WebMD sums my philosophy on life.
Surprisingly enough, in an article on “Children’s Health” entitled Raising a Resilient Child.
I can’t speak at all to the actual medical science in the article. but I can say that the second-to-last last paragraph hit the nail exactly right on the head:
I want to give my children the gift of resilient optimism…to teach them, wherever they may find themselves, to ask, “What is the best way forward from here?”
That, to me, is just parenting pwnage. The exact thing that I, as a parent, want for my kids. It is what I believe my parents were (somehow) able to give to me. I don’t know how they did what they did, but I’m hoping fervently to be able to replicate that bit of parenting.
To take that a step further, to me the “best way forward” is a way of logic, and reason. Take as much guesswork out as you can, understand what you are personally responsible for and what is outside your control. Think it through. Make a decision. Never be afraid to stop at some point, look around, and say “Okay, I was going this way, but from right here, right now, what is the best way forward? Is it still the same way?” Own that for yourself.
[/soapbox]
I admire PZ Myers.
PZ Myers, author of the science blog “Pharyngula”, has “desecrated” a Eucharist wafer, some pages of a Koran, and several pages of The God Delusion, as part of a cause over a story that you can catch up on under the first link below, if so inclined. I know he would likely say that what he did is not a cause for admiration, but he has certainly stood up for what he believes in the face of physical threats to himself and his family, pressure to have him fired from his job, and significant criticism from the religious community.
I don’t have anything to add that hasn’t been added in one of the many 1000+ comment threads that have appeared on his blog about this issue. My own two cents is that I agree, its just a cracker, and its just pages from books. Hell, from Dawkins’ perspective it was probably a win-win because PZ couldn’t have discarded pages from the book unless it was purchased, right? 
The Start. (Bonus points for use of the work “frackin’”)
There is a, uh, “fair bit” in between if you have several hours of reading to spare.
Dr. Myers and I share little common ground in political stance, but I am a big proponent of science. Prove by scientific method that the cracker is more than a cracker, and I’ll be all ears.
Strange but true!
Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn’t slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!
Strange but true! 75% isn’t 100%, but puts me where I feel is on pretty comfortable ground to discuss the Bible. Never went to Catholic school or received formal religious instruction, so this is just informal reading and research. At least it can’t be said that I’m a religious know-nothing
Someone keeps deleting my comments. Too bad they can’t delete my blog.
I’ve been dabbling in reading through some of the religious-tagged blog entries on WordPress.com, such as here or here. I honestly love a good, spirited discussion, and I find religious and spiritual topics tend to encourage good brain exercise.
What tends to rub me the wrong way is people who delete comments. I understand that if someone has a blog, how they operate it is their rules. But if you’re going to have a public blog with an open comments section, and someone isn’t posting something wholly inappropriate (adult language comments in a blog targeted at children, for example), then don’t be a tool and run around with a heavy hand of moderation. The whole point of a public blog with open comments is that you’re utilizing the Web the way it was intended, as a two-way communications medium, and not simply as a soapbox that comes equipped with a pair of earplugs.
Which brings me to “mom’s musings“. The author, who may even be the author of the book at the top right hand column, I can’t tell for sure, posted a blog entry surrounding the following story:
As Marie and some of the other young people were riding in a boat, they looked up, and to their surprise and fear, they spied a snake. One of the young men flung (?) it into the water and away from them.
The author then proceeded to pontificate as to various religious lessons that could be learned from this story, such as:
None of the young people knew whether the snake was poisonous or not. However, they didn’t want to take any chances so they (or one of them) hurled it away from them. Isn’t that profound? Sometimes you can look evil right in the face and not recognize it.
My comment was that since none of the kids knew whether the snake was poisonous or not, wouldn’t it make sense for the kids (and anyone else hearing the story) to take away a lesson regarding ignorance? If you educate yourself as to snakes, or how to cope with potentially scary situations in nature, maybe they could next time have a positive interaction with nature and not simply react out of fear and ignorance.
I even said in my comment that, given their state of ignorance as to the snake, they may have done the only thing they could think of to do, so it wasn’t as if I was bagging on the kids. I was just saying that this story should highlight to everyone that it is better to be informed, better to know, than to continue to live in ignorance and react by fear. That is much more profound to me than encouraging someone to perhaps unnecessarily push things away in the future. If the snake actually posed no threat in its default state, then the kids may have been increasing their risk when someone reached out to grab it and hurl it away, plus they may have unnecessarily harmed or killed the snake. What would the point of that be if you could know in advance whether the snake was a threat?
I don’t even think that what I said may have been that far off what she said. She said:
Sometimes you can look evil right in the face and not recognize it.
Well, ok, besides a rather blanket comparison of snakes to evil, which may be religiously accurate (froma Christian perspective) but is not factually accurate, wouldn’t you then want to do the work, do the research, do the learning, so that the next time you will recognize it? Or recognize when it isn’t? What is so patently offensive or scary about the pursuit of knowledge?
I guess it was just too much, or whatever. I made two comments, both were deleted. Not here. Take stories like this as lessons in why it is important to be educated as to the natural sciences if you know you will be exposed to such situations. Even something as simple as having a resource as to local wildlife so you can say “We’re heading out, what should we do if we see a creature that could be dangerous, like a bear, or a large cat, or (drum roll please) a snake?”
McCain just doesn’t strike me as having a good mental grip.
I know that politicans have to remember a lot of things. A ton of things. So many people, and facts, and a lot of the information they get, because they are so busy, is being fed to them by people–who, in fairness, are usually people picked by the candidate himself or herself, so the candidate bears a lot of culpability if they are being fed mis-information or spun information.
But McCain just doesn’t seem to me to have the mental sharpness to process, internalize, and communicate. Whether it is the gaffe over the Iraq-Pakistan border, Czechoslovakia, whether al-Qaeda is Sunni or Shia, how safe it is in any specific place in Iraq, or whatever, I know these all can be classified as just “verbal slip-ups”, but I’ll be damned if they don’t remind me way too much of George Bush. Maybe for some people that’s a good thing, but it isn’t for me. I want to have confidence that a presidential candidate really has a good grasp on issues they consider important, and if McCain is running on a platform as being the better man to tackle terrorism and terrorists, then he damn well better know what Muslim faction al-Qaeda belongs to. So far he has not demonstrated to me that he has a significant and comprehensive knowledge on even the topics he holds himself out as being knolwedgeable about, much less topics he doesn’t even pretend to know a lot about, such as economics. Given how much traditional conservatives used to care about economics, it just boggles the mind that you would have a Republican presidential candidate that isn’t extremely well versed in economics and economic policy. Of course, that would have required Ron Paul to get the nomination, and that did not happen.
My alternative is Obama, a candidate who suddenly decided that citizen rights really aren’t that important after all, and retroactive immunity is okey-dokey. Fight for the people dammit!! Give me some reason to believe you’re actually going to stand up for citizens, and not just for big government power. No?
Crap, time to “waste my vote” again on the Libertarian candidate. Maybe next election . . .
