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ONE NATION UNDER NO GOD
IN GOD WE DO NOT TRUST

Well, ladies and gentlemen, rest assured that it is inconceivable that any any serious atheistic candidate (or once elected) for any national office would ever advocate for the changing of the national anthem or the "God standard" on the country's currency.

That serious national atheistic candidates or (god forbid!) elected officials would have an atheistic agenda is a preposterous myth propagated by small-minded, insecure and/or delusional theists who self-perpetuatingly sprout forth such inflammatory nonsense.

As was irrationally feared by many, did JFK have a Catholic agenda? Did he ever attempt to change the name of the Oval Office to the Papal Office? Hardly!

Nor would any serious atheistic national candidate/elected official have a non-belief centric agenda. To assume that an atheist would be less politically pragmatic and less patriotic or would ever intentionally put national security at risk due to their non-belief system is obfuscation, cynicism and skepticism at its theistic worst.

First and foremost, the (un) holy grail is that POLITICIANS ARE POLITICIANS be they theists or atheists.

Due to such mean-spirited, hateful, and disingenuous thinking(?), that is why the country has few if any openly avowed atheist elected officials, perhaps not even at the dog catcher level.

Who says this naturalistic atheistic agnostic isn't spiritual while simultaneously being a lousy poet?

I see a butterfly
And say oh my!

I see a tree
And smile with glee!

I see a star
And realize how cosmically small we really are!

I see a flower
And admire it hour after hour!

I see a shell
And on its beauty I do dwell!

I see a peach
And appreciate that its sweet nectar is within my reach!

I see a trunk of petrified wood
And wonder how many years it had stood!

I see an ocean
And my heart stirs with joyous emotion!

I see a sand flea
And I thank __ ___ ___ that it's not me!

For some non-phrenologic reasons, perhaps more due to my skeptical freethinking innate nature, Random Thought-wise, I have had pseudosciences on my mind in a non-ESP sort of way for the last couple of days.

A relatively neutral definition for pseudoscience is that it is "a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status."

My feeling is that, to paraphrase George Orwell, "some pseudosciences are more plausible than others."

It does not take a soothsayer, prophet or clairvoyant for me to rationally come to the conclusion that the vast majority of pseudosciences including creation science (an oxymoron if there ever was one!), biblical scientific foreknowledge, climate change denialism, astrology, numerology, psychokinesis, palmistry, ufology, channeling,, ESP, levitation and of course scratching a certain part of my body, rumplogy, do not hold any water at all, Noah's Ark-speaking or otherwise.

However, there are some pseudosciences, from my perspective, that if channeled, er I mean administered properly, seem to have some credence, if not validity. These would include psychoanalysis, hypnotism, polygraphy and acupuncture/acupressure.

What pseudosciences are you or are not a believer in?

At some point in the future, I have a non-clairvoyant feeling that LanceB. will be non-paranormally visiting to provide some of his favorite pseudoscience quotes.

Without the use of a crystal ball or astrological charts or tarot cards or a Ouija board or a prophecy or energy from a vortex, but rather with the assistance of the useful yet not always accurate Internet, I conjure up, er, I mean copy and paste for you (with kind of one exception) my favorite pseudoscience-related quotes:

“Philosophy is to religion as psychoanalysis is to pseudoscience”
― Christopher Marshall

"It has a 100% cure rate for... or my predictions are 100% accurate ... or for a mere $50..."
-- A Pseudoscientist

“Pseudoscience often relies on a witches' brew of scientific terms (e.g. "wavelength," "energy fields," "vibrations") half-baked into simplistic metaphors that do not correspond with testable reality. In some cases, pseudoscience simply relies on language that is deliberately vague and poorly defined to deceive. While outright lunacy is almost always easy to spot, the most dangerous of pseudoscientific meanderings are those filled with scientific terminology that, even for experts, can initially be daunting and impressive. Upon dissection, however, the terminology is invariably found to be misused, or used in a context far from accepted understanding. However convincing and artful, however much we may even wish the conclusions to be true, monuments built in such shifting sands cannot withstand the inevitable tests of time.”
― K. Lee Lerner

"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true."
--Carl Sagan

"Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!"- Isaac Asimov

"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."- Arthur Schopenhauer

"When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself." - Mark Twain

"I know a lot of people without brains who do an awful lot of talking." -The Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz

For sum, er, I mean some ungodly reason, today eye, er, I mean I was Randomly Thinking about the words pray and prey and how they could bee, er, I mean be used in a sentence together. Like "do the faithful pray so that they do not fall prey to atheists,er, I mean the devil."

Sew, er, I mean so, of coarse, er, I mean course, that lead, er, I mean led me to RT-wise what other homophones their, er, I mean there may be that have a "religious" word juxtaposed with a decidedly "secular" one.

Hear, er, I mean here (as opposed to hair/hare) is a list of those religious/secular homophones:

Pray/Prey
Altar/Alter
Penance/Pennants
Pew/Piu
Choir/Quire
Damn/Dam
Nave/Knave
Oracle/auricle

For now, I will leave you with won, er, I mean one random pondering, in a homophone sort of way.
Is the nave of a cathedral a welcoming place for knaves?

Okay, I hope it's not too many, but let's make it to, er, I mean two.
Do (due, dew?) yew, er, I mean you think that any baseball fanatics perform any acts of penance in the hope that doing sew, er, I mean so will lead their home teams to win multiple pennants.

A website called The Best Schools in 2011 published an article titled "Top 50 Atheists in the World Today." Its determinations as to who made the list seemed to based highly on what and how many publications the individuals had. Not surprisingly, the list was top heavy with philosophers.

The person selected as the number one atheist was Peter Singer, an Australian utilitarian-focused philosopher who teaches Bioethics at Princeton University. A major thrust of his work is that humans are not superior to other sentient forms of life.

Herewith are some of my favorite Peter singer quotes:

"The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval."

"All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals."

"The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all."

"I don't understand the notion that modern farming is anything do to with nature. It's a pretty gross interference with nature."

"Animals, or at least those who are conscious and capable of suffering or enjoying their lives, are not things for us to use in whatever way we find convenient."

"As we realise that more and more things have global impact, I think we're going to get people increasingly wanting to get away from a purely national interest."

"An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable."


Oh yes,...

RT would like to thank you for yesterday's 870 views, a record for the thread, I believe.

I agree with much of Peter's view. Certainly animals are just as important in this world as we are, and farming these days is so far from nature it isn't even funny. I do respect the caring farmer who farms only what he needs to and doesn't use a ton of pesticides, if any at all, to kill insects and poison the crops for human consumption.

The proverbial devil must have made me miss this one the other day.

From an A/A perspective, what "religious" homophone could be more cause and effect than prophet is to profit!

Randomly Thinking about the Kingston Trio and of course my mind with a sense of nostalgia but not morbidity (maybe mortality though) did drift to such lyrics as "this time tomorrow, reckon where I'll be. Down in some lonesome valley hangin' from a white oak tree."

Yet it wasn't such hits of that iconic folk singing group as "Tom Dooley," "Lemon Tree," "Blowin' in the Wind," Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," "A Worried Man,""M.T.A.," Tijuana Jail" or even, "500 Miles" that struck the most spiritual chord in me.

Rather it was "They call the Wind Mariah" that most touched me in a naturalistic atheistic agnostic sort of way:

O no, Mariah blows the stars around
And sends the clouds a-flying
Mariah makes the mountain sounds
Like folks were up there dying...

And now I'm lost, I'm oh so lost
Not even God can find me ...

Mariah, blow my love to me

Maybe it was just the living soul stirring beating of the drums but...

What song lyrics most convey your sense of spirituality?

Speaking of spirituality...

Late next month for a week, I will be going to San Blas, Nayarit for my yearly spiritual retreat. Out in the elements of that Mexican Western Pacific coastal community, in temperatures that may be in the 90's with ungodly humidity and with pesky voracious insects in numbers that would put any Biblical plague to shame (not to mention the occasional American Crocodile that may come close to contact with me as they emerge from the mangroves onto the trail and then into the "sewer ponds"), in a variety of terrains and habitats, I will be out in nature, primarily observing 100-200 species of birds, from just before dawn till dusk, with perhaps a one hour nature pause in the afternoon for a shower and a change of clothes.

Even (or perhaps due to) with the conditions mentioned above, with for once no hyperbole on my part, my visit there which takes four buses and up to ten hours, allows me to experience my version of the only type of heaven that I acknowledge, the natural type here on Earth with an amazing variety of natural wonders in an array of settings and circumstances, some pleasant and others naturally not so.

It spiritually revitalizes me every time that I am fortunate enough to visit there.

What is your natural spiritual slice of heaven on earth?