Monthly Archives: February 2009

A long awaited update

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I have continued to post photos in my “daily, as available” Frost on the Window series at JPGMag.com. They’re fascinating to work with, and I’m eager to take as many different photos as I can while we still have cold enough weather for it.

Finally getting caught up on my Perpetual Poetry Postcards activities. The key to that was getting the adhesive postcard backs, where I can mount my photo art on the adhesive side. Really PostcardArt.net for a change! I’m having a lot of fun with it. 

My poor laptop is rapidly wearing out, and I am considering retiring it in favor of a Asus eee PC 1000 HE. I am lured by the 9.5 hour battery life (as long as one is not doing anything strenuous with it.) I can adapt to only having one shift key, if I can have my “n” key back without having to hit it two or three times whenever I need the letter to appear on the screen.

The postcard writing prompts are turning out to be a lot of fun, even though I am using my own photographs. The weekly postcard mailings were supposed to begin the 5th of January. So far, I have mailed three and received three.  If I can continue, now, to turn out one a day, I actually should be able to get caught up by the end of next week.  

I enjoyed proofreading the upcoming Star*Line, the Jan./Feb. issue. I remember when I used to read stuff and then write reviews and put them on my web site. My most major problem with regard to writing honest reviews was my concern about hurting the feelings of the writers. Well, it shouldn’t have been. All too many writers are disinclined to believe that what’s said in “bad” reviews may be an authentic response to what they are writing.

Anyway, I see such multiplicity at this point that I hesitate to voice any opinions. Words are too flat really to convey meaning adequately. I need more dimensions for accurate expression. 

The really good news is that eight days after my last overwhelming (3-minute) fragrance exposure, I finally have recovered for the most part from its effects. I certainly don’t want to let that happen again anytime soon.

I do hate being confined to such a narrow stream of activities for so long at a stretch.

Life Is What Happens

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[Crossposted to The Moments Between at WordPress.com]

Life is what happens, and faith to a great extent determines how we see that life. Sometimes, in order to bolster our faltering faith view, we try to convince or coerce others into seeing life the way we need to see it.

This past weekend I was reading some recent papers by William Stahl. One that I was particularly taken with is “”One-Dimensional Rage: The Social Epistemology of the New Atheism and Fundamentalism” (in Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Amarnath Amarasingham; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). He states that adherents of the New Atheism see science as having replaced religion and consider religious beliefs to be dangerous delusions. Coming from the other extreme are the adherents to fundamentalism with their insistence on Biblical inerrancy.

Bill is right to say that both sides are very angry. They are convinced that their views are the correct ones–the only possible correct views, which should be obvious to everyone. They are angry that they cannot impose their world view on everyone, and they feel the need to do so. They need to be in control. They need the world to be under control.

While Bill is mainly talking about New Atheism and the more extreme fundamentalism, I see the same dynamics in many discussions where the extremes are not so extreme as authority of science alone versus authority of an inerrant, literal Bible alone. There is no dialogue, because there is a desperate need to be in control that, faced with opposition, produces fear and anger. Their fear pushes people into extreme, undefensible positions; the unspoken, sometimes unrecognized presuppositions that underlie their stances are not universally shared by others. Since there can be no dialogue, too often one or more sides demonizes the other.

Bill’s closing is a good summary of what I have witnessed happening in several venues where people with diverse religious views meet.

“So in the end, fundamentalism and the New Atheism are mirror images of each other, sharing deep structural and epistemological parallels. Both are attempts to recreate meaning for a world that they perceive as having lost is way. Both are screams of rage against those that do not conform to their one-dimensional thought. And both are expressions of a will to power that masks its own nihilism through eagerness to enforce its moral values.”

“Will to power” is the key to the dynamics I have observed all too often. We feel so easily threatened, too unwilling to risk, too unwilling to not know! How much are we willing to pay for certainty? Is it ever possible to attain it?