Today I ran across a very interesting juxtaposition while listening to my local Christian radio station. At one point there was a preacher (I didn't catch his name) who was born with a cleft palate but thanks to plastic surgery is a successful international speaker. In complete opposition to that, the same station later played the song "Our God reigns" by the band Delirious?
This song, after attacking abortion and either HIV or greed (or both) then tackles what the band believes is the third great evil threatening this broken world - plastic surgery:
The west has found a gun and it’s loaded with ‘unsure’ Nip and tuck if you have the bucks in a race to find a cure. Psalm one hundred and thirty nine is the conscience to our selfish crime, God didn’t screw up when he made you, He’s a father who loves to parade you.
Now I like a lot of songs by Delirious? but this is arguably one of the dumbest, most thoughtless pieces of lyric writing out there. Sure, it may sound holy and deep if you are one of the fortunate ones who happened to be born healthy and with everything looking and working as it should. But what about all those who aren't? When you get right down to it, this lyric raises several very uncomfortable questions. If God doesn't "screw up" when he makes you then why are there so many babies born with various birth defects? Is it still a "selfish crime" to correct defects that would prevent a child from talking/walking/seeing/hearing? If God wants you to stay the way He made you (flaws and all) are we supposed to leave all defects untreated? If it's OK to use plastic surgery on some defects, why not on others? At what point does it become an insult to God to alter your appearance? Is it OK to get your crooked teeth fixed? Is it a selfish crime to colour your hair? How about shaving? Is it a sin for people who were born fat to diet? Do frail people who exercise insult God? Should we even be wearing glasses and contact lenses? After all if God (according to Delirious? at least) purposefully made you nearsighted, wouldn't it be a "selfish crime" to try and correct that? Is it OK to use moisturiser or would God prefer to parade my wrinkles and blemishes as soon as possible?
Seriously, if you want to tell a beautiful but insecure teenage girl that she doesn't need breast enlargement to be loved then tell her she is beautiful and doesn't need breast enlargement to be loved. Don't make incredibly dumb and thoughtless blanket statements about plastic surgery.
And since when is plastic surgery one of the biggest evils of our time anyway?
I get now why Pastor Rick Warren feels so at home among politicians and why presidential candidates seemed so at home in his church . They are cut from the same cloth. Dishonest peas in a pod. Like a true politician he will have an opinion for exactly as long as it makes him look good and then do a complete 180 (and lie through his teeth about it) if that opinion starts making him look bad. Unfortunately for the good pastor this is the information age and if you love seeing yourself on TV its going to make it a little harder to pretend you never said the things you did:
At least he didn't go on to act all unfairly persecuted by people calling him on it! Oh wait, he did and ended up with even more egg on his face:
Look, I am all for freedom of speech. I also firmly believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Therefore my issue isn't really with what Rick Warren believes it's with him not having the balls to stick to his beliefs. I have an even bigger issue with the fact that he will look you straight in the eye, smile and lie about it later. If you have an opinion then have an opinion. You want to change your mind then by all means please do, but don't then go around pretending that is what you always believed to begin with (How is that for straight out of 1984?). Most of all don't lie about it, especially when you are trying to set yourself up as the smiling overweight face of protestant Christianity - because that way we all get painted with the dishonest hypocrite brush. Like we needed any more of that...
I may dislike Fred Phelps with every fiber of my being but I respect him a lot more than Rick Warren.
Have you ever been to a party where you don’t know anyone but everyone seems to know everyone else there? That’s how I feel about church these days. For longer that I would like to admit, I have been struggling to feel any sense of belonging in the church. I have been to a couple, the people are nice, the music is good and so is the preaching and yet I usually end up feeling the way I do when I attend a funeral for someone I didn’t know (an activity I detest by the way), I feel like I am expected to feel something or experience something that I simply don’t.
What makes this worse is the feeling that I am the only one feeling this way. Everyone else seems to enjoy going to church just fine. Politicians seem right at home (during election time anyway) and yet heaven alone knows what they actually believe. Obviously the good Christian people of the world seem to get a lot out of it. In fact, it turns out even a large number of atheists and agnostics enjoy going to church! So if agnostics can think of ten good reasons to go to church, why is it so hard for me to think of even one?
I have every reason to feel at home in church. I grew up in church. From the time I was a baby I attended church every Sunday. I faithfully attended for most of my life. I wasn’t just attending it either, I was involved in it. I have been a deacon, a cell leader, an usher and a caretaker. Really I have dealt with every part of the church from the people to the toilets in my short life. I used to feel that connection, I used to feel like I belong. So why don’t I feel that way anymore? Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if Calvin was right with his gloomy doctrine. Maybe I am excluded due to predestination.
Maybe it’s because I have changed so much. These days I browse the various neighborhood church websites and look at the smiling pastoral faces promising aggressive Kingdom building and a strong commitment to defending Biblical inerrancy in these trying times and I see exactly the Christian I used to be which in turn makes me wonder how much acceptance the person I am now would have found with the person I once was. These days I have more doubts than certainties and more questions than axioms and I just can’t help but wonder if there would be any room for me among these good people.
Perhaps there will be room, but will there be understanding? Will there be acceptance? Could the smiling faithful really connect with someone who questions as much as I do, someone who doesn’t feel the same way they do, someone who may never see eye to eye with them on certain issues? I certainly don’t have the energy to fake it for the sake of belonging.
I guess there is only one way to find out. Time will tell.
* I say allegedly because while I can find hundreds of people attributing this quote to him I can’t actually find it in any of his works. Therefore there is a chance that he never actually said this.
Winter in the Highveld is not pretty but I love it. It's not snowy and pretty like the European winters in the picture books, instead it's endless amounts of dead grass and harsh blue sky and empty trees. (In fact it's so ugly there is even a song about it.) It's quiet and cold and dead and colourless and its my absolute favourite time of the year. Ever since childhood I have loved it as much as I have hated getting up early during it. Most people I know resonate with the vibrant life and colour of Spring, but me I always look forward to Winter.
Maybe it's because I'm naturally melancholy, maybe it's because I like the quiet, maybe I just enjoy the rich warm food, sleeping deeply under a pile of blankets and being able to wear all my favourite winter things. Maybe its all of that. It doesn't really matter.
Maybe the reason I love Winter so much today is because it reminds me of the beauty and necessity of death. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that in the way emo teens with too much makeup and a propensity for bad poetry mean it. I have been around enough death to know the despair it brings, the incredible and indescribable wrongness of it. To this day, my dreams refuse to let my departed loved ones go. Even now so many years later in dreams (and sometimes even awake) I forget to remember that they are no longer around and for a few bittersweet moments get to live as if they never left. Yet I do not hate death. I have accepted this ancient dance of the seasons, this eons old heartbeat of the universe. Life and Death, Life and Death, Death swallowing Life, Life arising from Death, destruction and creation endlessly making way one for the other.
In the last year I finally had to do as countless others had before me and face my own fragile mortality. It wasn't easy, I didn't enjoy it and I sincerely hope that I do not have to do it again anytime soon. Yet I am not sorry I went through it because it was a necessary experience I think. I have gone through the seasons from death to life and something in me has changed. Physically I am not who I was a year ago. One year ago I had a tumour that was threatening to end my life (thanks to my own stupidity) and today, almost exactly a year since my first surgery, I am completely clean and cancer free. I lack the words to describe the jumping-around-fist-pumping-Beethoven-listening-joy that fills me with. Clearly, I have changed emotionally too. Because of this, even though I disliked the process, I have immense respect for the cycle. I now grasp better than before the need for the seasons, the need for death and life, ending and beginning.
This blog was born in wintertime about a year ago. I think it too has gone through some seasons and I believe the time has come for some Winter. It's not the blog that needs to die though, it's my concern for it. Back when I started it, I didn't expect anyone to read it, much less enjoy it. The fact that it resonated with a small group of really interesting people around the world came as a big surprise to me. Unfortunately this turned the blog into something it wasn't supposed to be. I started it as a way for me to process my thoughts and especially to try and work though my issues regarding my faith. Unfortunately along the way I wandered away from that and started caring instead about being topical, relevant, interesting - a good read basically. I started caring about being Christian enough for the Christians who read it and skeptical enough for the skeptics who read it. Inevitably by trying to be something interesting for someone else I failed to be true to myself. Therefore I think it is this infernal care that needs to face some winter frost.
I believe in change. I wish to be able to live without being labelled but maybe I should aim more for not caring what you think.
If you are reading this, please know that you are very welcome. If my path crosses yours in this vast expanse that is cyberspace it may be because of random chance or it may be because of predestined purpose - we will never know which it is if we don't take the time to find out. If my journey resonates with you at all then please feel free to say something, I enjoy feedback and comments, even if they disagree with me. But as for me, I am going back to writing for the ghosts.
Normally I am don’t pay much attention to whatever the media may be hyping as the new doom of the day. Seriously, watching the news sometimes feels like watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the Apocalypse seems to be nigh on a weekly basis. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s at least entertaining. My favourite so far had to have been “Africanized bees” scare a while back. Due to the fact that I had been around fully African bees my whole life tended to make me snicker at all the senseless panic. However with the current swine flu scare it’s a little harder to be flippant. For one thing it may actually be a serious threat. For another, every un-skeptical group out there seems to be vying for a piece of the swine flu pie: The religious (It’s ritual Satanic deliverance of the innocents to death, timed to occur with the occult day Cinco de Mayo!), the alternative medicine groups (Big Pharma probably started it to make money, get a chiropractic adjustment to stop it instead!!), the anti-vaccinators (It’s a trap to get you to take their evil vaccinations of evil!!!), the conspiracy theorists (It’s a race specific bioweapon!!!!) and of course those who are all of the above (The Antichrist New World Order engineered this virus because they want to kill 80% of the world through poisonous vaccines!!!!!). Therefore I feel I would be amiss as a skeptic if I don’t write something about swine flu.
There is a very good reason why the current swine flu is such a hotbed for conspiracy theorists, this is not the first time we crossed paths with it and the last time was an absolute fiasco (in fact “fiasco” doesn’t begin to describe it but I’m trying to keep the blog at least nominally child friendly). The 1976 Swine flu outbreak had everything a conspiracy theorist could pray for, Government and the pharmaceutical companies combining their powers resulting in the death and paralysis of citizens and all over a threat that turned out to be a false alarm. As always, a little perspective does a world of good. A sober account of what happened can be found here but for the lazy, the highlights are as follows:
1. Doctors overreacted to a soldier dying of the flu, fearing another outbreak like the Spanish influenza. 2. A government reeling from a lot of negative sentiment following Watergate and Vietnam grabbed hold of this as a chance to redeem themselves to the voting public. 3. Ignoring all warnings by concerned experts the President pushed through an aggressive vaccination campaign using untested and unproven vaccines. 4. There were casualties and instances of Guillain-Barré syndrome amongst those who received the vaccinations and the program was immediately stopped. 5. It turned out that there was no flu danger to begin with and everyone involved (Pres Ford especially) ended up disgraced.
The 1976 disaster serves as the gold standard of how not to handle situations like these. All indications so far are that these are lessons we learned well and I don’t see anyone in power responding with the kind of hysteria they had in ’76. While many fear another disastrous vaccination drive the truth is that neither the WHO nor the CDC are calling for people to get vaccinated and at the moment there is no vaccine for swine flu. Lastly while I don’t deny that it was massively foolish to use untested vaccinations on the populace, it is worth noting that out of around 40 million vaccinations, there were only 3 possible deaths (3 elderly people died after being vaccinated, it was never proven that the vaccine was responsible) and around a 1000 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome (again not linked definitively to the vaccine). Don’t get me wrong, having a thousand people paralyzed is an unacceptably high number. However this fact, coupled with the fact that the program was almost immediately halted after things started going wrong completely destroys this image the conspiracy theorists have of Government and the pharmaceutical companies gleefully rubbing their hands and doing the Dr Evil laugh while willfully poisoning people. You can blame this fiasco on political ambition, incompetence, misinformation and bad decisions but not on malice.
In the weeks to come we will see how this all plays out. Hopefully it will go the way of Bird flu and SARS and be contained before it can do too much damage. In cases like this there are 3 things everyone should be doing:
1. Don’t panic. Various groups but especially the media profit greatly from fear mongering. Fear and panic causes irrational responses and bad decisions and here we should learn from 1976. Be very careful who you believe and where you get your information from. Don’t make any knee jerk decisions and always double check your facts.
2. Get educated. Shutting out the fearmongers is a good step one but you have to go a step further and get the facts. Don’t listen to the politicians and the media, listen to the experts. By experts I don’t mean the guy the local news got a soundbite from or some guy on Oprah or anyone ever on Alex Jones’ show, I mean the people whose job it is to inform and protect you from threats like these. Go see what the World Health Organization and the Centre for Disease Control are telling you and check it at the source, not second hand.
3. Take it seriously. With all the doom and gloom that the media promises and reality fails to deliver it’s easy to start thinking of all these viral threats as the boy who cried wolf. It’s worth noting how the story of the boy who cried wolf ended though. The flu virus can and has been devastatingly lethal. Especially when we face a new mutation able to kill strong young adults that we have no natural immunity against it is better to err on the side of caution. Every time a new strain jumps species or mutates to a new form it’s like playing Russian roulette. Sure, maybe most of the time you get lucky and get away unharmed but it is never going to be safe to put that gun to your head, ever. We never know what direction a virus like this is going to take so it’s always best to treat it seriously even if it turned out to not be that dangerous the time before (and the time before that). We shouldn’t be consumed by fear and panic but neither should be underestimate the dangers. It can mean the difference between a false alarm and a world wide disaster.
WARNING: The following blog contains disturbing images and descriptions of natural phenomena. This is the last cute picture on the page. Scroll down at your own risk.
I recently listened to a sermon on how to reach atheists, dealing specifically with the so called “proofs” for the existence of God – the Cosmological Argument, the Ontological Argument and the Teleological Argument. After listening to these arguments I have to say that if I was an atheist, those would have failed spectacularly to convince me of the existence of God. To me, the Cosmological Argument fails because even if you accept that there is an ultimate cause to the universe it certainly doesn’t follow that this cause has to be God. The Ontological Argument is the kind of thing that makes philosophers all giddy but anyone more practically minded would first go “Huh?” and then realize that it could just as easily be used to prove the existence of elves, unicorns and fairies. I think it’s for this reason that you don’t come across these arguments very often (at least in my limited experience). The Teleological Argument (aka the Argument from Design) on the other hand remains very popular and is the main reason most Christians feel the need to fight tooth and nail against evolution. After all, if you believe that every creature great and small is designed by a higher intellect and that this designer is God, then it follows that you will also feel that any suggestion that organisms came to their present state through natural means is in fact just another way of saying that there is no God. This is why to many Christians belief in God and acceptance of evolution will forever be mutually exclusive. This is also why the Creationism vs. Evolution debate will never be resolved as it is not about scientific evidence or reason but rather about defending the Faith. No amount of science and evidence will ever change that. Therefore I am not going to waste my energy trying to explain the facts of evolution or attacking Intelligent Design. Rather I will take the less exhausting (and futile) way out and explain why I think it’s a terrible idea to use the Argument from Design as a proof for the existence of God.
Recently I came across this satirical video that asks a question so obvious I have to wonder why it never occurred to Dr Behe – if the bacterial flagellum proves the existence of God, what does it prove about God?
It reminded me of an interview with Sir David Attenborough where he mentioned all the hate mail he gets from Christians for not giving credit to God in his nature documentaries. He said: “They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.” To me that sums up the problem with the Teleological Argument in a nutshell. It’s easy to imagine that all the beauty in nature proves God, but what about all the horrors of nature? If nature is a proof of God then what exactly does that say about God? Its easy (for some, me not so much) to believe that all plants used to be good but then some grew thorns and became poisonous or that some vegetarian animals started eating meat instead because of the Fall, but what about all those creatures who seem designed for nothing else but death and pain and suffering? Snakes, spiders and scorpions are only the tip of the iceberg. For a view into the abyss, look at:
Leucochloridium paradoxum is a species of flatworm that as part of its reproductive cycle infests a snail. Inside the snail it migrates to the eye stalks of the snail and then proceeds to stretch and change them until they resemble pulsating brightly coloured caterpillars. Birds see this and come rip the (normally retractable) eye stalks off the snail allowing the parasite to finish its life cycle inside the bird.
Sacculina is a type of barnacle that latches on to a crab. The female Sacculina seeks a joint in the crab’s shell and then ejects her protective shell, reducing herself to a gelatinous blob, and invades. "Inside the host, the parasite grows long, root-like tendrils throughout the crab's body, eventually emerging as a bump on the underside. During this process she renders the crab infertile, and creates a small opening in the crab's back that will allow a male Sacculina to make residence there. Soon the crab is filled with millions of Sacculina eggs and larvae, and like a zombie, the crab cares for these eggs and larvae as though they were its own, losing all interest in mating. When a male crab is infected, the parasite alters its physiology and behavior to be female, to better care for the Sacculina's young. The parasite basically rewires the crab for its own ends, and the crab becomes a helpless vehicle, expending its energy caring for the young organisms that will move on to inflict themselves upon other crabs."
Cymothoa exigua is a small crustacean that enters through a fish’s (specifically, a red snapper) gills and uses claws to attach itself to the base of the snapper’s tongue where it survives for a while by drinking blood from an artery. Eventually the fish’s tongue will disappear (There is some confusion on what exactly happens, whether the louse eats the tongue or simply causes it to atrophy due to blood loss) and once the tongue is gone, the louse becomes the new tongue and manipulates the fish’s food and consumes the free food particles as the fish eats.
Now these animals are all designed specifically to do things that are unspeakably horrible and cruel (not to mention really disgusting) and if they owe this design to an Intelligent designer then this designer makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a lovable bunch. However if they owe their design to evolution then they are merely the products of an imperfect world and its just nature being heartless nature. This is why I think Christians would be better off just letting go of the Argument from Design and simply accepting evolution. For if Teleology proves God then the God it proves is anything but kind and compassionate.
There are many good reasons to reject Intelligent Design Theory. First of all, it doesn’t even deserve the name “theory” because it isn’t one. Unlike real scientific theories, Intelligent Design offers no mechanism, makes no predictions and cannot be falsified. Now that’s a good enough reason right there to fully reject it and all attempts to put it in the classroom. However, up to this day that has not been enough to discourage ID proponents who continue to insist that saying “Golly gee, that sure looks complicated!” is the same as doing science. There is however an even better reason to reject it, namely the fact that Intelligent Design requires massive dishonesty.
While I may completely disagree with Creationism, at least I can respect Creationists for being honest about what they stand for. Kent Hovind and friends may have their faults but at least they are not going pretend that they don’t believe the universe to be 6000 years old. In fact they tend to be completely upfront about the fact that they believe everything in existence was created in its present form in 6 days around 4000 BC and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Not so with the ID crowd. Most of them believe exactly the same thing, but they pretend that they don’t. Here is a great example:
Notice how that lady steadfastly avoided every question about what exactly she believes? This is what all ID proponents have to do. They have to pretend that ID is not religious, they have to pretend that they don’t really think the “designer” is necessarily God and most of all they have to pretend that they aren’t really Creationists. How can any Christian follow something that requires so much willful deceit? What happened to not being ashamed of the Gospel? What happened to always being prepared to give an answer for the hope in you? When did it become OK for the disciples of Jesus to deny Him in public?
Seems to me that Intelligent Design forces its supporters to act less like Disciples of Christ and more like followers of L Ron Hubbard! Hiding the truth about what your faith stands for (until you reach the right level/are brainwashed enough not to question it) is something Scientology is supposed to do. They lure you in with promises of mental health and only tell you the crazy story about Xenu later. Christians on the other hand have always been completely upfront about what they believe. You may think us silly but we will tell you about everything from the virgin birth to the resurrection and all the miracles in between right on day one so that you can make a completely informed decision about what you are letting yourself in for. At least that’s what we used to do in the days before Intelligent Design…
Some may disagree with me and claim that in this case the end justifies the means. Again I have to disagree. Intelligent Design is the worst thing to happen to Christian Evangelism since the Crusades! Has anyone actually thought this through? For ID to actually work 3 things need to happen:
1 – Scientists have to stop doing science, cease looking for explanations and mechanisms and simply accept that certain features were somehow designed by "someone" or "something". This alone would take a miracle on the level of the parting of the Red Sea.
2 – The identity of this designer must then be debated until Scientists are willing to completely abandon the Scientific method and simply accept that the designer was a supernatural being.
3 – Lastly, once everyone can finally agree that the designer was God the debate would then have to start regarding which God? Yahweh? Allah? Vishnu? Odin?
Only when all 3 of these issues have been conclusively settled would Intelligent Design have any claim to effective evangelism. Honestly, how many decades do you think that will take? Is it really worth compromising so much for a strategy that has so virtually no chance of ever working and if it ever did would probably take over a century?
I spent most of my life as a fundamentalist and discovered Reason much later than I would have liked. I'm still dealing with the trauma and this blog is my therapy. So this is me: non-conformist, heretic, fan of delicious flavour and a man without a home. I’m a cynical optimist and a really angry zen master. I am just a man trying to make sense of it all. This is my life in juxtaposition.
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