One of my “friends” in a social networking site that shall go unnamed* has a profile blurb stating the following:
Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
1. Jesus Christ
2. The American GI.
One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.
Upon reading this, it carried a slight patina of credibility: the members of the US military are rightly renowned for their willingness to die for the sake of the US national defense, and the Jesus character from the New Testament did withhold his putative omnipotence long enough to endure a torturous execution, and did so, we are told, for the expiation of our sins.
On a few seconds’ more reflection, it turns out this kind of willing sacrifice is not so rare after all: martyrdom is hardly unheard of above and beyond the case of Jesus, and mortal risk comes attached to many occupations, a few obvious examples being police officers, firefighters, and prison guards. And there are many more — they don’t mean Deadliest Catch from the crabs‘ perspective.
What’s worse about the right-wing nostrum is how the two sacrifices it’s willing to consider are wholly at odds with each other. Jesus sacrificed himself because we’re incorrigible sinners without any hope of meriting god’s favor on our own, whereas US soldiers routinely die to preserve our “way of life,” which consists of large doses of greed, gluttony, lust, envy, sloth, pride, and assorted varieties of wrath. Jesus died to whisk away our sin; soldiers die to keep us neck-deep in it. Some fanatical Christians, perhaps most famously the knuckle-draggers of Fred Phelps‘s church, not only notice but loudly and rudely deplore this disparity.
In short, this nostrum my “friend” so proudly displays is, at best, a gross oversimplification. Soldiers do place their lives at peril, and we should acknowledge and thank them for that. But they’re not the only ones worthy to be so acknowledged.
* Unnamed except to say that it is not MySpace, which is garbage.
Source:A Nostrum Encountered
Here is a live performance of “When the Roses Bloom Again” by Laura Cantrell, who seems to have been born to sing this song (and others besides):
This performance appears to have been broadcast on BBC TV, which makes it yet another instance in which interesting music shows up on British, rather than American, TV — and in this case, it’s difficult to imagine how this music could be more American: the performer is American, the song was originally written by American A.P. Carter, its lyrical referent is the American Civil War.
Though I’ve not carried out the requisite sociological research, I believe I am on firm footing when I say the United States has numerous music fans, and of these, many who watch television. So where the hell is interesting music on American television?
Well, we have MTV, right? MTV! Music TeleVision! Below are tonight’s listings on MTV as screen-scraped from the local cable monopoly’s online TV listings page (click images to enlarge). I have no idea what these programs are about, but a glance at their descriptions reveals no discernible relationship with music. They seem to be something more in the “reality TV” category, or the “situation comedy (comedy conspiciously omitted)” category, or who-the-hell-cares. Maybe they’re game shows? Shows centered on footage of car chases? On footage of the physical arrests of trailer trash and/or racial minorities? I keep suggesting possibilities as though I wish to find out, when in fact I do not.
I grant I have not fully canvassed the issues raised here — Laura Cantrell, being a country-ish performer, is unlikely to appear on even a hypothetical version of MTV that concerned itself with music-oriented television; there is such a thing as a Country Music channel (CMT) that may, indeed, produce and broadcast music-oriented programming; perhaps there is another bona-fide music-oriented channel of which I am unaware (VH1?); it may be that my one-night sampling of MTV’s programming is an exception to a music-rich-programming rule.
I doubt all of the above, especially the latter, but since I have long since fallen out of the habit of even remembering the existence of MTV, I can’t speak with any confidence about the general nature of its programming.
I want my M TV; MTV can go hang.
Source:Music and American Television
Prepare to read something else you’ll wish you hadn’t:
As the summer swim season starts Memorial Day weekend, water quality and health experts have a message for swimmers: Please don’t pee in the pool.Although urine in the water probably will not cause swimmers to go to the emergency room, it causes “more of a respiratory, ocular irritation: the red puffy eyes or a cough, an itchy throat,” said Michele Hlavsa, an epidemiologist in the division of parasitic diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”A big health message is not to urinate or pee in the water.”
Back in the days when I went swimming regularly, I frequently experienced ocular irritation, and not uncommonly, a cough or itchy throat. Before now, I had been led to believe this was a result of the chlorine in the pool, not a consequence of all the urine I had excreted into the water.
If this is right, I had pee eyes, not chlorine eyes.
Source:Another Delusion Flushed Away
I wonder if anyone will answer Ophelia Benson’s questions? The questions arose in a dispute with Brandon at Siris and concern, broadly, the ways and extent to which Islam-as-creed is distinct from Muslims-as-people.
I have touched on this question myself many times, and in the spirit of not reinventing the wheel (or the butterfly), I’ve reproduced something I wrote a year ago that’s of direct relevance to the matters at hand. I’ve edited it ever so slightly:
There is violence and intolerance aplenty in the world’s leading holy books: see here a quiz and its answers comparing the viciousness of the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Koran; here’s more violence in the Koran; and still more violence in the Koran.
All well and good, but again and again, the point is made that no meaningful conclusions about a person’s beliefs follow from the person’s choice of holy books. Castigating Sam Harris for his most recent castigation of Islamic dogma, Tristero makes the point:
[W]hile it is certainly possible to read the texts of Islam (at least, the translated texts) as supporting a political program and the use of violence to gain power, it is not a necessary reading any more than a reading of the Hebrew Bible necessarily supports the violent suppression of objections to Israeli settlements.
And then broadens the point:
[T]here is no such thing as “Islam” but Islams – plural. To lump all Islams together and condemn the aggregate as inherently violent is not merely silly, but bizarre.
Presumably, Tristero would not want to condemn the aggregate as illiberal either. Granted, there are violent and non-violent, illiberal and liberal people who self-label as devout Muslims, just as there are child-rapist-shielding and non-child-rapist-shielding people who self-label as devout Christians, and it’s worthwhile to draw the distinctions among them.
To that end, exactly how do we draw the distinctions? I want to understand the non-literalists. Apparently a person can be a devout Muslim while blithely ignoring substantial swaths of the Koran. What is the Koran to such a person? Did god dictate it to Mohammed? If so, doesn’t it have to be humbly accepted as the teaching of a much greater intelligence? If not, isn’t it just another book? If it’s somewhere between — in part just another book, in part the words of god himself — how do we know which is which? On whose authority? According to what interpretive scheme? If it’s a matter of deducing the “correct” passages from their agreement with an overarching, fundamental essence of the faith — peace, submission, love, charity, service, truth, what have you — who decides the essence of the faith? Who defines these loaded terms? Doesn’t this stance just beg the same basic questions?
I really don’t get it. I have the same questions about the forms of Judaism and Christianity that wish away substantial portions of god’s supposed revelation.
Stripping away the platitudes and euphemisms, the forms of Abrahamic monotheism that sweep away the embarrassments and evils of the really-existing holy books amount to special pleading. They sound like groundless assertions that a set of piety-encrusted wishes, hopes, and aspirations are true — true as in authenticated by a god, notwithstanding what the god actually left in the way of concrete revelation.
This is good enough? This merits respect?
We continue to await a better account of non-literalist belief.
Source:Plus Ca Change — God's Law, God's Followers
This is a slightly edited version of a comment I chipped in at The Film Talk in an exchange ensuing from Gareth Higgins’s claim that
at the end of it all, the questions of the interaction between faith and science that the film [Angels and Demons] mentions deserve a better hearing than they’re getting either in movies like this, or in the work of Richard Dawkins.
Frequent flyers in the theism-atheism debates will recognize this quick jape directed at Richard Dawkins as a version of the Courtier’s Reply, and it strikes me as not enough merely to parody the Courtier’s Reply but to specify exactly what’s wrong with it. So this is an attempt in that vein.
Concerning Richard Dawkins:
(a) He has said many times — and I think he has a very good point here — that the relevance of theology depends completely on the quality of an underlying truth claim, namely that a god either does or does not exist. If god does not exist, then theology does not matter at all, as it is nothing more than an edifice of word games and just-so stories stacked on a delusion. If god does exist, nothing could be important than theology (defined here as the discipline devoted to understanding god’s revelations, his will, his rules, etc.)
(b) While Dawkins has no discernible background in theology, his work in science establishes his expertise as an evaluator of fact-based hypotheses, and he insists, rightly, that the question of god’s existence is question of fact. Dawkins has a strong record of winnowing what’s demonstrably true from the nice-sounding-but-false, the not-particularly-nice-sounding-but-false, and the outright-laughably-false. He is explicit about his method of evaluating truth claims, and having applied it to the question of god’s existence/non-existence, he has concluded it is false — or, more exactly, he has found it very likely false. Readers of The God Delusion will recall he assigns it a 6 on a 7-point scale where 1 = 100% certainly true and 7 = 100% certainly false.
People rather vociferously differ on whether Dawkins succeeded or failed in arriving at that conclusion, and on whether his method for getting to that conclusion is properly suited to the question. But make no mistake: that god very likely does not exist is Dawkins’s paramount conclusion.
I think he’s right with (a) above, and that being so, he does indeed spend no time on theology. I would expect him to change on that — I know I would — were someone to successfully demonstrate, with strong reasoning and evidence and a supportable truth-evaluation methodology whose terms are specified, that the 6 needs to be dialed back to a lower number.
Finally, I would simply ask the critics who continue to issue variations of the Courtier’s Reply whether and to what extent they have considered all the theology that they have rejected — Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, Shinto, competing sects, etc.
Do they insist that every thinking person devote serious attention all the theology he/she does not currently embrace — suspending judgment until it has all been given a fair hearing? Or do they, as I suspect tends to be the case, selectively apply this to Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, PZ Myers, and other atheists?
I continue to affirm, along with Dawkins, that questions of theology matter only after god’s existence has been demonstrated.
Source:A Response to the Courtier's Reply
For reasons that presently escape me but are no doubt crudely pecuniary, CNN has decided to notice the existence of scholar and agnostic Bart Ehrman:
Ehrman backs his arguments with a deep knowledge of the culture and history of the New Testament world. He’s written 20 books on early Christianity and is an authority on ancient manuscripts used to translate the Bible.His claims, though, take on some of Christianity’s most sacred tenets, like the resurrection of Jesus. Ehrman says he doesn’t think the resurrection took place. There’s no proof Jesus physically rose from the dead, and the resurrection stories contradict one another, he says.
That Ehrman does indeed ground his skepticism of Christianity in a thorough knowledge of its theology, source texts, and even the languages in which the texts were written; and that he tends to come across in an easygoing and friendly manner poses an interesting challenge for the anti-new-atheist flacks: the Courtier’s Reply, according to which religious skepticism is dismissed on grounds of an alleged failure to consider the past 3,000 years worth of theology, does not work for Ehrman. It does not work against other critics of religion, but it falls with an especially audible thud in Ehrman’s case.
It would be interesting to observe, for example, whether Terry Eagleton or Chris Hedges — who appear to have written the same unreadable book, give or take a few turns of phrase, sloppy misattributions, and points of emphasis — have seen fit to mention Ehrman. Amazon.com’s helpful “look inside this book” feature reveals that Eagleton‘s index includes zero mentions of Bart Ehrman; and Hedges‘ version of the same book matches that zero; as does Dinesh D’Souza‘s; as does this one.
Telling, no?
I do not mean to suggest Ehrman is without his critics. But he has the scholarly background to tell a naked emperor from a clothed one, and from that expertise he has come to a decidedly new-atheistic set of conclusions, albeit without the same self-label.
Telling. Yes.
Source:Telling Indexes
Ophelia Benson has collaborated with Jeremy Stangroom on a new book that sounds provocative and worthwhile:
Perhaps you’re wondering what kind of book it is. The title might be a clue: Does God Hate Women? [Amazon link] It’s about the role of religion in the subordination of women, and it’s critical of many religious practices and beliefs and claims.It’s not an ecumenical kind of book. It’s not conciliatory. It’s not about can’t we all get along. It’s not about cohesion, or respecting all religious and philosophical beliefs, or universal blanket tolerance, or saying that at bottom we all agree on the basics. It’s not that kind of book. It’s the other kind. It makes moral and political claims, and it disagrees with and opposes other moral and political claims. That’s the kind of book it is, and that’s always been the kind of book it would be. There’s never been any ambiguity about that. It’s always been a book that some people were going to disagree with.
Reading between the lines of Ophelia’s missive, I detect that she has been dealing with people — publishers? editors? readers asked to give input? — who are concerned with the non-conciliatory, combative tone and content of the book.
I can say this: I plan to read this book. I’m sure there are people who wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole, and others who might give it a glance but wouldn’t short-list it for the next round of Christmas stocking stuffers, but it definitely sounds like my kind of book. And I know I am not alone in that.
Source:Does God Hate Women?
George F. Will recently took a brief break from lying about climate change and castigating blue jeans to shake his tiny pale fist at government’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad tendency to make rules:
Once upon a time, government was supposed to defend the shores, deliver the mail and let people get on with their lives. Today’s far-seeing and fastidious government, not content with designing the cars Americans drive to their homes and the lightbulbs they use in their homes (do you know that, come 2014, the incandescent lightbulb will be illegal?), wants to say where their homes can be. And to think that Republican Ray LaHood, Secretary of Behavior Modification, is an enthusiast for this, well, cozy relationship between Washington and Peoria, and everywhere else, too.
This is teh awesome! Stay precious, Newsweek. Whatever you’re paying George F. Will to write this kind of offal, I hope you’ll double it.
As to the substance, I nominate George F. Will’s double-gated community (wherever it is) for first in line to become free of all these unbearable restrictions that so bedevil us — including, naturally, all neighborhood covenants and zoning laws. As he says, government should restrict its actions to delivering the mail, protecting the borders, and — Will was too incensed with the prospect of criminalized light bulbs to mention this function of government from the good ole days — gobbling up larger and larger shares of the Native Americans’ land. If Will’s neighbors across the street want to convert their house into a Taco Bell, and if the neighbors to one side want to open up a strip club, and if the neighbors to the other side want to raze the house and mine for precious metals, who could rightly stand in the way?
Of course, if the neighbor across from the precious metals mine wants to set up a chapel in which gay marriage ceremonies take place, and if the neighbor across the street from the strip club wants to open up a brothel, and if someone else down the street chooses to use his property for a clinic that provides family planning services, a free needle exchange, and medicinal marijuana, George F. Will will expect his panicked calls to the Secretary of Behavior Modification to be answered forthwith.
I can’t wait to read that column!
Source:Will Pines
Glennzilla runs down what has been a grim week in the Obama administration’s rollbacks of civil liberties:
Monday – Obama administration’s letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;Tuesday – Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;
Wednesday – Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse — despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;
Friday -Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.
At least the president didn’t treat the Constitution like so much toilet paper on Thursday, assuming this list is complete.
Notwithstanding a very qualified agreement with Wednesday’s entry — an agreement that stands on purely substantive grounds and does not even consider the legalities — this is not the change I voted for.
I am losing track — was it one president ago or two who said the following marvelous words?
This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our Founding Fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct, not just when it’s easy, but also when it’s hard.
This is exactly right, which is what makes Obama’s recent actions so exactly wrong. We did not need another president who either doesn’t connect his words with his deeds, or doesn’t care that they contradict.
Shameful.
Source:Same Shit, Different Day. Thursday Excepted.
PZ Myers is enthusiastic about the prospect of tweaking chickens’ development to make living dinosaurs, a blueprint of which he found in a new book by Jack Horner and James Gorman. Enthusiasm is one thing; the surprising thing is that Myers, who knows developmental biology if anyone does, finds the scheme plausible:
And then, once you’ve got a tailed chicken, you could work on adding teeth to the jaws. And foreclaws. And while you’re at it, find the little genomic slider that controls body size, and turn it up to 11. What he’s proposing is a step-by-step analysis of chicken-vs.-dinosaur decisions in the developmental pathways, and inserting intentional atavisms into them. This is all incredibly ambitious, and it might not work…but the only way to find out is try. I like that in a scientist. Turning a chicken into a T. rex is a true Mad Scientist project, and one that I must applaud.
Yes! I would prefer we hold off on turning up the genomic body size slider to 11 until after we’ve thoroughly validated the approach, if only because a shins-high T-Rex would be absolutely adorable, whereas a full-sized one would likely create public relations problems from all the heedless predation.
Start small, I say — but do start today.
Source:Best Mad Scheme Ever