The proper descriptive term is "bible filth."

Posted at November 4, 2007 5:43 AM in response to No whitewashes, please

I think there is a practical, objective method of defining class distinctions. For individuals who are of working age, a middle class person is someone who has taxable income, at least 80 percent of which is reported on a W-2 Form. A lower class person is someone whose income is not subject to federal income tax. An upper class person is someone with no more than 20 % of their taxable income reported on a W-2 Form.

Posted at June 1, 2007 2:38 PM in response to Straw Men and Low Bars

David Brooks’ notion that “security leads to freedom” is just another insidious flavor of poisoned Kool-Aid that the non-human morons of the right would like to foist on the body politic. Security is just another word for gutless cowardice. It leads not to freedom, but to the willingness to give up rights in order to be safe. Patrick Henry said “Give me liberty or give me death.” In modern parlance that means “trade death rate for freedom.” Safety and loss of life should not be defining concerns of a free society. The true path to freedom is development of the mind through education and personal self discipline. At its best the security state just makes the world safer for stupid people, and they are the true enemies of freedom. The motto of a free society is not “No child left behind.” It’s “No bozos.”

Posted at March 30, 2007 2:55 PM in response to Brooks, Greenwald, and The Right's Unraveling

Your observation is well grounded. Every sensor has to deal with the signal to noise ratio problem. You enhance perception of one stream of data by blocking out or weakening other stimuli. The ability to "focus" or specialize on certain data can cut both ways. Often the result is an enhanced signal, but your predisposition toward certain results may cause you to see a signal where there is only noise or to miss a different but also very important signal. Religion goes beyond that by training the subject's behaviors to ignore perceived data in favor of imaginary desires. Its goal is self-satisfied blindness, not specialized sensory efficiency.

Posted at March 1, 2007 3:34 PM in response to Criticizing religions that have offensive beliefs

Because it's not like there is book or something that might provide definitions of words in some sort of sequential order.

The well educating of their children is so much the duty and concern of parents, and the welfare and prosperity of the nation so much depends on it, that I would have every one lay it seriously to heart; and after having well examin'd and distinguish'd what fancy, custom, or reason advises in the case, set his helping hand to promote every where that way of training up youth, with regard to their several conditions, which is the easiest, shortest, and likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct callings; tho' that most to be taken care of is the gentleman's calling. For if those of that rank are by their education once set right, they will quickly bring all the rest into order.

It is very difficult to find your point amid all of the pompous posturing, but I doubt that Existentialism will explain it. A central tenet of that view is that existence precedes essence. Man is what he makes of himself. Sartre also said "Hell is other people." Both he and Camus understood something about the living dead.

You seem fairly inept at stating your actual position. You appear to believe that because there is a subjective, relativistic element to human perception it is impossible to develop any objective assessment of democracy. In other words, whatever a democracy does is by definition what its participants intended. Democracy is therefore always effective. This is erroneous at two levels. First, it is possible to characterize any process using the logical assumptions that define it. For instance, if the premise of a democracy is that the people's representatives act in their interest, any instance of a representative taking bribes would be an indicator of ineffectiveness. This factor can be considered without reference to the interests of any of the participants in a democracy. Your position is also flawed in that it ignores the concept of sovereignty. You may naively believe that democracy can only do good because people are inherently good, but that ignores the obvious bad results that democracies produce. Even the best democratic institutions will not satisfy all parties all of the time, but they retain support because the parties believe they will act in their interest over the long run. If a significant portion of the population comes to realize that the government is little more than a gaggle of morons, it will lose its hold on them. This is the great danger posed by George Bush and the long-term republican strategy of electing morons to public office. Government by stupid people will over time destroy a democracy, and not a long time at that.

Posted at February 28, 2007 7:05 AM in response to Criticizing religions that have offensive beliefs

Support that statement with citations to some of the great works of liberal philosophy?

Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one.

Your notion that democracy can only be viewed as an abstract tautology in which whatever it does defines what it is is just word play. Democracies really exist and their behaviors can be characterized without advocating a particular factional interest. Your stated belief in human dignity is not poisonous. It is the sugar coating that covers the poison. You use it to get a free pass. The poison is the belief that it is okay to be stupid, particularly in a democracy. This actually undermines human dignity because it fosters the notion that you are what you are and there is no point in trying to improve. I believe that a person has an obligation to himself and to society to raise himself to a higher level. Those that fail to do this are little more than the living dead. Furthermore, democracy works on the principle of the lowest common denominator, and if the lowest common denominator is stupid, what you get is George Bush and the morons like him in congress. And yes, I would agree that is the government we deserve.

Posted at February 23, 2007 9:56 AM in response to Criticizing religions that have offensive beliefs

Words are useful tools because they have fixed meanings.

If the data are human experiences, there is hardly a need for language to get at it all. For we all undergo our human experiences.

What could you possibly mean by effective?

You may be educated to the hilt, but it must have been a pretty short knife. Mocking by the way is sophmoric. So is the aw shucks bullshit about humility and being dumb. That's a page right out of the George Bush playbook. Instead of renting sentimental movies why don't you try reading and thinking for yourself for a change? I have no idea what the difference between you and me is because all I see is someone who wants to portray himself as something he is not.

Posted at February 22, 2007 11:02 PM in response to Criticizing religions that have offensive beliefs

Words are useful tools for extracting information from human experience. Without education and the discipline required to think clearly it is hard to get at the data. It is also next to impossible to figure out what is going on and to make good decisions. Effective democracy requires intelligent, informed decision making. You have demonstrated that you don't understand the word "humanist." You are confusing it with "humanitarian." It is not surprising that you think I am "redefining" terms since you appear to be unfamiliar with some basic concepts that underpin liberalism and humanism.

You obviously prefer the feel-good world of political correctness to serious and possibly controversial inquiry. You smugly sit there like the teacher's pet correcting everybody else's paper based on your silly tell other people what to do checklist. Like the religionist you think that because your poisonous ideas have a sugar coating they should be given a free pass.

Posted at February 22, 2007 6:52 PM in response to Criticizing religions that have offensive beliefs

From a legal perspective I agree with the principle that "all men are created equal." It is an essential, although somewhat fictional premise that we must accept to have a healthy society. In that context, defining who is human is likely to have undesirable results. It does not follow that I have to believe that being conceived or being born makes someone human. That requires education and self discipline. It is not determined by race, sex or ethnicity, but religion is an impediment to achieving that goal.

Most people are neither sincere nor good-hearted, even though they like to think they are. The purpose of the "reductionism" was just to clear away some of the feel-good moralistic clap trap.

It is the same kind of tripe that leads people to think they would like to have a beer with George Bush.

Posted at February 21, 2007 6:04 PM in response to Criticizing religions that have offensive beliefs

I think there are much worse things about religion. People don't examine religion carefully and objectively. They see religions as pious belief systems that you may not agree with but should respect because the beliefs are sincerely held by good-hearted souls.

People are not souls. They are organisms, and as such their primary functions are to process nutrients into excrement and to survive until they can reproduce. The remarkable thing is that these organisms have developed a very useful organ for processing sensory information and controlling muscle action--the brain. With discipline, i.e. the development of useful behavior patterns, and education, i.e. the capability to acquire, organize and store information, the organism we call a person can become human. In essence a human is a person who is capable of making intelligent and informed decisions using verifiable data and who can function as a productive member of a culture that values intelligence and learning.

Religion exists because of deficiencies in the child's mental development process that form as the infant tries to come to terms with its surroundings. The four pillars of religious belief are "the parent god," "us against them," "tell other people what to do" and the primacy of mental constructs over the "real," sensory world. These traits are found across the range of religious beliefs and can be very harmful. "Tell other people what to do" is just the child's way of internalizing the control behaviors that its parents used during its upbringing. It is the source of all forms of moral filth and actions designed to control the behavior of others. Anti-gay legislation is an obvious product, but an even more harmful one is drug laws. "Us against them" springs from the child's effort to differentiate itself, its immediate group and the outside world. It is an essential survival behavior, but it also energizes the essence of religious lunacy, the distinction between the saved and the damned. War is a natural byproduct of this behavior pattern. "God the parent" is the product of the child's initial conceptualization of its relationship to its parents. The religious god is not just a supernatural being, it is also a parent, and that is the basic mindset that underlies authoritarianism. The distinction between mental images and sensory data is an epistomological problem that challenges every infant. Many never crack it. For them, what they want to be true generally takes precedents over what their senses report. It forms the essence of religious belief, but it is not simply a condition. It is a pattern of behavior that can be strengthened and reinforced by repetitious use. Once mastered, this behavior enables all sorts of truly harmful lunacy such as the pre-Iraq war "intelligence."

Posted at February 21, 2007 12:55 PM in response to Criticizing religions that have offensive beliefs