They haven’t changed much. After all, before health care, they were protesting about taxes (the reason for the name “Tea Party”, in fact)… after the Obama administration lowered taxes for 95% of Americans — and, since there are probably no billionaire teabaggers, for 100% of protesters.

If they were honest, they’d admit that what they’re really protesting is “the President is black, and black people scare me”. What else explains that they protested about taxes after they were lowered?

A lot of Catholics have been complaining about Benedict 16’s utterly immoral statement, and, on one hand, one can’t fault them for it: it just shows that they still have some sense of morality, that they’re not mindless robots obeying “Dear Leader”.

On the other hand… do those Catholics (and Christians in general) know their own religion at all? Why are they surprised? Why aren’t them just nodding because, well, the Pope is Catholic and he’s just stated a Catholic / Christian position?

People, the basis of your religion is that this life is just a test! That one shouldn’t “love this world”. Earthly suffering is immaterial; the only thing that matters is whether you’re “saved” or not. If unspeakable suffering leads one to God / Jesus and therefore that person is saved, to a Christian that’s perfectly OK; in fact, one couldn’t ask for more.

If God exists as they think, and is absolutely against all forms of contraceptives / sex not for reproduction as they think, then better for someone to suffer horribly and die of Aids, with a chance of going to heaven, than to live a long, healthy, happy life and end up in hell with certainty. This is only logical, if one accepts their premises. Which, of course, I don’t, what with being an atheist and everything.

Christianity is a life-hating death cult.

“As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”

– Commissioner Pravin Lal, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, video game from 1999

Yes! Yes! YES!!

Sign A:

There is a God.

Sign B:

There is no God.

I’ll expand on this in the next post, naturally, but, first, I’d just like to have your answers, and, if possible, your reasoning for that answer – whether you’re an atheist or not.

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

about 9/11, and:

AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.

is dead.

My feelings about this? The world is better off without him. I’m sorry if this offends anyone; apparently, someone recently dead is always to be “revered”. But I’ll save my compassion for those who deserve it, for those who actually try to make the world a better place, instead of a worse one.

Still, while I believe that Falwell was (much like Robertson, Dobson, Jack Thompson, and others) a disgusting human being, and a source of fundamentalism, intolerance and bigotry, I won’t actually cheer his death. Unlike what his followers believe, I’m convinced that this life is “it”, and, far from making our lives pointless, it makes them precious.

Besides, there are surely many waiting to take his place, and they will always have power, as long as there are people who want to be free from the responsability of thinking and deciding for themselves, who can’t deal with their lives and so need to believe that “hey, this is not the real thing, this is just a test,” and who want to be told that their own prejudices and bigotry are actually “moral” and “holy”, because, hey, the big guy in the sky hates all of ‘em too.

What will make the world a better place is not the death of the Jerry Falwells of the world, but, instead, the loss of their power and influence, because people begin to actually think for themselves. People shouldn’t be “good” simply because there is no charismatic bigot currently inciting them, but because they see those bigots for what they really are, and want nothing to do with them.

While to any non-theist (or even simply non-Catholic) the threat of excommunication is as frightening as the idea of Santa Claus not liking you, if most of the populace is Catholic, the fact that a candidate (possibly attempting a re-election) has been excommunicated (“and by His Holiness the Pope himself!”) may influence polls and election results enough that anyone who’s been considering lifting some ancient and draconian abortion ban may end up not doing it.

What, you thought the Vatican only pulled the strings of kings and kingdoms during the Middle Ages? Think again…

Is it just me, or does this remind you as well of “pointy-haired bosses” putting more and more money into a project that everyone already knows is doomed to failure, and will bring no profit at all, just because “well, if we pull back now, it will mean that whatever was already spent is lost”? Which is, if you think about it for 5 seconds, a fallacy – what was spent is already lost, the choice is between losing even more, or not.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the main goal of the war — and, in that, it’s been an absolute success — was always to make it so that criticizing the president in any way is “unpatriotic”, I’d think that the only reason that the U.S. is still there is due to the above – better to bury more money (and, in this case, human lives) than to admit a mistake.

Peter David has some nice comments on Bush’s speech as well, plus a newer post, where he writes:

The classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.

We’ve been sending troops into Iraq. The result? Civil War, fighting, and young people dying.

Bush’s solution? Send troops into Iraq.

Different result?

No reason to believe so.

Someone should do a dictionary entry for “Insanity” with Bush’s picture next to it.

It may appear strange that an atheist like yours truly celebrates Christmas. However, not only is Christmas an originally pagan holiday (and much older than the supposed birth of Jesus), but, around here, it’s not really a religious holiday. We celebrate Christmas because of tradition, and as an excuse for the family to get together, possibly exchange gifts (though the increasing consumerism is certainly annoying), have a good time, and enjoy each other’s company… which, for some odd reason, is never done during the rest of the year.

So, whatever you readers celebrate, enjoy yourselves. If you don’t celebrate anything… do you really need an excuse to enjoy yourselves anyway?

To me, forbidding abortion reminds me of this Robert A. Heinlein quote:

Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

In other words, some people just want to be left alone and decide for themselves, while others feel the “need” to control others, to decide what others can and cannot do. Much like the sodomy-as-a-crime laws that still exist in some states of the U.S..

To put it simply: “You’re against abortion? Fine, then don’t have one.”

However, some people have argued that, in Objectivist / Libertarian terms, abortion is an “initiation of force”, a violation of the fetus’ rights.

The common answer is that a fetus doesn’t have rights, because it’s not a human being; it’s a potential human being. In other words, to say a fetus has rights, then we should say that every sperm has rights, much like in the Monty Python sketch.

What do you think?

But, surprisingly, the video games industry is fighting back. For a change. About time, IMO.

From the linked article:

The ESA argues that this bill is an effort to substitute the government’s judgment for parental supervision and turn retailers into surrogate parents. Lowenstein said that the industry’s products were being unreasonably and unfairly singled out. He contends that while there is no question that a few games have content that some audiences will find offensive, the same can be said for some content in TV, films, music, and books. Since the government does not regulate the sales of those entertainment industries, it should follow suit for the sale of video games. Ultimately, he concluded, parents, not government or industry, must be the gatekeepers of what comes in the home.

“In 2004, the average game buyer was 37 years old and the average game player was 30,” Lowenstein said. “Knowing this, our industry creates a wide range of content for a diverse consumer audience, just as other entertainment industries do. And, it’s illogical that video games would be treated more harshly than R-rated movies or music CDs with parental warning labels, both of which can be legally viewed and sold to minors. How can you treat a video game based on James Bond any different than a book or movie based on the same subject matter?”

Riiiight…

Pat Robertson a couple of days ago: “If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.”

Tough luck, Pat. Video recording is a wonderful thing.

Pat Robertson, an American ultra-conservative “Christian” televangelist, has just said, in a broadcast, that the U.S. should assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.”, the idiot said. Why? Well, according to him, Chávez is “going to make (Venezuela) a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.”.

Now, I’m not a Christian, but what confuses me is how anyone can believe that such a monster is one. I mean, this is not the age of the Inquisition, Crusades and so on, right? Christians today are supposed to have remembered the Thou shalt not kill Commandment, apparently forgotten in the Middle Ages. How can any Christian not instantly condemn that imbecile when he says “oh, let’s go kill that guy – he annoys us, and it’s cheaper than going to war again”? How can he still have listeners?

Remember that he’s the same guy who said feminism is a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

He’s also the same guy who agreed with another nutcase televangelist that the 9/11 attacks were the fault of “pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU and the People for the American Way.”

And yet I’m sure that little, if anything, will happen to him, or to his very successful (!) TV program.

Technorati tags: Pat Robertson

For the last couple of decades, the media, sleazy lawyers (redundant, I know) and opportunistic politicians (there I go again…) have been, from time to time, creating media circuses because computer and video games are corrupting our children with gratuitous violence, blood, gore, disrespect for authority and, worst of all, nudity! That no scientific study (and there have been several) has ever linked real life violence with computer games is of no interest to these parasites – it is an opportunity to get richer (to a lawyer like the vermin above) and an opportunity to be seen as “protecting children” and “fighting for family values” (just check out Hillary Clinton, whom I had nothing against until now).

Why do these tactics work? Because parents want them. Parenting is hard work, and it’s much easier to let the government do it through legislation, instead of taking an active interest in educating your children, spending time with them (“time? impossible, I have to work!”), getting to know them, and having an idea of what their entertainment is about. So people claim for stricter laws, they call for the end of “mature” games, they demand strong censorship against violence and, worse, sex. Anything so that they don’t have to be parents, don’t have to take responsibility for anything their kids do, and don’t have to teach responsibility to the kids themselves.

And, so, if a child or teenager is violent or crazy, gets a gun and goes on a shooting spree at school, it was those damned video games that caused it. Let’s sue Rockstar or Electronic Arts or Sony, let’s lobby Congress to ban all videogames except those fit for 8-year olds – never mind that the mature games are clearly labeled as such, yet parents keep buying them for their children (“just to shut them up”, I guess).

“Personal responsibility” seems to be a forgotten concept, these days. We are all “victims of society”, and can’t be blamed for anything we do. It’s those dirty heavy metal bands and role-playing games… Ooops, sorry, wrong decade, that was in the 70s and 80s. It’s “video games” now. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’ll just write a letter to my congressman demanding to ban video games (and violent movies, and violent books, and anything that could corrupt my kid (how old is he, anyway? I rarely see him at all…)), so I can be at the office for 10 hours a day and then go home to watch TV for hours, feeling safe with the knowledge that, whatever my kid is doing, he won’t see a drop of blood, a swear word or, horror of horrors, a nipple.

Basically, Marina Bai, a Russian astrologist, sued NASA for… wait for it… “changing her horoscope” by crashing a probe into a comet, in order to study it.

Now, it’s a fact that there are crazy people (I was going to say “weirdos”, but that’s not necessarily bad – one could say I’m one…) everywhere, people who are, to put it bluntly, completely nuts. This, by itself, should be known by everyone, and surprise no one.

It’s also a known fact that a lot of people don’t have the smallest shred of honesty, and will do anything, whatever it takes, to get rich without effort – and leeching other people, corporations or other entities are, to them, perfectly acceptable methods. So, the fact that someone is trying to get rich in this way shouldn’t come as a surprise.

What should come as a surprise, and saddens me that it doesn’t, is that, somehow, for some reason, cases like this are taken seriously. That people who do this are seen as “having a different, but valid opinion”. That they aren’t laughed out of the room when they try to sue a scientific organization for “disturbing” her baseless superstition. That they aren’t fined, or even arrested, for an obvious attempt at winning a lot of money from a settlement. That these methods do work.

In short, that people – that we – put away with it.