Christo-Solstice

Christmas will be happening a little late for the Saint Cynic household; I am scheduled to work the holidays. In any case, for the rest of you who have somewhat normal lives, Merry Christmas!

And for those of you who are of a different mind concerning Christmas, I hope you have a superb Solstice Season!

Anti-Facebook

I deactivated my Facebook account a couple of weeks ago. The reason: I find it to be an inexcusable waste of time. When I mentioned deactivating my account with Facebook to a friend of mine, he said, "Good! I was going to tell you to get off that thing. It's addictive. It's like crack cocaine. Besides that, you were being too conformist being on there."

Aside from the wry chuckle I enjoyed at his comments, I found his perspective on Facebook insightful: it's addictive, and it promotes conformity.

First, let's look at some behavioural characteristics of addiction.

1. Obsession - person cannot stop thinking about an activity.
2. Relentless Pursuit - person will engage in activity even to the detriment of his/her physical and psycho-social well being.
3. Compulsiveness - person will engage in an activity despite not wanting to, and finds it difficult to stop.
4. Withdrawal - once the addictive activity is stopped, person becomes irrational, irritable, depressed, restless.
5. Lack of Perception of Time - person cannot control how long, when, or how much s/he will engage in an activity.
6. Denial - person cannot, and will not accept that s/he has an irrational attachment to an activity, even despite the negative effects.
7. Covert-Ops - person hides his/her activity from friends, family, and concerned individuals.
8. Blackouts - person simply blanks-out during activity, which results in a lack of recall about what went on during addictive activity.
9. Depression - person experiences depressed states surrounding, and even during activity.
10. Poor Self-Esteem - person deals with personal anxieties and low self-esteem issues by "filling in their lack", as it were, with an addictive activity.

As a loose gauge for my own participation with Facebook, this list shows me that I fit at least 7, possibly 8 of the characteristics usually associated with addictive behaviours. As a family man, and a man with a conscience, I find that unacceptable. So, for this reason alone, I shut down Facebook.

Now, just so we're clear, I am not blaming Facebook for my problems. I am solely responsible for how I attend to an activity, how much time I spend doing it, and in what manner. Facebook itself is simply a computer application and has nothing to do with my addiction to it. But, as a vehicle for part of my social life, I cannot trust myself to use Facebook anymore because I was not able to control myself around it. Also, because I was allowing my time on Facebook to interfere with my family, my real-life relationships were starting to break down. So, for me, having parrotted the common sentiment that I would "take a bullet" for my family if I had to, why would I allow myself to shoot my loved one's down with an inordinate compulsion toward Facebook?

The answer to the rhetorical question above is an easy, "I wouldn't." But I did. And I did so unintentionally, and to my shame. But even unintentionally having hurt my family because of my own addictive behaviours surrounding Facebook, the result is the same: my family was hurt. Intentionality does not exhonerate me from the pain my family has felt this past while. My work is ahead of me; I have a lot of wounds to heal.

Coming at this from a different, more 'academic' angle, however, there is a certain conformity proffered in applications like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, et al. That is, applications such as the ones listed dole-up a common denominator people can easily access and use. The fact that applications like these offer the same basic templates for social interaction, aesthetics, and mindless pursuits (e.g., Farmville) now strikes me as a little creepy. I don't ascribe anything apocalyptic to it, but the fact that there is a definite sense of sameness across the board comes across a little Hux-Wellian.

Facebook is a little like a prototype for the 'Feelies' so excellently imagined in Huxley's Brave New World: slip into a virtual reality where everything surrounding you is a template for homogeneity, and predictability. The best part about it is that you don't actually have to carry on a real relationship with a real person. You can simply 'Add' and 'Delete' on a whim, and at will.

At the same time, Facebook is also a little like Big Brother. Mind you, the government is not prescribing Facebook as a means of mass-control, so the comparison is very loose. Still, people are screened for jobs by employers looking up Facebook accounts. Corporations actively monitor people's use of Facebook to keep an eye on the corporate reputation. Facebook does not protect your privacy, but instead, allows your information to be readily accessible to marketters (data-mining), industries, government, etc. It is a wonderful vehicle for corporate voyeurism (ever wonder why your stuff is hyperlinked without you having hyperlinked your information?). It is not quite Big Brother, but it is like having Big Brothers.

Facebook promotes uniformity not in people's ontology, but in people's expressions. That is, you don't stop being who you are by using Facebook, but you begin to alter how you express yourself to fit the mold offered. Eventually, this will impact who a person is. The same principle is illustrated in a positive light in the movie Patch Adams: if you change the conditions, or parameters of a persons environment, you affect their response. This in turn affects who the person is on a fundamental level. Seeing as Facebook is generally a breeding ground for poor grammar, thoughtless banter, useless games and quizzes, ambivalent attachments, and techonological distancing (i.e., moral ambivalence via technology), it shouldn't come as a surprise when people start communicating in real life as they do on Facebook. I imagine conversations would sound like Valspeak, but less eloquent.

I refuse that measure of conformity. I refuse that common denominator, which, as I see it, will continue to get lower and lower as the phenomenon of social-networking applications trim out the fat of human-to-human contact, and unwittingly inject us with the narcotics of virtual reality, and pseudo-relationships. I will not follow suit any longer. I am officially anti-Facebook.

What Is Religion?

An erudite reader commented in a recent article that he was calling me (and another commenter) out on the term 'religion'. It was not an aggressive manoeuver, but a considerate action meant to help clarify conversation. Rather than leave it within the context of that exchange, however, I thought it appropriate to bring this subject up-front and centre, since it is a defining issue in so many people's lives.

So, what exactly is religion?

Anyone can look around and note the various rituals, genuflections, processes, and events that religious people regularly attend to. But to note religion simply as a set of rituals and practices not only undercuts the driving importance of religious devotion, but it also relies on superficial observations of those things that are external to the religious anyway.


For example, everyone knows that Christians have a cultus for the sacraments, but that is where a good deal of understanding stops. It would require a little more effort to investigate the history, meaning, and respective differences in the sacraments, and further, the differences between varying communities of Christians. More effort would be required again to appreciate the aesthetic application of the sacraments to the religious life, and the nostalgic desire for transcendence that believers seek when they partake of the sacraments.


All this is to say that by observing that the religious have definite practices, we cannot then conclude that 'religion' is what we've observed: rituals, genuflections, proceses, and special events. Such a definition loops back on itself, and gets us nowhere. How much sense does it make to suggest that because we've observed people going to church and praying that religion is therefore going to church and praying? It doesn't make sense at all. All we have concluded with that kind of definition is that religion is what religious people do. The same logic is made memorable in the movie Forrest Gump: "Stupid is as stupid does." It may be the case that religion is what religious people do, but no-one is the wiser for such a definition.


Our work is still ahead of us. Thankfully, many people have proposed definitions of 'religion' that cut a little deeper than a wistful glance at Merriam-Webster. Here (thank you to Dr. Irving Hexham) are some of those definitions:

• William James: "the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."
• Alfred North Whitehead: "what the individual does with his own solitariness."
• George Hegel: "the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind."

James' definition approaches an appreciable definition of 'religion' but comes short; it only observes that people believe stuff and order their lives accordingly. I can observe the invisible quality of friendship just as much as I can observe the religious believing in an "unseen order". But observing friends being friends, or the religious being religious does not answer what 'religion' is anymore than noting that "stupid is as stupid does", as was mentioned earlier.

Whitehead's definition seems to dismiss the point altogether. People masturbate in solitude, but that hardly makes masturbation a religion. What one does when no-one is looking (i.e., in solitude) exorcises the very obvious fact that religion is a public phenomenon, a social event, a world-wide extroversion of beliefs. In this sense, solitude can be argued to work against religion; a social assent to a set of beliefs is quite the opposite to what one does in solitude, for what one does in solitude quite obviously lacks participation in public affiliations.

Hegel seems to want to relegate religion to a purely abstract realisation of the mind. That is, a singular, limited and mortal mind apprehending the fact that its essence, its very being, is unrestrained or unlimited; i.e., absolute. I think Hegel's definition anticipates his dialectic system more than a working definition of 'religion' proper. One thing Hegel's definition does intimate, however, is transcendence. This is helpful insomuch as it will aide in attempting a definition of religion later in this essay. For now, however, it is appropriate to note that one of Hegel's driving points was that the recognition of a boundary implies the possibility of going beyond it (which is the literal meaning of 'transcend', to go beyond). As such, for Hegel, religion is the implicit recognition that because a perceiving mind is finite, there must therefore be infinite, or absolute mind.

Where Hegel breaks down is in the practicability of his definition. Religion focuses on what is beyond the human condition, what is supernatural, and how those things can be invoked in human affairs. To state that a finite mind apprehending an absolute mind is 'religion' only tells us that religion is a recognition of a quality of being beyond our natural senses. That much is already assumed by the religious, though in far less philosophical terms. So Hegel's definition doesn't get us much further than to remind us that religion deals with the transcendent.

It seems we need to examine the original question again: what is religion? We have noted a few examples of what religion is not. Religion is not merely a list of things religious people do. Religion is not simply a lifestyle adjustment to an unseen order. Religion is not what you do when you're alone. And religion is not just an intellectual recognition of contrasts in reality.

Religion, it would seem, is quite hard to define. I think this is true in part because of its inherently vague grammatical application. Austin Cline notes that,

"Definitions of religion tend to suffer from one of two problems: they are either too narrow and exclude many belief systems which most agree are religious, or they are too vague and ambiguous, suggesting that just about any and everything is a religion."

Saying 'cancer' is an umbrella term that connotes some form of auto-immune disorder. Similarly, 'religion' is a catch-all phrase that connotes the dispositions of certain groups of people toward a set of propositions concerning the supernatural. Then again, certain religious people (those who claim a 'religion') are not supernaturalists so much as they are idealists (e.g., some forms of Buddhism are described as atheistic; Mahayanic Buddhism comes to mind). Thus the word 'religion' can run us adrift of helpful understanding.

Some people consider the word 'religion' to be notional. It does not denote anything actual, or real. Jonathan Z. Smith writes in Imagining Religion:

“...while there is a staggering amount of data, phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as religion — there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no existence apart from the academy.”*

Smith's observation on the classification and definition of religion is keen and helpful. 'Religion' is a blanket term used to quickly, and easily categorize an area of experience and activity obvious in all human cultures. Given Smith's observation, using the term 'religion' at once expresses a common understanding without drawing attention to any one particular faith-claim (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Bahá'í, et al.). But for the purposes of conversation, small qualifications are certainly needed. I would do poorly to speak with a Muslim about religion while not clarifying whether I am speaking in the context of his/her religion.

If the term 'religion' is a bit of a chimera made understandable by its attachment to academic generalizations, then whatever definition I give will necessarily enjoy the same attachment. Be that as it may, here is what I understand 'religion' is: the practice of specific, systematized cultural beliefs usually, but not necessarily, attended by the enjoyment of liturgical rites that anticipate communication with the supernatural, and invite an aesthetic experience of transcendence in the believing subject (person).

My definition is practical only in one sense: it finds a place in the academy Smith refered to earlier. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone can adequately define such a term as 'religion' without getting hung up on definitions that are too wide, and therefore fail to regard differences in varying religious claims; or definitions that are too narrow, and therefore inadequately refer to specific faith-claims.

Religion is a cultural motif. It is an on-going narrative that necessarily changes as the cultural climate changes. Some critics would argue that religion should determine culture (e.g., certain Christian academics feel this is an important action for Christians to undertake, and it is certainly a sentiment that runs quite deep within evangelicalism and American right-wing politics). Others argue that religion should be utterly removed from culture altogether by way of science, another blanket term (e.g., Sam Harris). Both positions on the nature of 'religion' in our on-going cultural narratives miss the point altogether: they are interdependent; we cannot force a religionless culture without removing culture and religion altogether. Both our culture and our religions provide an overarching story of our human experiences, aspirations, failures, growths and setbacks, and future history.

'Religion', as difficult a term it is to parse, is, despite its connotative nature, a very useful word that both binds and separates people, intimates a shared understanding, and provides many fascinating hours of stimulating contemplation.

*Smith's quote can be found in this article.

Dear Gregory

I'm writing this letter to you to let you know that we can have free discourse here at St. Cynic.

To start, there's no reason why my limited understandings on certain subjects are equivalent to "vitriol" or a misapprehension of certain claims. Similarly, there's no reason why a capacious understanding of certain subjects should render my position tiresome, or a 'waste' of your time, even if you disagree.

Next, I invite you to this site for debate because I get a thrill from butting heads with you. Sounds superficial, I know. However, "iron sharpens iron, just as one man sharpens another" seems especially apt to me when it comes to debating you: I learn from you, and I enjoy that. If you conclude that coming to my site is wasteful, frustrating, depressing, kicks in your cynicism reflex, or exasperates you at all, you are free to refuse my invitations. However, I would like to make it expressly clear that I am inviting you for a dual purpose:

1. As stated above, to lock horns with you for the purpose of learning with you, and from you;
2. To keep in contact with you.

Concerning number 2, it is not only geography that divides us. 6000 kms is quite a long way to go to shake hands and have a drink together -- and it would be well worth it! Nevertheless, my refusal of the Roman communion explicitly divides us, our respective philosophical moorings divide us, and our personalities stand in splendid difference to each other. While you have become more and more entrenched in Catholicism, I have become less and less enthusiastic about organised religion as a whole, and generally cannot abide the superficialities that come from all corners of the Christian marketplace. That last point in mind, however, there are a few people I really enjoy engaging, even to their frustration; you are first amongst them.

Your militant Catholicism is not offensive to me. I would ask that you extend the same levity toward my place in our conversations. What is offensive to me is some of the doctrines that go before you, and will probably continue on after you're a desaturated memory. A few of those doctrines are The Immaculate Conception, Mary's Assumption, Transubstantiation, Papal Infallibility, and a few others. Since these are doctrines you hold dear, any disagreement I extend toward them will necessarily spur you to defend them. Be that as it may, it would be a fair start to conversation if your first line of defense was not you just don't understand. While that may be true at times, it is not the case every time. I am not committed to Catholicism, so I am free to explore implications as they arise in my mind, even if they're heretical, off-beat, or seemingly disconnected in your mind. That does not render my efforts impotent.

So, in the spirit of Socratic dialogue (open, explorative converstion), let's chase our respective understandings with a respect that chases understanding of each other.

Today's Thought

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

~ George Bernard Shaw.

Believing and Knowing

'Belief' is a bit of a dirty word in polite society. 'Knowledge' seems to carry a little more weight. The word 'belief' carries with it connotations of thoughtlessness, credulity, and irrationality. Whereas the word 'knowledge' fosters a sense of confidence, credibility, and accessibility; what one knows, another can get to know. However, what one believes is isolated, and another would have to leap, or make a series of leaps (nonrational, often unverifiable assumptions) to express even a modest association with a claimant's beliefs.

Religion, say, the Christian religion, fixes definite doctrinal qualifications on its adherents. A Christian, in order to be a Christian, must assent to historical articles of faith, which is to say s/he must agree to 'believe' formulations concerning divine realities that s/he may not 'know' to be true or false. For example, a Christian has no other recourse but to believe in the incarnation of Christ. That same Christian, however, also has very little, if any, recourse to actual knowledge of the Christ s/he states belief in.

This leads to a confusion in terminology wherein the distinction between belief and knowledge is blurred. Some well-meaning Christians think that because they believe a given proposition -- e.g., there will be a mid-tribulation rapture -- they therefore know that proposition to be true. Conversation, at that point, becomes stunted. How can I discuss things intelligently at that point if the person I am talking to equates belief with knowledge? Crudely put, it is possible to believe that elephant ears act like wings when no-one is looking, or that cats house the souls of dead philosophers, perhaps that Darwin didn't die but underwent a rapid acceleration to a new evolutionary stage. It is not possible to know any of that.

So then, what is belief? Belief is, as the English philosopher Colin McGinn put it in Jonathan Miller's A Brief History of Disbelief:

"...what you'll act on, what you'll take for granted, what you'll assent to, what you might gamble on. That means you're committed to that being the case. 'Belief' is really just an umbrella term that covers all the varieties of assent, of takings to be true."

As such, a person can validly use the term 'belief' to state that s/he believes in eco-awareness, democracy, liberal politics, the existence of God or gods, or what have you. To state a belief then, it would seem, is the formal expression of implicit or informal trust in this-or-that phenomena or noumena on a case-to-case basis.

But to carry the definition of belief forward a little more, both Miller and McGinn acknowledge belief as a disposition. This is an important qualification since it realises the difference between what one knows and what one takes for granted; that is, believes. A Christian simply takes for granted the resurrection of Christ because it is a belief stacked on top of another belief that what the Bible states about Christ is revelation from God himself. However, belief in the resurrection comes with no actual knowledge of its truth or falsity. It is a willing leap based on a pre-disposition (i.e., already assumed belief) that what the Bible says is actually true. Belief is therefore dispositional, continuous and assumed, non-episodic, or second nature.

This is in contrast to knowledge. As Miller puts it:

"Although 'belief' resembles 'knowledge', there's a very important difference between the two. In the case of 'belief', you can say that someone believes X and that he was wrong. But it sounds rather odd to say that someone knows X and is wrong. It's part of the definition of knowing something that it is the case. Whereas believing something is a state of mind about which you could be proved to be wrong."

To 'know' something then, is to suggest that something is incontrovertably what it is, and not something else. To 'know' a thing is to perceive its correspondence to testable, communicable reality. But to 'believe' something is to take on trust what might, at some point, be shown to be false.

This puts Christians in a precarious situation not just amongst unbelievers, but amongst themselves, too. For how can conversation happen when belief is taken to be knowledge? In other words, how can anything intelligible be conveyed about any one of the tenets of Christianity if a Christian is convinced that what s/he believes is what s/he knows? The dissonance this creates in the mind of the observant listener shuts down any chances of mutually beneficial dialogue since this blurring of distinctions results in wrong-headed dogmatism, fanatacism, and extremism.

Even if a religious believer is benignly fanatical -- e.g., Catholic assertions about Mary's perpetual virginity, Baptist promulgations on the dance-leads-to-sex scenario, Pentecostal insistance on the gift of tongues -- the fact of the matter is that believing is not synonymous with knowing. As long as the insistance that "because I believe" is directly proportionate to "therefore I know" continues, most, if not all table-talk about religion will be mostly notional and not actual; connotative and absent of the denotative ingredients necessary to intelligently describing a belief, or sharing some actual knowledge. In essence, confusing 'belief' and 'knowledge' makes conversation almost meaningless.

That would be shameful for a group of people charged to "give a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15, ESV).

Free the Feet! A Shoe Experience of a 1st Season Barefooter.

Yesterday I made the (reluctant) decision to wear fully enclosed shoes. It was raining and usually when we go into town, I bring a pair of very loose, two flat-strapped sandals that would fall off if my feet weren't trained to hold them on with each step. I only wear them in stores. I walk and drive without shoes otherwise. I didn't bring my sandals because they have no tread and I can slide 20 feet on a good-balance day before landing on my posterior in public, when my sandals are wet.

Anyway, I haven't enclosed my feet since winter, and doing so produced some unexpected findings.

I expected that my feet would feel constricted relative to the way they are usually, and they did. I expected that they would feel too warm and they did. What surprised me though, was that I now use my feet so differently that the low, wide shoes I previously found comfortable caused me to have to completely change my gait to accommodate them! I found that I had to stiffen up my whole lower leg and foot in order to make my step conform to the shape and form of the shoe!!! And these shoes are considered, and really are by comparison, 'flexible!'

So, since that is ludicrous to me (and I am so glad that my body has adapted to moving in the way I didn't know it would or could, that actually suits its form rather than that of a shoe), I have endeavoured to make my own foot-coverings that will allow for natural motion so that when winter comes, I can still walk and not feel like I'm wearing casts on my legs and feet.

I'll post pictures of my creations when they are complete. :) So, this was news to me. Apparently, I now walk like a good-old-fashioned cave woman. :D

*ETA: I wanted to include- and have been consistently forgetting- that I was pleasantly surprised to find that my new leather-like-bottomed feet are not less sensitive, but in fact more than ever! BUT, I don't experience this heightened sensitivity as pain, and often have a need to walk on pebbly ground to relax my whole body and relieve my feet of too many hours on a smooth surface or sandals or minivan carpet. It is genuinely a delight so small and yet so delicious that in my desire to embrace the present, I am reluctant to express my sadness for having been without this experience for nearly 32 years. My feet are free; free at last!

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Some clichés are true. I like those ones. Other clichés, thankfully, are not true. For example, the oft-quoted aphorism, "Respect is not given, it's earned." Not true.

But it sounds empowering, doesn't it? I mean, who wouldn't want to assume the position of control it implies on the part of the person who employs it? You can play banker with another's sincerity: John Doe deposits some effort, you let it gain some interest in your mind, and after his efforts clear the mandatory security time, you can allow John Doe a withdrawal -- a pittance of respect from the power that presides over the relationship.

It's an artful scenario, really. If you enjoy the insular security of narcissism, that is.

In reality, however -- that place where people (hopefully) think through trite platitudes -- respect is given, not earned. But how can we give respect if we're not receiving it? Legitimate question. Simplest answer? We're not playing follow-the-leader when it comes to respect. If you're willing to treat others with respect -- that is, give them respect -- that same respect will re-visit you. It's essentially a mechanical truism of the universe, and many historical, spiritual leaders have phrased it well: do as you'd be done by. Or, "do to others as you would have them do to you". Stated in negative form, "do not do to others what you would not like others to do to you."

Ethicists call this foundational rule for human interaction, "the ethic of reciprocity". Though Jesus is most often credited as the source of the statement, it is not unique to Christianity. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

But I digress.

One amelioration of the notion that respect has to be earned was offered me recently. Basically, the idea was put across that because respect is a thing to be earned, we should therefore strive to treat each other with respect.

This is far from true, and I cannot countenance such an idea, personally. Not least of why is because striving to treat each other with respect is a direct contradiction to making people earn respect. If respect cannot be given then we cannot treat each other with respect because we cannot treat each other to something we're not willing to give. And if the automatic moral assumption is that all people should be treated with respect, then that implies that all people are inherently worthy of respect. This would indicate then, that forcing others to earn from you (remember the banker?) what is naturally theirs to receive is a fundamental lack of respect for others.

Further to that, striving to do a thing is not at all the same as doing it. Striving is not attaining. In this sense, no-one should have to strive, or 'try' to give respect if they truly want to. Since respect is a recognition of the inherent dignity of yourself and others, it follows that placing your dignity in a vulnerable position with another is real respect. And that is something that can only be done; it cannot be strived for any more than a person can strive to be who they are. You either are who you are, or you're lying, or living under a lie somehow. You either meet the dignity of another person with your own personal dignity, or you don't. Striving to do so is kicking about on the fringes of actual respect, and is therefore disrespectful.

There is no sentiment that can acquit a person of the fact that respect absolutely must be given. No circumstance can alter this reality. Hanging your hat on the notion that respect has to be earned sets you in a position that no-one has the right to occupy: a dictate over others inherent dignity. What kind of respect is it to assume a place of control over another's personal dignity? It isn't. In reality, it's the ultimate form of disrespect.

Objective Perspective

There were sixty of us at the conference. The anticipation wasn't. No-one was visibly excited. Everyone seemed to have dragged themselves through the scree, and into the stiflingly dull meeting hall.

The muffins were nice. The coffee? Not so much. Too bitter.

I swear the thrumming murmurs of the crowd was blending into one oceanic ohm. I felt if I had to hear it much more than the 5 minutes I'd already been there, I'd fall asleep standing.

But then the classic microphone tap-cum-feedback shocked me out of my growing catatonia. I was grudgingly aware.

A speaker was introduced. I don't know who it was. I was too busy trying to recapture the ennui from a moment ago. It seemed a better course than the one I was barreling into, out of control and with an ever-increasing sense of nausea.

Why nausea? Because that's what happens when your dread anticipations of an event are confirmed in reality by the cackling laughter of a pep-talk speaker who can't seem to get her kindergaarten idioms out of her adult speech.

"Good attendence, people!" She beamed almost as loud as her metallic red and white striped blouse. "You really have shocked me today with how wonderfully happy, and aware you seem."

I think she was still sleeping, actually. She seemed to be in a private dreamworld. The crowd, with eyes at half-mast, seemed to provide an object lesson largely in opposition to the speaker's felicitous naivety.

Her topic? "The Objective Workplace". Wow. An electric excitement rippled through the crowd. Eyes went wide, and lips curved into interested smiles almost in unison.

I'm lying. Everybody stayed pretty much the way they were: disengaged, disinterested, and hoping for an out-of-body experience.


But then it happened. She made a comment that set my brain to thinking (which can sometimes be a good thing, believe it or not). She said, "We always have to keep an objective frame of mind."

I wondered, at first, what subjective layerings she had to go through to parrot that popular sentiment. But then I stopped wondering because it was having a negative impact on my ability to stay bored and disinterested. If I lost that much, I'd have an unwanted lack of cynicism to aide me in my festering disdain for these kinds of empty educational venues. And that just wouldn't do.

But it did.

And my mind started churning. My hand followed suit with a black-ink rapier. And against my better judgmentalism, I penned these words:

Objectivity is an ideal -- a common one. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible.

All people are subjective, biased, and prejudiced one way or another. We cannot, by dint of existential experience, lay aside personal investment to achieve pure, ultra-cognitive, or suprarational objectivity.

'Objectivity' is necessarily outside human capacity.

Once I had written that down, I was able to recapture my angst and continue feeling unreservedly disinterested in the presentation. Thank you, Philosophy, for rescuing me.

*Please make note that the preceding was an unbiased, even objective look at a subjectively motivated perspective, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the writer involved. Naturally. ;)

I Give Up

I can't read Richard Dawkins's book, The God Delusion. It's just too damned fatuous, and presumptuous. David Berlinski was right: Dawkins is a "crappy philosopher".

This being my third attempt, I thought it would be the charmer (ah, the stupidstition!). Instead, I find myself literally hitting my head against my desk, and tempted for the first time in my life to rip a book apart and put it in the garbagio (my personal term for a fashionable visit to the dump).

I will now move on to Michel Onfray's Atheist Manifesto which has been re-titled for paperback as In Defense of Atheism.

Bad Christian

Overall, I'd say I'm a bad Christian.

Here's the laundry list:

1. I consistently forget to pray.
2. I seldom read Scripture. Though I really enjoy it when I do.
3. I swear.
4. I am a moody, moody man.
5. I can't pay attention to things that don't interest me.
6. I will take long hiatuses from church and not be bothered by it (last one was 2 years).
7. I commune my kids.
8. Much to the anabaptist's chagrin, I baptise my kids.
9. I can't stand evangelical Jesus-is-my-boyfriend lingo, sentiments, or worship.
10. I refuse to buy in to the latest programmatic/formulaic Christian rubrics for successful conversion of unbelievers.
11. I'm not a pacifist.
12. I read anti-Christian literature, and I don't think Harry Potter will damn me.
13. I watch movies that sometimes have violence or nudity in them.
14. I can't stand most “Christian” music (though I do love Handel and Bach).
15. Politically, I'm libertarian.
16. Philosophically, I'm a Christian anarchist (à la Jacques Ellul).
17. I'm an epistemological agnostic – which is to say that I believe all knowing has a limit as to its origin and scope. After that, I hold fast to “the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen” (Heb. 11:1) in combination with seeing through a glass, darkly (1 Cor. 13:12). So, I hang fast to St. Augustine's dictum, “Crede, ut intelligas” (believe in order that you may understand).
18. I refuse to spank my kids despite all traditional misinterpretations of Proverbs 13:24. Here's why.
19. I don't believe that having a talent, or gift automatically, or ipso facto indentures me to using those talents or gifts in front of the assembly every Sunday morning.
20. I think Sunday School, by-and-large, is a fantastic excuse for absolving yourself of the responsibility of guiding your children into a common, family experience with the holy (there are, admittedly, some rare exceptions).
21. I don't smile because Jesus loves me. I love Jesus and sometimes I smile.
22. I spend a lot of money on organic food. Apparently that makes me unconventional, and financially irresponsible. But if you don't have your health...
23. Sometimes when I pray, I get really sarcastic with God, even angry.
24. I don't think two people necessarily have to have the blessings of the church, and the licence of the government to be married. Though it is a well-reasoned assurance, I think it is mostly an insurance policy. Real marriage, I think, takes place between two people who honestly love each other wholeheartedly, and strive to follow through on life-long commitments to each other. Sex consumates that wholehearted commitment, and thusly signifies two as one.
25. I am a semi-convinced theistic evolutionist.
26. I think homeschooling is the only logical choice for people who really want to develop the depths and riches of what a family really is.
27. I avoid Swiss Chalet on Sunday afternoons because that's where all the Pentecostals are. I eat at Pizza Hut instead because that's where real community happens.
28. I'm not totally into tea 'cause I'm not a teetotaler.
29. Fruit juice during the eucharist doesn't assure me that I'm not going to be an alcoholic, or that I am an alcoholic, or that other people have the same assurance.
30. I like dancing. Sometimes it leads to sex, and I'm okay with that. 'Cause I'm married to the woman I like to dance with.

There must be more to that list, but I really can't think of anything else at the moment. That should be enough to have people mercilessly impugn me, however.

Prayer: Letters Chiefly From Ed

Ed, at Pilgrim.Not.Wanderer has written an excellent piece on the compulsive nature of prayer.  You can find the article here at his site.

Ed's piece reminds me of the words of C.S. Lewis, who, when he was questioned about his prayers to God after his wife, Joy Gresham died, answered "I don't pray because prayer changes God. I pray because it flows out of me; because I need to pray. It doesn't change God; it changes me" (paraphrase from the movie, Shadowlands).

What Ed has described is a compulsivity to prayer. That is, prayer leaps out of us unbounded, joyful, and sometimes mournful, but always free and unfettered, just like the child who can hardly wait to tell his mother or father some exciting tidbit of information -- he can't wait, he just has to interrupt everything else around him to make his voice heard. That is prayer. That is freedom in Christ. That is the enthusiastic impulse of the Holy Spirit in us driving us toward our loving, doting heavenly Father.

Now, though Ed's article was excellently written and very insightful, I did pose one question to him. I needed some clarification on his last sentence, "Cold and calculative prayers are hardly worthy of the name."

So I posted the following comment on his site.

"But is it worth the discipline? For example, prescribed prayers often help when ex corde moments leave a person without words (e.g., being overwhelmed by an emotional experience and not able to formalize understanding enough to speak
on the experience). In those instances, the calculative nature of a prescribed prayer is valuable -- and definitely worth it -- because prescriptions help verbalise instinctual movements of the heart.

What are your thoughts?

Also, I'm going to link my readership to your article on prayer because I think it is a wonderful piece that touches very tenderly on the intimacy, and compulsive nature of prayer.

Thank you for your insights, Ed." 

Indeed, Ed. Thank you very much for your warm-hearted understanding on such an important topic.

Artwork via Canadian artist Oliver Ray.

What Is A Debate?

Verbal discharge, disambiguation, and incindiation.

Thanks Mr. Cockburn

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it." ~Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen, you are so incredibly right. But of course, "the trouble with normal is that it always gets worse." Thanks Mr. Cockburn for such a superb insight.