I have a friend who has been accepted to the Hillsong worship institute in Australia and needs to raise a few thousand dollars for tuition and living expenses. Please give cheerfully.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Another fabulous church experience
This past Sunday my wife and I went to a different congregation we hadn't gone to before; not because we are looking for someplace new but because we had a really busy weekend and it was 10 minutes from home instead of the usual 35, and it came recommended to us by a few friends, including my own pastor.
Because Walt Disney said "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" I'll start by saying I've met the pastors here a few times and I like them. They're even leaders in the whole-valley Church movement I'm involved in which I appreciate a lot. The people in the congregation were very friendly, and while the order of service was very familiar they did some things differently that was pleasant.
But then the service started and I had the immediate urge to get up and leave because the first thing the younger pastor (it is co-pastored with a father and son) did was display a video with the face on the big projection screen of a radical Mormon, who is very inflammatory in the American political world, with ties to white supremacy groups, and says pretty outrageous things (most recently calling a Democratic Senator a prostitute). Yes, Glenn Beck was the starting point for this lecture - it was a lecture, not a sermon.
This lecture was on evolution. I've made my peace with evolution years ago, and with all of the piles of scientific evidence - and the fact serious theologists don't see a conflict between science and theology - I don't believe God made the universe to disprove himself, but to actually show his glory. So when we argue against what God has made to fit a very small world view, it makes us mystic types seem ridiculous because we believe in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Like how all of these lectures go, the pastors were very smug, and called scientists (indirectly) stupid, fools, and plotting to disprove God. Yes, they said biologists are in their profession for one reason: to disprove God.
But they also made some claims which are just plaid lies. They might believe them to be true, but they're lies non the less. I don't believe Christians should lie, and certainly not pastors in the course of a Sunday morning lecture.
One of these lies was, "Darwin claimed that, 'if no transitional forms are found within 100 years, my theory should be discarded' and there have been no transitional fossils discovered, so by his own words we should discard his work." Of course there have been transitional forms found, and lots of them.
Another wild claim made was that some historical figures that accepted evolution as a theory include Stalin, Lenin and Hitler. Now that's just a sensationalist claim associating "evil people" with the theory in an attempt to also make it evil. Why leave out pious people who believe in evolution, like Pope Pius XII, and Pope John Paul II - oh yeah, they're Catholics, not Christians... and they didn't kill millions of people.
And then there is the claim that evolution had made every society that has embraced it worse. Yes. Worse. Because the world was a better place in the 1830s when men and women were bought and sold. It was legally and morally acceptable to rape said slave women, and own your own slave-child, and sell your own child on the market. It was a better world where the people who lived on this land here in what is now called America were run off, killed, and cheated by us pre-evolutionary theory Anglo-Saxons. And of course the world is a much more worse off place now that we value everyone in society, even if you're not a white male. Somehow this argument that the world was better off in the 1980s, 1950s, 1840s, 1780s, etc finds a willing taker in some circles, and it's the same circle of people who claim they're oppressed AND that they're the majority.
Anyway, this was just a vent. Take it for that.
Because Walt Disney said "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" I'll start by saying I've met the pastors here a few times and I like them. They're even leaders in the whole-valley Church movement I'm involved in which I appreciate a lot. The people in the congregation were very friendly, and while the order of service was very familiar they did some things differently that was pleasant.
But then the service started and I had the immediate urge to get up and leave because the first thing the younger pastor (it is co-pastored with a father and son) did was display a video with the face on the big projection screen of a radical Mormon, who is very inflammatory in the American political world, with ties to white supremacy groups, and says pretty outrageous things (most recently calling a Democratic Senator a prostitute). Yes, Glenn Beck was the starting point for this lecture - it was a lecture, not a sermon.
This lecture was on evolution. I've made my peace with evolution years ago, and with all of the piles of scientific evidence - and the fact serious theologists don't see a conflict between science and theology - I don't believe God made the universe to disprove himself, but to actually show his glory. So when we argue against what God has made to fit a very small world view, it makes us mystic types seem ridiculous because we believe in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Like how all of these lectures go, the pastors were very smug, and called scientists (indirectly) stupid, fools, and plotting to disprove God. Yes, they said biologists are in their profession for one reason: to disprove God.
But they also made some claims which are just plaid lies. They might believe them to be true, but they're lies non the less. I don't believe Christians should lie, and certainly not pastors in the course of a Sunday morning lecture.
One of these lies was, "Darwin claimed that, 'if no transitional forms are found within 100 years, my theory should be discarded' and there have been no transitional fossils discovered, so by his own words we should discard his work." Of course there have been transitional forms found, and lots of them.
Another wild claim made was that some historical figures that accepted evolution as a theory include Stalin, Lenin and Hitler. Now that's just a sensationalist claim associating "evil people" with the theory in an attempt to also make it evil. Why leave out pious people who believe in evolution, like Pope Pius XII, and Pope John Paul II - oh yeah, they're Catholics, not Christians... and they didn't kill millions of people.
And then there is the claim that evolution had made every society that has embraced it worse. Yes. Worse. Because the world was a better place in the 1830s when men and women were bought and sold. It was legally and morally acceptable to rape said slave women, and own your own slave-child, and sell your own child on the market. It was a better world where the people who lived on this land here in what is now called America were run off, killed, and cheated by us pre-evolutionary theory Anglo-Saxons. And of course the world is a much more worse off place now that we value everyone in society, even if you're not a white male. Somehow this argument that the world was better off in the 1980s, 1950s, 1840s, 1780s, etc finds a willing taker in some circles, and it's the same circle of people who claim they're oppressed AND that they're the majority.
Anyway, this was just a vent. Take it for that.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Obama lies
I listened to Barack Obama's speech on his plans for Afghanistan last night, and I pretty much laughed at this history-revisionism:
This is something echoed a lot by Americans, but it's a complete fabrication. We've mythologized the founding of our nation because we want heroes and a cultural touchstone, but we disagree with our founders on almost everything.
In 1630, John Winthrop created the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which featured an indigenous man with the words, "Come over and help us" proceeding from his mouth. Our very colonization of this land contradicts Mr. Obama's statement that we don't "seek to occupy other nations" or "claim another nation's resources." And our founding colonies certainly didn't stay within their own borders either, instead we expanded West and South taking land from many other nations, and claiming all of the resources.
As for the comment that we don't "target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours," the philosopher Noam Chomsky writes:
And it doesn't stop there. We proceeded to go to Hawaii because we wanted pineapples, and to Panama and Central America because we wanted bananas, sugar, coffee, et al. The entire history of the United States of America stands in stark contrast to President Obama's assertion that we're a peaceful country with no designs of imperialism.
In the Orwell novel 1984, history was constantly changed to support the political goals of the day. This is exactly what the USA has done throughout the past century with regards to our racist, genocidal past.
For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours.
This is something echoed a lot by Americans, but it's a complete fabrication. We've mythologized the founding of our nation because we want heroes and a cultural touchstone, but we disagree with our founders on almost everything.
In 1630, John Winthrop created the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which featured an indigenous man with the words, "Come over and help us" proceeding from his mouth. Our very colonization of this land contradicts Mr. Obama's statement that we don't "seek to occupy other nations" or "claim another nation's resources." And our founding colonies certainly didn't stay within their own borders either, instead we expanded West and South taking land from many other nations, and claiming all of the resources.
As for the comment that we don't "target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours," the philosopher Noam Chomsky writes:
The first Secretary of War, General Henry Knox, described "the utter extirpation of all the Indians in most populous parts of the Union" by means "more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru."
Long after his own significant contributions to the process were past, John Quincy Adams deplored the fate of "that hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty… among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring [it] to judgement." The "merciless and perfidious cruelty" continued until "the West was won." Instead of God's judgment, the heinous sins today bring only praise for the fulfillment of the American "idea."
The conquest and settling of the West indeed showed that "individualism and enterprise," so praised by Roger Cohen. Settler-colonialist enterprises, the cruelest form of imperialism, commonly do. The results were hailed by the respected and influential Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in 1898. Calling for intervention in Cuba, Lodge lauded our record "of conquest, colonization, and territorial expansion unequalled by any people in the 19th century," and urged that it is "not to be curbed now," as the Cubans too were pleading, in the Great Seal's words, "come over and help us."
Their plea was answered. The U.S. sent troops, thereby preventing Cuba's liberation from Spain and turning it into a virtual colony, as it remained until 1959.
And it doesn't stop there. We proceeded to go to Hawaii because we wanted pineapples, and to Panama and Central America because we wanted bananas, sugar, coffee, et al. The entire history of the United States of America stands in stark contrast to President Obama's assertion that we're a peaceful country with no designs of imperialism.
In the Orwell novel 1984, history was constantly changed to support the political goals of the day. This is exactly what the USA has done throughout the past century with regards to our racist, genocidal past.
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