A Couple of Thoughts on the Newtown Tragedy

I have a couple of thoughts, by no means exclusive or comprehensive.

1. We definitely need a dialogue on how best to handle mental illness. There is such a societal stigma attached to it, and then we seem to only want to touch it with kid gloves, by making light of it, or joking (have you ever called a psychiatrist a “shrink”?). We are far more educated about the workings of the human brain than we were even 50 years ago, but we are light years away from understanding it completely. We have no problem running off to a doctor for the slightest physical ailment, yet despite the fact that the brain is far more complicated than all the other organs in the body combined, we hesitate to do something when things “aren’t right”. Often mental illness is left to the parents, or families, and society simply ignores it. We need to change our attitudes about it. In the process, we’ll not only have a better understanding of what makes the Adam Lanza’s of the world tick, but we’ll make great strides in dealing with other societal ills, such as homelessness, suicide, drug addiction, etc.

Follow The Money

My good friend JohnEvo (a/k/a The Ancient Atheist, tho’ he’s not so ancient)  sent me a link to this video. This is a really good example of the contention that religion has simply become a big business. Here we have a doctor, one schooled, presumably, in science and the necessity of basing the application of medicine on evidence, who’s simply shilling for a book he wrote that supposedly presents evidence for human resurrection. He travels the Extreme Christian circuit of talk shows, web sites and other forms of media hawking his book. The video blogger who created it makes a good case that there’s big bucks in the process, which, to understate it, somewhat diminishes the credibility of the claims.

Heck of a Job, Craig.

Sound familiar? After the debacle we remember as Katrina, Bush 2 complimented his buddy, Michael Brown, who he gave what he thought was a plum job as head of FEMA . He said, as people were dying in the flooded waters of New Orleans, or suffering through their hellish stay at the Super Dome, “Heck of a job, Brownie!”.

Atheism WILL Supplant Religion…

…eventually.

Actually, a better way of stating that would be that eventually there will be no religion. When that happens, while technically we’ll all be atheists, we won’t need to differentiate between theist and atheist, so there will be no Atheism either. Here’s why:

Sheer Devastation

At the end of my last post, a post that attempted to share facts, as opposed to beliefs, about the science of earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural catastrophes, I concluded with the exclamation “Enjoy!”. I’ve been reading about the after-effects of this horrible catastrophe, and realize that asking someone to enjoy even that kind of intellectual scrutiny was severely inappropriate, so I take it back.

Are There Roller Coasters In Heaven?

I don’t know about you, but my idea of heaven is somewhat vague. I think that’s intentional on the part of the powers-that-be, those who encouraged my juvenile and adolescent belief in heaven, but that doesn’t clarify for me exactly what heaven is, where it is, or what it will be like if and when I get there. So I checked around.

Scared to Die?

Image via Wikipedia

Me too. I don’t think I would be a properly functioning, reasonably intelligent human being if I wasn’t.

I’ve been watching my mother-in-law decline. She’s 80, and her body is failing her as 80 year old bodies are wont to do. She can hardly walk, she has trouble expressing herself, and clearly she’s near the end of her life; though she could be with us for 20 more years, she has that kind of strong constitution, and I hope she will be. But it’s not fun to watch  her try to retain her basic dignity just handling the day-to-day activities necessary to human existence. Like using a toilet.

The Decline Of Religion

I’m not sure what this poll really amounts to, but I sense that it’s another indication that religion is on the way out. When I say “on the way out” I don’t predict a total rejection of religion in America in my lifetime (which I figure to be roughly another 30 years if I make it as far as my father). No. Religion, like race, is something that’s with us for the long haul. But like race, it’s almost inevitable that it will disappear.

Atheism 3.0?

Here’s a little piece that talks about Atheism 3.0. Presumably, Atheism 1.0 was the original atheism, 2.0 was the New Atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennet (“we hate all theists”, or so it goes), and 3.0 is “We hate all theists, but religion might not be so bad”. I’m extrapolating here, but I surmise that there are some people who don’t believe in gods, or the supernatural, or are agnostic on the question of divinity (they live in Missouri, the Show Me state), but feel that religion is a positive force in society, and hence has qualities that are worth keeping.

“I don’t know if anybody is going to be able to convince me that God exists,” Sheiman said in an interview, “but they can convince me that religion has intrinsic value.”