Year: 2017 (Page 2 of 2)

We Just Believe in One Fewer God than You

April 17, 2017 / Trent / 0 Comments

A common argument against belief in God–does it stand up?

Actually, that’s not all there is to it.

I mean, it’s not quite so simple.

Affirmed atheist, Ricky Gervais used this argument when he was a guest on Stephen Colbert. The YouTube clip has received over 4 million views.

In the interview he said that there are about 3000 deities that people have worshiped at one time or another and Christians don’t believe in 2,999 of them, the atheist simply goes one god further. Gervais’ exact words are:

I don’t believe in just one more.

Colbert didn’t respond–perhaps he was just being polite, but what is the Christian response to Gervais’ argument?

[click_to_tweet tweet=”*I just believe in one god less than you.* What I would have said to Ricky Gervais if I were Stephen Colbert. #atheism #RickyGervais #StephenColbert” quote=””I just believe in one god less than you” (sic). What I would have said to Ricky Gervais if I were Stephen Colbert.”]

“I don’t believe in just one more”

This argument needs to be unpacked a little.

Gervais is suggesting that there is a logical, and therefore necessary, step that Christians (and other monotheists) fail to make. His use of the term “just” suggests that this step is insignificant. This is far from the case–the step is neither a logically necessary nor is it insignificant.

His argument is that the rejection of the final god is the same as, and in line with, the rejection of all preceding gods. But this is wrong. It does not follow that if one rejects 1 god, one must reject the remaining 2999. Nor does it follow that if you reject 2999, you must logically reject the last.

This step, the one that Gervaise takes, has only been taken by very few, and these only recently. Of all the millions of people that ever lived in all of the remote corners of the world, all of them have come to the same conclusion. They concluded that there is more.

Belief in any one of the 3000 gods is an acknowledgment of some form of transcendence–that there is something beyond or above the range of ordinary or merely physical human experience. The belief in any deity is a claim that there is some external standard to which we must all align our lives.

The Atheists leap of faith

Rather than making a small step in line with the rejection of the first 2,999 gods, Gervais is making a giant leap in the opposite direction. He doesn’t go one itty-bitty step beyond Christianity, as his “just” implies. He, and those like him, are breaking with conclusions arrived at by the rest of humanity. These conclusions have been arrived at independently, over thousands of years on human history.

That all of humanity has arrived at the same conclusion, isn’t irrefutable proof that their conclusion is true. People who believe in God certainly take a leap of faith.

Gervais points this out as he explains atheism in a nutshell:

You say, “There is a God.”

I say, “Can you prove that.”

You say, “No.”

I say, “I don’t believe you then.”

Perhaps many in Colbert’s audience feel that Gervais has scored a point against believers, but he hasn’t. A theist can illustrate the atheist leap of faith similarly:

You say, “There no spiritual reality beyond the material.”

I say, “Can you prove that.”

You say, “No.”

I say, “I don’t believe you then.”

I think Gervais would acknowledge his leap of faith.

The question is–Who takes the greater leap? The person who says that everything that we see in the cosmos and through our experiences in life is the result of material processes or the person that says there is something more than matter and its movements and modifications.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Who takes the greater leap of faith, the theist or the atheist? #atheism #RickyGervais #StephenColbert” quote=”Who takes the greater leap of faith, the theist or the atheist?”]

The conversation can start here, not where Gervais thinks he ended it in the Stephen Colbert interview.

Are All Other Religions Wrong?

April 11, 2017 / Trent / 0 Comments

Christians are not as intolerant as you might think.

Are atheists more tolerant than religious people? Are Christians intolerant of other faiths?

On a site called Hubpages, a person that calls themselves “kittythedreamer” asked the following question:

Why is it that Christians believe that Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Native Americans, etc. are all wrong in their beliefs?

It generated quite a bit of discussion.

This question makes a lot of sense in our culture. We find Christians, indeed all those who take their faith seriously, as judgmental. When we accept that there is no God, as many in our culture have; tend to also abandon the idea that there is a universal purpose and meaning–we are uncomfortable with, or reject, the idea of objective truth. We’d rather create our own truth.

That’s why Christians baffle people like kittythedreamer (“kitty”). Christians have this old fashioned idea that truth is objective, rather than subjective. We believe that some things are true, or moral, or good, or just, whether we like it or not. It follows then that some things are false, immoral, evil, unjust.

In our culture, saying someone’s views are wrong is the same as telling them that they have the wrong favourite ice cream.

“kitty” is right; Christians do say others are wrong. They do so because when they claim that some things are true, they can’t also accept the opposing idea as also true. To do so requires a mental dexterity possessed only by those who don’t believe in objective truth–those who create their own meaning.

But “kitty” is wrong in another way. Christians do not believe that other religions are wrong, at least not entirely so. We believe other religions are right in some very important ways. Here’s a list of some of the ways that other religions are right:

[tweetshare tweet=”Christians do not believe that other religions are wrong, They are are right in some very important ways. Here’s a list of some of the ways that other religions are right:” username=”Dryb0nz”]

We’ve already covered the first one. All, or very nearly all, of the world’s religions believe that truth resides outside of the individual. They don’t entirely agree on what that truth is, but it’s external. External often means universal–that means it’s true for everyone, everywhere, for all time. One of the things that humans are supposed to do is conform themselves to that external truth. So rather than thinking everybody is wrong, Christians believe that, in this respect, that these religions are right.
Another thing that nearly all religions believe is that behind the natural world there is a mystical and/or spiritual reality.
Most of the religions of the world, past and present, believe in transcendent gods or a God. Christians believe that, in this respect, all those religions are right.
Most religions believe that God or the gods is/are occasionally active in the lives of humans. Christians believe that, in this respect, all those religions are right.
Many religions believe that God is interested in human flourishing. Christians believe it and any other religion that believes it too are considered to be right.
All religions believe that human beings must contend with evil in their lives. Christians believe this and they agree with any religion that believes it too.
Many religions believe that other religions possess truth. Some are closer to “The Truth” than others.

Obviously, Christians don’t believe that other religions are wrong. There is tremendous agreement among religious adherents. This is not to say that the differences aren’t significant, but the points at which all, or most, religions agree might give one pause.

So who is more open-minded? Does the atheist say, “You are all correct”?

Atheists usually say of religious believers, “You are all wrong!”

I know it feels like there is a lot of conflict between Christians and others in our society. Not all of it can be reduced to closed mindedness and bigotry–some of it has to do with the fact that people of faith look to a source of truth outside themselves. Their claims might not be true, but it must be admitted that the idea that all meaning is necessarily internal also has some significant drawbacks that make it hard to believe.

This is where the dialogue should begin, not with kitty’s question.

Easter or Zombie Jesus Day

April 10, 2017 / Trent / 1 Comment

Ahmadreza89 / Pixabay

Some people refer to Easter as “Zombie Jesus Day.” I’m guessing they are being provocative or trying to impress their like-minded friends. Perhaps it is because of this attitude that Christian writer Eric Metaxas has taken the position that zombies are a parody of the resurrection of the dead. I think zombies are much more than a parody, and they can be part of a gospel conversation with our children and even with our unchurched neighbours.

Jesus died and, after that, he walked around. These are two of the main things that zombies do, and it is upon these two qualities that the case for zombie Jesus is based. Missing, of course, is the third main characteristic of the ambulatory dead: the mindless consumption of living human flesh.

Zombies turned up in popular culture about a century ago, but they really took off with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and they’ve been going strong ever since. Why this popularity? The simple answer is that there is something about the zombie horde that resonates with our culture. Given the popularity of zombie narratives, it must be resonating a lot and has done so for almost fifty years. Why?

The popularity of zombies is due to the popular belief in our culture that we have outgrown Christianity and that materialism is probably true. By materialism I mean the belief that reality is material, and only material. There’s no room for the spiritual – no such thing as God or the human soul.

More and more we have organized our lives and our society around materialism. On a popular level, we don’t really dig too deeply into the implications of materialism on human identity and the meaning of life. In general, we don’t have time to read and think about these heady issues.

Monsters of doubt

But we do have time to go to the movies. Many movies reinforce a materialist philosophy, but some question it. Zombie movies are among these. The zombie is a monster and, like all monsters, it is trying to tell us something about ourselves, something that we are trying to suppress. Zombies are an embodiment of our fears of a possible future if materialism is true.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The zombie is a monster and, like all monsters, it is trying to tell us something about ourselves, something that we are trying to suppress. Zombies are an embodiment of our fears of a possible future if materialism is true. #ZombieJesusDay #Zombies” quote=”The zombie is a monster and, like all monsters, it is trying to tell us something about ourselves, something that we are trying to suppress. Zombies are an embodiment of our fears of a possible future if materialism is true.”]

We are human beings, so we have first-hand experience with what one is. We know how human beings respond to a beautiful waterfall. We know what it means to fall in love and we know what it means to be very, very sad. We not only think thoughts, but we can think about our thoughts. Is any of this possible if materialism is true? Even in a secular society, there is enough in this question to cause some doubt. Monsters turn up when we have doubts, and they keep coming back until they are dealt with. With the popularity of the zombie, we know that there are some doubts about being human in a materialist context. If there is no spiritual dimension to reality, would we respond to beauty as we do? Have emotions like love? Could consciousness signify that a human is more than matter? If materialism were true, wouldn’t we be zombies? Are we zombies?

The Apostle Paul’s faced some resistance to the resurrection of the dead as he proclaimed it. The ancient Greek culture, too, had some incorrect ideas of what a human being was. Gnostics and Platonists taught that the body was evil, or at least inferior to the spirit. The resurrection of the body didn’t make any sense to them. Why would we want to resurrect that old thing? We can see very well what happens to the body after the spirit has left it—it rots and wastes away. If humanity were to live beyond death, it would be in spirit, the good part, not in the body. Paul’s response to this incorrect anthropology is found in 1 Corinthians 15:35-44. Paul writes of a someone who seems to be stating that the resurrection of a corruption like a rotting corpse is impossible. Perhaps this “someone” imagined a shambling horde of animated, partially decomposed corpses. Paul declares this talk foolish and explains that as a dead seed goes into the ground and comes out completely new, so too, the “perishable” body goes into the ground and is resurrected “imperishable.”

[tweetshare tweet=”Paul argues against zombies in 1 Corinthians 15:35-44. ” username=”Dryb0nz”]The error of Paul’s audience reduced the essence of humankind to spirit, where modern materialism reduces man to mere body. Paul says that you will get the resurrection all wrong if you fail to understand that a human being is both body and spirit and that the resurrection will be of the whole person.

The Whole Person Resurrection

The error of Paul’s audience reduced the essence of humankind to spirit, where modern materialism reduces man to mere body. Paul says that you will get the resurrection all wrong if you fail to understand that a human being is both body and spirit and that the resurrection will be of the whole person.

When Jesus rose from the dead he had a new, resurrected body. This is what Paul’s audience needed to understand about the resurrection. Paul’s words to the church in Corinth apply to our culture as well. We need to understand that Jesus wasn’t just reanimated body, but a heart and mind and spirit as well. Consequently, he was nothing like a zombie. And rather than eating living human beings, Jesus was satisfied with eating fish with his friends (Luke 24:42-43). This is very unzombie-like behavior.

It is clear that in AMC’s The Walking Dead TV series, one would rather be truly dead than one of the “walkers.” A materialist resurrection is much worse than the nothingness of a materialist death. Disrespectful internet trolls aside, I don’t believe that the zombie apocalypse is a parody of the resurrection of the dead; I believe it is a lament that resurrection isn’t what it used to be before we grew out of our belief.

The gospel message to the zombie culture is that human beings haven’t changed. We have always been a lot more than our material bodies and we still are. Our need for salvation has also not changed – there are no true zombie movies that don’t clearly present the truth of human depravity. The good news is that the God who made us with not just a body, but a heart and a soul and a mind as well, loves us so much that he redeems all of me. Jesus wasn’t a zombie, and neither am I. This is the comprehensive resurrection we celebrate this Easter.

A version of this article was first published for The Christian Courier at christiancourier.com.

Why Christians Ought to Be Royalists

March 8, 2017 / Trent / 0 Comments

Last week my school received a visit from the Honourable Judith Guichon, the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. The lieutenant governor the representative of Queen Elizabeth II in BC. The visit followed the expected protocols–teachers dressed formally; Her Honour was accompanied by an Aide-de-Camp in full RCMP dress uniform; she entered the assembly in a processional and various other formalities were followed; we sang the national anthem and “God Save the Queen.”

Some Canadians love all things royal. They’ve got a picture book on their coffee table and commemorative plates on their walls. Others like the idea of Canada’s relationship with the English monarchy. It’s part of our history and what makes us unique–it gives us a little class, and how can you not admire the depictions of Elizabeth II on Netflix’s, The Crown. But some people think the whole business is a royal waste.

I have concluded that Christians ought to celebrate the monarchy.
The Royal Family has an important role. Never mind the good that they do through the Royal visits and causes they for which they advocate. Even if you take all these significant contributions off the table, they play a significant role by just being royal.

One of the reasons some might question the value of royalty, indeed the whole English aristocracy, is because we believe in equality. We have come to accept equality as a foundational truth and a desired end. It follows that democracy is the best sort of government, and aristocracy and democracy don’t go together.

But we would do well to remember Winston Churchill’s quip that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Democracy doesn’t work very well because it needs a citizenry that is good and wise, and people are usually neither. The reason democracy is better than all other forms of government is because it takes the fact of human depravity and decentralizes it.

In a 1943 essay titled “Equality,” C. S. Lewis explains how the value of equality and democracy is grounded not in Creation, but in the Fall.

I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent.

According to Lewis, equality is a necessity to mitigate the power of evil in a fallen world. Equality came after the Fall to counter the desires of evil men to oppress and exploit each other.

Lewis from “Equality”:

[T]he function of equality is purely protective. It is medicine, not food. By treating human persons (in judicious defiance of observed facts) as if they were all the same kind of thing [like widgets], we avoid innumerable evils. But it is not on this we were meant to live. It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense – if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining – then it is nonsense. If it means that all are of equal value as immortal souls, then I think it conceals a dangerous error. The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would not have been divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is love. It may be that He loves all equally – He certainly loved us all to death. . . . If there is equality, it is in His love, not us.

In Western cultures we accept as normative the virtues of equality and of democracy. The “you are no better than I am” sentiment results in a reluctance to submit to legitimate authorities–the boss, the coach, the government, our parents. This sort of thing seeps into the Western Church as well. There is a hesitance to submit to the church leadership. Some denominations are made up of autonomous congregations. Some congregations don’t even have a denominational affiliation. These conditions lean away from God’s creational design.

As Canadians, we have a connection to the Royals that the Americans do not. Americans have their Declaration of Independence which tells them that all men are created equal. It just ain’t so. As Canadians we have an advantage over our American brothers and sisters in that we have in the Monarchy a powerful symbol to remind us who we really are–and I don’t mean, former British subjects.

The benefit of the Royal Family and the aristocratic class is that they ground us in reality. They are not just a symbol of a faded empire, but of a Creational truth that we are not, in fact, created equal. They remind us of the Biblical truth that our value is not is our “equal value as immortal souls,” but in Christ’s love for us. There is some value in our “inequality,” in our uniqueness, as we serve as different (unequal) parts of The Body (Romans 12).

[tweetshare tweet=”The benefit of the Royal Family is that they ground us in reality. They are not just a symbol of a faded empire, but of a Creational truth that we are not, in fact, created equal. ” username=”Dryb0nz”]Perhaps the main reason why people argue that the Royals are irrelevant is out of a misplaced allegiance to equality. Perhaps not, but as we watch Downton Abbey or The Crown or the various visits, appearances and events featuring the Royals, it might be a beneficial, even spiritual, discipline to reflect on what all the pomp and circumstance might signify, and how it might bring us toward the truth of who we are in the Kingdom.

[tweetshare tweet=”Perhaps people argue that the Royals are irrelevant is out of a misplaced allegiance to equality. ” username=”dryb0nz”]

Big Questions and Deep Questions

January 29, 2017 / Trent / 0 Comments

Who ask the questions in your classroom? If the teachers had answered our questions when we were in high school, we’d have a better understanding of our world today.

Here is the studio version of a speech I made at an educational event, Learning Revolution.

Big Questions from Abbotsford Christian School on Vimeo.

In this inspiring “RevIt Up” talk, Trent DeJong describes one way in which a Learning Revolution may come about if educators would consider “deep questions” with their students. With examples from his own experience and a clever sense of humour, Trent is sure to make you think about how we can authentically engage the next generation of students.

Why read 1984?

January 28, 2017 / Trent / 2 Comments

1984 may be the most important novel for our time.

I feel vindicated.

I have been asked countless times, “Do you still teach that? I read it when I was in school.” This past week George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, topped Amazon’s bestseller list. There is so much that recommends it. One of the reasons everyone should read Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it is a relevant warning. It is so masterfully articulated that the terms Orwellian, Big Brother and double-think evoke and almost visceral response in those who’ve read it. Consequently, these terms are powerful weapons against the abuse of power.

This week, Kellyanne Conway was accused of double-think when she used the phrase “alternative facts” in defence of President Trump’s press secretary’s assertion that 500 000 is greater than 1.8 million.

[tweetshare tweet=”We have entered an age where doublethink is possible #Orwell #1984 #alternativefacts” username=”Dryb0nz”]One of the reasons I am so committed to teaching Nineteen Eighty-Four every year, is to explore with students the necessary conditions that make double-think possible. These conditions are, apparently, present in our “post truth” culture right now–as is evidenced by the phrase, “alternative fact.”

What are these conditions?

[Spoiler Alert]

One of the main ones is articulated by O’Brian in Part 3 of the novel. O’Brian’s task is to “cure” Winston from his mistaken view of reality. Winston’s error? A belief in objective reality. In a very early session, Winston objects to O’Brian’s assertion that “we, The Party, control . . . all memories.” Winston challenges, “It is outside oneself. How can you control memory?” Winston is appealing to the existence of an external reality. O’Brian counters,

But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and no where else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes . . . only in the mind of the Party. . . . Whatever the Party holds to be truth, is the truth.”

(Sound familiar?)

Winston has a hard time understanding this; he argues that the Party doesn’t control the climate or gravity. O’Brian’s response:

We control matter, because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. . . . There is nothing we could not do. Invisibility, levitation–anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. . . . You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.

O’Brian is simply saying that reality or truth is defined by human minds, it is not a thing in itself. Consequently, if one controls human minds, then one controls reality.

[tweetshare tweet=”If truth and reality are defined by human minds, then one need only control human minds to determine truth and control reality. #1984 #Orwell” username=”Dryb0nz”]For this conclusion to be true, O’Brian’s first premise must be true. Is reality defined by human minds or is Winston right, does reality or truth exist outside the skull?

Human beings have always believed that reality or truth exist outside the human–the Ancient Greeks called it the kosmos, Taoists and Buddhists think of it as a transcendent truth, the Jews and Muslims understand it to be in a transcendent God, Christians find it in the person of Jesus Christ (this is another majority view held by all religions).

Recently, within the last 150 years or so, something changed in our culture–in the West. We broke with the rest of humanity and began to consider the possibility that the universe might be made up of just material. This meant that there is no God or gods or transcendent truth. Objective reality had not place to live but in matter.

All this has lead to a different way of talking about truth. Truth and fact used to mean different things. You used to be able to call all sorts of things true, not just things like,

water is made up of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom
the Battle of Hastings was in 1066
2+2=4

but sentiments could also fall under the heading of “truth”:

the waterfall is sublime
the Parthenon is beautiful
courage is better than cowardice

In a world of only matter, truth is reduced to fact. The rest of what used to be truth has to find a different place to live–it did. It took up residence in individual human minds. The truths in the second list are now “just” opinions–or are said to be merely subjective.

We’ve been going along quite happily so far with our separation of fact and opinion, but it couldn’t last. As Orwell warned, without an external objective reality, rational facts will eventually go the way of rational sentiments. If the truth is in the mind, then the, so called, facts have no more chance than did true sentiments. This is how O’Brian can state with confidence that 2+2=5 if Big Brother says it does.

This is what happened this past week on Meet The Press. It was officially declared by a representative of the President of the United States of America that 500 000 was greater than 1.8 million.

When we separated the mind from the world outside the mind, the first casualty was the loss of true sentiments, but it was only a matter of time till the facts themselves fell victim to the denial of objective reality.

The only way to get back to reality is to recover the pre-modern idea of objective truth. Objective truth, not only links reason to reality, but grounds sentiment as well. This is expressed in The Abolition of Man, where C. S. Lewis argues that emotions are not “in themselves contrary to reason” (19). Some sentiments are reasonable or unreasonable only as they conform, or fail to conform, to something else–to some external standard. He said that “a philosophy which does not accept value as eternal and objective can only lead to ruin” for it “has nothing, in the long run, to divide it from devil worship” (“Poison” 80-81).

It is appropriate to be alarmed by the “double-speak” coming from the White House this past week, but we oughtn’t be surprised–Orwell warned us in Nineteen Eighty-Four that this was coming. It has apparently arrived.

Perhaps the Overwhelming Majority Is Right

January 26, 2017 / Trent / 0 Comments

In his article called “Only A Minority Is Right,” J. H. McKenna Ph.D. argues against religious truth.

His argument is based on the diversity of religious belief. First there was polytheism, then their was monotheism along with “several sects and denominations of monotheism,” then there came “other new religions” and “several thousand denominations and new religions.” This story tells, according to McKenna, that “there is no uniformity in religion and no majority religious opinion” (italics mine). His point is that, “In religion, your view is inevitably a minority view.”

McKenna concludes: everybody, or almost everybody, is wrong. You can’t, therefore, look to religion for truth.

But what if there were uniformity in religion? Would that be a source of truth? What if there is a majority religious opinion?

There is.

Billions and billions of people for millennia, regardless of other more particular religious claims, have held to a single belief.

That belief: There is something and/or someone beyond the physical world, something bigger than we are–the transcendent.

Until recently, all religions have held that, out there somewhere, there are gods or a spiritual force or God.

Now, in Western societies, we have floated the idea that we–that is, human beings–are god or that nothing is.

It is only recently that this alternative has been proposed, and it’s been catching on because the conditions are currently just right for us to believe such a thing. Growth in the belief of human autonomy may or may not continue. Right now, the number of atheists and agnostics numbers in the low, very low, hundreds of millions. This up against the billions and billions of human beings in a wide variety of circumstances and conditions that have all believed in a transcendent reality.

Perhaps this much agreement across so may centuries and cultures might be, at least considered, a source of truth. I thought I picked up in the article, that McKenna suggests that this sort of unity in religious belief might carry some weight.

McKenna has missed this unity in human thought, present since humans started thinking, but he’s not wrong in his call for dialogue and respect between the more particular beliefs about the transcendent reality. Not because most of us are wrong, but because we all look at reality through very particular cultural lenses. It’s always a good thing to try to reduce the tint a little. We have much to gain from meaningful dialogue with other places and with other times.

I Invented Twitter in 1990

January 16, 2017 / Trent / 5 Comments

Most people think Twitter began in 2006, but a form of it existed in my grade 7 classroom long before that. I didn’t call it Twitter, I called it “Notion Notes.”

Early in my career, I was a grade seven teacher. Besides having fun learning all that Science and English, we also did fun things for their own sake. The kids loved it and so did I.

In it’s simplest form, a Notion Note is when students each write something on a little piece of paper, small enough it could hold more than 144 characters, and then I would read them out loud one by one.

The idea was that the students would play with words and ideas and there’d be some benefit from instant “publication.” Very quickly a whole bunch of rituals grew around this simple activity.

The paper must be newsprint, symbolizing the temporality of notions.
When a Notion Note had been created it must be folded once and held up between the middle and fore fingers until it was collected.
They were read from a seated position.
After each notion was read, it was torn four times and sprinkled from aloft into the large garbage can, again symbolizing the temporality of a notion.
Once a Notion Note was turned in, it belonged to the community rather than the author–one couldn’t publically state, “That one’s mine.”
If a Notion caught my fancy through originality, profundity, sincerity or wit, it was deemed a “Classic” and placed ceremoniously into my breast pocket. This is obviously correlative to the “favouriting” of Tweets.
At the end of the year, I would type up and post all of the classic notion notes of the year, and celebrate them. This is obviously pretty much the same thing as “re-tweeting.”

Students got into this. It became the goal to either get a laugh from their classmates or to get their notion note into that breast pocket and make the Classic list. They began to have a notion note page in their binder where they’d write down possible submissions. If they came across a quote while reading, they’d write it down. A funny idea or humourous question they had in response to something in Social Studies got written down too. Students also used Notion Notes as a way of disseminating famous quotes.

Notion Notes would sometimes talk directly to me, or interact with a Notion Note from the previous week. Sometimes they’d begin to develop themes over several weeks. These are like the reply option in Twitter.

Here are some classics from 1993:

I think zits are those little bugs that crawl in your underwear at night.

This pen doesn’t work.

If pencils had erasers on both ends, we’d get better grades.

Count to 5 . . . You are not 5 seconds older.

What’s the difference between a duck? Both of it’s legs are the same.

Author Unknown must be very talented.

Nobody notices what I do, until I don’t do it.

As the fish swims through the sea,/The bird swoops down and goes tweet.

There it was. The first tweet, staring me right in the face.

Too bad I was too short sighted to convert Notion Notes into an app–the problem was, no one knew about apps in 1990, and I missed my chance.