I personally can understand political partisanship coming from Senators and Representatives and other political figures. Their job is to try and paint the differences as starkly as possible and they have a real impact on the direction of the country (see how Reagan’s deregulation spree touched almost every aspect of our current problems).  However, when I see normal, everyday people engage in hyper-partisanship, I really can’t understand what’s going on. They gain nothing from it. It almost seems like some sort of tribalism and an inherent need to root as hard as you can for “your team.”

Then there is her insistence on lumping liberals into one giant group. I’ve come across this before in my discussions with conservatives of this kind on Facebook. There is a need to invoke a vast conspiracy and to lump all liberals together into one group. In this case it is that all liberals are morons.

In any case, read the list. It eventually just gets to the meat of it all. “Mock liberals.” I suppose mocking is one way to try and converse with people… but you won’t get far.

The Mormon Church initially admitted to spending only $2078 to pass Prop 8. When Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, filed his sworn complaint on November 13, 2008, he said they instantly attacked him.

They paid a fine of $5,538. That seems paltry compared to the damage they’ve cause LGBT families and the lies they spread in their campaign.

In their world the Founding Fathers laid out exactly how everything should be run with no room for compromise or advancement. In their world the Constitution is properly interpreted how they want it to be interpreted. In their world when the Supreme Court rules the way they like it is right, and if it votes the way they don’t like it is liberal judicial activism.

The problem is reality really doesn’t portend to this view. The Founding Fathers debated many of the same core issues that we debate today. They left the Constitution in a state that made it readily amendable and they even encouraged the future ages to decide how to interpret it. There’s no “original intent” present. We aren’t supposed to look back and try and garner what they thought 200 years ago. That would be absurd. They gave the power to the Courts to interpret our laws with our new, expanded knowledge.

The Tea Party is dangerous. I don’t mean in any violent sense, but I mean in a discourse sense. When they are absolutely right there is no room for debate. It is their way or the highway.

The GOP have been dealing with this, as evidence from the primary challenges.

After Senate Democrats’ second consecutive failed attempt Tuesday to take up a financial regulatory reform bill, a moderate Republican from Ohio indicated for the first time that he is planning to switch his vote and support opening debate on the bill if a deal isn’t reached soon between the top negotiators for each party.

It is very interesting seeing how the GOP is weakening in the face of actual spine by the Democrats. As I recall they promised to offer no cooperation at all after health insurance reform passed earlier this year.

How’s that working out for you?

The leader of the California Senate, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), called the law a “disgrace” and said the state also should consider a boycott. He sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asking for an inventory of Arizona businesses and government agencies with which California does business.

The anger towards Arizona’s law is palpable. My gut feeling is that this will be remembered for a long, long time. It won’t be remembered in a good way either. The question is, how will this play out?

The only course I can see this taking is that Arizona will become more and more unpopular until the law is either struck down by the state or by the Supreme Court. Either way, they are going to be limping along by the time this firestorm blows over.

I’ve decided I need to lighten up a bit and post quicker updates and not necessarily write a novel to explain my view. I’ve learned that, before in my earlier blogging days, that quick fast updates with my point of view elicited more response and generated more viewership.

Here’s to old-school blogging!

If you recall from Seinfield, the Soup Nazi was like so:

So.. what would the Progresso-Socialist be like?

“CANS ARE MORE EFFICIENT. YOU WILL LIKE!”

“REDISTRIBUTE THE SOUP!”

“YOU SEE THAT HUNGRY MAN THERE? GIVE HIM HALF YOUR SOUP!”

“YOU DID NOT WORK TO YOUR QUOTA. NO SOUP FOR YOU!”

It’s the only thing I can think of.

I will note that generally my points are never addressed. They are generally dismissed or I’m told that my history is wrong (despite not bringing up any historical accounts except to note when the Earned Income Tax Credit was raised, and that Hamilton was one founding father that broke away from the Madison/Jefferson views) and that my views align with those of Maoist China or Stalinist Russia.

It all began with my response to this lovely little diatribe:

IRS chief says that if you don’t buy health insurance, they will withhold your refund. So let me get this right: if you don’t spend your money the way the government wants you to, they will keep your money which they owe you. Not surprising. We’ve seen, even on my Facebook page, that progresso-socialists think all money is the government’s, and they’re just nice enough to let you keep some every year.

It was to an article that basically reported that the IRS chief is looking at ways to enforce the mandate on health insurance in 2014. I will note that the “progresso-socialists” he is referring to is me, and I did not state that all money is the government’s. I said that taxation is legally binding, and that money owed to the government is not, by law, yours. When you owe a debt, you do not own that money. It’s a simple concept, really.

So I responded:

They are well within their legal rights to withhold tax refunds for non-compliance. However, note, that all mandates don’t take effect until 2014. You have plenty of time to find an insurance plan that fits your needs.

The gist of my post that followed was that the government can choose to enforce the mandate (within the limits of the law). In fact, the Health Care law restricts heavily how the law may be enforced, as per the article they undoubtedly did not read.

The discussion turned to to the federal mandate on Health Insurance. I gave my reasoning for why I feel that such a mandate is, at least, ethically sound:

The reasoning falls under the Commerce Clause. Someone not buying health insurance who goes and gets emergency care raises the cost for everyone else, which results in increased premiums for everyone.

I think there’s enough of a problem with this model for the government to successfully make the case it can mandate health insurance.

I brought up the Wickard Vs. Fillburn Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that Fillburn was wrong for growing wheat past the quota, even if he wasn’t going to sell it, because the act of growing the wheat caused him to not buy from the open market.

In a sense, the health care mandate, at least to me, falls into the same realm. People claim that they can get by without health insurance and pay their own way. They impact the market by not being in the pool of people with insurance, and by raising costs if they do get sick.

To me the parallel falls in the following areas:

1. There was a problem with pricing in a market that impacted everyone (wheat prices/health care costs)
2. The government decides to take action to try and reduce costs (limit wheat production/mandate health insurance)
3. Inaction in the market by trying to unilaterally go your own way impacts the market (grow own wheat for personal use in spite of quotas/refuse to get health insurance in spite of risks)
4. Government enforces law (must buy wheat from market if you don’t set some aside below the quota/you must buy health insurance)

None of this was addressed. Instead, the response I got was thus:

Why the fuck do I give a shit about some fuckin wheat farmer in the 1940′s? That has nothing to do with the gov’t forcing people to buy something!

Great rebuttal! I know that I’m no policy expert and I am no lawyer, but in the interest of discourse, that was a really silly response.

This conservative then launched into a diatribe against the Earned Income Tax Credit, and surprise, surprise, it somehow gets into how the Obama Administration is “taking our freedoms away one by one.”

It was weird to note that Obama had no made any changes with the Earned Income Tax Credit, yet the two are somehow linked now, and it is part of a plot to take away freedom. Get that? Oh, and apparently I can’t see this because I am blinded by “liberal rhetoric.”

So I noted that the EITC was extended and raised by Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. How liberal is the policy now? It’s not liberal or conservative policy, it’s good policy. Okay, it’s liberal policy. That doesn’t make it any less valid.

So then the response is, oddly, this:

Bottom line is that progressocialists believe that the Constitution can be stretched indefinitely. Commerce clause is the most readily and frequently raped and abused.

That, of course, begs the question: if the Constitution can be stretched indefinitely, why did the Founders put such restrictions in there in the first place?

The U.S. Constitution is unique in that it says what the government CANNOT do to you and is VERY specific about those things which it IS empowered to do.

The progressive line that the Constitution is a living document (meaning it can be perverted to meet any end they desire) is a lie and they know it.

None of this explains why these are bad positions. None of this explains how this will lead to bad things. It’s just… assertions. Based on assumptions.

They seem to miss the point that the Constitution can be amended and changed. They miss the point that the Legislative Branch has the authority to pass laws, and the Judicial Branch has the authority to make sure those laws meet constitutional requirements.

Guess what? The Hamilton view of the Constitution has prevailed for most of the time. He wrote most of the justifications for the Constitution in the Federalist Papers.

The thing is, I can appreciate that there is a debate on the matter. I understand that a strict view of the Constitution is a valid view, as much as the “Living Document” view is. I know that the debate will continue long after I’m dead. Why is it that my conservative friend seems to think that one view is entirely invalid when the very people who helped write the Constitution and its justification debated the very same points?

So I brought up Hamilton. I explained the above point. What followed was the most bizarre and schizophrenic rant I think I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t even coherent, it barely addressed any of my points, and on top of that, it pretended to be a history lesson, because apparently Progressives and Liberals don’t know history, and only Conservatives know the TRUE history.

I have no responded yet. I will honestly say I am not making any of this up, these are his actual words:

Hamilton was also a statist who wanted to install a monarchy in America. Now, this is the second time you’ve invoked Hamilton to me, and I have no clue why you would think I’m a fan of Hamilton if you had even the slightest clue about American political history (you clearly do not, as most progressives do not, otherwise they distort it to fit their needs at the moment).

I will also respond now.

I don’t believe this person has to be a fan of Hamilton. In fact, I’m not a fan of Madison or Jefferson on many accounts. I do, however, understand their contributions and their views. I think they have valid points to make, despite the disagreements. The point I’m trying to raise is that there are other views. You can cherry pick the viewpoints all you want and disagree with others… but you can not pretend that no other views were even present. You can not pretend that the Founding Fathers were some uniform group who all agreed on every aspect of the document they were forging.

Fortunately, the Jeffersonians prevailed until the late 19th Century and especially the early 20th Century. This is when the progressives started taking more power for themselves — the uber racist Woodrow Wilson, for example, who jailed people who disagreed with World War I. He also gave us the Federal Reserve (which has devalued our money by 94%) and the income tax, which was supposed to tax only a few thousand really wealthy people.

The late 19th and early 20th century saw some of the worst income inequalities in America. The working poor worked in poor conditions, child labor was common, and there were high levels of immigrant workers in urban centers who were not represented in the government at all. There were riots constantly and the government was corrupt. Elections were won by those that could game the election system the best. They bought votes. They stuffed ballots.

It would seem that there is a general lack of context. It was a period, indeed, of great economic freedom as afforded to those views, but it was also a dark period, especially when compared to the income equality of the 50′s and 60′s.

As far as Woodrow Wilson’s supposed racism, I have two points: 1.) Racism in the 1910′s? Amazing! Unheard of! Racism back then was common. 2.) What does his racism have to do with anything he did? Nothing. It’s an ad hominem designed to try and invoke dislike because of his personal views.

I found nothing that states the the 1913 Federal Reserve Act devalued our currency 94%. No citation was given. Where exactly is this information from? I can find a few people online saying the same thing, but nobody seems to have any link to the Federal Reserve Act and the devaluation of the dollar.

The Federal Reserve Act was actually quite successful and helped stabilize banks. It eased wild fluctuations and bank runs. So not sure exactly how this is a bad thing.

The Constitution was amended to allow the income tax. They followed all the legal requirements to add an amendment. I don’t see any argument against it, per se. So what exactly is his point? It just seems like I’m supposed to simply recoil at the thought?

Fortunately, Americans rejected the crap for what it was: control by the government. THAT is wholly un-American. By the time FDR rolled around, the progressives changed their name to liberals. By the time Reagan/Bush/Clinton rolled around, “liberal” became a dirty word (remember “the era of big government is over”?), and rightly so. Liberals had a track record of the huge deficits and weakness in foreign affairs that are associated with internationalist progressive philosophy. Americans had rejected it again.

Americans rejected what exactly? The Federal Reserve Act remained in place, as well as the income tax. They elected Hoover who’s hand-off approach to the looming financial crisis brought us to the Great Depression. Under FDR we saw the Depression alleviated slowly, until the war. After the war and due to FDR’s policies we saw an age of equality in America where almost every American, one a single wage, could own a house and car and live a life barely dreamed of by people during the age this person heralds as being great because Jeffersonian views prevailed.

FDR’s policies were so successful that a lot of them still are in effect today. So what was rejected?

The deficit as a portion of GDP dropped all the way until Reagan got into office. So I’m not sure what is being said about the deficit. Foreign affairs were fine for the most part despite Democratic control of congress for 40 years. What exactly was being rejected, again? International progressive philosophy is what? I’m beginning to think this person is making up things. Also, what does “Liberal” being considered a dirty word mean as far as his argument? Rejecting a label is not the same as rejecting policies.

Americans didn’t reject any progressive/liberal policies. They kept electing Democrats into power giving them control of congress for 40 years! Republicans didn’t gain control of the House until 1992! Who is inventing history now?

By chance, we had an unpopular George W. Bush (big government guy also) that helped propel a progressive into office yet again, this time with Congressional majorities. There’s a reason Obama campaigned as a moderate and a centrist. There’s a reason health care negotiations have been held behind closed doors and egrigious deal making like never before had been made. The American people had flatly rejected this crap before and were rejecting it again. The only way the left could get it through Congress was by resorting to tricks and payoffs.

I love how Bush is suddenly a “big government guy” now. As though his expansion of the Defense budget was any different from Reagan. The Deficit also exploded under Reagan… was he a “big government guy” also?

Yes, Bush failed at a lot of things, however, he had the mantle of the modern conservative movement and enacted a lot of things that the modern conservative movement wanted. He cut taxes on the very wealthy, cut entitlement programs, tried to privatize Social Security (but even the South revolted against that), and did many other conservative things. The public, if anything, rejected modern conservatism with his failure.

Yes, Obama is still, by most accounts, a pretty moderate President. Andrew Sullivan (a prominent conservative voice) even declared Obama the “compassionate conservative” that Bush never was.

Now we see the diatribe take yet another spin into the health care process. Name anything that was done illegally? Can’t? Than stop whining. There were no “tricks” done that haven’t been done countless times before by both parties. I know it’s hard to believe, but the parliamentarian process can be pretty messy.

The end result is always the same. High unemployment, low productivity. You can only tax the top 50% to redistrubute money to the bottom 50% before the top 50% say “screw it.” It’s happened in New Jersey, from where $70 billion in wealth left the state after new taxes on the rich, it’s happened in New York, whose liberal governor David Patterson admitted that raising taxes has caused a drop in revenues, and it’s happened in Detroit, where decades of union-progressive alliances have turned the place into a virtual ghost town.

What does high unemployment have to do with any of the proceeding points? Obama helped stall the unemployment rate to just under 10%. What does health care or progressive policies have to do with any of this? During the 50′s and 60′s unemployment was low and productivity was high… under VERY liberal policies. The rich were taxed out of being rich and those at the top income brackets didn’t have a much higher quality of life than the blue collar workers.

Also, despite what you claim above, liberal states tend to be the richer states, with more tax revenue. How do you account for this? How do you account for the fact that liberal states tend to take less federal funds than conservative states?

Despite what you claim, union busting had reduced union membership drastically even in Detroit. Even you should understand that falling demand for US cars helps contribute to Detroit’s problems. It kind of sucks to have an entire city based on one industry.

And, in the case of world history, more often than not, socialism leads to mass-murder, as was the case with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Castro.

Don’t fool yourself, either, into thinking that what is happening in Greece cannot happen here if we let the progressives have their way.

France. Finland. Norway. Spain. England. Sweden. Japan. All of these countries have very socialist policies. They are way to the left of the US, and especially way to the left of your views and have been for a long time. Where are the mass killings?

So it is not the case of world history, not even “more often than not”, that socialism leads to mass murder. For one, Hitler was fascist, not socialist, and if you think him and Stalin would agree on anything as far as economic policy you are entirely more ignorant than I thought. Stalin and Mao did have mass murders after their respective revolutions. So did France after their revolution. Should I say that Republicans lead to mass murders as well? What about Castro? What mass-murders occurred under him?

Greece can’t have strong monetary policy. We can. We most likely won’t end up like Greece, and our debt has been higher before.

You want to see a large reduction in debt? End the fucking wars. I haven’t heard you mention the wars once. Why not? We spend plenty on them.

America is not a big government country, and Americans are not a big government people. The only way you can make them so is by forcing it on them. Your ideology has made millions dependant on government aid. And government has no money lest it takes from a productive member of society. And like I said, that scheme only lasts so long.

Even under FDR’s policies the US wasn’t spending more than other European nations with more progressive policies in place. You are right. The US has not been a big government country. We have the least redistributive policies out of the 24 countries that were in the OECD. We also have the highest inequality of income out of those countries as well.

Dependent on government aid? What government aid are they DEPENDENT on? Money assistance is at record lows (Less than 4 million enrolled in 2006), many people that qualify for food stamps don’t get them. You are invoking things that don’t exist.

Government ENABLES people to be productive. It protects them from harm, it makes sure their environments are safe to work in, and gives them empowerment. What exactly is wrong with all of this?

The “scheme” as you call it is something in your head, not based in reality.

No, if your progressive paradises are exemplified by Detroit and California and Greece and Cuba and North Korea and the Soviet Union and Maoist China, then you can envoke Hamilton all you want. I will continue expending time, money, and effort to expose progressivism for the fraud that it is — one person at a time, as I have successfully been doing. I reject your notion that we should abandon the limited government and personal freedoms that made America the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth and replace them with policies that have PROVEN, time and time again, to create states of perpetual malaise at best and bloody totalitarianism at worst (with plenty of Detroits scattered between).

I’m not a Maoist or a Stalinist. North Korea and China are awful places. If you think Hamilton has anything to do with those as well, then you are the one who is deluded with faulty history. You haven’t exposed anything more than your ignorance to history and the full context of the things you exalt and lambaste. History is complex. Cherry picking things to make you look good is dishonest.

I would ask that you take the flag out of your ass and pretending that you have any right to wrap your views in it. The funny thing about your statement is you assume that, somehow, your conservative views have made America the nation it is today. Yet the US rise to power occurred after WWII, a time when the US was under very liberal policies and when the rich were taxed 90%. The US rose to power and become the wealthiest nation on Earth because its cities were not bombed during WWII. It became a manufacturing base for the world.

We didn’t become the most powerful nation because our policies were any better or because we had a “limited government” (during a time of great government expansion, no less)… we became powerful simply because there was nobody else left.

Conservative views have only proven to increase income inequality in the US and left people out in the cold. The pathetic thing is the conservative movement had to swindle people into voting for them despite acting against their best interest by using racism in the 60′s in running against the Civil Right’s Act and raising fears about immigration. Conservative policies work against the very people that vote them in power.

The people won’t be duped for too much longer. They are starting to catch on. That’s why liberals were pushed into power again in 2006. Not just because of Bush… but because his policies were not working.

Bush left us with a powerful recession and two wars that were not paid for. His policies have caused the poor to become poorer and the rich to become richer.

Yet you have the balls to stand there and declare that conservatism has somehow proven itself? You have no basis for that claim. GDP grows under both liberals and conservatives… the only change is who that growth benefits. Government policy shapes that, and under conservatives the growth benefits those at the top. That’s why since Reagan the poor and midle-income wages have stagnated, while the top 1% saw their incomes increase five-fold.

And everyone I have talked to and shown the evidence to agrees. This is why Tea Parties gain momentum. This is why President Obama drops from 70% approval to 40% approval in a year, why Speaker Pelosi is at 11%, and why Leader Reid is at 8%. This is why Congress hovers constantly around 15%. This is all even AFTER passing your precious Holy Grail health reform bill.

Tea Party remains small, and hasn’t reached beyond its small conservative base. Your allusion to it being 40% Democratic and Independent is laughable. 13% Democrat according to that poll. If you push the independents they are shown to lean Republican.

Obama’s approval ratings will fluctuate. By this time in Reagan’s first term he had an approval rating of 35%. What happened? He cut taxes and then unemployment shot up after he promised it would drop. So much for proving conservative values there, no?

Congress is usually not very popular. Just so you know, the DNC just raised more money than the RNC in March, in large part due to passage of the health care bill.

My goal is to see what worked, and what has worked has ALWAYS been lower taxation and modest regulation. What has worked has always been competition, which incentivizes ingeniuity and innovation, which leads to honest, hard work and risk taking. Risk taking will lead to individual success or failure, and a FREE PEOPLE will always be ALLOWED to succeed and even be allowed to fail. It is only in this way that the economy will grow and our people will prosper again. The United States is not France, and, God willing, if the GOP can retake Congress this November, we will never reach the stage Greece is at now.

Well, your premise that lower taxation works is bogus. We are at historical tax lows. Yet we’ve seen periods of boom and bust under these tax rates, under Democrats and Republicans.

You are free to take risks… just you have a safety net in case you fall. People will allow themselves to take more risk if they find that if they fail, they won’t end up on the streets or starving. That’s incentive.

GOP won’t retake congress. It can’t. Not enough seats up for grab in the Senate. At best they can tie the Senate and take the House. Unlikely with the GOP failing to stop legislative victories.

I suspect the Democrats will lose seats… which is normally what happens during midterms for the incumbent party. Go ahead. Check history.

God has nothing to do with anything. As I recall Jesus himself said, “Woe unto the rich.” That’s ancient talk for, “Fuck the rich.”

(Note: This was very hastily written and probably full of errors of grammatical kind. If you want citations, ask, I didn’t want to break my flow and am too lazy to dig through now.)

Now, I am a wholehearted believer in God and Christianity. Therefore I do not understand why you need proof that something exists.

Later still he says,

My argument for this is Love. We have no proof that love exists yet we think very highly of it.

So the gist of what is being said is, “I believe in God, and can’t understand why you need proof. Love has no proof, but we believe in that.” Well, he’s wrong.

On one hand, I don’t think anyone disputes that you can believe something without proof. That’s a given. In fact, I imagine, Cory believes many people believe in different gods with no proof, but how can he show his God to be the one to believe in?

If no proof is required, then there’s no way to differentiate between one god or another. Every belief in this situation would be equally valid. Equally valid, though, does not mean it has strong value or is rational.

Love has proof. The body undergoes many changes when someone is love and this points to a physical process that is occurring. One would be hard pressed to provide any evidence that love is somehow an “immaterial thing” (a self-contradictory concept to begin with) that impacts your material body. When someone is in love their heart rate increases, they lose their appetite, they may take greater behavioral risks, among many other things.

If you want to dive more into the scientific views on love, Wikipedia has a nice overview of it.

So his argument for believing in God is based on the false premise that love is something believed in that has no proof.  Even if we grant there is no “concrete proof” for love this doesn’t mean it is not a physical process. Just assuming it is an immaterial thing is fallacious.

Cory continues,

There are a lot of things in life that can’t be proven but we still believe in them. Yet when it comes to God or religion these same people need absolute proof God exists.

While it is true that many people believe in things that they do not experience directly or are not given proof of, we still generally apply some level of wariness to what we believe or not. If someone told you, for example, that purple rain fell from the sky yesterday, you’d want proof before believing them, no? Would you take their claim at face value? On the same token, if they said that is rained yesterday, you’d be more apt to believe them. More extraordinary claims require more extraordinary evidence.

What was said here, though, was that we believe in things that can’t be proven. I’d personally want some examples. There’s a large difference between not being able to understand and something that can’t be proven. What things not proven do we believe?

Onto the other point, one should be asking for absolute proof of anything. In the scientific world there is no such thing as absolute proof because the premise of science is hinged on an assumption that the physical universe follows natural laws that can be discovered. Scientists, in a way, have a bargain with nature: as long as you follow your rules and are consistent, we can learn more about you and understand you.

What I ask for, personally, since I can’t speak for all atheists, is extraordinary proof of God. God is a very complex being, if I am to believe the believers, and was a complex being before the complex universe came into existence. This breaks what I know about common sense and how order and complexity arise. Everywhere you look we notice that complexity must arise from simpler things. You do not end up with something complex initially.

He then goes onto to say that he doesn’t need proof because his grandmother was religious and he loves her a lot. While I can admire his admiration for his grandmother, that’s not a reason in of itself to believe in something with no proof. Further, it sounds to me like his reasoning is purely personal. Personal feelings and experiences are not verifiable from the outside, and we have no way to know what is true or not in that arena. He can not expect others to take his personal feelings as evidence for God.

But for those people who need some sort of proof, here you go. First of all let’s look at the Bible. The Bible speaks of and passes on stories about God, his deeds, and his son. Why would a group of real people choose to make up elaborate and extensive stories of a fictional character?

What about the Romans and Greeks? Are their gods and goddesses real because they wrote about them at length over long periods of times about their deeds? Does Cory also believe in Zeus, Thor, Mithra, Mohammad, Jupiter, Aphrodite, or any other gods because there are ancient stories?

A simple reasoning for a group of people writing extensive stories about a fictional character is that this was their way of explaining the world around them. Simple as that.

Another main issue that is brought up is if God is so perfect, then why would he make humans so imperfect? If everyone was so perfect the world would be a boring place. Everyone would be robot-like and nothing interesting would ever happen. What fun would it be for God to watch our free will at work if we were all perfect? By giving us free will, God gave every human the innate ability to decide his/her life.

The problem with this argument is it shows us a very poor image of his god. Are we merely here for God’s amusement? Are we imperfect because God enjoys watching us lie, steal, kill, launch wars, and bomb each other? Does he enjoy human suffering as the Romans at the Colosseum did? Not to mention he contradicts the original Bible story, if he believes that myth, which says that Adam and Eve were originally sinless and perfect. Above angels even, according to popular Christian mythology.

I’d rather have a boring perfect world full of robotic people than an imperfect violent world that we have for the mere amusement of God.

He then ends off with the most cliche argument for God possible. The old, “just look around” argument. It is maddening how often this argument is used. It is as if it should be readily apparent that God exists and that atheists are simply blind to the world around them. Reading up on Asimov, Sagan, and Dawkins this could not be further from the truth. Atheists see beauty in the world just as much and appreciate complexity and beauty. Humans evolved to notice patterns, and this, at times, can bite us back by us seeing patterns that don’t exist. We should be aware of this.

Overall, this argument was very poor. It made a lot of assumptions about the world we live in and about atheists and their views on the world. It also applied faulty reasoning that rudimentary logic takes apart, such as apply the same arguments he uses to other religions and finding that such arguments still work. It was really a sloppy piece and Cory should brush up on what he believes and become more solid in that arena.

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins is a breathtakingly wide book covering a myriad of evidence for evolution. It is definitely a must read and will leave you wanting more.

The Great

Every chapter in this book seemed to offer better and deeper insights into the evidence for evolution. From comparing skeletons of mammals to the molecular evidence to the embryonic evidence, Richard Dawkins takes us on a journey through the latest understandings about evolution and lays them out for us to investigate and understand for our own.

It seemed like I learned something new in every chapter, and it was a joy to have that feeling of discovery like I did reading Issac Asimov’s “The History of Physics.” As someone who always loved science, I felt like a kid again reading my science book front to back as soon as I got it from school the first day.

The departure from his atheist “evangelizing” was also refreshing. It was good to see Dawkins back into the role of science professor, and it was a joy to be his student.

This book offers dozens of charts, figures, and photos that lay evolution’s evidence in plain sight for everyone to see and understand. His writing is extremely lucid and you sometimes forget that you are reading about a wonderfully complex subject from many angles.

The Good

He used an analogy of a “crime scene” and explained that the Earth was, in effect, a crime scene that was being investigated, and evolution is guilty of modifying life on it. This analogy, while apt, felt a bit tacked on, but it was still good enough to show that scientists aren’t just making things up; he shows they are all but forced to conclude that evolution is true.

He deviates a bit from evolution and also explains things like carbon and other forms of radiometric dating, dendrochronology, and plate tectonics. Dawkins also tended to explain how these scientists often made the wrong guesses first, or only got some of the picture right so he could set it up beautifully to show that science is a process.

The Bad and the Ugly

I honestly can’t think of anything bad or ugly in this book. The only bad thing is that some people still won’t believe in evolution. Perhaps it might be a bit long for the likes of Ken Ham or Ray Comfort to read and understand.

The Verdict

Buy it. Read it. Love it. You will not regret it.