YouTube Must Change Their Rules On Flagging, ETC. Abuses

The free flow of information is paramount on a free society. This abuse is tatamount to bullying people into silence. It is wrong and it is unAmerican. Reform is needed and can be achieved in time. In the end it will effect their bottom line with people leaving YouTube for a place where their rights are respected and recognized. I hope they will wake up in time before it is to late and their is noone left to complain about it.

Uganda's Godly Government

I recently heard of some awful legislation coming out of the Parliament in the African country of Uganda. This legislation would be an awful blow to the humans rights of homosexuals in this country. And you guessed it the people behind it all are motivated by their religious faith. That faith isn’t radical Islamic Fundamentalism, it is American Christian Fundamentalism. And it was religious conservatives in the American Congress and prominent Fundamentalist preachers who were supporters of this African government.
Uganda was not always like this. Once upon a time this country was like any other country in Africa. In one way it was different, its policy on AIDS prevention was the most effective in Africa. It was based on a reasoned and science based system which says Abstain from sex, if you have sex Be monogamous, or if you insist on not being monogamous where a Condom. This simple adage was used through out Uganda and the result was that the AIDS rate was on the decline.
Then the Bush administration’s effort to help Africa’s AIDS problem began. But certain conservative Christian Republicans wanted the majority of the money that was going to Africa to be used for abstinence programs. Abstinence programs in the U.S. looked good, for the religious conservatives, but were entirely ineffectual at stopping STD’s and pregnancies. The results for Uganda was exactly the same, the AIDS rate went from a decline to a doubling in number.
All the while Christian fundamentalists were gaining more and more influence in that country. The results were that the new leader of Uganda, his wife and the government officials were born again Christians. And then the failed abstinence programs they instated did not stop the AIDS infections from spreading. So they tried something that went with their born again Christian theology and are trying pass legislation that would punish people for being or associating with Ugandan homosexuals. The leadership’s theology believed that gay people chose to be gay and could recant from being gay through the force of national law.
These new laws, if passed, would 1. Would make any gay person who has AIDS to be put to death by hanging. 2. Gay people who did not have AIDS would simply be put in prison for the rest of there life. 3. Anyone who associates with gay people and not turn them into the authorities would be punished by three years in prison.
Human rights groups brought this to the attention of the world and now all those American conservative Christians politicians and preachers who so supported the Ugandan regime are either decrying these laws or remained silent on the issue. This godly government of Uganda that these people created has become a monster. They will be held responsible for all the abuses and deaths that their biblically inspired policies toward this country have wrought. This is what happens when you try to institute governmental policies based on theology rather than on reason and basic human dignity. These same American religious conservatives preachers and politicians would want to impose this theology on American soil. I would wager we would get similar results that were to be found in Uganda. So we as atheists and human rights advocates must be on the lookout for signs of theocracy in own country. As a great patriot once said “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

Harm in Believing?

I am writing this in response to the editorial “No harm believing” by Henrietta Harris in the Thursday, December 3, 2009 edition of the Belleville News-Democrat.
In her letter she rightly claims that there is no scientific support for the creationism of the Bible. It is a myth and nothing more. But then she goes on and says that other parts of the Bible are supportable in science. In this she is dead wrong. Which parts are scientifically supportable? The Sun stopping in the sky, the flat Earth, the virgin birth, the sky made of metal, the talking snake and donkey, or maybe the parting of the Red Sea. These and other fanciful stories are that, stories. Stories told by an ancient, superstitious people with almost no knowledge of science.
In another paragraph she wrote the incorrect definition of scientific theory. Theory, as defined by scientists, is basically the best way to explain the evidence at hand. Evolution has been able to explain the tons of evidence better than any other theory out there. The scientists look at the evidence and draw their conclusions from that. This is how real science works.
I would write that there is harm in believing because as Richard Dawkins once said, “Belief makes you accept answers to questions that are not really answers.” What you lose by believing is your ability to think critically and that makes a person gullible.