What is "Heritage"?

In everyday use, "heritage" usually refers to a culturally inherited trait that the individual receives from his parents. And so, there's American heritage, Irish heritage, Korean heritage, Jewish heritage, the poorly-defined Latino/Hispanic heritage, Black heritage, and, of course, never a White heritage.

(Does "White Heritage" sound disturbing? If so, then are the other heritages also disturbing?)

In general, it sounds simple: If your parents are of Heritage X, then you are also of Heritage X. Of course, it can get a little more complicated: If Mom is Heritage X and Dad is Heritage Y, then you can "claim" two heritages. Or maybe you would just claim one and ignore the other. (To illustrate, people with a black parent and a white parent usually seem to lean towards a black heritage.)

Now, what if your mom claims Heritages A and B, and dad claims Heritages C and D? Or worse, what if...

Mom = A, B, C, and D, and

Dad = E, F, G, and H?

Well, if any one of those eight heritages is "Native American", then you can open a casino. Otherwise, you would probably select your favorite heritage -- perhaps based on affinity with a group that has many accomplished members, or perhaps based on a group that has many members who claim victimhood, or...whatever your preference is.

Next problem: If your parents are from Germany, and you are born in Chile and then move to America, then what's your heritage? If you say "Chile", then that means that your heritage can be both inherited from your parents and formed by your residence. (And, presumably, your children can claim heritages of Germany and Chile -- and whatever heritages their other parent happened to claim.)

Can heritages extend beyond nationalities? Can one also have an Islamic heritage? Or a gay heritage? If so, that means that heritages can be formed by:

A) Where your parents were born
B) Where you are born
C) Your parent's beliefs
D) Your beliefs
E) Your parent's lifestyle
F) Your lifestyle

Pick and choose any or all?

And when one considers that heritages can grow exponentially from one generation to the next (by a power of 2) , then that's a lot of heritages to be burdened with.

Another problem: Adoptions. If a baby is adopted by a Jewish family, then can the baby claim a Jewish heritage? If that same baby is discovered to have Catholic genetic parents, can the baby also claim a Catholic heritage? Can a Chinese baby adopted into an Irish family also claim a Chinese heritage? If "yes", then on what basis? Genetics? That would imply that cultural traits are transmitted genetically.

And besides, how could a baby possibly have any heritage (let alone a religious heritage) when the only things it can understand are eating, eliminating, and screaming?

In a world of constant migration and "intermarriage", the idea of heritage is obsolete, as it is just optional membership in tribe tribe of your choosing. And in a period of relative enlightenment and education, heritage demands that individual thought and behavior be subordinate to irrelevant tribal rituals. And in a world that recognizes individual accomplishment, heritage assigns credit and blame based on other people in "your" group.

And in a powerful state, heritages are used to coercively take (and kill) for the benefit of other heritages.

Heritage seems like a pretty bad idea.

Is Abortion Murder?

For argument's sake, let's say, "Yes, abortion is murder. A fetus, from the moment of conception, is a human being, and to destroy it is therefore murder."

Then it follows that...

- The aborting mother should face the death penalty, or at a minimum, life imprisonment. We're talking pre-meditated, first-degree murder here.

- Any parental restrictions on the child's behavior after birth is slavery. There should be no cribs, no gates, no rules. If your new-born wants Jack Daniels in his bottle, you had better respect those wishes.

- Come to think of it, if your new baby threatens to cry if you don't feed him Jack Daniels, then you can sue him for intimidation and psychic damage.

- And if the fetus has been difficult, then a lawyer will be waiting to pounce on him as he emerges into the rest of the world.

- Since the fetus is being singled out because it is a fetus, then it probably deserves some hate-crime protections as well.

- If discarding a four-cell embryo is murder, then what can be said of killing cows, pigs, and sheep? (A four-cell embryo is much less developed than an earthworm, let alone more advanced mammals.) A new vegetarianism awaits.

What Do Polls Say About Atheists?

On March 31st, Newsweek released the results of a poll done by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. (Their expertise is implied by the use of the word "Princeton" in their name; perhaps this blog should be renamed the "Princeton faQster".)

From this poll, we learn that:

- 3% percent of Americans say they are atheists.

- Oddly, 49% say that they personally know an atheist. If 49% of the population personally knows someone from the 3%, then that, it appears, doesn't add up.

- 26% of Americans say that atheists cannot be moral, and another 6% would have to think about it. Are these people from the 49% who personally know atheists, or from the other 51% who only know them from TV (or whatever)?

- 62% would not vote for an atheist, and another 9% would have to think about it. (Replace "atheist" with "black", "Jew", "woman", or even "Muslim" and see how that sounds. Is there any group, other than, say, child rapists, who would be as automatically disqualified?)

- The survey also says that 4% of "Evangelical Protestants" feel that God had no part in the origin and development of humans.

4% of Evangelical Protestants say that God had no part? They would be interesting people to meet.

Are Socialists and Their Left-Wing Ilk Religious?

Yes they are:

1. Instead of trusting the evolving processes of free markets, they assume that an omnipotent, prescient, just, and benevolent leader can solve all problems.

2. Their doctrine demands today's needless sacrifices (taxes, economic controls, endless regulations, social engineering, etc.) to establish tomorrow's ambiguous utopia.

3. They have a rigid doctrine to which all members subscribe -- and display complete agreement in all aspects of subsidiary issues (wars, gay rights, recycling, etc.)

4. Their beliefs rest on faith; even when repeatedly disproven, they keep believing.

5. Israel is central to their beliefs.

6. They evangelize in public.

What Are The Worst Things About Religion?

1. Its substitution of reasoning and evidence with blind faith.

2. Its substitution of curiosity, open-mindedness, and critical thinking with forever-immutable and often-dubious "facts". Not only does this retard discovery, but it is also a dull existence.

3. Its encouragement of tribalism (although, admittedly, the absence of religion would probably result in tribalism based on other things).

4. Its providing adherents with a self-defined moral cover to harm others, from imposing restrictions on medical research to flying planes into skyscrapers -- let alone the harm done to children along the entire spectrum from bar-mitzvahs, to scaring them with stories about "hell", to female genital mutilation.

5. Its providing adherents with license to prohibit any discussion of behavior derived from their beliefs. From loud public displays of evangelism, to the "right" to go home early on Fridays, to the "right" to not touch pork in your supermarket job that you voluntarily accepted, to the public broadcasting of religious services, to the "right" to terrorize airplane passengers, any refusal to accommodate religious demands is interpreted as an attack on "constitutional rights".

Otherwise, no problem.

Are Americans Religious?

Not particularly.

Although 92% believe in God, 85% believe in heaven, 82% believe in miracles, 71% believe in hell, 63% believe there is a devil, 44% believe that God is male, they are not religious in the sense that they blindly follow everything in The Bible.

It's easy for them to hold those beliefs because none conflict with their hard-wired sense of morality. That is, they select sections of The Bible that don't conflict with their civil lifestyle.

For example, I suspect that few "religious" people (at least, Christians and Jews) would condone putting people to death for working on the sabbath, or for being a homosexual, or for being insolent to a parent. In fact, if you do a Bible text search on the phrase "put to death", you can see dozens of capital offenses that, I think, few people would approve of. It's a long list: Adultery, sex with a daughter-in-law (which returns a death sentence for both parties), bestiality (Fido also gets the death penalty), claiming to be a "wizard", anyone who attempts to dissuade you of a belief in God, anyone who rejects the God's Commandments, blasphemers, and all sorts of other transgressions that I can't understand because the prose is too incoherent.

But there are certainly many references to blood, stoning, eye-gouging, "smiting with iron" -- and enough other violence to ensure that any decent Christian or Jew would not permit their children to view a literal reenactment, assuming that they could stomach these things themselves. Better to believe in the abstractions, and live a life free of literal interpretation -- as civilized people tend to do.

Is Religious Discrimination Ethical?

You bet.

Very often, people talk will say that it is improper to discriminate against anyone on account of their race, ethnicity, or religion. Setting the first two aside, what exactly is wrong with discrimination based on religion? In fact, isn't religious discrimination precisely what religious people practice on non-believers?

In practice, most religions demand discrimination favoring their religion, and therefore demand discrimination against other religions. Therefore, banning religious discrimination would require banning religion itself.

But more to the point, religion is a set of beliefs and behavioral systems based on those beliefs. Should we be prohibited from treating people according to what they believe? If my religion requires me to get drunk on the job, does that mean that employers have no right to discriminate against me? And if my religion commands me to kill people who do not share my religion, is it discrimination to scrutinize me when I enter airports?

Was 9/11 an Act of Terrorism?

No, it was not.

Terror is used to frighten a population in submitting to one's demands, and has been used in varying degrees of success; e.g., the imposition of socialism in the Soviet Union, the IRA demands for a united Ireland, etc.

Although we read much about what the 9/11 "terrorists" want, this has been all speculation. In fact, the only demands have been the ever-changing items presented in the occasional Osama Bin Laden videos, all of which are beyond contemplation, let alone implementation. And other "terrorist" attacks (such as Bali, Madrid, London, Tel Aviv, etc.) had no accompanying demands at all.

The supporters of these attacks, however, have clearly stated that they wished to murder people. They have not expressed any desire to "terrorize"; they have only expressed a desire to kill.

In short, 9/11 and associated acts are not terror, but are just plain mass murder as an end in itself.