Al Stefanelli: Tyranny – A Seemingly Lost Concept on the Majority

I’ve written and re-written this post four times already this morning. With each edit came the revelation that it had morphed into another version of a rant against those who are under the notion that we are a Christian nation because of majority rule. Well, I’ve written about that many times and with each word that appears before me on my word processor, it becomes inevitable that I find myself writing about it yet again. Regardless of how many times I hit the “back space” 0r “delete” key, my mind stubbornly returns to the concept of tyranny.

Through the cobwebs and scattered papers that litter the floor of my mind and amongst the remnant memories of thousands of books that I have read which sit on the dusty shelves of my recollective, there emerges the single, unadulterated and clear thought [WOW!] of why the religious right continues to hawk their snake oil salve that consists of the single mandate that we should all acquiesce to their dictates and doctrines.

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PZ Myers: Irrational Humans

I really have a hard time wrapping my mind around the strategies of anti-choice activists. I’ve encountered a few, and I’ve browsed some of their websites, and am so unimpressed with their tactics . . . but they seem to work effectively with some people. . . .

The argument is never about whether some state is alive or not. Your appendix and tonsils are great masses of living cells, but if the organ becomes inflamed, doctors will cut them out and throw them away. Every time you poop, about a third of that mass that you excrete and flush away consists of living bacterial cells, yet no one hesitates and feels regret at the tragic loss of life when their hand is on the handle.

The argument is about whether that living thing is a person requiring extensive legal and moral protection, and it’s entirely clear that “life” is not a sufficient criterion, or people would be lobbying for the protection of turds and tonsils. We are not absolutists about protecting all life; we can’t be.

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Greta Christina: The Top 10 Reasons I Don’t Believe in God

“Does God exist?” is a valid and relevant question. Here are my top reasons why the answer is a resounding, “No.”

1: The consistent replacement of supernatural explanations of the world with natural ones.
2: The inconsistency of world religions.
3: The weakness of religious arguments, explanations, and apologetics.
4: The increasing diminishment of God.
5: The fact that religion runs in families.
6: The physical causes of everything we think of as the soul.
7: The complete failure of any sort of supernatural phenomenon to stand up to rigorous testing.
8: The slipperiness of religious and spiritual beliefs.
9: The failure of religion to improve or clarify over time.
10: The complete lack of solid evidence for God’s existence.

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