This Post Was Inevitable

Recently this image came across my newsfeed on facebook. 

This was my response.

Short answer: I disagree. 

BEGIN RANT.

Christopher Gardner: Don't ever let somebody tell you... You can't do something. Not even me. All right?

Christopher: All right.

Christopher Gardner: You got a dream... You gotta protect it. People can't do somethin' themselves, they wanna tell you you can't do it. If you want somethin', go get it. Period.

I don't end up places. I go places. I wasn't meant to be. I will myself into being everyday, struggling through existential depression. The situations that I've been in have only emphasized one fact: that life does not give you permission to live. Life does not care whether you enjoy it, whether you hate it, whether you think that life is precious or easily thrown away. 

Life does not care if you live. Every good and grand meaning to life has to be scratched out of the bottom layer of dirt with a spoon, life is only ever well-lived if you eat the meat, fat, blood, brains, guts, suck the marrow out of the bones and then chew the bones until your teeth are gone and your gums are bleeding. 

That being said, life is definitely worth living. Life seeks to be lived. Sonder, eleutheromania, logomania, curiosity even, prove that life does not mean to drop you off in one spot at a perfect time and a perfect place with the perfect one and let you be. Perfection isn't possible. Perfection is not meant to be. Life isn't perfect, and never will be. 

Life changes you. Life evolves. Life finds a way. To insinuate that life is anything less than a constant battle uphill in the snow is almost insulting, and to suggest that life meant to give me all of the things that I earned on my own or with the aid of like-minded individuals is actually asking for a fight. This is my life. I own it. The fact that I give it freely to everyone around me is not a testament to any higher motive or power, divine spark, or fated occurrence. I choose every second of every day to continue my existence because I hold out hope that against all odds, I will be among those who take, steal, earn, replicate or learn how to produce immortality. A gift like life should not be given to those unwilling to work for it. A gift like immortality is not fated for those unworthy of it. Fate doesn't exist. I don't subscribe to the idea that "meant to be" applies to any part of speech we have, nouns in particular. 

Hopefully this ironic situation taught you something you had never dreamed you would learn. If it has not, get off facebook, go to wikipedia, khanacademy, lifehacker education, google scholar, and learn something that you want to know about life. 

I guarantee that knowledge will be more than you dreamed.

END RANT.

Josh Feuerstein's $100,000 Challenge to Atheists

TLDR: In the age of telecommunication electronics and information, it is surprising and downright alarming that people can be anything they want when they explore the internet yet the majority of them choose to be stupid.

BEGIN RANT.

"And I say fine, pray for anything you want. Pray for anything. But...what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan. Long time ago god made a divine plan. Gave it a lot of thought. Decided it was a good plan. Put it into practice. And for billion and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn't in god's divine plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a divine plan. What's the use of being god if every run-down schmuck with a two dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan? And here's something else, another problem you might have; suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? 'Well it's god's will. God's will be done.' Fine, but if it gods will and he's going to do whatever he wants to anyway; why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn't you just skip the praying part and get right to his will?" [George Carlin, from "You Are All Diseased".]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer

"I prayed to God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work like that so I stole a bike and asked God for forgiveness."
We are told that prayer does not work like that, to not test the Lord thy God, fine. However, if one cannot test, verify, observe and affirm a God's power, potency, efficacy, efficiency, physicality or presence in general, an absence of evidence could in this case be construed as evidence of absence. 

Before I get into whether or not God exists, however, I'd like to assert a logical point into the discussion. The burden of proof in any logical discussion lies with the contender, that is, the one presenting or affirming his case, the one asserting that which is new or in existence. It is not on the atheist to assert that God is not real, it is up to the Christian, Muslim, Jew, Zoroastrian, Hindu, or any of the ones that I missed (https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_religions_and...) to prove that their God, god, Gods, gods, Goddess,... pantheon, or theological tradition is true, correct, verifiably existent, or real. I do not have the burden of proof to tell a person that they can't fly, it is up to that person to prove that they can. 

On that note, I take the burden of proof. I will prove that there is not enough evidence for the existence of God. First, the evidences for God would be something akin to the powers and properties ascribed to him. Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnibenevolence, answers prayer, sends plagues are verifiably attributed to the NKJ Old Testament God, verified as the New Testament God as well by Jesus Christ in the Gospels. This source is often the only one people accept as proof of God, which is problematic considering that it's full of contradictions. 
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html 

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus, attr.

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” 
-Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. 

Therefore we can assume that if the God of the Old Testament does exist, he either does not care about you, is so incompetent, malevolent or idiotic that we should not worship him/her/it, or, in this reporter's case, conclude that there exists too little evidence to support the claim of existence at all. Once God is demoted to a conscience, then he is not the Lord of Lords whom Southern Baptists worship on Sunday.
However, it is safe to say that God does not exist due to lack of evidence. No empirical, testable or verifiable evidence can be produced or reproduced that would satisfy a peer-review, or in Josh Feuerstein's case, a court of law.
Absence of Evidence does not mean evidence of absence except in the case where the evidence of presence is clear, well-understood and verifiable and the testing authority for presence is trustworthy, as unbiased as possible, and true. If you do not trust the Bible (other than the contradictions already pointed out) or my methods, (Other than my obvious bias, research this material on your own and develop your own opinion) please tell me why. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence
I assert that it is up to you now to question my authority and methods for gathering evidence. If you can counter all of my claims, then I will rethink my position on Atheism, not that it will do me much good now seeing as I've committed the Unforgivable Sin multiple times (Fuck the Holy Spirit.) Plus one. (Matthew 12:31-32)

Contact me if you have any argument against my methods. If not, Josh owes me 100,000 American dollars. 

I personally believe that there is absolute truth only in numbers and mathematics, everything else is, like these arguments, conjecture. 

Wikipedia Evolution. It does not work how you think it works. "Natural selection is the only known cause of adaptation, but not the only known cause of evolution. Other, nonadaptive causes of evolution include mutation and genetic drift." 
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
Survival of the fittest is not the only means by which the new generation survive.

I am an Atheist, and I condemn the Holocaust and the killing of million and millions of people. I can do this because Hitler was clearly not the fittest, he died. 

Other reasons not to support Hitler include racial prejudice and profiling, the problems with eugenics, black swan human beings (Read The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb) societal ethics, bioethics, human diversity, culture and accomplishment, general human decency, humanism, universalism, egalitarianism, The Brights Movement, Anne Frank's Diary, and I could go on. I have to ask, though, is belief in your God the only reason that you don't commit genocide? Is it really that voice in your head telling you to listen to it that holds you back from political homicidal rampages?
If that is the case, Josh, please, stay Christian. 

END RANT.

Judge Roy Moore Needs to Switch from Politics to Preaching

You'll notice that every time he mentions God, the crowd responds passionately, almost like a church service.  Amen. Yes.  Mmhmm. That's right.
I'm actually surprised I didn't hear a Hallelujah.
He isn't giving a political speech, he's not trying to influence anybody, he's preaching to his the choir, he's leading on sheep that pose as people. That's what makes me so pissed off, especially in cases regarding religion. They aren't supposed to be speaking to crowds of anti-fervor, they aren't used to giving their opinions to crowds of people that outwardly despise them, he is fervently giving his fervent opinion to people who have the same fervent confirmation bias. (Pardon my use of the f-word.)
He's not a politician, he's a preacher and he should be taken out of office and given a pulpit in a run-down back alley church somewhere out on the black lagoon where he was born and raised.
This is Alabama's Chief Justice, and he is only interested in giving and getting justice for Christians. I wonder if he only means Protestants, or Catholics, or just people that believe in his God and go to his church. Where is the line drawn, Roy? Where do people start to deserve these so-called God-given rights, and are you sure that you're the one who's equal to the task of giving those rights, i.e., are you claiming to have the rights and responsibilities of the God you so clearly serve?
It sounds to me like the only God you serve, just as so many others serve, served and will continue to serve, is yourself. I've read the comments on youtube and the posts other people have written on your fervor. You don't speak for all Christians, let alone all Alabamians. Your homophobic pro-religious agenda can stay right where you are, and if you continue this Westboro Baptist path you can end up on the hate-group list with them.
People will protest you. People will rise up against you, this isn't going to end for you. These superstitions and myths you hold dear will die off in the light of reason, logic, and true justice. Step down from your position, sir. Let the people who are qualified and dignified enough to run a real office do so, and you can go into a field that you will do much better in, I'm sure. Televangelism would suit you well, perhaps. 

Too everyone who likes to use song lyrics in their Facebook statuses

I understand.
I like quotes, too, I like reading them, I like quoting them, I like the little quirks in the english language that idioms reveal, reflect and make me laugh at. I am completely on board your crazy train road.
There is a FINE LINE, however, between posting song lyrics and posting quotes. Quotes, or spoken word, is said, written down, and shared to enable a mind to think in a new way. Song lyrics from country music, or from rap music, or from any of the myriad pop artists that top popularity charts do not, I REPEAT, do not constitute enough lyrical musicianship to rate sharing.
Unless it is deep, moving, inspirational, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, soul-lifting, spirit-filling, powerful, creating new methods of understanding, perking up the minds of nobel laureates, beautifully and masterfully executed by any non-human entity or capable of convincing aliens that humanity is a race worth saving, it does not make the cut.
If it is crude it does not make the cut.
If it uses any one cuss word more than twice, it does not make the cut.
If it includes the words swag, yolo, bitches or bling, FUCK YOU, it does not make the cut.
If it is misogynistic, homophobic, racist, anti-intellectual, anti-science, oriented to one of the two political representative parties owning America, man-hating, it does not make the cut.

Try at the very least to accomplish this one thing: If anything broadens your mind or expands your horizon, stretches your brain or touches the innermost reaches of your soul, then you may share it on Facebook. Life is short, share the good stuff.

You Forgot About Me

I miss you so much, my stomach in knots, I gave you my heart and everything that I've got...

You told me 3 words that I cannot forget no matter what dreams want to fill up my head

You made me alone. You made me give up. You made me give in to a lost kind of love.

You gave me my heart back, battered and torn... you gave me my heart and you tore out my world.

There was a fire growing there.

There was a flower in your hair.

There was a glow that I thought was from me...

I loved you, I love you, I'll love you...

but you forgot me.

The letters were read, five times a week, they were crumpled and torn but meant so much to me.

Thoughts of your lips, your smile and laugh brought me back from despair, I put it into my past.

I was naive, young and blind. It was just a few notes and a few lucky times.

I wanted to show you the world through my eyes...

but I, I, I 

I can no longer see.

I would walk back anyway, but you gave me defeat. 

you stripped back my walls and looked into my soul... 

It's not meant to be.

It's just you and me.

It's only a fling,

and I'm letting you go.

This was supposed to be

A love song about you and me

And now I can plainly see

That it's over, and it's not you, it's

This was supposed to be

A long romantic history

And it's out for the world to see

that it's not you,and it's

This 

me. 

There was a fire growing there.

There was a flower in your hair.

There was a glow in your eyes, in your body and mind

You said I love you 

I said I love you 

We said we loved each other, but now it's plain to see...

That you forgot about me.