Know God, No Peace; No God, Know Peace

"Peace Is Non-Theistic" by
• http://www.youtube.com/EpochOfReason#...

"Vision of Humanity groups together a number of interrelated initiatives focused on global peace. It brings a strategic approach to raising the worlds attention and awareness around the importance of peacefulness to humanitys survival in the 21st century."
• http://www.visionofhumanity.org



The Vision of Humanity Global Peace Index survey accounts for internal and external conflicts and the subsequent losses incurred, Including that of potential terrorist acts. Relationships with neighbouring countries and overall political stability.

Perceptions of criminality in society, violent and non violent crime rates and intentional homicidal displacement ratios to the overall population. Capital prison population, capital police officer population. Military expenditure, capability, sophistication and number of armed personnel.

Volume transfer of conventional weapons both import and export and ease of access to minor. UN peacekeeping funding, overall UN involvement and capital respect for human rights ...

The overall functionality of government, the Electoral process, Political participation and overall political culture. Civil liberties, corruption perceptions, Women in parliament, Democracy Index, Gender Inequality, freedom of the press, export and import % of GDP and foreign direct investment flow. Number of visitors as % of domestic population, and net migration.

Gender and age ratios, regional & international framework/conditions and framework of regional integration. Education spending, primary, secondary and higher school enrolment ratio, mean years of schooling and adult literacy rate. Hostility to foreigners, importance of religion in national life, willingness to fight. Nominal GDP, per capital, unemployment percentage, life expectancy and infant mortality rate.

With that said, the Global Peace Index is detailed and comprehensive to say the very least. Utilizing the results generated from each of the ten most religiously concentrated Islamic, Christian and Non-theistic Atheist nations I have compared them directly as to express the clear and distinct correlation between religion and conflict.

But more importantly, the apparent correlation between non-theism and peace. As the numbers clearly demonstrate, religion is a negative driving force, pulling us backwards. Non-theism is a positive driving force, pushing us towards the future.

The percentages of both theists and non-theists were taken from sources such as Adherents and Wikipedia, rounded to the largest denomination and then compared to official demographics produced by academic institutions. Its almost impossible to gain a specific percentage in all cases, though you need to factor in those whom have not yet come out of the theistic closet.

Regardless, the message remains the same; non-theism is clearly a positive driving force whilst theism remains a negative influence upon our global society.

They have done so by conducting a very detailed and extremely accurate statistical study in 2008 of 144 major countries and have allocated them a rating based upon many political, economic, social and academic factors in an effort to view a given nations merit of peace.

-EpochOfReason

Pat Robertson calls God a liar

From Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Since 2007 has passed, we can think of reasons why this prediction went sour. Either God does not exists. Or if he does, he does not talks to Pat Robertson anymore. Or he does talk to Pat Robertson, but lies to him, just like this clip suggests.

"WackJobs for Jesus"

Funny, Crazy, Weird Preacher - "WackJobs for Jesus"

Hitchens vs. Hitchens on religion debate

Brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens debate the Iraq War and religion at an event organized by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies with the support of the Center for Inquiry and the Interfaith Dialogue Association.

Go to their official page for the full debate.

Eden is an Illusion

"Eden is an Illusion" by
• http://www.youtube.com/GStolyarovII

Beyond being destructive, the Eden myth is simply false. There never was a "better" state from which human beings have "descended." Mr. Stolyarov explores why the Fall is an illusion that ought to be abandoned.



Gennady Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre, Rebirth of Reason, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, weekly columnist for GrasstopsUSA.com, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress.

• http://rationalargumentator.com
• http://www.associatedcontent.com/user...

Why Fight Religion?

"Why Fight Religion?" by
http://www.youtube.com/themanofearth

The Chaser's War on Everything: the eternal sin

The Chaser gang see if we have learnt our lesson from history by seeing if people will eat an apple offered to them by a serpent.

Episode 03, 2007

Definitive Proof Of God: A Sign From The Messiah Himself

Definitive Proof Of God: A Sign From The Messiah Himself - Monty Python's "Life of Brian".

Monty Python's official YouTube channel:
• http://www.youtube.com/MontyPython




Monty Python's "Life of Brian" (1979)

Following the success of "Holy Grail", reporters asked for the title of the next Monty Python film, despite the fact that the team had not even begun to consider a third one. Eventually, Idle once flippantly replied "Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory", which became the group's stock answer once they realised that it shut reporters up. However, they soon began to seriously consider a film lampooning the New Testament era in the same way "Holy Grail" had lampooned Arthurian legend. All sharing a distrust of organised religion, they agreed that there was nothing to mock about Jesus and his teachings. Instead, they decided to write a satire on credulity and hypocrisy among the followers of someone mistaken for the "Messiah", but who had no desire to be followed as such. Chapman was cast in the lead role of Brian.

The focus therefore shifted to a separate individual born at the same time, in a neighbouring stable. When Jesus does appear in the film (first, as a baby in the stable, and then later on the Mount, speaking the Beatitudes), he is played straight (by actor Kenneth Colley) and portrayed with respect. The comedy begins when members of the crowd mishear his statements of peace, love and tolerance ("I think he said, 'blessed are the cheesemakers'").

Directing duties were handled solely by Jones, having amicably agreed with Gilliam that Jones' approach to film-making was better suited for Python's general performing style. Holy Grail's production had often been stilted by their differences behind the camera. Gilliam again contributed two animated sequences (one being the opening credits) and took charge of set design. The film was shot on location in Tunisia, the finances being provided this time by former Beatle George Harrison, who formed the production company Handmade Films for the movie. He had a cameo role as the 'owner of the Mount'.

Despite its subject matter attracting controversy, particularly upon its initial release, it has (together with its predecessor) been ranked amongst the greatest comedy films. A Channel 4 poll in 2005 ranked "Holy Grail" in sixth place, with "Life of Brian" at the top.

Monty Python (sometimes known as The Pythons) is a group of six comedians who created Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on October 5, 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, spawning touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books and a stage musical, and launching the members to individual stardom. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles' influence on music.

The television series, broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974, was conceived, written and performed by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a sketch show but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliam's animations), it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content.

A self-contained comedy team responsible for both writing and performing their work, they changed the way performers entertained audiences. The Pythons' creative control allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while in North America it has coloured the work of cult performers from the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to more recent absurdist trends in television comedy. "Pythonesque" has entered the English lexicon as a result.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, three of the six members were voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders to be among the top 50 greatest comedians ever—Palin was at number 30, Idle at 21 and Cleese at 2.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Py...
.

God Is Everywhere

Stephen Fry @ BigThink: God Is Everywhere



Question: What do you believe?

Stephen Fry: Its interesting. Atheism comes into rather a bad press and I suppose Id rather describe myself as a humanist, who human I dont believe in God. I dont believe there is a God. If I were to believe in a god l would believe in gods. I think monotheism is the really ghastly thing. That is the absolutely staggering to me misapprehension.

I can perfectly see why anybody might imagine that each thing, each thing that grows, each phenomenon that we that accompanies us on our journey through life, the sky, the mountains, spirits of nature. I can imagine why man would wish to endow them with an inner something, an inner animus that they would call the god of that thing.

I can see that. Its a beautiful and charming way of looking at it and I can understand the Greek idea that there are these you know these principles of lightening or of war or of wisdom and to embody them, to personify them into a Athena or Aries or whichever god you want makes enormous sense, but to say that there is one only god who made it all and who is Yeah, that is just What? Why? Who said? Where? Come on.

And I love how when people watch I dont know, David Attenborough or Discovery Planet type thing you know where you see the absolute phenomenal majesty and complexity and bewildering beauty of nature and you stare at it and then and somebody next to you goes, And how can you say there is no God? Look at that.

And then five minutes later youre looking at the lifecycle of a parasitic worm whose job is to bury itself in the eyeball of a little lamb and eat the eyeball from inside while the lamb dies in horrible agony and then you turn to them and say, Yeah, where is your God now?

You know I mean you got You cant just say there is a God because well, the world I beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.

The wonder of nature must be taken in its totality and it is a wonderful thing. It is absolutely marvelous and the idea that an atheist or a humanist if you want to put it that way, doesnt marvel and wonder at reality, at the way things are, is nonsensical. The point is we wonder all the way. We dont just stop and say that which I cannot understand I will call God, which is what mankind has done historically.

Thats to say God was absolutely everything a thousand or two thousand years ago because we understood almost nothing about the natural world, so it could all be God and then as we understood more God receded and receded and receded, so suddenly now he is barely anywhere. He is just in those things we dont understand, which are important, but I think it just is such an insult to humanity and the Greeks got it right.

The Greeks understood perfectly that if there were divine beings they are capricious, unkind, malicious mostly, temperamental, envious and mostly deeply unpleasant because that you can say well yes, all right, if there is going to be god or gods then you have to admit that theyre very at the very least capricious. Theyre certainly not consistent. Theyre certainly not all loving. I mean really its just not good enough.

You know if we empower ourselves with responsibility over our actions, responsibility over our destinies and responsibility for directing and maintaining and creating our own ethical and moral frameworks, which is the most important thing really isnt it because perhaps the greatest insult to humanism is this idea that mankind needs a god in order to have a moral framework.

There is a very clear way of demonstrating logically how absurd that is because the warrant for that logical framework, for that moral framework that comes from God is always tested against mans own morals and its a complicated argument, but I mean thats you know its the standard one which is pretty unanswerable, but the idea that we dont know right from wrong, but we have to take it from words put down in a book two, three, four, five, six thousand years ago and dictated to rather hotheaded neurotic desert tribes is just insulting.

http://bigthink.com/

You May as well Pray to Aliens

This video looks at the way humans try to communicate with higher powers from Religious Prayer to Seti.

Is there any evidence for either?









Original Soundtrack Recorded by Alan Jinx http://www.youtube.com/user/ALANJINX

All clips/images used in this video are either copyright-free or covered under "fair use" for nonprofit educational purposes (Title 17 § 107 of the USC).

Maxine Stone - PR Manager
Lee Harvey - Creative Director
Alan Jinx - Sound/Music Director

What's good about religion?

Why do people laugh at creationists? part 1-10

Why do people laugh at creationists?

The only people so stupid as to not understand the answer are the creationists themselves.

Brought to you from Thunderf00t, this superb series explores the unproven beliefs that are treated as factual by many religions and the extremes to which some followers have taken them. Case studies in this series include various creationists like VenomFangX, Kent Hovind, Ken Ham and just the fundamentalist Christian population in general.

(part 1)







CORRECTION Stars in galaxy in half a trillion, not half a billion.


correction, the thickness of the Hovind ice sheet should actually be 400 km rather than 1000km. However this approximation does not change the core of the argument that no light can penetrate beyond at best the first one km, or the fact that it would cooked the Earth on falling down, and drowned in permanently.

Religion is a mind disease

Religion is a mental disorder

Jesus didn't exsist! [documentary]

PZ Myers destroys Simmonds in evolution debate

PZ Myers completely eviscerates his opposition Geoffrey Simmonds in this classic debate. This Simmonds guy clearly knows bugger all regarding evolution but writes books about it. Can we expect anything else from the Discovery Institute?

Frank Turek vs. Christopher Hitchens: What Best Explains Reality: Theism or Atheism?

Filmed at The College of New Jersey, Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens meet again in their second debate to give their arguments for what best explains reality.

Frank Turek vs. Christopher Hitchens: What Best Explains Reality: Theism or Atheism? from Andrew Ketchum on Vimeo.

Hitchens, Dawkins and A.C. Grayling vs. 3 Religious Authorities

Hitchens, Dawkins and philosopher A.C. Grayling debate a trio of religious authorities.

72 Virgins

How could Creationism not be dishonest?