From the Washington Post, July 2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/28/AR2005072802085.html
“Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, said yesterday that second-quarter profit rose 32 percent, to $7.64 billion….”

“ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil company, said Wednesday that profit rose 51 percent, to $3.14 billion.”
That’s profit.

ABC News, Aug 2005:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1029991
” ‘The huge profits are enormous because the public is drastically overpaying what it costs to produce,’ said Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.”

Progressive Newswire, Aug 2005:
http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0815-03.htm
“The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) noted today that recent world profits by the oil industry shows profiteering is to blame for the recent 20 cent run-up at the pump during the last three weeks.”

“Recent financial statements show oil companies making new world record profits on top of last year’s banner world record profits. “

I’m generally against and redicule conspiracy theories…but c’mon. It’s public knowledge (literally as these are publicly traded companies that must disclose their earnings) that these oil companies are making huge profits.
And they have the audacity to say they’re feeling the pinch the consumer is? Bite me.

Just read an article on TimesOnline: Creationism: “God’s gift to the ignorant”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-196-1619264,00.html
It’s all the same information and rational, reasoned thought I’ve read a million places before… but reworked into a short, easy to read summary about how mystery is vital to science–as a means to finding answers. And fundamentalist’s annoying way of converting mysteries into God instead of opportunities to remove ignorance.

I liked this passage:

The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.”

Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty. Today’s scientist in America dare not say: “Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frog’s ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. I’ll have to go to the university library and take a look.” No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: “Weasel frog could only have been designed by God.”

I once introduced a chapter on the so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: “It is as though the fossils were planted there without any evolutionary history.” Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the reader’s appetite for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context. Creationists adore “gaps” in the fossil record.

Here’s what I don’t get. We impeach a President for lying about extramarital sex, yet this president sends us into an illegal and immoral war resulting in the unnecessary deaths of thousands and increasing our risk to terrorism, and we don’t seem to care. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.

Why did we go to war? Think back a couple of years, and you’ll recall months of “weapons of mass destruction,” and “retaliation against and elimination of a connection to al Qeda,” and “eminent threat to the U.S.” and what have we found? Not a shred of evidence of WMD and we’ve turned that country inside-out looking. We’ve found not only did Iraq have no connection to terrorism (before the invasion) but bin Laden thought Hussein a fat, westernized traitor against his faith. We have found Iraq posed no threat to the U.S.

We have also found that the Administration knew it. We’ve found that they heavily encouraged the Intelligence community to come up with evidence that can be seen as evidence of threat, and we’ve found out we worked with Britain to come up with a situation to legalize a pre-planned invasion of Iraq. Remember Karl Rove? He dropped out of the media light pretty fast. He’s admitted to outing a covert CIA operative who is the wife of an ambassador who contradicted the administration’s claim of Iraq’s attempt to get plutonium.

Our administration lied to us, and have sent thousands of brave soldiers to their deaths needlessly–that’s murder. We didn’t go there to spread freedom (which is no more right than the Soviet Union spreading Communism, by the way,) we went there based on WMD and eminent threat. Now we know it was so a man who has failed horribly at every civilian job he’s been handed all his life, tried to finish what his daddy started, to gain more control over Middle East resources and have greater military presence over there, and to give his oil cronies like Haliburton exclusive contracts. And brave soldiers are paying for it with their lives.

And when people wave the “9/11″ banner over the Iraq invasion, it makes me so mad I get nauseous. Remember Afghanistan? We invaded Afghanistan because of 9/11. We destroyed the Taliban which was the confirmed political brother to al Qeda much like Sinn Fein is to the Irish Republican Army. That was a “just” war. It was so appropriate, that Russia and “Old Europe” not only said “hellsya, go for it” but actually helped us! (Ah, those were the days, when we had both the sympathy and the respect of the rest of the world….) We appropriately trounced Afghanistan because they were tied to al Qieda. Iraq was not. So why did we invade?

See if this makes sense:
Before we invade Iraq, Iraq has no connection to terrorism.
After we invade, not only does that increase terrorist justification for hating us, but Iraq becomes a training ground for terrorism against the West.
Before we invade, Iraq had an internal problem with a dictator. After we invade, Iraq gets flooded with insurgents and terrorism trainees that are taking their knowledge and going to other countries with it.

We haven’t made any progress in our (unwinnable) War on Terror, we made it worse.

I have nothing against the U.S. military. I’m proud of them and respect them, and watching both real and recreated scenes of what’s going on over there on The History Channel, I literally cry for them. I thank God that one way this isn’t like Viet Nam is that most Americans rightfully support the troops. Military generals have spoken in front of the Senate saying over and over again that to complete their objectives they need more and more men and resources, and time and time again Rumsfeld has been seen saying “oh that’s not necessary.” I feel the greatest sorrow for the military men and women who are obeying orders and being sent to die and get maimed for a murderous president and his cronies whim.

And so I ask again, where is the moral outrage?!
Want some facts? http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex The Brooking’s Institute facts and stats on the Iraq war (see the PDF on that page.)
U.S. troop deaths increasing, injuries increasing, insurgent attacks increasing, civilian deaths increasing, cost of the war increasing, and no end in sight. Not so long as we stay there. And the Bush administration plans on staying there. Even before 9/11, his administration’s early goals were to increase military presence in the Middle East and attempt greater control of Middle East oil resources. Lucky for those bastards 9/11 happened and gave their amoral lack of conscience a reason to attempt to twist it into being connected to Iraq. The ironic thing, is our “freedom building” attempt is resulting in a religious based government being created over there (hey, THAT sounds familiar!) and they will likely want to get the U.S. out of there once they finally get things settled and hammered out.

There’s more unease in polls regarding how the president is handling Iraq, and yet, most people when asked why we’re there give some half articulated reason of “freeing the Iraqi people.” Why are only liberal extremists the only ones who remember the months of rhetoric, of poor Colin Powell destroying his political career and credibility in front of the U.N. presenting misrepresented “evidence” of WMD’s and eminent threat? Never before the invasion was freeing Iraqi people a reason for war. The only reason the U.N. grudgingly allowed us to invade is because we convinced them of WMD and eminent threat to the U.S.

So I say, where is not only the charges for war crimes, but the moral outrage?!

When I first decided to mention this last Friday, I was blogging in my head for hours what I’d say with all kinds of bloated, arrogant ranting. Now, eh. Don’t really care at the moment. I’m just going to make it short just so I can purge my mind of the matter and move on.

Trying to be somewhat fair and open-minded and aware of the “opposition,” I look at fundamentalists sites now and then. I came across this site which “answers” the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible: Tektonics: Commentary on the Skeptics’ Annotated Bible
*sigh*
I was pretty up in arms for a day or two after reading through it. I recognize that skeptics and freethinkers and people in opposition to fundamentalism and Biblical literalness can be pretty arrogant and insulting. I’m guilty of that myself. But usually, most of the time, analysis of fundamentalist positions and arguments tend to be approached with clinical objectivity and neutral attitude. Usually. And when words get heated, it’s usually directed at the “foolishness” of the argument or position, not the individual. Of course I also recognize that by insulting the argument one can infer an insult to the individual that believes it. But you have to admit that calling an argument foolish, juvenile, without merit, etc, is still quite different than insulting the individual themselves. In all the refutations of Michael Behe, for example, it’s usually a very objective and analytical tone addressing the arguments, and if there’s any name calling it’s against the concept of Irreducible Complexity and not at Behe himself.

But this “answer” to the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible is disgusting. I’m the first to admit that the SAB can be kind of demeaning and Read the rest of this entry »

Not sure if “Rosetta Stone” is the best metaphor, in fact, the more I think about it the less it applies. But I will say this: This page is the BEST page I have read yet to critically, succinctly, expertly, comprehensively explain why Creationism and “Creation Science” is utterly flawed as both a scientific concept as well as anything remotely resembling a scientific theory, while evolution (even with whatever holes people want to ascribe to it,) is still a viable and valid example of a scientific theory — and creationism and evolution should never ever be compared as anything similar to “equals” in an intellectual debate between the two concepts.

http://skepdic.com/creation.html

I’ve read a lot of articles and Web pages and whatnot on the subject, but that page is by far the best one yet. Should be required reading in middle school, in my opinion.

Was listening to Jerry Springer’s call-in show on XM Radio’s “Air America” station (and let me digress for a second to say that this is his political radio show, not his crappy trash-TV show. And those of you who know me know I don’t cuss, so when I say trashy crap TV show, I mean it,) and he presented a very interesting question. Prompted, ironically, from something televangelist and member of the American Talibahn Pat Robertson said:

“You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [the President of Venezuela] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson said. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”

Venezuela is a major supplier of oil to the United States.

Robertson said the U.S. failed to act when Chavez was briefly overthrown in 2002, and added:

“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”(Associated Press August 23, 2005)

Well, assassination isn’t exactly anti-Christian, after all. Take a peek at Judges chapter 4. Well, OK, it may not have been assassination, but it was the murder of an enemy king in his sleep (AFTER completely destroying his entire army.)

Anyway, the question is this: What is the moral debate regarding assassination over war? Would it be better to send in a Special Forces or CIA team and kill the leader with a $.13 bullet than to engage in a protracted war?
I find it interesting that Pat Robertson’s main focus is on maintaining oil supplies and the $200billion spent on the Iraq war rather than the tens of thousands of innocent civilians and American troops killed in that (illegal and immoral) war. Again, it seems the Religious Reich has no problem with killing thousands in an unjust war over oil, but will fight ridiculous political battles where they have no jurisdiction over the life of one Terry Shaivo.

Anyway…again…assuming our reason for going to war in the first place is just, and let’s say we even officially declare war, instead of sending in massive resources and soldiers, we send in a team with sniper rifles or pistols and silencers? What is war anyway except legal murder of countless people, often involving innocent civilians and their property? If we can “win” a war by killing only a couple covertly, wouldn’t that be best? I mean, if killing HAS to be done anyway, might as well make it as few as possible, and the right people!

Now one can argue “But if it’s a just war, then we need to capture the enemy leaders so they can face trial for whatever crimes it is they’ve committed.” Very good point! As we can see, just because America spent so much effort and time and Colin Powell’s credibility convincing the US people and the UN (barely) that we had to go to war against the “eminent threat” of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, we see now that that was a load of B.S. By bringing in the leaders the world will get a second chance to see how full of crap the Bush administration is. If we’d have just killed Hussein et. al., that might not happen. (As a side note, we’re talking about US involvement here…I think there’s no question that Hussein was a murderous thug that was responsible for horrible atrocities to his own people…but that’s for Iraq to have dealt with, and the UN in the proper course of action.)

Plus, there’s no guarantee that had we assassinated Hussein it would have prevented a full scale war. After all, what would happen in the power vacuum? Their army would still have existed, someone would have stepped up and taken over, and it could have been just as bad for US interests. Not to mention that that action would still make us a target for anti-American terrorist organizations as much as our invasion has.

There is a double-standard though, that’s a little surreal. The first couple days of our invasion we tried to drop bombs on Hussein and other officials’ locations. So, assassination via air strike and massive destruction is OK, but through a couple of snipers is evidently not. Isn’t that weird?

Here’s a question I would like any Christian to really consider seriously.

Adam, Eve, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do you believe God is so conniving and deceiving and tricky as to put this Tree in the Garden, (remember, he’s God! He could have put the Tree anywhere, or nowhere. After all, what purpose to GOD does having this Tree serve?) and then telling Adam and Eve not to eat of it, and lying about if they do they’ll die?
Is God that callous and sadistic?

Is your answer: “No, God WOULDN’T be that deceptive and conniving. That story is a parable to illustrate how we have been given Free Will and have chosen to turn away from God as our nature, and so our entire human condition is thus defined by our return to God and Paradise. It’s not a literal Tree and a literal fruit they ate.”
I am going to guess that that is most Christian’s answer. It used to be mine when I was a faithful Christian, as well as most of my fellow Christians, and after all, if it were literally true, not only did God, BEING God know what was going to happen since he’s all-knowing, and thus kind of being a real jerk for testing Adam and Eve like that unnecessarily (why does God have to have a tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,) knowing already what was going to happen, but there would also have to be a lot of incest going on for those first few generations of human creation.

So, here’s the follow-up. If indeed that story is allegory, then why is that story but not the story of Creation or Noah, from the same book of Genesis? Why do you rationalize that story of Adam and Eve as being parable but take the Creation as literal truth? A report of fact, despite the fact that we have no evidence AGAINST Adam and Eve (except just pure reason and skepticism,) yet we have ages of evidence against Biblical Creation story and the Great Flood?
By what basis do you decide what is literal and what is allegory?

I leave you with this: Look up these verses:
Gen.1:25-28
and
Gen.2:18-23
In which order were humans and animals created, and when was Eve created exactly?

Watched a couple of movies this weekend I haven’t watched in years. In fact, I got the A.I. DVD when it came out a couple of years ago, and actually haven’t watched it since, until this weekend!

“Dark City”
A great sci-fi flick! That is SUCH an underrated movie. It’s one of those I so wish I could completely forget so I could watch it again anew and have that 1st-time experience with it again. The way Alex Proyas draws you in, picks you up and carries you through the movie is masterful! The visceral momentum he establishes in the first third of the movie brings you along, takes you on a ride. And the visuals are just stunning! The entire style is a unique (for the time…there’s been a lot of copycatting since) blend of Art Deco, Film Noir, silent era sci-fi like “Metropolis“, and post-modernism. Speaking of “Metropolis”, “Dark City” pays it significant homage with it’s style. But the movie also successfully makes you feel the same disconnect, confusion, and uncertainty the main character feels as he wakes up with amnesia in this weird place.

“A.I.”
I reviewed this after it came out: http://www.celticbear.com/reviews/021129195349movA.php. I know a lot of people hated it, but I think “A.I.” is a classic sci-fi and should be remembered and catalogued with the great movies of sci-fi, and perhaps time will allow it. “2001,” “Metropolis,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters,” it’s easily as good as any of those.
Why? Just the verisimilitude alone makes it worthy of extreme praise. There’s rarely a moment in the movie when you didn’t believe 100% that the world they presented wasn’t real. Every set, every prop, every sound and image, looked right out of what the near-future will likely look like.
The emotional content. There’s two types of good, successful sci-fi. Hard sci-fi with little emotional appeal itself, but may spark an emotional response. Like “2001“. It’s a very cold, sterile movie, with little actual emotional content. However, pertly because of that, the feeling of loneliness and paranoia, the feeling of expansive wonder, are elevated against that austere presentation. Then there is sci-fi that strives for an emotional response, and that’s more dangerous, because when it fails, it fails bad. But sci-fi has always had some connection with evoking emotional appeals as sci-fi often tries to expose some aspect of the human condition, warn away some aspect of human weakness. “The Twilight Zone” is an example of emotional sci-fi that worked more often than not.
“A.I.” often bordered on the sentimental (which is a bad thing) but generally, at least for me, stayed within the realm of believably powerfully emotional. I nearly cry through most of the movie, and at the end of my last viewing I bawled. The emotional impact of that movie is just overwhelming. I think partly made all the more poignant for me because of the themes of love between a parent and a child. But also because I can easily anthropomorphize inanimate objects easily, and so I feel an emotional impact at the plight of the “mechas” and empathy toward their fates and what happens to them.

That link above goes to a much more in-depth review of the movie. So I’m not going to repeat myself too much more. Just to say that the themes it deals with and the successful emotional impact it delivers, in my opinion elevates “A.I.” to great sci-fi to be remembered for as long as film history is studied.

Listened to the 8th Episode of Skepticality podcast, and they had an interview with Tom Flynn, one of the editors of Free Inquiry magazine.
He asks this question of Christians:

In the story of Abraham and Issac where God told Abraham to kill his son Issac, and at the last moment when he was certain Abraham was going to do it, he sends an angel to stop him.
Well, what would happen if something went wrong? What if the angel didn’t make it? Would it be OK for God to let Abraham kill his son?
And 99% of the time the Christian will say no, God wouldn’t let it happen.
Why?
God HAD to stop Abraham because it would be the RIGHT thing to do.
What does that mean? It means their morality comes from somewhere deeper than religion. Somewhere so deep that they can even judge God according to that moral code.

Some more thoughts, vaguely paraphrased from Tom Flynn and :
Where does morality come from absent of religion? The ancient Greeks looked not to religion for morality, but to their philosophers.

If morality WERE Dependant on religion, then it wouldn’t really be a sophisticated morality. Most religious morality is built around the carrot-and-stick, and is a very adolescent view of morality. A view that’s designed for people that don’t have much of a conscience. And most Christians who follow their religion’s specific set of morality, is very superficial and selfish as you’re really only looking out for your own Salvation.

Isn’t it odd that Christians, who say they know more about morality than anyone else, can fight literally to the death for Terry Shiavo’s life and the life of unborn children, but it’s OK to go and invade countries and kill thousands of soldiers and thousands of brown-skinned innocent people? And rile about how wrong what Joe and Bob are doing in the privacy of their bedroom next door?

My thoughts:
A mature, evolved morality would be one in which affects and effects all people, and should have an altruistic viewpoint and not concerned with the self…and should not be Dependant upon a book.

Atheists follow the same internal moral code most humans, Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or otherwise follow. So obviously you don’t need the Christian Bible to be moral.

What does that mean? Does that mean “morality” IS objective? There IS some universal morality that guides us?
I’ve debated the idea of relativism and objective morality, here and on NewSojourn. And for a significant amount of it, I argued strongly for the extreme end of relativism despite my belief in an objective morality. If every NEARLY every culture, ALMOST every religion and major philosophy, all agree that certain things are wrong such as murder, theft, pride, etc, then does it not follow that there may be a universal (to humans at least) objective morality?

Perhaps. Probably. I believe it. I can easily say “murder is WRONG!” and not feel guilty about using an extreme, absolute, and superlative term.
Next obvious question: Who/what provided this morality?

Some would say God. I don’t know; maybe. It’s possible. I believe God created/is the universe, and the human experience is so unique in the universe (so far) that the existence of the objective morality we generally share could be God given–designed and set in motion at the onset of Creation and evolution toward the homo sapien.

Some would say it’s from a biological imperative. That in order to maintain civil social order, to keep the species at peace and work together toward evolution and survival, it’s biologically wired into us to not kill our own species (or at least members of our own social group) and to not perform actions that infringe upon another human’s “rights” and “property”.

Perhaps. But we’ve seen some pretty significant examples of lack of following the objective morality. Wars over land, wars over food, wars over ideology. Raping and pillaging from the earliest of man to today, performed by entire cultures. The enslavement of entire races and cultures by a people. The stealing of land from indigenous people. Arrogant crusades and inquisitions. Scorched earth genocide.
All of these examples can be attributed to all manner of cultures all over the world from centuries ago to even today. And all of them are also found in the Bible as actions God encouraged or commanded of the Hebrews.

What are we to make of that? If most people, regardless of religion, can live similar lives of similar moral code, and so many can perform acts of “amorality” even the most God fearing/loving religious, what do we take from that? What’s the lesson?

My opinion, get rid of religion for one. That will eliminate half the wars and strife, and no longer give people one source of justification for their amoral actions. And follow that with encouragement of understand of an objective morality that ALL people can and should follow, not for the sake of making any gods happy…but so we can all live in peace with each other! We can flourish and evolve as the human race, living to serve each other and not some deity that we must appease.

This is WAY cool!
Secret Worlds: The Universe Within:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html

A month ago, Skepticality podcasts (I’m still working through the Skepticality Archives,) did an interview with Dr. Michael Shermer, author of such books as “Why People Believe Weird Things,” “Science Friction,” and “Science of Good and Evil,” and editor of Skeptic Magazine.

He presented, among many excellent points and arguements, the fact that Christians themselves often can point up their own irrelevance. For example, when asked something like “Why should we not have premarital sex?”
The Christian answer is usually “Because God says not to.”
“But, isn’t there some REASON why we shouldn’t, that he doesn’t want us to?”
“Oh sure, it’s not safe from disease, risks of unwanted pregnancies, lack of emotional fidelity…etc.”
Then the natural question is: “Those are very good reasons. So, aren’t those good enough reasons without having a book tells us not to because God said so?”

Discuss.

A followup to my original entry: Did Jesus Exist?
Here is another site that present a lot of historical evidence to support the theory that Jesus actually never existed as presented in the cannonical Bible:
Non-Christian Testimony?

A lot of evidence I’d be interested in hearing a Christian apologist’s take on.

I read on a forum recently this statement, and I can’t find it again to attribute it. But it makes sense:
– You can believe the truth, which may be hard to accept, but will allow you to move on and become a better person, or
– You can believe a lie and continue to make excuses for it and find rationalities for it no matter how absurd they must become to protect the lie.