The Binary Circumstance

I said they should thank him and they did.

After visiting Ted Haggard’s New Life church where he was warmly received, Mike Jones had an interesting observation.

Jones had been invited to New Life several times by church members since Haggard resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was fired from the church after admitting in November to “sexual immorality.”

Jones was accompanied Sunday by members of a New York- based theater troupe, the Civilians, who are in Colorado Springs researching a project on evangelicals. Church leaders were told in advance of the visit.

“A couple of ladies cried when they were touching me,” Jones said. “I was thanked for exposing the church, for helping Ted Haggard. A couple of them said they hoped I get God into my life. And they all said ‘God bless you,’ every one of them.”

But Jones - who came forward out of anger toward Haggard’s political stances against homosexuality - said he wasn’t impressed on the whole. If the Gospel message is enough, he said, why the loud music and MTV-quality production?

“There seems to be something missing, some realism, in my opinion, because it’s so vast, like some kind of self-contained city,” said Jones, who said he was raised Methodist but is estranged from organized religion.

The same article notes that Haggard and his wife have undergone counseling and are in a “restoration” program.

We’re all waiting for the announcement that Haggard has been cured.

Scientists allege pressure to downplay global warming and evangelical Christians in Federal Way, a suburb of Seattle, blocked the showing of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in high school. Gore maintains that global warming is a fact beyond debate at this point.

The 43-year-old computer consultant [Frosty Hardison] is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is “one of the signs” of Jesus Christ’s imminent return for Judgment Day.

His angry e-mail, along with complaints from a few other parents, stopped the film from being shown to Hardison’s daughter.

The teacher in the science class, Kay Walls, says that after Hardison’s e-mail, she was told by her principal that she would receive a disciplinary letter for not following school board rules that require her to seek written permission to present “controversial” materials in class.

The e-mail also pressured the school board to impose a ban on screenings of the film for the district’s 22,500 students.

The ban, which the school board says was merely a “moratorium,” was lifted Tuesday night, subject to rigorous conditions.

We have witnessed repeatedly in recent years what evangelicals can accomplish when they gain control of school boards and influence curriculum with regard to evolution and creationism. The fact is that their ultimate goal is the suppression of science, just as the Catholic Church suppressed the heliocentric teachings of Copernicus and Galileo hundreds of years ago setting back progress of the human race by centuries.

They must suppress science because genuine science is evidence-based and therefore inherently opposed to anything that is faith-based.

The fact is that there is no rational basis for a public school system to begin with. The liberal idea that such an entitlement exists is going to ultimately undermine all that liberals claim to stand for. If you claim to respect science then you had better build your school system on scientifically valid premises or your school system will ultimately fail.

Public schools are built upon the false idea that some people have a right to take the property of others by force and then use those financial resources to create a universal educational system to teach a state-sanctioned curriculum. In such a system, which is tossed about by political whim, the curriculum will ultimately be driven by the prevailing political winds.

Just wait until we have “universal” health care which will also be driven by political winds and the inevitable need to ration limited resources. What will happen when the anti-science, anti-reality, anti-evidence, anti-fact, anti-life evangelicals gain control of that?

Will the government as single-payer (hence the taxpayers) be forced to pay for prayer circles and faith-healing?

If you can force the teaching of creationism as science even when there is no evidence to back it and prohibit a movie about global warming which is actually backed by evidence, then it’s a small step to force people to accept faith healing as legitimate medical science.

Only individuals have values and those values are not universal, nor should they be.

Seattle’s week-old Olympic Sculpture Park is a lesson in what happens when private ownership is transferred to the “public.”

“Vito” apparently liked Seattle’s new Olympic Sculpture Park so much he signed his name to it.

As did “Cameron.” “Andy.” “Cheb.” And “Mom.” Someone else looked upon the 8.5-acre waterfront expanse, with its 18 sculptures, and felt moved to let us know that “David is a gay.”

These writings, alongside hearts, stars and smiley faces, have been doodled onto the rusted surface of just one artwork — Richard Serra’s “Wake” — in the park’s first week.

[...]

The art has not been permanently damaged, curators say. People wrote on Serra’s 14-foot-high steel slabs mostly by pushing their fingers into the corroded surface. It left marks that are faintly visible despite repeated power-washings, but curators say they can be buffed out.

Still, I saw someone had used a rock to lightly carve “DAD” into the steel of “Wake,” which is a $5 million sculpture.

I wrote before about how tax laws distort the value of art. (Tax laws distort the value of everything.)

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That is a reality that the promoters of “public art” do not seem to understand.

Barbaro was euthanized today after more complications from his leg injury.

It was a series of complications, including laminitis in the left rear hoof and a recent abscess in the right rear hoof, that proved to be too much for the gallant colt, whose breakdown brought an outpouring of support across the country.

“I would say thank you for everything, and all your thoughts and prayers over the last eight months or so,” Jackson [the owner] said to Barbaro’s fans.

[...]

The story of the beloved 3-year-old bay colt’s fight for life captured the fancy of millions and drew an outpouring of support unrivaled in sports.

When Barbaro broke down, his right hind leg flared out awkwardly as jockey Edgar Prado jumped off and tried to steady the ailing horse. Race fans at Pimlico wept. Within 24 hours the entire nation seemed to be caught up in a “Barbaro watch,” waiting for any news on his condition.

Well-wishers young and old showed up at the New Bolton Center with cards, flowers, gifts, goodies and even religious medals for the champ, and thousands of e-mails poured into the hospital’s Web site just for him.

“I just can’t explain why everyone is so caught up in this horse,” Roy Jackson, who owned the colt with his wife, Gretchen, has said time and again. “Everything is so negative now in the world, people love animals and I think they just happen to latch onto him.”

Devoted fans even wrote Christmas carols for him, sent a wreath made of baby organic carrots and gave him a Christmas stocking.

Although the get-well cards and banners eventually will fade or be trashed, the biggest gift has been the $1.2 million raised since early June for the Barbaro Fund. The money is put toward needed equipment such as an operating room table, and a raft and sling for the same pool recovery Barbaro used after his surgeries.

The Jacksons spent tens of thousands of dollars hoping the best horse they ever owned would recover and be able to live a comfortable life on the farm — whether he was able to breed or not.

It’s sad that such a beautiful animal had to be killed, but the fact that so many people needed him to support their fantasy world is even sadder.