A Message To Science Haters:

     Ohh yeah, flat earthers, climate science deniers, Jesus was walking with his pet dinosaur crowd, this message is for you. If you think Noah sailed the entire earth collecting all the living things on this planet, this message is for you. Do yourself a favor and go to your local university, tell the scientist working on breakthrough vaccinations to stop wasting his or her time, you will do them a favor and just pray away the ills of the world.

     Lets start with the climate science deniers. Whether you like it or not, scientists all over the world have spent years and decades studying the climate. They have meticulously studied atmospheric makeup and content, ocean currents, global temperatures, ice core samples, deforestation, industrialization, and damn near everything that could possibly affect our climate. This brand of science is so large and encompassing it has taken decades to gather the needed data to even propose a hypothesis. After all the hard work put in by thousands of scientists, we get one freakishly large snowstorm on the east coast, and here come the haters. "Where is your global warming now guy." Climate and weather are two different things altogether. Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a place and time. Climate is the prevailing weather conditions in an area over a long period of time. Humans have clearly had an affect on our overall climate. We have put trillions of tons of waste gasses into the atmosphere, tons of pollutants into our oceans, massive amounts of toxic waste into the ground and precious watersheds. If you have a really nice fish tank, do me a favor, every day for a year, put a handful of your garbage in it. While your at it, add a drop of mercury, benzene, and just for shits an giggles some bio hazardous medical waste. Tell me in a year that your beautiful fish tank is thriving. There is only so much that this planet is going to put up with before it starts killing the problem. Climate change is real, and we had better start accepting the fact that we need to respect the planet that allows us to thrive.

     Lets move on to the six thousand year old earth crowd. First of all, astronomers and astrophysicists have spent a really really long time trying to understand the origins of the universe. The Big Bang Theory is the best hypothesis that centuries of observation has produced so far. The different models that have been used to gauge the age of the universe are incredibly complex, and quite confusing for the average guy swinging a hammer at a construction site. Biblical history on the other hand, is easy to wrap your head around. God makes man, God makes woman, they screw up, get sent out of Eden, and here we are a couple thousand years later. Don't question the fact that science has dated rocks, minerals, and organic matter to be millions and billions of years old. That's just a big game of dupe the Christian. I want my kids to be taught science in school, provable observations, the scientific method, chemistry, physics, general relativity and so on. Keep your creationism at home with your kids. I am not going to dumb down the next generation because of my inability to comprehend complex scientific material.

     Lastly, we are all quite familiar with the story of Noah's Ark. I personally can't believe that one guy, a couple thousand years ago, sailed the entire world collecting all of the living animals. How big was this boat that collected one male and one female species of everything? How did he get all the way to South America, and the Arctic? Currently there are over 1.4 million described species. That means Noah put 2.8 million animals on a boat. A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sails with a crew of about six thousand, ask them to logistically accommodate 2.8 million creatures. I am sure they will laugh. Maybe this is a story about a local phenomenon that encompassed the entire world as Noah knew it. In his time people in South America didn't even know that his part of the world existed, and vice versa. Yeah, I can totally believe that there may have been a localized catastrophe that Noah reacted to. No, I can't believe this guy sailed the entire world collecting two of everything, because God wanted to destroy the world. 

     In conclusion, I am tired of hearing a bunch of crap aimed at promoting a creationist agenda and denying the hard, laborious work that has been done by thousands of scientists. There is no big agenda to deny religion its place in the world, however, there is a religious agenda to deny the hard work of science because it doesn't fit in with the narrow agenda of biblical theology. Science is constantly evolving and changing. New discoveries happen every day, discoveries that change the way we think, or view the world around us. Biblical theology is unchanging. Trying to vindicate the biblical version of creation is not scientific observation, it is trying to push an agenda. Besides, if God did snap his fingers and create this beautiful planet which we inhabit, shouldn't we stop shitting on it. Shouldn't we stop the largest multi-national corporations from buying our politicians, just so they can turn around and pollute the world to increase their bottom line. Think about that for awhile. Good Luck America!!   

President Obama Set To Announce Troop Drawdown In Afghanistan:

     Tonight President Obama is giving a speech to announce that we are going to start drawing down our military forces in Afghanistan. It has been speculated that we are set to bring home ten thousand soldiers by years end, and possibly twenty thousand by the summer of 2012. Whether you agree with the President or not, this is not an easy decision for him to make. What will the future Afghanistan look like? The possibilities are limitless.

     I have been tempted to think we should gather up our troops and equipment and get out of that hell hole as fast as possible. However, when push comes to shove, I think the President his making a good choice by drawing down our forces slowly. The last thing we need is to let that region of the world fall into complete chaos once again. Afghanistan is a hot bed for fanaticism, it is going to take time for the people to establish a government for themselves. 

     One reason we can't just up and leave are the logistics that go into transporting 120,000 troops and their equipment. Massive amounts of military hardware have been brought into Afghanistan and they have to be taken out carefully. We can't risk leaving behind weapons and hardware that could be used on Afghan civilians by a future force similar to the Taliban. We also don't want anything left behind that could be sold to our enemies and used on our soldiers. The Soviets made this mistake in the late eighties and early nineties when they were withdrawing from Afghanistan. They continued to supply the Mujaheddin, which in turn later turned those weapons against Afghan civilians, and even later, American troops. Lets be careful what we leave behind, someone can always find a market for military hardware.

     Afghanistan also has a long history of not supporting a centralized government, it is a tribal region consisting of many governing bodies. When we took down the Taliban we installed a centralized government in Kabul that has not produced a very good track record so far. Every day we hear of corruption and malfeasance on the part of the Karzai government. The Karzai government is nowhere near competent enough to keep the Taliban from reasserting their presence, and let's be honest nobody wants to see the Taliban reassert themselves. Whether it is the Karzai government or a newly formed Afghan council, government, regime, whatever the people want to call it, they are going to need time to train security forces. We can't just leave and let civilians get slaughtered.
     I am glad to here that we are finally starting the process of leaving Afghanistan. This was a war that came out of necessity, unfortunately it has become an endless conflict with no clearly defined mission. I hope we learn a valuable lesson from Afghanistan. Nation building is impossible, unless the people of that nation participate in the building process. The Taliban has been weakened, Al Qaeda has been significantly broken, Osama Bin Laden is dead, we will be leaving the Afghan people in a better place than before we came. Afghanistan is a very complicated region I don't think anyone knows what is going to come of that country. Hopefully the Afghan people can eventually figure out what it is they want for their country. Unfortunately, an entire generation of Afghans has known nothing other than perpetual war. Hopefully peace will be a welcomed new way of life. Good Luck America!!  
           

Happy Fathers Day:

     Happy Fathers Day. Today is a good day to thank your dad for all those rides to practice and games, for all those school plays he sat patiently through, for putting up with bad grades, and most important of all for raising you into the person you have become. So give your dad a call or tell him in person, thank you. Thanks Dad!!