A little too close to home?

Well, it seems my last post was a little bit too close to home for at least one person...but I have to wonder why s/he didn't bother to post a name or URL and chose, instead to call herself Anonymous. I always wonder about people who post anonymously when the option to leave a name is available...why don't they want their identity associated with what they have said? I find myself unable to take someone entirely seriously if they are ashamed or afraid to stand up for what they have written by putting their name to it.

So my anonymous correspondent takes me to task: Ouch! While I agree that some Christians fall way short of the ideal pattern set out for them by Jesus, I think you're being a little harsh here, we are not all bad! Surely, there have to be some good ones out there? For you to generalize makes you just as bad as the very people you are criticizing!

And I replied: Missed the point, didja?Go back and re-read. Everything posted in pink in this post (and yellow in the previous post) are direct quotes from self-identified Christians. Every one...and their screen names and a link to where those posts are originated is also provided.You may not mind being lumped into the same basket as delusional people who think they are hearing from Richard Nixon in heaven, who believe the Flintstones are historically correct, who think educating women is emasculating and who think torturing children is OK, but I don't want to be associated with these people.Tell me, would you kill YOUR child if s/he professed to be an athiest? There is a quote here from a woman who says she would!Do yourself a favour and go to www.fstdt.com and read the entries every day for a month. Just ONE month. Then get back to me.

What I did not do is to ask this person where I generalized. I made the statement that I do not want to be associated with these people, which is not a generalization but a statement of fact. What comes to mind when you hear the word "Christian"? For most of my life it meant kind, thoughtful, helpful people, people who loved their neighbours and did good works, who helped the poor. People like my grandparents who may not have gone to church often, but who donated to charity, participated in fund raisers for poor people, who behaved modestly, respected others, and were kind, loving people. But today if you say "Christian" to me, what comes to mind are the people we used to call "religious fanatics," nutcases who believed all kinds of fantastical...and impossible...things and who are determined to cram it down the throats of everyone they come across.

Their beliefs are ludicrous, their methods horrific: rape (FLDS), starvation (the family whose 14 year old son died of starvation while they had more than $3000 in the bank..."tithe money" they refused to use to feed their kids), depriving a dying woman of oxygen so they can harangue her one more time with their demands that she accept their religious beliefs (see previous blog), beating children until they submit (see yesterday's blog), willing to murder their own children rather than see them become atheists (previous blog)...the list of monstrous behaviours these people are willing to commit is beyond belief. Treason is a given, as they advocate violation of the Constitution in the pursuit of their ends: conversion of the US into a theocracy.

Generalization? No. By their own words they condemn themselves and when you say "Christian" to me, these are the people who now come to my mind. And given the visibility of the Religious Right, I'm willing to bet that most people, when they hear the word "Christian," these shameful people are what come to mind, not the kind, respectful, loving, helpful people who wore the name in the past.

Go ahead, I dare you...go to www.fstdt.com and read it for a month. Just click the link and then bookmark it. Read EVERY post they put up. Go back to the sources they cite and read the websites these quotes come from. Do it every day for a month and you will have a picture of just how pervasive...and lunatic...fundamentalist Christianity really is.

Then come back in a month and tell me you don't find these people and their beliefs scary...especially the belief that they are mandated by their god to force the rest of us to accept their belief or suffer horrific punishment (and not just in the afterlife...some of these people advocate capital punishment...including burning at the stake for heresy!).

These aren't your grandmother's gentle Christians, these are a whole new and dangerous breed who believe that the word "freedom" applies only to those who believe as they do. Be afraid, be very afraid!

Jesus wept...

…when he saw what His followers had ultimately become…

Are Atheists Blind? I have tried to debate with atheist on this forum, and I don't know if its me or not, but I find them very unreasonable. They do not seem willing to consider even for a moment that God may be real. They seem to have an attitude of arrogance about them. And I wonder, could some of them be evil, because sometimes they give me the shivers. And then there are those that get me a tiny bit angry. Then I want to smite them.... which of course is wrong... I should turn the other cheek. I'm beginning to think that some of the atheists that come looking for debate maybe under the influence of Satan. Are these people blind to God's truth? because when it is put right under their noses, they just don't see it. Gary51, ChristianForums
What part of “I don’t believe in supernatural puppet masters in the sky” does this person not understand? If a person were to say “I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy” would he consider them unreasonable because they were not willing to consider even for a moment that the Tooth Fairy might be real? And can this person not see that he commits the same offence…unwillingness to consider that the other person’s view may have some validity…for which he castigates the atheist? Most alarming, however, is this person’s easy assumption that, because these people refuse to get onto his bandwagon, they are therefore evil. People who don’t agree with him give him the shivers and are under the influence of Satan. Coupled with his desire to “smite” these people, Gary51 becomes a scary guy. What happened to “love thy neighbour as thyself”?

This is a mother speaking:
As a devoted Southern Baptist, and more importantly, as a disciple of Christ, I would rather kill my own child (as Abraham was willing to do) than see him convert to either Islam or Atheism. Fisher, Yahoo Answers
Here is an example of atheism being capitalized as if it were a proper noun and the name of a religion. One does not convert to atheism, for there is nothing to which to convert. Oh…you are horrified at the easy pronouncement of a mother that she would kill her own child if said child were to take on a belief system she found repugnant? After reading hundreds of posts by these people, I’m not even surprised. They are the very evil they so fear.

My unsaved daughter died last year. I know she was unsaved because we tried to convert her when she was dying. My husband removed her oxygen mask hoping she would make a public confession of Christ, but she died cursing us. I often [think] about the flames as the lap up against her face for eternity and how painful that must be. I hope when we get to heaven, we won't hear the screams from hell. Do you think about the same with your children? adrianna.scruggs, Yahoo Answers
Yah…remove my oxygen mask as I lay dying and demand I convert to your belief system and I’ll curse you too. Gee, do you think depriving her of her oxygen might have hastened her death? What kind of selfish, self-serving monsters are you, to take the breath right from the lungs of a dying person in order to further your own agenda? Might it not have been more appropriate to simply say “no matter what, we love you” and let the girl have her few last breaths in peace?

If dinosaurs "evolved" into birds then how come on the Flinstones there were BOTH dinos AND birds? Darwin Was Wrong, Yahoo! Answers
Can anyone really be so stupid as to believe the Flintstones are an animated expression of historical reality? Well, I’ve read people objecting to Scooby-Doo because it “glorifies witchcraft” and deals with the supernatural. How ironic, considering that the very people objecting are those who want to cram their own supernatural beliefs down the throats of everyone else on this planet.

Why believe in something you can't prove at all, and which actually flys in the face of the bible? I would have thought that science involved more than belief, in this area, however, it doesn't. We must consider that God really seems to have created it, and that your so called science is religious balderdash!!! dad, christianforums.com
Does this person even read what he is writing? “Why believe in something you can’t prove at all...” Erm, exactly. Interestingly, “Dad” seems to overlook the salient fact that there is no proof of God (the Bible doesn’t count as that would be using circular logic), yet science proves itself over and over again through repeated experiments that give the same result.

The church is drastically affected by the bastard which is a child conceived out of wedlock. The bastards have great difficulty in going to church and participating in the church services. Those who have sexual demons may act religious in church to cover their guilt about their sexual sins. Gene Moody, Demonbuster
This illustrates two of my primary objections to modern Christianity: hypocrisy and the notion that it is ok to condemn one person for the “sins” of another. What do you want to bet the Gene Moody is rabidly anti-abortion, even in the case of aborting “bastards”?

If something is not in the bible, it is never 100 percent true. Not even 2+2=4. PharasiticalLaws, Five Pharasitical Laws
Oh, really? Well, I have given birth to three children. It’s not in the Bible. Does that make my kids figments of my imagination?

I just read that women obtained 61% of the masters degrees in 2007. Does anyone think this is a sign of the end days? I do. I think it is a sign of love growing cold because these women are choosing not to get married or need a man or have children. I think it is funny how they talk about this in the media as though it were perfectly alright. Jsmythe, RaptureReady
Maybe it’s just a sign of women, in a country where more than half of the marriages end in divorce (leaving women to look after children without fathers and, in many cases, child support) have decided to be able to take care of themselves and any children they might have? Maybe it’s a sign that women are coming to the point of understanding that if they are capable of looking after themselves economically, they have more secure futures. And what is not “perfectly alright” about a woman being able to take care of herself and her kids?

A good looking woman has a lot of advantages that an average looking women does not have. So looks alone would increase her odds for survival. If evolution were true, I would expect the less attractive one’s to die off in favor of the attractive ones just like the change in structure of Darwin’s finches. But what do we see in every day life? Most people have just average looks. SavedToo, FaithCommunityNetwork [
Evolution doesn’t work that way. For one thing, as long as the less attractive ones procreate, their genes are kept alive and they can’t die off. For another, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And finally, if everybody was “beautiful,” then “beautiful” would be, by definition, average.

Is it true that the Catholics claim the pope is inflammable? Alex V Z, Yahoo Answers
How can anyone seriously believe this? Wouldn’t a person possessing even the most rudimentary critical thinking skills instantly grasp that they must have misheard that last word? And, given that these people are adamant that their bible (usually KJV) is infallible, they are well familiar with the word. I have a great deal of difficulty wrapping my mind around the existence of this kind of credulity.

Richard Nixon, the US President sent hundreds of thousands of his people to their deaths in Vietnam, and for that you'd expect that he'd go to Hell. Well you're wrong. Through prophecy we have received a message from him in Heaven, and the only reason he got there was because as a very young child, he accepted Jesus and believed in Him. dancingdog777, Yahoo! Answers
Like many Fundies, this person is factually challenged. Hundreds of thousands of Americans did not die in the Vietnam War, and of those who did die, Nixon was responsible for only a portion, Lyndon Johnson having sent at least as many as Nixon. Second, there is no evidence that Nixon “accepted Jesus” at any point in his lifetime, particularly as a young child when his Quaker parents were in control of his religious influences. There is no way to tell if this person is merely uninformed or making that information up, but the subsequent claim would seem to indicate the latter: “Through prophecy we have received a message from him in Heaven…” Ok, prophecy means to foretell the future…how do you receive a contemporaneous message in a prophecy? Just one more example of what has come to be known as “Lying for Jesus.”

I'm sick & tired of all these secularists complaining that McCain's pastor, Rev. John Hagee, calls Catholics "Nazis." So what? Obama's pastor questioned America!! No thanks! I'll take McCain's hate-speech over critical dialog ANYday!! ConcernedMother, Eyeblast.tv
Hate speech is preferable to critical dialog…’nuff said.

Anyone with intelligence will NOT vote for this man because of these facts and more. The super delegates are backing him only to obtain black votes for their needs! Clinton carries baggage, but this Devil carries "the end of America" and that is what he calls "change". He is a Muslim wrapped in a cloak of "BLACK CHRISTIANITY" He is NOT an American, he is NOT a patriot; he is a liar and a fake with the wrong people behind him. WAKE UP AMERICAN VOTERS. Nonna, Eyeblast.tv
Can we say R-A-C-I-S-T? And, as usual, factually challenged. Obama is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, and he most assuredly is an American, his mother being a natural-born citizen. His father, who was never involved in his life, was Muslim at one time. This, to me, is a prime example of what Fundies mean by the phrase “sins of the fathers visited upon the children.” I find it immensely interesting that the so-called Christians, those who purportedly embrace the teachings of Christ (“love thy neighbour as thyself” and “turn the other cheek”) are the very ones who are attempting to smear this man through lies and innuendo.

Mean-spirited, pridefully ignorant, willing to condemn and kill others…even their own children…at the drop of a pitchfork—is this the legacy Christ meant to leave for the world?

I can no longer call myself a Christian for I shudder at the thought of being associated with people like these, people who would rather kill than think, condemn than love. Their very zealotry drives me off. People who openly justify lying and deceiving to draw others into their web, people who reject logic and reality if it conflicts with what they want to believe. People who condemn to eternal damnation the innocent alongside the guilty and who beat, starve, rape and mentally abuse children in the name of their faith.

If you wonder how atheists are created, go to www.fstdt.com and read it daily for a month or so. But be prepared to read some truly despicable stuff done in the name of the Christian god.

Even more Fundie "fun"

I worry about America. I used to think that referring to a person as a “good Christian” was a compliment and testament to their good character, but I’ve since had reason to change my mind. Read some of the comments actually made by “good Christians” and see what you think.

The reason why I threw out logic is because people think it is the bastion of secularism when in reality it is a religious belief unto itself. Mailpouch, World of Warcraft Off-Topic Discussion
Since when is logic a religious belief? I have seen these people insist that evolution is a religion, but logic???

The biblical worldview makes sense of science; secular worldviews do not. Jason Lisle, Answers in Genesis
Remember, the Bible says that insects have four legs, bats are birds, and rabbits chew cud; the secular view says insects have six legs, bats are mammals, and cud-chewing animals have multiple stomachs while rabbits have only one. You decide.

In response to the cloud rat being "rediscovered" after not being seen for 112 years:
well all this shows is how scientists jump to conclusions....the weather may be a tad warmer for a couple years and its global warming they say....now they find animals they thought were extinct or almost extinct...how come scientists arent claiming that God is recreating these animals. ricsow2, AOL News Comment Board
Occam’s Razor says the most likely scenario is the simplest. That would mean that we simply haven’t seen the creature for 112 years, magical recreation being significantly less likely.

Stop assuming that the bible is not on the same level as scientific explanations. Ininja2000, GameFAQs
And we should assume a book written thousands of years ago by Bronze Age goatherds is on the same level as modern science because…? Science and religion are two very different things…as well they should be. Would you want a surgeon, whose training was entirely biblical in nature, do your bypass surgery? I have always believed that both had a place in our culture and society, but more and more I’m coming to rethink the religion aspect since it seems to make people stupid, selfish, and mean-spirited rather than inquiring, generous and compassionate, qualities necessary for a civilization to survive and advance.

I am learning, im learning that you tell me thats proof, but I still don't see it. showing me pics with evidence like swiss cheese isn't going to convince me. For example, I can give you a pic of a rabbit and a cat, thoses two breed together you get a cabbit, thats not evolution. and yes there are cabbits, look it up. Thats not evolution. It the same difference. dean1003, Christian Forums
I would like to tell you this is a joke, but sadly, it is not. This is what comes from allowing people who dropped out of high school to home school their own children. If this person…or his parents…had ever taken a 10th grade biology class they would know that wholly unrelated species…like cats and rabbits…cannot breed together. You can create hybrids from related species (horse+donkey=mule) but invariably such offspring are sterile and cannot reproduce themselves, Photoshopped pictures (or taxidermist’s little jokes like the Jackelope) notwithstanding.

[Does evolution stipulate any political attitudes?]
Um...can you stop using fancy phrases and talk plainly? What exactly do you mean by this?...If you mean, "Does belief in the Theory of Evolution affect the way a country is run or what Laws are (or are not) introduced?" then yeah, in my opinion it does. Racism for example used to be a HUGE problem back when people believed that Black folk were not as highly evolved from the monkey as White folk, and were in fact, sub-human. This all ties in with the Slave Trade as well. In the 1800s the Australian Aboriginies were highly persecuted, chased, shot, and displayed in museums, as sub-human "missing links". Presumeably this was all perfectly legal, because the Theory of Evolution dictated that these people were not really human, and therefore did not have human rights. The problem of racism also falls under the last question about moral consequences. Many other laws have also been passed that greatly oppose Christian and other moral teaching, and I believe that these can be linked with the general embracing attitude towards the Theory of Evolution. Kat, Myspace
Argument from Ignorance coupled with temporo-centrism. First of all, slavery and the slave trade itself predate the Theory of Evolution by centuries. People from the Indies who were then called “Malays” were enslaved by the Dutch and brought to Southern Africa in the 1600s; black slaves were bought and sold and considered less human than white people at the time of the writing of the American Constitution in the late 18th century: Darwin and his theories did not exist until the mid-nineteenth century. Slavery was an accepted institution in the time of Christ and Christ himself did not repudiate it. The idea of racism as a bad thing is a late 20th century concept: even the abolitionists of the Civil War era did not think racism was bad, only enslavement of humans of any race. Christianity had nothing to do with the abolition of slavery or the demonization of racism: both were secular and political in nature and the Christians of the Deep South embraced both without compunction. And while slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago, racism was alive and well in America…and openly and blatantly practiced by even the most devout Christians in the South…for more than 100 years after Abolition.

On Creationism in school:This should be an option in school. Darwinism is a religeon too. I am sorry but in the words of South Park....I am not derived from a retarded fish having but sex with a monkey creating me...a butt sex retard baby...I did not spawn from primortial soup or a monkey.....keep it up Florida... All of you science based individuals are the ones who are closed minded.. Duh, Topix
For starters, “Darwinism,” or more correctly, evolution, is not a religion but a scientific theory. Creationism, on the other hand, is a religious (Fundamentalist Christian) explanation for how the world and its contents came to be. Public school are funded by tax dollars paid by people who are not Fundamentalist Christians, people who are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, Wiccan. The taxes that support public schools are also paid by Christians who do not believe in Creationism or its oxymoronic equivalent, Intelligent Design. Since the Constitution forbids the government from establishing a religion, the government cannot support one religion’s creed over that of another: it must treat them all equally. Americans are notoriously stingy when it comes to approving tax increases for the benefit of their local schools so it is unlikely that, given a choice between funding the teaching of a hundred or more creation myths (government has to treat all religions equally, remember) or teaching a single secular scientific theory (and leaving the individual creation myths to the individual religions and their adherents), it’s no surprise that nobody has voted a bond issue to pay for the teaching of a plethora of creation stories in their school district.

As an aside, Duh (how apropos the name, denoting both stupidity and wilful ignorance) is apparently another victim of home or Christian schooling, exhibiting a shocking ignorance not only of evolution but of biology as well. Evolution theory addresses how the species evolve and differentiate, slowly over long spans of time; it does not address how life originated, only how life adapts to its changing environment. Duh could not have made a more pathetic example of prideful ignorance had he intended to do so.

[Faith can alter reality? If I have enough faith in something, faith makes it true??]
Yes Inan3, Christian Forums
What do you say to something this bone-deep ignorant? If you have enough faith, you can get the sun to rise in the west and set in the east? With enough faith you can raise your dead grandmother from her grave and find her baking cookies in your kitchen when you get home tomorrow? With sufficient faith you can bring back the dinosaurs or even Thomas Jefferson to set you straight on what the Founding Fathers really meant by the government not establishing a religion. Why, with enough faith you could even grow red roses in snow-covered fields, and get Brad Pitt to leave Angelina and fall madly in love with you and happily move into your double-wide behind the wrecking yard out on the edge of town.

Whatever is praised by men is an abomination to God (Luke 16:15). Apply this fully to the world: economics, science, self-confidence, power, sex, sports, business, celebrities, democracy, freedom, money, politics, success, peace, business... [yes, PEACE!] anonymous, Bible Issues-General Christian Principles
Well, if you ever wondered why the followers of Jesus were such a war-mongering bunch, here’s your answer: these people believe that peace, since it is praised by men, is an abomination to God. Of course, it can’t be that they are misapplying this admonition, can it? I mean, their book is infallible (even if the readers and their interpretations are not).

It appears that evolutionists don't how stars generate light because they laughed at me when I said that scientists claim that stars reflect light. So I though I'd illuminate them. (Forgive the pun). Carico, CARM
Um…stars generate light as they are big balls of burning gas; planets reflect light from stars, much as the moon reflects light fro m our sun (which is actually a star). How hard was that? And how can you get something so basic, so wrong? Maybe it really is time to outlaw home schooling and hold religious schools to a minimum state-mandated curriculum so that this kind of ignorance, which once was rare but now is frighteningly common, especially among the fundamentalists, disappears. No nation of superstition-bound technophobes can survive in the modern world and if this kind of stupidity continues to spread, American is doomed.

Could Satanist and Atheist be the same? This thread is not intended to offend anyone but to merely examine the common elements between the two subjects…I have examined different beliefs and I have found two that strike me as eerily similar and yet strikingly different. From my understanding so far, Atheist believe there is no life after death, god, heaven, hell or devil. Jackie, GATEWORLD Forum
For some unknown reason, many fundamentalist Christians simply cannot grasp the idea of someone being without a supernatural being to worship so, if you don’t worship a god, they apparently reason, then you must worship the devil. To her credit, Jackie actually seems to understand that atheists do not share the Christian mythology, but she is rare among Fundies, most of whom seem to think atheism (which they often capitalize) is actually a religion rather than the complete absence of religious belief.

almost 100% of murderers, rapists, and other are not religious. they either worship satin or no god at all *cough cough* ,athiests, but there are a select few christians out there doing it but most realize of what they are doing and dont do such an unnessicary thing. cartmn203, YouTube
This is an excellent example of Fundie “facts.” The truth is, more than 80% of those incarcerated in US prisons self-identify as some form of Christian. The other 20% are not necessarily atheists, either: there are lots of other religions besides Christianity. This is also an excellent example of what passes for education among fundamentalists: not only can this person not reason well, he can’t spell (satin, athiests, dont, unnessicary) and shows complete disregard for the most basic conventions of written English (punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, syntax). His recognition of the necessity for research and his dedication to telling the truth (the 9th Commandment, I believe) seem to be sub-optimal as well.

A lot of these people aren’t very nice, even to their kids:

[Response to a letter written about little kids who steal food from the pantry and won't admit to the thievery] Get a hidden camera that comes on when the beam is interrupted. They are used to photograph animals and can be purchased for less than $100.00. Install it secretly and wait for the lying thief to appear…First, get each one to sign a statement that they will not steal sweets. If one of them steals, wait for a week to see if the others will as well. Them come down on them with a charge of theft and be prepared to show your evidence. Three good spankings will be in order, plus one year with no sweets. Michael Pearl, No Greater Joy
Talk about overreacting! This person is scary! Treating six year olds like criminals, laying traps to catch your own kids…who, BTW, are between the ages of 6 and 11…rather than sitting down and finding out why they are taking the food? (I already know why nobody’s admitting anything…they are scared! And I suspect with good reason!)

Have you ever met a six year old who could make the connection between scribbling on a piece of paper and a promise not to sneak snacks when nobody’s looking? And if more than one child is sneaking into the pantry for snacks, my guess is that the kids are not being fed sufficiently. If it’s only one child, then I suspect the kid is doing some acting out behaviour (defiance or self-medicating with food) that could benefit from some gentle counselling. Maybe a lock on the pantry door would be helpful in making the point that nobody is supposed to go in the pantry without permission? But turning your house into a police state over a little pantry pilfering seems just a bit over the top to me.

More from the same guy:
It takes time and thoughtfulness for the child to come to repentance. I have told a child I was going to give him 10 licks. I count out loud as I go. After about three licks, leaving him in his position, I would stop and remind him what this is all about. I would continue slowly, still counting, stop again and tell him that I know it hurts and I wish I didn’t have to do it but that it is for his own good. Then I would continue slowly. Pretending to forget the count, I would again stop at about eight and ask him the number. Have him subtract eight from ten, (a little homeschooling) and continue with the final two licks. Then I would have him stand in front of me and ask him why he got the spanking. If his answer showed that he was rebellious and defiant, he would get several more licks. Again he would be questioned as to his offense. If he showed total submission, we put it all behind us, but if he were still rebellious, we would continue until he gave over his will. Only about three of our five children ever resisted after a spanking and refused to cooperate. Each of the three required only one experience of continued spankings until they surrendered. None of the three ever tried it a second time. In all cases, it was between the ages of two and four that they tried their moment of defiance. Michael Pearl, No Greater Joy Ministries
Slowly? Submission? “continued spankings until they surrendered”? Is it just me or does this sound like sadistic torture and child abuse to you, too? This person believes he is doing this in the name of his god. I can’t say I disagree with spanking a child, but this is just over the top.

Remember, these are the bright lights who tipped the scales and ushered George Bush into the Presidency, a man who named Ken Lay of Enron fame as a best friend, has wrecked the economy by unbalancing Clinton’s budget with the largest deficit in the nation’s history, repeatedly lied to the citizenry to scare them into supporting a war that is making his cronies rich, and has the compassion, intelligence and common sense of a large rock. Scintillating bunch, eh?

Durban Holiday: Rain and ramblings

6 November 2007

It’s raining.

We’ve been in Durbs for three days now and haven’t seen the sun yet. And today it is actually raining. Having spent many years in a seaside suburb of San Diego, I am very aware of the implications of an all-day overcast. The cloud cover acts like a lid on a pot, and keeps everything in…heat, humidity, pollutants. One of the lovely things about Cape Town is the Cape Doctor, that stiff breeze that blows all your troubles…and the heat, humidity and air borne pollutants…away. Here in Durban, sans wind or sunshine, we are just stewing in it.

That, of course, drives us indoors. Right now we are in our room, Hubby in the shower, and I’ve mapped out a day of shopping in the indoor malls. Maybe tomorrow the sun will come out and I can take my camera to the Botanical Gardens.

* * *

It rained all day, but from within the confines of The Pavilion and Musgrave Centre, we barely noticed. Our wallets lightened and shopping bags filled, we made our way back to Mum’s for dinner, and I was touched and delighted to see that she had made one of my favourite curries, cauliflower and potato. Hubby bought a new digital camera, which I will try out tomorrow, this one a pocket-sized powerhouse, my Sony being a rather large and unwieldy thing, although it takes spectacular pics with absolutely stunning clarity. Tomorrow we shall see.

Living in Cape Town, a city in which the Indian…especially Hindu…population is rather small, I have grown accustomed to people giving me second glances because of the red bindi (dot) I customarily wear out in public. It is my nod of respect to my husband’s culture and customs, just as he wears a wedding ring as a mark of respect for mine. In the years I have been here, I have grown accustomed to the double-takes, most of them just innocuous confirming glances…“Was that really a white woman with a dot on her forehead I saw?”… although there have been a few looks that were unmistakeably hostile.

In all honesty, I did not expect this kind of surprise on the part of Durban residents. Certainly everyone here knows what the red dot means and surely, after 13 years of freedom, couples of mixed-race cannot still be fodder either for shock or hostility. But, based on this afternoon, apparently I am wrong. Stepping out of a shop at The Pavilion and glancing to my left, I did not see it, but I did hear Hubby’s surprised reaction. He said that a man walked past us and gave me such a hostile look…his eyes fixed on my forehead, then sweeping me up and down, then back to the dot…that were it possible, I would have been fried to a crisp by his glance alone. Pure hostility, Hubby told me, disbelief in his voice. I am sorry I missed the opportunity to stare challengingly back in the man’s face. Not ten minutes later I walked past a man who gave me the almost identical treatment! This time I did see him and this time I did stare straight into his eyes until he turned them away. Not that I think he was in any way chastened by my challenge, but at least he didn’t get away unscathed. What is wrong with these people, anyway??

My nephew, a precocious lad of 13, is becoming more and more socially aware. It seems that one of his teachers is a white lady of a very strong christian persuasion who apparently hasn’t a clue about respecting the belief systems of others. She obeys the absolute letter of the law without even acknowledging its spirit. For example, my Hindu nephew is expected to sing christian hymns in class, hymns that have had the word “God” substituted for “Jesus” so that the hymn can be for any religion or deity. Now, none of the other words are changed, so specifically christian references remain, as well as male gender references. My nephew feels marginalized, disrespected, and slighted by the whole thing.

Now I am the first to admit that the boy can be a bit on the cheeky side, but I think he has a point. The teacher seems to have an agenda, and not just one of recruiting children from his religion to hers. Apparently in giving lessons regarding the history of this country and continent, she takes the view that the European missionaries brought wonderful things to the local savages. My nephew, in his customarily confrontational manner, pointed out to her that the local people might take issue with such a statement, particularly since their lands were taken, their people enslaved, murdered, or put to rout, and what had been prosperous…if primitive…cultures decimated. His teacher, of course, insists that the European incursion into Africa was a good thing, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

I have a problem with people who are so convinced of their own superiority that they cannot give even the merest nod to another point of view. And when they ignore or discount incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, then I have to wonder what their real agenda is. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist…or even a Margaret Mead…to see the rude shacks and grinding poverty that is the subsistence of so many South Africans today. To say that they have “chosen” to live in such a way is to beg the question: do black South Africans today have better lives than they had before van Reebieck landed? I suppose the answer to that lies in what you consider to be the definition of “better,” but as we drove through the Transkei my husband asked me “Do you think these people would consider themselves poor if they had never been told they were, and looked down upon for it?” There was a time, after all, before the arrival of the Europeans, that the indigenous people of this country judged their prosperity by different standards and what is perceived as poverty and want in the rural areas today would have been wealth and contentment in a society untainted by alien paradigms.

Nephew’s teacher makes me wonder, then, what her real agenda might be. She gives the barest cooperation to the literal letter of the law without acknowledging its spirit…what kind of example does that set for her students? Is it acceptable to subordinate the law and its intent to her allegiance to her faith…or her political beliefs? The strategy by which she has inveigled students of non-christian faiths to sing hymns of her faith in class…can anyone truly accept the sophistry by which she has rationalized it? What is it about some people that they simply cannot accept that there are other paradigms that are entitled to the same level of respect they demand for their own?

Nephew, at 13, is a precocious kid who thinks about things that most of us don’t address until adulthood…if ever. He is an observant Hindu…not especially devout and certainly not fanatical…but he prays and participates in the religious observations. And while he is given to arguing for the sake of argument (or making another person wrong so he can be right) I get vibes that his sense of outrage is genuine.

The separation between church and state is not as clear here as it is in the States, nor as contentiously disputed. Aggressive proselytizing and conversion has turned numerous native people into semi-Christians, people who have failed to give up their belief in the magic of muti despite their Christian affiliation. The Christian right here even has its own political party, and while one’s freedom of religion is codified, the concept of respecting other faiths doesn’t seem to have taken a firm foothold.

I find this rather sad, and just one more indication that a large part of the white population still “doesn’t get it.” And while one might think that a faction that makes up no more than 15% of the population is without significant influence, that isn’t how it is in South Africa. The majority of the wealth of this country remains in white hands and the white lifestyle is the one sought after by virtually all South Africans. No one, after all, aspires to live in a rondawel, sans electricity or running water, on a dirt track in the middle of nowhere. It is the affluence sufficient to own a BMW, a modern house filled with luxury furnishings in an upmarket neighbourhood, and a bucket full of bling…these are the aspirations of South Africans of all colours and cultures. To live white.

And so a minority culture dominates South Africa, and with it comes a sense of being right in all things. The idea that people might want to live like you…but not think or worship like you…can be too fine a distinction for people who are not given to respecting the beliefs and values of other cultures….or prone to periods of deep thought. I think it’s remarkable that, at 13, Nephew “gets it.” And that his teacher does not.