Sexy ****
Yeah, this oversized iPod touch is sexy, there won’t be an argument from me on that point. Apple is incapable of making a device which doesn’t carry itself with a high appeal in the looks department. The sleekness of it is the future of computing styles, but I don’t think anyone expected any different. The only issue I take is the LARGE amount of blackspace around the display itself. I’m wondering if this was necessary due to the component structure or a rare design flaw for Apple.

Newness **
Here’s where the problems start to play. We weren’t really given anything new. I think most of us were ezpecting this design, but with some enhanced multitouch capabilities, some brilliant software capabilities, or something else to point to other than “look, sexy.” As it stands, we don’t really have that, we have an iPod touch with a big screen and a bit more power.

Price ****
499 is a decent intro price, and hundred dollar increments for each increase in memory makes the higher level systems greater values. I understand the high cost of flash hard drives, but it seems that not many people would be able to get by with a mere 16 gig hard drive, 32 should have been the baseline, and I imagine that’s the direction that most users will head. 130 addon for the 3g card seems ok to me, but I’m not familiar with those prices so that’s a bit of guesswork for me.

Functionality***
Here’s where things get more interesting. The iPad packs some punch to it, that’s for sure, but the issue is utilization. From a students perspective I look forward to two things the most (from the iPad): the abolition of my textbooks having them all in digital format, and iWork. The ability to cut down on how much junk I lug around campus is key, if I can live off one device then it’s worth the $600 I’d plunk down to get it. The problem is that, at least to this point (Which mean early adopters are likely to NOT see this implemented) there was no mention of running multiple apps at the same time. Meaning I can’t switch between the text I’m reading and Pages (the apple word processor) with, oh say, the swipe of a finger, meaning I’d still need to carry either my laptop or my books, so how much is this actually saving me.
Where is the camera? That shouldn’t have even been a question of implementation, it should have been a given. Yes, I want to video conference from my iPad, and I think that’s a common sentiment.
I didn’t mark of for this next part, but thought I should address it. Many peope, including my somewhat technologically slow to adopt family, felt that the tablet should be the ultimate all-in-one and would have removed the need to carry any other devices, from phones to laptops. This notion is a bit ridiculous, and anyone dissapointed that they’d still need a phone was thinking a few too many years in advance.

Potential *****
Yes, I gave this section the highest possible rating. Most techno nerds knew going into this announcement that the true potential in the tablet didn’t lie in the device itself but more in the doors that have opened. The most encouraging sign was the New York Times inclusion of in line video, these sorts or new media implementations need to be picked up by the dead tree industry in their transition to digital media. They need to begin thinking in new ways to harness the power and opportunity provided to them by the tablet. The dead tree industry stands to gain as much benefit from the tablet as the recording industry gained from the iPod.

Final thoughts
I won’t be an early adopter. I remember to clearly the transition from the iPhone 1.0 to the 3g. I don’t mind waiting a year to see the implementations that the second generation of the tablet will gain. On top of that, I don’t mind waiting until the third party aspect of the tablet had grown a bit and it’s potential is brought to bear. In the end, I simply see no benefit to getting a first gen tablet. Hopefully I’m proven wrong.

I’ve been away for a while; I find myself distracted often by books, music.  These two distractions I don’t mind so much… they’re productive and I “live” when I partake in them. Some other distractions, however, are more amusing since they show my utter ineptitude in certain fields. (Let’s just say, laughably pathetic)

Since it’s been a while since I’ve written anything (at least publicly, I’ve become semi-prolific within the realm of my moleskines) allow me the brief repose of my meandering thoughts put on screen for your further clarification of how my mind works (or doesn’t work).

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about two things, “forever” and dreaming.

To the former, I sit and wonder how our concept of forever became so terribly impotent. Actually, I wonder this about every infinite concept, but forever seems to be both out most commonly used and easiest to exemplify our ineptitude with. Forever is the one term that we seem utterly incapable of removing from our vocabulary. We use the term forever, and it’s antonym, never, in an almost laughably frequent way (in fact it would be laughable if it’s over usage wasn’t so tragically causing increasingly precarious levels of insensitivity to the gravity of such a concept).

I am part of an online community known as tumblr, which is comprised mostly of people who fancy themselves artists of some capacity (guilty as charged). A popular bit of typography I see on tumblr has the following phrase:

“You say you’ll love me forever, just warn me when forever starts to end.”

I think this brilliantly captures the crime we commit on an almost daily basis. A crime which I am certainly guilty of myself, having gone further than most in such assertions of eternity, only to realize we both knew forever ended long before we openly acknowledged it. This same notion carries not just in love, but friendship and devotion as well. While I’ve never used the phrase “best friends forever” I have carried those sentiments around for a few years, only to have that particular friendship begin to dissolve (due in no small part to the previous example of forever ending).

On the other hand is the notion of never. I can think of specific things I thought I’d never like or do that I currently love or am doing. Things like wine, poetry, writing, and art, I thought I’d always ignore these, yet I find myself strangely awed, intrigued, and impassioned by these things now. Then, I never thought I’d reach a point where the base belief in god was even a question in my life (ironic side note: I have the name YWHW tattooed on my back) yet here I stand embracing agnosticism and finding comfort in it.

Alas, it seems I have yet to find any notion of forever on which I can solidly grasp. In reality, I’m ok with that; there are only two notions of forever that I wish to grasp: love and friendship. Give me those and take away the world and I’ll be perfectly fine.

Now that I’ve depressed you, allow me to express my hopeful side. I think “forever” (and by forever I mean for the rest of life, and not the purely literal eternity) is innately possible, but requires determination to allow things to continue. Whereas “never” would require determination not to change things IE: “I’ll never forgive him” is a personal determination to never overcome an adversity. So, I fully believe I’ll reach a point with someone where I’m comfortable in stating “forever” again, because I understand now that forever requires far more determination than had been put into things that have ended.

Which moves to the second problem plaguing me lately, my unstoppable desire to dream. I am capable of dreaming crazy things based on but the slightest provocation. I can dream up entire lifetimes in a moment, enjoy the vast grandness of a relationship that doesn’t exist, see bright futures full of hope and beauty even while my present sits dark and despairing. I have what can only be deemed as a limitless capacity for hope. My unending imagination coupled with my innate propensity to hope has caused both a rather amusing comedy of errors and a series of terrifying responses that drive me to ever doubt hope. I find myself reaching the point, nearly every other week, in which I say to (probably my best friend) “I’m done with hope. Hope only screws me over.” These hopeful dreams, they haven’t lead anywhere good so far, in fact, they normally just end up with me getting hurt.

Hopes a fucking scary thing.

Fucking scary.

So that’s where I’m at right now, I’ll restart my talk about god tomorrow.

First, since my posts now go to facebook as notes, I’ve gotten some more personal responses from people that didn’t read my blog previously but have been following me since I started moving into the facebook area as well. To these people, and to a lot of my other facebook friends that come across this post, the subject matter may be a bit outside of your normal conversational topics. I’m talking here about a movement that isn’t well known amongst the laity at your everyday American church, but it’s influence, or I should say effect, is likely felt within your own individual church experiences. If you’ve ever seen artists on stage painting during a sermon, or been to a coffee house church, or perhaps your church sits in a circle with the presenter in the middle, these are a few examples of things that the emergent movement has brought to the forefront. (an aside, I’m not saying emergent created these things, did them first, or does them best, simply that the influence of the movement brought them out) If you want to know more about the whole deal, feel free to email me matt at themattscott dot com.

Second, I want to preface my comments to my emergent friends. I was hesitant about posting on the latest “death of emergent” for several reasons; one the topic is becoming redundant. Two, there are other more important things to be talking about (speaking of which, please help helping Haiti in any way you can).

Third, I hesitated mostly because I don’t know if I consider myself part of the movement any longer. I stepped away from things for a few months while I was dealing with some life issues (and by dealing with I mean going through various and increasing levels of hell until things got better), and during this time went through some large belief changes. I’m not sure if I still consider emergent my movement (not as in I controlled things, but as in I had a part to play in the [continuing] formation, at least on a local level) I now split my self between feeling that I am still a part of emergent and simply being a friend that wants to see things go well for them. With these things in mind, let chat.

In response to the recent “death of” conversation, I point to the following quote from the movie “Lucky Number Slevin”

My father use to say: “The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk, but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.”

I’m no emerging church historian, but I can think of three times this “death of” conversation has sparked up, while I wouldn’t say it’s time to go looking for a burial plot yet, I would say it’s time to start dealing with the fact that you’re being called a horse.

I think the reason these past couple critiques have stirred up so much more emotion is because they have come from within, instead of the normal attacks and critiques from the existing structures that “feel threatened.” While Emergent, as a movement, has been under constant critique from the outside for what seems like the entirety of its existence, and I think has benefited from such constant critiques, and they’ll likely continue for some time. Some have been valid, some have changed things that needed to be changed, some have been rightfully refuted, and some have been ignored, all without causing too much emotional repercussions and long term levels of hurt feelings. These latest critiques, however, the ones that have come from within, are starting to show strains and cracks.

These latest critiques (really the last two “death of” critiques) have elicited what can only be seen as a “circling the wagons” response, an immediate defensive position. The former coordinator of EV immediately bangs out a response to them, the satirical articles come, and then the critique is seen as “refuted” and life moves on, nothing really changes and no real benefit is seen from the event. I have a friend who has no problems calling me an ass when I act like one and I have another friend who tells me straight to my face when I’m about to do something stupid. I value these two guys, because I know they want the best for me, and if I ignore their advice it’s usually to my detriment. I hope emergent starts to see these inside critiques in the same light.

But hey, I’m just the little guy on the outside looking in, what do I know?

I bring this up for a couple reasons, one because I like Nick, I drank his booze and swam in his pool once, but mostly because I’ve been talking recently about my own agnosticism quite a bit lately, and Nick also approaches the topic in his book (albeit from a more… hopeful [that pun was too easy] standpoint). Nick and I share some of the same views on the topic, so if you’re interested in hearing where this neo-Agnosticism is headed, come check things out tomorrow (Jan 12th) at 7 at Johnnie MacCrackens.

Here’s the facebook event link, if you prefer that.

Also, buy the book.

Also also, I’ll review the book sometime.

—-

The argument always went: “Look how intricate the world is, see the many requirements to sustain life, and how they happen without our effort? See if one little thing changes, like the salinity in the oceans, everything falls out of balance. How can you look at that and not see an intelligent designer behind it all?”

I long held to this argument, one of my favorite teachers, Rob Bell, was a proponent of this argument in his DVD (lesson? Sermon? Talk?) “Everything Is Spiritual.” It seemed to make sense to me, and I guess on some quasi-logical level the “Go for the best explanation, even it if isn’t 100% conclusive” argument swayed me. God, then, must have been the designer of the world, for the amazing intricacies and beauty of nature supposedly call his name. I think it often growing up it was said “The sunrise is God’s signature.” Cheesy, but it gets the point across.

I have no problems admitting to the beauty of the world, indeed my next tattoo (to complement my now ironic YHWH tattoo, that says “I am not lost” underneath it) will be “Mono No Aware”—the English pronunciation of a Japanese phrase meaning “the ahh-ness of things,” since this world is full of moments that fill us with the feeling of “ahh,” such as a beautiful sunrise, or this sunset I captured the other day driving down the road.  But do these really speak to the existence of a creator? Derek actually responded to this claim a bit the other day, so I’ll defer this point over to his comments, and address the subject from a different standpoint—one of acceptance.

Taking that God is the designer, the question becomes, where does the so-called design stop? Can you get god “off the hook” for the deaths, destruction, wars, and famines prevalent all over? For if god is the designer of it all then these things are necessarily part of god’s design, or perhaps it’s best to say, the result of god’s design. To borrow the argument from Russell, if an inventor designs a machine that goes horribly wrong, and then inventor is prescient enough to know that the machine will hurt, maim, destroy, or in any way inflict damage upon others, then it is the designer who should be held to account for the failures of the design. We similarly hold designers of buildings, bridges, and vehicles that fail to understand the flaws and failures in their design to account when the magnitude and gravity of the failure of the design is made apparent. Can the designer then be called “good” if s/he knows full well the ramifications of the failure yet continues to put the design out there?

To be fair, an open deist would argue that god didn’t have the foreknowledge of the current situation thus cannot be held to account, but the deists rely on the argument of “first cause,” which I’ve already addressed, so even they cannot put forth any sort of convincing notion of god. (More on this last sentence latter, so all of you stop thinking I’m some atheist clinging to black and white definitions of everything.)

Thus I stand now with my previous foundations for the belief in a deity lain bare and shown too weak to hold such a weighty notion.

I’m looking forward to it. You can follow the project here.

When I first started moving beyond my theism, I still held to two definitions of God, the first as designer and the second as original cause. I know several of my emergent friends have remarked on the poverty of the proofs for God, but for some time the thought patter of Aquinas’ original cause sustained my ever decreasing belief in God. I viewed original cause as the stronger of these two arguments, yet now in retrospect, I think they are both weak in dissimilar ways. If you don’t hold to any notions or proofs of god (I think most theists do, they simply don’t acknowledge their reasoning as a proof), then this post really won’t do much for you; it’s simply a chronicle of my transitory state.

As to the theory of First Cause, this seems to be the natural standpoint of most Christians, especially those defending notions of young earth creationism, indeed it appears that any Christian that has had any sort of apologetics training immediately turns to Aquinas when faced with the question of God. I understand why, this argument appears to have a logical core which is strong enough to place tenuous belief upon, however, I see two lines of reasoning as to why this argument fails in the end.

The first, assuming that first cause was indeed true, the argument does not do anything but implicate a designer, and speaks nothing to the God of any religion. First cause could then, in essence, have simply been a completely evil entity (which would seem to make more sense, more on this later), it indeed does not require God to be good by any means of the term (though this does beg the Socratic “what is piety” argument). Thus, if taken as valid, the argument does not prove any conclusions regarding God other than the existence of an entity capable of existing outside of cause.

Second, the argument takes the assumption that there must be a cause to everything. This argument, at its core, requires a standpoint of hard determinism, which has fallen far outside of favor in more contemporary circles (of course, it is still strongly held within a large portion of Christianity itself), and clings strongly to the notion that everything must make sense. (Interestingly, those who hold to first cause then must shut the door on any sort of compatibilism, a point which, I’m sure, many of those I have carried this discussion with would refrain from admitting.) Without delving too deeply into the arguments of determinsim/compatibilism/free-will, I’ll simply state that the logical implications of such an argument (hard determinism) do not follow contemporary understandings of the workings of the world, and thus make a poor foundation for “god.”

I spent a bit more time on causality then I had originally intended (perhaps the amount of time was predetermined by a long chain of events that stem from a single cause, and all add up to writing six hundred words about cause?), so I’ll leave design for tomorrow. As always, comment away.

—

For most of my life I have clung to certainty, often in a vain attempt to feel secure in the world that is, at its core, innately insecure. I grew up certain of black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, absolute truth, because I needed these things. The world needed to be orderly and neat, it needed to work for some grand design and purpose, I needed there to be a God.

The more I’ve grown up, the more I understand the innate disorder in the world. While, at many levels, things follow upon a central chain of causality, but at the same time, I’ve seen things that are far outside of the comprehension of order. I’ve seen both good and ill come outside of order; I’ve read a story about an enlightened individual that sacrificed himself to break the “orderly” understanding of violence. I’ve read other stories of “senseless violence”, in which the perpetrator had no cause to inflict pain,  (BTK killer, anyone?), yet did so.

Then I began to move away from my modern need for absolute truth, and towards a postmodern understanding of truth. I am not implying that postmodernism ultimately leads to an agnostic/atheist understanding, many of my postmodern friends are devout believers in (a) god, I am simply stating that my view of god was influenced by my understanding of truth.  I began to understand the world more in terms of contradiction (which, I likely picked up from my eastern philosophical influences), than absolutes, and saw less and less the need for order.

For quite some time after I began to understand the world in new terms, I held to God. I held to things like the vast number of requirements needed for the world to continue on as reasons for an intelligently designed evolution, and things like the argument of first cause to explain how “it” all got started.  I think, however, at some level I realized I was beginning to make excuses to hold on. I started moving ever more towards simply admitting that there may be a god, but I don’t know, and I won’t state either way conclusively.

I was having dinner with a friend one night, when I finally started voicing the questions I had been playing with in my mind for a while. “What if the world just doesn’t make sense? What if there is no point? Do I need a god to give my life meaning?” In my mind, I was saying no to all these questions. My friend and I had a little back and forth over it, and then I started to dwell on the subject more after that night, until I finally jumped ship a couple weeks ago.

I think I’ll have to expound on this a bit more, it’s a rather broad subject to poke around, and this post is more of a “here’s how I got here” than any sort of defense of my opinion.

As always, the better conversations happen in the comments.

I like the Jesus my friends talk about, the one who cares about people that most people don’t care about. I like the Jesus that hangs out with the rejects, the losers, the weak, the unclean, because I see myself in all of these categories. I like the Jesus that challenges others to set the world upside down, the Jesus that responds to the conventional approaches of inequality with wit and brilliance, the Jesus that makes those that come down on others look inward. I like the Jesus that showed the weakness of violence. This Jesus naturally attracts and intrigues me; this Jesus draws me out of my self, and (apologies) fucks up my world.

My facebook religion status is “Read Franny and Zooey.” If you haven’t read this brilliant little treatise on mysticism and religion (ok it’s a novel, but still a treatise), then I humbly ask you to do so. I’d say that “Franny and Zooey” is one of the biggest literary influences on my life, it’s powerful, provocative, and enlightening. But, allow me to share this little passage,

“[Jesus is] only the must intelligent man in the Bible, that’s all! Who isn’t he head and shoulders over? Who? Both testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls – but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody.”

This is how I’ve felt about Jesus for a long time. This is how I think a lot of people feel about Jesus, from all religions and philosophical systems. So, when Russell began his critique of Jesus, my mind reeled. After a bit of reading, I realized Russell and I were talking about two completely different versions of Jesus. Russell’s Jesus was still held captive by the stagnant, classist interpretation that has been prevalent since Constantine. (God, I think I invoke the ills of Constantine far too often)

Which brings me to the question Andrew posed; why do I consider myself “not a Christian”

First, I think the term has become and is becoming increasingly more unhelpful. While for many years a Christian to me meant a real true Baptist that held to the core theological positions such as total depravity and pre-millennial dispensationalism, because I was taught true Christians believed these things. Next I learned that it was OK not to believe these things, as long as you held Jesus is Lord and Savior and Fire Insurance, so my idea of the term Christian broadened. Then my own understanding of Christianity changed, and I started seeing Christianity in plenty of people that would never call themselves Christians. For the most part, however, I think when someone uses the term Christian, the mental connotations are that of a narrow minded evangelical. Thus the term both fails to cover me and to actually draw a circle big enough for those who are in it.

Second, I’m not quite certain that I should be placed within that terminology. I don’t hold that God must exist (or does exist). I simply don’t know if an entity we would call God exists, but this idea, that God must and does exist, I think is central to Christianity (again, using the Term in the generally widespread understanding of it).

If you want to call me a Christian because I try to follow Jesus, then go for it. Personally, I’d rather be done with the word, it bears too much baggage.

Why would I pick up “Why I Am Not a Christian?”

Questions about God and the nature of things have been the ever looming monster in my life, a battle of inward dialogue I have been having with myself since my first tepid steps outside of the box I was given as a child. For several years (as evidenced by the general thought patterns represented within this blog) I was comfortable working within the inward questions of my own Christianity.

The first question that occupied my mind was that of Hell, then I moved towards soteriology, followed by scriptural integrity, authentic Christology, chasing the dream of the early church, and postmodernism within Christianity. (you can follow this path of questioning via reading this blog chronologically) Somewhere along this path the inward agnosticism I had always battled began to emerge and the real struggle for my faith came. Whereas my previous questions only served to strengthen the resolve of my faith (by alleviating the certainty derisive to the true nature of faith), this new foreboding question was targeted at the very structure of faith itself.

I continued to partake in a group of freethinking Christians (though after my world blew up I stopped going for a while) known as an emergent cohort, and still largely considered myself part of the Christian populace, and for all intents and purposes a Christian (whose tenor I haughtily viewed as somewhat more authentic than that of others who were unwilling to face questioning and critical views of their systemic beliefs). I sit now, in the faux wooden chair and the throwback decor of my favorite coffee shop, and now openly confess that I am no longer a Christian.

Even know typing those words brings the sense of magnitude instilled in me by my teachers, and I begin to work through the ramifications of such a statement.

I should begin making clarifying statements here.

I was reading through “Why… Christian” today, in the aforementioned coffee house. The text opens with a lecture, by the same name, given by Russell to the National Secular Society somewhere in the late-20’s. Russell opens with a series of criticisms on the various “proofs” for God, Causality, Natural law, Design, Morality, and so forth. All of these criticisms I read with my now standard critical approach (I tend to run an inner dialogue with the authors I read, questioning them in the margins and highlighting a multitude of passages that any casual reader of a text after me would think I simply love the color orange) until I began to reach his criticisms of Jesus, this is where I began to feel an inward increase of vigorous objections and felt something within what we would term the heart (of course the ontological distinction becomes necessary between the heart as the vascular organ and the heart as perhaps the second player in the ever going struggle for control of the will).

Thus I must come to state where my current position interplays with the large majority of my readers, Christians.

I now view my position as that of an outsider, yet a friend. Where I do not share Russell’s belief that the entirety of religious systems are detrimental to the progressive and beneficial evolution of humanity as a whole, I instead hoist up what I see as beneficial examples of religion as that which should be sought after heartily by those still within those systems, and mimicked by those outside. When I see the social justice of Christianity played out, my heart is drawn to such displays, and when I see the detrimental side of the interplay between religion and politics my heart is spurned.

It is my high view of Christ which keeps me connected to Christianity, and my high view of the social justice of Christ which keeps me connected to Emergence (which is in no way a statement that those outside of this system [and those inside must forgive my usage of the term system] as the only expression of social justice, instead it is the expression I see which most promotes social justice as a necessary core tenant).

Thus, here I am again, fully appreciative of the phrase “Friend of Emergent.” And take comfort in the knowledge that I’ll still be able to carry on in that “conversation,” I look forward to the continued interaction with my local cohort friends, and the renewed interaction with my online friends (probably many of those don’t follow the RSS anymore, so that may be a while).

I’ll probably spend the next while clarifying my position on the subject, but as always, the comment section loves questions.