Thought crimes in Canada!?!

This pains me but I knew it was coming. This is clearly a thoughtcrime and quite disturbing, but then what do you expect in Canada home of the not-so-free! Lets face it, most have not read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So lets post a VERY important part:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. (source)

Who gets to decide what is justifiable!?! The government!! That's not a freedom that a privilege given by a dictatorial authority! It really is completely ridiculous but then our charter even gives the source of its nonsense in the preamble:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

Canada is therefore founded on the supremacy of an evil fictional character and the rules made up by our politicians, since that's the rule of law since our rights are actually privileges. COuldn't we put it more succinctly:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of Dracula and the decries of its politicians:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject whatever limitations the government decides.

There at least now it's honest. Well I hope I'm allowed the be thankful I am a US citizen with real rights and happy that even under Bush's ruining of the rule of law in the US I'm freer in the US!!

Here is Ezra laying it out! It's awesome and is my definition of a patriot.

Mexicans vs Candian Native Americans: what am I missing?

I was listening to the recent interview of Paul Martin by Steve Paikin when two important numbers were thrown out. The first was there are roughly a million aboriginals in Canada. The second was that the Kelowna accord was priced at $5 billion dollars (that an additional $5000 per aboriginal on top of the $6300 per aboriginal or $6.3 billion allocated in 2007 for Native affairs, see here) . Martin was stating that the aboriginals live in third world conditions.

Now as I though about the situation the parallels with Mexicans (or more generally central Americans) became apparent to me. Both live in 3rd world conditions and have little employment opportunity in their "homeland." So why is it Mexicans risk their lives to go to the US or Canada illegally, work crazy hours for crappy wages and send most of their money home to their family where as the aboriginals who have the right to work in Canada don't? As citizen they can get better education for them and their children than the Mexicans, healthcare since they are citizens andbetter jobs since they don't have to take illegal jobs. The aboriginals have what the rest of the poor world want, access to Canada and US jobs.

I guess one possibility is this isn't working for most immigrants who come here and spend most of their salary on remittance, which would beg the question why they stay or new immigrants continue to try to come in? Or maybe giving someone fish instead of teaching them to fish and letting them fish doesn't work. Am I missing some huge piece of the puzzle here?

The Jewish revelation and the Christian retractment

I've learned a little about the transition from Hebrews to Jews, specifically the Jewish revelation and it astounds me. While this happened in around 1000 B.C. for the enlightenment in the area (such as Babylon) the Jewish revelation really is far backwards and contorted "thinking."

So what is it? No it's not really monotheism. In a nutshell: You are Jewish if you have faith in Yehwah. On the surface this seems like monotheism is their revelation but I assure you it is not that simple. Before the Jews upto the dawn of civilization each city (which were very much like the Greek city-states) had a local deity. The deity was tied to the land the people were from so your god= your land (or "country"). When attacking another city the victors would often carry off the deity statues and paraphernalia of the conquered city as a trophy since they defeated the land and deity (they were one). Fast forward 2000+ years and the Hebrews face the problem of their leaders being deported to Babylon and so the people are separate. How can they remain the same people if they are no longer in geographic connection? Well, they say that Hebrews can be Jews as long as they believe in Yehwah even in other lands. But the other deities rule those other lands? So then Yehwah is the only god the others are local powers or something lesser or simply impostors. But the real kicker is the they take the tradition of the local deities being involved in human affairs and being right besides them (think of the deities as rationalizations of natural things they don't understand) and moved to the supernatural. This is where god gains his supernatural credentials, from the Jews. He is now outside of this world so he can't be stolen or captured by invading armies as is the case with other local deities.

This solves a lot of the political and defeatist problem the Hebrews were having (they were always losing to various other civilizations) since they could be defeated as Hebrews but not as Jews. But the price they paid is pretty astounding even for the time. They were forced the live with the inherit contradiction of a supernatural god who affects the natural but can't be affected by it (captured) and can through worship, sacrifice etc. Local deities clearly are in the lives of the people who worship them since it is the natural world around them so it is analogous to say the land provides them with the resources and production or to say the deity blesses them with resources and production. They Jews are forced to this difficult mental gymnastics of a supernatural god and clearly this didn't catch on well and is especially ironic that now to be Jewish you need to be born of a Jew so it went from land to creed to genes.

What is even sillier is the Christians then go (in one sense) backwards to making their deity earthly again by having a human version/component/avatar to their god. This makes the connection to the natural world stronger than the Jews and is more similar to the ancient local gods. The silly part is they have both a natural god (Jesus) and a supernatural and impersonal (god) and a supernatural and personal (holy spirit)!

So the way I see it while Judaism started around 3000 years ago it took 1300 years to sell the silly idea of the supernatural (something external from the natural as opposed to natural but powerful gods like Zeus and Thor) and the idea has clearly peaked and is loosing ground, but it may be another 1000 years before it is in the minority. What an oddity that after 1700 years of the silly supernatural contradiction, we are trying to move back to the local deities (now called countries or even just sports teams) since it makes more sense than the "revelation". Now that we have science to explain the natural world we can once again move to the natural world but this time without the "colorful" but wrong explanations for phenomenon (like lightning).

I love this pope! He's hysterical!!

No I'm serious. I've often said as a scientific naturalist who would like people to critically exam their faith at best but at the least confine the fighting amongst religions, this pope is a "god send" (lol). He has restored interfaith tension, made the biggest Christian church sillier than ever and he constantly makes a fool of himself. (This is important since when religions aren't at odds they attack homosexuals and secular society and we have progress to be made so it is helpful when they are distracted). Recently here is how he plans to get ride of pedophilia in the priesthood (thanks Ron for the info):

Pope Benedict XVI has instructed Roman Catholics to pray “in perpetuity” to cleanse the Church of paedophile clergy. All dioceses, parishes, monasteries, convents and seminaries will be expected to organise continuous daily prayers to express penitence and to purify the clergy.

Vatican officials said that every parish or institution should designate a person or group each day to conduct continuous prayers for the Church to rid itself of the scandal of sexual abuse by clergy. Alternatively, churches in the same diocese could share the duty. Prayer would take place in one parish for 24 hours, then move to another.

Vatican watchers said that there was no known precedent for global prayer on a specific issue of this kind. There are about one billion Roman Catholics worldwide. (source)

Now I'm not surprised since the level of cognitive dissidence it must take to be pope must be truly phenomenal. To spend so many days convincing yourself of these lies and then telling others about them claiming they are true, that can't be easy (but at least you get to live in a palace).

What's more on the same site I found a list of the top 20 offenses to religion. I was disappointed to see that South Park was not included and Life of Brian was so low, but they are really funny and insightful. These are the growing pains of the modern world shedding off it's past (religion) and while the past will always be with us, it's influence will degenerate.