Not All Mormons Bad

I came across this website the other day. lds4gaymarriage. This is a site by Mormons who are not gay, but who believe that gay marriage is in line with the scriptures. They have this to say about the teachings of the Mormon Church:

The prophets have stated that their own words are overruled by scripture and that we are to ignore anyone’s teachings, including their own, if those teachings contradict scripture.

Mormons thinking for themselves!

If more Americans could think for themselves, perhaps we would not have allowed Bush to gut the constitution and bring America to the verge of financial collapse over the course of these last 8 years. I just wanted to show that during this time when all the headlines are so terrible, there is some hope left in the world. Not that I have any.

Nazi Dinosaurs, Anyone?

I came across the strangest thing while browsing dinosaurs on Wikipedia the other day. I was quite sure that it was a hoax, but apparently it isn’t.

It appears that DC published a comic book back in the nineties called Major Bummer and the 5th issue featured a supervillain called Tyrannosaurus Reich. Per the wikipedia article: “T. Reich was pulled to earth through a dimensional portal from a dimension of Nazi dinosaurs. He briefly wreaks havoc in the downtown before being driven back to his home dimension by a housecat which changes sizes when agitated.” He even speaks German, although it is not grammatically correct.

Please do not confuse T. Reich with T. Rex. I want to make it clear that Marc Bolan was not a Nazi Dinosaur. He was a singer/guitarist for the British rockband “T. Rex”.

Sorry, Charlie, No Apology from the Pope

In breaking news, New Scientist reports that the “Vatican said on Tuesday the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago.” Frankly, I doubt that Charles Darwin really cares.

I, myself, have never seen any conflict between believing in Jesus and believing in the theory of natural selection. The conflict only occurs when you interpret the Bible literally to say that God created the world in six days. I realize that not all Christians are creationists, nor should they be, because creationism is silly. The New Scientist article goes on to report that in 2006, Sarah Palin advocated teaching creationism in the schools, but she has since backed down. I pray that it is not “God’s will” that she be our next vice president.

For those of you not familiar with Charles Darwin’s life, I just want to throw out a few quick facts. Charles Darwin was raised as both a unitarian and an anglican. As a man of his times, he was a Christian and, early in his studies, he was influenced by both Lamarckism and William Paley’s notion of “divine design”. His views began to change after taking a 5-year voyage on the HMS Beagle and examining the fossils that he found during this trip. The idea of evolution was already around at this time, but most people believed, like Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather, that it was based on acquired characteristics.

Charles spent two years researching and studying after returning from his trip. He spoke with zoologists, ornithologists, natural historians, even farmers and pigeon breeders, but it took two more years, while reading about the ’struggle for existence’ in Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, before he struck on the idea of how evolution might possibly work. Thus, he did not discover evolution, but rather the mechanism, natural selection, by which evolution works. The important part here is, of course, that no divine intelligence is required to guide natural selection. Chance is enough to result in the creation of new species.

Charles Darwin delayed the publication of his idea for twenty years because he knew most people would find it heretical. He finally rushed to publication in 1856 after learning that another young scientist, Alfred Wallace, was reaching the same conclusions. As expected, his book “The Origin of Species” stirred up quite a controversy, and even today, 150 years later, some people still can’t quite get a grip on it.

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Darwin found his faith in Christianity constantly being tested and slowly dwindling. His religious flame was pretty much extinguished in 1851 with the death of his favorite daughter, Annie, at the age of 10.

My only question is who really cares what the Vatican thinks.

Sarah Palin: Will Pray for Oil

I saw some of Sarah Palin’s televised speech at the Republican National Convention. It sort of reminded me of a stand-up comedy act, but none of the jokes were funny. She certainly forgot to mention anything about policy. I guess she thinks the economy is okay and the health care system works just fine and it’s all right if the rich keep getting richer.

What I’m finding hard to believe is that conservatives who didn’t particularly like McCain before now say they will vote for him. But then conservatives, for the most part, are a stupid lot who base their votes on personality rather than policy. That’s why a religious nut like Sarah Palin polls so well. She appeals to the greedy, gay-hating conservative base that is afraid of having their taxes raised but is either too lazy or too ignorant to do some research and see that they’re more likely to pay higher taxes under a McCain administration than a democratic one. Yes, it’s that same group of fools who watch Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh and actually believe them. These guys, of course, all have 7 figure incomes. They like the Bush tax cuts of the last eight years which have been very profitable for them, and they will do anything to keep those tax cuts, including lie.

Here’s a fun little chart that dramatically illustrates U.S. wealth distribution:

This is from 2001 so I’m sure the situation is even more extreme now. Jack Clark from Blast the Right, my favorite podcast, has more information on this subject. Take some time to look at it.

You know, the whole idea of trickle-down economics started in the 1980’s with Ronald Reagan. It sounded stupid then, and it still sounds stupid now. Plus, with hindsight, we can see that it doesn’t work. Why anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year would vote republican is beyond me. All I know is that the eighties sucked and now McCain and Palin suck. But since making fun of McCain is like shooting fish in a barrel, I’ve decided to make fun of Reagan instead. (He’s not here to defend himself, but, unfortunately, his ideology lives on.) This, then, is my eighties nostalgia vampire Reagan t-shirt. I really like it.