Twelve Opinions Likely To Be Unpopular

Funny thing is, I'm not even in a particularly bad mood...

To say that "all religion is bad" is an oversimplification bordering on intellectual bigotry and does not hold up to any measure of scrutiny. However, to say that "NO religion is bad" is equally over-simplified and holds up even less. I can think of FOUR religions, off the top of my head, that would make the world a better place by having their influence diminished to near-total obscurity - two of them are very large, two of them are sort of new, one of them is VERY new, and none of them are Judaism or Buddhism. Have fun guessing.

Barack Obama is NOT "playing chess while the Republicans play checkers." The Republicans are playing checkers, and Obama is wondering why they can't just all take equal numbers of red and black pieces, call it an "everybody wins" and go outside to guess what clouds look like.

Widespread legalization and acceptance of gay marriage will probably NOT cause an errosion in the societal stature of marriage itself, monogamy, the 'traditional' family unit, etc; ultimately leading to a kind of benign sexual/romantic anarchy (at least compared to the current model)... but if it DID, I wouldn't necessarily call that an innately bad thing.

The idea that "amoral" and "immoral" are treated as being the same thing causes an awful lot of unnecessary consternation and social-slowdown.

Making a certain "baseline" of medical care government-run and taxpayer funded would not only pay for itself but start paying DIVIDENDS if said "free" care was NOT made available to those who injured themselves through acts of willful stupidity - re: repeat hard-drug abuse, improperly-supervised "Xtreme!!!" sports/stunts, etc.

I do not object to one man being able to attain, without even running for or being elected to political office, the level of power and influence over world events that Rupert Murdoch has - I only object to that man BEING Rupert Murdoch. If I found out someone was bribing officials and subverting the will of "the people" to ends I agreed with, I'd probably be okay with it... unless it involved serious wrongdoing, like people getting killed or whatnot.

Science has not and probably will not "disprove" the existance of God. However, it's doing a very good job of making the prospect of an all-knowing, loving, benevolent God to seem very, very unlikely. Ironically, the much more ancient notion of god(s) as a super-powerful yet petty and scatterbrained uber-being treating the world like a bucket of not-especially-well-cared-for toys seems more plausible by the day.

The "Tea Party" wing of Congress (as opposed to individual citizens still for whatever reason comfortable with identifying with said movement) is speaking with 100% accuracy in it's opinion of itself as the representation of "average, everyday, ordinary folks" outlook on the world. As such, they are the clearest example ever presented of why "average, everyday, ordinary folks" are best kept as far away from exercising actual, direct power over the running of a society as humanly possible.

When I say "Hey science, it's the 21st Century - where's my jet-pack!?," I am NOT interested in hearing about how infeasible it is because air-traffic would be so difficult to manage. After all, please notice I was asking about MY jet-pack - not everybody else's jet-pack.

If Godzilla or something like Godzilla actually came into being and began an unstoppable destructive rampage the likes of which the world had never seen; so long as said rampage didn't kill anyone I know or destroy anything I hold in particular affection it would take at least a month for me to even think of acknowledging said events as anything other than "REAL GIANT MONSTER!? AWESOME!!!"

The worst thing that has happened to modern culture by far is that "elite" has become a derrogatory word.

I disagree with people who say "I have no problem with faith, it's organized religion that's the problem." Frankly, organized religion is fine by me - I "get" people needing/wanting some kind of structured sense of community and ritual to build get-togethers and holidays around; and that's cool by me. MY problem is when the actual faith/beliefs involved are take SO seriously by adherents that they actually want it to effect the way the world is organized and run.

I would be absolutely fine with NASA forging photographs proving to have found oil on Mars if it was successful in "tricking" the U.S. to turn the space-program back on and get some permanent installations built up there already.