Adorning the Driller

The Golden Driller is a 76-foot-tall statue of an oilfield worker that's stood at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds for most of my life. "Golden" is probably not the most accurate description of the big guy's color, but then, "Mustardy Driller" isn't a very catchy moniker, is it? Whatever color he is, he's a Tulsa icon. (And as I just now discovered, the Driller is also the official monument of the state of Oklahoma. He isn't included on the official "Oklahoma State Icons" page, but is listed in the "Oklahoma Emblems" section of this "Welcome to Oklahoma" pamphlet.)

As you can imagine, dressing a 76-foot-tall statue is no minor feat, but it can be done. A local radio station drapes the Driller in a tent-sized T-shirt every year during the state fair, and now the Oklahoma Scottish Festival wants to draw attention to their annual event and give His Goldenness a touch of class by draping him in the world's largest kilt. And we, his adoring fans, get to decide which tartan (pattern) will be used! Will it be the official City of Tulsa tartan? The Johnnie Walker tartan (the corporate tartan for Johnnie Walker Whisky)? Your own clan's tartan? You can buy as many votes as you want for only $1 apiece; the tartan with the most votes at 4:00 PM CST on June 1st, 2011 (that's tomorrow!) will win. I chipped in $10 to vote for the official tartan of my family. It's a small clan that hasn't a hope of winning, but whatever pattern prevails, it'll be cool to see the Driller in a kilt.

Fortunately the Driller already has permanently-installed trousers over which the kilt can be wrapped. Yeah, "regimental" is the way that true Scotsmen wear their kilts, but I don't think the Driller's a Scot, and that line from "Oklahoma!" about "the wind [that] comes sweepin' down the plain" is all too accurate.

Squaring Off

"In the world, but not of it" is a mindset that I associate with evangelical Christians, but it's not exclusive to them; Hasidic ("ultra-Orthodox") Jews live by the same philosophy. Most Hasidic Jews live in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, but some choose to live together in isolated communities so they can minimize their exposure to behaviors and clothing styles that might lead to "inappropriate" thoughts. Secular influences like television, non-religious music, and the Internet are strongly discouraged. Males and females are expected to remain physically separate in public places, to the point of walking on different sides of the street in some Hasidic communities. Hasidim dress very modestly; women are expected to cover almost all skin other than their faces and hands, and to wear a wig, headscarf, or hat. (The Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel was criticized by non-residents last year for putting up signs asking outsiders to "dress and behave in a modest way" while visiting the community.) The lifestyle sounds unbearably oppressive to me, but is intended to minimize worldly distractions and permit constant reflection on—and joy in—the nature of God.

A central aspect of Hasidic Judaism is loyalty to the group's "rebbe," who is not just a rabbi but also the leader of the community. The rebbe is consulted on spiritual matters and other important issues such as what job to take or who to vote for. The rebbe is regarded as the liaison between man and God; failure to accept his advice is viewed as an affront to the whole community. So when Aron Rottenberg, a resident of the Hasidic village of New Square (or "New Skver"†), New York, defied Rebbe David Twersky's directive to worship only at the community's main synagogue, he was criticized and intimidated by other New Square residents for more than a year. Windows in his car and house were smashed, and earlier this month, another dissident family's home caught fire. Reportedly, Rottenberg was told by other residents to leave the community, but he stood firm, although he did take the precaution of installing home security cameras.

Early Sunday morning, Rottenberg's security cameras showed 18-year-old Shaul Spitzer (who worked as a butler for Rebbe Twersky) on the house's back porch; it appears that Spitzer was trying to set a fire using a gasoline-soaked rag. Rottenberg confronted Spitzer and was badly burned over half his body. He's already endured several hours of skin graft surgery and is expected to be hospitalized for some time. Rottenberg's adult son was burned on his hands as he rolled his father on the ground to put out the flames. Spitzer has been charged with attempted murder, assault, and arson. His family and friends posted his $300,000 bail for him, but because he too was burned and remains hospitalized, being "out" on bail means only that the local sheriff's department doesn't have to guard him in the hospital.

Why Rottenberg chose to worship at a rehabilitation and nursing center a mile from his home instead of the village synagogue a few blocks away isn't really relevant, although Rottenberg's acquaintances/family members mentioned in news videos that he considered the sermons at the synagogue "too long," and that he wanted to teach people at the nursing center to pray correctly. Why Rebbe Twersky waited until several days after the incident to condemn the violence against Rottenberg is relevant, but I haven't heard any explanations for that. Why Rottenberg stayed in New Square after being ordered where to pray and then being abused for disregarding that order is none of my business, but I'd like to think it's because he's a grown man and (so far as I know) an American citizen, and realizes that he has the right to pray when and how he damned well pleases.

H/T to Howard Friedman at Religion Clause

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† This story captured my attention in part because my screen name, "Cквер," when pronounced as a Russian word written in the Cyrillic alphabet, is pronounced "skver." "Skver" means "square" in the sense of a "community square" (a public space or garden), but my username has nothing to do with community gardens (or Hasidism). I first started using the name more than a decade ago, after reviewing several entries on the then-new Yahoo! Personals online dating site (which has now been absorbed into Match.com). All I could think was, "Geez, I am such a square..."

Teaching the Controversy

"It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to think."—René Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

More than 100,000 people signed a petition in support of making Religious Education (RE) a requirement for British students. Actually, I thought it already was required, and I wish that American school systems required comparative religion classes. As Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn't, wrote in a USA Today article, "Even if religion doesn't make any sense to you, you can't make sense of the world without knowing something about the world's religions."

Surprisingly, at least to me, British faith leaders agree that RE should be required. They claim that without it, "a generation of children will have no knowledge of the role Faith plays in society" (capitalization in the original). Is this an acknowledgment that Brits just don't spend much time in church anymore? Personally, if I were religious and had kids, I'd worry that the knowledge they were exposed to in RE classes might encourage them to "comparison shop" and adopt a religion that appealed to them more than mine. That may be the concern of some Canadian parents who have unsuccessfully tried to keep their children out of the controversial Ethics and Religious Culture program taught in Quebec's schools on the grounds that the class could interfere with their children's moral education.

I couldn't find anything specifically about the effect of comparative religion classes on religious belief, although there are studies that show a negative correlation between education in general and religiosity. In other words, the more educated a person is, the less likely s/he is to be religious. And while you might think that people who've been exposed to lots of different religions are likely to believe in one of them, studies show that having an overwhelming number of choices may actually discourage people from making any choice.

Wow. As an atheist, I strongly oppose indoctrinating kids into religion, but now I have even more reason to support teaching them about as many religions as possible!

H/T to Howard Friedman at Religion Clause

Weathering the Storm

I'm normally quite fond of the color pink, but not so much when the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center has it plastered over the part of the map that corresponds to my home. The predictions for "HIGH RISK OF SVR TSTMS ACROSS PARTS OF KS/OK/NRN TX" and "EXPECTATIONS FOR AN OUTBREAK OF TORNADOES ACROSS KS/OK/TX" have already proven accurate; a local TV station is reporting two deaths and major damage in El Reno, Oklahoma. I'll save for later the post that I was planning to finish up and publish tonight; I'm too busy watching the news.

Stay safe, y'all.

Running a Little Behind

I have houseguests this weekend, so instead of a thoughtfully composed blog post, I offer a quiet de-stresser: a video of "micro-origami" unfolding itself after being placed in water:

Flottille (detail) from Etienne Cliquet on Vimeo

Check out the shadows of the rectangular "sculptures"; the paper's edges look smooth but the shadows are scalloped. How cool! I like the first piece and the one at the 4:20 mark the best, but the whole thing makes me want to go find some rice paper, a pair of very sharp scissors, and a bowl of water.

I found the video on BoingBoing but it looks like it's all over the net by now. Enjoy. :-)

Following Fred Phelps

The descriptions I've read of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) describe its congregation as composed "mostly" or "almost entirely" of pastor Fred Phelps' own relatives. I've wondered who makes up the remainder of the parishioners. I can kinda sorta understand that someone who was raised in the Phelps household/church might decide to stay with the family even when they're old enough to move out. After all, no matter how much you disagree with your family's beliefs, walking away from them permanently would be difficult (although some of Phelps' relatives, most famously his son Nate, have left). But how could WBC's hatemongering possibly attract someone who wasn't thoroughly indoctrinated into Phelps' fringe belief system from birth?

After reading this article, I'm still wondering. Steve Drain, an aspiring filmmaker who initially came to WBC to film a documentary, was prepared to hate Phelps, but instead came to see him as "the most misunderstood man alive," as "this humble, little old man" who spreads his "God Hates..." ("fags," soldiers, the US, Sweden, etc.) message "out of a heartfelt fear that if he doesn't do it, then the Lord is going to deal with him." Did Drain bother to watch Phelps as he was filming him? That ain't fear on Phelps' face; it's hate. Phelps has preached—with a grin—that he loves the thought of people going to hell and will be "watching you suffer, in all the nuances of your exquisite torment."†

According to the article, Drain came to admire Phelps and his family because they didn't omit parts of the Bible that they didn't like. The more he watched the footage he'd shot at WBC, the more he felt that he belonged there. Eventually he moved his family to Topeka, into a one-bedroom house near the church. He, his wife, and his 19-year-old daughter are now members of the church, the only ones not related to Fred Phelps by blood or marriage. His 7- and 9-year-old kids have not yet made "professions of faith"; Drain and his wife turned their oldest daughter "over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh" because she "offended the Lord" by having an online relationship with a man. Drain gave her some money and a car, and says he "wasn't trying to be cruel" by kicking her out, but he "can't be dragged down by somebody who has no interest in serving the Lord."

Drain's documentary "Hatemongers" (which contains language that is Not Suitable For Work) can be found in multiple chunks on Google Video. I've only watched the first couple of segments, and I'm glad that it's split into several short pieces because my tolerance for the Westboro wackos is limited. Possibly Drain actually explains his baffling sympathy for Phelps in one of the later segments. Possibly the May 21st "rapture" predictions from a completely separate group of fringe Christians are correct, and we heathens won't have to deal with Phelps and his ilk anymore after Saturday.

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† At about the 06:10 mark in the linked video. Sorry, "deep linking" to a specific spot in a Google Video used to work, but no more, apparently.

Nothing To Fear

Evangelist Billy Graham has a syndicated daily column, although it currently consists of re-runs from 2008. (I doubt that Graham, now 92 years old and in poor health, does much writing any more.) Yesterday's column dealt with atheism, a topic that Graham has addressed several times previously. The version I found on ArcaMax.com was titled simply "Are There More Atheists Than There Used to Be?", but the Kansas City Star displayed the column under the header "Atheism can't answer life's questions," and TheTownTalk.com ("Serving Alexandria, Pineville and Central Louisiana") used the title "Atheism ends in despair." (The latter two titles are paraphrases of comments that Graham made in the column.)

Statements like these make me wonder if Graham ever bothered to actually talk to any of these despairing atheists of whom he wrote. Of course we freethinkers are subject to all the same anxieties and misfortunes that befall everybody else, and—like everybody else, including Christians—some of us have to deal with serious mental health issues like clinical depression. I know lots of atheists, though, and I see no more despair in them than I do in believers. I'm reminded of the following story, which I've heard from multiple sources:

A woman who had labored against Christianity was on her death bed. Her unbelieving acquaintances, fearing that at the end she would renounce her infidelity, urged her to "hold on to the last." "Yes," she said, "I have no objection to holding on; but will you tell me what I am to hold on to?"

(This version is from "Studies in the Shorter Catechism" by the Rev. John H. Skilton, which appeared in the October 10, 1936 edition of The Presbyterian Guardian.)

Like any good skeptic, I'm willing to follow where the evidence leads. Can anybody can provide me with statistics on "despair" in atheists, or details of a conversation like the one described above that actually occurred between two non-believers, one of them dying? If not, I'd label the story as "apocryphal," the sort of parable that believers compose to assure themselves that there's some point to all the time, effort, and money that they invest in their faith.

Billy Graham's daughter Gigi has said of her father, "It’s not death that scares him; it’s the dying process." Most atheists, including myself, probably feel the same way, although for different reasons. Graham reportedly looks forward to "going home to heaven" to rejoin his late wife Ruth, while we non-believers expect that our "after-life" will be pretty much the same as our "before-life"...in other words, non-existence. Several Christian sects define "hell" not as "eternal torture" but as "eternal separation from God" (a doctrine known as annihilationism). If you regard your entire existence on Earth as preparation for your "real" life, then I guess that eternal separation from God would be quite a letdown...if you were able to experience it at all. For myself, I'm sure I'll be sad when I know that my life is nearing its end ("There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish"), and I hope I won't be in too much pain or a burden to others, but beyond that, I'm not worried. Nothingness is nothing to fear.