I first encountered Philip Gulley a couple of decades ago in the book he co-wrote with James Mulholland titled If God Is Love: Why God Will Save Every Person. In that book, Gulley and Mulholland set forth a Quakerly approach to universalism.
The current U.S. war in Iran has prompted me to seek out other pacifists. This is not an easy time to be a pacifist. While I’m hearing quite a few people who are opposed to the war, I’m not hearing people who are opposed to all war — only to this war. Or maybe they’re just opposed to the current administration.
“…We have mastered the ability to number the war dead with great precision. 175 schoolgirls killed when we bombed the school in Iran. Thirteen American soldiers dead thus far, thousands of Iranians and Israelis, the numbers growing every day. We have perfected the science of counting bodies. What we do not count, what we conveniently forget are the parents, siblings, and friends whose lives are also shattered when their loved ones die. What we do not count are the lives haunted by grief, those yet unborn who will one day bear the scars of their ancestors’ wars. And bearing those scars, are more likely to perpetuate and multiply the pain of war. We are never able to fully count the eventual casualties of war….”
And he adds a pacifist statement that is both Quakerly and Universalist:
“Friends, resist with all your heart the temptation to love only some.”
If you’re a Universalist pacifist like me, you might find Gulley’s post worth reading in its entirety.
Here are three emerging AI dangers, with brief comments on their implication for religious professionals and congregation. Since a large percentage of the population is already using generative AI for various purposes, let’s make sure we’re using those services wisely and well.
AI danger number 1
Your chatbot logs, and the queries you make to chatbots, may be accessed by lawyers during lawsuits. See, for example, how one law firm used such files in a defamation lawsuit against a Youtube influencer. In this lawsuit, the Youtube influencer is being sued for defamation by a woman, about whom he allegedly made intentionally defamatory comments. The woman’s lawyers claim to show that the influencer’s ChatGPT logs reveal his malicious intent.
As usual with anything to do with Big Data (including the web, the broader internet, text messaging, etc.) — you have to assume that anything you put into electronic format can and will be made public in ways that you might not like.
Nothing new here, but it’s a good reminder that congregations and religious professionals should refrain from placing any confidential information into chatbots. in addition, congregations and religious professionals can help educate people about this very real danger — including educating teens (e.g., in OWL programs), people going through divorces, etc.
“The sycophantic (flattering, people-pleasing, affirming) behavior of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, which has been designed to increase user engagement, poses risks as people increasingly seek advice about interpersonal dilemmas. There is usually more than one side to a story during interpersonal conflicts. If AI is designed to tell users what they want to hear instead of challenging their perspectives, then are such systems likely to motivate people to accept responsibility for their own contribution to conflicts and repair relationships? Cheng et al. measured the prevalence of social sycophancy across 11 leading large language models (see the Perspective by Perry). The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors. Users preferred and trusted sycophantic AI responses, incentivizing AI developers to preserve sycophancy despite the risks.”
An obvious implication is that there are specific and measurable dangers if you use AI as an inexpensive therapist. Unfortunately, lots of people have good reasons for turning to chatbots for mental health support — mental health professionals are expensive and may not be covered by insurance; in many places there is a shortage of mental health professionals; for many people there remains a significant social stigma for referring to mental health professionals; etc.
Congregations and religious professionals should be aware that some people are relying on chatbots for mental health support. While we are not qualified to provide mental health support, this might be an area where we could help create low- or no-cost mental health services and/or steer vulnerable people to existing low or no-cost services.
AI danger number 3
The U.S. Copyright Office has denied copyright protection to certain AI-generated works: “In general, the office will not find human authorship where an AI program generates works in response to user prompts….” See the U.S. Congress webpage on “Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law.” There remain questions about how much human influence is required before a work may be protected by copyright.
I’d expect this to be mostly a concern for religious professionals. If we use generative AI to come up with sermons, music, curriculum materials, etc., we should assume that material is not protected by copyright and can be used freely by anyone. In addition, it’s wise to be aware that generally speaking your prompts (and maybe even output generated by your prompts) can be used by AI companies for many purposes, so e.g. assume that you are giving away the rights to any text you enter into a chatbot.
There are legitimate uses for generative AI (think: people with dyslexia who use it to clean up writing). However, it appears that many current generative AI services are not well designed, nor do they make clear the potential dangers in using their services. I’m not saying “don’t use generative AI ever,” but I’m also not saying “AI is the solution to all our problems and we should use it for everything.” Using generative AI is analogous to using a chain saw — great tool for specific purposes, used wrongly it can cut your leg off. So read the (non-existent) warning label and wear safety gear.
Over the years, I’ve written blog posts on several obscure topics. Some of those obscure topics — making your own burial shroud, washtub bass, composer A. B. Windom, etc. — result in some interesting correspondence.
Most recently, Don O. was looking through my collection of information about the Perry Mason books (not the TV show, mind you, but the books). I have a complete listing of the Perry Mason books, and have gradually been adding notes to each book about recurring characters, plot devices, and legal matters. Turns out Don is a professor of physics, and he sent me email pointing out how Erle Stanley Gardner, the author of the Perry Mason series, used some pretty good science in one of his novels. Thank you, Professor Don!
While I was updating that Perry Mason information with Professor Don’s contribution, I wound up rebuilding that corner of my blog, and I was able to add notes for several more of the books. If you’re a Perry Mason fan, check it out.
Tracey got a comic zine for me at a recent comic convention. Drawn and written by Sanika Phwade — who bills herself as “an illustrator, cartoonist, and reportage artist” — it tells about a minister who has fun with the signboard outside her church. The zine opens with the words: “Pastor Jamie Washam changes the sign outside the First Baptist Church in America every week.”
The cover of Sanika Phwade’s comic zine about Rev. Jamie Washam’s signboard
According to Phwade, by putting short aphorisms on the signboard, Rev. Washam is continuing the tradition of her predecessor: “He would call it The Wayside Pulpit — that preaches a sermon to whomever is passing by. I love that! But I also like having fun with these.”
As the keeper of the Wayside Pulpit outside our meetinghouse, I was jealous when I learned that people actually talk to Washam about the things she puts in her Wayside Pulpit. But then, her Wayside Pulpit is edgier than ours is. I put up sayings like “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” No one comments on things like that. When Washam put up the phrase, “God Is Non-Binary,” sixteen people made comments:
“I have learned that it is the same signs that evoke both positive and negative reactions in people. Fifteen have said positive things about ‘God Is Non-Binary,’ and one person said, Hey what are you thinking? And I said well, let’s sit down and read genesis together. Because the text does support that. They thought I was just popping off politically, and yes I totally picked that up from Pride Fest. But it is completely substantiated by the text.”
Genesis 1:27 does in fact say, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” That is, both male and female are created in God’s image, which implies that God is (ahem) non-binary. Oh ye of little faith who try to place limits on God, limiting him to one gender (regardless of the pronouns we humans use to describe him).
Actually, February 2 is World Ukulele Day. But Mary Beth, our music director, decided we would celebrate it today, by accompanying the first hymn in our Sunday service. We had maybe two minutes of rehearsal, which is why the photo below shows us all looking at the song sheets on the music stands. But we played it through, we didn’t totally suck, and we had fun.
Screen grab from the livestream. L-R: Mary Beth, Steve, Micah, me.
Mike Lynch, who organized the first World Ukulele Day, said the goal was simple: “Take your uke out of its case and play it.” Beyond that, he said you could use your ukulele to bring some fun and joy into the world. I don’t know how much joy we brought into our Sunday service, but we certainly brought some fun. Besides, Mike Lynch often played uke at his church, so what we did was very much in the original spirit of the day.
The real World Ukulele Day is tomorrow. Plan now to take your uke out of the case and play it….
When I heard about the “Melania” movie, I assumed it was yet another vanity project assembled by yet another ultra rich person. What I didn’t realize was that the film has actually been released in theatres. I also didn’t realize was that Amazon paid to have this movie produced. The BBC reports that it is believed that Amazon paid USD$35million to market the film, and another USD$40 million for the rights.
Now that I know it’s not a simple vanity project, I’m fascinated. What is going on here?
Reviews of the movie so far are mixed. It’s easy to find negative reviews in the usual liberal media outlets like The Guardian, The Atlantic, and so on. Conservative Fox News, by contrast, seems enthralled. The politically centrist USA Today is not entirely negative, but still says it’s not a good documentary, giving it 1.5 out of 4 stars:
“‘Melania’ doesn’t quite work as a documentary, though that doesn’t matter: People who don’t like the Trumps won’t go near the theater, and those who love the Trumps probably will. Just don’t expect much insight either way: While it does offer an extremely flattering view of all things Melania, outside of a few candid glimpses, you’re not going to learn a lot about who she really is.”
Meanwhile, audience reviews posted on Rotten Tomatoes are generally laudatory. It’s hard to know if the reviewers are real people (after all, this is an Amazon movie, and Amazon is the king of fake reviews), but in a typical review “Karen M” gushes:
“As a creative—writer, pianist, singer, perfectionist, lover of classical music and art—I found Melania unexpectedly moving. The documentary opens her inner sanctum, and in doing so, created a quiet sense of sisterhood. I didn’t see a distant public figure; I saw someone achingly real—like watching your sister on her wedding day or hearing your daughter’s name called at graduation. There she is. Her elegance is unmistakable, yet the vulnerability is what lingers. She is refined without artifice, reserved yet deeply expressive. The film is not about Donald Trump—au contraire. It feels more like peering into the private life of a royal from afar, and realizing with pride: she is my First Lady. It has been a long time since young women—and grown ones—had a woman of such standalone strength to admire. Her quiet power rivals that of any great woman who has ever held a throne. Highly recommend, regardless of political persuasion.”
Maybe that is a real review. I can see that for someone who is fascinated by Melania Trump, this could be a fun movie to watch. Unfortunately, Karen M is probably mistaken, while USA Today is correct — Democrats are going to stay away in droves, Republicans are going to love the film. I guess those of us who belong to neither party can be bemused.
At this stage, it’s hard to know if people are actually paying to see the film in movie theatres. A very strange ad was posted on the gigs section of Boston Craigslist, offering people $50 if they would see “Melania” in a movie theater. This ad has since been changed to read:
“…due to widespread coverage and backlash surrounding this offer in the fake news media, counsel has advised us that proceeding would run afoul of campaign finance laws. Considering the funding of the film by Amazon, we were shocked to hear this, but cannot take the risk….On the bright side, this incredible film is now SOLD OUT everywhere, with box office success like no one has EVER seen.”
Even Snopes can’t decide if this was a fake ad, or a real ad. I mean, was this a bunch of Trump haters trying to make the movie look bad, or was this a serious offer to get people to attend the movie? Either way, it’s bizarre. And if ticket sales turn out to be good, we’ll be wondering — did the audiences pay to see the film, or did someone pay them to see the film? That uncertainty says less about the film, and more about the lack of trust in the United States today.
So far, Rolling Stone seems to have the most balanced, in-depth reporting I’ve seen about the film. They report that Melania Trump herself received 70% of the licensing fee, or USD$28 million, for herself — in other words, she got paid some big bucks, so this isn’t exactly a vanity project. They also report that the film crew liked Melania Trump, describing her as “friendly and very engaged in the process.” On the other hand, Rolling Stone also says that no one should expect any deep insight into Melania Trump: “‘Some people are boring,’ one crew member said. ‘Some people also never let their guard down.’” It sounds like Melania Trump fits in the latter category.
Something about this movie, and the varied reactions to it, seem to capture the zeitgeist of our times. And maybe part of the zeitgest is feeling that you can never let your guard down.
Update 2/1/2026: The movie has become even more zeitgeist-y. The BBC reports that the latest release of the Epstein files has a photo of the film’s director sitting next to Epstein, both with their arms around young women. It’s a fairly creepy photo….
When we last visited East Overshoe, a small town nestled in the hills of central New England, three local law enforcement officers had agreed to do double duty as ICE agents. Having been outfitted with their new ICE equipment…
My older sister suggested drawing a cartoon about ICE. At first I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to draw (plus it’s a pretty depressing topic). Then she told me about a small town where local law enforcement officers signed up to work with ICE…
(Eventually, this will turn out to be about progressive spirituality — bear with me….)
Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” cartoon (and the Dilbert merchandise empire) has died of prostate cancer, at age 68. Cancer deaths are often unpleasant, and Adams’s last months sound like they were especially painful and debilitating, not something you would wish on anyone.
Adams left behind a very mixed legacy. His “Dilbert” comic strip was syndicated from 1989 until 2023. For the first few years, the strip often offered a fresh and funny take on what it’s like to be a lower-level white collar worker in corporate America. But Adams’s career went downhill from there.
Although, who am I to judge? I guess I can call myself a cartoonist, insofar as I drew a regular strip for the weekly newspaper of the undergraduate college I attended. My drawings were good enough, but my weakness was writing the strips. I depended on my friend Mike (who’s now a rabbi) to write the strips, and after he graduated I never drew another weekly strip. I manage to write acceptable nonfiction prose, but when it came to writing comic strips, I was a failure.
By contrast, Scott Adams was a wildly successful cartoonist, even though he drew badly. His characters show no particular expression, and he had little understanding of how to represent three dimensional space. But his writing was good, or it was in the first few years of the strip, because in writing for the strip he managed to capture some of the more frustrating aspects of corporate bureaucracy. He came out with a strip that appealed to the white collar cubical worker at a time when there were lots of white collar cubical workers. His success as a cartoonist was probably due more to lucky timing than anything else.
Yet after half a dozen years, in the late 1990s, “Dilbert” was getting repetitive. By the 2000s, none of the characters was likable; or maybe Adams no longer liked any of his characters. And by the 2010s, the strip was just plain boring, as well as mean-spirited. I think what happened was simple. In 1995, Adams quit his white collar cubical job in order to work full-time as a cartoonist; once he stopped working in a cubical, he stopped being funny.
Furthermore, by the 2000s, Adams was becoming an unlikeable person. My take on it is that he let his success go to his head, deluding himself into thinking he was pretty hot stuff even though he couldn’t draw and he wasn’t much of a writer. He became pompous and self-righteous. You can read a brief summary of his online sockpuppetry, trolling, and bad behavior here. His bad behavior kept getting worse, culminating in 2023 when he said in his podcast:
“If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with white people—according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll—that’s a hate group. And I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the –– away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.” [Expletive deleted by me.]
(Full disclosure: I admit I didn’t listen to the podcast myself; I depended on this transcription.)
In fact, as early as 2000, Adams had turned into one of the least likable characters in his strip. He founded Scott Adams Foods to manufacture a frozen burrito that he called “the blue jeans of food.” What a stupid phrase. It’s a phrase that is classic corporate gobbledy-gook; it is exactly the sort of meaningless utterance made by the Pointy-Haired Boss of the early “Dilbert” cartoons. Adams had become the Pointy-Haired Boss.
I told you that eventually we’d get around to religion. In the last few weeks of his life, when he was in hospice, Adams apparently became a Christian. According to TMZ, in a final episode of his podcast his ex-wife read a letter from him which stated “he’s converting to Christianity because of the ‘risk-reward’ calculation.” (For an in-depth discussion of this philosophical stance, see Pascal’s Wager on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; there is little evidence that Adams understood any of the philosophical complexities.) Calling his conversion to Christianity a “‘risk-reward’ calculation” sounds like more corporate gobbledy-gook. Again, it’s the sort of thing the Pointy-Haired Boss would say, which is kind of sad.
Crucially, he did not say what form of Christianity he converted to. Did he become a Roman Catholic? a Latter Day Saint? Russian Orthodox? an evangelical Protestant? “Dilbert” had grown so mean-spirited in its last couple of decades that it’s hard for me to imagine what form of Christianity finally attracted him. Or maybe he just didn’t know all that much about Christianity, and just called himself a Christian without knowing quite what he meant. However, from my religious point of view, he didn’t have to worry about the afterlife. If he had become almost any form of progressive Christian, he would have understood God as love and forgiveness, and he wouldn’t have had to worry so much about formal conversion. Instead, he seems to have understood God as a sort of deified Pointy-Haired Boss, and Christianity as a corporate bureaucracy. Which is too bad.
But despite all your flaws, thank you Scott Adams, for a half dozen years of a good comic strip. Not a great comic strip — you weren’t a Herriman, or a Mauldin, or a Johnston. And maybe you should have done what Bill Watterson did, refusing to sell related merchandise, then quitting while you were still fresh. Nevertheless, your half dozen good years remain a legacy that surpasses what most people manage to do. So thank you for the good stuff, and we’ll try to forget about the rest of it.
From one cartoonist to another: Adams as the Pointy Haired Boss. Maybe the Pointy-Haired Boss was more likable than we all thought….
In its Dec. 6-12 edition, The Economist has an article has an article in which it proposes its “word of the year.” The article has no byline, and cites no sources — typical for The Economist, and one of the reasons I do not fully trust it — but this particular article is mostly humorous so I guess I don’t need a byline. The anonymous author begins the article by naming words-of-the-year that were runners-up:
“Finance is a good place to look for words of the year because trends move fast, and its denizens like neologisms. TACO is this year’s favorite. Coined by Robert Armstrong, a journalists at the Financial Times, it stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’ and points to the many tariff fights Donald Trump has picked and then backed down from….”
For the record, The Economist’s winning word of the year is “slop,” as in “AI slop.”
