Glen Beck being more of an idiot than usual

Although I wouldn't dare to try to chronicle all the painful, awkward, cringeworthy moments of the cartoonish career of Glen Beck, this one was pretty bad even for him. Cliff notes: Katie Couric asks Beck what he means when he says 'white culture.' Beck awkwardly refuses to answer, making some strange reference to our sound byte news paradigm.

Uhhhh news flash to Glen Beck, everyone knows you're a racist idiot. What are you worried about?

Eliza Dushku Saturdays: Volume 2

Are we ever going to tire of claiming that science will never solve this or that problem?

Eric Reitan, a professor of philosophy at Oklahoma U, fairly recently penned an article about Sam Harris' comments on Obama's pick of Francis Collons to head the NIH. I was sleepily reading the piece, which essentially pushes the same old tired argument that atheists are just as fundamental as the fundamentalists, but was stirred from my apathetic daze when I got to a section on neurophilosophy's much talked about hard problem as it relates to consciousness. However, I was quite dismayed to discover that even a professor of philosophy doesn't seem capable of keeping his stupid religious beliefs from influencing his depiction of the current state of scientific knowledge. A simple google search netted me his email address and I quickly shot him the following response. We'll see if he responds.


Mr. Reitan,

I was interested to read your article on Sam Harris' statements about Obama's pick for the NIH. I was even more interested upon seeing your discussion of the 'hard problem' as it (tenuously) relates to Mr. Harris' comments. However, I was remarkably disappointed to see such a misleading treatment of the subject of consciousness and neuroscience in your article. One can hardly say that the hard problem "remains entirely unsolved." As a professor of philosophy, I find it hard to believe that you are unaware of the widespread acceptance that the hard problem is not a problem at all, either because it doesn't exist in the first place or because we can already explain the essential subjective features of consciousness with current neuroscientific paradigms that are only likely to improve with time. I understand that you're trying to push a point in a short article, but your treatment of this issue was regrettably unfair and misleading to those who have no background on this issue.

Sincerely,

Dan Eisenhauer

The Banana, the Antheist's Facepalm

The most common response to the abuse I lay on the flat- earthers of this world is that I'm being too harsh, that we need to reason with these people and open as many forms of dialogue with them as possible, and that mockery will get us nowhere. My response to everyone who asserts this is to go check out some of these new age evangelicals and hear what they have to say. If you have a couple of brains cells to spare and the inkling to rub them together, you'll walk away knowing that no amount of patient reasoning will put out the electrical fire that is raging in these guys' brains.

Case in point, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. Don't be deceived by the ridiculousness of this video, these bozos are 100% mainstream, and they are not kidding.



Atheist nightmare? Far from it. Ray's perfectly valid and sound argument has made me realize that my hand and penis are perfectly made, one for the other. Excuse me while I perform god's will.

More Religion Bashing

I've been a huge fan of Adam Carolla ever since he co- hosted the hilarious radio show Loveline back when I was in high school. Unlike most other radio schmucks, Carolla is a genuinely funny guy who doesn't rely on staged or rehearsed nonsense to entertain the listeners. This was a classic example in which he expresses a sentiment that is starting to be shared by more and more people these days- a growing frustration with religious idiocy.

Can we stop acting like evolution is controversial?

There at times comes a point in intellectual conflict when you simply must throw your hands in the air and abandon any hope of reasonable resolution. This is no truer than when religion intrudes into the fray, and the stakes become infinitely greater than the issue itself. After all, the atheist living next door is a far greater threat to your children than the pedophile. If this life is merely the blink of the eye of eternity, the material concerns of this world become trite.

There's no headway to be made against this type of thinking, no reasoning, no pleading, and no compromise. As such, our greatest weapon here is what many refer to as conversational intolerance. The bleating of young- earthers and anti- rationalists should fall upon our ears in the same manner as the rantings of the UFO nut or the babbling of the holocaust denier, and they all deserve our mockery and contempt.

We need more of this in the media, and less apologizing.

Eliza Dushku Saturdays: Volume 1

What's my beef with religion?

The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge having in key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says, "I'm willing, Lord! I'll do whatever you want me to do!" Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas. And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don't. How can I be so sure? Because I don't know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not. The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that's what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong. This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you comes at a horrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers. If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let's remember what the real problem was. We learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That's it. Grow up or die.

The problem with the current health care debate

Although there are numerous problems with the state of the current national debate on health care reform, the biggest problem with the debate is that it rarely has anything to do with health care reform at all. In a move that has been typical of Republican political strategy across a wide range of issues, many Republicans have succeeded in re-framing this issue as one of several typical value issues like euthanasia, abortion, and illegal immigration. As such, instead of hearing about health care reform, we hear claims of death panels, taxpayer funded abortions, and health care for illegal immigrants. Granted, this is an excellent strategy for bringing the crazies out in droves to our townhall meetings, it's not much of a strategy for bringing out a meaningful national debate on health care reform. Nor is it much of a strategy for rallying independents to your cause.

Take the issue of illegal immigration as it relates to health care. Although many seem to be blissfully oblivious to the fact, we already provide health care for illegal immigrants. It's called the emergency room. Anyone, US citizen or otherwise, can show up at an emergency room and receive emergency health care per federal law, care that is funded (at least partially) by your tax dollars. Although I hesitate to think that there may be people out there that believe it to be better policy to allow the illegal immigrant to die on the emergency room floors rather than receive unpaid for treatment, I cannot help but think that there probably are some of those people out there. Regardless, these issues should be dealt with honestly rather than through the meaningless chants of no health care for illegals.

It's about time we started demanding meaningful dialogue on political issues, be it from politicians or the media. Health care reform is not about illegal immigration; it's not about abortion; it's not about euthanasia. It's about millions of people in this country who do not have health insurance and are an accident away from financial ruin. Is an intelligent discussion too much to ask for?

You Lie!

In a move that makes one question how large the human ego can possibly become, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson from SC shouted, "You Lie," at President Obama on Wednesday night during his address to Congress on Health Care Reform. The incident has since been roundly condemned by both Republicans and Democrats as out of line and an embarrassment to our country. Making the incident even more embarrassing to me personally, Mr. Wilson is an alumni of both my undergraduate institution, Washington and Lee University, and my law school, University of South Carolina School of Law. He has since 'apologized' to Obama repeatedly, the apology usually being prefaced by the assertion that he was told to apologize by party leaders, an apology somewhat akin to apologizing to someone who heard you call them fat by saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't know your fat ears were in the room to hear me say that." It's not really an apology, is it?

The absurdity of the situation aside, I find it odd that good ole' Joe decided to scream out in protest at that juncture in the speech. Non partisan fact checking organizations have jumped all over this one and have unanimously confirmed that Obama was not in fact lying, making one wonder if Joe would fit in better at a townhall meeting than the US Congress.

Regardless, Joe Wilson will likely face severe political repercussions for this nonsense. A mere 24 hours after the incident, Mr. Wilson's congressional rival for 2010 had raised over $500,000. Oops.

Getting this blog back on track

After a long hiatus, NaturallyLight is back with quite a bit to say. With most of my current employment being in the toilet legal temp industry, blogging has become an attractive way to burn some time, vent some frustrations, and avoid other time burners such as that daily 5th masturbation session, which let's be honest no one wants. I anticipate that much of my future posts will center around issues involving the intersection of religion, politics, and culture, and today's post will be no different.

As a sort of lightening rod for today's topic, I'm going to highlight a facebook friend's status update that is pretty characteristic of how many people think about this issue:

...every time I have a debate with a liberal that ultimate resort to some sort of personal or religious attack because their argument lacks merit...you can look further down my facebook page where i argued universal healthcare and some liberal responded by slamming my religion...but ya know, i guess we should be glad that such a these must resort to personal attacks because it ultimately furthers the conservative movement...

Aside from the fact that I would rather eat lead chips than read her views on healthcare, the most striking take away from this passage is the implication that her religious views are somehow 'out of bounds' in a civilized debate, that an attack on religious beliefs is no different than telling someone they have an ugly vagina- you just don't do it.

And let's be clear, this is not a fringe view of some nutjob on facebook. This sort of shielding of religious beliefs and frameworks is ubiquitous. We see this stick being dragged out in everything from casual conversation to national political discourse. During the run up to the last presidential election, Republican candidate for the nomination, Mitt Romney, had his mormonism questioned briefly before having it quickly and savagely beaten down by conservative talking heads, referring to the religious criticism as un- American. As such, the fact that mormonism was an officially racist organization prior to the civil rights movement (during which Mitt Romney was a member and an adult) was never given any serious media attention. Nor was any attention given to the fact that this man who is a public opinion poll away from becoming the next President of the United States professes to believe in spiritually blessed undergarments, intelligent design, and that the Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israel.

It's about time we stop treating religion as something too personal to be questioned, as a topic too taboo to be critically examined lest we offend. Religious beliefs do not exist in a vacuum. Are we to believe that the religious just happen to trend toward certain political beliefs in overwhelming numbers? Of course not. Religious beliefs inform political beliefs. How could they not? If you really believe that your all powerful space god penned a book in his spare time, why should it not be taught in schools? If you truly believe that god, in his role as a low end market real estate agent promised a crappy strip of land in the Mediterranean to a certain group of people, shouldn't we do all we can to secure it for them? Are we really expected to not question this underlying belief system?

Your views are stupid and they are screwing up our society. Prepare to be mocked. God wills it.