Quoting Robert G. Ingersoll

Robert G. Ingersoll was a noted American freethinker of the 19th century. He was an attorney, Civil War veteran, statesman, and orator, lecturing and debating about morality and devotion to reason.

“There is but one way to demonstrate the existence of a power independent of and superior to nature, and that is by breaking, if only for one moment, the continuity of cause and effect. Pluck from the endless chain of existence one little link; stop for one instant the grand procession and you have shown beyond all contradiction that nature has a master. Change the fact, just for one second, that matter attracts matter, and a god appears. The rudest savage has always known this fact, and for that reason always demanded the evidence of miracle. The founder of a religion must be able to turn water into wine — cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was necessary for him to demonstrate to the satisfaction of his barbarian disciple, that he was superior to nature. In times of ignorance this was easy to do. The credulity of the savage was almost boundless. To him the marvelous was the beautiful, the mysterious was the sublime. Consequently, every religion has for its foundation a miracle — that is to say, a violation of nature — that is to say, a falsehood. No one, in the world’s whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature. The church wishes us to believe. Let the church, or one of its intellectual saints, perform a miracle, and we will believe. We are told that nature has a superior. Let this superior, for one single instant, control nature, and we will admit the truth of your assertions.” —Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods, 1872

Click here for Robert G. Ingersoll quotations.

Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, responds to critics

The governor of Texas recently signed an executive order mandating vaccination against human papilomavirus (HPV) for schoolgirls. The virus causes almost all cases of cervical cancer.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

{Texas Governor] Perry refused to rescind the executive order he issued Friday requiring the vaccine for girls ages 11 and 12 who are entering sixth grade in September 2008. Parents will be able to opt out their daughters, as they can for other required vaccines.

In a statement, Perry addressed criticism that the vaccine could send a message that teenage sex is permissible.

“Providing the HPV vaccine doesn’t promote sexual promiscuity any more than providing the Hepatitis B vaccine promotes drug use,” the governor said. “If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it claiming it would encourage smoking?”

Thanks to the Austin Atheist for pointing to this article.

Freesound is an online library of sound samples

This is an online resource of shared sound samples.

Hat tip to Pharyngula for the link.

Nick Gisburne banned from YouTube for quoting Koran

YouTube censorship: YouTube has deleted Nick Gisburne’s accounts for quoting from the Koran. The video in question was a slide show that printed quotations from the Koran espousing violence. This is wierd. Letting a religion speak for itself in the words of its scriptures is now “inappropriate content”? (Hat tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula.)

More YouTube censorship:In addition, Nick’s files were deleted without warning. All his work — more than sixty videos — was suddenly gone. The e-mail notice claimed that he had been warned before, but this was the first Nick heard of it. As he says, it came like a blow to the gut.

You can see the video here (for now, anyway, before YouTube censorship catches up with it).

Do some research yourself at the Skeptic’s Annotated Qu’ran. And here’s the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Nick Gisburne’s Biblical slide show wasn’t subjected to YouTube censorship, only his Koran slide show.

What is Darwin Day?

According to Wikipedia:

Darwin Day is the anniversary of the birthday of Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809.

Darwin provided the first coherent theory of evolution by means of natural selection and so the name is used by a set of loosely-associated events, usually organized locally to take place on or about Darwin’s birthday, whose aim is to acquaint the public with the theory of evolution by natural selection and its importance to biology.