Sunday, May 20, 2012

The Obsolete Man, Twilight Zone, and What it Means to Be Human

By far the best twilight Zone episode ever aired in my humble opinion. It may sound strange to some, but Rod Serling, the largely agnostic Jew how later became a Unitarian, was just as responsible for me becoming a Christian as Billy Graham, through whom I heard the gospel many times as a child. Their moral universe intersected in such a way as to shape me deeply, both personally and ethically, especially as it regards social issues.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

The Strange Mentality of Fundamentalisms, Whether Secular or Religious

For people who treat obscure passages from Leviticus as though they're the controlling passages for how to read the entirety of the Bible, do you read any other book that way? For instance, do you pick out a sentence in chapter two of a twenty chapter science book, or a good mystery novel, or say, a history book, and force the rest of that book to then support that arcane passage? Have they no idea of what it is to read texts as they progress? To read them literarily? To read them critically (in the good sense of that term) as a narrative progression? Oh wait, that's right. It's not about that. It's about scoring cheap points. My bad, please return to your self enclosed safe little bubble. #strawmanfail Strangely enough, this can apply both to certain atheists I know as well as certain fundamentalists. But I repeat myself about their similarities...