Rebuttal Against Religious Intolerance

I received the following forwarded email one day last week.

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Barack Obama, during his Cairo speech, said: "I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of  America 's story."

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S RESPONSE:

Dear Mr. Obama:

Were those Muslims that were in America when the Pilgrims first landed? Funny, I thought they were Native American Indians.

Were those Muslims that celebrated the first Thanksgiving day? Sorry again, those were Pilgrims and Native American Indians.

Can you show me one Muslim signature on the United States Constitution?

Declaration of Independence?

Bill of Rights?

Didn't think so.

Did Muslims fight for this country's freedom from England? No.

Did Muslims fight during the Civil War to free the slaves in America? No, they did not. In fact, Muslims to this day are still the largest traffickers in human slavery. Your own half brother, a devout Muslim, still advocates slavery himself, even though Muslims of Arabic descent refer to black Muslims as "pug nosed slaves." Says a lot of what the Muslim world really thinks of your family's "rich Islamic heritage," doesn't it Mr. Obama?

Where were Muslims during the Civil Rights era of this country? Not present.

There are no pictures or media accounts of Muslims walking side by side with Martin Luther King, Jr. or helping to advance the cause of Civil Rights.

Where were Muslims during this country's Woman's Suffrage era? Again, not present. In fact, devout Muslims demand that women are subservient to men in the Islamic culture. So much so, that often they are beaten for not wearing the 'hajib' or for talking to a man who is not a direct family member or their husband. Yep, the Muslims are all for women's rights, aren't they?

Where were Muslims during World War II? They were aligned with Adolf Hitler. The Muslim grand mufti himself met with Adolf Hitler, reviewed the troops and accepted support from the Nazi's in killing Jews.

Finally, Mr. Obama, where were Muslims on Sept. 11th, 2001? If they weren't flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people on our own soil, they were rejoicing in the Middle East. No one can dispute the pictures shown from all parts of the Muslim world celebrating on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other cable news networks that day.  Strangely, the very "moderate" Muslims who's asses you bent over backwards to kiss in Cairo, Egypt on June 4th were stone cold silent post 9-11. To many Americans, their silence has meant approval for the acts of that day.

And THAT, Mr. Obama, is the "rich heritage" Muslims have here in America.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention the Barbary Pirates. They were Muslim.

And now we can add November 5, 2009 - the slaughter of American soldiers at Fort Hood by a Muslim major who is a doctor and a psychiatrist who was supposed to be counseling soldiers returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That, Mr. Obama is the "Muslim heritage" in America.

EVERY AMERICAN MUST READ THIS!!

Be Sure to SEND IT to All. Even Print it out and Send by Snail Mail!!

Now just maybe we are beginning to understand our “new foreign policy.”

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The following is my response. Please keep in mind that I am not usually a politically minded person, and I am a far cry from being any sort of activist. I did a bit of research and cited sources where possible, but this is not something I do with any regularity and I was mostly just following my gut. As such, if you are the type of person who eats this stuff up frequently, you may find a few faults in the way I've gone about it, but I think it gets the job done. Here we go.

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I don't normally get involved in conversations about politics and religion, because such conversations invariably turn friends, family, and colleagues against each other, if only temporarily. I'm known to sit quietly and wait the conversation out or to find some way to leave the room and return when it's done. But this email moves me to the point that I feel morally obligated to respond. It makes me feel ashamed to be part of an American culture that is so intolerant and disrespectful of other cultures; I want to delete it and pretend I didn't read it. I cannot for the life of me understand how the dominant religion of this land, which so fervently claims to advocate an altruistic viewpoint and proposes such agreeable themes as love and harmony, could be the source of such generalized hatred and dismissal of the more than 1.5 billion followers of Islam worldwide.

This email is an attack on words uttered by President Obama in a speech given nearly a year ago. I did a quick search online for the words "obama cairo islam story" and the very first result was the entire transcript of the speech from which this excerpt came [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/remarks-by-the-president-at-cairo-university-6-04-09]. If you will read his speech, you will find that the overlying theme is one of mutual peace. In it, he extends the figurative olive branch to a people with whom there have been tremendous tensions and violence on a global scale. It takes a man whose desire is to see an end to hatred and intolerance to offer those words. We live in what is arguably the most powerful nation on earth, past or present; but evil begets evil, hatred begets hatred, and violence begets violence. There is only one way to bring about an end to this vicious cycle, and that is to lay down weapons and offer an open hand.

The context of the aforementioned quotation is completely removed when it is presented alone and subsequently followed by angry, intolerant misinformation. I would like to share the following excerpt, which follows immediately after the one that originally spurned this hateful email. It is literally the next sentence in his speech:

The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims."

I wonder if Adams would now feel ashamed of his words, which seem to mock him in light of events that transpire in today's society. There is much worse than enmity in store for Muslims; there is open hatred and hostility.

The following excerpt is from just a bit later in President Obama's speech, directly after he declares part of his responsibility as President of the United States to "fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear":

The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words -- within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum -- "Out of many, one."

He reminds his audience, as we are reminded in reading, that our very country was born out of a revolution. Many settlers who first came to America did so out of a desire to practice their religion freely. Puritans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, among others, were free to pursue their faiths. It was this freedom in faith that was incorporated into the Constitution from the beginning: the protection under the First Amendment of every citizen’s right to freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.

This freedom was granted and protected at the very birth of this nation, and make no mistake, Muslims were present then as well.

I will now address a few specific points from the forwarded email.

Did Muslims fight for this country's freedom from England? No.

Did Muslims fight during the Civil War to free the slaves in America? No, they did not.

It has been estimated that 15-30% of all enslaved African men in North America were, in fact, Muslims. [Encyclopedia of religion in the South, Samuel S. Hill, et al, 2005, p. 394] Some 5,000 African-American men fought as soldiers during the Revolutionary War, some of whom were Muslim, some of whom may not even have been slaves. In particular, records exist that document the efforts of Yusuf Ben Ali, also known as Joseph Benhaley, who served in South Carolina, as well as Bampett Muhamed, a Corporal in Virginia; Francis Saba, a Sergeant; and Joseph Saba, a fifer. Records also indicate the enrollment of an African man named Max Hassan, a Muslim, who served as a porter in service during the Civil War. Muslims indeed fought for freedom during America’s earliest years, freedoms that are now used to spread spiteful intolerance of them by the culturally uneducated.

Can you show me one Muslim signature on the United States Constitution?

Declaration of Independence?

Bill of Rights?

Didn't think so.

A Muslim may not have signed any of these important documents, but there was one man in particular who was learned in the Islam faith and supported tolerance of their ideals: Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence himself. Jefferson, along with James Madison, originally wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which would later form the groundwork for the First Amendment. In it, he wrote that it was the ultimate goal of the law to “comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” Furthermore, Jefferson advocated that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever” and that no one should suffer in any way based upon religious opinions or belief. [What Jefferson Really Thought About Islam, Christopher Hitchens, 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2157314] [Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson, 1786, http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/lynch/religious-freedom.html]

Would Thomas Jefferson, who staunchly advocated religious tolerance, be ashamed of the way Muslims and other religious minorities are treated by his descendants? Would John Locke, a tremendous influence upon Jefferson, feel ashamed as well? [The Three Greatest Men, Thomas Jefferson, 1789, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm033.html] Locke wrote in 1689 that “neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.” [A Letter Concerning Toleration, John Locke, 1689, http://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm]

Finally, it is worth mentioning that ordinary citizens of Virginia agreed with these viewpoints, when they provided the following petition to the state assembly in 1785:

Let Jews, Mehometans and Christians of every denomination enjoy religious liberty . . . thrust them not out now by establishing the Christian religion lest thereby we become our own enemys and weaken this infant state. It is mens labour in our Manufactories, their services by sea and land that aggrandize our Country and not their creeds. Chain your citizens to the state by their Interest. Let Jews, Mehometans, and Christians of every denomination find their advantage in living under your laws. [The Founding Fathers and Islam, James H. Huston, 2002, http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html]

Returning now to the original forwarded email:

Finally, Mr. Obama, where were Muslims on Sept. 11th, 2001? If they weren't flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people on our own soil, they were rejoicing in the Middle East.

The actions of a few individuals do not necessarily reflect on the masses. As such, it is short-sighted and irresponsible to hold the masses accountable for the actions of a few. There are untold crimes committed by Christians, Jews, and people of every other religious denomination each day. Some of the most heinous crimes in history, not just those associated with the Islamic faith, have come about as a result of religious fundamentalism.

Who do you suppose was responsible for the Crusades? Consider that the Crusades were military campaigns waged by much of Christian Europe over a period of around 200 years, during which approximately 2 million Europeans died in the Middle East alone. Make no mistake, this was religious warfare, perpetrated by a Christian people against non-Christians. But to hold all of Christianity and all followers of the faith accountable to the modern era for those actions is not wise. Indeed, if you are a Christian, do you feel the burden of guilt for those crimes?

The real problem is not Islamic faith. The problem is also not Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion. The problem is the stubborn unwillingness of a believer of any faith to openly accept one who does not practice the same faith, the refusal to embrace the diversity of human culture, and the insistence that those who are different are dangerous. This mindset is the source of and cause for many of the most reprehensible acts ever committed against humanity throughout the history of civilization.

I don’t practice religious intolerance and I don’t wish to view any subsequent materials advocating a hateful, ignorant, intolerant view of any religion, ethnicity, or culture. I challenge you to to forward this email to those who forwarded you the original email, and for those people to forward as well, as so on.

Thank you.
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Special thanks to Joe Bildhauser, who spent close to eight hours researching and discussing the topic with me as I wrote. His assistance also proved invaluable during the editing process. It's entirely likely that this would not have been completed without his help.

Why iTunes Sucks

I don't keep my dislike of Apple's flagship media software a secret, and now I'm going on the offensive. To those of you who say "why not just NOT use iTunes?", I can't because I have an iPod Touch. And, truthfully, I love the iPod Touch. It's a brilliant device, and I don't want it to just be an expensive, shiny paperweight. I just hate that I have to interface with it using iTunes.

1. "That's no moon; it's a space station."

The download for the most recent version is about 100MB. For comparison, the downloads for the most recent versions of Windows Media Player and Winamp are 25MB and 10MB, respectively. I know we pretty much all have high-speed internet these days, but that is still four to ten times longer download time. If we're talking about two minutes versus ten minutes, that's a pretty significant difference.

2. "He is as clumsy as he is stupid."

This goliath of a program runs like, well, for lack of a better description, a piece of shit. Anytime it's doing anything at all, whether it's syncing my iPod Touch or building up a new round of Genius Mixes, doing anything else becomes a tedious grind. And that's frustrating as hell. Every other media player I use zips along with resiliency, pretty much regardless of what else I'm doing. iTunes also takes two or three times as long to open as either Windows Media Player or Winamp. And when it does open, it usually decides that it wants to do something that consumes more computing resources, and I end up having to wait even longer.

3. "Never his mind on where he was, hm? What he was doing!"

Why is there no equivalent of a "now playing" playlist, something temporary that I can toss songs into at my leisure? Both Windows Media Player and Winamp have this feature; even iPods have On-The-Go Playlists. This is baffling to me. It's also the cause of a great deal of frustration when I'm listening to an album and it finishes and iTunes just automatically starts playing the next one. Yet another example of Apple thinking it knows best, when really it should be leaving control in the user's hands. If I cue up an album in Winamp, and there's nothing else after it in the playlist, it stops playing. Better yet, if I have a few albums or songs queued up in Winamp and I close the program, the next time I open it those same selections are still in the playlist tab, ready for me to continue exploring them where I left off. This 'feature' has been in Winamp pretty much since its inception a decade ago, I believe.

4. "This deal is getting worse all the time!"

Before I acquired my iPod Touch, I used Winamp to put songs on my old iPod. It worked great; I could drag and drop directly from the Windows folder location onto the iPod, and there was even an option to save songs from the iPod onto my computer. But with the iPhone and the iPod Touch (and, I'm guessing, the iPad) Apple has seen fit to change the programming to make this impossible (or, from what I've read online, somewhat possible but prohibitively difficult), so now I'm stuck using iTunes to sync my iPod Touch. The problem is that computers are supposed to be getting simpler, we're supposed to be removing extra steps to move faster and improve productivity. But sync is an added step. It's like pouring your cereal from the box (or bag) into some arbitrary bowl, pouring milk into that bowl, and then pouring the entire mixture into yet another bowl and then sitting down to eat. Now you have to clean two bowls. Why not just eat out of the first bowl you poured into? No wait, it's like if someone else poured every kind of cereal you have into the bowl for you, and then left it up to you to sort out the bits and pieces you wanted to listen to—er, I mean eat.

5. "It's a trap!"

Music purchased on iTunes is DRM-protected. What does that mean? Let's take a look at this excerpt from How FairPlay Works: Apple's iTunes DRM Dilemma.

Prior to buying content from the iTunes Store, a user has to create an account with Apple's servers and then authorize a PC or Mac running iTunes.

During authorization, iTunes creates a globally unique ID number for the computer it is running on, then sends it to Apple's servers, where it is assigned to the user's iTunes account. Five different machines can be authorized.

When a user buys a song from the iTunes Store, a user key is created for the purchased file. The AAC song itself is scrambled using a separate master key, which is then included into the protected AAC song file. The master key is locked using the user key, which is both held by iTunes and also sent to Apple’s servers.

Protected, purchased content is locked within iTunes; songs are not scrambled on Apple's server. This speeds and simplifies the transaction by delegating that work to iTunes on the local computer.

The result is an authorization system that does not require iTunes to verify each song with Apple as it plays. Instead, iTunes maintains a collection of user keys for all the purchased tracks in its library.

To play a protected AAC song, iTunes uses the matching user key to unlock the master key stored within the song file, when is then used to unscramble the song data.

Every time a new track is purchased, a new user key may be created; those keys are all encrypted and stored on the authorized iTunes computer, as well as being copied to Apple's servers.

When a new computer is authorized, it also generates a globally unique ID number for itself and sends it to Apple, which stores it as one of the five authorizations in the user account.

Apple's server sends the newly authorized machine the entire set of user keys for all the tracks purchased under the account, so all authorized systems will be able to play all purchased songs.

Did you stop reading that bit and just skip to this part? That's okay, I didn't even read all of it myself. Know why? Because it's bullshit.

I don't buy music online too often, but when I do, it's at Amazon. Why? Because most of their albums are between $5 and $9.50. Yes, even the most expensive is still generally $0.50 less than iTunes. And some are $3. Oh, and it's all DRM-free. Yes, you just download the MP3s and then do whatever you want with them. Downloading from Amazon looks like this:

Install the Amazon downloader utility, which helps ensure that the stuff you pay for actually ends up on your computer, because it would be sad if it didn't.

Download some music.

Listen to it. Or don't. Add it to your iTunes library, or your Windows Media Player library, or your Winamp library. Or don't add it to any library, just leave it on your computer. Back it up to another hard drive. Send it to your mom. Put it on your iPod, or your Zune, or your whatever.

Easy. These are the reasons that iTunes sucks. Really bad.

People Who

1. People who buy you a drink (or dinner, or whatever) and then remind you of the fact that you owe them shortly thereafter, probably just before you were about to return the favor.

Come on, at least give me the chance first. Getting reminded of it feels like you sent my secretary an invoice for tax purposes. It cheapens the entire gesture and makes you look like a selfish tool. If it has been like a month, then sure, by all means, remind me.

2. People in cars who intentionally splash walkers and bikers during rainy weather.

You know who you are. You're all going to hell. Seriously. It's about as funny as a punch in the face, which I'll give you the next time I see you.

3. People who say "I'm gonna let you go now" on the phone.

This is such a conveniently simple way to politely condescend; it conveys the perfect mixture of "my time has become too valuable for you" and "I'm trying to come off as humble but I'm actually quite conceited". Anytime I'm told this, I immediately say "I'm gonna let you go." Take that.

If you don't get the condescension that is inherent in this statement, you're probably one of the people who say it.

4. People who say "oh, you didn't want any, did you?"

This is the worst! It's practically synonymous with "this is really good, but I do not want you to have any, because I'm too greedy." It's bad enough to not even offer, but this is even more offensive. Maybe it's the Hobbit within me, but I believe in hospitality between friends. When you stop by to hang with me for a bit at my place, you can feel entitled to more or less anything in the pantry, what little there may be, and there may be very little, like right now; I hope you like oatmeal.

5. People who slow clap when an employee at a restaurant or bar drops and breaks a dish or glass.

As if the poor individual weren't already embarrassed enough! Who elected this person Almighty Destroyer of Souls? If you have a keen eye, you will notice that this douchebag never claps as such when the malady occurs within sight; it's only in the relative safety of anonymity from across the room that he (or she) feels completely free to express his (or her) inner bastard.

This is an April Fools' Day joke

This entire post is a joke; it is being written in observation of April Fools' Day. Do not believe anything contained within.

Today is April 1, the day of merry pranks and jokes. To that end, I am posting this in the hopes of catching some of you unawares. A portion of you will read this and know that it is all a prank; you will have likely also read pranks and jokes on other websites. But chances are high that a majority of you will read through this entire post and not realize the irony or humor contained within, and you may even tell a few friends about it before you realize the error of your ways. At that point, you may feel slightly embarrassed. Don't worry, it's all in the nature of the joke.

I can't take all the credit for catching you unawares. I had ample help preparing for this deception. Several of my closest friends were indispensable in the labyrinthine planning stages of this elaborate spoof. We spent hours going over the details, and now that you have been sufficiently taken for a ride, I can safely admit their involvement. If some of you feel cheated or deceived, please take your frustrations out on me and not them, as they were kept mostly in the dark about the eventual purpose of their machinations.

To those who may suppose that posting such a farcical tale of whimsy as this would perhaps discredit future writings of a more serious nature, you need not worry. I assure you that this preposterous and comedic anecdote is the only one of its kind.

Shock and awwww!

I've been trying. Really. I've been trying so hard to sit idly by and whistle nonchalantly while the English language is heinously misused. Please, if you make these mistakes, do yourself and everyone else a very small favor and just don't anymore. It's that easy. I'm going to post this, and some people will think I'm a pretentious ass for daring to insinuate that they aren't intelligent. So be it. With the ubiquitous proliferation of the internet, someone has to take the blame for trying to keep some semblance of sanity in written communication.

1. Awe versus aw

This one is simple. Awe is a noun that describes a feeling of reverence. Reverence! Like the fear of God! You use this word when you talk about that feeling you get when you look up at the towering majesty of a skyscraper or when you think of the beauty of a Beethoven symphony. This word should almost never come up in casual conversation between friends or on Facebook status comments. Use sparingly.

Aw (also spelled aww, or awww, or awwww, etc.) is an interjection¹ that expresses sympathy or disbelief. It's what you say when your friend tells you his cat died. You can smile and/or laugh when you say aw, often when the situation is comical and has only a mildly negative outcome, like when someone tries to buy you a can of pop and the vending machine eats his dollar. In fact, the more severe the outcome, the less appropriate aw becomes.

Try this on for size: "My grandparents were killed yesterday in a horrible plane crash." "Awwww." ← Not appropriate. The outcome is way too severe. You need to choose other words and convey some genuine sympathy.

Also not appropriate: "My laptop got a virus and I lost all the progress I made on my research paper last night." "Awe." ← Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Another common usage of aw is as a sign of affection for something endearing or sentimental, like a new baby kitten. It's often followed by "that's so sweet" or "how adorable".

"I knitted you this scarf."
"Aw, how sweet of you!"

Hint: 9 times out of 10, guys, you really want aw, not awe.

2. 've versus of

This one is a little more tricky. We're all familiar with contractions, like do not becomes don't, are not becomes aren't, and so on. When you add have to another verb like should or could or would, and then add another verb like seemed or tasted or been afterward, you get familiar phrases like "should have seemed happy" or "could have tasted better" or "would have been wonderful". These should all make sense because we've been saying these things all our lives. When these are shortened to contractions, they become would've and should've and could've.

"You should've been there!"
"I could've stopped by, I suppose."
"It would've been great!"

That's right. It's not should of and could of and would of. Why is it not shuld of and could of and would of? Because, not only does it not make much sense, it doesn't actually mean anything! Of is a preposition that indicates derivation or inclusion. It is always followed immediately by a noun (or perhaps an adjective that describes the forthcoming noun).

I'm quite certain that the confusion arises from the existence of the colloquial phrases kind of and sort of. These are adverbial phrases that don't do much except set up a condition, be it a verb or an adjective, that is of uncertain accuracy. It's the easily discernible difference between hungry and kind of hungry.

"I'm kind of excited about the party."
"It would've been nice to get an invitation."
"You're sort of bitter about that, huh?"
"She should've known better."

It doesn't help that Cormac McCarthy writes entire novels that gleefully break this one. You should know that he's deliberately using it to illustrate dialectal speech patterns of less educated persons, not correct usage. Perhaps he should of known better.

3. Definitely versus ???

Now this one is ridiculously easy. It's definitely. Not definately, or definataly, or difinatly, or jesus I don't even know how many variations there are. I've seen this word misspelled more often than any other word, ever. I'm not exaggerating, either. The occasional misspelled word or typo is completely fine, I do it frequently enough myself. We all do; it's inevitable. But this one is a like a plague or flu that has spread beyond control into the dark, vast reaches of the internet.

Listen, if you've been spelling this wrong, just look it up, acknowledge to yourself that you spelled it wrong all those years on Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, accept it, and then spell it right. Suddenly you look much more intelligent and people care what you have to say! Except for people who swear it's definately, who will just be confused. Let them.

¹ Interjection is a fancy word for "nothing at all really". It's an isolated word that generally conveys emotion and has no grammatical function.

The difficulty of acquiring my morning grits

Dear Producers and Distributors of Edible Goods,

Please stop making your products so damn hard to open. You know the bag that resides snugly within the cardboard carapace of the cereal box? You don't need to seal that off with cement. Any standard grade adhesive will do. If I am forced to resort to the use of serated cutting utensils, then you've outdone yourselves.

The precise reason that religion is bullocks

Recently, the Catholic church has been debating the possibility of doing away with the concept of limbo. For the uninitiated, this is the realm in which unbaptized but innocent souls (like babies or those who lived before Jesus did his thing) go when they die; not quite heaven and not quite hell. Its etymology is of Latin descent, from limbus, and it originally meant the border of hell. This was a great concept to sedate the minds of the earthly survivors, who feared that their lost loved ones were suffering in an eternal sea of fire.

Now it seems that this age-old theory is about to be debunked -- by the same group of people who devised it centuries ago. The good ol' boys of the Catholic church have been gathering up in their tree house to determine what to do about the situation. Their former ring leader Pope John Paul even expressed his own desire to remove the concept of limbo from the church before he died. What's going to replace it? Maybe babies who die during childbirth do go to hell.

The fact that these guys can just decide to do away with a concept like, oh, where someone's soul goes when he or she dies, is just the kind of thing that helps shatter the very foundation of their credibility. If there is a god, he's probably looking on and laughing at all of his silly little Catholics, rewriting this and modifying that until life is easy to live again. It's a simple fact that times change and so do standards; thankfully, the Bible changes too. I'm sure if you wait around long enough, it will eventually change enough to fit your standards too. That seems to have been the motto of any significant church movement in recorded history: Don't like what they teach? Rewrite it.

Remember that election a year ago, when a country's faith in a presidential candidate was shaken because of an indecisive streak? The church is no different, except it's been changing its mind for almost two thousand years. How can something be true if all it takes is a meeting with couple of stodgy old guys to change it every now and then on a whim?

If next year they claimed that hell doesn't exist, would Catholics the world over believe and accept it?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051130/od_nm/pope_limbo_dc

Financial concerns

Greetings Cradle-goers,

It's been over half a year since we last talked but something's come to my attention that I'd like to bring up. Below you see what appears to be an innocent person carrying an inconspicuous book on a nondescript street.



Click for full size
If you look closer, however, you'll find out that there's much more to the scene than you thought. This poor individual has been the victim of an unfortunate agenda to rid the contents of his wallet and bank account. At a cursory glance, you might be tempted to believe that he is of lower-middle class status, perhaps a college student getting by on minimum wage and federal grants. Let your eyes wander to the bottom and you will observe what appear to be descriptions and prices of various clothing garments, all of which adorn our street-crossing urchin. It is at this point that you will make the horrifying discovery that he is actually filthy rich and has spent in excess of $300 on pants. Jeans. Denim.

His entire outfit costs $484, not including the "vintage hat and scarf," which are listed as not available. What? Is that the only item that Urban Outfitters hasn't bought from Goodwill and then marked up the price 100 times higher? I've got a pair of corduroys with frayed edges, ripped hems, and a hole in the pocket, and you can buy them from me for $300. No wait, $150. Actually, I think I won't sell them; I've had them for over 4 years and I enjoy wearing them. So if you want to look as cool as me, you're going to have to do what this poor bastard did: spend nearly two weeks' pay on a pair of dingy pants.

Tune in next time to see if he makes it across the street. I'm hoping he doesn't.

On the ridiculousness of modern Christianity

Terri Shiavo. This has already been talked to death, so I'll keep it short. A person who is on the brink of death for fifteen years is artificially kept alive. That sounds natural. Let's assume God exists for the sake of argument (but let's forego the capitalization of pronouns for simplicity). I'm sure he didn't intend for his little creations to be unnaturally held in an incompetent stasis for over a decade. Death is as much a part of life as birth is. If this woman was supposed to die fifteen years ago, it's not up to us to hold her forever in this world as nothing more than a breathing corpse. And what do the religious extremists care? It's only slightly ironic that the ones who actually believe in eternal afterlife and undying love from the creator are the ones who are raising such a fuss over supposedly releasing this woman into that bliss.