One Nation, Under God

Posted on January 16, 2008 by Paul — 4 Comments ↓

I was going to write something snarky about Huckabee’s comments on the Constitution, but Archy has already said everything I would have, and better:

Mike Huckabee doesn’t like it when people question him about his religion. He assures us that he won’t try to force his religion on us if he becomes president. He wants us to take his word on that and just shut up about creationism. This is his idea of not forcing his religion on us:

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

Say goodbye to pork, shimp, blended fabrics, and start collecting rocks to deal with all those rebellious children and women taken in adultery. At least he plays the guitar and has a folksy manner, because that’s what’s really important.

Freedom

Posted on December 11, 2007 by Paul — 2 Comments ↓

There’s an interesting discussion at The Dawn Treader about the idea that freedom requires religion (and vice versa), as suggested by Mitt Romney recently. To paraphrase my argument and that of others, at first blush it’s a statement that makes you think ‘yes!’ or ‘no!’ depending on your leanings. But a little more thought shows that it’s an empty, vacuous statement, because it assumes a definition of freedom without providing one. While it’s easy to think you know what freedom is, when you try to pin it down sufficiently to discuss it you find there’s no consistent ‘there’ there.

My Religion

Posted on October 12, 2007 by Paul — No Comments ↓

If you’ve been wondering about my core beliefs:

Uncomfortable Experiment

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Paul — No Comments ↓

Continuing on from yesterday’s post in a small way, a conservative Christian minister has been found dead from apparent autoerotic misadventure. Here’s how his attire was described:

Clothing: The decedent was received wearing two (2) wet suits, one scuba diving mask, one pair of diving gloves, one pair of slippers, one pair of rubber underwear, two (2) ties, five (5) belts, eleven (11) straps.

Neoprene has never been my thing (I quite like the smell of rubber, though not that much), but I guess if that floats your boat then fair enough. But two wet suits does seem a little…excessive. I do wonder if the slippers were really diving boots, or actual fluffy pink slippers.

As Pharyngula and others point out, this is a lot more sad than it is funny. This is a man who apparently believed himself to be particularly flawed, but couldn’t help himself, and certainly couldn’t afford to find others who might help him with his proclivities (either to overcome them or to do them safely). So now he’s dead, and his family have lost something that can never be replaced.

Low-Level Smiting

Posted on September 26, 2007 by Paul — 3 Comments ↓

Almost every day for over 3 weeks I’ve driven through the same set of temporary traffic lights due to some roadworks. That’s at least 36 trips through these lights. I would guess that there’s a 60% chance of hitting the light on red (50:50, minus the time when both sides are red to allow traffic to clear the roadworks). For someone to hit the lights on red EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME has odds of around 1 in 96,951,601. Now this could be a coincidence, of course. I’m just saying that, as an atheist, I could feel a little picked on. If there was something to do the picking, of course.