Either way, Christianity shoots itself in the foot...in the face of nonbelievers

One of my wife's atheist friends posted this article on his Facebook page. It's...not a good read from the perspective of a nonbeliever. Let's first go through Mr. Lose's points.

I know who WON'T be running for President amongst the Republicans

Chris Christie is done. He has no hope for a 2012 Presidential bid. Not that it appeared he was actually going to run, but I cannot know what goes on in his head. Even if he had been considering it, it is not going to happen now. He nominated a Muslim *gasp* to the New Jersey Superior Court. And then he had the nerve to defend his nomination by criticizing the people who bring up Sharia as being crazy (not necessarily clinically crazy, but crazy on this particular issue).

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It was a bit funny considering how the Republicans pray on the crazy and ignorant (there was a point where he said something about ignorance was behind the objections). Christie does it himself, pushing the idea that tax breaks drives job creation. [Cringes at the fact I have not yet posted as to why this does not work.] Though, I have been reminded that New Jersey has a fairly large Muslim population. Coincidence that he would be nominating and defending a Muslim judge?

(It should go without saying that I have nothing against this nomination. I'm not too concerned about the qualifications of this judge. No more than I would have with any judge nominated by a Republican.)

Almost forgot about Rick Perry! :S

Oh, I had wanted to share this video before today. It basically goes over Rick Perry's incompetence as Texas governor.



Apparently, a number of people did actually show up for his prayer rally. Let's see if it does any good. Like, maybe the stock market will magically go back up next week. And, more importantly, will he throw his hat into the presidential election ring? I thought he would announce it at his rally, but apparently he has not done so yet.

It's broken because they want it broken

In an earlier post, I discussed right-wing pundits complaining about liberals throwing money at problems and how what they really mean when they say that is they have no desire to fix the problem.

Another such area is public education. I often hear from the right-wing how our public education system is "broken." So, what is their solution? Voucher programs! These do at least 3 things that conservatives like:

1. Saves the wealthy money. Many wealthy people already send their children to private schools. Voucher programs will put money back into their pockets.
2. Promotes private business. As the vouchers would be used to send children to private schools, those schools would stand to increase their profits off of such a program. This is good for anyone invested in the school.
3. Promotes Christianity. To weasel out of any 1^st Amendment violations, it is a parent's choice for which private school to send their children to. However, there currently are a lot of private religious schools. There may not really be a viable choice between a religious and non-religious schools. (And many conservatives probably want it to stay that way.)
   Note to conservatives: Realize that if you are going to allow vouchers to be used in Christian schools, they can also be used in Islamic schools. I know how many of you freak out over Islam. Or are you trying to push your holy war agenda even further?

The scary part that people need to be aware is that conservatives are intentionally trying to undermine the public education system to push their agenda. There approach is really only a three-step process:

1. Pin/focus the blame on some factor outside of political control.
2. Defund public education while focus is shifted.
3. Repeat.

For step one, they are putting the blame on teachers. Other factors, as Lawrence O'Donnell discusses in the video below, includes home learning environment, the student's personal expectations, the student's parents expectations, class size, class environment, etc, etc, etc. O'Donnell blames it on an anti-union agenda, which could certainly be part of it, but I certainly think it is also part of their pro-voucher agenda.

I grant that there are some poor teachers out there. But has it occurred to people that we may have a large number of poor teachers (assuming that we do for the sake of argument) because those who could be good teachers that would like to teach don't because they can get a better paying job elsewhere? And that this also leaves open teaching jobs to people who would not do well in private industry? Some probably have, but unfortunately, teachers have been demonized as greedy and their low pay has been justified by the crappy argument that they only work 9 months out of the year...as if they don't have mortgages, utility bills, etc. to worry about those other 3 months and as if they don't deserve to be paid well for bearing the responsibility of educating the next generation!

Step 2 should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. Many schools are now rated on how their students do on standardized tests. If the students do poorly, funding for the school is cut. How is cutting funding supposed to help these schools do better? Well, go back to Step 1, and the problem (supposedly) is teachers...or even the school's administration. That's what the schools are supposed to fix...because there is no way that class size, etc, etc, etc. has anything to do with it!

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Please don't fall for the conservative tricks. The public education is only flawed because people with political agendas have made it flawed!

The fertility fears of the religious right

First, I must correct Ana. The USA is right at the replacement rate, and may actually be slightly under at 2.06. The population has grown largely due to immigration (which also includes all those South Korean, African, etc. babies people like to adopt, by the way). I added the above video to mainly focus on Steve King, particularly the part about a "dying civilization." At the end of the video, Sam suggests that this "part of a Sharia law...campaign." That is much of what it is. Part of it is likely also part of a pro-white campaign as well. The fertility rate of white people in this country is below the replacement rate. To better understand what King is saying, I present the following video:



This is the type of fear mongering that the right likes to spread. I think ideas like this are even worse in Europe, but we are starting to see more of it here in the USA as well. The video does a good job of mixing fact with fiction. It is true that the replacement rate is around 2.11. However, we start seeing fiction shortly after when the video says that a rate of 1.3 is "impossible to reverse," but then immediately goes on to say "because it would take 80-100 years to correct itself." Well, if it can correct itself, then it's not impossible to reverse, is it? "Impossible," then, is a buzz-word that attempts to exaggerate the seriousness of such a birthrate and feed fear. After that, we are told, "There is no economic model that can sustain a culture during that time." Well, they I suggest we get some economists on that and figure out a solution!

The video then goes over the birth rates across Europe. Some of those countries actually have higher birth rates. Spain is closer to 1.5, for example. However, I suspect they are looking at the non-Muslim population, since Spain has a high Muslim population. Because the next things they do is show how many Muslims are emigrating into Europe and look how they are breeding like rabbits!

Now, I grant I do have concerns myself. I do worry about the numbers of people who hold ridiculous religious beliefs possibly being on the rise, but I don't care about the religion. Fundamental Islam is just as much of a threat to humanity as fundamental Christianity. So, unlike these people on the religious right, the way to tackle this problem that I propose is to be critical of religious beliefs. In fact, let's be critical of any belief that is not founded on evidence. [Cringes at the fact I have not written a post on skepticism.] I have heard it said that the next generation of immigrants usually integrate into their society quite well. So, even if you have immigrants who are radical Muslims, their children could end up being quite different from their parents if the culture is not composed of radical Muslims. And that is why I think encouraging skeptical and critical thinking is the best solution. I don't give a crap if they are not white. People are people. Or I should say humans are humans. That, and skin color is skin deep.

I am also disappointed with the fertility rates of Muslims, like those on the right, but not because they are Muslims. Rather, I'm not happy that they are not helping to keep the world population down!

Also, where is the concern for eastern Asia? China - 1.54 fertility rate. (By the way, their economy has been doing OK thus far.) Japan - 1.21!!! If that doesn't send a strong message that this is all about fear mongering to stir up white Christians, I don't know what will.

At any rate, this is the sort of fear that drives the comments of those like Steve King. And it's the sort of fear that drove people like Anders Behring Breivik. The part that scares me is that this man does not appear to be the fundamentalist* Christian he was reported to be. He was sympathetic with Christian culture and knew some Bible verses, but he admittedly did not practice much. But what if he had actually been a fundamental Christian?
* It may be that he could be considered a fundamentalist Christian based on Norway's standards, as they are not a very religious nation. He would not have been a fundamentalist by American standards.

Best new thing

One of my friends had a great Facebook status update today. For those who cannot access Facebook, the status read as follows:

A man & his wife were sitting in the livingroom & he said to her, "Just so you know, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine & fluids from a bottle. If that happens, just pull the plug." So his wife unplugged the TV & threw out all his beer.

I think she went a step too far in throwing out the beer. He only ordered her to "pull the plug"! :)

"Liberals always want to throw money at a problem to fix it!"

The quote in the Title is near the end of the video. It was said by Margaret Hoover. The implication here is that it is bad to throw money at a problem, and this almost makes me wonder what kind of world these people live in. Seriously, in what world does fixing problems come without some type of cost? The reality is there is always some cost to fixing problems. Every problem, at minimum, takes time to fix, and, as the cliche goes, time is money. When I fix a problem at work, it takes time, time which I get paid for and time that I use up when I could have been doing something else...perhaps designing, for example. (Though, as an engineer, much of my job involves fixing problems. Fixing problems comes with the territory.) Even when I donate my time to an organization, there is some monetary consequence. (Yes, I'm considering volunteering as fixing problems for the sake of this argument. Consider it fixing societal problems.) When I donated my time on the United Way Day of Caring, my place of employment still payed me for the day, as they are a sponsor for the event. They incurred a cost even while I was gone volunteering and not doing the type of work I was hired for. Even when I volunteer on my own time, that is time I could be doing things to save myself money or maybe working a second job or even putting extra hours at my current job, which I can then use as a case for getting a bigger raise. In short, fixing problems costs money, so this implication that you don't need to throw money at a problem to fix it is absurd.

What could be seen as the more baffling part of this whole story is that this is in regards to this recommendation that birth control be freely available to the public in which there is the claim that the cost of preventing unwanted pregnancies will be much smaller than the cost of carrying out an unwanted pregnancy. In the end, money is saved, yet, these conservatives still complain.

This should lead people to the conclusion that there is something else going on here. I find that something else to actually be quite simple: They (the conservatives) don't want to have to pay anything at all, ever...which really boils down to selfishness. (Frankly, a lot of conservative ideas boil down to selfishness.) In other words, they are looking out for #1. For this case, O'Reilly and Hoover are likely thinking along the lines of "I'm a responsible person and never had to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. Why should I pay for someone else's irresponsibility?" When they complain about liberals throwing money at a problem, it is not because they live in some strange reality where fixing problems is cost free, as I suggested in the first paragraph, but rather because they had no interest in fixing the problem in the first place. When they disregard the fact that preventative measures can actually save money in the long term, it is because, once again, that they have no interest in the problem. Any cost in fixing a problem that is of no concern to them is too high of a cost.
Also note that earlier in the video, O'Reilly claimed that "Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex..." This is setting up the idea that unwanted pregnancies are always a result of irresponsible behavior, thus reducing sympothy for the pregnant woman. Amanda Marcotte at pandagon.net has a fitting response.

O'Reilly is framing unwanted pregnancy as a woman's just punishment for being a dirty, drunken slut. He doesn't, however, explain why he thinks it's such a great idea to have women he considers irresponsible, slutty drunks put in charge of raising the next generation. This is typical anti-choice thinking---putting punishing "dirty girls" above all other concerns, including the well-being of children.

...

O'Reilly clearly doesn't understand how the birth control pill works. His statement only makes sense if you assume that the pill works by a woman taking it right before or during sex to prevent conception, which is why being drunk might make you forget it. But in reality, that's not how the pill works at all, as roughly everyone in the world over 10 years old that isn't Bill O'Reilly understands. You just take it during the day and it covers you for having sex roughly whenever, as long as you're up on your pills. If you haven't been taking your pills and you take one right before sex, it doesn't offer any protection.

There is another issue at large in this discussion. Many conservatives are also moderate or fundamentalist Christians, the type of Christians that demonize the use of birth control. Even if freely available birth control makes sense (and it does), they will fight it as it goes against their religious dogma.