Life, the Universe, and Everything

And now for something completely different…

Hey, it’s meat. How could I resist?

(hat tip: Meatpaper, which I am so subscribing to…)

A massive earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday, and thousands are feared dead. Mashable has a list of ways you can help the survivors.

Foundation Beyond Belief provides a humanist, secular alternative to religious charities.

(hat tip: Pharyngula)

Douglas Adams:

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

August Berkshire provides a handy list of the The Top 15 Excuses Religious People Give for the Horrible Behavior of their God, and why each one is a load of dingo’s kidneys:

Here are “The Top 15 Excuses” religious people give in an attempt to explain away the horrible behavior of the all-powerful, all-loving god they believe exists.

(1) Unknown greater good.
God must commit or allow some evil to accomplish an unknown greater good.

But doesn’t that limit God’s knowledge and power?  Doesn’t that say that God couldn’t think of a better way to accomplish his goals other than by torturing innocent people?  Until this “greater good” is revealed to us, we are not obliged to accept this argument.

(2) God had to create Earth this way.
Natural disasters and diseases are an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of life-sustaining forces.  A planet without natural disasters and diseases could not operate in a way that would support human life.

But doesn’t that limit God’s knowledge and power?  Since God was creating humans from scratch, couldn’t he create us so that we could survive on a disaster-free and disease-free planet?

(3) Blame the ancestors and blame the victim.
All evil that happens to us is our fault, either directly because of something we did, or indirectly because of our ancestors, such as “Adam and Eve.”

This is known as “blaming the victim.”  Typically, a victim of abuse believes that the more he or she is punished, the more he or she is loved.

But what did an innocent baby ever do to deserve a birth defect?  And what kind of justice punishes children for the sins of their long-dead ancestors?

Also, how does this explain why animals suffer?  Did they “sin” too?

For those of you who believe it is okay to punish people for the sins of their ancestors, why aren’t you in prison right now?  Each of us has some ancestor who was a murderer.  Human justice is obviously superior to God’s justice.

More…

(hat tip: Greg Laden)

Lewis Black has that rare ability to make you laugh and think at the same time…

(hat tip: Greg Laden)

Mark Morford:

The absolute best way to speak to complete idiots is, of course, not to speak to them at all.