At heart, those who do not believe in evolution are heretics. That is, they are ignorant, stupid or insane, according to Richard Dawkins. Its the non-existence of god, where even the absence of belief is a from of ideology assuming religious proportions. Since god cannot be proven scientifically so the logic goes…though the theory of intelligent design gives rational consideration to belief in a god figure- though not the dimunitive little impersonator/charlatan watered down to faith based proportions. Essentially, anyone who does not accept the progression to the anatomically contemporary individual over the last say five million years is likely in denial of evidence…the debate rages on, and will until time travel becomes feasible after which a being that can voyage through time exists at all times. …
---"Earth - The Earthly Paradise" was painted in oil on copper, having the following dimensions: 45 x 65 cm; it is dated 1607, when Jan Brueghel was 39 years of age. Thus, it may be considered a work belonging to the Mature period of Jan Brueghel. "Earth - The Earthly Paradise" is on display in Musee du Louvre, Paris, along with other famous artworks of the Mannerism period.---Read More:http://www.backtoclassics.com/gallery/jantheelderbrueghel/earth-theearthlyparadise/
Are organisms built on the Rube Goldberg line, that is, to say cobbled together without regard for the niceties of fine design, simply to get things working , probably in the most outlandish way possible. And is this a refutation of god? Before Darwin, could one be a fulfilled atheist? Or are the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens simply, tenuously, reaching beyond their intellectual grasp into a an area requiring an expertise beyond the purview of their ideology?
Andrew Copson: Percy Bysshe Shelley developed an argument for the non-existence of God. He entitled it The Necessity of Atheism, and 2011 is the bicentenary of his being expelled from the university for printing it. The argument itself is simple. If you have seen or heard God, then you must believe in God. If you haven’t, then the only possible reasons to believe in God are reasonable argument or the testimony of others….
Read More:http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/07/09/the-art-of-derek-chatwood/
…The main argument given for believing in a deity – that the universe must have had a first cause – is not persuasive because there is no reason to believe either that the universe must have had a first cause or that this cause, if it existed, was a deity. The testimony of others – a third-rate source of knowledge in any case – is invariably contrary to reason. This is not least because it reports God as commanding belief, which would be irrational of God, given that belief is involuntary and not an act of will. So there is no reason to believe in God.Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/02/shelley-the-necessity-of-atheism a
Derek Chatwood. Read More:http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/07/09/the-art-of-derek-chatwood/
aThe target is large. Somewhat like shooting fish in a barrel.But is not also somwhat akin to the snake eating its tail. The liberal, rational, humanitarian way of thought- the Enlightenment- does seem like a vanished world. A power over the environment; a power over individual destinies. Science and its companion, technology were opening new, exhilarating vistas into a life that might be longer, easier, pleasanter, safer, than life had ever been before. Scientific thinking was unprecedented and unique in commanding the unanimous ascent of informed minds.
Gillray. The Final Resource of the French Atheist. "As scholars of early atheism have shown, the materialism of eighteenth century French atheism was indebted to the materialism of the anonymous authors of the clandestine manuscripts. The physician La Mettrie gave the idea of humans as mere mechanisms perhaps its most celebrated formulation in his Man Machine of 1747, in which he argued that the soul could be reduced without remainder to the physical organisation of the brain and body since the functions of the soul were completely dependent on the latter. La Mettrie's materialism rested on his medical study of human beings; however, it has also been shown by scholars that he owed much intellectually to the clandestine tradition."...Read More:http://www.investigatingatheism.info/historyeighteenth.html image:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Presentation_of_the_Mahometan_credentials_-_or_-_the_final_resource_of_French_atheists_by_James_Gillray.jpg
Copson:More timely is a remembrance of the social and political consequences of Shelley’s argument. In The Necessity of Atheism he reminds us of the mistake that people make when they think that “belief is an act of volition, in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind” and the way that “continuing this mistake they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief of which in its nature it is incapable”. We cannot pillory someone for their disbelief – it is not an area in which choice operates. Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/02/shelley-the-necessity-of-atheism
ADDENDUM:
Tom Hartley:Recent psych
rapeutic techniques, I believe, are focusing upon volition as the source of cognition dysfunction that typically leads to emotional problems. We choose to think in erroneous ways, whether due to laziness, succumbing to enculturaion or propaganda, or whatever. There are forces out there that influence us, but ultimately do we not accede to those influences? (assuming we are of sound mind–organically speaking–and are reasonably mature adults)…
Hugh Kramer:the Islamic clerics in Iran who had enough faith in their own sexuality to honestly believe that the sexual attraction to manmade materials could become a pandemic in the population at large. Normally we write about dummies, but this story defaults to dummies themselves. Having realised how attracted they were to mannequins the clerics moved that such sexual deviancy needed to be stamped out immediately. Rather than recognise their own urges for decoration defloration as being the problem, they decided to protect the population at large by reducing the attractiveness of the plastic paradise with the hacking off of their breasts in their usual methodology of cutting off the sexual organs of anything that find themselves overly attracted to. It takes belief of the strongest kind to think that sexual attraction of a man to a mannequin is a problem of god’s plan or the female form, and not the deviants who cannot control it. Read More:http://www.examiner.com/atheism-in-los-angeles/iranian-clerics-win-atheist-award-for-maiming-mannequins
Copson:One of the most upsetting stories I was ever told was by a young humanist from Saudi Arabia who grew up so frightened of what would happen if he spoke out loud about his beliefs to another person that the only outlet for his thoughts was to go on long walks away from all people, and speak his mind only to the air. In fact, he never spoke to another human being about his most fundamental beliefs until coming to Britain in his late 20s, and experiencing then for the first time what those of us who live in freedom take for granted: the joyful dynamic of testing and developing our own ideas in conversation and dialogue with others.Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/02/shelley-the-necessity-of-atheism
Read More:http://www.helium.com/items/1891314-zecharia-sitchins-theory-of-nibiru
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