I found this card, circa 2014, on the bathroom sink at a gas station // firework store called "Nervous Charlie's" in Nashville TN.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
church signs
When I drive into Springfield (OH), there is a church sign that currently reads "Jesus is comming soon" [sic] at Beatty Freewill Baptist Church. On both sides. Was the misspelling intentional to get me to pay extra attention to it? It's been there for weeks. For over a year this sign read, "Visitors Welcome; Members Expected."
When driving into Yellow Springs, Bethel Lutheran Church has had their sign reading: "God's plan is bigger than your plan," which I suppose is supposed to be consolation when your plans crash and burn. Another rendition could be "God is totally callous to your plan." Or one could challenge there even being a plan (or, of course, there even being a God).
The anthropomorphizing of God is fascinating to me. Humans make plans and carry them forward (in hopes of fruition), so God must do the same. I am equally fascinated by the ceiling and limitations of our imagination. For example, you cannot imagine a color you've never seen before. A sense you've never perceived. Those born blind, dream in only the senses they experience. The closest one can give to the blind kid to describe color is metaphor ("[this thing you've never experienced] is like [this thing you've experienced] in this certain aspect"). The difference being, of course, we are humans describing God to other human, like two blind kids trying to explain color to one another. Or humans trying to explain the experience of having some perceptual capability another animal possesses that we humans might not even know about.
So here we are.
What to do?
While we wait, the heart keeps pumping blood and the lungs keep breathing oxygen.
Whatever we do, the heart keeps pumping blood that the lungs load with oxygen.
Until they don't.
###
When driving into Yellow Springs, Bethel Lutheran Church has had their sign reading: "God's plan is bigger than your plan," which I suppose is supposed to be consolation when your plans crash and burn. Another rendition could be "God is totally callous to your plan." Or one could challenge there even being a plan (or, of course, there even being a God).
The anthropomorphizing of God is fascinating to me. Humans make plans and carry them forward (in hopes of fruition), so God must do the same. I am equally fascinated by the ceiling and limitations of our imagination. For example, you cannot imagine a color you've never seen before. A sense you've never perceived. Those born blind, dream in only the senses they experience. The closest one can give to the blind kid to describe color is metaphor ("[this thing you've never experienced] is like [this thing you've experienced] in this certain aspect"). The difference being, of course, we are humans describing God to other human, like two blind kids trying to explain color to one another. Or humans trying to explain the experience of having some perceptual capability another animal possesses that we humans might not even know about.
So here we are.
What to do?
While we wait, the heart keeps pumping blood and the lungs keep breathing oxygen.
Whatever we do, the heart keeps pumping blood that the lungs load with oxygen.
Until they don't.
###
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
RomanCatholicChurch™ hate on the Buddhism
In high school, I was deeply into the RomanCatholicChurch™, primarily because I was born into it and secondly because I attended a "non-denominational Christian" middle school that, unbeknownst to me upon enrollment, was vehemently anti-Catholic (and thus caused a rebound effect).
Like many good Catholics, I was confirmed in ritualistic fashion and then very quickly stopped attending Sunday mass.
Like a cliché, I ventured into Eastern philosophy/religion. For a while, I was a very big proponent of Buddhism, giving all that talk about it being a "worldview" rather than a "religion". Which is totally rubbish if you read any history. Nonetheless, I often find it amusing to view a Catholic critique against Buddhism.
=====
=====
Some have proposed the analogy of the world’s religions being as different roads winding up a tall mountain, with God in a cloud at the top awaiting our arrival. The paths are supposedly all man-made conventions reaching to heaven, so no one religion is really any better than the others. However, this misconception overlooks one enormous truth. One religion’s path was not paved by man [UNPROVABLE AXIOM] from the bottom of the mountain to the top, but was paved by God down the mountain to man. That road is Christianity, and it is arrogant [NAME-CALLING] to prefer a man’s path to the one blazed for our sake by God himself.
Buddhism, by contrast, teaches that there is no God and that human destiny lies in reincarnating to suffer until we use the Eightfold Path to kill our individual identity.
[NEGATIVE CONNOTATION-CLUSTERBOMBS]
======
======
Well, glad that's settled, aren't we?
###
Like many good Catholics, I was confirmed in ritualistic fashion and then very quickly stopped attending Sunday mass.
Like a cliché, I ventured into Eastern philosophy/religion. For a while, I was a very big proponent of Buddhism, giving all that talk about it being a "worldview" rather than a "religion". Which is totally rubbish if you read any history. Nonetheless, I often find it amusing to view a Catholic critique against Buddhism.
=====
=====
Some have proposed the analogy of the world’s religions being as different roads winding up a tall mountain, with God in a cloud at the top awaiting our arrival. The paths are supposedly all man-made conventions reaching to heaven, so no one religion is really any better than the others. However, this misconception overlooks one enormous truth. One religion’s path was not paved by man [UNPROVABLE AXIOM] from the bottom of the mountain to the top, but was paved by God down the mountain to man. That road is Christianity, and it is arrogant [NAME-CALLING] to prefer a man’s path to the one blazed for our sake by God himself.
Buddhism, by contrast, teaches that there is no God and that human destiny lies in reincarnating to suffer until we use the Eightfold Path to kill our individual identity.
[NEGATIVE CONNOTATION-CLUSTERBOMBS]
======
======
Well, glad that's settled, aren't we?
###
Monday, May 18, 2015
You were not there for The Beginning. You will not be there for The End… Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative…
— Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
I crashlanded onto this planet earth with no manual other than what my parents and brothers told me to be true. Then you get other kids' perspectives, television messages, and those inked on the insides of books and outsides of cereal boxes.
Initially I accepted axioms/postulates given to me by seemingly reputable/familiar sources. Jesus is the OnlySonOfGod™ whose crucifixion rendered sins forgivable and he resurrected before ascending into the Heavens, where he'll be until he returns for the FinalJudgement™ at the end of the world. Another story: Satan (a.k.a. Luci[ph]er) was once God's most prized angel until pride made him think he was more terrific than God, thus leading to an attempted coup d'état. For some reason that earned him the right to rule the Damned™.
Asking lots questions will crack up most any axiom/postulate/narrative like these. And when you read a lot of books, you start being able to poke holes and chisel away the solidity of almost any axiom. Thus, flat-worlders, GlobalWarmingDenial, HollowEarthTheory, and whatnot. Just refuse to accept the axioms that they present. Nevermind all the unquestioned axioms you hold over there.
I feel very uncertain about a lot in life. I have much doubt that there is a "right" way to live and wonder if I'm simply falling into the path of least resistance. One that is generally accepted to be moral: that of raising children with loving intention and support, supporting the wife, building the home, developing capital and wealth for financial security, to get rid of debt, pay for kids' current and future educational expenses. Being home all the time. Reading too many books and developing writing skills (for what purpose?).
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”
~~~ Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian
— Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
I crashlanded onto this planet earth with no manual other than what my parents and brothers told me to be true. Then you get other kids' perspectives, television messages, and those inked on the insides of books and outsides of cereal boxes.
Initially I accepted axioms/postulates given to me by seemingly reputable/familiar sources. Jesus is the OnlySonOfGod™ whose crucifixion rendered sins forgivable and he resurrected before ascending into the Heavens, where he'll be until he returns for the FinalJudgement™ at the end of the world. Another story: Satan (a.k.a. Luci[ph]er) was once God's most prized angel until pride made him think he was more terrific than God, thus leading to an attempted coup d'état. For some reason that earned him the right to rule the Damned™.
Asking lots questions will crack up most any axiom/postulate/narrative like these. And when you read a lot of books, you start being able to poke holes and chisel away the solidity of almost any axiom. Thus, flat-worlders, GlobalWarmingDenial, HollowEarthTheory, and whatnot. Just refuse to accept the axioms that they present. Nevermind all the unquestioned axioms you hold over there.
I feel very uncertain about a lot in life. I have much doubt that there is a "right" way to live and wonder if I'm simply falling into the path of least resistance. One that is generally accepted to be moral: that of raising children with loving intention and support, supporting the wife, building the home, developing capital and wealth for financial security, to get rid of debt, pay for kids' current and future educational expenses. Being home all the time. Reading too many books and developing writing skills (for what purpose?).
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”
~~~ Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in the Grand Inquisitor scene of Brothers Karamazov:
“If God does not exist, everything is permitted."
Of course, even if every action is morally equivalent does not mean that every action has an equal result. There is cause and effect, as capricious, fickle, uncertain, and inconsistent as it may be in many cases. You may be morally permitted to dance in front of a hungry tiger, but that doesn't mean one won't receive a nasty life-ending result.
Friday, May 15, 2015
“You don’t believe in Him, do you?”
“No.”
“Things to me wouldn’t make sense without Him.”
“They don’t make sense to me with him.”
— Quiet American by Graham Greene
When I was young, I was the first character speaking. Now that I'm older, the second makes most sense. The belief in an all-powerful all-benevolent creatures does not square up with the acts in existence. A watch may imply a watchmaker, but it does not imply an omnipotent watchmaker; a child may imply a father, but it implies neither an omnipotent father nor an all-benevolent one.
We lack understanding,
so we daydream of an all-understanding being.
We lack total benevolence,
so we daydream of a totally benevolent being.
We lack [...]
[et cetra et cetra]
You say this metaphor is more fitting. I say that metaphor is more fitting. We point at the others' metaphor and scream false equivalency, but in the end it's all conjecture and there lays an inability to prove with totality. So it goes, I suppose.
###
“No.”
“Things to me wouldn’t make sense without Him.”
“They don’t make sense to me with him.”
— Quiet American by Graham Greene
When I was young, I was the first character speaking. Now that I'm older, the second makes most sense. The belief in an all-powerful all-benevolent creatures does not square up with the acts in existence. A watch may imply a watchmaker, but it does not imply an omnipotent watchmaker; a child may imply a father, but it implies neither an omnipotent father nor an all-benevolent one.
We lack understanding,
so we daydream of an all-understanding being.
We lack total benevolence,
so we daydream of a totally benevolent being.
We lack [...]
[et cetra et cetra]
You say this metaphor is more fitting. I say that metaphor is more fitting. We point at the others' metaphor and scream false equivalency, but in the end it's all conjecture and there lays an inability to prove with totality. So it goes, I suppose.
###
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Last summer, I checked out the Yellow Springs United Methodist Church.
Within sects/denominations/religions, there often is a great spectrum. My experience in the Methodist Church exemplifies that: I was a youth coordinator at a LGBTQ-friendly church whose doctrine of "Creation Spirituality" essentially declared that the divine is in everything and thus was accepting of all various beliefs. People at my church could be essentially atheists and view the Bible as a text created by humans with their own personal/cultural flaws and biases. While becoming a youth coordinator, I went to a youth coordinator seminar at a different Methodist church, where they had us join in their worship, which involved people talking in highly evangelical terms, glorifying the blood of Jesus (penal substitution atonement) and stating his unique "only only" specialness in being a vehicle to posthumous salvation and thinking LGBTQ lifestyles were evil.
All in the same denomination. In the same state. Fifteen miles from each other.
So reading the Yellow Springs United Methodist Church's website, one cannot know what one is really getting into. Am I read coded language that they're LGBTQ-friendly (the code term in the Methodist Church is being a "reconciling church")? They are in Yellow Springs, after all. After attending, I'm still not sure. But I am sure of one thing: within the first couple sentences of the sermon, I knew this was not the place for me.
The minister began speaking about the "growing numbers of Christians in China" in glowing terms. Personally, I couldn't give a shit about how many "Christians" there are in China. Not because I don't care about China, but because I think that it doesn't matter how many people self-identify as "Christians" or "Confucians" or "Buddhists". The title one gives oneself is not important to me. I am not on TeamChristian™. I don't believe Christians to be inherently better than other religions. There are great people in all religions. And there are sloppy, lazy, mean-spirited and/or hypocritical people in all religions too.
Another element that is a problem at these Yellow Springs' churches is a lack of childcare. At this particular church, during the summer at least, they don't have any childcare during the services. So you take your children upstairs in the childcare room, let them play, while you can look out the window at the service happening in the chapel with speakers piping in whatever is caught on the microphones. Sort of like watching TV.
###
Within sects/denominations/religions, there often is a great spectrum. My experience in the Methodist Church exemplifies that: I was a youth coordinator at a LGBTQ-friendly church whose doctrine of "Creation Spirituality" essentially declared that the divine is in everything and thus was accepting of all various beliefs. People at my church could be essentially atheists and view the Bible as a text created by humans with their own personal/cultural flaws and biases. While becoming a youth coordinator, I went to a youth coordinator seminar at a different Methodist church, where they had us join in their worship, which involved people talking in highly evangelical terms, glorifying the blood of Jesus (penal substitution atonement) and stating his unique "only only" specialness in being a vehicle to posthumous salvation and thinking LGBTQ lifestyles were evil.
All in the same denomination. In the same state. Fifteen miles from each other.
So reading the Yellow Springs United Methodist Church's website, one cannot know what one is really getting into. Am I read coded language that they're LGBTQ-friendly (the code term in the Methodist Church is being a "reconciling church")? They are in Yellow Springs, after all. After attending, I'm still not sure. But I am sure of one thing: within the first couple sentences of the sermon, I knew this was not the place for me.
The minister began speaking about the "growing numbers of Christians in China" in glowing terms. Personally, I couldn't give a shit about how many "Christians" there are in China. Not because I don't care about China, but because I think that it doesn't matter how many people self-identify as "Christians" or "Confucians" or "Buddhists". The title one gives oneself is not important to me. I am not on TeamChristian™. I don't believe Christians to be inherently better than other religions. There are great people in all religions. And there are sloppy, lazy, mean-spirited and/or hypocritical people in all religions too.
Another element that is a problem at these Yellow Springs' churches is a lack of childcare. At this particular church, during the summer at least, they don't have any childcare during the services. So you take your children upstairs in the childcare room, let them play, while you can look out the window at the service happening in the chapel with speakers piping in whatever is caught on the microphones. Sort of like watching TV.
###
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