Freethinker Nation

New agers, the media, and other doomsday apologists have pinned the next end of the world to happen in 2012 because that’s the year the Mayan calendar ends. The difficulty of making these kinds of astronomical calculations with this kind of certainty are staggering. We’re not even certain of our own location within our galaxy (+/- dozens of *light years*), nor it’s exact size or shape. An exact date is a massive exaggeration. There has been so much bad science related to our sun crossing some imaginary galactic point in space, spewed forth by lunatics and the media in general, that I doubt few have checked any factual astronomy data on the subject.

According to men and women of science who are far smarter than most people I know, using incredibly advanced & precise instruments for cosmological study, this is what we know so far:
on Dec 21 2012, the sun will NOT be anywhere near the galactic plane, galactic ellipse, galactic-pie-plate… whatever you want to call it. It will NOT be positioned between the galactic center and the galactic plane - in truth, it’ll be light-years away in distance and millions of years in time away from any occurrence that places our sun/solar system in that direct line between the Milky Way’s center and where (we think) the elliptical edge of the galaxy is at.

So as best we know, Physically any magical doomsday galactic plane-crossing *isn’t* going to happen. At least not for a long, long, long, LONG, Long time… Unless our best minds in astrophysics are all idiots, and they’ve just been making up the numbers as they go along- then we could all be screwed. hehehehe.

Once you remove any chance of the galactic center being part of this phenomenal “plane-crossing” equation we’re supposed to hit upon in 2012, pretty much all you’re left with is something that is a common astrological occurrence that happens twice yearly, every single year -
which is that from the earths vantage-point as it revolves in its orbit, our sun appears to “cross” the galactic plane. Again, it’s simply an illusion because of our positioning - and that everything in our solar system is moving and rotating around in relationship to everything around it.

Personally, I’d be more worried about a rather large chunk of stellar material smacking into us - potentially one of thousands out there - and causing global catastrophe, than some oogie-boogie “crossing the plane will cause dramatic gravitational forces that’ll cause our planets entire mantle to loosen and rotate and flip the poles and open your bowels” non-sense.
At least the “big-things-hitting-the-planet-on-a-regular-basis” is a known fact.

Second point I’d like to mention is that this Mayan calendar everyone’s been hyperventilating about - even the experts are undecided as to exact specifics of when this “long-count” 5126 year calendar is supposed to end.
More to the point, most Archaeologists and scholars who study the Maya & their calendars are saying the Mayans weren’t predicting an end-of-the-world scenario at the last date of the long-count calendar, but instead a sort of age of enlightenment.
There is even debate about the finality of the long-count calendar.

As found on Universe Today, this passage for your consideration:

“The fact remains, the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy is purely based on a calendar which we believe hasn’t been designed to calculate dates beyond 2012. Mayan archaeo-astronomers are even in debate as to whether the Long Count is designed to be reset to 0.0.0.0.0 after 13.0.0.0.0, or whether the calendar simply continues to 20.0.0.0.0 (approximately 8000 AD) and then reset. As Karl Kruszelnicki brilliantly writes:

“…when a calendar comes to the end of a cycle, it just rolls over into the next cycle. In our Western society, every year 31 December is followed, not by the End of the World, but by 1 January. So 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan calendar will be followed by 0.0.0.0.1 - or good-ol’ 22 December 2012, with only a few shopping days left to Christmas.”

Thus, when it comes to Dec 21, 2012 being some horrific date-of-doom, I’m less than impressed.

sign the petition to stop Islamic Sharia Law being used in Great Britain

I wanted to see a third party candidate debate. This two party system has to end. The sad thing is most Americans don’t even realize there’s more to US politics than Republicans and Democrats. But what’s more pathetic is somebody who thinks the world is 6,000 years old and created by a sky daddy can get elected is beyond me. America wake up, there’s no god!

It seems as though I get a lot of readers, but nobody wants to join and blog. If I don’t get any members by the next week, I’m going to rename this Website, but with the same URL.

I wanted to share this. 000webhost offers 350MB (not 250MB) of space, 100GB of bandwidth, cpanel, and Fantastico scripts like Drupal and Wordpress for the price of 0.00 per month. If you upgrade to paid hosting it’s only 4.84 per month. Well that’s all sweet, but folks there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Don’t fall for it like I did. They insert code into your pages to track the pages. Well, that’s not being honest!

A few years ago, I went to drug rehab. Went in an atheist, and came out an atheist. However, I think the state did wrong by sending me to a spiritual-based 12 step rehab that pushed the Christian god. Here’s a recap I wrote upon returning from there in 2007:

I went to a drug rehab for 28 days; 99% of the staff and residents were theists, and I was the only atheist. I could write a short book on the experiences, but let me start by saying I had to defend myself against ad homine attacks, daily Pasqual’s Wagers, AA meeting that where more like jail house church, and lectures from a xian staff member making derogatory comments against atheists like “Believing nothing gets you nothing…and you will go to hell.”

The James Oldham Treatment Center is the low end of treatment centers; this is the end of the road for most users. It’s located in Buena, WA, which is south of Yakima, about thirty minutes. The area is one trailer park ghetto after another, and there is more cocaine, meth, and heroin then the cities of Seattle and Portland combined. This is on the major smuggling route by traffickers from Mexico, which distributes all the drugs around Washington, Oregon, Vancouver, BC, and Idaho. The solution to this problem of addiction is a belief in god, according to JOTC. This isn’t really a faith-based drug rehab, but called a “spiritual based treatment facility”. They define “spiritual based” as: accepting god, “cleaning house”, and letting go. Prayers, after every class, group session, or AA/NA meeting.

The NA meeting weren’t that offensive. The chair person was Native American, and was into some Native religion, saying “great elder spirit, great grandfather…” He even stated people without faith would not be judged because we all suffer from drug addiction, yadda, yadda, yadda.

We residents ran the AA meetings, and counselors didn’t attend. Keep in mind that most residents here come out of the Union Gospel Mission, jail, prison, and the streets. Although I was not the only guy singled out; a Wiccan was put on the spot, and I jumped to his defense. Did you know Rational Response Squad and Infidel Guy are offensive URL’s and slogans?

Oh yeah, one morning before the 8:00am meeting I wrote, ‘god is just pretend,’ and ‘Fighting to free humanity from the mind disorder known as theism’ on the chalk board, along with the URL’s. This started a fight amongst residents, to say the least. I came close to stomping the shit out of some Mormon, but kept it to verbal abuse. I way I saw it was, the theists put their Jesus crap on the chalk board every morning, so I thought it’s only fair to have free access.

I got singled out for not praying. That wasn’t anything of significance, but residents began to question my beliefs. I did claim to have a higher power in logical thinking, science, and humanity; however this didn’t sit well with most residents and reacted with trying to prove god; praying for me; and even one fundamentalist Christian said ad verbatim, “This place does not belong to the atheist and Secular Humanists. This is the house of god, and you better recognize!”

Of course, I told him to fuck off. Nevertheless, this wasn’t the only time.

Oh his defense of god, counselor John Ingram at James Oldham Treatment Center (JOTC) used this:

“[A] hundred years ago if you told somebody you believed in a cell phone, they laughed at you. So don’t tell me god’s impossible, you never know…”

The next sentence out of his mouth was:

“God is a fact, just hope you’re right. After this life we will take notes with each other and see who has it best…”

He even claimed there was meth in hell, and people walking around tweaked out. I asked him for a GPS location, or location in space. He than claimed he didn’t know, to be followed by saying what he was saying were facts. To end the lecture with a prayer right out of Sunday morning church added to the sermon-like lecture.

I give the guy a break though; he didn’t sober up until age 50. Had kind of a fucked up life, and may still be inept with reasoning skills. This, nonetheless, is all you need to be a drug & alcohol counselor. I feel a counselor should have, at least, a BA in psychology or sociology; maybe even cultural anthropology. Counselors are getting a certificate from the local community college to indoctrinate addicted patients into 12-step meeting and religion.

So anyways, it been almost three years without cocaine and alcohol, and I’ve done the task without god. So is a lawsuit possible, in regards to JOTC?

Uganda’s ethics and integrity minister says miniskirts should be banned - because women wearing them distract drivers and cause traffic accidents.

Are they still living in the Dark Ages? This is what you get when a country is run by religious nutcases.

More here.

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Hello World, as Wordpress humorously says! I’m a student of technical studies in Web Design and Web Administrative Assistant at SPSCC. Not a traditional education, but thinking critically nonetheless. Anyhow I don’t have much time to blog, but desire Freethinker Nation to be a successful blogging Website.

So, Freethinker Nation was created with the intention of being a multiple-user blogging platform. The roll of the none-administrative user is a Contributor. As a Contributor you can write your own blog. I thank all who contribute in advance. Let’s start blogging!

So what is a Freethinking Nation; the USA? Not exactly, it’s worldwide - remember, “Hello World!”