Rambling Thoughts of a Morning

Emily pulled a book from my bookshelf this morning and said, “This looks interesting.” It was “Getting It On” by Lewis Grizzard. She thought it might be a sexually raunchy book, not that I have a lot of them, but in my head life unfolds that way. I got to thinking about Grizzard’s life, what little I know of it. I know in his early life as a comedian he was a racist and his humor reflected that racism, but I did not find that out until after his death. I just remember him as a purveyor of southern humor rich with simple southern life. He understood the charm of a steak dinner at Waffle House if you get my drift. I also thought about how I’ve changed my reading habits in my merging autumn years. As I thought about this I remembered I had read Herman Hess’s “Siddhartha” this week at work and how out of character that was for me these days. It was a slow week and nothing crossed my desk to do and once I got all the unimportant things done that no one asks you to do but you know they expect you to do, I had time on my hands. I got Google books up on the computer and searched for Steppenwolf thinking I would read that story again since I last read it in a previous life and couldn’t remember why it was considered worth reading by the literary world. Well, actually, I was tired of reading my critical thinking book and wanted something different. I found it, but got side tracked to Siddhartha and for the life of me I don’t know why. I had never read it before and knew nothing of it. Hess was known to me as a German writer of strange philosophical undertakings that bored me to tears in my youth. I started with an introduction to Hess himself and was struck by a lot of similarities between his life and his thoughts and mine. We are not all that identical, but there were some remarkable similarities of thought. I finished the book by the first hour of the second day and have pondered its meaning off and on the rest of this week. I realize it means far more to me now than it ever could when I was 19 and built “like a rock”. I can’t help but think teachers waste a lot of effort on high school kids trying to get them to read and enjoy the classics when one really needs a lot of life experience and the wisdom that comes from that exposure to really relate and see the real value of the authors writings. It’s like expecting a high school biology student to understand the instructions of a brain surgeon at work. What a waste.

For those who have not read Siddhartha, you may want to pick it up some time and give it a try. It is less than a hundred pages and you don’t have to worry about in-depth character studies because that is not Hess’s style. You may find his insight into life and value of human interaction and experience insightful.

. . . if you lived next door to an atheist, you might never know it.

This is from the Opinion section of the Kansas City Star. As an atheist it is nice to see someone tell some positive things about those who confess to not believing in a God and those others who just can't quiet say they don't.

MIDWEST VOICES: Let us bow our heads in thanks for atheists

The re-awakening of atheism in America is going to make for some very interesting times. Leaders of the Christian Right have spent years trying to cast themselves as the voiceless victims in a secular society, but the scapegoating is over. (Want to talk marginalized? How many atheists have there ever been in Congress or the White House?)

Nonbelievers know a lot about Christianity and Judaism, most having been raised in religious families. Believers, however, are somewhat less clued-in about atheists. Here are a few simple truths about who they are, and aren’t.

Atheists are well-behaved. Atheists seem to play well with others overall. They’re not in the news for getting caught doing things they tell others not to do. Most co-exist peacefully with believing family and friends. They pay taxes.

Atheists don’t start wars on behalf of atheism. They do join the military, however, and contrary to the cliché, they are found in foxholes. In fact, there is a lawsuit now against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a major who harassed a group of “foxhole atheists” who simply wished to exercise their freedom of/from religion while serving their country in the Middle East.

Atheists have a thing for the American Constitution, particularly the First Amendment that separates church and state. They are secularists who support a government free from influence by any religion. They’re not anti-religious but nonreligious.

So when people like Mike Huckabee announce they want to “take this nation back for Christ” and make the Constitution fit the word of God, atheists worry, and feel that everyone else would be wise to worry along with them.

Atheists don’t take up much space. In fact, they only comprise 0.4 percent of the U.S. population, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, conducted through the Graduate Center at CUNY. (Agnostics would add 0.5 percent, the nonreligious 14.1 percent more.)

A total of 900,000 people isn’t even enough to fill 10 football stadiums, but evangelical leaders insist the godless are behind the decline of a whole nation. Uh, okay.

Atheists make good neighbors. Chances are, if you lived next door to an atheist, you might never know it. Atheists aren’t known for going door-to-door or shore-to-shore to un-convert people. They will help you even though there’s no heavenly reward in it for them.

Atheists will not infringe upon your life uninvited. On the other hand, you have to wonder about the neighborliness of certain believers when you see, for example, the miracle of the multiplying churches and neighborhood-munching mega-churches.

Thanks to the Religious Land Use law, passed in 2000, it’s lots easier now for religious groups to build more tax-exempt houses of worship, often against the wishes of neighborhoods which they burden financially and environmentally.

Atheists are lousy fundraisers. If you really want to raise a ton of money, oh, say on a weekly basis, don’t ask an atheist. Go to the folks with the know-how.

Televangelists raise almost $100 billion a year. In fact, they are so good at talking money out of people’s purses and bank accounts that six major Christian ministries are under investigation by the Senate Finance Committee.

These prosperity preachers tell their followers that God wants all of them to be well and be rich. (Serendipitously, God wants the preachers to have fancy cars, huge houses and the occasional Learjet.)

Atheists are the quiet type. Religionists have counted on atheists’ need for self-protection, but things are changing. Witness the popularity of Christopher Hitchens’ insightful book, god is not Great, the movie version of “The Golden Compass,” the mainstream media interest in the nonbelievers’ demographic.

There’s a new dialogue beginning between mainline believers and atheists, and among atheists themselves. While militant New Atheists fight on intellectual turf to replace dogma with rational thinking, humanists encourage believers and nonbelievers to get the moral work of peace, social justice and saving the environment done together.

Right-wing Christianity shook the atheist community out of its complacency with its relentless rhetorical badgering and attempts to co-opt the country. A missing piece of the real picture of America is finally being restored. Amen to that.

Linda Staten of Kansas City is a professional writer and former college instructor of ethics and comparative religion. To reach Midwest Voices columnists, write to the author c/o Editorial Page, The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 6410

Just something I thought was funny.

What do you think when you see an event announcement such as “Historic Mobile Home Tour”? Well, you could think it was a house trailer tour or you might think, “oh wow another RV gathering”.

When I saw this announcement it reminded me of a night in a hotel in New Mexico some years ago when I was watching the local news. The western news announcer was telling a story about Mobile, Alabama. I didn’t understand what he was talking about at first because he pronounce the city’s name instead of . When I realized what he meant, I laughed.

The aforementioned Mobile Home Tour is a tour of selected historic homes in Mobile, Alabama. If you want to know more you can check it out at www.historicmobile.org.

It's all about education, stupid.

When I read this article I felt I could replace the word "Florida" with just about any state in our nation and most assuredly I could pick any southern state. Just image if we spend the kind of money on our educational system that we wasted in Iraq this last 5 years. Our return on investment would be so much more rewarding.

Our reputation for flakiness is at stake
Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2008

By CARL HIAASEN
In a move that could endanger Florida's flaky backwater reputation, the state Board of Education is poised to endorse the teaching of evolution as a science.
This is a dangerous idea -- not the presentation of Darwinism in schools, but the presentation of Florida as a place of progressive scientific thought.
Over the years the Legislature has worked tirelessly to keep our kids academically stuck in the mid-1950s. This has been achieved by overcrowding their classrooms, underpaying their teachers and letting their school buildings fall apart.
Florida's plucky refusal to embrace 21st century education is one reason that prestigious tech industries have avoided the state, allowing so many of our high-school graduates (and those who come close) to launch prosperous careers in the fast-food, bartending and service sectors of the economy.
By accepting evolution as a proven science, our top educators would be sending a loud message to the rest of the nation: Stop making fun of us.
Is that what we really want?
On Tuesday, , the Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a proposed set of new standards that describe evolution as the ''fundamental concept underlying all of biology'' and ``supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.''
Certainly that's the position of every reputable academic group on the planet, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association.
But forget the fossil record, OK? Forget DNA tracing. Forget the exhaustively documented diversification of species.
This battle is about pride and independence; about boldly going against the flow, in defiance of reason and all known facts.
In recent weeks, the Board of Education has been swamped by e-mails and letters from religious conservatives who advocate teaching creationism or intelligent design, and who believe evolution should be discussed strictly as a ``theory.''
For those who wish to see Florida standing still, if not sinking, this is a fantastic strategy. In fact, it could be expanded to revise other educational doctrines.
Let's start teaching gravity as a ''theory,'' too. And don't forget the solar system -- what proof do we really have, besides a bunch of fuzzy, fake-looking photos, that Mars really exists?
At a recent public hearing in Orlando, opponents of evolutionary teaching rose one by one to assail the proposed curriculum standards. Some had traveled all the way from the Panhandle, and were, like presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, exclusive believers in the Bible's version of creation.
According to The St. Petersburg Times, one speaker compared Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary science, to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, well-known tyrants and mass murderers. Such loony gibberish is actually good for the anti-evolution crusade, providing the best evidence that the human species has not advanced one iota in the last 100,000 years.
With this in mind, several school boards in North Florida have passed resolutions opposing the teaching of evolution as fact. True, students in those same districts have produced some of the worst science scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but who needs Newton or Copernicus when you've got the Corinthians?
The notion that humans descended from apes has never been popular among fundamentalists, but what of the apes themselves? Given the gory history of Homo sapiens on Earth, no self-respecting chimp or gorilla would claim a genetic connection to us.
The outcry against evolutionary instruction has been so heated that 40 members of the committee responsible for the new science standards felt compelled to sign a letter stating, ``There is no longer any valid scientific criticism of the theory of evolution.''
Caving in to groups that question the soundness of science, the letter warned, ``would not only seriously impede the education of our children but also create the image of a backward state, raising the risk of Florida's being snubbed by biotechnology companies and other science-based businesses.''
Nice try, pinheads, but there's no sin in being a slightly backward state with extremely modest expectations for its young people. That's been the guiding philosophy of our tightwad lawmakers for years, and the degree to which they've succeeded is illuminated annually in the FCAT charade.
If snubbing is to be done, Florida should be the snubber, not the snubee. Keep your elite biotech payrolls up North and out West -- we've got hundreds of thousands of low-paying, go-nowhere jobs that require little training and minimal education.
Should state officials vote this week to put evolution on the teaching agenda, it will be a small yet radical step out of Florida's backwarding-thinking past.
Resistance is not futile. We've worked hard to keep ourselves so far behind in education, and we must stay the course.

Happy Darwin Day Everyone!

The City of Cincinnati has officially claimed it as such. You can see that proclamation below. It may be hard to believe that Darwin the naturalist agnostic is buried in Westminster Abbey but it is true. He is buried next to the eminent scientist Sir John Herschel, and a few feet away from Sir Isaac Newton. Darwin is entomb there because he was greatly respected by his contemporaries and the brilliance of his work was recognized as just that, brilliant and world changing. The Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, in a memorial sermon preached in the Abbey on the Sunday following the funeral, said “I think that the interment of the remains of Mr Darwin in Westminster Abbey is in accordance with the judgment of the wisest of his countrymen . . . It would have been unfortunate if anything had occurred to give weight and currency to the foolish notion which some have diligently propagated, but for which Mr Darwin was not responsible, that there is a necessary conflict between a knowledge of Nature and a belief in God . . .”. While I would disagree with the comment that there is no conflict between knowledge of nature and belief in god, the fact remains his country recognized his contribution and wanted it clear they claimed him as one of their own. Today most of us see the tremendous expansion of our knowledge base because of his controversial views and a lot of us see the blinders of faith lifted off our heads and enjoy the expanded view.


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Be It Proclaimed:

WHEREAS, The City of Cincinnati has always been at the forefront of scientific research, medicine, and academia; and

WHEREAS, The City will continue to support the sciences at all levels of education; and

WHEREAS, many scientific advancements can be traced back to the work of Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking discovery 150 years ago, that living things change over time, or evolve, in response to selective pressure of their environment; and

WHEREAS, Darwin's theory redefined the direction of research and progress, and has since been the cornerstone of the biological sciences that have brought advancement in medicine, agriculture, zoology, paleontology, and conservation, to name a few, to benefit us all; and

WHEREAS, Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, and

WHEREAS, February 12 is a world-wide Darwin Day Celebration; and

Now, Therefore, I, Mark Mallory,
Mayor of the City of Cincinnati do hereby proclaim February 12, 2008, as

"DARWIN DAY"

in Cincinnati.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have
hereunto set my hand and caused this seal
of the City of Cincinnati to be affixed this
7th day of February in the year Two
Thousand and Eight.

/signed/
Mark Mallory, Mayor
City of Cincinnati

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Now that is very refreshing. Breath it in all you creationist!