Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Obama's Presidency like the Second Coming?

I've found that most atheists are as far left leaning as you can get. It's understandable inasmuch as we are extremely liberal on so many issues. Naturally most of us align ourselves politically with the party that seems most attuned to our viewpoints on religious and social issues such as racism, sexism and homosexuality. However much I agree with them on these issues, I can't bring myself to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I cannot accept the tendency toward socialism and the Robin Hood mentality of the Democrat party. I'm a registered libertarian but I realize that my party is not seriously in competition for the presidency. This always makes for a difficult decision for me at the polls. On the one hand I want my country's leader to be opposed to bigotry of all kinds and not to kowtow to the dictates of religion and all of its ridiculous notions. On the other hand, I do not want America to become like the failed and failing socialist nations in Europe. It is clear to me that socialism is not the answer to our problems. Obama is right that we need change. But the change we need is not to turn our nation into another third world nation or socialist regime. For instance, socialized medicine is nothing more than a way to insure that everyone has free access to equally pathetic healthcare.

One of the ballot propositions in my state this year was put forth to keep our freedom of choice in healthcare from being overridden by well-meaning advocates of universal healthcare. The measure specifically and unequivocally stated that its intent was only to preserve our freedom to choose our own healthcare. And yet, the proposition was defeated because its opponents successfully convinced the electorate that it would prevent them from providing healthcare to those who are poor and on public assistance. No one has ever made a cogent argument for that position but voters fell for it. So we are now likely to have healthcare insurance foisted on us that will provide us with no choice and, just like Canada, we will be told that we will have to wait in a queue for important surgery or other treatment because our freedom to choose has been denied us. Freedom is what this nation was founded upon and that is exactly what is draining away like sand through our fingers.

And what have the Democrats given us atheists to be happy about with this election? Obama is just as much a religious person as the other candidates. He has promised to enhance the Bush doctrine of giving tax dollars to religious institutions. Just how have we gained any ground in the fight to secure real religious freedom? Sure, he pays lip service to the notion that people of every faith or no faith at all are all equal, but I am left to wonder how a man who sat for two decades in Reverend Wright's fundamentalist church and espouses a "growing" Christian spirituality can be serious about this. And the hate-filled racist diatribes of Reverend Wright didn't seem to bother Obama. So what kind of a champion against bigotry can we expect President Obama to be? Obama has been marketed as if he is the second coming of Jesus Christ and I think a lot of people are going to be woefully disappointed in what they got for their vote, especially atheists.

I am extremely tired of people who claim to be colorblind and eschew racism with their words but demonstrate a completely different attitude with their actions. I can't even count the number of people I heard in the national media stating flatly during the presidential campaign that they were voting for Obama simply because he is black. If anyone had said they were voting for his opponent because he was white, they would have been almost burned at the stake. But it's perfectly OK to say you're voting for someone because he is black. What kind of sense does that make? How is that not racism? Who cares what color a candidate is? In my opinion, color is not an issue and should not be a criterion for being elected to public office. While I understand the emotions of people like Tiger Wood's who was tearfully joyful at having the first black president, I think they are missing the entire point of a free nation. Of course it is excellent news that our country has risen above bigotry enough to elect a black person to the highest office. This event should encourage everyone of every race that they can achieve whatever they want if they work for it. The barriers are gone. However, if we have elected a man simply because he is black, we are only indulging in racism by that fact.

It dismays me that people can be blinded to the other real and important issues we face as a nation and elect someone who is not prepared to handle these issues or lead us to be a better and stronger nation just to prove we are not bigots. We have a black president. That’s fantastic. But have we just elected a symbol? Obama has never done anything of substance politically or otherwise. He was helped to every position in life by affirmative action and not completely on his own merit. He seems to have been living in a fantasy world and his politics are all theory based, not experiential. His complete lack of experience is a serious problem looming for his presidency and for us as a nation.

The real problem is that Obama's stated goals are completely impossible. He and Joe Biden want to indulge in rampant redistribution of wealth. They want to tax the hell out of anyone who they deem to be "rich." They want to increase taxes on businesses so they can implement their socialist agenda. But all they will succeed in doing is chasing more businesses offshore and their taxes on the rich will increase the costs of goods and services on the rest of us. Jobs will leak out of our country like water through a colander and they will be forced to define “rich” further and further down to keep funding their ridiculous plans for social engineering. They simply do not see what the country really needs to change in order to give people equal opportunity and to give incentives to make more progress.

Instead of growing government to massive proportions with ever greater grasping for revenue by an onerous tax burden, we need to shrink government and stick to the constitution. The government needs to be there to protect people from harm. It's that simple. The free market system is our best bet as China and other such nations have discovered. Of course we need regulations and protections in place to keep the populace from being abused by corporations and individuals who are unscrupulous. Of course we need to protect and provide for the less fortunate. But you cannot take away the incentive to be productive and expect people to keep forging ahead. As it stands now, our tax rates are confiscatory and unevenly applied. That needs to change. The government wouldn't need to have such preposterously high revenues if it wasn't trying to be everything to everyone. I hear people complaining all the time about our Big Brother government and yet they keep voting for more and bigger government. What do they think will happen? They want to give more and more power and control to the government and yet they want their freedom to be protected. It just doesn't make sense.

I wish President Obama well and I will enthusiastically support him when he is right but I will oppose him when he is wrong just as enthusiastically. I hope that as a nation we can be wise enough to insist on real substantive, useful and productive change from his administration and not just be happily mollified with the pabulum he served up in his campaign speeches. We certainly need change in this country but we don't need to change what made us a great nation that people all over the world flock to for protection from oppression and tyranny. Freedom is what made this country a great place to live. Socialism can only destroy that freedom. It is at least as bad as religion on that count. It cannot help us. Like Jesus Christ, Obama seems to be bringing tyranny disguised as utopia. I just don't see how so many atheists cannot make the connection. I am forced to think that they have given up thinking for themselves and want a nanny government to do it for them. The irony would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Beyond Belief - Food for Thought

In response to the recent books by people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, many theists are complaining about the tone of the debate. This also rankles some scientists who think that such arguments only serve to make the debate about religion more contentious and confrontational. I can see their point but I am with Sam Harris when he says that it is time to stop making it taboo to criticize religious dogma.

In 2006, Dr. Melvin Konner, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Emory University, expressed a desire for more sensitivity in the debate between rational scientists and the theists of the world. Whether or not there is any real validity to this approach, even the most sensitive approach cannot avoid the conclusions below. These are the statements of accepted fact that were put forth by Dr. Konner.


  • There is no verifiable evidence to support religious claims and all testable claims fail.
  • Science continually closes all the gaps in knowledge that religion has been used to fill.
  • What is called the soul is just brain activity.
  • Religion is divisive and causes bigotry, violence, hatred and war.
  • Religion is the "opium of the masses."
  • God is the product of human yearnings for:
    • A perfect parent
    • Reward and punishment
    • Companionship
    • Meaning
    • Escape from death
    • and other human penchants for agency-detection and imagining other minds.
  • More generally in psychological and psychosocial terms religion is a product of human yearnings for:
    • Identity
    • Belonging
    • A sense of superiority
    • Blameworthy enemies
    • Narrative

  • All "sacred" texts are characterized by:
    • Errors and lies
    • Internal contradictions
    • Mutual contradictions
    • Supernatural (i.e. highly implausible) origins
    • Silly or cruel behavior of gods and religious heroes

  • To validate his contention that arguing with theists is pointless, Konner points out, and I'm paraphrasing somewhat:
  1. Most religious people don't care about and are not swayed by proof.
  2. They do not generally care that religion has been the cause of great harm and injustice.
  3. They do not generally care that religious texts are fatally flawed.
  4. They do not generally care that they cannot even define God.
  5. They have been developing rationalizations and subtly fallacious arguments against all these things for millennia.

For different reasons, Dr. Konner and I don't accept the notion put forth by Steven J. Gould that religion and science are simply areas of nonoverlapping magisteria. He says "Neither one is magisteria." I agree that neither is magisteria, partially because that is a religious term. I say that science and religion do overlap and that science is better because it is the only one of the two based on evidence.

Atheism is not a religion but it is a perfect substitute for religion when it proposes to explain purpose or origins. It may not be as comforting to some when confronted with harsh reality but I don't think the vacuous promises of religion are any better. I do not mean to imply that atheism per se explains the origins of life or that it ascribes purpose to the universe. What I should say is that when religion fails to explain origins and purpose, atheism is naturally the correct conclusion.

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom but to set some limits on infinite error. - Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo

It's also commonly imagined that atheists think there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding. The truth of it is that atheists are free to admit that there's much about the universe that we don't understand. I mean it is obvious we don't understand the universe. But it is even more obvious that neither the Bible or the Qu'ran reflects our best understanding of it. - Sam Harris