I never met my father. He never writes or calls me. He was not even there when I was born.

My neighbors keep saying that my father loves me, although they never met him either.

I read that if I obey what people say he wants, he will reward me by moving in with him at some point and finally meeting him.

If I don’t obey, some of his helpers will bring me in the basement of his mansion and torture me forever.

I apparently have a choice: obey or be tortured forever.

The catch is that I can never have a straight and simple answer on what it means to obey my father. The book people say was written or dictated by my father has 613 rules. Some rules forbid me to have bad thoughts to any degree; some other pertain to not mixing some types of fabrics. Some people say it has 10 main rules, which I see people break all the time.

According to my father’s book, if I break some of those rules, my neighbors have to kill me.

Those rules don’t mention that I have to be 18 to be killed. This means a baby who break some of those rules has to be killed too.

What kind of father would torture his children or order people to kill them if they break even the silliest of rules?

I must be a different kind of father because I never thought about stoning or torturing my children…

The Smilites were Norse barbarians who invaded Europe in the 3rd century AD.

Contrary to other hordes of barbarians, the Smilites were polite, well kept and very helpful to the local populations. They were known to repaint houses, maintain gardens, babysit children, groom pets and renovate public buildings. They also had great signing voices and were able to knit at an incredible speed.

A few weeks after they had invaded a town, the streets were spotless, people were happier and their children had more toys.

Unfortunately, history remembers only the bad barbarians…

Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) always placed human life separate from other life on Earth.

When we look at how humans are made, it is obvious we are not separate at all from other lifeforms nor we are separate from the planet we live in.

99% of the mass of the human body is made up of just six elements: Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, and Phosphorus. The rest is composed of elements such as Potassium, Sulfur and Sodium. We can find all the elements we’re made of in our environment, here on Earth.

All those elements are held together by the same atomic forces we see in the rest of the physical world.

Our physiology, chemistry and even behavior is consistent with the other animal lifeforms on Earth. We have the same skeletal, digestive, muscular, cardiovascular, nervous and reproductive system as apes, for example. Most of our DNA is the same as most other animal species on Earth.

If we would have been magically created fully formed, we could expect to function under unique principles. Why would we need organs to convert food into energy? Why would we have vestigial organs? Why would we need neurons to think and memorize things? If we came from the realm of magic, why can’t we see a single trace of magic around us?

To realize that we are part of the natural world on all levels can actually be quite comforting. It confirms that we do belong right here, on Earth.

Why do US blockbuster movies seem so bad these days?

Our team of 20,001 seasoned investigative journalists uncovered the reason: they are written automatically by a software.

ScriptMaster 5000 Pro combines words to create a master idea, picks a setting in random, with more weight given to popular landmarks in the United States, such as Time Square and Madison Square Garden. By randomly combining plot elements from older movies and headlines of the past year of popular newspaper, the software then develops the intrigue. It makes sure it has the proper dosage of cliche comedic scenes, non-lethal car chases, and superficial drama.

When the actors are picked using a auto-casting popularity algorithm, it then generates the poster using the 2 main characters, sends it to the printer and to all affiliate movie theaters though the automated distribution agent.