'You don't understand Korean culture'

This was published by The Korea Herald. I'm keeping it here for posterity. I do not own it, I did not write it, and I'm not trying to profit from it. I'm just tickled pink to be have my name (or at least my moniker) in print.

'I think foreigners do have a right to speak about problems in Korea
and to address sensitive issues from our own perspectives.
At the most basic level we are invested in this society, even if for only

a short time, and we pay taxes,

function as consumers,
participate in local communities,

and teach local children.'

- Brian Deutsch

In 2007 and 2008, in a span of 12 months, seven school children from Jeollanamdo died in traffic accidents. Suncheon-based teacher Brian Deutsch found it interesting how educators mobilized their students to protest American beef imports, but said little about traffic safety.

He wrote an opinion piece for the Korea Times titled "Rallies Have Little to Do with Food Safety."

In the piece Deutsch, an American, wrote: "Encouraging students to skip school to attend these candlelight vigils and rallies is not only inappropriate and outside the bounds of a teacher-student relationship, but it detracts attention from more pressing issues students are facing.

"Namely, they are far more likely to be killed on field trips or while walking home from school than by contracting mad cow disease, which as of yet has claimed no Korean or Korean-American lives."

Add that to a previous piece about the use of Nazi imagery in a Korean company's skin care ad, both of which were used in a modified version for the Gwangju News magazine, and Deutsch had attracted the attention of the netizens.

Who told you to talk, foreigner?


The internet campaign was led by a Gwangju native, Kim Hong-su. He started two blogs to counter Deutsch's stories and posted the American's name, blog url, and Facebook profile online in Daum cafes along with an accompanying letter. He also posted the names of Deutsch's schools and advised people to direct their complaints there. Deutsch went to the police but was told they were too busy.

Kim's message was written in Korean, and it was then translated on Deutsch's blog.

"What galls me the most is that these foreigners are growing fat and rich in Korea teaching their native tongue while making fun of the same people who are paying their wages," he wrote. "I need your (other Koreans') help in correcting this kind of behaviors (sic) from foreigners. I would like you to e-mail the editor and those of you who are local to Suncheon should track down this Brian Deutsche (sic) and find out which school or hagwon he teaches in. You can assist me when you find that information. I seek full and unfettered cooperation in my campaign to correct this foreigner's behavior. If we cannot do that to a foreigner on our own soil, how can we hope to correct the behavior of U.S. President Bush?"

Kim was contacted for comment in this article, and responded via e-mail.

"Before you try to learn about Korea via a Korean, you should learn Korean and ask the questions in Korean first," he wrote.

The Gwangju News is operated by the Gwangju International Center. When Deutsch consulted with the staff at the GIC, they told him they didn't like his articles, either. They didn't like the Nazi story or the traffic safety story, and they also didn't like the story he wrote about the death of a 14-year-old American boy, Michael White, who drowned in a sauna near Daegu.

Staffers told him the magazine was publishing stories that were too foreigner-intensive. On top of that, the publisher of the magazine told Deutsch that they might as well close down the magazine if it wasn't going to be appreciated by foreigners.

Deutsch quit the magazine, but his troubles weren't over.

'Generalizations are kind of fun'


Anyone can be a blogger. It takes minutes to sign-on to Blogger or Wordpress, then you can put up a few pictures, spew some vitriol and start checking the site meter for hits. While living overseas it's a good way to stay in touch with friends and family. The days of the mass e-mail are over - they can check the blog for live updates.

It's common for English teachers and other non-Koreans to start up a blog. Most of their sites die a slow death, however. It's difficult to update often enough to keep readers; what seemed like a good idea at the time can easily turn into a bore.

Still, there a few prominent expatriate blogs in Korea that receive a lot of hits. The six we are interested in here are: The Marmot's Hole, Scribblings of the Metropolitician, The Grand Narrative, Ask a Korean!, Roboseyo and Deutsch's - Brian in Jeollanam-do.

The Marmot's Hole is run by Robert Koehler. It is the most heavily trafficked blog of the foreigner-in-Korea set. Koehler, with the help of a handful of guest bloggers, posts news items, analysis, entertainment and pictures of old buildings. Koehler is American, the editor-in-chief of SEOUL magazine, and has been operating the blog for five years.

"Our role is to offer commentary and criticism from a fresh, outside perspective," Koehler said. "That being said, it's easy to overthink these things - personally, I don't think the 'foreign observer' has any special role beyond that of any observer, which is to say, relaying observations he or she has made."

"All countries are open for criticism. The question that really needs to be asked is whether anyone should take what we write seriously. For the most part, the answer to that would be no.

"Most of us are guys with too much time on our hands who like to bitch about things we don't really understand. Which, granted, would make our uneducated rants little different from much of what passes for commentary on Korea, Western or Korean.

"I have a warning on my blog asking readers not to generalize from anything they read on my site, but still, many seem to do it anyway. Besides, generalizations are kind of fun - nationalistically hysterical Koreans, pot-smoking over-sexed English teachers, condescending expats - who doesn't love 'em. It's all a question of how seriously you take what you read."

Do you see what I see?


Scribblings of the Metropolitician comes from Michael Hurt. The blog is a mishmash of social criticism, international politics, pop culture and comments on Korean media. Hurt first came to Korea from America as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in 1994. After earning his master's in ethnic studies from the University of California-Berkeley, he came back in 2002 to finish his dissertation research on Korean nationalism. Now in his eighth year in Korea, he edits the Korea Journal and teaches social issues at Honguk University.

Both Koehler and Hurt brought up Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who wrote "Democracy in America" in the first half of the 19th century. Both men consider this book a great commentary on the United States.

"The fact that we're foreigners shouldn't disqualify us. I look at American social commentary and social criticism and some of our sharpest and best social critics have been foreigners, people coming from a foreign perspective," Hurt said.

"We have eyes, we have ears. We can read your newspapers. We read what you read. We have access to your information.

"I pay taxes, I buy (things), I live here, so why do I have any less say than you do?

"Why would I put all this effort, why would I even care, or put myself out there, why would I do this if I didn't actually give a (expletive)?"

We're not that different


New Zealander James Turnbull runs The Grand Narrative. He calls it "An irreverent look at social issues." Much of his work deals with Korean advertising and media as well as social commentary. In his eighth year in Korea, Turnbull teaches English in Busan.

"I find the notion that only Koreans are 'permitted' to speak about Korean problems simply absurd," he said. "That isn't to say that all foreigners' opinions on them are equally valid, but if the roles were reversed then I'd be quite happy to hear the opinions of, say, a Korean person who had spent some time in New Zealand and who made an active effort to study and know New Zealand society and learn the language. In fact, probably more so than someone who was merely born there.

"The majority of netizens aside, I've actually found a significant number of Koreans to feel much the same way about the opinions of non-Koreans.

"Koreans are not unique in readily dismissing the opinions of foreigners, but they do seem more defensive about foreign criticism than most. For that reason, it is very important to use Korean sources as much as possible.

"Another advantage to using and considering Korean-language sources as much as possible is that it makes you realize how much you may stereotype and generalize Koreans yourself without being aware of it.

"Without any Korean ability, foreigners are usually forced to rely on either the limited English language media or books for the bulk of their information, and both have problems: the former for often presenting a rose-tinted version of Korea to the world, and the latter for being quickly out of date in a country as rapidly changing as Korea."

Koehler also emphasized using the native tongue.

"Do it in Korean, and in a major Korean newspaper," Koehler said.

Writing complaints in English may be "cathartic," he said, but it does no good.

Why do foreigners complain so much?


Another pair of bloggers, a Korean man living in America (Ask a Korean!) and a Canadian teacher in Seoul (Roboseyo) put together a two-part series dealing with foreigners' criticism and social commentary.

Ask a Korean! wrote, "many complaints from expats that the Korean has seen show a certain level of ignorance. This is not to say that complaining expats are dumb. It is only to say that were they more aware of certain things about themselves and about Korea, they would not be complaining as much, and the pitch of their complaints would not be as strident.

"Expats rarely venture out of large cities in Korea, and they only really interact with Koreans who are fluent in English. Do you know what makes a Korean fluent in English? Money, tons and tons of it. So not only are expats insulated from older Koreans, they are also insulated from younger Koreans who are poorer. What kind of understanding about Korea could an expat possibly have with this kind of limited exposure?"

About social critics, Roboseyo wrote, "Naming a problem is the first step to solving it, and maybe some of these critics are attempting to be a legitimate part of that process - that is, they're writing because they want to see Korea become a better place - in which case, Koreans who are upset about non-Koreans criticizing Korea need to stop and take a careful look at why that upsets them, because the problem does not lie in the complainers or their intentions.

"To be fair, sometimes the social critics' intentions are good, but their methods are poor: the sometimes bitter and mean tone of certain critics can be hurtful, and as I've said to some of my friends who complain about Korea with a rude or condescending tone: 'when you talk so harshly, even when you're right, you're wrong, and even if you win the argument, you still lose.'"

'You don't understand Korean culture'

Deutsch plans to continue writing for the Korea Times and updating his blog.

"I like doing it and I like staying on top of current events and discussions. On the one hand I totally recognize that I'm being paid to teach, not to think, and I say that without being cynical at all. Most people couldn't care less about the particular issues foreigners face, whether in the classroom or in society at large, and hearing a foreigner talk about them probably isn't very interesting.

"I've also had to question how welcome those opinions are. My colleagues themselves told me that it was not my place to opine on what are called 'sensitive issues,' and a recent letter to the editor in the Gwangju News suggested that I, and foreigners, mind their own business and not worry about Korean internal affairs.

"But I think foreigners do have a right to speak about problems in Korea and to address sensitive issues from our own perspectives. At the most basic level we are invested in this society, even if for only a short time, and we pay taxes, function as consumers, participate in local communities, and teach local children.

"Moreover these issues are so prickly because they're not black and white. While it might be unpleasant for some Koreans to hear the other side of the story, I don't think it's inappropriate for it to be raised.

"Our opinions are often dismissed with a line about 'you don't understand Korean culture.' Often this comes when something unpleasant happens to a foreigner, or when a foreigner expresses an opinion disagreeable to the Korean listener. It's well beyond my abilities to explain why this happens, but it's patronizing and inappropriate. I do believe that although foreigners can sometimes dwell on the negative when writing or talking about Korea, I think taking a critical look shows an interest in the host culture that can be healthy if applied properly.

"I realize that a greater measure of tact is necessary when addressing sensitive issues and when trying to foster conversations across cultural boundaries, but even with a lot of coddling I remain cynical that people are ready to hear what we have to say just yet.

"I would love to have Koreans who disagree with me take the time to point out their objections, rather than simply railing against a foreigner who dares to publish something against the grain. And I would love to have Koreans spend more time trying to educate us about their culture and their views, then, since so much energy is spent telling us how wrong and misinformed our opinions are."

Deutsch said he was asked by his school to drop the case against Kim, and that his job was also placed in jeopardy because of what he has written.

Brian in Jeollanamdo: http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com

The Marmot's Hole: http://www.rjkoehler.com

Scribblings of the Metropolitician: http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop

The Grand Narrative: http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com

Ask a Korean!: http://askakorean.blogspot.com

Roboseyo: http://roboseyo.blogspot.com

By Bart Schaneman

(bschaneman@heraldm.com)

Wowie Zowie Seoul is Great in the Spring

Before we get into the "I Love Seoul" stuff, if you have the bandwidth. . .

This is a stop-motion animated military history of the USA's last century, as told through indigenous foods from the countries involved in the conflicts. Keep your eyes open for the Korean Kimchi, Vietnamese spring rolls, French Croissants, British Fish and Chips, German sausage and Pretzels, and various middle-eastern Kebabs, Israeli Bagels and Matzah, Russian Stroganoff, and more! My favourite is their portrayal of the US/Russian arms race.

Amazing.

Soundtrack time: Hit play and read on. Band: The Notwist

Song: Pick Up The Phone: great song, really cool video, too.

This sign was in the COEX Mall: I found Jesus (read the lettering)
Turns out he's a fashion designer from Apgujeong (a high-fashion district in Seoul).
So, um, I guess you don't have to worry about me, despite all my essays about atheism: I found Jesus in a shopping mall, so I figure I'll be OK. (Didn't buy anything there, though. . . hope that doesn't come back and haunt me later.)

The Kebab guy I told you about before now serves lamb. Boy it's great having lamb around the corner from my workplace.

There's a bar in the Daehangno district titled "cocaine". It's a blues and jazz bar. . .no idea if they serve any specialty products with their cocktails.

Feel hungry?

Wanna eat a tourist?

I wrote about the Yellow Dust from China. . . if you don't think it's bad, take a look at this (black, I swear) car.

The yellow dust is pretty gross.On the way home on Sunday night, after spending all day with Girlfriendoseyo, I came across these cats, dressed funny, each holding a different mathematical symbol (+ - ÷ × =), and handing out umbrellas covered with math symbols, too. I have no idea what they're selling, but if you offer me a free umbrella, buddy, I'll take it, and a picture for good measure.

Rule of thumb for selecting an After-School English Academy: If the name of the academy includes words that are neither English nor Korean, you can probably find a better one.



On Sunday, Girlfriendoseyo and I met and took a walk around Samchungdong. We had a nice talk about some of the things going on in her life, and her evening appointment unexpectedly canceled, so suddenly we had a free afternoon! The weather this weekend has been absolutely smashing. The sky was eggshell blue, and everybody stowed their winter hats and gloves, their coat linings and boots, and got their lazy fannies outside! Spring jacket weather is my personal favourite: I love seasons!


We walked up the mini-mountain (what should we call those? More than a hill, but less than a mountain? A mountette? a mountello? a mountita? mountebank?), and at the top there was a wall called the Seoul Seongwak (서울성곽) that the old kings built to guard against invasion. It's a remarkable, and totally underappreciated bit of Seoul's local heritage: it stretches right across the northern end of downtown Seoul, from east to west, almost totally intact. It even remains defensible, as it's on a mountain ridge, from an elevated position, and as you can see, a few modern military modifications have been made to the original wall.


It still looks pretty daunting from the low side (I sure wouldn't want to attack it.)


You can see the difference in masonry skill here: one part of the wall was built by Sejong the Great (below)
And the next part was built by a later King (forget his name; too lazy to look it up). You can see how the rocks are much more even, and fit together more smoothly. Girlfriendoseyo pointed out the difference in stone-cutting, and the seam was pretty plain to see.

On the other side of the wall, we came into this old, old neighbourhood behind one of Korea's oldest universities (Sungkyunkwan University), where Girlfriendoseyo lived during some of her student days. It was full of varied little shops, uneven roads, and alleys that looked like this:
Now understand: Seoul doesn't all look like that. In fact, to my dismay, more and more neighbourhoods like these are getting bulldozed and replaced with this:

So when I DO come across one of these rambling little corners, I appreciate it all the more these days. Maybe I'm just being sentimental but I think these neighbourhoods reflect Korea somehow more accurately than rows of apartment blocks like cenotaphs.

Buildings piled up and stacked behind eachother all the way up the hillside. I have NO idea how they built them, and I'm certain that no urban planners had any say in what did or didn't get built.

Here's the panorama of the valley below my spot on the hillside. The prevalence of brick buildings (notice the red colour) is a sure indicator that this is an older neighbourhood.

The wires spattering all over the sky is another sign that this area wasn't drawn out by any urban planner.

I love stairwells like this. Notice the old man in gray carrying something down the uneven steps.

There's girlfriendoseyo. She also really enjoyed the neighbourhood, but doesn't want to live there. I asked why not, and she answered "access by fire trucks".

She wins.
This is my favourite of the pictures: look at all the layers and angles and different building styles: as one of my students likes to say, "Happy Chaos."

Yeah, if the poorer or older Koreans are going to live somewhere, I hope neighbourhoods like this stick around: better than the alternative.



So anyway, I had a fantastic weekend; can you tell?

(PS: Don't forget to help out Bill Kapoun's family; they're still on the hook for a buttload of hospital fees.)

The Burn Victim, Bill Kapoun

Bill Kapoun, the English teacher who was burned in his fire-trap apartment, has passed away. His burn injuries were just too much.

You can still help: Bill's family still has a buttload of medical bills to pay here in Korea. You can click here for info on how to send a bit of help to the family.

Our thoughts and condolences go out to Bill's family and friends. I'm sure a lot of people are praying for them right now: this story's been all over the Korean expat community, and while I wish it could have ended better, it's heartening to see the expats in Korea stand up and show their measure in caring.

Perv.

Perv

(snicker)
p.s.: Amanda Beard pics in: playboy and FHM.

Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins: Part three: The Straw Man We Gave Him

Soundtrack: just hit play and start reading.
REM: Losing My Religion


To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

I strongly recommend you read my summary/explanation Dawkins' his attack on Christian morality, here. I did not include it in the essay, for the sake of length and aesthetics, but it is important/worthwhile to read, and know what I'm talking about, and my basis for the assertions I make here.

I read Dawkins' book carefully: I sure wasn't going to let him get away with anything, when he's taking aim, among other things, at the first twenty-two years of my life, and the better part of the following six, most of my moral fiber, as well as my Dad's livelihood. I was looking, and expecting, to find the straw man argument -- a logical error where someone misrepresents an opponent's position.

And oh, I had my radar set on ultra-sensitive! I would sniff out the first hint of straw like a bloodhound with hayfever! And. . . Dawkins looked ready to offer a straw man. In Chapter Nine, he describes a Jewish child being kidnapped (rescued) by the Catholic Church, taken from his home to be raised by good Catholics instead of by hellbound Jesus-killers (according to them). Now, the problem is, this happened in the late 1800s, and after the ground-rules he himself established in Chapter Seven (about the moral zeitgeist, and the necessity to refrain from judging other eras according to modern values), Dawkins' offering an example of religious fervour gone haywire from bygone times is a red herring. "Yes!" I thought, "Next he's going to start referencing the Inquisition and the Crusades, and then we'll have him: all we have to do is answer, 'Well times have changed, you know; we don't do that kind of stuff anymore.' " Every bickering couple knows that bringing up the past just makes things ugly, and only hurts your case. Never give up the high ground!

I had my "the scientist doth protest too much" defense at the ready, tucked in my sleeve and ready to lay on the table decisively and gleefully!

But then Dawkins did something. . . not entirely unexpected, but much more problematic for the defense. He didn't name-drop the Crusades or the Inquisition, except to mention that he wouldn't unfairly dredge up times when religion was a mere excuse for manipulative, power-mad or hateful people to puke their black souls all over whatever institution had given them power and leeway. Darn! He saw me coming, and refused to pull the cheap trick that would have given me the rhetorical high ground! Instead. . . (Mayday! Mayday!). . . he started drawing examples from mainstream religion in the last seven years!

Forget corrupt Medieval Popes and Bloody Mary and all the Reformation wars -- that stuff's easy to dismiss. Our man Dawkins planned to use relevant examples!

So instead of this:



he was using this:


(Ann Coulter is the most abrasive person I've ever seen.)

and this:


(Pat Robertson calling for Hugo Chavez to be assassinated.)

This would be harder than I thought. In fact, it shaped up as the worst-case scenario: he had a leg to stand on! His one example of the Church's immoral behaviour from times past (when the moral zeitgeist hadn't developed as far as it has now), got my hopes up, but the following pages and chapters chronicled examples of religious intolerance, clannishness, and extreme fundamentalism from our very own day and age. So many, and so sharp, it is shocking and dismaying.

From Salon.com, a few articles I spotted that kind of get at some of the problems:
October 23, 2007: "How Bush Wrecked Conservatism" -

"The Coulterization of The American Right"

"In Bush We Trust" -- GWB has attempted to set in place a theocracy

Soundtrack: Hit play and read.
Jim White: If Jesus Drove a Motorhome



Pastor Poposeyo called on Wednesday night, and we brushed on some of this, and then I veered away, saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that in my next post."

Here's the problem, dear readers.

Of all the spiritual and faithful people I know, I don't think any of them believe America, or any government, should be(come) a theocracy. Most of them bluster when they hear somebody lobbying to put creation into the science curriculum. They rankle when somebody says that the only proper place for a Christian woman is in the home, submitting humbly to her husband and head. Most of the Christian women I know don't wear floral prints, and none of them own any precious moments paraphernalia. They can't listen to Christian Talk Radio without squirming.

To a person, they agree that faith works best when tempered by sensitivity, humility, tact, and reason, and that it behooves each person of faith to build a workable framework by which they can be spiritual and intelligent, guided by faith and common sense, living integrated and edifying lives. Most of them try, in different ways, to develop their social consciousness and make the world better in practical ways. They volunteer, and sponsor acres of rain-forest and children in Afghanistan.

Problem is, these aren't the people jumping in front of TV cameras, representing the various faiths. Somehow, the media digs up the dumbest, most knee-jerk conservatives for their pundits and random interviewees, and make it look like Christian folk are all either gun totin' tabacca chewin', gay-hatin' furraner fearin' right-wing nuts, or Ann Coulter. Ditto for the other faiths. The Christian lobby's agenda is so different from the goals of the spiritual people I know personally, that it's a little startling to see them both described as Christian. The way the religious are portrayed in movies is even worse (case in point: I watched "There Will Be Blood" today;) but whose fault is it that screenwriters only have Pat Robertson to watch on TV as an example of "What Christians are like"?

Unfortunately, it is our fault. You see, we let those wingnuts speak for us. The moderate faithful, rather than kicking up a duststorm of our own, asserting our existence and saying "Hey! Not every Christian agrees with Jerry Falwell!" and getting behind the spokespeople who do, we quietly distance ourselves from the fundamentalist wingnuts, and the politicized, fundamentalist Christian Lobby. Oh, so quietly, we distance ourselves. We do not denounce them publicly so that it damages their credibility (and boosts ours) but quietly, so that nobody notices, and our silence is mistaken for tacit approval, or even assent.

As a result, instead of the Christan community marginalizing the crazies in-house, thus marking our turf and claiming a workable place in enlightened society, we have allowed them to bark and squeal, never complaining that they do not actually represent us. Because, in our complacency, we did not marginalize them, we have now been grouped with them, and marginalized by ever-growing tracts of the educated, democratic world.

In conclusion, the problem is not that Richard Dawkins uses a straw-man argument to discredit organized religion, dear readers; the problem is, we have given him the straw man, and it is not surprising, now that we have allowed the media and the intelligentsia to lump us all together, that we find ourselves under attack.

Dear, faithful readers, the moderates have dropped the ball, and now we are reaping what we allowed others to sow, as if on our behalf: we are losing our credibility, and our voice.

From the outside, this is how we look:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter, on 9/12/2001

I could go on, but even Dawkins is kind enough not to cite more of that kind of dreck in his book -- though he does tell you where you can find it.

All of us are being made to look smug, tribal, belligerent, interested (that is, angling for our own interests, rather than fighting for things like social justice), willfully ignorant, and (thanks, gay-bashers) hateful. Soon to be irrelevant, too if we keep on in this direction.

If Christians at large represented themselves, and supported moderate, sensible spokespeople, and leaned on the media for going with the unfair, cheap stereotypes instead of actual representatives, and meanwhile became the kind of wellspring of grace and love and acceptance, the powerful force fighting for justice and defending the helpless that religion has (at its best, during certain periods) been, then people would read Dawkins' attack and say, "Who is this clown, and where is he digging up his examples? I don't think he's ever met an actual Christian in his life!" instead of nodding their heads and thinking, "Yeah, I've seen/heard/read/met someone exactly like that." It is our fault that people do not. The dire truth, faithful readers, is that at this point, Dawkins IS right, far too often, and we need to get back to proving him wrong. Stay tuned for part 4: How.

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Balloons are cool, and Roboseyo's epic brain-farts!

Super Slow Motion is cool, too.



Brainfart 1: Girlfriendoseyo got tickets for us to see Harry Connick Jr. in Seoul on Thursday night. . . but I forgot to find out which Thursday night, so I rescheduled some evening classes and everything yesterday, and asked my lady "Where should we meet to see the show tonight?"
She replied: "Oh, that's NEXT Thursday, not this one."

I felt dumb.

Took the free evening, but I have to make up those classes.

Then, after enjoying my free evening, brain-fart number two:

Yesterday afternoon I took a much-needed nap (because of lost sleep due to a kind of sh*t happens situation I needed to deal with for Girlfriendoseyo). Then I forgot to set my phone's "backup alarm clock" back on my normal morning wakeup time. Then, going to bed, I forgot to set my "Plan A" alarm clock, too. I was woken by my phone ringing at 7:10, one of the school receptionists asked me, "Where are you? Your 7am class is waiting for you."

Big brainfart. I take a fair bit of pride in the job I do, so I felt pretty bad about that.

On the bright side, my students in my OTHER (not angry at me) classes told me I looked very healthy and well-rested this morning!

Don't forget: help this guy out! He might have a medivac back to the US available to him, but he needs to raise funds, fast.

Help a fella out

Bill Kapoun is an English teacher in Korea; there was a near-fatal fire in his apartment, and he got second and third degree burns all over his body.

Unfortunately, his school did not cover him under Korea's health insurance system, and are now shirking any responsibility for his medical care, leaving him up a creek without a paddle. He's gonna have a lot of bills to pay, and has nowhere to get the money, so his sister is organizing an online fundraising campaign. I don't know him, but I hope strangers'd do the same if it happened to me.

Go here and help him out.

Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins: Part two: Creation/Evolution, Science and Anti-intellectualism

For the sake of length, attention span, and aesthetics, I moved my summary of Richard Dawkins' explanation of darwinism/origins here. If you want more background, read up! If you think you can go it without, read on!

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.


"Jesus" by Velvet Underground -- one of my favourite VU songs.

A name came into my mind as I was thinking about this whole Creation/Evolution thing. See, Darwin is not the first scientist whose theory flew in the face of conventional theology. Let's think for a moment about Galileo:

In 1633 Galileo Galilei was imprisoned for publishing his theory that the earth rotated around the sun, rather than vice versa. This idea didn't fit with the way the church understood scripture at the time. However, the inquisition found it easier to throw one guy up against the wall than to re-think the arrangement of the heavens. For them, putting Galileo in the wrong through sheer force of "because I said so," was easier than going through all that thinking.

If we look at this with a little perspective, I’m sorry folks, but the creationist lobby flying in the face of all the cumulative scientific evidence just doesn't wash any better than those priests arguing to Galileo, “That can’t be! The bible says. . . “. Arguing for the six-day, young earth creation in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is a losing battle, and the more bitterly creationists fight it, the sillier all Christians ultimately look.

Now, we shake our heads and snicker at how short-sighted and self-serving Pope Urban VIII and Robert Cardinal Bellarmine were when they released the hounds on Galileo; we tut-tut that they should have been open-minded enough not to impede the march of science, we intone that such blatantly obvious truths, based on growing volumes of observable evidence, should have been given more weight. . .

And three hundred years from now, I have very little doubt that people will sniff and snort in the same way at George W. Bush and James Dobson and the Kansas School Board and whoever else is trying to get Intelligent Design on the science curriculum. (Heck, the Kansas School Board is already being mercilessly mocked, and it isn't even a decade!)

How is this any different, really? It's the same dilemma: it's less work to dismiss a new idea than to factor it into a new, workable framework, but folks, citing scripture to disprove Darwin only further undermines the intellectual credibility of all faith, and undermining our own credibility, in a world with a multitude of voices competing for attention, is the very, very last thing we want to do!

Just as the church, after Galileo, had to reinterpret and retool the way they understood the bible's account of Earth's place in the universe, the burden lies on us to be intellectually responsible and re-examine our approach to Genesis creation story. Falsely setting up faith and intelligence as mutually exclusive sets religion on a path toward total irrelevance, so a tactical retreat is in order: we are wasting energy and credibility on losing battles, and it would suit us better to get back to the areas where the church still CAN have influence in the world: feed hungry, clothe naked, help prisoners, defend the defenseless, fight for justice, so that even if people can't agree that the bible (or any other holy book) is scientific, they can agree that Christians (or any other believers), through tireless effort, are certainly making the world a better place.

And you know what else, folks? Faith SURVIVED Galileo. Big G's publications weren't an attack, and they only damaged the church exactly as much as the church leaders proved themselves ignorant and dogmatic in response to Galileo's attempt to learn more about God's Creation. Faith CAN survive Darwin too, if we're willing to re-think this whole origin thing with open minds.

I am afraid that, if fundamentalism runs unchecked (both here and in the Muslim world), religion will come to be seen as a politicized, rallying point for dogmatism, a point from which one guards against new ideas, rather than one vantage point from which one can survey all the various fields of knowledge in the world God (presumably) created. If this drawing-lines-in-the-sand, belief-over-evidence trend continues, religiousity will slowly become marginalized, viewed as anti-intellectual and (next after that) outright superstitious, and then (eventually) anachronistic, a leftover of “those dark, old superstitious days of the bloody religious wars." Richard Dawkins will be proven a prophet!

There has to be another way.

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Blogoseyo: Pictures!

(I'm Stickin' With You, by the Velvet Underground: Just hit play and read)

Every year, sometime in early march, it seems Korean winter gets one last kick at the can before spring begins to shine around the corner. Last year, late February was uncannily warm, and then March was one of the most bitterly, hawkishly cold months I've ever experienced; most years, that last gasp of winter comes in the form of bit, fat-flaked, fluffy snow (I've blogged about this before).

Every year, sometime in April or May, dust from the Gobi Desert blows away in the wind, and carries up into the atmosphere, choking provinces to the east, and turning the sky in Seoul yellow. It's called the "Yellow Dust" and, as clear-cutting increases wind-erosion in China, it's been starting earlier, and getting more frequent and severe. Many Koreans (especially the asthmatic and elderly) wear surgical facemasks during the yellow-dust, and are encouraged to stay home during severe alerts.

Now normally, snow in Korea is considered extremely romantic. You phone your girlfriend or boyfriend, go for a walk at night, practice catching it in your eyelashes and pretend you're in a music video or a teen movie montage. This year, though, we had an ugly intersection.

As you can see, the sky has this pallid haze -- the light is really odd during the yellow dust, a little like the hour before sundown, but not as warm. It looks to me like the kind of light you might have in a zombie movie, while the hero's walking around the city and going "why is it so empty?"

(I love bad zombie movies. This is funny. Really.)



But that was the colour of the sky, when the snow started falling.


Gross, ugly, sticky, yellow snow all clumpy with China's yellow dust, so that I didn't want to go out and play in it.


One more zombie clip: zombies doing yoga. They're funny, ya?



Other stuff I've spotted out and about: the frequent sight of people trying to meet their friends, standing on the partitions that stop cars from driving on the sidewalk, always makes me smile. I've done it myself.
"Can you see me now?"
"No."
"What about now? I'm standing on a post."

To celebrate my coworker Sonober finishing her contract, we went out to a tuna sushi restaurant and went all out. Wow, it was good.


Another tuna restaurant wants me to check their manu (Konglish contingent for the post)

On Valentine's Day, girlfriendoseyo took me to a really nice restaurant near her house, where they present the food beautifully. It's a great place, and the decor is fantastic (restaurants with real atmosphere are few and far here). They have picassos and. . . another really famous artist's paintings . . . on the walls.

And even the dishes are works of art.
This was a 300 year old stone cooking brick.

That's either really gross, or really cool. . . I'm opting for the latter.

In Insadong, last weekend (or maybe the one before) the sun finally broke out, and this guy decided to honour it with a few OMs.


This sign is really funny if you can read Korean: the restaurant name is "Beer Valley" but because of the way Hangeul (the korean alphabet) transliterates English words [there's no "V" in Korean, for one], the characters could just as easily read "Beer Belly" as "Beer Valley". Hee hee.

I like the delivery motor-trikes. Sometimes you see some unbelievable mode of transportation here. Once I saw this guy sitting at the front of a big wagon, with what might have been a lawn-mower engine welded next to the chair where he sat, with the engine lashed to his wagon's axle, chugging along right out on the road, totally vulnerable, totally blind, unable to go faster than a brisk walk, snarling traffic around him everywhere he went, proudly unapologetic. Fantastic!

Many restaurants have live fish tanks, where you can choose what you want to eat.
Plus, you get to gawk at ugly deep-sea fish with suckers on their bellies!


This guy's a palm-reader/fortune teller. His little stand looks quite pretty at night in the winter, when he pulls the plastic drape around it to keep the heat in.

Near my school is a bell that used to announce when the market opened and closed each day. Once or twice a week they have a changing of the guard ceremony there. They wear traditional clothing and fake facial hair. One thing I love about living in Korea, and in downtown Seoul, is I get to share a crosswalk with people like this sometimes.


What do you love about YOUR town?

Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins, Part 1: Parameters

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Soundtrack: hit play and start reading.

(King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 and 3, by Neutral Milk Hotel.)

What the hell are you doing, Roboseyo? Why do you zero in on the most controversial topic you can? I mean, everybody knows that religion, politics and money are poor form and bad manners at the dinner table.

True, true, it is bad manners. (Why do you have your computer at the dinner table, anyway?) But, you see, this guy named Richard Dawkins, a respected scientist, has written a book, and gained fame and notoriety by suggesting that, GASP! religion is not only wrong, but, to wit, the world would be better off if it disappeared entirely! (He even makes a case for why religion should not be privileged above other topics, and made "off limits" for any critical talk, thus, according to him, it's open season already, anyway.)

While my faith does not follow the exact pattern of my dad, Pastor Poposeyo, who sent me to Christian schools and everything (I chose the Christian university myself, though), my spiritual life is very important to me, and it enriches my life a lot (even if I don't talk about it often, and then only obtusely). Yeah, I've unorthodox'd the hell out of what I believed back in high school, but when old Dr. Dawkins publicly, articulately and unequivocally says the world would be better off if religion vanished completely, regardless of my mixed opinions and oddball postures, I stand up and take notice.

As humans often do when faced with a sustained and emphatic attack, many religious folks find it comfortable to write Richard Dawkins and his polemic off completely, either disregarding his rhetoric, or counterattacking.

However, I don't think either of those responses quite washes. If my colleague comes to me and says, "Hey, can we talk about the way you sing loudly to yourself and laugh randomly and suddenly at your inner monologue's jokes during office hours?" and I plug my ears and shout, "NANANANANANA" until she goes away, or call her a dum-dum-head and slap her with my brown-bag lunch, I'm not exactly winning friends, OR influencing people. Faced with a harsh criticism, I ultimately help my office-cred more when I try to look for the valid points beneath mean Sharon's* brutal honesty (even if she IS a shrew).

(Names have been changed to protect the privacy of shrew coworkers. Danielle.)

The hardest times in my life are the ones that taught me the most. . . might it not be the same with criticisms, that the harshest appraisal can teach me the most? Moreover, why WOULDN'T a group being roundly attacked listen carefully to those attacks. . . and rather than listening only to gather ammo for the counterattack, why not listen, and then root out the cause for those criticisms, and do away with them, pulling the rug right out from under such strident opponents? Scratch any criticism, however aggressive, however rude, and there's a teachable moment. . . if we listen. (Yes, I'm using first person plural to refer to the huddled hordes of spiritual people; hope you don't mind.)

Iron sharpens iron. Accountability helps me become a better person, and by the same token, I believe organized religions would be better served by listening humbly to Richard Dawkins' intelligent and not ungrounded attacks, than by simply ignoring or condemning him. Personally, I think Dawkins' book (and Christopher Hitchens' book, etc,) is a wake-up call of the highest order, friends, and urgent as indigestion! Whether he's right about everything or not, whether his information is all accurate and fair might be debatable, but what cannot be argued is that THIS is what modern religious practice and culture looks like to an outside observer, and THAT, dear readers, is a sobering thought.



My discussion of Richard Dawkins' attack upon Christendom and religiondom in all its stripes and shades, will come in four parts. This, the first one, will basically only outline the reason I'm writing, and what I am and am not trying to do with this series. The next one will deal with what Dawkins says about origins, and the way religions have responded to scientific claims about origin. The third one will deal with Dawkins' direct attacks on organized religion and practice in the second half of his book, and how I think religious leaders ought to respond to them. The final one will discuss, "what next" -- what is the outlook for the future of organized religion, in light of the attacks and criticisms discussed in the first three parts of the essay.

Parameters and Disclaimers:

So I read Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"; I read it with an open mind, because if you've made up your mind what you plan to think about a book before even reading it, why waste your time? I headed in ready to be convinced (if he presented a convincing case), but also carefully attuned for bullocks (if he misstepped). If you're not willing to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt, you probably won't agree with most of the rest of what I say here, so kindly move on. (Here is as good a place as any.)

In this series,

1. I AM discussing organized religion at large. To do this, I will paint with a broad brush. These are generalizations, and OF COURSE I know that not all religious people act in the way I describe; however, when a critic like Mr. Dawkins sees what he sees when he looks in from the outside, it means that TOO MANY religious people ARE acting in the way I describe (if they weren't, Dawkins would have no reason to aim his big guns at religion, and would have picked on somebody else, like maybe nationalists, or capitalists, cheese-eaters, or SUV drivers).

2. I AM dealing with material Richard Dawkins discusses in his book "The God Delusion" -- I may refer to a few other books. I strongly recommend you read this book, if you are not sure what you think about this topic, or if you are VERY sure what you think: an unchallenged victory is without honour, and an unchallenged belief is vulnerable both to attack AND manipulation. If somebody can recommend an intelligent, well-written and persuasive defense of God and religiousity, please cite it in the comment board! There are other books both for and against Christianity, faith in general, and God, but I haven't read them, so we'll just have to keep the focus narrow, to indulge my ignorance and laziness. (I do recommend "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller, a defence of Darwinism written by a scientist who is also a devout Christian.)

3. I AM discussing religion as it is practiced in modern society; this won't be a philosophical or theological discussion; it will be a discussion of current practice and attitudes toward religion, as seen by a careful and interested observer (your friendly neighbourhood Roboseyo). The practice is the interpretation and embodiment of a religion's beliefs; the texts might show what we want to be, but the actions show what we are. As such, I am not here to discuss what Paul, or Jesus, or Mohammed said about religion, nor how I personally am spiritually fed; I am here to discuss how religion is practiced by its followers today, and how it appears to outsiders.

As THIS GUY says (about Islam, this time) here, "People say 'you can't judge islam by its followers' but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers" -- nobody cares what the playbook looks like if the team can't win on the field. Or as one might say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the recipe.

4. I AM trying to offer a look at current religious controversies that will be interesting to non-religious outsiders, and challenging to religious readers.

5. I AM trying to discuss the organized religions in general (because Dawkins' attack is a general attack on organized religions); however, like him, I was raised in a Christian family, so that's what I know. Some of my comments may be a little Church-0-centric, out of ignorance of the finer details of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., not because I think that they are irrelevant. Hopefully the principles I discuss are broad enough that they can be applied to other groups as well. Also: I live in Korea, and come from North America, so a lot of my examples discuss the North American and Korean church; this is not meant as a snub to Europe, South Asia, or anywhere else, but a simple concession that I don't know as much about them.

Also, in this series,

I am NOT trying to definitively prove God exists.

I am NOT trying to definitively prove God does not exist.

I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of one religion over another.

I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of science over religion, or vice versa.

I am NOT attacking you, personally, or your beliefs (really, I swear).

I am NOT ignoring the great variety of different ways people practice religion, and saying every religious person is the same.

I am NOT saying I approve of the strident, and some say shrill way Dawkins attacks religion.

As I said before, and as King Solomon (may have) said long before me, "Iron sharpens iron" -- clear, focused, intellectually vigorous thought begets more clear, focussed, intellectually vigorous thought, and right or wrong, Dawkins has given me a great deal of intelligently and vigorously argued thoughts about God and religion. This WILL sharpen my own thinking, trimming the fat of superstition away, and leaving only the muscular integrity of tested belief, and that, dear readers, is a good thing, no matter how you slice it.

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Oh no. He's talking about religion again: The H-Bomb

Cake. Sheep go to heaven. Goats go to hell.


So, I read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins last week. It was really interesting, and I'm working on an essay series titled, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins" that will appear on the blog in several parts. If god talk is too much for you, I'll try to intersperse it with normal blogoseyo stuff, so it doesn't get too heavy.

Dawkins gave me a lot of food for thought, and stirred up a bunch of stuff I've had on my mind before, too.

Here's one interesting point. This wasn't in Dawkins, it was triggered by something I read here (point 10), which has been turning around in my head for a while.

I used to say "nobody flew airplanes into buildings to prove The Beatles are better than the Rolling Stones."

It was my way of saying "Religion is important. God is important. Don't dismiss it too lightly." Yeah, heart-poisoning hate, and a bunch of geopolitical yuk played its role, but in the box "reason for killing innocents" on their application for heaven, Osama's hijackers wrote, "Defending our Religion from the Infidel". So why is it, I thought, that when religion is on the table, the stakes get frighteningly, murderously high.

The answer is complex, but the theological part of it is simple.

Heaven and hell, grasshopper. Just so simple, polarized so quick. No middle ground can ever exist between two people who each honestly believe the other is going to hell.

See, if I say "I like avocado salad" and Robby-Bill-O, that charming hyuk from the boonies, says, "I like roast squirrel," we can go on our merry ways, cheerfully thinking, "To each his own."

But if I say "I like avocado salad, and you can go to hell if you don't!" and Robby-Bill-O, that ignint backwoods redneck says, "If you don't like roast squirrel, you can go straight to hell for all I care," it gets a little harder to let our differences slide without contesting the point. Especially when he's an uneducated redneck just parroting what his momma taught him, who never learned to think for himself the way I did in college. He can't even spell intransigent!

However, with religious talk, that's EXACTLY what happens. If my friend Ahmed says "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet," and I say, "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever shall believe may not perish, but shall have eternal life," the implication/assumption, "I'm going to heaven because I believe this" is there, not far from the surface. A little deeper underneath, "and if you don't, you aren't," is often tied on like a free sandpaper sample with my moisturizing lotion set. Those undertones have been known to complicate interfaith dialogue, yo.

My man Yusuf Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) says "You can't bargain with the truth" in his song, "In the end."


It's a beautiful, light pop song, catchy and hummable, but the posture he strikes: "you can't bargain with the truth" is pretty inflexible; the song's actual message, packaged in this sound is like a brick in a fluffy pillowcase.

Two points come up because of this:

1. When neither side can supply compelling, empirical evidence, opposing truth claims kind of cancel each other out: all we can really, finally finish on is "well, you'll see after you die!" -- decision deferred. Seeing as nobody's come back from the dead and said, "Yeah, hey everyone, the Hindus had it right all along, and you're all coming back as rhino buttworms for fighting so much", we're back where we started, with my word against yours. Each tradition has a case for their truth claims, many followers, HUGE repositories of teachings, arguments, and anecdotes to support them, and all we finally finish with is several camps shouting what amounts to, "Is so!" "Is not!" "Oh yeah? You'll see!" "No, YOU'LL see!" in a see-saw with makes both sides look a bit small, when there are, you know, hungry mouths to feed and prisoners to visit and aid organizations to support and people being oppressed in all kinds of ways around the world.

2. The promise of heaven and the threat of hell, in the absence of the aforementioned empirical evidence, will not convince a rational thinker who does not already believe what I am telling them. Bringing heaven and hell into a conversation with a non-religious person pulls very little weight.

As this guy (same one I linked to earlier) pointed out, in rational discourse, one does not answer a question with a threat.
"Why should I agree with your doctrine of atonement?"
"Because you'll go to hell if you don't."

Because I can't prove that I'm right until we both die, that statement reads as a non sequitur, and makes further discussion impossible, just as much as
"Why should I vote socialist instead of conservative?"
"Because I'll punch you in the throat if you don't."

By the same token, the offer of heaven is unsupportable, except through reading from a book that my bud isn't convinced yet is true, and maybe anecdotes that he wasn't there to witness.

"Why should I come to church with you?"
"So you can come to heaven!"

is tantamount to
"Why should I sign this petition?"
"Because I'll give you a cookie." (admittedly, with much higher stakes, though)

Where the truth of an assertion is unprovable, incentives and disincentives to agreeing do not change the unprovability of said assertion.

Religions need to find a new way to legitimize their claims, and also to contradict their critics: if nothing else, this heaven and hell talk is a rhetorical dead-end. It also leaves religious proselytizers/apologists vulnerable as an inverted hedgehog to the old trap, where my non-religious friend asks me, "So do you think I'm going to hell, then?"
I have to either answer, "Yes." and piss off my bud, "No," and make it sound like I waffle on the very thing I want her to believe, or dodge, leaving myself open to the "You don't know. You CAN'T know" objection.

All I can really say is, "Here's the information, here's what I think, and like my man Yusuf Islam says, we'll all find out in the end". . . and then keep humble, because it might be ME who's wrong! It might be better to let God decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and as tiny finite humans, respectfully step away. These days, when somebody asks me about heaven/hell topics, I answer, "Not mine to decide." Yeah, it's nice when somebody says, "I agree with your positions on X issue. You seem like a good Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/fillintheblank" -- but as far as I know, God doesn't ask for reference letters when separating the sheep from the goats.

So, as I hope I've demonstrated, playing the heaven and hell card is unfruitful at best, when dealing with someone who doesn't believe, and won't be convinced without evidence, and incendiary at worst, when dealing with someone who DOES believe in them, but passionately disagrees on how to get there.



Now don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in Heaven or Hell. Go ahead and believe in it, and even go ahead and play the heaven/hell card in a religious discussion, but recognize that it's taking you out of the realm of rational discourse and into the muddy waters of unsupportable faith-based belief. If you're comfortable starting sentences with "I believe that..." instead of "We can see that...", delve away. . . but don't expect to convince Richard Dawkins.

In fact, for the sake of good manners and mutual benefit in interfaith and faith/non-faith dialogues, we might be better served not to play the heaven and hell cards at all, unless we're honest enough to admit that the only support we have is our interpretation of the book our conversation partners haven't necessarily accepted as the absolute truth (and which they may interpret differently anyway), and using it is essentially a rhetorical molotov cocktail that boils down to "I'm right because I said I'm right, OK?", and turning the whole conversation from a discussion to an argument.

But religion IS important, right? I mean, remember what you said about the airplanes back in the beginning? Sure, it's important, but the airplanes bring us back to another important point. Flying airplanes into buildings didn't automatically make Osama's truth-claims right OR wrong. It's time to admit that the actions of a faith's adherents, though sincere, do not prove the TRUTH of their convictions, only the depth and type. Cutting off my finger because I believe the world is flat doesn't make me right; it only makes me a fanatic. Recognizing this distinction is another step toward an actual, fruitful interfaith dialogue. A million pilgrims walking the Camino trail in Spain does no more to prove Christianity's truth than a million Muslims doing the hajj in Saudi Arabia; it is a touching demonstration of devotion, but it doesn't actually change the facts under discussion.



Just because the worship of Isis and Amon-ra led to the building of the pyramids and the sphinx does not mean they deserve a continued following, if their beliefs and practices are shown to be superstitious, irrational, or harmful. This "what have you done for me lately/how do you like me NOW?" crucible swiftly removes history from relevance in discussion of the clash of cultures. It is not relevant that Muslims in the 8th to 12th centuries led a blossoming of study that influenced pretty much every field we know, any more than it is relevant that Michaelangelo's greatest works were all on religious themes. The question is, today, right now, is a religion's practice producing and encouraging the long-term sustainability of humanity, reconciliation and the kinship of all humans, or is it fostering divisiveness and scorn and tribalism, RIGHT NOW? Wiping the slate clean and looking at things as they are instead of as they were might be a breath of fresh air on this whole stagnant debate/culture clash. Having wiped the slate clean, things look rough: this is how the religious look to some outsiders, and they're publishing books, and getting on TV, and spreading their ideas, which shows that they're finding others who agree with them, too.



That's a serious wake-up call, dear readers, and dear believers.

When you boil away all the historical baggage, the crusades and Constantine's christendom and the inquisition and the demonization of the west as "the great Satan", when you close the holy books with mutually exclusive truth-claims, when we stop being afraid to say stuff that might offend someone, and simply judge the tree by its fruit, well, then we're at least ready to discuss the current relevance of organized religion, and whether it is a help or a hindrance to a more enlightened world, rather than running aground on the kind of intractability and dogmatism that hinders discussion when heaven, hell, holy texts and absolute truth-claims come into play.

On those terms, right now, according to Richard Dawkins, it isn't, and the fact he can say that and support it doesn't necessarily make him completely right (I'll get to that), but the fact he says it at all, and can support it at all, and especially the fact that he's found a LOT of support, and has sold a buttload of books, should be a bucket of icewater in the face of religious leaders around the world, who were so busy fighting their culture-wars that they never noticed, in the zeitgeist of the times, it seems that people are starting to get sick of their barking about the same old things, and refusing to listen to dissenting opinions.

And as we go, let's not forget, too, that if somebody DID fly an airplane into a building to prove the Stones were better than the Beatles, it would not automatically win the argument, it would not elevate the topic to any degree of reverence (or should not). How does it help the discussion, OR change rock history, if Beatlemaniacs become afraid to declare their loyalty, and nervous to whistle "Love Me Do" in public, for fear of offending those militant Jaggerites and Richardsonians, who want "Satisfaction" played instead of the national anthem at sports games? To cease further discussion of beatles vs. stones because of such a demonstration, or for fear of reprisals, is a kind of anti-intellectualism that shrivels under scrutiny, but robs credibility from everyone involved in the dialogue before it goes. To declare a topic off limits because of a threat amounts to intellectual terrorism -- surpression of discourse fits better in a Stalinist regime than a modern democracy. So yeah, let's be ready to talk about this. Let's be ready to disagree, even, but let's not send people to hell for disagreeing, let's listen to each other, and let's actually be willing to have our minds changed.

(PS: Yeah, sure, I do believe in heaven, and wouldn't want anyone to stop on account of me, and I'm sure Mom's up there now, having a grand old time, but I'm not ready to stick my neck out anymore and tell anybody that THEIR way of getting there is wrong, because I'm not God, and such talk will never help religious culture get along peaceably and positively with those in society who respectfully disagree. -- if they respectfully disagree, and we disrespectfully disagree (by telling them they're going to hell), who has the moral high ground?)

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
Go to the table of contents. Go to the next essay.