Gregory Paul has postulated in the Journal of Religion and Science that religion makes Americans more likely to be violent, disease-ridden loons.  Gregory Paul is a free-lance scientist who specializes in drawing dinosaurs.  He is understandably upset that belief in a creator makes it harder to sell his pictures.

Paul takes information from several sources that do not have similar reporting protocols and use them to support his thesis that religion hurts the United States.  He apparently equates stupidity with religion; yet some of the most trained people in our country, medical doctors, are usually spiritual persons. 

Paul states that teen pregnancy, sex-related diseases, and violence are all the result of religious beliefs in the United States, specificially, the belief in a creator.  He states that countries in Europe don't have these problems.  Surely, he has missed the large immigrant populations of Muslims to those countries--most of whom don't report diseases or domestic violence to authorities.  In fact, he doesn't seem to admit any of those countries have problems at all.  If that is so, why in heck do their economies suck so hard?  Why do they have such dismal employment rates?

After reading just his abstract, I wondered why Mr. Paul is still in the US, since he certainly seems to believe that other countries are much better than we are. 

I am not a religious person.  I preferred going fishing on Sunday to church as a kid; as an adult, Sunday was just another work day to me.  But religion gives many people hope; people need hope to keep going, especially when the world seems to fall down around them.  Most Europeans have already given up on hope--look at how dim and dismal their economies are, and that much is obvious.  Americans have a robust and growing economy, extremely low unemployment rates, and more freedom than any other group of humans any where on this planet.  We also tend to be much more hopeful, risk-taking, and yes, more religious.

Sorry that makes it hard to sell pictures of dinosaurs, Paul.  Hope you have a better time in Europe.

A sometimes deadly dog influenza has been found in Texas.  Just another reason to keep our dogs close and away from strays....

Ronald and I both woke up determined to come home today.  I called home, and our answering machine picked up, so I knew we had both power and phone service.  We hit the road just as the sun came up.  The wind was pretty high as we got closer to Victoria, but not very bad. 

We picked up Christine's car in El Campo, drove 71 down to Midfield and took our back route back home.  On the way home, we saw some trees down and a telephone pole snapped in half.  An old barn down from us collapsed, and there was a few shingles missing from some homes, but for the most part, there was very little damage.

The minis toasted Jessica's old room, but all the animals were okay and very happy to see us.  The prime on our well was lost because we lost power during the storm.  We might have gotten an inch or so of rain and we had branches all over the front yard.

Other than that, Rita caused very little damage here.

(By the way, Brazoria County OEM said everyone could come home....of course, we left before we knew that, but that info was released before we got here.)

I had hoped to start blogging again, but Rita is making that impossible.  We are in the absolute worst position with Freeport now the area they believe she will come ashore; we are about 20 miles from there, will be within the main hurricane force wind area, and on the dirty side of the storm. 

I hope we have a home to come back to.  I hope all my animals survive, since we are not able to take some with us. 

This sure has been a hell of a week.  First I find out my dad has typhoid fever and pneumonia.  Now this.  Sucks to be me.