Um, Okay Then...

Rod Dreher knows that demons are real.

A Haitian cab driver told him so.

"I am not a crackpot," Rod Dreher says.

And the comments on this post.  Holy hell, if you will pardon my pun.  My favorite is the fella who knows demons are real because when his daughter was little there was this little girl who came over to play with his daughter, see.

And she was wearing this sweater.  And orange sweater.  With yellow markings.  And without even looking it up on the internet he just knew that was a demonic sweater. Something's not right about that girl, he told his wife.  And sure enough later he heard these growling noises coming from inside the girl...long story short, now his daughter is all grown up and has all sorts of problems, like anorexic, and it's because of the demonic influence of this demonic devil worshipping child they were so foolish as to let their child come into contact with at that demonic public school.

Let this be a warning to you!  HOME SCHOOL RULES!

Reading C.S. Lewis

So I'm reading C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity -- for my sins.

Naw, it's actually because my students were doing some group work, and I happened to have a copy handy in my office, which I hadn't read in years.  I was killing time, in other words.

I read the first few chapters while they worked, and he infuriated me all over again.

First, this bit, where he is explaining how we know that there is something beyond sense and reason that makes us act with justice toward one another:

Teaching The Bible

Teaching two classes a day in summer session is eating my life.  It's worse than having a toddler.

This is especially true when one of the classes is Bible As Lit, since I am not only assigning massive chunks to be read every night (which I then have to re-read as well), I am having to do mountains of research for every class.  (Yes, if I had been wise I would have done the prep work over the three weeks I had off between classes.  But I was very busy writing short stories then, so.)

I did some of this research the last time I taught the class; except that was five or six years ago, and lots of new research has been done.  I am keeping like a day and a half ahead of the students, if that.

Still, it's a great class, one of my favorites.  We're on the bit of I Samuel with David and Jonathon tomorrow.  That's always a delight to teach.

One of my sources for that one tries to claim that the love between D&J is only a political love.  I suppose I'll pass this theory on to my students.  And then I guess I'll roll my eyes.  Um, yeah.  Okay.

The reason this theory isn't total nonsense is that I Samuel can be read as an apology, or a defense, of David's usurpation of Saul's throne.  In which case all of Jonathon's protestation's of love for David and his you-take-the-throne, I don't want it, are put in there to defend the idea that David doesn't take the inheritance of his own will:  It's Jonathon's idea.  

But that's not incompatible with D&J being lovers, either.  And so many other things indicate that their relationship is more than just buddies: what each of them says about the other's love being better than the love of women; what Saul says to Jonathon, about him "uncovering his mother's nakedness" in his relationship to David; the oath they make to one another at that very odd ceremony during the New Moon (shooting arrows by a sacred stone -- that looks very much like some buried religious thing to me).  

The kid is auditing this class, btw.  Part of home-schooling!  She's doing very well so far.

I Swear I Am Not Making This Up

Apropos of yesterday's post, the kid comes home from school yesterday, and we're having our afternoon bonding session (this is where we lie on my bed and discuss her day at school out of Herr Dr. Delagar's hearing, because he gets way too involved and angsty and, as the kid puts it, "gets on her" about minor events that I just find funny).

Anyway, after she told me who got in trouble today and who did not and who was a suck to the teacher and who was not and all the usual Upper El dramas, she added, "And Merry! Listen to what Merry said!"

Me: What?

The Kid: Merry said her daddy told her [imitates Merry's voice] that every little girl is Jesus' bride.

Me: (sitting up slowly): What?

The Kid: Her daddy says --

Me: What?

The Kid: She said her daddy told her that every little girl is Jesus' bride.

Me: (Staring at her.)

The Kid: (With satisfaction): That's what I said.

(May I add that Merry is about nine years old?)

See Also This

A study which shows what we already sort of suspected: the more religious your average tool is, the more racist he is.

My favorite line in this study is this one, of course: "Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant."

Hah!

(Via Joe.My.God.)

Hee!

The bacon/hummus split!

Bible Lessons

So we're hanging out in the waiting room at our doctor's office this afternoon, the kid and me, and there's not much to read, basic Good Housekeeping journals and Hunting magazines, Dr. Phil is jabbing away on the TV, we're bored stiff. I pick up a bright primary-colored kiddy Bible and we begin reading it together solemnly.

We get to the Noah's Ark page and the kid's eyes widen.

The Kid: Mom...

Me: What?

The Kid: I just...it just occurred to me...

Me: What?

The Kid: If there were only two animals of each kind on the boat? And only Noah's family?

Me: Yeah?

The Kid: God killed kittens?

Me: Yep. And puppies.

The Kid: And babies? Toddlers?

Me: (Trying not to laugh): Well, yes. But see, they were evil babies.

The Kid: Evil toddlers?

Rosh Hashanah

The days of awe are on us.

On Friday we ate challah and roast chicken and apples and honey and discussed things we might do differently come the new year, and on Saturday we threw our bread in the water (the Arkansas River, our usual venue -- a lovely evening, this year, not as blisteringly hot as usual, but my heavens were the mosquitoes vicious) and named our sins and regrets, things we'll change, things we're sorry we did over this past year, things we'll try to stop doing.

Then the kid and I did the winter dance at the top of the hill, by the scrappy remains of old Fort Smith, and we ran for the car before the mosquitoes could eat us to pieces, and went to the bookstore, and bought far too many books.

A good year to you!

Previously...

I had a post up about that Arhyalon's item's lord & master, which I deleted, because he had deleted the lj post in question.  Here, however, is a discussion of it.

Basically, like Arhyalon, he is filled with fail, and my point in the original post was it is no wonder she is in such denial -- she would have to be.

Elsewhere on his lj he preens himself for "forgiving" those who reacted with such vehemence to his homophobic post.  He turned the other cheek to their troll spew, he claims, since that is what Jesus would want.  Nor could he do that without having given himself to Jesus -- what motive could there be for acting decently, he inquires, without Jesus in one's heart?

My, am I sick of Christians coming forth with that argument.

Plato, of course, rebutted it 2500 years ago.  You live in this world, he pointed out.  You live among your neighbors.  If you act badly toward your neighbors, you make the world a worse place.  If you act decently toward them, you make the world a better place.  Where are you going to live?  Why, obviously, in this world, Socrates.  Therefore, unless you are a dimwit, you will act decently toward your neighbors (and, as Plato points out, all the world is your neighbor).

Why Xtians need a Sky-Fairy and a threat of hellfire to enforce the simple logic of this is the real mystery, in my opinion.

Jesus's General Leaves The Church

I taught in Idaho for three years, and the LDS students there, my students, I liked them a lot, even if some of the men did rat me to the dean every time I said fuck in class. And even if some of them did have this...attitude toward the Native Americans that I found difficult to get past. (Others came to me in my office after the class would go off on how lazy and entitled Indians were to tell me not every LDS felt that way, and how it used to be worse, how their parents had taught them when they were little that God hated dark people, so I should know things were changing...)

But they did their work, and they had immensely complex lives, due to the pressures their religion was putting on them, and when I was pregnant and in danger of miscarrying, and we had to move at short notice, one of my LDS students conscripted her husband and sons into moving my entire house for me -- I didn't ask her for this, she just did it -- and they would do things like that.

On the other hand: Proposition Eight. WTF?

Jesus' General speaks. And acts.

Gayness

Over on Language Log, in a another post about how popular science journals, in this case the New Scientist, can't ever get the science right (the journal is claiming that gayness is determined at birth and we can see this because gay guys' brains are wired like girl brains and lesbian brains are wired like boy brains, and Zwicky has his doubts.)

But the point I want to get to is a fella in the comments who suggests, as many of my earnest students have suggested, thinking they are scoring points with me, the liberal professor who obviously has swallowed that Darwinism stuff hook-line-and-sinker, that gayness can't be genetic, now, can it? Or it would have died out! Generations ago!

...if homosexuality is determined genetically, wouldn't it, according to the Mendelian theory of genetics, disappear after a single generation, since only heterosexual couples can reproduce? Even if we take cultural pressure into consideration, there's no way that homosexuality, being documented as early as (if not earlier than) the Old Testament references to Sodom and Gomorrah (the former being the root of "sodomy"), could have survived this long unless it's an experientially gained trait.

(His inclusion of Sodom and Gomorroh, here, for me, tips his hat -- boy is not arguing in good faith, in my opinion, or that would not be the historical reference that leapt to his mind.)

Anyway, another commenter replied thus:

1. Recessive genes.
2. Inclusive fitness.
3. The ability to have sex with a partner capable of producing offspring even if we don't enjoy it very much.
Developmental biology presents other possibilities.

Which leads us to PZ Meyers, which is so why I like the blogosphere.

I can think of quite a few hypothetical mechanisms that would drive the prevalence of homosexuality. They could every one be true, and just postulating or even providing conclusive evidence for a mechanism doesn't mean all the other mechanisms are false. I'll list a few ideas: none are contrary to evolutionary thinking.

Then he goes on to list them...well, I won't, since he does. But it's great.

And none of them have anything to do with wicked sinners and a vengeaful God.

Well, d'oh.

Theogony

Do you believe?

According to this poll, most Americans are atheists.

I'm guessing we've got some selection bias going on here, though...

Who cares! Go Votes!

Grading Papers

So here is why you don't want to let students know that you're an atheist --

Which, unlike feminism, is not something I generally bring up. My feminism and the fact that I'm a liberal, those I make a point of getting on deck. Early on in the class each semester, I'll say something like, "Well, I'm a big old liberal, as you might have noticed," and "Given that I'm a giant feminist, this sort of deal gets on my last nerve."

But the atheism I only bring up when they ask, which, as this is Bible central, they tend to. Mr. Jesus keeps coming up in class, and How This Story Makes me Think of What Jesus Tells us, and all that, and eventually someone will say, well, what do you think, dr. delagar?

At which time I will usually tell them something about zen belief systems or Coyote or what Rabbi Hillel might say, and their eyes will go round and wrinkles will appear between them. (This is except for the other students, whose eyes have gone bright and are thinking, yo, cool.)

Then someone will say, "Excuse me? dr. delagar? What do you believe in?"

"Me?" I'll say. "I'm an atheist."

Because I'm not in the business of lying to students.

OTOH, I follow up with: "The writer here, though, she seems to be --" or "Chaucer, though, given that this is the 14th century--"

Well, here's the problem with this practice, combined with how I do live in Pork Smith, deep in the heart of Bible central: once my Rockin With Jesus students know I'm an atheist, they know that the Lord wants them to save me.

So they write their papers as missions: saving delagar's soul!

I got three of those this semester, all of them wretched.

It's as if they suspect that I'm an accidental atheist. If I only knew what they knew about Mr. Jesus, see, or the real truth about evil-lution, why then! They write me arguments for God, witnessing documents, tales about how they prayed for a sunny day before a softball game and LO! Sun came! (S-o-n, gittit?) They tell me that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, and every scientist knows this! So Darwin was Wrong! How can I not be moved!

What am I to do with these papers? Give an F to Jesus?

Fail these tools, and they believe what their preachers and daddies have been telling them, that them liberal professors hate the Religious Right: pass them, and I am passing stupid work.

They make me ill, these papers.

On the plus side, the kid's standardize test scores came back yesterday, and she broke the test. Scored post-high school reading and on the 11th grade level in science; nearly that high in math. What a little whiz-bang. Guess we'll keep her. (We were going to sell her on e-bay, to buy gas with this summer.)

O Noes!

The kid is enjoying this 2 much!

Which is good, b/c she keeps getting witnessed to, and it is making me itchy. Her old best friend, who went to the local fundamentalist church, moved to Texas a few years ago; and her best friend after that was not religious (yay!), which is hard to find in these here parts; but that best friend had a mother in Iraq, and when, a few months ago, her mama finally got to come home, the new best friend and the best friend's dad moved, too, to where her mama got stationed, which wasn't here.

So now the kid has another new best friend, and this best friend I like a lot -- she and the kid are very nearly a perfect fit -- except for this religious bit.

The new best friend also goes to the fundamentalist church. (Half of Pork Smith does, it seems to me sometimes.) The new best friend witnesses to the other students, including my kid and the Muslim kids, at recess. My kid knows to get the teachers to tell the best friend to stop, but other students won't, always. And I think sometimes my kid won't, either, because this is her best friend and she won't pick fights.

Now the church is having a membership drive, or whatever the shit it is called, and the new best friend brought invitations to school -- Jesus Invites You to His Party!!1! Food, Fun, Games, Prizes!!

With sparkles.

"Do I have to go?" the Kid asked me.

"Shit, no, you don't have to go." I paused. "Do you want to go?"

"No."

"Well, good, because I don't want you to go. What did you tell her?"

"I said my mother was an atheist and my father was Jewish and I'm Jewish and we're not interested in Jesus."

"Good," I said. "Good for you."

"She said that her church said to invite people like me."

"Yes, well, that's their issue. Not ours."

The kid looked doleful.

I sighed. "Look. It's not your friend's fault. Her church is making her do this, they're telling her this stuff. They're allowed to believe what they want. They're not allowed to try to make you believe things. And they certainly shouldn't be making her do it at school. That's wrong."

"I'm sorry," the kid said, even more doleful.

I pulled her in for a hug. "You didn't do anything wrong. You did everything exactly right."

"But I like Caitlin," she said sadly.

"I do, too," I said. "Just let her believe what she wants about religion, and keep telling her you don't want to talk about it. Okay?"

Which -- ai -- if only that worked.

Also, if only we lived somewhere where she wasn't getting slammed over the head by this ten hours a day.

War On Halloween

It's Halloween in Arkansas!

But of course we can't celebrate it...not in the schools, anyway: because it's Satan's holiday.

Never mind that at least half of our students aren't fundamentalist Christians and thus do not believe this ahistoric nonsense (that Halloween began as devil worship): still, my child (an Ashkenazi Jew) is kept from her heritage (her civil right! as an American Citizen!) to wear a Halloween costume to school, and to march in a Halloween parade! And throw candy!

Further, the fundamentalist students wore Bible shirts to school and made her feel sad, telling her if she went out dressed in her sword-fighting princess costume, she was doing the devil's work, and would burn in hell for all eternity. Imagine the psycological damage she might have suffered!

Some of these kids also invited the kid to skip trick-or-treating. Come to our church, they wheedled. We'll have games! Prizes! Candy! It's a harvest festival! With Jesus!

Further, it's not just the Christian whacks that are wrecking the holiday -- here in Pork Smith, we've set up a signal system: if you're going to participate in the holiday, you decorate your house, put out a lit jack-o-lantern, and turn on your porch light. Then the kids come to your door. It works all right.

But!

Some parents -- oddly enough, mostly parents who drive SUVs -- don't want little Conner and Meredith to have to walk from door to door. No! Conner and Meredith might get tired! Conner and Meredith can't walk a whole mile in the dark!

So these parents drive Conner and Meredith from block to block, in their giant stinking gleaming Hummers and SUVs -- this is on the same street, mind you, where my kid and dozens of other kids are dashing about from house to house, back and forth across streets, and some of these kids are as young as two and a half. Conner's daddy can't see little Mick (who was a fierce little pirate last night, may I add) from behind the wheel of his SUV, even if Conner's daddy was looking, which I bet he wasn't.)

Also, look over here, on Unfogged, for another morphing of the holiday.

See? A WAR ON HALLOWEEN!

Women In Charge

It's hard to know where to stand on this one.

A former professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has sued the institution and its president, L. Paige Patterson, contending she was fired because of her gender. She is seeking damages for breach of contract, fraud, and defamation.

Ms. Klouda was appointed an assistant professor of Old Testament languages at Southwestern's School of Theology in the spring of 2002. At that time, the suit says, she was the only female member of the School of Theology's 40-member faculty. When Mr. Patterson took over as the seminary's president in the summer of 2003, the complaint adds, he "personally assured her that the administration change -- his appointment -- would not jeopardize her appointment."

But in April 2006, according to the lawsuit, she learned that her contract would not be renewed. "Dr. Klouda was told that she was 'a mistake that the trustees needed to fix,'" the lawsuit asserts. She is now an assistant professor of Old Testament studies at Taylor University, in Upland, Ind.

Not that I am without sympathy for Ms. Klouda...well, okay. I have a little trouble finding sympathy for Ms. Klouda, who is not just an innocent beleagured academic, after all, but a determined and dedicated hardshelled Baptist who lay down with this pack with her eyes open. She knew who these dogs were before she decided to run with them, is my point. Now they have bit her on the ass, I'm a bit lacking in tears for her. Did she not ever notice previous to this occasion that she was surrounded by misogynist tools? Was this her first hint that her culture was a poisonous, filthy, hate-ridden one?

I mean, d'oh!

Okay, okay. As Twisty tells us, we cannot blame the oppressed for their oppression. Truly, Ms. Klouda has been oppressed. It can't be her fault that she suffers from that oppression, and is warped by it, and can utter such things as this:

Ms. Klouda said she "firmly believed that excellent work both in the classroom and the academy would define me, and that I would be evaluated fairly in light of my scholarly accomplishments and congeniality."

And, apparently, believe them -- in a culture where this is, apparently, the commonly held worldview:

In his post, Mr. Burleson discussed the debate over a passage of Scripture, I Timothy 2:12, that some interpreters have taken to mean that women should not minister to men. He raised the question of whether such an interpretation might have been a motivation for Ms. Klouda's dismissal, even though she was not teaching theology, but Old Testament languages.

"What bothers me is the extraordinarily restrictive views of certain leaders in our convention regarding women," Mr. Burleson commented. "This is not about 'being a pastor' of a church. ... This is all about the belief among some that women should not have authority over men, whether it be in the home, the church, a business, or society in general."

Which, as I have found, from hanging out at Worldview and WordNutDaily, that absolutely is the worldview.

Yes, and the Sky is Blue

Which is what I have to say about this:


Polk County Judge Robert Hanson struck down Iowa's prohibition on same-sex marriage Thursday.

In his 63-page decision, Hanson wrote that the statute excluding same-sex couples from marriage "violates Plaintiff's due process and equal protection rights for the aforementioned reasons including, but not limited to, the absence of a rational relationship to the achievement of any legitimate governmental interest." Therefore the law is "unconstitutional and invalid."

Also, I would like to say, about time.

Really, what rational reason exists for denying gay folk the right to marry?

Some religions think it's not okay?

So let their churches preach it to their congregations. This is not a theocracy, last time I checked. It's a free country -- anyway, we're claiming it is. It's a place where religions do not, in fact, get to make our laws, but where reason makes our laws. No reasonable objection exists for barring gay marriage, despite the religious right's many attempts to create one; therefore, yes, gay people should be able to marry.

It's a no-brainer.

The Patriarchy Again

An interesting comment by Amanda over at Pandagon -- this is just part of it; it's in a discussion of this post here.


Our behavior makes more sense if you look as us as individuals trying to negotiate our survival and that of our children with the knowledge that we’re interdependent. With that in mind, it appears the patriarchy is a social system that developed when human males realized what female bonobos already know; if you band together you can dominate the other sex. Dominant females don’t have much reason to dominate too cruelly, though; they mostly seem interested in using their power to set up matrilineage and to keep males from harassing females. But dominate males want a lot more from females than just decent behavior; since females have wombs and males don’t, there’s a heightened interest in controlling females from cradle to grave. Thus, the patriarchy, which is a subtle alliance between men throughout history to keep women maintained as a sex-and-breeding class, utterly dependent on men for their economic survival.

Chimpanzees would like to dominate females this way, but they don’t control the females’ economic resources, so they’re sort of stuck.


The patriarchy is crumbling, by the way, because women have learned what our bonobo sisters already know; you band together and you have more power.

It occurs to me that this is why the Wingers hate women who work, and women who won't marry, and women who don't want kids, and women who "act like men," as they put it, meaning women who talk back and don't submit, and any woman who they see as escaping their spiky iron fists -- because it's not just a choice, for them, as it is for us.

For me, that's what it always was, and for me, therefore, their anger was a bit bewildering. Why would they get so bent about women who wore pants, and wanted a college degree, and didn't want kids, or didn't want to get married, or didn't want to take her husband's name? What was that to them? Surely this didn't have anything to do with their lives, did it? Why should they care if I said fuck, or I prefered the study of Greek to having six kids? That's my choice, isn't it? I don't care if they choose to go to church and have twins, do I?

But this makes their temper clearer: because they do care what I do, because to them it isn't just choice. What they see is that feminism lets women be free. And that means that that some women have escaped the cage. (The love of a good man, James over there on WorldNut put it, but it does start to look oddly like cage, when you examine their premises: women who have jobs leave it more often, women with educations leave it more often, women with access to birth control reject it in droves...hmmm...why does this not sound like something women are choosing because they feel loved and cherished? Why does it sound like oppression?)

Who will stay a slave when the door is open? Not too many.



[Now to be clear, I do not believe all relationships are oppressed relationships: people can partner up and work out decent relationships. It can be done. (At least, I'm hoping it can.) It can't be done, though, on the basis of one of those people exploiting the other.]

Oh Noes! Not the Books!

Over on Whirled News, they don't want the brown people using their libraries. For reasons of, from what I can tell, national security.

Leave it to New Haven, home of the bleeding heart since 1969. The famously liberal Connecticut city is offering to validate illegal immigrants under a controversial, first-in-the-nation ID card program. Reuters reports:

Starting Tuesday, New Haven will offer illegal immigrants municipal identification cards that allow access to city services such as libraries and a chance to open bank accounts.

Give a lawnboy a book, he'll build a bomb, you know.

Map

This map (which I got off PZ) shows you just how seriously rusted into the belt we are, here in the Pork.

I tried to enlarge, to see how red we are. Can't do it. Grr.