The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - Miscellany For Breakfast!
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08:47 am
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Miscellany For Breakfast!
1) George Takei, a.k.a. "Sulu" from Star Trek, is gay. This makes me oddly happy; the Enterprise just wasn't complete without a homosexual.
Now we'll see if George can go where no man has gone before, and I'll leave it to you to come up with the punchline to the rest of that joke. (Or not. It's okay.)
2) I was reading a review of The Average American, a book that I may have to purchase, and halfway through the review I became deeply horrified.
The idea of The Average American is rather nifty; it's an analysis of various statistics to find what the average American is like (better off financially than his parents, prefers butter to margarine, et cetera). I enjoy those sorts of studies, ridiculous though they are, because I like to know what other people think. I'm different, and I'm okay with that, but I like to look at normal and then wonder why I vary from it.
But the one statistic that threw me flat on my back was this: the Average American has never questioned his faith in God.
That terrifies me. I am a Christian, and I believe deeply in Jesus and Heaven and all the other stuff it's not cool to believe in if you're supposedly smart… But the concept that hey, maybe you could be wrong has flashed across my mind a few times. Particularly at funerals. There's that occasional bite of concern that perhaps I'm reading a pattern into a universe because it makes me more comfortable.
I still believe, of course, but it's those sorts of things that test my faith. As they should; it ain't easy, and as I frequently remind people, "Faith isn't science, and you should keep them separate." If you had enough evidence to know for sure, the same way you know that the chair you're sitting on will support your weight, there wouldn't be a need for faith.
But to never question is to carry such a low level of intellectual curiosity that you might as well be a pail of milk. That's the majority of people?
And then I also think of the people who blithely state, "Everyone's considered suicide at one point or another," when in fact there is a large portion of the population who, no, it's never occurred to them. Like calls to like, and I hang around with other depressives who get my drift, but the fact is that whenever I've asked a room of comparative strangers — as in, people I've bonded with at a social gathering that isn't nerd-related — if they've considered it, they say no.
And they say it with such a genuinely perplexed look that I don't think it's them trying to be to cool for the room. I think really, it's just not an option to a lot of people.
I like to think that people are reasonable… But as I said, I'm different, and my self-selection among my peer group leads to a very narrow focus. If the Average American truly never has gone, "I wonder if there really is a God" on at least one lonely, lousy night, then we're all in deeper trouble than I thought.
3) Dear SEMagic:
My password is not too easy to guess. It is only six to eight letters without any numbers or @ signs to spice it up, true, but they were letters I pulled out of a hat a long time ago. They make up no word in the English language, or any other; I've Googled it, and it exists nowhere in The Great Brain.
So shut up.
Sincerely,
T.F.
4) Dear Media:
We know you know nothing about the Valerie Plame indictments. It's okay. You don't have to keep making up new headlines that say, "Still no update." Calm down, little media.
Sincerely,
T.F.
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| | 1) George Takei, a.k.a. "Sulu" from Star Trek, is gay.
That's old news. I mean, decades-old news. I'm surprised by how many people were surprised by this. Surprisingly, I haven't paid attention to the sex life of anyone in Star Trek. Except when Kirk's wife drowned. That was about it. Do you think that maybe more people have questioned their faith & have considered suicide (maybe not in the "I should kill myself" way, but the "What would happen if I weren't here?" way) but don't want/are afraid to admit it because it's not socially acceptable? The faith? Maybe. The suicide? Like I said, when I've asked people, they seem confused, not defensive, and that's not normally the social reaction.
Maybe they're better liars than I think, but I doubt it. Semagic merely reports whatever messages are passed to it by Livejournal itself.
LJ is currently having a blitz on password security - take it up with the suppirt queue :-> yeah, i've been getting that message, too Ah, but the media (at least the broadcast portion of it) has one mandate and one mandate only: Fill The Time. Doesn't matter how. Doesn't matter with what. Just get from one end of the hour to the other. Just tossing this out there. Is contemplating whether there is a God the same as questioning one's faith in God? I mean, I don't know, but I wonder if people may take that question a little differently than how you might be. Like, perhaps there are people who have never had anything happen to them that would make them say "This really makes me wonder if God even exists," as opposed to the questioning that those of us brought up Catholic naturally have.
I dunno, just tossing it out there. Yes, that was my thought too. How the question was understood by the people asked it. This made me shudder, "believe in God and the literal truth of the Bible" my god, as a roman catholic myself I can never understand that other RC believe that. As if the bible can only have value when it is 100% correct.
Even the Pope said;"you know, some things in in the good book? just inspirational. Genesis? nicely written, very inspirational. Yep, very inspirational, but the Earth?.. Not really only 6.000 years old... please, trust me on that..." Terrifying, isn't it?
And don't forget, not everyone is Christian. There are any number of religions where faiths never get questioned. (Not that Christian isn't scary enough. Just look where that can lead, unquestioned...)
-Dira- I had listed you several months ago and have enjoyed your comments and observations. Especially while "working" the late night shift.
They are always good for a *giggle* or a *huh* I wouldn’t have thought that. If I remember right there was a debate on evolution/creation/religious something and that’s how I found this LJ. Let me get the nicety out of the way, this is obviously your LJ and you may put any opinion you choose.
Just wondering why this statement makes the assumption that we... the others…
Those on the opposite side look down on those of religious faith?
"I believe deeply in Jesus and Heaven and all the other stuff it's not cool to believe in if you're supposedly smart"
Maybe because it is all about ones faith, the very center of who we are, maybe that is why we are all so sensitive to it.
Just an observation on a Friday morning.
Mainly because even on my friends list, I see a lot of unconscious bashing of belief in general. They don't see it as such, but it is.
As with everything, my perspective could be skewed. I'd have a whole lot more faith if a certain LJ-er from Cleveland would throw a LAN party.
Or not, but I've been jonesing for a good LAN party for a while, and you DID write the book on it, after all. And remember, too. Religion != Faith.
I've been to religous Christian churches. It's kinda boring, and as someone whose beliefs stretch well out of that realm, I felt uncomfortable.
And I've also been to faith-based Christian churches. People with wildly varying viewpoints, where there's a base agreement on the major points and the minor points aren't nitpicked. A sizable portion of the congregation is either in AA or NA, and have HAD to question their faith at some point. A much more comfortable and well-meaning feeling. But the concept that hey, maybe you could be wrong has flashed across my mind a few times. Particularly at funerals. There's that occasional bite of concern that perhaps I'm reading a pattern into a universe because it makes me more comfortable.
It absolutely has crossed my mind. It's not a feeling I voice very often, but it's there....the little niggle in the back of my mind when people talk about eternity and damnation, and when people die, and really, just over anything that might remotely strike a chord as to my mortality, etc.
I worry that my belief is just a CYA, or some cultrually ingrained "You believe this" sort of thing.
But I wonder if thsoe people that answered that question were possibly covering their own asses? Hmmm. Interesting post. Lots to chew on. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/62283567/6957709) | | From: |  kmg_365 |
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| Date: | October 28th, 2005 01:29 pm (UTC) |
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That's old news. I mean, decades-old news. I'm surprised by how many people were surprised by this.
Well, the old news might have been rumor, but apparently he has just now come out of the closet.
He's been openly living with his male lover for almost twenty years.
He hasn't "just come out of the closet," he's just made a decision to announce his sex life to the media. There's a big difference there. I think those of us who blog have an even more optimistically-warped view than most people. The Internet, for all the morons you run across there, is of course a less-than-accurate cross-section. The "Average American", as it were, never interacts with strangers online. They have the email because some relative of theirs sends them jokes.
And you're right, it IS self-selecting. Already (and again, 'net morons be damned), the fact that someone's got the desire to reach out and expose themselves to new ideas makes them above average in this country. Therefore, those of us who spend any significant portion of our lives using the internets can often erroneously feel as though the majority of their fellow Americans are vaguely nerdy, deep-thinking, sometimes depressed, quasi-liberal cynics.
I don't get into political scuffles with my uber-Republican relatives (read: everyone in my extended family except my parents, my paternal grandmother, and one aunt), because none of them are interested in defending their beliefs. They just have the way they feel and they don't WANT it questioned. Bill O'Reilly good, Michael Moore bad. Off topic: ROFL at your icon. :)
I agree with what you're saying, though, because I know I and my friends have frequent attacks of "What do you mean, normal people don't analyze everything?!" For tonight's bad pun, we have city_of_dis to thank. In other news, it would seem that Sulu may have been especially interested in the Captain's Log. | | From: | kmg_365 |
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| Date: | October 28th, 2005 01:33 pm (UTC) |
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We know you know nothing about the Valerie Plame indictments. It's okay. You don't have to keep making up new headlines that say, "Still no update." Calm down, little media.
The Daily Show spoofed this the other night. They broke in to the "news" cast to let John Stewart know that there are still no indictments.
But the one statistic that threw me flat on my back was this: the Average American has never questioned his faith in God.
There has never been in the history of the united states an atheist congressman, atheist president nor atheist supreme court judge.
There is no public debate about the existance of god. You can't expect people to question things on their own initiative.
There is only one open popular forum which allows you to question the existance of god, it is not school, politics, or media.
It's comedy. David Cross is the current standard bearer.
Before him, we had Mark Twain, agnostic.
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."
My gaydar went of big time for Sulu. I mean, that GRIN he was always giving Kirk. It was SO THERE. Original slash really should have been Sulu/Kirk where Sulu gets Kirk drunk on Romulan Ale and takes advantage (not by force mind you but by Kirk's lowered inhibitions) because it was also readily apparent that the Enterprise's most sexual captain also swung both ways :) But to never question is to carry such a low level of intellectual curiosity that you might as well be a pail of milk. That's the majority of people?
Yeah, I think so. I look around me, and come to the inescapable conclusion that most people are stupid, or possibly just lazy, and so they don't bother to think, to question what they're told, because thinking is just too much work for them.
I also think there's a certain percentage of people who do question, but are too intimidated to admit that they have ideas that differ from what they believe to be the Acceptable Norm. I work in telephone/email customer serivce for a very large company. His comment is an insult to milk pails everywhere. the Average American has never questioned his faith in God.
Seems to those outside of the USA that the "Average American" rarely questions ANYTHING, especially in the last 6 years. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/51012029/1327339) | | From: | maidden |
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| Date: | October 28th, 2005 03:15 pm (UTC) |
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From seeing what americans let their president do, I'd say those of us outside of the USA are right.
But then, I'm brazilian. Pot, meet kettle. | | Note that I am, if you need a label, a "liberal agnostic" | (Link) |
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I really don't see actual "smart people" (as opposed to pretentious assholes who want to look smart) as generally having a problem with someone who beleives in god. It seems to me as if what most reasonable people have a problem with are two things:
Complete, unquestioning and unexamined blind faith, of which you yourself seem to take rather a dim view.
The firm conviction that anyone who does not share one's faith is somehow evil or morally inferior, and as such thier opinions don't count, or aren't valid.
These things, while commonly appearing (or at least being more obvious) in a lot of people with firm religious convictions, are nonetheless not the same thing as "being a person of faith". For that matter, a lot of supposedly open-minded liberals display the exact same traits with regards to thier own ideologies.
I think that most thoughtful people realize that faith does not entail closed-mindedness; it simply looks that way sometimes because a lot of closed minded people also are attracted to religious faith, and they are the noisy ones, who make everyone else look bad. I heard that on the radio yesterday, and that was the statistic that got me, too. That just can't be true - the thought of it is too horrifying to contemplate.
But then, the thought that your average Christian is ashamed of questioning is almost as bad. It seems so obvious to me that the most universal human quality is curiosity, that that being an affront to God is absurd. But then, that's why the Adam and Eve story has never made sense to me either. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/96628510/7638427) | | From: | beebarf |
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| Date: | October 28th, 2005 03:03 pm (UTC) |
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As a Brit, it doesn't surprise me that the average American is unquestioning in their faith and their literal belief in the Bible - but it frightens me.
Any country that can sanction the teaching of Creationism over evolution isn't one to foster a culture that debates these things.
The land of the free seems remarkably sheeplike in it's conformity sometimes.
Personally, I'm an agnostic with an aversion to calling myself an atheist only because I feel it's as illogical to not believe as it is to have faith :o) I sorely doubt the average Euro questions their faith in God. You've got the devout Irish, Poles, Spanish, and Italians for starters. Anglicanism is non-Roman Catholicism, while Turkey and Russia are Orthodox. About the only Euros I'd consider to question their faith would be the Germans, because they've been doing so much post-Holocaust soul-searching and the Nazi appropriation of cabalistic stuff.
BTW.. that new PW nag seems to be an LJ thing, not a seamagic thing... I keep getting it when I use the webupdate page too.
Bloody pain in the arse You're one of several people on my friends list who've stated the password thing. Semagic has never said anything about my password so I guess the tendency to add numbers into random words works for it. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/101527707/318288) | | From: | dawnwolf |
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| Date: | October 28th, 2005 05:03 pm (UTC) |
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" If the Average American truly never has gone, "I wonder if there really is a God" on at least one lonely, lousy night, then we're all in deeper trouble than I thought."
I'm not a Christian, at least by most definitions (as a Shaman I feel comfortable with all faiths, more or less). A fundamental tenet of my faith is, "I could be wrong about everything - not only my perception of Deity, but the idea that Deity exists."
I'd taken it as granted that it would be virtually impossible not to have doubts about this, for the reasons you mention and more. And if the "average" American has never doubted it...kind of gives a glimpse into some potential explanations of a lot of things in this country, doesn't it. *shudders* My question would be, does thinking "I'm gonna kill myself, THEN they'd be sorry!" count as honest to goodness suicidal thoughts, since it's not really a death wish, as a revenge wish. I had to add numbers to my virtually un-guessable password just to get the damn message to stop coming up in my iJournal client. I wonder if they'll notice if I change it back. . .? |
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