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The neat thing about bad arguments is that usually they are layered in thick and fast that you don’t catch them the first time,so you have to slow down and rewind the tape to see the intersectionality of wrongness and then unweave the fail.
Today’s disservice is dedicated to a post by the Wayward Catholic, ostensibly extending the putrefied olive branch of religion to those who are drifting (I imagine it is code for people who are starting to think for themselves) to get them back into the feckless fold.
A noble cause indeed. But hey, if the arguments are good, then maybe there is a good point to be had. Riiiiight…anyhow, lets see how the Wayward Catholic does in his(assumption of gender) post “Killing is wrong“.
The argument was if I supported such a law and the law passed then that would be forcing my opinion on others. Of course the commentor fails to see that the opposite must also be true as well. Passing any law ca be considered one group of people forcing their opinion on another group.
Individual laws are forcing their “opinion” on other people. Cannibals are rightly annoyed that they cannot go to the local Uncle Wally’s and begin the all-U-can eat feast. Laws are in place in society to preserve order and promote fair treatment in society and usually, said laws are enacted based their utility and on the needs of said society.
A perfect example is the HHS contraception mandate. This mandate forces all employers (with a very narrow exception) to provide contraception, sterilizations and “morning after” pills to their employees whether they have a religious objection to them or not.
Ah, the persecution!! Not being able to propagate outdated and irrational beliefs on society, the horror! Welcome to civilization that does not kowtow to your magic book and delusional mind-set. Women use contraception and should have access to it when they need it, at any time. Reproductive consequences for women are serious and they need to have all the options available to them.
But then this is the typical secular argument. They see all issues from one side, and one side only. If they think something is right, it is right, end of story, and anything which has to do with religion isn’t right so it is bad and must be destroyed.
What a marvellous case of projection you have going there, never mind the sweeping generalizations about all “secular arguments”. I imagine the problem for you is that often, secular arguments are based on evidence and verifiable facts, rather than on mythology, magic and dogmatic adherence to bronze age bugaboo.
The fact is, access to contraception is good for society. The above links are just a small sample of the evidence that supports the benefits of contraception in society. Just because you do not believe in contraception does not mean contraception is a bad thing. You have every right to express your opinion. However, unsubstantiated opinion is pretty much next to worthless when it comes to the law and moral issues in society.
Belief weighs heavily in the next paragraph, a paragraph one sees much to often from those who worship the almighty fetus. But hey one more reiteration won’t hurt, especially when its being used for educational purposes.
Even though killing and murder is wrong they will defend it, doing everything they can to “soften” the fact that it is murder, that they are taking a life. An innocent one at that, one who doesn’t have a “choice”.
Killing and murder is generally wrong, especially when dealing with people. Blastocycsts, fetuses, fertilized eggs et cetera are not people. I’m going to assume, for the sake of argument that you think that “life” begins conception. It is an erroneous, problematic assumption at best. So, what this comes down to is whether or not you think women get to makes choices about what goes on in their body.
You don’t get a say if you need a kidney and I happen to have one that is suitable to donate. Bodily autonomy does not magically stop when it comes to uteri. What goes on in a woman’s uterus falls under the same measure, her body, her choice. It starts and ends there.
We can always thank religion for continuing the war on women.
Some of what I dislike about creationists stems from their basic epistemological premises. For instance the idea that belief in an idea ipso facto makes it correct. The harder you believe in something, the more correct you are. Of course this idea is just one of the pathologically shitty ideas creationists come up with; it gets worse.
Because in their epistemology if you believe something, and their magic book of choice happens to mention it in passing, well then Goddidit and no further explanation is needed. It must nice to be dishonest and lazy when it comes to backing up and relating your ideas to the world. Dear reader, I hear you saying, “But Arbourist, this is a rational humanist blog where is your evidence?” Praise the Four-Cheezes patience, gentle reader the mighty wordpress has come to the rescue.
There is a handy feature in wordpress where you can search tags people make for the content of their posts. The posts I tag with “creationism” are much different much much that appears in that category. Take for instance, this noxious little gem of stupidity which we are going to examine with some detail.
What can we prove?
The truth is that no one can prove evolution or creation. We have the same evidence, but no one alive today was an eye witness to the origins of man, and neither of the claims of the creationist and the evolutionist can be observed today. We can only study the result.
*splat* That was my cerebral cortex recoiling in horror at the level of stupid in this one small quotation (there is more friends, but my little cortex is weeping and is begging for the inanity to stop). The fastest way to make arguing easy for yourself is to dishonestly represent your opponent. This one little paragraph is dishonest and shows an astonishingly brain-dead-shambling-zombie-like grasp of argumentation and rhetoric.
“The truth is that no one can prove evolution or creation.” – Bullshit – About 3,630,000 results say you are being a dishonest fuck-wit.
“We have the same evidence,” – Bullshit – Your “evidence” is based on the mystical ramblings of barely sapient bronze age goat-herds. Some 3.6 million papers that mostly conform to the scientific method, are peer reviewed and falsifiable say your version of the facts are the equivalent of the chunder my dog threw up yesterday.
“but no one alive today was an eye witness to the origins of man, and neither of the claims of the creationist and the evolutionist can be observed today.” – What the frack does being an eyewitness have to to with anything? I cannot see the moon orbit around the earth, should we infer that it floats into the sky on unicorn farts and then sinks every night once they dissipate? Usually you cannot see electricity, only its effects – are we to believe it doesn’t exist either or is its more fucking fantastical farting unicorns?
“We can only study the result.” – The only thing being studied by creationists is the depths of their rectal cavities because it is where they get all their fecal-dominated facts from when not busily bloviating about how godidit.
There is no controversy, only the religiously deluded making shit up and trying to pass it off as reasonable. Their arguments are piss-poor and they offer little to no evidence of a theory with more explicative power. Their arguments can sound good, but like polishing a turd for centuries,(the bible being one of the biggest floaters in the bowl), once the varnish is gone, all you are left with is shit.
A now classic video by Potholer54 showing with considerable acumen how wrong the Flood myth and by extension, biblical creation, is.
Watch what happens when you mix broken foreign policy with religion…
“One of Pakistan’s most influential clerics has renounced his support for polio immunisation, claiming that the programme is a cover for American spies.”
Pakistan needs less of this particular brand of religious stupidity. The stupid is compounded by the bullshite American cloak and dagger games being played in Pakistan.
“But now he says he cannot back the policy after it emerged that the CIA had used a fake hepatitis drive to hunt for Osama bin Laden last year.
Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who organised the vaccination campaign, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison and his actions caused a wave of paranoia about foreign aid workers.”
Thank you America your botched war is screwing up yet another county in your drive to be the imperial power of this century as well. Newsflash – China isn’t going to let you; get over yourself and stop killing brown people for not agreeing to be vassals.
“Pakistan is one of three countries where the disease remains endemic. Only 22 cases have been reported this year – compared with 59 in the same period in 2011 – and hopes were high that it could soon be declared polio free.
However, hard-line clerics have long opposed what they suspect is a Western conspiracy against Muslims. As a result health workers carefully cultivated moderate leaders, who issued fatwas – or religious rulings – declaring vaccination to be in line with Islamic teaching.”
There is just so much wrong going on here. Vaccinations to eradicate polio are a fundamentally good idea. This fundamentally good idea is trumped though when Western spy agencies use them to further their foreign policy goals. Then you get backlash like this:
But Haq said that it made no sense for foreign agencies to keep children free from disease while bombing Pakistan.
“If you people are that much curious about the health of people living over there, it means that you are keeping these people alive just to kill them by drones,” he said.
The sad fatalism of marginalized people. Wrong, but understandable given the circumstances. Never forget that we are categorically *not* the good guys for much of the world. If we’d taken the time and effort simply not to perpetuate misery and destruction on poor coloured folk we might actually have some respect in the world.
Qualia soup argues for secularism and its benefits to atheists and theists.
Betty Bowers, albeit somewhat crassly, explains the christian take on abortion.
We’ll file this under the heading ,”Only *MY* magical religious beliefs and bigotry are acceptable”.
This article has to do with the already wrong notion that a voucher system is somehow good for public education and the whiplash inducing reversal of course that happened once it was known that school vouchers could be used to fund Islamic education instead of the intended target, the ‘acceptable’ fundegelical christian bullshite-schools.
“Valarie Hodges admitted that when she supported Governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program, she only did so because she assumed the religious school vouchers could only be used for Christian schools. Religious freedom means that everyone’s free to follow Valarie Hodges’ religion! She explains,
Ah, religious tomfoolery meet the facepalm.
“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools. I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school.”
Contrast this with her next quote on the topic:
“We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”
Religion certainly does not breed intolerant tribalistic sectarianism – OH, Hells no!
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