The Calladus Blog

Same Sex Marriage - Where I agree with Santorum

2012-01-07T10:04:00.001-08:00

So perhaps you've seen this on the blog of the Friendly Atheist, the video clip of Rick Santorum comparing gay marriage to plural marriage?

First, I'll point out that polyamorous marriage is not legally the same as a "binary" marriage. The law in most societies is set up already to easily handle marriage between a couple - no matter the sex. There are no legal complexities in a marriage of two people. While the legal complexity of a union of three or more people can get complicated very quickly.

But I still find that I'm in agreement with Rick Santorum in that I see no ethical reason to restrict a legal union to an arbitrary number of two people.

Don't get me wrong, Santorum is being pretty smug in this video where he thinks he's cornered the questioner with a foolproof "gotcha". But even a stopped (analog) clock can be right twice a day. And Santorum is right here, when it comes to ethics.

If it is ethically okay for two people to get married, no matter their gender, then it is okay for three or more to get married. This is an argument that works even without considering same-sex marriage. Bringing gender into this argument is unnecessary, and may be a Red Herring fallacy.

In the Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Stevens concluded that:

(1) the fact that a State’s governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufﬁcient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice,

(2) individual decisions concerning the intimacies of physical relationships, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of “liberty” protected by due process.

...

This case does not involve minors, persons who might be injured or coerced, those who might not easily refuse consent, or public conduct or prostitution. It does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. Petitioners’ right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention.

...

The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the individual’s personal and private life.

If two adults, "with full and mutual consent" can engage in "private conduct" without government intervention - then why can't three, or four?

A reading of Polyamory in Wikipedia showed me that the law is still pretty tangled up, even though Lawrence v. Texas has resulted in some state legislators reviewing their laws on marriage. According to the Wikipedia article:

Bigamy is the act of marrying one person while already being married to another, and is legally prohibited in most countries where monogamy is the cultural norm. Some bigamy statutes are broad enough to potentially encompass polyamorous relationships involving cohabitation, even if none of the participants claim marriage to more than one partner. For instance, under Utah Code 76-7-101, "A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person."

Having multiple non-marital partners, even if married to one, is legal in most U.S. jurisdictions; at most it constitutes grounds for divorce if the spouse is non-consenting, or feels that the interest in a further partner has destabilized the marriage. In jurisdictions where civil unions or registered partnerships are recognized, the same principle applies to divorce in those contexts. There are exceptions to this: in North Carolina, a spouse can sue a third party for causing "loss of affection" in or "criminal conversation" (adultery) with their spouse, and more than twenty states in the US have laws against adultery although they are infrequently enforced.

So, the law seems to be all over the place, and some conservatives believe that the ruling in Lawrence v. Texas opens the floodgates to polyamorous marriage. And there are several forms that a poly marriage can take, which further complicates any possible future changes to marriage law.

But as someone who bases my decisions on reason and rationality, I cannot see any ethical reason to condemn a relationship between "n" number of people, as long as everyone in that relationship gives their informed consent. I can see a legal reason to prohibit such a union - in that today's laws are not constructed to be fair to such a marriage. But I can see a way to counter that objection by learning from and perhaps adapting laws of incorporation to marriage. Why not? A couple is often legally treated as a union, a single entity; and so is a corporation.

Santorm smugly thinks he has found a counter to same sex marriage, but I think he is one of many who (unknowingly) are working for the legality of plural marriage.

Internet insanity

2011-12-21T12:14:00.001-08:00

While reading about the plight of one of my friends, I came across a little bit of Internet Insanity. (Yea, I know, how unusual, right?)

Sue Basko, "Lawyer for Music and Film", is one of those "colorful" personalities who makes a living off of Hollywood. She also has a blog. I'm not interested in her blog, not at all. But I am interested in the warning she placed on her blog. It says:

COPYRIGHT: ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 2010-11 Susan Basko. You may not copy or use or link to or quote or cite ANY material herein without explicit written permission from the Owner. No "Fair Use" applicable. Permission easily granted to good people/uses. Don't be shy to ask.

You see what I did there? By copying her text, and linking to it, I've done what Ms. Basko says I cannot do.

I especially like how she says that Fair Use is not applicable! It's like she gets to make up the law as it applies to her own website!

This is why I like and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They offer a legal guide to bloggers that helps bloggers know when someone like Sue Basko is full of it. For instance, several court cases in America have ruled that I CAN link to Sue Basko's website, with or without her permission. I can even "deep link" to a place on a website where normal users of that site would have to go through several layers first. This has been ruled to be legal.

I'm also allowed to copy and paste "short quotes" from anyone else's blog just so that I can comment from it. This is lawful for me to do. Let me give you an example from Ms. Basko's blog:

EDUCATION: I have a Juris Doctorate magna cum laude from Southern Illinois University School of Law; have completed all coursework for a Master of Arts in Mass Communication Media Arts in the department of Cinema-Photography/ Radio-TV at Southern Illinois University; have a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Video from Columbia College Chicago.

This seems to be a pretty impressive education, until you realize that Ms. Basko really doesn't understand copyright in America - you would think that someone working in the entertainment industry would know copyright law inside and out! She has a JD degree from Southern Illinoise University School of Law and still says that I am not allowed to link to her blog, or use parts of it as "fair use"?

This is incredibly hilarious.

Taken with her other blog postings, Ms. Basko comes off as another one of the (all too common) tinfoil-hat wearing brigade, who try to force the world to be what they want it to be, instead of taking it for what it really is.

If you are seeking legal advice from Ms. Basko, I would advise you look long and hard at this first.

Also, if you have the time, money, or legal expertise, and you want to donate to an excellent cause, then support the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I do, and you should too!

Lastly, because I've been warned that Ms. Basko has a habit of deleting her own writing and claiming to have never written it, I've taken a screen shot of the offending page, which I will post here if it ever disappears or changes.

Update 24 Dec 2011:

Wow, it was predicted, and so it came to pass! Quietly, and without fanfare, Ms. Basko has updated her copyright warning. Since I saved her page, I can give you a before and after screenshot of it to the right here. (Click on the image to see it bigger).

The top shows her orginal text with the silly copyright warning that prevents you from copying or linking to her text.
She's almost got everything set here. But there is still a little bit of sillyness. The text now reads:

COPYRIGHT: ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT Sue Basko 2010. Materials on this site may be used and shared only for the purposes of learning. They may not be used for any form of cyberstalking, bullying, or harassing. Legal action will be taken against any cyberstalker or harasser. If that's you, get off this page.

I'm glad she's made this clear. Right now, I'm using her text to demonstrate that she still doesn't understand copyright - so I guess technically I'm teaching someone reading this blog something.

But still, she's completely wrong here. According to the US Copyright Office, I'm allowed to copy and reproduce a fair amount of Ms. Basko's work, "... for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports."

For the record, I'm criticizing Ms. Basko's words, her "so-called" proficiency with Internet Law. I'm doing so because she purports to be an entertainment lawyer who I would think is supposed to KNOW something about the law and the Internet, while also understanding basic facts about the Internet - namely "The Streisand Effect".

For a great example of what you can do with Fair Use and Copyright, I suggest you watch the movie "A Fair(y) Use Tail" by Eric Faden. (I would guess that there is very little chance that Mr. Faden is represented by Ms. Basko).

Another aspect of Fair Use is parody. If I wished, I could modify the image of Ms. Basko in Photoshop to make her look like a Klingon, and then translate part of her web site into Klingon words (called "tlhIngan Hol" in English). I could then put a word bubble above her head showing the Klingon Ms. Basko shouting her own words in Klingon.

I could, if I wished, use Photoshop to redraw the photo of Ms. Basko as a clown. This would be a neat parody because it would hook into the whole entertainment industry (better than a Klingon) while at the same time making a statement about Ms. Basko's abilities.

I could do this, but I won't. Not out of fear, but because it is Christmas eve and I've got other things to do with my time. Call it laziness if you wish.

One other thing I would like to point out is the Copyright Date on the updated text. Copyright is good for a long time, so a Copyright of 2010 is not going to run out any time soon. However, according to the Copyright Office, Copyright happens automatically when you write something. Using a date or the (c) symbol is merely a formality. But back-dating your copyright by a year doesn't make sense, it makes it seem older than it really is, and would allow it to fall into public domain one year sooner than necessary.

The only reason why Ms. Basko would have a 2010 Copyright on this material is if she is trying to make it seem like she didn't REALLY change her website - or if she merely forgot.

Personally, I think she just forgot. We will see it updated correctly soon. Especially after I tell her about it.

A little bit of fun with a heavy subject!

2011-12-18T10:05:00.001-08:00

What is life REALLY like on Kepler-22b?

A story about the newly discovered Kepler-22b appeared in my Google science news feed. Kepler-22b, as described by Wikipedia, "... is the first confirmed extrasolar planet found by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope to orbit within the habitable zone of a Sun-like star."

The story was a guest essay by Wade Sarkis, to the online magazine MPNnow.com. I clicked over to this story thinking I'd read some real science about what it would be like to live on Kepler-22b. What I found instead was an orgasmic Utopian political fantasy by a writer with stars in his eyes. The only fact quoted was the distance to Kepler - 600 Light Years. Needless to say, I didn't learn anything I didn't already know.

So let me tell you what little I know about Kepler-22b.

We know, approximately, what the diameter of Kepler-22b is because of how much light is occluded when it passes in front of its star. It is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth.

From that small bit of information, we can calculate Kepler-22b's probable gravity, depending on it's probable makeup. We would do so by noting that the gravity of a planet (g) is found with this formula: g=G(m/(r^2)).

For instance, if the planet consists of the same sorts of materials that make up the Earth, (rocky metals and water) then a person who weighs 200 pounds on Earth would weigh 485 pounds on Kepler-22b. Not a nice place to vacation for us humans!

But maybe we would luck out, and Kepler-22b would be less dense. This is possible if it were made of water. If Kepler-22b were made entirely of water it would only be 2.5 times as massive as Earth, but the gravity would be a pittance. A 200 pound person would weight only 86 pounds on a watery Kepler-22b - from the deck of his ship, since there would be no land. But it would be a strange ship, since there would also be very little if any atmosphere. The gravity of this water world would be too low to keep most of the atmosphere from escaping! And without atmosphere, even the water vapor would try to escape the bounds of the planet. Perhaps it would hang around if frozen solid, sort of like Jupiter's moon Ganymede.

So what would be comfortable to a human? If Kepler-22b were only 6 times as massive as Earth the gravity would be similar to Earth. You would weight just about the same. But this density would suggest a planet poor in metals, made mostly of silica and water. Granite and sandstone would exist, but heavier minerals would not. The term "Bronze Age" would be a complete mystery to the inhabitants of Kepler-22b, to whom the fused glass spear point would be the height of their technology.

Is there life on Kepler-22b? Who knows? But if they are able to develop human-like technology, if they can mine the metals to make a radio, and if we ever detect a signal, then we will know that theirs is a much heavier world than ours.

For those who are curious, I made a spreadsheet that calculates the gravity of planets found by the Kepler space observatory. Click on that link to calculate the the possible gravity on the surface of the planets found by the NASA's Discovery Program.

Contemptuous conceited chutzpah - the inherent hubris of Christianity

2011-12-16T23:40:00.001-08:00

I really don't know why I'm angry. I really did expect Christians to race to the front to see who could say something stupid about the death of Christopher Hitchens first.

Really, I expected smug self-rightiousness from the likes of Ray Comfort, and he didn't fail to live down to my expectations by posting a blog entry titled, "Christopher Hitchens is no longer an atheist. Richard Dawkins now believes in God" (No, I won't link to him.) Comfort made hay from Hitchens' corpse, while taking the time to quote-mine Dawkins.

And of course Rick Warren played "Concern Troll" by taking the time to say something hateful about Hitchens.

Twitter has been in an uproar too. Lots of good Christians have been threatening the person who started the trending topic #GodIsNotGreat

Over the next few days, expect to see a lot of "Good" Christians sadly lamenting that Hitchens "is no longer an atheist" or that he "knows the truth now". This false piety, this false sympathy is the curdling of human kindness into a sludge of religious evil.

Let me make this very simple for the followers of a god. You think you know what Christopher Hitchens is thinking right now. But you are wrong. He is not thinking anything. He's dead. His brain is no longer functioning, and therefore his mind has... ceased. The words he wrote, the words he spoke, the friends he made, the enemies he impressed, the people he touched are all that remains of his rapier-sharp intellect.

But Hitchens is gone, and does not exist anywhere.

This is a thought that terrifies many religious people. And this abject fear, this panic, is one of the most powerful tools of religion. Hitchens knew this, and overcame it.

He no longer cares about the religious buzzards that pick over his corpse. But I'm angry about it. Even though I knew it was coming.

We lost a good man today

2011-12-15T23:27:00.001-08:00

A good man is dead today.

I am so glad that I had a chance to email Mr. Hitchens and tell him that he assisted me in my deconversion. I was always impressed by his quick mind and verbal talent in debate. I just started reading his books this year, but I've watched hours of him on Youtube and have always been impressed.

I can't say I agree with his lifestyle, but we are very different people. I'm not that interested in being a part of a large social circle, and I can take or leave alcohol - I certainly don't need it to have a good time. Still, I'm glad he mostly got to do as he wished.

I've seen two different stories online where cowardly people have claimed that he turned to God in his last days. I'm sure everyone of any intelligence knows better than this. And I know that Christians will gloat over his death and exclaim that he is "no longer an atheist" or some such drivel.... Such people deserve the contempt they will receive.

I've said it before:

We are all living together here in the same pond. Our actions and words make ripples that are felt by, and influence those around us, who in turn cause ripples that are felt by and influence others. People who never know us directly will feel this influence.

It is not that important to make a big ripple, or wave, while we are here. What is important is the joy of splashing around.

Mr. Hitchens did both. He made a pretty big, influential wave. And he did it with an offhanded effortlessness, with a great deal of refined pleasure, quiet joy, and a rapier-sharp quip.

Goodbye sir. I'll miss you.

A wonderful atheist Christmas - the reprise

2011-12-11T23:39:00.001-08:00

I've said it before... I love Christmas.

It has been a long time, 5 years, since I've had a wonderful Christmas. In 2006 I spent Christmas at the hospital with Won. In 2007 and 2008 our holidays were severely scaled back due to Won's health and our finances. And then things got worse.

I spent 2010 recovering. And now... well, I've found someone special. Yea, I'm just as surprised as anyone! And we're planning Christmas together.

So for the first time in 5 years, I've been able to pull out my decorations. And Wendy and I decorated our tree. See the Bumble front and center? Did I mention that I have a Bumble ornament? Unfortunately, my Star Trek "Catspaw" ornament didn't survive the move. It, along with the Christmas tree skirt, and some other bits and pieces has disappeared or been thrown away.

I've had the chance to do a little baking this year. (Chocolate pecan pie!) But mostly I've spent the weekends enjoying the warm weather by working in my back yard wearing jeans and a T-shirt. After building a fence in my backyard, I'm working on building an insulated doghouse. I'm still working on aquaponics and gardening too - I plan to do a lot of that over my vacation. Yea, I'm taking 2 weeks off - the first time I've done that since before Won's health got bad.

So, I said before that I enjoy the holiday season. This week I plan to walk down Fresno's "Christmas Tree Lane" - something that I've never done before. I'm looking forward to seeing the "controversial" Christmas display that doesn't mention Jesus.

I understand that some people believe it is "hypocritical" for an atheist to celebrate and enjoy Christmas. But I don't get that. Yea, I have a tree, I have lights, I have snowmen in the front yard (well, on a flag, and made of wood and metal - no snow here!)

There are no overt Christian symbols in my decorations - and haven't been since I became an atheist and retired the tree-top angel almost two decades ago. The tree and decorations are certainly not a Christian symbol, as stated in the Bible.

This going to be a good Christmas. I'll celebrate the Winter Solstice with my friends, and then Wendy and I will celebrate Christmas. There will be good food, good company, some treats, some time around a nice fire, and even some presents.

I'll sing a few of my favorite Christmas Songs, enjoy some brandy and egg nog, and finally get to see what's inside of that red present under the tree.

I hope you will also have a great Christmas. And if you would like to share some Christmas spirit with others may I recommend Doctors without Borders, KIVA, and Scouting for All?

It's been two years.

2011-11-30T23:26:00.001-08:00

I just realized today that it's been two years since I dropped my wife off at the San Francisco International Airport for her trip to Korea. It was the last time we touched.

Yes, she left after our anniversary celebration, and was gone for Christmas, but was supposed to come back before New Years. But the airline offered her a good deal if they let them bump her a week, so she took that.

I was fine with being here on my own for Christmas. I had this new game, "Portal" that I wanted to play with, and I was in the middle of building a new workbench in my woodshop. I was actually looking forward to being a bachelor for a couple of weeks. And Won wanted to visit a friend of hers from high school, an old classmate who had contracted cancer.

It's amazing how quickly everything can change.

The first half of 2010 was terrible. I don't even remember much of what I actually did at that time. I spent our anniversary in November of last year saying "goodbye" to Won, for a week. Allowing the emotions to roll through me.

This year our anniversary went relatively unremarked. It didn't hurt (well, not much) to think about it. Still, it's an important date, one of 3 that will make me remember Won. Her birthday on June 13, our anniversary on November 23, and her death on January 2nd. I'm thinking that I will hold either her birthday or our anniversary as an official remembrance of us, but haven't decided which as yet.

I've said it before, in my blog and in other places...

It is not that important to make a big ripple, or wave, while we are here. What is important is the joy of splashing around.

Even if you never knew my wife, you feel her influence, through my words.

I'm doing much better this year. There is still some pain, there most likely always will be. But I've discovered joy again, and love.

Don't be afraid to gamble with your heart. And hold on tight to those you love.

Abortion vs. Personhood

2011-11-27T08:45:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I read about atheists who wish to ban abortion. A few have even given their support for a Personhood amendment.
And I have to wonder - have they thought this through?
I will be the first to admit that a fertilized ovum is "human". But then, so are my skin cells. The real argument is over what is a "person". I'll get to that.

First, let's discuss how we all came to be. (And for you biologists out there, feel free to correct this poor electrical engineer! I'm sure I screwed up something!)

Fertilization is the fusion of gametes, (sperm and ovum) to form a zygote. The zygote goes through "cleavage" (cell division) to form a Blastula. After about 5 or 6 divisions it is called a Morula, at which point it starts to form a hollow ball of cells around a center of liquid. Once the ball is formed it is called a blastocyst. The inner cell mass of this ball starts to form structures that will later define the fetus.

Up to this point, the blastocyst has not adhered to the uterine wall - when it does, it is called implantation. At implantation the cells are called an embryo until about the 8th week, when it is then called a fetus. Implantation happens between 6-12 days after fertilization.

I won't go into the development of a fetus here.

A baby is what we call a human that has been born. Newborn is the designation of a human from birth to several weeks old, and infant is the designation usually given from one month to 12 months.

Now let's review miscarriage.

Miscarriage (also known as "spontanious abortion") is actually very common in humans. Especially before implantation of the blastocyst. There is only a very narrow window of opportunity for the blastocyst to implant, and this window can be affected by various things.

The problem at this stage is that the blastocyst is about 32 cells in size, and if a miscarriage happens it often seems just like a woman's normal menstrual flow. Sometimes it is thought to be a little heavy, but not always.

No one seems to know the exact rate of miscarriage in humans because it is difficult to identify when it happens. Depending on who you ask, or which study you read, miscarriage rates are said to be anywhere between 30-50% of all fertilized ovum. (Wikipedia, New England Journal of Medicine, WebMD, University of Ottawa, MedicineNet)

Most miscarriages happen in the first trimester. Miscarriage is less likely to happen in the second trimester or later, and is usually due to problems with the uterus, umbilical cord, or placenta.

What makes miscarriage MORE likely?

There are things that a woman (and even the father) can do to increase the likelihood of miscarriage.

Older parents are likely to miscarry due to poor genetics. Smoking increases the likelihood of miscarriage - even if only the father smokes! Drug use is also an increased risk (but we knew that, right?) Antidepressants can cause a failure to implant.

IUDs, which mostly prevent pregnancy by preventing fertilization also prevent blastocysts from implanting in the uterine wall. Also in some few cases the combined oral contraceptive pill (the most common birth control pill) will cause the blastocyst to fail to implant.
There are studies that show a correlation between exercise and an increased risk of miscarriage in the first trimester, with more and heavier exercise leading to greatly increased chance of miscarriage.

There are correlations between caffeine use and miscarriage, and stress and miscarriage too.

So what happens if we define a fertilized ovum to be a person?

There is no argument that a baby is a person. Personhood is usually granted after birth. (Although this isn't always true. In some countries it has been common to not officially acknowledge or even name a baby until a year after birth - due to high rates of infant mortality.)

But what if we grant a fertilized ovum the same rights to personhood that you and I reading this text on a screen enjoy?

If a mother spontaneously aborts, or miscarries, we will need to determine to what degree the mother (and perhaps even the father) is culpable for the death of that "person" in a similar manner that we now do with born persons.

In the death of a non-born person, we must ask:

Was the woman sexually active, and not using any form of birth control that prevented fertilization?
- If so, was she living a lifestyle that is risky to the unborn?

Depending on how these questions are answered, the woman may be guilty of manslaughter, or negligent homicide. There are already cases of women charged with drug trafficking and child neglect due to their use of illegal drugs during pregnancy.

What if the woman willfully consumes caffeine during pregnancy, in the hopes of triggering a miscarriage? Or joins a cross-country track team for the same reason?

There are cases where women have been charged with murder for attempting to end their unborn child's life. Whether the method of murder is a pellet gun or a 10 mile run might not matter. (Wikipedia)

Obviously, if a fertilized ovum is the same as a person, AND it deserves the protection of the State, then some restrictions must be placed upon women of child-bearing years.

These restrictions might include:

No high-stress jobs. (Sorry about your dreams of becoming a District Attorney!)
No sports. (Perhaps women athletes could guarantee that they are not sexually active?)
No using the Birth Control Pill or IUDs. (Spermicide and condoms should be fine.)
Frequent pregnancy testing. (If you don't know you are pregnant, how can you protect your baby?)

I'm sure other protections may occur to the reader.

Roe V. Wade

So why is Abortion legal? Why did Roe V. Wade make it legal?

One of my religious acquaintances told me that Roe V. Wade was decided in order to allow woman to "avoid the consequences of sex".

In reality, Roe V. Wade is a privacy issue. It's about personal liberty. The restrictions that I enumerated above are invasions into a woman's liberty and privacy. They are a form of tyranny.

A family with two children may decide that "2 is enough" and then use birth control methods to prevent future pregnancy. But not all birth control methods are 100% effective, so it is still possible for the woman to become pregnant again.

Perhaps such a pregnancy will endanger her health, perhaps it will kill her. Or maybe the family is on the financial edge and cannot afford another baby - maybe it cannot even afford a full term pregnancy.

Roe V. Wade recognizes that the mother may decide to have an abortion. The decision made by the Supreme Court recognized that it is her private right to make such a decision. The court also decided that it was better that the mother do it safely, instead of using a risky method.

And risky methods of abortion abound. Ask any woman who remembers what abortions were like before 1973.Women died.

But the State also recognizes that it has a responsibility toward the unborn too. This is why Roe V. Wade talks about the viability of a fetus. If the fetus is viable, it is right to protect it. Viability could be as early as 24 weeks with artificial support.

At 24 weeks the pregnancy is obvious and miscarriage is unlikely to occur.

Last thought: In-Vitro Fertilization

"In vitro" means "within glass" and refers to the fertilization of ovum outside the mother's body as a treatment for infertility.

Usually several embryos are cultured before being transferred back to the mother. This is done because some embryos are not as viable as others (the best are chosen for transfer back) and because not all embryos will implant in the mother. Usually only 2 or 3 embryos are transferred back to the mother, with others held back until it is known that implantation occurs.

Usually there are several embryos that are left over from the process. These can be cryopreserved, but are often discarded - usually by the decision of the family.
If every embryo is a person, deserving of full rights of personhood, then IVF will need to change dramatically, or be made unlawful.

So, where are you in the debate on abortion?

"God did it!" - This is a dishonest answer

2011-11-09T19:21:00.000-08:00

When I engage in debate online with Christians, I am frequently asked about the origins of everything.

This comes down to the question of, "Where did life come from?" or "Where did the universe come from?"

I am somewhat familiar with studies in astrophysics and evolutionary biology where the origns of life and the universe are studied. But those are not my fields of expertise, so I don't pretend to use a study for an answer. There is a better answer.

"I don't know"

That's an honest answer isn't it? It is also a scientific answer. It's an answer that invites inquiry, it's an answer that excites scientists.

"I don't know, but let's see if we can find out" is the start of most rational, scientific investigations. It is the beginning of a journey, and no one knows how long, or how far, this journey will take us.

Let's compare "I don't know" to the other common response, "God did it".

First, you must realize that "God did it" is assumed without evidence. There is no proof that "God did it", there is no way to know, for sure. So saying that "God did it" is inherently dishonest, because it is assuming a fact that you cannot know.
"God did it" shuts down inquiry. It stifles investigation and it discourages scientific exploration. It encourages us to be satisfied with the way things are now, it blocks us from attempting to imagine that things could be any better.

By saying that "God did it" the speaker is in fact saying that he or she isn't interested in learning anything further. The speaker is just fine with his or her present level of knowledge, and is comfortable in their ignorance. Saying that "God did it" is a cop-out.

Here is what we do know.

Science has, so far, never needed a supernatural explanation for any piece of acquired knowledge. Radios, Televisions, GPS systems, spaceships, immunizations, and photosynthesis all work just fine without needing the supernatural to function.

Everything that we currently know came about without the requirement of the supernatural. It is reasonable, in fact probable, to assume that everything we will eventually learn will be based upon natural, as opposed to supernatural, processes.

When someone tells you that "God did it", ask them - "How do you know?" When they ask you where everything came from say, "I don't know" - that's the honest truth.

Why would a Christian like Vasko Kohlmayer have to lie to make his point?

2011-11-07T08:45:00.001-08:00

From what I can tell Vasko Kohlmayer is an American naturalized citizen from Russia who writes a column called "Higher Things" on Christian topics in the Washington Times - the paper owned by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon. His byline says he's writing from Moscow.

From the start, the truth is looking pretty weak here. The Washington Times is known for a euphemism called "Prudenizing", a dishonest writing practice. Why would a good Christian want to associate themselves with an organization known for dishonesty?

In his first article, "Atheism versus God: How did the universe begin?", Vasko says the following:

Most of those who don't believe in God say that the Big Bang was a chance event. In other words, the great explosion that brought the universe into being was a cosmic fluke.

... Because we know very well that explosions do not happen of themselves.

And yet many atheists make precisely this kind of claim. They say that the greatest of all explosions just happened. On this view, the universe just popped into existence spontaneously.

...

Common sense and experience tell us that the world does not work like this. Things just do not pop into being. Even children know this. If someone would claim spontaneous creation in connection with any other event, we would immediately think he has lost his senses.

But this is not the worst of it. The atheist claim also directly contradicts the most fundamental assumptions and observations of science. This is paradoxical, since most people of atheist persuasion say that they have arrived at their position on the basis of science and reason.

The problem is, however, that in all of its history science has never observed or documented a single uncaused event.

Everything that science has observed so far – whether on this planet or in the universe at large – has been subject to the cause-effect relationship.

There are two bits here that are problematic. I thought that Vasko was merely ignorant of the facts, and pointed out to him in a comment where he was incorrect: For example, science knows about many uncaused events. Anyone who has taken intermediate physics or chemistry knows about virtual particles, brownian motion, and the decay of radioactive material, where events happen without cause all the time.

But his statement about what atheists believe needed serious correcting, so I wrote:

(Quoting Vasko's article: "Most of those who don't believe in God say that the Big Bang was a chance event.")

This statement is incorrect. Some do say it was chance (for example, perhaps it was a quantum event that cascaded into macro space.) But most atheists that I know say, "I don't know what caused the Big Bang."

"I don't know." That's an honest answer isn't it? It does not presume an answer. It invites further scientific inquiry. It asks us to engage, to create hypothesis and to test them. It deals with reality.

"God did it" is inherently a dishonest answer. You don't know that a deity created the Big Bang. There is no evidence for this - indeed, no evidence for any God or gods.

"God did it" is an answer that actively stifles investigation by assuming an answer. If the answer exists, then who will look for it? A thousand years ago Christians took a dim view of those people who actively investigated where a priest said "God did it." These people were called "Heretics". Some were put to death. The modern version of "God did it" is still reprehensible in that it stifles free inquiry.

This is self-evident. By saying that a god did something unprovable, you are assuming something that you cannot know. By calling this a "truth", you are in fact being dishonest. I had thought that Vasko was merely ignorant of this, and tried to show why it is incorrect.

In Vasko's original article, he also says:

There are those who claim that to believe in God is not only unscientific, but also absurd.

This is certainly not the case. To the contrary, it is the denial of God's existence that contradicts both science and common sense.

...

It is only reasonable and logical to assume that the universe – just like everything else – had to have a cause. Judging by the staggering vastness, complexity and beauty of the universe, the cause that brought it forth must have been immensely powerful, superbly wise and exquisitely imaginative.

Such characteristics are normally associated with an entity we term God.

To believe in God – the transcendent cause of the universe – is thus neither illogical nor absurd. Not to believe in him is both.

Unbelief will remain to be logically and scientifically untenable until it can be demonstrated that it is possible for an uncaused event to occur.

So in the first bit, Vasko makes the assertion that science and common sense support the existence of God, and in the second bit he supports this assertion by reiterating that uncaused events do not happen - which we already know to be a false premise through scientific observation. Since the article is built on a false premise, the entire article fails in its purpose to prove God.

I hoped he would learn from this. Instead, he needed to protect himself, and to do so he needed a strawman to attack.

He chose to build that strawman out of my words.

In his next article, "Atheist, there is no such thing", Vasko said that he argued for a "transcendent cause – God – which brought the universe into being", and that his "exasperated" "unbelieving readers" "had to plead ignorance when it comes to the universe's origin. Yes, we were "exasperated", because pleading ignorance is honest, while asserting something that you cannot know to be true is inherently dishonest.

And here is what Vasko said about me:

One reader who goes by the name Calladus wrote: "[M]ost atheists that I know say, 'I don't know what caused the Big Bang.' I don't know. That's an honest answer, isn't it?"

The commenter is right: It is honest to admit our ignorance. His admission is also instructive because it contains a revealing inconsistency.

According to the dictionary, an atheist is “one who denies the existence of a deity.” Despite the fact that Calladus claims to be to be such a person, he also confesses he doesn't know what brought the universe into existence.

But if he does not know that, he must also concede it is at least possible the universe was brought forth by a transcendent cause.

What this means is that Calladus does not know – and cannot know – for sure whether or not God exists.

I cannot believe that he is so muddle-headed to make this mistake. This is a freshman - level logic mistake. Did he even try to google his argument to examine it for weakness? Because I admit to not knowing, I must "concede" that it is possible for God to exist. Yes, I will do that readily right now. It is completely possible for a god to exist that brought the universe into existance last week Thursday. It is completely possible that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

But no one argues that this is true because these positions lack evidence. The lack of evidence is not a reason to start asserting that your particular favorite flavor of God exists. In fact, we can argue these positions without the need for a God. We could argue that Markovians created the Universe. Or we could argue that a natural process that we currently don't know about or understand created the Universe. If we are wrong about this, we will discover our error during the investigation. This is how science works.

Out of all of these positions, only one invites further scientific inquiry. The rest all give a "just so" answer that stifles inquiry. In other words, only one answer is open-minded and scientific. Many explanations are "possible" - there are an infinity of "possible" explanations. Instead of investigating them all, science investigates the probable explanations first.

Vasko also quotes one dictionary definition of atheist. Why? I'm not sure, but I have noticed this is a tactic used by many Christians (notably Ray Comfort) in order to "prove" that there is no such thing as an atheist. The definition given says an atheist is: "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings." Let's break that down a little.

The first part of the definition "someone who denies a supreme being (God)" assumes that a God exists. This definition assumes facts not in evidence, and is somewhat flawed due to that. But by using the word "disbelieve" the definition is redeemed somewhat since the verb usage of "disbelieve" is to "have no belief."

It is true that some atheists beleive that no gods exist. This is a form of "strong atheism". I, on the other hand, merely lack a belief in Gods, because of the overwhelming lack of evidence. By choosing such an easy definition, Vasko has made me into straw man, that he knocks down by saying, "If he wanted to be precise in his use of terminology, Calladus would call himself an agnostic. This term more accurately captures his “I don't know” admission."

This of course, confuses terminology and mixes apples with oranges. Atheism and Agnosticism are two different things. Atheism deals with belief, agnosticism deals with knowledge. If you are are a person who is theistic, you have a belief that a god exists. Someone who is a-theist does not have a belief that a god exists ("a" is the negation of "theism") A person who is gnostic knows that a god exists. Someone who is a-gnostic does not know that a god exists. (again, "a" is a negation).

There is a responsibility for people who claim to be an authority on a subject. A person making such a claim must actually be an authority! By confusing atheism and agnosticism, by taking a lack of evidence as evidence, and by making a straw man out of my words, Vasko has demonstrated that he is in no way familiar with the arguments of atheism. From this position, anything he writes without first understanding the other side of the argument is intellectually dishonest.

When corrected in his mistakes, instead of acknowledging the correction Vasko "doubled down" and compounded his error. This shows him to be uninterested - at best - or idiotically stupid at worst.

And by applying a dictionary definition to me, without ever bothering to ask me what I believe, Vasko has actually lied about what I believe. This is beyond intellectual dishonesty, it shows him to be nothing more than a liar.

But why would a Christian have to lie to make his point?

My newest website - Fresno Backyard Harvest

2011-09-23T10:44:00.001-07:00

I've been saying that I wanted to revamp this website. The Calladus Blog is not going away, but it might get a makeover at some point. Blogger has been good to me, so I might keep it here.

But I have opened up a NEW website. Fresno Backyard Harvest. This new blog is a specialty blog that will discuss everything I'm doing in backyard agriculture.

Let's get something straight... I'm not a survivalist, and I don't think our government is going to suddenly dissolve, or even be overthrown by a plucky band of survivalists that want to return America to it's roots.

But I am also rational, and I believe the economy - the whole world's economy - is going to get pretty tough before it gets better. That was the spur to turn my backyard into a mini-farm.

But it was only a spur - what really got me going was the delight in creating a mini working farm. Since I was 6, I've been fascinated with aquariums, terrariums, and vivariums. I've kept frogs, fish, clams, lizards, tarantulas, and snakes. Ecologies have always fascinated me, and I was extremely interested in biology all the way up until a high school biology professor doused my interest by making biology the most boring subject I've ever taken.

So I turned into a gardener who enjoyed keeping pets, like fish, and dogs and cats.

Until now. Now I have learned about Aquaponics, I have a place where I can really cut loose and garden, and I'm making some big plans. And it occurred to me that other people might be interested in the ways that I solve my problems. So I opened a new website.

Do you like to garden? Maybe you raise rabbits? Do you have an aquarium? Are you merely a gardener or do you want to be as self-sufficient as you can be? Then maybe my new website will have something to offer to you. Whether you think the collapse of society is immenent, or if you are just interested in eating home-grown food while cutting down your grocery bill.

Check out Fresno Backyard Harvest!

On being witnessed. George and his bible.

2011-09-17T11:18:00.001-07:00

I've been working hard to get my garden set up at my new place. I've planned 4 raised bed gardens of about 48 square feet each, plus various flower beds and such. I've put in an order for 220 cubic feet of loamy soil and am waiting for it to arrive right now.
But earlier this morning I had stopped by the garden center to pick up some last minute items. Some vermiculite and peat moss to add to the incoming soil. Some stakes for the raised bed box, a little grass killer for the grass in the sidewalk cracks... that kind of thing.
And I was listening to the "Oh No, Ross and Carrie" skeptic podcast on my phone earbuds while shopping. This skeptical podcast is recorded at the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles. In this particular episode, Ross and Carrie are discussing atheism in their interview with Roger Nygard (author of "The Nature of Existence"). Mr. Nygard was just describing his interview with Richard Dawkins, and I was in the process of choosing a couple of brilliantly colored pansies (flowers of freethought), when I was interrupted.
A gentleman that I recognized came up to me. I know this guy from where I work. I know he works on the factory floor, and isn't really part of Engineering. We recognize each other, but I don't actually know what he does at our company.
I turned off the podcast and we shook hands. To protect his privacy, (and because I can't recall his name until I look him up in the company directory) I'll call him "George".
George seemed nervous. He told me that he saw me in the garden center as he was walking to his car.
"... And something told me that I had to come back and give you this."
This was a orange, soft-bound copy of the New Testament by the Gideons.
George was obviously nervous. He had apparently screwed up his courage to get me this bible.
He flipped to the back, where the Gideons had created a sort of "FAQ" - the sinner's guide to salvation - and said that any question that I had could be answered here.
"Why thank you George!" But I couldn't just leave it, I had to ask. "Just what made you think to give this to me?"
"I just got this feeling that you needed it" he said.
I shook his hand again, and thanked him again. I kept thinking, "say something nice! He's really nervous!"
"I always appreciate it when someone gives me a bible."
"Idiot" I thought - "that was so lame!" Sort of true though. I've received several bibles from various preachers and people doing witnessing.
But I wanted to be nice to George. I have done witnessing before, and I know how hard it can be to screw up your courage and actually talk to people. There was no way I was going to disrespect George by telling him that I have a whole bookshelf of bibles. That I'd just bought another commentary on the bible for my Kindle e-reader. I also didn't mention that I have 3 hard-bound copies of the Gideon Bible (old & new Testament) on my desk right now.
I also didn't mention that I was an out atheist at work, that my photo was on page 3 of the local newspaper this year, and that I've been interviewed by several TV stations this and last year. Why did he think I needed the bible? Either he "knew" because he knew I was an atheist, or because he subconsciously remembered seeing me. Or maybe God did guide him. Who knows?
But I wasn't going to slap him down for doing something that he thinks is kind. He's not malevolent, or stupid.
Merely wrong.
The dirt arrived. Off to the shovels!

Atheism, rational thought... "Have a Change of Heart"

2011-08-31T15:14:00.001-07:00

In our CVAAS skype discussion last night one of our topics concerned how many atheists often focus on the religious idiot of the day.

There is a small-time preacher who is advocating making a list of all atheists for the purpose of discriminating against them. There is a small-time rabbi who claims that atheism leads to bestiality. There is a religious street preacher who is famous for baiting atheists and belittling anyone who explains evolution.

And atheist blogs tear into these people. They search out these people. They dig through the Internet and find posts that were made months ago and bring them out.

The comment that struck me during the skype discussion was to the effect that too many atheists are so focused on highlighting the problems with religious people that they are neglecting the mention of the benefits of living a rational life.

As the saying goes, "You catch more flies with honey...." (Well, it works in the saying...)

I am interested in increasing the number of rational thinkers in our society. Which leads to the question of "How"?

It has become painfully obvious that rational explanations, the scientific method, and evidence are often not enough to get a person to exchange a belief in pseudoscience and the supernatural for reality.

Sometimes ridicule of belief is enough to start a person toward change. As Christopher Hitchens has said, religion “should be treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt". Sometimes this level of contempt is what it takes to get someone to realize that their beliefs are silly. When I was starting down the road toward atheism, a well placed jibe toward one of my beliefs made me angry enough that I examined that belief closely and was forced to the conclusion that the critical person was right.

But from what I can see, this seldom works, and it is too easy to mix up hatred of a belief with hatred of the person holding the belief. The criticism too easily becomes an "ad hominem" attack

"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is a phrase that comes to mind here.

Chris Mooney in the May / June issue of "Mother Jones" writes about the problem with trying to get people to change their minds:

Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins. What happens next, explains political scientist Charles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs," says Taber, "and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they're hearing."

In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers. Our "reasoning" is a means to a predetermined end—winning our "case"—and is shot through with biases.

Mooney writes that people become emotionally invested in a belief, and will defend that belief using something like fight-or-flight reflexes.

We're not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.

In other words, we are more likely to change our minds for emotional reasons, not for rational ones. We are said to "have a change of heart", not a change of mind.

So how do we apply this toward increasing the number of rational thinkers in our society?

It would seem that we need to get people to "have a change of heart" first, then teach them how to think more rationally.

But how do we do this?

The suggestion from last night was to focus on the positive aspects of a life lived rationally. Secular morality, and secular philosophy were mentioned. A life well lived.

We also discussed atheist celebrities. Many of these are much like Paris Hilton - they are famous for being famous (in atheist circles). Do they elevate atheism to a more visible position? Is higher visibility useful? These very atheist celebrities are often the same ones that tear into religious nobodies and who confuse ridicule of ridiculous beliefs with ridicule of religious believers. Pure vinegar.

Perhaps it is time that atheists start talking about the benefits of a rational life.

How to dismiss Atheist Teenagers

2011-07-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

Greg Stier was a recent guest columnist at the Christian Post who wrote an article entitled: "How to Reach Atheist Teenagers".

In this article he gives 4 points of advice:

1) Mock Religion to seem "cool": Atheist teens are disgusted by religion because religious people are filled with hypocrisy.; A dictionary definition of the term "hypocrisy" is "The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform". This excellent definition does seem to apply to many religious people and organizations.; It would be a good thing for a religious person to recognize when they are guilty of hypocrisy and work to correct this flaw.; Highlighting this flaw with religion and (many) religious people merely as a tactic to gain a teenager's trust does seem to expose a questionable moral standard - using this as a tactic is intellectually dishonest at best.; Maybe it would be more ethical if you actually examined Christian hypocrisy, understood it, could point out examples, and believed it to be true. Start with "Christian Privilege".
2) Jesus was "cool" too!: The "radical, rebel, revolutionary" Jesus was a hero to the downtrodden, who willingly suffered injustice to pay for your sins.; Nothing stated here about why God punishes everyone for the fall of Adam and Eve, or why God holds children to blame for the sins of their parents or grandparents or great grandparents or....; Also, the illogical and unreasonable position of allowing a supposedly guilty person to go free by the blood payment of an innocent person is never discussed. Or that all sins are equally bad (you are just as quickly damned for shoplifting some gum as you are for being a serial murderer.); Perhaps this is not the time to talk about "salvation". Saved? Saved from what? An eternity in Hell? Say, who made this "Hell" place anyway, and why?; All of these uncomfortable questions are glossed over.
3) Don't believe atheist teens when they say they're "atheist" because they don't know what they're talking about: Stier writes, "Instead of assuming they are true atheists..." and "At the end of the day there are no true atheists. In the deepest parts of their soul every atheist... truly believes in the existance of God, but doesn't want to () glorify him or give him thanks."; This has got to be one of the most dishonest, evil, unethical statements ever. What makes it so sad is that Stier isn't the first (or the last) Christian to make this assertion.; The Bible (in Romans 1:18-32) seems to indicate that God is "made plain" to everyone. To continue the quote, "For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks..." and "Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves."; This text then goes on to condemn nonbelievers and homosexuals, and is the New Testament justification for Christian hatred toward male and female homosexuality and atheism.; This section of Romans ends with, "Although they fully know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them."; Stier's words, taken with his quoting of Romans, would seem to indicate that he devoutly believes in these quotes. That there are no "true atheists" or "true homosexuals" for that matter, and that any claim of atheism (or homosexuality) is FALSE because they KNOW BETTER - in their soul.; This is a way to completely discount a person's convictions. It is belittling. It is hateful. It doesn't matter if you "hate the sin but love the sinner" or if you "do this out of love", It is a hypocritical, hateful, dismissive action that is designed to derail any argument. It is a license to be a discriminating bigot without guilt.; Any Christian who quotes a portion of Romans 1 in order to demonstrate that everyone "knows God" should be forced to read ALL of Romans 1. It is one of the most dehumanizing statements in the Bible.
4) Prayer - the ultimate tool for feeling as if you've done something (without actually having to do anything!): Stier mentions the conversion of Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus as an example of what can happen through the power of prayer. He then quotes Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 about how hard it is to resist the power of love.; But Saul wasn't converted through the prayer of others. Saul converted to Christianity because Jesus appeard to him in a "great light" and struck him blind. Saul's sight was restored by Ananias of Damascus, which was enough evidence for Saul to convert to Christianity, change his name to Paul, and start preaching that Jesus was the son of God.; Do you see what Saul had that today's teenagers do NOT have? Evidence.; Yes the evidence is anecdotal, but even anecdotal evidence is powerful enough to change your mind if it happens to you.

So what is missing here?

Is Stier successfully spreading the gospel to teens across the USA using his methods? Perhaps. However his methods have a serious flaw that anyone could find with half of a moment's thought.

Right. The missing ingredient is evidence.

Stier doesn't mention evidence, and I think the reason why he does not is pretty clear. Because evidence in any god or gods is lacking, let alone the God of the Bible. It doesn't matter how many times you toss out a quote from Romans 1 about how an atheist "really knows the truth, but denies it" - the fact is that without evidence such a quote is exactly like the Great Wizard of Oz howling at Dorothy to not pull back the curtain.

It's a house of cards built on supposition and daydreams. Reveal the lack of evidence, and it all comes tumbling down.

This is how you innoculate a young person against Stier's verbal trickery. Teach the young man or woman to reason, to use logic, to look for evidence. Teach the young person that the question, "How do you know that?" is one of the most powerful fact-finding tools in the toolbox of the Scientific Method. These five words are a piercing spotlight that withers the clouds of religious dogma.

Let's teach our kids to recognize when logic and reason are abandoned - and to recognize hypocrisy in articles such as this.

This is what "Christian Love" looks like...

2011-06-27T09:53:00.001-07:00

You fear the Lord. Just admit it. You fear something greater then yourself. You have been abused and left by those close to you so you dread the one thing that can make you whole. The hole you can't fill within you is the space you need to fill with God. Nothing else will fill it. There is nothing else in the world that will fit in the desolation you have. It's not your fault though. Having so many disillusionments in life can destroy anyone’s ability to allow faith in and hate out. The loss of loved ones and the anger at something you don't even believe exists must be insufferable. I will pray for you and that you find Reconciliation.
- Paul Gilman, Fresno Bee

Armchair psychoanalysis can be pretty funny - especially from a believer. What is even more funny is that it seems that Paul has been reading my blog. Perhaps he knows about Ronnie? He is sure to know about my wife. I'll admit - last year was a bad year for me. I spent the first six months being terribly depressed, and I got help.

But I didn't require spiritual help - Instead I got real help!

I took the antidepressant Wellbutrin last year after coming back from Korea. And I spent some time with a qualified psychologist. I've made major adjustments to my environment, and spent time with close friends. My family was there for me in my deepest time of need, and my friends kept me fed and my apartment clean while I worked things out.

God, Allah, Zeus, Vishnu - none of these, or any god, were required. And if asked, none of them would have been able to provide the care that I required. Because they don't exist.

I've been very upbeat this year. I've become more active in the community, I've got a girlfriend now, someone who I care about a great deal, I've moved into a new house and am looking forward to putting my woodshop back together. I do more volunteer work and give more to chairity than I've been able to do for a long time.

But of course, I can't be allowed to be happy, because that wouldn't fit God's plan, according to this nitwit - Paul Gilman.

Other people have jumped to my defense in the comments at the Fresno Bee, and the response by Paul Gilman is... enlightening.

mbm64
Paul,
Are you aware that you are not just venting to your computer monitor but to a human with very real emotions and feelings? This is quite possibly the most alienating and offensive post I've ever read. If you don't understand why, then you should stop posting.
paulgilman
The truth hurts? Dig deep and you will find God and his love for you.
mbm64
Let me clarify. You have ripped open another's horrible wound and poured caustic pain into it. You have no spiritual authority to treat another that way, because you are not Jesus or the Holy Spirit. In your need to pontificate, you have wiped your feet all over someone. That's what I mean by alienating and offensive.
paulgilman
Well I guess you will have to get over yourself. I open wounds that need opening and cleaning out by the purity of god.

"By the purity of God!" That is a very scary statement isn't it? That is exactly what I can imagine a black-coated white collar wearing preacher to say just as he throws a torch into the pile of wood at my feet!

It is funny. I've been having a very good year this year. I've been remembering what my wife told me - she knew she wouldn't be around forever, and she encouraged me to "enjoy my life". I've made changes in my life to do those things that we couldn't do while we were together.

And dear readers, family, friends - when my time has come to cease existing, please take the time to celebrate my life by celebrating your own lives.

Don't waste your time thinking hateful thoughts about my fictional eternity of torture. Because only the sick and the evil, and those who are inhumain through willful ignorance would think such a torture is just, and that an all-powerful God who permitted such a thing is loving.

As for Paul Gilman - hey thanks for reading my blog. Take a look around, maybe you'll learn something... like basic compassion.

“It was evil to Jonah, a great evil.”

2011-06-17T10:32:00.001-07:00

When atheists mention those parts of the bible that are unconvincing, "Jonah and the whale" are a frequent bullet point. Christian apologists deal with this objection pretty handily.

First, an apologist will point out that it wasn't a "whale", but was instead a "great fish".

Second, a humongous fish that can swallow Jonah whole, and keep him alive for 3 days is really no problem for someone who believes that God can do the impossible. From Answers in Genesis:

Could God have prepared a great fish to be in the vicinity of the foundering ship, to scoop Jonah out of the raging sea, transport him to shore and vomit him up?
Absolutely! If He is the all-powerful Creator God, preparing a fish and timing the whole event was not a great drain on His power or ability. He is in no way limited by what He created.

See? God can do anything! A giant fish is really no problem, and is easily brushed away. Literalist Christians will insist it was a fish, and those who are slightly less literal will begrudge a whale - but either way, it is not a problem for them.

But to me, the most damaging part of the story is God's apparent wishy-washiness. This story would seem to demonstrate that either God is capable of lying to his worshippers, or if he is not capable of lying - then he is unable to see the future. His omniscience comes into question.

In Jonah 1:2 God says, "Go immediately to Nineveh, that large capital city, and announce judgment against its people because their wickedness has come to my attention." Jonah, of course, turns the other way and flees.

What was Jonah supposed to say to the people of Nineveh? Once he arrived, Jonah was supposed to announce that at the end of 40 days the entire city "would be overturned" - which is another way of saying that it would overthrown and destroyed, and has the connotation of destruction by military conquest. After he got out of the fish, and arrived in Nineveh, Jonah did make this announcement.

Why did Jonah flee, instead of going to Nineveh to make this announcement? Was it fear of God? Fear of destruction? Rejection of God?

No, Jonah was an honest man, a man of conviction who did not want to see himself made a liar. The announcement he made in Nineveh, the announcement that God had Jonah make, had no qualifiers to it. He didn't say, "If you repent now, this fate will pass you by" - no he was very clear. In 40 days, the city would be "overturned". There was no wiggle room.

But the citizens of Nineveh repented in the hopes that this fate would pass them by. They repented from the King all the way down to the youngest citizen. They covered themselves in sack-cloth and ashes, and refused to eat - and refused to let even their animals and livestock to eat.

And God stayed his judgment due to their repentance.

And Jonah prayed to God and said, (paraphrased) "This is why I fled, instead of following your instructions to go to Nineveh. I fled to try to prevent this, because I KNEW you were going to do this!" Jonah threw a fit over this, and demanded to be allowed to die on the spot.

God then goes through a little morality play in order to tell Jonah that he really doesn't have a right to be angry. And that the population of Nineveh, all 120,000 of them, were unable to tell the difference between right and wrong, and therefore deserve pity.

My first thought at God's response to Jonah is that God isn't very well versed in human psychology. Of course we have the right to our feelings - they are ours. We don't have the right to act out on our feelings. Telling us that we don't have a right to our feelings is a way to make us feel guilty over having such feelings. But why should I be surprised that God would want people to feel guilty? That's the default state of most Catholics!

A little more seriously, my second thought is that God takes pity on the tens of thousands of citizens of Nineveh for their inability to know right from wrong, but has no problem exacting vengeance for the Israelites on the Midianites - including killing every male Midianite - all the way down in age to innocent babies. Apparently the "gracious and compassionate" "abounding in mercy" God that Jonah whines about in Jonah 4:2 runs out of that compassion for the innocent in Numbers 31.

But what is most striking is the implication of the entire story. God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and announce that they are doomed. And then (due to the actions of the citizens of Nineveh) God changes his mind.

Did God not know he was going to change his mind? Could he not see the future and see how the citizens of Nineveh would react? If so, then his command to Jonah was truthful, but his omniscience is lacking.

Could God see what Jonah's announcement would do to Nineveh? Could he see that he would choose mercy in the future? If so then his omniscience is fine, but this shows that God is willing to lie to one of his own prophets. And if God lies, then everything about Christianity is immediately thrown into doubt.

This is where I get the title of this blog entry. My New English Translation quotes Jonah as saying, "This displeased Jonah terribly and he became very angry." In this context, "This" means God's decision to show mercy on Nineveh, which has made Jonah a liar. Another translation of this passage from Hebrew could be, "It was evil to Jonah, a great evil." ("It" refers to God's actions.)

No wonder Jonah was so angry - you would expect a God who is both good and omniscient to be incapable of screwing up so badly.

Office Depot still insistent on getting rid of customers

2011-06-15T10:58:00.001-07:00

I posted in May about a deceptive practice used by Office Depot - using product tags to represent stock in the store, when that stock isn't actually available in the store. In fact, a product tag may represent stock that can only be ordered from Corporate - and yet, this is not stated anywhere in the Office Depot product display.
If you read my May posting, you'll see I got a bit upset at this practice.
So I complained to the BBB.
Office Depot sent me a reply on June 6.

Thank you for contacting Office Depot via the BBB. I opened this case file to address your complaint regarding the tags that were still out on display although the camera was out of stock. We value you as a customer and sincerely apologize for disappointing you, as that is never our intention.
I contacted both the Store Manager and the District Manager to address your complaint so I could find out the reasoning behind it. The reason the tags are left is to give our customers an opportunity to have the store place an order or attempt to contact a different store for a transfer. What was wrong however, was to ring up your sale before checking the stock. This is being addressed by our District and Store manager to make sure this doesn't happen again.
I want to thank you for letting us know about this disappointing experience as it has enabled us to do something about it so it doesn't happen again. As I stated, the real problem was not checking stock before ringing up your sale.
I appreciate having had the opportunity to address your complaint and hope that you will continue to place your trust and confidence in Office Depot. As a gesture of customer service, I’m sending you an Office Depot Gift Card valued at $25.00. You'll receive the card in 7-10 business days and I hope you will accept it with my compliments. If you ever need help again, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Sincerely,
Vera Barber
Coordinator, Executive Customer Relations

My response:

Ms. Barber,
I'm sorry that Office Depot has seen fit to decline to change their practice of advertising products as if they were immediately available when the store does not have any in stock.
On the day I tried to purchase this camera, I went to the store to purchase something else. The camera was an impulse buy. I liked what I saw, and I made plans to use it when I got back to my place of employment.
In other words, I wanted to use the camera immediately.
Office Depot has a deceptive practice of using product tags as if they were immediately available in stock. There was no signage that stated that the products might not be available, that the store might have to call around to other stores, that the product might have to be ordered from corporate.
Your letter only serves to make me MORE upset. It is a "Not-pology", an "I'm sorry you were disappointed, but we are not changing our store policy about deceptive practices".
This is, of course, Office Depot BS, and I begin to understand why Office Depot stock has taken such a beating in the last couple of years.
Ms. Barber, I've written my story in several places on the Internet, I have told it to many of my co-workers, including the administrative assistants at the company I work for (2,000 employees at our location alone), and I have informed the BBB that I'm not satisfied with the lack of business change with your company.
I will continue to do so until Office Depot changes this policy of advertising products that are not immediately on hand, as if they were actually in the store. Tell me you have corrected that, and I'll tell everyone that you have done so.
And I'll return as a customer.
Mark Boyd
Fresno

And there was a second round of letters where Office Depot actually responded to my response! (And it's no wonder - these letters are an echo of what is being posted at the BBB).

Dear Mr. Boyd:
I am sorry if my prior response gave you the impression that we did not care. I know it's frustrating to spend time shopping, pull the ticket and wait for help only to find out that the item is not in stock. Regardless of whether or not it is actually considered illegal or deceptive, it certainly doesn't represent good customer service and I want you to know that I am sharing your comments with our SVP of Store Operations as well as our VP of In-Store Customer Experience. Our intention is not to inconvenience you but to ensure that to communicate that the product is still available to be ordered.
I want you to know that I do see your point and that it is clear that we could do a better job of communicating this while also not giving our customers the impression that the item is available on hand to be purchased and taken home that day. I do appreciate your feedback and I'm really sorry that we disappointed you.
Office Depot needs your business a lot more than you need an Office Depot store nearby and I want to assure you that we will review this practice going forward.
Sincerely,
Vera Barber
Coordinator, Executive Customer Relations

My response:

Ms. Barber,
I will be happy to return as a customer when I know that Office Depot is no longer advertising products as if they were in stock.
I know it wouldn't take much, like a sign that said, "This product may not be in stock, please ask a sales associate to verify." However, I'd consider that to be questionable - why have twenty product tags advertised in a big floor display while at the same time saying that those tags don't actually equate to a real product on hand?
Wouldn't it actually save Office Depot some money in the long run to have a thinner cardboard poster-style display with just a few product cards in it? And perhaps some verbiage under the card that states that the item can be ordered if the customer still wants it?
It seems like the intent here is to get the customer to the cash register with the product tag, and then urge the customer to order the product from corporate, or from another store. Perhaps a little psychology is involved? An "out of stock" sign might make the customer move on, whereas getting the customer to the cash register with a product tag might make him more likely to buy?
I like Office Depot. It is right next to the company I work for, and I can walk over and pick up those things I need. Staples is a 10 minute drive away. But until I know this practice is changed, I'll keep making that drive.
Mark

The BBB is waiting for Office Depot to respond again. If they do not respond, or if they respond without changing this practice, then the BBB will grade them accordingly.
And I'll keep this exchange online, until Office Depot decides to change their policy.

How can I contact that sweet old lady? The one who expected a rapture?

2011-06-15T10:16:00.001-07:00

I met her in July of 2008. She was the sweet, apple-cheeked lady who wanted to talk to me about God, and about the May 21st Rapture.

I wanted to meet with her on the 22nd, the day after the rapture - the day I was, according to her, supposed to be in Hell.

But the drive-in burger place where we had met has been closed down, condemned, and is surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.

And I was busy on the 22nd, giving a talk to the American Atheists convention in Oakland - so I couldn't meet - even if she had agreed to meet me.

Since then, so many things have happened. I've moved (and am moving again!). My wife died. And Harold Camping, the man who predicted the May 21st Rapture, has had a mild stroke.

I wonder about this apple-faced Grandma. No, actually, I worry about her. Camping has millions of dollars, and a huge radio network worth millions more. Much of that money came from donations from those who could ill afford it.

How much did this woman give? How much of her retirement is gone? Maybe a better question is this; is any of her retirement money left?

Is this woman in good mental health? Does she have family to watch over her? There is a reason to worry.

A young girl in Russia killed herself over this prophesy, and another man in Taiwan. Lyn Benedetto tried (and failed) to kill herself and her children by cutting their throats with a box cutter.

And Camping has gone even further by saying that the May 21st date was merely a "spiritual rapture" and that it actually happened. The "End of the World" is still on target for October 21st, according to Camping.

Well, according to Camping before his stroke. I wonder if he will say something different now? But that's beside the point I want to make here.

Although the failure of the May 21st rapture (or it's success as a 'spiritual rapture') may have been a "wake up call" for many of Camping's believers, there are many more willfully deluded who will now be planning for their financial insolvency for the October 21st deadline.

Will the "spritual rapture" of May 21st goad other true believers into committing suicide (financial or physical) before October 21st? And after that date passes, how many more apple-faced grannies will need to go onto some sort of public assistance?

Maybe I can't talk to her - how can I find her?

But if you were a believer in Harold Camping, and you need someone to talk to - let me know. Email, phone call, text message - you can find it all in my "About Me" section on the sidebar.

She would have been 47 today

2011-06-13T12:34:00.000-07:00

My wife, Won (최원종), would have been 47 years old today.

자기야, 여보, 난 당신이 그리워요.

I still have dreams where I wake up knowing that she's right there, ready to talk to me. I wonder what she would make of all the changes in my life.

She would probably hate that I told you how old she is!

If you see me as a blur...

2011-05-27T16:45:00.001-07:00

So, I've been a little busy lately.

I'm moving (again). This time to a lovely old house that needs to have it's floors refinished before I move in. I've spent the last couple of weeks repainting, removing carpet, refinishing floors. Thanks to Wendy and her brother John for doing so much grunt work.

And yes, Wendy and I are planning on moving in together into this new place. It's odd how fast romance moves after 40. Won and I dated for 18 months before marrying. Wendy and I have been dating since November.

As to what else has kept me busy...

First there was the West Coast Rapture RAM conference at which I was a speaker. I got to meet a lot of my favorite Podcasting atheists. (I have photos!)

After that I gave a talk at the University of Phoenix for the class on Western Religions. I think I may have had a first there too. I'm not sure, but I may have seen a lapsed Catholic turn into an atheist. You can listen to the recording from that link and judge for yourself.

I'm also getting ready to be a counselor at Camp Quest West. I've been working with the camp director, Chris Lindstrom to develop a short course on "Ancient Technology". This seems to have several people in the Camp Quest organization somewhat excited. And I have to admit, the idea is pretty good. For example, do you know that the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth was Eratosthenes of Cyrene? He also proved that the Earth was round, and he very accurately measured the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

As part of getting ready for Camp Quest, I'll be taking an Archery Instructor Course next month. I'm also going through the Camp Quest training materials - although my talk at the UoP clashed with one of the conferences I needed to take for Camp Quest. (Have to make that up).

Next month I plan to be at the Fresno Pride festival along with other CVAAS members. We will have a booth there. We need to be prepared - it will be our first advertisement of the Heretic's Barbecue for this September.

July I'll be at Camp Quest for a week, and I'll also go camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains with a bunch of my friends. I'm really looking forward to both. I used to go to Church Camp every year - Camp without the Church part and with extra science will probably be even more fun! (Reminder to self -bring my telescope!)

Last month's fossil hunt went well for me - not so much for others in CVAAS. I went on my own and met up with a heretic from LA (hello Larry!). Came back with some good Trilobite cephalon fossils. Didn't find the elusive Anomalocaris again. I think I'm in the wrong formation for them.

I'm really doing a lot these days, and enjoying the heck out of everything. There is so much to do too. Like this blog for instance... it needs a major overhaul. That will take me several hours of work that I can't afford right now. And even when I move into my new place, I need to set up my new garden, and get my woodshop online. It's been so long since I made heaps of sawdust that I'm going through withdrawel!

Oh, I also got interested in beekeeping - but found out that Fresno classifies bees with other dangerous beasts like lions and tigers and bears - and won't let anyone keep them within the city limits. (sigh) Well, I didn't need a new hobby anyway.

To top off everything, I plan to start taking classes again at the university this fall. Maybe I can add a beekeeping class to my schedule of courses...

Office Depot in Clovis CA - how to get rid of customers

2011-05-17T14:49:00.001-07:00

I used to like Office Depot - but now I can see why they've had to close some stores - and I certainly understand why their stock has been dropping.

Apparently Office Depot doesn't care about it's customers.

I went in to find a serial to USB adapter (I know - who uses serial anymore? But it was for a specialized device for my work.)

While shopping, I saw that Office Depot had this neat Kodak EasyShare C143 12.0-Megapixel Digital Camera on sale for only $49.00. And it was red too! They had a standing cardboard floor display, filled with these cardboard cards that the customer could grab and take to the register. The floor display had about 30 of these cards sitting in individual card slots on the display.

So I grabbed one, and took it to the register. The cashier rang me up while another cashier ran to grab the camera.

But they didn't have any cameras. None at all.

I blew up. "Why," I asked the cashier, "don't you have cameras? You're advertising that you have cameras!"

She quickly grabbed Chris, the store manager. Chris assured me that they could call around town and ask if another store had the camera, or he could order one for me.

"No. That's unacceptable. You are advertising that you have cameras in stock right now. Why are you doing that?" My language may have been a bit stronger than that.

Chris told me that it was a big display, and they couldn't take it down.

"I don't buy that. Come here." I dragged Chris over to the display. "Look, these are cards in the display - each card is equal to one camera."

I pulled a card out of the display and handed it to Chris.

"Do you have a camera for this card?"

"No." Chris admitted.

I pulled out another card and handed it to Chris.

"How about this one?" I pulled another card, "or this one? Or this? Or this?" I loaded Chris up with all the cards from the display.

"No. I think you know we don't have any cameras for these cards."

"How could I know that Chris? How? I'll tell you how..." I pointed to the cardboard camera display, now empty of pull cards for cameras. "See? No camera cards. That's how I know you're out of stock. I won't bother you about them, and your cashier won't be ringing me up for something you don't have!"

"But that's not what corporate wants. They want these on display. I'm just doing what I'm told."

I'm afraid I saw red then... and not the nice red of a new $50 camera...

"So you're telling me that if I walk back in here tomorrow, and walk over to this display, there will be pull cards for this camera in this display?"

"Yes." Chris had gone into robot mode - just waiting for me to leave.

"And you won't have any cameras in stock?"

"No. Probably not for another week."

"But that's a stupid way to run a business Chris! That's really fucked up! You're going to give me a refund on my purchase, and then I'm going to complain. Probably to the BBB, and to your corporate."

Chris stood there for a moment, then realizing that I wanted a refund, he scrambled to make that happen. Anything to get this loud, annoying and complaining customer (Me!) out of the store as fast as possible.

At the end of the refund I asked Chris if he thought what he was doing was good customer service.

"It's what I was told to do by corporate," he answered.

"Chris, the company I work for was built on customer service. If we treated customers the same way that Office Depot treats them, I would have been out of a job a long time ago."

One of the other cashiers, behind Chris, started laughing quietly and nodded her head in agreement. Apparently this has been a problem.

So here's the deal. Office Depot sucks. It is my understanding that they put "pull tags" on display for products that are not in stock. This is the first time this has happened to me, but in the last hour I've run into 3 other engineers in my company with similar stories. It would seem that their MO is to ring up the sale, then order the product to be delivered for pick up. This is bullshit of course. The reason why I wanted that camera was because it was a good deal, and I was ready for an impulse buy. The promise they offered - in stock cameras - was a lie. Is it "bait and switch"? I don't know, but it smells perilously close to me.

My future office supply business is with Staples from now on. And with the local mom & pop office supply stores. They can't afford to treat their customers like marks.

Update: 18 May

I've updated my twitter account, Facebook, the BBB, Reddit, and of course I sent a complaint to Office Depot about their dishonest policy.

Here's some links you might enjoy about how badly Office Depot sucks:

ScribeFire 1.5.1

2011-04-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

I've upgraded to Firefox 4.0, with the reboot of the ScribeFire blog editor, ScribeFire 1.5.1. All I have to say about ScribeFire is that if you are NOT using it for blogging, you are seriously missing out. Wow, this is a great program!

Yes, I'm talking about blogging software - but seriously, this is Great Stuff here! If you blog, get this software. It's open source - so it won't cost you anything.

Debates can be fun, but are ultimately pointless

2011-04-20T10:32:00.001-07:00

As the president of an atheist / skeptical organization I've occasionally been invited to debate true believers. I've accepted a couple of those in the past, but declined the last invite I've received.

I've come to the realization that debate is merely a sport.

Don't get me wrong - sports are fine. Lots of Americans go crazy over their favorite football or basketball team. And although I'm not usually interested in sports I can spend a pleasant afternoon watching minor-league baseball at the local stadium.

Debates are much like a boxing match. Two opponents duking it out with arguments instead of fists. And like boxing it has very little correlation with finding out what is true or not, outside of who is better at the sport.

In a boxing match being smart about the sport is great, but might not be enough against someone who is quicker and more physically fit. In a debate the more intelligent opponent may be defeated by someone who quickly throws out lots of arguments in a glib, but engaging manner.

This is a terrible way to determine what is true.

Don't get me wrong - debates can be fun to watch or participate in as long as you realize that they ultimately don't have any bearing on what is true. And it is exactly this reason why I decline debates - because religious people take a debate "win" as an affirmation that their position is true.

Equating the winning of a debate with truth is so obviously a fallacy that I'm surprised that no one seems to have given this fallacy it's own name.

As I said, debates can be fun. But in order to remove some of the advantages that debate tactics confer, I prefer to debate only in writing, in a forum that all can see and comment upon. It's easy to make a claim in a spoken debate that an opponent will not be able to verify as true or false. But in a written debate, with a day between responses, it is possible for a debater to unpack his opponent's claim and demonstrate it to be false.

In this, a written debate is closer to the process used in peer review. But not close enough. Ultimately even this sort of debate is not very useful in finding out what is true. Although perhaps it may be useful in determining areas that warrant further investigation.

Tony Hanna of Iowa - Liar for Jesus.

2011-02-21T22:32:00.001-08:00

In my last post I spoke about an email discussion with a Christian who is concerned for my soul.

During this discussion Tony mailed a booklet by Mark Cahill, called "One Second After You Die". In this booklet Cahill quote mines Darwin - quote mining is a form of lying.

When I pointed this out to Tony, he later responded with a copy and paste of another text - the "last words of dying atheists". One of these quotes is supposed to be from Thomas Paine, in this quote Paine is supposed to have said:

"I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. O Lord, help me! Christ, help me! . . No, don't leave; stay with me! Send even a child to stay with me; for I am on the edge of Hell here alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one."

This quote is of course a lie. It was proven a lie in the 19th Century. Thomas Paine never said this.

I pointed this out to Tony and his reply was:

The fact is im not lying. I go according the the book of truth, the bible. The bible says God created the heavens and the earth. Pretty simple even an 3 year old can figure that out

You can read the whole email exchange at the RationalValley.com forum, supported by the Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics.

Tony Hanna of Iowa is a liar for Jesus. He is okay with lying in order to witness to the unsaved. He sends out an email that is titled, "I care where you spend eternity".

I'm quoting the text of this email below the fold.

I'm doing this as a service to other people who are witnessed to by this duplicitous gentleman. Now a simple Google search on Tony's name and a line of text from his email will showcase his willingness to lie in order to witness.

I know a great many very honorable Christians. And I know a few who are not honorable. Tony falls in the second group. I hope he realizes that his actions are not ethical and changes his ways.

Here is Tony Hanna's initial email to me:

I sent you this because I care where you spend eternity.

Where will you be three hundred million years from now? Will it matter how much money you made? Will it matter what kind of car you drove? Will it matter how big your house was? Will it matter who won the NCAA football and basketball games this year? Will it matter who you took to prom?

No!

The only thing that will matter is who is in heaven and who is in hell. Shouldn’t this be your first priority? Matthew 18:11 tells us that Jesus has come to save that which was lost. Do you realize that once you take your last breathe you will never be able to share your testimony of Jesus with another non believer ever again for all eternity.

2 Corinthians 5:10 tells us for we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ. When we stand before the throne of God he is going to be more alive than we ever could have imagined. You will wish you would have shared Jesus with a whole lot more people down here on earth. Can you really guarantee that you will wake up tomorrow? Do you have a friend who needs Jesus and you have not had that conversation with them. Matthew 18:12 Jesus tells us “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wondered off? Have you been led astray? Do you value possessions more than you value your soul and your eternity? What do you think about when you go to sleep and put your head on your pillow? Because when you get to heaven there is one thing you can’t do, that is share your faith with a non believer. Why? Well, because in heaven there are no non believers. John 3:36 Jesus said “He that believeth the son shall have everlasting life, he that believeth not the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides in him.

If you are a non-believer, I want you to stop and think about this. Look at the years on a grave. You are going to dead and in eternity a whole lot longer than you are alive on this earth. The fact is we are all going to take our last breathe, the only problem is we don’t know when the final bell will toll in our life. It doesn’t matter what you want to believe. It matters what is the truth. And the gospel is the truth. You say you’ve tried everything else, so try the bible. Jesus died on the cross for you and for the sins of the world. On the back of this tract is a list of heaven and hell testimonies. You simply go to the web site www.youtube.com and type in which one you want to watch. Once you have typed it in exactly as it is on the back you click on the first video that pops up. I hope you take time to watch these. If you have a friend who is an atheist show them these videos. What good is a friend here on earth if you can’t spend eternity with them?

www.youtube.com type in

Howard Storm Tony Davis near death experience part 1

Bill Weise

Tony Davis near death experience part 2

Tony Davis near death experience part 3

Mickey Robinson pt01

Mickey Robinson pt02

Mickey Robinson pt03

Mickey Robinson pt04

Bill Weise 23 Minutes in Hell

She went to heaven she went to hell part 1

She went to heaven she went to hell part 2

she went to heaven she went to hell part 3

Howard Storm Unsolved Mysteries

Earthquake Kelley visits heaven part 1

Earthquake kelley visits heaven part 2

Earthquake Kelley visits heaven part 3

Colossians 3:1-4 So, if you have been raised up with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who in your life is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory. Heaven- It is a place where believers go when they die. It is where God lives and is worshiped. You can store up rewards and treasures in heaven. It is a place of exceeding joy, you will know others there, God prepares a place for you there, it is a home, and don’t we all love going home! There is no pain, suffering, sorrow, or tears in heaven. It is a place of glory, holiness, beauty, perfection, light and love. The best part of heaven is the people who are going to be there. Hell- A place originally designed for the devil and his angels. It is eternal and irreversible. You can’t get out once you are there and the judgment has been set. There is conscious torment, weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is a place of sorrows and a lake of fire where the fire is never quenched. Your memory works just fine and you will remember all the worldly pleasures you chose instead of Jesus. It is a place of hopelessness and suffering. A place for those who reject what Jesus Christ has done. You don’t want to go there and neither do I. Repent- You are inwardly humbled and outwardly reformed. Seeing your sin, hating your sin and confessing your sin and turning from your sin. Remember you are not comparing yourselves to others, but to the perfect, holy God who created you. Even if we choose to repent of our sins there is a problem. How do we get rid of those sins. Jesus- The Son of God, born to the virgin Mary. By accepting him his blood washes away all of your sins. It is a gift from God that he wants to give to me and you. I think we should accept this gift! John 14:6 Jesus said unto him, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the father but by me. Ephesians 2:8,9 For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, Not of works. You don’t just add him to your life, but he changes you into a better person.

An email to Tony about Proof of God

2011-02-20T21:42:00.001-08:00

I've been having an email discussion with a Christian who emailed me out of the blue with the following:

I sent you this because I care where you spend eternity.

Where will you be three hundred million years from now? Will it matter how much money you made? Will it matter what kind of car you drove? Will it matter how big your house was? Will it matter who won the NCAA football and basketball games this year? Will it matter who you took to prom?

No!

The only thing that will matter is who is in heaven and who is in hell. Shouldn’t this be your first priority?

This gentleman's name is Tony, and he cared so much about my immortal soul and the possibility that it would end up in Hell that he went out of his way to contact me.

Unfortunately Tony's delivery was pretty poor. In general it was just poor writing. It is an excellent example of how Christians should NOT witness to atheists. It was poorly formatted, difficult to read, different colors and fonts. I did what I have done with previous emails of this nature - I made fun of it, and then posted it to the Rational Valley online forum.

Usually in making fun of an email, you completely cut off the conversation. But Tony seems to be made of sterner stuff. After an initial return salvo, he decided to have a conversation - which I also posted at the link above.

Sadly, that conversation petered out - Tony was unable to prove that God exists, and he seemed to get a little frustrated with that.

But then I found out that Tony had mailed the Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics a real live letter! The letter contained exactly the same text that he emailed in his first email to me, but it also contained a booklet by evangelist Mark Cahill called, "One Second After You Die".

After reading through Cahill's book I determined two things. He is at about the same level of evangelist as Ray Comfort. In other words, his theology is at about the same (poor) level as The Way of the Master, he denies the findings of science while misunderstanding the scientific method.

And Cahill, like Comfort, is deceptive in that both are willing to quote mine, or quote out of context an opponent's words in order to make them seem like they are saying something other than what they actually mean. This deception is a form of lying that Cahill does not seem uncomfortable with.

This deceptive theology and willingness to lie explained so much to me about Tony's poor ability to defend what he believes.

I thought that Tony should know this, so I emailed him the following: (Rest of the text is below the fold)

-------------
Update 21 Feb 11
Tony has decided to double down on his words, not only standing by Mark Cahill's lies, but cutting and pasting lies from others for good measure.

I want to emphasize that I know most Christians are very ethical people - but there are a few (loud) evangelists who are willing to lie for Jesus.

Tony,

Today CVAAS received the envelop of information that you sent to us.

I read with interest the booklet that you sent, "One Second After You Die" by Mark Cahill, because Cahill says he will provide solid evidence that there is a life after death. I was so happy - finally someone had solid evidence!

Let us go together through this book and examine Cahill's evidence...

1. Is there a God?
"Every time you see a creation, like a building, you know there is a creator. Every time you see a design, like a cell phone, you know there is a designer. Every time you see art, like a painting, you know there is an artist. Every time you see order, like 20 plates in a row, you know there was an orderer."
This is exactly what you tried to pass off on me as good logic. Unfortunately it fails terribly. As I've said before, we can examine things - like a snowflake - that looks as if it were created even though we know it is not. A snowflake is self-organized through a natural process. No gods required.

And we're not just talking about snowflakes here - self-organization happens in all areas of science, from self-organizing computer software (using genetic algorithms, among other things) to physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Take a look at Conway's Game of Life to see how a universe with simple rules creates order.

To say that everything that is ordered requires an orderer is an example of a stupid statement made by someone who has not bothered to spend 5 minutes with Google to determine whether what he or she is saying is true or not. It is said by someone who does not care about what is true.

2. We live in a perfectly designed world

Cahill next quotes various different authors. First he quotes Marilyn Adamson's work on Everystudent.com. Ms. Adamson says things like:
The Earth...its size is perfect. The Earth's size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth's surface. If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter.3 Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life.

As an exercise in physics, I've created an Excel spreadsheet that calculates planetary gravity based upon mass and diameter of a planet. If you follow that link you can play with different planetary diameters and mass. Here is an interesting tidbit. A planet with 4 times the mass of Earth, and twice the radius of Earth, will have exactly the same gravity as Earth. Neat, huh? Even better, this world would have 4 times the surface area of Earth!

Whether a planet loses atmosphere or retains atmosphere is a function of that planet's gravity, not physical size. Gravity is determined by density and radius of the planet. A planet that is larger than Earth, and masses more than Earth, but is less dense than Earth, could have Earth's gravity. The reverse is true. A Mercury sized planet might be perfect for human life if it were much denser... dense enough to have a gravity that could retain an atmosphere.

The basic problem here is in thinking that because you are comfortable, that everything was made just for you. In 1998, author Douglas Adams gave an example of this sort of thinking in a speech in England.
"(...) imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise." -- Douglas Adams

Cahill goes on to quote Ms. Adamson again:
Water.... (...) has an unusually high boiling point and freezing point. Water allows us to live in an environment of fluctuating temperature changes, while keeping our bodies a steady 98.6 degrees.

Water is a universal solvent. This property of water means that thousands of chemicals, minerals and nutrients can be carried throughout our bodies and into the smallest blood vessels.

Water is also chemically neutral. Without affecting the makeup of the substances it carries, water enables food, medicines and minerals to be absorbed and used by the body.

Water has a unique surface tension. Water in plants can therefore flow upward against gravity, bringing life-giving water and nutrients to the top of even the tallest trees. Water freezes from the top down and floats, so fish can live in the winter.

Ninety-seven percent of the Earth's water is in the oceans. But on our Earth, there is a system designed which removes salt from the water and then distributes that water throughout the globe.

The human brain... (...) Your brain takes in all the colors and objects you see, the temperature around you, the pressure of your feet against the floor, the sounds around you, the dryness of your mouth, even the texture of your keyboard. Your brain holds and processes all your emotions, thoughts and memories. At the same time your brain keeps track of the ongoing functions of your body like your breathing pattern, eyelid movement, hunger and movement of the muscles in your hands.

The human brain processes more than a million messages a second. Your brain weighs the importance of all this data, filtering out the relatively unimportant. This screening function is what allows you to focus and operate effectively in your world. The brain functions differently than other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people.

Ms. Adamson then starts discussing how the eye evolved on her website - but Mr. Cahill declines to quote THAT part. I find this amusing - since Cahill does not believe in evolution, he will not discuss it. But he seems perfectly happy to quote out of context a religious person's words that support his argument while ignoring those words that do not support his argument. This dishonest practice is known as "quote mining" and I bring your attention to it because Cahill does this more than once.

What Cahill seems to miss is Adamson's statement about the brain. "Your brain holds and processes all your emotions, thoughts and memories." This statement would seem to negate the idea of a soul. Do all of your thoughts, emotions and memories require a brain? I would say "yes". To put it in more simple terms, "every thought process requires a processor".

As for the necessity of water - perhaps life requires water. Scientists are currently unsure. The chemistry of self-organizing processes would seem to indicate that complexity and self-replication is possible using other "solvents". But water is a natural byproduct of Stellar Nucleosynthesis. Oxygen and Hydrogen are some of the most common elements in the universe. It is more rational to say that life has found a way to use this most abundant chemical, much like life found a way to survive the Oxygen catastrophe on Earth, and turn a deadly poison into a required element.

What Mr. Cahill does quote about the complexity of the eye comes from a book by Lawrence O. Richards, "It Couldn't Just Happen" (1989 - updated in 1994)

The quote from Mr. Richards is mostly about how staggeringly amazingly complex the eye is. He winds up with this:
Incredibly, the eye, optic nerve and visual cortex are totally separate and distinct sub-systems. Yet together, they capture, deliver and interpret up to 1.5 million pulse messages a millisecond! It would take dozens of Cray supercomputers programmed perfectly and operating together flawlessly to even get close to performing this task.
Well - the amount of information processed may be staggering for a human. But what about an animal that depends on just a bit of photoreceptor protein? Some bacteria have light sensitive patches. The gardener's favorite animal, Eisenia fetida - the common Redworm - has light sensitive patches that allow it to know when it is too close to the surface and in danger of predators. These are also "eyes" - and they are based on the same photoreceptors that are in Human eyes. But I daresay that the computer in your digital watch could probably handle the data rate.

And our eyes are far from perfect. First, we are trichromatic - the sensors in our eyes see the various shades of only 3 different colors. With those shades combined we are only able to distinguish between a million different colors. But there are animals (and a few human females) who are tetrachromatic. Tetrachromatics have sensors in their eyes that can see 4 different colors, and because of this they can distinguish between 100 million different colors.

Our eyes also have a blind spot - an area that lacks sensors. Our brain edits this spot out. Better yet, things that cross over that blind spot are actually added by our brains, as if they were there. You can see that happen in this video. What this means is that your brain is making things up - putting in things that the eye is not really seeing.

Also, our eyes lack sharp and clear vision through all of our detectors. Instead we have a little patch of detectors, called the Fovea, that are dedicated for sharp and clear vision. Because this patch of clarity is so very small (it has a field of view about the size of your index fingernail, held at arm's length) our eyes must constantly scan in order to build up a 3D image of our surroundings in our mind.

Compare the Human eye to that of the Mantis Shrimp - a creature that has a tetrachromatic eye that lacks a blind spot, whose whole eye sees sharp detail, and who can see far into the infrared and ultraviolet while also seeing the polarization of light - and you have to wonder why - if our eyes are designed - why this design is so bad.

Lastly, Mr. Richard's book was written in 1989 - he talks about how many Cray computers it would take to compute "1.5 million pulses a millisecond". This is another way of saying 1.5 billion pulses per second. Let's call each pulse an "instruction" that must be processed. In computing terms, this is measured in "Floating Point Operations per second" - also called a "Flop". Also, in computing terms the word Billion is replaced with the prefix "Giga". In 2003 a sub-hundred dollar GigaFlop processor became available. By 2009 it became possible to own a TeraFlop processor for under a dollar. "Tera" is the computer prefix for Trillion. This increase in computing power is a function of Moore's Law, and it is affecting all areas of computing and electronics.

One of these areas is the capture of visual information. You may not know it, but television standards are way behind the times. HDTV 1080i is defined in America as a 2 megapixel image. This is far behind what our current imagers are capable of doing. Modern video imagers are quite capable of 40 megapixels or higher, and digital SLR cameras can capture 60 megapixels or more.

But honestly, we really don't need these higher pixel resolutions for anything more than a new way to zoom. You see, our eyes just are not good enough to actually see more than 4 or 5 megapixels worth of an image on a 65 inch screen. And 2 megapixels is more than we can resolve on a 32 inch screen from more than a few feet away.

This is an excellent example of how human technology is better than the resolution of our eyes.

3 - the Uncaused Cause

Cahill again quotes Mr. Richards about DNA:
Just as the Britannica had intelligent writers to produce its information, so it is reasonable and even scientific to believe that the information in the living world likewise had an original compositor / sender.

This is not only a silly statement, it is certainly not a scientific position, and it demonstrates that Mr. Richard either lacks comprehension of the scientific method, or misunderstands it entirely. This is the position of, "I think it is so, so it must be true" - scientists do not work in this manner.

In reality, one example of the appearance of new information in existing DNA is through Polyploidy - the duplication of genes. We have abundant examples of this.

Mr. Richards continues:
There is no known non-intelligent cause that has ever been observed to generate even a small portion of the literally encyclopedic information required for life.
Perhaps Mr. Richards believes this statement to be truthful. I would hope that is the case, because it is not. There is a non-intelligent cause for generating complexity in DNA. It is called evolution. Evolution is a blind, undirected process that works through random mutation regulated by the filter and ratchet of natural selection. Evolution has been observed in the lab, and is a theory that has more evidence behind it than the theory of Gravity.

Cahill follows this all with a Carl Sagan quote, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." implying that Sagan may be talking about God. Cahill completely misses that Sagan was a skeptic, and at best an agnostic non-believer. Carl did say something during his Cosmos TV series that is relevant to Cahill's work, and has come to be known as "Carl's Law" - "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Life after death, a supernatural creator, a young Earth - these are all extraordinary claims that lack even ordinary evidence.

Cahill does go on to talk about evolution. His first bit of evidence is a quote from Charles Darwin that he cribbed from the thinkexist.com website of common quotations:

"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selections, seems, I confess, absurd to the highest degree."

This is, of course, an incomplete quotation - taken out of context from Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species". If we refer to the 6th (and latest) edition of Darwin's book, we see that the quote is continued (on pages 143-144):

When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.

As you can see, the full quotation from Darwin goes on to show that biblical beliefs held by popular opinion "cannot be trusted in science". He then explains that evolution of the eye from a light sensitive patch to a full modern eye is no difficulty to evolution as long as every intermediate step is useful in itself. My example of the Red worm doesn't share our eyesight, but light sensitivity is still a useful survival trait.

Cahill then goes on to say in his own words:
As we mentioned before, the eye is way too complex to have evolved, and even Darwin knew that by his own admission.
Clearly, Cahill is either lying here, or he never practiced due diligence to understand the whole quote from "Origin of Species". If I say that Cahill didn't understand that he was quote mining, and that he didn't realize that his statement about Darwin was false, then it shows that Cahill is an idiot at best. At worst, Cahill is a knowing liar.

Cahill quotes Darwin again:
Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.

This is also from "Origin of Species", 6th edition, chapter ten, pages 264 & 265. And again, Cahill quote mines Darwin's words. Darwin finishes this paragraph by saying:
The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
Darwin then spends all of chapter ten discussing the problems with the geological record, and how it would be a stupid and non-scientific idea to expect a constant flow of intermediate forms in the geological strata. Still he shows us that in his time the collecting of fossils is a brand new endeavor, and he explains how fossils are only part of the evidence of evolution.

In fact, we have become pretty good at understanding geology and we have a great deal more fossils than Darwin had. We have been able to see transitional forms in fossils.

But even if there were no fossil evidence, the evidence in biology and DNA would be more than enough evidence to satisfy the theory of evolution.

Cahill's deceptive quote mining of Darwin is not enough. He also uses deceptive and selective quotes from several authors, scientists, and proponents of evolution - bending their words in order to make his point. He finishes with the statement:
And there you have it. Time and time again, the evolutionists themselves are admitting there is not any evidence of transitional forms to back up their theory. (...) Since there is no evidence of animals and man transitioning into another kind of creature, we had to have gotten here some other way.

This quote demonstrates that Cahill is not just poorly informed. Instead this shows that Cahill is being intentionally deceptive to meet his own agenda. He has lied, and the evidence is right there in print.

Isn't the truth important?

Cahill goes on with a bit of philosophy. He says:
One of the concepts that I learned in a philosophy class in college was the law of cause and effect. And what it means is that every material effect had to have an adequate cause before it to make that effect occur. In other words, it takes something to make something. You can't get something out of nothing.

So if your parents made you, and your grandparents made your parents, (...) you eventually have to reach what is called the first cause or an uncaused cause that got the whole thing started. So when you reach that Cause, you now have your answer on who God is.

Cahill's philosophy may be okay, but logic does not seem to be his strong suit. Either everything has to have a creator, or it does not. If everything has to have a creator, then all things must have a creator. There is no reason why there must be an uncaused cause. It is just as reasonable to say that all causes must have a cause. In other words - who made God?

Another problem is that on the quantum level some things happen in an uncaused way. For example, a single particle may experience radioactive decay in a manner that is uncaused (and apparently random). Quantum mechanical events may happen that result in an effect, and when the event is duplicated exactly, it will result in a different effect.

I've also mentioned in a previous email that we do get something from nothing all the time. Virtual particles appear from nothing, and usually annihilate each other and disappear again. But sometimes they become separated (as in Hawking radiation, for example) and then they become real.

Cahill says on page 20 of this booklet:
Most scientists now believe that the universe had a beginning. Of course that is a real problem to many of them. Why? Because if it had a beginning, it had a beginner! It is really that simple.
On page 17 of this booklet, Cahill quotes astronomer Fred Hoyle's writing in his book, "The Intelligent Universe", about how impossible it would be for a tornado in a junkyard to assemble a working Boeing 747 out of bits. I find it interesting to find Cahill's following words on page 20 - because Hoyle absolutely rejected the idea of the universe beginning, and worked against the Big Bang theory until his death in 2001. Although this isn't strictly quote mining, it is a selective presentation of an authority in order to attempt to give credence to Cahill's words.

The rest of Mark Cahill's booklet assumes that he has met his burden to prove that a god or God exists, and goes on to describe the Christian God of the Bible. He uses the Bible as evidence of God, and uses God as the reason why the Bible is an authority - clearly this is circular reasoning.

However, as I have shown, he has not only failed to prove that there is a God, Cahill has demonstrated that he is willing to actually lie in order to meet his agenda.

Cahill lied. The evidence is in print in his booklet.

Please tell me why I should believe anything else this man has to say or write?

Tony, I now understand why your argument about the afterlife was so fatally flawed. If this is what you take to be evidence, then you have been lied to. I'm sorry to be the one to bear this bad news to you.

I hope you read this email in its entirety. I've tried to be clear and as succinct as the material will allow.

I do sincerely thank you for Mark Cahill's booklet, "One Second After You Die". I think that this book demonstrates the deceptive methods that religious figures will go to in order to meet their agenda. And to demonstrate this, I have posted a copy of this email on my blog, "The Calladus Blog".

I have also posted our email discussion to www.rationalvalley.com, the discussion forum supported by Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics. I will also link to that discussion from my blog in order to demonstrate the problems with your argument for god, and the deception practiced by Mark Cahill.

I do this because I think truth is important, and because when people work against that truth it should be spotlighted.

I think that you also believe truth to be important too, Tony. And although I've poked fun at you, I hope you realize that I wish you nothing but the best, and my hope for you is that you will try to better defend that which you believe using evidence that no one can refute. If you honestly search for this evidence, if you expend real effort to understand how the scientific method works, and how we know what is true, then I know you will become a more critical thinker.

Sincerely,

Mark Boyd
President, Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics

Just to make things balance out, I've made a copy of this email and posted it to the Rational Valley forum. You can go there and read the whole conversation between Tony and I, from start to finish.

And I really do wish the best for Tony.

Mr. Rexwood Curry goes a huntin!

2011-01-19T23:52:00.000-08:00

There's been an update with my friend Ellis Rexwood Curry IV. You may remember this clown, the guy who acts like he's a professional historian, who writes about himself in the third person, and who blames socialism in America on the evil Pledge of Allegiance?

Tell me again, how can a person that is smart enough to earn a J.D. and pass the bar exam, still not be capable of having his own law office? Why is this guy working as a public defender and moonlighting as an online community college instructor that teaches students how to look and dress in the courtroom?

I'll tell you. It is because he is so nuts that L. Ron Hubbard said, "Woah" and started taking notes!

Tell me what would you do if your neighbor had a dog that barked? Would you, (a) complain to the police? (b) call animal control, or (c) investigate your neighbor's background, publish your findings on gaudy signs in your yard, use those findings to get your neighbor fired from his job, and use your position as a lawyer to get the State Bar to send the neighbor a "cease and desist" that costs him thousands of dollars to defend. Then use 'tit for tat' noise like a leaf blower that runs for hours, and when that doesn't get the neighbor's dog to shut up, you just shoot it and call it "self defense"!

If you picked (c) then I'll say, "Hello Mr. Curry!"

Check out the comments to the article there. Lots of people seem to agree to Mr. Curry being a real shit. I'll be interested to see how long he continues to hold his license to practice law.

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More posts about the Pledge and Ellis Rexwood Curry IV.

Dripping of hate

2011-01-19T09:56:00.001-08:00

Sometimes when I have a little time I write in the comments section of the Fresno Bee. The local religious opinion is too often unopposed by anyone who is not religious, unopposed by those who require evidence before stating something as a fact. I have no illusions that I will change the minds of others commenting there, but perhaps I can help plant a seed of rationality of anyone else reading.

Recently, one person commenting said that my blog "drips of hate for Christians and our God."

Hate? Really? Prone to hyperbole much?

I don't hate "God" any more than I hate the Easter Bunny. They are fictional characters. Heck, God isn't even as real to me as Hello Kitty - at least I can get a plush doll of that. (And my wife had many!)

What I do "hate" - which in this case means, "disagree with vehemently" - is the religious right's attempts to hijack America's laws and Constitution for their own purposes. What I "hate" is the religious right's attempts to dehumanize people in order to demonize them.

But being disagreed with, having your position worked against, this isn't "hate" - if it were then every politician would be guilty of it.

And I have to wonder... which of my blog postings "drips of hate"?

Is it when I write about the Christian problem with Heaven? When I talk about the inherent hypocrisy of the Christian position against same-sex marriage? When I examine the question of why Christians are breaking the law to flood Iraq with bibles?

Do Christians think I'm hateful because I've identified what those feelings of the Holy Spirit were when I was a Christian, and have learned to reproduce them at will? Are they upset when I tear apart the religious right's "proof" that abstinence only education is sound science? Maybe they are threatened at my exposing the inherent religious hypocrisy in "Don't ask, Don't tell"?

I know... it's my approval of student organized, and student led prayer in school that is so "hateful". I'm so sorry!

Here's a clue. Having a contrary opinion, a different moral philosophy, a different worldview is not "hate". Having someone work against your position because they honestly believe it to be incorrect is not "hate".

But "Hate the sin, love the sinner" does seem, to me, to be a very special form of hatred that discounts a person's convictions merely because they differ from your own. This is not a position that I - or any atheist I know - holds.

My life in transition

2010-11-24T13:24:00.001-08:00

There's a lot of stuff undone around here.

Let's face it... my blog needs a makeover. The wallpaper is getting old, and what's with all that "Web 1.0" stuff hanging on around here?

Well, everything for this site is on hold for a bit. I'm moving out of my (our) apartment and moving into a rental house by the end of the year. I've traded in my (our) car for a used pickup truck (which I just broke yesterday!). I'm moving items into storage, still selling some items, and giving away a few others.

And my new place needs some fixing up too. Yes, it's a rental house, but it's a "fixer" rental house. My rent is cheap because I pay part of my rent in handiwork. Not a problem - I enjoy doing that sort of thing... mostly. Anyway, I only intend to live there for the next 3-5 years, and then I'll purchase a home.

For those of you who really want to know what I'm doing on a day-to-day basic, I'll redirect you to my Facebook page.

Hold tight to the ones you love. I'll be back here sometime in January.

Another Fleur de Pensée atheist tattoo!

2010-09-16T08:28:00.001-07:00

There is something deeply gratifying when you create something that other people are willing to commit to a tattoo.

This is James. He liked my Fleur de Pensée design enough to become the second person to commit it to ink.

The "Flower of Thought" is the oldest symbol of secularism held by any organization.

And why shouldn't it be? It got this image because Pansies bear some resemblance to a person in deep thought.

What I like about these flowers is how tough and drought-resistant they are. They can take 110 degree heat without blinking, and they shrug off sudden storms and heavy rains of spring by popping back up afterward. Hey, if they were tough enough for Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, well, that's good enough for me!

I love when people write to me to say that they are using the Fleur de Pensée, and I'm deeply honored and pleased that people commit it to ink. Thanks again James!

Go here to learn more about this symbol and how it was created, and to download graphics of it.

Waiting in line in Korea

2010-08-10T15:36:00.001-07:00

This New York Times story about waiting in lines reminds me so much of my first years of living in South Korea.

I was in my second year of living in South Korea, stationed at Kwang Ju Air Base in the Southern part of the Korean peninsula. I had traveled all over Korea by bus, but usually with a Korean guide - my girlfriend (later to be my wife.) We had met when I was stationed the year before in Uijonbu, near her home in Seoul, so when I moved away from Seoul we found ways to visit each other.

Taking a bus to Seoul took hours. A train was faster and more comfortable. I had two semesters of Korean Language from the University of Maryland (overseas) under my belt; I had a English-Korean-English dictionary; and I am cautious, but curious to the point of fearlessness in exploring.

The hardest part of taking the train was purchasing a ticket!

I was stationed in Korea from 1985-1987, before the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Korea was an interesting mix of third and second world country at that time. They still clearly remembered the hard times of the recent past - political oppression, poverty, war. But they were all looking forward to the bright future they could all see - Korea was going to be a world player soon, and everyone knew it.

So you could wait in line at a Wendy's or Kentucky Fried Chicken or Dunkin Donuts in downtown Seoul, and place your order during your turn in the queue.

All that went out the window at the train station ticket counter.

The first time I walked into the train station at Kwang Ju, I was amazed. The women selling the tickets behind the little windows in the glass were some of the fastest workers I've ever seen. They could have sold out a whole Megaplex Theater worth of opening night Star Wars tickets in five minutes flat.

And the way the Koreans rushed the windows was awesome, baffling, and a bit scary. They would shoulder each other aside, waving money and shouting ticket orders.

I had to buy my ticket from.... that.

My first attempt was laughable. Still clinging to the idea (a mere fantasy at this point) of a line, I tried to scoot up to the window, and wait for the people to clear out in front of me so I could step up.

They treated me like furniture - like a support column for the train station. They went around me, and a couple even pushed off of me to get better access to the window in front of me! I was used to being the only "round eye" around; I was used to stares, to helpful people showing me what to do next - but in this instance I don't think anyone even realized I was a foreigner.

I then wormed my way through the crush to the window, and started to ask how much for a ticket in my limited, halting Korean. The ticket attendant listened for a moment, and was about to reply when a couple of sweet-faced, apple cheeked grannies body-checked me away from the window and demanded their tickets! I've never played Hockey in my life, but I'll bet if I did parts of it would feel familiar.

Fine! Be that way! I got mad.

This time I got my money ready, barreled my way right to the window, braced myself with feet apart, and one arm on each side of the window - my fists were gripping the edge of the marble counter, and my elbows were out. I resisted every attempt to get past my guard while I asked the price of the ticket, paid, and then got out of there.

I got my ticket. I also got a bruised instep, kicked shin, and a kidney punch by someone's grandmother.

From then on, when I took the train I wore my boots, and paid with exact change - staying just long enough at the window to lay the money down, shout the name of my destination, and snatch up the ticket.

I'd never heard the word "scrum" before this - but the word so fits my experience!

When I went back to Korea again in January, I was pleasantly surprised. Trains, buses, taxis, even airport shuttles all now use a sort of "pay pass" card. You purchase the card at any roadside store or coffee stand, and you charge it at a machine, or add money to it at a store.

When you get on the subway or train, you merely wave the card over the turnstile. Your card is debited the proper amount, and you continue on your way without missing a single step. In a taxi, you wave it over a machine that sits between the front seats. I think it even gives the taxi driver a gratuity.

The train station, subway, and bus terminal is no longer a place to "scrum". But there isn't a queue either - people just pass through.

My shins were very grateful.

Won in the Emergency Room

2010-06-25T11:05:00.001-07:00

Won and I spent a lot of time in Emergency rooms over the last 10 years.

Take for example the time last Winter when she slipped and fell in the bathtub while taking a shower. She hit her head really hard. She was on the blood thinner Coumadin to support her mechanical heart valve, and she had quite a bump on the side of her forehead.

So, once again we rushed to the local hospital. I've timed it - it takes about 4 minutes for me to get to the local ER in my own car. If she was mobile, we always did it that way. Our medical bills were crushing - we tried to avoid the expensive ambulance co-pay.

So, we got to the hospital at 8pm on a Friday. The nurses glanced at Won as she walked into the door, then continued on with sicker people. A few minutes later Won went through triage, and then we settled down to wait. We were old hands at waiting in the ER and knew the drill...

Don't touch anything, and wash well with soap and water if you DO touch something. The hospital is full of germs, and Won had a compromised immune system. A little germ paranoia helped a lot.
Bring bottled water or buy it from the soda machine in the hall. Dehydration after several hours of sitting in the hospital is a problem.
Get the lightweight blanket out of the trunk of the car. Use it as a pillow, or as a cover when napping in the hospital waiting area.
Bring the book, iphone, or other media player you have handy with you. Won had an MP3 player with her favorite music on it. I had a phone that doubled as a media player. It's going to be a long wait.

At about midnight Won was finally admitted to a room, thirty minutes later she saw the doctor. We explained what happened, and our worry. She's on Coumadin, and hit her head really hard. See the bruise? Is this a problem? Are we right to be so concerned?

The ER doctor wasn't overly concerned. But because of her medical history he had her do an MRI. Another 3 hours to get into the MRI and back to the room - where the doctor said Won was okay, and we could go home without worry. He gave advice about her bruise, and we agreed to follow up with her regular physician.

About half of Won's emergency room visits were something like this. Something would happen that worried us due to Won's chronic illness, but it would thankfully turn out to be nothing at the ER.

But there was that time when things got really bad.

On December 3, 2007 Won said she felt like she was catching a cold in her chest. It didn't seem serious at first, but by the 8th she said it was like a really bad chest cold. The morning of the 9th (Saturday) she got up early because she was having trouble breathing. I got up with her and was worried. She didn't look good. So, once again we got ready for another trip to the ER.

We expected the same sort of treatment on arrival. Triage, endless waiting, followed by an ER Doctor visiting her. But this time almost the moment Won walked wheezing through the door an ER nurse was at her side. She was pulled into triage while I stayed behind to do the necessary paperwork.

When I was done with the papers, I walked past a crowded ER waiting area, and was ushered back to the ER room where Won was being held. She got a room already? We started getting nervous. Just how bad was it this time?

In a very short time she got an ECG, then the ER doctor came in to listen to her heart. An hour later she had an MRI. Then her regular doctor showed up in the ER to give us the news... her organic artificial heart valve was failing, it would fall apart very soon. Her "chest cold" was the buildup of fluid around her heart as it slowly failed.

The hospital admitted her that night, then she was transferred to another hospital downtown to be stabilized for the long ambulance ride to her heart surgeon in Redwood City. I scrambled to get our pets into the kennel, and to arrange for time off to go to Redwood City to be with her.

But before all of this, I had a few free moments in the ER. I asked the admitting nurse, one of the two who flew to Won's side as she walked in the door. "How did you know?"

"Oh honey," the nurse said kindly, "It was OBVIOUS!"

Thank you to all the medical workers, and those in the ER, whose abilities and dedication make life better for us all.

What I believe

2010-05-26T10:33:00.001-07:00

There are many things that I believe in. I believe that sunsets are beautiful, that love is wonderful, and that rainbows are both beautiful and amazing - especially when you understand the refractive index of a raindrop. For me, understanding such phenomena only enhance their beauty and the wonder that I feel about them. Knowing that love is something that happens in the software of my mind that runs on the wetware of my brain does not diminish the awe I feel over this feeling.

I lack any belief in a deity.

This is a "default" position for me. I have not found sufficient evidence to encourage belief in a deity. That doesn't mean that such evidence doesn't exist, somewhere. As soon as that evidence is presented I'll reevaluate my position. But it is as silly for me to believe in a deity "just in case" as it is for me to put bowls of milk on my doorstep "just in case" Brownies actually exist.

I have also seen that a coherent, falsifiable definition of God is yet to be given, by any religion. So talking about who God is, or what he/she/it wants is premature at best.

I will admit to the chance that our universe could have been created through intelligence.

The philosophers and scientists of the past who have said we were nearing the end of our journey of knowledge were wrong. I see us in the infancy of physics. And some of the infant ideas of physics include the hypothesis that universes are a "zero sum game" of quantum mechanics. That daughter universes can form out of the action of parent universes.

Some physicists have the idea that an intelligent action in one universe can result in the spawning of a daughter universe.

But this is not something we can prove one way or another now. I must admit that we might never be able to prove this idea.

In order, the three things I discuss here are given as atheism, ignosticism, and agnosticism. As you can see, these positions are not mutually exclusive. But they are not weighted the same.

To me evidence is key. I place much less weight on those ideas that lack sufficient evidence. I'm in large part an atheist due to an overwhelming lack of evidence. I'm Ignostic due to a lack of a good definition of deity. And I'm agnostic because I lack evidence that the universe was NOT created. However the evidence that everything in Nature came into existence through natural methods is so overwhelming, that the spot left over for an intelligent creator as described in modern religions is very small. I assign an equally small probability to my agnosticism.

Today is "Everyone Draw Mohammed Day"

2010-05-20T10:22:00.001-07:00

Today is "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day".

I'm not going to get into why it is right to draw Muhammad, I'll let the Friendly Atheist explain why it is right, why it is important that we draw this Islamic prophet.

I will say three things. First, to me it seems as if there is much more evidence that Muhammad actually existed than there is that Jesus actually existed. At least with Mo, we have articles of clothing, hair clippings, personal possessions. Not so with Jesus.

Second, just because he existed doesn't make his claims believable to me. I'm still waiting for evidence. I'm still an atheist in that the claims of Islam, like Christianity, still lack convincing proof.

Third, it is always wrong to criminalize free speech. Art is a form of free speech. I cherish my ability to write that Muhammad was, at best, wrong. At worst Muhammad was a power hungry ruler who cynically found a way around the local politics of his time by forming a religious power base. These are my opinions. I may be incorrect about them, but at least I'm free to write them.

Peace be unto her holy hooves.

The Dog next door

2010-05-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I need to just tell a story that's been brewing for a while. This story has been waiting for 14 years. I'm not advocating anything really here - except maybe human compassion.

I had lived for 6 years in Okinawa. Won was with me there for just over 5 years. While we were in Okinawa I was given the chance to stay even longer, but turned it down for an assignment to the United States. We both loved Okinawa, and I'd still be living there if things had worked out, but we knew something was seriously wrong with Won's health, and needed better doctors to help us figure it out.

So I asked the Air Force to send me to Sunny Southern California. Okinawa has a beautiful ocean and I was spoiled. The Air Force has an assignment preference paper lovingly called a "Dream Sheet", and I wanted a place with beautiful sandy beaches. The Air Force responded by sending me to the Ft. Irwin National Training Center, located in the middle of the Mojave desert just outside of Barstow California. It wasn't quite Hell, but it does share the same zip code!

After a six months of juggling, we finally managed to get assigned to on-base housing on the Marine Corps Logistics Base on the outskirts of Barstow. (It's been torn down, but it used to be right here.)

It was a nice place for base housing. We had a place for the washer and dryer, a patio for the barbecue, and we were right against the desert so we had plenty of space to that side of the house. Our water was paid for, so I spent some time making our lawn green and inviting, a place where I could sit under the big oak out front and play with our dog.

It was a duplex. When we moved in, our duplex neighbor was in the process of moving out. Within the month we got a new neighbor, a young Marine and his wife and baby daughter. They had a fluffy white cat who never left their house, but would occasionally appear in a window.

We had said "Hi" a few times, but I'd never really met them. We lived in different worlds, attached only by a wall between us.

Leena, my Cocker Spaniel, was a very smart dog. By the time we moved into the Marine base, we had her for about 4-5 months. By now she would already sit on command, lay down, go looking for Won or for me when asked, roll over, and pee and poop on command. (Teach your dogs to pee on command! It's great!) She would give us "high five", shake, and put her head down when asked. Like I said, smart dog!

The first time I spoke with the young Marine next door was when I had taken Leena out to do her business one night. He came walking up next to me with a fluffy white Chow puppy on a leash. He was obviously eager to show off his dog, and I told him he had a very cute puppy. (All puppies are cute, in my opinion!)

After Leena did her business on my command, he and I had a brief difference of opinion on how to train dogs. He was surprised that I never taught Leena to attack, and I was disgusted that he was using a Prong Collar on a puppy! (I'm disgusted with Prong Collars in general. If you use one, my respect for you has dropped automatically. No, I won't apologize for that.)

The young Marine then boasted to me that his Chow would be the best trained dog ever! He also let me know that a Cocker Spaniel wasn't a "real man's" dog. Okay, whatever.

That turned out to be our longest conversation. As an E-5 in the Air Force, I really could care less what an E-2 in the Marine Corps thought about my dog.

But I did get upset with the amount of noise he and his wife generated. They would often have loud screaming matches with each other, accompanied by crashing noises as things were thrown. These fights usually ended with the Marine slamming out of his house, jumping into his El Camino, and screetching off to somewhere in a big hurry. He'd come back after a few hours and things would remain quiet for another week until it was repeated.

From the few words I heard on our side of the duplex, I gathered at least some of the fights were about their pets. Won confirmed this - she had spoken to the wife while we husbands were out at work. She told me their dog was destructive. And the wife was pregnant with their second child.

On a few occasions, our neighbors cranked up the music late at night. I would put up with it on the weekends, because we were late sleepers. We also got out of town on the weekends as much as possible.

But loud party music during the week just isn't nice, and I never allow it. I'd let it go until 10 pm, then I went next door, banged until I got an answer, and told them to turn it down. The Marine would agree, the music went away, and we'd get a good night of sleep. At least, that's what happened the first 3 times I did it.

The forth time I did this (over a period of about a year and a half) the Marine came to the door drunk. I told him to turn it down, and he saluted me. "Yesss Shir! Shir!" He turned around and shut the door, and I went back inside my house. On the other side of the wall, the music suddenly went away and we could hear his wife yelling at him. I don't know what she said, but He said, very loudly, "F**k him!" Next the music came back, very loudly. It had a pounding Bass beat.

What could I do? I called the Marines. The Marine MPs. Loud music was against housing regulations, and the Marine Corps doesn't like looking like a fool to someone from the Air Force. The Marines arrived in minutes, politely knocked on our door to let us know they were there, then went next door to speak to the young Marine.

It got quiet very quickly. It stayed quiet for the next two weeks. The Marine MPs told me that they had informed our neighbor that quiet time during the week was at 9 pm, and it was 10 pm on Friday and Saturday. Please call again if there is any trouble.

There was trouble. Over the next two months our neighbor got drunk and loud again twice more. Not just with loud music, but with yelling and screaming between the couple. Both times I called the Marine MPs. The last time, the MPs told me they had reported everything to the young Marine's Commanding Officer, and any further outbreaks would result in a reduction of rank, and possibly moving the Marine into the dorms.

It was mostly quiet after that. Our tour in Barstow was coming to an end, we only had a couple of months left before I started out processing to become a civilian. But during that time, our neighbor called the MPs on US. Twice.

The first time, Won and I were sitting on the living room floor. It was Friday night at 10 pm, and we were folding laundry and getting ready to go to bed. We planned on getting up early the next morning to drive to Los Angeles and do some shopping.

When the MPs knocked on the door I let them in. They took in everything at a glance, and knew they'd been had. They told us that someone had reported, "domestic abuse" on us. I had commanded Leena to keep away from the warm laundry - but not in a loud voice. We were guilty of being domestic for sure, but not abuse!

The MPs went next door and had a word or three with my neighbor.

The second time, Won and I were quietly watching a movie, curled up with Leena and a bowl of popcorn between us. We weren't using my sound system - just the television. But the MPs had again been called for, "domestic abuse". They spent even less time in my house this time, and spent more time next door, talking to my neighbor. It was Spring, and our doors were open, so I heard the MPs saying things like "false report", and "report to your commanding officer".

Except for the occasional loud argument, it was quiet next door after that.

On our last day in Base Housing, there was one more incident. But it didn't involve us.

The movers had come to pack up our house, so I tied Leena up in the shade outside to keep her out from underfoot. I went back and forth from inside to outside to watch the progression of the movers, and to make sure Leena had enough water.

Suddenly next door there was a loud shriek, and the sound of things crashing to the ground. The wife next door started yelling, and the husband started yelling back. I don't know exactly what happened, but I later guessed that their dog had something to do with it.

The yelling escalated, and I heard her call him "crazy". I heard him yell about "that damned cat" too. I went back in and let Won know the neighbors were fighting again - and she told me how glad she was to get out of there. Even the movers made remarks about the fight.

I heard the door slam open next door, and looked outside as the Marine carried a long gun case out to the El Camino and toss it in back. He went stomping back to the house, so I stepped outside to see what was going on. I went over by the tree near Leena, and away from the house.

My neighbor came stomping out again with his Chow on a leash. He got the dog into the bed of the El Camino, tied the leash to a tie down, got into the car and drove away quickly.

20 minutes later he came back. Without the dog. He brought his gun case back into the house with him. I could hear clearly through our open doors as he yelled something to the effect, "I hope you're happy now!" They shut their door and continued yelling.

To this day, I'm still astonished that someone would kill their pet out of spite.

To the Marine who lived next door to me. I know better than to lump you together with all Marines, because I have known too many Marines. Honor among the Corps is the rule, not the exception. You sir, are just evil. If you ever recognize yourself here in my blog let me be the first to tell you that you didn't have what it took to be a man, much less a Marine. I can only hope the Marines recognized and rectified their error.

Our dog Leena lived to be 13 years old, and was always a brilliantly intelligent girl who followed my commands to the best of her ability.

You want charity? My answer is "No".

2010-05-17T10:09:00.001-07:00

I was sitting at a table outside of the bookstore in the Riverpark shopping center, enjoying a hot coffee and some interesting conversation with a close friend of mine.

About 50 feet away a charity organization had set up an information table. They had a portable awning over it, and several very large, very slick signs around it. They had a wide screen video monitor playing a revolving advertisement about their charity. From what I could see, it had something to do with golf. Other than that, I ignored them.

Until one gentleman popped up next to my table. He was pretty slick too - business suit, perfect hair, engaging smile. He squatted down at my side, stuck out his hand to me and said, "Hi my name is David. I'd like to tell you about (some program involving golf) that helps (disadvantaged youth)".

I pointedly looked at his hand, but otherwise didn't bother to move.

"No thank you," I said. I turned back and continued talking with my friend, who was just a little stunned at my complete dismissal of David.

Undeterred, David stood up and presented me with a glossy pamphlet. There were pretty color images of kids and golf on it.

"Don't you want to help (kids with some form of specific problem)?"

"No. I have charities that I give to. When I look for a charity, I carefully research them. I don't know a thing about your charity."

"Do you play golf?" David asked, hopefully.

"Not unless it has a windmill on the course" I answered.

Again, I turned away and finished what I was saying to my friend. When I looked around, David had gone.

"That was pretty rude" my friend told me.

"Yea, I know. Salesmen can be so pushy."

"No." she said, "I meant you. He was just trying to get a donation!"

I explained to her that this wasn't the same thing as a non-profit group making a general plea for donations. This was a slick marketing campaign that used professionally made materials and high pressure sales tactics to get donations. I would be astonished if they gave more than 60% of their gains to children in need.

And these were high-pressure sales tactics. I've blogged about these before. David had interrupted a conversation and attempted to get me to participate with him in selling me something I had never heard of and didn't want. He assumed the sale was already made, and never asked if I wanted to be sold to. By holding out his hand, by trying to get me to hold a glossy brochure, he was attempting to hold me "hostage" for his sales pitch. If I had accepted his gestures then politeness would dictate that I listen to him until he finished his pitch, and then apologize to him for not giving money.

Screw that. He was being rude for interrupting me, for applying high pressure sales tactics. He should be punished for his social faux pas, not rewarded for it. So I did.

But David isn't special. I say "No" to many charities. I shop at Petsmart and I refuse, every time, to give a dollar to "homeless pets". (But if they are a pet... why are they homeless?...) Every year I refuse to purchase a piece of paper shaped like a balloon, or shoe, or whatever - that is then marked with my name and stuck to the side of the wall in Wal-Mart. It has gotten to the point that when a cashier says, "Would you like..." my immediate response is, "No. Thank you."

I don't give money to people who ask me for money on the street either. Although if they say that they are hungry, I offer to take them to a nearby restaurant and share a meal with them. (Well, if I have money. When my wife was alive I was usually broke. Her meds weren't cheap!) I've shared a couple of meals with some interesting street people - but most refuse.

And I don't know if this only happens in Fresno or what, but I'm often approached by kids on skateboards who ask for money. Kids with good shoes, designer cloths, recently bathed... asking for money. One young gentleman said he'd show me his "best skateboard tricks" for $10. I told him I'd buy his skateboard for $20. His reply was colorful and rude, so I would guess that his situation was not very dire.

Don't get me wrong... I give to charity. Even when we spent a sixth of my income on prescriptions and copayments for my wife, we still managed to donate over a thousand dollars a year. But since I don't have a lot of money, and I do want to make a difference, I try to carefully select those groups where a little means a great deal.

I prefer charities who are part of the Combined Federal Campaign. I used to get CFC letters when I was in the Air Force that listed CFC charities, and how much each charity spent on administrative costs versus how much was donated. I never donated to those charities with an administrative cost above 20%. That's one of the reasons I stopped giving to the American Diabetes Association.

Won died due to congestive heart failure. She had diabetes and high blood pressure. She also loved kids, we both did. So I used to look for charities in these categories. Now that she's gone, I will be donating more to charity, but I'm interested in finding a new charity. I'll be looking for someone new. Maybe even a completely secular charity.

So no. You can't have the change that is in my pocket. But I might invite you to eat with me at Denny's.

And if you're going to be rude about asking me for money, I'm going to be rude right back at you.

Mojave Desert Cross is stolen

2010-05-11T09:45:00.001-07:00

Just off the Christian Newswire, I found out that the Mojave Desert Cross has been stolen.

If you'll recall, this is the same cross that the Supreme Court recently ruled does NOT give the impression that the US Government is advancing one religion over any other. This cross sat on Sunrise Rock in California's San Bernardino County, and until recently it was on land that was owned by the Department of the Interior, and overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. In order to stop government endorsement of religion, Congress authorized a trade - the Veterans of Foreign Wars would get the one acre of land that the cross sat on in return for 5 privately owned acres that sit elsewhere on the Mojave preserve.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars is also following this story.

(As a side note, back in 2003 I was invited to be a member of the VFW for my 2 years in Korea, but only if I believed in a God. Needless to say, I didn't apply. Their rules have since changed, but I think I'll wait for more of the older VFWs to die before I join.)

I'm fascinated by the Supreme Court ruling on this case. (Link to PDF of the ruling) Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the dissent to the decision. Solicitor General Elena Kagan argued in front of the court that there was "no reason to conclude that the continued presence of the cross would imply government sponsorship". If you'll recall, Kagan is Obama's pick to replace Stevens, who is retiring. To me this implies that perhaps Kagan is not a good replacement for Stevens... but I'm still thinking about that.

The real story here is that the cross has gone missing. Maybe it will be found again, and maybe not. Perhaps it was stolen for scrap metal, or maybe a crazed band of atheists swooped in and took it.

But if it was an atheist who took the cross, I'll be among the first to throw shame. If an atheist thought that by stealing the cross he or she was accomplishing anything more than simple vandalism, then that person (or persons) is wrong.

For an atheist to steal this cross is self-defeating. Think of the harm that Christians have done to themselves in coming to defend this cross. As part of the Supreme Court Ruling, the "Latin Cross" (as the war memorial is called) is judged to not be a religious symbol, because it has a "secular purpose".

Christians who complain about their religious symbols being defaced, that we should "respect" religious symbols, should be the first to bristle at the Supreme Court's ruling that their cross is merely a secular symbol.

I'm allowed to defile an image of a cross (or stick figures of Muhammad if I wish) because free speech is a protected right in America. However, I would never steal, or advocate the theft of the Mojave Desert Cross because it is theft, it is vandalism. And I hope they catch whoever did this and prosecute them.

Give CVAAS an artistic hand - help them create a new logo!

2010-05-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

If you read my blog, you probably are aware that I'm currently the president of The Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics.

CVAAS is trying to come up with a new logo to identify the organization. As with previous contests to create a new logo for atheism, I do not expect this to be a simple prospect. (I tried my hand at it too!)

So, if you are artistically inclined (or able to describe a good logo in words) why don't you pop over to the CVAAS website to read about what is needed, and then sign up for the Logo thread on the Rational Valley forum and give it a try?

You can even win a prize!

Our new National ID card - or not.

2010-04-29T10:44:00.001-07:00

My wife Won was a citizen of Korea, and a Permanent Resident of the United States. (She also passed her citizenship test.)

When she died, I spent a day in Seoul Korea with her mother, registering her as deceased, and turning in her Korean National ID card.

I had quite a bit of experience, through her, with how her National ID card was used. For instance, in order to sign up for an email address with Hanmail.net, she had to use her Korean Resident Registration Number to verify that she was eligible to have a Korean email address. She also had to use her ID to sign up for a "Hulu" style Korean television website.

It's difficult to be anonymous online in South Korea. It is difficult (if not impossible) for a Korean speaking foreigner to get access to a Korean website dedicated to Korean nationals.

But their is a way around this - Identity theft. Many Koreans just 'borrow' another Korean's Resident Registration Number. Someone did that with a former South Korean president, and gained access to hundreds of porn websites. (If you get caught doing that you can be jailed for up to 3 years and fined as much as $9000.)

In Korea you need your National ID card to open a bank account, get married, go to school, buy or rent a home or car. You are required to display your National ID card upon demand by law enforcement or military officials. You must have the card in order to travel to some places in South Korea (especially near the Demilitarized Zone.) You display your ID when cashing a check, and if you pay your utility bills in cash, you might still be asked to show your ID.

If you lose your card, you must get it replaced immediately (and fill out a form as to how and where you lost it.) If you are caught by police without the ID card they may hold you until they can verify your citizenship. I'm told that this could be an unpleasant process, depending on how you act and what mood the police are in.

But in many ways a Korean National ID card is used much like an American Driver's License is used for identification. The difference is that in Korea, everyone is issued this card at the age of adulthood (about 19 years old).

Americans have traditionally been very defensive about their right to privacy. We think that some things are not the Government's business. Stop and Identify statutes in the US require that you give your real name to an officer upon demand - but until the new Arizona immigration law came out you were not required to produce legal identification. (But failing to produce ID upon demand makes you look suspicious, and an officer has the right to detain suspicious looking people... so...)

There is also a very strong religious sentiment against any sort of national identification. In the Bible, Revelation 13:16-18 seems to talk about a form of identification without which "no one is allowed to buy or sell things". Korea's National ID card would seem to fill that bill - without a Resident Registration Number a Korean could not open a business, get a business license, or buy public services such as cable television or electricity.

We Americans are also still suffering from "Red Scare". We recognize the dangers of political power narrowly held by an elite faction or individual, and anything that smells remotely of totalitarianism gives us the heebie-jeebies. Conservatives and Liberals both point to legislation that they say are signs of impending totalitarianism. A national ID card is one item that both camps seem to agree on.

Arizona's new immigration law, and someone's Twitter comments, got me thinking - what if America DID have a national ID card? Would it be so bad? And then I found out that we DO have a National ID card. Sort of.

It's called the Real ID Act of 2005.

In 2005, Congress enacted the "Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005". This act (PDF link) became public law in order to:

Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, and for other purposes.

The Real ID portion of this act is contained in the "other purposes" section.

According to Real ID, drivers licenses will be required to display the citizenship status of every card holder. The issuers of state drivers licenses are also required to verify the card holder's citizenship with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. If a Resident Alien is here on some sort of temporary status, then his or her drivers license will have an expiration date that reflects that status.

In California, my drivers license is good for 10 years. Under this new law, it must be renewed every 8 years.

As part of this law, states would be required to link their license and ID databases and share driver / citizen data by a state compact called the Driver License Agreement. The DLA is also connected with (or accessible to) foreign countries. From what little I've learned about the DLA, if you commit a traffic offense while visiting another state, you may be charged as if you had broken the law in your home state.

Real ID was supposed to take effect in 2008, but due to opposition, and technical difficulties, the deadline has been extended to 2011. As you might imagine, there has been some serious opposition to this act from Conservatives and Liberals. Some states have passed laws or resolutions that refuse to implement Real ID. Democrats talk about how the Real ID technology will allow the government to track your every move, eroding privacy. Republicans are claiming that Real ID will (further) erode State's sovereignty, giving another State right to the Federal Government.

With all of this controversy, I don't think that Real ID will be implemented. I didn't even know it was current law until yesterday - the DMV hasn't said anything about it to me, so I guess California is waiting to see if they will have to comply first.

I'm an American Citizen, and yet I'm not required to carry any sort of identification that proves that I am a citizen. Oddly, my wife was required by law to carry identification that proved she was NOT an American Citizen, but once she had been sworn in, she would also not be required to carry identification that proved she was a citizen. Even the new Arizona law does not require people in Arizona to carry proof of citizenship - police officers just subject suspects to a citizenship verification process that might take several days to complete. (hint - it goes much faster if you carry your passport!)

I'm still unsure what I think about an American National ID card, whether we enact a de facto national ID like the Real ID act, or a real national ID like South Korea, Japan and China - or if we just keep our current status quo. On one hand, I can see how a totalitarian government like China might misuse such an ID. But on the other hand I saw how it allowed Won to enjoy benefits granted to her by South Korea, benefits that were denied to me because I was not a Korean citizen.

I think I'm going to continue looking for good arguments both for and against this issue until I can make up my mind on it. Right now, the only reason I have for really liking the idea of a national ID card is that I'd get to see conservative religious leaders turn purple as they bang their bibles in protest of Satan's mark.

Hmm. Maybe if we use an implantable microchip instead of an ID card...

That beastly Arizona Immigration Law

2010-04-28T14:43:00.001-07:00

Well, Arizona’s got a new law. Arizona State Bill 1070 (called the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”) was signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer.

According to Governor Brewer: (PDF link)

This bill, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, strengthens the laws of our state. It protects all of us, every Arizona citizen and everyone here in our state lawfully. And, it does so while ensuring that the constitutional rights of ALL in Arizona remain solid – stable and steadfast.

Really? That's great. So what does this law say? Let's take a look at SB1070 (PDF link):

20 B. FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY
21 OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS
22 STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS
23 UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE,
24 WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON. THE
25 PERSON'S IMMIGRATION STATUS SHALL BE VERIFIED WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
26 PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).

Wow! That's great. So what is a "lawful contact"? It could be a traffic stop, a sobriety checkpoint, an age verification check in a bar, or even a random encounter on the street. In Arizona it is lawful for a police officer to stop a citizen and ask for his or her name - as long as that police officer thinks the person is "suspicious". This is also a "lawful contact", and so the police officer can now ask for proof of citizenship too.

But this law says that the officer must have "reasonable suspicion" that the person stopped is an alien! But, what does that mean?

During a press conference on Friday, (April 23rd) Governor Brewer was asked, "What does an illegal immigrant look like?" She answered,

"I do not know. I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I can tell you that... I think there are people in Arizona that assume they know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I don't know if they know that for a fact or not. But I know that if AZ Post gets their selves together, works on this law, puts down the description, that the law will be enforced civilly, fairly, and without discriminatory... ah... points to it.

"Without discriminatory points" - so, it's not profiling. After all, who is to say that the illegal immigrant is a brown person from Mexico? I've known a couple of illegal immigrants from Korea, and another from France. And we've all heard stories about illegals bringing their children into the country at a young age, who grew up speaking colloquial English. It is possible that the cute blond-haired girl next door who goes to high school with your son might (just might) be in America illegally!

Just because you are a blond-haired redneck driving a pickup truck with a confederate flag on the bumper, it doesn't mean that you are NOT an illegal alien. In order to not discriminate, Arizona police should ask for proof of citizenship during ANY "lawful contact". Racial profiling has been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, so if a citizen suspects that he or she has been profiled merely because he or she is brown - then they can take the police to court.

Phoenix Arizona Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski is concerned about possible civil suits that may result over racial profiling. He has said that he will meet with the Phoenix City Council and the Police Chief in order to discuss his proposal to: "ask every person that's pulled over by the city of Phoenix Police Department, or called to their homes, to ask for their citizenship"

So what's the harm in that? If you hate illegal immigrants, it may seem like such a small inconvenience to produce your "proof of citizenship". The comments from people on Twitter, or in the comment sections of news organizations that are reporting on this law seem to indicate that quite a few people are happy to show their citizenship to police upon demand.

This is a fundamentally bad idea, and is an embarrassing comment on the state of civics education in America.

Do you have proof of citizenship with you right now? I'd suggest that most Americans do not.

What qualifies as proof of citizenship? I was married to a legal non-resident alien for 23 years. (She had passed her citizenship test but wasn't sworn in.) As a legal non-resident she had both a driver's license and a Social Security Card. Personally, I no longer have a social security card, and haven't carried one since slightly after I joined the US Air Force in 1984.

A legal non-resident can very quickly become an illegal alien who is still carrying a valid driver's license and Social Security Card. Looking at this on the street, a police officer can't tell a legal from an illegal.

What about a birth certificate? A piece of paper with an official looking seal on it... but it isn't a photo ID. Just looking at one will also not prove citizenship.

As far as I can tell, the only documents that a policeman can examine and reasonably determine that you are a citizen or a legal alien are a passport, a military ID card, and (funny enough) a Permanent Resident Card - also known as a "Green Card".

What does a police officer do when you give him your license and registration? According to the Arizona law, he just follows Section 1373(c) of Title 8 of the United States Code. (PDF link) That law merely states that the INS (now USCIS) shall:

respond to an inquiry by a Federal, State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency for any purpose authorized by law, by providing the requested verification or status information.

And how does he do this? It's simple, he just logs onto the USCIS "E-Verify" website from his patrol car, and makes an inquiry as to whether you can legally work in the United States.

SB1070 also says that it is lawful to detain someone while the verification is in process, and it allows the officer to arrest, "without a warrant" the suspect if that officer has, "probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States." Really? What does that mean if the officer "has probable cause to believe" that a suspect has committed the "public offense" of being in the US illegally? This would seem to be a "catch 22" situation. It would seem to give an officer a free pass to arrest or "detain" anyone on a pretense.

So, what does the USCIS have to say about the E-Verify system? I found the section on "Tentative Nonconfirmations" to be very interesting. Apparently the USCIS system doesn't always work!

E-Verify works by comparing the information employees provide on the Employment Eligibility Verification form (Form I-9) against millions of government records. Generally, if the information matches, the employee receives an "Employment Authorized" response in E-Verify. If the information does not match, the employee is given an opportunity to resolve the problem.

A Tentative Nonconfirmation (TNC) response means that the Social Security Administration (SSA) and/or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could not confirm that the employee's information matches government records. It does not mean an employee is unauthorized to work or is an illegal immigrant as there are legitimate reasons why an employee may receive this result.

Whups! So sorry, you aren't in the "system"! That's too bad. But maybe there's a problem on the E-Verify side. How long will it be until they fix that problem?

For those cases requiring manual review, E-Verify will first return a "DHS Verification in Process" response, and will then usually provide an initial verification result within 24 to 48 hours.

Well, 48 hours doesn't seem too bad does it? But according to the E-Verify manual, if you receive a DHS Tentative Nonverification, the process could drag out. Here's what the manual says: (PDF link to manual)

DHS VERIFICATION IN PROCESS: This response indicates that the non-citizen’s information provided to SSA matches the information contained in SSA records, but did not match DHS’ records. The case is then automatically referred to DHS for further verification. You do not need to take any action at this point. DHS will respond to most of these cases within 24 hours, although some responses may take up to three (3) Federal government workdays. You should check the system daily for a response.

I hope you didn't get pulled over on a Friday night! You might not make it back to work until next Thursday!

But, that's okay, because you are in jail. You can call a lawyer to help you out, and call your wife and employer to let them know where you are... right? Maybe - maybe not. The new Arizona Law seems to have wording that indicates that during this process you are only being "detained", and not actually "arrested". If you were arrested, you'd have the right to a lawyer, and can make a phone call or two. But if you're only being detained you do not have those rights.

There is no mention in this new law about what would happen to your vehicle during this time if you were detained during a routine traffic stop. My guess is that it will be towed and impounded. If so, then you would be told to pay the fees for towing and impounding.

So let's get back to the pickup-truck driving "bubba" in a Peterbilt hat with an "America, Love it or leave it" sticker on the bumper. Even with all I've said here, Bubba might still be in favor of this new Arizona law because he's White, darn it! And not brown like some illegal Mexican! Enforce the law 'cause Bubba won't get pulled over!

Has Bubba given any thought as to how many Hispanics are on his local Arizona police force? A few of these might even be what Fox News commentators lovingly call an "anchor baby". I would think that these people, over everyone else, will make sure that the law is applied fairly to everyone, light or dark skinned.

There is also no provision to allow access to the E-Verify system from an officer's patrol vehicle. What if you're pulled over in Leupp Arizona, population 970 - with a total of SIX white residents? The police there are probably going to be using a dial-up connection to verify your citizenship. I hope they have a fast modem!

I don't know how this law will turn out. I'll bet that it will soon be challenged in court. Meanwhile legislators in Texas are planning on a similar bill - Texas State Republican Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) has said she plans to file a similar bill.

And I have to ask - what logical outcome will be the result if other states (or the Federal Government) implemented similar laws? Even if the USCIS (a bureau of Homeland Security) got its act together and provided instant identification of citizenship, there is still a possibility of a problem if the database crashes, or the police department loses it's data connection. But why should we worry about that? It's not like Homeland Security ever makes mistakes.

Instead of relying on a computer database, what if all American citizens just carry a National ID card? The Real ID Act of 2005 was enacted by Congress to modify Federal Law in order to change your driver's license into a national ID card. That would work just fine for this purpose - a police officer could just examine your compliant driver's license / National ID card, and determine if you are a citizen or not.

I've seen something just like this in South Korea. When traveling by bus near the Demilitarized Zone, we often had to stop at a police checkpoint where a stern faced policeman (backed up by another policeman carrying an M-16) walked up and down the bus isle looking at everyone's national ID. (I showed them my military ID during these stops.)

Hey, it works for them. it should work here too.

Of course, there might be some protest from Christians who are worried about the fulfillment of Revelation 13:16-18.

Ob-La-Di - and all the rest of that...

2010-04-19T17:54:00.001-07:00

Wow, has it been over a month since my last blog entry?

This month has been very healing for me. I'm becoming comfortable in my own home. I'm getting out and doing things for myself. I read, work in my woodshop, and go to work. I'm glad I have CVAAS, but I'm starting to look at becoming active in other groups too.

I'm trying to learn how to juggle my activities now. Now if you invite me somewhere I'm likely to whip out my phone and pencil you into my personal calendar.

Won is still on my mind, but there is very little pain now unless I allow myself to dwell on our life together.

I'm making plans. I should be able to buy the pickup truck I want sometime in September. I'll move out of our apartment after Thanksgiving. (I'll start looking for my new place when I get my truck!)

I still have so much to do. I have so many nick-nacks and stuff that no longer has any value to me that I need to get rid of. It's discouraging. I'm keeping those things that have meaning to me. Many of the pretty items that Won bought had value only to her... the wire peach tree with leaves and fruit made from carved jade is very expensive, but doesn't mean as much to me as the ugly little cup that she made with her own hands in pottery class. The jade tree is up for sale... the cup - no way!

And I've had it hinted to me that maybe I need to go on a date. Perhaps. But not just yet.

The religious cheater

2010-03-14T16:10:00.001-07:00

It was a beautiful day, so I was outside today working in my garage woodshop. I had the door open as I worked on my new workbench.

Outside other people in my apartment complex walked past. I saw a lovely young college student I've seen before, an Islamic girl wearing her Hijab. She was also wearing a black halter top that left her arms and back bare. She walked past my garage on her way to the mail boxes.

"Nice skin" I thought to myself. Really, it seemed flawless. I went back to sanding planks for my workbench.

And then I stopped. Wait a moment, something wasn't right here. Islamic women are supposed to dress "modestly" so that the eyes of men are not drawn to them. This woman wasn't being very modest!

So when she came walking back from the mailbox, I was waiting. As she walked by, I realized she was wearing an almost skin-tight long sleeve top under the halter top. The sleeves of the top came down past her wrists to her hands, but hugged her arms and back. The top was the same color as her cheeks and what I could see of her hands.

A skin-colored top that hugged almost like a leotard, with a halter top worn over it. And of course a Hijab and long pants and shoes. Technically all but her face and fingers were covered. But I had thought for sure that her arms and back were uncovered! I even thought she had nice skin.

It seems to me that she was cheating - following the letter of Islamic religious law, but not the spirit.

Too often, this seems to be the case for many different religious people, willing to follow the letter of religious law, but not the intent. When I point out that the bible clearly indicates that divorced and remarried couples are committing adultery Christians will start explaining why they don't need to follow these particular guidelines. They may even explain that this wasn't the intent of what was said.

When people want to use religion to justify their actions, they have little trouble doing so. "Black and white" rules of morality go out the window when they become inconvenient. And worse, religion is too easily used to justify immoral actions, from removing or restricting basic human rights to outright atrocity.

My life is in transition

2010-03-12T10:16:00.001-08:00

The world around me seems real now. For almost the whole month of February, the world felt as if it were detached, dream-like and stuffed with a particularly flavorless cotton candy.

It is odd. I wake and my first thoughts aren’t about Won – but my second or third thoughts are often about her. I am still not to the point where I can dwell on her without tears, without survivor’s guilt – but it is not crippling now.

I can remember our disagreements, and still feel upset about them, still feel my old positions, righteous when I was right, remorseful when I was wrong. But when I remember our good times together… well, that’s when the tears flow.

The other night I had a dream where I was walking my little dog Tasha outside. In a tree sat a huge golden eagle that eyed Tasha hungrily and then gave a lion’s roar. I scooped up my dog and ran back inside where she was safe. When I woke, I realized there were many things in my life that were important to me, that I wanted to protect – my pets, my family, my friends.

I spent 23 years protecting Won. I taught her to drive, gave her more and more independence as she became integrated into America, graduated college, and finally took and passed (100%!) her citizenship test. I also protected her as she became sick – there were many times we rushed to the ER, and once she took a 200 mile ambulance ride for emergency heart surgery, with me scrambling to arrange for a pet sitter and follow behind her.

Last night I rented the movie “Zombieland” and laughed like a crazy person. It was wonderful! Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenberg reminded me of Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald in “Breakfast Club” – I’m not sure why… perhaps it was just the feel of an ‘80’s movie? Back then it was all about the hair, and now it seems to be about the eyes – Stone’s smoked and sultry eye makeup never seemed to smear or run. And none of the characters were splattered by blood, good thing I guess for a contagious zombie disease.

Stone is cute – and it is distressing for me to realize she was born 5 years after I graduated high school. Funny, I don’t FEEL old.

Won would have hated this movie. She liked “real” horror, like Amityville, or The Omen. She didn’t like the ever increasing dark humor in the whole “zombie apocalypse” genre. Ah well, she liked soap operas, both American and Korean, which I often found boring.

I’m heading to a birthday party on Saturday, CVAAS movie night on Sunday. Tonight I hope to start gluing up my next woodshop project, and hopefully finish it over the weekend.

And Tasha needs to go on a long walk. On Saturday I think I’ll walk her across the street to California State University, Fresno. There aren’t any Golden Eagles there, only squirrels and pushy Scrub Jays.

974-5233

2010-03-08T15:37:00.001-08:00

It's been 65 days since Won died of a heart attack while in South Korea.

For me, the entire month of February was pretty much a wash. I don't recall a lot of it. I would have been completely lost if it weren't for my friends.

But over the last week, I seem to have come to a new stability. I'm still very sad, very emotional. But I can laugh too. Last night I had a lot of fun at Drinking Skeptically. And when I got home, I was happy to see my fur kids again. See a picture here of Tasha? The apartment is really too quiet, but I'm learning to accept that now too. Before I married, I used to enjoy silence - I think I may get to that point again sometime.

Won's phone was turned off yesterday. Her iPhone is now nothing more than an iPod Touch. Her number - 974-5233 - is now inactive for whatever time before AT&T reassigns it to someone new. I tried calling it yesterday night and got a "disconnected" message. I chalk it up to my continuing adjustment that hearing that only made me a little sad.

On Saturday, while the phone was still active, I downloaded her outgoing voice message to my home PC. I listened to it once, and then archived it with the other voice mails from her that I've downloaded. I don't have much of her voice recorded. She hated being recorded, by photo, by video, by voice.

Today has been a good day. I woke up feeling good. It was sunny and cheerful, and I was full of memories of last night. I also got a new toy today... I purchased a new phone for myself - the Motorola Backflip, an Android OS phone. It's nice, but it has some problems. Luckily, being an Android, it won't take me too long to hack away the most annoying of those problems.

Of course this means I still have her iPhone, and my old cell phone. But it also means I don't have to delete her phone number from the contacts on my old phone. I think I'll let it stay there, and keep my old phone somewhere safe, for as long as... well... I dunno. Until it doesn't hurt to let go I guess.

There's real poetry in the real world

2010-02-25T12:15:00.001-08:00

Another new citizen

2010-02-22T08:45:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was Won's swearing in ceremony to become a U. S. Citizen. She was really looking forward to that.

I didn't go. I hung out with friends instead and tried not to think about it.

I also spent part of Saturday at my credit union, telling them that my wife was dead, and that her personal account should be closed, and her name taken off of our joint account. They wanted a death certificate - so I gave them the death certificate from Korea, along with her cremation certificate.

But the death certificate listed her maiden name, not her married name. In Korea, the woman doesn't change her name in marriage, but Won changed her name for me here in America. Since she was only a Permanent Resident with a green card, Won traveled on her Korean passport and still had a National Korean ID card.

The credit union couldn't do anything right away, because the name on the death certificate didn't match the name of the account holder. I was ready for that though... I had our marriage certificate with me, along with a copy of her Korean Passport that said she was married to me. I also had a copy of her green card and her cremation certificate. The credit union copied everything and sent it to their legal department. I should know something in a few days.

I guess since it only took a few minutes to clear the legalities with customs and immigration, that I expected the same to happen at the credit union. They seem more cautious than the Feds.

It was rainy and gloomy yesterday and this morning. It rained off and on all night last night. It fits my mood.

She was so looking forward to being an American, and was eager to vote in her first election.

This week has been a wash

2010-02-19T14:59:00.001-08:00

It's Friday, and I don't know how I feel about that. I guess I'm looking forward to sleeping in. I've made some time to see a few friends over this weekend, I'm looking forward to that. Plus there's Movie Night on Sunday - that will make me happier too.

I've spent the whole week in a trough - I completely lost a day this week. I finally figured out this morning that having President's Day off has thrown me completely out of whack. I was so sure that Thursday was actually Wednesday.

'Grief is no fun' would seem to be an obvious truism. But in the initial weeks after Won's death, I thought I had a kind of strength that allowed me to continue my daily routine. I've since learned, through experience and through counseling, that this was merely a form of shock.

As the barriers of shock crumbled, so did my composure. I literally spent all of Tuesday with tears in my eyes. I went through my projects at work this week automatically, on neutral - with no flair nor interest. I've since regained some of my composure, but even now a thought, a place, an object can bring me back to tears.

Roger Ebert is right, there is no "dignity" in dying. I would add that there is very little dignity in mourning.

Ours was not a fairy tail marriage. We had some really rocky times, and for a while I was sure we wouldn't make it. But I was always there for her. And now she's not there.

This whole town is haunted. I walk into stores where she once touched a door, I step where I know she has stepped in the past. When I drive down the road my eye is caught by the places where we've stopped to eat.

She loved the spring cherry blossoms. The cherry tree outside my office complex is once again in bloom.

I know there will be peaks of joy again in my life - but right now I'm in a trough of the wave, and all I can see around me are walls of water. There are, however, still things that I'm passionate about, still things that can draw me out of myself.

So I know I won't always feel this way.

I've been told I'm stirring the pot

2010-02-12T09:41:00.001-08:00

I've been a bit busy lately.

I woke up last Saturday with a really positive attitude. Although I still have down moments, and was very sad on Wednesday evening, for the most part I've been... I dunno... content? Happy is too strong a word... perhaps "interested" is better.

Like I have been saying, I know I'm going to be okay. Won would have wanted that for me.

So here is what I've been doing. I've been showing up in the news a lot lately as the speaker for the Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics.

If you have recently googled Fresno Prayer and Atheists, you might wind up here. If so, check out the story on the CVAAS website.

I didn't plan on being a spokesperson on this issue. The Freedom from Religion Foundation is the one who delivered the letter on behalf of CVAAS members. We are here to provide legal "standing" if needed.

But I have no fear of speaking in public. So I guess I'm the one.

I'm on Twitter fairly often, you can follow me to the right. You're welcome to even send me a message that way if you wish. I'm afraid my poor blog has taken a major hit to the investigative reporting that I so enjoy doing. But those sorts of reports take time and effort.

Been keeping busy

2010-02-09T17:17:00.001-08:00

I've been busy last weekend.

I've spent the weekend cleaning out my garage woodshop and getting ready to install new shelves, tear apart my benches, and make a new routing table all in an effort to give me the room to install my new lathe.

I've also been slowly going through Won's stuff, and getting ready to sell those things we no longer need. I am figuring out what items hold sentimental value so I can send them to my sister.

And I've jumped back into CVAAS. Sunday we had a great meeting, and I had a wonderful time at Drinking Skeptically. Thanks for the card everyone, I appreciate it.

Over the last month CVAAS brought one of our projects to life - and the fallout from that has kept CVAAS officers busy late into the night last night. Today several news organizations have called us for follow up.

So what's that all about? Well, the Freedom from Religion Foundation has sent a letter of warning to Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin.

So, I've been busy for the last 4 days, very busy. I've been upbeat mostly - keeping busy has certainly helped. i still get melancholy from time to time, and I don't expect this to last... but perhaps the times of light will happen longer, and more often than the times of darkness in my future.

Getting on with getting on.

2010-02-03T19:49:00.001-08:00

It's come to my attention that the world is still turning. Tonight when I left work the sky was still lit from the fading light of day - I can feel Spring coming. And each day is starting to feel a bit more normal.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems so... unfair.

I had to cancel another doctor's appointment for Won. And yesterday I paid for my car insurance. It was cheaper now that Won is no longer on my insurance. We married in 1988, just after I turned 25. My car insurance rates plummeted that year because of my age and marital status. How surreal that she helped my insurance rates by being there, and by not being there.

Thanks go to "Aunty" Liz for suggesting the masseuse. You're right, it helps. Thank you Wendy, and thank you John for bringing me delicious food, and for making sure I ate it. Thank you Jackie & John for going way above and beyond in my time of need. Thanks to my neighbors, co-workers, family and friends for checking in on me, for listening to me. And thank you to all my friends and readers who helped me financially. I start mailing out my thank you's this weekend. It might take a few days for me to get them all out.

I didn't realize I knew so many people. Don't be strangers. You're welcome to visit - just call.

I'm starting to do things now. I had a lot of plates in the air when Won died, and they all came crashing down. And I didn't care. Now, I'm finally feeling like picking a few of those plates back up and starting them spinning again.

At least tonight I feel like it. Who knows how I'll feel tomorrow. I'm reminded of Screwtape's explanation of "human undulation", the peaks and the troughs that we all experience. When on a peak, we have a hard time imagining that we can fall back to a trough again. Some things C.S. Lewis got right, he was pretty smart about humans. And I find the foreshadowing of his own tragedies interesting.

Hmm. I'm also finding it difficult to stay focused....

So, the biggest set of plates that I dropped is with CVAAS. This weekend I'll start picking them up again. I'll be at the CVAAS monthly business meeting this Sunday. If you've been working with me on CVAAS business, now is an appropriate time to send me another email to remind me of a dropped plate.

I'm still bringing order out the chaos of my life, but I can feel that I'm going to be okay.

Update 18 Jan 2010

2010-01-18T10:13:00.001-08:00

Just a quick note to everyone

My wife Won was visiting high school friends in Korea over Christmas / New Years when she suffered a sudden heart attack. She died en route to the Red Cross hospital of Saedamoon district, Seoul Korea. It was fast, and she wasn’t alone.

Won’s health has been difficult all her life, and it became somewhat fragile over the last 5 years. She had her mitral heart valve replaced twice, and her heart was much stronger than it had been in the ‘90’s. However, she had arterial blockage around her heart, and was susceptible to blood clots. Her doctors are unsure of what happened exactly, but we presume a blood clot due to either an interaction between her medications and the traditional Chinese herbal remedies she was taking, or a blood clot due to flying, or possibly a combination of the two. Another factor could have been the weather – the day before she died Korea had a 100-year snowstorm with temperatures in the 3° - 14° F range. Won would have been walking up and down the hills in Seoul in that weather.

Won and I knew that I would outlive her. I just expected to be with her a little longer. We were married 23 years; we’ve known each other for 25 – more than half of my life.

She was cremated in Korea, according to her wishes. I returned with her remains on Thursday, and have spent the weekend sorting through her things at home. I have friends and neighbors who have watched our pets while I was gone, and who make sure I’m okay. Everyone has been wonderful. Our apartment is cleaner than when I left, and there is plenty of prepared food waiting for me. My family has been there for me, and my sister will be staying with me for a week starting Saturday.

I will be up to receiving calls and visitors starting Saturday 23rd. Please do not call before then – I need some time. You can reach me through my Google Voice number at (559) 892-0102. Please call first if you wish to visit. If you have my personal cell phone number you are welcome to call at any time.

I want to thank everyone for the cards, well-wishes, flowers, and offers of assistance. I'm humbled by the generosity and caring that has been expressed toward me by religious and secular family, friends and readers.

Arirang

2010-01-17T21:00:00.001-08:00

아리랑, 아리랑, 아라리요,

아리랑 고개로 넘어간다.

나를 버리고 가시는 님은

십리도 못가서 발병난다.

The Land of the Morning Calm

2010-01-15T09:13:00.001-08:00

I'm back from Korea now. Back to a home full of memories.

I'm doing okay. I have friends here. I have family on the way.

I'll try not to be completely out of communication during this time of transition. Please understand if I'm a bit out of the loop for a while.

Since her death the grief has been strong, but I've also managed to laugh. I've been reviewing 25 years of memories, 23 years of marriage - but I can see a future for myself.

I'm going to be okay.

And you, readers and Pharyngulites, have made it possible for me to be okay financially. The impossible has been made merely difficult. I am honored and humbled by your generosity, and I'll be thanking each of you. Some day, when I'm stronger, when I've healed, I'll tell you about my wife, Won.

But not today.

The grief comes in waves

2010-01-03T14:57:00.001-08:00

This is the worst thing I've ever had to write.

My wife, Won Chong Boyd, has died.

She was in Korea visiting friends. I just got the news early this morning. I've been scrambling to make the arrangements to fly there either tomorrow or on Tuesday. I'm oscillating between numb and grief.

Won was a very private person with lots of medical problems. She did not like me to talk about her online. My deconversion from Christianity shook her faith, and for a time she was deist / agnostic. In the last year, with my support and encouragement, she had returned to the church - a much more liberal, accepting form of Korean church from that she used to attend. And I'm the President of CVAAS. We were okay with that.

She had an artificial heart valve and diabetes. She stayed active, but her health was fragile, something we've learned to live with. She had a heart attack and died en route to the Red Cross hospital in Seoul.

Grief is a very private thing, and normally I would not write about it this quickly. But I want to get the word out to my friends, and I would appreciate the help of my friends and readers.

This was a trip that I had long promised Won that she could make. We stretched financially for this trip. And now I go to take care of her one more time. But bills are due. Such a stupid, mundane thing. I've never asked for charity before, so this is difficult.

If you would like to help, here is a button for you. Thank you in advance.

[REMOVED]

I'm still a private person. If you would like to send cards or letters of sympathy, you can do so to "Mark Boyd, Care Of CVAAS, 438 E. Shaw Ave #221, Fresno, CA 93710-7602". This is a mail drop, please do not send flowers here.

As I said, Won did go to church. If you would like to send flowers you may do so to "Fresno Harmony Korean Church, 4881 E. University ave, Fresno, CA 93703".

Comments here are open. For those of you who are religious, I would be flattered with whatever positive expression you care to make, religious or otherwise. For those of you who are secular, I ask only for your continued support and friendship.

Now my day is all messed up!

2009-11-19T09:23:00.001-08:00

My phone rang

"This is Mark in Engineering, how can I help you?"

A really sexy sounding voice with a French accent responded.

"Hallo? I need you badly. Ze, ah... ah.. thing is... Hallo? Hallo?"

"Hello, I'm here."

"Yes, ah... zat THING has ah... ah... ah...zat thing... you know?" She emphasized "thing" with a sort of horrid fascination, like she'd found a particularly fascinating and disgusting mouse. The weird part was that even incoherent, the sex appeal in her voice was hitting me at a very visceral level. It annoyed me.

"Hallo? Hallo? Are you zere?"

"Yes I'm here." I let my annoyance leak into my voice just a bit. "What can Engineering help you with?"

"Engineering?" Even confused, she still managed to make the word sound exotic, fascinating, and full of soft susurrations. "Engineering? I zon't need Engineering. I need Finance!"

"Well this is Mark in Engineering."

"Ah! Zo, can you ah... ah... throw... ah... you know? To Finance?"

"You mean transfer your call?"

"Yes! Zat is it! Please transfer me," she said in a pleading tone. She pronounced "transfer" with a long 'a' and soft 'z' and 'v' sounds. It was the sexiest word I've heard in years.

"I'll see what I can do." I hit the 'XFER' button on my phone, brusquely cutting off her thanks. I looked up Finance in the online directory and sent the call on.

Why am I writing about it now? Because that darned sexy voice is going to be rattling in my head all morning and ruining my concentration.

Changing the game with Technology

2009-11-09T11:27:00.001-08:00

So I read Cory Doctorow's book, "The Makers". There were some points where I think it could have benefited with some editing, but overall I think it was a good book.

Makers is a story about the effect of disruptive, game changing technology. In the case of Makers the primary example is the three dimensional printer that is able to download a pattern and print it out. Want a new bicycle? Print out the parts and assemble it. Need a new fender for your car? Print it out.

3D printers are not fantasy - they do exist. The RepRap 3D printer is a device that can almost print a copy of itself. That's the goal. No one would purchase one of these printers, they would just have a friend run one off for them. RepRap is working on making a printer that could even print electronic circuits.

My friend Madhu linked to a TechCrunch article from his Facebook page about the beginnings of another disruptive technology. I think this technology is not getting the attention it deserves.

This Techcrunch article by Paul Carr is about the Fort Hood massacre, and it talks about how Army soldier Tearah Moore was inside the hospital where soldiers were being taken for treatment. Mr. Carr rips into Moore for being a "citizen journalist" for her reporting of events via the Twitter social network. He points out that she got much of her information wrong, and then calls her a problem for being part of the "look at me" society.

Mr. Carr seems to be lamenting the loss of professional journalism, and berates those amateurs behind the camera who won't get out of the way, or put down the camera and help. I think that is a discussion worth having, but is not the intent of my post.

I mentioned in response to Madhu that the difference between citizen journalists and professional journalists is the difference between data and information. A person on the spot with a camera and a twitter feed is providing data. This data, like all data, should be considered to be suspect until confirmed. A good news person would know this. A quick twit of "multiple shooters" would be turned into a cautious announcement of, "We have an unconfirmed report that there may be more than one shooter."

There aren't many good news reporters left.

But data is going to increase. The game changing technology is the convergence of micro digital video recorders, cell phones and live Internet streams. These cameras are shrinking to the point where a police officer can confiscate your 35mm camera while completely overlooking your personal digital video recorder. What good is it to force a photographer to delete his photos when they are already online the moment he or she takes them?

CCTV is already pervasive, there are few public urban places where people can go without being recorded by some sort of camera system. These systems are usually owned by businesses or by local governments, and they rarely link together. CCTV is sold to businesses and the public as a means of "security". As one executive in the security industry told me, "We don't build 'alarms' because they don't alarm the bad guys. We build 'security systems' because they make our customers feel more secure".

How much more secure would it make an average person feel than to wear a real-time video transmitter all the time?

At some point the technology is going to be so pervasive, and so discreet, that it will be unthinkable to prevent citizens from using it in public areas. It will become difficult, if not impossible to prevent the use of this technology even in a secure area. Places that don't allow cell phones often allow personal music players. What if your discreet iPod had a camera built into it? What if your camera system was smaller, and designed to blend in?

What will we do when all this video becomes available through live feeds on the Internet? The problem will cease to be shoddy citizen journalism. The problem will be in sifting through all this data and turning it into information. Those people and companies that learn how to do this well will become our news media. Those people who can turn mountains of raw video and audio into brief, informative text and video reports will become the "Walter Cronkites" of this next age of information.

And this pervasive technology will definitely change the game. Police got the message from Rodney King and routinely harass those people who video or photograph their actions. How will they act if they are unable to tell if someone is recording them? Most stores, like Walmart, don't bother to stuff cameras behind each camera bubble in the ceiling because the bubble itself is a deterrent. In the same vein, every bystander will become a deterrent to poor police procedure because it will be impossible to know if someone is carrying one of these cameras without performing a thorough search.

The new technology of video analytics is a way of analyzing video to determine behavior or attitude. If we applied this to a personal video stream, it could be possible for the system to sound an alarm when something goes wrong. Being held up at gunpoint, having an airbag deploy, or even varying your routine in a drastic manner may make your own personal "OnStar" system perk up and ask you if everything is okay. If you've ever been mugged before, this could be a very attractive technology. It would certainly change the game for criminals.

What does this all mean? What will come of it? I dunno. No one did a good job of predicting the consequences of personal computers or of the Internet. Some industries and governments have tried, and failed to predict the consequences of technology, with often humorous results. (For example, the Movie and Music industry successfully lobbied to cripple Digital Audio Tape recorders in America, and completely missed the importance of CD-ROM. They've been trying to catch up since then.)

Cory Doctorow's other book, "Little Brother" talks about pervasive information gathering of government and private businesses, and how the citizen can fight back using technology. It's a good book, but I don't think he took it far enough. When web-connected personal video cameras become ubiquitous the change will be massive.

If the Boy Scouts law was completely upfront...

2009-11-01T10:04:00.001-08:00

I had a reminder of the Boy Scouts again today. It made me wonder what the Oath, the Scout Law, and what their Vision Statement would look like if they stated the practices of their private club more explicitly...

Something like this?

The War on America

2009-10-12T08:02:00.001-07:00

In the book, "James Dobson's War on America" Dobson associate Gil Alexander-Moegerle wrote about how Dobson discovered that direct mailings requesting donations to Focus on the Family worked better when they warned about some sort of ominous threat to Christianity.

Apparently apathy can be overcome when people feel threatened.

But Dobson also discovered that there were diminishing returns. In other words, if a warning is successful in getting a donation then a second warning was less successful. The returns for any given warning diminish as people realized that the grim foreboding hasn't come true. In order to prevent the requested donations from drying up Dobson had to discover - or make up - another threat to warn people about. Like Heroin, people developed a tolerance to the warnings. To get the same effect you have to up the dosage over time.

I believe that scaring people with warnings about danger is somewhat like a cross between "Crying Wolf" and drug dependency.

The AP has an article today about how politicians and their supporters lie, and how their lies are supported by the Internet. The Internet has allowed the public to become more involved in politics than ever before, but it has also allowed people to be extremely uncivil.

Birthers, Tea-baggers, Freepers, Rush Limbaugh and writers at World Net Daily (I'm looking at YOU Chuck Norris!) are an excellent example of the soaring tirade against the current administration. These people don't just rail against the things that Obama is doing, but also against things that aren't true. Obama is supposedly a secret Muslim Socialist who is in America illegally to kill off old people through health care reform.

If you were reading this for the first time, you'd think I'm making this up.

These people are addicted to hate, and have such a high tolerance that they've had to up their dosage of fear and loathing to ludicrous levels. Whole news networks have become dealers in this crack, and sit on the corner of Fox and Talk Radio offering passers-by a 'free taste'. And when a well-mannered, civil person appears on their show and speaks sense they get yelled at.

This. Is. Insane.

Look, I don't have a problem with calling someone out when they are in the wrong, but when you make stuff up to be upset over then you're hurting real people who you convince to believe you. You're welcome to believe in Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, you're welcome to believe that Obama should be deported as an illegal alien, you're welcome to believe that Bush destroyed the World Trade Center. You are allowed your own beliefs.

But you're not allowed your own so-called "facts".

This vicious cycle of ever-increasing warnings has by necessity gone from warnings about truth to warnings about things that are made up because the people addicted need more despite to feel the same level of outrage.

Unless we get some perspective on this, things won't end well.

High-falutin' Internet stalker!

2009-10-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

Some guys get kooky stalkers on the Internet. I am a cut above the regular style stalker - mine is a ~~PhD~~ J.D. and a (community) college (part time) professor! He's also a Tampa Bay Florida public defender.

My! Impressive huh?

Anyway, ~~Dr.~~ Mr. Ellis Rexwood Curry IV (FBN: 475327) is a radical Libertarian who took a dislike to me over my blog posting for the Pledge of Allegiance. My initial research on him turned up very little, but that seems to be because the servers for his community college and the Florida Bar were down. I later confirmed that he was who he says - which makes him even weirder than I originally thought. I mentioned him a second time, and then forgot about him.

He just wasn't that interesting or important for me to spend any time on.

Anyway, he's on Usenet / Google Groups now, and for some reason he's boasting about besting me on the Internets. In the third person.

I've been reading about ~~Dr.~~ Mr. Curry - I originally thought he might be a tenured professor, but according to his community college he's merely an adjunct instructor. His fellow teachers get ratings from "Rate My Professor", but no student has bothered to rate him. ~~Maybe he's forgettable, or maybe he merely has a titular position.~~ Because he teaches via "Distance Learning" - in other words, online. His classes are "Courtroom presentation / Scientific evidence" (in other words, how to look, dress, and act in a courtroom and how to present your evidence.) He also teaches an overview class on civil rights & liability.

Rex has been banned from Wikipedia, laughed at by the Tampa Tribune, writes in the third person, and is a founding member of the Republican Liberty Caucus, an interesting group who (among other things) wants to do away with the Department of Education and close public schools in favor of private schools.

Wait, he attended Hillsborough Community College and the University of South Florida, got his ~~doctorate~~ J.D. at Florida State, and he works at Hillsborough Community College? And all of these are public schools? Well, I guess he's pragmatic enough to set aside his principles to reach his goals.

Anyway, as the old joke goes, just because someone is crazy doesn't mean that they are wrong. So he's finally got my interest, and I think I'll take some time to read how he supposedly exposed the terrible socialist conspiracy that is demonstrated by our quasi-Nazi salute of the flag. I actually kind of dread this because his website looks like it was designed by the Time Cube guy. But who knows? Maybe he'll convince me.

By the way, ~~Dr.~~ Mr. Curry, when you write something as stupidly, provably false as, "A public apology has been posted from the Calludus kook to the historian Dr. Rex Curry", this is known as libel. It's a legal term. You might want to look it up.

I've been finding this very amusing. I thought you'd be amused too.

---------------------------
Update 7 Oct 09

heh. I got a whole page dedicated to me on Mr. Curry's website!

Dude, don't you proofread your own material? Don't you edit? Pick up a copy of, "The Elements of Style" and use it! You're a teacher, act like one!

BTW, saying that you've "written volumes on the topic" is meaningless if what you've written is merely a cut and paste of yourself, scattered over the Internet like the droppings of an incontinent pigeon. You want to be taken seriously? Publish.

--------------------------
Update 19 Jan 2011

Wow, it is so hard to hide crazy, isn't it? Rexwood has been making so many crazy noises that Tom Cruse is asking him to "cool it"!

It turns out that Ellis has been feudin' with his neighbor. Apparently Mr. Curry hates dogs that bark. So what did he do about it? Most people would just call the police and let them handle it. But not Rexie! No way! Instead he investigated his neighbor's past, and used his position as a lawyer to get the neighbor canned, and attacked by the Florida Bar!

And if THAT wasn't crazy enough, Mr. Curry took it upon himself to post the findings of his investigation on large posters in his yard, and combined that with obnoxious noises in retaliation for the barking dog - noises like leaving the leafblower running for hours at a time!

But that STILL doesn't touch the top of Rexwood's craziness. No - he then shot the neighbor's dog!

Wow. I would have to say I'm surprised. I didn't think he could get any kookier than talking about himself in the third person all over the Internet, implying that he holds a doctorate in history, and blaming the Pledge of Allegiance for socialism in America.

But he outdid himself here.

--------------
Update 14 February 2011

I'm just taking a moment here to recommend the book, "To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance" written by Richard J. Ellis.

On the website "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets" by Ellis Rexwood Curry IV, Curry says that

The USA's Pledge of Allegiance (& the military salute) was the origin of Adolf Hitler's "Nazi" salute under the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis).

This turns out to be incorrect. The original pledge salute started with the speakers hand at his side, and during the pledge, when the speaker says "my flag", the hand is extended PALM UP toward the flag.

This wasn't done for some sort of Socialist ulterior motive. This was done as a form of theater, a grand gesture to highlight the flag in question. The problem is that the practice was new, and some people screwed it up. Children often got it wrong too.

And the whole thing became moot when Hitler came into power and we changed the flag salute to holding our hand over our hearts.

All of Curry's "Frightening Photographs" on his page show the various ways that different groups screwed up the original pledge. It wasn't as if they had a website to check, and it wasn't as if they actually agreed with each other on how to hold their right hand during the pledge. Some people even held their hands palm down, across their chest.

Rex never explains why this leads us into Socialism or a Police State.

Here is the takeaway. Symbols are what WE make of them when WE use them, right now. The Swastika has been in use by Asia and by American Indians long before the Nazis arrived on the scene. I've seen the Nazi swastika engraved in the butt of a Winchester rifle used by Comanche Native Americans in the 1800s. Yes, Nazi-style, NOT reversed. Maybe this particular Comanche got it wrong? Just like a kid who gave a Hitler salute instead of a Bellamy Flag Salute. Who knows?

Mr. Curry has it wrong. The pledge is not leading us into Socialism. It's merely a symbol. A symbol that has God in it, but a symbol nonetheless.

And Mr. Curry, I'm waiting for you to apologize for your libel about me.

---------------------
More posts about the Pledge and Ellis Rexwood Curry IV.

The Villiage Idiots - move past them.

2009-09-17T23:57:00.000-07:00

Some Christians I really agree with. This Christian gentleman had me saying, "AMEN!"

Creationism capsulated in a comic

2009-09-13T00:43:00.001-07:00

Bill Holbrook is a prolific artist of online and print comics. He draws three different strips that I know of. "Safe Havens", "On the Fastrack", and the one shown here, "Kevin & Kell".

In the Kevin & Kell comic universe, every animal, plant, and bug is sentient and self-aware. And yet, there is still a food chain. This can be problematic if you are the sentient being at the bottom of the food chain.

Every now and then, Holbrook comments, through his comics, about things happening in the real world. The comic shown was a dig at talk radio - but it works just as well for those who deny reality.

As Philip K. Dick once said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

If you like webcomics, you might enjoy Kevin & Kell. You can see the full cartoon shown here by clicking on this link.

Blogger's "Scientific" "Rational Proof" of God comes up short... way short.

2009-09-12T17:33:00.001-07:00

Some guy named Anders Branderuds wandered into the comments of my blog, and tried to slap me with an "Ultimate Proof" that atheism is a logically untenable position.

I found the following two articles on his blog:

Challenge to the atheist: Explain the existence of anything at all without a Prime Cause

Proof of the existence of an Intelligent and Perfect Creator

The first article was written and copyrighted by Paqid Yirmeyahu Ben Dawid. I'll assume that Anders is reprinting with permission. The second article seems to be written by Anders, and is basically a crib of Ben Dawid, with a kind of Jewish take on "Mere Christianity" mixed into the argument. Both articles purport to be based on logic and science, and both articles are supposed to be irrefutable.

The first argument has this logical argument:

1. Assume: There is no Prime Cause
2. There is nothing physical that exists without a cause
3. Therefore, nothing physical can exist
4. However, we see, and can touch, all manner of physical things around us that exist
5. Conclusion: There IS a Prime Cause
6. Q.E.D.

The second argument is based upon this assumption:

It is a fundamental law of physics (causality) that every physical occurrence in the universe has a cause.
The fundamental laws of physics then require a cause of the universe ex nihilo (since timespace has a beginning); i.e., a Prime Cause Singularity that is non-dimensional and independent of timespace.

There's a problem here. Most well-read atheists and scientists can already spot it. But Ben Dawid tries to head you off at the pass in the first argument by stating:

There may be some (..) who argues that #2 isn't necessarily true because things may exist and we simply cannot explain how. (...) This person has gone from pseudo-scientific cultism (banning pertinent information) to logical fallacy: argumentum ad ignorantiam – claiming that ignorance/silence supports their position, thereby avoiding the burden of proof of demonstrating the logical validity of their position. If something can exist with no Prime Cause then they must explain how; the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate how or they're just assuming another ladder. Until they explain how, and no legitimate scientist even entertains that suggestion, their cultist argument is logically invalid by argumentum ad ignorantiam.

(The ellipsis are in the text I quoted from Anders blog site. I haven't looked up the original text, so I'm not sure what is missing)

It's true. We don't know what came before the Big Bang. A rational person would leave it at that, and merely say, "We don't know." Only in religion does anyone claim to know. And that claim is inherently unprovable. Ben Dawid attempts to shift the "burden of proof" to those who say, "we don't know", and thereby do a little jig that automatically assumes a creator.

But there is something that we DO know, with a great deal of certainty. A certainty so great, that we use its physical properties every day as part of our basic technology.

We know that sometimes things happen without a cause.

What, you want proof? Evidence? Sure. A fairly easy bit of evidence to understand is the process of radioactive decay.

When a material has an unstable atomic nucleus it will spontaneously lose energy by emitting particles and radiation. The rate of "decay" of material is well understood and predictable. The term "half-life" is used to describe the rate of exponential decay of the material. (As an aside, "half-life" as applied to exponential decay works exactly like Zeno's Paradox. After the first time period, half of the material has decayed. After the second time period, half of the remaining material has decayed, and so on and so one. In theory, the arrow will never reach it's target, but in practice, it always does.)

So here's the kicker, although we know that there is a precise rate of decay, what we do NOT know is exactly WHICH given atom will decay next. Each atom decays spontaneously. This is called a "Stochastic process", meaning that it has a completely random, and completely unpredictable function to it. Better yet, it is proven that it is impossible to figure out when a given atom will decay next. We might try to study an atom's state, in order to find out when it will decay - but Heisenberg's uncertainty principle prevents us.

The "when" of an atom's decay is uncaused.

Another example is "Brownian Motion", where particles suspended in a fluid move randomly. (Note, all gasses, such as air, are fluids.) Although the general amount of motion can be related to the heat of the material, the vector of any particular particle cannot be predicted.

Now that I've shown that actions can happen uncaused, let's talk about how a "physical occurrence in the universe" can happen without a cause. (I'll assume he means the creation of matter and energy.)

Albert Einstein did a lot of great things for physics. His General and Special theories of Relativity took Newton's original physics, and expanded on them to explain effects in the universe that we had yet to observe. One of the first tests of his theories involved solving the Kepler problem of the orbit of Mercury.

But Einstein had one last spectacular failure. He had a hard time accepting the evidence of Quantum Mechanics.

Einstein believed, just as Anders Branderuds does, that everything in the universe has a cause. During his life, physicists Heisenberg and Bohr were working on quantum theory and came up with the idea that the quantum world was based upon probabilities, which could be modeled by mathematical wave functions. These "waves" of probability seemed to collapse when they interacted with classical physics. The nature of a quantum particle is that it is both wave and particle. (See the double-slit experiment for proof).

This duel nature of quantum particles blew Einstein's mind. He argued with Bohr for years on the subject, and Einstein's thought experiments were proven wrong by real experiments. Einstein never changed his mind on this, finally stating that he remained convinced that God does not play dice (with the universe).

He was wrong. As Stephen Hawking has quipped, "God not only plays dice. He sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen." Meaning that not only are quantum events random, but their cause is inherently unknowable.

So how does something come from nothing? Let's look at "Quantum Foam" At the smallest distances possible in the Universe, we can tell that the fabric of the universe is based upon quantum turbulence. At this scale, "virtual particles" form and annihilate each other constantly. Just like radioactive decay or Brownian motion, these virtual particles are uncaused.

A virtual particle and virtual antiparticle form at the same time, exist for a period, and then recombine to annihilate each other. This turns out to be a "zero sum game" that follows the rules of the conservation of energy.

Steven Hawking used quantum virtual particles to explain how black holes can (over a great deal of time) evaporate. As pairs of virtual particles form around the event horizon of a black hole, one particle of the pair may fall into the black hole. The particle that falls in always has negative energy, and the particle that escapes always has positive energy. The black hole loses a little bit of mass, and the now free particle ceases to be virtual, and instead becomes real as it travels away from the black hole as a form of radiation. The whole process is described as Hawking Radiation.

So what does this mean in regards to the Big Bang, and how we get something from nothing.

First things first - we don't know what came before the Big Bang. It may be that it is impossible to know what came before. That doesn't mean that you automatically get to stick a God into the equation at that point.

There is also a lot of guesswork going on about the physics of our universe, and how that might relate to the possible existence of other universes. One of my personal favorite guesses is by the physicist Andrei Linde, who describes something called the Chaotic Inflation theory.

In this theory, quantum foam may produce virtual particles and antiparticles that don't get back together and annihilate each other. Instead, there is a non-zero probability that the process will generate a form of positive feedback that allows it to continue happening. Left unchecked, positive feedback increases very quickly. This would generate a very rapid inflation, a "big bang" that in turn creates a bubble universe. According to this theory, the universe would continue to expand, and would eventually expand to the point where it started to decay. As the universe decays, the particles again interact with their antiparticles, returning back to their zero state, and energy is conserved.

Is this true? Who knows? Physicists don't know, and it is for certain that religious people don't know. As I said above, Ben Dawid desperately tries to hand wave this away by calling it an argumentum ad ignorantiam. But we are NOT arguing from a point of ignorance.

Peter Wall has restated this whole mess in a much easier to follow statement. "(T)he 'Cosmological Argument' says only (that) 'physics does not rule out God'; it does not say 'physics proves God.'" But physics has no problem with uncaused events, and physics is fine with something coming from nothing as long as energy is conserved, if only for a little while.

And perhaps for us, that "little while" might equal the age of the universe.

So physics isn't clueless about possible ways that the universe might have started. Indeed, there seems to be many different ways that the universe could have started by following the laws of physics as we currently understand them. We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to possibly jump-starting universes. It will be interesting when we get to the point where we can start testing different theories. Perhaps in testing these theories, we may end up creating universes. Who knows?

Religion, on the other hand, has no theories of how the universe came to be other than, "God did it." And worse, competing religions blame mutually exclusive gods for our universe's existence.

The burden is not on science to disprove God, science merely needs to say, "I don't know" and then stop. The burden instead rests on religion to not only explain how they are sure a God put things into motion, but to also explain why it is their particular god that did so.

Finally, Anders Branderuds has a very specific problem. His proofs of God all point to his particular god, the God of Judaism, not of Christianity. I'm sure my Christian friends would be happy to tell Anders how wrong his is, and how he would learn the "Good News" if he only... well, the list of "onlys" is endless.

To wrap this up, let me explain that what I know of physics comes from the undergraduate courses I took while preparing for my BSEE. I do not have postgraduate education in physics, and so of course my simplified explanation may have inaccuracies. I may be wrong. I'll happily correct my errors if they are pointed out and explained to me by someone qualified in physics. Kent Hovind, Ray Comfort, and Ken Ham obviously don't qualify, so please don't use their arguments as refutation.

8 years. We Remember.

2009-09-11T09:14:00.001-07:00

I didn't even go to the 9/11 observance at the California Memorial in Clovis this year.

As I've said before, I don't mourn well with others.

Once again I'm saddened by the evidence of the inhumanity that is possible through fanatical actions. This irrational enthusiasm for an idea, a cause, and yes, a religion, has in my opinion been the driving force behind most of the conflict in the world.

Rational people don't act in this manner.

These weren't stupid people, and as Richard Dawkins pointed out they were not cowards.

In Professor Dawkins's words:

... if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?

There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and its guidance system is in many respects superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organisation, or priesthood, it is very very cheap.

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.

It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.

Last year, I felt sad and lost at the memorial, I left to grieve on my own.

This year I feel not just sad, but incredibly angry. Angry at fanaticism in particular, and at religion in general for creating an environment where this can happen, then using it. Islam is only the latest religion to use its followers as tools of destruction, Christianity has a similar history.

In my grief, I feel like striking out against those who support religion. This is, however, irrational. Fanaticism must shoulder the greater blame, and fanatics come in all religious affiliations, including those with no religion.

Rational thought must prevail. Rational thinking goes hand-in-hand with skepticism, and I'm glad to see that both are so often part of the culture that makes up Positive Atheism, Secular Humanism, Brights, and other modern secular philosophies.

Create a Secular Tour Guide for the Creation Museum

2009-07-28T13:16:00.001-07:00

I'd like to make a suggestion for Dr. PZ. Myers and the Secular Student Alliance on their upcoming trip to the Creation Museum.

I've mentioned once before in the Pharyngula blog that I would like to see some qualified scientists explaining the exhibits at the Creation museum. Unfortunately, that post seems to be beyond my Google-Fu, so I'll try to recreate my idea here for future reference.

My suggestion:

There will be over 240 secular people going on the August 7th trip to the Creation Museum. Undoubtedly, several of these people will be well-qualified in biology, paleontology, and geology.

This is an unbelievably perfect opportunity to do the fieldwork necessary to create an audio "walking tour" of the museum for future secular visitors. Many museums have these sorts of audio tours, where the listener is guided step by step through the museum and told about the next exhibit.

From this trip, it should be possible to make a well documented guide that corresponds to a map of the museum. At each display, each sign, the announcer can explain why (or not) an exhibit is wrong, and how we know it is wrong. Perhaps an expert could be interviewed to explain the reasoning. Perhaps the explanation of each exhibit could be the voice of a different expert that attended this trip.

Once compiled, and added to a map of the museum, the MP3 would be made available for download to anyone who planned a future Creation Museum trip. A future secular visitor could accompany religious family on the trip, listen to real science, and still enjoy him or herself while friends and family praise the Lord.

Better still, such a person would have the ammunition to counter a religious argument.

But then what?

When the secular audio tour of the Creation Museum is widely used, the Museum will be forced to counter the facts with more religious sophistry. Perhaps they'll change the explanations, or add more. Maybe they'll try to add evidence? (I'd love to see the evidence for Creationism. I'm still waiting.) In any case, this will be an excellent chance for the audio guide to be updated to include new material.

It would be fun.

Best of all, there are hundreds of people who wish they too could attend this event, but who (like me) are unable to travel across the country to attend. With a map, some photos, and the tour guide, it could be like we were there!

C'mon PZ, make the suggestion. Maybe someone will step up. I'd be happy to provide what little skills I have with Audacity to help out.

About this blog

2009-06-11T17:23:00.001-07:00

So, all two of my readers are probably wondering where I've disappeared. In a nutshell, I'm not currently blogging for two very good reasons. 1) The economy and 2) CVAAS.

I mention the economy first because the company I work for is going through a lean period, and tightening belts. In order to increase sales, new product has to be designed. So while our manufacturing is down, we are working very hard on inventing new things to allow our product line to compete with others in the marketplace.

Manufacturing gets mandatory vacation days (furlough) while Engineering busts hump 60-70 hours a week to invent the next 'gotta have' product in our industry.

This might change soon, for at least a little while. Now Engineering is (mostly) caught up (well, the hardware guys at least. Software is still busting hump). So now my company has invited me to use up two weeks of my vacation time over the summer. I'm thinking, just to make my life seem luxurious, I could take off two days a week for a month. That would be nice. A whole month of 4-day weekends. (5-day weekend if I do it over July 4th)

Anyway, I'm not completely offline. You can still catch me on Twitter, or on Facebook, or on CVAAS.

The Uncanny Bobby Jindal

2009-02-27T09:04:00.001-08:00

I watched the Republican response to Obama's speech the other day. I was impressed with how they expressed, "We know we sold you a lemon before, but you can trust us to sell you a reliable used car THIS time!"

But I was also impressed by Bobby Jindal's almost-but-not-quite lifelike resemblance. In fact, I think there's a graph of this somewhere... Oh, right:

(Learn more about the Uncanny Valley)

Silencing Christians

2009-02-12T10:45:00.001-08:00

Pam's House Blend reported on the launching of the new AFA website called, "Silencing Christians". Apparently it's run by Don Wildmon's son Tim, who's following in his father's footsteps.

From Pam's website:

The premise is that Christians are under assault by homosexualists, enabled by state and local governments and schools, to force them to accept LGBTs as -- gasp -- human beings deserving of civil rights! They are careful to mention "former homosexuals" and those struggling with "unwanted same-sex attraction" in order to soothe and absolve the target audience of "Christians" that their motivations are rooted in compassion, not bigotry.

Don Wildmon got this thing rolling back in February 2008 when he announced a 13 week half-hour television series called "Speechless... Silencing Christians" on the Inspiration cable network INSP. (Not available from any cable provider in my area.) After its run, he made it available as a streaming video online.

When he first announced this project, Wildmon had this to say:

For years, I have had a dream that AFA would find a way to produce and distribute TV programs addressing major moral issues, programs that explain how great the anti-Christian bias is in our society and that give viewers ways to respond.

On the "Silencing Christians" website, there is a survey. The survey asks thirteen questions, and gives "Yes, No, Maybe" multiple choice answers. However it would be better to answer these questions essay style.

For a site that is supposed to expose bias, these questions reveal a surprising amount of bias! I'll answer these questions here:

Do you believe the Bible condemns homosexuality as sin?

Yes. Both in the New Testament and Old Testament. Jesus also condemns all women who divorce their husbands (for any offense) as adulterers. And Paul says Christians shouldn't sue each other in front of a secular judge. Perhaps we shouldn't be getting moral advice from a bunch of stories about amateur philosophers who lived a couple of thousand years ago?

Can homosexuals change their sexual orientation?

No one really knows for sure, but in many cases the answer seems to be "no".

Should homosexuals be allowed to adopt children?

Yes.

Should homosexuals be given the same special rights extended to African-Americans and other minorities?

What "special rights" have been given to blacks? The right to not be treated as chattel? The right to be treated equally? The right to an interracial marriage? The right to the same rights as other American citizens? The language you use here exposes more than a little racism.

Should hate crimes legislation be passed that would call for more severe penalties for crimes against homosexuals?

No. Hate crime legislation should be passed that gives equally severe penalties for a hate crime. In some states the penalty for a hate crime against a gay person is less than for a similar crime against an ethnic or religious minority. How is that fair?

Do you believe that churches and religious organizations should be forced to hire homosexuals?

No. They are private organizations. Just like the Boy Scouts. They should be allowed to ban anyone they want from their clubs. However, if they do so they should be denied government funding of any sort so that the State may remain neutral toward religion. If the State gives money to a group who bans some of the State's citizens, then endorsement of this practice is implied. How could citizens be equal in these conditions?

Would you support a boycott of a major U.S. corporation that contributes money to support homosexual activist organizations?

No. And judging from your results, neither should you. That boycott against Disney really brought them to their knees didn't it?

Should judges be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court who support extending special rights to homosexuals?

No. Judges should be appointed who support equal rights to all citizens, and who uphold the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Special rights - such as the special right that some non-profit organizations must pay taxes while others don't, should be closely examined for fairness.

Should employers be forced to extend special consideration in the hiring of homosexuals?

No. Employers should be forced to treat employees and potential employees equally in compliance with basic human rights and the rights that any American citizen has. In other words, no glass ceilings, no quid pro quo, no hiring minorities just because you need a "token", no firing employees because they refuse to believe in E-meters and Thetans, and no shuffling resumes to the bottom of the pile just because someone seems effeminate or butch.

Is the secular media demonstrating a bias in favor of the homosexual agenda?

I don't know. Which secular media do you mean? Fox News? Is the secular media less biased about the "homosexual agenda" than the religious media? I don't think so.

Do you support amending the U.S. Constitution to limit marriage to a union between one man and one woman?

Should children in public schools be taught homosexuality is normal, acceptable, and equal to the traditional marriage of a man and a woman?

It depends on the age of the children. Should we teach drivers education to kindergarteners? Or maybe have woodshop for first graders? Sex education is important, and some subjects are important enough to be taught before puberty, while other subjects can wait for later. By the time puberty happens, some kids are going to realize they are not like their friends. They shouldn't have to feel like outcasts because of this - so it would be immoral to allow kids to think that it is right to treat homosexuals differently, unequally.

Do you agree that Christians should be arrested for speaking against homosexuality in public places?

No. I will gladly, vehemently defend a Christian's right to say whatever he feels is appropriate in a public place, as long as he or she doesn't break any law in doing so. (No yelling "Fire" in the theater.) However, I've noticed that preaching hate only gets a certain class of people to join your congregation. Is that who you really want as your membership?

Steorn introduces salable product. Still no "Free Energy"

2009-02-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

I just received a press release from Steorn. You might remember this company from my previous blog posts.

To summarize, Steorn dramatically advertised that they would demonstrate a mechanical "over unity" or perpetual motion machine back in July of 2007. Steorn announced that they would demonstrate this machine at the Kinetica Museum in London England, but the demonstration failed when it experienced "technical difficulties" due to the machine having an unforeseen sensitivity to light which caused it to fail. That was the last we heard about a public demonstration of their equipment.

Personally, I think their machine had an allergy to skeptical observation - but perhaps I'm too cynical? Seriously, I thought they were hyping impossible vaporware in order to attract gullible investors. I believed that they had no intention of creating any sort of real product.

Well, I was wrong, and I'm not afraid to admit it!

The press release from Steorn today has announced the foundation of a new laboratory. But better yet, it announced the availability of test equipment designed to support those "organisations developing rotary and magnetic systems." Here are Steorn's first two products in this lineup:

A Hall-effect based sensor to measure the amount of magnetism of an object.
A torque sensor - designed to measure the magnetic force component of torque.

These products seem to be geared for inventors who are experimenting with over-unity systems. These could be anyone from garage inventors to small firms.

On the Steonlab website, the products look sleek and beautiful. They are easily of Tektronix quality in visual appeal. They also come with software packages that create reams of data and graphs automatically.

You have to be a specially accepted member of the Steorn website before you are allowed to view product pricing, so I don't know how much this equipment costs. However, I read the Steornlabs legal Terms and Conditions with interest:

Every order placed via our Website will be subject to acceptance by Steorn. We reserve the right to decline any order without providing a reason for doing so, regardless of whether payment has been received by us. Should we decline an order where payment has been received, the payment will be refunded in full.

Wow, that's not creepy or paranoid at all is it? You don't see Tektronix doing something as silly as this.

I think Steorn has found a way to make a product that they can actually sell, without coming out and admitting that perpetual motion or energy machines don't actually work. I think that their product will be geared to those individuals who fervently believe in "over unity", but who don't have the foundational knowledge to realize that they can duplicate these sensors in their own labs using off-the-shelf parts. (Hint - buy a Hall Effect sensor, and hook it up to a Tektronix digital storage oscilloscope. Learn to use the basic skills you would learn in a freshman Physics lab to subtract environmental forces from the forces you intend to measure. Learn to use Excel to make your own graphs.)

If you don't have the training or ability of a competent electronics technician, I guess the Steorn equipment would be pretty valuable to you.

In this press release, Steorn also mentions the release of "ZeroF passive magnetic bearings" due out sometime this summer. But I'm not sure what that could be. The name seems to suggest that these bearings will be free of magnetic flux, which would be useful if your perpetual motion machine is allergic to unforeseen electromagnetic energy. (Light, for example.)

Steorn also announced that it's over unity machine, the "Orbo" is due out by the end of this year. Finally! I can't wait to get one. I plan on feeding the output energy from my Orbo into the input and create my own mult-megaton explosion!

But I guess I'll have to do that in a dark room.

Civil unions & marriage

2009-01-21T11:17:00.001-08:00

My sister and I watched the inauguration, and wondering about the changes to the White House website - there are a lot of promises made to the LGBT community there.

I think that maybe sis is more pessimistic than I am - and why wouldn't she be? The law affects her and her partner directly.

What I'd like to see are sweeping changes made to marriage and civil unions. I spoke of it in a letter to my sister, and realized it would make a good blog post too. So here it is - my thoughts on what I'd like to see happen to marriage:

Honestly, I'd like to see marriage completely re-vamped in America. (And around the world)

I'd like to see the State take care of civil unions only, and these civil unions will have all the benefits, laws and regulations applied as are currently bestowed upon what we call marriage.

I would like religions to only deal with marriage, but a religious marriage will have ONLY theological benefits. Any religion would be able to marry a couple, but if said couple wanted to file (taxes) jointly with the Federal Gov't, they'd also have to get a civil union. And if the couple wanted a civil union and not bother with the marriage - well, that would be fine too. Let the various religions say that they are "living in sin" - it won't bother me a bit.

Actually, I'm somewhat bemused that even now a marriage performed in one religion is automatically recognized by another religion. Different religions have different requirements and ceremonies, why should one honor the ceremony of another? Why should Catholics be forced to recognize a Pagan marriage ceremony simply because it's recognized by the State?

Maybe the various religions will work out various organizations under which a religious marriage is recognized by other religions - in a manner similar to that in which colleges are accredited. "Your marriage is recognized by the Southern Baptist Convention, but not by the Alliance of Catholics and Episcopalians!" This would make sense to me because some congregations do grudgingly allow that other religions might also be "right". And for those in the "one TRUE religion", well they can with the flourish of a pen declare the rest of the world a buncha bastards. I'm sure the feeling would be mutual.

I would find it interesting that new converts to a religion would need to be re-married along with their baptism. It should be that way anyway - why should a Baptist church be forced to recognize the theological legality of a wedding performed by the Church of Satan merely because the ex-Satanist couple decided to convert?

If Obama creates something that has all the benefits and laws of traditional marriage - including inheritance and Federal taxes - but he instead calls it a "Civil Union" and makes it available to everyone... well! That's fine by me. I'd love to see it. And if an Atheist or LGBT couple wants to get "married", they could even go so far as to form their own church in which to do so - with the additional benefit that they could next declare the rest of the world to be "bastards".

I think that if a marriage is "religious" then it should only have religious benefits. The State has no business granting any sort of religious benefits and should stay out of religious contracts. Just as religion has no business in forcing the state to recognize religious contracts - including marriage.

Obama's Inaugural Address

2009-01-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many.

They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Goodbye Dubya... give 'em Hell, Obama.

2009-01-20T00:05:00.001-08:00

My Conservative friends say that progressives will be giving Obama a free pass. I'm not sure that's true. Progressives seem to be generating a lot of criticism to go with their cautious optimism. Obama is going to be under a microscope even by those who voted enthusiastically for him. He's got a lot to live up to.

I'm glad Bush junior is finally on the way out. His presidency has been a disaster. Still, I think that Bush was the best President that he was capable of being, and the only a bigger pretzel would have made him better.

Yes, this blog is still going.

2009-01-19T23:58:00.001-08:00

Yes, I've been neglecting my blog. I've been neglecting most of my online presence for over a month now. I'll be out of it for another couple of weeks while I finish rebuilding my computer room.

Nothing is really wrong... just needed a break.

Dear Santa - please let me comment on blogs that don't allow comments.

2008-12-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the season, I'll suspend a bit of my disbelief and cast a wish toward Santa (or better yet, toward the LazyWeb.)

Dear Santa,

There is a bit of software that I want to see implemented on the Internet.

I seem to remember a long time ago (well, long ago in Internet terms) that there was a website that allowed people to place comments on another person's website - even if that website didn't allow comments. The comment app was billed as a sort of "website graffiti" - where people could stick comments all over the page, in various colors.

I thought it was a good idea back then, if messy. But it disappeared sometime during the Dotcom bubble burst - and I've never seen it or anything like it again. Maybe it's there, and I've just missed it? I'd love to see something like that again - a better, revised version.

Because what the Internet really needs is a way to leave comments on those sites that do not WANT comments!

I'm always wanting to leave comments on certain sites. When some blogger with closed comments pedantically proclaims that their words are unopposed by everyone, I would like to disagree. When a government agency touts the benefits of pseudoscience, I'd like to leave a couple of links to peer-reviewed research. I want to be able to leave a comment that gives evidence that the writer is full of flower garden supplements.

I'm not sure how something like this would work. Perhaps it would be a website that held the target website within an HTML frame, generated dynamically. Maybe it could be a Firefox Add-on, that created a lower page in a similar manner to Scribefire. The idea is that the comments would look something like Haloscan comments, and be stored on a comment server that is accessed by the add-on. The server could generate income by adding content-sensitive advertisement into the comment display.

For the want of a label, I'll call this software "Graffiti comments".

There could be hierarchical or threaded commenting. There could be comment scoring and the ability to hide comments under a certain score. This would allow community policing.

The best way to reduce comment spam would be to require those who comment to use an OpenID identifier of some sort. Something like the way that Blogger uses IDs from Blogger, OpenID, Livejournal, Wordpress, Typepad or AIM. That should cut down on the anonymous trolls, and perhaps reduce sockpuppeting a little.

There could be a requirement to log into Graffiti. Then perhaps the offending person could be suspended or removed if required.

It would be ironic if a person with draconian tendencies in censorship opened a Graffiti comment site and then started restricting comments. But the solution to this is simple - the commenting software should be open source, and could be implemented by anyone who wanted to pay for the hosting database. You don't like the way that Joe Censor is operating his copy of Graffiti? Start your own!

With open source the community of Graffiti administrators would compete against each other as bloggers do, with some Graffiti site owners becoming famous (infamous?) while others wither in the Internet marketplace.

This Graffiti tool should come with a way to indicate that it is being used on a website. It should affect the target website analytics in some way. The website in question might be targeted by multiple Graffiti sites, and it would be courteous to indicate that it is being targeted. Although the comments may be hostile, the software should not.

Perhaps there is a question of legality here? I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think so. The comments would be hosted in another person's online database, and would only be viewable to those people who use the Graffiti tool. The bandwidth for the comments would also belong to the Graffiti host. There may be increased bandwidth to the target website - but isn't that one of the objectives of writing online, to generate bandwidth? The advertisements on the target website should still generate revenue, even if the comments are hostile.

There could be an issue with targeted articles (or websites) disappearing. I'm not sure how Graffiti would handle that. Perhaps the entire comment thread would also disappear? Or be automatically archived? Maybe it would still be viewable, with other content in the target window.

As long as I'm wishing for this wonderful software, here is what I imagine version 1.0 of this tool might look like: (click to make it larger).

Is this possible? I'm sure of it. And if it is made in a way to allow targeted advertising, I'm sure it could generate enough income to offset its own bandwidth.

But I'm not a programmer - well, not in this sense. I can program in ANSI C, but my experience mostly deals with programming embedded microcontrollers - not Windows or web applications. My knowledge of database programming stopped with DBASE III over a decade ago.

So Dear Santa, (or dear LazyWeb) please, just tell me you've started on this and I'll be content for this year's presents.

End of silence

2008-12-05T07:57:00.001-08:00

I know I've been quiet for too long. I'll be blogging again this weekend.

As a start, I'd recommend savoring this irony - when the conservative right sued to display the nativity in a government building, they successfully opened the door for every other religion, and non-religion.

And now they're whining about the result! Tsk.

Hummingbird song

2008-11-13T09:30:00.001-08:00

It was a beautiful morning; calm sunshine and cool while still plenty warm enough for a short-sleeve shirt. On mornings like this I would usually ride my bike to work, but on this day I drove my car so that I could take care of an errand before work.

The company where I work started out as a single manufacturing building, but over the years it has become a sprawling campus. There are many buildings and parking lots, but they are downplayed by lots of grassy areas with trees and shrubs and an amazing amount of flowers. The flowers are in full bloom on this day, and everything is green and lush.

I love days like this. Cool, clean air that seems to fill me with energy. Blue sky and birdsong.

I heard a familiar call and stopped for a moment to scan the top of a nearby Eucalyptus tree. Fresno is home to a lot of hummingbirds, but you would never know it just by looking. These little birds keep out of sight at the tops of trees and are rarely seen near the ground. I’ve met people who have lived in Fresno for years and never seen a hummingbird outside of a photo or video.

But my father taught me to appreciate and recognize birdsong, and I’ve learned to recognize the “squeaky-door with high-pitched radio static” call of the local hummingbirds. I hear them everywhere outside. And if I take a moment and focus on the hummingbird’s call I can actually find him – right there! He’s sitting on a small branch at the top of the Eucalyptus tree, singing his little heart out to a potential girlfriend. I silently wish him luck and move on.

It sounds like a beautiful spring morning doesn’t it? Perhaps sometime in May or early June?

No. This happened today, November 13th.

This isn’t some sort of “Indian Summer” because the weather here has yet to drop below 45 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Autumn for Fresno usually means the beginning of the rainy season, and we have had our first major rainfall. (I hope it rains a lot more – California is in a drought.) The summer didn’t seem any hotter than usual for Fresno – at least not to me. But it stayed warm longer. It’s been warm enough to go swimming here until the week of Halloween, and today’s weather is just beautiful.

Is this a symptom of climate change? I dunno – I’m not a scientist. I think that Bush buried one of the best tools that we could have used to prove beyond a doubt to the majority of the worst climate change deniers that climate change is real and ongoing. As beautiful as it is this morning, I feel vaguely uneasy at what it might imply.

I hope that Obama’s administration resurrects DSCVR so that we can know if my beautiful day today is natural, or man-made.

The Christmas War on Thanksgiving - and on all the rest of the Calendar.

2008-11-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

Why is it that Christians seem to hate Thanksgiving?

Yes, I'm only half serious here. But come on! The Christmas music has already started on the local radio station, and Christmas lights have already started showing up on scattered homes in our neighborhood. The local Wal-mart and Target stores have their full Christmas displays set up, and have dedicated major floorspace to Christmas decorations while giving only a token to Thanksgiving.

The stores that do advertise Thanksgiving do so as an afterthought, tucked away in a corner as if they're ashamed. In stores I've already heard the Muzak versions of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". I did sort of enjoy the hard rock version of "O Holy Night" on the radio - but only because I imagined it as a concert by Metallica.

Every year Christmas comes a little earlier.

It is like a war movie, "The Holiday that Conquered the Calendar!" Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice are occupied territory. Christmas then unleashed a barrage and Thanksgiving fell, in flames. Light cavalry with focused air support easily took Veterans Day afterward. Our only hope now is Halloween - it's a strong holiday and is usually able to go toe-to-toe with Christmas.

But the 'War on Holidays that are Not Christmas' has even come to Halloween. Over the last few decades Christians have been holding "Harvest Parties" at their churches, forbidding the wearing of traditional costumes, and even creating Christian hellfire and brimstone morality plays disguised as haunted house wannabes.

Halloween's bunkers are holding, but they're under heavy fire!

As a disclaimer, I'll freely admit that I do enjoy Christmas - I've said that before. But Thanksgiving used to be one of my favorite holidays - and now it's flying a foreign flag.

So this year I'm going to wish people "Happy Thanksgiving" all the way through Christmas. I think Thanksgiving deserves to regain some of the time that's been stolen away from it, and maybe by advancing it deeply behind the Christmas front lines the traditional Turkey Day can regain some of its former prestige.

You should consider doing the same thing. If we don't help the other holidays regain captured calendar days then some day in the future there will only be Christmas. Rise up! Wish everyone a "Happy Thanksgiving!" this year.

And if some Christmas trooper questions your battle cry, ask them - "Why do you hate Thanksgiving?"

Michael Crichton Oct. 23 1942 - Nov. 4, 2008

2008-11-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

Michael Crichton died on election day due to cancer.

I've read (and in some cases own) several of Crichton's books, including "The Andromeda Strain", "Congo", "Sphere", "Jurassic Park", "The Lost World", "Prey", and "State of Fear".

Crichton's books have always been a sort of scientific "morality play" that he used to show what might go wrong when humans fail to keep a watchful, respectful eye on the way we interact with nature. I support this sort of advice. Scientific discoveries and our human impulse to control our environment can be much like Djinn. Uncorking a Genie from a bottle often results in unexpected consequences. Failure to watch for potential side effects can be detrimental or even deadly.

This is good advice, and it is advice that Science Fiction writers have traditionally given since the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

It is too bad that Crichton failed to follow that advice in his book "State of Fear".

Instead of showing Global Warming to be a consequence of humankind's impact on nature, Crichton completely reversed his normal book writing formula to invent a scenario where all the consequences (storms, floods, arctic ice melting, and tsunamis) are created by a shadowy "eco-terrorist" group for poorly explored motives.

Because of his reversed formula, and because of pages full of supporting charts and graphs, Crichton's literary style suffered. The book failed to become fish or fowl - it wanted to be a Science Fiction thriller while keeping the trappings of a non-fiction book that explored global warming from Crichton's point of view.

Whether or not Crichton's evidence against global warming is valid is beside the point to me. What is the point is that he took a hypocritical view that all other interactions between humans and nature should be carefully monitored against unintended consequences, while the possiblility of Global Warming gets a free pass.

I'll miss Crichton's writing, for Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. I won't miss him for "State of Fear", because it was not up to the quality that he was capable of producing.

"It's the deep breath before the plunge"

2008-11-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

Because of the group that I lead, I subscribe to a LOT of religious newsletters. I easily get 30 emails a day from religious conservative groups.

Yesterday there was a final flurry of emails - I got over a hundred.

From the hour the news announced Obama's win, until almost noon today - the email was silenced. It was the calm before the storm.

Now I'm getting a small trickle of email that mostly blames McCain for not playing "dirty" enough in the campaign. Tony Perkins (a James Dobson protege) today said that McCain lost because he took "the high road". A couple of religious groups have started up with a circular firing squad of blame.

But I think that the trend that will emerge is that of American Decency Association Bill Johnson - Johnson has told his followers that (Christians) were "taken to the woodshed" by God". The loss of congressional seats and of the Presidency, the failure of Christian laws and amendments across the USA were all, according to Johnson, the result of God "removing his protection" from America.

This theme seems to be catching on today. Only time will tell if it will dominate. I expect that like-minded people will form a hard-core and well organized opposition to President Obama, and will continue to work toward their goals.

I also think that yesterday signals the start of a schism between fundamentalist Republicans and "old school" Republicans. The Republican party was hijacked. Their original goals of a smaller government, lower spending, lower taxes, and the encouragement of capitalism were replaced with a bloated government, increased spending, and a business model which rewarded big business and rescued them from their failures while at the same time forcing small businesses to dry up and go under.

Some Republicans remember what it meant to be Republican, and they want their party back.

Speaking as a Democrat, as an ex-Republican, I'm also wary.

I'll be watching Obama closely, "with 'bated breath", and hoping against all odds that he doesn't mess up. He made me care again. He made me hope. If he screws that up I'll be more than disappointed. I don't want to see another Jimmy Carter Democrat in office.

Obama, you made me respect you, trust you, and love you. You made me proud again - don't screw it up. If you break my heart I will kick you to the curb.

Proposition 8 passed, same sex marriage is unlawful. Now what?

2008-11-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've said before that I think same-sex marriage in the United States is inevitable.

It's going to happen. Get used to the idea now.

It will happen because the children of today are more accepting of the LGBT community than my generation, or of my father's generation. The older generations are fading away, and today's youth are taking over.

On March 7th of 2000, California Proposition 22 modified California's civil code to limit marriage to a man and a woman. That proposition passed 61.4% to 38.6%. That 61.4% was touted by Christian conservatives over and over again in the following years as a "Clear indication of the will of all Californians."

Proposition 8 today looks like it will pass 52% to 48%. That "clear indication" has dropped 10 points in 8 years. I believe this trend will continue.

And while it is much harder to overturn a constitutional amendment in California than it is to enact one - I do believe that there will come a time when this blot of hate will be removed from the state constitution.

It has been brought to my attention that the passage of Proposition 8 may be the best thing to happen to same-sex marriage. If Proposition 8 had failed, religious conservatives would have recreated it again and again for each election cycle. It would have been remade with more subtle wording - designed to worm it's way into law while remaining beneath our notice.

If we must legislate hate, if we must remove rights, it is better that we do it openly. It is better that we recognize that this is done out of purely religious motivation and that it is based upon an inflexible "moral" code that equates homosexuality with murder, deceit and malice. Let us all see that the Christian religion calls homosexuals, "senseless, faithless, heartless," and "ruthless" who are "wicked, evil, greedy," and "depraved".

It is this same religious morality that says in no uncertain terms that homosexuals, and those who support them, are worthy of nothing more than death itself. (Romans 1:18-32)

It is good to bring this hate out in the open so we can examine it under bright lights with high magnification. We have states in conflict - a marriage certificate in one state is worthless in another. This violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution and it must be addressed at a Federal level.

And I believe that in time, and with effort, equality will prevail. I believe that because last night I watched equality prevail in an historic election. I believe that equality will prevail because members of the LGBT community have come "out of the closet", so that more and more Americans recognize that they know, or are related to someone who is gay. I believe that equality will prevail because while it is easy to hate a faceless, nameless "evil", it is much harder to hate a kind aunt, or a loving son, or a friendly neighbor. I believe that equality will eventually prevail because even now, even under Proposition 8, same-sex couples are allowed to have and to raise children in a loving home - and those children will influence other children, and they will all grow up and vote their conscious out of love and knowledge.

The one thing that the Protectmarriage.com people have said that they fear the most - that same-sex marriage will be taught to children in class - has already come to pass. Your children ARE being taught to be more accepting - they are being taught by their classmates and peers.

My grandparent's generation has faded away. Soon my parent's generation will follow, and then my generation - the last of the Baby Boomers - will also fade. The future of LGBT equality lies inevitably with the generations that follow me.

In honor of the passing of Proposition 8

2008-11-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

In honor of the passing of California Proposition 8, I’ve asked former Vice President, Alexander H. Stephens to give a speech of congratulations for the failure of same-sex marriage in California. Here is some of what Mr. Stephens had to say:

Our new laws are founded upon exactly the opposite idea; their foundations are laid, their cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that homosexuals are not equal to heterosexuals; that inequality – subordination to our superior morals – is the natural and normal condition for gay people. And now, for the first time in California’s history, laws are based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics.

All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind—from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the pro-homosexual fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that gay people are equal, and hence conclude that they are entitled to equal privileges and rights with heterosexual people. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just—but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.

I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of California would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of homosexuality, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining that homosexuality is a sin, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

Election 2008

2008-11-04T08:06:00.001-08:00

I voted today.

The polling place was on a residential street, in someone's garage. Is that something that happens often?

In the past, the polling places around my home have been in the dayroom of apartment complexes, or at the gym of a local school. This is the first time I've ever voted at someone's house. It feels weird - like perhaps they'll be counting votes in the kitchen.

But it was a good venue. A bit chilly 'cause I voted so early. There was a line, but I didn't wait longer than 10 minutes. I spent the time reading Twitter reports (and updated my own voting experience to Twitter).

So, have YOU voted yet? If not, then you are not allowed to complain about any elected official or policy until the next voting cycle.

That's the rule!