Responsibility

Mary Winkler is out of jail. That irks me. It’s not even the fact that she killed her preacher husband that bothers me so much as she gave every excuse in the book why she was justified in doing it. And she only served 67 days.

Listen.

This country has a serious problem with accepting responsibility. This is a textbook case.

Mary Winkler claims that her husband was abusive and overcritical. According to those who knew the couple, there were no visible signs of anything wrong (but this doesn’t necessarily mean that nothing was going on behind closed doors). Still the claim stands. So Winkler says that one day she snapped. She took a shotgun and pointed it at her husband, claiming that she only wanted to talk to him. She denies any premeditation. As if you really point a gun at someone just to get them to talk to you. She also denied pulling the trigger.

She claimed that the gun went off accidentally (so it wasn’t her fault). She claimed that she was under stress from a variety of things involving her husband and alleged psychological abuse and financial troubles (so it wasn’t her fault). In the end she was found guilty, not of first-degree murder, but voluntary manslaughter. She was sentenced to 210 days, and with time already served awaiting trial, the balance was 67 days spent in custody after her conviction. This time was spent not in prison but in a mental hospital.

It baffles me that someone can kill a person and get off so easily, as if you’re ever justified in taking a life. There may or may not have been abuse in the home, but there are options other than murder. The sheer excuse-making to justify the act is ridiculous.

It’s about time people start fessing up and taking responsibility for their actions. Don’t make excuses about it. Don’t justify it, as if you had a good reason to do something immoral, so you are the exception to the rule that the act was in fact wrong.

Grow up.

The Influence of Music

Last week in the Chicago Tribune there was an article about censorship in hip-hop music. The debate is whether certain words should be censored, whether this would make a difference, and if there is anything wrong with the words at all.

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(Firstly, I’d like to note that this is not a discussion about hip-hop music only, but any kind of music that carries these kinds of messages. Hip-hop just seems to be the most prominent style of music promoting these messages right now, so we will discuss it.)

Not too long ago I watched a documentary about hip-hop music. It, like the article in the Tribune, talked about the messages of hip-hop music. Dominant in these discussions are the portrayal of women.

Let’s look at the lyrics and the videos for what they are. They portray women as “hoes” who are only good for one thing. They show women wearing next to nothing, and hanging off the men. Sometimes these are shots of women in strip clubs.

If this wasn’t put out on TV as a music video, it would easily pass as pornography. The lyrics of the songs are so explicit that if you spoke like that to, or in the presence of, any underaged person you would be arrested. So why is it alright to have this type of thing in our music? In my opinion these types of songs and videos can not be viewed as “artistic expression” any more than pornography can.

Some justify it by saying that they are only singing about what is real in our culture. This is true in the sense that this is what our culture is like. But I think it is more the case that the music is not singing about our culture, but shaping our culture into that which it is portraying.

Today’s philosophers are its musicians. Lyrics and videos impact the way we live, shaping minds and influencing attitudes.

This isn’t the kind of thing I want influencing my generation or that of my children. This isn’t the kind of thing that I want on my block.

Spewing Venom at Religion

Stuff like this makes me pretty angry. First of all, the premise is that Christians are delusional. The video says that it will prove that Christians are delusional. Then it points to Mormonism and Islam and says that it is about to prove religion is delusional. Then it explains that because Mormonism and Islam tell delusional stories, Christianity must be false. Does anybody else see a flaw in the logic of this?

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There are a host of people using this kind of reasoning, mostly famously perhaps are Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. They say that religion is not only false, but harms the human race and should be eradicated. They attack Christianity in particular, but use the flaws it other religions to prove Christianity false.

Look at it this way. Some parents abuse their children. Does this mean that my parents are abusive and should not be trusted? Does the fact that some people abuse mean that everyone is guilty of child abuse? Obviously not. The same thing goes with religion. Just because there are false religions in the world does not mean that there is not a true way to know God. Just because Mormonism and Islam have holy books that are not really from God does not mean that the Bible is not from God.

Another thing that bothers me about this video is the website that it came from. The site asks they question that if God answers prayer then why doesn’t he heal all the amputees in the world, and because God does not heal all the amputees in the world, he must not be real. Another flaw in logic, putting human expectation on God and saying that if he doesn’t live up to what I think he should do then he must not exist. In actually, this site is worse than even that, because it does not seek the truth, only to attack the notion of God, a la Dawkins, et al.

This kind of logic is quickly becoming known as militant atheism. I think this is an accurate term. Creating all sorts of accusations about God and Christianity because some people have misrepresented them, these atheists sound more like little children than reasonable thinkers and scholars. They criticize Islam for killing scores of innocent people in the name their ideologies, and then spew venomous words at anybody who believes in anything supernatural, as if it is the same thing.

The End – Seriously

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One day soon the world’s going to end.

Are you ready?