EVIDENCE SAYS NO GREAT DESIGNER AND XTIANS LIE

Always and ever, when we humans look at this great designer, puppeteer god of the Middle East regions, he turns out to be very human, even to his mistakes. So even if there were "Intelligent Design" (and there isn't), the designer sure made an awful lot of extremely human mistakes.

"The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer; perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them, and new experiments are attempted on an improved design. But this notion is a little disconcerting. Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament)." (from COSMOS, Carl Sagan, p. 29)

The nasty and dishonest twist which the fundamentalist put on this Intelligent Design hypothesis is that they do not intend to honor the hypotheses of honest intelligent design proponents at all. They just use intelligent design to try to wiggle their Old Testament god into the picture of how the universe came into being. If you'll notice, all the honest Intelligent Design theorists usually say that the Designer they speak of is nothing like the Bible god of fundamentalism. So when a fundamentalist pretends to advance the cause of Intelligent Design, he does not honor it in his own mind. He's just being a dishonest trickster.

Of course, the hope most revealed by those who support intelligent design is the wish to be accepted into the scientific community. They show that even they know that the scientific method is the one sure source of truth in the natural world.


IF WE HAD FREE WILL, WE COULD CHOOSE TO LIVE FOREVER

If we had free will, in any spiritual sense, we could choose to live forever, but we are not free, so we run down like old machines and rust away.


HOW VERSUS WHY

Science asks how something works. Religion asks why something works. If most of us got busy finding out how things work, we'd soon lose interest in worrying about why they work. Religionists would stop whining why why why why why why all the way into the grave.


KARPINSKI BOOK REVEALS MUCH

Okay, I may not know if I've spelled her name correctly, but Karpinsky is the once upon a time general in the military, the only one demoted for her role in Abu Ghraib (another name I'm too lazy to look up the spelling for). She was in charge of the prison guards, not the interrogators. She's recently written a book which tells how she was railroaded by higher ups, probably just like Scooter Libby is taking the fall for higher ups. Early on, Karpinski sat in on a meeting General Miller held with interrogation officials. He's the general who was transferred from Guantanamo to Iraq to do the dirty job of getting better intelligence. She heard him tell his people to start treating prisoners like dogs. Thus, the dog collars and leashes which appear in the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib.

At another time during her tour of duty, Karpinsky received an order to hold one captive's name from the rolls, to hide him away out of sight from the Red Cross and all scrutiny. Such an act is in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions. The order was issued directly from Donald Rumsfeld's office. She questioned the order and refused to sign it. She knew that to participate would make her a war criminal. Note, she is the only one who Secretary of War Rumsfeld has punished for the scandal in Abu Ghraib. He's a master of irony, isn't he? It's clear Rumsfeld has no more compunction than a fascist about his actions. If one acts like a fascist, then one is a fascist. If one supports a fascist, then one is also a fascist. Where does George Bush stand in all of this?
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"The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job." —Slappy White