I just ran across this post on a washingtonpost.com blog. The author, a prominent Jewish Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, argues that the Pew Forum survey on religion overestimates the number of atheists in the United States (they estimate about 1.6% of Americans). Rabbi Steinsaltz argues that “true atheists” have two rare qualities: 1) an understanding of what it really means to *not* believe in a divine power, and 2) an irrational, emotional belief that no God exists. (After all, God can neither be proved or disproved logically, and therefore true atheism as opposed to mere agnosticism requires an active belief in the absence of God.)
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Jul 092008
Jul 072008
McCain has promised to balance the budget by the end of his first term. How, you may ask? Well, its simple:
In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the McCain campaign says in a policy paper to be released Monday.
“The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.”
Uh… hold on Senator. Aside from the fact that Social Security is notoriously difficult to mess with, especially given the fact that you’ll likely be dealing with a hostile democratic congress, the Obama campaign has pointed out that:
McCain would have to pay for all of his new tax cuts and other proposals and then, on top of that, cut an additional $443 billion from the budget—which is … 78 percent of all discretionary spending outside of defense
Not to mention that you’ve also advocated extensions of the Bush tax cuts, and dramatically increasing the size of the military which only makes those figures worse. Good luck with that.
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Jul 062008
I found this article on the nuances of censorship on the internet to be quite interesting. As a libertarian, my primary concern is that the government doesn’t get involved – because that would make a real mess of things. As it stands, I think the market will sort itself out – if companies are too restrictive in terms of censorship, then creative people will go elsewhere and the companies will lose the dynamism that makes them popular. But overall, an interesting thing to think about…
Jul 032008
Right now, the United States is an active participant in two civil wars: Iraq and Afghanistan.
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How much is a human life worth?
I’m reminded of that question again, because of this case out of Pasadena, TX (a relatively poor suburb of Houston). Here’s what happened:
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