AIN'T NO gOD

GLOOM AND DOOM...

Labels: Boomed Out, injury

In all that blather no one mentions that the Constitution says nothing about using the Bible as a reference point for legislation denying gays the same rights as other Americans. If these Bible Bibbers would only put the Constitution ahead of their religious books, then America could get on with being a nation of laws rather than a medieval cesspool on the verge of another Inquisition.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Labels: Bible Bib, Chrisitianity, Palin

ANSWER THE CHARGE OF HATRED OF GOD

In response to the following statement "(1) God doesn't exist, and (2 they hate him" which appeared on the Columbian newspaper website from a man attacking "liberals",
I entered the following response:

Let me assure you, I don't hate god. I have absolutely no feeling whatsoever about the tremendously generalized idea about a superbeing that created this universe. I care about as much about this hypothetical superbeing as I do about Martians in space ships visiting the Earth or the idea of Santa Claus which I used to put a great deal of stock in. I was tremendously disturbed when I heard that Santa didn't exist, but I got over it.

The idea of god is a scientific hypothesis about how and why the universe appears as it does to the human consciousness. Currently, the god hypothesis has no evidence whatsoever for its validity. One proof, of course, would be to find and photograph the angels waving their swords at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to keep us humans from getting at the Tree of Eternal Life. They were put there to be seen and should still be there. I can't find anywhere in the Bible that they were relieved of duty so where are they?

Currently all the evidence available to us supports the idea that the beginning of the universe came about 15 billion years ago in a tremendous and unexplained explosion which is evidenced to our ears in TV static and to our eyes through the Hubble telescope and our being able to tell by light shift that the Cosmos is expanding at an ever increasing speed out in all directions. As far as we can measure and think, the material universe itself is as infinite and eternal as any possible spiritual entity, if and when we can ever, through our material senses, record this supposed "spiritual" realm that some have great hope in to reward them for obedience and to torture everyone else who doesn't agree with them... like me, for example. As far as I know about who hates who, my wishes for Christians aren't half so hateful as to include a place where they'll be eternal tortured for not agreeing with me.


AS TO A LOCAL PRAYER BREAKFAST (the Xtian tool for corrupting our Constitutional guaranteed secular governance),

I replied:

My wife suffered the unintended oppression of working for an organization in another city in which some members networked every day at lunch on the job with the boss to pray together. Quite naturally when people meet together on a regular basis, drawn together by a common purpose, they tend to grow closer together than those who don't share their common purpose and don't meet with them. "In" people tend to trust "in" people more than the "out" people in any organization. This is a well-documented phenomena in group dynamics. It's also the problem that all minorities of any kind deal with daily in any culture. That's why our Constitution is specially designed to protect minorities from the oppression of the majority. It's why "separation of church and state" was implemented in our Constitution. Our founding fathers knew what it meant to be oppressed by religious majorities.

To return to my wife's case. Turns out that every time an opening occurred in the management network of the place where my wife worked, people who networked together in prayer (several also attended the same church) were selected more often to fill the openings. Not only that, certain of the males who networked together in prayer, openly espoused the Christian idea that women's work was in the home. One of those men eventually came into authority over my wife, and when she was asked to do some (what seemed to her) questionable things, she respectfully disagreed with the Christian in charge and suggested other ways to handle the situation at hand. Her manager (like so many Christian males) was not able to handle being disagreed with by a woman who ought to be at home (and who did not pray as he prayed) and soon he fired her for insubordination. I should mention that all my wife's suggestions were offered within the framework of staff meetings where such matters are supposed to be offered up and discussed. This Christian male was way out of line. 

My wife is a quiet, conscientious sort of employee. It's not her usual way to create disturbances where she works. When she recently received her Masters in Public Administration and was honored at an awards ceremony for their top students, her supervising professor said, "M______, no matter what, she's always the consummate professional."

My wife could have, of course, pursued this injustice as a sex discrimination case, but, as I said, my wife's a quiet sort who doesn't seek trouble and we didn't really have the resources to embark on such a course of action. However, she was so much in the right that the president of that little incestuously Christian office, after a sweaty and nervous apology to my spouse, wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for her. It was so glowing that one wonders why she was fired? Get the idea?

My point is that no matter how unintended, when people join together in groups (prayer or otherwise), they are building networks which favor the in people and exclude the out people. It doesn't help that I know for certain that many of the people in attendance at these little pools of incipient prejudice are there only to protect their prestige and standing with others who might benefit them in business. Sad that freedom of belief is so suppressed in our culture that average businessmen must pretend to a strong belief that they don't necessarily have in order to further their business interests. Very few people in America are courageous enough to buck the prejudices of the majority Christians until after they've retired and are free to think differently than the majority. It's an age old tale.

If I found a businessman whose services or products I needed who was courageous enough to buck the Christian power elite of Vancouver, I'd do business with him/her in heartbeat. I'd know he had integrity for sure, whereas all those in attendance at these well-publicized networking opportunities for the majority Christian power structure are highly suspect in my eyes.

Labels: Big Bang, Chrisitianity, Cosmos, national prayer breakfast, prayer breakfast, secular government, Universe

AN ADAPTATION CALLED MORALITY

The following is a commentary I entered into the debates that go on all the time on the Columbian website in Vancouver, Washington:

Ray M.... Since it's now tomorrow, I don't know if you'll read this.

You mention a couple of excellent rules for behavior within a culture and, then, credit them to the Bible. Actually, those ideas are inherent within the human animal as we evolved through time. You will find those rules within all cultures and religions, past and present, with slight modifications. I'm an atheist, and I don't need a hypothetical superbeing to tell me that I ought to feel bad if someone steals something of value from me. My feelings inform me pretty well as to how nasty stealing feels, so of course I want laws to protect me from thieves. Bible people just wrote down what people were feeling at the time about the thieves among them and the adulterers, et cetera. Now, of course, we've learned that adulterers are always among us and that, often, those most vociferous about the evils of adultery are the ones practicing it on the sly.

Some will now say, "But what about people whose feelings don't agree with yours?" There are such people as that. They're called sociopaths, and they threaten cultural norms, but most people have evolved the same feeling structure as their neighbors and, thus, agree as to common rules for good social harmony. Less threatening and more helpful are those people who aren't comfortable within whatever culture they're born into. They are always demanding that we reevaluate our cultural priorities. If we didn't change and adapt, of course we'd die out as a species, so those people are healthy in a society. People like the latter brought us democracy. Though I'm an atheist, I recognize that Martin Luther brought needed reform to the Catholic Church, and Protestantism soon followed. Hopefully, Richard Dawkins will help end Protestantism and usher in Humanism as an ethical basis for cultural cohesion.

People interested in the subject of how morality is an adapted trait might like to read The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.

Labels: bible, Dawkins, morality, religion, sociopath

THE TWO OF US IN PORTLAND'S
JAPANESE GARDENS

This is for Kerly to see the two of us lovebirds: George and Mertie in Vancouver, WA.

The photo is by a friend called Carl who I once upon a time taught English to at Vandalia-Butler
High School. We then became hippy friends after my first divorce and shared a walkup flat with others of like mind. We often drove up to Yellow Springs to watch foreign films at the Little Art Theater.

Labels: Carl Tropea, Mertie and I, PDX Japanese Gardens

THE COLUMBIAN (VANCOUVER WA PAPER) WON'T ACCEPT THIS LENGTH

I like free market principles. Here in America they've done a wonderful job of stopping inflation dead in its tracks. With so many people out of work, no one except the richest 12% can afford to buy anything. That definitely keeps prices in check. And wages too.

Let's see: the free market (i.e. unbridled greed) has brought us outlandish CEO benefits and income, the Savings and Loan mess, the dot.com bust, the great Depression and current great Recession, bank failures galore, exploding gold values (for those who can afford gold), the collapsing dollar, corporate corruption, corporate ownership of the Republican part of the US Congress (think Tom Delay and his K Street project), a widely increasing gap between the richest Americans and the poorest, a continually shrinking middle class, the outsourcing of our entire manufacturing base (in search of profits first) along with its good-paying jobs, mortgage failures, the destruction of unions by which working men and women used to have some say about their pay rather than being totally dependent on what their bosses want to pay them (except when Dems manage to raise the minimum wage), financial collapse, cheap come-on printers with expensive ink, ownership of much of America by China and other big investors. Yes, the one thing we do not want is for we voters to have any control whatsoever over the economic forces that dominate our lives.

As to private health care insurance—haven't we seen where that takes us? The public option for health insurance is just that, an OPTION. No one has to use it, so let's try it out and see what happens. If we don't like it after 5 years or so, we can change it, drop it or keep and expand it. It's optional for Pete's sake. What's to fear? Only those who know it might succeed as well as Medicare to hold costs in check fear the public OPTION.

Another thing about private insurance with many competing plans. We've seen how the financial industry has bamboozled the average American with small print and hidden clauses and devious practices when it comes to credit cards. They have no scruples when it comes to profits. To make correct health care choices, one even now has to be an insurance whizzbang to always make the correct choices, and the insurance industry will do everything in its power to fool and trick the average American who, every year, becomes less literate and less able to inform himself by carefully reading the small print. We already have much anecdotal evidence about health insurance surprises for people who did not know exactly what they were getting when they tried to save money on health insurance. I've had occasion to appeal a health insurance claim. Talk about devious decisions and lawyer-like ways to use language to obfuscate an issue! They're masters at it already.

I'll tell you this, when I see widespread honesty at the highest levels of corporate life and a desire to balance profits with social responsibility, then I'll turn my economic welfare over to unregulated, free market capitalism. I can at least vote for change when it comes to politicians and a public OPTION in health care insurance.

Labels: capitalism, Democrats, free markets, health insurance, Republican

SEEING IS NOT HEARING or MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING

Labels: hearing loss, medicine, movies, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, theater

EATING EXPENSIVELY

Labels: Ashland Shakespeare Festival, restaurants, tourism, wealth

DEMONSTRATING IGNORANCE TO MANY PEOPLE

Labels: bible, Bible errors, Garden of Eden, religion