The Questioning Christian

"Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" -- A Truly Adolescent Creed

Young people today embrace a religion that could be labeled as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”  So says a survey of several thousand teenagers documented in Soul Searching:  The Religions and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, by Christian Smith, with Melinda Lundquist Denton.  A review in the September 6 Christian Century summarizes the “creed” of MTD as follows:

1.  A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2.  God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3.  The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. [!]

4.  God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God [sic] is needed to resolve a problem.

5.  Good people go to heaven when they die.

Carol E. Lytech, What Teens Believe, in The Christian Century, Sept. 6, 2005, 20, at 21.

One thing we can say about this “creed” is that it’s certainly adolescent.  Although, if we threw out point #3 and took #4 with a grain of salt, it wouldn’t be that awful.

Pastaferianism - the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

But Is There Intelligent Spaghetti Out There?   In case you missed the buzz about “the super-intelligent, super-popular god known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster,” here’s a wrap-up article in the Times.

Nothing Like Having People Shoot at You ....

From Anxious Embed Reporting for Duty (paragraphing edited):

Imagine George Costanza from "Seinfeld" being sent off to cover the Iraq war, and you have a pretty good idea of what Chris Ayres's hilarious new memoir is like. ***

Although Mr. Ayres leaves the front lines after only nine days - the title of the book, the reader is reminded, is "War Reporting for Cowards" - he gives us some indelible snapshots of the war. He captures that gruesome elixir of boredom and fear that permeates a military campaign, and he conveys the anomalous situation of embedded reporters. ***

He notes that his combat experience had at least one positive consequence: it cured him of his panic attacks and free-floating anxiety.

"I no longer dread the dirty bomb on the Underground; the nuke in Times Square; the anthrax in the post," he writes. "Battlefield fear has put all other fear into perspective. Perhaps that's what my generation needs: urgent, mortal terror. I sang in the shower this morning because the water was hot and because no one was trying to kill me. It was a pure, uncomplicated happiness. I can only hope this lasts."

Needless to say, it's a luxury still unavailable to many of the soldiers Mr. Ayres and other reporters covered.

Guess I’ll have to read it.

"We Owe Our Families a Good Death"

From One Last Recipe From Mother, for the Good Death, by Larry Zaroff, M.D., in today’s NY Times: 

Everyone who knew my mother wanted to stay in touch. She had an endless supply of common sense, and sound advice balanced by love. And she traveled from her home near Washington to visit her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren throughout the country.   ***

Now, knowing her well - not as well as she knew me - I am certain she did not want us to make a second trip. For her to cause her family any inconvenience was out of the question. Her plan was to die as soon as she saw us, goodbye and funeral in one package.

We doctors are taught to cure, to heal, when possible to restore patients to a full and active life in society. We are also taught, if we cannot establish health, to allow patients a good death.

But we pay little attention to what dying patients owe their loved ones. Leo Tolstoy understood this. In his novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," the protagonist, dying slowly, makes life miserable - complaining, criticizing, screaming - for his family until the last day, when he realizes that they love him. He then understands what he owes his wife and children: a good death.

The other day my wife said she had read an obituary of a man in his 90s.  The obituary said that the man exercised five days a week and was in great shape until just a few days before his death from a short illness.  That’s the way to do it, God willing.

"Missed Church? No Worries. Download It to Your IPod"

Missed Church? No Worries. Download It to Your IPod.

Just as Christian organizations embraced radio and television, podcasting has quickly caught on with religious groups.

"Show Me the Science" -- Daniel Dennett in NY Times

From Show Me the Science, by Daniel Dennett, in Sunday’s New York Times (paragraphing edited, emphasis added):

The Discovery Institute, the conservative organization that has helped to put intelligent design on the map, complains that its members face hostility from the established scientific journals. But establishment hostility is not the real hurdle to intelligent design.

If intelligent design were a scientific idea whose time had come, young scientists would be dashing around their labs, vying to win the Nobel Prizes that surely are in store for anybody who can overturn any significant proposition of contemporary evolutionary biology.

Remember cold fusion? The establishment was incredibly hostile to that hypothesis, but scientists around the world rushed to their labs in the effort to explore the idea, in hopes of sharing in the glory if it turned out to be true.

Yup.  Read it all.

Soldier Gets Anniversary Surprise at Seattle Restaurant

Next time I'm in Seattle, here's a restaurant I'll definitely patronize.  From the Seattle Times:

When Chris Yanez wanted to take his girlfriend out for a special dinner to celebrate their one-year anniversary, he chose the venerable restaurant Canlis, perched high above Lake Union.

Yanez, a soldier returning from Iraq, knew the dinner would be pricey. What he didn't expect is that it would be free. And he also didn't expect that when he walked out, the place would be in tears.

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links for 2005-08-26

• Maureen Dowd is an Egotistical Twit (The Questioning Christian)
  "I never cease to be amazed at how virulent she can be in denigrating anyone who doesn't meet her exalted standards (translation: anyone who doesn't agree with her views on How Things Ought To Be). "
  (tags: politics)

Maureen Dowd is an Egotistical Twit

I generally avoid reading Maureen Dowd's column in the NY Times.  I couldn't help but notice that her column of yesterday, My Private Idaho, excoriating President Bush for moving his base of operations to Texas for five weeks, is #1 on the Times's most-emailed list this morning.

Reading the column merely confirmed my opinion that Dowd is a vacuous, self-important twit.  I never cease to be amazed at how virulent she can be in denigrating anyone who doesn't meet her exalted standards (translation:  anyone who doesn't agree with her views on How Things Ought To Be).  Dowd seems implacably opposed to admitting that President Bush might have any redeeming qualities to him, or that his so-called vacations aren't exactly piña coladas on the beach.  It must be nice to be a Mistress of the Universe, able to shower down vitrol from the Times's Olympian heights, without bearing any responsibility for little things like, oh, world peace or the lives of American military personnel.

I now return to my practice of not reading her stuff.

links for 2005-08-25

• Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain - New York Times
  "When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' "
  (tags: Google capitalism Silicon_Valley Internet entrepreneur business)