Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How a Buddha Got Its Sight Back (April 13) "The small circular cavities visible on their faces once held inlaid ceramic or glass pupils. These were fixed in place using a technique known as qianmu, in which the eyes were inserted into carved sockets. Over the centuries, as Yungang’s soft sandstone yielded to wind and rain, and later to war and theft, these fragile elements loosened, slipped free, and vanished."

2. Countdown Standard (April 13) From xkcd.

3. ‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon (April 12, via) "The tactic of mass destruction of homes in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of committing genocide, was described as domicide by academics, a strategy that is used to systematically destroy and damage civilian housing to render entire areas uninhabitable."

4. “They Hopped” — Ken Ham’s Answer to Kangaroo Ark Migration Based on False Information (April 11) "The only placental mammals that appear to have reached Australia before human arrival are rats. And rats, as anyone who has studied dispersal biology knows, are perhaps the single most capable overwater dispersers among all mammals. The fact that only rats made it is actually powerful evidence for how difficult the crossing was, not evidence that a land bridge made it easy." (Similar to the video I wrote about here: Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories.)

5. 【可一儿歌】050 小燕子丨KeYi Children's Song丨【三淼儿童官方频道】 For those of you who are interested in what kind of Chinese songs my toddler is listening to.

6. Newcomb’s Paradox occurs in real life (April 17) "I’ve never heard anyone say, 'I’m a one-boxer if the second box contains $1M, but a two-boxer if the second box contains $1,001.'"

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. ‘One of the good ones’ obscures a dangerous lie (April 9) "So this man who had fled a country where he had been beaten and imprisoned by military police for no reason encountered America’s militarized police who beat and imprisoned him for no reason."

2. And this take from the Onion (parody site, not actually true): Melania Trump Slams Baseless Reports Linking Her To Wrong Wealthy Pedophile (April 10, via) 

3. The American Gulag (April 6, via) "Damas and Lunas Campos were among the roughly 73,000 people whom ICE currently holds in a tangle of detention camps sprawled across the country. And more centers are under construction. Many of them are former warehouses designed to function, as ICE acting director Todd Lyons put it last year, 'like Amazon Prime for human beings.'"

4. Trump's 'Praise Be to Allah' Easter Taunt Should Be Immediately Recognizable to U.S. Christians (April 7, via) "When the Roman state executed Jesus, according to John 19:19, it placed above his head a sign that read Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

5. Conversion therapy is soul-crushing — and it doesn't work (April 2, via) "I know this because I lived it for eight years. The guidance I was given ranged from the practical — “Don’t watch gay porn” — to the outlandish — “By developing platonic relationships with other men, my sexual desires for them would disappear.” But what it truly does is try to disintegrate a person’s body, mind and spirit."

6. Hegseth leads Pentagon prayer service with faux Bible verse made famous by ‘Pulp Fiction’ (April 16)

7. ICE detains 86-year-old in US to marry long-lost love, family says (April 15)

Update on that: 85-year-old French widow detained by ICE returns to France (April 17)

8. Amid quarrel with pope, Trump strips Miami charity of funding to house migrant kids (April 15) "'It’s incredibly psychologically harmful to be moved,' sometimes as stressful as serious illness or a death in the family, Latham said. 'For little kids, moving repeatedly creates bonding issues and destroys the sense of both self and community. They don’t know who they are and where they will be' from day to day."

9. Minnesota has charged an ICE officer with assault for alleged actions during immigration surge (April 16) "One victim told state law enforcement the encounter led them to believe there was a "crazy person driving down the road aiming guns at people," the complaint says."

10. She Helped the Authorities Deport Her Abuser. Then They Deported Her Back to Him. (April 6) "Carmen’s lawsuit, ICWC v. Noem, accuses the Trump administration of ignoring deferred action status and removing survivors from the country anyway; the administration is also deporting people like Carmen who don’t yet have the status but may be eligible once USCIS reviews her application. The case was filed against ICE and USCIS and seeks to represent a wide class of survivors who applied for U visas, T visas, and other protections under the Violence Against Women Act."

Really rich that these MAGAs are claiming they're "protecting women" by being mean to trans people. Here's something that would actually protect women: Don't deport immigrants who are survivors of domestic abuse.

Taking My Kid To Church: "The Belief That Baffled the Best of the Buddhists"

Image text: "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart." Image source.

Part of the Taking My Kid To Church blog series

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Those of you who grew up in the church, going to VBS and Christian camps, probably know this song:

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart
Where?
Down in my heart
Where?
Down in my heart
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart
Where?
Down in my heart to stay

(Apologies if that song is stuck in your head for the rest of the day.)

There are a bunch of other verses to this song too- "I've got the peace that passes understanding down in my heart", "I've got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus, down in my heart", "I've got the wonderful love of my blessed Redeemer way down in the depths of my heart." And of course, "And if the devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tack."

It's the sort of song that's very easy to make up new verses for. It's upbeat and goofy and fun, especially on those verses that try to shove a whole long phrase into the space where "joy, joy, joy, joy" was. I remember one especially fun camp leader that would add some flourishes like "and I'm so happy WOO WOO so very happy WOO WOO, I've got the love of Jesus in my H-E-A-R-T" etc. 

Anyway, yeah this song has lots of verses, some more "official" than others, and I remember hearing one verse that goes like this: "I've got the belief that baffled the best of the Buddhists way down in the depths of my heart."

Doing a bit of googling, I don't find this verse in any official writeup of the lyrics to this song, though there are references to something like it here, here, and here. I guess it's an extra verse that someone made up but never really got widespread popularity.

Okay but let's stop and think about this. Why is "the belief that baffled the best of the Buddhists" thrown into this song as a positive way to describe our faith in Jesus, and nobody bats an eye? Isn't that a little, uh, weird? Isn't that a little, uh, us-vs-them, kind of introducing an unnecessary conflict into this song? And also, why do we Christians see it as a good thing that followers of other religions are "baffled" about us? And, has anyone singing this song ever even met a Buddhist? Do we have any actual evidence for this claim that Buddhists are baffled?

I don't actually think Buddhists are sitting around being "baffled" by Christians, and if they were, why would that be a good thing?

Even though this particular verse of "I've got the joy joy joy joy" doesn't seem to have caught on, the ideas found in it are widespread in white evangelical American culture. The idea that people of other religions just don't understand Christianity, and that they all judge us and think we're ridiculous and our faith makes no sense, and we Christians see that as a badge of honor. And the way that we're so quick to buy into these one-dimensional stereotypes about people who believe differently than us, happily repeating them in a fun song, without stopping to think about whether we're misunderstanding or misrepresenting other people's views. The idea that we should actually ask them what they believe never even occurs to us. (Can't do that- you might be led astray! You need a Christian leader to tell you what atheists believe, what Jews believe, what Buddhists believe, what Muslims believe, etc.)

So all of this has got me thinking about what I'm going to tell my kid about ideologies I don't agree with. I'm not evangelical anymore; I'm a Christian feminist- so the "ideologies I don't agree with" is a very different set than back then. But this is something every parent should think about, regardless of which beliefs they themselves hold.

Okay let me give you an example. In my August 27 blogaround, I had some mean things to say about Matt Walsh: "I totally understand if you do not want to spend 1 hour and 10 minutes of your time thinking about Matt Walsh" and "If you are unfortunate enough to know who Matt Walsh is". I stand by that; I believe his ideology is abhorrent enough that it calls for this kind of criticism. 

BUT. This is not how you should explain him to your children.

When I write in that way, I expect that my readers recognize that I'm coming from a certain perspective, and I have strong opinions about things- typically things like feminism and queer acceptance- and so I have this kind of emotional reaction, and I believe that it's fair to use this kind of strong language, but you don't have to agree with me on that. Even if you generally agree with me on issues related to feminism, that doesn't even necessarily mean that you yourself would also describe Matt Walsh in such harsh terms. When someone uses language like that, you should recognize that their own feelings and biases are playing a big role in it. And sure, there may be a lot of solid evidence to back up those feelings and biases- but you should really look into the evidence yourself first, before you just accept their description at face value. (Although, honestly, your life will be better if you don't bother learning who Matt Walsh is. ... Wow this is so meta, because hopefully you also recognize that that statement has a lot to do with my own biases. IT'S THE TRUTH THOUGH.)

Anyway what I want to say is, children don't know any of that. Or, maybe I should just speak for myself- when I was a child, I thought in terms of what's true and what's false, and I trusted that my parents had the right answers. Yes, I was one of those kids who questioned a lot, but overall I believed it. It never would have occurred to me to realize "we are describing this group of people (who believes differently than us) in a way that is COMPLETELY NOT what they would say to describe themselves."

I'm not even sure if "bias" is the right word for this. It's more like... when you describe the ideology of people who disagree with you, do you make them sound ridiculous, or just plain evil, or do you make them sound like good people who have good reasons for their beliefs but they're just missing a few key facts, or somewhere in between, or what? And it's totally valid to answer that question differently in different situations, depending on your audience and what goal you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to have a reasonable discussion and convince people to change their minds, or are you "blowing off steam" in a setting where everyone already shares your ideology? There's a time and place for both of those- but you have to be aware of that. 

And my point is, children are not aware of that.

Like if I tell my kid "conservative Christians want to make such-and-such law because they hate trans people", isn't the kid gonna take it at face value? Like he will think I mean if you walk up to a conservative Christian and say "so, you support such-and-such law because you hate trans people?" then they will respond "yes, that's right." Whereas actually what I mean is, people on both sides of this issue make all sorts of arguments about it, but in my personal opinion, it can all be summed up by saying they hate trans people. If you're familiar with how arguing about politics works, then it's obvious that that's what I meant. But a little kid doesn't have that background knowledge.

(Though honestly I don't actually think the issue is "they hate trans people"- I think there's more to it than that, I think it's about people in power throwing trans people under the bus because it's politically useful for them, and then the average conservative person hears all this misinformation about trans people and buys into it- which, to some extent it's ignorance, but also they're not innocent, because if you're an adult you should be able to recognize when some ideology is that full of bullshit- you should realize "hey they are saying a lot of dehumanizing things about trans people, without actually talking to actual trans people about what their lives are actually like- something feels wrong about this"... lol I am not going to tell my kid all of that either. He is a toddler.)

Anyway...

This is one reason that I'm glad my husband is not a Christian. It's good for our son to see that people can believe different things and it's fine. And if any Christian tries to teach him some strawman argument about what non-Christians believe, he'll know it's not true, because that's not what Daddy is like.

Though of course when you say it's "fine" for people to believe different things, well, it really depends what belief you're talking about. Some ideologies are really harmful. There may be some ideologies that are so evil that you decide no, I'm not going to let my kid interact with that at all. You have to decide where to draw that line- and there could be a bunch of different factors that come into it, like whether you yourself are part of the demographic that is harmed by that ideology, whether you have close family members that believe in that ideology and you want your kids to be able to meet them, etc. I don't think there's one "right answer."

I realize that I've written this whole blog post but it doesn't actually have any answers. I guess I won't try to give answers here, because it really depends a lot on the specific situation. I just want to write this to say this is an important thing that parents should all be aware of. The power difference between a parent and a little kid is so huge that you can easily make them believe in whatever ideology you believe in, as if it's so obvious that it's true and everyone who disagrees with you is evil or stupid. But I would say it's immoral to use the power difference in that way. And when the kid gets older, that power difference won't exist anymore, at least not in the same way- so that strategy won't "work" in the long run. Your kid will realize the world is bigger than what you told them.

Overall, the goal has to be teaching your kid critical thinking skills, rather than teaching them the "correct" opinion to hold on every single issue. Your kid will end up disagreeing with you on some things, and that's okay. I think the main thing has to be teaching them to have compassion for people, and let that guide them as they try to sift through what's true and what's not.

And definitely teach them that it's a huge red flag when someone says "here is what people from this other ideology (which I don't agree with) believe", without actually listening to actual members of the ideology describe their beliefs in their own words.

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Related:

I Went to a Buddhist Site and Nothing Was "Sad"

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

Taking My Kid To Church: "We are so happy to know Jesus, we want to share that with other people!"

"My Evangelism Isn't Working" is a Very Creepy Thing to Say 

"This Doesn't Make Sense, But It Must Be Right"

Blogaround

1. Lightyear Changes EVERYTHING about the Pixar Theory! (June 24) "But it also means that the entire plot of the movie 'Lightyear' that we see is actually a live-action movie inside of the Pixar universe. Like, within the movie, Buzz Lightyear is being played by a real actor, like in the same way that Chris Evans out here in the real world plays the character of Steve Rogers."

2. New AI-generated horsies (July 22) "How to combine a four-legged horse with a two-legged rooster? Maybe as a three-legged animal."

3. Dutch collector ordered to return Buddha statue (July 20) "For local villagers, the statue is a significant cultural relic that had been at the Puzhao Temple in Sanming, Fujian province, where they could honor and worship it before it was stolen in December 1995, according to the high court."

4. Chinese Paddlefish That Outlived Dinosaurs Now Extinct, IUCN Says (July 22) "'The world’s failure to safeguard sturgeon species is an indictment of governments across the globe, who are failing to sustainably manage their rivers and live up to their commitments to conserve these iconic fish and halt the global loss of nature,' said Arne Ludwig, chair of the IUCN Sturgeon Specialist Group."

5. Next time I fall (July 23) "We can’t get up to present our 'personal testimony' about walking down the gangplank onto Ellis Island, but we can tell about our 'struggle' with sexual purity. And so, in a sense, the personal testimony of every child-convert, once they pass into adolescence and youth group, becomes something akin to that Seinfeld episode about being 'master of your domain.' We don’t have the conversion narrative expected by first-generation converts, and so we start to sound like we’re sharing at a 12-step MA meeting."

6. Woman detained for commemorating tablets to Japanese war criminals (July 25) [content note: genocide]

7. Chinese astronauts enter Tiangong space station's new lab module after dock (July 26) Cool!

Great Wall (Qinhuangdao, China)

I know what you're thinking. "Perfect Number, you've been living in China 5 years, and you haven't shown us pictures of the Great Wall! What gives? Cough 'em up!" All right, here they are.

So, normally, when people go to the Great Wall, they go to one of the locations in Beijing. But as you may have guessed, the Great Wall is really long and there are a whole bunch of different sites along it that tourists can visit. These photos are from Qinhuangdao 秦皇岛, a "small city" (3 million people) in northern China, near Beijing.

This particular location along the Great Wall is called Jiaoshan 角山.

Here's the entrance gate at the bottom of the mountain. This is really cool because it looks like the Chinese character 山 [shān] which means "mountain."

There is a chair lift you can take. Or you can climb the Great Wall to get to the top of the mountain. I took the chair lift to go up and then walked back down. Highly recommend.

After getting off the chair lift at the top of the mountain, I walked for a REALLY LONG TIME and came to this Buddhist monastery:

Check out the view here. It was AMAZING.

Then I had to walk all the way back from the monastery to the chair lift (it was really far and such a hot day), and keep going that direction to get to the Great Wall.

But first, the bathroom!

Here's the outside of the women's bathroom. Just a small concrete room.

Here's the women's bathroom at the top of this mountain. No doors or walls, just a few holes in the concrete floor, leading right outside and down the side of the mountain. As you may have guessed, it smelled terrible. But I was thinking of you, readers, so I took the time to get a photo.

Holy crap look at the amazing view though. I was THERE. It was AWESOME.

Okay finally at the Great Wall:

The Great Wall was blocked off here- you can't walk on it in that direction. The other direction leads down to the bottom of the mountain. That's how I went.

There were some towers with ladders that you actually have to climb up. Kind of scary.

I met some friendly Chinese people on the Great Wall that day. It wasn't that crowded, and everybody felt so exhausted from climbing all the stairs, so people would just hang out in little groups on top of the towers or wherever there was a place to rest.

The view though. Wow.

Did I mention it was SO HOT there? UNBELIEVABLY HOT. China uses Celsius and I... uh... don't, so I only have a vague sense of *exactly* how hot it is, but I would guess 90 degrees Fahrenheit that day. I made sure to have a water bottle with me at all times and drank from it constantly, and I was still kind of worried I would keel over from dehydration.

There was another set of stairs for people who feel the Great Wall is too steep.

This sign says "Be careful steps, don not trust" which doesn't really make me feel safe...

It was so worth it. I love the Great Wall so much. The view was just AMAZING. Really hot day, and it's exhausting to climb all those stairs (or take the chair lift up and then walk down all the stairs, like I did). But worth it.

Photos from Qinhuangdao 秦皇岛:
Great Wall at Jiaoshan 
First Pass Under Heaven
Laolongtou (starting point of Great Wall)

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If you want to see more posts like this, consider supporting me on patreon~ When I reach my goal of $20/month, I'll do a series of blog posts about various aspects of life in Shanghai. With lots of photos. ^_^

Lingshan Buddha (Wuxi, China)

Lingshan Buddha (灵山大佛 língshān dàfú) is one of the biggest buddhas in the world. It is 88 m (289 ft) tall- compare that with the Statue of Liberty, which has a height of 151 ft (and that's from the feet to the torch, not feet to head).

This thing is huge. And pretty new too- it was completed in 1996. It's in a city called Wuxi (无锡 wúxī, for those of you unfamiliar with Chinese pronunciation, it's like "woo she"), about 1 hour from Shanghai by train.

Here are photos I took when I went there. First of all, it's a pretty long walk from the entrance to the actual Buddha. (There is a cute little tourist bus you can buy tickets for, if you don't want to walk.) Along the way, there is some pretty architecture, a fountain, and some kind of Buddhism-related thing where you can hang prayers I guess. (The fountain has this cool show with a lotus opening and a buddha inside. I didn't take pictures of that, but other people have posted videos on youtube.)

In the photo above, you can see some kind of rack where people hang Buddhist prayers. Hendrix says each of the little red-tassel things has a prayer written on it, and people can buy them and hang them up on those racks.

The above photo is the view from the bottom of the stairs. There are a ton of stairs you have to climb to get to the Buddha. In this photo you can see a photographer selling souvenir photos.

At the bottom of the stairs, there was also a little pad that people would come and kneel on. (I don't have it in my photos though.)

The highest you can go is the feet (see those people up there walking around by the feet?). I didn't end up going that high because the line was super long. But if you want to see photos, click here or here.

Here's the view from the base of the buddha, looking down.

In the above photo, you can see how there are tons of trees around, and Lingshan Buddha is sort of in the middle of nowhere, far from the city. I really liked seeing so many trees because I live in Shanghai, where everything is always crowded and it feels like all of China is so full of cities and so many people- but it's not. There are some places in China that have huge forests and very few people.

See that gold building in the distance? There's a theatre in there, plus some artwork related to Chinese culture.

In the above photo, you can see where people burn incense and hang prayers, around the base of the buddha.

In the base of the statue, there is a room with a ton of little buddha statues (shown in the photo above). Each one is maybe 1 foot high.

Look at how the buddha just completely towers over EVERYTHING. It's kind of freaky, when you're driving out to Lingshan and you get close and you can see this giant buddha standing there among the mountains. This thing is massive.

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Related post: I Went to a Buddhist Site and Nothing Was "Sad" (my photos from Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou)

Tiger Hill (Suzhou, China)

Here are more pictures from Suzhou. These ones are from Tiger Hill (虎丘).

This tower is sometimes called "the leaning tower of Suzhou" because it leans.

Besides the statues in this photo, there was also a line of huge gold buddha statues, with bowls of fruit in front of them, and pillows on the ground, where people would come and bow down. But I don't know if we're allowed to take pictures of that.

This is 试剑石, the sword-testing rock. Apparently some king used to test his swords on it, I guess.

Bamboo forest

The weather was great and all the scenery was so beautiful~

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More Suzhou pictures:
Shantong Street, Xuanmiao Temple, river cruise
Humble Administrator's Garden