I’m sorry you’ve successfully completed your campaign.

I’m sorry for what the Obama family will now be subjected to…

Enemy #1 of any president is the sensory-overloading, ratings-focused news media system.  Irregardless (if you watch the news, you know why that’s a joke) of whether this pro-Obama stance keeps going not, something is going to take Obama down over the next 4 or 8 years.  Maybe he played t-ball with someone who’s now a transvestite.  Maybe he once shook hands with Castro and someone snapped a photo.  Maybe he brushed up against a 17 year old girl while shaking hands during his campaign.  Someone, somewhere will find something to blow completely out of proportion to either take him down, or bring themself up for their 15 minutes of fame, and end up crucifying his family for it.

It’s a shame because, if he can hold his campaign promises, we might be able to bring this ship back on course.  But I’m still skeptical.  He’s been president-elect now for maybe 12 hours, I’m surprised something hasn’t come up yet.

Watching his campaign… Watching the love he’s garnered from the public… Maybe he owes a little credit to the media.  I’m not saying Bush didn’t make it easy for the media, but stuff like choking on a pretzel has nothing to do with leadership qualities (yes, I know, being a bad public speaker does, but like I said, it’s not like Bush didn’t make it easy).

So, I hope for America, and I hope for Obama’s and his family’s sake, he’s got the spotless record everyone thinks a president should have, because if there is any achilles heal to a politican, it’s the ratings-grubbing media.  Otherwise he’s going to waste a lot of his time focusing on deflecting false claims than actually doing what a president is supposed to do.

While this is toward the latter half of the book, there are no spoilers…

“Where do you think the world came from, then, if it wasn’t created by the gods?”

“Which gods, Eragon?”

“Your gods, the dwarf gods, our gods… someone must have created it.”

Oromis raised an eyebrow. “I would not necessarily agree with you. But be as that may, I cannot prove that gods do not exist. Nor can I prove that the world and everything in it was not created by an entity or entities in the distant past. But I can tell you that in the millennia we elves have studied nature, we have never witnessed an instance where the rules that govern the world have been broken. That is, we have never seen a miracle. Many events have defied our ability to explain, but we are convinced that we failed because we are still woefully ignorant about the universe and not because a deity altered the workings of nature.”

..skip a bit..

[Oromis] “Dwarf priests use coral as proof that stone is alive and can grow, which also corroborates their story that Helzvog [the dwarf god] formed the race of dwarves out of granite. But we elves discovered that coral is actually an exoskeleton secreted by minuscule animals that live inside the coral. Any magician can sense the animals if he opens his mind. We explained this to the dwarves, but they refused to listen, saying that the life we felt resides in every kind of stone, although their priests are the only ones who are supposed to be able to detect the life in landlocked stones.”

That’s the interesting part. Many, many things believed by religious people cannot be proved, so they are told to rely on their faith that it did happen, even when there is evidence the opposite is true. For example, check out the “Conservapedia” entry on dinosaurs: http://www.conservapedia.com/Dinosaurs. This link should take you to the Dinosaur Fossils section. Check out the 2nd paragraph:

Evolutionists point out that radiometric dating of rocks containing dinosaur bones shows them to have formed between 65 million years ago and 250 million years ago, whereas rocks with human bones in them are dated as being much newer (less than 5 million years old). Young Earth Creationists believe that these methods of dating rocks provide false results, and therefore reject this argument.

So, this proven scientific method, which can accurately tell when objects are up to 6000 years old and can tell approx how old objects are outside of that range, have placed dinosaurs at 65million to 250 million years old. Religious factions say this must be wrong, and the dating must provide false results because “the bible tells us otherwise”.

Another classic excerpt from that site is:

It is sometimes asserted that if human bones aren’t found with dinosaur bones, then dinosaurs and man didn’t live together. Creation scientists point out that this is a false assumption; if human bones aren’t found buried with dinosaur bones, it simply means they weren’t buried together.

Can you count the rash assumptions in that last statement?

1. Humans and Dinosaurs lived together because god (lowercase because I don’t know which I’m talking about) created dinosaurs on the 6th day and man on the 7th day.
2. Dinosaurs were buried by humans when they died.
3. Man intentionally buried dinosaurs away from their burial grounds.
4. If man and dinosaurs lived together, then man was never killed by a dinosaur because their bones were never found together.

Then there are other topics, like Moses getting 2 of each “animal” on the boat, regardless of the physics surrounding creating a boat of that size and finding/corralling every animal possible.

So, getting back to the basis of this article and away from the hilarity of the Conservapedia, the reason people do believe in religion is simple, fear. There’s always that 1% chance that one of the parties involved is wrong. Maybe the Heaven’s Gate Cult, those that put $5 in quarters in their pocket, wore their Nike sneakers and killed themselves waiting for the Hale-Bopp comet were right and we’re all screwed. I’m not an athiest, but damn near close, and I’m smart enough to at least realize that religion came about as a method for self governance. The powers that be (government, society, whatever) needed a way to keep people from killing each other without just saying “’cause I said so” It started with the Greeks and the Romans having their people work to please the gods (including sacrifice, which thankfully died off [pun intended]). These governed people stopped killing each other, stopped stealing things, stopped “coveting thy neighbor’s wife” because there was an invisible being over their shoulder watching everything they do. In that respect, it’s brilliant.

In closing:

“We [the elves] give credence only to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog [the dwarf god] were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position.”
“It seems a cold world without something… more.”
“On the contrary,” said Oromis, “it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment…

Well said…

First, religion: I was raised Roman Catholic. Over time, I’ve become a bit of an agnostic. I’m leaning toward the belief that religion is a construct of society as a method of self governance, but much like those that believe in religion, I really have no hard facts to refute either side.

Next, politics: Although I’m cognizant of the goings on in day-to-day politics, I really don’t care to follow the every move (read: mistake) of this side or that side. I don’t really fall anywhere on the liberal-conservative scale, as I believe lining up behind a party really dilutes the population. Associating oneself with a certain side makes most people believe you follow “your side” 100%. But the my thoughts on this topic really have no bearing on this conversation.

So, back to the task at hand: redeeming myself from the title of this article. Let me define Marriage (since anyone else is afraid to). I was taught that Marriage (note the capital M, that will come back later) is a one of the seven sacraments in the Catholic Church that unifies a man and a woman under God. The other sacraments are Baptism, Confession, Communion, Confirmation, Holy Orders (becoming a priest) and Annointing of the Sick (basically, last rites, but not quite).

Again, let me pause for a second to clarify. You might ask why I am focusing on the Catholic Church. Well, because the US Government takes its definition of marriage (lower-case m) from Marriage the sacrament (from any flavor of the God/Jesus religions). This is what our country was “based on” when it was founded, so this is where their definition comes from.

Ok, now… The other side of this coin is the US Government. What are the benefits given to married couples under the government? For the purposes and simplicity of this article, let’s just say “financial benefits,” meaning tax breaks, credit report/loan evaluation, etc. So, the argument here is “Homosexual couples should not be Married.” Clarification: The church has a valid argument when saying that homosexual couples cannot be Married (big M). I didn’t say they were right, I just said they have a valid argument. As I was taught, Marriage is between a man and a woman, and if you’ll remember, I’m not so sure that religion came from down from Mt. Sinai or just some people who thought it might help them police the masses, but the book says man + woman. Those that believe strictly in religion, and follow those books, have every right to believe that homosexuals should not be Married. The government, on the other hand, has no say either way in that regard due to a tiny clause in a small, unimportant, often forgotten memo called The Constitution: Separation of Church and State.

I do believe, however, that homosexual couples should be married and if you’ve been following along closely enough, you’ll know I’m not contradicting myself. I think the government needs to reevaluate it’s terms so a huge fight isn’t created over semantics. Civil union is the term given, but that has gotten a poor stigma over time because people want to be “married”. So technically, a couple should receive the sacrament first to be unified in the eyes of God, then get a civil union after to be unified in the eyes of the government. The church should not require a “marriage license” provided by the government, because that confuses matters even worse.

Let me say it this way… Any two (I say two just because I’m not even going to try to discuss polygamy. That would be trying to kill a hell of a lot of birds with one stone) people who want to go in front of the government and say that they’re working together in life towards “the American dream” should be recognized as such and given the benefits of that union, regardless of their sex. The church can continue to turn away people for reasons detailed in a 2000+ year old book. I just know that many people are getting tired of the “but it says so right here” phrase, and they’re losing customers, fast…