In the Beginning...

It makes perfect sense!

http://notthebible.8m.com/b2.htm (skip the introduction, it's useless)

Young Earth Creationists are stupid.

... Actually, scratch that... Creationists are stupid.

Libertarian Q & A

From the Liberator online newsletter:

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ASK DR. RUWART

Dr. Mary Ruwart is a leading expert in libertarian communication. In this column she gives readers "short answers to the tough questions" to real questions libertarians are frequently asked. To submit your questions to Dr. Ruwart, see end of column.

Dr. Ruwart's past Liberator Online answers are archived in searchable form at: http://www.TheAdvocates.org/ruwart/categories_list.php

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What is libertarianism?

Question:

"I'm trying to figure out what libertarianism is. Can you give me a simple, cohesive definition, such as: "Libertarianism is a system of self-government qualified by ___________ " please?"

My short answer:

"Libertarianism is the political philosophy in which everyone rules themselves, as long as they don't physically assault others, steal from them, or defraud them. In a libertarian society, those who violate this "non-aggression" principle or "Good Neighbor Policy" restore their victims as much as humanly possible.

"Other political philosophies reject self-government in favor of rule by the majority (democracy) or rule by a minority (monarchy). Such political philosophies use taxation, regulation, and punishment (rather than restitution) to enforce this rule. The person or group in power changes periodically. People take turns being victims and aggressors. Society is thus eternally at war, with no hope or possibility of peace.

(Editor's note: for other short definitions of libertarianism -- and much more on the topic as well -- please visit our Libertarianism.com Web site: http://www.libertarianism.com )

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Question:

"What do libertarians think about universal health care?"

My short answer:

"The way to make health care universal is to make it affordable. The way to make it affordable is to slash the excess regulations that cause prices to soar without protecting the consumer.

"In 1962, for example, regulations were passed that tripled the development time of new drugs. These regulations haven't made drugs any safer. Most side effects seen in drugs for the past 50-75 years are ones that can't be predicted from animal studies or the small number of people exposed to the drug during clinical testing. Thus, these regulations kill about 100 times as many people as they save. In addition, they've driven drug prices up 700%. (For details, see: http://www.ruwart.com/AAPS.pdf )

"I conservatively estimate that we could slash 80-90% off our health care bill without such wasteful regulations. Almost everyone could then afford to pay for their medical care. The few who couldn't would be easily covered by private charity.

"If we keep excessive and expensive regulation in place and make the taxpayer foot the bill, we'll have to ration health care as other nations with universal health care do. In practice, this usually means that the elderly are denied care in favor of children and adults of working age. In Britain, for example, people over 55 years of age are often denied kidney dialysis. Thus, universal health care, as proposed by our politicians, is even less universal than the current bloated system in the U.S."

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http://www.theadvocates.org/publications/liberator-online.html

Godless Geeks

These are now being added to the "Required Reading" sidebar:

"Over Three Hundred Proofs of God's Existence"
"Why Atheism"

What fun!

Chinese Invasion

Is this thing real?

"Still Pro-War"

Andrew Sullivan's July 2nd, 2005 post in The Stranger: Still Pro-War, Despite the Flaws.

Excerpt:

I'm not going to give you the lame answer: we're already in so deep we cannot just abandon Iraq now. That's a fool's argument. So here's my shot at a better one. The reality of 9/11 was a terrifying one. It was that we faced a fanatical enemy determined to kill any civilization or people who objected to the restoration of a medieval, theocratic dictatorship in the Middle East (and, eventually, as with all such ideologies, elsewhere). We'd ignored or appeased them for years. And then they killed over 3,000 innocents in the heart of the United States. If they had had the means, they would have killed 300,000. If they get the means in the future, they will.

What do you do? In my view, you fight back, remove their base of operations, and kill as many of them as we possibly can. That we did in Afghanistan, a war that many on the anti-war left now pretend they supported. But leaving the matter at Afghanistan was a superficial solution. The fundamental cause of this new, totalitarian ideology - forged in the Egypt of the 1960s - was Arab autocracy and dictatorship. My view was and is that only democracy could allow these forces to exhaust themselves sufficiently to remove the underlying threat. I believed and believe that we owed it to the victims of 9/11 to craft a root-and-branch solution, not just a quick regime turn-around in a relative side-show called Afghanistan.

Intelligent Design Is Stupid

Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University:

It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a garden hose snagged on a tree, goose bumps that uselessly try to warm us by fluffing up long-gone fur.

The moral design of nature is as bungled as its engineering design. What twisted sadist would have invented a parasite that blinds millions of people or a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? To adapt a Yiddish expression about God: If an intelligent designer lived on Earth, people would break his windows.

The theory of natural selection explains life as we find it, with all its quirks and tragedies. We can prove mathematically that it is capable of producing adaptive life forms and track it in computer simulations, lab experiments and real ecosystems. It doesn't pretend to solve one mystery (the origin of complex life) by slipping in another (the origin of a complex designer).

Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.

Kenneth Miller & Joseph Levine, "Biology" published by Prentice Hall, 2 million copies sold, page 410:

Darwin made bold assumptions about heritable variation, the age of Earth and relaionships among organisms. New data from genetics, physics and biochemistry could have proved him wrong on many counts. They didn't. Scientific evidence supports the theory that living species descended with modification from common ancestors that lived in the ancient past.

George Carlin, "When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?" page 112:

Regarding Creationists: Aren't these the same people who gave us alchemy and astrology, and who told us the earth, besides being flat, was at the center of the universe? Why don't we just kill these [expletive] people?

... Bright people everywhere agree: Intelligent Design is a load of dog squeeze.

States where Intelligent Design is being forced on schools at the state and local level:

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Indiana
Kansas
Louisiana
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Texas
Washington
West Virginia