Shouzer

Apparently the Church of Scientology has been editing Wikipedia articles in a self-serving manner, so Wikipedia has responded by banning all edits coming from their IPs.  Honestly, I know very little about Scientology.  The few things I’ve heard sound nuts, and Tom Cruise seems crazy*.

Frankly, though, all this does for their reputation is enforce it, in my mind.  Really, Wikipedia is fairly “neutral” from the things I’ve read.  Given that, if you really need to edit articles to make yourself sound better, you must be doing something wrong to begin with.

* Crazy funny…  Have you seen Tropic Thunder?  The man is surprisingly funny.

BBC News had an interesting article about a month ago that basically said the more religious a person is, the less likely they are to “pull the plug” when they’re terminally ill.  I think that statistic becomes a little more interesting when you try to reason why that is.

Honestly, I would have expected it to be the other way around–my first thought would have been that people with strong religious beliefs would be more willing to accept death, with the knowledge that an afterlife is awaiting them.  Apparently that’s not the case, though, and I’m curious if anybody has thoughts on why that might be.  I have a couple guesses myself, but I won’t get into them unless somebody’s interested in the comments.

[Edit:] This ended up being a monster post. Despite that, I’d be really happy to hear what anybody else has to say about this. Comments are strongly encouraged!

There was a discussion on an email alias at work recently about intelligent design, and though the original conversation got extremely off-topic, I nonetheless spent quite a while thinking about it. From what I’ve seen, the typical debate seems to end up breaking down to religion vs atheism. Those that support religion are ostensibly religious, and those in favor of evolution or natural selection are typically perceived as atheist. What I don’t understand is why the two groups have to be mutually exclusive.

First–and I want to get this out of the way as quickly as possible–intelligent design is not science, nor should it ever be taught in school as a complement or alternative to evolution as science. Intelligent design’s sole purpose is to bring into science the requirement of a higher being. This mere fact alone precludes it from being science. Instead, it’s a giving up. Rather than actually trying to explain the way things are in physical terms, it’s a weak fallback to an unprovable, untestable, and intrinsically unscientific explanation.

Now, having said that, I don’t know why you have to be atheist to believe in evolution. I’m certainly not. I don’t understand what’s so “unintelligent” about evolution. The idea of natural selection explains a lot of things fantastically well. An organism’s or species’ favorable random mutations will become more common in successive generations furthering that species. It makes sense. It’s almost perfect.

So why can’t a typical Christian, for instance, accept this? Couldn’t it be the case that God created the world in this manner? We don’t have to remove the scientific randomness of it–God doesn’t have to be molding every single human, bug, and bacteria created. He doesn’t have to be actively carrying electricity over copper wires. No, science can explain it. If you believe in God, why not believe that He created things in a rational, explainable way? It would be well within his power.

The problem for me is that convservative religious groups often accept science when it’s convenient and condemn it when it’s not. They’ll write up blog posts from their laptops on their planes about how they didn’t evolve from monkeys. Oh yeah, and I suppose angels are storing those posts magically in the laptops while there’s no internet connection. They’re probably carrying the planes, too. Cell phones? They’re really work through a huge network of angels carrying our voices over vast distances. It has nothing to do with radio waves.

I’m a firm believer in science–real science–though I also mentioned earlier that I’m not atheist. I don’t accept the “general” notion of intelligent design, but I think natural selection is fairly intelligent. I don’t believe it’s too far-fetched to say some higher power designed things to work that way (i.e. it was an intelligent design…). In fact, I think it’s naive to believe that science will ever have all the answers.

The big bang, for example, while a fascinating theory, doesn’t actually explain the beginning of anything. Go far enough in the past and there was a single mass of infinite density, which then began expanding at an exponentially rapid pace? Honestly, what the fuck is that? Where did this magical ball (or point) of mass come from? Even if science can someday explain that, the next question will be what caused the thing that caused the big bang and so on? It’ll be an infinite series of questions and answers with no end.

The existence of life, of our universe, of anything is inherently beyond the realm of our scientific understanding. At the end of the day, taking all real science into account, “Why do I exist?” is still a valid question. That above all else necessitates my belief in a higher power, but it does not negate–nor should it supplant–actual science. And to attempt to do so with frivolous “theories” is a waste of time and a detriment to society as a whole.

There was a holiday in Thailand last weekend called Loy Krathong. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia article about it. I’m not going to offer an explanation about it because mine will only be inferior. Don’t worry, that one is really short.

My Loy Krathong celebration started last Friday. My regular school had a hand, foot, and mouth epidemic so they canceled. I begged my way into an outing to another school where they were celebrating the holiday. They had games, a traditional song and dance, this hot air balloon/kite, and of course, they floated Krathongs onto the swimming pool.

On Saturday, I went with a bunch of foreign teachers and one Thai to the main festival in Bangkok. We started out at a temple which is close to the canals and fairly close to the main river. I’m really not sure why we were there, but there were tons of people in the area. It had a carnival type feel to it. There were stalls all over the place selling everything imaginable as well as a few carnival rides and games. The more notable things were a freak show, a show where monkeys were all dressed up, and 2 dunking booths with “beautiful” girls ready to get all wet. Most of them didn’t look that happy to be there, incidentally.

After the carnival/temple, we headed down to the main river. There, people were floating their Krathongs. There was also a parade of much larger boats and some fireworks. It was incredibly packed here as well. Most of the action seemed to be on the other side of the river, but the bridge crossing was jammed with people so we just stayed on our side. Afterwards, most of us were pretty tired, so we headed back to our area for some dinner and chilling out. I floated my Krathong on a canal near the beer garden where we were. My candle went out pretty quickly. I think that means I’m destined for a short life. Then again, I’m also destined to meet a beautiful woman because I’ve taken the last piece of food from a dish at a community meal. So I guess I’ll have a short, but happy life.

Every week, Time has a section of letters that were written to them about their last issue.  The majority of them are generally about the past week’s cover story.  One letter irked me in particular.  It read:

I was saddened by your interview with Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop-elect of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A.  When asked about her focus as head of her church, she mentioned feeding people, providing primary education, promoting sustainable development and healing people with ADS, tuberculosis and malaria.  She made no mention of God, let alone Jesush Christ.  Her answers would have been more fitting coming from the head of the Gates Foundation than a national religious leader.  For 2000 years the church has taught that our works must flow from our faith.  Sadly, Bishop Jefferts Schori spoke only of works and of a church whose focus doesn’t include God.

I thought this was a ridiculous letter.  First of all, she shouldn’t have had to mention God.  How empty would it sound if she said her focus as head of her church was to preach scripture?  Duh.  That’s what everybody expects.  The real question is what will she do beyond that.

Someone in her position has more power and ability to help where the world needs it, so why not point out that she’s going to?  Do you really think she’s going to ignore her duties?  And who’s to say the work she’ll be doing won’t flow through her faith?  I suppose she could have said, “I’ll try to feed people, with God’s help.  I’ll promote primary education, with God by my side.  Through the power of God, I’ll help heal people with aids.”  But is that really what should be expected of her?

No, it’s a waste of my time to hear, and it’s a waste of her breath to say.  I grabbed this from Wikipedia about Mother Teresa’s order, called the Missionaries of Charity:

whose mission was to care for (in her own words) “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.”

“OMG!  She didn’t mention God?!?  She obviously didn’t deserve all the credit she got.  Then what good was all the help she provided?  Obviously she didn’t deserve her beatification.  She’s a disgrace.”

Obviously that’s not the case.  She didn’t have to mention God in every sentence she spoke or in every mission statement.  It was a given, as it should have been–and should be today for someone in a similar position.  I get sick of people thinking they’re better Christians, or better people altogether, than somebody else just because they throw Jesus’ name in every sentence.

Here’s a good comment on a post at /. that I agree with almost entirely. It’s worth a read, IMO.