Fish in Space

I've noted previously that I'm skeptical of Hillary Clinton as a progressive. In the six months since I wrote that, four other people threw their hats into the ring as candidates for the Democratic Party nomination including Bernie Sanders. Presently, Bernie is my preferred candidate as he best represents me on the issues I care about. Everywhere I look he continues to lead the pack as a progressive, liberal or whatever label you choose to apply. Clinton's campaign is a juggernaut, with campaign money that dwarfs all competition and political endorsements from all over. Although a lot can happen between now and July, safe money continues to be on Hillary Clinton as the heir apparent. This is now her race to lose, which prompts another look at her as a politician and as a candidate for President of the United States. In the last six months I've discovered a few things about her, some of which surprised me and others that don't. What I care about the most is not w...

The incomparable Matt Dillahunty recently posted the video of his lecture at Baylor University regarding what he calls "the problem of Divine Hiddenness." It's an excellent talk and I highly recommend it. At timestamp 13:59 he brings up the question "why create a world where you put thinking beings, give them a brain...where critical examination of what you see in the world is consistently the best way to find an accurate model of the world?...and then to say that the most important piece of information is one that doesn't fit that paradigm?" I've examined this before in my comparison of the conflict between faith and knowledge, but since Matt doesn't take much time to address the typical excuse of "faith" here I want to revisit the topic. While he correctly points out that "faith" isn't an answer because it can be used to justify any claim, he's set up a question that invites more scrutiny. Whatever god allegedly created...

I don't often talk about my personal life here for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, recent life events brought an issue to the forefront that I feel deserve a few words. Namely, marriage and relationships. For some background I was married before while I was living in Australia but that didn't work out. I left my wife and two children behind to find work back in my native United States, and she decided not to follow. She sent me divorce papers and forced me to move on with my life so I did. Shortly after, I accepted a friend's invitation to join his game and there met the woman who would ultimately become my second wife. We've been together nearly ten years and look forward to the next ten years with great eagerness. She is in all matters my partner and my best friend, an achievement that I hoped for in my first marriage but never accomplished. How did we do it? How did we succeed this time when I failed before? That's the rub. At our wedding my best man (and one...

For forty years it's been an article of faith that low voter turnout favors Republican candidates. It's one of the reasons why people attribute more electoral victories for Republicans in mid-term election seasons than for Democrats. The truth is that low voter participation favors extremism and further polarizes our politics, but that's neither here nor there. For at least the past twenty years Republicans have been working to discourage voter participation under the guise of voter fraud. By the most amazing of coincidences, the voter ID laws being passed by Republican state majorities tend to discourage minorities and the poor more than anything else. Of course, conservatives are quick to argue that these laws aren't racist at all, that people disenfranchised by these laws are too lazy. But the fact is that these laws are responsible for lower voter participation among Democratic-voting citizens. The fact that it also tends to target voters who are minorities i...

One of the fundamental flaws I often criticize about religious belief is when believers want their cake and eat it too. Specifically, I refer to when their arguments rely too heavily on special pleading. And no, adding caveats to the definition of a god does not bypass special pleading. I can redefine chocolate as the essential first cause of the universe, but that doesn't make the definition valid. But other examples of special pleading include arguments like this: god is mysterious, unfathomable and uknowable but somehow believers are granted special knowledge of who this god is, what it is and what it demands. Believers typically justify this via "special revelation," that they or their religious founders have been granted special knowledge by that god to carry out the divine will. Each religion and sect claiming special revelation typically considers the special revelation other religions and sects as heresy or at least attributed to human error. But since there are ...

The Democrats have a problem in the US. Liberals have been the media's favorite punching bag for quite some time, and a lot of Democrats have been running away from it for that reason. That leaves at least a quarter of the nation with little to no representation as the Democratic Party pushes farther to their right in a bid to poach the moderates edged out by right-wing extremists in the Republican party. Enter The Third Way, a think tank with corporate ties looking to support the Democratic Party's move toward the center. They're distinctly against populist rhetoric and they want us to play nice with Wall Street and other corporate giants who have repeatedly demonstrated a lack of interest in playing nice with anyone else. They're closely aligned with the Clintons in the aftermath of Bill's administration and have dominated the conversation among Democrats ever since. An attitude that I find infuriating in American politics is the notion that whatever's good...

There's a stereotype about atheists and atheism, that we're nihilists and that our world is cold and lonely. The thing is, atheism is neither inherently meaningless nor is it inherently lonely. As an atheist I don't see meaning the same way believers do because I don't believe in a god to impose that meaning. As for being lonely, that's a consequence of embracing a minority position. Atheists in largely secular communities aren't lonely because they're not being constantly pressured to conform to religious values. Do you think Christians in communities dominated by Islam don't feel lonely? Do you think Hindus in communities dominated by Christians don't feel like outsiders? A common question asked by new atheists is "what now?" They've finally taken that last step and they've abandoned belief. They've rejected what they were taught to embrace for so long, and they might still be hiding it to avoid social backlash or they mig...