millennium and not planted there and let them take samples to test how old the wood is. 


Since the story of Noah is not unique - there was Ziusudra the Sumerian hero of a great flood, Utnapishtilim the Babylonian version, the Greek Deucalion and several others - I highly doubt anything will ever be found and certainly not anything that can be scientifically proven to have been the ark that belonged to Noah.


There is another biblical item of curiosity that's intriguing, in fact another ark, this one the Ark of the Covenant currently claimed by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to be in Axum. If the object is revealed (it's only been seen by a select few over the centuries) to match the description in the Bible it must again be proven scientifically to be that ancient chest containing (or once containing) the tablets of the laws of Moses.


My actual interest comes from the idea that Jehovah was some sort of being from outer space, a version promulgated by Erich von Däniken and others. They hypothesize that the ark was some sort of communications device or weapon given to the Israelites way back when. Now if that proved true it would truly be turn our notions of religion upside down...on both sides of the atheist/believer divide.


I guess the only way I could ever believe in the Biblical god would be if he appeared before me and did a few miracles while the Amazing Randi and Penn and Teller verified that there was no Earthly way these miracles could be done (and even then I suspect I would have my doubts).

Science vs Religion

As I've posted, I think one of the main, yet unacknowledged, reasons that the deeply religious are antagonistic towards science is that science is denying us our place as the center of everything. Once upon a time it was believed that the Earth and moon and sun and stars were created just for us and revolved around us. We were speshul. Then Galileo came along and said not so fast - the Earth orbits the sun. The church decreed this was heresy and it took until 1992 for it to admit he was right. As more and more evidence confirmed that the Earth did indeed orbit the sun, despite all the declarations to the contrary by the church, people were placated by the idea that everything else still revolved around the Earth/Sun combo.

In the succeeding centuries it was found that our sun was one of many in what we called the Milky Way and that we were not at the center (fortunately for us - it's a violent galaxy out there) but out in the boondocks some 30,000 ly from the hub. Another blow came in 1922 when Edwin Hubble discovered that the nebulae seen in the sky were actually other island galaxies and we now know that there may be 100 to 200 billion or more galaxies each containing billions of stars. We could ignore that because we still lived in the only known solar system...until about 20 years ago when the first exoplanet was discovered. Nowadays it seems that everywhere we look there are planetary systems.

Biologists know we are not made out of some rare element like unobtainium but are carbon-based which is the 4th most common element in the universe. We are about 75% water which is the most common compound in the universe as it's made of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, and oxygen, which is the third most common element. Life is versatile and tenacious; on Earth life can be found in a broad range of environments: deep in the Earth, in hot springs, in radioactive pools of water etc. Living organisms such as tardigrades can even survive traveling unshielded in space which suggests that theories dealing with panspermia may not be that farfetched and the beginning of life may have come from elsewhere (one way or another we are indeed star stuff). There may be life on Mars and/or the outer moons; in all probability there is life elsewhere in our galaxy. Whether or not there is intelligent life (does it exist even here on Earth?) elsewhere remains to be seen. However given the sheer amount of planets not only in the Milky Way but in the other billions of galaxies I feel positive that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe and, for all we know, believe they were created in their deity's image. Science has diminished our place in creation - we are part of a biofilm clinging to the third rock orbiting a rather ordinary yellow dwarf star in a rather nice, symmetrical spiral galaxy among billions of other galaxies. 

There are many who find this unacceptable and wish to deny it and the sciences that contradict their beliefs but, like King Canute demonstrated, the tide and the universe does not accede to our beliefs no matter how fervently desired. Science is a process by which we learn and understand the universe by replicable experiments; we no longer have to take things on faith. Science didn't set out to negate religion; it has no interest in religion nor people's faith in them but when the religious attempt to impose their impossible-to-prove beliefs and claim they are facts, science must deny them their delusions.

We Are Not the Center of the Universe

Came across another outstanding astronomy vid which confirms my rejection of the ridiculous notion promulgated by various religions that the universe was made especially for us and we are the center of it all.