Sunday, February 10, 2008

Are Fundamentalists and Evangelicals Permanently in the Dark?


Would Noah Have Appreciated a General Electric Stove?


Electricity on Noah's Ark? Hell, the Bible doesn't even mention a wood-burning stove. Forty days (or, in some interpretations, 140 days) is a long time to go without any form of cooked food. Did the inhabitants of the Ark have disentary as a result? Whoa! Too much non-information here! Anyway, Noah, as a good God-fearing, science-hating man would not have approved of advanced technology such as electricity, so I guess Noah's family had to make do with a "natural" diet.


Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me -- the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love -- He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us -- nature did it all -- not the gods of the religions.


That was Thomas Edison, inventor of the first incandescent light, the world's first phonograph and a man who held the astounding sum of 1093 patents. In theological terms, Edison was NOT an atheist but a deist who strongly agreed with another Thomas - Paine.

Some fudamentalists point to the fact that Thomas Edison was home-schooled by his mother. They fail to mention that the textbook she used was RG. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and that later on, Edison was educated at the famously scientific Cooper Union in New York. In its 162 years, this school has had almost nothing to do with religion.

Over his desk, Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous quote: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." That, of course, includes the Creation Museum in Kentucky which states: "Don't Think - Believe."

Happy birthday, Tom. You would have been 161 years-old today. Would that you could have lived so long for us. But it would have been bad for you- I don't think you'd like today's anti-science movement.

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