August 2011 – Sumogirl Blog

The Republican Evolution Problem

Why Republican Rejection of Evolution Matters

Yesterday, Richard Dawkins published an article at the Washington Post about why it matters that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry rejects evolution. He said that Rick Perry’s rejection of evolution not only shows that he is an “ignoramus” but that asking politicians the evolution question is a good litmus test to find out whether they have basic reasoning skills or not.

I agree. This is not simply a matter of personal beliefs that will not affect their performance as president. It turns out there are several reasons why someone might reject evolution and none of them reflect well on the individual in question.

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Humanism doesn’t cost much

I received a link the other day from money.co.uk about the wealth of churches. It’s about the business of religion and covers some of the wealthiest religions, where they get their money from and what they spend it on.

Not surprisingly, the big dog religion financially is the Catholic Church. They are apparently worth hundreds of billions and their fortune apparently mostly came from priceless works of art that, were probably plundered (I mean saved) during the World Wars. They apparently have apparently spent 1/2 billion in the USA alone to pay off abuse victims.

Compare this with the America Humanist Association, whose annual budget is about $2 million. According to the 2010 annual report, they spend almost all of that on programs with over a million going to public awareness campaigns. They don’t appear to spend any money on pay off abuse victims.

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Gender Roles, Feminism and the Humanist Perspective

I was asked to comment on the Humanist perspective as it relates to gender roles and feminism. So, that’s what I’m doing. You might be unhappy to find out that we don’t really have a consensus on these issues as Humanists. For instance, some of us are ok with porn and some of us think porn exploits women. With that much range on some very basic issues within the Humanist community, it makes it rather hard to comment and make a blanket statement about the Humanist perspective on topics related to gender. But there are some basic concepts that almost all Humanists agree on, so I’ll focus on those.

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