So here are twenty minutes of Brian's thoughts. As I sit here, I am dumbfounded by the ignorance of humans. Today I talked to a coworker about religion. He found out that I'm agnostic and proceeded to proselytize. I can respect this, because his religion dictates that people who don't accept Jesus Christ will go to hell. But at the same time, I poked several holes in the Christian philosophy and in the Bible. He wasn't able to counter my arguments, and he responded only by saying that he has faith. This epitomizes human ignorance. I have faith the chair I'm sitting in now will not collapse and harm me. This faith is based on my past experiences with chairs and with seeing things that turn out to, in fact, exist. Yet he claims he has "faith" in a god that nobody on this planet can prove they've seen. I can just as well assert via faith that there is a Pink Elephant on the other side of the moon that we'll never see. I've never seen this elephant, but I KNOW it's there. I have faith. It speaks to me through the Elephant Spirit. What the fuck is that all about? How can someone bastardize his or her beliefs to knowledge like this?? It is incomprehensible to me. I realize that people have a deepseated need for absolutes. Nobody wants to think our planet is a lonely hunk of dirt floating in space, so instead we conjure up deities that give our lives and our very existence meaning. Never mind that there is absolutely no reason to believe we are correct save a book compiled thousands of years ago based on events hundred or thousands of years before that! Who needs logic and reason anyway? And it never ceases to amaze me that some scientists still embrace religion! It scares me how easy it is for them to walk away from work and into church and never mingle the two because they're so incompatible. It makes me truly sad that people can be so stupid. Thankfully our society is progressing further and further away from religion, albeit at a crawling pace. And even so, rather than shedding this relic of our intellectual infancy we simply mold the religion (absolute truth, mind you) to fit our current society and way of life. I'm dumbfounded. It also amazes me how closedminded people can be. I'm gay. Big deal. Yet many people (though a few proportion in Austin) perceive me as evil for it. My actions are vile and disgusting to them. Never mind the fact that homosexual activity occurs in nature, though not as frequently as heterosexual behavior. And don't even touch upon the fact that there is no logical, reasonable justification for opposing homosexuality. People have all these notions that homosexuals are pedophiles or that we try to "recruit. " At the risk of sounding pessimistic in my writing and thoughts, I can't believe how moronic our society is, on average. We even have Al Gore in the news saying he opposes samesex marriage based on religious reasons. (Hmm, are my two pet peeves of the day related? Of course!) J. And so I'm left sitting here, wondering how people can be so stupid as to embrace Christianity and oppose homosexuality. Ugh. THESE are the times that try men's (and women's) souls! Which brings up another point. I'm so annoyed at how misogynistic our society is. The craze in the past decade has been political correctness, and conservatives are sick of it. But things haven't changed nearly as much as people think. I still sit through lectures where the professor refers to every character described (a banker, an investor, a CEO) as he. he. he. I can't stand it. But perhaps it's not so much that these professors are bigoted to some degree. Perhaps they're simply trying to convey the way the world really is! Because women don't have anywhere near an equitable stake in society. In finance we were shown some subcommittees of the boards of directors of Procter and Gamble and Home Depot, Inc. Out of some two dozen positions between the two companies ONE PERSON was a woman! I can't stand it. I feel like I'm a bastion of fairness and equity and reason in a sea of stupid people! (Keep in mind, I'm not this pessimistic in my day to day activities, perhaps just in my mind. Hehe. ) And, not that I'm trying necessarily to relate it to our class, this is all psychology! It's probably evolutionary psychology more than anything. With regard to religion, as survival machines for our genes, we'd like to believe we will continue indefinitely. This manifests itself in various religions that promise us eternal life. And we'd like to believe that our existence isn't arbitrary, so we conjure up a god who gives us meaning, ignoring the myriad moral and logical problems this presents. With homosexuality. gay people don't reproduce if they fully express their sexuality. Of course not all do, which is why homosexuality could persist in the population as long as it has. And so on some level I'm sure we're afraid that if we accept homosexuality, more people will "choose" to be homosexual. Then the species will die out! Oh no! (I know per Richard Dawkins that evolutionary psychology operates on a genetic level, not a societal level, but you see my point. ) Anyway, I suppose that's my time for this week. Tune in again next week for more ramblings from Brian's ultraliberal mind.