Britain claims to have a far superior socialized health care system than us dumb capitalist Americans. Unfortunately, they also have EMTs who are stupid enough not only to debate whether or not a disabled man having a heart attack is worth saving, but to have such a debate in front of an open phone line where everything is recorded.
I will certainly grant that this kind of terrifying idiocy among EMTs could (and perhaps even does) happen here in the States without a socialized health care system. It is not as if a hospital ordered these EMTs to refuse this man assistance, so we can only assume it was their own homicidal tendency and misanthropic disregard for the disabled.
But it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to see how Britain's approach to health care and a general tendency towards euthanasia and abortion in Western culture could have an eroding effect on the value of human life. These two morons decided this man's life was not worth saving -- despite the fact that the man himself wanted to live, as evidenced by his emergency phone call.
Sure, legalizing abortion and euthanasia wouldn't necessarily have to lead to this kind of nightmare situation...but tell that to the guy who was refused health care because other people thought his quality life didn't meet their standards
Pewsitter.com, a Drudge-style Catholic news hub, has recently posted a very silly article which they have hyperlinked as "Science proves Moses crossed Red Sea..."
The link takes you to an article in the Philipine Star (a world leader in peer-reviewed archaeology, indeed!). It describes alleged findings in the Red Sea by one Ron Wyatt, who also claimed to have discovered Noah's Ark and the Ark of the Covenant, the stone on which the Golden calf was destroyed, and a puddle of still liquified blood belonging to Jesus Christ. Quite an epic career.
He would have made a great pilgrim for Chaucer.
Now, maybe Pewsitter is just playing a holiday joke with us...but they put this highly spurious article in a bold faced hyperlink with nary a question mark nor a winking emoticon...which makes me think that either somebody at Pewsitter has gotten hoodwinked or I have totally lost my sense of humor.
In between grading papers and exams, I've been trying to blitz through the Mega Man Anniversary Collection that I just picked up for my PS2.
They should have added a handicap feature for people who played the original Mega Man on the NES but have lost their gaming edge during the intervening decades.
I was forced to use the ol' "select-pause" trick to get through the Yellow Devil...and I still haven't been able to play to the end of Mega Man 2, which I know I beat repeatedly when I was a spry young grade schooler.
Fortunately, the game's hub lets you play any of the eight original Mega Man games out of order, so I can just skip on to Mega Man 3 when my patience finally wears thin...
But I feel a bit like Hrothgar sitting on his throne, too old to battle the hordes of monsters that wreak havoc on his mead hall as he waits for a younger hero to accomplish the feats he was wont to perform when his youthful vigor still resided in his arms...
It disheartens me that so many of my colleagues tolerate and even proliferate a reductivist view on matters of religion despite their protests against oversimplifications in their own fields.
Statement: "Those Catholics teach that if you don't believe in their God, you're going to Hell."
What if we applied the structure of this statement to other fields and concepts?
"Those physicists teach that if you let go of something, it always falls."
"Those mathematicians teach that if you subtract one number from another, you get a smaller number."
"Those doctors teach that if you gain weight, you aren't healthy."
While all of the statements above are sort of true, I don't think any physicist, mathematician, or doctor would say that they quite capture the complexities of their fields...and I don't think a teacher would let a student get away with them as a grounds for argument.
If a physics teacher reduced gravity to things always falling, I think most people would agree he or she isn't using a very sophisticated or effective way to teach gravity. It would be something of a physics scandal.
If a Catholic teacher taught that disbelief in God de facto equated to eternal damnation, it would be just as much an oversimplification and just as much of a scandal.
The last time I checked, the Church taught that Christ was the means of Salvation, and anything else was questionable -- not a guarantee of damnation. The Church teaches that we are all essentially damned except through the grace of Christ, and that the acceptance of Him is the surest way to escaping our self-imposed damnation. The Church also teaches that there are behaviors that cause severe -- but not irrevocable -- damage to our relationship with God, so much so that we must ask forgiveness. Even in with such actions, though, there are a host of mitigating factors, such as the need for freedom of our will, sufficient forethought, and grave matter. And I'm pretty sure I'm just on the tip of the iceberg here...
Uhm...how come nobody tapped me for an article in the upcoming book on Transformers and Philosophy? Did the editors never hear about my brilliant Hegelian analysis of The Transformers Movie? What the heck is the point of being a total geek with a humanities Ph.D. if I can't even manage to get myself included in such a book?
CNN.com is running a story about the very silly placard that an atheist group has on display beside a Nativity scene out in Washington State (surprises abound there, eh?).
The former-preacher turned religion debunker, Dan Barker, is quoted as saying: "It's not that we are trying to coerce anyone; in a way our sign is a
signal of protest," Barker said. "If there can be a Nativity scene
saying that we are all going to hell if we don't bow down to Jesus, we
should be at the table to share our views."
I can only imagine what kind of homilies this guy gave as a preacher...
Maybe I'm just in a Miltonic state of mind, but I this description of Christmas seems to fit the definition of diabolic...and that's not hyperbole. It's like Satan is writing this guy's sound bites. Who else but someone who is at least demonically oppressed would look at a Christmas scene and say that Jesus demands submission or will cast you into Hell?
First of all, theologically speaking, the point of the Nativity is that Christ is leading us away from Hell. It is a twisted perverse mind that thinks Christianity professes that Hell is the result of not celebrating Christmas.
Secondly, the other point of the Nativity seems to be how generous God is in not requiring us to bow down to Him in the manger. The shepherds wanted to adore him out of joy and (the slightly chronologically misplaced) magi have gone out of their way to pay him homage. God didn't demand the world bow down to the baby Jesus. If He was fixated on the bowing part, Christ would have come in all of his power and glory...not in utter humility.
Thirdly, and most Miltonically, why do atheists get so freaked out about bowing? It's exactly what freaks out Satan in Milton's poem...and I think it's telling that it's the atheists worst fear that there might be a higher being that deserves homage (even if that being doesn't compel it). Actually, it's the lack of compulsion that really ticks off Satan...and I bet it's what the atheist finds most insidious about Christianity.
The article concludes with Barker saying:
"When people ask us, 'Why are you hateful? Why are you putting up
something critical of people's holidays? -- we respond that we kind of
feel that the Christian message is the hate message," he said. "On that
Nativity scene, there is this threat of internal violence if we don't
submit to that master. Hate speech goes both ways."
You know, maybe he's on to something there. Wouldn't Nativity scenes be cooler if the angel Gabriel had a legion of fiery-sword wielding Seraphim behind him? Maybe we could start adding some Dantean devils with grappling hooks waiting just behind the stable lest any of the shepherds fail to genuflect on the right knee....Better yet, maybe the ox and the ass could transform into giant killer robots and lay waste to Nazareth if the magi don't show up in time...
Oh, wait...that's right...none of that would make any sense given that the scene depicts God's intimacy, mercy, and love for man despite his disobedience.
What's particularly telling is that Barker (in that quote) does not deny that his placard is hate speech. Look at me going nuts with the italics feature.
Isabel sent me a link to a video called Proposition 8: The Musical featuring Jack Black as a very un-funny Antichrist...er...I mean Jesus Christ.
The argument of the star-strewn video (there weren't really enough stars that I recognized for it to be studded) is essentially that the Proposition 8 campaigners lied and that Jesus personally condemns those who supported Proposition 8 as being self-contradictory, cafeteria Bible readers. It isn't entirely clear to me what the Prop 8 gang was supposed to have lied about, although it seems that their deceit resided in claims that schools would start teaching kids to sodomize. And here, I thought schools were already pretty much teaching that... Anyway, the part of the song that really saddened me was when Jack Black's Christological parody tries to point out Bible passages in defense of gay marriage.
Sort of.
The example he uses is shrimp cocktail.
Apparently, we are supposed to assume that ancient Hebraic dietary laws are somehow equivalent to contemporary, secular marital laws. We are also supposed to assume that anyone who accepts the Bible must read every single passage as equally literal. Jack Black missed the Sunday school lesson on St. Augustine and the fundamentals of exegesis... JB as JC argues that the religious right must be hypocritical because they ignore Biblical injunctions against eating invertebrates (the Prop 8 figures lick their chops salaciously at the shrimp cocktail), but uphold laws against homosexual unions. He perhaps also missed the Sunday school lesson on Acts 10 abolishing dietary laws. Next, he says that Jewish law permits the sale of daughters into slavery. I'm assuming he is referring to the following passage from Exodus 21:
When
a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go free as male slaves do. Sounds pretty harsh, no? So, as Black argues, how can Christians be opposed to slavery which is permitted in the Bible, but against homosexuality (which is not permitted).
I'm not sure that is necessarily a logical contradiction. Even if God says it is morally okay to do something, that doesn't mean it is the best way to run a society in practice. For that matter, even if God prohibits an action it is not therefore absolutely necessary to pass laws against it. How would you enforce a law against looking lustfully at other people?
Nevertheless, the passage from Exodus goes on...
But if her master, who had destined her for himself, dislikes her,
he shall let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to a
foreigner, since he has broken faith with her.
If he destines her for his son, he shall treat her like a daughter.
If he takes another wife, he shall not withhold her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights.
If he does not grant her these three things, she shall be given her freedom absolutely, without cost to her.
The point here is that slavery under Hebrew law is not really what Jack Back is probably thinking of. To the modern American audience, a slave is someone who is bought and sold and has no rights. Hebrew slave girls had very clear, and significant rights as slaves...(and it should probably be kept in mind that our word "slave" doesn't quite have a direct parallel in classical languages anyway since the word actually derives from the term for a person of Slavic descent). I don't any ancient readers of the Bible would have been shocked by the idea of selling daughters--but the idea that their daughters still retained certain rights even as slaves could have been radical (especially that their daughters could demand conjugal rights from master-husbands who had grown disinterested).
Ultimately, Jack Black proves that he doesn't understand the Bible or Christianity. Furthermore, he doesn't understand what Proposition 8 is all about. He doesn't consider that people might be against Prop 8 who are not fundamentalists or even religious. (I realize I'm laying all of the blame on Jack Black when I'm sure there was a whole creative team behind the video...but he took the role of Christ, so he gets the lion's share of my wrath.)
To play devil's advocate, however, there are indeed plenty of wild-eyed, hate-filled, pseudo-Christian whackos out there to provide inspiration for the gay rights movement...and it's all the more reason why we need to be careful how we present our arguments so as not to cause occasion for scandal.
For my part, I don't think gay marriage should be illegal because it is immoral (although I do think it's immoral).
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