22 July 2007

Vengeful Gods

Hello loyal readers. I think the last essay on religion angered somebody or something. My computer was struck down by a power surge the next day, and now I'm waiting to get it back. I'm writing this from the public library, but hope to have my own machine back early this week. I'm also being timed, so I have to go, but before I do, I wanted to say that I asked probably 8 random people where the library was here in this town, and it took that many to find one who knew. More on that later. TTFN!

16 July 2007

Sunday Best

Yesterday was Sunday, the day of rest, and I did my biblical best to not do much of anything. I didn’t create a universe this past week, but I did enough to lie around without feeling guilty. I did do a good deed this week, though, which I will relate in a moment, but first, I want to highlight a couple of the more godly events I ran across this week, events and actions carried out by people much closer to God than I.

The story that runs here is a shining example of Christian religious tolerance. The pope, as you may know, is practically the right hand of God himself. I’ve never really understood how being elected to the position by cardinals (men) somehow elevates the “winner” to demigod status, allowing him to be able to speak for God (when the day before he couldn’t), but that’s another story for another time. In any case, the thrust of this story is that Pope Benedict XVI, by virtue of his exclusive hotline to heaven, was able to announce to the world that the Catholic Church is, in fact, the only true church in the world. One of the proofs of the claim is that they alone enjoy apostolic succession, which means they can “trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles.” This is quite a feat, given that even in the Bible, the supposed word of God himself, biblical genealogical succession is, even to the novice, fraught with discrepancies. As a simple illustration, read the genealogical succession of Jesus in both Matthew and Luke. Without getting on my biblical errancy soapbox, the simple point is that oral tradition cannot be accepted as fact by reasonable people. I don’t know how it was two thousand years ago, but when I worked in a factory, somebody at one end of the plant could cut their finger, and by the time the news reached the other end of the plant, the injury had evolved into an amputation at the shoulder. So, Pope Benedict’s proclamation needs to be taken for what it is: an attempt by a person of dubious authority speaking for God, presenting fiction as fact.

I don’t want to pick on the Catholics too much, but as this story shows, they’ve been fairly busy this week. Once they asserted that they are the “one true church,” they found themselves in the news again just days later, although probably not for the reason they would like. In Los Angeles, the largest payout ever as recompense for sexual molestation charges against priests was ordered this week: $660 million dollars. According to the Associated Press, that amount pushes the total amount paid by the church to its secretly violated adherents (mostly children) to over 2 billion dollars since 1950; apparently if you were molested before then, too bad. In any case, that’s a lot of money. I would go one step further and say that that’s a lot of money that could be used for better things than to pay off the victims of sexual predation by the agents of God’s one church, but what do I know?

Let us turn now from the Catholics to Islam, the so-called “religion of peace.” This story helps to illustrate their benevolent nature. In today’s world arena, there isn’t a day that goes by without the words “Islam” or “Muslim” being mentioned in any given newscast. Muslim terrorists kill themselves and others by at least the hundreds every day. In the war on terror, America does have some allies in the troubled Middle East, including the best known one of Saudi Arabia. Nothing bad happens there, because they’re our friends, right? For the time being, I suppose they are, in that they’re not overtly involved in terrorist activities. However in this theocracy if you happen to be in violation of any of their numerous religious laws, you could find yourself in the unfortunate position of being punished by having your head chopped off in a public square and your body displayed in public as a deterrent. This is God’s law. The sentence is most often carried out next to a mosque, so I guess that makes it “holy” somehow. In fact, there is nothing secular about their system of justice; more often than not, offenders are tortured until confession, which provides the basis for imposition of the sentence. When we hear of the Salem witch trials we wonder how we could have been so obtuse as to sanction public execution based on forced confession, and yet it happens in Saudi Arabia as I write, and they are well on their way to exceeding their 2005 record execution rate of 191 persons in 2005. In Saudi Arabia right now, a nineteen year old Sri Lankan nanny awaits death by beheading because a baby in her care choked to death while she bottle fed him. She could be spared if the grieving family says the word, but they refuse to do so. Today, June 16, is the day the sentence is to be carried out.

There is a very interesting article here that relates the fundamentals of Islam. I urge you to read it, but if you don’t, here it is in a nutshell: God (Allah) is always right, and so is Muhammad. God can change his mind. Early verses in the Qur’an are superceded by later ones (abrogation), so Allah can say “love your enemies” and later say “kill all non-believers,” and the latter verse is the one that is held to be the “the truth”, no matter what was said previously. Make no mistake: Islam is not a religion of peace; some say it’s not even a religion at all. You do the research and decide for yourself.

The previous stories were the result of some very casual research done on the internet this week, and all have the common thread of being religious in nature. At the beginning of this essay, I said I did a good deed this week. I don’t know if it’s religious or not, but again, you decide. I had some company this weekend who was visiting from the northern regions, and was very keen to spend a few days at the beautiful beaches here in Florida. We did, and on Saturday we found ourselves in a small pavilion in Siesta Key rinsing the sand off as we prepared to leave after a day at the beach. Since we didn’t want to leave our belongings unattended we took turns showering and changing. On a picnic table across from us sat two women and a badly sun burnt child. With a thick Russian accent, the elder woman asked if I had a cellular phone she could use. I said “Of course,” and she made a call. She didn’t receive an answer, and as she handed the phone back to me, she said she was trying to contact the person who was supposed to pick them up; they had been waiting for over an hour in the hot (and I mean HOT) weather. The middle woman, who couldn’t have been much more than 18 or 20 looked about 8 months pregnant; she was obviously hot and uncomfortable, and the child, who was 8 or 9, had upon her countenance the wince of pain from too much sun. The woman said they had no money and no clue as to when their ride was coming. My visitor quickly produced a couple dollars and bought sodas for the thirsty stranded trio. Amongst ourselves, my visitor and I agreed that the right thing to do would be to offer the women a ride to their motel, which was a mere 4 miles away. They readily accepted, and we took them to their room. They had no money, and none was expected. They were obviously very happy to be off the scorching beach, and the last thing the elder woman said was “God bless you.”

This essay isn’t meant to teach any moral lessons. It is merely a series of stories that bring a fraction of the human experience to light. I hope it does somebody some good. I think you can do yourself a favor, though, if the next time you sit in your church or kneel in your mosque, you ask yourself these questions: Is the core message of my faith that of peace and goodwill, and do its institutions reflect that? If the two answers aren’t “yes” and “yes”, you have a problem.

11 July 2007

TV Wasteland, Vol. II

I wrote an essay earlier this year with the same title, hence the “Vol. II” designation. Through a series of rather depressing events, I don’t even own a television now, but I do have access to one. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I still think watching television is a form of vampirism, lulling me into oblivion while it sucks my time away. Nothing at all like the internet, you know...

The Good: I find myself really enjoying the Food Network channel. There are so many interesting things there, although I must admit that I haven’t tried many of the recipes I’ve seen. OK, I haven’t tried any of them. But I mean to. I particularly enjoy “Good Eats” with Alton Brown. He makes everything look so simple, and when I finally get my hands on a DVR, I will be sure to record some of his shows to see if I can duplicate his results. But far and away, I think the best show on the Food Network is “Unwrapped” with Marc Summers. From pretzels to marshmallows, from hot dogs to butterscotch, watching how the foods so many of us love being prepared is, to me, endlessly entertaining. Having worked in a food processing plant for much of my adult life, much of the packing machinery is familiar, but I still find myself transfixed by the process of making cheese popcorn.

The Bad: As much as I like the Food Network, I cannot extend the same praise to an episode of “Weekend Getaway” hosted by Giada DeLaurentiis that I saw this evening. Now, I have nothing against Giada, and I do not mean to imply in any way that she is an inept hostess; in fact I have learned that she is an accomplished chef and caterer in her own right. The episode I watched tonight was filmed in New York City, and it was the food and prices that I found distasteful (ha!) and not her. The featured appetizer was known as “Taylor Bay Scallop Ceviche”, and whether or not it was intentional, the camera showed the menu as she ordered, and the price was $25. I live in Florida, and I know that scallops are not the cheapest seafood you can buy, but I was really taken aback when her order arrived consisting of four tiny bay scallops. Four. Call me a cretin, but four scallops for $25 is ridiculous. I know, I know, New York. I once went to a bar in NYC (The Oak Bar in the Plaza for you critics) with two companions. Two of us had a beer and the other had a bloody mary. The bill was $32. For $32 I could buy a case of beer, a half pound of shrimp, a fifth of vodka and a gallon of bloody mary mix and still have enough for a Hershey bar. On this trip Giada also had a pizza from Grimaldi’s, and we didn’t get to see the price tag, but I’m willing to bet it was more than $8. I guess my point is that I didn’t enjoy watching somebody spend outrageous amounts of money for tiny portions of food. If that makes me a cretin, so be it. Anybody who wants to foot my bill so I can try this wonderful cuisine and maybe change my mind is more than welcome to try.

The Ugly: Aside from Rosie O’Donnell, Nancy Grace has to be the most obnoxious person on television. I had heard of her, but never seen her until tonight, and I think I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I hadn’t. In this evening’s episode, she was covering a “You Tube” video that showed a child no more than two or three allegedly under the influence of the drug ecstasy (MDMA). Don’t get me wrong, I think that if the video was authentic, and the child was drugged, the persons responsible for this type of behavior should be sterilized and forever banned from any contact with children, ever. The thing that bugged me, though, was Nancy’s shrill, repetitive squawking about how horrible it was. I think we got that in the first ten minutes of her raving while the video played on a loop, over and over and over. She had some panelists on as well, and one of them was a lawyer who said, or tried to say, that yes it was awful, but that, from a legal standpoint, it would be very difficult to press charges against any of the vehicle’s occupants because the child, although obviously under some sort of duress, was not being physically mistreated. Nobody was burning her with cigarettes or gouging her eyes. That the child had been given ecstasy was implied, but as far as the tape went, nobody knew for sure that that was what had happened. The trouble was, every time this guy tried to make his point, Nancy cut him off as though he were advocating the drugging and filming of children. His exasperation showed when he was repeatedly interrupted, but he never got the chance to finish answering the question Nancy herself had asked. It was as if she wanted to ask the question, but didn’t want to hear the answer unless it was a hand-wringing admonition of the vehicle’s occupants at least, or better yet, a call for a public execution. Maybe it’s just me, but if you are going to have a television show with a panel of guests to offer insight and opinion, wouldn’t it be prudent to listen to all of the opinions of all the panelists and then let the viewers decide? The one panelist who didn’t toe the opinion line seemed to be there solely as a whipping boy to give the illusion that if you don’t agree totally with Nancy, you do not deserve to be heard. It was a disgusting example of what passes for “unbiased” reporting on television.

And as an ironic note, a quickie research of both O’Donnell and Grace showed reports that both of them are vying for new shows: Grace to replace Rosie on “The View”, and Rosie to replace Bob Barker on “The Price is Right.” I’d rather watch Jerry Springer than either of these two harpies. I don’t think I need to repeat here that most television is indeed, a vast wasteland.

I’ve got more TV wasteland fodder, but I’m done for now. For those who are interested, the second part of “Me and Jack Webb” is almost finished. Watch for it on my "serious" blog (link to the right) soon!