Discovery or Dyspepsia?

Discovery requires not only Diligence in the Search but Openness to the Possibility.

I occasionally experience a flash of insight that feels inspired; I generally attribute such rarities to rumblings from my own Inner Voice---or maybe this time it was that chili I ate!?

Birth control is antithetical to Catholic dogma not because it is offensive to god, but because it would limit the number of Catholics.

Trump Farms

Futurists now predict that when Earth's population reaches ten billion, the remaining productive farmland will be insufficient to feed everyone. (We're already well beyond six billion, so reaching ten won't take long.) One proposed "solution" is vertical (hi-rise) farming. Wouldn't it make more sense, by any conceivable rational parameter, to limit the population?!

If we keep swapping farmland for "ratables," the U.S. will become as dependent on others for food as we are now for fuel.

Roosting Raptors

When firebrand preacher Jeremiah Wright declared that America's chickens were coming home to roost, he was reflexively bashed by many armchair "patriots" who hadn't a clue what the pastor was talking about. The U.S. supported Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen in their insurgency against the Russians in Afghanistan (sequela, 9/11). The U.S. sided with dictator Saddam Hussein in his prolonged lethal conflict with Iran (sequela, Bush's War). The U.S. propped up the despotic regime of Iran's Shah Palahvi (sequela, an extremist theocracy bent on acquiring nuclear weapons). When America's chickens come home to roost, they return as raptors!

Beating Tomtoms Around Bonfires

Thanks to governor Sonny Perdue for providing me the following (long-awaited) opportunity:
In a brazen act of antidisestablishmentarianism, the governor of Georgia convened a public prayer meeting to combat the draught.

Confronting the catastrophic "act of god," the Georgia governor decided it was time to give prayer a try. Did he really think that until then no one had been praying for rain?

They needed at least 16" of rain; but despite (or because of) their prayers, they received only 0.13"---a miserly tease from a penurious god.

Heaven

Believers count on Faith to save them in the hereafter but rely on Science to save them in the here-and-now.

Believers anticipate rewards in an afterlife; my own gratifications are somewhat more immediate---I look forward to a heavenly lunch!

Ebony and Ivory

The commemoration speaker noted that forty years after Dr. King's death, racial injustice remains part of our national conversation; and, he might have added, part of our national shame.

One hundred forty-five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Whites should stop expecting expressions of gratitude, Blacks should stop expecting declarations of remorse.

As a new Blogger, I feel like Lana Turner at Woolworth's, expectantly waiting to be discovered!

Of Thee I Sing III

The United States has become a country that spies on its own citizens and tortures political prisoners; a country of rapacious consumers and polluters; a country where political corruption is accepted as the norm; a country that is failing to adequately educate its young and appropriately care for its sick. "America, love it or leave it," the facile response of the enablers, is not the path to a "more perfect union"; instead, our mantra must be "America, love it enough to fix it!"

Of Thee I Sing II

The United States is violent, racist, crime-and-drug-ridden, politically corrupt---oh yes, and deeply religious.

America's history is not the American History we were spoonfed in school.

The incumbent is under federal investigation. So is the challenger. Is this a great country---or what?!

Americans must look beyond tribalism and divisiveness and join hands in common cause to right the ship of state.

In Memorium

Americans will always find a reason to party (or shop!), even when contemplative reflection might be more decorous.

Of Thee I Sing

Suharto, former dictator of Indonesia, recently died. During his regime, while a U.S. ally, he murdered as many as a million of his countrymen who opposed him. We do have a habit of choosing strange bedfellows.

First, American Idol became our national obsession, then Dancing With the Stars---are any people on the planet shallower than we?

If I were Canadian, I'd vote to enclose my homeland in a giant impenetrable bubble, to lock out the environmental and cultural pollution emanating from our neighbor to the south.

U.S. food and water supplies are contaminated. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Our economy is collapsing. Our health is failing. So are our students. Our friends are becoming fewer, our enemies stronger. Ronald Reagan's "shining house on a hill" has become an edifice with a cracked foundation, peeling paint, and a leaky roof.

Because The Bible Tells Me So

I am genuinely impressed by biblical scholars who can extemporaneously quote scripture to bolster their positions---whatever their positions! (I'd wager some could even cite passages that portray their loving god as angry, jealous, vengeful, and creatively homicidal!)

The arcane ability to quote from scripture is not an indicia of a profound or critical thinker.

Intelligent Design?

We are such marvelous creatures, you and I, that we could not have come about by chance---we must be the intention of an all-wise creator who fashioned us in his own image. Our supreme narcissism causes us to invoke a Supreme Narcissist.

What was god's reason for the Complexity that creationists claim as his signature? He could have opted for Simplicity. Was he showing off, trying to impress? A burning bush would have done it for me.

My hometown is the site of the State Developmental School (formerly the State Colony for Feeble-minded Males), one of many similar institutions that warehouse god's mistakes.

Righteousness

Religiosity is not a requisite of Righteousness (and vice versa).

I have worn a beard for 30+ years, so I speak with some authority to the Orthodox of all faiths: Facial hair does not make one more righteous!

Red v Blue

The letter writer couldn't understand why people would vote for the "tax-and-spend" Democrats. Because, dear Madam, the alternative is the flag-wavin', gun-totin', bible-thumpin', gay-bashin', borrow-and-spend Republicans.

Realpolitik

Political "change" should involve more than implementing one new regulation (or tax) instead of another; real change would mean less regulation, lower taxes.

Candidates who claim that religion will inform but not influence their political decisions are guilty of disingenuous Doublespeak or remarkable self-deception.

Self-professed foreign policy expert John McCain boasts that he was involved in every major security issue of the past twenty years. Voters should ask themselves, "Do I feel safer than I did twenty years ago?"

Democrat candidates seem smarter, Republicans savvier!

American voters crave reassurance from candidates that we are (still) great and good.

Politics should be a calling, not a career.

The longer the campaign, the less impressive the candidates!

It's in the Professional Politicians Handbook: When confronted with compelling incriminating evidence, one may misspeak or misremember; if caught red-handed with a smoking gun, one may exaggerate, distort, even dissemble or misrepresent--but one must never, NEVER lie!

Buy American!

Purchasing shoddy American-made products at inflated prices is not an act of patriotism.

Like it or not, we are now competing with the World. As U.S. manufacturing continues to emigrate/erode, should we really be acknowledging defeat by retraining workers for the service jobs of a Consumer economy; or should we, instead, deny inevitability and buck the trend by making a concerted, all-out national effort to restore American capability, pride, and prestige as Producers?

Get REAL!

REALITY is what will be left after we've all killed each other off defending our own Realities.

We share the same REALITY, whatever our Reality.

REALITY does not wear a Happy Face.

Bang, you're dead!

Memo to NRA Members: Guns will not make your penises grow.

Memo to Gun Hobbyists: Try decoupage.

Memo to Lawmakers: Wouldn't you like to know that the fellow buying that AK47 has a history of alien abduction?!

Uncommon Sense
from
365 Days to Recovery from Religion
(Available now on Amazon.com)

*J’accuse!—god either made it happen or let it happen; god gets no more capital gees from me.

*As kids, we played Make Believe; for some, the game never ended.

*We can fully actualize our Humanity only by exorcising our demons and angels.

*I resent being held accountable for Original Sin; I am perfectly capable of my own sins.

*I wonder if god ever tires of the Lord’s Prayer.

*In tranquil times, we trust in god; in times of turmoil, we trust the Marines.

With a powerful arsenal of provocative aphorisms, a Rationalist takes aim at a herdful of sacred cows—Pilates for the mind!

Why Do I Call Myself A Rationalist?

I have been a convinced and committed Atheist since my pre-teens, for more than half a century. But I have long resisted (and resented) being defined by what I don't believe. A proliferation of terms for nonbelievers now affords me an opportunity to adopt a more simpatico self-descriptive. My problem with "Humanist" is that Humanism seems to have expropriated Atheism in pursuit of an ultraliberal political and social agenda with which I may not (necessarily, at all times) agree. Terms like "Freethinker" and "Brights," though I may accept their tacit premise, seem gratuitously condescending and confrontational. "Skeptic," yes; but too often confused by too many with Cynic. "Agnostic" is considered a cop-out--fence-straddling--by many militant Atheists. I disagree: Agnosticism is about what one knows (or professes to know); Atheism is about what one believes. When Atheists, enamored of their self-rectitude, fail to recognize or allow any distinction between their knowledge and their belief, they, like the religious fanatics they rail against, become zealots. So, I am reluctantly agnostic (an Agnostic-Atheist): I concede that I do not, can not, KNOW (for sure, to an absolute certainty), despite the vast preponderance of credible evidence that validates my worldview beyond any reasonable doubt. Aha! I call myself a Rationalist because that designation best describes what I do believe---I believe (fervently) in Reason.

Political "Experience"

To paraphrase Lord Acton, incumbency tends to corrupt, and perennial incumbency corrupts absolutely.

In my hometown election, the three incumbents had, combined, 36 years entrenched in office; in the prior election, they had run unopposed. Unexpectedly, the voters sent them packing. I am always pleasantly surprised when our democracy actually seems to work.

"Landslide" is a euphemism to describe Hillary Clinton's lopsided trouncing of Barack Obama in the West Virginia Democratic primary. But Hillary is the trailing candidate, extremely unlikely to become her party's nominee; and many previous contests had been squeakers. So why the West Virginia anomaly? Did West Virginians know or see something in Hillary that a plurality of other Democrats had not? Or could it have been because West Virginia is our Whitest state? I am always discouraged when our democracy seems not to work.

Opening Day Preview!

I wonder what it would feel like, fasting to flush out accumulated toxins: no TV/radio News or Talk, no newspaper Section A; only G/PG movies, only light fiction with happy endings.

We don't have a shortage of health care providers, we have an excess of health care consumers.


GMA honored a woman with 17 biological children. We must evolve to a mindset in which such excessive, irresponsible fecundity is an object not of honor but of derision.

We've come a long way. A Black man may actually become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. But in the most recent primaries, only 40% of Whites voted for the Black candidate, just 10% of Blacks voted for the White candidate. It seems we may still have a long way to go.

I wonder if this historic presidential election will make Americans more conciliatory or will inflame old racial passions---will it reflect the best in us or reveal the worst?

With a Windfall-profits Tax, who gets to determine how much profit is too much profit?

We do not have a food problem, or a fuel problem, or a pollution problem---we have a people problem (too many!)

No matter which political party is in power, our morbidly obese government is incapable of securing our borders or ensuring the safety of our food and drugs (and toys!) or maintaining the integrity of our highways and bridges or eliminating the crushing national debt that will grind our grandchildren to their knees or exposing and exorcising its own pervasive corruption and ineptitude---now explain to me again, please, why my vote is so important.

It's a garish quadrennial spectacle, crowning the Keeper of the Cookie Jar!