Unlike my late father, I have always been one of the least finicky eaters on the planet. I would try almost anything at least once. And most foods that I tried, I tended to like.
Now that I’m well into my middle-aged years, however, I find that I’m fine-tuning my tastes a bit. There are now foods that I would just rather not eat.
Lately, though, my son and daughter, both of whom are in their early years of adulthood, have been taking me on a world tour of eateries, most of which are located in Indianapolis. I had no idea there was such a wide variety of gastronomy in Central Indiana.
It’s not like my family has to drag me to these quite disparate eateries. I go willingly. As I said, I’ve never really been that finicky, so I’m always willing to give something new a try.
But the more exotic and ethnic the foods are that I eat, the more I appreciate good old American fare. Not that I totally dislike ethnic cuisine, some of it is very tasty, I have just learned to better appreciate the kinds of food I’ve taken for granted my whole life.
Over the past few months, I’ve been introduced to a variety of new culinary delights. Take, for example, sushi. This is a Japanese treat that many Americans have taken to with great delight. I wasn’t impressed with it when I first tried it. But I have grown to enjoy it immensely. In fact, it is one of my favorite ethnic foods.
Then there are the Asian Indian foods. Most of them are flavored with some sort of curry sauce and have at least a slight kick to them. Although the lamb and chicken dishes are generally tasty, I find that the sameness in the flavor gets old after awhile.
I’ve also tried Scottish fare. I had my first taste of haggis recently at MacNiven’s on Massachusetts Ave.
Haggis is a Scottish dish consisting of a mixture of the minced heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep or calf mixed with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings and boiled in the stomach of the slaughtered animal.
I know how it sounds. But it wasn’t really so bad. If you like corned beef hash, you would probably like haggis. It, along with a heaping helping of mashed potatoes and an equally generous portion of mashed root vegetables, made for a meal I couldn’t quite finish.
Across the channel from Scotland is Ireland. A downtown Irish pub, the Claddagh, is one of the restaurants we keep going back to occasionally. It has the best fish and chips (which is actually a British dish) and a shepherd’s pie to die for. Shepherd’s pie is a bit like beef stew with a big pile of mashed potatoes on top.
On Pennsylvania Avenue there is a quaint little coffee shop, the Abbey, which has some non-traditional sandwiches. I don’t know if they would be considered ethnic, but they are certainly unusual. My favorite is the smoked salmon wrap with cream cheese and onion. The latte isn’t bad, either.
Although, traditionally, spaghetti dishes are Italian, they are so common in America that, like pizza, spaghetti is often considered an American dish. Still, restaurants that specialize in pasta dishes are listed as Italian.
My favorite Italian restaurant is, and has been for decades, the Old Spaghetti Factory. Their mizithra cheese and butter sauce has no equal, unless it is their creamy clam sauce. These two sauces over a plate of angel hair pasta is truly a divine creation.
But with all the variety of lunch and dinner selections I’ve enjoyed over the past few months, my favorite type of food is breakfast fare. I still enjoy eggs, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes. And speaking of the latter, there are no better pancakes on earth than the blueberry granola cakes served at Le Peep in downtown Indy.
Excuse me while I go grab a bite to eat. Yum!
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Saturday, June 11, 2005
If it is not Natural it is not Science
There are well-organized groups of people all across America today who have as their goal a watered-down science curriculum in public schools. They are the advocates of intelligent design, claiming it to be a valid alternative theory to evolution.
The focus currently is on Kansas, where the State Board of Education has been conducting public hearings on whether the concept of intelligent design should be taught along side evolution in high school biology classrooms.
But these menaces to scientific methodology are not restricted to that state. They are at the moment making some level of assault on the science curriculum in 24 states. They must be stopped.
They must be stopped not because of some dangerous cult belief system. Their beliefs are, if not mainstream, at least within the confines of Christianity. They are fundamentalist Christians who only think they know enough about science to inoculate the curriculum with their own variety of it.
But science is science and religion is religion, and the two disciplines are seldom easily blended, especially when it comes to question of how we got here. So what should be taught in the biology classroom?
There is one underlying postulate of science that makes up its foundation. It is that all laws of nature operate exactly the same for everything, everywhere, and throughout time. Science seeks to find natural answers to the questions of how nature operates. And without that underlying postulate, there would be no science.
It has thus far proved to be true. Galaxies that are billions of light years away seem to follow the same law of gravity that an apple falling from a tree on earth follows. But if we ever discover that the laws of nature behave randomly, or are at times altered by some supernatural entity, then science would collapse. Science cannot operate in a universe where the natural laws are unpredictable.
And, so, when we teach science in school, we must assume that all the theories of science are operating within the bounds of knowable natural laws. If we don’t understand how something works, and there is a lot we don’t yet understand, we don’t throw up our hands and say, “This must happen because of an act of God.”
It was less than 100 years ago that the theory of continental drift was first postulated by a meteorologist named Alfred Wagener. Before then, nobody knew what caused volcanoes or earthquakes.
Native islanders in various parts of the world, including Hawaii, thought volcanoes were brought on by the wrath of some god. They often sacrificed innocent people to the volcano to appease that god.
Scientists had no idea why volcanoes occur here but not there. They had no idea why they occurred at all. But they didn’t yield to the supernatural. They knew there had to be a natural answer to the question.
Eventually, they discovered that most volcanoes were caused by the action of crustal plates sliding underneath each other, or by hot spots in the earth’s mantle. Earthquakes and volcanoes were caused by what used to be called the theory of continental drift, but has since been modified into the more comprehensive theory of plate tectonics.
And so it is with evolution. Science does not have all the answers to evolution. What creationists might call irreducible complexity in organisms may be reducible after all.
But just because science isn’t able to answer all the questions about evolution yet doesn’t mean we throw in the towel and admit it must be God’s handiwork. God is a supernatural entity, operating outside the bounds of science. And, thus far, scientists have been able to explain away the hand of God in virtually every theory that He was supposed to dominate, such as the old theory that put the earth at the center of the universe, a notion held by the early church.
Eventually, researchers will come up with more of the answers that creationists ascribe to God. Indeed, the theory of evolution will one day join the ranks of the heliocentric view of the solar system, but not if we allow fundamentalists to weaken the science curriculum with their superstitions.
If it is supernatural, it can’t be natural. If it isn’t natural, then it can’t be science. And if it’s not science, however well disguised, then it does not belong in the science curriculum.
The focus currently is on Kansas, where the State Board of Education has been conducting public hearings on whether the concept of intelligent design should be taught along side evolution in high school biology classrooms.
But these menaces to scientific methodology are not restricted to that state. They are at the moment making some level of assault on the science curriculum in 24 states. They must be stopped.
They must be stopped not because of some dangerous cult belief system. Their beliefs are, if not mainstream, at least within the confines of Christianity. They are fundamentalist Christians who only think they know enough about science to inoculate the curriculum with their own variety of it.
But science is science and religion is religion, and the two disciplines are seldom easily blended, especially when it comes to question of how we got here. So what should be taught in the biology classroom?
There is one underlying postulate of science that makes up its foundation. It is that all laws of nature operate exactly the same for everything, everywhere, and throughout time. Science seeks to find natural answers to the questions of how nature operates. And without that underlying postulate, there would be no science.
It has thus far proved to be true. Galaxies that are billions of light years away seem to follow the same law of gravity that an apple falling from a tree on earth follows. But if we ever discover that the laws of nature behave randomly, or are at times altered by some supernatural entity, then science would collapse. Science cannot operate in a universe where the natural laws are unpredictable.
And, so, when we teach science in school, we must assume that all the theories of science are operating within the bounds of knowable natural laws. If we don’t understand how something works, and there is a lot we don’t yet understand, we don’t throw up our hands and say, “This must happen because of an act of God.”
It was less than 100 years ago that the theory of continental drift was first postulated by a meteorologist named Alfred Wagener. Before then, nobody knew what caused volcanoes or earthquakes.
Native islanders in various parts of the world, including Hawaii, thought volcanoes were brought on by the wrath of some god. They often sacrificed innocent people to the volcano to appease that god.
Scientists had no idea why volcanoes occur here but not there. They had no idea why they occurred at all. But they didn’t yield to the supernatural. They knew there had to be a natural answer to the question.
Eventually, they discovered that most volcanoes were caused by the action of crustal plates sliding underneath each other, or by hot spots in the earth’s mantle. Earthquakes and volcanoes were caused by what used to be called the theory of continental drift, but has since been modified into the more comprehensive theory of plate tectonics.
And so it is with evolution. Science does not have all the answers to evolution. What creationists might call irreducible complexity in organisms may be reducible after all.
But just because science isn’t able to answer all the questions about evolution yet doesn’t mean we throw in the towel and admit it must be God’s handiwork. God is a supernatural entity, operating outside the bounds of science. And, thus far, scientists have been able to explain away the hand of God in virtually every theory that He was supposed to dominate, such as the old theory that put the earth at the center of the universe, a notion held by the early church.
Eventually, researchers will come up with more of the answers that creationists ascribe to God. Indeed, the theory of evolution will one day join the ranks of the heliocentric view of the solar system, but not if we allow fundamentalists to weaken the science curriculum with their superstitions.
If it is supernatural, it can’t be natural. If it isn’t natural, then it can’t be science. And if it’s not science, however well disguised, then it does not belong in the science curriculum.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Is the Bible Absolute Truth?
Fundamentalist Christians believe the bible is the unerring word of God. But is it?
If the bible is anything, it is not an absolute. If it were, why would there be so many denominations, religious clubs all calling themselves “Christians,” yet disagreeing on virtually every point about salvation?
Consider this parable (not by Jesus):
A young woman is given a cookbook by her mother and told that it contains the best recipes. The young woman reads the introduction which states, “The recipes in this cookbook are the best and tastiest on the planet.”
The young woman grows up and uses her cookbook religiously, thinking all along that she has prepared the most flavorful dishes possible. But at pitch-in dinners, her friends bring competing recipes. She does not try them, knowing they are inferior.
When challenged to try them, she brings out her cookbooks and shows her friends what it says in the introduction. She tells them she knows her recipes are best because her cookbook tells her so.
Now, the bible is not a cookbook, but the analogy holds. Fundamentalists believe that the bible is unerring and is the infallible word of God. How do they know this for sure? Well, the bible tells them so. It’s the epitome of circular reasoning.
Fundamentalists say that God gave us the bible centuries ago. Actually, the early Catholic Church gave us the bible in the fourth century AD. A conclave of church bishops and lawyers got together under the command of Constantine I to decide which of the many manuscripts concerning Jesus would become part of their canon.
They left out many historic manuscripts and even destroyed them because they went against church dogma. Some of these were the Gnostic Gospels, a copy of which was found in Egypt in the mid-twentieth century.
So, does the bible reveal absolute truth?
Consider these passages:
Concerning theft, the bible says, “Thou shalt not steal.” (Ex. 20:15) And also, “And ye shall spoil the Egyptians.” (Ex. 3:22)
Concerning being “saved” by grace, it says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith...not of works.” (Eph. 2:8, 9) And then again, “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” (James 2:24)
Concerning calling people names, the bible tells us, “Whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.” (Matt. 5:22) But then Jesus said, “Ye fools are blind.” (Matt. 23:17)
Has anyone actually seen God? John 1:18 says, “No man hath seen God at anytime.” But Gen. 32:30 tells us “For I have seen God face to face.”
And why does God punish Adam and Eve for eating from the tree of knowledge, then praise King Solomon for choosing knowledge as his gift? Does God want us to use our knowledge or not?
The bible can be used to enhance our knowledge and strengthen both our spirits and our minds if we realize that it represents a disparate view of history from many perspectives. It makes for great philosophical debates.
But it can also be used to “prove” almost anything. When one religious zealot takes a single translation and dogmatizes it as absolute truth, he has done a grave disservice to his flock.
If the bible is anything, it is not an absolute. If it were, why would there be so many denominations, religious clubs all calling themselves “Christians,” yet disagreeing on virtually every point about salvation?
Consider this parable (not by Jesus):
A young woman is given a cookbook by her mother and told that it contains the best recipes. The young woman reads the introduction which states, “The recipes in this cookbook are the best and tastiest on the planet.”
The young woman grows up and uses her cookbook religiously, thinking all along that she has prepared the most flavorful dishes possible. But at pitch-in dinners, her friends bring competing recipes. She does not try them, knowing they are inferior.
When challenged to try them, she brings out her cookbooks and shows her friends what it says in the introduction. She tells them she knows her recipes are best because her cookbook tells her so.
Now, the bible is not a cookbook, but the analogy holds. Fundamentalists believe that the bible is unerring and is the infallible word of God. How do they know this for sure? Well, the bible tells them so. It’s the epitome of circular reasoning.
Fundamentalists say that God gave us the bible centuries ago. Actually, the early Catholic Church gave us the bible in the fourth century AD. A conclave of church bishops and lawyers got together under the command of Constantine I to decide which of the many manuscripts concerning Jesus would become part of their canon.
They left out many historic manuscripts and even destroyed them because they went against church dogma. Some of these were the Gnostic Gospels, a copy of which was found in Egypt in the mid-twentieth century.
So, does the bible reveal absolute truth?
Consider these passages:
Concerning theft, the bible says, “Thou shalt not steal.” (Ex. 20:15) And also, “And ye shall spoil the Egyptians.” (Ex. 3:22)
Concerning being “saved” by grace, it says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith...not of works.” (Eph. 2:8, 9) And then again, “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” (James 2:24)
Concerning calling people names, the bible tells us, “Whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.” (Matt. 5:22) But then Jesus said, “Ye fools are blind.” (Matt. 23:17)
Has anyone actually seen God? John 1:18 says, “No man hath seen God at anytime.” But Gen. 32:30 tells us “For I have seen God face to face.”
And why does God punish Adam and Eve for eating from the tree of knowledge, then praise King Solomon for choosing knowledge as his gift? Does God want us to use our knowledge or not?
The bible can be used to enhance our knowledge and strengthen both our spirits and our minds if we realize that it represents a disparate view of history from many perspectives. It makes for great philosophical debates.
But it can also be used to “prove” almost anything. When one religious zealot takes a single translation and dogmatizes it as absolute truth, he has done a grave disservice to his flock.
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