The Wonder of Nature

I saw a billboard recently that said "Explore nature, there are surprises everywhere". Pictured, it has kids in a forest, with Shrek. Personally, I think the presence of Shrek does a disservice to the message.

The reason is that Shrek isn't in nature. But things much more wonderful and amazing are. Nature has the Grand Canyon. Nature has Mount Everest. Nature has Angel Falls and Yellowstone and the Redwood forest.

There are trees literally thousands of years old. There are fungal colonies that cover miles of land. There are organisms that can survive boiling temperatures, or extreme radioactivity. There are even animals that can survive being in space.

There's no fiction that can compare to the magic and fantasy of real life.

Freedom From Religion

Recently, in Louisiana, an atheist student pointed out that a school performing a prayer at graduation isn't strictly legal. Of course, you can imagine how that went.

One religious defense is that the constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. I say that not only is that not true, it's not possible to have freedom of religion without freedom from religion. 

Here's a quick thought experiment. You want to go to the BMV and renew your driver's license. However, in order to do that, you first have to say a prayer to Zeus (or some other god you don't believe in). When you're not getting a license you can pray or not pray to whatever god(s) you like, but you can't get a license without saying a prayer to Zeus first. That doesn't sound very free does it?

I don't even know what true freedom of religion without freedom from religion would look like. You can go to whatever church you want as long as you also go to the state-endorsed church? You can follow whatever doctrine you believe in as long as you also follow the doctrine of the state religion?

Freedom of religion means live and let live. You can believe in whatever you believe in and I can believe in whatever I believe in. If we can force our beliefs on the other in any way, it's no longer free.

Fuck Indiana

Indiana is going to be the first state to defund Planned  Parenthood. For this, fuck Indiana. I've never been so ashamed of my state. Yeah, Indiana is a conservative state, but this is just bloody stupid. This not only fails to achieve any benefit, but is actively detrimental, both economically and socially.

The intent of this bill is presumably to decrease abortions. Of course, abortions by Planned Parenthood aren't funded by the government. So the whole thing seems kind pointless to start with. But worse than that is that this will actually increase abortions. One of the things that PP does is provide access to contraception and information about avoiding unwanted pregnancies. Removing those things isn't going to make people stop having sex, it's just going to have them have less safe sex, which will result in more unwanted pregnancies. And if someone doesn't want to carry a pregnancy to term, they'll be willing to go further out of their way to get an abortion, so the lack of PP won't make a big difference.

Ok, so this bill will actively do the opposite of its intention. Great. What other stupidity will result from this?

This will eliminate jobs. PP employs people. With reduced funds, it won't be able to employ as many, so people will be laid off, increasing unemployment.

This will prevent access to medical services that people need. PP provides all sorts of wonderful medical services like pap smears, testing for and treating STDs, and cancer screenings. PP is the only place poor people can really get these services since there aren't enough OB/GYNs and clinics that accept Medicaid to handle it all.

And this in turn will increase medical costs since it's cheaper to treat things earlier than later. And most of that cost will be borne by the taxpayers.

Really, this is just sickening. Fuck Indiana.

Big Government

Something conservatives like to whine about is that the government is too big and needs to be made smaller.

Personally, I don't really care about how big the government is, not as a terminal value. The government should be as big as it needs to be to do the things it needs to do. It should be big enough to defend its citizens from invading countries. It should be big enough to protect its citizens from criminals. It should be big enough to provide a minimum standard of living to all its citizens. Etc.

It doesn't matter if it's small or big as long as it does those things. It strikes me as quite odd that there are people who do treat the size of the government as a terminal value. That necessary government services should be reduced or eliminated just so the government would be smaller. Although, it seems very few proponents of smaller government support cutting funding to the military...

Libertopia: My Solution to Libertarians

Libertarians claim that everything would be better if government got out the business of, well, government. If everything were privatized and government were non-existent, people would just get along, and no one would ever try to take advantage of others unfairly.

I propose we test this hypothesis. We should set aside an area of land where absolutely no laws will be enforced. Maybe somewhere in Alaska, or perhaps eastern Africa. If what the libertarians say is true, it should become a utopian wonderland full of rainbows and unicorns. As more people want to go there the area can be expanded as necessary.

On the other hand, if it turns into a poor, violent hellhole, well...

Taxes are not Theft

In fact, without taxes, theft doesn't really have a meaning.

The thing is, property is not an objective reality. There is no empirical test you can perform that will determine if an object belongs to someone, and to who. Property is a social convention.

You only own something to the extent that you control it. You have it, and someone else doesn't. But someone bigger and stronger than you can take your stuff, and there's nothing you can do about it. Even if you're the biggest strongest person there is, a group of people can overpower you.

One of government's functions is to protect property rights. If you own something, someone bigger than you isn't allowed to just take it from you. And if they try, well, government is the biggest one around. And government needs taxes to operate. You need funds to pay for the police who will stop people from stealing.

Without taxes, the enforcement of property rights collapses, and property ceases to exist. And you can't have theft without property.

Beyond even that, taxes pay for roads and other infrastructure, which you're in debt to, even if you don't use it directly. Even if you don't own a car, you still get a benefit out of roads, because grocery stores you shop at are supplied via roads. Even if you have never needed medical care in your life, public medical care benefits you by herd immunity. The list goes on.

Wanting to get these benefits without paying for them is closer to stealing than taxes are.

There is Evidence for God

Something many atheists claim is that there is no evidence for god or religion. Not one single bit of evidence at all. But that's not true. It's frequently talked about as if it were an all or nothing kind of thing. As if all the evidence points one way or the other. But, it's possible for there to be evidence for something that's false.

There is evidence for god. It's weak evidence, and clearly overwhelmed by the evidence against, but it's still there. It's not nothing.

The biggest piece of evidence I can think of is that the vast majority of people believe in god. And this is not argumentum ad populum, but rather a probabilistic, Bayesian point of view. Which is more likely? The probability that so many people would believe in god given that god exists, or the probability that so many people would believe in god given that god doesn't exist? I think people are more likely to believe in something true rather than something false, especially if it interacts with them personally. Of course, people are willing to believe all sorts of crazy shit, so it's not much more likely. Which is why it's very weak evidence.