Link Love

I've read several posts from all corners of the blogosphere...um...ok...more like from the narrow list of blogs in my Google Reader....and I found several worth highlighting.

James ponders whether his spiritual life is one of Journey or Rest. His last paragraph really resonated with me.

Doug Chapin, aka clayboy, continues a conversation spurred by his skeptical maxim:

The rationality of a sceptic’s argument is inversely proportional to the strength of their attack on faith.

An interesting exchange took place, leading him to ponder whether Reason was God's practical joke.

Assistant Village Idiot compares multi-site churches and the mega church tendency to have song lyrics superimposed over pictures of doves, oceans, mountains, etc....to Orthodox iconography providing a Window Into Heaven.

Tyler Cowen, of Marginal Revolution, interacts with the article in The New York Times about cryonics, otherwise known as freezing your body, or head, in the hopes that technological advances made in the future will allow you to be thawed out and brought back to life.

While writing that out I just had a terrible image of 27th century, highly advanced people thawing out all these old, frozen heads and reanimating them only to give them to their children as pets. There's got to be a bad sci-fi movie in that idea...or maybe an episode of The Twilight Zone!

Sabio, from Triangulations, takes a poll on people's personal policies of violence. Some interesting conversation takes place between atheists and Christians. I didn't vote....but maybe I will after I've thought about it more.

Summing It Up

What is Money?

I caught the last half of a show on PBS, The Money Fix. Before I write anything about it, I will give the upfront warning that there is a lot of very liberal woo involved in the documentary, but eschewing that, it was fascinating.

Here's a clip from the movie:

Another explanation:

So...the entire monetary system is almost like a pyramid scheme of debtors.

I'm going to think about this for a while before I post my thoghts

Blogger Problems

Hmmm...I'm having problems with comments appearing on the blog. I added one as a test and it is also not showing up.

If you left a comment and it isn't "there"...it's not because I deleted it! ;-)

I'll wait and see if they eventually show up. Blogger has been very buggy with its comment feature lately.

In Search of a Tribe

I started this post at the beginning of June and never finished it. Now, my longing for a tribe has only been made more intense.

I have been in a pattern of complete avoidance regarding the church we've been attending for the last couple of years. In the past six months I have probably only been to church about four, or five, times. Working on my father's house almost every weekend kept me out of town and gave me an excuse not to think about it too much.

You see, our family never quite recovered from leaving the church we attended for many years on the heels of some crazy goings on. We hid out in a mega-church for a couple of years, never quite connecting because of the sheer size of the congregation and the fact that our lives and schedules didn't mesh with the opportunities provided; DH worked late and we didn't have extra money to spare for a regular babysitter in order to attend evening small groups.

We settled where we are now simply because we had been looking for a new, smaller church when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There were a few things we liked about the church, but mainly we realized that we needed to settle down somewhere because we weren't up for the emotional ups and downs of church shopping while I was going to have to go through surgeries and chemo.

We managed to get through that year and were just starting to try and get involved when the pastor was changed, apparently at the congregation's request. There were issues that we didn't know much about because we were relatively new and didn't have any idea about the inner workings of the church.

A new pastor was eventually appointed.

The new pastor actually was quite nice. He was older, had better organized and meaningful sermons, and I could tell that he was educated at a high theological/biblical studies level. It turned out he had been a professor at a Methodist University for some time.

I liked him, but then my life got busy and those 6 months of absenteeism took over. I had been planning on trying to talk with him about some things when the announcement came down that he was retiring and a new pastor would be taking his place in a couple of weeks.

This has just thrown me back into a mental limbo with regard to the church. We have no idea what this next guy will be like, and it stinks that this church will be on its third pastor in two years.

Almost five years have passed since things disintegrated at the church we used to love, and we are still just as disconnected and uncertain as ever.

*******

Well...I guess I know what the new guy's like now.

Sunday was the new, new pastor's first day on the job. I'm thinking staying at this church just might be untenable for me. We were already putting up with sub-optimal feelings about staying here, and now I just don't see it working.

The newly appointed pastor has much more enthusiasm than we have seen in the last two pastors, but it seems to be focused in a culture war direction. Besides the God and Country sermon we were treated to on Sunday, we had to hear the typical "America turning away from God" points...because apparently the fact that West Point no longer requires its students to attend chapel is a sign of the coming destruction of the United States.

Actually, mandatory chapel attendance was dropped from West Point in 1973, over 37 years ago. Here I am, in 2010, listening to a preacher quote this fact, minus the date, as if it just happened recently. This is a sign of the culture wars. It doesn't matter that the battle was lost almost 40 years ago. Somehow, it still is relevant to the state of the world and our Christian piety in 2010.

I can't do this. I can't go Sunday after Sunday listening to someone who wants to stir everybody up about irrelevant, outdated facts and use it as a goad to make people "live better" or "transform our country". The worst part about the service wasn't even that the new pastor went this route, but that many of the members were amen-ing him.

The church we attend has two services. An early morning, contemporary service and a traditional service. We attend the early service because we like it better and because we are mostly morning people.

Having two services has stratified the congregation. The contemporary service has lower attendance but is more diverse; young families, older couples, middle-aged couples. The traditional service is twice as large and completely unbalanced demographically. There are no children in the traditional service, mainly because everyone who attends that service is about 60 or older. They are very traditional in every sense of the word.

We've known about this stratification for some time, but we were happy to hang out in the early service .

I realized on Sunday, because the services were combined into one single service, why the first pastor had likely been dismissed. The larger part of the congregation wanted someone like this new pastor. They wanted a culture warrior, a shouter, a guilt-user in leadership over them. I had seen glimpses of this in the church newsletters, which were occasionally filled with the same type of intonation, but I had brushed it aside because there are always people in any given church who you might find disagreeable, or whose opinions you really don't like, but you choose to ignore for the sake of peace, or simply because one person's opinion is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Now, I am seeing that this runs deeper than a few older people who are set in their ways.

DH and I have talked about this endlessly, unsure about what to do. We have stuck around at this church because some of the people are nice and our kids feel very welcome and enjoy attending there. Also, we haven't wanted to jerk the kids around from church to church trying to find something that may not even exist; the perfect church for us.

I, personally, am really struggling with this, partly through my own "fault", though I think the term "fault" is a misnomer. I have spent too much time studying, thinking, and rethinking my faith to be comfortable in a church like this. I can't listen to some yahoo who just makes things up, or slants things in particular ways to suit his own agenda.

What is the point of me going to a church like that?

I shouldn't consistently leave a church stewing and feeling beleaguered.

The Unwitting Dissemination of Error

Today the new pastor of our church quoted Benjamin Franklin amid a mixed bag of Fourth of July, God and Country, overused tropes, complete with towering flag behind a tiny metal cross.

I was not amused.

Whenever Christians quote the Founding Fathers, especially in support of a sermon or idea, I remain highly skeptical of their use of that quote. So often these particularly prescient quotes about God and Country are taken out of context, or portrayed in ways that aren't true to the particular person who spoke them. Considering that many of the founding fathers were Deists, their points about God, while often eloquent and full of beauty, are meant in entirely different ways than they are appropriated by Christians.

In the midst of trying to verify this particular quote, I came across something that I found more interesting; Benjamin Franklin's letter to Thomas Paine, author of the rebuttal of Christianity and promotion of Deism, The Age of Reason:

I have read your manuscript with some attention. By the argument it contains against a particular Providence, though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the foundations of all religion. For, without the belief of a Providence that takes cognisance of, guards, and guides, and may favor particular persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear his displeasure, or to pray for his protection. I will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my opinion that, though your reasons are subtle, and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece will be, a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind spits in his own face.

But were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantage of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.

I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person, whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a great deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?

There are loads of things in this letter that I wanted to blog about, and probably will at some point, but before I could get to that things became quite curious. While still searching for a primary source for the quote from church, I came across this same letter on several different sites. One of them mentioned that it was falsely attributed as being written to Thomas Paine when, in reality, it had been written in 1757 to an unknown recipient...years before Franklin and Paine had known one another and years before The Age of Reason had been written.

Moments like these reveal how utterly uncertain we can be when researching things online, or even in books for that matter, when we don't have access to the primary sources that are quoted or attributed to people.

How could I know which sites were correct about this letter? How could I discern which sites might be more credible and trustworthy than others?

Those two questions are frequently underutilized online...if utilized at all.

I spent about an hour typing in variations of search terms about Franklin, Paine, and the online availability of Franklin's works. Surely in this day and age I should be able to find an answer about this. Franklin was one of the most prolific writers/inventors/thinkers of his time. There should be reams of documentation about him and multiple levels of redundancy online with regard to his writings.

I was surprised that it took an hour instead of 5 minutes.

Time and again, I found this letter described as being written to Paine. I found it on quasi-religious, patriotic sites accompanied by self-satisfied commentary that Paine was buried in a field because no American cemetery would take his blasphemous body. I found it on sites declaring that they were supplying primary source documents. I found it on Wikipedia's article on Benjamin Franklin. I found it on an atheist forum.

Over and over it showed up, in various contexts, and with various agendas.

Eventually, I found another site--franklinspapers.org--, with Franklin's collected works, which also supplied the now dubiously dated and addressed letter. It was listed under the earlier date of 1757 with the anonymous addressee. Considering this site was sponsored by The American Philosophical Society, a society founded by Benjamin Franklin, and also sponsored by Yale University.....I finally felt as if I had found a reputable, trustworthy source.

The letter was not written to Thomas Paine. Despite the popular-level, frequent attestation that it was written to Paine....it wasn't. Despite the fact that it wouldn't be hard to imagine it as a response to The Age of Reason, it wasn't. Despite the fact that many used this as proof that Franklin was on their side of religious belief, against Paine's Deism and rejection of The Bible, it wasn't.

Discovering examples of the unwitting dissemination of error is disconcerting and the two-edged sword of the Internet age. It's easy to read something, post an article quoting it, which in turn gets quoted by another site, which eventually serves as a reference for a blog post which ignites a spirited discussion, which takes the quoted material for granted and spins off innumerable comments and blog responses.

All without anyone realizing that the quoted attribution and context are completely false.

And...epistemological certainty takes another blow.

Conversations I Can't Win

After whiny, complaining, outraged speeches directed at yours truly from The Rationalist concerning the unfairness of letting The Intuitive play Wii first.....I sent him to his room.

Me: "I told you that was enough. If you don't quit fussing about it you'll have to go to your room and complain about it there."

The Rationalist: "But I asked before we even went to church this morning. I-"

Me: "That's it!...Go to your room!"

After a few minutes in his room spent caterwauling, complaining and pouring out his grievances to himself and God, I guess...he came out.

The Rationalist, finally calm and composed: "Can I come out of my room, now?"

Me: "Only if you're done complaining, fussing and yelling about how life is so awful and unfair to you."

The Rationalist, in a deadpan voice with a sigh as he plopped himself down on the couch: "OK. But, you know...life is actually unfair sometimes."

Knowing and Believing

It doesn't make any sense but we all know what Earl is talking about.

Humanity's Belief

A few weeks ago I came across this chart on someone's blog:

It's made the rounds here and there to bolster the argument that science and studying science doesn't make one an atheist. Usually, this comes up in the discussion of Creationism and Evolution.

What I found most striking, however, was the large correlation with studying the humanities and social sciences and the drop-off in religiosity for people in those fields.

My initial stab at explaining this is to posit that science is about facts while the humanities are about ideas. And nothing is quite as disturbing to one's own preconceived notions as encountering other people's well-argued, preconceived notions.

While scientific discoveries can lead to people re-evaluating their religious beliefs, it is usually not at the hands of scientists that we falter and rethink our assumptions, but at the hands of people who try to integrate those scientific discoveries into far-reaching ideas.

Those people tend to be writers, philosophers, social scientists....in other words, people who dabble in the humanities.

Most students arriving as freshman have only been exposed to a basic sweep of ideas and a general overview of literature and philosophy. Plunging deeper into that pool will naturally expose students to ideas they have never considered or arguments that are more powerful than what they have gotten at home.

On the negative side, it only takes one or two confident, authoritative professors to completely undermine a student's wavering faith....and humanities professors are more prone to see it as their duty to strip away and challenge their students' ideas.

Science professors are more concerned with teaching their students the facts and theories of their particular fields. While a science professor might spout off his or her theist/atheist philosophy in the midst of a class, it isn't the main subject, or even relevant to a student's understanding of how DNA works.

A humanities professor, on the other hand, has a much more powerful position because they work in the trade of explaining concepts and ideology through Literature, or Philosophy, or History, or Language, etc. Completing a humanities course and getting a good grade will inevitably involve regurgitating an interpretation of a particular text or idea that meets with the professor's approval.

Anyone who has ever had a terrible humanities professor, or perhaps better put, a biased humanities professor, can testify to how frustrating it can be.

I recall one Dr. Stanley who gave me my first ever D on a World Lit. test because he didn't like my answers. I was mortified and a little outraged because I felt that the answers he marked wrong, weren't wrong. I was shocked until I heard that almost everyone else had failed the test. I had to take him again the next year for European Lit. The first test gave me a C+. Once again everyone else did worse than me....and these were small classes filled with bright students, many of them smarter than me. However, we had run up against a professor who was certain of his interpretation and wasn't open to anyone else's. We survived the only way we could....by giving him what he wanted, even if we didn't believe it ourselves.

Dr. Stanley wasn't very charismatic, so he didn't win any converts to his ideas, but it isn't hard to see how if he had been more charismatic he might have been able to convince everyone to take a particular view of the subject matter, especially if it had been about something more substantial than literature.

BTW....this isn't an indictment of all Humanities profs.

So...no hate mail...OK!? ;-)

Every year, the weekend after school gets out, we take a trip to the beach to celebrate. I especially wanted to get there early this summer because I'm not sure what's going to happen in the Gulf over the next few months.

One simulation seems to keep the Tampa Bay area relatively safe from the effects of the spill...but those estimates are only taking currents into account, not the possibility of Tropical Storms or Hurricanes coming our direction from the west of the Gulf, which occasionally does happen when one slides past Cuba, into the Gulf and hovers there for a little while before deciding where it wants to go.

In other words....who knows what the heck is going to happen?

So far our favorite beach has remained pristine and we even saw a pod of 3 dolphins coming up for air.

We'll probably head to the beach as often as we can, trying to take advantage of what we have before it might be gone.

Rock the Casbah!

Who else can rock a mohawk and a polo shirt buttoned up to the very top button?

No one else but The Intuitive!

He's been pestering me for a mohawk since he was 5. I kept pushing the idea away, telling him he had to wait until he was older. Finally, I compromised and told him he could have one during summer break, when it wouldn't be a distraction in school. A couple of weeks ago, I moved up the date and told him that I would give him one the night before the last day of school.

So, here it is.

Despite his less than excited expression...he was very happy!

The Intuitive is even more excited because next year the "mandatory uniform" policy at his school has been changed to a "voluntary uniform" policy.....which might as well be a "no uniform" policy because who is going to continue to wear uniforms when they see all their classmates being allowed to wear anything they want?

Oh, that's right....The Rationalist will!

He's already informed me as much. A love of uniforms, patrol authority, and a reverence for following the rules....that kid is cut out for the military.

Meanwhile, The Intuitive is thinking of all the different ways he can wear his hair and clothing.

Experimentation, thy name is The Intuitive.

The line between what I would intuitively think was an ad on The Onion and an ad made for real-life is getting more difficult to discern:


If you really need this blanket to fend off "flatulence molecules"....then I give you my condolences!

FYI...if I ever got this as a wedding or anniversary gift...I'd be sure to reciprocate the gift with something as equally disgusting in concept.

God and Sales

Leila walked in the door, long black hair framing her brown face, smile wide and white and I gave her a quick hug. I hadn't seen her in almost a year, just before our kids started school. They had been neighbors and schoolmates of our children until they had moved south of us to a newer house, in a close-by town.

Birthdays and summer breaks kept us in touch, occasionally. I always showed up on the dot for her son's birthdays, in my way too literal, prompt, Anglo fashion, while the rest of her Latino guests would arrive about an hour or two later. She would joke that she should send me a different invitation with the "real" time listed so that I wouldn't always be so early.

She had called me the day before to say "hi" and to see if I'd like to get together to talk about the summer and what we could do with the kids that would be fun. After chatting for a few minutes, she asked if I had half an hour to spare the next day. Having just finished my last day of work for the school year, I gladly made time for her.

As she sat down on the couch next to me, I noticed she wasn't wearing her normal make-up and her eyes seemed a little puffy and tired. She works two part-time jobs, so I dismissed it as fatigue.

As we talked, I realized that the thirty minutes she had asked about was going to be spent on a sales pitch. She moved quickly from general conversation, with a purposeful side discussion about the church she was now attending and the Bible Institute she was taking classes from which was strict, but according to the Bible, to a DVD presentation about the company she was working for and their products.

I covered over my swirling anxiety with a fake smile and nodded while she talked, simultaneously thinking of ways that I could disentangle myself gracefully from the situation and not hurt her feelings.

Sadness began to well up inside of me as I listened, half of my mind attempting to stay engaged while the other half began to contemplate what had happened to my friend Leila. I realized that the black, curly hair, which tumbled down her shoulders, was different than the orange-y, blond streaks that she used to like. I noticed that she was dressed more conservatively, in a high necked shirt and wearing a skirt, instead of her normal shorts and showy blouses, bare ears instead of her usual dangling, sparkly earrings

I slowly began to piece things together and was left inwardly conflicted.

Leila and her husband, Angel, had just started attending a very conservative church the last time I had seen her. She had been excited and interested in sharing things with me. I was happy for her, but also uncertain in what to say, if anything, to her. My own spiritual mess kept me from being crazily enthusiastic, but I also didn't want to discourage her or challenge any of her new-found excitement.

I kept silent as I so often choose to do when someone I care about believes something in a way that I personally don't care for. I restrain my emotions. I tighten my tongue into lock-down mode. I carefully guard what I'm thinking, trying make sure nothing slips through to pour water on someone else's lit fire.

Doing this makes me feel lonely.....as if I have some terrible secret that I can't share without it destroying everything in its whirlwind path. It sections me off from people I care about but can't be fully honest with, not just for my sake, but for their own sake. I wind up living with these segmented relationships that can go only go so far, and then no farther.

All of these emotions bubbled up in me as I listened to Leila's accented English, which she always apologizes for but which is actually quite excellent.

What would I say to her? How would I turn her down without crushing her hope of growing her business through signing me up? Could I turn her down when I knew that the money would be very helpful to her family?

When she finished her presentation, I asked her how she had gotten into this particular business and was unsurprised when she said it was through a "brother" at her new church. I had been expecting that answer and would have been shocked if she said she had gotten into it any other way.

Conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist(?) church culture and direct marketing, or multi-level marketing, seem to be common bedfellows at times. I still remember the time DH and I started attending a large Baptist church in Ohio and had someone try to set up an appointment for his direct marketing business during the greeting/hand-shaking portion of the service. His handshake ended with a business card being placed adeptly in DH's hand.

Completely dissonant with what we thought we were at church for.

I told Leila that I would think about her offer...which was a lie because I already knew what I thought of her offer...though technically I am writing and thinking about it now...so maybe I can skate by with the rationalization that it wasn't a lie.

We ended the conversation discussing the summer and our kids again, and whether we were busy on Sunday. I wished her a good day and she left.

A few years earlier I would have been thrilled at Leila's involvement in church, any church. I had the sense that there was turbulence in her relationship with her partner and sometimes with her mother. I would have wanted her to know God as a grounding presence in her life.

In a way, I think she has found that. She certainly seems more focused on working on her family and doing things the "right" way. Those are all good things.....and those are some of the things that keep me from feeling as if I have completely fallen over the edge of Christian faith.

I wouldn't be who I am now without my conversion at the age of almost seventeen. I wouldn't have the family I have now. I wouldn't have the marriage I have now. I wouldn't have had the strength to move through so many of the problems that have come my way in life.

Without that faith.....I'm not certain what path my life would have followed.

On the other hand, I have had a lot to work through in that same faith. It hasn't come without its share of hurt, disappointment and disillusionment.

When I see Leila, I see myself and the bone-headed enthusiasm that led me to say and do a lot of things that I wish I hadn't said and done in the name of my faith.

It's hard not to make my story be her story. It's hard to separate myself and my fears for her if things go south at this particular church she's attending. I want to protect her.

It's ludicrous and condescending to think that way....I know it is. We must each find our own way.

Watching other people do it is simply hard for me.

Only the Beginning

These photos show only the beginning of what we're going to see in the next few weeks and months.

Gut-wrenching.

Sickening.

Mournful.

BP-Bumbling People

Yet another failed attempt by BP to stop this leak. One more failure in a monumental list of failures that boggles my mind daily.

I'm not upset that a mistake happened. I'm not upset that something went wrong. Human error will always be a part of any equation involving just about any business, machinery, or venture.

What upsets me is the complete inability of BP to plan for the worst-case scenario, or to even ponder that a worst-case scenario might even exist. There is some indication that BP knew there might be a problem with the casing and/or the blow-out preventer in the weeks leading up to this disaster.

It's unclear what exactly BP might have done to address the problems, but I can guarantee that there was one solution they probably never even considered....simply shutting the thing down until they knew what the hell was going on.

No. That would probably tick off all of their investors.

BP has repeatedly defended its failures by consistently reminding everyone that trying to work at these depths of water has never been done before and they are in uncharted territory.

Seriously?

Here's an idea:

If you haven't planned beforehand how to solve a catastrophic failure that you know would lead to disastrous results...then maybe you shouldn't move forward into "uncharted territories". And...even if you have planned beforehand what you're going to do in a worst-case scenario, it might be helpful if you actually try working in those depths with some training runs to make sure that your equipment and personnel can actually do what you propose.

I know, I know...totally crazy idea, right?

The military and NASA understand this concept. They spend years and years training and honing skills that they might hopefully never need, but are tested and proven just the same. No one goes into space without having had extensive simulation training. By the time astronauts are shooting through space they have been subjected to just about every possible strain that can be reproduced while still on earth.

Makes a lot of sense to do things that way.

Sickening me even more is BP's notion that if they aren't successful in this latest attempt that we will all have to wait until August for them to drill relief wells.

August?

They're kidding right?

They really believe that they can just decide to give up and wait until August and allow two more months of uncontrolled oil spilling into the Gulf? Two more months of this and there won't be any Gulf of Mexico left to save.

It will have to be renamed the Gulf of Tarry Death and Putrescence.

You know that section in Revelation about one third of the seas being dead is starting to seem all too real to me.