In support of illegal immigrants

Lots of folks rant and rail against illegal immigrants, most of them Mexican. One of their first claims about illegal immigrants (IIs) is that they take jobs away from Americans.

However, the vast majority of IIs work for minimum wage doing boring, tedious jobs like mowing lawns or flipping burgers – jobs that most Americans would only take if they were desperate. IIs do our dirty work – the jobs that we don’t want to do. Not only are we ungrateful, we try to deport them at every turn. IIs are even prime targets for burglary, because they don’t report crimes to the police.

They come to the US because they’re desperate, and we seem to exploit that desperation. Next time you see a foriegn, shifty-looking guy mowing a lawn, thank him. Would you be willing to cut grass for $7.50 an hour?

"Benefits" of religion II

Another benefit of religion I mentioned before was that of comfort. The idea that when you die, you get to see all your former cats again and eat all the ice cream you want is certianly one in which anyone contemplating mortality can find solace in. (define heaven to taste, of course.)

However, just because something is comforting doesn’t make it true, nor does it make believing it a good idea either. I, for instance, believe that cheeseburgers are healthy. A comforting thought: I can eat cheeseburgers 4x a day and not worry a bit about trans fat or cholesterol. I will also probably need gastric bypass surgery before I’m 19.

There’s no cholesterol in God or in heaven, though, so it doesn’t seem like faith is very harmful. Maybe in moderation, it isn’t. Although the individual in question may waste his time in mosques or synogogues or churches, he doesn’t seem to suffer any ill effects.

Some argue that there are ill effects, though I don’t think of them as particularily grave ones.

1. Life choices.

We can suppose that an individual would look at his life differently if he thought he had eternal bonus time afterwards. If, on the other hand, he reasonably supposes that this is all he gets, he will probably value his life more. (Is this better? I don’t know. It may be worse, by placing unnecessary worry on him.) In the real world, though, this doesn’t really hold up. I would bet that if a poll were taken, people of faith value life just as much as nonbelievers.

2. Children. Richard Dawkins makes an excellent point regarding the indoctrination of children. Basically, it’s bad, and we shouldn’t do it. People wouldn’t expose their 5-year-olds to politics or general relativity, so why do people expose children to the notion of an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient metaphysical being who created the universe? Most 5-year-olds I know lack the ability to make informed choices as to what theological belief system they wish to associate themselves with, if any. Dawkins goes as far as to say that indoctrination of one’s children is child abuse. I think I’d stop at calling it tremendously bad parenting.

In conclusion, the comforts of faith don’t make its claims true; the several harmful side-effects of religion make it not the fuzzy security blanket it first appears to be.

Deceptive advertising

The end of the BrandsMart ad sounds like this:

“Of course, your favorite brands at low, low prices! [singing:] That’s why more people say / I like buying at BrandsMart USA…” etc.

Seems, fine, right? Wrong. Wrong, I say, wrong! This, folks, is Deceptive Advertising. Look carefully at the first line in the jingle. “That’s why more people say.” More? More than what? More than, say, people who like buying at Manolio’s Lectro-Pawn? (see http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs10.html) No contest there. The “more” is left wholly unspecified, leaving the innocent consumer confused, angry and emotionally exhausted. We must not tolerate this! It is, in fact, intolerable! I hereby advocate a full-scale, full-throttle, full-figure lawsuit against BrandsMart! Who’s with me?!

That will be all.

Random observation

I was thinking the other day about people’s motives for doing what they do. After much consideration, I have found a single motivator which seems to explain every human behavior I can think of; namely, people want to be happy. Doubtlessly this is not a new observation in the sense that no one’s observed if before, but I find it rather interesting.

For some behaviors , it’s quite obvious. Eating ice cream, relaxing, going for a walk in the park, etc; these behaviors are all performed with the end goal of being happy. Sometimes, the motive is buried, but it seems to me that it all eventually boils down to happiness. Take going to the gym. Most people I know don’t particularily enjoy the drudgery of lifting weights or the endless toil of cardio workouts. Some gym-goers say they go because they want to be fit and healthy; others, because they want to be stronger; still others because they want to look good. But always, because they think being healthy or strong or good-looking will make them happy. If they thought being healthy, strong or good-looking would make them unhappy, you can bet that they wouldn’t go to the gym.

Of course, the definition of “happy” can vary considerably. A better definition might be more like “a positive state.” Meditation and dirt-bike racing may both bring happiness, but of a radically different sort.

Sometimes, it’s even harder to extract happiness as a motive. Consider anorexics, or suicide bombers, or workaholics. They do what they do (starve themselves, kill themselves and work themselves to exhaustion, respectively) with the understanding that it will eventually bring the happiness (in these cases, weighing next to nothing, eternal bliss, and more money). However, the end goal always seems to be happiness.

I see addictions as the one exception. Many smokers/alcoholics/drug addicts say they want to quit, so apparently they must see being free from their drug of choice as a happier state than the state of addiction. However, few of them actually stop. Obviously, this is the fault of their biological wiring. It’s so hard to quit for the precise reason that the aforementioned substances act directly on the brain, making quitting next to impossible. It’s kind of like a reflex. In this case, happiness can’t really come into play as a valid motive – biology takes over.

And that is all I have to say about that. Thoughts?

"Benefits" of religion

Last time, I outlined a few benefits of religion. I now want to look at some arguments refuting those benefits.

1. Religion supports many charitable efforts. (ie, habitat for humanity; helping refugees; feeding homeless people; etc.)

This is so plainly illogical that I find it amazing so many people still cite it as a benefit. First off, religion does very poorly as a framework for charity. If, say, a church were billed solely as a charity organization, it would be a terrible one. The percentage of funds given to charity pales in comparison with the cost of pews, stain-glass windows, choir robes, refreshments, equipment and general operating cost. The overhead is directed at ventures that do nothing whatsoever to further charitable efforts. Organizations like Care or the Red Cross provide an immensely superior framework for goodwill.

Second, on the whole religion has a horrible track record. Consider its many uncharitable efforts:

• the crusades
• suicide bombings
• discrimination
• holy wars

I could go on, but I can already hear the protests. “Well, my religion isn’t violent. Any violence done in the name of _________ [fill in your favorite deity] is wrong, and the result of a misunderstanding.” However, the fact that religion even has the potential to be used in so many violent ways rules out our next benefit:

2. Religion provides a food foundation for ethical behavior.

Essentially, there are good and bad parts of any religion. The trick the religious defend so adamantly is that of interpretation, or the ability to pick and choos those elemnets of faith one likes best, and discard the others. With the newly personalized, pared-down version of faith, one can market it as the basis of morality.

This is obviously absurd. Suppose I go to the doctor and he tells me two things. One: I’m going bald. Two: I have 20/20 vision. Needless to say, I don’t like the first item. As such, if I treated the doctor’s diagnosis as the religious treat their holy books, I am free to not believe that I’m going bald at all. I am also free to proclaim that I have a full head of hair, and because that’s a “religious” claim, I will naturally forbid anyone to tell me otherwise. If they do, I will frown upon their intolerance of my sacred beliefs.

So, religious violence and religious good deeds result merely from different selections from religious doctrine. In addition, as a framework for goodwill, religion is a failure.

Thanks for reading.