there is no objective view of “God”: each generation has to create the image of God that works for it. The same is true of atheism. The statement “I do not believe in God” has meant something slightly different at each period of history. The people who have been dubbed “atheists” over the years have always denied a particular conception of the divine. Is the “God” who is rejected by atheists today, the God of the patriarchs, the God of the prophets, the God of the philosophers, the God of the mystics or the God of the eighteenth-century-deists? All these deities have been venerated as the God of the Bible and the Koran by Jews, Christians, and Muslims at various points of their history. … [These deities] are very different from one another. Atheism has often been a transitional state: this Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all called “atheists” by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. Is modern atheism a similar denial of a “God” which is no longer adequate to the problems of our time?
Finding effective treatments for Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses has become much more difficult. As usual, it’s all about the money:
The problem, they say, started back in 1980, when Ronald Reagan changed the rules governing how scientists (and the entities they work for) profit from their work. Where scientists used to gain fame and fortune by publishing and sharing their work in conferences and journals — and were thus rewarded for furthering general knowledge — the new rules encouraged them to hoard their discoveries as trade secrets; and then leverage their patents and their seats on medical boards to write the disease definitions, mandate approved treatments, and completely control the scientific discourse in order to maximize the profits they made.
This story shows we need to make very big changes to how we deal with chemicals and their effects in the workplace. Right now, workers must prove that a specific chemical caused their problem. This is often absolutely impossible to do. Perhaps a better system would be to hold the employer responsible if workers exposed to a certain chemical show symptoms of exposure to that chemical. It would certainly encourage employers to be more responsible and careful about exposing their employees to dangerous chemicals.
Dr. Isis takes on more sexism in science, specifically this frustratingly common misconception: one of the requirements of scientist-hood is a lack of femininity or sexuality.
I’m the birth mother of an adopted child, vehemently pro-choice, non-Christian, very unsuited to motherhood, and after over a decade, have got some things to tell the world about adoption. It’s been stewing since I heard about the recent rash of pre-abortion ultrasound legislation. While I am touched that so many men in such various states are so deeply worried about women possibly being all sad from having an abortion, I wish to point out to these compassionately bleeding hearts that the alternatives are not exactly without their own emotional consequences.
Holy crap. The world O Magazine has actually acknowledged that lesbians and bisexuals actually exist and that gender and sexuality are, well, complicated.
Freedomgirl writes about her experience with marriage:
After the wedding, this circle of people treated us differently. Our relationship was more serious, our status was higher. People pressured us about having children, buying a house.
All well and good. But we were doing this thing without understanding the whole story. We aren’t straight. There is nothing we can do to pass in the everyday world as mainstream and ordinary without denying some fundamental facts about who we are. Which is precisely what we did for a long time.
Most depressing evidence yet of America’s failure to educate its citizens: Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. via Bad Astronomy.
The Guardian published a ridiculous editorial by JoEllen Murphy just before Christmas. Murphy headed a fundraising campaign to run signs on buses reading “Why believe? Because I love you and I created you, for goodness sake – God.” These signs are a reaction to American Humanist Association signs that say “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”
Let’s start with the wording on her signs.
“Why believe? Because I love you and I created you, for goodness sake – God.
There isn’t much of a rational argument here. “Because I love you” is the answer to a question like “why did you buy me flowers.” If someone told you unicorns existed because they loved to use their horns to magically heal all disease, would you believe them? And, god didn’t say I love you and I created you. JoEllen Murphy says god says it. I wonder what gives Christians the idea that they can speak for god. Can’t he speak for himself? Keep reading below the break…
I’m heading to NC tomorrow and will miss the lovely white Christmas here. But getting to spend time with my grandmother is priceless, so I’m not too upset about missing the snow. I don’t believe in heaven or hell or any idea of an afterlife. I know that when my grandmother dies, I’ll never see her again, so every chance I get to see her and every minute I spend with her is precious to me.
This is the paradox of gay existence that is often the source of so much misunderstanding. The outside world sometimes puts us in a box of cultural otherness – “San Francisco values” – while we are also, simultaneously, as integrated into normality as any heterosexual. Because we are your kids. We grew up in your homes. We can never be totally other when we are also totally mainstream.
she wrote about how her head pain that day made her cancel yet another plan she had been looking forward to — this time a cooking class with her husband at Whole Foods. It was hardly a tragedy, she admitted. But it did add to the cumulative frustration of years of missed plans. After all, such minor cancellations remind you of the bigger things you are missing. “Headaches steal so much of your life,” she had written in another entry. “The list is long, but includes jobs, relationships, having children, self-respect, ambition and identity.”
Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything, and the gods of Sakiel-Norn were no exception. All of them were carnivorous; they liked animal sacrifices, but human blood was what they valued most. At the city’s founding, so long ago it had passed into legend, nine devout fathers were said to have offered up their own children, to be buried as holy guardians under its nine gates.
This passage reminded me a bit of Terry Pratchet’s Small Gods, but it’s much darker and not nearly as funny.
In science, as in politics or love, one can have all the good arguments and still be in the wrong. When it comes down to it, what matters is not whose story is more logical or beautiful, but which leads to the greatest effect. — Lee Smolin
you’ll ever read. And a 
Chatter