What if you were asked to pray by someone dying?

On facebook's page for the Greek Atheists and Agnostics someone asked the following question:

If someone who is dying, asked you to pray with him would you do it? 

A whole lot of people answered, and there was a debate going because I was one of the few people who answered that I would have said NO. It does seem to be cruel and unkind, but it's not. Not at all. Let me elaborate on this point.

I am an atheist. I do not believe in any god(s) and I will never accept such fantasies without some kind of scientific evidence. Most of my friends and relatives know of my atheism. Those who don't, is just because the subject has not been discussed. However, everyone knows that I will not go to church unless it is for a wedding, or a baptism, or a funeral. And those have to be about people that I am close to. Otherwise, I will not go to any wedding for a relative that I see once or twice per year. I dislike orthodox church hymns to the point of hatred.

So my answer, was no, I would not pray with anyone and for any reason. Not even if that person were dying. I am an atheist, and proud to be one. I do not change my practices and become hypocritical because someone is dying. That would be betraying myself firstly and my lack of beliefs, and being dishonest and a hypocrite towards the dying person. If it were me the dying person, I would prefer truth and honesty from people. So, it is not just about me and my lack of beliefs, but it also is about being honest and truthful to someone else.

Prayer is also supposed to be addressed to someone or something one holds to be a deity. Who would I even trying to pray to? And how can I even utter some phrases and be serious, when faith itself is ridiculous to me? Some people said, to pretend. But I cannot pretend to pray to someone/something I don't believe in. It would be insulting both to the dying person and to myself.

Another thing to note, is that I do not know any prayers. I just know the first couple of lines of one prayer. I stopped praying when I was a little girl, and never looked back. I did try and ask for some favours as everybody else has done, but those prayers were never answered, as is usual. People said to ask him what that person wants me to say. True, that could work, but the other problems remain.

What I could do though, is tell that person the truth. Tell him/her that I do not believe, that I am an atheist, and thus it would be dishonest of me to suddenly pray. It would be hypocritical and insulting for both of us. But, I would add, that I can stay silent and listen to that person praying. I would not mock or ridicule a dying man, and if his/her praying provides some comfort, I would not take it away.

What would you do in that case? Would you pray or not?

Talking internet ads.

There is nothing worse than advertising in internet pages. I never click those links at all. But what is worse are the ones with sound. WTF? Why do I have to close my speakers because some idiot decided that advertising with sound on the net is cool? Well, let me tell you a secret, people. It's not. I hate it. I don't want to listen to some idiot selling me stuff or telling me to answer a few simple questions so I can win a prize.

Please stop the internet banners with sound. There is nothing more annoying than trying to surf the web, and maybe someone has put some music on, and suddenly, hear someone selling whatever.

Stop the internet adverts with sound. As if the normal ones weren't bad enough.

Online classes

At work today, just an ordinary day. Every day we get about 5 to 15 calls per day, from companies and people promoting their products and services. And of course, today was not different in number of calls. However, there is one call which stood out.

I answer the phone, and there is a woman's voice on the other end of the line, saying "Hello". So, I say Hello as well. The woman continues in atrocious English, or rather in a language that tried to sound and resemble English. Anyway, she said that she was calling from Spain or Pakistan... (yes, her language skills were that atrocious.) And what does she sell?

Online Qu'ran classes!

I am not joking. Anyway, I answered her thus: "No, thank you. I do not believe in god, allah or any of that other shit. Good bye." The woman managed to say "bye" before I hang up the phone.

And seriously, I do not know whether to laugh or cry at the above...

Scienceblogs on FIRE!

With the PepsiCo incident, Scienceblogs lost a number of good science bloggers, and it is still losing a lot of people. And now, my favorite Scienceblog, Pharyngula is on strike.

My opinion on the PepsiCo incident is that it was a huge blunder by Seed Media. There was a conflict of interest between the scientists-bloggers and PepsiCo. What if a blogger wrote something against PepsiCo? What if someone took a post of PepsiCo's and showed how flawed it was? Would that have been okay? Or would have the management of Seed Media silenced the scientists because of the big money PepsiCo was handing over?

PZ Myers was saying that he does not want to leave Scienceblogs. He has a lot of effort invested in SB, and that he did not want to move his huge blog. But, because of the way the scientists-bloggers are treated, he is on strike. No more Pharyngula for now, and it is a huge pity. A huge loss for Scienceblogs and the Seed Media.

I hope they wake up, and address the problems. Losing bloggers like that, and good bloggers on top, is not going to help Scienceblogs; in fact, they are already losing credibility in the blogosphere, and the internet in general. WAKE UP SEED MEDIA.

I want my favorite bloggers back. I am not going to read anything on Scienceblogs, anymore, until the situation is resolved. And many people will probably do the same. I want Pharyngula back...

Spam, and more Spam: from blogs to Nigerian scams

I've had some problems lately with spam comments in this blog. I must have deleted up to 10-15 comments at least in the past 2 weeks. Every now and then I get an e-mail in my inbox, and there it is: the spam message in chinese, with every kind of spamming links, from pr0n (as it is the word in the intertubez) to selling I don't know what.

If there is one thing I dislike, in general, from my mailbox to the forums I frequent to the blogs is spam. I understand that people want to advertise their product, and that they want to sell; but spamming sites and blogs is not the answer. Nowadays, there are ways of getting rid of spam, that is very effective.

For example, mail programs have spam rules, and put various spam messages into the Junk or Spam inbox. They don't always get it right, but they do at least 9 times out of 10. I do check my junk mail to see if there has been an error at times. For example, this morning one of the messages from ESA got into the junk mail, and I just redirected it to the normal inbox.

There is also the kind of spammer who is looking for victims; like the Nigerian scams, or the bank e-mails. If you point (without clicking) on to one of the links in the scam bank e-mails, you will see that those links re-direct to a different web address than the one you see on your screen. This is done in order to make you think that you are linking towards the bank's website, while, in reality, you get re-directed to a site where your username and password as well as other details can be keylogged and used by fraudsters.

As for the Nigerian scams, I had found once a little book with some of the most famous Nigerian scams around. I have regretted not buying it at the time; it must have been more than 6-7 years ago though. Nigerian scams have been here almost since the time of faxes; I have gotten a number of those letters by fax in the company. Maybe they have been around even longer, and the first ones were by snail mail? I don't know, but it might not be so far-fetched.

After all there are a lot of gullible people in the world, ready to believe anyone and anything.