Chariots of Iron

In the news this week: the chum is in the water and the sharks are circling the Vatican, let’s get litigious! Joe curses Nick’s name. Damn you Nick! DAMN YOU. The Catholics are batting their eyelashes at the Muslims in a sickening fashion, slavery is awesome and we talk about how we missed THE SINGLE MOST AWESOME MOMENT IN PORTLAND HISTORY. *sob*

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy? Really Elton? Really?

In the main segment, we talk about both the scientific and the kooky mumbo-jumbo origins of language. Lamar manages to say the word “explanation” all by himself and we don’t even help him at all! In the true Chariots of Iron style, we pick apart the tower of babel story and even explore some midrashic apocrypha in our search for answers. If you have an hour and a half to kill, you could do worse. You could play Minsweeper. Minesweeper is WAY more boring than listening to three out of shape men talk about Michael Jackson’s new batch of crazy.

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Wearscience.com has some great t-shirts for those at all interested in the creationism/ID vs. evolution debate. The discworldy shirt is calling my name.

According to this article on ScienceNOW, a  molecule of glycolaldehyde (an essential molecule in the formation  of ribose, one of the constituents of RNA) has been discovered in a a massive star-forming region in the Milky Way.

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Tragic news in Nigeria, Africa today. Apparently Christian and Muslim gangs are involved in a bit of a conflict, with fighting now claiming 400. Unlike the claims of most religious folks according to the story this is religious violence being disguised as political violence (most of the buildings being destroyed are churches and mosques).

Allow me to reflect on this after just having read Hector Avalos’ great bok Fighting Words. Religion workes my breaking tribal and familial bonds in favor of a bigger “tribe” that of those sharing your faith. It creates and in-group and an out-group and often emphasises the differences between “believers” and “non-believers”, especially in the desert dogmas we find that non-believers are dehumanized and in some cases the mere presence of non-believers and/or thier alternate beliefs are a risk to ones personal salvation (and eternal afterlife bliss, puppies and rainbows, etc.).   Religion is also used as an effective tool to ge people to circumvent thier own personal morality and commit atrocity they would otherwise oppose. While the motives of those making the religious appeal may be political it is the appeal to that highest of authorities that can get the faithful masses to buy in and participate. Once again, when reality becomes truped by ideology, problems are sure to follow.

According to AiG’s Ken Ham (in agreement with a sermon given by Charles Haddon Spurgeon back in the 19th century) I’m dead, and so are a whole heck of a lot of other folks.

The theological loopholes this implies are truly baffling given some of the parallels drawn by Ken Ham’s quote of this apparently “famous” sermon. It more goes to show that I think christianity does so well is that it’s an “easy out” for your afterlife needs. If I must have religious nutters running about at least give me a brand that actualy associates the doing of good deeds here on earth as a neseccity for salvation.