Random Secular Stuff
Here is a fun little drawing of Charles Darwin riding a tortoise.
Here is the link to the original: http://ahohesensei.deviantart.com/art/Darwin-riding-a-tortoise-160649209
The drawing is by ahohesensei. Her work can be found at http://ahohesensei.deviantart.com/gallery/.
I also came across this quote by Friedrich Nietzsche. I’ve read it before and have always liked it.
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. “
Darwin, Hitler, Secularism and Chritianity
There has been a continuing debate between atheists and Christians about the Christian claim that Hitler and his Nazi party were the natural culmination of Darwinism. I’ve dealt with this in my own debate with a Christian that you can read here and here.
PZ Myers has an nice refutation of this whole notion of Hitler being a Darwinist. There is also a very well written article at pilly.com by Faye Flam, A Scientist Responds to the Charge that Darwin’s Theory Obliterated Morality, that deals with it beautifully. Go read both of them. They show up the lies that Christian apologists are constantly telling in their efforts to try to bury the truth of evolution.
Its All About (warped) Proirites
PZ Myers had a blog post about a terrible Mississippi proposed law that would declare a fertilized human egg a person. The consequences are dire for mother’s and babies. I am not going to try to speak to this since PZ does it much better than I can. Please go read it. Comment there and/or here.
What’s in a Name?
What’s in a name? you might ask. Well, in India, quite a bit, if you are a girl named ”Nakusa” or “Nakushi,” which mean “unwanted” in Hindi. In a heartwarming CBSNEWS World article, 285 girls changed their names to reflect a new beginning in their lives.
It is hard to imagine, in our society, that parents could choose such a cruel name for their child. This reflects, I think, the sad social insistence in many countries on having male children.
It is known that in many cultures in the past, baby girls were buried in the sand, thrown into rivers, lakes, and seas, or left out in the wilderness to die of exposure and starvation, or be eaten by wild animals. Where this horrible concept that a female child is worthless came from is hard to understand. Ok, I get the idea that many cultures desired male children for the purposes of inheritance, protection, wage earning, and so on. Also, many of those same cultures required that the parents of a daughter pay a dowery when she married, which can be seen as a financial burden. Still, why was no thought given to the fact that females are needed for reproduction, or that a marriage of a daughter to a man from a good family could be a benefit? Then there is the most important reason of all to value daughters: that hey are humans begins just as worthy of love and caring as any male.
These misogynistic ideas have their roots in a major change in human social development.
In their book, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá trace the origins of misogyny to the advent of agriculture, which “…changed everything about human society, from sexuality to politics to economics to health to diet to exercise patterns to work-versus-rest patterns. It introduced the notion of property into sexuality.” (Ryan and Jethá, 2010)
What we see here is the result of the male desire to secure a claim to property for himself and his offspring. In order for this to work, the woman becomes property as well. These attitudes have prevailed for close to 10,000 years even though there is really no longer any reason to treat woman as property.
We have made great strides toward sexual equality in the past 100 years or so, at least in the West. I hope that the cross pollination of cultures we have seen in the past couple of decades will have a positive influence on less enlightens cultures around the world. Until then, more girls will be shamefully labeled “unwanted”, both in practice as well as in name.
References:
Ryan, Christopher and Jethá, Cacilda, 2010, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Harpers Collins
Lovely Evolution Artwork
Here are a couple of examples of some lovely evolution and Darwin related art work. I just felt the need to share.
By qubsik
By angelac
Prayer Costs Lives
The BBC has a sad, disturbing article about a totally preventable cause of death due to HIV in Africa. It seems that people who had been being successfully treated for HIV infection died when they stopped taking their antiretroviral medication because their pastors or priests told them to and instead put their faith, and lives, in the power of prayer.
If anyone has any doubts about the harm that superstitious, religious beliefs can cause, this story should quash them. People like to say that god answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is “no”. Bullshit! What kind of loving, merciful god would let someone die in agony when they had abandoned worldly treatments of their illness and put their faith in him? If there is a god, then this just proves that he is a sick, sadistic fuck. But we knew that already from reading the Old Testament. Just look up the books of Joshua, Job, or, for that matter, most of the whole of the Bible if you want a taste of callousness, perfidy, and outright cruelty.
It’s Ada Lovelace Day!
Today is Ada Lovelace Day. For those of you who don’t who Ada Lovelace was, she was Charles Babbage’s assistant while he was working on his mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She wrote the first algorithm for the engine becoming the first computer programer.
The purpose of Ada Lovelace Day is to call attention to the contributions of woman in technology and science and, hopefully, inspire more woman to enter these fields.
So to everyone out there, especially all the girls and woman who are interested in science and technology, happy Ada Lovelace Day!
Alternative Medicine = What’s the Harm?
When skeptics point out the fact that alternative medicine like homeopathy and naturopathy don’t work, people ask, “What’s the harm?” Brian Dunning from skeptiod.com has a very sad and poignant example of just what the harm can be. He opines that Steve Jobs might still be with us if he had pursued modern medical treatment earlier rather than naturopathy. Go read the article.
If you want to read many more stories about the harm of alternative medical treatments, go to What’s the Harm.
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