IDoNotGetIt

I’m so excited.  I finally got my “In Reason We Trust” vehicle tag yesterday.  I’ve been wanting one for the longest time.  There are so many people with the “In God We Trust” tags that I was beginning to feel ashamed every time I saw one.

The experience of getting it was interesting though.  The DMV has a stereotype that everyone likes to believe.  I usually don’t have a problem when I need to go there but the lady that was helping me yesterday was really trying my patience.  She was a perfect representation of the stereotype.

I walked up to the counter and gave her my paperwork and said “I’m swapping out my license plate for this special interest tag.  I had already filled out the application for the special tag and it had a place to write in the name of the tag that you want to get.  For this tag, I had written “Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry.”  To start with the idiot woman couldn’t read it so I assumed that it was my handwriting and turned the page over to show her where it was printed and circled.  She still couldn’t pronounce the word Secular.  She kept looking at me over the top of her glasses and saying “you want this plate?”  She repeated this at least two more times over the course of this visit.  So after several minutes of computer searching (I still suspect she was searching the web to find out what secular means), and several trips to the back room to talk to her supervisor, she finally came out said “I need to see your membership card”.  Now I had already researched this on the Internet and they have a printable version of the membership card on the lowcountryhumanists.org web site.  So I pulled it out and gave it to her.  “This is your card?” she said.  “Yea ma’am” I replied.  After a few more “over the eyeglass looks”, she went over to search the wall of cubbies where the license tags are stored.  I watched her look over the wall and I saw the tag, it is actually pretty recognizable due to the large U.S. Flag on the left side and I was pretty sure I saw it but she didn’t get it.  Instead, she walked back to the back room and came back out a few minutes later saying that they didn’t have it in stock and I would have to mail in my application.  I was second guessing my self about whether or not the one I saw was the one I wanted so I ask her for specifics about the mail in process but then I took one last look and noticed the sticker above the cubby.  It was too far for me to read but it was long and certainly looked like it could say Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, so I pointed it out to her and said I think that is it.  She looked annoyed and slowly walked over to get a better look.  “That’s not it, it says ‘In Reason We Trust’”, she hollered.  I replied, “Yeah, that’s it.”  So several minutes later, I finally had my new tag.  Now I can feel pride rather than shame every time I see one of those idiotic In God We Trust tags.

Yesterday, I was riding with a friend; we were driving by a palm reader business when she said “I wonder if she gets any business at that palm reader place”.  My reply was surely she does, that place has been there all my life and I don’t doubt for one second that she gets plenty of gullible customers, eager to hear what ever non-sense she has to offer about their futures, love lives, etc.

Now before I continue, let me point out that my friend is a Christian, and one of the scary, dangerous (in my opinion) kinds of Christians.  I say dangerous because she’s the unpredictable kind.  She isn’t the kind that thinks that the Bible is the unerring word of God, she is more the kind that believes that it is more of a rough draft and it is up to the individual to make it into what ever they want (she probably wouldn’t agree with that but it is true, that’s what she does).  At least, with the crazier bunch who do think the bible isn’t something to be interpreted individually, you know what to expect from them.  Her type is more common and more dangerous because you don’t know what to expect from them.  They tend to group together based on similar interpretations and fight hard for misguided “rights”.  Keep in mind that to many Christians, their rights require other people to give up their rights.

Anyway, after I said “I don’t doubt at all that she has plenty of business”.  She said “I don’t understand how people believe that.”  I was a little flabbergasted actually.  I said “I agree” and made it obvious that I was pointing my finger at her with my voice.  Picking up on that she got defensive and sort of dismissive but tried to clarify.  I said “I don’t see the difference between that and church”.  The discussion ended when I said “Well, I think you should think about that.” and my other friend in the truck, expertly,  changed the subject.

I’m constantly amazed at how theists can firewall their “accepted beliefs” from everything else.  She was using logic and reason to reject the “powers” of the palm reader but she has her own beliefs which are equally, if not more, illogical.  But her beliefs are safely behind the firewall, untouchable by that nasty logic and reason.

Tuesday night, I had a long argument with one of my co-workers.  We were talking about the election and he said “something funny” was going on because, allegedly, if you chose to vote straight democrat on our voting machines, when it went to the review page, it didn’t have Obama listed as one of the candidates that you were voting for.  This, in his mind, suggested that there was a deliberate act on “their” part to cheat Obama out of votes.

My skeptical mind immediately kicks into gear and doubts that a conspiracy is the most reasonable explanation for this occurrence.  I said this to my co-worker and explained why it was more likely that these reports were exaggerated, or the people were mistaken or even intentionally lied, etc. than that the voting machines were tampered with.  He then stated that this wasn’t just South Carolina but all over the country (although, still only a hand-full of complaints).  My reply to this was considering the extremely small number of complaints and considering that they are spread out over such a wide area, the entire country, it is even more likely that it isn’t true.  Because now we have a conspiracy that involves government and civilian officials all over the country which wouldn’t be an easy task even in a small election much less one as closely watched as this one.  Given the difficulty of such a large conspiracy, it is more likely that these people are mistaken or a machine malfunctioned and I would discard the testimony of these hand-full of people.

His reply was that I lived in a fantasy world.  WTF, I live in a fantasy world?  My initial reaction at this point was anger because I had just been insulted.  And from my point of view it was a pretty decent insult.  I’ve overcome a significant amount of fantasy based living, in my past, to get back into the world of reality.  Telling me that I live in a fantasy world is as bad as calling me a Scientologist or worse, a Christian.  But I quickly realized that he had just made an attack against me rather than my arguments.  I asked him to address where I was wrong in my reasoning as I certainly do not live in a fantasy world!  I even tried to explain Occam’s razor to him and tried to show how many unwarranted and unlikely assumptions he has to make about everyone involved with the voting process to come to the conclusion that these isolated reports are true and in fact represent some sort of conspiracy to cheat Obama out of votes.

He also assumed that, just because I don’t believe these few peoples stories, as they were relayed to me through him, that I must think these people and everyone else who believed them to be liars.  This is not so, there are other possibilities, they could have been mistaken or the machines could have been malfunctioning.  It is naive to believe everything you are told, even if the story comes from someone you trust.  When the claim is hard to believe, it requires more in-depth vetting before acceptance.

One other problem I had with his side of the argument was when he insinuated that I was being naive because I don’t know everything about these computerized voting machines.  As in specifics about how they are programmed, who can program them, etc.  I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t trying to prove to him that it isn’t possible to manipulate these machines in order to cheat Obama.  I was only trying to show why it was not only unlikely, but unlikely enough to not warrant further research on my part.

Even after all this, I’m not sure if I got through to him at all, if I did he wouldn’t admit it.  I never could get him to point out specific problems with my side of the argument.  It was pretty much decided that “I just don’t understand”, which is the generic version of “god doesn’t want you to understand this yet” or “god works in mysterious ways.”

One other thing (just to beat this dead horse one last time) I just thought about.  If there was a conspiracy to cheat Obama out of votes using these computerized voting machines, why would you design it to not show Obama when someone selects the straight democrat option, thereby giving a clue to your devious plot.  It would be smarter to have it show Obama but just not give him the vote.  And if they are dumb enough to not think of that they can’t be smart enough to pull off this huge conspiracy otherwise.