Prayer: The Ultimate Hypocrisy

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The truth of the matter is that prayers get answered in the favor of the petitioner at about the same rate as doing nothing at all . . . When unbelievers point out the obvious lack of concern by their god, the inevitable doctrine of a “fallen world” and “free will” is tramped out. This is, of course, just another example of the “higher/mysterious” excuse for the obvious absence of the divine . . . It takes an astounding level of ignorance to attribute the lack of alleviation of this human suffering to an explanation as mundane and enigmatic as it being outside “his will” or not being in accordance with “his plan . . . “ The truth is that prayer is a placebo, and a dangerous one when it involves the ignorance toward science and medicine. Read more . . .

Apocalyptic GOP Is Dragging Us Into a Civil War

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Lofgren, in describing the reasons for his defection from the Republican party, describes a Republican camp that increasingly acts not like a traditional peacetime political organization, but more like an apocalyptic cult or one of the authoritarian movements from early 20th century European history . . . But for the new GOP, compromise of any kind defeats their central purpose, which is political totale krieg. This party’s entire reason for being is conflict and aggression. There is no underlying patriotic instinct to find middle ground with the rest of us, because the party doesn’t have a vision for society that includes anyone outside the tent. Read more . . .

Robert Reich, “Inequality: The Real Cause of America’s Economic Woes”

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Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread . . . How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions . . . Reviving the middle class requires that we reverse the nation’s decades-long trend toward widening inequality. Read more . . . 

Christopher Hitchens, A Man of His Words

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He is our intellectual omnivore, exhilarating and infuriating, if not in equal parts at least with equal wit . . . he is dying of esophageal cancer, a fact he has faced with exceptional aplomb. This fifth and, one fears, possibly last collection of his essays is a reminder of all that will be missed when the cancer is finished with him . . . He regards God as a superstition employed by religions for the purpose of control and repression . . . Hitchens finds much to love about America, but on the evidence of this collection, he seems to find it mostly in books . . . At a time when America is experiencing a resurgent campaign to proclaim us a “Judeo-Christian nation,” Hitchens delights in the plentiful evidence that the founders were not all that religious and certainly not interested in creating a sectarian country. Read more . . . 

America’s Greatest Enemy: Ignorance

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An educational system born in an agrarian culture, and later industrialized to produce compliant employees, mass produces the skills of how, but inhibits questions as to why. The result is a debilitating kind of existential ignorance taught in assembly-line fashion, as millions of people learn to be human doings, but not human beings . . . Willful ignorance is human tragedy writ-large; it contains seeds of destruction for mankind and for most of the species on the earth . . . Why is so little attention given to being responsible for the veracity of one’s opinions ?
 . . . It is a sad commentary that legions of our citizens decry elitism instead of striving to become living, breathing examples of it . . . Why are exceptional athletes who break records revered, while exceptionally well-educated people are reviled? . . . Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is a self-destructive, self-defeating void where misspent emotion provides the substance needed to sow distrust and keep hatred at the forefront of public discourse. Read more . . . 

Sam Harris, “September 11, 2011”

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Whatever else may be wrong with our world, it remains a fact that some of the most terrifying instances of human conflict and stupidity would be unthinkable without religion . . . What defenders of religion cannot say is that anyone has ever gone berserk, or that a society ever failed, because people became too reasonable, intellectually honest, or unwilling to be duped by the dogmatism of their neighbors . . . Ten years have passed since a group of mostly educated and middle-class men decided to obliterate themselves, along with three thousand innocents, to gain entrance to an imaginary Paradise. Read more . . . 

Quote: Christopher Hitchens

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Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949)
English-American, Journalist, Author, Essayist,
Polemicist, and Outspoken Anti-theist

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly ‘holy text dictated by god’ and show that they are man-made and what you have to show is their internal inconsistencies and absurdities. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority . . . it is an indispensable thing people can call it blasphemy if they like, but if they call it that they have to assume there is something to be blasphemed – some divine work, well I don’t accept the premise.