Carnival of Science, The Bible, Philosophy, and Humor

Tweets attributed to “God” on Twitter:

People like to imagine Me coming down to end civilization because itʼs less scary than imagining being left alone and doing it yourselves.

The people who think the world will end all at once will be largely responsible for it ending gradually.

If itʼs any consolation, the nine quintillion other universes I oversee are all going to sh*t too.

Praying is the definition of the least you can do.

The best thing about atheists is they never blame Me.

The people who say “itʼs all part of God's plan” give Me waaay too much credit.

tweets from jmiz8

When people tell me “I found the Lord” I assume the Lord had been hiding from them. Then I pray for Jesus to find some better hiding spots.

I have a Christian friend who is so devout he refuses to covet his own wife.

I get religious people being anti-abortion, but them thinking .25mg of estrogen or 2 grams of latex can stop the “fate of god” I'm fuzzy on.

Naked female scientist tries to tame belugas in the freezing Arctic

Green Porno - Dolphins (what kinds of sex WONʼT dolphins have?)

The Simpsons, Quotations!

Marge [praying before having sex]: Dear Lord, thank you for the physical intimacy we are about to enjoy.
Homer: And as always, have fun watching.

Homer ordering ice cream at a Christian theme park: “One Tower of Babel and build it to Heaven” (Ge 11:1-9).

Homer: Whatʼs the big deal about going to some building every Sunday. I mean, isnʼt God everywhere?
Bart: Amen, brother.
Homer: And donʼt you think that the almighty has better things to worry about then where one little guy spends one measly hour of this week?
Bart: Tell it, Daddy.
Homer: And what if we pick the wrong religion? Every week weʼre just making God madder and madder.
Bart: Testify!

Rev. Lovejoy [playing a Protestant in days of Queen Elizabeth]: Lord Jesus, although our country turned protestant for the soleful reason that our fat mean King could dump his faithful wife, we know youʼre on our side. So please destroy these horrible monsters [Catholics] who believe your mother should be revered.

Ned Flanders praying in Israel: ..and Lord, thank you for letting me be in this wonderful place where the end of the world will soon begin.

Pirate: We must pray to Santa Maria to save us. Santa Maria de Guadalope, mystical rosa, interceda por .. (lightning strikes the ship.) One of you were not praying!

Homer: Oh heavenly God, my son is plagued with homework. With Your vast knowledge of “The Shore Birds of Maryland”, I know You can help him.

Homer: Dear Lord, the gods have been good to me, and I am thankful. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So hereʼs the deal; you freeze everything as it is and I wonʼt ask for anything more. If that is okay, please give me absolutely no sign. Okay, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done.

Futurama Quotations

Zoidberg: Whoʼs brave enough to fly into something we all keep calling a death sphere?

Bender: Dying sucks butt. How do you living beings cope with mortality?
Leela: Violent outbursts.
Amy: General slutiness.
Fry: Thanks to denial, Iʼm immortal.

Reverend Lionel Preacherbot: The only lies worth believing are the ones in the Bible.

Hermes [showing line graph]: As you can see, since Benderʼs death, request to bite one shiny metal ass are down 98%. [Scruffy walks by, using parts of Benderʼs disconnected robot body as a noisy vacuum cleaner] Do you mind doing that later?
Scruffy: Bite my shiny metal ass. [the end of Hermeʼs line graph rises]

God: Bender, being God isnʼt easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you, and if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch. Like a safecracker, or a pickpocket.
Bender: Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!
God: Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do things right, people wonʼt be sure youʼve done anything at all.

Bender: I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe!

GODʼS BLOG (from the New Yorker, humor)

New novel poses the question whether God might not simply be an adolescent: There Is No Dog by Meg Rosoff – review

Interesting Bible News!

“The Book of Jeremiah is now one-seventh longer than the one that appears in some of the 2,000-year-old manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some verses, including ones containing a prophecy about the seizure and return of Temple implements by Babylonian soldiers, appear to have been added after the events happened.”

St. Christina The Astonishing!
Her life story was composed by a contemporary! (Witty writer sums up what we know about her, the original flying nun!)

10 Vestigial Traits You Didnʼt Know You Had (The article left out all the vestiges left in the human genome, from genes inserted by viruses in our ancestors to pseudogenes, and multiplying jumping genes that landed in the same relative places in us and our predecessors. What are the odds! Obviously they didnʼt land in the same places, we inherited the same DNA.)

Violence Vanquished: We believe our world is riddled with terror and war, but we may be living in the most peaceable era in human existence. Why brutality is declining and empathy is on the rise.

According to Cavanaugh every concentrated community of power, whether of religion or of the state, is likely to tilt toward violence under certain circumstances. He also thinks that during the 17th century the western world went from religions that deemed themselves beyond criticism to governments that did so, calling it a “migration of the holy.” He judges that the nation-state was formed at the turn of the modern era as a concentration of power for the conduct of war. In order to sustain itself in the violence business the nation-state has taken to itself religious or quasi-religious claims that are shrouded so as not to be subject to the critique that it is a form of religion that is producing violence. In the end the nation-atate--not least the U.S. in its pious, self assured, exceptionalism—has become the core idol in the modern world. “God Bless America.” We are witnesses to an assumed holiness of the state in its aggression that is rooted in a myth that continues to have wide and uncritical acceptance. So says the reviewer of Cavanaughʼs two recent books. Cavanaughʼs view reminds me of Eric Hofferʼs view in The True Believer. Though Cavanaugh is a Christians and Hoffer an atheist.

Quotations From Logan Pearsall Smith, E. M. Cioran, Kierkegaard.

Prey turns on Predator! Beetle larva flaps its tail, enticing the frog to come after it,then the frog swallows it, but canʼt keep it down, then the larva attaches itself to the frogʼs belly and sucks and eats it till the frog is just bones.

“Brain eating” amoeba kills three people

Plants survive animal attacks by creating lots of new DNA. Creationists take note, nature makes more DNA naturally. And portions of that continue to undergo mutation.

The bacterium responsible for the Black Death was once a mild stomach bug.

Rats were not responsible for the Black Death (I thought that the medieval killing of cats contributed to burgeoning rat populations that led to the fleas on rats carrying the plague).

6 Animals That Kill Natureʼs Scariest Creatures For Fun

500+ Atheism versus Theism Debates

“Atheist,” a poem by sci-fi author Dennis Danvers I recommend Circuit of Heaven, and also his recent short story, “The Fairy Princess.”

The Damned Sing The Damnedest Songs