SoulPancake

Sodom and Gomorrah. The Great Flood. The Apocalypse. Sure, we were all taught in Sunday School that God’s wrath is dished out with love for his creatures, but isn’t the whole "I made it, so I can unmake it" thing a little sophomoric?

Is there a sense of enjoyment in having enemies and punishing His children for their shortcomings? Or perhaps God, in a way, is prescient enough to balance his own impulses.

Would God create something just so that he could exercise loathing for it?

:: say NO to shellfish spied by dustout

My students recently asked me if I’d ever want to get off this rock and move to a big bouncing lunar suburb. I said no, and they were totally aghast. Why the hell would I NOT go to a new planet where the imported air and water were fresh and fragrant and clean and everybody was in love?

Perhaps it’s the fact that even though we are destroying our planet at warp speeds, I kinda have a soft spot for this place that Carl Sagan calls our pale blue dot—the only home we’ve ever known, infinitesimally lost in the vastness of space, an insignificant speck that Sagan says demonstrates the folly of human conceits.

When this pale blue dot still needs so much work, what makes us think we can just hop-skip-and-jump over to an entirely new planet and start anew? If you had the opportunity to move to another planet tomorrow, would you do it? What lessons from earth should we take with us? And more fundamentally, does our eagerness to blast off belie a feeling that the earth is a lost cause?

The earth has a future, but is it one that we can still have hope for?

:: @pascali

:: tree life lines by ktylerconk

“Anger can be cured by time; hatred cannot… Much may happen to make the angry man pity those who offend him, but the hater under no circumstances wishes to pity a man whom he has once hated: for the one would have the offenders suffer for what they have done; the other would have them cease to exist.” —Aristotle

We use the word “hate” far too freely. I hate getting up early. I hate tailgaters. I hate turnips. I hate hate crimes. That’s probably why the word gets such a bad rap. What if the truth about hate is entirely different? What if hate is a perfectly natural human emotion—and one that has its place? Right now, I’m angry with the man who broke my heart and want him to suffer. I would much prefer to hate him. Because then, according to Aristotle, he would cease to exist or matter to me. And that’s a coping mechanism I can get on board with.

Is there a place for hate?

:: hate-cake by kayepants

“If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat… you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It’s just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It’s just to destroy life.” —Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, 1992

Do we deny life when we only live for art?

:: cat curator by mark williams

Do we have the right to interfere with other cultures' customs and traditions—even if it seems unjust?

Super Christ Me. Every Sunday, TV congregations numbering tens of millions tune in to salvation sermons broadcast from mega-churches filled with thousands upon thousands of followers. Sure, televangelism is shallow, manipulative, money-driven. But isn’t everything in pop culture (think Top 40 music, fast food, reality TV) just vacuous drivel designed for material gain? Maybe McJesus televangelism is just as valid a religion as any. But the real question is, can millions of couch-bound American souls survive on it alone? Who are we to point the finger at someone’s spiritual diet and say it’s time for some ecclesiastic exercise?

Is televangelism an acceptable method of ministry to the masses?

:: Todd Steinberg :: couch-church potato by Matt Goold

:: signage spied by paul nicholson

“In terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.” —Bill Gates

Sunday School students of the world unite! Or de-unite! We get dressed up every weekend and burn gas to drive over to church and sit in those uncomfortable wooden seats. Why? Can’t I find deliverance watching Patrick Crayton haul in a Tony Romo pass with 105,120 other Cowboys fans? What if I just sat in solitude and read chapters out of Genesis or the Koran? What if I meditated? Or called my mom? Or took a walk in nature?

What's the point of going to church when there are so many other spiritual things you could be doing?

:: Todd Steinberg

“No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a hero.” —from Frank Herbert’s Dune

Would the world be better off without messiahs and the blood shed in their names?

:: bloodied hands by Tabbouleh Breath