Classwork
Are You Tolerant?
While jogging this evening, I listened to a video by Prophet of Zod called "Do We Get Offended Because Christians Believe in Truth?" The entire video is below:
It's a critique of another video, this one by Impact 360 Institute, a Christian apologetics organization. The original video is here:
It's a ridiculous caricature of how non-believers view Christians, suggesting that non-Christians feel threatened and offended because Christians believe the things they believe, and these caricature atheists suggest in the name of tolerance that shouldn't be tolerated. It's as mind-numbingly stupid as it sounds.
However, there was a link to a set of questions designed to determine if one is tolerant or not. Intrigued, I went ahead and provided my email address (Gmail will sort out any of the spam the organization sends me as a result) and went through the questions.
Question 1: No one has the right to disagree with or criticize another person’s life choices.
The first question is a slow pitch that is based on the premises of the video: atheists are supposedly intolerant in the name of tolerance, and this first question is directed to that assumption. I don't know of anyone who would agree with this.
Question 2: College students should be protected from hearing ideas they disagree with because that would make them uncomfortable.
There is a fairly robust effort, it seems, to shut out voices that college students seem to disagree with, but it seems to be from the students themselves and not from the institute. The passive construction of the statement ("students should be protected") only suggests that it's the college itself that's doing the protecting. From what I've seen, it's the students who raise a stink. Sometimes, granted, the college caves, but often they don't.
Question 3: People should have the freedom to believe and publicly promote that two men or two women should be allowed to get married.
Notice the wording: it's saying that people should be able to promote it. Christians will say they have no issues with people advocating it. When it comes to implementing it, though, they will, as we have seen time and time again, vociferously disagree and fight it in the courts. Which leads to the next statement:
Question 4: A wedding photographer should be forced to use her artistic talents to celebrate and memorialize a same-sex wedding even though it violates her conscience and deeply held religious beliefs.
This is such a loaded, biased question that it's difficult to know where to start. First, we have the idea that the photographer "should be forced," which makes it seem like a draconian, totalitarian state that's behind it without coming out and saying it. It does this through the use of the passive voice. No one is suggesting that a photographer be forced to do this. If the photographer doesn't want to do it, she doesn't do it. It does mean, however, that can no longer be a photograph because they are denying their services in a discriminatory fashion. Some will say this is the same as forcing, but people have to do things in their jobs all the time that they don't really want to do. It's not, I suspect, that they don't want to "celebrate and memorialize" a same-sex wedding; they're homophobic and don't want to witness this wedding. Fine -- don't. But you can't withhold services because of that. We can frame this racially and see how bigoted it is: "A wedding photographer should be forced to use her artistic talents to celebrate and memorialize a [mixed-race] wedding even though it violates her conscience and deeply held religious beliefs." Suddenly, it looks different -- except that it doesn't.
There's also the word "celebrate." The wedding photographer is not a guest. She's not celebrating anything. She's recording the event. That's it. By doing so, she's not approving or disapproving of it -- she's taking pictures. If she's not willing to provide her services to anyone who wants to pay for them, she needs to find another line of work.
Question 5: No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will.
This is meant to help the individual (most likely a Christian since it is an apologetics site) feel good about their religious views: "We're not interested in forcing our religion on others!" Except if you're trying to outlaw (to use the previous example) same-sex marriage, you are attempting to force that particular tenant of your religion on everyone. You're compelling everyone to follow that particular part of your religion.
Question 6: People should have the freedom to publicly promote their view based on science that unborn babies are genetically distinct, living, and whole human beings and that their human rights should be protected by not aborting them.
Talk about stacking the deck: their view is "based on science." "We're just basing our views on science -- how can you argue with that?" Unless we bring up all the science they don't like -- evolutionary theory and global warming come to mind.
Question 7: Parents should have the freedom to believe, publicly promote, and teach their children that God designed marriage for a man and woman for a lifetime.
Now we're back to same-sex marriage -- isn't that what it's always about? Obviously, parents have the right to teach this, but implicit in this is the notion that they want to be able to support draconian laws to stop same-sex marriage. And that's fine, I suppose: it wouldn't be freedom if you couldn't be free to be a bigot. (Yes, I am aware of the loaded language I just used.)
By the same token, they have to accept that some of us are fine with same-sex marriage and think it might even be -- gasp! -- a question of equal rights.
Question 8: Muslims should have the freedom to believe and publicly promote that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad is his prophet.
What an out-of-left-field question! I really have nothing to say about it.
Question 9: It's not OK to respectfully challenge the truth of another person's sincerely held beliefs.
Christians themselves don't seem okay with this. "Why are you trying to push your atheism on us?!" they decry when all atheists have been doing is pushing back on centuries of the majority trying to stop them from "respectfully challenge[ing] the truth of another person's sincerely held beliefs."
Question 10: People of faith should not be forbidden to worship God according to their conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.
That depends, doesn't it? What about snake handers? They claim that three verses in the Bible allow, even call for, the handling of snakes as evidence of faith:
- Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. (Luke 10:19)
- And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)
- And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita. And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god. (Acts 28:1-6)
Yet several states have legislation on the books that forbids this. Isn't that a restriction of their right "to worship God according to their conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions"?
My Result
I answered as one might expect a left-leaning moderate atheist to answer. The response:
Congratulations, you are a truly tolerant person! In a culture that operates with a confused view of tolerance that thinks "real tolerance means agreeing that everyone’s moral, religious, or social viewpoints are equally valid and true," you have rightly rejected this false tolerance because it's unlivable. True tolerance respectfully allows others the right to be wrong because we disagree with them. The good news is you have strong beliefs about the way things should be. Continue to courageously and respectfully make your case and let the best ideas win. Is it messy? Yes. But true tolerance is the only way we will discover the truth about questions that matter.
Yet I'm sure in discussion, the makers of this "quiz" would determine that I am, in fact, not tolerant.
Spring 2023 Soccer
New season, new coach, new team.
Hoping it will all turn out alright.
Curriculum Night
Tonight, I took the Boy to curriculum night at his zoned middle school. We're still not sure if he's going to the charter middle school L attended (he's grandfathered in) or if he's going to the zoned public school. Right now he's leaning toward the latter: he's interested in music, and he wants to play in band, which is not something the charter school offers.
We spoke to the band director for a while, talked to the strings teacher, looked at the instruments, talked about the advantages of each.
"I think I'm leaning to this school," he said.
"My only concern," I said, "is that the academics at this school won't be at quite the level as the charter school."
The Boy expressed that he's okay with that, suggesting once again that he's not such a smart guy as someone who needs those "high-level classes."
K and I don't know where this idea comes from. He gets great grades; he scores well on standardized tests -- he just doesn't see himself as a gifted person, certainly not as a thinker. He sees himself as perfectly academically average.
He couldn't be more different than his sister...
Baking
Gallery Walk
Decent?
K, on the evening: "Good time at the Y, good movie, decent beer..."
Someone's turned into a beer snob!
Playoffs
Lit Circles
My most challenging, most rewarding, and therefore favorite class really nailed it today.
Rings
Teaching as Consequence
This quarter, I have hall duty, which means I keep an eye on the kids who arrive early and have to sit for half an hour in the hall before school starts. With over 300 eighth-grade students in the school, it would get very loud very quickly if we didn't keep them quiet, so we have a whisper-only rule.
There's only one problem: many of the kids don't know how to whisper.
"I am whispering!" they'll protest after they've been speaking in hushed tones (but definitely not whispering) to friends.
"No, whispering doesn't mean just talking quietly."
Tired of telling kids over and over what whispering means, and knowing of course that they did indeed know (or at least most of them), I enlisted the help today of The Whisperers, kids who I'd called down for talking who had a choice: either take a signature on the school discipline card (the ROCK card), or teach a lesson during advisory on how to whisper.
They chose the second option.
First House
The last time L and I were in Rock Hill for a volleyball tournament, and Papa was still alive, I managed to find the first house I remember living in, the house Nana and Papa owned when they brought me home.
In the front was the same railroad-tie planter that Papa had built decades and decades ago, sometime in 1976 or 1977 I would imagine: I say this because I remember him building it, in vague, hazy memories that might be more the product of suggestion than actual memories.
When Nana passed away and I was going through all the old photos we'd taken from their condo, I found one of us cousins in front of that house. I'm on the little horse toy toward the far right; that's my cousin C behind me. This was from a family reunion that we had at our house. I remember a family reunion there, so it must have been a second one: I'm far too young in this picture to remember anything from that time.
From the same series of pictures is one of my grandparents: Papa's father is on the far left; Papa's mother is the only woman in the foreground.
And yet another one from that day, this time on someone's motorcycle. I'm not sure whose, and I'm not sure it was the owner posing with me in this shot, and I'm not sure who the man in the picture is. These are all just things that exist in my past but not in my memory.
And the obvious move: what pictures will have this same effect on my own children? Probably none -- their lives are so completely documented here that they would have no problem figuring out who was holding them on a motorcycle...
Last Game of the Regular Season
The Boy had his final regular season game today. Coach had him in the entire first quarter, and he got a rebound that he put back up for a basket.
That's one basket a game for the last three games.
Greenville Drivers
I'm sitting at the stoplight. Ahead of me is a BMW that probably costs more than some houses and definitely has twice the power of my little Honda. Were we to race, that car would, in a flash, leave me staring at its taillights in the distance. The light turns green; I'm slowly releasing pressure from the brake, ready to slide my foot over to the brake; I'm ready to go. And nothing. The car in front of me sits there, as if the driver has confused this bit of pavement for a parking lot.
Is he on his cell phone? Is she in a heated discussion with her partner? Is he scolding his kids? I don't know. I just know the light been green for a good five to seven seconds now, and she has not moved an inch.
Nothing annoys me more than Greenville drivers at a traffic light. It's as if the green light is merely a suggestion, as if they interpret a green light to mean, "If you have any desire to move forward, any desire at all, feel free to do so. If not, it's fine. Just wait. Everyone behind you will wait as well. No rush," instead of "Go!" When the light turns green, I wonder if that change in the wavelength of the light striking the driver's eyes has somehow erased his memory, and suddenly he finds himself in a place he's never been, with this large circular object before him that seems to serve some mysterious purpose that he can't divine. And those pedals at his feet? Why, they could be for anything. Pressing one of those pedals -- especially that narrow one to the far right -- could do any number of things. It might propel him into another dimension where he will struggle to survive for a few moments before being crushed into oblivion by the unknown as he cries out, "Why, oh why did I press that pedal?"
I sometimes wonder if there's a little conversation going on in that car.
"Hey, Bubba, that light. It's a different color now."
"Yep."
"Reckon what we should do?"
"Dunno."
"Think it might mean something?"
"Dunno."
"I think it means something. What do you think it might mean?"
"Dunno."
"Reckon I should do something about it?"
"Like what?"
"Dunno."
And so the driver sits there meditating while I sit there stewing, my heart rate skyrocketing, my blood pressuring rising like a like a bottle rocket, my face turning multiple shades of red.
One would think it might be a little better once that first car moves out, but it usually isn't. The second car goes through the same dilemma, wondering what those pedals are for, wondering if he should do something since, after all, that car in front of him has begun moving, wondering what's for supper, wondering if he paid his cellphone bill, grabbing his cellphone to check.
I've driven all over the world. I've sat at a traffic light in New York City and learned quickly that as soon as that light turns green, everyone -- everyone -- goes. It's a simple process, really: you just watch the brake lights of the car in front of you. As long as the car in front of you is moving, you move.
"Isn't that tailgating?" some might ask. "Don't you have to leave at least two car lengths between you and the car in front of you?" That used to be the guideline, but then someone realize that two car lengths at 15 miles an hour is fine while two car lengths at 70 miles an hour will get you killed, so they changed the guideline: pick a point and make sure two seconds pass between the time that back of the car in front of you passes it and the front of your car passes that same point. That means that a distance that is tailgating at a higher speed is fine at a lower speed. Therefore, when the light turns, it's fine to move the instant the car in front of you moves. You just have to let that distance gradually increase as you pick up speed.
That's fine advice for the second, third, and fourth drivers at the traffic light, but what about that first driver, who seems to want to go through his entire dental routine including flossing before moving? Why does that driver sit there? Why does that driver infuriate all of us who seem to have even the most basic understanding of safe yet quick driving principles? Could it be because so many people in Greenville County run red lights? Could it be an understandable reaction to many drivers in Greenville County, a yellow light means "speed up! hurry up!" and a red light means "only four more cars can pass"?
But that's an entirely different rant.
Literature Circles
