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1.15.2005
Wow, I think I've found a okie blog that frustrates me even more than Chaz at Dustbury.com; who, in the interest of full disclosure, does have his moments of brilliance. I don't know the author of Red Dirt Blog. He might be a nice enough fellow. Or maybe not, maybe he's an asshole in real life. Funny thing about these blogs. They tell you so very little about a person other than his views on various topics. If all you ever knew about me was from reading this blog, you would have a very distorted picture of who I really am. All we have to work with are the words people give to us. And I openly admit that I base my judgments on the words I have read. Dustbury and Red Dirt Blog frustrate me because both claim to represent a form of aww-shucks common sense that's really just a thin film of apologetics for their own cultural biases; an equal opportunity "They're all rats" form of thinking that allows them to take pot shots at the imaginary demons that are tearing down a idealized vision of society "as it should be." What has become abundantly clear to me over the years of thinking about people and the choices they make, is that you can not simply ascribe a person's decisions in life to their intellect. We do not look at the world with a clear lens. We carry with us the emotional attachments that influence how we see the world. Its a basic part of human nature. We need to realize that our opinions are not born in a vacuum. Most often they are the product of our own emotional, cultural or social bias. Witness an example: Whatever else you can say about this year's bitter and divisive presidential election, one aspect of George W. Bush's win has been extremely gratifying to me personally -- and that's the defeat of what I call the Geriatric Ponytails. But, there is a difference between sober political analysis and publicly fighting battles with your old demons. Learn the difference. I'm not a psychoanalyst but sheesh, I don't have to be. Read through this entire post on the "Geriatric Ponytails" and its obvious that Red Dirt has built a careful rationalization to justify his current lifestyle; one that rejects the "childish" ways of "The Left" He doesn't need to apologize for this. We all do it. I try to be very careful about letting my own "bone to pick" seep into my writings here. I too, have my own defense arguments carefully crafted to fend off any and all takers that wish to question "who I am and what I do with my life". I delete many posts because they wander too far away from analysis into apology. "I think there are a lot of aging hippies out there with good hearts and good minds. They've had a positive impact on many elements of our society, but they also chose to grow up after the sixties." Growing up, and being a "grown up" means rejecting the ideologies of the left and embracing the real world? A Real World that forces us to make decisions based on society's own preferences. (But that can be the subject of lots of other postings) What we, people that write about politics, human nature and opinion need to wary of, is letting our own defensive excuses for our own lifestyles get in the way of being honest. For it is then that we become excessively lazy in compartmentalizing the world into small ridiculous groups of people that we take turns mocking. Most times the people that we are mocking are just a small fraction of idiots that we have conflated into some larger conspiracy. I might be unfairly using Red Dirt Blog as an example. Its just the one that started me thinking about this topic. I feel vindicated that on November 3rd, Americans turned out to vote, and they turned out to reject the leftist nonsense and hatespeak the Democrat party peddled this year. I also felt that this year's election represented the last gasp of the Vietnam-era New Left, as represented by a cohort of angry, illogical Baby Boomers who had decided to never grow up Here we see that theme again. Growing up. The Faith Factor The Faith Factor - Part Two The Radical Left Meltdown Otherwise you find yourself writing absurd defenses of bad science as a means of protecting your own decision to be a person of religious faith. Separate the two for gosh sakes!! ID theorists purport to show the hand of an intelligent creator in the elegant structure of our biology, our existence and our cosmos. Their theories are complex and layered. Whatever the merits of this new body of theory, and whether it has connections to conservative politics, at least it deserves a full airing in an article that seeks to question its legitimacy. .. and the reason why it doesn't? Nevertheless, we can't expect or anticipate that sort of honest debate from the atheistic gliberatti. Typically, they will not provide anything of the sort. Despite the facade of "intellectual honesty" they so assiduously maintain, it's not in their nature, nor is it an article of their radical and increasingly hostile faith. NOOOOOOO!!!!! Its rejected because its BAD SCIENCE! Get over yourself. Get past the little fairy tale that some "atheistic glibberatti" is conspiring to keep a legitimate scientific theory from seeing the light of day. ID is bad science and it has always been bad science. Good scientists have even taken the time to tell us WHY it is bad science. Intelligent Design is a media darling. This "battle" is being waged in the court of public opinion because in the realm of science it was an unfair fight. The only reason ID is still alive despite its deserved "crackpot" designation is because of the symbolical usefulness it represents to those that are "fighting the good fight for God". I like this quote from Gould: "Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)." A good thing for bloggers to keep in mind as well. That's where I'll end for now... though this topic deserves greater discussion. Q) Why aren't people so fired up to declare other old-Earth sciences like plate tectonics as "just a theory"? |
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