Listen to Jay=Z talk a little about the sony in this promo for his new album, which I happen to like a lot.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Music Shmusic: Jay-Z's Heaven
Usually rap has a lot of "praise the Lord" talk mixed in with lyrics promoting questionable morals. I was pleasantly surprised to hear a song with a more skeptical take from Jay-Z.
Listen to Jay=Z talk a little about the sony in this promo for his new album, which I happen to like a lot.
Listen to Jay=Z talk a little about the sony in this promo for his new album, which I happen to like a lot.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Grundy Disagrees #4
My latest disagreement spawned from a Two Catholic Men and a Blog post on the so-called "availability" of God and/or the Holy Spirit. I pointed out that the knowledge of the God's word is not universally available, rather it is asymmetrically available. Some people are born into areas where Catholicism hasn't spread or at least isn't mainstream, some people die before hearing about Jesus, and others are so indoctrinated into competing religions that a near insurmountable boundary is present. Basically, if the Catholic God exists, it is unfair for his word to come so easily to some and not at all to others. Further more, this God is unjust to judge symmetrically given the circumstance he put in place.
Joe, one of the two guys, disagreed.
Here are excerpts of the exchange:
Joe: We must do our part and God will provide the rest. We who are indwelt are called to bring God's love to the whole world. It is OUR fault if some do not hear of God when they are accessible to believers.
You put the fault on God who "makes it so much harder." Again, it is not God who does this. We who imagine and teach the competing worldview are to blame.
God is not a genie in the sky who is expected to wave a hand and fix our troubles. Part of our salvation comes from working to solve just these issues.
Lastly, God judges how God will. He has revealed to believers how he will judge, but God can always save who he will without consulting anyone. Maybe many will be saved in spite of their ignorance. We don't know.
You may say, "perhaps it is better for them to remain ignorant." Maybe. Maybe not. We do know God is just and fair. The question is then, "why bet on ignorance when sure knowledge is available?"
Me: You seem to be trying the justify the lack of availability from the perspective of the believer, but from the perspective of those who don't know about Jesus or have been conditioned to believe otherwise, it's surely not their fault they are in the situation they are in. That's what I'm saying, and it makes God, if he exists, neither just nor fair.
Joe: God does not reveal to us the ultimate fate of non-believer. He only reveals to us our responsibility towards them. Whatever their fate, we as believers are held responsible for our own actions (or non-action) towards them.
As God is both just AND fair, the fact that someone is the situation they are in when it is not their fault would certainly work in their favor. You are certainly correct in pointing out that circumstances reduce an individual's culpability.
The Catholic Church has NEVER said that anyone is in Hell. Not even Judas. We hope that Hell is empty.
Do you see the difference?
Me: I see the difference in regards to hell, but denying some heaven while giving others that reward when asymmetrical circumstances make it so much harder for some to be aware and to believe is the definition of unfair. So, I'll ask you the same question I asked Ben: Do non-Christians go to heaven? Can they?
If the answer is no, God is unfair. If you don't know, then the fairness of God is also unknown and I don't think availability is the best topic to blog about.
Joe: Would you be considered unfair to give a gift to someone but not to another? I would think you would say no.
In the same way, human life is given as gift. If you were in the position of God to create matter from nothing and then bring a non-living being to life, say a clay figure, (see my Clay Man post) you would be perfectly in your rights to do whatever you wish with that Clay figure. You can take away its life without moral impact. It's YOUR stuff. You gave it life and can take it away again.
This is a very hard teaching to accept (as clay men). If you do not accept it, then we have different ideas as to what's "fair" and I'd beware of people who ask you for money since you'd be unfair or unjust not to give money to each and every person who asks.
If God gives life (and eternal life) as gift, it's not mysterious, but it IS up to him. If he wants to explain some of his rationale to us so we can have a chance of obtaining it, even THAT is gift. We are fortunate to listen to it!
Me: I don't accept that teaching and neither do you. Take a child who wouldn't be alive without you. According to this teaching, it is perfectly acceptable for you and your mate to abort the fetus, after all, it's YOUR stuff. I know you don't feel this way because I see you are pro-life. Further, once the kid is born anything from incestual pedophilia to murder one is fine when committed by the parent, right?
Wrong. You and I are both right in not accepting this teaching.
It goes on. Check the comments or weigh in yourself here.
Joe, one of the two guys, disagreed.
Here are excerpts of the exchange:
Joe: We must do our part and God will provide the rest. We who are indwelt are called to bring God's love to the whole world. It is OUR fault if some do not hear of God when they are accessible to believers.
You put the fault on God who "makes it so much harder." Again, it is not God who does this. We who imagine and teach the competing worldview are to blame.
God is not a genie in the sky who is expected to wave a hand and fix our troubles. Part of our salvation comes from working to solve just these issues.
Lastly, God judges how God will. He has revealed to believers how he will judge, but God can always save who he will without consulting anyone. Maybe many will be saved in spite of their ignorance. We don't know.
You may say, "perhaps it is better for them to remain ignorant." Maybe. Maybe not. We do know God is just and fair. The question is then, "why bet on ignorance when sure knowledge is available?"
Me: You seem to be trying the justify the lack of availability from the perspective of the believer, but from the perspective of those who don't know about Jesus or have been conditioned to believe otherwise, it's surely not their fault they are in the situation they are in. That's what I'm saying, and it makes God, if he exists, neither just nor fair.
Joe: God does not reveal to us the ultimate fate of non-believer. He only reveals to us our responsibility towards them. Whatever their fate, we as believers are held responsible for our own actions (or non-action) towards them.
As God is both just AND fair, the fact that someone is the situation they are in when it is not their fault would certainly work in their favor. You are certainly correct in pointing out that circumstances reduce an individual's culpability.
The Catholic Church has NEVER said that anyone is in Hell. Not even Judas. We hope that Hell is empty.
Do you see the difference?
Me: I see the difference in regards to hell, but denying some heaven while giving others that reward when asymmetrical circumstances make it so much harder for some to be aware and to believe is the definition of unfair. So, I'll ask you the same question I asked Ben: Do non-Christians go to heaven? Can they?
If the answer is no, God is unfair. If you don't know, then the fairness of God is also unknown and I don't think availability is the best topic to blog about.
Joe: Would you be considered unfair to give a gift to someone but not to another? I would think you would say no.
In the same way, human life is given as gift. If you were in the position of God to create matter from nothing and then bring a non-living being to life, say a clay figure, (see my Clay Man post) you would be perfectly in your rights to do whatever you wish with that Clay figure. You can take away its life without moral impact. It's YOUR stuff. You gave it life and can take it away again.
This is a very hard teaching to accept (as clay men). If you do not accept it, then we have different ideas as to what's "fair" and I'd beware of people who ask you for money since you'd be unfair or unjust not to give money to each and every person who asks.
If God gives life (and eternal life) as gift, it's not mysterious, but it IS up to him. If he wants to explain some of his rationale to us so we can have a chance of obtaining it, even THAT is gift. We are fortunate to listen to it!
Me: I don't accept that teaching and neither do you. Take a child who wouldn't be alive without you. According to this teaching, it is perfectly acceptable for you and your mate to abort the fetus, after all, it's YOUR stuff. I know you don't feel this way because I see you are pro-life. Further, once the kid is born anything from incestual pedophilia to murder one is fine when committed by the parent, right?
Wrong. You and I are both right in not accepting this teaching.
It goes on. Check the comments or weigh in yourself here.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Boycotting Boycotts
Consider the following boycott scenarios.
The first boycott is not effective while the second is effective because an effective boycott must hurt both the boycotter and the boycottee. From the point of view of the boycotter, the choice to punish a brand for a distasteful policy is a desirable statement that outweighs the undesirable personal consequence. However, when a potential boycott is the hardest to make, and necessarily the most effective, the potential boycotter may opt out of boycotting. In these cases, I’ve thought about another option.
When Ender’s Game comes out in theaters, I will buy a ticket. I’m a big enough fan of the source material that I obviously hope it’s good, but even if it’s bad I’ll be curious to see just how bad it is. Since the author, Orson Scott Card, is a vocal Mormon with ideas and contributions of which I don’t agree, I have some desire to boycott it, just the principle. I recognize that in this case I could pirate Ender’s Game so that Card doesn’t get to put my good money to bad use. At the same time, I feel he deserves to be paid for work that I recognize has value. This leads me to my boycott alternative: I will enjoy a night at the movies and then contributing the ticket price to an organization that works toward goals opposite that of Card’s charities. Instead of this boycott hurting me recreationally, it will only hurt me financially because I will basically be paying twice the ticket price in “protest” of Card’s views.
Card’s primary boycott-worthy view in my opinion is being against gay marriage, so I will likely give to a LGBT charity. In the end, I think this will be more effective than a traditional boycott on a personal level since very little of the cost of my ticket will go to Card’s bank account and again only a fraction of that will go to his causes while the entirety of my extra nine bucks will go against his cause. On a public level, it isn’t quite as effective because I won’t be participating in the inevitable organized boycott of the movie which can only be measured as a factor in the movie’s failure (which I feel is unfair because it punishes everyone else involved in the movie in addition to Card.) In the end, every boycott is a personal boycott and this option is the best for me and might work for you whether you apply it to Ender’s Game, Chick-Fil-A or whatever.
Additional boycott tip: If you do decide to boycott something, it probably won’t be noticeable unless it is part of a large-scale and successfully organized boycott. To make your personal boycott efforts noticable, write to the business or brand you are boycotting and tell them why you are doing it. If you were previously a regular customer, be sure to say so. I’ve done this before with advertisers of particularly harmful radio hosts and heard back from some of the companies. Whether they do anything about it or not, they’ll at least know, and that matters.
- I boycott my local Catholic church for covering up priest pedophiles. I didn’t previously go to church nor did I contribute to their collections. It doesn’t hurt me, but neither does it hurt the church.
- I boycott Chick-Fil-A for their CEO’s stance on gays and for their contributions to like-minded organizations. I really like Chick-Fil-A and spent money at their restaurants on a weekly basis. It hurts the company in losing one of their regular customers, but it also hurts me in that I am losing a favorite lunch spot.
When Ender’s Game comes out in theaters, I will buy a ticket. I’m a big enough fan of the source material that I obviously hope it’s good, but even if it’s bad I’ll be curious to see just how bad it is. Since the author, Orson Scott Card, is a vocal Mormon with ideas and contributions of which I don’t agree, I have some desire to boycott it, just the principle. I recognize that in this case I could pirate Ender’s Game so that Card doesn’t get to put my good money to bad use. At the same time, I feel he deserves to be paid for work that I recognize has value. This leads me to my boycott alternative: I will enjoy a night at the movies and then contributing the ticket price to an organization that works toward goals opposite that of Card’s charities. Instead of this boycott hurting me recreationally, it will only hurt me financially because I will basically be paying twice the ticket price in “protest” of Card’s views.
Card’s primary boycott-worthy view in my opinion is being against gay marriage, so I will likely give to a LGBT charity. In the end, I think this will be more effective than a traditional boycott on a personal level since very little of the cost of my ticket will go to Card’s bank account and again only a fraction of that will go to his causes while the entirety of my extra nine bucks will go against his cause. On a public level, it isn’t quite as effective because I won’t be participating in the inevitable organized boycott of the movie which can only be measured as a factor in the movie’s failure (which I feel is unfair because it punishes everyone else involved in the movie in addition to Card.) In the end, every boycott is a personal boycott and this option is the best for me and might work for you whether you apply it to Ender’s Game, Chick-Fil-A or whatever.
Additional boycott tip: If you do decide to boycott something, it probably won’t be noticeable unless it is part of a large-scale and successfully organized boycott. To make your personal boycott efforts noticable, write to the business or brand you are boycotting and tell them why you are doing it. If you were previously a regular customer, be sure to say so. I’ve done this before with advertisers of particularly harmful radio hosts and heard back from some of the companies. Whether they do anything about it or not, they’ll at least know, and that matters.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
A Decent Idea That'll Never Work
A woman in front of me at the check out counter makes small talk with the cashier. I find her voice beautiful. For someone who is tone deaf in regards to his own singing, I have wildly specific preferences when it comes to sound. Her sound I could listen to everyday. She walks away, never to be heard from again.
After attending Easter service with my religious family, I overhear a teen leaving the church who asks his parents why there is evil in the world if God is good. The kid’s dad offers a “mysterious ways” response and moves on.
What do these two scenarios have in common? In both I wanted to engage someone who it was socially awkward to engage.
In the case of the woman, my interrupting her exit with the simple compliment “you have a beautiful voice,” could make me a creep if she’s immediately uninterested in me, a potential mate if she is interested, and so far out of the ordinary that it’s bound to be weird regardless. To be clear, while I obviously don’t want to be a creep, neither do I want to be her mate. I’m happily married which makes compliments to strange women in any situation somewhat inappropriate. When I said “her sound I could listen to everyday,” I meant only as a friend...or if nothing else, the voice of my GPS.
In the case of the child at church, I’d be leaving my family to answer a question posed to someone else. Offering my take on the problem of evil could be seen as anything from blasphemy on church grounds or telling the kid’s folks how to parent. These possible charges are more than enough in my cost/benefit analysis to persuade me not to engage publicly.
These are small problems. Nevertheless, we have a woman who likely would have enjoyed a compliment under proper conditions, a kid who missed out on an answer to an honest question and me who wanted to share something positive with each. It got me thinking, how could this have gone better?
I thought about how texting is the preferred way to deliver information without the need of pleasantries or the pressure to fill in a conversation. I thought about a location-based service in which a tweet-like message could be sent to geographic neighbors. I thought about how maintaining Internet-like anonymity would make this less creepy in that no real personal information is shared and no motives outside of “just letting you know” could be assumed.
Then I thought about how this service would never reach the user base needed to make the service useful because it would already need to be useful to encourage the growth of the user base: a Catch-22. Then I thought what makes me think an anonymous service that allows for real-time criticism of any social interaction would have a net positive affect on society? It would likely result in an echo chamber of “fail” notices. I’d be no closer to sharing information and affirmations and yet acutely aware of when I’m pwed. I guess I’ll go back to wishing I had telepathy.
After attending Easter service with my religious family, I overhear a teen leaving the church who asks his parents why there is evil in the world if God is good. The kid’s dad offers a “mysterious ways” response and moves on.
What do these two scenarios have in common? In both I wanted to engage someone who it was socially awkward to engage.
In the case of the woman, my interrupting her exit with the simple compliment “you have a beautiful voice,” could make me a creep if she’s immediately uninterested in me, a potential mate if she is interested, and so far out of the ordinary that it’s bound to be weird regardless. To be clear, while I obviously don’t want to be a creep, neither do I want to be her mate. I’m happily married which makes compliments to strange women in any situation somewhat inappropriate. When I said “her sound I could listen to everyday,” I meant only as a friend...or if nothing else, the voice of my GPS.
In the case of the child at church, I’d be leaving my family to answer a question posed to someone else. Offering my take on the problem of evil could be seen as anything from blasphemy on church grounds or telling the kid’s folks how to parent. These possible charges are more than enough in my cost/benefit analysis to persuade me not to engage publicly.
These are small problems. Nevertheless, we have a woman who likely would have enjoyed a compliment under proper conditions, a kid who missed out on an answer to an honest question and me who wanted to share something positive with each. It got me thinking, how could this have gone better?
I thought about how texting is the preferred way to deliver information without the need of pleasantries or the pressure to fill in a conversation. I thought about a location-based service in which a tweet-like message could be sent to geographic neighbors. I thought about how maintaining Internet-like anonymity would make this less creepy in that no real personal information is shared and no motives outside of “just letting you know” could be assumed.
Then I thought about how this service would never reach the user base needed to make the service useful because it would already need to be useful to encourage the growth of the user base: a Catch-22. Then I thought what makes me think an anonymous service that allows for real-time criticism of any social interaction would have a net positive affect on society? It would likely result in an echo chamber of “fail” notices. I’d be no closer to sharing information and affirmations and yet acutely aware of when I’m pwed. I guess I’ll go back to wishing I had telepathy.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Doubting Solo
This week’s meme got my thinking about Han Solo one-liners.
His quotes apply wonderfully to our world but I can’t quite embrace him as a skeptical role model because, in the Star Wars universe, his is dead wrong. The “hokey religion” in question, the Force, is true. Han had the right idea to doubt the Force because Jedi were inactive during his formative years making the extraordinary claims of the Force a matter of faith. He, rightly, came around when he witnessed his new friends levitating shit.
Theists seem to think atheists are close minded and in denial. We aren’t, we just need that demonstration. It is within God’s power (supposedly) to levitate objects and bend natural law, theists should pray to get him to do it. If I saw someone using the Force I’d immediately drop my career in favor of Jedi training. Likewise, you better believe I’d become a Christian.
Want to convert me? Use the Jesus, theists. If he can’t do it, you might want to rethink his power, influence and existence.
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen *anything* to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls *my* destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
Theists seem to think atheists are close minded and in denial. We aren’t, we just need that demonstration. It is within God’s power (supposedly) to levitate objects and bend natural law, theists should pray to get him to do it. If I saw someone using the Force I’d immediately drop my career in favor of Jedi training. Likewise, you better believe I’d become a Christian.
Want to convert me? Use the Jesus, theists. If he can’t do it, you might want to rethink his power, influence and existence.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
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