The Religious Right and Neo-Wahabist Islamic-Facists

These two groups have become the new facist powers to worry about. Instead of facists like Franco, Hitler, and Musselini who all shared enough common views as to allow them to agree with each other and not focus their hatred against each other we have two groups, with power, numbers, and money who have openly declared war on each other.

Both of these groups are leading to the destruction of their parent groups through the war they have declared on one another. The Religious Right is destroying the reputation of American Christiams, portraying them as ignorant crusaders while the Neo-Wahabist Islamic-Facists are destroying the reputation of Muslims, portraying them to be Jihadists. The schisms forming among American Christiaans and Muslims grow each time one of those groups does as the other claims they will do. Since many American Christians and Muslims are smart enough to understand that the stereotypes are just that, stererotypes, but those on the fence belonging to the parent groups are more easily persuaded to join the facist elements of their larger parent group when the opposing facist side carries out another act that portrays the stereotype. For instance, before September 11 the religious right was going on doing there thing preaching hatred of non-Christians and claiming that other religions were inherently "evil" and after September 11 those American Christians who may have had the slightest bit of agreement with the religious right on their view of other religions and who weren't mentally equipped to reason their way through the propaganda of the Religious Right joined them. Then when the Religious Righ pushed for the Iraq war and lied to the American public to get us all on board for the war you see some of those Muslims who were on the fence in regards to how they felt about American Christians now see them as invaders and crusaders just as the Neo-Wahabists would have them believe.

Facism is alive and kicking and if these groups are not stopped this will lead to the next world war. The "War on Terror" will be construed as a "War on Islam" by the Neo-Wahabists and the resistance to the "War on Terror" will be construed as a Jihadism by the Religious Right and they will preach their typical "If you aren't with us you are against us!" when speaking of nations or groups that don't support their methods in the "War on Terror." We must hope that one of these groups falls out of power and falls out of favor with the population that supports them.

The Religious Wrong---Part II Creationism and Intelligent Design

Those in the Religious Right who deny evolution and support either creationism or ID only show their ignorance to science. Many of those who attack the Theory of Evolution have no education on the subject. For instance Ann Coulter makes odd claims that evolution is part of a godless "religion" and claims it is an already falsified and discredited theory, while she has no credentials in biology! I mean she has a J.D., she has no degrees in any of the sciences. Of course she has the right to make a statement about evolution, she also has a right to blantantly lie. I truly don't understand how people like Ann can believe that teaching valid science in science classrooms can topple their religious beliefs. Do they have that little faith? The Catholic Church has no problem with Evolution, the Big Bang, or any other scientific theories as far as I know. Although I may not subscribe to the beliefs of the Catholics I truly love the statement made by the late Pope John Paul II, "Truth cannot contradict truth."

I have communicated with members of the Kansas State Board of Education on the topic of their vote to redefine science in the classroom as to allow Intelligent Design in science classrooms. One who disagreed with the majority vote to allow ID in science classes responded to me, along with one member who did vote for ID to be allowed. The member who believed ID should be taught was extremely defensive and felt insulted after I pointed out that she was ignorant of much of the information supporting evolution, and suggested she was ignorant of anything regarding the topic. Her only response was "everyone has a right to an opinion", but she was unwilling to accept that evolution was more than an "opinion." This just reinforced how ignorant she was of the topic and showed that the people making this decision had no information on the subject, but still voted solely on the basis of their religious belief.

Creationists and IDists both refuse to actually try to support their points of with evidence. They do try to discredit evolution, using a variety of tired arguments. These arguments include such things as claims that the Second Law of Thermodynamics precludes evolution, or mathematically probabilities preclude. The Second Law argument is pure non-sense because the Laws of Thermodynamics can only be applied to isolated systems, and the mathematical probability argument is based on flawed statistical analysis and makes little sense considering evolution is an observed process, so no matter the probability it still does occur. No claims made by creationists or IDists to discredit Evolution disprove it, even if the claims did make sense in most cases the claims would still fail to disprove Evolution. The Theory of Evolution and its various components have been tested again and again, and within 150 years it has not been disproved.

Creationists also tend to ignore specific pieces of evidence, like shared endogenous retroviruses, which confirm a common ancestry for many species. An endogenous retrovirus, or ERV, is a "genetic scar" caused by a retrovirual infection which is passed on from one generation to the next. These "scars" are never the same in any two organisms infected with a retrovirus, yet after mapping the genome of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos it has been found that all three species share the exact same "genetic scars." The simplest explanation for this is that some ancestor of all three species was infected by a retrovirus which altered its DNA and this alteration or "genetic scar" was then passed on. Creationists will say "oh well the creator just made it that way" and an IDist's response to would vary from "well the designer just made things that way" to "well the designer designed that ancestor to change and branch off into those species." Alright...and these statements are scientific how? So you can actually test whether or not a creator or designer exists and you can test to see if a creator or designer was involved in anything? The answer is of course no. No one can test a faith based idea, but you can test Evolution, you can test the Big Bang Theory, you can also test many other theories that IDists and Creationists of the Religious Right claim are not science, and they hold after being tested.

The Religious Wrong--Part I Gay Marriage

The religious right again tries to impose their religious views on others by sponsoring the amendment to ban homosexual unions. Do they not realize that such an amendment would violate the first amendment. Forceful imposition of a religious ideology does constitute legislation concerning the establishment of a religion. If religion is not the reason why the religious right supports such anti-homosexual legislation then why can't they come up with a single unified reason why they want to ban it? They all have different, usually nonsensical, reasons. For instance some would claim that homosexual unions would some how degrade marriage as an institution. The basis for this argument seems to be the stereotype that homosexuals are promiscuous and incapable of commitment. This is really funny because most divorces in the USA involve straight Christian couples. The religious right would also encourage all impregnated women to marry the man that impregnated them, which they don't seem to see in most cases this leads to a divorce. The whole time the religious right would push for these events to occur they will not allow for people who are committed and not being forced into marriage or pushed into it to marry. I mean it isn't like churches would be required to perform ceremonies, I'm sure most wouldn't even care if a different legal name was given to homosexual unions as long as all the same rights and benefits were applied to homosexual unions and heterosexual marriages.

It seems more likely that the true reason the religious right wants to ban homosexual marriage is merely because they feel such unions are sinful. The only other options are that members of the religious right are so deeply disgusted by homosexuals that they are unwilling to extend the same rights to them as they extend to heterosexual couples or that they aren't comfortable enough with their own sexuality to be able to view the situation objectively. So if the last two reasons aren't the reasons that the religious right wants to ban gay marriage it must mean that it goes back to them wanting to impose their religious views on others through law. The hardest core evangelists at least admit to this being the reason that they would support a gay marriage ban, while politicians need to lie to come up with a reason to ban homosexual unions.

Lou Dobbs, Montel Williams and a draft

After recently seeing Lou Dobbs on Montel speaking about a draft, or National Service as he referred to it, I realized he is nuts. If we changed out military to a non-volunteer service the quality of our armed forces would drop drastically. Truthfully the United States does need a larger military, but we also need a better military. We have one of the best in the world, but we don't give our troops the best we have to offer. During World War II all nations involved in the war tried to get their best and newest technology to the front as fast as possible, while now we hold back. We have no F-22s in active service, no Comanche helicopters in active service, no urban combat units using metamorphic camouflage or our new urban combat uniforms. We are engaging in urban warfare constantly in Iraq, yet we don't deploy the new equipment we have to use in such situations. People talk about sending more people into the military while we don't even have enough of the very best equipment we have for them. We should be giving contracts for production of the new urban warfare equipment and aerospace companies for the production of more of our most advanced fighters and helicopters and tax incentives to companies willing to take those contracts. We also should be paying soldiers much much more. Enlisted personnel in combat should be making at least $90,000 per year and outside of combat they should be making around $50,000 a year. With a $40,000 per soldier per year increase in spending maybe the government would at least consider keeping a war as short as possible. This would also act as a great incentive for people to join up during wartime. Join up, do your year tour in combat, go back to the states, go to school on the GI bill, stay another few years and retire with a Bachelor's Degree, a big savings, and enough for a nice down payment on a home. The government could also do many other things to entice people to join up, clearing criminal records, pressuring credit reporting bureaus to repair credit of enlistees, and many other possible scenarios.

A draft is a terrible idea, and a draft or activation of selective service should only be used if the United States is actually invaded. An increase in pay for soldiers and expedited production and use of new military technologies would give us all we need currently militarily without forcing anyone into military service.