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0 Appropriation is Awesome

  • May 17, 2018
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Culture · Thought Box

People have been taking “cultural appropriation” way too far. By people, I mean the American left which has lead the mission to yell at, bully, and belittle anyone who participates in anything that wasn’t created by their ethnic group. White people aren’t allowed to make burritos, only black people should rap and in a recent example of cultural appropriation idiocy, a high school girl was shamed on Twitter for wearing a Chinese dress (and wearing it well I might add) to her prom. Thank goodness I am half-white and half-black and therefore allowed to dip into two different cultures.

So what exactly is cultural appropriation? It’s often described as someone adopting from a culture that is not his or her own – a hairstyle, a piece of clothing, a manner of speaking, even a type of exercise (yoga, for example). Everyday feminism takes this a step further explaining that cultural appropriation takes place when a dominant group borrows from a culture they have oppressed. It doesn’t matter if you specifically have never oppressed said group, just that someone of your same ethnicity has. Neither of these definitions seem inherently evil to me but whichever definition you use, cultural appropriation is confusing from the start.

First, let’s look at the broader definition of cultural appropriation. Take something from someone else’s culture and you’re appropriating. This means if your culture didn’t invent a style of dance, you should not participate. Well, white people invented tap dancing. If you’re familiar with the history of tap dance you might say nuh-uh, tap dancing was invented by blacks in the south. I’d say you’re right but tap was actually an appropriation of Irish clogging. Poor Irish and poor blacks lived amongst each other in the south. Both groups were discriminated against and faced socio-economic struggles. (Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals explains this in more detail.) The two groups ended up borrowing quite a bit from each other. It’s just fact that blacks appropriated the Irish clog to create tap and I’m glad they did…But that’s appropriation so I guess only the Irish should be allowed to tap. If blacks can’t participate in tap dance, we never would have had Savion Glover, quite possibly the best tap dancer who ever lived. Please take a minute to watch him here; he truly is astounding. Ballet certainly isn’t a part of African culture, so say goodbye to Misty Copeland too. If Hip-Hop is a black-American invention then someone better call Channing Tatum and tell him to stop dancing. Classical music isn’t rooted in Asian culture so forget about Yo-Yo Ma. Opera began in Italy so if you ain’t Italian don’t even bother. Flutes originated in China so literally every kid in my high school band’s flute section was way out of line.

The arts are an easy one to pick on but you can apply this to nearly any piece of the human experience. There would be great losses in our cultural advancement if people weren’t allowed to cross cultural lines. Weren’t we all told as kids that copying is the greatest form of flattery? If someone uses something from your culture to create something new, they most certainly respect your culture. If they didn’t, why would they use it? Now if a white person makes a dream catcher and says “hey, I invented this” I could see the issue but that is rarely, if ever the case in these instances of “cultural appropriation.”

But SJWs think they got ya on the second definition of cultural appropriation, the one that says only oppressors can appropriate meaning white people can’t participate in any culture that isn’t their own, but black people, who are the most oppressed, can borrow from any culture they want. (Actually Jews are the most oppressed, but that’s a topic for another day.) The problem with this idea is that it really only hurts minorities. Ok, so now white people can only wear jeans and eat italian food..not really a big deal. But that authentic taco stand? You just lost all your white customers. Black rappers? You just lost 70-75% of your audience. The UFC would not only see a huge drop in ratings; (can’t have white people viewing mixed martial arts) they would lose quite a few athletes as well, with Dana White following them out the door. His name is literally White! How much more offensive can you be??!!!

I realized that cultural appropriation had gone way too far when some of my friends admired a dress I have. It is a beautiful, colorful, handmade dress. I bought it from an online shop that sells dresses made by African artisans. My friends ranted and raved about the dress so much that I asked one of them why she didn’t just buy one for herself. She told me she was afraid if she did people would get mad because she is white. And you know what, she’s probably not wrong; someone might get mad. But the person who gets mad that a white woman supported a black designer is an absolute fool.

Why would you want to prevent 77% of the American population from purchasing goods made by minorities? Do you want minority culture in the U.S. to disappear, because without the white man’s dollar most culture-based businesses will fail. Do you not want white people helping uplift merchants in third world countries out of poverty by supporting their craft? It breaks my heart thinking about the dollars those African dress makers are missing out on because white women have been bullied into fear of celebrating the beauty of something not their own.

So appropriate, I say! Without it, we wouldn’t have tap dance or blues or MMA or ice cream cones or me! If you’re worried about it still, just follow these rules:

  1. Give credit where credit is due.
    Don’t claim you created something you didn’t.
  2. Don’t wildly misrepresent a culture.
    Don’t claim you’re giving props to Native-Americans when you’re in a skimpy outfit with feathers and just want to dress provocatively.

That’s pretty much it. Be respectful but be a sponge. If Drake isn’t proof we need more cross-cultural appropriation, I don’t know what is.

0 When Everything is “Problematic”

  • May 10, 2018
  • by Arianna
  • · Culture · In the News

The internet is awash with articles dubbing parts of the culture “problematic.” Whether it be films, songs, memes, words, or phrases; when it’s considered “problematic” it typically means that the author feels that there is some hidden or implied discrimination in it that is likely not immediately obvious to most people. When highlighting “problematic” things, the authors’ message is frequently to stop supporting or using whatever the thing is.

For films or tv shows, much of the criticism that brings out the word “problematic” comes from an expectation that all entertainment should be a reflection of the critic’s ideal society. This typically involves proportionate representation of minorities (at minimum) and messaging around the empowerment of underrepresented groups. While you can make good movies that fit these requirements, there are many that inherently will not and that should be okay. In an article titled “As A Black Woman, Everything I Love Is Problematic,” one writer discusses her internal struggle when she finds herself liking movies or tv shows that do not advance her ideal society. For example, she confesses a love of period pieces such as Poirot and Downton Abbey but laments that they are beautiful shows that can glorify some of the negative aspects of Western/European history, depicting rich, attractive people who are successful often just by dint of birth and who take advantage of less fortunate people, treating them poorly. Her feelings of guilt in liking these shows indicates that she feels that by watching and even enjoying them, she is somehow supporting the structure of society in those times and supporting the behavior of the characters.

This way of thinking puts a lot of pressure on the viewer to only watch things that reflect their own views or experience back to them. While I understand the desire to see your culture represented in film or tv, the pressure that this has created to only support diverse projects does not appear to be beneficial. To look at a period piece that accurately represents a time period and feel you shouldn’t like it for that reason indicates a problem with your feelings and not the piece. You absolutely can watch it and feel distaste for any of their bad behavior, even while appreciating the beautiful clothes and hair and architecture, because history is complex and very few things are all bad or all good.

When it comes to “problematic” words or phrases, articles typically focus on those that have racist or otherwise derogatory origins that most current users would not be aware of. While it can be worthwhile to explore the origins of the words that we use, savory or otherwise, I think it’s unnecessary to try to scrub out any words from our vocabulary that may have been used in a negative context at some point by someone many, many years ago. An example from the linked article is the phrase “No can do.” In our everyday lives, this is a simple, efficient way to let someone know we’re unable to do something. However, this phrase gained popularity in Western culture while making fun of Chinese immigrants’ broken English. After learning the negative origin of this phrase, we can stop using it – as the author suggests – because we oppose any mean-spirited taunting of immigrants doing their best to learn and communicate in our language, but what are we really accomplishing by doing that? This may make you feel more righteous as you act on your newfound knowledge, but that really only affects you.

If your goal is to improve society’s treatment of immigrants, then it makes more sense to worry about any wrongs that are being done to them now, not hundreds of years ago. When there are real problems that we can address together, why create problems in situations where there are none? This is where social justice warriors tend to lose an engaged audience that extends outside of other social justice warriors. I believe the grand majority of people in the United States want to combat bigotry and discrimination. The problem with social justice warriors’ approach is that so much of the messaging is focused on small things that may offend a minority group rather than combating barriers to success for minority groups. With this, the movement loses focus and the ability to create any real change. If everything is “problematic,” how do we identify and solve real problems?

1 Stop Pretending Sex is the Same for Men and Women

  • April 20, 2018
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Culture · Thought Box

Biological differences between men and women matter. Because of biological differences men tend to be bigger and stronger. Because of biological differences women tend to be smaller and more flexible. Women tend to be more focused on people, men tend to be more focused on “things.” Men tend to like solving finite problems and women tend to like artistic challenges. This isn’t my opinion, these are facts based on evolutionary and biological research. As I’ve said many a time, men and women are different and that’s a beautiful thing.

It’s concerning that modern culture (starting in the 60s but really becoming a mainstream train of thought in the 90s) doesn’t recognize this when it comes to sex. TV shows, movies, books, blogs, magazines are all telling us that sex is exactly the same for men and women. What I mean is that promiscuity, one-night-stands and casual sex were once thought to have been something more sought after by men. Now we’re told that women should celebrate their participation in any of the above as well. Instead of teaching men that maybe they should be a little more like women when it comes to sexual activity, we teach women they should be more like men. At the same time, we’re told men are pigs! If that’s the case then why is the response for women to act more like men when it comes to sex?

In a perfect world, we would all live perfect sexually moral lives. In a perfect world, you could have the same conversation about sex with your son as you would your daughter. But it’s not a perfect world and people certainly aren’t perfect. Sex is different for men and women and there’s plenty of research to back up this statement.

Pregnancy
The most obvious difference between the sexes, is that women can become pregnant. Condoms don’t always work, hormonal birth control doesn’t always work; I know of women who have gotten pregnant while using either of these contraceptives. The only way to insure you don’t get pregnant is to not have sex. The maternal death rate in the United States is around 17 deaths per 100,000 births and pregnancy also has other life changing complications. Pregnancy takes a toll on a woman’s body and is not something to be taken lightly even when planned.

If a woman conceives she can’t keep it a secret for long like a man can because a man can’t conceive. Even if a woman decides to have an abortion, there are potential side effects, including the mother’s death in some cases. If a mother wants to give the baby up for adoption, the act of carrying a life and giving birth to a baby adds an additional emotional wrinkle that sometimes leads to a mother changing her mind after initially agreeing to an adoption. Pregnancies (especially unplanned) can lead to emotional consequences that women endure but men can avoid.

For this reason my dad’s advice to my brother and I was “don’t have sex with anyone you couldn’t do business with.” I say he told this to my brother but I actually don’t know if he did but he certainly said it to me on more than one occasion. Why me and not my brother? Because it is more relevant to me. If I get pregnant and I keep the baby, I am 1) forever connected to the baby’s father even if we are not in a relationship and 2) more locked into the responsibility than he is.  From conception, the mother is literally and therefore emotionally more connected to the baby, making it harder for her to run away from the responsibility.

I do know that my father told my brother, if you get a girl pregnant, you’re pregnant too, (metaphorically) but in reality, we all know that especially in the baby’s early years, from breastfeeding to dirty diapers, the mother does much of the heavy lifting.

Injuries
Believe it or not, sex related injuries are a fairly common occurrence. Did you know 30% of women report having pain or discomfort the last time they had sex? This compared to only 5% of men. The pain could be due to a variety of factors including vaginal tearing, yeast infections and urinary tract infections. The main injury men get from sex that women don’t is a broken penis. Sounds pretty serious but it is extremely uncommon. To give you some perspective, In 13 years of analyzing medical records in a region with over 3 million people…researchers found only 42 patients with confirmed penile fractures. Yeast infections alone effect over 75% of women in their lifetime.

Forget pregnancy, sex is just more likely to cause overall discomfort for women.

Sexual Standards
While everyone who’s interacted with men and women know this, for some reason its controversial to say: men and women are different emotionally when it comes to sex. And there are countless studies to back this up.

The median number of sexual partners for a woman in America is three, while it’s five for a man. And let’s be real here, when it comes to gender, which one has an easier time finding someone willing to go to bed with them? I know very few females who couldn’t come home with a guy every Friday night if they wanted to. I know males who try to come home with a female every Friday night and fail most of the time. The standard for the average woman is higher than the standard for the average man. Most women report they do not marry the man who gave them “the best sex of their life,” but instead look for a loving, multi-dimensional relationship.

This theory has been tested in other experiments where a male and female walk around asking complete strangers if they would have sex with them. 75% of males agreed to have sex with a complete stranger where 0% of women agreed. This was the biggest gender difference ever discovered in psychological science. In a less scientific, but still fun version of this experiment, some YouTubers repeated the experiment finding less than 1% of women agreed to have sex with a stranger compared to 30% of men. Clearly, men are a little more eager to engage in casual sex than women, but why is that?

Emotional Differences
You may think women aren’t as into casual sex because of safety concerns, fear of pregnancy, or fear of being discovered but studies have also found that even when men and women are surveyed on the basis that none of the above concerns would be an issue, women are still far less interested in casual sex than men. Still think patriarchy is to blame? Researchers have found that in the most egalitarian societies the difference in the desire for promiscuity between gender actually grows larger. Furthermore, across all societies on Earth, even the least patriarchal, women always are less interested in casual sex.

Researchers have also found that men are far more interested in a two women, one man threesome versus a woman being interested in any threesome combination. Men are also more likely to have fantasies about short term sexual relationships. Men imagine having sex with more partners than women. Men spend more on prostitutes, strippers and porn..need I go on? This seems like common sense stuff to me, but I have to cover my bases.

So why do women crave longer term relationships? Why do women yearn for romance over cheap lust? Why is it that 84% of romance novel readers are women and romantic comedies are aptly nicknamed “chick flicks.” Because men and women process emotions differently.

Studies using brain imaging and blood tests have found that men are less reactionary to negative emotions because negative signals spend more time in the part of their brains associated with reasoning. A study out of Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and the University of Montreal looked at the amygdala (the brain’s threat detector) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (the brain’s regulator of perception, reasoning and emotional regulation) and saw that these two areas interacted more with men when they viewed negative images compared to women.

Coauthor Stéphane Potvin, an associate professor at University of Montreal’s department of psychiatry, said in a press release:

“A stronger connection between these areas in men suggests they have a more analytical than emotional approach when dealing with negative emotions. It is possible that women tend to focus more on the feelings generated by these stimuli, while men remain somewhat ‘passive’ toward negative emotions, trying to analyze the stimuli and their impact.”

Ok, so that explains why perhaps women tend to be more feelings focused. (Not a bad thing by the way.) But why does sex make us (especially women) get all emotional? While I have my own spiritual theories, the science isn’t conclusive. But, sex does appears to have a much longer lasting emotional effect on women.

A study done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that as a woman’s number of sexual partners went up before marriage, so did her likelihood of divorce. Women with over ten sexual partners are most likely to divorce while the odds of divorce are lowest amongst those women with one or zero premarital sex partners. The same is not said in regards to men, meaning marital success doesn’t seem to correlate with the number of partners the man has had before marriage. However, both men and women report more satisfaction with their sex life the fewer number of sexual partners they’ve had.

We all know intuitively that sex affects men and women differently, both physically and mentally. Why do so many pretend we have the same attitude? And if we’re choosing to push one attitude over the other why are we pushing the male attitude towards sex on women instead of the other way around?! Virtually all data shows that the fewer sexual partners you have, the more fulfilling your relationships will be.

If someone gives different advice to a female when it comes to sex as opposed to a male, don’t call them a sexist, perhaps they are simply acknowledging that sex has different consequences for men and women, which isn’t sexist at all. Perhaps they’re aware that a woman has more to lose every time she engages in sexual activity.

I’m not saying everyone must wait ‘til marriage or they’re doomed. But be picky about who you sleep with. Not only should it be a privilege for someone to go dancing in the sheets with you, it should contribute to a romantic connection you and your partner are both equally interested in pursuing and maintaining.

 

0 The Surprise Success of A Quiet Place

  • April 9, 2018
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Culture · Thought Box

While no one predicted A Quiet Place to be a failure, in its opening weekend it surpassed expectations. Opening at number one, the movie raked in $50 million, when Hollywood predicted that optimistically it would bring just $25 million. A 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and word of mouth is thought to have helped boost attendance. Ryan Reynolds, Stephen King and high-profile people aplenty are singing its praises. I was one of the people helping to spread the word.

I am a big Emily Blunt fan and, like everyone else, I have watched every episode of The Office. I was excited to see the real life couple work together for the first time, and while this isn’t the first movie John Krasinski has directed, it would be the first one I watched. I spread the word because it had good reviews and I wanted to support the actors involved.

Last Friday, opening weekend, I watched the movie. If you’re unfamiliar with the premise it’s about a family, Lee (played by Krasinski), Evelyn (played by Blunt) and their children, living in a post-apocalyptic world where monsters hunt anything living, but only by sound. Make a noise and they’re on you within seconds. A review I read said to watch it in a crowded theatre (and he was right). I really liked the movie. It wasn’t terrifying like I thought it would be but was good for reasons I didn’t expect.

*Spoilers Below*
A Quiet Place has surprisingly conservative undertones. The structure of the family is traditional. By that I mean the mom is feminine and the father is masculine. The dad is the protector and the provider while the mother is the homemaker and the teacher. Very early in the film, the family loses their youngest son. They’re walking home in a line and suddenly the boy starts playing with a loud toy. Evelyn, who is closer than Lee turns around and starts crying. It’s Lee, who is farther away, who sprints as fast as he can towards his child supposedly to try to push him out-of-the-way so he can be killed by the monsters instead. Evelyn isn’t a bad parent for not running towards her child; perhaps she’s the smarter parent because there is nothing any of them can do except potentially get killed. But Lee is a man, and traditionally it’s men who run towards a fight.

Femininity is needed as well. Lee is obsessed with protecting his family and figuring out how to kill the monsters. It’s fun seeing all the clever ways they have set up their home in order to communicate, protect themselves, and survive. That being said, the man is stressed. You can’t really blame him for this but it’s Evelyn who calms him down. She pulls him away from his desk and they enjoy a tender romantic moment slow dancing while listening to music through headphones. Evelyn also calms her son down when he’s extremely nervous about going to get fish with his dad. Evelyn is the calm in the storm, even when she’s not calm. Women are generally the calming force in a family and that is certainly the case in A Quiet Place.

Speaking of bringing the son to fish, my brother and I argued about whether Lee bringing his son out to fish and leaving his daughter who wanted to go was a gender-based decision or not. I don’t think it was, but my brother does. Evelyn tells her son that Lee wants to teach him how to take care of her. At first look I would agree, this is a gender based decision. But the sister is deaf and has a history of not listening. The truth is, the daughter is a liability in more ways than one, so I see why you may not want to take her out on an excursion into monsterland. Lee does tap into his son’s masculine side later in the film when at first his son refuses to run across a field. Only when Lee tells him his mother needs his help does the boy’s attitude change, and it changes immediately.

Lee is short with the kids. He loves them but he’s all about survival while Evelyn brings warmth and meaning to the kids’ lives and her husband’s. You can tell a difference even in the way that they sign, Lee’s hands are harsh while Evelyn’s are somehow kinder. But you need both: without Lee they die, without Evelyn they want to die.

Children are sacred in this movie. Not only the born ones but the unborn. Evelyn is pregnant. You can see how in a movie all about staying as quiet as possible this could be a problem. First of all, why is she pregnant? Clearly these are smart people yet they didn’t use any condoms? They have access to condoms and in the timeframe they still wouldn’t’ve expired. This makes me think they chose to get pregnant as the bringing of new life is fundamental to their survival and humanity’s. This means they’ve decided life is still worth living and they have an obligation to contribute to the ongoing of mankind.

But maybe they got pregnant on accident. If there’s any situation in which an abortion would be ethical, it’s a world where everyone gets killed if a single sound is made. We see earlier in the movie that they have access to drugs in a nearby town. While a surgical abortion is out of the question there are certainly other ways to cause “miscarriages.” One might argue that an abortion or killing the child shortly after it’s born would be the ethical thing to do because a baby puts the whole family at risk. This seems to have never occurred to the family who set up an elaborate plan for Evelyn to give birth and take care of the baby.

Now it may seem like I’m making Evelyn’s character out to be a weak, simple woman. She isn’t. At the end of the movie she is the first and only person to actually take out one of the monsters and she does so when it’s inches away from killing all three of her children. Not only does she kill the monster, she had the calm to wait to shoot the perfect shot, knowing other monsters would be on them at the noise. The mother figure isn’t weak, just feminine, and it’s modern day feminists who conflate those two terms. The woman has a baby with no drugs while being chased by monsters. Ain’t nothing weak about that, but is there anything more feminine than giving birth? There’s nothing more important to her than protecting her children; she literally tells Lee this in the film.

Because the family operates in this traditional way, they are believable and because they are believable, you emotionally invest in them. This movie made me care about the survival of the family more than I usually do for any type of film but especially when you talk about the thriller genre.

Feminism (in its current form) is all fine and dandy in theory, but when surviving is the goal, it’s simply not sustainable and Krasinski clearly knows this based on the direction of the movie. To make a film where women are just as strong as men or men are comforting in the same way as women wouldn’t be telling the truth. A woman isn’t going to be able to race through the woods carrying a kid for as long or as fast as a man. A man isn’t going to have as much patience teaching young kids as a woman has. Of course these are generalizations, but they’re generalizations with statistical significance. To get away from that, like so many recent movies have, is to ignore the truth.

Even in a hellish world there is nothing more beautiful than life. Humans are wired to protect life under a certain dynamic. That dynamic is man and woman, mother and father, feminine and masculine. A Quiet Place hits that nail right on the head.

3 Questions from an Atheist: From Believer to Skeptic

  • April 3, 2018
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Philosophy/Religion · Thought Box

As an atheist or agnostic thinking about whether or not God exists, most of us have the same questions or hang ups. Any apologetic will tell you it’s rare they hear a question they’ve never heard before. Despite humans having contemplated faith for thousands of years, many of which determining yes, God does indeed exist, non-believers often believe they have the “Gotcha” question no believer can logically answer. Like I said when I wrote about my literal coming to Jesus, it’s kind of arrogant. I was one of the arrogant, with science and faith being my biggest hangup, which is probably the most common argument I come across.

Having the science vs Christianity debate actually gets kind of boring. Talking with people who think they’re so smart and you’re just a dumb Christian is fun at first, but I find there are actually bigger questions to be answered once you dig a little deeper. Skimming the surface of Christian doctrine gives evidence of compatibility with faith.

Recently I had a fun and different conversation with someone who was once a believer and now isn’t. He had a list of reasons why he had left God, some science related, others not. I am new to “apologetics” but I had a good time testing my own faith and knowledge by addressing his qualms. This will probably be a recurring piece on my blog as I believe it is good for everyone involved.

 

  • Is your version of the Bible correct?
    I have various versions of the Bible. By various I mean slightly different translations. That being said, all Bibles say virtually the same thing. They have the same message. Just like the various adaptations of the Cinderella story told in virtually every culture across the globe: they’re all slightly different, but the moral remains the same. However, it is a distant goal of mine to learn Hebrew or ancient Greek so I can read the Bible in its original form and hence its most accurate one.

 

  • How are God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit one yet separate? I.e. why would Jesus pray to himself?
    First we must unpack why there is even a trinity to begin with. I think C.S. Lewis has some wise words on this.

    On a one-dimensional level, you can have a straight line. On a two-dimensional level, those lines can be combined in ways they couldn’t conceive in a one-dimensional world, and they could form a square. Moving on, on a three-dimensional level, those squares can be combined in yet more inconceivable ways for anyone living in a one-or-two-dimensional world, and could form a cube.

    This trinity is a deeper or more complex level of living/existence. On Earth we are one dimensional. What I mean is one person is one being. You shoot me and only I die, I eat food and only I get full. Perhaps we get close to a two-dimensional existence when we marry someone and two become one; Evidence of this is when one’s spouse dies and a day later they die as well.

    Lewis suggests the doctrine of the Trinity describes a “higher kind of life,” where you can have “a being who is three persons while remaining one being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.”

    It’s difficult to wrap our heads around it, but the trinity is something for us to experience. Keep in mind that when we envision one, two and three we do so in terms of objects because we are physical beings but God is not physical, he is spiritual. God (the Father) is the one we pray to, God (the Holy Spirit) is the thing inside us urging us to pray, and God (the Son) is a bridge or road along which we are pushed to that goal. Humans are one being and one person. God is one being but three persons.

    Click here for a good explanation of the trinity.

 

  • How do you know if something is true? Through prayer? Through faith?
    This is a weird question to me cause it seems obvious. I know something is true if I have solid evidence that said thing is true, beyond a reasonable doubt. I have researched Christianity and have been convinced because of the evidence and compelling arguments apologetics make.

    Prayer may help with truth seeking, but praying something doesn’t make it true. Faith doesn’t define truth either, it is sort of a side effect of truth.

 

  • Where and how do you gain knowledge of God’s existence?
    For me it’s through research and a little bit of feeling. Although the further I grow in my relationship with God the more feeling based it becomes and I think that’s normal. I constantly have questions about God’s existence. I read books, look up blogs and listen to podcasts. I pray about my questions, literally something like “Heavenly Father I am having some issues understanding why the old testament was so violent. Can you help me find the resources to better understand you?” Every time I have found answers.

 

  • How can all religions be right? It must be then that they’re all wrong. There are hundreds of different Christian faiths all proclaiming to be the one.
    This is a weird paradox, if you’re not always right are you always wrong? Yes there are many religions and of course some of them are wrong. Hinduism and Christianity are wildly different so one of them must be wrong.

    When it comes to Christianity, sure there are many different sects but, just like different translations of the Bible they still say the same thing: “Jesus is the good news. He came, he died and now we are all saved.” Walk into any Christian church and that’s the message. The differences between churches are questions like, when should we baptize children? Should worship stay traditional or evolve? Even Catholicism which is its own genre of Christianity isn’t greatly different from protestant messaging. Jesus came, he saw, he died, hallelujah. Unity does not necessarily mean uniformity.

    Humans aren’t perfect so of course the messages in the Bible are interpreted imperfectly. Who has it perfect? I am not sure, I can only make my best guess. But there are many aspects of Christianity that almost every church agrees on.

    Now there are groups like Mormons who add their own layers to Christianity, leading some to claim Mormons aren’t even Christians. The thing about the Book of Mormon is that it doesn’t even come close to the level of verification that the Bible has been found to have over centuries. Potential books of the Bible have been left out because they weren’t found to be historically sound enough. Most notably is the Book of Thomas. Scholars regularly debate whether it should be added but it has continually failed to meet the levels of scrutiny needed to be included in the good book. Likewise, the Book of Mormon fails these tests.

 

  • Why do you believe the Bible to be the basis of morality? It condemns homosexuality, God hates sinners Psalms, Romans 1:18, John 3:36 etc
    This is the biggest part of my faith that is feelings based. As you have heard me say, without God there is no objective standard of good. I believe in an objective standard of good.

    Without an objective standard for good we get slavery, the holocaust, abortions on demand etc. Nations sat by and watched these things happen. Literally millions of people have been convinced that all these things are a good idea. Judeo/Christian thought is what brought down all of these travesties. (It hasn’t succeeding in bringing down mass abortion yet but I believe it will and one day we’ll look back on these days with shame.)

    People say morality is subjective but don’t think hard about what that means; subjective morality means evil is subjective too.

    If you have specific issues with things God doesn’t like such as homosexuality I’ll have to address those individually. But here’s what a lot of Christians get wrong in my opinion; They “power rank” sin when all sin is the same in God’s eyes. It’s important to make the distinction between God’s court and ours. We humans punish murder more harshly than petty theft as we should. It’s what our society needs in order to function. But God can forgive a murderer the same as a glutton.

    Therefore homosexuality is the same as theft or having sex before marriage, or even having sex with a condom. Why do some Christians focus on homosexuality? I think because it’s “abnormal” sin. A small percentage of the population has homosexual desires but we can all relate to jealousy, glutton, and general lust. Homosexuality is also a very public sin, it’s harder to hide. There are also certain traits common among gay men especially, that are easy to see. Oftentimes other people know a young guy is gay before he even realizes it. On the flip side, no one knows the jealousy I feel or what decisions I make based on selfishness. My sin is not as obvious.

    Religion is a relationship. I don’t know your relationship with God, I don’t know your conversations with God, I don’t know your struggles or what’s in your heart; that’s the same whether you’re gay or straight. I also don’t know what God does with gay people but I find it hard to believe we won’t see any in heaven. Jesus never talks about homosexuality. While I think it is sinful, I think a lot of things are sinful and I don’t think homosexuality is one of God’s greatest concerns. I also don’t think as a straight person I automatically have a leg up on a gay person. There are certainly gay Christians less sinful than I.

 

  • Why are there contradictions in the Bible? I thought it was the word of God, isn’t that perfect?
    The Bible is the word of God and his word is perfect, however, humans are not. When it comes to the Bible, context, interpretation and translation are huge. Sometimes things people throw out as contradictions actually aren’t. There are also different “genres” in the Bible to be interpreted and understood in different ways. Sometimes folks miss that. There are language conventions we have now that didn’t exist when the Bible was written. Regardless, there are no contradictions that I have ever found in the Bible that are irreconcilable. When you see two verses that are next to each other that don’t seem like they fit, well, someone thought they did belong next to each other so perhaps some further thought on why that is is worthwhile.

    People also mistake something taking place in the Bible with meaning it’s condoned by God. For example, in the old testament, Isaac, Abraham and Jacob, the heroes, have multiple wives. You may look at that and say what a contradiction! God condones polygamy in the old testament. But all those dudes are not exactly having a good time. Make sure when you’re reading the Bible you are understanding the narrative.

    Another example. People like to point out the difference between the gospels. This is probably the most common “contradiction” I hear about. Each gospel reports a different amount of women running to the tomb, a different number of angels, some include details some leave them out. Because of these “contradictions,” people say, aha! See this is all false. I read the differences and I think, wow this is probably true. Eye witness accounts never turn out the exact same, even if the event happened five minutes ago. This has been tested over and over again. If four people had the exact same memory of such a long, detailed event, that would be more suspicious to me.

    I try to figure out why one witness says it one way and another says it a different way. And there are lots of good theories backed by solid reasoning as to why the differences in the gospels exist. Again, look for narrative, not identical recounts.

 

  • Why can’t people perform miracles anymore? Are modern miracles dead?
    I think you’ll have to define what miracle means to you in order for me to answer this the way you want me to. But no, they aren’t.

 

  • Why does God kill people in the old testament?
    First, my theory: When we raise children, at first we’re extremely hands on. We are constantly correcting them. Usually through constant praise and constant punishment. Most well behaved children are raised this way. For me the punishment was physical in the form of spanking, but maybe it’s time out, getting toys taken away etc.  As your children get older you stay involved but you back off. Rare to see a 12 year old get spanked or a 15 year old put in timeout.

    Humanity is all of God’s children. In the old testament he was laying the foundation for all of mankind. He had to teach us what is wrong and right and He did that through punishment and reward. Very obvious, in your face punishment and reward. He had to in order to teach us how to be human. It seems obvious now that the Ten Commandments are a good thing but back in the day humans were a little more, for a lack of better words, savage. Early humans didn’t have thousands of years worth of philosophy and thought experiments like we do. But God didn’t like the punishment, that’s why Jesus came.

    But to put things more bluntly, God can kill whenever he wants. In fact, the only reason any of us die is because God wills it. God owes us nothing. But it’s also worth asking, why is God so merciful in the Old Testament.

 

  • Where are the prophets today?
    You aren’t going to like my first answer to this question but the Bible calls all believers in Christ prophets. In Acts 2:16-21, Peter declares that in the church this prophecy is now fulfilled. Every believer is led by the Holy Spirit to discern the truth (1 John 2:20, 27). Each believer is directed to admonish with the word of Christ (Col. 3:16), as well as to instruct (Rom. 15:14) and encourage other believers (Heb. 3:13).

    Prophecy in the New Covenant is defined as ideas, thoughts or understandings put into your head by God. So Christians might also pray for prophecy. Say I was going to debate you in front of a crowd on the likelihood of God. Before our debate started I might pray to God for prophecy, meaning profound understanding of the word and the means to accurately communicate it. So perhaps prophecy is revealed in that I give an example that relates directly to a thought you had that morning that I had no idea about. That’s modern prophecy.

    Like so many other things, the arrival of Jesus changed the role of prophets, rather it got rid of the need. You’ll notice in the New Testament Jesus’s followers are called apostles, not prophets. I believe this is because Jesus was the ultimate prophet. He gave us the word of God, straight from Him so what more do we really need at this point? There is no more “thus saith the lord” in the new testament. Perhaps there will be another prophet one day but there honestly isn’t a need for one in the traditional sense. We have all the instructions and guidance we need from God and that is mostly because of Jesus.

 

  • Why do you believe the Bible is the only book you need or that it has all the answers in life? That’s like saying everything you need to know in life you’ll learn in school.
    I believe the Bible is the only book you need in order to know your core purpose as a human and child of God. If you know your purpose then everything else follows. Because of what the Bible tells me I feel it is important for me to attend school and treat people well and do things that generally glorify God. So yes, the Bible is all I need.

 

0 Let’s Judge Movies by their Content, not Skin Color

  • March 28, 2018
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Culture · In the News · Reviews · Thought Box

Insisting a certain group of people receive awards just so that group of people gets awards is one of the stupidest ideas Americans have right now. I touched on this in a piece I wrote in 2016 when the “Oscars So White” hashtag was gaining steam, but I now think the topic deserves more attention.

Before I go on I’d like to share some stats you may not know. Black people make up 12% of the population. So you might expect them to make up 12% of actors and 12% of Oscar winners. This means you would expect a black person to win one of the four Oscars for acting every 8.3 people. So presumably, two Oscar shows could go by without a single black person winning an acting award and it wouldn’t be anything to worry about. Since two black people won last year, statistically, you wouldn’t expect another black person to win until four or five Oscars from now given the population of America, all other things equal.

I enjoy seeing minorities and women succeed but the obsession with representation for representation’s sake depresses me. The demand for affirmative action in Hollywood or “inclusion riders” as Frances McDormand called for delegitimizes any actual success had by minorities or women. Now I’m going to wonder if I got the award because I’m good at what I do or because I’m a black female. Whatever happened to judging things by their merit alone? The number of blacks or gays or women in a film should have little to do with the grading of said film. Alas, criticism is now linked directly to diversity quotas, not actual talent.

Representation for Representation’s Sake
I feel like a broken record but Martin Luther King said it best, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” And that’s really all we can ask for, but instead, what is being asked is that a certain quota of demographics be met when casting a movie, writing a paper or producing any sort of art.

Earlier this month, Huffington Post editor Chloe Angyal bragged about meeting gender and racial quotas in the opinion page. My question is, so what? Are the opinion columns any good? Are they informative? Do they express a wide variety of opinions so readers can better understand the world around them? Of course she doesn’t mention quality, all that matters is the skin color and gender of those writing. Pretty racist I’d say.

Lately there has been a steady stream of movies directed by and starring black people that have received the highest honors and praises. I’m talking Moonlight, Get Out and Black Panther. While art is subjective I have seen all these movies and none of them have struck me as extraordinary. Before you freak out, let me tell you why.

Moonlight
This movie has an exclusively black cast and was written and directed by a black man. In 2017 Moonlight won Best Adapted Screenplay, Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor and it won Best Picture over La La Land, Hacksaw Ridge and Arrival.

Moonlight is beautifully shot, and the acting is good. But the story itself, the meat of the movie, is empty. It’s 110 minutes when it could’ve been 30. If I were writing the description for the back of this movie it would say, “Kid in the inner city grows up with no father and a drug addicted mother to become a drug dealer himself. He’s also gay.” Read that description and you don’t need to watch the movie. We all know this story. The lead role being gay adds a wrinkle but it really doesn’t change the story much. You could replace the word gay with awkward, dorky or any other trait kids like to pick on and get the same movie. I am not trying to make little of what it’s like to be a gay black kid but I know of kids who took similar bullying for seemingly no reason at all. Bullies gonna bully, that’s just the way it is. There is no plot twist, the main character doesn’t overcome anything, you don’t finish the movie with a changed perspective on anything.  

Moonlight is a nice movie aesthetically but is it spectacular? Absolutely not.

Get Out
I really like this movie. I was on the edge of my seat, I squirmed a bit, I yelled “Noooo!”  It made me feel the things horror movies are supposed to make you feel. But it wasn’t unique. Jordan Peele is a smart guy but Get Out is just Stepford Wives but with black people instead of women. It’s not an exact copy but it’s very similar. And I’m fine with that, it’s ok to take good ideas and tweak them into even better ideas but let’s not pretend Jordan Peele rocked the world with this crazy new idea. I need not write about all the similarities between Get Out and Stepford Wives because other people have done it for me.

Get Out is a good movie, but it’s not a unique new idea.

Black Panther
Like the two movies above, this one is well done aesthetically and the acting is good but it’s not a unique story. My brother wrote about this in a comparison of Black Panther to Thor: Ragnarok. Furthermore, Black Panther is the battle between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X with T’Challa as MLK and Killmonger as Malcolm. This is the same battle of ideas the entire X-Men series is built around with Professor X as MLK and Magneto as Malcolm. There is no depth to the Black Panther plot, (spoiler alert) you know he will come back when he falls off the cliff, you know he will beat Killmonger in their final battle. Towards the end of the movie when T’Challa’s general was losing I whispered to my boyfriend, “here comes the Ape King with his people” and sure enough, they showed up and saved the day. Again, it’s a story that’s been told a million times and just because it’s with an all black cast this time it’s not better.

I was particularly blown away by people claiming Black Panther changed their life or made them proud to be black for once, or after watching it, now they know what they can achieve. This type of thinking is silly for so many reasons.

First of all, if you need to watch a pretend movie to feel proud of who you are I would suggest you have some psychological issues you should probably address. What someone else does, even if they look exactly like you has nothing to do with how you should feel about yourself. If you do need a little outside inspiration, I can point you in the direction of hundreds of papers and books about black people who have been doing awesome shit as far back as time has been recorded. And I mean real stuff. Not pretending to be a superhero.

But let us think critically about what black people are so proud of when it comes to Black Panther, Wakanda (the made up country in the movie) specifically. The people of Wakanda have great power by chance alone. A meteorite happened to hit their country and bring a magical metal that can literally do anything including power stuff, make armor and bring people back to life. Black people in the movie didn’t invent it, they didn’t earn it, they didn’t even win a war to get it. Pure chance. Is that something to really be proud of? Of course they live in a fantastic utopia. Any group of people would be if they had that magical element. And honestly, for having magic powers they really aren’t that far ahead of the rest of the world technology wise.

Furthermore, Wakanda is isolationist, they have strong borders, they don’t trade with anyone, (which would never create more prosperity in the real world, just ask Japan) they place high value on tradition, they have a huge, well trained army and they’re extremely spiritual…Does any of this sound familiar? According to how black people have voted in America for the past 50 years, they aren’t too keen on that philosophy, yet when it’s Wakanda it’s wonderful? I’m a little confused. No one’s bothered that Wakanda isn’t a democracy? The people don’t elect their leader and the only way the leader changes is if you can beat him in a fight? That seems pretty unfair.

I actually don’t care about any of that stuff though. You know why? It’s a SUPERHERO MOVIE. I don’t attend to have my mind blown, I attend to watch stuff get blown up. I don’t want the heroes to die. I want a fun movie that has some cool effects, maybe some funny lines and I don’t mind if a couple people fall in love in the process. I wouldn’t politicize this movie except that everyone else chose to so I feel the need to respond.

None of these movies are bad but at the same time none of them are particularly unique. One thing they all touch on, the issue amongst the black community that I have been screaming about for a long time. Fathers. The importance of them, especially for men.

In Moonlight the kid yearns for a father figure so bad he finds a nice drug dealer to fill the void. Because this kid has no father he doesn’t know how to fight or stand up for himself. Even at the end of the movie he still doesn’t know who he is.

In Get Out the main character doesn’t have a father and the loss of his mother scars him forever. Additionally, his girlfriend and her brother are messed up because of the sickening way the were raised in a home lead by the father.

We all know Killmonger would have turned out very different had his father been a different man. Killmonger didn’t have the example of what manhood looks like and losing his father at a young age rocked his world. On the flip side we see the result of a father instilling values and principles in a boy starting at a young age with T’Challa. Notice that T’Challa doesn’t turn to his mother for advice on how to be a man.

Claiming America is racist when it comes to black actors is just pure nonsense. America loves watching black people on the big screen. You know what actor has made the most money at the box office? Samuel L. Jackson at $5.149 Billion. Morgan Freeman is 4th on the list, Eddie Murphy is 7th, and Will Smith is 19th. 20% of the top 20 highest all time box office earners are black guys. An overrepresentation compared to the black population. When it comes to stand alone action/adventure movies (so not movies like Suicide Squad, Star Wars, Saw etc) three out of the top five grossing ones star black leads. Number one being American Sniper, followed by Independence Day (starring Will Smith), Get Out (starring Daniel Kuluuya), Twister, and Beverly Hills Cop (starring Eddie Murphy). If you don’t count Independence Day because they just made a sequel no big deal, that would move Hancock (starring Will Smith) into the 5th spot.

Most Americans don’t care who is entertaining them, they just want to be entertained. Black Panther was fun, Get Out was scary and Moonlight was nice to look at, but none of them were groundbreaking. Replace the black people with white people (or women in the case of Get Out) and see what I mean.

4 Where We Really Need Feminism

  • March 5, 2018
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Culture · In the News · Philosophy/Religion · Thought Box

I’m a feminist. But according to women leading the feminist movement I am the enemy. Do I believe that women should have equal opportunity? Yes. Do I think women deserve equal pay for equal work? Absolutely. Do I think women should be able to sleep with whomever they want whenever they want? As long as it’s consensual, yes. Do I think rape is horrible? I think rapists should be put to death. Yet, I would not be welcome at the Women’s March and other Feminist Organizations for many reasons. The third wave of feminism – the one that promotes pu**y hats, claims there’s an unfair gender gap, and teaches women that masculinity is inherently evil – doesn’t include me and, furthermore, I think it’s much more damaging to women than helpful. The sad thing is that the world does desperately needs feminism but not in the places feminists usually are marching. Below is a list of where feminists should be focusing their energies.

  • Where we should be fighting for basic privileges

Women hold powerful positions in America. We can wear whatever we want, buy whatever we want, marry whoever we want, and divorce whoever we want. This is not the case in many other parts of the world. Saudi Arabia recently announced it would lift its ban on women driving in June of this year. Women in Saudi Arabia are still expected to have a male “wali” – an official guardian, typically a father, brother, uncle or husband. In practice, women need their guardian’s consent for any major activity, including travelling, obtaining a passport, getting married or divorced, and signing contracts. They also can’t “wear clothes that show off their beauty,” interact with men, compete in sports, go swimming, or try on clothes.

There was a protest in Iran just last month because women are forced to wear hijabs. Women in Iran can also be banned from traveling or even going to work by their husbands.

  • Where we should be fighting for sexual freedom

Young girls in Mali and Somalia are still subject to genital mutilation. In Mali and Nepal child marriages are the norm. In Mali, one in 10 young women die in childbirth. 37% of girls in Nepal are married before 18. The rape of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo is so widespread that United Nation’s investigators called it “unprecedented.” Systemic rape is a huge problem in Pakistan and Sudan as well. Things are so bad for women in Afghanistan in terms of domestic abuse and forced marriages that women turning to suicide as an escape has become the norm.

Sex trafficking exists all over the world, including the United States. But compared to other countries, the United States is doing fine in this area. The following countries are the biggest violators of human rights via sex trafficking: Algeria, Libya, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Congo, Kuwait, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, North Korea, (but hey, Kim Jong Un’s sister is cool right?) Belarus, and Russia.

  • Where anti-domestic abuse efforts should be focused

In Guatemala domestic violence is abound. Honor killings still take place in Pakistan where they are so prevalent women are frequently executed for adultery. Honor killings are commonplace in India as well. Both countries have informal court systems which almost always side with men.

  • Where we should be concerned about “women to work” and education rights

In Afghanistan and the Central African Republic, only 24% of women can read, in Benin 27%, in Chad 14%, in Mali 22%, in Niger 11%, in South Sudan 16%. It’s no coincidence that many of the most violent-towards-women countries are the ones where women are least educated. In Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Haiti, Egypt, Pakistan and at least 15 other prominent countries, girls go to school at much lower rates than their male counter-parts. Usually because they are not allowed to or the risk of rape is too high if they do attend.  85% of women in Afghanistan receive no education. More than three-quarters of the world’s illiterate adults are found in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa; of all the illiterate adults in the world, almost two-thirds are women

Education obviously effects work opportunities. In every country with low female education rates you can expect work prospects to also be low for women. But to take it one step further, in 18 countries, married women cannot get a job without their husband’s permission: Bahrain, Bolivia, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania, Niger, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza and Yemen.

  • What should alarm feminists about abortion and gender bias

Abortion is not an equal opportunity experience. By that I mean female fetuses are aborted at a much higher rate than male fetuses. Before we leave the womb, we’re already being discriminated against. Gender-based abortion happens in third world and first world countries alike due to cultural preferences and a desire to “keep the family name alive.” Official figures suggest as many as 4,700 females have disappeared from the latest national census records of England and Wales, raising fears that indicate the illegal practice of sex-selection abortion has become prevalent in the UK.

According to the United Nations Population Fund, around 117 million women are believed to be “missing” in Asia and Eastern Europe – the result of son preference and gender-biased sex selection, a form of discrimination. A problem since the 1990s, in some areas there are reports of up to a 25% difference between male and female births. These gender biases have been linked to increased human trafficking and domestic violence against women.

Writing this made me feel shameful. Shameful that I have done absolutely nothing to help these women around the world. Everything listed above is not commonplace in the United States. I live a pretty kush life. Are there issues for women in the United States? Of course. I have my gripes like everyone else. But they are small potatoes compared to the extremely dire situations for women around the world. Women in America march around in pus** hats whilst college educated, divorced and bruise free. Millions of women in other countries couldn’t even dream of doing such a thing. I mean literally if they told the wrong person they did dream of it there is a good chance they would receive some sort of very unpleasant punishment.

But where are all the Women’s Marchers? Not to say none of them are helping these poor women overseas, I’m sure some of them are, but a great deal of effort, money and time are put into feminist efforts here in the states. I can’t help but wonder what that kind of effort and media attention could accomplish in Nepal or Afghanistan or Cameroon.

Don’t ever accept an injustice just because it’s not as bad as it could be, but do think about how you can best utilize your resources, make the biggest changes and exploit your abilities. In feminism and in every facet of your life.

0 Prejudice is Natural

  • October 4, 2017
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Culture · Thought Box

Humans are designed to do two things: survive and reproduce. The two are linked as reproducing is how the species ultimately survives. I’ve touched on this in another post but most everything about humans is designed to contribute to either surviving or reproducing. Prejudice is one of them.

Prejudice is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Humans are wired to have prejudices or preconceived notions about certain people or certain things as a mode of survival. We’re wired to be attracted to things that are similar to us. A study done by Arizona State University found that “because human survival was based on group living, ‘outsiders’ were viewed as — and often were — very real threats.”

This is why people often prefer to date people who look like them or be friends with people who look like them. Asians are likely to date other Asians, whites date other whites, blacks date other blacks etc. We automatically love and trust our family more than others and for the same reasons we automatically trust and love folks who look like us. Our brains are wired to sort those people into the “family” category or at least closer to it than someone who looks/talks/dresses very different than us.

A study from Ghent University in Belgium, also found that prejudice doesn’t come from a set ideology. The study found that prejudice is a result of people’s desire to make quick and safe judgments. Surprises aren’t useful to survival. The study notes that humans have a need to feel safe and they do this by making quick decisions to best stabilize their lives. Again, this all relates back to our instincts to best protect ourselves. From the beginning of time, prejudice has helped humans avoid real danger.

Humans are also designed to learn prejudices from experience and our prejudices have evolved. For example, if a tall brunette man tries to kill you, there’s a great chance that you will walk away with an aversion to tall brunette men. If you’re deeply wronged by someone or witness someone being deeply wronged it’s natural to sort the group that the perpetrator belongs to into the “to be avoided” portion of your brain. We often do this subconsciously and when you do this, it actually means you’re normal.

I’m not making the case there is no prejudice backed by the traditional kind of racism one might think of, but rather that interpersonal preference is somewhat wired into us. While we don’t live in a caveman time period and there isn’t a need to constantly look around for the neighboring cave-family to attack or saber toothed tiger to pounce, natural prejudice creeps into all of our lives whether we admit it or not.

I point all this out because it gets pretty annoying when folks claim that a preference or attraction to certain features, skin colors, heights, genders etc are actually signs you’re a racist when in fact that’s counter to science. My dream guy would have skin color, eyes and hair similar to mine…does that make me a racist or a simply a normal human? I get away with it because my preferred look is one of the minority but I see no difference between me saying I’m most attracted to brown men and a white man saying he prefers white partners. But if a white man (gay or straight) were to publicly admit they’re white preference they’d get ripped apart by SJWs. Sometimes a preference is rooted in racism and sometimes it’s simply an aesthetic attraction we can’t control.

The bottom line is that it’s not really my business who you’re attracted to and why you’re attracted to them. I don’t care why you choose your friends. There’s also no shame in not being attracted to a certain trait, whether that’s height, skin tone or eye color, in fact, it’s natural. Ultimately it’s what’s on the inside that matters but we all know you can’t date someone unless you’re at least a little bit attracted to them, and no one should be bullied for their choices.

1 Brave Gender Roles

  • September 17, 2017
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Culture · Thought Box

A couple weeks ago I watched the movie Brave; the Pixar flick about the Scottish princess who doesn’t want to get married so she turns her mom into a bear and she’s really good with a bow and arrow. It’s not Pixar’s best, the plot has already been done, (it’s essentially Freaky Friday) but it’s still an above average cartoon movie and the soundtrack and visuals are fantastic.

Brave is a different princess movie as there is no prince. The story is about a relationship between a girl and her mother not a girl and her crush. Because there was no prince, many feminists approved of the movie. There were some critiques of the plot being a little basic and Merida being a little too schoolgirl tomboy in personality but no one seemed to notice the obvious.  

Brave makes the case for gender roles but in an intelligent way. The very first scene, a mother and father combine to protect their child from a bear. The mother grabs the child and runs while the father stays and fights the bear, losing his leg in the process. Women protect children, men protect women.

One of the funniest scenes in the movie is when three different tribes arrive with their finest warriors vying to win Princess Merida’s hand. Chaos quickly ensues and all the men are brawling in the hall. Even the king, Merida’s father is getting in on the fun. It’s not until Merida’s mother, the queen, calmly walks to the front of the room and commands the men to stop that things settle down. Men are wild, women calm them down.

Later in the movie Merida comes across the same bear that took her father’s leg. The only reason she escapes the bear’s clutches (despite being an excellent shot with her bow) is because her mother, who is now also a bear, helps her get away. There is no way Merida would’ve survived the attack had not Merida’s mother literally been a bear. Women aren’t able to take down big strong foes with their bare hands except in fantasies involving special powers and abilities.

Part of the movie’s charm is the way it even showcases male vs female attraction. Males are visual creatures who think about a specific topic more often than women. At the very end of the movie the queen gets turned back into a human and is unclothed except for the blanket she is wrapped in. The first thing her husband does after hugging her is try to get a peep at her naked body. I actually chuckled at this part because any woman who has dated a man has experienced doing some sort of normal, seemingly non-sexual task whilst inadvertently turning their guy on.

While Merida can handle a bow better than any of the fellas, in war, you need brute strength too. This was especially true in the olden days but is still important today. The average U.S. soldier carries an extra 60 pounds in gear. Special Ops forces carry even more weight.  Now that I’m writing this I’m realizing Brave also makes the case for concealed carry. Guns are the only equalizer in a literal battle between the sexes.

Men are needed to fend off bears and fight wars, women make sure that’s not all they do.

The fact is, any story involving male and female relationships that doesn’t acknowledge this truth won’t resonate with anyone. That doesn’t mean women can’t be tough and men can’t be sensitive. Merida is a badass and her dad has a soft side but women and men are designed to do different things. And I mean that scientifically.

Brave shows the dynamics of men and women but in a subtle way. The bravest person in the movie wasn’t Merida who ran to a witch to solve her problems with magic. Nor was it Merida’s mother who can’t fathom the idea of jigging the system by not forcing her daughter to marry. The bravest person in the movie is Merida’s father who, even after getting his leg ripped off by a bear, didn’t hesitate to charge into battle against the very same bear in order to protect his wife and children.

5 The Logic of Faith

  • September 6, 2017
  • by Connie Morgan
  • · Philosophy/Religion · Thought Box

I’ve wanted to sort out my views on religion for a long time. Whether I was an atheist or believer, I wanted to know exactly why I was either of those things. “I find it hard to believe…” is not a good enough reason not to believe in something so important. If God is real there is actually nothing more important than dedicating your life to serving Him. If God isn’t real then if I care about my Christian friends I should try to convince them they are wasting their lives worshipping an idea that isn’t true.

I wasn’t raised in any sort of religious community but my parents were. They both call themselves agnostic but made an effort to expose my brother and me to religion. I think they did this because they wanted us to make our own decisions about religion and also because they believed it was important for us to have at least a basic understanding of Christianity because we live in a Christian nation. We’d sometimes attend Christian church services of varying denominations. If a friend of the family invited us to church we nearly always went and my parents took no issue with us attending the various Youth Groups we’d get invited to.

I liked attending different church services but always felt like an outsider just passing through for a moment. Church services were fun to observe but felt rather silly to me. None of the churches I attended made me feel any certain way; and I have attended a lot of church services, pretty much every Christian denomination you can think of. I saw the value of religious communities at a very young age and still don’t understand the hatred some have towards Judeo/Christian thought. Of course certain churches or certain Christians have twisted religion in wrong and sometimes downright evil ways but the values generally promoted by Jews and Christians are something I could get on board with.

But to believe there is a magical dude in the sky who created us all? So if evolution is a thing how does that work? Did God allow for evolution? Was Genesis literal or were those metaphorical days? And so then God must’ve created the planets. How does that work? And if we’re all perfect creations why are some of us not? Down syndrome, autism, red hair…why do these things exist then? Although I would sometimes climb a mountain and be so struck by the beauty at the top that I would think “how could this have happened by accident?” or find myself feeling more at ease when someone said they would “pray for me” or I would sometimes cry when listening to a gospel or Christmas song, feelings would never be enough for me when deciding whether or not to find faith. God needed to be scientifically and historically accurate.

It was mainly my inability to reconcile science and faith that held me back. In hindsight, it was pretty arrogant of me to believe no other Christians asked themselves those questions and/or that there weren’t any thoughtful answers to them. Another part of my arrogance was I felt my life needed to be perfect in order for me to find faith. Not because God wanted me to be perfect but because I needed to have a completely clear head in order to make a decision so big. I couldn’t turn to God when I was sad after a breakup, dealing with a death or some other emotional event. Emotions cloud judgment; people who hit rock bottom only to find God may have stumbled on the truth but only out of their own weakness, I would never use God as a crutch. Last Summer I finally felt my life was exactly how I wanted it to be, my conscious felt clear and seriously diving into my investigation was safe mentally and emotionally.

My search for truth last year was largely influenced by a question that I couldn’t answer, rather I couldn’t answer it without there being an objective good. That question being “Why would it be wrong to euthanize severely handicapped people.” Severely handicapped referring to folks who can’t communicate or take care of themselves.

The thought of wiping all of these people off the face of the earth was horrifying to me. I think most people would agree doing this would be wrong. If today, President Trump announced: “we’re rounding up all the severely handicapped and euthanizing them for the good of the country,” we’d all be outraged and rightly so. But why would we be outraged?

Because killing is wrong! You’d say. But why is killing wrong? Why would killing handicapped people be wrong? To make a long philosophical debate short, logically, it’s not wrong to kill. If someone is severely handicapped they’re a burden on society in every way. Monetarily, emotionally, they truly are a resource suck. If we could eliminate them in a painless and efficient manner why shouldn’t we? And this is where an objective good comes in. It’s not ok, to kill humans, no matter their status, health or otherwise because God said so, and God is the objective good.

Honest atheists know there is no objective good without a God. As former “obnoxious atheist” turned Christian, geneticist Francis Collins said, “no law of science could adequately explain the existence of morality.” Jerry Coyne, a staunch atheist writer and biologist admits that morality does not exist for atheists. And unsurprisingly he is an advocate for the euthanasia of babies born with disabilities, calling it “merciful.”  

There are atheists who argue that morality is possible without a God, but their arguments are not convincing nor scientifically absolute at all.

As atheist turned most profound Christian thinker of the modern era C.S. Lewis said, “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”

That blew my mind a little bit.

Without objective good there is no morality and without morality all you have is relativism, and with relativism we are all reduced to objects. It’s easy for people who haven’t really thought about the things they believe and why they believe them to just say “oh I’m a relativist” as most/many atheists do. But relativism doesn’t make sense if you have any sort of moral boundaries at all, and pretty much all humans do.

Relativism is the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. And it’s all we have without an objective standard for good. Under Relativist doctrine, culture excuses any behavior. Let’s take slavery for example. In almost every early culture, including African culture, slavery was perfectly normal. For hundreds of years no one thought anything of it. Relatively it was moral to have slaves. Did that make slavery right? I’d argue no. But according to relativism slavery then was acceptable. Another example is if Nazis had taken over during WWII and convinced the whole world to get behind them. Let’s say Nazis ruled for 100 years. The masses were convinced that exterminating Jews was a must. Would that make it any less evil? I’d argue no. But a relativist would have to accept that behavior because the culture dictated it was a-ok.

I struggled with the killing question. I sought answers for literally months, turning to religious and atheist people alike though I found the conclusion pretty early on, and both camps for the most part agree. Killing for any reason other than protection is only wrong if there is an objective good, and there is only an objective good if God is real.

This is where I was starting to become convinced God must be real. Jesus was still a myth to me but God might be the real deal. My freshman year I researched Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and was convinced those religions might have some good ideas but their “truths” weren’t actually true. If there is a God, I concluded he is the one Christians or Jews describe.

Ok, so if I believe in objective morals (and I do) then God must be real. But ok, what about all the science stuff? Science and religion aren’t compatible and that’s just known by everyone. Then I had science thrown in my face…by Christians and Jews!

Alex Metaxas makes the case for science and God in “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God” one of the most shared articles in Wall Street Journal history.

Metaxas makes this point:

Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.

According to the odds, I shouldn’t exist. Hmm, that was interesting, and as I dug deeper into this idea, I found more science to back up the theory of intelligent design.

As former atheist activist turned believer Antony Flew stated, “the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source.”

Of course, you can always find refuting arguments but I could find no science whatsoever that debunked or even came close to debunking God. And I found no evidence that religion and science could not coexist. Einstein himself said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

And no, evolution and faith aren’t incompatible.

An objective good is only possible through God and science is compatible with faith. For goodness sake the inventor of the Big Bang Theory was a monsignor in the Catholic church. Whoah! This realization sort of shook me to say the least. Mostly because I had waited so long to ask and answer the obvious questions. I was starting to admit to myself that belief in God might actually be logical. I was explaining to my agnostic mom that I was finding shocking evidence that God is a rational idea.

“Mom! I am not using feelings at all and I am still becoming more convinced there is a God.”

“Feeling is part of religion Connie. You can’t commit unless you feel the spirit.”

I knew she was right. But fortunately I had started praying, the ultimate anecdotal experiment. This would surely affect my feelings.

It was suggested to me that I start praying, literally start acting like I was Christian just to see what would happen so I did. I started attending a Christian non-denominational church when I could and for months I prayed. It felt very weird and ridiculous. I prayed out loud because I heard that was more “sincere” and boy did I not like it at first. I tried to take prayer seriously though and prayed the ways recommended in the Bible. I praised God a lot but I asked for help with things and to my utter shock and amazement my prayers were answered.

One example that sticks out was during a long run while training for a 50K. It was a 22 mile run and I didn’t pack water like the idiot I am. I was so tired, my head pounding from the sun and dehydration that nearing the end of my run with about a mile left, I said to God “please, help me get water,” and I shit you not, I crested the hill I was on and there was a lemonade stand. I had ran this route many times and never before had there been a lemonade stand. The little girls at the stand not only quenched my thirst, but through conversation with the girls’ mom I learned they needed a swim teacher…and I am a swim teacher. The Lord had given me water in two ways. But that was just a coincidence and I still wasn’t convinced.

Then I prayed that a friend get in touch with me or else I feared we would lose contact and the next day that friend, who I hadn’t heard from in months messaged me. Then I prayed for answers to a personal problem I had been dealing with for years, the next day an article came across my Twitter feed addressing the exact unique issue I was facing, and it was written by a Christian. I still wasn’t convinced though. Obviously these things were coincidences.

Then much more recently, I visited my grandfather and was officially convinced of God.  My grandpa has cancer riddled throughout his entire body and has been undergoing chemotherapy for some time now. One of, if not my first prayer, I asked the Lord do what he must with my grandfather’s life, but please make it as painless as possible. When I visited my grandfather, months after that first prayer he told me “surprisingly, the chemo hasn’t been painful at all.” My mouth metaphorically dropped as I remembered my first prayer.

An objective good, cohesion with science and my own anecdotal examples. I couldn’t ignore the idea of God any longer, for that would be ignoring the truth. And there’s only one reason to become a Christian, not because it makes you feel good, or because it’s what you’ve always been taught, but because God is the Truth.

After hours and hours of intense research over the last year spent looking at arguments from a long list of Judeo/Christian thinkers and atheists alike I was convinced that God is the Truth and soon after that Jesus was indeed the Son of God sent to save us from our sin. (Reconciling Jesus was a whole nother internal crisis but this blog has already gotten too long.)

The evidence was eventually so overwhelming that I decided to accept Jesus into my heart and was baptized by the pastor of the church I had regularly been attending surrounded by friends and strangers alike. It was a weird feeling and honestly I am still not 100% comfortable in my new life of faith. My insecurities have shown in that I worry people I want to respect my opinion now won’t. (Which is dumb because 100% of my political views can be argued from a secular perspective.)  But I follow the truth where it leads and the truth has lead me to Jesus.

If you’re an atheist, agnostic or even religious person I encourage you to really ask yourself why you believe the things you believe. If you believe it is wrong to kill, why do you believe this? If you believe it is wrong to take advantage of people weaker than you why do you believe this? If you believe cheating on your wife or husband is wrong, why? But not just the serious stuff, why do you hold the smaller principles in your life to be true? I think most of us, young and old, religious and not haven’t done this. Ask questions and be honest about the answers you find. Atheists think they are more rational than Christians but atheism requires faith too. Could there really be anything more important in life than figuring out whether faith in God or faith in an accident is correct?

If you’re searching for answers these are some of the Christian and atheist thinkers I found to be helpful: Francis Collins, Jerry Coyne, Antony Flew, Sam Harris, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alex Metaxas, Yaron Brook, C.S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft, Ayn Rand, Richard Dawkins, Lee Strobel, Andrew Klavan, AJ Jacobs, Timothy Keller, Michael Shermer, Jordan Peterson, Bishop Barron, Ravi Zacharias and my former roommate, William Bergman.

Seek out the truth, whether you come to the same conclusion as me or not, there’s really nothing more important.

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