American Airlines and the Mile High Club

The New Yorker has a piece about American Airlines’ anti kissing policy. 

Apperently a gay couple were told not to kiss or touch during the flight or the plane would be diverted.

One AA spokesman said that they would have been told that had they have been gay or straight, while another said that straight couples were not told they could not kiss.  The AA spokesman said that they have a responsability to make their customers comfortable.  That’s bull.  They have a responsability to get their customers from point A to point

The Politics of Dehumanization

The NYT had an interesting articleabout the political ramifications of the senate’s passing of the detainee bill that would allow the government to hold enemy combatants without charge indefinitely, use questionable interrogation methods, and keep evidence from them.

While the article is interesting as we go into the election season – what we need to see is the actual result this bill will have on human lives.

“I think most Americans would agree that if somebody is held they should at least be able to respond to the charges,” said Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. “The fact we don’t have that is something that, over time, Americans are going to be embarrassed about.”

While Sen. Obama has the right sentiment, I for one hope that in the future, when we’re lucky enough to look back at this with hindsight, we are not embarrassed – we should be ashamed and disgraced.  This bill does not just represent another political defeat for the democrats, it represents the current administrations complete disregard for basic human rights.

Supposed ‘protection from terrorism’ is important.  But what is it really worth?  Our dignity?  Our morality? 

I should hope not.

An Atheistic View of Morality

So someone sent me a link to a pdf file of a 112 page document entitled, The Bible of the Good and Moral Atheist.  While I haven’t even begun to read the thing, one phrase early on made me think.

All morality begins and ends with sympathy.

In a society where the religious right is gaining more and more ground and atheists are still looked upon as amoral, it is good to remind ourselves that some morality begins and ends with sympathy.

Empathy does not belong soley to the religious.  Empathy is part of the human condition and is partly responsible for allowing humans to live in societies.  Partly responsible.

I do not think that sympathy is 100% responsible for morality.  Some morality comes from good ole fashioned genetics.  Richard Dawkins explored this in his book The Selfish Gene and Howard Bloom went into it in The Lucifer Principle.

Through evolution our brains are still hardwired to operate in certain ways.  Let’s take the example of our need to propagate the species.  This genetic need makes us behave in ways that are both selfish and selfless.  We want to make sure our offspring survive, and we’ll do almost anything to ensure this.  But we also know that unless we are able to peacefully interact with others, our offspring may not stand a chance.

This concept is true in many ways.  I am sure that you’re able to think of a few ways that you behave ‘morally’ for completely selfish reasons.  I’m not punching that stranger in the face because I sympathize with the pain he will be in, but because I don’t want to be punched back.

You don’t need to be afraid of divine retribution – there is enough immediate incentive to act morally.  In most cases, what’s good for the group is ultimately good for you.

And no, I am not, nor have ever been, a member of the communist party.  Kinda.

Throwing Away the Key

Today the Senate shot down a proposed amendment to the Detainee Bill that would have allowed detainee’s to be treated like humans.

“What this bill would do is take our civilization back 900 years,” to before the adoption of the writ of habeas corpus in medieval England, Senator Specter said.

Mr. Leahy said the bill as written would allow the executive branch to hold any lawful immigrant in the United States indefinitely without charge. “We are about to put the darkest blot on the conscience of the nation,” he said, charging that the push for quick passage was purely for political gain.

You know something is serious when I agree with Arlen Specter.  I honestly can’t believe that the US House or Senate would pass a bill that would give the Executive branch the power to ignore basic civil liberties and international conventions.

Link to NYT article.

Atheistic Quotes

I came across this excellent list of atheistic quotes.  Here’s a small sample:

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.  -George Bernard Shaw

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? – Epicurus

Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities. – Voltaire

 A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. – Albert Einstein

My God’s Better than Yours!

Type in “Richard Dawkins” in YouTube and you get a treasure of interesting videos.

In one of the interviews, he refers to the bible as “tribal mythology”.  Which makes you think.  What is the difference between Christianity, Islam, Hindu, et al.?  All of them come to us today from books, from oral mythology.  How can you accept the christian story rather than the Hindu story?  Because of what tribe you come from, what stories your people have told you since childhood.  If you were born in India you’d probably be Hindu and think Christianity is just as silly as you think Hinduism is now.

Stephen Roberts once said, “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

I would like to know why a religious person knows that they’re religion is true.  What is more compelling about Jesus than Krishna?  If you can dismiss one of them, why can’t you dismiss them all?  Please respond, that’s an honest question.

Cracking Down on Sinus Relief!

It’s 1:37 and I should be at work.  Instead my head is pounding, my nose is running, and I’m standing in an aisle of the supermarket vainly trying to find the Advil.  Fast-forward to 15 minutes later.  I’m walking out of the supermarket, Advil in hand, and I think to myself “Sweet Jesus – it just took me 15 minutes to buy Advil.”

Colorado is cracking down on drugs that could potentially be used to make methamphetamine.  Apparently my favorite brand of cold medicine is one of those.  The saga grew to epic proportions when I wrote my name and address on the form on the clipboard and the guy say that I wrote a Colorado address and that I had an Oregon ID.  After a whispered conversation with his suprivisor he took my ID and the clipboard back to a computer and spent five minutes typing.

When he came back I was expecting him to want me to pee in a cup or something – but instead he just had me pay. 

Now I see that when all is said and done this wasn’t that big of a deal.  But I say: “DEAR GOD I JUST WANT TO BUY ADVIL!”  As far as thwarting drug makers go, I think this is stupid.  They’ll find a way.  A counter is not going to stop them. 

If nothing else I’m thinking about selling my left over Advil on the street – $5 in the store – 50 bones on the street!

Protecting the Populace from Mozart

The Deutsche Oper in west Berlin announced on Monday that it would be cancelling four performances of Mozart’s Opera Idomeneo.

In the production, directed by Hans Neuenfels, King Idomeneo is shown staggering on stage next to the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon and the Prophet Mohammad, which sit on chairs.

The German government, thankfully, condemned the decision.

German politicians denounced the opera house’s move, deputy parliamentary speaker Wolfgang Thierse saying it highlighted a new threat to free artistic expression in Germany.

“Has it come so far that we must limit artistic expression?” he told Reuters. “What will be next?”

So what does the director of the Opera have to say?

The director of the Deutsche Oper, Kirsten Harms, defended her decision at a news conference on Tuesday. She said Ehrhart Koerting, Berlin’s top police official, had phoned her in mid-August and warned her of dire consequences if the opera house proceeded with its plan to show “Idomeneo.”

“If I had paid no attention and something had happened, everyone would rightly say that I had ignored the warnings,” Harms said.

In my humble opinion, this is disgraceful.  While I’m not alone in being skepticle of any censorship, this kind of censorship presents new challenges for the arts.  In a country where the president keeps telling us that the terrorists will strike again – in a world where people of all faiths use violence as their primary means of solving conflicts – this form of censorship by fear is a great risk to free speech and the nature of art.

For shame, Kirsten Harms, for shame.

NYT article.

Preemptive Reasoning Foreign to US

A 16 year old girl, on trial in El Paso for drug smuggling, faces a possible sentence of 40 years in prison. 

In a statement released last week, County Attorney José Rodríguez said his office was hoping the decision would deter the city’s ongoing problem with teenagers transporting drugs across the border.

“Proceeding under determinate sentencing statute in this case demonstrates that we will not tolerate these types of crimes, and should serve as a warning to those teens who might be tempted by the money being offered by the drug cartels,” Rodríguez said.

I think that the prospect of sending a 16 year old girl to prison for 40 years is appalling.  Primarily – a long prison sentance does not equal rehabilitation.  Secondarily – I don’t think the best way to deter others from following her path is to ruin her life.

It’s been shown that even the death penalty is not a deterrent.  Economical and social factors are what push people into drug trafficking.  We should not punish the person so much as look at why they’re doing it and finding proactive ways to fix it.  This is typical of the US – deal with problems after they occur – rarely do we try to prevent them in the first place.  This is evident by the amount of so-called ‘terrorists’.  Most of them are angry with us for a reason.  Maybe we should have carefully thought out foreign policy – I think we’ll end up burying fewer people that way.  Just an idea.

It’s Always Opposite Day for the Neo-Cons!

I find I have increasingly less energy to post about political topics.  The same things keep happening over and over.  Misc. Neo-Con does or says something stupid, and I ridicule them.  Don’t get me wrong, I love ridiculing those that deserve it – I just wish something would change.

The fact is, no matter what he does – Bush will be in office until the next election.  I think he’s done more than enough illegal, unethical, and just plain stupid things to warrant being exiled to a deserted island somewhere cold. 

As issues come up, it is easy to know what Bush or the neo-cons will have to say about them.  Just think what is the smart and ehtical thing to do, and then think of the exact opposite.

Obviously the administration would seek to exempt ‘terrorists’ from the rights provided them in the Geneva Convention – because the smart and ethical thing to do would be to treat them with dignity and how we expect people to treat us.

See?  It’s easy!  Let’s try another.  Stem cell research – it shows great promise with many different diseases, affecting millions of people around the world.  Bush says:  let’s ban it!

Anyway my point is that recently the neo cons have demonstrated a severe lack of knowledge about what is exactly going on on the other side of the world.  Coulter said things in Afghanistan were going “swimmingly” and for the president -

By most reliable accounts, three and a half years into the U.S. occupation, Iraq is in chaos — if not in a state of civil war, then awfully close. But President Bush insists it’s not so.

If you ask any Iraqi family or any US soldier (who’s spent time outside of the green zone) I bet they have a different view than Bushy.

Oh well. . . it’s what I expect.

Link to article.

Bush: “It’s unacceptable to think”

From Bush’s September 15th press conference in the rose garden:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. If a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State feels this way, don’t you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you’re following a flawed strategy?

THE PRESIDENT: If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic. I simply can’t accept that. It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective, Terry.

My job, and the job of people here in Washington, D.C., is to protect this country. We didn’t ask for this war. You might remember the 2000 campaign. I don’t remember spending much time talking about what it might be like to be a Commander-in-Chief in a different kind of war. But this enemy has struck us and they want to strike us again. And we will give our folks the tools necessary to protect the country; that’s our job.

It’s a dangerous world. I wish it wasn’t that way. I wish I could tell the American people, don’t worry about it, they’re not coming again. But they are coming again. And that’s why I’ve sent this legislation up to Congress, and that’s why we’ll continue to work with allies in building a vast coalition, to protect not only ourselves, but them. The facts are, is that after 9/11, this enemy continued to attack and kill innocent people.

I happen to believe that they’re bound by a common ideology. Matter of fact, I don’t believe that, I know they are. And they want to impose that ideology throughout the broader Middle East. That’s what they have said. It makes sense for the Commander-in-Chief, and all of us involved in protecting this country to listen to the words of the enemy. And I take their words seriously. And that’s what’s going to be necessary to protect this country, is to listen carefully to what they say and stay ahead of them as they try to attack us.

I think the president hit it right on the mark when he said, “I simply can’t accept that.”  He simply can’t accept that he was and is wrong.  He can’t accept that what he calls ‘terrorists’ arn’t just a group of people who hate the US.  They don’t have annual terrorist picnics.  They are people that have nothing to do with eachother and that all have different motives and objectives.  The situation is and has always been far more complicated than he would lead us to believe. 

“We didn’t ask for this war.”  I don’t even know where to start with that one.  As far as the supposed ‘terrorist’ attacks on american troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, well yes, he kind of did ask for it.  Let’s not forget the infamous ‘bring it on’ comment.

As far as September 11th, 2001, the beginning of his war on terror – they attacked us for a reason.  Their attack reflects decades of flawed foreign policy.  It’s unfortunate that it did, but someone should have expected our policies to come back and bite us in the ass.  You don’t see any terrorists flying planes into any buildings in Switzerland. 

What about all of the Iraqi civilians killed (accidentally or not) by Americans since the beginning of the Iraq war?  Was that not an act of terrorism on the Iraqi people?  What about Bush’s friend Israel – they’re considered terrorists for their acts in Lebanon.

Wait.  Slow down.  I’m comparing the actions of the United States to those of terrorists – that must be flawed logic.  It’s unacceptable.  I think my head might actually explode for thinking that.

I repeat my question – when did logic and reason fall out of fashion?

The Benedict Code

Truthdig and Sam Harris have a good piece looking at the Pope’s recent speech.  Here’s a little sample:

“Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today….”

It is ironic that a man who has just disparaged Islam as “evil” and “inhuman” before 250,000 onlookers and the world press is now talking about a “genuine dialogue of cultures.” How much genuine dialogue can he hope for? The Koran says that anybody who believes that Jesus was divine—as all real Catholics must—will spend eternity in hell (Koran 5:71-75; 19:30-38). This appears to be a deal-breaker. The pope knows this. The Muslim world knows that he knows it. And he knows that the Muslim world knows that he knows it. This is not a good basis for interfaith dialogue.

In the pope’s defence, I couldn’t write a good speech in favor of Catholicism . . . just can’t be done.

What You Should be Afraid of

Here‘s a color-coded chart of how you’re going to die as an American:

Who’s to pay the Lawyer?

I heard this story on NPR this morning:

Morning Edition, September 18, 2006 · The House is expected to vote as soon as this week on a bill that would prevent plaintiffs in certain separation of church-and-state cases from recouping attorneys’ fees. Supporters say the fees are used to unfairly coerce plaintiffs. Critics say the bill would roll back a major civil rights protection.

You can listen to the story here.

 

It seems to me in cases like this the loser should have to cover legal fees.  Otherwise religious monuments will be going up faster than Starbucks.

Archaeopteryx – The Thorn in Evolution’s Side

Time for another trip into AnswersInGenesis.org. This time it is an article entitled: Vertebrates: animals with backbones. This article was first published in 2006 – so we can be sure that all of the claims are accurate as of today. Or can we? The article discuses Archaeopteryx as the possible missing link between reptiles and birds. It then uses it to try to disprove the theory of evolution.

Is there any clue in Archaeopteryx as to how reptilian scales evolved into feathers? No, none at all. When we find feathers as fossils, we find fully developed and functional feathers. Feathers are quite complex structures, with little hooks and eyelets for zippering and unzippering them. Archaeopteryx not only had complete and complex feathers, but feathers of several different types! As a matter of fact, it had the asymmetric feather characteristic of strong fliers. An evolutionist once claimed that penguin wings showed the transition from scale to feather. Their small feathers do overlap like scales (or roofing shingles!), but their microstructure and development are 100% feather. He might as well have claimed the feathers evolved from shingles!

I don’t think anyone has recently claimed that Archaeopteryx is the missing link. Archaeopteryx is however an early ancestor of birds. This article has this to say about feathers:

Two species of dinosaur have recently been found in northeast China which possess feathers (Qiang et al. 1998). Protoarchaeopteryx robusta and Caudipteryx zoui show regiges, rectrices and plumulaceous feather inpressions. Further, they are not birds, lacking a reverted (backwards facing) big toe (see number 2 below) and a quadrratojugal squamosal contact, having a quadrojugal joined to the quatrate by a ligament and a reduced or absent process of the ishium. These and other characters group Protoarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx with maniraptoran coelurosaurs rather than birds.

Basically it comes down to this: regardless of whether or not Archaeopteryx is the missing link between dinosaurs and birds, it doesn’t prove or disprove the theory of evolution.  Unlike creationists, who claim to know the truth – science understands that they don’t.  Scientists use theories to explain things.  As new evidence is discovered the theories are tweaked.  Genesis is never tweaked.  The theory of evolution was never and will never be riding on the back of Archaeopteryx.  You’d think someone who supposedly used to teach college biology would know that – or at least do their research.