Some Things Aren't Up For Debate

For several months now, I've avoided getting into debates in the anonymous corners of the Internet.
Mainly because I have standards regarding any arguments I make, such as proper grammar, cited sources, as few (trying for none) logical fallacies as possible, treating all participants with respect as people even if their argument is bunk, etc.

And other people just....don't.

I've lost track of the number of times I've written or started writing a well-organized, well-researched, well-thought response to a post online, and then thrown the whole thing out instead of posting it because the person would likely not even read the thing, and only respond with cliches, platitudes, or the always-popular "I will enjoy watching you burn in hell".

So for your reading pleasure today, I'd like to post a few issues which at this point shouldn't even be up for debate anymore.
By that I mean issues which do NOT have two equally logical positions which can be taken regarding them.

These are not "just your opinion" issues, like who should be president or whether there should be a monument to Satan next to the Ten Commandments.

These are issues which should have been resolved, accepted as truth, and built up from DECADES ago, but our society continues to stagnate because delusional sheeple continue to argue them.


1) Evolution is not "just a theory".
Stop spewing nonscience regarding this subject.
That goes doubly for church people who seem to think that if anything in the Bible is scientifically explainable, it somehow insults and diminishes God.....even though many of the pioneers of the modern scientific method were CHRISTIANS who looked up at the universe they believed God made in such wonder that they believed the study and greater understanding of it was an act of worship.

Evolution Via Natural Selection is, in view of the evidence currently available, the most plausible explanation for the state of life on this planet.
"Most plausible" is the key phrase here.

Religious people are so obsessed with "certainty," having been indoctrinated to think of their particular beliefs in absolutist terms, that when a scientist tells them the obvious, that science doesn't deal in certainties and absolutes, they lose their minds.
And immediately start screaming in the public forum that science and everything ever discovered or developed by the scientific method is anti-God.
...while posting about it on the Internet using a smartphone while standing under an electric light.


2) Vaccines are necessary for the protection of society, not an optional medical treatment.
See those words "most plausible"?
Read them again.
Because science works in probabilities, not absolutes, the discoveries and developments which result from it work, based on a set of evidence, in the majority of cases.
That one child with a particular genetic makeup somewhere still got sick after getting a vaccine doesn't even come CLOSE to counterbalancing the MILLIONS who have been and are saved by them, by being treated individually AND by preventing a mass outbreak.

That we are seeing outbreaks of diseases which medicine filed under "tamed" years ago, demonstrates that the completely artificial paranoia of anti-vaxxers is a threat to society as a whole via their paranoid-delusional practices.


3) Religion has no place in the education of children.
Ever.
If your beliefs are self-evident in their veracity, let your children discover them as adults.
Shoving texts and doctrines and dogma down their throats before they've even started cognitive development is nothing but forced indoctrination.
It does not lead to greater intelligence, curiosity, or creativity, but in too many cases leads to the stunting of all three.
The more and more deeply you indoctrinate them, the longer it will take them to develop a sense of self, because everything they attempt to make of themselves will be weighed down by your indoctrination.
In addition to placing pressure upon them from day 1 to live up to an unrealistic standard that completely ignores and in some cases subverts their individual personality.


4) Religion has no place in the government of adults.
Ever.
Forced indoctrination is the opposite of a free society, and thus should be prevented at all points from infringing upon the workings of it at all levels.

A pastor who pressures his congregation to vote a certain way has crossed the Wall of Separation, and should have his organization treated as a Party promoter rather than a charitable organization, and taxed to the full extent of the law.
A politician who attempts to use religious beliefs to justify an unjust law or unjust enforcement of a law should be removed from office immediately for the same reason.


People who try to force religion into government and education seem unwilling to be honest with themselves and just shout from the rooftops that they want a theocracy built around their particular dogma, but they continue to attempt to employ theocratic methods in their political maneuvering and PTA protests.



We tout ourselves as a nation of laws, as a nation of freedoms, as a nation of progress.
It is an ideal we routinely fail to reach, in great part because too many people refuse to accept anything as true which counters their own dogma, regardless of the evidence presented.
If we cannot move beyond this, we will continue to stagnate and rot from the inside out.