Here’s what would happen if NASA embraced the intelligent design theory:
NASA, the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration, announced today the launch of the first-ever faith-based space program. The project, working-titled “In God We Thrust”, will develop and launch a range of orbital, lunar, and interplanetary space vehicles using entirely faith-based methods of engineering, aeronautics, electronics and astrophysics.
The launch of the first NASA mission developed under the In God We Thrust program, a geostationary sublime reflector, is scheduled for early 2013.
“We have a lot of faith in the new procedures,” said Dr. Helmer Mountebank, NASA’s public relations officer, “and, God willing, the mission will be an stellar success.”
NASA engineers will be basing their rocket and capsule design and space flight calculations on a Christian view of the shape, size and age of the universe as detailed in the Bible, the primary reference work for faith-based scientific initiatives.
If humans were content with faith, we would have never made it to the moon — hell, we wouldn’t have built skyscrapers, because biblegod doesn’t like them.
Thankfully, many of us are not content with mere faith!
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entirely faith-based methods of engineering, aeronautics, electronics and astrophysics.
What does that mean? What is faith-based engineering? And how would it be any different?
they put no engine in it, or overload it with fuel, and pray it works
Faith based engineering would be like this:
Faithscientist 1: “I think this will hold together under a great deal of thrust.”
Faithscientist 2: “I think we should run the numbers.”
Faithscientist 1: “Are you questioning my faith?”
I assume you already knew that and were just playing dumb.
Faith-based engineering might have some problems as the Biblical value of Π would be 3.0.
How many skyscrapers have you ever built?
I doubt ANY atheists have every built a skyscrpaer…oh, yes, they did try one time. It was called The Tower of Babel. At least they contributed in a round about way to the many languages in the world today !!
Atheists wouldn’t try to build a tower that reaches a place they don’t believe in.
Try to at least stay consistent within your own mythology.
Atheists don’t believe in the sky?
Not a metaphorical heaven.
So why doesn’t God do that now? Did he change his mind about skyscrapers?
I’ve helped build a lot of skyscrapers. I’m an atheist.
Considering how many people it takes to build a skyscraper, and considering how many skyscrapers there are on the planet, it is statistically improbable that not a single atheist contributed to any building project ever.
Unless you have hard demographic evidence to show this, you’re just talking out your ass.
And, I repeat, the point is not whether these people believe in some sort of deity or not, it’s whether they take a literal translation of the bible to rule their daily lives.
If we had continued to follow the teachings of these holy books word for word, you would not now be able to argue your fundamentalism here on this website. Because, without fail, every time science has investigated an area of the natural world that a holy book has an opinion on, the holy book has been in error.
Every single time.
And if we scientists everywhere had not chosen to ignore their holy books, or treat them as metaphorical instead of literal, our societies would look like the societies in those holy books – warring tribal factions without electricity, heat or air conditioning, the internet, cars, cell phones, or those fancy televised sermons with microphones for the choir.
A great observation by Sam Harris is that the understanding of how reality works from religion and science is one-way: scientific ideas have replaced religious ones, but never vice versa.
So, enjoying that high speed connection to the Internet, Glenda? How about listening to MP3s online? Ever watch a video on YouTube? Claude Shannon was an atheist. Your entire online experience owes so much to Claude Shannon and his hand in information theory. The concept of you railing against atheists in an online forum that would not even exist without atheist research and study is the very definition of irony.
By the way, many NASA scientists are Christians, and I don’t know anyone who works there, now or ever, that has stated they were atheists. Come on, people, don’t believe your own propaganda !
and I’m sure those NASA scientists build their engineering, aeronautics, electronics and astrophysics around their religious beliefs as the intelligent design proponents (the target of this parody) want to do with Biology.
Your ignorance is showing.
The reason you don’t know anyone who works there now or ever who has stated they were an atheist.. is because you haven’t looked. You are trying to maintain your ignorance, in other words. That is you buying into your own propaganda. Go educate yourself.
The first time that you ever venture to write something even remotely civil, dignifying or kind to another who holds a viewpoint contrary to the one that you tirelessly espouse is the day my faith in humanity swells by a degree or two, maybe more…
Give it a rest John. Glenda is a troll, of the most obvious kind. Your defense of her trolling is typical of you.
Do you disagree with anything I said to her? Do you think she KNOWS that there are no atheists at NASA? No, she is a lying troll. Do you think she KNOWS that no atheist built a skyscraper? No, she is a lying troll.
You are a lying coward, but you don’t need to defend the trolls.
John C, it is fairly easy to see through some of your passive-aggressive, “hidden” covert hostility. (e.g. Roger stated that he did not wish to be called “Rog”, so you called him “Rog-ER” instead of doing people the courtesy of calling them by the name they wish to be called. Hey, if you want to call names overtly when you’re attacking, go for it, but the pretend politeness is still covert hostility.)
Aor was right on accurate when he said “You are trying to maintain your ignorance, in other words. That is you buying into your own propaganda. ” My faith in humans might go up a notch if you showed some capacity for thinking, fact-seeking, questioning, and reasoning.
Actually, one of my closest friends works for NASA at Kennedy Space Center who is an atheist
And, the point is not whether they are atheists or not, but whether they base their work on SCIENCE or rules in the bible that contradict science.
“By the way, many NASA scientists are Christians …”
For example, there’s Edgar Whisenaut, the retired NASA scientist who published the very popular book 88 Reasons why the Rapture will Occur in 1988.
Perhaps not the best example.
Sounds like he would be right up Glenda’s ally.
The First Religious Sacrament Performed on Another Heavenly Body
Buzz Aldrin – Handwritten Notes and Scriptures Flown to the Surface of the Moon. Front and verso of a 3″ x 5″ buff-colored lightweight card, one horizontal fold affecting some text, about fine condition.
The entire world was watching and listening to every word uttered and every step taken by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong during the 21+ hours they were on the surface of the moon in July of 1969. The first words uttered by Armstrong as he stepped out of the Lunar Module Eagle are still familiar to all. A great sense of national accomplishment swept over most all Americans that month as three brave astronauts flew toward the goal set by President John F. Kennedy just eight years earlier when he said: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Why did Kennedy want this accomplishment so badly? He elaborated in 1962 at Rice Stadium in Houston: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” It took many many brave and brilliant men to accomplish this goal with Apollo 11 being the mission of ultimate attainment.
The astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission were so inspired by their view of the earth from moon orbit the previous Christmas Eve that they read the biblical account of the creation story from Genesis. Noted atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair brought suit against NASA over this Bible reading asking the courts to ban any further such activity. Though the courts eventually rejected the suit, NASAwas quite nervous about further religious activities throughout the rest of the Apollo program. Buzz Aldrin, a Christian and an elder at the Webster (Texas) Presbyterian Church, wished to express his personal faith and give thanks to God by the taking of the Holy Communion on the moon. His church furnished him with the wine and wafer which he stowed secretly in his kit. He described the activity in his book Return to Earth (Bantam Books, 1973): “During the first idle moment in the LM before eating our snack, I reached into my personal preference kit and pulled out two small packages which had been specially prepared at my request. One contained a small amount of wine, the other a small wafer. With them and a small chalice from the kit, I took communion on the moon, reading to myself from a small card [the item offered here] I carried on which I had written the portion of the Book of John used in the traditional communion ceremony.” He had wanted to read the scripture back to earth but NASA requested that he not do so. Instead, he read from this card, on which is written: “Houston This is Eagle The LM Pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. Over. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way- – My way shall be by partaking of the elements of Holy Communion.” His fellow astronaut, Neil Armstrong, watched but did not partake.
Madelyn Murray O’Hare and one of her sons was brutally murdered; Chrisitanity is still going strong; Buzz Aldrin blessed the world, literally, and Ms. O’Hare damned it. Where are you in this scheme of things?
Hi, Glenda. Welcome to the Internet. Just for future reference, we have these things here called “hyperlinks.” They’re very popular. Instead of cuntpasting entire walls of text from other pages, you can just post a brief description of the page and turn it into one of these “hyperlinks” so that, when someone clicks on it, they bring up the page you wish to reference. For example:
The First Religious Sacrament Performed on Another Heavenly Body
Alternately, you can just post the URL of the relevant page. A-like so:
http://historical.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=669&Lot_No=25370&type=&ic=
I’ve always wondered how to do that. How can I find out more?
“welcome to the Internet” — best comment ever?
Seconded?
def
what kind of pasting?!?!?!?!1
Got anything from the past 40 years?
[[ NOTE FROM DAN: This comment has been deleted, as it is too long, too annoying, and too trolly. If it's something from another site just put a link and say why it's relevant to the topic. If it's not, don't post it.
Glenda, please stop trolling, or you will be banned. Read more about trolling here:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1764/what-is-a-troll ]]
Please stick to the topic. You’re being an annoying spammer – and, I might add, you’re being a convenient example of a stereotypical unintelligent fundie.
THANK YOU, DANIEL!
That deserved the loud cheering of all caps.
Sounds to me like a certain wall-o-text posting fundie failed to understand the point of the post. Typical.
I… had the same thought.
I snickered.
Yickes, this ended under the wrong comment oO supposed to be under the comment below (In God We Thrust… a stake through its heart?)
“In God We Thrust”… anyone else think this sounds dirty?
I think it belongs in the newest post on Christian vs Muslim birthrates.
LMAO!!!
Is this connected in some way to screaming, “oh my GOD!” ?
So that’s the real reason they missed Mars a few years ago.
i thought it was becaus of problems with the metric system-wathever you use in US conversion, but it might be because of pi=3
At lease you can’t say that Einstein was stupid; but eviidently, he wanted no identification to atheists, so I think he was more a genius than history gives him:
Einstein: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
However, it would also seem that Einstein was not an atheist, since he also complained about being put into that camp: “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views. I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”
Please note the last sentence.
He also said:
“”It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.”
and…
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
or…
“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish… . For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people”
So he was not christian, and not precisely a literal reader of the bible -wich we are discussing here.
Anyway…
1.- Argument from authority doesn’t count in science. Einstein didn’t prove the existence of any kind of god, so his opinion is merely that, an opinion.
2.- Even the most intelligent person -a strong claim to do- can be wrong about things wich are not his speciality. Einstein’s opinions about biology, medecine or english literature aren’t more informed than maybe yours, mine or anyone here.
3.- The fact that his equations led to a “beginning of the universe” -and it was later proved- may have convinced him that something made the universe begin. He failed to see other options.
Glenda, when you ignore questions asked of you you make yourself appear deceptive. If you are unwilling to respond to honest questions you will come off as a dishonest person.
Hahahahahahahahaha!
Francesc the Factual has one-upped Glenda the Deceiver Troll big time!
“In God We Thrust”
Oh my, what a total “That’s what she said” moment.
Nasa faith-based space program:
we will get to a corner of the world with our submarine, then let it fail down til he is far from earth’s gravity, and when it enters the water’s vault, it can swim to the planet or star we want. They can’t be very far, as all of them are in the same sphera
Wow I’m convinced gotta get LaHaye busy with this
Well, Almighty God had to topple Babel all by himself, but he has plenty of followers and the godless technology of aircraft to take out skyscrapers now.
You do realize that this is a hoax.
If you read the text then they just did it because this way they got the money to create the space crafts. LOL. And they have the problem to fit the elliptical orbits into perfect circular ones. LOL
Ah yes about the Atheists, well Glenda I got bad news from you. Our team did contribute to the NASA Mars exploration by creating high tech machinery that was used to help develop the Mar exploration equipment. And the complete team was all atheists!
Faith based space program would result in the termination of all space programs because they would not like what they see and terminate the programs.
In God We Thrust…
I used to say that to my ex wife when I was a Christian and wanted Nookie Nookie
Thanks to blogging and online social networking, they are quick to share their knowledge and opinions with one another. ,