haha .. erosion .. Chris Abele, Milwaukee County Executive. (Wisconsin's Gov. Walker's old job) .. Tea Party Birther Mayor Defeated in Champaign, IL Don Gerard beat incumbent Mayor Jerry Schweighart .. Liberal JoAnne Kloppenburg, upset conservative incumbent Justice David Prosser to fill the seventh seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. .. [fingers crossed] .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=61808331
CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, the Washington Post, The New York Times, Sunday morning talk shows and everyone else in the media? Go screw yourselves. You spend so much time either parroting idiotic quotes from politicians (mainly "serious" Republicans) and trying to show "both sides of an issue" that you don't bother with facts. Global warming? Let's balance one of the 999 scientists who understand global warming with one of the three Republican-funded hacks who deny it as though there really some question about it all. Evolution? Do the same. Hey media, go screw yourself.
I first read Russell's essay a few years after being confirmed as a Lutheran and, of the many reasons offered for his views, it was the moral argument that stuck with me:
You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell." That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many of these things about hell. There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come." That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of this sort into the world.
Such arguments, along with the incompatibility of evolutionary biology with the Christian tradition, led me to abandon my faith.
However, feeling incomplete without a way to define myself, I quickly came across the concept of humanism through the work of my favorite author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. .. [...] ..
In his article Appleby points out how this trans-species commonality has traditionally been a problem for humanism, but that a more inclusive view of human beings as part of the natural world may actually help us better understand ourselves as well as our nonhuman cousins.
Thus in allowing ourselves to imagine the inner life of the elephant, to allow that they have one and that it can be scarred by the way it is treated in a way analogous to human trauma, we can develop both a deeper understanding of the quality of our relations to them and a deeper understanding of ourselves.
I'm happy to see that my humanist friends are opening their vision to incorporate other species in the qualities they admire. Rather than creating a division between "man and beast" it's far more inspiring to view all living beings as sharing a biological continuity. Understanding our "bestial" nature needn't undermine our positive qualities, if anything it can help us create conditions that limit those behaviors while emphasizing others. In the human zoo we've designed for ourselves we need all the good ideas we can muster.
so cruel .. it is survival of the fittest .. no one knows the odds, or the best course to choose .. but 2000 years from now .. our protogeny will know
That sounds like a great Jack London rendition of Darwin's evolutionary concept. Didn't know you were an evolutionist. (i realize you meant progeny instead of "protogeny")
... here's a tie-in to the considerable on the board in re the religious right's biggest lie, their entirely made up and precisely reality-inverting myth, by means of which they claim legitimacy to impose their sectarian beliefs through government and the law under the Constitution, that this nation was founded on anything whatsoever specifically Christian ... http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=41688113