Nice response, Mervin. I agree VR escapism will become massive shortly with the new play to earn incentives and growing “crypto kiddie millionaires”.
I do have a strong dislike of lower school boards’ desire to teach “pedophilia” being my word selection that seems very inappropriate and unneeded for the age and dangerous to the psyche about what love is. Certain orginizations trying to make pedophilia lawful. I personally see it as a sickness.
I am a bit disappointed I posted on this as well. Not my strong suit and I’ll keep this as my last reply. no teasers please.
I wonder what school board that would be. Kids in my district barely get anything I would call sex ed, or human biology. They are operating bodies without an owner’s manual with no real information about their functions or how they work, with no guidance from their parents (besides “don’t get pregnant”) or school (besides “don’t get pregnant, or do drugs”). This is not pedophilia; it’s dangerous.
We have a great deal of evidence that kids (at least in my district) are sexually active and experimenting with whatever they hear about, run across. In their brute ignorance, kids in our district have gotten ahold of and distributed on social media videos of each other “experimenting”.
In the late '70s my 6th grade sex ed class was academic and frank. We learned what all the parts were and what they did. We understood how chemical drives could lead to tendency to actions that we would need to master, how pregnancy occurred and some basics on STDs. Girls learned about dealing with menstruation, what it is and its implications.
In 8th grade we covered “human biology”, including but not exclusively, the sex organs and reproduction.
In 10th grade we got it again with a lot more information about cell division, ovulation, fertilization, implantation and pregnancy. Dear, rational, scientific Mr. Camp stated plainly that when sexual intercourse takes place during ovulation, pregnancy will occur. Unvarnished statement of fact.
Those were the days.
As kids are now dealing with greater information about gender issues, they are also dealing with social pressures my generation (on the whole, with the exception of a few who were often hiding in the closet) never imagined. There is stuff they need to know simply as a tool for survival.
I believe that is a reference to John Polkinghorne, a famous Anglican priest/theoretical physicist.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
64
What?! Sorry is it!? I’ve never been so… in all my…
You were encouraged by @EDC1 about the science-faith divide in Britain. The culture that gave you Darwin, Huxley, Haldane, Medawar, Maynard-Smith, Dawkins on the one biological hand and Lewis (anti-scientism) and Paul Davies, Freeman Dyson, The Rev. Sir John Polkinghorne FRS, Professor Sir Fred Hoyle - all physicists who fall under the fallacious wheels of fine tuning.
I have only ever known Christian medics, scientists, nerds, geeks and techies who could affirm this. I can only intellectually faithfully sign up to the third of the fourfold declaration and the fifth of the aims.
The UK is institutionally, seamlessly, politely, regretfully, unjust, corrupt, deluded. We’ve been refining this abomination, clothing this naked emperor, the same establishment, for a thousand years. No one in parliament, left, right or centre, no one in academe, no one in the arts, no matter how superficially radical, dares, one way or the other, to speak truth to power or is heard at all if they do, apart from the odd writer.
They all, including the virtually mute Church (the ABC - Archbishop of Canterbury - is mildly challenging once a year), all Christian scientists, miss the point.
Social justice. Now.
Yet I keep meeting Christians and others who who agree!
Just because we avoid the Wild West breakdown of intellect and morality in America doesn’t mean that we’re not perichoretically depraved in both.
Maybe from James Dobson/Focus on the Family? Since the '80s, when I was old enough to notice, maybe earlier, Dobson has been poisoning the minds of U.S. parents with inuendo that the craziest possible sex ed programs in California are the norm in all 50 states in every district, and that our children are in grave danger.
The damage he has done seems irreparable. I think his indoctrination has been a major motivator for the current homeschool movement that Ken Ham is just eating right up, and the ever deeping distrust of science among evangelicals at large and fundis specifically (who already leaned that way).
Morning, Martin.
Just a clarification, please: do you mean the Christians you meet agree with you (social justice now!) or with the scientist Christians you are aware of, who are oblivious to the matter?
Thanks
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
70
Ay up our Kendel.
Aye, had dinner with the local Baptist minister and her ordained husband on Saturday night. First class, lovely people. Totally inclusive. That’s the third inclusive Baptist clergy we’ve met. They agree. He beat me to it. Proper socialists just like the Jerusalem church.
In a large on-line Christian community, dominated by liberals, I’ve only encountered a tiny minority that progressive.
Thank you for providing a fuller picture of the faith-science situation over there.
You mentioned this:
and this:
and this:
If I understand right, you’re identifying distorted priorities of scientists who are Christians, and even of the church, in that they’re focusing more on irrelevant theological minutae rather than the overtly stated, practical commands of Jesus. That they are willing to stick to the beliefs part of the doctrinal statement and aims statement, but not willing to take the practical steps to carry outthe action statements you are are in accord with. Sounds like hyprocricy.
It’s a serious charge, and while it’s hard to hear, a valuable one.
I think it’s fair to say that institutional (and with it political) power for and in the (particularly Western) church have been both a blessing and a cancer. You might say only a cancer. For all of our talk of the Gospel, we are deeply focused on maintaining worldly power – of course to achieve spiritual ends. This confusion of Kingdoms, and their aims and tools, ultimately cannot work. Jesus told us we can’t serve two masters, but we don’t believe him, and the World that we say we’re here to save, sees right through it, while we inside the church don’t.
People see us carrying out our hypocrisy. What can we in the church possibly have to say to them, if we don’t consider our own actions in light of what we say we believe? If we aren’t willing to deal with our own sin, how do we call others to the offer of atonement? We seem only able to conceive of and talk about our own need in abstracted, ineffectual terms.
How can one justify insistence on Fine Tuning, when one is unwilling to obey the directly stated commands of the tuner?
We poison our own wells, and blame others for it.
Maybe I’ve taken your words in a different direction. Hope not.
Anyway, I want to thank you for your consistent insistence that Christians think better as well as do what we say we believe. There’s plenty of room for disagreement on a lot of details, but those are two very valuable challenges.
Also, I hope your encounter with the pastor and her husband is a fruitful part of your rebuilding project.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
74
We’re both incredibly privilegedly heading in the same, marginal, lonesome direction Kendel!. Worked with the Baptist minister today. The wife too. We still think that scratch 'em deep enough and they’re damnationists, but a lot of nice people are!
It’s tough stuff, not having deconstructed, and wrangling with stuff even Jesus taught, that we really wish he hadn’t. Maybe ranks with all that social justice stuff. Whuddawe do with it? Ignore the bits we find unpalatable?
There are things I can’t sit easy with, but am constantly confronted with. They won’t go away.
There are those ‘damnationists’ who may revel in the thought of all the people they don’t like facing eternal retribution, but I suspect (hope) that most Christians probably do not have such a cruel streak about themselves and would only be ‘damnationist’ in the same way as somebody warning someone else not to fall off the cliff just over there. Gravity has no mercy, and those who warn of those dire consequences are probably no more damnationist than the mild mannered Baptist who happens to have been convinced that there theological realities every bit as real as the steep cliff.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
77
Aye @Kendel, @Mervin_Bitikofer (our Merv), you being nice people are confronted by the hard sayings of Jesus, the nicest person who ever drew breath. I’m not a nice person and refuse that most understandable, most frightening… interpretation. Partly because He also said the opposite, but mainly because even if He didn’t, it’s all metaphoric, hyperbolic, culturally appropriate for the hard times, economic, and has nothing to do with transcendence. Nothing to do with God as He ontologically is. He is competent, active, therapeutic love.
Is God good or not? Is He any good if He is?
I know of no one who deserves damnation. No one. It’s not Putin’s fault, that he is as vile as he is.
None of the broken poor I was with this afternoon, broken by having fallen of[f] the cliff of life, deserve any more torment or extinction by fire.
If that’s what happens to them, I’m jumping in with them thanks.
Martin, I used a few free minutes at work today to scan this: https://www.inclusive-church.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Something-Worth-Sharing-WEB.pdf.
While I probably wouldn’t fit well at the IC, this document of theirs shames every church I’ve been to. If we claim to have something so valuable to share, why do we allow barriers and roadblocks for people with disabilities? Somewhere on the website is also the hashtag #withnotfor. Yeah. Both my daughters are smart cookies with physical disabilities. Even they will have challenges finding work.
I found the problem is far less about reasoning than the spirit behind it. Addressing the spirit (intent, motive, that compels) of something tends to cut through to the heart of any reason. Good intent has authority over poor and ill intent when exposed. Be like our Farther who says even if the words and actions are good, first find and weigh the spirit that compels them. Also, the spirit compels us as we should remove any splinters (beams) from our eyes first. The power of the spirit (goodness) works when we start figuring out what is most important to our Father, who is Spirit. Love, kindness, mercy, peace, and respect have authority over their counterparts.
Is it a lack of funds, or permits? Or is the problem a result of some intent?