a priori blues

I Am My Father's Afterlife

2012-01-24T17:07:00.005-05:00

My daughter is sick today and I couldn't be happier. She is home all day with me while I "work", so we've spent time coloring, "cooking" with playdough, listening to music and watching photo slideshows on Apple TV, going to the library to pick out books and CDs, and walking to the bakery for cupcakes. I wish all the kids were sick today, so that I could spend this beautiful day with the three of them. Which has me thinking:

For various reasons, my father was unable to have a relationship with us. Maybe it's because he couldn't, or maybe it's because I never really had/knew my father, but in the three years since I became one I have wanted nothing more than to be a good dad. Even saying it like that makes it sound like something it's not, which is a chore. What I mean to say is that I enjoy nothing more--I never have enjoyed anything more--than being a father. Being a daddy. I see my wife in my children's eyes, in their faces, and hear her when they laugh and cry. I see us in them. I love us in them and love that they are our love materialized. Strangest of all, I see him in them.

I don't know what I expected to see in my children, but I did not expect to see my father when I looked at them, or to feel that they were partly a gift from him. While I could never know him, could never have a father/son relationship with him, a fact that tormented me nearly every day of my life until well after he passed, still I am grateful to him. He gave me life, and by extension he gave life to them. As the abiding sadness of my life, the emotional black hole whose gravitational pull I spent so much energy avoiding, still he gave me this joy. While he was unable to relate, I could still see that he wanted nothing more than to be what he could never be. A dad. A daddy. A father. He gave me life, and now I am living his afterlife. I live the bliss he always longed for but could never have. To be close to my children. To hear respect for me in their voices. To hear my son cry out for me in the night. To feel them cling to me when they have need, when they are frightened, when they want to be with one that they trust, that they choose.

How I wish he sees me. How I wish I could transfer to him this most profound, most boundless, beautiful joy. I do not believe in the afterlife as I was taught to believe in it. But I wish for his sake that part of it might be real, so that through me he might have what he never had. That he might live his afterlife through me. It does not all resolve back into this, as though what I am or what I love is only attributable to the loss that I carry, as though all I am is my past. Only a part of it does, and the past that hurts makes the now that much sweeter.

Today I held my firstborn daughter's hand as she drifted off to sleep. Every time this happens it is a sacrament. A miracle. Though my father's life was a living hell, today I lived his heaven. Though he made my life a living hell, still I emerged to live this heaven. Perhaps, most of all, this is what caused his life and mine to be such a hell--that while face to face we could never truly be together. I could never know him as he was, and he could never be father to me. And so here, I am, living my father's afterlife, more blessed, I believe, than any father ever has been, for I know what is at stake. I know the frailty of it. The impossibility. I know what it is to want and not have, and to look into the eyes of the father who cannot be. I know I am the father who should not be. And so I will cherish them, love them for who they are, for what we are together, not just because of my own loss, but not the less for the loss I experienced. All the more.

I am overcome with gratitude to whoever, to whatever has allowed me to live this life with these children. I do not know what father to thank, and will not trivialize any of them by trying. Instead, I will be father to them because it is my life's joy. I cannot do otherwise, and I want nothing more. I am my father's afterlife.

Why you should get a Tablet Computer

2011-12-08T11:40:00.001-05:00

The thing about the tablet is...

For as long as you have used a computer, you've been consuming information that was designed for a tablet. Only you've been doing it in a way that the information was never designed to be consumed in.

What I mean is:

When people build applications, web pages, and digital content, they're doing it for other people. People, by their nature, are tactile. We are not disembodied. We crave feeling, we expect it, and when we design, we design for it.

So, all of the people who have mode products for the computer have been designing according to a tactile, page-like metaphor. Only they did it for other people who were sitting at a desk, holding a mouse (just pause and think about how clunky the mouse is for a second, and how it separates you from what you're actually trying to do, which is touch something on the screen). And, we do all this while sitting passively, staring at a big TV.

So now...for the first time...everything you've interacted with electronically is in the medium and interface that it was meant to be in.

Digital paper. Liquid light paper.

You hold it and touch it and turn its pages, etc., just like you've been pretending to do for the last 2 to 3 decades. And, you're not just reading, you're do everything --listening to music, making music, watching movies, making movies, playing games, making games, drawing, painting, writing, etc. Everything is digitized, from ancient manuscripts in a college library, to your amplifier and effects for your guitar, to your paint, to your videos about your kids, to your bank account, to your shopping trip, etc.

So, it's not a gadget.

It's the modern world. And, it's in your hand.

Joy

2011-11-30T18:26:00.001-05:00

All of my joy comes out cracked and bitter;
It is for love of the world that I scream in a stale, and silent, rage.
It is the insatiable, limitless love of God,
which causes me to turn my back on all things named god.
It is because I love you that I remain forever apart, forever aloof, forever pondering, forever parted;

content in the knowledge that we all extend the same withered hand toward the same hallowed sunset,
that we all sing with the same voice the same eternal song,
with which the very clouds resound.
Come.

Thanksgiving and American Apartheid

2011-11-24T00:18:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving: it is the positive holiday that Abraham Lincoln created to counteract a nation at war with itself over the right to own dark-skinned peers as chattel. I am grateful, too, but lest we ever forget that this is our history as a people: we should pause and remember that, as much as faith or gratitude, apartheid and the willingness to die so that some the powerful might deny liberty to their peers, has always been endemic to the American soul. That's just fact and history, not some myth of Pilgrims and Injuns.

The Thanksgiving Declaration, by Abraham Lincoln, 1863:
http://www.classicallibrary.org/lincoln/thanksgiving.htm

The Emperor has no clothes. But no one cares.

2011-11-21T22:20:00.001-05:00

News Corporation, which basically runs the Republican Party, has been exposed as a criminal organization on at least 3 continents. I guess it's easier to go on as if nothing's happening than it is to admit that your political system is illegitimate.

A Letter to Dinesh D'Souza

2011-11-21T13:48:00.001-05:00

I'm re-posting an email that I sent to Dinesh D'Souza in September of 2009. For the record, I once emailed Noam Chomsky and got a response within half a day, and corresponded with him several times over the period of a week. Mr. D'Souza never answered my email, or even acknowledged that he received it. Not that I expected him to. Here's what I sent:

Mr. D'Souza,

Last night I spent some time listening to your address at WheatonCollege in which you responded to some of the challenges posed by theNew Atheists. I am a Wheaton College alumnus, having graduated in 2002with my B.A. in Ancient Languages. While I did not listen to yourentire lecture, and while I have several bones to pick with the logicbehind some of your arguments, I do want to point out at least one lineof argument that you ought to omit when making your next defense ofChristianity.

I will grant to you that it was well known, even in the ancient world,that the earth was spherical. Your Aristotle reference is sufficientto establish that the pagan world knew full well that the earth wasround. I'm not sure how this substantiates any claim that theChristian world knew this to be true, but let's assume that it does. The fatal error in your reasoning, however, lies in the fact that theprincipal text regarding the nature of Earth was not written by Paul orPeter, but ostensibly by Moses. The Genesis account of the creationwas penned in a cultural milieu that, without any doubt, believed thatthe earth was a spherical disc, surrounded by waters on all sides,upheld by "pillars", situated beneath a dome-shaped bowl called thefirmament (i.e. because it was "firm"). Many, many conservative,Bible-believing Christians are well aware of this fact, some of whomare on the faculty at Wheaton College and were likely present as youmade your faulty argument. If you doubt it, perhaps you could contactJohn Walton, former Moody Bible professor, current Old Testament professor at Wheaton, author of the NIV Commentary on Genesis.

While your argument may prove that the classical world, and then thatlater generations of Christians, believed correctly that the earth wasa sphere, I don't think for a moment that you've done anything todispel the argument that the Bible enshrines a cosmology in which theearth is flat. It most certainly does, which explains the stubbornnesswith which this erroneous view persisted through the ages, and probablyheld sway among the majority of Christians in Galileo's day.

AncientNear Eastern cosmology is something completely different from thecosmology of the Greeks. It predates it, and, unfortunately, it is thecosmology that is enshrined in the Bible. This is known by Christianscholars, therefore any apologetic that seeks to establish the validityof the Christian faith by claiming that Christians knew that the worldwas a sphere is misguided at best. By the time of Christ, certainly,ancient cosmology had evolved to the point that it knew the earth to bespherical. Not everyone knew this, however, and Moses, certainly, didnot know this. You might as well recommend to your audiences thatChristianity is to be believed because Christians have always adoptedwhatever worldview or opinion was fashionable in their day, asevidenced by the fact that, whenever the rest of the world learned thatthe earth was a sphere, Christians followed suit. That's theequivalent of any argument that uses the "flat earth" as a test case.

Sure, the fact that the earth is a sphere was known by Christians andnon-Christians alike, even before Galileo. That's because, after all,the earth IS a sphere, and this fact can be verified and experienced. Prior to this discovery, however, and even for centuries after it, manypeople did not know that the earth was a sphere. Included in that"many people" were the authors of the Old Testament. So, while someChristians in Galileo's time may have adopted the scientific worldviewof their day, they also retained the Old Testament and along with itAncient Near Eastern cosmology.

At this point, I'll briefly mention that many of your other argumentsrest on the same fallacious logic. Whenever you claim thatChristianity is the source of some belief, or of a certain ethic, or atthe very least that it was not wrong about a thing (like the flatearth), you only seem to show your ignorance of the historical contextin question and your suppression of counter-examples.

Claims aboutJudeo-Christian ethics, womens rights, the sanctity of life, etc., caneasily and instantly be debunked by the myriad instances of Christianabuses of human rights on the one hand, and on the other by the factthat Christianity absorbed the cultural standards of the societies outof which it arose. Or, do you think that, until Christianity, fathersdid not love their sons, that husbands did not love their wives, thatneighbors did not treat each other with respect, and so on?

How wouldthe human race have survived for millennia before Christ, or beforeMoses? How is it that societies existed outside of the sphere ofJudaism or Christianity? Moreover, are you unaware that many of theLaws in the Torah are identical to what you find in the Laws ofHammurabi? Or of the similarities between Paul's ethical injunctionsand the writings of Seneca? Read the ethical writings of any of theGreeks or Romans, and you'll find that, not only do they have much incommon with the Christians, but that, in reality, the Christiansco-opted philosophy at every decisive point. This is not only the casein ethics, but most notably, in Christology, with all of theAristotelian categories used to describe the unity of the son with theFather. Claiming that Christianity somehow has cornered the market onethics, or that the pagan ethical systems are somehow based onChristian teachings will only be effective in an audience of uneducatedpersons. It relies, in truth, upon ignorance, since, for every claimthat you make about Christianity, history offers severalcounter-examples of exactly what you want to attribute toChristianity.

That being said, and I believe plainly evident upon evena cursory survey of historical literature, it seems to me to bedisingenuous to try to convince audiences to commit their lives to asystem of beliefs in light of your arguments, when your argumentsthemselves only seem convincing because you are either ignorant ofexamples to the contrary or you are purposely misleading. Given your profession, I sincerely doubt that you are unaware of the counter-examples, as they must have been brought to your attention. Therefore, I can only conclude that your omissions are purposeful. Ignorance can be excused, but ought to be corrected. Deception for the sake of personal gain is inexcusable.

Pope invites Paterno to interview for College of Cardinals Coaching Job

2011-11-10T07:48:00.001-05:00

By A. P. Riori
Vatican, Rome--former fullback for the College of Cardinals and current Pope Ratzinger was delighted by the news of JoePa's ouster this morning, according to sources inside the Vatican. "We have had our eye on Joe for some time," the Holy Father said, "we know that he has just what it takes to manage not only our players, but our entire coaching staff. Apparently, we men of the cloth are not so different from the men of the gridiron, and we're looking forward to a chance to bring Paterno in and see how he handles the idiosyncrasies of our club."

__________________________

On another note...

A beloved football coach of 60-some years is unceremoniously canned just prior to his final game before retirement, all because he had an employee who abused a kid that he informed the authorities about.

Meanwhile Catholic Priests who commit abuse are routinely hidden away and protected from not only public scrutiny but from legal repercussions for their own abuse of young boys. The Pope actually oversaw the cover-up for years, back when he was a mere mortal and a Cardinal. Imagine if the rule of law applied to the Church?

Herman Cain: Con Artist for President

2011-11-09T11:37:00.000-05:00

This is one of Herman Cain's political ads. If you still think he's a real candidate after watching this, please send me $100 which I will forward to Mr. Cain's campaign on your behalf. It's called "He Carried Yellow Flowers":Here's another one, which inexplicably mentions and shows images of 9/11 over and over, not even attempting to hide the fact that this is a form of dog whistle politics intended to elicit a pavlovian response from 'Patriots': The climax in this next one is where the "Butcher" says that Herman Cain is the best choice because, when asked a question, he replied, and I quote this Butcher quoting Cain: "I can't give you an answer, because I don't know what all the facts are."That's his qualification: that he doesn't know anything. Just ruminate on that a minute. The man is the best choice to be the leader of the free world because he doesn't know anything. And, it's not just that this Butcher is saying this: Cain himself is saying this:and this: Cain is just doing what Stephen Colbert is lampooning every night on his show. He's using Colbert's playbook, only instead of being a satirical show, he's actually running for President, actually winning, and actually taking money for his efforts. America: Seriously--this is your country. And this make-believe candidate is considered to be an actual contender by almost 50% of your population. Just imagine the implications if the rest of conservative ideology were equally as phony as Herman Cain?Just imagine what your country might look like....

How to Extract Wealth from Poor People: Education Edition

2011-11-08T23:46:00.001-05:00

1. Promote the use of technology in classrooms (iPads, smartboards, etc.), even though there's no research to support it. Make it sound like stuff that poor people can't afford will make them more employable (i.e. able to work for you) so they'll cheer for your team against their own. Show them shiny toys and use the word "outcomes". A lot.

2. Disseminate propaganda that denigrates what actually works (i.e. teachers). Even though people have been teaching people since the dawn of time, make it sound like nothing could possibly achieve 'outcomes' like your shiny gadget can, so screw the history of the species and 3,000 years of educational tradition. The government is looking for a fall guy to take the blame, so don't let your conscience bother you when you throw the people who inspired you as a child under the bus (i.e. your teachers), who incidentally are the same people currently devoting their lives to raising your children (i.e. your kids' teacher), who in return for pouring their souls out like so many pearls before swine earn less than you spend on golf in a quarter.

In every TED-style talk you give, be sure to emphasize that the days of the "sage on the stage" are behind us and a new digital age of unmediated access to content has arrived. Use great visuals of the power of technology in your presentation to distract people from the fact that what really impresses them is that you (a human being) are teaching them (other human beings) what you know.

3. Divert government money that used to go to teachers into technology. Poor people can't afford disposable gadgets, especially not for their kids, and definitely not for unimportant things like school (as opposed to very important things that gadgets are good for, like football games and, or course, porn). Uncle Sam has deep pockets and he's just itching to throw money at gizmos, as long as they can improve 'outcomes'. Be sure to emphasize the improvement of outcomes, and stress that this will be borne out by the research that is soon to be forthcoming. Don't forget about your appointment to discuss allocating funds to conduct (i.e. create) research to substantiate your claims.

Try not to feel bad when you see your favorite childhood teacher working as a greeter at Walmart because they can't afford to retire, or that the money wasted on gadgets that will remain relevant for 2 and a half years at most could have been better spent buying nutritious food for a kid who will go to sleep without dinner tonight. They will all thank you for it later because they're learning practical skills that will prepare them for the "workforce". And, when you meet with the folks at "Dehli Digital" about your plans to outsource production, try not to think about the fact that you are eliminating the jobs that you are promising to all of the kids who will use your technology to learn the "outcomes" that are such valuable skills for employment. Somebody will figure something out between now and then.

4. Get rich. -er. Try not to think about your success as nothing more than glorified money laundering.

Steve's Job

2011-11-07T18:45:00.001-05:00

Steve Job's great contribution to humanity came in the fact that he insisted that his technology remain in the realm of the Humanities, if it ever were to become part of business. He recognized that human beings want beauty more than they want efficiency. That there is more pleasure in elegance than there is in productivity. The workaday Windows world did not understand that people would prefer smoothness and completeness over time-saving, or diversity, or freedom (I'm looking at you Android). His creations were the fodder for artists, for students, for the effite, for the elite, not for accountants, or managers, or god forbid, project managers.

From what I hear:
He was a thief. He was a douchebag. But he was human, and he wanted technology that was human. That put human beings in touch with what human beings care about. Art. Music. Beauty. Not--no, not--never--productivity. Business. Slavery.

Freedom.

America is a Communist Nation

2011-11-07T09:13:00.001-05:00

There is no greater example of collectivism than the two monsters that govern American society which go by the names of the Corporation and the Market.

In a corporation, all things are held in common by the collective. Each member works only to serve the good of the collective. Individuals do not own their labor, their equipment, or the fruit of their labor. All effort, whether it is from capital, or management, or labor, is expended for the sole purpose of benefitting the collective, with the hope that the prosperity of the collective will result in relative prosperity for the individuals of which it is comprised. At least, that is what naive members of the collective are led to believe. The reality is that the corporation itself reaps the rewards and either hoards them, or gives a disproportionate amount of the profit to those who govern the collective, or redistributes the wealth of the collective to a larger collective, known as the Market. There is no room for autonomy in the Corporation. There is no freedom of expression, no freedom of thought, at least not publicly or among fellow members of the collective. Dissent is not tolerated, neither is creativity, at least for the vast majority of the members. Roles are assigned, even the physical placement of individuals is assigned, and no member is allowed to deviate from their role or their place for fear that they will be expelled from the collective. Every individual member lives in fear and therefore in submission, willingly sacrificing freedom, individuality, autonomy, will, and strength to the collectivist body known as the corporation.

From several corporations there is constructed a larger, more potent collective, known as the Market. The Market is the ultimate collective in society. There are no individuals in the market, there is only the Market. The will of the Market determines the lives of every individual, whether directly or indirectly. Its fluctuations dictate the direction of society and determine the fate of politics, business, and leisure for the entire society. Individuals do not govern the Market. The Market is the absolute collective, where every individual is subsumed and sublated to the will of the collective, to which every individual must bow, before which they must lie prostrate, to which they must pledge eternal allegiance, from which alone they may hope to derive prosperity. What the Market wants, it gets. When the Market speaks, every individual must obey. Society passes through multiple stages of abstraction toward this absolute collective, as the individual surrenders to a group, the group forms a corporation, and a corporation joins the Market, so that, in the end, the Market may be all and in all, and individualism may be eradicated entirely, leaving only the predictable, regular, homogenous, ever-expanding, monolithic hum of the hive mind reverberating from the Market.

Individuals do not determine value, they do not ascribe it. Individuals do not have value, value belongs to the Market alone. The Market ascribes value. Individuals receive what the Market confers, and they do so without question, knowing instinctively that the collective is that for which and in which the individual lives and moves and has its being. The Market may value that which is destructive to the individual, as the individual is the nemesis of the Market, yet individuals do not consider this to be a slight. The Market feasts on the individual, the individual is its fuel, propelling it on towards total domination, whether by extracting the resources that the individuals require for sustenance, or by digesting individuals themselves through their labor, or by profiting from the annihilation of individual property, then ultimately from individuals themselves. But not too much. A balance must be achieved, so that the Market will always have food and individuals will always believe that sacrificing themselves to the almighty Market will always be a noble calling.

Fictional Facts: In God We Trust

2011-11-04T11:32:00.002-04:00

(Note: In the Fact vs. Fiction dialog below, the Fictions are outdented and the facts are indented and in italics.)

Yesterday, the United States Congress approved, in an overwhelming majority, the re-affirmation of our National Motto, "In God We Trust". In a time of political and national turmoil, this move reminds us of what unites us as a nation.

16% of Americans identify themselves as atheists or without religious affiliation. To put this in perspective, that's roughly equivalent to the number of Americans who are non-whites (18%). Such a proclamation of "In God We Trust" is the ideological equivalent to saying that any racial/ethnic groups other than whites don't matter in America.

America has always been a religious, dare I say Christian nation, and yesterday's proclamation merely reiterates the intention of the men who bravely turned against a tyrannical king, to found a new, faithful republic on Christian principles.

Thomas Paine was the author of the pamphlet Common Sense, credited by no less a source than John Adams with being the most important impetus for the revolution. Paine also wrote a two-part treatise intended to debunk and ridicule Christianity, entitled The Age of Reason.

At a time when just as present-day patriots fear that their country is slipping towards an atheistic agenda reminiscent of National Socialism, boldly proclaiming that "In God We Trust" shows the world that we are a nation set apart by God for good works.

Nazi belt buckles were emblazoned with "Gott mit uns", which is a reference to Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who can stand against us?"

Unlike some of its rivals, and totalitarian regimes of the past, America is aligning itself against atheistic, marxist ideology, so recently on display in mass protests such as the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Nazi lists of banned books included "The literature of Marxism, Communism and Bolshevism." along with "All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk."

After all, a nation whose God is the Lord, which proclaims its faith in God and Christian principles, is the nation that will seek to lead the world to righteousness and freedom.

An early Nazi slogan was "Our Religion is Christ, and our Politics is Patriotism".

In fact, it was precisely because of their lack of faith in God and grounding in Christian principles that atheistic regimes like the Nazis became puffed up, and took upon themselves the prerogatives of Almighty God, who alone gives an inheritance in the promised land. The unbelieving Germans sought to conquer their neighbors, displace them from their lands, and place formerly free citizens into ghettos and labor camps.

The seal of the Massachussetts Bay Colony, an early settlement, depicts an Indian pleading "Come over and help us." The early settlers were led by clergymen and missionaries. It was because of American Christianity that native populations were displaced, murdered, and ultimately eradicated. Not in spite of it.

Their lack of belief in the sanctity of human life led Nazis to murder 6 million Jews in concentration camps. And so we stand against the atheists and the Darwinists who see human life as disposable and without value.

There were up to 18 million Native Americans in North America prior to Columbus' arrival. And, Nazis also banned the study of Darwinism: "Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism."

We are, and have always been, one nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and justice for all.

Less than one hundred years after its founding, the United States went to war with itself over the right to own and abuse brown-skinned citizens as personal property. In the "Cornerstone Speech", the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens proclaimed the Biblical and missionary justification for slavery: "We hear much of the civilization and Christianization of the barbarous tribes of Africa. In my judgment, those ends will never be attained, but by first teaching them the lesson taught to Adam, that "in the sweat of his brow he should eat his bread," and teaching them to work, and feed, and clothe themselves." The Cornerstone being, of course, the belief in white supremacy.

Incedentally, "In God We Trust" first appeared on US Coins in the year 1861, the same year that the Civil War started.

Oh, and the Pledge of Allegiance was authored by Edward Bellamy, a Socialist.

And so, it is with humble pride that we reaffirm our commitment to our national motto, and call all history to be our witness that "In God We Trust". It is this very God and this very trust that stands as a bulwark against the evils of a progressive agenda, and the countless injustices that have been committed under the banner of secular humanism.

(This was not intended to ridicule faith per se, just the notion that there's anything meaningful, unique, productive, or even theistic about proclamations or slogans about God or religion. Slogans don't cause evil, nor do they offer any solution to it. I do not believe that God was on the side of the Nazis or the Confederates, but they sure did.)

The windows to the ______

2011-11-03T13:55:00.000-04:00

Now, what I'm about to say has stuck me recently as profound. It very well may not be, but right now, it's something that has me thinking. The other morning, I was watching cartoons with my kids. Rather than allowing myself to imagine along with the kids and the show, to believe that what I was seeing was somehow real and that the characters were actually interacting with each other, talking, and solving problems together, I got to thinking:

What I am looking at is just a bunch of pixels on a flat, lifeless, surface. In terms of what was actually happening--in terms of what was real--there was just as much interaction going on as if I had been staring at a piece of plywood, or a stone, or a pile of dirt. But, no matter how much I tried to pretend to convince myself otherwise, I simply could not look at the little animated creatures and see anything other than little humanoids, with eyes, behind which there must have been little brains and beneath which must reside little souls. The sheer fact that some lifeless, electrified junk had been organized into a pattern that vaguely resembles a humanoid face is enough to convince me, and my kids, that we are not looking at a dead piece of plastic, but through a window into another world.

This doesn't just work with TV, or artwork, either. Anything, and I mean anything that you arrange into the pattern of a face will immediately convince your mind that it is just that--a face. And try as you might, you can't seem to not see a face. Even the simplest arrangement will immediately become a face when your brain gets ahold of it. Take this oval:

Just a simple circle, right? But, I'd be willing to bet that there's already a part of you that wants to see it as a head. Now, add two little ovals in at just the right spot and, try to let you mind not turn those into eyes:

So what do you see? An oval with two circles in it? Or do you feel yourself wanting to organize it into a face? Now add just the slightest amount of detail and:

There it is. A face. Only, it's not a face. I know this, because I'm just some dude, and I can't make faces. I can only draw lines and circles and whatnot.

But, try as you might, you cannot un-see a face. It's a face, right? No. This is not a face. It doesn't matter how many times you say it, though--it will always be a face. Or a face first, and then only after serious concentration can you maybe temporarily convince yourself that it's bacon and eggs on a plate. In the shape of a face. And, it's not just because culture has made you accustomed to seeing things in a certain arrangement as a face, as though you've grown accustomed to a certain style of drawing or art.

Babies see stuffed animals as having faces, before they have any idea about what animals are, or have any exposure to the history and current state of face-making in art. Somewhere inside our brains, there is a face recognition engine, which tells us that anything organized in a certain relationship is a face. Whether it's on a piece of toast, on a mountain, in the sky above, or on our TV screens, we see faces on anything in that certain arrangement, and even within a huge range of facial plans.

Take the Picasso face-ish thing below. I'd be willing to bet that when you look at it, you're immediately trying to reconstruct the mood of the "person" whose "face" appears in the painting. Why?

What's more, we see almost everything this way. Not only do we immediately jump to the conclusion that two ovals two thirds of the way toward the top of the circle equals a face, but we project our expectation for personhood, for personality, on to all kinds of things in the world. Random strings of events have purpose. Storms have an attitude. We give names to our cars or our guitars. By default, we believe that the world is a "Thou" and we are an "I". We believe that the world has a soul and that we look into its eyes.

I'm not drawing any conclusions. I'm not willing to abandon the idea that behind the veil of nature, there is a great something staring back at me through the canvas. That's not my responsibility. I'm as free to enjoy that thought and the beauty that it may entail as I am free to enjoy how much fun it is to ridicule it. The truth about the universe and our place in it wouldn't be worth a whole lot if it required me to prop it up. But, that's beside the point. I'm just making an observation about the way that it is, and the way that we know that it is. There can be no doubt, none whatsoever, that man projects himself on to all that he sees. Man sees faces in ovals. Man sees a man in the moon. Man sees a Son of Man riding on the clouds. That's just what happens, and it's as true for babies as it is for big boys, and probably true for other animals as well, only maybe they see their own animal face in other objects and creatures. Maybe your dog thinks you look like a dog, only with a bald and weirdly round face.

In light of that, we can go one way, and believe that this is because God himself is actually a man--actually a human with eyes and a brain--and that the All became One in the person of Jesus Christ. We might even say that this is why everything that we focus our eyes on seems to convince us that there's a human brain behind it all. Maybe it's in heaven. That, I suppose, is one option available to us. Or, we could go another way, and exercise some pretty extreme caution. Like, if your car had bad brakes, you wouldn't take road trips to San Francisco. Just in case. You'd stay where it was flat, until you were sure. Same as, if we have a brain that just insists on seeing human personality, human faces, in everything, we might just want to be cautious about attributing personality to things that may just be illusions that our own internal machinery is throwing up in our way.

At the very least, we could be realistic with ourselves. Realistic enough to know that the only reason we like watching TV in the first place is because we are looking out at the world through the filter of a machine that tricks us into believing that lies are true. That junk, organized in a certain pattern, is actually our friend, with whom we can laugh and cry and share our dreams and adventures. You and I are trapped inside an apparatus that, from the second it was turned on, began convincing us that everything we see is like us. That's just how it works, and probably with good reason, because we naked apes survive best when we work together against all the meanies who want to eat us up. So we see the world through lenses that are convinced that the world is full of other lenses like our own, so we can find them and join them, and that anything that even remotely resembles us is, in fact, another being like us.

We are prone to project our own illusions on to the world--there's no shame in it-- and we are convinced that the world is looking back at us. Fine. In some cases, it actually is. In many cases, it is not. The equipment that we work with is not even remotely concerned with telling us which case is which. And, we're free to choose the realities that we prefer. We're free to watch whichever channel we want to.

Because, whatever they happen to be looking at, our eyes were made to see windows to souls.

In conclusion, read Feuerbach. Then take a deep breath. And start over.

Idealism vs Materialism

2011-10-29T09:54:00.001-04:00

As Engels wrote over a hundred years ago with respect to German Philistinism, so it is today, so it always has been among the conservative class. As I say, they hate what they are. Or, as Engels says:

"The Philistine understands by the word materialism, gluttony, drunkenness, carnal lust, and fraudulent speculation, in short all the enormous vices to which he himself is secretly addicted, and by the word idealism he understands the belief in virtue, universal humanitarianism, and a better world as a whole, of which he boasts before others, and in which he himself at the very most believes, only as long as he must endure the blues which follow necessarily from his customary "materialistic" excesses, and so sings his favorite song—"What is man?—Half beast, half angel."

Moneychangers

2011-10-27T21:23:00.001-04:00

Jesus opposed bankers.
Jesus opposed personal posessions.
Jesus was an activist.
Jesus said rich people go to hell.
Jesus had long hair.
Jesus was unemployed.
Jesus slept outside.
Jesus was arrested by the authorities.
Jesus was put to death by the government.
Yet, opposition to Occupy Wall Street is the Christian thing to do?

Reliably Unreliable History for Non-Historians

2011-10-27T21:20:00.001-04:00

"I hold a standard that if a book is printed 1900, it is probably one hundred percent accurate because there are not agendas. If it's printed from 1920-1940, I'll buy into maybe seventy-five percent of it...etc... I have that much doubt about books that are written more recently because they reflect agendas."
--David Barton, keeper of the "Christian Nation" myth, actually believes that "agendas" were invented post-1900.

"The only books that are reliable are the ones written before the world understood anything about germ theory, evolution, or anything else that might call into question a mythological worldview."

Translation into plain English: "The only books that are reliable are the ones that are completely unreliable."

#OccupyJesus

2011-10-26T21:49:00.001-04:00

Is it just a little ironic that the people who criticize the Occupy Wall Street protestors also happen to call an ancient, unemployed, homeless, Galilean activist their God?

I Pledge Allegiance to Socialism

2011-10-24T06:47:00.001-04:00

Did you know? Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance, was a Christian Socialist who "championed 'the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus," and 'was forced to leave his Boston church because of the socialist bent of his sermons.'. Now you do.

See Wikipedia's entry on Bellamy for more.

Lincoln vs. the 1%

2011-10-22T22:42:00.001-04:00

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."--From a 21 November 1864, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, quoted in Shaw, Archer H. 1950. The Lincoln Encyclopedia. New York: Macmillan, p. 40.

Thomas Jefferson on the 1% (2)

2011-10-22T22:33:00.001-04:00

“I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Thomas Jefferson on the 1%

2011-10-22T22:18:00.001-04:00

"the selfish spirit of commerce (that) knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain."

The Capture: alternative to Rapture Day

2011-10-21T16:48:00.001-04:00

The Capture is happening today! (Not the Rapture, which some dude made up in the 1800's then convinced everyone that it was in the Bible. "The Capture", which I made up this morning, which is equally plausible and equally Biblically supported.) At noon, giant fish nets, held by the Apostles, will descend from heaven and catch up all the saved. Be ready! Matt. 4:19.

God's Habit: Rapture Today

2011-10-21T16:46:00.001-04:00

Maybe the world is like smoking for God. No matter how many times he promises, he just can't seem to quit it.

The Problem

2011-10-21T09:40:00.001-04:00

We’ve got a real problem…this is a mathematical fact. Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren’t doing it, republicans aren’t doing it, an entire integrated system, banking, trade and taxation, created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now.We owe $70 trillion. [cross-talking 04:29] a $4 trillion solution, which is basically just a way for the Democrats to avoid dealing with this until 2017. I’m not here to talk about plans to deal with this till 2017. I’m saying we’ve got a real problem, and I’m tired of Republicans and Democrats who either want – Republicans who want to burn the place to the ground and Democrats, with all due respect, who want to offer a plan that gets it through the end of their second term of their presidency, and then screws me and my kids when it’s over! And until we do that, we have to deal with the extraction that is at foot, it is the reason the financial markets are behaving the way they’re behaving, it is a mathematical fact! This is not some opinion; this is a mathematical fact. Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren’t doing it, Republicans are not doing it, an entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system, that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. And we’re sitting here arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the President for 2017, or burn the place to the ground, both of which are reckless, irresponsible, and stupid. And the fact of the matter is until we actually, and I’m sorry to lose my temper, but I tell you what, I’ve been coming on TV for three years doing this, and the fact of the matter is that there’s a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being extracted. It’s being extracted through banking, it’s being extracted through trade, and it’s being extracted through taxation, and there’s not a single politician that has stepped forward, Susan, to deal with this.I would like him to go to the people of the United States of America and say, “People of the United States of America, your Congress is bought, your Congress is incapable of making legislation on healthcare, banking, trade, or taxes because if they do it, they will lose their political funding and they won’t do it. But I’m the President of the United States, and I won’t have a country that is run by a bought Congress. So I’m not going to work with a bought Congress and try to be Mr. Big Guy, ‘I’m working with a bought Congress’, I’m going to abandon the bought Congress like Teddy Roosevelt did, and I’m going to go to the people of the United States and I’m going to say, ‘You’ve got a bought Congress,” and until we get rid of the bought Congress, which is Jimmy Williams constant point, which is get the money out of politics, and until a President says that’s the problem and says he’s going to fix it, there is no policy that I can possibly see no matter how brilliant your idea may be or your idea or my idea or her idea or your idea at home, is that idea will not happen as long as there’s a capacity to basically fire a politician who disagrees with me by taking funding away from him

I am the 99%

2011-10-20T08:37:00.001-04:00

In July of 2007, my new wife and I purchased our first home for nearly $170,000. It was a Condo in Naperville, IL, and it was the best deal we could find. Though not an expert in finance, I rejected several offers for sub-prime loans, feeling uncomfortable that so much money would be offered to newlyweds with very little assets. I put all my effort into securing a sensible, 30-year-fixed loan at the best rate available with a local credit union. I spent all my inheritance from my father on my down payment. I borrowed money from my father-in-law. I got a good loan, at a good rate, with responsible terms. I was ecstatic.

I had no idea at the time that July 2007 happened to be the month when the housing bubble in Naperville burst.

To give you an idea of how crazy it was in those days, how loans were being thrown around like nothing, in December, 2007 (five months after purchasing), I asked the Credit Union if we could refinance. This is what they told me to do once we had secured the loan. This is what everyone was doing before the crash.

I was rejected.

My wife was offered a better career in Michigan, where housing prices were half of what they were in Chicagoland. Knowing how hard it was for my wife and I to find such a great deal on our beautiful condo, I decided to sell. I was prepared to pay two mortgage payments until we could sell. I was unaware that the Casino at the heart of our economy had just gone bust, literally the same month that we bought our condo. So I paid two mortgage payments while we listed the condo. I was shocked when months went by without any interest. Then I learned about the collapse. So I decided to find a tenant. Because of the crash, even rent was falling, and I couldn't find a renter at the same rate that I paid for my mortgage. So, I subsidized rent for three successive tenants (often to the tune of $500 per month), seeing my responsibility to pay my mortgage as paramount, no matter how hard it was for my family, no matter how much we lost.

On October 3, 2008, I heard George Bush tell the nation that Congress must pass emergency measures to prop up the banking system which had just lured my family into a trap. As I was losing hundreds of dollars a month, I watched congress hand the con men who had ensnared us all a trillion dollars, so that they could continue their con game unmolested.

So I voted for Obama.

From 2009 - 2010 I repeatedly petitioned the bank for a refinance, due to falling rates.

I was rejected.

I began to learn about the waves of foreclosures.

I applied for Obama's HAFA program, but was rejected, because my condo was not my primary residence.

So, in October 2010, I moved my pregnant wife and my two children under two back to our two bedroom condo, so that I could qualify for the HAFA program. We quit our jobs and left our lives. It broke our hearts, but it was the right thing to do. Because we are talented, intelligent, hard working people, we found jobs in the worst job market in the last half century. I gave away anything that wouldn't fit into the condo. I started over.

My children couldn't even have their beds set up because we were so crammed into that condo, but we sacrificed so that we could do the right thing, the responsible thing, and pay our debts, and work within the system. I started over. Because of the economic collapse, the upper-middle class neighborhood where we bought our condo in 2007 had transformed by 2010 into a lower-class neighborhood.

I did not feel safe having my family in that condo.

I applied again for HAFA. I was again rejected.

I petitioned the bank again for a refinance. I was rejected.

In February, 2010, five months after moving from Michigan, I moved my family out of our condo into a rental home.

I told the bank they can have the condo.

Immediately, I was offered a temporary, 1% reduction in our mortgage rate. Our rate, from 2007, was 7%. At the time of this writing, rates are at 4%. The bank's grand concession, after all I had done, was to lower my rate by 1% temporarily.

I rejected the offer.

By 2010, the condo we purchased at a sensible rate, with a sensible loan, whose mortgage we paid under the direst financial circumstances, would have been worth $70,000, had we been able to sell it.

No one would buy it.

So, I gave it back to the bank.

The official record of the transaction lists the price of my first home at $1.

I got no bailout.

I am the 99%

Words to live by

2011-10-08T22:49:00.001-04:00

"With great power, there must also come--great responsibility."
--Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man

A Friend of the Family: why the AFA likes me so much, pt 2

2011-10-03T14:26:00.000-04:00

American Family Association
Earlier this year Maine became the fifth state to legalize same sex marriage. Shortly thereafter supporters of traditional marriage gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on marriage on the upcoming November 3 ballot. Polls show likely voters are evenly split at 48%. I applaud the organizers of the referendum for their hard work in taking the fight to the people. How about you?

So glad you asked....
It's impossible to define marriage without reference to a particular religion over and against another, which essentially means that, at least in this instance "Congress shall make [at least ONE] law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;". Admittedly, in these instances it's the states, but it does violate the separation of church and state and the establishment clause.

Mormons used to believe in polygamy (some still do), and if there were religious freedom, all gay people would have to do would be to claim that gay marriage is a form of religion. The DOMA and measures like Prop 8 can only be justified by pointing to Judeo-Christian religious practice.

I'm perfectly happy in my heterosexual marriage, but I'm just saying---I don't see any other basis for excluding homosexuals besides a religious one.

Does the AFA propagate the lie that America is a Christian Nation, or do members just assume that because they've heard it elsewhere. The Constitution expressly forbids it. Thomas Jefferson was anti-Christian - he mocked it and edited the NT to remove all hints of Jesus divinity. Thomas Paine wrote an entire book intending to debunk Christianity called "The Age of Reason". Benjamin Franklin denied the divinity of Christ. John Adams, while a Christian, presided over the treaty with the Barbary Pirates, which explicitly states in Art. 11. "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;" Even Abraham Lincoln was a skeptic, having produced a pamphlet intending to debunk Christianity, which he burned for fear that it would hamper his political career. He remained a "free thinker" to his death, which is code for saying that he was in the tradition of Thomas Paine.

But, do go on... tell us about how this is a Christian Nation. (I recommend you read Gregory A. Boyd's "the Myth of a Christian Nation"--written by an Evangelical, so you can trust it.)

I think I just read a comment above that made the criteria for salvation whether or not you believe in "traditional marriage". I could have sworn I read elsewhere that it is by grace that you are saved, through faith, and that this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God so that no man should boast. Hmmmm..... I guess that "old book" doesn't matter to a group like this. You have "God's word". So, what book were you referring to? I, for one, like to read the Bible, but maybe your book is better.

Great point Ann--our country should distinguish between a religious union and a civil union. That way, nobody's religious feelings get hurt if one of the non-religious types wants to be happy in their life-long partnership. You can have a Christian Marriage, which is biblical, and you can have a Civil Union, which is according to the laws of the land and the democratic will of the people. Problem solved--now if organizations like the AFA would stop hampering the peaceful and equitable resolution to this conflict, we can all go about our merry ways and live happily ever after.

American Family Association:A.P. Riori, sorry but you lose again. In Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 471 (1892), the U.S. Supreme Court said, "

If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find every where a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, "In the name of God, amen;" the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing every where under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.

Read it for yourself at http://supreme.justia.com/us/143/457/case.html.

American Family Association:Mr. Murray, each member of your family has the same rights as every other citizen. A homosexual, as a person, is no different than anyone else. However, the vast majority of homosexuals choose to engage in behavior that has been considered immoral, indeed illegal, for thousands of years. It is unquestionable that homosexual sex is unnatural from a physiological standpoint and therefore denigrates the image of God in man. It is also indisputablle that the so-called homosexual lifestyle is unhealthy from a medical standpoint, as even some homoseual activist groups admit. So, the short answer is a large percentage of Americans disapprove of your conduct, not your status as a person.

AFA - you can't actually be quoting legal precedent, can you? Your entire mission as an organization is to OVERTURN legal precedent. You are actually citing a case to me? Once again, I'll use the same nonsense tactic-- Roe v. Wade. See? You lose.

AFA - not only is your citation evidence of your fallacious logic, it doesn't even apply. The ruling simply states that this is a "religious" nation. That has never been in dispute. The intent is of course to prohibit sanction against religion, which, in this case, happened to be the Christian religion. It could, and it does, just as well pertain to Judaism or to any other religion. The quotes in the case are also, by and large, referring to the Christian religion. But, not all of them. Certainly not the Constitution. Jefferson would not have allowed that, as you no doubt know if you have read him. Nor would even the Christian fathers, like John Adams, since they knew all too well the evils that can arise when one sect of the church seeks to dominate others through government control. You're aware that the American colonies included many different sects who were fleeing from the Church of England, are you not?

The God or Creator of our founding documents could just as well be the god of the Jews or the Mohametans or Christians--it's an acknowledgement of the Divine, not of Christianity. Or, do you think all of the Jewish lawyers in the US just missed this one for the last 200 years?

AFA member jumps in with:
Natural. Well it is natural to want to kill each other and natural to keep everything to ourselves and to have sex whenever and wherever we desire, natural to care only for ourselves, does that mean it is godly? NATURAL is fleshly, NATURAL is behaving as beasts, not meaning "right". Not necessarily recommended. Look up "brute beasts", this is what we have become, what our KIDS have become. Look at em. God aiin't happy about it neither.

And then - ** 2 Peter 2:10-22 kjv

Kathleen, you illustrate a foundational problem on two fronts, thank you. First, contrary to what you either believe or have been taught, the world at large is not looking to kill people or commit immorality all the time in every place, or whatever. That kind of morbid fantasy is either something that's been used to manipulate you, or that's indicative of serious psychological trauma of some kind. Most people, the vast majority of people, are just trying to make it through their work day, to love their family, to have some personal milestones, and to get some peace on earth--no matter what they believe about the rapture, the holy spirit, or the creation.

While we certainly have an animalistic side, call it selfish or a "sin nature", it simply isn't true that, outside the walls of your church, people would just roll around in their own filth if they could. I think that this line of thinking is what often leads to the deeply disturbing behaviors that come out when Christian leaders fall from grace--they obsess about perversions like the ones you mentioned, and sooner or later they end up seeking ways to indulge in them. The majority of the civilized world is somewhere between heaven and hell on this one.

Secondly, just because people disagree with you about these issues, doesn't mean that they are possessed by the devil. If you put three christians in a room, you will have three different opinions about almost every topic--do you speak in tongues, or have the gifts ceased? are you a five point calvinist, or do you believe in universal atonement, or are you an Arminian? When will the tribulation happen? Should baptism be by immersion or by sprinkling? Should it happen at infancy, or conversion? And so on.... Having a different viewpoint means you're human, not that you're one of Satan's minions.

American Family Association

The Declaration of Independence speaks of "self-evident truths." However, in order to recognize them one must believe in the existence of objective truth. For centuries Western Civilization recognized that objective truth can be mined from the Bible, i.e. certain things are always right and others always wrong. As can be seen from some of the comments on this board, there are many people today who no longer believe in objective truth. To them,truth is arrived at through emotion, e.g., "if it feels good, do it!" The danger of such a philosophy readily evident.

me;
I really don't mean to be a contrarian, but believing that it's a self-evident truth that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, kind of leads me to feel sympathy toward homosexuals, since they have rights just like you and I do.

Secondly, the notion that people base their morality on "if it feels good, do it" has never been proposed, as far as I can tell. I believe that the opposing viewpoints are between basing morality on a traditionalist, largely protestant fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, or on a more diverse and inclusive reading of a Bible that seems to be more diverse and inclusive than Protestant fundamentalism, or an ethic that doesn't look to the Bible as the source of all morals. At no point has anyone, as far as I can tell, advanced the position that there should be no morals. I do see a lot of "feelings" as the basis for some of the anti-homosexual rhetoric here, and I would hazard a guess that gay people have "feelings" too. But, let's not use cliches to muddy the waters, AFA. This isn't about whether or not there are such things as morals, it's about whether the AFA stance is moral or immoral. It's about whether or not morality can be accepting of diversity or not.

and, by the way,to your earlier point, there have been societies that have accepted homosexuality, and even encouraged it. The Greeks and the Romans did. That doesn't make it right, that just means that it's not possible to say that no civil society has sanctioned homosexuality, because the classical world most certainly did.

I really want to know--if being gay is a choice, then what are you all so afraid of? Are you afraid that gays will somehow convince Christians who are straight to become gay? And, if being gay is unnatural, and gays can't procreate, then letting them marry is actually doing you all a favor, because they won't be procreating anymore while forced into the closet, pretending to be straight. Letting them marry is actually a way to further your own agenda, as long as you can be patient enough to wait a generation or two.

Or, is it because some studies, at least, have equated homophobia or anti-homosexual sentiment, with homoerotic tendencies. Meaning, a person's anger toward gays is inversely proportional with their own tendency toward homosexuality. Or, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "methinks the [AFA] doth protest too much."
You can read the study from the University of Georgia here, but you probably won't like it:
Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u47/Henry_et_al.pdf

American Family Association

There is an obvious arrogance in people who believe they're right when 3,000 years of history says they're wrong. Does anybody here really believe that homosexual conduct has been shunned by civilized society merely because of bigotry? Perhaps proponents of of homosexual rights should ponder that for a while.

Me:
That's just the point, isn't it? You say it's been shunned by civil society. Yet, in order to make that claim, you have to pretend that the Greeks and the Romans did not condone homosexuality, which they most certainly did. That doesn't make it right, it just makes it impossible to make the very claim you're trying to reiterate once again, even though it's baseless.

Furthermore, if homosexuality isn't a part of a civil society, then were, pray tell, have all the gays come from? Why have there been homosexuals in every culture since the beginning of time?

Sidekick

2011-10-03T10:30:00.001-04:00

Am I the only one who always thought that one day I would have a chimpanzee to be my sidekick?

Support the Great Ape Trust

Aphorisms and quotes, some mine, some not

2011-09-25T17:21:00.000-04:00

I ain't ashamed to say that the clarinet is a bad ass instrument.

"The tea has been thrown overboard. The revolution 0f 1860 has been initiated." -- The Charleston Mercury, 1860

God invented the camera to take pictures of Abraham Lincoln. I'm sure of it.

"I think The Book is something that should be read and can be read, but not to be taken literally to the point that it had been for so many years. I mean, after all, the book was handed down pretty much word-of-mouth. But as with most things that are handed down word-of-mouth, a lot of things are normally lost in the translation. And furthermore, when that word of mouth was created, whatever year that was, all this stuff was not available."--Joe Maddon of the Rays, talking about Baseball

You are normal if you believe that God reached down and sent a tornado/earthquake/hurricane to punish the naughties for their sins. But you are crazy if you believe that the earth just might somehow be affected because humans pour billions of tons of poison all over it. Ain't that America?

I remember september 10th. That's the day the clock stopped for me. I refuse to engage in the mass hysteria that has afflicted my people ever since.

I'm pretty sure that all modern American politics is just a collective yearning for the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.

Barack Obama backs failed "green jobs" firm = huge scandal. The failure of every major firm on Wall Street = not a scandal.

Shock and Awe

2011-09-25T17:15:00.004-04:00

Wanna be shocked? OK--"the cost of [college] education has increased at twice the rate of inflation, which is a faster increase than healthcare and energy costs.".

On "Job Creators", buzzword of the political day

2011-09-25T17:13:00.002-04:00

"Job creator": n., an Orwellian term for a rich person who spends all day thinking about ways to eliminate the overhead knows as "jobs" through reductions in benefits, increased productivity, technology, and outsourcing. In plain English, "job creation" is solely the result of demand which comes from consumers (a.k.a. "you"), not from managers or producers.

Lies about Teachers from the Monster who is your Master whom you Love

2011-05-27T09:41:00.001-04:00

Here's a study that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the current Republican propaganda about teachers having cushy salaries, etc., is just a lie. People who majored in Education make, on average, less than almost any other profession. Yet, they spend all of their time raising the children of this country. There's nothing more important than this calling. What kind of parent would short-change their own kid by paying their teacher so little? What kind of country would willingly set up it's most vulnerable citizens--it's own children--for failure by making certain that there's absolute zero extrinsic motivation for someone to be a teacher? And, as we commit this unnatural sin, purposely designing a system where our children will fail, we add insult to injury by creating a myth about how teachers are over-paid. All the while, people who gamble for a living, whose profession routinely involves an expense account to pay for hookers and drugs, are drowning in cash. We embrace a myth about how "business" is efficient, leads to innovation, raises the standard of living. The truth is that dumb people do dumb things, whether it's in business, government, or otherwise. And, "business" cares only about gaining leverage and crushing the opposition. That's the definition of business, and the only point in it is to win. And "business" is in the business of lying, cheating, and stealing as much as it can in order to gain leverage and crush the opposition.

Dumb kids will become dumb adults who will maintain the status quo in which the fanciful mythology that calls slavery by the name of freedom. Wage slavery and corporate slavery are all we know in this country, and we're trained to love it. Teachers are the greatest enemy to the two-headed corporate/government monster that controls this country. So they got to go. They need to be replaced with wage slaves (in charter schools) who care only about their "merit pay", so that they'll never, ever question the monster and how it's destroying this country and poisoning the minds of our kids. And, under no circumstances can any citizen in this country achieve a measure of security or leisure, either through a pension or paid time off. People with security will not be obedient, and will not submit to the monster. So your pension's got to go, so that you're always dependent on the wage that only the monster can give you. You'll be lucky to even have a job, so don't get uppity and think that you should also be treated like a human being. It's called "freedom", so get used to it.

Libertarianism and the Religious Right or Atlas Sucks

2011-04-14T11:09:00.003-04:00

I believe this is why the Libertarian Atheists and the Religious Right make good bedfellows, because both ideologies are based on utopian fantasies about things that never happened and never will happen. I can agree in principle (as everyone can) that the best way for humans to safeguard individual liberty is through a market economy with a limited government. Who wouldn't want that? But, in reality, it's ludicrous to think that the "market" actually wants to be "free". What market participants want is LEVERAGE. There always have been and always will be market participants who will use any means necessary in order to get leverage. This is why the government and the market will always have an incestuous relationship with one another, not just because of government meddling or over-reach, but because the market wants a strong government that it can use to gain leverage. The market says it wants to be free, but only free from government obstacles--not from the conveniences that only government can provide, like instant access to the collective wealth of an entire nation. The market wants total commitment from the government when it comes to subsidies, protections, and of course bailouts. The market wants only to gamble with house money and to create its own rules to ensure that it always wins. That is what goes by the name of "freedom" in conservative parlance. Market participants want "freedom" to gain leverage, so that they can crush their competitors. This is why, for instance, things like Net Neutrality (which actually protects REAL freedom) are opposed by conservatives, because it stands in the way of market participants' ability to gain leverage (a.k.a. "freedom" in conservative-speak). The idea that there ever can or ever will be such a thing as a "free" market is ludicrous, because freedom is exactly what market participants are trying to prevent their competitors from enjoying. Take away any external market constraints and you'll inevitably see power concentrated in one group's hands and used to exploit another, which is the opposite of freedom. One man's freedom entails another man's slavery, and it's usually the proponents of slavery who argue most vigorously on behalf of freedom. Conservative freedom usually means freedom for , subjugation for . During the golden age of "freedom" the United States legalized owning human beings as property. Because "freedom" doesn't always mean "freedom", which is also why "objectivism" is ludicrous. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. No sooner do you arrive at something "objective" than you find out that it was just a projection of your own subjective preferences. Objectivism is the objectification of what I subjectively want to be true, namely that [I] am better than [You]. I am Atlas.

Is Rob Bell a Heretic? Is Rob Bell A Universalist?

2011-03-17T17:09:00.001-04:00

Rob Bell is getting even more attention than usual these days for his "Love Wins" book that has all the fundies crying foul. The book, I can only assume, is based on the bumper stickers destroying the resale value of every other car in West Michigan. Here's an interview where the author of "Sex God" attempts, weakly, to defend his position that God can (and probably will) save everybody in the end:

Of course, as we all know, no good Christian wants to believe that God will save more than the absolute bare minimum of sinners, which is why this 'new' idea has everyone's Bible in a bunch, right? Well, funny you should ask, because there's actually nothing new about Bell's bumper-sticker theology of "Love Wins".

In fact, the only thing unusual about Rob Bell's position is that it's been relegated to the sidelines in contemporary Evangelicalism. As long as there have been Christians, there have been Christians who have believed in Salvation after death. In fact, the Nicene Creed states that Christ "descended into hell", which is where he "preached to the spirits who were in prison" (1 Peter 3:18-19). So, even the New Testament teaches a version of this doctrine, the earliest Christians believed it, it became official Dogma in Nicea, and has been held by Christians all throughout the ages.

Actually, this whole dust-up is really an indictment of the power of Fundamentalism to overshadow even the Orthodoxy from whose head it has sprung, since a form of salvation in the afterlife is and always has been part of orthodox Christianity. It's just that little-o orthodoxy is not the kind of Christianity that is embraced by Fundamentalists.

Equally ironic is the fact that Huldrych (or Ulrich) Zwingli, the Reformer who was the founder of the Anabaptists, held a very similar position, and even extended it to "pious heathens". Anabaptists were the precursor to today's Evangelicals. So, the movement that currently rejects this theology actually began with this theology, not that I'd expect a contemporary Evangelical to have any use for the term "theology". Here's a good treatment of Zwingli's position.

Now for the real kicker. Here are some of the earliest Christians expressing their views on the matter:

Tertullian: "Christ Descended into hell in order to acquaint the Patriarchs and Prophets with his redeeming mission." De Anima 55.2

Origen: "It is said in Psalm 16: 'You will not leave my soul in hell.'. And in Peter, in his general epistle, mentions Jesus descent into hell." Commentary on John 6.174-76

Cyril of Alexandria: "Here, Peter answers the question which some objectors have raised, namely, if the incarnation was so beneficial, why was Christ not incarnated for such a long tim, given that he went to the spirits which were in prison and preached to them also? In order to deliver all those who would believe, Christ taught those who were alive on earth at the time of his incarnation, and these others acknowledged him when he appeared to them in the lower regions, and thus they too benefitted from his coming. Going in his soul, he preached to those who were in hell, appearing to them as one soul to other souls. When the gatekeepers of hell saw him, they fled. The broze gates were broken open, and the iron chains were undone. ..for both those who were alive on earth during the time of his incarnation and those who were in hell had a chance to acknowledge him."

So, Bell isn't saying a damn thing that the very dudes who collected the Bible into the canon were fond of saying themselves. He's not even saying anything that Reformers weren't saying. Being saved in hell? Sure. Why not? Jesus made booze from water, what's a little sermon in the fiery depths?

Now, if the fundies knew their own Church History, they would have known that the concept of hell has evolved over the ages. Initially, it was understood analogously to Sheol or Hades and was merely the place where the dead went to live as shades, or in this case as "prisoners". Saying a person is in "hell" is not crystallized as a wholesale condemnation until centuries after the Apostolic period. In the classical world and the Apostolic period, it simply means that a person is dead.

What Rob Bell is doing here is what Robert Webber of Wheaton College once coined as the "Ancient Future Faith", which has since morphed into the buzzword "Emerging Church." Bell is a Wheaton grad, after all, and was likely there when Robert Webber was a faculty member. He's trying to be trendy and cool while embracing the doctrines of the earliest Christians. I applaud him for bucking the mainstream and hope that leads him ultimately to buck the whole tradition, which is just as intellectually disingenuous as the notion that everyone who doesn't come forward for an altar call is going to be eternally tormented while God and all his fundamentalist children point and laugh. What Rob Bell is NOT doing here is being Universalist, or heretical, or even heterodox, and certainly not original. His proclamation, which has the Fundies in a tizzy, isn't even interesting.

What would be interesting would be to know why the fundies are up in arms about Rob Bell for his "unbiblical" Christianity, yet they take no issue with the theology of the guys who collected the Bible. And, I'm guessing that fundies would think it's abhorrent that Tertullian said the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.) went to hell, but they have no problem with the notion that Jesus went to hell. Even worse than Rob Bell's idea that people might--God forbid--be saved from everlasting torment by a merciful God who is stronger than even human death (if you can imagine such a Being existing... like, say, if you're able to reason at the level of a fourth grader)is the idea that God himself went to hell (in the form of Jesus). Yep. That's what Christians believe, and have believed since Christians stopped being called Jews and started being called Christians. There's your real controversy.

Next time someone tells you "Go to hell!", maybe you should take it as a compliment. Next time some fundie shoves a tract in your hand that asks "If you die today, do you know where you will spend eternity?", tell them "Who the hell cares?! I'll catch Jesus when he does his greatest hits tour through hell."

Now enough of this nonsense.

Midwest Labor fights & Repealing women's rights: how did we get here?

2011-02-24T09:11:00.000-05:00

We got here, to a large degree, because of the rise of the Religious Right, who are easy dupes for corporate fascism. Frank Schaeffer's book "Crazy for God" is a great inside look at the emergence of the "pro-life" movement, which he pretty much engineered with his dad Francis, which brought the fundamentalists from the sidelines and into the political fray. If you convince people that abortion is murder--all abortion, because, let's be honest, some abortion IS murder, though not all--then, anything goes. What the Religious Right has done is galvanize people through the belief that they are a resistance movement, a present-day anti-Nazi force, when in reality they are an emerging fascist movement whose values are increasingly indistinguishable from the Nazis. They see abortion as a modern-day holocaust, so, to combat it, they'll go to any length, including legalizing murder. But, don't forget, the Nazis were also anti-abortion, and accused the Jew of being so vile as to abort members of his own race, which an Aryan would never think of doing. See the German Propaganda pamphlet called "The Decent Jew".

Also, the Cold War was a great framework upon which to hang all the apocalyptic mythology that people love to obsess about. Fundamentalists were trained that Russia was the seat of the Anti-Christ, so all things Soviet became synonymous with evil. So, Capitalism, i.e. America, is good, and anything that even hints at behaving sanely in the marketplace is Satanic. All regulation is bad, because that's what Satan would do in Russia. Jesus would return to the Gold Standard and let the free market do as it pleases, just as ye are free in Christ.

Before Roe v. Wade, fundamentalists were content to condemn secular society, to be "in the world but not OF it", and to wait for the rapture. After Roe, the people who live in constant delusion were drawn into a great struggle, and it's their mission to take over every sector of society and impose their "Biblical worldview" a.k.a. collective delusion, a.k.a. mental illness, on America. Russia may have fallen, but now the Anti-Christ has been reincarnated, first in the form of Saddam Hussein, then in the form of a black, foreign-born, Socialist dictator named "Barack", which is the Hebrew word for "lightning", and Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning..." , whose middle name also happens to be Hussein... and so on.

It's like taking candy from a baby if you're part of the organized crime ring that's bilking America for all it's worth. Just keep throwing them raw meat via FOX, and they'll be not only be so distracted by it that they won't notice that you pulled a moving van up to the back of the US Treasury to take all their tax dollars--they'll actually vote for you and beg you to do it some more. And they take to the streets to demand that you strip them off all their rights to not be screwed.

Here's a great article on Christian textbooks that train kids to believe some of the garbage above.

Why do I continue to state the Obvious? Because, the obvious isn't obvious to everyone, and the stakes are high

2011-01-12T12:26:00.002-05:00

If you haven't seen the response from Conservatives yet, you owe it to yourself to digest what's happening right now. The "Values Voters", people who focus on "personal responsibility", who used to be called the "Moral Majority", have come out in droves to defend the stream of violent rhetoric and death threats that have been issuing from the right since the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Try to wrap your head around this for a minute:

The demographic of people who congratulate themselves on the fact that they don't allow their children to watch R-rated movies, or play M-rated video games, or listen to explicit lyrics, has spent the last four days circling the wagons to defend their leaders who literally used assassination as a metaphor for how to deal with politics that they disagree with. So, on the one hand, Conservatives believe that just having a violent image flash in front of your eyes, or pulling the trigger in a video game, or hearing a Marilyn Manson tune--will result in an inevitable slide towards murder and brutality among our children. Yet, in the very same heads, they are able to claim that political heroes, quasi-diefied figures like the God-like Sarah Palin or the Prophet Glenn Beck, cannot, in any way, affect the behavior of their minions or sway them toward violent behavior. They have responded with mockery, insults, and the most inappropriate language imaginable through the use of the term "blood libel" in their defense of the Right's right to be as graphic, extreme, and violent as possible in their rhetoric. And, all the while, they're checking Focus On The Family's Website to see if it's OK for their teenagers to go and see Avatar or not.

Just imagine Conservative, Christian parents telling their children, "Now, Johnny and Suzie--the violent, misogynistic rhetoric of gangster rap is not responsible for the violence and misogyny you see in the hood. It's free speech. When a gang-banger kills someone, he's not acting out the fantasies he indulges in his rap music. It's just an isolated incident. It has no relation to the hip-hop culture." Try to imagine that. You won't be able to. Or try to imagine them saying, "Now, Johnny and Suzie, I know that suicide bombers killed people today. But, it's not Osama Bin Laden's fault. It's not related." Has anyone ever stopped to do a psychological analysis of a Terrorist? I sincerely doubt it. And, if they found that the Terrorist was scizophrenic, would that change their opinion of Bin Laden one iota? Hell no.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post had this to say, on Friday of last week, before the shooting. It's not opportunism. It's common sense:
"Given the extremism of the rhetoric at the top, is it any wonder that there is incredible fear trickling down to the grass roots? If those are the stakes, then of course criminalizing any implementation of the bill makes sense. Frankly, if those are the stakes, then violent resistance might be required.

Those aren't the stakes, of course. They're just the words. And words slip sometimes. Things come out too angry, or too quickly, or too sharply. I've had my share of experience with this. But words matter. And the Republican Party hasn't been slipping up: It's been engaged in a concerted campaign to scare the population into opposing health-care reform. That may be good politics, but it can have bad consequences"

Just imagine mocking this type of concern in the wake of a tragic atrocity. Yet, this is what passes for Conservatism today. Imagine if, in the wake of 9/11, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Michael Moore all got on TV and their blogs to mock the shock, horror, greif, and concern of Americans who witnessed the tragedy and wondered how it could have happened, how it might have been prevented. But, this is what Conservatives--even nice people, people I happen to know are good people--are treating this tragedy.

How deeply does one have to be brainwashed, so that they would act in ways that run counter to every instinct towards decency they might have? I can answer that, because I have been brainwashed. I used to consume right-wing media. There was a time when I would have joined the dog-pile to claim that Liberals were being opportunistic with their concern, politicizing tragedy, and whatever nonsense has been circulating. Lucky for me, I was deprogrammed a couple of years ago, and I'm able to see just how sick I once was. Just how sick my country now is.

Rather than tempering the Right's tendency toward violent fantasy, I fear that this tragedy has only encouraged it. I hope I'm wrong.

The most important article you'll read about Rep. Giffords' assassination attempt

2011-01-10T09:16:00.000-05:00

The BRAD BLOG : Violent Rightwing Rhetoric Doesn't Kill People. People Living in a World Where They Hear A Lot of Violent Rightwing Rhetoric Kills People.

Libertarianism (a.k.a. the Tea Party) and the Tradition of Hating the Constitution

2010-12-30T09:21:00.000-05:00

"[The Founders] planned and executed a coup d'Etat, simply tossing the Articles of Confederation into the waste basket, and drafting a Constitution de novo, with the audacious provision that it should go into effect when ratified by nine units instead of by all thirteen."
-- Albert Jay Nock, Libertarian ideologue, favorite of the American Right, self-professed hater of the Constitution, from his book Our Enemy the State, p. 165.

If you talk to Tea Party folks, it won't be long before somebody brings up the work of Friedrich von Hayek, especially his book The Road to Serfdom. Von Hayek was the founder of the Austrian School of Economics, ideological forebear of neo-Liberalism and the Chicago School of Milton Friedman (whose theories are basically the bedrock of Conservatism from Reagan to present), also represented today by the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, beloved of Conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. One of the favorite thinkers of the Mises Institute is the anti-New Deal, anti-Statist, anti-Socialist Albert Jay Nock, whose work Our Enemy the State is tossed around with almost as much regularity as Hayek's Serfdom.

So, here we are in America, after a year where the Tea Party "Patriots" have become a fixture in our political landscape, who are seeking ostensibly to return this nation to the glory of its inception and the heroism of its Founders. Yet, this movement of "Patriots" traces its lineage back through a vocal and vehement opponent of the American Constitution, through an Austrian Economist and the guardians of his legacy who speak openly about how Hitler was right and FDR was wrong (Hitler, by the way, was also Austrian, for what it's worth), and they choose, with no sense of irony, to hold up Patrick "Give me Liberty or give me Death" Henry (also an opponent of the Constitution) as one of their patron saints.

It couldn't be more Newspeak if Orwell himself created it: The "Patriots" are literally, actually anti-American. They align themselves with an ideological tradition that is inimical to all things American at every turn. What's more, this movement that obsessively refers to the Constitution as the basis for their reactionary politics literally and actually immerses itself in the ideologies of men who openly, publicly, vehemently opposed the American Constitution.

I realize that this is all very Glenn Beckish of me to go about connecting the dots, but I also realize that it's almost always the case that the Fundamentalists hate what they themselves in reality are (see nearly every other blog post I've ever written for details). Newspeak, after all, according to Umberto Eco, is one of the hallmarks of Fascism, and what else is Fascism but the political manifestation of fundamentalism?

Show me the mantra of the Fundamentalist, the list of that which he hates, and I will show you what the Fundamentalist himself is most guilty of. Show me the man who claims he is a Patriot, and I will show you the man who hates his country and is actually a traitor. Show me the man who claims to venerate the Founders, and I will show you the man who is diametrically opposed to all that they stood for. Show me the man who claims to oppose Fascism and Statism, and I will show you a Fascist, bent on Totalitarian control of the State.

The Lord Giveth Touchdowns, the Lord Taketh Touchdowns Away

2010-11-30T11:13:00.002-05:00

I have a few thoughts on the ever-present "Thank you Jesus for making me win" professions coming from star athletes, and how they relate to the history of Theology. First, there's this story about the goat who dropped the winning pass for the Bills in overtime against the Steelers (and thank God he did):

NFL receiver blows game, questions God
By Larry Hartstein
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We've heard athletes blame coaches, teammates and playing conditions when things go wrong, but God?
That's what Buffalo wideout Steve Johnson seemed to do Sunday, after dropping what would have been a game-winning 40-yard touchdown in a 19-16 overtime loss to Pittsburgh.
"I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME !!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO...", Johnson tweeted.
Usually athletes are thanking God for their exploits on the field. Last week, after scoring three touchdowns in a win over Cincinnati, Johnson tweeted, "Jus Goes To Sho God Is Good N Real! Keep Faith Thru Good N Bad." read the rest

This is the double-edged sword of crediting God with accomplishing the things that people do. What happens when you fail? Obviously, God failed. That is, if there's any logic or rationale behind saying "Thank you God for helping me win", then you have to say "God made me lose" when you lose. That is, you have to say that if you're honest with yourself, as this poor guy is. It's not his fault he dropped the ball--it's God's. That's just basic logic, if you buy into a worldview like his. Don't think for a second that it's just this poor guy losing a game and shooting off his mouth at God. This is the logic of the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. When Israel wins battles, it's because Yahweh is the Lord of Hosts (which means Armies). When they lose, it's because God made them lose to punish them. (Actually, in Ancient Near Eastern terms, when they lose, it's because the other nation's God is stronger than Yahweh, but they don't like to admit that).

Robert Wright's book The Evolution of God is a must-read. One of the things he goes into detail about is how monotheism evolved out of this way of thinking. Since Yahweh giveth, and since a believer must give Yahweh the credit for the wins, it stands to reason that when you lose, you have a choice to make: either Yahweh isn't strong enough to earn the win, or Yahweh purposely threw the game to teach you a lesson. This plays out in the history of Israel as successive nations conquer and have their way with Israel. So, as a devotee of Yahweh, you must either conclude that Yahweh isn't all he's cracked up to be, or you subversively interpret the reality to mean that Yahweh is transcendantly controlling Assyria, Babylon, Persia, etc., and using them to accomplish his ends. Since a believer cannot accept the fact that their God is not actually in charge, you see the inevitable march towards monotheism progressing through each of the conquests that Israel must endure. At first, Yahweh is one of many gods, he's just the favorite one of Israel. The more Israel gets conquered, the more Yahweh becomes the ONLY God that really exists, and the rest of the gods (and nations) are just puppets that Yahweh uses as his proxies.

So, it's not because Israel is so strong or wins so much that Yahweh is acknowledged as the only, all-powerful God. It's because they are so weak and lose so much that they have to continually revise their interpretation and place Yahweh further and further back behind the curtain, where he pulls the strings rather than fighting his own battles.

As it was with Israel, so it is with the NFL. I'm certain that if this guy hasn't already done so, he will revise his initial (logical) interpretation of the loss to something like this: "I realize now that God used this situation to test my faith, and I see now that he is all-powerful, even when I lose." And so on...

Why Conservatives and Liberals will Never Agree: A question of virtue

2010-11-05T13:23:00.002-04:00

At the heart of the current ideological impasse in American politics, and in historical manifestations of the same, is a question of virtue. Two competing definitions of virtue are held by the opposing factions, and they are held in ways that run contrary to other, prior ideological commitments. On the one hand, we have Conservatives and on the other Liberals. Each group is convinced that the other is ignorant at best, and evil at worst. Each group is certain of their own intrinsic goodness and the purity of their own motives. How can this be? Simple. It is a question of virtue.

Conservative Virtue:
Good can only be achieved by everyone doing good for his/her self, without respect to others. The individual will do good and be good for the individual's own intrinsic reasons, and this will, by extension, benefit society. All that is required of society is that it allow the individual sufficient freedom to pursue one's own, intrinsic good. The individual cannot (and does not) take for granted the fact that other individuals will pursue the good. The only guarantee of virtue for society comes as the individual is free to secure its own good through its own, personal gain. If society provides sufficient space within which the individual can achieve its own good, it follows necessarily that society will itself be good.

In other words, personal gain is societal gain.

Liberal Virtue:

Good will only be achieved as each individual works to secure the potential good for all the others, without immediate respect to any personal gain. The individual will do good and be good because the individual is intertwined with many others like itself. Society is intentionally a leveling force, which works to secure individual good through collective good. Occasionally, the individual will act in ways that on the surface are opposed to its own, personal gain, but when taken as a whole will contribute to the greater good for the greatest number, which reciprocally benefits the individual. Virtue is guaranteed as individuals are enfranchised as members of a collective who recognize that their own freedom stands or falls with the freedom of all other individuals.

In other words, societal gain is personal gain.

At a basic, theoretical level, I don't believe it's possible to find fault with either definition of virtue. Given the framework of Conservative Virtue, if certain conditions are met, then society will prosper if indeed I myself am allowed to prosper. Likewise, if certain conditions are met, Liberal Virtue will have its desired aim: I will prosper if my society prospers.

As with nearly every philosophical question, the distinction comes in the direction one takes, whether one works from particulars to universals or from universals to particulars. This is as old as thinking itself, and is by no means unique to political philosophy. It is interesting to note that, in actual practice, Liberals and Conservatives hold other commitments that seem to be diametrically opposed to the political virtues they are attempting to achieve. For instance, in the sphere of religion, or the science/religion dichotomy, Conservatives tend to be overtly religious, while rejecting newfangled science like Darwinism. Most religious traditions emphasize what I would classify as a "liberal" ethic: Love thy neighbor. Do unto others. Protect the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Give alms. The ethical imperatives of religions are not intended to be for personal gain, at least not on their surface. This is the opposite of the "rugged individualism" that Conservatives espouse in the political sphere. Likewise, Liberals are typically adherents of Darwinian explanations of life, which is often (incorrectly) summed up in Spencer's "survival of the fittest" maxim. Liberals are more prone to accept naturalistic explanations, which currently includes Darwinian theory of competition for resources, which on its surface seems to more closely resemble the conservative ethos.

Without getting too deep into anything that might get me labeled as a "Marxist" (which would essentially mean that I was being charged with being "educated" or "intelligent"), I'll briefly note a couple of things regarding the science/religion dichotomy and how Liberals/Conservatives choose sides on the basis of it. For one, anyone who thinks that Religion is not about selfish, personal gain has never read John Piper the "Christian Hedonist". While not intending to do so, he pretty clearly pulls back the veil on any pretense of altruism in Religion. On the flip side, Darwinism is only misinterpreted as individualistic. Even a contemporary of Darwin, Peter Kropotkin, clearly demonstrated that Natural Selection includes many examples of altruistic behavior, where individuals sacrifice their own immediate gain for the long-term benefit of others. So, the religious commitments of both groups, upon a deeper analysis, actually do line up with their political commitments, even if popular understanding of Religion/Science seems initially to indicate otherwise. The same could be said with respect to economic issues, where Conservatives favor a "free market" or Laissez-faire approach, where Liberals tend towards more regulation and planning. Again, however, this is deceiving, since the rule in Capitalism is Laissez-faire for me and roadblocks for you (what company do you know of that is not trying to achieve dominance in the market and would not hinder its competition if it was able to?). Likewise with Socialism, the aim is not to intentionally micromanage every aspect of business, but in theory to level the playing field so that the maximum number of entities can participate. And, in a way, Liberalism is a form of trickle-down freedom: If you let me be more free, you will, in turn, become more free, just as Conservatives have convinced one another economically that allowing others to prosper (i.e. allowing me, the rich guy, to prosper) will, in the end, lead to one's own prosperity.

I suppose the point is: Given the fact that each side is committed to what it believes to be virtuous, and given the fact that each side's virtue would, under the right circumstances, achieve its desired aim of a better society, do such circumstances ever exist in reality? Can they? That's what we're always fighting about, I suppose.

Perhaps on another level, the virtues that we're pursuing come down to this: Are we in competition? Or are we in collaboration? Competition has its own set of rules, and competing well is itself a virtue, as is winning. But, are we actually competing? If what we're actually doing in our lives and on this planet is engaging in an enterprise that requires that we collaborate, then competing when we're supposed to be collaborating is inappropriate and perverse. Depending on where you fall in the political spectrum, you'll emphasize competition or collaboration to a greater or lesser degree.

For my part, I may have no immediate stake in your ability to prosper. But, I have become convinced that competition does no one any long term good outside the sphere of play. Competition in baseball is glorious. Competition that leaves people homeless, not so much. To take a more concrete example, while I may not have come from the same heritage that you did, or I may not particularly find your sexual orientation appealing, I am convinced that my own ability to thrive is integrally connected to your ability to pursue the things that you find important, and therefore I would take a Liberal stance on issues of race, gender, sexuality, etc. If I were Conservative, I would consider my own ability to thrive as under threat from a competing ideology's ability to do so, therefore if homosexuality increases, then heterosexuality must, of necessity, decrease, since all things are in competition with one another. Similarly, if I see my own personal good as "being heterosexual", then as a corollary I must necessarily see the good of society as "being heterosexual", so therefore I will compete with others who oppose what I see to be good, in order that the good might win out in the end, and all of society be subjected to that which is good. Personal gain is societal gain. If I were to take a Liberal approach to the same issue, I would say that, while I may not personally believe that homosexuality is a good for society, I take for granted the fact that the only way in which that which is good will spread to society is if I tolerate that which I see as not good. Societal gain is personal gain, and in this instance, I personally want to be free to practice what I believe is good, so I will tolerate others practicing what they believe is good, regardless of how I have evaluated their good personally.

Toleration was the word that John Locke used for this, Locke of course being the thinker who influenced the American experiment more than perhaps any other. While Locke was himself a Christian, and believed firmly that it was the only acceptable position that man should take with respect to God, Locke also realized that the only way to achieve this was to allow others to not be Christian, or to allow others to be Christian in ways that one may personally disagree with. Failure to engineer society on these terms would perforce lead to one religious group restricting the freedoms of all the others, and ultimately to the bellum omniae contra omnes, so that no one ultimately had freedom. Perhaps we should also add to the liberal side of the ledger that Peter Kropotkin, author of Mutual Aid, was himself an Anarchist, as is Noam Chomsky.

So, which do you prefer? The bellum omniae contra omnes, where society clears the way for a winner-take-all, dog-eat-dog battle royal? Or an anarchistic free-for-all in which all things are "politically correct"?

Maybe it gets at a larger question: Just what are we anyway? Are we children of God who have fallen from Paradise? Are we combatants in a Darwinian arena, fighting for our share of the resource pie? Or are we organism that thrive through mutual, collective aid?

Whatever the answer, one thing is for sure. Liberals and Conservatives will never agree. The pendulum will swing back and forth from competition to collaboration and back again, and we'll be arguing about the same things until kingdom come. Because, of course, we are convinced that we are pursuing virtue.

On Voting

2010-11-03T10:48:00.000-04:00

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm."

The myth that the Founders wanted you to Vote
When this nation was founded, only white males who owned property were allowed to vote. Many of the men who ratified the Constitution would have been mortified at the notion that anyone in this country would be allowed to vote, simply by virtue of the fact that they happened to be born in this country or that they passed a citizenship test. The Republic was far too important, in their opinion, to allow people who had no financial real stake in it to vote, let alone women or non-whites. For this reason, polling was public, not private. They feared Democracy, they did not encourage it. Needless to say, we've come a long, long way from the Founders (though there is currently a movement afoot that ostensibly seeks to turn back the clock). Here's an excellent article on the history of voting in America: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/13/081013fa_fact_lepore#ixzz148ImKTBQ

I love the American Founders and I love to read them. I love the American Experiment that they started, and the framework they put in place. It was necessary for the Liberty that we now enjoy, but it was not necessarily sufficient. It took 150 years before women were allowed to vote. It took almost 200 years before black people were allowed to use the same toilets as whites. It took 42 Presidents before the man who represents a nation that will soon have a majority of non-whites was himself brown-skinned.

The myth that God blesses a moral nation
the notion that God will bless/curse a "nation" is only potentially applicable in the case of a "nation" that has a covenant with God. Deuteronomy is addressed to Israel, not to Egypt/Assyria/Babylon/Persia/Greece/Rome/etc.../America. Israel isn't "blessed" as a political entity, but as a covenantal community, just as Rome was not blessed because the church happened to be located within the Empire. The entire New Testament deals extensively with the difference between nationalism and community, and Jesus explicitly rejects nationalism as does Paul. Members of the community may be "blessed" as a result of their adherence to God's word, but the same principles that apply to the Church are not extended to the secular government (see Romans 13). The church may be blessed as a result of its faithfulness, but the church is universal. America will not be blessed in the same way that Israel/the Church are, however, nor will any of the nations where the church happens to be present. "My kingdom is not of this realm" and all that.

From what I can tell by reading the Bible, there were many nations who actually were "blessed" (meaning they were wealthy and powerful, of course). Did they have "moral fiber"? Were the several nations who overtook Israel, exiled them, and ruled over them "blessed"? From the perspective of Israel, certainly they were, since the Israelites would greatly have preferred to be in power rather than subject to it. Cyrus is referred to as God's "Annointed". Was this because of his "moral fiber" and the just laws he enacted, or was it because God simply chose him? I'm pretty sure it's the latter. The same goes for Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Xerxes, Alexander, and Caesar, to name a few, and if God's still in the business of choosing people, then of course Obama.

On a personal level, how do you explain the fact that "the wicked prosper" (Psalm 73)? It's often the case that "blessings" result from the opposite of "moral fiber", as the Psalmist laments, and as you see evidenced on a national level with all of Israel's overlords. We see today that China is on the rise. Is this because of their "moral fiber" or God's blessing? I doubt it.

Paul deals extensively with this issue in Romans 9, and it's worth a read and a re-read. It may seem like good business to train people to be "moral" so that their country will be blessed, but that notion is summarily dismissed by Paul, who goes so far as to point out that the Gentiles (non-believers and immoral) have achieved righteousness while Israel (believers with moral fiber) have not. Why? His answer? How dare you even ask?!? That's God's business, not yours. God's favor is not a Democracy. It's not an achievement. You don't get to vote for it. You are a pot, he is the potter, and he does whatever he wants to do with whomever he wants to do it.

How these myths shape American voting

Here is the majority opinion among American Christians, expressed in a syllogism:

God will bless us if we are Moral, just like he blessed the Founders.
Only those who are "pro-life" (with respect to fetuses) are moral.
.: Only Republicans are Moral

Somehow, the Republicans have successfully co-opted Christianity and it's largely due to the idea that only a "moral" nation will be blessed by God. Of course morality is tested by one issue (abortion) and only Christians are moral. So, if you want to be moral (i.e. Christian), you have to vote Republican, because only Republicans are "pro-life".

So, Christians for the last 40 years have voted Republican, even though Republicans have not (and can not) do a single thing about Roe v. Wade. We don't get to vote on Roe v. Wade, no matter how much we want to, yet Christians turn out in droves in an attempt to do just that, and no matter how many Republicans come and go, they never seem to notice that nobody's doing anything about Roe v. Wade because nobody CAN do anything about Roe v. Wade, unless they're a Supreme Court Justice. In an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, Christians uncritically vote Republican in the hopes that a justice will die, Republicans will pack the court, and Roe will somehow get a re-trial. It could be a million years before this happens, but no matter--we'll stock the court with "conservatives" who we think will re-try Roe. In the meantime, what they actually do is act in the best interests of Big Business, against the will of the people, against the very things Christians care about, but what is that compared to the possibility that someday, Roe v. Wade might come up again? And, no matter how many "Values Voter" Republicans are exposed as complete and total frauds, whether it's toe-tapping in the men's room or walking the "Appalachian Trail", to say nothing of launching wars of Imperial conquest or rigging our economy to favor the fabulously wealthy, nobody seems to care, so long as they can convince themselves that they've done the "moral" thing by voting Republican. No matter how much the Bible contradicts the idea of Nationalism, the temptation to convince one's self that they have done their Christian duty by voting Republican is far more alluring (and far safer) than the idea that one is an "alien" in this world and that one's true country is unseen and unknown.

So, in brief, no matter how much immorality Christians vote for in reality, it's nothing when compared to the morality that they've convinced themselves in their heads that they're supporting. The morality narrative has allowed Republicans to literally get away with murder for decades.

Jesus Disc

2010-09-27T14:51:00.001-04:00

a submission to Grand Rapids' ArtPrize 2010

The Christian Nation Lie

2010-09-16T23:30:00.007-04:00

Next time you hear that this is a Christian Nation, here's what Thomas Jefferson wrote in his memoir about the Virginia act for the establishment of Religious Freedom and how he rejected the notion that this would be a "Christian Nation" outright:

"Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, 'a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."

So, there you have it. This is, by design, a nation for all faiths, including incidentally Islam (a.k.a. Mohometans) and/or atheists. Build away, Park51--Jefferson invites you to do so, as does America.

This obvious and conclusive rejection of the Christian religion and Christ at our nation's founding comes, incidentally, from a section in which Jefferson repeatedly rejects Hebrew or Biblical law as a foundation for American law. So, the "Christian Nation" argument from that angle won't do, either, since Jefferson hasn't left that option open.

How sad that contemporary "spiritual" and moral leaders flat out lie about this. Sad and typical. It's not enough, apparently to have the freedom to worship as you see fit--apparently there's a large contingent of people who like to use this freedom to not only restrict the freedoms of others, but resort to bald-faces lying in order to do so. Thank God that Jefferson rejected Christ, and swayed the rest of the Convention to follow suit, as Timothy Dwight famously lamented. By doing so, he not only enshrined religious liberty and atheistic freedom as a core value of this would-be great land, but he was, as a corrolary, the Architect of the most devout nation of Christians on earth. It is because this is a Secular nation that it's Christians can flourish. Take away the protection of secularism, and you will destroy American Christianity. Whatever you do, though, don't lie to yourself or others about it.

Divine Right of Capital

2010-09-16T14:52:00.001-04:00

From now on, we should refer to Millionaires as "Dukes" and Billionaires as "Kings". Nothing has changed in 500 years, except for the successful branding of the monarchical class as self-made this or that. All the same oppression, abuse, and theivery exists, we just tolerate it because we don't have good names for them and we think if we work hard enough, we'll be just like them. We won't.

How is destroying intellectual property a form of free speech?

2010-09-15T14:23:00.000-04:00

So, if you burn me alive, that's a crime. If you destroy the equipment I'm using to try to communicate lawfully, that's a crime. If I'm driving around your town broadcasting my voice through a speaker mounted to my car, and you decide to trash my speaker so nobody can hear me, that's a crime. If you take a sledgehammer to my computer to stop me from blogging, that's a crime. If you burn my books, that's free speech. Why is that?

Burning, so far as I know, is not a derivative of speech. A book, however, most certainly is a form of speech. Therefore, destroying a book to silence the speech that it contains, seems to me like a textbook definition of an infringement on my right to free speech. You don't have to listen, meaning you don't have to buy my book or read it. But, if you destroy my intellectual property, if you destroy my words, solely in order to silence me, I'm at a loss to see how this is not infringing on my right to free speech.

I'm assuming that this has been decided by the Supreme Court, but I can't see how this makes any sense. If it hasn't been decided by the courts, then someone should take it there, and put an end to Nazi bonfires once and for all. No civil society should include burning of books--period. Let 'em die a natural death, unloved and unbought on a shelf somewhere, but don't kill 'em.

Burning Qurans today, Burning Suburbs tomorrow, Burning world the day after

2010-09-09T16:45:00.002-04:00

Lovely. The Religious Right is trying to provoke Armageddon because they think that Jesus will hit the "eject" button just as Mohammed's armies are surrounding their suburbs. And, the Republicans are only too happy to indulge them, because they want total domination of American politics, even if it means all they have left to rule is a little piece of charcoal where America used to be. As usual, normal people don't speak up.

Great. Sorry, kids. There won't be a world for you to grow up in, if these idiots get what they want.

Why 9-11 Should Not Be Commemorated

2010-09-08T21:46:00.001-04:00

I'm just going to come out and say it: my life on 9-12 was almost the same as my life on 9-11. The only difference, of course, is that, from 9-12 onward I was told that I was in a post-9-11 world. This meant, of course, that I was supposed to stay glued to the TV and to uncritically accept everything my President told me. I didn't buy it then, and I buy it a hell of a lot less now.

9-11 was Bush's blunder, like Katrina. It was not Pearl Harbor. I respect those who lost loved ones and those who sacrificed to help others, but I will never dignify Bush or Neocon Imperialism by commemorating 9-11. I'll leave the 9-12 mentality to the inhabitants of GlennBeckistan.

If you want to commemorate 9-11, spend time reading Chapter 6 of the 9-11 Commission Report, entitled "From Threat to Threat.". This is all that history should ever remember regarding this dark chapter in the history of incompetence and demagoguery, when abject stupidity created the first American dictator.

Before they were famous: Tea Party edition

2010-09-02T11:07:00.003-04:00

So, you've been hearing about the Tea Parties for a year, and all of their principles and the things they oppose, right? They hate "tyranny", and they think everyone else is under the spell of Obama, worshiping the "great leader" going along with anything he says, pledging their allegiance to him, and so on. And, they hate government spending, they hate the deficit, and so on. They hate "big government" and government overreach. They think we should focus on issues here at home, like illegals, and so on. And, of course, they see themselves as revolutionaries who relentlessly criticize the government and anyone who disagrees with them is just a shill for the Obama administration. And, of course, Glenn Beck is one of their heroes, and their leader, right?

So, what if we were to take a peek back into a time before Obama was on the scene. What if we were to meet with the Tea Partiers and their leader before they were screaming about these issues and waving Gadsden flags against tyranny. What if we could see what these people doing back before they were "revolutionaries". Well, thanks to the magic of the internet, we can do just that.

Before he was the self-appointed prophet and spiritual advisor to the "revolutionary" Tea Party he founded, Glenn Beck was actually a Bush administration cheerleader and government lackey. He organized a movement, not so different from his current movements, called the "Rally for America", where his fans would come out to show their support for the US Government and its intent to wage an illegal war against the people of Iraq. He did it with all of the over-the-top pomp and circumstance with which he does everything, only in this case, he wasn't being a revolutionary--he was getting the people to fall in line and support the divinely appointed great leader of the USA, George W. Bush, to sing his praises, to praise the flag, to pledge allegiance to Bush and all his goals.

And what was it that the Rally for America was supporting?

Uncritical allegiance to the US President:
Beck said of then President Bush, in a statement eerily inverse of his criticism of Obama "Presidents lead by highlighting what we all have in common: Hope". While Bush appears on the jumbotron, Beck explains that he is "here in heart", and says "I am so grateful to God in heaven that George Bush is our President." This kind of eerie leader-worship was common in the first Bush term, and it has served as the foil for all of the anti-Obama rhetoric that has come down the pike since. Beck and those like him implicitly assume, or cynically project, their own penchant to worship their heroes must be present in their opponents.

Government spending on a war that cost a Trillion Dollars
No sane person could ever believe that a country could wage a war without spending billions of dollars. This week, there's been a debate about which cost more--the stimulus or the Iraq war. While it shouldn't matter, since investment in domestic projects and economic stability shouldn't even be compared to investment in Imperial wars of conquest, I bring it up only because the Tea Party crowd is so vehemently opposed to the stimulus. Yet, the same people who oppose the stimulus came out in droves to support George Bush's trillion dollar war. Something doesn't quite add up. If your entire movement is based on being against "spending" in 2010, why were the very same people carrying the very same flags and wearing the very same red, white, and blue shirts at the rallies which guaranteed that the government would spend billions on war?

Big Government expansion
Supporting the war means supporting the increase of US influence abroad, the establishment of a US presence in foreign nations in perpetuity, the development of US bureaucratic apparatus in Iraq, etc. Therefore, a cheer for war is a cheer for big government. Anyone who actually opposes the expansion of government (like Ron Paul) would also logically oppose US interventions abroad (like Ron Paul). The Tea Party crowd and their leader gleefully supported Big Government when their Messianic leader, George Bush, and the cheerleader's cheerleader Glenn Beck were telling them to support it.

An Imperial war of conquest based on false pretenses, manufactured intelligence, propaganda, and purposeful misinformation
For someone who spends so much time scribbling connections and charges of subterfuge on to a chalkboard, Glenn Beck sure missed the boat on the Iraq war. While the entire US press, the Mainstream Media, and almost everyone else bought the Bush regime's propaganda and lies hook, line, and sinker, wouldn't you think that the conspiracy theorists would have had their antennae raised just a bit? But, no--Glenn Beck led the charge and castigated anyone who failed to give full, uncritical support to Bush, even while Bush was making up intelligence, and while things like the Downing Street memo were being written. Ironic, isn't it, that in one of the pictures below, a participant at a Rally for America proudly holds a sign saying "We Love Tony Blair. Thank U". If only Glenny had fired up his chalkboard back then, maybe all of this could have been avoided.

Propaganda on behalf of the sitting Administration
At the time of the Rally for America tour, Paul Krugman of the New York Times detailed the connections between the Bush Administration and Clear Channel, the corporation that broadcasts Glenn Beck's show. "Who has been organizing those pro-war rallies? The answer, it turns out, is that they are being promoted by key players in the radio industry — with close links to the Bush administration. " Krugman insinuated that these rallies had more in common with Nazi-era fascism than American Patriotism, accusations that infuriated Beck and which he repeatedly denied. In hindsight, I doubt that there are many people, even on the Right side of the aisle, that would dispute the fact that this nation became drunk on patriotism and that this intoxication was easily manipulated by the Bush regime. Nowadays, Glenn Beck is known for almost nothing as much as his penchant to accuse others of Nazi-style tactics. Thankfully, those of us who have the benefit of the internet are able to see the source of these charges. All Beck has to do is rewind the tape to the year 2003, remember what it was like to be Glenn Beck, and then turn and charge his opponents with the very things that Glenn Beck and the still unborn Tea Party were doing.

- For Glenn Beck quotes above and references, see Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
By Alexander Zaitchik

- Visit the Rally for America home page on Glenn Beck.com if you really want to see how absolutely insane the whole thing is.

Glenn Beck trains Christians to believe in Mormonism

2010-08-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

Mormonism is a cult, according to Christianity. For a list of reasons why, you can go to the site called "All About Cults" and read about why Mormonism is not a version of Christianity, but actually a Satanic cult. So, you would think that Christians would want to distance themselves from people who teach them to believe in Satan. But, you'd be wrong. At least when it comes to the curious case of Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck "University" features one of the pre-eminent Christian Fundamentalist propagandists in the last 50 years, David Barton of Wallbuilders. Most of the "Christian Nation" spin that you've ever heard has been championed by his organization. Barton recently had to go to great lengths to make excuses for his intimate alignment with Glenn Beck, and to convince his fundamentalist followers that Beck really is one of them.

So, if Beck just keeps to the general Jesus-talk or God language, no harm, no foul, right? One can assume that he can be a co-belligerent with the real Christians, as long as he doesn't go teaching them to believe in the Book of Mormon, which, according to Mormons supersedes the New and Old Testaments in almost exactly the way that the Quran does for Islam. (Remember, this is all happening at the same time that fundamentalist Christians are protesting the construction of Mosques and claiming that Faisal Rauf is a "terrorist", even while he's trying to call his fellow believers in the one God to pray together, right?) Well, last week, Glenn Beck devoted significant time on his TV show to teaching his disciples about some of the history of North America that had been covered up, including the "bat creek stone". Anyone familiar with Mormonism knows that the Book of Mormon claims that, after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to the North American Indians, who, in the Book of Mormon, were more advanced than the real Native Americans that we know from our history books.

So, here's Beck, on his program, talking about the Bat Creek Stone. You'll notice on the picture, that he tells his viewers to go to www.lostcivilizationdvd.com for more information, and you can watch the video here:

So, if you go to the Lost Civilization web site, you'll find that it is a site for a "documentary" that presents the evidence for the Book of Mormon, including the Bat Creek Stone, which Beck covered in his show:

And, who created the Lost Civilizations "documentary"? It turns out that it's a produced by the founder and president of the "Family First Foundation", a Mormon outfit, on whose website you'll find a link to the "Book of Mormon Evidence" site that also references both Glenn Beck and the Lost Civilizations "documentary".

More on the Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-25T10:41:00.000-04:00

This is my reply to Ibn Warraq's question posed on the Center For Inquiry's blog:
Yes, it is inconsistent to oppose Islam's attempts to silence critics on grounds that they offend Islamic sensibilities, then to turn around and oppose the building of a mosque on the same grounds. Just as it is inconsistent to oppose Islam--radical, moderate, or otherwise--while failing to simultaneously oppose Christianity and Judaism. Islam is no more and no less barbaric and violent than Christianity or Judaism, though, by my unofficial estimation, Christians and Jews will probably kill or torture more people today than Muslims will. The difference is that Christians and Jews do it "over there"--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, etc.--while Muslims are trying to bring the Crusade "over here". This, of course, is natural. If the any country had been beseiged by foreign, Imperial rule and exploited for generations, it would only be a matter of time before its people began to search for ways to attack not only the Imperial forces in their own country, but to go abroad and attack them on their own soil. I believe that this is akin to some of the statements that Imam Rauf has made, which get him labeled as an extremist. I don't care what he is, if he cites a fact, and it is a fact that "Osama Bin Lade was made in America" or whatever the statement was, the fact should stand on its own merits, regardless of who uttered it. If we fail to recognize that, we give further support to the far-Right, neoconservative myth that America is in a holy war with "terror", and that we must remain in perpetual fear and thus perpetual war, and of course only the far-Right is qualified to rule over us in these perilous times. Then, no sooner will they finish with the Muslims than they will turn and take aim at their other enemies, which incidentally, ranks "atheists" and "secular humanists" just after Muslims and just above homosexuals.

If someone wants to make a case that no religious edifices should be built anywhere ever, then that might be a case with some merit. But, to try to make a case that Islam is somehow especially barbaric and especially dangerous is to ignore the thousands of people who will die at the hands of Christians and Jews this week, and the millions who've been slaughtered this century, and so on. It's also to ignore the fact that in order for anyone to be free, everyone must be free, so you can't pick and choose which ideologies are allowed to prosper. If you don't want them coming to burn down your local CFI office tomorrow, you'd better not encourage them to stand in the way of this mosque today. Maybe 300 years from now, we'll live in a secular utopia, but until then, the freedom of any group is tied up with the freedom of every group.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly...Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Ground Zero Mosque Debate or Reason was the first casualty on 9/11

2010-08-18T10:22:00.000-04:00

Thoughts after reading Christopher Hitchens' take on the "Ground Zero Mosque" debate:

Beyond ridiculous discussions like this one, where we as a nation are actually having to deliberate about whether Muslims are protected under the First Amendment or if it only applies to Christians and Jews (who also slaughter lots of people), I also find this disturbing: Even Christopher Hitchens takes offense at statements that would be innocuous and pedestrian if not for the specter of 9/11. I have no use for Islam, but Feisal Abdul Rauf's statements in the wake of 9/11 weren't even out of the mainstream. The US does meddle in affairs that it has no right to meddle in, and such meddling has predictable outcome--the people whose countries are ruined because of our meddling will look for ways to get revenge. I think it's completely legitimate to say that "Osama Bin Laden was made in the USA". It's a damn shame that 9/11 has made us all so overly and unnecessarily sensitive and caused us to censor our ability to critically analyze US policy and Imperialism and the backlash that it creates, out of a warped sense of patriotism created by 9/11. That attack was wholly preventable, and entirely predictable (see Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror) and it's surprising that it didn't happen sooner. I'm surprised that it doesn't happen more often. I don't buy into any of the pre- and post-9/11 thinking. That entire mentality was created in an instant by a news media that seized on an opportunity to chain us to our televisions, and by an Administration that wanted to exploit our collective shock in order to go after agendas that were in the works for 7 years or more (see John J. Maresca's 1994 testimony to the House of Representatives on why the US needed to install a government in Kabul in order for Unocal to build its pipeline to the Caspian sea, and Dick Cheney's comments on how the Caspian Pipeline was the world's top energy priority.).

If terrorists are those who use acts of violence to turn public opinion, who fight a covert war and attack in ways that are sudden and unexpected, then the United States is as much a terrorist organization as any other. What happened on 9/11 was tragic and shocking, but if we allow our ability to reason and think clearly to be fundamentally altered by the events of 9/11, then "the terrorists have won." In this case, I'm speaking of the Terrorists in the Bush Administration and in the board rooms of the Oil companies. They had been gearing up for military action in Afghanistan for years. They had been looking for excuses to extract oil from Afghanistan and Iraq. 9/11 was like Christmas for them, since it transformed a dufus of a President who nobody had much use for into a towering figure of national machismo. The media and the public handed over their energies and their intellects to this man and his oil buddies, and we let them define the world for us and do with it as they wished. If we continue to suppress our ability to criticize the corporate owned and operated government out of a sense of patriotism and post-9/11 duty, the terrorists have won.

Patriotism can come in two forms: Loving one's country for what it is, and loving it enough to help it become what it should be. I feel a surge of patriotism when I think of those planes crashing into the towers, and it saddens me that my country had to suffer such shock and it makes me want to be a better American. But, I also feel a sense of patriotism when I think about my duty to rid this country of its Bushes and Cheneys, who create the circumstances under which we will inevitably be attacked and then exploit them to their own selfish ends. We should hear more about how 9/11 was the result of US foreign policy, not less. We should be mature enough and rational enough to hear it from those whose lives have been affected by our meddling, namely from Muslims.

The Memory Hole

2010-08-17T11:13:00.002-04:00

In case you're not already aware, here's a little secret: Everybody (Republicans especially) knows that Bush destroyed the country. That's why nobody would even mention his name in the 2008 elections, and he wasn't allowed to campaign for or endorse anybody. FOX knows that he is the monster that they created. In order to ensure that the world doesn't do what a sane version of the world would do, which is to unravel the ball of yarn that they spun for 8 years and start indicting people and holding FOX and the RNC accountable for all the havok they wreaked, here's what they did:

1. Re-brand the Republican cult as the "Tea Party". All the Bush era failures and policies can successfully be chalked up to "the establishment", while the same exact ideas can be passed off as "revolutionary".

2. Report the news from the last 8 years, about how the Constitution is being crapped on, about government over-reach and "tyranny", etc., only pretend that it's happening today, and pretend that Obama is the one doing it. It will seem true, because people will look around and notice that the world has gone to pot. They aren't smart enough to know that it happened progressively over the last decade (and really starting with Reagan), so they'll immediately attach their fear and frustration to whoever happens to be sitting in the Oval Office right now.

Why Is There Even a Discussion about saving teachers' jobs?

2010-08-12T14:32:00.002-04:00

Just imagine this for a minute--imagine a world where a person who makes shady deals trading fictional commodities that have been designed to dupe consumers into investing their pensions in things that are designed to fail--imagine if there was a world where such a person would make hundreds of millions of dollars, and, if their scheme didn't work, that the federal government would open the treasury assume all of their losses.Then, at the same time, imagine a world where the men and women who have devoted their lives to becoming educated professionals, deciding to give their time and energy and their lives to not only educating the children of this country, teaching them right from wrong, but also at times serving as surrogate parents and family, as a support system, and more--imagine that these people are routinely skimped on by the federal government, and demonized by "conservatives", have their budgets slashed, and live in fear that they'll receive a pink slip in their inbox after 25 years of work as a result of some political game playing in the legislature.

Wouldn't that be crazy, if such a world existed, where the cheaters and the morally bankrupt who serve no greater purpose to society than a dealer at a black-jack table serves, if these people were the wealthy and the ones who get "bailed out". Imagine if these glorified casino workers were pandered to by our government, especially our "conservatives". Yet, the people who exhaust themselves trying to represent everything that is good, who sacrifice their days and nights for the sake of the children of this country, get nothing more than a hot turd sandwich.

I could go on to mention the money spent on wars, or the BP fiasco, and so on. The point is that there's nothing "conservative" about any of this. It's radical. It's unconscionable. It's mind-blowing. Let's pretend that a teacher made $100 million a year. SO WHAT? Who in our society deserves to be paid more? A gambler (a.k.a. a broker)? Or someone who is doing a service to the community, to the future, and therefore the world? And, a "conservative" actually has the gall to publicly speak out against paying teachers, wanting to cut down on the number of teachers? Yet, the same "conservatives" will fight against reigning in the financial industry? Or will offer apologies to BP executives? Or will tell us that we need to go to war with Iran? Basically to throw money at any and every sector that they think will get them an immediate return on their investment, while refusing to invest one cent on what really matters.

It's things like this that make me feel like the human race isn't going to be around for very long. We love the things that destroy us, and we fight against the things that are good for us, and we call it being "conservative".

Church is like Bowling

2010-08-09T10:43:00.000-04:00

When I was a Christian, and a fundamentalist, it pained me to no end that the vast majority of my fellow Christians knew next to nothing about their faith or the Bible, and practiced even less of what they knew. I did a lot of work with youth groups, and what I always knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that there was nothing that could distinguish a Christian youth from a non-Christian one (besides a Jesus T-Shirt or Christian Rock band on their iPod). I would tell myself and them that this was evidence that the Bible was true, and that "there is none righteous. No, not one", but it was unnerving to see them doing exactly the same things that their non-Christian counterparts were doing, and sometimes to an even greater degree.

Now that I'm on the other side, I do a lot of hand-wringing about the political cohesion of the fundies, which is pretty remarkable (given the fact that they vote in lock-step then go back to church and claim that everyone else is going to hell), but I probably give them way more credit than they're due. I would hazard a guess that 9 out of 10 Christians have no knowledge of the Councils that gave them their scriptures, or any of the historical developments of their dogma, let alone any knowledge of the origin of the books of the Bible themselves. Beyond not knowing, there's not doing. Most of the Christians I knew were, to quote one of my old favorite Christian songs, "just as good, just as bad, and just as distracted", as anybody else.

Church, to most people, is like a bowling alley. You go, you bowl, you go home. You never read about the history of the place, the founders, let alone the history of the game you're playing, etc. It's recreational at best, and mostly just a way to kill time and have something to look forward to. We bowl, that's it. Why? Because we do. If you start thinking about why it is that you bowl, it's already over--the minute you start to think that way, you know you're already sick of bowling and want to do something else.

Logic, Proposition 8, and Crusaders

2010-08-08T23:32:00.001-04:00

Thanks be to god, after 2,000 years, common sense has finally trumped religious fear and bigotry, at least temporarily. I've said for some
time, on this very blog as a matter of fact, that religion forms the only basis upon which a society can discriminate against same sex unions. Actually, not just religion, but fundamentalist misguided religion, to be exact. So, when the courts struck down Prop. 8 citing this very (obvious) fact, I was pleased to see common sense on display in a nation almost completely bereft of it. Not to worry, however, it wasn't long before the Fundies came out to defend their don't-look-at-me-I-really-really-really-am-not-gay-no-matter-how-much-I-obsess-about-my-wardrobe marriages from the encroaching homo hordes.

Tony Perkins if the Family Research Council had the (not gay) balls to say on national TV that the judge in the case should have recused himself because he is a practicing homosexual. Let's just break down the logic here: a person who practices a particular lifestyle is unfit to adjudicate cases that affect the ability of themselves or others to practice said lifestyle. Hmmm. Sounds like it makes sense. Until you think about it and apply it to, well, anything else.

What about Christian judges? What might they have to recuse themselves from? Forget the occasional skirmishes over the Ten Commandments or Creationism--what about cases involving marriage, of any kind, since marriage, apparently belongs to (not gay) Christians, since their God made it. By using Perkins' criteria, in cases like this one, a judge is incapable of making judgments based on logic and law or of authoring opinions that must be weighed on their own merits according to their fidelity to the Constitution. They will instead just root formtheirnside to win. But don't Christian judges decide cases about marriage and other things Christians care about? Won't their opinions on anything that might affect Christians likewise necessarily be considered suspect if offered, but, truly, they should never be offered, since they should rightfully recuse themselves from any case involving or affecting Christians. Meaning, by Tony Perkins' criteria, Christian lawyers should effectively be prohibited in the United States. Of course, using his criteria, the same holds true for lawyers who breathe oxygen. Besides, this tortured logic onlynappliesmto gay people, not Christians, since gay people can't possibly think clearly or behave competently enough to do anything that normal (Christian) people do. All gay people think about is being gay. In that respect, they're just like Tony Perkins and the FRC.

Juxtapose this with the equally absurd litigious endeavor of Pat Robertson's group, which is attempting to block the construction of the Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero, and you get a feel for just how repulsive and hypocritical the Fundamentalist logic really is. Let's just pretend that the fact that some members of a religion decided to kill some people was a sufficient reason to disqualify other members of the same religion from building religious facilities near places where people were killed by the aforementioned members of said religion. Where in God's name would you build your churches? Is there any place in the Western Hemisphere where some Christian at some time didn't decide to kill somebody? Where would you send your missionaries? If this logic were carried out, there would be no place on earth eligible for a Christian ground-breaking ceremony, besides maybe Antarctica.

The arrogance, the relativism, the complete lack of reflective thought and basic reasoning, and the abject hypocrisy is stunning and grotesque. John Locke (a Christian) was right in his Letter Converning Toleration, which is the foundational text for the American principle of the separation of church and state--Christians must be protected from Christians in order for Christianity to exist. If the prominent voices of Christianity in America had their way, the logical conclusion would be to ban Christians from public life and to outlaw Christianity. Not that this would necessarily bran bad thing, but it's not at all what the Perkinses and Robertsons of the world intend. They just want to hate gay people and Muslims, but they never want their own draconian rationale to be applied to their own deviance or fundamentalist sectarian bullshit.

Antichrist? Look in the mirror...

2010-07-29T10:30:00.006-04:00

This video of "Doctor" Tim LaHaye (of the Left Behind series fame) talking about Barack Obama ushering in the end times gives me an opportunity to reiterate the "you hate what you are" truism regarding Fundamentalists.

As always, with Fundamentalists, you can count on one thing: They accuse the "other" of what they are most guilty of themselves. They claim that people "worship" Obama, and that's part of why they think he's the anti-Christ. (Remember that McCain/Palin ad calling Obama "the One", which is code for calling him the Antichrist according to the Left Behind series?) But, the truth is, they're just projecting their own tendency to worship their heroes on to the rest of the world, ignoring the fact that the outside world isn't part of their group because it isn't interested in demagoguery and hero worship.

Here's what they did when Bush was President (from the film Jesus Camp):

Also, here's what they do today with regard to "Christian" leaders like Sarah Palin. Here's a random quote from here Facebook page:

"You, Sarah Palin, represent and live this Truth and Liberty, and that is what they hate most. They can't do anything else but to try to destroy you and what you represent.... God is with you along with millions of Americans."

Then there's Glenn Beck. He's hugely influential among Fundamentalist Christians (the same crowd that's always on the lookout for False Prophets and anti-Christs). Here's just one out of a million instances of this--Q90 FM, a Christian Radio station, had supported a concert called LifeFest for over a decade. Upon learning that Jim Wallis, a fellow Evangelical and founder of Sojourners, was invited to speak, Q90 FM decided to boycott the event. Why? Because Jim Wallis had been publicly critical of Glenn Beck's campaign against "social justice" in Churches. Glenn Beck was calling on all church-goers to walk out of their churches if the pastor spoke about "social justice" because Beck equated it with "Marxism", rather than equating it with what it actually is, namely "Christianity". (I think it would be impossible to speak about the Bible without speaking about social justice, but, that's just because I, unlike Glenn Beck, know a lot about the Bible. But I digress...) You can read about the little dust-up here, where a Christian Radio station actually followed Glenn Beck and tried to oust a fellow Evangelical and trampled the clear message of the entire Bible underfoot because Beck cried "Socialism".

So, how is it that they follow his every word as though it's gospel, yet Beck is a member of a cult or a heresy? He's a Mormon for Christ sakes. You don't get much more "false prophet" than that.

So, while Fundamentalists throw the charge of Antichrist around, let's just review:

It was common to speak of Bush in quasi-Messianic terms, and he was elected twice because Fundamentalists believed he was God's man.
Check the comments on Sarah Palin's facebook page at any given moment, and you will see clear evidence of hero worship that borders on the idolatrous.
Glenn Beck is a member of a cult that is inimical to Christianity, he is a heretic, and quite literally a "false prophet" and an "antichrist" by Christian standards, given that he holds sway over the minds of millions and exposes them to false teachings that support Mormonism.

So, who's the antichrist? Fundamentalist, look no further than the mirror to see the mark of the beast written all over your face. The rest of the world isn't even playing this game with you, yet you're constantly charging them with the very things you are most guilty of yourself.

UPDATE: I came across this piece of typical Bush-era propaganda, cooked up by Fundamentalists and the GOP. It's so over the top that it requires that I assure you that it was not produced by the Onion, or the Daily show. There could scarcely be a more idolatrous, worshipful piece of Christian fiction. George W. Bush is painted with a halo so bright that perhaps only King David or Jesus Christ himself could claim to be more pious and beloved of God than this man. Or is he a man? Is he the son of God? I don't know, he is something special though, according to the fundies who made this tribute and passed it out at the 2000 Republican National Convention and aired it on TBN.

So, why are the fundies claiming that people worship Obama? Because they all worshiped Bush, as you can plainly see here. Why do they claim that Obama is not a Christian? Because, when compared to George Bush, nobody is a Christian. He was apparently the most faithful, faithiest, faith-based President to ever have faith, to paraphrase Sean Hannity:

Tax and Spend

2010-07-28T16:53:00.004-04:00

So, to apply my axiom, that whatever dogmatic conservatives claim to be true must, of necessity, in reality be false, I've taken the liberty of combining a couple of charts on Taxing and Spending. Everyone's heard the old conservative saws about taxing and spending and how evil they are, both individually and together. "Tax and spend" is virtually a conservative swear word reserved for the worst of the worst Liberals. It's so ubiquitous that it almost sounds convincing, and sounds like something that any good liberal should be ashamed to be associated with. Well, it just so happened that this morning I came across a FactCheck.org article that was disputing some claims made by Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. I have no use for Geithner, but one thing that caught my eye in the article was a figure they cited regarding government spending in the year 1945, which was the last year of WWII. That year was the previous high in government spending on record, when government spending was 41.9% of GDP. Big deal, right?

Well, it also happens that conservatives have a truism about World War II, and how it is what brought us out of the Great Depression. This is such an accepted maxim that it's often one of the subtexts for any and every war that the US has gotten itself involved in since WWII. The reasoning goes that, while there may be some reasons for opposing war, heck--we all know that this will be good for the economy, since WWII got us out of the Great Depression. Add to this the general attitude that conservatives typically take with regard to the Leave it to Beaver era of the 50's, when America really was America, when people were prosperous, where women stayed home to raise a family and an honest day's work got you your house, cars, vacation, retirement, and so on. So, WWII got us out of the Depression, and the 50's were the good old days right? And, as we all know, taxing and spending is the quickest way to kill the economy, right?

Oh, and another thing--Reagan proved that cutting taxes will result in "trickle down" wealth that will help the middle and working class, right?

Check this out:

This chart is an overlay of the US Income Tax Rate on top of Government Spending as a percentage of GDP, taken from here and here. Now, I'm no economist, so I could be way off here, but... One thing I have learned is that American conservatives live in a parallel, bizarro-world universe, where the truth is always the opposite of what they believe. So, even without any research, if conservatives tell you that "taxing and spending" kills the economy, you can pretty much take it to the bank that, in the real universe, taxing and spending boosts the economy. But, if you don't think that's sufficient, what do you notice about the charts above?

Here are a few highlights:

The tax rate (the line) is low and intersects with the spending % (blue field) right around 1930, and then not again until the 1980s. The Great Depression began around 1929, and some would say that the current collapse is the result of neo-Liberal economics (a.k.a. Reaganomics, or neo-Conservatism).
The Wars that the US is most proud of winning (WWI and WWII) were accompanied by huge tax hikes and huge boosts in government spending. The same has not been true of any wars since then (and I don't believe the US has unequivocally won a war since WWII).
The year in which both taxes and spending were highest was 1945--the year that ended the Depression, and the year we won the war.
Taxes and spending remained high throughout the "Leave it to Beaver" era of American prosperity. This is the era in Americana that most people look back to as the glory days, when one income was enough to raise a family, take a vacation every year, and retire.
Taxes begin to come down during the Carter era, which was characterized by the crisis of confidence and an economic "malaise".
Ground zero happens with Reagan, when falling taxes intersect rising spending.
Currently, the gap between taxes and spending is as high as at any point since 1900.

Oh, and by the way, what happens if we also factor in unemployment? I overlaid the Unemployment Rate during the depression era on to the chart above (purple and yellow line):

Notice how unemployment takes a nose dive, just as federal spending skyrockets, right around 1941. Unemployment shoots up in 1930, as does the tax rate. But, unemployment only comes down when both Taxing and Spending are high. If someone knows of a good argument for why it's bad for people to be employed and to enjoy what is almost universally regarded as the highest standard of living in our nation's history, I'd love to hear it. If someone can explain to me why the point in our history that is acclaimed by conservatives as a high point in America's national identity, when we won the War and pulled ourselves out of the Great Depression is also, God forbid, the time when taxing and spending was also at an all time high, I'd like to hear that, too.

I could be way off. If I thought I was way off, I wouldn't have wasted my time writing this. But, could it be that taxing and spending is actually a sound way to ensure the highest standard of living for the majority of Americans? Could it be that the anti-tax and spend propaganda that went into full force in the Reagan years was intended to strip away the security that Americans had enjoyed in the post-War era (when taxing and spending was highest) in favor of a return to the pre-Depression era of the robber barons and the Gilded Age, when inequality was highest but didn't matter to the rich? Could it be that Big Business figured out that the economic practices that are in the best interest of the majority of Americans, which secure the highest standard of living for the greatest number of people, are antithetical to the goals of Big Business? If everyone has a decent job, a good wage, and a measure of security, who will work at and eat the food from McDonald's? And, McDonald's, of course, is just the archetype for the American Corporation, with its franchises, its assembly-line approach to everything, its disposable workers and disposable products that thrive on the working poor while also contributing to their undoing.

I could be wrong. Here's an article from Business Insider that, along with the charts I've mashed up above, seems to indicate that I'm not. I know enough to know that conservatives and Republicans are the enemies of prosperity for the middle and working class, with or without charts to prove it. But, I think there's plenty of empirical evidence out there to substantiate the axiom that each and every conservative truism is the opposite of the truth. If a conservative tells you that taxing ans spending are bad then they are, of necessity, good.

So, how about a little taxing and spending? Why not try it? It was good enough for Leave it to Beaver, why not see if it works for us?

I won't hold my breath.

Jesus Christ MovieStar or even Jesus isn't Jesus (pt. 2)

2010-07-23T11:17:00.000-04:00

It is dubious at best to talk of a Jesus who existed, or a “historical Jesus”. Whether or not there ever was such a figure has become an irrelevant and obsolete question. Regardless of whether there was an individual known as “Yeshua/Joshua/Jesus” in the 1st century, we can know some things for certain:

1. Every anecdotal story about him or “act” that he performs in the pages of the Gospels is a re-write of a prior Old Testament story. Believing that these stories or “acts” are things that actually took place requires that one believe that a person named “Joshua” re-enacted all of the events of the Old Testament in his lifetime. He is called out to the desert (Israel/Isaiah ch. 40), he is tempted (Israel/Adam), he crosses the Jordan river (Joshua), nearly all of his miracles come either from the life of Elijah, or from Psalm 107 (see my blog post on this at http://aprioriblues.blogspot.com/2009/12/our-daily-brood-on-gospels.html).
The entirety of the Gospels could be re-constructed from the Old Testament, and therefore an “historical” figure known as “Joshua” the Messiah isn’t even necessary.

2. All of the items that I cited above against the historicity of a “real” or “historical” Jesus make the question doubly irrelevant in light of the fact that all of these elements are present in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and are ascribed to a different “Joshua”, who was also the Messiah. Only, he came a century before our “historical” Jesus did. He was known as the “Teacher of Righteousness”, and was a latter-day Joshua leading the Essenes to the desert (per Isaiah 40 and the Joshua myth in Judges). He baptized his followers and celebrated a sacred meal in which the Messiah blessed the bread and the cup. He was betrayed by one of his closest associates, and even the same Psalm was cited as a prophecy that he would be betrayed (Psalm 49:1). The Servant Songs of Isaiah were ascribed to him, as they were to Jesus, and he was considered to be divine. His followers expected that he would come again. All of this was before the “historical Jesus”, who, in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is a wholly redundant figure.

So, not only do we have the fact that the Old Testament contains the entire “biography” of Jesus, which was cobbled together by re-writing the favorite bits of it and re-contextualizing it into the 1st century milieu, but, even if that were not enough to make the idea of a “historical Jesus” dubious and obsolete, we have the fact that the community at Qumran believe in and worshiped a figure who is indistinguishable from the 1st century “Joshua/Jesus”, only they did so 100 years or so before he allegedly came to earth.
This simply stretches credulity too far. And, I’ve only scratched the surface, because we could also delve into the various Hellenistic myths that are wrapped up in Jesus, in particular the poetic death on the Cross, which is a Judaization of the death of Socrates by hemlock. You have the “tree of Life” and “cursed is every man who hangs on a tree” at play in the Cross. With Socrates, who called writing a “drug”, you have the “drug” hemlock used as a poetic death of the great teacher who lives on in the writing. (See Jacques Derrida’s essay “Plato’s Pharmacy”)

So, I don’t think there’s any Jesus to be found. Though the process of looking is well worth the trouble, since it will take you around the world and through all time, as you survey all the myths of civilization that have been gathered into one quasi-historical figure’s “biography”.

Jesus Christ MovieStar or even Jesus isn't Jesus

2010-07-20T10:44:00.002-04:00

From a comment I left on Killing the Buddha's article on a Jesus movie.

The thing about Jesus is that we only ever see him through a medium that's like a movie. Consider a movie about Jesus, or any other historical figure or event. The filmmaker chooses from the stock of traditional and well known material, selects the bits that fit the purpose of the film, recasts other bits, and shapes the tradition in such a way that it conveys the story that the filmmaker wants to tell. The film says as much about the filmmaker and his audience as it does about the subject matter. The same goes for all four gospels.

The Jesus traditions were anywhere from 50 to 100 years old by the time the gospel writers got to work creating their writings. Each one has a different emphasis, and in the case of John, a different Jesus. Not only that, but very little (if any) of the parts of the gospels that purport to be "acts" of Jesus (healings, resurrections, exorcisms, etc.), can possibly be considered historical. Each and every one of them is a re-telling of an Old Testament myth. It would be as if one were to make a movie in 2010 about a politically astute kid named Georgie Washington, and to have him chopping down a cherry tree in the first act of the film. Everyone would know that he was re-enacting what the first George Washington allegedly did. Nearly every episode in the gospels is something of this kind. Jesus is Elijah 2.0, or Joshua 2.0, or Moses 2.0, or Israel 2.0 and so on.

So, the point is this: The Gospels themselves are already blasphemy, if you consider a stylized re-casting of the original to be blasphemy. Better yet, the Gospels are what I like to call "verbal iconography". When one looks at an icon, one knows that it's not a realistic portrait, but a symbolic one. The color of the robes, the posture, the setting, all have symbolic meaning. The same goes for the gospels. They are not biographies, and one does not come anywhere near a "real" Jesus or an historical one. At best, one is watching a film. Some of the films are a bit dry (Matthew, Mark, Luke), and one of them is esoteric and avante garde (John). Non-canonical gospels are wacky. But just as we are conscious of the fact that Jim Caviezel is not actually Jesus, we should always remember that even Jesus is not actually Jesus. The Jesus of the gospels is the star of a film, or the subject of an icon. He is not to be confused with the real thing.

Suicide Bombers without the Suicide

2010-07-19T14:50:00.004-04:00

I was thinking the other day about how dirty suicide bombers are, blowing themselves up in places where people least expect it, with no warning, without giving people a chance at a fair fight or even escape. I was thinking that it had to be the lowest, most despicable way to kill people, or to wage "war". Then I thought, "what's the difference between a suicide bomber and an unmanned drone?" Nothing, except that one's the poor man's way to fight an unwinnable war, and the other is a billion-dollar equivalent of a suicide bomber.

Surprise! You and your wedding party are dead.

From Ted Rall

UPDATE: Perhaps 1/3 of the persons killed by drones are civilians.

A Thought on Global Warming

2010-07-16T10:56:00.001-04:00

From: http://teapartyjesus.tumblr.com/post/801989481

Denying global warming is a simple denial of the principle of cause and effect. It's equivalent to pretending that millions of gallons of oil could spew out of a pipe in the ocean, but would never wash up on shore. The atmosphere is like an ocean, only, on earth, we have billions and billions of pipes that are spewing toxins. Regardless of the specific effect, or the degree of the effect, it's insane to deny that there is, and will be, an effect.

Denial is the chorus of the same people who cried "Drill, Baby, Drill!" and assured us that offshore drilling is safe, while the reality-based community preferred to exercise caution, and perhaps, just maybe, begin to take a bit of "personal responsibility" for our pollution and our consumption, so that "our children and grandchildren" aren't burdened by our "debt". Funny, personal responsibility and concern for future generations gets invoked when it benefits the rich (by cutting services for the poor), but not when it might cost the rich a few bucks (by cutting back on fossil fuels, changing emission standards, investing in new businesses rather than subsidizing entrenched ones, etc., etc.) If I didn't know better, I'd think these people didn't care about "personal responsibility", or "future generations" at all, and that they were cynically using those appeals to get people to do what's best for the wealthy.

It's also not surprising that the denialist position is appealing to the same demographic that believes that, any day now, they will all fly up into the sky at the Rapture. As though the law of gravity is just a temporary stop-gap measure for God to keep us stuck to the ground until he's ready to send his Son to gather all the good boys and girls up to heaven. If you don't believe in cause and effect when it comes to your cosmology and eschatology, why would you believe in it when it comes to "personal responsibility"?

A Wager with Myself, or so I can say I told you so.

2010-07-15T14:33:00.004-04:00

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is one of the leading voices of the Christian revival of fascism in the United States. For the past several days or weeks (who cares, really), he has been including posts on his blog Focal Point which quote from the Psalms entitled "Daily Prayer".

Given the fact that Bryan Fischer is in the running for "Most Evil Man in America", I'm going to level a little wager with myself. I'm betting that he thinks he's clever, and that he can indulge his sadistic, murderous fantasies, while using the cover of godly, Bible-based prayerfulness. I'm betting that on August 4th, Bryan Fischer's Daily Prayer will include Psalm 109:8, which is the verse that Fundamentalists have been gleefully "praying" against Barack Obama. I think that Bryan Fischer is so evil that he intends to land on this verse on August 4th, because, of course, August 4th is none other than the birthday of our esteemed Presidetn, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama.

Here's a quote from Psalm 109, starting in verse 8, which I'm betting will be included in Fischer's Daily Prayer on August 4th. I hope nobody lets the evil Mr. Fischer know that I'm watching him and that I'm on to his little sadistic fantasy.

Psalm 109:

8 Let his days be few;
Let another take his office.

9 Let his children be fatherless
And his wife a widow.

10 Let his children wander about and beg;
And let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes.

11 Let the creditor seize all that he has,
And let strangers plunder the product of his labor.

12 Let there be none to extend lovingkindness to him,
Nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children.

13 Let his posterity be cut off;
In a following generation let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
And do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15 Let them be before the LORD continually,
That He may cut off their memory from the earth;

What do you say? Any takers.

UPDATE: as of 7/16 (the day after I wrote this) Bryan Fischer jumped over to the book of Nehemiah. I'm not going to say Bryan Fischer is reading my blog, but hey--If you are reading B-Fish, why not drop us a line? I'd love to know what one of the most evil men in America thinks of my blog!

UPDATE: In case you're wondering about the chances of whether a semi-famous blogger would routinely Google themselves to see if anyone's picking up their stories or criticizing them, I'll just offer this piece from Matt Taibbi, which is about this very thing: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/152095/83512

In Taibbi's piece, the writer in question picked up on someone's criticism of their work in about 3 hours. Fischer may have done so in 24. Also, Google has settings that allow you to receive nitifications when your search criteria gets new results. Wouldn't this be perfect for a sadistic, egomaniacal, professional liar like Bryan Fischer?

Separation of Church and ... Democrats

2010-07-08T16:01:00.005-04:00

This is a response to an article in Jeff Sharlet's blog, The Revealer, entitled "Jim Wallis, Between a Wall and Glenn Beck":

Jim Wallis is an Evangelical leader who tacks to the left a bit. He seems like a decent guy, and his Sojourners group supports the kinds of issues that sane people would support. The best thing about him is that Glenn Beck hates him, which, in itself, is sufficient evidence that you're a pretty good guy. Jim Wallis is a Christian. So, why is a Christian Rock station, which has sponsored a Christian Music event for over a decade, pulling out of said event, just because Jim Wallis has been invited? Because, of course, they apparently believe in the separation of Church and State. Well, that's not quite it. What they believe in is the separation of Church and Democrats.

The idea that a Christian radio station is concerned with the ill effects of mingling religion and government is so cynical and disingenuous that it's almost incomprehensible. This act of protest against Jim Wallis comes from a station that also has this little ditty on their homepage:

"Our founding fathers sensed the need for a 'Call 2 Fall' in view of the monumental struggle we were engaged in with Britain. The First Continental Congress called for a day of public fasting and prayer throughout the Colonies on July 20th, 1775 just after war broke out."

--This is not the kind of sentiment expressed by an organization that's concerned with the wall of separation. Note also that this radio station partners with the Family Research Council in its "Call 2 Fall" day of (political) prayer and (Republican) repentance.

The truth is that Christians are involved in politics because of their delusional belief that America is a Christian Nation and our laws are based on the Bible. The truth is that Q90 opposes Jim Wallis because Q90 is completely under the spell of Glenn Beck, who recently launched his "University" of propaganda, which he named "Faith, Hope, and Charity". You know, from 1 Corinthians 13. Not from the Constitution. Not the kind of stuff a person concerned with "separation" would call their political propaganda "University". David Barton, who is Glenn Beck's "Professor" of Faith at the new Glenn Beck University online, spends all of his time arming Evangelicals with evidence that the Deist / Freethinking Founders, were actually Bible-believing Christians. Separation of Church and State couldn't be farther from the real agenda here. The truth is that they want a Separation of Church and Democrats. They believe that Democrats are from Satan and Republicans from God. When they refer to a "slippery slope", what they're referring to is a Nazi-style collusion between the satanic state and the churches, and as Beck brainwashes them, a Marxist agenda for redistribution of wealth.

They want the wall of separation to be torn down. Just not by a Democrat or by a semi-liberal Evangelical like Jim Wallis. George W. Bush was elected twice because he was an Evangelical and a Republican. Jim Wallis, an Evangelical Democrat, isn't welcome to appear at a Christian music festival. Q90's statement explicitly says, "we believe the social justice message and agenda they promote is a seed of secular humanism, seeking an unholy alliance between the Church and Government." When Bush (Republican) makes the alliance, it's holy. Same with Sarah Palin (Republican), and Michele Bachmann (Republican), and, of course Glenn Beck (Republican pretending to be subversive). Jim Wallis? Not so much.

Secular Humanism, in Evangelical propaganda (dating back to Francis Schaeffer) is a code-word for Nazism. It's ironic that, only in this context, will Christians implicitly own up to the fact that the Churches were in league with the Nazis, but only because it serves their purpose here. In other contexts, they spend all their energy trying to prove that German was "pagan", Hitler was a "Darwinist" and an "atheist". That is, a "secular humanist".

Also, if you wonder if Glenn Beck is behind this, wonder no more. Just read, as they quote from him in their statement: "The movement in our nation toward the forced redistribution of wealth through taxation ensures this—when the government controls where the money goes, freedom to express the gospel of Jesus Christ will eventually be eliminated legally...."

I'm all about separation of Church and State. I just don't like hypocrisy. Q90 doesn't believe in separation, nor does Glenn "I'm on a mission from God" Beck.

Helen Thomas: Not only correct, but a victim of racism.

2010-06-08T15:11:00.001-04:00

Here's a transcript of Helen Thomas' comments, which led to near unanimous condemnation from the left and the right. Ari Fleisher insinuated that she called for "religious cleansing". Jon Stewart dedicated a segment to mocking her. Media Matters for America called for her to be punished by the White House Press Corps.

See her comments below:

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: Any advice for these young people over here for starting out in the press corps?

HELEN THOMAS: Go for it. You’ll never be unhappy. You’ll always keep people informed. And you’ll always keep learning. The greatest thing of the profession is never stop learning.

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: Today they’re covering the Jewish Heritage Month. Any—

HELEN THOMAS: Are they going to meet the President?

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: Yeah, and any comments on Israel? We’re asking everybody today. Any comments on Israel?

HELEN THOMAS: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: Ooh, any better comments than that?

UNIDENTIFIED: Helen is blunt.

HELEN THOMAS: Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, and it’s not Poland.

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: So where should they go? What should they do?

HELEN THOMAS: They could go home.

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: Where is their home?

HELEN THOMAS: Poland, Germany—

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: So the Jews—you’re saying Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?

HELEN THOMAS: —and America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries? See?

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: Now, are you familiar with the history of that region and what took place?

HELEN THOMAS: Very much. I’m of Arab background.

RABBI DAVID NESENOFF: I see.

What's wrong with this? Thomas was referring to "settlers". These people. People who immigrate to Israel under the law of "return", in which ANY person of Jewish descent from any part of the world can take up residence in Israel, and turn around and expel Palestinian residents at gunpoint.

So, why the uproar? Because of her last statement: "I'm of Arab background." Nothing she said was inaccurate or any different from what Israeli Peace Activists haven't said a million times before. The difference is that she admitted to being an Arab, and that was her unforgivable sin. Anything else she might have said will be skewed or dismissed on the basis of this one fact, that she admitted to being an Arab.

For the record, the State of Israel demands to be recognized explicitly as a "Jewish State". Therefore, any reference to the State of Israel must at least imply a reference to "Jews" according to Israel's official stance (which is contrary to reason and is a purposeful obstacle to peace, since Muslims would have to effectively renounce their own ... See Morerights to be in Israel as a pre-condition to any peace agreement). Therefore, any criticism of official Israeli state policy is, by this twisted logic, "anti-Semitic", since criticism of Israel the government is criticism of a "Jewish State' and therefore criticism of "Jews".

Now, the truth is, a person actually can criticize a government without criticizing the religion or ethnicity that many of the governed happen to ascribe to, which is what Helen Thomas was doing. But, Israel has purposely made it so that any negative talk about Israel must be deemed anti-Semitism. It gives them carte blanche to do as they please and to never have to be accountable, since any amount of criticism will, by design, open the person who is critical up to charges of anti-Semitism and will bring up the spectre of the Holocaust, and so on. Again, see the example of Helen Thomas.

It's ridiculous. Intelligent people should refuse to play by such ridiculous and propagandistic rules. Maybe the loss of Helen Thomas (and the slaughter of humanitarians who try to reach the concentration camp in Gaza, which is no longer even talked about since Helen Thomas' miscue), will wake the world up to this obviously juvenile and manipulative trap that Israel has set.

Anti-Socialism = Anti-Semitism? Only sometimes...

2010-06-04T14:30:00.001-04:00

"Marxism, Socialism, or Communism in practice are nothing but state-capitalism and rule by a privileged minority, exercising despotic and total control over a majority having virtually no property or legal rights. As is discussed elsewhere herein, Talmudic Judaism is the progenitor of modem Communism and Marxist collectivism as it is now applied to a billion or more of the world's population. ... Socialism is indeed merely the clover held in front of the cow's nose to get her into the barn under the milking machine. It is a mechanism whereby a 'human' can lead a whole non-human herd into the Jewish controlled barn." --Elizabeth Dilling

According to noted anti-Socialist Glenn Beck, one of noted anti-Semite Dilling's books shows that "McCarthy was absolutely right," and he lauded it for exposing the unions as havens for communists.

What's the connection? Just paranoia, ignorance, and bigotry, which exist in equal measure among anti-Socialists and anti-Semites, and not infrequently by persons who belonging equally in both categories.

Israel: What the US can/will look like in the future

2010-06-02T10:22:00.003-04:00

If you wonder what the U.S. could look like in a few years, have a look at Israel. A neo-con apartheid state with giant walls on the border, where everyone who disagrees with the right-wing government is considered a "terrorist", and where religious zeal can justify any amount of injustice.

It's like a giant Tea Party.

Think I'm exaggerating? Read this:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/06/02/fnc-notes-gaza-bound-flotilla-s-links-terrorists-mob-chanted-death-je
and this:
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/02/israel-global-jihad-linked-to-flotilla/
and, of course, this:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/ritual-terrorism-hating-obama-as-a-new-form-of-religion-1.284916

Of course, in order for the US to look like Israel, the right-wing, fascist-leaning, Tea Party uprising will have to succeed. That remains to be seen, but there are some disturbing trends that point in this direction. Israel is, and long has been, a virtual laboratory where the US can test anti-terrorist, anti-immigrant weapons and policies. Why do you think Israel's allowed to get away with killing and maiming US citizens, and is exempted by the US from adherence to international law? Because, of course, it would not be kosher for the US to test its weapons and policies on its own citizens, so we need a place where we can try out new innovations on real people and real situations. So, we have Israel, the "holy land".

"There is a sickness that has to be addressed."

2010-06-01T15:28:00.000-04:00

Watch the Video:
Global Condemnation of Israeli Armed Attack on Gaza-Bound Freedom Flotilla: At Least 10 Dead, Hundreds Remain in Detention

Ali Abunimah's passionate appeal (From the Transcript):

And so, what the Freedom Flotilla was, was it was a peaceful, unarmed people’s navy, assembled to fill the void and the vacuum where the Obama administration should be, where the UN Security Council should be, where the Arab governments should be, where the European Union should be. And it is a shocking outrage and a crime that will live in infamy, along with the bombing of the King David Hotel, along with the attack on the USS Liberty, along with so many other appalling crimes, that international humanitarian workers bringing aid were attacked on the high seas.

I spoke to you a few months ago when I was in Cairo with the Gaza Freedom March. By now, people have tried to reach Gaza to break the siege by land. They have tried by sea. And they have lost their lives. They have given their lives in the cause of breaking this siege on Gaza. And we have to ask, we have to ask, for what crime are 1.5 million people in Gaza being held prisoner? There is a museum in Berlin, which I visited as a schoolboy, to those who were killed trying to cross, those who were machine-gunned trying to cross over the Berlin Wall. Well, an unknown number of people, because Israel won’t tell us, were machine-gunned for trying to break this blockade. When will there be accountability? And when will the Obama administration stop this outrageous complicity, this enabling, this acting as an accomplice with these crimes against people in Palestine and now against Americans, Turks, Greeks, Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Swedes, French people, German people, members of Parliament, doctors, retired people, trying to bring medicine to people in Gaza? That our government has not stood up and condemned this in the clearest possible terms is a sign that something is sick in the United States’ system when it comes to speaking about and dealing with Israel. There is a sickness that has to be addressed.

Another One Bites the Dust: Mark Souder joins the "you hate what you are" file.

2010-05-18T11:28:00.000-04:00

Family Values politician, a 93 out of 100 on the Family Research Council's "Vote Smart" scale, resigns. Why? He screws his employees, of course.

Souder was among 41 House members who supported the Family Research Council's national effort to encourage the public posting of the Ten Commandments.

His official bio page (soon to be taken down I'm sure) mentions his faith several times, and even mentions the church he attends.

Just more proof that, among the fundamentalists and especially the Family Values types, given sufficient time, the probability that they will become embroiled in a perverse sexual scandal equals 1. Why is that? "You hate what you are", of course.

Glenn Beck: from the "You Hate What you Are" file...

2010-05-17T12:39:00.001-04:00

Glen Beck is an attention-obsessed crack-pot. Sane people everywhere know this. Stupid people love his show, as do Christian Nationalist zealots. But, even these numbers are dwindling, thankfully. I just want to offer up a little juxtaposition of clips from his show (and these are just from today--I could do this every day if I wanted to waste the time) in which Beck proves the truth of my maxim about fundamentalists. You hate what you are. See how Beck demonstrates that, while he tries to fabricate connections between the Obama Administration/Progressives and Chairman Mao's ideology that he is only implicating himself. Who reads Mao? Really? I read lots of Liberal and Progressive stuff, and I've never come across anything or anyone that recommends that I go out and read Mao's Little Red Book. In fact, the only person I've ever heard talking about Mao is Glenn Beck. And he's the only person I've ever seen on my TV who is quoting Mao.

Check this out. Beck accuses the Obama Administration of worshiping Mao.

So, let's get this straight-- Glenn Beck suggests that we dismantle the entire US Government, jettison the Obama Administration, and rebuild a nation from scratch. While doing so, he accuses the President, whom Progressives are growing more fed up with by the day due to his centrist positions and his constant pandering to Republicans, as a "Marxist revolutionary". So, while basically defining the word revolution in his own recommendation for the country, Beck accuses the President of being the revolutionary?

And, all of this was in response to the video below. Beck was filmed at an NRA rally not only quoting Mao, but recommending that a bunch of resentful, gun-obsessed hillbillies put his words into practice:

So, let's recap. Here's how it works, and it works this way every time. Whatever you are accusing the "other" of, you are actually guilty of yourself. You say the other is a revolutionary, but you do so while advocating the overthrow of the US Government (See the Tea Party for further examples.) You accuse the other of worshiping Mao, yet at a rally, you tell a bunch of gun lovers that Mao's words are true and they should heed them by threatening the government and their fellow citizens with their guns. (See the Tea Party for further examples.)

Perhaps at one point, Glenn Beck heard something about an Obama Administration appointee who said Mao was her "favorite philosopher" (which was probably a tongue-in-cheek comment), ever since he began to fixate on that, he has been reading lots of Mao himself. The same exact thing is true of Saul Alinsky. Beck thinks Obama loves Saul Alinsky (because Alinski was apparently an early Community Organizer). So, Beck spends all his free time reading Alinsky. So, the only person here who is obsessed with Mao and Saul Alinsky is Glenn Beck.

Beyond the fundamental ignorance and naivete that Beck displays, due to the fact that he thinks that reading a book somehow taints a person's soul and turns them into a zombie or a "worshiper" who can only due as the author or "philsopher" bids, here's the point--Beck, fundamentalist that he is, hates what he himself is. He thinks he's hating Progressives by hating these men. In reality, he just hates himself.

The Great Evangelical Gaycation: You hate what you Are

2010-05-07T13:58:00.001-04:00

Since I came out of Evangelicalism a few years ago, a certain truism has been drilled into me through my interactions with persons of this religious persuasion: Whatever it is that you accuse the "other" of doing is the very thing that you are most guilty of yourself. Take any one of the Religious Right's pet peeves, and scratch beneath the surface, and you'll find that whatever they hate, they are. Let me say this again, though if you've ever read my blog or spoken to me about any issue you'll have heard me say it before: They hate what they are. In fact, I believe this goes beyond application to the religious bigots of the world and applies to you and me and everyone in between. We hate what we are. To bring the point close to home and to prove that I'm not being hypocritical, I'll apply it to myself--I get so bent out of shape by religious zealots because I used to be one. Maybe I still am one, I just no longer have a religion to hang my hat on, so I spend my time looking critically at the camp that I used to want to lead, back when I was still able to convince myself that what I believed in made sense. In fact, one of the primary forces that drove me, kicking and screaming, from the ranks of the Christian Soldiers was the fact that I found myself surrounded by the nauseating contradiction that is Evangelicalism. Every sermon, every conference, every "Day of _____", every movement, was just another instance of the foundational fact that we hate what we are. Take the major bugaboos of American Evangelicalism and apply this principle and what will you find?

Abortion:
Given the inordinate amount of attention that Evangelicals pay to the issue of abortion (which, so far as I can tell, nobody actually enjoys), you would think that the Church would, for the most part, be free from the practice of actually aborting fetuses. Right? Well, not if you apply the axiom I stated above. In fact, Protestants and Evangelicals account for roughly 40% of all abortions in the United States. But I thought that they stood against the so-called "culture of death" that the evil atheists want to be free to practice? Not so. Protestant abortions outnumber those of persons with no religious affiliation almost two to one, even though persons with no religion, so we are told, have no reason for not having abortions. So, why is it that Evangelicals are so obsessed with the issue of abortion? I submit that it's because so many of them are getting abortions, and so many feel guilty about the abortions that they have had or are having or will have that they project their guilt on to others and turn self-loathing into anger at "the world" (i.e. the out group or "other"). If the Church stopped getting abortions, there would be a 40% reduction in the number of fetuses that die each year. Think about that--what other political or ideological movement could solve nearly half of the problem that they oppose if only their own members would practice what they preach? To cut abortions by almost half, all the church has to do is stop getting abortions. Of course, that's easier said than done. Because, while Evangelical "ethics" demand that they stand up for the rights of the "unborn", at the same time, no other group in society has the suffocating stigma attached to a child born out of wedlock. So, it's a classic catch-22, and one that, more often than not, results in the choice to abort rather than suffer the shame of bearing a child before God has matched you up with the one he's chosen for you. So, what are you to do as an Evangelical? Why, of course, you hate what you are, and you take to the streets to condemn the world for what you are most guilty of yourself.

Homosexuality:
Chances are, if you listen closely enough to the pastor or preacher or parachurch leader who is speaking most passionately against the homosexual lifestyle, you'll notice something peculiar. They have a lisp. Or should I say, lithp. OK, so not all of them, but if you listen, you'll notice that many of them do. But, even if you don't consider that rather juvenile and unsophisticated criteria to be valid, think about this: Evangelical masculine culture is enamored with effeminate expressions of emotion. It always has been. I'm thinking of course about the Gospel of John and how John, the disciple whom Jesus "loved", used to recline on Jesus' breast. There was even a tradition in which Jesus was apparently gay, or at least had what appeared to be a romantic relationship with the mysterious boy who ran off naked from the Garden of Gethsemanae at Jesus' arrest. See Clement of Alexandria's letter to Theodore on the subject. Of course, that tradition, which even the venerable Apostolic Father Clement did not disparage, nevertheless did not make its way into the orthodox tradition. Still, the effeminate and the homoerotic abound in Evangelical culture. Crying, hugging, hand-holding, and the like are the stuff of the men's retreat, and the Christian life is considered a "Sacred Romance". A huge portion of the Evangelical devotional culture is little more than a Christianization of a harlequin romance novel in which Jesus is the Fabio-like stud and you (the man) are "the bride of Christ" waiting to be swept off your feet into his rapturous embrace.

Time to Gloat:
So, now for my long-awaited, grand pronouncement of "I told you so." I have, on many occasions, tried to reason with the members of the Family Research Council regarding my "you hate what you are" axiom. My approach was usually cordial (though I was always insulted and even occasionally threatened by the followers of gentle Jesus). Most often, the approach I would take would be to recommend that the Evangelicals simply follow their own Scriptures. While I never uttered a curse word, nor engaged in the abusive language that either was directed at me and my family by members of the FRC, nor did I make crude or inappropriate comments as many other belligerents were making on the FRC's Facebook wall, I was eventually blocked from offering my comments. And for what? Because I said things like this:
Jesus was a friend of sinners. He spent time with the prostitutes, loved the Tax Collectors (I'm looking at you Tea Party), and never tried to shame people into obedience. In fact, he focused all of his criticism on "the Church" of his day (the Pharisees) and the believers or chosen people, who allegedly were supposed to know better. He didn't go after the government or the secular culture of his day--the only time he became violent was when he threw the moneychangers out of the Temple (or times, since he apparently either did it twice or John's account contradicts the Synoptics, but I digress).

My sour grapes about not being able to gloat on the FRC's Facebook wall aside, it should come at no surprise, and actually ought to be expected that, this week, one of the founders of the Family Research Council, Dr. George Rekers, and one of the leading voices against homosexuality coming from the Evangelical camp has been exposed after hiring a male sex slave from rentboy.com to accompany him on a great gaycation to Europe. In fact, if my axiom were a mathematical formula, and you worked the whole thing out, the solution would read something like this: "Therefore, the founder of the FRC must, of necessity, be gay himself, and will someday be exposed as a closeted homosexual, and a perverted one at that." This is how the formula works when applied to Jimmy Swaggart, to Ted Haggard, and to so many "Family Values" politicians that it's not even fun to count any more, and this is obviously how it will work, nay must work for any and every Evangelical who condemns a certain lifestyle or culture. You hate what you are. You obsess about abortion? Must be because you've had one. You obsess about pornography? Must be because you're addicted to it. You accuse "liberals" of hating America? You must secretly fantasize about treason and sedition. Last, but by no means least, you obsess about the "homosexual agenda"? Why you must have an agenda yourself, and one that includes purchasing the services of a man whore from rentboy.com for your European gaycation. You hate what you are.

This is what's known in Evangelical circles as a "testimony", though in the real world it's know as "hypocrisy". On any given Sunday, you will here the following testimony from a teary-eyed convert: I know that abortions are evil because I have had one. I know that pornography is from the devil, because my wife left me because I was addicted to it. I know the homosexual agenda is evil, because I used to be gay. It never even occurs to such persons that what they consider to be divine certainty is little more than an allergic reaction to their own conscience. It never even crosses their collective minds that this is the definition of relativism, not the antidote to it.

Now, to apply the axiom to the entire system of Evangelicalism globally, which fancies itself as some kind of superior ethic and a last bastion of resistance against the encroaching relativism that threatens us all, I'd like to offer up this little gem, which comes from the FRCs statement in response to the Rekers rentboy.com scandal:

"While we are extremely disappointed when any Christian leader engages in the very activities that they 'preach' against, it is not surprising. The Scriptures clearly teach the fallen nature of all people. We each have a choice to act upon that nature or accept the forgiveness offered by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and do our best to ensure our actions, both public and private, match our professed positions."

Allow me to translate what the FRC is trying to say here. In essence, they're saying "What did you expect?" Now, they're saying this because they think that this failure just confirms the wisdom of the Biblical worldview in which "no one is righteous. No, not one", and that all are saved by the glory of God. Well, isn't that just the essence of convenience, especially if you're the kind of "sinner saved by grace" who likes to purchase man whores on occasion and to somehow use your abject dismissal of your own principles as a way to further your own credibility, rather than destroying it. At its "wild" heart, Evangelicalism is a supremely relativistic philosophy, and one in which accountability and responsibility are, of necessity, excluded from the outset. It has been carefully crafted over the millenia by men and women (mostly men...and some men who like to behave like women) to achieve two contradictory purposes: to both convince its adherents that they are supremely righteous and therefore superior to all other groups, while simultaneously excusing its adherents from even the grossest and most perversely unjust actions. The priest is chaste and celibate. The priest also likes to rape little children, particularly little boys. The pastor is a man of God, a moral bulwark in the culture war. The pastor also sexually harassed the secretary which led to the church learning about his sexual encounters with several women who met with him for prayer. "What did you expect? He's just a sinner saved by grace. His actions only prove that God is wise and the Bible is true." Evangelicalism is like a moral black hole, where responsibility collapses in on itself due to the inescapable gravitational pull of hypocrisy. It will ever and always continue to do this, because this is what it was designed to do. This is how our minds work--we hate what we are, and we project this hatred on to others. We also know what we are, and we know what we've done, and so we need a way to convince ourselves that we're not as bad as our actions and memories might tell us we are. We also know what we want to do, so we need to find a way to have our moral cake and eat a little beefcake on the side, too.

Let me conclude by channeling the Apostle Paul for a moment. There is no one righteous, not even one. But, thanks be to God that we have been called to condemn the other for being unrighteous and to present ourselves as gloriously obedient to a higher moral standard. Thanks be to God that we that, through Christ, can both condemn the sin that we see in others, while furtively enjoying gobs and gobs of it ourselves. What shall we say then? If the founder of the FRC condemns the homosexual agenda in others, yet rents a sex slave for a European gaycation himself, is he to blame? May it never be! For, if the one who boasts about his own righteousness shall be found to be gay himself, is he to blame? Never. For we know that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, so what do you expect? And yet, conveniently, through Christ, brethren, ye are perfect, as He is perfect. There is no one accountable. Not even one.

There's a Ghost in our Basement (Part 1)

2010-05-06T11:17:00.007-04:00

The spirit of the former owner of our house still walks through our basement at night. At least, if you ask my wife he does. You see, many years ago, the owner of our house took his own life. At least he tried to. As a result, his life is forever intertwined with the place where he suffered his great loss. In his house, in his basement. In our basement. According to my wife.

He was a kindly old man who loved to work with his hands and to build things. Most of all he loved children. He would spend hours in his workshop in the basement, dreaming up little improvements for the house he loved, our house. The evidence of his handiwork is all around, from the neat little built-in shelves in the bedroom, to contraptions for stowing appliances and pots away in the kitchen. The spirit of the former owner of our house is tangible even today. But home improvement was not his only hobby, and not his favorite. What the former owner of our house loved most of was to use his hands to build toys for the little boys and girls in the neighborhood.

Throughout his working life, he dreamed of the day when he would finally retire and be able to devote all of his time to toymaking. That is, until one fateful day when his dreams were shattered. After a life of working and waiting, just as he earned his long-awaited retirement, the former owner of our house was diagnosed with glaucoma. Now, instead of spending his waning years doing what he loved most and making children happy, the former owner of our house began to find it increasingly difficult to build anything in his workshop. His eyesight began to fail him, and it wasn't long before his glaucoma completely stole the sight in his left eye, leaving him with a right eye that could still see but only barely. Try as he might to work on his toys, with but one dim eye remaining, the work was increasingly difficult and discouraging. To add insult to injury, beyond stealing his sight, his glaucoma required a medication that may have temporarily staved off blindness in his right eye, but at the cost of a deep, dark depression as a side effect. The loss of sight and the weight of depression proved to be more than he could bear.

One afternoon,when his wife headed out to the grocery store, the former owner of our house walked down to his workshop in the basement with his pistol in his hand. Through his remaining eye, he surveyed his workbench, saw the unfinished toys that he would never be able to give to his grandchildren or to the kids in the neighborhood. Life was bitter and cruel and without the ability to do what he loved, the former owner of our house decided that it was no longer worth living. He raised the pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. The unfinished toys on his workbench were the last thing he ever saw.

A moment later, one thought began to ring in his mind, replacing the ringing in his ears from the shot he fired into his own head. "I want to live!" Miraculously, the bullet traveled through his skull without killing him, but instead took a more ironic path. It severed the connections to his right eye, and took with it the sight that remained, and as it left his face, it made him horribly disfigured. Lying blind in a pool of his own blood, with a giant hole in his face, he somehow found the wherewithal to crawl out of his workshop and up the stairs to the kitchen, where he once again lost consciousness. His wife returned shortly thereafter from the grocery store to find a terrible surprise. Her husband was inexplicably laying prostrate at the top of the stairs with a hole in his face. The paramedics came and took him away. He survived.

He lived out the rest of his days as a blind man, incapable of building anything, and without the inclination to even try. Instead of being the nice old man who worked away in his shop building toys, he became the neighborhood bogeyman. He was the blind old man with one wandering, whitish eye on the left side of his face, and with horrible scars on the right. The children of the neighborhood would no longer ask him for toys or stop by to see his latest creation, but would instead run when they past by his house. That is, until our neighbors moved in.

As a young couple, our neighbors bought their first house together and moved in with their little baby girl. They soon became acquainted with the former owner's wife, and through her got to know him over the coming months. Blind and disfigured as he was, he maintained his will to live, and tried to keep his spirits up as best he could. He would hear our neighbors come and go and loved to listen to their little baby girl as she would coo and cry. One afternoon, the neighbors had an emergency and came banging on the front door looking for the former owner's wife, so that she could watch the baby while they tended to the situation. He made his way to the door and told the neighbors that his wife was away and that he was very sorry that they weren't able to help. The situation being urgent, and knowing that the blind old man was no bogeyman, but was a dear, tender-hearted, sad old man who loved children, the neighbors decided to leave their baby girl with him and to go. As she handed over her baby girl, our neighbor saw tears well up in the former owner's remaining eye. "You're leaving her with me?" he managed to say, choking back a sob. "Yes. I know she's in good hands," said our neighbor. And off she went to his eternal delight.

When his wife returned home she once again found a great surprise. Her husband was sitting on the couch with an enormous grin on his disfigured face, his remaining eye glowing with pride. He clutched the little baby girl closely in his arms. He was so glad that he lived, if only so that he could be here for this one moment, to help this baby girl when she needed someone, anyone, and he couldn't believe that it was him.

In his remaining years, he used to sit in a chair in his yard, in our yard, and feel the sun and the wind on his face, while he listened to that little baby girl growing and playing in the yard next door. He was a good babysitter, and he would be trusted frequently to take care of her, and she was never afraid of him. One day he died, peacefully, and not by his own hand.

He lives on, to this day, in our house, in his house. The pain of his loss keeps him in his workshop in the basement, but only in the dark, as he lived his most painful years in the dark. There are times when he retraces those steps, through the place where his workshop was, up the basement stairs, into the kitchen. But only at night, and only in the dark. He still loves little children.

He still lives here. But only at night, and only in the dark. At least, if you ask my wife, he does.
_____________________________________

NOTE: This story, whose details are true, is intended as a foil for a larger point that I wish to make about belief in Part 2. There is no actual ghost in my basement or anywhere else. I also mean no disrespect to my wife whatsoever. If I allow myself to think about the details of the story, especially when I'm standing in the basement at night, I'll start to feel the hairs on my neck stand up. So, I can completely empathize with the feeling that he's still there in the basement. I'll talk more about this in the next installment.

Biblical Inerrancy Quiz Show

2010-04-26T16:21:00.000-04:00

This is a really great little piece by NonStampCollector. It's worth watching for the full 10 minutes:

For further reading see:

The Jesus Nobody Ever Knew

2010-04-15T11:19:00.009-04:00

This cover story of this month's issue of Christianity Today, whose subtitle is "A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction", is called "The Jesus We'll Never Know." This title is playing off the title of a popular book by Christianity Today reporter Phillip Yancey, called The Jesus I Never Knew, which was a quaint, devotional little book about "meeting Jesus again for the first time" and all that happy stuff. Yancey's book was one of dozens if not hundreds of books from the popular devotional genre written in the guise of objectivity or journalism or science, but intended to do nothing more than prop up the existing, Evangelical/Fundamentalist ideas about "the Historical Jesus", and why it really, really, really is rational to believe that a human being walked on water that wasn't frozen, made wine without grapes, or woke up none the worse for wear after being brain dead for three days. I belabor the point about Yancey's book here because it has a lot to say not only about this month's article by Scot McKnight, but about the Historical Jesus / Jesus of Faith issue in general. It should be noted that the Yancey book on Jesus is like all devotional books or writings about Jesus, including the Gospels: It is first of all an artifact that was produced by a person who previously decided to devote their life to the worship of a being that they had never seen or interacted with in person. Yancey's exposure to Jesus came 2,000 years after that of the Gospel writers', but it is essentially identical to it--it is a religious feeling and it is based upon a tradition of the religious feelings of others just like himself. In addition to this, and in a way that is crucial for anyone who wants to actually study Jesus rather than worship him solely while rejecting any rational or scientific inquiry about him, Yancey's book about Jesus is like the first books about Jesus in a way that is critical for us to understand: It is a lie. It is a book that is intentionally misleading, and one that hijacks the reader's confidence by purporting to be a factual, objective, "journalistic" account of Jesus, when, truth be told, it is anything but that.

When the Gospels were written (or rather compiled from several pre-existing sources), journalism did not exist, and historiography was new to the cultural scene. In place of objective reportage, ancient peoples were accustomed to reading books that were written in the guise of objectivity, but were nothing more than the religious imaginations of the author or, even worse, their religious delusions. The ancient market was saturated with tales that were allegedly written by Moses, or one of the Patriarchs, or any of the Old Testament characters, and on and on, so ancient readers didn't even bother to consider whether or not they were being lied to when they picked up a book (or a scroll, as the case may be). The practice was so ubiquitous that we cannot even question whether or not the people of that time actually believed that Solomon wrote the Wisdom of Solomon (in Greek, Solomon was a Hebrew), because such a distinction would never have occurred to them. In fact, it took about 1,500 years after Christ for someone to begin to think critically about this issue, as Baruch Spinoza famously, and thankfully, began to do.

Almost all books that were circulated in Ancient world were religious, and almost all (in fact, probably all) of these books were pseudepigraphical or pseudonymous. That means, when we get right down to it, they were lies. When someone writes a novel and pretends to be someone else, like when Samuel Clemens pretends to be Mark Twain pretending to be Huck Finn, we don't call it lying--we call it art. That's because Mr. Clemens isn't asking us to commit our eternal destiny to the dictates of young Mr. Finn. But, when someone does this with a piece of religious fiction and then expects their audience to actually believe that the book written by Joe Shlomo was actually written by Enoch, we have no choice but to call it lying. Of course "we" in this case can only refer to those of us who understand that the Book of Enoch, which was written in Greek, could not have been written by Enoch, who only appears in the Hebrew Bible, and who does so at a time before either the Greek or Hebrew languages would have existed, to say nothing of the invention of writing. The Ancients didn't seem to trouble themselves much about the obvious. By extension, "we" in this case also refers to those of us who understand that the Gospel of Mark could not be an "eyewitness" or historically reliable account of Jesus, since even if it was written by Mark (it wasn't) it wouldn't matter anyway, because Mark wasn't even there during Jesus' ministry, and so, at best, he's passing on second hand information. But, of course, he's not, and even calling the author "he" demonstrates our propensity to see ancient texts the way that we see modern texts, that is, as having an author. Most ancient texts evolved out of communities, so when they finally came to be compiled and committed to writing, they may have actually had dozens or hundreds of "authors" as traditions passed from one person to another until they became crystallized and standardized enough to warrant the waste of ink and paper involved in writing them down. This isn't a skeptical opinion of the Gospels, it's just how it was--ancient manuscripts didn't even have titles, and it was several generations before anyone even thought to propose titles for them. Any modern day notions we have about "who" "wrote" "the" "Gospels" only shows that we are a culture that has authors (rather than communities that transmit stories and sayings), whose authors have access to writing materials and can afford to write things down (as most Ancients did not), who also happen to be literate (as most Ancients were not), who see books as completed artifacts that are self contained (rather than repositories of communal wisdom that is constantly evolving), and who who think the Gospels were the four books written about Jesus (rather than the four selected by a 4th century church council out of the dozens, if not hundreds, that were circulating at the time).

Now, to have some idea of what it might have been like to be alive in the first and second centuries AD, where religious people were making stuff up about Jesus, then attributing it to him, then writing it down and passing it off as though first of all He said and did it, and second of all You need to follow it, we need look no further than the Phillip Yancey's or Lee Strobel's or Josh McDowell's of the world. People do this today--they sit down at their desk in their Church or Parachurch Ministry office and pretend as though they are journalists or lawyers. They then proceed to write a devotional book about how you should worship Jesus, but they pretend as though they are writing an objective, scientific account of "the Historical Jesus". It's a tradition as old as the Gospels themselves, and even older. It's your job to understand that they are lying.

So, after that long excursion, I want to return to this month's article "The Jesus We'll Never Know", because, while it's intention is to convince Christians that the Historical Jesus research of the last 500 years has all been for naught, and that Jesus is just too ineffible to be caught and pinned down by scientific research, if you read closely you'll see that the article, and the entire Evangelical edifice surrounding Jesus, actually subverts itself. For one, in the introduction Scot McKnight mentions the fact that he has his students take a personality test in his Jesus course. First, they fill it out and describe what they think Jesus' personality is. Then, they fill it out and describe themselves. Lo, and behold, the tests show that people think Jesus is just like them. Of course, if you knew anything about what I said in the previous paragraphs, you would have expected this. This is what people have always done with Jesus, and with all of their religious icons. They created them in their own image, and then, once they were finished, they worshiped the image they created and expected others to do the same. For Evangelicals, who are desperate to find rationale for the patently false things that they believe in, an exercise like the one McKnight describes, which demonstrates this fact beyond a shadow of a doubt, some kind of spin is in order. What do you do when you realize that your own prejudice and preconceived ideas betray you? Why, you claim that this is what everyone is doing, of course. You, a supremely relativistic person, who discovers the fact that Jesus is just a reflection of yourself, turn to level the charge against the world--that the world is relativistic, and that anyone who says that they have any degree of understanding or knowledge is only doing what you are doing, which is spouting relativistic nonsense. So, when a scholar has successfully demonstrated that the Gospels are obviously cobbled together from pre-existing sources, and that almost none of the available material can reliably be traced back to an actual, Historical Jesus, what do you do, if you're an Evangelical? You claim that they are just creating Jesus in their own image. You claim that those whose understanding of Jesus is based on evidence and fact are simply skeptics, so naturally they are skeptical about Jesus. You are shy, so you think Jesus is shy. They are skeptics, so they are skeptical about the evidence of Jesus. More to the point--you are lying about Jesus, lying to yourself about Jesus, lying to yourself about the obvious fact that you've created Jesus in your own image, so you charge those who don't indulge in your lie with being liars themselves. Brilliant.

In addition to starting his article off by admitting that believers in Jesus are lying themselves and are creating Jesus in their own image, McKnight goes on to admit what everybody already knows--that there is not a shred of reliable evidence for the historicity of the Jesus character in the gospels. No, not one. His title says as much, and he mentions that he has even passed up appointments to academic committees devoted to historical Jesus research because of this fact. But, again, some spin is in order. Rather than being content to leave it at that, to mention that there is no evidence and probably never will be, McKnight has to continue to find a place to lay blame. So, to him, it's not that there's no reliable, incontrovertible evidence. It's that the scholarly field of historical Jesus research is so hopelessly prejudiced toward non belief that nothing can be accomplished, so why even bother. Since he's committed to believing that there really, really was a resurrection and an empty tomb, even though there's no evidence, he's turning his back on the entire project, since nobody who is serious about historical Jesus research is willing to play along. He's taking his ball and going home, because he doesn't think that anyone else is playing fair, but only because they're not treating an impossible event as history.

I can feel McKnight's pain, having gone through this process myself. I once "was blind" with respect to faith in Jesus. And, then "I saw", and I believed in Him wholeheartedly. I experienced him in the pages of the Bible. I knew the resurrection was a reality, because I felt it in my heart, and saw it in my own life. But, then, I realized, that what I considered "sight" with respect to faith in Jesus, was just an alternate form of "blindness" with respect to reality. In fact, it was the inversion of reality in favor of my own, private facts, and was a way of re-making reality into the image that I wanted it to be. In my own image. Just like Jesus. I decided first that the empty tomb was real, and no matter what, I was going to cling to that. There was a time in my own life when I could have said exactly what McKnight says here, though, now, I recognize that this is just the admission of one's own sad, pathetic, purposeful lie:

I think I can establish that the tomb was empty and that resurrection is the best explanation for the empty tomb. But one thing the historical method cannot prove is that Jesus died for our sins for our justification. At some point, historical methods run out of steam and energy. Historical Jesus studies cannot get us to the point where the Holy Spirit and the church can take us. I know that once I was blind and that I can now see. I know that historical methods did not give me sight. They can't. Faith cannot be completely based on what the historian can prove. The quest for the real Jesus, through long and painful paths, has proven that much. and was raised

Not to be overly congratulatory of myself, but it took all the moral courage I could muster to turn my back on sentiments like these, after I had come to the end of the road of my own Quest for the Historical Jesus. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, and yet, at the same time, I feel obligated to share it with everyone in the world. Texts about Jesus are the same as texts about Huck Finn. They are art, and they are written by people pretending to be someone that they are not. If there was a Church of of the Holy Huckleberry Finn, you and I would be the first ones to tell the worshipers that it was just a story, and to show them the evidence, so that they could get on with their lives. Otherwise, good people, and I would consider myself a good person, might fall prey to the fiction, and might end up devoting their lives to worshiping and serving Huck, which would be a serious problem. It's one thing to have a favorite book. It's another to have a Bible.

The problem here, for Mr. McKnight, is that no one could establish that the "tomb was empty". There are many empty tombs in Palestine, but, to my knowledge, not even the Church can make up its mind about which one belonged to Jesus. If Jesus were actually raised, you would think that somebody would have considered it a significant enough event to make a note as to which tomb he came out of, but alas, nobody did. That's not sufficient evidence against the resurrection, just against the notion that we can ever hope to identify the empty tomb. Unless Jesus' DNA is found on the wall, we'll never be able to do such a thing, and too bad for us that he flew away, because we'll never be able to find any of his DNA. Even if such a thing as the resurrection had actually happened in Jesus' case (in a special way not to be confused with the thousands of Ancient myths about resurrection that are not considered historical by the church), what would it matter from the perspective of historical inquiry? History could no more tell us where lightning may have struck at a particular moment 2,000 years ago than it can tell us if or where a miracle may have taken place. Actually, there may be a way that science could account for all occurrences of lightning throughout all history, since lightning can be measured. But how do you measure a miracle? Scientific inquiry regarding miracles would be the equivalent of trying to scientifically establish one breath that one person in one place at one time exhaled 2,000 years ago. Whatever it was that resuscitated a dead man after three days, however, could not be measured, and therefore cannot be a part of historical or scientific inquiry. Anomalies or singularities--things that happen once and obey no laws of physics or reason--cannot be a part of scientific, rational inquiry, and therefore have no place in scientific disciplines.

Whether such a singularity should be considered factual, therefore, should be based on all the other available data surrounded the case in question. As it stands, all of the data surrounding the historicity of Jesus points in the opposite direction of faith. What we know about the ancient world tells us ancient communities were just like modern ones--they liked to create their gods and heroes in their own image. All that we know about the ancient world tells us that creating stories about miracles, resurrections, and the like was the norm, not the exception, and we routinely cast off any such story that's not about someone called Jesus. What we know about Jesus' day is the same thing we know about our own--that people like to lie to themselves and then to turn around and foist their lies on to others. And why shouldn't they? These lies have always been popular, they've always sold books, they've always been handy ways for their purveyors to make a living, to get a cushy appointment or sinecure. It takes a lot of courage to admit the lie to oneself. It's always easier to try to turn the tables and claim that everyone else is lying.

The truth, in the case of Historical Jesus research, is this, and it's what everyone who believes in Jesus already knows deep down in their hearts. There is no evidence. In fact, there is little evidence that the Jesus character in the gospels was actually even a real person. But, the evidence that we do have makes the discussion about a Historical Jesus obsolete. All of the writings about Jesus are demonstrably mythological. Everything that might shed light on who he was can be shown to be in the same vein as the Book of Enoch, which is to say that it's all Pseudepigraphical, Apocryphal, religious re-casting of pre-existing Jewish mythology. There's no use referring to the Gospels, since they're in the same genre as the Book of Enoch, and you would never consider referring to the Book of Enoch for information about "the Historical Enoch". Therefore, given this fact, and this is now an established fact that is open to everyone who decides to take time out of their busy schedule and study it, as they would study any other fact like Gravity or the structure of cells or the human genome, McKnight and others who are of the Evangelical Conviction persuasion, have no choice but to either change sides, or to retreat from the field of Historical Jesus studies. There is simply, and quite literally, nothing there for them to study. While he's quick to spin and place blame, McKnight admits as much at the end of his article. He then proceeds to bring closure by doing at the end what he described his students as doing in the beginning. In the absence of evidence, after all efforts to find the Jesus of the gospels in the real world have failed, McKnight openly states that he prefers the Jesus that lives inside his own head to the one that may or may not have ever lived in history. The Jesus that lives inside your head can be known, and he is familiar, because he is just like you. The alternative to him is the one that nobody ever knew.

Biblical Literacy: The antidote to the Bible

2010-04-14T12:22:00.002-04:00

Last night, while trying to fall asleep, I watched Dan Dennett's TED talk in which he offered a rebuttal to Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. I'll reproduce the video below, and it's certainly worth watching, but what I want to focus on is the one call to action that he issues in his talk. Dennet insists that children ought to be taught about allreligions if they are to be taught about any religions. This may sound surprising to anyone who knows of Dennett's fame as one of the "Four Horsemen", a quadumvirate that in addition to Dennett includes famous atheist evangelists Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris.

So, what on earth is a "new atheist" doing recommending that every child learn about religion? Well, you can hear him explain that for himself in the video below. I would like to tell you why I agree with him, and why I'm convinced that the best way to rid our society of the negative effects of religion is to teach our children, our teens, and our adults as much about religion as they can possibly stomach. I'm convinced that this is the best way to create a just, peaceful, harmonious society whose morality and decency are based on clear thinking and sound, scientific principles, rather than fear of retribution in the big bad beyond or of provoking the ire of the great bogey man in the sky. I believe I'm in good company here as well, since I can claim none other than the likes of Thomas Jefferson and the Society of Biblical Literature for my side, to say nothing of the "new atheists". I can also attest to the fact that exposure to religion, study of it, immersion in its texts, doctrines, and history, was the great antidote to my own "God Delusion", as it were, and I have no doubt that a rigorous religious education is just the thing for a modern society that's clinging to a medieval worldview with all of its might.

When I was a biblical studies student in college, studying the New Testament in Greek and the Old Testament in Hebrew, I was initially as devout and sincere a believer in the literal, inerrant, God-breathed truth of Scripture as there could be. I really believed in the Bible, and I staked everything about my life on it. The Bible was everything to me--it was the primary means of communion with God, a powerful, mysterious, source of encouragement, chastisement, insight, and wonder. It was the voice of God from the whirlwind, from the burning bush, and from the heavens. It guided my decisions about what to do with my life, to go to college, who to be friends with, who not to be friends with, and more. I felt so convinced that it was God's Word that I would repeatedly put the direction of my life on the line in the full confidence that the Bible was my guide and would never lead me astray. Come what may, whether it be poverty, ostracism, ridicule, fame, fortune, obscurity, or otherwise, I would direct the course of my life according to the Word of God as it spoke to me through the pages of the Bible. As Job said, "Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him."

So, off I went to learn as much about the Bible as I could. Convinced as I was that the Bible was God's deposit of truth for man, I felt confident that at least two things were true for me: The first was that my faith in God was genuine and could not be shaken by any mere words or thoughts of man. The second was that "all truth is God's truth", so if God is the ultimate source of the Word and the World, no true thing that I could learn could jeopardize either my faith or the authority of the Bible. I was like Anslem of old, Fides quarens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. I heard about the pitfalls of "head knowledge" versus "heart knowledge", though the only people who ever used those lines were people whose heads lacked basic knowledge of the Bible. I knew that many, many brilliant believers before me had gone away to study the Scriptures, only to give in to the temptations that Satan put in their way--temptations such as the belief that Moses didn't write the first five books of the Bible, or that the book of Isaiah could be divided up into several books based on the fact that there were obviously several authors working on different parts of the book over a period of time, and so on. I knew full well that Satan had vanquished greater men than me, but I felt certain that my faith would withstand any of the perils of "head knowledge" that Satan put in my way. Little did I know at the time that what I called "Satan" was actually just intellectual honesty.

Hardly the great dragon of old or the Tempter in the Garden, the reasons to doubt that I thought were the work of Satan were just the mundane, trite, obvious, basic facts about the Bible. What's more, they were only facts about the Bible because they were facts about culture, history, and the way that humans do what humans do. One of the main things that humans like to do is to create Religions with holy books. Once the books are a part of the religion, they are to be venerated, disseminated, memorized, and submitted to, but of course, they are never to be doubted.

Christians are fond of their persecution complex (even though they have been the majority since 312 AD when Constantine converted to the religion that most of his subjects believed in at the Milvan Bridge). As part of this complex, they like to claim that no other book is subjected to the scrutiny and criticism that the Bible has to endure at the hands of the demonic hordes that seek to overthrow Christian culture. The reality, however, is this: All ancient texts are forced to undergo rigorous criticism from countless scholars. Everything is called into question, whether it be the identity of an author or group of authors (like Homer or Shakespeare), or the date of the composition, the intended meaning(s), the audience(s) to which it is addressed, on and on ad nauseum. The Bible, outside the halls of serious, rigorous, academic institutions, is completely insulated from the criticism that every other classical text must undergo. High school English teachers will talk about questions of authorship when it relates to Shakespeare's plays or Homer's epics, but your local Pastor would never dare to clue you in to the problems of authorship when it comes to Paul's Epistles. While reciting, quoting, and even memorizing the Bible are a part of the Christian routine, this happens at the same time that Biblical illiteracy is strictly enforced. Thousands of people in a congregation sit to learn about the Bible every week, and while they do, they are actually being trained to not read the Bible, to not understand it, and to not know it as it is. They are told to "trust and obey" and to beware of any head knowledge that might tempt them to see the Bible as it really is, which is a book to be placed right alongside the other artifacts of human civilization. Not above them. Not different from them. If the Bible were the word of God, it could stand up under any amount of scrutiny, which is why I felt that I had the liberty to study as much about it as I could. Over the course of a decade of study, reading the Bible in its original language, I grudgingly and gradually had to admit the truth to myself. The Bible just couldn't handle it. Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.

My experience with the Bible is analogous to any honest intellectual's experience with the world. Our culture once believed that the earth revolved around the sun. It took several thousands of years to let go of that notion, and it was only accepted after intense conflict with the Church. The same conflict has been raging, and will continue to rage, with respect to the Bible. It's been well known and well documented for centuries that the basic teachings of the Christian church with respect to the Bible are completely untenable. Yet, the doctrine of Inerrancy is probably more popular the year 2010 than it was in 1710. This is not because the average Christian in the modern world knows more about the Bible than they did 300 years ago. It is not because the average Christian has a thorough understanding of the Biblical texts, their history, and their place in the western canon. It's because the church has succeeded, as it has always succeeded, in erecting a majesterium between the people and their Book.

When you make membership in a society contingent upon an agreement that you will not scrutinize certain aspects of that society's belief system, chances are, people would rather remain in good standing with the community than trouble themselves about the community's beliefs. Why would you put yourself in danger of losing all of your friends and loved ones, your network of support and care, simply to satisfy a bit of intellectual curiosity? If you are a member of a Christian community, your ability to thrive in life is directly proportional to your ability to agree to respect the Bible and to leave it at that. It almost goes without saying--a sine qua non for the Christian is the belief that the Bible is God's Word. Most Christians choose to show this respect by not delving too deeply into their study of the Bible. Some choose to show it by immersing themselves in the things about the Bible that the community endorses, which is the devotional reading of the Bible. Anyone who crosses from the devotional into the academic risks losing everything, so why even bother?

Was the world better off when everyone believed that the sun went 'round the earth? Perhaps. You could probably make a case for why we ought to prefer the geocentric universe, since people are more happy when they have a smaller, more common sense, more manageable understanding of the universe and their place in it. This is, of course, the argument for Religion in general, and for Christian piety and devotional interaction with the Bible in specific. Why rock the boat? If people are happy, why trouble them with facts and truth? Why move the earth from the centre when people seem so content to have the universe revolve around their primitive understanding of things?

Because, as the Bible says, "The truth shall set you free." We have no business believing that the sun revolves around us, if that is not the case. In fact, believing that the sun revolves around mankind leads to millions of expressions of arrogance when it comes to the rest of nature. If we are the reason for it all, then what's to stop us from treating the universe the same way we treat our other disposable possessions? The only way to disabuse mankind of his ludicrous assumption that he's at the center of the universe is to buy a man a telescope and convince him to look at reality. If, as the Bible teaches, all creation exists for mankind, what manner of evil might this allow us to implicitly justify? If the entire human race exists solely so that God might save a fraction of it, how might this play into the ways that Christians choose to treat their fellow man, say if their fellow man happens to be Muslim (in the crusades), or Jewish (in the whole history of the west right up until the "final solution"), or a heathen American Indian (which was a worse holocaust than the holocaust)? Or, what if the Bible teaches priests that they hold a privileged position with respect even to the Church? How might this affect the way that priests treat those under their charge? It's high time we bought some telescopes, or microscopes, and had our schools turn them toward "the heavens" that are presented in the Bible. Only through scientific, academic, rigorous, substantive research and study of the Bible will the sun of Biblical Literalism be put in its rightful place.

How much about the current state of our world and the unquestioning prejudice, backwardness, barbarism, and abuse that an otherwise rational animal engages in has been implicitly sanctioned by a book that nobody knows how to read? I say teach the kids to read the Bible. Teach them Greek. Teach them Hebrew. Let them experience, with their own hands and eyes, that the Bible is just like everything else in the world--it evolved. It is an artifact, like the pots we dig up or the scrolls we find, it is a relic from a byegone era. It is a testament to human creativity, as much for its moments of beauty and insight as for the totalitarian manipulations it imposes on its audience. No one should ever "fear the LORD" on account of a book, at least not any more than they would fear Plato or Shakespeare. It would have made as much sense for me to base my life on the writings of Shakespeare as it did for me to spend a decade of my life believing that the Bible was some kind of direct line to God. Even Christians understand that millions of people are capable of believing that things are from God that are not--the Book of Mormon, the Koran, Homer's epics, to name just a few, are all cast into the pile of human artifacts with the understanding that people are capable of making things and then worshiping them. The Bible is only able to be immune from this treatment because those who claim to be its most ardent readers aren't really reading it. But, to know this, one would have to actually study the Bible. This is the very thing that the church exists to prevent.

I say it's time to make Biblical Literacy a requirement. Our schools owe it to our kids to teach the Bible. While they're at it, they ought to teach the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Upanishads, and so on, right along with all of the other books in the western canon. It's time for Biblical Literacy to do away, once and for all, with Biblical Literalism.

Check out the Society of Biblical Literature's "Biblical Literacy Project". Check out a good introduction to this by way of Bart Ehrman's new book.

True Love Waits. Love of Jesus, not so much.

2010-04-13T10:57:00.004-04:00

When I was in youth ministry, one of the mantras I heard at every conference was that most people convert to Christianity before their teen years are up, and if they don't convert before the end of adolescence, chances are drastically reduced that they'll ever become Christians. This was always repeated as a warning, and as some sort of an indictment against our culture, so we youth workers had better hurry up and convert all the kids before they become adults. Now that I'm on the outside of the church business, I find emphases like that one shocking and scandalous.

The same adults whose eyes were wide open about the false sense of urgency that our culture places on teens with regard to relationships, sex, worldly status and possessions, were completely in the dark about the fact that this same false urgency was being foisted on to teens when it came to Jesus. Every year, millions of church teenagers sign a "True Love Waits" commitment, vowing to forego the satisfaction that their hormones are insisting that they enjoy for a more measured, reasonable, informed, long-term decision with regard to sex and relationships. Yet, when it comes to Jesus, true love is told to do anything but wait.

Kids are bussed off to "Jesus Camps", inundated with attention, bathed in trance-inducing Christian-rock worship songs, brought to the point of euphoria through emotional and physical exhaustion, and at the end of each night, just before bed, they are invited to commit their entire lives to loving Jesus as their personal savior. This is the exact opposite of what they're told to do with every other commitment, whether it is to follow their dream of becoming the next Tony Hawk or the next American Idol. But, when it comes to Jesus, kids, throw caution to the wind, indulge yourselves now! now! now! and don't you dare wait or take time to research all the available facts, religions, or life paths you could take. Do with Jesus what you feel like you should do with that girl that you feel like you just can't live without. Do it now! Before he gets away! Before you become an adult and learn to think things through! Just do it!

Rather than producing a sense of urgency among adults, the fact that kids would not convert if left to their own devices and won't convert as adults should be a red flag. Of course adults understand that teenagers are fickle and that their decision making skills are impaired, to say the least. The same youth workers who chaperone these hormone festivals can be heard making surreptitiously sarcastic remarks about their horny flock throughout the Jesus Camp weekends. Johnny loves Suzie... again... except if Sally is around, then he loves her. Suzie is convinced that Tommy is the one....this week. Part of the job description for any youth worker worth their salt and light must include the ability to convince teenagers not to do what they feel like doing, along with the ability to wield a fire hose on occasions when the little animals get too close to each other. Yet, when it comes to making a lifelong commitment to a relationship with Jesus, unlike making commitments to their other relationships, Christian adults want nothing more than convince teens that time is of the essence. "Hurry up and do it!", but only with Jesus. With everything else--wait, wait, wait. Life is long. You'll look back on these years and realize how immature you were, how impetuous, how you thought things were important that really weren't. Except Jesus. Hurry up and commit to him.

Churches are defined as successful in accordance with the number of adults that are devoted to raising money, giving time, doing research, attending conferences, and so on, in order to strategize about how to convince children and teenagers to make lifetime lifestyle choices about their religion, before they have ever left home or experienced or learned anything about the world. The great panic ensues with each graduating class, knowing that the kids would be out "in the world" and many of them wouldn't be able to overcome "temptation". Temptation, of course, could be to have sex, to drink alcohol, or to stop believing in Jesus, in no particular order.

In any other context, this kind of brain washing would be considered criminal. When impetuousness is at its zenith, Church-going adults are taught to pounce, to secure that "relationship with Jesus", before teenagers go off and learn how to engage in adult, critical thinking. You know, the kind of critical thinking that churches try to instill in kids when it comes to questions about sex and partying, which is the same kind of critical thinking that they're working overtime to exempt Jesus and the Bible from, to say nothing of Creationism.

With the exception, of course, of advertising (where lying to people in order to get them to sacrifice for things they don't need and wouldn't want unless you brainwashed them to believe that they were a necessity) and in torture of detainees (which actually is criminal, except when you ask the same people who believe in being 'born again', then it's not criminal, it's righteous), nowhere in our culture is brainwashing more prevalent than in Youth Ministry. Nowhere else do adults try to get kids to make decisions that will cost them their lives than at the seasonal Jesus Camps that are such a fixture of church life.

True love doesn't wait at Jesus Camp. It runs down the aisle exhausted, with dirty feet from the ultimate frisbee game, or torn jeans from the broomball tournament, delirious with sleep deprivation after a night of giggling over girl-talk or boy-farts, ecstatic after an hour of trance-inducing music, hot tears streaming down its face after a sermon that can only be described as emotional terrorism (probably invoking graphic scenes about one's death or the death of loved ones), and it runs to the forever embrace of oneness with Christ, the bridegroom, in a little mini-marriage ceremony right there on the makeshift altar at the camp.

For everything else that's good about life, True Love Waits.

The Conservative Religion

2010-04-12T16:14:00.003-04:00

I wonder if anyone could tell me where knee-jerk conservatives learn the following mantras, which seem to be as ubiquitous as they are inane:

1. To emphasize that we are a "Republic" not a "Democracy".
As though it means anything to emphasize one word over the other when talking about a Democratic Republic. Our form of government is a Republic, but our leaders are chosen Democratically. So, in essence, the words "democracy" and "republic", when referring to the United States, are basically synonyms. Yet, Conservatives are trained to tout the fact that we are a Republic, dammit, as though this is a meaningful distinction. It's not. At least, not until we stop holding democratic elections to seat our republican leaders.

2. To tell people that they consider to be "Liberal" that they need to "wake up" because they are "blind".
As though going to college, reading books, and forming intelligent positions that are not based in superstition and dogma is the equivalent of sleeping and blindness. Being Conservative, by definition, means that you want to protect tradition. That tradition might be based on rational, scientific principles, though most cases of tradition throughout history have not been that way. Or, the tradition might be based on uninformed superstitious dogma. It is not for a Conservative to determine whether or not the traditional viewpoint is correct, being a "conservative" means that you want to protect tradition for tradition's sake, and need not mean anything more. Therefore, if any faction were to be "blind" or uncritically accepting a status quo that desperately needed to be challenged, it would, of necessity, be the Conservative side of the ledger. Certainly not all change is good, and progress can be made toward the negative as well as the positive. But, blinders with respect to change is part of the conservative uniform. Slumbering comfortably in the status quo is the opposite of what the word "progress" means.

3. To use "Socialism" as a slur.
As though "spreading the wealth around" weren't proposed by the Founders themselves. Even Glenn Beck had to concede this fact about Thomas Paine in his "documentary" about Progressivism. Thomas Paine authored a tract on Agrarian Justice in which he proposed to:

To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property.

In fact, one of the basic tenets of Socialism is that wealth is created by labor, and thus ought to remain in the hands of labor (or the proletariat/working class). It ought not be unjustly accumulated by "capitalists", who use the capital that they've amassed in order to exploit labor. This notion of wealth as labor dates, at least, back to John Locke who said "The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my Property in them ." Karl Marx agreed with Locke on next to nothing, but they at least agreed on this. It is well known and documented that the Founders were steeped in the philosophy of John Locke, and while Jefferson claims not to have been citing him, Locke's thought is evident in nearly every clause of the Declaration, and is found throughout the constitution. What's more, one could hardly find a more adequate summary of the tenets of Socialism than this little gem from one of Benjamin Franklin's letters, which more or less quotes the Locke passage reproduced above:

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

4. To refer to the Constitution like it's the Bible. As if it's a once-for-all deposit of truth rather than what it actually, and explicitly, is, which is the framework for a Democratic "experiment". The Founders used the word "experiment" quite often to refer to the system of government that they established. As an experiment, it is, of necessity, in constant revision and evolution. The Constitution didn't set up a completed system--it created an open-ended one, and one that relies on votes. Votes are the way that the Constitution provides for its own evolution, or dare I say "progress". It invites Amendments, and the three branches of government are not supposed to sit idly by, doing nothing until eternity. The system was supposed to be open-ended enough to prevent "tyranny" or exaggerated government influence over the private lives of individuals, while remaining flexible enough to adapt to the needs of a changing world. This is the opposite of the Bible, which, I have a feeling, is the only other book that many Conservatives are familiar with and the source of their constant cries of "Constitution!".

Anyhow, what puzzles me is not the fact that a faction of our society could hold opinions that are antithetical to reality. Hardly anything has been more common than that in the course of human history than believing in things that aren't real. What puzzles me more has to do with the source of Conservative indoctrination. I just wonder where they learn this crap, because they regurgitate it verbatim, as though it were a creed. (Incidentally, see my slightly outdated "Imbecile's Creed" post if you have another minute to kill.)

Humans can be taught to believe anything, so long as someone they trust tells them to believe it. There's no surprise there. See "Bunny, Easter" and "Claus, Santa", to say nothing of more mundane lies like "Weapons of Mass Destruction". I just marvel at the consistency and effectiveness of the 'winger majesterium and their ability to cement a total indoctrination into the Conservative Religion.

Scientists Discover Sin Gene

2010-02-15T23:22:00.006-05:00

by A. P. Riori
February 14, 2010

BERLIN: Biologists at Der Glaubenschaflicheit Genkapf Laboratories have made an astounding breakthrough in genetics that will change life as we know it. Dubbed the "Genomic Manhattan Project", this international team of researchers has been cloistered away for nearly a decade working on a top secret, military application of genetic engineering. The objective for this crack squad of biologists was simple: Develop a biological weapon so powerful as to eliminate the potential threat posed by any of the enemies of civilization, be they terrorists, or Nuclear regimes, military dictators, or otherwise. In other words, their goal was to use science to save the world. While the project was kept so secret that not even heads of state were informed about it's existence, even those priviliged few who were in the know about the project were skeptical about making any progress toward the stated goal of a genetic super weapon. As it turns out, they were right to doubt. The project was an abject failure on that front and the team has completely abandoned its original objective. What they actually accomplished, however, could be every bit as revolutionary and more effective in securing the future of the entire human race than even the lofty goal they initially pursued.

No, the team at the vaunted G.G. Labs did not create the great deterrant they hoped for in the "Gene Bomb". They did something far more astonishing. They discovered the gene for sin.

Nearly every religious tradition is predicated upon the notion that human beings are sinners. We are tainted or dysfunctional at a basic level, and without religion, we cannot hope to fully achieve the purposes for which our Creator has placed us on this Earth. Now we know why, at least according to the researchers at G.G. Labs.

"It is true," said Damaso d'Aquino at this morning's international press Conference. "Prior to our discovery, which has been rigorously verified through countless experiments "I was not what you would call a religious man.", he continued, obviously moved by the enormity of the breakthrough, "Now? I must confess. I am a believer in sin". When asked by one of the thousands of press members at the conference how he was certain, d'Aquino replied, "I know this because we have discovered it. No!", he snapped, "Because we have cured it!"

Details of the study were presented for hours while cameras flashed and reporters buzzed. Researchers at G.G. Labs isolated a segment of the genome, shared by all living creatures, that they are convinced is the source of sin. This portion of the genome is inherited from a species of apple, of all things, and it dates back to the time just before the Cambrian Explosion, some 520 to 550 million years ago. "At some point," says d'Aquino, "creatures bearing what would become the human genome incorporated part of this Apple's genetic material, resulting in what we now experience as the sin so ubiquitous among members of our species."

At one point or another during the presentation, most everyone in the room seemed to succumb to the emotional impact that this incredible discovery could have upon the future of our race. Consider the prospects of a world without sin--is it even possible to imagine such a world? As the conference wore on, however, it became apparent that not everyone was pleased with the progress that science had made. True, the vast majority of those on hand to receive this world changing announcement were alternately filled with joy, relief, and promise of a whole new era of human civilization. Surprisingly, there were those who did not hide the fact that they viewed the discovery as a threat. Most vocal in their opposition to actually implementing the cure were members of several religious sects and denominational representatives. The delegation from the Vatican spoke out first, and they were joined by the unlikely allegiance of a group of leading Imams and Mullahs representing several Islamic countries. Last, but by no means least, a contingent of Evangelical leaders and broadcasters caused a great stir. The commotion seemed so inappropriate on such an occasion, considering the fact that they had just learned that the reason for their Religion's existence had been successfully realized by science. As leaders from the world's great religions grew indignant, researchers from G.G. Labs were aghast--wasn't the removal of sin what the Religions wanted most of all? After a great deal of protest, the Evangelicals decided that they wanted no part of the cure, and were unanimous in their conviction that this was the long awaited mark of the beast. They were soon joined by the other great religious leaders, who one and all promptly made their unceremonious exit.

____________________________________________________________

I cooked up the satirical situation above in an attempt to flesh out a few ideas that I've been mulling over. In case you didn't get it, here's what I had in mind:

Science and Religion:
This is the second piece I've written about scientific solutions to religious problems. My goal is to highlight the fact that it is preposterous that Science could solve the problems that Religion deals with, but only because these problems are themselves preposterous, if taken seriously. If the problems of Religion are real (sin, salvation, the afterlife, etc.), then they are necessarily able to be investigated. Any problem that can be investigated can at least theoretically be solved. If there is such a thing as sin, or "the fall", then it must at least share the basic criteria with everything else that we believe is real, namely that it can be observed and that on some level it is accessible to the human intellect. Nothing is more basic to religion than sin, and therefore nothing should be easier to investigate. If sin is passed on from one human to another, transmitted from one generation to another, it must be like any and everything else that we transmit to each other, and must be open to scrutiny. I believe that taking religious themes seriously, as they demand to be taken, and pretending that they are actually as real as they say they are, exposes them for what they are, which is impossible. What if sin were actually what religion claims that it is, like some kind of a disease that was contracted when the first man ate a magical apple? What if we took that seriously in the same way that we took small pox seriously? I believe that, when it comes right down to it, the only reason that such mythology is successful and convincing to so many is because nobody actually believes it. Everybody is required to believe it, but never to believe it in the same way, say, that they believe in cancer. The foundational myths of religion must forever be just off stage, just behind the curtain. We must only ever experience a hint of their possibility, never truly treat them as actual in the same way that we treat everything else in our lives.
Hypocrisy:
While this story is intentionally preposterous, it's rooted in several historical examples of real scientific incursions into the jurisdiction of religion. Each time science makes a discovery, whether it's cosmological or biological, religion is quick to condemn science. If the universe is God's creation, then it stands to reason that theologians would have been the first in line to congratulate Galileo on his discovery. They weren't. If humanity is God's treasured creature, then the Church should applaud any scientific advancement into the understanding of our nature, especially any understanding that could provide cures to diseases and common ailments. Darwin's Theory of Evolution certainly does this and more, and we know how religion feels about Darwin. Each time science makes a discovery or breakthrough, it is the church who condemns it, even though it is always and only science which provides either theoretical or material assistance to our collective, human plight. While sin is not real in the sense that religion wants to claim it is real, history is full of episodes in which science actually did make progress toward solving some of the issues that religion claims to concern itself with, and nearly every time, religion has opposed science. If sin is real, it stands to reason sin could be solved. If sin were to be solved, I am convinced that the only ones who would oppose the cure would be the religious. They opposed Galileo. They oppose Darwin. They would oppose this too. Hell, they oppose health care.

South Carolina

2010-01-26T11:26:00.002-05:00

Where the Fundamentalist Lt. Governor calls poor kids who get free lunches at school "animals" who should not be allowed to "breed" or "reproduce".

Where the Fundamentalist Governor "hikes the Appalacian Trail".

Where a Confederate Representative shouts "You Lie!" during a Presidential Address.

And, of course, where you can get this lovely License Plate:

Coincidence?

Humans Being Human: Friday was Every Day

2010-01-25T11:35:00.025-05:00

Friday night, our televisions brought us a significant juxtaposition of human beings acting humanly. At 5:00, Glenn Beck aired his "documentary"--a propaganda film entitled "The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free or Die". To the millions of Americans who ignored this little piece of trash, it was a non-event. To anyone with a college education who was unfortunate enough to stumble upon it while channel surfing, it was laughable as much as it was detestable. To millions of Glenn Beck fans, people who do not read polysyllabic books without pictures, who do not study history, philosophy, literature, political theory, or any other theory, it was gospel. It was revelation and the fuel for the coming Right-Wing activism fire. I'm hoping that Glenn Beck's star will fizzle out as quickly as it has risen. I'm worried that he and the movement he's trying to force upon us all will get what they're after. His nightly political theater hour, all emotionalism, screaming, crying (literally), lying, and brainwashing, is not fit for decent, well meaning people, which is what the majority of American people are. It appeals to the lunatic in all of us. It is driven by hatred, resentment, and the desire to lash out against opponents and to silence opposition. It is fundamentalism and it is wrong.

Friday Night's propaganda film, which Beck had the audacity to call a "documentary", had the singular purpose to incite rage against "Progressives", whom he claimed were responsible for all of the atrocities of the 20th Century. This rage will ultimately lead to violence against Progressives, at least if Beck has his way, as he stated clearly on his radio show last week, more than once. That's right--a "documentary" whose sole premise was that American Progressives, persons whose political devotion is to Pacifism, non-violence, and egalitarianism, who believe that all people deserve the same quality of life as any other person, who do not even believe in owning a gun, much less shooting one at another person or killing anyone else, many of whom are so against killing in any form that they do not even believe in killing or eating animals or trees (hence the slur "tree hugger" from a generation ago which didn't make people hate them enough so it was abandoned in favor of the Orwellian designation that liberals are "fascists")--that these Progressives are the same as the Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists, and every other "-ist" who ever killed anyone or wanted to kill anyone.

In his Documentary, Beck made cursory mention of the fact that the Nazis were anti-Marxist, but then went on to claim that this was an illusion and that the Nazis only hated the Marxists because the Nazis were more Marxist than the Marxists. In a high point of irony completely lost on Beck, he points out how the people wearing Che Guevara T-Shirts at Anti-War rallies are sporting the image of a self-professed "killing machine". Now, for one, I wonder if the epithet of "killing machine" could be applied to any other "Revolutionary" heroes--Say General Washington, for instance. I believe it could.

Also, I won't dispute whether or not Che Guevara killed a bunch of people, but only because I don't know anyone who elevates any idealist, revolutionary, or philosopher to the level that Mr. Beck believes Progressives dogmatically cling to Che. Jay-Z wore his T-Shirt. I doubt he ever read any of his writings, or ever tried to emulate his actions. Even if he had, come on--the false equivalence is preposterous. As though there's no difference between an American Progressive and a Cuban Revolutionary? That's absurd. This is America, that was Cuba. Enough said. But well beyond this, what should be evident is this glaring reality: whether hippies wear Che's image or not is irrelevant in light of the fact that they're doing so at an anti-war rally. It's not possible to claim that an Anti-War Progressive is Pro-Killing. They're diametrically opposed. Progressives are Anti-Gun. How exactly are they going to shoot you with the guns that they neither own nor want to own? How are they going to commit this great "holocaust" when they're too busy trying to convince you to eat vegetables so that no more cows or pigs or chickens get killed in the "holocaust" of the meat industry? Is it really possible to make this equation? Who are actually the people in America who believe in guns, in war, in torture, in "racial profiling" (which is also ideological profiling)? All you have to do to know that Glenn Beck is trying to charge Progressives with the sins that Conservatives are guilty of is to survey the banners on display at their respective marches. Or, better yet, tune into FOX News for five minutes one day, and you will hear a Conservative pundit recommending some kind of atrocity or outrage against their ideological opponents, or justifying why it's OK for Americans to kill at will, or even why they're going to enjoy a bloody steak for dinner so up yours tree huggers!

It's a sad piece of human nature that we tend to want to demonize and kill fellow human beings that we disagree with, even slightly. That's the tragic side of the history of our species, and emphasizing this is not far-fetched, it's as self-evident as anything we know about our race. But, where does the idea come from that reading someone's words immediately translates into emulating their every action, as though words on a page were like a computer program that entered your brain and caused you to do exactly what the person that you're reading about did, whether it's Che, or Mao, or Stalin (though I've never personally known of anyone who reads any of these guys). This is not the stuff of News (which is allegedly what Beck is doing), nor even the way that adults think about the world. This is make-believe, fantasy land, comic book crap. At least, that's what it is outside of Fundamentalist churches. Inside those churches, where Sarah Palin, and Michele Bachmann, Pat Robertson, the FRC and AFA, and Glenn Beck worship, people are taught that listening to Rock music "gives ground to the devil", that Halloween Candy is full of demonic spirits that are inserted by Witches (who apparently only work in candy factories), or that reading Harry Potter will result in demon possession. This is what Glenn Beck is selling, as a self-proclaimed "Jesus Freak" he is purposely mixing up a dangerous concoction of religious rage and political power, and hoping that it will boil over into violence.

Anyone who has more than a high school education (which incidentally excludes Mr. Beck who did not go to college) knows that reading a person's thoughts does not mean that you intend to emulate all of their actions. Anyone with more than a high school education has had to grapple with the fact that it's possible to, for instance, be a Christian and to believe that Christianity is a force for good, even though at some points in the past it has been a source of untold destruction. Do Christians break out into ethnic cleansing each time the story of Israel sacking the Canaanites is read in a Bible Study? Of course not! Are fundamentalist Christians known for their exegetical or hermeneutical perspicacity? No. If there is a hermeneutical hierarchy, fundamentalists are at the bottom. Still, even with that being said, if fundamentalists don't break out into the Grand Inquisition every time they think about Church History, what could possibly make them think that a Progressive will start shooting at them a la Che Guevara? If anyone's going to uncritically follow the writings of their "Great Leaders", it's the fundamentalists, not the Progressives. If anyone's going to start shooting, it's the people with guns, not the Pacifists. If anybody has guns, we all know that it's not the Progressives, which is the constant warning of the NRA. The fundamentalists love the guns. In fact, they seem to want us all to know that they have guns and that they mean to use them. Beck is trying to get them to fire the first shot, and then to run home and watch their side being cheered on by FOX News.

Still, anyone whose knowledge of 20th Century Germany is deeper than the "news" (read: indoctrination) one can get from FOX pundits knows that, of all nations on earth, 20th Century Germany was as Christian as a Christian Nation could be (95% professing Christians, to be exact). That's not to say that Christianity will always result in a "holocaust", or that there was anything necessarily Christian about the holocaust, just that everyone should always be on their guard against complacency and the thought that, to quote the title of arch-Progressive Sinclair Lewis' novel, "It Can't Happen Here." It "happened"--it being the actual "holocaust"--in the most intellectual and Christian nation on earth. If it could happen in Germany, it surely could happen here in America where half of the population is so uneducated and uncritical as to find Glenn Beck's propaganda convincing.

But, beyond all of that, and to illustrate the point of this article. What were the Progressives actually doing on Friday Night, the night that may as well have been every night? While Glenn Beck was putting the worst of Human Nature on display during his horrific TV show, what were the Progressives doing with their humanity? On the same night that the Arch-Conservative aired his ground breaking documentary to expose the coming "Revolutionary Holocaust" that the Progressives are planning, were Progressives actually plotting evil that night? Were they gathering to plan their "death panels", to weed out those "unfit" for society? Were they taking stock of the un-productive members of the public that they wish to exterminate? Were they engineering a famine a la Stalin, or applauding the deaths of millions of the weak or the poor? Were they supporting war or genocide or nationalistic hate? It's difficult to even try to express this, because, as I try to list the charges that Beck leveled against the Progressives, it's obvious that these are the tenets of Conservatism, or at least Fundamentalist, militant Nationalism (which is what Hitler's regime was all about). This is not what Progressives were doing Friday night, the night Glen Back tried to teach the world about the coming Holocaust. It's not what they do on any night. Progressives, liberal elites, Hollywood Liberals, tree huggers, Socialists, and so on, were gathered in front of their televisions, telephones in hand, joining their hearts and souls with the poor, suffering people of Haiti. They were giving their money to help, using their talent to raise awareness, and their time to try to ensure that people different from themselves, thousands of miles away, would not have to endure any further "holocaust". This is what Progressives were actually doing, while Fundamentalists were trying to brainwash Conservatives that the Progressives were coming after them. Progressives were crying for the dead, the suffering, and the poor, and were giving of themselves, not taking anything away from anyone. Progressives were doing the same thing that many Conservatives were doing, I'll bet. Friday night, Progressives and Conservatives felt compassion towards their fellow man, and wanted to do something about it, because that's what we do as human beings.

There's your "Revolutionary Holocaust". Friday night was Every Night in America--Conservative, Corporate media tries to brainwash ignorant Americans into believing that the best impulses of our shared humanity are the gravest threats. Why? Because the more frightened you are, the more certain FOX News is that you will dutifully tune in, the more certain Glenn Beck is that you will buy gold from his slimy sponsor GoldLine and get your Taxes done by the shady Tax Masters firm so that the Obama administration can't take what you have and give it to a Welfare Queen. This was the desperate plea of a pathetic man who relies on fifth rate advertisers to bring his political propaganda and tear-drenched theater of hate to your home. But, of course, this is only because all of the respectable sponsors boycotted his show when they learned about his sins from the Progressive movement.

UPDATE: One of the "gotcha" moments of Beck's piece was a clip of George Bernard Shaw talking about eugenics (as many early twentieth century blow-hards and pseudo-science lovers were wont to do). I guess Beck thinks he was a Progressive because he was eloquent and intelligent, well respected and widely read? George Bernard Shaw was no Progressive. First of all, he wasn't even American. Until Glenn Beck told me he was a Progressive hero, I never knew that he was. I thought he was just a famous Author. He was socially Right-Wing, but Politically Left-Wing, I suppose, because he believed in a form of Socialism. Socialism has Rightist and Leftist expressions, however. Nazism and Italian Fascism were Right-Wing movements. Democratic Socialism is a Left-Wing movement. But, let's see who Shaw has more in common with, Progressives or Conservatives:

He believed in Capital Punishment, Progressives do not. Conservatives do.

In a comically apropos demonstration of this, Andrew Breitbart, who publishes the fake propaganda website that creates fake "scandals", and which issued a charge against Progressives in the wake of Beck's documentary, actually likes to use the phase "Capital Punishment" as a conservative Fatwa against people he disagrees with. He tweeted an order of Capital Punishment against the "Climategate" scientists, and the another against the author of the Brad Blog.
G. B. Shaw also apparently believed that there was such a thing as an "unfit" member of Society. Progressives do not believe this. In fact, Progressives are primarily distinguished by their egalitarianism, against the Conservatives who bristle at the idea that everyone is equal (even the poor or the brown skinned or, God forbid, the Liberal) which is to say, that Progressives do not believe that anyone is more "fit" than anyone else. Such an idea is the Opposite of Progressivism, and therefore cannot be an expression of it.

I can be argued, however, that Conservatives do believe this. Laissez faire Capitalism is Economic Darwinism, pure and simple. It is "survival of the fittest" in its economic application, which is why Marx and Engels opposed it, and why Progressives oppose it (while not necessarily owing any allegiance to Marx). This point was made clearly in a recent statement by South Carolina Lt. Governor, who suggested that the best way to rid society of the "animals" who rely on entitlements, that we should stop feeding them, so that they cannot "reproduce". In this case, he was referring to free lunches, but you get the gist. Beyond this, Conservatives were on the wrong side of Affirmative Action, Jim Crow, and of the Abolitionist movement, and it is primarily the present day Southerner, heir to these segregationist policies that hates the Progressive movement. Beyond that, Conservatives proudly boast of their belief in "racial profiling" and that it's acceptable to wage war against Muslims based on the fact that they're Muslim. Why are Conservatives pro-Torture? Because, even if you kill or torture the wrong Muslim, it's still only a Muslim you're torturing. Muslims, after all, are "unfit" for existence according to Conservatives. Progressives are only too willing to be protective of the poor and the outcasts of society and to extend the rule of Law even to "enemy combatants". Not to mention, Ted Kennedy, who Conservatives hated, passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against Conservative opposition. Pretty much any legislation intended to benefit the "unfit" is met with harsh opposition from Conservatives, and make no mistake, the current Health Care debate is about precisely this problem--that the poor are left to die for no other reason than that they are poor, and therefore, in a Conservative world, "unfit" for life. Abortion is the one issue that Conservatives will claim against Progressives, as though the only persons who ever die in our system are "the unborn". Of course, the Nazis also were anti-Abortion, because it wittled away the Aryan nation and allowed the population to tilt towards the undesirables. Incidentally, this is currently a huge concern for Conservatives--that Muslims, non-Whites or Liberals might outnumber them, therefore they frequently admonish one another in their Churches to reproduce faster than the "enemy".
Shaw believed that the Constitution should be Abolished. Progressives believe that the Constitution should be upheld, even in the case of "Enemy Combatants".

Conservatives often look for loopholes in the Constitution, such as in times of war or national emergency, or in times when Conservatives feel like not upholding the Constitution (when they have to go to the "dark side" as Cheney said, or when it comes to Terrorists who they believe to be exempt from habeus corpus). Progressives believe that the Constitution guarantees the right of "Life, Liberty, and [Health]" for all, even if major Corporations have inserted themselves in between a person and their right to life or health or property. Conservatives do not believe this, and always advocate for the Corporations and their right to take away any and all of the above. Especially when it comes to the "Health" part.

Whatever else George Bernard Shaw believed is, at this point, irrelevant. He was British. Not American. He was a Right-wing Socialist, not an American, Left-Wing Progressive. The fact that I'm even entertaining this rubbish has given it far more creedence than it deserves. Glenn Beck fabricated a premise, that all of the atrocities of the 20th century were committed by American Progressives, even though these atrocities happened in other countries and the people who committed them actually hated the principles that Progressivism stands for (pacifism, Democracy, universal human rights, etc.) I could pose the question to Conservatives as to why they did not stand opposed to Genghis Khan, or to Caligula. Or, "Hey, why didn't you stop Caesar from becoming a dictator, anyway?" Um, because that was Ancient Rome. This is America. That's insane. Glenn Beck fabricated charges against Americans, and to do so, he made reference to several people who were not American?! How does that work, exactly? People who believe that the Constitution should be Abolished? These are the people you're equating to the Constitutional watchdogs who support the ACLU? Not to mention, just where do all of the Neo-Nazis congregate, anyway? On the Right or the Left? How about the White Supremacists and Racists--do they typically vote Democrat or Republican? But, that's beside the point--American Conservatives in the 20th Century are just that--they are not Germans or Italians from the first half of the twentieth century. They must be engaged on their own terms, even though they do believe the same things on a lot of issues that their Fascist predecessors believed. They may be dangerously close to Nazis, because they both hate all of the same things. But, it's impossible to claim that they are the same. It's even more preposterous to claim that Progressives are somehow inheritors of a far right-wing social agenda. That's all that Beck has tried to do by conjuring up the creepy old G. B. Shaw. Progressives might include lots of gay men who happen to like "My Fair Lady", but that's about the only connection you'll find between Progressives and Shaw that holds water.

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Update: Then there's this little Gem from the "Bold, Fresh" Tour:

Avatar vs. The Bible: Whose God is more boring? The Real One or the Fake One?

2010-01-24T12:43:00.004-05:00

Does John Piper listen to my thoughts? Did heaven give him a warrantless wire-tap on my brain? I devoted about 1/3 of my life to studying the Bible. I read, re-read, meditated, sang, thought, and talked about it all the time. I went to school to learn how to read it in the languages that it was written it. It was my life. Not just the most important book, not my hobby, not my favorite thing. It was everything. That was then. This is now.

When I went to see Avatar, I was mesmerized. The message of that movie is profound, even if it's a message you've heard a million times before. Whether you heard it in a Disney film, or a Kevin Costner film, or a PBS documentary, or from a "tree hugger", or from Darwin, or whether you read a pop science book called Global Brain--it doesn't matter. If there were any shame in repeating an old message, there would be no such thing as Art. All art is mimesis. All speech is imitation and repetition. Just because Avatar's story is well known doesn't make it less important, or less worthy of another hearing.

So, while sitting in the theater watching Avatar and listening to its message, I texted my wife to tell her what I was feeling. I said, in all seriousness, "This is better than the Bible." I said that as someone who spent his life in the Bible, living the Bible, loving the Bible, studying its message, its charachters, and its God. The result of all of my study was to realize that God, the God that I was pursuing, did not live in the Bible. In fact, God, the real God, whoever He is or is not, led me out of the Bible. Away from the Bible. Into a realization that the world that God created looks like the world of Avatar, not like the world of the Bible.

Human beings are not pots, made from clay and God's spittle with a puff of God's breath. That is beneath God's dignity, though it's a nice start in our investigation of him. The cosmos is not a Temple, since Temple's are something that Man created in his infancy, and God is better than infant, or infinite, Man. God's world is alive, and not with a life that is a prelude to real life. God's world is real life. God's word is real life, and it isn't constricted by any one language, any one culture, and one way of speaking. God is better than the Bible. The Bible is a nice introduction to God, and may even be a necessary introduction, at least for those of us who want to talk about God in the Western World. But, one thing the Bible taught me was that the Bible is not God.

So, I thought it was kind of interesting that John Piper had this to say about the Bible and Avatar. I'm not saying Avatar is God. I'm just saying that the real God has more in common with that movie than he does with the Bible. At least, in my humble opinion as a former professionally trained exegete of the Bible.

Incidentally, this is another example of an axiomatic truth, and perhaps even the definition of the word "truth" as uttered by a fundamentalist. The truth, in this instance, being that the Bible actually is boring. There are many, many, wonderful and profoundly moving stories and characters in the Bible. But, anyone who has ever tried to read it from cover to cover, or even to read an entire book, has realized that, yes, even though you're not allowed to say it, that there are large swaths of the Book(s) that are really, really, excruciatingly boring. There are parts that must be boring on purpose (turn to the Book of Numbers). So, it's OK that the Bible is boring. Because, the Bible is the Bible, and it's not a film, whose primary purpose it to entertain. Like Avatar, for instance. The Bible is a collection of books about God, and is not God. It can be quite boring, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be, since lots of cultural artifacts are matched in their importance perhaps only by their tedium. But, the Bible, for some reason, must be excluded from the rule that applies to every other object in the world. The "truth" when it comes to the Bible, has to be that the Bible does not obey the laws that all other artifacts or objects obey. That's why a Fundamentalist must say that it's not boring. Because it is boring. That's how truth is spoken in fundamentalistese. Truth, of course, meaning what we refer to in normal language as "lying". Like when Pat Robertson said the other day about Haiti, "true story". Or when Glenn Beck exposed the "truth" about Progressives in his new "documentary". Or when Lee Strobel wrote a "journalist's" account of the "evidence" for Jesus in the Case for Christ. If you listen to fundamentalists backwards, this axiom never fails. Because, lying is "truth" when it's done for the sake of God and the Kingdom. Lying is just lying when it's done for anything unrelated to God.

The truths you find in Avatar or in the Origin of Species are referred to by fundamentalists as "lies", but only because they are true. When you go to see the enormous and preposterous fables made into Disneyland kitsch at the "Creation Museum", you're supposed to believe that you're finally seeing the "truth". And so on.

The truth is that all truth is just the beginning. The Origin of Species is the start of an understanding of life. The Bible is the beginning of an investigation into God. The truth is that the truth is something always in front of you, never something you'll possess in full. It isn't able to be contained in one book, or one culture, or one language, much less one movie. But if anyone tells you that they're telling you the truth by telling you the authoritative last word, you can rest assured that they're lying. Truth is ahead of us, not behind. Our Art, our science, and our Religion points the way, but the direction that they point is forward, not behind.

The Real Story in Massachussetts

2010-01-20T17:45:00.006-05:00

OK, let's get one thing straight. The last time the Majority Party in the United States Senate had 60 votes was in the 95th Congress, from 1977-1979. It almost never happens. It is an aberration, not the norm. In fact, the 60 votes that the Democrats briefly enjoyed (to no real effect, but to their eternal shame) were a glaring, daily reminder that this country was very, very dissatisfied with its Republican Party. Epically dissatisfied. Changing one vote in the Democratic majority only means that America is slightly less dissatisfied. Because, of course, the Republicans wrecked everything under Bush, as everybody knows, especially the Republicans, who aren't even allowed to utter Bush's name any more. But, even after Bush wrecked everything so bad that the Democrats were handed an electoral blank check, the Democrats promptly took this historic majority and squandered it. Ce la vie. Eventually things will get back to where they usually are, where one party has around 1 to 5 more votes than the other. Still, the Democrats have a 59 to 41 vote majority, which is still pretty historic, though less epic, being only 1 vote shy of the magic majority. This is hardly the apocalypse. It's barely even news in a saner version of America. In a world without FOX News, the doomsday prophecies for Democrats, who still have an 18 vote edge instead of a 9 vote edge, would sound like what they are--weird, bogus, propaganda. It's a touchdown dance by a guy who just scored for the team that's losing by 5 touchdowns. In a saner version of America, where the Republican platform is not entirely dependent on convincing the country that the President is Hitler reincarnated in the body of a 1/2 black man, the Democrats could still get almost anything they want accomplished, since you could count on a handful of Republicans to vote their conscience, rather than being obstructionists to the death. The reason this senate race mattered was because the Republicans in America's Senate right now are intractable and it is currently en vogue to be barking mad.

Congratulations, Republicans. You now only trail by 18 votes.

You're welcome by the way. This whole thing happened because Progressives checked out the minute the President allowed the Senate to take the Public Option off the table. Without it, a progressive state like Massachusetts, that already has Universal Health Care has absolutely nothing to gain, and everything to lose, from a milquetoast version of reform. They've got what we all need. Why would they pay for us to have it? The only way it would make sense for them to care about National health care would be if a Public Option were included, which, by all accounts, it won't be. And why? Because, when they had the impervious majority, the Democrats demonstrated to the nation that they don't care. Even when they could do whatever they want, whatever the people want, they won't. Instead, they turned an epic, historic mandate into an excuse to "dither". That's right. Like Dick said. Dither.

The real story here: Progressives got sold out. Then they took their votes and went back home. While all of the news networks join the chorus that this country doesn't want to be too "left" or that the Tea Party idiots are actually having an impact, we Progressives know the truth. We fought to get Obama into office. We fought to get an epic, historic majority. We charged them with a mandate for real, comprehensive reform. Then, every morning, we woke up to see them giving away one more piece of the reform we demanded. Then we got handed a version of the bill that had abandoned all of the things we considered to be most important. The last straw came when they let the Public Option go, which is to say that they sold out on the only thing that constituted real reform.

Ted Kennedy's legacy was betrayed before they ever counted a single vote. And the Massachusetts election was lost two months ago, when progressives checked out of the process. As soon as we learned that the Senate Bill, with its magical mystery majority had no Public Option, Scott Brown won. You're welcome, Republicans.

By the way. I guess I have to ask: How did those Bush years turn out for you, anyway? You know, when you had a real Conservative in office? Was it as anti-climactic as like what happened when Democrats had a real 60 vote majority? Who made out in those glorious Bush years--was it the People? People like you? Small Business? Or was it the Corporations, the Banks, etc.? Did Bush give you a bailout check on his way out the door? When the Democrats had all the power they ever needed to make a difference, what did they do? They took an historic mandate and used it to craft a bill to give a giant hand job to Corporations, and to force us all to join in under penalty of law.

Something is rotten in Denmark. Elect who you will, the Constitution is no match for private Capital. The Corporate interests know this, and they were taken aback momentarily. A few bailouts later, an insurance mandate or two, and they're able to smile again, knowing that our one party system will always do the bidding of its master.

"In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy."
--Matt Taibi, "The Great American Bubble Machine"

Here are the results of a MoveOn.org Poll about what Obama supporters who voted for Scott Brown feel about the Senate Health Care Bill:

Here's a run-down of the Majority Party stats in the Senate since 1977.
95th Congress (1977-1979)
Majority Party: Democrat (61 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (38 seats)
Other Parties: 1 Independent
Total Seats: 100
96th Congress (1979-1981)
Majority Party: Democrat (58 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (41 seats)
Other Parties: 1 Independent
Total Seats: 100
97th Congress (1981-1983)
Majority Party: Republican (53 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (46 seats)
Other Parties: 1 Independent
Total Seats: 100
98th Congress (1983-1985)
Majority Party: Republican (54 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (46 seats)
Total Seats: 100
99th Congress (1985-1987)
Majority Party: Republican (53 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (47 seats)
100th Congress (1987-1989)
Majority Party: Democrat (55 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (45 seats)
101st Congress (1989-1991)
Majority Party: Democrat (55 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (45 seats)
102nd Congress (1991-1993)
Majority Party: Democrat (56 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (44 seats)
103rd Congress (1993-1995)
Majority Party: Democrat (57 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (43 seats)
Total Seats: 100
104th Congress (1995-1997)
Majority Party: Republican (52 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (48 seats)
Other Parties: 0
Total Seats: 100
105th Congress (1997-1999)
Majority Party: Republican (55 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (45 seats)
Total Seats: 100
106th Congress (1999-2001)
Majority Party: Republican (55 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (45 seats)
Total Seats: 100
107th Congress (2001-2003)
Majority Party (Jan 3-20, 2001): Democrat (50 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (50 seats)
Total Seats: 100
Majority Party (Jan 20-June 6, 2001): Republican (50 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (50 seats)
Majority Party (June 6, 2001-November 12, 2002 --): Democrat (50 seats)
Minority Party: Republican (49 seats)
Other Parties: 1
Total Seats: 100
Majority Party (November 12, 2002 - January 3, 2003): Republican (50 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (48 seats)
Other Parties: 2
Total Seats: 100
108th Congress (2003-2005)
Majority Party: Republican (51 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (48 seats)
Other Parties: Independent (1 seat)
Total Seats: 100
109th Congress (2005-2007)
Majority Party: Republican (55 seats)
Minority Party: Democrat (44 seats)
Other Parties: Independent (1 seat)
Total Seats: 100

BREAKING NEWS: Demons in Haiti Delighted at the Influx of Money, Fresh Souls

2010-01-20T11:47:00.002-05:00

By A. P. Riori
Published: January 20, 2010

PORT AU PRINCE: The tragedy of recent days has brought some unlikely actors to the forefront of the public's attention. Considered by many to be part of a bygone era, Demons are experiencing a resurgence in popularity in the wake of the Earthquake that rocked Haiti this past week. These invisible goblins feel that they are finally getting the credit they deserve for all of the misfortune in Haiti, both past and present. "It's about time", said Azrael, the angel of death. "We've been laboring in obscurity here in Haiti for decades, getting no respect. If we had known that all we had to do to get noticed was to shake up a couple of tectonic plates, we would have done this years ago."

In recent days, the lack of public attention led Demon brand strategists for to devise this elaborate, albeit destructive campaign to raise public awareness. "We wanted to shake things up, no pun intended", said Incubus. "I'm usually the one in charge of f**king with people, no pun intended, but when our marketing department contacted me about this recent campaign, I was like, 'Hell Yeah!', no pun intended."
Figure 1

Belial offered our reporters on the scene a glimpse at some of the plans that the demons devised to get the word out (see Figure 1).

The devastation and the global response to it has had some unintended consequences, much to the delight of the Prince of Darkness and his minions. "You know, all we wanted was to tell the world, 'Hey, we're still here.' We had no idea that they'd send all of this money. We're raking it in hand over fist, and for that, we'd like to thank you. I'm not sure what good it will do, though, sending all this money into a country run by demons, but whatever. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth," said Azrael.

Belial was also overjoyed at the outpouring of relief aid, both financial and in terms of the individuals who are giving their time to lend a hand. "We've worked here a long time, and this is the first time we're really experiencing this kind of influx of capital. And the souls? My God, it's like living in a 24-hour, all you can eat buffet. No sooner does one chopper load of people get possessed by us than they've got another one coming in for landing."

We attempted to reach Michael, chief of the Archangels and head of God's Homeland Security Department, but his office was unwilling to comment. It does make this reporter wonder, however, about the ability of God's government to handle terror attacks. Exactly where were the angels while this attack was being planned and executed? Perhaps we will never know.

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This is a satirical response to the stories below. It is in no way intended to discourage relief to Haiti. In fact, quite the opposite. I encourage everyone to click here to Donate, or text "haiti" to 90999. It is ludicrous to claim that Demons are responsible for this tragedy, and if one is serious and intent on doing so, then it stands to reason that sending relief to a Demon-infested land would be irrational. Sending relief is what we all should do, and talking about demons in the wake of this tragedy is despicable.

In defense of Pat Robertson
By Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association

And, of course, to Pat Robertson: