IDoNotGetIt

This is a great article about the ridiculous position that Christians have taken over the rights of gays.  Their religious bias and persecution complex are so ridiculous and it really shows with how they are fighting this battle.

They behave as if their rights are being taken away right and left but jackasses like Fred are evidence that they have nothing to worry about.  As long as he is out there spewing his toxic bile-filled messages, they can be assured that their rights haven’t been taken away.

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.

Lately, it seems like there has been a lot of free expression issues in the news.  We’ve had the controversy over PZ’s “cracker”, we’ve had the “Jesus Sucks” banner and we’ve had the atheist sticker issue, among others.

This has really got me thinking about how lucky we are, as some of these have occurred in other countries that don’t have the same freedom of expression guaranteed by their constitution that we do.  It is scary if you do a little research to see how often people go to jail in other countries just for saying something that people find offensive.  Holocaust denial will get you thrown in jail in many European countries.  In my book this falls into the category of evil.  It is wrong, in my opinion, to disallow people to say things just because they are stupid.  But it is unconscionable to throw them in jail because they say something stupid.  Idiots that spew their hatred and ignorance should be marginalized by the rest of us but they should not be thrown in jail.

In the United States, we don’t have to worry about going to jail for saying something that someone else doesn’t like but we might have to suffer through a lawsuit.  Fellow atheist, Patrick, was offended by a sticker that called him a “fool”, so he decided to sue, then in a similarly offensive jab at the other side, the “Jesus Sucks” banner offended the Christians.  They also had at least one nut who decided that something must be done.  Since the “Jesus Sucks” offense happened in Canada, they may actually have a case, I’m not sure.

My point is that we should be able to get over being offended.  We shouldn’t have the right to stop people from speaking their minds just because we don’t like what they are saying.  Personally, I think restricting people’s freedom of expression is equivalent to restricting their freedom of movement.  Whether you are tying their legs or tying their tongue, you are still causing an undue restriction to their freedom.

The laws in Canada and European countries that make certain offensive speech illegal, and punishable by jail time, are wrong in-so-far as they are unnecessary to protect the general population and are anti-freedom.  I believe that laws that restrict or basic freedoms should only be levied when they are absolutely necessary to protect the public.  Speech that is hateful, irrational, unpopular, etc. but does not specifically incite other illegal activity should be allowed.

I am so grateful for the brilliant foresight of the men who penned the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing Americans this basic freedom.

Rep. Barney Frank had some great “American” things to say today.

“The vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government’s business”

“I don’t think it is the government’s business to tell you how to spend your leisure time.”

If we had more Americans thinking like this, we’d be much better off.

Rep. William Lacy Clay said he did not condone drug use but opposes using tax dollars to pursue what he feels is an arcane holdover from “a phony war on drugs that is filling up our prisons, especially with people of color.”

But the best was Frank pointing out the hypocrisy of republicans (who claim to be in favor of limited government) support of these archaic laws criminalizing marijuana.

I couldn’t agree more.

Here is the article.

What the hell is the difference between Bush and a democrat?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/budget_deficit

I didn’t realize that Huckabee said the following:

“The First Amendment requires that expressions of faith be neither prohibited nor preferred. We should not banish religion from the public square, but should guarantee access to all voices and views. We should share and debate our faith, but never seek to impose it.”

I completely agree with that.  I just wonder if he actually understands what it means.  Most “religious” people I know mis-characterize the insistence by atheist to remove mandatory prayer from schools and other public facilities as some kind of desire to ban religion.  When in reality, it is our desire to enforce the First Amendment and make sure that the government isn’t imposing a religion (invariably Christianity).

Huckabee, made some scary comments when he was running for the republican nomination.  Some of which did not seem to jive with this one.  This seems so reasonable, it makes me suspicious.

Some people like to predict the end of religion.  I’m certainly one who believes knows that knowledge is the worst enemy of most religions.  But even though we, as a society, will slowly allow religion to loosen its grip on us as we gain more and more knowledge about how the universe works, that doesn’t mean that everyone will be forced to give up there faith in something unknown.  Knowledge will only “kill” the religions that continue to try to control society.  The religions who try to work their way into politics (ahem, Christianity, cough-cough) will die as our knowledge of the world around us makes them less and less useful.  All religions are essentially unnecessary, but so are underclothes and jewelry.  Just because they are unnecessary doesn’t make them undesirable to some or even most people.  I’m wearing a tie right now, this tie is most definitely not necessary.  It performs no function other than to make me look more businesslike, which, itself, is not necessary for me to efficiently perform my daily duties.  Some religions will persist no matter how much knowledge we obtain, but these religions will be the ones that focus on the things that they do best for the people that require them, without trying to grow themselves and work their way in to policies outside of their churches.

I mentioned in an earlier post of how I used to have long arguments with a guy I worked with regarding religion.  I was Christian and he was atheist.  This is very important to me today and relates exceptionally well to what I just said.  He is the most intelligent person I know today.  And he is no longer an atheist, but it is, I believe, important to point out that he is also not a Christian.  He is Wiccan.  He now has faith in something that is not scientific; he has faith in something that is not, strictly, logical.  But I don’t consider him a crack-pot either.  He is still the most intelligent person I know.  But for what ever reason, he has chosen to believe in something other than what he can prove with science.  This makes him feel good and I don’t believe it is just him fooling himself with nonsense beliefs.  Even though he can’t show proof for the things he believes it doesn’t matter, because he isn’t trying to make policy based on his beliefs.  He is only using them to improve his own mental well-being and that of his family.  It is no crazier for him to perform Wiccan rituals than it is crazy for someone to meditate to calm themselves.  It could even be proven scientifically that his religion does physically make him healthier just as it can be proven that some Christians are healthier.  The point is that it is their beliefs in their religion and not their religion that makes them feel better.  It is a scientific fact that our well being can be influenced by our mental health and for some people; their religious beliefs are an important, if not integral, part of their mental health.  So I feel sure that religion will never disappear completely.  Only the ones that believe that they are the source of morality for everyone and that they must enforce their version of morality on other people will disappear.  Christians would scoff at the very idea of teaching these rituals in a public school, but they have no problem suggesting that their own religious beliefs should be taught there.  This is why amenable religions like Wicca who are not out trying to make other people behave according to their beliefs will outlive the ones like Christianity.