Another Glenn Greenwald must-read post about how the government is trying to intimidate and harass people who have supported WikiLeaks or Bradley Manning.
We are slowly but surely sliding towards an authoritarian national security state where people exercising their freedoms in ways that the government does not like will be labeled ‘enemies of the state’ and subject to all manner of harsh treatment.
Anyone who has followed god’s career knows that he seems to get pleasure from killing off some of his most devoted followers.
Here are some more examples and some thoughts on whether religious people really believe the words of their holy books that god cares for his flock and will protect them from harm.
(For previous posts in this series, see here.)
The philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) didn’t think much of Rene Descartes’ idea of a disembodied mind, using its free will, acting as some kind of captain of the body, and coined the derogatory term ‘the Ghost in the Machine’ for it.
There is a doctrine about the nature and place of minds which is so prevalent among theorists and even among laymen that it deserves to be described as the official theory… The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this. With the doubtful exception of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function. Human bodies are in space and are subject to mechanical laws which govern all other bodies in space… But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws…
…Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.” (quoted by Stephen Pinker, The Blank Slate, p. 9)
On election day, the state of Oklahoma passed by a whopping margin of 70-30 a referendum that amended the state constitution to prohibit courts from the consideration of Sharia or international law in their verdicts.
Stephen Colbert applauds this action.
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But now a federal judge has placed a temporary restraining order preventing the amendment from taking effect pending a hearing on November 22.
The only conclusion that I can come to is that the devious jihadists have infiltrated the federal judiciary in Oklahoma as a first step in their plan to impose Sharia law on the entire US.
After all, how can we call this a democracy if we don’t even have the freedom to choose who collects our trash?
Surely this must be one of the inalienable rights that the founding fathers meant to protect?
It’s been awhile since I inflicted on this blog’s readers a long multi-part series of posts but I have decided to look at the question of free will, something that I have not addressed before, and this is such a weighty and controversial subject that it requires a somewhat lengthy discussion.
It used to be thought that what distinguished living things from inanimate matter was the presence of some mysterious life force, an élan vital. Modern biology has dispelled that myth of a vital essence, replacing it with the understanding that biological systems are nothing more than the working out of the laws of physics and chemistry on atoms and molecules. But there are some forms of vitalistic thinking that are still extant because people tend to want to cling on to the idea that there is something special about living things, especially human beings.
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Apparently there is this church in Spain that has been under construction since 1882 and is not due to be finished until at least 2026. It looks to me like they are way overdue to find a new construction firm. Pope Ratzinger consecrated the church on his recent trip so now they can at least hold masses there.
Architect Antoni Gaudi was a devout Catholic and believed that the new church would be an expression of “the divine history of the salvation of man through Christ incarnate, given to the world by the Virgin Mary”. He was so dedicated to this project that he began work on it in 1883 and from 1911 onwards made it his only occupation, spending “the next 15 years living and working on site as a virtual recluse, supervising work”.
In return for all this selfless devotion, god caused a tram to run over and kill Gaudi in 1926.
We should not be surprised. God has a funny way of showing gratitude for the unquestioning faith he says he wants, like when he caused the deaths of all of Job’s ten children just for the hell of it, even though Job was even more faithful to him than Gaudi.
For those not familiar with the Job story, here’s a nice summary.
One positive sign about the impact of the rise of atheism is that pope Ratzinger feels the need to constantly warn against it on his travels. After doing so in England, he has felt obliged to do so in Spain as well, saying, “The clash between faith and modernity is happening again, and it is very strong today.” I love the fact that uses the word ‘modernity’ to contrast to faith, thus reinforcing the idea that religious faith is a medieval relic.
Spain is a country in which 73% identify themselves as Catholic although only about 14% attend mass regularly, has a socialist government that has pushed through some reforms such as ending obligatory religious education in state schools and legalizing abortion, divorce, and gay marriage.
One positive sign about the impact of the rise of atheism is that pope Ratzinger feels the need to constantly warn against it on his travels. After doing so in England, he has felt obliged to do so in Spain as well, saying, “The clash between faith and modernity is happening again, and it is very strong today.” I love the fact that uses the word ‘modernity’ to contrast to faith, thus reinforcing the idea that religious faith is a medieval relic.
Now that the mid-term elections are over, what can we expect to see in the next few months? As I said in yesterday’s post, the advantage to the leadership of the two parties of so-called ‘divided’ government, where one party controls one part and the other party another part, is that they can blame lack of action on the issues their core supporters care about to this gridlock while they can be ‘bipartisan’ when it comes to serving the needs of the oligarchy.
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