Insurgents offer of halt of attacks perhaps not a trick

Link I think people might be skeptical of this, but the insurgents don't want to die either. They seem just to want life to get better with possibility of jobs for themselves. Some game theory person should get in there and do some smart negotiations and end this useless war.

Buffett gives generously to Gates charity

Link It is nice to hear that a key goal of the foundation is an AIDS vaccine. Let's hope the extra money takes some research there.

Religious freedom versus same-sex marriage

Does freedom of religion mean adherents of a religion can believe whatever they want? Maybe within reason.

Many religious beliefs cannot be validated today. Resurrections, healings, miracles. Most everything is interpreted from books. These books might have biases from the writers. Over time, these religious works would be likely be purposed to fit the need of the time. In the beginning there is a need to grow the power of one religion over non-believers, secular humanists, or other religions. Someone probably had an idea to prohibit contraception as well as homosexual behavior in order to increase birth rate of Christians. (I guess it was quite obvious that sex between two men or two women never resulted in children.) In the old days, more people simply meant more power. Therefore increasing Christian population was the reason behind prohibiting homosexuality. Political entities in Europe eventually probably didn't mind sustaining these beliefs. England needed fighters for its Empire. Germany needed more soldiers for it's world domination. Obvious right?

Today Christianity is no longer the fledging religion it once was. In America, Christians are the majority. They are the 800-pound gorilla to borrow the old internet boom days business analogy. There are plenty of Christians, and even some Christians have come to allow contraception. (Also, countries generally have enough population these days except Japan, some European countries, and Russia, but I digress.) Besides allowing contraception, there are other examples of Christianity changing over time to meet practicalities and becoming more 'civilized'. Anti-semitism, slavery, anti-native americanism, and anti-miscegenation were widely held beliefs earlier in America even when Christians were practically the only people on the North American continent. I don't think one can claim that Christians did not participate in these discriminatory activities or that some churches did not perpetuate such bigotry. I do credit that these forms of discrimination are mostly no longer tolerated in churches. I think it a matter of time before Christians see the light that being anti-gay is no more a fundamental tenet of Christianity than racism.

So, what of the argument that allowing same-sex marriage is discrimination against Christians? Well come on, folks. Christians don't rightly believe Buddists, Muslims or Jews will be saved. Surely practitioners of these other religions are sinners. But Christians don't try to prevent them from getting married. It isn't considered discrimination against Christians that Buddists, Muslims or Jews get married. One might argue, being gay isn't a religion, but being persecuted by other religions sure gives being gay religion-like credentials. Eventually the 800 pound gorilla religion is going to have to realize that claiming a small minority religion is harming them by getting married is not consistent and is unreasonable.

Why sane people follow Christianity? (updated)

(Read this post before? Skip to the bottom for the update)

-- posted April 2

I was pondering this question. There's a lot that doesn't make sense and is very arbitrary about Christianity. If Christianity made sense, why is Jesus a white guy? There are more Indians and Chinese in this world than white folks. Why did the christian god only show up to this subset of people in the world if he created all men and women. Why allow billions to struggle without his message. Not very compassionate. Why was god a man and not a woman? Arbitrary? Sure god isn't fair. Jesus the prophet had to be one of the races and sexes. But certainly it shows kind of a favoritism, maybe even racism and sexism. From a logical and scientific perspective, religion does not stand up to scrutiny. Why 10 commandments? The convenient coincidence between the absolute rules for human behavior and the number of human fingers is rather disturbing. Did god think man could only track as many rules as he had fingers? Anyway, if it's not already apparent, it seems a whole lot of bulls**t to me.

My question is why do people today still believe in it, and invest in this. Perhaps it's a cultural tradition. If one were to look at the religions of the world as viral entities, one would say that the ones which succeeded did have something special in them. There might have been something beneficial to society in them, even though they might have some bad elements in them as well.

Key elements to survival of Christianity: (1) It is programmed to spread. Somewhere ingrained in many religions is the idea that other religions are wrong and that others in the world -- any place in the world -- need to be converted or sometimes killed, (2) there are actually some benevolent and beneficial elements of all religions which provide stability to society: compassion, help others, do not do bad things: murder, adultery, and (3) a good story about what happens after death.

In fact in Christianity, 2 and 3 are linked. In other words, if one is good the reward is a nice afterlife story. In a way, one might want a lot of people to believe in Christianity even if one doesn't believe in it oneself. I mean, it provides this law and order element which says if you do bad things in life you will be punished after you are dead, even if you aren't punished in life. Even (and especially) bad stuff no one else knows about will be punished.

Let me just say, the current scientifically supported end-of-life story -- which I believe by the way -- is that after you are dead there is nothing. Another option for some scientists is to say that one doesn't know what happens after death to 'spirit' if they think something like a spirit exists. A Christian heaven or hell is rather too arbitrary to scientists, I think. No reason to believe heaven or hell exists. Still it's pretty tough to support a spirit as separate from body. Consciousness and even unconsciousness have been tied to portions of the brain. Once the brain is not functional (massive cell-death), it's difficult to say that 'spirit' would live on. Most probably it's gone, too.

Anyway, I think the simple but useful tying together of good behavior to a good afterlife story seems to be key to survival of Christianity. Most people tend to be afraid of death. I read a study in Men's Health where huge numbers of people believe in heaven even beyond the numbers of strongly religious. I think people are just chicken-shit. It's a nice idea that there is a heaven; it means you can avoid thinking really about death as an end. So, instead of facing reality, people will take the trouble to go to church on Sunday and get the exhortations to be good and compassionate or not, depending on the church. And maybe I agree it's something people need to be taught in a simple way. If one had to teach morality to children without the support of web of religious belief, it might be hard. You'd need to set up something like: treat others as you would like others to treat you. It's simple, but would children understand that? Who's going to police something so simple? Maybe better not to rely on that. Simpler and better to set out real prohibitions which would be punishable upon death or in life. Plus, Christianity certainly has a nice afterlife story. Nice to think that grandma is up there looking down upon me instead of being eaten by worms.

I read somewhere that Europeans -- the place where Christianity took hold first -- do not attend church very much, far less than Americans anyway, and this is a reflection of how much they believe. I take it to mean that the Europeans have figured out they don't need Christianity to prevent people from doing bad things. The Americans are just too afraid of their neighbors and other people. No way we Americans can trust anyone to be good. And then I think it indicates Americans are probably the more scared of death than the Europeans. Americans are just the most scared people on the planet I guess.

-- updated June 19, 2006

So, here's another conspiracy theory... Why do some Christian sects proscribe usage of contraceptives? They need as many children of Christians as possible to spread the religion. Priests know it's difficult to get the rhythm method perfectly, but if on average every Christian has say 5-6 children before getting wise that this anti-contraception stance is rubbish, the church has just proliferated the faith that much more. It's an early Chinese idea -- and now well known RTS gaming strategy -- of overwhelming your enemy through birthrate. People are going to say they knew this was the strategy already, and I'm pointing out the obvious. Well, it wasn't obvious to me until I thought about it.

King George

The one good thing (although not unequivocally good, more on that later) that this administration did which I can remember is to give to the international AIDS relief funds in Africa. This it seems was due to relentless efforts of Bono. He put George W. in the role he likes to play, King. Bono, the famous rock star, bends to beg and kneel before the king to ask him to show his infinite mercy and to very lightly try to revive the king's sleeping conscience. Oh, and by the way, you're supposed to be a Christian king, right? Perhaps, a la Hamlet, a little theatre -- a reminder of the legacy of death Bush as already created -- helped Bono to bring that conscience to light. But perhaps it was just petitioning the king which did the trick.

Here's the catch. Bush decides to tie the funds to programs which emphasize abstaining from sex. A nice try, but it's simply not practical. Even the Pope now says that we should allow couples with one partner having AIDS to use condoms.

I guess even Bono can't work miracles.

Hawking Says Humans Must Colonize Space

Interesting thought to try to save the human race. I think that humans would get their just desserts, if human shortsightedness is the cause of their own demise. It seems possible now that humans would not last the millennia because of human inflicted destruction and poisoning of their home planet.
--
It's something out of the cold war age, this idea of colonizing some place else because we've made such a mess out of Earth. It's not that I hope the human race gets wiped out. It's just that human nature doesn't seem geared in that direction, at least not right now. People (myself included) are far too selfish to think about future generations with any seriousness. They just have assumptions that scientists will solve the problems without any sacrifices on their part.
--
Slashdot: "
Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space: "neutralino writes 'The Associated Press reports that astrophysicist Stephen Hawking wants humans to establish colonies in space in order to ensure the survival of the human race. At a news conference in Hong Kong, Hawking said that 'It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species. Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.''
"

Republican hidden agenda revealed

Krugman makes several points in his Op-ed piece (Times Select). But one is a restating of the scapegoating theme I've mentioned before on this blog. Essentially, the Republicans get re-elected making a big stink about terrorist threats, gays, and God. Once elected they go to work trying to make the rich richer by cutting income taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes and getting rid of liberal policies: safety nets for the poor and old, and handing money to cronies in big business in the form of removing environmental regulations and starting wars. If people really cared about Christianity and God, what ever happened to helping your fellow man. How can we start wars, killing many innocents and our soldiers -- none of them children of members of Congress and most of them from poor backgrounds -- for trumped up reasons? Perhaps deep down, the Republicans are two faced hypocrites? They really don't believe in God and Christianity like me, but just put up a fake storefront to enrich themselves. I'm not an expert, but seems we have a few big sinners in office.

LATimes: Allow gay men to make blood donations

LATimes Editorial makes the point that the big hammer application of disqualifying any previously sexually active homosexual man from donating blood for life is discriminatory and potentially harmful to society -- eliminating a source of needed blood.

New York County recognizes marriages from elsewhere

Advocate article. This will be interesting. Perhaps it means that Westchester residents can get married in Massachusetts and have it recognized in New York state. Similarly with getting married in Canada, it could be recognized in Westchester. (?) Need some lawyers to clarify.

Isn't it always the Republicans that think of playing dirty?

NYTimes Opinion piece on how Republican secretary of state of Ohio is preventing new voter registrations in an attempt to win as governor.

Gay marriage not really galvanizing

Sure social conservatives are upset about Bush and some Republicans less than sanguine pushing of the same-sex marriage prohibition. But who the hell else are these social conservatives going to vote for. No other party supports guns, unilateral military action, less taxes, and melding of church and state. I think Republicans can afford to drop the same-sex marriage issue, just like the Dems can afford to refuse to stand up for gays and lesbians. Who the hell else are gays and lesbians going to vote for? Even the gay Log Cabin Republicans couldn't endorse W last election.

LOS ALTOS / 300 march in gay pride parade organized by high school group

A small town in California had it's first pride parade. As it happens I was there, and it was a fine experience. There were protesters, but what's a little gay pride parade without some peaceful opposition?

Thank you to SF Chronicle which covered the story:

LOS ALTOS / 300 march in gay pride parade organized by high school group: "Downtown Los Altos was awash in rainbow-colored flags, balloons and leis Sunday afternoon as hundreds of participants in the city's controversial first Gay Pride Parade marched through its typically quiet streets. Police and organizers estimated that..."

Using the Internet to democratize revolutions

How about this: Put up a website which asks Iraqis or North Koreans if they want someone to overthrow their government. Put up a list of proposals from different countries, NGOs and the UN. For example, the US will take over your country, find and imprison Saddam. In exchange, you give US rights for some oil or some such. And you guarantee that you will put down insurgency. With a mixed ethnic, religious country, then you would need majority votes from all ethnic groups. Proposals would thus have to be modified to accomodate all groups. If this out in the open, then no one can complain that it wasn't the will of the people. People just need some way to access the internet to vote. Multi-national companies would overthrow governments for profit. It wouldn't be the US, then it would be corporations. Crazy? Yeah, I guess so.