A New Video

I have just posted a video on the Darwin and the Bible channel about what Charles Darwin (standing out in a heavy rain) (link here) might think of the environmentalist message of the story of Noah's Ark--a message almost wholly ignored by Bible believers today.

Subtle Misinformation from Christian Radio

When I was driving through Texas recently, my radio choices were between Christian radio and Christian Christian radio. I thought I would listen awhile.

On at least two radio preacher programs, the message was the same: in relationships, it is most important to cultivate a close relationship with one person than to be promiscuous with lots of partners; and that a lasting relationship begins with a strong bond of shared values, and grows out into physical intimacy from there.

Actually, most non-Christians that I know believe this also. With few exceptions, the people I know who are not conservative Christians also form long-term bonds (usually marriages) that are based on character and values, not just sex; and with few exceptions, these people are not promiscuous.

So I did not have a problem with what the preachers said about the best way of forming, and the value of forming, deep lasting relationships (for many of us, that means with a spouse). What I found objectionable was that these preachers were consistently portraying all non-Christians as being sex-driven promiscuous maniacs. They did not actually say this, but their implied advertising message was, “Are you a sex-driven promiscuous maniac? If not, then join us and send us your money.”

Conservative Christians routinely lie about liberal Christians and about non-Christians. This is particularly outrageous because many famous evangelical preachers have been promiscuous and sex-driven.

So the radio preachers may be right about what they say about long-term intimate relationships, but they are consistently wrong, and I believe deliberately wrong, about what they say about those people who are not allied with them.

Another Advantage of Frugal Living

Frugal living has always been a good idea. I know modern conservative Christians do not think so. For example, in a previous blog entry, I documented that one leading conservative group thinks that the way to show God that you love him is to waste as much fossil fuel as you can. I wonder what these Christians think about Jesus and His frugal way of living. God made gold and silver, but Jesus showed how much He hated God by never seeking any. Throughout the ages, many religious people (of diverse traditions) have seen frugality as a way of respecting the created world and its creator. Not so modern conservative Christians. Let them hate Jesus, and let them hate me, for our frugality.

But there is another advantage of frugality. It seems that neither the government nor corporations feel obligated to fulfill their contractual obligations unless you sue them. Here are the corporate examples. I signed a contract with Sears for siding on my house. They cashed my check then repeatedly put off the work, until I told them that I was ready to hire a lawyer; then they began the work. The computer on which I am writing came from Best Buy, back when we naively trusted it, and in less than a year it is crashing. I also bought a camera from them last year; twice in a row, they had to fix it, the second time to correct damage they had inflicted on it while repairing it the first time. I had to threaten legal action to get them to replace the camera. A camera and a computer are staples in my work. Anything that is not fundamental to my work I will simply not purchase from a corporation. Farmer’s markets? They are pretty good.

The government example is an agency everyone knows and despises: the IRS. We all know we have to pay taxes; but the IRS is a corrupt agency. They were recently in the news for targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny on tax-exempt status applications. But there is a bigger problem. We all know that they take months to send refunds back. But during those months, they provide no information about what is going on. You can check on their website, but if you do click on “Where’s my refund?” you will almost certainly get a message that says that no information is available. I had to write a letter to the White House (not quite a legal threat) before the IRS checked up on it. It turns out that they were working very very very had to give me a bigger refund than I had requested, which is great news, only for those months I was waiting, I had no idea if they had even processed my return. I had a delivery confirmation, so I knew they had received it; but I had no way of checking whether they had subsequently misplaced it. Recently, I received a letter from them explaining to me why my refund was delayed, but not explaining to me why they had kept the process a secret for so long. All we want is to know what is going on, and for IRS to not be a totally secret organization reminiscent of Soviet days.

A refund is not a privilege that we are requesting from the IRS; the refund amount is the amount of money by which we overpaid on our withholding. It is our money, not theirs. So now I have greatly reduced my withholding; I plan to pay taxes each March (I do not wait until April) rather than to expect a refund. I can be absolutely sure the IRS will cash my check the moment they receive it, and within a day or so it will show up on my bank website. The ousted IRS director loudly proclaimed, “We provided horrible customer service.” But the news reports focused on a minor aspect of this ineptitude. What about the millions of us who waited for our refunds, and kept in the dark while we were waiting?

None of us can do anything about the fact that the IRS is corrupt, other than to minimize our withholding. But there is something we can do about corrupt corporations. We can simply purchase as little as possible. Quite simply and obviously, the more we buy, the more opportunity there is for corporations to take our money without delivering acceptable goods and services. Anything that seems even remotely unnecessary or luxurious, I will reject it. I occasionally eat out, but only when traveling or for special occasions, such as my daughter’s birthday. Even on those rare occasions, I often get temporarily double-charged for the bill.

If rejecting most luxuries sounds like what Jesus said to do, that is more than just an interesting coincidence. Let the conservatives decry me as evil for my opposition to large corporations. Let them call me unpatriotic if they like. But if they call me unchristian, they should take a second look at the Bibles that they wave in the air without reading.

A New YouTube Channel

I have just started a new YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/darwinandthebible. On this channel, Charles Darwin goes through the Bible and comments on it. I did not want to clutter up my science-based YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/StanEvolve) with religion, so I created this new channel.

The purpose of the new Youtube channel is to explore what we can learn from the Bible not by reading it as a devotional, the way conventional religious people do, or by attacking it, as anti-religious people often do. The Bible is a collection of books in which many people over the course of a millennium have struggled with the big issues (where did we come from, where are we going, what are we doing here, and why do bad things happen). They came up with many different answers (thus contradicting one another). But maybe we can have our own minds challenged by the stories they came up with to express their thoughts.

So if this sounds interesting to you, check it out. I expect that some of the things you will see on the darwinandthebible channel will be ideas, some of them possibly outrageous, that you have probably not heard before. Among the topics already posted:

1. The Bible is not a book. It is a collection of contradictory books written over a millennium. The Bible contains no list of books that are supposed to be in the Bible.
2. Genesis 1 is not a history of the Earth, either correct or incorrect, but a portrait of "creation."
3. You can think of Genesis 1 as a song in the style of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
4. You can even think of Genesis 1 as a description of life colonizing a volcanic island. I realize that this interpretation is wrong, but hey, it works as well as other interpretations, and better than most.

See you there. Or, I'll just keep seeing you here.