A Romantic Rationalist

Tragically, the places likely to be devastated first and worst by Global Environmental Change (GEC) are the poorest, most overpopulated regions of the world. There are many elephants in the room that need to be dealt with and one of them is culture (and that includes religion). The governments of such countries must realize that their (predominantly) patriarchal cultures in which women are treated like breeding livestock and that are beset by rampant overpopulation, illiteracy, and lack of economic opportunity, must change. The problem is, no one is going to come right out and say that "The culture of _________ is primitive, backwards, and positively maladaptive in the 21st century." When natural disasters strike regions where life is already marginal at best due to overpopulation, the loss of life is magnified many times over. Not to pick on Myanmar and Bangladesh , which recently suffered terrible natural disasters, but Western, industrializ...

Introduction I would like to take this opportunity to address some frequently encountered arguments used whenever believers are attempting to convert a non-believer. I am doing this in the somewhat forlorn hope that having disposed of the arguments of the faithful here, they will actually take them onboard and non-believers will not encounter them again. But of course, who am I kidding? At the very least, when such believers roll out the same old arguments non-believers can have the pleasure of pointing out that it has been addressed elsewhere and telling them to shut up and move on. A note about “respect” Before I begin, I want to say a word about “respect,” and what it means in a supposedly rational, democratic, enlightened society. I feel this is necessary because invariably, some who read this will feel that their beliefs are not being “respected” in the way they feel they should. Five minutes of web surfing will show that there are any number of “weird” beliefs out there. Two easy...