Monthly Archives: January 2015
Funny* Things People Say to Me
*Funny in the sense of mildly disturbing, not hilarious.
1.) From a classmate in Theological Anthropology: “The promise of Christianity is that if you stop sinning, you’ll become immortal!” I thought that the promise of Christianity was that if you confessed your sins and asked for forgiveness, God would sacrifice someone else.
2.) From a classmate in Intro to the Hebrew Bible: “Hagar got uppity.” Really, dude? You want to interpret Genesis 16, where Sarah whores out her Egyptian slave, Hagar, with the word uppity? Are you out of your goddamn mind?
3.) From a classmate in Ethical Perspectives on War and Peace: “I can keep secrets, so Edward Snowden should have been able to as well.” Lady, if the secrets you are keeping are about the end of meaningful forms of freedom, spill ’em, please.
Tolerance, O Tolerance — An Ode, A Lament
I don’t know if anyone remembers, but early last quarter I became quite agitated about tolerance. Never one to let things go, I insisted on writing a short paper (“short” means under 3,000 words) to justify my in-class comments.
Tolerance and Intolerance: A Paradox
Introduction
Tolerance and intolerance are not the innocent, simple, or one-dimensional terms which they appear to be in current American discourse. Each word has been used, abused, misused, and twisted in the service of radically disparate agendas. It is often frustrating when two sides, each preaching tolerance, accuses the other side of demonstrating intolerance – when, in fact, perhaps neither side, whether tolerant or intolerant, has anything life-affirming to offer. Even the “tolerance” being fought over is not the moral high ground.
While neither tolerance nor intolerance is prima facie virtuous, tolerance and intolerance are by no means equivalent. In different situations, either tolerance or intolerance can be the right choice or at least the lesser of two evils. However, I contend that it is moral cowardice and intellectually dishonest to shrug our shoulders and say[1] “who are we to judge?”
From “Endgame”
“[A] man who lives alone…one day hears a knock on his door. When he answers, he sees The Tyrant outside, who asks, ‘Will you submit?’ The man says nothing. He steps aside. The Tyrant enters his home. The man serves him for years, until The Tyrant becomes sick from food poisoning and dies. The man wraps the body, takes it outside, returns to his home, closes the door behind him, and firmly answers, ‘No.’” (Loc. 5874)
Winter Quarter Begins Monday
Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: I feel that I’ve already been “introduced” to the Hebrew Bible, but apparently biblical scholarship is different in HUGE, MEANINGFUL WAYS from four atheist friends sitting around cracking jokes about 2 Kings 2:24. (A common atheist complaint: Christians don’t like our interpretations, so they tell us that we are interpreting it all wrong. But, aside from unalterable, if occasionally inconclusive, historical and scientific facts, there’s no such thing as right or wrong interpretation — it’s all merely interpretation.)
The first assignment for Tuesday? Write about your thoughts on “biblical authority.” I’m already baffled. “Authority over what?” is not the first thought of an atheist-atheist; it is first thought of a “sinners in the hands of an angry God” atheist. The Christians in my life tried to teach me that all authority rested with God. The Bible is therefore not an authority at all.
Ethical Perspectives on War & Peace: I’m mostly dreading this class, even though I love the professor (I had him for Ethical Analysis & Advocacy and for Hispanic Ethics & Theology). I learned to generally fear radical pacifists when I took the nonviolence seminar last spring. Don’t misunderstand — violence is bad. Likewise, war is bad. But let’s not be so naive as to pretend that the ends have never justified the means. Inevitably, a classmate will accuse me of playing God, to which I will almost certainly reply, “What’s your point?”
Shaping Public Policy: Ugh, these ridiculous 2-credit classes I have to take in order to round out my schedule! I’ve campaigned professionally. I understand advocacy. My first love was Howard Dean. That being said, if we get away from Christian supremacy for just a little bit — if we actually explore what it means to live in a secular democracy — my classmates’ heads will implode and it will all be worth it.
Theological Anthropology: Woohoo, the good stuff! This is what I’m talking about! This is why I am bothering to go to graduate school! Who are we, why are we here, what does it mean to be human in North America in the 21st century CE? Plus, I love this professor (Postcolonial Globalization in Africa; Rethinking Diversities).
Liberation Technology
This is a slightly modified version of a paper I wrote last quarter. It was originally written for the class “Religion, Space, and Place,” and the paper was styled to make the argument that the Internet is de facto sacred space (and, therefore, misuses of the Internet are desecration). I just cut out the parts which were me sucking up to the professor.
If you are a techie, the paper is a bit simplistic. If you are an academic, my citation style in this informal paper will drive you nuts (I had the prof’s permission, honest!). If you are a Catholic, you probably shouldn’t be reading an atheist blog to begin with — you’ll just raise your blood pressure. However, I really enjoyed writing this paper, and I think it shows.
I’m putting this paper up on my blog, as the first post of 2015, because I have the phrase “liberation technology” stuck in my head. If I say “liberation” in an American context, I evoke the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That isn’t the kind of liberation I’m talking about. If I say “liberation technology,” I evoke “liberation theology,” and I continue to assert various ways in which my prophetic atheism is an explicitly religious worldview.
Without further ado, I give you: “The Internet: Sacred and Desecrated Space.”
While Millennials aren’t the only Americans to consider the Internet a formative part of their identity, my predisposition to view the Internet as a sacred space is certainly rooted in my outlook as a Millennial. I was one of the first people to grow up on the Internet. It provided me a “‘space’ in which to meaningfully dwell” (Smith, Map is Not Territory, 291).
“Millennial” is generational moniker for people born roughly between 1982 – although anyone born in the 1980s is on the cusp – and the turn of the millennium in 2000. Millennials have a number of identifying characteristics, particularly as pertain to their use of technology and their political opinions about technology-related issues.
Asked an open-ended question about why their generation is “distinctive,” “24% [of Millennials] say it’s because of their use of technology” (Pew, “Millennials,” 5). When asked if Edward Snowden should be prosecuted for revealing the scope of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying, 50% of 18-to-29 year-olds said no, the largest percentage of any segment of the population (Pew, “Public Split”); 60% of the same age group said that the Snowden leaks serve the public interest. And while the American public is nearly unified in in their opposition to a two-tier Internet (this means we are generally in support of net neutrality), 18-to-24 year-olds are the most likely to say they “strongly oppose” a two-tier Internet (University of Delaware).
Karen Armstrong writes that a “holy place…is thus bound up with a people’s sense of self” (Armstrong, 191). It makes sense that this formula would also work in reverse. If we know and understand a group’s sense of self, we should be able to extrapolate what places they find sacred. I do not know if my analysis of the Internet as a sacred space would compel anyone who didn’t grow up with the Internet – either designing it or playing on it – to change their mind and to start to view the Internet as sacred. This perception of sacred space may be restricted to a rarified cohort. But what I can do on the strength of my analysis is demonstrate why the misuses of the Internet are so strongly opposed.
It is because some of us see the Internet as inviolate. It is because some of us know the Internet to be sacred.
Profanation by the telecoms, desecration by oppressive regimes, and the pollution of the wellspring of our culture – of the unrestricted liberty, access, communication, coordination, political power, and human potential of the Internet – will not be tolerated.
Atheist Social Change 