Franklin's Focus 9/2/10

Obama's Leaning on Religious Fanatics in War and Peace

As indicated here, Obama removed perfectly capable military leaders
from Afghanistan and replaced them with religious fanatics who see the
war a kind of Armageddon pitting the Christians, who are the chosen
minions of God, against the Muslims, who are the minions of Satan. The
new war leaders saw the battle as a continuation of the Christian
crusades of along ago. The media, of course, failed to frame and
analyze this bizarre action by Obama.

When it came to the war against disease, something similar took
place. Obama had to appoint a new head to the National Institutes of
Health, an enormous, far reaching research organization. The future of
medicine is seen by this body as being in stem cell research. The size
of the American enterprise reflects the huge importance given to it by
the U.S. and most nations. It directly employs 20,000 scientists,
325,000 outside researchers, and operates 27 institutes and research
centers. The enormous size of this project reflects the fact that most
scientists and politicians believe the future of medicine lies
somewhere down that road of massive research.

What happened was predictable. After choosing religious fanatics to
run the war in Afghanistan, Obam appointed Francis Collins, a
religious screwball, to run the world's biggest single medical
research project. The choice could not have been worse.

So why did Obama do this? A vast majority of the scientists employed
by the NIH are adamant atheists. Placing a believer as head of this
enormous project was seen as a gross insult by the great majority of
member scientists. The scientists who are members of that project were
never consulted because they would have voiced almost unanimous
opposition.

The insult of non-consultation was made even greater by the fact that
the person selected is a crackpot theist who believes the existence of
a deity can be scientifically proved! Such a bizarre belief is
evidence of a mind that does not understand science. As it turns out,
Obama had read a book written by this crackpot to prove the existence
of God scientifically ('The Language of God'). Obama showed us just
how stupid he can sometimes be by his embracing of that book and its
idiotic thesis that the existence of a tripartite, omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent God could be proved through science. Obama has
heartily endorsed a book that says this is so. It was undoubtedly
difficult to find a well known scientist who does not understand or
accept the basic premises of science, but Obama actually managed to do
so.

Since that appointment, there has been a profound gap between the head
of the world's most important scientific mission and the huge number
of scientists this mission employs. If Obama wanted to sabotage that
mission, he probably has succeeded. The rest of the world scientific
community no longer looks to the American project as a leader.

On top of this bungled appointment, Obama has refused to step up to
the plate and fight vigorously for maximum freedom in cell research.
Many deluded souls thought that when he became president it would be a
huge boon to cell research. What we were given for a leader of cell
research was a religious freak who claims he has proved the existence
of God and using science to do so.

Of course, that claim pertains to all three parts of that god, i.e.
the son, the ghost, and the father. The notion that three is one and
one is three was usually rejected by the primitive tribes of the
Pacific islands who were being lectured by Christian missionaries. The
natives saw that claim as logically impossible and therefore
empirically impossible. One could not be three. In other words, they
believed in a common rule of rational thinking that the missionaries
rejected.

The missionaries tried to tell the natives that God's truths were
often so profound we mortals cannot hope to fully understand them. One
has to believe by faith and not question 'truths' that seem like
obvious falsehoods. In some cases, natives were slaughtered for
voicing such filthy anathema. Millions were eventually murdered in the
Americas for failing to understand dogma that was incomprehensible to
them because the dogmata were in fact incomprehensible.

The Trinity has always been problematic. To say three is one and one
is three and truly believe is simply not sane thinking. Collins goes
further down this path to madness. He recounts in his book the time he
was hiking in the mountains, and he came across a frozen waterfall. It
had frozen into three columns. This instantly became a religious
revelation for Collins, who claims that this proved beyond any doubt
the existence of the Trinity! I kid you not! The world's most powerful
scientist has proven the existence of the Trinity using the a frozen
waterfall for his evidence.

Examples abound of this man's madness. Alas, our president has bought
into his madness and appointed him to one of the most important posts
any scientist has ever been appointed to. This insanity in our
government hearkens back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Throughout those eight years, both he and his wife once weekly
consulted with their private West Coast astrologists for advice of
state. An unknown number of decisions of state were made by Reagan and
his wife that came from astrologists.

Obama's appointment choice is, as one might is suspect, is
conservative. When some researchers wanted to launch research into the
massive number of gunshot deaths and woundings across America to
better understand the reasons from a scientific viewpoint, Collins was
uncooperative and let the proposal die without any true consideration.
That he was ordered to let it die by Obama, who did not want to rile
the NRA, was clearly the main reason, but the conservative Collins
would most likely agree with his president on this issue in any case.
Suppression of scientific knowledge is almost invariably promoted by
conservatives if it does not fit with their idea of sound social
engineering.

True liberal thinkers, on the other hand, are usually quite willing to
face research that might threaten a given belief. It is at the heart
of reason to abandon a belief once more counts against that belief
than counts for it Shedding a false belief should give a person a good
feeling generally speaking. Guiding one's life with false beliefs is
usually bad in the long run. The same goes for running a country.

I understand there are many anecdotes about Collins's irrational
embrace of religion, but the mode by which he came to believe in the
Trinity is enough by itself. To believe that three is one and also is
three indicates a willingness to abandon reason as a result of
cognitive impairment of the worst kind. It is not even a belief in the
core meaning of 'belief'. What could one possibly mean when a person
speaks of a belief in square circles? It's an epistemology that has
somehow been fashioned by a religious world view.

The fact that Obama actually bought and read Collins's book, which
Collins says scientifically proves the existence of God, indicates
that Collins does not have the slightest understanding of of true
scientific reasoning. His appointment was purely political and
arguably one of Obama's worst appointments. It also sheds more light
on the mentality of Obama. The belief that the existence of a deity
can be scientifically proven is pure madness. One's thinking has to
have become disastrously twisted to slide into the world of volitional
belief as opposed to a rational world view. It's painful to envisage
our president sitting in the Oval Office reading a book that purports
to scientifically prove the existence of a tripartite all powerful god.

Today's Quotation

'Faith: belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
without knowledge, of things without parallel.'

Ambrose Beirce, 'The Devil's Dictionary'

Warmest regards,
Richard