Archive for Religion
Idiot Geniuses
Posted by: | CommentsEl Blogador recently posted studies showing that atheists are smarter than the rest of us and that those of us who believe in God do so because of our own paranoia. He didn’t mention if the studies measured the arrogance of high IQ atheists.
I smiled at the post because I had just come from a bar where I found myself engaged in a lively discussion with three atheists and one agnostic. The agnostic was largely quiet, commenting only occasionally to scoff at the more absurd assertions by the atheist. I thought I’d share an accurate, if not literal, excerpted version of the dialogue:
Atheist 1: So you’re probably one of those evolution deniers, right?
DM: No, I’m open on the question of the method God uses to create things.
Atheist 2: But God and evolution are mutually exclusive!
DM: Prove it.
Atheist 1: Well, that’s just a cop out.
DM: No, you asserted it and evolution dogmatists state it is a fact, so prove it. I hold that God created time and matter and I am less interested in the technique, just as I am more interested in getting another glass of wine than I am in the technique the bartender uses in pouring.
Atheist 2: But you hold to a theory which can’t be proven.
DM: So do you.
Atheist 3: That’s not true, evolution is proven.
DM: I disagree. Many high IQ, atheist scientists believe the common understanding of the evolutionary theory-Darwinism-is severely flawed. And unlike most scientific work, it can’t be tested. It’s a theory that is unproven.
Agnostic: That’s a good point.
DM: Thanks.
Atheist 2: No it’s, not, stop encouraging him. Do you think gravity is a theory?
DM: No, I accept gravity. I consider it proven. I can knock your beer off the table and prove it; will you kindly prove evolution to me?
Atheist 1: You’re a smart guy, are you telling me you really believe some all powerful narcissistic genie character with no beginning and end snapped his fingers and created all this?
DM: You’re a smart guy, are you telling me that everything came from nothing?
Atheist 1: That’s absurd.
DM: Yeah, that was the point I was making. You have faith in a theory you cannot prove and you mock the faith I have in a theory I cannot prove.
Atheist 2: Oh, don’t give us that BS faith thing, reason and faith are not the same thing.
DM: I didn’t say they were, but my reason tells me that since everything we know of has a beginning and an end, and that everything in motion was put in motion, then reason tells me something was there at the beginning capable of both creative power and potency and if you believe in the big bang, then what was the cause of the big bang? Nothing?
Atheist 1: Matter was there.
DM: And the matter was created how?
Atheist 1: It was always there.
DM: And how do you know that?
Atheist 1: Uh…
DM: And what caused the matter to spontaneously fall in on itself and create the density required to trigger the big bang?
Agnostic: Oh, this is getting good…
Atheist 2: Well, I just think there was no ‘beginning’ such as you describe, that you’ve gotten us to accept your premise of a First Cause.
DM: Well, that’s your problem. Do you have an alternative explanation for how everything began and how all things came to be in motion?
Atheist 3: But evolution makes a lot of sense, it explains a lot of things that we seek the answers to.
DM: So does a Creator, but you reject Him and mock those of us who don’t blindly follow your secular faith.
Atheist 1: Oh, here we go with the atheist faith fallacy…
DM: You believe evolution is so superior to God simply because it takes place slowly and started from some primordial soup whose origins you can’t explain. Think about that for a moment.
Agnostic: That’s a good point, did you come up with that?
DM: No, with my 136 IQ I’m an intellectual midget compared to you geniuses who are unburdened by the paranoia I carry around.
Atheist 2: I don’t think you really believe this stuff, you just like polemics.
DM: You have a love affair with facts but fear/ignore the truth.
Atheist 2: What’s that supposed to mean?
DM: You’ve been indoctrinated into empiricism and adhere to said rules like I (occasionally) adhere to the Sacraments but these facts, which are often wrong due to human error or prejudice, don’t really explain anything in terms of truth.
Atheist 2: Okay, I’ll bite; “What is truth”.
DM: Facts are things that can be observed and measured, but in themselves don’t explain things. You may interpret them and reach conclusions which you, given that you are an atheist, naturally believe will be both true and factual and above reproach, but you still have not necessarily found truth. So much of evolutionary theory is based on untested, in fact, untestable theories, but instead is one generation after another of theory which assumes the accuracy of a predecessor’s theories. They can’t test evolution in a lab, all they can attempt is deduction based on the little data they have. Have you ever read the conclusions brilliant scientists have reached merely by looking at drawings on a cave wall? They deduce all sorts of things that cannot be inferred by the drawings but which happen to align with the scientists’ preconception of what a cave man was like.
Agnostic: Can you give me something practical?
DM: Well, take global warming. It has been believed to be true by millions and even now is held to by some people who you would otherwise consider to be intelligent and rational. And yet, the facts have either been faked or wrongly interpreted. Almost nothing the scientists involved have represented is ‘true’. Sure, some temperatures have been rising, and so they concluded this was the result of man-made global warming, but it turns out that an objective review determined those readings to be disproportionately located in areas of substantial urban growth. It would be like taking the temperature of human beings but only those who had just finished exercising in the desert, and then concluding that the average human temperature is about 101. Besides, the earth is actually cooling, and the temperature increases that were authentic started before the industrial revolution, a minor problem if you believe human industrial activity is the cause of global warming.
Agnostic: Interesting.
Atheist 1: Let’s return to this atheist question because if we continue down this path you’ll use your theology to trick us into debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
DM: Don’t you know?
Atheist 1: Sigh.
Agnostic: How many is it, oh great one?
DM: One.
Atheist 1: So, you’ve managed to change the subject but evolution really is proven, we have the missing link.
DM: No you don’t. Where is the animal that was a transition between monkey/chimp/gorilla to man?
Atheist 2: It’s not that simple.
DM: Right. Let me ask this, it’s evolutionary theory that animals (including man) adapt and evolve and develop these genetic traits based on experience and environment, right?
Atheist 3: That’s reasonable.
DM: Well, if I stopped wasting my time drinking in these dive bars and instead was working out at the gym and developed massive muscles, does that mean that when my child is born he will have large muscles?
Agnostic: LOL.
Atheist 2: Of course not, but if your son and his son and so on for many millions of years did this then their children would, over time, become stronger.
DM: Can you prove that?
Atheist 3: Well….how else would you explain things?
DM: Doesn’t it make more sense that through the history of mankind those who were best suited to a particular environment prospered and those who were ill-suited either died off or moved on to a less challenging environment, kind of like what happens in these conversations?
Atheist 1: You’re an a$$hole.
DM: Perhaps, do you think that’s genetic or have I adapted to my environment?
Agnostic: I love it!
Atheist 2: So how do you explain all this genetic and DNA evidence that tends to support evolutionary theory?
DM: I don’t know, maybe there is some evolution in our history, but you all believe scientists are infallible while I think they are human with a propensity to seek answers that will support the conclusions they’ve already reached….
Atheist 1: No, that’s what close minded theists do.
DM: …like Global Warming, which was never anything more than a humanist religion, now known to have been a total fraud. There need be no conflict between faith and reason, but for the secularist, they must be mutually exclusive, because they have decided there is no God and must develop evidence to support this theory, however unlikely or unproven the theory is.
Agnostic: Why didn’t I ever hear any of this in Sunday School?
DM: Because many believers, whether atheist or theist, are comfortable with their presumptions and don’t want them tested. It represents a threat to their core values and the worldview, and they reject information contrary to what they would like to believe.
Atheist 1: I’ve spent a lifetime watching fools of every stripe worship their gods and then steal and murder and lie and cheat and I think you’re a fool for even pretending to believe as they do. It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen, all these Priests on their altars are no different than the Indians and their witchdoctors. I could never debase myself to accept such foolishness, and I think you’re too smart for it. You possess the ability to reason through things, you should be an atheist.
DM: You mean, like you, with no answers to any questions and a belief in infallible colleagues so long as they share my presumptions?
Atheist 1: You’re awfully arrogant.
DM: It’s only arrogance if you’re wrong.
Death in Guate
Posted by: | CommentsThis friend of mine, we’ll call him ‘Thomas”, is married to a well-to-do Guatemalan woman. One night about 7pm they get a phone call saying that her eldest brother had died that afternoon. It was a shock to them all since, although he was in his 60s, he was in good health and was not suffering from any injury or disease.
At 3am the following morning, Thomas gets a call saying that the brother’s body had already arrived from Zacapa, and was ready for viewing. Most of the rest of the family had already come from around the country and was at the funeral home being served scrambled eggs. Thomas, like you or I, was surprised at the extreme speed with which things were happening.
When they got to the funeral home, he talked to the caretaker, who indicated that not only had the body been transported from Zacapa since his death only 8 hours earlier, but he had already been embalmed and the funeral was scheduled for 2pm! Thomas pondered this and wandered back to his wife’s side and joined a conversation with the surviving siblings in which they were discussing whether or not to tell their mother that her oldest son had died. (Not surprisingly, she doesn’t take news of dead children well).
They had decided to merely tell the mother that the (deceased) son was sick, and then slowly let out that he was more serious, until eventually they would let her know that he had in fact died, when Thomas interjected and said that it would never work and they had to tell her now.
They told the mother in time for the funeral Mass, at which the lifelong atheist was declared to already be in heaven with God. I was surprised to hear that, given that non-Catholics or those who have left the Church aren’t supposed to be buried in a funeral Mass, let alone canonized on the spot. (Note for Christians: don’t think it’s just the Catholic Church that is different here, the evangelicals don’t resemble so-called ‘evangelicals’ in the US).
Anyway, the dead man was accompanied to the cemetery that afternoon with the usual funeral band and a procession. If you’ve not seen one of these before, the closest comparison I can give you is the funeral procession at the beginning of Godfather 2. People carry the casket at shoulder level, a band plays funereal marching music and a procession follows. I have the suspicion that there are professional funeral walkers, but no one has ever admitted that to me. Either that or everyone knows everyone and that explains the frequent appearance of the same people in these processions.
I later learned that the man’s wife and children did not attend the funeral, and that is apparently by custom. How strange that the people who chose to leave his family for and spend the rest of his life with are not supposed to be at the funeral. When Thomas asked what the cause of death was, the family said, “It must have been a heart attack”. But with no autopsy, you can’t be sure.
In general I was shocked by how fast things were done and the hurry that everyone seemed to be in. In the US we often take 3-5 days to bury someone, so that all the friends and family can gather and here this man was in the ground less than 18 hours after his death.
God’s Wrath
Posted by: | CommentsKemmel and Lisa share a few stories from their mission work:
Sting-y Church Member Gets Taste of God’s Wrath
In Mactzul V during a church meeting to discuss the upcoming construction of their new church building, the members began pledge their personal funding committments to the work. As they went around the room, each family would anounce how much they planned to give over the next year. They came to one brother (quite wealthy in livestock) who said he felt like nobody should be compelled to give, and that he was not going to do it. The church elders said that was fine, and that it was a free-will offering outside of normal giving. A few days later, a call for help came from the man and his family after they and their livestock had been severely attacked by a colmena–a swarm of honey bees! Two of their bulls had been killed and the whole family was suffering from the stings. Several of the church leaders ran over to help them and took up a collection of Q500 to help pay for their medicine. They family was humbled and ashamed of their prior behavior and immediately asked for forgiveness and offered money to the building fund.Police (or rather, Posse) Blotter
A teenaged girl from the town of Chijtinnimit was kidnapped and left in one of the area garbage dumps one night, arousing fear in that town and surrounding communities. Shortly after midnight, townspeople gathered to decide what to do. The girl was found alive and after further questioning, it was discovered that she had been running around with a man–who was already married. It is hypothesized that the spurned wife ordered the kidnapping. Plans are being made to sort out the trouble between the two families.Plans for Teachers’ Protest Rally Strike Out
Friday morning was kicked off by an early-morning call from our physician Dr. Lux who was planning to travel to Clinica Ezell that day. There were reports of a teachers’ strike on the first day of school–all of the main crossroads in the country were to be blocked in an effort to get their concerns addressed by the government. Among the complaints are the job cuts for thousand of teachers despite growing school censuses and lack of teachers in many communities. As the morning progressed no signs of traffic blockade were seen. Rumors of late-morning initiation began to fly–citing first-day-of-school duties to attend to. The day’s activites went smoothly with no stops in traffic, or rioting. Local papers the following day showed photos of a few lonely maninfesters on the palace steps. Maybe they are afraid to loose their jobs too.
Christmas is Wearing On Me
Posted by: | CommentsI suspect more of you than normal will be upset by this post, but I’ve grown to dread Christmas. Christmas means that we alter our lives for a month before the holiday, work hard to spend enough money to satisfy enough people that they are important to you…actually, more important than last year…and generally race around like fools dodging everyone else doing the same thing and pretending that we all love this season.
It doesn’t matter that there is no real theological significance in giving gifts on Christmas (that would be Epiphany), or that Santa Claus bears little significance to Saint Nicholas, for whom he is named, or that the Christmas season doesn’t begin until Christmas Day and then lasts 12 days, or that billions of people around the world will be more exhausted, more broke and more desperate than they were before the day after Thanksgiving is celebrated in the US. You probably think I’m a scrooge, and that’s not it; I love giving people things, spending money, and I know I’m happier when the people around me are happier, but I guess the mockery it makes of Christmas has just gotten to me. I’m glad I’m not back in Phoenix with all the family and friends and all the pressure that comes with walking through the Christmas season like an egg nog zombie.
A friend of mine, we’ll call him Mateo, told me recently that his wife was so worked up about all the planning for Christmas, all the shopping that has to be done, all the family to be seen, that she is unbearable to live with. To make matters worse, Mateo is an atheist and sees in all this all the hypocrisy that fuels so many atheists’ disgust with theists.
I came across an article by a guy with similar sentiments:
Christmas (as it was once called) is the suicide season, when people get depressed and off themselves right and left. You could probably make money with a cyanide concession: Here’s your pill, now go into the alley, would you? Suicide suggests taste. It is a reasonable response to jollity contrived at corporate.Of course people kill themselves. They’re lonely folk trying to engage in obligatory cheer that doesn’t work, while imagining that everyone else is simmering in the warmth and love that they see in the commercials. In truth people seldom like each other that much, which shows good judgement.
What you actually have is, on Christmas morning, bored and spoiled children opening package after package without interest. Oh yeah, a CD of Klok Mortuary and the Gadarene Swine, already got it from Limewire. A fluorescent iPod cover that changes colors when you turn it, whoopee-do. The whole thing is a fraud, a sad swindle, an ordeal.
It is, however, a splendid example of Pavlovian conditioning. Pavlov is usually revered for torturing dogs, but he should be placed in a larger framework, as an early marketer. Americans hear ringdingchingading and their eyes glaze over. Yes, they think…yes, must buy…something. Urg. It doesn’t matter what they buy: A ghastly sweater for Aunt Sally, reduced because it would embarrass an aboriginal in the Amazon rain forest; an espresso-maker for Cousin Richard, because…well, because it’s fifty-percent off, and, who knows, Richard might like espresso.
You see these automatons issuing from department stores groaning under things they didn’t want to buy, for people they usually don’t like, who don’t want whatever was bought for them. “What can we buy for Uncle Fritter, who we’d rather never hear from again but he just won’t die? Oh, look. Soap in the shape of a cute little burro. Just the thing.”
What used to be Christmas, and was a joyous celebration of Mithra’s birthday, or the solstice, or something else reasonable, has become the Winter Holidays or, more candidly, the Winter Shopping Season. It no longer has anything to do with Christianity, which has gone flaccid in the suburbs and in the heartland consists of lunatics waiting to be Raptured up to heaven as by a giant godly Hovermatic. You can’t call it Christmas. We must observe the constitutional separation of church and retail.
This fool business has apparently become the foundation of the American economy. I have read that without Holiday sales, retailers of things nobody in his right mind ought to want would go out of business. That’s a lot of retailers. I’m for it. I mean, how many ugly ties can the Republic stand?
We’re in trouble, I tell you. You think it’s the sub-prime crisis? Nah. The holiday shopping season is going to do us in. We might stop doing it. The country is as force-fed as a pâté goose with Holiday bottles of shaving lotion and remaindered blouses, and if people stop gobbling, it’s all over. Ask yourself: Without the Shopping Season and high-pressure advertising, who would buy much of anything? Suppose that Apple Computer couldn’t advertise, but just put its new hiss-crackles on its web site? Why isn’t this reasonable? If you felt a compulsion to own an iPod with thirty-seven buttons and a sonar-depth-finder, you could. But you’d have to want the thing enough to look for it. Ha. The economy would croak louder than an opera bullfrog. Wouldn’t need a fat lady.
Don Marco’s Special Thin Crust Pizza Recipe
Posted by: | CommentsYou can go to Domino’s and get a predictable pizza for about 100Q, or go to Papa Zito’s or El Pescador Italiano and get a nice pizza for about 150Q, or you can stay home and cook a killer thin crust pizza with your favorite toppings for about 30Q each. This recipe has been updated and improved over the original after substantial quality-control experiments. Here’s how it’s done:
Don Marco’s Special Thin Crust Pizza Recipe (makes 4 pizzas)
1. In a bowl, have a kid combine 4.5 cups of flour, 1 3/4 TP salt and 1 TP yeast.
2. Add 1/4 cup olive oil and 1 3/4 cup room temperature water.
3. Instruct the kid to mix thoroughly and then knead. (This is a great activity for a teenager with aggression).
4. Enjoy a glass of red wine.
5. Tell teenager to continue kneading.
6. Begin to assemble ingredients for Don Marco’s Kick A$$ Pizza Sauce
Don Marco’s Kick A$$ Pizza Sauce
1. Find an obsessive kid and tell him to add 6 oz of tomato paste (or for an adult version, use leftover Don Marco’s Special Salsa), to 6 oz of water. Mix.
2. Add 1 TBP minced garlic.
3. Add 2 TBP honey
4. Add 3/4 TP onion powder
5. Add 1/4 TP oregano, marjoram, basil and black pepper.
6. Add 1/8 TP cayenne pepper
7. Add 3 TBP grated parmesean cheese
8. Add some salt.
Tell the obsessive kid to stir the mixture slowly but consistently. At this point, you’re going to need to take a break from watching the kids work and have another glass of wine.
When you return, the teenager should be done pounding kneading the dough. Have him cut the dough into four equally-sized portions and then begin to spread the dough into pizza shapes on a pizza sheet you’ve greased with olive oil.
The kid with the pizza sauce should be tired by now, so tell him to start grating 1/2 lb cheddar cheese. I prefer a mixture of mozzarella, sharp cheddar and Parmesan. Usually the ratio is 1 to 1/2 to 1/4. Mix thoroughly.
The dough should be ready on the pan now, add approximately 3 TBP of sauce to each pizza dough, then sprinkle cheese liberally. Suggested toppings include pepperoni, salchichas, onions, peppers, mushrooms, jalapenos, sliced tomatoes and basil, or whatever you have on hand. Poached chicken with alfredo sauce, chopped tomatoes and onions can also be good.
You should have already figured out that the oven should be pre-heated to 375F, or if you have a Guatemalan oven just set it to ‘4′. The rack should be on the lowest level-so put your pizza in for 15 minutes or tell a kid to start counting.
Go drink another glass of wine.
When the timer goes off, or when the kid has counted to 900-take the pizza out of the oven and put the second one in. Enjoy with a glass of wine and raise your glass in honor of “Don Marco, Virile, Vigorous and Potent Conquistador, Exploiter and Pizza Chef”.
Just like I like 'em; spicy, hot, thin and mouth-watering...
Where Do All the People and Money Come From?
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve gotten to know some people involved in managing NGOs here in Guatemala and without exception the ones who have been here five years or more and remain in business have confided to me that life is very different than what they imagined or what the newbies all think ‘works’. One of the things I’ve heard is how it’s the Churches and religious people who show up year after year to volunteer and send money month after month, reliably. Even the secular atheist types tell me this.
I was reminded of this by a recent post by Glenn and Neva, medical missionaries to Guatemala:
We finished a surgery trip which completed 53 cases. The focus for surgery was for ENT, Plastic and General Surgery. The majority of team members were from the south, Alabama,Georgia,Tennessee and other states. This was the first time for many of the members and once they were assigned, they were busy at making the whole body work to the glory of GOD.
I know you have heard this before but the cases seem more difficult because of the amount of time span people have lived with the illness affecting them. Regardless God used his people to repair/remove thyroids, cleft lips, cleft plates and hernias, lumps and bumps.
Good to see how those southern rednecks managed to overcome their KKK tendencies and help the little dark-skinned people.
Wanted: English Speaking Church Services in Antigua
Posted by: | CommentsA reader has asked me for help finding a English-speaking church service in or around Antigua. I used to know of one, but have not been able to track them down. She didn’t seem all that concerned about theology, so if you know of anything at all, please post it here or email to me.
Thanks!
Update: A reader has emailed that Iglesia San Felipe de Jesus has a Mass in English. Anyone know the time?
Muy Frio! Muy Frio!
Posted by: | CommentsMaid #3 & #4 are always scolding the Wife about how cold the children are. This is because the children will strip down to their underwear and run around the yard, spraying each other with the hose (and then come inside shivering), or re-enact scenes from Rocky IV (the one where Rocky fights the entire Soviet Politburo and wins), which of course necessitates going topless.
I’ve witnessed this scenario play out a few times, and it’s pretty funny. Someone will get punched in the face, decide that it was too hard, grab the broomstick, and then beat the snot out of the other ‘boxer’. This results in two people crying, and the Maid will run over, hold them protectively and, pointing to their shirtless-status, tell the Wife they’re cold.
Anyway, I was reminded of this because of a post by Jimmy. Jimmy and Shelley are Christian missionaires in Peten, but they’re not your normal wide-eyed, pie-in-the-sky born again types who can’t see the forest for the trees. They really get it, and are actually working with people who’ve never heard about Jesus before (as opposed to converting all the pagan Catholics). Here’s a story:
A country-wide superstition in Guatemala is that anything cold will kill you. I would imagine this started in the mountains and gradually migrated north to Petén. We were told about this, but our first encounter with it was during the first medical clinic we were a part of:
An old grandmother brought her two granddaughters with this complaint: “My granddaughters wake up early in the morning before I do and drink ice-cold water and now look how skinny they are!” Of course, they were skinny because of the parasites and amoebas in the water, but she wanted the doctor to tell the girls to stop drinking cold water.This irrational fear of anything cold presents itself in conversation several times each month. Parents won’t let their children ride in the cab of the truck because of the air conditioning. When I got Dengue Fever I was cautioned to not turn on the air in the truck, and Shelley was told that she had to open the fridge for me because if I stood in front of the fridge with a fever I would die.
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