Adventures of a Wetware Hacker

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths."

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 10:37 AM 0 Comments

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 7:20 PM 0 Comments

The Chicago ONE Campaign is a group for people in the Chicago area who are interested in leaning about and getting more involved with ONE:The Campaign to Make Poverty History. We are building a network of grassroots activist to rally Americans ONE by ONE to fight extreme poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS.

The goal of the ONE Campaign is to get an additional ONE percent of the U.S.federal budget for poverty-focused development assistance programs.We want to help meet the Millennium Development Goal of cutting global poverty in half by 2015.


Click to join onechicago2006

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 5:06 PM 1 Comments

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.... Hurry up, woman!

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

Google to catalog human genome, and create super humans

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 7:51 AM 0 Comments

"De-throning man is at the heart of most revolutionary scientific thought."

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 8:58 AM 0 Comments

Question of the Day: Why am I so offended by the very idea of religion?

There are, of course, thousands of practical instances in which faith and organized religion are detrimental for our society. But instead of continuing to dwell on these, I will attempt to describe my personal philosophy, to explain the great offense I feel when someone claims to know the truth; to know God, to know The Answer. I will attempt to explain why it hurts, why there is an inevitable crumbling of society, a devaluing of all that is decent, and why problems occur when the value of truth is reduced to nothing; denigrated to myths and stories, when fairy tales are revered enough to kill for, and to die for.

There is something wrong when the truth can be so easily dismissed in favor of an easy explanation, when the most important thing we can ever hope to know, the very truth of our existence, is convoluted and ignored. There is no concern, in a mind where religion reigns, for ever actually finding out, actually really knowing, actually confirming the truth. In a society where the easy way out is not only accepted, but worshipped, there will be no truth. Never will religion lead to a real answer, a tangible answer, a legitimate understanding. Never will mankind find the answer if they are convinced they already know.

“There is no god higher than truth.” -Gandhi

“The gift of truth excels all other gifts.” -Buddha

The truth, to me, is almost sacred, and the tainting of the truth, the assignment of a value to this unknown quantity, is almost blasphemy. It hurts to see something so beautiful as scientific truth shunted aside for an easy pseudo-explanation.

The truth is that we don’t know the truth, and people need to stop pretending. And start trying.

TBC..

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 7:21 PM 0 Comments

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 9:37 AM 1 Comments

"Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.

It revealed that faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense.

Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition.

And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!"

``````````````````````````````````````` "After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings. I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. We need less emotion and more thought."

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 8:36 AM 0 Comments