philosopher.
Drudge just cracks me up. Check this out:
So you think, wow, this is _really_ tightening up toward the end here!
Until, of course, you check Gallup’s website:
He is only pulling his data from the traditional model, and is completely ignoring the exact same poll that has Obama up by 7 points. I wonder why that model is necessary? Oh right…
Harper and I are giving the keynote address at Northwestern University Entrepreneur Idol.
I wonder what we will talk about this time….
More coming soon.
McCain – “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.”
McCain – “Worst mistake of my life.”
The best part of this is that the Senate Ethics Committee did not pursue any possible ethics breaches in McCain’s delayed reimbursements to Keating for trips at the Keating’s expense, because they occurred while McCain was in the House… so they lacked jurisdiction. So you would think that perhaps the House would have jurisdiction? Wrong. The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct said that it too lacked jurisdiction, because McCain was no longer in the House. I am not kidding.
See the entire site here: http://www.keatingeconomics.com/
Call out John McCain for who he is.
There, I said it.
For years, I have been reading Newsweek. Nearly every time I am unfortunate enough to stumble my way upon one of her columns, I find myself exclaiming aloud “How can Newsweek legitimize sending this moron a pay check?”
In her piece, Arguing Against Atheists, she doesn’t really quite understand the argument at hand.
First, if 90-odd percent of Americans say they believe in God, it’s unhelpful to dismiss them as silly.
I’d like to point a couple of things out with the idiocy of that statement. Within her uncredited and dubious 90% number, I am sure many of the hundreds of world religions are represented. Each of those religions believes they are the true religion, and they have the EXACT same stance as atheists… everyone else is wrong. However, atheists have a very special philosophical right.. because they do not make any sort of claim on mysticism, they hold the right to throw stones without compromise. They have nothing to defend, whereas your religion has to defend why Jesus (or Allah or Moses or whomever you worship…) exactly exists. Why? Because you can’t just make shit up, that is not how the world works. Take this conversation for instance:
Lisa Miller: “Hi Scott, do you know what time it is?”
Scott V: “Sure do. Pancakes.”
Lisa Miller: “What?”
See, that is silly because I made it up. It doesn’t matter if I make it up, or if I convince 200 million people that the time is currently pancakes. The fact remains, it is silly.
Second, when they check that “believe in God” box, a great many people are not talking about the God the atheists rail against—a supernatural being who intervenes in human affairs, who lays down inexplicable laws about sex and diet, punishes violators with the stinking fires of hell and raises the fleshly bodies of the dead.
Wrong. When atheists argue against gods, they are arguing against any form or spiritual being. Not only am I arguing about your ambiguous-interfering-sex-pervert god, but I am also arguing against your do-nothing-can’t-get-off-the-couch-the-game-is-on gods too.
The problem with religion is not belief itself, which even in the most orthodox believers is inconsistent, but the (violent or oppressive) enforcing of one truth over another.
Wrong. The problem with religion is that it subverts logic and makes it seem acceptable. It lends a hand to those who want to disrupt REAL science with asinine beliefs, without proof, that the earth is 4,000 years old. Or that some magic creator made women subservient from men by pulling out a caveman’s rib bone in a jungle. Religion has been consistently used as a tool of power for longer than history has been recorded, whether or not those means and ends were violent is irrelevant, the fact that it happened is not.
They may provoke in believers a better, or deeper faith, but the number of converts they—or the atheists—can claim is undoubtedly small.
While I have no hard proof that Hitchens himself laid hands on a believer and cast the devil of faith from him, I can tell you that there is no moment of revelation within atheism. Its not as if someone is going to pick up a book on atheism and become a convert, because atheism is not easy like religion is. It doesn’t propose to solve your problems. It doesn’t promise eternal salvation. It isn’t comforting or warm. We don’t have meetings on Sunday mornings. As it turns out, atheism more frequently than not, comes with a simple education. The incidence of atheism in our population grows the more educated we are.
Submitting faith to proof is absurd. Reason defines one kind of reality (what we know); faith defines another (what we don’t know).
The only thing absurd is that sentence. Lisa is making two statements here. One, god exists. Two, we don’t know if god exists. If faith defines what we do not know, then we do not know that god or gods exist. At best, this does not make you a believer, it makes you an agnostic. Good work Lisa, welcome to your own philosophical conundrum.
