The masters of science fiction

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

I think I've finally figured out the problem with science. That is to say, I think I know what the real issue is with the public perception of science, and what it is about it that makes the average layman surprisingly loath to trust it. Let's face it; every day we're going to open the newspaper and find another story along the lines of some school board refusing to teach evolution, and the more "enlightened" among us will shake their heads and mumble something along the lines of, "Are we living in the dark ages or something?" Well, I've decided that in the end, the problem surprisingly lies with science itself, and the manner in which science by its very nature generates its own bad press.

I don't remember what it was that was simmering somewhere on the back-burners of my mind the other day as I was perusing some essays by Isaac Asimov, but maybe it will come back to me, as it had become a thought suddenly boiled over when I hit a particular sentence in one of his essays. Just in case you're not familiar with Asimov--and actually, you're probably not as familiar as you think you are even if you do know something about him--he's probably best known as a science fiction writer, but also carried on his resume a number of works of fiction in the genres of mystery and fantasy, as well as a certain amount of writing on science fact, history, and Biblical commentary. Asimov was probably my favorite author as a child, and I'd always wanted to write as well as he did, but never thought it likely. Turns out my wish may have come true: while his storytelling is superb, his essays are pretty crappy. I am in good company after all.

It's probably actually not his essay writing overall, but this particular subset. I picked up a copy of Magic: The final fantasy collection, which is a gathering together of all Asimov's "fantasy stories that have never before appeared in book form." Truth be told, even the fiction is not quite as good as his sci-fi works elsewhere, but the section of essays dissecting the nature of the fantasy genre seem to really fall short. Maybe it's just me. Actually, one of the hard things in evaluating the fiction is that not too much of it falls into the standard sort of format that one thinks of as "fantasy"; one story, a mystery involving Batman, actually has no supernatural element to it at all, so go figure.

What does all of this have to do with science, though? Well, as Asimov works his way through essay after essay of reflection on the subject of magic, faeries, mythical creatures and dashing knights riding off to slay dragons, he ends up--as a firm believer in science, and an author with a strong preference for science fiction over fantasy--taking many of these thematic concepts and relating them back to scientific principles. Science fiction and fantasy both generally involve the use of extraordinary means of meeting the protagonist's ends, but there tends to be a divergence in the nature of the means that is sometimes hard to describe precisely due to the fact that, as Clarke has said, technology can sometimes appear to be magical. Asimov points out that the real difference is that technology is something that always comes with limits, but magic much less so.

An excellent example is to think about the worlds of "Star Trek" vs. "Harry Potter". Both involve fictional means of teleportation, but there are few similarities in the workings of each. In the Trek world, teleportation is made possible through the employment of technology that requires a very large amount of energy and powerful supercomputers. Those attempting to teleport with these devices need to program these powerful computers with the particular coordinates of departure and arrival, the subjects of teleportation cannot be in motion, the teleportation device must be fully-powered and within a certain distance, and (for some unstated reason that has never made much sense to me) the operator of the device needs to know the number of people being teleported. In Potter's world on the other hand, all one needs to teleport is to be a wizard who really wants to go to a location in mind. I'm sure there are Potter fans who would take issue with such a simplification of the process, but really, I've simplified the process from both worlds.

So who is the winner? Maybe it seems like Potter is, as he needs no power source or help from a computer, has no limits on distance of travel, and can disappear at will in mid-stride while running from the hot pursuit of Voldemort. Not so, however. There are, and will always be, people who have a preference for the theoretically possible over the fantastic. After all, what good is Potter-style teleportation to "muggles" like you and me? Computers and technology, on the other hand, make amazing strides daily, and who knows? While physicists haven't yet invented the warp drive, it has been suspected that the principles of relativity actually do allow for travel faster than light speed if we could find a way to manipulate the space-time continuum. Sci-fi has a lot of big "ifs", but they're not the ridiculous imaginings of magic and fantasy, at least.

That sort of thinking is actually the smaller part of the problem of science: it's sort of a killjoy. On page 143 of "Magic", Asimov points out that the old fairy tale staple of "seven-league boots" are something for which science can't really produce an analogue. Seven-league boots are magical pieces of footwear that allow the wearer to move seven leagues (21 miles) in a single step. Asimov points out that such boots would cause the wearer to, at the pace of a brisk walk, achieve escape velocity and therefore be launched into space in a stride or two. Sheesh, Asimov, you're no fun. I'm not personally a big fan of the fantasy genre, but I think it's clear enough that we're meant to understand that magic boots, by the very fact of their being magic, don't have to concern the wearer with mundane factors such as escape velocity and wind resistance (I'm sure someone could give some very good reason why travelling at escape velocity with no protective gear would cause air friction enough to vaporize you, or at least severely chap your skin). Asimov is only trying to point out that science, unlike magic, has limits, but really the depressing thing about science is that really on the whole, science is all about telling us repeatedly that we are limited.

One of the best-known limits in science is the speed of light, but it's odd that it's so well-known. That is to say, it's not that people know what the speed of light is (I can seldom remember it off the top of my head), but they know it exists, and the one thing they really know about relativity theory is that things in the real world can't go faster than light. What does this really do for the layman, though? What possible purpose does it serve the non-physicist to know that the universe has a speed limit, especially since not a one of us will likely ever travel so much as 0.01% of that limit? It only reminds us that we do not have unlimited ability, and while this is true, it adds nothing to the human condition to know it to be so. Science doesn't care, nor should it, as it exists in a world of facts and not fantasy or feelings.

I've written before that science is not in the business of making people feel good or have a sense of self-worth, and that's why it makes for a lousy religion. "But wait," most readers will object, "science isn't a religion!" No, it's not. The bigger part of the problem of science is that despite that fact that it isn't a religion, there are an awful lot of people who treat it like one. Something else that I know I have written about many, many times is the fact that the world is full of skeptics who are more than happy to puff out their chests and declare, "We don't need God and religion to give us the answers, for science has all the answers we need!" But whatever you may feel about religion, the second part of that sentence is dreadfully wrong: science doesn't have answers, it only has theories. Wait! I'm probably not saying what you think I'm saying...

My imagination makes it hard to write this, as I know with almost every sentence I write, there is someone out there who will be reading this and saying, "What an idiot!" Maybe, but can you wait until I've had my say? I know there are a lot of creationists that love the catch phrase, "Evolution is just a theory," and of course, they're missing that in the realm of science, that word tends to mean something deeper than they give it credit. Granted. What I'm saying is that even giving it all the credit it truly deserves, it's still not the end-all and be-all of truth, because science is not a religion in very important ways that are actually its strength, but unfortunately its lesser-known strength.

The Asimov essay that boiled over that thought was one titled "Giants in the Earth", an essay on why he thinks so many cultures (including the Bible) have had myths concerning giants and other fantastic larger-than-life creatures. He gives a number of theories about why people would imagine giants, mainly focusing on people of lesser technology who marveled at achievements of more advanced societies such as the massive walls of Mycenae and the pyramids of Egypt and, not being able to fathom technology that could move such massive stones, imagine the employment of giant men or sorcerers for the purpose. In general, this is not an unreasonable theory, but I do have some issues with it, the main one being the assumption that every single example of stories about giants surely could not have simply been the result of actual, living giants. After all, Goliath was only said to be nine feet tall, and while that sounds pretty fantastical, I fail to see why there could not exist a man of that stature, or at least near that stature helped with a dash of exaggeration or rounding off to the nearest cubit. I think I may have made this exact analogy in a former piece of writing, but if a person who had never been to China or known anything about it ran into Yao Ming, he might be tempted to tell friends that China was a land populated with giants, and he would be sort of right, since there are at least a few of them.

Now, just shortly after denying that tales of mythical giants had anything to do with actual giants, and denying that tales of dragons could have anything to do with actual oversized lizards such as dinosaurs or who knows what, Asimov makes this startling statement:

"The elephant bird, or aepyornis, of Madagascar still survived in medieval times. It weighed half a ton and was the largest bird that ever existed. It must surely have been the inspiration for the flying bird-monster, the 'roc,' that we find in the Sinbad tales of The Arabian Nights."

"Surely"? Maybe Asimov had some backing for this statement, but from what I see here, it seems to be pure speculation. Why does one need to go to Madagascar to find such a large bird when fairly large birds such as ostriches and crowned eagles exist on the African mainland? The apparent assertion of a matter of speculation as bare fact is what disturbed me, and surprised me from Asimov as a supposed man of science.

Maybe it's a particular problem of Asimov's, being a writer of sci-fi and mystery, that he feels a need to see to it that loose ends are tied up into a neat little bundle. Fiction does that quite often, especially in the mystery genre. We expect when we close the book after reading the last page that even if the ending is not a happy one, we at least will have had everything explained to us, and everything will be understood. Religion (which atheists will gladly relegate to fictional status) also tends toward this sort of resolution. It tends to try to answer as many of the key philosophical questions of life as it can, and then blankets anything that wasn't covered with some panacea such as, "Well, God is working all things to the good, and He will triumph in the end." Everybody likes a happy ending.

Science may like to define limits, but has no end in itself, and never completely ties up all the loose ends. This is the true strength and power of science, but it's not a savory one. Those so-called skeptics who claim that science has all the answers are missing the true point of science: that it has no answers, only a better class of questions. The real problem of science is that people are looking for final answers, and science's disciples are more than happy to claim that they have them, despite the fact that they are (unintentionally, granted) misleading people with such a claim.

It is the nature of science's never-ending quest to question reality that what are today's scientific truths will be tomorrow's scientific misconceptions. We had nine planets, but then we only had eight. We were descended from homo erectus, but then we weren't. The smallest indivisible units in the universe were atoms, but then they were found to be made of protons, neutrons and electrons, which were later found to be made of quarks, which in turn are made of...what? To the average person, all of this sort of stuff looks like indecision: can't science make up its mind? I thought you said science had the answers? To the non-technical mind, the answers that science give look like so much magical hocus-pocus, and when Rowling tells us in book seven that wands only properly work for their true owners, yet book four is full of magicians getting along just fine with borrowed and/or stolen wands, we start to think it may all be a bunch of crap.

Science is suffering from bad press, and it's not bad press from those fools who do things like ban the teaching of evolution in schools, but from those people who say things like, "Science has given us the answer, and the answer is evolution." Such an attitude falls prey to those who object, "What happened to us being evolved from homo erectus?" or "Why do you think it is that Piltdown Man turned out to just be a hoax?" If "evolution is the answer", then like dogmatic religious zealots, the disciples of the religion of science will demand that asking more questions is inappropriate, never realizing that like Pharisees berating Christ for healing on the Sabbath, they're elevating tradition over deeper, more fundamental truths. Yes, science embraces evolutionary theory, among other theories, and as a "theory" it's actually something deeper and more well-established than just an idea of how the world might happen to work, but just as Christianity holds as an underlying tenet that "Love thy neighbor" is more important than any rules about how you run your church, science holds to an underlying tenet that above all, we must keep asking questions of our universe.

Evolutionary theory is a better theory than its detractors give it credit, and I expect it to be a part of science for quite some time, despite the fact that simpler concepts, like the number of planets we have, lasted for much shorter time than evolution has already enjoyed. But it is the nature of science that all theories are potentially only here for today, waiting for the time that they will be replaced by a better theory and discarded. The real failure of our educational system is not a failing to convince everyone that evolution or any other theory is true; after all, the greatest scientists have always been the ones who were willing to be the first to discard the failed theories of the past. No, the real failure is not teaching our children that the real strength of science and greatness of scientists was not in their determined acceptance of the status quo, but in the very willingness to go against it. Mendeleyev wasn't the first person to think of the concept of the periodic table of elements (a crude approach to modern understanding of the behavior of subatomic particles before anyone had even thought of subatomic particles), but he was one of the first people to be willing to keep pushing and questioning until scientists decided to take it seriously.

Yes, the problem with science is that we haughtily insist that people accept it as it is, forgetting that the state of science is always evolving. Religion is the one that often strives to be right without being questioned. Science? It only strives to be a little less wrong than it was yesterday, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The Da Vinci Code: a royal pain

Okay, this excellent comic has reminded me that once again this may be a time for me to make a topical post.

I know what thousands of people have been thinking in the midst of all the controversy. Yep. "What does Brucker think about this whole 'Da Vinci Code' thing?" Well, wonder no more, my fellow netizens! I am about to expound far beyond the limit of any reasonableness, that limit actually having passed probably two sentences ago. So long as I'm being pretty stupid already, let's have some fun and let me mock-interview myself as the leading authority on complete crap.

Running from Elevators: Well, let's get down to business. What did you think of the movie?

Brucker: I haven't seen it. I might eventually, but I'll probably wait for it to come out on video.

RfE: Well did you read the book, then?

B: Oh, I considered it, but I haven't had time for much reading lately. I've been spending what little time I have for reading books that freak out conservative Christians, like the Harry Potter books. Man, those are good. I've got some interesting thoughts on the ending of "[Harry Potter and the] Half-Blood Prince" that I'd love to share.

RFE: I don't think that's necessary. Surely, though, you have formed some sort of opinion on the book and movie just from hearsay, right?

B: Oh, yeah. Like probably 60% of the target audience, I know what the book is about; I even know the twist ending that probably not nearly so many people are aware of.

RFE: Yes, let's not spoil that, but let's talk about the main theme of the book. Do you think it's a dangerous one?

B: Well, yes and no. First of all, whatever danger there may be to Christianity, um, well, some of it may be overplayed. Like the joke in yesterday's PvP comic that you linked to above, there are some people in Christianity who don't want to believe Jesus was really much like a human at all. The concept that He definitely went to the bathroom, probably cried as an infant, may have had acne as a teenager, and so forth, is oddly offensive to some people.

RFE: Despite the fact that the Bible emphasizes His humanity.

B: Right. I mean, most people probably don't like to think of Jesus ever looking other than a tall, light-skinned, shiny-clean man in bright-white robes. But of course, He wasn't tall, probably had much darker skin than people of European ancestry, and the Bible even says that He took baths, so He must have gotten dirty. Probably, he got very dirty, seeing as He spent so much of His time wandering around from place to place on foot in an age where they didn't have concrete and asphalt pavement.

I would like to note as an aside that I've heard people complain about Jesus being portrayed by tall actors in films, and I don't think that's something that should be an issue. While Jesus almost certainly wasn't tall by modern standards, He may well have been tall for His own time and culture. If you're going to insist Jesus be played by someone short, you'd have to have a whole cast full of short people to match him.

RFE: So is the important issue of the "Code" the fact of Jesus' humanity?

B: Yes, but not entirely in the way one might think. I have heard that the premise is that Jesus was human, and the Church has been trying to cover up that fact by suppressing "Gnostic Gospels". The fact is, as far as I know, the Gnostics were far more inclined to deny the human aspect of Jesus' person than the mainstream church. Gnostics believed in mysticism and spirituality on a level where they didn't like the idea of Jesus being a flesh-and-blood individual. The Gnostics were also rather anti-feminist, which is also the reverse of how I understand they are portrayed in the story.

RFE: Which leads to the big point.

B: Yes, not the twist at the end, but the big secret that just about everyone knows--

RFE: Spoiler alert!

B: Right, heh. The big secret is that rather than the Apostle John being the most important figure in the early church movement, it was actually Mary Magdalene, who was Jesus' wife. Supposedly, while the Bible never says that Jesus married, the reason is not that He actually wasn't but rather that those details have been edited out and repeatedly suppressed by the Catholic Church, natch.

RFE: So the real meat of the story is there. What do you think about this idea?

B: Well, I have mixed feelings. As a "Bible-believing Christian" I would support the official stance of the mainstream churches that Jesus did not marry. On the other hand, as [PvP creator] Scott Kurtz says in his blog, "Good fiction makes you think. And thinking is never bad. There's nothing to be afraid of, even if you're a religious person. And what good is your faith if it can't stand up to being challenged from time to time? It's safe for Christians to read the book. It's just a story."

"The Da Vinci Code" is hardly the first or the only entity to speculate on the subject of Jesus being married. Some have pointed out that even in the Bible as we know it, edited or not, Jesus spends an awful lot of time with Mary for the both of them being single. It's something that's not really even socially acceptable in many modern societies. Also, the fact that they were both single at such an age in a culture where singleness was uncommon suggests to some that married or not, Mary was probably intended to be married to Jesus via an arranged marriage.

RFE: Is there any positive evidence in the Canonical Scriptures for such a marriage?

B: Eh, slight. Some have suggested the wedding feast at Cana was actually Jesus' wedding feast. Why was Jesus, as a mere guest, put in charge of the refreshments? Why do we never find out whose wedding it was? Why are Jesus' disciples there? If indeed this is Jesus' wedding, then the answer to all of these is fairly obvious.

RFE: But you still think Jesus was unmarried?

B: Yeah. And for a reason that may bother some conservative Christians almost as much as suggesting the possibility in the first place. Well, except Catholics. Church tradition. We sometimes tend to treat the idea of "tradition" as a bad word among evangelicals, as it conjures up images of men in robes and funny pointed hats chanting in Latin before a crowd of people genuflecting in unison. I don't think we really appreciate how much of our faith is built on tradition, though. Sure, the Bible is our foundation, but tradition is the framework of the house that was built on it.

RFE: But as an evangelical, you do reject much of that sort of tradition that you talk of amongst Catholics, right?

B: "Reject" is a strong word. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but some people can get distracted by all the liturgy and miss the faith that should fill the inside of all that ritual. I reject it for myself, but wouldn't question the faith of someone who was in a more liturgical church just because they're that way. Most of those things come down to personal preference of worship style rather than a deep doctrinal issue.

RFE: So is Jesus' marital status a doctrinal issue?

B: Whew, that's a tough question. In some sense, everything about Jesus as a person is a doctrinal issue. When you deal with other people in the Bible, and their own personal lives, it's different. For instance, was Peter married? The Bible mentions him having a mother-in-law, but never talks about his wife. If Peter was the first Pope, and Popes are not to be married, this may be important on some level, but the marital status of the Pope is more like Church "policy" than doctrine. It may surprise some people to know that there are Catholic priests that are married. It has something to do with certain sub-sects of the Catholic Church which I don't fully understand.

But getting back to Jesus, the fine details of His life are far more prone to scrutiny. As I was essentially saying before, some people would hang precariously on the issue of whether Jesus ever picked His nose, but getting married is certainly something a bit more vital. I just don't know. It's potentially important, yes, but I don't personally see any reason it would bother me to suggest that Jesus was married, other than the fact that it's just not mentioned.

RFE: But what about the issue of children, and a royal bloodline?

B: See now, there is that, and one might wonder about the implications of a flesh and blood descendant of Jesus. The fact is, descendants of a person may not have much in common with that ancestor. If Jesus hypothetically did have a child or two, I don't see any reason they would be particularly special. In fact, if "The Da Vinci Code" is trying to simultaneously argue that Jesus was nobody special and yet that His descendant(s) are very special, well, I don't get it. Maybe I'll get it when I eventually get around to reading the book or watching the movie. There is no monarchy in Israel today, nor do I expect there ever will be one again, short of divine intervention, so being of the royal bloodline is, well, nothing. England is a country that still has a monarchy and they seem to just barely matter.

RFE: So you just don't see why we should care?

B: Exactly. The fact that there might be a living descendent of Jesus is about as interesting as knowing there might be a living descendant of George Washington. A bit of a curiosity, celebrity by association, but that's about all. My grandfather was very much into genealogy later in his life, and he discovered on tracing back his family tree that our family comes from French and English Royalty back in the 13th century. Interesting, but essentially meaningless in respects to who I am as a person.

RFE: So would you recommend going to see the movie?

B: I'd wait to hear what the reviews say and act accordingly. So far, I've heard a lot of bad press, and not much good. The general consensus on imdb.com so far is that it's pretty mediocre, and sometimes I go by that rather than reviews, but either way, it's not looking too promising.

Of course, there's the fact that somebody came up with a drive to have every Christian go and see "Over the Hedge" as a protest against "Da Vinci", which is an interesting idea. I'm wondering if it might work, especially with the movie being panned by critics. Oh, and it looks better-reviewed on imdb.

See whatever movie you want to see, I don't really care too much. Let me know what you think if you see either of those movies, I'm giving them both consideration.

RFE: We'll be sure to do that.

B: "We"? Can "we" stop typing yet?

Thoughts on mistaken identity

You know, although most of my posts so far in this blog have been pretty random, I usually have an idea as to what I'm trying to say, but today ought to be interesting, my thought for the day is pretty much a random ramble. Not that it matters as nobody seems to be reading this or giving feedback. Hmmm...

Anyway, I had an odd moment this morning. I have a co-worker that for quite some time I had thought was a lesbian. Then somebody told me that she was a Christian. Then I overheard her saying something that seemed to confirm that she was indeed a lesbian. Then I overheard her talking about church. Back and forth, back and forth... I was confused, and to this day, I still don't know for sure whether she is a Christian or a lesbian.

The thing is, well, that "back and forth" thing I said above. In my mind, while I was trying to sort out her personal life without being pushy and outright asking her for personal information that I don't need in order to do my job properly, it did feel like a "back and forth" thing. Surely she was either a lesbian or a Christian, right? But I realized in specific this morning something that I knew in general already. It may be possible that she is both! I mean, why not?

In particular, I had an online friend a couple years ago that I had known for some time, and this young woman was, as far as I knew, a very good, upstanding and moral person who had a solid grasp on Christian theology. She was intelligent, well-versed in the Bible, and devoted to serving God in her life. Then I found out that she was a lesbian, too. Because I knew her as well as I did, my impression of who she was as a person was not really altered much by this revelation. (Unfortunately, I found out about it roughly the same time her parents did, and her parents, whom you'd think would have an even better grasp on who she really was in her heart of hearts, had a much less favorable reaction to her coming out of the closet.) While I do tend to be of the understanding that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, it's not something I have a personal problem with, nor is it a sticking point in my personal grasp of Christian doctrine. I'm much more inclined to believe I'm mistaken about that point than about 90% of the rest of my doctrine.

My friend was a good person, and a good Christian, and even if same-sex sexual relations indeed are a sin, I did not, and still do not believe that her attraction to people of the same gender makes her any less so. Yet at the same time, because of my understanding of doctrine, it's hard for me to accept someone as being a Christian from the get-go if they have certain characteristics. Why is that?

I suppose it's a form of prejudice, even though in this case it stems from a doctrinal issue. There are probably a lot of things that are characteristic of myself that would make other Christians question the status of my salvation and/or devotion. I'm a registered Democrat, have long hair and tattoos, listen almost exclusively to secular music, and enjoy reading the Harry Potter books. Sheesh, I might as well be a Satan worshipper as well as some of that!

The Christian life is hard enough on its own that it doesn't need the complications of trying to do God's work of sorting out the saved and the unsaved. Trying to relate to other Christians can be a tricky thing. As much as there is a good amount of agreement over the main points of Christian doctrine among the majority of believers, sometimes there can be a bit of discomfort to be discussing some matter or another with a fellow Christian, and they happen to mention something concerning their personal beliefs that makes for an awkward moment. Maybe they stress the importance of being "born again" (a term only found once in the entire Bible, if I'm not mistaken) while you yourself don't commonly use the term. Maybe you find out that they are a member of a Christian denomination that you consider to be doctrinally questionable, or the reverse: they believe the denomination you belong to is questionable! Maybe they engage in behaviors you find morally questionable, or even outright wrong.

Of course, even non-Christians can probably go through this, as we all have expectations that the people around us are like us to some extent. But you find out that a close friend is a racist, or they have a drug habit, or there's some strange secret in their past, and it throws you for a loop. Perhaps Christians just expect more similarity within the family of God, but why should we? There's probably not much similarity within a regular sort of family. I remember a time when I was a kid and a bunch of my cousins were all bored, so we started sharing secrets about things we'd done that nobody knew about. It was shocking, no doubt about it, but sometimes the most shocking secrets are the ones that are hidden in plain sight. I have a cousin on my mother's side of the family who is also Jewish, and although I've known her all of my life, I didn't know she was Jewish until I was about twenty. She didn't hide her identity, but she also didn't talk about it enough that it was widely known. Finding out didn't change my estimation of her at all, but it threw me for a loop, because I felt that I should have known.

But is there any singular given "flag" that marks one as being Jewish? (I mean, not in the official sense that an Orthodox Rabbi would use, but in a more general cultural/genetic sense.) While there are certain characteristics that are associated with being Jewish, it is far from the truth that all Jews look the same, act the same, and believe the same things. How about being gay? As far as I have known, there is nothing at all that homosexuals have in common across the continuum, despite stereotypes one sees portrayed on "Will & Grace".

The truth is, we as human beings living in a society will categorize and stereotype people as a matter of course, because it makes life easier to get a handle on. While we know intellectually that every person in the world is an individual, our brains can't handle the concept of six billion individuals, so we make clumps of people and think consciously or subconsciously, "These people are all like this..." While it's not wrong per se, it can be jarring at times when we find our categories break down. No Christian could possibly vote Democrat. No member of my family could possibly be a drug addict. No lesbian could possibly be a regular churchgoer.

I don't know what my point in all of this is, nor quite what the theological significance might be, except for the obvious that it's best to keep an open mind, perhaps.