Dukes and Serfs

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Once upon a time in a land far away, a man and woman worked a fertile garden, blessed by God. That garden was in the incredibly rich, black soil of Savoy, Illinois. The zucchinis harvested were of biblical proportions. Some of them miraculously grew to the size of my calves seemingly overnight. The broccoli and carrots my wife and I grew had so much flavor that we couldn’t believe just how much leeched out while vegetables sat in the back of a truck or on a grocery-store refrigerated shelf. Even with their periodic mistings. It was as if Bunnicula had visited them at night. So long ago, the garden. It seemed obvious in those days why the writers of Genesis compared paradise to a garden. Ours was no Eden – it was hard work – but my wife and I had a lot of fun with it.

James Buchanan Duke, namesake of Duke University, owned a considerable estate outside Hillsborough, New Jersey. Having established both a tobacco monopoly and an electric company, Duke was enormously wealthy. He left his Hillsborough farm (not the tobacco farms which were in his native North Carolina) to his daughter Doris, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world. Her estate now consists of a socially conscious Duke Farms Foundation that has offered gardening plots to the plebeians of the region. So yesterday I found myself once again back in the garden. Sharing a plot with a friend, we arrived for opening day and were greeted by one of the organizers of the garden. Her name, of course, is Eve.

New Jersey planting requires more manure than the black earth of the Midwest. Yesterday I found myself shoveling horse manure, not for the first time in my professional life, while Eve supervised the garden. It seemed strangely biblical. Dodging between my summer classes this year, I will be emulating the first profession of our mythic father Adam. In the afternoon, after cleaning up, we headed to Rutgers Day, the university public-relations festival that shows off the tremendous wealth that cannot afford to hire full-time faculty any more. As I kept a weather eye on the clouds, worried about the seeds I’d just planted, the future continued to look stormy to me, even on the campus that has at times been my only source of barely sustainable income. Perhaps I should have changed my shoes, because it seemed to me that the smell of horse manure still hung heavily in the air.

I wonder if this is how Adam got started

Reap the Whirlwind

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A pillar of cloud by day

Something seems to be absent. The blazing rhetoric of televangelists and others proclaiming the wrath of God on New Orleans when Katrina blew ashore are strangely silent as a massive outbreak of tornadoes has ripped through the Bible Belt. Hundreds have unfortunately died as nature’s most severe weather-weapon has raked the south. In an apoplectic frenzy rivaling the 1974 Super Outbreak, tornadoes are well ahead of seasonal schedules this year as one wholesome Christian location after another vanishes in a whirlwind the envy of Elijah himself. I do not make light of this disaster. Having lived for many years in “Tornado Alley,” I very much feel for those victimized by these severe storms. They are a great tragedy and the loss of life, for Americans, is mind-boggling.

There is, however, a lack of continuity. Katrina, we were repeatedly informed, was the judgment of the Almighty on the sinful city of New Orleans. The tornado, surely the most divine of windstorms, remains a tragic natural phenomenon. “He makes the sun to rise on the just and unjust,” I recall someone once saying. Human tragedy is never easy to explain in any religious system. Even the self-righteous must acknowledge that – on some level – their pristine, exemplary lives deserve a thunderbolt or two. They speak loudest, however, when lifestyles of which they do not approve are decimated. How does the Bible-believing, rural farmer offend God? Were there no Christians in New Orleans?

The problem is forcing all members of one location into a category fit for reaping. It is sowing the wind. Human compassion demands that we not stand in judgment of the unfortunate, we simply help in what ways we can. One of the greatest dangers of any religion is that it validates one group above all others. Either we are all favored or none of us are. Waiting for a divine answer may take centuries, or even millennia. Lifting a hand to help a fellow human being is the only ethical response. Tornadoes are not the finger of God. Katrina was not the Almighty losing his masculine temper. We are all victims of the world into which we are born, and the sooner we refuse religion’s diabolical temptation to claim our special place, the sooner we will find our own way to a just society.

Cheating God

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Anyone engaged in education long enough will eventually encounter cheating in one form or another. Social psychologists have suggested that whether one believes in God or not has little bearing on moral behavior. A recent report in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion demonstrates that belief in God does not effect cheating by undergraduates. Among those that believe in God, however, those that believe in an angry, punishing God cheat less than those who believe in a loving, forgiving God. An explanation of the study may be found at Medicalexpress.com.

Someone's watching you

Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” it seems, is the bane of cheaters. The Great Awakening chased along the heels of a wrathful deity baying “believe or else!” Those believing in a nicer God are more apt to take liberties. The interesting corollary of this finding is that it does not divide believers along denominational lines but rather along personal outlooks on God’s kindliness. Nobel pagans and fearful believers share a strong moral center.

An informative follow-up would be a study to determine how many believe in a loving versus a wrathful God. From such data we might be able to extrapolate who is more likely to cheat on taxes, spouses, or any other big-ticket items in the economy of our society. Given the number of high profile spouse-cheatings among televangelists and Christian politicians, one thing seems clear: belief in a friendly God willing to look the other way is in no danger of extinction any time soon. Oh, and please keep your eyes on your own paper.

Playing Doctor

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Science, religion, humanity. People are a conundrum. Medical professionals have the unenviable task of sorting out what is wrong with this jumble of organic biological systems and also attempting to address the uniquely human aspect of their subjects. As far as life forms go, although we may not be on top of the evolutionary ladder, we are suitably, impressively complex. We haven’t yet sorted out how mental states figure into physical processes: a number of cases of “faith healing” seem to have been verified, but the mechanism remains unknown. Praying has been demonstrated to improve some physical conditions with the believer saying God is doing the work and the skeptic suggesting it is the healing aspect of our own minds. How do you treat a creature that may not even agree with you on the ground-rules?

A story in yesterday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger revealed that New Jersey hospitals are experimenting with human subjects. The subjects, however, are doctors, not patients. In an effort to bring science and the humanities together, several hospitals are sponsoring reading groups for doctors. Like a garden-variety Oprah reading club, the physicians read a novel and discuss the human elements with each other. The theory is that it may help them understand the softer side of the science – how to touch the human reality of a field of study that has become very scientific. Specialists in the sciences and humanities have grown apart.

The humanities have long been assigned to the “less necessary” side of both university programs and the job market. Ironically, among those who are most famous in our pragmatic, make-a-buck world are musicians, actors, film-makers, best-selling novelists – in short, masters of one of the humanities. A darker side exists here as well; even celebrated humanities specialists can turn on one another. Contradictions and conflicts are part of human nature. Religion, one of the humanities, is a stellar example of the heights and depths of human behavior. As physicians attempt to discover what really makes us tick, reading novels is a good place to start. Attending religious services may be a bit more chancy, but like any human endeavor, one might get lucky and make a truly groundbreaking discovery. Did Rasputin write any novels?

Playing doctor, once upon a time.

Mary in the Sky with Sequins?

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Shortly before Easter in the district of Yopougon in the Ivory Coast, a large group of Christians saw the Virgin Mary against the sun. UFO enthusiasts saw an alien in the same event. Several eyewitnesses ended up blind after staring into the sun. The video of this purported miracle is available on YouTube,

but even watching the “miracle” on a dim computer monitor hurt my eyes. If you want to see Mary, I suggest a good pair of Ray-Bans. The alleged vision occurs a couple of minutes into the video – let the audience reaction be your guide if you decide to watch. All that I saw was what may be categorized as an optical illusion or pareidolia, although it does look a bit like a walking person. Objective information on this miracle is decidedly lacking on the web.

I never pretend to have the answers on unexplained phenomena. I find human arrogance amazingly resilient despite all that we still don’t comprehend. In the midst of all that might exist out there in the 99.99 percent of the universe we haven’t explored, I remain skeptical that we know all there is to know. One thing is certain, however; if something unknown appears in the skies some will call it Mary, others Jesus, and yet others an angel. (Conspiracy theorists claim it is Project Bluebeam.) Religious belief and paranormal belief are close cousins. Both involve explaining something that science cannot yet comprehend. If the figure were moving any faster, I might be inclined to accept that it is Carl Lewis.

In an unrelated story, it seems that the Allen Telescope Array of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Frank Drake and Paul Allen’s baby (anticipated by Carl Sagan), is being shut down. Earth-based governments are reassessing spending priorities and finding a cosmic big sibling who might help us out of our mess down here has become a luxury we can’t afford. ET may phone from home, but on this end the receiver will be off the hook.

Religions tend to bolster the self-importance of human beings. While I believe we are ethically and morally bound to help one another, I find it difficult to believe, when looking at the way governors are operating today (Christie one of Time’s 100 most important people? Christie eleison!) that Homo sapiens are anywhere near the top of the cosmic intelligence scale. I just hope that if it is Mary in the sky with sequins that she remembered to bring her SPF 2012 sunscreen along.

Budget Bombs

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Budgets are measures of what we value. For a nation that likes to tag itself repeatedly as “Christian,” our priorities belie that claim as surely as the lives of our leaders. Over the past few months, those of us involved in education have watched in horror as governor after governor has attacked education as a pork-belly society simply can’t afford. Considering the salary differences between politicians, CEOs, and teachers, there is no comparison. Many teachers I know must work second jobs to make ends meet: they too have kids to send to college. The problem, however, is not endemically a Republican one. My political leanings are well known to those who read this blog, but a colleague at Montclair State University recently sent me this quote from a 1953 address of Dwight Eisenhower that makes the point clearly:

An unlikely prophet

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.” (President Eisenhower’s address “The Chance for Peace,” Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53)

The largest slice of our national budget goes toward military spending. Christianity teaches that we need not fear death – that’s what Easter’s all about, is it not? – and yet we pay astronomical amounts to keep ourselves safe. Do we really practice what we preach?

Since Eisenhower’s day we’ve seen an increasing inflation of self-centered motivation and self-importance taking precedence in politics. Republican politics allied itself with extreme right-wing evangelicalism and soon we were being told that Jesus was a free-market economist. The values of one sect hijacked a political party, and indeed, a nation. The force of this movement is so strong that, with some obvious differences, the policies of President Obama are not so far from those of Bush. No forward progress is to be made: backward, Christian soldiers! Our nation is in full retreat from facing square-on the very real problems of social injustice, unemployment, and lack of adequate schooling for many of our children. Those who know no better sit by and say, “well, the Christians are in charge, everything will be fine.” I don’t believe in a divine apocalypse, but then again, I don’t believe we will need one. Unless people wise up, we will be perfectly capable of creating a home-grown apocalypse all on our own.

Good Earth Friday

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In a rare superimposition of holidays, today marks both Earth Day and Good Friday. These two special days are a study in contrasts, yet both are holidays that look forward and hope for salvation. Good Friday, the culminating drama of Holy Week, is often paradoxically treated as a day of mourning. If Christian theology be correct, humanity would be Hell-bound without it. Yet many of the faithful weep as if for Tammuz, knowing that resurrection is just two days away. Earth Day, much more recent in origin, is much more ancient in importance. Biology as we know it, whether human or divine, would have no place to call home without Earth. Earth Day began in 1970, but every day is an Earth day for most of us.

Still buzzing with 1960’s activism, on the first Earth Day 20 million demonstrators got involved and helped lead the way to the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency. People cared. This was before fashionable complacency set in. Whatever. Today citizens of the United States get stirred up about very little. Good Friday may represent a school holiday for some, others may even go to church although it is not Sunday. But get worked up? Hardly. Legislators in our country drag their feet like spoiled children when it comes to reducing emissions (many politicians positively treasure their emissions) or paying for cleanup of what we’ve done to our planet. Let our children inherit the dearth.

While bully governors seek to slash and burn, it is the responsibility of more reasonable individuals to try to repair the damage their leaders do. This is the spirit of Earth Day. Our leaders make the mess, those of us who care try to do something about it. Good Friday shows what happens when an idealist challenges the imperial status quo. Long-haired liberals get nailed, and guys in expensive suits cut themselves bigger and bigger checks while orphaning those who get in their way. Gaia was never crucified, but that doesn’t stop Neo-Cons from trying to rape her. Just a year on from Deepwater Horizon and oil companies argue they are legally within their bounds not to permanently seal off caps that “meet regulations.” Their friends the politicians politely look the other way. If things are going to get better I suggest that we leave official policy hanging on a cross and do our own best effort to save our mother’s life.

Careful, it's the only one we've got.

Educating Religion

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The delicate dance engaged in by “church and state,” despite its apparent grace, includes many awkward stumbles and gaffs. Nowhere is this more apparent than in higher education at state-sponsored schools. I teach in two large state universities and the spring semester is winding to its accustomed close in both. The religious calendar of Judaism and Christianity, however, is just winding up. Based on a lunar calculation, the date of Passover is a moveable feast that takes Easter along with it. A late holiday season complicates the end of the semester when many students are held captive by religious leaders insisting that they cannot attend class during this most sacred of seasons. I’ve had many students missing class this week with final exams just around the corner. The students are, however, the innocent victims.

Religions are generally famous for unwillingness to compromise. I have both Jewish and Christian students who attend class despite the holidays while others find the requirements of enforced celebration more pressing. I do not pretend to have an equitable answer for this dilemma, I simply feel myself being squeezed between two colossal forces: the demands of the academy and the requirements of the faiths. Even state universities recognize the liberty of conscience and regulate excused absences for religious holidays. The information missed, however, cannot be easily acquired so close to the end of term.

This jumble of conflicting demands is particularly evident in a Religion Department. Teaching a subject that many – including not a few deans – assume is How to be Religious 101, a lowly instructor is beset with the weight of ecclesiastical and rabbinic decree while trying to educate the young about their own backgrounds. And if grades are not stellar due to missed lectures, it is the teacher who must be blamed. No great wonder, I suppose. We see shifting blame as a repeating pattern among our political and business leaders as well. It is always somebody else’s fault. Oblivious, “church and state” continue their waltz and gather their funds while a few toes get stepped on as the first full moon after the vernal equinox exerts its firm pull on all believers.

In the light of darkness

Take Your Medicine

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Sanofi-Aventis is a local pharmaceutical company. I drive by their massive campus on my way to Montclair a couple times a week. The facility is immense: it has its own three traffic lights on a state highway. Nestled in the center of this large sanctuary to engineered improvements to natural life is the Sri Venkateswara Hindu Temple (it too has its own traffic light). The first time I saw this temple – it is still under construction – I almost drove off the road. It is a stunning structure to see in the edges of rural New Jersey and it is a testament to the religious diversity of the state. Being small-minded in matters of zoning and construction (I’ve never owned property or a house), I wondered how this fascinating building came to rest in the center of a major pharmaceutical company’s strip.

As I considered this juxtaposition, it occurred to me that I was seeing a living metaphor. In our country of (admittedly uneven) advanced healthcare, an industry driven by science and its wonders is still penetrated by a religious institution. A temple to ancient Indic gods surrounded by a temple to human accomplishment. We can lengthen life, if there is cash on the barrel-head. Being technically unemployed, I do not receive healthcare benefits. According to bravado wafting from the governor’s office, other state employees may soon be joining me. Yet it is the cost of healthcare that has consistently caused the stagnation of some sectors of the economy. According to this month’s Harper’s Index, since the year 2000 Massachusetts has allocated $1,200,000,000 (yes, one-billion, two-hundred-million dollars) to decrease class sizes and to increase teacher pay. Of that amount, 100 percent has gone to cover rising healthcare costs. Kali have mercy!

Those of us in central New Jersey, like our Hindu temple, are surrounded by pharmaceutical companies. I have, because of my robotics avocation, been inside some of the facilities of a couple of these companies. Their visitor lounges surpass any faculty lounge I’ve ever witnessed in both opulence of appointments and sense of wealth. Yet I know that legislators refuse to tap these shoulders when it comes to taxes. Those wealthy beyond compare have already paid their dues. Besides, these guys have the keys to life: bad heart? Overweight? Sexual malfunction? All can be cured, given the cash-in-hand. Yet in the center of the capitalism’s campus stands a temple for a time-honored religion. Where your heart is, there will be your heart medication also.

Palm Versus Palm

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“Mankind [sic] has managed to accomplish so many things: We can fly!” The words are not mine, but, depending on whether he was standing or sitting when declared, the Pope’s or God’s. In his Palm Sunday sermon yesterday the Pope addressed the issue of technology. Acknowledging flight a mere century after it began is breakneck speed for the Roman Catholic Church, but the concern behind the sentiment is real enough. Can religious systems survive the full onslaught of the technological revolution? As one small sample of the larger picture, ethics must react to increasing advanced technological scenarios. Raymond Kurzweil’s proposed Singularity where human and machine are fully integrated is perhaps an extreme example, but by no means the most extreme. Without fully understanding the context, our technical ability has soared way beyond our capacity to foresee implications. Believe it or not, many people alive today cannot use personal computers, have no palms, no cells. Sounds like they might be living free.

Palm Sunday is a day of tradition, heavily freighted as the start of Holy Week (in the Western tradition; of course, many Christians think it is a little too early some years, but that’s for a different post). Fronds from actual trees are waved as the Pope speaks. In the crowd palms are also being utilized to send the news home that one is waving a palm in the presence of the Pope. Traditional Christianity can survive with only the most rudimentary of tools. Religion, from the available evidence, began in the Paleolithic Era – earlier, I am pretty sure, than even the first integrated circuit. With its iron grip on the human psyche, religion is not about to disappear. Instead, technology is either ignored or embraced by it. As long as religions rely on human participation, however, technology will need to be reckoned with.

It's still a date (or palm)

The fact is technology has changed the perception of the world for many, especially in the western world. Even the revolution in Egypt earlier this year was conceived on the Internet. All the indications point to increased usage of technology rather than its imminent demise. Yet religious leaders still enjoin us to wave palm branches. Virtual Church websites abound where the faithful can wave electronic fronds and nary a tree will be harmed. Sermons, discussion groups, Bible readings, prayers – they can all be dispensed through wireless networks and modems. While many traditionalists turn from such ideas in disgust, it would behoove us all to pay attention. With the Vatican now onto the fact that we are flying, within mere decades we might receive a divine message on – oh, wait a minute – I’ve got mail!

Bell’s Hell

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Hell makes the cover of Time. Or at least its absence does. For those of us who’ve delved deeply into the Bible for many years, it is no surprise. In fact, the uproar, as Time confesses, is among Evangelicals. So why Hell? Why now? The Evangelical pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, Rob Bell, has just published a book questioning the existence of Hell and his fellow Evangelicals are in a conflagration about the loss of the sacred icon of God’s omnipotent stick that threatens them all into Heaven. It is a sad day when love cannot encourage enough that hatred becomes religion’s motivating factor.

The loss of Hell, however, represents so much more than just the loss of the scariest place under the earth. It represents the loss of control. Without Hell to wield and Hell to pay, many of the faithful may wonder what they might get away with. Neo-cons have been eager to court the Hell-mongers because the issue is making others lock-step in their own pattern. Diversity is not encouraged or appreciated. Lawns must be cut to the same height, trees carefully trimmed, shirts must be conservative and cookie-cutter, and one must wear that blessed smile that proclaims “Hell-dodger.” Cast any doubt into this fabled world and the results might be, well, realistic.

The Hebrew Bible knows no Hell but the one we make for ourselves. We hardly need a Devil to tutor us in the ways of evil. Human history reveals that we’ve had it in us all along. Instead of celebrating the death of Hell, several Evangelical pastors are simply adding Bell to its numbers. Time’s news is not news for many of us, but for those who haven’t considered seriously the implications of their faith as Holy Week rolls around, this may be a good time to take stock of options for eternity. What do we gain by fabricating an eternal torment devised by the most loving deity ever conceived? Hell can now claim its rightful place as a metaphor for the wickedness Homo sapiens devise for each other and for their planet.

One Percent Solution

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A colleague just pointed out an article in Vanity Fair that should be required reading for all Americans and it should be offered with a generous quaff of nepenthe. Please pardon any excess indignation you may find in today’s post. Whenever I’m teaching my course on the Hebrew Prophets I tend to get swept into the spirit of their oracular outrage. The latest statistics reveal that 40 percent of American income goes to only 1 percent of the population. Despite protests to the contrary, wealth does not trickle down like milk and honey (even though the latter takes its sweet time). The disparity between the ultra-wealthy and the middle class, as suggested by the article, has its closest analogues in Russia and Iran. Once the top is reached all political systems begin to look the same. Even President Obama’s budget will continue the legacy of tax cuts to the wealthy.

Where is the outrage? Americans are among the most complacent people in the world. Kept at the cusp of sufficiency, most people will not complain. Louis XVI himself could waltz into congress and be heartily greeted by his peers. All things being equal, if we the bottom 99 percent have enough then complaint is only sour grapes. All things being equal, however, is always hypothetical. All things are not equal. While many hard-working people are caught in a cycle of diminishing returns the bloated oligarchs help themselves to performance bonuses lofty enough to support hundreds of suffering families for a year. “Let them eat fake,” one can almost hear them say.

In the idealistic world of the Bible a pipe-dream was touted. Wealth itself is not evil, but it comes with an obligation. Trickle-down is a dried wadi in summertime. The wealthy are obligated to make certain that their fellow citizens all have enough. No one gets two houses before everyone has one. Once this level of fairness is reached, go ahead and get stinking rich. But that principle has never been realized. Those who have always require more. From those in such stratospheric positions magnanimity cannot be expected; for others to benefit some of their astronomic wealth must be taken. What are taxes for? Josef Stalin is laughing in his grave and shaking hearty hands with P. T. Barnum. They share a cigar and neither one of them need speak the motto they both know to be as true as the gospel.

Trickle-down economics

O Tenn Won’t You See?

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Truth goes to the highest bidder. In the United States the highest bidder is the party with the numbers to get elected. Truth by democracy. Once again Tennessee is flirting with Creationism, if not having already climbed into bed with her. High school biology teachers nationwide are afraid to take on the issue directly; many of them are told by their clergy that the concept itself is anti-Christian. This is what happens when mythological needs go unanswered. No one has yet deciphered why human brains evolved the capacity to believe in outside agency beyond the realm of nature. Many Fundamentalists use the phenomenon as proof of their pre-decided answers, despite their willingness to utilize this evolved Internet to spread their ideas. If evolution is false the Internet does not exist.

The larger issue here is the fact that educators have, by-and-large, dismissed the impact of religion. Particularly in higher education. Everyone has their own religion, we don’t discuss it because someone will become offended, and we pretend that, gosh-darn-it, people are just too smart to believe all that. Meanwhile millions of tax-payer dollars are wasted on cases continually going to court where one subset of one religion insists that its mythology has a right to be taught as science. Even the Fundamentalist’s strange bed-fellows in other conservative issues, the Roman Catholic Church, has stood up and put on its slippers. This one is not a matter of opinion, ecclesiastical or otherwise.

But religious folk understand that if they elect the right candidates, the issue can be forced again and again. The Creationist tactics are evolving to fit the situation. Meanwhile, not only religion, but also the study of history is largely dismissed as irrelevant. It is history that demonstrates the birth, growth, and current goals of the movement. The Scopes Monkey Trial was nearly ninety years ago, but it may as well have not taken place yet. If William Jennings Bryan had been smart, he’d have waited until his cohort had had time to carefully sow their seeds, water, weed, and fertilize them (using the oldest known material to ensure growth – plenty of manure) and then take it to legislators. The results are as predictable as the sunrise over our flat earth.

Seems just like tomorrow...

This Year’s Apocalypse

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Sundays are notoriously slow news days. The local paper, therefore, ran a whimsical headline: “Will the world end on May 21? Are you ready?” Nearly 40 billboards are asking Garden State commuters (as if they aren’t already stressed enough) if they are prepared to meet their doom. This year’s apocalypse is sponsored by Howard Camping, a California prognosticator with an history of calculating the world’s end. Given that our daily experience confirms uniformitarian processes on this planet have been in place for millennia – and even longer – the belief in a cataclysmic termination of billions of years’ work is rampant as ever. The end of the world, as touted in the media, is always based on religious precepts of some sort or another. Our scientifically scheduled apocalypse is about five billion years away when the sun becomes a red giant. (The biggest threat to capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

Why do so many religions want to see it all burn? Life certainly has more than its fair share of misery and suffering. Apocalyptic scenarios abound in disadvantaged communities – the final leveler of all inequalities will put us all in the same place. Privilege creates as many problems as it does boondoggles. A truly evolved race would wish to share its good fortune to those without access to resources of the more fortunate. It is a severely effaced line between inequality and iniquity at the best of times. Those who don’t get a fair shake in this life look for a better lottery pick in Heaven’s jackpot.

But why do affluent people share this urge to watch it all explode to a theological fantasy-land? The local electrical engineer funding the billboards, is quoted by Star-Ledger staff as saying, “Seven billion people are facing their death! What else could I do?” My humble suggestion would be to put that money toward helping those who do not have enough. The underprivileged could be made to suffer considerably less with the obscene income of the Left Behind franchise. Instead that money is being funneled into questionable political causes. Maybe it is best that the world end next month after all. I’ve put it on my calendar, but I’m still expecting to be around for the 2012 apocalypse as well.

An apocalypse worth waiting for!

Waiting on a Miracle

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A Google search for Morgan Freeman and FIRST Robotics will bring up an online invitation to the FIRST Robotics national championship in St Louis. After having spent yesterday at the Philadelphia FIRST Robotics regional competition I was once again struck at how emotional such events can be. I reflect on how emotion often drives religion and it is obvious that humans crave this kind of fulfillment. We look for something to believe in. Science and technology fields of inquiry are offering answers to age-old questions and present-day problems. God has been removed from the machine, but a divine residue remains. Whenever I attend these competitions I am alert for how religion manages to cling on to this highly humanistic art of robot building. I’m never disappointed.

The Dean of Temple University’s College of Engineering (which was hosting the event) spoke of the emotional rescue of the Chilean miners last year and how the press hailed the feat as 75 percent engineering and 25 percent miracle. The Dean espoused that the goal of engineering is to bring the engineering factor up to 100 percent. A world where we no longer rely on miracles. Any of us who’ve every waited on a miracle know that the outcomes are chancy at best. And yet the religious language was not over. DuPont, one of the corporate sponsors for FIRST Robotics, had a promotional slide on the projection system reading “The Miracles of Science.” Of course, that is one of their corporate logos, but the question left lingering in the air is: does the miracle come from God or human engineering?

Teams from a wide variety of high schools participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition. The founder of FIRST, Dean Kamen, was present yesterday to celebrate the final regional event. Several parochial schools compete in the competitions, and religious language is evident in team names, logos, and mascots. One of the winning alliance members yesterday was the Miracle Workerz (I didn’t catch what high school they were from) making a hat-trick of miracle references. Another team mentor was caught on the camera making the sign of the cross as he left the robot to make its way into the finals. Even though my team did not make it out of the elimination rounds this time, I left feeling inspired. Dean Kamen revealed new ways that FIRST is promoting technology to better the future while the headlines remind us how dangerous religious extremists can be. At the same time, even in this future that our engineers are designing, God is still hidden in the machine.

A gift of the gods or human innovation?