http://www.calaquin.com/ A site by Bryan en-us Nucleus CMS v3.32 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.calaquin.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://www.calaquin.com/ http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=428 I'm taking a break from posting articles on religion for the time being, so for now you'll have to put up with crap about other awesome stuff, such as this:

As summer draws to a close, November doesn't seem very far away. Why is November such a great month, you ask? It's the National Novel Writing Month! For those of you who haven't heard, the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a big event that anyone can participate in. It's not a competition, but everyone has the same goal: 50,000 words. That's it. It doesn't matter what you write about, it just has to be 50,000 words. But you only get 30 days to write it.

I first participated in 2005, and it was an amazing experience. I wrote the best novel I've ever written, and I had a blast. In 2006, I tried to write a romance novel, but it failed miserably and I never made it past 13,000 words. But then last year, I wrote the sequel to my 2005 novel, and it was just as awesome of an experience.

Novembers for me have been a caffeine-riddled, insomniatic mess. Trying to get through college finals while writing a novel is an incredibly daunting task, but it's worth it every time.

But this year, 50,000 words just doesn't seem that scary or daunting anymore. I've done it twice, so I know I can pull it off. This year, I'm doubling it, and going for 100,000 words. That's fucking scary for me.

I've spent the past several months thinking up great plots for novels, but none of them seem to be very interesting for NaNoWriMo. So this year I want to go in without much in mind, and hope for the best. If it sucks, I won't care. Having 100,000 words of my own is a reward in itself.

I'll be creating a separate section to this site specifically for NaNoWriMo 2008 in the next few days. There's a link on the sidebar of this site, but that's for my 2005 novel. I'll post an update when the new site is up and running.

If you're interested in NaNoWriMo, head over to the official website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/. If you've been a participant, please post a comment about your experience. I'm happy to recruit anyone into this amazing event. Everyone should give it a try.]]> Writing http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=428 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:10:37 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=426
If Jesus did in fact exist (which is certainly questionable), then I doubt he promoted christianity so much as a better kind of Judaism. He promoted loving everyone, even those we dislike or disagree with. This is definitely something worth believing in, but unfortunately christianity has all but destroyed this concept within that religion. I have absolutely no problem with any religious beliefs that promote nothing but love and caring. If those beliefs include a god, I can still accept it so long as it is a personal worship and not one that requires spreading the dogma around the world.

That said, let’s assume the Bible was indeed a true story, and Jesus did in fact die for our sins.

I’m not going to throw in quotes from the Bible or anything, but I’ll take what I remember from what I learned in church and Bible School. Jesus was arrested for his teachings by the Romans, and then a crown of thorns was stuck on his head. He was beaten, stabbed, and severely harmed by many people. If The Passion of the Christ were accurate at all, he endured horrible pains that would have resulted in the death of a mere mortal much sooner.

The punishment Jesus received was a similar punishment for other criminals. After all, there were at least two others on either side of him who were nailed to crosses just like him.

So it’s sounding like Jesus suffered greatly for our sins, which I won’t doubt one bit. Being beaten, tortured, and nailed to a cross is an absolutely awful way to be treated. However, there were the two men on either side of him who also endured this absolutely brutal punishment. I can think of many situations in which human beings endured equal or worse punishments that Jesus endured (The Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, being trapped out at sea with no food or water, etc.). I am in no way doubting that Jesus suffered (as long as I’m assuming the Bible is fact for the purposes of this article. There are theories that Jesus might never have been arrested, but I digress). But Jesus certainly didn’t do the most suffering out of the human race. Despite this, I will admit that if someone were to endure something like that for the sake of helping me, I would be grateful.

But that’s because I’m an atheist. The idea of someone dying for my survival is something for which I would be grateful my entire life. Not a day would go by without me thinking about him, and I would do whatever I could to make up for this person’s suffering. I would live my life happily, because that is probably what the person would have wanted. I would owe them my life.

Jesus, however, went to heaven after he died (er, after coming back to life and then ascending to heaven). For the past 1,978 years, Jesus has been living the life up in heaven, enjoying every minute of it. He did his suffering, and now it’s smooth sailing from now on. And best of all, Jesus knew this was going to happen after his short time of torture. In the big scheme of things, the amount of suffering he did, which is still less or equal to suffering of countless other humans, wasn’t really that much.

The suffering Jesus did ultimately resulted in much more suffering here on Earth. Sure, people might be able to get into heaven a bit easier (though that’s debatable), but so many people have suffered because of christian’s reign. A few hundred years after Jesus died, there were the Dark Ages, a direct result of christianity in which technology reached a standstill that still affects the world to this day. There was the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, and today people are trying to get creationism in our schools. God supposedly has the ability to know everything, including the future, so didn’t he and Jesus see this coming?

But, of course, I’ve heard suggestions that Jesus was in fact not trying to create christianity- far from it. If he was a normal guy trying to do some good, and ended up dying because of it, then I take back everything above. I would gladly throw in my support for someone trying to promote love and understanding between individuals. If we had that, the world would be a better place. But instead we have a church that takes advantage of its people, and allows its priests to get away with raping young boys. We have an entire group of people who think their country was based on their morals, trying to impose their beliefs upon everyone.

So Jesus, if you did in fact exist, were not promoting christianity, and never went to heaven, I thank you. Too bad things didn’t work out so well though.]]> Religion http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=426 Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:54:43 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=423


It's a compelling argument, if you take away the Islam propaganda. The idea that the Qur’an predicted all these scientific theories is rather absurd, and if you do a little research, you’ll find plenty about the subject. From what I’ve read, it sounds like the words in the book are twisted to sort of sound like they’re predicting it, but this doesn’t seem much different than what’s done with the Bible (don’t even get me started on the god damned Bible Code).

But as I said, the video does provide a compelling argument for the existence of god. If you didn’t watch it, it stated that god has four important qualities:

Eternal
God existed before the universe, and will continue onward beyond the end of the universe. God has always been here and will always be here.

Omnipresent
God is everywhere, and is everything. The universe itself must either be god or part of god.

Omnipotent
God has unlimited power. God can do anything to the universe.

Omniscient
God has infinite knowledge and wisdom. God can predict every single moment of the future, and can set in motion any event.

So what has these qualities? We’ll use our handy-dandy science to show that there is indeed something in this universe that has these qualities:

Light
Light is made up of packets of energy called photons. These photons travel through the universe at the fastest possible speed, 186,000 miles per second. Because it moves at this speed, time for it does not pass. A photon is the same age through its entire existence. Therefor, light is eternal. Light is also everywhere, because it is made up of energy. Every atom in this universe is made up of energy. So light is omnipresent. Since light is everything, light has all the power in the universe, thus being omnipotent. And since all knowledge is stored in forms of light, energy, and matter, light has all the knowledge of the universe.

Given these qualities, I must confess that light is indeed god. However, there is a very human flaw in this argument: humans gave god these qualities. There are no established parameters for what god actually is. Some religions perceive god as a living being while less strict religions perceive god as some kind of unknowable force. There are many different definitions for what god actually might be. Until we can establish a clear definition, we can’t even begin to show evidence for god’s existence.

This argument makes the same fallacy (begging the question) as the following statement: “humans think god wrote the Bible, and if the Bible says god exists, then god must exist.”

In this case, it’s “humans think god has X qualities, and light has X qualities, so god must be light.”

To put it even simpler: “Y might have X qualities. Z does have X qualities. So Y must be Z.”

Why is this flawed? Let’s apply things to X, Y, and Z: “An apple is red and is round. A tomato is red and is round. An apple must be a tomato.” Just because two things have similar or even the same qualities does not make them one and the same. God may have other qualities in addition to these four qualities, while light certainly may have qualities not associated with what we perceive as god (it travels in waves, while god might not).

There is a major assumption that is entirely derived from man’s perception of what god might be. How do we know that god has always been around? How do we know god is everywhere and everything? How do we know god has unlimited power? How do we know god knows everything? We have books like the Qur'an and the Bible, among many others, but their ideas of god often conflict, and there of course is the question as to whether god actually had any of them written or not.

-------------------------------
I posted a comment on this YouTube video some months back, and I would like to share it here. It repeats what I’ve stated above, but I’m posting it for the sake of my next point:

“Nice try, but you're still using flawed human logic. Humans said that god has those four qualities, and if light has them, then light is god.

It's the same fallacy of logic (begging the question) as: "humans think god wrote the bible, and if the bible says god exists, then god exists."

As of yet, I have still not heard a solid logical way of saying god exists, free of any fallacies.“

Someone responded to this by posting on the comments section of my YouTube profile:
”u said that, I hate seeing people this confused about science and what they believe. I think u don't believe in god because alot of shitty people cant explain it. I will have my phd in science in about 2 years so I know about science. Listen if u need it better explained to u ill explain. Byt the way..........that comment came from the video where science proved the existence of god.”

And my response:
”Thank you for the comment.

Perhaps a lot of shitty people can't explain it, but I've listened to many, many different viewpoints. I listed to both the atheists and the theists. The atheists have so far been able to avoid virtually every fallacious argument (of which there are many) while the theists often use circular logic and base most of their evidence on hearsay and guesswork.

While hearsay and guesswork do come into play with many different arguments, they in and of themselves do not constitute a valid argument. They can only be used in addition to an argument, but should be avoided when possible. In the case of god, it is not possible.

I know about science too. I've studied astronomy since I was five, and quantum physics for the past six or seven years. Science has been a passion of mine for nearly my entire life. I did not make the conversion to atheism lightly, however. I believed in god for twenty years before finally concluding that there most likely is not one.

That said, I would be happy to hear your case for god. I wouldn't dream of avoiding a potential explanation that may sway be back to agnosticism, or perhaps a religion. Be wary, however, because I am not going to change my beliefs because of an argument I've heard many times before.

Thanks again,
Bryan”

I hope to hear from this person again soon, and I don't say that in a sarcastic tone at all... I'm really lonely...

-------------------------------
I welcome any and all arguments for or against god on my site. If you wish to email me to discuss things privately, please visit my About Page. If you wish to discuss it more openly, feel free to post a comment on an article, and I will respond to it as quickly as possible.

]]> Religion http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=423 Wed, 6 Aug 2008 22:41:52 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=420
So I looked through some other skins on the Nucleus CMS site, and came across a skin not too different from what you see here. I spent a few hours changing things around to get it the way I wanted, and now I'm very pleased with it.

Originally, the skin came with a giant image near the top of the page. I tried to find an image to replace it with, but I thought images of Jupiter or galaxies were just too tacky. So for now I'm just leaving the image off, but eventually I might put something nice there.

This new skin also allows me to easily create an About page. I had to be a little creative with it, but you'll never know what I did.

I'll be adding more neat little things in time, and doing more to advertise the site. ]]> Website Updates http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=420 Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:30:14 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=419
While I won’t bother to compare myself to experts in the field, I can state with absolute certainty that I know a hell of a lot more about the universe than the average person. The reason I can safely say this is clear: most people don’t seem interested in returning to the moon or going to Mars. But with my knowledge of space and astronomy, I can say with a high degree of certainty that there really doesn’t need to be a god anywhere in the equation (I’ll discuss this in a later article).

So why did I believe in god for all these years? The following is not an exhaustive list of reasons, but reasons I personally accepted for a time.

Evolution
I didn’t understand evolution for a long time, but the theory has been accepted into the scientific community as the best answer to the question “how is there so much diversity of life?” The theory does not, however, answer the question “where did life on Earth originate?” There are many possibilities, such as lightning striking certain molecules or an asteroid containing the amino acids necessary for life hitting the planet. My thought was that god could have placed things in such a way as to allow evolution to happen, and then gave subtle pushes to transform creatures into what they are now.

Now that I’ve learned more about evolution, I’ve come to realize this is entirely unnecessary. Human life is just one of many, many, many possible outcomes of evolution. Sure, it’s incredibly unlikely that humans would look exactly as they do today, but if you’re given an infinite number of possibilities, you have to go with ONE of them, right? Humans just happened to be the outcome.

Specific Numbers
This is actually one of religion’s strongest scientific arguments, but it can easily be explained in a number of ways. The idea is that gravity, the strong force, the weak force, and electromagnetism have specific numbers attached to them that define their strengths. Gravity could be slightly stronger, or the strong force slightly weaker. If some of these forces were slightly different, then stars would never be able to form, thus preventing planets from ever forming, thus preventing life from ever forming. This sounds like some very intelligent entity decided on these numbers so that life could be possible.

There are actually several ways of explaining why there is no need for a god here. The first is the multiple universe idea. If there are an infinite number of universes, then some of them could have different numbers associated with the forces. Our universe is one of the universes that has the right numbers. Another reason we don’t need god is the same as stated above: this is just one outcome of many, many possibilities. If stars weren’t able to form, something else might be able to, and life of some other sort would form in an entirely different way.

Old People
In many cultures, the elders are revered and considered to be very wise. In our society, we call them senior citizens and try to avoid them as much as possible. Old people vote in record numbers (for republicans), and make up a very large portion of the United States’ population. I used to believe that, since old people were mostly not atheists, and since they were supposedly wise, then they must have spent a lot of time thinking about god. Since they still believe in god, there must be something to it.

What I’ve come to discover is that old people don’t have the level of education people get today. This is unfortunate, but the information we have today simply wasn’t available while they were in school. During their time at our age, people were expected to be christian. They were also expected to stay married no matter what, and divorce was a terrible thing. Atheists were considered to be the lowest of the low, and feared because everyone believed they were being controlled by satan. Despite this, there are still some elders who are atheists, and are some of the coolest people I’ve ever listened to.

Atheism
For a long time, I used to think that atheists were just as ignorant as christians. While christians blindly believed in god, atheists totally denied the possibility of a god. I preferred to take the stand in between, saying there may or may not be a god, but there’s evidence to support both options. Add on the neat phrase “just because two people are arguing doesn’t make one of them right,” and that explains my dislike for atheists. The problem I had with christianity was that it said that if there was a god, then the Bible was true and so was everything else they believed. I didn’t understand this at all. The problem I had with atheism was that they seemed to believe the universe had no place for god.

What I know now is that yes, there are some atheists who are just as irritating as christians. However, the atheists I’ve discovered since then are far better people. They don’t totally deny the possibility of god, but they place god in the category of things not worth believing in, like fairies and unicorns. There’s no evidence to disprove them, but there’s also no evidence to prove them, so why bother? God is just one of many figments of imagination humans have had in large groups.

Comfort
The idea of an eternal afterlife sounds wonderful. Knowing that there’s a god out there who loves you and cares for you, and will be the only person out there willing to forgive you for your sins is definitely comforting. And knowing that one day you will be rewarded for your belief by surviving an apocalypse sounds great to someone who wants every non-believer to suffer.

As I stated before in a previous article, this life may be all we get. Why risk wasting it? Furthermore, simply wanting something really badly doesn’t make it so. Religions appeal to our emotions by showing pictures of babies, sunsets, galaxies, and all of the other beautiful things in the universe, and say that’s proof of god. I look at those pictures now and think “wow babies are ugly.” The Big Bang theory explains the formation of galaxies, the amount of pollutants in the air explains beautiful sunsets, and evolution explains why babies look the way they do.

And to actually look forward to the apocalypse or death disgusts me.

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Site Update!
Actually, this isn't really a site update, but I'm now posting my articles on Facebook and Blogger.com. Here are the links (I'm also putting them on my sidebar):
- Blogger
- Facebook (requires a Facebook account to view)]]> Religion http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=419 Sun, 3 Aug 2008 18:13:25 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=416
The comments feature of this site does in fact work, but now that I know that I can approve or deny them, comments might start actually appearing on articles. This brings me to the main point of this post:

I think I've found a purpose for this website. I enjoy writing articles about religion and atheism, and I'd like to get in on the debate between the two. If you haven't figured it out already, I have taken the side of the atheists. For Richard Dawkins, my newest personal hero, I have added the Scarlet A to my site to support the OUT Campaign. This campaign is attempting to get atheists to speak out and truly integrate themselves into society. The idea is that the more atheists there are who state they are atheists, the stronger the community will become.

So I am declaring myself an atheist. It has been a long, slow process, but I'm here. The concepts of god and christianity plagued my mind for years, begging me to keep them always at least at the back of my mind as I attempted to understand the universe. Every time I questioned a scientific theory, I'd hear "god did it" pass through my thoughts. This is not the case anymore, and it's a huge relief.

I still want to keep this site personal though. I will continue to post short stories on occasion, and you can bet that come NaNoWriMo time, I'll have plenty to say then.

Some notes on me and my site:

- I refuse to capitalize "god," "christian/christianity," and "atheist/atheism." I do not care which is a proper noun, because none of them deserve to be capitalized unless they are the beginning of a sentence. If atheists are not capitalized, then neither should christianity. I don't care about the repercussions of this decision.

- I have denied the Holy Spirit. That's me saying that, and I meant it. This means that even if christians or catholics were right all along, it doesn't matter what I do; I'm going to hell. I have sold my soul and committed the greatest sin there is.

- When speaking of the christian god, I will refer to it as "Yahweh" or the "Desert God". "Yahweh" is an ancient term applied to that god, and I just think it's a cool name.

- My family has been devoutly catholic for many generations. Fortunately, my father told me to study all religions, and this lead me to agnosticism, and ultimately to atheism.

- I've got less of a problem with Judaism than most other religions. I don't like many aspects of their beliefs, or that their children are raised Jewish, but this religion typically keeps to itself. They do not stick their noses into scientific endeavors, so I do appreciate that. Also my girlfriend's father is Jewish and I kind of don't want to screw things up there.

- Regardless of religious views, I will allow anyone to reply to my articles. I won't delete anything just because I disagree with it. I will, however, delete things that I reasonably have the right to delete, such as the following:
- Racist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful comments.
- Spam of any sort.

- I honestly want to hear from religious people too. I am looking for reasons people have faith in their gods, and I want to know why people believe what they do. I want to hear compelling arguments for god because I have heard plenty of compelling arguments against god. Please, if you have something to say, by all means say it. Everyone has the right to be heard.]]> Website Updates http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=416 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:43:03 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=415
Unfortunately, the religious answers to scientific questions are wrong. Within the last 100 years, science has offered far more than religion has. Finally, humanity has the capability of knowing that the universe’s first act was the Big Bang, that humans are the descendants of bacteria from four and a half billion years ago, that everything we can sense is made up of the same stuff. Science has put human beings on the moon, converted mass to energy, and allowed nearly every American to have a computer in their home, and all of these computers can connect to one another.

While religion reigned supreme, humans believed Earth was flat despite proof that it was spherical (proved thousands of years ago, by the Greeks), that humans came from dust (which too many people still believe), and that everything that has ever existed, with the exception of Yahweh, dates back only six thousand years. The Bible is filled with inaccuracies that science time and time again proves wrong, yet these false understandings of the universe are prevalent in society.

And even if religion were right about these things, we’d still be left with a god who absolutely hates us unless we’re all identical. This god doesn’t care about the people who suffer in Darfur, or has some kind of plan for them that we’d never be able to comprehend as pathetic human beings.

But not to worry, of course, because god promises all of us who are faithful an eternity in a beautiful and perfect place called heaven. All we have to do is devote our short lifetimes to being his servants. It even seems logical to have faith in god because of Pascal’s Wager.

What Pascal’s Wager states is the following:
If there is a god + choosing to believe he exists = eternal life in heaven
If there is a god + choosing to believe he doesn’t exist = hell
If there is no god + choosing to believe he exists = No problem at all
If there is no god + choosing to believe he doesn’t exist = No problem at all

So, according to Pascal’s Wager, believing in god offers the best possible outcome: eternal life in heaven. Two other options don’t offer anything at all, and on offers damnation forever.

But I submit to you that Pascal’s Wager is severely flawed. Why? Because it ignores another possible outcome:

If there is no god + choosing to believe he doesn’t exist = Scientific Reasoning and a meaningful life

Religion embraces death. Yahweh wants us to spend our lives working to get to heaven, as if this short time in this universe is some kind of test. All of the suffering and pain we go through is just part of some bigger plan made up by someone we won’t even meet until we’re dead.

Atheism embraces life. We are given such a short time in this universe, and we should spend as much of it as possible enjoying every moment of it. We should do everything we can to understand it, so that the next generation can understand it further, and their lives can be even better than ours. Our ancestors who gave us scientific understanding have made our lives easier, more interesting, and more fun, and we owe it to our descendants to do the same.

So I have a new wager. Maybe I’ll call it the Matthews Wager (interesting because I think my name is Catholic):
If there is a god + choosing to believe he exists = being a servant (negative)
If there is a god + choosing to believe he doesn’t exist = a meaningful life, plus standing up to a supreme being (positive)
If there is no god + choosing to believe he exists = a waste of a short life (negative)
If there is no god + choosing to believe he doesn’t exist = Scientific Reasoning and a meaningful life (positive)

Okay, so maybe standing up to Yahweh could be considered a negative, but so does every possibility except for atheism without a god. Life is the most precious gift you could possibly be given, so it should be enjoyed, celebrated, and embraced. There are many ways of doing that. Have sex, drink beer, study the universe, ride rollercoasters, play video games, read books, masturbate, do anything you enjoy. Don’t let religion choose your meaning of life, choose it for yourself!

If there were a god, wouldn’t humans embracing the life he gave them be a good thing? Wouldn’t he be happy to know that, despite all of the flaws in humanity, all the dangers of the universe, that people can prevail and still enjoy life? Wouldn’t you be happy to know that your children are happy, and that their children will be happy, and that theirs will be, and so on? Religion doesn’t care about our descendants. It only cares about making you dead so that you can’t enjoy what the universe really has to offer. Christians want the Apocalypse to come and put an end to this universe. But you know what? I’ll do my damndest to stick around for as long as possible because I fucking love this universe. I fucking love life.]]> Religion http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=415 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:38:51 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=414
I've heard that line many times, and on the surface, it sounds like a pretty good thing to say. You need something to believe in, right? We need to have faith in ourselves, others, and god- or so they say.

But what I've come to realize is that the word "faith" is quite possibly the most useless frequently used word in the English language. Let's start with a definition:

From dictionary.com:
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

"belief that is not based on proof."
Logically, the less evidence there is, the more faith you need. So when someone says they have a lot of faith in something, that means they have very little evidence for it.

This is why faith is so vital for religion.

There is not a single shred of tangible, physical evidence of god. There are testimonies ("I just know god exists," "I feel god"), and quite a few books on the subject. But to date, there has yet to be a scientific observation of evidence of god.

When it comes to evolution, the Big Bang Theory, quantum physics, and all of the other scientific theories of the universe, there is a lot of evidence. The only reason the scientific community refers to these things as "theories" is because the scientific method doesn't allow such things to be declared as "facts" just yet. Science is so strict that even gravity is labeled a theory.

Science allows a margin of error, but nothing is generally accepted until hard, concrete evidence is available.

Religion allows no margin of error, and so-called facts are accepted on the basis that they come from books written by people long before the world began to accept the scientific method.

With science, there is no faith. There is evidence.

Why do so many people have faith in religion? They have no grounding for their beliefs at all. They believe in what religions have to say even though it is PEOPLE who are telling them these things. They have no proof that the Holy Bible is the word of god, only faith that is is the word of god. They believe it simply because they believe it, or they were told to believe it.

Science does not require belief. The Big Bang doesn't give a shit whether you believe it happened or not, and neither does evolution. They simply are, whether you like it or not. Religious gods demand that you believe in them, as their scriptures imply. But in return, they give you no evidence, only stories of salvation and supposed eternal happiness. All they ask is that you have faith in them.

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Want to see what harm lies in faith? Guess why AIDS is such a problem in Africa. The catholic church opposes condom use. Source: CathNews.

"The church says one must be faithful in marriage and save oneself for marriage," said Senegal Bishop Alexandre Mbengue. "We cannot cave in to the current trend."

Faith here results in several idiotic moves. The catholic church not only has faith in god, thus believing that condom use is bad, but faith in people not having sex prior to marriage. Faith has left the catholic church leaders out of touch with reality, and because of this they are allowing the deaths of THOUSANDS of people.

But is anyone stopping it? Of course not. It seems when people take religious action, it's somehow acceptable despite reckless endangerment of human lives. ]]> Religion http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=414 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:41:12 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=413
The last post I made was back in April, so what have I been doing since then?

School
I'm going to Towson University to get a Bachelor's degree in Communication Studies. I don't care what your lame fucking joke is about my lack of communication skills. I've heard them all. School isn't why I haven't updated. It's because I don't have Internet access at my apartment because I'm too poor to afford it and I can't steal it from anyone anymore. Towson is an okay college, but I enjoyed community college a lot more. I haven't been trying very hard to make friends because I'm not on campus that much anyway.

Summer
I finished my summer classes (they were only a month long), and I now have exactly 100 college credits. Next semester is my last full semester, and then after that I only need to take two pretty easy classes and an internship. Then I will be done with school and have to get a real job somewhere.

Beer
Holy shit I love beer. Not in the college student get ass drunk kind of love beer, but in the I make my own beer kind of love beer. I hope that made sense. I don't drink it that much, and I've never been to a party where everyone drinks beer, but I've been seriously considering selling it at some point in my life (legally, of course). I want to run a bar that isn't filled with sports lovers, but run it sort of like a coffee shop. I like experimenting with bizarre flavors like green tea.

Writing
I've actually been writing more than usual lately. Not much else to say about that...

Reading
I've lost count of the number of books I've read this year. I keep buying them and reading them, and for the first time in my life, I'm starting to run out of stuff to read.

Video Games
I'll probably never outgrow these because I love them so much. I recently purchased Mass Effect for the PC, and it's from BioWare, the same company that created the incredible Knights of the Old Republic. Mass Effect is simply one of the best games ever made and one of the few games to have an outstanding third act. Most games tend to lose my interest toward the end, but this one threw in the single greatest action-packed sequence of any game I have ever played.

I also played through GTA4 in about three days, but that was because I played for about 12 hours a day. By the end of it, I was sick of it, and it's unlikely I'll ever play it again.

Girlfriend
Aside from video games, this is really my only legitimate excuse for not updating. ]]> Personal http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=413 Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:45:20 -0400 http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=412


I said "ironically" because this video was meant to bash Oprah. Instead, I cheered her on. Why? Because the only point the video makes is: Oprah isn't christian. Most of her "religious" preachings are really just ideas you can find in a lot of self-help books (probably written by Oprah). I don't buy it personally, but it's not like she's trying to force it on anyone.

Meanwhile, the christian leaders are still trying to oppress the world by preventing gay marriage, stem-cell research (which doesn't even use fetuses anymore), and is giving aid to poor nations to make them christian too (what other choice do they have?).

The only people who will find Oprah to be a heretic after seeing this video are ignorant christians anyway, and they'll believe anyone is evil if someone else says they don't worship their messiah. They say that satan is manipulating people like Oprah to turn people away from christianity.

I'm not saying all christians are stupid enough to buy into the crap this video is saying, but based on the comments on YouTube, there are plenty of them that will. As the world is finding less and less of a need for christianity, the hardcore followers are going to look for everything they can to keep people believing. But trying to turn the world against Oprah by calling her a "not-christian"? That's pretty lame.

"Open your eyes, turn off the TV, and pray." Yeah, that method will solve everything, just like it always has. ]]> General http://www.calaquin.com/index.php?itemid=412 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:01:21 -0400