In Bad Faith, Part 5: What’s Missing?

Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that all experiences of “Faith” are delusions, that there is no god out there “talking” to you. He wrote that anyone with an ounce of intelligence recognizes that there is no “man behind the curtain,” and that the stories in the Bible, for example, should have been given up when we gave up on our belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. It all seems very logical. But something is missing here.

Conversely, I love that, for the fundamental or conservative Christian, the answer to every problem faced by us is to “give it up to Jesus.” Lost your job? Give it up to Jesus! Stuck in a rotten marriage? Give it up to Jesus! Need a new car? Give it up to Jesus! It’s a powerful message, especially if you’re a teenager or a drug addict looking to leave that lifestyle. But, for all of us in between, there still seems to be something missing.

In Bad Faith, Part 5: What’s Missing?

Ironically, one of the mistakes that I made as a young Christian adult was to close off my emotions and try to be more logical because my faith told me that one can’t trust emotions. Yeah, that approach didn’t work so well for Mr. Spoke, I don’t know why I thought it’d turn out any better for moi. I tried to be logical and I wasn’t any fun to live with. Just ask my ex-wife. Now, I know that Dawkins isn’t advocating a logic-only/emotionless lifestyle, but there’s a kind of delusion to entertain the idea that human beings are going to be “logical” and “scientific” when it comes to the bigger issues in life or even in ones day to day existence. I think the fictional character, Geordi, in ST: TNG, said it best when he said that we humans go with our “gut” so much because we almost never have enough data to make the decisions that we need to make.

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Following the Logic of Feelings

Some of my thinking lately has reminded me of this article that I wrote in the late 1980s about rediscovering the power and need to be emotionally alive. This article was part of a column that I wrote called “The Editor’s Wild Hair” for a little print newsletter that I inflicted upon friends and family called, “Air, Dirt & Ink.” [Sigh], the good ol’ days.

Journal Classic: Following the Logic of Feelings

Heart, why are you pounding like a hammer?
Heart, why are you beating like a drum?
Heart, why do you make such a commotion
when I’m waiting for my baby to come?
Oh heart, don’t do it if it’s not the real thing
Heart, I get so easily deceived
Heart, there is no other I can turn to
if not you, heart, then who can I believe?”
“Heart” by Nick Lowe

I vividly remember when it first happened. It was in the seventh grade when I walked up to Mary Hinck and said, “Hi,” and she said rather unfeelingly, “Oh, it’s you.” It’s like I didn’t even really know that it was there until it came crashing to the ground in front of God and everyone. Jesus, I thought, if this is what love feels like, I don’t want any part of it.

I didn’t mean that, of course, and have spent the intervening 17 years demonstrating it to no one in particular. But something very definitely changed after that first brush with emotional death.

Back at home, though I never once for a moment doubted my parent’s love for me or my siblings; emotions, especially anger, seemed to be like Steven Spielbergian pyrotechnics. Like the much-feared nuclear holocaust, there would be a blinding flash of emotional light: my father would explode over some such reality of living with five children. My mother would then deploy her tactical arsenal. Another flash, then children running in every direction, vainly hoping to avoid becoming part of the scorched landscape. Then just as quickly as it had begun, it would be over. Father would be about his business and mother would continue hers. It all seemed to my childish mind to be quite unnecessary.

So it only seems right that at one point in my life I hung around with a religious group that held to the philosophy that “feelings” could not be trusted. “Feelings, they come and go, but objective truth, now there’s the ticket.” Of course the objective truth that was being referred to here was the Bible, the Scoffield Reference Bible in the King James Version to be more specific. And Love, well that had something to do with some Greek word and God and Jesus dying and . . . (all of which of course made no sense whatsoever to my teenage mind, but who was I to scoff at the insights of my elders?).

I don’t know why I always seem to use this column to take pot‑shots at Evangelical Christianity (no doubt an unconscious attempt to pay them back for the emotional trauma and near fatal brain damage I experienced while getting my Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies). In fact, before this starts sounding too much like “Sex and the Single Brain Cell,” I have to question the wisdom of attempting an article that would argue following the logic of emotions. I mean, either you understand it or you don’t.

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In Bad Faith, Part 4: The Evil Media

A few months ago I saw this comment on my Twitter feed: “RT @vavroom: Sometimes, small minded Christianity really saddens me. (via @kubke @snowded @annemcx @euan )” – Christine Morris (@CMoz). And attached was a link to a story from the Telegraph in the UK about how a film about Charles Darwin was having difficulty finding a distributor in the US because the film’s subject, Evolution, is too controversial. The Telegraph story was written in September (2009) when the film opened at the Toronto Film Festival. What the story failed to mention was that this was one of those years when a large number of films were having difficulty finding distributors. The theory of distribution presented in the story came from the film’s producer. So, perhaps, it was economics and not the small mindedness of US Christians that was making finding a distributor difficult. As someone with a degree in Journalism and Biblical Studies I tire from hearing the Christians complain how Godless (liberal) the Press is and from the Atheists and Secularists how Christian (provincial/conservative) the Press is.

In Bad Faith, Part 4: The Evil Media

What both the Left and Right seem to forget is that the Media, especially in the form of the movie industry, is a form of banking, and it will do whatever it thinks will make money for it’s investors. Period. It rarely leads and often plays both sides of the issues because it needs to draw attention to itself, not to change things but to make money. The Media is not a perfect reflection of our culture, remember it’s first responsibility is not to reflect Reality, but to make money. And this “bottom line” mentality is not limited to the movie industry but, sadly, has become a big part of the News Industry too. Journalism has felt the pressure to sell it’s wares. We may think of Journalism as a service, but it’s a business. This is not to say that Journalism has abandoned the principles of Objectivity, but it’s more of an ideal, like how Americans try to live up to our Constitution, Bill of Rights and Pledge of Allegiance. Journalism believes in Objectivity, in part, because it’s business model requires a certain level of trust. No trust, no sales. So, at it’s core the News & Media industries are neither Left or Right. They can’t afford to be. They will follow the interests of their audiences, Left or Right, but the commitment isn’t to the politics but to the business of making money. The Media decision-makers are not pushing any position except the one that keeps them viable and better yet, more than viable.

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Moving Media Around the House

By definition, this is a “first world” problem. In the news gap between CES and the Apple event next week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I might manage my media collections between all of my computers. The buzz around the Boxee box and anticipating the need to have most of my working data in the cloud so that I can access it regardless of what computer or platform I’m using has inspired me to find a better way to work with my media. Actually this is a “problem” that I didn’t have until I moved from my one-room studio to my one-bedroom apartment and then two-bedroom townhouse. I have four macs floating around the house (and anticipate a fifth Apple in the form of an iPad-netbook-media-thingy), each with their own full copies of my iTunes library, DVDs ripped to a couple macs, and daily podcasts downloaded to all four computers. In the past I manually erased podcasts I’d already listened to on one of the four computer and my iPhone, but given how many podcasts I listen to this method is just too much work. I’d also been hoping to store my DVDs on one computer and be able to view them on any of the other devices. The upcoming release of the Boxee box has me rethinking my media sharing scheme.

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.

One of the things that I’ve learned so far is that even though I’m using fast wireless “N” and or a fast “power” Ethernet connection between the first and second floors, ripped DVDs stored on hard drives in their original Mpeg2 format won’t play across the network without lots of buffering or dropped frames. Unacceptable. I was anticipating using my PS3 as the movie/media player downstairs (still working on that), so I had previous converted some movies to mp4 and those videos seemed to play nicely across the network. So, even though I’m a firm believer in having access to all of the “extra features” that I look for with my DVDs (and how convenient they are to access using the DVD menu system), I’ll need to rip and convert my media to a more network friendly format, like mp4 (which makes each extra feature into it’s own separate video file). Grrr.

I have a huge DVD and music collection and get most of my more daily news and entertainment via video and audio podcasts, so I need some kind of box attached to my TVs so that I can get my Internet/network media. I was hoping to use my PS3 as the player in my living room, but it has a crappy web-browser and doesn’t do RSS, so it can’t natively do podcasts. More work needed here. At the moment my mac mini is doing living room media duties. I love the Front Row interface, but it seems a bit confused that my episodes of StarTrek (classic and Next Gen) are not movies and won’t let me organize things. So maybe the updated Boxee interface will do the job.

I’ve played with Boxee previously, but couldn’t break away from my iTunes addiction. With the software upgrade and set-top box, I’m thinking that this might be the solution to my Internet TV/podcast thing, either the software or the set-top box. Depending on my success using the PS3 as a media player, I still might need another set-top box for the bedroom TV. I’m also thinking that I need to plug into the NetFlix thing (streaming and disc) so that I don’t find myself buying every movie I want to see. So whatever box I get needs to do Netflix, access my music and DVDs across the network and either grab podcasts off the net or the ones stored on my other computers. Having invested in the PS3, I’m aware of the problems of getting a box that isn’t as expandable to handle all of the twists and turns that tends to happen in the media market.

Sources:
* Boxee Demo. http://www.boxee.tv/box retrieved on 1/23/2010
* FrontRow image by Joe Bustillos
* Tekzilla » Episode 124: “Should I buy a Boxee Box or a Roku or Stick With My xbox?” http://revision3.com/tekzilla/veronicapc/should-i-buy-a-boxee-box-or-a-roku-or-stick-with-my-xbox-360- retrieved on 1/23/2010
* Tekzilla » Episode 121: Boxee Box. http://revision3.com/tekzilla/2010newyear/boxee-box retrieved on 1/23/2010

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Up in the Air and Life Choices

Just saw “Up in the Air,” and don’t know if I should be depressed or not. Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is the quintessential road-warrior, who spends over 300-days a year business traveling and he loves it. He’s a firing expert who works for a firm that gets called in when it’s time for lay-offs. The job isn’t “fun” but he’s found a balance that works for him and it doesn’t include any relationship commitments. His foil is 23-year-old Natalie Keener, played by Anna Kendrick, who has come in to make the job more efficient with technology. She has her whole life mapped out and it’s completely the opposite from Ryan’s.

The movie is basically about life choices and the stories that we tell ourselves to make these choices work. Ryan’s life is a set package and he’s happy. But he has to contend with those around him who are convinced that he’s made a mistake by not settling down and making a lasting relationship investment. Sans the mega-frequent-flier mileage and movie-star good-looks, I seem to resemble those contentions. Alas, it’s been my observation that most of us make these life choices long before we’re even aware that we have a choice. Those first few years after high school and those first few years out of college, set us on paths that tend to be impossible to break away from. And most choose not to, and make their lives there, for good or bad. Then there are those of us who get a wake-up call and/or have a higher expectation for ourselves.

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In Bad Faith, Part 3: Franky Schaeffer, Son of “Slippery Slide” Comes Clean

I was amazed to hear the interview of Franky Schaeffer on NPR because his story was so revealing about the dangers of when sincere faith is influenced by political power and marketing. I was introduced to his writings in the early 1980s after his father had been promoted as an “intellectual Christian” and Franky continued his father’s beliefs that any step toward accepting “modern values” (particularly abortion) was a slippery slope toward liberalism.

In Bad Faith, Part 3: Franky Schaeffer, Son of “Slippery Slide” Comes Clean

One of my favorite Fuller Seminary professors, Colin Brown, commented once that he didn’t think that Francis Scheaffer (Sr) read any of Kierkegaard in the original languages. Academic put-down! The Schaeffers represented a huge line in the sand between True Biblical Christianity and the various forces of liberalism, academia and secularism. After reading one of Franky’s books in the 80s I recognized that I wasn’t on the “right” side of the divide. I was too much of a rationalist, situational-ethicist and intellectual. I loved the Bible but I also recognized the cultural-historical place it came from (hint: it wasn’t Heaven). Slippery slope, indeed.

So all these decades later it turns out that all the rhetoric was mostly a sham promoted by the Christian Right, to the point that even Franky eventually couldn’t tolerate and left. What I really loved about the interview was that this was a story about Idealism, human foibles, bending the “Truth.” The forces the Schaeffers represented created a conflict that I’ve spent a lifetime contending with. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one scarred by the experience. I love the comment Franky makes during the interview when he’s asked why he hasn’t gone all the way to Atheist. He says that the patterns of his life are such that the first thing he’d do would be to pray to God to help him be a better Atheist. So human.

Sources:
Pro-Life — And In Favor Of Keeping Abortion Legal by Frank Schaeffer - NPR Fresh Air Interview. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97998654 retrieved 1/9/2010.

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In Bad Faith, Part 2: Born this Way? or This is Your Brain on God

As a college freshman at Loyola Marymount University I recognized that there had to be at least some psychological aspect to things like Speaking in Tongues (Glossolalia) and didn’t feel that that diminished the “God” part of the behavior at all.

In Bad Faith, Part 2: Born this Way? or This is Your Brain on God

I don’t think that I ever shared these thoughts with my fellow-believers. I just assumed that those in the midst of the experience probably didn’t analyze the phenomenon beyond a few Bible passages and whether the practice was accepted or rejected by their church. Then many years later I saw a documentary TV program where scientists were mapping the brain, using scans that looked for elevated brain activity. They found that persons in deep meditation or prayer showed elevated activity in the Temporal lobe. From what I remember, the pattern of activity was similar to those who reported stories of alien abduction. They were able to induce the “Alien” experiences in some test subjects by transmitting the pattern instead of recording it. Then one scientist, an atheist, thought that he might “see” what the religious participants in the experiment had experienced if he also used the recording harness to transmit the “religious” patterns to his brain. The scientist saw and felt nothing. I wasn’t too surprised, but it wasn’t because of any “God” thing. It might have been that his brain was just not wired to understand the “language” of religious experience that had been recorded in the experiment. According to a recent article in Ars Technica, it might indeed be something lost in translation that’s individual to everyone’s brains.

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#1 Music Recording of 2009 That You Can’t Buy

I have no business reviewing music. I gave up on keeping up with what’s hip in music when studio tricks took over for musical talent. Yeah, I’m an old fart. That said, a top 5 list written by Nathan Chase caught my attention because Chase’s #1 recording was a collection that you can’t get at Amazon or Wallmart or iTunes: Kutiman’s “ThruYOU” project.

I previously posted a blog entry about the ThruYou project after a friend sent me a link to the project on the same day that the Buzz Out Loud podcast crew commented on Jonathan Coulton’s blog post about the project. Like Coulton, my first impulse is to go on and on about the tour de force that this project represents and how it reveals how ridiculously broke copyright is. One track from the project, Wait For Me, has almost 140,000 views. After listening to the project I bought his commercially available CD, Escape Route, from Amazon (in DRM-free downloadable MP3 form). That’s one sale of a record that wouldn’t have happened had this artist posted his creation for free on YouTube. As Larry Lessig said in his TED presentation, this is not about taking someone else’s work and passing it off as ones own (piracy), but taking what has gone before and making something completely new: remix culture.

An excellent website has been created listing the Thru-YOU videos and all of the contributing videos: http://thru-you.org

Sources:

* My Top 5 Albums of 2009 – Tortoise, Muse, P.O.S., Mute Math, & Kutiman by Nathan Chase, http://nathanchase.com/2009/12/my-top-5-albums-of-2009-tortoise-muse-p-o-s-mute-math-kutiman/ retrieved 12/31/2009.

* YouTube video: Kutiman-Thru-you – 06 – Wait For Me by Kutiman, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i88CKr6Shn4 retrieved 12/31/2009.

* TED Talks: Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity by Larry Lessig, http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html retrieved on 12/31/2009

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Street Meets… Pedestrian: Christian Side Hug

When the rapper begins screaming, “Are you ready to party?!” the crowd goes wild. Apparently there’s a lot of pent up energy here. Then for the life of me I couldn’t figure out if this was straight or parody. I think it’s both… This video is totally def with an “A”… ack.

Sources:
youtube video: “Christian Side Hug” by 1337ven0m07. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91J37qcRfI retrieved on 12/13/2009

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The Love in Your Day

Last week I wrote this thought on my white board in my office:

What is it that you most love in life,
and how do you express it in your
day to day routine?

Thinking about the aunts and uncles who’ll be at this year’s Christmas gathering, and realizing that the list is getting shorter. My dear sister-in-law, Connie, passed last Spring. And a life-long friend whom I haven’t had the best communication with, has had incredible health difficulties since taking a fall a few months ago. For my part, I’ve been so busy, with an almost around-the-clock sense of urgency tending to my job. Because of the freedom I’ve been given I feel the need to work all the harder to deliver the best possible learning experience for my students. That’s a blessing, but I still need to pause a moment and consider bringing the bigger vision into the daily routine.

I shouldn’t let a day go by without picking up my guitar. I shouldn’t let a day go by when I don’t write in this blog. I should let a day go by when I don’t call up a friend just to say, “hi.” I’ve done these important things too infrequently this past year and that needs to change. After my uncle Joe passed, whenever I found myself relaxing for a moment, especially if the moment included a good IPA, I raised my glass in his honor. I didn’t do this because I thought that he might be haunting me or aware of my gesture, but because I wanted to honor the memory of his work ethic, what he contributed to in the life of his six daughters and dozen of grandchildren and just the man’s man who he was.

So, there needs to be more room for the meditation that I find in my guitar. Thus, last night when I should have been trying to get some sleep because I had an early morning video shoot (I was doing the behind the scene stills), I found myself listening to some Sarah McLachlan and then strumming along, then looking up the lyrics and chords for the song on the Internet, then learning the song and playing until my finger, that have long lost their callouses, forced me to quit. I’ve long felt a strong emotional connection to McLachlan, but when I listened to the lyric last night, something in the careful twist of words really connected it to the journey I’ve been on. I decided that this would be a good place to start getting back to the things/people I love in my life.

“Fallen“
Heaven bend to take my hand
And lead me through the fire
Be the long awaited answer
To a long and painful fight
Truth be told I tried my best
But somewhere long the way
I got caught up in all there was to offer
But the cost was so much more than I could bear

Though I’ve tried I’ve fallen
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so

We all begin with good intent
Love was raw and young
We believed that we could change ourselves
The past can be undone
But we carry on our back, the burden
Time always reveals
In the lonely light of morning
In the wound that would not heal
It’s the bitter taste of losing everything
that I’ve held so dear…

I’ve fallen
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so

Heaven bend to take my hand
I’ve nowhere left to turn
I’m lost to those I thought were friends
To everyone I know
Oh they turn their heads embarrassed
Pretend that they don’t see
But it’s one missed step you’ll slip before you know it
And there doesn’t seem a way to be redeemed

Though I’ve tried I’ve fallen
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so

Sources:
* “Fallen” by Sarah McLachlan from her Afterglow CD

* youtube video: Sarah McLachlan Fallen Live – Macworld 2003 Keynote posted by cryotekk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEKqFw9x_IM retrieved 12/11/2009

p.s., I used to catch hell for my affinity and attraction to artist’s like McLachlan. This person would tease me, saying that I needed to quit listening to the “lesbians” because the music was making me too moody. I’m glad that I didn’t stop listening. The music didn’t make me moody, it spoke to the shitty situation and my frustration with it. Making this song a part of my emotional vocabulary is a far better way to move past those trouble times than to pretend that they didn’t happen or wall off whole sections of ones life. There, I said it.

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