Okay, Mike, so it's all bullshit....

....what have you got for us instead?

Wheeeelll....

....let's start with science.

Science isn't just guys in white coats with test tubes, like in some corny old industrial film from the 1950's.
This separate thing in a box away from normal living.

At its core, it's the study of things that are real.

If magic were real, its study would be science as well.
This makes "supernatural", a meaningless word.
You'd be amazed how many people I've run into that either can't, or stubbornly refuse to wrap their heads around that premise.
It can be frustrating.

Here's a little film on the scientific method that cuts right through the bullshit that I've always enjoyed linking to....

Pretty damned basic huh? It's a bullshit filtering mechanism, it even keeps the scientist from bullshitting himself. And as the film shows in excruciating wiggle-proof detail, it can't be sabotaged by some conspiracy agenda. The theories would break down, and the technologies derived from them wouldn't work. And thus, it would be found out. And we don't just owe our modern civilization to it, but our very lives. Virtually everyone reading this has a parent, or grandparent, or great-grandparent who was saved by vaccinations, or some other form of modern medicine. So, the movement afoot to lash out at, defame, or hamstring science annoys me to put it mildly. And one of the religious attacks on science, is that it's cold, and uninspiring... These people have got to be fucking kidding me... The wonders of nature as revealed by science and technology make Moses's burning bush, or any other Biblical "miracle", look tiny, and insignificant. The Hubble telescope pictures, the microscopic structures of life, the daily illuminating powers of the internet we daily take for granted, I could go on. But vast heaps of National Geographic, and Popular Science have beaten me there. Why, look at life itself. Think of the millions of sperms and egg combinations that could have been born instead of you. And then add that up over all the generations in your family. Then add that up over all the people in the world. How unlikely your birth is. How lucky you are to be alive. That's way more miraculous to me than the paltry things that typically get called "miracles". "To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air into gold...". -Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen. And we wouldn't understand the full nature of sexual production, and the odds involved, without science. Cold and lifeless? Reality as revealed by scientific inquiry has incredible revelatory power, and tells a way more incredible and uplifting story of our origins and place in the universe than any holy book ever written. Real life is better. And acts of real imagination and myth-making absent the taking things literally, complete with "thou shalt nots", are better. Well, you get the idea, but that's what I'm stumping for. Seems odd to me that I'd have to stump for life, love, and western civilization. But, that seems to be where we're at. Yes, I prefer our way of life to that represented by say, the Taliban, or shit, even Pennsylvania Dutch counry, or Salt Lake City Utah. I'm not ashamed to say so. I find it deeply disturbing that I should possibly have to be. Hey, maybe I'm naively utopian, who knows? America was a utopian experiment, and despite some rough patches, it seems to have worked. Let's keep going, says I. Let's see if we can get to starships, let's see if we can get all the way to TARDIS-es. More of that, less of the Taliban crap, y'know? That's the source of my impatience with it all, given that life can be looked at and lived that beautifully, and our goals can be that beautiful, then the bullshit I've ranted about just smears crap all over that to me. All of it, not just religion in the form of creationists fucking with schools, but all the goofy shit in our culture and politics that inch us towards the world in "Idiocracy". I mean, yeah, if you like the things I like, you're on my side, life, love, hope, democracy, the whole shmeal. All I'm adding is you don't need religion in the salad to have those things. I'm tired of hearing how "bleak", atheism is, and how "cold", evolution is for pointing that way, and how you NEED eternity to not fucking shoot yourself. It's an insult to me, it's disservice to yourself. Keep religion if you feel you must, but fer crying out loud, don't war on science. It's really the only hope we have. And hope is what we need, and what I'm also stumping for. As I said in a previous rant, one of religion's disturbing components is the death wish. You see it most feverishly in the Islamic world, but do we need any droplet of what that nuttiness stands for on our shores? Let's live for life, for chrissakes. Not death. Can we manage that much at least?