Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 159 Editor's Choice: 9
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Perhaps a small step in the rigth direction?
[Read the article: Bush's climate change]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]With James Inhofe out of his position as the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the platform for him bringing discredited contrarians in to "debate" global warming has been severely limited. FYI, Barbara Boxer is now the chairman of the Senate EPWC and her agenda is nearly opposite of his.
So, that along with the (grudging) admission of the problem by the Bush administration, may be baby-steps, but they are steps in the right direction.
I am quite intersted in the sudden intrest in industry in wanting regulations... my suspicious nature makes me think that they realize that regulations will eventually happen and so they want to put in their influence as soon as they can. That and/or they intend to use the regulatory process as a weapon against their competitors.
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"Right" I meant the "right" direction-
[Read the article: Bush's climate change]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]- without an automatic spell check I am lsot.
I meant "lost"...
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Wait a second-
[Read the article: Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]- you mean a bunch of emotionally crippled sky-god worshipping freaks were upset when somebody didn't go along with their sky-god crap? Shocked! Shocked, I am!
I fear that the mistake that these two bloggers made was to give up. FIght the fight (or ignore it, as you would a yapping dog or non-existant god). If you were a liability to the Edwards campaign, it is their job to boot you. Or so it seems to me.
Further, I agree with Ms. Marcotte that this will only embolden the right wing noise machine and allow them to recruite new and eager e-soldiers to fight the only battle they can win- the smear campaign.
And yet more. The smear campaign must be destroyed before it destroys us. Since the 80s, whenever I hear anybody talking about entering politics, almost everyone says "Not just no, but HELL no. I wouldn't do that to my family."
The smear campaign has become so common and so expected that nobody even seems to notice it anymore, much less notice that it's driving out all the normal people and filling our leadership pool to the sociopaths (who don't give a damn about their families anyway) and the absolute freaks with something to prove (G. W. Bush).
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Sorry to see the letters have already descended-
[Read the article: My daily bread]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]- into shrill name calling. I love that part, the gradual slide that is.
Anyway. Someone else said it, I'll re-say it. Ms. Miles excerpt is a fine, fine example of the meme of religion infecting an otherwise healthy mind. Convinced that there must be 'something more', or perhaps 'afriad of her eventual death', Miles seeks out meaning and stuff in religion. Of course, she doesn't really find it there, at least not in this excerpt. In fact, she already had the meaning/experience she was looking for (something about a log and a big sky and paper mache planets), but has allowed strange men in funny clothes to convince her that THEY will give the meaning/experience to her.
It appears she's been trying, and failing, to get to the meaning through her religion, but really only gets close to it when she ignores doctirne and just sits and thinks (or non-thinks, I guess) on it.
Of course, her actually experiences with organized religion are almost Woody Alan-esque in their awkwardness. It also appears that what little positive experiences she gets from her involvement in superstition are often in spite of, and not because of, the religion in question. And, of course, she never actually comes out talks about believing in God, Satan, Jesus, and magic.
What a strange way to spend one's time...
I, on the other hand, will come out and say it (yet again). There is no God, no gods, no Devil, no demons, no magic, no souls, and no afterlives. We are chemicals all the way down and when we die we stop. We've been out of the iron age for a long time now, it is high time we grew up and left the superstions of that time behind.
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Return to Civility!
[Read the article: My daily bread]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow, these threads have devolved even worse than all the other superstition v. science articles.
Of course, this article wasn't really about superstition v. science, as much as just Ms. Miles journey into superstition.
Don't get me wrong, I thought the excerpt was interesting, had clear writing, even some good hooks. I probably won't buy the book, but might check it out from the library sometime, just to see where her path leads.
However, one of the things that spurs skeptics/athiests/agnostics into responding to articles like this is that, well, imagiane if someone wrote an article about how they got way, WAY involved in Silmarillion or the local Klingon re-enactmant group. Sure, good things may come out of it (Klingon groups raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity), but if the writer starts taking that stuff seriously, claiming that there is some great 'truth' to the Kla'Pathu rituals... well, one feels the need to point out that it's all a fantasy.
To clarify: Religion is just a fantasy.
Sorry, but it is. You can claim to get all kinds of things out of it (social interation), or do good things (feeding the homeless), but it's still an agreed on fantasy shared among its members. Should come with its own dice-bag and a collectable card game.
I also find it interesting that Miles' excerpt shows a person absolutely BEGGING to be indoctronated into a cult- and Christianity can only just barely keep her in the ranks. And she's someone who really, really, wants to believe, and she can barely swallow it, much less talk about it to other grown-ups.
Fascinating.