Come near, you nations, and listen;
pay attention, you peoples!
Let the earth hear, and all that is in it,
the world, and all that comes out of it!
The Lord is angry with all nations;
his wrath is on all their armies.
He will totally destroy them,
he will give them over to slaughter.
Their slain will be thrown out,
their dead bodies will stink;
the mountains will be soaked with their blood.
All the stars in the sky will be dissolved
and the heavens rolled up like a scroll;
all the starry host will fall
like withered leaves from the vine,
like shriveled figs from the fig tree.
My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens;
see, it descends in judgment on Edom,
the people I have totally destroyed.
The sword of the Lord is bathed in blood,
it is covered with fat—
the blood of lambs and goats,
fat from the kidneys of rams.
For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah
and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
And the wild oxen will fall with them,
the bull calves and the great bulls.
Their land will be drenched with blood,
and the dust will be soaked with fat.
For the Lord has a day of vengeance,
a year of retribution, to uphold Zion’s cause.
Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch,
her dust into burning sulfur;
her land will become blazing pitch!
It will not be quenched night or day;
its smoke will rise forever.
From generation to generation it will lie desolate;
no one will ever pass through it again.
The desert owl and screech owl will possess it;
the great owl and the raven will nest there.
God will stretch out over Edom
the measuring line of chaos
and the plumb line of desolation.
Her nobles will have nothing there to be called a kingdom,
all her princes will vanish away.
Thorns will overrun her citadels,
nettles and brambles her strongholds.
She will become a haunt for jackals,
a home for owls.
Desert creatures will meet with hyenas,
and wild goats will bleat to each other;
there the night creatures will also lie down
and find for themselves places of rest.
The owl will nest there and lay eggs,
she will hatch them, and care for her young
under the shadow of her wings;
there also the falcons will gather,
each with its mate.
Look in the scroll of the Lord and read:
None of these will be missing,
not one will lack her mate.
For it is his mouth that has given the order,
and his Spirit will gather them together.
He allots their portions;
his hand distributes them by measure.
They will possess it forever
and dwell there from generation to generation. (NIV)
^^^^This is quite funny, yet still the subject matter is mind blowing!
Many people probably mistake all this talk of Neurons, etc as evidence of real understanding.
It’s supposed to make Science ‘Poetic’ and profound yet is really a song of ignorance, myth and superstition.
“Our Reptile Brain”.
“It evolved from the inside out”
Quite pathetic.
This is a Materialist Hymn.
Why would anyone believe this nonsense?
The reality is Science cannot fathom how our Conscious Minds, our Self awareness, and freewill are related to our Grey matter.
They must wax lyrical about ‘Collage explosions’… I assume on the ‘Entertainment systems’ in our heads!
The closest these guys get to the Truth is when they call our Brains.. ‘an enchanted room’.
’20 million volumes of information… A very Big place in a very small space’
The confession… “It is the most mysterious part of our Body”.
The biggest questions of Consciousness are well beyond reach, and as long as modern science remains dominated by Monist Materialism they will never be able to understand the Mind/ Brain paradox because they have willfully shut their minds to non-physical spiritual realities.
I laugh at the ‘all to common’ claims these days that mankind has mastered how the brain works, and Technology … that scientists will within the next 20 years have invented ‘Conscious computers’ which will be capable of thinking ‘human’ thoughts, and ‘feeling’ human emotions.
It is mind boggling that materialists can be so Absurd as to be contemplating ‘ethical issues’ of granting Robots ‘rights’!!!
They have traveled so far into materialist fantasy that they have forgotten the reality that *’Robot’ and ‘Morality’* are Oxymorons!
Morality only being possible for Free willed beings which have a choice, and whom exist in a universe governed by Objective Moral laws.
All these necessities are absolutely alien to Materialist cosmology.
I have said many times before that mankind may one day make an imitation mechanical bird which may be able to fly and sing, and that a person may have trouble identifying it as being a fake… none the less that Machine will never be a real bird.
Likewise with a Humanoid Robot.
They may be clever enough to program a machine with human mannerisms, so that when we interact with it we can believe we are dealing with a living, thinking…even emotional and caring *Person*, but in reality that is all just a gigantic Deception… The Robot will not be alive… will not be conscious, will not be moral, will not care… etc etc…
It is staggering to know that these fundamental truths are completely ignored by materialist thinkers.
What is worse to contemplate is just what materialists believe our life and human consciousness is!
Death, the Materialist must believe is nothing more that ‘pulling the plug on your computer’!
And *you* literally ‘vanish’.
Materialism is one of the most powerful Opiates of them all!
It’s stupefying!
Why do they choose to think this way?
Simply because they desire to subject the whole universe …neatly into their own puny… small minded Naturalistic Rationale.
They allow themselves to be dominated by their own primitive theories.
It makes them feel good.
They refuse to be Objective and admit that there are plenty of things in reality which don’t fit at all well with their materialism.
The moment they admit this to themselves, their entire ‘religion’ falls apart… and that is what materialism is… a falce religion.
The moment a person awakens to the idea that there are greater realities than mere Matter and energy is the day that their subjective scales fall from their eyes and they appreciate spiritual truths, Free will, Consciousness, Love, …Good and evil, etc are not properties of matter… nor ever could be… and they are then in a much better position to appreciate the Amazing truth of the Bible.
You can spread the flu to people, including your family/whanau and friends, who are at most risk of complications
While general health affects the severity of an infection, the influenza virus is contagious and anyone can become infected.
Influenza is more than just a ‘bad cold’. Although some of the symptoms are the same, influenza is usually much more severe. Symptoms of influenza include a cough, headache, fever or chills, body aches and pains, fatigue and generally feeling miserable
Influenza, commonly called the flu, can be a serious illness that is sometimes fatal.
Even if you do not end up in hospital, influenza can keep you in bed for a week or more, preventing you from doing work, sport or just about anything that requires leaving the house.
The flu spreads from person to person. The influenza virus is transferred in droplets of moisture expelled through breathing, coughing and sneezing. The virus is spread when a person touches any droplets which contain the influenza virus and then touch their mouth, nose or eyes before washing their hands.
Influenza can infect up to 1 in 5 of us every year.
Influenza can affect anyone, no matter how fit, active and healthy they may be. Although people with underlying health conditions are most at risk from influenza associated complications, previously healthy people can still become seriously ill an even die.
Approximately 400 deaths each year in New Zealand are related to influenza infection.
We cannot predict from year to year how severe the influenza season may be. The flu virus can change yearly and new strains can emerge to which people are not immune.
To maintain the most effective protection against influenza, annual immunisation is required.
protection lessens over time
each year influenza can be caused by different strains of influenza viruses that are not represented in the previous year’s vaccine
It takes around two weeks to develop immunity once vaccinated. Ideally, immunisation should be carried out before the main influenza activity in May to September. People can be immunised at any time during the influenza season, but the vaccine is only free for those in the high-risk groups until the end of July.
Seasonal influenza vaccinations are recognised as being the single most effective way of reducing the impact of seasonal influenza – especially for those most at risk of complications.
Stop the spread of the flu
If you are unwell, stay at home until you are better.
Follow basic hygiene practices:
Wash your hands regularly for at least 20 seconds and dry them for 20 seconds – or use an alcohol-based hand rub
Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze – then put the tissue in a lined bin
Cough or sneeze in to your elbow if a tissue is not readily available
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth
Don’t share drinks
Avoid crowded places
Don’t let the flu knock you. Get immunised. Protect yourself. Protect your family. Protect your community.
Immunisation may be FREE for you. Ask your doctor or nurse today.
This season’s ‘flu’ could be worse because of the new influenza virus commonly known as Swine Flu.
This is the very latest meme from an Evolutionist friend on Facebook.
It seems to me that both Dawkins and his interlocutor miss the point entirely.
Yes, DNA and fossils are evidence for the theory of evolution! But …
According to Creationism
(1) All living things are DNA-based. We’re carbon-based life-forms. One theoretical reason for this is that we’re all creatures of the same Creator. One practical reason for this is that predators need nutritious prey. Silicon-based prey, say, would be indigestible to a carbon-based predator.
(2) When living things die, their remains (or the remains of the thing that ate them and then later died) end up in the ground, to be dug up millennia later by archaeologists.
So, there is an astonishing amount of evidence for Creationism. You can see it in the DNA and fossils that we found which are in the museums right now …
In one sense, DNA and fossils are evidence for both Evolutionism and Creationism. In another sense, DNA and fossils are evidence for neither, since their mere existence does not help us to determine which is the correct explanation for life on Earth as we know it.
What Dawkins interlocutor seeks is that which Dawkins fails to show, viz., evidence that militates in favour of Evolutionism over Creationism.
Animals have rights. Yes, even feral conservatives like John Banks.
This PR may seem like one out of left field to some, but John Banks has a long history of campaigning for animal rights and supporting animal welfare legislation. It may seem that he and (former) Green MP Sue Kedgley make strange bedfellows, but a SAFE media release in (pre-election) October last year had this to say.
Greens Lead the Way against Colony Cages
If the nation’s three million caged hens could vote, the Greens and Act’s John Banks would be ruling the roost come this year’s election, says leading animal advocacy organisation SAFE.
Outgoing animal welfare spokesperson and Green MP Sue Kedgley, announced yesterday that her party will pledge against cruel colony cage systems and Act Party candidate, John Banks, also says he will pledge his personal support to help caged hens.
…
I say (and I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular), good on them both. Many libertarians are conflicted about animal welfare legislation. They think such legislation is unprincipled, while at the same time they abhor animal cruelty. I find their arguments, that the way to prevent animal cruelty is through social rather than legal sanctions, feeble at best and unconscionable at worst.
My defence of my seemingly unlibertarian views on the matter of animal welfare legislation is this. Animal welfare legislation is not a moral issue. It is a metaphysical issue.
(Almost) all libertarians I know subscribe to the view(s) that
human beings are individually possessed of certain inalienable rights, which are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of … happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers – and only such powers – from the consent of the governed; that all laws legislated by governments must be for the purpose of securing these rights; that no laws legislated by government may violate these rights …
If you believe, as I do, that non-human animals also possess some (limited) rights, then it is within the proper scope of government to secure those rights. Animal welfare legislation is not necessarily unlibertarian. Whether it is or not depends on whether or not non-human animals possess rights. And that is a metaphysical question, not a moral one.
Accounts of unusual sexual activities among penguins, observed a century ago by a member of Captain Scott’s polar team, are finally being made public.
Details, including “sexual coercion”, recorded by George Murray Levick were considered so shocking that they were removed from official accounts.
However, scientists now understand the biological reasons behind the acts that Dr Levick considered “depraved”.
The Natural History Museum has published his unedited papers.
Mr Levick, an avid biologist, was the medical officer on Captain Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910. He was a pioneer in the study of penguins and was the first person to stay for an entire breeding season with a colony on Cape Adare.
He recorded many details of the lives of adelie penguins, but some of their activities were just too much for the Edwardian sensibilities of the good doctor.
He was shocked by what he described as the “depraved” sexual acts of “hooligan” males who were mating with dead females. So distressed was he that he recorded the “perverted” activities in Greek in his notebook.
Graphic account
On his return to Britain, Mr Levick attempted to publish a paper entitled “the natural history of the adelie penguin”, but according to Douglas Russell, curator of eggs and nests at the Natural History Museum, it was too much for the times.
“He submitted this extraordinary and graphic account of sexual behaviour of the adelie penguins, which the academic world of the post-Edwardian era found a little too difficult to publish,” Mr Russell said.
The sexual behaviour section was not included in the official paper, but the then keeper of zoology at the museum, Sidney Harmer, decided that 100 copies of the graphic account should be circulated to a select group of scientists.
Mr Russell said they simply did not have the scientific knowledge at that time to explain Mr Levick’s accounts of what he termed necrophilia.
“What is happening there is not in any way analogous to necrophilia in the human context,” Mr Russell said. “It is the males seeing the positioning that is causing them to have a sexual reaction.
“They are not distinguishing between live females who are awaiting congress in the colony, and dead penguins from the previous year which just happen to be in the same position.”
Sexual coercion
Only two of the original 100 copies of Mr Levick’s account survive. Mr Russell and colleagues have now published a re-interpretation of Mr Levick’s findings in the journal Polar Record.
Mr Russell described how he had discovered one of the copies by accident.
“I just happened to be going through the file on George Murray Levick when I shifted some papers and found underneath them this extraordinary paper which was headed ‘the sexual habits of the adelie penguin, not for publication’ in large black type.
“It’s just full of accounts of sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex, and finishes with an account of what he considers homosexual behaviour, and it was fascinating.”
The report and Mr Levick’s handwritten notes are now on display at the Natural History Museum for the first time. Mr Russell believes they show a man who struggled to understand penguins as they really are.
“He’s just completely shocked. He, to a certain extent, falls into the same trap as an awful lot of people in seeing penguins as bipedal birds and seeing them as little people. They’re not. They are birds and should be interpreted as such.”
There’s a lot of food for thought in this report.
The current curator of eggs and nests at the Natural History Museum, Douglas Russell, tells us that the then keeper of zoology at the same museum, Sidney Harmer, decided that George Murray Levick’s paper, Sexual Habits of the Adelie Penguin, “was too much for the times.” Apparently, though, Russell thinks it’s still too much for the times. He seems to think it necessary to remark that when live penguins fuck dead penguins it’s not actually penguin necrophilia. “What is happening there is not in any way analogous to necrophilia in the human context,” Mr Russell said.
Not analogous? Not in any way? Really? Frankly, I can’t see how penguins having sex with dead penguins is in any way disanalogous to humans having sex with dead humans. Sick penguins, sick humans.
Russell goes on to describe Levick as “a man who struggled to understand penguins as they really are.” He says that Levick, “to a certain extent, falls into the same trap as an awful lot of people in seeing penguins as bipedal birds and seeing them as little people. They’re not.”
They’re not? What about Happy Feet?! Why on earth shouldn’t we anthropomorphise penguins? We anthropomorphise people, don’t we?! Times change. Nowadays, being likened to a penguin is more offensive than a graphic account of necrophilia. What’s the world coming to?
Russell gives his alternative account of the live penguins’ non-necrophilic sexual relations with dead penguins. “It is the males seeing the positioning that is causing them to have a sexual reaction. They are not distinguishing between live females who are awaiting congress in the colony, and dead penguins from the previous year which just happen to be in the same position.” Russell, you see, claims to have “the scientific knowledge” that Levick, a century earlier, lacked.
But does he? How does Russell know that the penguins “are not distinguishing” between live and dead penguins? I’d say the penguins are well aware, but do it for the lulz. Perhaps Levick was right all along. Copulations with dead female penguins are the depraved sexual acts of hooligan males. Doubtless, the penguins involved don’t see it that way.
“It is the males seeing the positioning that is causing them to have a sexual reaction,” says Russell. Well, doesn’t “the positioning” of a human female also cause human males to have a sexual reaction? Of course it does! The positioning of a human female—is there a more apt description of the sex industry than that?
For whatever reason, humans are more like other members of the animal kingdom than humans care to admit. Darwin’s theory of evolution explains and predicts these similarities. Creationists must acknowledge that when God made the creature called man, he based his handiwork on an intelligent design blueprint he’d used previously and successfully throughout the animal kingdom.
What do you name a necrophilic penguin? Cold Feet.
