Almost over (Fall 2007)

Workout notes 6 mile walk on the treadmill in 1:09:30; perhaps 1-2 minutes slower than normal for this effort. I noticed that I didn’t have the dehydration effect that comes from giving whole blood (I gave red blood cells). Maybe some yoga later today.

Local: snow. Yuck.

I know, I know: just a small dusting by the standards of those who live in Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Utah, Vermont, etc. I still don’t like it.

This photo was more for the Texas folks.

More photos: I am going to buy one of this one; the only thing that I regret is that Olivia is right behind me (you can see her legs if you look through mine)

Yes, I am holding a stuffed frog.

Politics TeacherKen at the Daily Kos wrote a thoughtful diary about the Romney speech. He is more representative of liberals than I am (we atheists/agnostics are just a small percentage of Democrats though we are a much larger percentage of communities such as the Daily Kos community)

(screenshot of the results of a Daily Kos poll on spiritual beliefs; yes, online polls are not that accurate but this is probably the best one can do in this situation)

(larger)

(larger, more readable version)

But that was a digression to establish that the Daily Kos community is more secular than most; back to Teacher Ken’s diary on the Mitt Romney Speech.
Yes, Romney was not talking to us. But Teacher Ken’s thoughts are still worth reading:

In the process of my 61+ years I was raised as a non-practicing Reform Jew who had his Bar Mitzvah on his 13th birthday; attended Quaker Meeting while on active duty in the Marines in the 1960’s without officially joining; was baptized as an Episcopalian in the middle 70’s, spending the summer in an Episcopal Benedictine monastery; became an Orthodox Christian (like Russian or Greek) for 14 years, including directing choir, serving in lay leadership positions at parish, diocesan and national levels, and made repeated trips to monasteries here and in Greece, and had the abbot of a monstaery on Mount Athos serge as my personal spiritual father for a decade; returned to Judaism first as an Orthodox Jew then as a Conservative Jew, for a total of perhaps a decade; and finally completed a journey that began as a freshman in College in 1963 when I joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), committing in the Fall of 2002 and officially enrolled as a member in early 2003. Along the way I picked up a Masters from a Roman Catholic Seminary, taught comparative religions and ethics to adults in a church, and teens first in a synagogue and then in a public high school. [...]

I have no problem with a person having his or her life defined by his sense of faith, I know many people whose commitment to service to others, including in the political arena, is fueled precisely by how faith drives their life. I think it is good that a person has a core which, if they are willing, they can explain how it influences them.

And while it does not make me especially comfortable, as individual voters we each have the right to apply any test we desire, including a religious test, in determining for or against whom we will cast our votes. In fact, there is no real obstacle to a religious leader saying to those for whom s/he has pastoral responsibility that a particular candidate either should or should not receive the votes of the followers, although at that moment any exemption from taxation perhaps should be lifted: there is freedom from taxation so long as the religious body is providing for general well-being, and that exemption perhaps exists even though the body might advocate on policy, but explicit instructions about voting seem to me to cross the line. In a sense this parallels current law about the magic words in political advertising, whether it constitutes an inkind contribution to a political campaign.

We were at the time of our founding, that is, during the period between 1775 when the American Revolution began in Massachusetts and the ratification of the Bill of Rights in December of 1791, already a diverse nation. One reason we did not move in the direction of an established religion was that such a move would have split the nation, at least along regional grounds: in New England the established churches were the Congregational Churches descended from the Puritans while in Virginia it was the Anglican Church. Some of the Middle Colonies like New York and Pennsylvania were already so diverse that no real religious establishment was possible. Yes, it is true that many states had religious tests, some maintaining them for many years. But already the direction was away from even informal religious tests, although this continued to be a struggle for many years: after all, one reason for the establishment of Catholic schools was that the public schools often had an explicit Protestan orientation. [...]

Even if we were to paint broadly and say the vast majority of Americans are Christians, not all denominations are willing to give that acknowledgment of a shared basis (followers of jesus) to other denomination. It is not merely that some Catholics still hold to the Feeneyite assertion that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation ( an ancient doctrine that seems to be gaining strength again, especially under the current Pope); different sects are not sure what acknowledgement they will make of one another, whether 7th Day Adventists, or Unification Church members, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Mormons should be included in the broader definition of Christian. And there are some which would be willing to label Catholics as other than Christian. And many have no idea what to make of the Eastern Churches, whether Orthodox or Oriental ( and the two groups acknowledge one another but are still split by doctrinal differences dating back to the 4th Century of the Common Era).

We are actually fairly ignorant about religion as a nation. Thus it becomes easy for some to demagogue on religion. That is a scary proposition, because once that begins, we can never be sure where it will stop. It is not just the Ann Coulters who represent a problem on this, generals who say while in uniform that their own god is a bigger or more real god than those who follow Islam. And the danger of even taking the first step, of asserting that freeomd requires religion and religion requires freedom, as was asserted by Romney in what I thought was a frighteningly ignorant and dangerous speech, opens the door to all kinds of problems. [...]