Responses, Responses

It’s your right to come together
It’s your right to join and pray
It’s your right to go to Houston
To the Astrodome today

It’s your first amendment freedom;
Just remember, when you do,
That the same applies to others
When they’re criticizing you.

It’s my right to call you foolish
It’s my right to say you’re wrong
It’s my right to disagree with you
In poetry or song

You have every right to worship
You have every right to speak
But you do not have immunity
From secular critique

It’s your right to call me sinful
And to say I’m bound for hell
Just as long as every other voice
Can have their say as well

In the NYTimes, Op-Ed contributor Paul Horwitz writes “How to respond to Rick Perry and ‘The Response’“. It’s a nice piece, arguing that attempts to keep religion out of the public sphere are misguided. Not because religion has any sort of special privilege in guiding public officials, but because attempts to keep religion “private” come at too great a cost:

by trying to banish religion from the public sphere, Mr. Perry’s critics end up cutting themselves out of the debate. When religion is viewed as a fundamentally private matter, the natural corollary is to think that it is inappropriate to criticize someone’s faith.

We have also seen that those who do criticize faith matters are seen as militant, boorish, dicks.

This double standard needs to end. If religion can’t be forbidden in our public debates, even for elected officials, neither should it be immune from public criticism. And in the case of Mr. Perry and “The Response,” there are good reasons to be critical.

Horwitz focuses on The Response, but the message applies much more broadly.

I personally like it when public officials flaunt their religion in public. But then, satirical writing requires a diet rich in public stupidity.

Two Books

My favorite thing about this one, on the old blog, was my readers’ responses.

There was a man who had a book
Of Things Which He Believed;
He followed it religiously—
He would not be deceived.

The story in its pages was
The Truth that he adored—
The world outside its ancient script,
He faithfully ignored.

When someone found a falsehood
Or a small mistake inside it
(Or even some tremendous flaw)
He eagerly denied it.

The Truth was there inside his book
And never found outside
If something contradicted it
Why then, that something lied

And when he met another man
Who had another book,
He fell not to temptation—why,
He didn’t even look.

And, surely, there are other men
With other books in hand
Who walk, with views obstructed,
Here and there across the land

****

There was a man who had a book
(I find this quite exciting)
Who looked upon a tangled bank
And then… he started writing.

He wrote about the things he saw
And what he saw them do
And when he found mistakes he’d made
He wrote about them, too

He shared his book with other men
And women that he met—
They found the catch is bigger, when
You cast a wider net.

They shared their observations
So that everyone could read;
They worked as a community,
The better to succeed.

They found they saw much further,
And discovered so much more
When they stood upon the shoulders
Of the ones who’d gone before

It’s a book that keeps evolving,
Always growing, as we learn.
Many people help to write it:
Would you like to take a turn?

The New Parenthood

Continuing todays XKCD theme…

I want to make peace with my laptop computer;
I think that its feelings were hurt.
It read what I wrote–at least, that’s what I figure;
Since then, it’s been rather more curt.
It’s dialogue boxes are monosyllabic,
I swear it’s beginning to pout.
Now I’m thinking that, maybe, it’s bored in that box,
So I’m working on letting it out.

I wired a handful of microcontrollers,
Some batteries, bearings, and wheels,
A webcam for eyes, so it sees where it’s going
And doesn’t fall, head over heels.
It’s programmed, of course, not to run into objects
While making its way ‘cross the floors,
And it talks to my house’s security system
And opens and closes the doors!

Now it sneaks out and wanders all over the city–
I follow its progress online.
It’s posting its story, and streaming its cam
On a blog that gets more hits than mine.
It asked me last week for a solar recharger–
I found it a small one to add;
This morning, I woke to a note in the printer:
“I’m off to adventure! Thanks, Dad!”

Inspired by the inimitable XKCD, in case you are the last person not to know about it.

Asking Questions, Questioning Answers

In the seeking of knowledge,
From cradle to college,
No matter the issue or task
It’s a pretty good bet
That the answers you get
Will depend on the questions you ask

The answer, my friends
Very often depends
On what question was asked, and of whom?
In the world that we face
It’s not often the case
There’s an expert right there in the room

It’s a process. We ought
To use skeptical thought
But the thing is—unless we’re omniscient,
You are different from me
So we might disagree
On what evidence we find sufficient

One man may be liable
To look to the bible
Another may look to his heart
If they honestly question,
Then here’s my suggestion:
That’s all we can ask, for a start.

I hesitate to weigh in too much on the skepticism/atheism kerfuffle, mainly because I suspect that much of the kerfufflage is the result of overreaction on both sides. A specific complaint is seen as a general one, colorful language is used, et voila! Molehills, mountains, teapots, tempests.

So, although I could be wrong, I don’t think this is a big deal. Of course skepticism and atheism are not the same thing; that’s trivially true and easily demonstrated. It’s not a major issue. One can easily be a skeptical Christian. I was, and it led to my atheism. My sister was, and remains a Christian (in my opinion, she asked the wrong people, and was shown bad evidence, but that’s a very easy thing to have happen where she lives; she has also been able to avoid science classes in her education, and may be ill-prepared to evaluate the evidence she gathers).

The real reason for writing this post, though, is to share this video. This man was a skeptic while he was a Christian, and does a great job describing the sorts of questions he asked, the answers he got, the puzzles he puzzled… His experience was different from mine (for one thing, he left Christianity younger than I did), but it had a familiar feel to it for me, and he is (unlike me) a comfortable speaker just telling his story, without notes, to a rolling camera.

And as of this writing, it only has 190 views. It deserves more.

Someone Is Wrong (…On The Internet)

I am still in the process of introducing myself; with any luck, our new server will roar into action at any moment and make it easier for readers to zip through my pages here, but in the meanwhile, for the six of you who manage to get through, another from the old digs. It’s friday, which is XKCD day (along with monday and wednesday, of course); I have occasionally used XKCD as a jumping-off point for a verse. This one, for instance.
(to be read aloud, with increasing speed and spittle-flecks)

Someone Is Wrong
…On The Internet,
And I won’t get to sleep for a while,
Cos I’ll stay up and fight if it takes me all night
When I know I am right and my coffee is strong
Because Someone Is Wrong!
…On The Internet
And the cases they cite are all lame;
I don’t mean to be picky, but hell, it’s not tricky,
Just google or wiki, you’ll see before long
Because Someone Is Wrong!
…On The Internet
And I’m not going to idly sit by!
What he says is a crock! So I’ll teach, tease, or mock
Till my internal clock thinks I live in Hong Kong
Because Someone Is Wrong!
…On The Internet
On a topic of interest to me,
And the rancor’s increased; I’m becoming a beast
And that glow in the East is becoming quite strong
Because Someone Is Wrong!
…On The Internet
Which I’ve stayed up the whole night to say
But his head is cement, and I’ve made not a dent
And one hundred percent of the gathering throng
Says that Someone Is Wrong!
…On The Internet
But it looks like they’re siding with him.
They are here not to cheer for the points I’ve made clear
On this fight I’ve used sheer force of will to prolong
Because Someone Is Wrong!
…On The Internet
It’s beginning to look like it’s me.
I can hardly admit that my logic is shit
But it doesn’t quite fit, ‘less I twist it a bit,
So defeated I sit, at the end of my wit…
Since time will permit, I will land one more hit:
Declare victory, quit, let that be my swan song,
Because Someone Is Wrong!
…On The Internet
Me.
image source XKCD, as if I had to tell you

The Sanctity of Marriage (Warren Jeffs Edition)

“If two men can wed, why not three men, or four,
Or a dog, or a sheep, or a pigeon?
The only thing keeping the evil from creeping
Is the holy restraint of religion!”

But casting about for examples, I find
A surprising result in my search—
In polygamy cases, and doggy embraces
What force was behind them? A church!

The news today has polygamist (and polygamist church leader) Warren Jeffs convicted on child sexual assault charges. He could spend the rest of his life behind bars. His defense, such as it was, claimed that this was not sexual assault on a 12 year old girl, but rather church-approved holy matrimony (and as the leader of the church, he should know!).

I have previously written about a marriage between man and dog. In this case, the wedding took place at a Hindu temple.

The “defenders of marriage” often tell us that marriage is religious, not civil, and that this religious aspect is what keeps the barbarians at the gate. If it were not for the church, if we can let men marry men, and women marry women, then the door is open for polygamy, for cross-species marriage, for any manner of misconduct.

But, see, that door is open. It’s just a door to a different church. If you don’t like it, maybe it would be best to recognize marriage as the civil contract it is, independent of interference from any church.

A Call To Prayer (Not You, Pal)

On August 6, the nation will come together at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas for a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting and faith.

Now, I know everything’s bigger in Texas, but that has got to be one hell of a stadium if the entire nation is going to come together there. Is this gonna be another one of those Noah miracles? How is “the nation” going to fit into the Astrodome? (Source: The Response. Seriously, take a look. People who know how to use the internet are planning on fasting and praying to save the country.)

We must gather Real Americans—
We’re putting out the call—
It’s time to come to Texas,
Come to Houston, one and all!
It’s the chance to save our nation;
It’s the righteous thing to do

Just a minute, buster—who invited you?

In this time of moral crisis
We must pray in Jesus’ name
And it wouldn’t do to gather
With the ones we’re going to blame
We will gather in humility
In just a couple days

But I don’t intend on welcoming the gays.

We will offer our repentance,
Asking God to intervene
In the greatest moral crisis
That our country’s ever seen
We will humbly bow before Him,
Those who answer when we call

But let’s not include the atheists at all.

We need answers to our problems,
And who would better know
Than an ancient Jewish prophet
From two thousand years ago?
There is wisdom in the Bible
And it’s wisdom we can use

But I don’t expect to see a lot of Jews.

It’s a prayer to save the nation
It’s a prayer for all of us
Only fifteen bucks for parking
There’s a place to put your bus
Come and join in prayer with us
At the Reliant Astrodome

But you Muslims maybe better stay at home.

Though we’re “non-denominational”
We’re Christian and we’re proud
You might even see a Catholic
Or a Mormon in the crowd
Evangelicals a-plenty
Other groups in small amounts

In other words, it’s everyone who counts

Once we winnow out the heathens,
The apostates, and the wrong
And we keep it to the people
Who we know will get along
We’ll have elbow-room aplenty
At the new Reliant Park

Maybe this is how they did it with the Ark.

Introspection

I have no eyes to look behind
And view my brain, much less my mind;
I cannot know your thoughts, and you
Are blind to what I’m thinking, too.
These are the facts; we can’t deny
We have no working “inner eye”
Nor any form of ESP;
Your thoughts cannot be seen by me.

The claim—that we can know ourselves—
Is countered by the miles of shelves
Of self-help books. Our knowledge hides
From where we’re told that it resides!
If we could simply take a look
Inside our minds, why need a book?
We’d never ask “How do I feel?
Could this be love? Could it be real?”

If God or Science offered me
Some cranial transparency
So you could see my every thought—
The change of mind; the urge I fought,
The censored comment never spoken,
Secret kept and promise broken—
What fabled treasures! Wondrous finds,
If we could read each other’s minds!

But we cannot. Make no mistake,
Our skulls and minds are both opaque
We do, instead, what we can do;
We read the things in public view
We see the song, the poem, the kiss;
Infer from these that love is this.
In turn, each element we find
We sum, and call the total “mind”.

If I could see inside my head,
(A place where angels fear to tread)
And see how thinking really works,
The jumble of selected quirks
And if (what wonders “if” can do!)
I saw inside your thinking too
I think that I should never see
What now makes up philosophy.

This post was originally a comment in an ongoing thread about memes. The fish, a macropinna microstoma, would be the perfect antithesis of the metaphorical cuttlefish. Cuttlefish obscure their thoughts in ink, but macropinna has a transparent cranium. Utterly open; I’ve known people like that. Except that, no. You’d think you can read her face like a book, but you’re really just reading that book by its cover, and you know what they say about that. We can’t see what a macropinna is thinking. But we can see what it is doing, which is all we need.