The Mile High Club

Next month a bunch of crazies will descend on Denver Colorado, the next month a similar but different bunch will descend on St. Paul Minnesota. The strategy of each seems pretty clear, to pick of on of their opponents weak states from last time.
The only problem with this strategy is that someone forgot to check to see if the target states matter. If the election goes as it did last time, flipping Colorado wont give the Dems the election. Of course it is highly unlikely that things will go exactly as they did last time, but still why not go for a state that would have made the difference, like Ohio?
Since the GOP is the defending champ I guess you could say they are just looking for insurance, but still would not Pennsylvania have offered them much greater insurance?
So why did the Dems pick Denver? Maybe it’s the beer.

Reactionary Weekly indorses Chuck Baldwin for U.S. President!

I was hoping for Alan Keys (yes, I know he is Roman Catholic and yes I am OK with that) but Mr. Baldwin is at least a step in the right direction.

The Devil’s playbook

It has been said that the Devil has not added anything to his playbook in millennia. Of course one wonders how we would know such a thing. It is true that he seems to pretty much stick to two or three plays, but then since we have not shown that we are willing to consistently defend even these simple tricks, why should he show us anything else until we do?
The US presidential election is now in full swing and the evil one is once again trotting out his old “choice of evils” fallacy.
If you think Sen. Obama would make a good president, then do not let me dissuade you from voting for him; indeed I would not even know where to start. Or if you think Sen. McCain would be an excellent choice for president, then I suppose there really is nothing more to say on the matter. But most the people I know think neither of these things. Many if not most people, it seems, will be trying to choose the “lesser of two evils”. It has been said that choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. This is true only if there is some other choice available which is better. The best of all available choices must be by definition good, for it is taking one in the best possible direction one can go. If one will not choose the best route because there might be a better one, then one can take no route at all. Indeed, if we had a runoff system and it came down to McCain and Obama then I would dutifully determine to the best of my ability which one best manifested The Good and vote for him. But that is not the situation we have. Regardless of what any one tries to tell us, we have many choices, some probably worse than McCain/Obama some (at least at first glance) look a good deal better, and if you do not think any of the names on the ballot would make a better president than yourself, you can just write your own name in. We have many choices, so in this case choosing the lesser of these two evils is in deed choosing evil; and if we continue choosing evil, we will not only get the evil we chose but our choices will continue to be evil, and the lesser will continue to get worse.

Dick in the Dock Part 11: Dawkins loves the little children…

Once an organism (and perhaps especially one of Homo sapien parents) reaches a certain, apparently arbitrary, level of development Dawkins apparently ceases to think it is expendable and thinks its well being very important. At least he thinks it is important to protect them from religion. Thus his notorious statement about religion being child abuse. I do have to agree with him to a certain extent; that is, I do think that man-made religious systems are child abuse. But then I believe there really is a God, which such systems would be an abomination to. However, since Dawkins does not, what is he fussing about?
In order for something to be abused, it must presumably have some proper use. So we must ask, what is the proper use of children, that is, what are they for? Well, according to natural selection, the purpose of children is to propagate their parent’s genes. So then anything which interfered with this purpose would be abuse. Now Dawkins complains that Roman Catholics fill their children’s heads full of a bunch of nonsense. Be that as it may, it is tough to argue with results. There may not really be a nasty place called purgatory where you will have to go if you engage in homosexual acts or use birth control, but you know what? Catholics have a lot more kids than atheists do.
After blathering on about children for most of the chapter (and making very little if any sense) Dawkins abruptly switches gears, and starts talking about how important the Bible is as a cultural basis and literary work. That it certainly is, but it is that only if one excepts its truth claims. Here I must pause to make a distinction, many people confuse “truth” with “reality”. Truth is that which deals with the immaterial, the rational, the metaphysical. Reality is that which deals with the material, the empirical, the physical. Now I can read J.R.R. Tolkien’s works without having to lend too much credence to the “reality” of the events being related, but I have to give at least some credence to the Truth of the paradigm, or it becomes pure gibberish. The Bible is like this but even in a more profound way. The Bible claims both supreme Truth, and that the Word was made flesh, Truth and Reality where fused. This proposition must either be regarded as true or false, if it is true it is True, and if it is false, then it is worthless as literature or any thing else.

Dick in the Dock Part 10: No species is an island, well actually every spicics is.

Dawkins spends yet another chapter demonstrating why atheists cannot be moral. And as usual it gets back to the lack of moral absolutes. For example, Dawkins does not think there is anything wrong with abortion. This is because he supposes it is all about developed central nervous systems. And after all numerous vertebrates with as developed a central nervous system as a six week old human fetus are killed every day by humans for more or less uncritical reasons*. Of course if we were to take this central nervous system argument seriously, it could be argued either way. One could just as easily say that these animals have as developed a central nerves system as a six-week-old human fetus and should therefor be protected. But the point is that arguing from something analog such as central nervous system development can never bring one to a meaningful moral determination. A newly conceived zygote may be no more biologically sophisticated than a carrot, which just about every body concedes would be acceptable for me to eat. Yet Prof. Dawkins would no doubt take offence if I regarded him in the same manner. But can he give any definite point that distinguishes “us” from “them”? Many of his ilk like to use natural birth, but if he is using central nervous system development as his distinguishing principle, this event is inconsequential.
What then does separate us from our lunch? Well if we are to be moral about it, we must have a definite principle to apply, that is to say, an absolute. And the only real absolute available to us in this matter is the species. Either an organism is able to mate and produce fertile offspring with me or they are not. Some may argue that this is actually not as absolute a standard as it appears, on account of so called “link specimens” (linking two otherwise separate groups by being able to mate with both) but if such specimens exist then the so-called “linked” species would in fact be one species. And there would still be a definite point where the links became extinct and the groups became separate species. However, nature does not seem to be much in favor of such links. Most organisms live in well contained yet internally integrated species, particularly of importance to us – our own, since all organisms out side our species are equally not us. Lest there be any objections from the LGM, this is not to say that we should necessarily view all organisms outside our species as lunch, but rather that we should view no member of our own species as expendable.


*One could consider eating critical, but sense other food sources are often available; I would have to consider it not quite.

Dick in the Dock Part 9: It is written.

Dawkins does not think much of the Bible, but that is supposedly not his point in this chapter. His point is supposedly that nobody actually uses the Bible as there moral absolute anyway. Well I don’t know about that, I practice every day (except on Shabbat) so that when I see an Amalekite I can smite him!
But what Dawkins really dislikes is moral absolutes of any kind, regardless of where they come from. He prefers to think of morality as evolving. Again, this is simply behavior patterns, not morality. In order for there to be morality there must be a free moral agent and a moral ought. One could base their morality on natural selection, but that would simply make natural selection the moral absolute.
Dawkins tries to get his “morality” from the Zeitgeist. But what does it mean to be filed with the Zeitgeist? It means simply to blow with the wind, or rather to chase it. For one’s own arbitrary opinions, prejudices and inclinations would be part of it, with no principle by which to know which to cultivate which to eliminate, just a statistical average which is always changing. Eventually, of course, natural selection will weigh in on such matters, but that is still not making any moral pronouncements (unless you think we “ought” to survive, but then that still requires a moral absolute external to the Zeitgeist).
Dawkins did say something I agree with though - “If there are moral absolutes…they are available to every one, even without scripture.”
Well, as someone who does believe in moral absolutes, I think that is true. I think the source of such absolutes must be God, Who is accessible to all, and is manifest in the things that are made.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

That is what I was saying to my self in the theater while waiting to see the new Indiana Jones film. It is also probably what Harrison Ford said to Gorge Lucas after reading the script. The special effects are of course amazing. You almost feel as if you are in the nuclear fire ball, unfortunately the script is so bad you almost wish you were. In the 1985 documentary From 'Star Wars' to 'Jedi': The Making of a Saga, George Lucas said, “Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. A Special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.”
He must have thought no one believed him, why else would he devote most of the rest of his career to proving himself right?
There is of course lots of action in Crystal Scull, and it is mostly boring. Even with The Arc* making a cameo, the opening sequence failed to impart any gravitas. 
Lucas does toss us an exposition bone every once in a while. (Exposition is the part of the script where he has to write something besides “they fight”.) But if we peace them to gather is there actually a skeleton there? Let alone any meat. It seems the basic idea is that some inter-dimensional extraterrestrials came to earth a few thousand years ago to teach some ancient Americans (of course they were not ancient at the time) how to farm and build a giant temple around their hyperspace ship. But then one day some conquistadors showed up and cut off one of the hyperspace dudes' head, and since they were one of those collective consciences things, it shut them all down. But before the conquistadors could get very far the natives caught up with them and berried them and the scull in an elaborate tomb complete with booby traps (of course what else would they do with it?) The hyperspace dudes home world apparently sent some scouts to find out what happened, but it is not clear why it took them centuries to get here, or why they apparently could not keep their ships in the air once they got here. Enter the soviets (the Nazis were unavailable) that want to capture all alien gobbledygook for their own nefarious psychobabble and what not. Does any of this make any since? Of course not. Does it matter? Not really. Because that is not what the movie is about any way. 
It is about Indy finally marrying Miriam Ravenwood, oh, and by the way they have a son. Which means Indy and Jr. have to spend thirty minutes of screen time very awkwardly “bonding” with Indy supposedly not knowing that the kid is his son, and an even more awkward “we are all going to die” scene where Miriam tells him (However, I did like the bit where Indy has to grab onto the snake to save his life). I must say Miriam looked pretty good after all this time. But this only served to make that bag of bones, DR. Jones, look all the older. I wonder if when they go out together people say, “Where did she dig up that old fossil? Yah, yah, I know, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

*Apparently it is kept in the same warehouse as all the area 51 stuff, and apparently security is so tight that any one with a dozen or so guys can break in loot the place.