Saturday, November 28, 2009

Health Care and the Cash Cow


Posted by Herb Schmidt

The current debate about Health Care in our country rightly should be of great concern to people of different Faith Communities. With over 40 million of Americans without health insurance, with people facing bankruptcies because health care costs, others dying because they can’t get medical assistance, people of faith need to add their voice to this important issue. It is a matter of Justice and good stewardship of the resources God has given us.

Like most problems there is an unrecognized ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. In this case it is not an Elephant but a CASH COW. The reason American’s can’t get affordable health care is that in this country we have made Medical care, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and the entire system into a profit making enterprise. The Free Market has its place but not in providing health care. Fire protection, Police protection are not money making businesses nor should Health Care be. Look at some of the facts.

In America we spend over $7,000.00 per person per year for health care. In other developed countries like Canada, Great Britan, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countires, etc. the cost is less than $2,500.00 per person. Yet many of these countries have better systems. American is 33rd in longevity and lag behind many developed countries in many different categories of care. Profit insurance companies use only 70 cents of each premium dollar on health care. The rest is overhead and profit. The administrative cost by the government for medicare is only 3% while administrative costs for most insurance companies is more than 20%. Medical Insurance companies hire people to find ways not to pay claims. They are the ones who get in between the patient and doctors. Pharmaceutical Companies spent more on advertising than they do on research. If you go to Mexico or Canada you can buy the same drug from the same company for about one fourth of the price you pay for the same drug in this country. Our representative in the House and Senate are beholden to drug companies and pharmaceuticals because of their contributions to political campaigns and their large lobbying efforts in the congress. The companies at the present time spend more than a million dollars a day to defeat any change in our health care. It is time to change the system.

The only way to correct the present system in this country is to have a government run single-payer system or at least a robust public option. The Government can deliver a much better system than the Cash Cow system we have today. Think where we would be without Social Security and Medicare. Both of these plans when they were presented were opposed by the same people and party who object to the present proposed changes to our system today. Of course these systems need up dating and modification but our country would be in dire straits if we did not have these systems.

It is time we name the Elephant in the room. It is time to get the CASH COW OUT of our medical care system. A market driven systems is the problem. The time is now! Write and call your representatives so that we can get a medical system that truly uses the resources we have in this country to serve all our citizens.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

What Caused God?


Posted by Peter Payne

Many people use as an argument for belief the creation of the universe. This is called the “first cause” argument: if the universe had a beginning (ie, the Big Bang,) then the cause of the Big Bang must be something that transcends the physical universe. Coupled with the apparent fine-tuning of the natural laws which make life possible and the claim that it would take a super-intelligent Being to so arrange natural law, this argument designates “God” as the transcendent cause of the universe.

There are objections to this position. As Bertrand Russell puts it, “If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.” And, “if there can be anything without a cause, then it might just as well be the world as God.” To fail to seek a cause for God is to abandon the premise that everything must have a cause.

Furthermore, if one allows that God is an exception to the rule, then why not simply stop with the universe and suppose that the universe came into being without a cause? Alternatively, why not suppose that the universe has always existed? “The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination,” Russell says. His conclusion is that “there cannot be any validity to the argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, ‘How about the tortoise?’ the Indian said, ‘Suppose we change the subject.’ The argument is really no better than that.” It should be said in response to Russell that when he wrote this essay in 1927, the big bang theory had not yet arisen.

This, of course, does not address the “fallacy” that Russell said is committed by the first-cause argument: the apparent conflict between the principle that “everything must have a cause” and allowing that God be uncaused. To see what is wrong with Russell’s claim, let’s alter the Indian tale. Suppose that upon being asked, “What about the tortoise?” the response had been, “The world rests on the back of an elephant, and the elephant on the back of a tortoise, but all three rest in infinite space.” If this had been the reply, it would clearly block the further question, “But what does infinite space rest on?” Were such a question asked, the Indian master would rightly have replied, “Your question reveals that you do not understand the concept of infinite space.”

At this point, it might be objected that God is not infinite space. This is, of course, true, but God is in some respects more like infinite space than like any finite thing. God is not some sort of cosmic superman, like other beings yet with super strength and abilities. Rather, God is completely unique. His power is literally without limit. He is not limited by space, or time, or anything else in creation. Although we refer to God as “a being,” there is an important sense in which it is inappropriate to think of God as a being, one more being amongst the many that exist.

The being of God, God’s nature, is reflected in some ways in what God has created, but God is categorically distinct from all that he has created. We can relate to God, and we speak of God as the object of our worship, but God is not an object or an entity in the sense that all finite things are. The theologian Paul Tillich aptly expressed this by stating that God is “the ground of our being” – not another being, but the source of all being; not a thing; but the creator of all things.

Coming back to Russell, when Russell says, “If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause,” he is taking “everything” to mean all that is real. God is real, but one must ask whether God is the sort of being which one should expect to fall under the principle “everything has cause.” Every thing may have a cause, but is God a thing in the sense which this dictum supposes?

To illustrate the caution here, consider the reality of mathematical truths. The metaphysical status of mathematical entities is a difficult issue, but suppose one were to say that mathematical entities are real, should one therefore expect that they are caused? It would be rather odd to suppose that they must be caused. Mathematical entities are not at all like physical entities. Experience tells us that physical entities are caused and their existence seems to depend in an obvious way on prior states of affairs. But mathematical entities, if they exist, do not seem to have this same sort of contingent status. Now, this in itself does not demonstrate that it is utterly impossible for mathematical entities to have been caused—God might in some sense cause or sustain the existence of mathematical

entities—but at minimum it would seem quite unwarranted to suppose that mathematical entities must have a cause.

In a similar way, it may or may not be logically coherent to ask whether something could have caused God. Whether or not such a question is logically coherent depends on how the concept of God gets defined. But at minimum it would be unwarranted to assume that God must have a cause. Given that God is infinite and has the character described above, there is good reason for suspecting that the principle “everything has a cause” ought not to be applied to God.

Does this mean that the first-cause argument is a compelling argument? Not necessarily. Yet, its weakness does not lie in the sort of fallacy that Russell says it commits. The question “What caused God?” may or may not be intelligible, but there is good reason for suspecting that someone who takes this as a serious objection to the first-cause argument, either does not comprehend the concept of God or is not taking the concept seriously when the question is asked.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Freedom of Speech


Posted by Pamela Urfer

I was an undergrad at Berkeley at the time of the Free Speech Movement (1964 - 65.) This Free Speech was not about shouting four-letter words from the steps of Sproul Hall, as most people think. This was about the freedom to say “I am, or was, a member of the Communist Party,” and not lose your job.

One result of the Joe McCarthy witch hunts during the 50s was a clause in the California constitution that required all state employees, which included all UC system employees - from students who worked in the cafeteria, as I did, to the more exalted faculty and staff - to sign a “loyalty oath” to the United States of America. Those who wouldn’t sign, couldn’t get hired, and those who did but lied about their political affiliations, were guilty of a felony if they were found out. And there were many people busily trying to find out which of the profs at Berkeley were secretly “pink.”

We don’t usually think of the right to proclaim “I am a Communist” as the true meaning of free speech, but that’s pretty much what it boils down to. Professors get tenure just so that they can’t be fired if it turns out they have a political affiliation not currently in favor with the administration.

Or a religious affiliation.

These days, being a communist is a plus on the resume of anyone applying for a teaching job at a UC campus. But what about being a Christian? At the UCSC campus, with a faculty of 1500, there are perhaps ten self-defined Christian faculty. Or, rather, ten who are willing to let their affiliation be known. If there are others, and it’s hard to believe there aren’t more than ten out of fifteen hundred, they are keeping a very low profile. Very low.

And why is that? Why are they reluctant to let their religious affiliation be known?

Because they might get fired.

And why would they get fired?

Perhaps because they hold views that other faculty and staff find problematic: that not everything can be explained by science; that the universe is not a closed system; hat transcendence is real.

Even if I were not a Christian myself, this kind of small-mindedness would bother me. There was a time when Jews were not allowed (often by Christians) into the Academy. I hope that if I had been in a position of authority then, I would not have tolerated that prejudice. If American-Indians were being denied jobs (by Christians) because of their beliefs, I would not look the other way. Just as I did during my involvement in the Civil Rights Movement (I was pretty busy in the 60s,) I would have protested such bigoted restrictions.

Perhaps this new prejudice is some kind of perverse pay-back, giving Christians a “taste of their own medicine.” That’s also very small-minded, but I suspect it’s not the Jews and American-Indians who are setting these standards. Those same someones who won’t hire Christians, also won’t allow those already in the faculty teach any subject that hinges on Christian belief, so that First Century history and philosophy courses can only be led by atheists - just as Spanish is always taught by musicians and geology by literature professors.

The mantra these days is that the university is supposed to be about diversity - we value those with ideas that are not ours, so that we can learn something new. But here’s the question: Do those with Christian viewpoints have nothing to teach us? Or are we afraid of what they might say? Can those Christians at UCSC who are still in the closet come out at last and say with pride, and with no fear of losing their lab funding, “I am a Christian?”

What sort of message does this situation send students? “We value diversity, as long as we approve of it. If you’re already a Christian, you had better change your mind if you want a job in academia. And if you aren’t, don’t even think about it! We have a quota at this campus, and it’s 1:150.”

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Envy


Posted by Pamela Urfer

When we first started looking for speakers for our series on “The Seven Deadly Sins,” I had no idea that the one topic no one wanted to cover was Envy. Not any more so than the others, anyway. But I’ve learned something. No one wants to admit they have been envious. No one wants to talk about it. Apparently, envy is not sexy.

Anger is readily admittable. It makes one look strong, if impetuous. And it’s easy to apologize for. “I lost my temper. I won’t do it again.” How often have we heard those words? Lust is almost admirable. What a Dude! we think. Even Greed is Good, according to Gordon Gecko and certain Wall Street types recently in t he news. But envy? Not so much.

Envy makes one look weak. Needy. We want other people to envy us. We already have a good life; why should we need more? We send out long Christmas letters full of our achievements and those of our families, so that people will see how well we’ve done. The sad truth is, we do envy others. But because it’s so shameful, we call it something else.

Let me tell you a story. Please forgive me for using stereotypes here, but a lot of envy and dissatisfaction in our lives is based on what others have done. It makes it easier to complain if we see them as groups, classes or races, rather than individuals. It’s in stereotypes we think, so that’s how I’ll tell my story.

Once upon a time, there was a WASPy young man (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, for those who don’t recognize this.) He came from a wealthy family, with all the right connections. He want to the best prep schools, where his father and grandfather had gone, and when it came time, there was a slot at Harvard waiting for him, just as there had been for his father and grandfather. We’ll call this young man Legacy Guy.

Everyone was envious of Legacy. He had what everyone wanted and they wished there were some way they could take it away from him and make it their own. And it seemed he hardly appreciated what he had, which made it all the worse. He appreciated it so little that late in his freshman year he got caught up in a frat house rape scandal and was expelled.

His slot was given to a bright young Asian woman who we’ll call Straight “A” Girl. Her parents were immigrants and had scrimped and saved, both working two jobs to put her through school. Fortunately, she had gotten a scholarship, but that meant she had to maintain her high grade point average. She often wished she could have had Legacy’s advantages, especially the money that made life so easy for him. She couldn’t understand why he threw it all away so easily. Of course, she didn’t know about his family problems, the father who was never there, the alcoholic mother. She wouldn’t have envied him those. Her parents were supportive, maybe too much so. But her time at Harvard didn’t last very long. In the middle of her junior year, she had a nervous breakdown.

The next person to take that slot at Harvard was a Black kid from a small town. His family had no money, no connections. He didn’t even have much of a family. His parents were gone, and he had been raised by his grandfather. His grades were terrible, reflecting the state of his schools. But he was a documentary filmmaker, and his senior project had blown away the admission board. We’ll call him Creative Genius.

Of course Creative Genius envied Legacy’s money and Straight “A” Girl’s supportive family. He thought they had an easy ride in life. And Legacy and Straight “A” envied him. After all, he was in Harvard and they weren’t. In their minds, he had cheated to get there, not having had either the grades or the background to make it on his own. They thought he should have gone to an art school with a major in filmmaking and left Harvard to the real scholars.

So, with everyone envying someone else, you can imagine what their attitudes were towards the next affirmative action vote to come up in their state. Or tax cuts for Legacy’s father, whom everyone agreed was too rich already. Or for letting more immigrants into this country when there weren’t enough slots at Harvard for the native-born. Their envy, and the voting pattern it created, made a big difference in their lives and in the future of their country. Multiplied by 30 million, you can imagine the damage that could create.

Some of you may say that this is a case of social injustice. But it seems to me that justice was fairly well satisfied here. There’s a difference between injustice and envy. Injustice, or justice, is what happens - and envy is how we feel about it. If we are envious of another individual or another group, we may even welcome injustice.

If we are envious, we begin to wish other people ill, to hope they fail, to suffer as we have suffered, or even drop dead – so that we can take their place. It causes us to distrust other people, to wonder what they are plotting against us. We begin to talk against a certain group, to demonize them. Believe me, I know how that works. In my spare time, I’m a writer and filmmaker. I’m extremely jealous of other writers that get better publishing contract or sell more books. I’d like to see them all drop dead.

Earlier I said that to make our envy less shameful, we call it by another name. That name is Rights. Now, don’t get me wrong. The struggle for Rights – civil rights, women’s rights, minority rights – has been a wonderful thing. There has been a lot of injustice in our country and the struggle for legitimate rights have helped many. But there’s a dark side to rights.

If we can convince ourselves, and others, that we have a right to a slot at Harvard, then we will do every thing we can to make sure we and not some other person gets it. If someone else does get it, rather than feeling sad, we can bolster our indignation by protesting their good fortune with a clear conscience. If we can convince ourselves we’re not just trying to get something for ourselves, but that instead we’re fighting injustice, or working toward a more equal society, there’s no limit to how outraged we can be at those who have done better than us.

But the more of this that happens in our country, the more the fabric of society is stretched thin. The political culture becomes adversarial, us against them. And it feels good. As long as it’s someone else’s fault, it’s not our own failings we’re dealing with.

Blame offers a simple narrative of how problems and tragedies arise, and a beguilingly simple solution – a fairy-tale solution. The fairy-tale is that the world can be fair, according to our ideas of fairness, as long as other people don’t get in our way. We think that we should always get what we deserve and if we just yell loud enough, it will happen. But there’s no way the world can be arranged that way. Sometimes these things depend on chance. Sometimes it’s a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

People with better qualification will still lose jobs and university slots to people with worse qualifications. The resentment of those who lose out probably won’t be mollified by the fact that the beneficiaries of the policy might be more needy than they. If we are offended every time we don’t get what we want, and we let that sense of entitlement grow, our focus can slip from injustice to demands, and we will find ourselves unable to reach beyond our bitterness.

Our competitive society places a high premium on academic achievement. Getting ahead, making our place in the world. We think that getting into Harvard will make us happy, wealthy and wise for the rest of our days. It won’t. If it could, there would be no suicides at Harvard.

There’s a reason the Seven Sins we’re dealing with this year are called “Deadly.” Unrestrained, they can do some serious damage to our spirits - twisting, corroding, debilitating them. I think we all know that. I believe I can say about God, at least the God I know, is that he wants better for us. He wants us to get along with others, to treat them as we would want to be treated, to give them the benefit of the doubt. God’s values are different from ours. God doesn’t consider intelligence or achievement virtues. For God, kindness, respect, and love are the most important traits.

Something I find especially comforting about God is that he knows the way my life is going to turn out. Because of that, I can trust him when he suggests that there may be a better way for me to live. Haven’t you ever found that losing something – a boyfriend, a job, a school slot – turned out to be the best thing that ever happened? We can never know our lives in advance, or even what makes us happy. But God can.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Should God's Name Be Heard On Campus?


Posted by Pamela Urfer

“Certainly not!” say a loud number of voices. “Religion is an embodiment of irrationality and a threat to liberal values. Religious people are crazy. They’d as soon bomb you or shoot you as look at you. It’s too much trouble! Best leave it alone.”

And didn’t your mother tell you the same thing? “Don’t talk about religion, politics, or sex,” she cautioned, “and you’ll get alone with everyone.” The post–Enlightenment modern university agrees with your mother, but for other reasons.

The most well-known are:

1. Acknowledgement of religion violates our post-Enlightenment principles.

2. There is no God, so therefore religion is basically self-deception and superstition.

3. Religion has perpetrated too many atrocities and must be acknowledged as the root of most social unrest in the world.

4. There may be a god (or many) but vulnerable college students should not be pressured into joining any organized church by purveyors of those beliefs so that they can use their time on campus to study, learn a trade and/or find themselves (in a secular sense only.)

5. Even classes in history of religion must be taught by non-believers as anyone who is actually a member of those religions can hardly be considered neutral in their beliefs and will use class time to proselytize.

Recognize those? Let’s see if we can’t (easily) rebut them.

1. There was much wisdom, as well as much craziness, in the 18th century struggle against dogma and hierarchy. But now, with the Enlightenment’s own dogma and hierarchy firmly in power, we might want to reexamine what we consider oppressive.

2. The non-existence of God has never been proven. It is a minority opinion held by a small (but influential) number of Northern Europeans/Americans.

3. Yes, this is true. And much good has come from religion as well – the anti-slavery movement in Britain and America, Child Labor laws, the Civil Rights movement and even William Wilberforce’s pet project, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As evangelical lefty Jim Wallis says, “The answer to bad religion isn’t secularism. The answer is better religion.”

4. Protecting college students can only go so far. Outlawing alcohol and drugs has been only partly successful. Forcing students off-campus for their stimulants is not the same as a cure. Religion, if outlawed, can also create a backlash. Nothing is more attractive than the forbidden.

5. What exactly are we afraid of here? Are physicists not allowed to teach physics in case their natural enthusiasm for the subject seduces students away from their chemistry major? Must native Italian speakers teach Swedish instead, so as to keep language learning on neutral ground? Teachers of the same religions they practice can only be made into bogymen if adopting a religion is considered a fate worse than death. (see #4 above.)

There is one more point forbidders of religion often miss – many students arrive on campus as members of a religion. According to the 2006 CIRP survey, at UCSC 48.9% of incoming students self-identify as practitioners of a religion. 52.1% will have attended a religious service and 33.8% carried on a discussion of religion in the past year.

Roman Catholics at 17.5% are, by far, the largest self-identified group. These students, raised in a close family environment with religion a basic aspect of their identity, are being asked by the paternalistic university to renounce their heritage “for their own good” and the better development of their ‘identity.’ Teaching such students that God doesn’t exist, that they don’t really need him and are far better off without him, is to do them some sort of damage. And it is a step beyond the true parameters of a noble university.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

List of UIC Members



Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Postmodernist and Belief


Posted by Pamela Urfer

My niece, Sam, is a Post-modernist. Raised half a Catholic and half a Jew, she sees no problem in following two religions at once (she hasn’t done a lot of theological study) and will probably add Buddhism in there, just to round things out. Still, she likes Jesus and thinks he’s cool. She’s not too concerned that she will ever find Truth, Eternal Truth, or True Truth, an important quest for a Modernist, because she figures that when she sees whatever is true, she will know it. It will speak to her. It will work on her life.

She’s also not too worried that modern science will tell her that some of the things she believes in – God, miracles, demons, magick, curses - can’t possibly exist. She doesn’t think science has all the answers, especially regarding human behaviour. After all, science has messed up as many things as it has fixed, so how does it deserve our trust?

Modernism was a product of the Enlightenment. Rejecting the authority of the Bible (and other holy books,) Modernism looks for answers in tangible facts and experimentation. It holds to a single, correct, universal worldview, one that everyone would adopt if they were only sufficiently well educated and put their minds to it logically. This is perfect if science is what we’re working on, but it doesn’t work to well for other issues.

For all its advances and conveniences, modernity has proved an inhospitable environment for the spiritual life of human beings in both its liberal and conservative expressions. Too many religious people have become imbued with modernist ideas, especially in the West. This is the error that led to so many abuses in the mission field as Westerners tried to educate the rest of the world in their culture and customs as Absolute Truths.

What they didn’t see, and what most haven’t seen until recently, is that there is no one “right” way to do everything, even though we all think our way is the right way. But we are blinded by preconceptions or presuppositions that we barely recognize, so much are they part of our culture. As Nietzsche, the first postmodernist, said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

Each of us interprets the world from our own, unique position. If we can recognize that, we will refrain from imposing that view on others and instead present it as a contribution to the common good. As Dan Kimball says in The Emerging Church, postmoderns will be spiritual but not religious, view spirituality from a pluralistic viewpoint, be drawn more to the mystical and experiential over the rational, and have a view of sexuality that is more open and tolerant that that of the modernist. I’d like to add, from my own experience, that young postmoderns have a burning heart for the disadvantaged, the oppressed and the marginalized. They yearn to repair the world (tikkun olam.)

Postmodernism has opened up a lot of windows, and put forth many possibilities, that had been closed in the Modernist era, much of it to the benefit of faith.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Modernist and Belief


Posted By Pamela Urfer

My father-in-law is an agnostic, a wishy-washy position, in my opinion. Even atheism is better than such vague confusion. “Make up your mind!” I say to him. “Is there a God or not?”  Yet he always demurs. “Really, there’s no way to know.”

His refusal to commit used to frustrate me, but now I see he’s simply being true to his beliefs – or lack thereof. If he is a naturalist, or a materialist - which he must be, as he’s certainly not a theist - he would naturally harbor a profound lack of confidence in the capacity of his mind to discover truth.

Naturalism is the idea that there is nothing ‘super’natural about the world, that all is ‘natural,’ that humans are just bodies, or some part of our bodies, such as our nervous systems or our brains. But by ‘brains’ we really mean our neurophysiology, certainly not our ‘mind,’ as mind again comes down to ‘beliefs’ (hopes, thoughts, dreams.)

Beliefs are, for naturalists, caused or determined by our neurophysiology, by electrical signals proceeding through the nerves from the sense organs to the brain. In response to these signals, certain muscles contract, thus causing movement and behavior. If we do harbor some impulse which we might think of as a ‘belief,’ we’re simply being deluded, as it’s more likely simply an adaptive behavior useful for ensuring the survival of our species.

Some might say that the healthy state of our species implies that we can trust the validity of those behaviors we call ‘beliefs,’ as they have proved useful to us in the past. But as philosopher Alvin Plantinga points out, “natural selection doesn’t care about the truth or falsehood of your beliefs; it cares only about adaptive behavior.” Your beliefs may all be false. As long as your behavior is adaptive, you will survive and reproduce.

He uses the example of a frog sitting on a lily pad. A fly passes by; the frog flicks out its tongue to capture it. Perhaps the neurophysiology that causes it to do so also controls the ‘beliefs’ the frog has about this action. He may believe “those little black things are good to eat.” Or, he may believe “if I catch the right one, I’ll turn into a prince.” As far as his tummy cares, it doesn’t matter if his beliefs are true or false.

 If naturalism is true, then the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is very low. Certainly it would be difficult to state that rationally. So my father-in-law has a point. There is no way of knowing.

As a naturalist, he must conclude that beliefs cannot be trusted nor have any connection with reality. There are many other things he cannot know: whether the mushrooms he is eating are poisonous, whether the Post Office has delivered his letters, whether his wife loves him. Thus skepticism becomes a way of life.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

What's the Point of an Interfaith Council?


Posted by: Pamela Urfer

That’s a question I get asked all the time.

The speaker usually goes on to say, “What good does it do us (fill in the name of your faith group) to associate with Catholics, Jews, American Indians, Evangelicals or Buddhists?” Some even add, “The disgusting, heretical (any name here) are all of the devil anyway! Why do you bother?”

To this, my reply is - “Collective Bargaining!” Yes, it’s true. That’s our main purpose in life.

The best way for any of us on the council to deal with the university is collectively. It would be easy for the U. to dismiss any one of us as nobodies and nuisances. But together we have POWER!

Look at the room reservation situation. Before the U. gave us a way of renting rooms legitimately, we had to slink around outside the SOAR offices trying communicate with students inside through mental telepathy, bribe them into taking onerous classes in bank accounting, and lie through our teeth. Now we are free, out of the closet, and orphans no more! Thank you, Dean Sifuentes!

Strangely, that doesn’t seem to impress my interlocutors. “Who cares about room rentals? These people (fill in name),” they say, “are disgusting! They believe in (demons, no demons, God, no God, sinning.) They have (oppressed us, resisted our oppression, told us off, seduced our children, violated our holy sites.) Therefore, we need to (kill them, expel them, ride them out of town on a rail, take them off our mailing lists.)”

Well, let’s all just calm down a minute! I know some of these horrible people and they’re not so bad.

“That proves it! They’ve seduced you!”

OK. So much for calming down.

Fortunately, not everyone feels this way. As president, I’m operating on the assumption that all members of the UIC are acting in good faith, trying to follow the Supreme Being’s direction as best they can. I’m applying the Buddhist concept of “critical tolerance,” where other people are given the benefit of the doubt. If the Supreme Being doesn’t like what they’re doing, it’s his/her job to tell them so. Right? Not mine. (Wouldn’t do much good, anyway.)

Very few of us believe all religions are fundamentally the same, or lead to the same end. We’re all firmly rooted in our own religious traditions, not agitating for the triumph of the One World Religion or for reducing faith to its lowest common denominator. I’m sure each of us believes that our own religion is the best for pleasing the Supreme Being. Why else would we bother to hold those beliefs?

Nor do we need to prove to each other (or to ourselves) which religion is rightest or wrongest, not for collective bargaining purposes, anyway. The truth is that that sort of attitude doesn’t get anyone closer to God. And that’s what we’re all after, isn’t it? (Remember, we’re the UIC.)

And having another warm body to help us schlepp our tri-fold to the Orientations plaza? Priceless!