Of Animal Cruelty and Immorality
There was a very sad, disturbing article in the Omaha World Herald about 64 chihuahuas that were rescued from a home in Falls City, NE. While this is an upsetting story in itself, it isn’t the neglect of these dogs that I want to talk about. I want to talk about a comment that was posted about that article.
Posted by: Tea Party Tom on 08/18/11 @ 12:30 pm:
Here we go agian, more government on our back telling people how to live our lifes. I guess the govenment is never satisfied, now there tellign dogs how they have to life.
When another commenter said that, while they felt it was wrong to mistreat animals, the government should focus on taking care of people. Tea Party Tom responded:
Posted by: Tea Party Tom on 08/18/11 @ 10:03 pm:
To Concerned: why should government take care of people??? Let people take care of people and if they cant do it, to bad thats the way the cookie crumples. I never had the gorverment take care of me and I’m doing just find!
There are so many things wrong with Mr. Tea Party’s responses that I am not quite sure where to start. I suppose I’ll start with his comment that the government shouldn’t be telling dogs how they have to live.
The authorities are considering charges against the owner. The laws that may have been broken have nothing to do with telling animals how to live their lives, but with ensuring that animal owners treat the animals in their care humanely. If anyone is being told how to behave it is the owner, not the dogs.
As for Tea Party Tom’s contention that this is an example of more government on our backs, the fact is that the Humane Society (not a government agency, by the way) was called in because the owner called authorities to tell them that he could no longer take care of the dogs. So the authorities didn’t come out and raid the home or anything. They came in response to a call for help. They weren’t poking their noses into the owner’s private business, but responding to a legitimate call for assistance.
The most egregious comment of Tom’s, though, is his belief that if people can’t take care of themselves that it is their own fault. Basically, fuck the poor, they deserve it. Considering that the Tea Party is, by their own admission, openly Christian, his statement is completely contrary to the teachings of Christianity, which call for compassion and aid for the poor.
Finally Mr. Tea Party states that the government never took care of him. While I can’t say that’s not true for sure, given his atrocious grammar and spelling I can only assume that he attended a public school, a government funded institution that provide him with 12 years of free education.
This ill informed, bigoted screed is just another example of the moral bankruptcy of the Tea Party and its followers.
It has been shown that sociopathic killers often start their careers by torturing and killing animals when they are young. The same, I believe, holds true for a person’s attitude toward animal welfare. This is clearly illustrated by his comments. Tea Party Tom, and his cronies, show not just their indifference to human suffering, but their outright hostility and disgust of those less well off then them. To call themselves the party of family values and morality is more than disingenuous, but is grossly immoral and abhorrent.
A Science Teacher Stands Up For Science
From PZ Myers comes the story of a science teacher who wasn’t afraid to stand up for science and critical thinking. The best part is that a judge in a lawsuit against the teacher by a Christian student defended the right, and the necessity, of promoting critical thinking and questioning dogma. It is good to see the fundgelicals called on the mat for their attempts to insert their archaic, tribal beliefs into our educational system. Yea for science and critical thinking!
Fuck Nature! So Saith the Lord Our God
The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that a group of local tea partiers are fighting a U.S. Fish and Wildlife plan to restrict boating and other human activity in Kings Bay in Florida. While there is reasonable opposition from other local groups such as The Crystal River City Council and Citrus County Commission due to concerns over the potential negative financial impact of the proposed regulation on the local economy, the Citrus County tea party group is claiming the Bible as their reason for opposing it.
“We cannot elevate nature above people,” explained Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, in an interview. “That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.”
Federal officials “want to restrict the entire bay,” she contended. “They don’t want people here.”
Mattos then went on to tie the regulations into a conspiracy by the U.N. According to the Times she said:
“We believe that (federal regulators’) aim is to control the fish and wildlife, in addition to the use of the land that surrounds this area, and the people that live here and visit. … As most of us know, this all ties in to the United Nations’ Agenda 21 and Sustainability.”
Agenda 21 is a program, adopted by the U.N. in 1992, to encourage countries around the world to promote only development that does not harm nature. Pundit Glenn Beck and other conservatives have attacked it as an attempt to impose world government’s rules on every aspect of American lives. The Citrus County tea party group’s website says Agenda 21 is “designed to make humans into livestock.”
This is just one more example of the tea party’s efforts to use the Bible and their religious beliefs to influence how government operates and is an insidious attempt to move our country toward a theocracy based on the Bible and the idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation. Their crazy idea of a worldwide U.N. conspiracy, ”designed to make humans into livestock”, shows just how delusional these people can be.
As for it being against the Bill of Rights, I think she needs to go and actually read that document. Like many tea partiers, she loves to wave the constitution in everyone’s faces, but has no idea what it really says or means. The Bill of Rights does not guarantee the right to boat or swim or do whatever we want to do in Kings Bay. While the rights of private land owners are certainly protected by the constitution, that same document also provides the ability of the U.S. and state governmenst to set aside land for “public use”. The laws protecting the manatees have been in place since the 1980′s and much of the land in and around Kings Bay have been designated a U.S. Wildlife Refuge since that time. The Supreme Court has held that the federal government and each state has the power of eminent domain—the power to take private property for “public use”, based upon the “taking” clause of the fifth amendment. In fact, there were public hearings just last week on the proposed restrictions, which the tea partiers picketed, as is their right. It would seem that the U.S. government is following the constitution, while the tea party, ignorant of that document that they love to constantly mention, would attempt to strip us of many of the rights that it guarantees, especially the establishment clause that outlines the separation of church and state.
Normally, I’d just sluff this off as the mad ravings of a bunch of crack pots. The scary thing here is that the tea party has already put members into public offices all across the country. The fact that Michelle Bachman won a straw poll in Iowa, making her the current leading candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination is frightening beyond belief. I thought that George W. Bush was bad, but Bachman would be a greater disaster for this country than he could ever have been. There is good reason they are often referred to as the “American Taliban”. A Christian theocracy would stifle our ability to innovate scientifically and technologically, leave millions of poor and middle class Americans with no health care and no safety net, and allow capitalism to run rampant and unregulated, exalting the greed of corporations and the rich to the detriment of the majority of poor, working class, and middle class Americans. Those of other faiths (or of no faith at all) could likely become second class citizens in their own country.
This issue in Florida may seem to be just a local concern, but it is an example of what is happening all across the country as the religious zealots of the tea party attempt to foist their religious inspired beliefs and delusional conspiracy theories upon the rest of us. They have openly stated their intent to make the U.S. a Christian nation governed by the laws of the Bible. The threat from these know nothings goes far beyond the Patriot Act ever could and raises the specter of another age of McCarthyism, but one that could have far more lasting impact.
Religion Weasels It’s Way into My Kids’ School
Tonight was open house at our kids’ Middle School. As we walked in the door, we were greeted by a woman handing out blue flyers about a before school program for kids who get there early to meet, have donuts and have “fun”. This program is to be held in the lower gym at the middle school.
Here is the front of the flyer. (Please forgive the poor quality, they were taken with my phone camera).
Here is the back of the same flyer:
At this point I was still reading this. I thought, considering that it said ”Campus Life” that it might be a program rung by one of the local colleges. The woman who was handing them out was standing right by the line where you had to get in to in order to get your child’s schedule. She told us that it was a before school program where kids could go, have donuts, hang out with their peers and have “fun”. Never once did she mention that she was with a Christian organization. Nothing in the literature that she handed even hinted at all that this was run by a religious group.
Fotunately, Lorraine noticed a table about six feet away from her that was set back and that had this flyer on it:
We proceeded to ask the woman who was handing the blue flyers out why they didn’t state on those flyers that the program was being run by a Christian group. She told use that their other information was available at their table. When I raised the point the the table was set back and several feet away from where she was handing out her flyers, she directed me to her director. I raised the same objection to him as I did to her and got the same response. I pointed out that the blue flyer was misleading because it didn’t in anyway let parents know that this was a program offered by a religious organization.
At this point, Lorraine spoke up and asked if the kids were going to be told how much their faith will save them and that that the must pray to god in order to be saved. After some prodding by Lorraine, te said that, yes, they do try to help the kids find their faith and open themselves to discovering god and how he can work in their lives. Basically, he told us that, yes, their goal was to convert children to their faith, although he was loathed to use the word “covert”, preferring words like “discovering their faith”, and “finding the faith inside themselves”.
We tried to find the principle to ask him why he was allowing this overtly religious group to meet every morning in the school cafeteria and indoctrinate children into their particular flavor of Christianity, but were unable to corner him. We plan on questioning him on this as soon as we can.
Many parents would likely read the first flyer, which has no mention whatsoever about this being a religious activity, and figure that it would be a great way to feel safe dropping their kids off early at school. What they probably wouldn’t know unless they had noticed the other flyers on the table is that their children would end up being encouraged to “find their faith” and pray for Jesus to save them.
The one good thing was that after our confrontation with them, the group were handing out a smaller yellow flyer that did state that they were a religious organization. I couldn’t tell if they were handing those instead of the blue ones or in addition to the blue ones.
Our public schools are supposed to be free of religious influence, but here, in the guise of a way for kids to “have fun” and get to know each other, and talk about issues that interest them, they are subtlety being indoctrinated into a set of beliefs that they, and their parents are unaware of and may disagree with.
Embracing Randomness – Why Mathematics and Statistics Negates God
I had an interesting FB conversation with a couple of fundie friends of mine. I had posted a quote to the about the ineffectiveness of prayer. One replied with how she has prayed to God and that because of that she now is with a wonderful man who treats her and her kids great. I responded that I am with a wonderful woman who treats me and my kids great, and I never prayed for anything. The other friend then replied that he had prayed for me, implying that it was his prayers that brought me this wonderful woman.
Believers will ascribe all the wonderful things in their lives to God. The fact that others who don’t believe in God, or in their particular god, also have wonderful things in their lives doesn’t seem to have an explanation within their world view. A rational view of this data would indicate that good things happening are random throughout any given population (as are bad things). Another factor is how specific people view the things that happen to them. What seems a good thing to one person could be considered not to good to another. It is a matter of one’s outlook on life. Is the glass half empty or half full?
For me, knowing that events are basically random makes it easier to deal with bad events because I don’t have to worry if I am pissing off some invisible sky man. Conversely, I also don’t have to waste my time and effort trying to please said sky man or thank him for a random event. I can then focus on how I must deal with things.
That’s not to say that I don’t feel that I’m about due for some good things to happen in my life after all the shit I’ve been through. Some would take this as a sign of karma. Personally, I see it as a sign of the law of averages. Since the past 20 years have pretty much sucked. With all things being equal, the fact that good things are now happening (and I believe, will continue to happen) is pretty much a matter of things averaging out. Regression to the mean. Mathematics and statistics are much better and more consistent at explaining the why good or bad things happen to us than is the idea of some benevolent (or malevolent, depending on how you look at it) god making things happen.
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