Strange Family Conversation VI

This afternoon, (((Wife))) and I were playing a game of SuperScrabble ( I won when I managed to put BLAZE across AX (with the Z on a double word score) and the A across the top of WE (it scored 76 points) (sorry)) and we looked down to see Dust (our 26-pound cat) sleeping peacefully in the dog bed (we don’t have a dog, but he won’t fit in a cat bed).  I mentioned that I was going to check my blog, and (((Wife))) said, “Maybe Dust should start a blog.”

Immediately, we began to riff on what a cat’s blog would look like.  Here (to the best of my memory) is what I think we agreed upon:

Sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep.  Pee. Lick myself.  Lick KC (another cat).  Sleep.  Drink.  Eat.  Eat.  Poop.  Eat.  Lick myself.  Lick myself. Sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep. Love the human.  Love the Human.  Love the Butcher Block.  Love the Butcher Block.  Love the Stool.  Bat Catnip Mouse.  Fall into exhausted sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep. Drink.  Eat.  Eat.  Pee. Lick Myself.  Dope Slap Sherman (another cat).  Kick Oreo (yet another cat) out of hutch.  Sleep.  Sleep. Etc.

While photos of cats may be fun, a cat blog written from the point of view of the cat would be breathtakingly boring. 

I guess I’ll go back to blogging about politics and religion.

Church Signs #5

Downtown, a church has an interesting sign up on the kiosk:

Church is where you give your presecne [sic] to God.

Leaving out the rather obvious typo (although it is one of those signs with the plastic replaceable letters, so I’m not sure if ‘typo’ is the correct word), I found this interesting in a couple of ways.

First:  Does this mean that, if you are not in church, you have no presence before God?  That would seem to imply that prayer, outside of church — a physical structure — is pointless (it’s also pointless in church, but that’s another matter).  It would also seem to imply that, when a Christian is outside of church, since they have no presence before God, then how would one expect God to intervene in a life-threatening situation?  How many times have we heard someone thank God for saving their life during a tornado?  I guess that’s not gonna fly if you belong to this church.  My problem with this interpretation is that, according to Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc., God is omnipotent and omniscient.  He is everywhere.  There is not place on earth where God cannot reach.  So why is one supposed to go to church to give your presence (sorry, presecne) to God?

Second, it could be that the pastor views any who are not a member of his church (evangelical Christian) has no presence before God.  The odd part here is that virtually every Christian church has the same basic method — my church is the only real Christian church.  Reminds me of the Avignon Papacy during which time there were (from 1378 to 1417) two Popes and all of Christendom had been excommunicated by one or the other.  Except that today, we have hundreds of different Christian churches, all of which claim to be the only path to God and every bloody one of them is saying, “Your presence must be in my church.  Those other ones don’t matter and won’t get you any closer to God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.”  Yeesh!

It could be that I am reading too much into this.  Maybe the pastor is just asking his flock to make an exchange:  give me (and God) a little bit of your time, and God will feel your presence (sorry, presecne).  I suspect this last one is probably the most correct.  Much of belief comes down to a vrtual business proposition (with a complex, self-contradictory and illogical contract) in which the believer surrenders time, independent thought, a chunk of one’s income, and a required presence in a specific building at a specific time.

Even without the typo, it is an odd sign (at least to me).

A Little Bragging

My son will go to college in September majoring in Secondary Education - Social Studies and History.  He will graduate in four (hopefully four) years with a BS in Education and an BA in History.  He figures it will make him marketable.  His art teachers want to know why he’s not majoring in art and, looking at some of his work, it’s a valid question.  Here are three of them:  

 

 

Number 2 won an Honorable Mention in the Wilkes-Barre Fine Arts Fiesta;  Number 3 won 2nd place for a county-wide juried student exhibition down at Luzerne County Community College (known (for some strange reason) locally as LCC).

Just a little bit of bragging about my offspring.  Were I a theist, I would thank god(s).  Being an atheist, I credit the genes he got from my wife and I, and the instruction he recieved from various art teachers and his grandmother up in Maine. 

You Can’t Make This Shit Up! (part IV)

You Can’t Make This Shit Up!

Focus on the Family has launched a new crusade: “Focus on the Family Action is calling on families to co-sign a letter urging Marriott hotels to stop offering in-room pornography. The letter, signed by 47 family groups, will be presented at a meeting May 14 between pro-family leaders and Marriott International officials. It’s the first time a major hotel chain has agreed to meet to discuss the issue.” The meeting occurred earlier this week, but Marriott would not commit to making any changes.

Don’t you dare sit in a Marriot Hotel room and engage in solitary autoerotic pleasure.  This is offensive to (Dobson’s version of) God!  Everytime you touch yourself, a kitten dies.  Solitary pleasure doesn’t produce new souls who can be converted to turbo-Christianity.

Be a real turbo-Christian and beat and rape your wife.   Or go out and rob a sub-discount store. Or rape the young girls in your congregation.   Or set up a meeting with a 13-year-old girl for sex.  Or if you’re the principal of a Christian school, why go online?  Just abuse the students under you.  But whatever you do, don’t look at hotel porn, especially at Marriot.

Keep in mind, its perfectly legal for an adult to purchase and view this material at Marriot (or other hotels).  There are already controls in place to limit the viewing of said material by minors.  But, as my brilliant wife points out, the above links (to stories about ministers (and one principal at a Lutheran school)) involve things that are illegal, immoral (by just about any definition of the word) and would tend to damage families.

This is an open question to any theists who may visit my blog:  How does the solitary (or maybe some couples view it together (I have no idea)) enjoyment of adult films harm the family?  More specifically, how does it damage the family more than narrow-minded bigotry masquerading as ‘family values’?

Good News and Bad News

Today was one of those really strange days.  The weather is squirrelly (or, as it is said around here, ’skroilly’):  sunny and warm in the morning, turning to November around noon, then windy and sunny in the afternoon.  Then, to top it off, my glasses broke (Bad News).

Not just the usual missing screw (that sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) or lense popping out, but the fram actually broke.  Right where the metal piece across the top meets the nasal arch, it snapped.  My lense made a wonderful sound (almost like fine crystal) as it hit the floor in my office (I use glass lenses (with lined  bifocals (I tried the no line things and they made me feel ill)) as plastic ones get shredded in the dust and ashes of wildland fires). 

Luckily, my optometrist has Sunday hours.  I called my wife and asked her to meet me there with money.  I filled out a leave slip.  I figured out how to cover what I was supposed to do that day.  I drove down (wearing my prescription sunglasses) hoping that they had a frame my lenses would fit into (otherwise, there goes a big chunk of my ’stimulus’ cheque) in stock.  The young lady was very helpful.  And she found a frame (a mid-priced frame, at that) into which my lenses fit (Good News).  The frame she found was damaged, so tomorrow I go back to get the lenses put in (assuming the new frame (matching the damaged one she found) comes in). 

Then she said something that floored me:  “Remember to thank God tonight.  He made sure these frames were here.” 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Bad News)

Here I was about to thank her for being able to eyeball the shape of my lense and find a frame to fit.  Or maybe quick thanks to the frame company which, rather than completely redesigning the frame, just changed the temples.  Or a quick thank you to slow stock turnover.  Silly me.  I should have been thanking an imaginary bronze-age deity.  I’d bet dollars to donuts that if no frame to fit was there in stock, she wouldn’t have blamed God.  Oh, no.  She would have blamed the supplier, the manufacturer, her boss, or even the one who orders the frames.

What the hell is wrong with people?   Can’t anyone take credit where credit is due, or blame where blame is due?  Have we become a nation of conservative politicians?

Help! I Need Somebody!

Seriously. Apparently I am clueless about some things (wife can fill you in on many of them). I have sent Mojoey an email to join the Atheist Blogroll. However, how in the name of The Great Green Arkleseizure do I convince WordPress to allow the graphic to show up in my widgets? If anyone can help, I will be geatly appreciatve. Note the way the ‘graphic’ looks over there on the right. Here’s the way the text is supposed to look:

<a href=”http://mojoey.blogspot.com/2006/09/join-mojoeys-atheist-blogroll.html“>
<img border=”0″ alt=”Join the best atheist themed blogroll!” src=”http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/947/847/200/Atheist.jpg”/>
</a>
<script language=”javascript” src=”http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=5c200d7707b725a7f687a5095a156653” type=”text/javascript”>
</script>

Here’s what actually comes out after I save it:

<a href=”http://mojoey.blogspot.com/2006/09/join-mojoeys-atheist-blogroll.html“>
<img border=”0″ alt=”Join the best atheist themed blogroll!”>
</a>

If you know how to deal with this (short of changing blog hosts) please let me know.

Fire Photos

By now, most of you (if you’ve been paying attention) have grokked that I am part of the fire militia.  Two, three, sometimes four times a year, I get posted for a couple of weeks to a wildland fire (or hurricane (or terrorist attack)).  My wife refers to it as ’summer camp.’  Anyway, here are some photos I took last year while at a fire in Idaho.

The smoke in this photo is from a second fire about thirty miles south.  I used a brown filter to bring out the colours.

 

I spent two solid weeks, twelve hours a day, at this road block.  You have no idea how many people have a problem understanding what “Road Closed” means.

The fire burned through this area a few days before.  Most of the fire was a very healthy mosaic with fully burned, partly burned and unburned areas checkerboarded together.

One of hundreds of spost fires within the fire perimeter.  This is in one of unburned or partially burned areas.

A thunderstorm approaching the fire.  There was magnificent cloud to ground lightening, half inch hail, and plenty of wind.  It did not blow up the fire.

 

 A typical view of fire camp (with a full moon in the background).  Sleeping in a tent, using outhouses, eating in a large tent, and working 16 hour days is typical for fire overhead.

All photos were taken with a Fuji Coolpix with a really nice Nikor lense.

At last, a real journalist

I have come to the conclusion that the only true journalists left in America are the sports writers.  Today’s Boston Herald is a wonderful example (and I am pleasantly surprised to be complimenting the conservative Herald). 

A few months ago (right about the time that my Patriots lost to the Giants), the Boston Herald published an article reagarding the allegations that members of the Patiot’s organization had taped the St. Louis Rams walkthrough a few years back.    The problem is, it didn’t happen.  The Herald admitted today that they did not actually see the tape, nor in any other way verified the veracity of the accusation.  Today, they printed this:

On Feb. 2, 2008, the Boston Herald reported that a member of the New England Patriots video staff taped the St. Louis Rams’ walkthrough on the day before Super Bowl XXXVI. While the Boston Herald based its Feb. 2, 2008, report on sources that it believed to be credible, we now know that this report was false, and that no tape of the walkthrough ever existed.

Prior to the publication of its Feb. 2, 2008, article, the Boston Herald neither possessed nor viewed a tape of the Rams’ walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI, nor did we speak to anyone who had. We should not have published the allegation in the absence of firmer verification.

The Boston Herald regrets the damage done to the team by publication of the allegation, and sincerely apologizes to its readers and to the New England Patriots owners, players, employees and fans for our error.

The Boston Herald admitted that it ran a story without verifying the information.  The Herald admitted that they made a mistake.  The Herald apologized.

Will we ever hear a similar apology from the Washington Post for it’s blind acceptance of the Bush administration’s warmongering talking points?  Will the New York Times ever apologize for it’s cheerleading and jingoism during the runup to the Iraq invasion?  Will any newspaper, any American newspaper, admit that, “though we thought the reports of WMDs in Iraq were correct, we have since learned that we were mislead and the report was incorrect?”

I ain’t holdin my breath.

Olberman is a former sports journalist.  Maybe that explains why he is willing to question the press releases and propaganda coming from our government.  Maybe that explains why he’s willing to call ‘bullshit’ when appropriate.  Maybe that explains why he is willing to admit when he was wrong.

Another Non-Apology Apology

John Hagee, McCain’s pet preacher, has decided that maybe, just maybe, the Catholic Church is not the Whore of Babylon and did not conspire with the Nazis to kill all the Jews.  Thanks to “an improved understanding of the Catholic Church, its relation to the Jewish faith, and the history of anti-Catholicism,” he has decided that Catholics might be human and wants “to express [his] deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.”

Got that?  He apologizes for any remarks Catholics “have found hurtful.”    After years, hell decades, of bashing Catholics with his right wing evangelical bigotry, he suddenly realizes that they may have found the comments ‘hurtful.’  Note, though, that he’s not apologizing for what he said, he’s apologizing for the Catholic’s finding them hurtful. 

I really have to laugh at these apologies.  It’s carefully phrased so that it sounds like he is apologizing for his remarks.  If you listen (or read) carefully, he’s apologizing for the Catholics that they were offended.  I know I’m nitpicking here, but how hard would it have been for him to say:  “I apologize for the words which came out of my mouth”?  Oh.  Wait.  Right wing, Republican, evangelical Christian.  To actually apologize for what he said, and not how other people took what he said, would be taking responsibility for his actions.  Responsibility and Republicans don’t mix.

As Steve Benen, over at The Carpet Bagger Report, says,

If Hagee is prepared to start apologizing to those he’s denigrated, he has quite a few letters to write. Hagee has argued that Hurricane Katrina “was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans” for hosting a gay-pride parade. Hagee has smeared Jews (he thinks they’re responsible for their own oppression), Muslims (he thinks they’re all inherently dangerous), women, “Harry Potter” novels, and pretty much anyone who doesn’t look and think like exactly like he does.

Hagee will get a free ride as he apologizes for other’s feelings, not what he said.  Every conservative gets a free ride from our ‘liberal’ press for lying, adultery, drugs, breaking the law, mistatements, pretty much damn near everything.  Must be nice.

Do Apocalyptic End Times Myths Hurt Humanity?

Christianity is a death cult.  Christians are supposed to live their life as if tomorrow (yes, TOMORROW) the end of the world (either personally through death or in the Great Apocalypse) may come and they will be judged.  Christians view the world as a place of hopeless sin, with only the very few who have accepted Jesus Christ as his or her personal saviour having any chance of avoiding eternal hell.  Everyone dies, but only a self-selected few get to go to heaven and spend eternity waving palm branches, singing hoseas and hallalujahs, eating mana (which I suspect is Jello mixed with whipped cream and marshmallows), and bathing in the light of the Lord.  Everyone else is screwed.  This idea that the world (personal or universal) is about to end (which has been a major part of proto-orthodox, orthodox, and modern Chrisitanity since the beginning) gives a rather frenetic feel to Christianity.  I feel safe in saying that a significant proportion of Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant) sincerely believe that they are part of the last generation to live on earth.

What effect, though, does this belief have here on earth?  In my humble (hell, not so humble (or I wouldn’t have this blog)) opinion, apocalypsism has a deleterious effect on humanity in a couiple of (to me) obvious ways.

The first way apocalypsism harms humanity is through economics.  The Republican Party is dominated to an unprecedented extent with true believers.  These true believers really do (or most of them, anyway) think that this is the End Time.  They view the ‘Left Behind’ books as non-fiction.   If the world is going to end soon anyway, why bother dealing with poverty?  It’s easier to give money to your friends and their corporations.  Why worry about debt?  Once Christ returns, money won’t matter.  Why worry about health care?  Most of ‘them’ will die in the end times anyway, so why spend money to make them healthy now?

The second way that apocalypsism hurts humanity is through the treatment of the environment.  There seem to be two different views on the part of right-wing Christianity regarding the environment — either use it up, or ignore it. 

I first came across the ‘use it up’ theory when James Watt was Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan.  During one of his speeches, he stated that (and this is paraphrasing) “Christ will return soon and He will be unhappy if we have not used all of the natural resources placed here for humanity.”  Which explains the continued starvation of federal agencies which preserve (NPS) and the starvation of  federal agencies which monitor and regulate the use of America’s land.

I have never heard the ‘ignore it’ theory put so bluntly as Watt did for the ‘use it up’ theory, but it is there.  The Republican war on science has focused a great deal of attention on minimizing ‘bad things.’  These bad things include (but are not limited to) the possibility of more powerful hurricanes due to anthropogenic global warming; the dangers of carcinogens in water supplies (or containers); selling the clear-cutting of national forests as ‘fire-prevention.’  All of these, though, will magically cease to matter when the Apocalypse comes.

A third way in which apocalypsism harms people is through opposition to family planning of any kind.  This link is a little more tenuous, but I see some evidence for it in the comments (drivel) of the Pope, James Dobson, Falwell, et al.  Since the world will end soon, overpopulation does not matter since some significant fraction will die during the end times.  But, since the world will end soon, Christians need as many people as possible alive on earth RIGHT NOW to increase the chances of converting and saving some of the souls.  Any form of population control (family planning, the pill, condoms, abortion, voluntary sterilization) is reducing the number of souls who might be saved when the end comes.  More is better when it comes to saving souls.

The last way that I see apocalypsism harming humanity is through the lessening of the willingness of private or government organizations to aid in the event of a natural disaster.  America has the largest economy on earth.  We have the largest military budget on earth.  Yet when a million and a half Burmese (sounds better than Myanmarese) need aid after a massive tropical cyclone, America offers a paltry $3 million (which given the strength of the dollar, isn’t even that much)?  The tsunamis of the Indian Ocean a few years back, a disaster unprecedented in the modern world, was ignored by the President for days.  So how is an unwillingness to help related to apocalypsism?  The world will end soon.  Suffering through wars, natural disasters, starvation, pestilence, plague, even tooth decay, are all signs of the coming apocalypse.  Easing the suffering is upsetting God’s plan.  Easing the suffering will delay the second coming.

I realize that I have painted Christians with a rather broad brush here.  Many Christians (as well as atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Animists, Shintoists, etc.) give generously of time and money during and after disasters.  On an individual level, this is great.  But on an institutional level, where the greatest good can be accomplished through the pooling of resources, solutions and problem solving are intentionally lacking.

One of the biggest dangers facing America and, in fact, the whole world, is the idea that we are in the End Times and the Apocalypse is coming which will bring the second coming of Christ.  The willingness to derail the American economy because is won’t matter after the apocalypse is short-sighted (after all, in the 990s, thousands of Christians gave away all their possessions believing that the end was near and ended up dying in poverty when the end didn’t come (and a couple of guys named de’Cheney de la Bush really cleaned up)).  A willingness to destroy the world on which we live through short-sighted profiteering enabled by an end-times mentality is short-sighted.  And an unwillingness to help others through the belief that easing suffering will delay the end of the world is short-sighted.

What happens when the end of the world doesn’t come and our economy is run by China (or taken over by the World Bank because we can’t run it)?  What happens when the end of the world doesn’t come and the ecology of the world is in ruins because of Global Warming?  And what happens when the end doesn’t come and the rest of the world looks at how our short-sighted greed and selfishness, based on a bronze-age superstition, has created suffering and chaos throughout all the lands?

I don’t have the answers, but, to quote a line from Broadway:  “Comes the end and it won’t be pretty!”  And it won’t be the world that ends, but America’s role in the world.

( I retitled the piece from “Does Apocalypsism Harm?” because, well, it confused me.)