Tossing Pooes

Okay… not how I addressed it, but here’s a letter I just sent Rep. Joe Wilson… a SC nobody who grabbed a popular vote and has done nothing but disrespect the office he holds, the country and people he is sworn to serve, and to blatantly lie about his “fiscal responsibility”… about H.RES.662, the recognition that the House supports public bodies’ legal ability to deliver generic invocations to open their meetings. 

“H. RES. 662 - Your sponsorship of a waste of time

 Representative Wilson,

I want to congratulate you on your uncanny ability to waste congressional time and taxpayer money. Really? A resolution to support public prayer to plagiarized, outside-reality storybook characters that  is perfectly legal under the Marsh vs. Chambers decision?

Please, sir, remove your taxpayer funded head from your corporate funded rear and actually DO something.

Sincerely, 

Steven Prouse”

I had to make it short and sweet else his attention span may suffer drastically.

So… up at 4 after a shit night of sleep, shower and shaved and throw the bags in the car… or at least the bags I didn’t drop in there last night… and we’re off. The green lights seem to work for us, well, all but for that one yellow to red I just didn’t feel like trying to stop for.

Rolling through the morning dark just after five down highway twelve into downtown Columbia with Me First and the Gimme Gimmes playing low through the car speakers and my girlfriend in the passenger’s seat staring out the window at the street lights passing by, I let my mind wander.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t drift to what feels like the half hour of sleep I had last night or the odd dreams of colorful cobras that, as I beheaded the two of them, became very confused girls. It hovers over how very much this feels like one of my hundreds of business trips where I roll out in the ass-end of dawn heading for an airplane to who-knows-where.

Somehow, that seems fitting. I’m going to a place I’ve never been… a place I’ve only ever heard of and a place I’ve never really thought I wanted to go.

Fatherhood.

As I mentally prep for crossing the boundary of what everyone tells me will be a completely different life, oddly, I don’t face it with any more anxiety as I do any other journey. No way am I prepared, but it’s something new and I’ll face it as I do all other change. Every night is a doorway into a new life. This is but another doorway and my new life will bring a full spectrum of emotion that I may or may not be prepared to face, but I will face them. And I eagerly anticipate looking into the face of my next stage of life.

See you soon, son.

There was a comment in a humanist group on facebook just now that got me thinking. Basically, it asked if the non-religious absolutely have to talk about religion all the time.

We immediately think, “Of course not. That’s just ridiculous.”

But then we have it pointed out to us that throughout most of the various atheist/secular/humanist social networking groups in which many of us are members, a vast majority of the posts are from folks who grew up within the hyper-sealed envelope of the religious dogma of their communities and families, and they overwhelmingly get lost in venting against those dogmas.

We’re all guilty of either beginning or allowing ourselves to be sucked into those conversations where we’re desperately trying to prove that our world view is right for us and is valid and should be respected, and when we do it with a large group of like-minded people, we fill up pages and pages of commentary on religion. We create a dark cycle of escaping from religion only to imprison ourselves fighting against the logical fallacies of those same religions.

We’re doing what we feel is right and we’re helping people within our social media communities handle arguments and attacks in their non-cyber lives. We’re arming them with knowledge.

But, are we overwhelmingly creating an image of unification through negativity? 

That’s probably too broad a statement, but it has me thinking. 

There are amazing wonders in this life… things of such supreme importance that the complete destruction of ancient fairy tales can’t even begin to compare.

Things like rattling out the most amazing sentence you’ve ever conceived.

Going out into the country on a clear, warm spring night and watching the stillness and wonder of the color spectrum played out by the stars light-years away.

Looking into the eyes of the person you love, of your children, of your parents, and knowing, without a sliver of doubt, that that person loves you as much as you do them and that they know you better than you know yourself.

An amazing steak or piece of chocolate or any other guilty pleasure rolling over your tongue sending you inside your own mind with pleasure.

Reading a fantastic book.

Watching a movie that makes you pause and think or cry or laugh or laugh so hard you cry.

Having mind-blowing sex… for HOURS.

Being there to help someone exactly when they need it most.

While my concepts of those things insurmountably beautiful are fairly limited within the vast cosmos of human experience, the key to these experiences and many more like them is simply this… no matter your faith or lack thereof, these are experiences that can be and are enjoyed without the impact of religion.

Can we change our conversation? Can we treat religion as if it is little more than a gnat which we only pay attention to when it buzzes around our head? 

I truly hope so. I would so much rather read the hopes, dreams, fears, life stories, and personal moments of absolute amazement from my non-religious friends than the stories of yet another fundamentalist attack or stupid fascist, faith-based law that sets the secular crowd into defend mode.

I understand why we argue against religion so very much - because religion is non-stop in our face judging us and trying to strip away the civil liberties of those persons who don’t fit within it’s tightly guarded mold.

I just don’t understand why we don’t, just as often, choose to celebrate the poetry of existence. Our universe is so much more phenomenally beautiful than any mythology could ever hope to be.

So… I really like Penn Jillette. I like what he has to say. I like his free spirit. I like how effectively he uses the word fuck. I like some of his jokes, but he gets a little pun-ny for me.

I like a lot of his political positions, but not all of them. Especially his taxation thoughts. While our tax code is shit and our spending is out of hand, his uber libertarian stance that he will not approve his government of using force for anything that he wouldn’t be willing to do for himself including taking money from people is a little simplistic. Voluntary taxation has never been a way of viably financing a government and peaceful anarchy is as pie-in-the-sky as the ridiculous notion of an invisible man lording conflicting morality and nature over our heads. The key is to increase the value the People receive for the tax dollars they pay.

But, where I’m really with Penn is, “I don’t know.” The notion that this statement is the most powerful, humble, and wise statement in the English language hits home for me.

I don’t know macro economics, but I know enough to ask folks who do. They don’t know definite outcomes of their theories, but they should know enough to know that their predictions are just that… predictions.

I don’t know climate science, but I know enough to ask folks who study it. They don’t know definite causes / outcomes of their theories, but are positing solutions based on actual evidence.

If more of our politicians and pundits could understand that they truly don’t know, maybe we’d have a government that would stop trying to tell us when / where / why / how to live and from throwing every last cent of our money they can get their hands on against the Corporate Evangelical Military Industrial Complex wall just to see what sticks. They would begin to look for value and be willing to admit when they’re wrong about something.

Changing our position isn’t a sign of weakness. It represents the personal integrity and strength required to admit that, in all reality, we really don’t know.

Hilary Rosen is getting far too much attention for her comment, so I’m not going to really talk about her here. But, Peggy Noonan’s response this morning on Morning Joe made me go a little retarded when I heard it and I have to comment back.

Her attempt to beatify Ann Romney by saying that it is a sacrifice to stay at home with your children falls short and presents a quite dismal view of Republican priorities. 

First, when your husband is born wealthy and pulls down $200MM per year, it is NOT, in any way, shape, or form, a sacrifice to stay at home. What is she sacrificing, an extra car? She doesn’t need to work so she’s not sacrificing anything… especially when it comes to what Peggy Noonan thinks is important [her words] money and status.

This brings me to my second point. To sacrifice one thing to do another, you have to believe that one has value over another. Sacrifice is giving up something of value when compared to what it is being given up for. That means, to Noonan, having a second income is something of significant enough value that, to give it up for the sake of raising your children, it is a sacrifice.

I don’t know what world she’s coming from, but my girlfriend would give anything to spend more time with her son. She would love to give up her job and raise her son… spend time with him… make him not sob every time she leaves the house for 8-10 hours, even on the weekend, knowing that it’s a possibility that he’ll be asleep before she gets home and that may be the last time he sees her that day. The thing of legitimate value for her is to have her son know that she is there for him when he needs him, not the family in whose hands we have to leave his care each day.

But I can’t provide that life for her. I don’t make enough to cover our joint living expenses. I hope to get to that point one day, but we’re just not there. How much of his life and our (on the way) son’s life has to pass before they can have a full time parent with them? 

It is a luxury in this economy to have a stable and efficient single income so that a second one isn’t required to keep a roof over your child’s head. The sacrifice is having to leave the raising of your children to someone else while you go to work to pay bills.

Mrs. Noonan, where are your priorities when you actually think it’s a sacrifice to stay home with your children rather than to go earn a second income? If you’re speaking for most “conservatives,” to hell with your world view. You’re the type of people who think the only person of any value is putting in 10-20 hours a day at a job rather than enjoying the one life and all the love that comes with it we have on this planet.

I recently returned from the Reason Rally: a gathering of 20,000 non-religious on the National Mall standing in the rain for 8 hours to have their minds provoked and hearts entertained. The rally represents the re-ignition of the flame of liberty begun by our Founding Fathers and slowly drowned by the surging tide of evangelical theocracy.

I don’t intend to paint the religious in a negative light. Most of the religious people I know are only trying to do what they believe to be right and good. They’re trying to save our souls. If they weren’t trying to save my soul, I would think them the most callous, irresponsible, hateful person. Think about it. If you knew, in your heart, that I was going to burn for eternity, it would be only morally right for you to try to talk me into changing my ways and turning toward eternal salvation.

The problem humanity faces is that eternal salvation has millions upon millions of roads with different caveats and requirements. Being good isn’t enough. You have to believe in this specific version of that specific god and pray to that specific god in this specific way on that specific day at that specific time facing this specific direction… and you must ignore this fact: that even though this god created mankind in its image and gave mankind the ability to observe and analyze the natural record, we are expected to have faith in things counter to the natural record and unobservable.

This problem leads to disagreement… disagreement in belief… disagreement in universal interpretation… disagreement in things so personal and beloved that the simple existence of an opposing view becomes words of evil, and evil can be summarily dismissed or met with righteous violence.

Our Founding Fathers understood this. They threw off the chains of a dominant Church-State and established a country whose first tenet is that government will prefer no religion or religious denomination over another and will do nothing to stifle people speaking their opinions. Several went on to assure various religious denominations that this means that their right to worship privately would be protected by the government as would the rights of others to worship differently.

Then the Treaty of Tripoli, a document that states blatantly that the United States is not, in any sense, a Christian-founded nation, was unanimously passed. This happened under our second president. Our Founding Fathers were still in the picture and their experiment in a secular representative republic was well on track.

So… that happened. Then we went on to build massive industry, develop the combustion engine, innovate the flying vehicle, build the computer and a way to link them all, build things so small you need a microscope to see them, oh… and land a man on the moon and go back a few times. We’re able to see things 14 billion light years away and to understand how the smallest parts of our physical bodies work together to function as a whole. We saw the edges of the world and expanded them through our knowledge and understanding of the natural world. Despite our continued faiths, we did not pray away polio, small pox, or collera.

Faith was not endangered by these innovations. Nor did it prevent them. But, there are those whose faith in the supernatural is so weak that it can not compete with the revelations of the natural. They must believe that the supernatural created us and instructs our morality the way a pre-science, a pre-understanding of the natural world, book explains it. They believe it is their moral duty to convince others that a natural way of viewing the universe leads down a road to immorality and destruction. And they’re doing a good job of it. With 40% of the United States identifying themselves as very religious, personal faith in the numinous shows no signs of leaving the human psyche.

They’re free to believe this way in the United States. Our Founding Fathers set it up so that we can not regulate away this personal uncertainty.

The danger lies in how these faithful hard-liners choose to go about spreading the gospel according to… whomever. With little more than teachings of a teacher as taught to them by a teacher who got it from a writer who interpreted it from a reader, they’re taking their cut, pasted, reassembled and regurgitated dogma to the halls of government and unwaveringly making the case that this version of that faith in this god is what the Founding Fathers truly wanted government to enforce… by law. They’re doing it through lobbies. They’re doing it through election. They’re doing it through the pulpit. And they’ve been at it a while.

The freedom to worship whenever and however and whatever you choose have been slowly disappearing in favor of a legally enforced interpretation of a text by a minority creating a societal tyranny and opening the floodgates of theocracy.

The non-believers are the balance. Thought of as being on the fringe of society, the firm lack of belief in god in the United States sits in the center of the theist multi-verse. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, New Age… they’re all points on the spinning top of personal relationships with the numinous, and the lack of believe in all of these is the center point allowing the top to continue spinning.

Most non-believers are not interested in converting believers. They honestly don’t care in whom or what the faithful believe. And, that’s the key. The spinning top of diverse belief is allowed to continue freely in this country with no religion as the governmental foundation.

Liberty is best protected when all people are free to live, work, and worship however they choose so long as they do not infringe upon the freedom of another. To protect the liberty of all Americans, bodies in the public sphere are prevented from accepting or assuming the authority of any single religious denomination. Federal, State, and Local authorities must remain neutral. They must remain non-religious.

Ok. While I’m personally adamantly opposed to the indoctrination of the young into mind-numbing religious faith and scientific stupidity through “education” programs, I support a parent’s right to pull their children out of a school system paid for by public funds and placing them into whatever ideology of madrasah they choose. I even support tax rebates for doing so. Nothing sucks like having to pay for the public education of some children on top of the private education of your own child(ren).

I would love to send my children to a private school that teaches critical thinking, scientific analysis, true history, artistic expression, and analytic literature without using the crutch of any millenia-old orally-transmitted superstition to distort their developing world view, and I would love to do it without paying double for education by paying for private school and paying my taxes toward a public education system that doesn’t teach such things (though I wish we took seriously our public education system and reformatted it to do just this).

But the SC House is getting this all wrong. $2000 tax credit for home schooling? $4000 for private schooling? $1000 for a parent to drive their kid to the public school of their choice?

I don’t know of ANYONE who’s paying that kind of property tax, much less who pays that much as the PORTION of their property tax that goes toward the public education system. The state is offering them more in credit than they pay into the public education bucket. In essence, we’re giving welfare for the well-off and/or fundamentalist. We’re PAYING people to pull their children out of an education system that should be restructured, not erased. 

Under this plan, parents who send their children to public schools are paying for public schools through taxes, paying additional fees to the schools for enrollment and supplies, buying extra supplies because we don’t allow public schools to cover that sort of nonsense any more, AND paying for the crazies to send their children to crazy camp. 

If you feel like sending your child into the ovens of insanity in place of an actual education, by all means, do so. And if our lawmakers want to reimburse them only what they’re paying into the public school pot, well, that just makes sense. But pretending we’re not illegally state-funding religious organizations and private institutions by paying parents to send their children there instead is just stupid. 

http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess119_2011-2012/bills/4894.htm

The other week, I attended a presentation and discussion volley with a USC atheist student group where an anti-abortion atheist was presenting his argument to a group of very intelligent peers. He was met with acceptance and hospitality, but, like it always does, the conversation became heated. I injected my pseudo-intellect a few times, but really feel I should’ve just kept my mouth shut. Not because I have nothing to say, but because I don’t agree with the conversation in general. 

The usual arguments (scientific, legal, and passionate) were presented from both points of view and the legitimate and enthusiastic discussion filled the room. My problem is that it was nothing new. This group and this country are going nowhere quick when it comes to the discussion of abortion while lawmakers pretending to be physicians are throwing everything at this “issue.”

I am a man, so when I say that “I” had an abortion, what I mean is that I was part of a couple that became pregnant through the consensual act of two under-aged people and we terminated the pregnancy. Every year around the time that fertilized egg would have been developed enough to be born, I get a little depressed… generally uncomfortable with the decision we made.

I still believe it was the right decision. I had a lot of anger issues at that point in my life. I have no doubt that that child would not have had a better childhood than I had. I even worry that that child would have been subjected to misplaced aggression and would have simply continued the cycle of rage. 

All that being said, I don’t like abortion. I don’t like the thought of ending someone’s life before consciousness begins. Morally, I take issue with it. 

But I think we’re missing the point with our abortion conversation in this country. Morality is personal. It is built in family, community, church, and friend settings. The big question for us, as a people, is, “What should government’s role in this be?”

Anti-abortion advocates proclaim, “life begins at conception!” Bullshit. Life began millions of years ago and has been continuous ever since. A male is born and begins creating sperm. He is alive and creating life. A woman is born and generates living eggs. The cycle represents perpetual life.

Choice advocates stick to the woman’s right to choose. Well… yes and no. Not ever abortion is done outside of a relationship or because a man is a piece of shit. In those cases, it really is a discussion between two people, so stay the fuck out of it. But, yes, here’s the major point… it IS the woman’s body.

Let’s grant that life exists as the egg is impregnated and begins splitting. Let’s even grant that splitting cell human rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America - well, frankly, because it is the highest legal authority in our land despite personal faith.

The Constitution protects every person’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… so long as their continued rights don’t rob another person of the same. Our Constitutional Representative Government must then ask itself (and because it’s of, by, and for the People, we must also ask ourselves) what duties it has in the regulation of abortion.

We have already established that the government cannot mandate that one person relinquish their personal rights to protect the rights of another person (except in the case of national defense when we initiated the draft - but there were escape hatches for some people even then). We can not mandate that one person give a kidney or blood to save the life of another person. That would be robbing a person of their body rights.

As a fertilized egg / embryo / fetus / pre-born infant is a person that can not exist without the resources of another person, it’s rights do not supersede those of the mother. The mother legally takes precedence as her rights are required to be sacrificed for the continued life of the child.

So… legally, we need to understand that the proper roll of government is to ensure that safe abortion procedures are provided by reputable medical doctors to protect the rights of the mother. And THAT is where government intervention should end… that is until the synthetic uterus is perfected and the fertilized egg no longer requires the continued sustaining body of the mother. Then, all bets are off. Technology would create a world where abortions would end rights of the unborn even though the rights of the mother are no longer being violated. All new custody and child support law will be reviewed (because financial rights don’t extend when your actions caused the requirement for financial support of another person). Until that time, however, our government must provide for safe medical procedures, invest in technological research, and build an education system based on critical thinking, factual scientific study, and personal responsibility.

But choicers need to slow their roll as well. Morality isn’t mandated by government, but does come from friends, family, church, and community, and you don’t have the right not to hear something that is offensive to you. Protesters are free to show images of the aborted unborn and plead through publication in an effort to change the mind of the mother. They’re free to voice their opposition to the ending of a human life even if they’re not free to regulate against a mother’s rights. A family is free to put pressure on daughters so long as they’re not imprisoning her or preventing an abortion by force. And pastors are free to speak out on faith against such things. And we’re free to call personal responsibility bullshit on a woman who originally decides to keep a baby but changes her mind three months later or a woman who uses abortion as birth control. It’s what makes America great. Doesn’t society just suck? 

I just ask for one thing from both sides… please start paying attention to the conversation. Stop asking for the government to regulate personal morality. Stop pretending that a fertilized egg isn’t a human life. Stop creating the most ridiculous, vile arguments demonizing the people who disagree with you.  By all means, continue sharing your view of right and wrong. Just be logical about what the actual question is when it comes to setting the laws by which we live.

So, yeah, Westboro Baptist, the “God Hates Fags and almost everything else” people, will be attending the Reason Rally, a celebration and resurgence party for the rational secularist patriots, in Washington DC. And yes, I am excited to see the Phelps cult in full florescent-hate-sign glory.

It was fun first attending San Diego Comic-Con International 2010 and even more fun flipping through the counter protest photos from that show where cosplayers from Futurama, Star Trek, Star Wars, and all of “geekdom” came out in force to counter protest the religiously infected Westboro folk.

Having them protest a “godless” rally would just be fun, right? Well… yeah… but…

I’m going to dissent from the National Atheist Party for this one, as I apparently want to do from time to time being cursed with a mind of my own, and say, “meh.” We (as a party) have taken a knife and jabbed it deep into the hot-air balloon of my cynical and ever-inflating excitement. We (as a party) invited these people.

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/12914/

I mean, really… what the fudge chocolate?

I love, love, love, love, love inciting a good argument. Hell, I even love losing arguments (though only after the ball-kicked-ache in my pride settles down) because it teaches me either that I don’t have enough evidence to support my stance and I should do more research or that my stance is absolutely bunk and should be abandoned.

While these people showing up would be an excellent illustration of irrationality in a blissful crowd of logic and reason (yes, even atheists have an image of nirvana in their hearts and minds), inviting them just seems to gang-rape the daydream.

While in reality, a group of free-thinkers can be as irrational and unreasonable as the most homosexually-obsessed Phelpsian leading to a potential IED effect on the National Mall, the WBC, showing up on their own (and with the also attending “True Reason” evangelical crowd), would have been marginalized and out of place.

But we invited them. We said logic and reason aren’t enough. We need to antagonize a disgusting group of zealots into an argument when the higher road would have been to keep the conversation at this rally focused on the next steps to reestablishing our strong, proud, secular country.

Sending the WBC this invite is  parallel to the NAACP shooting a protest invite over to the Grand Dragon of the local Klan just to make them squirm. They sure as fuck were going to show up anyway, but now we look like we’re picking the fight. We’re instigating.

I spread the word. As SC State Chapter Leader for the NAP, I did my duty spreading information about our campaigns and activities and our overflowing excitement that the Reason Rally is but a week and a half away and we’re a part of this great and wonderous thing.

I even gave the defensive argument in one local facebook group that inviting the opposition to the table was necessary for reasonable discourse… because that’s the only rationale behind doing something like this (other than the almost elitist mentality that we’re smart enough to “show these fuckers up”). But, really, if you want reasonable discourse, you don’t invite the unreasonable and borderline insane opposition. You invite reasonable opposition. 

Occupy Columbia met with the SC Tea Party. They didn’t agree, but they were open to exchanging ideas and did find common ground. What common ground is sought with a hate group? The short answer is: none. 

I will support an organized secular political movement that at least closely matches the direction I think this country should be going, but I will never hold back an opinion. This was a poor political ploy done in poor taste, and it, from an outreach and public relations point of view, only serves to set the NAP back a couple steps and undermine efforts to make this party seem politically minded or politically viable. 

Our PR and Outreach groups need a strong politically-minded strategy and need to stay on task. In the eyes of the public, they’re the helmsman of the NAP ship. If they keep these petty little poker moves at the forefront, they’re going to drive us right into the iceberg that is the dominionist movement and then cry foul as the ship sinks deeper into the murky ocean destroying the reputation of anyone who dared climb aboard in the first place.

This blog does not reflect the opinion of the NAP or even the SC State Chapter. This is my personal rant. I still support the NAP. I still urge progressive atheists (sorry, it is a progressive party so conservative atheists either need to get involved in the NAP and drum up support to change the platform or form their own political party) to get involved. Help plot the course of this fledgling vessel. Just know that there doesn’t exist a single sane group on earth who’s members all think exactly alike.