Tim, a few thoughts and yes I hesitate getting into this on Easter Sunday of all days in the year.

-Terri's parents, the Schindlers, urged Michael Schiavo to start dating and get on with his life. (From the independent report ordered by Jeb Bush and the Florida judges. See citation below.)

-"The evidence is incontrovertible that Michael Schiavo gave his heart and soul to her treatment and care." (Same independent report to Jeb Bush)

-In my view, the Republican hacks have stopped playing politics now that they re-read the polls. Is that sick or what? The religious rightwing seems to be feeling a little abandoned by the Bush Bros. these days. When's the last time you heard Frist speak up? (see esp. Grover Norquist in the Washington Post: "I think that a lot of conservative leaders assumed there was broader support for saying that they wanted to have the federal government save this woman's life.")

-BTW, the Dem politicians are pretty much a close-second, pond scum on this issue too.

-A reasonable assesment is that the split in 1993 was apparently over the malpractice settlement money. The Schindlers demanded a cut of the malpractice money from Schiavo. Instead he used it for Terri's care. (Article USA Today "Feud May Be As Much Over Money As Principle" http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-03-24-schiavo-money-cover_x.htm)

-This kind of analysis you're making is losing touch with the basic issue, in my opinion. As sophiebrown in DailyKos noted, "[The religious right] aren't arguing a moral position --- they are playing amateur detectives, marriage counselors and neurologists."  

Terri didn't want a tube stuffed in her. 40 judges from all angles of the United States of America justice system came to that conclusion and are honoring her request and are protecting her from Randall Terry and a screaming mob in Florida. It's her life to make a decision about.

-----------------
"...It took Michael a long time to consider the prospect of getting on with his life---something he was actively encouraged to do by the Schindlers...He was even encouraged by the Schindlers to date...."
[http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/schiavo/1203galrpt.pdf])

"...an independent report to Gov. Jeb Bush and the judicial system two years ago said 'the evidence is incontrovertible that [Michael Schiavo] gave his heart and soul to her treatment and care.'...The exhaustive 2003 report by Jay Wolfson, professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida...."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-michael24mar24,1,4679777.story

Posted by: Tom at March 27, 2005 08:53 AM

So let me sum it up from my liberal Dem view.

I think we liberals are right where we should be on the Terri Schiavo issue. We've spent time with the details, understood where the court---liberal and conservative judges---has gone, and now champion the weakest voice here---that of Terri Schiavo's.

We liberals believe that Terri gets to make the final decision about her medical care, no matter how loud the shouts or how big the posters of the noisy, vicious throng outside her hospice window. We feel horrible for her parents. Their sadness must be overwhelming. But in the end, Terri gets to make the decision. End of argument.

The vicious mob, led by fanatics like Terry Randall---who uses reprehensible tactics like forcing children to fight his battles---has to be beaten. They must lose in Florida if justice and decency is to triumph.

We liberals support the integrity of the US judicial process---a process that has come to the same conclusion over and over and over again in Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo's case. We support the right of her legal guardian, her husband. Her closest family.

We hope and pray the legal guardian we ourselves personally choose through marriage or whatever legal means, will win in any battle against noisy bullies who claim they know better than we do, especially if we're too weak to fight for ourselves anymore.

It's wrong to force a helpless woman to have a high-tech mechanical life support system when she asked to die under these circumstances. We need to fight the people that are saying that she doesn't get a vote anymore now that she can't fight back. We need to fight the voter block and their campaign donations that say cynically and cravenly to its elected representatives: "We voted for you. We gave you money. Now use your government power to eliminate the right of the individual. Eliminate the rights of the closest family to make the most intimate decisions of family life."

We need to fight the falsely moralizing rabble that is pushing for state-sponsored control of our own bodies. They've shown their true colors here. And thank God the polls are showing Americans see through their phony moralizing.

Posted by: Tom at March 27, 2005 11:31 AM

religion—as opposed to faith in a god or gods—be discouraged?

1.1 Let’s rid ourselves of the pernicious tendencies of religion and get our religion dividend.

Beyond the history of religion as a pernicious force, with its inquisitions, holy wars, and other such historical charms, and beyond its continuing ability to divide (consider President Bush’s quote, "God is on our side." versus President Lincoln’s milder, "I hope we are on God's side.”), religion exacts a heavy tax on the development of our civilization that can be measured in lives lost due to wasted effort. How much time, money and effort has gone into filling the coffers of Jimmy Swaggart and charlatans of his ilk, or popes and other such more mainstream religious leaders? Could not the monies for building and maintaining glorious new churches instead be donated to cure cancer? Science does work. Childhood leukemias, for example, are now highly curable, whereas a mere 50 years ago they were nearly always fatal death sentences. Or how about putting some of that wasted “church” money into education for better schools and higher paid teachers? There are likely thousands of worthy causes struggling for cash that is otherwise wasted on religion. But wait you say! Religions do contribute to good causes. Certainly some nominal amount of church monies do go into cancer research and other good causes. But what fraction of it? Half? I doubt it. So cut out the middle man and send 100% of the cash to the good causes. Then instead of wasting time at church functions, people could put time into their communities. Again, yes I realize that some nominal amount of church time is spent on improving communities. But what fraction of it? Half. I doubt it. Cut out the middle man, and while you're cutting out the middle man, cut out the hypocrisy as well. Why do good members of faith X, Y or Z do their good deeds and donate their coins of silver, or some of their hours, or even their very own lives? Is from out of the goodness of their own hearts, or for the reward of life after death for Christians or a harem for suicide bombers, etcetera? One can never trust that the religious do good deeds—like Christianize savages or pray to their god(s)—strictly out of the goodness of their own hearts. One must always suspect that the religious are to some degree motivated to save their own skins and, perhaps, the skins of those they care about. Although I don’t believe the phrase that there are no atheists in foxholes, I must always believe that the motives of the faithful are suspect at best, if not altogether disingenuous.

2. What is wrong with morality based on religion?

2.1 NO DOUBT there is trouble with religion.

This, NO DOUBT, is what most religions are predicated on. No doubt equals faith and conversely, and having NO DOUBT is the innate trouble of most religious doctrine. I believe that history shows that Hitler could not have come into power without the support of Christian peoples, and that if he had succeeded, it has been argued that he would have pushed for a new Nazi-based religion against the traditional religions to make his views more palatable. In this way religion, by its very own construct of NO DOUBT, is innately pernicious, because only under a moral philosophy of NO DOUBT can entire hordes of religiously motivated people throughout the ages, by reason of their NO DOUBT faith, become holy warriors, KKK nuts, al Qaeda members, witch burners, lynchers, homophobes, misogynists, child molesters, and other numerous types of nefarious -obes, -ists and -ers in order to raze entire civilizations, pillage, plunder, murder, maim, destroy, burn books, imprison scholars, discriminate, rape, butcher, segregate, and slowly eviscerate other peoples. And the vast majority of these religiously motivated people committed these crimes and atrocities against humanity without a doubt in their minds for they were following the will of their god(s) NO DOUBT.

2.2 Does lack of religion imply degeneracy?
If there is no religion, no faith in God, then what? Can there be no morality as Immanuel Kant would insist? Why does religion have to equate to morality? How many millions of atheists are there out there following the same basic morals of the faithful? Don't kill, steal, cheat, help others, and so forth, these kinds of ethical rules need not have anything to do with religion. These morals, which try to hem our wanton natures, make good sense if one wants to enjoy the fruits of civilization. Does the lack of religion make the enforcement of such morals impossible? Ask the millions of atheists who aren’t busy chopping tens of thousands peoples with machetes or molesting children.

3. Can there be alternative, less dangerous moralities?

3.1 Morality based on the scientific method is less arrogant and thus less dangerous.
The scientific method is based on doubt up to reproducibility and error bars. Cold fusion so far has turned out to be some much bovine poop, as cannot yet be reproduced in other, independent labs. Newton's law of (scalar) gravity, on the other hand, worked well within a large range of scales and phenomenology. Experiments and/or observations began to show cracks in Newton’s law of (scalar) gravity. The planet Mercury, with its exposure to a stronger part of the sun's tensor (curved space-time) gravity field could not be made to jive with Newtonian gravity. Einstein's more general theory of gravity, namely general relativity, took care of this and other discrepancies with Newtonian gravity, and we know of no experimental violations of this theory to date! Yet we doubt Einstein's theory is complete. Of late, Gravity B probe is out and about testing general relativity as I type this essay, and though it is expected to verify general relativity, physicists fully expect that someday, with sufficient technology, the experiment will come that shows cracks in Einstein's general relativity. Personally, at least a small part of me wouldn’t be completely surprised if, suspecting some deeper physics, the force of gravity just plum quit working one day. Still, if NASA, or a working space agency offered me a ride to Mars, I’d take my chances with Sir Newton.

Getting back to human morality, the innate doubt of the scientific method, should, if we adopt it as a basis for our general morality, make us more humble citizens of the universe. In a world where people shunned NO DOUBT religious faith, and instead searched for demonstrable, defendable, repeatable facts both scientifically and logically, it seems likely there would be less risk of committing holy war and other such crimes. People would categorize their belief systems according to their applicability, testability, utility, reproducibility and probability over other competing models within the error bars. They would realize that there can be no ultimate theory of truth, just models with certain ranges of utility. People such as these would, hopefully, be decent people in the conventional sense of not stealing, cheating, killing, etcetera., and would, recognizing that humans also have wanton tendencies, bind themselves to secular laws designed to prevent crime and corruption for the better good of civilization. Please don’t cite the failed Soviet Union (and other such “godless” experiments) as a case in point that godless people can be evil as well. Religion didn’t die in the Soviet Union. It went underground. I agree however that godless peoples can be as evil as god(s) fearing peoples, especially if they have substituted one kind of NO DOUBT faith for another kind—say sports—but it seems less easy to incite a bunch of doubting Thomas’ to bash people’s brains in than Christians or Muslims say over a game of soccer or some holy relic.

4. Must we believe in god(s)?

4.1 One can't prove existence or non-existence of God. One must have faith! Or not.
Immanuel Kant proved that we humans can't prove the existence of God. Still, he thought faith (if not proof) of God's existence made sense. He used a design type argument. If a watch needs an intelligent watch maker, then our complex world too, it seems, needs an intelligent creator. He could not have been aware of modern, corrected versions of Miller’s experiments that show that within weeks or less—forget about a billion years—complex molecules required for life as we know it can form from primordial soups, or be dumped on our unwary heads from meteorites. Immanuel Kant also thought that lack of faith in god(s) would make it impossible for civilization to arise. We'd all be killing each other off like godless Native American savages, the very way the millions of today's atheists...errr God fearing warmongers…are wont to do all the time.

In its simplest form, Occam's razor states that explanations should never multiply causes without necessity. When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable. Kant, ignoring Occam’s razor for one reason or another, failed to consider the possibility that we humans inhabit only one of infinitely many universes, with this one universe allowing for the spontaneous evolution of life from a primordial soup of chemicals. Again, amino acids, which can be found in meteorites and cold, blue balls of space gas, can get “created” in simulated, corrected primitive Earth environments. In this case (infinitely many universes), we don't need an intelligent creator. This is not to say, however, that god(s) cannot exist. One can no more prove the existence of god(s) than their non-existence, but of this more will come down below.

4.2 Occam's razor, it's not a close shave man.
Imagining a world without religion, I would hope that its people would prefer, using Occam's razor, to think of their existence as having no explanation, and of having no special purpose—Steve Martin’s special purpose aside—other than what they made of their own existence while they lived. They would be godless, and they would, hopefully, be driven to help each other out, not for eternal life in, say a harem, but out of the goodness of their own hearts, and/or out of some honest to goodness economic necessity so that they could enjoy the fruits of civilization over dwelling in caves. Presupposed in this imaginary world is the supposition that its “laws” of physical nature would be as fairly “reliable” as our physical “laws” seem to be, else, if gravity turned itself on or off depending on the price of rice in China, I’d think it hard to imagine life evolving, let alone getting civilized.

4.3 But what about salvation?
Tough! When you die you D-E-A-D. Until we figure out how to cure aging and disease, and perhaps transform ourselves into more advanced types of indefinitely long lived beings, we die, and our lives will have had no meaning other than, perhaps, the quality of our children we raised and what we contributed to the better good of humanity whilst we lived. Eventually, though, as Marcus Aurelius noted, even this personal meaning to our lives would fade into time immemorial.

4.4 God is nuts!
The alternative to believing we are nothing special via Occam's razor, is to believe we are something special in the eyes of some higher being, and this requires throwing logic out the window. If the higher being is simply a more scientifically and technologically developed being (or beings), then this is the least of the illogical alternatives to believing we are nothing special. Hey, humanity is little BloGorg's 1st grade exobiology lab experiment. Maybe this is why, given little BloGorg's inexperience and grubby hands, that vast portions of humanity's history has and continues to suck. If, however, we chose to have faith in a perfect, eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent God, then we have real logical and egomaniacal problems! Let us consider a few:

4.5 Can an omnipotent god make a burrito so hot even he can't eat it?

In many religious systems we are asked to believe that a god, who knew an eternity before creating us exactly what would happen after he/she/it created us, namely, that we would screw things up, will punish the wicked and reward the good. What? Say again! Given his/her/its omniscience, I say the wicked were condemned an eternity before they ever saw the light of day. Isn’t this predetermination? We then must conclude that the supposedly perfect creator (of ALL things) is the screw up. In light of his/her/its omniscience, how dare he/she/it punish (typically by roasting the wicked in hell) a single human being, and demand from the rest of us that we worship him lest we suffer the same fate as the wicked? Doesn't the buck stop with HIM/HER/IT? If so, then he/she/it is the mother/father/progenitor of all masochists. Given just this first step into an infinitely illogical morass of believing in omniscient, omnipotent, eternal gods of love, how are we supposed to reconcile a perfect creator with an imperfect system that is predetermined by his/her/its omniscience without just giving up basic logic and selling our souls to some utterly indefensible bullshit faith-based scheme? Then, going down the slippery slope to my damnation, I ask myself just why would a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal being need the worship of lowly humans? To satisfy a really, really weak ego? I don’t thinks so. To me a perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal being is a dead lump of nothing that would suffer zero motivation for doing anything. Create, or do anything, but what for? He/she/it knows the outcome, hence he/she/it would have zero motivation. (Have you seen the old TV commercial, "been there, done that"?) Someone, countering this line, once asked me, why should I procreate? You know what the kid will do he stated in defense of his purported god. The kid, predictably so, will breath, drink water, learn to read, and so on. I procreate—accidents aside—because I am not perfect, eternal, omnipotent nor omniscient, and 'cause sex feeeels good. It’s in my genes! And I simply don't know whether my kids will become mass murderers or land on Mars. Their world will constantly change. Science will reveal whole new domains for exploration. Lacking omniscience allows for the possibility, if not the guarantee of motivation.

I know that some of you who read these arguments for dropping god (or gods) will cite the "father analogy" when I will point out the misery of the human condition. “When you were a kid,” they will say to me, “and your father denied you ice cream as a punishment, he was doing it for your own good, to protect you, to teach a lesson, and so forth. As a child, you could not have understood his logic, and you probably thought he was being a bad guy for no good reason. He (assuming a Christian god) is our Father and we are His children.” For hours they will droll on in their brainwashed fashion. In response to this insupportable analogy, I will reply that my father was not a perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal being. The god being foisted on me supposedly is. This is a FUNDAMENTAL distinction people never seem to realize when they drop their father analogy. And, counter to those who, using the father analogy, claim we are too pea-brained to understand God, I claim that we humans are sufficiently intelligent to question God. We should, as a few religious people will accede to, have the right to ask, “If you are perfect, eternal, omnipotent and omniscient, then why X, Y and Z?” I'm not arrogantly claiming that we would have the ability to understand this kind of God's mastery of science and mathematics beyond M theory. I'm asking basic questions and pointing out self-evident contradictions like, “How can you condemn Hitler when YOU created him?” Finally, again, if I'm too pea-brained to ask God questions, wouldn't I be too pea-brained to worship Him even after becoming a human adult? Perhaps a prayer in obeisance is to him/her/it what a dog/cat/rat lick is to us?

Yet another related defensive tact on behalf of god(s) goes along the lines, without bad you can't have good, that's why we have bad in god's world, so that we learn and appreciate things. What good comes of genocide? What lesson did the annihilated peoples, the children, mothers and fathers, learn? What benefit is conferred when a five year old child dies of cancer after years of misery? God had to create a child to teach his parents a lesson? To make them pray to him? To help pay for Bob the oncologist's shiny new sports car? Or god, the omnipotent, as some say, needed little Ricky’s help in heaven? Really? I thought we humans were too pea-brained to understand him. Ricky must have been far more special than we thought. Truly I say to thee that the variations of the illogical contradictions of an omnipotent, eternal, perfect, omniscient god of love are countless.

5. Why should religion and faith in God should die?

5.1 Religion should die because of sections 2 thru 3, and faith in God should die because of section number 4.

6. Does killing religion and god(s) save humanity?

6.1 An a-religious humanity following a doubt-based morality is not guaranteed survival.

A humongous comet may yet squash us—or a planet of atheists—like the insignificant bugs that we are—splat! We humans, because we are innately competitive, and have difficulties with basic morality (e.g., we kill, steal, cheat, and so forth, and typically in the name of god) may yet treat ourselves to nuclear winter or death by advanced viral weapons. Yet, given that the scientific method based morality can be equated with DOUBT and that religious practice can be equated with NO DOUBT, it seems reasonable to believe that an a-religious world would be a bit more stable and likely to survive than a religious world. After all, a herd mentality requires a threshold number of initiators, and if there are less initiators there is a reduced likelihood to herd. Who do you see as more likely to cause trouble, a group of like-minded fanatics with NO DOUBT in their belief system, or a tough looking group of rowdy doubting Thomas'.

7. Is science Lily-white?

7.1 Since I seem to be advocating scientific, doubt based morality over a religion based morality, I'm sure people will point out the dark ways of science.

First of all, science is us just as much as religion has been a part of us. No us, no religion or science.
Does science bring us evil? A-bombs? H-bombs? Sure it does, but when was the last time we had a full-blown world war? And how many American and Japanese lives were saved by using Fat Man and Little Boy? Or was President Truman an agent of Satan sent out to deliver the handiwork of demonic scientists? History will show that fifty-nine atomic bomb scientists signed a petition to President Truman asking him to instead demonstrate the bomb's power to the Japanese on a remote island. Are there and have there been evil scientists? Yes. Are there are and have there been arrogant scientists? Yes. Have (and do) some scientists get tempted to play God? Yes. Are there and have there been evil priests? Yes. Are there and have there been arrogant popes? Yes. Have (and do) some people of religious faith get tempted to play God? Yes. These points, picking out individuals from a population, are not THE POINT. Scientists do not make the scientific method any more than religious leaders make up religious malpractice.
By the way, we goody-two-shoes Americans, the plain speaking little folk, are actually doing a nice job of hurting the planet with our massive SUVs appendages requiring boots in Iraq and a simultaneous, two-faced policy towards the Saudi royal, friends of the Bush family, family. We waste and pollute while we go to church without remorse or compunction. We demand our bigger LAND ROVING SUV pe_nises as long as gas is cheap. Now that heating gas is getting pricey, suddenly we high school flunkies of basic science are saying go nuke—a move which I support based on science. We're also quite okay with kissing the rainforests good-bye, filling them with methane farting cows so long as hamburger patties stay cheap. We, excepting a few deranged do-gooders, generally don't push for more reasonable uses or our resources, until, that is, it hits us in our pocket books. The bottom line is that if we’re going to make it, it’s going to take all of us. See my article on "Some thoughts concerning law...in a post-Darwinian world of conflict, crime, social inequality,... at Forums, General Discussion, “Some thoughts concerning law, social identity…” at:
http://www.convergingtechnologies.org/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=39

8. Improving our chances.

8.1 I say that if we want to improve the lot of humanity, religion must die. Some can point to all the humanitarian good religion has done and continues to do. Though I can't prove it, I suspect the net harm done in the name of religion far outweighs the net good it has done. A body count of saved versus killed off in the name of God could be one metric amongst others. But how would one count those who have died of cancer and other diseases because decades worth of charity and time have gone into building opulent churches and funding popes and their ilk over basic research?

8.2 But modern religion is truly enlightened and tolerant you say.

Some might argue that modern religions are now more enlightened. Which religions? Those practiced in Bosnia? Africa? Iraq? Or by our own homophobic (or was it vote pandering) president? Did President Bush, while he was pandering to homophobic voters, conclude the American constitution needs to be modified via an intellectual path, or out of religious conviction, tantamount to NO DOUBT? I saw him claim on TV that the base of great civilizations have been the union of man and woman. America's government is modeled after the Greek and Roman states. Does President Bush not know that those toga wearing peoples had no problem with homosexuality? Does President Bush not know that as much as 10% of humanity is genetically predisposed to homosexuality according to an increasingly growing pile of scientific evidence? No. If we are to believe in Bush's faith in a god, Bush has no god given doubt that homosexuals, as aberrant peoples with sinning ways, do not deserve the same legal rights as heterosexuals—never mind the point that in his universe his god created those sinning gays, some of whom are good enough to fight and die in Iraq, but NOT get married. Religion, even today in an "enlightened" western power, is just as vile as it ever was, and is still preaching holy war. How many times has President Bush stated it is America's duty to spread freedom, which is God's gift to humanity? If I had a nickel for every time some two-bit…

9. Putting logic aside, can religion ever be expected to die?

9.1 Will religion die?
Should humanity survive to evolve into post-corporeal beings, then I do believe religion will die, but I don't expect it to do so in the near future. Not until humanity—should it survive—has transformed itself into beings with indefinitely long lives will the need for religion die. So long as we live but a handful of years, the need for religion and faith in God will continue to exist. There really could be, as some researchers believe, an advantageous “god gene” locked into our genome passed on from god fearing caveman to god-fearing caveman. When Blogorg ‘believed’ there was a god out there looking out for him, he fought on, but poor, atheist Grung gave up an got eaten by the saber tooth. Thus Blogorg, who got to zug-zug Lana, passed on his genes. When we drop our carbon based bodies, however, we won’t need to pass on our god gene to zug-zug Lana, and it will be adios to the god(s).
10. A call for atheist preaching!
In the mean time, given that religion will be with us for some time to come, we godless people must accept and tolerate those religious people among us as they claim to accept and tolerate us—and I'm not trying to be funny. Moreover, just as religious people have a god felt need and duty to save our heathen butts so that all may enjoy some kind of holy paradise tending sheep, we godless people too must do our best to “unsave” people so that we may all enjoy a more real (Occam's razor based) reality in a safer, more stable world with more resources going to solve problems than building churches. We have to preach unGod and unSaving logically, as I have tried to do in this post, as well as push to get rid of religious tax exemptions, especially when child molesting priests illegally tip-toe about the law and pander for votes.

PS—Wouldn't it be nice if religion, like cigarette packages, came with a warning sign listing off all its completely illogical foundations and inconsistencies, and its innate tendency to do harm thanks to NO DOUBT morals. People—before having to wait until we evolve into more advanced beings—could then decide to believe or not on a more informed basis despite their potential god genes. Science, with its scientific method, does this by definition. WARNING! All theories are subject to change given new data.

Alex Alaniz, M.S., Ph.D.
4925 S. Sol
Los Alamos, NM 87544

Posted by: Dr. Alex Alaniz at March 27, 2005 12:24 PM