Atheist Version of Pascal's Wager

I saw this on Greta Christina's blog and I thought it was worth sharing with the Unitarian Universalist blog community. It's an Atheist version of Pascal's Wager.

Greta had noticed the Atheist version of Pascal's Wager as an off-hand comment on the Pharyngula ("Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal") where they were discussing the blog article on Dilbert creator Scott Adams' blog where he defends Pascal's Wager as a reasonable case for believing in God.

"Any deity this argument (the original Pascal's Wager) applies to is evil. Honestly, E-V-I-L... You might as well take the Atheist's Wager. Do good, then if there's a evil God everybody is still screwed. If there is a good God then you go to heaven, if there is no God then doing good is its own reward."

I mention this because our congregation's Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship had a multi-week series on "tough issues" in Christianity with a guest minister from the Shreveport Bible Church offering Pascal's Wager as a serious argument for believing in God.

Even more fun is Scott Adams' next blog article where he addresses the previous blog article about Pascal's Wager:

"Personally, if I were more rational, and less focused on immediate gratification, I would become a moderate, peace-loving Muslim. My reasoning is that Islam has the best chance of becoming the dominant world religion in the future, and therefore probably has God’s backing, if he exists. The Muslim belief that death is sometimes a good thing is a huge advantage in a future where weapons are improving, and the only thing keeping people from using them is fear of death.

If you believe God exists, the smart money says he’s backing the team with the best strategy and long term viability. Based on what I see today, I’m betting on Islam being the only religion in a thousand years. Once you can build your own nuke from stuff you buy online, don’t be betting on the Buddhists."

And I guess this pretty much illustrates the practical limits of using probability and game theory strategies to discern theological truth.

So -- Do I have to like Jerry Lewis?

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's Your Inner European?

Where Does "Theology" Stop and "Mental Masturbation" Begin?

I've been looking at the recent replies on Philocrites' blog to the "Isaac Newton's anti-Trinitarianism in the news" article.

Much of the discussion touches on speculation about Jesus and his relationship to God along with various competing christologies -- unitarian, trinitarian, etc.

Maybe I'm just too simple-minded but I'm finding most theological discussions to be "mental masturbation." The Urban Dictionary definition of this term is "The act of engaging in useless yet intellectually stimulating conversation, usually as an excuse to avoid taking constructive action in your life."

Personally, I don't totally like the term "mental masturbation" because it implies that masturbation (the physical sexual act ... not the "mental" variety) is a useless and non-productive act. I've blogged about the life-affirming and spirituality-enhancing aspects of this in the past:

• Sexuality and the "Direct Experience of That Transcending Mystery and Wonder"
• Here's Hoping That You Have a "Happy Ending"

However, I can accept this phrase as an imperfect metaphor.

So ... most theological discussions are a lot of mental fun but I find too much too much theology to be useless and non-productive for the work that needs doing in the world.

Certainly, too much theological discussion can be a real "Doritos syndrome" experience once you're done.

I'm really not that concerned about christology but I am concerned about practical soteriology.

How can Unitarian Universalists offer salvation and protect us from those things in the world that deny life or make life less whole?

To me, that is a more important question for us than the existence and the nature of God, the relationship between God and Jesus, and all the other questions that come up in most theological discussions.

But John ... if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.

You're Jurassic Park!
by Michael Crichton

You combine all the elements of a mad scientist, a brash philosopher, a humble researcher, and a money-hungry attracter of tourists. With all these features, you could build something monumental or get chased around by your own demons. Probably both, in fact. A movie based on your life would make millions, and spawn at least two sequels thatwouldn't be very good. Be very careful around islands.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I really don't understand the aversion to polyamory in Unitarian Universalist circles

I'm really puzzled by some of my coreligionists.

Recently on the Unitarian Universalist Minister Rev. Tom Schade's blog (The Lively Tradition), there has been some discussion on the lack of transparency surrounding the recent decision by the Unitarian Universalist Association's Board to reduce the number of Unitarian Universalist Independent Affiliates.

There's a lot of excellent commentary on the lack of openness and transparency -- you can read the most of this blog discussions using the following links:

• Serving Congregations?
• One meaning of the Independent Affiliate mystery
• The Independent Affiliate mystery deepens
• The most obvious theory about the IA mystery and what it means

I'm not blogging about the lack of transparency ... my concern is the aversion to polyamory that I'm witnessing.

Part of this discussion has been speculation on the potential role of polyamory and Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness in the recent decision to reduce the number of affiliates.

We really don't know the UUA Board's thinking here and I don't want to speculate any further than I already have online.

In the most recent blog post on Tom's blog, the blog conversation explored polyamory and asked what stand our religious movement should take on polyamory.

Fausto of The Socinian blog replied with the following about polyamory:

"As to the narrower question of polyamory, is there or is there not room at the table for a good-faith argument that polyamory is morally and spiritually dangerous, both to its practitioners and to their children, and that it therefore should not be presumptively entitled to the same societal or religious acceptance and blessing that we freely extend to monogamous unions?"

We can evaluate danger when it comes to mental health, physical health, and other empirical measures. Polyamory can be evaluated for its impact on mental and physical health. This is a social sciences question that can (in theory) be asked and answered. I'm not aware of any research on poly families.

However, "morally and spiritually dangerous" concern is something that we probably can't find common agreement on beyond agreeing that we should minimize the possiblity of harm to others and self.

However, some individuals may look at factors other than harm to others and self. This aspect of sexual morality is covered by Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Faye Flam in her column "What fuels the hatred of homosexuality?" Here's an excerpt from this column:

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt wants to help liberal types like me understand why some people condemn homosexual relationships as immoral.

As an exercise, he says, imagine that a neighbor has installed a sign in her front yard reading Cable television will destroy society. You ask her to explain, and she responds: "Cables are an affront to the god thoth. They radiate theta waves, which make people sterile."

Now imagine another neighbor, with another sign. This one announces Gay marriage will destroy society, and she justifies the statement by saying that homosexuality is an abomination to God and will undermine marriage.

If you're a liberal, you may view both neighbors as equally out of touch with reality (though the woman with the theta-wave theory is more original). That's the way most academics would traditionally see it, too.

But Haidt, who works at the University of Virginia and specializes in issues of morality, says the conservative viewpoint isn't just theta waves - it's based on a moral compass that points in dimensions liberals simply don't perceive.

"There's been this enormous change in how scientists are thinking about morality," he says. He outlined the new view recently in the journal Science.

In Western societies, secular and liberal-minded people base their moral beliefs on fairness and the avoidance of harm. That explains why, in previous columns, I wrote that I saw nothing immoral about premarital sex, homosexuality or sex toys - except, perhaps, for nonrecyclable batteries.

Dozens of horrified readers quickly blasted me as disgusting.

Which Haidt says is exactly the point. Most people set their moral compasses based on their sense of disgust. This is an additional moral dimension, which he calls purity/sanctity.

I suppose one can speculate on health, relationship stability, and other "danger" aspects surrounding polyamory. The problem here is we've got a lot of speculation and very little information to base our decisions. When that happens, the potential for basing one's moral decisions on disgust instead of reason becomes very likely.

Fausto later wrote the following on this blog thread:

"When I talk about moral objections, I'm thinking instead about the often unappreciated but nevertheless very real potential for deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual damage that can so easily occur in polyamorous situations despite all precautions. Not only to the consenting adults (if indeed they are giving their fully informed and free consent, which is another significant question), but especially also to their children or prospective children, who need to grow up in a stable and secure environment."

The issue that I have with this line of thought is we really don't have any data to answer any of the concerns raised. Are poly relationships more dangerous? If so, are they so dangerous that we should strongly discourage them? Are poly relationships so unstable that we should discourage them in order to prevent harm to children?

To the best of my knowledge, we don't know the answers to any of these concerns. All we have with respect to poly questions are anecdotal evidence. And the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." And the collection of anecdotal evidence often is distorted by a "confirmation bias" (a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs).

Tom Schade then replied on this thread:

"Poly panels, which I have seen, are a exercise in propaganda. They are arguments from 'best-case anecdotes.' The persons who are participated in the panel are currently happy in their relationships and will willingly testify to the joy of their lives."

I'll agree that guest panels are often the "best-case anecdotes" ... We do the same thing with sexual orientation guest panels that are used in the Our Whole Lives and Welcoming Congregation programs. I've never heard of a sexual orientation guest panel including an "ex-gay" person who has undergone "reparative therapy."

Is that one-sided propaganda or just a reasonable limitation on the information that we wish to present in our congregations and other religious settings?

Tom Schade then replied further on this thread:

"And, by restricting the 'moral' argument to these best case examples, they discount all negative experiences elsewhere. The stories about 13 year coerced brides in Utah are not relevant in those discussions, because that is bad patriarchy and we are only talking about good polyamory."

Tom ... these stories are not relevant because we're talking about consenting adults and coerced adolescents are not consenting adults. This is a "red herring" fallacy.

Tom Schade then replied further on this thread:

Regarding OWL: the guidelines you quote refer to specific sexual relationships -- not social policy and the witness of a religious movement in the cultural circumstance in which it finds itself.

Actually, the values in the curriculum go beyond the interpersonal. We need to avoid double standards in providing ministry to families. We need to promote justice and inclusivity.

Tom Schade replied again on this thread:

BTW, many of the poly panels at which I have been supposedly trained, include the testimony of someone who argued that they had numerous problems with adultery until they "came out" as a poly, realizing that they were just incapable of being faithful to one person.

Would it be better for a person to have this self-knowledge before attempting to live monogamously? One possibility with this self-knowledge is this person would know that any monogamous relationship that he or she enters will be a challenge. Another possibility would be this person would use this self-knowledge to attempt to live non-monogamously and ethically.

The danger here is assuming that everyone has the same needs and the same relationship type can meet the needs of every individual.

Congregational Goal-Setting -- All Souls Board and Council Retreat

Last Saturday (30 June 2007), I attended my congregation's annual "retreat" for the Board and Council. Here are my notes from today's Board and Council Retreat.

The word "retreat" is in quotes because only Unitarian Universalists would take a word that usually means an event where "one takes time away from everyday life, often in order to reflect or meditate" and use it to describe an all-day working meeting.

On Friday night (29 June 2007), the departing and newly elected board members met without the council members. Their group process included "SWOT analysis" where the board members brainstormed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the congregation:

Top Five Strengths
1. Physical Building and Grounds
2. Innovative and Substantive Programming
3. Religious Education
4. Sense of Freedom
5. Caring Community

Top Five Weaknesses
1. Financial Shortfall
2. Diffuse/Confused Identity
3. Membership Retention
4. Small Membership
5. Religious Education

Top Three Opportunities
1. Response to Violence
2. University/Artistic/Professional Communities
3. Religious Alternatives

Top Three Threats
1. Downturn of Local Economy
2. Negative (or Non-existent) Community Perceptions
3. Out-migration of Youth/Families

Next, we looked at our congregation's mission statement:

Mission Statement
We, as a loving and caring spiritual community, resolve to:

• Promote diversity through free expression of ideas and beliefs
• Encourage intellectual and spiritual growth, and
• Provide an environment for social activism and community service

We believe the search for truth is a journey, not a destination. In this spirit, all are welcome. -- (Written by the All Souls Congregation on 25-27 January 2002, approved by congregational vote on 17 February 2002)

The "top rank objective" in our mission statement is " to encourage intellectual and spiritual growth" -- this should explain why we are here as a church and the other objectives in our mission statement are the "how" that help us achieve this intellectual and spiritual growth.

Here are the goals that came out of the board's discussion on Friday night:

1. Sharpening the profile and identity of All Souls as a religious alternative

2. Membership

• Recruiting from University / Professional / Artistic communities
• Retention of Members

3. Balance the Budget

4. Develop a Response to Community and International Violence

On Saturday, the group facilitators talked about items 2 and 3. During the discussion, we decided that they were "means" and not "ends" that our goals should be "ends" that we are working towards.

The Saturday discussion was to re-examine the long-term goals of the congregation and to categorize them into the following two categories:

1. Product Development

2. Organizational Maintenance and Development

The following discussion resulted in the brainstorming of sub-goals that would fit within these two major goals.

1.0 Product Development Goals

1.1 Inspiring Sunday Worship That Transform Lives

- support and enhance music in worship

- lay reader skill development

- encourage reverence

- continue diversity of worship services

- minimize "business" on Sunday mornings (e.g. active recruiting of volunteers) -- see UUA Drive Time Essay on this topic

1.2 Focusing, Refining, Embracing, Our Common Identity

- sermons, classes, other content on our commonality

- covenant of right relationships

- enhancing connection with wider denomination (connections, resources, etc)

- appreciation of our heritage

- build more denominational bridges

- increase denominational event involvement

1.3 Nurturing All Souls Community

- Healing on Welcoming Congregation issue and other tough issues

- Creating a "Calm" Committee

- Reconstitute Food/Folks/Fun Committee

- Small Group Ministry and Covenant Groups

1.4 Continue Ministry and Service to Community

- Develop a response to violence to community and international violence (Alternatives to Violence Project would be a good start for this)

- "Give Away the Plate" on second Sunday of the month

- Division over social justice issues -- goal 1.3 would offer solutions for this

- Interfaith involvement - World Religion Day, other interfaith groups addressing racism and other issues in our community

- Build relationships with sister churches/organizations (Zion Community Ministries)

2.0 Organizational Maintenance and Development

2.1 Membership Growth and Retention

- Continue orientation meetings

- RE class for new members

- Establish plan to target university, artistic, professional communities

- Find strategies for creating engaging youth programming

- Add sexuality education info to the web site as a marketing strategy

2.2 Fiscal Stability

- Improve planned giving efforts

- Strengthen fund-raising strategies that require minimum investment of member time and also draw funds from outside the congregation

- Implement "steps" pledge drive program

This discussion summary is not the official record of the retreat. Eventually, our congregation will have the complete info posted on the congregation web site.

A Result of Cold War Aircrew Duty in Strategic Air Command ...

... and the fact that B-52s were rarely sent outside the CONUS (continental United States) until recently (Desert Storm, combat in former Yugoslavia, and post-9/11 combat in Afghanistan and Iraq):



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Must Be a Result of 20+ Years of Military Service ...

... and growing up as military brat (hat tip to Boy in the Bands for pointing out this web quiz):



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Nerd Test Results ...

I was bored at work on a Friday ... thanks to Rev. Sean at ministrare for pointing this test out:

The Perfect Geek Rating for an Our Whole Lives Educator ...

Thanks to Boy in the Bands for mentioning this online quiz ...

69% Geek

Back with the "R" Rating ...

All it took was one post on pornography and liberal religion to regain my R rating:

According to the Mingle2 rating web site, my rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• porn (5x)
• sex (4x)
• bomb (1x)

Pornography and Liberal Religion

Reason and Reverence and El Cáliz Azul (The Blue Chalice) and have both commented on the question of the responses that liberal religion should take towards pornography. You can read both blog posts here:

• Pornography: why religious liberals should care
• What is a liberal religious response to pornography?

Both posts raise some concerns with pornography and ethics. Specifically, Reason and Reverence mentions the following concerns about pornography as a social ill:

I need look no farther than the UU principles as a start for why religious liberals may want to start thinking about why pornography is a social problem. The first two principles:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations

Pornography seems to seriously violate both of these cherished principles. It is a humongous, selfish, disgusting industry that belittles and trivializes human sexuality. It objectifies and commodifies men and women. It portrays sex in a brutal, selfish, unrealistic way.

I'll agree that there are segments of the pornography and sexually-related businesses that are selfish and inconsiderate.

Some sexually-related businesses do belittle and trivialize human sexuality. And some do economically exploit their workers.

However, the objectification and brutality mentioned above sounds like a description of the "Gonzo Porn" genre. These objections may not apply to all pornography. Like other types of media, there is a wide range of normal variation in pornography.

The explicit values in the Our Whole Lives (OWL) curriculum jointly developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ may be useful for exploring pornography as a values issue. You can find the OWL values online here.

The OWL curriculum spends very little time discussing pornography. Most of the discussion of porn as a values issue happens in the adult curriculum where many views are presented and it's left as an open-ended question for the group to discuss.

Let's look at the list of issues that Reason and Reverence raised with pornography:

• Humongous, selfish, disgusting industry
• Belittles and trivializes human sexuality
• Objectifies and commodifies men and women
• Portrays sex in a brutal, selfish, unrealistic way

I wonder if we can peel back the layers of concern here to discover if pornography can exist in a manner consistent with the sexual values promoted by Unitarian Universalists.

Is pornography innately incompatible with our religious values? Or the problems that we've identified with pornography due to the corporate commercial culture that produces much of the pornography in North America?

For example, would amateur porn made by lesbians for lesbians be OK within our values?

This hypothetical example would eliminate the commercialization issues and the patriarchy oppression issues commonly associated with pornography. However, it would still involve people obtaining pleasure from viewing sexually explicit images.

Personally, I've enjoyed the sex-positive feminist perspective on porn issues. Here are some sex-positive feminist web resources that you can check out:

• Susie Bright's Journal
• Greta Christina's Blog
• Sexual Intelligence (Dr. Marty Klein)
• Joani Blank (UU tidbit -- Joani is a member of First UU Church of Oakland CA)
• Betty Dodson
  

For an example of visually erotic but non-explotative pornography, you may want to check out Nothing but the Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image as an example of sex-positive feminism in action. Susie Bright has a sampling of photos from this book on her web site here.

Blog Rating Update ... I'm now PG

Apparently, the online blog rating system is just as inconsistent in applying ratings as the real-life MPAA rating system.

Here's my rating as of this morning:

My Blog is Rated "R" ...

I saw this blog rating service mentioned on Adrastos, the blog that belongs to a family friend in New Orleans who blogs about post-Katrina life in his city.

Apparently, my blog isn't acceptable for all ages:

I was also curious to see what the rating for my congregation's web site was using this service:

I'm pretty sure that my congregation's leadership will be relieved to know they are safe for all ages.

In case anyone is interested, here's the ratings for several blogs that I routinely read:

• PG -- Peacebang
• PG-13 -- Philocrites
• G -- Boy in the Bands
  
• G -- Radical Hapa
  
• NC-17 -- Sexuality and Religion
  
• R -- The Chaliceblog
  
• NC-17 -- Susie Bright's Blog
  
• NC-17 -- Greta Christina's Blog
  

And this blog content rating service is just as openly transparent as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) rating system for movies that is often criticized for its effect on artistic expression in film. The documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated examines the problems with the MPAA ratings and the non-transparency of the MPAA process.

Sokal Affair and Theological Writing

After reading about the Sokal Affair (a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated on the editorial staff and readership of a then-non-peer-reviewed postmodern cultural studies journal called Social Text), I'm curious about another application of Sokal's technique.

Has anyone ever tried Sokal's experiment with a theology journal? Some skeptics like Richard Dawkins are critical of many theologians. The counter-charge is that folks like Dawkins are not well-read in the current theological literature.

A successful Sokal experiment involving a theology journal would address some of the criticism that the current crop of Atheist writers should know more about current trends in theology.

Followup on Microsoft Office 2007 File Formats

This blog post is a follow-up to my earlier post on Microsoft Office 2007 and the "incompatible" file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint ("incompatible" for those who are using an older version of Microsoft Office, open-source software, Mac OS X, or Linux).

The first possible solution is an article from the Tidbits Mac news site:

MacLinkPlus Deluxe Converts Word/Excel 2007 Documents
Thanks to Jim Dewitt, who alerted me that DataViz's venerable MacLinkPlus Deluxe, now at version 16, also includes read-only support for the file formats used by Word 2007 and Excel 2007 under Windows. So, if Microsoft's free beta converter doesn't work for you (see "Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter in Beta," 2007-05-21), and you want an alternative to Panergy's docXConverter, check out MacLinkPlus Deluxe. DataViz deserves kudos for sticking with the conversion game for so long and with such a large list of file formats. My experience is that conversions are seldom perfect, but any automatic tool that brings you closer to the desired result is a good thing.

The second solution was also mentioned on the Tidbits news site and may be useful for Windows and Mac OS X users:

docXConverter
You have received a file from the new Office 2007 and cannot open it...

If this file is a Word file (generally with the extension docx)

. . . have a look at docXConverter today!

With docXConverter you can simply:

Forget that one minute ago you couldn't open this file.
Continue your work without missing a single comma.
With docXConverter there is:

Nothing lost and nothing new to learn. Just double-click on the file and let docXConverter work for you, silently and without getting in the way.

docXConverter version 1.3 works on the following systems:

Windows 98 to Vista
Mac OS X version 10.2 to 10.4
Mac OS 9.2

Finally, a older Tidbits article also mentioned some future updates for the Mac OS X file format converter software for the Mac OS X version of Microsoft Office:

Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter in Beta
If you find yourself needing to access Office Open XML documents created by Windows users in Word 2007, Microsoft now has a free beta converter that may help. The Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.1b can convert .docx and .docm documents (the latter are Word macro-enabled documents) into RTF format, which can be opened in Word 2004 and Word X on the Mac. The converter provides both individual file and batch conversion.

In this beta release, macros and Visual Basic scripts are dropped from the converted file, and charts and SmartArt graphics are converted to pictures. Other problems that might crop up in the beta include resizing of graphics, loss of color fills and shading in tables, loss of certain document formatting and layout, loss of some Unicode characters and picture bullets, and font substitution. The conversion might fail entirely if the document contains a bibliography, citations, WordArt, or very large pictures, or if you use an SMB network volume as the destination. To summarize all that, most documents should convert fine, but some that use less-common features may have troubles. Nonetheless, it's great to see Microsoft's Mac Business Unit releasing this beta now; even though it's clearly not done, it will undoubtedly be useful to Mac users right away. Now if only they could give it a snappier name.

The Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac beta is a 24.9 MB download and expires on 31-Dec-07. It requires Mac OS X 10.4.8, and either at least Office 2004 11.3.4 or Office X 10.1.9 to open the converted documents. Free upgrades to both versions of Office are available from Microsoft's Mac Downloads page.

If you find yourself needing a conversion capability that this free beta doesn't support, it's worth taking a look at Panergy's $20 docXConverter, which promises to convert the majority of Word 2007 features to RTF as well.

Microsoft tells us that updates to the converter in a few months will include support for PowerPoint and Excel documents, and a version of it that provides read/write conversion will be integrated into Office 2004 six to eight weeks after the release of Office 2008 for Mac. For more about it, check out Geoff Price's post in the Mac Mojo blog.

These options may be useful for you when you receive a newsletter article or other church business documents in these new "incompatible" Microsoft Office file formats.

Speculation on UUA Independent Affiliate Decisions

Within the past week, there has been some speculation on the recently announced ("leaked"?) decision by the Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustees to reduce the number of non-congregational Independent Affiliates.

Some speculation has mentioned the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA) as a factor for this decision.

Here's a sample quote from The UU Enforcer blog that illustrates a representative example of this speculation:

"I have been thinking and talking and reading about the whole independent affiliate status tussle going on and one of the things that was pointed out to me was that this occurred, this being a whole lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, because no one wanted to come out and say to the Polyamorists get out! Yup instead of having some back bone and saying "sorry you missed the sixties, but you can't try and relive it here" the UUA board tried to avoid the conversation and set up some pretty high bars for groups to reach."

If that's the "real" reason behind this decision (and I hope it's not), I would find it troubling.

To me, this decision might be analogous to the tactics used by the Salt Lake City school administration to eliminate all extra-curricular student clubs because fairness and equal treatment laws demanded that the school officials allow for a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) in the public schools. The ACLU of Utah has background info on this case here.

The school administrators were forced to allow GSA groups if they allowed extra-curricular clubs. The "fairness" requirement was externally imposed by the Federal Law guaranteeing equal access for student-led clubs.

For Unitarian Universalists, our "fairness" requirement was not externally imposed by legislation. It comes from our Principles and Purposes along with the mostly implicit theology that our principles come from.

Like the Salt Lake City schools facing the GSA decision, it's possible that our UUA Board side-stepped any future decisions regarding the UUPA and official recognition by raising the bar.

And it's one way to avoid our theological requirement for fairness in who we choose to welcome or not welcome in our faith community.

For folks who are traveling to General Assembly in Portland, there will be a series of meetings to examine the future of non-congregational affiliates. More details can be found here.

"Critiquing Ideology" or "Bashing Another's Beliefs"

This past week, several discussions (many very heated) have popped up in a response to a Church of the Larger Fellowship article.

This article briefly mentioned the decision at Starr King School for the Ministry to stop using the term "brown bag" to describe lunchtime talks where one brings one's lunch to the talk. This is due to the historical association between brown bags and colorism discrimination.

One good place to find many links to these blog conversations is Philocrites blog article "Brown bag landmines, culling the affiliates, and more."

The Unitarian Universalist minister author of Ms. Kitty's Saloon and Road Show commented on her concerns about ministerial collegiality in the "brown bag" blog conversations.

One of the replies to Ms. Kitty's concerns voiced her belief that a criticism of an ideology should be permissible:

"An ideology was being critiqued. Ain't no guidelines against that and I hope to God there never will be."

Of course, this comment opens up the question what's an ideology and what's a sincerely held religious belief?

The online Merriam-Websters provides "a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture" as one definition for "ideology."

Since an ideology is just a term to describe an organized collection of ideas, the term would include most religious belief systems (e.g. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Paganism, Humanism, etc).

Do we want any ideologies to be off-limits from criticism in Unitarian Universalist communities?

For example, would a "Dawkins" or "Harris" criticism of belief in God and traditional religion be OK or would that be off-limits in a Unitarian Universalist setting?

I guess that Unitarian Universalist Christians will need to remove the term "Christian-bashing" from their vocabularies for two reasons:

1. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been "bashed" (physically assaulted) for being a Christian in a Unitarian Universalist congregation or other settings -- mostly it's a verbal criticism of ideology.
   
2. Criticism of ideology is OK for some Unitarian Universalists and some Unitarian Universalist Christians.
   

But do we want to live in a congregation where this frank criticism of ideology happens?

I think that no ideology or system of belief is so sacred that we cannot look at it critically.

However, I do see a problem with excessive criticism of ideologies in our congregations.

How do we examine an ideology critically in such a way that we don't shut down communication and eventually end up in the heated ritualistic exchange of verb-pronoun combinations?

Microsoft Office 2007 and the New File Formats

Thanks again for Microsoft to try creating a document "standard" that is not compatible with other office application suites.

If you haven't noticed this problem yet, it will probably affect you when a church volunteer sends you a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document created with the latest version of Microsoft Office for Windows -- Office 2007.

The new file formats are not compatible with Office 2003 or earlier versions of Microsoft Office (more to follow on this).

These formats are also not compatible with the current version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS X or the current OpenOffice or NeoOffice programs (more to follow on this).

Here's the details on the new file format from Wikipedia:

"Microsoft Office uses a new file format, called Office OpenXML, as the default file format. It is based on XML and uses the ZIP file container. According to Microsoft, documents created in this format are up to 75% smaller than the same documents saved with previous Microsoft Office file formats, owing to data compression.

Word documents without macro extensions are now saved using a .docx extension rather than the traditional .doc extension. Files containing macros are saved with the extension .docm. You can save your 2007 Word documents in the old format so that they will still be usable in previous versions of Word. If not, you will have to download a free converter from Microsoft for older versions of Word to be able to open documents created in the new format."

If you're using Microsoft Office 2003, Office 2002, or Office 2000; your best option is to download the "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats."

According to Wikipedia, the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS X (Office 2008) will be file-compatible with the Windows Office 2007 version and should be available in the second half 0f 2007. I cannot find any information on the requirements for Office 2008.

Microsoft has released a beta version of the XML filter for Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS X. This filter only converts Office 2007 Word documents (.docx, .docm). Here are the requirements for this conversion filter:

• Microsoft Office 2004 11.3.4 or later
• Office v. X 10.1.9 or later
• Mac OS X 10.4.8 (Tiger) or a later version of Mac OS

A search on the openoffice.org site provided some information for users of OpenOffice. OpenOffice users should expect import filters for OpenOffice between summer and autumn 2007.

If you're using Microsoft Office 2003/2002/2000, you should install Microsoft's compatibility filter.

If you're a Mac OS X user who is using OS X 10.4.8 or later and Microsoft Office, you can install the Microsoft Word compatibility filter for using Office 2007 word documents. You will still need to have the people you work with save their Excel and PowerPoint documents in the older formats (Excel .xls and PowerPoint .ppt).

If you're an OpenOffice user on any platform or using a Mac OS X version 10.4.7 or earlier, you will need to ask the person who sent you the Office 2007 document to save the document in the earlier Microsoft Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt).

If this file format issue seems confusing, you can thank Microsoft for creating this confusion for you, your congregation, and everyone else.

E-Mail Is Out With Today's Younger Web Users

On the previous blog post about security issues, I mentioned a disadvantage of using HTML-formatted email for church marketing. But there's another disadvantage of using email for church marketing and communication.

It's a communication tool used more by older people and used less by younger people.

Here's another article from InformationWeek about this demographic difference in internet communication -- a brief quote from the article:

"For most of us in the business world, e-mail is an integral part of our work lives. But for the millennials -- the generation between ages 13 and 24 -- e-mail is for old people. That's right, the first form of communication that brought many of us into the online world is now as outdated as a leisure suit.

For younger Webizens, e-mail today is like sending a letter -- something you do when you have to but not a primary means of communication. For these users text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking sites are the ways they communicate and stay in touch."

This affects many areas of congregational life.

How do we address these preferred means of communication for youth in our congregational safety policies?

How do we ensure that our religious professionals and congregational leaders can use them effectively? Our congregational leaders may have who may be unwilling and/or uncomfortable with these newer methods of communication

Another observation from this article related to campus communication at Virginia Tech during the shooting incident:

"Signs of this shift were evident last week during the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech. Students relied on text messaging and Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and social networks for updates and for social support.

University officials faced criticism for e-mailing out alerts more than two hours after the first wave of shootings. In the wake of this tragedy, technologists have called for universities to adopt technologies like text messaging to build more immediate alert systems instead of relying on systems like e-mail."

The final quote from this article provides three possible explanations behind this generational shift in internet communication:

"So why is e-mail dying? I think there are a couple of reasons. First, younger users want more controlled systems of messaging. The advantage of text messaging, IM, and social network sites, compared with e-mail, is that these systems are controlled by users' buddy lists. While spamming inside these modes of communications does happen, it's still much harder and more expensive to spam people through IM, text, and social networks than it is through e-mail.

The second is immediacy. IM is instant and so, too, is SMS. Social networks are immediate, too. E-mail is slower. Users have to wait for a response and e-mail communication isn't, in most cases, a real-time dialogue.

And the third reason is personalization. E-mail is a cold medium. It's not as personal as social networking, where message updates and friend connections extend users' online personas through their communications. Cell phones are, almost by definition, highly personal devices and, likewise, younger users see text messages as more intimate."

So ... I suppose if our congregations want to appear cold and impersonal to younger members and potential members, email is the way to go.