Infidels be warned

The International Humanist and Ethical Union has determined in a recent report that nonbelievers can be killed for their nonbelief in seven states. If you think religion is bollocks, you may want to avoid these: Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Of course, as this article from Slate points out, the hostility toward nonbelievers does not just persist in radical Muslim theocracies. Right here at home, seven states — what is it with religious people and their fascination with the number seven? Yahweh‘s favorite number, no doubt! — ban atheists from holding public office. These bastions of reason and logic include Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Many of these, as you will notice, were, unsurprisingly, in the old Confederacy, including my home state, which can pride itself on being the first to leave the Union and the last to rejoin.

Just out of curiosity, I did a little fact checking on Tennessee, and as plain as day, here is the statute right there in the current state Constitution (ARTICLE IX. DISQUALIFICATIONS):

§ 2. Atheists holding office

No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.

I think it’s also curious that not only does a person have to be a believer to hold public office, belief in a future state is also required. Why would the latter part be included? Perhaps so that if and when this public servant inevitably fails his constituents in some way or another, he and they can take comfort in the thought that they will one day walk on sunshine with Jesus, free from the trappings of this world and its tough decision-making. No, the state wouldn’t want any nonbelievers in office approaching life on the notion that they had better get it right the first time and that there are no cop out solutions like prayer if, by chance, they happened to make life for millions of blacks a living hell for generations after they were supposedly emancipated, or if they allowed hordes of KKK members and other racists to run rampant in the South, scarring innocent women and children for decades. No, they might say: “It’s all permissible as long as we teach those people about the good news of the gospel; my mistakes as a racist, oppressive public servant in the South and their misery and the misery of their children can all be scrapped because one day we will be reconciled under the warm glow of heaven.”

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Legislative idiocy

As I have stated previously, that some of our elected officials can manage to tie their shoes in the morning really is a miraculous thing. Rachel Maddow recently made light of a few examples. And here they are:

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And the coup de grace:

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Astonishing. No? About the South Dakota House measure, to reiterate, a lot of folks have the idea of a scientific theory misconstrued. Gravity, as we all know, prevents us from floating off into space. Literally, it keeps us grounded. Too much of it and our bones can’t hold up under the weight. Not enough of it, and we’re heavenward. Our planet has just enough of it. Yet, gravity is still yet a theory. This site explains it well:

In popular usage, a theory is just a vague and fuzzy sort of fact.
But to a scientist a theory is a conceptual framework that *explains*
existing facts and predicts new ones. For instance, today I saw the
Sun rise. This is a fact. This fact is explained by the theory that
the Earth is round and spins on its axis while orbiting the sun. This
theory also explains other facts, such as the seasons and the phases
of the moon, and allows me to make predictions about what will happen
tomorrow.

This means that in some ways the words “fact” and “theory” are
interchangeable. The organisation of the solar system, which I used as
a simple example of a theory, is normally considered to be a fact that
is explained by Newton’s theory of gravity. And so on.

A hypothesis is a tentative theory that has not yet been tested.
Typically, a scientist devises a hypothesis and then sees if it “holds
water” by testing it against available data. If the hypothesis does
hold water, the scientist declares it to be a theory.

An important characteristic of a scientific theory or hypotheis is
that it be “falsifiable”. This means that there must be some
experiment or possible discovery that could prove the theory untrue.
For example, Einstein’s theory of Relativity made predictions about
the results of experiments. These experiments could have produced
results that contradicted Einstein, so the theory was (and still is)
falsifiable.

So, nearly all that we know about the world, from gravity to climate change to evolution are still theories, but as it regards the scientific method, it’s as good as fact. No one disputes that existence of gravity, as we have come to define it.

Thus, the South Dakota’s House’s bill, stating

That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;

doesn’t make much sense. One has to go no further than the Merriam-Webster to grasp the validity of scientific theories. The scientific definition of the word is:

a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena

And briefly on Rep. Franks’ comments on slavery. First, black folks weren’t counted as humans in the Antebellum South, were they? So, right off the bat, Franks’ idea of aborted fetuses are afforded an advantage over slave children. Rightly or not, Franks considers embryos right up to birth to be fully human. Slaves weren’t granted that designation no matter how old or young.

He also noted that slavery was a “crushing mark on America’s soul,” but nevertheless, “far more black children are being devastated by the policies of today (noting, supposedly, that 50 percent of all black fetuses are aborted) than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”

As I recall, children today aren’t tortured, humiliated, raped (females), separated from their parents and sold as cattle in America today, and abortion by no means can be equated to tragedies befallen to living human beings, children nonetheless. Even if one takes a Christian worldview, the aborted fetuses find a new home in heaven. I’m not going to lay out my view of abortion here, but suffice it to say that it’s egregiously wrong and horrifying that an elected official would attempt to make a political point at the expense of those who suffered under the tyrannical and stupified slave system of the 18th and 17th centuries in this country (much of which folks justified biblically), not to mention the millions who suffered worldwide.

Blue Dogs, more comic book-esque names

What is with the propensity to come up with comic book, superhero names for political factions, politicians and generals in Washington? Down through history, we have:

  • “Old Rough and Ready” (Zachary Taylor),
  • “The Railsplitter” (Abe Lincoln),
  • “Old Hickory” (Andrew Jackson),
  • “Young Hickory” (James Polk),
  • “Sage of Monticello” (Thomas Jefferson),
  • “Sons of Liberty” (anti-Loyalist group in American Revolution)
  • “Copperheads” (anti-Civil War, pro-peace and possibly slavery faction of the old-school Democrats)
  • “Blue Dogs” (current right-wing faction of the modern Democrats, once known as Dixie-crats”)

There are actually many more of these sorts of nicknames. The most recent to my knowledge has been this anti-health-care reform faction of Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition. The Copperheads, or the Peace Democrats, actually strike me as a similar group to the Blue Dogs. Although the party today and the party in the mid-19th stood for vastly different ideals, I see similarities. As we know, the Republicans in the mid-19th century were the more progressive, generally anti-slavery faction, while the Democrats were generally in favor of the South and for maintaining the institution of slavery.

The Copperheads wanted to the Civil War to end and blamed it on the abolitionists. They wanted peace, to their credit, but that would be at the expense of allowing the institution to continue. They said Lincoln was abusing his powers as president. Bizzarely, the most prominent Copperhead faction was the Order of the Golden Circle (the Golden Circle being the perceived and wished for circle of slavery extension from the southern United States around through a portion of South America back around to the South), and its most prominent politician was Clement L. Vallandigham, who was exiled in Canada for awhile.

The Blue Dogs, thus, are the fiscally conservative wing of the Democratic Party, as it exists today, but they are also, to their discredit, the more lobbied group by the health care industry:

… more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party’s Blue Dog Coalition received came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries, according to watchdog organizations. — Democratic Underground

and, like the Copperheads, are speaking out against the president taking too many liberties to expand federal power.

Given their ties to the health care industry, the Blue Dogs have largely adopted stances against health care reform. Go figure.