It's going to be a busy week

Finally got around to planning my trip......

To choose a path no threat impedes
Wherever the light of conscience leads

Science can only explain what is measurable. I don't think it requires very much imagination to imagine that there is a lot we are missing or overlooking. This doesn't mean that science isn't incredibly useful and offer an incredible amount of value for improving the quality of our lives. It's just a statement that science is not truth and reasonable skepticism is healthy. Doubt is at the core of every belief, secular and religious.  Faith too is always necessary, even if it is imperceptible - in everything we do. Faith and doubt are nothing but probability assessments. 

Malleable Skills

I found an article that talked about the glut of recent PhD's with limited job prospects. I had an email exchange with a friend and talked about why that may be the case. He mentioned it may be a lack of social skills. Below is my reply

"Along the lines of social skills the original article mentioned a deficit in the skills needed to actually do well in work like. Personally I am terrible at patiently wading through menial tasks which is always necessary in any entry level job. I know I had the perception that i would come in, be instantly recognized for my ability and get paid to think and design. The world doesn't work that way. You have to do what you are told even if they do know you are capable. They hired you to do something and only later will you get a chance to prove yourself. You just have to keep your nose on the grindstone and endure it - at least until you can get a promotion or move to a better job at a new company. Also in academia you can skip tasks you don't like. My homework usually counted for about 5%-10% of my grade in school. I could spare the points and became accustomed to simply skipping assignments I didn't like. I could come in late or skip class if I wanted as long as it wasn't too frequent (and in some cases it didn't matter at all) without any real repercussions. In a professional setting you have to do 100% of your work. You can't just decide to skip the tasks you don't like. Respecting bosses just because they are your boss is also another essential skill they don't teach you in school. Loyalty, or at least the perception of it, is highly valued. These could be called social skills, but I think they are something different... something similar to discipline. Something similar to what you probably found in the army"

Separating Jesus from the Bible

The UU has people who share a wide range of religious views. Last night at the worship committee meeting we had a discussion about the criteria that would be used to select our new minister. One member expressed opposition to anyone who was "overly Christian" and was visibly upset at anyone who would preach from what he called a "homophobic, sexist..." and then just abruptly cut himself off. He talked about how they would need to be internally contradictory to believe it all. 

I don't think that's the case and below is an email I shared with him

"The Jefferson Bible gave me a totally fresh lens to see "Christianity" and I found it to be incredibly liberating. 

I think it's clear we both have different goals though, mine was simply to reconcile my beliefs with those of most of the people in my life and still have my own "responsible search for truth and meaning."

For me, it was clear there was obviously a lot of value in the Bible (though most of the good messages are not unique to it) but as you mention, there are also a lot of other mean-spirited, hateful messages as well as unscientific bunk that I think even the most creationist Christians would have a difficult time believing. 

Here is a good example I found a few years ago that I have never heard mentioned in any church: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor

It's clear Jefferson had similar issues. Rather than getting caught up in thousands of pages of religious texts and supernatural phenomenon, he simply took the parables of Jesus and said "Here, this is what he was really preaching." I found it to be very easy to swallow. 

The real issue (and purpose) for any religion is to give people a way to live and to make difficult moral decisions in life. I think the title of Jefferson's project highlights this "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." For me the supernatural stuff (whether or not there is a god or whether he was "RAISED FROM THE DEAD" or even if there is a heaven really aren't important.") What I found was a world view almost 180 degrees different than the materialist culture we live in. 

CS Lewis once said something along the lines of "Jesus is either a liar, a crazy man, or who he says he is." He tried to back you into a corner, but I think the "crazy man" label isn't that much of a stretch. Jesus was a wandering homeless man who hung out with the lowest members of society and enjoyed shaking up the religious establishment of his time. He lived in a world where religion was a set of silly beliefs and rituals (Pharisees) and had lost its way. Jesus said the whole law can be described up in as loving your neighbor. It's a world view that challenges me every day and reminds me not to cling to the popular measures of success - a pretty wife, money in the bank, decadent food, sex. I see his purpose as very simple - to tear down the nonsense of religion and be a true reminder of what we should do. That's how I see Jesus and I think that's how many "liberal" Christians see him too..."

Words

I wrote about the ambiguity of words a few weeks ago, but I didn't touch on the fact that language as a whole has slowly taken on the same shift towards meaninglessness (particularly in academic and political circles). I came across a fantastic article by George Orwell where he

"The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."

here is an example he used to illustrate this

"Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

While I tend to use metaphor quite frequently, I have always felt a bit insecure about it. I feared it only exacerbated other's perception of me as some unrefined, small town, country hick. Concrete imagery almost feels tainted because it is associated with our world. Quaint is a good word. Abstractions are like wisps of cigarette smoke in a still room. They have an airy sophistication about them that lets them rise like helium above what others are saying. Unfortunately, as Orwell points out, they often lack any meaning. They are just pleasant sounding phrases tacked together like magnetic words on a refrigerator.

When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.

Several years ago I read a book called "On Bullshit." It's main premise was that bullshit was much worse than lying because at least a liar knows what the truth is. A bullshitter just says whatever he wishes without any regard for reality. I remember one story in that book he told about a mason who laid the mortar perfectly  on the underside of a cathedral. When someone asked him why, he said it was for the glory of god. In that moment I realized what craftsmanship was. Most things can be taped or glued or beaten into shape. Kludges  are usually effortless and I am an expert at them. Though the sight of careful handiwork of an attentive laborer always makes me stop and just admire what they are doing, even for simple things. When the poor man at the car wash gets on both knees to polish the wheels of my truck and remove the caked on brake dust to leave them sparkling. A cobbler who restores and renews old lifeless leather shoes. A carpenter who precisely saws each piece of pine and snugly screws each board. It comes from an appreciation for what they are doing and a desire to do it well. One can sling words like a Jackson Pollock painting or nail them together like some old shanty house but this will earn no admiration. Give me a neighborhood of McMansions or a finely crafted mountain cabin and I know where I will call home. Language is no different. I need to slow down. I need to be deliberate. I need to craft my words with the care of a gardener who gently places seedlings in freshly turned soil. I get too excited and my mind goes faster than my mouth and I struggle to keep up. Then I find myself talking as my mouth has just started to wander. I need to tame it. It must be domesticated.