robrohr.org : religion

Family Values...

robrohr — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:22:33 GMT

"The national government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life."
- Adolf Hitler

Huh.

"Survey Says..."

robrohr — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:24:00 GMT

Back in late 2002, I joined the Presidential Prayer Team. The reasons for doing so are many and varied, but I'm still a member to this day. One of the many joys I get from the weekly newsletter is THIS WEEK'S POLL, where I get to select my personal take on nuanced issues of the day from a limited list of carefully crafted answers. Have you ever taken a multiple choice test where none of the answers were even remotely right? When no grades are at stake, it can be rather amusing.

Today (July 27, 2006) I received my weekly newsletter from the Presidential Prayer Team. Oh, bliss! I skipped past such gems as:

Additional Leaders to Pray for This Week
(Sec. Defense, Donald Rumsfeld; Joint Chiefs Chair, Gen. Peter Pace; Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales; and Sec. Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez)
Presidential Quote for the Week
(Intro: "The faith background of President Taft is difficult to determine at best. At times, he declared himself a Unitarian...")
Can Prayer Help Reduce Crime?
("...inviting the faith community to join them for prayer every evening at 7:30 P.M. under a large tent being set up on the National Mall. Supporters will be taking the extraordinary step of praying and believing that God will reduce crime in our nation's capitol over the next six months.")
Godly Words of Inspiration in Two Army Hymns
(lyrics to Old Hundred and God of Our Fathers)

What I really wanted was the survey of the week. I was not at all disappointed by today's offering.

It is indeed rare for a question to be posed so clearly, without leaving gaps between answers where those addicted to nuance can often fall. A typical question would be:

PREVIOUS WEEKLY POLL (April 28, 2005)
How will you be participating in this year's National Day of Prayer?
At home, privately. (38.2%)
With my church, small group or Bible Study. (18.9%)
I won't be participating. (15.6%)
At a gathering in my community. (14.5%)
At work. (12.9%)

Note: At no point did they mention "Running nekkid through the streets, ululating an ode to Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds*, calling down a rain of fire onto this sinful world, wiping this planet clean of all iniquity." If this is your plan, which option do you choose?

Anyway, this week's question was a juicy one. How would my fellow prayer-monkeys vote? (Side note: prayer-monkeys do not like to be called prayer-monkeys, unless they are me.)

The Results!

Well, well, well! It would appear that my fellow prayer-monkeys are having visions of impending armageddon. I suspect this is quite a dangerous thing to do while driving, shaving or visiting the numerous agricultural fairs.

"Mommy can I have a popsicle?"

"Apocalypse? Soon, dear. Soon."

Skeptic that I am, I am convinced that the passage of time is an indication of the nearing of the apocalypse, and, should we be lucky, it will be the expansion of the sun into a red giant that ultimately wipes all life of this surly planet. Looking at these results, I won't be scratching my head so much in the future as I look at survey results from other weekly polls.

These folks have the ear of the President and this Administration. These folks are running the FDA, NSF. These folks are representing us at global talks on poverty and setting policy on our behalf about aid to organizations that provide women's health care.

Let us pray...

Update: The results posted were early results with just under a thousand responses. At this point (~1500 responses,) armageddoners are up over 70% and rising. It appears that fundies like to sleep in a bit, or perhaps they like to pray a bit before hopping onto the internets for a little clickety-click, or maybe they are just slow readers.

* I am fairly confident that Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds is a cat.

Finite boy versus the multiverse

robrohr — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:52:00 GMT

I've been reading up on the Intelligent Design debate quite a bit lately, and have decided to subject the theories of the ID movement to the flawless logical processes that generated these ideas in the first place.

Premise: Any biological structure that is too statistically improbable to have developed by a random process (i.e., evolution) must have been designed by an intelligent designer.

Other Premise: Any complex structure or chain reaction that, with the removal of any one component of the complex chain, fails completely, is termed irreduceably complex. According to ID proponents, such structures or systems would have to emerge all at once, fully developed, the likelihood of such happening randomly is so startlingly remote, that it must have been the work of an Intelligent Designer who is not necessarily "God" but is definitely more powerful than you or me. Well, you, anyway. Some examples of structures or sequences that are offered up as examples; The eyeball, the bacterial flagellum, blood clotting.

Rob's super duper thought experiment: The argument goes, that the human sack of genetic material is so chock full of remarkable systems that are so wildly unlikely to have happened by chance, that we must have been created by an intelligent designer. In order to tantalize the ID crowd, I'm going to stipulate that this position is true and correct for the duration of this thought experiment. "Have you completely lost your senses?" you say (to me, not the ID crowd, for this is a civil debate.) Bear with me.

For the sake of argument, I have been created by an intelligent designer, whose name is Adrienne. We know this is true because I am obviously too statistically unlikely to have happened by chance. Ask my parents. They took all the precautions.
For the sake of argument, it is even less likely that Adrienne occurred by chance, for designers are predominately more complex than their creations.
Adrienne, the intelligent designer must have been herself designed by another, more intelligent designer. His name, incidentally is Barry.
Before Barry left the family disco band, and began designing highly improbable designers, Barry was himself designed by a more intelligent designer named Carla, who, incidentally worked at Apple on the PowerMacs.
Carla is designed by Devon; Devon designed by Earl; Earl designed by Fiona who disgusted by Earl's work ethic retires in a huff, but not before she can be designed by Gerhard.
I could go on, but I don't want to tax the bandwidth of my server.

If humanity or life or the US tax code is too complex to have developed randomly and is therefore the product of an intelligent designer, you have to be ready to consider the same argument applied to your designer. By this argument, every designer must have been designed, and now you get to explain to me how an infinite number of creators fit into a finite universe, while leaving enough space for tacos, Tom Cruise's ego, and SUVs.

I don't go around trying to disprove the "There is no god but G_d" crew, but I'd say if Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity were successful in making their way into the science curriculum, it would only result in introducing malleable young minds to polytheism, for any single designer is too complex to have randomly occurred, and ergo must have been designed. My goal here is not to disprove G_d, nor is it to prove a multiplicity of them, I just think the ID crowd might want to polish up another "scientific theory" if monotheism is at all important.

Who's the spongiest geek in town?

robrohr — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:32:00 GMT

Spongerob Rohrpants!

Margot has been singing my praises to the tune of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song. Now I find out that some conservative christian groups are denouncing the Spongester for promoting tolerance. I first was trying to figure out a way to morph a picture of my head into the shape and skin tone of Spongebob, when I found a movie poster ripe for alterations.

Specifically, I altered the text of the logo, and added a few logos to the underpants, to show the world what happens when you blithely donate your soul to Microsoft in exchange for squish toys.

Naturally, I had to edit the undies. I wonder what processor G. W. is running in his pants?

The complete desktop image can be loaded by following this link to the Spongerob Rohrpants wallpaper.

A conversation with God.

robrohr — Mon, 10 May 2004 19:54:00 GMT

If George W. Bush did have a conversation with God, I suspect it might go something like this.

Courtesy of http://www.stripcreator.com/

The lost blog entry...

robrohr — Wed, 05 May 2004 18:52:00 GMT

Some of my colleagues, upon hearing that I joined the ACLU, seemed to think that with my leaning so far to the left, I was in danger of tipping over. In the interests of balance, I decided I would join the Presidential Prayer Team. Apparently, good things don't happen in America unless honest God-fearing folks like you and me (well, you, anyway) sit at home and turn their eyes skyward and humbly beseech the good graces of Our Lord and Saviour, ____________ (insert name of deity here). On the website, you get the opportunity to pray for various aspects of the presidential foreign policy plan, as well as additional military leaders, soldiers abroad, and the poor Iraqi innocents that chose to live in squalor directly underneath our laser-guided munitions. Apparently, it is their fault that they haven't overthrown their brutal dictator. I've decided to pray for Captain Wilbur C. Douglass, Chief Chaplain of the Coast Guard. He's fifth on the list of Additional Leaders to Pray For This Week. Since most of the other service branches are more likely to see action in the upcoming skirmish/armageddon, it would behoove us all to pray that the Coast Guard not be lost in the rush for glory.

Sample Prayer: Let us pray that the Coast Guard, under the spiritual guidance of Chief Chaplain Captain Wilbur C. Douglass, be allowed the dignity and grace of routing the Iraqi Navy with a show of spirited boarding, search and siezure, and boating safety lectures. Amen.

It is free to join, but they really need a dropdown box for choice of deity. Otherwise, this organization may be viewed as exclusionary. I personally will be praying to the ACLU. Or Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds.