I say "Bless you" when you sneeze because to me, it is like saying, "Hello," "Thanks," and "Please." When I think about where it came from, I feel a little weird about it. But that doesn't change the simple fact it's just polite to say it. So I say it anyway.

When you say, "God Bless You," I say, "Thanks," even though you may as well be saying, "Santa/Nessie/Bigfoot/Mermaid/Unicorn Bless You." I say "Thanks," because I know you are trying to be polite. There is no reason for me to open up a discussion with you about how I think your beliefs are wacky and you should not be shoving them onto people, or simply assuming they agree without any sort of evidence.

That said, your beliefs are wacky (just like everyone else's) and you should not be shoving them onto me (or anyone else) or assuming I (or anyone else) agrees with you. But that doesn't give either of us the right to be rude to each other, so I am just going to keep it here in case you ever come across it.

So thanks for the kind words, but please understand that I don't say, "I hope everything works out for you until you are just dirt" because I feel that would be an assumption you'd rather not hear.

I've been meaning to post something involving religion and the elections, so here goes.

2000 brought with it the myth of the Values Voter. The idea was that Bush was voted in due to people who voted their Values, particularly Fundamentalist Christian Values, over anything else.

Ignored, of course, was any indication that people voting for the other side might also be voting their Values, and that some of these might be religious in nature. It was a curious ceding of the moral high ground to homophobia, anti-choice and pro-capitalism. Overall, this probably served to degrade the moral superiority of religion in general. After all, anyone with a bible can demonstrate the need to help the poor (Socialism!), heal the sick (Socialism!), and accept all people, regardless of who they might be (except for homosexuals and muslims. Jews are okay now, though).

This last election saw the coming to fruition of a new movement that had been building since 2004: the other Values voters. The people who were willing to say "Yes, I vote my values. Yes, those values are rooted in religion. These include being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-universal health care, etc." This movement is more interesting, I think, in that its not focused strictly on saying "See! We're right!" so much as saying "Look, this issue is more complex than the other side would have you believe. Let's look at some different points of view..."

I like this approach, personally. Let's have some complexity in our discussions, and lets have it from people who have faith from both sides.

After all, the roots of Capitalism may be in Christianity, but Christians were also the first to try "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." (Chapter 1, Section 3)

Belief is a powerful thing.

At present, the Wetern medical community is seriously considering the mass marketing of Placebo. A study has revealed that about a third of all doctors have, at some point or another, given Placebo to a patient for an ailment. The rest have all seriously considered it at some point.

The Eastern medical community, for its part, has never really understood the difference. This is part of what causes their studies to be rejected out of hand by Western doctors.

There are no control groups. A study might involve one hundred patients with an ailment. Fifty report an improvement with a treatment. So the treatment is said to have a 50% success rate.

How much is the placebo effect? Irrelevant. Its an effect. If, for hundreds of years, Chinese doctors have been giving patients the root of some animal, and those patients have reported feeling better, than why stop now? Sure, the treatment may be all in your head. But the contents of your head can have a powerful impact on your body. So why not harness the patients head whenever you can?

This, then, is the basis of Chaos Magic. It's a little like paganism, but created by folks who had read a lot of Robert Anton Wilson. It came out of Discoridianism, itself a religion disguised as a joke disguised a religion.

The idea is that yes, in the end, belief in anything may be incredibly silly. It may defy logic. It may defy percievable reality.

But belief can lead folks to survive unsurvivable horrors. It can cause cancers to enter spontaneous remision. It can unseat governments and make the Dow drop 5% in a day.

Why, then, would we refuse to believe?

If all beliefs are silly, then why not acknowledge the silliness, and believe anyway? Why not believe what you need to, whatever is useful, and let the silliness be damned?

Can you afford to believe something that may cause you tremendous harm? No.

But can you afford to believe nothing?

The longer I live, the more I tend towards mysticism.

Actually, that's not strictly true. I can't honestly think of a time when I didn't follow the basic line of thought.

If there's a god, if there's a great big supernatural that I can't see and you can, then why should I take your word for it? Show me. Let me experience it for myself. Give me the tools to let me decide, personally, if what you're feeding me is a line of bullshit.

Of course, as time went on, my thinking on the subject got somewhat more complex. I have very little doubt that there is a significant amount of reality which we are not aware of. These could very well be aspects here and now, behind and above and around and right in front of you.

Why shouldn't there be? What we can percieve is limited to our senses, which have been getting proved sketchy for as long as psychologists have been testing it. And there are plenty of people who claim to percieve things that most people don't.

So we have a couple of options. We can write off everyone who claims to have percieved something inexplicable as an idiot. If that's the case, there's a whole lot of idiots, and many of them are people who I have known to be quite intelligent, thoughtful people. Not what you'd call an idiot.

Secondly, we could take everything that any of these individuals say at face value. I have trouble with this because, in spite of the disclaimer, many of these individuals are actually idiots. And if we take them all as is, we're left with a world that has been visited by more contradictory love messiah's who want us all to behave in a highly specific way than I care to consider.

Thirdly, we could do what most of the most critical thinking inclined folks I've  known who have had some experience do; accept that they experienced something, but leave it to question what that is. After all, if we've managed to open some kind of sense that is normally closed, and percieve a world that normal senses can't grasp, then how will our mind handle the experience? The same way it handles any sensory input that doesn't make sense: by assigning some preset schema to the whole thing. You expect UFOs? You see them. Angels? Done. Ancestor spirits? No problem.

All of these could be true. Or none of them could. How would you ever know?

Sure, the interpretations differ. And God (or whatever) only knows what other random crap your brain attached to the actual experience to make sense of it. (Much the way, say, that your brain fills in details of your memories, or an estimated 80% of your field of vision, with things that are likely, rather than what is.) But does that mean that there was no experience?

I'd lean towards saying something happened.

As to what, precisely, it was? I'm not sure it matters. What matters is that, perhaps, the evidence of a world we can't fully explain may be stronger than we believe.

 

I have to say, there is more going on in this funny episode of Family Guy than meets the third eye.

"Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the LORD? Let it come now."
Jeremiah 17:15

The Bird is the Word.

 

It appears this blog may be active again, so here goes.

The trouble I've had lately is in finding the line where religion ends and everything else begins. Scientists and clergymen alike will often agree that there is such a line, some point where something becomes the domain of religion vs. science. The question, then, is this: where is that line?

Initially, myths and gods served a very precise purpose: to explain natural phenomena. That's science, now. Every religion concerns itself with how the world was formed. Science took over that. During the enlightenment, science concerned itself with how people should behave, how governments should be formed for maximum happiness, how humans should interrelate. That was abandoned at some point, but now a number of sciences push forward on the issues of why people act the way we do, taking credence away from the Devil of Christianity and replacing it with leftover bits of evolution.

Science has, at one point or another, claimed every point that we now give to religion, up to and including the question whether there is a god.

Is that a bad thing? I don't really think so, except that it is based on a single false pretense: that science is not, itself, a religion.

A religion, in the broadest sense, is much like a philosophy or anything else. Its a way of seeing the world. So is science. And perhaps science is more rational than other religions, being based on observable facts rather than on a book someone wrote a few thousand years ago. Of course, most religions consider themselves to be improvement on previous religions (or revivals of old ones), and consider themselves based on obvious facts that everyone can see.

That's the trouble, though: the observable fact. In the end, every observable fact must be observed by a human. At this point, scientific researches estimate that something like 90% of everything we see is made up by the brain. The eyes are an extremely sketchy tool that can't see most of what you think is in your field of vision. So your brain fills in the rest based on what it thinks ought to be there, what was there last you looked, etc. So how much of what you're seeing is really there?

The Buddhists took that to the extreme, and believe that the answer is nothing. Or rather, the answer doesn't matter either way, because you can't prove that anything truly exists outside your head. And if this is true, could Science, in the end, be only equally as valid as any other belief system, complete with its verifying miracles of flight and miraculous cures?

For me, anyway, I find science to be useful, and I find that it often makes me happy. So I frequently believe it. But some days, I don't. Because perhaps its just one more religion.

A lot of people don't seem to understand why people like myself don't have a religion. Well, it all comes down to faith. And I (we) just don't have any faith in religion. I mean, it serves a valuable purpose. Some people need religion to function and/or behave properly in society. They can't go through their lives not knowing what it all means, what happens (if anything) after you die, knowing there is some balance somewhere with all this "evil" going on, knowing there is a reason for everything that happens (bad or good). I understand that need. Sometimes it's hard for me to admit I don't know what (if anything) is out there. I like to think there might be something for us after we die, but I am just not experienced enough (in death) to know. And that's OK with me, despite curiosity tugging at me like an anxious child. I'm not about to go off myself to find out. I don't need little name tags covering everything I don't understand. I have my own moral compass and it has kept me from doing things society forbids (rape, murder, theft, etc.) as well as things my family and friends wouldn't understand (I'll leave it to you to imagine some examples). But not everyone has their own moral compass, so they need someone to give one to them (often an extremely specific compass that just ends up spinning around in constant circles because it contradicts one direction with another i.e. you can't really go up and down at the same time, but it expects you to do so). But that's religion for you. Humankind is imperfect and when they set out to write down a set of guidelines, as a group, they tend to lose a lot in translation and confuse the hell out of everyone (much like I am doing now!).

Anyway, point is, people with religion don't really understand people without it. How can we go on living our lives with any sort of moral code dictated by some spiritual being or strong belief that we are right about what happens when we die? Well, I don't really know how to explain how I live this way. I just do. I don't want to go 'round assuming I know everything, especially matters concerning things that the living can't possibly know for a fact. And since there are so many religions to choose from, learn from, et cetera, my brain can't wrap itself around thinking the one I choose (because it is a choice) will be the correct one. And considering there is a possibility that all of them are correct and/or incorrect (wrap your mind around that, will you), it makes that choice the more difficult.

Let's rewind a second and talk about morality. People with religion tend to think they are in the "right" and that people without religion are immoral, misguided folks. Well, sure, some of us are without morals. But considering that a lot of people with religion also seem to lack morality and manage to rape, murder, steal, lie and cheat, it doesn't really seem fair to only point out criminals without religion and then proceed to cite the lack of religion as a cause. Religion or lack thereof, is only one factor in why people do what they do. You have to look at all kinds of other things like mental illness, childhood experiences, jobs, education, relationships, physical condition, and well, just about everything involved with living. It all factors into how we act and how we think. We are all conditioned from childhood by our parents, friends, educators, and even television to look, act and feel a certain way. And since we are living in such a diverse world, people tend interpret this conditioning in different ways which is why we are all unique individuals, yet somehow all exactly the same at the same time.

I know we generalize because it makes things easier to understand, and then go on with our other thoughts and living our lives. But if we lump everything into one all-encompassing blob, like the bible or any other holy text dictating all that was, is and will ever be, we are going to run into a lot of problems with interpretation and understanding. And the longer that text is around, the less it will make sense because things change with time.

There are rules that are outdated and wacky that dictate your holidays, rituals, prayer, places of worship, what to eat, who to sleep with, behavior regarding people not of the same faith, how to share your religion with other people, and all that jazz. It all gets a tad confusing and complicated, despite all religions having the same basic message: if you don't cause harm, good things will happen to you; if you do cause harm, bad things will happen to you. It comes down to the definitions of "bad" and "good" that make one religion differ from another in the most basic sense.

So we come down to choice. What you, as an individual, choose to believe is bad or good, and what religion reflects those choices the most clearly. And as I was trying to say at the beginning of this mass of text, I haven't really found myself in a position to make that choice due to a lack of experience with being dead and understanding life, the universe, and everything. Maybe if I weren't such a stickler for details, I'd find that choice easy to make. But as it stands, I can find way to many contradictions in just about any religion you shove in my face for me to bother. I do what I think and feel is right, and so far, mainstream religions often contradict that. Telling me I have to go sit in a big room while someone dictates stories to me about how women are the root of everything bad in the world? I don't buy it, and yes, I am a hard sell.

So, in sum, religion is not my cup of tea. I don't need it, and I still manage to be an overall good person who positively contributes to society. And if you don't understand that, even after my wall of text, I'm fairly certain I can't explain it to you. Just know that all I need is a roof over my head and Fat Cat snoring her little kitty cat snores next to me as I tap tap tap the keyboard.

I work for a Pastor's son. He believes athiests worship the devil and chaos. He's "happily" married but he wants to fuck the receptionist (and tries and fails, and tries and fails). He talks about God and heaven like he will meet him and go there.

It hurts my head.

The Chinese (although I've seen it in Manga, too, so perhaps "The Asians would be more appropriate) have a saying: If on the road you should meet the Buddha, kill him.

The saying is, primarily, pragmatic: if you find anyone claiming to be the Buddha, he's probably a liar.  To the Chinese, anyone who claims to have found enlightenment probably hasn't, because those who have found it would know that telling everyone else about it would serve no purpose except to give themselves a headache.

This, I think, is my trouble with organized religion: all of them are started by someone claiming that they have found enlightenment, and everyone else ought to follow.

Oddly enough, the same principle governs my tendencies towards self-proclaimed alien abductees.

This is a follow-up to last month's revelations that Ted Haggard, the de-throned pastor of the New Life [mega]Church and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals organization whose 30-million politically-active membership unquestionably helped George W. Bush win the 2004 presidential election, is not gay.  According to a news article at North Jersey.com:

Another overseer [of his "therapy"], the Rev. Tim Ralph of New Covenant Fellowship in Larkspur, Colo., said he was "misquoted" recently as saying Haggard was "completely heterosexual."  He said he meant to say that therapy "gave Ted the tools to help to embrace his heterosexual side."

What kind of tools was Ted given, exactly?

Meanwhile, Sarah Posner has done some reporting on Ted Haggard's formative and college years when he attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  In "Ted Haggard's Hell on Earth" Posner explores the fundamentalist world in Tulsa that "made Ted Haggard live in terror of his own homosexuality."  Posner's descriptions of Ted's upbringing made me think she might have been writing about Tehran, not Tulsa.

Sarah Posner's article sparked off many comments of a religious nature.  But, one comment from "I live in Tulsa" had me laughing about the modern televangelism movement:

"A lady I knew used to call the various large Tulsa churches who had Sunday talk shows where they would pray for you. Her favorite episode was where she called in pretending she was pregnant and was thinking about getting an abortion. She jumped to the head of the queue and talked live on television with the hosts who tried to convince her not to do it and gave her advice like how she just needed a good man to take care of her unlike the bum who got her pregnant and left. They asked where she met him, and she replied, "Oh, it was at your church."  The phone call quickly ended after that."

Since the Haggard family has been banished from the western camp of Christian militarism in Colorado, they have chosen to resettle in our country's traditional Bible belt in the southeast.  Apparently, both Ted and his wife plan on continuing his "therapy" and pursue degrees in psychology in the state of Louisiana where he began his ministerial career.

As long as Ted can resist his urges to be on television or influence politicians, I wish Ted and his family all the best luck in the world with the new chapter in their lives.