Gay Marriage, Swine Flu, and Dissension in the Ranks of Evolution Supporters

Gay Marriage, Swine Flu, and Dissension in the Ranks of Evolution Supporters

Gay Marriage
Iowa has become the third state to legalize Gay Marriage, and as a supporter of Gay Marriage that’s good news to me. I don’t however see a tidal wave of states rushing to adopt similar legislation, most will go for Civil union instead. That’s problematic in it’s own right due to federal code that prevents SSI and other benefits from going to children of gay parents, which doesn’t seem too “pro family” to me. It would be good if the sections defining benefits as going only to married heterosexuals were extended to permit that, otherwise there will be no compromise in states proposing civil union as opposed to marriage.
I like the idea of this controversial social issue working at state level with the sole exception of that benefits question. Given time and test social issues are best initially solved state by state: because in a legislative labratory of fifty states eventually someone will hit on method that’s best for everyone and then it will become adopted in widespread manner. I dislike the contentious and hysterical people trying to decide this issue yesterday at both ends of that spectrum.

Flu Outbreak
A good article at Pajamas Media goes into the panic attack over the flu outbreak, and states that some might be profitting from the panic. I agree; it’s the flu, and people die every year from variations of it. The panic posts might get hits, but it’s sliding into yellow journalistic ground to artificially inflate panic by not comparing to the flu outbreaks we have every year:

With the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, there always has to be something to say. You need excitement. “We’re all gonna die!” sells papers and gets people talking. What’s missing is a sense of proportion. Somehow, the way these things get blown up is never a big story — and hardly anyone is appropriately horrified.

Evolution, Pragmatism or Agnosticism?

In the Evolution discussion Richard Hoppe at Panda’s Thumb dissents from the Coyne/PZ Meyers view. I’m in agreement with Hoppe, but it’s not pragmatism alone that makes it so.

The pragmatism goes like this: Since we hope to convince more conservatives that teaching religion in science class is a bad thing, then we shouldn’t hand out the big smackdown to religion by essentially agreeing with Discovery Institute’s dichotomous view that to be a good Christian you must be opposed to science, since the Coyne/Meyers version of that is just the obverse wedge: If you support science then you must automatically deny G-d.

One is philosophy, the other religion – neither wedge should be allowed in science. Ayn Rand said “Politics is philosophy in action.” If we allow the teaching of a politics in science that denies G-D, then not only are we diminishing Science and being unpragmatic, we are also proselityzing a philosophy.

That’s probably just as unconstitutional as teaching religion as science, and as you will see below it’s not scientific. If the rabid atheists  must have that view taught then like religion it belongs in history, philosophy, and social classes, but not in science classes.

One of my heroes in this ongoing political struggle is Genie Scott and she explains this much better than I in the video below.

Even as a child I did not have faith, and PZ in many ways is like an ex-smoker in that he had faith and changed his mind – now he wants everyone else to. So he’s taking a hardline and saying that Evolution’s defenders should go on offense in his reply to Hoope here.