Yay science!

So anyway. Way more interesting than secular humanism and Jane Addams is modern atheism!

I'm going to propose some definitions to clarify the group "arches", Atheism, atheism, and whatever else comes up in my head.

First of all, big-A Atheism I would call the worldview that there is no metaphysical or supernatural reality, and empirical data/observation/"hard science" can explain all phenomena that occur. A "problem" for philosophically minded Atheists is the question of where morality comes from, but I'm not going to break Godwin's law and discuss that here...

Any big-A Atheist uses Atheism to answer the questions about the nature of the cosmos that a religious person uses religion to answer. Some Atheists have among their beliefs the belief that the world would be improved by abolishing religion, that people with religious beliefs are deluding themselves and worshiping human creations with no power, etc. (you can see a parallel with religion here I hope?) I would call this sort of Atheism an analogue to religious belief, an arch at the 'top level'

BUT while Atheists must believe that empirical observation is the way to see everything in the universe there is to see, they cannot define themselves solely by acceptance of the current scientific theories about cosmology and the origins of the human species. Science has a property I enjoy very much: the limits to the scope of things it can be used to answer questions about. Because (even though people can make a career speculating about the first quarter-second of the Universe) it is logically impossible to speculate about what happened BEFORE that. See my corny illustration up top? While Atheists may have their opinions, there is nothing stopping anyone putting ANYTHING in the spot Michelangelo's God is taking up (flying Spaghetti Monsters, random chance, etc) and empiricism can't touch it. No decent scientist is going to answer ANY questions about WHY the Universe came into being, or the Ultimate Cause of anything.

As an empirically-minded (though mostly ignorant) Christian brought back to the sheep-area by a science teacher, I'm going to hammer that point again. Acceptance of any theory of modern science CAN'T be incompatible with religious belief, because religious belief and scientific inquiry ask and answer TOTALLY DIFFERENT questions. God works in mysterious ways, and those ways can be the origin of species by natural selection...

Long Moment of Silence

So when I heard about the "assignment/experiment" for next class period, I thought immediately, "excellent, I can put off doing my reading assignment for Government until then!" and then when I realized that might gather some sideways looks, "Excellent! I can secretly nap!" or act like a fool and pretend the "inner light" came upon me, and then I realized those would probably be bad ideas too.

It's interesting to me that (Is this due to the college class schedule? The modern American ideal of busy living? Some other cultural factor I can't come up with now?) I don't know how to deal with the prospect of twenty minutes of doing absolutely nothing. I think the fact that it is so radically out of the ordinary that would give it some of the attributes of a 'religious' or 'spiritual' or at least 'ritualistic' event.

Rapture Index

http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html

This is the "rapture index" I mentioned in class... It took me a while to figure out whether it was serious or not. Yep, completely serious! 68.8% chance of rapture today.

Women in the Church

The thing I find much more interesting than Margaret Fell's writing is this episode from her life:

The meeting between Margaret Fell and George Fox occurred while Thomas Fell was away on business. When he returned, he found that George Fox had converted his wife, daughters, and many members of the household to Quakerism. Although he never converted to Quakerism, Thomas Fell was supportive of her wife--who promptly stopped attending services at St. Mary's and became one of the key figures in the dissenting religious group.

Now I know about the sort of post-Reformation blooming of Protestant sects, but I never knew before that confessional diversities split up families. It seems to me that this can be taken as reassurance that the difference in beliefs -- for example the role of women speaking in church, as Margaret Fell writes about -- is not the earth-shaking thing we can make it out to be. Most sects agreed on the "important points" -- Jesus is the Saviour etc -- and could therefore get along. I don't think we should believe that tolerant Thomas Fell is what Sam Harris (well, class interpretation of Sam Harris) would call a 'half-assed' believer, soft on doctrine.

Ship of Fools website review (tangent!)

Ship of Fools,'The Magazine of Christian Unrest', existed first in print from 1977-1983, died dead and returned to life in 1993 with the Internet. "The ship sails under the flag of orthodox Christianity, but on a buccaneering voyage", claim the creators. The "magazine" features serious editorial articles about modern Christianity, without shying away from criticism and even ridicule, and uses humor liberally while examining Christianity's bumpy interactions with marketing, media and politics. The website is veritably jam-packed with content, and includes a very active forum community, so I'm having a beastly time examining it in three pages. No lie, SoF is my favorite religious community online, and you all ought to check them out immediately. Here are highlights from site content.

The Laugh Judgement, the recap of a forum/panel discussion regarding the top ten funniest and top ten most offensive religious jokes. The panel stared taboos right in the face and decided that they ought to stay right where they are. Verdict? Pedophilia is just unfunny. But schism and public beatings are fine!

The Mystery Worshipper. Mostly UK and NZ-based, MWs go to unfamiliar churches and review the building, choir, congregation, service, etc. A surprising variable set of views, as well as churches. Makes my snarky preference of one Appleton church (smart homilys, no crying children) over another ("family-oriented", full of clapping and singing...) seem more legit. This seems to be the most faithfully-updated area of the website -- the humor pages and the serious columns are more sporadic.

Caption Contest. Where the forum community and the online newsletter meet -- no one gets away with looking ludicrous.

The Forum divided into sections as "Heaven" "Purgatory" and "Hell" (referring to how hot the debate is allowed to get) is the powerhouse of SoF.

The Ark. Slightly confusing to understand, but it seems as it was going on, The Ark was a virtual comedy/game show, where prominent SoF forum members played Biblical characters, (yes, including God), interacting over a 40-day period and "voting off" their fellows as though it were "Big Brother". Once you read the episode transcripts, though, it all becomes clear -- check out John Baptist struggling through sacrifice and situational ethics with a chatty God in the Crow's Nest. Now the players are all bots in a virtual Ark environment, at least until the next season...

Lord, I have no idea how I'm going to 'review' this monster...

Knife! Knife! Knife! er...

Poor Haile!

From the Wikipedia article on the Rastafari movement:

Haile Selassie visited Jamaica on April 21, 1966. Somewhere between one and two hundred thousand Rastafari from all over Jamaica descended on Kingston airport having heard that the man whom they considered to be God was coming to visit them. They waited at the airport smoking a great amount of cannabis and playing drums. ... Bob Marley's wife, converted to the Rastafari faith after seeing Haile Selassie; she has stated that she saw stigmata appear on his person, and was instantly convinced of his divinity. It must be said also that Jamaica had been suffering a serious drought at the time, that was suddenly punctuated by rain upon Selassie's arrival; this must also have done much to spread the Rastafarian message.

Can you imagine the only respected African leader, being thronged by all these wacky pot-smoking hippies? He looks like a guy with no sense of humor. Jeez. Seriously, though. Reading through Selassie's Wikipedia page, he seemed to like the Jamaican Rastafaris' interest in African rights and anticolonialism, but ... very little is said about how he viewed the cult that happened around him. I'm imagining Monty Python's Life of Brian ... Oddd.