thomascwaters.com

I have written before (and will probably say it many times to come) that we are living in one of the most amazing and frustrating period of cultural change. Cultural, as opposed to merely political, although we see it in the political arena all the time. But the actual change itself is happening at a deeper level than our governance systems. Like the shifting of the teutonic plates which lead to an earthquake, our collective cultural experience is the result of coming to grips with the changing understanding of God, and there is just no arguing with stupid.

The other night, my partner and were watching a program about the landscape under the sea and this notion of the shifting plates that cover the earth. In places, these shifts happen extremely slow at a rate of an inch or so a year, and at other locations at much faster rates. When it comes to Science, we have ways of measuring and talking about these changes, but we lack either a methodology or a language for such a discussion when it comes to our collective understandings of God. But the plates of understanding have shifted enough that there is no denying it any longer. Those on the Religious Right have no language or frame of reference except a collection of texts, edited, organized and combined more than 2000 years ago, called the Holy Bible. Even with the most generous interpretations, this anthology, which reflects attitudes, ideas and historical reflection, is a mouthpiece for that narrow understanding:

Homosexuals are not allowed to enjoy sunlight

In his op-ed column for the Maine newspaper The Times Record back on Aug. 7, the executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine said concerning Maine’s gloomy, sunless summer that it is “fitting that this eclipse of human reason (the voting in of homosexual marriage) is mirrored by the disappearance of the sun.”

Heath said in his column that in May, Maine’s elected officials “overturned the law of nature, and in its place paid honor to evil and unnatural practices.” They in fact “allowed a cloud of error to hide the light of reason, and then the rain began,” according to Heath.

Delevan Ogle is suggesting that the weather is a prediction of a JudeoChristian God’s happiness with what is done at the level of state government! I’m not the only one to jump to that conclusion. The single comment left on the blog entry  follows what s/he feels is Ogle’s logic, but to a different conclusion. But on a closer read, I draw a different conclusion- Ogle is arguing with Heath’s op-ed.

But you can’t argue with stupid! It is impossible to use the logic in an attempt to dissuade others from agreeing with it, or to try and highlight the insanity of it. When you do, you just end up looking as stupid as what you are supposedly arguing against. Here are the clues that Ogle doesn’t see things in the same framework as Heath:

if Kansas’s wheat and Iowa’s corn fail horribly, and Missouri’s cows pine away — just wait and see if it comes to pass. If something like this does happen, some Midwesterner should write an op-ed piece about how God hates homosexuality, but is fine with methamphetamine production, for he has not been punishing that.

A few problems here. It is possible to see predictions of Iowa’s agricultural production by this point, isn’t it? What’s up with that? And here is the craziest element of the post- the mention of Methamphetamine. Ogle must be totally off his rocker.

The moral of the story, if you don’t want to look stupid, don’t try to argue with stupid on stupid’s level. Name it what it is, and move on. Everything (else) is moving on, and those trying so hard to cling to what used to be (if it ever really was what used to be) will be left behind eventually.

Homosexuals are not allowed to enjoy sunlight.