I'm feeling blue about blue laws...

A blue law is a law which has been passed for religious reasons. Thankfully, us up here in Canada have mostly done away with blue laws (there are a few remaining if you look hard enough), but that's not the point of this post.

I own land down in the good old USA, more specifically in New York state. It's a nice big plot of land (about 80 acres) with a pond.

Anyways, a few years ago it was illegal to purchase alcohol before noon on a Sunday. However, Monday through Saturday you could buy as early as 8:00am? For what reason could this have been enacted? That's right, it's a blue law.

How clearly un-american. And that's coming from a Canadian.


The most evident violation of the first amendment in the USA.

Now, if it was left at not being able to be half trashed at 8:08 after powerchugging a 24 of watered down american beer and a bit of writing on their bills, I wouldn't mind too much. But we all know that's not where it stops.

To see the excessive nature of blue laws we head to my favourite state. Texas. Although Florida is a close second. :)

A few weeks ago the Texas Republican party decided it'd be a neato idea to make it a felony to issue a marriage licesnse to a gay couple. And oppose the legalization of sodomy.

These are clearly religious positions and clearly against the first amendment.

From their statement:

We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such.

We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.

Just to re-iterate, the republican party would want to see someone who married a gay couple serve manditory jail time for doing so. Not only that, if they were caught three times, they'd serve the rest of their natural life in jail. Disproportionate? You bet. But what do you expect from people who expect others to burn for eternity for having buttsex on a lazy friday afternoon.

But they're not just against homosexual relationships. Heterosexual relationships would be illegal too. They're opposed to sodomy, which translates into oral sex for husbands and wives. That's right, they're telling you that you can't have trips downtown and/or can't enjoy an old fashioned slobberpole.

My question is this. Why is this nonsense allowed to occur? How can a reasonable intelligent adult rationalize such an action?

Inspired by Allah?

Let it not be said that I don't only target Christians. In today's entry I'll be talking about the more a few verses in the Quran. These are the english translations, and as I've been told, they lose some of their meaning. Even if the translations were off a bit, it's hard to claim these are divinely inspired.

Bukhari: V1B4N163
"The Prophet said, 'Whoever cleans his private parts with stones should do it with an odd number of stones. And whoever wakes up should wash his hands before putting them in the water for ablution. Nobody knows where his hands were during sleep.'"

Bukhari:V7B71N643
"I heard the Prophet saying, 'If anyone of you dreams something he dislikes, when you get up, blow thrice on your left.'"

This leads me to the subject of my post today. There are many people who believe these things to not only be true, but the divine will of Allah or God. You can find entries like these in the Bible, Quran and pretty much any other holy book.

And yet many of these people are respected leaders of their community and dispense advice about family matters, what the neighbourhood should be doing and what our attitudes to things like condoms and pork products should be.

Why is this? Why are these people's thoughts respected because of their source? Shouldn't their ideas be lauded and accepted based on the merits they have?

Religious Sensitivity

One thing that bothers me is the claim that atheists are not sensitive to the beliefs of theists. And while I do freely admit that many athesits are coarse and unforgiving, I think that part of the problems lies with the thesists as well.

It's been my experience that generally speaking, theists don't enjoy having their faith questioned. Unfortunately, this is the only way you can intelligently talk about their faith. So from the get go it's an adversarial situation, not in the mind of the atheist but rather in the mind of the theist. I swear, I'm trying not to typecast people.

Let's take the story of Elijah. I'll summarize, but you can find the story in 4th Book of Kings, Chapter 2:23-2:24

Elijah was a wise man and knew god. And he was as bald as a cue ball.

As he was walking one day, a gang of young children came up to him and started to mock him. Calling him bald head among other things.

However, Elijah was not to be mocked and he turned and cursed their name to God. Suddenly, two female bears popped out of the woods and killed all 42 children who were mocking him.

So, this is a pretty awful story. It's hard to justify killing 42 people simply because they called a wise man bald. So, if we're talking about this story, how can I refer to God's actions without drawing offense?

How would you handle talking about a touchy subject with someone of faith?

How would you choose?

Had an interesting thought today. Going to phrase this question in the form of a story.

Let's say you're an atheist and grew up in an atheist household, you have never really known God and you really don't have any knowledge of any religion. You're walking down the street and the clouds break.

Before you stands God. You know it's God and he says to you "Worship me, my son." Then he disappears and the clouds close up.

You find yourself on a street. On the left hand side is "The Church of Man's Last Hope". On the right, "The Church of the Last Hope for Man." Both have similar tenents, with some slight changes, however, both claim the other is wrong.

Given that you know a God exists, how do you intelligently figure out which church you should attend?

Why I'm not Religious...

Coming from a Roman Catholic family, I am often asked why I'm an atheist. And it's a fairly easy question to answer.

Let me pose you a question. Let's say we're discussing invisible dragons who breathe fire. These magical dragons are self concious though, so to look cool they made themselves an extra set of muscular human arms. You know, to be all bad ass and stuff.

Below is the invisible dragon if you could in fact see invisible things.


BURNINATE!


I then tell you that I don't have any real life evidence for this dragon, only my personal feelings. Regardless of what you thought of me, you'd have to take on of two positions.

1. You would reject the notion of this invisible dragon until it has been proven to exist.

2. You accept the notion until it is proven that it does not exist.

Putting aside the obvious flaw that you cannot prove something doesn't exist, think about it for a moment. If you adopt 2, you place yourself in the position of having conflicting viewpoints.

For example, if I tell you "Christianity is the true religion", you would have to accept it until it's proven to not be the case. If then you heard from someone else "Islam is the true religion" you'd have to do the same. And at that point you'd have two viewpoints that you have to accept that have not been proven wrong. That's simply not valid.

That's why 1 is your only real option. It's the logical default for all claims. That is why I'm an atheist. I cannot accept things without evidence because that's the only way you can intelligently operate in the world.

This is why atheism isn't a faith as well. It's a logical rejection of theistic claims made without sufficient evidence.