Oh, dear, me

What? Rev. Jeremiah Wright has up and said some crazy talk? Oh, dear. Oh, dear, me. That’s horrible. Imagine, a religious leader saying something crazy.

That never happens.

Right, Pat Robertson?

“We have the ability to take him (Hugo Chavez, democratically-elected president of Venezuela) out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability.”

Oh, um, it seems Pat’s got something else on his plate.

But, surely, man of peace Pope Benedict XVI will denounce these abominous statements by Rev. Wright.

“Christ established here on earth only one church. The other communities cannot be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense.”

Hmmm… I guess that means “no comment”.

Well, how about some words of wisdom on this grave breach of religious etiquette from, oh, say, Pastor John Hagee?

“I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”

…uh, OK, Pastor Hagee can’t come to the microphone right now. He’s, uh, busy.

Rev. Fred Phelps?

God hates fags.

That, too, looks like a “no comment”.

Frankly, I’m having a hard time finding non-outrageous, non-hateful speech by any religious leader. And I haven’t even gone searching outside of Christianity yet. I won’t defend Rev. Wright’s comments, but I do have to wonder; is the crime that he’s making them from the religious left rather than the right? Is that why he deserves so much air time and print space in the elite media? ‘Cause, I mean, seriously, people. They’re all crazy to me. This is about as shocking as the idea that teenagers are having sex.

Oh, sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung that on ya. Yeah. They are.

Deep Thought

The problem with a question like “Is love real?” is that two of the three words in there are not well defined and vastly open to interpretation.

The bottom line

I’m borrowing this from my new favorite atheist site Evangelical Realism, because it really is the bottom line for me and many others (my emphasis added):

Notice, the reason given for why people believe in God is because of the more or less complicated arguments of men—many of which even believers no longer find credible. The claim of the Gospel, however, is not that men decided God must exist because of centuries of abstruse philosophizing. Biblical stories are about the existence of a type of concrete, objective evidence that you don’t need a Thomas Aquinas to elucidate for you.

That evidence, however, consistently and universally fails to exist outside of the stories, superstitions, and subjective feelings of men. It is absent even from the experience of believers like Vox, which is why he must appeal to complicated (and fallible) human arguments as being the justification for Christian faith. And if even Vox must dismiss as irrelevant “the reasons some people used to believe in God 700 years ago,” imagine how irrelevant the 2,000 year old arguments must be!

Truth is consistent with itself. The evidence Vox appeals to, and which he castigates Dawkins for not considering, and which he lacks the courage to offer as a defense of God’s existence, is evidence which is not even the same type of phenomenon as the purported evidence the Bible claims as the basis for belief in God. There is one type of evidence in the stories, and an entirely different sort of “evidence” in actual experience, even among believers. The Bible stories simply are not consistent with what we see in real life, which is why Vox has to grasp at bizarre straws like the “over 30″ ageism he opened with. Thus, he “refutes” atheism by demonstrating its fundamental correctness.

I would love to hear the harrumphs and fumfuhs of theists defending that little statement of fact. Anyone?

Deep Thought

If the Discovery Institute is so intent on showing that “intelligent design” is science, why are they targeting elementary school curricula instead of, y’know, doing some actual research and experiment?

Getting involved

I walked past my neighbor’s house carrying a couple of bags of groceries. Had walked up to the store and back. I was on my way home.

Election coming, I had decided to do my share, so I’d stopped at the Post Office and picked up voter registration forms. This coming Tuesday is the last day to register in Oregon.

Sitting on Peggy’s front stoop was Old Barfy and a buddy, 40 ouncers of cheap beer in their hands. The dark-haired one, who always wears sunglasses, used to live in the building but hasn’t for a year or so. I think he got evicted. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the drama in my building.

Remembering the forms in my bag, I turned to the older men and shouted, “Hey, are you guys registered to vote?”

Old Barfy nodded, and the other guy said “Yeah,” so I kept walking.

But Sunglasses continued “…but we’re registered Republicans!” He said it in a challenging way.

I turned back, stopped. “Huh?” The answer confused me. Or maybe his attitude about it. Or the underlying assumption he’d made. I wanted him to repeat it.

There was an awkward pause.

“Are you askin’ from the left, or the right?” he said, again making assumptions that I didn’t really get.

I shouted back, laughing. “I don’t give a fuck! I just wanted to know if you were registered.” I turned away, my question answered, and wanting to make a larger point. “There’s an election coming up. Just wanted everyone to have their say.”

And besides, joke’s on them. The country is largely progressive.

Generally speaking, Democrats win when more voters participate. Heh, heh.

Geekiest of the geek

I’m volunteering this weekend at the Stumptown Comics Fest. I’ll be there on Sunday. I’ll probably swing by on Saturday, too, and poke around.

I’m the A/V guy.

I think that qualifies me for the title of “geekiest of the geeks”.

I got street cred. Geeky street cred.

Word.