On religion, law and education

I am quite pleased to report I have reestablished contact with Linda Williams, an email acquaintance and former SFN member from several years ago. We had an email exchange right after 9-11 which is included in my book, "Images of Pain." I have found our exchanges stimulating and very enjoyable. You can view her fiction blog -- Reality Skimming -- at http://www.okalrel.org/blog/blogger.html

In her blog she states about me, "I find his advocacy of Biblical values as the only proper moral base for government and education to be plain blood-chilling scary." I really don’t understand how she received that impression. If it was from some of my writing, I’d like to change it. In any event I shall respond with an attempt at clarification:

Biblical law was certainly the overwhelming contributor to our constitution and to our earliest laws, but certainly not the only one. I firmly believe in the first amendment and have two lectures I give on the subject. It is my belief and I so state in my lectures that the present actions by the courts regarding the "separation of church and state" are precisely the opposite of what that amendment states. I reread my lectures to see if that’s where she formed her opinion and have now posted them in their entirety in my blogs. I can understand where she might get that idea and will soon redo both lectures to make my beliefs more clear. Links to current versions of my lectures are at: http://hjbloglist.blogspot.com

I firmly believe that for anyone to impose their belief system on others without their consent is evil. This includes atheism. I also believe that by far the most grievous wrongs going on in the world are because of fundamentalist religious beliefs of all types being forced on even those who do not agree. This includes what I call "fundamentalist atheism." How many wars can you think of where religion is not or was not a major factor? I have spoken to religious and non-religious groups and individuals with my lecture on science and religion for many years. Most listeners, including even fundamentalist Christians, whom I thought would be almost violently against my words entered into constructive discussions after the lecture. Several members of some science and engineering groups were not so open minded. Constructive discourse is always in danger from closed minds with firm beliefs.

I would certainly agree that the advocacy of Biblical values as the only proper moral base for government and education would be "plain blood-chilling scary." This if only because there seems to be an infinite variety of interpretation of Biblical values. I think it equally scary to contemplate removal of all Biblical values from government and education.

When I was in high school I sang in the choir. Our high school was about 50-50 Christians and Jews with a few other belief systems in the mix. The choir was about sixty percent Jewish and we were a fairly close knit group - good friends all. We sang in many different places including, schools, churches and synagogues where we performed both secular and religious music. One of our big events of the year was our "Christmas" concert. I never heard a single complaint from any Jewish member of the choir about singing Christmas music. During the concert we frequently sang Jewish and secular songs along with the carols. I remember two soloists, in particular, who sang "Ave Maria" and "I Wonder as I Wander." Both were Jewish. Our male soloist in several Christian pieces was an atheist. I truly cherished that atmosphere of understanding, acceptance of differences, and indeed, peace. To me, that is the epitome of comradeship, love and humanitarianism.

Most likely, that would never happen today. Instead, the ACLU would be stirring up animosity by suing the school to stop any such concert. I certainly don’t call that progress. I see current political correctness activity inflaming anger and hatred for any possible differences of belief or purpose between people. I see current efforts at "diversity" promoting divisiveness and intolerance. Hate for anyone "different" has become the aleinating driving force in our country as exemplified by those who promote political, religious, racial, cultural and economical differences for their own purposes.

The modern media has become the stage from which hatred - noisy, quiet, clever, infuriating and even almost subliminal hatred - emanates under the name of news, entertainment and commentary. Indeed, so-called "peace marches" orchestrated by those who hate America have become an escalating vehicle for screaming nefarious hate mantras and subsequent incitement to angry actions. I fear serious mob violence lies ready to erupt just beneath the surface. The overpowering motive of those emissaries of hate are all too plain - power - and not for the people!

No, I certainly do not advocate Biblical values as the only proper moral base for government and education. Nor do I accept atheism, or the exclusion of Biblical values in the same role. I do accept that our Constitution was an extraordinary document with far reaching political effects. I just do not see it being corrupted in meaning to further the goals of a single group to the exclusion of all others. I see great harm in replacing human moral values with "political correctness" as seems to be happening.

Yes, the rights of minorities of any kind need to be protected, but to protect feelings and ask government to impose sanctions on any who might injure another’s feelings is a recipe for hatred and violent mob actions. All reasonable concepts, religious or secular, have their place in law and education and should be so considered, but not necessarily adopted. Like language, morality is a constantly evolving, almost nebulous concept that is moved like a straw in the wind by our current beliefs. Even some very basic moral values have been changing, cut loose from religious and even ethical constraints. I get a bit nervous wondering about where all this is headed.

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I have an ugly observation to make and share.

Never is there as much display of artificial breasts, lip puffs, male enhancements, vulgarly expensive clothes and jewelry as in the endless parade of award shows constantly being trotted out by the entertainment world. In addition to the five "big" award shows: Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Golden Globe, the air waves are pummeled by numerous other "lesser" award shows. These include seven for music, five more for Hollywood, at least nine cable awards shows and countless other even smaller award shows. This is according to an article titled, "Utterly Meaningless Award Shows," by Coury Turczyn in Pop Cult Magazine. Coury goes on to say, "Some of these aforementioned programs are so spirit-crushingly awful that you would think there could not possibly be any worse ones. But leave it to corporate executives to devise award shows that are blatantly void of meaning, yet still believe they're legitimate enterprises that actually matter." And these people expect us to take their social and political activism seriously?

Ordinarily I don’t agree much with Chris Rock, but in an Entertainment Weekly interview. Rock said he had rarely watched the Oscars, and called award shows "idiotic." "Come on, it’s a fashion show," Rock told the magazine. "What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one. And they don’t recognize comedy."

For your information, Chris, very few straight white guys watch either. Thank goodness I have not seen an award show in many years. I have long had my own opinion about these shows which I define as:

Group social masturbation by narcissists permanently frozen at the emotional and intellectual age of fourteen with far too much money and time on their hands and far too little respect for anyone or anything. I take great comfort in the news that these shows are drawing smaller audiences each year indicating that the number of entertainment world "groupies" similarly frozen at age fourteen is actually decreasing. I take even greater comfort when I happen to hear the names of the award winners and realize I don’t recognize a single name and haven’t the foggiest idea who they are. Of course, nearly all of the names from the entertainment world I do remember are dead!

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A hoax that could scare people

Redone with more accurate information it could be the basis for a new Sci-Fi novel or story.

PLANET-DISSOLVING DUST CLOUD IS HEADED TOWARD EARTH! is the title of an interesting but ficticious article.
To view it CLICK here

By its obvious inaccuracies the article itself lets us know it’s a hoax. The statement, "To avoid widespread panic, NASA has declined to make the alarming discovery public. But Dr. Sherwinski's contacts at the agency's Chandra X-ray Observatory leaked to him striking images of the newly discovered chaos cloud obliterating a large asteroid."

All "asteroids" are within our solar system. There are no "asteroids" as far as ten light years away from us. Besides, we have no instrument capable of resolving any object as small as an asteroid at that distance.

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