International Society for Krishna Consciousness, ISKCON (a religious sect founded in the United States in 1966; based on Vedic scriptures; groups engage in joyful chanting of `Hare Krishna' and other mantras based on the name of the Hindu god Krishna; devotees usually wear saffron robes and practice vegetarianism and celibacy)


    "We're another religious youth group that claims to have all the answers and knows the meaning of life, right? What makes us so special?

     Well, we take guidance from a chain of teachers originating from God, or Krishna. Each teacher, in turn, took disciples, or students, and passed on the knowledge of spiritual reality. The support of scriptures ensures that the teachings remain the same. With a large body of detailed sacred texts on many aspects of reality, we're able to harmonise[sic] the variety of beliefs in the world. We can answer just about any question you fire at us. Our programmes[sic] are run by youth, so answers are communicated in a way that makes sense to youth.

One day the zoo-keeper noticed that the orangutan was reading two books - the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species.

Surprised, he asked the ape, "Why are you reading both those books?"

"Well," said the orangutan, "I just wanted to know if I was my brother's keeper or my keeper's brother."

The most prominent religious picture in which God does not figure at all is, of course, the Buddhist religion. This religion can be characterized not only as non-theistic but more so as atheistic; that is to say, not only does the Buddhist religion discard the notion of God as a religious term, but it vehemently rejects any use of this notion as meaningless. Buddhism is, therefore, a religion without God.

Most histories of atheism choose the Greek and Roman philosophers Epicurus, Democritus, and Lucretius as the first atheist writers. While these writers certainly changed the idea of God, they didn't entirely deny that gods could exist.

Epicurus put forward the theory of "materialism": The only things that exist are bodies and the space between them. Epicurus taught that the soul is also made of material objects, and so when the body dies the soul dies with it. There is no afterlife.

Epicurus thought that gods might exist, but if they did, they did not have anything to do with human beings.

Religion was the human activity of trying to live in the way such noble (but unknowable) gods might live.

Lucretius did not deny the existence of gods either, but he felt that human ideas about gods combined with the fear of death to make human beings unhappy.

He followed the same materialist lines as Epicurus, and by denying that the gods had any way of influencing our world he said that humankind had no need to fear the supernatural.

Attending a wedding for the first time, a
little girl whispered to her mother,
'Why is the bride dressed in white?'

'Because white is the color of happiness,
and today is the happiest day of her life,'
her mother explained, keeping it simple.

The child thought for a moment and said,
'So why is the groom wearing black?'

An Interview with Rene Girard

by Brian McDonald

Rene Girard is both one of the twentieth century’s most prominent theorists of culture and a devout Roman Catholic. Born and raised in France, Girard received his Ph.D. in history from Indiana University and has lived and taught for most of his life in America.

He combines a “deconstructionist” and “debunking” analysis of the origins and bases of human culture with an essentially traditionalist affirmation of Christianity. His cultural analysis has been praised by secular critics, even as his insistence that this very analysis should lead to Christian affirmation has shocked them. Christians are pleased that a giant of modernist and postmodernist thought is a solid Christian, but some are disturbed that he seems to “debunk” the propitiatory view of Christ’s death on the Cross. A brief outline of his thought and its development may therefore be useful before presenting the interview.

Girard’s Thought

Picture two young children playing happily on their porch, a pile of toys beside them. The older child pulls a G.I. Joe from the pile and immediately, his younger brother cries out, “No, my toy!”, pushes him out of the way, and grabs it. The older child, who was not very interested in the toy when he picked it up, now conceives a passionate need for it and attempts to wrest it back. Soon a full fight ensues, with the toy forgotten and the two boys busy pummeling each other.

As the fight intensifies, the overweight child next door wanders into their yard and comes up to them, looking for someone to play with. At that point, one of the two rivals looks up and says, “Oh, there’s old fat butt!” “Yeah,” says his brother. “Big fat butt!” The two, having forgotten the toy, now forget their fight and run the child back home. Harmony has been restored between the two brothers, though the neighbor is now indoors crying.

It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that Girard builds his whole theory of human nature and human culture through a close analysis of the dynamics operating in this story. Most human desires are not “original” or spontaneous, he argues, but are created by imitating another whom he calls the “model.” When the model claims an object, that tells another that it is desirable—and that he must have it instead of him. Girard calls this “mimetic” (or imitative) desire. In the subsequent rivalry, the two parties will come to forget the object and will come to desire the conflict for itself. Harmony will only be restored if the conflicting parties can vent their anger on a common enemy or “scapegoat.”

With the lucidity characteristic of French thought before the “deconstructionist” writers, and a consistency reminiscent of Calvin, Girard shows, throughout the body of his work, how his theory of “mimetic” desire can illuminate and unify an extraordinarily disparate set of human phenomena. It can explain everything from sacrifice to conflict, from mythology to Christianity.

Mimetic desire accounts for the nature of human culture. Early human cultures, thinks Girard, must have been marked by violence as mimetic desire drew human beings into unceasing conflict. Ultimately, the object would disappear from view and be replaced by the conflict itself. Thus, most conflicts, either ancient or modern, are almost literally over “nothing,” with essentially identical rivals seeking only the prestige that comes from achieving victory over each other. (St. Augustine noted this in his Confessions, when he analyzed sports and games and marveled that the only object won in these contests was prestige gained through victory over a rival.)

Primitive societies would have few mechanisms for containing the spreading contagion of mimetic violence, so Girard concludes that such societies would have inevitably decimated themselves had they not found a mechanism for containing the conflict.

This mechanism he locates in another fundamental human characteristic: our propensity for “scapegoating.” At some stage in a cycle of mimetic violence, the community spontaneously turns on one of its members as the one who is to blame for it all. (Remember that point in innumerable movie Westerns where, in the midst of some scene of agitation and confusion, a finger gets pointed at someone and immediately a thicket of fingers is pointing at him and a lynch mob is instantly created?)

Boiling this down REALLY
condenses the crazy.

Its like when you see a really great movie.. then you try to tell someone the plot and its comes out sounding ridiculously silly.

In looking at IQ: Atheists scored 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. While these numbers are not definitive proof, they certainly imply a correlation (if not a causation).
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#Studies_comparing_religious_belief_and_I.Q.

A debate between a scientist and a Qur'an believing Muslim over whether the Earth is flat or spherical.

Richard Dawkins in a complete and utter debunking of Islamic creationist Harun Yahya's (Adnan Oktar) book "Atlas of Creation". This video is truly Dawkins at his best.

            Little is known about general views of evolution in Muslim countries. A 2007 study of religious patterns found that only 8% of Egyptians, 11% of Malaysians, 14% of Pakistanis, 16% of Indonesians, and 22% of Turks agree that Darwin's theory is probably or most certainly true, and a 2006 survey reported that about a quarter of Turkish adults agreed that human beings evolved from earlier animal species.
           In contrast, the 2007 study found that only 28% of Kazakhs thought that evolution is false; this fraction is much lower than the roughly 40% of U.S. adults with the same opinion (though this could be due to the fact that Kazakhstan is a former republic of the USSR, where Atheism was explicitly endorsed and promoted).[1]
           In Turkey, polemics against the theory of evolution have been waged by the Nurculuk movement of Said Nursi since the late 1970s. At present, its main exponent[2] is the writer Harun Yahya (pseudonym of Adnan Oktar) who uses the Internet as one of the main methods for the propagation of his ideas.[3] His BAV (Bilim Araştırma Vakfı/ Science Research Foundation) organizes conferences with leading American creationists. Another leading Turkish advocate of Islamic creationism is Fethullah Gülen. Due to the lack of a detailed account of creation in the Qur'an, other aspects than the literal truth of the scripture are emphasized in the Islamic debate.
           The most important concept is the idea that there is no such thing as a random event, and that everything happens according to God's will. This does not mean that God has to interfere with the universe and it is ok to believe God set the universe in motion. Hence the ideas of some Islamic creationists are closer to Intelligent design than to Young Earth Creationism. Another Muslim viewpoint is that evolution is real and that God did create it by creating the universe.
           According to Guardian some British Muslim students quote the Qu'ran in scientific exams and fail as a result.[4] At a conference in the UK in January, 2004, entitled Creationism: Science and Faith in Schools, Dr Khalid Anees, president of the Islamic Society of Britain stated that "Muslims interpret the world through both the Koran and what is tangible and seen. There is no contradiction between what is revealed in the Quran and natural selection and survival of the fittest."[5] However, over 1,505 people opposed the creationist movement and the Brown government has recently published new standards removing creationism from the schools.  

"Student Excercise:

Hint: Look for differences such as: apes cannot speak; their feet are more like hands; they may use a stick as a sort of tool, but they never use a tool to make a tool like humans can; they walk differently, etc."

See more of this mind blowing 'fact filled' knowledge at http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs

Philosopher Dan Dennett calls for religion -- all religion -- to be taught in schools, so we can understand its nature as a natural phenomenon. Then he takes on The Purpose-Driven Life, disputing its claim that, to be moral, one must deny evolution.

Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University. Dennett is also a noted atheist and advocate of the Brights movement.

Daniel Dennet's Homepage: http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm

Some of his FANTASTIC books:

The prestigious magazine, Scientific American, published figures showing that while 90% of the general American public believes in a personal God and an afterlife, only 40% of scientists who are BS-degree-only holders so believe and only 10% of scientists regarded as eminent believe in a personal God or an afterlife.

In a survey of more than 500 members of the National Academy of Scientists, it was found that 72% were atheists, 21% were agnostics and 7% believed in God. A very similar breakdown was found in relation to belief in an afterlife.

Results of a survey published in Skeptic magazine the same year showed that about 40% of scientists in general believed in God. In particular, 40% of mathematicians, 30% of biologists and 20% of physicists were believers, according to the study. These figures tend to agree with the Scientific American figures for BS-holders, while the figures for the NAS correspond more closely with the Scientific American figures for eminent scientists, as would be expected.

This is a direct quotation from Free Inquiry magazine, 1986: "Is it more logical to be a Christian? Is religion the natural choice of a smart person familiar with more of the evidence? Not according to a broad consensus of studies on IQ and religiosity. These studies have consistently found that the lower the IQ score, the more likely a person is to be religious."  

A Gallup poll found that 33% of college graduates believe in creationism, while 55% of high-school-only graduates and 66% of grade- school-only graduates believe in creationism, that is, the belief that God created Adam and Eve, the mythical parents of the human race.

Another Gallup poll showed that 53% of college graduates and 63% of non-graduates considered religion very important in their lives, while 48% of Americans in the $50,000-and-up income range, 56% in the $20,000--$50,000 range and 66% in the less-than-$20,000 range considered religion very important.

These figures agree with my own observations. Most of the educated people I've met, and especially those of a scientific bent, tend to have open, inquiring minds, whereas ordinary people on the street, like bus drivers, supermarket checkers, telemarketers, bakers and carpenters most often declare themselves Christians, often stubbornly and peevishly.
I've seen in a few articles on Internet and elsewhere that people like these have derided atheistic scientists as "absent-minded professors" and worse. But consider some of the things that modern science has produced: computers, television, electricity, nuclear energy, airplanes, cell phones, spaceships, audio- video equipment, automobiles, X-rays, copiers, fax machines, printing presses, plastics, petroleum refineries, power stations and modern ships.

What can religion offer? Prayer books? Rosaries? Crucifixes? Icons? Habits? Scriptures?

All of the above figures definitely correlate education and intelligence with disbelief in religion, and ignorance and lack of intelligence with religion. This correlation is also self- evident from the fact that in the Middle Ages, when educational levels were low, religion was in its heyday, whereas nowadays, when education is greatly improved, religion is beginning to decline. All and all, I think it's safe to say that Christians are intellectually inferior to atheists. 

By Thomas Keyes

Source: http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/feb/article156.html