Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - in Legoland

This is awesome.
And by awesome, I mean Totally Sweet!

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/fsm/

Mourning Kurt Wise's Mind

American Geologist Kurt Wise:
To Quote Richard Dawkins (and Kurt Wise) from The God Delusion (p 284-285, in hardcover):

"He took a bible and went right through it , literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific world-view were true. At the end of this ruthlessly honest and labour-intensive exercise, there was so little left of his bible that,

‘…try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two. I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible...It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.’ "

So here we have a person who spends literally years and tens of thousands of dollars getting what could be argued as amongst the finest of educations available in the modern world…and when faced with what he perceives as a fundamental incompatibility between the tenets of his fundamental Christian upbringing, and his science education, he is compelled to abandon…..reason in exchange for faith.

Its sad. But is it unexpected. Humanity is a species of story tellers. We tell stories to entertain ourselves. We tell stories to explain the mysteries of the universe. We tell stories constantly and infinitum. Is it a surprise that we could adopt a dogmatic belief in our stories and pass these back on to further generations…resulting in the sad situation faced by Kurt Wise?

Is this an example of credulity of thought? Is it an example of inflexibility of mind? Is it simply an example of faith prevailing over reason? What really rankles me is that this man abandoned a fine education in science for faith, and that in some circles this act would be viewed as laudable rather than laughable.

When will we stop believing in our self-created bed-time stories and abandon this irrational need for a protector sky-daddy to keep away the bogey-men of the universe?

My Lousy Trip to the Dominican Republic...

The View from our suite balcony. We were about 30 steps from the Pool Bar.

My Feet meeting the Caribbean Sea.

My Feet looking over the Caribbean Sea.

There was a stunning variety of wildlife roaming freely about the grounds.

The Beach was remarkably beautiful.

Wish I had another 2 weeks out there.

Dominican Republic - Punta Cana Trip!

Its one day before we leave for beautiful Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Nic and I are going to be staying at the Bavaro Princess Resort and Spa for a week. It is a 5 Star, all inclusive resort on the S. E. beach of the Dominican.

We are traveling with her Folks, and her brother, Andre, and his Girlfriend Kate. We will each have a villa suite to ourselves. The suites look really comfortable and cozy.

This will be the most extravegant trip we've ever taken, and frankly will be my first trip to any place remotely tropical. I'm really quite looking forward to it. The Villas look really nice. Each has its own balcony, living area, kitchenette, and king-sized bed.

The beach, of course, promises to be spectacular in every way. We have plans to go on a 'swim with the dolphins' excursion, and possibly a Manatee-World excursion where we may get to ineract with manatee's?

I'm not sad at all to say that I'll not be posting on this blog for a week or so as we'll be so far away from the internet, and so not interested in internet related things that it just won't even cross our mind. We'll post more actual "not stock" photos of our experiences when we return.

Bueno!

Micronaughts?

Straight out of ThinkGeek.com, these Acrobots remind me of a childhood toy I once had. Micronaughts were little robot men with all kinds of outlandish vehicles which "transformed" through creative assembly of various parts.

I remember fondly days spent playing with these toys. I had motorized elevator lifts, and faction "wars" and all kinds of hyper-imaginative fun with them. I even had friends come over to play Micronaught wars with me.

Ah the good old days....

I want a couple just for the sense of familiarity from my childhood toys. Hmmmm....I wonder if micronaughts still exist somewhere in the world of e-bay. Wouldn't my wife just love it if I ordered up some Collectors Item "Micronaught Super-Deluxe Dreadnaught Battle Cruiser" to display in the home theater?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/6748/

Supermarket 2.0 - Social Networking Convenience Store

glumbert.com - Supermarket 2.0

Now that's one-stop-shopping!

Sam Harris vs Rick Warren Cage Match...

From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17889148/site/newsweek/

Sample:
WARREN: Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions. I'm willing to admit my presuppositions: there are clues to God. I talk to God every day. He talks to me.

HARRIS: What does that actually mean?

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, "God, I need you to help me with this," as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, "I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case." Now, if that happened once in my life I'd say, "That is a coincidence." If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

There must have been times in your ministry when you've prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.

WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

HARRIS: So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.

------------------------------------------------------
My opinion:

There are some very primary examples of compartmentalization and argumentative detours in this article. Harris seems willing to butt-heads directly with the issue, but Warren appears to think very tangentially and seems to have no problems going off into a segue that is only loosely related to the question at hand.

The above sample seems to illustrate the basic compartmentalization of the faith-thinker, who sees god as omni-benevolent and is able, within this compartment, to write off the horrible stuff as 'mysterious' or 'unfathomable to imperect-humanity'.

I think Harris does well to sum it up with the statement:

HARRIS: I don't want to pretend to be certain about anything I'm not certain about.