OMG! Obama is a Muslim...

Or so this beefcake of a pastor from Wichita is wont for us to believe. I found this kind of amusing, until I realized that this guy just got some time on CNN (CNN!) for his whack job actions... Wow.

Godless Americans...

The battle for North Carolina's electoral votes is definately hot, but not as sizzling as the crap throwing going on in the race for the Senate seat. The race features incumbent Elizabeth Dole facing off against State Senator Kay Hagan. The campaign has been recently rated as a toss up, and with such a race comes the mud. The newest issue, and the one that got my attention, is that Hagan is filing a lawsuit against Dole for a campaign ad that calls her "godless." From the ad:

The ad then shows members of the group, which promotes rights for atheists and the separation of church and state, declaring that neither God nor Jesus exists. "Godless Americans and Kay Hagan," the ad continues. "She hid from cameras. Took 'Godless' money. What did Kay Hagan promise in return?"

Well, one could hope that she has promised to not let religious dogma influence public policy, but alas, this is America and that would be far too enlightened.

Racist, prejudiced, whatever they are...

they sure sound stupid. I'll take all the berating someone wants to throw my way for being an intellectual elitist on a vast array of issues, but on this my friends, stupidity should not be tolerated as a valid belief.

“He’s neither-nor,” said Ricky Thompson, a pipe fitter who works at a factory north of Mobile, while standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store just north of here. “He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds*.”

How many people do you think they had to interview to find someone to say something so stupid, and then have their picture taken for the national paper of record? I would hope a lot, but Mr. Thompson undoubtably feels he is making a valid point, supported by the good word and his religion. Unfortunately for him, I would highly doubt that he could cite more than the old "unequal yoke" verse from Corinthians. The first problem with this basis is that the verse focueses on believers and non-believers, and only uses lightness and darkness as metaphor (oh no, I sound like an eltitist). Of course, another big detriment to Mr. T's lovely logic is the fact that all humans are, acccording to the Bible, descended from one couple... ergo, if one of us can't "come as one," then none of us can.

* Breeds? And I thought race was a stupid term...

Religulous...

I went to a Sunday matinee at the lovely Sundance 608 to watch Bill Maher's Religulous. Maher pulls few punches when attacking religion via "asking questions," though he doesn't make as many counter assertions as many of the "New Atheists" cohort. Maher's basic conclusion is that the human race must outgrow religion and dogma before it kills us. It is an entertaining movie, though each time I engage this topic I get saddened, because I don't know which is worse... A. People really do question the ridiculous beliefs the hold, but are scared to say them, or B. they really actually believe them.

Perhaps even more frustrating from the film, was the continuous stream of "it's politics" statements by religious figures when discussing issues between religions. I'll be a Crickian here, and defend politics from this lunacy. The major area where these statements came up were with regard to issues in Netherlands between Muslims and other Dutch citizens. Politics is not ever murdering a film maker in the street, or issuing a death sentence against a novelist. Ever. Period.

Trailer (not as good as the movie):

As we evolve...

Hitchens always offers something to say and a brief review of the last three posts in his Slate "Fighting Words" column shows that he is two for his last three. The old curmudgeon can still hit a little, eh? The column dated 7/7/08 on the death of Jesse Helms is definately a double to the gap.

I make no apology for calling him a provincial redneck, because that, to be fair to him once more, was how he thought of himself and even described himself. It was a scandal that a man with so little knowledge of the outside world should have had such a stranglehold on American foreign policy for so long. He once introduced Benazir Bhutto as the prime minister of India. All right, that could have happened to anybody. But what about the hearings on North Korea in which he made repeated references to "Kim Jong the Second"? In order to prevent any repetition of this idiotic gaffe, Helms' staff propped up a piece of card on which was clearly written the pronunciation "Kim Jong ILL." The senator from North Carolina duly made the adjustment, referring thenceforth to the North Korean despot as "Kim Jong the Third."

Good riddance Jesse...

I won't go into great detail on his post from July 14th on what he feels is a false zero-sum choice proposed by liberals with regard to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I feel this piece is either a hard line out to right center, or maybe it is reaching on an error by the left side of the infield? I am not as convinced as Mr. Hitchens that the war in Iraq is going as well as he would have it, but he does make one point in reference to the Afghanistan war that I believe to be of import.

It would also be very nice to accept another soft-centered corollary of the Iraq vs. Afghanistan trade-off and to believe that the problem of Afghanistan is a problem only of the shortage of troops. Strangely, this is not the view of the Afghan government or of any of the NATO forces on the ground. The continued and, indeed, increasing insolence of the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies is the consequence of one thing and one thing only. These theocratic terrorists know that they have a reliable backer in the higher echelons of the Pakistani state and of its military-intelligence complex and that while this relationship persists, they are assured of a hinterland across the border and a regular supply of arms and recruits.

Until Pakistan gets serious about the insurgents in the Tribal Regions, an area much neglected and extremely economically and politically depressed, there will be no true "peace" in Afghanistan... no matter how many NATO or US troops are there.

And finally we have the blind salamander column dated July 21st. In this column Hitchens offers an interesting argument against the entire mindset of linear progression, which is of primary import to the Creationists (and is at least partially shared by many other humans). Hitchens proposes considering our current position not as the resultant of a natural progression, but as the temporary status quo of an ongoing and dynamic process, whereby things (cells, organs, organisms, ecosytems, planets, galaxies, etc.) come and go. There is no ultimate end to evolution, it is merely a part of the ongoing change that is the universe.

I am not myself able to add anything about the formation of light cells, eyespots, and lenses, but I do think that there is a dialectical usefulness to considering the conventional arguments in reverse, as it were. For example, to the old theistic question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" we can now counterpose the findings of professor Lawrence Krauss and others, about the foreseeable heat death of the universe, the Hubble "red shift" that shows the universe's rate of explosive expansion actually increasing, and the not-so-far-off collision of our own galaxy with Andromeda, already loomingly visible in the night sky. So, the question can and must be rephrased: "Why will our brief 'something' so soon be replaced with nothing?" It's only once we shake our own innate belief in linear progression and consider the many recessions we have undergone and will undergo that we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design.