#biology and religion

[thewordenreport]

Biologically, experiences of awe, whether religious, moral, or in Nature, can render a person less self-centered. https://thewordenreport-religion.blogspot.com/2024/12/overriding-selfishness-by-experiencing.html

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Evolution is a fact, not a theory. It really happened, and the fossil record and the molecular biology all confirm it. And yet, in this country, the United States, which is the leading scientific country in the world, we have people who are not only ignorant of science, but who are actively hostile to it and to the scientific method. And that is a serious problem, because science is not just a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. It's a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility." -- Carl Sagan

[pigswithwings]

this'll be the last oceanblr post. promise. is everyone here familiar with niche aquatic events btw

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🐋 simplecetacean Follow

haha might fuck around and let my body become an unidentifiable mass that washes up on several shores and won't decay and will be mysterious to scientists for years upon years

🐋 simplecetacean Follow

might fuck around and bite off a man's leg but leave the rest of him alive, kickstarting a violent and all-consuming battle between us

🐋 simplecetacean Follow

might fuck around and absolutely troll this guy named jonah

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🦑 strawberry-squidz Follow

Squids that destroy ships and squids that have never seen a ship shouldn't be fighting. They should be kissing. That's why this pride month,

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🌑 greatbitesharkof87-deactivated Follow

lol im floating by this sandbar and theres sooo many humans gathered near the shore. looked out of the water earlier and theres a big old whale body just sitting on the beach, hope nothing bad happens lmaooo

🎣 marlingardens-deactivated Follow

top ten posts that make you feel like it's the 1970s in Florence, Oregon

🐙 ask-an-argonaut Follow

HELLO???

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🌿 misc-manatee-mutters Follow

pacific ocean superiority this & indian ocean superiority that. when will you guys focus on the real problem, the blood ocean

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🔍ms-magnap1nna Follow

Made a new friend today. Everyone better cheer and clap or I'm dragging you into the hadal zone

🐌 justasnailfish Follow

:}

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🌙 fishoftheabyss Follow

What do Epipelagic Zoners even do? Like it sounds ridiculous up there. Ooh, there's rain! Wow, a coral reef! I might even hop out of the waves a couple of times for funsies! Tf do you even have over Abyssopelagic Zoners. Go to shell

🌱 kelps-forests43 Follow

cranky because you've never seen the sun huh

[thebeesareback]

I'm fascinated by the way scientists interact with religion. On one hand you have Sir David Attenborough, who said "I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy". On the other hand, you have JBS Haldane who remarked "the Creator must be inordinately fond of beetles: the earth is home to some 30 million different species of them." I appreciate the diversity

[quillpokebiology]

Something I find very interesting as a researcher is the fact that all pokemon (accept Nihilego, maybe) have their own 'languages' and cultures. Weavile draw symbols on trees to communicate with other Weavile, and I don't think we tall enough how big of a deal that is. These pokenon have their own writing system, and we're NOT talking about it?

Tinkaton make little towns out of discarded metals or on mountains and even have scheduled gatherings where they trade metals with each other.

Bisharp have their own groups and may even have a writing system, just like Weavile. They make tools like baskets and use their claws to give messages.

I know it may not seem like much, but it's just so interesting to me. I tried asking Joker (my orbeetle) about it because Orbeetle are really smart and he has found ways to communicate with me via telepathy, but all I really get from him are things about pokepuffs or wanting to rewatch A Bug's Life. But, one time, I asked him about Orbeetle Culture and he said something about space. Granted, I caught him as a young Blipbug so I dont really know how much he knows, but I'll take it!

Anyways, I'm probably going to make a series explaining different pokemon behaviors and all of that, lol

[yellosnacc]

What about uniima/Fueem’s religion causes them to see Neal as a sloman?

This ask is probably a reaction to this post where I share some of Fueems thoughts if anyone wants to read it.

Here's a post about small aspect of the wider ueemic religion here.

But shrimply! Fueem's regional variant of this faith is pretty close to the one considered the "base" ueemic type. They are a follower of the heads and their rules and are knowledgeable in the ways of soul right.

In more recent years (like 30) the Eye has declared a soul right for every alien (any sophont found in the world so far) with some distinct rules for each but still similar to how uniima souls work.

Because this addition to the base religion is pretty recent, there are many versions of how this works for different people-species but nothing is fully agreed on. There's also the problem of most uniima never seeing a live sloman or knowing their biology/reproduction. So lot of the existing interpretations are based on accounts of a few ueema. Now if those guys weren't good drawers, someone else had to visually interpret their interpretation and welp. The farther from the Heads (the religion central) the weirder looking and weirder working other aliens are in art and literature.

So a recap. When a uniima dies (according to ueema belief) they release a soul. This soul in some way (depending on subculture etc.) gets attached to a person who was close to the dead person. At a point, the soul will jump to a baby at the right point in its development. This baby can be the new child of the soul wearer or just close to them. Usually, the wearer has to meet the "body" at least once. There are a lot more rules and stuff but this is long enough!

So anyway, this is probably what Fueem imagines happened to Neal spiritually.

Making Neal have the soul of once-sloman and thus being one too.

[secondwheel]

An immortal cell line

[returning-to-her]

I am currently writing an article and producing a video showcasing the biology of the divine in females and why the male is merely an addition. It is all based on science, yet matriarchal religions practice this as spirituality. Mother Nature really is science and spirituality in one.

The fascinating research shows why the female sex is so intuitively wise and designed to lead. She is God.

We all need to return to listening to women and nature. All the destruction created by men and patriarchy needs to be undone.

It is why my name is Returning To Her.

Check it out here. It will come soon.

www.healingfromharm.com

https://youtube.com/@returntomatriarchy

https://www.patreon.com/ReturningToHer

[bibiana112]

I've grown a bit protective over my theist Akane headcanons lately because everyone I've seen dismiss her as definitely making more sense as an atheist after the experiences she has seem to almost.... i dare say whitewash her faith? it's why I only use the word Theist she seems to believe in Some kind of god but that really really doesn't automatically imply a capital G western God that is characterized as fatherly and all powerful and all good it does not even imply values ascribed to western saints, I've been agnostic since elementary school and listen to atheism podcasts all the time I say this cause I'm the last person who will be attached to a character for them being religious but I also live somewhere where one of the better known religious minorities is polytheistic and of african origin and completely outside of the eurocentric conception of spirituality and since I have friends who converted to that and suffered prejudice about it I know very well what it looks like when people are projecting God vs Devil worshipping stuff on a belief that does not frame itself with those binary axes at all

I don't even think Akane would strictly follow the Shinto traditions she grew up surrounded by but it's what would have framed her early life and it's a completely different framework and understanding of spirituality and ok I will probably be a bit reductive here but as I understand it Shintoism has many subdeities yokai many superstitions baked into it that are incredibly varied and specific to each community and place and rituals and perfomances are the main expression of this faith (which the kanji for ceremony/ritual is literally in her name! which could be showing she sees her own nonary game as one big ritual I think the ideas behind the Kurashiki etymology are honestly really fun) so with that basic context plus the fact she literally does have her prayers answered, she literally does pray over her doll while crying in the incinerator and that's what saves her I don't know if she'd be mono or poly theistic but her believing in Something doesn't feel like much of a stretch

Sure, people will say, but it didn't Completely save her she still suffered she was still all alone in there in some realities but for goodness sake there is not anything that could more accurately apply to the meme of teehee I'm god's most specialest suffering soldier than what martyr complex ass mindset Akane developed I think she just made up her own understanding of divine intervention right there right with getting her future sight and morphogenetic powers and shit her prayers were answered and the person she wanted by her side talked to her and saved her even from nine years in the future because the forces at be allowed it on the condition that she played her part because the pain and death was supposed to be all there was to it but she performed this display of faith and it suddenly miraculously wasn't a dead end anymore and she was allowed to live if only with the weight and understanding that fate will work in its own mysterious ways and it's up to her to appease it and do whatever ceremonial bloodshed it demands over and over again to salvage at least one timeline out of many that fall into certain doom without her intervention... or at least that seems to be her perception of it she would probably also get ocd from all that but I don't have much say on the subject myself

Her line in ztd is hypocritical but I still don't think it's internally contradictory for her and I will die on this hill

[atheostic]

I swear to god, intelligent design proponents have the observational skills of a rock

"The universe is perfectly designed for us!"

...Most of the universe is made up of a void that has neither heat nor air, but you know what it does have? Radiation that would kill you instantly if you were to go out into said void without protection.

Not Tardigrades, though. They'd be fine. Those tiny freaks are goddamn indestructible.

...Our source of light and heat gives us skin cancer.

And that light source literally cooks our skin cells if we stay exposed to it for too long (aka sunburns).

"The world is perfectly designed for us!"

My dude, humans are only capable of surviving on 10% of the world's surface.

And that's including places where we technically can survive if we don't spend too much time outside and if you want to go outside you have to cover up every bit of skin otherwise it'll freeze.

71% of the world is water but only 1.2% of it is both accessible and drinkable.

While technically 3% of the world's water is freshwater, most of it is locked away in glaciers.

Our bodies are perfectly designed!

There is a gap between the ovary and the fallopian tube, which means the fertilized egg might implant outside the womb.

This means that the embryo is guaranteed to not survive and the person carrying it will die if it the embryo is not removed.

There is a 0% survival rate for an ectopic pregnancy without medical intervention.

Between one third and half of human fertilized eggs do not implant.

They just get washed away with the menstrual blood and the person isn't even aware they were pregnant.

We breathe and eat from the same place (the pharynx), which means it's possible to choke to death.

[annarosestudent]

Hi!

Welcome to my blog!

You can call me anna-rose.

I am currently studying in Scotland at an S5 level, and the subjects I am taking are English, Biology, History, Religion and Philosophy, and Latin, all at Higher level. I hope to go to Oxford to study English, then do a Law conversion degree. The clubs and societies I do are; Politics club, cadets, cello (studying for grade 5, and in my school orchestra), STEM volunteering with the school maths club, ski racing, I'm editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, I volunteer in the school library, I am vice president of the school law society, speech and debate club, Mental Health advice volunteering, badminton, canoeing, hill-walking, rugby coaching, and finally volunteering to help get disabled people involved in sports. It's a busy schedule but I love doing all pf it, and I would love to connect with people on here who share any of these interests.

I'm starting this blog to keep me accountable with my studying habits, because I'm starting studying for my Higher mocks today. I would love mutuals so please any studyblr accounts that see this maybe reblog or give me a follow?

[bookmothic-dyke]

I am moderately unhinged (and mentally ill).

But it’s cool.

I’m hot, and can tell you facts about parasitism and the Catholic pornocracy.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Editor’s Note:

At Reality’s Last Stand, we are deeply committed to fostering free speech, scientific discourse, and intellectual courage—values that are increasingly under siege in today’s polarized climate. It is in this spirit that we are republishing Jerry Coyne’s essay, “Biology is Not Bigotry,” which was originally published on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) website before being abruptly unpublished.

Coyne, an emeritus professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, critically responded to an article by an FFRF intern that argued, “A woman is whoever she says she is.” Despite receiving approval for publication, Coyne’s scientifically grounded critique was unpublished after the FFRF deemed it inconsistent with their values and worried it may cause readers “distress.” Following this decision, both Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins also resigned from the FFRF’s Honorary Board in protest.

By republishing this essay (with the author’s permission), Reality’s Last Stand reaffirms our commitment to upholding rigorous science, free inquiry, and respectful dialogue. Coyne’s essay stands as a critical defense of biology against pseudoscience and as a reminder of the dangers posed by ideological gatekeeping in science and public discourse.

Colin Wright CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Reality’s Last Stand

--

From the Atheists for Liberty Editorial Board:

The following article by Jerry A. Coyne was originally published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Freethought Today. It has since been removed because “it does not reflect our values or principles.” Clearly FFRF’s idea of “Freethought” only includes thoughts aligned with their new Social Justice values. These new values are completely contrary to those which once made it a respectable, nonpartisan organization championing the strict separation of church and state.

After Jerry Coyne’s resignation from FFRF’s Honorary Board, he has kindly authorized us to republish his article in its original uncensored form. His resignation has since been followed by the resignations of Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, men responsible for making atheist organizations like FFRF thrive in the early decades of the 21st century.

As you read Coyne’s words, we at Atheists for Liberty hope you consider what the FFRF found so disagreeable they had to censor this article by a respected professor. Contrary to their stated reasons, FFRF’s actions prove, not that they abide by values and principles, but that they may have never had any in the first place.

--

By: Jerry Coyne

Published: Dec 31, 2024

In the Freethought Now article “What is a woman?” author Kat Grant struggles at length to define the word, rejecting one definition after another as flawed or incomplete. Grant finally settles on a definition based on self-identity: “A woman is whoever she says she is.” This of course is a tautology, and still leaves open the question of what a woman really is. And the remarkable redefinition of a term with a long biological history can be seen only as an attempt to force ideology onto nature. Because some nonbinary people—or men who identify as women (“transwomen”)—feel that their identity is not adequately recognized by biology, they choose to impose ideology onto biology and concoct a new definition of “woman.”

Further, there are plenty of problems with the claim that self-identification maps directly onto empirical reality. You are not always fat if you feel fat (the problem with anorexia), not a horse if you feel you’re a horse (a class of people called “therians” psychologically identify as animals), and do not become Asian simply become you feel Asian (the issue of “transracialism”). But sex, Grant tells us, is different: It is the one biological feature of humans that can be changed solely by psychology.

But why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality. Instead, in biology “sex” is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells (“gametes”). Males have small, mobile gametes (sperm in animals and pollen in plants); females have large, immobile gametes (ova in plants and eggs in animals). In all animals and vascular plants there are exactly two sexes and no more. Though a fair number of plants and a few species of animals combine both functions in a single individual (“hermaphrodites”), these are not a third sex because they produce the typical two gametes.

It’s important to recognize that, although this gametic idea is called a “definition” of sex, it is really a generalization—and thus a concept—based on a vast number of observations of diverse organisms. We know that, except for a few algae and fungi, all multicellular organisms and vertebrates, including us, adhere to this generalization. It is, then, nearly universal.

Besides its universality, the gametic concept has utility, for it is the distinction between gamete types that explains evolutionary phenomena like sexual selection. Differential investment in reproduction accounts for the many differences, both physical and behavioral, between males and females. No other concept of sex has such universality and utility. Attempts to define sex by combining various traits associated with gamete type, like chromosomes, genitalia, hormones, body hair and so on, lead to messy and confusing multivariate models that lack both the universality and explanatory power of the gametic concept.

Yes, there is a tiny fraction of exceptions, including intersex individuals, who defy classification (estimates range between 1/5,600 and 1/20,000). These exceptions to the gametic view are surely interesting, but do not undermine the generality of the sex binary. Nowhere else in biology would deviations this rare undermine a fundamental concept. To illustrate, as many as 1 in 300 people are born with some form of polydactyly—without the normal number of ten fingers. Nevertheless, nobody talks about a “spectrum of digit number.” (It’s important to recognize that only a very few nonbinary and transgender people are “intersex,” for nearly all are biologically male or female.)

In biology, then, a woman can be simply defined in four words: “An adult human female.”

Dismissal of trait-based concepts of sex leads to serious errors and misconceptions. I mention only a few. The biological concept of a woman does not, as Grant argues, depend on whether she can actually produce eggs. Nobody is claiming that postmenopausal females, or those who are sterile or had hysterectomies, are not “women,” for they were born with the reproductive apparatus that evolved to produce eggs. As for chromosomes, having two X chromosomes gives you a very high probability of being a woman, but a rearrangement of genetic information can decouple chromosome constitution from the gametic apparatus.

But the biggest error Grant makes is the repeated conflation of sex, a biological feature, with gender, the sex role one assumes in society. To all intents and purposes, sex is binary, but gender is more spectrum-like, though it still has two camel’s-hump modes around “male” and “female.” While most people enact gender roles associated with their biological sex (those camel humps), an appreciable number of people mix both roles or even reject male and female roles altogether. Grant says that “I play with gender expression” in “ways that vary throughout the day.” Fine, but this does not mean that Grant changes sex from hour to hour.

Under the biological concept of sex, then, it is impossible for humans to change sex—to be truly “transsexual”—for mammals cannot change their means of producing gametes. A more appropriate term is “transgender,” or, for transwomen, “men who identify as women.”

But even here Grant misleads the reader. They argue, for example, that “Transgender people are no more likely to be sexual predators than other individuals.” Yet the facts support the opposite of this claim, at least for transgender women. A cross-comparison of statistics from the U.K. Ministry of Justice and the U.K. Census shows that while almost 20 percent of male prisoners and a maximum of 3 percent of female prisoners have committed sex offenses, at least 41 percent of trans-identifying prisoners were convicted of these crimes. Transgender, then, appear to be twice as likely as natal males and at least 14 times as likely as natal females to be sex offenders. While these data are imperfect because they’re based only on those who are caught, or on some who declare their female gender only after conviction, they suggest that transgender women are far more sexually predatory than biological women and somewhat more predatory than biological men. There are suggestions of similar trends in Scotland, New Zealand, and Australia.

Biological sex affects who and what we are. Let’s look at the contentious area of sports participation. Here’s a summary of the current regulatory situation (from a link that Grant gives):

For the Paris 2024 Olympics, the new guidelines require transgender women to have completed their transition before the age of 12 to be eligible to compete in the women’s category. This rule is intended to prevent any perceived unfair advantages that might arise from undergoing male puberty.

In addition, at least 10 Olympic sports have restricted the participation of transgender athletes. These include sports like athletics, cycling, swimming, rugby, rowing, and boxing.

Completing transition before 12 is virtually unknown (26 American states ban childhood transition), and the International Olympic Committee has now asked each sport to devise its own rules. Further, the presence of “regulation” does not make the problem go away, for many regulations are insufficient to protect female athletes from male athletic advantage. According to a United Nations report on violence against women, “By 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals [to transgender women] in 29 different sports.”

I close with two points. The first is to insist that it is not “transphobic” to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights. Transgender people should surely enjoy all the moral and legal rights of everyone else. But moral and legal rights do not extend to areas in which the “indelible stamp” of sex results in compromising the legal and moral rights of others. Transgender women, for example, should not compete athletically against biological women; should not serve as rape counselors and workers in battered women’s shelters; or, if convicted of a crime, should not be placed in a women’s prison.

Finally, speaking as a member of the FFRF’s honorary board, I worry that the organization’s incursion into gender activism takes it far outside its historically twofold mission: educating the public about nontheism and keeping religion out of government and social policies. Tendentious arguments about the definition of sex are not part of either mission. Although some aspects of gender activism have assumed the worst aspects of religion (dogma, heresy, excommunication, etc.), sex and gender have little to do with theism or the First Amendment. I sincerely hope that the FFRF does not insist on adopting a “progressive” political stance, rationalizing it as part of its battle against “Christian Nationalism.” As a liberal atheist, I am about as far from Christian nationalism as one can get!

Issues of sex and gender cannot and should not be forced into that Procrustean bed. Mission creep has begun to erode other once-respected organizations like the ACLU and SPLC, and I would be distressed if this happened to the FFRF.

--

For reference, here's a link to an archive of the FFRF posting of this article.

==

It's sad that FFRF have turned into an anti-science faith-based cult.

[lenbryant]

Show us your talking snake, and then we’ll show you the talking donkey.

[zephyrrhiesfyrian]

Okay so I'm a biology nerd so I like alien physiology and shit, and Transformers as a franchise has a lot of that, but I'm also a recovering ex-CoC member so the notion that Cybertronians were "designed" by Primus (or in IDW1, just some unknown designer since Primus is literally just a dude) rubs me the wrong way XD

All that to say that generally whenever I write TF stuff, I do so under the headcanon that they evolved just the same as any other race. This is the framework I'm working with for my IDW/TFP longfic, if anyone was curious :D!

I also have a lot of thoughts about the way that Cybertronians work in IDW1, specifically around how their reproduction works! Since they don't reproduce individually (sexually or asexually), they don't really seem to fit into what we'd generally define as a lifeform.

HOWEVER

Cybertron itself is what creates sparks! Meaning that the start of a Cybertronian's life cycle begins with the planet, and that posits the fascinating concept of Cybertron being alive. If this is the case, that makes the Cybertronian race somewhat similar to social animals like ants, bees, and wasps; Cybertron itself is the "queen", which gives birth to all subsequent members of the "colony", which in turn then care for and protect the "queen".

We also see in IDW1 that Titans innately have the ability to cyberform and ignite other planets, which is (at least I believe) how Caminus and similar exoworlds became populated by Cybertronians. This would make Titans the equivalent of young "queens"; parts of the colony or hive that leave to start new ones!

This might also be how Cybertron itself is able to send that "come home" message to all Cybertronians, even those who aren't nearby.

anyway thx for comin to my TED talk, I'll probably do more later ASDFGHJ

(also did you know (i think at least, you're welcome to fact check me >v>;;) almost all ants are female? the males only exist to carry the queen's genes to another colony to reproduce!)

[ask-the-praetors]

Elesh Norn...

If you hate flesh so much, why are you the color of meat and bone?

The material that covers our exalted bodies has been thoroughly reprocessed–that is to say, blessed–by the rites of compleation. As such, it is no longer the sinful, divided meat and bone it once was. Only the spiritually blind assume a resemblance, but all will share the vision before long–even you.

Phyrexia elevates and transforms. What was once the biomatter of an isolated fleshling becomes sanctified with oil and cable, knitting it to the true Whole.

-E