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Politics : Support the French! Viva Democracy! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (1746)	7/15/2003 11:05:32 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7841

Some good thoughts: ...Sastra is a well known and eloquent writer for the humanism movement. Her ability to succinctly express the humanist position makes her one of my favourite writers. ...With her permission, I am including this piece that she wrote as an essay for the Sheboygan Press in response to the deluge of editorial pleas that our country return to the imagined "christian roots". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "A Humanist's Perspective" "To make a memory truly permanent, it helps if you can add repetition to shock. When I logged onto my computer the morning of September 11 of 2001 I read a short blurb about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center and assumed a small plane had accidentally flown too low and clipped the building. I was wrong. What I later saw on my television screen looked like out-takes from a terrifying action movie. I suspect that the words that kept going through my mind, over and over, were echoed in the minds of all of us: oh those poor people. Those poor, poor people. And we watched it all happen, again and again, as the film kept repeating. We were trying to take in the fact that this was real life, and the real world. "I believe that what occurred that day demonstrated several hard truths to us. The first is that we are vulnerable -- even in our own office buildings and planes we are not safe. Even our mighty military buildings are not safe. There is no special protection for the innocent and the strong, and never has been. It was and is illusory. "The second hard truth is that America is only one part of the world, and events that take place overseas, resentments that build and explode in other areas, will have consequences in ours. We cannot insulate or isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity. We belong to a global community. What took place in New York was an attack not only on us but on every other nation that sides with us -- and in a way it was an attack even on the ones that don't. We are all in this together, whether we realize it or not. "The third hard truth is that what happened that day was not the result of insufficient Faith; it was stimulated by the terrible certainty that comes from theological conviction. It was inspired not only by a hatred of America but by a love of God and by the unshakable resolve to make oneself the obedient instrument of a Power and Cause greater and more important than individual human beings and their earthly lives. Over 200 years ago Voltaire wrote "it is a dangerous thing to burn a man alive on the strength of a conjecture." On September 11, over 6,000 Americans were burned alive on the strength of a conjecture. "The terrorists entered the airports armed not only with box cutters and knives, but with the Word of God and the desire to do His Will. They stepped onto those planes with not one shred of doubt that their faith could have been misplaced. They flew into the buildings with words of praise and prayer to God on their lips and holy scripture in their pockets, convinced that death was not the end for them. They did not question that the pain and suffering of this earth are all part of a great Plan for ultimate goodness and justice. Nor did they challenge their obligation as submissive servants of the Divine to put this plan into action. "And their prayers were answered, and the frantic and heartfelt prayers of the passengers and office workers were not. The gods always side themselves with the laws of physics. Faith will not move mountains, but it will move men to fly jets loaded with fuel into them and the mountains will come crashing down. "I think that what America and the world needs now is not more faith and trust in God, not more religious assurance and conviction, but the courage and the humility to doubt. Human beings should not claim to know what they do not know, they should not declare themselves certain in a way nobody can or should be certain. When we believe things with no test in reality there is no way for others to check us, and no way for us to check ourselves, to pause and reconsider in the light of common reason and common experience and common humanity. The terrorists would not -- and could not -- have gotten on those planes if they had not been so comfortably filled with the certitude that the world is divided into People of God and People of Satan, and thus there is no crime in eliminating the enemies of God. Crying out that one must hold fast to a faith in God and His eventual Goodness and Love would only have encouraged them onward. What they needed was a whisper of doubt. "Tolerance does not come out of the capacity for certainty but out of this ability to doubt -- out of the quiet voice of Reason that tells us "you might be wrong." When people no longer make a distinction between their belief in a God and the God in which they believe they become gods -- infallible, immovable, and capable of great acts of cruelty in the name of a higher, mysterious love. It has been written that "men seldom do evil so cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." We have seen the truth of this confirmed many times in the history of our civilizations. I think we saw this confirmed once more on September 11. "As America attempts to draw itself together in sympathy and sorrow I am afraid this lesson will be lost. Religion does not unite people: it divides them. It has even divided One Nation Indivisible. It works to separate the Godly from the Ungodly --Muslim from Christian, Protestant from Catholic, Buddhist from Hindu, Baptist from Wiccan and finally Theist from Atheist. Enough. We are all Americans of equal standing. We are each protected by a constitution that does not give a preference to any belief over any other because it wisely recognizes that religious speculation should not rest in the public domain of government policy, but in the private domain of individual conscience. "As a Secular Humanist and proud citizen of the United States, I do not pray. I can only hope and try to act on behalf of these hopes, urging us to solve our problems through our own best efforts. I hope that our nation will continue to reach out with the charity and heroism displayed by our rescue workers in New York. I hope that our country seeks justice with caution and patience, and with due consideration for the lives of innocent peoples overseas. Finally, I hope that America remains true to the rational principles of the Enlightenment on which it was founded and the civil rights and mutual respect embedded in our Constitution. There is an unbridgeable diversity in our unverifiable conjectures about other worlds and realities. The one certainty we all rest on together is this all too real world we create for ourselves. May we not forget we are and have always been united as individual Americans, as citizens of the World, and as portions of Humanity." "E Pluribus Unum" -- From Many, One.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (1746)	7/15/2003 11:07:46 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7841

Did you know Bush went to war with fat? I think he lost. observer.guardian.co.uk Bush declares war on fat America The Bush files - Observer special Ed Vulliamy in New York Sunday June 23, 2002 The Observer President George Bush yesterday turned from his war on terror to the war on fat, using his own body as a model for America to get fit. With a punishing week of diplomacy ahead of him - a summit of world leaders in Canada and an expected Middle East peace initiative - Bush chose to turn his nationwide radio address down a novel path for a head of state and inform Americans that 'exercise is a daily part of my life, and I urge all Americans to make it an important part of your lives'. 'I insist,' said Bush of his own staff, 'that they take time off, out of their daily grind, to get some exercise'. Bush is one in a long line of jogging, health-conscious Presidents - including his predecessors Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter - on top of which he has a daily regime of weight training. At 55, he can bench-press five repetitions of 185lb and run a six-and-three-quarter-minute-mile for three miles. 'Regularly hiking through a park can add years to your life,' Bush said in his weekly radio address. He said Americans should eat fruit and vegetables rather than fatty foods and refrain from smoking and excessive drinking. 'I know you're a better worker if you exercise on a daily basis. I know you'll help keep the healthcare costs down in America if you exercise on a daily basis. I know your life will be more complete if you exercise and serve a neighbour in need. 'Our message is simple, but important,' Bush said. The President's address, which followed a speech last week in which he announced a team of athletes and doctors for a President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, focused on exercise, with no mention of the packaged-food companies that donate to his coffers. However, the presidential address cast light on a serious crisis in a country where obesity has reached pandemic proportions. About 300,000 people died in the United States last year from obesity-related illnesses, which are also estimated to cost $117 billion (£73bn) in healthcare. Just over half of Americans are above their recommended weight, with 20 per cent qualifying as obese. About 14 per cent of teenagers and children are overweight (the rate in the Seventies was 5 per cent) and the problem correlates directly with poverty and ethnicity, being particularly serious among African and Native Americans. In response, Congress is considering a tax on junk food aimed at children and specific packaging codes and health warnings - modelled on those for cigarettes - for high fat and high sodium products. But the powerful trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, has members with sales adding up to $460bn and urges a Congres-sional panel on obesity not to blame America's health ailments on over-eating. The big junk and packaged food companies are afraid that they could be next in line for lawsuits of the kind levelled at the tobacco industry. As a result, they have tried to launch 'social-marketing' measures, such as school programmes and commercials on fitness and eating in moderation. Philip Morris, which already owes $100bn to 50 states in the tobacco settlement, is nervous because it owns Kraft foods, a leading manufacturer of cookies, hot dogs and other junk food.