hell’s handmaiden

Gregg Easterbrook, in The Progress Paradox, addresses the seeming contradiction between the quality of lives we lead here in the United States and our reported feeling of unhappiness. Our lives, due to technological and social advances in nearly all areas, have much improved over the past couple of decades. Medicines keep us alive and healthy to ages staggeringly rare just a hundred years ago. Working hours have dropped. Pollution has improved, at least in those areas greatly afflicted at the turn of the century, such as cities. We have choices not even available a century ago, like the choice to fly across country or around the world. So why do we report that we are unhappy? That is the question Easterbrook asks in his book.

I go through a lot of books and now and then I come across one that deserves a mention, not that it deserves a mention, necessarily, for the reasons the author would like. So I’ve added a category.

Enjoy.

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It is common to hear the religious invoke the argument that humans need religion to keep them in line and to maintain social structure and such. Thus, even if God doesn’t exist, religion is a good idea. Well, you don’t see agnostics slaughtering atheists.

It is unclear what was behind the attack, but the girls attended a private Christian school and one of the heads was left outside a church leading to speculation that it might have had a religious motive.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4387604.stm

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The United States should take heed. Our academic and technological superiority is not ordained by god. We will lose those things to China just as we gained them from Europe in the past, if we are not careful. And it isn’t looking good from my point of view.

China wants to transform its top universities into the world’s best within a decade, and it is spending billions of dollars to woo big-name scholars like Dr. Yao and build first-class research laboratories. The effort is China’s latest bid to raise its profile as a great power.

This may be one of the most dangerous intellectual poison in the creationist’s arsenal.

For instance, in the official court transcript, you will read page after page of the supposed scientific evidences for evolution presented by the leading scientists of the day– but most of what they presented as fact back then has now been rejected, and by evolutionists themselves. What a lesson here: man’s ideas have changed, but the Bible’s account of origins hasn’t changed one bit!

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2005/1027breakpoint.asp