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• Monday, June 30, 2008 12:54 AM

  Until you are willing to take on religion

  anti-science sentiment will rule in America.

  Look, here is part of young-Earth creationism: The world is under 10,000 years old.

  Part of the evidence for Global Warming is that we have temprature records going back 100,000 years or so, from the Greenland ice-sheet.

  Further, we have a culture where because we are all afraid of stepping on religious toes. Because we all know that so long as you don't see the bullet coming, it isn't going to kill you.

  We have real threats to our civil liberties out there, be it the erosion of privacy rights, the rise of anti-piracy programming which just happens to check your internet browsing habits and your music folder, the coke-head conservative CEO takeover of the news industry, and the cokehead CEO takeover of the government.

  America's legal system has been systematically raped by the appointment of jackass justices who wouldn't know the law from a strip of toilet paper and we are constantly bombarded by a news industry that can't tell the difference between facts and opinions.

  And we have psuedo-intellectuals who are better at reading philosophers than they are at thinking for themselves supporting this crap with existentialist nonsense that gets proven wrong every time a soldier gets hit by a sniper's bullet.

  And our counter to this is a limp wristed parody of liberalism that preaches tolerating bullshit in the name of diversity.

  It isn't even a concerted effort or conspiracy theory, it is a reaction to cultural norms that were proven wrong back when the plague wiped out Europe. It is our fault that this is all happening, it isn't something being done to us, but being done by us.

  It is all a bit like worrying about mad scientists straight out of old comic books and ignoring the fact that big brother wants to sell your girlfriend a bigger penis.

  Now obviously there are global warming deniers who aren't religious, but the thing is they use the same basic cultural norm to prevent people calling them what they are - stupid.

  If you cannot attack a religious falsifications, there is a distinct problem with attacking non-religious ones. We are creatures of habit, and groupthink - the idea that unity is more important that actually being right - is a habit.

  We don't need to all get along, conflict is healthy, arguments are good for you, and respect while nice, when it means you don't get contradicted when you are clearly wrong or your clearly wrong opinion does not get hammered, is not.

  You need your nose rubbing in your idiocy every now and then, that is the way you learn to stop being an idiot.

  —Taliesan Read Taliesan's other letters
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