Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Whence Freedom?
Mark asked a question in another post that can't be answered as a response:
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.
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.
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
Sunday, September 22, 2013
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
How Many?
So, how many quotes are there about homosexuality in the Bible?
Well, according to CARM, there are four. Given that they are one of the many wings of the American Taliban, believers in Republican Jesus, and have a direct line to what God thinks, saying that the Bible "doesn't speak of homosexuality very often" they should know of what the speak, right? So, four....that's 4 mentions of homosexuality.
How many times does the Bible say women should be submissive to their husbands?
That would be 29 times.
So, it seems to me that God places more importance on women submitting to their husbands as they do to Christ than homosexuality. If a woman does not do this, what happens?
This would be a great example of how the Bible is just plain wrong. Women are not second class citizens and should be treated equally (as everyone else is) in the eyes of God. Considering that the Bible was written by (flawed) men at a time long before equal rights, we have to adjust the teachings of the Bible and look past antiquated notions of gender and sex.
Oh, yeah...and how many verses are there on caring for the poor?
Anywhere from 100 to 300, depending upon how specific you want to get.
Well, according to CARM, there are four. Given that they are one of the many wings of the American Taliban, believers in Republican Jesus, and have a direct line to what God thinks, saying that the Bible "doesn't speak of homosexuality very often" they should know of what the speak, right? So, four....that's 4 mentions of homosexuality.
How many times does the Bible say women should be submissive to their husbands?
That would be 29 times.
So, it seems to me that God places more importance on women submitting to their husbands as they do to Christ than homosexuality. If a woman does not do this, what happens?
This would be a great example of how the Bible is just plain wrong. Women are not second class citizens and should be treated equally (as everyone else is) in the eyes of God. Considering that the Bible was written by (flawed) men at a time long before equal rights, we have to adjust the teachings of the Bible and look past antiquated notions of gender and sex.
Oh, yeah...and how many verses are there on caring for the poor?
Anywhere from 100 to 300, depending upon how specific you want to get.
Religious Bigotry Is Not Freedom
I've been putting up quotes from our founding fathers over the last couple of weeks to illustrate that they did not, in fact, believe that it was OK to be a religious bigot. Having religious freedom does not mean you also get to impede the rights of other people. Essentially, this is what the believers of Republican Jesus think is OK as they happily play the victim card, doing the very same thing they supposedly hate (not to mention employing the fallacies of misleading vividness and appeal to fear).
Yet this recent piece over at HuffPo shows that the atheists out there also get it wrong. The founding fathers were not atheists. They very much believed in God, the grand architect of the universe, and drew much of their inspiration for the core philosophy of this country from John Locke. Locke's Second Treatise of Government was the primary source from which Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence. It stated that individuals are born with the rights of life, liberty and property that come directly from our Creator. Jefferson changed "property" to "pursuit of happiness" but the spirit is still the same. 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.
The quotes that I have been putting up illustrate this core belief. The people that believe in Republican Jesus have always had trouble understanding nuance (you are either with us or agin us!) so it's very likely that they would disagree with Lockian thought which holds that there is no such thing as original sin, for example. People are born as blank slates given only the rights I listed above. How they live their lives after that comes the choices they make with that freedom. Because of this, Locke was often accused of not being a "true Christian"...just like yours truly.
Yet he was clearly a true Christian because he loathed atheism and warned repeatedly that it could lead to chaos. In many ways, I agree with this philosophy and so did the founding fathers. The morality of Christ is what we base our laws upon in America. That doesn't necessarily makes us a Christian nation as many other religions have this same morality. Locke truly believed that reason and Christianity were intertwined and that fundamental human equality arose from this combination. Since all humans were created free, governments need the consent of the governed to make sure that everyone is treated equally under the law. In short, practicing religious bigotry is not freedom. No one has the right to treat people differently because their religion tell them it's ok. Claiming victimhood, as a few jack wagons have done who are refusing to serve gay people at their place of business, is yet another nauseating example of this. The people who are supportive of such folks have yet to tell me where the line is drawn. Would they be allowed to not serve women who were not submissive to their husbands as the Bible says? Or not serve black people because of racial purity beliefs? As of today, all I hear are crickets on these questions. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.
So, the quotes that I am putting from our founding fathers are examples of how religious zealots should never be allowed to hijack our government and curtail our freedom that comes directly from God. My beliefs about God coincide with those prevalent at the height of the Age of Enlightenment. The thinkers of the that time, many of whom were our founding fathers, scoffed at both religious zealots and atheists in the same breath. So do I. Our founding fathers sought to protect religion from government, no doubt a large problem as divine right of kings thinking was still quite prevalent at the time. God and Jesus were for everyone, not just those in the aristocracy. No one was closer to God than anyone else...just as the Bible says. That includes believers in Republican Jesus.
Isn't it ironic, though, that with the American Taliban running around, we now have to protect government from religion?
Yet this recent piece over at HuffPo shows that the atheists out there also get it wrong. The founding fathers were not atheists. They very much believed in God, the grand architect of the universe, and drew much of their inspiration for the core philosophy of this country from John Locke. Locke's Second Treatise of Government was the primary source from which Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence. It stated that individuals are born with the rights of life, liberty and property that come directly from our Creator. Jefferson changed "property" to "pursuit of happiness" but the spirit is still the same. 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.
The quotes that I have been putting up illustrate this core belief. The people that believe in Republican Jesus have always had trouble understanding nuance (you are either with us or agin us!) so it's very likely that they would disagree with Lockian thought which holds that there is no such thing as original sin, for example. People are born as blank slates given only the rights I listed above. How they live their lives after that comes the choices they make with that freedom. Because of this, Locke was often accused of not being a "true Christian"...just like yours truly.
Yet he was clearly a true Christian because he loathed atheism and warned repeatedly that it could lead to chaos. In many ways, I agree with this philosophy and so did the founding fathers. The morality of Christ is what we base our laws upon in America. That doesn't necessarily makes us a Christian nation as many other religions have this same morality. Locke truly believed that reason and Christianity were intertwined and that fundamental human equality arose from this combination. Since all humans were created free, governments need the consent of the governed to make sure that everyone is treated equally under the law. In short, practicing religious bigotry is not freedom. No one has the right to treat people differently because their religion tell them it's ok. Claiming victimhood, as a few jack wagons have done who are refusing to serve gay people at their place of business, is yet another nauseating example of this. The people who are supportive of such folks have yet to tell me where the line is drawn. Would they be allowed to not serve women who were not submissive to their husbands as the Bible says? Or not serve black people because of racial purity beliefs? As of today, all I hear are crickets on these questions. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.
So, the quotes that I am putting from our founding fathers are examples of how religious zealots should never be allowed to hijack our government and curtail our freedom that comes directly from God. My beliefs about God coincide with those prevalent at the height of the Age of Enlightenment. The thinkers of the that time, many of whom were our founding fathers, scoffed at both religious zealots and atheists in the same breath. So do I. Our founding fathers sought to protect religion from government, no doubt a large problem as divine right of kings thinking was still quite prevalent at the time. God and Jesus were for everyone, not just those in the aristocracy. No one was closer to God than anyone else...just as the Bible says. That includes believers in Republican Jesus.
Isn't it ironic, though, that with the American Taliban running around, we now have to protect government from religion?
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Good Words
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.”
~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
Jefferson didn't believe in a limited god either.
Jefferson didn't believe in a limited god either.
Alternate Dimension?
Being a comic book and scifi fan, I often wonder how many other dimensions and realities exists that are parallel to our own. Are there alternate versions of myself or my family and friends? Today, I feel like I have slipped into an alternate dimension with these two headlines.
Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control
Iranian New Year greetings leave Israelis perplexed, pleased
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Don't get me wrong...I'm happy but it's jarring after so much bull crap every day to see something as positive as both of these stories.
I supposed I could be a cynic and say the latter headline is just Iran trying to smooth over diplomatic relations with the United States and is representative of recent back channel communications over their nuclear weapons program. Still, though, even with that caveat it's quite shocking to hear something like that from an Iranian leader.
The Pope's comments certainly jibe with his overall philosophy of placing more importance on helping the poor and sick of the world rather than being inordinately preoccupied with sex. Certainly caring for the needy of the world is mentioned far more often in the Bible than homosexuality, abortion, and birth control so it's clear which is more important.
Sadly, I'm sure it won't be long now before the Pope is accused of not being a Christian.
Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control
Iranian New Year greetings leave Israelis perplexed, pleased
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Don't get me wrong...I'm happy but it's jarring after so much bull crap every day to see something as positive as both of these stories.
I supposed I could be a cynic and say the latter headline is just Iran trying to smooth over diplomatic relations with the United States and is representative of recent back channel communications over their nuclear weapons program. Still, though, even with that caveat it's quite shocking to hear something like that from an Iranian leader.
The Pope's comments certainly jibe with his overall philosophy of placing more importance on helping the poor and sick of the world rather than being inordinately preoccupied with sex. Certainly caring for the needy of the world is mentioned far more often in the Bible than homosexuality, abortion, and birth control so it's clear which is more important.
Sadly, I'm sure it won't be long now before the Pope is accused of not being a Christian.
Good Words
“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
~Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814
Friday, September 20, 2013
Good Words
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
~Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802
What's the True Cost of an Unsafe Pain Killer? 150? 33,000? 78,000? Or Billions?
ProPublica published an article about how easy it is to overdose with acetaminophen, best known under the brand name Tylenol. If you take just 25% more, only 2 extra pills a day over a few days, you can cause liver damage. Higher overdoses can cause liver failure and death.
Accidental overdoses killed 1,567 people between 2001 and 2010, or about 150 people a year. In a given year, double that many die, but the other cases are either intentional or the intent is unclear.
Furthermore:
Acetaminophen overdose sends as many as 78,000 Americans to the emergency room annually and results in 33,000 hospitalizations a year, federal data shows. Acetaminophen is also the nation’s leading cause of acute liver failure, according to data from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes for Health.In addition:
In 2010, only 15 deaths were reported for the entire class of pain relievers, both prescription and over-the-counter, that includes ibuprofen, data from the CDC shows.And finally:
The London-based Lancet declared in a 1975 editorial that if [acetaminophen] “were discovered today it would not be approved” by British regulators. “It would certainly never be freely available without prescription.
One major problem is that many drugs contain acetaminophen (such as Nyquil), so it becomes extremely easy for people with a pounding headache and a bad cold or the flu to overdose when they take Nyquil and Tylenol at the same time.
This allows us to draw three conclusions. 1) Anything containing acetaminophen (including Tylenol and Nyquil) should be more tightly controlled, probably prescription-only. 2) The warnings on Tylenol and Nyquil should be much more explicit and obvious: even a small overdose can send you to the hospital, especially in combination with alcohol. And 3) if you can tolerate safer pain relievers, you should use those preferentially.
Fine. The FDA should tell these drug companies to stop pretending their product is absolutely safe. Case closed.
But then I came to the comments at the end of the article. The first commenter said, basically, "Only 150 dead people? So what!" Other commenters chimed in with stuff like, "More people die from can opener accidents." Would they think that if their daughter just died because they just tried to soothe her suffering with a spoonful of medicine? Or she was forced to undergo months of waiting for a liver transplant?
The trolls intentionally obscure the real point of the article: 78,000 emergency room visits and 33,000 hospitalizations annually. If the average emergency room visit costs $1,283, that's $100,000,000. If the average hospital stay costs $15,734, that's another $519,000,000. Many victims of acetaminophen poisoning will suffer permanent liver damage, and some will require liver transplants, which means they'll spend their entire lives taking anti-rejection drugs. If the average liver transplant costs half a million dollars and the antirejection drugs cost $12,000 a year, acetaminophen poisoning will directly cost billions of dollars annually.
And then there are the indirect costs: some victims will suffer other debilitating medical problems as a result of liver failure, which will prevent them from working, or will require expensive special care. Some of these people will wind up on welfare and Medicaid. Parents and spouses will miss work to care of them.
The real cost of lax regulation of Tylenol is not just 150 dead people a year. It's billions and billions of dollars in medical costs, plus millions of hours of lost productivity, plus an incalculable amount of human suffering.
So, who are these guys who troll the web, who minimize other people's pain and defend the profits of giant corporations who market dangerous products? Are they paid shills? Rabid libertarians who think companies should be able to make money any way they can, and let everyone else clean up the mess while they laugh all the way to the bank? Conservatives who hate it when people sue corporations? Why do they leap to these companies' defense and obscure these drugs' true costs to society?
Don't they get that dangerous products hurt everyone, even conservatives and Republicans? Republicans like Antonio Benedi, for example. Benedi was once an assistant to president George H. W. Bush. He took some Tylenol, as per the label, and it almost killed him. He had to get a liver transplant. He sued Tylenol's manufacturer and a jury awarded him $8.5 million.
I don't think people should sue companies at the drop of a hat. But these companies are selling a product that has been known to be dangerous for decades. They've tried to make it safer and have failed. They've even produced an antidote for acetaminophen poisoning. So they know exactly how dangerous it is. Yet they're using their economic and political clout to prevent the FDA from enacting additional safety measures. All the while still telling parents that Children's Tylenol is completely safe (when used as directed).
Medicine is supposed to make us better. Not poison and kill us.
Good Words
“We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for
honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.”
~John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785
Thursday, September 19, 2013
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