Pale Musings

I know that is a grandiose and generally ambiguous statement, I am simply unable to come up with a better title at the moment.

You may be aware of the recent events leading to the firing of radio icon Don Imus.  It was not a good situation.  It was a testament to the fact that we, as a society, still have issues to face around the racial forum.  Unfortunately only one side tends to get examined for it’s wrong-doings, the side of the majority.

Please, do not get me wrong.  I agree that what Imus said was 100% wrong and the thought process that produced his comments is the root of the problem, however the minority side has just as many thought processes that need adjusted.

An recent example that exemplifies this was the move Beauty Shop.  It was funny and I enjoyed it, however there was a point in the movie where it was made plain that a Caucasian girl (played by Alicia Sylverstone) could not say the”N” word while it was O.K. for the rest of the ladies in the shop (all African American) to use it freely.  It is the other side of the same coin and it saddens me.  If the word has as many negative connotations as it does, none should use it.  Let’s get real.  It’s just another form of of the same problem, but since it is coming from the minority it becomes acceptable.

Another example is pointed out, at least from my point of view, by Scott Adams’ post about the Imus event which is where this post started.  It was a bad situation that was in the end handled very well, yet one thing is still missing.  I’ll let you read his post if you are interested.

Wow, this is a hot topic as seen here and here. When you take something that is as deeply ingrained in society such as religion and you throw out ideas that are inflammatory to any of the sides involved, it is bound heat up to the point of explosion!

The short version of what is going on, in case you have not heard, is that James Cameron has a documentary that will be aired shortly exposing what he claims to be scientific proof that Jesus was buried with his family in a tomb outside of Jerusalem around 2000 years ago. This tomb was discovered around 27 years ago and it has taken over 2 decades to fully examine, test and come to conclusion about the findings.

Notice I said “his family.” This includes his mother, Mary, another Mary, perhaps Magdalene and his wife, and a son. Wow, straight out of The Davinci Code!

I know that people who classify themselves as “true believers” talk about faith and belief.  That is all fine and good.  It is important to believe in things and everyone needs to decide for themselves what that is.  I am not a particularly religious person and that is fine, or it should be.  Many that I work with are religious to different degrees.

I say religious however that brings with it an entirely different set arguments.  Religion, or at least organized religion, is really the point of my post.  As I said it is well and good to take some things on faith.  At the same time I think that it is negligence to refuse to acknowledge that the very words that the faith is based upon were written, edited and censored by…..man.

The bible, the word of god, was written by men.  Perhaps they were inspired by, talked to or communicated with in some fashion by god, but they were still men and as we all know, every human has their own set of filters, opinions and views on any situation.

Now, men have written the words but they have not yet been put into a book.  That task falls to other men.  With all of the content, how to decide what goes into the bible?  What should be left out?  What should be edited, because surely the author did not mean exactly that, or perhaps the translation from a dialect dead for millennia has be diluted.

Is it OK to put your faith into these words?  Absolutely.  You can have the opinion that, despite all of the men involved in evolving the current version of the bible, it still holds the original message from god.  maybe it does, I just do not know.  It certainly has conflicting messages.  It, just as certainly, has many messages and lessons that are good from our moral point of view.  It teaches how we can and should get along with each other.  Just please acknowledge that the possibility exists, and is fairly high, that we do not have the entire picture of what the bible was intended to be by the authors, and perhaps even by the originator of the message, if there was such an entity.

I just don’t know, but I do not discount the possibility of any of it, on both sides.  It is an interesting debate.  Being nothing more that a man myself, how can I truly say what the answer is, what is true?