Holy Jesus fucking monkey balls.

This beer is as expensive as Mother Theresa’s shit but worth every goddamn penny. This Belgian Tripel is aged for a long ass time in fucking Apple Brandy barrels. The barrels give this beer some sweet and sour notes which makes my whole fucking mouth explode with happiness.

Only certain beers deserve an expletive review like this goddamn one right here. But holy shit-stained armadillo penis, I wish it was socially acceptable to drink this beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and that my wallet could handle the $25 punch to the face.

Too bad I can’t even begin to pronounce the shit.

But kick me in the goddamn teeth if this isn’t one of the best fucking beers I have ever had.

Some people are not convinced of evolutionary biology. I believe that the reasons for this have nothing to do with evidence or theory. The reason is because most of us need meaning, purpose and moral guidance in our lives. The real issue is that people seem to think it’s impossible to find these things if we accept that evolution is the real story of our origin. It is also assumed by many that if our origins are traced back to a purposeless and materialistic force such as evolution by means of natural selection, then our lives therefore have no purpose, and without creation we have no morals. It is suggested that if we accept the laws of evolution as fact, then nothing is stopping us from behaving like primal beasts (although it could be strongly argued that we already do).

The very people that believe this belong to the same group of people that have convinced our society (or propagated the belief) that there is a lack of evidence and that evolution is an unproven ‘theory’ (by the way, the definition of a ‘scientific theory’ is much different than the every day usage of the word, for example gravity, germs and atoms are all theories). A small group of young-earth creationists have somehow convinced a large amount of western society that evolutionary biology is a farce, and to top it off, that various evidence has been forged.

The truth is, evolution is a fact, although it will likely continue to be disputed for centuries to come anyway, solely due to religious pressures. Hundreds of independent scientific societies around the world have looked at evidence from many areas, including but not limited to: the fossil record, biogeography, embryology, vestigial structures, suboptimal design, and so on. In every single tested prediction, experiment, or analysis (and there have been millions) every single shred of evidence has supported evolution.
We’ve seen new species form, both in the fossil record and in real time. Scientists have found transitional forms between major groups, such as whales and land mammals.

“Through evolutionary biology we can predict where fossils will be found (take Darwin’s prediction that human ancestors would be found in Africa), we can predict when common ancestors would appear (for example, the discovery of the ‘fishapod’ Tiktaalik in 370-million year old rocks), and we can predict what those ancestors should look like before we find them. Scientists predicted that they would find fossils of marsupials in antarctica, and they did. We can also predict that if we find an animal species in which males are brightly colored and females are not, that the species will have a polygynous mating system.
Every day hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. And every fact that has anything to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don’t have a single one. We don’t find mammals in precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossil out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record and, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that benefit only a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to scientific truth.”
- Jerry A. Coyne, Ph. D., Professor at the University of Chicago, Author of “Why Evolution is True”

Evolution has been tested and proven from many different angles, but the most compelling section of the evidence has to be the fossil record. When the majority of people are shown this evidence (i.e. transitionary fossils demonstrating whales ancestors being 4-legged land mammals), they are convinced and usually have little problem agreeing. The real problem is when the evolution of humans is mentioned. People like to think that we are superior to all other animals and that, although maybe other animals evolved over millions of years, humans were specially created. The idea that humans evolved along with every other species has been around since the 1700s. Obviously it was met with huge backlash. Still, for hundreds of years the theory was developed, and more and more evidence would pile up supporting that humans evolved. Most people having an ‘I have to see it to believe it’ attitude did not accept it, until 1924 when Raymond Dart discovered a human transitional fossil in africa (as predicted). What he discovered was australopithecus africanus, a species that resembled a human with ape-like features. within the next 70 years, more were found. The oldest being about 3.5 million years old, a species almost entirely ‘chimp-like’ but with human-like legs for walking bipedally (try to picture an ape walking upright like a human). As evolutionary order would follow, more fossils very clearly demonstrate the evolution of humans.

If you ask me, evolution is not just fact, it is also the amazing connection between us and nature. It shows that we are all related, not just to other humans but to other animals, plants and the earth. Evolution over such vast amounts of time have molded our brains to be so complex that we are capable of doing almost anything. It has made us the only known species so developed that we can actually understand the laws of nature that govern us.

“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you.  Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself.  There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

“Show me,” you say.  I lead you to my garage.  You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.

“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.

“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely.  ”I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.

“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”

Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”

You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.”  And so on.  I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?  If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?  Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.  Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.  What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

- Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow

I’ve been considering writing a blog post about being atheist for while now. I was going to give some reasons why I am an atheist and what it means to me. The only reason I considered it is because I haven’t really put it down in written words before. I know how I feel, I have read a lot about the subject including religious texts, scientific books, anti-religious writings, etc, but when I talk about it with friends or family I tend to go off on tangents or rants and I am not really sure if I have ever been able to truly get my point across the way I would like to. Writing a blog post about it would give me an opportunity to do this, without it turning into a debate or rant.

I will probably write that post down the road, but instead, I am going to write about the common misconceptions about atheists that can really make my blood boil. Here goes:

1. Atheists hate religion/religious people. Maybe some do, but I would say the majority do not. This is an unfair generalization. Most atheists were probably religious or at least theistic at one point and probably took a long journey of questioning and discovery before they came to the point of being an atheist. Quite a bit of hate in my experience comes from religion, and the majority of atheists are kind and accepting of all people. Most just want to live their life and not be forced into a religious societal framework.

2. It takes just as much faith to be an atheist as it does to be a Christian. This is false logic and also presumptuous. It presumes that all atheists believe the same alternative to theism (whatever that is) and that they must have faith to follow this doctrine just the same. The presumption is wrong because all atheists do not believe the same thing, they just follow the same non-belief. Also, it doesn’t take faith to not believe in a talking penguin. Non-faith is much different from faith.

3. Atheists are not happy. If you are religious, and that religion makes you feel happy and warm inside, don’t assume people without that religion are not happy. Just as many religious people can be unhappy, atheists can too. But it’s condescending to assume unhappiness in the faithless. To me, atheism is extremely freeing and I am overall a happy person.

4. Atheists want to offend people. I honestly don’t understand why some people are offended when an atheist simply says they don’t believe in God. I understand that some atheists may enjoy offending uptight zealots, but for the most part I think the average atheist honestly does not want to offend anyone. In fact, I could very well get offended on a weekly basis when I am bombarded by religious billboards, anti-abortion campaigns, religious influence in the media and government, etc. But I don’t.

5. Atheists are pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, want to stifle religious freedom, etc. It’s unfair to assume anything about an atheist other than they don’t believe in a god/deity. Atheism in no way outlines a set of moral guidelines or rules in the way that the major religions do. The great thing about being atheist is that I can form my own opinions and beliefs based on evidence, personal morals and logic… As opposed to an outdated text full of loosely interpreted rules and stories. Most avid atheists strongly believe in religious freedoms, but disagree with religious influence in social policy catering to the major religions by way of tax exemptions and public school funding. It probably is fair to say that a majority of atheists do indeed support gay marriage and pro-choice… but this is an opinion each person makes for themselves.

6. Atheists believe that something came from nothing. This one kills me. I have heard a lot of religious people say that atheists think all of the animals and the earth came from nothing and the complex human eye magically and randomly created itself. The argument is that if you see a brand new Ford truck, with all of it’s complexities, you know it was created. It didn’t just magically come into existence. Therefore the human body must have been created, and atheists believe it magically sprung up into existence. This, again, assumes a common belief about atheists first of all. Atheism implies nothing other than a non-belief in a god, it doesn’t say ‘this is what we think happened’ or ‘there is no god, so all of this stuff just showed up overnight’. It simply says ‘I reject your claim of a god/creator’. Secondly, it demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of the common scientific theories (i.e. evolution). Don’t make an argument when you don’t know what you are talking about.

That is all.