Muzzled By Cruel Fate!

Woke up this morning and discovered that my connection was screwy, so I can't get online, post anything, or even so much as check my e-mail. (Except for here, from work.) If it isn't fixed by the time I get home, this could be a very dull weekend.

And I know: the obvious joke is something like, "See, Dave? God's punishing you for assigning a late date to the authorship of 2 Peter!" I just want to point out another thing, though, that may not have been clear: I was at my local store the other day and bought a fridge-pack of coke, and the price, after tax, came up $6.66. "Oh, wow!" said the cashier. "That must be some evil coke. I'd be nervous if I was you."

And it struck me then that catastrophizing superstition---and other things like anxiety and discomfort with sex---are not the exclusive property of evangelical Christians, and I didn't intend to suggest they were. Nor was I intending to imply that evangelical Christians are incapable of living without suffering psychological damage or couldn't mature into lovely human beings. What I was saying, which is not quite the same thing, is that if you want to get past our pan-cultural, universal human tendency to engage in catastrophic, superstitious thinking and binary obey-or-be-punished styles of morality, you can do it from anywhere. But evangelical Christians are, by the nature of their theology and worldview, going to have a slightly harder time than other people who aren't trapped by the evangelical's presuppositions. That's still something of a slam, but at least it's not a rabid one, and I think I can prove it. All I need is for my computer to work when I get home. If you don't hear from me, that's probably what's wrong.