Here’s a 4:36 minute video and information you need. Then just go HERE to send letters to your state reps through the Secular Coalition For America. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Texas State Board of Education’s moves to impose educational standards into its textbooks intended to indoctrinate Texas public school students with a telling of U.S. history that is based in extremist religious ideology.

You’ve probably also heard about some of the more jaw-dropping proposed changes to the curriculum, such as booting Thomas Jefferson off of a list of influential thinkers in place of explicitly religious figures, and the totally fabricated assertion that our system of government is based specifically on the laws of Moses. This comes from the same group of theocrats who famously fought to undermine evolution in science classes and delete from science textbooks the scientific consensus on the age of the universe because they conflict with the Bible.

As terrible as this religious imposition is for Texas students, all Americans have reason to fear. Due to the size of the Texas textbook market (and because other highly populated states do not use statewide textbook contracts in the say way), the backward dictates of its theocratic school board effect textbooks used by public school students all across the country.

Someone in Congress is finally standing up to this abuse of power and unconstitutional overreach by the religious extremists on the Texas State Board of Education. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (T-DX) recently introduced a resolution (H. Res. 1593) that supports fact-based curricula in public schools without meddling by those with an avowed religious agenda. Students in Texas and all across America need to know that Congress wants them to have an education based on facts and science, not myth and religious bias.

TAKE ACTION NOW: Watch the video message above from Secular Coalition for America Executive Director Sean Faircloth supporting Rep. Johnson’s resolution, and then tell your member of Congress to become a co-sponsor.

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In the first episode, they talk to Monica Reinagel who is pretty neat in her own right. She’s a nutrition expert and through her short podcast and blog she helps weed through the hype and nonsense of nutrition. As a person who wonders what is fact and what is bullshit when it comes to food, diet and the like, it’s very cool to find a resource for good information.

Here are her sites:

www.nutritiondata.com: her blog is on here along with a wealth of information.

http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/: Her podcasts are on here. If you go to listen or read and episode, you can then find the link to iTunes to subscribe and get them all. They are each about 5 minutes long.

Do you have any great resources for good nutrition and diet that are based in science and research? Please feel free to share!

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Do you have the COURAGE to Read this whole E-Mail?????

The TRUTH about UNTIMELY DEATHS!

John Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during an interview with an American Magazine, he said:
“Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain. Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple. Today we are
more famous than Him” (1966).
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.

Is god lazy? Lennon said he was bigger than Jesus in 1966. Mark Chapman shot him in 1980.
Fourteen years later! Was god too busy all those years assassinating other sinners? Is he a procrastinator?
“Oh yeah, that one blasphemous beatle. I really should smite him.”
The next day:
“Crap! I forgot! again!”

And so on, for the next fourteen years!

MARILYN MONROE:
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. He is a preacher and Evangelist and the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her.
After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said: “I don’t need your Jesus”
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment.

Of course, the fact that Marilyn Monroe was Jewish is inconsequential!

Now consider:

Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, was the leader of the Cambodian communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge
During his time in power, Pol Pot imposed a version of agrarian collectivization, forcing city dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects, toward a goal of “restarting civilization” in a “Year Zero”.
The combined effects of slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people, approximately 21% of the Cambodian population.

Also, he was not a Christian. Also, he lived to be 70.

Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, was an English occultist, writer, mountaineer, poet, playwright, yogi, and possible spy He was an influential member of occult organizations, including the Golden Dawn, the A∴A∴, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and is known today for his magical writings, especially The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelma. He gained notoriety during his lifetime, and was denounced in the popular press of the day as “The wickedest man in the world.”

And yet lived to be 72.

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, was a French aristocrat and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle. His works include novels, short stories, plays, and political tracts; in his lifetime some were published under his own name, while others appeared anonymously and Sade denied being their author. He is best known for his erotic novels, which combined philosophical discourse with pornography, depicting bizarre sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence, criminality, and blasphemy against the Catholic Church. He was a proponent of extreme freedom (or at least licentiousness), unrestrained by morality, religion or law.
The term “sadism” is derived from his name.

Lived to be 74.

Idi Amin Dada, The military dictator and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979.
Amin’s rule was characterised by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption and gross economic mismanagement. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is estimated by international observers and human rights groups to range from 100,000 to 500,000.
A polygamist, Idi Amin married at least six women, three of whom he divorced. He married his first and second wives, Malyamu and Kay, in 1966. The next year, he married Nora and then Nalongo Madina in 1972. On 26 March 1974, he announced on Radio Uganda that he had divorced Malyamu, Nora and Kay.
Kay died on 13 August 1974, Her body was found dismembered.

Lived to the ripe old age of 78.

Finally, the REAL TRUTH comes out!

UNTIMELY DEATHS?

Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes–one child every five seconds.
In the time it takes you to read one E-mail full of “little lies for Jesus” at least 200 people will have died of starvation.
Over 4 million will die this year.

“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 (Greek philosopher, BC 341-270)

Use Your Brains.

Charles already got an angry response and replied:

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:35 PM, (unnamed Christian) wrote:

Man is where evil dwells not God. Don’t blame MAN’S shortcomings, cruelty, greed, racism, etc,,, on God!. Man has a choice….all of us have a choice. What we do with that choice is up to us. Our hand is not being forced by any being including God….use you brains!!!!!!!!!!

Charles’ reply:

An intelligent man would never blame god for any of those things, because he understands that god is but a creation of man.
Don’t devalue all humanity by blaming all the world’s injustice on them. You do not only the world, but yourself a disservice.
It is ludicrous to claim that the people who died in the earthquake in Haiti choose that to happen. As ridiculous as claiming that children choose to die of starvation.
Saying that “all of us have a choice” is the biggest “blame the victim” pile of steaming… well you get the idea, that religion ever propagated.

If you believe in god then you already believe in a place god created that is without suffering and yet all the people there still have free will, it is called heaven.
There is no reason an all powerful god couldn’t have made earth the same way. Unless he is just a dick?

But again, that would be silly to blame the world’s problems on an imaginary being. As silly as blaming people for things that they have no control over.

Things just happen, good and bad. It is a result of living on an imperfect natural world we have by chance evolved to live on.

Maybe someday you can see reality without the “Jesus glasses”. Good luck with that.

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American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 by Crystal Eastman, Roger Baldwin and Walter Nelles. It was founded to assist in defending the rights of citizens as granted by the United States Constitution. At the time, the three biggest concerns were freedom of speech (for anti-war protesters), civil rights for blacks (and other minority races), and equal rights for women. On their site, the ACLU proclaims themselves as a “guardian of liberty, working [...] to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.”

This is the group who has time-and-time again gone to bat for the ‘little guy’ to insure their Constitutional rights as a citizen and a human are upheld. The Christian’s very doctrine urges them to help the weak, the sick, the poor, the unfortunate, the ‘little guy’. So why do so many Christians harbor such vitriol and hate towards the ACLU?

Personally, I think it boils down to two things:

1. Christian think they are under attack; so they look for that attacker in every action.
2. It is a common human reaction to fear the unknown; and Christians fail to understand, even refuse to understand what the ACLU represents.

As for the attacks, Christians have read stories and prophesies in the bible about Christians being persecuted; and so they look for persecution and attack everywhere. They seek to self-fulfill prophesy; and they see a potential persecutor in anyone who does not have the same life philosophies as they do. Their need to see these prophesies fulfilled goes so far that they even see persecution from other branches of Christianity. I see no universal way to combat this, especially on a large scale; so I simply look for those opportunities to help an individual see the light.

Ignorance and lack of knowledge can by combated though. I think the root of this ignorance lies in lack of understand of the principle of Separation of Church and state. So many Christians strive to tear down that wall of separation, without a clue to how that wall protects them and their ability to practice their flavor of Christianity as they see fit.

The ACLU has done some great work defending civil liberties and the rights we are given by our Constitution; but all Christians seem to notice today is their involvement with lawsuits that relate to religion (and of that they are really only noticing one side). And without knowing an ounce of the facts, jump to the assumption that the lawsuits are an attack against Christians. Never once stopping to realize that in many of these cases the ACLU is actually defending the ‘little guy’ from Christianity.

Even when the ACLU is defending the ‘little guy’ from Christians, the ACLU is not against Christianity. The majority of their staff and membership are Christians; and they have repeatedly defended Christians when the rights of those Christians were not being upheld. One of the most recent examples, pentecostal minister Howard Thompson Jr. used to preach during worship services at the New Jersey State Prison, until a few years ago when prison officials stopped him. Multiple religious and Christian defense groups stood by and did nothing; it was the ACLU who went to bat for Mr. Thompson’s rights, and it was the ACLU who won the case for him.

This isn’t the only case that the ACLU has gone to bat for a Christian; here is a list of some of the more prominent cases where the ACLU defended the right of a Christian to speak as a Christian or to practice Christianity. Yet few Christians seem to realize this; most Christians have bought into the conservative media’s constant claim that the ACLU is out to bring down Christianity.

The ACLU fights for INDIVIDUAL free exercise of religion (just as the Constitution specifies). The ACLU also fights against GOVERNMENT endorsement, sponsorship, or establishment of religion (again just as the Constitution specifies).

Now to the heart of what brought on this rant. Someone sent me this email not long ago (warning: obnoxious chain email incoming):

Pass this on to your church, co-workers, family, and friends. What do you have to lose but 44 cents, what do you have to gain? More than you will ever know!

What a clever idea!

Yes, Christmas cards! This is coming early so that you can get ready to include an important address to your list.

Want to have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD this year.

As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice, CHRISTIAN card to brighten up their dark, sad, little world.

Make sure it says “Merry Christmas” on it.

Here’s the address, just don’t be rude or crude (it’s not the Christian way, you know):
ACLU
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004

Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn’t know if any were regular mail containing contributions. So spend 44 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a ” Holiday Tree”! It’s always been called a CHRISTMAS TREE!

Please pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU! They really DESERVE us!!

For those of you who aren’t aware of them, the ACLU, (the American Civil Liberties Union) is the one suing the U.S. Government to take God, Christmas or anything Christian away from us. They represent the atheists and others in this war.

Help put Christ back in Christmas!

I’ve already addressed most of the subtle hate and lies from this email; so I’ll let the Executive Director of the ACLU of Texas respond:

And just in case you need further fodder to throw at this spiteful and inaccurate email, Snopes has an article on it. In it they point out that some businesses replacing “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings” was NOT done under litigation or threat from the ACLU; but instead did so (proactively) to appeal to a broader customer base. They also point out the logically laughable idea of overwhelming the ACLU office with Christmas cards.

If you receive, or previously received the above letter, I encourage you to reply with a link to the above video. Whichever holiday you and yours celebrate, I wish you well and hope its enjoyable.

Sources: here, here, here, here, here,here, here, and here.

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Well I am new to religion totally as neither of my parents knew what to believe so they taught me nothing. I have so many questions and not nearly enough hours to google! lol jk

If you dont believe in a higher being such as God like the Christians what do you believe? (***Now please dont think I am questioning your beliefs I simply need a better understanding of what you hold to be true in this world.***) Do you believe that things happen simply because we choose that is how it should or is there a force behind events? I have gathered you believe in evolution but how were monkeys first placed on earth? And then how was earth created? I believe it is truely unknown to begin with but do you have a theory?

My reply:

First, question everything. Don’t take my word for it. Research everything yourself.

I have a couple of questions for you.

Your parents taught you nothing about religion? So you picked up bits and pieces as you grew up from other people? That’s interesting. Are they atheists then? Or do they just never talk about religion? Perhaps it just doesn’t seem like an issue to them? I am curious if they’ve said anything to you at all. What kind of school did you go to? Did you go to public, private or home school? In which state? And how old are you?

Raising a child without teaching them anything is not what I’d consider ideal. My idea of a great foundation for a child is to teach her how to think critically, to think for herself. I recommend teaching a child about all religions from around the world and throughout human history, then asking questions to help the child form her own understanding about it. I would also share my personal opinion on the subject. But most people don’t raise their kids to think for themselves.

It sounds like you’re searching for something to believe in, but I would ask why you need to believe in anything that isn’t real?

I will speak for myself only, as I’m sure other atheists have come to their lack of belief in different ways.

I grew up as a christian. I went to church and believed jesus died for my sins. I was terrified of burning in hell and got baptized 3 times in 3 different churches to try to make sure I’d get into heaven and not burn for all eternity after I died. Looking back I think it was a horrible burden as a child, to be so afraid of a god that was supposed to be loving. It made no sense.

I studied the three major religions (judaism, christianity and islam) in my 20′s and realized after several years that is was all created by man. It hit me about 10 years ago that I no longer believed in gods of any sort and I was actually an atheist. A more detailed history of my deconversion can be found here.

Your question is incorrect. You asked if I no longer believe in a god (or any gods for that matter) then what do I believe in. The answer is I go out of my way to avoid beliefs as a general rule. You see, I don’t want to believe, I want to know (Carl Sagan said that). I want evidence and reality. I prefer facts to fantasy or wishful thinking. I have no need of beliefs that are not based in reality.

What do I hold to be true in this world? That’s a different question. I guess the answer to that is what has been observed in our brief human history. I value the accomplishments of humans, the amazing wonders of nature in all its forms, the cosmos in its vast scale. I look at history and see how far humans have come. I see how we’ve evolved our culture and societies, how we’ve learned great, amazing technologies and thought deep, profound concepts that have advanced us tremendously in a relatively short period of time. These are all real things that we can look at and examine and understand to the best of our abilities. Something else I hold true is that I am fully responsible for my own actions, as well as my inactions. I can’t pawn that off on some fantasy being. Actions and inactions have consequences.

Do I believe things happen simply because we choose that is how it should be or is there a force behind events? No. Neither of those has any basis in reality. The first is wishful thinking and the power of suggestion. The second is looking for a supernatural god to explain things you don’t understand. Neither is real.

Something happens because of cause and effect. I hit a key on my keyboard and a letter pops up on my monitor. A thousand things happened to make it show up. Just thinking and wishing for the words to appear on the screen does nothing. Your thoughts do not leave your head and transform the universe. This is a common false belief in the new age worldview. It is completely bogus nonsense without any basis in fact. If you have a thought and then you take that thought and turn it into some kind of action, that’s when things start happening.

In all of science there is zero evidence of anything supernatural in the universe. Everything that has been explained is natural. While we don’t have all the answers (and probably never will) about the beginning of the universe as we know it, or how it will end, if it will, and other questions, we know an awful lot now and it’s all completely natural. There is no evidence of any sort of god needed to make it all work as it does. What we call the laws of nature work just fine without any kind of divine force.

So I guess what I trust is cause and effect, physics, and human interaction with the material world. No need for a god or a creator. It all works just fine on its own.

Yes, I accept evolution as a fact, as most scientists do. Your next statement is also quite wrong. Monkeys were never placed on earth. This would say that some divine being put monkeys on the planet like a child placing dolls in a toy house. Did you learn the prevailing theories of how the earth was formed through natural cosmic events 4.6 billion years ago (or thereabouts) in school?

To go back in time, and again this is my rough explanation (you really need to read up on the specifics as I am not a cosmologist or a geologist and I’m doing this from memory) about 14 billion years ago (roughly) there was the Big Bang. All of matter expanded from a singular source (called a singularity) outwards, and even now it continues to expand. Swirling gases condensed to form stars and crashed together and cooled to form planets. I guess you could say, after the Big Bang, the rest of the formation of stars and planets has been the effect of that event.
I recommend Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson as a great astrophysicist. He’s easy to understand and very interesting. Here’s a 5 minute video you might like.

Also, PBS has a timeline of the universe here.

These are rough and simple explanations of prevailing theories as I know them. As I’ve mentioned, no one knows how exactly the Big Bang happened, what the universe was before the Big Bang, or how exactly life on earth first formed. The thing about science is we never stop asking questions. Usually asking a question brings up a dozen more that are unanswered, but it’s all so exciting and thrilling to observe the universe in all its intricate and natural majesty, and to try to understand it. And again, there is no evidence of any sort of god or supernatural being. Everything so far discovered and understood is all natural.

While no one knows exactly how life first started on earth billions of years ago, we are coming up with interesting ideas for how amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) were first able to form in the primordial soup that was on the planet. It was a very different environment, and little one-celled organisms most likely formed bio-films on the ocean floor and probably in volcanic steam vents. (Again, this is my understanding. I am getting this from memory, not a science text, but I recommend you study it yourself so that you know a bit about it straight from different scientists)

Through natural selection and adaptation, the little bacteria evolved over billions of years, branching off, adapting to different environments and through different environmental pressures. We are not evolved from monkeys. But we share a common ancestor from long ago. In fact, I should make it clear, we now know that all of life is connected genetically. You have billions of bacteria living on you right now, and you share a common ancestor with that bacteria, your pet cat, the fish you ate for dinner, and the whales that live in the ocean. I recommend watching a great video and playing with an interactive tree of life here. Here is a link to the video with David Attenborough. It’s 6 and a half minutes long, basically just a rough overview but it will get you started. Here is another great tree of life video (10 minutes).

I hope that makes sense. Please consider looking into learning a basic understanding of biology and maybe some other science. It will help you understand so much more about the world. Get some good books on evolutionary biology, cosmology and astronomy. You might find it amazing and interesting. Look up the show Cosmos and Carl Sagan. He was so awesome at explaining the universe.

Look up David Attenborough. He’s a naturalist and explains natural history quite well. Try a museum of natural history. You could check out the NY Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian in D.C., and look to your local library in the science section. Look for scientists who are peer reviewed and stick to subjects they are experts in. Follow up with other sources to verify what you read. Never take anything at face value.

I have to ask, why do you feel you have a need for a god and a religion? You were lucky not to be brainwashed into believing something false to control you. Why do you feel the need to grasp onto one now? Religion is about controlling how people think, feel and live through fear, guilt and promise of a reward after death, which can never be tested or proven.

Oh, and because it is often a reason people think they need religion, I will say that being a good person is its own reward and there is ample evidence that morals are evolutionary, not directed by a supreme being who likes the smell of burning goat-flesh. Millions of atheists are moral and happy without such delusional beliefs based on iron age goat-herders.

I hope I answered your questions. I hope you are now asking many more and that those questions will become a lifelong quest for information and knowledge about the world and the universe, and our humble place within it.

~

If you would like to add to what I have said, I would love links to great videos, sites or books that might be helpful in explaining the Tree of Life, evolution and the Big Bang, etc. Please don’t resort to ad hominem attacks. We all start somewhere. Let’s give Anne the benefit of the doubt and encourage her to ask questions and seek answers.

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Of course the Mayans themselves didn’t survive till 2012, so maybe they aren’t the best group to ask about such things.

Recently a friend of mine mentioned the 2012 phenomenon as if it were true. Unfortunately I didn’t have the hard facts at my disposal so I told him it’s not going to happen and left it at that. But I thought I’d look up some more information so when your mother starts talking about the end of the world, you will have some facts to back you up.

Lucky for me, NASA and Wikipedia have pages to explain where the concept came from and what scientific basis there is for it (none, thank you very much).

Some people seem to love the idea of predicting cataclysmic events and the destruction of the world. Of course, since we’re still here, so far they have been wrong every time. That’s something in itself to consider.

NASA explains it all very succinctly in FAQ form:

Q: Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
A: Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 — hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.

Q: Could a phenomena occur where planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.

Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?
A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.

Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of pending doomsday?
A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.

Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?
A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

Addition information concerning 2012 is available on the Web, at:

• NASA Astrobiology Institute: “Nibiru and Doomsday 2012“
• Bad Astronomy: “The Planet X Saga: The Scientific Arguments in a Nutshell”
• Sky and Telescope Magazine: “2012: The Great Scare“

Also see Wikipedia or more. It seems well referenced. Even Science Daily mentions the cyclical nature of the Mayan Calendar.

December 21, 2012 is a Friday. I propose a huge “Another Unfounded Prediction Has Failed” Party for Saturday December 22, 2012. How nice that we will also be able to celebrate the Winter Solstice as well!

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Anyway, it’s Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ann Druyan and Victor Stenger. Moderated by D.J. Grothe (of Point of Inquiry), it took place at the New York Academy of Sciences at a Center for Inquiry conference titled “Secular Society and its Enemies.”

The panel discusses atheism versus science, science education, the nature of science, various strategies for advancing society in society, threats to science education including religion and popular culture, racism and sexism in science, and many other topics. It’s about an hour long and quite interesting:

I know this may seem biased, but Neil deGrasse Tyson is the MAN. His passion and clarity of expression are awesome. My interests lie more in the microscopic while his lie in the cosmos, but it doesn’t matter. He still inspires me.

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