Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/21/120521fa_fact_toobin#ixzz1vEXCqjWn

Groups of the like minded are more powerful than a single voice I agree, and that is precisely why legislation has been drafted to overturn the Supreme Court mistake you mention.

The odd thing about political partys today is the mandate to subscribe to the party platform or not be supported by the party. I mean if the party leaders feel their positions are that important then they should run and not depend upon surrogates.

Recently John Kerry feighed loss over Dick Lugar, as a moderate voice. John Kerry? That imbecile votes party line 97% of the time. Why is he necessary?

Conversely Scott Brown votes party line 54% of the time.

You either support the person’s principles, or that they are a mindless drone extension of some rarely seen actors. I fail to see how how supporting groups or parties or unions or corporations over individuals is tangential.

I sympathize with what I think is at the core of what you are saying and hope to find common ground going forward.

As for your comment today: This is common ground between us.

Dan,

I’ll check you link out shortly.

As for today’s quote. People need to ‘believe’ in something. If science cannot tell them answers, then they will believe in anything, plausible or not. Most religions started thousands of years ago before science really started answering fundamental questions accurately. Tradition propels religion through the centuries as a lifestyle choice, although sometimes not much of a choice is involved. One must grapple with the concept that you are pitting tradition with science. Some people just don’t like it when you move their cheese!!

As for being part of a group, I am tangential to any group. They do not embody me – just a particular interest on any given day and time. That way I can keep an objective mind and actually think about an issue, rather than being a mindless drone.

The article that is perhaps most interesting to us here is the one that touches on Religious and Sacred Imperitives in Human Conflict. It’s behind a subscription firewall though, so I can’t read the whole thing. The abstract though:

Religion, in promoting outlandish beliefs and costly rituals, increases ingroup trust but also may increase mistrust and conflict with outgroups. Moralizing gods emerged over the last few millennia, enabling large-scale cooperation, and sociopolitical conquest even without war. Whether for cooperation or conflict, sacred values, like devotion to God or a collective cause, signal group identity and operate as moral imperatives that inspire nonrational exertions independent of likely outcomes. In conflict situations, otherwise mundane sociopolitical preferences may become sacred values, acquiring immunity to material incentives. Sacred values sustain intractable conflicts that defy “business-like” negotiation, but also provide surprising opportunities for resolution.

Not “why?” and then some endless stream of hypotheses, but why would something be said to be both omnipotent and omnipresent, then also imperceptible? Seems a stupid waste of effort!

Heretic I would describe myself as a fiscal conservative Libertarian too. At least where socially I’m progressive but in disagreement with the great many fiscally progressive or liberal minded folks who favor excessive government spending to solve economic problems. (Keynes)

I like laissez-faire capitalism where government involves itself only enough surveillance over the enterprise system to ensure the social usefulness of all economic activity. (common defense)

As Andrew Jackson (Democrat) did, I too dislike it when the government imposes “unnecessary burdens upon the people” and that the government “has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution; and if its income is found to exceed these wants, it should be forthwith reduced, and the burdens of the people so far lightened”.

By “common sense” I’m thinking you speak of “unnecessary spending”?

As a Republican atheist I too am not mainstream/a pariah. I objected to a local Republican politician yesterday who said the following:

1) “At what point exactly do we as individuals give up our rights when we join a group?”
2) “Are we going to allow the collective rights of members of a group to be trampled if the basis of the group happens to be a profit motivation?”

I ask: Since when did groups of individuals get to expand their rights as members of groups? and “Since when do Republicans talk about being part of the collective?

The man explained that he should have rights as a small and medium business owner or member of a corporate group to use company funds to lobby and contribute to political influence and election and that I understand but I clarified for him that it is not the small and medium size groups that win that game, it is the large multinational corporations that overwhelmingly influence governance and that is corporatism. Champions of corporatism would include: Henry Ford, Benito Mussolini, the Roman Catholic Church to name a few.

People embody rights as individuals only, never as groups!

I have skeletons, and lots of them, I just don’t insist they stay locked up in any closet.

As for being gay, I don’t see sexuality as an absolute. I mean if we dig down to the ultimate deciding factor as a definition: “Would you every engage in sex with a member of the same sex?” then I can’t see me ever doing that. But if feelings of affection for a member of the same sex, or love of, or enjoying an embrace of count for anything then there must exist a space between extremes and in that space understanding is possible, even appreciation. (I’m pro same sex marriage)

At the risk of sounding like a closeted typical dopey cliched bigot “I have a black friend” well, I have a gay friend. She is my oldest friend, most dear to me, and I had hoped we could have been…Well you get the picture. Maybe there is truth to the idea that no one sympathisizes until it happens to you, maybe I’d not appreciate the difficulties gay people deal with if not for.

I agree it is a character flaw to depend upon religion for your morality. Nothing points to a lack of morality that a reliance on something other than one’s on character for morality. (If you need a 10 commandments you can’t be a moral person)

I am a Fiscal Conservative/Libertarian. Although I consider some of my social concepts to be traditional, I do not subscribe to any notions that are not backed by common sense. I am a pariah in the eyes of many Republicans, as are many gays, I would imagine. It doesn’t stop us voting for what we believe in; it just makes it a little harder to mingle, because we are not cookie-cutter.

I could never run for a political office (not that I would want to.) Even though I don’t have any skeletons in my closet, unlike many of the ‘faithful’, I am not main-stream.

Some people have very closed minds; others do not. Many are hypocrites. But, I see them more as people of character flaws than as the fault of religion. I just think that religion allows them to overlook their hypocracies – so they do.