With or without belief in a god. A nice opinion piece was found via today. It’s by Greg M. Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University, about the need for everyone to aim for goodness, regardless of religious leanings. :
Let’s be perfectly clear: of course we can be good without God. Millions of Americans are.
But that’s not what my book is about. Because if you think we can’t be good without God, that’s not just your opinion. That’s not just some brainstorm that crossed your mind. It is prejudice. And it might even be discrimination. I mean, no one in his or her right mind would ever say, “Oh, you’re a Catholic. How nice–is it possible for you to be a decent human being, too?” We wouldn’t ask whether it’s possible to be a good person and Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist. We don’t ask whether you can be good and a Democrat, or a Republican (at least, usually we don’t). So since we know that there are now millions and millions of people living without belief in a god, it’s time to reject the question of whether we can be good without God.
The book he wrote is called and is so recently published, not a soul on Amazon has reviewed it yet. Might be worth the bucks anyway.
A person starts to wonder how anyone can be good with a belief in god when stories like this crop up every day or two: .
A 37-year-old teacher accused of creating a “secret society” to lure teenage girls into having sex with him was arrested Monday evening after a girl he allegedly wanted to recruit into the group complained to police, authorities said.
Robert Louis Rosseau taught Bible classes — among other subjects — to eighth-graders at Christian Academy of San Antonio.
Rosseau, who isn’t certified by the state to teach, remained in Bexar County Jail on Tuesday on a charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child. He was being held on $100,000 bail.
I bold that which is of interest. How come they put a guy in charge of classes when he wasn’t a teacher? Knowing how to read a bible is suddenly all the education you need to teach kids? I feel sorry for all the kids at this school if that’s the case.
According to the affidavit, he was reading bible verses to “legitimize” his interest in these girls sexually and this somehow encouraged them to strip their clothes off and join his weird little biblical sex club. It seems like the girls are all disagreeing over what actually went on there so the only person who’d have the “truth” (such as it is) would be Rosseau himself. Scummy bugger.
Is every religious person this deluded about good behaviour? No, thankfully. This guy would be a sexual deviant whether he read from the bible or from Hubbard’s Dianetics, or from a car manual printed in 1947. Sick is sick. Using the bible to lure young girls at his school is probably easier than trying to hit on random teen strangers in a park or mall.
We should be able to trust authority, but don’t be afraid to question it sometimes too, okay? Teachers, no matter how “official” should not be asking their students for sexual favours. Does that need to be printed in every text book? In every student bible? Maybe it ought to be.
Having no experience whatsoever with Sarah Orne Jewett I took her book off the shelf with only mild interest. I have a Dover Thrift edition, which weighs nearly nothing and could be easily mistaken for a bound short story. The evening I took the book down, I needed something I could move easily through from beginning to end and which would hold my interest through a predictably sleep-interrupted night. So it was quite fun to start reading and then find myself swept up in Jewett’s cheerful and loving descriptions of the New England she held close to her heart.
The Country of the Pointed Firs is not so much a novel as it is a series of portraits assembled into a detailed collage of coastal Maine at the dawn of the twentieth century – a rugged landscape, a reliance on fishing and the lobster harvest, the deep quiet of a typical Maine personality. I believe it was Jewett’s goal to record the way of life in this area as well as pay a sort of tribute to it. And she does this well, introducing the reader to a series of eccentric characters and describing the landscape with great precision.
The narrator is a writer who has come out to the area on retreat, spending her days either helping her landlady gather herbs or working diligently in an old school house a bit outside of the town. It is difficult not to imagine Jewett as the narrator, especially since the narrator keeps her own personality and internal thoughts so distant from the actual people she is describing. She reflects on them and interacts with them, although not to create a story between herself and them but, rather, to get at the heart of their own story, whatever that may be.
Each little chapter is a portrait of one of the townspeople or a related event and includes such gems as Captain Littlepage’s story of encountering a sort of limbo town where dead souls wait during one of his sea voyages to the Arctic, or a young woman named Joanna who, thwarted in love, rows out to a tiny island off the main coast to live out the rest of her days alone. Most of the sketches involve the narrator’s landlady or the landlady’s mother – two quaintly bizarre women – in some capacity, either introducing the narrator to another individual or providing a suitable event for description.
The Country of the Pointed Firs has no central event or interlaced plot, but each chapter is linked to the rest through its tone and the consistency of the narrator. There is also a harmony in the collage aspect of the book; each chapter fits to the rest like a separate piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The overall effect is pleasant and the book creates a vivid image of a tiny corner of the United States at a particular time in its history.
The hoped for outcome of a writing an autobiography can vary greatly. Some people have had rich and interesting lives and believe that others should know about it. Others are more interested in cashing in and getting some wonger for a quickly written book about their limited experiences. What most have in common is the author’s want to be liked. Even books that are ‘warts and all’ tend to be sympathetic to the writer as they try to excuse their behaviours. I am not a huge fan of the genre and do not read many memoirs etc. However what I have noticed is a strange situation were I dislike the writer by the end in almost every case. Roger Moore came across as insincere, Peter Kay as annoying and Frank Skinner as an unpleasant man I would not like to meet. In ever case the author thinks they are appealing to me, but is every case I found them unlikable. Perhaps I should read a book that is based on a life more similar to my own? An autobiography about a normal upbringing in which Role Playing Games (RPGs) played a role.
As a youth Mark Barrowcliffe was an awkward lad prone to gaffs and clumsiness. He never seemed to fit in with any group until he discovered Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). D&D is a RPG that takes place in the imagination of the players and by playing the game Mark met many like minded boys who he felt understood him. D&D is a nice hobby, but what happens when it becomes an obsession? Unable to form strong relationships with people Mark became addicted to D&D and it controlled his life. With some amusing tales and insight into a teenage boys life Barrowcliffe tells us what it is like to grow up a geek and then grow out of it.
‘The Elfish Gene’ is a book of two halves; one of which is a pleasant enough autobiography about someone you don’t know, and the other something that undermines what you just read. When writing about his early teenage years Barrowcliffe paints a vivid picture of what it is like to grow up in 70s Coventry were life is a little grim. No wonder the imagination fuelled world of D&D seemed so seductive to a younger version of himself. There are lots of short stories about Barrowcliffe getting into mischief and showing him as a flawed chap. Surely it must be the folly of youth that had Barrowcliffe acting pretentious and arrogant? The book is all about how he grew out of this and became the successful author he is today.
Or so Barrowcliffe likes to think. The second half of the book reads like an apologist’s view of their younger years. In trying to excuse his former self Barrowcliffe paints his current self as one of the most displeasing people I have ever read about. This is not the plan of course as Barrowcliffe sneers at what he used to do. He thinks he is being cool, but actually he is being nasty, distasteful, arrogant and stupid. The final chapters are by far the worst. These follow him as he leaves school and starts to gain interest in girls. At university he became a bully and picked on people weaker than himself after he had been bullied for so many years. Worse still in the epilogue that is about his current self. Now an author of lad lit he proclaims his life before this as dull and meaningless. I’m sure this will go down well with all his work colleagues for the past 10 years – the arrogance drips off the page. He was a stand up for a while and I can only imagine that his comedy was of the nasty and demeaning variety; although he probably does not realise this himself
As one final element to rub salt into the wounds Barrowcliffe ends the book by going to an adult’s game of D&D. I am not saying that these men are the coolest of people, but at 40 they can do what the hell they like without having to be judged by the likes of Barrowcliffe. He rips into them and basically calls them all losers. Who is the loser? The men who may be geeks, but are happy with who they are and what they have been? Or the man that has written off 30 years of his life as pathetic?
Another issue, that is purely critical of the style and not the author, is who wants to read a book about D&D? The answer would obviously be fans of the game, but if you are going to spend 300 pages slagging them off they will not like the book. This leaves those that have not played the game. However, they too will dislike the book as there is too much minutia about the game and it will bore them to tears. From what I can see Barrowcliffe has managed to alienate all potential audiences whilst also making himself seem like an idiot. Barrowcliffe was a teenager who lived in a fantasy world and had an inflated sense of his own importance; now he is an author who lives in reality, but is still inflated.
Учителят казал: “Ние всички се нуждаем от любов. Да обича е част от природата на човека, тъй както да яде, да пие и да спи. Понякога, когато ние оставаме абсолютно сами, наблюдавайки красивия залез на слънцето, си мислим: “Тази красота не е важна, понеже нямам с кого да я споделя”. В такива моменти ние трябва да си зададем въпроса: колко често ни молят да обикнем, а ние се обръщаме на другата страна? Колко пъти ние се страхуваме да се сближим с някого и като отхвърлим съмненията да кажем, че обичаме този човек? Пазете се от самотата. Тя прилича на зависимостта от най-опасния наркотик. Ако залезът на слънцето вече няма смисъл за вас, станете по-скромни и тръгвайте да търсите любовта. Знайте, че както и останалите духовни благословения, колкото повече искате да дадете, толкова повече ще получите обратно”.
Please vote for the Pink Car Rally coach to win the bling my coach competition by voting for them
The Pink Car Rally is in aid of a fledgling children’s charity, called the Little Princess Trust, which provides children who have lost their hair (primarily through cancer treatments) with ‘real hair’ wigs. If we win this competition, we can take 49 pink passengers on the coach and if each one raised an average of £50 Sponsorship, we could raise in the region of £2500 for the charity!! How fantastic would that be? It means that the charity could provide wigs for 8 more children!! We NEED to win!! Please help us…..
Please look at the short film, which is introduced by Gail Porter, on the Little Princess Trust’s website () It tells the story of how the charity helped Melissa….
As I wrote in my entry yesterday, I got panicked when I couldn’t find the book, “What I talk about when I talk about running”, by Haruki Murakami. Like you can read in the entry, I found the book after more than one hour.
So, yesterday night before I went to sleep, I started reading the book. It’s really a very inspiring book! I haven’t finished reading but I’m sure I will have read the entire book today.
And by the way, yesterday I made a new personal record in 5 km! 22 minutes is the new personal record.
I also have made a new running program for November which hopefully will help pacing down my records for 5 km and 10 km. After the November running training, it’s time for the Marathon training for the Copenhagen Marathon next May!
