The Book of Human

 I woke up in the middle of the night and, unable to return to sleep, stumbled across this article on Facebook: https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/ (HT to Cameron McCoy for sharing that). This line in particular struck me: "If all you knew about Christianity came from a close reading of the New Testament, you’d expect that Christians would be hostile to wealth, emphatic in protection of justice, sympathetic to the point of personal pain toward the sick, persecuted and the migrant, and almost socialist in their economic practices." One of the major problems I have with the pro-birth movement (I refuse to call them pro-life, because most of them quit caring after birth) is their willingness to use state power to enforce their beliefs, which includes the prosecution of doctors (and eventually women, just you wait) for terminating pregnancies.  Many of the people in this movement also abhor using taxes to support

  Well, I found my first topic.  Over the past few years, I've come to notice that people love posting memes that only sound good if you have zero education on the topic they address.  A lot of these focus on the topics of finance and economics.  Now, don't misunderstand me: both of these topics are chock full of some serious bullshit that seems purposefully designed to frustrate everyone, but there are some basic ideas about which some people are getting incredibly stupid. The most recent example is a tweet from some idiot going by Commie Warlock, who apparently thinks economics is magic.  It reads: "humans really made up paper money and to give it value said it's value was based on a metal which also has a made up value and then convinced everyone again that those made up values are constantly decreasing and that they determine whether or not a child can eat".  Holy shit.  I don't even know where to begin with this.   Okay, first, I'm glad those long ago

 Posting once a week?  What was I thinking? I don't know how often this will be updated, but I'll throw links on my Facebook page when I do, in case anyone is interested.  This will likely end up being a repository for my thoughts on various geek, news, or philosophy related thoughts that I don't want to inflict on someone else's comment thread and too long to post to my own FB page. Got some ideas brewing now.  Expect an update soonish.

What I Believe, Part 2 I've covered the philosophical underpinning, so let's talk application.  There's obviously a lot more to Kant's philosophy than what I wrote about in my last post, but I covered the parts that are important to me.  There are two big takeaways from all that: first, any rule you live by should be one you wouldn't mind everyone living by (meaning any action you justify taking should be one you would accept someone else doing to you), and second, every person is an end, not just a means.  The second part is a little complicated, but essentially, every person deserves to be dealt with as if they had worth in and of themselves and not as objects in your personal universe that only have worth in relation to their value to you. It's a simple idea that can be a little tough to put into simple language. So that's it.  That is the basis of how I navigate this crazy world, and how I evaluate another person's words and deeds.  Everythin

What I Believe, Part One I've had a number of people tell me I should start a blog.  I don't know if that's a good reason to actually start a blog, but I do a lot of thinking and it would be useful to nail down some of these thoughts.  Inviting comment from others is a good next step. I plan to discuss many topics here, so the first thing I want to do is lay out exactly how I look at the world. First, I took the title for this blog from a series of books that were a great influence on me at a young age.  I just wish the original author actually applied some of the ideals from those books in his own life. The most important thing to remember is that we all have some basic structure we apply to the world and what we expect from it.  Philosophy calls this worldview or paradigm or Weltanschauung, if you're feeling fancy (it's just worldview in German). It's the basis of any philosophy because it defines what you think the universe looks like and the rule