Five rants for the price of one

[vovat]

1. Hey! THIS design isn't very intelligent! - I've discussed Intelligent Design before, but I might as well do it again. One of the main arguments for the idea is that, hey, the natural world is so amazing that it couldn't have come about by chance, right? These people seem to totally ignore all the not-so-well-designed parts of nature. Maybe if we posited a creator who was powerful but not perfect, we could say, "You did such a good job on the circulatory systems that we'll ignore all these vestigial parts!" For most (if not all) Creationists, though, this creator is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and infallible. Once you put that in, there really isn't any excuse for the mistakes, unless you somehow come up with an idea as to how they're NOT mistakes (like, say, tonsils as a punishment for sin that developed after the Fall, or the appendix actually having a mystical purpose in processing prayers or something). It reminds me of one of my favorite bits from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods:

"People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?

"And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a much better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere.

"This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn't looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts' Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country."

2. Winners Don't Use (Prescription) Drugs - I respect Bill Maher's opinions on a lot of issues, but his rant in the most recent episode of Real Time about how all prescription drugs are essentially poison went a little too far. He apparently thinks antibiotics should only be used when a person is desperate, and that good health habits would make it so your immune system would never be that bad. He does have a point, but I think there are factors he's not considering. Plenty of people who eat well and exercise regularly still get sick pretty often, and vice versa. Incidentally, considering that he's a pothead who's opposed to prescription drugs, does that mean he's opposed to medical marijuana?

3. The American Communist Lawyers' Union - Of all the groups that the Obnoxious Right chooses to attack, why is the ACLU one of their biggest targets? Their argument always seems to be something along the lines of, "OMG, they defend child molesters!!!!!111" In that case, though, doesn't it seem like their beef shouldn't be with the ACLU, but with those uppity framers of Western law who decided we should all be innocent until proven guilty? I'm not a member of the ACLU, and I'll admit I haven't done that much research on the subject, but I would consider most of what I've heard about them to be good things.

4. Going Postal - I hear that stamp prices are going up again, which makes all the stamps I still own useless unless I buy more 2-cent ones to accompany them. I actually still have a fair number of 37-cent stamps. I guess what bothers me isn't so much that the prices keep going up, since it's not like I mail that much anyway (which is probably part of why keep raising the prices, really). It's more that the prices change so often that it's difficult to tell how much appropriate postage actually is.

5. Sucked Under! - What kind of business is it that gets annoyed about having to rescue people who get trapped under an escalator? Okay, this one is really real, but part of a dream I had the night before last. I was with bethje and some other people at a store, and Beth and another girl were sucked into a gap at the top of the escalator. Some other person and I tried to get them out, but we could only get a hold of the other girl's jacket. I went to talk to some employees, and they seemed totally unconcerned, despite the fact that another girl had been trapped under the same escalator earlier that day. (Apparently the escalator, like a dragon, had a preference for girls.) What followed was a typical dream occurrence for me, where I get into a shouting match with a worker at a public place. Usually it's over something stupid, but in this case I feel I was in the right. Later that night, I dreamed that I was trying to get into a certain part of a college campus that was locked off with a gate. There was a way around the gate, but when I tried to take it, there was a fence there. I woke up while unsuccessfully attempting to climb this fence.

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

1. I have often thought this, that if there is a Supreme Creator God, it's not so much Intelligent Design as Kinda Stupid Design. The nostril, the example given, doesn't particularly bother me that much -- seems to do its job pretty well, really -- but the bigger, dumber stuff. Like making giving birth immensely painful. I can see that you probably wouldn't want it to feel GOOD, since otherwise, we'd be over run with babies. But, you know, why not make it just like, I don't know, minorly uncomfortable. So it'd be like "Hm, might not be really wanting to do that again, but if I end up wanting another kid, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world or anything, y'know?" Maybe like a really big poop that is a little too big, but ends up coming out OK in the end. Might hurt a little on the coming out, but it's not like it's necessarily gonna stop you from, I dunno, eating a whole bunch of cheese or whatever.

2. Man, that's... one of those where it's kinda-sorta-got-a-point-but-come-on. Like, Maher's right that we shouldn't just throw antibiotics at everything. Antibiotic hand soap, say, is something that you really should not have unless you're a doctor. And even then, you'd think one of those alcohol-based soaps would do the trick. It's shit like that that actually ends up making us MORE sick more often, since bacteria gets resistance to it. HOWEVER: I think it depends on how he defines desperate. If he's just saying we shouldn't go "Doctor! I got a bit of an upset tummy! GIMME DRUGS!!!" that is right, but if he's all "Doctor, I think I'm going to die of Pinkeye and ear infections... is there anything at all you can do or should we just call in the priest now?", that is silly. Especially since I don't think you can die of pinkeye or ear infections, but what do I know. I don't know. Dude's wacky.

3. But when the framers were writing that, they didn't think anyone was going to be FUCKING KIDS!!! Kid-fucking is something the godless homos brought in in 1973! (Homosexuality itself was only extent five years before that.) If the framers were alive today to find out that people were fucking kids, they'd just string 'em up right now, even if someone even THOUGHT that someone was fucking a kid! That's just too far! Better to be safe than sorry!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

1. I agree that the nostril isn't that much of a problem, but Pratchett was obviously going for laughs with that example. Genesis implies that childbirth WOULDN'T be painful if it weren't for Eve deciding to eat that damned fruit, but that doesn't explain why childbirth is painful for animals as well. THEY didn't eat the stupid fruit, did they?

2. I've heard about the antibiotic hand soap not being good for the immune system, although it seems to be pretty much all the stores sell these days. I guess it SOUNDS good, even if it really isn't. Anyway, Maher admitted that, if it were a choice between antibiotics and death, he'd choose the drugs. I just get the impression that he's someone who doesn't get sick very often, and seems to disregard the fact that luck might well have played a role in this, and not just the fact he has a healthy diet. Not that a healthy diet hurts, of course, but some people seem to think good eating will prevent pretty much any disease, and I don't think there's much actual evidence for that.

3. Homosexuality was invented in 1968? Then what about Sodom? Wasn't that destroyed because everybody there was gay, even though the Bible never actually says that?

[travspence.livejournal.com]

"Gay" as a social identity is less than a century old. Same sex activities, though, have been going on forever.

Also, buy the Forever stamps with the Liberty Bell on them. They are good for first class postage even if the rate goes up after you buy them. I've wondered why the hell the Post Office just doesn't raise it to $1 and forget about it for a while. These one and two cent increases every year are just annoying.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Same sex activities, though, have been going on forever.

I know some scholars think the Jewish prohibition on male homosexuality was a reaction to the male prostitution at Canaanite temples, which 1 Kings claims was also practiced by the Jews at one point. I think the general "no sex until it's for procreation" attitude in the Bible was an (over?)reaction to the heavy use of sex in the rituals of competing religions.

How much do the Forever stamps cost?

[revme.livejournal.com]

1. I know, but it's still sorta like "Well, who put the fruit there in the first place knowing full-well it was gonna get et, genius?" Oh well. That and, yeah, the animal example makes me think that if there's a God, he's a colossal prick.

3. Actually, according to my Bible professor, the beef with S&G wasn't so much the gayness, but the random and rampant raping of anyone who happened upon the towns, be they lady or dude. Which is pretty interesting, I thought. So, basically, apparently raping heterosexually is a-OK, but homosexually is WRONG. Unless it's part of your punishment in prison.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

So, basically, apparently raping heterosexually is a-OK, but homosexually is WRONG.

This always bugs me when people talk about pedophiles. It's always somehow linked to homosexuality; it's always "men who like little boys." Does that mean the ones who molest little girls are somehow BETTER? (Or for that matter, women who molest little boys).

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I guess people who disapprove of homosexuality would say that male-on-male child molestation is two bad things in one, and if they can convince the public at large that there's a link between the two, they can use it as a reason to oppose gay rights. Actually, though, considering how our society seems to present little girls as more helpless than boys, you'd think male-on-female molestation might be considered worse. Women molesting boys seems to be much less common, or at least the media don't cover it anywhere near as much. Sure, there are those stories about female schoolteachers having sex with male students, but they're much more rare, and the boys tend to be teenagers rather than really young kids (not that that makes it okay, mind you, but I don't think it's exactly on the same level).

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's like the whole homosexuality=pedophilia thing doubly sucks because it makes out that all gay men are pedophiles AND it belittles hetero-pedophilia. But there is evidence that some men who were molested by men as children grow up sexually confused and many become gay when they might not have been otherwise, and perhaps it's their testimony that these other folks are going on. But still.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

1. I like Douglas Adams' take on the Garden of Eden story: "Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."

3. The impression I get from the story of Sodom is that the attempted angel-rape was a way to humiliate foreigners, and hence has nothing at all to do with consensual homosexuality (you'll need to go to Leviticus for condemnation of that). The Bible is never really clear whether that was the main sin of Sodom or just one among many, though. God had already made up his mind to destroy the place before the angels showed up to warn Lot. I get the impression that the destruction of Sodom was a story that the Hebrews used to condemn pretty much anything that could be considered bad. Isaiah compares Israel to Sodom because they weren't properly providing for orphans and widows.

Even less is known about Gomorrah than Sodom. Maybe the people there weren't so bad in and of themselves, but chose to hang out with the wrong crowd. Or they could have gotten caught up in divine wrath simply by the misfortune of being located right next to Sodom.

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

You could go with the gnostic idea that God made the universe out of defective materials, hence all the sufferin and dyin.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

But then where would He have gotten the defective materials from? Or does this have to do with the Gnostic concept of a true spiritual God and a lesser God of the material world?

[slfcllednowhere.livejournal.com]

They're saying the stamps are going to go up every May from now on, actually. And it's only 1 cent this time, not two.

[colbyucb.livejournal.com]

Of course you would be on top of these things :3 I should send you a letter affixed with solely 2-cent stamps. I don't know why, it seems appropriate.

[slfcllednowhere.livejournal.com]

Haha that would be awesome.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I guess that means I'll have to buy 1-cent stamps as well as 2-cent ones, if I want to use the 37-cent ones.

[onesto-hotel.livejournal.com]

1. Hey God, why'd you make wisdom teeth, you sadistic bastard? Argh...by this point, I have basically given up all attempts to even guess as to why someone might find "Intelligent Design" feasible. People are just so out of touch with reality.

2. I don't use any sort of drugs, but that's just because I can't swallow pills. If you're sick and a prescription can make you better, why not? Obviously abuse of stuff like valium is bad, but as long as you don't abuse any of it, it shouldn't matter. Maher is veering into suspiciously Tom Cruise-like territory here. (And a pothead basically has no grounds to complain about anyone using legal drugs at the request of a doctor because...yeah.)

3. The whole point of the ACLU is to defend freedom of speech and the like. You don't have to agree with it, you just have to realize that restrictions on speech and thought and (sometimes)action are bad. Because, you know, OBVIOUSLY Christians are being so oppressed by all these other religions being allowed to exist, etc.

4. Jeez, it feels like it goes up every year...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

3. The weird thing about fundamentalist Christians complaining about the ACLU is that they've defended people against religious prejudice. It's obviously not an anti-religious organization, yet some people seem to want to paint it that way. But then, it often seems like fundamentalists don't want fair and equitable treatment for everyone, just for people who believe what they do.

4. The first few times I can recall the price going up, it was right at the beginning of the year, so at least it was easy to remember. Now they just seem to be changing them whenever, which makes it more confusing.

[colbyucb.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha when I was doing my taxes, I opened my wallet to find a ton of 37 cent stamps, and I was pondering if I should just stick a few on instead of finding a more recent stamp. I can't believe they're going up again. I'm never going to be able to keep track of these prices... which I guess is the gist of what you already posted.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I've sometimes been tempted to just use a few old stamps to mail something, but I usually figure that the prices change so much that even that might not be enough.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

1. Hey! THIS design isn't very intelligent! - The concept of Intelligent Design has been abused and turned into a laughingstock, which is really a shame, because I think at the beginning it was actually an attempt to bridge the two philosophies-- the Literal Biblical Philosophy of Creation and the Totally Random and Meaningless Theories of Evolution and Natural Selection. This is something I believe in strongly. I believe the universe WAS created by an Interested Higher Power, and that through science we discover the ways that Power works. I WISH people would realize that it doesn't have to be an either/or, that science tells us HOW and religion tells us WHY-- they serve two different purposes, both good. Instead, people turned the concept of Intelligent Design into a pseudoscience, and I'm not sure who's more at fault-- the creationists, searching for some scientific support for their beliefs, or the ones who laughed off the idea of Intelligent Design at its first suggestion. The problem also was when people started talking about Intelligent Design being taught in schools. What is there to teach? SCIENCE is taught in schools. What science teachers SHOULDN'T do, though, is teach WHY. They should make a point of leaving the WHY open for religion, or even non-religious spirituality, to cover. While science cannot prove the existence of God, it cannot disprove it either, which means to be truly open-minded you must remain open to the possibility. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if religion WAS taught in schools, not A religion as in This is what is True, but Comparative Religions, so that people really understand them, and all bases are covered.

2. Winners Don't Use (Prescription) Drugs - People are too dependent on drugs but seriously, Incidentally, considering that he's a pothead who's opposed to prescription drugs, does that mean he's opposed to medical marijuana? that's just stupid. Actually, it reminds me of the people who are so into natural and holistic medicines and so forth that they won't trust anything a real doctor says. While, meanwhile, buying into some Miracle Herbal Remedy they read about on the Internet, which, they don't realize, was either posted by some teenager who heard something about it once, or by some kind of scam artist wanting them to buy their placebo.

3. The American Communist Lawyers' Union - I think this is one of those things, if one guy doesn't like it, everyone else who agrees with that guy on other subjects suddenly decides THEY don't like it, without really understanding why. I see that a lot with people who stick closely to One Side's philosophies-- they tend to immediately believe and espouse whatever the people they already trust say, and immediately reject whatever the other Side says. I notice the Right has a lot of those little things. The Left does, too, but they're usually broader, such as "all Christians are bigots" and "the Right are the only ones who are into censorship-- the Left would NEVER do that, except about ideas and people we think are Wrong."

4. Going Postal - You'd think, if the post office wants to win people back from the distractions of email and electronic bill payments, they'd be a little more user-friendly and quit making their stamps go out-of-date every year. :P And we just got a whole bunch of stamps for Christmas.

5. Sucked Under! - I seriously think I had this dream once.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

1. That science explains how, not why, is something I don't think the Creationists who insist that evolution is a religion understand (and they probably don't want to). Nobody believes in evolution the same way people believe in religion. There's no school of thought that teaches that, if you're a good evolutionist, you'll evolve into something really cool. I tend to agree that religion should be taught in public schools in a cultural way (and we did get the backgrounds on some major religions in World Cultures class), but there seem to be a fair number of people who think that even mentioning a certain religion is advocating it (and, on the other hand, that NOT mentioning a religion is opposing it). I've heard of people who hold certain religious beliefs being irritated by Religious Studies classes because they examined their religion from the outside, rather than professing it as true.

2. But the doctors are TRYING to keep you sick, because otherwise they'd be out of a job!!!!!111

3. I don't even get the impression that the ACLU is really a left-wing organization per se; I'm sure pretty much every American, regardless of politics, thinks that civil liberties are a good idea. The problem seems to arise primarily when people think THEY deserve such liberties, and other people don't.

4. I guess that's something that could go either way. You could say, "Hey, less people are using the post office, so we have to raise prices to make money" (which is basically what they seem to be doing), or, "Less people are using the post office, so we should try lowering prices and making things user-friendly, to attract customers back." It's sort of like how the music industry complains about how less people are buying CDs, but they apparently don't consider that this might be partially because the prices have gotten so high.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

4. If they'd just keep the prices STABLE for longer than a year, that's all I'm asking for; like whoever said up in the comments, even if that means making the price even higher NOW. Just so you're not always trying confusedly to figure out if the stamps you have lying around are the right price.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about it. Maybe they just want to trick people into using more postage than they need to.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Which, I admit, I have done on more than one occasion. Usually because I have a letter that I think is heavier than the limit but I don't feel like taking all the way to the post office to get weighed and paid for properly.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I've done that as well. Sometimes I think a good way to use up old stamps would be to just put a few of them on a heavier envelope, but I usually worry that it won't be enough, and it'll be returned.