Banned Book Club – Catch-22

What’s the catch? For Captain John Yossarian and the rest of the characters in Joseph Heller’s classic novel it was Catch-22, a semi-unofficial rule best explained by the author. From chapter five:

Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

This was a hard book to follow. The events portrayed in it aren’t introduced in a chronological order, nor in a flashback format, really. Heller devotes some chapters to Yossarian’s experience of events from his life in general and on the job. The rest are used to relay those events as witnessed, explained or misunderstood by other officers and friends. It all gels in the end, apparently, if you can get that far. Only one in our group did and it wasn’t me. I only skimmed the end chapters without getting too involved with them. I lost interest in the book around chapter 35 but I did consider quitting sooner. It was most enjoyed by the one guy who’s actually experienced life in the American military. I’ll have to refer to the Yossarian write-up on Wikipedia to make sense of it.

Yossarian wants to get the hell out WWII and Pianosa, the remote little island off Italy where he’s stationed. Unfortunately, every time he gets close to completing the required number of bombing runs, his superior officer, Colonel Cathcart, ups the mission number needed to earn the flight home. (It starts at 25 but by the end of the book it’s up to 80.) He’s a liar, a malingerer, a saboteur and a very desperate individual. It’s debatable whether he’s actually crazy, or the only sane man in a crazy situation. Most of what he does is a reaction to the situation he’s been put in and has no other control over.

When a friend and one of his crew, Snowden, gets struck by flak that pierced their plane during a run, Yossarian does what he can to save the man but the injuries are far too severe.

Snowden’s death embodies Yossarian’s desire to evade death; by seeing Snowden’s entrails spilling over the plane, he feels that “Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage.”

The experience on the plane dramatically changes Yossarian’s attitude towards life. He now looks only to protect his own life and, to a lesser extent, the lives of his close friends.

And whatever faith he might have had in the military before that point vanishes in a heartbeat. He can’t save anyone anyway. Most of the people he’d consider friends die in the book, or disappear without a trace.

Some of our meeting focused on other characters that featured in the book. One we talked about was Milo Minderbender who runs the mess hall in a strange yet very efficient way. As the book progresses, we learn that he’s a crafty entrepreneur who nearly always manages to make a profit. (At one point he’s paid by the Germans to bomb his own squadron and gets away with it.) This led to discussion about capitalism in general and satirical points Heller was trying to make about war being a business like anything else.

This is probably a book that does need to be read a few times in order to get a sense of where Heller wanted to go with it. I don’t think I’d try it again though. There were some parts I did laugh out loud over: the absurdities of bureaucracy and the bit where Yossarian bitches about God’s incompetence. Other parts were surprising and truly cringe-worthy, like McWatt’s daredevil behaviour and what ultimately resulted from it. Reading about the finale, I see I missed a lot of critical events. Ah well. If I couldn’t generate enough interest in the story to stick with it to the end… Some books are just like that, and it doesn’t matter if they’re considered classics.

A Question of Atheist Scruples – Round 2

I found a copy of A Question of Scruples a while back and decided it might be entertaining to go through the questions and answering them as honestly as possible. Like last time, I’ll answer three questions and add one more for readers to weigh in on.

You want to landscape your property but find that trees cost too much. Do you drive into the woods and take some?

Ha. No. I’d just raid my dad’s yard. Mom and Dad planted 2000 trees or so on their acreage in the early ’70s and saplings pop up all over the place, often where they don’t want them. They’d gotten theirs through Indian Head’s PFRA Shelterbelt Centre.

The benefits of shelterbelts are numerous. Shelterbelts reduce wind speed and thereby create a microclimate for yards, gardens, and crops. The wind is deflected up and over the shelterbelt, creating a well-protected zone in the lee of the belt. The zone of protection extends outward many times the height of the trees. Reducing wind speed can have a dramatic energy saving benefit. On average, a mature 5-row shelterbelt, with at least 2 rows of conifers, planted around a farmhouse will reduce its heat requirements by 25%. The trapped snow provides water for dugouts and soil reserves.

Not to mention trapping the pesky CO2 while they’re at it, and providing refuge for wildlife of all kinds, especially birds.

A friend wants to copy and swap some expensive software. You know it’s illegal. Do you swap?

My copy of Scruples come out in 1984 just as personal computers were coming into focus as affordable fun for the whole family. Apple’s famous ad for the Macintosh ran that year during the Superbowl. My school bought a couple Apple II’s for the whole student body to share and by 1987 there were two IIe’s in every classroom. The junior high I attended after had a whole room filled with computers for kids who wanted to take the programming class. I was satisfied with what little I knew of BASIC and LOGO, which wasn’t much. I never owned a computer until I reached university and discovered they were actually useful for other things. To finally answer the question, yes, I’d probably agree to a swap if we each had something the other wanted. Illegal or not, cops have more important things to do than crack down on software trading when it’s on a one-on-one basis. Cops could get after the library for loaning out DVDs and CDs, too. It’s pretty damned obvious that if someone borrows fifty CDs Friday night and drops them off again Saturday morning that they probably ripped every one of them to their computer. We don’t flag their cards and report them. No proof they did that. Suspicions, but no proof. I think far too many people have already shrugged off the illegalities of it and it barely tarnishes their notion of being a law-abiding citizen. And to get biblical on your ass, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Do you see any stones flying?

Someone you don’t particularly like invites you to an expensive restaurant that you’d love to try. Do you go just for the meal?

Is he or she treating? I can think of a few people I’d force myself to sit across from if it meant I got free food out of it. If it’d be up to me to pay my way, I’d pass on the offer. I’d rather plan a night there with people I enjoy being around.

Last question, left for you to answer. Feel free to answer the other three as well.

The government has been overthrown by a party that is violent and undemocratic. You are asked to join the underground. Do you?

Old news: Lady Gaga is evil; South Koreans beg God to intervene

Lady Gaga had a concert set up for Seoul back in April but the Korean Association of Church Communities hoped God could do something about that. It’s vital he save the children of South Korea from “being infected with homosexuality and pornography,” and Cassie Murdoch, who writes for Jezebel, responded:

And here we had no idea that pornography and homosexuality were diseases that could be spread through song. You really do learn something new every day!

Well, probably her choice of clothing would have something to do with it, too, but no matter. I like her music well enough but I don’t pay much attention to the lyrics necessarily. I’m one of those people who uses music more for filler than message. I always have music on and might not even know the name of the song I’m listening to let alone who sung it on what album and when.

I’ll have to look up some of her lyrics now.

Love Game:

I wanna take a ride on your disco stick
Don’t think too much just bust that kick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick

Beautiful, Dirty, Rich:

Beautiful, dirty dirty rich rich dirty dirty beautiful dirty rich
Dirty dirty rich dirty dirty rich beautiful

Beautiful and dirty dirty rich rich We’ve got a redlight pornographic dance fight
Systematic, honey but we go no money

Not going to win many awards for poetry with this stuff but it’s good enough to dance to, I guess.

Black Jesus:

Amen, on the runway,
dressed in his best.
Amen Fashion, on the runway,
Work it! Black Jesus.
Amen, on the runway,
dressed in his best.
Amen Fashion, on the runway,
Work it! Black Jesus.

The line “Jesus is the new black” can’t count as blasphemy, though, since Gaga is reporting that Jesus is not out of style at all.

Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)

She’s just an American riding a dream
And she’s got rainbow syrup in her heart that she bleeds
They don’t care if your papers or your love is the law
She’s a free soul burning roads with the flag in her bra

Rainbow syrup makes her heart sound pro-gay, I suppose, but the song also speaks toward American patriotism, which tends to require anti-gay sentiment in order to prove one is a True American (TM) in the so-called “one nation under God.”

These crazed opponents of Lady Gaga’s “lewd lyrics and performances” have been raising quite a fuss. They’ve protested outside the officies of Hyundai Card, the show’s sponsor, and they also put up banners all over Seoul. The banners were taken down, but the state did raise the show from 12 and over to 18 and over.

There’s that at least. I suppose that wasn’t good enough for the protestors but at least it limits attendance to consenting adults instead of “impressionable” children. I expect it’s too late, anyway. They probably already know all her lyrics by heart and accept the fact that they were “born this way,” whatever way that might have been.

The moral: be careful what you preach because the internet can quote you…

…verbatim via video.

Pastor Sean Harris spoke recently at an event in North Carolina meant to promote the ban on same sex marriage. It was recorded for posterity, of course, and he is caught on video suggesting more than a few questionable behaviours parents should be willing to engage in in order to save their children from a sinful gay life. Not surprisingly, the video turned up on at least one site promoting LGBTQ etc. rights. Good as You and Pink News quote it. I’ll pick a bit of it, too:

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male.

Pink News reports that Harris later claimed the LGBT community had taken his words out of context and twisted the meaning,

saying he “would never advocate for such discipline or actions on behalf of a father or mother”.

In a blog post addressed to members of his church he wrote: “I would never advocate for such discipline or actions on behalf of a father or mother. I misspoke. Hopefully, you understood that I was speaking in a forceful manner to emphasize the degree to which gender distinctions matter to God; and therefore, must matter to each of us and especially parents [...]

He stands by his belief that God’s avidly against homosexuality but has since retracted his comments and apologized for causing offense.

“I recognize that there are those in the LGBT community who believe that their sexual behavior is not sin. I do not agree with them and this official retraction should not be misunderstood as an apology for the gospel of Jesus Christ or the Word of God.”

Alternet ran a short article back in April suggesting that Jesus might have been gay.

Had he been devoid of sexuality, he would not have been truly human. To believe that would be heretical.

Heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual: Jesus could have been any of these. There can be no certainty which. The homosexual option simply seems the most likely. The intimate relationship with the beloved disciple points in that direction. It would be so interpreted in any person today. Although there is no rabbinic tradition of celibacy, Jesus could well have chosen to refrain from sexual activity, whether he was gay or not. Many Christians will wish to assume it, but I see no theological need to. The physical expression of faithful love is godly. To suggest otherwise is to buy into a kind of puritanism that has long tainted the churches.

Harris would never buy that, of course. It doesn’t fit in with his specific world view.

The bible isn’t a straightforward book. It’s filled with analogy and metaphor and glaring inaccuracies. It’s not a history book set out to record events as they actually happened. It’s a never-out-of-print relic of a bygone age, the collected stories of people who lived over two thousand years ago and how they thought, believed and ruled themselves. There’s no denying that some of the rules set down back then were socially and culturally valuable and still worth setting into law (laws against theft and murder come to mind). Other things were very time-specific and very detrimental to the rights of all human beings – like slavery and homosexuality as abomination – and are nothing current educated societies should promote as valid now.

But people like Harris still will. At least he apologized for the way he attempted to preach his message. That was good of him. Negative press does wonders.

Another final resting place for Jesus found: in a tortilla

Yep. I believe this is true more than I believe the tomb story written about earlier.

David Sandoval says he was about to chow down on Ash Wednesday dinner last week when he saw Jesus in one of his mom’s hand-baked tortillas.

“I passed it to my mom, and she said, ‘oh my god,’” said Sandoval.

What made the find even more astonishing was that it was the first day of Lent.

He went and posted the picture on Facebook, and comments started flooding in.

“Everybody has been able to see it. They agree, and they’re calling it a miracle.”

Yes, of course they would. Astonishing.

Hardly.

I’ve showed off my french toast Gandalf before. If this tortilla somehow proves Jesus was real, my french toast proves Gandalf was real. Praise J.R.R. Tolkien for revealing the truth!

So I read Deborah Feldman’s book “UNorthodox”

It was released by Simon and Schuster recently and was a pretty quick but interesting read. Feldman grew up in Brooklyn as part of the Williamsburg Hasidic community and has written a memoir based on that life and the steps she ultimately took within her life to surpass those mentally crippling limitations.

It was eye-opening in terms of me learning more about that stricter version of Judaism. I hadn’t known women were expected to shave all their hair off after marriage and wear wigs or some other head covering. There’s a point in the book where it’s discovered that natural hair wigs purchased for these Satmar women were made of hair that Hindus had shaved off themselves as part of their own worshiping ceremonies and the Rabbi demands all the wigs be burned. God truly forbid they wear hair that belonged to those who worship false idols. But God also forbid they be allowed to keep and style their own hair – it might give the men Ideas. It seems the men have enough Ideas as it is.

Men and women being kept separate in temple is something I might have known about before but the purity laws that keep the temple and thus men “safe” from menstruating women seem outright laughable, even though it’s clear they take that shit seriously. Feldman describes the ritual of self-testing for bleeding and rules about bringing one’s underwear to the Rabbi if one’s not sure the stains are blood. Once married to the man chosen by one’s parents, there are even more rituals and rules to abide by – special purification baths to take and men not allowed to touch anything a bleeding woman has touched. As an outsider looking in, it all sounds so damned ludicrous. What she describes about her sexual anxiety on top of all that wound up being the most fascinating part of the book, I have to admit. I thought I had hang-ups…

She didn’t come out of the experience a complete atheist but she grew to understand why her mother felt compelled to leave that world (she was gay) and her life-long secret love of secular books eventually helped her realize she wanted a better education for herself and her son than they’d otherwise get. Her relationship with her husband was also poor (not just because of the bedroom problems) and it seems like it was a fairly easy decision for both of them to divorce.

I’m not much for reading memoirs. The brain can be a terrible place to store memories. The bulk of them wind up flawed and changed by memories of experiences that occur later, either our own, or those we hear of from other people. No matter how “true” a story might feel to the writer, it’s up to the reader to take it with a grain of salt. (One “reader” goes a step further; RS has a whole blog dedicated to exposing Feldman as a fraud, and provides different background to some of the stories she shares in her book.)

In terms of the book itself, I’ve read a lot of books and this one feels green. Amateurish, I mean. 25 she might be, but a lot of writers got a start younger than that and their first books are a lot more polished. It might be on account of the style she chose to write it, mind you. It’s a present-tense first person kind of thing so that while she’s describing events that might have occurred when she was nine, it’s written like she is that age, writing pages in a juvenile diary. I agree with the opinion of The Forward blogger, Debra Nussbaum Cohen, too:

Whatever the truth, something about Feldman still seems very young, though she is now 25 and the mother of a nearly 6-year-old son. In photos in the Post, posing in a sequined, sleeveless mini-dress, and in pictures on the ABC News website, where she sits on a park bench, wearing high heels, tight jeans and holding a cigarette in her hand, she looks like nothing so much as a young girl posing the way she thinks grownups are supposed to.

She reminds me of 13-year-old girls I see at some bat mitzvahs, teetering around on stiletto heels and wearing minis so short they can’t safely sit down.

I’m trying to think back to what I was like when I was 25. I think I was probably something of a poser, too, without enough life experience to see what parts of my behaviour merely reflected those around me and what came directly from myself. I think that’s a struggle everyone goes through at some point, even if they don’t realize it.

Now living on the Upper East Side with her son, she said there is nothing she misses about life in the Satmar community. “Everything I miss I can have,” she said. “If I want cholent, I make cholent. I have it all now. I am just exhilarated by it. There is not even within me even one shred of regret.”

If she feels like she has to prove something, I hope she realizes she only has to prove it to herself. It does take some daring to write about yourself, I’ll admit. I’m not that bold. Then again, a lot of what I’ve done is boring and quite forgettable. Truthfully, I don’t think I could remember enough childhood events to fill a chapter, let alone nine of them. UNremarkable. That’d be the title of mine…

FFRF not finished fight over Big Mountain Jesus

I missed this on Wednesday, but the Wisconsin-based group has been trying to get this Jesus statue (image via The Blaze) removed from Montana’s Whitefish Mountain Resort. At the end of January the Forestry Service renewed the special permit the Knights of Columbus needed to keep their memorial in place for another ten years. I figured that would be the end of it, that the Freedom from Religion Foundation would consider it a loss and move their “separation of church and state” issue to another public religious eyesore but clearly I missed the part where they said, “We’re not done here.” The FFRF was, shall we say, disappointed over the Service’s choice to side with “tradition” and “historic” and the Jesus loving KOC and have decided to take the issue a step further – now they’re suing.

Ian Cameron of the newly formed Flathead Area Secular Humanist Association provided some more information about how the statue got there.

Cameron pointed to a 1954 Whitefish Pilot article about the statue’s dedication ceremony as evidence of its unabashed religious symbolism. The article refers to the statue as a “shrine” whose placement on the mountain came at the behest of Catholic skiers participating in the National Ski Championships, which were held at Big Mountain in 1949 and 1951.

“Several of the world’s leading skiers are Catholics and they asked why a shrine had not been placed,” according to the article. Those skiers included early pioneers of the Big Mountain ski area like Toni Matt, former U.S. downhill champion who served as a lieutenant in the 10th Mountain Division.

Still, Cameron said the religious connotations cannot be ignored.

“That contradicts all of the previous reports,” Cameron said. “We are not militant atheists out to stamp out religion. We are fighting to make sure that everyone has a seat at the table.”

Cameron said he formed the Flathead Area Secular Humanist Association last September, just as news of the statue’s uncertain fate was reported. Until then, he never knew the statue existed, and to his knowledge none of the association’s roughly two dozen members had complained.

“I’m not a skier so I hadn’t seen it, but now that I know it’s out there looking down on the valley, I am offended,” Cameron said. “It bothers me that it’s up there and that it’s on government land.”

Ubiquitous is the word. Statues are all over the place and often they have some sort of symbolic connection to a faith or religion and most people probably acknowledge their existence without thinking much about them, or simply ignore them altogether. Well, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is standing firm on the idea that it’s time to stop ignoring them. If the statues are on public property, especially government property, then everyone who walks past the thing without thinking needs to be reminded to think about the separation of church and state and why it’s so important to maintain that.

U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., a vocal supporter of the statue from the beginning, pledged to continue his support of the statue.

“The Whitefish community and the Forest Service did not ask for this fight, but we’re going to do whatever is necessary to win it,” he said Wednesday in an email responding to the lawsuit. “In this case, the Forest Service made the right decision to extend the permit and let the monument stand. They have the overwhelming support of the local community and the American people in their stand against litigious bullies who want to force their narrow beliefs on the rest of us.”

This old canard again? Believe whatever the hell you want. Just don’t force others to do the same and don’t assume you deserve any special treatments because of your beliefs. The statue needs to be moved. It’s promoting a religion and it’s on government property. That is, and has always been, a no no in your country. Never mind how many people and organizations have gotten away with it for years, it’s still wrong. If people still desire a war memorial on the property, design a secular themed one that recognizes the sacrifices made by all soldiers, not just the ones who died Catholic. Why act like it’s more complicated than that? The Blaze article included a link to the FFRF’s site so I’ll finish with a quote from that:

“A federal agency should not hold a vote on whether to obey the Constitution!” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.

“The U.S. Forest Service has unlawfully misused federal land owned by all of us to further Christianity in general, and Roman Catholicism in particular. This diminishes the civil and political standing of nonreligious and nonChristian Americans, and shows flagrant governmental preference for religion and Christianity.”

It’s important for people to continue to speak out against that kind of thing. I know it starts to look like they’re tilting at windmills and making pests out of themselves but it’s still an important issue and it’s high time more people started calling “Foul!” rather then put up with it silently. That’s why it’s such a drama to get this kind of thing stopped now. Too many years of being silent. Now there’s a vocal atheist minority that’s tired of going unheard. I don’t know if they’ll win this, but I’m glad to see they want to try.

Creationist propaganda matters more than education in Kentucky

Based on were they want their money spent, at any rate. From Forbes:

In one of the most spectacularly mis-prioritized state budgets in recent memory, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear (D), is suggesting over $50 million in cuts to education – while preserving $43 million in tax breaks for the Ark Encounter, a creationist amusement park centered around a life-sized Noah’s Ark. The park is sponsored by Answers In Genesis, a non-profit organization that promotes a “literalist” interpretation of the Book of Genesis while promoting an anti-evolution (and other sciences) agenda.

There are a number of reasons why this is a bad idea.

Oh my non-existent god, are there ever. The author, Alex Knapp, hit on a few. Cuts to education only work if previous work has been done to reform the system first so standards can still be met even with less funding. Apparently that’s not the case here. Plus, the park is a luxury more than it is a necessity.

in a time of austerity, surely it makes most sense to eliminate wasteful subsidies first, rather than essential public services. Especially subsidies that are of dubious value to begin with, whether its this “Ark Park” or a football stadium.

I add a link because I didn’t know what he meant. Austerity is an economics term, a policy intended for cutting spending and increasing taxes in order to decrease debt. Public services often face cuts when governments go this route and education falls under that, unfortunately.

I agree on the “dubious value” of a creationist theme park (anywhere, not just Kentucky), but I suppose Kentucky is assuming the tourism dollars will make it worthwhile? Knapp notes that the move to give them a tax break is close to crossing a line – maintaining separation of church and state. P.Z. Meyers notes that a further $11 million is going toward infrastructure: “highway improvements for the Ark Park” itself. Hopefully properties other than the Ark Park benefit from that little windfall. That cash isn’t going towards their personal driveway and parking lot, right? Right?

Quoting Friendly Atheist now because he’s so succinct:

In summary, Governor Beshear has basically used $54,000,000 of taxpayer money to help the Biblical Ark Park. And he took $50,000,000 away from the education budget.

In other words, the Governor just took away $100,000,000 that could have gone toward educating people.

There’s no real education to be found at Ark Encounter. Mythology treated as fact is
what they offer. Mythology as entertainment is one thing, and probably a fun thing, but this gets sold as if it’s more true than anything science has taught humanity about our origins and existence. Add to that a government essentially encouraging this business to continue unabated and it equals a very serious problem for the future. It’s a pity education has to take a hit just so this junk heap can stay afloat.

A return to the classics: reading Billy Graham’s mail

And being new into 2012, do you want one guess as to the content of this letter? If you guessed, “If the world’s really ending this year, does that mean Jesus is coming at last?” give yourself a cookie.

Q: Do you think Jesus will come again this year? I’ve heard people say that the world is going to come to an end in 2012, and I’ve wondered if maybe they have some inside knowledge about Jesus’ return. — Mrs. E.H.

Some credit to Graham for his answer, though. He reminds readers that the bible never specified a date. Then he blames interest in the Mayans for causing the whole “end is nigh” kerfluffle.

Most of the “predictions” claiming the world will come to an end in 2012 aren’t based on the Bible, but on a calendar from an ancient civilization that actually ended hundreds of years ago. Most experts deny that the calendar even says this — but if it did, why should we believe it instead of the Bible? Jesus warned, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven” (Mark 13:32).

I found an interesting article from 2010 noting research done at UC Santa Barbara about the Mayan calendar and the technique used to sync it up with our own Gregorian version. The people responsible may have gotten it wrong. Mayans excelled at astronomy, often using Venus as their point of reference, which allowed recent scholars to do the same.

Although GMT uses several sources of astronomical, archaeological and historical evidence to correlate the Long Count with our modern calendar, Aldana has cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the astronomical evidence interpreted from ancient Mayan artifacts and colonial texts.

One of the key events described by Aldana is a battle date as set by the ruler of Dos Pilas (a Maya site in the current geographical location of Guatemala). Ruler Balaj Chan K’awiil chose this date by the appearance of Chak Ek’. According to Johan Normark, researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University, Chak Ek’ “used to be believed to be Venus but in another study Aldana believes it is a [meteor].”

The author of the piece explains that Gerardo Aldana estimates the “end date” might be 60 days off because of this and other discrepancies. It still doesn’t mean the world will end just because the Mayans didn’t count any higher, of course. There’s no reason to believe the bible’s selling a true upcoming world event, either. Smart of the writers at the time to not pick a definite date to throw in, though, unlike other doomsday authors.

Back to Billy:

Why is Jesus’ return important? For one thing, it gives us hope — hope that someday all the evils of our present world will come to an end, because Christ will rule in glory. It also assures us that God — not Satan — is in control, and someday (as the Lord’s Prayer says) His Kingdom will come, and His will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

He then asks if people are ready to accept Jesus, so we’ll skip that part.

Hope is good, but I think action is better. There are ways we could improve the world now. We wouldn’t have to wait for some future date when someone else might sort it out. If I may pull out a Terry Pratchett quote from one of my most favourite books, Hogfather:

“the phrase ‘Someone ought to do something’ was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider ‘and that someone is me’.”

Which is my point. It’s a lot easier to sit there hoping Jesus will come down and sort it all out than it is to figure out ways to fix things now and get busy fixing it. I think people who look forward to Christ’s return aren’t necessarily the best people to leave in charge of things that need doing. I think people who do what they can to improve the world even if they think Christ will take over eventually have the right idea. People who do what they can to improve the world because they know there is no savior on the way are also on the right track. It doesn’t matter if Jesus comes tomorrow or he doesn’t. We have to live here now.

I can’t get de-baptized

I wasn’t baptized in the first place. But, for those who were and don’t want to be anymore, de-baptism is just the thing:

The movement may have begun just a decade ago when Terry Sanderson, head of the National Secular Society in Britain, posted an unofficial “de-baptism certificate” on the society’s website, mostly as a joke. To date it has been downloaded at least 100,000 times.

“It was a joke to begin with, but now it has taken on a new significance because there are so many people who are anxious to leave the church that they are actually taking it seriously now, and they want some way to make their break with the church formal,” Sanderson told VOA. “Often the church won’t acknowledge their desire to leave.”

A lot of theories get bounced around about why people seek to remove themselves from official church registries. Some think it has to do with public backlash against scandals like the rampant pedophilia, or the continued medieval stance against homosexuality or women in positions of power. Some are probably just disenchanted in general, or annoyed that there was no choice in the matter. Now they’re at an age where they can choose and want out.

The article in Mother Nature News focuses primarily on the increase of interest in Europe but Debaptized.com accepts requests from everywhere. If it’s of interest to you, check it out.