Saturday, March 31, 2012

"Stand Your Ground" For Pregnant Women

I usually don't address the whole abortion thing because it's not usually in the scope of things I address. But, this Trayvon Martin case has caused me to think of something I thought I would share.

For people who are in favor of the self-defense/stand your ground point (to any degree), can't the same logic be used in states where a fetus is declared a person? If the fetus is legally a person, it would be legally consistent to assert that, at least in some cases, the woman carrying the fetus could be considered under attack, especially in the case of "risky" pregnancies. Legally, then, it would seem as permissible for the woman to protect herself from the fetus she's carrying by aborting it.

I don't know if the people on the Religious Right have considered this result of their push for the "personhood" bills, as they're called. But it seems to me they're in a pickle.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Reason Rally Reveals The Need For It

This has been one amazing weekend.

I was able to meet an incredible number of awesome people while working at the Reason Rally, my office's pre-rally reception and the American Atheists convention. Because I was working, I didn't actually get to see very much of the activity everyone else came to enjoy. But, I was able to talk with way more people than I would otherwise have been able to. So, I think overall it was a fair trade-off.

There is something special about being among such a large number of people who have given up the attachments so many have for the myths that have held us back for so very long. The few protestors who came around seemed even more like an odd human anomaly than usual. Imagining how so many among their ranks can actually get into political office takes my mind on a ride even more bizarre than before.

Because I have ended up seeing things this way, the eye-opening nature of the weekend has a small bit of regret mixed in with a heaping amount of joy. I hate the idea that I can see so many human beings as dangerous oddballs; something just doesn't seem "right" about it because it makes it harder to live together. However, I do know that the need to keep up the fight against religion getting control of society is paramount. We can only be so nice before attitudes need to change in order to stop us from getting dragged into a theocracy that would have no chance of being anything other than pure evil.

One of the things I think that separates us from them is that they seem happy to take up the fight in favor of ancient myths and superstitions and many of us are pissed that we have to fight for a nurturing, fact-based society that sees a future in embracing new discoveries over ancient hallucinations. It makes the fight seem all the more peculiar and unnatural.

The Confused Sheep

I find it confusing that Christians will proudly state "The Lord is My Shepard" then get insulted when they are compared to sheep.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Holy Water Can't Be Avoided

For believers all water on the planet should by now be seen as holy. Given that all the water on the planet gets recycled, "unholy" water shouldn't exist any longer. Given the number of times a subset of the planet's water has been "blessed"--millions of times, at least--there is likely no remaining collection of water that doesn't contain at least some "blessed" molecules. Now, unless believers want to assert that there is value in the number of blessed molecules within any temporary collection of them, there should be no need to bless any more water ever again.