"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"

Friday, June 20, 2008

With God on their side

And frankly, they can have him/her/them/it. While we may or may not be locked in a "Clash of Civilizations,"  it certainly isn't the Christian West vs Muslim East one that the right imagines it to be. It is the clash between the secular, logical, reality-based world and the fundamentalist, unreasoning, faith-driven supernaturalists. Personally, I'll take the scientific side - we don't know everything, but we can learn and at least we are willing to live and let live. The other side, eh, not so much.
 The creationists sometimes try to pin the massacres, holocausts and pogroms of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot on atheism and their own misinterpretation of Darwin's theories as a justification of  "survival of the fittest" -- when the real cause of these horrible events, and indeed most of the evil that men do, is the "true believerism"  the notion that one is righteous that brooks no doubt, no reconsideration in the face of evidence that one's thesis is not airtight. It is that sort of inability to admit errors or tolerate dissent that leads to everything from the Iraq war to religiously driven fatal child abuse and deadly neglect.
And lest you think I am only picking on the Jesus-addled variety of superstitous dumbassery, consider this marvelous little episode and tell me blind belief in obvious chicanery does no harm.

(hat tips to Cat, the General,  MJS,  and David)

2 comments:

David Webb said...

So, a fan of rational thinking, eh?

Then do NOT read this.

And I think that was my first hat tip. I am as giddy as a school girl. A Japanese school girl. A Japanese school girl who just bought a Hello Kitty themed DS.

I should stop now.

Rev.Paperboy said...

wow, I didn't think the busy schedule of a Toronto Sun columnist would leave time for smoking that much crack, because, honestly, that has to be the explanation. The Toronto Sun would never hire someone as stupid as that...oh wait, its the Sun, nevermind.