Crappy Last day…whine, etc.

Ice fog. Bull-sh*t meetings. I found that my 9 am class got moved across campus; the problem is that I have an 8 and a 10…and the morons want me to use technology to teach these classes…different technology for each one. To top it off, we have icy roads and sidewalks due to ice fog.

Oh well…here is my sympathy:

End whining…

Now this poor soul has something to whine about. The man had a court order to stop the demolition and he had a signed note to the contractor saying “don’t do it”. But they did anyway; this sounds like something that would happen where I live.

And, I suppose I could be living in Alabama and have an idiot like this for governor:

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) commemorated the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday, telling a gathering of Alabamians that he didn’t see skin color as a divisive factor. When it came to religion, however, the recently-inaugurated governor raised some eyebrows with a comment on his view of non-Christians in his state.

“So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother,” Bentley said in his address, according to The Birmingham News, after telling the congregation that he was “color blind.”

Then again, what does one expect out of a Republican, especially a southern one?

Religion and Science It is said that religious fundamentalism offends reason, atheism offends faith and religious moderates offend both. Here is an excellent example of this:

Collins gives the money quote when the interviewer presses him on how he sees Biblical accounts of creation:

Interviewer: Genesis would lead us to believe that the earth is six thousand years old. And it would lead us to believe that God created two human beings—one out of the rib of the other. It’s pretty explicit stuff.

Collins: We interpret it as explicit these days. It is not a textbook of science! It would not have suited God’s purposes to lecture to his chosen people about radioactive decay, and such things as DNA. What God was trying to teach us through those words is the nature of God and the nature of humans—and that comes through loud and clear.

A bit later, Collins asserts:

. . . once you’ve accepted the idea of a God who is the creator of all the laws of nature, the idea that God might at unique moments of history might decide to invade the natural world, and suspend those laws, doesn’t become, really, a logical problem. And certainly the Resurrection is the most dramatic example of that: where God became man, walked on this earth, was crucified, and then, after death, was resurrected—that, for me, is the cornerstone of my faith. And it doesn’t present a real problem, as a believer, as long as I’ve already acknowledged that God is God.

This is embarrassing stuff, even more so coming from America’s most prominent scientist. Quick thoughts:

* The correct translation of the frequent claim that “The Bible is not a textbook of science” is this: “The Bible is not literally true, except for those places where I say it’s literally true.”
* Why is Collins so sure that he knows what God intended when “writing” the Bible, especially since other Christian sects disagree?
* How does Collins know exactly which parts of the Bible are “not science” (i.e., fiction) and which parts are? If Genesis and Adam and Eve are “not science”, why is the Resurrection “science”? There’s precisely the same amount of empirical evidence—i.e., zero—for each of these stories.

In other words, suspend logic and reason where you think it should be suspended.