Yet Another Example of how the GOP is Evil

Are your senators on the list?

Cory Doctorow is an Insightful Man

(Again, as usual.) Read for yourself.

We're men, real men! Real manly men who are manly!

Morehouse College, a male-only college, is such a manly manly place for men that they have a manly manly dress code for men. How manly manly is it? So manly manly that they forbid hats in buildings. And crossdressing. They are so manly manly that anything that smacks of not being a straight, cisgendered, man is something they "do not expect in Morehouse men". It's true! Putting on a dress makes you less of a manly manly man. If you do so, you are a disgrace to your manly manly college full of manly manly men.

So remember kids, if you do anything that squicks out the conservative douchetards who want to control your life, then you aren't a real manly manly man.

Obama’s Humanist-Atheist Non-Beliefs

According to Thomas Roeser, Obama is not Christian, as he has "humanist-atheist non-beliefs" (I think it's adorable how he calls them non-beliefs). You see, rather than base his policies directly upon religious ideas, he doesn't chain his ideology directly to one religious sect. Roeser then starts raving about how Obama's a Marxist and is an "atheist clothed in humanist philosophy" because he thinks the State is the new god. We also get this gem:

Among intellectuals there are two ways of looking at the purpose of human life. One is to begin with the world and allow one's intellect to soar after that to God. That is what's called philosophy. The other is to begin with God and allow one's intellect to explore the world.

Oh, what was it that Obama did to incite this rant? This:

When asked why I am outspokenly anti-Obama, here is a main reason. Last April 9 at a news conference in Turkey, he said that while there is a great number of Christians in the United States...

"... we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Mormon is the new black

At least, according to one Dallin H. Oaks.

Atheism has always been hostile to religion, such as in its arguments that freedom of or for religion should include freedom from religion. Atheism’s threat rises as its proponents grow in numbers and aggressiveness. “By some counts,” a recent article in The Economist declares, “there are at least 500 [million] declared non-believers in the world — enough to make atheism the fourth-biggest religion.”

Atheists are trying to take away our rights! We're going to quote a world-wide (as opposed to USA-wide, where any of this is relevant) statistic of 500 million non-believers (which is not the same as atheist, although atheists are a subset of them) to show that they are totally going to oppress us and stuff! Freedom to practice your religious beliefs (or lack thereof) doesn't mean you have freedom to not have mine forced upon you!

A second threat to religious freedom is from those who perceive it to be in conflict with the newly alleged “civil right” of same-gender couples to enjoy the privileges of marriage.

We have endured a wave of media-reported charges that the Mormons are trying to “deny” people or “strip” people of their “rights.” After a significant majority of California voters (seven million — over 52 percent) approved Proposition 8’s limiting marriage to a man and a woman, some opponents characterized the vote as denying people their civil rights. In fact, the Proposition 8 battle was not about civil rights, but about what equal rights demand and what religious rights protect. At no time did anyone question or jeopardize the civil right of Proposition 8 opponents to vote or speak their views.

The real issue in the Proposition 8 debate — an issue that will not go away in years to come and for whose resolution it is critical that we protect everyone’s freedom of speech and the equally important freedom to stand for religious beliefs — is whether the opponents of Proposition 8 should be allowed to change the vital institution of marriage itself.

The marriage union of a man and a woman has been the teaching of the Judeo-Christian scriptures and the core legal definition and practice of marriage in Western culture for thousands of years. Those who seek to change the foundation of marriage should not be allowed to pretend that those who defend the ancient order are trampling on civil rights. The supporters of Proposition 8 were exercising their constitutional right to defend the institution of marriage — an institution of transcendent importance that they, along with countless others of many persuasions, feel conscientiously obliged to protect.

And the gays! The gays are trying to take away our religious freedom! If we don't have the right to oppress them, we're being oppressed! The issue of whether people have the right to marry whomever (consensually) want--even if they're the same sex(!)--isn't an issue of homosexual (and bisexual) rights, it's an issue of religious rights! Waah!

It was the Christian principles of human worth and dignity that made possible the formation of the United States Constitution over 200 years ago, and only those principles in the hearts of a majority of our diverse population can sustain that constitution today. Our constitution’s revolutionary concepts of sovereignty in the people and significant guarantees of personal rights were, as John A. Howard has written, “generated by a people for whom Christianity had been for a century and a half the compelling feature of their lives. It was Jesus who first stated that all men are created equal [and] that every person . . . is valued and loved by God.”

Professor Dinesh D’Souza reminds us: “The attempt to ground respect for equality on a purely secular basis ignores the vital contribution by Christianity to its spread. It is folly to believe that it could survive without the continuing aid of religious belief.”

Religious values and political realities are so interlinked in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot lose the influence of Christianity in the public square without seriously jeopardizing our freedoms. I maintain that this is a political fact, well qualified for argument in the public square by religious people whose freedom to believe and act must always be protected by what is properly called our “First Freedom,” the free exercise of religion.

And let's wrap it up with the paradoxical claim that freedom only exists when society is dominated by Christianity; if people used their freedom to choose not to join Christianity, and Christianity no longer ruled, then their freedom would magically disappear! Freedom exists so that you can conform to us!

LDS General Conference

The official text of the talks aren't being posted until Thursday, but until then, I have some quotes gleaned from various news articles about the conference.

Jeffery R. Holland (link): "For 179 years, this book has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart like perhaps no other book in modern religious history -- perhaps like no other book in any religious history. And still it stands. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages ... such persons, elect or otherwise, have been deceived and, if they leave this church, they must do so by crawling over or around or under The Book of Mormon to make their exit."

Strange that he doesn't mention anything about the Book of Abraham, like that it's complete bullocks and demonstrably so, since we have the original papyrus Joseph Smith "translated" it from. (Also, I've seen this reported on various sites as being "stirring" or "passionate". Why can't we have a rational argument, rather than a happy-happy-feel-good-don't-notice-I'm-lying-to-you-because-I-can-manipulate-your-emotions argument?)

Thomas S. Monson (link): "Those who live only for themselves eventually shrivel up and, figuratively, lose their life, while those who lose themselves in service to others grow and flourish — and in effect save their life."

I'd be more impressed if this wasn't a blatant plea for church members to spend more time giving service to the church he leads.

"We are the Lord's hands here upon the earth, with the mandate to serve and to lift his children. He is dependent upon each of us."

So much for omnipotence...

Vicki F. Matsumori (link): "We can help others become more familiar with the promptings of the Spirit when we share our testimony of the influence of the Holy Ghost in our lives. By sharing testimony of the Spirit in our lives, those who are unfamiliar with these promptings are more likely to recognize when they have similar feelings."

Brainwashing! If enough people constantly tell someone how much they believe, they'll wear down their defenses! This works especially well on children, who are far more impressionable.

(Link) Speaking Saturday morning, [Russell T.] Osguthorpe compared how his son, a physician, saved lives by sharing his knowledge of medicine.

I wonder how much of that medical knowledge relies on evolution, which, although the LDS church doesn't officially deny at the highest levels (bishops and such seem to have no trouble denying it though), Mormons overwhelmingly reject.

D. Todd Christofferson (link): "[The recession] was brought on by multiple causes, but one of the major causes was widespread dishonest and unethical conduct, particularly in the U.S. housing and financial markets."

Yet your church actively works to support the conservative cause (despite your constant denials of such, and even if you usually phrase things to appeal more to social issues than economic), which includes deregulation of the markets, which led to the crash.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are the New Bananas

Richard Dawkins was The Colbert Report last Wednesday. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you do; it's an enjoyable, humorous interview (and Dawkins wore a croco-duck tie), although you'd probably have to appreciate Colbert's style.

However, we can't have anything good in the world without someone trying to destroy it with stupidity, so... Anne Godlasky from USAToday steps in with this:

His conversation with Stephen Colbert went something like this:

Dawkins: "You asked me for the evidence for evolution, where's the evidence for God?"

Colbert: "Reese's Peanut Butter Cups."

Amen, Stephen.

I'm going to assume she's being serious here; if it turns out she was joking and doesn't actually think that Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are evidence for some sort of deity, disregard all of the following.

Why is she agreeing with something that Colbert said in character? One would think that his well-known reputation as a satirist would make people leery of accepting what he says at face value, but that apparently doesn't stop people. And for that matter, it's a stupid argument (and no doubt Colbert himself thinks it's a stupid argument). Why is she supporting a stupid argument? It's as if she doesn't want to be taken seriously.

She ends her column with

If Dawkins asked you that same question, what would you say?

which makes me suspicious that she thinks there's actual evidence for one or more gods existing. But, seeing as how the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was obviously intelligently designed for human consumption, as it fits so nicely into our hands, as it comes with a convenient wrapper to keep it clean until we choose to eat it, as it deliciously combines chocolate and peanut butter, I have a hard time disagreeing.

Looking at past columns of Godlasky, she tends to end with an open ended question for readers. Which makes this question particularly annoying, as, unless I'm horribly misreading it and "there is no evidence for god, which is why it's irrational to believe one exists, especially an interventionist theistic deity" is an expected answer, the question presumes the readers are all religious. Being untrue, I have to question the wisdom of this assumption.