Letters to the Editor
pacificwhim
Published Letters: 201 Editor's Choice: 37
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This is fascinating
[Read the article: The flying spaghetti monster]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, kudos to 95% of the folks posting here. It seems this issue brings out some of the most thoughtful, lucid, balance people reading Salon. Bravo to you and your rational, intelligent disagreements on mathematics and metaphysics.
Being a writer with very little grasp of physics or higher mathematics, my point relates to the bigger question no one has asked (though one late poster touched on it): why does a spiritual/metaphysical/noncorporeal aspect to human existence need to have a God involved?
To me, it does not. I reject the idea of a personal God; it seems transparently obvious this infantile concept exists largely to give the fearful comfort in the face of uncertain life and certain mortality. Set a personal Deity aside, however, and you still have mountains of evidence--some anecdotal, some scientific but as yet poorly pursued--that there is some sort of metaphysical level to human existence, ranging from such things as energy healing (which I have experienced) to Chinese chi manipulation to the manifestations of unseen beings that exhibit characteristics uncannily like deceased loved ones (which I have also experienced) to near-death experiences.
Future science may explain or disprove all of these and myriad other so-called spiritual phenomena, but the fact remains that no ginned-up God is necessary for them to exist. If some of the many metaphysical phenomena that have been observed over thousands of years do exist and are not just wishful figments of the human imagination, then they are likely PART of the NATURAL world. A part that has been either denied by religion or absorbed by it ("Energy healing? That's God, case closed."), and rejected by science because of the taint of religion and illogic that comes with it.
Certain? No. Possible? Yes. And no God required. What if God didn't need to exist, but was simply something we invented to explain an unseen realm of reality that we could not otherwise grasp? I think that is far more likely than an angry Deity of any stripe.
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Losin' that lovin' feelin'
[Read the article: Is time running out for the GOP?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Echoing some of the posts about Republican dissatisfaction with the GOP...my closest friend lives in Charleston, SC, a bastion of ignorant redneck Bush support. Except for that...his father-in-law, a dyed-in-the-wool, gun-toting, Bible-pounding, libertarianish, send-them-immigrants-back-where-they-came-from hillbilly Republican business owner, has gone completely to the Light Side of the Force. This frothing anti-Democrat has become a frothing anti-Bushite. To his immense credit, he has dropped the scales from his eyes and seen that, regardless of ideology, the GOP's ACTIONS have done terrible damage to his land. He told me recently in an e-mail that he plans to vote Democrat, after which I spent about 15 minutes cleaning up the puddle of pee I made on the floor beneath my desk chair.
If this cat can turn his back on Bush and the Republican'ts, anybody can. There is hope.
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Shocked
[Read the article: Haggard: Massage, meth but no gay sex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Personally, I'm just stunned and disappointed that the great Merle Haggard would have anything to do with this kind of scandalous behavior.
Oh, wait...
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A new natural law
[Read the article: Haggard: Massage, meth but no gay sex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think, given the depredations of mssrs. Foley, Haggard, Swaggart, Reed, Falwell, Robertson, et al., we can carve this new law of the cosmos in stone alongside Newton's laws of motion, Special Relativity and the one about "the odds of the bread falling butter side down are directly proportional to the cost of the carpet":
The volume with which a person proclaims his or her fabulous piety while denouncing others for failing to meet his or her standards of virtue and holiness is directly proportional to the likelihood that he or she is a child-buggering, cash-stealing, graft-grabbing, meth-snorting hypocrite who belongs in prison, where he can be anally introduced to Bubba the weightlifter.
In my experience, people of true faith and virtue shut the fuck up about it, do good works and try to lead others by example, not ego-driven proclamations of goodness. The Christian Right in this country is a paper-thin veneer of packaged holier-than-thou bullshit covering a festering seepage pit of repressed homosexuality, familial abuse, drug addiction, greed and lust for power.
PATHETIC.
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Occam's Razor
[Read the article: Can the Democrats stay afloat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Voting machine conspiracies, voter suppression, yada, yada. I buy them as much as I buy the "the government flew the planes into the towers" hogwash. Fellow travelers, when all else fails, fall back on Occam's Razor, which states that all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one.
To wit: if the Democrats manage to blow this game in the bottom of the ninth, it will be because the GOP's "get out the vote" efforts were better, their smear ads were smearier, and mostly because voters still just don't get it.
But they won't. Blow it, that is. This is simply the corporate-owned media sowing some doubt in favor of the party that slashes FCC oversight, and us buying into it because of 2000-2004 jitters.
And to the troll and his/her wonderfully eloquent chanting, two things. First, only a mindless sheep could favor more Republican rule after the last 6 years of unfettered corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy. And it's "Pelosi," you fucking moron. Again, you show why we educated "elites" should be in control of the country.
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Good...
[Read the article: Rumsfeld to voters: You just don't understand]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...fucking riddance.
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Hooray
[Read the article: One more word from Allen, and the Democrats take the Senate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm so happy about this result that I could just macaca.
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The Mark of stupid
[Read the article: Another Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or perhaps the women just dated someone like you, Mark.
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Another addendum
[Read the article: Reid vows legislation on robo-calls, phony sample ballot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And any public official at any level found to be guilty of participating in any effort to deny voter rights should immediately be expelled from office and banned from running for public office at any level...regardless of whether a court finds him or her guilty of a criminal offense.