Lots To See

[via Indexed]

Close, But Not Quite...

[via Indexed]

inauguration: down payment on the dream?

[via Notes From Off-Center]

Related: president obama’s regression problem

Differences Between Proud and Broken People

[via Grace and Truth to You]

Hallowe'en:

Don't deny. Face your fears. Persevere though tragedy.

The Ordering of Love

[via Spiritual Sensuality]

Community and Conformity

[via Ponderings on a Faith Journey]

Tragedy:

Death is what happens when you're making other plans.

And That Is Not Insignificant...

[via You saved my life from a colorless one]

The fact is, from a global perspective, you don't matter either.
{read the rest}

Calling Yourself Exceptional Isn't

Just a quick Fourth of July note. Hope you set off lots of fireworks, and eat lots of hamburgers. But here's also hoping that you do it with a clear head.

This civil holiday celebrates resistance to tyranny. And of course, some of the most ardent participants at such events are those who want to justify contemporary tyranny, the kind who want to keep everybody well occupied over celebrations of resistance to yesteryear's tyrants....

Calling yourself exceptional isn't. Recognizing that we are mortal men just like other mortal men, and that we are vulnerable to all the same temptations, is rare. Boasting in American achievements barely manages to clear that Ozymandian low bar -- it is the kind of ordinary hubris nailed in a poem that was written before we defeated the Nazis, landed on the moon, built the space shuttle, and started selling iPhones that could serve as navigation systems for the space shuttle -- and when we invite mighty observers to look on our works and despair, we are acting like pretty much everybody else in the history of the world.

[via BlOG and MABLOG, emphasis mine]

Distinquished Ladies

There's a subtle implication that Ruth Graham's life was somehow less than the life of the modern-day pastor's wife - a misfortune of being trapped in her husband's shadow. I wonder if the opposite is true: Ruth Graham actually lived an example of pronounced individuality. Today's famous pastor's wives seem to work hard to do the same thing as their husbands. I don't want to diminish the importance of what they do, I'm just questioning whether this actually gives them a singular identity, or simply blurs them into an almost indistinguishable extension of their husband. In today's upside down culture, we often discount the unique achievements of a quiet life, while pursuing celebrity, which ultimately diminishes us with its sameness. Something that can never be said about Ruth Graham.

[via the view from her]

Mystery - Illusion = Truth

Illusion - Potency = Faith

Mystery - Illusion - Potency = Reality

Eternal Expiration

Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that the first cells were indeed designed and used to seed this planet. What would this look like to someone who was convinced that this planet instead spawned those seeds? A gap. That is, if one is committed to the hypothesis that the planet’s geochemistry is sufficient cause for the origin of these cells, yet their origin depends, at least in part, on some form of intelligent design, the non-teleological perspective interprets its difficulty in bridging the discontinuity in epistemological terms – a gap.

Now, once we realize that such a design event will be perceived by non-teleologists as a gap, two other interesting insights follow....

Things get more interesting when you realize that most non-teleologists believe that a design inference necessarily depends on the ability to identify and describe independent information about the designer(s). Without such information, the teleologist is left with nothing more than gaps. If it can thus appear the gaps are slowly being filled, the non-teleologist will never suspect that life was designed (remember we are making this assumption for the sake of argument).

But there is one major problem with the Promissory Note Argument – it has no expiration date. Since, FAPP, we can indefinitely generate new speculations and lines of inquiry that provide new sets of circumstantial evidence, the perception of a discontinuity as a gap can be maintained long past my lifetime. And this takes us to Dawkins' argument about the origin of life – the OOL event was so ancient and improbable that we should NOT expect an ability to completely close the gap. In other words, the Promissory Note has been given an expiration date after all – eternity.

[via Telic Thoughts]

Related: PUC in the Gaps

Not Saints, Just Soldiers

Soldiers are just that — soldiers. They are spokes on a wheel. Many, many soldiers, save those at the very top of the pyramid, are pawns. They are button men for our civilian leadership. Is this an honorable profession? Certainly. But it is also, in the end, just that — a profession. Soldiers should be proud of their service, maybe prouder than men of any other profession, but let’s not get out of control with it.

These are not saints, they are soldiers. They are men of honor for the most part but their actions are very much at the mercy of those of their superiors. We cannot continue to lie to ourselves that the military is a some semi-religious institution that can never get too much money or do no wrong.

The military is our war machine and soldiers are the cogs in that machine. The stuff we say and repeat to ourselves about the military, it is the kind of stuff you tell schoolchildren, not words you repeat to fellow adults.

There are no more good soldiers than good people in this country and there are no less bad people in a position of dominion over these soldiers than in the civilian population.

Spouting the platitudes can be useful enough to build morale and boost recruiting but at some level we must the honest with ourselves at recognize what the military is and what it isn’t — myths and fairy tales aside.

[via VolunteerVoters.com, HT: THE HOMELESS GUY]

There are two kinds of light–the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
- James Thurber

[via From My Heart, Out Of My Mind]

Isn't the Church Lady Enough?

An Omission From the Feminist Crusade

[via The Thinklings]

Comparatively Speaking...

When does association with something not considered acceptable become acceptable? How distant does something have to get before one is no longer considered a hypocrite? To use an analogy, when is a blood diamond no longer a blood diamond? Can using computers that owe present usefulness to someone who lived half a century ago, with behavior one deplores, really be considered equivalent to directly supporting and associating with such a person who is alive now?

It seems to me that at some point the semantics get ridiculous.

[via Going Gentle into that Fair Night?]

Ranking of Sorrows

What is it that makes us need events to be superlative? The horror of Monday's tragedy is neither enhanced nor diminished by whether or not some other tragic event was quantifiably "worse," so why this insistence on ranking tragedies like some macabre Top-40 countdown?

Partly, I think, it's the lazy trend of quantifying and ranking everything, from box office returns to fallen soldiers. The deadliest day, the biggest opening weekend, the worst massacre.

And partly, I think, it's the desperate need to believe we're special people living in special times, in "the most critical time in the history of the world."....

Just now I don't much care about the ranking of sorrows.

It doesn't matter to anyone whether this was the "worst" event of its kind, it was worse than bad enough. Sorrow, death and tragedy are not a competition. Comparisons may be helpful as an exercise in empathy. But rankings are utterly pointless.

[via slacktivist]

What’s “Good” about (Bloody) Good Friday?

[via Prof. John Stackhouse's Weblog]

Good Friday:

Eschewing weapons to defeat weapons