Tony Campolo calls it duplicity; some others might call it hypocrisy. If the Bible is the literal and inspired Word of God, as so many in the religious right would have it, how then can "a dozen top leaders of America's Religious Right" argue that sometimes torture is justified? Either they've parked their religious principles at the door (while exhorting the rest of us to vote our values), or they've abandoned their reliance on the infallibility of scripture. As Campolo notes,

If they have changed their minds and are ready to refute the golden rule, then it is time for them to say plainly, "For the most part we agree with Jesus, but there are special circumstances when we must ignore His teachings."

Great article from Wired documenting the dramatic rise in blogging spam. A sample of the content of one of the spam blogs:

Show Disputed Vinland Map Was Made Half Century Before Columbus Trip Audio/Video Columbus: Secrets From The Grave "The Last Voyage of Columbus": An Epic Tale Charles Mann's "1491"

Lucid, yes?

I've been spending almost all my blogging time lately dealing with comment spam. There has to be a better way!

It was about lunchtime on Wednesday, August 9. We were on the last leg of the hike from Toxaway Lake back to Pettit Lake and home. We hiked in the previous Sunday and had spent three night together on the trail. Over Snowyside Pass from Alice Lake, down into the Toxaway drainage, up on Tuesday to Sandy Mountain and a quick look into the Edna Lake drainage.

With only about three miles to go, it was time for lunch. Plus, my knee hurt, my feet hurt, and I was tired! Even so, the joy, thrill, and beauty of our four days together -- Ben, Mike, Chris, and Dad -- was very much on my mind. It was the first experience at backpacking for all of us except Mike, who was our organizer, leader, and guide. Also it was the first time all the Hirby "boys" had spent such sustained time together. We had a wonderful time, and if the three of us who are married can persuade our wives that the benefits of our being away outweigh the costs, we may do it again!

Lunch break (and foot break!)
Originally uploaded by troelby.

More photos from
Chris
Ben

A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin sparked a scientific revolution. Now that revolution has become a culture war. But does the concept of “intelligent design” have validity as an alternative to evolution? Three new books look beyond the rhetoric.

Reviews by Robert Lee Hotz of three books analyzing (and largely rebuffing) the claims of intelligent design to be "scientific" in method and conclusions.

The books are:

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin:
An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution
David Quammen
Atlas Books/W.W. Norton: 304 pp., $22.95

Intelligent Thought:
Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement
Edited by John Brockman
Vintage: 258 pp., $14 paper

Why Darwin Matters:
The Case Against Intelligent Design
Michael Shermer
Times Books/Henry Holt: 202 pp., $22

The Christian Science Monitor writes about Henry Paulson, new Treasury Secretary as follows:

The wide gap between the richest and poorest Americans has not often been the topic of choice for the Bush administration's two previous Treasury secretaries.

So it was notable this week that Henry Paulson, the president's latest Treasury head, chose to put that issue on his short list - as one of the nation's four prominent, long-term economic challenges. Mr. Paulson's head-on approach during one of his first public appearances as secretary differs from his predecessors' strategies, some analysts say.

The optimist in me thinks that someone in the administration has finally figured out that continued collusion with rich and powerful elites is morally offensive and a failed strategy. Maybe the President's often-avowed Christian values will finally start to become evident in his political life. The pessimist, however, suspects that as Paulson's agenda becomes more widely known within the administration, he'll be quietly forced out.

This is an interesting article about the first grants from a new foundation "for projects that have broad implications for our understanding of the deep or ultimate nature of reality."

So far, all of the institute's money is from the Templeton Foundation, which has often been criticized by scientists for attempting to blur the lines between science and religion.

Even skeptics, though, suggested that the new institute, which used the Templeton money as seed money and is run completely separately, could be good for science.

Pat, Steve, and Chris spent the weekend with Ben, Sage, and Reed in Oak Park. Yes, it was hot! But we cooled off vicariously while Reed played in the backyard pool. He's newly walking (a couple of days), and was very much enjoying this new mode of mobility.

Nuthin' better on a hot day
Originally uploaded by hirbyfam.

Tom and Nyla hosted Mike, Schatzi, Pat, and Steve for a wonderful weekend in the Iowa Great Lakes. One of the treats was the chance to water ski on West Lake Okoboji. As you can see in the background, the sailboats were out for a regatta. Schatzi went first, Steve followed, and Mike wrapped it up, doing a great job on skis.

Of course without Tom at the wheel and Nyla rooting for the skiers, none of it would have happened at all.

Mike behind the boat
Originally uploaded by hirbyfam.

The July 25 issue of The Christian Century includes an interview with John Bell of the Iona Community and the Wild Goose Resource Group. Bell is not only eminently singable, he's also eminently quotable. This statement (p. 21) speaks to me:

If the church in the Northern hemisphere does not in the next ten years use songs that come from Asia, South America and Africa, it'll be deemed racist. It will be seen as a case of musical apartheid. Most Christians in the world are black and poor. They're not white and affluent. If that's the body of Christ of which we are a member, then we have to share the joy and the pain of fellow members.

Mike De Sisti, a photojournalist with the Appleton Post-Crescent, has a great blog that he and his P-C colleagues use in presenting video essays and slideshows. I stumbled on this essay, featuring the inimitable Queen Bee in downtown Appleton, today.

Noor and his wife Jennie Baha have owned the Queen Bee for 14 years. Tucked away on the 200 block of E. College Avenue, the Queen Bee breakfast and lunch restaurant in downtown Appleton manages to survive among the larger chain establishments thanks to loyal customers. They come to enjoy the food, share a story or two and celebrate life.

The "celebrate life" moment refers to comments by Leota, who was eating breakfast at the Queen Bee the morning after her husband, Lee, had succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. "Lee loved the Queen Bee," she said. Poignant.

Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share and sought advantage over no one.

--Robert Brault

Stumbled across this quotation while reviewing AWADmail issue 216 (July 1, 2006) this evening. Anu Garg usually includes quotations in his A.Word.A.Day messages, but I missed this one when it came. I'm glad I decided to review the weekly summary.

I really like this apologia by Justin Good for the objectivity (and thus, potentially, for the truth-carrying capacity) of feelings.

4. Beauty is a feeling, but feelings are objective and more precise than “thinking.” Feelings are not irrational reactions, but highly evolved ways of gathering information, knowledge and meaning from the environment. What we call thinking – linguistically-mediated inferential reasoning or reflection – is cumbersome in comparison to the countless ways our mind/body reads, and is read, by the ecosystem. Information is everywhere and there are countless ways of picking it up. The feeling of being grounded and centered which people often experience when finally alone with nature is not “subjective” but rather a keen cognitive awareness of the geometry of life around us.

The context here, of course, is the esthetics of windfarms, but I believe the notion of the power of feelings to mediate objective truth has other applications as well. Our discussion group has been reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God, and one of the foundational polarities in that book is between theology as rational and theology as experiential/intuitive. Armstrong wants us to conclude that the rationalist project as applied to our understanding of God (a primarily Western way of apprehending the sacred) always comes up short, whereas religious experience recurs perpetually and rarely fails to satisfy. Relilgious experience is too often dismissed as "merely subjective." Good's comment reminds us, with Pascal, that "the heart has its reasons that reason does not understand."

It was a beautiful morning, the campus was nearly empty, ornamental plantings were in bloom, cars on College Avenue were few, and I took advantage of the opportunity to try out my new camera. The Lawrence campus is especially pretty in spring, and it's fun to try to capture a bit of that beauty in photos.

The camera is working pretty well, don't you think!

Lawrence Memorial Chapel
Originally uploaded by hirbyfam.

Pat always brings back wonderful photos of Reed from her weekly trips. This one stood out to both of us because of the way it highlights his increasingly mature face. Note, too, that he has hair now!

My how you're growing, little man.
Originally uploaded by hirbyfam.

Pat took this photo of Reed on one of her weekly April trips to Oak Park to baby-sit while Ben and Sage are both teaching. "Baby Beluga" is one of Reed's favorite songs (it's by Raffi), and Pat was lucky enough to find a great picture book based on the song.

Here's Reed

Originally uploaded by hirbyfam.

On March 11, I cited an Alternet story about Robert Jensen, a self-confessed atheist, who joined a Presbyterian church for, as he put it, "political reasons." Now the pastor of that church explains the reasoning that led him to accept an atheist as a member, noting that the early Christians were accused of being atheists because they didn't worship human images of God. (We should remember, however, that until the end of the eighteenth century, "atheist" was not used strictly to mean "someone who believes there is no God" but, rather, "someone with whose religious views I disagree." )

"Whoever has love has God." That's what the Bible says. So the question before my church was not whether Jensen could recite religious syllables like a cockatiel, but whether he would follow the core teachings of Jesus and learn more and grow more into Christ's universal love of which the creeds sing. This he pledged to do.

Robert Jensen's interesting and, perhaps to some, provocative testimony about the value an atheistic progressive finds in being part of a mainline Christian congregation.

A real Christian who doesn't believe in God? This claim requires some explanation about the reasons I joined, and also opens up a discussion of what the term "Christian" could, or should, mean.

The essay sparks in me thoughts about the way the good news is spread. George C. Hunter III's The Celtic Way of Evangelism contrasts the Celtic approach, based on including people in a community first, with the Roman approach, based on teaching people the doctrines first.

Here are a couple of examples of Bill Staines lyrics that strike me as especially poetic.

From "Secret Garden":

Grasping at love is like holding a fistful of sand

The harder you squeeze, the less that you have in your hand

And the refrain from "Crossing the Water"

We are crossing the water our whole lives through
Making a passage that is straight and true

Every heart is a vessel, every dream is a light

Shining in the darkness of the blackest night

Jody called our attention to the Bill Staines concert last night, sponsored by the Green Apple Folk Music Society. We've listened enthusiastically to Bill's songs on "Simply Folk" for years ("Roseville Fair" has been a particular favorite), and then we heard him in concert last August at the Shawano Folk Music festival. Since then, we've put a bunch of his songs on our iPod and can't stop listening to them and singing along. So we knew we had to go!

As a venue, the nature center at Bubolz is great for audiences but less so for performers. Someone told us that Bill gives a concert there annually, so it can't have been a surprise to him that he'd have no green room or anything comparable. So he sat at a table in one room offering CDs and a few casettes for about half an hour before the concert. The 15-20 minute opening act gave him a chance to catch his breath, and then he started singing. During intermission he was back to the table, and following the concert as well.

There's a gracious, gentle spirit about the man, and he surely loves what he does. The audience of about 100 people responded warmly to his songs, singing along quietly until prompted -- and then enthusiastically! We could feel in the audience (and felt ourselves) a warm affection for the man and his music, and for the sentiments and values represented in them.

Seems he mostly drives himself to his concerts -- no road crew, no driver, no tour bus. Just a Jeep Cherokee with a back full of CDs. At 70,000 miles a year for more than 20 years, he has accumulated more than a million miles behind the wheel.

Our theology discussion group met on Thursday. We've been reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God, and our assignment this time was chapter 6, "The God of the Philosophers."

Structurally the chapter is reminiscent of a fugue, in the sense that Armstrong brings forth example after example of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian thinkers each of whom offers a perspective on God and the possibility of talking about God involving some blend of rationality, revelation, and mystical experience. In reflecting on Armstrong's sometimes bewildering précis of what must be nearly two dozen different eleventh- and twelfth-century thinkers, I found myself asking, Why do these questions keep coming up? Why have so many people worked so hard to complete a task that is, on the face of it, impossible?

Today, in reading the April 2006 edition of Spirituality and Health (thanks, Jane!), I came across this from Sam Keen in "Sam Keen's Ludicrous God Talk" (pp. 54 ff.):

But why not merely chuck the whole impossible project of speaking about the unspeakable? Because I cannot refrain from asking impossible questions! …We push against the unknowable mystery because it keeps us alive to the ultimate questions that persist, even for logical positivists and militant atheists. Why is there something rather than nothing? Where did the world come from? Why is there a heartwarming amount of beauty, goodness, and order and a heartbreaking amount of ugliness, evil, and disorder?

Shame on you, Dick Cheney! In talking with Jim Lehrer about the US role in advancing a settlement in the Darfur region of the Sudan, Cheney said:

It's a huge area. It's difficult to get at, but we have been actively involved. I am satisfied we are doing everything we can do.

Senators Barak Obama and Sam Brownback, just back from Sudan, think the US can do more. And Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek has decided that he personally can and will do more.

So much vice presidential leadership exerted on behalf of the wealthy, the powerful, the elite. So much distortion and misinformation spread in pursuit of a war in Iraq. So little recognition of how the US could help bring an end to massive violence and suffering in this desperately poor region of the world.

Leave it to Google ... again! Wondering about the date of Ash Wednesday in 2006 (the first day of Lent), I googled "lent 2006". What popped up was a link to this calendar, which I am so glad to know about. The fact that it's an interfaith calendar with a worldwide perspective heightens my interest and underscores its usefulness.

As the Internet is arguably one of the most powerful forces of social change conceived by humankind, this topic will be the new focus of my blog. I'm going to focus on how the Internet is changing the congregation; thus, transforming the church through its wisdom from the bottom up.

Tim Bednar's blog at e-church has its ups and downs. This new focus looks to be quite helpful, especially if it fulfllls its promise of describing changes the Internet is effecting in the way congregations live, work, communicate, and worship.