Asteroid 2005 YU55 Permission To Fly By

Your Guide to the Asteroid Encounter - Cosmic Log 11/7/11

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The Asteroid 2005 YU55 will be the closest object to earth in nearly 35 years, coming within 0.85 moon distances as it whizzes by us later tonight. Fortunately, it poses no threat to hit earth or the moon and will be too small to see with the naked eye, but it should make you think that there are objects out there that can and will eventually hit us, so make the most of your time while you have it. An object the size of YU55 could cause some major damage if it were to impact the earth. It could destroy a city or cause a massive tsunami. If it hit the moon, it would be a spectacular light show, but nothing more. The asteroid is too small to have any real noticeable impact on out daily lives, it won't have any effect gravitationally, and won't affect the tides. The path is pretty well understood and it should pose no threat to earth in the future either, just something to get you excited about for a night and think about cosmic collisions and how we are completely at the mercy of the "heavens".

Cool shot taken by NASA JPL yesterday afternoon along with the current expected track...

Origins of Life on Earth & Beyond

Origins of Life on Earth and Beyond - Daily Galaxy 11/8/11

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Exciting progress on the abiogenesis front by the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative (I love that the acronym is HOLI). Figuring out how life got started is one of the most perplexing but also most exciting questions out there. We know genesis accounts in holy books are not accurate or feasible or even remotely possible, and with modern advances in science we are really getting a feel for how simple life is put together with amino acids, RNA, DNA and proteins. Reverse engineering life has hit a wall in experimentation, but new techniques in building life from scratch are starting to take hold and make some sense, especially with what we know was present in the early earth and what we see as abundant in the universe. Complex chemistry under the right conditions seems to steer us towards cell creation and self-replication, and eventually to mutations that can be advantageous evolutionarily. These are the basic functions of life and if it can be proven that life can be created in this way, then it is conceivable that life can arise from non-life very simply and possibly is a common occurrence through the universe.

This will undoubtedly have profound implications for the human race and for man-made religions that are still struggling to keep up with advances in evolution, climate science and other hot topics that science can now better explain. Finding that life can be created like this will dramatically decrease our importance in the grand scheme of the cosmos and religious people are fearful of that fact, because for them, the universe was "created" with us in mind. If we find out we are truly just a bi-product of complex chemical reactions in an indifferent cosmos, that happened coagulate on a planet not too close and not too far from its stable star and managed to not go extinct for a reasonable period of time enough to evolve more complex on that fragile planet, this will truly open our eyes. I'm really looking forward to reading Prof. Krauss' book coming out next year "A Universe From Nothing".

Harvard Origins of Life Initiative

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A World Without You

Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians - Christian Post 7/16/11

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Why is it that religious people always have the saying "get 'em while they're young"? It is because unless a child is indoctrinated into the faith by that time, the mind generally has a hard time accepting fantasy as fact in a world surrounded by credible evidence to the contrary. The internet has been the engine driving this resurgence of healthy skepticism. I feel as though we are on the verge of a second, world-encompassing enlightenment period in which people and ideas are becoming so interconnected that we can't help but find credible answers to solutions, where we will find common ground as a species and once and for all leave behind the bronze-age superstitions and supernatural fears of our forefathers. It is quite obvious that religious leaders sense this impending wave of rationality approaching and it's coming right into their homes without most of them even knowing it. The internet allows you to research any topic, read any book, contact just about anyone anywhere else in the world to share ideas. One doesn't have to be secluded by zealots or hidden and quarantined from the rest of the world anymore. Every young person now has the portal in their homes and even on their cell phones to be able to question religious authority and veracity if they so choose. I think of a few quotes from the Matrix movie as this type of mental freedom is coming and already starting to take effect...

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. 

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. What truth? That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind. 

I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it. 

I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you. 

Tim Minchin - Mutated in a Good Way

Tim Minchin: Mocking God in the Heart of Texas - The Guardian 11/6/11

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I've never heard of Tim Minchin before I read this article, but I was moved by his tale, a visit to the U.S. and in particular, bible thumping Texas. He is quite the performer and musician, is a little eccentric but that just adds to his aura, I suppose. He is the kind of person you feel could entertain you for hours with music and comedy and theatre or with a serious discussion on taboo topics such as religion. I highly recommend you check him out. I've embedded a few videos below on some of his religious topics... enjoy


Tim Minchin - Wikipedia

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Seeking the Ruin of Souls

Catholic Official Blames Satan For Homosexuality - Religion News 11/3/11

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In what can only be described as a major gaffe, this week the Catholic Church found itself in quite a P.R. disaster after The Boston Pilot (the official newspaper of the arch diocese of Boston) published an article by Daniel Avila that more or less blames homosexuality as the work of the devil and his fallen angels. It's nice to actually get something clear to the intent of the religious leaders than all of their posturing and scheming to get an angle lay people may be more inclined to agree with. I must be fair in saying that the Pilot has since recanted this story and both the paper and the author have apologized, but you can only surmise that this is actually the real position of the catholic church on the matter and the apologies were only issued as a result of a huge backlash. Some absurd highlights from the article:

That is, if God causes same-sex attraction, and yet commands that it not be satisfied, then this is divine cruelty. Or, if God causes same-sex attraction, then it must be the divine will that those with the attraction should act on it and it is the Church that is being cruel in its teaching or at the very least tragically mistaken about what God wants. In either case, the belief that the Church is wrong on this issue starts from a faulty premise. God does not cause same-sex attraction.

In other words, the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil. Any time natural disasters occur, we as people of faith look back to Scripture's account of those angels who rebelled and fell from grace. In their anger against God, these malcontents prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. They continue to do all they can to mar, distort and destroy God's handiwork.

Therefore, whenever natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God. Applying this aspect of Catholic belief to interpret the scientific data makes more sense because it does not place God in the awkward position of blessing two mutually incompatible realities -- sexual difference and same-sex attraction.

If in fact this analysis of causation and culpability is correct, then it opens new perspectives on the Church's teaching in this area. Being born with an inclination which originates in a manner outside of one's control is not sufficient proof that the condition is caused by God or that its satisfaction meets God's purpose. Furthermore, a proper understanding of who is really at fault should deepen our compassion towards those who experience same-sex attraction and inform our response to the question of loneliness. Ultimately, an accurate attribution of responsibility for same-sex attraction frees us to consider more fully the urgent question of why sexual difference matters so much to God. These matters will be addressed in my next column.

(artist rendering of Daniel Avila)

Thomas Jefferson on Religion

Some great quotes here, complied by nobeliefs.com

For more of Jefferson's writings, check out the intellects section above. He has some fantastic letters and makes clear his desire for separation of church and state. He also wrote his own version of the new testament, commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible, in which he recounts the life of Jesus, but removes the supernatural and dogmatic parts to show a man of high character and some important philosophical teachings.

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

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But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

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What is it men cannot be made to believe!
-Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, April 22, 1786. (on the British regarding America, but quoted here for its universal appeal.)

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Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

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Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

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I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

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I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

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They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

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Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

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History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

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The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

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Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

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In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

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If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816

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My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. Samuel H. Smith, August, 6, 1816

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You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

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As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819

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Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820

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Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820

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To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820

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Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.
-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.

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I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

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And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

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It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825

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May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)

The Jefferson Bible

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Why Evolution is True

Great talk by Jerry Coyne...

Jerry Coyne Blog - Why Evolution is True

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We are Handing You Over to Satan and His Kingdom of Darkness

Image of the day: The loving church

(Source: Letter of Excommunication)

Cornerstone Reformed Church Website

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Fallacy of Prophecy

Camping Sorry for Failed Apocalypse Predictions - KBOI2.com 10/31/11

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With little fanfare this time around, Harold Camping's fantastic failure of the apocalypse came and went 10/21/11. Initially set for May 21, 2011, the date was quickly changed when he realized no one was, in fact, raptured. He offers the lame excuse below on his website along with his retirement. All mentions of the rapture dates have been removed from the family radio website along with the futures of the gullible followers who gave up everything they had to be ready for the end times. So sad. But in a way, i hope it opened some eyes to the ridiculous assertions of the christian faith that we should celebrate the world coming to a calamitous end. I think it brought increased scrutiny to absurd religious beliefs and I am grateful for that exposure, but now Camping needs to go away and not harm anyone anymore...

Beyond Normal

Why the 'Paranormal' Is Just Normal - Cosmic Log 10/31/11

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Timely piece by Alan Boyle of the Cosmic Log. What people perceive as the paranormal really can be explained away by natural phenomena that we do understand. Thinking you've seen a ghost, heard a strange noise, the ouija board moving on its own, cold spots and EVPs, alien visitations in your sleep... these are all manifestations in your brain. Sometimes hindered by faulty information through the senses, sometimes vamped up by our own imaginations or dreamt in REM sleep. It really boils down to what information is being processed into your brain, and based on what we know, the more likely explanation is one in which you were mistaken to have experienced something paranormal as opposed to the other way around. Our brain can be tricked very easily, as shown by those Brain Games episodes I linked to in a previous post. We also psych ourselves up for feeling paranormal things: going to a "haunted house" or playing Ouija, you have already prepared your mind to be on edge for something strange. This can manifest itself in various ways to give you the effect you are feeling something paranormal, when in fact it's really in your own mind. EVPs are really fascinating because our brains are trained from birth to recognize speech and to see faces in random, inanimate objects. Why do we always see jesus in toast? why do we see faces in telephones and bushes? When we hear sounds we automatically look for things we can recognize and process because that is how we evolved. So, someone can hear a "bump bump" on a recorder and think they've heard "go home!" Our sensory detectors are far from efficient, just think of the scales on the spectrum that we can actually hear and actually see and all of the other information beyond our boundaries can still have subtle inputs like feeling cold spots or getting goosebumps by infrasounds. Fascinating, but explainable.

It is fun to investigate these mental breakdowns and the feelings they can convey, and it is also fun to just let loose and run through a halloween haunted house for the thrill of it. Knowing full well you are safe and there is nothing "paranormal" to fear... it's kind of like a mental roller coaster. It can be fun to let loose and pretend for bit and let your mind get carried away, but if you really wanted to understand these types of phenomena, there is always a scientific explanation grounded in facts and supported by evidence.

(do you see the face?)

Great article on brain tests for schizophrenia... another sort of brain paranormal delusion:

Man With Schizophrenia Has Out-of-Body Experience in Lab, Gains knowledge, Controls His Psychosis - Discover Magazine 10/31/11

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