Tag Archives: false cause arguments

General discussion

Phylum stuff

1 Comment

As overlord, I'd make sure we had an empirically-driven discussion about gun violence, the kind an insurance adjuster would have–to start, at least.  We can also talk about rights, and the second amendment, and constitutional originalism and all of that. 

It's going to be difficult to have that discussion, because a lot of people are influenced by that guy, the Reverend James Dobson (via Huffington Post):

Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I'm not talking politically, I'm not talking about the result of the November sixth election; I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.

I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or he's irrelevant to me and we have killed 54 million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences, too.

And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the scripture and on God almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that's what's going on.

When was God's judgement not falling on us?  When the hell was that?  Tell me so I can know the difference.  

Dobson was positively Cartesian, however, compared to this fellow from Tennessee:

Morris insisted that “humanism” in schools taught Lanza that he was God and “he can just go blow away anybody he wants.”

“When I got in high school, man, I started learning all this kingdom, phylum stuff, all this junk about evolution,” he recalled. “And I want to tell you what evolution teaches — here’s the bottom line — that you’re an animal. That’s what it teaches. So, you’re an animal, you can act like an animal. Amen.”

“So, here you are, you’re an animal and you’re a god! So, what are we going to teach you about in school? Well, we can teach you about sex, we can teach you how to rebel to you parents, we can teach you how to be a homo! But we’re definitely not going to teach you about the word of God! Amen.”

I think God's punishment will continue.

General discussion

A true gentlemen

4 Comments

And another.  This one even worse than Huckabee (AP via Huffington Post):

The question is going to come up, where was God? I though God cared about the little children. God protects the little children. Where was God when all this went down. Here's the bottom line, God is not going to go where he is not wanted.

Now we have spent since 1962 — we're 50 years into this now–we have spent 50 years telling God to get lost, telling God we do not want you in our schools, we don't want to pray to you in our schools, we do not want to pray to your before football games, we don't want to pray to you at graduations, we don't want anybody talking about you in a graduation speech…

In 1962 we kicked prayer out of the schools. In 1963 we kicked God's word out of ours schools. In 1980 we kicked the Ten Commandments out of our schools. We've kicked God out of our public school system. And I think God would say to us, 'Hey, I'll be glad to protect your children, but you've got to invite me back into your world first. I'm not going to go where I'm not wanted. I am a gentlemen."

I don't get this picture of God: "God is powerful, but insecure, like Barbara Streisand before James Brolin".

General discussion

This did not take long at all

3 Comments

Mike Huckabee, former Presidential candidate, Governor of Arkansas, and current bass player and Baptist minister, has already figured out the cause of the latest mass shooting in Newtown Connecticut, from TPM:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee attributed the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in part to restrictions on school prayer and religious materials in the classroom.

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News, discussing the murder spree that took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, CT that morning. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

Law enforcement has released few details on the alleged gunman, but Huckabee suggested that the separation of church and state may have spurred his rampage.

"[W]e've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability — that we're not just going to have be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment," Huckabee said. "If we don't believe that, then we don't fear that."

He said those suffering from a crisis from faith should look to God in the community's response to the violence. But he added that "Maybe we ought to let [God] in on the front end and we wouldn't have to call him to show up when it's all said and done at the back end."

I don't get people like this.