Proof

Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

I knew it all along.

Correlation between mental illness and GW Bush voters | digg story

Faith != God

(For those that don't know, "!=" is a common programming operator for "not equal".)

There was a recent debate between conservative radio host Dennis Prager and atheist author Sam Harris. There were many interesting points in this debate, and I may discuss it again, but one subject that particularly stood out to me was Prager's attempts to confuse the existence of God with the belief in God. This is especially apparent in this embarrassing paragraph from his closing statement:

You write: “If humanity can’t survive without a belief in God, this would only mean that a belief in God exists. It wouldn’t, even remotely, suggest that God exists.” This statement is as novel as the one suggesting that Stalin was produced by Judeo-Christian values. It is hard for me to imagine that any fair-minded reader would reach the same conclusion. If we both acknowledge that without belief in God humanity would self-destruct, it is quite a stretch to say that this fact does not “even remotely suggest that God exists.” Can you name one thing that does not exist but is essential to human survival?

This argument is so profoundly stupid that I had to ask a friend to verify that I had read it correctly. Prager repeatedly states -- even after Harris clearly and specifically points out the logical fallacy -- that the essentiality of the belief in God is a strong argument for the existence of God. On the contrary, as Harris states, this simply proves a point that no rational person would agree with: that belief in God exists. This fact that they both agree on in no way suggests that that belief is at all accurate, as Prager claims that it does. The last sentence clearly shows that Prager considers belief in God (something that Harris at least hypothetically agrees is "essential to human survival") to be the same as God ("one thing that does not exist"). I can only conclude that this is an attempt on Mr. Prager's part to make readers dismiss the debate as unfair by painting himself as a complete and utter moron. I guess that means that I'm not a "fair-minded reader" that he can easily imagine.

Belief in God has tangible benefits -- particularly for more primitive, unenlightened cultures of the past -- that few rational people would deny, but faith -- as a belief that can be neither proven nor disproven -- is utterly indifferent to its own accuracy. In the absence of the potential for proof, faith can only ever act as a placebo for the believer. To anyone who did not realize that, and for whom the placebo effect will no longer work due to the revelation, I apologize.

read more | digg story

Dirty words

I began work on this post some time ago, but in light of current events, I thought it would be a good time to finish it up and get it out there.

Dirty words are stupid. I don't just mean the unnecessary use of them is stupid (which it is), I mean that the idea that certain words are vulgar or offensive and should not be used is stupid. Words are, by definition, simple linguistic constructs that have no meaning unless one is agreed upon. All of these words have definitions -- often sexual, racist, scatological, etc. -- but these meanings are barely understood anymore due to the stigma of their use. Many of them are also used figuratively to provide pejorative emphasis, and can be an effective and valid means of conveying ideas in such context, and to remove them from the permissible vernacular is no better than diluting their meaning through over-use. The use of censorship, even self-censorship, rather than one's own judgement in communication only causes problems.

Another oft-ignored meaning that they have is what they say about those who use them. While their use alone doesn't make an individual stupid, inappropriate or excessive use certainly demonstrates a lack of eloquence. Some are virtually meaningless beyond demonstrating the prejudice of the speaker. Epithetical remarks such as those for which Michael Richards has been receiving flak could just as easily be cognitively replaced with the phrase "I'm a racist". Beyond that, all that he stated was that the individuals that he was addressing were black, a fact of which I'm sure they where aware, and their reported attempt to extort money from a man who pointed out that they black and admitted to being racist is no less shameful.

Words have meaning because we give them meaning. They have no meaning that we don't give them, and we have no power that they don't give them, and it's foolish to give them the power to harm us.

The Disinformation Show

Now Fox News Channel, a primary source of material for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, is teaming with the exec producer of "24" to try its hand at a news satire show for conservatives to love.

The Daily Show has often been derided by conservatives who claim that it encourages people to be uninformed, despite studies showing The Daily Show to be at least as substantive as other cable news sources and more informative than most news sources, but now the conservative propaganda machine seems to be changing its tune.

The problem with this tactic, of course, is that a Faux News clone would only be so much disinformation, just like most of the "fair and balanced" network's other programming. The Daily Show is an equal-opportunity satirical mockery, and conservatives only feel singled-out because it has been true in recent years that, in the words of Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias," such that his own show is as close as anyone can honestly come to a conservative counterpart to The Daily Show. There's a reason that Colbert's conservative talking points are so amusing, and shows like O'Reilly's would be almost as funny if the audience knew that he didn't believe them.

Satire is only funny if it rings true, so FNC will never air anything humorous... at least not intentionally.

read more | digg story

Depends on What Your Definition of "Succeed" Is

Recently, when asked if there were lessons about our situation in Iraq to be learned from the Vietnam War, Bush once again embarrassed us all by saying that "we will succeed unless we quit."

What's going on in Iraq is not a war, and it's certainly not something that we can win. It would be so much simpler if it was a war, because we could just complete the genocide and leave... or more realistically, we could finish the genocide and pave the land with oil pumps. Obviously, Bush would never be allowed to get away with this, so what are his goals? What would a "clear military victory" be? Kissenger interprets it as "an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control," which he doesn't believe is possible. Someone will need to explain to me how an independent government fitting that description could be brought about by any amount of military force.

Republican senator John McCain says that we're "fighting and dying for a failed policy", but this is wrong. We're fighting and dying for absolutely nothing. There isn't a plan. There isn't even a goal. If there was, we'd have to weigh whether it was worth the losses that we are suffering to eventually achieve it, but there isn't. We've passed the "quit while you're ahead" point, but we can still cut our losses. We can continue sending our brothers, sisters, parents and children to die while we search for a reason to do so, or we can admit our mistake and leave before more of us die. That is the lesson we should have learned from the Vietnam War.

Still sick

I'm still sick. Go listen to what this insightful 8-year-old has to say:

Sick day

Leave me alone, I'm sick.