Zoe’s Journal

I found this article to be simply outrageous.

DENVER - A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

“Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up,” he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

WHAT?!!? Oh my God, this is crazy. A peace sign certainly isn’t unpatriotic! And even if it is, doesn’t everyone have the right to an opinion? What about all of those jesus-fishes and bumper stickers on vehicles?! I sense a double-standard here!

But, wait. It gets worse.

Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn’t say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members.

I really want to know how any president of an association can FIRE all of the elected members of a committee! Also, whatever happened to the so-called constitutional right to free speech???

Jensen isn’t taking any shit:

Lisa Jensen said she wasn’t thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, “Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing.”…

Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000, and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she’s not going to take it down until after Christmas.

“Now that it has come to this I feel I can’t get bullied,” she said. “What if they don’t like my Santa Claus.”

She even used to be a an association president! Maybe this is entirely a jealousy case…

It’s true…

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian man who could not figure out how to deal with his girlfriend’s feverish 10-month-old daughter put the baby into a freezer to cool her down, a local newspaper reported on Friday.

Derrick Hardy faces charges of criminal negligence and assaulting the infant, who was rescued when her mother came home, the Charlottetown Guardian said.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said the mother found the girl crammed into the freezer alongside ice cubes and hamburger meat. Hardy said he had left the door ajar but the mother said it had been closed when she returned.

He told a court in the eastern province of Prince Edward Island on Thursday the child had only been in the freezer for about 40 seconds.

Hardy, 21, who admitted to police that he had no real parenting skills to deal with a sick child, said he had noticed the girl was very hot and put a cool cloth on her face, but this had no effect.

He then carried the girl outside into the night air but, frustrated that this also did not work and worried she might drown if placed in a cold bath, he put the baby into the kitchen freezer. She was wearing only an undershirt.

A local doctor said the mother had described her baby as “crying, sobbing and terrified.” The child spent several days in the hospital to recover from first and second-degree freezer burns on her head and torso.

Hardy has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The baby’s grandmother now has custody of the girl.

Poor ignorant guy! I’m sure he thought he was helping… what is this world coming to?!

Here is a great quote I came across:

Russell’s teapot was an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, to refute the idea that the onus lies somehow upon the sceptic to disprove the unfalsifiable claims of religion. In an article entitled Is There a God?, commissioned (but never published) by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Russell said the following:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

In his book A Devil’s Chaplain, Richard Dawkins developed the teapot theme a little further:

The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell’s teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don’t exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don’t stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don’t warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don’t kneecap those who put the tea in first.

I think I’ll start the Teapot Religion…

Thanks for the idea, Richard.

Moving on from the introduction of Dawkin’s latest book, The God Delusion, we find chapter one entitled ‘A Deeply Religious Non-Believer’. A large portion of this chapter deal with the question ‘How much respect is religion actually entitled to?‘ The first section is called ‘Deserved Respect’, and that is what I’ll cover today. While I actually found the second part more interesting, this portion must be explained in order to play fair.

Dawkins begins by talking about how people are drawn to religion, or, in his case, to Science. In most cases, people make their decisions when they young, by wondering how something as beautiful and complex as, say, an ant colony, came into being. Depending upon their education and upbringing, some turn to religion, while others take the scientific route.

I read this section a couple of nights ago, and kept a highlighter handy. There was so much good stuff, that I’m afraid I won’t be able to fit it all into a decent-length post. However, I shall try.

An American student wrote to me that she had asked her professor whether he had a view about me. ‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘He’s positive science is incompatible with religion, but he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe. To me, that is religion!’ But is ‘religion’ the right word? I don’t think so.

I’ve met many people who said the same - that believing strongly in any one way is equivalent to religion. But, since reading Dawkins, I wonder. Is it religion to believe strongly that the grass is green and that the sky is blue? No, because those are obvious to anyone who sees them. This is all explained in greater detail later on in the chapter. Dawkins then quotes Steven Weinberg from Dreams of a Final Theory:

Of course, like any other word, the word ‘God’ can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that ‘God is energy‘, then you can find God in a lump of coal.

… continued in next post…

During our two-week excursion to Sweden, the LotR and I also took in Stockholm. What an awesome city!

(left - first impression? Crowded.) (right - very cool fountain… seems a Swedish typicality)

(left - Plattan Square) (right - bridge overlooking old town Stockholm)

(left - crowded street) (right - Naked Gods!)

(left - this was my all-time favorite fountain.) (right - a Swedish fantasy bookstore!)

(left - cool building on one of many islands that Stockholm is built on.) (right - a sailboat, duh)

(say WHAT?!?!)

(left - this place made me feel so French!) (right - the geese say ‘Hi’)

(left - ‘Peace’) (right - another crowded road)