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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.
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Sunday, December 04, 2005
CHRISTIANS ARE THE LAST (APPARENTLY) SAFE TARGET IN OUR “MULTI-CULTURAL” COUNTRY
Or maybe you don’t believe that…...
The EVIDENCE is pretty plain.
But Christians and conservatives are their own worst enemies, in many ways…..
The evolution debate seems made for liberals. It casts them as thoughtful and open-minded thinkers and conservatives as zealots and simpletons — or at least that’s how it looks through the media prism. It doesn’t matter how many times you remind people, as Jonah Goldberg once memorably did, “Your Darwin fish are safe,” the Left will still seize on the caricatures of that debate to pillory whatever other conservative initiatives are around, drowning out the rest of the conversation. It’s hard to argue the virtues of a complex issue such as school choice, for example, while all the shouting is about what a lousy science book the Bible makes.
PHIL JOHNSON warned against just the kind of activism we’re seeing in DOVER, PA and elsewhere. For Phil, the main issue has always been the adequacy of materialist explanations—and that’s what he urges everyone who will listen to keep talking about. Trying to force alternatives into the classroom simply makes it easy to use stereotypes to divert attention from what’s going on in every level of our schools.
“When will we ever learn…....?“
SADNESS AT CHRISTMAS…..
Thorvald found this and sent it along…..HUMBERTO ECO has written about this season. Why sad?
I was raised as a Catholic, and although I have abandoned the Church, this December, as usual, I will be putting together a Christmas crib for my grandson. We’ll construct it together - as my father did with me when I was a boy. I have profound respect for the Christian traditions - which, as rituals for coping with death, still make more sense than their purely commercial alternatives.
I think I agree with Joyce’s lapsed Catholic hero in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?“ The religious celebration of Christmas is at least a clear and coherent absurdity. The commercial celebration is not even that.
He’s right, of course, but how sad to recognize THIS, but miss out completely on the life- changing magnificence of what Christianity really is…...God bless him, and continue to woo him…....
I GOTTA BE ME? WELL, SOME FOLKS DO…...
It seems to be a particular characteristic of our adolescence-celebrating culture that not only should each of us be able to do whatever we want, but that there should be no negative consequences for whatever choice we happen to make…...what’s that about, anway?
But, some brave and principled individuals will actually argue against their peers, and risk all the abuse that goes with that…..in addition to arguing against what MANY would call “their own interests”. Why?
Perhaps because they value truth more than comfort?
In any case, I think they should be celebrated, and so here’s my contribution to that end…..
APOLOGIES SEEM SO BORING….at least when we’re the one who is supposed to be making them.
However, this one is (I think) TRULY boring, because I have this sneaking suspicious there is no one out there who feels the need for it…... :-(
Nevertheless, it seems to me that having a blog (for which I thank my darling daughter Laura and her awesome husband Leslie) imposes a certain obligation to actually post to it somewhat regularly, regardless of readership. And I actually like doing so.
But I haven’t been. It’s the second half of the first semester, and my schedule is just nuts, and I haven’t even looked at the blog for weeks, but it must have been a month since that last post…...sorry.
However, today my brother sent me something that I MUST put up here - I want more people to see it, so those of you with blogs that are read more regularly, link to the next item (via the OgBlog, please) and write your own comments. It’s magnificent!!
Only one more week (during which I have to give two lab finals) and then Final Exams. A week of grading, and it’s Christmas vacation!! I have a backlog of stuff I’m going to try to get up—and doing it from home will be easy because son Thorvald (who left for England this morning—at least two years in a theater group where he’ll get his graduate training in lots of things, including business, drama, writing, etc.) bought us three months (the minimum) of broadband so that he could carry on his business during the month he was here with us.
Anyhow, I hope to have more going on the OgBlog during December! Hope you’ll check in now and then.
Reading
- BlogsForDummies :)
Web resources
- Arts & Letters Daily
- Ravi Zacharias
- Southern Adventist University
- The SAU Biology Deptartment - where I work with a bunch of very neat people.
- Venezuelan news—FROM Venezuela