I see religious charity work as a form of blackmail. It's not just that they use tax-exempt resources to force their faith on the needy. It's also that they use the exclusivity of those social services to make a case for their existence - no church, no charity. But churches are dead set against secular social services, specifically those provided by the government. Religious leaders protested against the Melinda Gates Foundation, they protested against universal health care, they protest against just about anything that "competes" with their services and the overwhelming majority of them push their congregations to espouse regressive, socially conservative values.

Ah, I have actually just read Shrodinger's Rapist just a few weeks ago and someday I will write an in-depth critique of it called Shrodinger's New Girlfriend. I found it to be a fairly campy and condescending blog post that did more to insult than to convey.

But it's funny to see the argument made that women should fear every guy as a potential rapist because they can't read minds. That's exactly the same as the counter argument that men can't anticipate every scenario that could potentially make women uncomfortable. For every argument that can be made to say that men should understand women better and know how not to offend them, the same argument could be made to say that women should understand men better and know when the intentions are good. Both are nonsensical arguments, that's my point. To quote WarGames, "The only winning move is not to play."

There has to be some better way of coming to a mutual understanding where mistakes are both forgiven and learned from. I hope that Elevator Guy learned from his mistake, but it really didn't help to have people call him and everyone who came to his side a sexist, misandric, creepy potential rapist. Who, according to the subtitle of Shrodinger's Rapist, deserves to get maced... In fact a lot of women came to Elevator Guy's defense, including feminist women, one of whom Rebecca Watson really skewered for disagreeing with her. Which is why, I feel, the proper overall response to this entire brouhaha is exactly as Richard Dawkins stated: go deal with real feminist issues (before people start to think that there aren't any).

Vjack, this is perhaps the most even handed response to the incident that I've seen. To be honest, I have my own biases and I side more with Richard Dawkins on this issue, for which I think there are plenty of very good reasons, but you were able to appreciate both sides of the issue at once, which is something that neither camp could do and the reason this whole thing blew up.

With all that said, I really wish we could rewrite part of the script for the movie Idiocracy. The part where the genial educated couple is sitting on the couch talking about having kids and how it's such a big event and it's never the right time while all the idiots are out there breeding. I would replace that part with a depiction of the events surrounding elevatorgate.

I'm a little late here, but I saw this post a while ago and this morning I was just talking with my friend about how every city should be built around a cultural institution just like the Smithsonian in DC.

People have built cities from a religious perspective. They have set aside dedicated spaces for religious practice and spent lavish amounts of money to make sure that those are the most well-appointed, attractive parts of town. They even have their own architectural styles for religious things. Everything else was an after-thought.

There is so much art in the world, most of it is stored in warehouses and never seen by the public. There's enough of it for a million museums. And they should all be free. There should be a well-kept park within walking distance of everyone's home. Just about everywhere I've lived there is a church within walking distance of everywhere, but rarely a park. Why not? If we took all the land wasted on churches and half of the money and invested it in normal everyday things that we have come to think of as the luxury of a lucky few, things would be really good.

I can only guess what Americans were thinking in 1966, but in retrospect it doesn't seem like they were anywhere close to ending Christianity. Maybe they grew up hearing stories from their parents or grandparents who grew up under Prohibition while they were growing up with rock and roll. I don't think people really understood all the different ways in which Christianity pervaded their culture. I think that's what we've learned since then. And the numbers that we can consider are more fundamental than church attendance - literacy rates, birth rates, even IQ.

Nice. I think I agree with just about everything you said.

At that level, I would say you're right. When you compare MSNBC and FOX to a reputable news network in Germany or France, the false equivalency doesn't seem all that false.

It would also seem that the bias at MSNBC is causing some upheaval as ownership is changing hands. This kind of stuff wouldn't happen if journalists were held to a higher standard. In a normal world, someone like Olberman would have gotten fired but it wouldn't have mattered because there would be dozens of other journalists on every other network who could be counted to deliver programming that is thought provoking and informative but in a neutral way. But the one really big question is, if there is even one network doing what Fox does, can it really be countered effectively with a neutral stance day after day? I don't think so. I think FOX really has to go before real journalism has a chance.

That's not the case at all. Stewart's rally, or as you call it, his "stunt", is about the depraved state of what passes for political discourse. Not about how "both sides" are "equally" crazy. I have never heard Stewart claim that both sides are equally guilty of anything. You'll have to share the statements from Stewart that offend you because I just haven't heard anything like it. Stewart has always made his position clear - that both sides are far from equal, that he can't in good conscience support electing Republicans, and that he's not a partisan hack who will try to sweep hypocritical Democrats under the rug as if for some greater good.

If I may be so bold as to make an assumption, it seems that you're eager to see Democrats fight fire with fire if it means winning elections. I respect that opinion and you're entitled to it. But Stewart disagrees with this and it would make for a false equivalence to imply that treating both sides to the same standard means that both sides are the same and a false dichotomy to say that the only other choice is to ignore things you disagree with on your side of the isle so long as the other side seems way worse.

Do you really think Stewart makes a lot of false equivalences? While sometimes I think it's hard to tell with him, I always give him the benefit of a doubt. He leads in with what appears to be a false equivalence but ends up leaving it as an open question for the viewer to contemplate. Stewart is a satirist, after all. Whenever I see these open-ended segments that are clearly satirical, I don't take away from them that I should "agree" with Stewart's satirical non-conclusion any more than you should agree with Colbert's lampoonery. Stewart never actually says both sides are the same. Quite the contrary. I think his position is quite clear.

His rally is just as tongue-in-cheek as Colbert's. Colbert took to mocking right-wing extremists while Stewart is mocking centrist accomodationists. Their styles just differ. But together, they're mocking the full breadth of establishment politics and the media. This is a coordinated event, after all.

I'm calling this one out as a strawman argument. Stewart is doing no such thing. Unless you call "facts" versus "make-believe" to be a subjective 'us versus them" fight. Which is, in the end, what the purveyors of the Huffington Post and the Mooneys of CFI would love for you to believe.

The problem I have with the crazies on the left is that they have a profound effect on pushing centrists to the right. In that sense they're equally dangerous to the national discourse, if not directly dangerous on their own.

Both here and abroad, left-leaning idiots have pushed agendas that have led the way to racist, xenophobic backlash. Multiculturalism is a case in point. Family law is another. These really aren't minor details and silly beliefs. These types of things are rooted in left-leaning ideologies that have a profoundly harmful impact on people's lives.

I would further mention the fact that people on the left have an incredible knack for instantly losing all their credibility. Take Bill Maher and his embarrassing stance against modern medicine. Take Jesse Ventura and his conspiracy theories that disqualify him as an otherwise serious public servant. It just never seems to end. How can we promote science and facts and convince people to take things like global warming seriously when even people on "our side" resort to reason just when it suits their preconceived notions.

So I think that Stewart is right on. He gives no shelter to idiocy. Never has and never will. He also criticizes the accommodationist Democrats who break their campaign promises and do hypocritical things. So I don't think that anything he's doing is in any way unwarranted. Stewart, as far as I can tell, is an atheist. As is Colbert, as far as I can tell. I think that the New Age loons on the left are no worse or inconsistent than liberal Christians. I think that atheism is at the front and center of the fight for the identity of progressive politics around the world. I think there's no point in beating around the bush and pretending that idiotic beliefs are somehow harmless.