What matters more to you: content or the way you get it?

I ask this question because Alan Kaufman at the Evergreen Review seems to believe the delivery method is the most important. So important that he even invokes Godwin’s Law on himself when talking about the current trend of books moving from paper to devices like the Kindle.

All physical books must go up the chimney stack. Such was the methodology of the SS who forced their prisoners to run naked races round and round the barracks yard in the Polish winter, a race that no one was meant to win.

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.

What an ass.

He seems to believe that e-books are responsible for bookstores closing. They aren’t. The vast majority of the population that reads doesn’t have e-readers, but they do often buy their books online, and that’s what’s killing bookstores.

He also seems to believe that e-readers hearld a new age where only the biggest, most important authors get published. This is nonsense. If that was the case, I won’t have a short story for sale in the Kindle store (for those who don’t have a Kindle, download the free Kindle ap for the PC and then you can read my story if you like).

The writer of the article is simply wrong, and comparing the transition from paper to e-readers to the Holocaust is just insulting on many, many levels.

Further, everything is starting to digital. Does it really matter if the movie you are watching is on cable, on a DVD, on a DVR or some sort of streaming video format? Does it matter if music comes to you as an MP3, a CD, or on a record? The content is basically the same across the various delivery systems. The content is what matters.

For fun, here’s a poll:

I wrote last month about Cameron Todd Willingham, a possibly innocent man executed in the state of Texas in 2004.

Well, now it sounds as though there’s some political fallout to this. Texas Governor Rick Perry replaced three members of an investigation team looking into the case. He tried to play it off all cool, but I think it’s clear he has a guilty conscience and wants to try and avoid finding out that he played a direct role in the death of an innocent man.

I have a little poll here. This is a poll only for people who favor capitol punishment. Enjoy!

A recent article on Slate.com concerns a study that seems to indicate, as the headline puts it, religious people are nice and atheists are mean.

This is, of course, a very broad statement and one that, at least in my personal experience, is not substantiated by the facts. I’m far happier as an atheist than I ever was as a theist, and while I’m not all that nice, I’m certainly quite moral and decent.

The article also implies atheists are cheap bastards when giving to charity.

In Gross National Happiness, Arthur Brooks notes that atheists are less charitable than their God-fearing counterparts: They donate less blood, for example, and are less likely to offer change to homeless people on the street.

I think there’s some very slight truth to this, but I think it’s only because churches, for all their ills, do have great charitable organizations set up, and when you’re in a group of people being asked to donate money to a worthy cause, you’re more likely to. Since nothing like a church exists for atheists, we don’t have the same weekly reminder to give cash, and we don’t have the silent peer pressure of those around us. It is a problem, to be sure.

On the other hand, the author of the article then goes on to point out that largely atheist countries like Denmark and Sweden tend to be very moral, very generous and quite happy. He says this is a bit of a puzzle. Well, I can solve it for him.

Religion, or the lack thereof, doesn’t make any real difference in people’s morality, generosity or happiness. It’s a slew of other things that matter more. Religion is evil because it’s a lie presented as truth, and therefore should not exist, but I strongly doubt it makes people more or less moral. I do believe it’s far easier to move people onto evil moral concepts like racism, homophobia and the like through religion, but that isn’t the same thing.

That said, the author makes one other point I very strongly disagree with.

Most Americans who describe themselves as atheists, for instance, nonetheless believe that their souls will survive the death of their bodies.

Ok, I don’t believe that. There is no evidence what so ever to support the notion of a soul. I don’t think I have one. I can’t recall anyone I know who identifies as an atheist who believes they have one, either. I think this statement of his is just flat-wrong, but since he’s not offering any data to support it, I haven’t much to refute it with.

So what follows down below is an informal poll for atheist readers only. Enjoy!