ClimateGate: Deleting Dissident Emissions

In what will most likely be remembered as the biggest scientific controversy of my lifetime, this holiday season is packed with new juicy new details on the relationship between ideology and science. The leaked emails (scratch that and insert "the illegally obtained emails") of leading climatologists combined with the destruction of original climate data guiding over thirty years of research is releasing toxic scientific skepticism and ideological emissions into our academic environment.

In case there is any doubt regarding my own personal position on climate change, let me confirm my belief that human beings are most likely escalating harmful environmental changes. Emissions should be reduced, and even if climate change is demonstrated to be a myth, or bad science, I am of the belief that we should still being striving toward Green Communities and a Green Planet, as I mention in my July blog offering.

But…

Serious charges have emerged this week and none of it looks good for science. In fact, what is coming to light looks abysmal for science, and not just climatology. There are numerous avenues to explore, most of which cannot be done in a single blog update. For example, I could easily spend the remainder of this note discussing the dumping of nearly all the original raw data on which a series of value-added data has been based. What this does for climatology is that it eliminates any chance of alternate theories of ever being tested from the original data sources. It basically removes all objectivity from the debate; it cuts the science off at the knees. Scientists don’t dump raw data, and any that do probably aren’t scientists. That should be our first clue.

In spite of the monumental relevance and consequence of the data dump, I find it a bit more interesting, and would rather spend some time thinking about the inner workings of the scientific community as related to its dissident voices, particularly the way in which they are controlled and contrary opinion is usurped almost nefariously.

Of primary importance and in the interest of fairness, I will reveal my own biases which stem from my own experiences in these matters. Approximately 15 years ago I was applying for graduate work in a particular program and a particular University. I was interviewing with the Department Head, when a fierce debate erupted during the question and answer session, one that has forever soured my belief in the objectivity of post-graduate Academia. Higher Education is a highly controlled and even rigidly antiseptic environment in which the ruling powers have little interest in knowledge or research that either exists outside their interest areas or that they are unable to attach their own name to. It’s a game of egos, and the good little players trot along and do the good little research for the big professor attempting to inflate the big name on a big project for the big school.

Furthermore, my experience behind this particular “closed door discussion” revealed the manner in which a so called “education” protects itself from dissent. I got see firsthand the way in which this faculty divided and jockeyed for power along ideological lines and even heard my interviewer describe one of her fellow colleagues as “an unwelcome aberration of what this program stands for.” That colleague happened to be the finest professor I have ever sat under, and that statement sparked one of the most heated debates I’ve ever been caught up in. It was a furious debate that reached all the way into how science and research was to be articulated and maintained in a public setting… and not only science itself, but it also debated the skin color, religion, and a nationality of the one delivering the science.

After some bold faced shouting at one another, I knew the interview was over. I didn’t have a snowball’s chance and everything that was articulated to me in no uncertain terms, was said behind a closed door… it was off the record… not meant for public consumption. That’s my experience and it naturally shades the way I view any information that arrives from any source. The point being, I’m not entirely objective here, and I know it.

This recent event (jokingly dubbed ClimateGate by some) provides us with something much more objective than my experience. We have scientists and project administrators describing the process of creating and disseminating an ideology in their own words via their own private emails. The glimpse we receive into this world is very similar to what I was able to witness behind that closed door fifteen years ago; it serves as an open window into the relationship between science and ideology. These emails are the forbidden fruit of scientific materialism and simultaneously they are the holy grail of philosophical idealists.

So what do these emails say? I’ve been reading them in my spare time and although I’ve got much further to go in my reading I have to believe that these climatologists are extremely bright people who care very much about the environment. My take so far, is that their compassion for the Earth has led to the creation of an Empire of sorts, and they seem ready, willing, and able to defend this Empire, and like any good set of soldiers they strategize the best ways to accomplish their goals by strengthening their positions and weakening the positions of dissident voices.

They openly debate about deleting data, deleting emails to each other, and deleting file attachments because of the Freedom of Information Act. They talk about peer reviewed science and express frustration at some reviewers who questioned their results. They strategize together the best ways to get information out to the public, and discuss ways to ensure the data can be molded into their overall objective, or the best way to overcome any data that might counter their positions. Sometimes this is accomplished by combining data with another data set to mask the overall effect of one set of numbers. Other times, they shift methodology around to try and get the data to say what they want it to say. They bicker back and forth about each other’s methodologies and conclusions, and they discuss and debate the most ethical way to word certain findings to maximize their ideological impact in journal and magazine submissions, as well as in newspaper articles.

Nothing particularly hostile in them…. It was just standard fare run of the mill, another day at the office kind of stuff replete with tweaking data, reporting the parts that fit, deleting the parts that didn’t, and taking offense to anyone requesting any kind of further data from them.

The picture that has been painted for me thus far in reading the emails has been well-rounded and complete. The emails reveal the politics of science – a little worse than that I think – the emails reveal the religion of science.

1. They outline a solid and convincing in-group, while demonizing an out-group.

2. They operate a tightly protected exchange of ideas in which controversy or dissidence must be approved and communicated from the top down.

3. They twist particular ideas and concepts according to a prescribed dogma and protect such dogma from invasion from outside entities.

4. When dissidence cannot be adequately eliminated, potential source material for such dissidence is deleted.

Good science doesn’t have to follow along after itself with a finger on the delete key because of the Freedom of Information Act. Good science means that you communicate to me exactly what materials you used, exactly what methods you used, and should I choose to repeat the process, will obtain exactly the same data you did. From there I am free to accept your findings, or challenge either your materials or methodology. That’s how science works. And while interpreted data can sometimes be more reliable and preferable than raw data, good science doesn’t delete the raw data from which the interpretations were made.

What these emails demonstrate to the world is that science is not immune to ideological infection. They demonstrate that C.S. Lewis was once again right; and that the Abolition of Man should be required reading for post-graduate work in any field. Man will find a way to make himself the measure of all things and no subject, no matter how seemingly objective, is immune from humanity’s anthropomorphic lens, even science.

Of course, we must take these issues quite seriously and follow the lead of our own President, as he was so quick to point out to us this past January that the climate debate has too long rested on the shoulders of “rigid ideology” which has “overruled sound science.” Can we take the President at his word when he committed to us in March that his administration would “restore science to rightful place” and that our nation will make decisions based on “scientific fact, not ideology?” Does Obama have an obligation to respond to these email leaks?

I believe he does. And I believe that each of us have the responsibility to challenge, question, and publicly debate divisive scientific conclusions. The proverbial 'Ivory Tower' protects itself and so does the laboratory. It’s not always malicious and in fact, this protection can arise from a deep-seated belief in what is being researched or presented. The desire among academic elites to circle the wagons around their pet projects and causes can be highly ideological, and ideology is not inherently bad. However, at the same time, government funding and professional prestige are also capable of guiding a) the direction of research, b) the publicity of discovery (or lack of), and c) this kind of power can keep the wall high enough to marginalize its skeptics. The wall which marginalizes skeptics is constructed by the power brokers – the handful of Department Chairs at a university, or team of pre-selected peer reviewers, or a group of journal editors who unwittingly, for good or for ill, have been appointed to pull the puppet strings on scientific hermeneutics.

That’s the world we live in. Just don’t say it too loud... because if some of them hear you, there is a chance one or two might find a way to keep you on the outside, looking in like a marginalized crazy dissident. And in the places such individuals can’t keep you out, with enough forewarning, they might just hit “DELETE” key, leaving you with a bag full of questions and no data from which to answer them.

Sour Grapes

Today I spent some time re-reading Aesop. Every time I pick him back up, I am reminded of how well the stories he recorded so completed defined humanity, and how quick we are to forget his wisdom. They’re the sorts of tales that just don’t stay with us too long because his insights are too penetratingly simple.

Today’s reading was old favorite I had forgotten, entitled The Fox and the Grapes:

One hot summer day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been hung over a lofty branch. “Just the things to quench my thirst,” he said. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed taking hold of the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”

This is one of many stories attributed to Aesop – a collection of old sayings and proverbs from a time that has long since passed us by. The proverb from which this story was driven (or perhaps the proverb that arose after) went something like this: “When the fox cannot reach the grapes, he insists they were not ripe.”

I can’t even begin to explain how often, as a pastor, I have witnessed this phenomenon. It plays out in our day to day lives in so many ways – from relationships, to employment, to politics, to the creative arts, and perhaps most interesting to me: in our spirituality.

I see two extremes of this phenomenon (modern psychology calls it “cognitive dissonance,” but I see no good reason to muddy up such a simple truth). The first extreme that I notice belongs to that of the true believer. Men and women so convinced that their destiny is set that they stop trying to accomplish anything.

These dear souls are the “God willed it” crew and for whatever reason have surrendered the best parts of themselves over to fate without putting up much of a fight. Worse, they not only stop trying, they conclude that what they were striving for was a “bad” thing.

• “My daughter is always in a hurry to get off the phone with me. I just shrug it off. Until God changes her heart, I believe a conversation with her is pointless.”
  
• “That job I lost last month sucked anyway. Until God gives me another one, I will stay home and wait on the right one.”
  
• “It just wasn’t God’s will for us to fall in love. Dating sucks anyway. Why would anyone bother?”
  

Now I’m not one to say exactly what God wants or doesn’t want for people in their employment or relationships with others. I think there are some basic principles to go by for sure, but no real specifics. Even so, I feel pretty confident that giving up on anything and using God as a personal scapegoat is probably, according to Aesop anyway, “sour grapes.”

There are exceptions of course. Some people work so hard to attain something they get psychotic. In relationships, we sometimes call them “stalkers.” In the work force, we call them over-compensators. People do get out of balance in the other direction, but I’ve found them to be far less frequent than those who just throw in the towel and say, “No big deal, the match was rigged anyway.”

It’s one thing to not be able to reach your goal. Heck, I’ve got a dozen that I likely won’t reach without miraculous intervention. The story of the Fox and the Grapes isn’t about things that are just simply out of our reach. It’s about drawing the wrong conclusions about the thing we were reaching for to begin with.

You see the Fox would rather draw conclusions about the grapes, than to seriously consider his own stature or limitations.

That brings me to the second extreme I encounter pretty regularly in my line of work. This type is the opposite of the true believer – it’s the perpetual skeptic.

The perpetual skeptic believes that just because he’s been unable to reach any spiritual fruits, they must not be real. It doesn’t matter that other people around him might be enjoying them. Actually the only time the beliefs of other people matter to him at all is when he sees an opportunity to point out how sour he believes the fruit to be.

He’s the embittered atheist who not only refuses to jump up for the fruit, but draws the wrong conclusions about a fruit he cannot reach. Unable to evaluate his own stature and limitations, he determines that the fitness of the fruit is solely dependent on where he’s standing. Concluding that the fruit is bad, he then makes an attempt to ruin the meal for everyone else.

Certainly there are exceptions here as well, just as above. Some unbeliever’s spend their entire lives without a shred of concern for what other’s might be believing or doing. They live a “no harm, no foul” life and leave the true believers to enjoy whatever it is they seem to be enjoying. There’s also the unbeliever who quite rightly challenges the believer in issues of injustice, prejudice, or hatred. For these, I doubt the parable applies at all.

But there are many, I meet them constantly, who are motivated in a much different manner. They’re not simply non-religious, they are spiritual antagonizers. One gets the feeling when conversing with them that they aren’t so much out to convince you that your grapes are sour; they’re embittered that you’re eating at all.

Aesop’s conclusion to his parable is very simple: “It is easy to despise what you cannot attain.”

I don’t think it even has to be that harshly worded. The Fox doesn’t despise the grapes. Instead, he has convinced himself that he never wanted them in the first place. It reminds me of the saying:

“The danger of starvation is not just trying to live without food. The real danger when you are starving comes after you have convinced yourself that you are no longer hungry.”

I think, spiritually speaking, that defines much of my generation.

Censoring America's Best Jokes

The Obama administration has made it painstakingly obvious that they're content to embattle Fox News with little regard for any outcomes that might arise from it. Certainly this activity is backfiring and will continue to backfire as the administration generates a martyr syndrome among American conservatives, who quite frankly need be given no more opportunities to point at their wounds.

Reasonable people see through Fox News. Extremely reasonable people see through all news, regardless of the network. Reasonable people with a lick of talent and motivation read source documents on all their news. Make no mistake, Fox is anything but "Fair and Balanced."

But then again, there's not much out there that is when it comes to politics, religion, and social issues. America is shrouded in idiocy, a long and lingering hangover from the 60's and 70's when we emphatically decided we'd toss balance out the window and polarize ourselves as a nation.

We're now a nation with a crazy bunch of microphone hogs on both the Left and the Right. Politics have never been more of a joke than they've been these last ten years. From "dangling chads" to disguised pimps with hidden video cams in ACORN offices, one gets the feeling that our so called "news" exists more for entertainment than anything else these days.

The real problem comes when you have one group of people (namely the free speechers on the Left) who've decided one set of jokes just isn't funny anymore. From the Fairness Doctrine to this week's FCC ruling on Internet blogs to the recent snafu on excluding Fox News from an interview they had arranged, these Free-Speechers are hell bent on telling us when, where, and how we ought to laugh.

These self-proclaimed champions of liberty are all about any speech that agrees with them and their warm-fuzzy picture of the future (which ironically can be obtained as young people were advised last week, with a unique blending of Mao and Mother Teresea's tenacity). And speaking of "Fair and Balanced," were it not for Fox News then Anita Dunn's ill-placed comments would have fallen away largely unrecognized by the public. Even Dunn admits it was an ill-conceived attempt at breaking the ice as she spent nearly three minutes of a speech to high school students heaping praise on perhaps the most notorious mass murderer in human history.

If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny. But Dunn didn't admit she'd made a mistake until after Fox News brought it up, and more importantly, until after she'd fully bashed them for doing it. So yeah, Fox caught the joke. Spreading the joke and contextualizing it wasn't funny though.

Leave it to government to tell us when to laugh. The Obama adminstration's assualt on Fox News is only an attempt to make the mockery that is American politics appear less funny. And that 60% of us in the middle really do enjoy laughing at the 20% of you on either extreme, so please let us have our fun. Stop censoring America's best jokes.

Like did you hear the one about the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee who steers discourse on tax laws -- and how he hasn't been paying his own taxes?

Or how about the one where the President of the National Association of Evangelicals got caught paying for man to man sexual acts after building his career preaching against homosexuality?

Of course I just shared the one about the White House Communication Director who communicated rather eloquently (to a group of American teenagers no less) the upside of a dictatorship which forced starving families to trade their children with each other because they couldn't bear to cannibalize their own offspring.

Please, I'll be here all week.

That is of course unless our President decides to wage a war of censorship on me too.

Kitten Claws & the Kowtow Christ

I am fully aware of the hubris of the Christian Right. I experience constantly in my line of work and truth be known, probably spent a good portion of my journey guilty of it. It’s a hubris that assumes everyone is in the same place, that one can speak in absolutes, and that one has full permission to act upon these absolutes with little regard for others around. It’s what I call, “In Your Face” Christianity.

I’m not a fan. At this stage of my life, I’ve had to mop up enough messes left behind from this kind of hubris. It damages free-thinking people. It closes doors to people who would be otherwise open and receptive to the gospel. When binding up the wounds inflicted on a person from a presumptive, and ideologically violent Christian, then it can take years to repair the burned bridge. These sorts of people don’t do the gospel any favors and they make my job infinitely more difficult.

At the same time this problem is happening on the Right, we have a much different issue on the left. I’m going to call it, “The Kowtow Christ” for lack of a better term. The Kowtow Christ assumes a subservient role, not just where one is needed as in the example of Jesus washing feet, but also in places where lying prostrate before inferior and even harmful ideologies can do an equal amount of damage.

To get to where I’m coming from (and I recognize you may very well not want to), we have to move beyond the hot-button topics of today. For many, acknowledgement of a KowTow Christ only comes when certain religious taboos appear in culture – such as homosexuality or abortion. It doesn’t take long for the hubris to kick in on these topics and sensitive clergy find themselves once again attempting to mop up the blood from hacking and slashing of a fully armed Christian assault on yet another human life.

It’s a bit broader and more ideological than that. It’s liberalism of a much higher order. The kind of intellectual kowtowing that seeks to place the most delicate human ideas in the lap of naturalism and empiricism… the kind of Christ that cuddles up in the lap of academic elitism like a docile kitten, coddling an indifferent and self-serving owner in hopes of getting a friendly pat on the head.

A few things are play here I believe. The first is the absolute inability of Christian people to engage in honest ideological debate. I’ve watched the great atheists of our day debate Christian apologists. You can see the debates on YouTube if you’re ever bored. Be prepared to see Christianity absolutely dismantled as our inferiority complex is articulated in no uncertain terms by those seeking to explain our belief structure using the terms and definitions set forward by our ideological opponents.

Such inferiority causes a mad rush to bad science, horrible presumptions, and even more disgusting conclusions – such as belief that the fossil record has been fabricated, or that the geological strata can unequivocally demonstrate a world-wide flood. That’s not kowtowing, that is a brazen defiance of honest debate and communication. If it doesn’t change, it will be difficult for any rational person to accept any idea we cast forward at all.

Kowtowing happens when our inferiority complex takes us in the other direction; when we nuzzle up against the rationalist in hopes of a quick pat on the head. It occurs when we’ve inherently accepted the rules of debate without questioning those rules in the first place. It happens because we too have bought the idea that faith in a higher idea is of lesser value than the demonstrable, repeatable, and verifiable day to day reality in which we all live and thrive.

The confusion exists because we have (rather foolishly) equated two wholly different concepts: cause and value. Our Christ kowtows when we allow questions of cause to usurp questions of value and utility. Interestingly enough, we as a species will only allow this kind of kowtowing in certain arenas, religion being one of them.

For example, a firefighter could easily kowtow before the absolutely rational and empirical reality that human flesh can be consumed by fire. In truth, a degree of kowtowing must take place in a firefighter’s life if he or she wants to survive a fire via equipment and training. Nevertheless, there comes a time when the kowtowing stops. The firefighter must behave in a manner than counters the empirical reality of flesh and fire. The firefighter no longer cuddles in the lap of luxury like a docile kitten with the goal of never being burned. No, the firefighter makes an appeal to an idea and takes a measured response, at least usually. The measuring of this response considers cause and effect, i.e. fire = potential injury or death, but then moves from cause to value, i.e. fighting fire = potentially saving life. The leap from cause to value can happen under the watch of skillful planners who are on the site empirically monitoring the scope of the fire—and often does.

But the leap from cause to value can also happen in an instant of courage, in which cause is trumped by value with little to no mental exercise or reasoning at all. Men and women who make these kinds of leaps are most often regarded as heroes, even when their attempts fail and they lose their lives. Hence, the firefighter who escapes the prison of radical empiricism and behaves with a higher ordering for his or her actions is perceived quite differently than the religious person who may choose to do the same.

Recently inducted to sainthood is one man who against the common sense cause and effect relationship offered up by empiricism, rationalism, and naturalism, chose to live in a leper colony and distribute Christ’s compassion to others. Father Damien contracted leprosy and died.

Besides perhaps a few cynics, no one that I am aware of is calling for Father Damien’s legacy to kowtow itself before science and reason, but even the cynics who on the one hand might be willing to applaud Father Damien’s actions, will still call to the carpet the idea that a person might be willing to forgo the realities around them for the sake of living Christ.

“Keep your service to mankind, but lay your Jesus at my feet.” That’s the call of the modern day atheist who is quite busy erecting exchangeable ideologies for us to kowtow beneath. These ideologies are dressed in a much different set of clothes – covered in words like memetics and anti-clericalism. It’s the age-old battle presented in the third chapter of Genesis, the desire to make man his own God. The belief that we can see better than God, respond more fully than God, and behave more ethically than God.

Fascinating is this phenomenon considering that in our story, God became a person to show us the true meaning of personhood as he kowtowed to us in love and service, and for his compassion and kindness we dealt precipitously with his flesh in murderous contempt. The crucifixion story is one of hubris (both religious and other) taken to its ultimate, barbarous and bloody fruition. It’s not a story sent to cuddle in the lap of human reason and luxury any more than it is a story to wield against our fellow men with insecurity, fear, and mental ineptitude.

Christ is not a cause that can be successfully demonstrated using manmade litmus tests, but a value which must usher in a position of humility in the face of both the known and unknown. This kitten has claws and history has demonstrated time and time again that some will chose the route of fanaticism and misery and dispense it on their brothers and sisters without a second thought.

Even so, in knee-jerk fashion, others will kowtow and cuddle before ideologies scribed by human hands, exchanging God for genetics and the supernatural for the natural. Such a kowtowed Christ is equally harmful and as we enter a new age of hubris for our species – both on the Right and on the Left.

We must find a middle way.

Prayer, Jail, and the Tyrants of Men

I suppose I am not surprised by much anymore. So when I read that two men were potentially facing up to six months in prison for saying a prayer at a school event, the only thing I could really think was "better get used to it."

Here's the story on CNN if you haven't heard about it. There can be little doubt, at least from my perspective, that these two men are guilty of violating the law. A more important issue for any citizen of this country is that the law exists at all.

School systems already have guidelines for handling internal issues of this nature. The Supreme Court has ruled time and time again in ways that protect the basic freedom of every student in any public education setting to be free from unwanted religious instruction, prayer, or practice. These two men seemingly violated the standards set by the court and I am very sure, the standards set by their school as well.

Normal people living in normal places would expect a complaint to be issued, received by the school, discipline actions to be dolled out to all guilty parties. Sometimes the guilty get a slap on the wrist, other times they loose their jobs. That's the system, that's America.

The real story here isn't that a couple of administrators said a prayer in a school. The real story is that for whatever reason Pace, Florida has determined that "normal" responses to religious expression, even wrong-headed expression, are insufficient without the threat of jail time. That's the real story. And the real story still doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me because in this culture war of ours, we have lost all perspective as a nation.

I won't be surprised if the crazies on the Right get this story swelling in the minds of the American people. In this particular case, I hope they do. Because the crazies on the Left managed to generate law with the threat of imprisonment over a crime of ideological differance. Such tyrants of the mind and heart are of the highest, most abusive order in any civilization. And these must be greeted with a great and ferocious intensity from free-thinking Americans on the Left and the Right.

My take: pray all you want, out loud and in public and in school. Don't expect to keep your job, and don't expect me to advocate that you should because I won't. But expect me to without question rise against any law that would put you behind bars for choosing to express your ideology in public.

One Billion Albums vs. One Billion Lives

If you were to tell me that there was a man who saved more human lives than any other person in history and that this man lived in my life time, and he would die this weekend without me knowing his name, I would probably say you were crazy. But that’s what happened.

If you were to tell me that there was a man credited with saving as many as a billion lives on the planet, or 1/6 of the human population and that such a man would pass with little to no fanfare, no hero’s parade, no moment of silence, no paparazzi, and barely a mention in the news, I would probably say you were crazy. But that’s what happened.

I’m not going to even pretend to know the first thing about Norman Borlaug who passed two days ago, because quite honestly, I had never heard of the man before this morning when I read a Facebook post alluding to the relative obscurity of his great accomplishments for humanity. This same post alluded to a much more recent passing that received almost a month of unmitigated fanfare – Michael Jackson.

Jim’s Facebook post this morning really got me thinking about the difference between these two men and the values of a culture that are perhaps more than just a little misplaced. I have to include myself in that critique.

I find myself wondering how it is that the accomplishments of Norman Borlaug have escaped me. I am a well educated person, with two degrees. I am a well read person, with a large library and very consistent reading habits with regards to modern news and events. I love science and read about genetics, agriculture, and pathology all the time. I want to believe that I am a compassionate person who cares about the state of world hunger and keeps up on humanitarians working to end it. How did I miss Norman Borlaug?

A few things come to mind here, so bear with me. The first is obvious – I am not as educated, well-read, current, or as compassionate as I thought. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace prize and the Congressional Gold Medal. I’ve no excuse to not know him. He’s been somewhat at the front of the Green Peace Movement, which I am at least aware of. I suppose it is enough to say that if it were in me to know the man, I would have found a way. I was never without the means or the ability to learn.

The second is not so obvious, and the more I ponder on it this morning, the more disturbing I find the thought to be. It is a general acknowledgement that saving a billion lives from starvation is not something an affluent society such as ours deems important. In fact, the likelihood is that starvation by the millions is something we conveniently (and collectively) repress. That Jackson’s death could receive such fanfare is further evidence of this since entertainment is often used as a mechanism of repression. I’m going to put it just as bluntly as I can:

Saving one billion human lives from starvation is simply inconceivable for us. Selling one billion albums isn’t.

Jackson sold an estimated 750 million records during his career, and since his death, sales have skyrocketed. I think there’s no reason to doubt that his album sales will top 1 billion very soon. The picture here is amazingly ironic. Two legacies, two lives: 1 billion records vs. 1 billion lives.

I just don’t know if I can say anything more about that. Frankly, I’m not sure that I even need to.

Genetic Purity Be Thy Name

I was dumbfounded this afternoon in my reading to discover that the last mandatory sterilization in the United States happened in 1981. I was twelve years old. I look forward to tracking down and reading the actual case study, but until then, it seemed only prudent of me to remind any of us who were either too young to remember this dark spot on both science and religion or perhaps weren't even born when this occurred.

It's trendy now to bash religion as being irrational and to hold science up like a golden calf which is believed to cure all our ills. Heck, I might join the trend too if I believed that these ills only ran skin deep. The interesting thing to me about the historical (or perhaps mythological) golden calf recorded in Exodus is not the idolatry itself, but rather what the people hoped the idolatry might provide them. It was a utilitarian move on the part of Aaron to construct the calf, as well as a product of democracy, which Aaron is quick to use in his defense to his brother Moses when he returned from the mountain and threw a tirade.

So what were these democratic souls hoping to accomplish with the calf? Two things stand out in Exodus 32. First, there is the people's own admission -- "Give us a god who will go before us." Here is the basic human expression of need: to have something ahead worth following, something less ambiguous and less invisible, something more tangible than a seemingly absent Creator in the wad of indifference many have come to accept the universe to be. The second thing that seems apparent is that people wanted to do what they wanted to do. No sooner had the melted gold re-solidified than a picture emerges of a people drinking, copulating, and making merry. The gloves were off and the groove was on.

In tonight's reading, I was stumbling through not only Eugenics, but also a relatively new movement, called Neurodiversity. The earliest published use of the word according to wiki was 1998, so don't feel bad if your like me and had never heard of the word.

Neurodiversity is a term used to describe atypical neurological development (say autism) as being recognized and respected as any other human variation. That might seem like a widely and easily acceptable ideological position for most of us. Not so however in much of the scientific world, and the Pandora's Box waiting for us all to open lies hidden away in the human genome.

It's easy to look at the Eugenics movement of the past and pass moral and ethical judgment on those who refused reproductive rights to particular group based on race or disability. Even though there are a few out there who still advocate for such matters, they've been largely silenced and removed from the public sphere since around the time I was born.

Looking however at the potential for genetic markers and genetic screening of the unborn and we can perhaps see ways in which Eugenics, however unintended and however freely chosen it might be, could in short order remove neurodiversity from the planet. It wouldn't be planned out, or hatched by some mad scientist in a dark labratory with bubbling test tubes. It will be the natural result of selecting traits for future children. It will come through selective pressures from insurance companies and which babies they will cover, and which they won't cover, or at least won't cover at a reasonable price.

Human diversity is about to take a tail spin. I can't make any moral or ethical claims about what is going to happen. After all, if you knew for a fact that a simple test on 20 of your embryos would reveal that 1 of them could easily develop schizophrenia, could anyone make a ethical argument that you should take that one over the other 19? I think most likely not. Our best chance to make such a case to a parent would be pointing to some of the prodigies of the past who undoubtedly represented the upside of neurodiversity -- people like Van Gough or Emily Dickinson, each respectively "suffering" from a genetic trait that might one day be removed from our species.

Like it or not, it's coming. Something Andrew Niccol saw coming when he penned the film Gattaca. But it's not coming without a fight, and that brings me to embryonic stem cell research.

The stem cell has perhaps the greatest potential to assist humanity in overcoming disease since the discovery of penicillin. It's also the front lines of a battle which will reveal the ways in which we approach our genetic future. I'm not one to argue one way or the other for stem cell research. The science just isn't clear enough to assure me that a zygote isn't a person, nor are the religious arguments strong enough to merit a blanket refusal of the research and thereby potentially block cures to a wide variety of diseases. I'll not make a stand anywhere in this dog fight because I just don't feel like I'm capable.

Nevertheless, I feel confident enough to say that what we're fighting about now isn't just about stem cells. It's about Pandora's Box. The stem cell debate just happens to be the occasion to attempt articulation of concepts that are likely so buried in our genetic make-up that we can't adequately even communicate them to one another. So they take on various forms, including both religious and scientific catch-phrases.

I suspect that the objection to stem-cell research for some is a deeply held genetic predisposition handed down to us through natural selection. An unconscious recognition that too much tinkering, even for good reasons, is just simply bad for the species. If natural selection is true, then my suspicion is most likely true. Given the examples we have from our biological world of species habitually having to undercompensate in a given exercise for the benefit of survival, it seems plausible that such underpinnings lurk somewhere beneath the articulation of our arguments on reproductive ethics. Biology says that most all of life favors randomness and that decreased randomness doesn't usually bode well for survival of a species. Larger genetic variations in a population allow for increased survivability by allowing the species to adopt new habits, develop new skills, and lessen the chance of extinction.

While the goals of today are very noble and worthwhile, the end result of all our work will be a world in which human beings are less diverse than they were before the genome was mapped and the stem cell was opened up for discovery. That's no reason to stop what we're doing -- I'm not saying that at all -- but it does perhaps explain why some people have deep seated beliefs about the embryonic stem cell.

It's easier to blame religion than science, as I mentioned above. It's even a bit trendy. But the religious experession happens in real bodies which have undergone real genetic change and emerged from millions of years of natural selection to hold a host of unconscious feelings toward reproduction and reproductive ethics. How those unconscious feelings get articulated is extremely less important than the fact they are there at all.

Now that I've rambled on quite a bit about this topic, it seems only fitting to say that we should proceed with caution and attempt to reach homogeneous conclusions about reproductive ethics. Our species' survival might just depend on it.... it might depend on respecting the complexities of our genetic make-up as well as all our autistic, depressed, and schizophrenic brothers and sisters with whom we all share the wonder of life.

Of course we could get impatient. Instead of our necklaces and earrings, we can offer up our genetic future to the priests of science. We can mix those discoverys together in one big melting pot and prop up a golden genome god who will go before us. We can pass the bubbly and get the party started, making a new genetic calf for a brave new world, a new god for a new future:

"Genetic Purity be Thy Name."

Epicurean Jesus

I’ve embarked on a life-long jaunt called Christianity and never really ceased to be amazed by what I’ve found along the way. See, there’s this set of ideals I hold to with regards to the Divine. They embody radical grace, radical love, and radical freedom… all of which the good teacher embodied, and most of which the church has seemingly forgotten.

I recently was invited to do a lecture on Quality of Life in Oak Ridge with regards to religion and spirituality. I had fun leading the discussion, but perhaps twice as much fun preparing for it.

During my preparation, I delved into a concept which I am certain will be one of interest in the next decade: religious brown fields.

Religious brown fields are churches that have for lack of a better phrase, “gone out of business.” Splintered and fractured beyond repair, these churches bury more than they baptize and begin the inevitable descent into a vacant building, which they can no longer fill nor afford to maintain. Over the next 10-20 years, expect our community to be over-run with religious brown fields… buildings that were once vibrant fellowships will most likely be reduced to the ever increasing number of eyesores in Oak Ridge. The rubble of these buildings will serve only as a physical reminder of something much deeper running through Christian culture – a disease, a poison, a toxicity of spirit that according to the book of Jude are nothing more than blemishes on our love feasts, foaming shame out the mouth of our theology, doubly dead and uprooted from the foundation.

The buildings are themselves the final causality of a war that most Christians apparently aren’t even aware they are waging… a worship war or perhaps more aptly named, “the music wars.”

Here’s the scoop for the non-religious among us: younger crowds have increasingly found mom and pop’s music boring and incomprehensible so they’ve upped and formed their own churches. Hey, I’m not one to knock a start-up church. High Places was one… 20 years ago.

At a time when start-up churches were going the “contemporary music” route and building big congregations by snatching up members from traditional churches, we said two simple words, “No thanks.” It would have been easy to build a church around a dynamic music program and early on there was pressure to do so, but the reality was that everyone else was doing that. Churches were splintering and fracturing all over town and everyone was hip to join the “new fresh sound” a block away.

Contemporary is on its way out though. About the time many traditional services started offering a “tradition worship experience” and a separate but equal “contemporary worship experience,” culture had already moved on to the “new, but not really contemporary worship experience.”

I say, “Bullocks.”

Show me a congregant that picks their churches based on a collective “worship experience,” and I’ll show you a Christian stuck about two miles behind a mature believer on the Christian journey. That people select their churches based on music programs says a whole lot more to me about the person doing the selecting than it does the nature of the music. And it says a great deal more about the inefficacy of the gospel of Jesus Christ in today’s culture.

Truth be known, there are some real easy formulas for growing churches out there, and some real easy ways to fill row after row of entertainment-minded believers. Any number of books can get you there. Any number of guest speakers or live video feeds can take you there too.

“Apply liberally to infected areas” and the antiseptic-God will magically be conjured up by a guitar riff ready to cure those worship doldrums and smother that itch we all feel for something real.

I’ve been doing this pastor thing for a while, and I’m a keen observer of people. I watch them move to and fro, and what’s hot today is what’s not tomorrow. It’s time for the gospel to get its due.

After all this time I can guess the first question that come out of people’s mouths when they’re asking about my church – 1) What’s your worship style? It’s only on extremely rare occasions that anyone has the wisdom to ask me what God is doing in our church.

To this question, I can only respond with a question – “What isn’t our worship style?” I’m becoming slightly brazen to the question, perhaps it is the crankiness of my old age, but I am starting to believe it is most likely out of a deepening spiritual maturity. The question tells me something about the asker. I think Jesus had that simple truth of life figured. When people asked him questions, he sensed a deeper issue going on and didn’t hesitate to address it.

I’m increasingly becoming committed to ask such questioners a question in return, “Are you looking for a church with a particular music style?” Any answers to the affirmative give me good enough reason to start handing out addresses and meeting times. The gospel doesn’t need music shoppers. This isn’t I-Tunes for Jesus, it’s about something more… something deeper.

The road truly is narrow and few there are that find it. We often refer to ourselves as a “church without walls,” I wonder though if that takes in to account the wall of sound that shuffles believers through congregations like decks of cards.

I remember when we were first getting cranking, we didn’t have permanent seating. During those days we would intentionally turn the seats to face a new direction periodically. Some folks didn’t like that. Even today, we’ll forgo music, shift music around, or pull something utterly outrageous out the hat. Some folks don’t like that either.

Holy Cows. That’s what we call them… places where form makes more of a difference than the eternal God who assumes so many different forms. Holy Cows need to be tipped over occasionally and we do just that. If we didn’t, we’d find ourselves fighting over a future brown-field one day. Maybe it would be ten years, maybe twenty, but eventually someone somewhere is going to come along and start a war over expectation.

If we didn’t engage in Holy Cow tipping, we’d soon find ourselves in a war that is a deflection of the light of the gospel, and we’d be forced to watch helplessly as the entertainment-minded believers erected an epicurean Jesus for a new set of worship coinsurers to shop from within our own walls. That’s what is happening to countless churches around town right now. That’s what is waiting for countless more. And the greatest causality of this war is the gospel itself – and a Christ who had no band of traveling minstrels, no certain set of chords he was destined to play, no favorite instruments strapped across his back, and no shiny angelic chorals to prepare the hearts of man for his Sermon on the Mount.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “Beware the man who’s God is in the skies.”

I say, “Beware the man who’s God is in a style.”

Why Churches Should Go Green, Even If Skeptical About Climate Change

It seems like churches should be the first to adopt new “Green Energy” technologies and become early adopters of the ecology movements across the United States. Yet, because of the platform nature of the global warming debate, many aren’t even thinking about it… especially conservative Southern churches where politics fill pulpits Sunday after Sunday.

I’m not going to make a theological case for going green; these kinds of arguments have been made in countless other places, and I believe quite sufficiently. I’m not even going to bother with trying to make the case for global warming because as a skeptic by nature, I wouldn’t know enough to even convince myself about the topic.

But I do think churches should be ecologically centered and make the switch to Green Energy. Here’s my three P’s as to why, and they shouldn’t matter as to which side of the political fence you built your facility.

Potential. No matter how any of us might feel about the data surrounding the climate change issues, a few things we can be certain of… change is happening, and it is real. If there was even the slightest potential that human dependence on fossil fuels was driving some of that change, churches should lead the way as champions of prevention. I understand the multi-faceted objections that are often raised, ranging anywhere from, “That’s a liberal issue” to the perplexing and ill-conceived “Jesus is coming back to fix it all anyway” mentality. What doesn’t compute is doing nothing at all. Churches often make claims to “prophetic visioning” of culture and its many ills. If there was even the potential that our actions were leading to climate instability, why would we fail to find the intestinal fortitude to take a prophetic stance for green energy?

If there’s even a possibility that our habits are impacting future generations, then the church must stand on the side of those with vision. It doesn’t have to be a knee-jerk reaction, and it certainly doesn’t have to be coupled with political grand standing. It doesn’t have to assume identification with any agendas or platforms. Instead, it should be about seeing clearly the potential of human beings to make things better. That’s what churches are supposed to be about, right?

Forget the debate about whether global warming is real or made up. It’s a deflection of a deeper issue, which is the responsibility we all share to be forward thinkers and doers in a global community. So if there was even a remote “chance” of making a positive difference, why would anyone toss it out?

Protection. I’m not talking about protection of the planet (that would fall under the P of potential). Until the science is complete (and it is getting more and more clear with each passing year), we just can’t know with certainty if our actions are protecting the planet or not. Whether or not we’re making a difference there, we can at least rest knowing for certain that we aren’t making anything worse. As I stated above, the potential ought to be enough to get us moving.

By using the word protection here, I’m instead talking about what many have described as the largest transfer of wealth history has ever recorded. Billions of dollars are virtually signed over to foreign companies every year. American asset protection is one great reason for churches to go green. The more money we can save on energy, even at the local church level, the more assets we have to share with the world in areas of greatest need – such as eliminating disease, mental illness, drug abuse, and poverty.

Protection also comes by way of our democratic values. Many of the recipients of the billions of dollars we send overseas do not have the better interests of freedom in mind. They often represent cruel dictatorships, seldom distribute the money in ways that benefit their impoverished or fund better educations systems. And in some cases, the money we send them can be directly tied to activities that are not only unsympathetic to democratic values, but actually at war with them.

Churches must adopt energy policies that protect the innocent, enhance freedom, and support the under-privileged. We can’t do that while sending billions of dollars per year to be utilized outside the boundaries of our laws and values.

Perception. The last P is an important one, and that is perception. There can be little doubt that the world perceives Christians as being self-centered, judgmental, divisive, and ecologically apathetic. Heck, I’m a Christian and I see so many of us this way myself. It’s extremely damaging to our faith to be constantly known for what we are against, but seldom if ever known what we are for. We come across as combative, ideological zealots, and we fail to embody the kindness and compassion of Jesus when we draw lines in the sand on the issue of ecology.

Perception isn’t everything, and I certainly wouldn’t advocate that it is the responsibility of the church to please everyone – in fact I might argue quite the opposite. But when it comes to being a positive force for change in this world, I see no reason why we should not be on the forefront of such causes. I see an opportunity to reach outside of the political agendas and find common ground. I see churches earning the right to be heard, because we’ve been faithful with the environment we share with others.

And let’s face it folks, if Christians aren’t willing to take a shared approach to the air we all breathe, why in heaven or earth would anyone care what we have to say about a giving God? Churches may not want this negative perception attached to them, but when they fail to be ecologically focused, that’s exactly what happens.

Potential for change, protection of assets, and perceptions of generosity – that’s what is really at stake whether or not you believe in global warming. Churches should make the switch. Go Green today!

Digital Publishing, Grain Drills, and Bumper Crops

I’m no farmer, but I have to say I enjoyed reading up on the advent of the grain drill and what it has done for wheat farming. Apparently, when wheat is scattered by hand it can cut into the yields considerably – this is due to the seed not falling into the ground at the proper depth, as well as it being planted to close to another seed.

Depth and Spacing: I’m not sure if there is a more appropriate metaphor for a new kind of industrial advent: digital publications. As it stands today, writers have a couple of options for taking something to print. There’s the standard route, which is to scale the nearly insurmountable wall of agents, editors, and corporate execs to land with both feet inside the fortress of a big time publishing company. There’s smaller press, specializing in particular areas that may or may not relate to a writer’s publishing goals. And then there’s what some refer to as the ‘vanity press,’ which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It allows you as the writer to edit, publish, market, and sell your own work. Anyone can do it.

Digital Publishing: A Pest or Pesticide?

A new option is on the horizon, scratch that, it’s already upon us and there seems to be some debate as to whether or not this new thing is good or bad for the industry. Digital publishing is being hailed by some as a next wave which will crumble a few castles to the ground, while simultaneously lifting all our boats. I think it is a bit too early to tell exactly what it’s going to do. One thing I do feel confident about though, human beings tend to naturally take the paths of least resistance and when acting as a whole, our species tends to settle on a lowest common denominator.

Imagine making a purchase of a novel or a comic book and having full ownership rights of it – meaning you can place it on your X-Box 360, iPhone, or pocket reader and carry it around without even noticing it’s there. That’s what I mean by the path of least resistance. We’re talking – easy to get to, smaller, lighter, affordable (and some might say even “cheap”), ever-present and at your finger tips.

Alongside this revolution for the reader, comes a different revolution for the writer: a backdoor for getting your stuff out there and into people’s hands. At the moment, there haven’t been any leaders of the pack emerge in the area of digital vanity press, but rest assured they will come. When they do, every Tom, Dick, and Harry whose ever written a book, or even half a book, will be out in carte blanche… scattering seeds by hand.

Some would argue that this is already happening through internet blogs (hey, you are here aren’t you?), electronic news channels, Twitter updates on world events (and even celebrity grocery bag contents), sport’s interviews, online novels, web comics, ad nauseum. Articles are appearing on top of articles, blogs on top of blogs. Some argue that mediocre writing is smothering out good writing, and some good writing is smothering out great writing. They believe that mass accessibility lowers the competitive bar that formal publishers raise for writers, the flood gates open, banality ensues. This is the lowest common denominator that human beings tend to naturally settle for if given the full druthers to do as they please. (Have you looked at the top ten YouTube videos lately?)

On the other side of the coin, some argue that digital publishing is going to relinquish the old guard from its command. New and exciting things will find their way to print, breaking the mold of what’s “acceptable” to bring to print or deemed “good enough” to find a platform. It’s already changing the way we get our news. No longer do news companies get to decide what’s news worthy – we do that now as bloggers and Twitter fans upload live shots and commentary from events that could possibly be a world away. Is there any reason to believe this level of immediacy won’t also find its way to scientific journals, archeological finds, novels, or even iReports from major league baseball games? Isn’t even the lowest common denominator better for everyone than something polished but beyond our control? The Libertarian in me wants to say yes.

So is digital print and distribution a pest or a pesticide? I think maybe it’s a little of both. Too much information can be good or bad. As in all things however, I do have hopes. My deepest hope is that the process will be fine-tuned and formalized in a way that maximizes the harvest of good information, good entertainment, and quality material.

Digital Publishing: Building a Grain Drill

I’m not sure why I was so excited to learn about grain drills early this year, but my reading gave me a picture of the process and the way in which it increased wheat yields by as much as 300%, enabling us to begin transforming the face of world hunger. The purpose of the grain drill is mechanizing the seed distribution so that each kernel of wheat (singular) is appropriately spaced from its sister kernels and that each kernel is planted at the appropriate depth.

Digital Publishing – Spacing

It seems to me that one of the complaints, concerns, issues and such is that the advent of digital publishing will cram markets and thereby overrun existing ones. This is already happening to local newspapers. The second issue with regards to spacing in the digital age is that really great work can spring up right beside a whole lot of really bad work. That really bad work potentially casts a shadow over the things that people probably ought to be reading – like peer reviewed science articles vs. non-peer reviewed science articles. With too many poorly conceived, poorly written, and poorly reviewed works springing up in our fields, we watch them suck the nutrients from the soil, leaving a host of good material struggling to find an audience. This isn’t a new problem; it’s plagued the film industry and printed media since before I was born.

Even so, what is new to this process is the general malaise of the reading public regarding where they will turn for quality. As it currently stands, there is an analogous set of data streams out there, with little or no indication of “Who’s got the stuff and who’s got the fluff.”

I propose that we adopt a grain drill approach to spacing digital work, and that the only way to successfully maintain good space for good stuff is for top publishing companies to network together to create a recognizable brand name for digital distribution. In other words, as a consumer I want to know exactly where to go to find quality. I want to know who has been peer reviewed, who has had their references checked, and who had the skill to both impress a major publisher as well as climb the “fourth wall” and impress the men and women dolling out dollars for work.

This can’t really happen without some team players at the top. Whatever digital distribution format is selected it really will be only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. A good example that I believe publishing companies need to follow can be found here:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=21693

Comics have struggled since the spinner racks left the gas stations and supermarkets. They’ve nearly price pointed themselves to oblivion. I recently heard about an Eisner Award winning writer who only sold 6,000 copies of his first issue. Digital Longbox is going to reduce the risk of dropping four dollars on something that might suck. A few industry publishers are already jumping on board to the format, so readers can be assured that they’ll at least be getting the quality they’re used to from their favorite creators. As a fan, I will know where to go to give something a test run and can do it at ¼ the cost. My digital investment can pay off because LongBox will allow me to apply a credit of my digital purchase toward a hard copy of the work should I be so inclined. It reduces paper and printing costs, reduces waste, reduces risk to publishers and creators by lowering the initial financial investment, allows for print-to-order marketing and distribution, and gives readers a place to turn to try new things by lowering fears of stepping too far out on a financial limb by purchasing something they might not like. Publisher, creator, reader – win, win, win.

Digital Publishing – Depth

The grain drill plants individual kernels of wheat at a programmed depth, thereby preventing them from being planted too shallow (and being eaten by the birds) or too deep (and never being able to emerge from the soil). During the recent turmoil in Iran, there was much debate about what was getting reported and by whom. The sources were unverified and popping up from all over the world. Retractions, redactions, and apologies sometimes followed. What was news? What was commentary? What was opinion? And most importantly, what was fact?

The digital wave lacked any appropriate mechanism for determining the substance of what was being distributed. I hardly see other genres of digital media being much different. Items that are put forward without the proper amount of review can reside in a shallow soil and be immediately placed at risk of over-consumption by the birds. These digital offerings of the lowest common denominator make me want to shut the whole process down. Twitter doesn’t need regulation, but the degree in which we rely on it for any sort of quality information does.

Again, I point us to the Digital Longbox project. The creators of this distribution format have a board of industry professionals providing input on the process from its development to its implementation. If they build the wall too high, writers will see their works buried too low and some really great things will have to find another way to see the light of day. If they build the wall too low, then readers like myself will walk away looking for a better standard.


Building a digital grain drill is a Catch 22 when it comes to issues of substance and depth. It is going to take more than the minds of one or two publishers, and Digital Longbox is setting the standard in that regard, I believe. What remains to be seen is whether or not the reality will match the idea. Will a consumer be able to find quality, accessibility, and a good bargain for their dime? Will content receive the right amount of attention and keep Eisner Award winning writers somewhere other than the page gutters? Will there be enough energy to choke out the really bad digital vanity presses? Can authors who’ve typically planted seeds so deep that they get passed over by the “professionals” in the publishing industry finally find an outlet?

I think so, but I’m an optimist. I think over the next decade we will see the industry adopt a more streamlined approach. There will be plenty of digital room to scatter kernels by hand. And some of those offerings are going to rock the world and turn our accepted formats upside once again. The digital grain drill is being created as we speak, and what we need are more industry pros getting on board – from all fields too – novels, scripts, scientific and sociological articles, religious writing, poetry, and more. The standard hoe is about to be replaced, but it need not come at the expense of quality, depth, and illumination.

I believe it’s all good. I believe in a bumper crop of greatness emerging from a new generation of writers. I believe because I believe in the human spirit, what it can accomplish when freedom and responsibility join hands.