Currently Listening Decadence By Head Automatica see related

Missouri's almost as stupid as Kansas

Just so everyone is aware, there is a bill going through the Missouri congress that would declare Christianity the "official" religion of the state. It's called House Concurrent Resolution 13 and is pending in the legislature.

The resolution would recognize "a Christian God" and would fail to protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs." The resolution states that "a greater power exists" and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls "justified recognition." David Sater of Cassville, MO is the sponsor of the bill. You can find a brief article about it here: KMOV.com | St. Louis, MO | Top Stories

I don't think it's going to take much commentary for me to show why this is a dumbass idea and why it pisses me off. First of all, there are blatant First Amendment issues, as the government of Missouri would be blatantly sponsoring a religion (even worse, a specific religion, while excluding other religions).

Secondly, this bill will never pass. Even if it somehow passes in Missouri, it would move to the courts, where it would be shot down. I would be surprised if it made it to the Supreme Court, and I would be very surprised if the Supreme Court allowed it.

Also, the day the Supreme Court allows America to become a theocracy is the day I start making serious plans to move to Europe. This is the kind of fucked up shit people moved to America in the first place to get away from.

/end rant

Currently Listening The Oncoming Storm By Unearth see related

Why being a secular humanist, skeptic, atheist, and agnostic on a planet with overwhelming credulity sucks

Hello world. I am a secular humanist. I believe that my duty is to do my best to leave this world a little better for the next generation. By secular, I mean that I don't focus my activities around any religion; and by humanist, I mean that I believe that humans are capable of a lot in this world and that I support promoting their welfare and quality of life. Put "secular" and "humanist" together and you get someone who cares about helping and advancing people not for Jesus or Allah but for the sake of helping people.

I am a skeptic. I have never seen a convincing argument for the existence of absolute knowledge. I have tentatively concluded that it may be impossible for finite, limited humans to attain absolute knowledge. I spend some time pondering the epistemology of absolute knowledge, and I haven't found a sound argument for its existence in thousands of years worth of human reasoning. As far as I can tell, "established beyond a reasonable doubt" is likely the best we mortals can attain - but that's OK with me. It has worked for as long as science has existed, and the fruits it has bore us even in its short lifetime makes me smile.

I am an atheist. That doesn't mean I believe that a god or gods don't exist - I don't have the information to make that kind of statement. When I say that I am an atheist, I mean simply that I am not a theist. I don't have theistic belief, and my lack of theistic belief makes me necessarily an atheist - as it is a true dichotomy. Many people confuse this concept of non-belief with agnosticism, but that's actually not true (though the words have perhaps taken a different context outside of philosophy, just as the word "theory" has a different context outside of science).

I am an agnostic. I don't know of any possible way to test a god's existence, so I must therefore remain neutrally skeptical. By being an agnostic, I am therefore necessarily also an atheist - as a person who has theistic belief can't be agnostic about a god's existence, and since an agnostic doesn't have theistic belief they are therefore an atheist by definition. As I said before, many people misunderstand the application of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic," and I am just attempting to clear them up.

It also helps to understand that theism (and therefore, atheism) is an existential position ("X exists" in the case of theism, and "I am not convinced that X exists" in the case of atheism) while agnosticism is an epistemic position ("I can find no way to justify any statements regarding X, therefore I must remain neutrally skeptical."). Many people would argue that a person can't be an atheist and an agnostic at the same time, but that's actually a misconception - many atheists are agnostics, and all agnostics are atheists. Each person must decide the existential question ("Do I think X exists?") and then on top of that they must decide whether to take an additional epistemic position or not ("Is there any way to really know whether X exists? If not, then I must remain neutrally skeptical.")

Anyway, as a member of all of the above distinctions, it's utterly frustrating to live in a country with overwhelming gullibility. Theism is rampant - a position which I feel is unjustified, and have yet to this day never seen a reasonable justification for it. Other types of poor epistemic standpoints are also rampant - New Ageism, astrology, creationism and its ilk are at a seeming all-time high (though I admittedly lack the statistics to support my claim that they seem to be on the rise).

One might ask, "What's the harm in a little faith?" or "What's the harm in people believing weird things as long as they don't hurt anybody?" This is a very tricky question to ponder, but I think the answer I arrived at is serious enough for anybody to consider. For every quirky belief that fallible humans are able to conceive of and believe in, there is likely a child that will be indoctrinated with those quirky beliefs, and they will continue. This nation is already doing poorly enough on standardized science and math tests - why should I stand back and do nothing when so many parents are teaching their children the very antithesis of rational thought?

History has shown that knowledge is power, and rational thought comes hand in hand with knowledge. What our kids need is a LOT less hocus pocus and a bit more practical skills such as critical thought and the ability to rationally assess the world around them. That makes sense - a society that attributes rain to the water cycle after rigorously and empirically probing the world around them is a lot more likely to succeed than a society that rain dances to appease the "water spirits."

I argue for creating a mandatory critical thinking and logic skills class for kids all the way through high school, and maybe even an introductory version in junior high or grade school. I argue that parents should refrain from indoctrinating children with religion or superstitions until said children are old enough (and well armed via the classes mentioned above) to think for themselves - and I argue that the fact that so many parents indoctrinate children at an early age is akin to knowingly brainwashing them.

I harbor no special abhorrence for religion (though I think humanity would be far better without it), and I'm not out to destroy it - but I predict that if the world followed through with my suggestion, religion and superstition would practically disapear as the world population became more rational, logical, and intelligible.

Currently Listening Cult Classic By Scarlet see related

I see everything from where I live on the hill. I saw you click on the link that brought you to my xanga page, so I asked Felix if you were good or evil. One bark was for good and two barks was for evil.

What, you think I really talk to my dog? What do you think I am, some backwater maniac with a shed full of skulls and a scythe that I sharpen nightly for the armaggeddon?

No, this isn't like what you watch on TV. I watch mostly the Biblical channels.

And if you look at me like that for one more second I'll cut you into pieces and send you to your mother in boxes. SMALL boxes.

Currently Listening Queen - Greatest Hits By Queen see related

I have a beard. Sales would be proud.

I also have a new job. Come see me at Houlihan's in Leawood if you want to get served. That wasn't just a clever euphemism, dumbass.

Oh yeah, and Kansas still sucks.

Currently Listening Liberate Te Ex Inferis By Zao see related

Only in America (or maybe medieval Europe or the most backwards middle-eastern theocracy state) would a state school board vote to change the definition of science, a methodology that has unequivocally improved the quality of life for centuries. The reason why science has done so many wonderful things for humanity is becuase it's a methodology that works - and part of the reason why it works is because it doesn't allow people to take the "cheap way" out: it doesn't allow subjective supernatural explanations.

Well, not anymore, according to Kansas. The new Kansas definition of science includes "non-natural" (read: supernatural) explanations to be considered to explain scientific phenomena. That's right, that means that if water isn't coming out of your sink, "Demons have stolen the water" is now just as valid an explanation as "The pipes are frozen." At least according to Kansas.

Also now considered "scientific" to the Kansas school board: Astrology. (Intelligent Design guru Michael Behe even admitted under oath in Dover, PA that under the new definition of "science," astrology would be "scientific.") Also alchemy, phrenology, and many more pseudosciences. In fact, the Kansas board has removed the domain of the definition of "pseudoscience" - what would normally be defined as pseudoscience to the rest of the world, Kansas considers to be "real" science.

All this because a school board decided to politicize science. The Kansas board (or at least the conservative majority) has decided that they can simply vote on what people "think" science is. They claim that the majority of Kansas supports their decision and that they're just giving the people what they want.

Hello! Even Philosophy 101 students understand that the Argumentum Ad Populum is a fallacy of the silliest degree. Just because masses of mostly uneducated people *think* something is true doesn't necessarily mean it is! "Everyone believes the earth is flat, therefore the earth must be flat." Fucking nonsense. I guarantee you that if the people who support the changes in the science curriculum (including the board members who support the change) were forced to take the most basic of science theory and biology tests they would utterly fail. They already have utterly failed simply by way of their ridiculous actions.

Did you know that the U.S.S.R. also attempted to politicize science during the Cold War? Or rather, succeeded. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was the leader in an assault on science simply because he believed the same thing the Kansas school board does: that if enough people (or people with enough authority, such as Stalin) believe something, then it must be true. In the same way that the Kansas board assaulted science by changing the definition of science to incorporate pseudoscience, so did Lysenko and soviet Russia.

The result? Massive crop failures. Famine. People died because a nation thought it could politicize science.

Speaking of people dying, surely no one can forget how Nazi Germany also twisted science by declaring that it was "science" that "aryans" are superior to the other "races." Nazis, too, believed that simply because a majority of people believed something, then surely it must be true.

There are "scientists" in America who are also attempting to pass off their racist agenda as "science," using misleading statistics to support their assertions of racial superiority.

What Kansas is doing is no better than what the soviets, nazis, and racist statisticians have done.

___________________________________________________________________

Some facts (with some opinions in red):

The Kansas Board of Education is also either trying to do or already has done the following:

1. Discourage student participation in sex education
I don't know about you, but I think it's important to teach kids how to protect themselves from AIDS and how to prevent pregnancy. "Abstinence education" has been a resounding failure across the country and even across the globe. The best defense kids can have against disease and unwanted pregnancy is knowledge.

2. Discourage student knowledge of other cultures and countries
If I had to guess why, I'd say that this move is to keep kids from being "tainted" by other cultural ideas. This is the same nauseating "God bless America and no place else" routine so abhorrently evident in so many people this day and age. This is the same kind of nationalism that charged World War I and countless other disasters through history.

It is important for kids to understand other cultures and the histories of other countries in order to be well rounded and to compete in the increasingly global economy - let alone for the simple sake of being exposed to other opinions in order to become wiser!

3. Private school vouchers
The last thing we need is to divert more money from public schools and to send kids to be religiously indoctrinated at private schools!

4. Less restrictive rules on starting charter schools
Charter schools need to have stricter standards, not looser ones, in terms of accreditation, federal mandates, teacher certification, and testing requirements. The only thing that needs to be less restrictive is admission policies - charter schools should be open to all.

Other facts (with some opinions in red):

1. The US Government is cutting $15 billion from the education entitlement fund
2. They're doing so to accomodate Bush's request for $50 billion across-the-board budget cuts
3. The education allocation represents a mere 0.5% of the total entitlement budget
4. "That figure," says Tom Joyce, spokesmand for Sallie Mae (the nation's largest student lender), "is remarkably disproportionate."
So, Bush asks for $50 billion to be cut across the board. Education takes up a mere 0.5% of the total entitlement budget (just one of MANY budgets from which they could have possibly cut), and they decide to cut $15 billion from the education entitlement? "Remarkably disproportionate," indeed!

Again, this shows the administrations disgusting willingness to chop the feet out from under the poor. Financial aid isn't a luxury; it's a future defining necessity. Once again the current administration displays its wanton disregard for the needs of the poor in favor of the rich. I guess those of us who are "less fortunate" don't need to be educated, huh?

5. Next year, a record number of students will graduate from high school. College enrollment is projected to increase by 14% over the coming decade - at least, under the current availability of student loans.
6. One out of five of those possible college students will live below the poverty line.
So, we're going to kill programs and hit hardest those who most require aid at a time when their numbers are rising.

Way to contribute to the growing chasm in opportunity for millions of Americans. There is no talk of a "gap" between the rich and the poor anymore, folks - "chasm" is a good choice of words, indeed.

And that concludes my rant on how America is attempting to conquer its own citizens with ignorance. Ignorance makes dictatorship possible. Remember that.