makeshiftmind

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Got this from my friend Aaron Hsu. It’s my kind of Christmas card

Hot Fuzz is going to be tight!

Ok, I’m working on a UI that will allow people to sign up on my blog in order to make comments. Until then, if you wish to comment, shoot me an email and I will manually create an account for you. Hopefully I will have the whole mess fixed soon.

Cheers!

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle…

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

- Steve Jobs in his commencement address to Stanford in June 2005.

Wired is running a small news spot (on the Wired Blog) about “[n]ewborn babies [who] may have been stolen from mothers in Russian maternity clinics only to be harvested for their stem cells.” The article is brief and just says that evidence has been handed over to the authorities. It seems those who spent so much time decrying the slippery slope argument against fetal stem cell research are now silent. If the evidence is conclusive, the perpetrators should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

My friend Jon has posted his thoughts on the recent YouTube video I linked to regarding Atheism. His comment is worth reading; below is my reply.

I thought the video was interesting and thought provoking, not gospel truth. I myself am not an atheist, but the recent resurgence in atheist literature, blogs, talk shows, videos, etc. has churned up some curious cultural artifacts that I think are worth noting. That having been said, Jon points out (correctly, elsewhere on his blog as well) that the broad strokes often applied against Christianity as a religion can also be applied to Atheism as an ideology; i.e., just because some Atheists are benevolent or intelligent doesn’t make Atheism right, and just because some are evil and disgusting doesn’t make it wrong.

The point of the video, in my opinion, is a reaction against the growing extremist Christian “right” (and in case you doubt that such a thing exists, I refer you to the interesting documentary Jesus Camp, which is a telling look at mainstream Protestant Christianity in America). The video was merely pointing out three obviously true things: 1) there are atheists who are intelligent, 2) there are atheists who are benevolent, and 3) there are atheists who have benefited mankind directly or indirectly with their lives. If these things are true, it makes little sense to say “The fool has said in his heart… his throat is an open grave… BUT he is intelligent, benevolent, and has benefited mankind”. This, I think, is the point of the video.

I do agree with Jon that the video’s examples of “moral” atheists are somewhat lacking. Certainly the author could have fished from a better pool than Hollywood to find examples.

In terms of religious adherents, it is very true that Atheists are in the minority (population-wise). Study links from the U.S. Census Bureau place the Christian population (I assume all denominations) around 80%, and the Atheist population around 1%. That having been said, it is no surprise to find a majority of prison inmates would claim to be some flavor of Christian, assuming the prison population is even a moderate representation of the population as a whole. The real question is this: if Christianity sanctifies, and 80% of the U.S. population is Christian, then why does immorality continue to rise (according to Christians)? If Christianity is true, the only real answer is that the great majority of professing Christians are either deluded liars, or that sanctification really isn’t that much about improving behavior. My own opinion is that people are people, and if you convince them that they are not ultimately responsible for their behavior (whether by natural or supernatural determinism) and that they cannot affect their circumstances, or that there is no reason to make investments in their own lives, then you are asking for trouble. If atheists teach that you are goo and meaningless, and exist only to serve the state, and if Christians teach that you are god’s puppet and your life is supposed to be miserable so get used to it, is it any wonder that people become irresponsible and apathetic?

Finally, I have to disagree with Jon when he indicates that Atheists only exist because “…we [Christians] have driven them to despair by our own wickedness and hypocrisy…”. While I know that this certainly has happened in some circumstances, it is not the sole reason that people leave Christianity. For a much more comprehensive view of the subject, I recommend Ruth Tucker’s book “Walking Away from Faith”. I think that people leave the faith for a variety of reasons, some intellectual, some experiential, some moral and some arbitrary. But the fact remains that if the Christian church does not have the bite to back up its bark, then people will reject it on the simple basis that it cannot make good on what it promises.