There’s a feeling you get when you’ve eaten too many potato chips and you catch yourself with your hand in the bag. The compulsion to eat feels absurd. It’s not satisfying, you’re not hungry, and it doesn’t even taste good anymore. So how do you explain your newly salted fingertips? You can’t. You just hate yourself for it.
That’s the sort of feeling I get when I automatically open Facebook moments after closing. Continue reading
Increasingly religious beliefs are being classified as self-deception or a means to justify prejudice. Not too long ago, a couple who had chosen to wait until marriage would have been respected even by those who did not share the religious conviction. But if you had the opportunity to listen to some of the professors at NC State talk about it, you would quickly realize that they believe anyone who advocates for abstinence until marriage must be misinformed, ignorant, or oppressed. In the minds of modern skeptics, religious conviction lacks the necessary conditions from which belief is justifiably built.
From their perspective, adequate proof must exist prior to belief and beliefs must always exist in proportion to the evidence. Religious belief in their minds does not fit this criteria. Instead, religious belief requires no experimentation, changes from person to person, and is made up by the imaginations of people who are picking out what things they’d want to be true. It is like children who play house with none of the inconvenience of actually collecting an income, paying taxes, or mowing the lawn.
And so it is no wonder that skeptics who see religious belief in this way would look upon it with some, if not a great deal, of disdain. Of course, they are right that religious belief is a very different thing from what I most commonly hear called “scientific belief.” But they get two things wrong by categorizing belief in this way. Continue reading
We are sharing a guest post by Rob Blair.
Let me start by saying, very clearly, I am deeply concerned by Trump’s executive orders. The ones that are purely symbolic, readying-for-legislation stuff are worrisome. The ones that have present-tense impact are (with possibly one exception) devastating. These things are not okay. And I am all for following the advice of Captain Picard:
“We’ve made too many compromises already. Too many retreats. […] Not anymore. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further.”
But I also want to raise a concern I have with how we are talking about the current situation. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for my assertive tone. Continue reading
Trump has proven himself a pretty despicable human being, but when we blanket-charge him with racism we join with him in his insufficiently considered blather.
Trump is known for insults. To be fair, so was Winston Churchill, but the difference is between some of the greatest English zingers of recorded history and the sad equivalent of playground bully mouthing off. “Not nice,” “dopey,” “unfair,” “a joke,” “a real dummy,” “overrated,” and one of his favorites, “loser,” show up again and again on Trump’s Twitter feed. They’re his go-to favorites, blown off at the least sense of competition or loss of ego. Thinking people, whatever their party lines, dislike this unthinking, imprecise brazenness (Josh talks about what people do like about this kind of talk here). But in our dislike for Trump (or any politician) do we sometimes also speak with (fatal) imprecision?
We have got a thing against racism in this country. “Racist” is almost the most serious charge there is, in certain prominent circles at least. Until the election, I thought that making multiple comments that were perceived as racist or misogynistic was automatic political suicide. (For most politicians, I’m still confident that it would be. I suppose Trump avoided his political demise by appealing to a different audience than most politicians.) Continue reading
I don’t like how we talk about privilege. It’s like we’re asking people to apologize—please excuse my privilege. It is always evoked derogatorily as something that stands in the way of seeing clearly—something that blinds us from seeing another perspective accurately. Or it is the dynamic by which society is made inequitable. And when people acknowledge their privilege, it is seldom with adulation for the people who helped them succeed, but as a form of virtue posturing. They seem to hope that by acknowledging it, people will be able to see past it. Like it’s an ugly blemish on their otherwise upstanding character. Continue reading
In the months prefacing the election we proved our human predisposition towards worst-case scenario thinking. It caused a lot of people to draw parallels between Trump and Hitler—his rise to power, the populist movement, white supremacy, German exceptionalism, etc. Other more rigorous articles have claimed that his rise has more in common to Mussolini’s. But during the election process, it was only abstract political posturing. Now it’s real. Trump is elected. And people’s projections (both liberals and conservatives who opposed him) have become real anxieties and authentic fears.
One of my conservative friends reacted to Trump’s election with this heart-felt question: “Advice on how to face a class of beautiful, undocumented 6th graders??” People responded, some encouraging her panic and others with an attempt towards attenuation. I have other liberal friends who have woven a worst-case scenario narrative where any non-white-cis-gendered-Christian male is now in eminent danger of discrimination or deportation. They substantiate their narratives by citing The New York Times exit polls which demonstrate that Trump was principally favored by older, white, straight, Christian men as well as citing the many rude things Trump has done and even proposed. Continue reading
The Brothers Sabey 