I have been neglecting the blog lately. No reason in particular, but probably a confluence of things. Working six to seven days a week has been pretty exhausting. Minor familial strife has not helped. Nor has a rather intense conversation buried in the comment section of a previous post (which shall remain nameless). Even my bookstore boss noticed that I looked more tired than usual.
My reading has only been limping along, as well. At the moment I am reading The Scarlet Letter because I never read it in school and suffered a sudden burst of curiosity a few days ago. Turns out I love the book and Nathaniel Hawthorne is my new literary hero. But my more "serious" (i.e., non-literary, non-fictional) reading has suffered a bit. I have been picking at bits and pieces of Herodotus, a previously mentioned book about the "Scopes Monkey Trial," and a pop-history about the United States in the late 19th century. But now I am starting John Taylor Gatto's An Underground History of American Education (available to read online here) because it is the latest selection for my reading group. That will be a major task, especially since Gatto's writing style and lack of documentation annoy the heck out of me.
Meanwhile I have also been reading Mourt's Relation and trying to lay my hands on a decent copy of William Bradford's Of Plimouth Plantation. Yes, it's that time of year again, and I can't celebrate a holiday without diving back into its history (or alleged history, in the case of Thanksgiving).
Despite all this reading (and I've not included all my reading in this account), I have had surprisingly little I felt like writing on the blog. However, I have been working on a different literary project. Every literate person should have a novel in the works, I think. Let the masses have their television, I shall find my escape in writing. Working on a big piece of fiction also has the delightful effect of centering one's intellectual pursuits around a singular narrative or literary theme. This is especially helpful for me and my insanely broad interests. Perhaps one of these days it will see the light of day as a published work, but don't hold your breath.
Of course, being an independent reader and a closet novelist, one must always struggle against the slithering tentacles of crackpothood and dilettantism. That, too, is exhausting.
At any rate, I have not shriveled up and died, and I have no intention of abandoning my blog like so many others have done. A quasi-hiatus now and then is almost inescapable, though. As my mother tells me I once said to my father at an early age, "I'm not Superman, daddy!" Indeed. Nietzsche notwithstanding.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Colson, Derrida, and "Doubt-Ridden Skeptics"
Jacques Derrida died last week. Chuck Colson commented:
Classic. Innocent Christian kid goes off to university, comes back a "doubt-ridden skeptic." Happens all the time. You might say it happened to me. Maybe Derrida's deconstructionism had something to do with it, but not the way Colson wants you to think. No, deconstructionism is not an evil force that is hacking away at the scriptural foundation of Christianity from without; deconstructionism has been called to the defense of Christianity from within. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that modern Christianity could not function without deconstructionism.
Twentieth-century American Christianity was richly prepared for deconstructionism by fundamentalists who took the biblical texts, hacked them into pieces, and rearranged them to build the fantastic "prophetic" schemes of premillennial dispensationalism, authorial intent be damned. All they had to do was remind people that God was the true author, and suddenly their own ideas about God could stand in as authorial intent. Rearrange the text, build theological tenets on allegedly interrelated passages, forget about the massive cultural and contextual gap between yourself and the biblical authors. Congratulations! You have deconstructed your "holy" scriptures. (See, for instance, the Scofield Bible, which encouraged nonlinear reading by placing in the margins numerous reference markers pointing to other passages.)
But the fundamentalists aren't the only Christian deconstructionists. The liberals do it, too. These are the people who constantly re-interpret various passages based on an allegedly superior understanding of the original language and cultural context. For instance, many of them have managed to turn the Bible into some kind of feminist manifesto. I once read a whole book that was dedicated to convincing its readers that despite what the Bible seems to say about women (that they are lesser people), it is in fact emphatically supportive of equality between the sexes. Sure, there are some parts in the Bible where women are allowed to play important roles, but their treatment is far from consistent. So how come radical feminism within Christianity didn't happen until almost two thousand years after the canon was completed? Suddenly scholars in the twentieth century can understand the texts better than their original authors and readers did? Welcome to Christian deconstructionism! (Liberal Christians also use deconstructionist critiques to support homosexuality, even though the Bible is pretty darned clear on that one, too. But since the ancient text doesn't line up with modern tolerance, we'll just tweak it so it says what we want.)
Then there are the Catholics who establish scriptural authority with voting councils. Because, you know, while a lone, "reformed," sola scriptura reader might be wrong, a bunch of institutional elites who argue and then cast votes can only be truly led by the Spirit. Apparently God is a democratic deity. This from the branch of the church that is the most hierarchical and authoritarian. Go figure. (Watch out, here come the Catholic readers to slap me silly and tell me I'm wrong, likely under the auspices of some papal bull or other authoritative document.) Seems like shades of deconstruction there, too. How can you establish authorial intent by taking a vote? Does the author get a vote?
(Of course, most of these Christian forms of deconstruction were around long before Jacques Derrida, but they're not too different from his theory. Only the liberals have actually read and been directly influenced by Derrida. My point, though, is that Christians of all stripes have wandered from the original intent of the authors of their scriptures and begun reading their own meanings into the texts, sometimes innocently and sometimes not, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively.)
When I went to university, I decided that since I was bolstering my education in other corners, I might as well delve into my faith. So I started reading the scriptures more carefully. I read whole books at a time, instead of just picking and choosing verses or chapters here and there. I tried to learn about the context of the author. Who was his (or her, in the case of some books, perhaps) original audience? Why? Where were they? When were they? What was this about? That is, I began to read them as a historian instead of a religious devotee. Rather quickly it became clear to me that the only way to make these writings as meaningful as I had been taught they were supposed to be was to deconstruct them, to read into them, to listen to the intent of various commentators and historical authorities instead of to the bare texts themselves.
So there I was in the midst of my university education, starting to wonder about the validity of a religious text that is more interpretation and tradition than anything else. In other words, it was the deconstructionism rampant within modern Christianity that exposed the silliness of the religion to me. So if Colson wants to worry about deconstructionism, he ought to turn his guns against his own, because the "doubt-ridden skeptics" are not the ones doing the deconstructing.
The very day Derrida died, I was on an airplane. A couple recognized me and came over to talk. They told me the sad tale of how four years of college had turned their son from a solid Christian into a doubt-ridden skeptic. Now multiply that incident a million-fold, and you'll understand the real legacy of Jacques Derrida, who amused himself at our great expense. Who said ideas don't have consequences?
Classic. Innocent Christian kid goes off to university, comes back a "doubt-ridden skeptic." Happens all the time. You might say it happened to me. Maybe Derrida's deconstructionism had something to do with it, but not the way Colson wants you to think. No, deconstructionism is not an evil force that is hacking away at the scriptural foundation of Christianity from without; deconstructionism has been called to the defense of Christianity from within. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that modern Christianity could not function without deconstructionism.
Twentieth-century American Christianity was richly prepared for deconstructionism by fundamentalists who took the biblical texts, hacked them into pieces, and rearranged them to build the fantastic "prophetic" schemes of premillennial dispensationalism, authorial intent be damned. All they had to do was remind people that God was the true author, and suddenly their own ideas about God could stand in as authorial intent. Rearrange the text, build theological tenets on allegedly interrelated passages, forget about the massive cultural and contextual gap between yourself and the biblical authors. Congratulations! You have deconstructed your "holy" scriptures. (See, for instance, the Scofield Bible, which encouraged nonlinear reading by placing in the margins numerous reference markers pointing to other passages.)
But the fundamentalists aren't the only Christian deconstructionists. The liberals do it, too. These are the people who constantly re-interpret various passages based on an allegedly superior understanding of the original language and cultural context. For instance, many of them have managed to turn the Bible into some kind of feminist manifesto. I once read a whole book that was dedicated to convincing its readers that despite what the Bible seems to say about women (that they are lesser people), it is in fact emphatically supportive of equality between the sexes. Sure, there are some parts in the Bible where women are allowed to play important roles, but their treatment is far from consistent. So how come radical feminism within Christianity didn't happen until almost two thousand years after the canon was completed? Suddenly scholars in the twentieth century can understand the texts better than their original authors and readers did? Welcome to Christian deconstructionism! (Liberal Christians also use deconstructionist critiques to support homosexuality, even though the Bible is pretty darned clear on that one, too. But since the ancient text doesn't line up with modern tolerance, we'll just tweak it so it says what we want.)
Then there are the Catholics who establish scriptural authority with voting councils. Because, you know, while a lone, "reformed," sola scriptura reader might be wrong, a bunch of institutional elites who argue and then cast votes can only be truly led by the Spirit. Apparently God is a democratic deity. This from the branch of the church that is the most hierarchical and authoritarian. Go figure. (Watch out, here come the Catholic readers to slap me silly and tell me I'm wrong, likely under the auspices of some papal bull or other authoritative document.) Seems like shades of deconstruction there, too. How can you establish authorial intent by taking a vote? Does the author get a vote?
(Of course, most of these Christian forms of deconstruction were around long before Jacques Derrida, but they're not too different from his theory. Only the liberals have actually read and been directly influenced by Derrida. My point, though, is that Christians of all stripes have wandered from the original intent of the authors of their scriptures and begun reading their own meanings into the texts, sometimes innocently and sometimes not, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively.)
When I went to university, I decided that since I was bolstering my education in other corners, I might as well delve into my faith. So I started reading the scriptures more carefully. I read whole books at a time, instead of just picking and choosing verses or chapters here and there. I tried to learn about the context of the author. Who was his (or her, in the case of some books, perhaps) original audience? Why? Where were they? When were they? What was this about? That is, I began to read them as a historian instead of a religious devotee. Rather quickly it became clear to me that the only way to make these writings as meaningful as I had been taught they were supposed to be was to deconstruct them, to read into them, to listen to the intent of various commentators and historical authorities instead of to the bare texts themselves.
So there I was in the midst of my university education, starting to wonder about the validity of a religious text that is more interpretation and tradition than anything else. In other words, it was the deconstructionism rampant within modern Christianity that exposed the silliness of the religion to me. So if Colson wants to worry about deconstructionism, he ought to turn his guns against his own, because the "doubt-ridden skeptics" are not the ones doing the deconstructing.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Solon's Culture of Life
Before I slipped into sleep last night I read a little Herodotus. The historian tells the story of a wise Athenian named Solon who was traveling throughout the lands of the Greeks. In Lydia, a region that is now part of Turkey, he came before the King Croesus, one of the richest, most powerful men of his day. Solon was known for his wisdom and experience, having recently rewritten the Athenian constitution, then setting out on a ten year journey to experience greater Greece. So Croesus, finding a wise man in his court and hoping to bolster his vanity, inquired of Solon who was the happiest of all men--fully expecting to hear his own name echoed back. But Solon told him of other men whom he deemed happier, listing their achievements both modest and great, and finally declaring that no man's life can be truly evaluated until it has ended, so that all the days of his life can be counted. Every day is different, Solon reminded Croesus. Even great men who have lived long may still find time to fail and fall. Croesus, of course, was angered by Solon's response, and judged the Athenian to be a fool.
The story probably did not happen as Herodotus told it. Solon instituted his Athenian reforms in 594 BCE then set out on his ten year journey, but Croesus did not become king of Lydia until 560 BCE. Be that as it may, the conversation between Solon and Croesus is still a valuable piece of philosophy, even if its historicity is dubious. (See also the 17th century Dutch painter Nikolaus Knüpfer's inspiring portrayal of the story.)
Reflecting on the words of Solon I turn back to modern times and the various movements posturing themselves as proponents for a "culture of life." The people of these movements judge life by its potential instead of by its achievements or failures. This view is allegedly more hopeful and inspiring than the one espoused by Solon, but I wonder. How is it good to plant a sense of value into every person regardless of how that person lives? What can that do but establish a sense of complacency that allows us to take our lives for granted? Certainly we all have potential. But greatness and importance and value come not from potential but from what is done with potential. Potential may be used wisely or it may be squandered. Tragedy occurs when one who is attempting to use his or her potential for something great is caught up in the machinations of nature or human society only to see that effort and that potential cast down to oblivion. Tragedy is what happens when those who strive are beaten back by forces greater than themselves. Without striving, without an attempt to act on potential, there can be no tragedy.
Solon had his own culture of life, and it is one that I can affirm. Life is valuable as an opportunity, but human lives are valuable as efforts to be and to become something more. No life can be judged a failure or a success until it is completed and no beginning is enough to secure a valiant ending. Many of us will fail and be forgotten. Only by striving against the entropy and oblivion of time and history can we secure for ourselves a place of honor. Don't give me a participation award and tell me that simply existing is good enough, pat me on the head, call me valuable, and send me on my way. That is not life but illusion. Give me something real instead. Give me Solon's culture of life, and not this feeble culture of modern days.
The story probably did not happen as Herodotus told it. Solon instituted his Athenian reforms in 594 BCE then set out on his ten year journey, but Croesus did not become king of Lydia until 560 BCE. Be that as it may, the conversation between Solon and Croesus is still a valuable piece of philosophy, even if its historicity is dubious. (See also the 17th century Dutch painter Nikolaus Knüpfer's inspiring portrayal of the story.)
Reflecting on the words of Solon I turn back to modern times and the various movements posturing themselves as proponents for a "culture of life." The people of these movements judge life by its potential instead of by its achievements or failures. This view is allegedly more hopeful and inspiring than the one espoused by Solon, but I wonder. How is it good to plant a sense of value into every person regardless of how that person lives? What can that do but establish a sense of complacency that allows us to take our lives for granted? Certainly we all have potential. But greatness and importance and value come not from potential but from what is done with potential. Potential may be used wisely or it may be squandered. Tragedy occurs when one who is attempting to use his or her potential for something great is caught up in the machinations of nature or human society only to see that effort and that potential cast down to oblivion. Tragedy is what happens when those who strive are beaten back by forces greater than themselves. Without striving, without an attempt to act on potential, there can be no tragedy.
Solon had his own culture of life, and it is one that I can affirm. Life is valuable as an opportunity, but human lives are valuable as efforts to be and to become something more. No life can be judged a failure or a success until it is completed and no beginning is enough to secure a valiant ending. Many of us will fail and be forgotten. Only by striving against the entropy and oblivion of time and history can we secure for ourselves a place of honor. Don't give me a participation award and tell me that simply existing is good enough, pat me on the head, call me valuable, and send me on my way. That is not life but illusion. Give me something real instead. Give me Solon's culture of life, and not this feeble culture of modern days.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
July, 1925
Greetings, gentle readers. If you're wondering where I am, and why I have not posted for several days, let me assure that I have not disappeared or spontaneously combusted. I have only been working and reading and thinking, letting things boil around in my brain for a while.
For instance, I am currently reading Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1998 for this book. It is a fascinating tale, this circus of a trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. I've always thought it was interesting, from the day I first learned of it in my advanced placement U.S. History class. (I can still see my teacher's handwriting on the board, the words "Scopes Monkey Trial." What a catchy name for a trial!)
A whole host of issues coalesced in the Scopes trial: individual rights versus majority rule; academic freedom versus education as indoctrination; legitimate and illegitimate uses of the judicial system; ideological content versus media "events"; and, of course, science versus religion. This makes the Scopes trial one of those points of perennial fascination in U.S. history, not unlike the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 in its popularity, its sordid human conflict, and its simple staging that translates well into linear narrative. (Consider the two famous plays The Crucible by Arthur Miller and Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the former based on the Salem trials and the latter inspired by the Dayton trial.) Many of the recurring themes in American history can be encapsulated in these two events. (Most of the rest of them crop up in the Civil War.)
Americans of all stripes would do well to revisit the Dayton, Tennessee of July, 1925, the complex characters who converged there, and the conflicting ideologies that clashed swords there. There is something telling in the "Scopes Monkey Trial," not just in its explicit content and what is recorded in the transcript, but in the way that the trial was arguably a manufactured publicity stunt--manufactured by all participants, from the ACLU that sought a "test case" for the antievolution Tennessee law to the Daytonians looking to put their town on the map to William Jennings Bryan and his post-Great War paranoia of a Darwinian-Nietzschean alliance to the bombastic Clarence Darrow who volunteered for the case only after he discovered that Bryan was involved. All this after the enactment of a law that no one really expected would be enforced. The clamor of the public regarding this trial indicates, at least to me, that Americans needed a stage upon which to enact their inner struggles over the ideological direction of their nation. Dayton was willing to be that stage and Scopes, Bryan, and Darrow were willing to be the players. Publicity stunt though it may have been, it was a cathartic one that gave new direction both to the evolutionists and to the antievolution fundamentalists, setting the tone for their conflict up to the present day. (It is surprising how many of the same arguments are still around, 79 years later.) It was as though the participants, under the guise of a publicity stunt, were creating a myth--a myth to put Dayton on the map, to destroy evolution, to ridicule fundamentalism.
History is filled with interesting stories and events that ought to make us pause and reflect. Rather than speeding us along toward some imagined, predicted future, they should caution us always to consider what has already been said and done. Daniel Boorstin once wrote that
What happened in Dayton in 1925 was not the beginning of a conflict, nor the end of one, but a conveniently dramatic emergence of an emblematic representation of arguments that have almost always been with us. The United States has always been a land of conflict and turmoil and that has usually been a sign of our health. That is one of the reasons I so often delve into controversy with this blog. Even if an argument changes no minds, it has the sneaky effect of exposing both sides to each other's existence, and that is perhaps more valuable than changing minds anyway.
For instance, I am currently reading Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1998 for this book. It is a fascinating tale, this circus of a trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. I've always thought it was interesting, from the day I first learned of it in my advanced placement U.S. History class. (I can still see my teacher's handwriting on the board, the words "Scopes Monkey Trial." What a catchy name for a trial!)
A whole host of issues coalesced in the Scopes trial: individual rights versus majority rule; academic freedom versus education as indoctrination; legitimate and illegitimate uses of the judicial system; ideological content versus media "events"; and, of course, science versus religion. This makes the Scopes trial one of those points of perennial fascination in U.S. history, not unlike the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 in its popularity, its sordid human conflict, and its simple staging that translates well into linear narrative. (Consider the two famous plays The Crucible by Arthur Miller and Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the former based on the Salem trials and the latter inspired by the Dayton trial.) Many of the recurring themes in American history can be encapsulated in these two events. (Most of the rest of them crop up in the Civil War.)
Americans of all stripes would do well to revisit the Dayton, Tennessee of July, 1925, the complex characters who converged there, and the conflicting ideologies that clashed swords there. There is something telling in the "Scopes Monkey Trial," not just in its explicit content and what is recorded in the transcript, but in the way that the trial was arguably a manufactured publicity stunt--manufactured by all participants, from the ACLU that sought a "test case" for the antievolution Tennessee law to the Daytonians looking to put their town on the map to William Jennings Bryan and his post-Great War paranoia of a Darwinian-Nietzschean alliance to the bombastic Clarence Darrow who volunteered for the case only after he discovered that Bryan was involved. All this after the enactment of a law that no one really expected would be enforced. The clamor of the public regarding this trial indicates, at least to me, that Americans needed a stage upon which to enact their inner struggles over the ideological direction of their nation. Dayton was willing to be that stage and Scopes, Bryan, and Darrow were willing to be the players. Publicity stunt though it may have been, it was a cathartic one that gave new direction both to the evolutionists and to the antievolution fundamentalists, setting the tone for their conflict up to the present day. (It is surprising how many of the same arguments are still around, 79 years later.) It was as though the participants, under the guise of a publicity stunt, were creating a myth--a myth to put Dayton on the map, to destroy evolution, to ridicule fundamentalism.
History is filled with interesting stories and events that ought to make us pause and reflect. Rather than speeding us along toward some imagined, predicted future, they should caution us always to consider what has already been said and done. Daniel Boorstin once wrote that
When we become historians, we are seduced by the prophet's temptations--to pretend to be wiser than we really are, and to underestimate the probability of the unexpected. But History should be our Cautionary Science. Our past is only a little less uncertain than our future, and, like the future, it is always changing, always revealing and concealing.
What happened in Dayton in 1925 was not the beginning of a conflict, nor the end of one, but a conveniently dramatic emergence of an emblematic representation of arguments that have almost always been with us. The United States has always been a land of conflict and turmoil and that has usually been a sign of our health. That is one of the reasons I so often delve into controversy with this blog. Even if an argument changes no minds, it has the sneaky effect of exposing both sides to each other's existence, and that is perhaps more valuable than changing minds anyway.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Guillen's Galling Guff
Michael Guillen has a new book. Can a Smart Person Believe in God?
What kind of question is that? Of course smart people can believe in God. They do it every day. Apparently Guillen is arguing against the straw-atheist who claims only idiots believe in God. This is exceedingly annoying. But wait, there's more!
Guillen can't even make it past the second page of his book without spreading more silliness. He says we are "split into two camps: Those who believe in God and those who believe in something else. You'll notice I resisted lapsing into the common practice of referring to the two camps as Believers and Nonbelievers; doing so would encourage the totally erroneous notion that 'believing' or 'having faith' is something only some of us do. Truth is, everyone of us 'believes.' Everyone of us 'has faith.' What divides us are the different objects of our faith, our different gods."
Umm, no. Sorry. Real life ain't Hollywood where everybody has to "believe in something." (Speaking of which, I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing that same freaking line in every other movie. You'd think Hollywood was all about pie-in-the-sky and nobody cared about the bottom line. Ha.) In real life, there are people who believe in things that can't be seen, observed, verified, or otherwise detected by any non-subjective means, and people who don't. I am one of the latter. We are a very small minority.
Which Guillen recognizes: "4 percent of Americans don't believe in God--a pretty meager percentage given the disproportionate attention and clout this camp appears to enjoy in today's secular age."
Huh? Attention? Clout? Yeah, right. Guillen has clearly never been an atheist, or he would know what it's like to live in a world where everybody (for all intents and purposes) believes in God, and basically assumes that you do, too. He doesn't understand that when you work in schools and you have to stand up every morning to pledge your patriotic allegiance, that pledge still includes a theological point because the "clout" for that issue is entirely on the side of the theists, who are always standing at the ready to ram a theological declaration down the throat of every American. Nor does Guillen know what it's like when every civic meeting and ritual seems to include an invocation and/or a benediction, during which we allegedly attention-getting, clout-wielding atheists are made to feel like outsiders. Anyone who has actually been an atheist knows what it is like. Any attention we get is negative, any clout we have is fought for tooth and nail. Why are the presidential candidates bending over backwards to appeal to religious voters, but none of them give a damn what we atheists think? I'll tell you why: Because there are only a very few of us and we have approximately zero clout. In fact, most atheists are not interested in "clout" for the sake of atheism. We're not like Christians, who want to convert the whole world and are willing to stage massive proselytization efforts to achieve that end. Most of us just want to live our lives and have Christians stop telling us we have to say things like "under God" if we want to pledge our allegiance to our national flag. Stuff like that.
Guillen's book "Includes a revealing self-test to determine your own SQ" or "Spiritual Quotient." I can't get past the first question:
So what am I supposed to do if none of those answers applies to me? My answer would be "(f) Be glad something good happened." But Guillen doesn't allow for that, because his test is biased. He still thinks that even though I am an atheist, I still "believe" in something. But I don't.
Anyway, that's all the time I have for now.
What kind of question is that? Of course smart people can believe in God. They do it every day. Apparently Guillen is arguing against the straw-atheist who claims only idiots believe in God. This is exceedingly annoying. But wait, there's more!
Guillen can't even make it past the second page of his book without spreading more silliness. He says we are "split into two camps: Those who believe in God and those who believe in something else. You'll notice I resisted lapsing into the common practice of referring to the two camps as Believers and Nonbelievers; doing so would encourage the totally erroneous notion that 'believing' or 'having faith' is something only some of us do. Truth is, everyone of us 'believes.' Everyone of us 'has faith.' What divides us are the different objects of our faith, our different gods."
Umm, no. Sorry. Real life ain't Hollywood where everybody has to "believe in something." (Speaking of which, I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing that same freaking line in every other movie. You'd think Hollywood was all about pie-in-the-sky and nobody cared about the bottom line. Ha.) In real life, there are people who believe in things that can't be seen, observed, verified, or otherwise detected by any non-subjective means, and people who don't. I am one of the latter. We are a very small minority.
Which Guillen recognizes: "4 percent of Americans don't believe in God--a pretty meager percentage given the disproportionate attention and clout this camp appears to enjoy in today's secular age."
Huh? Attention? Clout? Yeah, right. Guillen has clearly never been an atheist, or he would know what it's like to live in a world where everybody (for all intents and purposes) believes in God, and basically assumes that you do, too. He doesn't understand that when you work in schools and you have to stand up every morning to pledge your patriotic allegiance, that pledge still includes a theological point because the "clout" for that issue is entirely on the side of the theists, who are always standing at the ready to ram a theological declaration down the throat of every American. Nor does Guillen know what it's like when every civic meeting and ritual seems to include an invocation and/or a benediction, during which we allegedly attention-getting, clout-wielding atheists are made to feel like outsiders. Anyone who has actually been an atheist knows what it is like. Any attention we get is negative, any clout we have is fought for tooth and nail. Why are the presidential candidates bending over backwards to appeal to religious voters, but none of them give a damn what we atheists think? I'll tell you why: Because there are only a very few of us and we have approximately zero clout. In fact, most atheists are not interested in "clout" for the sake of atheism. We're not like Christians, who want to convert the whole world and are willing to stage massive proselytization efforts to achieve that end. Most of us just want to live our lives and have Christians stop telling us we have to say things like "under God" if we want to pledge our allegiance to our national flag. Stuff like that.
Guillen's book "Includes a revealing self-test to determine your own SQ" or "Spiritual Quotient." I can't get past the first question:
1. If something unlikely but good happens to me, I am most likely to:
(a) Shake my head in wonderment over the coincidence.
(b) Try figuring out how it could have happened.
(c) Thank God.
(d) Thank Lady Luck.
(e) Try analyzing the odds of its happening.
So what am I supposed to do if none of those answers applies to me? My answer would be "(f) Be glad something good happened." But Guillen doesn't allow for that, because his test is biased. He still thinks that even though I am an atheist, I still "believe" in something. But I don't.
Anyway, that's all the time I have for now.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Standardized Testing
Today I am administering standardized tests to seventh graders. These are local tests, part of our district's attempt at "deep alignment." (I.e., the powers that be are convinced that a Good Education for all seventh graders means they can all pass the same tests at the same times throughout the year.) The kids have no idea that they are not really being tested. Standardized tests have nothing to do with students or what they know. They have everything to do with The System and what it can induce the students to regurgitate. Want your students to test well? Write a test then prepare them for it. This will tell you nothing about what the students know or about how well they understand anything (except maybe how to deal with multiple choices and how to shade in bubbles). However, it will tell you how well The System has adhered to its curriculum. This is clear from the fact that students are not graded by standardized tests--schools are graded by standardized tests. Your school did not fare so well on the standardized tests? Prepare to be punished or sanctioned or sentenced to the purgatory of "professional development." (I.e., "Because your students did not pass the standardized tests, you are clearly not up with current instructional and psychological fads. If you were a good teacher, you would do what we tell you to do and stop trying to respond to the innate curiosity of individual students, which only short-circuits the precision of our nearly-automated curriculum, which you need to follow if you want to produce standardized, cookie-cutter students. Our standardized, cookie-cutter tests reveal this flaw in your professional and personal character. Report to the nearest re-education--er, professional development--center.") The kids will never notice anything except that suddenly their teachers are in a frenzy over how well the students perform on all these tests that won't affect their grades. Welcome to modern American education.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Tired
It's one of those days. I'm not even focusing as I write this. All the words are doubled. Too tired to bother. Worse, I still have five hours left at work. Worse than that, at least five more days until I get a day off. It's already been at least a week since I had a day off, too. (On top of that, my last days off were all Civil War reenacting days, which are exhausting and not restful at all.) One of these days I'm just going to fall over, I think.
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