Category Archives: religion

Mennonite Mothers are to Blame

Conspiracy Theories, Critical thinking, Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Health, Mennonites, Philosophy/Ideas, Rebel, religion, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

Let’s get back to Mennonites.  We have noticed that in many places in North America the resurgence of measles on account of vaccine resistance has occurred in areas with a large number of Mennonites. Why is that? Is that a coincidence?

In my view, the problem is that many Mennonites live in a culture of belief. What I mean by that is that often Mennonites robustly indoctrinate their young. From a very early age, Mennonite mothers (and of course fathers) are careful to foster Christian faith in their offspring. They teach those children that they must have faith. Faith in God and the inerrant word of God evinced in the Christian Bible. I know that many religious groups do the same thing, but Mennonites definitely do and they do it thoroughly. Their children must believe what they believe without evidence.

 

Personally, I consider this a mistake. That is a very bad habit to get into. By doing that Mennonites (and others who do it too) shackle their children. If parents don’t give their children the opportunity to think for themselves their children will not learn to think for themselves in the real world. They won’t learn if they are not given the opportunity. That means they must be allowed to make their own mistakes. Even if we think they are wrong. We should give them evidence to encourage them to change their minds. Not indoctrination. Children must learn to think and think critically. This is true even when it comes to important matters such as choosing to believe or not to believe what their parents have taught them. In fact, this thinking skill is most important in the most important matters.

If children do not learn to think for themselves, they will be constant prey for charlatans, con-men, and hucksters.  That goes for religious hucksters as well. And there are legions of them. They are ubiquitous. It is much better for children to learn to think for themselves and make decisions based on evidence and logical arguments or inferences rather than faith inculcated by their parents. Thinking is a good habit to get into. Believing without evidence is a very bad habit to get into. I know when we are very young we need to believe our parents to keep us out of children or get hurt. But when we are old enough we must learn to think for ourselves or we will be in big trouble. And if enough children overly credulous when they get older society will be in trouble.

Those are skills that are worth much more than any belief. Such skills are literally invaluable.  That is what parents should teach their young charges.

To take away their right and obligation to think for themselves is to rob them of what they will most need after their parents are gone, namely, the ability to think and overcome challenges which they will inevitably meet. I know parents mean well when they try to inculcate their children, but they are misguided when they do it after their children are old enough to think for themselves. And to the extent they are old enough, they should be allowed to make decisions for themselves.

It is only by trying to think that we can learn to cultivate a spirit of questioning, of scrutinizing evidence, of weighing evidence and making rational decisions.  These are the skills children will need as they grow and have to make important decision such as whether or not to take vaccines. Robbing children of that skill could be considered child abuse, because it robs them of one of the most important skills they will ever need and they will otherwise be unable to learn.

Parents can guide such learning and offer help to them in learning these skills, but to take away their decision-making power is unfair to them.

Children must also learn to avoid the trap of wishful thinking. It is one of the easiest traps to fall into. The most difficult thing in the world is to disbelieve what you want to be true.  The easiest thing in the world is to believe what you want to be true.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said it was not important to have the courage of one’s convictions. It was much more important to have the courage to attack one’s convictions.”  That is what we have to learn to do. That is the basis of critical thinking. It is perhaps its  most important element.  Nietzsche also said, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

He also said, “if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire”

Nietzsche realized he was radical in this respect. He showed thinking is fun. He said, “I am dynamite.” I think he meant to say that he was on this earth to break up encrusted ‘truths.’ He was here to attack them, to expose them.

I think many Mennonite mothers, but not all of them, and many Mennonite fathers, but again not all of them, have taught their children to believe what they have been indoctrinated to believe, and that is a dangerous thing as is shown by the fact that too many Mennonite children  have refused to believe measles vaccines are better for them than the alternatives, such as, in extreme cases, such as the woman in Ontario, eating wild flowers.

 

 

Infectious Beliefs

Ethics, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, religion, The Sleep of Reason, Vaccines

 

The British philosopher William Kingdon Clifford said “we should not believe anything except those propositions for which we have good evidence and that the confidence we place in our beliefs should be proportional to the amount of evidence that supports them.”  According to Clifford we have a moral duty to engage in the hard work of looking at science, or our own good work in order to consult the best available evidence conscientiously and honestly before we commit to believing.

 

We have to be open-minded. That means that we have to be willing to accept evidence that contradicts our cherished beliefs or that contradicts those propositions we would really like to be true and we must be willing to discard or modify them if the evidence entails such actions. Only on that basis are we entitled to belief something. Only on that basis can a belief be ethical.

 

The fundamental basis for Clifford’s position is that the harm, the evil, the tyranny, the cruelty of humanity is a function of our superstitions, ignorance, and prejudices. As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “we have to have not the courage of our convictions; we have to have the courage to attack our convictions.”

 

The basis of all superstition is that people believe things that are false and for which people have no good evidence.  Some people say believing something without evidence is acceptable provided we don’t act on it.  Clifford denies this. People often say that they live most of their lives based on rational evidence and if they choose from time to time to base their beliefs and their actions on horoscopes, or hunches, or perceived answers from God to our prayers, or perceived dictates from ancient sacred texts that is no one else’s business. We should be free to do that. Clifford disagrees.

 

Clifford says that if we believe a statement without evidence because we want to believe that, we are conditioning the mind to do that again. It will then tend to believe another statement without evidence just because we also want to believe it is true. This is really a kind of slippery slope argument. Credulity leads to ever more credulity. It is not possible to sequester such beliefs in order to avoid contamination. Contamination will follow inevitably from our acceptance of beliefs without evidence in one case. Our mind is so trained to think that this is acceptable.

 

Schafer gave an interesting example from his experience as an ethics consultant with hospitals.  If you accept beliefs, such as religious beliefs, without evidence, you are more likely to believe that they should let their children die rather than giving them a needed blood transfusion. One irrational belief leads to another and that other belief may be seriously harmful. In fact, this is what we might be experiencing now with  the explosion of anti-vax beliefs for which there is little or no evidence.

 

Another example that Schafer gave was the father of Turrel Dueck whose father was a fundamentalist Christian who believed that chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer was not appropriate. As a direct result of that irrational belief Turrel’s life was put in eminent danger. His father took him to Mexico for scientifically untested medicines that proved wholly useless. Irrational beliefs lead to more irrational beliefs. As a result of some irrational beliefs some have come to believe that homeopathy is a valid discipline, which Schafer said is total garbage.

Part of the problem is that people pass on their superstitions and their prejudices and irrational beliefs to their children. As a result, ordinary people in ordinary situations can infect others with their irrational beliefs. Irrational beliefs are never innocent. They often have seriously harmful consequences.

Schafer said “Clifford sees irrationality as a kind of infection.” The analogy Schafer employs is that of the person who knows she or he is infected with the aids virus having sex with an unprotected and unaware partner is committing a serious assault on that other person. So too with the person who relies on irrational beliefs. According to Schafer, “the penis or vagina in such circumstances can be a lethal weapon.”  The same is exactly true of irrational beliefs that are accepted without evidence. The people who knowingly engage in unprotected sex without telling their partners of the risk are engaged in spreading infection and ought to be punished. It might be that the criminal justice system is not the best forum for this but the principle remains and is equally applicable to those who adopt irrational beliefs.

“There is no such thing as an innocent religious belief, if religion is irrational,” says Schafer. If it’s not rational it shouldn’t be believed.

 

 

Credulity is Bad

Conspiracy Theories, Critical thinking, Epidemics/Pandemics, Morality, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, religion, Skeptical Philosophy, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

 

The philosopher William Kingdon Clifford argued, that to believe anything because it comforts you, or makes you feel good, or sustains you in life, or makes life a little less intolerable, is not just epistemically wrong, not just intellectually wrong, but morally wrong. In fact, if the decision that needs to be made is serious enough, such as whether or not to send people to war, or whether or not to cut health benefits to millions of people to raise money to give tax breaks to wealthy people, or whether or not to encourage  vaccines to fight serious diseases or encourage eating wild flowers instead, the decision could amount to one of the worst crimes that you can commit. That’s a pretty drastic statement. According to Clifford  It is a travesty and has some horrible consequences.  We will get to those later. In any event, according to Clifford this is a morally wrong. I think it is hard to argue with that. Serious decisions must be made on the basis of serious evidence, analysis, and scrutiny before they are made and innocent people suffer.

 

Arthur Schafer, a wonderful philosopher and ethicist from the University of Manitoba, and the first philosopher I ever heard speak in person, is a fan of Clifford’s reasoning. According to Schafer, Clifford sees our reliance   on illusion on false pictures of the universe, as amounting to creating in us a walking time bomb. As Schafer said at talk to a talk given to the Winnipeg Humanists, Atheists, and Skeptics, Society,  “to put it a little less dramatically, when we believe things because they make us feel good, rather than because we have good evidence for them, as Clifford argues, we make ourselves credulous people.” That Clifford says is wicked. Schafer agrees with that conclusion. So do I.

 

Again, we are talking only about serious important issues here. We are not talking about a decision to pick a red jelly bean rather than a white jelly bean from a cup. For those decisions we are completely free to make them on the basis of a whim, or an inkling, or an instinct or even on a guess.  But we can’t justify decisions that seriously affect the health or welfare of other people on such a basis.

 

If we are credulous people we can easily believe, as the Mennonite woman interviewed by the CBC radio did, that eating wild flowers to combat measles is better than taking vaccines. If we have been conditioned by our parents to be credulous, they are partly responsible. Credulity can be dangerous—to ourselves and others. That is why Clifford and Schafer said encouraging credulity is dangerous for society. Not just for the believer, for society.

We can believe whatever we want but we should be careful about helping to create a credulous society. As we are now seeing everywhere, that can cause a lot of harm.

Religion and Art in Quebec

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, religion

 

 

I must admit this photograph was taken of a church in Quebec town the name of which I neglected to take down. But I would be willing to bet it was named after a Saint. Quebec has hundreds of towns name after saints.  I never knew there were so many saints. We  don’t have any in Steinbach unless you count Andrew Unger.

You would be forgiven if you thought Quebec is a very religious province. This is an illusion.  It once was, but it is no longer. It’s not just that French women don’t want to have a lot of children anymore. Though that is part of it.  Quebecers also want expressions of religion, particularly by government officials, to be kept private.  They want a secular state. I agree with that to some extent.

The state should not impose any religion. No religions should be official. In fact, if you like religion, you should ensure the state stays out of it. The United States is one of the most religious countries in the world, and I think that is partly because it has insisted right in the Constitutionon that no religion could be “established” there. It is called the non-establishment clause. Many people think that because no religion was allowed to be established by the state each religion had to compete for adherence. Hence those religons have remained vibrant.  In states where there is an official religion, often it does not have to compete and hence the approved religion quickly loses its luster. Freedom of religion leads to robust religions. Established religions lead to stuffy religions. Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion and that is for the best, even for religions! Freedom from religion is important for others besides atheists.

In Quebec they try had—some would say too hard—to maintain a secular state. Just like France, eventually people rebelled against the dominance of the Catholic church and this spelled the doom of the church.

In Quebec I often get the feeling that art has replaced religion.  They are religious about art. They take art very seriously. Religion not so much.  Artists are everywhere and usually well respected. Priests and nuns are a dying breed mainly of old people who are literally dying out.

Yet Quebec also have magnificent churches. I took many photographs of them on our trip across Canada, and I usually tried to write down the name of the church. This time I failed to do that.

 

Notre-Dame-des-Neiges

One church I did take down the name was the church called Catholic Church Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in the city of Trois-Pistoles, Quebec on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River.  It was built from 1882-1887 and the architect was David Ouellet. The town is said to have been named for a silver goblet worth three pistoles, an old French coin, that was lost in the river in the 17th century. The coin is long gone. The church remains.

Is Hell the Answer?

Classic Books, Morality, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Some people think Hell provides an answer to the problem of evil. The parents who tortured their 5-year old child will be punished with eternal damnation for their crime. Does that make it right? What is hell? It is only divine vengeance? Some people believe in vengeance. Ivan didn’t. Neither do I. Even if the vengeance is levied by God. Vengeance brings no justice. It heals nothing. It makes nothing right.

As Ivan asks of the hideously cruel parents who made their 5-year-old girl stay in the freezing cold stinking outhouse all night, begging gentle Jesus for help, what good does it to do put them in hell. Ivan asks this question: “What good would it do to send the monsters to hell after they have inflicted their suffering on children? How can their being in hell put things right?” That’s not the help the little girl was praying for from gentle Jesus. She wanted Jesus to stop the pain. And he failed at that.

Ivan asks another good question

 “Besides, what sort of harmony can there be as long as there is a hell? To me harmony means forgiving and embracing everybody and I don’t want anyone to suffer any more. And if the suffering of little children is needed to complete the sum total of suffering to pay for the truth, I don’t want that truth, and I declare in advance that all the truth in the world is not worth the price!…No I want no part of any harmony; I don’t want it. I don’t want it out of love for mankind. I prefer to remain with my unavenged suffering and my unappeased anger—even if I happen to be wrong.

 

That is the truly amazing part of Ivan’s rebellion. Even if he is wrong and God provides a satisfactory answer for why he permitted children to suffer so cruelly, Ivan wants no part of that, even if he is wrong!

Unlike all the modern terrorists, or revolutionaries, he does not look for some harmony in the future to justify the pain. Nothing justifies the pain of that 5-year-old girl. “Such harmony is rather overpriced,” says Ivan.

Ivan tells his brother Alyosha that he is returning the ticket from God. Echoing, Albert Camus, Alyosha says “that is rebellion. Ivan finishes this discussion by asking Alyosha another question:

“…let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that in order to attain this, you would have to torture one single little creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could have built that edifice  would you agree to it?”

 

And Alyosha replied, “No I would not.” Even the one truly deeply religious and most saintly of the Karamazovs would not accept such a price.

As moral philosophers would say,  that end does not justify that means!

And of course, neither Alyosha nor Ivan is like God—all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. God should have been able to find a better way. Why didn’t he?

None of the Karamazovs are able to answer that question.

 

 

From a Distance

Classic Books, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Julie Gold in her magnificent song, “From a Distance” was engaged in her own modern religious quest. Here are the lyrics to that song:

 

“From a distance the world looks blue and green
And the snow-capped mountains white
From a distance the ocean meets the stream
And the eagle takes to flight

From a distance there is harmony
And it echoes thru the land
It’s the voice of hope
It’s the voice of peace
It’s the voice of every man

From a distance we all have enough
And no one is in need
There are no guns, no bombs, no diseases
No hungry mouths to feed

From a distance we are instruments
Marching in a common band
Playing songs of hope
Playing songs of peace
They’re the songs of every man

God is watching us
God is watching us
God is watching us, from a distance”

 

Ivan Karamazov in the novel The Brothers Karamazov asked a very important question: Can any future good justify the tears of that 5-year-old girl freezing in the outhouse in which her mother locked her for some minor offence,  all night begging gentle Jesus for help? You tell me.

 

Will it make sense in some day in the future when the mystery is revealed to us and we understand what God understands?  Will that answer provide the answers we need?

 

Dostoevsky, of course never heard Julie’s song but he did consider such an answer. This is what Ivan said in the book:

“I want to be here when everybody understands why the world has been arranged the way it is. It is on that craving for understanding that all human religions are founded. So I am a believer.”

 

I think Ivan, who is always referred to as an atheist, claims, claims to believe in God. He says he has faith. Faith that an answer will be provided?

 

Yet even Ivan, after saying he is a believer, asks, “What about the children?” Ivan says any answer they will get that is powerful enough for all creatures on earth to shout hosanna, will still not be good enough for him. That is the day of universal harmony when the answer to his questions will be revealed and universal harmony restored to the world. Then we will learn everything that will prove to us that it was all worthwhile. The evil and suffering in the world will be justified by the end obtained. The problem of evil will be solved on that day we now can see only from a distance.

 

But Ivan cannot accept even that. As he says, “that’s just the hurdle I can’t get over, because I cannot agree that it makes everything right. Ivan says,

“I have no wish to be a part of their universal harmony. It’s not worth one single little tear of that martyred little girl who beat her breast with her tiny little fist, shedding her tear and praying to sweet Jesus to rescue her in the stinking outhouse. It’s not worth it because that will have remained unatoned for. And those tears must be atoned for; otherwise, there can be no harmony.”

 

At least for Ivan Karmamazov, Julie Gold is wrong. There is no harmony.

 

 

 

The Great Rebellion

Books, Classic Books, Rebel, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

One of the great themes in the novel The Brothers Karamazov is the problem of evil. In other words, is the fact that evil exists in the world proof that God does not exist. If God is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, as most believe, how could God allow evil to exist? Sice evil exists, it is argued, God cannot exist.

 

In the novel, Ivan Karamazov says “I’m not properly equipped to deal with matters that are not of this world.” In other words, he cannot fathom how this world makes sense and finds no solace in saying it is mysterious and will all make sense when we are in the world that follows. To him that is no answer to the problem of evil. It is not good enough to say we will learn in the next world why evil was necessary. Yet, amazingly, he accepts that it makes sense, even though it does not appear that way. This is hard to untangle. As Ivan tells his brother, Alyosha,

“I would advise you too Alyosha never to worry about these matters, least of all whether He exists or not. All such problems are quite unsuitable for a mind created to conceive only three dimensions. And so not only do I readily accept God, but I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, of which we really know absolutely nothing, the divine order of things, the meaning of life, and the eternal harmony into which we are all to be refused.”

 

Even though we don’t know these things we must accept them. Ivan says, “I believe in his Word.”  In other words, he has faith. I think that is what he means. What else could he mean?  Yet, there is something he does not accept.  As Ivan says,

“I do not accept this God-made world, although I know that it exists. I absolutely refuse to admit its existence. I want you to understand that it is not God that I refuse to accept, but the world that he has created.—what I do not accept and cannot accept is the God-created world.”

 

What Ivan cannot accept is a world in which children suffer. How could a loving God create such a world?  And if it is necessary for a child to suffer—even just one child—Ivan cannot accept that. Yet Ivan, despite that,  amazingly has faith. Or at least that is what I call it. Dostoevsky does not use that word. He uses a different word, “trust.” That might be a better word. As Ivan says,

“…let me make it clear that, like a babe, I trust that the wounds will heal, and the scars will vanish, that the sorry and ridiculous spectacle of man’s disagreements and clashes will disappear like a pitiful mirage, like the sordid invention of a puny,  microscopic, Euclidian, human brain, and that in the end, in the universal finale, at the moment universal harmony is achieved, something so magnificent will take place that it will satisfy every human heart, allay all indignation, pay for all human crimes, for all the blood shed by men, and justify everything that has happened to men.  Well that day may come to pass—but I personally still do not accept this world. I refuse to accept it!”

 

That is the great rebellion of Ivan Karamazov. Nothing can make him accept a world in which a child must spend an entire night freezing in a shed at night until he dies.  Nothing can justify that in Ivan’s eyes. Even if it is a miracle. This is the magnificent rebellion of Ivan Karamazov. The only rebellion that compares to it is the rebellion of Huck Finn who will go to hell rather than give up his friend Jim. These, I think are the two most astounding rebellions in all of English literature and they are what makes this novel and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the two greatest novels ever! Both novels embody magnificent rebellions against what they find on their religious quest.

The Problem of Evil: Tortured Children

Books, Classic Books, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

One of the greatest problems in the history of religious thought is the problem of evil.  In its simplest form it goes like this: How can God exist if evil exists? If evil exists that means there is no God. Dostoevsky deals with that problem in The Brothers Karamazov in a remarkable way.

In a lengthy discussion with his highly religious brother Alyosha ,  Ivan Karamazov—the man of reason—considers the problem through a number of case in which parents torture their young children. These adults “have a passion for inflicting pain on children.” These people are kind and gentle to adults, but enjoy torturing children. Ivan says,

 “They even love the children because of the tortures they inflict upon them. What excites them is the utter helplessness of the little creatures. The angelic trustfulness of the child who has nowhere to turn for help—yes that’s what sets the vicious blood of the torturer afire.”

What could be more evil than such a parent? How is this possible? It seems incomprehensible. No, it is incomprehensible. But Ivan has collected stories of this phenomenon. He even claims “many people have this trait.”

Ivan described the actions of the little girl’s parents this way in horrible detail:

“…these refined parent parents subjected their five-year-old girl to all kinds of torture. They beat her, kicked her, flogged her, for no reason that they themselves knew of. The child’s whole body was covered with bruises. Eventually they devised a new refinement. Under the pretext that the child dirtied her bed (as though a five-year-old deep in angelic sleep could be punished for that), they forced her to eat excrement, smearing it all over her face. And it was the mother who did it! And then that woman would lock her little daughter up in the outhouse until morning, and she did so even on the coldest nights, when it was freezing. Just imagine the woman being able to sleep with the child’s cries coming from that infamous outhouse! Imagine the little creature unable to understand what is happening to her, beating her sore little chest with her tiny fist, weeping hot, unresentful, meek tears and begging ‘gentle Jesus’ to help her and all this happening in that icy, dark stinking place! Do you understand this nonsensical thing, my dear friend, my brother you novice who is so eager to spend his life in service  of God? Tell me, do you understand the purpose of that absurdity? Who needs it and why was it created? They say that man could not do without it on earth, for otherwise he would not be able to learn the difference between good and evil. But I say I’d rather not know about their damned good and evil than pay such a terrible price for it.  I feel that all universal knowledge is not worth that child’s tears  when she was begging ‘gentle Jesus’ to help her! I’m not even talking about the suffering of adults: they at least have eaten their apple of knowledge, so the hell with them. But its different when it comes to children.”

 

I feel that Dostoevsky has put the problem of evil as strongly as it could be put. What in this world could possible make those tears of that freezing child worth it? Ivan suggests nothing could. Do you disagree? Who could possibly disagree. How could a loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God permit that to happen? Even truth is not worth it. Even freedom is not worth it? The entire world is not worth it.

Ivan also says there is no way out. He says no remote future harmony is good enough either to justify it.

 Ivan asked his angelic brother Alyosha what he thought of this mystery.  His answer, “I want to suffer too.” Is that an answer? It is not a rational answer as far as I can see. Yet, compassion, fellow feeling is the only possible response that makes any sense. It can’t possibly justify what happened.  But no logic can provide a satisfactory answer. No reason can provide an answer. It would only be what Ivan calls “Euclidian gibberish.” What faith could provide a justification? What retribution could provide a solution? Personally, I see no way out.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Amplify the worst of religion

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Artificial Intelligence, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Somewhere on this trip to the southern USA I also learned  that in India spiritual guides are giving advice to truth seekers.  Nothing really unusual about that, in the most religious country in the world. India, not the United States has earned that designation. But this time there is a difference. The spiritual guides are AI Chatbots! Spiritual advice is being given online by machines without human intervention. Apparently, thousands of people have signed up for the spiritual advice from the Bhagavad Gita an epic scripture that has the answers to all our problems.  Many Indians in the past have got spiritual advice from that source but not with the twist of AI to tailor the advice to you!

 

According to Salimah Shivji of the CBC, people are now fearful that some will use religion online to spike up political violence?  This is not impossible. We have all seen what happened in the US in earlier elections. As well, look at some of the things American televangelists have done. Much of it does not inspire confidence. After all, the internet is quite capable of amplifying the worst of religion, just as it currently does with politics!

 

Christian Radio Blues

2024 Trip to South West United States, religion

 

Traveling through the USA by car is an amazing experience. This is a country that is full of surprises. And they never end. On the second day of our trip,  I marvelled at the radio stations in South Dakota. Mainly Christian stations. Preachers preaching. Choirs singing. Holiness on the march.  Dull, dull, dull in other words. To me the stations seem sad. Boringly sad. Selling fantasies for cheap. To me these Christian radio stations are about as interesting as muzak in elevators.  I know others will disagree with me on this so I hope we can just agree  to disagree, From my perspective I was thankful there were a few National Public Radio stations to break up the monotony with some genuine conversation.