Monthly Archive for July, 2012
The opening ceremony for the London Olympics seemed to raise more political/ideological issues than usual. Which is a good thing.
But this was one result. The anonymous placing of flowers at the grave of Emmeline Pankhurst in West Brompton cemetery near Earl’s Court in West London. She was a leader of the British suffragette movement which helped women win the right to vote.
Not in response to Danny Boyle’s amazing presentation itself (although it did include this among other humanitarian issues) – but to the fact that for the first time all the competing teams include a female athlete.
What a nice thought!
Thanks to Sarah Taylor @saturngirl tweeted about the flowers.
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Most people live each day according to their own inner code even though, on the surface, they give credit to a supernatural designer.
Even though Marcus Aurelius may never have said the following quotation, his book The Meditations implies much of the same philosophy and is worth a read.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20120729032257im_/http://i.imgur.com/4H7N8.png)
Take care of yourself and make some good memories. You don’t need to believe in a god to do that.
I like Annalise Fonza’s deconversion story. The sticking point for her was something I also find awful: the Christian dogma of original sin, and the way so many Christians literally detest their own humanity.
snip
ultimately, one can get away with saying, “we need a comprehensive austerity package augmented by structural reforms, such as labour flexibility, designed to increase competitiveness and facilitate growth,” as opposed to: “we need to rapidly impoverish our populations, whom we will then exploit to the fullest, such as by creating a cheap labour force, which would increase elite control and generate private profits.” such honesty and bluntness would lead to revolt, so, political language is used instead. in europe, political language is part of a ‘power dialectic’ which supports policies and agendas that aim to take more for those who already have the most, and to take from all the rest; to impoverish, exploit and oppress; to plunder, profit and punish.
/snip
etc.
I saw this on @cstross‘s twitter feed and had to laugh. Audiophiles and other bewildered purchasers of high-end electronics can get thoroughly deranged and start throwing ridiculous sums of money at the most trivial components — like cables. How would you like this extra-special X-Box cable? I found one place selling it for $85; the non-elite cables without the virus protection are about $8.
If you really want an amazing deal, though, go for an AudioQuest K2 terminated speaker cable.
It’s only $8,450. And Amazon has 5 in stock! Order fast before they’re gone!
I don’t think they’re selling, though. The most wonderful thing about over-priced (or possibly typoed) cables are the reviews. You must read the reviews! Even the 5 star reviews are loaded with snark, but my very favorite is this one-star review. It’s a whole tragic story.
We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.
PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long… I will type as fast as I can.
DO NOT USE THE CABLES!
We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this… accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the… whispers… began.
Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly… we began to UNDERSTAND.
No, no, please! I don’t want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out… oh, god, the screaming… the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!
WHY CAN’T I FORGET THE WORDS???
We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.
Do not use the cables!
I want to read more of the author’s work. Alas, after that one flash of brilliance, most of Whisper’s work is pedestrian: shoes, exercise equipment, computer accessories. No audio gear, though, which is only to be expected if he has to wear earplugs all the time.
Pennsylvania authorities just charged the Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church and youth pastor Andrew D. Jordan with counts of “false imprisonment, a felony, and simple assault.”
What the hell did they do to deserve that?
They conducted a mock terror raid on unsuspecting teenagers in the church… to show them what some Christian missionaries have to deal with:
… four men — one carrying an unloaded but real gun — rushed into a room full of youth-group participants, put pillowcases over their heads and forced them into a van. The children didn’t know the raid was fake. One was injured.
…
After bursting in on the youth group, the raiders prodded the hooded kids into a church van and drove across the parking lot to the pastor’s house. They led the teens through the garage, past the pastor’s motorcycle with crucifixes painted on its gas tank to an interrogation room in a dark corner of the musty basement.
A single-bulb painter’s light was suspended from the ceiling. It illuminated a lone chair. The men questioned each teen for 30 seconds in the room, raising their voices to invoke fear, before releasing them, Lanza said in March.
Good judgment: Another thing we can cross off the list of things the church teaches you.
(Thanks to Paul for the link!)
This post is not what you might think. The Friendly Atheist posted on the odd case of Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson, who were denied the right to marry in a Southern Baptist church because they are black. Mississippi, is still Mississippi it seems.
Hemant Mehta does a great job of reporting on these types of stories. He captures the shock and outrage of these odd WWJD issues in a friendly way. I usually pass on the stories because I know he will run with them. I’ve changed my mind thought. I plan on posting each one I come across under a new WWJD tag. I think the stories capture the essence of my problem with some Christians. That being, are they really living the values of Jesus? It is when we hear a resounding no roll off our tongues that we see truth. Some believers behave immorally and call it Christianity. They failed the test. Somebody needs to point that out to them. The more of us who point it out, the better. The members and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs have all failed the test. Shame on you Dr. Stan Weatherford.
This afternoon, I had a chat with Camels With Hammers readers for the inaugural episode of The Camels With Hammers Show.
I am most grateful to Kyle Hughart, Dwight Welch, Michael Boys, Dave Mann, and Adam Freese for joining me for the chat. Predominantly engaging with Kyle Hughart, We talked about ethics for the first 43 minutes and 43 seconds.
At the 43:43 mark we changed topics to talk about religious naturalism for the last 32 minutes. Dwight Welch is a liberal Christian pastor and a religious naturalist who does not believe in any more supernatural entities than atheists do. We chatted about what that means and what, if anything, Christianity has left to offer secularists.
Here are some Camels With Hammers posts on the theme of secular religion:
The pros of secular religion: Answering Greta: My Goals As An Atheist Writer
The cons of any religion: The Dangers of Religion Itself
The possibility of “true” religion: Islam, 9/11, and “True Religion” (Or “What Could George W. Bush Mean When Talking About True Islam?”)
The possibility of a “true” spirituality: On Defending True Spirituality And Taking The Word Back From Spiritually Bankrupt Fundamentalism
Eric Steinhart’s series on possibilities for developing an atheistic religious naturalism using philosophy and Wicca as dialogue partners: Atheism and Wicca (original post and links to the entire rest of the series)
Your Thoughts?
Our Daily Train | By Jeremy Styron
Another tragedy, more crazy talk to boot. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee recently said America’s “sin problem” was behind the Aurora movie theater shooting, while Rep. Louie Gohmert has said the nation was no longer under God’s “protective hand.”
Dwight Longenecker, a Catholic priest in my native South Carolina said recently on his blog that Satan could be behind James Holmes’ recent rampage in the Aurora movie theater shooting. Longenecker wrote:
… Was he demon possessed? Maybe. It happens.
Medieval engraving of holy men casting out demons.
Demonic infestation is a rare, strange and terrible psycho-spiritual affliction. In simple terms, a malevolent, separate intelligence infests the mind and spirit of a person. It takes over the rational faculties and dominates the personality. The phenomenon is real, but anyone who has ever dealt with the problem realizes that the demonic realm is complex. The human person is an intricate organism in which the physical, mental and spiritual aspects are totally interwoven. Therefore, in most cases, trying to diagnose the possibility of demonic influence is extremely difficult.
This is because, in theory, demonic influence in a personality can exist on several different levels. Experts disagree about the terminology and extent of the diabolical influence, and in this arcane discipline, for reasons that will become clear, there are few set rules or guidelines. However, some levels of demonic involvement can be observed.
Longenecker goes on to identify four “levels” of demonic influence, which begin at temptation and then devolve into obsession with a certain “sin.” The third level is “infestation.” At this level, the demon becomes entangled — or whatever — inside the spirit of the host:
When the signs of preternatural strength are seen, horrible alien voices come from the person, vile blasphemies are heard and perverted and violent actions are witnessed, one can be fairly sure that a demonic infestation is happening. However, many of these symptoms may also be signs of a deep mental or spiritual illness which is not demonic in origin.
Of course, we aren’t told how we are to determine the difference between “demonic infestation” and mere mental illness. The final level is possession, in which the spirit “hides within the personality rather like a parasite.” The actual exorcist at this point is in a kind of no-man’s-land between reality and the spiritual knife edge, as Longenecker describes it:
In analyzing these levels of demonic influence, one must remember that each level builds on the former and there may be no sequence, predictability or diagnostic tests. In dealing with the interface between the paranormal realm and the complexities of the human person, the exorcist often feels like he is walking blindfolded through a minefield set in quicksand. He is wrestling with a pool of oily octopuses. He is on the edge of chaos where there is no foothold.
Here, Longenecker, possibly realizing that not even he believes his own hot garbage, softens his tone and begins using the more typical and blanket term, “evil,” to describe what Holmes may or may not have experienced:
Is James Holmes demon possessed? It is impossible to say without a detailed diagnosis. Even then, it is a slippery question. We are dealing with a reality that is rubbery. In many ways this is the wrong question. Better to ask, “Was James Holmes taken over by Evil?”
“Evil” is capitalized here, of course, because Longenecker wants people think that he is still talking about the concept as the personification of the devil or demonic spirits, and again, we are given no explanation as to what this “detailed diagnosis” involves, other than to reference a friend whom he said was an exorcist:
A friend of mine who is an exorcist says this is why the ministry of exorcism is so exhausting and grueling—because the demons constantly lie. Whenever evil is manifested, it wears a mask. The evil ones squirm and hide. They flatter one moment and hiss with rage the next. They are one moment obsequious and aggressive the next. Because they are liars, reason and trust can find no grasp. Pure Evil is random, violent and unpredictable.
Longenecker then notes that “Evil” is “mindless” and that all we helpless humans can do is gaze on it with “fascinated horror.” Now, if “evil” is mindless, then how is there a demon behind this dark cloak? I thought Satan was a cagey, intelligent creature, as presumably are his minions as well if they have been smart enough to somehow outfox Yahweh all these thousands of years. Further, for all the “horror” that the Aurora shooting does represent, I find it hard to view the deaths of 12 people as anything but fascinating, no matter if some “spiritual” force was behind it or not.
Longenecker ends with some rather lame truisms about love (He capitalizes it, again personifying a wholly secular feeling) conquers darkness and that love (“Love”) was the force that drove three people to shield their loves ones in the shooting, saying nothing of selflessness or courage. Well, I hate to break it to Longenecker, but if God is “Love,” as Christianity teaches, then God himself failed where those three heroic humans did not.
Being a newly minted resident of the United Kingdom, I’ve learned that much can surprise you in this gloriously, beautiful country with utterly filthy weather. One thing that might catch an American atheist off-guard is how the UK, a country far more secular than the US, maintains official ties with religion that are unthinkable in a country with the First Amendment.
One of these ties is the existence of state-funded faith schools. Historically these were Christian schools that agreed to teach a general state-mandated curriculum in exchange for being funded by the government. In the mid 90s, the Labour government expanded the religions that were allowed under this system. Today, though the vast majority of faith schools are either Church of England or Catholic, there are also Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu schools — all funded by tax-payers.
So what kinds of perks come with being a faith school? Though specific rules can vary by region, generally speaking:
- The school is allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion when selecting a hefty proportion of the students.
- The governing church/temple/mosque/etc. will often have the ability to choose, and dismiss, employees on the basis of religious doctrine.
- The school is allowed to maintain a certain religious ethos, including mandatory worship and sectarian religious education.
All of these things are bad, and that is only compounded by the fact that they are funded by taxpayers. Sadly, because the UK lacks a strong separation of church and state, they are perfectly legal. However the state has put its foot down when it comes to faith schools teaching Creationism.
At least until now.
Three schools have won approval to switch over from being religious private schools to state-funded “free schools” while expressing Creationist views on the origin of the universe.
One of the schools, Sevenoaks Christian School, says that while it won’t teach creationism as an alternative to evolution, it will teach children aged 11 to 18 that “God made the world and loves what he has made” in religious education class.
More worrying still is Grindon Hall School, which had a “Creation Policy” (DOC). It states:
We will affirm the fact that “God created the world and everything in it”. We will affirm that he did so “ex nihilo” — out of nothing.
After that very poor start they are quick to assure that they do not share the “rigid Creationist’s insistence” on literalistic interpretations of the Bible and make some soothing sounds about getting along with evolution. Then things go downhill fast:
However, we vigorously challenge the unscientific certainty often claimed by scientists surrounding the so-called “Big Bang” and origins generally.
We believe that no scientific theory provides — or ever will provide — a satisfactory explanation of origins, i.e. why the world appeared, and how nothing became something in the first place.
We will teach evolution as an established scientific principle, as far as it goes.
We will teach creation as a scientific theory and we will always affirm very clearly our position as Christians, i.e. that Christians believe that God’s creation of the world is not just a theory but a fact with eternal consequences for our planet and for every person who has ever lived on it.
This document has since been removed from the school’s website after it’s existence was denounced by the British Humanist Association.
The headmaster of the school now claims this is an “obsolete” document and that science class would be kept free of Creationism, a subject that would be reserved for assembly (collective worship), adding:
“If children question for themselves their origins, that’s what we want them to do — to ask sensible, responsible questions. Am I here by accident, or — dare I use the word — design?“
Are you reassured? Yeah, neither am I.
In the end, these are the dangers you confront when you allow state money to go towards segregated sectarian education. Though there are many schools where the religious aspect will be merely decorative and the curriculum utterly indistinguishable from a fully secular school, there will always be those so devout that they are unable to separate their religious beliefs from their legal obligations. Paying such people to educate children and expecting them to keep their beliefs separate from their jobs is like giving a match and wood to a pyromaniac and asking him to build furniture. Sooner or later, something is going to be wrecked.
(Thanks to Mike for the link)
Our Daily Train | By Jeremy Styron
As if I needed more books that I may never get around to reading:
The literature anthology at the top and “Perspective on Culture” were in the free bin. The others were no more than $4 apiece. Thank you, McKay Used Books, CDs, Movies, & More, and of course, my obscure reading tastes.
Racism is still alive in Mississippi and a Baptist church is at the center of the controversy.
Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson planned to get married at the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, a church they attend regularly (but aren’t members of), but at the last second, the church members said they couldn’t hold the ceremony in their building.
Why not?
There’s no nuance to that. There’s no additional information we don’t know about. It’s just racism, pure and simple. It’s especially weird when you consider Te’Andrea’s uncle works at the church and her dad is a member.
“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if he went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” said Charles Wilson.
…
“He had people in the sanctuary that were pitching a fit about us being a black couple,” said Te’Andrea Wilson. “I didn’t like it at all, because I wasn’t brought up to be racist. I was brought up to love and care for everybody.”
The church’s pastor, who had no problem with a black couple marrying in the church, performed the ceremony for them at a different location:
“I didn’t want to have a controversy within the church, and I didn’t want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te’Andrea. I wanted to make sure their wedding day was a special day,” said Weatherford.
…
“I was prepared to go ahead and do the wedding here just like it was planned, and just like we agreed to,” said Weatherford. “I was just looking for an opportunity to be able to address a need within our congregation and at the same time minister to them.”
What good is a pastor who can’t tell members of his own congregation that they’re out of their minds? Why would anyone want to be a pastor of people that awful? Has this issue never come up before? Has the pastor ever spoken out against racism before? If so, it clearly didn’t work.
I’m just waiting for a congregation member to throw out some Bible verse in justification of the racism…
Let’s hope the Wilsons leave that church (and, ideally, the faith) altogether. They deserve better than that.