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?

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.

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.

Kill The Atheists!

(The title is satire, not hate speech. I don’t want anybody killed.)

Atheists are hateful (1); they’re annoying, rude, and loud;
They’re a total waste of oxygen (2), the godless and the proud
They are spiteful un-Americans, rejecting Jesus’ call—
The solution? Let’s just shoot them. Shoot them all(3).

Those atheists are radicals, and militants as well;
For their blasphemous beliefs they’ll all be heading straight to hell
We could wipe them from the planet, and be grateful for the loss—
The solution? Fucking nail them to the cross(4).

They deny the Holy Spirit; they deny a God above
They deny that Christ was crucified to save us through His love
By rejecting God’s forgiveness, they choose nothingness instead
So they all deserve a shotgun to the head(5).

We should crucify their leader; shove a spear into his side
Let him know the pain that Jesus felt, the hours before He died(6)
So that maybe he’ll appreciate what Jesus Christ is worth—
Nah, let’s wipe the fucking godless from the earth.

I follow in Christ’s footsteps; I adore the Prince of Peace,
But these atheists grow bolder as their numbers have increased
It’s my patriotic duty now, to walk where Jesus led
And He wants these godless bastards fucking dead.

(1) Michael Perri
(2) Casey M Jones
(3) Joe Martinez, Casey M Jones, Bob O’Connell, Joseph Sneckenberg
(4) Chris Dunn, Mike Holeschek
(5) Joe Martinez
(6) Chris Dunn

Source.
Edited to add: Here’s another source for a bit more of the background. It is noted there that, although these comments were taken down quickly by site owners (Fox News’s facebook page), Chris Dunn’s comment got 19 “likes” in the few minutes it was up.

Headline Muse 7/30

Seems the picture that’s drawn is too hazy
Or my brain has gone summertime lazy
We could blame his religion
Which tweaks things a smidgeon
But, really: just “partially crazy”?

Headline: Ex-FLDS member: Warren Jeffs “partially crazy”

In an “objection” lasting nearly an hour, Warren Jeffs, polygamist and alleged child molester, threatened his prosecutors with “sickness and death“. He wasn’t making a threat; he was simply delivering a message he got from God.

God Is Love, Right?

The Old Testament god of the bible was liable
To torture and kill you, as if at His whim;
His ardent believers were therefore a scare for
The heathens who dared have doubts about Him

The New Testament hoped to appease us with Jesus
Whose death on the cross was the end to our fear;
Now Christians are always, while living, forgiving
Unless we say something they don’t want to hear

Yesterday’s “Headline Muse” referred to the American Atheists’ WTC cross case. It’s a story worth keeping an eye on, for those of us who love reading commentary. As is often the case, the worst of the comments are censored before we can read them… but this time, some have been archived, and serve as testimony to Christian Love. (The ones that remain range from supportive to vile, but fall short of death threats.) [Read more…]

One Last Dance

When Johnny was little, he played with his friends
As the summertime slowly would pass
They’d swim in the rivers; they’d hide in the woods
And they’d frolic and dance in the grass, oh
They’d frolic and dance in the grass

But friendship is fickle in kids of this age
So he had the occasional fight
And names would be called, and fists would be thrown,
In a world that was pure black-and-white;
Johnny was smaller than some of the boys
And the target, sometimes, of abuse
He sometimes fought back, but too quickly he learned
That his struggles were never of use

When Johnny was little, he’d played with his friends
As the summertime slowly would pass
They’d swim in the rivers; they’d hide in the woods
And they’d frolic and dance in the grass, oh
They’d frolic and dance in the grass

Johnny was lonely, and Johnny was scared;
He knew he would never be cool
He knew all the names of the popular boys
Cos they’d all kicked his ass after school
They called him a faggot; they called him a queer
And nobody cared if it’s true
Cos the summers are long and the summers are hot
And the bad boys need something to do

When Johnny was little, he’d played with his friends
As the summertime slowly would pass
They’d swim in the rivers; they’d hide in the woods
And they’d frolic and dance in the grass, oh
They’d frolic and dance in the grass

Johnny told teachers, and parents and more
That the bullies were out of control
But the teachers were fond of the popular boys
So they told him they’d pray for his soul
He heard what they said, and he heard what they didn’t,
And knew they were not on his side
He wondered if, really, they worried at all,
And would they be sad if he died?

When Johnny was little, he’d played with his friends
As the summertime slowly would pass
They’d swim in the rivers; they’d hide in the woods
And they’d frolic and dance in the grass, oh
They’d frolic and dance in the grass

Johnny was tired of running and hiding
And wanted his troubles to end
Johnny might never have done what he did
If he only had talked with a friend
Instead, though, he talked with the school’s Parents’ League
(There were lies that they had to dispel)
They wanted the children to all know the truth—
That Johnny was going to Hell

They said he was sinful; they said he was wrong
They told him the things he must learn
They told him that God sends all sinners to Hell
They told him that that’s where he’d burn
When Johnny heard the things they said
He knew he had no chance
So Johnny got a length of rope
For one last, special dance

They told him they’d pray for the sake of his soul
They told him that, always, there’s hope;
But never again will he dance in the grass
Since he danced at the end of a rope, oh
Since he danced at the end of a rope.

[Read more…]

Should I Be Cross?

I can’t really blame you; the pain is yet growing,
With so many horrible losses
But somehow it seems that your privilege is showing—
You seem to have mis-placed your crosses.

One of the reasonably local papers around Cuttletown had a political cartoon today that irked me a bit. Here’s a link–I won’t show it here because, well, I’m cheap. Basically, the cartoon morphs the cross from the flag of Norway into the crosses at the graves of the victims.

It’s a clever concept, but it reinforces the position of privilege held by Christians (despite claims of persecution) in the US. The crosses represent the victims (reminiscent of Justice Scalia’s view that crosses are “the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead”), which is all well and good, except that

According to Inglehart et al. (2004), 31 percent of Norwegians do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 54 percent of Norwegians said that they did not believe in a “personal God.” According to Greeley (2003), 41 percent of Norwegians do not believe in God, although only 10 percent self-identify as “atheist.” According to Gustafsson and Pettersson (2000), 72 percent of Norwegians do not believe in a “personal God.” According to Froese (2001), 45 percent of Norwegians are either atheist or agnostic.

(source: Phil Zuckerman’s chapter, “Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Patterns”, in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism.)

Ah, but we do know with certainty that there was at least one Christian involved. The shooter. Yes, it appears his extremist political views, not his religion, was his motivation. I’m sure American cartoonists would make the same distinction for Muslim terrorists as well.