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“Choose to Bless the World” by Rebecca Parker of Starr King UU Seminary

Sunday, May 18th, 2014

This is a wonderful poem that I heard read at our congregation at the Free Congregation of Sauk County, and it touched me enough to post it. It is written by Rebecca Parker, a Methodist/Unitarian Universalist minister, who attended famous UU seminary the Starr King Seminary.

Choose to Bless the World by Rebecca Parker

Your gifts—whatever you discover them to be—

can be used to bless or curse the world

The mind’s power,
The strength of the hands,
The reaches of the heart,
The gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting

Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
Bind up wounds,
Welcome the stranger,
Praise what is sacred,
Do the work of justice
Or offer love.

Any of these can draw down the prison door,
Hoard bread,
Abandon the poor,

Obscure what is holy,
Comply with injustice
Or withhold love.

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?

Choose to bless the world.

The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will,
A moving forward into the world
With the Intention to do good.
It is an act of recognition, a confession of surprise, a grateful acknowledgment
That in the midst of a broken world
Unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.

There is an embrace of kindness that encompasses all life, even yours.

And while there is injustice, anesthetization, or evil
There moves
A holy disturbance,
A benevolent rage,
A revolutionary love,
Protesting, urging, insisting
That which is sacred will not be defiled.

Those who bless the world live their life as a gesture of thanks
For this beauty
And this rage.

The choice to bless the world can take you into solitude
To search for the sources of power and grace;
Native wisdom, healing, and liberation.

More, the choice will draw you into community,
The endeavor shared,
The heritage passed on,
The companionship of struggle,
The importance of keeping faith,
The life of ritual and praise,
The comfort of human friendship,
The company of earth
The chorus of life welcoming you.

None of us alone can save the world.

Together—that is another possibility waiting.

Rebecca Parker

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The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality [video]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

This is sad but true. The Tea Part has no real grasp on what America really is or who our founders really are. They claim to be Christians and hide behind claims of righteousness, but violate Jesus’ words at every turn. Hypocrisy and fundamentalism at it worst.

Matthew Vines speaks on the theological debate regarding the Bible and the role of gay Christians in the church. Delivered at College Hill United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas on March 8,
2012.

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Posted in Church, Civil-Rights, Civil-Unions, Gay-Rights, Marriage, Ministry, Politics, Religion, Video | No Comments »

The Fundamental Essence of Religion is Humanism

Monday, October 11th, 2010

In a previous post about Biblical/Theological Humanism that I had written a while back  titled “Theological Humanism? A solution to the divide?” I mention that religions need to start approaching their theology from a more humanistic perspective otherwise they will, at some point, find themselves irrelevant and ignored, but my primary focus was the fundamentalist and orthodox ideologies and their methodologies and rhetoric. These religions find their dogma more important than the people and that was really my primary focus for that post.  Now, having recently read the following two books, which were awesome by the way,  :

I find my approach towards Theological Humanism solidified, but changing in a very fundamental way to which not everyone will like, and some may label it as heresy.  For that I apologize, but for me this makes a lot of sense. After reading these two books  I was  inspired to write my Personal Creed v1.0 which helps to codify my current beliefs and will also help you to see where I am going with this. In there my first 3 points are as follows:

  1. I hold that the world’s religions have organically developed and evolved based on the political values and socio-cultural conditions of their times. Religion is a method of perpetuating cultural history, mythology, and morality as has been determined by their relative and distinct histories.
  2. I hold that there are many parallels between the world’s religions’ morality that when distilled down to its essence they reflect humanism at its core. Religion and Humanism is about humans and the relations between us as individuals, and humanity as a collective and interdependent society.
  3. I hold that the potential wisdom from the world’s religions can inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life, and provide an impetus for the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. I also hold and accept that each individual’s journey towards spiritual growth is personal and unique, and worthy of respect, inquiry; as well as being a potential place where I may learn and grow in my own journey.

In essence I am saying that the fundamental essence of all religions is humanism which just happens to be steeped in the culture, mythology, politics, and history in which it was formed; in other words at its very essence  all religions teachings and their morality is truly Humanism with a cultural, mythological, political and ideological skewing and dressing them.

With this knowledge choosing the religion that is appropriate for you becomes which flavor of mythology, ideology, and culture do you like your humanism. The ideological, cultural, and mythological choice you make will become defining of how much of what I shall call truth will be taught. The more orthodox or fundamentalist the religion the less truth you will get, since they care more about slavish adherence to their dogma than they do how what they say and do affects humans.

Now some religions really find themselves skewed far from this precept and they emphasize their mythology and dogmas more than they do the moral and humanistic values and this is why the orthodox and fundamentalist religions are harmful. They have forgotten what religion is really all about….. you and me – humans and our relations with one another. Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and all other prophets’ teachings at their very essences were about us, humans, and our interdependent relations, although some may approach it from an theistic point of view. Religions need to return to the humanistic essence of their theology.

My stance changed from ‘orthodox and fundamentalist religions need to change their approach to their theology’ to ‘they need to return to the humanistic roots of their theology’. A subtle but very important difference. Just an idea for you to ponder. =)

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Personal Creed – v1.0

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

I know not everyone will agree with my beliefs or find this suitable for them, but I have been, as of the last 4+ or so years, engaged in a lot of reading and reflection on religion and science and so on to try and figure out where I stand. The following is  a work in progress and is the current culmination a personal creed for me:

  1. I hold that the world’s religions have organically developed and evolved based on the political values and sociocultural conditions of their times. Religion is a method of perpetuating cultural history, mythology, and morality as has been determined by their relative and distinct histories.
  2. I hold that there are many parallels between the world’s religions’ morality that when distilled down to its essence they reflect humanism at its core. Religion and Humanism is about humans and the relations between us as individuals, and humanity as a collective and interdependent society.
  3. I hold that the potential wisdom from the world’s religions can inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life, and provide an impetus for the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. I also hold and accept that each individual’s journey towards spiritual growth is personal and unique, and worthy of respect, inquiry; as well as being a potential place where I may learn and grow in my own journey.
  4. I hold that I should neither accept nor reject ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge, reason, ethics, and justice. I shall build my opinions and knowledge of the world on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of the intellectually limiting effects of authority, conventional wisdom, popular culture, sectarianism, tradition, urban legends, and all other dogmatic principles.
  5. I hold the interdependent web of humanity of which we are ALL a part of imbues all humans with inherent worth and are all deserving of life, dignity, right of conscience, justice, equality, compassion, and a pursuit of happiness. This interdependence of humanity with itself necessitates a noble goal of the world community to work towards peace, unity, liberty, equality and justice for all.
  6. I hold that the interdependent web of ALL existence implores finding a balance and innate understanding for the nature’s laws and how we impact it is vitally important so we can maintain an ecological balance and preservation to prevent damage and promote flourishing plants and animals on earth and where ever we migrate to as a species.
  7. Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Informed Resources

There are many books and articles that have really affected and informed my beliefs. Some are as follows and this is not at all an inclusive list:

Books from Amazon

Other Important Sources

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“Why I finally joined a church” – a Salon article

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

If any of these links are not dead, need correcting, or if you have recommendations please let me know.

In Support of Esperanto

More Casual

More Technical or Indepth

Text Based

Learning Tools (In English)

In Esperanto

In English

Audio (in Esperanto)

Video

Products In or About Esperanto

Social Networking and Translators

Software Support for Esperanto

Software

Flash Card

User Interface Language Support for Esperanto

  • Drupal: is available in Esperanto (an open source content management system)
  • European Union Website: is in Esperanto
  • Firefox – an open source and free browser – which ‘Totally roxors my boxors!!’
  • Gimp - an open source and image editing software for Linux
  • Google’s Interface is available as a language and you can specifically search Esperanto only sites.
  • GNU Esperanto Translation Team: looking for help in translating part of their website into Esperanto
  • Ubuntu - an open source and Linux Distro
  • Wikipedia: is available in Esperanto (an online encyclopedia)
  • WordPress: is available in Esperanto (an open source content management system)

Organizations

Custom Search Engine

Esperanto Travel

Nay Sayers

Here is an interesting article titled “Why I finally joined a church” on Salon about why a family finally joined a church after not having gone for so many years,
and why they chose a Unitarian Universalist church.

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Theological Humanism? A solution to the divide?

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

OK, so I was reading a post on Prop 8 Trial Tracker where the following quote was rendered which spawned the creation of this post:

There’s two lenses here. One’s a biblical world view and the other is basically more of a secular humanist world view and that’s why there never seems to be agreement” said the Rev. Pastor Brad Cranston, of Burlington’s Heritage Baptist Church. “They’re not going to be reconciled with one another.”

Iowa – One Year Later (Proposition 8 Trial Tracker)

Now, my recent post A problem with conservative religions is that Dogma and tradition is more important than People really touched upon this, but having read that quote I realized that I realistically could take this a step further. I have stated before quite a bit, perhaps not specifically on this BLog, that modern (fundamentalist and Conservative) Christianity is not really “Christian”. They have lost their way. Jesus’ teachings were about love, compassion, mercy, and acceptance and many of the contemporary Christian teachings, especially fundamentalist and conservative Christian teachings, have nothing to do with these ideals, and in some way are antithetical to them, which saddens me greatly. In that post I also state flatly that for them dogma is more important that humans which is something that they need to move on from, especially if they are to remain relevant and not part of the problem.

Now, the above thought brought me to the create the idea of Biblical Humanism. Fortunately, I am not the only one to ever have considered this possibility. It was first (as far as my currently limited research shows) was thought up in the late 1400’s with Erasmus of Rotterdam’s’ writings. Erasmus was a monastic Catholic priest of sorts and was heralded in his time for his enlightenment and writings. He was, shall we say, the father of contemporary Biblical/Christian/Theological Humanism.

A more humanistic approach to religious practice and teachings less zealous, blind, irrational, and tyrannical. The heaven hell model and the extreme religious tyranny are why Christianity is slowly dying and why people for many years have been defecting from Catholicism and other orthodox religions to other more humanistic faiths. These conservative or fundamentalist faiths enforce their dogma with fear – fear of going to hell, fear of sinning, fear of not getting presents on Christmas, fear of not being saved. This sort of fear based propaganda stresses the psyche and emotions and eventually there is going to be a break down, and we are seeing that, especially in Europe an Asia, and also here in the United States. These religions are killing themselves and they are too proud and arrogant to see it. Historically they have changed only when they see that they have had no real choice, but perhaps this time… they may not be able to fully recover, unless they embrace a more humanistic view of Christianity – a view that is more “Christian” than what is being taught in many churches today. A Humanism Theology may be the only way to save contemporary Christianity.

Resources

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New Examiner Article – “My faith (part VI) – The influence of Unitarian Universalism, Free Thought, and the ULC”

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I have posted a new article for the Milwaukee Examiner titled “My faith (part VI) – The influence of Unitarian Universalism, Free Thought, and the ULC.

Unitarian Universalism (UU)

Assuming you believe in a creator at all, we Unitarian Universalists believe that there is only one creator regardless of your polytheistic or monotheistic leanings. We are all praying to the same entity called by different names.

Unitarian Universalism is a non-dogmatic faith that has but one small set of principles with which to pursue your spiritual or aspiritual journey. Outside of that, where you go and what you believe is up to you. We gather together reveling in the different paths that we walk and look forward to learning something from each other. My congregation at the Free Congregation has those of the Buddhist, Zen, humanist, secularist, atheist, Christian, deist, naturalist, and others as well as a token Republican about.

An important tradition in the UU churches is lay led “worship” or discussion within congregations led by the lay person, and this is powerful and empowering tradition that invites congregational wide discourse and participation on topics via our individual (a)spiritual journeys.

Many UU’s are active in the various civil rights movements from gay rights to opposing war actions. A UU minister was the first to hold a legally recognized same-sex marriage. These are all reasons why Unitarian Universalism is important to me and my faith.

Free Thought (German)

In coming to the Free Congregation I knew they were a Unitarian Universalist congregation, but I did not know that they were a German Free Thought congregation as well. I had never even heard of the movement until I started to go there.

The German Free Thought movement, which was crushed in the mid 1800’s in Germany by the Catholic church, promoted critical thought and analysis of spiritual matters as well as relishing its debate and discussion. They value introspection and the individual journey that each person travels while basing individual beliefs on reason, evidence, and logic – dismissing the supernatural for there is no evidence or proof of its existence. Free Thought is a non-dogmatic and more secular and humanist approach to religion or spirituality. The Secular and Humanist movements do find some of their roots in the Free Thought movements.

The key points for me about the Free Thought movement requires evidence based reasoning verses the deciding issues on dogmatic religious stances that are counter to facts and the interests of humanity. The logic and the separation of secular and religious matters are exactly what the doctor ordered.

Universal Life Church (ULC)

Being ordained as minister of the non-denominational Universal Life Church is more of an affirmation of me taking charge of my faith and spirituality. No one can tell me what to believe, because I am responsible for my journey and beliefs. I am more than happy discuss and consider other view points and ideas. I am minister of my own faith and some may choose to listen, and perhaps there might be something to learn from each other. The ULC’s motto ‘Do only that which is right.’ is very appropriate, though highly subjective,  for making a difference in this world.

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New Examiner Article “My faith (part I) – The beginning”

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

I have posted a new article for the Milwaukee Examiner titled “My faith (part I) – The beginning”

All of the articles in this 7 part series will help to detail the things that are part of my faith and how I came to them in my journey:

I was brought up Methodist, but my family stopped going to church when I was probably 8 or 9. Of course, like any child I was happy about not going anymore, because I had better things to do, like play with my G.I. Joe’s or watch TV, than to sit still while listening to adults talk about stuff that was not interesting or fun. At home we never talked about religion. It was not a topic we avoided or anything, but it was just not a topic of real interest for our family.

For most of my life religion has had not much of a place in my daily life or thoughts. It was not that I actively avoided it, but I just never had any interest or immediate need for it. When I was in the navy on the USS Enterprise and in the middle of the Mediterranean I went to a few non-denominational services, but that was about the extent of my interest in religion until I was in my very, very early 30’s (being that I’m 36 now).

It was not until I became more interested in supporting gay rights in the last 6 or so years that I became interested in religion. The fundamentalist and uber-conservative religions being its most vocal opponents made studying Christianity more of a priority. Once I started to do that I started to question things such as morality, religion, sexuality, evolution, creation, marriage, God, faith, organized religion, our calendar and all sorts of other things. I also came to wonder what exactly it is that I believe about these sorts of things since I had never really thought about it before. I had the default Christian theological and socio-cultural values handed to me by virtue of being an American growing up in the southern Wisconsin. In thinking and reading about all of this I have come to find out that I had a lot of catching up to do.

Finding my way through a self inquisition of my personal beliefs has been a very educational and enlightening experience. Half of my journey has been figuring out what it is I think or believe, and the other half is finding the appropriate label for it. We, as humans, need labels for things, so we know where we stand in reference to others and so we know which group we are similar with and belong too. It is that ‘descriptive word to concept’ need as well as the baser need for tribal membership pushing me ahead. I have come up with the concepts of evolutionary creationism, Age-Day Creationism, and the International Fixed Calendar on my own and found out that someone else had already done the work for me. It was wonderful to know that I was not alone, or off my rocker, as I have many times thought.

In my search for understanding of my beliefs and the world in a moral and/or secular/theological manner I have found a home of like-minded individuals and of a theology that is amenable to my beliefs as I explore them. I have found that home in at Park Hall with the Free Congregation of Sauk County which is a Unitarian Universalist and the German Free Thought congregation.

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New Examiner Article: “Christianity’s Heaven/Hell model not conducive to altruism?”

Monday, September 14th, 2009

I have posted a new article for the Milwaukee Examiner titled “Christianity’s Heaven/Hell model not conducive to altruism?”

Preface

For the purposes of this article I have ignored the fact that Christians are rewarded in the afterlife for good deeds and therefore there is technically a reward, albeit spiritually. I am also choosing to ignore the fact that feeling good about doing a good deed is a reward in and of itself. I am choosing a definition of altruism that relies on an purely external and Earthly reward system to negate the existence of altruism in an individual’s action, however in the context of this article the former will be seen as a challenge to the existence of altruism in Christians.

If we take into account the above two arguments it would mean that only people who do not enjoy helping others and whose belief systems does not have a reward for good deeds would be technically capable of altruism – which, in both cases, potentially negates the possibility of altruism in Christianity and most Americans. These arguments might be a bit pedantic or annoyingly philosophical, but I am mentioning their place for completeness…. and now on to the article…

The Article

Christianity’s preaching potentially teaches the individual to be very self-serving and selfish – do good deeds so you can get into Heaven. Now, keep in mind that this is a really broad and sweeping generalization that most assuredly does not apply to all Christianity. It might not even apply to most, but this is just an observation on my part.

Some sermons go on about fire and brimstone and how being sinful will send you to eternal immolation in Hell, or that being virtuous will send you to the white and pearly gates of paradise in Heaven. Christianity seems more concerned with keeping itself from Hell and trying to get itself into Heaven than purely teaching that doing a good deeds with a level of self-sacrifice because it is the right thing to do.

Some people do the right thing just because they are trying get past the big pearly gates by ‘attempting to keep score’ and not because it is necessarily what they really want to do, potentially fostering a begrudging insincerity in their actions, or even self-contempt, guilt, or feeling a lack of worth at not being able to live up to Christianity’s idealistic and virtuous lessons. This guilt driven methodology is counterproductive to the individual and society in general, because it is driven by a negative by emotions – guilt and fear.

Does fear as a motivator get results, especially in the short term? Yes it does, but it is not necessarily one that can continue to get results without significant emotional and psychological breakdown, and is very, very hard to sustain in the long term due to a results in the forms that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

The way that Christianity is sometimes taught puts its followers at odds with altruism, which I find an interesting paradox due to the virtuousness they espouse. Now, I am not saying that no Christians exhibit altruism, but it seems to me that Christianity’s preaching and motivational methodology being based on a punishment/reward system is not conducive to altruism being a cornerstone to its adherents’ primary internal motivations – gaining reward in the afterlife and preventing damnation is.

In some ways I think that the reason we do things is almost more important than the action itself. Now, I did say almost. If someone does a good thing then they could have done it because if they did not then they would be punished (later in Hell), or if they did it they would be rewarded later (in Heaven), or they did it because they wanted to and it was the right thing to do without consideration of potential positive or negative spiritual rewards. To me the later is the most pure and preferable form of altruism.

I do not want to necessarily say that Christianity and altruism are mutually exclusive, because I don’t believe they are, but I think the emphasis in teaching needs to shift to doing the right thing because it is the right thing, and not because you will be punished or rewarded with damnation or salvation. Such a shift might help to breed more tolerance and acceptance allowing us to potentially work more quickly through contentious civil rights issues such as same-sex marriage. Grass-roots movements as ‘random acts of kindness’ or ‘pay it forward’ are not punishment/reward based altruistic movements, and the action is its own reward are great examples of what could be done.

For more info see:

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Ministry Page posted

Friday, August 28th, 2009

I have posted a Ministry page.

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Life Update (June 22, 2009)

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Pregnancy

So, here we are about a week or so before Tanya’s due date. She is so ready for this pregnancy to be over with. Her feet are in pain from carrying so much extra weight. Some good things about it is that during this pregnancy her body tempurature has been warmer than normal, which puts her at being comfortable most of the time. Normally she is always chilly or cold, but not now, so that has been a nice change for her.

We are getting the emergency pregnancy bag together are making sure we have everything we need to get this scary and throroughly exciting new era of our lives started. We have most everything we need from a crib, bassinet, diaper genie and a whole host of other things mostly donated or given as gifts by the wonderful people in our lives. =)

My mother is excited beyond all belief, especially after fearing that I may never have children since I have waited so long. I am currently 35 =O and not getting any younger. =)

Hopefully, in the next week we will be able to post that our new daughter has been born.

Immigrating Family

Tanya’s brother and his wife have one a Green Card through the US’ Green Card Lottery and have been here for a few weeks. We have been able to get a lot done. We have their Social Security CardsNumbers and Green Cards, as well as having a job for her and a car for them, plus back accounts and debit cards setup. We have some thoughts on work for him. He is a mechanic and are working towards those jobs. We are currently working towards getting their divers licenses and finding and getting them an apartment.

The primary issue we have is their English knowledge. Neither learned a lot of English in school back in Belarus. They are now really  just starting to learn English so that is going to slow their progress down. They are learning it each day. They have MP3 based lessons as well as books that they are working with so things are progressing. Yea!

Father’s Day

Fathers day was a combo of 2 days. My father wanted to have a cook-out and fire so we arranged to have a cook-out at our house on Saturday. My parents brought over most of the food and stuff so Tanya would not have to worry about things so much. I had to work at First Weber in the morning until about 14:30 (2:30pm) or so. After that we prepared things for them to come over.

I have 3 used grills and will be looking forward to buying a new grill some day. My wife prefer’s the flavor of food cook over fire instead of gas or charcoal, so after talking with my Dad and Tanya we started the grill with charcoal and then added some wood on top of it. Now, of course the wood would put the flame right at the grills surface and cook/burn things too quickly and make it really hard to control, so I brought out the metal cooking griddle that I bought for camping and placed that comfortably over the grill. It fit right on the edge allowing the heat from the flame to more evenly heat the griddle to cook. That seemed to work really well. The only issues with it were that the mesquite chips we used were not effective in imparting their flavor and the griddle was too small to cook a lot quickly, other than that, it seemed to work really well.

We ate and drank and enjoyed ourselves. It was a good time.

Sunday, was more my day. We went to church at the Free Congregation where we discussed Evolutionary Creationism which is a pet topic of mine, so I found it really enlightening and enjoyable. Our speaker, Andrew Kerr is always a delight to listen to. He is quite intellectual and challenging.

New friends

After that we stopped by a couple that contacted us, since Tanya was Russian and so was the wife. We made plans to meet for the first time and it was a pleasure, especially for me. The husband was an American who was a geek as well as a former US Navy nuke, so we had a lot in common there. The wife was Russian, and was an English as a Second Language teacher and has a degree in Linguistics which I found interesting since I am reading a little bit about it due to my interest in Esperanto.

Dugeons and Dragons

D&D Sunday was great, We got together with the group and killed a few things but spent most of our time in an puzzle/trap room and a Skill Challenge with a long dead adventuring party. A good time. =)

All-in-all a good Fathers Day weekend.

Posted in Church, Evolution, Family, Life, Marriage, Pregnancy, Relationships, Religion, Science, Update | 1 Comment »

Secular Humanism??

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

What is Secular Humanism? I have often wondered that myself. I have heard the term bandied about, and was not sure what it meant. At church today (the Free Congregation of Sauk County) our speaker, Andrew Kerr, spoke eloquently as ever about this topic.

What I learned today resonated greatly with me. I think that this might be the most correct label for what I believe. My impression (and opinion) of a decent definition for what Secular Humanism is, is as follows:

Secular humanism is the patent rejection of “silver platter” answers to your theological/spiritual meaning or revelation. It is taking and accepting responsibility for your journey to meaning and revelation, and your understanding of you humanity and your place in existence. It is to not blindly accept what answers you are spoon fed, but to question everything and to try to understand and find the answers.

Current organized religion is a disease that too much attempts to relive the individual of responsibility for their journey and it tries to hand them the answers for which they have no foundation, experience, or perspective with which to understand or apply the teachings.

Meaning and understanding can only come from questioning and the dogged pursuit of understanding and perspective and not from just being handed the answer. Sheep are created by the dogmatic shepherds who relieve their flock of the responsibility of self-inquisition and thought by handing them an answer for which they are punished if they are questioning or are not following and believing in.

I do not believe Secular Humanism is the patent rejection of religion, but it is the patent rejection of being spoon fed the answer without taking responsibility for your belief and the ramifications of it. Many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion and that is horrible, for in these moments responsibility lays in their zealous belief of what they have been told is ‘the truth’ and they obey.

Just my humble thoughts for now.

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Prostitution Should Be Legalized….

Friday, May 8th, 2009

I have written a huge page in support of the the Legalization of Prostitution and I thought would announce it to everyone so that they may rant or rave about it.

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Posted in Church, Civil-Rights, Culture, Evolution, Gay-Rights, Ministry, Politics, Poly, Relationships, Religion, Sex | 1 Comment »

The Courage Campaign’s Video Contra Proposition 8

Monday, February 16th, 2009

This Courage Campaign Video was put together in response to Kenneth Star’s filing to the Supreme Court in favor or California’s passing of Prop 8 which bans same-sex marriage.

Watch the video and then sign the petition. Tell the Supreme Court to invalidate Prop 8, reject Ken Starr’s case, and let loving, committed couples marry. DEADLINE EXTENDED: March 2.

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Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters … (Review)

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

I have just finished reading “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, approved Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire– Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do“. Hows that for a really long book title.

This was a very interesting read. This book gives a 2 chapter intro into Evolutionary Psychology and then it is off to explaining many of humanity’s cross-cultural universal behaviors from an evolutionary psychological perspective. I think that this book is a wonderfully enlightening read. I would suggest that everyone pick it up (if you are into that sort of reading). In some cases I think that they maybe trying to hard to come up with answers, but their empirical evidence is telling.

I was previously on the ‘nurture’ side of the ‘nature vs nurture‘ argument, but with the books that I have been reading such as this plus Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray (Paperback) a (sociocultural look at mating in humans and other creatures) and The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People (an evolutionary biological look at mating in humans and other creatures) I am seeing that our evolution greatly affects what and why we do things as humans today.

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Posted in Books, Church, Civil-Rights, Culture, Evolution, Life, Marriage, Politics, Reading, Reviews | 1 Comment »

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