Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Don’t Believe in Evolution? Then Don’t Be a Hypocrite

CBS News reports: Majority of Americans Reject Theory of Evolution

NEW YORK (Oct. 23) - Most Americans do not accept the theory of evolution. Instead, 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved.

These views are similar to what they were in November 2004 shortly after the presidential election.

This question on the origin of human beings, asked both this month and in November 2004, offered the public three alternatives: 1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process; 2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process; or 3. God created human beings in their present form.

The way I see it (copied from a post on the Restore the Pledge forum):

Anyone who disbelieves in evolution, yet takes advantage of medical technology that is a direct result of its basis in FACT (antibiotics, vaccines, etc.) is a hypocrite of the highest order. If they were truly committed to their beliefs, they’d eschew any of these life-saving treatments for themselves and their families and pray themselves well… which would serve not only to address shortages of medicine, but probably help out with overpopulation as well.

They’ll talk the talk, but if walking the walk puts their lives in jeopardy, their beliefs take a back seat to survival. Why do they not stand by “Let Go, Let God” when the only treatment that might save yourself or a loved one is based on what these people claim is a “lie?”

Laporte, or any other Christian claiming “Goddidit” to be a more worthy theory than evolution with regards to biology, can you explain why you wouldn’t avoid any of these treatments and rely solely on God’s healing powers, if you’re so SURE that evolution is pure bunk?

I’d REALLY like a fucking answer to this question, please.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I’m Not Completely Worthless!

According to the Business Opportunities Weblog:

To be quite honest, I expected a big fat ZILCH!

Monday, October 17, 2005

Sam Harris says it best

There Is No God (And You Know It)

An excerpt:

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is—and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

I have to send that to everyone I know.  Maybe then they’ll start to understand…

I Choke On Jesus… but it’s for charity!

Like every other parent in America, I do my part to raise funds for school groups and programs the Princess belongs to.  Wrapping paper, candy, restaurant nights, the whole shebang.  In these parent booster groups, it’s inevitable that there’s one or more exuberant follower of Christ who gives not a moment’s pause before going on a tirade about what’s “right” or what “shouldn’t be allowed.” By law, I’d presume… and according to “God’s Law,” of course.

It took every ounce of will I had not to get in this one lady’s face when she started ranting about how horrifying it was to go into Costco and have “one whole huge section of nothing but Harry Potter and all sorts of things relating to sorcery… it’s awful that they can sell that to kids!” Rather than goad her by asking just what the fuck you’d call turning water into wine; or walking on water, if not some sort of sorcery, I simply said, “It’s harmless fantasy… make-believe, y’know?” I restrained myself from adding like your God, and devils and demons.  But it was right on the tip of my tongue, I tell ya!

Why is it ok for HER to push her own myths and invisible magical beings without someone like me laughing in her face, or calling her a superstitious and delusional twit; yet beyond the bounds of social grace for ME to exercise MY right as an American and say I think HER fairy tales have every reason to be in the Wal-Mart, but NOT anywhere NEAR my kid’s school?  I don’t want my kid to have any repercussions due to my outspoken nature, and it’s so difficult within the context of the whole “booster” scenario that I’ll be really surprised if I make it through four years without being branded a heretic and ostracized.

I guess I just have to sell lots of candy, and wrapping paper, and ad space, and car washes, and rummage sales…

The irony of it all was that her hysterics and lamentations were delivered while wearing a perfectly satanic little smock covered in Hallowe’en ghosts and those Agents of Satan himself, black kitties.

My Vacation

I’ve already been home for weeks, and I haven’t even finished uploading pictures from my vacation… never mind blogging (which I should have been doing every night, dammit!).  Unfortunately, it would seem that the bill for my absolutely wonderful time visiting my family came due upon my return and required a payment in the form of stressful events, one after the other.  Kee-rist, a bitch doesn’t have time to get a breath these days!

Spending time in CT is always nice, yet surreal in many ways.  This trip, I learned that there aren’t nearly as many street signs in Watertown as there are corners on which they should be displayed!  It’s a damned good thing I’ve got a pretty keen sense of direction, or I’d probably be driving around somewhere in Rhode Island today, heh.  It’s a pretty clear picture of the state of my home state, in that the “suburbs” where the upper middle class people live doesn’t seem to have enough money to put up street signs for fuck’s sake.  There are plenty of signs in Waterbury… but man, the place is pretty damned bleak overall.  Those people need JOBS, and badly.  If I had millions of dollars, I’d buy up some of those beautiful old houses and find a way to help my town come back to life.

Being able to see all my brothers in one trip, and visiting with other family and friends made me wish I’d taken a longer vacation.  Everything and everyone are so close together compared to here in SoCal, that I got to spend most of my time actually being with the people I love, rather than on the freeway on the way there or back.  I’ve always loved having lots of family around, and even when I didn’t have blood relatives nearby, I’ve always had my “tribe,” or the family of friends that we’ve chosen for ourselves.  These days many of those people are living farther away from us than the farthest distance between one of my brothers’ houses to another, so there’s no “family” to speak of within, say, 10 minutes of us.  It was amazing to me that I was able to go from Waterbury to Watertown, and back, in half an hour in order to get my niece to work and then get back for a surprise birthday cake for my friend’s dad.

Speaking of nieces, I finally got to meet two of mine that I’ve only chatted with online, or maybe by phone for a few minutes… and they’re both wonderful young ladies, beautiful and smart (but they’re Colellas, so why wouldn’t they be? Ha!).  But one of the shitty things about traveling alone is that there’s no one to help take pictures… so I didn’t get pictures with 3 of my nieces, my brother, Tom or the closest thing to a stepmom I ever had, Cathy - which sucks.  Oh well, I guess that just means I have to go back again pretty soon.

There were quite a few times over the 9 days of my visit when I was emotionally overwhelmed, and even now I get a little choked up thinking about just how good it felt to be with people I love in such an absolutely beautiful part of the world.

[more later...]

It’s later—by 12 days!  The vacation glow’s worn off, I still don’t have those goddamned pictures up, because life goes on with all its hectic and often insane daily dramas.  Work is work, and home life is in a bit of a turmoil (what else is new?) due to a death in my husband’s family.  In a perfect illustration of the sheer distance between relatives here, the decedent lived over an hour away, and since that’s where most of the family is, that’s where everything’s happening.  There’ll also be an out-of-town relative who needs accomodations… logistics, feh.