My Atheism, Part 2

Religionists often assume that atheists must have an important text like the bible. They will often pick the Origin of Species. They ask who we worship rather than cope with the reality that atheists do not worship. Atheists are not the opposite of religion, we are completely foreign from religion. Atheists also understand the underlying concepts of religion and find it to be lacking in providing any kind of benefit.

To boil it down to a bumper sticker, atheists prefer to know the truth rather than simply believing in a story written a long time ago.

Never Learned to Read

H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

According to Jenna Wisen(ph), who owns an asphalt company with about 150 employees, interviewed at the Nevada Tea Party rally this weekend, "Nobody's read the whole [Health Care Reform] bill - could say that I can't wear brown on Tuesday. Nobody knows whats in there." It is interesting to note that Jenna also thinks that the bill will bankrupt her because now she will be "forced to" provide health insurance to her employees. She must be a GREAT boss.

I heard this on NPR this morning, and Ina Jaffe's comment after Jenna's tirade, "But most of the people at the rally were pretty sure that whats in there could destroy the health care system and put an end to freedom in America," is quite brilliant. I do, however, really wish that she had taken it further, asking Jenna if she had bothered to find and read the bill, since it is public record and Jenna has a vested interest in knowing what is in there. My guess is that they would have said "I don't have the time." Ina could have then asked, "how do you then find the time to go to Tea Party rallies?" A punch to the Ina's face might have followed.

Tea Party people are, quite clearly, know-nothings about how our government actually works. They can not and should not be taken any more seriously than the random homeless person shouting insults on the street. Not only are they too dumb to go and look for the bill before shouting nonsense about it, they don't have enough shame to realize how horribly dumb they look to the rest of us. These are people who have been told for years that they don't need to listen to experts because their own "common sense" was good enough. Now these people are coming unhinged, and it would be funny if I was the kind of person that could laugh at stupid people.

I don't think of myself as someone who is significantly more intelligent than the average person. I have had more opportunity to learn than most people, true, but most, if not all, of the information that I know is stuff that anyone can learn. Some of it takes a while to learn, but some of it just takes the ability to remember a website, like thomas.gov.

President Clinton helped make this a reality, so the know-nothings are probably proud to not know about this, but it allows anyone, anywhere, access to the full text of legislative branch documents from our government, including bills just signed into law. Unfortunately, our worthless mass media doesn't mention this, or give us the tools to find the bill - like the bill number or the official name. I only learned about thomas.gov because I used to work as a government document reference librarian. So it took a little sleuthing on my part this time, but now you have it with no effort at all: H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

You can also go to thomas.gov and search for bill number H.R.3590, in case that link doesn't work and if you're not a complete idiot.

My Atheism, Part 1

Even in the worst of times, knowing the truth of the situation was always better, and the sooner I knew it, the better. For instance, my recovery from my brain injury was actually an enjoyable experience because I understood what was happening, thanks to science. This, my brain injury did not affect my worldview, like many assumed that it did.

I knew three things when I was recovering from my brain injury. I knew that I was a vegetarian, I knew what I was going to school to do, and I knew that I was an atheist. I recovered very well from my brain injury, which caused some "survivor guilt", for lack of a better term. I wondered why I was recovering so well and considered that it might be something supernatural. When I explored my thoughts and what I knew about my accident, I realized that there were natural factors to my recovery, the most significant being that my injury simply was not bad enough to cause permanent harm.

This did nothing to support my ego, like thinking that I was better than other people or that something mysterious had an affect, but I was proud to be able to apply reason to my situation and find an explanation that can be tested*.

Two atheists I know have chronic illnesses that will eventually kill them, one possibly in the next couple of decades (24 year-old). The other one (20 year-old) may have more time. These are two people around whom I feel comfortable stating my actual atheist viewpoints, like that the bible is just another [damned] book, written by people. I'm comfortable stating that there is no afterlife around these people, knowing full well that their lives are likely to end much sooner than my own. These are atheists in foxholes.

* Imagine you were able to create a brain injury in others in increasing intensity and monitor their recovery. Conducting this experiment, however, would be painful and occasionally deadly. The loss of life for some and the loss of mental capacity for pretty much all the other people in the study is unacceptable to me because I assume that there is no afterlife, which is an important thought in my own atheist cannon.

Evidence Based Tax Philosophy

We Haz It

Really Good Thread

I'm almost done reading a great thread on Pandagon. This is just one of the comments that I'd like to share. I would post others, but there are so many.

I am a climate scientist in the US. Over the last several months I’ve watched colleagues and friends get slandered, have their private communications completely misinterpreted, and been variously called a hack and a fraud. Already most of my colleagues have decided not to participate in the next IPCC assessment report, since all it does is make us targets for the most vicious personal attacks. We’re expected now to respond to the most assinine, ill formed, and usually wrong criticisms from bloggers. And, except for a few people stepping up to help, we’re largely being thrown to the wolves by the media, public, and politicians.

Here is my prediction. In fifty years time, when climate change is real and apparent right before everyones eyes, there will be all sorts of hand wringing and concerned comments from people on the tv. And everyone will soberly talk about how nobody could have predicted what was happening (much like the levee comment after Katrina).

And I’m gonna have a really, really hard time caring at all.
Comment #70: TransientEddy on 03/12 at 12:31 AM

This post is illuminating so many things about me, my life, my family, former friends, acquaintances, frustrations that I have had. It is about, on the surface, climate change denialists, but the thread gets into the basic motivations of the denialists themselves. Pandagon is a both/and blog, so as long as arguments are in logically and rationally sound, they're an awesome add. Unsound arguments are shut down at one comment so far. I'm actually looking forward to a response just to see what angle they go down this time. It reminds me of the report I gave and the book on which I gave it back on the 2nd. I found this book on Feb. 28th after shopping all day with a friend. I skimmed it that night and bought it the next day.

Friday, I talked with protestant evangelical teenagers about science and religion. The arguments were all either cruel (maiming and death are adequate punishment for not wanting to be pregnant was one), stupid applications of science (an anti-gay marriage argument from the standpoint that same sex couples cannot reproduce), or unsuccessful attempts to find holes in scientific explanations. It was a great experience to have, and also very draining. Rational claims are pretty awesome. The Pandagon thread is rife with these.

We Can Haz Progressive Tax Structure?

The top marginal tax rate for income over $400,000 in the 1950's wonderland that conservatives try to emulate was about 91%. These days, the top rate for income over about $310,000 is 35%.

Colorado Springs is turning off a third of the streetlights, trash services in parks, and other services because they don't have the budget.

And tonight, I heard about another idea some states are pushing - a 4-day school week. Now, I don't have kids myself, but I both was one once and know people that have them (shocking, I know), and my instant reaction to this idea was a bunch of swear words. Like it or not, working parents rely on school to watch their kids while they are at their jobs, making the money to feed those kids. I can't tell you the numbers, but my guess is that about at least half of families need to have two incomes, most of which are earned during the traditional work week.

The school districts that stand to "gain" the most from this idea are those that have large transportation costs. I use the quotes around gain because the only members of the school districts that gain are the ones pushing the paper around. Parents not only gain nothing, but may lose a significant amount of money from lost wages or extra childcare costs. Furthermore, areas where transportation is needed are often the rural areas, where the houses are far apart, and it isn't as easy to just "drop a kid off with the neighbor".

The radio program focuses on the lost learning time with this 4-day week, but that, to me, is a non-issue compared with the insult to working parents that this idea presents.

But, schools are hurting, just like the rest of our public sector. California students and other residents took to the streets highway on Thursday to protest the state's cuts to education. They walked right out onto 880 during rush hour, which made me really glad that I never, ever have to take that highway to get where I need to be. Just like the takeover of Wheeler Hall last year, nothing much will come of this - or, at least if we say that, anything that does happen will be a pleasant surprise - because the state is bleeding money. Of course, if we heeded Glen Beck's advice and seceded from the Union, we would have all that Federal tax money back to, but that's neither here nor there.

What we need to do, in reality, is stop being greedy hoarders and pay for our society already. We have ample evidence that giving rich people money does not work because they just use it to make more money for themselves. We know that raising the minimum wage allows people on the low end of the economic scale to spend more and live better, and we know that spending on public programs makes our towns better places to live. I'm hoping that we can some day act on evidence rather than ideology, but with the stupid Quiverfulls pumping out more idiots to be brainwashed with young earth creationism, I don't know how optimistic I get to be.