Angst

Crusade, let me tell you what I see: A man, a tall man bent on his knees weeping

a space

without delineation in solitude within a mob

the bell rings,

the chador whisps

voices whir

are you missing something?  don't you see what's going on?  they're talking to the space - the space they think is outside but is more likely inside because there's nothing outside except the seething anger and hatred exchanged for not accepting that which lingers on the inside as something that exists on the outside.

but mention this to religionists and you'll have a fight on your hands.

mention this to mystics and you'll have commotion to

deal with

try to convince him that ivory doesn't harbor any metaphysical properties or

the rabbit's foot is simply a severed paw

try to dissuade her of the belief that feeding her husband whale blubber will increase his virility

and imagine why there's a wailing wall - melancholy of remembering loss...

mention this incredulity to the witch doctor and a doll will be made in your honor that will ceremoniously be stuck with pins.

or the religious fanatic will bomb your clinic or your place of business
(or praise in idolatry worship the celebrity - a fine line, no?) 

have you got a headache, Fatwa?

Slowly rowing down the river of life

It's a modern day mystery how some people conservatively cling to notions of antiquity known as mythology.  Religious myths will eventually lead to the third world war.

As our minds erode into paranoid ideological pictures of good and evil, our religions alienate and divide us with purely fictional dogma.

For the love of god

Kara was a happy, active 11-year old.  She and her friends jumped rope, played dolls and beanie babies, and swam. She was a bright imaginative student who was doing great in school.  Suddenly she started feeling incredibly tired even after a full night's sleep.  Her parents knew something was wrong, so they prayed.  They knelt beside their daughter as she slept and prayed that she would be healed.  Kara was now nauseous all the time, and had no appetite.  She was continuously thirsty but she kept vomiting up the fluids she drank.  Her parents enlisted members of their church to pray for their daughter but her health failed to improve.  Within a month, Kara was near death. She slipped into a coma.  Within the day, she was dead. 

18-month old Alayna was born with a birthmark over her left eye.  As she got older the birthmark grew into a small lump.  It continued to grow larger until it swelled so large that she couldn't open her eye.  Her parents prayed for her to be healed.  They anointed her with oils, fasted, and had fellow church members lay their hands on Alayna and pray.  But each week the growth above her eye was noticeably bigger, more obtrusive to Alayna's vision, and more painful.  Her parents remained devoted to prayer but to no avail, the growth covered had now completely covered her eye and was applying pressure that left untreated would lead to blindness in her left eye.

For centuries before there were doctors or hospitals or medical science, people turned to the unknown for aid.  They prayed to the god of rain when a drought set in; they prayed to the god of war for victory in battle.  The stories about Kara and Alayna could have been plucked from the dark ages but sadly they were not.

Madeline Kara Neumann died in 2008 of diabetic ketoacidosis a treatable form of diabetes that even in the advanced stages could have been cured had she been to a doctor.  Her parents were convicted of second-degree reckless homicide and sentenced to spend 30 days in jail each year for six years and were placed on 10 years’ probation.  Two months ago a judge refused their request for a retrial.

Alayna Wyland's story started in 2010 when the DHS took her into custody due to parental neglect.   She might not lose her eyesight in her left eye because of DHS intervention and despite her parents faith treatments instead of seeing a doctor .

For people like the Neumanns and Wylands, time has stopped in the nineteenth century.  It's astonishing and frightening to think that for many fundamentalists their devotion to ancient, man-made mythology trumps medical science.  (Scientologists are the exception - they are devoted to modern, man-made dogma.)  Their faith in a nebulous, eternal heaven transcends and surpasses progress that could be made during their lifetimes. They are the most conservative among us and the most recalcitrant.

What's interesting is that the Neumanns and Wylands, and similarly the End-of-Worlders, like Howard Camping, continue to believe that there is a god who cares about them - as if human beings are so much more significant than any other life form.  Additionally they can rationalize any misconception or error in judgement.  When asked about why the prayers were ineffective or why the world didn't end, the believers invariably blame themselves or invent a reason.  When Kara Neumann died, her parents explained that it was their fault because they hadn't prayed hard enough nor did they hold enough faith.  Of course, they are dreadfully wrong.  They are at fault, for that they are correct, but not because of their lack of faith.  They are at fault because they refused to seek medical advice.  It has nothing to do with god or obedience or diligence of faith.  It has to do with the ability to reason and question our own ulterior motives.

Because of the continued ignorance associated with archaic, conservative religious views, countless numbers of children die each year in America.  As Shawn Peters pointed out in When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law:  "A number of factors make it difficult to determine precisely how many children have lost their lives in such tragic circumstances.  Members ... isolate themselves."  He quotes a minister as saying, "We don't mix with the world."  So to ascertain an accurate number of deaths due to faith-based medical neglect is next to impossible.  Children could have been born, have died, and been buried without anyone outside of the community knowing about it.

Why do these obscure potentially disastrous ideas persist?  Why is society afraid to confront the perpetrators of faith-based medical neglect with more stringent punishment?

I believe that the underlying problem is related to our inability to question our belief systems effectively without being aghast and/or offended.  There's a reason it's called indoctrination - if your beliefs can't be mocked without you losing your temper or feeling infringed upon, you're probably indoctrinated.   In the closed religious communities, the followers express utter devotion to their way of life and are unwilling to accept any alternative world view.  The Wylands are livid that the DHS took away their baby and allowed her to be treated by a physician. 

There are simple solutions to all of these problems.  Acquiescence.  Take religious persecution for example.  Let's just say you're a christian and someone wants you to become a muslim or else someone in your family will suffer.  Here's what you say: Toss me that Zaytuna Cloak and let's head out to the mosque.  Done.  You've just saved our family member and sacrificed nothing.  Clinging to old beliefs for no other reason than because that is in line with tradition, is not productive nor necessary.  It's detrimental and can lead to tragic results.

Or, let's take a more mundane example.  Let's say you found out about a free swim class offered by a christian church.  You really wanted to participate but there's one catch.  The rub is that you have to a be a christian.  You're an atheist.  So what would you do?  I'll tell you: you hang a cross around your neck and thank the lord for blessing you with such lukewarm water.  The lesson in this story: don't cling to non-belief when a free swim class is offered.

There are parents who believe that praying will extricate the 'demons' of sickness from their children.  I mean, holy shmit the exorcism was just a movie.  That wasn't real.  Do these people know about imagination?  For their devotion to god, they've lost a daughter, who very well could have been the future researcher who discovered the cure to cancer.  There are also people who believe wearing a cross to join a free swim class is moral morally wrong.  Are all lies wrong?  How can a lie be morally wrong when everyone benefits?  I get to learn how to swim and the christians get to think that they've found another christian.  That's a win-win.

Peters wrote, "Religion-based medical neglect is a pervasive phenomenon that continues to jeopardize the welfare of children throughout the United States."  That's a testimonial understatement.  More importantly what continues to jeopardize our welfare is the harm caused by idiotic and misplaced devotion.  There are no legitimate reasons to justify obstinate devotion that puts innocents in harm's way.  Ignorance is not an incurable disease.  For the love of god, it's time for some real intervention on the ultra-conservative religious cults.

God bless us, everyone.
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Keep abreast of all the wacky, discouraging, tragic, and disparate religious news: http://www.religionnewsblog.com/
Check out American's United fighting to support the separation of church and state: http://www.au.org/
To remind myself how pathetic I am, I watch this.  Hopefully you'll find the same insight.  Watch Mr. Bensusan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXtnpotwW8s

Religion, terrorism, and name calling

Contradictions are interesting.  We all have them.  Perhaps you know someone who is anti-abortion but cheers when a missile strike destroys a convoy in Afghanistan carrying innocent people as well as a suspected terrorist.  Or someone who claims to be a Christian and yet lives a life of sheer excess.  Perhaps you know someone who lays claim to atheism yet won't step on a crack for fear of damaging his/her mother's back.

All of these instances are contradictory to the core belief system.  The mistake that is often made when contradictions such as these are observed is to label any of the people who practice them as hypocrites. Name calling is a convenience meant to eliminate any necessity to understand something in greater detail.  The easiest action to perform is to label something by naming it.  The act of naming something implies that there is understanding of that thing.  By calling the people who commit suicide bombing attacks "terrorists" and "evil" the government instills in the public opinion a certain level of understanding.  The public associates these groups as malevolent in reaction to the names themselves assigned to the entities.  The larger problem with this type of propaganda is that for many people there is no further investigation to uncover why or the underlying reasons for people to use themselves as weapons of destruction. 

What is an act of terrorism anyway?  If the US or one of its allies kills a thousand innocent civilians, is it an act of terrorism?  What is meant by the concept of evil?  Is invading a sovereign nation evil?  Is it evil to kill someone without cause?  These are nebulous terms and the meanings can shift from one person to the next or depending on which country is carrying out the action.  So understanding them is arbitrary.


God and the religious
One objection to the argument that a benevolent god exists is the presence of terrible unnecessary suffering of innocent life in the world, or what is commonly referred to as the problem of evil (here's that thorny concept yet again).  H.L. Mencken once said, "[y]ou can never underestimate a human being."  Imagine the most malicious action, crime, or offense someone could perform and you'll find thousands who have and thousands who have committed much worse crimes against humanity and/or against nature - many times in the name of religion. 

The religionist has no explanation for this.  What's surprising is how many Christian apologists use the same tactic to address the problem of unnecessary suffering.  They try to explain away the problem by describing god as having a motive for allowing innocents to suffer that's so utterly complicated we mortals cannot possibly understand.  It's an absolutely disastrous counterargument because the whole premise of Christianity, and Judaism and Islam, is to develop a "relationship" with the Lord.  It seems to be a daunting obstacle to not understand why an omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent super-being would allow the hideous crimes of mass genocides, fraternicides, rape, child molestation, torture, senseless acts of brutality, the slow death of malnutrition, etc. when this omnipotent creature could blink and the level of pain reduced substantially without much impact on our relationships with it.

Just a slight reduction in the amount of pain that innocent people suffer through wouldn't create too much of a problem, would it?  People could still have an option to choose to love god or not.  But unfortunately this doesn't happen.  The only cases where pain and suffering have been diminished is when people intervene, many times religionists but not predominately so and definitely not exclusively.   

In this case the fact that so often the counterargument to the problem of unnecessary suffering is of the same nature from a variety of people is an indication that some very effective indoctrination is taking place.  Obviously philosophers and thinkers far more intelligent than the writer of this entry have thought about these issues and argued over these issues for hundred of years.  They came up with a pat answer that has been passed down form generation to generation without much question.   Through a sleight-of-hand naming trick religionists are playing the same game as politicians using the words "terrorist" and "evil". 

(The most interesting position that I have heard was from a Muslim who argued that allah is everything.  Allah is wicked and good.  But Allah never promises to be only benevolent.  Interestingly from that standpoint there may as well be no allah or god because a supernatural being becomes irrelevant.  On the other hand, if there is a god that creates suffering, there's no guarantee that the afterlife will be pleasurable.  It is just as likely that eternity will be filled with torment.)   

The answer to the problem of evil doesn't address the problem with any further level of understanding.  Using "god" and "evil" and the "nature of god" as concepts that have no pinned down definition causes inconsistencies that cannot be reconciled.  These concepts in the end exist as arbitrary notions without value and without meaning.  What god wants becomes devoid of any actual significance because god becomes an unknowable conceptual device.

This all begs the question: What's the problem with there being no god?  It might straighten out a lot of conflict in the world if people just accepted the idea that religion is myth.  Then we can get on with tackling the real problems that our children are going to inherit from us if they live that long. 

Let's stop arguing and fussing about this god or that god and this religion or that religion.  Let's be rid of the whole idea altogether.   Perhaps then we can address the tangible issues like the environmental devastation people are inflicting on the Earth, the inequality of wealth, education, justice, and health in the US and globally.  Afterall, a stitch in time saves nine.

Marx called religion the opiate of the masses.  It's time to get rid of one of civilization's sedatives, plenty others left.  Get rid of religion and go get involved in the real world.

So let's all get involved.  If you have any ideas on how to get more involved in addressing our global problems, please post them online.  Let's get the ball rolling by getting rid of one cause for so much division and war.

Some places to start: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/getinvolved/
http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance
http://www.house-of-love.org/
http://www.bbbs.org/site/c.9iILI3NGKhK6F/b.5962335/k.BE16/Home.htm

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An Alternative to Competition

In a later blog entry, I will set out an argument for why competition is actually harming innovation and productivity.  But in today's entry, I'd just like to post a brief word about it.

There is a plausible alternative to competition in a classroom setting.  That is cooperation and collaboration.  Rather than calling on one person to answer a question, call on groups to answer questions.  A teacher ought to inspire a hunger for learning and a desire to solve problems by communicating with others.  It's a positive approach that can become effective with practice and will instill longer retention rates.  Teaching should revolve around authentic learning experiences not fabricated examinations. 

Are religious fundamentalists damaging public education?

In 1989, Wisconsin passed Wisconsin Act 336 that established the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP).  Wisconsin was the first state to offer parents a choice of either staying at a public school or taking a voucher in order to pay for private education.  The program had its participation capped at 15% of the population of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The legislation set up a voucher program for low income families at 175% the national poverty level or below to attend non-sectarian private schools.  In the 2010-2011 school year, 20,996 students (based solely on 3rd Friday head count) were enrolled in 102 participating schools that were predominantly religious. 

Studies have indicated that voucher programs do not achieve statistically better results than their public school competitors.  According to the Department of Public Instruction, the WSAS results are worse than MPS's. At the same time, they are sapping needed money away from MPS.  At best the research and current literature are inconclusive about consistent results.  And data does not track students from the time they enroll to the time they leave.     

Funding
Every year, funding for the next year is based on the 3rd Friday head count.  Private schools collect their vouchers based on this count.  Invariably, teachers in MPS prepared for the 4th, 5th, and 6th weeks of the school year because then there would be a sudden surge in enrollment.  This practice takes place every year in every MPS school.

The students that arrive later in the year are welcomed to secular public classrooms that cost them no additional money.  At the same time, if the student had been kicked out of a private voucher school, the school keeps the $6,700 that the MPCP had paid as part of the 3rd Friday count.  The best data would trace the student from the beginning of the year until the end of the year regardless of mobility.     

This funding structure leads to a plethora of problems for MPS.  In my eight years as an elementary and middle school teacher at two different schools, it was rare to have a text book for each child.  We made do; we learned to share.  In order to ensure there was paper in the classroom, teachers asked parents to make  donations, still teachers paid out of pocket for most supplies, even in the high-achieving, effectively run schools.  As the population of voucher students rises each year this funding scenario grows worse for MPS.

The funding for many of the institutions that receive vouchers is also much higher because they charge tuition and have wealthy contributors.  The type of investment that the billionaires in the religious right have made on private schools is the type of investment that should be made in every school for every child.  Private voucher schools have intensified income inequality in education.  Conservative fundamentalists are pushing the voucher agenda all over the country selling it as reform that works.  In Milwaukee, the lobbying by religious groups swayed the debate and by 1998 private religious schools were added to the list of participating private schools.  Now rather than tax dollars designated for public education, the money goes to religious education.

Parental Involvement
When Howard Fuller became a strong advocate for MPCP, he leaned hard on the idea that it was a way to get parents involved with their children's education.  The main message to parents was and is that they should have a choice.  One of the lead cheerleaders for MPCP in Wisconsin is Leah Vukmir.  "The voucher program has caused dramatic improvement in the public schools," Vukmir explained. "As a result of choice and competition, there are more opportunities for students."  The biggest problem with this idea is that the programs provide opportunities for a small percentage of the student population whose parent(s) were already highly involved in the child's life.  In many cases these are students who would perform equally well had they attended their local neighborhood school.  Thus, the voucher program removes high achieving students from public schools.  As a result test scores at MPS schools drop and achievement overall drops because high achieving students often act as the role models at the school.

Special Education Needs (SEN)
Private institutions are under no mandate to provide individual education programs (IEP) for students with special needs (SEN).  Because of this many students do not receive the services they would had they attended a public school.  What does happen is that, for example, speech therapists by law are required to provide services.  A student who is not registered at the MPS school where a speech therapist works, but is instead enrolled at a private institution, may still receive services from that speech therapist.  When the therapist could be spending time with students that are actually enrolled in his/her school, the therapist m,ust attend to the needs of the private school student.  Not only is this a disservice to the members of the public school, but it also means that taxpayers are paying for services in addition to the voucher.

As the voucher cap increases, the results will be that MPS will become the school district for all of the challenging kids that get kicked out of the private schools.  Eventually the population in MPS will be entirely of those students who can't afford private schools, don't have parents who are involved in the decision making, or don't function well in the traditional educational setting.   

Focus of Teaching
Additionally, the focus at schools is increasingly about competition.  The competition is only comparable in data - test scores.  So, everyone is preparing for testing, all year long.  The authentic learning experience will no longer exist if education becomes driven by the capitalist notion that competition leads to improvement.  This is an obvious obfuscation but regardless, in education competition leads nowhere.  Students need to learn how to work together in order to solve problems rather than vying against each other.  Cooperation and collaboration ought to become far more important skills than competition.

While all of the finagling over money and cap limits is taking place, sectarian schools are quietly taking tax dollars and teaching children biblical myths; some go so far as to to teach that the bible is the word of god, that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that evolution is not science-based but only a hypothetical theory.  To many forward-minded people, the idea that our tax dollars are funding children to be proselytized would be hard to accept and unfathomable in a developed country, after all this is not Saudi Arabia.  But the religious right have successfully focused the attention on the failing public school system not on the content or learning provided by the private religious schools.

The religious right have dominated the debate and are succeeding in forcing their agenda on parents, especially in urban districts.  The cost of all of this is that public education is being damaged irrevocably.  The gap in educational attainment between the poor and the wealthy is increasing and vouchers contribute to that crisis. 

What do you think?  Are religious fundamentalists damaging public education?

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Read more about it and decide for yourself:
http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/choice.html

http://dpi.wi.gov/oea/mpcp/results.html

http://www.newcoalition.org/Article.cfm?artId=18915

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED462502.pdf

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5512/as_milwaukees_economy_fails_how_can_public_schools_succeed/        

http://www.scsba.org/voices/Milwaukee%20Voucher%20Program%20Info.pdf

http://www.progressive.org/rc032911.html

http://thirdcoastdigest.com/2011/05/walkers-expansion-of-school-choice-moves-forward/

Thank you for being such a Ham

When it seems that the world is getting you down, maybe Obama didn't address ending the wars or our unbelievably out-of-control incarceration rates (the largest prison population in the world), or maybe you're just depressed and apathetic about the whole ball of wax - including the Czech kleptomaniac and the fact that some kid just got sentenced to a prison term for possession of a dime bag while Willie Nelson paid a 100 shmackels, played a song, and got off, it's Ken Ham, the Haminator, time.

So here's something to cheer you up.  Step on in to the Creation Museum in Kentucky.  Your host Ken the hammer Ham - where people are constantly Hamming it up with the Ham man.

These folks just confirmed what they'd already known for years - that the earth is 6000 years old, that dinosaurs lived with people, how we hunted them to extinction, and now they can tell everyone who Cain's wife was.  They look pleased as punch, by golly.

The Hammer man would like you to understand that the first humans were just as smart as we are today.  Looking at this picture, I can only agree with the Hamster on this point.

So what's got the Kenimator up in arms this week?  Seems like one of his own, an Eastern Nazarene College professor, has tossed some criticism at the Creation Museum.  Evidently not everyone shares the same knowledge with the first homo sapiens.  Some modern humans think that the earth is billions of years old and that woman did not come from the rib of the first man. 

Evidently there are some Christians who believe that the creation story is mythical.  Naturally this bit of conjecture bites off a bit more ham than the Haminator is willing to let get bit off.  And the Hammer man lays in:  "To claim that Genesis is just an ancient story that “began as an oral tradition for a wandering tribe of Jews” is to attack the Word of God, and thus it is an attack on the Son of God, who is the Word."  The professor got the Hammer's pork all barbecued (I admit it, I have no idea what this even means).

The professor goes on to write that "Evolution does not contradict the Bible unless you force an unreasonable interpretation on that ancient book.  To suppose, as the so-called young earth creationists do, that God dictated modern scientific ideas to ancient and uncomprehending scribes is to distort the biblical message beyond recognition. Modern science was not in the worldview of the biblical authors and it is not in the Bible."

Kenny won't let this blaspheming mock christian prof get away with the rhetoric of a sinner - he calls the professor a liar (pretty harsh stuff).  Then he adds this damning string:  "And where do you read in “the book of nature” that the world is billions of years old and that life evolved? You read this in man’s fallible books, as fallible man who “suppresses the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1), as Giberson is doing, then imposes this story (and that’s what it is, a made-up story) on nature."

Sweet lamentations! That's some lickety splitin' arguin' there K.Ham running around and around in circles until no one knows what's up or down.  It's a thing of beauty to see the Haminator getting worked up in a fury. 

Dizzying feats of illogical banter are always reasonably inexpensive entertainment when the world's got you down.  Go check out the K.Ham website - it's priceless or worthless - but always good clean fun without utensils.

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You can visit the Ham's site by clicking on the link to it on this page under the blog links.

In the event of an emergency, don't panic.

With the rise of the tea party, and politicians decrying spending, there has been a resounding call to look to the Constitution.  That's very interesting because there are not many details on how to deal with the types of problems we face today.  In fact, one of the main catalysts for writing the Constitution was the uprising known as Shays' Rebellion.  Much of the Constitution relates to property owners' rights and the demands of the wealthy and ensuring that another Shays' Rebellion could not happen again.

So as usual (SNAFU), we're being bamboozled, cuckolded, because the politicians who are directing us to the Constitution must not realize what the main job of the government is according to the Constitution: the federal government is to tax and spend.  As Bill Maher points out in New Rules, "Stop calling them tax and spend liberals.  It's the government. That's what they do."  

Sometimes myth is more potent than reality, imagination more vivid than fact.  It is in this simple understanding of our ability to perceive the world that our repeated poor decisions make sense.   Thus, Ronald Reagan becomes a hero.

Superficially, the power of myth transcending reality is manifested in the political race that was recently decided or the Wisconsin Supreme Court race that now seems to have been decided.  People vote based entirely on myth.

But our myths are stronger than that.  People believe in gods and are willing to die for their faith.  In America, we are all clinging to the fantasy that our politicians desire to help us.  And that by helping us, we too can improve our lot in life.  There is a reason this has been called a dream.  It is just that, a dream, a fantasy, a myth.  Humans hold their myths dear.  They covet them more than gold and silver.  And so the startling realization that most of the politicians are working for themselves will not change voting patterns.  The fact that a judge who calls the chief justice a bitch and threatens to destroy her can win a public election seals the deal.  People are happier in their myths than in reality.  And that seems uncanny since one of the most popular forms of television shows now is "reality TV." 

The only principle that seems to be at work in America in a plausible form is this: if you can look around and honestly affirm that you are not screwing someone over, then someone is most definitely screwing you over.