Part 1 - Lost in Translation
One of the most insidious tactics of the American church money-machine is to inflict modern vernacular upon ancient texts via "new translations".
Idioms, gender-neutral pronouns, definition-inserted-in-place-of-term...these are forcibly inserted in a seeming attempt to make overquoted Bible verses feel less overquoted, and more relatable or relevant to an audience which has heard them all before.
But this is not only semantically dishonest, it removes, or attempts to remove, the cultural context of the writing and skew its literary context.
The various texts chosen to be included in the Bible each have a rhythm to them, especially the more poetic works.
The word choice in these only seems trite to modern American audiences because most Americans were raised in or around a church, especially in the Bible Belt, and most mainline denominations defend their doctrines and dogma with a relatively small number of Bible verses to serve as "spiritual pillars".
This small group of verses are thrown around again and again in sermons and Bible studies across the country, to the point that elder church members treat them like mantras of the good ol' days, and younger church members get sick of hearing them (and generally yearn for leaders and teachers to convey spiritual concepts in their own words instead).
Thus, we see attempts by Bible publishers and church leaders to modernize the ancient words, but in so doing remove the sense that they are in fact ancient.
This attempt at modernization, by removing the cultural context of the texts, blurs the Old Testament's progressive discovery of God's character by the ancient Hebrews, and dumbs down the radical nature of the New Testament's "HERE HE IS" message.
Ironically, instead of being perceived as an overquoted authority, this tactic makes the Bible seem petulant and pedantic, subject to the whims of fickle vernacular rather than being the rock-steady divine Word which fundamentalists proclaim it to be.
Part 2 - Lost in Interpretation
Any Bible verse which seems cut-and-dry in favor of a fundamentalist position must, like any single line of text used to support any opinion, be delved into much deeper than "face-value".
Its cultural, historical, and literary context must be thrown open like the doors of an ancient ruin to discern whether ancient, tribal Hebrews with no concept of astronomy or biology or psychology REALLY meant that disrespectful children should be executed.
...and then decide if we REALLY want to emulate them if they REALLY believed that.
Of course, the very practice of reinforcing our dogma with handpicked lines of text without any cultural understanding was not the practice when the texts selected for including in the Bible were written...but don't tell the fundies that.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Reading the Bible Backwards
So much of our current mode of thought is the result of a combination of Greco-Roman philosophy and Enlightenment philosophy/theology.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either, and each generation is naturally the rhetorical, intellectual, and spiritual offspring of its forbears.
But it becomes an issue when we apply our modern sensibilities on ancient texts.
Many of our "traditional" doctrines are not the result of some great movement of the Spirit, but the application of Plato, Aristotle, or John Edwards to texts which predate them.
For example, the traditional doctrine of "The Fall" is basically Plato's descent into the cave of illusion.
The original tellers of the story (remember, it was passed down orally for generations) did not think in terms of perfect "forms," or more precisely, changeless states.
Especially since most of the first four chapters of Genesis were originally POEMS, meant to reflect on higher truths in figurative language rather than portray hard facts of reality.
Another negative effect of this application is that we tend to read the Bible backwards, for example reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, instead of forwards with the contexts of the individual writers in mind.
We fail to understand the cultural context in which each book of the Old Testament (or in the case of Genesis, in which each section of each book) was created, because we operate under the flawed unconscious assumption that the Bible is essentially a legal constitution.
We assume cohesiveness and continuity from cover to cover because our current philosophical context demands such, even though a basic reading of each book demonstrates a vast variety of literary, cultural, and historical contexts across the anthology.
Up to and including many contradictions, internally and with our present spirituality.
But the storytellers and writers whose works are included in the current canon obviously did not think of themselves as "Biblical authors", and the historically earlier authors had no notion of the historically later authors' existence or ideas or cultural context.
Thus if we are truly to apply our present standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants philosophical methods, we must abandon the legal-constitution assumption which has driven so much of the church's methodology for generations, and re-examine the Bible as a cultural exploration of an evolving understanding of God.
Too many people have been driven away by the church's iron-fisted approach to "divine inspiration" (to say nothing of "inerrancy") for us to continue to pound the pulpit with unrelenting tradition which fears doubt and curiosity and basic questions from anyone, especially those already in its grip.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either, and each generation is naturally the rhetorical, intellectual, and spiritual offspring of its forbears.
But it becomes an issue when we apply our modern sensibilities on ancient texts.
Many of our "traditional" doctrines are not the result of some great movement of the Spirit, but the application of Plato, Aristotle, or John Edwards to texts which predate them.
For example, the traditional doctrine of "The Fall" is basically Plato's descent into the cave of illusion.
The original tellers of the story (remember, it was passed down orally for generations) did not think in terms of perfect "forms," or more precisely, changeless states.
Especially since most of the first four chapters of Genesis were originally POEMS, meant to reflect on higher truths in figurative language rather than portray hard facts of reality.
Another negative effect of this application is that we tend to read the Bible backwards, for example reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, instead of forwards with the contexts of the individual writers in mind.
We fail to understand the cultural context in which each book of the Old Testament (or in the case of Genesis, in which each section of each book) was created, because we operate under the flawed unconscious assumption that the Bible is essentially a legal constitution.
We assume cohesiveness and continuity from cover to cover because our current philosophical context demands such, even though a basic reading of each book demonstrates a vast variety of literary, cultural, and historical contexts across the anthology.
Up to and including many contradictions, internally and with our present spirituality.
But the storytellers and writers whose works are included in the current canon obviously did not think of themselves as "Biblical authors", and the historically earlier authors had no notion of the historically later authors' existence or ideas or cultural context.
Thus if we are truly to apply our present standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants philosophical methods, we must abandon the legal-constitution assumption which has driven so much of the church's methodology for generations, and re-examine the Bible as a cultural exploration of an evolving understanding of God.
Too many people have been driven away by the church's iron-fisted approach to "divine inspiration" (to say nothing of "inerrancy") for us to continue to pound the pulpit with unrelenting tradition which fears doubt and curiosity and basic questions from anyone, especially those already in its grip.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Sermons and Shepherds
The older and/or more informed I become, the more trouble I have with the idea of the "sermon".
I understand and embrace the "worship" portion of church services, because it brings the congregation together in a communal experience of emotion and music.
But then instead of sending us on our way at the peak of that communal experience, we're jarred out of it to be lectured at as individuals for the remainder of the service (in some cases taking up half or 3/4 of the total service time).
This would be fine on its own, if structured like a college class, which focused only on the individual intellect, at a separate time and/or place from communal worship.
But jarring us out of our communal emotional experience just to be talked at, and then sending us out after THAT, makes the joys of the communal experience seem wasted and trod under.
Especially since a sermon, unlike a college lecture, doesn't even allow anyone being lectured to to raise a hand and ask questions.
A sermon is the antithesis of a conversation, and too many pastors use the captivity of their audiences to spew some truly awful drivel.
What confuses me is that most churches HAVE a separate activity to invoke the individual intellect.
It usually happens pre-service in Sunday School classes, or throughout the week in small-group Bible studies or discussion groups.
Why can't that be enough?
Why do we still need the authority figure from on high passing supposedly-irrefutable wisdom down to us lowly sheep?
Especially in our current age of unlimited information.
We should be having the best conversations about God and spirituality in the history of humanity!
Not sitting quietly and pretending to listen to someone else talk at us while drawing or playing on our phones.
Just a thought.
On an unrelated note, having left the image of the "good shepherd" at least a couple centuries behind us in the developed world, we need a new metaphor for God and really really REALLY need a new metaphor for Jesus.
But having made the mistake of literalizing our metaphors about a thousand years ago, and at some point between then and now turned that mistake into a multibillion-dollar business and lobbying empire, I doubt any new metaphors would really take.
It's a mark of how weak metaphor and symbolism are in our current American culture that churches STILL feel the need to explain the imagery of the baptism EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. IT. HAPPENS.
Explanations of imagery are what anthropologists do when examining another culture.
Those WITHIN the culture don't ever need an explanation because everyone knows the ritual's purpose.
But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, given that we have taken imagery, symbolism, and metaphor which are supposed to fill a niche in the human psyche, and transformed them quite against all sense into "inerrant Word of God", and given them the same level of gravitas we give plain facts.
This move to make literal what should have remained figurative has naturally and tragically caused an intellectual backlash against any and all imagery ever associated with religion.
Too many have thrown out baby and bathwater, assuming that spiritual matters which psychologists have found we NEED to remain SANE and remain coherent as a society, are not only unnecessary, but are either a plague to be cured or the quaint/barbaric practices of a less-enlightened age to be outgrown on our way to utopia.
Instead of each society subscribing to its own rites and rituals and STORIES to fill the niche in their collective psyche, somewhere along the way a few of them became convinced that their stories were the only "real" ones, their deity/ies the only "real" ones.
Even though their fathers and grandfathers had never stopped to decry anyone else's stories unless at war, usually over something actually-real like food or land or resources, and that defamation was mostly a formality.
Societies such as the Greeks and Egyptians and African tribes and Native Americans were content with an unspoken, "It's real to use in our circumstances," and content (or rather, constrained by a harsh life and low life-expectancy) with letting others worship who, what, and how they would.
From a certain perspective, we in the infinitely-connected-to-infinite-information seem less able to deal with the part of our psyche which needs spirituality for communal bonding and communal action than our barbaric ancestors.
We know more about the universe and the human body and the human psyche than any generation before us, but having turned their metaphors into "facts," and caused the backlash which resulted when reason was attacked by irrationality, we seem unable to truly recover.
We are thus compartmentalized by our more recent ancestors' mistakes, with too many elders clinging to that mistake as if by divine command, and too many youngers abandoning spirituality wholesale because some are willing to kill to defend the mistake.
There doesn't seem to be any solution to our fragmented state.
Having shed the rituals and rites of our ancestors, which helped us process the greater truths of the universe, in the fight against the literalization of metaphor, we find ourselves naked before the terrifying cosmos, unable to go back into our shell and unable to truly strike out on our own.
We shed the rites and rituals, but we could not change the fundamental nature of our psyche, and thus we lack one of the first tools for comprehending the universe which our distant ancestors developed in the darkness of pre-history.
Time will tell if we have truly taken ourselves out of the evolutionary pool, or if this is simply the next evolutionary hurdle we must overcome.
I understand and embrace the "worship" portion of church services, because it brings the congregation together in a communal experience of emotion and music.
But then instead of sending us on our way at the peak of that communal experience, we're jarred out of it to be lectured at as individuals for the remainder of the service (in some cases taking up half or 3/4 of the total service time).
This would be fine on its own, if structured like a college class, which focused only on the individual intellect, at a separate time and/or place from communal worship.
But jarring us out of our communal emotional experience just to be talked at, and then sending us out after THAT, makes the joys of the communal experience seem wasted and trod under.
Especially since a sermon, unlike a college lecture, doesn't even allow anyone being lectured to to raise a hand and ask questions.
A sermon is the antithesis of a conversation, and too many pastors use the captivity of their audiences to spew some truly awful drivel.
What confuses me is that most churches HAVE a separate activity to invoke the individual intellect.
It usually happens pre-service in Sunday School classes, or throughout the week in small-group Bible studies or discussion groups.
Why can't that be enough?
Why do we still need the authority figure from on high passing supposedly-irrefutable wisdom down to us lowly sheep?
Especially in our current age of unlimited information.
We should be having the best conversations about God and spirituality in the history of humanity!
Not sitting quietly and pretending to listen to someone else talk at us while drawing or playing on our phones.
Just a thought.
On an unrelated note, having left the image of the "good shepherd" at least a couple centuries behind us in the developed world, we need a new metaphor for God and really really REALLY need a new metaphor for Jesus.
But having made the mistake of literalizing our metaphors about a thousand years ago, and at some point between then and now turned that mistake into a multibillion-dollar business and lobbying empire, I doubt any new metaphors would really take.
It's a mark of how weak metaphor and symbolism are in our current American culture that churches STILL feel the need to explain the imagery of the baptism EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. IT. HAPPENS.
Explanations of imagery are what anthropologists do when examining another culture.
Those WITHIN the culture don't ever need an explanation because everyone knows the ritual's purpose.
But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, given that we have taken imagery, symbolism, and metaphor which are supposed to fill a niche in the human psyche, and transformed them quite against all sense into "inerrant Word of God", and given them the same level of gravitas we give plain facts.
This move to make literal what should have remained figurative has naturally and tragically caused an intellectual backlash against any and all imagery ever associated with religion.
Too many have thrown out baby and bathwater, assuming that spiritual matters which psychologists have found we NEED to remain SANE and remain coherent as a society, are not only unnecessary, but are either a plague to be cured or the quaint/barbaric practices of a less-enlightened age to be outgrown on our way to utopia.
Instead of each society subscribing to its own rites and rituals and STORIES to fill the niche in their collective psyche, somewhere along the way a few of them became convinced that their stories were the only "real" ones, their deity/ies the only "real" ones.
Even though their fathers and grandfathers had never stopped to decry anyone else's stories unless at war, usually over something actually-real like food or land or resources, and that defamation was mostly a formality.
Societies such as the Greeks and Egyptians and African tribes and Native Americans were content with an unspoken, "It's real to use in our circumstances," and content (or rather, constrained by a harsh life and low life-expectancy) with letting others worship who, what, and how they would.
From a certain perspective, we in the infinitely-connected-to-infinite-information seem less able to deal with the part of our psyche which needs spirituality for communal bonding and communal action than our barbaric ancestors.
We know more about the universe and the human body and the human psyche than any generation before us, but having turned their metaphors into "facts," and caused the backlash which resulted when reason was attacked by irrationality, we seem unable to truly recover.
We are thus compartmentalized by our more recent ancestors' mistakes, with too many elders clinging to that mistake as if by divine command, and too many youngers abandoning spirituality wholesale because some are willing to kill to defend the mistake.
There doesn't seem to be any solution to our fragmented state.
Having shed the rituals and rites of our ancestors, which helped us process the greater truths of the universe, in the fight against the literalization of metaphor, we find ourselves naked before the terrifying cosmos, unable to go back into our shell and unable to truly strike out on our own.
We shed the rites and rituals, but we could not change the fundamental nature of our psyche, and thus we lack one of the first tools for comprehending the universe which our distant ancestors developed in the darkness of pre-history.
Time will tell if we have truly taken ourselves out of the evolutionary pool, or if this is simply the next evolutionary hurdle we must overcome.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Sunday Morning Thoughts
1) Had my first good church experience in way too long this morning. It's always nice to have three strangers engage you in conversation within five minutes of walking in the door. And have seven more do so before you leave.
2) It is a sad testament to the state of the American cultural consciousness that we extend altruism suspiciously, and treat any altruism extended in our direction with suspicion. We have become so accustomed to being exploited that we can't handle genuine selflessness.
3) I'm really not accustomed to only needing five to ten minutes to get places.
4) When it doubt, picardy third. When not in doubt, picardy third.
5) The principles of Affirmative Action should also be applied to relationships. Don't have many black/Hispanic/gay/transgender/atheist/agnostic/Muslim/liberal/nerdy friends? Get some. It'll improve and expand your perception of the world and the people in it.
6) Never underestimate the emotional impact of singing the fifth over a picardy third in progress.
7) It's interesting to notice the ragtime roots of Southern Gospel piano music.
8) Too many of the atrocities suffered by the Hebrews in the Old Testament are treated by the writers therein as their own fault. No wonder centuries later the Pharisees wanted to know whose fault it was that the man Jesus healed was born blind. Also no wonder that we've had centuries of Christians trying to blame the victims of oppression, poverty, and injustice since then.
9) In my experience, a person whose mind is entirely undivided, who does not struggle with difficult questions, is either a fanatic or apathetic.
10) We assume that everyone needs unfettered access to information, that information is the key to a more educated society and thus a more enlightened society. But we also need guides to help interpret, extrapolate from, and apply that information. Otherwise we're just dumping an ocean into a bucket and hoping it will fit.
11) It's amazing how big a gap exists between "peace on earth, good will toward men" and "peace to those on whom his favor rests." This is why studying Biblical Interpretation is necessary for intellectual honesty.
12) Rituals take us out of our routines, bringing us into a communal experience away from our complicated lives as individuals. Thus, faith communities who omit or minimize their rituals set themselves on a path to splintering into factions based on dogma. Not because individual thought and study and opinion naturally leads to such, but because they have removed and/or made impotent their shared experiences and demonstrations of faith. Removing rituals removes symbolism from religious communities, and without symbolism, a religion is just a philosophy with some divine salad dressing sprinkled on top.
2) It is a sad testament to the state of the American cultural consciousness that we extend altruism suspiciously, and treat any altruism extended in our direction with suspicion. We have become so accustomed to being exploited that we can't handle genuine selflessness.
3) I'm really not accustomed to only needing five to ten minutes to get places.
4) When it doubt, picardy third. When not in doubt, picardy third.
5) The principles of Affirmative Action should also be applied to relationships. Don't have many black/Hispanic/gay/transgender/atheist/agnostic/Muslim/liberal/nerdy friends? Get some. It'll improve and expand your perception of the world and the people in it.
6) Never underestimate the emotional impact of singing the fifth over a picardy third in progress.
7) It's interesting to notice the ragtime roots of Southern Gospel piano music.
8) Too many of the atrocities suffered by the Hebrews in the Old Testament are treated by the writers therein as their own fault. No wonder centuries later the Pharisees wanted to know whose fault it was that the man Jesus healed was born blind. Also no wonder that we've had centuries of Christians trying to blame the victims of oppression, poverty, and injustice since then.
9) In my experience, a person whose mind is entirely undivided, who does not struggle with difficult questions, is either a fanatic or apathetic.
10) We assume that everyone needs unfettered access to information, that information is the key to a more educated society and thus a more enlightened society. But we also need guides to help interpret, extrapolate from, and apply that information. Otherwise we're just dumping an ocean into a bucket and hoping it will fit.
11) It's amazing how big a gap exists between "peace on earth, good will toward men" and "peace to those on whom his favor rests." This is why studying Biblical Interpretation is necessary for intellectual honesty.
12) Rituals take us out of our routines, bringing us into a communal experience away from our complicated lives as individuals. Thus, faith communities who omit or minimize their rituals set themselves on a path to splintering into factions based on dogma. Not because individual thought and study and opinion naturally leads to such, but because they have removed and/or made impotent their shared experiences and demonstrations of faith. Removing rituals removes symbolism from religious communities, and without symbolism, a religion is just a philosophy with some divine salad dressing sprinkled on top.
Friday, August 28, 2015
Thoughts, Mostly Regarding Indoctrination and its Effects
I need to come up with a simile that involves explaining the scientific method to a creationist for the hundredth time.
Something really witty that I can bring up in mixed company to vent just a little of my frustration.
Maybe...
-Starting your car with no gas in it? You can go through the steps over and over, but you won't get anywhere.
-Taking a bath in a lake? You can be as thorough as you want, but you'll still feel dirty when it's all over.
...eh. Work in progress.
It's difficult to form a straw man of religious fundamentalism.
Just like it's difficult to satirize American rightwing politics nowadays.
Attempting to skirt ahead of reality and depict it as MORE ludicrous than you think it could ever be is an exercise in eventual futility in both cases, since both appear to be hurtling away from "comprehensible, decent, and rational" territory at the speed of light.
That there are people operating the accelerator pedals in both camps simultaneously isn't a coincidence.
It makes me wish there really WAS a leftist conspiracy to institute communism or that there really WAS a plot by the scientific community to oppress religious groups into oblivion.
At least then the ranting and raving would have SOME basis in reality.
Instead of simply being violent delusions spewed forth by victims of generations of indoctrination.
And they continue to spew, even as many their children turn back on them with fact and cited sources to counter their indoctrination.
Many, sadly not all.
Though the Internet and the free and infinite availability of information has put a dent in the age-old cycle of ideological repression and worship of the irrational, there are still families who manage to squelch their offspring's intellect beneath the weight of dogma, and send them out into the world to make another generation of mental midgets who think themselves giants-by-divine-appointment.
These families are mainly of the Duggar or Duggar-fandom variety who REPRESS *irony* their children and keep them away from any and all sources of actual-not-dogmatic information.
While there have been a few voices expressly against religion in the scientific community (Carl Sagan comes to mind), most researchers, experts, and students, if they acknowledge religion at all, express at least some level of devoutness to a religious tradition.
Which, to the rational people in the peanut gallery, demonstrates perfectly that there isn't some cosmic chessgame between Science and Religion.
Science does its work and mostly keeps to itself.
Religion, at least in the fundamentalist circles, can't seem to comprehend that, much less do it themselves.
And just to clarify my terms, here's a nice breakdown:
1) Religious people say, "This is what I believe."
2) Evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and it would probably do you good to believe it as well."
3) Fundamentalist evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and you really believe it too, which you would realize if you STOPPED LYING TO YOURSELF AND SENDING YOUR KIDS TO HELLRAAAAAAAR!"
What I think the more rational and/or altruistic religious and evangelical religious people are afraid of is that a point made by the Agnostic and Atheist communities is in fact true, or coming true.
That being that all the altruistic efforts motivated by religion over the centuries cannot counterbalance the atrocities committed in its name, and that by this stage in our societal development, we shouldn't NEED the proddings of a Sky Father to get us to take care of each other.
That we will eventually outgrow religion, having finally learned to take care of each other because "It's the right thing to do," not because Heaven or Hell depends upon it.
Even as a Christian, I hope this is true, that we will one day take care of each other simply because we should, not because of morality or bribes or threats.
Notice I separate "should" from "morality".
Every other communal species on this planet has a biological imperative to care for and protect all individuals within a particular group.
Whether it's a single family or a group of families which interbreed.
Yet for some reason we humans need some abstract-made-physical thing to focus on in order to get us to do what every other communal animal does naturally.
Read Warren Ellis' Supergods for a larger breakdown of that concept.
On an unrelated note, it's nice to post a conservative-run discussion board, and get three "likes" from members and an infraction from the site admin.
Something really witty that I can bring up in mixed company to vent just a little of my frustration.
Maybe...
-Starting your car with no gas in it? You can go through the steps over and over, but you won't get anywhere.
-Taking a bath in a lake? You can be as thorough as you want, but you'll still feel dirty when it's all over.
...eh. Work in progress.
It's difficult to form a straw man of religious fundamentalism.
Just like it's difficult to satirize American rightwing politics nowadays.
Attempting to skirt ahead of reality and depict it as MORE ludicrous than you think it could ever be is an exercise in eventual futility in both cases, since both appear to be hurtling away from "comprehensible, decent, and rational" territory at the speed of light.
That there are people operating the accelerator pedals in both camps simultaneously isn't a coincidence.
It makes me wish there really WAS a leftist conspiracy to institute communism or that there really WAS a plot by the scientific community to oppress religious groups into oblivion.
At least then the ranting and raving would have SOME basis in reality.
Instead of simply being violent delusions spewed forth by victims of generations of indoctrination.
And they continue to spew, even as many their children turn back on them with fact and cited sources to counter their indoctrination.
Many, sadly not all.
Though the Internet and the free and infinite availability of information has put a dent in the age-old cycle of ideological repression and worship of the irrational, there are still families who manage to squelch their offspring's intellect beneath the weight of dogma, and send them out into the world to make another generation of mental midgets who think themselves giants-by-divine-appointment.
These families are mainly of the Duggar or Duggar-fandom variety who REPRESS *irony* their children and keep them away from any and all sources of actual-not-dogmatic information.
While there have been a few voices expressly against religion in the scientific community (Carl Sagan comes to mind), most researchers, experts, and students, if they acknowledge religion at all, express at least some level of devoutness to a religious tradition.
Which, to the rational people in the peanut gallery, demonstrates perfectly that there isn't some cosmic chessgame between Science and Religion.
Science does its work and mostly keeps to itself.
Religion, at least in the fundamentalist circles, can't seem to comprehend that, much less do it themselves.
And just to clarify my terms, here's a nice breakdown:
1) Religious people say, "This is what I believe."
2) Evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and it would probably do you good to believe it as well."
3) Fundamentalist evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and you really believe it too, which you would realize if you STOPPED LYING TO YOURSELF AND SENDING YOUR KIDS TO HELLRAAAAAAAR!"
What I think the more rational and/or altruistic religious and evangelical religious people are afraid of is that a point made by the Agnostic and Atheist communities is in fact true, or coming true.
That being that all the altruistic efforts motivated by religion over the centuries cannot counterbalance the atrocities committed in its name, and that by this stage in our societal development, we shouldn't NEED the proddings of a Sky Father to get us to take care of each other.
That we will eventually outgrow religion, having finally learned to take care of each other because "It's the right thing to do," not because Heaven or Hell depends upon it.
Even as a Christian, I hope this is true, that we will one day take care of each other simply because we should, not because of morality or bribes or threats.
Notice I separate "should" from "morality".
Every other communal species on this planet has a biological imperative to care for and protect all individuals within a particular group.
Whether it's a single family or a group of families which interbreed.
Yet for some reason we humans need some abstract-made-physical thing to focus on in order to get us to do what every other communal animal does naturally.
Read Warren Ellis' Supergods for a larger breakdown of that concept.
On an unrelated note, it's nice to post a conservative-run discussion board, and get three "likes" from members and an infraction from the site admin.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Some Thoughts From Today
1) Sometimes I find myself truly torn between a personal need for rituals, and a desire to deconstruct them.
2) It seems counterproductive for churches to devote so much energy to eliciting an emotional response via music, only to cut it off and try to swerve into the intellectual just before the sermon. Maybe that's why the homily is so short during Mass. Perhaps Protestant and Nondenominational churches and university chapel services should cultivate the intellectual response in small-group settings, and reserve corporate worship for exactly that, the emotionally ecstatic state which results from the combination of prayer and music.
3) How sad is it that humans consider ourselves to be the peak of evolution, yet we require rites and rituals involving inanimate objects or anthropomorphized abstract concepts in order to take care of each other as members of a society? No other animal on this planet requires such. Each member of a community cares for each other member of the community for the sake of the community. The group must survive, moreso than any one of its members. Yet humans seem to have left that basic instinct behind with our attainment of "sentience".
4) Too many religious people try to oversimplify too many complex concepts, to their detriment and the detriment of their testimony. Seemingly in an attempt to avoid truly dealing with hard questions, avoiding the complexity of real life and the real universe, they cling to one-liners, and a very small pool of simplistic cliches and platitudes to throw at every question and concern which crosses their path. The world, with its unlimited access to information, is no longer impressed with simplistic answers or simplistic attitudes. Oversimplification in the face of honest complexity leads to outright rejection of one's beliefs and principles. People would rather know we struggle than be handed the illusion of confidence.
5) The word is "sure," people. You can't be "for sure". At all. You can do something "for sure". Such as, "I know for sure that I locked the front door." The expression is an adverb, not an adjective. On an unrelated note, the word is "regularly". "On the regular" is MEANINGLESS. "Regular" is not a noun, and thus cannot be the object of a preposition. YOU KEEP DOING THIS, AUTHORITY FIGURES AND TEACHERS, AND YOU WILL ONLY CONTINUE THE LANGUAGE'S DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO VAGUENESS AND MISUNDERSTANDING.
6) Having no direct day-to-day experience of persecution, far too many American Christians assign the term flippantly. "That man said the Founders didn't write the Pledge of Allegiance to say 'under God'! He's persecuting meeee!"
7) I haven't needed to use the word "mezzanine" since I was last in Herrick Auditorium in 2007.
8) It's always nice to see an alto standing proud in a crowd of loud sopranos.
9) I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for an adult who leaves home right after high school, works and pays bills and taxes for a couple of years before starting college, only to be forced into High School 2.0 because of the way his/her institution of choice is run.
10) Why is it seemingly only the colleges which force religion or force a militaristic attitude via obsession with athletics upon students who are willing or able to have an intimate, caring environment on-campus?
Why can't academia and the arts bring people together without the trappings of religion or sports mania?
11) We continue to celebrate 1st-year college students, but I have a feeling that once my generation (aka the most-educated, least-employed generation) has kids of college age, it won't be something to celebrate anymore. It will either be an unspoken expectation, or a questionable decision due to the mountain of debt required.
12) Getting to hear Dr. Mark Reighard play for the first time in years was an awesome unexpected birthday present.
13) It's weird having a new phone that's lighter than the old one. Makes me think I'm going to break it every few seconds.
2) It seems counterproductive for churches to devote so much energy to eliciting an emotional response via music, only to cut it off and try to swerve into the intellectual just before the sermon. Maybe that's why the homily is so short during Mass. Perhaps Protestant and Nondenominational churches and university chapel services should cultivate the intellectual response in small-group settings, and reserve corporate worship for exactly that, the emotionally ecstatic state which results from the combination of prayer and music.
3) How sad is it that humans consider ourselves to be the peak of evolution, yet we require rites and rituals involving inanimate objects or anthropomorphized abstract concepts in order to take care of each other as members of a society? No other animal on this planet requires such. Each member of a community cares for each other member of the community for the sake of the community. The group must survive, moreso than any one of its members. Yet humans seem to have left that basic instinct behind with our attainment of "sentience".
4) Too many religious people try to oversimplify too many complex concepts, to their detriment and the detriment of their testimony. Seemingly in an attempt to avoid truly dealing with hard questions, avoiding the complexity of real life and the real universe, they cling to one-liners, and a very small pool of simplistic cliches and platitudes to throw at every question and concern which crosses their path. The world, with its unlimited access to information, is no longer impressed with simplistic answers or simplistic attitudes. Oversimplification in the face of honest complexity leads to outright rejection of one's beliefs and principles. People would rather know we struggle than be handed the illusion of confidence.
5) The word is "sure," people. You can't be "for sure". At all. You can do something "for sure". Such as, "I know for sure that I locked the front door." The expression is an adverb, not an adjective. On an unrelated note, the word is "regularly". "On the regular" is MEANINGLESS. "Regular" is not a noun, and thus cannot be the object of a preposition. YOU KEEP DOING THIS, AUTHORITY FIGURES AND TEACHERS, AND YOU WILL ONLY CONTINUE THE LANGUAGE'S DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO VAGUENESS AND MISUNDERSTANDING.
6) Having no direct day-to-day experience of persecution, far too many American Christians assign the term flippantly. "That man said the Founders didn't write the Pledge of Allegiance to say 'under God'! He's persecuting meeee!"
7) I haven't needed to use the word "mezzanine" since I was last in Herrick Auditorium in 2007.
8) It's always nice to see an alto standing proud in a crowd of loud sopranos.
9) I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for an adult who leaves home right after high school, works and pays bills and taxes for a couple of years before starting college, only to be forced into High School 2.0 because of the way his/her institution of choice is run.
10) Why is it seemingly only the colleges which force religion or force a militaristic attitude via obsession with athletics upon students who are willing or able to have an intimate, caring environment on-campus?
Why can't academia and the arts bring people together without the trappings of religion or sports mania?
11) We continue to celebrate 1st-year college students, but I have a feeling that once my generation (aka the most-educated, least-employed generation) has kids of college age, it won't be something to celebrate anymore. It will either be an unspoken expectation, or a questionable decision due to the mountain of debt required.
12) Getting to hear Dr. Mark Reighard play for the first time in years was an awesome unexpected birthday present.
13) It's weird having a new phone that's lighter than the old one. Makes me think I'm going to break it every few seconds.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Some Things Aren't Up For Debate
For several months now, I've avoided getting into debates in the anonymous corners of the Internet.
Mainly because I have standards regarding any arguments I make, such as proper grammar, cited sources, as few (trying for none) logical fallacies as possible, treating all participants with respect as people even if their argument is bunk, etc.
And other people just....don't.
I've lost track of the number of times I've written or started writing a well-organized, well-researched, well-thought response to a post online, and then thrown the whole thing out instead of posting it because the person would likely not even read the thing, and only respond with cliches, platitudes, or the always-popular "I will enjoy watching you burn in hell".
So for your reading pleasure today, I'd like to post a few issues which at this point shouldn't even be up for debate anymore.
By that I mean issues which do NOT have two equally logical positions which can be taken regarding them.
These are not "just your opinion" issues, like who should be president or whether there should be a monument to Satan next to the Ten Commandments.
These are issues which should have been resolved, accepted as truth, and built up from DECADES ago, but our society continues to stagnate because delusional sheeple continue to argue them.
1) Evolution is not "just a theory".
Stop spewing nonscience regarding this subject.
That goes doubly for church people who seem to think that if anything in the Bible is scientifically explainable, it somehow insults and diminishes God.....even though many of the pioneers of the modern scientific method were CHRISTIANS who looked up at the universe they believed God made in such wonder that they believed the study and greater understanding of it was an act of worship.
Evolution Via Natural Selection is, in view of the evidence currently available, the most plausible explanation for the state of life on this planet.
"Most plausible" is the key phrase here.
Religious people are so obsessed with "certainty," having been indoctrinated to think of their particular beliefs in absolutist terms, that when a scientist tells them the obvious, that science doesn't deal in certainties and absolutes, they lose their minds.
And immediately start screaming in the public forum that science and everything ever discovered or developed by the scientific method is anti-God.
...while posting about it on the Internet using a smartphone while standing under an electric light.
2) Vaccines are necessary for the protection of society, not an optional medical treatment.
See those words "most plausible"?
Read them again.
Because science works in probabilities, not absolutes, the discoveries and developments which result from it work, based on a set of evidence, in the majority of cases.
That one child with a particular genetic makeup somewhere still got sick after getting a vaccine doesn't even come CLOSE to counterbalancing the MILLIONS who have been and are saved by them, by being treated individually AND by preventing a mass outbreak.
That we are seeing outbreaks of diseases which medicine filed under "tamed" years ago, demonstrates that the completely artificial paranoia of anti-vaxxers is a threat to society as a whole via their paranoid-delusional practices.
3) Religion has no place in the education of children.
Ever.
If your beliefs are self-evident in their veracity, let your children discover them as adults.
Shoving texts and doctrines and dogma down their throats before they've even started cognitive development is nothing but forced indoctrination.
It does not lead to greater intelligence, curiosity, or creativity, but in too many cases leads to the stunting of all three.
The more and more deeply you indoctrinate them, the longer it will take them to develop a sense of self, because everything they attempt to make of themselves will be weighed down by your indoctrination.
In addition to placing pressure upon them from day 1 to live up to an unrealistic standard that completely ignores and in some cases subverts their individual personality.
4) Religion has no place in the government of adults.
Ever.
Forced indoctrination is the opposite of a free society, and thus should be prevented at all points from infringing upon the workings of it at all levels.
A pastor who pressures his congregation to vote a certain way has crossed the Wall of Separation, and should have his organization treated as a Party promoter rather than a charitable organization, and taxed to the full extent of the law.
A politician who attempts to use religious beliefs to justify an unjust law or unjust enforcement of a law should be removed from office immediately for the same reason.
People who try to force religion into government and education seem unwilling to be honest with themselves and just shout from the rooftops that they want a theocracy built around their particular dogma, but they continue to attempt to employ theocratic methods in their political maneuvering and PTA protests.
We tout ourselves as a nation of laws, as a nation of freedoms, as a nation of progress.
It is an ideal we routinely fail to reach, in great part because too many people refuse to accept anything as true which counters their own dogma, regardless of the evidence presented.
If we cannot move beyond this, we will continue to stagnate and rot from the inside out.
Mainly because I have standards regarding any arguments I make, such as proper grammar, cited sources, as few (trying for none) logical fallacies as possible, treating all participants with respect as people even if their argument is bunk, etc.
And other people just....don't.
I've lost track of the number of times I've written or started writing a well-organized, well-researched, well-thought response to a post online, and then thrown the whole thing out instead of posting it because the person would likely not even read the thing, and only respond with cliches, platitudes, or the always-popular "I will enjoy watching you burn in hell".
So for your reading pleasure today, I'd like to post a few issues which at this point shouldn't even be up for debate anymore.
By that I mean issues which do NOT have two equally logical positions which can be taken regarding them.
These are not "just your opinion" issues, like who should be president or whether there should be a monument to Satan next to the Ten Commandments.
These are issues which should have been resolved, accepted as truth, and built up from DECADES ago, but our society continues to stagnate because delusional sheeple continue to argue them.
1) Evolution is not "just a theory".
Stop spewing nonscience regarding this subject.
That goes doubly for church people who seem to think that if anything in the Bible is scientifically explainable, it somehow insults and diminishes God.....even though many of the pioneers of the modern scientific method were CHRISTIANS who looked up at the universe they believed God made in such wonder that they believed the study and greater understanding of it was an act of worship.
Evolution Via Natural Selection is, in view of the evidence currently available, the most plausible explanation for the state of life on this planet.
"Most plausible" is the key phrase here.
Religious people are so obsessed with "certainty," having been indoctrinated to think of their particular beliefs in absolutist terms, that when a scientist tells them the obvious, that science doesn't deal in certainties and absolutes, they lose their minds.
And immediately start screaming in the public forum that science and everything ever discovered or developed by the scientific method is anti-God.
...while posting about it on the Internet using a smartphone while standing under an electric light.
2) Vaccines are necessary for the protection of society, not an optional medical treatment.
See those words "most plausible"?
Read them again.
Because science works in probabilities, not absolutes, the discoveries and developments which result from it work, based on a set of evidence, in the majority of cases.
That one child with a particular genetic makeup somewhere still got sick after getting a vaccine doesn't even come CLOSE to counterbalancing the MILLIONS who have been and are saved by them, by being treated individually AND by preventing a mass outbreak.
That we are seeing outbreaks of diseases which medicine filed under "tamed" years ago, demonstrates that the completely artificial paranoia of anti-vaxxers is a threat to society as a whole via their paranoid-delusional practices.
3) Religion has no place in the education of children.
Ever.
If your beliefs are self-evident in their veracity, let your children discover them as adults.
Shoving texts and doctrines and dogma down their throats before they've even started cognitive development is nothing but forced indoctrination.
It does not lead to greater intelligence, curiosity, or creativity, but in too many cases leads to the stunting of all three.
The more and more deeply you indoctrinate them, the longer it will take them to develop a sense of self, because everything they attempt to make of themselves will be weighed down by your indoctrination.
In addition to placing pressure upon them from day 1 to live up to an unrealistic standard that completely ignores and in some cases subverts their individual personality.
4) Religion has no place in the government of adults.
Ever.
Forced indoctrination is the opposite of a free society, and thus should be prevented at all points from infringing upon the workings of it at all levels.
A pastor who pressures his congregation to vote a certain way has crossed the Wall of Separation, and should have his organization treated as a Party promoter rather than a charitable organization, and taxed to the full extent of the law.
A politician who attempts to use religious beliefs to justify an unjust law or unjust enforcement of a law should be removed from office immediately for the same reason.
People who try to force religion into government and education seem unwilling to be honest with themselves and just shout from the rooftops that they want a theocracy built around their particular dogma, but they continue to attempt to employ theocratic methods in their political maneuvering and PTA protests.
We tout ourselves as a nation of laws, as a nation of freedoms, as a nation of progress.
It is an ideal we routinely fail to reach, in great part because too many people refuse to accept anything as true which counters their own dogma, regardless of the evidence presented.
If we cannot move beyond this, we will continue to stagnate and rot from the inside out.
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