The Icy Cold Hand of Evolution is Reaching For You

It's Darwin's 200th birthday and that is as good an excuse as any to engage in soap-boxery. Atheists are using this day to publicly make a spectacle. Though when it comes to making an ass of yourself in front of the media the Freedom From Religion Foundation just doesn't have the flair of PETA. If only there was some way to combine public nudity with atheism. We need to see some hot atheist ass. I am publicly calling for an "Emperor has no clothes" parade in Madison, WI. It will start at the capitol and end in my "evolution research lab."

I discussed previously that the public debate over Evolution does not actually regard any scientific discussion. The Christian zealots are using this as a way of publicly challenging the faith of other Christians out there basically saying you will go to hell if you believe in science. Using the fear they have used since the beginning for recruiting. Even the British cling to religious posturing in their ignorance rather than trust the people who dedicate their lives to careful study of the natural world. Which is exactly what this is about. Making highly educated people who have dedicated their lives to rigorous study into purveyors of a competing ideology. Reducing science to mere faith and turning scientists into servants of the devil. Christians know well how to turn mundane decisions into matters of eternal moral significance and normal people into sinners and the enemy. Creationism is an ideology of ignorance and hate.

Evamaloutions

I think the real issue is not clearly explained in debates over creationism. In discussion over changes to curriculum it becomes apparent that what is being debated is the position of science in our society and the deference due to science in examination of nature. I don't think that the scriptural interpretive preference of an obnoxiously vocal minority should have any bearing on how we regard the statements of experts on matters of fact. The point is not that fundamentalist Christians are trying to hijack our culture through the indoctrinating power of the already failing public school system, but that they intentionally avoid narrowing the issue or focusing on details because this is a discussion they loose as soon as rationality prevails.

In case you were wondering this post was not provoked by anything in particular but is tangentially related to the posts this week regarding stumbling upon websites anthropomorphizing of animals and showing that the efforts by religious fanatics to destroy science is not restricted to right wing Christian maniacs.

Posted from a Palm Treo mobile device.

Speaking of Religious Zealotry

Isn't there something in the Bible about graven images? One of those "commandment" thingys the fundamentalist religious fanatics keep trying to force onto public land?

Prop. 8

I am not a citizen of California, so I have not been following the news surrounding Prop. 8. I don't even know the technical wording of what it does. I recently read this article, and it reminded me of something I have tried to address in previous postings. The idea that there can be a status equivalent to marriage for homosexuals that simply uses a different word. I have explained before that separate is not equal and that there are technical differences in the law that would be difficult to account for in creating a parallel civil institution.

I would like to try to address the underlying argument that if homosexuals are allowed to marry it somehow damages the sacred unions of heterosexual marriage. To me this seems like saying that every time I have a bacon cheeseburger, it harms every Jew that keeps kosher. Sure they might feel left out at a BBQ, but bacon is still delicious. OK, so the analogy needs work. I have yet to hear any reasoned argument behind the bare assertion, other than a veiled suggestion that the purpose of marriage is to produce future taxpayers. That upsets me as a Libertarian, but as a moral human being this concept throws me into a foaming rage that a human child is being valued only as a walking wallet. I think it shows that these people who claim to be for morality and the family are really the most cynical and selfish, if you only press them beyond their memorized talking points.

Personally I find it hard to argue with Mormons on the issue of family because they have such a strong family ethos and make it a central tenant of their religion. My bone of contention with them is that their conception of "family" is so narrow, it excludes and even rejects some of the diversity on Earth and in society that must be a part of God's plan. A faith that has a de facto exclusion of the childless and infertile, and an outright hostility to homosexual families seems to me to be directly rejecting the spark of divinity inherent in every part of God's Creation.

Life Lessons and Vice Presidential Candidates

As a child, I learned two lessons about the adult world almost as soon as I was able to tell right from wrong. That the authority granted to adults and supposed authority figures most often is not granted because they are moral or even responsible people and is usually a coincidence arising from their career, rather than given to them through any legitimate means. Second, I learned that most people are not deserving of respect (beyond that due every human) until they prove otherwise. Since I learned those lessons at Catholic school, it took me a while to separate my problem with authority from my perception of all Christians as hypocrites. If you have read some of my other posts on this blog you will notice that I still have that perception of Christians.

Christian hypocrisy is a good transition into discussing the issues surrounding the pregnancy of Sarah Palins unwed teenage daughter. Anti-abortion types will see this as not being hypocritical since Bristol, Palins daughter, will be keeping the child. This is itself a red herring and the hypocrisy I wish to discuss because it ignores the anti-contraception and anti-sexed positions that are associated with an anti-abortion and which Gov. Palin has herself expressed. A friend of mine observed today that you can't treat teen sex like the Easter bunny and decide not to believe in it because it does happen and has profound consequences. Many of those consequences will not be felt by Bristol and her child(eren) because of the financial status of her family. Sadly this is not the case for most unwed teenage mothers. Teen pregnancy is almost a guarantee that the mother and new child will live out their lives in poverty according to the CDC. It is easy to be anti-abortion when you have a safety net. Yet the Bush administration, right wing Christians, and other people with nothing personally at stake continue to push for abstinance only sex education, which has been shown to do nothing to reduce premarital sex or teen pregnancy. At the same time, Jamie Lynn Spears is on a publicity romp, glorifying teen pregnancy. To get back to the accusations of hypocrisy, Sarah Palin has advocated abstinence only sex ed while claiming to be anti-abortion, which is consistent until you notice her unwed teenage daughters pregnancy and have to question Palins parenting.

So while she is telling the rest of the nations women what is right for them she is either not practicing what she preaches or she is ironically suffering the consequences of the polices she supports, but not really suffering from them the same way every one else will. At the same time the Republicans are decrying all the public attention this is getting because its prying into a personal family matter and shouldn't be public, which is hypocritical because of the way in which the very same Republicans dug into the personal sexual lives of the Clintons during the Monica Lewinski scandal.

I applaud Sarah Palin for supporting her daughters choice to become pregnant and to keep her child. (Remember there is always adoption.) I just hope it can be a learning experience for her about the failings of abstinence only sex education even though it will not open her eyes to the deep personal consequences it has for far too many American girls and the resulting social costs to U.S. taxpayers.

The Walk of Shame; Only 115 Shopping Days Left

Today is Labor Day, the Sunday night of all summer. Its still warm out but kids are back in school and the leaves will soon start to turn. That doesn't stop main street from thinking about the big sales figures it draws in for the Christmas season. Especially given the struggling U.S. economy. All summer long they groan in board rooms about slagging sales and strain their little MBA minds to come up with something original and every year the answer is to try to make the holiday season as long as possible.



This is all shit you have heard before. I am just here to vent my rage at seeing Halloween advertisements and sales on fucking Labor Day. All year long I wonder to my self why I have an irrational hatred for corporations despite being "libertarian" and then this shit happens and my rage boils up and I don't have a memory problem any more.

Look at that shit! Discount Halloween candy? That shit won't make it till the end of the month even if you don't eat it. But who fucking cares about that, you are giving it to other peoples kids. Why should you bother to have candy that isn't filled with moth larva after sitting in your kitchen for two months?

The Walk of Shame

A conservative, pro-life congressional candidate, knocked up his girlfriend, said he didnt want the baby and then paid for her abortion. I can has hypocracy?

Polygamy, Marriage, Religion, Freedom

Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere
with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one
believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would
it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could
not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was
her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be
beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into
practice?

Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 166 (U.S. 1878) This quote does an excelent job of outlining the freedom of religion. What freedom it does guranty and what freedoms it does not. It is explained generally enough to cover almost any situation where someone tries to raise religious belief to justify some crime they have committed. More than that, it actually gives a moral outline so rare in the law. That a religious belief does not excuse a wrong act, is an excelent precept with which to weed out those that believe that God will excuse their sins if only they belive correctly.

The above quote also informs people where their right to believe as they please ends and the rights of others begins. You can believe abortion is wrong, but you cannot stop women from having them. You can believe vaccinations are against the commands of God but you cannot keep them from your children. You can believe creationism, but you cannot teach it in schools.

However that line of reasoning is used below to justify the government meddeling in marriage.

From that day to this we think it may safely be said there never has been a time
in any State of the Union when polygamy has not been an offence against society,
cognizable by the civil courts and punishable with more or less severity. In the
face of all this evidence, it is impossible to believe that the
constitutional guaranty of religious freedom was intended to prohibit
legislation in respect to this most important feature of social life. Marriage,
while from its very nature a sacred obligation, is nevertheless, in most
civilized nations, a civil contract, and usually regulated by law. Upon it
society may be said to be built, and out of its fruits spring social relations
and social obligations and duties, with which government is necessarily required
to deal. In fact, according as monogamous or polygamous marriages are allowed,
do we find the principles on which the government of the people, to a
greater or less extent, rests. Professor Lieber says, polygamy leads to the
patriarchal principle, and which, when applied to large communities, fetters the
people in stationary despotism, while that principle cannot long exist in
connection with monogamy. Chancellor Kent observes that this remark is qually
striking and profound. 2 Kent, Com. 81, note (e). An exceptional colony of
polygamists under an exceptional leadership may sometimes exist for a time
without appearing to disturb the social condition of the people who surround it;
but there cannot be a doubt that, unless restricted by some form of
HN21constitution, it is within the legitimate scope of the power of every civil
government to determine whether polygamy or monogamy shall be the law of social
life under its dominion.

Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 165-166 (U.S. 1878) Why? Why does the government get to fuck around with my marriage? Why did I have to go pay some beureaucrat to file some paperwork so that I can go to a state approved church to solmenize the commitment I have made with my wife? Because marrage is the foundation of the state? Fuck you! All that is saying is that the state and all the members of the society demand a benefit from my love for my wife and that I pay for them to have the priviledge.

All that is said when someone says that marriage is the foundation of society is that they want the benefit of your children. The benefit that more productive members of society bring. Fuck you! You have no right to demand that my marriage be of any value to you. Even in a capatilist society where each of your fingers has a dollar value attached to it the value of my future children cannot be demanded by you for no compensation.

If you want control of marriage you owe me. You owe me for the increased efficiency of a two person household. You owe me at least the cost of producing the children you will benefit from. Not only that you owe me the value their future labors will bring to society and the taxes they will pay. The cost of raising a child to adulthood is huge but only a fraction of what that person puts back into society. That value is increased tremendously if that child moves on to higher education. You have no right to demand that value and the control over my life to get it.

You have no right to meddle in my spiritual ritual and put restrictions on whom I can have to officiate the ceremony of my marriage. Every person has the same connection to the devine as each other. We all had the breath of life put in us by the creator and none of us has any more or less than our neighbors. No schooling, licence, building, location, costume, or ritual can increase or decrease that, nothing. Yet there are judges that have invalidated peoples marriages because they did not like the manner in which the person officiating the ceremony obtained the title of "minister." This is just the state insuring the continued existance of the professional clergy.

I hate that there is legal effect to the state's yoke of control over love. I hate that I could not stand up for my beliefs and refuse to register my marriage because it would send a terrible message to my wife that there was something deficient about our love.

That said, I don't give two shits about polygamy or gay marriage.

Even if I agree with the Supreme Court's rationale that polygamy fosters patriarchy and totalitarianism, it does not justify the state sticking its fingers into the exercise of faith. Back to the thought I started with. There must be some limit to the distinction between belief and action because faith is meaningless if one cannot act on ones beliefs. Clearly there must be limits, but cutting off all action leaves faith as a mute quadrapalegic.

I don't know where I would place the marker. Ideally the law would reflect morality but it does not and not all things that are wrong are illegal and not all things that are illegal are wrong. As a libertarian I want to say that ones right to act on ones beliefs ends when they interfere with the rights of another but that can be a sticky area to hash out. Harm can be a good way to solve that problem. When an act of one person harms another can be a good place to say their rights have ended but that is still far too broad and vague. How do you define harm? And so forth. It might be glib to end this way, and all of this falls below the standard of legal reasoning, but it is pretty easy to detect the harm eminating from Warren Jeffs' brand of polygamy.

The Walk of Shame

There is a set of common arguments that have as their basis the assumption that morality flows from religion. Any athiest will tell you how foolish this is. One need only look to history to learn the lession that people are terrible regardless of what God they kneel to or whether they believe or not. Something that is frequently overlooked is just how dangerous it is to have faith in religion or the law to make people treat each other well. If someone is not killing you or raping you or not robbing you because they are afraid of God or jail then that person is actually evil. Not only evil but an evil coward.

All that crap was to introduce this article about an accused child molesting pastor.

The Walk Of Shame

Bwa ha ha ha!

The worst part about this is the community that thinks these forced marriages are a great idea.

Money! Corrupting religion? Inconceveable!

Alleged police misconduct. To put it lightly.

Exxon.

The Walk of Shame

Thats right, two walk of shame columns in one weekend! By the decree of the Invisible pink unicorn. Another school board, motivated by the public opinion of ignorant savages, trys to plant the seed of doubt about evolution in the minds of the children they are supposed to be educating. Remember, the people pushing creationism on schools believe they are fighting a war. They may seem like crazy hillbillys to rational people, but they are willing to kill and die to spread their ignorance and hate.

This is more fuel for the argument that K-12 education is really just federally funded babysitting. Coupled with the blind hope that some of the little crotchfruits will be active participants and the society on the whole will reap the benefit of a few productive workers. I really wonder about what effect Ron Paul style, privitized education would have on America. Does anyone else hear Pink Floyd's "The Wall" playing?

Whats The Point?

This is what happens when you have theocratic elements in your government. An important fact to understand this story better; the Archbishop of Canturberry has a seat in parliment.

Genital Mutilation

Court battles are being fought to end the heinous practice of carving up the dicks of baby's for aesthetic purposes. Unfortunately as long as stories like this are relegated to "odd news" little progress will be made. I ask you again, where is the outrage? How can we as a society allow unnecessary surgery that is intended to cripple people's sexual function. What insane justification can be the basis of this practice? The answer is the label for this post.

The Walk of Shame

The Germans have a word for when one enjoys the shame of others. Can't think of what that word is though. Anyway here is another story about an evangilitical gay hater who is gay.

Also, don't just do an image search for "gay." Unless you want to see lots of bald men with cock in their mouths.

The Walk Of Shame

Again, a conservative politician turns up violating the same morality he crams down other peoples throats. Did you ever notice, its the people who don't go around making a big deal about sexual ethics, that are the most moral?

More Substantive Commintary

Sen. John McCain won the Republican primary in South Carolina on Saturday, and Ron Paul placed second in Nevada and I couldn't be happier. I sincerely wish McCain had won the presidency in 2000, because I believe the world would be a better place now. McCain would have had the appropriate responce to 9/11 and he may even have had the wits to stop it but we can never know now. We just have to live with the effects of Rove's wicked campaigning where he was able to paint real American war heros like McCain and Kerry as cowards in compairison to a drunk driving, draft dodger. (better than G.I.Joe)

McCain and Paul are the kind of Republicans I could vote for. There are people who are disappointed with their conservative credentials on the right but these are the kind of maniacs that voted for Huckabee. They put enforcing their religious beliefs on other people over, freedom, fiscal responsability, integrity, security, and sound defence policy. In my book those are the things that make someone a Republican, not the desperate need to carve out special religious privileges for yourself and opress everyone who disagrees with you.

Politicians like John McCain gave me hope that there can be such a thing as integrity in public office. Which is why I fealt personally offended when he gave the graduation address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. It was overt pandering like I had never seen and I couldn't have expected from McCain. I suppose Rove and his evil strategy of courting the southern poor with appeals to devicive religion could mess with anyone's mind.

One last thing about Huckabee. I am gonna say something that sounds like an Old Media attempt at manipulation. Huckabee cannot win a national election, he is not "electable." I saw this kind of thing play out in the last senate election in Wisconsin. In the primary the Republicans of the state nominated someone that appealed to them so they got a religiously extreme, inexperienced, but nice-looking candidate. When it came to the state wide election he could only garner the votes from those that had voted for him in the primary that went for style over substance. Huckabee is the same kind of candidate. He represents a religious special inetrest group, and only people in that special intrest group are voting for him. If Huckabee wins the Republican nomination, I predict he will get no more than 33% of the popular vote(persuant to our previously cited 1/3 are always wrong). Unless, he is pitted against Sen. Clinton, who is hated by a considerable section of the population. In which case, I would give him a twenty point spread even though those two catagories are going to have some overlap.

The Walk of Shame

There has been a conserted effort by some to claim Barrac Obama is a muslum and that he took his oath of office on the Koran. The people who would vote for him are not likely to be affected by this, and the people who would are likely to vote for an extremist like Hucakabee. Obama denies this stating he is a Christian. While denying this he also states that Americans are too smart to be taken in by this kind of statement. I logically derive from this statement that those who would be taken in by these claims are stupid. I like any statement that points out the stupidity of conservative extremist radical Christians.

If you want to persecute a politician for supporting Islam and terrorism, looky here. Basicly, a Republican congressman accepted stolen government money from an Islamic charity that funneled money past the UN embargo on Iraq into the accounts of a terrorist.

Free The West Memphis Three

This article from Fox News does a good job of explaining some aspects of the case, such as the circumstances of the murder and some of the new evidence. However, in some places it takes leave from the facts in order to paint a story that would be more appealing for a Fox News audience. I question the inclusion of the information that the victems were riding their bikes in their neighborhood before being murdered. Their bodies were found in a drainage ditch behind a truck stop it is unknown how long they laid there. You might as well say they were eating dinner with their family before being murdered if you are going to be including irrelevant information from an indeterminate time before the murder. This may all seem like nitpicking but it seems to me to be the author dressing up the story for his intended audience.

Another example of this is the erroneous statement that the police attributed the murder to the participation of the accused in a satanic cult. The prosecution never alleged that they were satanists, which would have been irrelevant even if it were true. One of the accused, Damien Echols, was a Wiccan at the time and the prosecution made much of this, finding damning quotes from some of the more eccentric mystics from previous centuries and by claiming that Mr.Echols held beliefs about cannibalism. Cannibalism, by the way, was not a part of the crime. The rest of the prosecution's evidence was that the boys were outcast, wore black, and listened to Metallica. As well as the forced confession of one of the accused who was mentally retarded.

"Thats some good police work there Lou."

The new information is that the federal judge is requiring the state courts to hear the new evidence first.

On January 3, 2008 Huckabee Won the Iowa Republican Caucuses

Though this may piss off Chuck Norris I must out Mike Huckabee as a religious extremist.


He talks like a politician and mitigates his insane position of radicalism to get applause. Hucabee believes in the literal interpretation of the Bible. He believes that it provides a perfect instruction on morality, history, spirituality, and science. He has also said that he believes that school children should be instructed in Creationism.
Huckabee's position of a literal interpretation of the Bible has a broader implication for his potential as president. He has said that he would not keep his extremist religious beliefs seperate from his policy decisions. The televalgalist he worked for also echos this sentiment.
For an example of how this kind of thing might play out, look to his prior position on AIDS. In the past he has advocated seperating those with AIDS from the population and later justified his position by claiming his ignorance about how it was spread was a widespread ignorance in 1992. Except at the time religious conservatives of his stripe were promoting this particular brand of ignorance for political reasons, based primairly on hatered of homosexuals. He has since tempered his position to one that sells better on a national stage. Perhaps Huckabee will only insist on a literal following of Leviticus as US law. Get ready to stop shaving and start stoning to death your smart ass kids.

At least hes sane enough to oppose gun control.

A person of any other religious persuasion would be a fringe candidate if they held these same kinds of views. But in America we almost require our politicians to be religious wackos. I blame Karl Rove.
wikipedia-Mike_Huckabee

We're Doomed

Walk of Shame

http://blogs.tampabay.com/schools/2007/12/in-support-of-i.html?cid=939948141