This I Believe 2 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Feminists and Anti-Feminists

I consider myself a feminist, in that I believe in equal legal and social treatment of women and men. I don't believe all men are rapists (I'm pretty sure I'm not), I am not advocating for the Matriarchy (because that's sort of the opposite of what feminism means to me), and I refuse to spell "woman" or "women" with a "y" (because that's dumb).

Declining to be a feminist because, as with all movements, there are some extremists who use the label, is like declining to be a Christian because of the Westboro Baptists are hateful idjits, or declining to be an atheist because Bill Maher is an anti-vaxxer, or declining to be — well, you get the idea. There are bad apples in every barrel, especially when human beings are concerned.

Or, as the Bloggess puts it (much more entertainingly than I) …

Reshared post from +Les Jenkins

This. So so this.

Women Who are Ambivalent about Women Against Women Against Feminism | The Bloggess
So…yeah. Right now there’s a lot of talk about a tumblr called WomenAgainstFeminism. It’s just pictures of some women holding up handwritten signs entitled “I don’t need feminism because…” Some of the reasons they give for not needing feminism almost seem like a parody (“How the fuck am I …

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Independency

Patriotism gets a bad rap in a lot of quarters because it so easily elides into nationalism and jingoism. We've seen that historically, and it's never a good thing, but I think it's also not a good thing when we lose connection with our nation and its ideals — not in a "neener, neener, we're bigger and badder than you" kicking-sand-in-the-face kind of way, but in a "here's what we believe in, here's what we are willing to live and die for" kind of way.

I believe in America, and its ideals. We fall short — waaaaaay short — of those ideals far too often, and are far too often unwilling to admit when we do so. And our pride in those lofty ideals, our falling short, and our denial about it, can all lead to just anger and disillusionment, at home and abroad.

But those ideals, epitomized in so many ways by the Declaration of Independence, remain. And as long as they remain something that we aspire to — and protest for, and fight for, and admit where we've turned away from them and strive to do better — then this Independence Day holiday will have meaning.

Liberty. Equality of all in rights. The freedom to pursue our lives as we see fit, subject only to not stepping on each other in doing so. And that we are all in it together as a nation, pledging, like the signers, our Lives, our Fortune, and our Sacred Honor.

I spent an inordinate amount of time on my quotation site (http://wist.info) this morning, finding five new quotes to go for the day. Here they are.

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America."
— Barack Obama (b. 1961) American politician, US President (2009- )
Keynote speech, Democratic National Convention (26 Jul 2004)

"In no country is there so much devolving upon the people relating to government as in ours. Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also."
— William McKinley (1843-1901) US President (1897-1901)
Speech, Woodstock, Connecticut (4 July 1891)

"July 4, 1776 was the historic day on which the representatives of three millions of people vocalized Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill, which gave notice to the world that they proposed to establish an independent nation on the theory that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The wonder and glory of the American people is not the ringing Declaration of that day, but the action then already begun, and in the process of being carried out, in spite of every obstacle that war could interpose, making the theory of freedom and equality a reality."
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) American lawyer, politician, US President (1925-29)
Equal Rights (1920)

"Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic principles. These principles are that each man is to be treated on his worth as a man without regard to the land from which his forefathers came and without regard to the creed which he professes. If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted."
— Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) US President (1901-1909)
“Americanism,” speech to the Knights of Columbus, New York (12 Oct 1915)

"I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."
— John Adams (1735-1826) US President (1797-1801)
Letter to Abigail Adams (3 Jul 1776)

A happy and safe Fourth of July to all.

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Absolute Truth in Perspective

Anyone who claims with absolute certainty that their religion is the One True Way is trying to sell something — either to you or to themselves. I have my own beliefs, which range from vague hunches to enough faithful certainty to make a serious effort to live up to the particular teachings I think come closest to the truth — but I have neither the hubris nor the gall to claim a particular, personal, infallible insight into absolute metaphysical and theological truth.

(h/t +Les Jenkins)

Reshared post from +Monica McGee

OF COURSE!! (◕‿~)✿

#atheism #atheist #AtheistRollCall #skeptic #agnostic #reason #irreligion #irreligious #Monicks

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The Why and How of "What Would Jesus Do?"

It's actually a fascinating little story, going back further than I would have guessed.

For all that WWJD is sometimes maligned as some strange arch-conservative Christian groupthink (because of modern conservative Christian orthodoxy about what Jesus obviously did or said and what it means in modern life), I actually think it can be a valuable thought exercise (and applicable to a variety of thought / faith leaders). It creates a mental checkpoint for actions, a "Hey, how does this thing I'm about to do actually line up with my personal beliefs?" moment. And, yeah, maybe you then decide that, yes, Jesus probably would support you having another glass of wine because, y'know, the Wedding at Cana and all that, but at least you gave it a bit of thought, and that's usually not a bad thing to do.

The Fascinating Story of How the “What Would Jesus Do?” Slogan Came About
What Would Jesus Do?, often shortened to WWJD? or W.W.J.D. is a slogan so famous that millions of objects have been emblazoned with it. However, the person who came up with “W.W.J.D.” never saw a penny of the millions of dollars companies across the globe have made from it. The earliest known instance of the full [&hellip

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"When I was hungry, you fed me"

This evening, the vestry from my parish did their annual service at St Clare's Ministries just south of downtown Denver. This is an adjunct building to the (Episcopal) Church of St Peter & St Mary, where once a week they open the doors to feed as many homeless and impoverished people as they can, and to provide them clothing as well.

It was a neat experience. I got there early and got set to work setting up the tables and pouring cups of lemonade. That led to me being on lemonade (and coffee) duty all through the meal, which got me circulating around the whole room (and out of the kitchen).

The clientele was a remarkably mixed bag, from some folks who were clearly homeless, sometimes impaired in some fashion, and almost certainly sleeping rough, to others who just appear to be temporarily down on their luck and needing an extra hot meal to keep things going.

Anyone who wanted lemonade, I poured it.

I'm not relating this tale to blow my own horn about how righteous I am. Anything but. I just want to share what a positive experience it was, and to encourage anyone who has the opportunity to volunteer in such a way to make a point to do so. It's easy to talk about "the poor" and "the hungry" in a very generic and faceless fashion; actually encountering them and being in a position to do something to help — is different, in a truly worthwhile fashion.

St. Clare’s Ministries | St. Clare’s Ministries

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For the Love of Money is the Root of All Evil

Not the love of having enough to feed your family, or saving to send your kid to college, but the love of money itself, avarice, which seems to far too easily become an addiction just as mind- and mood-altering as heroin. Except that while a heroin addict can only rob one person at a time, the true wealth addicts can (and do) rob an entire society to feed their never-ending addiction.

I think it's important to remember a few things out of this:

1. Yes, "othering" the Rich is just as wrong as "othering" the Poor or an other group. As soon as you start demonizing and dehumanizing any group, you lose the moral high ground.

2. But not demonizing heroin addicts doesn't mean I shouldn't beware of the risks of turning my back on one. Having sympathy for a wealth addict and seeing one as someone deserving such sympathy (how many people don't feel some twinge of envy and avarice in their lives) doesn't mean we shouldn't make ourselves safe before trying to help him.

3. Wealth and power aren't necessarily evil per se — you can have a drink of Scotch and not become an alcoholic knifing someone for the price of a bottle of rotgut. What's important is what you do with that wealth and power — do you use it to leverage still more, no matter who gets in the way or gets hurt, or do you use it to help others? "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required." If money and power are the goal themselves, that's a sign of sickness.

(h/t +Yonatan Zunger)

Reshared post from +Matthew J Price

I actually had a paradigm shift while reading this; a small epiphany.

I have been thinking of people in power as experiencing motivations that were somewhat unique, or at least unfathomable to me. Like the 1% were somehow alien, not to be confused with actual people.

I've been dehumanizing people addicted to wealth

If I can have empathy for people in the throes of human weakness in every other area of addiction and malfunction, why would being wealthy make one more or less culpable?

I can now see how, like everyone else, the broken reward system of their human brain is not equipped to moderate behavior even in the face of grave moral violation and injustice. I feel pity for a heroin addict driven to violence for a fix, and I feel pity for the stock broker who would profit from the suffering of millions.

I didn't, yesterday.

For the Love of Money
We are letting money addiction drive too much of our society.

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Be One

So sayeth Mr. Nice Guy.

Reshared post from +Larry O’Dell

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Want to bring people to the faith? Try this, instead

Want to convince people to join your religion? Don't read chapter and verse. Don't threaten, cajole, harass, or condemn them.

Instead, tell them about how your faith has brought you joy, how it has brought you contentment, how it has stirred your soul, how it has made you a better person.

Better by far than telling them, though, is to show them through your actions. Let them see how this was the right thing for you, and may be for them, too. Don't hide your beliefs under a bushel, but don't treat your faith as a prima facie case as to why they should believe, too. And don't simply say, "Being a Christian (or whatever) has made lots of folks better people." Demonstrate it with yourself, in talking about who you were and in showing who you are.

If you can, it's a hugely effective, very personal argument for most people; if you can't — well, maybe you better work on that, first.

It's not automatic. Folks aren't going to automatically drop to their knees and accept Jesus as their personal savior just because you held the door open for them, or spent Superbowl Sunday working in a soup kitchen, or something like that. It takes time to influence in this way. It might not happen today, or tomorrow. It might be years, and long after the other person isn't around you any more — but if your example was a good one, they will remember it.

That's how you persuade. That's how you lead. That's how you bring people to God (or Allah or the Buddha or whatever belief system, religious or otherwise, you want to bring them to).

The alternative is to get into arguments with them, and, assuming you don't spoil your case with doltitude like the below, it will all eventually boil down to "God told me so, so it must be true."

To which one can expect the retort, "Nuh-uh."

To be followed by "Uh-huh," "Nuh-uh," "Uh-huh," and pretty soon everyone is sounding — well, childish. Which hardly brings glory on whatever faith you're touting.

The nice thing about this approach is that you don't even have to be actively proselytizing for it to work. If the tree is known by its fruits (or whatever parallel metaphor you want to use), then being a good tree is good thing in and of itself, and if it demonstrates something that brings people to the faith, then all the better, right?

This May Be the Worst Argument Ever Made for Why You Should Believe in God

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On the Optimization of Charitable Giving

Yeah, I admit, this thought did cross my mind during the whole Batkid foofoorah. It's joyful to see a kid's dreams fulfilled, esp. a kid suffering from such an illness, and it was certainly heartwarming for all the participants and viewers — but from a purely pragmatic basis (in terms of saving or salvaging lives), it was not the most effective spending of a million dollars.

Still … Batkid!

How Many People Died Because of Batkid?
Batkid. Remember Batkid? A sick child, running around San Francisco, living a wonderful dream? Terrible use of resources, that kid was.

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The real War on Christmas

"What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."
— James 2:14-20 (KJV)

It’s Conservatives Who Really Want Christ Out of Christmas
They’re terrified America’s tiny number of atheists will change the meaning of the holiday. But conservatives are the ones who are really at war with its message.

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Heresy!

I have to confess, sometimes I just go with Patrick's final argument and move on to something interesting or useful.

(h/t +Yonatan Zunger)

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Some Quotations for Thanksgiving

My quotations for the day for my WIST quotation site, curated specifically for the day:

“If we meet someone who owes us a debt of gratitude, we remember the fact at once. How often we can meet someone to whom we owe a debt of gratitude without thinking of it at all!”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
Elective Affinities, 2.4 “From Ottilie’s Journal” (1809) [tr. Hollingdale (1971)]

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”
— Franz Kafka (1883-1924) Czech-Austrian Jewish writer
“Investigations of a Dog” (1922)

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter
Sermons and soda water the day after.”
— George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, 2.178 (1819-24)

“Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.”
— Aesop (620?-560? BC) Legendary Greek storyteller
“Androcles,” Fables [tr. Jacobs (1894)]

“Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think,
And at the same time make it sin to drink?
Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus–
Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!”
— Omar Khayyám (1048-1123) Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer
Rubáiyát [tr. Le Gallienne (1897)]

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

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Giving Thanks to Others

I tend to thank people a lot, because it's a nice and kind thing to do, and I really sincerely appreciate stuff that folk do that often gets unmentioned.

What's particularly nice is, as happened today, a person sends back a personal reply saying, "Thank YOU. I don't hear 'thank yous' much, and I appreciate your note immensely."

I think I made someone smile and feel good about themselves today. That's kind of keen.

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Instant Sainthood

Sorry — I'm a big believer in letting history judge. Don't build civic structures and name them after live people. Don't vote on "The Best/Worst President" including anyone who was in office the last twenty-five years. And for saints — I'd say wait a century and see; the Church can afford the long game, and it would certainly eliminate the smell of politics and populism.

At least, that's how I'd run the Catholic Church.

Vatican panel clears John Paul II for sainthood

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Movie Review: "Dogma" (1999)

I really love this movie.

A ★★★★★ review of Dogma (1999)
It’s easy to dismiss “Dogma” as a foul-mouthed, irreverent, anti-religious diatribe. Easy, and wrong. Except for the foul-mouthed part. And maybe the irreverent part (though there’s a goodly amount of reverence involved), and possibly the religious part (if by which you mean organized and human-focused religious institutions). “Dogma” manages to poke fun at or criticize almost everything about religion (see above), but is deeply supportive of fai…

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Evil to Teach Humility

I have never cared for this particular line of argument around the Problem of Evil, for much the same reason the Pig suggests.

I'm also not thrilled with the Sacrifice of Abraham as an opportunity to teach piety, dittowise.

Reshared post from +Les Jenkins

This.

The Atheist Pig – A lesson in humility
I’m pretty sure at this point, it’s not even about god any more for more xtians. I think it’s mostly about people the can’t grasp the concept of “all men are created equal”. I’m not even joking. If god loves everyone equally, then these “lesson in humility” would happen uniformly.

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(Un)Certainty

'Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only by incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don’t know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness.'

— Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), “An Agnostic’s Apology,” Fortnightly Review (1876)

“An Agnostic’s Apology,” Fortnightly Review (1876)
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most……

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My job in life

Yeah, sappy or stupid or impractical …

But this is what my faith tells me God does, and so I am called to strive to be that way myself. (Cf. Luke 10:25-37 http://bg4.me/YegDJp).

Interesting fellow, that Thomas Merton (http://wist.info/author/merton-thomas/).

Reshared post from +Cathy Wallace

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In (very slight) defense of Richard Mourdock

In a debate Tuesday night for the Indiana Senate race, Mourdock (a Republican) was asked about abortion exceptions for rape and incest. He replied:

“I struggled with myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.”

His statement has lit something of a firestorm (legit and exploited both), even with his quick correction post-debate that he didn't think that rape itself was something God intended.

A couple of thoughts of my own.

1. The idea of not granting a rape or incest exception is is a perfectly consistent and defensible position, if you grant the rights of "personhood" or humanity to a fetus (I don't, but many do). By law and by justice, we don't visit the crimes of the parent on the child. If you are staunchly anti-abortion, providing an escape clause for rape or incest makes no rational sense, since you are essentially saying it's okay to kill a baby if the father was a rapist.

(An exception or the life of the mother, yes, in that you must choose one life or another — though the direction for that choice is, itself, informative.)

2. Mourdock's thornier issue here was pulling God into the mix, but even here he's on hardly-radical grounds of parsing God's purpose and trying to reconsile the Problem of Evil — why an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God lets bad things (like rape) happen — or, put another way, if God knows all that will happen and can act and intervene according to His will, why does he enable a universe where that sort of thing occurs?

(And, yeah, that's one I struggle with, too. And I don't have any glib answers. Which is a big reason why I don't go around publicly attributing things, good or bad, to God's will.)

Mourdock runs into trouble here (at least one of the places he runs into trouble) because he tries to address just part of the equation. He's willing to say that a pregnancy from rape is something "God intended," but not that the rape itself is. And, yes, hand-wave, free will, all that, but that's just not a distinction that sits well (especially since I suspect a lot of women would consider no pregnancy from a rape to be a much greater "gift", if not a coincidentally nearby police officer or stray lightning bolt).

So, no, he didn't say that God intended rapes to occur, and it's not necessarily fair to suggest he thinks such a thing (let alone going down the road of "… so she must have deserved it") — but he opens the door to that interpretation by musing about a theological point that has engaged scholars for centuries and is hardly a topic that lends itself to easy or nuanced headline-based discussion.

Mind you, Mourdock would have been criticized anyway, either for his position on abortion exceptions or if he'd simply murmured about God's will, "Mysterious Ways", and all that — especially if he didn't follow on by saying "And here's how we're going to support the women and children who find themselves in this situation." Where he really erred was in trying to blend the two, mixing "God's plan" in with "rape" as a reason to restrict abortion, and playing directly into a set of issues (and expectations) where the GOP fringe has come across as anti-women, shame-based theocrats who are looking to incorporate A Handmaid's Tale into the party platform. That's beyond what Mourdock himself said, certainly — but not so far that his statements didn't resonate with those quite legimate concerns from the Left.

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Will Richard Mourdock’s rape remarks hurt Mitt Romney? (+video)
The Romney campaign immediately distanced itself from the remarks of Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate from Indiana. Democrats portrayed the remarks as evidence of an extreme view on abo…

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Being a non-Republican Christian. Or a Christian non-Republican

For too many people, "Republican = Christian". From the outside of Christianity, Christians get identified with conservative Christian evangelical types, many of whom are Republican … and who, themselves, mistake their particular flavor of Christianity with Christianity as a whole (and, thus, their political affiliation with The Only Party a True Christian(TM) Can Belong To).

But that's not the whole picture, by any means …

Reshared post from +George Wiman

As a non-theist I often keep company with people who write off all Christians on the basis of the religious right – which is admittedly the loudest branch of that religion in this country. But it is important to recognize that within Christianity is a broad range of human values, from inexplicably Ayn Rand-ish and hating gays, to OT prophet's concern for the poor. Here's a well-reasoned essay from a Christian who explains why she is a Democrat. It is sad that any Christian or any person for that matter should have to explain…

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Why I am a Christian Democrat
A friend recently watched, helpless and aggrieved, as her husband—a philosophy professor at a conservative Christian university—was pummeled online for co-writing an essay with a fellow professor on w…

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