So I took the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) a couple of weeks ago. It’s like the ACT or SAT for people going into grad school.
Got my scores back yesterday. *glee*
Verbal (the English stuff): 670 (94-percentile)
Quantitative (the math stuff): 610 (45-percentile)
Analytical Writing (the uh, writing stuff): 5.5 (85-percentile)

I’m quite happy! The Verbal and Quantitative range from 200 to 800. I was shooting for a 700 in the Verbal, but being in the top 6% is OK. =) It’s enough to get accepted into Princeton or Yale, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
The Quantitative, I would have been ecstatic with a 500. I suck at math. My math score was what kept me from getting higher than a 28 on my ACT Composite. 610 is above the mean, yet 55% of GRE takers got score higher than mine. That’s weird. But I’m quite pleased with it.
The Analytical Writing goes from 0 to 6 in .5 increments, so a 5.5 is great. I was hoping for a 5 or better, but would have accepted a 4. I wouldn’t have imagined I’d have done poorly in the writing section since the tasks were basically to blog about a couple of topics. *wink*

The GRE was my saving grace for getting into grad school. See, back when I got my BA’s, I went through on a Theatre full-ride scholarship, so I put all of my focus and energy into the Theatre. (Much to the chagrin of my new wife.) So I did MUCH worse in my English degree classes than I would have liked. Which is ironic since I’d been more passionate about literature and writing since as long as I can remember, and theatre only since Jr. High. But, when they’re paying for my entire college education, you have to set your priorities.

So even though I have a 3.8 GPA (out of 4) in my Theatre Major, my English GPA was, well, I won’t say. So I knew I had to do well on the GRE to likely convince the English Department admissions persons that I would be worth it. Well, hopefully. They still have yet to decide to accept me or not. I’m putting my cart before the horse.

Oh, in case it wasn’t obvious, yes I’m planning on getting my MFA in English. Creative Writing, to be exact. Like I said, I’d always been passionate about books and writing since I was a kid. I was one of those weirdos who actually enjoyed reading the assigned books in school English classes (while still always reading something else under my desk during class, of course.)

So wish me luck. If they accept me, I’ll be taking two night classes a semester and maybe I can get my Ph.D. by 2020.

CNN.com - Bush: U.S. will succeed in Iraq or troops will leave - Mar 21, 2006

“We are doing the right thing. A democracy in Iraq is going to affect the neighborhood. A democracy in Iraq is going to (inspire) reformers in a part of the world that is desperate for reformation.”

In all the leadup to invading Iraq, where was all the talk about democracy building? Where was the talk about “freeing Iraq”? There was none. The entire justification for the preemptive invasion of Iraq were WMD’s and ties to terrorism. Now after finding no WMD, after finding out the intelligence for WMD was faulty at best and manipulated at times, after uncovering that Iraq had no ties to terrorism and Bin laden actually despised Hussain, now all the rhetoric is about freeing Iraq.

That’s not what we bombed the hell out of their country to do. And now our invasion has destabalized the country, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, thousands of American troops, and the U.S. is LESS safe now than it ever was before, because we’ve turned a previously non-threatening country (to us) into a hotbed of terrorism and training ground for terrorists where before there was none. Is that success?!

There’s no denying Hussain and his sons were psychotic murderers. Three years ago I was certain the world and Iraq are better off without them. But are they? I know we’re not. After 9/11 and before Iraq, we had the support and sympathy of the world. Even a Parisian newspaper declared “We are all Americans” after 9/11. Even if Hussain did have WMD, he certainly wouldn’t have used them against as, as no country would attack us, because they know in 17 seconds their country would become a parking lot. So yes, the battle is against terrorism, not disctatorships. In fact, not that I support dictatorships by any means, but terrorism flourishes more in democracies where people are free than in tightly controlled dictatorships. Hussain was killing his own people, but not at the rate of 100,000 in three years! In any case, it’s up to the people of Iraq to free themselves, not the American Empire to do it for them.

And so I say again, where was the freedom building rhetoric three years ago? Would Americans have support the Iraq invasion if that was the reason we had been given back then? I don’t think so.

And so three years later, Bush has squandered the worldwide support and sympathy we once had after 9/11. We’re now hated by countries and people that before respected and admired us. We even had the support of moderate Muslems after 9/11. And now even those moderate Muslems despise us. We’ve created instability in the Middle East. We’ve created a new source for terrorism where before there was none. We’ve killed thousands of innocents and our own soldiers keep dying and getting hurt. And it’s all so we can spread democracy to a country that didn’t ask for it? So we can start a civil war in a country that we bombed back to the Middle Ages both in material goods and services as well as religious and political mindsets? So we can make us a target for more terrorism and anti-American hatred? So we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this invasion instead of spending it on our own schools or healthcare or even providing our FBI agents with e-mail accounts as they do REAL work protecting us from terrorism instead of creating the cause for it?

Is it worth it? Is that “success”?

Following a link that’s supposed to go to “The God Squad’s” argument that atheism = immorality, I found this article instead:
TMS Features: WHY DO WE NEED A MESSIAH?
In case that link stops working, here is the article reprinted without permission (at least I give full credit where it’s due!) Scroll on down for my take on this absurdity….

WHY DO WE NEED A MESSIAH?

By Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman

Tribune Media Services

Q: What would be the need for a messiah if we evolved from lower life forms, even IF God did start the process? Why would we need redemption? - K.S., via e-mail

A: The WAY we became human beings is the just and rightful province of science. WHY we became human beings is the just and rightful province of religion. The debate over evolution and Intelligent Design may be motivated by religious commitments, but that debate remains a scientific one. It’s the same debate that always occurs in evaluating a scientific theory, and the resolution of that debate hinges on which theory best explains the facts of human life on earth.

The purpose of human life is another matter altogether, and it is in those speculations that the belief in a messiah arises. The theological problems that belief in a messiah are meant to solve are first, the individual problem of atonement for our sins, and second, the collective problem of the presence of evil in a world created by an all powerful, benevolent God.

One of the ways we teach children about sin is to pound a bunch of nails into a board and ask the kids to imagine that each nail represents a sin we commit against God or against another person (and God). Then, we pull the nails out of the board and tell the kids that the nail holes represent the hurts we cause when we do wrong. We then ask them how to get rid of the holes. Some children say you can fill in the holes, sand the filler and paint the board, but even then you can see where the holes were made.

What is true about the nail holes is true about sin. When we sin, we wound ourselves, our character and others, and we must try to find a way to fill in the “holes” we cause by our callousness, cruelty, thoughtlessness and greed.

For Jews, the holes are filled in by atonement and by God’s grace (hesed in Hebrew). This is also true for Christians, except that there’s an additional belief that the atoning death and resurrection of the Messiah (Jesus Christ) helps fill in our sin holes and also atones for the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in eating from the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge.

The second problem the Messiah solves is that of evil in the world. The Messiah is meant to fight the last battle of good over evil, punish the wicked and usher in the rule of peace and justice when, in the prophet Isaiah’s words, “The lion shall lie down with the lamb.”

In the case of Jewish messianic speculations, this might involve the appearance of a messiah to do battle with evil - the Messiah ben Yosef - and then the messiah for the end of time who will resurrect the dead - the Messiah ben David. The Christian belief is that the triumph of good over evil will be accomplished by Jesus at his second coming (the parousia in Greek).

In both traditions, the reign of the wicked will not last forever, and goodness and hope will be the fulfilled promise of God.

Can you spot the huge logical fallacy in there? Actually two. It’s an argument from fallacy and a false syllogism.
In order for their argument for a Messiah to have any merit, there must first be “sin” and the need for supernatural salvation from sin. Since their ideology assumes sin and eternal judgement by a supernatural power, then by their argument, there needs to be a savior from that sin. And so a Messiah is required to fill that purpose–regardless of whether it or he actually exist or not! There is no emperical evidence that there IS a Messiah or that we even need a Messiah, simply the belief that there is sin and thus the belief that there needs to be a savior from it.

It’s like saying, “There needs to be a reason why the sun goes up and down. I can’t imagine anything beyond fire and someone carrying fire. So the sun going up and down requires there to be a god named Apollo riding a flaming chariot across the sky.”

The first problem is the assumption of the existence of sin.
Do people do “wrong”? Absolutely! Like their board and nails analogy, do people hurt others and themselves? Yes. Can we judge that as wrong? Yes, most people would consider harming (physically, emotionally, mentally) another person or yourself is “wrong.”

But is that “sin”? Sin is the elevation of a wrong into something divinely prohibited. Most people from fundies to atheists would consider stealing “wrong” if for no other reason than because it takes ownership of something away from someone’s possession without their permission and removing their right to determine for themselves the use of that something. It disrespects personal liberty and is an exhibition of greed that affects someone else negatively.

Everyone (most reasonable people) regardless of religion or lack of would agree that alone is “wrong.” That SHOULD be enough. At least, most humanists and secularists feel that should be enough. Negatively affecting other people intentionally or thoughtlessly in and of itself is “bad” and creates damage to one’s relationships with others, with society, to their own psyche perhaps. But when a religion decides that simple human responsibility isn’t enough and something must be prohibited by a deity (regardless of whether people in general can agree that an act is considered “wrong” with or without supernatural prohibition,) that becomes “sin” and brings into it judgement by the supernatural.

Hypothetically, if a “wrong” is a “wrong” regardless of divine motivation, there is no need for divine salvation from that act. Societies create laws and punishments for people who comit these wrongs, regardless of religions. That’s why nearly every human society from ancient Egyption to Babylonian to Mayan, from Muslem to Buddhist to Shinto to American Indian, and everywhere else, have “laws” that tell people “this is wrong and you will be punished for doing it” to help deter those people who have problems realizing that harming others is not a responsible way to live in society.

Part of the reason supernatural judgements exist is because many cultures, Hebrew and early Christian among them, experienced mass persecution and terrible treatment by other cultures and societies around them. What do you do when you are a people for whom society’s laws don’t apply? You create divine justice which says those who deserve punishment will be ultimately punished even if they get away with it on Earth, and those of you who are “good” shall get rewarded despite the suffering you experience on Earth. Divine justice is wishful thinking on behalf of an oppressed culture.

Not to mention a way for a culture to set their societal laws in stone. How better to make sure people don’t cheat someone in a purchase of a donkey or a daughter or a slave than to say these rules are given from God and you better follow them or stoning is the least of your worries.

So, the existence of a Messiah begs the question of “from what?” Which requires a belief in sin, which requires a belief in being saved from sin…. Humanity will be much better off when when we can evolve past divine no-nos and realize doing harm to others is “wrong” regardless of if a deity says it is or not.

The stick of eternal punishment in the carrot-and-stick premise of religion is fundamentally a juvanile way to maintain order, as people who avoid doing wrong for fear of God’s wrath is an ultimately selfish motivation. “I want eternal paradise, not eternal punishment, so I must not do wrong” which I would argue is what motivates a very large percentage if not majority of religious people, is shallow and self-serving. Admitantly, some religious people do good and avoid wrongs in order to please God with little or no thought to their own fate, and that’s great! Just as possibly most non-theists avoid doing wrong to avoid arrest and punishment, there are a significant amount of people who avoid doing harm for the altruistic motive of bettering humanity and society.

I posit that of the two selfless motivations: pleasing a god and bettering humanity/society, the latter is a greater virtue as the former requires that a) You know what it is God wants and would please him (is it no longer the smell of burning flesh as found constantly in the Old Testament? No? OK.) and b) Pleasing God tends to depend upon ideology that ignores the plight and situations of your fellow humanity and the state of the Earth. Avoiding doing wrong, and doing good, for the betterment of your fellow man will only lead to a better society, a better humanity, making life here and now better and for future generations.

We don’t need a Messiah if there is no “sin,” only irresponsible and harmful acts.

This also pretty much sums up the “evil in the world” condition that begs the existence of a Messiah for salvation. “Evil” is another face of “sin,” a supernatural component to humans doing harm to other humans. Religion has placed the moniker of “evil” on acts that harm another. Evil is a way Western religions have come up to explain WHY people harm others or themselves. Humans are always looking for answers, and all too often make up answers that sound good instead of either searching harder or allowing themselves to simply not know the reason.

Why does the sun move? How did we get here, and why? Do I have a purpose? These are big questions. And ancient people who had no knowledge of cosmology and physics came up with answers like flaming chariots and human-like Gods forming objects in the nothingness. Humans require answers, and so we made answers up as ancient people. The problem is, many of us are trying to cling to these ancient and childish answers instead of looking at the new evidence that help us come to new answers. One would think it would be easy as a society to give up the incorrect ancient answers like Creationism in favor of more correct answers like evolution, but instead people find ways to defend the simple answers they grew up with. Making up arguments and reasons why the facts that refute their ancient answers are wrong.

And so it goes, moreso, with the philosophical questions and answers like evil and meaning. If there are divinely proscribed acts people must not do, there must be a REASON why people still do them! That reason MUST be “evil.” Booga-booga!

The idea that a Messiah will come to end the reign of the bad and fight for the good, is just an extension of the need for a divine justice that supersedes the “unfair” justice of humanity. Society’s laws and punishments are incomplete and sometimes unfair, and the deity’s justice is perfect. The problem is, which deity and which interpretation of the deity’s laws?

It embarrasses me that we modern humans still cling to ancient myths that were created to explain what we couldn’t understand back then, either scientifically or sociologically. When will we learn that our savior is ourselves! That as long as we rely on a God or a Messiah to make things right, we will continue to allow wrong to happen, and ignore the plight of humanity. The focus will always be on converting humanity to your belief in the supernatural as opposed to promoting the methods that will make all of humanity live in peace regardless of religion and myths.

I wanted to blog today on the supposition by the religious that non-theists are amoral. But I think I’ve done that. Anyone can (and should) realize that doing harm to self or another is “wrong.” We don’t need a deity to tell us this. To be “moral” under the fear of punishment from a supernatural force is childish, selfish, limiting, shallow, and superficial. True morality comes when you realize you don’t need a carrot and a stick to live without “sin,” you can do good and not do wrong simply because that’s the best way for humanity to get along with itself.

Conservative Christians are all the time trying to argue against relativism and naturalism.
Take for example Newsojourn: Learning to think and Newsojourn: Revenge of the sith and the article http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=14793.

Their favorite argument is that by saying “there are no absolutes” you are stating an absolute and contradicting yourself.

Oh I’ve debating this before: More on Morality, Objective, Universal and on Newsojourn: More about truth.
And the problem comes down to a) Semantics and b) The use of absolutism in addressing the belief “there are no absolutes.”

That understanding that there are no absolutes refers to moral absolutes. Ethical and behavioral absolutes. Of course in our Euclidean geometry run time and space there are mathematical absolutes: 2+2=4. There are biological absolutes: Everything that lives must die. There are physical absolutes: An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.

To say “there are no absolutes” is an absolute and self-contradictory is ignoring the forest for the trees. It’s being intentionally dense and obtuse in order to be contrary as a reasonable person, based on context, can understand that the statement is referring to a particular area of “absolutes” and the statement is not representative of that area and thus not self-contradictory.

Here’s some more understanding of relativism: Wikipedia: Relativism. And for more exposition on the self-contradictory claim, this does a better job than I could: Relativism: Pros and Cons.
Here’s a section on the incongruity of using the statement itself as a refutation of what the statement is explaining:

However, contradictions such as “all beliefs are equally worthless” appear irrelevant, as they constitute arguing from the premise. Once you have said if the X is absolute you have presupposed relativism is false. And one cannot prove a statement using that statement as a premise. There is a contradiction, but the contradiction is between relativism and the presuppositions of absoluteness in the ordinary logic used. Nothing has been proved wrong and nothing has been proved in and of itself, only the known incompatibility has been restated inefficiently.

From a religious point of view, I’ve already expressed how hypocritical it is for a conservative Christian to deny relativism in my last blog: Christianity is Absolutely Relative. The Bible is filled with instances in which morality is relative to whichever side you’re on. On the one hand, “Thou shalt not murder,” and yet the OT is FILLED with instances of the Hebrews slaughtering countless civilian men, women, children, elderly, animals, in order to gain their land. Where captured virgins are to be given to the Hebrew priests to own. Where slavery and selling your daughters were just and good. Where Samson is the first suicide “bomber” by pulling the building down around himself killing hundreds of women and children and civilian men and gloating about it with his dying breath. Where God sends 40 she-bears to slaughter children who were making fun of one of his traveling prophets. How you’re supposed to kill a victim of rape if she was in the city and couldn’t be heard. Or a man who farms two crops right next to each other.

Then, in the NT, in a couple of places Jesus states he did not come to abolish the Law. That the Laws of Moses are still valid and must be obeyed. Except, now you should love your enemy, and instead of an eye for an eye, you should turn the other cheek. Friends, if this entire shift of moral paradigm isn’t relativistic, I don’t know what is.

One can say, “Well, when God changes his mind, then the absolutes change. That doesn’t mean there’s no absolutes.” That’s a relative statement itself because it changes the concept of what is “absolute” to fit the behavior of the deity.

One of the complaints about relativism that conservative Christians express, is the idea that relativism begets tyranny and fascism. As exposed by Newsojourn: ESCR is NOT a Complex Issue and Newsojourn: Attack of the Clones.
Is this possible? Does relativism lead to fascism?
Yes it can.
Can absolutism?
Oh, you so betchya!
Fascism and tyranny come when someone or group has all the power. When they make the rules and have the power to enforce it. The strong overcome the weak, whether physically or politically. And when a person decides what’s right and wrong for themselves, and has the power to enforce it, it begets tyranny.

But that’s not the inherent nature of relativism, that’s the inherent problem of being greedy, arrogant humans. Believers of absolutism have the very same faults. And in fact, religion has historically been one of the biggest reasons for tyranny and fascism. Absolutism requires that all believe something the same way, the “one true way,” and all other ways are wrong. I can argue that belief is more fundamentally fascist than relativism is!

Being a relativist does not negate the need to live in peace and harmony with fellow man, or the world we live in. In fact, it requires it! We live in a homogeneous world in which there are countless cultures, histories, religions, traditions, languages, and you HAVE to accept these differences in thought and belief if you’re going to live together in peace. (The alternative is to convert, destroy, and force others to believe as you do. THAT’S Tyranny!) When you say “there is only one true way, God’s way,” well, which God and which WAY of God as determined by which Bible or version of it and which interpretation of the Bible, and which authoritarian’s belief of what God thinks and wants?

Absolutism is riddled with relativists vying for power for their absolute ideas. The fascist is not a relativist! The fascist, the tyrant, is an absolutist who believes they know the one best, true way of doing things. Perhaps even mandated by God. The true relativist understands that there IS NO one true way to live and thus would not force others to live that way!

A very important distinction. The absolutist by its very definition would require that all live the way they believe is the right way; the relativist understands there is no right way and would not desire to subject others to any one way at the point of a sword.

Naturalism. Some, see links above, equate naturalism to a religion. Huh. Just as conservative Christians get the definition and very nature of Relativism wrong, and evolution completely wrong (Gods, if I hear one more time that “man was descended from apes,” I’ll scream! Nothing has done more harm to understanding what evolution is than that damned painting of supposed steps from monkey to man. That piece of incorrect and completely mistaken crap is what is in everyones’ minds when they think of evolution, and there’s nothing more WRONG! Humans did NOT descend from apes! Apes and man evolved SEPERATELY down separate evolutionary branches from a shared ancestor that no longer exists! Sheesh! OK, anyway…) they also have Naturalism wrong.

I’m too lazy to go look for the name of the logical fallacy this falls into, maybe Straw Man, but it’s an attempt to redefine and alter the definition of what is being argued against in order to more easily refute or attack it.

Naturalism is by no means a religion. It has no moral codes, no rules, no supernatural component, no deities of worship. It’s at best a philosophy. It’s a viewpoint that all things in reality must be objectively examined using the tools of reality from a realistic foundation. That there is no “supernatural,” and anything that appears supernatural has a natural cause or basis. Ergo, there are no demons or angels or miracles. And if there are, then they can be examined using natural methods. And if we don’t have the tools to do so, we haven’t discovered them yet, and they perhaps exhibit some nature of natural law we have yet to understand.

This is the model that historically holds up under trial and error, testing, truth. Every century that passes, more and more that was thought to be supernatural has been examined and explained using natural methods and revealed to have natural causes.

Mental disease and epilepsy? There was once a time they were thought to be caused by demonic possession. Flies were thought to come from spontaneous generation and diseases were also demonic. We examined and explored and developed the tools we needed to discover the microscopic world. Before microscopes, whole swaths of our existence was relegated to the supernatural.
There was a time people were visited at night by demons and succubi and evil fairies. We’ve learned about the nature of waking dreams and the paralytic components to the REM dream cycle.
Ghosts used to be caught on film all the time. Then we examined and learned more about double exposures and the nature of photosensitive film. Ghosts also can be heard in houses and feelings of dread in “haunted houses” can wash over people. Aside from basic human psychology and wishful thinking, scientific exploration has discovered a sounds at a particular frequency which directly affects parts of the brain that induce fear and depression. Not to mention whole areas of acoustic science which have explained how footsteps across a building can sound like they’re outside your door.

Supernatural thinking is superstitious thinking. Supernatural concepts come from ignorance, no matter how innocent. The more we examine and explore and develop the tools to explore deeper, the more we learn about the nature of the reality we live in. To refuse to accept that is to choose to live in a fantasy world of superstition and erroneous cause-and-effect. To always have your behavior and decisions affected and informed by irrational and fallacious reasoning. Deciding to live in a world of angels and demons and miracles is no different than living in a world of faeries and ghosts and astrology. They’re all based on erroneous cause-and-effect, post hoc fallacies, and lack of knowledge.

I simply can’t conceive of living in a world where unseen forces constantly affect reality with no logical rhyme or reason. Where explanations for things come from emotion and ideology instead of facts and evidence. And fortunately, as time goes on, superstitious thinking gets replaced with reality, and demon possession and spontaneous generation and animal magnetism and ghosts become less and less substantial.

Or, does it get shifted around? Demon visitation has become alien visitation. Hrm. We have a lot more work to do before we can evolve beyond myth and superstition and embrace our potential to become a peaceful, intelligent, reasonable race that can coexist with each other and better our world and ourselves instead of hiding in the darkness of mystery and ignorance and arrogance. One day. I hope.

Some recent blog discussions, found here:
Newsojourn: Attack of Clones and Newsojourn: ESCR is Not a Complex Issue, and here Newsojourn: Revenge of the Sith which contains a link to an article here: http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=14793, involve discussions on absolutism versus relativism.

Naturally the point of view of the evangelical, conservative Christian right is that there is absolute morality. Black and white, good and evil, right and wrong.

It astounds me how blind people are to the absurd hypocrisy of this belief.
Along the same vein as the fact that the depictions of God in the Bible are the ultimate form of humanism, ironic for a religion that despises humanism, is this absolute belief in absolutism from a religion that itself wallows in relativism.

Show me the absolute perfect and exact, clear as crystal Bible. Is it sitting in a case somewhere? Under glass? In a vault?
No. The Bible has scores of translations, in English alone. Have you compared some of these translations and versions? There are some hefty differences in everything from word choice and syntax to literal meaning, not to mention figurative.
Add to that the fact there are many, many versions of various books of the Bible in the original languages. Even before the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed scores of different versions of Old Testament books, there existed various versions of various Hebrew histories.
Well goodness, the four Christian Gospels has enough differences among them to discount any Biblical absolutism, just add to that the various books of the OT that retell the same history from different Hebrew kingdom’s points of view. The canonized OT tells some history one way, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls versions give very different tellings with different takes and points of view.

Now, back to the many, many English translations (ever been to a Christian bookstore lately?) you have countless preachers and ministers and congregations and individual Christians who will value one version over another as “more correct.” More valid. Whole denominations of Christianity are based on various interpretations of various parts of the Bible.

If the Bible is so clear and absolute, why do 7th Day Adventists follow some of the Laws of Moses while other denominations say adherence is no longer necessary according to Paul? Why do Baptists immerse while Methodists sprinkle? Why ARE there so many Christian denominations, each one taking a relative point of view of the teachings of the Bible?

You may say, aw, that’s just the little stuff. The minutea.
I think the various denominations/congregations/ministers/Christians that believe some of these minutea would heartily disagree with you. I’ve met people who absolutely believed the “original” King James translations was the ONLY correct Bible. That you MUST drink wine and eat bread at Communion or Jesus is not present. That if yo don’t immerse, you are not truely washed clean of sin and Jesus has not entered your heart. Not to mention all the debates of whether Jesus really WAS God incarnate or not, despite mutual belief in the Nicean Creed.

Even in the Nicean Creed that supposedly most Protestant denominations believe tie them all together, are viewed differently from denomination to denomination.

Why are there thousands and thousands of books, hundreds written each year, that give a different take on the teachings and lessons of the Bible? Of the very MORAL foundations of the Bible? Of the will of God, and the mind of God, and the Laws of God? Why is it you can go to a hundred different Christians and get probably fifty different interpretations of lessons from the Bible?

Why does the OT not only condone slavery and selling your daughters but give rules and regulations for it, but those things are condemned nowadays, if morality isn’t relative?

Why did God provide a couple hundred laws of morality to Moses 4000 years ago, and they’re no longer valid today? Did Christians and Jews decide what to follow or not, which confirms relativism, or did God change his mind? Which means there’s still no absolutes if the uberdeity can change his mind about absolutes at will.

Christianity is rife with relativism. From sect to sect, church to church, individual to individual, each one has a different interpretation of the Bible, of God’s will. And each one will tell you their version is the right one. The correct one. The absolute one.

At least relativists are honest about the fact that there are no moral absolutes. At least we don’t hide behind delusions of holiness and knowing God’s mind as they do when they propose their dogma is more absolute that the next denomination/church/individual/translation’s dogma.

CNN.com - New animal resembles furry lobster - Mar 8, 2006

No telling how many new and unusual discoveries are to be had in the depths of the ocean.
It’s a pretty weird, alien world down there.

Hilarious!
washingtonpost.com

(Click the image or link above for the full comic.)
A wonderful illustrated satire on “teaching the controversy.”

Check my previous post: “Should We Teach the Controversy?”

An excellent article:

Should We “Teach the Controversy”?

Beautifully describing why Intelligent Design (as yet) has no place in schools and no credibility in science, and there’s no controversy in the scientific community regarding it.

Found it on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy

CNN.com - New Florida town would restrict abortion - Mar 2, 2006

Basically, this guy is wanting to create a town that follows a religious doctrine.

This may surprise anyone who knows me and my anti-religious stance, but I say go for it.
If it’s a new town, created by people of a similar philosophy, and no one is required to live there and anyone can leave whenever they wish, have at it.

There’s a quote in the article:

Frances Kissling, president of the liberal Washington-based Catholics for a Free Choice, likened Monaghan’s concept to Islamic fundamentalism.”This is un-American,” Kissling said. “I don’t think in a democratic society you can have a legally organized township that will seek to have any kind of public service whatsoever and try to restrict the constitutional rights of citizens.”

I have to seriously disagree. As a libertarian and in general very supportive of individual rights, this endeavor seeks to epitomize the concept of choice of living how and where you want that’s right for you and your family.

I may not agree with the religion or their philosophies, but the point of America is not to homogenize everyone into a stark, gray melted pot. The founding of America was not meant so that everyone is the same and has to believe and live the same way, even if that way is utter freedom.

The point of our great American experiment is to allow everyone the freedom to live how they wish without government imposing any constraints upon them. The Constitution was designed to give the Federal Government limited powers that was solely needed to keep the states together as a union, and that’s it. All other rights and responsibilities were to fall to the states and the individuals to govern and live how they see fit. (See the 10th Amendment.)

If a community of people want to have their own towna dn live how they prefer, there’s not only nothing unAmerican about it, it’s very PRO American! So long as it’s within a country that remains free for people to be able to do this, that recognizes the role of the government is NOT to GRANT rights but to protect the rights of freedom we’re born with, then things like this is exactly what the founding fathers wanted! The point of the US government was not to make everyone live the same way, but prevent government from making people live the same way while protecting everyone’s freedom to live how they choose.

Good for them, and I hope it succeeds, not just for their sake but the sake of the ideals of America!

CNN.com - Feingold on Patriot Act: ‘The die has now been cast’ - Mar 1, 2006

This is the part that literally disgusts me and fills me with rage:

The war on terror can’t wait for more debate, Republicans said.

“Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead,” Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, told the Senate.

Nevermind the fact that the military industrial complex our economy depends on which absolutely loves this idea of an eternal and unwinnable war in which case you’d think it COULD wait a a few more days or so to debate how much we’ll limit our freedoms for….

That statement, “Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead,” is the very antithesis of what the founding fathers fought and risked death and died for!!
What happened to “Give me liberty or give me death”?!

It’s important to protect innocent lives, sure. But our politicians have taken oaths to protect the Constitution…and we’re not talking about the piece of paper behind glass. Their number one responsibility is to protecting the idea of the United States of America. Of protecting freedom and liberty whatever the cost!
Lest we lose the very pluralist, free country the terrorists hate. (Which isn’t even accurate, as most terrorists couldn’t care less about the USA, they care about or occupying forgein countries, waging pre-emptive wars, getting bed with Saudi royal family, supporting Israel… that’s what they care about anyway.)

That Senator has no place having his job. It sickens me he’s holding a position of honor and responsibility created by people who risk everything, willing to sacrifice their lives to create a free country that values individual liberty above all else. He wouldn’t even have his job if it wasn’t for the sacrificed lives of thousands of people who fought and died for civil liberties!

Damn!