We are all one.

A neat idea from ProgressiveBuddhism.com - that all religions, when you break them down, are about one idea: the one dissolving into the whole.

The one (us, our spirit, whatever) eventually finds the whole (God, Brahman, etc.). We lose ourselves in religion.

The world has gone Tom Cruise.

Like some batshit crazy scene out of one of Tim LaHaye's far-out novels, along comes Tom Cruise.

Again.

I've come to realize that there are a lot of ape shit crazy people in this world. For instance, I read today that some yahoo in Iowa, right before the causes, preached on about how churches should control the states, not vice versa. "Read your history," he said.

Or how some other yahoo running for office would just as well write his own Constitution, given the chance, because - you know - elect holy men are the ones that should be running our country.

Thank goodness most states in the nation would have to agree in order to write looney laws like the "protection of marriage" into our country's most sacred document_ But lately, I'm starting to wonder.

You see, what I've been missing is this whole side of the country that's whacked out of their minds. I tend to surround myself with reasonably sane people (exceptions exist, as with anything), and I'm afraid if I conversed with one of these fine folks, my nose would start gushing blood.

Come to think of it, I have encountered these folks. One was outside the library trying to "protect" marriage by banning gays from civil unions. He had a clipboard, which lent him undue authority.

Or, recently, Jackson's own group of yahoos pulled the plug on a teen pregnency program because - gasp! - Planned Parenthood was helping to fund the thing. According to Jackson Right to Life, Planned Parenthood would hand out abortions like they were candy. Nevermind that abstinence-only programs, besides being laughed at by 16 year olds everywhere, don't work.

You see, what Tommy preaches on about up there is merely a symptom. Tom says, "I wish the world was a different place," and what's dangerous is that Tom and people only half as nutty as he is are trying to wish that into reality.

The end of the video claims that Tommy's message has reached "more than 1 billion humans." What they video doesn't say is that those billion suckers committed suicide immediately after walking out of the Holiday Inn the Scientology group rented for the come-together. The human brain is capable of only so much Punch and Judi before it explodes in an orgy of get-me-the-hell-out-of-here.

It's true. And what's worse is that there are people out there who might nod their heads in approval at platitudes if it was, say, Joel Osteen or Alex Jones. This country has a fine tradition of shit-talking bullshitters, and American eat them up. What makes Tom sound crazy to you and I is the same trite B.S. that makes Huckabee's constitutional suggestion sound like a nutjob.

Here's a tip: if someone ever tells you that theirs is the one-true way, grab a bamboo stick and hospitalize them. Don't even let them get up.

Tom's message is no more crazy than a lot of mainstream religious folks' message. It's just that his religion was invented last century. This happens all the time, and usually when a new one pops up everyone else thinks their crazy (lions + den = maybe they'll shut the hell up). But really they're no more crazy than the folks that are guarding the Coliseum.

You'd think that the Englighnment never happened. And here some are so freaked out about Muslims being the "greatest threat ever" (maybe they've never heard of a the Civil War?), yet they think abandoning the Founding Father's idea of the "consent of the governed" in favor of Bible-based laws. If that's the case, then they can trade Pokemon cards with the Taliban, and blow up some more Buddhas.

But this is America, and we need to let the crazies roam like buffalo on the high prairie. The hope is that, over time, people get smarter and society gets better. Some events have challenged this notion, and again we find ourselves threatened by the barbarians, who are knocking at the gates.

Hope springs eternal.

Stop the presses: here comes Jesus

If you live in Jackson, or even if you don't, you might think of it as a pretty conservative place. Birthplace of the Republican Party. Voted for Bush by a great majority in the past two elections. And now home to a paternalistic "university" that seeks to steal the speech and behavior rights of all who step foot on campus.

The latest evidence? Spring Arbor University recently seized every issue of the student newspaper because it printed a story about a cross-dressing professor the school didn't agree with.

The cross-dressing professor thing (Julie Nemecek used to be "John," but was fired from SAU after seeking transgender therapy - it's been big news around here) was bad enough. Now Spring Arbor University wants to prepare students for "learning and critical participation in the contemporary world" by seizing the student-run newspaper.

What, really, would Jesus do?

The school swiped all 500 copies of the newspaper, "The Crusader," from school grounds, offering to give it back only if the student editors cut the Nemecek story out. The school's reasoning? The story was innacurate (and they haven't even said why).

It's one thing to respond to a newspaper article with a letter to the editor, or a request for a correction. That would be the sensible thing to do. But to seize every issue with a ransom attached is deplorable, and unfit action in a democracy. The university has every right to add its thoughts to the paper's marketplace of ideas. Instead, it plays the part of the bully dictator.

SAU has had an image problem lately, and it responds by censoring the news it helped create. The school has raised all sorts of issues just with the Julie Nemecek issue: does a Christian-based workplace show compassion by firing a professor who needs help? Is it legal? Is it right? Is it even nice?

This latest example shows the university's backward ways - after all, how can a place of learning prepare students for the real world when its constantly acting like a paternal overseer? Is this the "contemporary world" SAU wants to represent?

I remember applying for a job at Spring Arbor - something like a PR assistant or something. I couldn't believe the requirements the school asked of students and employees: no drinking, no smoking, no pre-marital sex, or else. It was unbelievable. Slip up, and you're gone.

We're done with the Dark Ages, right?

SAU's actions show students what it's like to live in communist Russia, or fundamentalist Iran, not the United States. Here, we follow the words of Thomas Jefferson by respecting newspapers more than any governing body.

The lesson: if you're different, or even have a different opinion, than SAU, you're not welcome.

The Pharisees would be proud.

Heaven is a place on earth.

If you believe you're going to heaven, what do you think it will look like?

As a kid, I remember thinking that heaven was on top of the clouds - that a walk down a street in heaven was like walking on a soft bed, and that the buildings and structure of heaven didn't vary much from where the Care Bears lived.

Maybe it's not a place at all. Some Christians believe that heaven is a state of mind, earned when you are truly saved and redeemed by Jesus Christ.

But what if it's none of the above? What if heaven is, as Belinda Carlisle sang, a place on Earth?

If so, we've sure made a fine mess of it.


- - - - -

Have you ever seen that "Footprint" poem - the one where the narrator sees two sets of footprints (feetprints?) on a beach, and then only one, and it's because God was carrying the narrator at the end? Maybe it looked like this:





You see that nice beach scene the poem is placed over? You get a sense for the poem's meaning because the visual - two sets of feet along a sandy waterfront - is so immediate. Anyone who's been on a beach has seen something similar.

I got thinking about the "Footprints" poem because, recently, I've been reading about Christians embracing environmentalism as a way to display their faith in God and to show their commitment to His creation.

If God made the world, and us in his own image, what would he think about us tearing up his place?

There are some Christians who seem to think that environmentalism is some conspiracy job dreamed up by liberals, lefties, and - worse - the French. But there are even die-hards - like my favorite nutjob Pat Robertson - who are starting to come around.

On Bill Moyer's recent "On America" series, he ran a story called "Is God Green?" where he finds out what kind of Christian becomes concerned with the environment, and why other Christians think those Christians are nuts. His story takes us to West Virginia, where coal mining companies are actually leveling entire mountains to get at the black gold inside, and how that makes the water undrinkable and the citizens sicker than hell.

What would Jesus do? Would he poison the streams just to earn a buck or two?


- - - - -


There's an entire market of Christian quotes and Bible verses that are printed on majestic scenes. Perhaps you've seen one:





They're on calendars, mugs, greeting cards - you name it. The word of God is paired with a glowing scene of beauty and splendor. And why not? His words are supposed to be uplifting and what says "you're saved" like a mountain-and-stream scene?



But if you're a Christian, and you think helping the environment is for hippies, these two messages don't jive. You wouldn't pair, say, a passage from the Psalms with a Wal*Mart parking lot scene, would you? They don't fit.

So what kind of case can a Christian make for spoiling the very creation that we're supposed to enjoy, raise our kids in, and marvel at the beauty of?

I remember Dr. Renner, in our Environmental Journalism class, saying that - when he went to church in Iowa - his preacher would say that everyone was just passing through "this mudball Earth" on the way to the true home up in heaven.

"Just passing through," Renner would joke.

And if you truly believe that, then maybe using the Earth's resources until they're all dried up makes sense. If this home is only temporary, what's wrong with a few extra parking lots?

Well, for one, Christians don't know how long they'll be hanging around for. Jesus himself said that Christians won't know the hour or the day he'll return. Whenever he feels like coming back, pretty much, like a thief in the night. It could be a million years from now. Who would want to suffer through a polluted, global-warming-raged Earth for that long?

Second, he might not come back at all. That is a possibility for some folks.

Third, what if Earth is really all we have? What if heaven IS a state of mind, one that - once we're dead - disappears like sand in a windstorm?

In that case, get used to scenes like this on your Christian calanders:






And can you imagine getting a greeting card with this on it:





Now that's compassion and mercy for God's creatures.

Sorry, what was that about dominion over all living things?






I made these graphics half in jest, but more to get people to think about the policies they support.

It seems to me that if you truly care about God's creation, and our place in it, then you would be careful when you value the Almighty Dollar over Him. Because that's what it comes down to - using the creation as a means to an end (wealth) is downright sinful.

Luckily there are more and more Christians converting to the side of good stewardship of the Earth.


- - - - -

That first picture I posted, way up at the top, speaks to me more than those initial images I had in my youth of a city in the sky as the rightful place of heaven.

I agree with Erik Reece, who - in his "Jesus Without the Miracles: Thomas Jefferson's Bible and the Gospel of Thomas" (originally printed in the Dec. 2005 Harper's - go here to read it, it's great) - says that a vision of of the Earth as merely a log in the stove of industry is a shameful way to behave:

"As the world all around us sickens and dies from the poi-son discharges of Hamiltonian industry, these twin gospels suggest that it is time we inverted Pascal's famous wager to say not that we should believe in heaven because we have nothing to lose but rather that we should believe first in this world, because in losing it we may lose everything. And if we can somehow live justly, modestly, with generosity and compassion, we have everything to gain."


Reece's idea that pulling heaven out of the sky and placing here on Earth fits nicely with Thomas Jefferson's dream of an agrarian, utopian America - "where farmers intuit the will" of the Creator from the laws of nature.

"Perhaps we won't have to wait for the kingdom of God," Reece writes.

But what will happen to it in the meantime?

Origin of the feces

"So you want to change the definition of science to include the supernatural?"

"Yes," Thompson says, "we need a total paradigm shift in science."


- - - - -

The above was from an exchange between Salon.com reporter Gordy Slack and Richard Thompson, who is representing the Dover School Board (in Pennsylvania) in the "Scopes 2" Intelligent Design trial - currently underway.

Now, there are two ways you can read and react to the quotes above. Either you can say, "Amen, brother!" Or you can say, "What is this world coming to?"

I would scream the latter.

The arguments have been there for years. You see a watch, you assume there was a watchmaker. Design begets designer. There are biological process too complex to explain with mere chance. And these are all fine arguments - they raise serious questions about the world in which we exist.

ID supporters also claim that even the Big Bang theory was once laughed at (even Einstein didn't believe his universe exploded billions of years ago - he was a "static universe" advocate), as ID theorgy is now, so why not support it?

Sorry, but Bozo the Clown was laughed at. That doesn't mean I'm going to listen to any of his cosmological arguments any time soon.

If you support teaching ID theory in public schools, you are basically arguing for teaching a form of religion in the classroom. And you can't do that in this country - so says the Supreme Court.

Say what you will about the faults of evolution, the "controversy" over whether it's the accepted form of biological study in the scientific world, or even whether evolution is a disprovable science at all. That debate should be had. After all, the nature of science is to question, to dive deeper, to foster understanding and truth.

But saying that a scientific alternative is out there - ID - is flat out silly.

For one, science begins with questions and tries to find the answers. Why is the sky blue? How long does it take for Neptune to orbit the sun? When do chimpanzees use primitive tools? Seek, study, think, understand.

ID, however, starts with the answer. God exists (or, sorry, a "designer" exists). Now how can we show it?

That's not science. Fundamentally, absolutely not. It stops science dead in its tracks, in fact. Why do some bacteria have a little tail that wiggles and allows locomotion? Gosh, I don't know. Must be God's will.

That, to me, is the wimp's way out.

Even to this day, there are some who believe that the Giza pyramids of ancient Egypt couldn't possibly have been designed, built, or maintained by mere humans. The job was too big, too complex, to allow for us puny mortals. Aliens must've helped.

I really think these kinds of arguments shortchange us people. I think we're smart enough, we're capable enough - we can do anything we set our minds to. Our ancestors built Stonehenge, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Giza pyramids, and the Eiffel Tower - and what evidence can you give me that they didn't that's beyond basic human capability and will?

The same thing, I think, is true for our understanding of our basic biological roots. Just because we can't understand how something works, or why something is the way it is, doesn't mean we never will.

Do we stop and just say, "God did it - good enough for me."

Or will we do the truly human thing: keep asking, keep looking, and eventually, maybe, find the answer.

If you're content with "God did it," then we don't speak the same language. "God did it" doesn't help me understand the world around me any better than "Aliens did it."

And that's why ID isn't science.

I'm willing to accept ID, Aliens, whatever as truth only if its scrutinized, tested, researched, debated, and put through the scientific method rigors any other theory is screened through.

But because no one can prove or disprove whether a designer built us as we are, it can't be called science. Call it religion, teach it in church, and let the rest of us actually learn something.

Maybe we can never really know anything, but I do know this: ID shouldn't be taught in any science class in this country.