First, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as directed by the director of the original Swedish vampire film that made me think vampires could be interesting again, Let the Right One In. A truly inspired bit of daring movie-making, that one. With TTSS, he brought along his truly wonderful talent at evoking atmosphere and style, but I was rather underwhelmed by the film as a whole. There’s really nothing I can pinpoint as any one particularly weak point (except maybe the somewhat impenetrable script — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If everything else is good, and I get a sense that the plot is making sense, I can let a dense script I’m not immediately grokking wash over me knowing I can watch it again some other time for the details). But even the script isn’t a failure by any means; the dialog was well-written with the tension-filled spareness of a Pinter play.

The acting was also quite good all-round — but I wasn’t blown away. Which is my failing. For months, I’d been so worked up about this film, about Gary Oldman, that I expected a tour de force performance. What I got was skillful subtlety, and natural and believable underplayed drama. Well, except for John Hurt, but then, his angry forcefulness was exactly what was needed and entirely appropriate for character and tone.

This asplosion not in any film reviewed here. Or, anywhere.

Did I not like it as much as I was hoping because, what, I was expecting a Bourne movie? Bond? Mission Impossible? No. I’m familiar with the book (though I haven’t read it) and the original production, so I knew it was going to be a realistic, non-explody, spy film. I loved The American, for example, even though — no, because – it was stark and understated and atmospheric and tension-building and virtually no actiony-action. (I’m actually the only person I know who liked The American.) But then, I really didn’t know what to expect with The American except that it’d been described as a European-like film — which is a plus in my book! I simply, for some unknown reason, went into TTSS with high expectations — and they were ironically fulfilled in that it’s an excellent film, but not what I expected.

Then there’s J. Edgar. I pretty much got exactly what I expected with that film, and that may be one of the reasons for its surprisingly low RottenTomatoes score (although Ebert, who I almost always agree with, gave it a high 3.5 arbitrary stars). It was a rough, uneven, hit-and-miss film with much unfulfilled potential. Part of the problem is Leonardo DiCaprio. I can’t buy him. I recognize he’s a good actor who takes on challenging roles, but he’s . . . so . . . it’s the very weird dissonance he creates in my mind where I can’t decide if he did well or not, like one of those “magic eye” pictures where if you work at it, the 3D image will pop out at you — but usually, it’s just lingering on the edge of being and you know you can bring it into focus if you try. . . . Anyway, that’s DiCaprio for me in any adult role he’s in. He was great in Gilbert Grape, perfect in Titanic, quite wonderful in Gangs of New York. But I could just barely accept him in Shutter Island (good film!), though, I’ll admit, I accepted him in Inception. But as J. Edgar Hoover, I just can’t quite bring my opinion of his performance in focus, but I’m pretty sure I see the outline of an opinion that he was out of his depth and gave a pretty 1.75-note performance. His squint gave the other .25.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the makeup! OK, DiCaprio’s was passable, but what the heck was the Play-Dough and stipple monstrosity that was “Clyde Tolson”? It looked like Odo came back from Deep Space 9 with chicken pox and a bee sting allergy. Also, the film skipped around in time indiscernibly. It wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been two or three very different time-lines that went along at their own, but chronically forward, line — but there were points in which it skipped around in time just enough where you couldn’t quite tell by any visual cue if it went forward 1 year or 15 before skipping back 30.

Those flaws aside, the story surrounding Hoover and his longtime companion and possible lover, Clyde Tolson, was nearly perfect in its level of intimacy, its tone, and its anxiety. They played it quite well. Although, unfortunately, there’s one scene in which they have a fight resulting from Hoover’s repressed fear and Tolson’s sense of betrayal, in which they’re rolling around on each other and despite the sincere drama of the moment, I couldn’t help but hear Mark Russell in my head singing, “Sexual, subli-MA-tionnn . . . sexual SUB-li-ma-tion. . . .” It was just too contrived and blatant. But, as a whole, as I said, it was well-done and dramatic as I couldn’t help but cry a little at the end in Hoover’s bedroom.

But, being the Marxist that I am, I couldn’t help but see the movie from another perspective. Most of Hoover’s career was, as was depicted in the film, an obsession with a war against terror, I mean, against the Commie Menace. Now, I know Clint Eastwood, socially and politically, is a complex guy who has a foot in both the liberal progressive and the conservative camps, so I’m not terribly certain whether he wants us to cheer for Hoover and his elimination of communism in America (after all, the only depiction we get of the people Hoover fought were legitimately dangerous and violent anarchists — which, by the way, is a different ideology from communism), and no glimpse of American socialism of the 1910s through 30s that wasn’t through Hoover’s eyes, or whether he wants us to realize Hoover’s view is a skewed and ideological one. Is Eastwood taking it for granted that the audience knows who Emma Goldman was and what the Chicago union strikes were all about? Or does he side with Hoover’s ideals, but just not as neurotic about it as Hoover was?

In any case, I booed (mentally) with the 1919 anarchist bombings, sure; but, when Emma Goldman, the mother of American anarcho-socialism, appeared (and with such an eerie likeness that I questioned the accuracy of Maureen Stapleton’s portrayal of her in Warren Beatty’s epic film, Reds), I cheered! She’s a hero in my book, and a movie very desperately needs to be made about her. (Probable sociopath Ayn Rand got a sympatheric TV movie made about her, but Emma just gets cameos.) But as I was saying, in this time of the 2nd great-ish depression, thinking about the fascist iron fist that was brought to bear down on the nascent socialist movement in America during the 1st Great Depression, makes me frustrated and angry. People today have no clue that, especially before WWI but continuing into the Depression, the socialist party was a viable and legitimate party in America with supporters from all walks of life (except the wealthy capitalists, the politicians they bought, and the police they used to protect them), from Woody Guthrie to John Steinbeck to Albert Einstein.

If the development of modern capitalism had been mitigated and wasn’t allowed to take complete dominance in America in the early 20th century, I’m just guessing here of course, but I seriously doubt we’d have the boom-bust collapse of the economy across the predominately postmodern capitalist world we have now. (But then, to be fair, capitalism was needed then in order to get us to a state where it can destroy itself by making capital wealth ownership by the few, unnecessary. Which is the state we’re now in, with capitalism self-destructing.) But, if socialism had been allowed to remain side-by-side with capitalism — even if in a lesser role — and share the “base,” then when capitalism collapsed as a viable socio-economic model, viable and evolved socialist models for the 21st century could’ve been ready to take over. Yet, thanks to the war-on-pinkos waged by the likes of Hoover (and McCarthy, whom, according to this film, Hoover disliked greatly), all reasonable ideas of socialism were lumped in with the violent anarchists and eradicated as one boogey-scapegoat. And, while Hoover’s pet project and legacy, the FBI, became enviable in the realm of criminal investigation, I’m less than pleased about how corrupt, like most of government, it has become. (Although, really, with all the bugging and wiretapping the FBI was doing in the film, often for Hoover’s own secret personal files, I guess they really haven’t changed all that much!)

So, what was Eastwood’s point? Does he share his contemporary, Beatty’s, leftist sensibilities and made Hoover into a murkily depicted ideologue who changed history on his own terms? Or as a flawed hero who but for being sadly repressed (I know, fortunately, Eastwood’s liberal progressive opinions on homosexuality) and conflicted, did the right thing, badly? I can’t tell. And I don’t think that ambiguity, useful in arthouse films, is a good thing in this very Hollywood biopic.

If you believe no one should remake movies, especially foreign films, then you’re an arrogant elitist.

Gawdangit, I just did it, didn’t I? Got offensive? I’m sorry, but honestly, I can’t think of another way to describe the belief that, sight unseen, even before it’s finished, a movie can be judged as unworthy of existing because it dares to use a pre-existing script as its source. If works of art and/or entertainment are inherently bad for that reason, then why do we bother doing Shakespeare? Why do we get all excited about this version or that version of Hamlet? Why do we discuss our favorite version of Romeo and Juliet? Why is it OK for a director to make a version of a work of Shakespeare that’s “more accessible” to modern audiences? Where’s the cries of, “If you can’t be bothered to understand Elizabethan English, you don’t deserve to watch Shakespeare?”

Why are there countless CDs of countless classical works of music arranged in countless ways and performed by countless ensembles and orchestras and soloists, and no one bats an eye about that? Isn’t the London Symphony Orchestra’s 1968 recording of Beethoven’s 9th good enough? Why do we need the Cleveland orchestra to do it too? It’s been done already, why bother?

Look, I get it. I’m a card-carrying elitist myself. Subtitles are far preferable to dubbing, NASCAR is for rednecks, wine appreciation takes a sophisticated palate. I used to think foreign films are “better” than American and if you don’t like them, then go back to your “American Idol.” Maybe it was my Marxist education, maybe it’s my education and experience as a stage actor and director, or maybe I just realized after seeing one too many incomprehensible and pretentious art-house film, that there’s nothing written in the immutable laws of nature that says foreign films are inherently better, and that film is somehow prohibited from being remade like we do plays and music.

Why do plays get a pass? The usual response is: Because they’re made to be performed live, that’s the expectation. OK, sure. Then why make movies of plays? Anything by Shakespeare to Tim Rice. From Othello to Death of a Salesman to The Producers. Why does a play not, once it’s been made into a film, get the remake embargo? But more importantly, what law of nature says it’s verboten to give the same allowance to a movie?

“Because the Americans just want to make money.” Sure they do. So do the French and the Swedes and the Germans. Very few people, no matter what language they speak, put a film up for major release without the intent to try to make some money off it. But OK, let’s say that the American studio producer is just a cynical d-bag who sees a successful foreign film and decides, “Hey! Let’s make it here and get rich(er)!” The film doesn’t then just appear from out of the will of the producer. It needs a script writer, it needs a director, it needs cinematographer and costume designer and actors. Are some of the above, and the scores of others who appear in a film’s credits, completely mercenary? Will do anything only for a paycheck? Sure. But I would hazard that most of the people involved in the creative part of the film, not just the grips and the seamstresses, actually care about their craft. Gasp! Yes, it’s true! They do. Most directors, most actors, take on projects and roles because something about it speaks to them. Something about the themes is compelling, something about the characters is interesting, and so the creators do it for the same reason the director of a play stages another version of Macbeth, the same reason an actor portrays another version of Willy Loman.

Do you think that Rooney Mara took the role of Lisbeth in Fincher’s “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” simply because it’s a paycheck? Or maybe because, as an actress, she lives to play interesting and compelling characters, and wants to see what she could do with the role the same way a stage actor wants to play Lady Macbeth? Don’t you think director Matt Reeves took on “Let Me In,” the “remake” of “Let the Right One In,” only to become rich, or, like a theatre director, is compelled to want to bring to life an interesting work in his own way? Should creators of art be prohibited from plying their craft and using their own vision simply because, “Nuh-uh, that film has already been done, bucko! No one can do it again!”?

I find it interesting that the people who railed against the American version of the novel Låt Den Rätte Komma In seem to have no problems with the fact that the original Swedish film is a translation of a novel in the first place. Hey! They story’s been done already! If you can’t be bothered to read the book, you don’t deserve to see the film!

“Well, Americans just can’t read and are lazy so they hate subtitles and that’s why they’re making an American version.” OK, see all the above — it still applies. But you know what? So what if some, many, people don’t like to read their movies. Me, I’m fortunate in that I can read fast and have great comprehension, which allows me to quickly read the words then look up at the facial expressions and listen to the tone of voice. But I’m lucky in that way. If I had to read slower, I would hate subtitled films, because it’s a film! I get most of my enjoyment from the film by looking at what’s going on, looking at facial expressions, hearing the inflection of voice. And so do most people. Does that make them lazy? Uneducated?

And when you come right down to it, if a film is all that great, that much of a masterpiece, then answer this: Is it better for the film not to be seen at all if it can’t be seen in the “original” subtitled version? If your answer to that is “yes,” then you are exactly the definition of an arrogant elitist.

Finally, really, what in the world does it truly matter if someone remakes a film? Does it do you any harm in some way? Are you being forced to see it? Are you being taken against your will to the remake? Really, who the eff cares. Especially if the originally is still around and available. In fact, very often, an American remake of a foreign film gets the original a bus-load of attention and new fans it never would have before. Virtually no one but the most edgy j-horror fans knew of “Ringu” before the American remake, “The Ring.” Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of Americans who have seen and appreciate “Ringu” only because they heard of “The Ring” is more than double-quadrupled from before the remake. After an American remake, the original often gets repackaged, re-released (or even released in the first place!) and finds its place on shelves and Netflix where it wouldn’t have before.

Oh, but, maybe that’s a bad thing? Maybe you don’t want more people to know about the original? Maybe you want to be part of the exclusive in-crowd who knew X was cool before it became popular? If so, guess what: arrogant elitist.

I really started this with the intention to be calm and friendly, but something about arguing (even against an imaginary opponent… boy am I sad!) against the presumptive arrogance that a movie is “bad” without anyone having seen it, for nothing more than the sin of being made into English by an American, just really gets my blood boiling. I need a nap.

Christian local businessman pops over to the annual free “Skepticon” conference to see what’s going on. Thinking, understandably so, that it might be all about skepticism on UFOs and ghosts and whatnot (which it somewhat is), he’s treated to a few minutes of Sam Singleton’s parody act of a holy-roller revivalist sermon, not promoting gettin’ saved, but parodying religion and promoting skeptical atheism — and the crowd participating in the parody by, not yelling “amen!,” but rather “goddam!”

So, said Christian businessman runs over to his neighboring gelato and smoothie business and posts a sign reading:

“Skepticon is not welcomed to my Christian business,”

where it remains for anywhere between 10 minutes (he says) and two hours (others say), possibly violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The near immediate result? Atheists with access to the Intertubes (purt near ev’rybody), went apoplectic and completely decimated his online rankings on such social media services as Urbanspoon, Yelp, and Google reviews. I mean, decimated. (Although, will taking a store’s ranking down to 1 star, or 5%, or whatever on one of these, really harm a business? Especially in a town that’s not very social media savvy? Meh, doubt it. But it’s still something that would make a struggling businessperson’s stomach turn to water.)

So, he posted an notpology on his Web page: a very thinly veiled ”please lay off, m’kay?!” apology. After that made the rounds of critical mockery, he posted an extensive and reasonably sincere-sounding apology over on Reddit, where his infamy across the world was begat. Some atheism/skepticism bigwigs and muckymucks accepted the apology. Others did not. Boy-howdy, did they not. And this is where my opinions on the matter begin….

As this drama played out, plot twist by plot twist, my own views changed somewhat with each new development.

• Posted the sign: I freaked-the-flip out.
• I learned he posted it after watching some undeniably inflammatory and reverse-offensive Sam Singleton: I nodded my head sagely and with tee-pee’ed fingers murmuring, “Indeed. Quite understandable, wot!”
• The notpology: “OMG hes such a lyingjerk!!1!”
• The full apology: “Ah, good show, old bean!”
• JT Eberhard’s non-acceptance: “Yeah! Totally! We ride!… whoa… wait a second… Really?”

See, JT Eberhard’s a quickly-growing muckymuck of atheism in his own right. He’s the driving force for the first three years of Skepticon and is a very vocal opponent, and mockerizer, of religion. And nearly all the time I agree with nearly everything he posts (although, I find his frequent use of profanity completely unnecessary and juvanile… but whatchya gonna do). Yet, I’ve decided that in this late stage of this already getting old issue, his approach (the first “non-acceptance” post linked above, and his ironically-titled follow-up: “We Have No Choice But To Invade Gelato Mio” is wrong and likely do to far more harm than good. (But FSM help the person who tries to suggest JT might be wrong about something, unless you already happen to be in his inner-circle of friends. You take your metaphorical life in your hands. But, here goes….)

There is a time and a place and a need for bulldog firebrands. And, in JT’s day job, I rather think his style of take-no-prisoners scorched-earth approach is necessary! As he’s “a campus organizer and high school specialist with the Secular Student Alliance,” I believe he has to work on a daily basis dealing with some absolutely terrible bigotry from people in positions of unquestioned authority toward kids who have little to no defense against the religious intolerance they face. He has to defend students’ rights, legal and ethical, to express their beliefs and even form legally-allowed student clubs and associations which are constantly under attack from school administrators. Atheist students, especially those still in the closet and in much need of vocal and voracious support, need people like JT and his “give no quarter” single-mindedness. And I celebrate him for it!

But, there’s also a need, and a time and a place, for choosing one’s battles, deciding when discretion is the better part of valor, and allowing the “enemy” to slink away with a noggin-bump, instead of nuking them from orbit and then salting the earth for good measure. Yes yes, I know, JT’s actual demands are:

“Tell me bigotry is unacceptable.  Tell me offense is not the same as breathing life into prejudice.  Tell me that punishing somebody for disagreeing with you or thinking your beliefs are silly is immoral.  And tell me you will make a donation that will actually help make the world a better place rather than inviting us to patronize your business for an insignificant discount.”

…and they’re not unreasonable demands, really. (Well, there’s valid debate over whether demanding a struggling small business owner [who is likely in great debt and probably not even paying himself a wage -- if the average situation of small business owners is applicable in this guy's case] make a large personal donation is unreasonable or not. Although, I can see how that 10% discount the guy’s offering might be seen as patronizing and a cynical ploy to simply help his business.)

But it’s not just the demands themselves as much as it’s the inflammatory approach and words JT uses. The demeanor, the tone, the insults, the mockery he uses, feels to me less like a noble battle, and more like curb-stomping the local bully after getting a lucky break and jumping him when his back was turned. And while in the battlefield of protecting students from bigoted school boards and principals and teachers, for the sake of establishing proper laws and rules and making sure they’re enforced, one does not concede the battle until the other side gives unconditional surrender. But in the battlefield of public opinion, media, the general public, that approach does the atheist “movement” far more harm than any possible good.

In the minds of the general public, they see a situation where a local businessman does something, and are shown by the outraged minority that the something was discriminatory and bigoted, we now have the upper hand. We now are seen by many people as having rights and that there is discrimination that goes on, and the general public (including liberal Christians), now have the seed planted in their head that discrimination’s not cool and we’ll call them on it. They themselves may not disagree with the bigotry, but at least they may be thinking about the repercussions of it and may even be questioning the bigotry itself as something they never really thought about before. It’s not a big win, but it’s progress.

Then, the guy apologizes, and the atheist community at-large generally, and publicly, accepts it. What happens? The general public and the liberal Christians have their preconceptions of the angry, religion-hating atheist challenged! We’re shown as reasonable, ethical, diplomatic, and perhaps even calmer and more sane than your average holier-than-thou religious leader and spokesperson who appears on FOX News. Now they’re more willing to listen to what we have to say, to consider our positions, to truly rethink their bigotry and not just the outward acts of discrimination. Now they’re willing to concede issues and work with us in other issues.

But then, what happens when prominent atheist spokespersons demand heads on spikes? (Metaphorically.) The walls redouble in size, the shields go to maximum, and the us-versus-them mentality is reinforced. The general public and the liberal Christian (which, really, by and large, are greatly overlapping Venn Diagram circles), believe their preconceptions are well-founded and continue to ignore our valid complaints and criticisms.

If we let this one bigoted business owner go, probably not having had a real change of heart but just a show of one, what do we really lose? If we accept his sincere-sounding apology and let him off with tail tucked between his legs and a stern “Okay, off with you — but we’ll be watching,” is that really so terrible if it means we gain great PR and the willing and open ear of millions of other people? So he’s not beaten into submission — but will anything we do really, possibly, change his “heart”? Do we seriously think that we can possibly convince this guy he was truly wrong by continuing to berate and insult and bash him and demand things of him? Will that make him, and many like him, watching this, see the light? Have a true conversion?

No, it will not. No amount of continued battle against him will truly change him or others, and will only harden them all to us. But diplomacy, some forgiveness, leniency, will not only be more productive to our cause in the long run and on a wider scale, but may actually do more good in setting this guy on a path to the real and sincere atonement that is currently being demanded at the point of a verbal spear.

*blog post image taken from this lifehacker post: “Venting Frustration Will Only Make Your Anger Worse.”

Deceptive Campus Leafleteers

Was feeling feisty today so stopped to reprimand some street preachers who were giving out information on Jesus under false pretenses. If your message is that good, you shouldn’t have to deceive to spread it. The first one took his tongue-lashing with dignity and silence. The second one to stop me only wishes he did. You asked for the story, here it is.

Guy A:  “Would you like a basketball schedule?”

When I turn this over, it looks like a religious document. Why did you offer me a basketball schedule and then give me a religious document?

“Because it’s important.”

If it’s so important, why didn’t you offer it to me directly? Why did you try and sneak your message in on the back of something else?

“Because then people wouldn’t take it.”

Yes exactly. And yet you have today decided that I don’t have the mental capacity to make my own decisions on what I do and don’t want. You’ve taken position of arrogance that you know so much better than I, what I need, that you’d rather trick me in to chancing upon your information than give me a chance to make my own decision. Can you see why I might find that disrespectful to me and my fellow students?

“Uh”

Further, if this message is so important, if it truly is backed up by evidence, if it bears fruit in the lives of those who embrace it, then it should be able to stand up on its own. The message of God shouldn’t need to trojan horse to be considered by his own creation.

“Silence”

You’re not here to help give me information about the basketball season, you’re taking advantage of my desire for that information to give me something else, something you want to give me, but haven’t given me an honest proposal which I can decide on. If you were a business that would be called bait-and-switch, and it would be illegal. But you’re not selling anything, so it’s not illegal, it’s just dishonest, and frankly hypocritical for a follower of a diety who commands truthfulness. I think these issues are important, and I like talking about them, but I’m not going to take your information because I don’t appreciate the way you’re approaching my campus.

“Ok”

Stay warm, and take care.

And I walked off.  Then, this other guy starts making eye contact with me at the other end of the block. I don’t cross the street on my own campus to avoid people, and they were over there anyway.

Guy B: “Hi there, would you like a basketball schedule?”

No, I wouldn’t, and as I explained to your friend, here’s why….lists off an abbreviated version of the above.

“Can I show you a scripture that explains why I’m doing this?”

Sure

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. – John 5:24 so it says here that God gave us the Bible so that we could have everlasting life.”

Ok, that’s very nice that he said that’s why he wrote the Bible, but if another book also says it was written so I could have everlasting life, how do I know which one is true? What evidence should I base that judgment  on? Isn’t it reasonable to expect evidence to be available in order to decide which book or claim to put faith in? You would probably say that God gave you the ability to reason, so would you agree with Thomas Jefferson who once said, “Question with boldness, “Question with boldness, even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the [the use of] of reason, than that of blind-folded fear” or faith?”

“Do you believe in God? How about Heaven or Hell?”

  No

“Can I ask how you came to not believe?”

Sure, I found a lot of things that made sense if God existed, it explained a lot of mysteries, but there were some things that didn’t quite fit with the real world too. So I started looking, not for things that I could fit in to the assumption of God’s existence, which there were plenty, but for evidence that implied God did actually exist, specifically and necessarily. I didn’t find any, so I decided that belief was unjustified.

“Can I share some more information with you?”

If it’s that evidence that God does exist that I mentioned earlier, I would be most excited to hear it, yes please!

Proceeds to try and claim the bible’s internal writing prove it’s divinity. 

Freshly armed with historical facts from Dave Muscato’s talk at SOMA, I proceed to rip each argument apart, and growing weary of countering each argument as it was brought up in response to the previous one’s failure, got him to admit that:

a) The fact that Darth Vader’s rise to power was prophesied by the Jedi does not mean the Star War’s canon is real

b) Harry Potter’s internal consistency and the accuracy of its manuscript to the author’s intent is not good evidence for its reality.

c) The age of the Iliad does not justify using it to create a belief system

d) His evidence was no better than theirs

Sooooo, let’s try and get back to the original question, do you have any evidence that I should accept the proposition of God, Heaven, and Hell?

Of course he wanted to try more and more approaches instead of admitting he didn’t have any evidence, so I took the opportunity to force him to admit the following, none of which he was happy about but was forced to concede because they were based on his own words and flowed naturally from his attempts to defend the Bible’s contents. 

a) God is really emotional sometimes, and his temper get’s away from him and needs to be talked down

b) We are more loving than God. The Bible says 1) God is love 2) love is not jealous 3)God is a jealous god. So we are expected to love our fellow human beings more deeply than God loves us, because he embodies only the agape form of love and does not hold the full range of positive feelings toward us that other forms of love require.

c) God’s patience with the men, women and children murdered and the virgins raped by the Israelites was slightly less than it currently is with us. A patience that apparently causes him to do absolutely nothing for more than 2000 years despite promising to be basically “right back” (Matthew 16:27-28)

d) Jesus was not that worried about keeping families together nor advocating peace. Having previously insisted that not a single thing in the bible was metaphor or figurative, he simply promised to look in to this passage in Mathew 10:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father,  a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

e) He would never punish his child with fire, death, or permanent shunning, based on whether or not they choose to obey, even if he had provided a way to avoid it, he would not continue to stoke a fire in his house for the express purpose of irreversable punishment but God is just to do so.

f) God created hell, and continues to allow it’s existence for the express purpose of punishing people with it, even though he could create a less horrific option at any time, or simply let someone die and have the absence of heaven be the punishment.

g) God killed himself, to satisfy  a debt he owes to himself, because of a contract he made with himself, which being capable of all things he could change at any time since we already established he’s capable of being two contradictory things at the same time. Further unless God is subject to a universal morality outside himself, there is nothing compelling him to use blood in order to alleviate sin,  a crime, punishment, and recompense all defined by himself.

He tried to claim that because God set up this contract before mankind existed it wasn’t immoral. I pointed out that

1) he could have easily chose a less gruesome, more loving option, one that didn’t so coincidently line up with desert tribes animal sacrifice customs, and

2) making a decision before a circumstance presents itself does not alleviate one of moral responsibility, as he readily agreed that making a decision to punch all people wearing red shirts in the face before having noticed he was wearing a red shirt would not absolve me of punching him in the face now that he had violated my rule.

h) Jesus did not actually make the greatest sacrifice ever made, since he knew he was going to be resurrected. Even though he would only be resurrected if he was sinless, he was both incapable of sin and fully aware that he would not sin so his sacrifice was less than that of any human who’s ever given up their life for another with no promise of immediate resurrection. (he really didn’t like that one, but wasn’t willing to admit that Jesus could have sinned or been ignorant in order to get out of it)

i) That even though his opinion doesn’t matter, and it’s not his judgment  it’s God’s, he does have to agree that it’s justice for a human to suffer in hell for all eternity if they have sex out of wedlock, even if the rest of their life is completely virtuous. He has to hold that belief or contradict God.  (It would actually be more virtous if he was simply afraid of God’s wrath, avoiding a bully’s beatings, but he’d rather be a pious accomplice in this entirely unequitable sentence.)

j) He has no actual justification for preferring his translation of the Bible over all the others, besides that it better aligns with the teachings his church believes.

k) If his friend owed him a debt and he intended to forgive that debt out of love he would simply forgive it if it was in his power, without setting up a perpetual punishment for failure to comply. But God isn’t getting rid of the debt, namely the death that is the wages of sin and the damnation that follows, he’s demanding obedience in exchange for the debt, if you fail, you get put on a payment plan that never ends.

After each of these, I offered to return to my original question of what evidence existed that suggested God is real. Anything that we should look to that is not used by any number of other supernatural claims, that actually implies why his belief is true.

Finally he had had enough and I needed to get to class, so he offered to give me information to get in contact with his Pastor to hear more.

I kindly, but honestly explained that thus far he’d failed to offer even a single bit of evidence of what I originally requested, so considering that he represented his church and seemed well versed in it’s teachings, it didn’t suggest that my time would be well spent rehashing this conversation with his pastor. But I gave him a SOMA card and earnestly encouraged him to contact me if they did in fact have any evidence, as I would eagerly accept legitimate evidence for God and Jesus and humbly repent.

He didn’t want to do that, he wanted me to call  his pastor because he was a busy guy and it would be better if I called him.

I asked him, do you have any evidence on which to assume that I am in fact less busy than your pastor? He didn’t but wanted to insist that it was me who was ‘checking out’ so I took the opportunity to make him admit one more thing:

l) the fact that his pastor wouldn’t call me but would take my call meant that the decision was not in fact mine, but ours, meaning that if his pastor did have convincing evidence to share he was making the decision not to share it with me, and let me burn in hell, since I was most willing to listen.

With that he reluctantly took my card, and I encouraged him to call or email me should he come across that evidence we’d been searching for today.

Look I’ll give this guy credit, the conversation was incredibly civil and well-intentioned. He knew his pitch well, and knew scriptures by chapter and verse. He stood out in the cold and talked with me for some time, and I thanked him for his sincerity and care but also pointed out that despite all that love and concern he was showing by being out here, he was somehow able to simultaneously believe that I deserved to burn in hell forever if I didn’t sign the license agreement on the Yahweh/Jesus v2.0 software installation, and I found that a disturbing thing for him to think about another human being. Realizing he was simply outmatched today (it didn’t take much, I’m no theologian, these are glaring issues for someone with a critical eye), he agreed that it was simply his belief, he believed it on faith, and didn’t have an external reason for having faith in that instead of something else or nothing at all, he simply thought faith was a good thing to have, and this was the thing to have faith in.

We said cordial goodbyes and shook hands.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t debate consumer feedback on your marketing tactics. 

*Update*

Here is the website of the church these gentlemen belong to.

http://heritagebaptistchurch.cc

They are building their own little empire right here in Kansas, with mass printing, for sale of course, based on the promise the secret to getting in to heaven. They are contructing a new 700 seat church building and have their own education system from elementry through university where “Degrees offered include pastoral theology, elementary and secondary education, missions, and church ministry.”

It looks like it was no fluke that the nice gentlemen I spoke with knew his stuff, Barnabas Smith is the Assistant to the Pastor at  Heritage Baptist Church.

http://heritagebaptistchurch.cc/barnabas-smith-assistant

Freethinking, and atheism itself, is as old as ancient Greece and Rome with Epicurus, Seneca, Emperor Marcus Aurelius. . . . But there are few comprehensive essays critiquing the idea of a creator omni-god, Yahweh and Jesus in particular, that’s as thorough and reasoned as Bertrand Russell’s 1927 essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian.”

What he wrote in that famous essay is nothing new, not today and not even in 1927 — but he examines the basic and common claims for God, the “first cause” claim, the moral argument, the justice argument, from design, etc., and dismantles each one. Then, goes on to touch on how the teachings of Jesus are not nearly as wise and good as people like to think.

While many writers since Russell have written exhaustively on these subjects (and more, such as the ontological argument for God and the Kalam first cause variant), Russell’s essay serves as a hallmark on the topic.

I imagine a theist reading this and quipping, “You’re treating Russell’s essay as dogmatically as you accuse believers and our Bible.” Big difference between what Russell wrote and the Bible: these standard arguments in favor of atheism, unlike revealed religious scripture, don’t have to be told to you or taught — anyone capable of reason and logic can come up with the exact same thoughts as Russell, independently and in solitude. In fact, a great many atheist, including myself, have done exactly that. Before I even heard the names Dawkins or Hitchens or Bertrand Russell, as a believer questioning all I’d been taught to believe, I’d come to all the same conclusions as Russell (and Epicurus and Seneca and Hitchens), and eventually discovering, “Hey! What I thought were great insights, are old hat! Millions of non-believers have arrived at the same conclusions I have — except some of them have written them into exquisite books.”

Everyone is born an atheist, with lack of belief in any gods. The luck of what culture you’re born in and what parents you’re born to, determine what revealed, unquestionable dogma you’re indoctrinated with. You’d never know anything about hell, Jesus, Yahweh (Kali, Allah, Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Zeus, Pele, etc.) unless someone told about it and taught you to believe it as truth. But you can be born into any religion, any culture, with any background, and if you give it honest thought, you can come to the same realizations on your own as these great thinkers.

Had an interesting day last week with a significantly important coincidence:

So we spent two hours at work last Wednesday doing our annual insurance benefits review. For two hours, with our insurance broker and our Aflac rep, we discussed how much our insurance costs. How many thousands our deductible is. What’s in-network and what’s out. Whether ER visit costs get rolled into the hospital stay coverage or not. What conditions allow for supplemental insurance payouts and whether it follows you and your job. Tips and hints on how to try to get the insurance company to authorize and pay out for treatments. Etc. etc.

(Interesting note provided by the Aflac rep: 70% of bankruptcy cases in America are due to medical costs. And 50% of those — the bankrupt had medical insurance.)

So, two hours of numbers and facts and complex conditions surrounding how your life can be slowly destroyed by medical bills instead of quickly destroyed. Now for the comedic coinkydink:

That very morning, on the way to work, I was listening to a recent “Sword and Laser” scifi/fantasy book club podcast with a conversation with multi-bestselling and award winning author Robert J. Sawyer. And when asked how old he was when he was able to start writing full-time, he said he was writing full-time in his early twenties. Why? Because he’s Canadian. He expressed that, like him, a lot of Canadian writers and other artists are able to even have careers as artists, are able to work on their art from an early age and get good, developing their skill and talent early, allowing them to have decades of quality output far in excess of American writers and artists for primarily one main reason: socialized healthcare. As a young man, Sawyer never had to worry about giving up his talent and dream in order to find and work at a job doing not at all what he wanted to do in order to have healthcare. Sure, there were times he had to eat pretty skimpily, but that’s doable. Paying thousands of dollars for an illness or accident isn’t.

Award-winning Canadian author (among other things) Cory Doctorow once expressed similar arguments on an episode of American Freethought. He said now that he had a family, he’d never live in the U.S. again, never not live in Canada or the U.K., so that his daughter would never be without healthcare. He told a story of how when traveling across England, his daughter started developing a bad fever. They stopped in a town and saw a doctor who examined her, wrote a script, they picked it up, and were able to continue on, and they never had to fill out papers and only had to pay a couple of dollars (equivalent) for the medication. He and his wife get to thrive in their dream jobs because aren’t forced to work for healthcare.

I can’t say who because I didn’t ask permission to say, but I know someone in Canada who had a car accident not long ago. They were taken to the ER by ambulance, were examined, treated, and released with great care. They were provided with a new shirt because theirs had to be cut off, and, reimbursed for the cut shirt. All they had to do was show their Canadian citizen health I.D., and they got all this treatment without paying a dime or filling out paperwork.

Oh, of course, taxes pay for this care. But I once compared how much taxes I pay (sales, income, property) with a relative who lives in Canada (higher sales but no income (or property — one of the two, I forget)), and at the bottom line is we pay about the same in taxes.

…except they don’t have to pay what I do in health insurance premiums and deductibles and medical co-pays and out of pocket bills…. So, who wins here?

In every modern country in the world: the citizens do. In the U.S., and only the U.S., health insurers do. And the so-called healthcare “reform” that was recently passed? That “Obamacare” (which can be called “Newtcare” since it’s the same reform proposed by the House Republicans in the 90s), it actually put insurers in better position to make more money while hurting small businesses and much of the people. But, small wonder considering how many millions of dollars politicians, from both parties, get from insurance industry lobby.

Do I hear someone yell, “If you love Canada so much, why don’t you move there!“? Oh, I swear I wish I could, I really very much wish I could. But it costs to move and I’m too far in debt with student loans.

Oh, did I mention that, like most of Europe, most of higher education in Canada is also as free as their healthcare? They have this crazy idea that a healthy and educated citizenry is somehow good for the country on the whole. I know, crazy, huh?

Update: Well this is funny!
Note the date of today’s post — September 2011. Well, after posting this post, my blog automatically created a set of “related posts” links (see below). And lookee what’s likely still the first suggested link.

It’s a post I did in April 2009 about the same author(s) talking on different podcasts about the same thing. I’d totally forgotten! Wow, so much has changed in the last 2 to 3 years, huh? Oh I’m laughing til I cry.

For 25 years, ever since high school and I got involved in drama and speech & debate, I’ve had frequent “actor’s nightmares,” where I’m expected to perform on stage and I don’t know the lines or what I’m supposed to do. I get them probably twice a month for all those years — sometimes less frequently, sometimes more.

Naturally, it was at its worst back in college as a theatre undergrad, but resurged in an altered form as an English grad student as I’d have to present papers in classes and conferences. It’s a very anxiety-inducing dream that can leave me unbalanced for the rest of the day.

But last night I had the most involved dream yet of a new type of dream I’m having more frequently: I’m wanting to play guitar in public, at my real-life meager skill level, and I really really want to but for one reason or another I’m being prevented from doing so.

For example, last night, I was challenged by someone to play in a sort of battle of the bands. Two of my friends played drums and bass, and we’d set up — but technical difficulties kept preventing my playing from being heard. I saw myself playing what I really can play: power chords and fretting within a couple of basic rock/blues scales. No rock star ability, nothing special, just my own embarrassing skill — but I so desperately wanted to be heard. Yet, the volume controls wouldn’t work, the amp kept turning off, the sound cable kept shorting. It was just as frustrating and anxiety-inducing as being forced to perform but not having the lines. Weird.

Also interesting is the guitar I was using was some cherry red Strat I didn’t care much for, not the AXL Badwater I very badly covet, nor the Squier Affinity Tele I actually own. Weird as well.

(image taken from here)

Sadly, not as much as I’d like. I’m still very skittish after the incident that happened last autumn that prompted me to give up expressing my opinions publicly; and then, at work yesterday, I had to deal with someone who seems to be obsessed and has been harassing people here at work multiple time a day for weeks. Then there’s the guy from Montreal who’s been sending crazier and crazier death threats to skeptics and atheists around the world, and has begun being seen at skeptical events.

There are some real effed-up people out there, and I’m not too keen on making myself a bigger target.

So, if I start posting again on here, it’ll probably be mostly banal stuff. Yeah, I’m sorry to say, I give in to terrorist threats. That’s not to say that what I’ll post here might not be of interest — it will be to me. And I’m really itching to post some thoughts on how culture is created and how it affects the way we think and believe, but I’ll probably keep it all at a higher, theory level and try to stay away from things that may trigger personal buttons of this-person-doesn’t-believe-the-same-things-I-do-so-I-must-fuck-with-their-life!

I keep thinking I’m an idiot and a fool for putting my thoughts and opinions out there for people to read; but then, that’s like blaming the rape victim for wearing a skirt and leaving the house. I’m not advocating violence, I’m not advocating revolt or rebellion, I’m not advocating hate, I’m not advocating irresponsible actions — if I’m advocating anything, it’s for people to think critically, skeptically, and outside your comfort zone. I express opinions and share uncommon info because I want to, primarily, to express myself, but also to give people a chance to look at the world they live in just a little bit differently. Do I deserve to be harassed and terrorized for that?

(comic by Nina Paley)

It started with something a friend of mine said recently. A group of us were ragging on corporations, and someone commented about something vile a corporation recently did, and the friend quipped, “It’s almost like corporations were made up of people.” The subtext to his sarcasm was to imply that it’s silly to discuss corporations as if they’re some separate entity from humanity because, after all, corporations are made up of people and, evidently, will only do the same good and ill that humans do.

Unfortunately, despite what the conservative-leaning Supreme Court thinks (vis-à-vis “Citizens United v FEC”), corporations aren’t people. They are a collection of people, that, like any collection of people, make a gestalt that is very different than the sum of its parts. To claim to not be able to analyze and critique (and judge ethically) corporations as a separate thing because they’re made of people, is utterly meaningless. By that rationale, nothing could be said about anything within the realm of human culture and creation because, after all, it’s all made by, or made up of, people. Like all forms of human culture and its production, corporations can — and should — be analyzed and critiqued as a concept that acts separate and apart from humanity in general. Why?

Think of it this way: Would you walk into a library and find a literary book club in progress and expect it to behave and have the save motives and agenda as, say, the group of Ultimate Wrestling fans that show up regularly at the local sports bar? Or how about the local Baptist Bible study group versus the local Society for Creative Anachronism group? They’re all made of people, yes? But any group of people with a shared goal, or interest, is going to A. be very similar to other groups that have the same goals and interests; and B. be very different from groups with different goals and interests. Similar groups will be similar enough that you can usually talk about that kind of group using generalities, and different groups can be different enough to be able to critique them as altogether different entities. This sounds silly and obvious when stated like that, but it’s the ridiculously obvious reason corporations lend themselves to separate and justified deconstruction and critique apart from the motivations and behaviors of people in general.

One of the reasons should be obvious: self-selection. Particular type of people with particular types of demeanors, attitudes, outlooks, ideologies, will choose to associate themselves with others of similar types, under the banner of a shared goal or interest. You will find particular types of people at a book club and different particular types at the sports bar. Oh, sure, there will be cross-over. The occasional mixed-martial-art fan may also be a Jane Eyre fan, and the occasional Nicholas Sparks fan will be seen at the sports bar. But the exceptions point up the rule.

And so too with corporations. Particular types of people seek and earn MBAs and become stock traders and managers and accountants and whatnot who gravitate toward the corporate culture. And the larger, the more multi-national the corporation, the more the individual dissolves and melds into the background of the homogeneous culture of the corporation. Those who don’t fit in or are different than the corporate culture demands, either self-select to leave the culture, or get pushed out for not fitting in — not being a “team player.” And so the corporate culture self-reinforces and insulates itself even more in order to achieve its goals and realize its agenda.

And what is the corporation’s goals and agenda? All groups, organizations, have goals and agendas. The book club, the Bible study, the sports cub, the football team, the knitting circle, the SCA group, the anti-vaccination group, the local skeptics’ club, the Young Democrats, the Future Business Leaders of America… all groups that have come together for a shared interest have an overarching goal. And what is the corporation’s? Profit, pure and simple. Profit by means of selling a product or service to as close to 100% of the market share as possible, and by any means it can get away with. In fact, legally, a corporation can’t make operating decisions that would knowingly deprive the shareholders from making money. As observed by Robert Hinkley in “Redesigning Corporate Law,”

“Distilled to its essence, [the law] says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders. This explains why corporations find social issues such as humanrights irrelevant – because they fall outside the corporation’s legal mandate. Secondly, these provisions explain why executives behave differently than they might as individual citizens, because the law says their only obligation in business is to make money.“

Well, you can’t make it more plain than that. Corporations exist to make money; and civil liberties, human rights, decency, laws, are all obstacles that must be worked around and, wherever possible, ignored and broken, in order to reach its goal.

A corporation, because of its self-selection and its over-aching goal that all members of the corporation buy into, makes the corporation act as something individualized and apart from humanity. In a way, a corporation is like a person — a sociopath. An amoral being without empathy or remorse, single-minded and manipulative, and dangerous. Capable and willing to do any harm necessary if it means getting what it wants.

In society, when an individual sociopathic human does harm, we punish them. We take them out of society. When a corporation does harm, what happens? The corporation may get fined, it may get sued. But as the link above explains, that’s just a cost of doing business. The corporation will likely continue on without a hitch, especially if it’s a multi-national where its finances are in the Cayman Islands, its management is in Dubai, and its production is in China. Some CEO or manager may become the face of “the problem,” get slapped on the wrist, leave the company — but the company persists as juggernaut. (And the CEO likely will be just fine as well, don’t you worry. Most corporate CEOs and managers sit on the board of directors of other corporations in an incestual game of musical chairs. Boards that hire on a new CEO from another corporation who leads the company for a while, makes several million, gets a few million more as a severance package even if he does a poor job, where he’ll move on to oversee the hiring of a CEO in another company he helps run.)

Oh, and by the way, most of the people on top, the CEOs and managers and directors of the board, aren’t generally people who started out at a community college and worked full time and took classes until they Made It. No, that group at the top, who shuffle around the companies and hand each other favors, are the type of people satirized in this “Note of Appreciation from the Rich.” So when the top of the corporate structure is led by these hereditary, dynastic, feudal lords, and the bottom 95% is constructed of those who strive to be like those at the top — you get a very particular type of culture.

Corporations are, in general, evil in the same way a psychopath is evil. (In fact, it’s estimated that an inordinate amount of corporate leaders are, in fact, sociopaths and psychopaths. Why? Again: self-selected culture.) So, like all and any construct of human creation, the corporation is something that has its own agenda, goals, motivations, effects, and sub-culture, which is perfectly open to deconstruction and ethical judgement.

For more, excellent analysis of why we should analyze and deconstruct any element of human culture, see Roland Barthes Mythologies. It’s actually very short, and a fascinating read.

In the meantime, I plan to do a lot more blogging of SF, writing, literature, reviews, and scholarly stuff. And for that, I’m using my blogs: GrogMonkey and Tragic Sans.
Right now they just mirror each other; I need to decide on how to separate their roles and make them unique. Shoulda done that before today.
Anyway, so there’s the update.

Have a good year!

With the coming of this completely arbitrarily demarcated new year and new decade (contrary to popular opinion, decades begin on “1″ years, e.g.: 2011, not “0,” e.g.: 2010), I need to make some serious changes; I need to refocus, re-prioritize, and start anew. As someone I don’t recall said, “If you want things to be different, you must do something different.”

Part of my problem is frakkin’ Facebook. It’s an evil, evil bane on productivity and a facilitator of my getting distracted and bent-out-of-shape about subjects that, while are important, serves only to make me upset and completely unproductive in regards to what’s even more important in my life: my nascent, budding writing career that I hope to make into a viable “second job,” with aspirations of it being my main job within a couple/few years.

In addition to the craptacular events that have sideswiped me and/or made me utter a general “WTF, world? W. T. F.?!” every other week, it seems, I recently read a blog post by writer/director Kevin Smith: “SMonologue #2.” The first half he discusses “Clerks 3″ and the cost/process of investing in a movie idea and making it happen. But the important bit is the last half, in which he writes:

Don’t pursue a role, LIVE that role. Like my sister told me, back when I confessed I wanted to be a filmmaker…

“Then BE a filmmaker,” she said.

“That’s what I’m saying: I wanna be.”

And that’s when she gave me the million dollar advice…

“No - BE a filmmaker. You say you wanna be; just BE a filmmaker. Think every thought AS a filmmaker. Don’t pine for it or pursue it; BE it. You ARE a filmmaker; you just haven’t made a film yet.”

And it sounded artsy-fartsy as fuck, but it was CRAZY useful advice. A slacker hit the sheets that night, but the CLERKS-guy got out of bed the following morning.

The old writer’s adage goes: “A writer writes.” It means a writer doesn’t pine to write, a writer doesn’t think about writing and wishing, a writer does it. Good, bad, lots, little, it doesn’t matter.

It reminded me of a blog post from popular and well-awarded SF author, John Scalzi (whose books I love and is only 2 years older than me), I read some months ago, and then came across again recently: Writing: Find the Time or Don’t. And while he’s not normally this in-your-face, this is obviously a subject, the kvetching about finding time to write, that gets his goat — so he writes:

This is why at this point in time I have really very little patience for people who say they want to write but then come up with all sorts of excuses as to why they don’t have the time. You know what, today is the day my friend Jay Lake goes into surgery to remove a huge chunk of his liver. After which he goes into chemo. For the third time in two years. Between chemo and everything else, he still does work for his day job. And when I last saw him, he was telling me about the novel he was just finishing up. Let me repeat that for you: Jay Lake has been fighting cancer and has had poison running through his system for two years, still does work for his day job and has written novels. So will you please just shut the fuck up about how hard it is for you to find the time and inspiration to write, and just do it or not.

Kind of puts things into perspective, don’-it? Regardless of what goals you want to pursue. For me, writing has been what I’ve wanted to do since I read my first Ray Bradbury story around 4th grade. Solidified when I started writing narratives of my D&D game exploits around 6th grade. And what have I got to show for 30 years of wanting to be a writer? Three finished short stories and a novel that’s still shambling toward an ever-ungraspable ending. Bupkis! Why? Oh, because I have work, and family, and school, and yadda yadda yadda. It’s really all because I’m easily distracted. The Internet has helped give me adult ADD. My falling ass-backwards into a computer career didn’t help, as it forced me to multi-task. Oh, and good news, studies on multi-tasking has been shown to make you suck at everything you’re trying to do at the same time. Oh, and your general reasoning ability as well.

This excuse, that excuse…. Scalzi asks:

So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

I’m sick of saying, “Yes, but…”. The answer is “yes, dammit!” Every year I age I’m closer to death. Closer to dementia. Closer to debilitating car accidents. Alzheimer’s. Embolisms and aneurysms. Things that will take away my ability to write without giving me any choice in the matter. Not to mention the fact that after 30, the adult brain begins to plasticize and harden neuropathways making it more and more difficult to learn new things, think in new ways, consider alternatives to assumed ways of thinking and knowledge — basically, makes you less of a nimble and adaptable person with a dynamic voice and ability to explore various and risky or challenging writing styles and subjects. Every year that passes is my life becoming less and less what I want it to be, with wasted opportunity and missed chances.

Find the time or make the time. Sit down, shut up and put your words together. Work at it and keep working at it. And if you need inspiration, think of yourself on your deathbed saying “well, at least I watched a lot of TV.” If saying such a thing as your life ebbs away fills you with existential horror, well, then. I think you know what to do. (Scalzi)

I am filled with that horror!

I can’t quit my insurance-providing day job, and of course I can’t give up my family. But I can squeeze those writing moments, those 250+ words a day, from the spaces where reading about how politicians are ruining our democracy, how the TSA are the new Brown Shirts, how religion does this or that, etc., currently saps my time and attention. The podcast “Writing Excuses,” episode: “5.8: The Excuses You’re Out Of” has three successful writers talking about all the “yes, buts,” and they reiterate what I encounter time and time again from writers (and other creators of art and scholarship) — they gave up TV in order to do what they wanted to do. Not necessarily all TV as at least one of them uses some shows as inspiration (more on some vs. all in a moment), but certainly the turning it on just to see what’s on habit — but the bottom line is you make the time to do what you want, and you make it a priority over the other things that you complain are sapping your time.

The idea of giving up wading through daily doses of political, anarchism, religious, social-critique articles and blogs and news and essays, cold turkey, is very daunting. Intimidating. Being a well-informed advocate of educating one’s self about the forces out there in socio-political economics and culture, is something I’ve become, is a central part of who I am. Ever since the late 90s, when I knew something was wrong with society and politics and middle-class life, but couldn’t put my finger on it. I kept hearing from both political sides what problems were and who was to blame, but it all seemed superficial and scapegoating for the real problems. Then a few years ago, I was introduced to a method of thought, an ideology (yes, “ideology,” no bones about it) that serves as a tool for examining culture and politics and economics and religion — everything, and everything made sense! I could begin, just, to see the roots of the problems and not just the symptoms.

One can’t unsee, unexperience, what one has seen and experienced. I can’t become that quality I loathe in most people in America who limit their entire social awareness and political activisim to spending 5 minutes every four (at best two) years in a voting booth, putting checks next to people who have been selected for them as their representitives, who don’t actually represent them at all! And then coast through life with smug arrogance that they’ve performed their civic duty and are engaged citizens of democracy — when all they’ve done is choose a lesser evil fed to them, maintaining the status quo, and aren’t any more engaged or civic than the person who stayed home during that one day in 1460 days (or 740). I can’t be that person. Granted, I use a lot of “yes, but”s when it comes to actually doing things like protesting or marching or letter-writing campaigns, and the like — but I see my endless shouting into the storm as a form of engagement with the cultural forces that affect my life without my consent. It’s a form of doing something that’s better than just passively watching FOX News or MSNBC and going “tsk tsk tsk” at the symptoms of cultural rot and manipulation. I don’t know if I can be passive and uninformed any more.

Part of my mind keeps trying to reassure me, no no no, of course not! Go ahead and be engaged in deep socio-politics and religion critique and the like, little bits. It’ll be OK. And I realize that voice sounds a lot like what I figure the mental voice of an addict tells him that it’s OK to still hang out with his druggie friends, or go places where people will be using. It’ll be OK. But I know hanging around Facebook with all the news feeds and interest groups that feed my “bad”-news-junkie addiction, will just suck me back into time-wasting distraction from what I truly want my goal in life to be right now. So, I have to ask myself, can I do it for one year? Can I block, set to ignore, defriend, unsubscribe from all the people and groups that send me socio-economic-political-religious news and info, and be a disattached and disengaged sleepwalker?

Unfortunately, not entirely, I can’t. Because that ideology I’ve embraced which makes sense of the world to me, is the same one I use to critique popular culture, literature, and the other subjects of my scholarly writing — the second aspect of my writing life I need to make active and viable. That aspect that I just spent years and racked up debt getting my Masters Degree in. I need to continue to nurture and engage the scholarship that will allow me to write interesting and applicable journal articles, and hopefully books. And no scholarship can be done absent of some model, some theory — some totalizing ideology. And, even if I were to limit my scholarship purely to the study of certain literature, I can’t avoid some engagement in contemporary socio-politics. More so since my general area of scholarship is in posthuman postmodernism. (Well, unless I wanted to approach it purely from a “liberal humanist” perspective and claim the text/film contains everything necessary within it already to expose the inherent “good, truth, and beauty of art,” with no need to contextualize it within its culture of its creation. Pah! Gag.)

So, I can’t cold turkey, but I can’t fall prey to rationalizations and distractions any longer. At least not for one whole year. I have this arbitrary new year to get rid of bad habits, make some new, and get significantly closer to the person I want to be, accomplishing the things I need to accomplish. I need to prune and lop off parts of the enabling where I can, and limit exposure to distraction everywhere else. To that end, my resolutions:

• Identify the Facebook friends and groups that are more than 33% about politics, socio-economics,religion, etc., and block/ignore/defriend them.
• Identify the RSS feeds that are the same, and delete them from my feeder/reader.
• Identify the podcasts that are the same, and delete them from my iTunes updater.
• Write at least 250 words a day, every day, of fiction or scholarly work — not blogging or journaling!*
• Read at least one short story or chapter of fiction a day, every day.

*250 words is basically only one page of text (without dialog), and isn’t much at all. I’ve written 15-page school papers in a day. But it’s Cory Doctorow’s minimum, and it’s a good low bar that should be do-able and won’t lead to ultimate failure. (Cory is a prolific author and social-political activist who straddles both roles and does it well! But then, I’m pretty sure he’s not human, either.)

Well, that’s my resolution for 2011. Hopefully by this time next year I can look back and proudly state that I see in me what I want to be, and there’s no turning back.

It’s official, I am now a regular contributor to the new, up-and-coming blog site for atheism advocacy: Atheism Resource.

Their… er, I guess our tagline, is: “Big questions deserve big answers.” In that spirit, my first offering over there is a two-part essay on atheism and its role (or lack of) in determining ethics and meaning to life. Big enough for ya?

• What Does Atheism Have to Offer? Part 1
• What Does Atheism Have to Offer? Part 2

I end the essay with what I think is one of the best observations about appreciating life from the humanist perspective, by Paul Kurtz.

Well, go check the site out, it has some great contributors (me notwithstanding), including the incredible and impressively intelligent and well-read (if somewhat crass and crude) JT Eberhard. He’s embarrassingly young for being so enviably sharp and effective, and even lives in the same town as I do. While I will always be some curmudgeony blogger, I fully expect JT to become one of America’s foremost advocates for rational atheism. People will one day in the not-too-distant future be including Eberhard in the same breath as Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris.

Anyway, I hope I can add something of value, or at least interesting, to the discourse. T’would be cool for Atheism Resource to at least place around the likes of The Friendly Atheist and Debunking Christianity. (…whom we need to get plugged by on their sites, hint-hint, Adam. *grin*)

Hmm, maybe we can be looked at as the BoingBoing of atheism?

(This is the 10th edition of my Alpha Course reaction. For the first and all past posts, see the Alpha Page.)

Hopefully this will be a short post as well; I don’t seem to have that many notes for this session. I think Nicky is kind of winding down a bit as he’s coming to the end of the course.

One side remark: In small group, it’s been brought up a few times that people wished there was an additional, more advanced course than Alpha. There is. It’s called seminary school. It’s basically this, except in Greek.

Well,let’s get right to it….

Does God Heal Today?

Right at the beginning of the video, Nicky starts talking about what’s called, “words of knowledge.” This is basically any kind of information a person believes they receive from God/Holy Spirit about another person, their ailments, their concerns, etc. In Nicky’s example of experiencing an American faith healer, John Wimber (more on him in a second), the preacher handed out words of knowledge like, a woman here has a bad back, a man here has a back that’s been hurting him, etc. No way! A huge room full of people, and there are some with bad backs? You need the Holy Spirit to tell you this? The preacher then mentioned “a woman who’s barren.” According to the CDC, 10% of women can’t conceive. Tell a congregation of people that “there’s a woman whose barren,” and if there’s more than 10 or 20 people, you’re going to get a hit.

Speaking of “hits,” these words of knowledge are really nothing more than “cold reading.” It’s basically where psychics and faith healers, throw out vague, ambiguous, somewhat common ailments, names, information, that will likely hit on someone in the audience, fishing for a response.

That’s an ethical illusionist describing cold reading. This is a known, unethical, immoral, con-artist “psychic” using cold reading:

This a-hole preys on grief, using psychological tricks to feed off of peoples’ desires to find comfort with their loss, and makes a lot of money doing it.

Now, faith healers? Well, there some like Peter Popoff and Benny Hinn who do the same thing. And a lot of smaller, low-profile faith healers do the same thing. But funny thing about cognitive biases, is some faith healers (and psychics), some, do believe their own abilities. That John Edward clip shows a con-artist fully aware of their scam. But you get someone who truly and sincerely believes in the gift of healing and “words of knowledge,” and when they’re in front of people and they get an impression of “someone here is having back pain,” even though that’s as vague as possible and the most common ailment of people over 25, they could actually believe this is a communication from the supernatural and not just their own subconscious feeding them a tip.

And, as you can see in that clip above, people want to believe, even when it’s obviously groundless. And the belief, and positive reinforcement of the subjects, just encourages the sincere “healer” in a kind of feedback loop, that they have a spiritual gift.

I can’t link to it, because it’s filled with crude language, but Penn & Teller’s B.S. had an episode last year on astrology. (You can Google/Youtube for it.) The astrologer was doing a reading for a lady, and the lady herself brought up, without any prompting, her son’s (?) illness. The astrologer never said anything about it. But in the after-interview, when asked if she thought the astrologer was successful in reader her, she claimed that the guy had somehow known about her son and his illness! So, why, yes, the astrologer was amazingly accurate!

People want to believe what they want to believe, and their mind, that gray cottage cheese in the skull, will use all kinds of tricks to help the person maintain belief in the face of overwhelming cognitive dissonance!

Back to Nicky. The faith healer he mentioned he saw, was John Wimber. This is something I found on him:

-  Wimber and his team of traveling faith-healers once conducted a “healing meeting” in Leeds, England, which happened to be attended by five doctors who were born-again Christians. To summarize the doctors’ general observations, one of them stated that there was not any evidence whatsoever of any true physical healing that occurred at that evening’s “very expert performance” (which included “many minutes of assorted shakings, tremblings, smilings, fallings, swayings and utterings” as so-called evidence of the working of the Holy Spirit’s healing power), but instead all the evidence pointed to “all the textbook characteristics of the induction of hypnosis.” In their joint statement, the five Christian doctors said:

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“Hypnotic trance with suggestion is a powerful psychological tool. It has many uses. Psychosomatic disorders and physical symptoms related to neurosis [sin] are very likely in the short-term to respond to this treatment. Relief of pain as in dental extraction or childbirth is relatively commonplace with hypnosis. In Wimber’s team meeting we saw no change that suggested any healing of organic, physical disease. Given the concern of many attendees to be of use to their neighbors, some very helpful suggestions were undoubtedly made during the numerous trance states. (Emphasis added.) [...]

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Professor Verna Wright, M.D., Rheumatology, concluded that the great dangers of Wimber’s “miraculous healing teaching” are: (1) “it discredits the person of Christ because of the very obvious failures, when we claim to serve a Savior Who never fails”; (2) “it undermines the Word, because it elevates a new form of ‘revelation’ — so-called words of knowledge or prophecy”; (3) “it deceives Christians and breeds a race of gullible believers, taken in by virtually anything”; (4) “it increases the agony of suffering”; (5) “it removes Christian comfort”; and (6) “it diminishes Christian testimony.” (Cited in Masters, p. 227)

Hmm.

According to Nicky, why is faith healing and other supernatural events able to go on today, despite the previous coming of Jesus? Because we are living in the end times, between the 1st and 2nd comings, in which the wall between the world and heaven is porous. Wow. That’s some mental gymnastics. He even had a chart! So it must be true.

Problem is, it’s kind of stretch to say that the end times are neigh, since the same was said 2,000 years ago, and yet — here we still are:

“Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” — Matthew 16:28

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“But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.” — Luke 9:27

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“Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.” — Matthew 23:36

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“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” — Matthew 24:34

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“Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” — Mark 9:1

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“Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” — Mark 13:30

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“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.” — Luke 21:32

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“Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” — John 21:22

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“But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none.” — 1 Corinthians 7:29

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“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” — 1 Thessalonians 4:17

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“I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:23

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“Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son….” — Hebrews 1:2

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“But now once in th end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” — Hebrews 9:26

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“Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” — 1 Peter 1:20

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“But the end of all things is at hand.” — 1 Peter 4:7

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“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” — 1 John 2:18

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“The Lord is at hand.” — Philippians 4:5

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“For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” — Hebrews 10:37

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“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass. — Revelation 1:1

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“The time is at hand.” — Revelation 1:3

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“Behold, I come quickly.” — Revelation 3:11, 22:7, 22:12

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“Surely I come quickly.” — Revelation 22:20

No wonder Nicky has a problem with words he thinks mean one thing, and everyone else thinks mean another — the Bible has the same problem. “At hand,” “quickly,” “shortly,” these phrases kinda mean usually less than two millennia. Not to mention Jesus mentions that the coming of the reign of heaven on earth will happen before everyone hearing his words die! The actions and message of his teaching also implied a world-is-about-to-end form. He constantly taught people to forget the burying of their dead, it’s unnecessary; to sever ties with their families, the coming of heaven is neigh; give up your worldly possessions, you’re about to not need them.

And yet… here we are. So, of course, apologists need to find some way to rationalize God/God’s son preaching like the world is about to end, when it clearly hasn’t, and thus kludge together this idea that oh! He must have meant some kind of overlapping period of time where the kingdom of heaven is upon us now, and… it’s not! Despite the fact that there’s no clear, direct indication in scripture of any such thing. After all, it can’t be that Jesus (or rather, the people who wrote the gospels literally decades after Jesus died), was simply wrong.

Which brings us back to the question: This is supposedly the most important message God has for all humans, of all times. And the best he can do is inspire a book that barely makes sense and requires people to have to retrofit rationalizations on top of stuff that appears to contradict reality? Seriously? Either Yahweh is (a). an idiot, (b). cruel and completely without any compassion for the conflict, confusion, uncertainty that his “divine word” has/will inspire, or (c). doesn’t exist.

Nicky tells a story of how he messed up the cartridge in his knee, it was all swollen, and it was giving him terrible pain. He refused to acknowledge a “word of knowledge” about “someone with knee pain,” (why, that’s as rare as back pain!) but finally gave in and told people he had it. So they prayed over him. Guess what happened: a condition which is completely known to self-heal, did! Miracle.

Here’s the funny thing: (and I don’t mean “funny: ha-ha,” I mean “funny: stop punching me in the eye!”) Why is it all faith healings are conditions that are unseen, unobservable, can be cured by medical treatment, have been known to go into remission, and/or can be healed by the body itself? Isn’t that kind of odd? Cancers, diseases, arthritis, aches and pains, broken things, mental states…. You know what never gets healed? Amputated limbs. Third-degree burns over the body. Ebola. Death when a person’s been dead longer than the possibility of medical science reviving them (e.g.: on the slab for days or even post-autopsy). Surely is the power of God can do these things 2,000 years ago during a time of incredible superstitious belief, and can cure tumors and bad backs, it can cure amputated limbs and people dead long enough for rigur mortis, no? Or, were these verses lies?

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” — Mat 17:20

“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” — John 14:13

Of all the Bible, few passages are as unambiguous as those: You pray for something, no matter how little faith you have, in Jesus’ name, and it will be done! Are you saying there’s not a single Christian in the world with more than a little faith who has sincerely prayed for a loved-one to have a leg be restored, or 3rd-degree burns healed?

Why won’t God heal amputees?

Small Group

Love my group! I don’t recall the direct path of conversation, but they’re pretty unanimous that it’s immoral and terrible to fall back on the “blame the victim” rationalization for why a prayed-for healing didn’t “take.” That, “My prayer is fine; you just didn’t have enough faith!” vileness. (Besides, as we see above, you only need faith the size of a mustard seed for anything to be possible.)

Most people in the group say they think praying for people isn’t so much about healing people, as a means of helping victims of illness/injury and the people around them deal with the stress of the situation. That’s certainly a noble, generous, beautiful sentiment, and I can’t fault anyone for that! Neither can irascible ”militant atheist,” Christopher Hitchens:

Hitchens also faces three groups of people seizing on the moment: haters who want him to suffer; believers who want him to convert to their faiths; and others who pray for God’s intervention on his behalf.

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Hitchens says the first group of haters should “go to Hell.” As for the second group who want him to convert, he replies: “Thanks, but no thanks.” As for the third group praying on his behalf, he says: “It’s fine by me, I think of it as a nice gesture. And it may well make them feel better, which is a good thing in itself.”

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“I’m perfectly sure that there is nothing to be gained from it in point of my health,” he tells the Associated Press, “but perhaps I shouldn’t even say that. If it would do something for my morale possibly it would do something for my health. We all know that morale is an element in recovery. But incantations, I don’t think, have any effect on the material world.”

(This is the 9th edition of my Alpha Course reaction. For the first and all past posts, see

After last week’s monster of a post, you’ll be glad to hear that this week’s will be shorter than usual. But first, a couple of semi-related things I’d meant to refer to in earlier posts but missed.

In the last post, I briefly discussed (due to the subject of “speaking in tongues,” or glossolalia), the concept of left and right brain hemispheres, and how one controls language and the other is the emotional center. Sometimes the emotion, to convey it to others or even to express it for one’s self, the language centers of one half of the brain need to be bypassed in order to “speak” directly to the emotional regions of the right-brain.

Well, here are a couple of absolutely fascinating videos which address this dual-brain dichotomy.

I Can Smell Your Spicy Brains!

The first is an excerpt from a show about the brain, and features Alan Alda interviewing a doctor and a patient who has had the connection allowing the two brains to communcate, severed. The results are fantastic:

There used to be a model of “understanding” the human, the personality, called dualism, that was the accepted and simply assumed model since Plato at least. Philosopher René Descartes did a lot of work on the subject, so we’ll often hear it refered to as “Cartesian dualism.” It’s basically this: The brain and the mind are two separate and distinct entities. The mind is a result of the spirit, or animae, and operates with the influence of, but apart from the physical brain. Of course, this belief, utterly philosophical (and religious) and not based on any hard evidence, makes sense to those who believe in the soul, spirits, ghosts, etc.

The problem is, we know without a doubt that everything about the person, behavior, personality, wants and desires, fears and memory, are all derived from the physicality of the brain. We know this because the brain can be manipulated, whether from internal damage (disease, stroke, etc.), by injury, and by experimentation (surgery, drugs, focused magnetic resonance), and any changes can create marked and stark changes in the “person.”

Case after case of people suffering brain trauma show people going from very kind and nice to mean and cruel, and the reverse. People with Alzheimer’s, in which the brain is literally being disintegrated, suffer extensive and constant personality changes. Neurologists have done studies where parts of the brain will be temporarily “turned off,” resulting in subjects who no longer recognize they are within their own body! They perceive their own body as someone else following behind them! People whose brains are changed, become completely different people. Even our senses can be tricked to fool our brain into short-circuiting the body awareness. People who’ve had changes to the only organ we have to perceive our world and tell us what is “real,” experience different and altered realities.

So naturally, this raises the question: If all of our personality, everything we are, exists in the physical brain — what happens to “us” when we die?

Something to think about, eh?

Is God Good? Or Is Goodness Godly?

The next miscellaneous topic involves the question of morality and God. Is what is “good” and “evil” that way because they are objectively so? Or because God arbitrarily decrees them to be?

See this page for an excellent explanation of this ancient question and how either way it’s answered, is not good news for believers in Yahweh: Euthyphro Dilemma.

If there is an objective right and wrong, good and evil, that exists outside of what God says — then God is unnecessary as we can determine that good and evil ourselves. In fact, we constantly do when we read something in the Bible, like Yahweh’s command to slaughter all people, children included, in a town, tear open mothers’ wombs with sword, but keep all the virgin girls for themselves — and we declare that as cruel and terrible. On the flip side:

“The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good.” – Bertrand Russell

Why And How Should I Tell Others

OK, on to Nicky for this week.

We walked in on the video already on progress and missed the few couple of minutes. I don’t think we missed much, though. Nicky was in the middle of a story about William Wilberforce’s efforts to abolish slavery in the U.K. I think it was his point that individuals can make big differences. Yeah, that’s sometimes true. Especially if the individual happens to be a major public figure or has access to Parliament.

But then he then went on to talk about Nelson Mandela, and his belief that it’s not kings who change the course of history, but the masses. Indeed, that’s true! For example, the entire rise of modern capitalism is attributable to the French Revolution, not any important individuals in it. The Scottish Rebellion, not particular individuals, changed the course of feudalism. As Bertolt Brecht wrote:

“Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?”
– from Bertolt Brecht’s “Questions from a Worker Who Reads”

It is indeed the masses who build, who create, who change, and develop our world.

But the point Nicky is leading to, is it’s the masses who were tasked to spread the word of God. Evidently, this understandable and perceptive belief that masses affect change is the key to rationalizing why God would put the responsibility of telling the world of his plan to damn everyone to eternal torment, because he so loves the world, unless you believe in the resurrection of himself/his son, onto the shoulders of humans traveling on foot and camel and horse. The most important information of all the world, and all eternity, in fact, affecting the entire world and vital to each individual at the cost of their eternal soul, and it’s revealed to/by one man in the desert, preaching to other people, who are then tasked to spread it on their own.

A concept that utterly absurd and ridiculous must be rationalized. So naturally, the apologist has to grasp for a reason, and Nicky decides masses of people overthrowing apartheid, or abolishing slavery, is the same as passing on the news that everyone in the world in all corners and the farthest reaches, are damned by a loving God unless you follow some rules he gave to a handful of men in a superstitious time. I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, but I think an all-wise, all-knowing all-creator could think of a better method than a giant game of “Telephone” to tell people “Do this or burn for eternity.”

Nicky states that “Christianity is not a blind leap of faith — it’s a reasoned step of faith.” Once again, we see Nicky has a very weird concept of what words mean. Here’s a book filled with events that can be proven didn’t happen, and some that at best can’t be corroborated by any evidence outside of the book, and events that violate everything we know about how the world and reality works, written in a time and place overwhelmingly superstitious and myth-filled — and we’re told we must believe this despite the fact it’s illogical, unethical, and unreasonable, and similar in these ways to thousands of other mutually exclusive religions on the planet, all of which are predominantly believed in by people who were raised to believe it simply because of the luck of where and when they’re born…. And I’m to accept that doing so is a “reasoned” step of faith and not a leap?! Funny, I have a feeling that the Muslim Imam and the Hindu Maharaj and the Shinto Kannushi and the Buddhist Monk and the Scientologist Tom Cruise and the Hari Krishna cultist and any of the thousands of religious leaders in the world would say the exact. Same. Thing. And each has their own revealed religious books and scrolls and whatnot to present as “evidence” that they’re right.

At some point Nicky said, “It’s OK to say ‘I don’t know. . . I don’t know — I’ll go away and find out.”

Whoa. Pick my jaw up off the floor! That is the most (nearly the only) reasonable, logical, rational thing Nicky has said the entire video series! Indeed, if you don’t know an answer to a question, the only intellectually honest response is, “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

But unfortunately, Nicky is pretty much only saying that in order to appear that faith is a reasoned step. Because I have yet to see an apologist in any debate ever say, “I don’t know.” They all seem to claim to know the answer to any question, and will try to claim the answer is in the Bible. Just like the pastor last post did, she never said “I don’t know.” She tried various empty apologetic answers and ended up with some non sequitur of a story. Religious leaders actually hate to say “I don’t know.”

On the other hand, the very basis of scientific inquiry, of skepticism, is “I don’t know — let’s find out!” Ask a scientist how life began on earth, they will all say, “I don’t know. We have some hypotheses, but we don’t know. We may never know.” Ask any religious apologist, and they’ll tell you exactly how life began, and have the scripture to prove it. Why did the universe begin? Pre-Big Bang? The intellectually honest scientist says “I don’t know. We have some theories, but we may never know for sure.” The apologist, will not only tell you with certainty, but will tell you the mind of God and the purpose for it! Ask a scientist what the meaning of life is, and nearly all will say something like, “Don’t know. There probably isn’t any meaning beyond the meaning we make for ourselves.” The apologist knows exactly why we’re here, will tell you why you’re here, and what God wants and desires. And yet, scientists and skeptics get pegged as the arrogant ones.

Not just apologists, but most believers will do the same things. Especially the more fundamental, evangelical. But in this group of liberal Methodists in small group, saying “I don’t know” is perfectly alright! And I love them for that. Even the one guy in group who is the most boisterous and full of stories, he has no problem saying “I don’t know.” And because of that, I have a great deal of respect for these people.

I’m afraid, though, that it might be amplified — this ability to admit “I don’t know” — given the environment of inquiry we’re in, with this Alpha Course. But, probably not. I think each of these people are sincere and forthright enough to admit they don’t know. Well, except the one lady who see humans as clay to be molded and broken by dictator-god’s whim. Her answer is simply God knows and it’s not even our place to question. Sheesh, these darn silly inquisitive brains we have! How dare we have the audacity to use them to question and explore and discover and wonder “what” and “why”!

Nicky made some claim that evangelist Billy Graham has spoken to half the world’s population. What?! There’s nearly 7 billion people on the planet. I can’t believe that even since 1950 his total audience has been 3 billion people, much less 3 billion currently living people. Heck, there’s only 2.1 billion Christians in the world! And most of those are people in third-world countries who don’t exactly get out to the stadiums and watch TV all that much.

But here’s the coup de grâce of the night, in marked, ironic contrast to his claim that Christianity is a reasoned step, he said: “You can argue about contradictions and evidence and suffering — but you can’t argue with your story!” Translation: screw evidence and logic and reason, personal anecdotes trumps all!

Really, Nicky. Really? Let’s examine this claim, that the ultimate proof of religion is the personal story. Remember what I just said about 2.1 Christians? That means there’s at least 4.6 billion people who aren’t, and each of them has their own personal story for why they’re Hindu or Ba’hai or Janist or Muslim or Buddhist or Zoroastrian or Wiccan or etc etc.

Think about it this way: Someone comes up to you, they same perfectly nice and reasonable. They tell you this story, a very personal story about how their child was ill, seriously ill. And doctors couldn’t do anything. But the family prayed and prayed, and miraculously the child got better and is now healthy! That’d be a pretty impressive personal story, no? Now what if that person then tells you they’re a Hindu and the god they prayed to was Ganesha? Would you find their story particularly convincing then? No? But they believe it. They’re very sincere, very honest… very certain. Why is this story not enough evidence for you to believe in the power of Ganesha? There are 4 or 5 billion people with similar personal, intimate, powerful, sincere stories of how Allah, Vishnu, Ganesha, spirits, ancestors, the Goddess, crystals, etc. etc. ad nauseum changed and touched their lives. Why are their stories not compelling to you?

Why would you expect your story of how Yahweh or Jesus affected your life be any more compelling than any of the other billions’ of sincere, good, loving peoples’ stories?

If someone’s personal story, of a different faith or god or religion, is not enough to convince you, then you obviously accept that for a person to believe something is true, evidence needs to be objective and not personal. Otherwise, why don’t you believe every magic trick ever done by an illusionist is real magic? You saw it with your own eyes! Why don’t you believe every optical illusion you see as a real violation of the laws of physics? Your own senses told you it’s real. Aren’t your own senses, your own experiences enough to be convincing evidence?

If it’s not adequate evidence to convince someone a playing card was torn and magically repaired itself, how can it possibly be good enough evidence than a man/god came to earth, raised the dead, cast out demons, was himself raised from the dead, and ascended to heaven — all as some plan to save humanity from the fiery wrath of a disembodied mind who loves you enough to extort you into loving him? As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And someone’s personal experience is actually the least reliable evidence there is. Otherwise, magicians would be out of a job, insane asylums would be empty, cops would never need to ask more than one person “What’d you see happen?”, and every religion would be accepted as real, no matter how mutually exclusive they are.

Small Group

Well, I guess that’s pretty much it. As for my small group notes, all I have is something about how we’re supposed to assume that when God said to Adam and Eve, if you eat the fruit, “surely you will die,” he meant “one day,” and not immediately. When there’s nothing anywhere else in the Bible, at all, that Adam and Eve were supposed to be immortal when they were created.

And I also have a note about how someone in group expressed how one of the reasons, ways, that they were led to Jesus, was because someone actually stopped to listen to their concerns. No doubt, that act is a very powerful act — listening with sincere interest in someone’s concerns! I wonder, what if that person who had stopped and listened hadn’t been a Christian evangelist, but had been a Moonie? Or a Hari Krishna? Or a Buddhist? Or…an atheist? Would that have been the trigger to get him to become of one those (non)believers?

Oh boy. I’m going to try to keep in reigned in, but this is going to be a doozy edition (as if the previous novels haven’t been). Wife and I attended the weekend Alpha retreat which included three Nicky videos and discussion sessions after each one. Plus, there’s the whole weekend experience surrounding it to talk about.

Camp Galilee

As I’ve mentioned in past posts, I went to Camp Galilee Methodist Church Camp when I was a teen. It was a very formative, wonderful experience, and the crest of my religious belief. Saturday, we had two Nicky and talk sessions (one of which rather emotional), and nice bonfire. So Sunday morning, after a terrible sleep on a horrible mattress in a rather nice cabin, I was exhausted. But after a tasty breakfast, everyone went down by the lake for a devotional and I stayed up at camp to read a bit from Paul Kurtz’s Affirmations: Joyful And Creative Exuberance; a humanist “devotional.” Then I had a moment to write this:

It’s 8:30 on a beautiful morning here at Camp Galilee. It’s overcast, cool, slight breeze, the tease of rain in the air. For me, that’s a perfect morning. I’m sitting on a park bench maybe 200 feet from the pavillian where when I was a camper here, 15 years ago, we had our nightly services and testimonials and music and song. I gave my testimony as a Christian there at age 17. It was sincere, and I felt I was filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, I know it to have been a very human, very wonderful, self-created emotionalism. It was an incredible feeling, one that I can just touch with the “tips of my fingers” when I performed in plays, sometimes when I watch an effective play or movie, hear a particular song. It’s an awesome feeling, this kind of pathos, no less wonderful because I had it in during a period of religious delusion. I actually treasure that time; I’ve come to terms with it. I’m glad it’s in my past, and I feel I now understand the emotion better, and I’m extremely glad I can have bits of it when I can enjoy touching art or feel awe and wonder at some amazing aspect of the universe. And having that past experience, I can relate better to other humans who continue to feel that emotion in connection to a religious belief. I can understand their not wanting to even entertain the idea of giving that up. The shame of it is, though, that one does not need to give that feeling up. And, like the “mysteries” of the universe, science, reality, understanding it does not eliminate the wonder and, dare I say, goodness of it.

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A formation of Canadian geese just flew over, honking the entire way. A few moments ago I heard the call of a buck. All around me is the sound of the wind through the trees, dead leaves shifting and tossing, and nuts falling from trees to crash to the ground or bonk on a roof and roll off. Earlier in my life I used to do this — sit and just listen to nature. It was the best part about camping as a Boy Scout, taking those moments. I’m thankful for this moment right now, this feeling of refueling.

Just a few more words about camp before I move to the meat of the weekend:

The camp is nice and well-kept. The food was really good. We, about 25 of us (?) were the only ones there. I didn’t get a chance to really explore some of the buildings I was most familiar with back as a camper. At the front of the mess hall was a giant, cartoon-looking cross with cartoon crown of thorns and three giant cartoon nails. Was pretty disgusting and disturbing, really, having this symbol of torturous death made cartoony and venerated for kids to see every day at camp.

But then, when I was 16 and 17, I would have loved it. In fact, during my early 20s I had a cross necklace made from three nails and copper wire. I thought it was great. Amazing what one accepts as normal when you’re brainwashed to accept death-worship and sado-masochistic “salvation” rituals as good and beautiful.

Our Gifts

After we arrived, we filled out a questionnaire ranking our “spiritual gifts.” It was actually both fun and amusing. A lot of questions like “I enjoy doing things with my hands,” and “I like to share my faith with other people.” Naturally, I scored that last question low. But questions like, “I enjoy sharing my knowledge of scripture with others” pretty high! Of course, the reason being different than what the survey authors intended.

I ended up with my top three “spiritual gifts” being: Knowledge, Teaching, and Working with hands (arts and crafts). Hmm, I have knowledge about Biblical contradictions and issues, like teaching about them, and painting D&D miniatures. Wonder how I can use these gifts for the church.

Who Is The Holy Spirit?

Well, let’s get started. I’m going to deal with all three of Nicky’s videos in a row, and then address the small groups. Stay tuned — that part gets heated(ish).

In the companion book, Nicky has a point that reads: “‘Holy Ghost,’ ‘He’ not ‘it,’ resisted.” He didn’t address this in the video; I wish he had. It’s already ridiculous to think of the over-God as “he” as that implies gender which implies sex organs — and you have to wonder a. What does the creator of all existence need with sex organs; and, b. Who would he use them with? An even less embodied entity, known as a “ghost” or “spirit,” having sex organs as well? Well, I guess it’s important if you’re going to impregnate a young woman. (Which also makes me wonder: The angel pretty much just told Mary what was going to happen, I don’t recall her being asked. Was her impregnation consensual?)

Nicky says the Spirit was involved in creation. How’s he know this? The Bible says so! Well, sorta. He quotes: “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” ~ Gen 1:2. (‘course, read the second creation story in Gen chapter 2, and you see God does all the work himself — and in a different order from chapter 1). We’re assuming “the Spirit of God” is a separate entity and not a poetic reference to God. In fact, the OT only mentions “Spirit of God” whereas only the NT has “the Holy Spirit.” The Hebrew in the OT translates what we call “spirit” as “breath” or “wind.” Interestingly, the Jews have always read this as the equivalent of the power of God, not as a separate entity. Even in the Attic Greek in the NT, the word for “spirit” translates to “breath” to match the intent of the OT writers. It wasn’t until the Vulgate Latin version of the Bible was translated, around the 5th century A.D., that “breath” became “spirit.” And it wasn’t also until that time that the concept of the trinity, of the “Holy Spirit” being a separate entity was even created.

Kind of odd that the “Holy Spirit” wasn’t thought of as an entity by God’s very “chosen people,” and it wasn’t until the early Christians were separating themselves from the other mystery cults of the region that the Holy Ghost was separated from the entity of God.

Nicky refers to Samson’s breaking his bonds thanks to the help of the Holy Spirit. I found that an interesting reference. Samson was basically an original “suicide bomber.” See this happy happy representation of the story: Samson’s Final Mass Murder.

Nicky mentions that the Spirit “sets us free from the negative,” and while it may be instantaneous for some people, for others it can be a life-long process. Well, that kinda covers all his bases, doesn’t it? Make you wonder just how powerful the Spirit is if it could take all life long to have an impact. Sounds suspiciously like it depends on how much work each individual puts into changing their own life.

The OT can be “summed up in one word: promise.” Funny, “blood-thirsty” is what first comes to mind.

“God says, ‘I will give you a new heart!’” Nicky says. Whoa, doesn’t that affect “free will” in some way? I mean, if God is intervening to make new hearts, and change you life, and have the Spirit make you a new person, isn’t that de facto an a violation of non-intervention on free will? But that’s not surprising; the Bible is also filled with instances in which God violates his most, er, second-most precious gift of “free will” by making people do thing, softening and hardening hearts. In fact, the entire murderous slaughter of countless Egyptian males, boys, infants, and probably unborn, came about because God specifically intervened and intentionally “hardened” the Pharaoh’s heart (“And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.” Exodus 4:21).

Guess the “new heart” God gives you is a lemon?

Nicky tells a story of an unruly boy with a bad attitude, who “accepted Jesus” and, according to his grandmother (?) became a whole new person. Again: isn’t that altering free will? But even more important: Wouldn’t it be, like a whole lot more loving and fatherly and just to, I dunno, do that whole “new heart” thing to people who could really use it….before they act their free will by horribly harming others? I mean, if God’s going around blowing the Holy Spirit around and changing people’s behaviors and attitudes, wouldn’t it be cool if he did that to someone before they raped someone? Or murdered someone? Or embezzled the company pension fund? Or opened fire in a school? You, know, give new hearts when it really matters and not just to kids who very likely just went through a stage anyway? Just an idea.

Then later that night we learned… What Does The Holy Spirit Do?

(You mean, changing hearts isn’t all?)

Nicky begin this video with a metaphor for how we’re (re)born into the Spirit: “When a man and a woman come together in an act of love, a physical baby is born….” And… what if a man and a woman come together in an act of rape? Or molestation? Or a drunken hook-up after the bars close? Ya gotta think your metaphors through a little better, Nicky. You’re basically telling us we get effed by the Holy Spirit.

As children of God, Jesus, on the cross, took our sins — past, present, and future. Naturally, we’re back to asking the perennial question: How?! By what mechanism does that work? Some would dismiss the question as unimportant, advise to just accept it. But it really is an important question; it speaks to the nature of this god and his power. On the one hand, he could have just snapped his Spirit fingers and BAM! we’re all forgiven. But instead, he enacts a bloody sado-masochistic torture and death which results in all his followers venerating the symbol of bloody and painful execution. If you don’t think this doesn’t do something to inform the general culture of Christianity, you’re not looking from the outside enough. The arrogant and righteous violence mixed with martyrdom-minded persecution-complex, comes from the worship and idolization of bloody death. Remember, at the core, it’s not about “sacrifice” because (a) nothing but 36 to 48 hours was actually sacrificed; and (b) the torture/murder is completely superfluous when Yahweh has the power and ability to forgive at-will.

Plus, let’s look a little deeper at this whole forgiveness thing, Dr. Freud. For what is this magnanimous uberdeity forgiving us, anyway? Sin, right? What is sin? It’s not inherently unethical things, as the Bible is soaked with unethical behavior that God’s cool with. Sin is offending God, not necessarily harming self or others. God is deigning to forgive us for offending him. You have to wonder, just how insecure and flawed an omni-everything god must be to feel it necessary to (a) feel offended by us; and (b) cast our souls into eternal torment because we offended him for 0 to ~80 years or so. You’d think a megagod capable of creating an infinite universe filled with galaxies and black holes and quasars and nebulae and photosynthesis and the wonders of human imagination, would kind of be bigger than the very very human weakness and failing as feeling offended by puny humans, and inordinate and unfair levels of vengeance for said offendedness.

Nicky says relationships grow by communication. Well, indeed they do! I agree, Nick ol’ boy. So, he says, the Spirit helps our relationship with God by helping us pray.

Uhm, do we really need to deconstruct this? OK, let’s go for it.

Having a one-way conversation at God, mediated by another entity, is being equated with having direct two-way, real-time communication with another person. Sure. Carry on….

He states that “the divisions within the church are such a tragedy,” by which he means the various Christian denominations. Well, whose fault is that?! There are supposedly around 3,800 different denominations. Even though most of those are tiny and insignificant, we all know that of many significant and serious denominational splits so drastic that they virtually form whole different religions: Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, Assemblies of God, Seventh Day Adventist, Lutheran, Charismatic Pentecostal, Branch Davidian, and on and on. The differences spawn, at the core, from very divergent interpretation of a book that was compiled nearly 2,000 years ago. Doesn’t this huge list indicate that there must be something wrong with the message if it results in such conflicting and contradictory interpretations — to the point in which long and bloody wars have been fought among them?

Ah, the apologist will say, it’s not the message that’s the problem, but human apprehension of it. Yeah, you know, that still goes back to the responsibility of the crafter of the message. If I’m writing a message to someone, a message so important, so vital that their life literally depends on their understanding the message, and having excellent intelligence sources, I know that the recipient of the message will be a little confused, a little slow, have some issues with receiving the message properly, isn’t it incumbent upon me to make sure I make the message as clear and unambiguous as possible?

My puny human brain can come up with a handful of ways I would, given the power of omnipotence, impart the most important message in all existence to flawed humanity. And the least effective way I could come up with would be a book written during a primitive time by ancient people in an age steeped in superstition and utter misunderstanding of nature and reality. The claim that an omni-power/knowing being could come up with a way that looks suuussspiciously very human-created, can only mean (a) Yahweh is an idiot, (b) Yahweh is a mean, cruel, sadistic bastard, (c) Yahweh doesn’t exist and the Bible really is a creation of ancient people steeped in superstitious and barbarous beliefs. Occam’s Razor would lean toward which answer?

So here’s a funny bit: At the beginning of this video, Nicky states that all of us have the Holy Spirit within us from the time we’re born. It’s up to us to decide to accept it or not. Then, toward the end of the video, he states that “people without the Spirit in them do not belong to Christ.” Sorry, didn’t you say we all have the Spirit with us? Pedantic contradiction pointing when there’s much more serious issues to point out; sorry for the diversion.

Nicky then talks about how we must “grow the family,” we must share the message with others and bring more people to Jesus, and the Spirit makes it easier for us to do so.

Now, I know I’ve gone on about this many times in my blog, but I don’t recall if I’ve addressed this in the Alpha posts yet. This is the concept that served as my Final Straw into atheism after years of research and debating and trying to find answers to my questions and the issues I saw. No parables or metaphors, here’s the theological setup: God sets up a system of eternal reward which can be paradise or eternal damnation. He sets up the rules and conditions by which he’ll judge you upon death (or the End Times, depending on your denomination). This is a pretty big deal, yes? I mean, no denying, this is The Big Deal of all deals! So, what does God do to tell we subjects, we victims, of this setup? He avoids telling anyone about it until a few thousand years into humanity’s history, and then lets a handful of people in a desert land in on the secret. And then commands this small group to go by foot and tell other by mouth of this Ultimate of Big Deals.

Really? This is the best the all-knowing, infinitely wise god of gods could come up with telling humanity that they’re doomed to damnation unless they do the one thing that will save them from it? A process that looks suspiciously like the methods and activities of a cult.

OK, analogy: (I think I have said this in Alpha posts…) I’m a loving, caring, forgiving father with many children. I pull one aside and tell her, “Say, here’s a secret I’m telling you and only you: If any of you, my children and your children, fall asleep tonight laying down, I’ll come chop your arms off with a rusty saw. Now, go forth and tell your siblings.” And I do this knowing that it’s impossible for her to possibly tell all her siblings and their children — and that the default result will be rusty arm removal since sleeping lying down is just the normal way humans behave.

The rational, ethical Christian naturally understands that this is a problem. Which is why it often crops up in serious discussions (like the small group here), what does God do about people who lived before Jesus? Or in places where humans haven’t reached with the Gospel? And the rational, reasonable Christian will rationalize that a loving god would never be so evil as to damn people who didn’t hear about Jesus out of sheer luck of where and when they’re born! And good for them for rationalizing this.

But let’s step it back a step, shall we? If God is willing to reprieve and not damn countless billions to hell because evangelicals hadn’t told them they’re sinful and evil and need to accept a torture/murder as a process of forgiving them, then why not skip the whole mistranslated, misapplied, war and suffering-starting Good News altogether?! The existence of the Bible and it’s rules and bigotry and racism and misogyny and cruelty, has been responsible for unimaginable suffering throughout the world, and it still does. And yet, evidently, God could and does bypass the whole thing in order to not cast into hell people who haven’t encountered his blood-thirsty Bronze Age tome. Result: (a) Yahweh is an idiot, (b) Yahweh is a capricious, fickle, psychopathically cruel and arbitrary dictator, (c) Yahweh doesn’t exist. Occam’s Razor says…?

Finally, in this video, Nicky ends hammering on an idea that he kept beating throughout the video: God’s offering us a “free gift” of the Water of Life! We just need to accept it.

Funny how we have such different ideas of what “free gift” means. In my world, a free gift would be:

“Hey, Joe. I have this cool widget for you.”
“Ah, thanks! Do I owe you anything for it?”
“No, Joe, it’s free!”
“Why, thanks, pal.”
“Think nothing of it.”

In Nicky’s world, “free gift” comes out more like:

“Hey Joe, I’ve this widget for ya. It’s a free gift for you!”
“Oh cool. Thanks.”
“Wait a second there, Joe. Where ya going? The widget is going to cost you. You need to be my servant and do what I command and give me love and devotion.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, pal! That’s not ‘free,’ that’s a pretty penny! Never mind, I don’t want your gift.”
“Oh, Joe? You don’t want the gift? OK, Joe. If you won’t take the gift, I’ll stab you in the face with a bear.”
“Holy crap, pal! Your gift isn’t a gift at all! It’s extortion!”
“Love me.”

Love those gifts you’re forced to take under pain of eternal torture!

The small group discussion after this video got very interesting, and involved me having a small row with a pastor. But, that’ll come in the combined discussion section. For now, on to video three…

How Can I Be Filled With the Holy Spirit

So, if you accept the extortionary exchange, you too can be filled with the Holy Spirit. And some people react to the Spirit physically, like falling from the “gale” of God. Sort of like this?

Physical reactions to emotionally charged situations are a part of the human makeup. It’s why you can find in every human religion of every culture, people reacting physically to ceremony, ritual, any situation in which there is a communal, emotionally charged atmosphere, and an expectation of physical reaction!

Nicky tells a story of a service in which people weren’t told about possible physical reactions to receiving the Holy Spirit, and were shocked by the them. First of all, you have to live in a cave to not have in some way encountered the idea that falling, or weaving about, or vocal emissions, and the like, don’t happen in emotionally charged Christian events. It’s not necessary for the pastor in attendance to have to tell the audience about such things for some of them to have been pre-suggested of such reactions. Secondly, because we can see people from all over the world react to emotional ritual in similar fashion, there’s a semi-universal physical response that’s triggered in many people regardless of whether they’re in a Christian service, a Sufi, a Hindu, an aboriginal, a Zulu, tiny cult, etc. ad nauseum, ritual.

But Nicky spends most of his time talking about “the most obvious of the spiritual gifts” (because healing people from indisputable death and restoring amputations and moving mountains I guess just aren’t obvious enough now-a-days) of speaking in tongues.

Nicky is very careful to remind people that being given the gift of speaking in tongues does not make one a “first class Christian,” but that it’s simply a gift that some receive but certainly not all. That’s the last reasonable thing he says.

He claims that while speaking in tongues, “the speaker is in full control.” And yet, later, he claims that speaking in tongues is a method one has to leave control of their rational language when speaking to God, allowing the spirit to speak through them when human words just won’t do. Huh, that doesn’t sound like full control!

He says that the only way to start speaking in tongues is to just start speaking, and he gave an example of how once when he was in a very hightened emotional state, he did so and he started speaking in tongues to God. This goes back to the fact that every religion, every culture, has and venerates as holy various unusual behaviors people experience when in hightened emotional states in a religious context. Ancient Greece had the bacchates or maenads, followers of Dionysus (who, by the way, shares many specific similarities with Jesus) who would send themselves into frenetic emotional states during worship. Sufi dancers spin themselves into emotional fugues (“whirling dervishes”). Many native Americans fast and “sweat lodge” themselves into hallucinogenic states where they can receive guidance from the spirits. Hindu is filled with various emotional states one sends themselves into, Tantra being one of the disciplines of, in order to become more spiritually aware.

The list of ways in which various religious beliefs give context to the way we humans can play with our own minds to provide alternate states of “awareness” goes on and on. It’s not unique to Christianity, and speaking in tongues, it’s universal to being human and having gray cottage cheese meat organ serving as the material that controls our senses, our awareness, our perception of reality.

Recent studies have indicated that glossolalia is not a uniquely Christian practice. Glossolalia is practiced by a large number of native non-Christian living religions around the world. Glossolalia is found amoung the “Inuit (Eskimos), The Saami (Lapps), in Japanese seances in Hokkaido, in a small cult led by Genji Yanagide of Moji City, the shamans in Ethiopia in the zar cult and various spirits in Haitian Voodoo. L. Carlyle May shows that glossolalia in non-Christian religions is present in Malaysia, Indonesia, Siberia, Arctic regions, China, Japan, Korea, Arabia, and Burma, among other places. It is also present extensively in African tribal religions. http://www.goodnewsaboutgod.com/studies/speakingtongues.htm

Glossolalia. That’s the name given to the act of speaking in, essentially, gibberish. Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher and now co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, was a guest at last year’s Skepticon in Springfield, MO. (He’ll be back for this year’s in November.) He told the audience that speaking in tongues used to be a pretty common thing of his when he was religious. But now he recognizes the emotional state and the psychological triggers of it, and if he wanted to, even now as an atheist, he could put himself into a state where he could glossolalia again.

Fortunately, not all glossolalia is delusional. it’s left-brain-bypassing emotional root is used by a couple of my favorite musicians: Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance (and increasing success as a film music composer) has used the glossolalia she’d developed since she was 12 in her etheral/ambient/world music singing.

And Jón Þór Birgisson from Icelandic band Sigur Rós also incorporates glossolalia to create their music’s otherworldly sound:

These incredible artists understand that the semantic meanings of intelligible words can get in the way of emotional impact. Just as Nicky said, sometimes there’s not the words to properly express a feeling. He’s right! And we have an entire half a brain that operates separate and even in opposition to language. There’s nothing spiritual, mystical about it. It’s an aspect of human psychobiology.

(Seriously, though, if I may say, Dead Can Dance is one of the best music groups evah!)

Oh goodness! This has been a chore of post! But we’re almost done:

Small Group

And here is where once again I learn my “classmates” are cool… and pastors/preachers/etc. are purveyors of blatant BS.

So, running the weekend’s three small group discussions together, it started out discussing “gifts.” The consensus of the group is that we’re all born with our “gifts” and that circumstances bring them out in us. So then I wonder, if anything you can do is a “gift,” how do you know it’s a gift and where it came from? By what scale or guide can you determine your courage, or rising to an occasion, or ability to sing, or whatever, is a spiritual gift as opposed to just something that’s a part of your DNA/experience/training? If it’s something so ephemeral and ambiguous, and these are qualities that people all over the world of all religions (and no religion) can have — what’s the point of calling it a spiritual gift?

Don’t remember what brought it up, but one person mentioned that judging other people is bad, because you will be judged by the same measure you judge others. And no one should judge, because we’re all human and we all have failings, etc. But isn’t that just the pernicious trap of religion? We all have failings, failings are sinful, you must pray and return to religion for forgiveness, and repeat the cycle forever.

Before Christian missionaries arrives to the Polynesian islands,  their belief system had no proscriptions regarding sex. There was no “sin” or divine offense in regards to (consensual) sexual behavior. Oh but food, they had tons of rules about food! When to eat what, who could eat what. If the wrong person ate the wrong thing at the wrong time, you offended the gods!

Then the Christians came and guess what they brought with their conversion? Food became no big deal, but sex! Now there’s where Christian excel at creating guilt and shame and attributing sinful behavior.

In both very different examples, you have a human biological drive (eating and sex) that become favorite tools of the religion to vilify, create issues, and then force you to return to the religion for a solution to the arbitrary constraints. Religion creates this viscous circle of co-dependence necessary for its very survival! Richard Dawkins had it right on when he coined the term “meme” as a mind virus, and religion was the most virulent of the mind viruses.

The second night we had a pastor sit in with the group. She made this absurd claim, as we discussed whether God sends good people to hell regardless of faith, that Gandhi was a Christian. I know I must have made a significant face of shock and annoyance at such an outright untruth. He was very much a devout Hindu. (And a probably pedophile, but that’s never been proven. He only wrote that he liked to sleep with naked young girls and not have sex with them to prove the strength of his faith; he never wrote about any failures he may have had in his own testing.)

Again, the general consensus among most of the class was that no, God would never send good people to hell for simply not believing! Of course, this does make me feel good about these people (have I mentioned I like Methodists?) They are moral, ethical, caring people with good hearts! Unfortunately, the god they say they follow is a cherry-picked one of their own creation, and not the Biblical Yahweh. (Actually, that’s very fortunate, not unfortunate, when you think about it.)

According to the Bible:

Matthew 18:8-9: If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

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Matthew 25:41, 46: Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. … And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.

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Mark 9:43-48: … into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

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Luke 16:22-24: And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

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John 5:28-29: The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

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2 Thessalonians 1:8-9: In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction.

That’s a short list.

(Oh! I should warn you, that video has a couple of F-bombs, in case you have kids around or something. But please, do watch it its entirety! It’s not very long and it makes excellent points which must be thought about by the believer.)

So, if you’re going to believe in Yahweh, the god of the Bible, you have to believe that he send people to eternal damnation those who don’t follow his rules, those who offend him. (See earlier posts for the illogical, unreasonable, immoral situation of sending people for eternity of pain and suffering for offending his delicate sensibilities; and the extortion of forcing people to looove you, using your “free will” by the way, or else  it’s lakes of fire for you.) If you don’t believe in this god, you don’t believe in the god of Jesus and Paul and the disciples of the Bible, plain and simple.

If you don’t worship the god of the Bible, that has set up rules and demands that you worship him and not offend him, lest he torment you forever, that’s great! You are a moral, ethical, thinking person. But you have no right nor reason to call yourself “Christian.” Congratulations: you’re a deist, or a pantheist, or a transcendental theist, or maybe Buddhist, why not. But you’re not a “Christian.” Everything about being a Christian comes from what JC is supposed to have preached — and I guess, if you believe that he was the son of God, then you have to accept that what he supposed to have said is gospel truth, so to speak. And what he said is unambiguous: God judges and he sends those who don’t follow him into eternal torment.

Now, I know as a modern, moral, ethical, thinking person, this is anathema to you, this idea of a god so capricious, petty, vengeful, cruel, let’s face it, downright evil. And well you should have a problem with this concept! It’s ancient, superstitious thinking. But, that’s the Bible all over — ancient, Bronze Age, violent, superstitious thinking. And that is the root, foundation, “soul” of Christianity and you can’t cover up the truth of it with rationalizations and cherry-picking. The Christian believes the Bible is the word (or at least directly inspired word) of God himself, and unless you’re Mormon, there have been no further revelatory decrees and manuscripts from God since. What’s in the Bible, is what’s “true.” If you don’t like what the Bible says, good! You’re a good person. But you can’t just make up your own ideas of what God is and wants and does, and still call yourself a term (“Christian”) that applies only to people who do believe in the only source of “knowledge” that imparts what it means to be a Christian.

So, good news: Most of the people in small group (and that church and Methodism and modern, liberal Christianity) are moral and thinking enough to not believe what the Bible says. Bad news (for them): That makes them not Christians. (Well, at worst, they’re Christians who are ignorant of what it means to be a Christian.)

I say, if you’re going to ignore most of the Bible, rationalize away and negate the stuff that’s cruel and immoral, and basically defang God and believe in a god and messiah that’s not the one depicted in the book, just go ahead and jettison the label and the burden of immoral, illogical religion altogether! Be the good, ethical person you already are who loves your family and friends, does good works, etc., and do it because you already know it’s the right way to be, and you know it despite what the book/religion says! You’re already using your reason, your empathy, your ethics to pick-and-choose what make sense to you, and you do so completely at odds with the religion and its dogma and orthodoxy. So, take the logical step and chuck off the label “Christian.” It’s ridiculous to keep calling yourself something you’re not.

Well, that who topic of sending good people to hell lead to a discussion of theodicy, which naturally brought the observing pastor into the discussion. To her I asked the basic questions of suffering in the world: Why is there an excessive amount of it when there’s ample proof a barest fraction is all that’s necessary to test faith (if that’s the intent)? Why is it a good, fair, and just thing for people to be able to use their free will to horrifically harm innocents (if free will is the holy price to pay for so much suffering)? Why can’t God simply create a world where we have limited ability to cause so much harm to others, and not realize we’re limited (since he is all-powerful)? Etc etc. And at each question, at each challenge, her response was not just basic apologetics that don’t address the question asked, don’t provide any sort of answer, simply moves the goal-posts, and don’t stand up to logic and reason.

It actually got a little heated. Well, not anger heated… although, I admit that for my part, I did (and do) get a little pissed. For example, she actually brought up the rationalization that others’ suffering is perhaps to help others feel compassion. I leaned forward and scowled, and I knew my voice was emotional, when I challenged, “Are you telling me that the horrible death a child in the arms of a mother in Africa, dying painfully of starvation and cholera, and the despair of the mother, you would go to her face and ell her, ‘I know you are suffering, but feel joyous because your suffering and child’s death is teaching some people how to donate money’?!” That angers me.

That then led to the ultimate ridiculousness, when she broke into some story she obviously learned in seminary, about how John Wesley (the founder of Methodism) was on a boat Moravian missionaries during a bad storm. And their singing and lack of concern gave Wesley hope and reminded him that death and suffering is nothing compared to his relationship with God.

Yeah. It’s one of those answers pastors are really good at. Where they don’t actually answer the question posed, but they usually sound good and positive and hopeful, and distract you from the question or concern. And the usual questioner will often go away, feeling like they were answered even though they really weren’t. Ghost whispering psychics are good at that too. Watch John Edwards of Sylvia Brown sometime. When they give a “miss” (as in, like, claim the subject’s dead relative may have died from something they didn’t or something), they will snake and prevaricate and basically distract the audience away from the miss. And people feel comfortable that they got the answer they wanted, and felt good about it. Although, interviews with psychic audience members days later, many times will report the opposite feeling once they had a chance to think about it.

In this case, as this pastor started in her story, I could tell she lost. (No surprise there: I’ve read and seen debates and interviews with Christian apologists of world-class level all of who miserably fail at answering the question of suffering.) The conversation was over, and she was going to do some hand-waving for a while. I looked at her with unhidden incredulousness and disgust, and sat back quietly, waiting for her to finish her pointless and unrelated tale. I was done with her. I only wish I could know whether or not the other people in the room recognized her smoke and mirror act.

So, I’ve mentioned the one lady in class who has a very authoritarian outlook of God (which is actually a more Biblically-honest belief than everyone else in the room — if more immoral belief). Interestingly, the conversation did turn to gays, and the fact that they can’t help being born gay. (I am so glad that from what I could tell, (most?) everyone in the room recognizes a person does not choose to be gay. Have I mentioned I like Methodists? Baptists: you can bite me.) I don’t recall exactly what was said, but something related to that appeared to make that lady seem to reconsider he homophobia a little bit. At least, I hope.

Speaking of more Biblical belief, there’s one other guy in the group who has mentioned a couple of times, “Even the devil believes in God.” (This is in response to that earlier conversation about whether or not good people who don’t believe will get punished or not.) He says when he was himself not really committed Christian, he had a friend point to the Bible where it says that the devil believes in God, and it blew his mind. Really?? That’s like saying, “Even Sauron knows the One Ring can be destroyed, because it says so right here in Lord of the Rings!” C’mon, think about it. Let’s say god Yahweh is indeed a myth, that would mean that the Bible and all it says (in regards to supernatural creatures at least) is also myth. Thus, the devil and what he does or does not believe, is also a myth. Q.E.D. If I don’t believe in god, I don’t believe in the devil and what he says either.

On the third day, on the subject of spiritual gifts, I was also impressed that the group as a whole was not just skeptical but negative about TV faith healing. But goodness, more about that in a later post for a more recent week. (I’m like, two weeks behind now.)

——–

In honor of Guy Fawkes Day this Nov. 5th (Wiki link)* are a couple of links for light reading:

A recent musing of mine on anarchy and democracy: link

An excellent (and scary-sad) collection from Classically Liberal of examples of police stateabuse and misconduct.

* Like most things in postmodern culture, this topic is well filled with contradictions. Guy Fawkes, for example, was not truly an anarchist (as far as I can tell). He, along with his cohorts, were simply p.o.ed that Catholics were being descriminated by the Protestant British government and decided to get rid of it, hoping to establish a Catholic-friendly one. (*sigh* what, religious violence again!?)

Guy Fawkes ironically became a symbol of later anrchistic movements despite his basically being just a religious terrorist.

Guy Fawkes was also appropriated by the British cultural hegemony as a symbol of celebrating the God-protected and ordained rule of proper British royalty. (Much like how Hitler propagandized his surviving the Valkyrie assassination attempt as a sign that God protected his divinely ordained Third Reich. [I may have just Godwined myself, but it just goes to show that anyone and everyone can and does invoke God's favor when things go well for them.])

And now there’s this Anonymous group appropriating Guy Fawkes to protest Scientology. Interestingly, as this is a quasi-religious fight, this may actually be a more “appropriate” use of Guy’s image… if not for the fact that what they’re really doing is using the image created by the film “V for Vendetta”. They’ve taken an image crafted for entertainment consumption, based on a hyperreality of an appropriated image, of a man whose purpose has been fictionalized by one group and celebrated for it’s failure by another group for ideological justification…

Ow. Jean Baudrillard is probably laughing in his grave over this a-historical postmodern pastiche! (I think I see a scholarly paper in this!)

So, am I going to vote next week? Actually, yes. But, with caveats, and I’m more than happy to explain why.

First, a little parable:

Three wolves and six goats are discussing what to have for dinner. One courageous goat makes an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!” The other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves acquiesce.

But when everyone is preparing to vote, the wolves take three of the goats aside. “Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,” they threaten. “Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”

The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of the election: a majority, including their comrades, has voted for them to be killed and eaten. They protest in outrage and terror, but the goat who first suggested the vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy! At least we got to have a say in this!”

Voting is a right. People fought and some literally died for he right to be able to vote in fair elections for such things as fair taxes, appropriate laws that are meant to help society function, and people who would represent them in a government by, of, and for the people.

But on most scales, that’s not what we have. We have a government where the higher up you go, the less you, as a person, are being represented so much as being governed in the interests of corporations. The congresspeople, the president, the massive support system that runs the federal government, are paid for by corporate profit — sanctified by the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend as much money as they wish to make sure the politicians vote in their interests. In fact, the only politicians at all that get to that high of a level, that get their name on the ballot, are politicians that, regardless of the R or the D next to their name, will support corporate interests over those of the people.

These people do not represent me. I don’t not wish to associate a vote, by right and purchased by many people braver than I who gave their lives to give me the privilege and not the obligation to do so, to any of these people. A vote for a less vile, less corporate-owned, less dishonest, politician is not an exercise in freedom and liberty and civic duty — it is an insult and a mockery of freedom and liberty.

My right to vote quite certainly includes my right to choose to not vote, if that represents my opinion that the people who are my forced choices do not represent me. If I despise both options I have to vote for, I will complain about either one of them regardless of whichever one wins, and I should not have to be compelled to associate myself with either repugnancey in order to be granted the boon of being able to complain about them.

Especially when what I complain about is not just the puppets that I’m forced to choose between, but the entire corrupted and perverted system that puts only bought-and-paid-for corporate tools as my choices for representation.

Indeed, there are people who don’t vote, not because they are exercising their right not to, but because they’re too uninformed, detached, and unconcerned about the process, the system, civil rights and duties. You know what? They too have a right to complain! All people have an inalienable right to speak their mind (granted, so long as it does not directly incite harm to others), regardless of whether they participate in the farce.

I may pity and scowl at them in my own elitist, condescending way for not being involved and interested and engaged in the process, the events, the system that essentially controls their lives. But they still have a right to complain.

The parable above is often used to illustrate what’s called the tyranny of democracy. The idea that the minority must concede to will of the majority for no better reason than because they’re the majority. We all know this is on many levels wrong and unethical. It was seen during segregation, where the racist views of the majority violated the rights of a minority. We can see it today in such things as California’s Prop 8 in which the rights of a minority were eliminated by a majority vote.

If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority of a group simply on the grounds that they outnumber everyone else? We accept majority rule because we do not believe it will threaten us – and those it does threaten are already silenced before anyone can hear their misgivings.

–From THE PARTY’S OVER: BEYOND POLITICS, BEYOND DEMOCRACY
http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/pdfs/democracy_reading.pdf

I agree with the position. Majority rule; minority suffers. That’s all well and good so long as you’re part of the majority. But everyone belongs in someone else’s minority group. What happens when the majority on a given position, or condition, votes to remove a right of yours? How fair is democracy to you then?

As an anarchist, I believe ultimately in the removal of all coerced obeisance to the will of another group, whether that group has the force of greater numbers, or a monopoly on violence (the state). But, like Marx who understood that capitalism was a necessary step on the road to socialism, then communism, I understand we’re likely not going to have mass anarchism (nor communism) within my lifetime. The state is here, and it’s not going anywhere, any time soon. And the structure of representative government, as corrupt and flawed and manipulated as it is, should at least somewhat be made to work for the people and not for corporations, whenever possible….

So, I’m going to vote next Tuesday, despite the fact it will be a violation of my integrity. (I don’t believe in the very system itself, I shouldn’t support it with my participation.) But, living completely on the grid, within the culture, subject to the will of the hegemonic cultural logic, and millions of other people have no choice — so I’ll go ahead and cast votes where, and only where, I have a choice in which I think one option is ethically acceptable, and not because it’s the alternative to a worse option. If neither option represents my beliefs, it’s not getting my approval simply because of some non-existent obligation to have to choose one.

What gets my goat, is how so many of the people who wallow in self-righteousness and decree that you’re unAmerican and not worthy of the right to free speech if you don’t vote, are people whose entire civic consciousness, entire political activity, entire involvement in the world around them, begin and end with that 30 minute exercise once every couple of years — maybe only every four years. And of course, that just the way those in power like it. Convince people that they’re actually capable of changing things, get rid of bad and install good, improve the system, by making them think that all they need to do is vote for person A or nearly identical person B, whose differences are those that make people bicker while ignoring the fact the rot goes down to the roots. Make people think that voting equals change, and just shuffle the same agents of corruption and dominance through the offices while the very system itself that underlies the main problems gets blissfully ignored.

So, if you’re one of those who sticks your nose into the air with superiority because you go out of your way to vote for a new boss, same as the old boss, save your breath on me. I’m going to participate in the farce. But you better anticipate some write-in names on my part.

Ah, Halloween! Sadly, as an adult, I find October passes by much too fast with my barely able to enjoy the season before it’s gone.

But in my mind, Halloween will always evoke the memory of grade school in Westminister, Colorado: paper skeletons with brass brads for joints and bloody paper weapons taped onto their hands; lawns of dead and crackling leaves; gray skies and a chill air, sometimes with a little snow on the ground; that big, old house several blocks away with the unkempt yard and odd, metal star attached to the chimney, a house that begged to have a role in a Bradbury story with overly inquisitive kids. Halloween was my favorite holiday in the middle of my favorite season.

I don’t do much to celebrate any more, and that’s my loss and my fault. But often, when possible, at the last minute on that Halloween night, I’ll try to at least watch an appropriate film before the clock ticks into the month that begins the season for family and food. This year, I have a weekend in front of me and no thesis or papers to keep me from taking a couple evenings to enjoy the spirit of the holiday.

Here’s what I think I’m going to try watching:

“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is an absolute requirement, period.

“Coraline” should be a good one. We’re hoping to get the kidlet to watch that and maybe “9″ (the animated film, not the musical) with us.

Then, once she’s off to bed, the pool of possibilities are: “Shaun of the Dead” (hilarious, plus Wife likes it, too); “Zombieland” (though I did already watch it again a few months ago); haven’t seen “Splice” yet (supposed to be good); “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (hey, I liked it [despite Keanu], lay off); “Alien” (more on that in a moment); “John Carpenter’s The Thing” (haven’t seen that since I was 13); maybe “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (also been a long time, and it may be another with-the-kid movie).

Something you didn’t see in that list — slashers. I hates slashers. Ridiculous plots, horrible acting, nihilistic and pointless violence, no redeeming qualities whatsoever. With a couple exceptions: The first “Scream” was not bad, but mainly because it was the first postmodern slasher with a unique take on the genre. And I’ve seen a couple of the “Saw” movies, and while it’s nihilistic violence wrapped in a veneer of moral didacticism and life affirmation (ROTFL), the mechanized tortures remind me of the computer games “7th Guest” and “Phantasmagoria,” and the convoluted and complicated plot with looping timelines is really kind of intriguing. I’m curious to know if the clever yet highly impossible timeline coinciding-plots were planned from the beginning or have been kludged together for each film.

My favorite editor, Ellen Datlow, discusses her Halloween film pick, “Alien” on this page. Interestingly, one of my favorite SF authors, John Scalzi, dismisses “Alien” as unscary in his Filmcritic article. (While I disagree with him about its non-scariness, I have to say, I’m completely with him on why he finds the kind of film he does find scary, to be so.) I first saw “Alien” when I was about 13 or 14, and it scared the flip out of me.

(Although, not as much as seeing Kubrick’s “The Shining” did at 12. To this day, the image of Nicholson’s Jack limping through the snow with the shiny-bladed ax, chasing Danny, gives me jeebies of the heebie variety. That said, I still think Kubrick totally f-ed up what truly made the novel frightening, even more so now that I’m a husband and a father — the idea of a good man who slowly crumbles into insanity, and you’re not quite sure how much of it is within him and how much is supernatural influence. Kubrick’s “The Shining” starts out with an unhinged Jack and puts all the horror on the actions of the hotel. Even as a teen, reading Stephen King’s novel, I could understand the brilliant way he made the horror come from out of the character drama. But I’ve really digressed….)

Yeah, “Alien.” It scarded me! I’ve always realized because, even though it was sci-fi, it was entirely believable and realistic. Plus the hard SF’ness was uber-cool. But, I started watching it again a couple weeks ago, and I realized something disturbing: The script for the movie, the dialog, really sucks! Bad. Yet, the acting is superb! So natural, so believable, that they were able to take a bad script and make you believe it despite. The directing was so well-done, the pacing and mood and film-work, that it entirely enhanced the actors’ valiant effort — culminating in a truly effective film that one remembers as perfect despite the near-embarrassing script. Man, if Joss Whedon had been a script doctor back then, I can’t imagine how truly perfect it could have been. (I understand Ridley Scott is planning to make a prequel film. Note: he wasn’t involved in any of the sequels (although Joss was). I hope he gets as good of a cast as “Alien” had and even a marginally better script.)

Between that film, and OMNI magazine (hey! An Ellen Datlow degree of separation!), I’ve loved H.R. Gieger’s art ever since.

So, those’re my thoughts on Halloween at the moment. I think I might read some Poe to kiddlet this weekend. That’d be a cool tradition to start.

I’m currently working on the big-ole Weekend Retreat Alpha post. It was a 3-for-1 weekend of Nicky videos and some interesting group discussion — so look for that (and a regular weekly Alpha post) sometime during the evil spooky weekend.

I’m also working on a post about voting that may be heretical to some. That’ll be good for some laughs, and coming in a day or so.

And breaking from religion and politics (well, religion at least), I have a reaction to SF author extraordinare Charles Stross’ reaction to my beloved sub-genre of steampunk coming up.

Lots of goodies; stay tuned!