Friday Quiz: Shakespeare v. The Bible

First I find out I'm a closet Unitarian, and now I'm a student of the bible? I guess I have read the whole thing a bunch of times, in several different translations. Which, apparently, is more than average. I've gotta say though, that if I scored this high, I suspect that the bar is probably pretty low.

You know the Bible 75%!

 

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

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via L'Amour et le crane, formerly known as Ink and Incapability.

I've had the "If you could pick only one book to have stranded with you on a desert island what would you choose?" conversation several times lately. I got called a weinie for wanting some kind of scouting manual or one of those old hippie-survivalist 'how to build a shelter, purify water, find food, and heal the sick using only the contents of your handbag' type books. The kind with chord charts and lyrics for all the hippie folk songs in the back. Because of course I'd have a guitar with me, or could build one out of, like, bamboo or whatever. But no, my friend said, it had to be a work of literature. My argument that handbooks and folk music were literature was not purchased by my interlocutor.

Another friend of mine, an excellent writer, recently said that she'd pick the bible, on account of how it contains so many of what I guess you could call the foundational-type plot outlines that sort of define western literature. I don't disagree with her, not entirely, but if I've got to limit myself to literatary works, I'd probably stick with the complete works of old Will Shakespeare -- he's got all the same plots, but he's funnier. I'd want to bring an edition that includes the sonnets, though, in case I got tired of the plays. Check out that Shakespeare link, by the way; it goes to a site called Open Source Shakespeare, which is kind of cool.

Oh, and after you go there & brush up your Shakespeare, you can, if you like, go here and take a quiz. It's just a series of quotes to identify. I'm not clear about what my actual score is, but I got the response "Huzzah! You deserve most excellent accolades! A true Shakespearian Erudite!" Whatever an Erudite is. Watch out for the Chaucer they threw in there to try to trip you up. If you want more Shakespeare quizzes, there are plenty of 'em online. Watch out for the ones on about.com, though -- seriously annoying pop-ups and twitchy blinking items on the all the pages.

If you're looking for an online bible, this site has a whole bunch of English and non-English translations, and you can easily compare among them.

Friday quiz results: Finding my religion. Or not.

This is a pretty interesting test: the Belief-O-Matic™, but I gotta say I'm a little surprised by the results. I've been perfectly happy all these years without a religion. Except for a short while when I was about eleven and wanted my family to be Amish, or maybe Hasidic Jews. I think I craved more rules and structure. A kid needs something to rebel against, or what's the point?

But anyway, who can resist this?

"Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic™ knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic™ will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing."

I'm not actually considering practicing a religion, but I took the test anyway, because -- well, mostly because Julie IM-ed me a while ago wondering where the Friday quiz was. I think she was bored. But also I wanted to see how a heathen like myself would score.

When you're all finished, the results page lists 27 faiths, each followed by a percentage score in descending order of how closely your stated beliefs match those of each particular faith. The explanation of the scoring system is as follows:

"The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic,™ in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa."

Well thank goodness they added that last bit. I'd hate to think that all Unitarian Universalists were a bunch of heathen commies like me. Likewise with the Liberal Quakers: I scored 98% on that one.

But the third one on my list was Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants? WTF? Secular Humanism, which is more or less how I'd describe my beliefs if I had to describe them, was #4 on the list (88%). I have to confess, though, that I didn't even know that there was such a thing as a Secular Humanist Association. I've never been to a meeting. But if there is an organization and it has meetings, it's probably not really my scene.

I was glad to see Scientology so low on the list (#22), but frankly a little surprised that New Age and Neo-Pagan were so high (#12 and #6, respectively).

Seven Deadly Quizzes

I took all seven of the Deadly Sins assessments over at BeliefNet. I didn't do as well as I'd hoped, considering what a heathen I am.

A couple of them I even took over because I'm really not all that virtuous. There were a couple of questions that I couldn't really answer in a meaningful way because they were about TV shows I've never seen or celebrities I've never heard of.

I suspect that the tests aren't very good instruments for measuring actual sinfulness, because even after do-overs, I still didn't do at all well on Pride, Anger, Envy, or even Gluttony. I mean, Gluttony, for crying out loud. How hard is that? But at least I had a respectable score on Lust and Sloth, and they are my favorites.

By the way, here's a little trick for remembering all seven of the deadly sins, should you need to name them: PALE GAS. Pride, Anger, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Avarice, and Sloth. Of course some lists call anger "wrath" and avarice "greed" which messes it up. Too many consonants.

So here are my results. The website doesn't provide any nifty graphics or handy code to post results on your blog, and the scoring is kind of eccentric. I calculated the percentages myself, but basically, the scores were grouped in three or four categories of increasing sinfulness. The ones marked with asterisks are the ones where my score fell in the second-lowest bracket. I re-took Greed and Sloth and moved up to that category in each. All the others I was in the lowest (i.e. most virtuous) category, even though I re-did Pride and Anger and Envy. I tried, people.

• Pride: 4/24 (17%) - "You might want to work on your self-esteem"
• Anger (Wrath): 5/27 (19%) - "You're a most patient person ... or about to blow like Mt. St. Helen's"
• Lust: 15/32 (47%!)* - "Your body isn't a temple, but it isn't a fast-food joint either"
• Envy: 2/24 (8%) - "Your freedom from sin is enviable"
• Gluttony: 9/41 (22%) - "Spiritually, you might be a bit too thin"
• Avarice (Greed): 11/37 (30%)* - "Your generosity outweighs your greed"
• Sloth: 9/25 (36%)* - "Your life is a good balance between activity and relaxation, but like most of us, you could use a spiritual supplement"

Image: detail from The Seven Deadly Sins by Hieronymus Bosch. Stolen from ibiblio.org's WebMuseum.

Rapture Index = 157: Buckle up, yall

I've been hearing a lot of buzz for the last couple of days about how the situation in the Middle East, along with everything else that's going on with regard to [insert your favorite end-times bogeyman here], must surely be pushing us closer to, you know, armageddon & all that shit. So I thought I'd check out what the good folks over at The Rapture Index had to say about it.

We're at 157, apparently. It seems that a reading of 145 & over means that there is indeed some very heavy prophetic weather, though the site's author(s) are careful to note that the index is "designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture." So yeah, the peace process is back to zero, and whaddya know: global turmoil, liberalism, and Russia (!) are all on the rise.

The record high index reading, 182, occurred 9/24/01, while the all-time low (57) was 12/12/93. This year it's been running pretty steadily in the 150s. We're moving pretty briskly in the direction of the "pre-tribulation rapture."

The purpose of this index, you may wish to know, is "to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator," and also "to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting."

Yeah, well, they got that last part right. Prophecy reporting in general is plagued [sorry, couldn't help that] by wide variance and a general lack of cohesive indicators.

Recommended reading

The best sentence I have read today -- and I have read a lot of them -- might be this one: "Attempts to convey the ineffable often come across as kind of effed up."

The sentence was written by Fred Clark over at slacktivist, and he's an editor, so he should know. He's posted a new installment to his ongoing exegesis of the "Left Behind" series and it's, as always, fascinating. This particular post talks about stories of religious conversion ("testimonies"), which have always struck me as bizarre and disturbing -- much like the stories of what brought someone into recovery whatever 12-step group they participate in.

I mean, I'm all in favor of redemption & everything, but it seems kind of a private matter to me, and I don't really understand this need to share. But then again, I'm a heathen, and I'm not in recovery.

I read all but the last of the "Left Behind" books; my co-workers were passing them around a while back and I was curious, and then horrified. I don't recommend reading the books, but I highly recommend taking a look at Fred's commentary for those who are interested. He offers both literary observations and critical analysis from an evangelical christian perspective. [The series is archived here.]

Biking on Wednesdays

I didn't ride my bike today. It's another bad air day, with orange level alerts for both ozone and particulates. Plus a heat index of 102 with highs in the high 90s. It's OK, I guess, if I don't ride my damn bike every single day. I don't have to feel guilty about it. But if I thought it all through, I think I'd stop riding my bicycle altogether on Wednesdays on account of here in the land of a bazillion baptists (that's pronounced 'babtists,' apparently, if you're from here), Wednesday night is church night, and no matter which route I take home, I have to pass at least two churches.

Big deal, you say. Why should a bunch of churchgoing yahoos harsh your buzz so royally that you want to stay off the street? Are they so zealous that they have to stop and witness to passing bicyclists? Is cycling some kind of abomination, or is there something in Leviticus or the teachings of St. Paul that suffereth a woman not to ride a damn bike? Are they offended by those little skirts that you wear biking? Are you such a heathen that the very presence of a bunch of christians can wreck your day?

No, I'll tell you what it is: these people are a fucking traffic hazard. Seriously.

In the first place, there's a lot of them. And because all the churches have so many different activities Wednesday nights, it's impossible to predict what time would be best to pass by. It's like there's this ebbing and flowing swarm of them and they're all over the place and they're just not looking where they are going. The teenage girls are furtively watching the teenage boys, who are of course watching them. Mom is busy trying to herd a bunch of girls who are dressed like refugees from the set of like 'Little House on the Prairie' or something across the street in the crosswalk. Grandma is clutching her pocketbook and looking around warily. She saw it on the news the other night that little old ladies get mugged all the damn time, and she's pretty sure tonight is her night. She doesn't see me of course on account of I'm white. She's easy to miss though because she's moving pretty slowly.

Dad sees me at least; he's staring right at my tits as I swerve to avoid him and the car door he has just opened in my path. I imagine he's thinking about the sins of Bathsheba* as he stammers an apology. This is by far the worst menace. The car door opening, I mean, not immodest women.

Anyone fool enough to ride a bike on city streets knows that it's safest to act as if every car door will in fact open when you're right alongside of it. But once you've seen five people get out of a Civic and cross the street and go into a building, you're surprised when the driver's door opens and someone gets out. Maybe you're riding defensively enough that you're sort of prepared for it, and there's no collision, but what was he doing in there? Having an NPR Driveway Moment^SM? Didn't think so. Getting high? Reading a little bit of scripture, maybe, before going on in to the fellowship hall?

And you can forget about anything you might have thought about how friendly and polite these freshly-scrubbed, modestly dressed people must be. They're every bit as rude and hostile as people in a hurry anywhere else. They not only ignore the presence of a passing bicyclist, they aren't paying any attention at all to passing cars, either. And they're rude and hostile when they're driving their cars too, honking and cutting in front of people, and turning without using their signals & then getting mad at other drivers for not using their signals. Oh, and harassing females. A couple of weeks ago on a Wednesday, I was going over the bridge just before this one church, and a shiny red car full of college boys rode past me, slowed down and rode alongside me for a while, then slightly behind me, then a bit ahead of me -- shouting crude sexual remarks the whole time and making rude gestures. For quite a while. I mean, it was quite a bit beyond the kind of scene where you can just maybe flip 'em a bird & forget about it. Scary-type shit, actually. Then they sped up, cut in front of me, and into the church parking lot, whereupon they piled out and started tossing a frisbee.

How fucking wholesome.

On the other hand, Wednesday is a great night to go to the grocery store, or the laundromat, or anyplace else you want to avoid a crowd.

*Thanks to Emma at Gendergeek for the Sins of Bathsheba link.

Is there some kind of hierarchy of sanctity?

Help me out here, somebody. I'm just not well-versed in the intricacies and implications of sanctity. When we're talking about the sanctity-related properties of a sanctified thing, are some sanctified things, like, more sanctified than other sanctified things? I have some questions, I guess, about the sanctity of life versus the sanctity of marriage.

Here's a hypothetical case:

Let's say there's a sanctified husband and wife, ok? A church-authorized marriage between one man and one woman. Let's put them in the context of a marriage in which she has signed on to graciously submit to her husband's will on account of he's the biblically mandated head of their righteous christian household. And let's say they've performed their sanctified marital obligations (again) and now the gal is pregnant (yet again). For the purpose of this discussion, let's say she's in her forties, and they just got some test results, and the fetus she is carrying -- the pre-born individual, if you like -- is seriously and fatally flawed. Like, doesn't have lungs, or is missing its head or something. And also that at her age, and given that she has a few other chronic medical conditions that make pregnancy dangerous, and the wear and tear on her body from previous pregnancies and miscarriages, let's say that this pregnancy represents a very serious threat to her health and her life. With this in mind, as well as the -- let's say there are seven -- hypothetical little ones at home, let's say the husband decides that this pregnancy needs to be terminated.

Are you with me so far?

OK let's keep going. The husband, as biblically ordained and socially approved head of the household, makes a decision that he believes is in his wife's best interest, and in the best interest of his seven happy, healthy, living children, god's will or no. He tells his wife that he believes that this pregnancy should be terminated. That is to say, this fetus, this baby, this pre-born human, should be aborted -- in the interest of the whole family and in order to save her life. She says no way, every life is sacred, and even if the baby will not live very long after emerging from her body, it is her obligation to suffer the pregnancy, take all the risks, and allow the fetus to be born, suffer horribly, and die. She understands that the likelihood of death for her newborn baby is 100%, but she believes in the sanctity of life, and she accepts that whole thing about christians needing to suffer sometimes for their beliefs. But she also believes in the possibility of the occasional miracle. Her faith tells her it's possible that her baby will be just fine.

Yes, this is a difficult case. Yes, I can see that hard-liners will say that she is obliged to carry this pregnancy to term and that she has to defy her sanctified marital obligation to submit to her husband, even though she takes her obligations to her family seriously, and even though she fears the consequences of her decision.

I'm thinking that the hard-liners are wrong, and that if I were her I would want to think a little harder about things. But I'm a left-leaning libertarian heathen, and I always think that. I'm also pretty swayed by an argument that is both practical and compassionate. I say terminate the pregnancy. There is heartbreak either way, and yes indeed that is a bummer.

I try to avoid most of your large-scale media circuses, and so I haven't paid much attention to the very real case of Terri Schiavo; it's just too depressing. [And there's a lot out there -- I'm not going to link to every single thing, but I'm in general agreement with those expressed at Alas, A Blog and Pharyngula and the Rude Pundit.] I've been reading about the history and the details of the case this morning, though, and it's truly appalling. I mean, her brain has essentially dissolved, bless her. Her body is alive, without any cognitive function and possessing only the lowest-order reflexes. Since she lacks the ability to swallow food or water, she has -- for, what, some fifteen years now -- been given these vital substances via medical procedures and devices (feeding tubes, IV ports, etc.).

Some people argue that giving a patient food and water is not keeping her alive by artificial or extraordinary means, nor does it constitute "artificial life support," like dialysis or a heart-lung machine or whatever it is that we all fear being hooked up to in the end.

I'll certainly agree that withholding food and water from patients who are physically able to swallow it would be, well, murdering them in much the same way that putting a pillow over the face of a patient who is able to breathe would be murder. I mean, we don't go around depriving people of food, water, and air -- even when, say, they can't move to prevent us from suffocating them or they can't bring the food to their own mouths without assistance.

But when you have to employ medical devices and/or surgical procedures to get the air, food, or water into patients' bodies, then what you are doing is providing artificial life support. No matter how simple the procedure seems, no matter how much you say "it's just giving her food and water," it's still artificial life support in a way that holding food to someone's lips to allow them to eat it, or changing their diaper, or keeping them clean and free of bedsores and infections is not.

The legal issues behind the definition of artificial life support vary from state to state, of course, but it's my understanding that Florida law considers feeding tubes to be artificial life support. Abstract Appeal is the weblog of a Florida attorney (attorneys?) not connected with the case who has been following developments from the legal standpoint, and it's an excellent source of information.

Anyway, this particular case has obviously struck a deep loud chord for a lot of people. Is withdrawing her feeding tube merely allowing her to die, or is it the same as killing her? Who has the right to decide whether or when to discontinue such measures when the patient can't communicate? There are activists holding vigils and hunger strikes. The governor of Mrs. Schiavo's state (the brother of the president), has supported a bill that attempts to resolve the case in accordance with a hardline pro-life, and clearly rightwing worldview.

[update] Plus the US Congress has introduced a bill intended to force the case into federal court, though they deny having any political motives; they are just trying to save the woman's life: links here (free subscription req), and here and here.[/update]

It's a big hairy deal.

As I read through pages and pages and followed link after link to about a bazillion commentaries and news articles about the case, I was struck by a few things:

• One of the purported benefits of marriage is that your legal, sanctified spouse -- and not your parents or siblings or rich guys offering your spouse large sums of money or even Mel Gibson -- get to make medical decisions on your behalf in the event of your incapacitation. Nobody is talking about the sanctity of the Schiavos' marriage here. Why not? Isn't this the whole point? I mean, it doesn't take many clicks of the old mouse from the "Save Terri"-leaning websites to get to a "God Made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" type post on the same site. Or, as I asked above, do some kinds of sanctity trump others? On what grounds?
• The Florida courts have determined that removal of this particular woman's feeding tube is what she would have wanted -- whether or not her husband agrees. Why is it even an issue?
• Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo and her parents are devout catholics. Why are her parents trying to get them divorced? Which church teachings apply? Is divorce OK sometimes?
• It feels almost silly to mention it in the context of all these big issues, but this poor woman's condition is the result of her severely dysfunctional dieting/eating behavior. This is a whole separate issue, but one deserving of attention.

Anyway, it's a complicated issue, and I still want to avert my eyes when I see anything about it. It's just not a public issue. There is heartbreak either way, for everybody directly involved. The rest of us can only follow along.

I can't hear you

In my post the other day about the evolution dust-ups I mentioned at the very end my feelings about how the two sides of the argument are so far apart they can't hear each other. It's true of course in any dispute that engages people on a deep and non-rational level. I came across a good example of what I'm talking about via Ed from the excellent Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The example features a quote from a user of the ARN Design Forum message/discussion board.

The writer (Douglas Bender) is responding to a question about so-called 'abstinence only' sex-education, and his response is fascinating. He says, essentially, that the risks to the souls of the individuals engaging in premarital or promiscuous sex are perhaps more important than the risks to their physical well-being (pregnancy, disease, etc.); therefore "one should not teach them ways to destroy or taint their souls in 'safety.'"

In other words, if you're going to go out and do something that my religion says will endanger your souls, boys and girls, you're going to have to risk your body and your future to do it. These people don't much care that their misbegotten anti-sex education concept is not effective at preventing pregnancy nor at slowing the spread of sexually transmitted disease -- nor even that it doesn't do much to reduce the numbers of young people who go out and have sex, with or without the appropriate knowledge. What they care about is that they don't appear to be placing the immortal souls of our youth in peril -- a peril in which only they believe.

And we try to argue with them saying that their programs aren't effective and that kids are going to do it anyway, and we trot out our statistics and our examples of lives shattered and bodies ruined, but they don't care. That's not the problem, in their world. They don't want a secular society in which the public health system and the public education system work to prevent and/or address the real-world consequences of (in this case) raging teen hormones. They want sinners to be punished -- even if the "sinners" don't subscribe to their particular set of beliefs.

The middle ground is going away fast. There is less room every day for reasonable people to disagree and discuss and try to resolve anything. And it doesn't help matters when we dismiss the increasingly militant christian right as merely stupid and uninformed.

Don't even get me started about gay marriage.

Darwin v Jesus

I've been thinking a lot lately about this whole new wave of monkey business over evolution, and whether it should be taught in schools. While I'm firmly in the mainstream science camp (and I'm a card-carrying member of the heathen commie intellectual elite to boot), I'm not going to make any particular argument here; I'm just trying to sort a few things out and make a few observations.

As a moderately well-educated person who has spent many of the last 20+ years living and working on the edges of science, I just can't understand what the fuss is about. I don't have what you'd call a deep understanding of evolutionary biology, but it seems to me that this "evolution" thing is not very controversial among working scientists. I don't know any scientists who practice a religion called "Darwinism," nor any who would say "Darwin was right; therefore Jesus is wrong." I can't think of a single practicing scientist who would try to ascribe inerrancy to Darwin's writings.

I do know a few scientists who are deeply religious (christians but also jews, muslims & buddhists) and they just don't seem to find a conflict between their religious beliefs/practices and their understanding of biology, nor do they appear to find it necessary to spend time refuting such concepts as natural selection in their work or in their conversations.

I also know a few christians of the hard-core bible-is-the-inerrant-word-of-god persuasion and they seem to feel deeply threatened by science generally and poor old Darwin in particular. Their definitive argument seems to consist of the evidence that Darwin himself is dead, and Jesus is not, therefore education is evil and science classes should teach religion instead of science. I think I'm reading the bumper stickers correctly.

But in any case, the evolution-haters have come up with this "intelligent design" (ID) concept to replace the largely unsuccessful "creation science" efforts of a few years back. It's been written about all over the place lately; google it yourself, or you can look it up here at the Intelligent Design Network website. And TalkDesign.org is a website set up by the same folks as TalkOrigins.org; both of these explore the creation/evolution controversy, with the former focusing more exclusively on ID and its implications. TalkOrigins has a lovely FAQ page and an excellent archive.

Oh, and The Panda's Thumb is an excellent group blog in which the integrity of both science and science education are defended. Among other things.

So if I'm understanding ID correctly, one of their central points is that everything in the universe is so amazingly perfect that it couldn't be the result of a random process -- like, say, evolution -- and must be taken as evidence that an "intelligent designer" -- god, for example -- is running the show. On the one hand, this is a pretty harmless idea, and doesn't necessarily contradict natural selection, for example, as a description of the mechanism by which this "intelligent designer" constructs its designs. It does, however, seem to fall prey to the very thing I find most irksome about the popular understanding of Mr. Darwin's theory: namely that homo sapiens is somehow the "end product" of natural selection; that there is this orderly progression of increasingly sophisticated organisms from primeval ooze to lizards to monkeys to contemporary humans, such as we are. Like we evolved -- or someone evolved us -- on purpose. Seems goofy to me.

I know it's difficult to get your mind around it; didn't Galileo or somebody get into hot water for suggesting that the earth was not the center of the universe? This is sort of the same thing. We're not only not at the center of the universe, we might not even be the goal of evolution. Yeah, this is a bummer for some. And yeah, I know that it's disconcerting to think that it's possible no one is in charge. I imagine this is why religious traditions and creation stories are so essential to humans, and why pretty much every community of humans comes up with some way to account for it all and impose some sort of order. It's what we do.

And yes, I know that I'm going to go to hell for implying that there might not be a god. I told you already I was a heathen.

But I digress again.

What I was saying was that while such notions as those comprising ID are harmless enough on their surface, I am extremely nervous about the ways in which they are being used as levers to divide communities, ravage local school district budgets, and undermine the efforts of educators. (See Michelle Goldberg's recent Salon article, for just one recent example).

And this Darwin v Jesus argument is only one part of the current wave of hostility that I find increasingly difficult to stomach. Just as is the case on every other front in the ongoing culture war, the two sides of the argument are so far apart that they can't even hear each other. There is no middle ground. Everybody's getting more angry and/or more afraid.

And everybody's losing.

Premillenial Dispensationalism: why should I care?

You know those bumper stickers that say things like IN CASE OF RAPTURE, THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED or IN CASE OF RAPTURE, CAN I HAVE YOUR CAR? They are referring to this belief-- a "theory," if you like, apparently based mainly on highly subjective interpretations of the prophecies in the New Testament book of Revelations (and I guess some other places in the NT -- I'm no theologian), that the judgment day we've heard so much about will be upon us sooner rather than later. All is not lost, though, to the adherents of this theory: their god is merciful -- at least to those who play by certain rules. You see, before wreaking almighty havoc with his creation here on earth, this god will somehow gather up the righteous -- or merely the saved, depending on whom you ask (these are definitely folks who fall in the "good works are not enough" crowd) -- and transport them bodily into heaven where they will get front row seats to watch the remaining heathens who refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their savior go through seven years of tribulation. You know, the plagues of locusts, rivers of blood, solar and lunar eclipses, little tiny metallic horsemen buzzing around stinging people. That kind of thing.

Some of those who remain will be allowed to accept salvation at the end of the seven years, but it doesn't let them off the hook as far as all the plagues and calamities go -- and if they die in the meantime they don't get taken up until the end. They still have to do time in the grave and they have to wait with the riff raff until god has finished smiting all the unbelievers and then, after the Glorious Appearing of the messiah, they get to join their previously raptured friends and relatives, who will say "I told you so" for the ensuing thousand-year reign of Jesus in some kind of holy christian paradise.

A major proponent of this theology is Tim LaHaye, who wrote the improbably popular "Left Behind" series. You can read more about it at his website. He has some kind of Rapture think tank sort of thing going, called the Pre-Trib Research Center and appears to be moving an awful lot of product in the meantime.

There are a fair number of believers who are studying both scripture and the news, and keeping tabs on which prophecies have been fulfilled. Check out the "prophetic speedometer of end-time activity" at raptureready.com if you want to see how close we are to the big event.

As I personally am not a christian nor a serious student of theology, I can't really speak to the theological problems of premillenial dispensationalism. There are, however, a few serious christians who take on the version of it as presented in the "Left Behind" series that has been wildly popular in certain circles.

Perhaps most ambitiously, Fred Clark in his highly excellent weblog Slacktivist has undertaken a page-by-page exegesis of the series, which is archived here. He's only up to page 71, but it's fascinating. I'd been reading the series for a while when I came across his comments, and was relieved to learn that this was not in fact an essential tenet of mainstream christian doctrine.

Carl E. Olson in his altogether too-kind (IMHO) review of the 12th installment of the Left Behind Series in the National Review Online, explains:

"As a Catholic, I have every desire for people to become Christian and embrace the Gospel. But I see several serious problems with the "Left Behind books," of which I will just mention a couple.

"First, the "left-behind" theology is not the "Christian" or the "biblical" view of the end times, despite what LaHaye says, or what the media sometimes echoes. Premillennial dispensationalism and the belief in a Rapture event separate from the Second Coming is rejected, either explicitly or implicitly, by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and nearly every major Protestant denomination. Dispensationalism, with its particular views about the nature of the Church and the role of Jews in end-times events, was created in the 1830s by former Anglican priest John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and later systematized in the United States by C. I. Scofield (1843-1921) and Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952). Hal Lindsey's 1970 best-selling "The Late Great Planet Earth" took popular dispensationalism into secular culture, a feat repeated by the "Left Behind" series.

"As Evangelical scholar and Wheaton College graduate Ronald M. Henzel has decisively shown in his book, "Darby, Dualism, and the Decline of Dispensationalism, Darby built his entire theology on a radical dualism between heaven and earth that was unprecedented in the history of orthodox Christian thought. As Henzel notes, no dispensationalist has ever "been able to offer a single point of continuity between Dispensationalism and any other school of theology." This would all be as meaningful and esoteric as learning to lip-sync songs by Grand Funk Railroad except that the influence of dispensationalist thought in North America has been tremendous. Throughout the 20th-century it had a powerful pull on cultural and political matters, especially shaping perceptions of the Middle East and attitudes towards the nation of Israel."

And it is this influence on secular politics and culture that is of interest to me, and sometimes keeps me up late at night.Here are a couple of examples:

• The Godly Must Be Crazy: Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment in the online environmental news magazine Grist
• Apocalypse Please an article by George Monbiot

Anyway, more on this later -- especially as regards the whole global climate change thing.