"Elite" is bad only because of the virulent populism and latent anti-intellectualism running through a wide swath of American culture. What's even more bizarre is that millionaires like Bush and McCain can use it against other millionaires to get poor people to vote R. You'd think that people would eventually realize they were being manipulated and get pissed off about it, but they never do.
Even Bush's country accent is fake--he's not really a country boy, not really a rancher, etc. But the populism button keeps on spitting out the votes. As cynical as I am, I still find it depressing.
him going on about how people only like guns/religion because they're poor, a month or two ago
Well, here's the quote:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
I guess you and I just read things differently, because I got a bit more nuance out of his statements, and "people only like guns/religion because they're poor" doesn't quite capture it. Seeing the economic viability of your community crumble, seeing the way of life of your parents crumble, can be a polarizing experience, and yes, people cling to things, things they consider symbolic of their way of life. I don't see anything especially patronizing about saying that people are pissed off and that when they're pissed off the symbolic things matter more than they might in times of prosperity.
you need to win the votes from both parties, not just your own
Could you sum up the traits a Democrat nominee would have to have for the Republicans to refrain from demonizing him? The Republicans will only vote for an R, unless their own candidate is so bad that they have to stay home. McCain may or may not be be that bad, but it remains to be seen.
Anyway, Obama would be demonized with any name, and regardless of his hue. No matter who he is, if he's a D and he's running, then he'll be the "single most liberal member of Congress" since Che Guavera or whoever, an "elite" know-it-all who is out of touch with the heartland of America, will have gotten a "free pass" from our "overwhelmingly liberal media," would put us in danger of "appeasing" the terrorists, "emboldening our enemies," etc. It's the same script, every time, all the time. The Republicans always use the same words to galvanize their base, because, well, it works. Who or what Obama is or isn't has little to do with how the Republicans will vote.
Les Miserables was partly set in Paris, yet is fiction. This means...what, exactly? There really was a Herod, and even an Egypt. Does that mean that Jesus loves you? No. Learn some nuance, please.
letting them make up their own minds about the subject.
Why on this one issue? Do we let a geocentrist present his case and then let the kids make up their own mind? You can "present a case" that the germ theory is bad science. Kids don't know the science yet, don't understand the scientific method, so they are more susceptible to pseudo-science like ID.
School (meaning pre-college in this context) is about teaching kids what the current science IS right now. On the test, there is a right answer and a wrong answer, and the kids don't get to go with their gut feelings.
That certainly doesn't mean we stop asking questions or doing research.
For such an independent thinker, you sure do recycle talking points often, and verbatim at that. Are you suggesting that the entire field of climatology has stopped asking questions and doing research?
There is an element of truth to what you're saying, in that everyone is fallible. But you're also approaching science as one who views it as dogma, and if you've been burned in the past by science being wrong about something, then you don't believe them anymore. All science is tentative, forever, no matter what. Scientists, climatologists, know more now than they did 40 years ago, 60 years ago, 10000 years ago, etc, and they will know more 10 years from now. At no point in the future, ever, will they know everything.
Modern life involves a level of trust in science, because you and I aren't able to do our own research in all of these areas and come to our own conclusion. Those who think they have have usually just read a few politically minded books that allow them to stick with the conclusion they want without feeling stupid.
I don't know your political affiliation, and it doesn't really matter. My point is not YOU per se, but the fact that if you take away everyone who is waiting for the rapture, then "skepticism" that humans are worsening our own environment is going to be dramatically reduced. Everyone who is waiting for the rapture is a fundamentalist, ergo fundamentalists are the problem. Yes, many of these fundamentalists will tell you, at great length, that they're just "skeptical of Big Science," and want us to "keep asking questions," but underlying all of this is the thing I alluded to originally-a hostility to science qua science. They just don't believe that some guy knows more than them about environmental issues just because he got a Ph.D and spent 20 years doing research. It's theology mixed with arrogance mixed with anit-intellectualism. That scientists are fallible, as are we all, doesn't refute the magnitude of evidence leading to the conclusions that humans are exacerbating global warming.
This has nothing to do with evolution vs creative design or any of the other popular straw men.
That isn't a straw man, but a battle over epistemology and the nature of rationality. ID advocates want to redefine science to include the supernatural.
Modern big science is easily hijacked by ideology.
I'm not sure which science you're referring to. The global warming issue is mainstream consensus in the climatalogical community. The only people who are saying "it's been politicized" are right-wing naysayers, which is the same thing they say about everything they don't like. That's a garden-variety right wing attack that attempts to discredit something by alleging bias but not by addressing the actual arguments made.
Trying to discredit science by saying "it's been politicized" every time it doesn't agree with the Republican platform IS politicizing science--they're creating the problem, then pointing to the problem as a reason why we should trust, say, Rush Limbaugh over, say, Carl Sagan. Who do you think we should trust--Limbaugh, or Sagan?
Is there a problem with the handing on of scientific knowledge in the US? Or is this a reflection of American cultural shortcomings?
Yes, and yes. The USA has been largely taken over by religious fundamentalists. To the extent that they don't rule outright, their influence is still pervasive, and moves the entire country in that cultural direction. Science and scientists are openly held in amused contempt by about half of Americans, if not more.
They respect engineers and people who can make stuff, but science for science's sake seems pointless. As Ronald Reagan, the official saint of the Right Wing, said, "Why should we fund intellectual curiosity?" That's not a gaffe--that's a normal right-wing attitude towards intellectual curiosity, i.e. basic science.
You can make an argument that Christianity itself isn't inimical to science. I won't agree with you, but I acknowledge that you can make a case for that. You can't, however, make a case that religious fundamentalism isn't harmful to science. The hostile relationship between fundamentalism and science is glaringly obvious, and there just isn't much to talk about here. As long as fundamentalists are running our culture, our downward spiral regarding science education will continue.
We'll still be on top for a while, but only because our initial lead was so great and we still have so much more money. I don't think they'll turn us into Afghanistan anytime soon, but they're going to keep trying.
"Discriminate" means to choose. For or against, doesn't matter. And on a functional basis, saying "I just prefer whites" is no less discriminatory than overtly choosing to exclude everyone else. The Klan, to go right to the most extreme example, never said they hated black people. They just viewed themselves as the guardians of white, Christian civilization.
So yes, to support Obama only because he's black is morally no different than opposing him only because he's black. The problem here is that you have to choose your poison, and I've chosen (I hope) the lesser of the evils.
I can look at a minority with hundreds of years of slavery, oppression, lynching, and discrimination stacked against them and basically give them a pass, on a personal level, for frantically supporting one of their own. A smug good-old-boy saying "well now, isn't that racism?" may be semantically correct, but I'm not going to entertain his arguments because I strongly suspect that he is not motivated, shall we say, be an aversion to discrimination qua discrimination.
The real world wreaks havoc with philosophical arguments.
Saying that we consume too much isn't the same as saying that the government should mandate how much you can consume. There is such a thing as using a public forum to discuss important issues, and discussing these issues doesn't make one a budding totalitarian.
If Obama actually advocated legislation regarding the things you complained about, please provide a link for our edification.
I used to put some credence in these "the sky is falling" predictions of jackbooted thuggery, back when B. Clinton was in office, but once I found that conservatives generally become okey-dokey with, say, warrantless wiretapping, gutting habeus corpus, torture, secret prisons, etc, as long as it's a Republican in office, then I've come to doubt their intellectual integrity a bit. Thus, I'll need a source. Thanks in advance.
How does it end up that every single Democrat running for office happens to be the single "most liberal" in all of Congress/the USA/the known universe? Gore, Kerry, Clinton (B and H both), and really every Democrat has been labelled with this.
And what the heck does it mean, anyway, to be the "most liberal?" Can you point out a conservative, so I can have a basis for comparison?
I want to: stop torturing, restore habeus corpus, get us out of Iraq, balance the budget, invest in alternative fuels, and invest some in our own infastructure. If advocating those things makes you "liberal" then sign me up for Obama. He isn't nearly liberal enough.
When "conservative" means torture, gutting habeus corpus, endless war, warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, the largest deficit in US history, censoring scientific findings to meet political agendas, etc, then you guys don't have much to sell anymore.
I've never seen/heard/read an atheist say that I should be an atheist because Einstien didn't believe in God. I have, on the other hand, had several evangelicals claim that Einstein believed in God, and then ask me "Do you think you're smarter than Einstein?" After I explained that the God Einstein believed in was pantheistic and a repudiation of their own beliefs, I asked THEM "Do you think you're smarter than Einstein?"
I openly asked them if they still find the logic persuasive, but intellectual integrity is just beyond some people. This type of practice is a clear, unambiguous clue that evangelicals don't believe what they believe because of the reasons they cite--they're just fishing around for whatever looks like good ammunition, and they don't really care to follow through the logic they're using.
Logic and accuracy do not matter to them, and they'll knowingly use illogical arguments based on bad data if doing so will convert a soul. This is also why you basically can't trust them when it comes to evolution, the age of the earth, etc. It isn't just that they're wrong on any given issue, but that intellectual integrity is of so little importance to them compared to their perceived role as a soldier for Christ against the forces of Satan.
You can't MAKE teenagers do much. You can cajole, bribe, etc but ultimately it's the same problem you face as a boss at work--you're still trying to manipulate someone into doing something they don't want to do. Sure, parents love to take credit when one of their kids is smart and successful, but we all know families where one kid is smart and the other is a pain in the butt. If it all came down to parenting, you wouldn't have such a wide divergence in the same family.
I'm lucky that my kids are sane and are doing well in school, but I'm aware that it is partly luck. I've known parents who thought things were okay, and felt that this was to their credit, only to find later that their 8th grader was part of a prostitution ring at school. Suddenly they felt that their own efforts were a little less of a factor, and all of a sudden it was "the culture," etc. We all want to take credit when things go well.
And you also have a lowered threshhold for when we use violence. The use of drones will increase the number of people we're willing to kill, because it will add one more layer of abstraction between us and the human beings whose lives we are ending.
In other words, he's not that far from a Falwell in terms of inflammatory rhetoric. He is willfully antagonistic towards religious groups for no other reason I can find
He's saying that there is no evidence to support religious beliefs. By definition, that makes it a delusion. He's making the additional argument that religion not only fails to confer the benefits its advocates claim, but also causes demonstrable harm. He's making a rational argument, and it's only called inflammatory because religious people don't like it.
He's using the same logic and intelligence he would bring to bear on any other subject, the difference being that religious people basically freak out and act like it's a hate crime if you treat their pet beliefs with the same rationality and common-sense that you bring to other subjects. They expect a special pass, which up till now they've generally gotten. If someone believes in an invisible unicorn that talks to them and protects them, we damned well know that that's delusional. If they talk to Jesus everyday, how exactly is that different? It's not, and rationalists are tired of pretending otherwise.
If Dawkins used exactly the same logic and tone to skewer belief in invisible unicorns, you wouldn't consider it divisive, spiteful, inflammatory, or even controversial. Changing the noun to "God" doesn't suddenly change commonplace, logical observations into howling invective.
When your post began, I was just going to point out that Dawkins is incensed against delusional thinking, and he wrote a book about what he considers to be one of the most persistent, widespread, and harmful versions of delusional thinking. He doesn't hurl invective just because they believe in God, but because delusional thinking is harmful, which is an argument he explains at some length.
And then your argument really took a header.
...it rejects without proof any possibility of gods, fairies etc rather than just rejecting the theories as unproven
Dawkins explicitly addressed this very argument, which you would know if you read the book. The burden of proof rests on the person who posits faeries, gods, etc. The point is that if there is no REASON to believe in these things, i.e. no evidence, then to believe in them is delusional, by definition. Dawkins wrote in the book that technically you can't prove that something doesn't exist, but that doesn't make it rational to believe in it. You're refuting an argument he not only didn't make, but explicitly addressed in the book as being, strictly speaking, logically untenable. Nevertheless, believing in something for which there is no evidence is still delusional, which was the point of the entire book.
Considering what Haliburton has done (and been caught/fined for) and yet is still chugging along without a hitch, what did IBM have to do to get suspended altogether?
If you think that using big words automatically means pretension, then we have found part of the problem. You have to credit readers with the ability and willingness to look up a word they don't understand. If, in truth, they won't, and if, in truth, they'll resent you using any word that they don't already know, then that isn't pretension on your part, but anti-intellectualism on their part.
Yes, writing can be overdone. Some writers overuse 25-cent words. But a larger part of the problem is that we demand that every idea be simplified to where anyone with a fifth-grade education can understand it in 20 seconds or less. Another problem is the willful arrogance of the ignorant. I know people who KNOW that they are ignorant about, say, evolution, yet they don't feel that this self-admitted ignorance lessens the value or insight of their own opinion. I'm not saying that they have failed to gain expertise--I'm saying that they can't even explain the basic tenets of evolutionary theory. They just don't care about what it IS, because they already know that it's wrong.
There is a bit more involved here than a scientists talking down to the rubes.
Actually the Millenials (weird name, btw) are often better-informed than we think. Watching The Daily Show and the Colbert Report exclusively gives you a better knowledge of what is actually happening than does CNN and Fox News.
The downside is that the Millenials don't really care. They're more amused than outraged. They think you can't change it, because the system is too far gone, too corrupt, whatever.
Also, it's not "cool" to be all that involved. It's okay to have an opinion that so-and-so is an idiot, but to get really pissed off, go to rallies, and be a real-life activist loses the cool-points you garnered as a laid-back, amusingly cynical do-nothing.
It's hard to be a concerned American right now. We're realizing that American's don't actually have an innate moral sense. The indifference to wiretapping is the least alarming of the current apathies. Wasn't torture wrong, just last week or so? What happened to that?
Now there are entire movie franchises (Saw, Hostel) where our best and brightest go to watch torture FOR AMUSEMENT. For you Jack Bauer fans (torturer par excellance) there is even a guide to Christian living written in the context of that show--Jack Baeur is Having a Bad Day, or something like that.
I have to explain to my kids why I won't rent them these movies, and how they have influenced military members serving at Abu Ghraib, etc. I miss the days when the "moral issue" consisted of explaining to your daughter why she shouldn't show her boobs to the world. Now our culture is to the point where we have to "have a dialog" about torture. Thank you, John Yoo.
Calling Hey Jude and Get Back "elevator music" is a bit of a stretch. Our culture is so infused with their music that we don't notice it anymore. It's sort of like the extent to which western lit is infused with the KJV and Shakespeare. It's so present that we don't even notice it. I'm not saying that every song is a masterpiece, but stuff like "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is edgy even today.
people use what they want, not what they need
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There is already software that is easier on resources. How many people use Word when Abiword, or even a text editor, would do what they needed? I use OS X, and to tell the truth, Textedit and TexShop pretty much meet my actual requirements. Actually, vi and iTerm would meet them, but you get the point. But people don't use what they need--they use what they like. What they like depends on more than just need. Familiarity, convenience, vanity ("I'm a power user, so Abiword isn't enough for me!)", and who knows what else goes into that.
If Wi-Fi worked out of the box, I'd be fine with Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, or a similar distro on a 5-year old laptop...but it wouldn't be as fun, as shiny, as oooh-aah-ish as the latest and greatest. Well, that is until I wanted to use Handbrake and I no longer had the encode times I get with a dual-core 2Ghz chip. Then all of a sudden the retro thing wouldn't be as cool anymore.
Well, considering that Toyota already has a recycling process in place, I'm not sure how much of a problem it is for you. The question of how much pollution the car causes, to include manufacturing and emissions both, has already been looked into. The Prius is the best alternative, pollution-wise, on the road (assuming you count only production cars). Yes, the batteries are shipped, as are transmissions and other replaceable parts on regular cars.
If you're stuck on the shipping question, be fair and consider the 50% more gasoline, that also has to be shipped and trucked to your gas station, used by other vehicles. Not to mention that money spent at the gas pump sends money to Wahaabi fundamentalists who want to destroy the USA, whereas money spent on a Prius sends money to Toyota engineers who just want to make fuel-efficent cars.
The Prius doesn't save the world, but it does hurt the world less emphatically than other cars. It still uses recources, and still spits out emissions, but on balance it is far greener than the other cars out there. The issue really isn't that murky.
Well, yes...they meant other people. People never mean "I want to give away all of my privacy." It's just when they dismiss privacy as superfluous, they have a mental picture right then of someone, probably a minority (if they themselves are a minority, it will just be a different minority) doing something shady, probably involving kiddie porn or something similarly without redeeming merit. If we actually started randomly selecting people and posting their entire browsing/chat history online, people would just get pissed without going through the intellectual effort to articulate why that is wrong.
They want their own privacy and that of their friends, and by extension for those they admire, but not for anyone else. The entire concept of rule of law, that we need to find rules that can apply to everyone yet still maintain law and order, is alien to them.
Yes, it seems so obvious that human rights should extend to humans. It's sad that this is an edgy, subversive idea in our day and age. Suddenly basic moral principles are open to nuanced, legalistic discussion.
People just don't have the basic moral character that we like to think they have. Rattle them a little bit and suddenly they'll gladly sign off on tortureing someone to death if it could hypothetically lower the risk of an unspecified something happening to any American at any point in the future. Who are these people? Oh, my fellow Americans. How I love thee.
The "less government is better" conservatives have been marginalized in your party. The Neocons (who are not conservatives, but visionary crusaders bent on saving the world) have taken over your party. So if we (i.e. everyone else) are going to criticize Republicans, we are going to criticize the Neocons. If you don't like being associated with them, push them out of positions of power in your party.
As far as "Republicans want to protect the environment," the ones who say they do want to do so by removing the few remaining restrictions on corporate drilling, logging, etc--i.e. their definition of "protecting" means the very opposite of what it means to everyone else. They just changed their language.
As far as "democrats want to increase government spending even more," I'd have to ask, "even more than whom?" Which alternative? The last Democratic President balanced the budget, and reduced the size of the federal government. The Republicans always talk about how bad government is, but they have no problems with indefinite imprisonment without trial, waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping, and the largest deficit in national history. Republicans supported Bush in all of these, right down the line. So when your party actually has some prominent members who believe in small government, maybe you can wave the small-government flag again. As it was, Ron Paul got about 10% of the Republican polling numbers in his best showing. That's about the extent of the Republican committment to small government.
The reasonable Republicans don't speak up, so they don't get heard. O'Reilley and Coulter are the voices of your party--if you don't like that, stop buying their books and watching their shows. These people (and the rest like them) are the ones that polarized the political environment to make the population believe that only the far right is "really" Republican, while self-described "moderates" are Republicans In Name Only -- RINOs, as Rush named them. If you want to know why your party looks ridiculous, extremist, and sometimes outright stupid, look within. Even thinking that this perception is a conspiracy by the "liberal media" to make Republicans look bad is signature conservative thinking--the classic persecution fantasy combined with a pseudo-populist conspiracy theory. Don't think I just made this up--read Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, written in 1964.
Torture has long been known to produce bad intel. Take a power drill to my knee and I'll detail my nefarious plans to bomb Switzerland, Jupiter, or really anything you want to hear. Names? I got plenty of them. As long as you never need to present evidence at trial and have it cross-examined, my hearsay "evidence" will be all you need. That's pretty much the model we've used thus far, from what I can tell.
If someone objects to torture, please don't dismiss their arguments by thinking it's about Bush. Is it really impossible to even fathom a principled argument here? McCain said waterboarding is torture--is he a Bush hater? The JAGs for the US Army have said that waterboarding is torture--are they Bush haters? You can't dismiss every objection and criticism by saying "you just don't like Bush, do you?" If you don't get that people can object to torture on moral grounds, then your moral compass has been replaced by a political one. Replace the name "Bush" with "Bill Clinton" and still see if you think torture is okay. If it came to light that we were waterboarding dozens of people under Clinton, would that bother you?
Should local cops be able to waterboard subjects, if they can say that they think it might save a life? Who do you want to empower with this option? The local sherriff in a town of 2.5K? He might get valuable info on a local murder--you won't know until you give him free rein. Torture is the ultimate slippery slope. Once the end justifies the means, and the end is a nebulous "saving lives" in hazy scenarios that may or may not be real, you get people tortured to death, along with fake death certificates and the whole thing. It isn't what a civilized society does.
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Even Bush's country accent is fake--he's not really a country boy, not really a rancher, etc. But the populism button keeps on spitting out the votes. As cynical as I am, I still find it depressing.
Well, here's the quote:
I guess you and I just read things differently, because I got a bit more nuance out of his statements, and "people only like guns/religion because they're poor" doesn't quite capture it. Seeing the economic viability of your community crumble, seeing the way of life of your parents crumble, can be a polarizing experience, and yes, people cling to things, things they consider symbolic of their way of life. I don't see anything especially patronizing about saying that people are pissed off and that when they're pissed off the symbolic things matter more than they might in times of prosperity.
Anyway, Obama would be demonized with any name, and regardless of his hue. No matter who he is, if he's a D and he's running, then he'll be the "single most liberal member of Congress" since Che Guavera or whoever, an "elite" know-it-all who is out of touch with the heartland of America, will have gotten a "free pass" from our "overwhelmingly liberal media," would put us in danger of "appeasing" the terrorists, "emboldening our enemies," etc. It's the same script, every time, all the time. The Republicans always use the same words to galvanize their base, because, well, it works. Who or what Obama is or isn't has little to do with how the Republicans will vote.
Les Miserables was partly set in Paris, yet is fiction. This means...what, exactly? There really was a Herod, and even an Egypt. Does that mean that Jesus loves you? No. Learn some nuance, please.
School (meaning pre-college in this context) is about teaching kids what the current science IS right now. On the test, there is a right answer and a wrong answer, and the kids don't get to go with their gut feelings.
For such an independent thinker, you sure do recycle talking points often, and verbatim at that. Are you suggesting that the entire field of climatology has stopped asking questions and doing research?There is an element of truth to what you're saying, in that everyone is fallible. But you're also approaching science as one who views it as dogma, and if you've been burned in the past by science being wrong about something, then you don't believe them anymore. All science is tentative, forever, no matter what. Scientists, climatologists, know more now than they did 40 years ago, 60 years ago, 10000 years ago, etc, and they will know more 10 years from now. At no point in the future, ever, will they know everything.
Modern life involves a level of trust in science, because you and I aren't able to do our own research in all of these areas and come to our own conclusion. Those who think they have have usually just read a few politically minded books that allow them to stick with the conclusion they want without feeling stupid.
I don't know your political affiliation, and it doesn't really matter. My point is not YOU per se, but the fact that if you take away everyone who is waiting for the rapture, then "skepticism" that humans are worsening our own environment is going to be dramatically reduced. Everyone who is waiting for the rapture is a fundamentalist, ergo fundamentalists are the problem. Yes, many of these fundamentalists will tell you, at great length, that they're just "skeptical of Big Science," and want us to "keep asking questions," but underlying all of this is the thing I alluded to originally-a hostility to science qua science. They just don't believe that some guy knows more than them about environmental issues just because he got a Ph.D and spent 20 years doing research. It's theology mixed with arrogance mixed with anit-intellectualism. That scientists are fallible, as are we all, doesn't refute the magnitude of evidence leading to the conclusions that humans are exacerbating global warming.
That isn't a straw man, but a battle over epistemology and the nature of rationality. ID advocates want to redefine science to include the supernatural.
I'm not sure which science you're referring to. The global warming issue is mainstream consensus in the climatalogical community. The only people who are saying "it's been politicized" are right-wing naysayers, which is the same thing they say about everything they don't like. That's a garden-variety right wing attack that attempts to discredit something by alleging bias but not by addressing the actual arguments made.
Trying to discredit science by saying "it's been politicized" every time it doesn't agree with the Republican platform IS politicizing science--they're creating the problem, then pointing to the problem as a reason why we should trust, say, Rush Limbaugh over, say, Carl Sagan. Who do you think we should trust--Limbaugh, or Sagan?
Yes, and yes. The USA has been largely taken over by religious fundamentalists. To the extent that they don't rule outright, their influence is still pervasive, and moves the entire country in that cultural direction. Science and scientists are openly held in amused contempt by about half of Americans, if not more.
They respect engineers and people who can make stuff, but science for science's sake seems pointless. As Ronald Reagan, the official saint of the Right Wing, said, "Why should we fund intellectual curiosity?" That's not a gaffe--that's a normal right-wing attitude towards intellectual curiosity, i.e. basic science.
You can make an argument that Christianity itself isn't inimical to science. I won't agree with you, but I acknowledge that you can make a case for that. You can't, however, make a case that religious fundamentalism isn't harmful to science. The hostile relationship between fundamentalism and science is glaringly obvious, and there just isn't much to talk about here. As long as fundamentalists are running our culture, our downward spiral regarding science education will continue.
We'll still be on top for a while, but only because our initial lead was so great and we still have so much more money. I don't think they'll turn us into Afghanistan anytime soon, but they're going to keep trying.
So yes, to support Obama only because he's black is morally no different than opposing him only because he's black. The problem here is that you have to choose your poison, and I've chosen (I hope) the lesser of the evils.
I can look at a minority with hundreds of years of slavery, oppression, lynching, and discrimination stacked against them and basically give them a pass, on a personal level, for frantically supporting one of their own. A smug good-old-boy saying "well now, isn't that racism?" may be semantically correct, but I'm not going to entertain his arguments because I strongly suspect that he is not motivated, shall we say, be an aversion to discrimination qua discrimination.
The real world wreaks havoc with philosophical arguments.
If Obama actually advocated legislation regarding the things you complained about, please provide a link for our edification.
I used to put some credence in these "the sky is falling" predictions of jackbooted thuggery, back when B. Clinton was in office, but once I found that conservatives generally become okey-dokey with, say, warrantless wiretapping, gutting habeus corpus, torture, secret prisons, etc, as long as it's a Republican in office, then I've come to doubt their intellectual integrity a bit. Thus, I'll need a source. Thanks in advance.
And what the heck does it mean, anyway, to be the "most liberal?" Can you point out a conservative, so I can have a basis for comparison?
I want to: stop torturing, restore habeus corpus, get us out of Iraq, balance the budget, invest in alternative fuels, and invest some in our own infastructure. If advocating those things makes you "liberal" then sign me up for Obama. He isn't nearly liberal enough.
When "conservative" means torture, gutting habeus corpus, endless war, warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, the largest deficit in US history, censoring scientific findings to meet political agendas, etc, then you guys don't have much to sell anymore.
I openly asked them if they still find the logic persuasive, but intellectual integrity is just beyond some people. This type of practice is a clear, unambiguous clue that evangelicals don't believe what they believe because of the reasons they cite--they're just fishing around for whatever looks like good ammunition, and they don't really care to follow through the logic they're using.
Logic and accuracy do not matter to them, and they'll knowingly use illogical arguments based on bad data if doing so will convert a soul. This is also why you basically can't trust them when it comes to evolution, the age of the earth, etc. It isn't just that they're wrong on any given issue, but that intellectual integrity is of so little importance to them compared to their perceived role as a soldier for Christ against the forces of Satan.
I'm lucky that my kids are sane and are doing well in school, but I'm aware that it is partly luck. I've known parents who thought things were okay, and felt that this was to their credit, only to find later that their 8th grader was part of a prostitution ring at school. Suddenly they felt that their own efforts were a little less of a factor, and all of a sudden it was "the culture," etc. We all want to take credit when things go well.
And you also have a lowered threshhold for when we use violence. The use of drones will increase the number of people we're willing to kill, because it will add one more layer of abstraction between us and the human beings whose lives we are ending.
He's using the same logic and intelligence he would bring to bear on any other subject, the difference being that religious people basically freak out and act like it's a hate crime if you treat their pet beliefs with the same rationality and common-sense that you bring to other subjects. They expect a special pass, which up till now they've generally gotten. If someone believes in an invisible unicorn that talks to them and protects them, we damned well know that that's delusional. If they talk to Jesus everyday, how exactly is that different? It's not, and rationalists are tired of pretending otherwise.
If Dawkins used exactly the same logic and tone to skewer belief in invisible unicorns, you wouldn't consider it divisive, spiteful, inflammatory, or even controversial. Changing the noun to "God" doesn't suddenly change commonplace, logical observations into howling invective.
And then your argument really took a header.
Dawkins explicitly addressed this very argument, which you would know if you read the book. The burden of proof rests on the person who posits faeries, gods, etc. The point is that if there is no REASON to believe in these things, i.e. no evidence, then to believe in them is delusional, by definition. Dawkins wrote in the book that technically you can't prove that something doesn't exist, but that doesn't make it rational to believe in it. You're refuting an argument he not only didn't make, but explicitly addressed in the book as being, strictly speaking, logically untenable. Nevertheless, believing in something for which there is no evidence is still delusional, which was the point of the entire book.
Considering what Haliburton has done (and been caught/fined for) and yet is still chugging along without a hitch, what did IBM have to do to get suspended altogether?
Yes, writing can be overdone. Some writers overuse 25-cent words. But a larger part of the problem is that we demand that every idea be simplified to where anyone with a fifth-grade education can understand it in 20 seconds or less. Another problem is the willful arrogance of the ignorant. I know people who KNOW that they are ignorant about, say, evolution, yet they don't feel that this self-admitted ignorance lessens the value or insight of their own opinion. I'm not saying that they have failed to gain expertise--I'm saying that they can't even explain the basic tenets of evolutionary theory. They just don't care about what it IS, because they already know that it's wrong.
There is a bit more involved here than a scientists talking down to the rubes.
The downside is that the Millenials don't really care. They're more amused than outraged. They think you can't change it, because the system is too far gone, too corrupt, whatever.
Also, it's not "cool" to be all that involved. It's okay to have an opinion that so-and-so is an idiot, but to get really pissed off, go to rallies, and be a real-life activist loses the cool-points you garnered as a laid-back, amusingly cynical do-nothing.
It's hard to be a concerned American right now. We're realizing that American's don't actually have an innate moral sense. The indifference to wiretapping is the least alarming of the current apathies. Wasn't torture wrong, just last week or so? What happened to that?
Now there are entire movie franchises (Saw, Hostel) where our best and brightest go to watch torture FOR AMUSEMENT. For you Jack Bauer fans (torturer par excellance) there is even a guide to Christian living written in the context of that show--Jack Baeur is Having a Bad Day, or something like that.
I have to explain to my kids why I won't rent them these movies, and how they have influenced military members serving at Abu Ghraib, etc. I miss the days when the "moral issue" consisted of explaining to your daughter why she shouldn't show her boobs to the world. Now our culture is to the point where we have to "have a dialog" about torture. Thank you, John Yoo.
Calling Hey Jude and Get Back "elevator music" is a bit of a stretch. Our culture is so infused with their music that we don't notice it anymore. It's sort of like the extent to which western lit is infused with the KJV and Shakespeare. It's so present that we don't even notice it. I'm not saying that every song is a masterpiece, but stuff like "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is edgy even today.
If Wi-Fi worked out of the box, I'd be fine with Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, or a similar distro on a 5-year old laptop...but it wouldn't be as fun, as shiny, as oooh-aah-ish as the latest and greatest. Well, that is until I wanted to use Handbrake and I no longer had the encode times I get with a dual-core 2Ghz chip. Then all of a sudden the retro thing wouldn't be as cool anymore.
If you're stuck on the shipping question, be fair and consider the 50% more gasoline, that also has to be shipped and trucked to your gas station, used by other vehicles. Not to mention that money spent at the gas pump sends money to Wahaabi fundamentalists who want to destroy the USA, whereas money spent on a Prius sends money to Toyota engineers who just want to make fuel-efficent cars.
The Prius doesn't save the world, but it does hurt the world less emphatically than other cars. It still uses recources, and still spits out emissions, but on balance it is far greener than the other cars out there. The issue really isn't that murky.
They want their own privacy and that of their friends, and by extension for those they admire, but not for anyone else. The entire concept of rule of law, that we need to find rules that can apply to everyone yet still maintain law and order, is alien to them.
People just don't have the basic moral character that we like to think they have. Rattle them a little bit and suddenly they'll gladly sign off on tortureing someone to death if it could hypothetically lower the risk of an unspecified something happening to any American at any point in the future. Who are these people? Oh, my fellow Americans. How I love thee.
As far as "Republicans want to protect the environment," the ones who say they do want to do so by removing the few remaining restrictions on corporate drilling, logging, etc--i.e. their definition of "protecting" means the very opposite of what it means to everyone else. They just changed their language.
As far as "democrats want to increase government spending even more," I'd have to ask, "even more than whom?" Which alternative? The last Democratic President balanced the budget, and reduced the size of the federal government. The Republicans always talk about how bad government is, but they have no problems with indefinite imprisonment without trial, waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping, and the largest deficit in national history. Republicans supported Bush in all of these, right down the line. So when your party actually has some prominent members who believe in small government, maybe you can wave the small-government flag again. As it was, Ron Paul got about 10% of the Republican polling numbers in his best showing. That's about the extent of the Republican committment to small government.
The reasonable Republicans don't speak up, so they don't get heard. O'Reilley and Coulter are the voices of your party--if you don't like that, stop buying their books and watching their shows. These people (and the rest like them) are the ones that polarized the political environment to make the population believe that only the far right is "really" Republican, while self-described "moderates" are Republicans In Name Only -- RINOs, as Rush named them. If you want to know why your party looks ridiculous, extremist, and sometimes outright stupid, look within. Even thinking that this perception is a conspiracy by the "liberal media" to make Republicans look bad is signature conservative thinking--the classic persecution fantasy combined with a pseudo-populist conspiracy theory. Don't think I just made this up--read Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, written in 1964.
If someone objects to torture, please don't dismiss their arguments by thinking it's about Bush. Is it really impossible to even fathom a principled argument here? McCain said waterboarding is torture--is he a Bush hater? The JAGs for the US Army have said that waterboarding is torture--are they Bush haters? You can't dismiss every objection and criticism by saying "you just don't like Bush, do you?" If you don't get that people can object to torture on moral grounds, then your moral compass has been replaced by a political one. Replace the name "Bush" with "Bill Clinton" and still see if you think torture is okay. If it came to light that we were waterboarding dozens of people under Clinton, would that bother you?
Should local cops be able to waterboard subjects, if they can say that they think it might save a life? Who do you want to empower with this option? The local sherriff in a town of 2.5K? He might get valuable info on a local murder--you won't know until you give him free rein. Torture is the ultimate slippery slope. Once the end justifies the means, and the end is a nebulous "saving lives" in hazy scenarios that may or may not be real, you get people tortured to death, along with fake death certificates and the whole thing. It isn't what a civilized society does.