Bush’s job approval: it boggles the mind

October 20th, 2008

According to RealClearPolitics, Bush currently has, in the U.S., a job approval of 24.6%. On the other hand, 69.3% disapprove.

To me, this is impossible to even begin to understand, unless I lower my appreciation of the human race even more. How can anyone who’s not a major partner of an oil or weapons company approve of Bush’s presidency? Think he’s doing an acceptable job? From fighting the wrong war to ruining the economy, from supporting Creationism to vetoing stem cell research – twice –… how can anyone with half a brain support him?

The only – scary – explanation is that about 25% of Americans – or about 76.363.250 people – would support Bush (or any other Republican) even if they saw him, with their own eyes, eating babies – because, no matter what he’s done, at least he’s not a lib’ral, doggone it!

If this is not something to keep one awake at night, I don’t know what is.

Posted in politics, stupidity | 2 Comments »

Powell, Obama and Muslims

October 20th, 2008

You’ve probably read the news by now (and, if you feel like being disgusted, read the comments at the bottom of this page: the number of Republicans who didn’t even listen to Powell’s reasons and are accusing him of supporting Obama just because they’re both black is simply scary), but I couldn’t let this part of Colin Powell’s statement pass by:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said: such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian, has always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, "What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" The answer’s "No, that’s not America." Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Kudos to Powell for having the guts to say that (remember McCain’s (paraphrased) “no, he’s not an Arab,” (meaning “Muslim”, really), “he’s a decent family man”, thus implying that a Muslim can’t be one?). The implication, which probably shocks and offends the Religious Right like few other things in recent memory, is that being a Muslim is somehow not inferior to being a Christian, that being a Muslim (or a non-Christian in general) doesn’t disqualify someone for the presidency.

What next, they may be asking? “Is there something wrong with being an atheist in this country?” ;)

I’m betting, of course, that the media will focus on “Powell endorses Obama”, and ignore this small bit of what he said, but, to me, that was the most important part. I can easily imagine Powell saying the same thing about any other religion, or about the lack of one, and these things need to be said, to combat the Religious Right’s dream of religious tests for high office (which, of course, you’d only pass by adhering strictly to their exact branch of fundamentalist Christianity).

Incidentally, it’s strange that I haven’t seen mass conservative cries of “Obama is an atheist”, since atheists are even more demonized than Muslims in the U.S.. I guess it’s the old “there are really no atheists, as deep inside everyone knows God exists” thing.

Posted in atheism, politics, religion, us elections | 1 Comment »

“No, really, the alternative will be EVEN worse! Trust me!”

October 15th, 2008

Articles like this, which I seem to be reading several times a day as I follow the U.S. elections, really get on my nerves. Not just because they’re wrong (they are), but because they spread ignorance, fear, and a complete unwillingness to learn anything, no matter what.

I won’t quote from that article here; if you’re interested in the subject matter, you’ve probably saw a dozen of them this week. The gist of them is always: no matter how bad things are, an Obama presidency / Democratic Congress will be even worse. No, really. Trust us. Things may be pretty screwed up these days, but Obama is a socialist! A liberal! He will destroy Capitalism, destroy the economy (as if it needs help, after the Bush administration), lead the United States into the dark ages, and so on.

Evidence? No need for that; Obama is a Democrat! What else do you need? Don’t you know that Democrats hate capitalism, freedom, America, and all that? If they win, they will raise taxes for everyone, spend money they don’t have (unlike the Bush administration, of course, which would never do such a thing), and, of course, promote the gay agenda, ban religion, force people to have abortions, surrender to Al Qaeda, move to the metric system (gasp!), and so on. Because that’s exactly what happened when Clinton was president, right?

What really makes me angry is this: Bush has been the worst president in recent memory, and the troubles are all his administration’s fault. Yet, without any data, without evidence, they claim that a change of administration would make things even worse. Bush sucks, but Obama is a liberal, and nothing is worse than that, to these people. And many believe them. Even though the last Democratic administration was actually much more fiscally conservative than the “oh, let’s spend a few billions each month in Iraq each month; it’s not as if they come out of our pockets” Bushites.

I’ve always believed – whether talking about U.S. elections, or Portuguese elections, or any others – that, if the group in power screws up, they must be punished, and that only a complete idiot will believe any “devil you know” arguments about the possibility of an even worse alternative. This is not a “devil you know” versus a “devil you don’t”: only the former has actually shown himself to be a “devil”. Suppositions and guesses about Obama’s future government (especially when they contradict all his stated policies) shouldn’t ever be comparable to real, actual, recent-past facts about Bush and I-voted-with-him-90%-of-times McCain.

Posted in politics, us elections | 1 Comment »

The State of Way of the Mind

October 14th, 2008

As you’ve probably have noticed, this blog hasn’t had any new posts since May 2008, which has led to some queries about it being dead. Fortunately, it isn’t (it’s just pining for the fjords… sorry, couldn’t resist), but I feel I have a duty to explain things to my dear, (formerly) faithful readers.

One reason for my absence (from WotM and every other blog I author) was the changes in my life during these past months. New job, several new places of work (in the same job), new girlfriend, and even many physical changes at my home. Now, this by itself should have only affected my blogging for a couple of weeks or so, but then, as any blogger probably knows all too well, it’s hard to come back; you always feel that you have to apologize for “not doing your job”, and it’s easier to delay it… and delay… and delay…

Another reason is that, while my interests and hobbies tend to remain forever, they change in intensity. I’ve always gone through “phases” in my life: more reading, more video games, more socializing, and so on; and even each of those also tends to vary; for example, while reading atheism-related blogs was my passion in 2006 and 2007, these days I tend to go for, incredibly enough, U.S. politics (go, Obama!). If you don’t read, you don’t feel inspired to write, after all… so you get the idea of what happened. I’m happy to report that I’ve began to read Planet Atheism again for the last couple of days, and I’ve only just realized how much I’ve missed this subject for the last 5 months.

(incidentally, Planet Atheism is yet another problem – I have more than 100 new blogs and blog changes in my “to-do list”. But that’s a subject for another post, coming later today, or tomorrow.)

Since recently I’ve been fascinated with the U.S. elections, as I’ve said, until November I’ll be writing about them as well (probably mostly about them). Atheism and religion will go back to being the main themes afterwards.

Anyway, sorry about my absence; the least I could have done was to explain things, and I didn’t do so. I’ll try to be more careful about it in the future.

Posted in way of the mind (site) | 4 Comments »

Comment deleted by mistake

May 8th, 2008

A short while ago, as I was deleting a few spam comments that Akismet missed, I clicked one too many times and deleted a recent, legitimate comment from a post. I don’t even know which post it was, or what the comment was about (everything went too fast). Therefore, I apologize to the commenter, and hope he or she re-posts his/her comment.

Again, sorry about this. I’ll be more careful in the future. I believe that anyone who takes the time to comment here (except when the comment is insulting, off-topic or spammy, of course) should have their “work” respected and preserved, and I always endeavor to do that.

Posted in way of the mind (site) | 5 Comments »

The problem with "Darwinism"

May 2nd, 2008

It can be said that one who consciously lies and deceives others is dishonest; however, one who believes that lie and propagates it isn’t. However, if a person is propagating such a lie, that person is necessarily one of the two: deceiver, or deceived.

Such is the case with anyone who uses the terms “Darwinism” and “Darwinist”.

Why is it? Because those terms are both inaccurate, and loaded.

They’re inaccurate because modern evolutionary theory, much like any science, has itself evolved, and biologists know much more about the workings of evolution than Darwin did, more than 150 years ago. While, say, religious beliefs themselves change and evolve with time (anyone who believes today’s Christianity has anything to do with what Jesus preached is completely deluded, and should someday try to read the gospels as what they really say, without any preconceptions), they don’t do that openly. In other words, there are branches of Christianity which claim to want to “go back to the basics”, but, typically, you don’t see “Christians” claiming that “Jesus was on to something, but we’ve improved over his primitive teachings“. They do that (after all, the apocalyptic, “sell everything you have, the end is near” trappings of Christ’s Christianity couldn’t have lasted long as a religion, at least with any degree of earthly success), but they don’t claim that — or, if they do, then they have to accept that Jesus was just a man, and such a belief can no longer be called “Christianity”. Islam is a popular example of that (to them, Jesus was just a mortal prophet).

Science, however, evolves, and while the founder / discoverer of a branch is honored and respected, scientists don’t treat his or her words as “holy” or as dogma. No biologist would ever say something like “it’s like this, because Darwin said so.” In science, reality is the final arbiter, and no hypothesis or theory is ever sacred. If anyone ever disproves (with evidence) evolution as we know it, science will abandon it and replace it with a better predictive explanation; the fact that nobody has managed to do it in almost two centuries (and it wasn’t from lack of trying) should tell us something.

We don’t call gravity “Newtonism”, because Newton wasn’t the be-all, end-all of gravity — nor did he claim to be. His writings aren’t the final word on gravity. There is no “final word”, but any new “words” must be tested against reality, and must be able to predict new situations as accurately as possible (say, the orbits of planets). “Newtonism” would suggest that modern physicists worship Newton, that they take his word as dogma, that modern physics are just a case of spreading Newton’s word to the unenlightened. You know, much like religion?

“Darwinism” is exactly the same. The implication of the term is that evolutionary biologists worship Darwin, that modern biology is just the study, understanding and spreading of Darwin’s word. That such a belief is dogmatic, and taken on faith. You may not mean it that way, but that’s what the word implies. If you disagree, consider what saying “Newtonism” instead of “gravity” sounds like.

And yet I keep seeing the term tossed around. Especially — of course — by intelligent design advocates. Who, as Expelled has shown, are not necessarily the most honest people around. Now, if you say “Darwinism” instead of “evolution (by natural selection)”, which are you? The deceiver, who fully knows the implications of such a loaded term, but wants to promote the idea of evolution as a Darwin-worshipping cult? Or the deceived, who was fooled by the former?

Tags: ,
Posted in evolution, honesty, intelligent design, science | 4 Comments »

RSS feed back up

May 2nd, 2008

As readers had noted in the post below, the RSS feed for this blog had been missing since the update to WordPress 2.5.1. That version introduced a bug where the feed on /feed/ worked, but not that on /wp-rss2.php and similar. Since I use the latter for FeedBurner, this blog was affected. Everything should be fine now, as the WordPress guys have already fixed the bug in the development version, and I was able to install their fix here (just follow the link above if you’re having the same problem).

Posted in way of the mind (site) | Comments Off

Natural Selection and Eugenics, part 2

April 30th, 2008

A reader called Ashlea has replied to my post Natural Selection and Eugenics with this comment:

I fully believe that what Hitler did WAS Eugenics. And Darwinism is a direct link to this and other things. By eliminating a God and a creator, you really do eliminate the value of human life. If one believe that firstly, he was out on this earth by some cosmic accident, that his life is nothing more than to live and to die, and that after he does there is nothing left, no after life, what value does it have? So of course people are going to look at the "evolution" of people from mud or apes or whatever the case, and they are going to try to "perfect" it. If human life is NO more valuable that the life of an animal, which why would if be if we were once animals, and we have no soul, then what is the harm in picking and choosing and killing??
It has also led to other things, such as euthanasia and abortion. If life is as valueless as Darwinism suggests, then why not just kill of the ones who are "useless"?
What we need to realize is that Yes! We were created by an Intelligent Designer. Look at what trying to prove this wrong has done??? Resulted in the death of Millions of innocent people, people with a purpose in life.

I had started to reply with a comment there, but the reply was getting too long, so… a new post it is. :)

Ashlea: I’m sorry, but you are guilty of several common mistakes there. I’ll try to enumerate them:

I fully believe that what Hitler did WAS Eugenics.

No argument there (although it has been argued by some that the Holocaust wasn’t really done to perfect humanity, but because Hitler envied the Jews.)

And Darwinism is a direct link to this and other things.

Here I can’t agree. Both Dawkins’ quote in my post and my own follow-up to it clearly explained that eugenics is simply an attempt to apply the millennia old selective breeding of animals to humans — which is artificial selection, and has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution (not "Darwinism", but that’s a subject for another post), which is based on natural selection.

By eliminating a GOd and a creator, you really do eliminate the value of human life.

I disagree, and such a thing has never been proved. You’ll note that virtually everyone who says "without God, life is pointless" is a believer… and if they were right, then atheists would be sad, nihilistic, suicidal people who saw no point to anything. That is, of course, not the case at all. In other words: only the people who need an external justification for their lives believe that such an external justification is universally needed. Forgive me for the harsh comparison, but this is like an addict who claims that nobody could ever live happily and healthily without the drug.

Besides, even if you were right, and life were pointless without a god, it would not follow that a god would exist. Something is not more likely to be true simply because the consequences of it being false "would be bad". Please see this entry in my FAQ for more details.

If human life is NO more valuable that the life of an animal, which why would if be if we were once animals, and we have no soul, then what is the harm in picking and choosing and killing??
It has also led to other things, such as euthanasia and abortion. If life is as valueless as Darwinism suggests, then why not just kill of the ones who are "useless"?

Again, you are confusing two separate things. Darwinian evolution describes how things work, now how people ought to behave — and neither Darwin nor modern biologists advocate eugenics (which, again, is artificial selection, and which humanity has performed on animals and plants for ages).

You also imply that human life is only worth anything if we have something known as "souls". This is the old argument: theists claim that a finite life is worthless; I say that its finite quality only makes it more precious, more worthy of being lived to the fullest. And, look — I care for other people even though I don’t believe they have supernatural, immortal "souls"! Isn’t this weird, according to your way of seeing things?

I’d also argue that euthanasia and abortion arise from respect for human life and dignity, not from lack of it, but that’s another story.

To conclude, most of your comment was an appeal to consequences. You didn’t try to show either how evolution doesn’t happen, or how intelligent design does; you just claimed that, if evolution is true, "things would be bad", therefore it must be false, and intelligent design wins "by default". Sorry to say, but that’s not very convincing…

P.S. – I’m glad you didn’t use the "Hitler and Stalin did what they did because they didn’t believe in God, therefore they thought they could do anything" argument. My reply to that one would have been a lot less nice… :)

Posted in evolution, intelligent design | 8 Comments »

"Just a theory"

April 27th, 2008

The Intelligent Design proponents make a compelling, and totally legitimate, argument that if a theory has not been proven, then one suggested theory is just as good as another.

Take gravity, for example: the force of attraction between massive particles. We know a great deal about the properties of gravity, yet we know nothing about the cause of the force itself. Why are particles attracted to one another? If we review the literature, we find a lot of material dealing with the properties of gravity, but very little dealing with the underlying cause of this attraction. Until we have a proven answer to this question, it seems irresponsible to instruct students in what is, ultimately, just a theory. However, if we must discuss the theory of gravity at all, then it’s reasonable that all suggested theories should be given equal time, since none have been proven or disproven. Therefore, I formally submit that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is behind this strange and often misunderstood force.

What if it is He, pushing us down with His Noodly Appendages, that causes this force? He is invisible, remember, and is undetectable by current instruments, so in theory it is possible. And the fact that the gravitational powers of the Spaghetti Monster haven’t been disproven makes it all the more likely to be true. We can only guess as to His motives, but it’s logical to assume that if He is going to such trouble, there is a good reason. It could be that He doesn’t want us floating off earth into space, or maybe just that He enjoys touching us — we may never know.

– Bobby Henderson, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Posted in humor, intelligent design | 3 Comments »

Just when you think they can’t sink any lower…

April 22nd, 2008

… they put up a sign like this:

obamaosama

From the article:

Pastor Byrd says the sign is not meant to be racial or political but rather to make people think.  “His name is so close to Osama I have a feeling he might be Islamic therefore he doesn’t recognize Christ,” Pastor Byrd said.

and:

Pastor Byrd told News Channel 7 he would ask his congregation to vote on whether to keep the sign.  They voted unanimously to keep the sign up Sunday night.

Jonesville Church of God does not have any African American members.

You know what really infuriates me about this? Not that these assholes do this, but that it works. A good percentage of Americans probably “have a feeling” that Obama might be a Muslim, simply because of his name. How stupid can you get?

(via Friendly Atheist)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in bigotry, christianity, politics, racism, stupidity | 5 Comments »

U.S. Elections and Pokémon

April 21st, 2008

uselections-pokemon

Apparently it’s from Fark. Funny, especially if you know the Pokémon games. :)

It begins with “You encountered McCain!”. If you catch it in the middle, just force a refresh of the page to see it from the beginning.

Posted in humor, politics, video games | 5 Comments »

Natural Selection and Eugenics

April 21st, 2008

Richard Dawkins has posted an open reply to a letter from a Jew deceived by Expelled, who believed the propaganda movie’s absurd claims without any fact checking. I suggest you read Dawkins’ reply in full, of course, but the subject of this post is this part in particular:

Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin’s great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realize that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: “natural selection”, the “survival of the fittest”. Hitler didn’t apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler’s eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.

This, in retrospect, is obvious, but I hadn’t seen it explained so succinctly and clearly before. Eugenics has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution! Animal (and even plant) breeders have known about selective breeding for millennia (indeed, I think it’s even mentioned in the Christian Bible), ages before Darwin or the concept of the evolution of species. Anyone who breeds dogs, horses, birds, etc. knows perfectly well that you can cross specimens with particular characteristics to achieve desired results (say, a new hair or plumage color, or a bigger or smaller animal, or one with other specific characteristics). This can be seen as artificial selection.

Darwin’s new idea was: what if something like this also happens in nature, without intervention? And what if that is how the species in the world today have came to be? In other words: evolution, by natural selection.

Eugenics (the attempt to “perfect” the human race according to one’s beliefs or preferences) has nothing to do with natural selection. It’s simply an attempt to apply the ages old selective breeding of animals to humans.

Of course, I’m not even considering blaming animal breeders from thousands of years ago for the Holocaust. That would simply be ridiculous. But blaming something completely unrelated (Darwinian evolution) for it is even more ridiculous. Eugenics is a disgusting distortion of selective breeding (which is itself blameless for eugenics); it’s completely unrelated to evolution / natural selection.

And, when you should know better than to say such an absurdity (as some filmmakers do), it’s also a dangerous, evil lie.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in definitions, evolution | 12 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »