Just when I thought it couldn’t get better than the Brick Testament I stroll across the Jesus Christ Action Figure. Unfortunately, the site listed in the video doesn’t exist anymore. Here’s the video that made my morning:
Not to be outdone, Mcfee.com ALSO has a Jesus Christ Action Figure that CAN be ordered. Unfortunately, no cool video but still… nothing better than the Deluxe Edition of the Son of God.
Deluxe Jesus Christ Action Figure
See what some decent funding can do? We should have dumped all the money we spend “exporting democracy” into projects like this.
This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years. MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine. Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Read more and watch the video at MIT’s NewsOffice.
Comments rss
TrackbackAccording to a recent Pew survey, 21 percent of atheists in the United States believe in “God or a universal spirit,” and 8 percent are “absolutely certain” that such a Being exists. Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith, wonders if they were also “absolutely certain” they understood the meaning of the term “atheist.”
Since that really didn’t make any sense, he recently conducted a much more detailed poll of atheists and devout Christians through his website. Some of the results were as expected, others were a bit shocking. The results can be viewed via the links below. “For each statement the number of respondents averaged around 5000, 80-90% of whom were atheists. The numbers of Christian responses ranged from 254-787.”
Personal Data and Attitudes towards Science, Journalism, Politics, etc.
Comments rss TrackbackReal quick late night post. Just had a strange conversation with a Christian friend who started making crazy claims about the validity of Christianity over other because of its moral foundations. This was followed by of course anti-Muslim-speak (in other words “they’re all terrorists”), and a constant pointing to how the bible is such a great source or morality. These things always frustrate me. There’s nothing “bad” about Christianity except when Christians do exactly what Jesus said not to do and be the judge themselves. LOL. Anyway… fodder for my arguments.
Bible:
The killing of homosexuals is condoned and encouraged in the wonderful laws of Leviticus. Leviticus 20:13 clearly states “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Well there you have it, Homosexuality is wrong, and they must pay the ultimate price… IN THE NAME OF GOD!!!
Who else shouldn’t people do?
One must wonder why there are so many people wanting to site Leviticus for gay bashing, but they never mention these rules. How strange. It is common that a Christian will blow off these old rules with “Jesus came to change the laws, so these are outmoded, and we don’t need them”, but throughout Leviticus God states that these laws are to be followed forever. Hmmm.
That doesn’t even touch the monstrosity called Deuteronomy which is filled with some whacky stuff.
As for the all Muslims are terrorists I wiki’d the Christian version and only had the following to share with my friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism. For the record, a lot of Muslim based countries scare the shit out of me… but then again so do a lot of uber hardcore born again Christians who’ve never even read the bible. ;O)
Update to responses received:
I never imagined that a late night post… ok rambling… would receive such a huge response. This post has certainly generated a lot of traffic. For those who have sent me hate filled emails I can only say that I’m sorry you were offended but please take your hatred elsewhere. Better yet, go to church and pray for me (I personally don’t think it will help me but appreciate positive rather than negative response) and let your personal god be my judge. For those who have commented on the original source for most of this post, the link to the original source is in the trackback (below).
Finally, since this seems to be getting a big response I thought I’d point out two excellent books, that could be interesting to a wide variety of readers. The first is Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. The book was written in response to letters Christians wrote to Harris regarding his previous book. It’s a quick read, where Harris critiques many of the absurdities of biblical religions that claim inerrancy for a ‘book’ written some 2000 years ago.
Another great book is I Sold My Soul on eBay by Hemant Mehta. I think this might have a broader appeal as both a Christian and non-Christian can take a lot away from the book. In I Sold My Soul on eBay Mehta explains how and why he became an atheist and features his latest church critiques, including descriptions of his visits to some of the best-known churches in the country. His observations will surprise and challenge you, revealing how the church comes across to those outside the faith. What’s most interesting is how, even though he is an atheist, he provides suggestions to Christians on how they could enhance their base, be more inclusive, and actually spread their faith. It’s an honest look at current Christianity in America, exposing the best and worst of the faith and the churches the spread the word of Christ.
Comments rss Trackback
A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew found near the Dead Sea in Jordan that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is raising eyebrows in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it is believed to speak of a messiah called Simon who will rise from the dead after three days, suggesting that the story of Christ’s death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.
The tablet, which is similar in style to the Dead Sea Scrolls, is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.
A fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls which set the word talking when they were discovered 60 years ago. The new text seems to imply the life and death of Jesus was predicted before his birth
But a leading scholar says it confirms his theory that some Jewish sects before Christ believed a messiah would save them - but not before he was killed and brought back to life after three days. Israel Knohl, Professor of Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says one line of the text tells the ‘prince of princes’ slain by the evil government, ‘in three days you shall live’. He suggests the story refers to the death of a Jewish prince called Simon who led a revolt against King Herod.
Daniel Boyarin, of the University of California at Berkeley, said that there was growing evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.
‘Some Christians will find it shocking - a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology, while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,’ he said.
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1032642/The-ancient-scripts-predate–rewrite–Bible.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/middleeast/06stone.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
Comments rss TrackbackIt’s often trumped in the media just how powerful the “religious right” is, as well as how fervent they are in their beliefs. We’ve come to know our country as this highly Christianized version of America. However, a recent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life study released yesterday indicates that many are contradicting the teachings of their own faiths, saying that truth comes in many forms. Large majorities of Americans say that many religions - not just their own - can lead to eternal life, and that there is more than one way to interpret religious teachings.
“As Americans rub shoulders with people of other religious traditions, they are less judgmental, and less likely to offer pronouncements about other people’s eternal life,” said Rice University sociologist D. Michael Lindsay.
Comments rss TrackbackCracked.com lines one up and hits it out of the park with it’s latest:
If we could ask God for just one thing, it’d be this: We want superpowers like people in the Bible had.
Is that too much to ask? We could do a lot with our powers, some of it good. So why not? It used to happen quite a bit, the Bible is full of people who God infused with powers that would put most of the Marvel and DC lineup to shame. Such as:
#5. Ezekiel and His Zombie Army
Ezekiel was a prophet. For most Biblical prophets, this meant having freaky visions, telling them to people, being mocked and most likely being executed for heresy. But it was all worth it, when things like this happened:
That’s Ezekiel 37: 1-14, and that’s him raising a freaking army of the undead.
If we could do that …
An army of the undead, right at our fingertips? Imagine the bank-robbers running when suddenly rotting arms reach up from the ground, grab that sack of cash, steal his car and beat him with his own intestines. But crime fighting is just the beginning, we’re thinking there’s really an incredible number of uses for your legions of undead henchman.
Also, it’s not too far-fetched to assume that this would work on animals as well, so zombie horsemen could give us some serious mobility.
The Downside:
This special ability seems to require having a lot of exposed skeletons laying around, a resource we probably won’t find while fighting crime with Spider-Man in New York (unless there are some neighborhoods that are way worse than we initially thought).
Secondly, some people might get a bit uneasy about the whole walking around town followed by an army of terrifying zombies. It’s one of the tenets of being a superhero that your presence doesn’t prompt horrified shrieks from children. So we would have to move somewhere where freakishly impossible and ethically questionable things won’t seem out of place. Maybe the Netherlands.
Comments rss Trackback
Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the “intellectual elite” considered themselves atheists than the national average.
A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded “simplistic” by critics.
Comments rss TrackbackI’m constantly mystified during discussions where people argue “they should show BOTH sides of the arguement about evolution in science class.” What they mean is that they should discuss Creationism, the belief that god created everything, in science class. I’m ALL FOR teaching creationism in a world religion or a philosophy class. However, creationism does NOT fall under the scientific method as a means to prove anything so it should stay OUT of the science classroom. It’s for this reason that, for instance, evolutionary biologist and astronomers, etc usually avoid the idea of Creationism altogether. It’s not that they do not believe in god… in fact many well know scientist are very religious. The avoid the subject because it cannot be proven. There’s no mountain of recreatable/verifiable evidence to back it up.
For those who have never had the opportunity to find out about biology or science, claims made by those who believe in supernatural alternatives to evolutionary theory can appear convincing. Meanwhile, even among those who accept evolution, misconceptions abound.
Most of us are happy to admit that we do not understand, say, the string theory in physics, yet we are all convinced we understand evolution. In fact, as biologists are discovering, its consequences can be stranger than we ever imagined. Evolution must be the best-known yet worst-understood of all scientific theories.
Comments rss Trackback
Ok this is funny, Bible Fight is a flash game, kinda like a Bible version of Street fighter that spoofs both the Bible and Street Fighter.
The creators, those guys at This Is Pop for Adult Swim are completely insane, that said… I think this is hi-larious.
You can use Bible fighters called Eve, Noah, Moses, Mary, Satan, and Jesus, who look and dress like Eve, Noah, Moses, Mary, Satan, and Jesus and then battle is out Street Fighter style.
Comments rss Trackback
