We’re going to have a tree this year, maybe, if we can find room for it. With a lapsed Anglican, a non-practising Jew, a pagan, and a couple of lesbians, it won’t be exactly a Christmas tree. Perhaps a tree of rational thought? Or a science tree, like this one on Flickr.

Wow! LXXXV is a lot of carnivals. Go and read Carnival of the Liberals LXXXV.  My fave:

Greg Laden presents “The Bible as Ethnography.” This is a poor title for an awesome post, in which Greg deals with the idea “that a good chunk of the old Testament is telling a story about nomadic pastoralists”, linked to Southeast African cultures. In other words, could the old Testament be an “African thing”? It’s a fascinating idea.

Bottle-Kicking, originally uploaded by Documentally.

I found this story on flickr in the form of a photodocumentary of an old village custom.

The full story is at “Bottle-kicking in Hallaton.”

I mean residential schools for aboriginal peoples. John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts blogged about the Roman Catholic residential schools scandal in Ireland, and that reminded me that I hadn’t covered the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in Canada. In 2007, it Canada’s parliament formally apologized for the wrongs done and a compensation package of $1.9 billion was put in place. You can read about it on the CBC’s Residential Schools FAQ.

The main purpose of the schools was to separate children from their ancestral culture. This purpose is now considered to be genocidal, I suppose because to obliterate a culture has similar effects in history as obliterating a people.

We’re getting closer to understanding the need for belief.