Oklahoma GOP is insane

The Oklahoma Republicans have come up with (PDF warning!) their platform.

My favorite bit is from the Education section(emphasis mine):
Quote:4. While the objective study of philosophy and religion can be beneficial, public schools should not be endorsing any specific religion or philosophy. We believe that students and teachers should enjoy the right of free exercise of religion.

5. We support posting the Ten Commandments and our Nation's motto, “In God We Trust,” in all public schools in recognition of our religious heritage.

Considering #5, I doubt #4 a bit.

#7 makes me wince of course:
Quote:7. We believe that the scientific evidence supporting Biblical creation should be included in Oklahoma public schools curricula, and if any evolution theory is taught, that both should receive equal funding, class time, and material. Teachers should have the freedom to cover creation science without fear of intimidation, reprimand, or lack of professional respect.

Keep in mind that these people are running the second-largest city in Oklahoma and the 45th-largest in the US (according to Wikipedia). That is why yes, creationism is a problem.

There are quite a few "hilarious if they wern't in charge of a major metropolitan area" bits in the Curriculum section.

Quote:5. We oppose any curriculum that promotes one-world government, communism, socialism, global citizenship, and any curriculum originating with UNESCO. We affirm that our citizens, of any race, creed, or culture, are fully American. We support teaching our commonalities as U.S. citizens. We support teaching the intent of our founding fathers, the original founding documents, and the difference between a democracy and a republic.

The best argument against belief EVER!

"So why don't you believe?"

"The world is so awesome. How can you believe it all came from nothing?"

"You're an atheist so you can sin all you want."

(insert some version of Pascal's Wager here-usually a really simplified and stupid version)

Pretty much any openly atheist person living in the Bible Belt has had a conversation turn in one of these directions. I won't go into the ones that go into apologetics, because they're just silly.

So why is it I don't believe?

Because I don't want to.

Try it the next time such a conversation starts. It is truly enlightening how it shuts things down. After all-there's nowhere to go after that.

I have no need to disprove anyone's faith. Without any evidence for it, I can choose whatever I want to believe.

Dear Texas Legislature-don't be stupid

A Texas legislator is trying to allow degrees in Creationism. Do these people never think about the wider implications of their actions? If this passes I'm going to go start a college to grant degrees in Dr. Pepper drinking.

Anyway, if anyone lives in Texas you might want to write your state representatives.

Texas House of Representatives

Texas Senators

Atheism and Me

In my formative years I was pretty apathetic towards religion, though my family was off-again/on-again JWs. Then in my twenties I became part of a protestant-fundamentalist-YEC-strongly Religious Right college church (I had a few issues). It was one of the churches where people talk about 'feeling the presence of God' and such-which I never did. I saw wonder and beauty and often questioned whether people were confusing that with God. I [i]wanted[/i] the transcendent experience. For years I beat myself up over not feeling it, and during that time I raged at both myself for not having enough faith and at God for hiding from me. So in a way that period of time was certainly a love/hate relationship with God.

Later on I became somewhat of a pariah when I told someone how I felt and it spread through the congregation like wildfire. I stopped going and eventually stopped caring about God. At some point I realized that I have very little capacity for believing in any sort of supernatural anything, so I'm an atheist by default.:D I actually realized my atheism after working for a time with a conspiracy believer. One day after talking about UFO abductions he asked me if I believed in the soul, in a manner that indicated that he expected to base his next argument on my saying 'yes.' However, after thinking for a moment I said that I didn't and gave my reason. He then asked about God, and for the first time I realized that not only did I doubt God's existence, but I didn't really care and in fact rather hoped that He didn't.

Over the next few years I began to really discover who I was. For a time I blamed my old church, and by extension Christianity in general for the misery I had felt, but eventually I got over it. I don't think that religion is good, but I don't believe that it is evil either. I believe that it simply reflects its own subculture.

On Sarah Palin

Here are some interesting opinions the Republican candidate used to hold. Just a few:

1. Complete the sentence by checking the applicable phrases (you can check more than one).
Abortion should be:
Banned throughout entire pregnancy.
Legal to save the life of the mother.
Legal in case of rape and incest.
Legal if the baby is handicapped.
Legal if the baby has a genetic defect.
Legal in the first trimester.
Legal in the second trimester.
Legal in the third trimester.
Other:__________________

SP: I am pro-life. With the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end if the pregnancy continued. I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society, we cannot condone ending an innocent’s life.

So she favors forcing a raped woman to carry her rapist's child? Wow, that's pretty cold.

2. Will you support the right of parents to opt out their children from curricula, books, classes, or surveys, which parents consider privacy-invading or offensive to their religion or conscience?

SP: Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught.

The problem is that many parents don't want their children to learn things that they need to know. Little Jimmy won't be able to 'opt out' of evolution questions on his SAT, mom.

3. Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?

SP: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.

Abstinence-based sexual education doesn't work. Not to mention that some parents don't do a very good job! That's one of the problems with Republican idealism.

11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Heh. What, are you kidding me? Now I'm guessing that the defense will be that she was referring to the words 'Under God' with this answer, but it sure looks like she thinks that the founders wrote the Pledge. (hint: they didn't) The words 'Under God' weren't even part of the Pledge until the 1950s.

The Price of Beauty

This morning I was speaking to a rather attractive woman I know who has a problem-men 'fall in love' with her all the time. Now, I am not one of them. I am in fact quite happily married myself. However, it did get me thinking.

I have known quite a few women who I think would be happier if they were not quite so attractive. Attractiveness makes meeting a prospective partner easier, but it seems harder to know if your partner likes you for you or as a status symbol.

I guess I'm lucky to be utterly average.

Arkansas politician shot

Sad news for the Democrats in my state. This reminds me of the Jim David Adkisson case from a couple of weeks ago. One can only hope that this is not politically motivated-our country really doesn't need that right now.