So I didn’t post anything yesterday, yet that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise since I barely banged one out on sunday, and even then forgot to change my side-bar posts. It is not as if there is any real good reason why I just suddenly skip them, just sometimes I do not feel like it. That is a liberty that I have since there is absolutely no reason for me to do this site. There is no monetary obligation, no moral consciousness that I am overlooking if I skip. This site is purely for my amusement. As evidenced by my readership being in the very low single digits.
That all could be content driven of course, but as I have no content how will I ever know?
I have been reading a lot of news over the last few days. I must be doing something while I am not actively typing this out, right? And porn does grow tiresome after about so long, how many naked people must one see before they begin to understand that the shape of the vagina is always gonna be pretty much the same? The answer, in my case, is 1,364,771,122.5 (one of the photos had both sets of genitals).
But, the news, yeah there has been a hell of a lot of the stuff in the news over the last couple of days. A couple of articles got my ears perked, but not to the point that I actually wanted to cut and paste anything to discuss it in much detail. However I did find it pretty disappointing that Dubya is standing firm on the position that stem cell research is wrong.
I understand that Dubya was brought up about as far right as you can get, but the thought that one of his mentors, Ronald Reagan, died from one of the very dieseases that they are trying to use the stem-cell research to find a cure for is just a bit odd to me. His quote that “Life is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man”, I found particularly disturbing. If he believes that whole-heartedly, doesn’t that mean that the very Vice-President that he chose should be dead? Were it not for a quadruple bypass in 1988 Cheney would be dead now. At what point, in the twisted little mind of Dubya, does medical science become playing God? It seems that he is fine with it as long as it is used for prolonging life, but what about basic things like vaccines?
I bring up the vaccine thing only because that is where it get really easy to start hammering at the very religious, right-wing folks. A vaccine is something that is used to stop the spread of a deadly virus, yet, by biblical definition, the virus was created by GOD, doesn’t that mean that using a vaccine is playing GOD? If you are so sure of your faith, why don’t you go ahead and let your children die from diseases that could easily be cured by vaccines? Or, perhaps GOD will intervene and save your child. The virus is every bit as much alive as a fetus in the womb of a human in early pregnancy. There is no thought only rapid growth. In the case of the virus it will continue to grow until something stops it or the host dies, where the pregnant woman could carry the embryo to term and be rid of it. Any person who tries to argue that abortion is wrong should have to sign papers that explicitly forbid them to have any medical treatment for any life-form that occurs inside them. Say the person happens to get a cut and the cut becomes infected, the infection will spread without the intervention of either 1) GOD, or 2) Simple rubbing alcohol, yet that person should be made to not use the alcohol and see which way it goes. I mean to use alcohol to kill the infection would be “playing GOD”.
The way science and religion mix with the very religious, though, makes this a tough point to argue. In the infinite wisdom of the church, they have decided that GOD somehow meant that humans were a lot more important than any other form of life when he “Created man in his own image”. I am not a bilical scholar, nor am I inclined to believe that if there were a GOD he would favor one particular species. If the biblical GOD does exist, shouldn’t that mean that all life is precious, and further that if you swat a fly you are breaking one of the commandments that Moses was all in a rant about?
I am not inclined to read any book that is two-thousand years old, which has been re-written as many times by scribes, and take it as factual evidence that someone actually created every living being. Nor am I likely to further believe that preferential treatment should fall on the ones that were made in his likeness. If there truly is a GOD (by the defintion Christians) then every living being will go to heaven or hell. Does that mean that humans are necessarily better than the ants that we step on while walking on the sidewalk? Does that mean that there will be good cockroaches in heaven, while the bad ones go to hell? Then what about the viruses that were created by GOD, but ultimately destroyed by mankind, do they go to heaven or hell? The virus simply feeds off of the land that it is given (a human body), and populates until it eventually over-populates and can no longer feed, then (on that body) the virus is extinct. Is that any different than what the humans are doing to the earth, or is it a microscopic view of what is to become of us?
I didn’t actually think that I was going to go into a ‘ripping on GOD’ mode today, but the other thing that I thougt I would mention was the Supreme Court’s ruling about the “Pledge of Allegiance”. Funny thing how time can change one’s perspective…
When this story broke, what a year and a half ago, I was thinking that yes, the separation of church and state should certainly make this one a slam-dunk. Everyone and their sister knows (at this point) that the words “under God” were added to the original pledge in the fifties. Should have been a simple victory to get the ‘under God’ words ruled as unconstitutional. (in any other administration, maybe)
What really steams me about the Supreme Court’s decision is that they threw out the case on a technicality. Every court that heard the case, prior to them, had made a ruling, thus it landed in the highest court in the country. The fact that the justices of the “Supreme Court” don’t have the cajones to handle this one really pisses me off. I honestly don’t care whether the words stay in the allegiance or not, I just wish that they would have stepped up to say that either yes or no it could be there. The result of their action is that we are going to be hearing/reading about this same damn thing in another few years when the actual custodial provider for the child gets before the “Supreme Court”, since there is no way that any State-Level judge is going to overturn the ruling.
Not that I particularly care for the particular line “Under God”, but I do feel that it was a pretty useful one. I suppose the other options would be, “one nation, under the statue of liberty, with liberty and justice for all.” See, that one seems redundant. How about this one, “one nation, under the sky, with liberty and justice for all.” Not much power to that one. How about, “one nation, under Oderus Urungas, with liberty and justice for all.” Probably not enough Gwar fans out there to appreciate that one…
Wait, I have it. To summarize the entire US population, while still being faithful to the original pledge, it must be, “One nation, under the golden arches, with liberty and McDonald’s for all”. Enough said.