- 74% believe in God, down from 82% in 2005, 2007, and 2009. This is a decrease of 2% per year since 2009.
- 83% of those 68 or older believe in God, but only 64% of those between the ages of 18 and 36 do.
- 6% of those who believe in God are neither absolutely nor somewhat certain.
- 59% are either very religious or somewhat religious, which is down from 70% in 2007. Religiosity is falling at a rate of nearly 2% a year.
- 23% are not at all religious, up from 12% in 2007, which is increasing at a rate of nearly 2% a year.
- 47% believe in Darwinian evolution (up from 42% in 2005), while 36% believe in creationism.
- 42% believe in ghosts, 36% in UFOs, and 29% in astrology.
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
22 December 2013
Harris Poll of Some American Beliefs
A Harris Interactive poll of 2,250 American adults conducted in November 2013 found the following:
29 August 2008
Critique of Obama's DNC Acceptance Speech
On 28 August, Senator Obama gave a masterful acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention. He presented his empty populist and socialist program with complete self-assurance and sincerity. His rhetoric wowed the Democrat crowd. Let us examine it critically.
Early on, he claims the American promise is threatened because the economy is in turmoil. Well, yes, the economy goes through business cycles now and then and sometimes policies long encouraged by Congress backfire and cause a problem, such as the home mortgage problem. Well, guess who wanted Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and other businesses to issue risky mortgages and consistently pushed for more of them? The Democrats in Congress. Nonetheless, are we to believe that the American dream is so fragile that it is threatened by a GDP growth slowdown which is not even a recession, let alone a depression?
So he complains about lost homes and reduced home values. Gasoline prices which are high. Could that be in part because the Democrats have consistently opposed drilling for oil in America and prevented us from exporting more oil from Iraq? The credit card bills he complains about would not be so high if people did not work until 16 July to cover the cost of government. The tuition bills would not be so high if socialists did not have total control of the universities.
He complains that a man in Indiana packed up equipment he used for 20 years and shipped it to China. Could it be that the equipment was now obsolete and selling it to China was a good way to get some money for it. Maybe the company bought better new equipment, using the income from the obsolete equipment as the down payment? We do not know. But there is not nearly enough information given here to bring tears to a rational listener's eyes.
He claims we let veterans sleep on the streets. We probably do. There is no guarantee given to a veteran that he will never see hard times. He can go bankrupt, or he may become an alcoholic or a drug abuser. We do have many programs to help veterans, but he should not tell a veteran that he will be forever on easy street because he has served in the military.
Obama says "John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time." Ummm.....I thought George Bush was President and has never served in the Senate. He never votes with Senator John McCain!
Obama falsely claims that McCain proposed "tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans." First, McCain proposes a reduction of the tax rate to all corporations, big and small, and to all industries, not just oil companies. The phrases Barack Hussein used were meant to be inflammatory. Second, McCain does propose that the Bush tax cuts be extended, which will provide tax relief for more than one hundred million Americans. The Democrats have long opposed the extension of the Bush tax cuts which are due to expire in 2010. Obama realized he would have problems winning the election if he went along with the majority of the Democrats on this opposition and has embraced a pledge of no new taxes on middle class individuals, except those leveled upon business owners and that half of the population that owns stocks. Or upon those who realize a capital gain.
He complains that McCain has offered "an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college," but there are already programs that provide student and parent loans adequate for that purpose. Obama does not bother to tell us what he would do.
He says McCain "would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement." No one is changing Social Security for those near retirement. But the present plan is not funded fully and for the younger workers who will be soon heavily burdened with additional taxes to give Baby Boomers many luxurious years of retirement on Social Security, where is the security for their retirement? McCain knows that the only way to provide for that is to end a purely Ponzi scheme and get at least a part of the money withheld from paychecks into investments which over time will grow with the American economy. Funding everyone's retirement with tax money is stupid.
Obama claims the Republican philosophy was to give the rich more money and hope some benefit trickles down to those less well off. Hogwash!!!! The Republican philosophy was to reduce everyone's taxes and they did it. They did include tax reductions for high income groups and everyone else. As a result, the fraction of the income tax paid by the highest income groups went up, not down as you would suppose from the Democrat complaints. The higher income groups now pay almost all of the income tax monies collected.
Obama says "in Washington, they call this the Ownership Society." Yes, and under this philosophy a larger fraction of the population than ever has come to own their own homes and to own investments in stock and other retirement funds. To the dismay of the Democrats, more and more people are building wealth.
He says the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 under Clinton and then down $2,000 under Bush. I have spent a while trying to figure this one out. I know what average family income is and I know what median family income is, but I am not sure what he means by the income of the average American family. It probably means average family income.
But first, let's look at the median family income. This is the income of most interest to most American families. In 1992, median family income in constant 2000 dollars, was $44,129, while it was $52,148 in 2000. This is an increase of $8019. Good for the relatively low spending of Clinton and his free trade policies, so unusual for a Democrat. Of course, this was largely necessitated by a Republican Congress. From 2000 to 2006, median family reported income went down by $1595. But, as we have noted before, workers are taking more of their compensation in the form of unreported retirement investments, vacation time, medical savings plans, family leave time, and paid sick leave, rather than taxable income. People have many more options now on how they take their compensation for their work. Taking advantage of them is just plain smart given the high marginal tax rates, which have gone up in many states and locales during this period. Since these calculations are in price change adjusted dollars, the rise in gasoline prices and food prices plays a big role here. Both Bush and Congress are responsible for the rise in food prices, but it is mostly Congress who is responsible for the increase in gasoline and other fuel prices.
I have not been able to find good numbers for the average family income for this complete span of years, but the average income numbers are much higher. This is because they are weighted heavily by the families with very high incomes. So, a reduction in average family incomes may simply indicate harder times for the very wealthy, who we know Obama to be uninterested in.
Obama claims the American promise says we have "the freedom to make our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect." Generally, yes, but he is actually smuggling in a requirement to be our brother's keeper here, which we shall see down the pike. If I really treat someone with dignity and respect, then I expect that they can take care of themselves.
He says "businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road." First, businesses do not have an obligation to create jobs. A business is composed of people. These people are not obliged to create jobs for others. If they were, then those others would be equally obliged to create jobs. That would logically require everyone to create a job. If everyone creates a job, then no one has to create a job for anyone else but himself. Then everyone would be looking out for himself.
Barack says government should do what we cannot do for ourselves. "Protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology." What, we cannot protect ourselves from harm? We often do. Government has some role here, but not a comprehensive one. We do not need government to provide education. That is an experiment that has failed and it is fraught with the conflict of interest that one of the primary reasons we need to learn to think rationally for ourselves is so we will not be so vulnerable to government tyranny. Putting government in charge of schools is putting the fox in the chicken coop. We do not need government to keep our toys safe. We need responsible retailers to check on safety using good laboratories to examine products from China or other unreliable foreign vendors. Government should play a role in some basic science research, but the development of technology should generally be the province of private enterprise. Government develops technology very poorly.
Now Obama drops the big idea on us. "We are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper." This is surely conflating religion with government. If I am responsible for myself, why isn't my brother, or more probably, some stranger, also responsible for himself? This is clearly contradictory and a recipe for standard socialism with the government intervening in our lives to tell each of us that we must sacrifice our individual rights, privileges, and immunities along with our own individual idea of our values and our goals to some need of others. Soon, no one has any job but to take care of others, but a society in which everyone takes care of others at the expense of themselves is nonsense. Consequently, everyone simply becomes a servant of the state. Then the state determines who gets what "rights", rather then the individual having an inalienable right to anything. This logic is what caused Senator Joe Biden to be furiously suspicious that Judge Clarence Thomas might believe in inalienable individual rights. Biden was adamant that only government can give anyone a right.
Now Obama says "change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it." Yet, Obama plans to write tax codes that do reward certain businesses he likes. Does he really suppose those businesses lobbyists will not be working overtime to see that he picks their businesses for these favors. It is McCain who goes much further in not trying to play favorites with the tax code.
"Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America." Do you really want Obama, who has never managed a business, deciding whether jobs have been shipped overseas and which are good jobs here? This is not the job of a President of the United States. Besides, there may well be good reasons to eliminate some jobs here which are unable to compete in the global economy. Obama will wind up erecting high tariff walls to protect unproductive jobs and destroying our export industries and our competitiveness in the process. This is very simple-minded.
"I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow." Does this mean he will try to decide which small businesses will create high-wage and high-tech jobs and which will not? Many states were doing just this and encouraging investors to start dot-coms and other computer software firms, biotechnology, and optical communications companies which fed the frenzy that led to their collapse in the so-called dot-com recession that hurt the economy so much in the early part of Bush's first term in office. The loss in incomes due to that are a part of what Obama blames him for compared to Clinton, but the frenzy was started and fueled mightily under Clinton's time in office. Government is incompetent in picking winners among small businesses. Forget this. Even if he does not mean to discriminate among small businesses, they really just need a more even playing field, which masses of government regulations do the most to destroy.
"In ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East." He must think he is God. This is absurd. Even an enthusiastic driller cannot do this and he is not a happy driller. His idea to pour money into alternative energy development will result mostly in wasting tons of money and only a small increase in energy. Crash government programs are very wasteful and do not translate well into functioning businesses.
He will use more natural gas, invest in clean coal technology, and use safe nuclear power. Glad to hear he will allow more natural gas production, use of coal, and nuclear power. Will he reduce the time it takes to get government approvals to build facilities? This will be the real test here. And, will companies be allowed to proceed in a way that will allow them to make a profit, which he thinks is a dirty word? Then he will subsidize fuel-efficient cars and alternative energy. It would likely be less wasteful to give our dollars to Mideast sheiks. He will create 5 million new jobs by taxing Americans enough to get the money and thereby destroying another 5 million jobs. Where do politicians get the idiot idea that they create jobs?
He wants every child to have a world class education so they can compete in the global economy from which he wants to retreat to protect unproductive jobs. How he will do this keeping his Democrat Teacher's Union friends happy is not stated beyond saying he will do more of the same things that have always failed.
Somehow, he will give us all accessible health care. I thought we had that, but clearly he proposes to take control and second guess medical experts still more than Medicare already does. This will cause costs to skyrocket, as Medicare has already proven they will. It will also result in highly rationed care. Like Canadians, we will wait many months for an MRI examine for a brain tumor and then 8 more months for an operation to remove it and by then most of our brain.
He will decree that businesses provide more paid sick days and better family leave. This will put some businesses out of business and cause many to hire fewer people.
He will decree equal pay for equal work. So, bureaucrats will visit businesses they know nothing about and interview workers and decide which ones have the same job and do it equally well. Then they will tell the company what to pay them. Really wise! So, who do I fire? All of my female employees or all of my male employees?
As in Biden's speech, he claims Iraq has $79 billion in surplus money. Of course Iraq has terrible needs for this money in rebuilding the infrastructure and society that Saddam Hussein destroyed over many decades and to increase their oil production, but they cannot agree among themselves on how to spend it. Meanwhile, Congress, controlled by the Democrats, opposes their spending it to get any help from American oil companies and until all factions are happy with its use. So, of course it is unspent.
Obama will "build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease." There is no focus here. He who chooses to defend everything, defends nothing. Unless, this joker is God. Seriously, He will defeat all poverty and all genocide. He will defeat the earth and make it keep a constant climate? He will defeat all disease? Incredible. Unbelievable. Childish. Megalomaniacal. Unbalanced. Insane. Otherworldly.
The rest of his speech was just rhetoric with nothing but apple pie, mom, flag-waving, and invocations upon God.
Early on, he claims the American promise is threatened because the economy is in turmoil. Well, yes, the economy goes through business cycles now and then and sometimes policies long encouraged by Congress backfire and cause a problem, such as the home mortgage problem. Well, guess who wanted Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and other businesses to issue risky mortgages and consistently pushed for more of them? The Democrats in Congress. Nonetheless, are we to believe that the American dream is so fragile that it is threatened by a GDP growth slowdown which is not even a recession, let alone a depression?
So he complains about lost homes and reduced home values. Gasoline prices which are high. Could that be in part because the Democrats have consistently opposed drilling for oil in America and prevented us from exporting more oil from Iraq? The credit card bills he complains about would not be so high if people did not work until 16 July to cover the cost of government. The tuition bills would not be so high if socialists did not have total control of the universities.
He complains that a man in Indiana packed up equipment he used for 20 years and shipped it to China. Could it be that the equipment was now obsolete and selling it to China was a good way to get some money for it. Maybe the company bought better new equipment, using the income from the obsolete equipment as the down payment? We do not know. But there is not nearly enough information given here to bring tears to a rational listener's eyes.
He claims we let veterans sleep on the streets. We probably do. There is no guarantee given to a veteran that he will never see hard times. He can go bankrupt, or he may become an alcoholic or a drug abuser. We do have many programs to help veterans, but he should not tell a veteran that he will be forever on easy street because he has served in the military.
Obama says "John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time." Ummm.....I thought George Bush was President and has never served in the Senate. He never votes with Senator John McCain!
Obama falsely claims that McCain proposed "tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans." First, McCain proposes a reduction of the tax rate to all corporations, big and small, and to all industries, not just oil companies. The phrases Barack Hussein used were meant to be inflammatory. Second, McCain does propose that the Bush tax cuts be extended, which will provide tax relief for more than one hundred million Americans. The Democrats have long opposed the extension of the Bush tax cuts which are due to expire in 2010. Obama realized he would have problems winning the election if he went along with the majority of the Democrats on this opposition and has embraced a pledge of no new taxes on middle class individuals, except those leveled upon business owners and that half of the population that owns stocks. Or upon those who realize a capital gain.
He complains that McCain has offered "an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college," but there are already programs that provide student and parent loans adequate for that purpose. Obama does not bother to tell us what he would do.
He says McCain "would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement." No one is changing Social Security for those near retirement. But the present plan is not funded fully and for the younger workers who will be soon heavily burdened with additional taxes to give Baby Boomers many luxurious years of retirement on Social Security, where is the security for their retirement? McCain knows that the only way to provide for that is to end a purely Ponzi scheme and get at least a part of the money withheld from paychecks into investments which over time will grow with the American economy. Funding everyone's retirement with tax money is stupid.
Obama claims the Republican philosophy was to give the rich more money and hope some benefit trickles down to those less well off. Hogwash!!!! The Republican philosophy was to reduce everyone's taxes and they did it. They did include tax reductions for high income groups and everyone else. As a result, the fraction of the income tax paid by the highest income groups went up, not down as you would suppose from the Democrat complaints. The higher income groups now pay almost all of the income tax monies collected.
Obama says "in Washington, they call this the Ownership Society." Yes, and under this philosophy a larger fraction of the population than ever has come to own their own homes and to own investments in stock and other retirement funds. To the dismay of the Democrats, more and more people are building wealth.
He says the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 under Clinton and then down $2,000 under Bush. I have spent a while trying to figure this one out. I know what average family income is and I know what median family income is, but I am not sure what he means by the income of the average American family. It probably means average family income.
But first, let's look at the median family income. This is the income of most interest to most American families. In 1992, median family income in constant 2000 dollars, was $44,129, while it was $52,148 in 2000. This is an increase of $8019. Good for the relatively low spending of Clinton and his free trade policies, so unusual for a Democrat. Of course, this was largely necessitated by a Republican Congress. From 2000 to 2006, median family reported income went down by $1595. But, as we have noted before, workers are taking more of their compensation in the form of unreported retirement investments, vacation time, medical savings plans, family leave time, and paid sick leave, rather than taxable income. People have many more options now on how they take their compensation for their work. Taking advantage of them is just plain smart given the high marginal tax rates, which have gone up in many states and locales during this period. Since these calculations are in price change adjusted dollars, the rise in gasoline prices and food prices plays a big role here. Both Bush and Congress are responsible for the rise in food prices, but it is mostly Congress who is responsible for the increase in gasoline and other fuel prices.
I have not been able to find good numbers for the average family income for this complete span of years, but the average income numbers are much higher. This is because they are weighted heavily by the families with very high incomes. So, a reduction in average family incomes may simply indicate harder times for the very wealthy, who we know Obama to be uninterested in.
Obama claims the American promise says we have "the freedom to make our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect." Generally, yes, but he is actually smuggling in a requirement to be our brother's keeper here, which we shall see down the pike. If I really treat someone with dignity and respect, then I expect that they can take care of themselves.
He says "businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road." First, businesses do not have an obligation to create jobs. A business is composed of people. These people are not obliged to create jobs for others. If they were, then those others would be equally obliged to create jobs. That would logically require everyone to create a job. If everyone creates a job, then no one has to create a job for anyone else but himself. Then everyone would be looking out for himself.
Barack says government should do what we cannot do for ourselves. "Protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology." What, we cannot protect ourselves from harm? We often do. Government has some role here, but not a comprehensive one. We do not need government to provide education. That is an experiment that has failed and it is fraught with the conflict of interest that one of the primary reasons we need to learn to think rationally for ourselves is so we will not be so vulnerable to government tyranny. Putting government in charge of schools is putting the fox in the chicken coop. We do not need government to keep our toys safe. We need responsible retailers to check on safety using good laboratories to examine products from China or other unreliable foreign vendors. Government should play a role in some basic science research, but the development of technology should generally be the province of private enterprise. Government develops technology very poorly.
Now Obama drops the big idea on us. "We are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper." This is surely conflating religion with government. If I am responsible for myself, why isn't my brother, or more probably, some stranger, also responsible for himself? This is clearly contradictory and a recipe for standard socialism with the government intervening in our lives to tell each of us that we must sacrifice our individual rights, privileges, and immunities along with our own individual idea of our values and our goals to some need of others. Soon, no one has any job but to take care of others, but a society in which everyone takes care of others at the expense of themselves is nonsense. Consequently, everyone simply becomes a servant of the state. Then the state determines who gets what "rights", rather then the individual having an inalienable right to anything. This logic is what caused Senator Joe Biden to be furiously suspicious that Judge Clarence Thomas might believe in inalienable individual rights. Biden was adamant that only government can give anyone a right.
Now Obama says "change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it." Yet, Obama plans to write tax codes that do reward certain businesses he likes. Does he really suppose those businesses lobbyists will not be working overtime to see that he picks their businesses for these favors. It is McCain who goes much further in not trying to play favorites with the tax code.
"Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America." Do you really want Obama, who has never managed a business, deciding whether jobs have been shipped overseas and which are good jobs here? This is not the job of a President of the United States. Besides, there may well be good reasons to eliminate some jobs here which are unable to compete in the global economy. Obama will wind up erecting high tariff walls to protect unproductive jobs and destroying our export industries and our competitiveness in the process. This is very simple-minded.
"I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow." Does this mean he will try to decide which small businesses will create high-wage and high-tech jobs and which will not? Many states were doing just this and encouraging investors to start dot-coms and other computer software firms, biotechnology, and optical communications companies which fed the frenzy that led to their collapse in the so-called dot-com recession that hurt the economy so much in the early part of Bush's first term in office. The loss in incomes due to that are a part of what Obama blames him for compared to Clinton, but the frenzy was started and fueled mightily under Clinton's time in office. Government is incompetent in picking winners among small businesses. Forget this. Even if he does not mean to discriminate among small businesses, they really just need a more even playing field, which masses of government regulations do the most to destroy.
"In ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East." He must think he is God. This is absurd. Even an enthusiastic driller cannot do this and he is not a happy driller. His idea to pour money into alternative energy development will result mostly in wasting tons of money and only a small increase in energy. Crash government programs are very wasteful and do not translate well into functioning businesses.
He will use more natural gas, invest in clean coal technology, and use safe nuclear power. Glad to hear he will allow more natural gas production, use of coal, and nuclear power. Will he reduce the time it takes to get government approvals to build facilities? This will be the real test here. And, will companies be allowed to proceed in a way that will allow them to make a profit, which he thinks is a dirty word? Then he will subsidize fuel-efficient cars and alternative energy. It would likely be less wasteful to give our dollars to Mideast sheiks. He will create 5 million new jobs by taxing Americans enough to get the money and thereby destroying another 5 million jobs. Where do politicians get the idiot idea that they create jobs?
He wants every child to have a world class education so they can compete in the global economy from which he wants to retreat to protect unproductive jobs. How he will do this keeping his Democrat Teacher's Union friends happy is not stated beyond saying he will do more of the same things that have always failed.
Somehow, he will give us all accessible health care. I thought we had that, but clearly he proposes to take control and second guess medical experts still more than Medicare already does. This will cause costs to skyrocket, as Medicare has already proven they will. It will also result in highly rationed care. Like Canadians, we will wait many months for an MRI examine for a brain tumor and then 8 more months for an operation to remove it and by then most of our brain.
He will decree that businesses provide more paid sick days and better family leave. This will put some businesses out of business and cause many to hire fewer people.
He will decree equal pay for equal work. So, bureaucrats will visit businesses they know nothing about and interview workers and decide which ones have the same job and do it equally well. Then they will tell the company what to pay them. Really wise! So, who do I fire? All of my female employees or all of my male employees?
As in Biden's speech, he claims Iraq has $79 billion in surplus money. Of course Iraq has terrible needs for this money in rebuilding the infrastructure and society that Saddam Hussein destroyed over many decades and to increase their oil production, but they cannot agree among themselves on how to spend it. Meanwhile, Congress, controlled by the Democrats, opposes their spending it to get any help from American oil companies and until all factions are happy with its use. So, of course it is unspent.
Obama will "build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease." There is no focus here. He who chooses to defend everything, defends nothing. Unless, this joker is God. Seriously, He will defeat all poverty and all genocide. He will defeat the earth and make it keep a constant climate? He will defeat all disease? Incredible. Unbelievable. Childish. Megalomaniacal. Unbalanced. Insane. Otherworldly.
The rest of his speech was just rhetoric with nothing but apple pie, mom, flag-waving, and invocations upon God.
16 January 2008
God is Man-Made
When people start talking about God, I sometimes ask them what they know about God. The answers I get most commonly are 1) "God is personal to me and I will not tell you who God is." and 2) God is good, powerful, the creator of the universe, all-knowing, and omnipresent. The first tells me nothing. The second leads to myriad questions, none of which the God-believer is prepared to answer. So, having a conversation about God with a believer is extremely difficult for one who is accustomed to the precision and the reality of science. God is not nearly as substantial as a fog. God is not as substantial as a field theory, since that can readily be known by observations of reality. No, God is a vanishing act. God is unknowable. Over and over, I am told that one simply has to choose to believe.
OK, so if I must simply choose to believe and then I have religion, why should I not choose to believe that the fate of the universe and the human race is determined by three gnomes living in a cave on the dark side of the moon. I could exercise my creative urges by thinking up a religion of my own creation. I could emulate Moses, Paul of Tarsus, Mohammad, and Joseph Smith Jr., except I could readily invent a much better religion, one which held human life in much higher regard than do the religions of the past. However, my arbitrary belief in the three gnomes would already undermine what man needs most to live his life well. What he most needs is a respect for reality, for the power of his own mind to know reality, and for his ability to live his life better because he understands reality and the requirements of the well-lived life. Rather than consign his fate to the three gnomes, it is critical that he assume the responsibility for knowing reality and for managing his own life. If man truly wishes to achieve his happiness, then he must assume these personal responsibilities.
This man has no need for a vanishing God. He understands that if God comes into existence only to the extent that he arbitrary chooses to believe in God, then God is man-made. In effect, man is God. Man has the means to know reality and man's good is the Good. For something to be good, it must be good for that being who can act to gain or to keep that good. Something can be good for a man. It is not at all clear that anything is good for a God, given the usual vague ways in which God is defined or left as a very vacuous concept. But, if we believe that God is Good, then perhaps we should see what is good for man and call that God. Then, if we can determine what is good for a man, we could come to know what his God should be. But, it is really better if we simply cut off all of this God and religion tradition and start with a cleaner and clearer way of thinking about ethics and what is good for man. These issues are complex enough without all of this prehistoric and ancient baggage. Indeed, the contents of that baggage are a disorganized, contradictory, and irrational mess. Modern man should be better able to think out the issues of ethics and value better than a bunch of ignorant ancients or medieval flim-flam artists.
The god that most people believe in now is not really a universal God. No, he is a local God. There are the gods of the Hindus, the God of the Christians, the God of the Jews, the God of Islam, the God of the Mormons, etc. Most believers, who have chosen to believe in God, have somehow chosen that God who was believed in by their parents or who is believed in by most of the people in their local community. Is it not a wonder that God who is omni-present, all-knowing, all-powerful, and the creator of the universe, is of such a different character in Arabia, India, Israel, and North America? God is apparently not very universal! But, as a man-made idea, this makes sense. Those who choose to believe, choose to belong to the local club. Why choose to be an outcast in one's home town? So, there is very little tendency to stray from the local dogma. Of course, a few hundred years ago, any straying was likely to result in one's death as a heretic in Christian regions. Today, any straying in the Islamic regions is still cause for one's execution. The clubs have not always been voluntary.
This fact that the clubs are local and have often not been kind to dissenters, makes it very reasonable to wonder if they are filled with cultists. In fact, the arbitrary nature of the belief and the fact that the beliefs have little regard for reality, makes it clear that the world's many religions are of the nature of cults. I do not think I will choose to add to these cults by adding one which believes in the three gnomes living in a cave on the dark side of the moon. I am just not enough motivated by a desire to exercise power over those who might join my cult.
There is a reason little publicized that I have heard from a number of men for being a Christian in the United States. It turns out that many men do not in fact believe in God or in Christianity. They simply find it convenient to pretend to believe. One of the reasons they regard as the most compelling for this pretense is that they think that they will be cut off from most women if they do not pretend to believe. It is usually not that they would not be able to win election to be President of the United States, no, it is that few women would ever choose to love them. I have heard this over and over again from intelligent men. They are right. Very many women will not love a man who has not made the arbitrary leap of faith to believe in the Christian version of God in these United States. You can be the best man possible and they will refuse you their love.
How odd that the religions, which are so commonly more supportive of men than women in their traditional beliefs, enjoy as their strongest advocates the loyalty of the vast majority of women in their local regions of practice? Modern Christianity has been under the primary influence of women so long now, that it has evolved into a rather feminized belief system. For instance, the Christians are now reluctant to believe in the existence of bullies, who must be opposed with force. Peace is a primary value, for which all freedoms can be traded. The Christians more and more believe that one must provide care for everyone through the medium of government. This is the maternal instinct writ large on the national scale. So, we have the Nanny State, more and more supported by Christians and women. More and more, the churches wish to be non-confrontational, which is always popular with women, who as they have taken over the public education system, have also made that a primary concern in the dogmas of public education. There is the commitment to not hurting anyone's feelings, which has materialized as political correctness restrictions on free speech, and widely practiced in the Christian churches and the public education system. The belief that everyone means to be nice, that no conflict can be allowed to occur, that peace is achieved when one party refuses to fight, that everyone's feelings are to be respected, except one's own feelings, and everyone must be mothered as an adolescent is becoming the rule wherever women rule. More and more they rule the churches and public education, making it difficult for a masculine, reality-first man to find a home in either.
OK, so if I must simply choose to believe and then I have religion, why should I not choose to believe that the fate of the universe and the human race is determined by three gnomes living in a cave on the dark side of the moon. I could exercise my creative urges by thinking up a religion of my own creation. I could emulate Moses, Paul of Tarsus, Mohammad, and Joseph Smith Jr., except I could readily invent a much better religion, one which held human life in much higher regard than do the religions of the past. However, my arbitrary belief in the three gnomes would already undermine what man needs most to live his life well. What he most needs is a respect for reality, for the power of his own mind to know reality, and for his ability to live his life better because he understands reality and the requirements of the well-lived life. Rather than consign his fate to the three gnomes, it is critical that he assume the responsibility for knowing reality and for managing his own life. If man truly wishes to achieve his happiness, then he must assume these personal responsibilities.
This man has no need for a vanishing God. He understands that if God comes into existence only to the extent that he arbitrary chooses to believe in God, then God is man-made. In effect, man is God. Man has the means to know reality and man's good is the Good. For something to be good, it must be good for that being who can act to gain or to keep that good. Something can be good for a man. It is not at all clear that anything is good for a God, given the usual vague ways in which God is defined or left as a very vacuous concept. But, if we believe that God is Good, then perhaps we should see what is good for man and call that God. Then, if we can determine what is good for a man, we could come to know what his God should be. But, it is really better if we simply cut off all of this God and religion tradition and start with a cleaner and clearer way of thinking about ethics and what is good for man. These issues are complex enough without all of this prehistoric and ancient baggage. Indeed, the contents of that baggage are a disorganized, contradictory, and irrational mess. Modern man should be better able to think out the issues of ethics and value better than a bunch of ignorant ancients or medieval flim-flam artists.
The god that most people believe in now is not really a universal God. No, he is a local God. There are the gods of the Hindus, the God of the Christians, the God of the Jews, the God of Islam, the God of the Mormons, etc. Most believers, who have chosen to believe in God, have somehow chosen that God who was believed in by their parents or who is believed in by most of the people in their local community. Is it not a wonder that God who is omni-present, all-knowing, all-powerful, and the creator of the universe, is of such a different character in Arabia, India, Israel, and North America? God is apparently not very universal! But, as a man-made idea, this makes sense. Those who choose to believe, choose to belong to the local club. Why choose to be an outcast in one's home town? So, there is very little tendency to stray from the local dogma. Of course, a few hundred years ago, any straying was likely to result in one's death as a heretic in Christian regions. Today, any straying in the Islamic regions is still cause for one's execution. The clubs have not always been voluntary.
This fact that the clubs are local and have often not been kind to dissenters, makes it very reasonable to wonder if they are filled with cultists. In fact, the arbitrary nature of the belief and the fact that the beliefs have little regard for reality, makes it clear that the world's many religions are of the nature of cults. I do not think I will choose to add to these cults by adding one which believes in the three gnomes living in a cave on the dark side of the moon. I am just not enough motivated by a desire to exercise power over those who might join my cult.
There is a reason little publicized that I have heard from a number of men for being a Christian in the United States. It turns out that many men do not in fact believe in God or in Christianity. They simply find it convenient to pretend to believe. One of the reasons they regard as the most compelling for this pretense is that they think that they will be cut off from most women if they do not pretend to believe. It is usually not that they would not be able to win election to be President of the United States, no, it is that few women would ever choose to love them. I have heard this over and over again from intelligent men. They are right. Very many women will not love a man who has not made the arbitrary leap of faith to believe in the Christian version of God in these United States. You can be the best man possible and they will refuse you their love.
How odd that the religions, which are so commonly more supportive of men than women in their traditional beliefs, enjoy as their strongest advocates the loyalty of the vast majority of women in their local regions of practice? Modern Christianity has been under the primary influence of women so long now, that it has evolved into a rather feminized belief system. For instance, the Christians are now reluctant to believe in the existence of bullies, who must be opposed with force. Peace is a primary value, for which all freedoms can be traded. The Christians more and more believe that one must provide care for everyone through the medium of government. This is the maternal instinct writ large on the national scale. So, we have the Nanny State, more and more supported by Christians and women. More and more, the churches wish to be non-confrontational, which is always popular with women, who as they have taken over the public education system, have also made that a primary concern in the dogmas of public education. There is the commitment to not hurting anyone's feelings, which has materialized as political correctness restrictions on free speech, and widely practiced in the Christian churches and the public education system. The belief that everyone means to be nice, that no conflict can be allowed to occur, that peace is achieved when one party refuses to fight, that everyone's feelings are to be respected, except one's own feelings, and everyone must be mothered as an adolescent is becoming the rule wherever women rule. More and more they rule the churches and public education, making it difficult for a masculine, reality-first man to find a home in either.
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