Here we go again with the War on Xmas

Every year around this time conservatives twist themselves in knots trying to argue against freedom of religion. One flashpoint this time around is the erection of a monument to satanism in the Iowa state capitol. It’s shiny and pretty.

I have noticed that every news story about it drags in this same weird religious wackaloon, Shellie Flockheart, who organized a prayer meeting to protest the display (about 4 people showed up), so in a sense it’s actually been effective in getting the conservative Christian perspective on air. In any other circumstance Flockheart would be getting no attention at all.

If you must witness true conservative hypocrisy, though, Michael Knowles has a ten minute rant about how religious freedom does not include those other religions. His argument is that a religion worthy of display must be leavened with “tradition”, and that the founding fathers weren’t thinking of Satanism when they wrote up the Constitution. That’s curious: so 17th century colonists did not actually believe in the evil being that they burned people to death over? I think it’s easy to argue that Americans have a long tradition of believing in Satan that’s still thriving today — just ask Shellie Flockheart. On the other hand, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, and Scientology didn’t exist when the Constitution was written, can we deny them their right to worship?

Heck, Christian Fundamentalism in the US is a post-civil war invention. Many of the founding fathers would have been appalled by biblical literalism, for instance, and they never heard of the Niagara Bible Conference, and they hadn’t read the twelve volumes of The Fundamentals. Religion evolves. The form it has taken in the 21st century, including the radical conservative Catholicism of Knowles, would have disgusted educated 18th century leaders.

But, you know, despite the contemporary existence of religions they did not care for (including Catholicism, by the Protestants, or atheism, which is a very old idea and also has a long tradition), those 18th century politicians declared freedom of religion with no qualifiers. They could have said that American was a Christian nation, or at least a nation that opposed Satan, but they didn’t, despite having full knowledge of the diversity of religious thought. They said:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Period. They qualified the second amendment by prefacing it with the words “a well-regulated militia,” a phrase the conservatives have pretended doesn’t exist ever since, but on the matter of religion they didn’t even insist on a formal priesthood. You can believe what you want. That’s our tradition that demented Christian traditionalist Knowles wants to abandon.

Some good news from Washington state

I didn’t even know about this court case in Minnesota, but it leads in the news here in the Seattle area. The Supreme Court made a good play.

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a Washington state law prohibiting licensed health care professionals from practicing “conversion therapy” – a scientifically discredited practice intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – as it applies to minors.

Critics say the practice – which attempts to convert people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning – into straight or cisgender people, causes serious emotional harm and can have deadly results.

Of course, it’s more of a “I’m not touching that with a 10 foot pole” decision than something that actively slaps down conversion therapy, but it’s a good start. At least until the court decides to revisit it again.

The usual suspects wanted to hear this case in court.

The vote was 6-3, with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly saying they would have taken up the case.
Thomas wrote in a five-page dissent that he would have taken up the case to consider a First Amendment challenge to the law.

I know it’s not fair legal practice, but I personally consider any law favored by those three corrupt thugs to be a bad law.

Embarrassing photo!

Here at my mother’s house, we’re reminiscing about old times, and out come the photo albums. You have permission to mock 1990s me.

This was not a one-off. Mary’s looking good in 1995, I’m just a big dork.

In contrast, this is a photo from 1943, of my grandparents holding my mother. Formal photos look so much better. Classy!

The rising of the full loon

If you’re really curious, my recent debate with Hendricks is now online as a video, with the full Q&A. It’s a cell phone video, so not great quality, but the whole thing is there.

But I want to talk about another problem with doing debates: it stirs up the crazies. I’ll give you some examples. This is an email I got the other day.

For what science and religion, not to mention the rest of us, thought impossible has now happened. History has its first literal, testable and fully demonstrable proof for faith and it’s on the web.

The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the Gospel
and moral teaching of Christ is published and on the web. Radically
different from anything else we known from history or tradition.
Redefining all primary elements including the very nature of Faith, the
Word, Law, Baptism, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit and especially the
Resurrection, this new moral teaching is predicated upon the ‘promise’ of
a precise, predefined, predictable and repeatable experience of
transcendent omnipotence and called ‘the first Resurrection’ in the sense
that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate Gods’
willingness to reveal Himself and intervene directly into the natural
world for those obedient to His Command, paving the way to confirm and
justify, by faith, to the power of divine Will, Purpose, Law, covenant,
and the absolute certainty of ultimate proof!

Thus ‘faith’ becomes an act of trust in action, the search along a defined
path of strict self discipline, [a test of the human heart] to discover
His ‘Word’ of a direct individual intervention into the natural world by
omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant,
which at the same time, realigns our flawed mortal moral compass with the
Divine, “correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering
biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural
evolutionary boundaries.” This is the discovery of the ‘true self’ and
thus is a man ‘created’ in the image and likeness of his Creator.

So like it or no, and most won’t, a new spiritual teaching offering a
testable, predictable, moral wisdom not of human intellectual origin,
transcending subjectivity, wholly testable by faith, meeting all
Enlightenment criteria of direct, evidence based causation and definitive
proof now exists, and carries all the implications that suggests. Nothing
short of an intellectual, moral and spiritual revolution is getting
underway.

Links on request.

I did not request a link.

I think this is a guy trying to stir up interest in his peculiar Christian cult. I made the point before that these debates are often a conflict between certainty and doubt, and here comes someone offering the absolute certainty of ultimate proof! No thanks.

Here’s a fun YouTube comment. Try and figure this one out:

Unfortunately its 2 archytypical minds at work in believers & non believers. In both camps this gets in the way often.

And you must understand current concesus science was authorativly imposed through actvist judges and politics it did not win over the arena of thoughtful science. It violated America’s main rule that we would never impose physical prescriptions upon each other because they was a aware of newtons infinite sums of approximating probability and was very aware of how hard it is to tell where physicalism begins and ends. Interpretations are not hurtful but physical prescriptions are damaging to society and nations.

Its the wrong question, this is typically only formulated by a chaldean mind or thought.
What isn’t God ,is the correct formulated question to ask.

This is hard for a Babylonian deterministic quantitative evolutionary mythological Euclidean mind to think of because its dictated by a radicalized environment governed by these extreme physical lawism structuralisms.
It rather stay in platos cave granting unification & simplicity in the top of the higher archy even if its made up , it needs to connect dots and force the evidence to fit the grand theory of everything to fill in missing links.
It rather live in complexity of many different disciplines cults within cults. Its unaware of its triality navagating this dualistic system.

War time powers of Ww2 & the modernization act traps America back under this chaldean mind model because the classical American mind triality recognized such necessary evil structuralism must give the unity & simplicity to the top so that 18 year old troops deal with Entropic turn over of infinite sums of approximating probability & complexity .

This type of believer says God is universe big bang with math & time is his actual fingertips and through mult verses he chose this one here etc etc etc.

The classical American mind is the only one to ever escape the chaldean mind or platos cave.

It state man made language, time & maths are inspired by god, only by his grace do we have a mind that can read his left over fingerPRINTS that’s legable.
This mind follows the evidence where it leads it knows the human dashboard can never removed from the system thus this system is the proper place to unify individual systems .
God is not in a rock or under a rock he was separated from his creation at different points but through us thy will be done. Through Jesus salvation the unification of tripartite nature of man past present and future. It is the grand unification of objects physica cause l,subjective secondary effect & idealogical minds. Mind body and soul. You know whole deal ,father ,son holy spirit represents the 3 natures of our reality .

What kind of archytypical mind do you have, a chaldean mind, a Babylonian deterministic quantitative evolutionary mythological Euclidean mind, or a classical American mind triality?

I’m at the airport, sorry to say

Warning: Old Man Rant coming up.

My first flight on an airplane was in 1975. I was flying from Seattle to Indianapolis to start my first year of college. It was OK. My family went right out to the gate with me, I boarded by seat number, I happened to sit next to a schoolteacher from Brownsville, IN who told me all about Indiana — the weather, the history, geography, cool differences from Washington state to watch out for. I still remember his kindness.

The flight was only remarkable in hindsight, because the airlines now have fucked up a mundane form of transportation beyond recognition.

Security theater is ridiculous. Get in a long line, take off your shoes, pull out any personal electronics, go through a scanner, get patted down by a guy in a blue uniform. Today is a light traffic day, so I was amused that there were more security personnel than passengers in the terminal.

Boarding is a nightmare of privilege. Now we board in the order First Class, Diamond Medallion, Premium Select, Comfort+, Sky Priority, Main Cabin 1, 2, and 3, and Basic Economy (on Delta; every airline has their own series of ranks). You have to pay extra to go first on the plane. I’m afraid I’m a Basic Economy person, every time.

I’m flying on Sun Country today, which is one of those no-frills airlines, so maybe I’m something even lower than Basic Economy. You will pay extra for every piece of luggage you bring on, which is fair, I guess. I’ve pared everything down to the bare essentials — everything I need for 8 days away packed into one tight little backpack. I sorta fondly remember that first flight when I packed a year’s worth of clothes into an oversized cardboard suitcase held together with packing tape. No extra cost for the flight, but this was before wheelie bags and I blistered my hands dragging that thing across the university campus.

When you buy a ticket through Sun Country, you don’t actually buy a seat — you have to go through a map of the plane where each seat has a dollar value attached, depending on their desirability. I booked a $12 seat, the lowest, because I didn’t want to spend $50 for an aisle seat near the front. I assume standing in an aisle is not an option.

And then there’s the lack of reliability — you pay for a ticket, but that’s not a promise that they’ll deliver you to your destination. They can cancel your flight at any time, there’s no recompense. There are often delays. I’ve learned that if they announce a 15 minute departure delay, that actually means they’re going to nudge that time upwards while you wait. It’s going to be hours, at least, and often ends in cancellation.

It’s all about corporate greed anymore. They’ve taken a service that used to be routine and reliable, and turned it into a hellish gamble, with the only guarantee being that the airline will get its money, whether they deliver or not.

I’d rather stay home anymore. But I’ve put my money in the slot, pulled the handle, and I’m hoping what comes up is a safe arrival in reasonable time in Seattle. So far, I’m not enjoying myself.

It’ll get better once I’m out of an airport.

Does God exist? Perry Hendricks & I argue about it

I was drafted to participate in a debate on my campus last night, and first I have to admit that yes, I have been quite vocal in my opposition to the utility of debates. As an excuse, I was asked by our students to do this, and I’m a sucker for student requests.

Secondly, the topic was, “does god exist?” That’s a real groaner of a subject, and normally I’d demand something more specific and manageable, but again…students. Also, my opponent, Perry Hendricks, seems to be a nice guy, so I went with it. It’s not as if we’re going to actually answer the question, or that the answer would matter.

We had an audience of about 100 people, mainly students taking a break before finals week hits them next week. I’d asked that it be recorded, but unfortunately it was not. But fortunately, I’d brought a pair of clip-on mikes, so I was able to capture Perry’s and my remarks in audio. Unfortunately, those mikes did not capture the audience’s questions, which is too bad since there were a lot of questions (mostly for Perry) and they were good sharp questions, too. I end this recording at the start of the Q&A, I’m sorry to say.

The format was straightforward. Perry got 20 minutes for an opening statement, then I got 20 minutes, then we go 10 minutes each for responses, and then we descended into a flurry of back-and-forth that again, my rudimentary recording set up could not cope with.

Partial transcript/commentary below the fold.

[Read more…]

What if two of the most annoying people in the world had a conversation?

This is how I like to see conservatives represented: briefly, and distilled down to the essence of their lunacy. I guess Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones sat down together for a tête-à-tête, with Carlson being fawning and praising Jones, and Jones being mutedly rabid. You couldn’t pay me to sit through the whole thing, but here it is edited down to 56 seconds.

It’s rather revolting watching Carlson sucking up all the shit Jones is spraying all over the place, so under a minute is right there at the limit of my tolerance.

Pray for me

In about an hour I’m strolling over to be sacrificed in this godawful debate.

It will be recorded, apparently. I’ll see what I can do to get a copy.

I dream of the day when these kinds of debates are banished to the domain of public arguments about whether Santa Claus is real.

An exercise in geography

It’s a journey of increasing uneasiness. A guy in an office is browsing Google Earth, and sees a dark circle in the middle of nowhere in Madagascar, and gets curious: he sees buildings inside of an old crater. He traces satellite photos back in time, and learns that the buildings weren’t there before 2008. He digs deeper, never leaving his office, but looking for photos and people on the internet who might help him figure out what’s going on in this remote place, which has virtually no footprint on the web.

So far, I’m with him. This is interesting! How much can you figure out about an isolated spot on the globe without lifting your butt from a chair? He’s calling up people in Madagascar, scientists and college professors, and asking them what’s going on in that crater. It’s purely academic, he just seems to be getting a bit obsessively invested in this random question, and now he’s pestering people on the island.

Then he hires a half dozen people to make the trek from the nearest city to this isolated place. He has the money, he can draft a few locals to do some leg work for him, all to satisfy his curiosity. Unfortunately, it’s the rainy season, the roads are terrible, they can’t get there.

So he waits for the dry season, hires another bunch of locals to make a second trip, and they get there at last. It’s a village of about 300 people. They’re tense and worried. They’re suspicious and wonder why these strangers have suddenly shown up on their doorstep.

They don’t tell them that this well-off white man a few thousand miles away had seen their homes from outer space and had spent a lot of time and money to invade their privacy and make a video telling the whole world about them. As a reward for exposing these people, the video creator got a million views on YouTube and thousands of comments telling him how great he was. But what does the village get? Did they even want this kind of attention?

Here’s the video. It’s professionally done. A lot of people spent a lot of money satisfying idle curiosity, which you’d think I’d appreciate, but I don’t know…how would I feel if a film crew showed up at my house, and they announced that this wealthy Malagasy guy was kind of curious about what I was doing and had commissioned them to come report on how I spent my time? He was too busy to make the trip himself, but he’d definitely make sure everyone knew my business.

Maybe I’d feel less queasy about it all if the narrator had cared enough to make the trip himself, and wasn’t parading the people around on the internet like some kind of exhibit.