During his debate with Christopher Hitchens, Al Sharpton couldn't get past the title of Hitchens's book, "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." Hitchens would make a comment about Christianity, Islam, etc., and Sharpton would stop him to interject, "Those are religions. You said 'God' is not great." As if to distinguish between the two was of gravest importance.

What do we know of this "god" thing apart from the descriptions (myriad contradicting descriptions) offered in religious texts? It's elementary to ask for proof of "god," and when none is offered (other than to play with words or call such a thing "necessary") what features does it offer us apart from those we know through the claims of religions?

I'm new here so just to get it out of the way, I'm not an Atheist. I'm a Born Again Christian. My first question to Atheist would be how does your argument get off the ground? ( I mean my words here with repect I might add. Theres no place for cheep shots or sarcasim on this topic. It adds nothing to the debate, only stirs up unwanted bitterness towards eachother. One thing we can both agree on is the importance of the search for truth. God or no God. To take it lightly is to not respect it, and to not respect it is to be unworthy of the discussion. I'm not saying we need to take life too seriously, that we miss out on some of the best parts of it, only there is a time and a place. Furthermore, we are all people of different levels of "faith" and we're all in different places in life.)

Hello My first blog entry, first time ever in any blog.

My name is Rene´ im 29 years old, im from a town called Aalborg In denmark and im still living there.

Okay here we go, how can we expect believers being comfortable as atheist if soceity doesn't allow it? Now thats a hard nut to crack,
I can easily change my opinion about politics and other things, if i have a discussion about my opinions and i run out of arguments and answers, one of two things has happend.
1: I have not thought enough about the subject to have a valid opinion
2: I am simply wrong and my arguments are flawed, i will gladly change my mind and be comfortable with my new opinion.

Good day to you all! I have decided to introduce yet another new feature, in the Community section I will be posting a new "Victim of Religion" story in each new edition highlighting a different case of the atrocities that religious fervor can bring about. These will be stories about individuals, people who may not get much press otherwise.

I would also like to plug a new site that was brought to my attention recently by one of the regulars in the stickam chat room, Atheist Rescources is an awesome site!

I would also like to remind you all about the Content Submission contest being held here on the RRS site. You could win some great prizes for your essays, articles, or other atheist inspired writings. I am also still looking for you de-conversion stories to post in this newsletter, if you wish to share it.

Thanks for reading, if you have any comments or suggestions you can reach me directly HERE. Or on Myspace HERE.
Stay rational,
Jack
and the RRS MI team

Table of Contents

Click HERE to find your local affiliate!

Rational Response Squad News

RRS Michigan News

Science News

Religion

Government

Community

Entertainment

Rooks Intro to History class, Powerpoint presentations now available!

The Powerpoint Presentations for the RRS Academy Intro to Classical and Modern History, presented by Rook, are now available for download for anyone who wishes to do so. Special thanks go to Jason Hoblin on this.

Check it out HERE!

Essay contest

NOTE: DUE TO ERROR IN LINKS AND LOW SUBMISSIONS, THIS CONTEST HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO MARCH 15TH, 2008.

IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION READ EVERYTHING FIRST, CLICK LINKS! COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS SHOULD BE POSTED PUBLICLY IN THIS THREAD FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL PARTICIPANTS! PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THE INFORMATION OF THIS SUBMISSION DRIVE FREELY.

The Rational Response Squad is proud to announce a call to action for content submissisions. We have been blown away by the positive feedback we've received from the freethinking community. Thanks to everyone who has placed a banner, or our player on your website and helped spread the word in some manner. We've received many great written submissions of thoughts and views, but had no place to put them, so we've created a guideline to help you, help us. The categories in which we need submissions are listed below, send us your best material. Your writings will be added to our library of articles, essays, and debunkings. We're hoping to build one of the largest and diverse free libraries of rational thoughts on the internet. Please post everything publicly on our forum so it's there for all RRS members to access who are working on this project. In addition to hosting everything in a free web archive, we may also compile views into a free e-book or a book for sale to generate money for activist projects. Not that you need a reward to share your views with others, but as a thank you we'll be awarding prizes to as many of the top participants as we can. Prizes will be awarded based on effort put in and quality of writing.

We've put the categories in order of need and may alter the order later as submissions come in.
Prizes will be awarded MARCH 15TH, 2008, but you can continue to submit content well after MARCH 15TH, 2008.

Read the whole list of rules, prizes and submission categories HERE!

Back to Table of Contents

The next meeting

The next RRS MI meeting will be held on Thursday, August 30th, topic still to be determined. I would like to get some people together for an outing to the Detroit Science Center for the "Universe Within" exhibit as well. It will be on a Friday, just not sure when yet. Admission is $20. I will keep you posted.

Back to Table of Contents

Evolution Is Driven By Gene Regulation

Science Daily — It is not just what's in your genes, it's how you turn them on that accounts for the difference between species -- at least in yeast -- according to a report by Yale researchers in this week's issue of Science.

The bulk of my family, on both sides, is Catholic. My mother's side is Italian: the people who invented Catholicism to market the tyranny of the state to the Christian rabble. And my father's side being Filipino: people who had Catholicism rammed down their throats by the marauding Spanish who invaded the archipelago some 500 odd years ago. Miraculously, I can count the number of times I've been to church on my hands; and they're all weddings, baptisms and funerals. Almost everyone in my family pays some kind of lip service to their religion. They're just normal people, not fanatics; which means living out the casual hypocrisy of being religious and having a mainstream life. It must be a weird situation.

Good day to you all! I have decided to introduce yet another new feature, in the Community section I will be posting a new "Victim of Religion" story in each new edition highlighting a different case of the atrocities that religious fervor can bring about. These will be stories about individuals, people who may not get much press otherwise.

I would also like to plug a new site that was brought to my attention recently by one of the regulars in the stickam chat room, Atheist Rescources is an awesome site!

I would also like to remind you all about the Content Submission contest being held here on the RRS site. You could win some great prizes for your essays, articles, or other atheist inspired writings. I am also still looking for your de-conversion stories to post in this newsletter, if you wish to share it.

Thanks for reading, if you have any comments or suggestions you can reach me directly HERE. Or on Myspace HERE.
Stay rational,
Jack
and the RRS MI team

Table of Contents

Click HERE to find your local affiliate!

Rational Response Squad News

RRS Michigan News

Science News

Religion

Government

Community

Entertainment

Rooks Intro to History class, Powerpoint presentations now available!

The Powerpoint Presentations for the RRS Academy Intro to Classical and Modern History, presented by Rook, are now available for download for anyone who wishes to do so. Special thanks go to Jason Hoblin on this.

Check it out HERE!

Essay contest

NOTE: DUE TO ERROR IN LINKS AND LOW SUBMISSIONS, THIS CONTEST HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO MARCH 15TH, 2008.

IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION READ EVERYTHING FIRST, CLICK LINKS! COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS SHOULD BE POSTED PUBLICLY IN THIS THREAD FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL PARTICIPANTS! PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THE INFORMATION OF THIS SUBMISSION DRIVE FREELY.

The Rational Response Squad is proud to announce a call to action for content submissisions. We have been blown away by the positive feedback we've received from the freethinking community. Thanks to everyone who has placed a banner, or our player on your website and helped spread the word in some manner. We've received many great written submissions of thoughts and views, but had no place to put them, so we've created a guideline to help you, help us. The categories in which we need submissions are listed below, send us your best material. Your writings will be added to our library of articles, essays, and debunkings. We're hoping to build one of the largest and diverse free libraries of rational thoughts on the internet. Please post everything publicly on our forum so it's there for all RRS members to access who are working on this project. In addition to hosting everything in a free web archive, we may also compile views into a free e-book or a book for sale to generate money for activist projects. Not that you need a reward to share your views with others, but as a thank you we'll be awarding prizes to as many of the top participants as we can. Prizes will be awarded based on effort put in and quality of writing.

We've put the categories in order of need and may alter the order later as submissions come in.
Prizes will be awarded MARCH 15TH, 2008, but you can continue to submit content well after MARCH 15TH, 2008.

Read the whole list of rules, prizes and submission categories HERE!

Back to Table of Contents

A reminder

The next RRS MI meeting will be held on Thursday, August 30th, topic still to be determined. I would like to get some people together for an outing to the Detroit Science Center for the "Universe Within" exhibit as well. It will be on a Friday, just not sure when yet. Admission is $20. I will keep you posted.

Back to Table of Contents

Early Modern Human Skull Includes Surprising Neanderthal Feature

Science Daily — In 1942, a human braincase was found in Romania during phosphate mining. The skull’s geological age has remained uncertain. Now, new radiocarbon analysis appearing in the August issue of Current Anthropology directly dates the skull to approximately 33,000 years ago, placing it in the Upper Paleolithic.

The fundamental principle behind all signals between neurons in the brain is that of ion channels. These channels are gated. The cell membrane does not normally admit ions. The channels are shut unless they receive the proper signal. There are a variety of signals which will open the channels. Certain voltage differences across the membrane will open channels. Such channels are called voltage gated ion channels. VGIC are the most common types of channels in the logic gates in the brain, but they are not the only ones. There are, in addition, channels which open in response to the presence of ligands called neurotransmitters. These are called transmitter gated ion channels (TGIC). The other extremely important feature of these channels is that they are nearly always ion selective. Thus, we can separate the ion concentration gradients and voltage gradients that result from the charges of ions and the concentration of individual ions. This ability to differentiate between the concentration gradient and electric field is extremely important for the ability of neurons to transmit signals.

After following the forums for some weeks, engaging in some "debates," and abusing some of the more bizarre believers, I've lost some interest in arguing about religion. Religions are completely artificial in origin, and fictional in content. If it isn't obvious to a person, there's something getting in the way of their seeing it objectively. Fear or tradition being the usual suspects. We don't need to carry the anthropomorphising of nature into the future, and neither should we dignify the question with elaborate debates. There is no cosmological/ontological/whatever explanation necessary to exclude the possibility of something there's no cause to even consider.

A national, general strike is in the works and we need as many people as possible to participate. The strike will occur on the much remembered date of 11 September. If you are angered, or even just worried at the path the US is taking, then please participate and make yourself heard. We can turn a day of mourning and loss into a day of truth and change.

More information (and flyers) can be found at the website provided below:

http://www.strike911.org/

Without enough people, this will just be another faint sigh of quiet dissent.

Cheers!

Homeless in NEW YORK

So, I feel I must write about homelessness. I, as some of you may or may know, was homeless for a breif period of time. However, those were the worst times of my young existence. Anyways, I feel I must write this, as it was 4 years this past Wednesday the 8th, that I moved from Puerto Rico to the Bronx, my birth place.

So, I begin.

We arrived on August 8th 2003. We were to live with a friend of my mother's. We were doing fine, my mom had some jobs, Josh (my brother) and I were going to school. It was a good time. Although the living space was cramped, but it was somewhat tolerable dispite certain personalities in the home.