Monday, 06 December 2010

Okay, so today I watched this video:

This happened back in April, but it was just posted last week, presumably because the criminal case is concluded.

It’s weird.
On the one hand, Kahle, and the woman whose name I do not know, are making a great point: this is a state-sponsored endorsement of religion and, as such, is unconstitutional. However, they did disrupt the congressional proceedings (there’s seems to be some debate on this in the comments section – they did NOT disrupt them in that the proceedings were able to continue without a glitch, but they DID disrupt in that they spoke when it was not their turn), and thus I think it was appropriate that they were removed from the room.

However! Yikes, that was quite an aggressive manner in which to remove someone! Also, once he was out of the building, why did they keep on harassing him? I like how fearful they are of the camera. It’s as if they’re saying, “No, what we’re doing is not right, so please do not record it!”

Several people are using YouTube’s comment section under the video to point out how Christians are willing to beat up people who disagree with them. And while that’s certainly true in some cases, is there any evidence that this is why Kahle was beat up? Perhaps the sergeant-at-arms and deputies do this to anybody who causes any sort of disturbance, regardless of the validity of their point.

Anyway, Kahle was exonerated.

Reminder to self: Don’t visit the Hawaii State Senate. I might get beat up.

Tuesday, 07 December 2010

And today I watched this series of videos:

PART ONE-

PART TWO-

PART THREE-

They’re evidently “episode 19” in a continuing saga. I have not watched the 18 prequels, but it’s not necessary in order to ‘enjoy’ this triptych of filmlets.

The film-makers kind of get off topic here (particularly in part 2), but it’s still entertaining. It’s stuff like this that makes me nod my head and think, “Yep, religion sucks.” It’s hard to think of any truly good reason why religion should exist in our modern world.

Best line from the set of films is in Part Three (and it appears the film-makers know they hit on something here):

“Extremism is pure, uncut religion that has not been diluted with the progressive views of secular logic and reason.”

Brilliant!

Sunday, 05 December 2010

Yesterday we visited Krueger’s Christmas Trees to select and cut down this year’s Winter Solstice Tree. They try really hard to practice sustainable tree farming, and they give part of their profits to all sorts of hippy non-profit organizations. So, it’s been an annual tradition for us; this is our third year venturing to Krueger’s.

We bought a Canaan Fir (Abies phanerolepis). Here’s a picture of it all gussied up for the Holidays:

And today I took close-up pictures of some of our ornaments, so you can see the kind of thing we decorate with:

Here’s an ornament celebrating the upcoming Solstice. My wife made this from scratch. She molded the shape from clay and painted the sun on it.

And here’s one that Owen made (actually, there are two here – he also painted that one in the background). This wooden stocking has a metal hook to hold it onto the tree, and the hook terminates in a bell. Owen painted this when he was two years old, and Jennifer wrote “Owen 2007” on the side (barely visible due to my lousy photography).

Jennifer also made some gingerbread people (and cats, too) from scratch. This one represents Owen. Cause, you know, nothing says “Owen” like ruffled wrists, ankles, and a red bow tie. Jennifer said she has to make one for Isla now that she’s in our family. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s another custom-made ornament, only this one isn’t quite ‘from scratch;’ Jennifer drew and colored this picture, then uploaded it to some website that then put it on an ornament for us. She did the same thing with a mug, too, and so Owen has a mug that looks just like this (his name is on it, too).

Okay, so the actual photo in this frame is in focus, but again, I just took a really bad picture. It’s hard to focus when there’s light coming from every angle and there are tree branches at every distance between the lens and my subject. Anyway, here’s another unique ornament of a vintage frame with our family’s photo in it. A photo that, like the gingerbread men, is sure to make Isla feel left out.

Well, these guys have seen better days. In fact, the ornament on the left hasn’t seen ANY days lately, as his eyes fell off. We made these out of corn husks and dried corn back in 2007. It was fun to make some ornaments using such simple materials. My sister says they’re kind of voodoo-ish. She’s like that.

This ornament says “Our First” (barely visible) on it because, well, it is all that’s left of our very first Xmas tree. We purposely saved this slice and Jennifer decorated both sides of it. I drilled the hole, so don’t think that Jennifer does all the artsy stuff around here.

[Oops – wait – that’s not all that’s left of our first tree. There THIS STUFF, too.]

And before you ask, “Hey, do you guys make every ornament you hang up?” I submit these…

I call this our “ornament archetype,” since, to me, it best embodies the mental image I conjure up when I hear the term “Christmas tree ornament.” Jennifer also bought a set of 20 smaller colorful balls to hang from the tree, but this one – larger, metal, and with a bell inside – still holds the record for most typical ornament.

This is our oldest ornament. In fact, we even hung it up in 2006, a year in which we didn’t even have a tree. It came in the mail one year (2004?) as a Thank You for our donation to the Humane Society. I didn’t have the heart to get rid of it, so I just kept it in a drawer in our kitchen. This allowed Satan access to our home, where he insidiously convinced us that hanging out with our family on December 25th was ‘funner’ than knocking on doors. Damn you, Devil. Damn you.

…and here’s our newest ornament. It was free with our purchase of the tree, so it’s been in our home for about 24 hours now. I think it’s an opossum. With glad tidings, I’m sure.

And here’s the topper to our tree – an image of the sun with human face on it. We used to have a five-pointed star that we made out of willow branched (the same time and place we made those corn husk people, above), but it fell apart while in storage this past year, so we nixed it in favor of this guy. Also, my sister complained that the willow branch star had “a little Blair Witch going on.”

She’s like that.

Thursday, 02 December 2010

Today was a fun evening in which we thought Isla was sick.

Maybe she is sick? Hm. I don’t know.

Jennifer tried to take her temperature with this Star Trek-y thermometer that you touch to a person’s head, then scrap along their forehead. It just takes seconds, and it’s not invasive, so it’s perfect for a baby.

Except…it kept reading unusually low.

So then we tried a more traditional approach, by placing a thermometer in her armpit. Usually this type of thermometer is supposed to be kept under the tongue, but good luck getting a baby to cooperate with that one. Of course, placing a thermometer under her armpit is also difficult for a baby. You have to take off their outfit, for one thing, so then they’re cold. Also, you have to hold their arm down next to their side, which is evidently asking the world of a four-month old.

So as Isla got more and more cranky as I held her arm down, I began to wonder how accurate the thermometer could possibly be, since he agitation was probably resulting in a higher body temperature.

Anyway, we couldn’t detect a fever; at least, we couldn’t detect any temperature high enough to merit concern. So, we’ll just do what any good parent would do. We’ll just go to bed and see how she is in the morning.

Friday, 03 December 2010

I took our Saturn – you know, the one with the ENGINE light on – to Midas this evening. They do a free “courtesy check,” which is exactly $50 cheaper than this place down the road that I took our Jetta to last year. Well, actually, that courtesy check was free, too, but only because I yelled at the cashier for having such a crappy policy. She said something about her mechanics needing to get paid, too. I said something about me needing my money, too, and not wanting to give it to people that don’t do anything for me. She said they did do something for me, and I said she should’ve had her “50 dollars just to walk in the door policy” posted somewhere, and so she begrudgingly gave me back the money. She asked if I wanted their estimate, and I said no.

Anyway…

The guys at Midas asked if the car was doing anything funny, or sounding funny in any way. I said it wasn’t, but I called Jennifer just to have her explain a funny sound she said she’d heard this morning. But, with the cold weather and wet conditions, a funny sound may just be a belt squeaking as the engine heats up.

They were nice enough to hoist the Saturn up and look around, but they couldn’t see anything. One of the guys told me they could hook it up to their computer, which would cost $80. He said if it turns out the problem is something really simple – such as having refueled with the car running – they wouldn’t charge me for that.

So this then generated a conversation about refueling the car when it is running. I’ve had this ‘problem’ with my Cavalier, too. I declined the expensive computer-to-computer conversation, and Owen and I drove back home. I asked Jennifer if she had refueled the car while it was running, and she said she did.

So my plan now is to wait a few days. Once the tank gets lower, we’ll get gas again, only this time with the car shut off. I hope that fixes the ENGINE light.

Saturday, 04 December 2010

This morning, Owen and I went to the Mall of America. The Lego Store was re-opening, and Owen seemed pretty excited to see their upgraded store.

Well…it was kind of disappointing.

We arrived at the mall at approximately 10:45. We walked directly to the Lego store, but there were long lines of people waiting to get in. Really long lines, in fact, with ropes corralling them back and forth around the store. I listened in while a security officer talked to another confused guest, and he explained that the Lego store would be unveiling their enormous sculptures (which were scattered in the three floors of space above the store and still covered in enormous tarps) at 11:00. So I asked Owen – who was completely overwhelmed with all the people – if he wanted to go back upstairs to get a better view. He agreed, and we went up to the third floor. We stood there, peering down on the store for another ten minutes, until just after 11:00, when someone came on the PA system and asked if we were excited.

I want to point out here that the PA system was absolutely terrible. I think it was the same one used at the 6K. I’m not sure why raising the decibel level of the human voice has suddenly become out of the reach of modern science. You’d think that someone could figure out a way to magnify sound without rendering it incomprehensible.

So, this announcer kept saying things, and all I could make out was that we were ‘traveling through time.’ They first uncovered a giant Lego sculpture of a dinosaur (I think). But we couldn’t see it. Due to the design of the Mall, the floor we were standing on was directly above part of the Lego store, and so our ‘ground’ was obscuring our view of part of the store.

After unveiling two or three sculptures that we couldn’t see, though, they finally started to uncover stuff we could see. There was a sculpture of some 15^th century explorers, then there was something a bit more recent, then there was a guy on a motorcycle (which represented the present), then, lastly, there was the biggest sculpture of all: a robot who was 34 feet tall. We had a perfect view of that robot, and it was fun to see them unveil it. The curtains covering it were so big, I thought they were going to catch on the robot’s parts, but they didn’t. Oh – I think the robot represented the future.

So then I asked Owen if he wanted to go see the store, but he said he just wanted to go home. I talked him into visiting Teavana (something he loves to do), and we checked out the animals at the Home for Life demonstration, and we even bought my sister a Xmas present.

As we doubled-back, I told Owen we would be going to the Lego store (I was hoping the crowd had died down in the 45 minutes since). Alas, the lines were still just as long, and a security officer assured me there was a long wait.

So we went home. I’ll bring him back another day.

CLICK HERE to see a news story on what I’m talking about.

Wednesday, 01 December 2010

Ah…so here we are at the final month of the year. I’ve written a post for each day of the year so far – 336 total.

This evening, before bed, Owen and I were reading books together as we often do. Tonight, he selected a book about the universe. I told him the book was too long to read cover-to-cover, but that we could just read some excerpts from it.

Among other things, I turned to a page that showed a picture of Isaac Newton sitting on a bench in the classic thinker position. We read about how Newton realized that the same force that keeps the planets tethered to the sun is the same force that makes fruit fall from trees.

While I was reading those paragraphs, Owen asked: “But how do you know if your idea is right?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I asked for clarification. He said: “Because if you think your idea is that the sun goes around the earth, then you are wrong, but how do you know you are wrong?”

I told him that was a good question (you know, to distinguish between that and all the stupid questions). I tried to explain that people used to just come up with ideas that explained what they saw (or what they think they saw). For the most part, I said, that worked out okay, but in time people decided to test their ideas.

We talked more about the sun going around the earth: we agreed that it certainly seems like the sun goes around the earth. After all, we see it move across the sky, and we don’t feel the earth moving. And we also agreed that saying the sun ‘rises’ and ‘sets’ is a pretty useful way of describing what we see.

But then I told him how people noticed that Mars, Venus, and Jupiter did not move in predictable patterns, and so people sought to find better ways of explaining things. We talked about how we need to do tests to check on our hypothesis, and to find better ways to observe our world, such as by sending up spacecraft to get a better view.

Owen agreed that Newton was pretty smart for coming up with the correct answer. There was a box below the one about Newton that discussed how Einstein figured out that Newton wasn’t exactly right…but I figured it was best to skip that box for today. It was bedtime, after all.

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

So, a few weeks ago, I received a brief note in the mail. It was from someone on the Board of Directors at Minnesota Atheists. He wrote on the note “This came in the mail, and I thought you might be interested in responding.” His note was attached to a letter, and that letter had been sent all the way from Massachusetts by a guy named Jason.

It turns out, Jason is a Jehovah’s Witness. And he decided to get several copies of the latest Awake! issue (that’s a Witness periodical; it’s like the Watchtower, but even simpler) and mail copies of them out to various free-thought organizations around the country. Here’s the cover of that magazine:

When I mentioned this to an ex-Witness friend of mine, he said, “Who would do something like that?” Good question. The answer is: Pioneers. I used to be a pioneer, too. It meant I had to get in a ridiculously high number of hours each year (1,000) going door-to-door or standing on the street corner passing out tracts. Since that was really a drudgery, I was always looking for other ways to accumulate hours. One day, for instance, when the Awake! cover story was about animal rights, I wrote out a letter to several local humane societies and zoos telling them that they might like to look at the articles, as they hold out a hope for a better future for animals.

Jason, however, operated differently on three counts: For one thing, he wrote to free thought organizations. Yikes. Bad idea. Second, he didn’t enclose a polite, tactful letter as I did, he wrote a letter that said the magazine “would point out some of the flaws in atheist reasoning.” Again, yikes – that’s a bit confrontational, don’t you think? Maybe it would’ve been better if he’d said, “This magazine will give you some things to think about.” Third, he included his home address, phone number, and email address. And this is why I was given his article – I guess they felt I’d be the best man for the job.

I’m not gonna paste in all the emails that transpired between Jason and me, because this would quickly become the longest post ever. The correspondence included discussions on evolution, the origin of life, Noah’s Flood and the Witnesses basis for saying 1914 is the start of the Last Days. In fact, the emails got so long that Jason decided to splinter our conversation into three separate emails; he’d write me three emails, then I’d respond to all three.

As it turns out, Jason could only point out one ‘flaw’ in atheist reasoning, and when I responded, he admitted that it wasn’t really a flaw after all. Our last couple of emails detailed the question of where did God come from. In his final email, Jason included answers to that question from two of his friends. While I appreciate his efforts to bring in other sources, I think it’s funny that he had to find two friends to help prove the existence of his best friend (would I need help from other people in proving my wife’s existence?).

His final email is copied below. I responded to him but, as of today, it’s been three weeks since then and I don’t think he plans to write back, despite the fact that he already agreed that refusal to answer difficult questions is a sign that a religion is false. Anyway, here’s his email:

Hi again James,
I asked a couple of my friends the question of ‘who created God?’ and here are two of the responses:

RESPONSE ONE:
Richard Dawkins has asked the same question in his published writings. No doubt his followers think that he is on to something. But is he?
As has been pointed out, the question of who or what created the creator leads to an infinite regression and an infinite regression of questions cannot answer anything as it simply raises more questions. Moreover, an infinite number of creators would lead to an actually infinite quantity – which cannot exist. As such, any answer that provides a reasonable stopping point to an infinite regression is far more plausible than positing an absurdity in its place – which is what an actually infinite quantity is. So when an atheist argues that ‘who created the creator’ requires adopting a many creators hypothesis they are, in fact, answering with an absurdity.
Usually, however, the atheist will use the question of ‘who created the creator’ with the intent of showing that because the question leads to absurdities then there must be no creator(s) at all. Since atheism argues for existence by means of non-existence, which is itself illogical, then all one needs to define is a more logical answer to the question of existence. To my mind the Leibnizian argument from contingent existence answers this question nicely. Neither Dawkins nor any of his cronies have adequately grappled with the problems this argument creates for their position.

RESPONSE TWO (from my Spanish friend):
Evidence points to a creator. That’s the subject you’re discussing. Whether that creator has always existed, or whether it was created by a wiser and older and more powerful being is irrelevant. It doesn’t affect at all the question that universe asks for a creator, and any arguments in that sense are only trying to distract attention from the main point.
I don’t care whether God was created by a higher god (well, I’m sure he wasn’t, but anyway 🙂 ), what I know is that evidence points to an intelligence creating the universe.
Don’t you think so?
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As for the points you raise in this e-mail, perhaps I’ll write back at another time.  But as I’ve said before it’s best that you speak with a Witness in person to have your questions answered.