Clawing Her Way Up

I really must stop proofreading these posts by reading them aloud to myself. My cat keeps thinking that I'm talking to her, and takes that as a signal that it's OK to jump into my lap. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that she doesn't always judge the height of my chair accurately, and I never had her declawed. If only I were wearing some pants right now...

Inspiring Words, For a Price

While researching an idea for a potential blog post, I came across iStockSermons.com, which is intended for "pastors who want to keep up with current speaking trends." iStockSermons lets you search for sermons based on keywords such as "addiction," "balance," "celebration," and the like. Each "complete creative sermon package" includes an MP3 (audio) file of the sermon, a transcript of the sermon, and artwork (logos "in illustrator or photoshop" and JPG formats). Some packages also include "extras" like videos, additional notes, or sermons that were written but not delivered. The prices for the packages currently available on the site (which each contain at least 3 and as many as 7 sermons) range from $149 to $399. I thought at first that the site was fairly new, but the company's brochure (warning: PDF) has a copyright date of 2009. They don't have much to choose from—only 9 sermon packages—so if you need a sermon on "building campaigns" or "giving," for example, you'll have to write it yourself or look elsewhere. iStockSermons isn't the only web site that offers sermons to download, but of those that seem intended for pastors looking for creative help, iStockSermons seems to offer the most complete and polished materials.

Not everybody who's "called to the ministry" is a talented writer, I'm sure. Even for those who do write well, composing an original and stimulating sermon every week must be tough, especially with all the other stuff pastors are expected to do (counseling, administrative duties, etc.). It must be a relief to know that when inspiration fails, there's someone to turn to, but this raises interesting questions. If a pastor does buy and download one of the "creative sermon packages," does s/he pay for it personally, or does it come out of the church's budget? (Either way, the money originally came out of the parishioners' pockets.) Does the pastor indicate somehow that someone else wrote the sermon? Or is this more like Sandra Lee's "Semi-Homemade Cooking" where you add your own touches to prepackaged items and pass the result off as your own creation?†

If pastors are open about the source of their sermons and/or if this practice is as common and acceptable as purchasing a Vacation Bible School (VBS) kit, that's fine, but to this outsider, "buying a sermon" sounds an awful lot like "buying a term paper."

---

† Polenta (known in these parts as "cornmeal mush" before it got all uppity and started appearing in tubes at the grocery store) and white chocolate, while both very tasty in their own right, are ingredients that really should not appear in the same recipe. Ick.

Turning A Skeptic Into A Believer

Don't you just love targeted advertising?

If I really wanted to be snarky, I would point out that the photo of the "believer" is much lighter/brighter than that of the "skeptic." Certain publications have come under fire for doing that kind of thing in the past. But I don't want to be snarky. Nope, not me.

(If you have a Yahoo account and would like to receive alerts on "atheism" or any other subject that interests you, sign into Yahoo then click here to set up keyword-based alerts. If you don't have a Yahoo account, you can create one by clicking the "Create New Account" button near the bottom of the "sign in" page.)

Spinning Out of Control

Happy Earth Day!...unless you think that Catholics like Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com are the bee's knees, in which case, forget I said anything. I wouldn't want to ruin your Good Friday glow.

In the script for the April 13th episode of "The Vortex" (a daily video presentation in which "lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed"), Mr. Voris wrote:

...the Earth Network [I think he means the Earth DAY Network] wants Catholic priests to devote their homily to the topic of Earth Day...[on] EASTER SUNDAY. Admitting in [their] letter that devoting a homily to Earth Day on Easter might be a slight problem .. the earth worshippers are perfectly happy to suggest giving a full blown homily the next Sunday .. which is DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY...They give suggestions on some material for the homilies .. like encouraging the congregation to clean up a park...Imagine .. going to Mass to hear about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead .. only to hear instead instructions to clean up a park...If you find yourself in Mass on Easter Sunday and the priest even so much as breaths [sic] a word about Earth Day .. throw nothing in the collection plate .. finish your Sunday obligation .. and resign from that parish on Monday.

Imagine...going to church on (what I hope will be) a lovely spring day...a season when nature seems to be resurrecting itself from the dead...to hear suggestions to clean up the planet you live on...the HORROR!

I'm not sure how many Catholics take Voris seriously. Marywood University and the Diocese of Scranton canceled presentations that he was scheduled to give earlier this month after they learned that Voris has "caused 'a number of controversies' and that his programs are not endorsed by his home archdiocese." Really? Suggesting that democracy should be replaced with a benevolent Catholic dictatorship is controversial? The video for the "Vortex" episode in which Voris made this comment has been taken down, but on the Internet, nothing can be completely deleted. PZ at Pharyngula and RationalWiki both quoted from the video, and Voris himself later tried to "clarify" that what he'd really meant was a benevolent Catholic monarchy, not a dictatorship. "Yea. That’s the ticket. A Catholic monarchy."

I suppose every religious group of any significant size has members on the fringes. Islam has the Taliban, Fred Phelps and the rest of the Westboro wackies consider themselves Baptists, mainstream Mormons distance themselves from their polygamist ancestors and contemporary fundamentalist offshoots. Would it be insensitive of me, on Good Friday, to make a crack about Voris being the Catholics' cross to bear?

Selling a Bill of Goods

Catholics aren't the only ones who can use iPhone apps to manage their spiritual lives, it seems. With Pesach (Passover) coming up, observant Jews are exhorted to rid their homes of leavened grain products (chametz; I've also seen it spelled hametz or hametz)...only a lot of them don't actually discard grain-based foods; that could get expensive if you just stocked up on cereal or beer! What some do instead is "sell" their chametz to a non-Jew then "buy it back" after Passover. Apparently no products actually need to change hands; the "seller" is supposed to lock up all the forbidden foods in a designated area in his/her home, such as a cupboard or a room, and not enter that area until Passover ends. (I can't tell from the bit of research I did whether money actually has to be exchanged or not.) The buying/selling part is managed by a rabbi, and because it's considered a legally binding transaction, there are forms to fill out...unless you've got the app for that. With the i$ellChametz iPhone app (there's also an Android version), you can "let Rabbi Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom - The National Synagogue sell your chametz for Pesach!" (I found a different but similar app called "No Chametz" from RustyBrick on iTunes.)

I've got no problem with believers who use technology to help them honor their commitments; I use electronic calendars and to-do lists to help me remember and fulfill my own commitments, after all. I don't take issue with believers who choose to give up particular foods for religious purposes, whether it's chametz for Jews during Passover, favorite foods for Catholics during Lent, all food during daylight hours for Muslims during Ramadan, or whatever. Business owners can decide for themselves whether they want believers' trade enough to comply with religious rules like putting cows on a chametz-free diet so the milk will be kosher for Passover.

What does irritate me is believers asking members of other religions (or no religion) to keep them from violating their own rules. A rabbi in the Isaeli city of Akko has asked a Muslim imam to instruct Arab business owners (especially bakery owners) not to sell chametz to Jews during Passover. WTF? If someone doesn't believe that there's a good purpose for the restrictions that a religion imposes on its believers, then why bother following that religion? I'm with the bakery owner who responded, "I'm not going to ask every person if he's Jewish or Arab...It's their religion, not mine, and I will sell pita bread."

H/T to Ed Brayton at Dispatches From the Culture Wars

Wishing Hubble a Happy 21st Birthday!

I've been an armchair astronomer since my late teens or early twenties; that's what comes of reading and watching tons of science fiction. I've never owned a telescope or even a decent pair of binoculars; I barely know the major constellations (although I'm oddly fond of Orion, maybe because its "belt" is so easy to spot in my part of the world). Aside from one Science and Engineering Club field trip in college, I've never driven out to the country (away from all the light pollution in town) to get a decent look at the sky. I get my astronomy "fix" from photos like the ones taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which was launched into space 21 years ago this month. Here's one of my all-time favorite HST shots, of the "Tadpole" galaxy (officially known as "UGC 10214" or "Arp 188"):

The Tadpole probably got its long "tail" as a result of a collision with another, smaller galaxy. What beauty can come of intergalactic violence! What really gets me about this picture, though, is the huge number of more distant galaxies that it shows...galaxies that could be just as big and complex and diverse as our own (the Milky Way). When I see a picture like this, I imagine myself being about as important in the grand scheme of things as a microbe living on a chip of rock in a pile of rubble in a valley in some barren, windswept mountain range. Even if I was doing all the things that a microbe is supposed to do—eating, growing, excreting, making lots of little baby microbes, etc.—you'd never know it from the top of the mountain range. Anyone who can look at a photo like the one above, grasp the vastness and complexity that it represents (of just one tiny bit of our universe, mind you), and still believe that s/he was deliberately, "intelligently" designed to occupy one particular spot on an insignificant planet in "the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy" has a far more vivid imagination than I do.

H/T to Phil "Bad Astronomer" Plait...even though he initially got the HST's launch date wrong. (He's fixed it now.) I actually started writing this post without realizing that this is Hubble's birthday month, before Phil said anything about it on his blog. When I read his post, I realized that I'd accidentally managed to time my thoughts really well!

Nosing Around

The latest email from my neighborhood association reports two recent break-ins within a few blocks of my house, and specifically asks me to be a "nosy neighbor" to deter future criminal activity. If I see a person or vehicle that "doesn't seem to belong in the neighborhood," the email recommends "slowing down and acting interested," getting a description (e.g., noting cars' license plate numbers) and passing that info along to the neighborhood association, and/or calling the police department's non-emergency number.

I'm all for "acting interested" in what's going on in my neighborhood (that's just being neighborly), and I help law enforcement in any way I can, but now I'm torn between...

• my desire (if not my tendency) to think the best of others, and my desire to protect my property (and that of my neighbors);
• my dismay over the idea of targeting people based on race and/or perceived economic class, and the knowledge that recent thefts—and one I personally witnessed last summer—involved black men (some driving older, beat-up vehicles);
• my commitment to behaving as a law-abiding citizen (apart from a slight tendency to regard speed limits as "suggestions"), and my resentment of scrutiny from my fellow citizens and from law enforcement.

Is there such a thing as "situationally induced multiple personality disorder"?

The neighborhood association is meeting tonight, and I plan to attend. A representative from the police department is scheduled to give a presentation, which I hope will include some tips on "how to protect your neighborhood without feeling like a government informant."

---

Later...

I'm home from the meeting, which had a generally upbeat tone and was well-attended (in comparison to previous meetings I've been to in my five years in the neighborhood). The recurring theme was "get to know your neighbors so you'll know who belongs in the neighborhood and who doesn't." The police officer who attended didn't offer much specific advice other than "do your own research" (on alarm systems, the pros and cons of gun ownership, etc.), and the few specifics he did share—about the recent and upcoming decreases in the number of officers on the force—were depressing. But he did say that the neighborhood isn't being specifically targeted by criminals, and he repeatedly encouraged us to report any suspicious behavior, as that kind of reporting has helped solve cases in the past. The phrase "racial profiling" was used by a resident, but the officer dismissed it, saying "we don't do that."

There are no immediate answers to the neighborhood's problems, but after tonight's meeting, I feel reassured that even though I bought my house based primarily on its price and location, I chose my neighbors well.