Ted Haggard

It's fitting that Ted Haggard led New Life Church, as he is now exploring a new life as an insurance salesman and sometime Oprah guest, sometime documentary subject. And now he's looking for redemption, the essence of "new life" as defined in Christianity. He's an ex-pastor, but not just any pastor; Haggard was the head of the evangelical movement - a man of real power. He believed it was his duty and the duty of all Christians to use government to make "God's will" a reality, and was the leader of like-minded millions who think they know the nature of this particular god and what its will would be, and how to implement that will correctly. And thus he was targeted, rightly, as an enemy of equality and a friend of authoritarian government.

ABCNews.com: "Before the scandal broke, Haggard was a powerhouse and star in the evangelical world, rising quickly from the humble founding of Colorado's New Life Church in his basement in the 1980s. By 2006, the church was 12,000 members strong and Haggard, as president of the evangelical association, was exchanging weekly phone calls with President Bush."

So in November 2006, when news broke that a male prostitute named Mike Jones had information linking Ted Haggard to him, and to crystal meth, and to Denver, these hi jinks were irresistible to a political left who had been battered and electorally bruised (soon to change starting with the congressional victories later that month) - they held him up as an example of all the hypocrisy of the evangelical right. His fall represented the end of power for the evangelical right, and for good reason: This is the same lot who proselytizes about the intrinsic value of marriage between a man and a woman and yet has the highest divorce rate of any religious division in this country. This is the group who leads the "family values" fight and attempts to erase the reality of homosexuality from the culture by marginalizing gays, fighting hard against their right to wed by using their bible to advocate their hard-wired bigotry, insults them on a basic level by claiming to "cure" them through misguided and misanthropic programs which are supposed to replace their natural homosexuality with dishonest heterosexuality, shoe-horned in using that contradictory bible and the bastardized authority of Jesus Christ and mostly pressure from Christ's tragically simple followers. The deadly hypocrisy of a sect that claims to love all of God's children and yet wants millions of them not to exist is obvious, yet still striking. Ted Haggard led that swath of the country to the great distress and damage of homosexuals like himself.

Somehow New Life Church didn't believe the story that Haggard "threw away" the crystal meth he had bought and his denials about his series of rendezvous with the male prostitute named Mike Jones, and of course neither did anyone else. I watched him on Oprah yesterday while I was snowed in and he said that he was "lying" and his assertion that he threw the drugs away was "stupid." New Life Church banned him from their congregation, banned him from the state of Colorado (this lasted one year), and banned him from ever ministering there again.

Haggard told Oprah that if his wife and children had abandoned him after this fall from grace, during his steady spiral downward, he would have committed suicide. He said he still had thoughts about men, sexual thoughts. He told Oprah that he was a heterosexual with homosexual tendencies. He told Newsweek that he is still opposed to gay marriage, because he is "evangelical at heart." It is this last assertion, this clinging to the last vestiges of bible-assisted bigotry, that causes me to wonder if redemption can ever truly be his.

I can believe that there may be some gray area between heterosexual and homosexual; therefore goes bisexuality. Redemption always wins eventually with Christians, as this is what their entire fundament leads to. They will not deny this man Ted Haggard redemption, although he has fought and will continue to fight for it in full. So now the question that rattles around in his homosexual head must be this: Can I get back to where I was, and who I was, the leader of a powerful church?

If it is in his heart to be an evangelical pastor, then he feels this as deeply as he feels his homosexuality, and the seed of his inner conflict was probably sown early, at six or seven years old, when he was sexually abused by a friend of his father. Because he cannot marry the two, the evangelical man and the homosexual man, he sees his homosexual bent as something to defeat and not give in to, as if he's trying not to go to the gas station for a pack of smokes after quitting. He reports to Oprah Winfrey that he fasted an extra day, and redoubled his efforts in prayer, in an attempt to resist the manifestation of those urges at different times. This after the outing that cost him his career.

He clearly hasn't accepted who he is. One can see how Haggard became the leader of such a powerful movement; he is charismatic and believable, seemingly honest and now, crippled by his manifested homosexuality, harmless. But he was not always harmless, and the biblical anti-gay stance that he voiced, which allowed him to preach bigotry to a dominated congregation and make a very good living doing so (he and his family still lives in a $700,000 house) and speak regularly with a sitting president, is still present despite his own partial reckoning with his nature.

And it is the partial aspect of this reckoning that prevents him from full redemption in the public eye. This man must advocate for the reality of homosexuality at least, and end this blurring of that reality with his waffling nonsense about "homosexual tendencies." Those tendencies reveal homosexuality, not some dark aspect of the human condition that must be "cured" or resisted. And this is his test: Can Ted Haggard come to terms with who he is, and if so, will he use the empathy within him to take the courageous stand and see homosexuals fully as people? Or will he continue his hedging in an attempt to "fix" himself and prolong what is clearly the primary struggle in his life? If he does the latter, he isn't only denying his own nature: He's claiming something worse than the evangelical Christian belief that gays are somehow second class people. Haggard still believes that homosexuality itself is evil and must be defeated, and therefore naturally, by extension, so must homosexuals themselves. This is an advance into dark territory indeed, spearheaded by the forces of self hatred and fear. This is why he says that he's still against gay marriage, because he lacks the essential courage to reckon with his nature and will do anything, including abandoning the idea that homosexuals should exist equally and fully, to avoid this reckoning. Haggard isn't "evangelical at heart," unless that phrase is a euphemism for his self loathing. Which it must be, for what else explains a man who is clearly gay and yet cannot find it in himself to advocate for the equal treatment of fellow gay people? This choice between "fixing" homosexuality and coming to terms with and accepting it for Ted Haggard represents the same choice that many, many self-hating gays in positions of influence in the church must make in the interest of truly celebrating the breadth of humanity on this planet and carrying the torch for salvation.

Of course, Ted Haggard could be a psychotic careerist who is on a singular mission to preach because he's good at it and it has been quite profitable. If that's true, he is truly a gifted charlatan, especially if he succeeds after this incredible transgression against his church and his followers.

What would Jesus do? The Jesus that Ted Haggard's people believe in, the one who loves all, would surely not stop with flipping the tables of the money changers when hearing of this abominable treatment of so many of his children. The fact that so many Christians fail in this basic aspect of their own faith, to interpret the grander meaning of the redemptive power of their own savior continues to astonish, and continues to marginalize them and homosexuals both in the name of pure evil. The choice is theirs.

Automatic Arguments: Teacher v. Athlete

I have a lifelong buddy named Shawn D who definitely won't read this entry due to his dedication to Budweiser products instead of Microsoft products. It's too bad, because I'm correcting one of his worst arguments.

Stop me if you've heard it, as it is one of the most popular and pathetic of the "automatic arguments": Teachers don't get paid enough, they should be paid more, and look at what athletes make, it's not fair.

This often comes in the form of "Look at what they pay teachers! It's a disgrace! I mean, why do they pay athletes so much while teachers are so underpaid!?"

The above bold represents the problem: They. Who are they? Well, they are us, and we "pay" them in very different ways.

In this automatic teacher v. athlete argument, we are talking about public school teachers. These teachers are paid using tax dollars and enjoy strong union support, summers off, and are part of the intrinsic structure of a community. They do perform a tough job and a necessary one, but they cannot be paid much more outside of what a particular community determines, and this is why the mindless comparison to athletes makes no sense. Teachers don't generate funds directly based on the function of what they do on a daily basis. They are paid from public funds, and aren't making money for a company, so their value is not measured monetarily by their contributions to the growth and profit of a business in a free market.

Pro athletes generate massive sums by belonging to leagues that draw huge television ratings and therefore advertising dollars. We don't pay them directly; we consume the products sold by the advertisers and buy tickets to the games and concessions and team apparel and other goods. Successful professional sports leagues enjoy huge revenues that are split between the league, ownership/staff (including coaches) and the players. The last figures I remember reading a few months ago showed that athletes in the NFL, for example, take about 60% of the revenue a team gets, compared to 40% for ownership. That seems fair; after all, the athletes are risking sometimes major injury and are the stars of the show. Owners are generally fat, supremely rich white men who usually sit numbly in a glass box watching the profitable action.

It wasn't always this way; before free agency owners had players over a barrel. Curt Flood changed baseball by forcing free agency in 1970 and professional sports leagues haven't been the same since. Which is a very good thing, as it comes down to a simple question: Who do you want making the most money - the players on the field who are doing all of the work and taking physical risks or the owner of the team who is doing no work and taking a minimal financial risk? I think the answer is clear.

Teachers are part of the public sector and funds must be allocated on a scale determined by several factors, none of which is related to competition in a free market. We don't buy tickets to observe them teach in person, and we don't watch them teach on television. Of course this is where the comparative aspect of the argument falls apart, even though it really wasn't together in the first place and never made much sense. But it's easy to make, you see, so it's made. The problem is, people just stop with the athletes/teachers comparison, everyone gets huffy about how wrong the whole thing is, and the discussion ends. What should happen is a discussion of how communities can find ways to pay teachers more, fire bad ones and use incentives to draw good ones. Discuss the pros/cons of the union and how both communities and teachers would be better served by higher pay and stronger incentives and how to achieve those things. Talk about how nurses and doctors are compensated compared with teachers, as this would actually be related to the conversation. Oh wait - that would take intellectual effort.

That sort of back and forth could actually be constructive and educational, while automatic arguments which don't go anywhere and cause people to agree on the obvious "wrongness" of something are as useless as complaining about the weather. It's time to retire this teacher v. athlete argument with regard to salary, which would automatically elevate any such conversation on the subject to at least one level above stupid simply by its omission.

Get Off The Bus

I was kicking around the 'Comments' area of Guardian U.K. a little while back and came across an idea for an ad which was to be placed on the panels of some London buses, sponsored by Professional Atheist Richard Dawkins, which would feature an atheistic message. This in response to ads sponsored by different religious influences, and the specifics aren't that important. You can imagine - "GOD IS GOOD. FREE CRACKERS AT 11:00."

But what is the Dawkins message?

"THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE."

Clever? Nothing could possibly be clever enough to hide the inherent desperation and sadness enclosed in this message. What an utter failure. Why?

Well, read it again. "Probably" no God. We know that atheists don't believe in God, so this is not really a message that honestly represents their view. As a matter of fact, the monolithic atheist mission right now seems to be to eliminate all possibility of God or spiritual experience. This certainly doesn't seem to do that, and opens up the door to the possibility of God due to the use of the word probably, all courtesy of the world's most popular advocate for atheism. If the ad is selling godlessness to the public, it isn't doing much of a job, probably because it's hard to sell the lack of something and also rather pointless.

"Now Stop Worrying" - really? About what, everything? I know that Mr. Dawkins is making what seems to be a good living from The God Delusion, which stayed on the New York Times non-fiction best seller list for about a year. He tours, he dances, he shares his views and is paid to do so. This is partly because he is a worthy contributor to healthy debate, but seemingly a humorless one. He may be financially secure and may not have the emotional intelligence or moral structure necessary to give a damn about the issues of the world, but most of the rest of us have a lot to worry about. Oh wait, I'm sure he wants to strip down religious influence so that we can conduct ourselves as civilized people, and religion has a brutal history - that's the popular argument. This completely ignores the fact that these religions, while deeply flawed, provide a moral code that atheism can't. We need something that enshrines empathy as a "godly" thing - whether God can be proven to exist absolutely or not. Our societies are fragile, and we need these religious mechanisms to help massive numbers of our world population learn the importance of caring for each other, and those mechanisms provide people a higher reason to do so. The Golden Rule is good, but of course those who seek power know that they can treat others as they please without the fear of reciprocal treatment most of the time. The Golden Rule succumbs to trickery. Individuals need a moral reminder to varying degrees - I don't need to go to church to know that I should be good to people - but to destroy the whole religion thing and trust atheism and soulless pursuit of satisfaction and the Golden Rule to take care of ethical things would be a sure way to destroy selflessness and empathy and all of the other, higher expressions of human dignity. We need those to continue our civilizations, along with notions of liberty and equality. The conceptualization of a higher power structure gives those ideas more weight and unifies people under them.

That's the idea behind the Declaration of Independence, for example: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." By mentioning a "Creator," men aren't just bestowing all of these rights, in an elitist fashion, to all of the people: They are uniting everyone, including themselves, and the now sacred ideals of meaningful life and liberty, under a greater power. It's more brilliant and effective than anything a godless moral code has to offer. To take morality for granted would be foolish - the success of the civilized world is not ensured, but the lack of a moral code goes a long way toward ensuring its failure.

Finally, "Enjoy Your Life." Anton Lavey spawned a brand of agnostic, atheistic Satanism that challenges Christianity not based on worship of Satan, instead using Satan as a representative rebellious figure in the pursuit of questioning Christianity. Not surprisingly, the moral code boils down to fulfilling urges, so Lavey Satanists are hedonists. This nearly non-existent moral code is similar to the code that results from Ayn Rand's Objectivism, although she was starting from a very different place: Establishing the primacy of reason and barely acknowledging the function of human emotion as a tool for gaining worldly knowledge. Her moral code also featured an empty pursuit of happiness model - happiness being a measurement of one's success in meeting the challenges of the world. No mention of caring for others, no mention of the clear failures of Darwinistic "survival of the fittest" theory applied in reality to the human condition, which dooms the meek to misery and poverty and death. The anarcho-capitalism that results from application of her worldview aggrandizes the logical self, rewards the wealthy and dooms nearly everyone else. We've seen how that has worked in America in recent years. The manifestation of this ideology results in failure for most people, and great wealth for a very privileged few.

So Dawkins got his bus ad, and now some buses roll around in London and maybe other cities in England with his agnostic/atheistic/hedonistic message, although the ads were nixed at the last minute in Italy. Dawkins gets what he wants: more publicity, which surely leads to more paid speeches and more recognition and more money. So he's enjoying his life and maybe he has no worries? The rest of us have plenty to worry about, militant atheism and Richard Dawkins and bankrupt moral codes included.

Nine Hours Of Daylight

Watch the Obama Inauguration speech again, or if you remember it freshly in feeling and on message don't bother. Then read the text, at least most of it and get a sense of what the words convey in black and white. When you're watching and then later while reading, imagine the speech in the voice of George W. Bush. He's making the exact same speech, and you're evaluating it.

Yeah, I know we're done with him. Just bear with me.

The idea is to yes, get caught up in the sweeping emotion when you're watching Obama's speech it and really feel it. Enjoy it. Be inspired - it's good for the country when people are inspired for sound and virtuous reasons. It's not just about Obama the man or the president, it's about what he represents and the ideas that he articulates, strikingly well. It's hard to watch him and listen to him every time afresh, even after the many, many months of campaigning, and not think that he believes in what he says. So if we're being tricked, this is an elaborate and awful trick, one that makes fools of us for simply believing in the core values of our country and the goodness of people and then electing the one who embodies them purely.

The point of reading the text of the speech and hearing it in Bush's voice is to interpret what the words mean without the emotion, or even with a feeling of antipathy toward the speaker. It's a test of belief in a man I suppose, but also a test of the inherent substance of the speech. What do the words say, without such attachment of the heart?

Sometimes Obama directly contradicts the thrust of the Bush administration when he lofts verbal cannonballs, describing how our country must be protected without sacrificing our ideals. That wouldn't need to be said if those ideals hadn't been so clearly sacrificed by the shameful conduct of the Bush/Cheney crew and what resulted. Bush supporters, and there will always be some, are still supporters mainly because "we haven't been attacked since 9/11." Who am I quoting? Them. What else does he get any credit for other than allegedly protecting the country from more terrorist attacks?

Of course, this notion that we have been protected is false. Our reputation in the world after Iraq and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and torture is wrecked; we only hope it isn't totaled. That and our continued hated presence in the Middle East is what leads to more terrorist attacks. Wiretapping and heightened airport security doesn't prevent them. The hard fanatics find other ways because we have incited fury, and those who are furious are skilled at destruction. They have chosen not to strike in the window created by the time between 9/11 and now, but that's our window, our time frame, not theirs. Even a diminished al-Qaeda is dangerous and strikes on their schedule, not ours.

Play a trick of your own. Imagine it's 2000, but Bush has won the election in the manner he won in 2004: 286 electoral votes (270 needed), 62,000,000+ total votes, 50.8% of total votes, 3,000,000 vote margin of victory. That's a legitimate victory, one that can't be challenged by the Supreme Court. Bush takes this legitimacy and uses it in an attempt to spread good will and unite the country, so he speaks Obama's 2009 inauguration speech.

If you voted for him and believed in him, the same way you feel about Obama now (if you do), you would probably be almost as inspired but maybe not quite, considering Obama's deadly oratory skills - but imagine Bush at his best, not flubbing things, and doing what he did when he was "on", which for him meant clarity and concision and toughness. If you didn't vote for him, would you have believed in him more based on his legitimate victory and impressive speech? Maybe you would give him a chance, or maybe you would at least feel better about the upcoming Bush presidency.

The point is, presidents say a lot of things, as they are politicians who have risen to the apex of success in their discipline. Obama could disappoint us. It's probably a good idea to temper this inspiration with some common sense and a will to criticize honestly. The good feelings associated with this - at the end of the day unbelievable - inauguration are legitimate and the joy is substantive. The man who serves us now in the highest office speaks as if he truly believes in and will uphold our cornerstone ideals. Now it's about how he does it, and if his reach and grasp are equal. His words mean something in that estimation, which won him the presidency and much good will, and so the evaluation of his actions can begin.

Grant Park

...To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you.To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

- Barack H. Obama

November 4, 2008 was the day on which many things ended: an election, a failed presidency, the second class status of a people. For millions apathy, for millions despair, for many more both. For millions more, their vision of the direction of the country would not be realized, and this new and surely different direction would have to be reckoned with.

It's easy to assault a word like hope when it is used so often in a certain context, especially during a political contest. It is also easy to associate the word hope with assumed future policy, in an effort to make those policies seem as if they're based on something without substance.

But of what substance is hope? It must be real; what mainly keeps us going but the hope for a better series of tomorrows? This isn't meant to be flighty conjecture - I've been as atheistic as they come, and thought myself a rationalist, a realist, and not one to succumb to emotional guidance. But the survival instinct alone would drive us to do many grave things, especially when resources are scarce and empathy is forgotten. Besides, we are too advanced intellectually and socially to simply follow the survival instinct mindlessly, save those who barely think at all or those who have just given up, or given in to forces which subjugate their will to be. What of hope and empathy though? The initial quote is a statement of strength through peace, a sophisticated idea and one of the most difficult to realize, and the hope and empathy which is mentioned here again provides much of the bedrock. Without a great many people believing in such lofty ideas, they would be rendered useless. They are tenuous - constantly challenged from within and otherwise - and yet are invaluable, and must be cherished accordingly in the interest of continuing on in a free and prosperous country. The alternatives are nearly unspeakable by comparison.

If emotion isn't a worthy interpretive mechanism with which to know the world, then why does pure rationality fail to provide all useful knowledge? Why does it miss some of the most crucial aspects of the human experience?

I ask because I thought of something I found interesting and I coudn't sleep because of it and thought that maybe I could find a simple answer. I just wanted to know what someone else may think of why evolution happens.

So I typed 'why evolution happens' into a Google search. The first two pages were about 'how evolution happens.' The exact phrase was not present. How and why, of course, are two very different things. I don't expect to get to the bottom of this issue by the end of the entry, but if I do, I'll surely have a better computer soon and wider readership.

I think the question of why evolution happens leads to the failure of atheism. One can explain how evolution happens, one can roughly explain the origins of life, and one can explain the survival instinct which provides the inertia which enables continued existence.

But if evolution and life were truly random, why would a survival instinct be present to continue life? If it were random, why would it be necessary for life to continue? Life would have happened, maybe only for a second, then died out without motivation. What is the motivation? To simply to continue to live? On its face, it makes little sense.

Our success as living creatures seems to suggest a why - and of course, the presence of a why would destroy the random nature of existence. Life is sturdy, and life is strong, and life continues, even when it seems absurd that it's even possible on a rock with water near enough to a star in what seems to be mainly a void. Chance seems like it is only one of several possibilities, but atheism only works if chance is the only possible cause. I reject chance as the only possibility, and therefore I reject hard, material rationality brand atheism, sold at a bookstore near you.

I also reject it because as I wrote before, I think it is necessary for greater possibilities than chance to facilitate hope, which is what drives us to maximize our potential as civilized people, as does community and a real sense of brotherhood gained through shared experience and condition. We are still evolving; our limits are currently unknown. To stop intellectually and philosophically evolving now based on the surety of an almighty God or the surety of a complete lack thereof would be foolish. We travel on, fueled by hope, and yes, survivalist instincts, and love, and things we don't know about ourselves or the world, at least not yet. Maybe we never will, but what we've learned so far about our capacity to succeed and our will to be free while still caring for our fellow man and exploring all of the possibilities inherent to this coil should and does inspire us to continue.

Zeitgeist, The Movie Review

Zeitgeist, The Movie - a running commentary:

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche kicks things off by announcing that spirituality means...intuition, among other commentary about the "theistic tradition." There is no actual video yet, just a few screen effects. Mr. Trungpa was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who died of heart failure at age 48 after years of alcohol abuse, according to Wikipedia. He's also the author of Drinking Your Way To Nirvana: A User's Guide To Buddhism. Really? No, not really.

Almost 3 minutes in, this Trungpa fellow won't stop...and he does sound a little tipsy. He gives me the impression that I would enjoy drinking with him.

Trungpa closes his nonsensical ramblings by expressing that it's "very funny indeed" that we continue to "vote for the presidents." This is all amongst echo effects, kind of like the "in the bush...in the bush...in the bush" thing from Ozzy's No More Tears video. More Trungpa words: "Waiting to be dead...waiting to be dead...waiting to be dead (dramatic echoes!) Not trusting 'nowness' properly (?). Maybe that's why we seek religion, maybe that's why we march in the street, maybe that's why we complain to society, maybe that's why we vote for the presidents. It's quite ironical..."

That's very close to verbatim and is pretty much gibberish, yes? I don't understand his point, and I reject "ironical" because proper new word certification procedures were clearly not followed. But maybe all of this relates somehow to the rest of the movie, although it's not a very good sign that this drunken babbling is the way the filmmaker* chooses to start his explanatory quest.

First video: Missiles firing, lots of them, eventually some mushroom clouds.

This takes us to a jaunt through the universe, starting with earth and moving to the sun and some galaxies and fun stuff. I noticed this tag line while I waited for the damned thing to actually start: "What does Christianity, 911 and The Federal Reserve all have in common?" I don't know, the fact that all three should be preceded by "What do" instead of "What does?" Probably the Masons made all of them happen and the Masons are mysterious and oddly evil somehow. "You know Bob, the dollar bill sure is strange! What's with that eye on top of the pyramid?"

But maybe not? I love this stuff - so I'll give it some chance to make sense.

Back to earth - cells dividing, cool animation of amoebas turning into fish, turning into higher life forms. So this is a documentary about...everything, ever. I have to admit, I dig it so far. I've always wanted to know everything.

It's important to get the next sequence down correctly. Eventually, the life form progressions turn into a human (naturally), and then a hand appears, then the hand grasps a pencil and proves that the hand's host body can perform the mathematical equation "1+1=2." Yes. Then the paper with the equation on it disappears, and a different mysterious hand places a Holy Bible where the equation was. And then the hand drapes an American flag over the Holy Bible. Next, planes fly into the WTC and more random missiles and explosions. I'm not leaving anything out, except for me kinda yelling "umm...what the fuck, did I miss something!?" to nobody. So we as humans learned simple math, wrote the Bible, started America, and 9/11 happened and shit started to generally blow up.

Let me write that down again..."simple math...bible...America...9/11...shit blows up." Okay, got it. What am I in for here?

Jumping around from WTC collapse to mass graves in Vietnam or Cambodia, can't tell which. No Adagio for Strings, but similarly unhappy music at a slightly faster pace with percussion here and there. The percussion intensifies things, you see. Dead children, random unhappy people from what appears to be the Middle East. Still no narration whatsoever, but what would the narrator say at this point? Bad things happen to good people because we figured out math?

At 8:45 in, "Zeitgeist" appears on the screen! The title screen's appearance at this late point suggests to me that there is not enough material for a movie, so sad music and disturbing images have so far taken the place of actual exposition, along with the drunken Buddhist ramblings. But there is still hope! I mean, at least it's exciting, right?

Jordan Maxwell claims we've been lied to! Who is he? From his official site: "Jordan Maxwell continues as a preeminent researcher and speaker in the fields of secret societies, occult philosophies, and ufology since 1959. His work is not only fascinating to explore, but too important to ignore." I love these guys, I really do. And I did just write in my last blog that I'm open to UFOs, but that's mostly because when several eyewitness accounts and pilots say the same thing, I find it interesting. And that's a far cry from "ufology" - the study of UFOs as if they undoubtedly exist as alien spacecraft. Like I said, I'm open to the possibility that we can't explain some things that fly around, not sold on the reality that aliens just jam in and out of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, Mr. Maxwell recommends this book: Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, to which he supplies the foreword. If I find out that a major publisher accepted this work for distribution, I will immediately gut myself Samurai-style.

Jordan Maxwell intimates that "I don't know what God is, but I know what he isn't."

The "False Dilemma" logical fallacy:

A False Dilemma is a fallacy in which a person uses the following pattern of "reasoning":

1. Either claim X is true or claim Y is true (when X and Y could both be false).
2. Claim Y is false.
3. Therefore claim X is true.

So a person can't know what God isn't if they don't know what God is, and I think it's clear what this fellow is claiming, that he knows that god isn't y, without knowing what set of qualities x even represents, and how exactly ...anyway... this man is a source used to present information in a "serious" documentary? Seriously? He does say "damn" and "dammit" a lot though, a verbal trait I've always enjoyed. His reference to God in this case is about our "masters" and banking cartels and a vaguely messed up education system. It's all vague actually, but it's very dramatic, and that's what's really important when the room is dark and then you smoke some pot.

George Carlin makes a vocal "appearance" with his bit about religion being the biggest bullshit story every conceived, and God is an invisible man who lives in the sky...funny shit when Carlin did it. But now he's dead, and I'm watching a cartoon of God in the sky, in a cloud specifically. With Carlin's voice in the background among some of the worst keyboard/drum/shlock music ever produced. I can't dance to this. I can't believe any of this.

Animations courtesy of Ruprecht Monkey Boy.

Part I is called "The Greatest Story Ever Told." So here's hoping that there is only one part, and then this will be the best movie ever made despite the awful, eternally long, ridiculous intro.

Zodiac symbols, the twelve months, other prophets/deity types (Horus, Dionysus, etc.) are being used to show that the biblical word of God is all borrowed from earlier stories and astrology as it relates to Jesus. I'm looking forward to the jump from "Christianity is borrowed" to "Christianity is evil." Although the narrator claims that Christ's crown of thorns is actually "sun rays" as he and all of these other prophets are variations of a sun god. Okay, sure! None of this magical nonsense actually happened anyway, so let's go ahead and get to the point before I just go completely nuts.

*** Bullshit Alert! Category: Astronomical History ***

The precession of the equinoxes: The movie claims that "ancient Egyptians, along with cultures long before them (who exactly?) recognized that approximately every 2,150 years, the sunrise on the morning of the spring equinox would occur at a different sign of the zodiac." If they did, they never expressed it: A fellow named Hipparchus is credited with discovering the precession of the equinoxes somewhere between 147 BC and 127 BC. Wiki: "...if the ancient Egyptians knew of precession, their knowledge is not recorded in surviving astronomical texts." The movie claims that they were "very aware" of precession. Really? But they never bothered to record that knowledge? There is some evidence that temples were built and then torn down and rebuilt to coincide with some star orientations, but that hardly proves that they knew of precession, and seems like a pretty damned inefficient way of doing anything - tearing down and rebuilding the same buildings over and over again. The proof is in the narrator's language: "very" aware. One is either aware or unaware. The only reason to use "very" is because the claim is weak. Burden of proof requirement: Failed, due to lack of credible evidence necessary to support the claim. Let's move on.

The narrator trips along, taking bible passages wildly out of context to make astrological points about the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius, and doesn't back up claims of biblical mistranslations and generally annoys me as much as anyone does when they take things out of context, especially stupid things.

The criticism of the basics of Christianity continues in the area of plagiarism of past stories and this all points out what everyone knows: You need faith to believe this stuff because otherwise it's bullshit. It's not real! I'm shocked, I really am. Besides, while this stuff is interesting when presented a certain way, logic and reason suffice quite well when debunking Christian claims or any other religious claims. You don't need all of this pseudo-historical astrological silliness. Bill Hicks is now in the film; why not just show a half-hour of Carlin and a half-hour of Hicks? All of this dumping on Christianity would be much more entertaining.

Better though, that the existence of a man named Jesus Christ is questioned. Josephus's accounting is historically highly suspect, and the other three historians who are referenced when attempting to corroborate the "Jesus was a real dude" claim don't mention him specifically: There's a good chance this guy Jesus never even existed! So far, my favorite part of the movie next to the 417,000 missiles exploding in the intro. Present that evidence and people tend to get upset. I mean, if no Jesus Christ walked the earth then this whole Christianity thing is a much bigger test of faith than these Christians signed up for. I would prefer it if he were an actual human, because he seems like a good enough guy with a solid community organizer (ha ha) type of message. It's more fun that way - I don't have to think he was some god-guy to think that he was a good guy who really existed. Why not? Of course, the vast majority of historians have agreed that Jesus was an actual person, with the doubters being on the fringe. How much of this is just accepted without question is unknowable, but "Most Historians" v. "Zeitgeist, The Movie" is like "Mike Tyson" v. "Cicely Tyson."

Wild leaps! The Christian religion was created by Rome for political reasons related to control. This ignores any complexities related to Paul and the branching off of Christianity from Judaism, and while the involvement of Emperor Constantine is mentioned, how he was involved is not. So there is no evidence to support the claim that the historical Jesus was created in Rome for political reasons. It is a massive simplification of a complex process. The Vatican is blamed for the Dark Ages, exclusively. No other factors or potential causes are considered. Between the alleged politicization of Christianity by Rome and assigning blame to the Vatican alone for the Dark Ages, I think this is where the movie shifts aggressively to pure conjecture and absurdity. There is simply not enough evidence presented which would support these claims. It's an all out "blame Christianity" argument without any mention of other factors that contributed to the Dark Ages specifically. From Cornell University, "Ask An Astronomer":

I recently read an article that asteroids or something like that busting up in the Earth's atmosphere, was what caused the term the Dark Ages during the Middle Ages. Is it true?

It is true that there was a steep drop in the population of Europe in the mid-6th century, a time frame that coincides with what is commonly referred to as "the Dark Ages" (a period of time spanning several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, from which there are few historical records of events in Europe). Most of this was due to a plague that is widely believed to be an earlier occurence (sic) of the Bubonic plague that struck Europe again in the 14th century, but there's also some evidence that there was some global cooling going on at that time. This would have led to lower crop yields, and caused the population to drop further.

The astronomical aspect isn't even necessary when doing a basic search for some of the potential causes for the Dark Ages. Why isn't any one of these elements present in the film's argument? Because it's just an assault on a religion and is not interested in a rational, fact based presentation. Christianity and its involvement with the power structure in the U.S. is ripe for criticism, but this kind of thing obscures responsible efforts in that pursuit.

Part II is called "All The World's A Stage." Based on the biased and often unfounded claims used against Christianity, and the clues that suggest we're suddenly moving toward 9/11 conspiracy theorist territory, I'm preparing to get angry. Should I? Well, I don't like religion much, generally, but I can actually see some good in different religions when the higher aspirations of good will toward others and betterment of mankind are the focus. That's pretty rare, but at least it's possible. Plus, religion is cohesive, and Christianity in this country, practiced among people and outside of politics, is a charitable force and often a positive influence. Having said that, there are several reasons to bring religion down a few pegs in this country, as we have seen the results of faith-based governmental leadership, especially in the foreign policy arena, and any continuation of that idea is unacceptable. It doesn't work.

But when it comes to 9/11...the facts are not in dispute. The issue is settled. These sorts of distractions are frustrating; fortunately most people have completely dismissed this nonsense. But let's see what territory we arrive in...

Well, the 9/11 Truth brigade is obviously involved, as this part of the movie is a controlled demolition claim. Read this:

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency Report of 2002 and the later National Institute of Standards and Technology report of 2005 regarding the reconstruction of the collapse events of the Twin Towers and Seven World Trade Center both contradict the controlled demolition hypothesis. On August 21, 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology released a 77 page report on the cause of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. It concluded that the collapse occurred because the building was set on fire by falling debris from the other burning towers, that catastrophic failure occurred when the 13th floor collapsed weakening a critical steel support column and that the collapse of the nearby towers broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water. The theories that the collapse was caused by explosions or fires caused by diesel fuel in the building was investigated and ruled out."

Passage from Wiki, everything independently sourced - check it out for yourself, check Wiki's sources, do what you have to and leave your emotions at the door. Check both sets of claims and come to the conclusion that makes the most sense if you haven't already. Read Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke for insight on the attitudes of the major players involved with 9/11; it's about incompetence and a misguided focus on Iraq instead of al-Qaeda, not about some lame-brained conspiracy theory that just doesn't make sense when independently sourced facts are considered and some basic homework is done. Popular Mechanics has a very good piece entitled Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report. Your technical questions, answered by experts in the field. Have a blast, knock yourself out, call grandma and tell her all about it. I saw the report years ago: I was satisfied.

By the way, as a movie: This is not very good, not very good at all. The earlier documentary aspect concerning religion is somewhat interesting, but that's the best that can be said. The graphics, animations, and most of the music are laughably poor. We've all seen the plane ram into the first Twin Tower; does it need to be replayed 9, 10 times in a row, really fast, with really loud whooshing and concussive sound effects? What does this add to an already sensational event? Bad - but worse, obnoxious - filmmaking. That's the most offensive aspect to these 9/11 "truthers" - they're so convinced that they're right and everyone else is wrong that they try to "shock" us into listening to them, at the same time debasing our emotional connection to the event, as if that connection isn't legitimate because we're all just so dumb and wrong about what actually happened. They have all of the special information required, and we're so stupidly accepting of whatever the government and the media tells us. Please. These people couldn't be more wrong, in every area of argument, and then they think they need to drive some point home by sensationalizing this mass murder. Misplaced audacity such as this doesn't get much more pathetic.

I have to admit, I fast forwarded through the rest of the 9/11 stuff and landed on this: New World Order, NAFTA creates North American-style EU, and then this direct quote from the narrator:

"By default of this agreement, the American Constitution will eventually be obsolete. You would think that a situation like this would be on the cover of every major newspaper. That is, until you realize that the people who are behind this movement are the same people who are behind the mainstream media. And you are not told what you are not supposed to know. The North American Union is the same concept as the European Union, the African Union, and the soon-to-be Asian Union. And the same people are behind all of them."

Yeah, wake me up when all that happens. These powerful people certainly have a lot of energy - far more than me, so there isn't much I can do to fight this unless I learn to breathe fire and piss acid. Can anyone possibly afford to take the years it would require to dispute all of these claims? This movie doesn't deserve the effort. How much baseless conjecture actually exists in the world? It may indeed be infinite. James Warburg gets the final quote from Zeitgeist:

"We shall have World Government, whether or not you like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent."

Mr. Warburg was a banker and special adviser to FDR. Wiki also tells me that he wrote the lyrics to the hit song Can't We Be Friends?, released in 1929 and the musical Fine and Dandy in 1930. Clearly, anything this man ever uttered should be taken as gospel truth. You have been warned and you will be assimilated. Probably in like a week or so.

* I used the words "filmmaker" and "filmmaking" in this entry - what the hell am I talking about? There isn't a bit of original footage in the whole thing from what I can tell. It's just a serial masturbator copy/pasting a bunch of whack-job crap into Microsoft Video Machine.

Atheists: Okay, Now What?

I have come to a point of shifting: I must now shift away from the word atheist and to some other currently unspecified and incomplete philosophy. I knew, somehow, that I wasn't a person who needed this atheism as much as many atheists need their agreed upon philosophy to be true. There is an emotional clinging inherent to this "new atheism" that bothers me more than the emotional clinging that many Christians partake in. The difference? Christianity offers something in return, even if the mechanics of what they offer and how it's offered don't make much sense in a logical world. Atheism offers...what exactly? Are they singularly dedicated to factual presentation, and purely robotic logical explanation of things, or are they scared of something too? Scared of anything they can't know for sure? Well, "they" aren't a monolith, but when I considered myself an atheist (one who lacks a belief in a god or gods) I still was open to certain possibilities; UFOs, the potential for psychic ability, the vast potential for the unknown to have its say; I can perceive a certain mystery in the world that can't be easily explained. But I find that the thrust of this new atheism is to control ideas with a material rationality, and to aggrandize the self, as if anything we can't explain with sensory perception and our limited ability to reason is impossible, and as if strong communities create themselves.

Under a purely atheistic worldview, where does taking joy in the mysteries of the world and the universe come in? And more importantly, what of brotherhood of mankind?

I ask, partially because I mentioned above that Christianity has something to offer. And what it has to offer is more important than what atheism has to offer. Christianity, Islam, Judaism all get beaten rather handily by logic and reason at the evidence game, when it comes to their stories and their miracles and the constructs that would seem to provide the basis for any belief in those philosophies. And yet they continue to enjoy massive membership, great influence, and enthusiastic support. This all exists despite a history of violence, recent scandal (pedophilia in the Catholic Church), and the slow but sure push of scientific discovery that directly or indirectly refutes religious claims. Why is this so? Why do so many people choose to remain faithful when so much other, seemingly better information exists?

Because Christianity, etc., beats atheism rather handily at some very important things: Forgiveness, empathy, and meaning come to mind. I've heard, and made, several of the arguments now inherent to new atheism: This is an emotional need you're filling, you can reject religion and still live a good life, and most good people would be good people without religion. But what would they do with all of that goodness? Christianity provides a faulty, yes, structure upon which people can carry out that goodness. Forgiveness is one of the most sophisticated philosophical ideas we have - Darwin's survival of the fittest would remove the need for forgiveness, correct? The strongest among us survive, and those weak of character or other attributes would struggle and die. But we don't do that. Why? I would guess human empathy, but Christianity in particular enshrines that empathy and uses its beloved prophet to promote it. Christianity's charlatan actors, the televangelists, have used Christianity for business reasons and the narrow minds of the loudest Christians that manifest themselves when they rant about abortion and homosexuality cloud the higher attitudes of their message. One should not throw the baby out with the bath-water when thinking of something as important as forgiveness. Why? Because when you can forgive another human being and invest in them with your heart, and know that there are others who will do the same for you, then you have the building blocks in place to form a strong community.

And what else do we have but the quality of our communities? What else keeps us from utter failure? Would anyone truly want to live in an atheistic, "every man for himself" kind of world? I think we've proven that we would not.

This is not to say that atheism is irresponsible or wrong on certain merits: I can no sooner find you God than find you the Easter Bunny. But new atheism seems to seek a war with religion, or greater membership somehow, or probably just bigger book sales. But Christianity isn't wrong about forgiveness, and Buddhism isn't wrong about enlightenment, and no religion is wrong when it seeks to unite people under a greater good. It's just that religion has shown itself to be imperfect in that pursuit in sometimes appalling ways. But maybe that's right for us? For we are imperfect as well, and sometimes in appalling ways. I would like to see us strip down our emotional connections to any one of these overarching philosophies and do what we do best: Take the best parts from each and use our free will and empathy to reach our best potential with parts of the major religious and non-religious philosophies as our tools. The question is whether or not that's possible, or even desirable? It seems to me that these factions continue to exist because we need them to, and emotional connection is at least as powerful as reason. Both exist in the brain; is one truly more legitimate than the other? Or just more useful?