13 April 2010 (am)

(Fail Blog)

Health Care Bill Comment: Randazza cracks me up:

don’t even understand what the healthcare bill did. Sorry to plead such ignorance, but I really don’t give a fuck. I have lots of money, really good health insurance, and I can only give a fuck about so many items at a time. Healthcare isn’t one of them. I get it, they are gonna tax me more so that poors get better health care. Fine. I don’t mind. My tax dollars support a lot dumber shit than that.

The highlighted part: applause! That is how I feel. Note: this point is tangential to the main point, which is “we really don’t know how it is going to work until it has been in place for a while”.

Note to Randazza: I am not stalking you. But I love good rants and pithy sayings; that is one reason I like Pat Condell, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins and Miranda Celeste Hale. I also like the competent “nerdiness” of Nate Silver.

Skepitcs Funny, but I always thought that self-proclaimed skeptics were skeptical of religious claims. Evidently I was wrong:

I’m really, really tired of skeptics who are committed to investigating and criticizing irrationality unless that irrationality is of the religious sort. I certainly commend anyone who devotes their time to combating irrational and baseless paranormal/supernatural claims, but there’s absolutely no excuse for excluding religious beliefs/assertions/practices from that inquiry and criticism just so that the skeptic in question can cling desperately to their own irrational faith and/or avoid offending religious individuals.

Recent discussion of this topic has got me all fired up, and I posted this comment at Pharyngula tonight:

You can’t legitimately and honestly claim to be a skeptic if you cling to an irrational and completely unevidenced belief in God. I know that some people try to get around this with all sorts of NOMA-esque nonsense, the core of which seems to be “God is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.” But that’s complete and utter bullshit. All supernatural claims are (and must be) subject to scientific scrutiny. It’s ridiculous to assert that God is a special case that shouldn’t be subject to the same rigorous investigation as any other supernatural claim. This kind of servile deference to the religious mindset is cravenly and incredibly tiresome. It seriously needs to stop.

But this comment got me thinking about a related topic: what do people get out of religion anyway?

My guesses:
1. They get a sense of community.
2. They get a time out from all of the (sometimes crushing) material concerns of life
3. They get challenged to live a better life.

I’ll focus on the latter: I have heard some good things IN CHURCH. For example, one Unitarian minister said “one of our problems is that we often compare the best in ourselves with the worst in others; that way we prop ourselves up.”

That is so true, at least of me.
I might snicker at, say, how ignorant a social conservative is about science (“ha, they think that the world is 6000 years old!”). I then promptly ignore how this individual’s contributions to charity (in terms of time) puts me to shame, or I ignore that I need to read the instructions to change a car tire (which I HAVE done) whereas they can knock it off in 10 minutes or less.

Of course, none of my points depend on believing in zombies, ghosts, magical golden plates, burning bushes or deities (either material, or “unknowable”), etc. And yes, I see nothing of value beyond in believing in the “truth” of these myths, though they can make interesting stories and sometimes these stories have value.

Science: great talk about attitude and fear of science: (hat tip: Richard Dawkins)

Off to lift weights prior to my work day.

Injury note: I see the PT; last night I had the best “pain free” sleep in a while; then again I took the naproxyn more frequently (3 does). Then again, I did that two nights ago and it still hurt like hell. Maybe I AM getting better?