I want to agree with this guy, but…

Roar Sheppard (poor guy, his parents doomed him from the start) is a “New Humanity Culture leader” and director of the Overseas Seon Culture Life Museum.

In an article for the Korea Times, he writes about the earthquake in Japan and links it to other recent natural disasters.  Then:

I wanted to ask nature, what is the reason for abnormal conditions of the Earth to appear all of a sudden? This was the answer I received.

How can we say all of these are separate phenomena? The one organism, the Earth is showing the signs here and there. Human death and shortage of grains ― these are only the result. Take a look at the fundamentals that are giving rise to these.

What is the present condition of the Earth? When people and nature are uprooted from their homes like in Japan, swept away by extreme rains in Pakistan, how do you think the Earth feels which is the basis of all of these?

and

If you live on the Earth ― no ― if you are a being with a heart, when you stare at the Earth in this situation, you should wail. Are glaciers melting? Do you know what it will cause to the Earth? It means the immune system and basic circulation of the Earth is collapsing.

If your digestive system has a disorder even slightly, you can’t perform normal activity, can you? Even though the Earth has serious disorders in all of its organs, especially serious damage in essential organs, it is still circulating its blood here and there to send nutrition even now. That is nature.

I sorta agree that we need to take better care of the Earth, but even my so-common-it’s-cliched phrase bothers me.  Whatever happens to humans or living things, the Earth will be okay.  Well, as okay as any inanimate, non-responsive, non-thinking thing can be.  A big rock is okay, after all, even after you break it.  It is now in two pieces but the change doesn’t matters to the rock.

There are some useful lies out there.  Perhaps belief in Santa does make kids better behaved in December and the companies that make Christmas donations to charity might not if there were no Santa.

… I’ve decided to leave religion out of this argument as much as I can.  The author is director of a Buddhist organization so I have to bring it up but I guess I don’t need to connect it with useful lies.

Anyway, there are useful lies and metaphors can carry important ideas.  If we think of the Earth as a living thing that we need to better care for, perhaps we will behave better: we might, for example, work to reduce fossil-fuel use, fight acid rain and other forms of pollution, and be more careful of just how much we harvest out of the ocean.

So long as we keep in mind that we are only discussing a metaphor and not truly thinking of the Earth as sentient, I am satisfied.

However, Roar continues in the same vein and overworks the metaphor – if it is, indeed, a metaphor for him.  I do not believe it is.

However, it is not that the Earth will just watch humans do this forever, because the Earth also has to maintain its balance as a member of the universe.

The events happening now are nothing in fact. It’s already in the state where the balance has begun to crack, and the imbalance will only speed it up and the rate will get even faster.

Even though you know we are headed toward a cliff, we can say it’s a runaway car that cannot be stopped. Please understand the Earth’s situation where it has no choice but to take action.

I’ve questioned in the past whether I let Buddhism get away with such claims, as I do not offer such latitude in my consideration of Christian claims,  but this is far enough into the realm of science that reading it bugs me.  How much does it bug me?  Enough to break my nearly month-long silence on this blog, that’s how much!

Anyway, in addition to disliking Roar’s statements even as metaphor, I also dislike them if uncritically accepted.  I imagine an angry mob with pitchforks driving them into the ground while chanting, “Earthquake, huh?  Take that, jerk.”  After all, if we accept the Earth is actually deliberately quaking or that the previous quakes, and other entirely explainable-through-meteorology natural disasters were twitches of a waking beast and could deliberately quake again, we should obviously be ready to counter attack or try to blackmail the Earth into good behavior.

I am an environmentalist but I can only see improvement in our situation coming through better education, but nightmarish threats of the Earth itself fighting against us don’t help.

Atheism and autism

According to a Scientific American article, people with autism are less likely to invoke God to explain events in their lives.

Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the “Bering in Mind” blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American MIND), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened—for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response—for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.

In a second experiment, Heywood and Bering compared 27 people with Asperger’s with 34 neurotypical people who are atheists. The atheists, as expected, often invoked anti-teleological responses such as “there is no reason why; things just happen.”

Some experts theorize that certain schizophrenia symptoms (for instance, paranoia) arise in part from a hyperactive sense of social reasoning. “I’d guess that they’d give lots of teleological answers; more than neurotypical people, and certainly far more than people with Asperger’s,” Heywood says.

As an atheist and probably not an …autist, I much prefer the responses of respondents with Asperger’s Syndrome to those of the atheists.  A very reasonable response to “Why were you sick?” is “I was exposed to a virus.”  The atheist’s “There is no reason why”, is ridiculous.

I enjoy reading Scientific American and respect it but I have to wonder about the reporting in this case.  The article reports there were two studies and I would want to see the actual questions asked.

I am not disputting that people with Asperger’s Syndrome and atheists may have similar worldviews, but I, well, hope, that atheists can provide better answers than those given.

Don’t burn the Koran…D’oh!

This afternoon I listened to a BBC World Service interview with Rev. Terry Jones.*  He had publicized a plan to burn many copies of the Koran on Sept 11, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.  Eventually, he cancelled the event, saying that in simply planning the event, he had generated enough attention to the issue of militant Muslims.

Many people asked Rev. Jones to stop and he did.  Others, such as PZ Myers, applauded the idea, although more as a way to show that one person’s holy item need not have value to others.  Drawing Muhammed is only blasphemy to Muslims and Christians should not be afraid to do so.  Myers is (in)famous for desecrating a Roman Catholic Communion wafer so, if Jones had burned copies of the Koran, Myers might have followed up, in the spirit of inclusiveness, by burning copies of the bible.

I disagree with Myers.  Don’t burn the Koran (click to embiggen)!

I listened, as I wrote, to the interview this afternoon.  In an early evening walk, I saw this SUV and knew I had to photograph it.

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*I really enjoyed the interview.  While both the pastor and the interviewer were civil and allowed each other to speak, it was not a softball interview.  Jones was questioned vigorously but politely and he kept cool throughout.  His answers were sometimes weak, as I will soon describe, but he spoke calmly and clearly.

The interview drifted into other religious issues and homosexuality was brought up.  Jones stated that the bible was against it.  When questioned about other things the bible was against – wearing mixed fibers and shaving, for example, he backed away, saying he was not a theologian.  It was as if he had decided he had read enough of the bible to lecture others but not enough to challenge any previously held beliefs.  If he is not a theologian, why does he feel to comment on any part of the bible?

The Hominid and Mohammed

The big Hominid recently had a post about cartoonists being threatened with violence for drawing Mohammed.

Those Muslims had a choice: set fire to Danish embassies or protest in a civilized manner. They chose the former, and should be held accountable.

I, for one, side with the cartoonists. No one should live in fear of reprisal for their religious irreverence, and anyone interested in fairness should recognize that, if it’s permissible to ridicule Christianity and Christians– routinely and relentlessly– through written satire, cartoons, etc., then it’s permissible to do those things to other religions and their adherents as well. That’s how fairness works.

I commented, asking if he would draw Mohammed in solidarity and explained that I agreed with his (the Hominid’s) opinion but that I hadn’t mustered the nerve or the energy or escaped from apathy enough to do it myself.

The Big Hominid took up the challenge and drew a few, relatively unoffensive, images.  One of his images may have the Lucasites after him.

Anyway, I didn’t feel I could set him up like that and not do the same myself.

My first question- did I mis-spell his name?  Alright, the above is a picture Titled “Muhammed plays soccer”.

I followed the Hominid’s example, and the suggestion I made in my comment to him, that there was no reason for the image to be deliberately offensive – The original cartoonist described in my first link drew Muhammed with a bomb for a turban.  The cartoonist has the right to do that, but neither he, I or the Hominid should feel required to be deliberately offensive.

I don’t know if the Hominid was aware of the date but I wasn’t until afterward that yesterday was International Blasphemy Day. That might not be as good as drawing these on Everybody Draw Muhammed Day, but we are sorta part of a movement.

Want to know about religion? Ask me

Via blogs and news reports too numerous to link to them all (here is the New York Times on the subject), The Pew Forum ran a survey entitled, “How much do you know about religion?”

The result was that atheists and agnostics knew the most about religion.

As for me, according the New York Times quiz – six of the original 32 questions – I did great 6/6.

According to the quiz the Pew Forum- 15 of the original 32 questions-I scored better than 97% of the public. To brag even more, here is the screen shot.

Shamans along the shore

Should that be shamen or shawomen, instead, I wonder?

I took these at the mouth of the Nakdonggang.  I lightly retouched the faces in two photos to obscure features to allow us to see the ritual without recognizing individuals.

religion in Korea and the world

The Korea Times has an article about the religious affiliation of Korean presidents.  It is interesting how many are/were Christian in this traditionally Buddhist country.

I am interested to read the distinction between Christians and Catholics.

According to a 2005 survey, Buddhists make up 22.8 percent of the population, followed by Christianity with 18.3 percent and Catholicism with 10.9 percent.

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Abroad, those catholics may be trying to hide under the general title of Christian after the Pope described “the rape of little boys by priests” as “petty gossip“.  I guess Kim Kim-tae petty gossiped that girl to death.

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These two events don’t really fit together.  I just had to fit my disgust with the Catholic church in somewhere.

In the Persimmon Grove

Another weekend, another day at the farm.

This time, we were spreading fertilizer around the sweet persimmon trees.

(click to bigify pictures)

Each bag was 20kg and that’s not that heavy, except for the terrain.  Each persimmon tree has been cut or pruned (what am I, an arbourist?) so that it grows wide, not tall.  To travel more than three metres, one must duck and twist to fit between the branches.  I had a bit of a cold, so I was trying to keep my head high so my nose wouldn’t run all day.

It seemed like a lot of packaging for that fertilizer.  We used more than 150 bags after all.  On the other hand, for reasons stated above, we couldn’t drive the tractor, adorably small though it is, between the trees.

The Kyeong-oong-gi is a remarkable Asian device to replace the tractor.  I used to know how to drive them, but I’ve forgotten.

Here are my wife’s oldest brother and their father.  I am not sure why they ploughed (plowed?) the ground under the trees, maybe it was to either hold to channel away rain (What am I, an engineer?) or to mix the fertilizer into the ground.

Here is my son ‘racing’ his kyeong-oong-gi. Vroom, vroom!

and now for something completely different:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has a church here.  Who knew?