Andrew Arensburger | Epsilon Clue

FFS Politics Religion

One Christmas, Under God, With Fries, Hold the Drama

For years now, whenever someone argued that the insertion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or “In God We Trust” on dollar bills was a violation of separation of church and state, there have always been people who’d jump in with comments like “What’s the big deal?”, “Get a life”, “Aren’t there more important things to worry about?”, “So just don’t say the `under God’ part”, and so on.

Now some retailers, in an effort to make as much money as possible during the various end-of-year holidays — and I hope you won’t think me overly cynical for thinking that a company like Lowe’s or Target is motivated more by profit than anything else — have been writing “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” on their bannners, flyers, and ads. And right-wingers like Bill O’Reilly and the American Family Association are getting their knickers in a twist.

I think this is the part where I get to tell them to get a life, and what’s the big deal, anyway?

Am I A Conservative?

Over at redstate.org, nazgul12 has an article on what it means to be a conservative:

But I think there are some pretty basic things that are central to the conservative movement, which is the movement the Republican party has come to identify itself with. If you fundamentally disagree with some of these central tenements [sic] of conservatism then you probably don’t really belong amongst the ranks of Republicans. Before someone says I’m being too vague I’ll try to list at least a couple. The the order is in no way meant to convey order of importance.

Limited government

Free market economies

Democracy is superior to monarchy, dictatorship, communism, etc.

A strong military is necessary to insure [sic] peace.

Life is precious and innocents should be protected at all stages of life. In matters of diplomacy you should take that action which helps insure [sic] the greatest number of lives are protected. Sometimes this means declaring war to protect your people, even though it means the death of others.

Let’s take these point by point:
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Andrew Arensburger

Dec, Sat, 2005

Intelligent Design Links WTF?

What’s the Difference Between Bill Dembski and An Apple?

The apple has a much thicker skin.

I refer you to this series of comments in Bill’s weblog: Read More

Andrew Arensburger

Dec, Thu, 2005

Math Politics

Not Such A Good Deal

As of this writing, the Ronald Reagan Memorial National Debt stands at eight trillion, ninety-five billion, nine hundred forty-four million, eight hundred ninety-two thousand, three hundred seventy-one dollars and forty-eight cents. That’s a stack of $100 bills 549 miles high ([1]). The Hubble Space Telescope orbits about 375 miles above Earth.

In fiscal 2005, the US government made $2.053 trillion, and spent $352 billion paying interest on the debt. This is just the minimum payment to keep the debt from growing even more.

In other words, for every dollar that the US government receives in taxes, 17 cents gets taken off the top right off the bat to pay interest on the debt. For every one of your tax dollars, the government can only spend 83 cents on defense, homeland security, urban development, law enforcement, Medicare/Medicaid, research, and everything else the government does.

We Americans love a good bargain. I don’t think paying $1.20 for a dollar’s worth of defense is a good deal.

Andrew Arensburger

Nov, Tue, 2005

Religion

The God Who Wasn’t There

If you haven’t seen The God Who Wasn’t There yet, you should. The DVD just arrived on my doorstep over Thanksgiving.

As the title implies, it’s a documentary that explores the notion that Jesus Christ never existed, and that religion — particularly extremist Christianity — is doing this country and the world more harm than good.

(Spoilers ahead.)

Intelligent Design, Restated

The central tenet of Intelligent Design is usually stated as “certain features of living organisms are too complex to be the result of natural processes, therefore they were designed.”

But as Michael Behe explained at length on the stand in the Dover Panda Trial, what he objects to (at least, when he’s on the stand) is the notion that these features could have been formed by natural selection. He also made it clear that as far as he’s concerned, the designer is God.

So really, the central tenet of ID should be restated as, “certain features of living organisms are too complex to be the result of natural selection, therefore they are the result of a powerful, intelligent, probably supernatural, entity.”

PZ Makes the Big Time

The front-page article in the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages is about PZ Myers. It answers the burning question that I’ve been wondering about for ages: what does “PZ” stand for?

Oh, and it also says what a pharyngula is.

Andrew Arensburger

Nov, Wed, 2005

Site News

Category RSS Feeds

Good news for those of you who only like some parts of my self-indulgent bloviating: I’ve updated the so that a category view (such as this one, for the “Fun” category) also includes a link to the RSS feed for that category. So if you only want to read stuff in one or two categories, you can stick those in your RSS aggregator.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a way to create an RSS feed that combines two or more categories. So if you want to read both Religion and Politics, you’ll need to add two feeds. Sorry.

Just in passing, if you like the look of this site, it uses the Tucker theme for WordPress, and can be downloaded .

Andrew Arensburger

Nov, Wed, 2005

Politics Religion

Guns for Tots

Here’s an idea: let’s give everyone a gun on their thirteenth birthday. After all, if we don’t exercise our second amendment rights, we’ll lose them, right?
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