Satan’s Garden

I tried to write emphatically about the utter exasperation I feel when religion claims a special divinity to a people, but it just came out all wrong. By the time I was done, it looked too much like a rant from Mel Gibson at a DUI arrest, because the most outward example I can think of is the Jewish claim of being “The Chosen People of God”. That very premise disgusts me! Trying to write about that in anger, doesn’t work out well. So, I calmed myself down and hashed it out again, doing my best to quell my angry tone.

My ire is toward the idea of racial theism itself, not any particular flavor of it. Racial theism certainly isn’t an exclusive Jewish phenomena. Any group claiming to be the “Chosen People” of any god are propping themselves up to be better than everyone else. In a very real sense, theism is racism when used this way. The Jewish faith just happens to identify itself as a race as well as a faith, which you are born into, which makes their particular expression of religious superiority a very sticky subject to speak against - especially in anger. As it stands, you can’t utter criticism of any kind against Jewish religious doctrine without being labeled a racist for it. Which is ironic, as claiming to be the “Chosen People of God” is the ultimate in racism!

I have to ask, what is it with the Middle East that produces this kind of theocratic thinking? The majority of religious superiority complexes seems to come out of the Middle East. Whether this is a reflection of the history of the region, going back to the start of Western civilization itself, or of the specific cultural aspects of the last two millennium, I have no idea. Middle Eastern theism and racism have gone hand in hand, with a belief in a particular god being the source of racist expression from all groups involved. The current strife in Iraq, with warring factions at each other’s throats, is the result of conflicting religious views, which have been associated to particular races. The entire Middle East has been rife with this nonsense for the last 2000 years.

How does theology lead to racism? No better example of this dynamic can be found than in the sordid history of Christianity in Europe. Springing from Judaic tradition, melded with a rehashed story of Appolonius and others, Christianity was used as the measure to determine racial status. Aside from the Crusades and the wanton stupidity of Christian and Islamic clashing, the stratification of people according to faith allowed the various European peoples to associate together as a “chosen people”, who just so happened to all be white in skin tone; justifying the heathens as expendable, simply another resource to be used. Two continents were attacked using this doctrine, with its inhabitants enslaved or slaughtered in the name of theocratic racial purity. It can be argued that governments were the source of such desires, not religion, but if it was not for the religious tennants pushed out, the common man would not so easily go along with these plans. Religion is ultimately a system of control.

The simple truth of reality is that there is no chosen people of any god. We don’t even have evidence for the existence of any god, let alone any racial declarations from one. We need to drop the entire idea into the dust bin of history and move on.

As long as the human race continues to use theism as a guide, the human race will suffer the racist and “creedist” outcome of it. When the claim of the divine is made, anything can be justified by that claim - even genocide. History proves this. As long as any religious group claims to be the chosen people of a god, we will never achieve the ideals of a unified human race. Mankind needs to release itself from the shackles of religion and open up its collective mind to the ideals of humanism. As resources dwindle and population grows, this becomes a more important goal every day. If we continue to view the world through religious glasses, we will never reach a point that allows the cooperation needed to resolve our world issues, we will instead only escalate our conflicts against each other.

If the Global Warming Church can make a more accurate statement on the hypocrisy and religious aspect of their movement, I’ll be surprised.

Environmental activists are building a replica of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat—where the biblical vessel is said to have landed after the great flood—in an appeal for action on global warming, Greenpeace said Wednesday.

Read the short article.

Just how many CO² eating trees are these morons cutting down for this project, anyway?

There is an argument preached by the Global Warming Church, that even if the current theories of anthropogenic global warming are wrong, we should take action anyway, because the risk is too great. I’ll make a counter proposal to this argument. I say that those preaching the massive, unsupported stupidity of the Global Warming Church are a danger to the human race and even if they are not, we should wipe them out anyway, because the risk is too great.

Neither is a statement of science - both are statements of politics.

Until this debate is waged in scientific fashion, using sound scientific principals, it is but a shell game.

Let’s put it all simply: If it is true that there is a demonstrated cause and effect relationship between CO² levels and global warming, then we ought to be able to isolate the sources of atmospheric CO² that we generate and make proper decisions, based on scientific analysis, as to what to do about those sources. We can use the tools of science to clean up or minimize the problem. This is not what the GWC is spewing, however. Instead, political attacks are made on some industrialized countries, in sweeping efforts, while other nations with even larger problems of pollution in general are ignored. This is a political effort, with political motivation, barren of reasonable action. Even the $5 billion spent on global warming research last year in the USA, was not aimed at research on how to combat global warming, but on climate studies themselves, all trying to predict new environmental disasters.

Take a look at Carbon Credits, for an example of the politics involved. Just what is a Carbon Credit, anyway? A Carbon Credit (CC) purchased, allows the purchasing agent to emit one tonne of CO².

Wikipedia further defines the process: International treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol set quotas on the amount of greenhouse gases countries can produce. Countries, in turn, set quotas on the emissions of businesses. Businesses that are over their quotas must buy carbon credits for their excess emissions, while businesses that are below their quotas can sell their remaining credits. By allowing credits to be bought and sold, a business for which reducing its emissions would be expensive or prohibitive can pay another business to make the reduction for it. This minimizes the quota’s impact on the business, while still reaching the quota.

On the surface, this looks equitable. If you can’t afford to fix your problem, you pay someone else to fix theirs, which allows the overall CO² emission regulations to be met. Under the surface, it doesn’t work. The best description of the real workings of Carbon Credit I’ve ever found is an article by Gene Logsdon, from the The Progressor Times. It’s quite short. Take the time to read it and understand just what a scam this is.

Furthermore, there is real pressure on the developing nations of the world to use “sustainable” energy sources, such as solar and wind, to produce their progressing energy needs - in spite of the fact that many of these nations have abundant coal or oil resources. The Global Warming Church doesn’t want them to use these resources, but to purchase the far more expensive solar and wind solutions, so that they won’t contribute to anthropogenic CO² emissions. On the flip side the Global Warming Church is more than willing to allow other nations to buy those same fossil fuel resources for their own use, as long as they pay the carbon tax on it.

The developing nation under this regime is screwed twice. Not only would they end up selling their own fossil fuels to the large industrialized nations still burning them, but they then have to purchase the far more expensive solar and wind technologies from those same countries to produce their own energy.

In any case, solar and wind provide less than 1% of the current energy production of the world and this is not going to change anytime soon.

The final score in all this, is that Carbon Credit bankers are in this for the money. They could give a damn about the environment. The Carbon Credit system protects the rich from having to change their lifestyles, while it penalizes the poor, yet again, for being poor.

Jerry Falwell was found dead today and the world already seems a better place. Christianity has enough problems in general without nut cases like Falwell spurring on the fringe regions of the faith.

While the papers are reporting on his demise and his contributions to the right wing political engine, I’m going to instead send him of with series of quotes by him, to show just why it is that the world should make this a holiday of celebration.

• AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
• The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country
• If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being
• Textbooks are Soviet propaganda.
• I sincerely believe that the collective efforts of many secularists during the past generation, resulting in the expulsion from our schools and from the public square, has left us vulnerable
• (re: 9/11 attacks) “…throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.”
• I am such a strong admirer and supporter of George W. Bush that if he suggested eliminating the income tax or doubling it, I would vote yes on first blush.
• I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!
• There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
• The Bible is the inerrant … word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible,without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.
• The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That’s like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.

But the best and most honest statement Falwell ever made was:

• Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions

As if the mongrel police forces in America didn’t have enough civil rights abolishing capability as is, May 14th, 2007, is the deadline for ISP’s all over the nation to be compliant with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. In short, CALEA demands that all ISP’s and telephone companies provide data to law enforcement on their terms, using their data collection methods to provide email, Web browsing histories and other online activity reports on legal demand, as quickly as possible. The law forces your ISP to be their spy. Though the act does not change standards for legal use of wiretaps, it is notable that when the telephone compliance was finished in 2002, court-ordered surveillance nearly doubled from 2,586 applications granted in 2002, to 4,015 granted in 2006.

When you make it easier to spy, than to do actual police work - you can guess the results.

I’ve never met Joshua Witter, but he’s a kindred spirit to be sure. Joshua is the creator of probably one of the most beautifully satirical sites I’ve seen in some time, the Post-Rapture Post.

His basic premise is simple: he’s an atheist, admittedly on the hedonistic side, who will be around should the impossible occur - the rapture. So, he’s offering a guaranteed postal service for those who will be spirited away, to send a message to their own relatives and friends of high debauchery left behind.

The brilliance of this project is self-evident. I can’t stop laughing!

The Safety Nazi’s are at it again. Their target this time, images of smoking in the movies. Yes, smoking in the movies is important enough for the MPAA to wave their golf gloves in the air for attention and some San Francisco based do-gooders to take up the oppressive moral challenge of removing images of smoking from the movies altogether.

The MPAA is quoted as saying, ‘”all smoking will be considered and depictions that glamorize smoking or … feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context” could warrant a more prohibitive rating.’ Frankly, who cares what the MPAA says. The MPAA long ago made their lack of any valid moral stance known, when they ruled that you can’t show a bare woman’s breast to children, but decapitations are fine and and dandy.

This is the crap that pisses me off: The San Francisco-based center Smoke Free Movies claims that movies are responsible for 5,000 smoking-related deaths a month that might have been prevented by an R rating. The group also says movies are responsible half of the 800,000 children a year who start smoking. (Full article here.)

Where are they getting this data? What studies have been done to prove these numbers? What is the criteria being used to determine whether or not children start smoking do to the “responsibility” of movies? How have they shown that giving a film an R rating, prevents any children from smoking?

When is the last time you actually saw someone smoking a cigarette in a movie? That’s a fairly rare event these days. “Kill Bill” is about the only one which comes to my mind’s recollection, with Samuel L. Jackson smoking at the church organ, but that’s hardly a kiddy flick. If you go to their own Web page showing which of the movies out right now have smoking depicted in them, (see the page here,) the count is a bit deceptive. As of April 30th, 2007, when I took a gander, there were four of eight that have an R rating, which doesn’t qualify as a kid’s movie. Isn’t this group the one weeping over the fact that films with smoking need an R rating? Why even put those films in this list of movies? They already qualify for their goal. Three of the remaining are PG-13 and one G, which are supposed to be the most objectionable films to these folk. In all of this, you’ll have to take their word for it being a film which, “promotes smoking”. My guess, is that if it doesn’t show someone dying from it, they qualify it as “promoting smoking”. Their inclusion of R rated movies in their list shows their ultimate goal as well - the complete banning of any depiction of smoking in the movies, no matter what the ratings.

In short: this is blatant propaganda, so full of shit that you could use it to fertilize your garden! They have no studies to prove their claims. They have no studies to even support their notions! They’ve pulled some numbers out of their ass and spout it as if they are an authority. Am I supposed to believe that the Smoke Free Movies organization is an unbiased source of information?

Organizations like this come off appealing to “common sense”, but their goals are never that low. They want to control you, as much as the tobacco companies dream they could. They want to determine what is right for you, what you should be able to see, or read or think. They are controlling fascists, who ought to be stamped out, hard, like a crusty cigarette butt.

I’ll tell you who’s responsible for 5,000 smoking-related deaths a month - the 5,000 people making the decision to smoke. No one forced them to do it. No one put a gun to their head and a cigarette in their mouth.

If you want to debate the issues of peer pressure and other nonsense, let me counter with a quick rebuttal: If you haven’t taught your children to have self respect, based on a solid foundation of moral principals and steadfast self determination, able to resist any and all peer pressure - then you have failed as a parent!

I’ll add that your failure as a parent in this regard, has more striking ramifications than your children picking up bad habits. If your child is at the whim of their peers, you have sown the seeds of tyranny, by producing progeny that will goose step along with those who would rule by force over others. Dictators cannot rule, unless they can encourage the common man to enable their evil plans, to push their vile agenda - through peer pressure.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

More evidence that we don’t really know what’s going on or why, when it comes to our atmosphere: NASA has found that roughly 60% of what we thought was clear sky, is really filled with transitional particles from dry particles to cloud droplets. Considering the absolutely gigantic role that clouds and water droplets play in climate, this is no small find.

What this means is that none of our current climate computer models can possibly be even remotely correct in assessing what is going on. How unsurprising.

Straight from NASA.

Anthropogenic Global Warming, as the data stands today, is a completely unproved grasping of straws. We know that the Earth is warming up, but we really don’t have a clue at this point as to why and pointing the finger at human CO² production is unscientifically premature.

It doesn’t help that ludicrous disaster scenarios are spat out like so much Hollywood bile. It doesn’t take much effort to determine how stupid some of these claims are. For example, Gore’s and others insistence that the polar caps are going to disappear in our lifetime. Simple math shows this isn’t around the corner. The average temperature on the ice plains of the antarctic is -53F. The doomsayers are calling for, in worst case scenario, a 13F increase in average world temperature over the next 100 years. You could have an increase in polar temperatures to make the average rise, or an increase in tropical temperatures to make the average rise - or a small increase in both to make the average rise. It is a mean temperature rating, after all.

Let’s assume, for the sake of radical argument, that it is a full shift of twice that 13F value happens in the antarctic - a full 26F change. Last I checked, ice doesn’t melt at -27F. At the opposite extreme, any increase happening at the tropical zones would increase the evaporation rate of the tropical oceans by leaps and bounds, which leads to higher cloud cover and cooler temperatures.

The reality of the situation, climate science has revealed that the world has warmed about 1.8F in the last century. That includes all the CO² from two World Wars, the industrial revolution through the post WWII industrial growth, et cetera. 1.8F. That’s it. At this trend, assuming it the most likely, -51.2F in the antarctic doesn’t scare me from buying beach property.

While the doomsayers whip everyone up into a tizzy, the real scientists trying to make sense of what is going on, will probably run into yet some other factor no one knew about - and we start all over again.

Bah, it will all be for naught, even if our CO² spewing is the cause. We’re already running out of fossil fuels. It can’t last forever.

Imagine if you would for a moment, what it would be like not to know who your own parents are. No descriptions. No photographs or even drawings of them. No information on their lives, no knowledge of even their names. No knowledge of their parents, or grandparents, or the relatives before them. No information about the circumstances of your birth, or even why you are not allowed to know about it. Not a single bit of data telling you the story of your heritage and makeup. Your family tree is but a stump.

If you’re adopted, you don’t have to imagine these things - probability holds that you are living it, or have lived it. Reunions with adoptees and birth families are not the norm and sometimes even those reunions which do occur are not particularly pleasant.

I can’t speak for others in similar shoes to mine, but for me, it is the lack of a family tree, the withholding of my heritage which is the most difficult to deal with. From dealing with two stepsons from the time they were quite young, to watching the interactions between myself, my adopted brother and my adoptive parents - the verdict is out as far as I’m concerned. In nature vs. nurture, nature has the predominant role.

Of the various inequities I’ve dealt with through life, the only one which has truly caused me a great deal of anguish, is my adoption. It’s not the parents I ended up with, far from it, they’re great! I have no more qualms about my childhood than anyone else and aside from a particularly ugly battle over religious indoctrination, I can’t think of anything which really caused me much grief growing up. All in all, I think I lucked out.

The angst and general anger I have over my adoption is aimed at my long time nemesis on just about every issue concerning what is right and wrong: the government. In this case in particular, the government of the state of Minnesota, who feels that my genetic identity is none of my damn business.

There are methods to attempt to gain the simple knowledge of who my parents were, but they are quite obtuse in Minnesota, which has some of the most restrictive laws on the subject. As it is, only four states in the union; Alaska, Kansas, New Hampshire and Oregon have open records, where legal adults can gain the knowledge of their birth parents without having to jump through expensive court proceedings and red tape. If it was not for the workings of Bastard Nation and other organizations fighting for the simple right to know, neither New Hampshire or Oregon would currently be on the list. Originally, only Alaska and Kansas allowed an adult adopted individual to learn of their biological origin.

How can this be? How can it be justified that a human adult does not have the right to know who their own parents are? How can a society which stands on the concept of individual determination and equity among all, proclaim in the same breath that those who were given up at birth are not equal to those who were not? How can the argument be made that the government should have the power to withhold an individual’s very identity from them?

I find it reasonable to withhold such information from minors, as minors may not be in an intellectual or emotional position to make sound decisions over something so profound to their lives. However, I cannot fathom how this can be extended into the lives of adults. Once an individual reaches adulthood, there is no argument that can be extended, no factor taken into account, which allows the continued secrecy of that individual’s lifeblood to be held.

Certainly the primary argument which has always risen from the adoption industry, is the fear on the adoptive parent’s part, that the birth parents will come back into the picture and take their child away. Granted, this is a real fear for many and I’m sure that it causes a great deal of worry in adoptive parents, where such a potential exists. However, once that child is no longer a child, how is that their birth parents can take anything away? They can’t take back the child, they’re an adult. They can’t take away the years of growing up with their adoptive parents. They can’t steal the memories away, or force that person to change their name and abandon their past. That type of fear is utterly irrational!

The opposing argument is that handing out such knowledge, would violate the privacy rights of the birth parents to leave that part of their past in the past.

Excuse me?

Let’s break down this argument here. Two people had sex. That sex produced a child. For whatever the reason, the decision is made that they cannot, or do not want, to deal with that child. They give the child up for adoption. Cut it anyway you want to, but the simple fact of the matter is that the birth parents haven’t dealt with the ramifications of their actions, instead they’ve passed on the responsibility to others. So, to argue that their “right” to privacy needs to be attended to, by keeping the information of their identities safe from their disowned progeny, is to make the ruling that such a lacking of personal responsibility is something that the law should protect. The last time I looked, our entire legal structure was based on the concept of individuals being personally responsible for their actions. This argument is akin to protecting the identity of a motorist from the innocent victim hit by their car.

There is no right to privacy, when that privacy is merely an attempt to forget what you have done to another. No claim for the right of privacy can be held to be higher than the claim for the right to know one’s own heritage. No claim for the right for privacy can outweigh the ramifications of your actions, when the result is another living human being of your blood.

That our society would protect such dismissive irresponsibility under the color of law, is simply heinous.

The last argument against open records, is certainly the most emotional of them all - what happens when the mother was the victim of rape? How can the right to know one’s own heritage be fulfilled, while protecting the already scarred mother? I see no easy answers here. A very powerful film, “Secrets & Lies”, tackles this question, with predictably messy results.

I can understand the desire to heal and leave in the past, the memories of such a horrid attack. I can understand the mother not wanting to dredge up semi-quelled emotions. Perhaps the answer in this case is to provide the adoptee with the information of their parentage, on the stipulation of denial of contact, if such is desired by the mother. Certainly, that in itself will be difficult for the adopted child to deal with, but in the case of such a crime, how can bad feelings be avoided?

For myself, if I was in this situation, even if I could have no actual contact with my mother, I’d still want to know. I’m an adult. I’ll deal with it.

That’s pretty much all that adopted folk are asking for, the truth. We’ll deal with it. For any answer is better than no answer at all.

As a motorcyclist, I enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of a trip to levels that simply are not possible when stuck in a cage, er…car. The experience is beyond compare, even to bicycling, as at least for me, I’m too engrossed in the workout to really enjoy my surroundings when I’m peddling.

There is one sound I don’t like to hear on a motorcycle, however, that’s the sound of screeching tires behind me. In this case, I had already spotted the moron and had taken steps to dash to the side of the car in front of me, but the sound is not any less disconcerting. I’m not exactly sure what shit for brains was doing aside from driving, but it must have taken all of his attention. He had, at the very least, a mile long straight shot of nothing between his approach and the light I was stopped at. Assuming he couldn’t see the arc lamp like, bright taillights on my GoldWing, or the lights of the vehicle in front of me, or the lights of the vehicles in the other two lanes next to us; you would have hoped that he would see the traffic semaphore.

Such seemed to be par for the course for the commute this morning. I counted eight lane changes without signaling, five of which without looking - even in the rear view mirrors - to see if it was clear for the maneuver, three of them attempting to merge into me. One U-Turn through a red light (what the hell is it with this retarded stunt in Utah?) and five turnouts from side roads and parking lots without checking for oncoming traffic. Mix in four left hand turns through a red light, at least a half dozen running of a red light and two vehicles driving down the center line between lanes for no less than a full block (no, I am not joking!) - and you get one hell of a tally for a morning drive. All of this, was during a ten mile commute.

It is seriously a wonder that road fatalities in Utah are not higher.

To be honest, however, the lead Utah had in bad driving habits is quickly being closed in by other states. It seems as if the quality of drivers is declining in general and I have to ask why. What has changed? Is it something in the water?

Certainly there have always been those who would perform retarded stunts and general mayhem when behind the wheel, but they used to be the exception to the rule. It seems like they’re becoming the norm. I am well aware that public education is declining in near free fall, but I guess I made the mistake of assuming that driver education wouldn’t necessarily fall with it - as the government has a vested interest in keep the roads safe.

In any case, I’ll continue to ride with the attitude that everyone else on the road has been hired to kill me, and hopefully I’ll make it through my autumn days intact.