Unity is Overrated

The 2020 election has been called today for Joe Biden, and already we are hearing Trump supporters and other Republicans lecturing us about unity. John Kasich is warning us about whom the president-elect must consider (and must not consider) for his cabinet, The Independent is urging Biden to pardon his predecessor "for the good of us all," and Rick Santorum is on CNN insisting that we all need to give Republicans and Trump sufficient time to "sort through their feelings" about having lost the election. To quote, oh I don't know, every single MAGA person for the last four years, "Fuck Your Feelings." Sorry, but unity is not on the table. It's not about being sore winners, it's just that a lot of Americans are busy mourning the deaths … [Read more...]

Game of Thrones, Collapse of Empire

Since Game of Thrones officially ended a year ago I have read or watched countless reviews of the series as a whole, most of which followed a similar trajectory: “It started out great and stayed good for four or five seasons, but then it jumped the shark, and the end was so bad that it ruined the entire show.” Well, I just finished rewatching all eight seasons of the series for the first time after knowing how it all ends, and I would like to offer a bit of push-back on all the melancholy and lamentation. Before I jump in let me just get this out of the way: Yes, the last couple seasons were incredibly rushed, and a lot of the plot- and character development suffered for it. The defeat of the Night King and his Army of the … [Read more...]

Don’t Love God, Love the World Instead

I have given little hints here and there to the fact that my experience with God is largely characterized by divine absence, the “real absence of Christ” (to subvert a well-known theological formula). In short, the “every hair of your head” and “not a sparrow falls” passages resonated very little with me, if at all, while the one about his giving sunrise and rainfall indiscriminately to all made more sense. Shit happens, is what I’m saying. And it’s all pretty random, so don’t try to interpret Providence or expect God to be overly doting or attentive. (Read More) … [Read more...]

Scientists and Superstitious Simpletons

I am sick and tired of hearing about the supposed “objectivity” of science and scientific inquiry. The claim goes like this: Belief systems, whether religious or secular, deal in supernatural issues like the afterlife, morality, and the state of the soul. Science, on the other hand, deals in brute facts, and therefore needs to be taken seriously. It’s an incredibly modern kind of claim, if you think about it. And I am just postmodern enough to be suspicious of it. (Read More) … [Read more...]

Podcast #54: Nouveau Bros, Neo, and Islamic Extremists

In this episode, the DXPs try to determine whether they are a part of a new-fangled cultural demographic that they eventually conclude is mostly BS (but at times eerily specific and correct in its description of them). We then spend some time on the long past-due topic of Keanu Reeves (you’re welcome), after which we take listener voicemails about agnosticism and whether Cherokees and Catholics can date. We then turn our attention to the deaths of the four U.S. Marines killed by Islamic extremists (or were they just everyday, garden-variety Muslims?), discussing: (1) whether America should retaliate for this attack; (2) whether this attack was retaliation for some other attack we already did; (3) whether that previous attack, for which this … [Read more...]

Caitlyn Jenner and the Religious Response to Transgenderism

I realize Caitlyn Jenner has been discussed ad nauseam by this point, but I would like to weigh in from a slightly different angle. In order for the feeling  of gender misidentity on Jenner’s part (or any transgender’s part) to be valid, a person must be more than their mere biological body alone. Otherwise, there’d be no “real them” to be trapped inside the outer shell of their physical appearance in the first place. In other words, if, as many atheistic naturalists claim, a person is simply a collection of cells devoid of a mind or a soul, then the transgender’s frustration is delusional on its face, since there simply is no “inner you” to feel trapped within the “outer you” (because the latter is all there is). But if those with a … [Read more...]

Bang Bang, You’re Dead

I was having dinner with some friends a couple nights ago, and the issue of guns came up. In such situations I often insist (jokingly, with tongue in cheek) that I just wish Obama would burst through our doors with a battering ram and personally confiscate all our guns so that we'd finally be safe. Once my conversation partner's hyperventilating has subsided, we can usually have a pretty healthy discussion. The point I made that night, which I also made on episode #49 of our podcast (click above to listen), is that we simply don't get to be "the gun country" on the one hand and lament mass shootings on the other. To be more clear, while those who favor serious and strict firearm regulations can genuinely grieve over schools and … [Read more...]

Fake Plastic Selves

"... The more we hide our humanity beneath a spiritual or religious mask, the more we lose the integrity of our souls. In fact, 'integrity' simply means 'wholeness' (like how an integer is a whole number), meaning that suppressing or burying our humanity actually (and ironically) ends up splitting us in two, and we forget which one of us is real. "Thus the greater the degree to which we avoid grappling with our own humanity, the more hopeless will become our thoughts, and the more frenetic will become our activity as we seek to distract ourselves from our own existential schizophrenia. '[Such a man] becomes his own slave driver,' Merton says. 'A shadow whipping a shadow to death.'" [Read more] … [Read more...]

Nobody Puts Brody in a Corner….

"If there were an omni-malevolent and spiteful Being with enough malice and power to weave together an arrangement in which I could be as ruined as possible, as damaged as possible, and as duped as possible to think that redemption and reaping were real when they’re not, he wouldn’t be able to do a better job executing his twisted plan than by simply copying what the 'good' God put me through these past few years. Indeed, 'if at all God’s gaze upon us falls, it’s with a mischievous grin.'" Read more. . . . … [Read more...]

What, to the American Indian, is Your Thanksgiving?

In a moving speech given by escaped slave Frederick Douglass on July 5th, 1852 (a portion of which is read by Morgan Freeman below), the question is asked, "What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?" Here is part of his answer: [The Fourth of July] is a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. . . . Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse , recover with the help of Pacific Ridge online and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for … [Read more...]