So today was supposed to be the rapture. Well according to this site.

Will The Rapture take place on Monday-September 21^st 2009, at The Last Trump of Rosh Hashanah?

I would be willing to bet the answer is NO. I don’t know how they could have been wrong, I mean they did use the infallible word of God as their guidance. They have a snazzy video too. Who could have ever doubted them?

There are even 8 reasons listed as to why this is the day:

1.The Bible code and a number of other prophecies predict that a comet will annihilate the earth in the year 2012.
2.Jesus said that the generation that sees the rebirth of Israel would see His return
3.Experts are predicting a “complete global economic collapse starting by FALL 2009”!
4. Global food supply is near the breaking point and out the lowest level in 30 years!
5. Drought is at an epidemic level, worldwide!
6. Jesus said that before his return that earthquakes, travel, and knowledge would increase.
7. President George W. Bush announced that there will be a peace treaty dividing up Jerusalem before his term expires in early 2009.
8. 2008/2009 is the end of the biblical 490-year cycle

This is some seriously crazy bullshit. How could anybody fall victim to such insanities? What I am really waiting for is their response as to why today was not the day.

I just wanted to take a moment to talk about my posts. Most of them are simply word dumps. I don’t spend a lot of time agonizing over details and editing each one. There will be mistakes. Also, for my Daily Pictures, almost every single one of them is not mine. I make no claim these pictures are of my own creation. I simply do not know the origin of many of them. If you want a picture removed simply email me: godlessblogger@gmail.com Also, I want to talk about my comments. They are and always will be uncensored. I have no plans to edit what you have to say or block something I don’t agree with. Just note if you threaten me, like over at ProudAtheists, there will be no hesitation in contacting the FBI and local law enforcement. If you simply post something stupid, I reserve the right to make fun of you as well. I just wanted to let everybody know these things. As always if you have any questions or suggestions place them in the comments or shoot me an email. I always make an honest attempt to respond to everybody.

Okay here is a chance to quickly and easily test your devotion. At the end of this post, I will place a blue oval. To pass, you just have to look at it until you see God. It should not be too difficult if you are a true believer. Let me know your results and what He looks like.

(If you can’t seem to find anybody, you might be an atheist…)

Neither did I. According to the Center For Inquiry he is in fact a heathen. The author found an old interview from 1968 where Shatner was asked about his religious beliefs. Here was his response:

“No. I don’t. Emotionally I would like to believe there is a life after death. Intellectually . . . . I cannot accept the idea. . . . as for myself, I have finally come to the conclusion that life is here and now . . . and nothing more.”

Seems pretty clear to me. Always good to have another one on our side.

It turns out preaching conservative religion does NOT work in preventing teen pregnancies. Actually quite the opposite would be true. You can look at how religious a state is overall and use that as a pretty good indicator for how high the teen pregnancy rate is.

They found a strong correlation between statewide conservative religiousness and statewide teen birth rate even when they accounted for income and abortion rates.

That’s strange, I thought a strict anticontraceptive, antisex dogma would prevent this, guess not. If you don’t believe me, I’ll post a chart at the end of the post showing the statistics so you can read for yourself. Obviously this is not working. They discourage contraception, but they don’t do a good job on discouraging the sex.

“The idea is that in the heat of the moment, a young woman who has said, ‘I’m going to be a virgin on my wedding night,’ is with her boyfriend and she says ‘Let’s just do it.’ And since they didn’t plan it, nobody has a condom. And so it increases their chances of a pregnancy,” Adamczyk said.

So it’s actually more dangerous. Now we have the spread of disease as well. Wonderful job as always religion. Maybe you are wondering how the determined how religious a state is, here is how:

For religiosity, the researchers averaged the percentage of respondents who agreed with conservative responses to eight statements, including: ”There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion,” and ”Scripture should be taken literally, word for word.”

How about we actually do some teaching? If we educate people, the rates will go down and so will the amount of disease. I’m pretty sure Obama recently cut federal funding to “abstinence only” programs. That is a start. As promised, here is the chart from MSNBC:

I often find myself wondering why we still have religion. Or even why it spread so much in the first place. I would agree the origins would be an attempt to explain the natural world around us. Make sense, and every culture tried it. Yet even after the advent of science we still have religion here. Why?

 
It seems to me like religion would have spread, because we are loss orientated beings. I think Dawkins described something like this in one of his books. Wouldn’t it make more sense to treat the gust of wind as a predator rather than just nothing? The human who ignores that would be more likely to be killed by a predator. That’s simple natural selection. If you always assume it was just the wind versus a lion, that will probably catch up with you eventually. Wouldn’t the same principle apply to God? If you are more likely to trust something is true as a survival instinct, why wouldn’t that apply to religion? Especially when the consequences are as dire as Hell. At least that makes sense to me.

 
The reason religion continues today is indoctrination. Another human trait is to trust elders. Especially when they drill a concept repeatedly into your head from a young age. The logical approach to breaking the spell of religion would be with the children. A strong education would help. We need to raise a generation of critical thinkers who aren’t afraid to ask questions. The true enemy of religion is knowledge. Isn’t knowledge the whole thing which got Adam and Eve removed from Eden? I my opinion indoctrination is child abuse. Even indoctrination into atheism. Children should be given a choice. Let’s raise them all agnostic and let them choose for themselves. Currently, faith is based on your parents and geography. If you are religious, wouldn’t you think your location would change what faith you are raised in? Somebody born in Iraq would most likely hold different beliefs from somebody born in Sweden or Aboriginal Australia. Our future always rests with children so we should educate them and try to make them able to do the most good for humankind.