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Considering the fact that men of faith were the ones to fly a plane into the World Trade Center; that men of faith were the ones to molest little boys, and receive the backing of the Catholic Church; that men of faith have been tearing up Europe for decades now in one form of sectarian violence after another: I think your comment should be re-worded:

oh you mean men of ATHEIST FAITH like STALIN MAO POL POT HOXHA, etc…mass murderers…or how about racists like your hairygod darwin?

the whole eugenics movement…I’m sure you’re proud, you piece of trash.

I’d like to see some evidence that she wants to win over youngsters, rather than just join them in their delusions. If you buy into some lefty notions, but not all, is that enough to gain the uppper hand, or is it just the prelude to a justified extinction?

littleguy on April 15, 2009 at 2:15 PM

I don’t know her motivations. Perhaps it is just vanity.

The GOP needs to win elections to control congressional committees and choose judges. Right now it is approaching extinction in urban areas and much of both coasts.

Yes, but the GOP also needs to attend to recruiting 20-somethings. Meghan isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but she is speaking to an audience that the GOP has recently had little relevance with. Unless the GOP is counting on a bunch of muggings with 30-somethings it will have some statistical problems in a decade.

dedalus on April 15, 2009 at 9:43 AM

I’d like to see some evidence that she wants to win over youngsters, rather than just join them in their delusions. If you buy into some lefty notions, but not all, is that enough to gain the uppper hand, or is it just the prelude to a justified extinction?

Republicans are supposed to be what you become after you’ve been mugged by reality.

Squiggy on April 15, 2009 at 6:29 AM

Yes, but the GOP also needs to attend to recruiting 20-somethings. Meghan isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but she is speaking to an audience that the GOP has recently had little relevance with. Unless the GOP is counting on a bunch of muggings with 30-somethings it will have some statistical problems in a decade.

Republicans are supposed to be what you become after you’ve been mugged by reality.

Following an Enlightenment philosopher’s views from a strictly religious perspective is absurd.

Frankly, I’m not convinced about the absurdity. I am convinced that ignoring the relative meaning of “evident” when Locke views God as “evident” is a massive equivocation on Locke. And that invoking Locke to attribute nature as creator when nature has not evidenced anything Locke or the founders attributes to the to this role, and that somehow it is contingent upon Locke.

It’s also not clear that it is a “strictly religious” perspective, as Locke was writing political and moral philosophy. You may want to regard it as such, but it’s certainly not required, and it doesn’t answer on equivocation.

And if man is to live in society, then he must set some requirements of his own on his neighbors, namely: that they not kill him; steal from him; or enslave him in some way or another.

Man lived long enough in society with slavery. So that is patently false. That changes when it matters not as much that man “lives” within a society but how he lives within a society. However evolution only cares if he propagates his genes before dying. If he does that, he’s a winner, evolution-wise.

But it is a widely agreed upon fact that humans have ceased to “evolve” in the same way as other, lower animals

I have no idea where you get this. Human-exceptionalism is rather deprecated in modern evolutionary theory. Larry Moran, a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, has this to say, “The idea that humans have stopped evolving is ridiculous. It reflects a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.”

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/01/have-humans-stopped-evolving.html

I am at an equal loss as to how you can sum my understanding of evolution by my simple statement a plain fact of evolution. That evolution, as a force of nature, differentially rewards traits.

But in terms of atheistic dogmatism, if the absence of God should be the default assumption, absent any proof, how does it help you that we might have some unkown source of equality through nature. Unless we can clearly identify natures provision for equality, it hardly makes it proof, and absent proof, why wouldn’t a simple acceptance of a lack of “equality” provided by nature be more in line with this “rational” principle?

So if our standard is “we hold these truths to be self-evident” it is not clear that a possible maybe does the same job.

It’s ironic that if tomorrow I couldn’t see a path to God and renounced him, supposedly I would never again have to justify my lack of finding a way to God. Yet if I have sincere doubts about the lack of a natural principle of equality, I usually end up with the suggestion that I haven’t tried hard enough, or there might be some mechanism out there that does it–or otherwise that I am blind for not seeing their path.

However, the general characteristic methodology of atheism suggests that there is no harm in doubting what someone does not consider provable. Thus if that has an application larger than deciding the question of Gods, a mere possibility should require no one to admit that equality is “self-evident” or even that clear.

Axeman on April 14, 2009 at 10:04 PM

Following an Enlightenment philosopher’s views from a strictly religious perspective is absurd. Certainly Locke was a religious man, but he argued from reason, and not from faith. “Natural” rights descend from nature, not from divinity. This is not to say that “nature,” as if a person, “gives” humans rights. Bambi, in other words, is not the originator of rights; but it is reality (i.e. nature), and the requirements it sets upon man, which is the basic foundation of human rights. All of morality is conditional upon one assumption: that man chooses to live on this Earth. If man chooses to live, then he must follow the demands reality sets upon him. And if man is to live in society, then he must set some requirements of his own on his neighbors, namely: that they not kill him; steal from him; or enslave him in some way or another. Any three of those things (or any variant of said three) is antithetical to the sustenance of human life and the pursuit of human happiness.

All I have just written is based on objective fact, and not religious doctrine. This is the heart of the Constitution, regardless of some scattered references to a magical, unproved, and unprovable, “Creator” of the universe.

Your, and the rather ironically named “right4life’s,” understanding of evolution is sadly lacking. Certainly, organisms are born with “competitive advantages,” as you say. But it is a widely agreed upon fact that humans have ceased to “evolve” in the same way as other, lower animals — namely, because of our state of being conscious, conceptual, volitional creatures, which gives us the ability to mold our environments to our desires and needs. The same cannot be said of any other organism, with minor exceptions. Without volition, no rights or code of morals are/is possible — or, indeed, necessary, because instinct would rule every single interaction between organisms, and no form of arbitration (internal or ex) would be needed.

Contrary to what religionists would have the general public believe, you need not, and cannot, justify rights with mysticism. Nor is atheism synonymous with material mysticism, i.e. communism. It is simply libelous and stupid to claim otherwise. (I’m looking at you, right4life.)

right4life on April 14, 2009 at 10:12 PM

Considering the fact that men of faith were the ones to fly a plane into the World Trade Center; that men of faith were the ones to molest little boys, and receive the backing of the Catholic Church; that men of faith have been tearing up Europe for decades now in one form of sectarian violence after another: I think your comment should be re-worded:

from a theist? surely you jest! as we’ve seen once they get in power those ‘rights’ are whatever they say God says they are

FIFY

from an atheist? surely you jest! as we’ve seen once they get in power those ‘rights’ are whatever they say they are

Well, of course I jest. And I’m sarcastic, to boot.

I just recently read an essay on Locke which points out that Locke was the chief opponent against Hobbesian view that everything was negotiated out of power, by providing the self-evident God as a buffer between rampant private oppression in Hobbes’ “State of Nature” and Hobbes’ solution of the state ever on the brink of totalitarianism, necessary to reign in the passions of natural man and Hobbes’ determinism.

One of my principles is intellectual honesty, i.e. not faking reality to preserve antiquated delusional beliefs and traditions for their own sakes. So I am not contradicting myself by attacking Christianity; in fact, I am being wholly consistent. Try again.

breek on April 14, 2009 at 6:17 PM

believing in the quaint racist eugenicist idea of evolution sure is an antiquated atheist fairy tale.

you atheists think you’re the smartest people in the room…when you prove the bible ….professing to be wise, they have become fools…

Plenty of people agree with the Republican positions on foreign policy, taxes, spending, school choice, etc…But the negative attitude, and social litmus tests turn people off.

therightwinger on April 14, 2009 at 9:00 PM

actually its people like you that turn me off from the GOP.

Yes, you can settle the question for everybody…. sure. Just alert me when you do it with some coherency?

Axeman on April 14, 2009 at 10:04 PM

from an atheist? surely you jest! as we’ve seen once they get in power those ‘rights’ are whatever they say they are…since they think they’re god….

What I don’t understand is why those who seek to keep marriage rights segregated don’t just come out and say they are bigots. Actually, maybe I do understand, as being a bigot means one is in a minority and those who fight to keep marriage law unequal think they are in a majority.

Viscount_Bolingbroke on April 14, 2009 at 7:14 PM

so you’re not for polygamy? if not, you’re a BIGOT!!

you’re against pedophilia? if so you’re a BIGOT

actually you’re just an idiot.

gay ‘marriage’ is not marriage at all….its scum like you that want to end freedom of religion, all for your hellish little fascist gay agenda.

Your “Creator” is nature; the Founders were heavily influenced by John Locke (practically plagiarizing him at times), who believed in natural, not magical, rights. To justify a person’s rights by saying that his imaginary friend lent them to him, is hardly a valid argument.

That’s not what Locke believed at all. He believed that God, as Author and Creator and ultimate Moral Judge, a self-evident fact (read book II of Human Understandingagain). You need to put that into the mix of his “natural” rights. Anything else is a ridiculous equivocation.

This is why our founders held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Where do you get that it is “self-evident” that nature created us “equal”? Is that how Evolution works, everybody is “created equal”? Without competitive advantages?

What does Nature give us “unalienably”? Nature has the advantage over God in the Problem of Evil, as it is not ever attributed with promising us anything. God stands condemned for having promised us better in the PoE, but not Nature. And even so, God stands condemned for the very same calamities we accept from Nature.

Nature cannot be the guarantor of anything, inalienable or not. Thus we have two “observable” rights that fall by the wayside when attributed to your “Creator”.

So, you argue Locke diametrically out of context, simply because he says words you can bend your way, and to top that off when examined by your attributed creator we find that equality and unalienable things vanish. It seems to me that Locke wasn’t right at all. Neither about God being self-evident, nor unalienable rights being evident from Nature.

Yes, you can settle the question for everybody…. sure. Just alert me when you do it with some coherency?

Plenty of people agree with the Republican positions on foreign policy, taxes, spending, school choice, etc…But the negative attitude, and social litmus tests turn people off.

In other words, she wants the GOP to become Democrats! Why does anyone read this woman’s column? She’s as irrelevant as her father now is! Tomorrow, you will begin to see the future and these pseudo conservatives will either join in or be run over!

CrusaderPatriot on April 14, 2009 at 8:02 PM

She lives in NYC where elected Republicans are liberal and socially conservative Republicans don’t hold office.

breek on April 14, 2009 at 7:28 PM

Further it took several years of war following the Declaration for the rights to have a chance. The war could have easily gone the other way and the signers of the Declaration likely hung.

Is this tthe first time you’ve been in love? Be careful. She’s twice the woman Sarah Palin is; maybe three times.

CrusaderPatriot dot com