No, not everything happens "for a reason"; sometimes, #ShitHappens

Personally, I loathe that phrase, whether out of the mouths of conventionally religious, out of the mouths of New Ages, or out of the orifices of 12-steppers, for two reasons.

One is that it doesn't comport with modern scientific knowledge; the uncertainties of quantum theory show that, at a microscopic level, exact causation cannot be limned out. Related to that, things like chaos theory, emergent complexity, etc., show that exact results of causal events cannot be predicted even at the macroscopic level.

Two, as shown here in detail, it's got a huge, gross, boatload of insensitivity behind it.

This also illustrates why the Silver Rule is better than the Golden Rule.

"Do NOT do unto others what you do NOT want them to do to you."

I've written about the Silver Rule before, most recently with Kim Davis. Before that, with explaining its practical consequential differences, as part of attacking the so-called War on Christmas myth.

This has some extra significance with the HERO proposition losing by a fair margin in Houston Tuesday.

A lot of conservative Christians probably haven't even heard of the Silver Rule. Those who have would surely belittle it as non-Christian.

Beyond the Silver Rule, shit happened plenty in Houston on bigotry, and on the state of Texas in general in kissing the Legislature's ass, last week. And, noooo, there was no divine plan behind it; there was no "reason" except the lack of reason of a majority of a small minority of eligible voters who actually turned out. And, if my guesstimates are right, more shit will happen to Houston in times ahead.

And, beyond that, from personal experience in the newspaper biz, I know that shit happens all the time. Fatal car wrecks had no god or higher power behind them, for example.

Nor does a small town murder-suicide on the stereotypical "slowest day of the news year."

And, certainly, on the slowest day of the news year, no god had a purpose orchestrated behind a wingnut anti-abortion zealot killing a police officer and two others.

Arianna Huffington wrong AND clueless on Alcoholics Anonymous

While the Divine Ms. A has done a lot of good in supporting the growth of the liberal blogosphere, it comes as no surprise, knowing her NewAgeish tendencies in some areas, to know that she totally misses the boat with blank-check support for AA. That, in turn is part of a larger and sadder blank-check support for “faith-based initiatives” in general. (Oh, BTW, what would the Bush Administration, or the Greek Goddess (snark again) do, if a Wiccan or Satanist applied for a faith-based grant?)

Here’s the nut grafs of how she’s wrong:

The evidence is overwhelming that it's infinitely harder to rebuild shattered lives without acknowledging the spiritual dimension of human nature. No, this doesn't mean accepting Jesus as your personal savior. It simply means that, as Alcoholics Anonymous and its many offshoots — including Gamblers Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc. — have shown, acknowledgment of a higher power is central to recovery.

First, Bill Wilson only inserted more religion (yes religion, not “spirituality”) into AA because Dr. Robert Smith’s AA group in Cleveland was growing faster than his own in New York City. Wilson was a former stockbroker, and like most salespeople, didn’t care WHY something was selling, just that it was.

But, the more serious claim that AA, and the other 12-Step offshoots, “work”? Not at all. Here’s some of the dirty little secrets AA doesn’t like to admit:

According to AA’s own Triennial Survey of its membership (conducted every three years, of course), of 100 people who join AA today, only about five of them will still be there a year from now. In five years, that figure will shrink to a mere 1.6 to 2.6 percent. These figures have remained consistent for decades. Compare this with the figures describing the natural outgrowth of a substance problem: of Americans who say they’ve ever had a substance problem but have since solved that problem, fully 80 percent claim they either outgrew the problem naturally, or buckled down and took care of it on their own, without any outside help whatsoever.

In other words, AA and other 12-step groups don’t work. And, for the Athenian Airhead to cite AA as a success model so blithely shows she didn’t do any research on her subject. (And, her dissing of atheists in the same column only underscores that; it also puts her broader credibility on the line.)

Of course, as the person above notes, and, as the Greek Gidget sneeringly dismisses, the bigger issue yet is that enforced AA (as for people convicted of alcohol-related offenses) is illegal, per multiple U.S. District Court rulings.

Besides, Huffington is ignorant of Bill Wilson’s real “higher power” when he got sober — belladonna. It’s easy to hallucinate all sorts of spirituality shit when, well, when you’re on a hallucinogen! She apparently also ignores Bill’s late-life jaunts into the world of LSD.

Oh, no. The Athenian Airhead utters this instead:

Leading the nitwit parade on this issue are two very strange bedfellows: Barry Lynn, who has made a career out of warning people of imaginary threats to the separation of church and state, and Pat Robertson, who is worried about “opening the floodgates ... of the federal treasury to aberrant groups” like the Church of Scientology, the Unification Church and the Hare Krishnas.

I guess Rev. Pat doesn't know that the Hare Krishnas have provided help to homeless veterans, recovering addicts and prison parolees with the help of government money for close to 20 years.

First, seven years later, I wonder if Miss A. has admitted that many of these threats aren’t “imaginary.” (I suspect many fundamentalist backers of Bush, if they do worry about things like climate change, simply assume they’ll be “elevated” during the Rapture to serenely watch the world bake. Heck, some may substitute Chinese CO2 output for Soviet tanks and say global warming is the prophesied Armageddon.)

Second, I don’t care whether the International Society for Krishna Consciousness is “aberrant” to Pat Robertson or not, it’s still unconstitutional for it to get money like this.

The ruling of liberal faith-basers’ “favorite” Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, and his blatherings about “civil religion,” aside.

Why ‘believe it and be it’ just does not work

Steve Moore’s April 18 “In the Bleachers” is indeed worth 1,000 words on this subject. But, I’ll add a few, so the cartoon doesn’t look so lonely on the page. Whether it’s Shirley MacLaine, Melody Beattie, or some other New Age guru telling you that you just need to visualize personal success and you will see it happen, or some New Age-intoxicated (pun highly intended) 12-Stepper reducing that already trivial “spirituality” to something like visualizing and praying for parking spaces, it just isn’t true.

That’s even more the case in the work world, whether it’s Og Mandino or Robert T. Kiyosaki amongst the famous, or your local management guru, claiming that with enough discipline (no duh), and enough visualization and positive thinking, you can be anything you want to be.

Two words: Michael Jordan.

And, no, those are not two words in support of New Agers of spiritual guruism, or New Age-lighters, or New Age-infused Christian gurus like the spiritual descendents of Norman Vincent Peale.

No, I’m not referencing Michael Jordan, the world’s greatest basketball player.

I’m referencing Michael Jorden, the Double-A baseball washout with the Birmingham Barons.

Whether he actually did visualization exercises every night, or even before every at bat or not, Michael Jordan had a huge desire to make the major leagues. Remember, he, along with us, was seeing the two-sport stardom of Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson.

But, no matter how big his dream and how much he visualized, Michael Jordan still couldn’t hit a Double-A curveball to save his life or his major-league dreams. Period. End of story.

All the basketball talent he had simply could not translate into the proper hand-eye coordination.

But, let’s go to the business world. Some of America’s richest people, including No. 1 Bill Gates and top 10 Warren Buffett, strongly oppose efforts to get rid of the federal estate tax. (Post “death tax” in comments on my blog and I’ll ban your IP.)

Why do they feel this way? Well, Gates has explicitly said that luck — pure, dumb luck — has had a lot to do with his success.

You know something? You won’t find “luck” in any New Age book, nor any management guru New Age-lite/New Christianity book.

That’s because luck means no God, no spirit, no life force, no karma, not even a doorknob, is in control.

Let’s go to the everyday world, though.

Want to be a musician but are tone-deaf or rhythm-numb? All the visualization and positive thinking in the world ain’t gonna change that.

Want to be a surgeon but have unsteady hands? Ditto.