Los ateos son gente buena... ¡QUE SE VAN PUDRIR EN EL INFIERNO!

El católico mas grande de Inglaterra, el cardenal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, dijo que los ateos y agnósticos son gente decente con almas tormentosas que van a quemarse por toda una eternidad en el fuego del infierno.

De acuerdo a este individuo, debemos ser respetados hasta la hora de nuestra muerte donde vamos a estar cara a cara con Satanás y su tridente.

Y eso que muchos consideran la iglesia católica la mas razonable de todas las religiones. Agradezcamos que de vez en cuando personas como esta dejan saber lo que de verdad piensan para recordarnos que todas las religiones son igual de ridículas.

Atheists and agnostics are decent people whose tormented souls will burn for all eternity in the scorching fires of hell, Britain's biggest catholic said last night.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor said non-believers should be respected, right up to the point of death when they will finally come face to face with Satan and his blood-soaked pitchfork.

He told a conference in London: "Those without faith should not be shunned or abused. Jesus and Beelzebub are already cooking something up for them, don't you worry about that."

The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales stressed that a 'hidden God' was active in everyone's life, often nipping to the shops for them or wiping down their kitchen surfaces.

Stressing that God was not in the phonebook, the Cardinal said: "You can't just ring him up. You have to get an appointment and that can take up to 18 months.

"I suppose I could try to put in a good word for you... if only I wasn't so skint - if you catch my drift..."

He admitted talking about God was difficult, especially as some people genuinely believe a man was born of a virgin, performed miracles and then died and came back to life, while others believe that is a lot of insane, voodoo rubbish.

He added: "We must not allow Britain to become devoid of religious faith, otherwise how will I afford new hats?"

The Cardinal's lecture follows clashes over stem cell research and gay rights, where the church tried to impose laws based on a 2000 year-old book written by people who stoned each other to death for wearing the wrong clothes.

Fuente: Daily Mash

California recibe $271 millones para construir 12 centros de investigación de células madre

El estado de California ha recibido $271 millones para construir 12 centros de investigación de células madre en el estado, a pesar de que una de las razones políticas para construir el programa puede desaparecer pronto.

Una de las razones por la cual se necesitan los edificios es que la administración del presidente Bush ahora prohibe financiamiento federal a investigaciónes que utilizan células madre humanas desde agosto del 2001 porque crear estas células significaria destruir embrios humanos. Esto ha significado que el trabajo envuelto en construir nuevas líneas de células madre no puede compartir ni un microscopio con un proyecto que ha recibido financiamiento federal.

En la Universidad de California, San Francisco, por ejemplo, científicos de células madre han tenido que trabajar en espacio rentado fuera del recinto por muchos años. En diciembre 2002, una tormenta causó fallos eléctricos en el área, destruyendo lineas de células que estaban creciendo en incubadoras. Si el trabajo hubiera sido realizado en el recinto, generadores hubieran podido mantener las incubadoras en operación.

"Varios años de trabajo se fueron por la cuneta," dijo el Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, director del programa. Ahora la universidad recibirá $35 millones para construir un centro de investigación de $95 millones.

Estas restriciciones puede que sean eliminadas con las elecciones presidenciales que se acercan el próximo año. Todos los candidatos presidenciales han expresado su apoyo a la expansión de la investigación de células madre.

¡Enhorabuena! El prevenir la investigación de el potencial de células madre por que conlleva la destrucción de un embrión, a pesar de que los resultados pueden salvar la vida de cientos o miles de persona es ridículo. Los religiosos se les hace imposible tener una opinión razonable acerca del tema ya que consideran que "el alma" de este puñado de células es mas valioso que la vida de cientos de personas vivas, con años de experiencias, sentimientos, pensamientos, familias, amigos y que viven en sufrimiento.

LOS ANGELES — California has awarded $271 million in grants to build 12 stem cell research centers in the state, even as one of the political rationales for the building program might soon disappear.

The awards, announced here Wednesday, represent the largest chunk of money awarded at one time by California's taxpayer-backed stem cell program, which is slated to spend about $3 billion over about a decade.

The universities and research institutes that are receiving the money have said they would spend an additional $560 million on the laboratory construction, money they are trying to raise from donations. The resulting total of $831 million would add nearly 800,000 square feet of research space to house 2,200 scientists.

One reason the buildings are needed is that the Bush administration now prohibits federal financing of research using any human embryonic stem cells derived after August 2001, because creating such cells entails the destruction of human embryos. That has meant that work involving newer stem cell lines cannot share even a microscope with a project that is federally financed.

At the University of California, San Francisco, for instance, stem cell scientists had to work in rented space off-campus for many years. In December 2002, a huge storm caused power failures in the Bay Area, destroying cell lines that were being grown in incubators. Had the work been conducted on campus, backup generators would have kept the incubators operating.

"Several years of work literally went down the drain," said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, director of the university's stem cell program. The university will now receive $35 million to build a $95 million research center.

But the restrictions might be lifted by a new president as early as next year. All three main presidential candidates have expressed support for expanded financing of human embryonic stem cell research.

"Now that the money is flowing, those federal restrictions are going to be removed," said Jesse Reynolds, a policy analyst at the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, which supports stem cell research but has at times criticized the California project.

Robert N. Klein, the chairman of the board of the California program, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, argued Wednesday that the state could not take for granted that federal restrictions would be lifted. Mr. Klein said Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, had expressed opposition to some types of stem cell research.

Moreover, Mr. Klein and university representatives say that even if the restrictions are lifted, new laboratory space will be needed to expand research and to recruit scientists, who are already flocking to California because of the research financing.

Some officials also said the construction would provide an economic stimulus at a time of a weak economy and a huge state budget deficit. The stem cell program, approved by voters in 2004, is financed by bonds and is largely immune to state budget-cutting pressures.

Alan Trounson, the president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, said the new buildings would allow scientists to work together, accelerating the development of medical treatments.

Proposition 71, the 2004 ballot initiative that authorized the program, limits spending on buildings to 10 percent of the total $3 billion.

Most of the major universities and research institutes in the state, including 9 of the 10 University of California campuses, will get money for new buildings.

Stanford University will get the biggest award, nearly $44 million, to build a $200 million stem cell center.

The University of California, San Diego, teamed up with the nearby Burnham Institute for Medical Research, the Salk Institute and the Scripps Research Institute. The team will receive $43 million for its building.

Fuente: NY Times

Citando la fe, Bush defiende la guerra de Irak

Lo que sucede cuando mezclas la religión y la política.

NASHVILLE — President Bush delivered a rousing defense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Tuesday, mixing faith and foreign policy as he told a group of Christian broadcasters that his policies in the region were predicated on the beliefs that freedom was a God-given right and “every human being bears the image of our maker.”

In a 42-minute speech to the National Religious Broadcasters convention, Mr. Bush called upon European allies to step up their efforts in Afghanistan, and conceded that recent security gains in Iraq “are tenuous, they’re reversible and they’re fragile.” Still, he insisted his troop buildup there is succeeding.

“The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency,” Mr. Bush said, to a standing ovation. “It is the right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision.”

The speech, coming a week before the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, is the first of three talks on terrorism and war policy that Mr. Bush will give before next month’s Congressional testimony by the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the senior diplomat there, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.

General Petraeus is widely expected to recommend a temporary pause in troop withdrawals from Iraq, although at least one senior administration official said the president envisions further reductions this year. With the nation’s attention turned to the race to succeed Mr. Bush, White House aides say the speeches are a way for the president to frame the Iraq discussion, taking it back from the presidential candidates and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“It’s a way of resetting a little bit,” said one senior White House official. “There was a lot of talk about the surge, and then when the surge worked, it was like, ‘O.K., it worked,’ and then ’08 heated up and people sort of moved on. People need to be reminded of who we’re up against and what the stakes are.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Bush cast the stakes in stark terms, repeatedly invoking his desire to spread freedom and democracy, the central themes of his foreign policy. Those themes are hardly new to American presidents. Woodrow Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy, while Ronald Reagan warned that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

But Mr. Bush, most experts agree, has taken the American freedom agenda to an entirely new level, by trying to foster democracy in nations that have not known it before, like Iraq and Afghanistan. Some historians have called it folly, and Mr. Bush conceded in an interview with conservative commentators last year that his critics believe he is “hopelessly idealistic.”

Still, he renewed his case on Tuesday, predicting that liberty will soon be on the march in the region.

“The effects of a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan will reach beyond the borders of those two countries,” Mr. Bush said. “It will show others what’s possible. And we undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That’s why we’re doing this. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”

Mr. Bush’s faith is well known; he credits his acceptance of Jesus with turning his life around by helping him to quit drinking at age 40. His beliefs have colored his policy decisions on matters ranging from abortion to embryonic stem-cell research to fighting malaria and AIDS in Africa.

Christian conservatives are an important component of Mr. Bush’s political base, and the broadcasters greeted him so enthusiastically on Tuesday that he laughed and called them “kind of a rambunctious crowd.”

The last time he last time he talked to the religious broadcasters, in 2003, he focused on his faith-based initiative.

On Tuesday, he opened with a nod to the Rev. Billy Graham, who is recovering from surgery at his home in North Carolina. Mr. Bush said the preacher “brought the gospel to millions, and many years ago he helped me change my life.”

He went on to praise the broadcasters for “standing up for our values, including the right to life,” and pledged to veto any legislation that would reinstitute the so-called “fairness doctrine,” which required broadcasters to give air time to opposing views.

Mr. Bush often talks about his belief in “the universality of freedom,” as he did last year to a conference of political dissidents in Prague. But rarely has the president mixed the language of faith and God so closely with talk of war and terrorism, as he did Tuesday at the Opryland hotel here.

Calling freedom a “precious gift,” Mr. Bush said: “The liberty we value is not ours alone. Freedom is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to all humanity.” His words were punctuated by shouts of “Amen.”

Fuente: The New York Times

Rezar es como oprimir el boton del elevador para cerrar la puerta

Recientemente, leia un interesante artículo en la revista "The New Yorker" sobre los elevadores. En este, el autor menciona que desde los '90, el botón para cerrar la puerto no sirve. Es un simple placebo que está ahí para satisfacer nuestra necesidad de control. El autor, luego hace una comparación que creo dió perfectamente en el clavo:

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.

La oración no sirve. Es un simple placebo que utilizamos para proveer la ilusión de control sobre un mundo al cual no podemos afectar y el cual continuaria existiendo sin nosotros. El hecho de que a veces nuestros deseos se hacen realidad, para nosotros corrobora la eficacia de la oración pero facilmente ignoramos las cientos de veces anteriores que nuestro pedido no tuvo ningún efecto. Pero claro esta, en vez de aceptar la realidad, preferimos decir que "no era el momento adecuado", "Dios no queria que sucediera" o "No tengo suficiente fe".

El siguiente dibujo lo explica mejor que yo:

Ateo incubierto se une a la iglesia del pastor John Hagee

Matt Taibbi es un periodista y escritor político que actualmente trabaja con la revista Rolling Stone. Como parte de su investigación para escribir su nuevo libro "The Great Derangement", Taibbi infiltró la congregación cristiana "born again" del pastor John Hagee y nos cuenta a través de sus ojos su experiencia. Para los que no conocen a John Hagee, este es un influyente pastor que propone el "zionismo cristiano". Este movimiento pretende alinearse a Israel ya que de acuerdo a su interpretación bíblica, solo cuando el pueblo de Israel se enfrasque en un conflicto bélico contra un "ejercito satánico" será que vendrá el fin del mundo.

Taibbi quedó sorprendido de como la gente abandona todo uso de razón al participar en estos retiros y absorben todo lo que dice el pastor, sin importar cuan absurdo o ridículo sea. Basicamente esta gente no es capaz de cuestionar a sus líderes religiosos y pierde la capacidad de pensar criticamente. Ejemplo:

Fortenberry then started in on a rant against science and against scientific explanations for cycles of sin. "Take homosexuals," he said. "Every single homosexual is a sexual-abuse victim. They are not born. They are created -- by pedophiles."

The crowd swallowed that one whole. One thing about this world: Once a preacher says it, it's true. No one is going to look up anything the preacher says, cross-check his facts, raise an eyebrow at something that might sound a little off. Some weeks later, I would be at a Sunday service in which Pastor John Hagee himself would assert that the Bible predicts that Jesus Christ is going to return to Earth bearing a "rod of iron" to discipline the ACLU. It goes without saying that the ACLU was not mentioned in the passage in Ezekiel he was citing -- but the audience ate it up anyway. When they're away from the cameras, the preachers feel even less obligated to shackle themselves to facts of any kind. That's because they know that their audience doesn't give a shit. So long as you're telling them what they want to hear, there's no danger; your crowd will angrily dismiss any alternative explanations anyway as demonic subversion.

A team of twenty of the world's leading scientists wouldn't be able to convince so much as one person in this crowd that homosexuals are not created by pedophiles.

Y concluye:

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this -- once you've gone this far -- you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

Son estos individuos y esta mentalidad los que pusieron a George Bush en el poder por 8 de los peores años en la historia presidencial americana y nos trajeron lo que consideran la "guerra santa" de Irak.

Aqui les proveo los primeros parrafos del escrito. Para leerlo todo, vayan aqui.

I pulled into the church parking lot a little after 6:00 p.m., at more or less the last possible minute. The previous half hour or so I'd spent dawdling in my car outside a Goodwill department store off Route 410 in San Antonio, clinging to some inane sports talk show piping over my car radio -- anything to hold off my plunge into Religion.

There was an old-fashioned white school bus in front of the church entrance, with a puddle of heavyset people milling around its swinging door. Some of these were carrying blankets and sleeping bags. My heart, already pounding, skipped a few extra beats. The church circulars had said nothing about bringing bedding. Why did I need bedding? What else had I missed?

"Excuse me," I said, walking up to an in-charge-looking man with a name tag who was standing near the front of the bus. "I see everyone has blankets. I didn't bring any. Is this going to be a problem?"

The man was about five feet one and had glassy eyes. He looked up at me and smiled queerly.

"Name?" he said.

"Collins," I said. "Matthew Collins."

He scanned his clipboard, found my name on the appropriate sheet of paper, and X-ed me out with a highlighter. "Don't worry, Matthew," he said, resting his hand on my shoulder. "A wonderful woman named Martha is going to take care of you at the ranch. You just tell her what you need when you get there."

I nodded, glancing at his hand, which was still on my shoulder. He waved me into the bus.

I had been attending the Cornerstone Church for weeks, but this was really my first day of school. I had joined Cornerstone -- a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country -- to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country eight years of George W. Bush. The church's pastor, John Hagee, is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in the country -- not because his ministry is so very large (although he claims up to 4.5 million viewers a week for his Sunday sermons) but because of his near-absolute conquest of a very trendy niche in the market: Christian Zionism.

Y aqui tienen uno de mis pedazos favoritos.

Morgan turned, glanced again at my name tag and sighed.

"Well, uh, OK, then," he said. "Matthew, do you want to tell your story?"

My heart was pounding. I obviously couldn't use my real past -- not only would it threaten my cover, but I was somewhat reluctant to expose anything like my real inner self to this ideologically unsettling process -- but neither did I want to be trapped in a story too far from my own experience. What I settled on eventually was something that I thought was metaphorically similar to the truth about myself.

"Hello," I said, taking a deep breath. "My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes."

The group twittered noticeably. Morgan's eyes opened to tea-saucer size.

I closed my own eyes and kept going, immediately realizing what a mistake I'd made. There was no way this story was going to fly. But there was no turning back.

"He'd be sitting there in his costume, sucking down a beer and watching television," I heard myself saying. "And then sometimes, even if I just walked in front of the TV, he'd pull off one of those big shoes and just, you know -- whap!"

I looked around the table and saw three flatlined, plainly indifferent psyches plus one mildly unnerved Morgan staring back at me. I could tell that my coach and former soldier had been briefly possessed by the fear that a terrible joke was being played on his group. But then I actually saw him dismissing the thought -- after all, who would do such a thing? I managed to tie up my confession with a tale about turning into a drug addict in my mid-twenties -- at least that much was true -- and being startled into sobriety and religion after learning of my estranged clown father's passing from cirrhosis.

It was a testament to how dysfunctional the group was that my story flew more or less without comment.

Fuente: AlterNet

Florida es un bochorno de estado

No solo es Florida uno de los estados mas conservadores, si no que también esta lleno de fanáticos religiosos ridículos. En los últimos meses, en el estado han sucedido las siguientes idioteces:

1. Se intentó crear una tablilla para autos que decia: "I believe" con la imagen de la cruz. (claro esta, que se joroben los judios, musulmanes, hindues, ateos, etc.)
2. Han intentado pasar varias veces reglamentaciones para "enseñar" el creacionismo en las escuelas.

Ahora cayó la gota que colmó la copa. Jim Piculas, maestro de intermedia en la escuela Rushe Middle School, hizo un truco de magia en su clase donde desapareció y re-apareció un palillo de dientes. Mas tarde, el maestro recibió una llamada del principal, diciendo que lo habian acusado de brujeria.

Esto es lo que sucede cuando suspendemos el uso de razón y comenzamos a creer en hadas madrinas, seres invisibles, espíritus y dioses que interfieren en nuestras vidas. Probablemente uno de los estudiantes le contó del truco a sus padres, unos fundamentalistas cristianos, y estos llamaron a la escuela indignados de que su niño estaba siendo pervertido por un seguidor de Houdini, el hijo de Satán encarnado.

Fuente: Local6 News

El NCSE te explica como pudo evolucionar el ojo

Uno de los argumentos que utilizan los creacionistas para "probar" que fuimos creados por un dios, es que el ojo es un órgano demasiado complejo y no pudo evolucionar por si solo. El NCSE ha creado una serie de videos educacionales para contrarrestar estos argumentos ignorantes. Son cortos, simples y facil de entender.



Fuente: PZ Myers