For All the Wrong Reasons

I came across an interesting insight today. It is as such:

When gay marriage is made legal, it won't be because it's the right thing to do; it'll be because the commercial possibilities of having them will be realized. Because, if I can speak stereotypically for a moment, who would throw a more elaborate wedding than two gay men?

Filing Taxes

Me: I think it's ridiculous that they keep that 54 dollars. I don't make enough money for them to keep that. I want that 50 dollars back!

Jesse: It pays for the services that the government renders you.

Me: They can render me a fucking blow job!

Seperated from Reality

The other day I was walking along with someone; let's call her Ms. Bootless. We were passing by some storage tanks that held liquid oxygen. For whatever reason, there were crewmen there venting off some of the O2. It looked really cool. The pipe it was venting out was coated with frost all along it's length. Fabulous science!

But that's not really the point. Ms. Bootless got all weirded out and didn't know what they were doing. She crossed the street and wouldn't go near it. "Why are they doing that? What is that?" she asked. I told her they were just releasing some liquid O2, that it was just oxygen. It didn't matter to her, and she said she wasn't going to go near it.

Now this event may not seem like a whole lot to someone who is not acquainted with Ms. Bootless. She bothers me, and it took me a long time to figure out why that was. And now I think I have a decent idea of why she bugs me so much. Here's the thing: I still have this silly idealistic notion that every person is worth something. She disconfirms that fanciful notion of mine.

Life, as I see it, builds toward something. It's different for everyone, and no one goal is intrinsically more "worthy" than any other. Ms. Bootless isn't building toward anything. She's said enough to the effect that she wants to just be in heaven so her troubles will be over. Setting aside my first reaction to that, it strikes me as a futile existence waiting for life to end. Where's the fulfillment in that? That's just subsistence with no meaningful prospects, completely setting aside the metaphysical garble that is the afterlife.

Either that, or she's just annoying.

Does this make me weird?

I spent my lunch break today writing. It started out with my opinion on the nonexistence of free will. How many twenty-one year old guys actually think about stuff like that? It moved from there into the changing ratio of human understanding vs. the realm of god. Through time, scientists reach their limit and attribute the out-of-reach portion to god. Then someone comes along and licks the problem that stumped the previous intrepid individual. It's a lesson of human limitations and the development of human knowledge.

My point is that, over time, the god explanation has been used less and less to cover an unknown. Now, it's a 'we don't don't know...but we will' attitude that I think is much better. Still though, people insist on throwing in the god card. As a species, we haven't discovered everything, but I think we've uncovered enough to where we should realize that the blanket explanation of big-sky-daddy is no longer necessary. There's a system in place where we can find answers, test them, accept them, and revise them.

Isn't that grand?

I just think we need to be careful. If ID is allowed to encroach on the already pitiful state of public education, we could forever lose our standing in the intellectual world. While Western society was entrenched in Church instituted Dark Ages, the Muslim world was the center of of scientific discovery. If that doesn't give you the willies about the power of religion induced promotion of ignorance, then yeah.

This is how I spend my time.