The Funky World of Creationism

Creationist people are funny. I mean that literally. It’s only fair, they take everything literally too. Well, sort of. It’s a well-known fact and easily provable, that creationists only take what they like in the bible literally–the rest, they ignore.

I continue to post really great stuff on Facebook, most of it from scientists who happen to also be believers. I spread it around. There are Catholics, and Lutherans, and Presbyterians, you know, mainstream religious folks. And they all point out the silliness of trying to claim that the earth was formed in six days.

Normal people nod their heads and wonder what all the fuss is about, since logic is a part of daily life you know. I mean if evolution were not true, then when the human genome project was completed, there would have been a hue and cry of world-wide proportions had the DNA not supported our evolution from “lesser”beings. As it turns out, we learned something we had not thought true–some homo-sapiens today actually have DNA from Neanderthals in their bodies, proof that a more primitive humanoid actually mated with those who would ultimately become us.

All this is beyond the average creationist of course, since they are unable to wrap their compartmentalized minds around actual facts. Life is so much simpler when you simply decide what would make you happy and then “make it so” in your mind. There are dozens of shysters out there willing to take you money in return for a good sounding story that meets your needs.

Of course, such mindless ones are also prone to “doubt” anything else that they find troubling in their white-centric (and that is most always the case) world. They stout-fastly deny that the earth as portrayed in the bible is FLAT and that the “heavens” are a dome which keeps out the “waters” which surround everything. No, that doesn’t work for them, so literalism takes a flying leap off the edge on that one.

Since I was peppering the Facebook page with a lot of actual *gasp* science, one of our creationist types figured to “get enlightened” so on the advice of others of her myopic kind, she ordered her some books from a site that specializes in helping people remain god-awful ignorant of the truth.

And she read them.  Or at least tried to.

And then she told the Facebook crowd all about what she had learnt. It had to do with “if the earth was so old then we would all be buried under tons of cosmic dust”, and something about you know crab nebula only occurring once every 100 years, so where are they all? And if you count people the right way, and not the scientific way, somehow, it comes down to just 2 people some 6,000 + years ago. General junk like that.

Which proved that not only did she not think of any of this stuff herself, she didn’t understand most of what she read in the first place.

After I had deciphered the “arguments” I went to the science. Most of the really good and big ones just have an archive of these silly assertions and a scientific proof to explain the errors.  (Talk Origins is great for this by the by should you get asked one of these “yeah so, explain this” questions).

Some of you may recall that there was a thing that ran around Facebook a few weeks ago about a test given to grade schoolers about “science” and most thought it a joke, until the school system (a Christian school) fessed up and said it was theirs. Anyway, at the end, was a question which tells you that this is all about indoctrination and not about actual science. The question was “And what do we say when people tell us that the earth is millions of years old?”

The answer is “Were you there?” Yeah that’s what crazy fundie parents are teaching our children to say in response to a scientific fact. And lo and behold that question also exists on the Talk Origins “creationist arguments”.

I found every single one of the lady’s “arguments” on Talk Origins. They are simplistic and easily dispelled. The offerer of course doesn’t understand a thing about what they just regurgitated. They aren’t meant to. They are happy to find somebody who agrees with them, who writes in a way that sounds all scientific-y, and is not understandable by them certainly. (This makes it likely to be true).

I cited scientific responses and the appropriate links to read the truth in full. (By the way NCSE is another great site for scientific responses and information on evolution and climate change).  Of course there was no response from the creation lady.

When I asked for her sources, since her arguments were not hers but something she admittedly read in a book, I got the stonewall. “You won’t read them anyway!” she whined. No of course I’m not going to line the pockets of a charlatan, but I will look up his name and read reviews of his book(s) and alert others where to go to read about his credentials.

But she won’t give them to me. Plagiarism is a darn sight less dangerous in her eyes than giving her sources up to scrutiny by others.

Truth is scary stuff to some.

I suppose next she will be telling me that Revelation is all about the Catholic Church being the beast. That seems to be the level where those of her kind end up.

What does all this mean?

Not much. It is just that willful ignorance of this sort is that voice that I hear that tells me that these folks shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and definitely not raise children. They should be set down on farms far away from normal people where they can engage in their fantasies without harming others.

But then that conflicts with the other voice that tells me that I don’t approve of limits to who can vote (heck given their level of duh, I figure we couldn’t go too wrong with letting chimps vote either), and I don’t think we want to go down the road of who can procreate either.

The nice thing is that the two voices conflict and I have to resolve the dilemma, something the fundie mind can avoid. So far I come down on the side of freedom, but if these people don’t stop annoying me with their nonsense, well, I might be persuaded to at least make chocolate unavailable to them. I mean it’s a treat they should be denied, just for being so darn goofy.

What Would Jesus Do?–Apply Only When Convenient

I try not to go all Jesus on you, at least on this blog. And truthfully, I’m not really. I’m just trying to illustrate a point. Today’s discussion revolves around the death penalty.

The reason it came to mind today for me, is that Maryland’s governor, Martin O’Malley, recently signed a repeal of the death penalty bill, ending that state’s long association with murder by government, and becoming the 18th state to move to the side of life.

What is perhaps most interesting, or draconian, as you see it, is that at the same time, Florida moves to make the killing of its citizens more easy for the state to accomplish. Florida wishes all those on death row executed within 180 days of “a warrant being signed”–presumably from a valid conviction and sentence. This awaits the governor’s signature at a time that Florida ranks first in overturned death penalty cases, a stunning 24 people having been exonerated, since 1970.

When you look at a map of the country, it is easy to see that the 18 states who have abolished the death penalty, almost all reside in the north and east,  my own state of New Mexico being a happy exception. More and more, the killing is confined to the deep South, Ohio being the only exception to that rule. You can check out all the statistics in your state here.

In 2012, 140 countries had abolished the death penalty, 39 more have de facto eliminated it by not using it for a number of years. Fifty-eight still impose it, the US of course among them. Of the fifty-eight, there is not one single what we would call “modern” country, save Japan that does so. We are in the company of Syria, North Korea, the Congo, Cuba, Pakistan and Afghanistan with our penchant for murdering our own citizens. Only Iran and Saudi Arabia beat us in the numbers killed each year (China refuses to divulge such information and the numbers for them is thought to be in the thousands)

It confounds rational beings in this country that we continue this barbarism. In many countries, vigils are held at US embassies when an execution is imminent. Many countries will not extradite prisoners to this country because of its death penalty. Our claims about human rights violations are laughed at across the globe when we so viciously execute our own in the face of growing numbers of those later found innocent.

Yet we continue to do so, and it begs the question why? Why is the deep South, home of the Bible Belt, people by so many who advocate the death of their fellow citizens? Why do so-called Evangelical Christians, or Born Agains stand so steadfast for this legalized murder? How do they square all this with their manual of life, the Bible?

We can’t answer that question, because it is in fact unanswerable. These same people will argue that it is both right and proper for state legislatures to impose all kinds of controls on women to make sure that any fertilized egg is produced as a live birth. In fact, taking their arguments and legislation to its logical extension, absolutely nothing is “too far” when it comes to a fetus. They would allow for women to be imprisoned to insure that she is eating properly. They would allow for an investigation into the circumstances of any “miscarriage” to determine whether there was either deliberate or negligent causation of the loss.

They tell us that life is sacred, given by God. They say this of course, while we know that their interest begins and ends there. They are not generally willing to support that child once born. Many of them later will label that same child a “taker”, a 48%’er, a lazy, or other such appellation suggesting that they are unworthy of their charitable largess. And indeed they wish to reserve that right of “charity” to those persons deemed “worthy” as defined by them.

They engage in this ying-yang dichotomy of what God demands. God demands we preserve life at conception. God is ignored when in the guise of Jesus, He demands compassion and care for the least of God’s children. In the biggest effrontery of all, they accomplish this by proclaiming that God made his manual understandable to everyone, and therefore their self-serving interpretation is sacrosanct. They even have the gall to point to scripture for this proposition–beware of false prophets–everyone who tells them differently are of course the false prophets. It’s all neat and tidy.

However, the facts tend to get in the way. I offer the story of the adulterous woman from the Gospel of John, from Chapter 8.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

Note how the Scribes correctly state that the penalty for adultery is death. Stoning was never a punishment of pain, it was a death sentence. Yet Jesus precludes the use of the penalty, telling the woman to “go forth and sin no more”–an impossibility of course to any mortal human being. He forgives her. He in a real sense rehabilitates her. He sends her forth to resume her life, hopefully with a new outlook and a better approach to community living.

Yet these fundamentalists who insist that there is but one way to read the bible, and that is literally, seem able, as is always the case with them, to manage to avoid the obvious literalness of this passage.

They are quite happy to merrily go on judging others and condemning them to death. They continue to usurp the right of God (from their previous logic) to control matters of life and death.

It is why they forever deserve not only our ridicule, but our condemnation as Christians. They are simply users of scripture to accomplish their own personal desires. As such their opinions carry no weight.

So just jump in and rant away good readers!

Stop Projecting Your Crap on Me!

A couple of ideas got to floating around in my head, and the best way I know to get rid of them is to bore you with them. Think of yourselves as my therapists. Cheap treatment eh?

Anyway. You know for the longest time, I figured that humans, being humans, and not giraffes or hermit crabs, probably thought pretty much the same way. Not the same opinions, mind you, but they processed in similar ways.

You know the drill, gather the information (in your head), sort through it, categorize it, and in the end define your “opinion”. As you came across new facts, you tweaked your opinion, were happily confirmed in your opinion, or ditched it for a better one.

A couple of remarks by folks the last week or go, brought me to the utterly sure conclusion and “opinion” that that is simply not the case. Most people might operate as above, but whole groups of people do not, and I think they are identifiable.

Know thy enemy various sage warrior types tell us, and indeed it’s true. But one cannot do that if one just assumes that your enemy thinks like you do. Often they don’t.

It has happened more than once that a commenter on this or one of my other blogs will bemoan the fact that “the people who need to read this won’t.” And that seems undeniably true. I’ll explain further in a moment.

The other statement that struck me (because it was not at all true) went something like this: “You criticize everybody on our ‘side’ as wrong, and you think everybody on your ‘side’ is right.” Actually no.

So in trying to fathom these two statements I realized that indeed, we don’t think alike.

Now this is not a new concept I suppose, for it’s well documented that the certain minds do operate quite differently, yet I had never see it in how they process information.

The fundamentalist mind is a mind in terror. It doesn’t like the world as it exists, and finds it both chaotic and scary. So it creates an illusory perfect world that works for them. If everyone were to behave in the “right” way, then their lives could finally be happy and safe. They are prone of course to religious fanaticism, finding this a perfect vehicle for achieving the world they want. They also are, if you hadn’t noticed, unreservedly conservative.

In fact, they aren’t conservative by any known definition at all. They are reactionary in their outlook. And it is this that causes them to process information so very differently.

As we engage in the back and forth of normal dialogue and debate, one thing becomes obvious. Liberals and progressives read all the material offered up by the reactionary right. We read it, find the errors in it, check out the sources, check out the backgrounds of the writers. Then we make our objections and our arguments. Reactionaries don’t return the favor. They studiously refuse to read any material you offer to them as proof of the point you contend.

At first I saw this as a manifestation of passive-aggressiveness. And partly, that is probably the case. However, it goes much deeper.

The reactionary is on very unstable logic grounds. They somehow intuitively know this. The people I debate with are frightfully uninformed about basic information and what information they do have comes from unreliable sources that makes them even worse, mis-informed.  They tend to engage in hit-and-run tactics. They present the information, and when you show them the reasons why it is unreliable, they don’t argue the facts, they simply argue that you are “just against the conservative point of view.”

That is because that is how they operate. They read ONLY what pleases them and reinforces their predetermined beliefs (ones that serve their purposes). They are not interested and don’t want to contend with information that is contrary to what they believe, because they are comfortable in their world and don’t want it disturbed. Facts might do that.That might cause them to have to think. Horror of horrors they might find out (as liberals and progressives do every day), that they have to change their mind about something.

Talk about upset the apple cart! How is one to survive in this insane world without the anchor of truth, justice and the American Way on your side? How to live with a book that is the recipe for how to live?

The reactionary right will always claim that the liberal/progressive is the same as they are. They truly believe that. They believe that MSNBC and CBS are “just as bad” as Fox at telling lies. They believe that en mass the Democrats are just as evil as the Republicans.  To them, proving that Fox is an awful “news” outlet and not to be trusted, means nothing, because to them, MSNBC is no better. There is no distinction in their mind whatsoever, no shades of grade, not qualitative difference.

They cannot fathom for instance that some liberals on some subjects are very unhappy with the President. That some are very unhappy with Harry Reid. They don’t think we “know” that Democrats are often as guilty of self-serving greed as Republicans. When we agree with them that MSNBC is often lousy at news, they are taken aback and think we are lying.

They refuse to see a qualitative difference, because they don’t engage in any media EXCEPT right-wing blathering. They assume we are all alike, just opposites. We know they are not the same, because we engage in both.

It is true that the people who need to read things which would help them see themselves in a mirror, won’t. No amount of asking them to will work because it is just too damn dangerous. A created worldview is a fragile thing. It cannot bear the light of reason or facts. It crumbles in the daylight, and therefore  must be kept safe.

I believe what I believe because it suits me, and I read what tells me I am right. I do not read what threatens that. Ever. I simply project my own closed mind onto everyone else. They are just like me. I am not ignorant. Fox is really fair and balanced, at least it’s no worse than the rest.

Such minds are not reachable.

They are locked away, growing dusty and angrier by the minute.

They are more susceptible to demagoguery.

They are sure they are right, and no fact will ever be allowed to tarnish that shiny bag of beliefs.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

A lot of minds out there are being wasted.

 

 

Meet the Original Libtards!

Our friendly Tea Party “Patriots” often tell us that they love the constitution. In fact it takes second place only to that timeless book, the Bible–the one God wrote to tell us how to behave. Probing, (as I am always wont to do), I discover that it’s not only the constitution that is revered, but of course the “founding fathers” who, as you know, among other things, brought us the constitution.

That always amuses me ever so much.

Sadly, it seems common to the PayTREEots not to dig too deeply into the mantras they are taught by Fox and people like pseudo-historian David Barton. If they did dig a bit they would find that their adulation is ironic to say the least. Barton of course would have them believe that the FFs were all deeply religious men and that they basically made the Declaration and Constitution tracts which God hopefully would  approve of wholeheartedly. The truth of course lies quite a ways left of Mr. Barton’s imaginative ramblings.

We all know that many of the founders of our fair republic were anything but religious in their leanings. Jefferson is notable for his refusal to believe in the truth of any of the bible’s miracle stories, actually editing them out of his personal bible. (You can see his bible with all the little cut-outs somewhere, probably at Monticello). The other giant, Franklin might be defined as a deist at best.

This should not be surprising since all the FF were the rich elites of their day, and were well read. And what they read and what inspired them (oh you must remember this from high school) were the likes of Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire. All were “men of the enlightenment”. You could easily add Isaac Newton and Spinoza to the mix as well. They were men who started to see that the world could be explained through normal observation and reasonable deductive conclusion. Some, like Newton, were men of science, who were uncovering the physical laws that governed the universe.

In all cases, they were the heretics of their day as well, rejecting the church’s claims that the bible was the only resource needed to explain the world. Some professed a belief in God, but not in the traditional sense of their day.

The explosion of new thought spread across Europe and Britain, and eventually to America where it inspired Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and others to reject the “god-given” circumstances of both colonialism and monarchy. They were “enlightened” to perceive the world differently and their place within it differently. They could finally conceive of themselves as in control of their own destinies.

They formed a government based on enlightenment principles of freedom, democracy, and most of all reason as the basis for rule. They ushered in the concepts of capitalism, markets, the scientific method, religious tolerance (read tolerance to practice what YOU believed, or be free to believe nothing). It was a movement based on equality and commonality and shared responsibility.

In effect, they were the liberals of their day. They were the heretics to the religious right with all their talk of reason and science. They brought forth a new type of government.

The conservatives of their day? They were Tories.

It thus is so very ironic to think of Tea Party adherents touting their love and admiration for our Founding Fathers, today. In the time of our founding, such people would have been sending their sons to stand with King George III.

But of course Tea People never think that deeply.

I can see why.

It is just too embarrassing.

It’s the DICKS!

A person I know has been known to say that being conservative is a difficult thing. What he means of course is that one must get past the emotional desire to help everyone (known as the bleeding-heart syndrome) and recognize that such a thing is economically impossible.

Of course the truth is that being a conservative is a very easy thing to be. No one put it better than John Kenneth Galbraith in his famous quote:

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

The difficulty is in fashioning a good excuse as it were. The excuses were helped along wonderfully by the Protestant work ethic (something to do with the devil finding good use for idle hands), rugged individualism, and pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.  The work ethic comes from Calvin and his belief that successful people (i.e. hard workers) were the identifiable chosen of God. Rugged individualism arose during the Hoover administration and was some sort of plea to every day people who their success was in their own hands and presumably not in the disaster that was coming at them from a failed American and world economy. The last about the bootstraps arose from a tall tale that finally became another euphemism for working hard to succeed.

This of course was all immeasurably aided when a group of “elitist” Eastern scholars decided to expropriate Darwin’s evolutionary “survival of the fittest” to explain why some people succeeded and why others did not. Mix them all together and you have the perfect storm of excuses for why I’m wealthy, and you not only are not, but don’t deserve to be.

I would argue that the average business entrepreneur is anything but a true conservative. We like to think of conservatives as being people who don’t like change, who harken to the “good old days”, albeit as seen through rose-colored glasses. This cannot be true of the business person of course, since nobody who thinks like this is likely to risk their all on some belief that they have invented the new wheel of the day.  Business persons simple vote for and support those that promote the kinds of policies that most protect their interests.

Of course all these terms don’t explain anything at all. One may ascribe to the belief that some of the great titans were perhaps brilliant in some way, but more likely they are men who had an inordinate desire to (a) make fabulous sums of money, (b) acquire fabulous amounts of power, or (c) acquire fabulous amounts of accolades for being “successes”. Actually all three feed each other. And with that personality in tow, they happened upon the right idea at exactly the right point in history. The rest is as they say, history.  Imagine the poor hunter-gatherer who happened upon a pool of black sticky goo. He might have dreamed of using this substance in some way that would power his lifestyle, but without either the steel, refinery or car awaiting, it’s unlikely he would become Chief Rocker-negie.

These “conservatives” were a different sort of course than the ones we have today. They cared little about social issues, the rabble could act and interact within their tenements in whatever manner they chose. And they were and are not the same as those “new conservatives” known as the neo-cons, who have applied survival of the fittest to the very nation itself, and given our superior  American exceptionalism, the right to fashion the rest of the world to our liking, even if it means by force.

No, the “New” new conservatives suffer from a much different issue than the mundane guilt facing the average conservative of old, assuaged as was by the phrases above, expropriated to their cause of “me first, you probably never.”

I am of an age, when we were taught that each generation in America did better than the one before it. Each family wished better for their children than themselves, and they expected that. We are the first for which, for many at least, that was not so. In fact for most, staying even has been the best we could hope for.

This leads to the inevitable question of why. And that question scares the bejesus out of the rich. For if the rabble in mass discerns that it has lost at the hands of those who have profited by our misfortune, the wealthy cannot withstand the onslaught. They know it and they have worked tirelessly to avoid that question being turned to them.

The corporate interests, flush with their bulbous bank accounts, bought up the media, and in some cases created their own. The chants began. If you are feeling left behind by the American “dream” then look left.

It is the fault of the blacks who just maybe (hints are everywhere) aren’t as capable in the first place, and are genetically lazy. They are the “takers” the “lazies” the 47%’ers. The subsist on “freebies” and from the Santa Claus syndrome, making a “good” life while aspiring to be nothing more than they are.

It is the fault of the browns, the “illegals” who take our jobs from us, and are prone to being lazy and takers as well. It is all the more horrific because they don’t have any “rights” having entered this country by nefarious and illegal means.

Recognizing that there is a strain of Bible Belt Christianity, you can turn your ire upon the “non-Christian” especially those who look different, are brown, and follow Islam. They are intent upon bringing their hate religion to our shores, taking control of our government and forcing us into their mosques. They are out to destroy American and everything we hold dear.

It is the fault of uppity women and gays who demand equal rights and are surely a part of that “One World Government” thing, that sounds un-American and sinister to boot. It all means that white men are losing their grip on power and money in this world.

Throw in a good dose of government is bad because it just is, continue the mantras of work ethics, and you have a supper to be served to the rank and file American who spends little or no time reading books or articles that deal with real issues in the world.

Soon you have a strange mix of folks who don’t want to pay taxes for all those “others” and who have managed to extricate from their King James’ Bible, plenty of justification for blaming it all on everybody not white, not male, and not Christian.

YOU COULD MAKE IT IF YOU WORK HARD AND IF IT WERE NOT FOR THEM.

The angry mobs will elect people who spout this, and assure them that they are right in their new-found angers and hatreds. A new cadre of grifters are paid to stir the pot daily, assuaging your guilt that tugs at your heart from time to time, making you feel just the slightest bit petty and selfish.

State legislatures across the land become engaged in bizarre bills to destroying women’s reproductive rights, limit the rights of immigrants, legal or not, ban gays from equality, pass looser gun laws (just in case we need them against the government), and otherwise suggesting that life outside the US of A might be better for all, and other secessionist blather.

These bands of ignorance can be found all over America, calling themselves “patriots” and other misbegotten appellations. They are no party, but a band of misfits of no particular ideology other than “stop taking my money” and “it’s not my fault I don’t have the life I dreamed of.” Those two ideas drive all their so-called “opinions. They know nothing, and care to know nothing.

But to call them the Know Nothings is to do a disservice to  another time and place and to misrepresent the meaning of the term when used. They deserve their own name, these “new, new” conservatives.

I coin the phrase The DICKS© to define them. They are the Determinedly Ignorant Conservative Koalition, or DICKS.

Searching For the Meaning of “Good” Friday

I’ve never been quite sure what the “good” in Good Friday meant. Perhaps we see beyond the pain, torture and death of Christ to the event of Easter. We live in those awful moments not in the moment itself, but in the promise of Sunday.

That seems to trivialize it a bit for me, and it doesn’t satisfy. I know that the Passover, celebrated as the Last Supper by Christians is that wonderful celebration by Jews of the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. It celebrates freedom. And no doubt as the Synoptic Gospels relate, this date for the Last Supper of Jesus (the first night of Passover) serves to symbolize our liberation from sin.

John changes the mix a bit by placing the Last Supper not on the first night of Passover, but the day before, when the lambs are slain for the meal. He likens Jesus to the lamb slain. The general symbolism remains the same.

I am not a believer of substitutionary sin–the theory that Jesus took upon himself our sins and died for them– a demand of a God who requires payment for a sinful world. Such a God, to me at least, is both harsh and ugly–sending his own son to die in the most horrible of ways.

Rather I see, (note that these ideas are surely not my own, but are the theology of many a learned scholar and teacher as well as believers) that Jesus by his willingness to die for his beliefs, shows us the perfect way to engage with this creator we call God. Jesus, in dying, pays the ultimate price for principle, the foundational principle of life–love, no matter what the cost.

For this is the essence of the God that Jesus points us towards. A God who is unimpressed by formulaic ritual and a God saddened by our tendencies to divide ourselves into groups of “saved” “faithful” or “pious” and all others who somehow by human standards fail to reach the mark. So saddened is God by our divisiveness that Jesus shows through his willingness to endure scorn, beating and tortuous death, that even the least among us is worthy of dying for.

As we struggle in our daily lives to come to grips with the deep agonies that divide us as a people and as a world, Jesus on the Cross, stands as testament to the strength that we too can express if we are willing to take up that Cross ourselves and stand for love at all costs.

Jesus stands against those whose primary goal is to protect “number one”. He stands against those who are motivated by greed, self-preservation, and egotistical individual ruggedness. He points the way to a God of grace and love, who calls us daily to be bigger than our selves in our love of brother and sister. This God, so real, so in love with His creation that He becomes one of us, in an effort to show us, by his teaching, suffering and death, what He is really all about.

I speak not of Jesus as the son of God, but as the Son of Man, for the reality or fantasy of Jesus as the incarnate God is beside the point really. If Jesus is so infused with the Spirit of the Transcendent One, then it matters not the creeds we dutifully recite each Sunday. Jesus moved aside as human, and allowed the Spirit of God to envelop him so completely that God really was among us.

All the more important that we be especially careful to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of the Church. More and more I find them quite different beings, with quite different agendas. After having read much, I am still in love with Paul and his exuberance for the Gospel, but I recognize that Paul molded the ensuing Church and molded Jesus into that Church. I’m not so sure that it is the Jesus of history whom he never met in the flesh.

We must comb the Gospels carefully I think to find that Jesus–that gentle yet firebrand individual who sought to bring all into the house of God, as true and perfect children. He tenderly attended to the needs of the most broken and rejected in society without asking of them anything in return, other than to put God first in their lives. His anger was invoked by those whom he saw as impeding the people in their attempt to know their God. He pointed the finger and accused them of having lost all sense of why they were doing what they did. It had all become for show, for power, and for accolades.

True piety rested with the many Marys who lived with the Master, the self-less women who sat at his feet, absorbing his wisdom, who anointed his head, washed his feet, and knelt at the foot of the cross, and ultimately went to dress his broken and dead body, and found to their amazement that his real presence washed over them.

If we learn anything from the Friday, called Good, it is that we too can approach God in these simple acts of service–not by asking questions about who deserves and who doesn’t deserve our acts, but in simply being willing to give in love, knowing that the Spirit of God inhabits each and every one of God’s created beings.

Have a blessed Easter Time.

(I know that many of you who read this are not religious, and at best agnostic if not actually atheistic in your outlook. But I think that whatever you believe, you are beloved and understood and accepted by God as you are, and I hope the sentiments I express, resonate in that “human” way that knows no faith.)

What a Difference a Mind Makes

You know it’s really funny. Prepare you face for it. To laugh that is.

When I talk about faith or religion here, it brings out the new atheists and their smarmy yak-yak about believing in fairy tales. When I talk about faith or religion on my actual religion blog, Walking in the Shadows, I sometimes get folks who deign to explain to me that I’m not practicing the right kind of Christianity from their point of view.

Yesterday, I was asked, after making a number of statements regarding various fairly technical aspects of Christian theology (atonement theory, faith/works), the sort of things that some of us love to discuss, whether I was a “follower” of Jesus.

I guess it caught me oddly since I can’t imagine why anyone would spend all that much time on a subject of which they had no interest. But then I thought of a few rather well-known scholars who had started their studies in faith, and then lost it, and remained in the discipline. So I guess it wasn’t so odd.

Which brought me to the well-known principle that on just about every subject known to man and woman, people see things very differently. To this person’s mind at least, because I didn’t believe as she did, I must not be a follower of Jesus as she was. There was one way to follow Jesus, and I wasn’t doing it.

Similarly, whether it be economics or climate change, or any of a host of human and worldly problems, you discover that people have views that seem idiotic to you. Yet, when you talk to them, they have the same passion as you do. They are just as sure. Well, I guess that’s not totally true. I always figure that I’m never totally sure about much of anything. Doubt to me is part of the package. Those who are diametrically opposed to what I think, they seem to be very sure.

Therein lies the rub as Shakespeare was wont to say. The “follower of Jesus” if asked, would assure me that her belief is absolute, without question. That seems to me to be the total opposite of faith. For to me, faith is such in the face of doubt. It’s a choosing to believe even when there is no proof that you are right, just no proof that you are wrong.

It led me to conclude that that is probably true about most people who are given to being “absolutely sure”.  I’m also engaged with a very reactionary type who is “very sure” there is no such thing as global warming. Even though logically he can’t be, since he has no training in any science even remotely related to the subject. He is adamant that he is right, because the people he aligns himself with say what he wants to be true.

A scientist will tell you that you can’t be absolutely sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. Something catastrophic could always happen. Is it true that only the reactionary right are “sure” about things? I wonder.

I’m not completely sure where this comes from. One can refer to the fundamentalist mind. People think it refers to super conservative church people, but it actually is a mindset. It refers to a person who likes things in neat little boxes, all tidy and a whole world gets constructed of rights and wrongs. Once they have established this nice world, they can finally relax, they have all the answers. Nobody is allowed to jeopardize that with actual facts to the contrary. They must be defeated, and they are, by naming them as suspect. They are “purveyors of lies”, they are “Marxists” or “socialists” or “one-world government” nuts. They are hucksters conspiring  to obtain grants based on known falsehoods, for the “money”. (of course nobody explains how tens of thousands are all in on this conspiracy and waste their careers getting grants to do things they know already are false). Nobody explains the lack of logic of it all.

One can refer to self-interest, and that explains a lot too. When you poke at the angry all too sure person, they generally erupt in a retort of “we’re going to be taxed to death, and all for nothing!” That is the crux of the issue when you puncture the pus-filled wound they carry around with them. They hate taxes, hate everything they perceive is keeping them from retaining every dime they make.

That is why the GOP mantra is so attractive. They not only support the angry right and it’s desire to pay less taxes, they give them all the reasoning as to why they need not feel guilty about it either. If you show them statistics that prove that raising the minimum wages doesn’t result in an uptick in the unemployment numbers and that it results in raising up the wages of all workers, they retort with a firm “no it doesn’t, all it does it deny poor black kids a chance at a job, and perpetuate poverty, which is all Democrats want because then they have a ready-made electorate who want those handouts.”

It’s so nice when people tell you aren’t racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or wrong period. It’s nice to be told that you are right in denying full rights to gay couples because “God wants it that way.” Nice to deny SNAP to women and children because it just “encourages laziness and relying on the government”. It’s nice to  leave the planet in a mess to the next generation because a few opportunists are willing to assure you that it’s really okay and you shouldn’t be scammed by and forced to pay more taxes to encourage green technology.

So, add another point to how to determine when you are hearing the truth, or when you are hearing what somebody wants you to believe for their own purposes. Are they sure? If they are, and they don’t have the background to make that determination, look for something else at play, and tread carefully when you make your decision of what you believe.

Belief and surety are not the same.