Archive for August, 2004
Hip to be… A Religious Fundamentalist?
16 August 2004Well, since I’ve said my piece about the liberal left trend a couple of times in here, I thought I might post something about conservatives as well, you know, for the sake of being fair and balanced. A website I stumbled upon last night gave me the perfect opportunity.
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has quite the interesting site. The first thing you read on their frontpage is that they “don’t promote [their] own religious beliefs” because the site is run by people of multiple faiths. Interesting that, a few inches below, their logo features a silhouette of a dove, a stock clipart image you’re likely to find on any church office computer, and a heavily western religious symbol that likely has no equivalent meaning in eastern religions, and certainly none to atheists and agnostics. Perhaps I read too much into this, but I believe it’s an early indication of the limits to their self-proclaimed religious impartiality.
I was particularly amused by their page on the Theory of Evolution and Creation Science. They lay out the most common sets of beliefs, ranging from naturalistic evolution to “young earth creation science”, and compare the differences: How old do they believe the universe is? They even go so far as to admit that “creation science” isn’t a science, according to US court rulings, because it bases its facts on biblical passages rather than the scientific method.
Their forthcoming attitude changed a bit, however, when they got to this section:
Can science determine the age of the earth accurately?
Science will never be able to prove absolutely that the world is over 10,000 years old. Collecting countless pieces of evidence for an “old earth”, is supportive of their theory, but is not proof. Creationists can simply counter scientists’ arguments with two of their own:
- That when God created the universe 6 to 10 thousand years ago, he created everything as if it had a history. e.g. when God created trees, he made them with tree rings to look as if they been growing naturally for many years before creation. When he created the Appalachian mountains, they were formed to look as if they were the remains of tall mountains which had been eroded for millions of years. When he created the world, say 8,000 years ago, it was fashioned to appear 4.5 billion years old.
- All scientific dating methods share a single assumption: that basic processes behaved in the past much as they do at the present. e.g. the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the rates of nuclear decay, etc are constant or near constant. There is no absolute proof that this is true. If some of these basic quantities changed by a million times or more, then dating methods would suggest an age of the universe that is 10,000 years or less.
And so, the debate will probably continue forever without any possibility of resolution.
This is great… Let’s write two paragraphs and completely invalidate hundreds of years of intense scientific study. I find it interesting that they list these two arguments against science, but they tend to omit some basic arguments in its favor, like, say, Ockham’s Razor. Of course, they couldn’t include that, because Ockham’s Razor states that “one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed.” Supposing that God ”created everything to look older” is probably vulnerable to *ahem* Razor burn.
Now personally, I don’t think the scientific community has it all figured out myself. I think they make some presumptions, often unaware, and will eventually get proven wrong about things, as happened with the shape of the world, the sound barrier, the smallest particle being the atom. But science has always been willing, if at times reluctant, to revise its theories based on new evidence. The religious community, on the other hand, tends to explain away such evidence–or ignore it completely–to keep it from contradicting scripture. That a site claiming impartiality can do no better than this speaks volumes.
But I’m being a bit too hard on this site. In fact, it does a relatively good job of providing exhaustive information on both sides of many controversial issues. But even this haven for fair treatment isn’t immune from making assumptions on issues.
Then there are those fundamentalists who care nothing about fair treatment. Everything exists in terms of their bible, their beliefs, and nothing that challenges those things can be tolerated. I was actually brought to this site after Googling the word “reparative” (to check my spelling). One of the links was to the site’s section on “Healing Homosexuality Through Reparative Therapy“. Out of curiosity, I clicked in, and was immediately disgusted by the topic.
Now, I’m relatively old-fashioned, and in case anyone isn’t aware I’m most definitely straight. The thought of two guys “together” grosses me out, and I could never picture myself being one of those guys. Being “together” with a woman, on the other hand, is quite appealing to me. That’s my preference, simple as that… And between that and some simple logic, I’m not at all bugged by homosexuality. Two people can do whatever they want together. It doesn’t affect me in any way, and I’m going to keep on liking who I like.
(And heck, most gay guys are rather attractive, and most lesbians are rather… unattractive, and that’s based on my own observations, not presumptions. So if I’m doing the math right, that should leave more single, attractive straight women looking for a decent looking straight guy… I’m in luck.)
As far as the “causes” of homosexuality, I’m a mixed bag. I do think homosexuality is often coupled with psychological problems–of the (admittedly limited) number of gays and bis I’ve known, they seem to have more issues per-capita than straight people I know. So do some people look to homosexuality and bisexuality, at a subconscious level, to deal with psychological problems? Yeah, some of them do, I think. Then there’s the simple fact that it’s socially acceptable–in some circles and some levels, at least. When something’s considered less taboo than it was previously, it’s usually explored more as a general possibility. In the current state of society, I think there probably a few who simply find the “gay community” as an outlet for social acceptability. But is it just a matter of psychology or society? No, I don’t think so. How do you explain intersexed (hermaphroditic) individuals? They fall into a biological grey area–somewhere between male and female. Often religion and even science take it upon themselves to “assign” a gender, and it’s not uncommon that this assignment is incorrect, as individuals may later decide that they feel and relate to the opposite gender. So, physically, gender isn’t simply an either/or as we’re accustomed to think it is. If there can be this physical ambiguity, can’t there be similar ambiguities of personality and mentality? Makes sense to me.
But back to my point… In any case, even if a fundamentalist could prove that homosexuality is wrong or a mistake or an anomaly to be corrected, why on earth should so much time, money and effort be spent in attempt to “repair” gays? There are millions of people out there with serious problems, mental, physical, financial, that could use help. Famine remains a worldwide epidemic. I’m sure there are even countless straight, god-fearing Christians who are having trouble making ends meet for themselves and their family, Christians questioning their faith, losing faith, tempted to resort to lives of sin and crime because they feel abandoned by their god and their fellow man. Why aren’t these people a far greater priority when it comes to “help time”?
*sigh* I could say a lot more–don’t even get me started about stem cell research–but it’ll start to sound like countless similar arguments that have already been posed and answered away with a bible verse or ignored. Christians should be free to believe what they want. But they should respect the separation of Church and State, and they should respect and display tolerance. The opposite of tolerance is eventually oppression, and this country (as with most democracies) was founded to escape oppression. It was founded to ensure tolerance for its people, and if anyone has a problem with that, they’d better ship out and start their own country, someplace where intolerance is rewarded.
I hear there’s a vacant tyrant position to be filled in Iraq.
Shit, meet fan…
2 August 2004Fan, meet shit… Shit, fan, fan shit.
Good! Now that we’re all acquainted…
Perhaps I’ve been too patient, too easy, too willing to give the benefit of the doubt for the past ten months or so. Perhaps not… The people with whom the shit has hit the fan would probably say not, but I would ask anyone who’s known me any length to time to tell me how long I resist before becoming confrontational–seriously confrontational. I certainly enjoy a heated debate and defending those things I believe in strongly, but I almost always do so with a sense of respect of the other person.
Perhaps there are just some people I’m not meant to get along with. Hmm, yeah, that’s certainly true in a few cases. Particularly people for whom I offer my loyalty and my support under the assumption they are in the right or will try to act in the right, and take advantage of my support to instigate. To cause more of the same problems I sought to stop. Because doing so reflects upon my trustworthiness, upon my principles, and that’s not something I take lightly. Also, people who bitch and moan about every last thing but don’t want to hear any advice, certainly nothing that could imply fault on their behalf, even if it is meant constructively. If you’re not looking for a solution and honest opinion, then I don’t want you bothering me with petty shit. There are people with far worse problems that are more receptive to an honest opinion or tough love that I can spend my time on.
In any event, while the second physical incarnation of Smart-Popcorn.com began only a month ago, the second ”spiritual” incarnation ended today. In many respects, things were looking very good–the site, first of all. The business cards I just got printed up, the new applicants, though perhaps they hadn’t yet shown their reliability… In a sense, most importantly, the fact that we’d established some standards with our reviews. But something was nagging at me. The site had lost it’s fun, there wasn’t the thrill there once was, even when a few of the early die-hard stragglers were writing dinky, 400-word reviews. And the lack of fun wasn’t due to the zillion different roles I was fulfilling, whether they were my own or not. It was from a sense that my exciting experiment had become superceded by someone else’s exciting experiment. It was amazing, I thought last year, to find two other people who’d seen the same need for a two scale rating system, but it quickly became a double-edged sword. Their system came from a series of debates about film theory and theory of film critique; mine came from a pragmatic desire to bridge the gap between the elitist culture of film critics and the sometimes-simplistic demands of the moviegoing public. What they brought with them, though they may see it, is their own sense of elitism–they’re certainly not art-house snobs… in fact, I felt they were adverse towards the artsy types in ADDITION to the typical pro-Hollywood types. They preached tolerance for different opinions, but I could sense their distate for people with notably different opinions than their own, particularly in applicants, but elsewhere, and I believe it was affecting their interactions with those people and stifling the site as a result.
It’s not that I didn’t want their opinions on the site… It’s that I felt others’ opinions wouldn’t feel as welcome as I’d hope in their presence. It’s also that Sarah (Reel Monkey) was simply incapable of handling the application duties–she offers finesse in her reviews, but doesn’t extend that finesse in her dealings with people, something pivotal for such a role. Why consider something in charge of such a role, then, when I had to take on most of the communication (or if she would hand it off to Ray)? There is such a thing as teamwork, as sharing duties, but a good team member should be able to take on certain responsibilities personally so that teammates can meet the needs of their own tasks. But I guess I was supposed to write “form letters” for the cause, in the middle of everything else… again, where’s the display of responsibility?
There’s a lot more that could be mentioned. Because this role was not being properly fulfilled and my suggestions for improvement were met with dictations as to the tools “needed” to do a job that should be held by a people person, I decided to bring on a people person to eventually take on the task. I invited Kaleena (a.k.a. Sporky now Buttercup) to come back to the site, and she did. And I didn’t even have a chance to suggest the turning over of duties, nor she the chance to write a single review, before I was made aware how “unacceptable” the situation is… I was delivered some very accusatory and extremely premature judgements made about Kaleena, and about what her presence on the site would lead to. I won’t even get into the accusations made, because they were completely uneducated and baseless remarks. But the simple fact of the matter is, on MY site, Kaleena–or any somebody like Kaleena–would be welcome. If she wasn’t welcome among these people, then it isn’t my site anymore.
I’ve always wanted my site to live up to it’s own name: Smart-Popcorn.com. Smart and fun. The first go-round, it was a hell of a lot of fun but not very demanding of content, of quality writing. Over the past eight or ten months, it’s gained a lot of such demand, but it’s lost its fun for everyone but the two I’d more or less left in charge on the front end. Not even fun for me, anymore.
I’m going to take my time with this third attempt to rebuild, so to speak. I’m certainly not going to be so quick to hand over power because I’m preoccupied at the time. If it has to be, I’ll let the site run idle when I’m not able to remain actively involved with it. But I hope this time we can find the best of both worlds–make it something the critics and visitors alike will enjoy, and something that will be enlighting and informative to both.
Third time’s a charm.