I've said it before and I'll say it again: the "if we teach Biblical creationism then we have to teach all the other religions' creation myths too" argument is a bad one to use against these loons. They're not interested in "religious freedom" or "equal time" or anything else of the sort; what they want is a Christian (specifically fundamentalist evangelical Protestant) theocracy, and no one should have any illusions about their goals. If they get their way, we will have to teach (their version of) Biblical creationism, and we will not have to, or even be allowed to, teach anything else.

The same goes for the closely related "if we have Christian prayers in schools, then we also have to have Jewish / Muslim / Buddhist / Hindu / Wiccan / Satanist / etc. prayers too" idea. This is an appealing argument to tolerant, open-minded liberals, but it is a dangerous misunderstanding of the thinking of the religious Right.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/12/missouri-republicans-introduce-bill-that-forces-educators-to-teach-creationism-in-schools-and-universities/

If the DNC did this, then every Democratic candidate for office, from Obama down to the guy running for county dogcatcher, would be peppered with endless questions about it at every press conference, and would have to issue a statement either endorsing or repudiating the Committee's stance. It would be the greatest campaign issue for the Republicans in recent history, and they wouldn't let it slip by them. It would, more or less, be equivalent to the entire Democratic ticket saying, "You know what, we don't really care about 2012, you guys can have it."

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/11/402358/republican-national-committee-files-brief-seeking-to-allow-corporate-funding-of-campaigns/

I will now eagerly await the actions of the Democratic attack machine on this story in 3, 2, 1, ... still counting ..., 0, -1, -2, ... um, guys?

We have already seen that "piracy" (in the IP sense, not in the original meaning of the word) is one of four root passwords to the Constitution. The others are "drugs," "child porn," and "terrorism." It's time to fight fire with fire.

I therefore propose that We the People, in order to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish these Talking Points:

(1) Lamar Smith gets campaign contributions from drug dealers!

(2) PIPA stands for "Porn Infant Porn for All!" You know it's really bad 'cause it's got "porn" in it twice.

(3) If SOPA passes, the terrorists have won.

None of this actually makes sense, of course, but if we repeat it loudly enough and often enough, it should work.

This is a nice, compact debunking of the "B-b-but in the 1970's all the scientists were predicting global COOLING!" meme that the denialists seem unable to resist. It won't help with the hardcore denialists, of course -- "You can't reason someone out something he didn't reason himself into" -- but it's worth keeping around to show those who might be on the fence. Be sure to follow the links; there's some good stuff there.

Derailing for Dummies

I'm not going to say I agree completely with all the arguments herein, but it nonetheless ought to be required reading for anyone (and particularly, yes, for white men) who is considering jumping into discussions about race, sex, religion, and other Sensitive Subjects. It strikes me as being akin to lists of common logical fallacies -- not at all (a large number of Slashdotters to the contrary) the be-all and end-all of understanding how to have a good debate, but an incredibly useful tool for understanding the basics of how not to make yourself look like a fool.

The reactions to Christopher Hitchens' death have reminded me that I am, even among my fellow nonbelievers, a stranger in a strange land.

My personal "I had no need for that hypothesis" brand of atheism, or agnosticism, or whatever, is important to me to exactly the same degree it was important to Pierre Laplace -- that is, not at all, unless someone with the power to order my head chopped off makes an issue of it. (To be fair to Napoleon, he did nothing of the sort. Modern bloody-minded political leaders could take a lesson from this.) I spend as little time as possible pondering (and pontificating on!) the nonexistence of God, or the Gods, or the Universal Spritual Force Which Holds Everything Together But Which I Don't Want To Call God Because That's Too Conventional, because it does not matter to me. I have science to do.

But then, I was raised by two atheists, an ex-Catholic and an ex-Jew, and they didn't get that luxury. Neither, I strongly suspect, did Hitchens, or any of the other more vocal "New Atheist" leaders -- and neither did the vast majority of the nonbelievers I know. Almost everyone I have ever known, in my entire life, was raised with some sort of religious belief. Most of them retained that belief, or switched over to a closely related one. Some broke away from it, and the use here of the verb "to break" is appropriate. It is a breaking, and like all such violent events, it leaves scars. The ex-believers almost universally have in their minds something very much like the titanium rod I have in my leg; it provides some support against the stresses and strains of the world, but one is always aware that it is there, and sometimes it rubs against other, organic structures in uncomfortable ways.

My father is an immigrant, and although he's lived here for what is now by far the greater portion of his life, he's still sometimes taken aback by some cultural reference which was common to the childhoods of his native-born contemporaries. In a culture which is shaped as deeply by religion, specifically Christianity, as is ours, I sometimes feel like a long-term immigrant too. I may look and talk and for the most part think like the people around me, but there's that common cultural reference point, that history of belief if not the belief itself, that I don't have.

"You don't know what it was like, man! You weren't there!" Indeed. And I don't regret this, because I've seen the scars the breaking leaves. But I do regret that there really is no other way to understand what it feels like, without having to go through the associated pain.

Hitchens was an abrasive, egotistical loudmouth, and the things he was loud about tended to be opionions with which many of my family and friends passionately agreed. For what it's worth, I agreed too, for the most part, but without the passion. Because I just don't have the background -- the Passion of the Atheist, if you will -- to feel it. I have no need for that passion.

This leaves me free to look at the man and his life with the immigrant's eye. If the immigrant's lack of a common cultural reference point comes with a price, it confers advantages as well. My father often makes astute observations about American culture which no native-born citizen, not even one as culturally introspective as I am, could quite come up with. Objectivity helps. And the objective truth is that while Hitchens was right about many small things, he was wrong, badly wrong, about One Big Thing.

Hitchens saw 9/11 as the result not merely of Islamic extremism, but of religion in general -- in which he was right -- and conceived of America's subsequent kill-em-all reaction, specifically the Iraq portion, as a war against religious extremism -- in which he was wrong. Deeply, tragically, bloodily wrong. And he compounded the wrongness by turning his considerable eloquence and wit to propagandizing for the war, often turning against his fellow leftists in the process, growing ever louder as the corpses piled higher.

One Big Thing. And I understand that to my fellow nonbelievers, more specifically to the ex-believers in whose land I-the-immigrant live, the small things were not small. Hitchens wrote for decades against Yahweh, after all, and for only a few years in the service of Mars. But for myself, while I have no need of the Yahweh hypothesis, I know Mars quite well. Bright-speared Mars, and Odin who stirs up wars among men, and Morrigan who sends her ravens to feed on the dead -- these Gods I know; and Hitchens preached their gospel. To others, this may well be a minor heresy. So be it. It is a sin I find myself unwilling to forgive.

http://the-scientist.com/2011/11/16/opinion-the-dark-side-of-science/

The author seems to think we live in a world of wild, unregulated research in which unlimited time and money are available for latter-day Frankensteins to create monstrosities in their labs, hidden from public view until the horror is unleashed. In reality, the opposite is true. The primary ethical concern in biomedical science is with curing disease, saving lives, and reducing suffering -- and progress toward these goals is increasingly hindered by philosophers, theologians, and politicians who inject themselves into a process they refuse to understand.

I can't help but wonder if their remote ancestors during the Paleolithic were rubbing their chins and muttering about the dangers of this new flint-chipping technology. Of course, once the hand axe was established as part of everyday life, they were happy enough to use it, all the while warning that tying a smaller, sharper piece of flint to the end of a stick was Going Too Far ...

The more any participant in an online discussion proclaims that he's being logical, the less likely it is that there's any actual logic on display in his posts.

As an American, and specifically as a Westerner, I reject the idea that culture is in the blood. The West is a distillation of America, with all its best and worst ideas, and one of these ideas is that we are who we choose to be, not who our ancestors were. Our names, our languages, our religions, even our lands: these things matter, but they do not define us; we define ourselves.

But I have to admit that there is something distinctly Russian in the way I see America, and particularly Colorado. The Motherland, the Rodina. A very old way of thinking, and one which doesn't fit particularly well with the New World.

The linguistic root of "patriotism" is "patria," that is, "fatherland" -- a word which tends to make people nervous these days, and with good reason. I am a patriot, and (says the Westerner again) I choose what that word means to me. I am far past the age when it meant beating the drum and waving the flag. I did that when I was younger, and I don't regret it, but honestly I'm not sure how well it ever fit me. Nor, with my rational modern eye, can I indulge in the idea of mommy-land; I've lived too many places (largely as a side effect of the drum-beating and flag-waving, it should be noted) and known them too well to believe that any of them is bound to me by blood.

Grown-ups love their parents too, even when they go far from home. Adult patriotism is hard to define. It's easier to remain a child, to be tough like Daddy says or run crying to Mommy when acting tough doesn't work out so well. My parents raised me with something more thoughtful and more useful than that, and in so doing earned my eternal gratitude.

I'm still working out how to apply that to my country. I probably will be for the rest of my life.

(Jumping off from the conversation here, for those who are interested.)

Although I stopped posting stuff here ages ago, I've had the My Amigos feed in Google Reader, and have occasionally wandered in to have a look.

But now I've decided to cut my ties here permanently. So as soon as I've posted this, I'm unsubscribing My Amigos. I've already updated my User Info with how to contact me.

To those few of you who still post here, thanks for the fun times. It's nothing personal, I just need to cut down the amount of time I spend on social networks generally.

-MT. signing off.