Monthly Archives: December 2007

On Death

I found out recently (via Facebook) that my neighbour from residence in first year has died.  I don’t know the exact circumstances but he was a mere 22 years old.  We hadn’t been in contact much since first year, beyond random passings on campus, but he was a generally good guy (although may have had too much affinity for the drink).

What this mainly makes me realize is how fragile we are. As much as we (the “young”) may think we’re invincible, we are not.  Life ends.

From a naturalistic perspective there is nothing after death – similar to what it felt like before being born (or at least prior to the brain developing in the womb) – it’s essentially irrelevant.  That doesn’t mean I think life is pointless however.  What it means is that the time I have here now, while I am alive, is the most sacred thing in the world.  If I believed there was an eternity of bliss to follow this life, why would I be worried about enjoying my time at all?  Even if you were guaranteed a life of bliss of equal or greater length after this one, I wouldn’t really care how great this life was for me (or those around me).  Since there seems to be a vanishingly slim chance of any afterlife (let alone an eternal afterlife), I choose to enjoy my time here, and to ensure that those in my life can enjoy their time as best as possible.

Getting back to where I started, I know my friend enjoyed his time alive, as unjustly short as it may seem.

Atheist Christmas

I clipped today’s Bizarro comic out today (it’s not online and I don’t have a scanner with here, so bear with my explanation): the caption reads “Atheist Christmas” and a woman is passing a man and she says “Merry nothing!” to which he replied “Same to you!”

I think Bizarro is generally funny, and I can take a joke and laughed a little when I saw this, but at the same time it’s just plain not true.

As an atheist the only part of Christmas I don’t really partake in is the Christian mass and the Jesus story – the family, food, presents, Santa, etc. is all still well and good.  I love watching Rudolf and Frosty the Snowman and the Grinch – all stories which do not once mention God.

Then there’s the “Jesus is the reason for the season” saying, which is blatantly ignorant of ancient history.  The real phrase tossed around ought to be “Winter Solstice is the reason for the season,” if you wanted to be more accurate.

And don’t even get me started on how I watched Don Cherry say remember that on December 25th, Santa is good, but December 25th is for baby Jesus. After which he flashed to pictures of the troops in Afghanistan.  And you could tell that he was being serious.

So have a merry secular Christmas.

101st post review

(Note: all links are to internal blog postings unless explicitly said otherwise, I’m also going to attempt to not repeat any links.)

Since I’ve written a bit here since I started in June, I’ve decided that I would go through a review of what I’ve posted on. Basically if you’re new here, this is a good intro (since I only just broke 2000 hits, and have since hit 2,400).

An important one is probably on what THz is, since it’s what I named this blog after. I then presented my research on THz at CUPC 2007. Under the topic of science I also wrote on what knowledge I would give to our ancestors if I could (my answer was the modern scientific method). A good exemplification of the scientific method is given by RP Feynman’s talk on Cargo Cult Sciences. Which leads into a distaste for things like chiropractors and alternative medicine (surprisingly I haven’t written on that yet). I also wrote a couple of posts on global warming, which people still can’t seem to accept is happening. More recently I took an interest in Garrett Lisi’s new theory of everything (which still has to be peer-reviewed). Finally, I still like this awesome use of Lego Robotics.

This past summer I finally made it to Warped Tour again (after missing the last 2 or 3). I also went camping and to the Calgary Stampede Parade. I also upgraded my computer during the summer (on the cheap too). And the entire time I’ve had this blog running things have been great with Sonia.

I’ve also written on a few political things (likely more will come) including the America: From Freedom to Fascism documentary, the homeless, democracy, and Sharia Law.

Finally, I move onto where a bulk of my topics is: religion and atheism. Topics range all over the place. The key factor here was my founding the UofA Atheists and Agnostics over the summer, which got me pretty active in the atheist movement (I eventually added this site to the atheist blogroll). I’ve written and linked to overviews of atheism; my personal reasons for disbelief; several times on ethics and atheism; creationism keeps coming up, but that means there are many, many spoofs of it; it then leads that I need to emphasize evolution (which I’ll likely do more of); and then comes the varying tales and spoofs (more, and Stacey’s Law) (or things I wish were spoofs) of dogmatic fundamentalism; I started to read the bible (will likely continue during the holidays, ironically enough) and attempts to understand modern Christianity; and I also read the God Delusion (some of my other posts came about from reading this), and replied to critics of Dawkins; my issue with Humanism; the Atheist motivational poster I made for a contest; and porn.

There’s still a few things that I plan to write on (besides things that instantaneously piss me off or excite me to post immediately), including the Rhino party, death, why atheism is not religious, Gideon bibles, relativism, and more of the bible (I did get through Leviticus, and I’ll do at least a couple more Old Testament books before really diving into the New Testament stuff).  So stay tuned and thanks for reading!

False Idols

(Side note: this is my 100th post here!)

Fundamental evangelical Christians in the US are at it again – now they’re calling the I-35 a sacred highway as prophesied in the Bible.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5S38LpMgu0]
(via Pharyngula)

If that video made your head hurt (it should come with a disclaimer), here’s a redeeming video of Kathy Griffin’s comedy about her Emmy acceptance speech where she said “Suck it Jesus.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNOSh5HxA2s]

(via Friendly Atheist)

New theory on the origin of presents

The classic debate among children has been that of the scientifically sound parentism vs. santa-clausism, with many older, more intellectual children favouring the the former. Now a new theory has been put forth supporting External Delivery as the source of Christmas presents. I’ll let you decide what you believe. Many blogs have already had their say (see more).

Special Note: I created that initial Wikipedia article, using the Intelligent Design article’s intro as a guide.