posted by Sam Richards

The problem we’re dealing with in 2009 is that we’re not asking people to THINK. We are feeding them information and few engage in dialogue with people who ask “why” and “how” and “if what you are saying is true, then what about…” Rusty thinking is what happens when we don’t sharpen our understanding of the world by conversing with people who are inclined to say to us “please tell me more about what you think about that.” These are, more often than not, people who have ideas that are different than those we espouse.

Imagine not having taken the opportunity to ride a bicycle for thirty years and suddenly somebody asks you to take an old, rusty bike out for a cruise. How do you imagine that you’d fare? Thirty years without ever being asked to spin those wheels and now you need to perform with all eyes upon you.

So we have this idea that people around us are thinking, that they’re truly using their brains. But have you listened to the conversations going on around you recently? No? Give them a listen now and then. There’s very little back and forth. I’d like to even be able to say that those are just opinions that people are throwing about but it’s hard to even hear the random, shallow, sophomoric ideas as “opinions.”

Okay, so really, the video below was put on the web by people who are critical of Sarah Palin and the people who support her. I’m putting it up, however, because it says nothing about Palin or her supporters and everything about Americans with rusty brains — including the millions of Obama fans who would answer similar questions about him and his policies in the same sort of awkward ways because they, too, drink in “fast food news” without being asked to give their brains a workout and interpret it.

And now…on to the show. And please, don’t laugh at them unless you have answers to the questions that don’t make you sound like a lost soul.

UPDATE: I’ve been reading some of the comments and I have to say I’m not entirely impressed. It’s the standard muckety-much about “my generation” and “people today” rounded out by “but I have to be honest and admit that I don’t know anything about politics.” C’mon people, how does it FEEL to be woefully and utterly ignorant about basic social and political issues? Take ownership, ya’ll. Lay it out there. Don’t grovel in it…but say something about what it means for you.

Share on Facebook

posted by Sam Richards

So I heard on the radio this morning that Egypt’s most powerful (Muslim) cleric, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, has spoken out against the niqab, the full, face-covering/headscarf (not to be confused with the burka–a full body covering). He has proclaimed that these should be banned from the various schools of the Al-Azhar University. He has asserted that niqab “has nothing at all to do with Islam.”

This is from the Press Trust of India:

Cairo, Oct 9 (PTI) Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar University has barred students from wearing face-veils or Niqab in female-only classrooms and dormitories.
The Al-Azhar supreme council, in a statement yesterday, said that it has decided to ban students and teachers from wearing the Niqab inside female-only classrooms that are taught by women.
The ban extends to women dormitories and to schools affiliated with the university.
It said that the aim of the ban is to spread the spirit of confidence, unison, comfort and sound understanding between the teachers and their students.
The decision was announced by Sheik of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, who was recently criticised for forcing a girl to take off her face-veil inside an institute affiliated with the university.
The Muslim brotherhood, the largest opposition bloc, has asked for his removal, describing his action as part of a larger plan to de-Islamise Egypt.

This struck me because it sounds rather progressive and, dare I say, “feminist.” It does not sound at all like some proclamations I’ve heard recently by other Egyptian (Muslim) clerics. Listen to this one:

Now that’s what I’m talking about. Real machismo. I’ve always thought that God/G-d/Allah wanted straight men to have a way to unequivocally express how manly they were in their own homes so as to show that he is on our side — he is a “he,” afterall, isn’t he?

So here’s the deal. This should show all of us that Islam, like all other religions, is ripe for interpretation. I mean, c’mon, god–the g is lower case now in deference to the atheists among you–either wants women to be beaten or to not cover up. Not sure if a bikini is acceptable, but these are two very different interpretations of the will of the creator and I’m struck by how anybody at all can speak for god. Reminds me of some words I read years ago: “You can be pretty certain that you’ve created god in your own image when your god hates all of the same people and things that you do.”

I guess I’d like to leave you with the following: Just like your secular and religious leaders have different interpretations for their people’s actions, so too do the leaders of other lands and cultures. Keep that in mind the next time you hear something that sounds really crazy that has been proclaimed by one of a billion or so followers of some belief system. Perhaps it’s just that one person’s sense of reality! Maybe not every so-called follower agrees with that person — like when Ahmadinejad in Iran expresses his desire to Nuke Israel, or when the Pope decides that using condoms will not help prevent the spread of HIV.

Share on Facebook

posted by Sam Richards

I have no idea who this guy is. I guess he’s a former child actor who now works for God. As I have not watched TV in the past thirty years, he remains a mystery to me–even though he seems to be quite popular in our mainstream media outlets because I see his face a good deal on the Web.

That said, he says something here that leaves me a bit perplexed and I’d like some of you to respond. Listen to the clip and get back to me.

“When you learn how to skip to a person’s conscience and circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution disappears.” Poof. It’s gone. Someone questions you about evolution? Just change the subject. Amazing what can happen when we stop thinking.

So tell me what you do when the complicated questions that you cannot immediately answer come at you in a fast and furious way, when your world view is called into question, or when you accidentally and inevitably step into that gray area that so many of us unsuccessfully try to avoid so much of the time. Do you just stop thinking like this guy says you can do in the case of evolution so that the conundrum disappears? Or do you stay in the ring and wrestle with the challenges that are difficult to pin down?

Here’s the issue as I see it. This short little video clip might be taken out of context, to be sure. However, it doesn’t really matter for what I’m asking because I see lots of people turning off their intellect when confronted with things they can’t explain. This includes believers of all sorts of ideas, including scientists and sociologists, and not simply religious folks.

And I know what you might say. You might remind me of what I said the other day in class with regard to religious beliefs–that fealty to God comes mainly from faith. But the problem is that faith is not separate from the intellect. Most people who have faith will give you very logical and rational reasons for why they have their faith. Sure, a great deal of many people’s faith is conditional and based on convenience. Perhaps it’s “I have faith that the Pope is speaking for God but I don’t want to get my girlfriend pregnant so I’m using condoms–even though the Pope/God says it’s a sinful act.” Pure convenience to avoid the inconvenience of having a baby to take care of while taking classes.

Or people posit “There are immutable laws that govern the universe (e.g., gravity) and thus no reason to postulate some otherworldly causality.” A convenient observation until you take the time to read theoretical physics and discover the many brilliant scientific minds that have been led to God when they discover that many of these laws are not as immutable as they previously thought. Pure convenience to avoid the inconvenience of having to read another book.

It’s all faith implicated with rational thought.

So the question is as follows: If we live our lives both “believing” and “thinking,” then when is it acceptable to stop doing the latter for the sake of the former? In other words, do we abandon ALL rational thought or just when thinking would force us to confront some ideas and observations that don’t immediately make sense or mesh with what we want to believe?

The message of the gentleman in the video is that some “truths” he has discovered just happen to accompany a particularly complicated mix of riddles (like evolution) and that it’s okay to “circumnavigate” them so you don’t have to deal with what you don’t want to risk understanding. I’m not so sure I agree.

Once again, it doesn’t matter if this has been pulled out of context because that’s a message I’ve heard all of my life from people who want to avoid thinking about something–like the pervasiveness of racism or where fossils came from or whether it really does lower the morale of the troops if gays and lesbians are allowed to serve in the military.

By the way, those of you who are not disposed to faith persuasions don’t need to use this post as an opportunity to bash those who are. Rather, use it as an opportunity to rethink how you navigate the world of ideas.

Share on Facebook