organic

Thank God! ( hahahahahahahahaha ).

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Irish schoolchildren to learn about atheism

Up to 16,000 primary-school pupils in multi-denominational sector will learn about atheism, and others will be offered courses on the internet and smartphone apps

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality is a key text in the first ever atheist curriculum for Irish schoolchildren. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

In a historic move that will cheer Richard Dawkins, lessons aboutatheism are to be taught in Ireland‘s primary schools for the first time.

The lessons on atheism, agnosticism and humanism for thousands of primary-school pupils in Ireland will be drawn up by Atheist Ireland and multi-denominational school provider Educate Together, in an education system that the Catholic church hierarchy has traditionally dominated.

Up to 16,000 primary schoolchildren who attend the fast-growing multi-denominational Irish school sector will receive tuition about atheism as part of their basic introduction course to ethics and belief systems, including other religions.

From September 2014 children could be reading texts such as Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality, his book aimed at children, according to Atheist Ireland.

But Michael Nugent, Atheist Ireland’s co-founder, stressed that all primary-school pupils, including the 93% of the population who attend schools run by the Catholic church, can access their atheism course on the internet and by downloading an app on smartphones. He said these would be advertised and offered to all parents with children at primary schools in the state.

“There will be a module of 10 classes of between 30 to 40 minutes from the ages of four upwards. It is necessary because the Irish education system has for too long been totally biased in favour of religious indoctrination. And if parents whose kids are in schools under church control want to opt their kids out of learning religion (as is their right these days) then they can use our course as an alternative for their children to study,” he said.

Nugent added: “Religion isn’t even taught properly as an objective subject with various religions and their origins examined and explained. The teaching is to create faith formation first, not objective education. We see our course as a chance for young Irish children to get an alternative view on how the world works.”

Jane Donnelly, a member of Atheist Ireland and a parent of two children in an Irish secondary school, welcomed the creation of an atheism alternative for Irish pupils.

“I opted my two girls out of religious education classes and they were told to go to the library and find a philosophy book to read during RE instead. The range of philosophy books was very limited so I sent them into school each day with a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion for them to read.”

Religion, education and the Irish Republic

• God is omnipresent in the 1937 Irish constitution, with article 6.1 stating: “All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people”; and article 44.1 noting: “The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.”

• Since the foundation of the republic, the Catholic church controls up to 93% of the state’s 3,200 primary schools.

• The Catholic church’s near monopoly of influence in education means that the ultimate power in each school is the local Catholic bishop.

• In Dublin the city’s archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, is patron of about 470 primary schools. He is responsible for the management of the ethos of those schools, for senior appointments and is the one who can be sued when legal action takes place.

• The Irish taxpayer, and not the church, pays the bills for all the schools the hierarchy controls.

• The Irish education minister, Ruairi Quinn, has promised “the most radical change in primary education in Ireland since the state was founded in the 1920s” by taking the power of the church from running almost all schools in the state and putting it into the hands of elected governors. So far his reforms have not begun in earnest.

• This article was amended on 27 September 2013 to clarify that pupils in multi-denominational schools will learn about atheism as part of the wider curriculum covering ethics, beliefs and religion. Atheists will not be teaching children that God does not exist, as originally stated, rather, children will be educated about atheism, including the atheist belief that God does not exist.

 

GMO and corporate farming.

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I’m not trying to go overboard on the organic food thing, but I saw a few documentaries that I researched for factual evidence and was shocked at what I found. I already knew that mussels and shrimp from Asia were processed in unsanitary conditions, but why had I EVER expected them to observe any sort of standard on other exports of goods? The truth is is that our best trading partner, China, is poisoning us with food raised on animal feces and that is polluted with other deadly chemicals. 

Atheists value reason and logic and should examine all things with these standards. We are supposed to be a cut above the lemming populace, but by ignoring what is put in the body, people reduce themselves to followers of the status quo. As forward thinkers we are supposed to question everything and do research that others are afraid to do to. Food is just one part of that. Please use these articles to make informed decisions and continue to press the Fed to properly label food. Remember, you are what you eat and if what you eat is full of shit then… well you have it!

Aside

Giant livestock farms that are known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs house thousands of cows, chickens or pigs and produce staggering amounts of animal manure. The way these wastes are stored and used has profound effects on human health and the environment.

A giant factory farm in North Carolina

A giant factory farm in North Carolina; the brown rectangle at left is a waste lagoon.

On most factory farms, animals are crowded into relatively small areas; their manure and urine are funneled into massive waste lagoons. These cesspools often break, leak or overflow, sending dangerous microbes, nitrate pollution and drug-resistant bacteria into water supplies. Factory-farm lagoons also emit toxic gases such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and methane. What’s more, the farms often spray the manure onto land, ostensibly as fertilizer — these “sprayfields” bring still more of these harmful substances into our air and water.

Yet in spite of the huge amounts of animal wastes that factory farms produce, they have largely escaped pollution regulations; loopholes in the law and weak enforcement share the blame. NRDC has fought, and won, a number of courtroom battles over the years to force the federal government to deal with the problem of factory farms, but more protections are needed to adequately protect public health and the environment from CAFO pollution.

Threats to Human Health

People who live near or work at factory farms breathe in hundreds of gases, which are formed as manure decomposes. The stench can be unbearable, but worse still, the gases contain many harmful chemicals. For instance, one gas released by the lagoons, hydrogen sulfide, is dangerous even at low levels. Its effects — which are irreversible — range from sore throat to seizures, comas and even death. Other health effects associated with the gases from factory farms include headaches, shortness of breath, wheezing, excessive coughing and diarrhea.

Animal waste also contaminates drinking water supplies. For example, nitrates often seep from lagoons and sprayfields into groundwater. Drinking water contaminated with nitrates can increase the risk of blue baby syndrome, which can cause deaths in infants. High levels of nitrates in drinking water near hog factories have also been linked to spontaneous abortions. Several disease outbreaks related to drinking water have been traced to bacteria and viruses from waste.

On top of this, the widespread use of antibiotics also poses dangers. Large-scale animal factories often give animals antibiotics to promote growth, or to compensate for illness resulting from crowded conditions. These antibiotics are entering the environment and the food chain, contributing to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and making it harder to treat human diseases.

Threats to the Natural Environment

LAGOONS AND SPRAYFIELDS

Some people hear the word “lagoon” and picture blue water, surrounded by palm trees, perhaps, or with mountains in the background. A visit to a factory farm would quickly erase this beautiful image from their minds.

At factory farms, “lagoon” means an open-air pit filled with urine and manure. Lotsof urine and manure — some lagoons are larger than seven acres and contain as much as 20 to 45 million gallons of wastewater. The waste is collected with scrapers, flushing systems, or gravity flow gutters, and then stored in lagoons. Opportunities for disaster abound. The lagoons can leak or rupture, for instance, or they can be filled too high and overflow after a rain. But even if none of these problems occur, the lagoons still release gases. Their horrible stench and toxic chemicals harm workers and nearby residents.

Sprayfields are yet another threat. Manure is periodically pumped out of lagoons and sprayed on fields. Although manure can be an excellent fertilizer when it is applied at rates that crops can absorb, it must be safely — and sensibly — applied. But factory farms produce far more manure than their land requires, and they often overapply it to fields as a way to get rid of it, causing it to run off the fields and into rivers and streams. Farmers may also spray when it is rainy or windy, or with little regard for adjacent property. In addition, the act of spraying wastes increases evaporation and vaporization of pollutants.

The natural environment also suffers in many ways from factory-farming practices. Sometimes the damage is sudden and catastrophic, as when a ruptured lagoon causes a massive fish kill. At other times, it is cumulative — for example, when manure is repeatedly overapplied, it runs off the land and accumulates as nutrient pollution in waterways.

Either way, the effects are severe. For instance, water quality across the country is threatened by phosphorus and nitrogen, two nutrients present in animal wastes. In excessive amounts, nutrients often cause an explosion of algae that robs water of oxygen, killing aquatic life. One toxic microorganism, Pfiesteria piscicida, has been implicated in the death of more than one billion fish in coastal waters in North Carolina.

Manure can also contain traces of salt and heavy metals, which can end up in bodies of water and accumulate in the sediment, concentrating as they move up the food chain. And lagoons not only pollute groundwater; they also deplete it. Many factory farms use groundwater for cleaning, cooling and providing drinking water.

Better Alternatives Exist

Practical remedies to these problems do exist. But implementing them will require some important changes in factory farm practices and government oversight:

  • Regulation and accountability. Factory farms are industrial facilities and should be regulated accordingly. They must obtain permits, monitor water quality and pay for cleaning up and disposing their wastes.
  • Increased transparency. The public should know where CAFOs are located, how CAFOs in their neighborhoods dispose of their waste, and what waterbodies or drinking water sources may be at risk. There is not currently a comprehensive database of this critical information, which should be collected and made publicly available.
  • Public awareness and participation. Local governments and residents must have a say in whether to allow factory farms in their communities. The public is also entitled to review and comment on the contents of pollution reduction plans and to enforce the terms, where a factory farm is in violation.
  • New technology. Factory-farm technology standards must be strengthened. The EPA must consider recent technology advances that significantly reduce pathogens.
  • Alternative farming practices. States and the federal government should promote methods of raising livestock that reduce the concentration of animals and use manure safely. Many alternative methods exist; they rely on keeping animal waste drier, which limits problems with spills, runoff and air pollution.
  • Pollution-reduction programs for small feedlots.Voluntary programs must be expanded to encourage smaller factory farms, which fall outside of the regulations for industrial facilities, to improve their management practices and take advantage of available technical assistance and other resources.
  • Consumer pressure. Individuals can help stop factory farm pollution by supporting livestock farms that use sustainable practices. In the grocery store, this means checking meat labels for “organic,” “free range,” “antibiotic-free,” or similar wording, which indicates meat raised in a more sustainable manner. Many sustainable livestock farms also sell directly to consumers or through local farmers’ markets.

    Two extremely useful tools that will help you use your buying power to support alternatives to food from factory farms are the Eat Well Guide and Sustainable Table.

RELATED NRDC WEBPAGES:

NRDC Report: Cesspools of Shame

How factory farm lagoons and sprayfields threaten environmental and public health.

RELATED WEBSITES:

GRACE Factory Farm Project

Updates on animal agriculture issues and efforts to replace factory farms; good links

Waterkeeper Alliance: Pure Farms, Pure Waters

Information on Waterkeeper’s campaign against factory farms.

Scorecard’s Animal Waste Pollution Locator

Lets you look at the amount of animal waste produced in your state and the trends over time; good links as well

Sierra Club: Clean Water & Factory Farms

News, reports and fact sheets from the Sierra Club’s campaign

The U.S. EPA’s Animal Feeding Operations Page

Information on Clean Water Act permitting and factory farms

Home brew and organic food!

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Hey there blog folks! I will be expanding my topics to include organic food and farming practices and home brewing. I’m doing this because I believe, as an atheist, that reason and logic always includes truth and sensibility as well as social responsibility, so I will include those things that I think are totally relevant to the cause! As my readers know, I hate Monsanto and it’s poisonous subsidiaries with a passion because they are trying to sell us on their fucking poison as if it were mannah from heaven,( which we know is bullshit because mannah and heaven are myths ). 

I feel as a responsible person of non-religious belief, ( thats what they are calling fucking godless heathens these days ), that I must pass on the knowledge that I receive from other free-thinkers to better the lives of other sensible, logical people in an effort to not only tell the truth, but expand the knowledge base of open minded people. I brew organic beer and am starting an organic garden as well. I will be hunting deer, elk and pheasant for free-range wild meat and purchasing locally butchered and grown meats as well. Atheists are smart. They know that they are what they eat so they will listen and learn. My topics are only for the open, non-deluded mind, so they should be received by my community very openly. 

So get drunk and gorge on free-range food! We will all dance naked around the campfire stoking it with Gideons bibles that we have stolen from motel rooms! The only thing that those bibles are good for is rolling papers anyway! Have a good day and I will be back bashing welfare assholes, the 700 Club and that light bulb headed son of a bitch thats trying to lead us into war and bankruptcy! Wake up America! Your politicians are selling you out as you watch Honey Boo Boo and the Kartrashians! Did you see Kim’s new purse? Kanye bought it for her as an ‘I’m fucking you in the ass later tonite’ present! 

Hey, check out the documentary Fresh and Food Inc. These are a real eye opener into the trash that we are being fed today! Open your mind Mr. Quaid! I’m hangin’ offa yer belly for a reason! Peace out, I’m going back to my corner to hold my ‘will work for food’ sign so that I can make a living without paying taxes EVER!

No problemo asshole!

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The title is a T2 reference for those who are NOT geeks! I have a great task before me to create videos on my Youtube station that aren’t blatantly offensive. I am aware that most deists would not afford atheists that kind of slack, but I am not them! I am an atheist trying to appeal to atheists! I want people who are considering leaving the bondage of the church to see my opinions as not just another christian-like attack on something not understood, but a glance into logic and reason! Evidence presented in an understandable format has all of the power in an aguement for the belief in myth and foolishness! Well presented evidence and logical arguement will always win an open mind to common sense. Do I say that religion is NOT poison and should NOT be eradicated? NO! I believe that a world without religion is a world of forward-thinking people with their thoughts firmly planted in the future of sense and reality!

The idiots of Benny Hinn and that asshole Osteen are in need of a wake-up call because they are relying on their cult leaders to guide their life in the name of a god that the cult-leading asswipe doesn’t even believe in! Those tele-assholes don’t believe in the Bronze-Age shit that they are peddling to the lemmings in the audience, they are laughing all the way to the spiritual Fuck-You Bank! A fatter christian wallet means another Mercedes Benz for religious leaders!

I will warn all who blog here that I do NOT want anyone to visit who will be insulted and just leave. If you are insulted but have a seed of doubt planted because of the evidence against ALL religion presented then come on back! Most religion is easily debunked because it has NO CONCRETE EVIDENCE and relies on the lemming-brain of the common human being to believe in hokey ancient fairy tales! So, if you want reason and enlightenment then come on down! If you want snake oil and complete bullshit, then listen to your pastor!

Please take a minute to consider what is here. I don’t do this to help myself, I do it to help others to logic and reason! We need people to stop living vicariously thru the Kartrashians and take charge of their own lives individually! Lemmings listen to a pastor, free-thinkers listen to evidence! Faith is just a word to fool smart people into deciding foolishly!