Let the Ball Drop . . .

It's New Year's Eve and all around, people are "getting ready." Some are getting dressed for dinner, others are setting up for a huge party, and still others are looking to see what in on TV tonight that will take their minds off of being alone on such a "happy" night. The question is, though, what is the world celebrating?
After the year that was, both for me personally, and for the world in general, I believe that the celebration is not for welcoming the new year as much as it is actually celebrating the survival of the old. We've had personal tragedy, financial ruin, and famine, pestilence, disease, war, hurricanes, floods . . . all of the wonderful things that filled 2005 with such joy. We've seen people we loved in our lives gone forever while others, whom we detest, have stuck to us like glue. We've watched people get rich as we get poor, others be rewarded for their "sins" while good people are trammeled under their boots, and a general diminution of hope for the future, yet we're still here.
So, what's ahead for 2006? Are we to suffer more of the same, or will we and the remainder of the world have learned to turn things around and make things better "for us and our posterity." I suggest the latter. I'm not taking a pollyanna attitude, or forgetting to look around the corner to see the terrible things that potential await me next week. On the contrary, I'm entering 2006 with my eyes wide open, but my attitude adjusted. We will succeed in 2006. We will prevail. We will make a difference and enter 2007 with a better life in a better world.
There are those who would think it folly to believe that next year will be any better than the last. They are wrong; it would be folly not to. When we stop believing that world in general, and our world in particular will be a better place, then there is no point in going on. I, for one, plan to go on. I for one plan to continue. Therefore, let the ball drop . . .

Irresistible Force and Immovable Object

Once more, the battle between religion and science heats up. There is a ballot initiative coming up in Missouri to allow human stem cell research. On one side are the religious extremists who seem willing to sacrifice living human beings to their pain, paralysis and death in order to save the dozen cells that are formed in the laboratory. On the other are the scientists, the rationalists, the sick and infirmed, who believe that to be pro-life begins with being in favor of helping those who are already alive, even at the expense of early Bronze Age and Medieval dogma.

It will come as no surprise that I fall into the second category. I keep asking myself why someone can feel so morally superior that they are willing to impose their beliefs upon the remainder of the world regardless of whether it means they must continue to suffer needlessly or die. How can someone be "pro-life," and consider even a single, undifferentiated cell a human and therefore "sacred," yet be in favor of the death penalty and have no qualms about killing an already existing human? They speak of evolution as a flawed "theory," and therefore want to impose their Creationist views (even if they call it intelligent Design) upon everyone else, yet have such a poor understanding of the meaning of the word "theory" in science that they abuse it to their own ends.

We, as a civilization, have been poised with "one foot in the jungle and one foot in the stars," for most of the 20th Century. The religious reactionaries (they're far beyond conservatism) would erase centuries of human knowledge and drag us back into the jungle to satisfy their own emotional needs. I, for one, refuse to allow them to drag me back "down" to their level. I refuse to stand in the muck of Bronze Age mythology when I could be exploring the Universe.

If God exists in the way that the religious right believes, then He (She or It) is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. If THAT God comes to me and tells me not to do stem cell research, I'll vote to stop it. If that God makes itself known to me in an unequivocal way, not through circular religious teachings (our religion is right because the Bible, Koran, etc., tells us it is, and the Bible, Koran, etc., is right because my religion tells me it is)but through its appearance and absolute knowledge, I'll comply. If not, I've been left on my own to decide what is the greater good, and I choose life saving technology and scientific exploration, however imperfect, to well meaning but apocryphal and internally inconsistent stories handed down in a oral tradition until they became frozen beyond expansion by those who had and have a vested interest in keeping things the same.

If you feel differently, I can tolerate your beliefs so long as you don't foist them on me. Can you do the same?