No Sacred Amendments

There is nothing sacred about the Bill of Rights, in terms of permanence.

The Bill of Rights are simply the FIRST ten amendments to the Constitution.

They were added to the Constitution AFTER it was ratified by the States.

The people OF THOSE TIMES supported those amendments, just as Americans since then have supported amendments to support abolition of slavery and the right of women to vote, to name but a few.

We are no more bound by the amendments of the first American generation than future generations should be bound by amendments we support today. That's the whole point of a democracy, after all. It evolves, grows, learns, etc. - tempered by experience and reality. Not frozen in time.

Those who believe any amendment is beyond modification or even retraction simply do not understand how our liberal democratic system was setup to function.

This is what Thomas Jefferson had to say about change:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

I'm sick and tired of hearing that we should be held hostage to what people in the 18th century thought about guns and their role when muskets and canons were the primary weapons of violence and war.

As a gun-owner myself, I'm quite content to use basic defense weapons for target practice. I don't need or want anything more. And, even if I did, I would give up access to higher-grade weapons as I'm not so selfish as to demand a right to recreational high-power target shooting at the expense of crazy people using same high-power weapons to decimate my fellow citizens.

Kudos to Labor

Nothing happens without the physical world - molecules, atoms, electrons, etc. From bridges to microprocessors, they all require labor to bring to fruition in some fashion or another.

People who focus on using their brains in their career (e.g. Engineers, of which I am one), we figure out ways to use and manipulate the physical world to enhance the way we live. And, we are rightfully and handsomely rewarded for that. But, what should not be lost in all of that is that those who implement the objects of our creative minds are people who use their hands - and also their brains - to bring theory to market.

This has been forgotten in this day and age of outsourcing and focus on the professional sector. But, as an engineer, the way I see it is that the efforts of my intellect-centric labor (telecommmunications, in my case) would be for naught were it not for those in the trenches (literally) laying the fiber optic lines in the backbone and running data connectivity to curbs and cell towers to make it all a reality.

Near where I live, a man died from a 200 foot fall from a cell tower. It was a story in the local news so long as the helicopter had good footage. But, after that, not so much. Was this person who fell a hero? You bet. He (or she) had just as much to do with expanding broadband telecommunications access as I do. The difference being that their focus was more on labor and realizing tangible infrastructure rather than engineering know-how that drives the use of that infrastructure.

But, all the same, we're all in this together and deserve equal accolades for realizing enhanced technology.

Engineers may be different in areas of skill and knowledge per our formal training. But, we are not different in our common humanity. Our contributions are no more or no less important than those who convert knowledge to tangibles - i.e. those who apply what engineers are able to imagine and create.

Kudos to Labor.

Reactionary Christians and Human Progress

There are so many things we take for granted today that fundamentalist Christians opposed once upon a time before they could no longer withstand the wave of change or just plain died out.

For example, Christians who were part of the abolition movement were largely progressive - the kind Falwell(s), Pat Robertson, et. al. love(d) to demonize and deplore.

Conversely, you can find much in the historical record of Southern Baptists and other fundamentalists (not all southern) denouncing abolition as evil and anathema to God's will.

The moral of the story? Fundamentalists should be the last ones in the world to be trusted to judge what kind of change is worthy of human dignity and progress.

For those who haven't read it, I recommend "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom" by Andrew Dickson White, the founder of Cornell University, in 1896.

It outlines example after example of how reactionary/conservative Christians opposed science (just one area of human knowledge). When you read the examples, it will remind just how far we have come despite the persistent presence of religious reactionary forces.

Obviously, the book only takes you up to the 20th century, and I'm sure other authors have documents plenty of examples since then. But, it's a good place to start to get some historical perspective on fundamentalism's anti-progress role through the ages.

Christian Rapture Mania

When I was a fundamentalist in the 1980s, even then I couldn't understand why so-called Christians were writing books, making terrorizing plays, etc. to hypothesize about how close we were to the coming of Christ (as if no other generation had done that before ... try all of them!).

Or the craziness of thinking Reagan was the anti-Christ because his first, middle and last names had six letters each. Or the nonsense about P&G symbol on toothpaste being a Satanic symbol; or Russia being the Bear from the Book of Daniel, etc. And so many people buying into all of the nonsense!

In any case, from the 1970s book, The Late Great Planet Earth, and numerous other venues (e.g. Word of Life traveling circus) used to whip this up, I thought hasn't anybody taken the biblical passage "no man knoweth the hour..." seriously?

In retrospect, like most else in our money-driven culture, it probably had more to do with $ rather than theology.

It was a sad affair then. And as an agnostic today, I feel bad for those who take it seriously. But also angry by the moral hazard it poses to spawn complacency and inaction among those thinking the end is nigh.

For example, I have family members who are still fundamentalists and they aren't the least bit interested in recycling. They don't see the point when Jesus is coming any minute and global warming will be the least of the problems of those left behind. If they end up being wrong by 200 years or forever, that's a big act of irresponsibility and selfishness in my book.

National Day of Reason

RE: proposed bill http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c114:H.+Res.+670:

I'm an agnostic which, I guess, makes me a practical atheist. In any case, a "Day of Reason" is long overdue. After all, it has been reason and science that has provided for our modern amenities of medicine and technology. No prayer or homage to a deity gave us any of this.

Absurd Heavenly Math

Robert Ingersoll makes the following comments in Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 4, p. 266-67:

"Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost third.

Each of these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both.

The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten--just the same before as after. Christ is just as old as his father, and the father is just as young as his son.

The Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the Father and Son before he proceeded, that is to say, before he existed, but he is of the same age as the other two.

So it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son and the Holy Ghost God, and these three Gods make one God. According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three time one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar: if we add two to one we have but one. Each one equal to himself and to the other two. Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity."

Fundamentalist Frauds Have a Day of Reckoning

I almost feel bad for the religious frauds who have forsaken Christ for political influence. A Christ quote updated to apply to the 21st century: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not advocate tax cuts and promote the free market; and rail against abortion and homosexuality per your Old Testament Father's mandates?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"