Good Words

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.” ~James Madison; Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations, EcclesiasticalEndowments

A Tough Day for Extremists

During a number of interviews on his stateside trip, Hassan Rouhani has made many bold statements regarding the future of Iran and its place in the world. But the one that has everyone buzzing is his description of the Holocaust as a “crime that the Nazis committed towards the Jews” He went further, calling it “reprehensible and condemnable.”

It's always special when a religious extremist can admit reality. I'm forever holding out hope that our own American Taliban can begin doing that (although I'm certainly not holding my breath). But this admittance is clearly the result of Iran feeling the pressure from the rest of the world in terms of sanctions. Of course, his statements will obviously send the extremists in his own country into full mouth foam. How dare he admit that the Jews were not at fault for something?

And our own moonbats here in the US probably ran screaming to their pillow for a long sob. What is the world coming to when all the bestest bad guys start acting all nice and shit?

Ah well, time to go demonize the liberals again. Look out! They're trying to steal our guns!!

Good Words

“Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.” ~James Madison, letter, 1822

The End of the Lying

With the Affordable Care Act set to open the exchanges and, for the most part, fully roll out next week, I thought I would put up a post with several links that essentially dispel all the lying that is going on about the new law. The Right knows that once the law rolls out and begins to work, any last vestiges of their relevance will fall away completely. What will they do when the federal government does something that works for Americans? So, they are being completely dishonest and far too many people are believing the bullshit.

The first place to stop is the White House web site itself, specifically the myths and facts section. There you will find the lies that your weird uncle with titties has been foaming at the mouth over since the law has passed juxtaposed with the actual facts of the new law. Perhaps after seeing reality he might just storm off to purchase his 20th gun and leave you alone. This site also contains a state by state look at the new premiums. Click on your state to see how much lower your premiums are going to be.

Factcheck is also a great source to sift through the BS and see what is really going on with the ACA. Politifact has frequent updates as well. Here is a link to their Top 16 myths about the law.

Wendell Potter, insurance industry whistleblower, has put up a couple of posts recently that are most excellent torpedoes of the false information flying around, courtesy of the Right.

Bill Keller put out a good piece last year on his top five favorite lies.

It might take a little time for these myths to fall away but their demise will be coming soon to a theater near you once the impoverished people in the many red states (the ones that are letting the government run the exchanges) begin to feel the benefits of the law.

Who will be left to listen to their psychotic ideology?

It's Official

Well, it had to happen. Our nation has become so fucking stupid with guns that we now have this.

Iowa grants gun permits to the blind

What's next? Guns for epileptics?

They are going to keep going farther and farther until it gobbles up their asses, aren't they?

Good Words

“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.” ~James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822

Good Words

“The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State.” ~James Madison, 1819, Writings, 8:432, quoted from Gene Garman, “Essays In Addition to America’s Real Religion”

Amen!

Calling All Science BuffS!

If science is something you enjoy learning about but also a tad overwhelming, you should check out Phil Plait's Welcome to Science cartoons. Even if you are not a comic geek like me, these pieces are just plain fun and insightful. Phil is a regular contributor to Slate.com with his Bad Astronomy posts which I also recommend checking out on a regular basis.

Thanks Ted!

Ted Cruz is currently providing the nation (and the Democrats in 2014 and 2016) with some fantastic material in his fakebuster on the Senate Floor. He's over 20 hours at this point and his remarks serve as an excellent illustration of how the Right is completely fucking nuts.

Good Words

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814,

Good Words

"We have solved by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government, and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving everyone to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason, and the serious convictions of his own inquiries." ~Thomas Jefferson: in a speech to the Virginia Baptists, 1808

Is Bill Gates A Time Traveler?

Well, not really, according to this recent piece at Politico that I have been wanting to point out for awhile.

This week found Gates in the Capitol promoting his plan to combine a 1960s-era oral vaccine with new satellite photography and GPS trackers to eradicate polio finally from the globe. Picking up where the Green Revolution left off in his youth, the 57-year-old Gates talked up new farming methods and genetically modified seeds as an answer for hunger in Africa, whose staple crops were neglected in earlier research. “It’s all about innovation,” Gates told POLITICO. “Now that I am focused on the poorest, in some ways, you could say the innovation is more basic.”

Right. I have no doubt that we are headed for the world Bono envisioned because of advances in technology.

50 years. No more world hunger.

Whence Freedom?

Mark asked a question in another post that can't be answered as a response:

Our freedom comes from God and atheists don't believe in God. So where does freedom come from in their eyes? Perhaps my atheist commenters can answer that question.

You've got it backwards: in many ways god and his representatives are the antithesis of freedom. Freedom isn't a thing in and of itself: it is an absence of constraint, oppression and intimidation. Freedom is the default state of the world. It disappears as man multiplies in number, spreading oppression and restricting other people's actions as their religious prohibitions and quests for dominion over others grow.

Animals in nature are free. A lone man in the wilderness is free. Small family groups of cavemen were free. Hunter gatherers on the African plains were free. It is only when large tribes of men organize together into communities is it necessary to formalize rules of interaction, causing the concept of freedom to arise. These rules preserve order and prevent the exploitation of the innocent by the ruthless. We can be bound voluntarily by rules and still be free. In the past you could just leave if the rules chafed too much. But the primitive version of freedom disappears when you can no longer flee to unoccupied territory.

Rule-based freedom is easily maintained in a homogeneous community, but when different communities collide it falters. It is easy to deny the freedoms of those different from you: the stronger community imposes their rules on the weaker, infringing upon others' freedom for their own gain, be it for land, slavery, or economic gain. When it becomes us versus them it's much easier to deny the freedoms and rights of "them." And nothing is better than religion for separating "us" from "them."

In the American mind freedom and democracy are inextricably linked. But hierarchical monotheistic religions are profoundly undemocratic: the pope in Rome, the ayatollah in Teheran, the archbishop of Canterbury, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church aren't elected by a democratic vote of the faithful. They're chosen behind closed doors by the churches' elites. These organizations are hierarchical and autocratic: the faithful must adhere to their dictates or be excommunicated (or worse). And that's why there are so many different sects: people rebel against the lack of freedom and splinter off.

Another concept that goes hand-in-hand with freedom is equality. Theistic traditions dictate a top-down hierarchical structure: gods, Jesus, Mohammed, Mary, pharaoh, the angels, the saints, the king, the nobility, the priesthood, men, women, animals, the earth. This leads naturally to justifying inequality based on perceived importance to god. It becomes very easy to separate humans into classes who are lower in the hierarchy: Jews, Muslims, pagans, serfs, slaves. It becomes easy, necessary and good to deny the inferior their rights and freedoms and even lives, under the guise of preventing them from committing blasphemous, impious, immoral or illegal acts, stopping them from tempting the righteous into immorality, or simply because they are not the chosen people. It becomes easy to justify wanton destruction of wildlife and habitat as "god's will."

Religion disguised as the will of god has thus been used for millennia to justify slavery, the subordination and degradation of women, persecution of homosexuality, genocide against Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans, mass murder of both Catholics and Protestants, the burning and drowning of countless "witches" in the Middle Ages, the caste system in India, and so on. Religion has been used to fight those injustices as well -- many abolitionists were devout Christians -- but in the end it's just a matter of how the preachers interpret the dictates of men dead for thousands of years. It's not what god says that matters, but what self-proclaimed keepers of the holy scripture say god says.

Thus, if god was right to exterminate all the people of Sodom and Gomorrah because they pissed him off, then the faithful can justify the Inquisition torturing and killing witches, Christians invading the holy land and murdering Muslims during the Crusades, and Ugandans passing laws that make homosexuality a crime.

Inequality and the right of one group to kill "the other" are integral parts of the most basic texts of monotheism. The promised land of the Israelites was Canaan. How much freedom flowed from god to the Canaanites when he told the Israelites to obtain the promised land by killing the original inhabitants?

We now know that most homosexuality is developmental, not a choice. If your brain developed such that you have an attraction to your own sex, are you really free if god threatens to kill you for doing exactly what god designed you to do? Some Christians deny that's god's intent, but the bible explicitly says homosexuality is wrong. But we have no way to know whether that dictate came from god, or from some prig who didn't like homosexuals, pork and shellfish. This is the core of the problem of religion: there is no logic, there is no rationality, there is no consistency, there isn't even morality: there is only faith that god -- by proxy of his preachers -- is right. Like Nixon, no matter what atrocity god commands he is righteous by definition.

We can't talk about "god's will" as if there was a single god, because there are too many religions that come to too many completely different conclusions -- even in the same denomination. In Christianity alone we have the tribal Hebrew god who commanded his people to commit genocide against the Canaanites, the psychopathic god who mauled 42 children for deriding a bald man, the sadistic god who commands Abraham to kill his own son, the mercantile god who blithely condones slavery, the vengeful god who kills all the men, women and children in two cities, the beneficent god who commands the rich to allow the poor to eat once every seven years, and the universal "turn the other cheek" god of the New Testament.

And then there's free will: god can't make you do anything, can't give you a hint as to whether he really exists or not. It's up to you to accept his existence without any proof. But you have to find the one true faith without a lick of real evidence which one it is, and then live -- or die -- with the consequences. A core tenet of our legal system is the idea that you cannot be bound to a contract entered under duress. This threat of eternal torment drives millions of people into churches. It's extortion in the extreme.

Are people who believe in god really making a free choice? And do they truly believe in god? Or have they simply succumbed to the cynical logic of Pascal's Wager, and profess belief in god under duress, betting that if god doesn't exist they've lost nothing.

Other concepts closely linked to freedom are innocence and guilt. In Anglo-American jurisprudence one is assumed innocent until proved guilty. That is, we should be free unless our proven bad acts make our freedom dangerous to others. One cannot be punished for the independent actions of another, such as a parent.

Protestant theology cuts the heart out of the very concept of innocence with the dogma of original sin. According to Luther we are all filled with evil lust from our mother's wombs, sickness and hereditary sin because Eve (those evil women!) chose to eat from the tree of knowledge.

This dogma presumes that every generation of humanity is guilty of a trivial crime committed by a single woman thousands of years in the past. It is this kind of blind acceptance of guilt by association that leads to misogyny, anti-Semitism (the Jews killed Jesus!) and other ethnic hatreds.

Now, there are religions that don't have a monotheistic god. Some animists, Jains and Buddhists believe in no gods at all, and perceive all living things to be equal in a certain sense. They are concerned with finding inner peace, accepting the fact that suffering is a part of life and coexisting in harmony with the world.

But Western society and the Middle East are monotheistic. Part of the reason is that it's simpler, and it mirrors the way we construct our own societies and fits with our politics, with wise and important people on top who tell us what to do: the pope, the king, the CEO. Most people just want do what's right, so they turn to those who claim to know better. They want straightforward answers to the important questions of life and death -- where we came from and where we're going.

They're looking for certainty in a world that has never had it. They don't turn to religion to find freedom, they are seeking safety and stability, which are frequently at odds with freedom. Humanity has always been wondering at the vastness of the heavens and questing for the truth. We always will. There's a reason that we're still creating religions -- like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism and Scientology -- three thousand years after Moses left Egypt: the old religions have too many injustices and inconsistencies and leave too many questions unanswered.

There are more than 20 major religions in the world. Most of them have splintered into thousands of sects, many of whom are actively trying to kill each other. The Shiites and Sunnis are at each others' throats today in Iraq, and Catholics and Protestants were still killing each other in Europe 20 years ago. Theism breeds so much intolerance and violence that heresy often elicits greater hatred than being an infidel.

So when you look at the current state of the worlds' religions, the confusing miasma of dogma and apologetics, the lack of freedom in theocratic states, and the history of murderous internecine religious warfare, it's obvious that god  provides no straightforward answers and no freedom. Various religions directly sponsor the oppression of women, gays, ethnic minorities, and adherents of other religions. People inspired by monotheistic Middle Eastern gods are no more noble and just than adherents of Eastern mysticism or pagan animist religions.

In discussions of religion believers constantly interject with, "But I don't believe that! That's not what my god says! My religion doesn't do that!" Others argue that you have to separate god from the human institution of religion. How can we claim to know what god says when he never speaks for himself? We only hear what the self-appointed prophets of god claim he says.

And more often than not, they speak against freedom and equality for all.

The Harmful Myth of Collapsing Schools

One of the most cherished tactics of the Right is to find a policy (health care, immigration, budget...whatever), find the flaws, and then blame anyone who isn't exactly aligned with their moonbattery about what to do regarding that issue. It's very convenient because there are always going to be flaws so they will always be able to find something. Nothing is perfect. Well, check that. Inside the bubble, everything they do is perfect despite reality (see: self delusion). Never is this more true than with the issue of education. Everything is terrible, they say, because liberal ideology has taken over and our students are stupid as a result. They point to test scores and other bits of information from the right wing blogsphere that "proves" public education is a failure.

A recent piece in Politico posits the question...what if a big part of our problem is this exact mentality? And not even close to being true besides? As the cartoon below this posts illustrates, we know full well the agenda of the Right. Those on the left that complain about education invariably want more money or power for their particular corner of the world so their intentions aren't all that much better. Yet, as the piece shows, we aren't really doing that bad and we should take reports of our "collapsing schools" with a grain of (actually, a giant boulder of) salt.

Then again, we’re 32nd on just one test. American kids do better relative to the world — though they’re still far from elite — on the PISA science and reading exams. And they do better as well on a different, equally respected, international math test known as TIMSS. On the most recent TIMSS test, from 2011, American eighth-graders handily outscored seven nations that had the edge on the U.S. in the 2009 PISA exam, including Great Britain, Australia — and, yes, Slovenia. Fourth-graders rocked the TIMSS test even more: They came out ahead of a dozen countries that had beaten the U.S. on the PISA exam.

Exactly right. You have to look at more than one test. And how about that ol' China canard?

As for China, it doesn’t participate as an entire nation; only students from three relatively wealthy regions — Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong — are tested. That’s important to note because income correlates with success on standardized tests.

If the entire country was tested (as we are), China's scores would be considerably lower.

Ms. Simon does an excellent job of blowing up several of the myths about the state of our education system. The next time you see a story about how awful our schools are, please kindly refer to this article.

Good Words

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” -Thomas Jefferson: in letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

Good Words

“I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799