From the wires

From AFP:

Whites to be minority in U.S. by 2050

Immigration will drive the population of the United States sharply upward between now and 2050, and will push whites into a minority, projections by the Pew Research Center showed Monday.

More than 80 percent of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving in the country and their US-born children, who will make up nearly one in five Americans by 2050 compared with one in eight in 2005, it said.

Whites, who currently make up around two-thirds of the US population, will become a minority (47 percent) by 2050, the report said.

The Hispanic population, currently the largest minority group, will triple in size and double in percentage terms from 14 percent in 2005 to 29 percent in 2050, the report said.

The Asian population will roughly double in percentage terms, from five percent to nine percent, while the black population will remain static at around 13 percent.

I think we need a new word than "minority." The word is generally used to mean people who are numerically less, but also means people who are socially/politically less powerful. I imagine that the power part of the definition won't change, or will it? I also wonder what the mixed-race numbers will be, and what impact we mixed folks might have, if any. I was all for the change on the Census that let us check all races that apply, as I was tired of feeling like I was lying on every government form, but I'm also pretty concerned at the way the numbers of mixed-race people are used to de-power and divide racial groups. I also wonder if by 2050 the default for "American" will still mean "whiteperson," (ala Sam Huntington) or will we finally let that go and accept the diversity that this country is?

From Bloomberg:

Obama Drive Gets Inspiration From His White Mom Born in Kansas

Barack Obama's mother was most at home a world away from her Midwest roots, trekking the old Silk Road or arranging small loans for weavers in Indonesia.

" I'm so tired of seeing her described as just a white woman from Kansas,'' says Bronwen Solyom, 63, who first met Ann Dunham in the 1970s when they were graduate students in anthropology at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. "She
was much more than that.''

Her son, who may become the first black U.S.
president, displays a penchant for defying convention and forging his own path that those who knew Dunham well trace back to her arrival with her family in Hawaii after high school. Although the son has channeled the rebelliousness of
his early years, he remains impatient with customs, such as the political dictate that he should wait his turn for national office.

"She certainly gave us her open-mindedness and our desire to challenge ourselves with new vistas and perceptions,'' says Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister from Dunham's second
marriage to an Indonesian businessman.

Too bad the headline writer wasn't paying attention to the actual point of the story -- Obama's mama wasn't just a whitelady from Kansas, she was a multifaceted, world-trekking, adventurous individual who apparently shook off labels like dust from her intrepid feet. Never mind about Barack, I'm inspired by his mom!

It's a small world

Ha!

Japanese town of Obama has a new hero

In the coastal city of Obama, about 300 miles northwest of Tokyo, some residents formed a support group called "Group that Supports Barack Obama Voluntarily" in early February. Of course, none of the group's original 18 members in this city,
with a population of a little more than 32,000, are qualified to cast a vote in the election.

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How I love the Internets!

Today's wisdom brought to you by the letter ñ

Taken at the CCAMYN guest house for migrants in Altar, México. CCAMYN is staffed and supported by volunteers, with the blessing and prayers of its Catholic community, which prays for migrants daily. At CCAMYN, migrants preparing to make the dangerous journey across the U.S. desert borders are given information on what to expect when they cross, food, a few days shelter, and clothing. They are told about the dangers in the desert, of the coyotes, of the exploitation they might come across. Workers take information and data from migrants on human rights abuses and criminal acts. And families of migrants who have lost touch with their loved ones often turn to CCAMYN to help track their last known movements.

Translated: "If we don't think differently, nothing will change."

Business leaders in Oklahoma are calling for the repeal of the House Bill 1804, which has been called the harshest anti-illegal immigration legislation in the country. These business leaders cite negative economic impacts on the communities -- essentially employers are not able to find workers, retailers are not able to find buyers for their stuff.

I hate to agree with Randy Terrill, the author of the bill, but I believe he has something there when he says, "The moral dilemma for them is that they are defending the functional equivalent of modern-day slavery."

An economic argument is the least firm foundation on which to build opposition to this law. This is old thinking.

We need new thinking. We need to start putting value on human lives that isn't economic. Where do we start?

Morality, Men and You

Great bit today on Talk of the Nation about how morality is hard-wired into our brains, and how that, if morality is part of our programming, doesn't mean that morality still isn't moral.

Of course you had a person call in and say, "Well, God decides our morality anyway." The guest, Steven Pinker, tore that argument apart with a great reply that's part of his essay that was published in the New York Times:

Putting God in charge of morality is one way to solve the problem, of course, but Plato made short work of it 2,400 years ago. Does God have a good reason for designating certain acts as moral and others as immoral? If not -- if his dictates are divine whims -- why should we take them seriously? Suppose that
God commanded us to torture a child. Would that make it all right, or would some other standard give us reasons to resist? And if, on the other hand, God was forced by moral reasons to issue some dictates and not others -- if a command to
torture a child was never an option -- then why not appeal to those reasons directly?

He also gets very Lakoff-ian about the moral left-right divide: libs focus on fairness, convervos focus on authority and yadda-yadda.

There's a lot about us human beings that are hard-wired into our brains and our bodies. Love, for example, is completely biological, that doesn't mean it's not romantic or meaningful. I think that we in the West, and we in religion, have let this body-spirit divide go on for far too long. We need to reclaim the body and stop regarding it as secondary or superfluous to spirit, and, in that same vein (literally) stop letting the body run the show of the mind by ignoring all the influences that it does have on how we think.

I've been considering the concept lately that we can't get to the spirit unless we go through the body. Maybe that's a reason for the Incarnation.

Also on Talk of the Nation there was a discussion about the "Child-Man" -- you know, the 26-year-old guy who lives in a ratty house with his buddies and plays X-Box all day who may or may not be employed. You usually see these guys featured prominently on Judd Apatow movies. Neil Conan talked with a woman who wrote an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News called "The Child-Man" where she takes these guys to task for not being "grown-ups." They talked a bit on the radio about how the Child-Man might be a reaction to feminism, which created new roles for women and men are reacting to those roles. They act that way, she says, because we let them. Now it's time for them to start acting like adults -- husbands, fathers, good jobs, mortgage, nice lawn.

Give me a crappin' break.

How is creating such a tightly defined role for men any different that creating tightly defined roles for women that revolved around wife, mother, good helpmeet, nice clean house, etc.? Wouldn't we feminists be all up in arms if someone tried to decide what it is to be an adult woman? What it is to be acceptable? I started leaving those ideas behind me a loooong time ago. My house is a pit, I'm opting out of motherhood, and while I love my husband and will be with him forever, I'm not really happy with the idea of "marriage." I create my own ideas of being a woman. I do this because I let me. And I'm happy about it.

Maybe the whole "Child-Man" thing is young men reacting against the very idea this author is trying to pigeonhole them into, that there is one definition of being a man, that society has a tendency to determine a man's worth by his paycheck and material goods than by his heart, his personality, his inner self. Maybe they're in the process of throwing off the old patriarchal shackles that imprisoned/imprisons and hurt them as much as it did/does us and creating a new definition of manhood. The world has changed, women have changed, but men are still pushed into these old, archaic roles. Maybe it's time for new definitions.

(Also, quite honestly, there really seems like a whole "The guy I want to marry refuses to marry me and only wants to play Wii all the time! How can I make him into what I want?" thing going on. Jeez, life's too short to try to remake a guy into what you want to marry. Here's a hint -- don't go out with that guy. Or, if you do and you love him, love all of him. Encourage him to do what he really wants to do, what will really make him happy. That'll help make him the real man that he is inside. And get real, women who have this kind of contempt for men have always considered them to be nothing more than children anyway: "He can't survive a day without me, look he can't dress himself, he'd be nothing if I weren't behind me." This "Child-Man" thing is just saying it out loud in the worst, snarkiest way.)

I think society is what needs to grow up, and not these guys. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a nice steady job, but if your guy has one and he's a good companion to you, who gives a damn if he PlayStations and drinks beer in his free time? Hell, so would I if I had the game system. Scoot over, guys, give me the Wii-mote. I'll join you.

Highway to Heaven

A friend of mine clued me to this story the other day:


Texas ministry sees I-35 as holy highway

Some believe I-35 might be shorthand that links the interstate to Isaiah 35:8 of the Bible: "And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not pass over it, and fools shall not err therein."

... So ... basically, the road to heaven is constantly under construction and features the occasional porn shop and casino in border areas. Got it.

This, by the way, is as clear as I can figure to be an example of eisegesis that I've ever been able to find.


If you're a fan of NPR, head on over to the Diane Rehm Show to listen to this morning's discussion about the debate between teaching evolution and creationism. The show was prompted by the statement last week by the National Academy of Sciences that urged the teaching of evolution as a basic bedrock foundation of scientific principle, rather than teaching creationism/intelligent design instead or offering up both evolution and creationism and letting the kiddos decide between the two.


Firstly, kudos for the Academy for calling this what it is, creationism, and not intelligent design. I often joke about how NOT-intelligent the design of the world is (Have you seen that March of the Penguins movie? I used to like penguins until I saw it; now I think those are the creatures most horrifically enslaved to an inefficient genetic compulsion I've ever seen. Granted, it's kept them going for all these thousands of years, but man, yikes. When and if their climate changes, they're all screwed, them and the poor polar bears. Yes, we lament only the cute and cuddly seeming), but a recent viewing of a NOVA documentary on the Dover, Pa., case really gave me a good view of how intelligent design is an evolution (pun intended) of creationism with a shiny new gloss.


What I found most interesting about the creationism supporter on the Diane Rehm show was his insistence that his arguments weren't based in the Bible, but he took issue with how "materialism" (not the Brittney Spears-worshipping kind, but the kind that's based in the material of the world, he says) removes the ultimate purpose from human existence. Which, really, isn't a religious issue at all, but a worldview issue. Actually, that kind of anthrocentric worldview to me sounds vaguely like human-worship; that is, it says that we're so very important that we were created for some special purpose, and any idea that says we're just here through random chance reduces us to nothing more special an aemoeba. Which is impossible because humans are too important to be the same as aemoeba.

I rather find the concept of human existence in the world -- and hell, aemoeba existence, too -- as a product of random mutation rather awesome (not in the same vein as "these earrings are awesome!" but "That f-5 tornado bearing down on my house strikes awe in my heart"), moreso than that of some creator who has designed us for some purpose. Out of all the billions upon billions squared possibilities in the universe, there you are, just you, a unique person. Sit back for a second an appreciate that as a miracle, one that's reduced to the mundane by the fact that there are 6 billion and counting miracles walking the earth.

Admittedly, that sounds a bit like human worshipping, too, but with a different focus, one on being rather than goal, purpose or ultimate accomplishment. Very much like how the concept of God's grace was described to me, that we receive it not because of anything we do or even believe or join, but because we are.

Comic book scribe extraordinaire Alan Moore said it better than I did more than 20 years ago in his Watchmen series, about when the whole creationism mess was first rearing its ugly head:

Doctor Manhattan: Thermo-dynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless
generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so
specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle.

Laurie Juspeczyk: But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!

Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.

Theology in the news

A few items of theological interest in las noticias caught my eye in the past few days. The theology in some cases is very bad; one is very good.

Huckabee's Christmas ad: Yes, Mike, we get it. You're a Christian, and, just like Mitt Romney, you want Christians to vote for you. You're a warrior in the *cough* War on Christmas (Ain't it nice that when there's a real war(s) going on that you'd pick the one that doesn't have any risk or casualties?). And while it seems like a nice message and all ("Let's forget about politics and just have a MerryChristmas with your loved ones"), it'd be nicer if you weren't pimping Baby Jesus for campaign purposes. But hey, you must know what you're doing, you've got a theology degree ... oh wait, you don't! Yes, I know, you've got a B.A. in biblical studies; I've got a B.A. in religious studies, myself, but I wouldn't call that a theology degree. But I got my sheepskin at a secular university and you got yours at a Baptist university, so I'll grant that maybe you're closer to it that I am. We didn't get to study much theology at CrimsonU (well, I did, but it was independent work). But surely as an ordained Baptist minister you've got a seminary degree ... oh wait, you were only in seminary 1 year? Well, seminary's tough. I've just finished my first year, and it's kicking my butt on a daily basis.

More Christmas warriors: So the OKC city manager sent out a memo reminding city workers not to publicly display religious decor during the holidays, to ensure that there would be no church-state crossover problems. And wouldn't you know it, two workers decided that their First Amendment right to religious expression was being oppressed, and they're suing the city. Yet another case of people confusing public square with government, and confusing a privilege with a right. Let's clear it up: you can do whatever you want in non-government public space, especially if you own it. You can decorate the snot out of your office, if you own your office. You can put a big-ass lighted cross on the side of your skyscraper that can be seen for miles and miles, if you own the skyscraper. You can even wish your customers "Merry Christmas" if it's your store. But if you work for someone else, your office is not your office; thus you can't surf for porn on your work computer, and you really shouldn't send e-mails to your co-workers about how bad your boss' B.O. is. There are lots of things that you can't do at work that you can do at home, in your car and put on your person if it meets your dress code. The government has these rules even moreso, because it's not just guarding the integrity of the office space, but the whole damn country. And it has these rules to protect your religious rights (and anyone who's ever looked at the reason why we have an establishment code would understand this: Aren't we all glad that we don't have to be Anglicans? Aren't we all glad that no one forces us to go to a specific, government-approved church? Don't you want it to stay that way? Then stop being a dick.). A loss of the privilege of getting to put your Baby Jesus creche on your computer monitor is not the same thing as having your rights trampled on. The reason why we work so well is that we give a little to get a little. So give a little.

Evolutionary theology: I stumbled across this article on Salon and it just blew me away. And, of course, it's the comments from the so-called progressive atheists who really ended up pissing me off. Sam Harris' book The End of Faith was one of the factors that made me turn away from stepping over the line to become an atheist, simply because I didn't want to be that much of a smug jerk. Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens all take the worst, most hateful and most closed-minded theologies and hold them up as examples of the true faith, and they write off examples like Oscar Romero, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Mother Theresa (well, Hitchens wrote an article about her loss of faith with the glee of a bully pulling the wings off flies) and so many more. Theologian John Haught's new book, God and the New Atheism, takes on these guys and takes them to the mat. His basic theme: Theology is not static, and we cannot keep relying on 1,000-2,000-year-old ideas of how the world works to frame how we see our world. Theology is faith seeking understanding, and that understanding is grounded in the real world. As that understanding continues to change and, yes, evolve, so must our theology. And of course it does! Like I said when I was snarking on Huckabee, seminary is hard. It'd be a crapload easier without theology, without having to think about the things we think about, which because we're all crazy about religion tends to be about religion. But there's theologies upon theologies upon theologies, all crafted as people try to understand why the world is as it is. I'm hoping maybe to create one myself. Anyone who thinks that we all have one theology and it's all based on Aristotle hasn't been keeping up with the trends.

I'm not exactly sure that I agree with Haught's position that science will never achieve ultimate meaningful answers -- like Ghosthunters before they started believing their own press and started calling all the weird shit they encountered "ghosts" instead of "unexplained phenomenon," I honestly believe that the things we don't understand are not understood because we don't have the science yet, but someday we will -- but I do agree with him that a statement like this is a faith principle, not a scientific one. And, like the good nontheist, quasi-apatheist that I am, I'm good with waiting to see if I'm right or wrong. That's a faith statement, too, that someday I might get an answer. Anyway, I'm glad to see someone taking on the atheist blowhards, who are just as bad as the fundamentalists and, judging from the comments attached to the article, are all over the damn place.

(What I'm listening to as I blog: Aterciopelados' Oye