Like Dawkins, I find the reality of our existence thrilling.
A little inspiration for a Saturday morning.
Lyrics:
[Narrator]
With every century
Our eyes on the universe have been opened anew
We are witness
To the very brink of time and space
[Robert Jastrow]
We must ask ourselves
We who are so proud of our accomplishments
What is our place in the cosmic perspective of life?
[Carl Sagan]
The exploration of the cosmos
Is a voyage of self discovery
As long as there have been humans
We have searched for our place in the cosmos
[Richard Dawkins]
Are there things about the universe
That will be forever beyond our grasp?
Are there things about the universe that are
Ungraspable?
[Sagan]
One of the great revelations of space exploration
Is the image of the earth, finite and lonely
Bearing the entire human species
Through the oceans of space and time
[Dawkins]
Matter flows from place to place
And momentarily comes together to be you
Some people find that thought disturbing
I find the reality thrilling
[Sagan]
As the ancient mythmakers knew
We're children equally of the earth and the sky
In our tenure on this planet, we've accumulated
Dangerous evolutionary baggage
We've also acquired compassion for others,
Love for our children,
And a great soaring passionate intelligence
The clear tools for our continued survival
[Michio Kaku]
We could be in the middle
Of an inter-galactic conversation
And we wouldn't even know
[Sagan]
We've begun at last
To wonder about our origins
Star stuff contemplating the stars
Tracing that long path
Our obligation to survive and flourish
Is owed not just to ourselves
But also to that cosmos
Ancient and vast, from which we spring
The ACAA state baseball championship game was canceled due to Catholic misogyny. Tell the truth, CNN!
CNN reports that a Catholic school in Arizona displayed its festering misogyny for all to see last night, when it denied its boys' baseball team an opportunity to play in the Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship baseball game.
The Christian religion will continue to behave in an openly misogynistic manner until a critical mass in society finally rejects it, but I am sure the justified outrage in the public reactions and the media reporting on the story might help move things in the right direction, amirite?
But, wait! The CNN story begins with this blatantly misleading - and, naturally, victim-blaming - line (emphasis on bald misrepresentation, mine):
"The Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship baseball game wasn't played Thursday night because Mesa Prep's second baseman is a girl."
CNN fail. Again.
Wrong, CNN.
The game wasn't played on Thursday night because of the bigotry of the unnamed officials at Our Lady of Sorrows school. The cowardly nameless spokesperson(s) for the school denied their students a chance to play for the state championship because of their refusal to allow their boys to mix with girls in sports. The presence of Paige Sultzbach on the field did not stop the game; Catholic misogyny did. I think people should ask why the CNN writer, Brad Lendon, played so willingly into the narrative that it was "because of the girl" that this game was cancelled.
Moving down the page, the article goes from bad to worse.
"“It takes tremendous moral courage to stand by what it is you believe, and they are doing what they think is right,” Mesa Prep Headmaster Robert Wagner told KTVK."
Wrong, Mr. Wagner.
Why would you excuse the behavior of another school which robbed not only its own students of a great experience, but yours as well? What does it say about your attitude toward girls - and toward Paige's presence on the baseball team - when you are comfortable describing the baldly misogynistic discrimination by another school against one of your students as an act of "tremendous moral courage"? Seriously, WTF?
Women in sports? The horror!
It takes no courage at all to single out, victimize and diminish a lone teenaged girl out of a sea of teenaged boys. Our Lady of Sorrows school made a power play. They know that social sentiment will support them in blaming this young girl for the fact that they robbed a group of deserving boys of the chance to play in a state championship. They know they can count on the same old, depressingly predictable victim-blaming: if only that one girl had just sat out, none of this would have happened! Why did everyone have to suffer just because of her?
It is part of a larger power play, too. This Catholic school's goal is to put pressure on the entire league to eliminate opportunities for girls like Paige who had no other option to play other than the boys' team. They ruined the championship for everyone in the league and have neatly set up a problem for next year. They have thrown down a challenge to the other participants in the league, one which will undermine morale and leave all the teams in the league wondering what will be the point if such a thing will surely happen again (possibly with additional schools of "tremendous moral courage" similarly emboldened to refuse to play Mesa Prep if Paige is on the field). But, thanks to the manner of the reporting and the collusion of pandering officials like Mr. Wagner, the blame for it all will be placed squarely and unfairly on the shoulders of one Paige Sultzbach.
They know how the the implacable tyranny of majorities works: the powerful never ask themselves, "Wait a minute, why should the weaker among us always have to lose privileges?" - they say, "Why the hell should all of us have to give the weaker ones the same privileges we enjoy? We won't do it!". Including one girl (or even more girls) in the game (if they qualify for the team by the same rules as the boys) should not have been difficult. It isn't difficult. Games involving hand-eye coordination and other non-gender specific abilities are not barriers for inclusiveness. But, for religious and patriarchal societies, it is the inclusion of girlsitself that is anathema. Girls are other, and Bible-based theism demands that they be marginalized. That is systemic misogyny.
The endgame is to force girls out of sports unless they can be ghettoized into all-girl sports programs (read: programs given short shrift in time, resources and promotion in many schools, especially religious schools). With reporting like Brad Lendon's and attitudes like Mr. Wagner's, they may succeed.
That's right, insecure men. Those scary female eyes are looking at you!
Thanks to my nifty son-in-law, DvdD for pointing me toward this story!
Everyone deserves a little bit of awesome on a Friday morning. Enjoy!
Lyrics:
[deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically
[Feynman]
I think nature's imagination
Is so much greater than man's
She's never going to let us relax
[Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature
[Nye]
I'm this guy standing on a planet
Really I'm just a speck
Compared with a star, the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There's billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks
[Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself
Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned
I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we
[deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??
(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)
[Feynman]
There's this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other
And it's all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it's all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature
via Pharyngula. Better to laugh than to cry, I suppose! "(GOP), it's not you, it's - no, no it's you."
Bill Donahue, chief American Catholic (sorry Santorum), is outraged over President Obama's declaration of support for marriage equality for all. In an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN last night, Donahue was unequivocal about where he stands:
United States Catholic Congress?
Perhaps someday, Bill.
You've got majority Christians
on your side, after all.
"I want the law to discriminate against straight people who live together — I used to call it shacking up, now it’s called cohabitation — I want the law to discriminate against all alternative lifestyles, against gays and unions." Bill Donahue on CNN.
Got that everyone? Phil proudly and publicly speaks for the "moral majority", the Christian right who so enthusiastically supported Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and the entire cast of Bible-believing theocrats who are currently running the Republican party. He wants the law to discriminate against anyone whose life and "choices" do not pass his the Biblical sniff test.
But wait, what did Jesus have to say about abortion? Nothing, you say? Ok, well, what did he say about gay marriage? Oops, nothing again! Well, surely Jesus had something to say about a man and a woman and holy matrimony...?
Bingo! Why yes, yes Jesus DID mention the holy bond between a man and a woman. It is the only currently relevant relationship arrangement that he did comment on: Jesus was against divorce.
Since Christians are fighting against laws
which make Jesus weep, they ought to
criminalize people who divorce.
You first, Donahue!
""And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery." —Matthew 19:1-9.
Phil Donahue, who is divorced, is in a tizzy over gay marriage and abortion, and yet he is curiously undisturbed by divorce, the only social issue of these three that Jesus actually condemned, clearly and unequivocally. Jesus pointed out that the provision for divorce in Mosaic law was made because Moses had to accommodate the "hardness of heart" of the men of his time, but now that Jesus was there, that Mosaic law no longer applies. Old covenant/New Covenant. It's simple, really.
Except that it isn't.
So, let's try to get this straight: Christians want gay marriage and abortion outlawed because they claim that some vague prohibitions of these things appear - however ambiguously and subject to interpretation - in the Old Testament of their holy book. Bible-believers claim that this is solid Biblical law and they will do everything in their power to enforce it - not just within their own religious communities, but throughout society - by working tirelessly to write state laws that force their religion down everyone else's throat. In other words, to establish a Bible-based authoritarian theocracy - the Iran of the west, if you will.
Sure there were hundreds of "laws"
but come on, laws, schmaws. The Christian right will decidewhat is or isn't law now. Got that, everyone?
But wait! The Old Testament also laid down rules about 600+ other things, ranging from rules about food, dress, associating with people of different genders, tending animals, keeping house and countless other matters of daily life, out of which the brief, often mangled verses that modern Christians point to to condemn homosexuality and abortion are carefully cherry-picked. Never mind those verses, modern Christians chuckle, they are obviously not meant to bind us today. Only a select few prohibitions are still in effect today, and fundamentalistChristians will decidewhich ones will become the law of the land, thanks very much to the Christian majority - especially you, moderates; they just could not have done it without you! - which has given them unprecedented political power.
Some Christians, Donahue presumably among them, feel A-OK - actually passionate - about persecuting GLBT people claiming their "authority" to do so is derived from the vicious teachings laid down in the Old Testament. They feel A-OK about tormenting and subjugating women too, denying them free agency and denying them the right to control what happens to their own bodies, citing the Bible as the inerrant source of their knowledge of what is the righteous treatment of women.
Except when a "moral majority" says it is.
Got that, sluts, homos and godless socialists?
Yet, these same Christians argue with no apparent discomfort that they are also A-OK wearing mixed fibers, eating shellfish, not stoning their children to death for disobedience and (usually) refusing to condemn a raped virgin daughter to marry the rapist (other peoples' daughters, of course, are sluts) - rules which are likewise laid down in the very same Old Testament books. But that is different, they argue. Those rules were only meant for that time and that place. Those rules went by the wayside once Jesus came along. Out with the Old Covenant with Moses, in with the New Covenant through Jesus. Read the black text, follow the red! Bible-belief is so simple. God is good!
Turning to the New Testament, we find that Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality. If Christians follow the red text, and abide by the New Covenant that Jesus is believed to have made with them, then Christians ought to make no judgement on homosexuality. Further, Jesus specifically stated that homosexuality can be inborn (Matthew 19:12). Indeed, by following other words directly attributable to Jesus, Christians of good conscience ought to be supporting equal rights and fighting for the protection and dignity of those who are marginalized and downtrodden in society, too.
So which will it be, Christians? Which Testament do you plan to force onto the entire population of the United States when your ambition of a Christian theocracy is fully realized?
Bible-believers unite!
Biblical Law in the USA!
The Old Testament condemns homosexuality and demands that women he subjugated almost totally - mere chattel to be used by men for reproduction. It also demands that parents kill their children for disobedience, and it prohibits countless activities which are widely practiced by Christians today. If the religious right is following the Old Testament, then they had better get right with God and follow all of it, instead of cherry-picking. Stop eating pork and shellfish, legislate stonings for disobedient children, force your daughters into marriage to rapists; get with the Bible-based program here!
The New Testament emphasizes charity toward the poor, protection for the weak and helpless, loving forgiveness for others, turning the other cheek and above all, refraining from judging others. Jesus said nothing ever about homosexuality (or abortion) and in fact, he affirmed that homosexuality is inborn - which spoils the Christian argument that it is a choice, thus putting them at odds with God's creation, the filthy sinners - and he condemned divorce. Christian self-named "Jesus-freaks" had better get right with Jesus and follow all of his teachings, instead of cherry-picking. Give up your money and look after the poor, accept that homosexuality is inborn and leave your judgement to God, turn the other cheek and above all, no divorce! Did you get that, Bill?
"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment that you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." - Matthew 7:1-5
Bill Donahue again: "I want the law to discriminate against straight people who live together — I used to call it shacking up, now it’s called cohabitation — I want the law to discriminate against all alternative lifestyles, against gays and unions."
Gee, Bill. Personally, I want the law to discriminate against hypocritical assholes who wield the Bible as a cudgel against those they hate.
