Like this ...

Pastel Drawing on hymnal page, by Sister Mary Lisa.

You see so many things these days that the mind tires. But this one woke me up.

Guns 'n Roses

"People say, 'Oh, it's dangerous to keep weapons in the home or the workplace.' Well, I say it's better to be hurt by someone you know accidentally, than by a stranger, on purpose."

--Dwight Schrute

Strange that we often have more fear of shadows and boogiemen than of clear and present dangers. True in life, love, and faith.

The Gods Calculator

I picked atheist as my view of the gods, 'cause even if there's a god he's such a douche that half the known universe would kill him on site, which would make him dead, dead, dead. And in the eternal scheme of things, dead once is dead always.

But slightly more seriously, all the evidence points to god being a figment of human imagination. With this kind of evidence one must seriously consider the odds.

Every hard atheist I've ever met is an odds calculator.

Big God, little god, fat GOD, slim, um ... god?

In our attempts to reconcile what we believe about life, the universe, and everything(TM) we often collect a bundle of so-called god-like aspects which we revere and label as "god." It's an old trick meant to balance what we actually believe with socially accepted language.

But, at what point does strapping the label "god" to your package of beliefs cease to be meaningful?

teh awesome

Star Trek fans are out of their Vulcan minds! :)

I loved the film. I mean, insomuch as Star Trek is a love affair, this one was the one by which all others will be compared.

My daughter says it's the best movie she's ever seen. That it's better than LoTR ... and you know, that's saying something. We agreed that this film is not in the same class as LoTR but that this was beside the point.

One more observation from my daughter that really cemented our Star Trek dad/daughter bonding: "Zachary Quinto is more Spock than he is Sylar ... and no other Vulcan in the film was as supremely Vulcan (ie, as fit for his Vulcan hair and ears) as Quinto, not even Leonard Nimoy."

Crazy Money

Michael: How can I get you to stay?
Stanley: Money.
Michael: We all want money. But there is none in the budget so ... tell me why you're really leaving.
Stanley: Money.
Michael: Mo' money, mo' problems, Stanley. You of all people should know that.

--the office

Reminds me of my first job after moving to the Seattle area. I had a line manager who repeatedly expressed unsolicited empathy for how little I was making and how difficult that must be with a family to raise. Never-mind the self-gratification of "feeling sorry" for how little you're paying an employee, or the passive-aggressive motives behind actually putting such concerns into words. What really got me was how this manager responded when I finally got around to asking for a raise:

Me: It's been one hell of a year. I've proven my worth. I think it's time for a raise.
PHB: Wha?
Me: Yeah, remember how you hired me on a try-and-buy arrangement? Are you ready to buy?
PHB: Well, uh, you know people aren't typically motivated primarily by money. So what else can we do for you?
Me: (jaw hanging in disbelief, thinking: "fuck-off?") Um, nothing. Never-mind.

Asking myself: "would I do this job if they weren't paying me?" No. Life is too short. I left to work for a competitor shortly thereafter.

Money is a strange thing. Money + people? Insane.

The Mormon Plane Crash Object Lesson

It's been around for many years. One of those things among Mormons, like "Pioneer Trek," that's legendary and most church members have met at least one person who has personally experienced it. Hadn't heard much of it in recent years. Perhaps it went underground a bit after September 11, 2001. But just today I've heard two references to this object lesson in Mormon theology. Two separate verifications that the Plane Crash Object Lesson is alive and well. Perhaps making a comeback?

And I thought (a sniggeringly fearful little thought in the back of my mind) that the Dept. of Homeland Security ought to be keeping a file on this, no? Not that I agree with governmental spying on its citizens but, jeebus! -- getting to mormon heaven via a plane crash?

What the ...

Chanson is right, why not do something that's likely to change minds such as The Global Change Game?

I'll tell you why. Just a little guess now, but if my own past beliefs serve as fair context: because Christian fundamentalists believe the world needs to be saved and they don't believe the world can be saved without apocalyptic change. They believe the world was born to be burned. The only true heaven being a post-earthlife reward for enduring in faith and obedience to the end in this "fallen" world.

In sunday school our favorite topic for gobsmacking discussion was the last days. The end-times. We speculated in ambulance-chasing morbidity that perhaps we might live to see the beginning of the end of the world. That in fact there were many signs all around that such times were imminent. And the rewards that would be ours if we remained faithful and true to the end. As a child, I was entranced.

Now they're role-playing plane crashes as the doorway to heaven?

Scary. I'm scaring myself. Shut-up, Matt. Now.

-- --

PS. Here's a link to the Plane Crash object lesson. I think we'll have more to discuss later.

The Members are the Problem

From the intro to Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians:

"Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves [...]"

"We know an awful lot about authoritarian followers. In one way or another, hundreds of social scientists have studied them since World War II. We have a pretty good idea of who they are, where they come from, and what makes them tick. By comparison, we know little about authoritarian leaders because we only recently started studying them. That may seem strange, but how hard is it to figure out why someone would like to have massive amounts of power? The psychological mystery has always been, why would someone prefer a dictatorship to freedom? So social scientists have focused on the followers, who are seen as the main, underlying problem."

So as I was reading this I was reminded that I seem to always default to blaming the institutional church and its leaders, preferring to think of the members as unwitting victims. This seems also to be the most common take on discussion boards. I mean, we have loved ones and family who remain true believing members and we certainly don't want to blame them for all the trouble any more than we want to blame ourselves.

So then, we blame the church. It's easy to say: I hate the church for doing this! Not so easy to say the same about the members. Yet, it's worth considering that we may be hacking at a facade while the members grow stronger in their convictions.

Another thought occurred to me as I was typing-out the quotation above. How interesting is it that D&C Section 122 presents the main problem of authority as authority figures abusing their authority, whereas the findings of modern science show this to be the easiest part to understand, perhaps the easiest to defeat. While the real danger, the most perplexing problem, lies in those who abuse themselves and others by over-zealous submission to authority?

I've just begun reading The Authoritarians (thanks Chanson and Jonathan!), hoping there's something to learn here. Some truth that will become apparent such that, in the end, we might save ourselves, families, and friends from ... not form the church ... but from ourselves?

-- --

Update: I've been a fan of Sam Harris for some time, particularly where he points out that religious moderates are to blame for enabling and excusing the excesses of religious extremists. The above, however, seems to take the idea to the next level. And not in search of blame, but in search of understanding and wisdom. That me might actually learn from an understanding of our natures and change where our survival and actualization are concerned.

Pandemicalypse

You know damn well that it was either this or, well, um, yeah. It had to be this:

Could be one of those things where all we can do is laugh, 'cause it's either sooner we're past it (just another false alarm surrounded by lemming-like madness) or later we're too shocked to even cry.

At any rate, this seems apropos to me ... I don't quite know why:

Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Waters) 11:26

Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are.
You well heeled big wheel, ha ha charade you are.
And when your hand is on your heart,
You're nearly a good laugh,
Almost a joker,
With your head down in the pig bin,
Saying "Keep on digging."
Pig stain on your fat chin.
What do you hope to find.
When you're down in the pig mine.
You're nearly a laugh,
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry.

Bus stop rat bag, ha ha charade you are.
You fucked up old hag, ha ha charade you are.
You radiate cold shafts of broken glass.
You're nearly a good laugh,
Almost worth a quick grin.
You like the feel of steel,
You're hot stuff with a hatpin,
And good fun with a hand gun.
You're nearly a laugh,
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry.

Hey you, Whitehouse,
Ha ha charade you are.
You house proud town mouse,
Ha ha charade you are
You're trying to keep our feelings off the street.
You're nearly a real treat,
All tight lips and cold feet
And do you feel abused?
.....! .....! .....! .....!
You gotta stem the evil tide,
And keep it all on the inside.
Mary you're nearly a treat,
Mary you're nearly a treat
But you're really a cry.

(Via Slog.)

Most Everything I Learned to Fear About Death Was Taught in Sunday School

A friend pointed me to this post entitled "Death is a Matter of Opinion," which presents some very interesting thoughts on the existential challenges that we humans face in dealing with the certainty of our own deaths and that of other beings. I highly recommend that you read the whole thing before continuing with my additional thoughts, as the author's points about the eternal nature of what we refer to as our past -- these are quite profound.

What I'd like to highlight here are my thoughts on the following excerpt:

It is only the concept of the future which gives death any measurability. We, as humans, seem invariably afraid of (I would say) our mortality, or rather, the end of our mortal existence. To see this as a negative thing, we have to view death as an "ending."

Many religions deny this by saying there's a continuing to life after death. I disagree that this is necessary to rob death of its power. I think that the "end" of this life is only the end if you evaluate the flow of time forward as an absolute beyond our perception. I feel it is the mortal perception of "yet to come" which makes us so afraid. We rely on a "yet to come" in order to function, make plans, gain things we consider to be "valuable," etc., etc..

...

Our existence has occurred, perhaps, in the weak medium of measurement known as "time," but our immortality occurs the moment we take first breath. Each choice we make reestablishes that immortality. And death -- the "end" -- does nothing to change or shake that in any way.

Death, being defined as an "ending of life," is fallacious at best. It has no grasp, it changes nothing, it has no power. It is simply another aspect of life -- not its ending at all, but a form of existence.

When I was a believer in the dogma of eternal existence as a being of our current type, I once made the comment in LDS Sunday School that death is only significant to the living. Folks vigorously disagreed. I was a little taken back but ultimately understood how the context of Christian faith (and Mormonism in particular) requires that death mean very much to the dead. Yet I was still convinced that the living had much more to fear than the dead.

Now I've come to believe that death is entirely a concern of the living and nothing more.

One thing I'd like to add is that religions in general have capitalized on teaching the eternal nature of the human soul. By doing so they succeed in controlling us now by framing an alleged pre-earth and post-earth existence in such a way that we then feel bound by things utterly outside our control, and subsequently seek to align what we can control--the here and now-- with the precepts of faith. The same faith that, via the circular reasoning of appealing to faith, set the context of our fearful reasoning from the start.

I think much of what we fear about life and death is taught to us by those who cannot know such things. And the net result is that we live as slaves of a manufactured pre-existence, and in fear of what might happen to us or our seed (or our ancestors--for the mormons) should we not do all we can do as framed by dogmas we have accepted.

I think whatever solace that religion may offer in the alleged form of "removing the sting of death" arising from the existential, it wipes-out one-hundred fold with its bondage and fear-mongering via doctrines of pre and post existence.