Misleading arguments against same sex marriage

Most people have probably heard that Rick Santorum was given a hard time by a group of college students in New Hampshire because of his opposition to same sex marriage, which resulted in him being booed and jeered at the end. You can see the video at the bottom of this news story. What people may not have been noticed is that this was a group of college Republicans, which shows how the younger generation across the political spectrum views giving gays equal rights much more favorably than the old. Homophobia is dying, and dying quickly.

In responding to the question of why he opposed same sex marriage, Santorum exploited a debating trick in which one shifts the point of discussion ever so slightly away from something that is hard to defend against to something else that is easier to defend. The students were not prepared for this and though they sensed that they were getting a non sequitur, they could not quite put their finger on the flaw at that moment. This is not a good thing for Santorum because the students will figure out later what he did and why he was wrong and it will make them angry that he tried to snooker them. I think the jeers at the end were from those who already realized what he was doing but did not get the chance to make their case.
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Guess I won’t be invited to write for The Huffington Post

They have started a new science section and Arianna Huffington says this of her hopes for it:

I’m particularly looking forward to HuffPost Science’s coverage of one of my longtime passions: the intersection of science and religion, two fields often seen as contradictory — or at least presented that way by those waging The War on Science. A key part of HuffPost Science’s mission will be to cut through the divisions that have resulted from that false war.

Rather than taking up arms in those misguided, outdated battles, HuffPost Science will work in the tradition of inquisitive minds that can accommodate both logic and mystery. It’s a tradition exemplified by Brown University biology professor Kenneth Miller, who, when I visited with him last year, told me that he sees Darwin not as an obstacle to faith but as “the key to understanding our relationship with God.”

Ah, yes, the old “accommodate both logic and mystery” ploy, as Inspector Clousseau would say. Expect to see full-bore accommodationism that tells you that magical thinking is perfectly compatible with science, as long as you throw in sexy sciency words such as ‘quantum’ and ‘indeterminancy’ to mask the woo that lurks beneath. I don’t know why they don’t call it the ‘Deepak Chopra section’ and be done with it.

Another storm in a teacup

A good indicator of how degraded the political discourse has become in government is the absurd fuss over the recess appointment by president Obama of Richard Cordray to head the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that Elizabeth Warren designed and which she was considered too controversial to lead. She is now running for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts.

The US Senate, that has blithely ignored or gone along with all the major violations of the law and the constitution that presidents have committed over recent years, has taken umbrage over a minor issue of procedure and privilege, illustrating once again my point that it is not the issues that they fight over in Washington that one must watch closely, it is what they don’t fight over.

The Daily Show comments on the latest absurd fuss. I find it impressive how, in a few short minutes, they manage to explain precisely what is at issue, with all its munitiae, while overlaying it with humor.

Fighting over the baby Jesus’s crib

Many Christians who belong to the Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on or around January 6 because they follow the older Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar that the rest of the world uses. This gives them a huge advantage since they can do their Christmas shopping after December 25, thus not only avoiding the crowds but also taking advantage of the post-Christmas sales.

I came across this news report that said that priests of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church came to blows over who has the right to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the site that tradition says is where Jesus was born. Each side had come with cleaning materials to clean their assigned area but when one group encroached on the space of another, they used their brooms and mops to wage a pitched battle for supremacy. Watch.
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My brain is already falling apart

A new study says that people start losing their brain powers as early as 45 years of age.

The results of the tests show that cognitive scores declined in all categories except vocabulary – and there was a faster decline in older people.

The study found a 9.6% decline in mental reasoning in men aged 65-70 and a 7.4% decline for women of the same age.

For men and women aged 45-49, there was a 3.6% decline.

Since my work involves mainly words, the lack of decline in vocabulary skills may be masking my decrepitude.

The study can be read here.

Now we can all be indefinitely detained

On New Year’s eve, a time when no one is paying much attention to politics, president Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act. This was a bill that funded the US military for the rest of the fiscal year. But within that legislation was a provision that allows the US government to indefinitely detain without trial even US citizens, by making the entire world, including the US, part of the ‘battlefield’ which means that anyone can be picked up anywhere and declared to be an enemy combatant and thus stripped of their rights. The administration claims it has the right to indefinitely detain anyone that they, and they alone, assert is ‘at war with the United States’, whatever that means. This continues the whittling away at habeas corpus, one of the bedrock protections of individual liberty.
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Stoning in Iran

As a vivid example of the ghastliness that can ensue when religious people gain political power, we have the case of people who are condemned to death by stoning in Iran. According to an ACLU pamphlet that I received, at least 14 people are currently awaiting this form of execution.

Bound, wrapped in shrouds and buried in a pit with head and shoulders above ground, the victims are likely to survive for between 20 minutes and two hours from when the first stone draws blood. The reason they survive so long can be found in the chillingly clinical wording of Article 104 of the Iranian Penal Code:

‘The size of the stone used in stoning shall not be too large to kill the convict by one or two throws and at the same time shall not be too small to be called a stone.’

As can be seen in this passage and in the instruments of torture and death developed during the Inquisition, religious people can be quite ingenious in the careful way they devise ways to prolong the agony of their victims.

One Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, is awaiting such an execution because of an adultery conviction. Maryam Namazie has been highlighting her case, hoping to win her freedom.

That’s a relief

Bolon_Yokte.jpgFor all those people worried about the Mayan prediction that this will be the last year before the world is destroyed on December 21, it appears that a new reading of the Mayan calendar says that it did not predict that the world will end in 2012. It only predicted the return of the god Bolon Yokte, shown on the right.

So who is this Bolon Yokte? And does he/she come in peace or to smite us in the ways that gods seem to enjoy? The image suggests someone with a fierce attitude, which does not look promising. Some have suggested that he is in fact Jesus, but that seems a bit much. The concept of the trinity is mind-boggling enough without adding a fourth incarnation. As they say when it comes to gods, three’s company, but four’s a crowd.