Last Friday night as I was heading to bed, I flipped on the TV and saw Bill Moyer's show. It was doing an interview which hooked me right away, with Katherine Newman regarding her new book, "The Missing Class:Portraits of the Near Poor in America"

She was discussing the plight and lives of those making between 100-200% of the poverty line, and how that affects themselves, their families, and yes, even their communities. It was one of those things that I've known about for a while...a lot of my generation have ended up in that boat and have made it pretty public..more light on this subject is always a good thing.

I saw this about a week ago and was going to diary it, but it kind of slipped my mind. But the anger has been coming back (not for me really, but other people seeing it), and it was in my bookmarks list, so there it is.

Why Atheists are Angry by Greta Christina. Caution. Use of the F-word abounds. However, it's a very good rundown of just why people are really upset. Why to quite a few people (and that number is growing in leaps and bounds), this stuff matters.

But stick around for the end. Because after the why, that's where the meat is.

Hi all. This is a quick diary just giving you a heads up to watch out that there's a virus (technically it's a worm) that's not so much spreading, but is present over at DKos. Because this is a Scoop based site as well, it could affect here as well.

Just until this clears up, you may want to avoid clicking on links that you're not aware of. Mouse over the link, and see if the site checks out. In particular, the virus seems to be pointing to a website on the php0h.com server.

I'm a fan of Moore. I don't agree with everything he says, and I'm not that much of a prankster myself, but to each our own, right? But I think his arguments come from a state of good faith. I really think he's much more open minded than people give him credit for..take for account Bowling for Columbine, in which I guess was going to be your gun control argument #234 and became a great dialog on fear and its effect on the human condition. The greatest movies are said to be about the human condition, are they not?

But Michael Moore goes on my list of people who get it. Thanks to RandyH over at Comments at Digbys, it's a rundown of the end of Sicko. I haven't seen the whole movie yet..not playing locally yet. So I'm not sure if this is the end of the movie, or something else. It matters not. Moore gets it.

The quotes are intentional.

Theocracy, I think that those of us that fight against it isn't the end in and of itself. For some people, on a purely egotistical standpoint, it might be. But for the majority of the movement leaders, I don't really believe it. And I think the reason we fight against this...is that it's a decoy in a bunch of ways. But it's all we can do.

The question that's repeatedly posed to me, is would we think different about this if those seeking a "theocracy" were not politically opposed to us. The more I think about it...it's not that we're politically opposed.

It's that we're morally opposed.

People probably know that I'm critical of Rev. Wallis, and some others who are trying to crack the evangelical shell to allow progressive ideas in. Not so much for that, in and of itself, but that they tend to use seculars as battering rams and that gives me a headache. (Groan)

This diary is not about that.

From the L.A. Times, a story on how Wallis is..er...throwing down the gauntlet, so to speak. And boy do I approve. Text under the flip.

I've been mulling this diary for the last few days, so I'm just going to sit down, and write it and see what comes out. This has been building for a few weeks now, watching the various religious blogwars play out, and seeing all the themes come and go, all the threads being weaved and pulled upon, whole sheets of cloth being cut apart and stitched together. But out of the fray, two words tend to come to mind. Content, and Tone.

These things by themselves are fairly self-evident. Content is the point of what you are trying to say or do, and tone is how you say it or talk about it. But I've seen a lot of confusing the two, and it creates a lot of confusion. And anger. And just a complete breakdown of communication.

Time announced their annual Person of the year, and congrats! They've named you. Meaning all of us. Why?

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Thoughts? Disappointments? Something you'd rather?

A couple of threads recently have gotten into the whole provability of Faith (please note the big F) thing. I read through the threads, and have seen a lot of good points, on both sides.

As I'm apt to do, I try to thread the needle, so to speak, and make everything fit. I'm a systems person. It's how my brain works.

This is more of a discussion starter than anything else. Over the last few days, over the various Haggard related threads, there's been a lot of talk about forgiveness. And different people have different ideas what forgiveness is, and should be.

So what's yours?

In the discussion on various levels of atheism, I mentioned my theory of disconnection. LunarEclipse asked me to write more about it, so I will. At least to have something hard I can write down in the future.

In short, this disconnection is actually a lack of belief. Yes, this is the mythical "closet atheist" that tends to get people upset just to mention. But I think there's two levels of belief. There's passive belief, and then there's active belief. In this case, the people lack the active belief.

There's been a lot of talk lately about basic respect, between believers and non-believers. I've read a lot of it, and thinking a lot about it. I just wanted to share some of my experiences..not on a personal nature, but on the nature of this "conflict". The idea of mutual respect, and how to achieve this.

As a lot of you probably know, I'm kind of an atheist. (I'm also agnostic, for what it's worth). In the past, I spent several years activly in various non-belief communities, talking and listening. And thinking back to those days, I don't think some of you get what's going on when people "mock" your religion.

I'll try to explain what exactly, at least in my experience, people are trying to say. Of course, I'm not speaking for everybody...trying to herd non-believers is like herding cats :). But it might give some insight into what exactly is going on, and may allow you to better handle future conversations.