Darkora - Nik's Blog

Yeah I'm late to the Omegle party but this is far too fun to pass up...

If any of my posts blow up please let it be this one:

Australia is currently petitioning to make it that all gender confirming surgeries for transgender individuals are covered by Medicare. This is absolutely huge as surgeries are super expensive even with private health insurance.

It doesn't ask for an address or phone number or anything so I think anyone in the world can sign for it? But I'm not entirely sure.

EDIT: yeah you gotta be a citizen, so if you're outside the country, if you could reblog this to reach more Australians, this would be amazing!

Here's the petition link:

Petition information:

Please reblog this and spread it as far and wide as you can, this is super important!

Day Thirteen - Beliefs

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I consider myself to be an agnostic atheist - I would like to believe in a divine creator but I don't really see there being any proof to that end. Unlike how most atheists are portrayed, I do not hate god, nor do I hate religion particularly much, I merely find it distasteful the number of atrocities that have been committed in either's name. 

I do however find the bible a very distasteful document and it is my opinion that anyone who feels otherwise has yet to actually read it thoroughly. The sheer volume of horrific actions that the book condones and encourages do nothing positive to enhance the image of Christianity as anything but another reason to kill people.

I do however hold firm beliefs that everyone is entitled to believe what they wish, so long as they don't mind me doing the same nor attempt to influence me - a few of my closer friends and even my girlfriend are Christians, and while I admit to a faint selfish hope that they one day turn from this path, if it makes them happy I will do nothing to change their beliefs just as they do nothing to change mine.

If however the existence of an all powerful creator can be proven to me beyond all doubt and scepticism, I will happily alter my path but between now and then; enlightenment is bliss.

Nik

TW/CW: Animal death I read some really sad articles a while ago, a lot of animals are having a really hard time because of this. What do you think?

Webtoon - instagram

I fucking hate that the general response to RFK Jr's eugenist take on autistic people is "autistic people do pay taxes, autistic people do work, autistic people do date!"

Some autistic people don't and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life. Some autistic people do need constant help and support and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life.

Once again we're falling in the right wing trap of :

They make a hateful, fascist statement

Instead of focusing on the fact that it is hateful and fascist we try to show them that they are factually wrong

We throw our own allies and the most vulnerable of us under the bus in the process

We legitimise an only slightly less hateful, fascist view as we go

They have completed their goal of making us accept the still hateful, fascist second version, hurrah. What a victory.

Right now what we're getting to with that is that autistic people who can work and pay taxes are okay, and the others aren't. Fuck this shit.

Same thing happens with the people who are being deported ("they have a visa!", "they didn't even have a criminal record!" -> even if they didn't have a visa, even if they did have a criminal record, deporting them and detaining them in what's essentially a concentration camp wouldn't be okay, you absolute tools of fascism.)

iheartchaos:

Not even a hurricane can turn away the sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Every single day since April 1948 without fail, there’s been a sentinel guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. And Hurricane Irene was no excuse to call in sick yesterday. 

Via

Can't fault the dedication to duty there, I'm very impressed

22 Messages From Creationists To People Who Believe In Evolution

I asked 22 self-identifying creationists at the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate to write a message/question/note to the other side. Here's what they wrote.

I saw this article and I must admit, there was a lot of facepalm. After my initial facepalm session, I decided to redirect my despair and actually provide some answers.

Caveat: I make no claims of being any kind of expert, I just wanted to form my own ideas gleaned from a lot of miscellaneous reading into some kind of an answer that wasn't an incoherent stream of rage.

1.       “Bill Nye, Are you influencing the minds of children in a positive way?”

I would argue yes, Bill Nye espouses an evidence based, critical thinking centric way of looking at the world, is this a good thing? I’d argue yes, teaching children to look at things critically rather than just believing the first thing they’re told sounds fantastic to me – okay you might not want your children to ask awkward questions, but man the fuck up, that’s what children are for.

 2.       “Are you scared of a divine creator?”

Being scared of something is an acknowledgement and admission of its existence, so I doubt it very much. Besides, have you actually read the bible lately? The God of the Old Testament isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy. The question I ask in return is this: are you more afraid that ‘he’ does exist, or that he doesn’t?

 3.       “Is it completely illogical that the earth was created mature? (I.e. trees created with rings, Adam created as an adult”

In a word: yes. In more words: that makes absolutely zero fucking sense and presents a serious cosmic mindfuck.

 4.       “Does not the second law of thermodynamics disprove Evolution?”

Citation: “The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium”

Short answer: not really, no. more here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html

 5.       “How do you explain sunset if there is no God?”

Well, the Earth revolves around that giant gaseous ball in the sky called the Sun, this is handy for us to see things by because the Sun produces light (as a by-product of a process of nuclear fusion and fission using hydrogen)

Due to certain other factors, the Earth also spins around a central axis (whilst revolving around the Sun too) meaning that only half of its surface points towards the big shiny thing in the sky at any given moment. This means that on the side that’s pointing away from the Sun it’s dark. On the edges between these zones you have either a sunrise (where that point of the earth is coming towards the Sun) or a sunset (where it’s moving away).

Ask a four year old’s question, get a four year old’s answer.

6.       “If the Big Bang theory is true and taught as science along with evolution, why do the laws of Thermodynamics debunk said theories”

See 4. Additional childish answer: “Because you touch yourself at night.”

7.       “What about Noetics?”

What the actual fuck do they have to do with anything?

8.       “Where do you derive objective meaning in life?”

From its brevity. You get one chance. There is no ‘round 2’ there’s no take-backsies, you live for an amount of time and then you’re not there anymore, to me the only real meaning we can derive is to make the best of it, to try and leave this tiny lump of rock better for our fleeting presence.

9.       “If God did not create everything, how did the first single-celled organism originate? By chance?”

There are thousands of possible hypotheses that can be (and are being) made on this subject, we may never actually know for sure – that’s one of the redeeming features of science, it doesn’t claim certainty until all the results are in (and often not even then.) What I’m driving at however, is that just because we don’t presently know for certain how the first cellular life arose, does not automatically default to “God did it!”

10.   “I believe in the Big Bang Theory… God said it and BANG it happened”

While this is an admirable attempt at marrying up Evolution and creation, it is an entirely unscientific one, I reiterate from above, just because we don’t know exactly how or why something happened doesn’t automatically mean “God did it!”

11.   “Why do Evolutionists/Secularists/non-God believing people reject the idea of there being a creator God but embrace the concept of intelligent design from aliens or other extra-terrestrial sources?”

Holy straw-man Batman! How about you ask these people this question? Perhaps you’ve just invented them for the purpose of this question or perhaps they believe in another religion (yes, those exist!)

12.   “There is no inbetween… the only one found has been Lucy and there are only a few pieces of the hundreds necessary for an ‘official proof’”

Wow… just wow, there are thousands of transitional fossils, just literally thousands – go and ask any university biology department, they have drawers full of the fuckers. But I know that creationists love transitional fossils, as soon as you’ve found one; now you have two gaps to be smug about.

13.   “Does metamorphosis help support Evolution?”

I don’t see why not, it’s an example of how animals change over time, how their forms are not fixed and how two animals of the same species will not necessarily develop the same way – sounds pretty good to me.

14.   “If evolution is a theory (like creationism, or the bible) Why then is evolution taught as a fact?”

Because creationism is at best a hypothesis, in basic terms it’s what you have before you get any supporting evidence. Evolution is a theory, one step below absolute fact – it’s taught as such because until evidence that discredits it is brought forward, it is considered as such. Remember please that gravity is referred to as a theory, did you leave your house this morning from the ground level or the top floor?

Additionally: the bible is what we call ‘a book’, not a theory.

15.   “Because science by definition is a “theory” – not testable, observable, nor repeatable. Why do you object to creationism or intelligent design being taught in school?”

What the actual fuck? ‘testable, observable and repeatable’ are exactly what science is. You throw a ball upwards, does it A) continue rising indefinitely? B) hover, ominously? or C) fall back to the ground, hopefully hitting you in the face? Congratulations, through a very basic bit of scientific reasoning you’ve just proved gravity and hopefully been hit in the face (saving me effort)

Why do people like myself object to creationism and ID being taught in schools? Because they are exactly opposite, they make zero scientifically provable claims, present zero evidence and are a waste of tax payers money.

16.   “What mechanism has science discovered that evidences an increase of genetic information seen in any genetic mutation or evolutionary process?”

The answer was in your own question: ‘mutation’. See: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

17.   “What purpose do you think you are here for if you don’t believe in salvation?”

I wouldn’t say we have a purpose; we’re here to be here, what we make of it from that is up to us.

18.   “Why have we only found 1 “Lucy” when we have found more than 1 of everything else?”

Because we haven’t? Multiple fossils of Lucy (Australopithecus) were found in the 70’s – Lucy is just the most famous of her kind.

19.   “Can you believe in ‘the Big Bang’ without faith?”

Believe is the wrong word, science has no use for faith. The scientific method at its very core is based on doubt, it’s based on asking the questions and finding out where they lead, not taking a stab at the answer and having faith that you’ve found the right one.

20.   “How can you look at the world and not believe someone created/thought of it? It’s Amazing!!!”

While I agree, it’s amazing, that doesn’t mean it has to have been intelligently designed/created. The existence a watch is in no way evidence of a watchmaker – upon further examination, you can provide a receipt to prove where the watch came from and then their records will show who made it. Just because that works for a watch doesn’t mean it works for a planet, do you have a receipt?

21.   “Relating to the big bang theory… where did the exploding star come from”

Okay, so the big bang was not caused by an exploding star. We’re talking about all the matter in what is now the universe compressed into a point, things that are compressed get hot and all that energy has to go somewhere.

Where did it come from originally? I don’t know, but again, that doesn’t automatically mean “God did it!”

22.   “If we came from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?”

We came from a common ancestor, that’s like saying “If me and my brother both came from the same parents, why do I still have parents?” the answer: you’re a fucktard.

Not sure if trolling or just incredibly stupid misuse of science.

1. There haven’t been ~7 Billion people on this planet for all 3 Billion years, the world’s population has doubled within living memory, besides you haven’t taken into account animals which vastly outnumber us on this planet - This is only a minor criticism by comparison to the following;

2. Water is one of the most recycled substances on the planet - every time we breathe out and every time we urinate and even when we die, the water we have ingested goes back into the cycle - there is the same amount of water on this planet as there was two thousand years ago (give or take a few gallons that we’ve put into space)

So either successful troll is successful or someone needs to go back to Elementary school and actually pay attention… My faith in humanity rather hinges on it being the former instead of the latter.