Public Better Informed Than Government

Isn't the directive by the government for its employees to not look at WikiLeaks documents like telling religious believers to not read science books?

Equality and Entropy

Equality and freedom are apparently subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics as much as anything else in the universe.

Christmas Is Never Merry

I will not be wishing any of you a merry Christmas, no matter how much you insist on it and say you feel insulted otherwise. Here's why.

The overwhelming majority of Christians strongly believe that everything happens for a reason set forth by their god; all that occurs is their god's will, perfect and loving in its form and purpose. This idea is taught to their children and pushed on adult non-believers. They try and make others feel better when the horrors of life keep coming in a never-ending cycle with this sales pitch. The moments of joy are not continuous because their god has "a plan"--that no one will ever understand--and that plan includes pain, lots of pain for lots of people that has been going on for thousands of years.

But, eventually, if you do all the right things and believe in just the right way, you will be rewarded with the ultimate gift for you pain and suffering at the hand of this god: Being in the presence of this being for all time and praising him for simply existing. That gift is what you need to strive for, you are told. Being in the unending presence of a being that won't give up the secret of his Plan of Pain until your post-life begins is the ultimate reward and you need to be glad to be offered the chance to accept it. This god's will for your pre-death existence is for you to put up with whatever he decides to dish out and for you to deal with it--without any proof of the eventual gain that is supposed to come with pain.

If this is your view of the human condition there is a simple speech that you should give to each new class of elementary school students.

"Before many of you reach adulthood, or even puberty, you will be abused in a manner that you cannot now even imagine. Someone you trust and have been told is a good person, maybe even a 'man of god,' will do things to you that you will not understand. This person will put his hands under your clothes. He will touch your body in places you've never been touched by a stranger and in a manner that will not be loving, even though you will be told otherwise. You will feel strange, maybe even sick. You will not know what to do. You will want to cry, but be told not to do so. The will do many things to you that you know aren't right. He will not only touch you, he might even put his penis in your mouth and push it down your throat. He might even put it between your legs and put it inside your body there, too. Your feelings won't matter. Your desire for it to stop won't matter. You only need to remember that it is the will of your god to endure this experience, which may happen many times. All things happen for a reason and only our god knows why. You just have to believe that this will be happening to you because our god wants it to happen. He is all powerful, as you've been told, but has decided to use his powers to give you pain, not stop it. We don't really know why. You need to believe that we all have to accept the decisions our god has made on our behalf.

"But remeber, too, that our god has taught us that it is he who is the universe's most injured party, no matter what pain and confusion you experience. Your birth automatically made you a sinner and our god will not put up with sinners. The abuse you suffer matters not. You must apoligize to our god with heart-felt repentence for your existence as a sinner. You do not get to make the same assertion against our god for his plan that calls for you to endure pain and suffering. He is perfect in all of his decisions and actions, no matter the pain and hurt being caused. Nothing evil and vile that happens to you as part of our god's plan can be considered even close to the most minor action you commit as a sin against our god. When you bleed and suffer in torment, remembering that pain for the rest of your life, it is nowhere near as bad as breaking any of our god's most minor rules. Telling a small lie like when you say someone did a good job when they didn't hurts our god even more than anything you will feel. Your suffering is not relevant at all to our god; your sins against him, however, are hurtful to our god and he never forgets. Being a jealous and vengeful god, you have no choice but to just accept the situation our god has designed for you and trust that our god is always right."

Asking that anyone see this belief system worthy of merriment is similar with asking the victims of the Abu Ghraib prison system to wish George Bush supporters a "merry" time on his birthday. Anyone with any sense of decency would never do such a thing. Asking someone to wish another a "merry" time on any Christian holiday is not only an insult to humanity but a lie being told to one's self. To hold a position that this belief system should be attached to any emotion even minimally related to joy is a joke.

So, no, I won't be wishing anyone a "merry" anything having to do with Christmas or any of the other of this religion's holidays. I might just throw up on someone.

No Time Like The Present

It's amazing how similar today's power brokers act to those of the most brutal regimes of history; just change a few references and the horrid actions taken by those in power could be from today's news reports. Those in power do whatever they need to justify its continuation; the century matters not.

Concentrated Wealth Fails

Unlimited access to, or accumulation of, wealth--and, therefore, power--should never be a principal on which a society is based. How this has been turned into a virtue in today's culture is going to provide a great many doctorate degrees among future generations of people studying past societal failings.

Sin As Part Of The Game

Sin requires the prequisite of belief. To claim a non-believer can commit sin is like saying someone walking down the street outside a stadium during a baseball game can strike out.

We Have Better Information Now

I think it is a general truism that has time progresses the quality of the stuff we discover and understand increases. If that's accurate, then to simply say "we have better information now" when asked about ancient religous texts should be enough to stop the assertion that old information trumps the new.

Belief Test

Believing is to resting as thinking is to [blank].

Answer: running.

Horseplay

By replacing horses with cars people unknowingly granted themselves greater freedoms than first imagined by being able to behave in the streets in ways that would have bothered the horses.

Misuse Of Guns

If misused, guns cause less harm than if used correctly and as designed.

A Poem For Believers

A "poem" for believers who won't leave you alone and won't listen.


You believe, I don't.
So, go away.
I think, you don't.
Really, go away.

Use as your only reply to every inquiry until they cease.

Gods Must Be Evil By Design

It appears that when humans create religions with a single god he is evil and destructive because the natural forces of the planet aren't naturally kind to human existence. To create a god that was otherwise would be immediately disproven.

Nothing To Lose

Does a believer have "nothing to lose" by being offered unconditional forgiveness just by asking? If so, isn't a believer more dangerous to others than not, which is the opposite of the condition being claimed?

The Evolution Of Jesus

If there was a person who actually existed in the early 1st century who was the single human seed from which the Christian cult began (whether named Jesus or not), there's no way to know for sure what he said or did. There are simply no contemporary accounts, which means there is also no way to tell for sure if the resulting cult's stories didn't come from a combination of stories about mythical figures who never existed along with one or two who did.

Even if there were contemporary accounts which included the same stories as contained in the Gospels, the claims of those accounts would likely not be seen as any more valid given the outlandishness of the stories contained within them. Even today, contemporary stories of miracles and magic aren't taken as truthful because of the claims themselves, not because of their distance from the events they claim happened.

Giving In

An astute and legitimate political leader says: "These are the facts and we will act accordingly." The current crop of Democratic politicians seem to have this state of mind instead: "These are the facts, but if you don't agree we'll do it your way."

End Of Racism

We'll know that we've eliminated racism when a racist comment is seek as a pathetic joke by everyone else but the teller, including the target who honestly puts LOL after repeating it online.

Final Say

A suicide note is a final blog entry with the comments turned off.

Freedoms Fostering Hate?

There are some who assert that many of the enemies of the U.S. are so because "they don't like our freedoms" and, therefore, dismiss any complaints they might have as unjustified. If that's true, it would never reasonable for the people in the U.S. to become enemies of any society with more freedom, such as those who allow abortion, gay marriage, drug use, prostitution, etc. Would that society be justified in looking down upon the U.S. as containing people who's complaints can be dismissed simply because "we don't like their freedoms?" Would the people of the U.S. accept that line of thought?

Hell On Earth

When believers take over a society, all hell breaks loose.

Opposition Fuels The Object

It is the energy of the opposition that often powers the object of it, sustaining the thing trying to be killed.