33 years ago, on November 10th, 1976 the Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest freighter on the Great Lakes from 1958 to 1971, sank before a distress signal could even be sent.  Jessie Cooper, Captain of another freighter, the Anderson, reported the Fitzgerald was having problems shortly before they lost contact with it.  So mighty was the Fitzgerald that the Coast Guard initially did not take Cooper seriously.
I saw this video over at Pharyngula, so I decided to read up on it.  The wreck was before my time, so I have no real emotional investment, at least by comparison to more recent tragedies that have occurred within my lifetime, yet I'm really fascinated by the event.

It's clear that empathy drives our attention towards disasters like this, but why?  Wouldn't it be less strenuous just to turn away and pretend they didn't exist?  Perhaps our curiosity is a stronger impulse than empathy (since most of us suffer at least in small ways when witnessing the suffering of others, yet we still can't turn away).  Or perhaps we need to empathize and sympathize with others in order to be healthy, happy human beings.  I honestly don't know.

Life is really hard at times, even for the best of us.  I suspect there's nobody on Earth whose life I would not view differently, with more understanding, from being in their shoes.  I can't imagine how awful it would be to die by drowning in a winter storm.  I have had nightmares about drowning.  It's really curious that I feel compelled to read about people who died in that fashion.

Whatever the motivation, I think empathy is my favorite part of the human condition.  It's my favorite part of what makes up me.

A few weeks ago, Brother Jed came to our campus and, as usual, I led the FSM charge out to oppose him.  This time there was a news team there and they pulled me aside for an interview.  We talked for about ten minutes, and during that ten minutes I expressed my distaste for doing interviews.  I've done this type of thing several times now, enough to know that these people generally don't care about context.  I explained to the reporter in great detail why complex issues take more than five second sound bites to communicate. 

Anyway, the story aired last night, and you can catch about ten words of my whole part of the interview, which include none of the important commentary on what was going on.
Oh well.  I guess next time we'll have to settle for throwing a festival around him for charity.  Nobody wants to talk philosophy or really examine their belief set, it seems, and other students seem convinced that volume equals truth.
Never you mind the chipper, upbeat guy in the blue shirt and the bandanna who is making satan jokes at the end.  I'm just a bitter, humorless atheist.

Ok, some things I heard in the video from the crowd...

1.  "Show the love of god, not the condemnation."

Why not the condemnation?  God condemned people left and right, and Jesus rebuked people for all manner of non-offenses.  The fact that you don't want this man talking about god doing what the bible talks about god doing suggests that you, a mortal, are judging god's actions negatively...shouldn't that tell you something?

If you need to try and sweep god's professed behavior under the rug in order to cover up for behavior you deem immoral, it's time to rethink some things.

2.  "He's not bringing people to Jesus, he's more threatening them."

The very concept of Christian salvation is a threat.  What happens if you don't accept Jesus, hrm?  Just because Jed is honest enough to talk about hell while other Christians want to imagine they don't believe they need Jesus to escape eternal worms (while simultaneously relishing their one-way ticket to heaven) doesn't rescue Christianity from threatening people with unspeakable punishment for their honest opinion.

3.  "You [Jed] are exactly what's wrong with Christians in the world."

No, irrationality and unreason, and protecting those values as the highest of human aspirations under the euphemism of "faith" is what's wrong with Christians.  The actions that result of those qualities, like visiting a college campus and trying to rescue people from hell is just one of many byproducts.

4.  "It's just a screaming match."

Yes, it is!  Very few people there want to advance the conversation.  They want to vent their frustrations, be noticed, or think volume and emotion equate to truth (a concept I've noticed is a trend in Christianity).  It's depressing.  It's especially depressing when I've calmly backed Jed into a logical corner, have him staring at the ground in silence aware that not even making shit up will get him out of this, and some tantrum-throwing audience member shouts something like "Jesus preached love!" and gives him a means of escape.

Our discourse is incredibly lacking, and journalism of this sort is not helping.