theomorph

Slice of Life

2004-10-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting the blog lately. No reason in particular, but probably a confluence of things. Working six to seven days a week has been pretty exhausting. Minor familial strife has not helped. Nor has a rather intense conversation buried in the comment section of a previous post (which shall remain nameless). Even my bookstore boss noticed that I looked more tired than usual.

My reading has only been limping along, as well. At the moment I am reading The Scarlet Letter because I never read it in school and suffered a sudden burst of curiosity a few days ago. Turns out I love the book and Nathaniel Hawthorne is my new literary hero. But my more "serious" (i.e., non-literary, non-fictional) reading has suffered a bit. I have been picking at bits and pieces of Herodotus, a previously mentioned book about the "Scopes Monkey Trial," and a pop-history about the United States in the late 19th century. But now I am starting John Taylor Gatto's An Underground History of American Education (available to read online here) because it is the latest selection for my reading group. That will be a major task, especially since Gatto's writing style and lack of documentation annoy the heck out of me.

Meanwhile I have also been reading Mourt's Relation and trying to lay my hands on a decent copy of William Bradford's Of Plimouth Plantation. Yes, it's that time of year again, and I can't celebrate a holiday without diving back into its history (or alleged history, in the case of Thanksgiving).

Despite all this reading (and I've not included all my reading in this account), I have had surprisingly little I felt like writing on the blog. However, I have been working on a different literary project. Every literate person should have a novel in the works, I think. Let the masses have their television, I shall find my escape in writing. Working on a big piece of fiction also has the delightful effect of centering one's intellectual pursuits around a singular narrative or literary theme. This is especially helpful for me and my insanely broad interests. Perhaps one of these days it will see the light of day as a published work, but don't hold your breath.

Of course, being an independent reader and a closet novelist, one must always struggle against the slithering tentacles of crackpothood and dilettantism. That, too, is exhausting.

At any rate, I have not shriveled up and died, and I have no intention of abandoning my blog like so many others have done. A quasi-hiatus now and then is almost inescapable, though. As my mother tells me I once said to my father at an early age, "I'm not Superman, daddy!" Indeed. Nietzsche notwithstanding.

Colson, Derrida, and "Doubt-Ridden Skeptics"

2004-10-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

Jacques Derrida died last week. Chuck Colson commented:

The very day Derrida died, I was on an airplane. A couple recognized me and came over to talk. They told me the sad tale of how four years of college had turned their son from a solid Christian into a doubt-ridden skeptic. Now multiply that incident a million-fold, and you'll understand the real legacy of Jacques Derrida, who amused himself at our great expense. Who said ideas don't have consequences?

Classic. Innocent Christian kid goes off to university, comes back a "doubt-ridden skeptic." Happens all the time. You might say it happened to me. Maybe Derrida's deconstructionism had something to do with it, but not the way Colson wants you to think. No, deconstructionism is not an evil force that is hacking away at the scriptural foundation of Christianity from without; deconstructionism has been called to the defense of Christianity from within. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that modern Christianity could not function without deconstructionism.

Twentieth-century American Christianity was richly prepared for deconstructionism by fundamentalists who took the biblical texts, hacked them into pieces, and rearranged them to build the fantastic "prophetic" schemes of premillennial dispensationalism, authorial intent be damned. All they had to do was remind people that God was the true author, and suddenly their own ideas about God could stand in as authorial intent. Rearrange the text, build theological tenets on allegedly interrelated passages, forget about the massive cultural and contextual gap between yourself and the biblical authors. Congratulations! You have deconstructed your "holy" scriptures. (See, for instance, the Scofield Bible, which encouraged nonlinear reading by placing in the margins numerous reference markers pointing to other passages.)

But the fundamentalists aren't the only Christian deconstructionists. The liberals do it, too. These are the people who constantly re-interpret various passages based on an allegedly superior understanding of the original language and cultural context. For instance, many of them have managed to turn the Bible into some kind of feminist manifesto. I once read a whole book that was dedicated to convincing its readers that despite what the Bible seems to say about women (that they are lesser people), it is in fact emphatically supportive of equality between the sexes. Sure, there are some parts in the Bible where women are allowed to play important roles, but their treatment is far from consistent. So how come radical feminism within Christianity didn't happen until almost two thousand years after the canon was completed? Suddenly scholars in the twentieth century can understand the texts better than their original authors and readers did? Welcome to Christian deconstructionism! (Liberal Christians also use deconstructionist critiques to support homosexuality, even though the Bible is pretty darned clear on that one, too. But since the ancient text doesn't line up with modern tolerance, we'll just tweak it so it says what we want.)

Then there are the Catholics who establish scriptural authority with voting councils. Because, you know, while a lone, "reformed," sola scriptura reader might be wrong, a bunch of institutional elites who argue and then cast votes can only be truly led by the Spirit. Apparently God is a democratic deity. This from the branch of the church that is the most hierarchical and authoritarian. Go figure. (Watch out, here come the Catholic readers to slap me silly and tell me I'm wrong, likely under the auspices of some papal bull or other authoritative document.) Seems like shades of deconstruction there, too. How can you establish authorial intent by taking a vote? Does the author get a vote?

(Of course, most of these Christian forms of deconstruction were around long before Jacques Derrida, but they're not too different from his theory. Only the liberals have actually read and been directly influenced by Derrida. My point, though, is that Christians of all stripes have wandered from the original intent of the authors of their scriptures and begun reading their own meanings into the texts, sometimes innocently and sometimes not, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively.)

When I went to university, I decided that since I was bolstering my education in other corners, I might as well delve into my faith. So I started reading the scriptures more carefully. I read whole books at a time, instead of just picking and choosing verses or chapters here and there. I tried to learn about the context of the author. Who was his (or her, in the case of some books, perhaps) original audience? Why? Where were they? When were they? What was this about? That is, I began to read them as a historian instead of a religious devotee. Rather quickly it became clear to me that the only way to make these writings as meaningful as I had been taught they were supposed to be was to deconstruct them, to read into them, to listen to the intent of various commentators and historical authorities instead of to the bare texts themselves.

So there I was in the midst of my university education, starting to wonder about the validity of a religious text that is more interpretation and tradition than anything else. In other words, it was the deconstructionism rampant within modern Christianity that exposed the silliness of the religion to me. So if Colson wants to worry about deconstructionism, he ought to turn his guns against his own, because the "doubt-ridden skeptics" are not the ones doing the deconstructing.

Solon's Culture of Life

2004-10-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

Before I slipped into sleep last night I read a little Herodotus. The historian tells the story of a wise Athenian named Solon who was traveling throughout the lands of the Greeks. In Lydia, a region that is now part of Turkey, he came before the King Croesus, one of the richest, most powerful men of his day. Solon was known for his wisdom and experience, having recently rewritten the Athenian constitution, then setting out on a ten year journey to experience greater Greece. So Croesus, finding a wise man in his court and hoping to bolster his vanity, inquired of Solon who was the happiest of all men--fully expecting to hear his own name echoed back. But Solon told him of other men whom he deemed happier, listing their achievements both modest and great, and finally declaring that no man's life can be truly evaluated until it has ended, so that all the days of his life can be counted. Every day is different, Solon reminded Croesus. Even great men who have lived long may still find time to fail and fall. Croesus, of course, was angered by Solon's response, and judged the Athenian to be a fool.

The story probably did not happen as Herodotus told it. Solon instituted his Athenian reforms in 594 BCE then set out on his ten year journey, but Croesus did not become king of Lydia until 560 BCE. Be that as it may, the conversation between Solon and Croesus is still a valuable piece of philosophy, even if its historicity is dubious. (See also the 17th century Dutch painter Nikolaus Knüpfer's inspiring portrayal of the story.)

Reflecting on the words of Solon I turn back to modern times and the various movements posturing themselves as proponents for a "culture of life." The people of these movements judge life by its potential instead of by its achievements or failures. This view is allegedly more hopeful and inspiring than the one espoused by Solon, but I wonder. How is it good to plant a sense of value into every person regardless of how that person lives? What can that do but establish a sense of complacency that allows us to take our lives for granted? Certainly we all have potential. But greatness and importance and value come not from potential but from what is done with potential. Potential may be used wisely or it may be squandered. Tragedy occurs when one who is attempting to use his or her potential for something great is caught up in the machinations of nature or human society only to see that effort and that potential cast down to oblivion. Tragedy is what happens when those who strive are beaten back by forces greater than themselves. Without striving, without an attempt to act on potential, there can be no tragedy.

Solon had his own culture of life, and it is one that I can affirm. Life is valuable as an opportunity, but human lives are valuable as efforts to be and to become something more. No life can be judged a failure or a success until it is completed and no beginning is enough to secure a valiant ending. Many of us will fail and be forgotten. Only by striving against the entropy and oblivion of time and history can we secure for ourselves a place of honor. Don't give me a participation award and tell me that simply existing is good enough, pat me on the head, call me valuable, and send me on my way. That is not life but illusion. Give me something real instead. Give me Solon's culture of life, and not this feeble culture of modern days.

July, 1925

2004-10-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

Greetings, gentle readers. If you're wondering where I am, and why I have not posted for several days, let me assure that I have not disappeared or spontaneously combusted. I have only been working and reading and thinking, letting things boil around in my brain for a while.

For instance, I am currently reading Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1998 for this book. It is a fascinating tale, this circus of a trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. I've always thought it was interesting, from the day I first learned of it in my advanced placement U.S. History class. (I can still see my teacher's handwriting on the board, the words "Scopes Monkey Trial." What a catchy name for a trial!)

A whole host of issues coalesced in the Scopes trial: individual rights versus majority rule; academic freedom versus education as indoctrination; legitimate and illegitimate uses of the judicial system; ideological content versus media "events"; and, of course, science versus religion. This makes the Scopes trial one of those points of perennial fascination in U.S. history, not unlike the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 in its popularity, its sordid human conflict, and its simple staging that translates well into linear narrative. (Consider the two famous plays The Crucible by Arthur Miller and Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the former based on the Salem trials and the latter inspired by the Dayton trial.) Many of the recurring themes in American history can be encapsulated in these two events. (Most of the rest of them crop up in the Civil War.)

Americans of all stripes would do well to revisit the Dayton, Tennessee of July, 1925, the complex characters who converged there, and the conflicting ideologies that clashed swords there. There is something telling in the "Scopes Monkey Trial," not just in its explicit content and what is recorded in the transcript, but in the way that the trial was arguably a manufactured publicity stunt--manufactured by all participants, from the ACLU that sought a "test case" for the antievolution Tennessee law to the Daytonians looking to put their town on the map to William Jennings Bryan and his post-Great War paranoia of a Darwinian-Nietzschean alliance to the bombastic Clarence Darrow who volunteered for the case only after he discovered that Bryan was involved. All this after the enactment of a law that no one really expected would be enforced. The clamor of the public regarding this trial indicates, at least to me, that Americans needed a stage upon which to enact their inner struggles over the ideological direction of their nation. Dayton was willing to be that stage and Scopes, Bryan, and Darrow were willing to be the players. Publicity stunt though it may have been, it was a cathartic one that gave new direction both to the evolutionists and to the antievolution fundamentalists, setting the tone for their conflict up to the present day. (It is surprising how many of the same arguments are still around, 79 years later.) It was as though the participants, under the guise of a publicity stunt, were creating a myth--a myth to put Dayton on the map, to destroy evolution, to ridicule fundamentalism.

History is filled with interesting stories and events that ought to make us pause and reflect. Rather than speeding us along toward some imagined, predicted future, they should caution us always to consider what has already been said and done. Daniel Boorstin once wrote that

When we become historians, we are seduced by the prophet's temptations--to pretend to be wiser than we really are, and to underestimate the probability of the unexpected. But History should be our Cautionary Science. Our past is only a little less uncertain than our future, and, like the future, it is always changing, always revealing and concealing.

What happened in Dayton in 1925 was not the beginning of a conflict, nor the end of one, but a conveniently dramatic emergence of an emblematic representation of arguments that have almost always been with us. The United States has always been a land of conflict and turmoil and that has usually been a sign of our health. That is one of the reasons I so often delve into controversy with this blog. Even if an argument changes no minds, it has the sneaky effect of exposing both sides to each other's existence, and that is perhaps more valuable than changing minds anyway.

Guillen's Galling Guff

2004-10-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

Michael Guillen has a new book. Can a Smart Person Believe in God?

What kind of question is that? Of course smart people can believe in God. They do it every day. Apparently Guillen is arguing against the straw-atheist who claims only idiots believe in God. This is exceedingly annoying. But wait, there's more!

Guillen can't even make it past the second page of his book without spreading more silliness. He says we are "split into two camps: Those who believe in God and those who believe in something else. You'll notice I resisted lapsing into the common practice of referring to the two camps as Believers and Nonbelievers; doing so would encourage the totally erroneous notion that 'believing' or 'having faith' is something only some of us do. Truth is, everyone of us 'believes.' Everyone of us 'has faith.' What divides us are the different objects of our faith, our different gods."

Umm, no. Sorry. Real life ain't Hollywood where everybody has to "believe in something." (Speaking of which, I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing that same freaking line in every other movie. You'd think Hollywood was all about pie-in-the-sky and nobody cared about the bottom line. Ha.) In real life, there are people who believe in things that can't be seen, observed, verified, or otherwise detected by any non-subjective means, and people who don't. I am one of the latter. We are a very small minority.

Which Guillen recognizes: "4 percent of Americans don't believe in God--a pretty meager percentage given the disproportionate attention and clout this camp appears to enjoy in today's secular age."

Huh? Attention? Clout? Yeah, right. Guillen has clearly never been an atheist, or he would know what it's like to live in a world where everybody (for all intents and purposes) believes in God, and basically assumes that you do, too. He doesn't understand that when you work in schools and you have to stand up every morning to pledge your patriotic allegiance, that pledge still includes a theological point because the "clout" for that issue is entirely on the side of the theists, who are always standing at the ready to ram a theological declaration down the throat of every American. Nor does Guillen know what it's like when every civic meeting and ritual seems to include an invocation and/or a benediction, during which we allegedly attention-getting, clout-wielding atheists are made to feel like outsiders. Anyone who has actually been an atheist knows what it is like. Any attention we get is negative, any clout we have is fought for tooth and nail. Why are the presidential candidates bending over backwards to appeal to religious voters, but none of them give a damn what we atheists think? I'll tell you why: Because there are only a very few of us and we have approximately zero clout. In fact, most atheists are not interested in "clout" for the sake of atheism. We're not like Christians, who want to convert the whole world and are willing to stage massive proselytization efforts to achieve that end. Most of us just want to live our lives and have Christians stop telling us we have to say things like "under God" if we want to pledge our allegiance to our national flag. Stuff like that.

Guillen's book "Includes a revealing self-test to determine your own SQ" or "Spiritual Quotient." I can't get past the first question:

1. If something unlikely but good happens to me, I am most likely to:
(a) Shake my head in wonderment over the coincidence.
(b) Try figuring out how it could have happened.
(c) Thank God.
(d) Thank Lady Luck.
(e) Try analyzing the odds of its happening.

So what am I supposed to do if none of those answers applies to me? My answer would be "(f) Be glad something good happened." But Guillen doesn't allow for that, because his test is biased. He still thinks that even though I am an atheist, I still "believe" in something. But I don't.

Anyway, that's all the time I have for now.

Standardized Testing

2004-10-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

Today I am administering standardized tests to seventh graders. These are local tests, part of our district's attempt at "deep alignment." (I.e., the powers that be are convinced that a Good Education for all seventh graders means they can all pass the same tests at the same times throughout the year.) The kids have no idea that they are not really being tested. Standardized tests have nothing to do with students or what they know. They have everything to do with The System and what it can induce the students to regurgitate. Want your students to test well? Write a test then prepare them for it. This will tell you nothing about what the students know or about how well they understand anything (except maybe how to deal with multiple choices and how to shade in bubbles). However, it will tell you how well The System has adhered to its curriculum. This is clear from the fact that students are not graded by standardized tests--schools are graded by standardized tests. Your school did not fare so well on the standardized tests? Prepare to be punished or sanctioned or sentenced to the purgatory of "professional development." (I.e., "Because your students did not pass the standardized tests, you are clearly not up with current instructional and psychological fads. If you were a good teacher, you would do what we tell you to do and stop trying to respond to the innate curiosity of individual students, which only short-circuits the precision of our nearly-automated curriculum, which you need to follow if you want to produce standardized, cookie-cutter students. Our standardized, cookie-cutter tests reveal this flaw in your professional and personal character. Report to the nearest re-education--er, professional development--center.") The kids will never notice anything except that suddenly their teachers are in a frenzy over how well the students perform on all these tests that won't affect their grades. Welcome to modern American education.

Tired

2004-10-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

It's one of those days. I'm not even focusing as I write this. All the words are doubled. Too tired to bother. Worse, I still have five hours left at work. Worse than that, at least five more days until I get a day off. It's already been at least a week since I had a day off, too. (On top of that, my last days off were all Civil War reenacting days, which are exhausting and not restful at all.) One of these days I'm just going to fall over, I think.

Sunday Morning

2004-10-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ah, Sunday morning. NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. Huevos rancheros. Orange juice. Espresso. The swish of the dishwasher. Looking out the window on a world swathed in the orange and pink light of a rising sun. Going online, skipping around a few blogs. Finding rude, unnecessary, and as-yet-unsubstantiated comments regarding my personal character.

What? Oh yeah, that last part. Take a look:

I sure as hell wouldn't want to be his wife....or worse, his daughter. If he even has a wife, I bet he won't have her for long.

Hey, it's the best part of waking up! Courtesy Alexa.

Here I am, trying to be one of those honorable bloggers who manages to speak out with unpopular perspectives without attacking people for their personality, marriageability, etc., when along comes yet another Christian testifying to the transformative power of her faith. Lovely.

If you don't like what I write, don't read it. Better yet, tell me why. I can weather criticism pretty well. (I'm an atheist in a predominantly Christian culture, a non-partisan atheist in a milieu when atheists are predominantly leftists, and a relatively privileged white male in a "postcolonial" age when relatively privileged white males are everybody's favorite whipping boy. You do the math.)

Anyway, I'm gonna go pull another shot of espresso, have another glass of juice, and read a book. Good day to all.

Entropy

2004-10-02T01:17:00.000-07:00

Today I led some seventh graders through a couple science labs. Nothing too exciting, unless you think dropping food coloring into a dish of soapy milk is a good way to quicken your pulse. These labs were just designed to practice making hypotheses and observations. So before we started in with the food coloring, all the kids had to write down a hypothesis. What would happen? One girl wrote, "It will blow up and everyone will die." Funny. This was a perfectly valid hypothesis, I later explained to the class. She had never mixed milk, liquid soap, and food coloring so what could she know? Anything might happen. She might have reasoned inductively that no teacher would ask seventh graders to perform a lab that would kill them, but where's the fun in that? At the bottom of her lab report, at the end of her conclusion, she wrote, "No one died." Indeed.

Another girl in the same class tried to convince me that the air conditioner hanging from the ceiling could explode at any minute. "We might all die," she said with such weary disaffection that she seemed almost hopeful about the possibility. "Yes," I conceded. "No one knows. We could all die any minute now." Really. An asteroid could strike the earth. A plane might crash into the school. Al Qaeda might detonate a nuclear bomb. Who knows? (Or, as I suspect the air conditioner girl might have added, "Who cares?")

Last weekend I did some Civil War reenacting. One of my friends later shared with me his thoughts as he lay still and silent on the field after "taking a hit." He said, "Here I am this intelligent, articulate person, and look how quickly I might be struck dead." Thousands of intelligent, articulate people were struck dead just that quickly in the Civil War. Lives are destroyed by projectiles every day. Individuals who have spent decades cultivating themselves, learning things, expanding their horizons, reading for pleasure, thinking about the meaning of life--destroyed in an instant.

You, of course, may believe in souls. I do not. However, do not confuse my reflections on soul-less mortality as a depressed lament on the alleged sadness of human life and consciousness without the prospect of eternal life.

No life has a guarantee, not for next year, not for next week, not for tomorrow, not for my own ability to reach the end of this sentence. But look, there, I did it, the lack of a guarantee notwithstanding. Some people would call it a gift, others would call it a miracle. I call it life as usual, no warranty, no guarantee, no dealer maintenance program, no safety net, no nothin'. It is astonishing, then, how many of us survive each day unscathed.

I often think about myself and my thoughts when I drive, because driving is existentially precarious. (Especially in my Saturn on a road full of SUVs.) Here I am on a daily quest for self-improvement and at any moment all that I have worked for might be destroyed. Someday it will be destroyed. All my poise and articulation, all my knowledge, all my opinions, all my thoughts and cares. It will happen to you, too.

But in the face of death we are defiant little buggers, aren't we? We seek longer lives, fleshly immortality, historical importance, influence on the future, whatever. We accumulate wisdom and possessions. We try to leave our mark. As I heard a 114-year-old woman say on NPR this morning, we live our lives the best we can. What else can we do? We build and build, constructing our lives piece by piece, but in the end we cannot outrun the physical laws of the universe, that everything falls apart, and entropy will always conquer. Someday, even the great pyramids at Giza will be gone, pulverized and spread across the desert. People built those things with an eye to eternity, you know. Like everything else we do.

Some people think that mortality plus atheism will always equal despair and meaninglessness. If there is no eternity, if I have no soul by which to pass on the accumulation of my life at the moment of death, why do I bother? But I think the question is misguided. How can I not bother? How can I live and be human without thumbing my nose at fate and entropy and the ultimate disassembly of my mind? What is the point of living unless by living you mean to defy death?

(The more logically minded of my readers will smirk at that ostensibly circular tautology. I remind them that logic, though a useful and valuable tool, is about as real as Euclidian points and lines. Sometimes the facts of existence are not so simple as to yield themselves to logic.)

So here I am, defying death and entropy, trying to leave behind a trail of my existence. How many of my thoughts can be encoded in language and passed along to others? How long will it take for the information about myself that I can secrete in words to degrade into gibberish? Even documents, our primary link to the past, will fade away. Preservation cannot stand up against entropy. Someday all of us will be forgotten, even those of us who write and try to embed ourselves in words. But we might last a little longer.

Fraught with Naught

2004-09-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

So I watched the debate. Lehrer pointedly asks John Kerry for "specifics" on his plan for Iraq and Kerry says all this vague stuff like "change the dynamic on the ground." What the does that mean? Then after the debate they get all these Democrats saying that Kerry has finally come out and provided a solid plan for Iraq. Huh? Did I miss something?

Kerry wants to have a summit to talk about Iraq with world leaders. Isn't that basically what the UN did for a dozen years before the invasion? How long can the world talk? This, unfortunately, is where the enemy has the Western world by the balls. While we sit around in committees and summits and congresses discussing things, they're out planning and carrying out their attacks. They don't worry about unilateralism versus multilateralism; they're nimble. If they want to blow up children in Iraq, they blow up children in Iraq. If they want to destroy the tallest buildings in New York and kill thousands of civilians, they destroy the tallest buildings in New York and kill thousands of civilians. If they want to kidnap and behead a journalist or a contractor or a soldier, they kidnap and behead a journalist or a contractor or a soldier. Meanwhile, we go over there, get a whole bunch of them cornered in a nice, centralized location and flat refuse to drop a bomb on them because they're in a Muslim shrine. Yeah, that's the way to win.

The Western world has triumphed and survived because it has been able to invert its value system on the battlefield and the frontier. We are peaceful and tolerant in the center, but vicious around the edges. Except now American troops are in Iraq and elsewhere trying to fight some kind of sensitive war because we don't want to offend anyone. Well, hey, guess what. War is offensive. No way around it. And if we're not willing to fight an offensive war (and both meanings of the word apply), then we're not going to win. We worry about killing women, children, and innocent civilians. We refuse to attack when our enemies hide in religious buildings. Terrorists have no such qualms.

So John Kerry wants to hold a summit meeting and somehow "change the dynamic on the ground." Way to go, John. That'll do the trick. You find yourself in an asymmetrical war so you decide to become even more sluggish and overgrown. Good thinking.

Killing Embryos?

2004-09-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

I am here today to go on the record with my bewilderment with opponents of embryonic stem cell research.

Here's how I understand stem cell research: Fertilize an egg and let it divide a few times. Take the resulting clump of cells and use them to see what kinds of tissues you can grow on command. Repeat until you get something useful. Put cotton in your ears while Christians scream at you for being a genocidal maniac.

Broad strokes, I know. (Don't get me started about generalizations.)

Maybe the religious folks have a halfway decent point about destroying a potential human being. But then I have seen way too many full-fledged human beings who don't deserve to exist. For instance, why are we so quick to execute murderers? Why are Americans in general more concerned about a thousand dead American soldiers than about many thousands killed in Iraq who were not Americans? Or why people keep going on about the 58,000 American soldiers killed in Vietnam while conveniently ignoring all the dead Vietnamese--especially the ones who died after we pulled out? Or why do we always hear about the six million victims of the Nazis, but never about how many German soldiers were killed in the Second World War? Why are dead friends and neighbors a source of grief, but dead victims of a typhoon in India merely statistics? On and on it goes. Unequal valuation of human beings happens all the time, so naturally that it easily slips our notice.

Now we are told that it is unethical and immoral to extract fertilized eggs, develop them into embryos (which, honestly, are just clumps of cells not recognizably human), and then use the stem cells in those embryos to explore new methods to enhance and prolong the lives of those already here. This bewilders me.

Perhaps I would understand better if fertility rates were low and every last embryo was needed to ensure the continuation of the species. But here in the modern West, it is easier to reproduce successfully than in any other historical milieu. Thanks to advanced medicine, government funding, and social safety nets, people who have no discernible parenting skills are able to reproduce at higher rates than their more conscientious neighbors. Fertility rates are so high that anyone who wants to have a baby can have one. Where I live, the well-fed children of thugs and criminals and drug-addicts abound. (Then, when they get older, we nurse them along with special education programs, school psychologists, free lunch programs, and later welfare, prisons, and the same social safety nets that allowed their parents to bring them into the world.) It's harder to get a driver's license than it is to reproduce. So why are we worried about destroying embryos? We clearly have resources--both biological and economical--to spare.

But the opponents of embryonic stem cell research will surely object that they defend embryos not because we need them but because they are potential human beings. So what? If killing a pregnant woman were a double homicide and relatives of dead victims of terrorists can be awarded financial compensation for lost decades of earning power, maybe the murder of a married couple should be considered a quadruple murder because the murderer has destroyed the potential for the average birthrate of two more children. If you don't understand why that "relatives of dead victims of terrorists" thing is in there, it's about viewing murder as the destruction not just of the victim, but of the victim's potential. How far can you go with that? I can produce millions of sperm which, passed along to enough women, could result in innumerable offspring. Is that part of my potential? What is potential anyway?

Ultimately, again, opponents of embryonic stem cell research bewilder me. Human life is not nearly so clear cut as they seem to wish it were.

Smarter than God

2004-09-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

Check it out. Didn't know I wrote in an "I'm smarter than God" style. Didn't know that was a style.

It's a weird comment, though. If you don't like what I say, just disagree. Preferably with substance. What's the point of saying I think I'm "smarter than God"? I run into those things and I can't help but make a funny face and think, "Okay, if I'm so misguided, why won't you point out some specifics?" Who cares how smart I am or think I am? The substance of my comments is what matters.

Furthermore, I am curious about the specific rhetorical devices that indicate my "smarter than God" quotient. Is it a crime to be confident in my opinions? Should I pretend to be dumber? Should I weaken all my remarks by prefacing them with the words "I think" or "I believe," as though it weren't already obvious from what I had written that I think or believe it? What exactly makes me sound "smarter than God"?

In my opinion, too many people mistake straightforward declarations of opinion for arrogance. So I have a strong writing style. Get over it. Fight back with something real and lose the ad hominem stuff.

Lee Strobel Strikes Again!

2004-09-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

Chuck Colson has been blabbering on (and on, and on) about Lee Strobel's latest book, The Case for a Creator. (Huh? The case for a creator? Not The Creator? For somebody so assertive and one-sided as Strobel, I am a bit shocked that he chose the indefinite article for his title.) For the sake of full disclosure, I should say that I have not read this book yet. But I have read two others of his "Case for..." books, including The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith, so I know how his system works: Find people who will support his case, interview them, write it up in a book and make it look like the "case" is ironclad. Why doesn't he have the balls to interview people who will disagree? (Note to Lee Strobel: If you are reading this, feel free to answer via the comment section.)

On Lee Strobel in general: I have no problem with people who want to believe. I have no problem with people who do believe. I have no problem with people trying to rationalize reasons for why they believe. I don't even have a problem with people who write books to that effect. But I do get annoyed when those books make it sound like people who don't believe as Strobel does (conservative evangelical Christian) are just ignorant, uninformed, or defiant. If Lee Strobel wanted to say why he believes what he does despite alternative viewpoints, that would be great. But his books don't really work that way because he never encounters any alternative viewpoints. He stays securely in the midst of people who support his views while he supports theirs. There is no debate, no argument, no conciliation, and no explanation of why there is a disagreement in the first place. There are just people who can think well enough to be Christians (his interviewees) and people who can't ("Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Book"). In that respect, he has a little in common with Michael Moore. (Although Moore interviews people who disagree with him, he still manages to make them look as stupid as possible.) Overall, I have not been impressed by Lee Strobel. Not even a little. (Well, he is a decent writer, at least in the sense that he manages to make all his interviews sound like those smarmy, self-assured educational filmstrips they used to show in school. It's a triumph of tone at the expense of content.)

At any rate, before I get off track, let me dive straight into Colson's latest plug for his pal Strobel.

In this BreakPoint commentary, Colson remarks on an article in the journal Resuscitation that "described a year-long British study that offered evidence that consciousness continues after a person’s brain has stopped functioning, and he has been declared clinically dead." That sounds really interesting, and I wish I was a subscriber to that journal so I could read the whole article, but unfortunately I can only get to the abstract here. Here is the most important section of the abstract:

Recent studies in cardiac arrest survivors have indicated that although the majority of cardiac arrest survivors have no memory recall from the event, nevertheless approximately 10% develop memories that are consistent with typical near death experiences. These include an ability to ‘see’ and recall specific detailed descriptions of the resuscitation, as verified by resuscitation staff

Fascinating. I love these kinds of studies, because they reveal phenomena that are still lacking in theoretical explanation. These are the kind of facts that drive science forward. Without unexplained phenomena, scientists would have no reason to search for explanations. (Fortunately for scientists, every explanation seems to lead to more unexplained phenomena. Talk about job security.)

But how does Lee Strobel report this? He says that Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick, the authors of this article, are "candid in admitting that they currently have no explanation for how the brain might spawn consciousness." In other words, they are honest. No big deal. Lots of things "currently have no explanation." But then, according to Colson, the illustrious interviewer Strobel starts jumping to conclusions, even as he denies doing so!

But other scientists are determined to follow the evidence wherever it leads. As the late neurophysicist Sir John Eccles put it, “I am driven by data, not theory . . . There are solid, concrete data that suggest that our consciousness, our mind, may surpass the boundaries of the brain.”

Huh? Wait a minute. Following the evidence wherever it leads is great. That is the scientific method par excellence! But how could Sir John Eccles claim that "there are solid, concrete data that suggest that our consciousness, our mind, may surpass the boundaries of the brain" when the "concrete data" suggest no such thing? As Parnia and Fenwick admitted, the "concrete data" have left them without a theoretical framework. All they have are facts: 10% of cardiac arrest survivors in their study formed lucid memories of the resuscitation process, even though they were considered dead at the time. Does that mean the mind "may surpass the boundaries of the brain"? No! The evidence in this case does not answer any questions; it only raises them, as Parnia and Fenwick were careful to note. And as Strobel and Colson were careful to ignore. After further research, it may turn out that our definition of "dead" is faulty, and the continued brain activity past the point of our declaration will lose some of its mystery. Or it may turn out the way Eccles, Strobel, and Colson would like. (Unfortunately for the latter, though, no matter what happens, there will always be scientists and skeptics there to press and probe and question the validity of the conclusion. This does not bode well for trying to find theology in science: Science is always changing, theology is always trying not to change. Tough to keep in step that way.)

Lee Strobel has a problem with his defense of God. He looks for unexplained phenomena and then puts his God in there. This is sometimes called "the God of the gaps." It's problematic because whenever you fill a gap with an explanation (and create a few more gaps with new questions), the sovereignty of your God will change. But Lee Strobel writes that "atheists are pinning their hopes on some as-yet-undetermined scientific discovery to justify their faith in physicalism" [emphasis added]! Huh? I am not waiting for any such thing. Nor do I have any "faith" in physicalism. Faith has always meant something like "the acceptance of something unseen." Yes, nitpickers, naysayers, and self-appointed gadflies, that is a broad approximation of a (mostly meaningless) concept whose hairs can be split nearly infinitely by philosophers who have nothing better to do with their lives. But this is only one of the many bizarre inversions modern apologists like Strobel have created to defend themselves. (E.g., irreligion = religion, atheism = theism, etc.) Then they stand around patting each other on the back and claiming their arguments and defenses are better than ever before. Except who wants to worship a God that needs defending by bestselling books? Who wants to worship a God that only becomes evident when you redefine words? (To quote Jar-Jar Binks, "This iz nutsen!")

If religious people would just believe and have their faith, I wouldn't mind. But when they have to go around trying to prove that they believe for reasons that can be observed objectively, I start to wonder whether they really believe it themselves. If your God is so real, why do you keep trying to prove it? Nobody tries to prove that the sun shines every day. Nobody tries to prove that gravity pulls us down. People may try to prove how the sun shines, or how gravity works, but nobody tries to prove that these phenomena exist at all. Not so for God. People are constantly trying to prove that God exists, mainly by claiming that anyone who disagrees with them is blind to this allegedly obvious God.

I don't think religious believers are stupid. Lots of them are very smart people. Nor do I doubt their faith, or at least their desire to believe. (I am quite sure there exist plenty of "believers" who are afraid their belief is misplaced, though. My father used to be one of them, until he finally quit trying to fake it. He was quite relieved--and still is--to find that life can be lived very well without believing in God.) I am perfectly content to let people believe in God, so long as they don't go around trying to twist up the rest of the world to fit their belief. For instance, this study about cardiac arrest survivors certainly reveals our lack of understanding about the brain and consciousness, but it is not proof of anything except for the fact that 10% of the people in this study exhibited a behavior not predicted by current theoretical models. Claiming otherwise is dishonest and a disservice to honest scientific research. Nor do I like when Christians come to me and try to tell me that I'm just defiant or ignorant or uninformed and that is why I am atheist. I don't understand why Christians believe what they do and Christians don't understand why I don't believe what they do. What's so hard about that?

This is starting to get random and unfocused, but I want to mention one more thing: If these cardiac arrest survivors are evidence of Christian-style mind-body dualism, why did only 10% of them exhibit this behavior?

At any rate, when Lee Strobel's book comes out in paperback, I plan on snagging a copy and reading it, even though his books always annoy me. I read The Case for Faith in my atheist book group and when we met to discuss it, we decided that our most common feeling while reading was the desire to throw the book across the room. However, most of us managed to read the whole thing without any such displays. At the same time, some of our group also mentioned devout relatives who have flat refused to even try to read a book that challenges their faith. Just about every Christian I know would probably say "That's not me!" but I still haven't found too many Christians who actively and consistently read against their assumptions. I think it would be interesting to have a Christian reading partner, and we would alternate books from different perspectives--one religious book followed by one non-religious book, and so on--and then discuss them openly and honestly. Don't know if it would be possible, though.

Philosophy

2004-09-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

After a long discussion with somebody named Jerry over at Ales Rarus, Jerry has dropped a few comments on my doorstep:

"Purging oneself of philosophies would require a metaphilosophy that dictates that philosophies are bad. . . . Yours may be a spare, minimalistic philosophy, but a denial of philosophy seems bizarre."

First, bizarre is a matter of context. Maybe a denial of philosophy seems bizarre, but that seeming says nothing about the nature of the denial and everything about the person to whom it seems.

Second, philosophies are unique to humans. This may seem painfully obvious and silly, but for all we can tell the world would exist perfectly well without us (and in fact did so for millions of years). That is, the world operates independently from our thoughts about it. You may object, "Well, perhaps the world does not need a philosophy, but we certainly do! In fact, we cannot function without one!" That may be true, but am I not allowed to doubt everything, including this? And is that doubt itself philosophical doubt, or something else?

Philosophies can certainly be "just a set of heuristics for organizing and explaining the world around you," but my experience has always been that no philosophy can explain more than just a small portion of the world. That is, no philosophy has ever been successful at its goal, which is to "organize and explain the world." Otherwise, we should see one or another philosophy taking hold and triumphing over all the others based on its consistent success at doing what it claims. But we have not seen that. Why not? I suspect (though of course I cannot be sure) that it is because the world is fundamentally inexplicable.

We humans are very good at responding to challenges. We can recognize patterns, solve puzzles, and reason both inductively and deductively. But we are only really good at these things in defined situations; widen the parameters of a problem and we are soon bogged down. Sure, most people can understand simple economic rules of thumb like spending more money than they earn will cause problems, but extend your economic sphere to the level of nations and suddenly understanding drops precipitously. We have moved from solving a specific problem (the personal budget) where solutions are easy to working at a systemic problem (the national economy) where "solutions" come mostly from theoretical speculation. Hence economists can be optimistic or pessimistic without losing their jobs. My point is that there is a continuum of problems faced by human beings and some of them require more speculative philosophy than others. Moving from one end (say, keeping the national economy running smoothly) to the other end (say, dodging a rock thrown toward your head) of the range of problems, the difference is clear. The further out you go, the more complicated things get, and the harder it is to explain them. Why?

More importantly, is it even possible to explain the more complicated things? For several days last week people expected hurricane Ivan to plow into New Orleans. Computer models predicted this with varying levels of (un)certainty. Some folks in New Orleans were worried. No one really knew what would happen because hurricanes are complex weather systems whose predictability are still beyond our meteorologists (and are likely to remain that way for a long time, perhaps forever). It turned out that Ivan veered away from New Orleans and went to Alabama. Relief in New Orleans, disaster in Alabama. Sometimes hurricanes even dissipate before they make landfall at all.

Hurricanes are a "natural" problem. There are social and historical problems, too. For instance, why did the United States break in two and fight a war during the 1860s? This is a particularly vexing problem, and one to which historians have returned in every generation since. There has never been a definitive consensus even though there is a wealth of data and many great minds have attacked the problem. Was it a war about culture? Politics? Economics? Was it inevitable? Was it the result of a "blundering generation"? Was it all of these things? We might develop a set of heuristics to organize and explain this problem--and many have tried--but no one has yet succeeded at squeezing all of the available data into a singular philosophical framework, even after 145 years of trying. This leads me to believe that the problem is insoluble if by a "solution" we are looking for a comprehensive narrative that organizes and explains all of the data. In varying degrees, this hurdle lies before every historical problem.

Why did the Reformation occur when, where, and how it did? How did the West come to dominate "the rest"? Why did the Roman Empire fall when and how it did? Why did the Muslim world fall behind the Western world a few centuries ago, where once it was far more advanced? What does it mean to be "advanced" anyway? Why did such a powerful nation as China remain isolated for so many centuries? Or did it? Did the Bantu people of Africa spread their language and culture by conquest or peaceful migration? What happened to the Mayan civilization? Did the birth of Christianity happen as portrayed in the New Testament, or some other way?

Those are all historical questions. There are other questions regarding the nature of human beings, too. What is consciousness? Are we really conscious, or is it an illusion? What is thinking? Are humans fundamentally rational, fundamentally social, fundamentally both, or fundamentally something else? What exactly do our genes do and how to they do it? How did life begin? Why are humans so different from all other forms of life on earth? Why do we have such big brains? Why do we walk upright? Why do we have so little hair? How long has our species existed? Where did it originate? How many other species of hominid were there before Homo sapiens triumphed? How did Homo sapiens triumph?

Then there are the Big questions. Why are we here? Is there a God? What is God anyway? How did the universe come into being? What does it mean to exist? Can there be such a thing as nonexistence? Why do we ask questions? Why are we curious? Why do we want to know? Can we know anything at all?

Most of these questions in all of these categories (natural, historical, species-ontological, existential) are probably fundamentally unanswerable. Even if we could answer them, we would want those answers to fit together. But we have different ways of expecting that, too. Some people feel that should the answer to "Is there a God?" be "Yes," then the answer to "Did the birth of Christianity happen as portrayed in the New Testament?" would also be "Yes." Other people disagree. This creates another question: Why do they disagree?

I chose that example for a reason: It actually exists. There are in fact people who think according to both of those possibilities. This is not a generalization or a straw man or anything else, but a simple recognition that there people in the world who disagree on this very specific metaphysical or philosophical difference. It is, if you will, a set of facts that demand a theory. But what if there is no theory? What if there is no singular explanation? Even more dauntingly, what if an explanation is posited that simply leads to more questions?

In my experience, the questions never stop. It is impossible to make a statement that is both a definitive explanation and unquestionable. Even apparently straightforward things are like this: Gravity pulls you toward the ground. Why? Because larger masses attract smaller masses? Why? Because larger masses curve space and create gravity. Why? Keep going. Eventually you get out in that territory where it's like a huge, open plain and there are physicists wandering around scratching their heads and trying to figure out where they are. Nobody knows.

Because the questions never stop, I am wary of anyone who claims to have a definitive answer. Certainly, some answers are better than others--if someone comes and says that Americans fought their Civil War because Abraham Lincoln was a transvestite, anyone with a slight knowledge of U.S. history will know to discard this answer because it is implausible. But no answers are unquestionable.

Asking questions leads to philosophies. A person may ask why some people are virtuous and others are not. This may lead to a philosophy of virtue. But another person may ask what virtue is, exactly. This may lead to another philosophy. Someone else may ask why these other people are so concerned with virtue. Again, this may lead to another philosophy. Finally, someone may come along and ask why people formulate philosophies. Depending on how you see the problem, this may lead to yet another philosophy or it may lead to the collapse of philosophy. But because questions can always be asked, philosophies can always be broken. That is why I put so little stock in philosophies. They may seem to be explanatory, but because they can only exist as responses to questions they are no more definitive than the questions themselves.

Sets of heuristics for organizing and explaining are limited by space, time, and human subjectivity. The universe allegedly organized and explained by these heuristics is not so limited. But the smaller the problem, the greater the limitation and the more likely that your particular set of heuristics will be useful. Put another way, the more you try to explain, the greater your margin of error. Why did John F. Kennedy die? Because a bullet tore into his head. Simple enough. But try to answer how and why that bullet got there and you'll have a much tougher time. Why am I alive? Because my mother gave birth to me and my biological needs for survival have been met ever since. Why did she give birth to me? Because one day a sperm got into an egg and started the process that resulted in me. Go back much further than that and you begin to run into problems, controversy, and conflicting ideas. The world beyond our limited range of understanding is unfortunately quite incomprehensible. (A good next question to ask is, "Is the world incomprehensible because we cannot understand it, or can we not understand it because it is incomprehensible?" Unfortunately, it is an unanswerable question, too.)

"If you are just trying to 'be,' why are you so passionate about religion (in the negative sense)? Does it help you find food or meet some other bodily necessity that you may 'be'?"

I don't know why I am so interested in religion (in the negative sense). But neither do I know why you are interested in religion (in the positive sense). And I suspect that you do not, either. Some people would like to take that question ("Why are we interested in religion?") and find an intrinsic answer in it ("Because religion is true"), but there is no reason to do that. Usually, when I think about this question, I decide that I am interested in religion for the same reason I am interested in the weather: because it is all around me. Religion has simple effects in my life and more complicated ones, too. An example of a simple effect is that I rather like riding my bike on Sunday mornings because Christians have historically established Sundays as a day of rest, so even people who aren't in church are not out doing their usual things and there are fewer cars on the road. An example of a complicated effect is that religion affects the way people see their world; I am a part of their world, so religion affects the way other people see me. These are not basic problems like finding food, shelter, water, or oxygen, but they are existential problems and puzzles whose solutions enhance my well-being. (For instance, if I can understand better how religious people see me, I can understand better how to interact with them without too many negative or unwanted effects.)

Finally, I should say that my philosophical (or anti-philosophical, or whatever) views are not chiseled in stone. My views have changed constantly and steadily for at least ten years now and I don't intend on forcing them to stay put just for the sake of staying put. I like to pursue chains of questions and answers as far as I can. From my perspective, along this intellectual journey that is my life there is a long continuity between my days as a Christian fundamentalist to wherever I am now. Sure, I can tell you the date, the place, and the approximate time of day when I stopped believing in God (September 1, 2000, 9:30 AM), but looking back on the process that sudden shift meant a lot less than it seemed at the time. Perhaps when I am old I shall become some kind of theist again, though I cannot imagine that. However, there are still causes and events and experiences that are yet to shape my life.

Philosophies, in my opinion, are best when temporary and easily tossed aside if the need arises. Some people prefer to build themselves a philosophical house, hunker down, and defend their right to settle until the day they die. Fine. But I don't think that choice is necessitated by philosophical reflection. And it is that kind of "settled" philosophy to which I object. With every day my knowledge and understanding changes. Sometimes it seems as though I am constantly rebuilding my "set of heuristics." Sometimes it seems as though I am rebuilding so fast that there is no real structure there at all. It seems silly to me to adhere to a particular philosophy or ideology just because I like it, even though my knowledge is changing. For years I did that within Christianity--adhered to the belief system because I liked it, even though my knowledge was changing. Eventually that method broke down and I had to unhitch myself. Now I would rather follow the chaotic, if incomprehensible, flow of the universe than try to impose some narrative upon it. That is why you might say I am "anti-philosophy." Split your hairs and terminology however you like, but that is where I am and attempts to tether me or fence me in do not usually go well.

Elitist Rant

2004-09-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

Is it okay to loathe my customers? When they come in reeking of stale cigarette smoke and asking only for books about NASCAR or World War II airplanes ("Not the pilots or the history, just the planes!") am I allowed to think, "Go back to your trailer, but first let me have some of your money"?

Yes, I know that NASCAR has supposedly expanded beyond poor white trash. But it's still the P.W.T.s who come in my store looking for books about one of the circle-driving Dales, usually identified by their racing numbers as if knowing this minutiae is as obvious and normal as knowing that the Pope is Catholic. "Not number three," a customer once chided me. "Number eight!" Confronted with my blank look she added, "That's Dale Earnhardt junior." (In case you are wondering, I had to Google the Earnhardts in order to make sure I am recounting the facts correctly.)

Then there was the NASCAR advertisement I recently saw before a movie in the theater. How come NASCAR drivers are all a bunch of skinny white hicks? After the ad, I leaned over to my brother and said, "Watch NASCAR! See white guys drive in circles! Wahoo!"

On my continuum of ridiculousness in the wide world of sports, NASCAR is pretty close to the extreme end of absurdity. Here we are with guys who make a living driving cars in circles faster than other guys driving cars in circles. This in a society where we drive everywhere and become astonishingly fat for lack of exercise. And we call NASCAR a sport? Oh, wait, "motorsport." And this is in the society where everyone is worried about the end of oil and the clock is ticking for internal combustion engines, which, incidentally, spew hydrocarbons into the atmosphere at an alarming rate and contribute to all kinds of environmental havoc. (I feel the same way about the motocross track that's a few hundred yards from my place of residence, where manly men encourage their little boys to burn up petroleum products, produce greenhouse gases, make an awful noise, and throw dirt across the bicycle trail where I ride. All so they can zip around in circles and get some kind of bizarre enjoyment. Why not enroll your kids in martial arts or Little League something? Your sick obsession with internal combustion engines and their noxious byproducts is disgusting.)

Back to my reeking customers, though. I did manage to sell them the one NASCAR biography we have and was glad to see it go. It annoys me to no end, however, that we live in a time and place where the vast history of human writing is readily and inexpensively available and most people, if they read books at all, are more interested in junk like NASCAR biographies or the journals of Kurt Cobain. (Face it, the guy was a depressed high school boy who never outgrew his adolescence.) Meanwhile there is more good literature available than ever before. Nobody has time to read, though. They're too busy watching reality TV or renting Hellboy on DVD (talk about a lame flick). Books? What are those?

However, I have work to do so this elitist rant must come to an end.

Dogville: Hip Xenophobia

2004-09-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

Lars von Trier must think he is a pretty clever guy. His film Dogville is nearly as clever as he thinks it is. That is, until the credits roll and all his cleverness collapses into laughable xenophobia. And when I say "xenophobia," I mean anti-Americanism of the worst and most ridiculous kind. We're talking Michael Moore territory, where Americans are all a bunch of nasty, vindictive, gun-toting, victimizing, victimized, selfish, materialistic, whores. Except the ones who call Americans these things, because hurling nasty epithets at Americans is the best way to ennoble oneself in the world today. (Although I recall my time in elementary school when we learned that calling names and tattling, even when you're accurate, is just as petty and wrong as the people you're accusing. Oddly enough, silly me, I still believe that. Must be these awful, brainwashing, industrial American schools, right?)

See, von Trier made this movie Dogville as a kind of allegory. Cutting the sets and scenery to their bare minimum he abstracted the story from reality and tried to cast it as something blatantly and explicitly universal. This contradicts with good storytelling technique, where specificity of time and place done right have the odd quality of making a story seem even more universal. Splicing your characters and their self-consciously philosophical dialogue into the bare structure of a narrative does not make a good story; it makes your audience feel like they're being force-fed ideology under the guise of entertainment, because otherwise they would not be able to handle your medicine. (Sort of like Plato's method of writing philosophy as dialogues. Good philosophy writing, bad dramatic writing.) At least, that's how Dogville made me feel.

That would not be so bad if the medicine in question weren't so utterly stupid. It's that xenophobia thing. Which, unfortunately, does not explicitly rear its head until the credits roll, as I mentioned above. Until that moment, even though the execution of this particular film was annoying, von Trier had me nodding and thinking, "Yes, we human beings can sure be despicable sometimes!" During the last section of the film, two characters discuss arrogance and forgiveness. One of them points out that excessive forgiveness is only arrogance masquerading as goodwill. It means putting yourself on a higher ethical plane and then assuming that no one else will ever be able to reach so high. So you offer mercy and forgiveness as a way of saying, "No, you'll never be as good as I am, but I will let your existence continue." At that moment, I thought, "Yes! He's onto something!" Little did I know what would happen when the credits rolled.

After nearly three hours of wallowing in the depths of what I thought was the potential depravity of human nature, suddenly I was confronted with a montage of real, historical photographs, all of which were intended to be disturbing. Their common theme? Down and out Americans. Poor people. Drug addicts. Homeless people. What looked like a murder victim. Some of the most sad and wretched Americans who ever lived. But wait, there's more! Across the top of this depressing sea of photos skipped a bouncy little song by David Bowie: "Young Americans." Well, the lyrics aren't so bouncy. But the total package of music and images came together in a way that made me want to hurl this DVD into a dumpster. Americans don't live up to their ideals. Suddenly I remembered that Dogville is the first in a trilogy of films by Lars von Trier, and his title for this trilogy is "USA - Land of Opportunities." Oh, he's being sarcastic. Now I get it. We're bad because we set the bar high and still end up as low as everyone else.

Lars von Trier, by the way, has never been to the United States of America. The great Dane is too afraid of airplanes.

I don't mind if a filmmaker wants to say that human beings are cruel, violent, and selfish creatures. We are. If you have a high opinion of your species, read some history. It will cure your delusion lickety-split. Human beings can be pretty darned awful. Unfortunately, we have lived down to that potential more often than most of us are comfortable admitting. So, like I say, I don't mind if a filmmaker wants to confront us with that reality. But I do mind when a filmmaker tries to make Americans look like a particularly loathsome brand of human. (Especially when the filmmaker in question has never even visited our country. Hey Lars--you have an open invitation to my place. Come on down. Take a boat if you need to. I'll show you around. Bring Nicole Kidman if you can.)

But von Trier's brand of xenophobia sure is hip these days, isn't it? Yep, we Americans are the most despicable people on the planet. If only we could be so noble as those Europeans who only stopped killing each other wholesale about sixty freaking years ago and that was after centuries of nearly constant bloodshed. Because yes, look at the immigration rates at American borders. Look at all the people fleeing this horrid, despicable place! No, Lars von Trier may think the U.S.A. is a horrible place, but the rest of the world sure is beating down our door to get in here. Maybe that's because in the midst of all our violence and abject poverty, we're still better off than a lot of other places. (Note to Michael Moore: Ditto this memo to you, fat boy.)

So people have a beef with us, with our power, our polices, our whatever. Maybe they just plain don't like that the United States is top dog in the world. But for some reason they can't just say that straight out. No, they have to find a way to undermine our whole society. So how do they beat on us? They take advantage of the discrepancy between our high ideals and the fact that we have yet to make every American as healthy and wealthy as the next one. Oh, what a crime! From what I have gathered in my reading, Europe would much prefer it if Americans were more self-deprecating, if we stopped trying to think that our lives and indeed the whole world can and should be better. We should all sit around like a bunch of cynics and say, "Well, human nature being what it is, we cannot expect to rise above." But Americans believe in hope and we believe in the world getting better and we believe in getting that job done for ourselves because no one else will do it for us. Do we fail a lot? Yes! But does that stop us from trying? No! Does that quash the American Dream that says through thick and thin it is still good to be here in the land of opportunity? No! Nor does it mean that everyone here will succeed. Not everyone will.

What is the land of opportunity, anyway? Maybe once upon a time it was a resource-rich geographical region, but those days are gone if they ever existed. The "land of opportunity" in the 21st century has more to do with the American attitude than anything else. This is a land of opportunity because we make it so. Not because we have been endowed with some kind of Manifest Destiny. Not because God is on our side. No, because we are determined. We fail when we lose our determination. Should we condemn all of our people because some of them have not succeeded, or should we applaud the fact that so many have?

I can own up to the hideous history of humanity. I can own up to the hideous deeds of my own fellow Americans throughout our four centuries of history. But I will not stand by silently as Lars von Trier slaps our nation in the face by assuming some kind of higher moral dignity for himself and the rest of the world. He is just as human as we are, and we are all just as human as each other. That is our great tragedy and our great comfort. Americans are no exception.

Taking a Personal Day

2004-09-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

I have decided to stay home today. I am not taking any phone calls or watching any television or listening to the radio. I just need a day to slow down, relax, and mentally detox. So here I am, looking out my window and watching the orange world of sunrise giving way to the harsh and dusty yellow of a late summer midday in central California, waiting for my teapot to whistle, and glad I have no obligations for the rest of the day. As Bob & Doug MacKenzie would say, "Beauty, eh?"

Already in the relaxation my thoughts are starting to clear out. For instance, a few minutes ago I suddenly recalled an interesting moment the other night when I visited my grandmother for dinner. Before she served her magnificent(ly unhealthy) home cooked food, we caught a little of the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. (Watching news on television at the end of the day always seems quaint to me. I get my news throughout the day in snippets from the NPR hourly news updates, or from Google News.) There were two stories back to back: First, people preparing for hurricane Ivan along the Gulf coast; second, people killing each other in Iraq. As we sat down to eat, grandma picked up the remote control, clicked off the TV, and bowed her head to pray. I may be an atheist, but I'm also respectful of other people's beliefs and practices when I happen to be in the same room with them, so I bowed my head, too. What proceeded from her mouth after that was interesting.

First, of course, she expressed gratitude for yet another day. That goes almost without saying, but when you pray, I suppose nothing is allowed to go without saying. Then she called down a blessing on the food, which seems to me about as quaint as getting your news from Tom Brokaw, especially after you've prepared the food yourself. After that came the obligatory nod to some of the frightful world events that had just unfolded on the TV screen a moment before.

This in itself is interesting to me: Expose a Christian to horrors in the news and his or her next prayer will likely include a petition on behalf of those involved. Rare, however, are those Christians who actively seek out depressing events just so they can pray about them. Why? Things happen every day that my grandma never hears about and hence never prays about. But once she knows about them, the prayer becomes necessary. Will her prayer make a difference? If so, that puts God in an awkward position of needing people like Mr. Brokaw to spread the news so Christians will know what to pray for. Just think about it for a while. It's bizarre.

Anyway, the most interesting part of her prayer was what she did not include: the suffering of the people in Iraq. Her pleas for the people in the path of Ivan were quite eloquent, but the Iraqis got the short shrift. I wonder why. Was she just trying to keep from praying too long? Or does she care more about Americans being whipped around by the forces of nature (or, in her cosmology, by God) than she does about Iraqis blowing each other up? I can't answer those questions because I don't know what was in her head, and I certainly wasn't going to ask her, either. "Grandma, why didn't you pray for the Iraqis?" Maybe a four-year-old could get away with that kind of question (later to become a sermon illustration about the clear-eyed faith of children), but a grown-up atheist sitting across from his grandmother at dinner would not do so well. Then it would just sound like cynicism or criticism.

Prayer is a weird thing. If you try to turn prayer into a way of asking God to do things, before long you'll find yourself in a morass of conflicting theological precepts (e.g., God does whatever God wants versus God answers prayer). So a lot of Christians I have spoken with define prayer as little more than "communication with God." Apparently just initiating the link at all is enough to make prayer worthwhile. But doesn't God know all my thoughts already? Oh, but God likes when you share voluntarily. Okay, sure, whatever.

Does it matter that my grandma failed to pray for the Iraqis? From my perspective, no. But I have to wonder how that looks from within Christianity. How does a Christian know when to stop praying? After all, the world is big enough, and there is enough happening, that one could pray all day every day without running out of things to pray about. Prayerful Christians who want to live regular lives are required to pick and choose, then. So it seems to me that prayer is really more about the person praying than about God or even about the subject of the prayers.

The act of recognizing one's subordination within the grand scheme of the universe--we are not very powerful--appears to be the main purpose of prayer. But if that's the case, why the second party of God? Why the "communication" thing? Why the appeals for other people? I am an atheist, but I can certainly recognize my relative weakness within the universe. In fact, you might say that my taking a personal day today is like an act of prayer. Except there is no second party, there is no communication, and I am not worried about other people. This is about re-centering my own self in the scheme of circumstances that constitute my life. Everyone needs to do that periodically. Even me.

Amish in the City

2004-09-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

An Important Person told me to watch Amish in the City tonight because it would be "interesting." (No, I don't know an industry insider. She knew ahead of time because she's in a different time zone. Lucky she.) So here I am camped out with the iBook in front of the TV.

I've watched this show a couple times before. Gotta say, the Amish kids are way cooler than the city kids. Mose, dude, we gotta hang out! And Miriam, wow, what a hottie. (I have been told by my Important Person that Miriam is not that good looking and that Ruth is much more attractive. Whatever. Being Important does not make you right. Miriam is hot.)

Tonight the whole gang went back to Amish country. At first the city kids freaked out and refused to go. Then they realized what morons they were being. After all, if the Amish could go to L.A., the Angelinos could go to Amish country. Things are a little more balanced that way.

Right now, the crazy Vegan girl is puking in an outhouse because they barbecued a pig. "It's sickening, it's so barbaric," she says. "I think being in the country does not mean roasting whole pigs and eating them like pigs."

"The city kids are really bad complainers," says Ruth. Right on! But then, I suspect they deliberately cast this show with people who were likely to whine and complain when confronted with real life. For instance, Nick the busboy and Reese the token gay guy refused to shovel manure. What's the deal with that? They can't manage to do something they don't want to do for one day? "Oh, ya pansy," the Amish guys tell them. Definitely.

Few things are more pathetic than people who refuse to experience different ways of living and thinking. I felt similar annoyance when I watched PBS's Colonial House a couple months ago and the atheists refused to show up in church on Sunday.

One of the things I particularly enjoy is reenacting the Civil War. It's great to put on old clothes, to reenact battles from a horrible war, and to try and get into an 1860s mindset--even though I prefer modern clothing, I think the Civil War was a great tragedy in our history, and I am glad I live in the 21st century. To me it is refreshing and helpful to alter my own perspective sometimes, to embrace things in fantasy that I would prefer not to embrace in reality. But that's just me.

At any rate, this was indeed a very interesting episode of Amish in the City, and I am glad my Important Person reminded me to watch.

Posting for Posting's Sake

2004-09-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

Wow. I haven't posted since Friday. What is the world coming to? I have certainly been busy. At the moment I am exhausted, sitting here in my black leather "yeah, this is the throne and I'm the king of this domain" chair, listening to Selected Shorts on NPR. René Auberjonois is reading something and all I can see is Odo from Deep Space Nine, standing at a lectern with his weird, shape-shifter face and his gray jumpsuit, hands clasped behind his back...reading a short story. Kinda bizarre. On top of that, I'm too tired to pay attention to what he's reading. For all I know, he could be reading the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

Whoa. Better watch out or I'll fall into a tailspin of Star Trek references, even though I haven't had a meaningful relationship with that franchise since "All Good Things" came to an end, and that was ten years ago. In the '90s. Remember those? We thought we were sobered up from the '80s, reinforcing ourselves with drab colors and smarmy, postmodern irony. Remember when it was the ultimate faux pas to take yourself seriously? We had no idea what September 11, 2001 would do to us. Now we have to take everything seriously.

Right now, though, I am too tired to care about much of anything. I could use a little Star Trek: The Next Generation. Too bad the DVDs cost so pickin' much. I guess I'll have to make due with a Corona with lime and my imagination.

Takes All Kinds

2004-09-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

Selling books is like a game sometimes. Especially in a small, independent bookstore, where you can chat up your customers, feel out their interests, and target them with all the weird books that have been languishing on your shelves for months. I did just that a few minutes ago.

This guy comes in, sort of a regular, complete weirdo. Local teacher. Thinks he's all that. Big time dilettante. Open mind with no screening. The kind of person who stands across the room from you, picks up a book, and starts talking about it, hoping that you'll come over and listen to him gab. If I wasn't selling right now, I would run and hide from him. But these weirdos with the gift of gab are easy sells.

He asks me if we have a "Dummies" book on web pages. We do not. So he tells me that he wants to do something on the internet with his gifted and talented students. (I'm thinking, they let you deal with the GATE kids?) "Should I require them all to have a web page?" he asks. Well, I tell him, personal web pages are out of style. The hip, new thing is blogging. He has never heard of this. So I introduce him to the blogosphere, show him a few blogs, tell him how it works. I mention the bloggers on the floors of the recent Democratic and Republican conventions. He's totally stoked. Starts talking about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Marshall McLuhan. Global village and noosphere. Teilhard de Chardin was a nutball Catholic heretic (according to the Vatican) who believed that human knowledge would emerge or coalesce into its own structure, which he called the noosphere. Suddenly this guy in my store who had not heard of blogging until two minutes before is telling me that the blogosphere is the noosphere. Sure, dude, whatever. It's new, it's cool; it's not all that.

But I still want to make a sale, so I show him a copy of Salam Pax's book, which is basically just paper-published version of his blog. "Wow!" the weirdo says. He's in the bag now. I've had this book sitting on the shelf for months. I'm getting excited because it's about to go out the door.

Suddenly the weirdo says, "Did you know I have an identical twin brother who's not a radical Christian but a mystical Muslim? Yeah, he's a Sufi. We have the most astounding conversations. Sometimes he tells me I'm a Christian dog and that he'll have to kill me." Okay, man, it's time to pay for your merchandise and leave. But he keeps going and starts telling me about this "revelation" he had of how Christianity and Islam are both from the Mediterranean region. Well, yeah, sorta. He tells me that they're somehow interlocked and that they're spread east and west from the Mediterranean all around the world. Well, yeah, sorta. But I'm really just wondering if the identical twin brother who is a Sufi is this guy's version of Tyler Durden.

Eventually I get him back over to the register, sell him the book, and he leaves. Sigh of relief.

And this guy teaches in public school. He buys all kinds of weird books, believes all kinds of New Agey stuff (despite being a self-proclaimed "radical Christian"). I heard him in here once telling some people that scientists have invented anti-gravity technology but that they have it hidden away in a secret warehouse until Jesus comes back, at which point all the great technology will be released to the public and we will travel to the stars. All righty then. Public school teacher.

Selling books can be really interesting sometimes.

"Intellectuals" vs. Darwinism

2004-09-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

A while back I picked up a copy of Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, edited by William Dembski. The title is vaguely self-explanatory, but a betrayal of the book's weakness, as well. Notice that it is not subtitled "Biologists Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing" or even "Scientists Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing." That is because most of these "intellectuals" are not scientists or even biologists. Here's how they run down:

James Barham is an "independent scholar" who was "trained in classics."

Michael J. Behe is a "Professor of Biochemistry."

David Berlinski was a professor of "philosophy and logic."

J. Budziszewski is a professor of "government and philosophy."

William A. Dembski is an "associate professor in the conceptual foundations of science."

Michael John Denton is a "Senior Research Fellow in Human Genetics."

Roland F. Hirsch is a "program manager in the Office of Biological & Environmental Research in the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy."

Cornelius G. Hunter is a "senior scientist at a high-tech research firm and part-time postdoctoral researcher."

Phillip E. Johnson is a "Professor of Law."

Robert C. Koons is a "Professor of Philosophy."

Christopher Michael Langan is an "independent researcher and reality theorist" (i.e., crackpot).

Nancy R. Pearcey is a "senior fellow of Seattle's Discovery Institute and a free-lance writer."

Marcel-Paul Schützenberger was "Professor of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Paris."

Edward Sisson is a "partner at a large Washington D.C.-based international law firm."

Frank J. Tipler is a "Professor of Mathematical Physics."

John Wilson is "the founding editor of the bimonthly review Books & Culture and an editor at large for Christianity Today magazine."

I count only two (Behe and Denton) who work professionally in the life sciences, perhaps three if you count Hirsch, though I am not sure whether a "program manager" is a scientist. The rest of these people are surely "intellectuals" (because anyone can be an intellectual), and they certainly find Darwinism unconvincing, but what should that mean for anyone else?

I have no problem with intellectuals who are not scientists having an opinion about Darwinism, because intellectuals usually have opinions about everything. Nor do I have a problem with intellectuals writing essays about Darwinism being unconvincing and having them bound in a book. But I do have a problem with the way Dembski presents their opinions as something more than what they are. He writes in his introduction:

In commending this volume to the reader, I wish to leave Darwinists with this closing thought: You've had it way too easy until now. It is no longer credible to conflate informed criticism of Darwinism with ignorance, stupidity, insanity, wickedness, or brainwashing. Informed critiques of Darwinism have consistently appeared ever since Darwin published his Origin of Species. Unfortunately, because Darwinism's myths are so entrenched, such critiques have until now been unable to reach a critical mass and actually overthrow Darwinism. That is now changing.

If Dembski had found sixteen scientists who research and write professionally about life sciences, who teach, publish, speak, and hold sway in professional organizations, and still find Darwinism unconvincing, he would have a much more important book. But when most of his contributors are lawyers and philosophers (and even one "reality theorist," whatever that is), I don't see any such "critical mass" as could "actually overthrow Darwinism." He is certainly right that there have been "informed critiques" of Darwinism since 1859, but informed by what? Sure lots of people have recoiled from Darwinism right from the beginning. That doesn't make them correct, or add more weight to their successors. It just means the objections have been constant. Nor do scientists work in a vacuum. They are aware of these objections. Darwin was aware of objections, too. Why did that not dissuade him?

Furthermore, if Darwinism is "unconvincing" for rational reasons (and each of the contributors in this volume assert as much), why should a rational reason need a "critical mass"? Correct is correct. Science can be changed incredibly quickly by a single paper. It took only a few years for Einstein's theory of relativity to revolutionize physics, and he only wrote two papers on relativity, ten years apart! Meanwhile 145 years after Darwin people like Dembski and his contributors are sitting around publishing book after book of alleged challenges to Darwinism and now speaking of some kind of "critical mass." Are they looking for some kind of Kuhnian paradigm shift?

But as I read through Uncommon Dissent I do not see any real challenge to Darwinism. I see doubts. I see philosophical revulsion. I see a whole lot of bad writing. But no real challenges to Darwinism.

For instance, Budziszewski complains that Darwinism makes morality impossible. Hence, anyone who understands the world through the Darwinian framework has no reason to behave. He thinks this is a slick criticism, I think. But he assumes that the only reason anyone would behave morally is because of his or her philosophy of ultimate reality. He does not take into account social circumstances, cultural indoctrination, psychological drives, or anything else. People behave in certain ways for a lot of different reasons, metaphysics being only a minor one, if at all. For instance, I do not believe in God or in anything supernatural, and yet I behave like an ordinary, law-abiding, middle-class citizen. Why? Clearly not because of my beliefs about the nature of the universe. To be honest, the nature of the universe rarely makes an appearance in the matters of my day-to-day life and behavior. My behavior is driven by proximate causes, not ultimate ones.

Furthermore, Budziszewski's objection on moral grounds does not come close to touching Darwinian theory. His essay says little more than, "I cannot conceive how life could be moral in a Darwinian world; therefore, Darwinism is false." Since Darwinism is a theory of biological life and not a theory of morality, worries about morality have no bearing on the theory. But since Dembski couldn't find enough scientists to address the theory from a purely scientific standpoint, he had to throw in these kinds of contributions which are a kind of ad hominem attack, not against a person, but against a theory.

This is the problem with using "intellectuals" to attack a theory of biology. They have every right to object to the theory, but if their objections are not scientific or biological in nature, they carry little weight. Perhaps Dembski does not realize this, or perhaps he is being intentionally dishonest. I do not know. For his sake, I hope it is the former.

A Vast Muslim-Wing Conspiracy

2004-09-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted since Friday, which seems like weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. Bill Clinton has had heart surgery, for one. Like I care. But this morning as I got ready for work I heard Bill's surgeon give a press conference to assure the world that Bill "My Life" Clinton will be just fine, but might have to lay off campaigning for Kerry. Thank you, NPR, for distorting my world. (Not that there is a single news organization in the whole world that does not distort reality. Bias pervades the media the way gravity pervades the universe. I.e., the one cannot exist without the other.)

Anyway, I am sure there were lots of people out there who were getting "mostly routine" heart bypass surgeries this weekend and wondering why they were not also getting a routine press conference. (Well, I doubt they were really wondering that, but if one can have a rhetorical wonder, I'm sure plenty of people were.) But Bill's bypass is more important than anyone else's apparently. We also needed to know that Hillary had been on an "emotional rollercoaster" all weekend. Poor Senator.

Then I came across this lovely little conspiracy theory on my friend's blog. But I think I can go one better.

Here are the facts:

For years now, Bill Clinton has an affinity for those trans-fat-laden globules of food-simulacra that are served at McDonald's.

Trans-fat is known to wreak havoc on the circulatory system, which, in case you forgot your high school biology, does include the heart. (Yes, Bill Clinton has one of those.)

Al Qaeda is expected to carry out a high-profile assassination during our election season.

Al Qaeda plans its attacks for years

See what I mean? McDonald's is clearly run by al Qaeda. No doubt. Didn't you ever wonder why Ronald McDonald wears all that white makeup? It's to cover his swarthy Arab skin, of course. These people have been trying to kill us for decades! If Bill Clinton had not rushed himself to the hospital, he might have been their first high-profile takedown!

Don't let this happen to you. Don't "eat" at McDonalds. You are only supporting terrorists! Just like if you drive your SUV. Watch out, because these Islamic terrorists are going to quietly take over all American culture. But if you want to stop these insidious invaders, just call your congressional representative and ask that they establish a House Committee on Un-American Activities. We will root out all the terrorists and their supporters and send them to the camps. Have no fear, good citizens. This will surely be the final solution to the terrorist problem.

Party Politics

2004-09-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

I saw the President speak last night. Not in New York. From the comfort of my own home, via PBS. (Yeah, I am a committed public broadcasting guy. I even donate and volunteer.) Anyway, the President.

So as I'm listening to the speech, I am basically having to take it sentence by sentence. Yes, I like this; no, I don't like that. Yes, I agree; no, you're out of your mind. All the while I'm listening to people cheer from the floor of Madison Square Garden and wondering if all these die-hard Republicans listen to speeches from their party members without having to dissect them the way I do. A few weeks ago I went through the same process and wondering during the Democratic National Convention.

Party politics seems bizarre and quasi-religious to me. Here are these groups with apparently arbitrarily decided creeds who get together and make vague, misleading, and rhetorical statements to prop them up. Of course, party platforms are not arbitrary but historically conditioned. Still, I am bowled over at the uncritical way in which Republicans can take issues like national defense and heterosexual marriage and imagine that these are somehow inextricably related. Same thing happens with Democrats (different issues, of course). What goes on inside these people's heads? (I ask the same question about religious people, too.)

Personally, I think most politics are misguided. People who want to see change will work to create change themselves. For instance, like I mentioned above, I contribute to and volunteer for public broadcasting. It's important to me, so I do it. I also refuse to follow silly fashion trends or to buy and drive an SUV. I ride my bicycle whenever I can, because it's healthier for me, it's cheaper, it isn't dependent on foreign oil (well, I suppose the manufacturing process was dependent on foreign oil, but one can only take these things so far), and so on. When I am out and about, I try to be helpful and polite and respectful. In the last year or so I have finally been able to acquiesce to speed limit laws (trust me, that's a huge deal for me). I have no interest in sexual promiscuity, wild partying, or regular intoxication (just a Guinness now and then to relax, mostly). Illegal drugs have never interested me, even slightly. I try to stay informed. I read books. I try to follow the news, and encourage others to do the same. I write letters to politicians and to the editor of my local newspapers. These are all things that, in my opinion, are my contribution to making a better America.

Sure, it's a drop in the bucket, but I firmly believe that people change individually, from within, and not because of structures and systems and federal programs imposed upon them. I also believe that people are more likely to change because of their personal experiences and relationships with other people--"word of mouth" or "grassroots." However, when word-of-mouth and grassroots turn into "movements" and "institutions," I am long gone. This is why I am not a member of the Libertarian Party or the Green Party or any of the other parties where some of my views might fit. A party is a party is a party and they're all just spouting rhetoric to prop themselves up. Joining a political party is like putting your brain on cruise control. Not for me, sorry. Maybe when I'm old and tired.

So I sat there on the floor of my living room last night watching the President and all those convention delegates in their political frenzy and wondered, "Why?" I think a strong national defense is good. I believe in the war in Iraq, but doubt the resolve of the American people to do what needs to be done there (which is to set up a strong, democratic government that includes all Iraqis, and which is emphatically not a puppet of the U.S., but a representative of liberalism in the fractured and ideologically volatile Middle East). And I believe with Niall Ferguson that benevolent imperialism is a good thing in the long run. (For instance, look at the "West" which is a vast section of the world including most of Europe, North America, Australia, and even Japan, all of which is on pretty good terms, and which is the result of a long string of empires from the Greeks to the Romans to the Spanish to the British and now the American. Centralized power is the proven way to build peace within diversity, even though it is a long, painful road.) That makes me sound almost like a Republican, even a neocon. But then I also believe that homosexual marriage ought to be allowed, that abortion ought to be, in the words of Bill Clinton, "safe, legal, and rare," and that embryonic stem cell research is not some kind of affront to humanity, dignity, ethics, or anything at all, really. Now I sound like a Democrat. But when I get to talking about change coming from the individual and not from government programs, I sound like a Libertarian. Ask me what I think of the oil economy and environmental policy and I start to sound like a Green. Show me any American anywhere and I will agree with him or her about something.

To me, this is only natural. What makes no sense is how the political parties bind foreign policy to social policy for no apparent reason and call it a "platform." Of course, the parties are supposed to reflect the major worldviews of the American people. This is where Kerry-Edwards get their "two Americas" rhetoric. Some Americans believe our military should be out kicking butt all 'round the world and that our politicians and clergy should be repressing homosexuality and abortion here at home. In their minds, these vastly different policies come from the same place. Other Americans think we should be mostly isolationist, that we should never act unilaterally with our military, and that we should be as liberal as we can with our social lives here at home. Again, those Americans see their foreign and domestic social policies coming from the same place.

Who are these people? What are they thinking? The system is absurd. Sometimes I wish the ballot had a space that said "All these guys are simplistic idiots." Maybe if enough people checked it often enough, the wheels of our government would grind to a halt, and in the deathly silence Americans would have to start thinking again.

Church and State, Part I

2004-09-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the local Episcopal priest came into my bookstore. He was looking for something called Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion by David Barton. Unfortunately, although this book is available on Amazon.com, I was unable to find a distributor for retail sellers during the short few minutes he was in my store. This happens occasionally, especially when books are produced by nonprofit organizations like WallBuilders, as this one is. The priest is a regular though so I am not worried I have lost a customer to the vagaries of publishing.

However, after he left, I decided to look at the sample pages at Amazon.com. They were very interesting. Right away the author gives a list of court decisions that are intended to shock and offend the Christian readers of this book (and Christian readers are about all it has, I am guessing). But as I read down the list, I found myself disagreeing with several of the rulings myself, and I am an atheist! Yes, I actually believe Christians have more rights than they think they have, and that some of those rights have been abridged by the courts. While I suspect that the summaries of court decisions that are listed in the book are oversimplified and designed to increase their shock value for Christians, I don't have the time to research them, so i am taking them at face value and responding accordingly. Here is the list:

"A verbal prayer offered in a school is unconstitutional, even if that prayer is both voluntary and denominationally neutral. ENGEL v. VITALE, 1962; ARBINGTON v. SCHEMPP, 1963; COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION v. SCHOOL COMMITTEE OF LEYDEN, 1971."

Ah, well, I think any religious believer should be allowed to pray wherever he or she wants, provided that he or she is not at that moment occupying a position of authority over people who believe differently or not at all. That is, a student may pray alone or with other students; a teacher may pray alone or with other teachers. However, students and teachers ought not pray together because the structure of authority in that situation creates an authoritative endorsement by a state employee over a young person who is highly impressionable. Nor should prayers be given from the stage at any school events, because the stage represents the authority of the school and hence the state. To sum up, I think verbal prayers are quite acceptable in schools, so long as there are no authority structures involved in the situation.

"Freedoms of speech and press are guaranteed to students and teachers--unless the topic is religious, at which time such speech becomes unconstitutional. STEIN v. OSHINSKY, 1965; COLLINS v. CHANDLER UNIFIED SCHOOL DIST., 1981, BISHOP v. ARONOV, 1991; DRUAN v. NITSCHE, 1991."

This one is worded extremely vaguely, which leads me to believe that there is more to it than Barton is letting on. Can teachers and students talk about religion in school? Sure. How could anyone teach history without talking about religion? But most people (including many teachers) have no idea how to talk about religion without favoring one side or another. Children who are raised within their religion often don't discover alternative viewpoints until college or even well into their adult lives if they are particularly sheltered while many adults actively flee from alternative viewpoints. Because of this, many of the people in schools are poorly equipped to understand religion from a global or pluralistic perspective. Religion can be talked and written about in schools, but it cannot be advocated. Nor can secularism be advocated, incidentally, not because "secularism" is a religion, but because advocating secularism would be just as contrary to the wishes of religious parents as would advocating religion be to the wishes of secular parents.

"It is unconstitutional for students to see the Ten Commandments since they might read, meditate upon, respect, or obey them. STONE v. GRAHAM, 1980; RING v. GRAND FORKS PUBLIC SCHOOL DIST., 1980, LANNER v. WIMMER, 1981."

Huh? Students who are studying ancient history should certainly see the Ten Commandments. In fact, they should see as many versions of them as can be found. They should also see the Code of Hammurabi and they should have to read at least a little of the Analects of Confucius, as well as the Qur'an. Not one iota of religious law anywhere exists without a historical context and there are few, if any, historical contexts where religious laws or ethical codes have no influence. Students need to understand that there are many people in the world with many different beliefs. If they cannot handle believing only one of the many religions out there, then parents should be equipped to explain to their children why they believe a particular religion while the neighbors down the street believe a different one. If your child is unconvinced, congratulations! You have on your hands a brand new critical thinker. He or she might come around to your views one day, or might not. Regardless, at least your child will be able to explain his or her views better than you can yours.

"If a student prays over his lunch, it is unconstitutional for him to pray aloud. REED v. VAN HOVEN, 1965."

That's ridiculous. Absolutely stupid. If a kid wants to pray aloud over his or her lunch, why should anyone else care? I suspect the problem in this case runs something like this: If little Susie decides to pray over her lunch verbally like a good little Protestant but Abdul next to her happens to be a Muslim, perhaps he will feel strange and uncomfortable. This is where better education pays off. If the teacher in the classroom would have the fortitude to explain that different people have different religious beliefs and that is just fine, perhaps the children would not feel so strange that their friends do not believe the same things about God that they do. Instead, we refuse to explain the world to them, we send them off into the cafeteria, and they are all afraid to express their own religious beliefs because they have no understanding of a pluralistic world. By the way, if you are annoyed that I keep bringing up this pluralism thing, bear in mind that the world has had a multiplicity of societies and religions for thousands of years before any scholar came along and invented the politically correct terminology of "pluralism" or "multiculturalism." It is only in our modern era with global communication and transportation that people have been thrust into pluralistic microcosms in cities and suburbs. Deal with it.

"A school song was struck down because it promoted values such as honesty, truth, courage, and faith in the form of a 'prayer.' Interestingly, the song occurred as a part of voluntary extracurricular student activities. DOE v. ALDINE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, 1982."

So what if it was "voluntary extracurricular student activities"? If it was school sponsored it was state sponsored and that brings into play the structure of authority that I mentioned earlier. Students are free to go to church youth groups (which they do in droves) and express whatever beliefs they want. They ought to do it. I had a great experience in my church youth group, and most kids do, I think. The nifty thing about church youth groups is that they usually exist without massive ties to denominational membership. That is, if a kid wants to attend the youth group at some other church than his or her normal one, he or she is usually welcome to do that. When I was in high school, youth group participation often had little correlation with church membership. Some kids even traveled around to two or three different youth groups in town. That's great. Let them. A lot of good things happen in church youth groups. Kids are often exposed to diversity, they are allowed to express their own ideas, they can have refereed arguments about religion, and they can be openly skeptical without having somebody come down hard on them. At the same time, they can form valuable friendships and cohorts that will last them a long time. Yes, you are hearing an atheist extol the value of church youth groups.

At any rate, what I am trying to say is that songs about faith have no place in public schools. However, that does not constitute a social purging of all songs about faith. Certain venues are better for certain things. Churches are organizations for faith, schools are organizations for education. Kids are welcome to participate in both, and there is no need to conflate them. (Yes, I am aware that many people disagree and further believe that conflation is all but necessary. I am not going to argue that point right now.)

I am going to stop here because the list is very long. To be continued...

Una Pelicula de M. Night Shyamalan

2004-07-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

Before seeing The Village, I read ten or fifteen reviews online. This is part of a game I play, as I was telling an Important Person earlier this evening. I call it Meta-Critic™. Here's how it works: First, read lots of reviews before seeing the movie. Then try and figure out why no two critics ever seem to have watched the same movie. Now, use all those conflicting reviews to piece together a hypothesis of what the movie is really like. Finally, see the movie and reassess the hypothesis. Meta-Critic™. You heard it here first.

So I played Meta-Critic™ with M. Night Shyamalan's The Village today. Most of the reviews were negative, which isn't extraordinary in itself. No, the really interesting thing was that while few critics seemed to like the movie, none of them seemed to dislike it for the same reason. This led me to hypothesize that perhaps there was something deeply unsatisfying about the film, but that none of the critics could quite put their fingers on it.

Well, it turns out my hypothesis was pretty close. The problem is not that The Village is unsatisfying, but that it's darned near impossible to say anything meaningful about the film without giving away the ending. Suddenly, it all became clear. I imagined critics across the nation facing blank computer screens and wondering what to write. They certainly couldn't give away the secret ending. What would they do? Latch on to whatever little detail annoyed them most and use it to lambast the whole movie, of course. Hence the divergent negative reviews.

Is there anything original in The Village? No, not really. Will it give you something to think about? Probably, but it depends on who you are and what you think about already. Should M. Night Shyamalan put his talents to use on a film without a twist ending for once? Probably, and the sooner the better, before he turns into a one-trick pony. But most importantly, is Bryce Dallas Howard just about the cutest thing ever? YES.

Campaign Cynicism

2004-07-29T17:40:00.000-07:00

Each evening this week, I have tuned to coverage of the Democratic National Convention on PBS. (Due to a family event, I was only able to watch the first hour of coverage on Wednesday night.) I have enjoyed some of the speakers (Al Gore, Ron Reagan, Ted Kennedy, Wesley Clark, and Barack Obama), and rather loathed others of them (mostly Al Sharpton, who cannot pronounce the word "ask," cannot seem to speak without yelling, and who has a highly racialized vision of history). However, because I have been trained to look for logical analysis of documented facts, most political speeches still grate on me.

Logical analysis of documented facts does not make a rousing political speech. It is more fun and exciting to say without substantiation, and based only on the shared assumptions of your fellow party members, that the United States cannot withstand four more years of George W. Bush. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. But in a political speech, truth doesn't matter. What matters is whether the speaker and the audience agree with each other, not whether they agree with facts. If the audience believes something, even something untrue, the speaker who echoes that will succeed.

As for whether the nation can withstand four more years of the President, I believe that kind of talk oversimplifies the truth. The United States government is an immense and complex system whose actions cannot fall entirely on the shoulders of one person. The framers of our Constitution intended this. But as the power and prestige of the executive have increased, so has the mythology surrounding the office of President. This carries into presidential campaigns, and cynical people like me are nonplused by all the rhetoric.

Bar People

2004-07-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I spent a couple hours at a bar with my brother and a cousin. This is the place where my brother meets his friends every Wednesday night, but most of them were not there. So we stayed for a couple hours and I watched all the weird people who are expressing their personality by putting pieces of metal through parts of their body and injecting ink into their skin, but who would surely call me an intolerant bigot for daring to make assessments of said personalities based on the metal and ink. What happened to good old fashioned virtue, having character, and expressing your personality through your words and deeds?

While we were there, my brother tried to convince me that controversy for the sake of controversy is constructive (e.g., maybe Michael Moore is just a polemical jerk, but he's "bringing people to the conversation"). This is what he considers edifying "bar talk." I happen to disagree. Being controversial just to get your adrenaline flowing, or to practice your argumentation techniques, is pathetic. It's a waste. It's decadent. "Bringing people to the conversation" is a worthless endeavor if those people have nothing insightful to say, if they have no unique perspectives, if they cannot find their own facts, and if they are simply going to huddle in parties and spout competing dogmas. But my brother, I fear, would approve of anything that merely looks like reasoned discourse, regardless of what it actually is. Get people arguing over Michael Moore, he says, even if they don't know what they're talking about, because at least they're "participating." Well, if acting like imitative monkey drones is "participating," I suppose he's right.

This is why some people say I'm an arrogant elitist. Because I think tattoos and body piercing are stupid, and because I don't want to sit around in bars compounding ignorance laced with alcohol and cigarette smoke. (Nor do I think girls in halter tops and lowrider pants are at all attractive. Could there be a clothing fashion less flattering?) But this is who I am, and I am expressing it through my words and my deeds, instead of getting it tattooed on my back. This way, I have the option of changing my mind someday (and I won't have to pay for an expensive procedure to remove the tattoo).

More "Colonial House" Religion

2004-07-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

Watching Colonial House on PBS. Third episode. Most of the "colonists" have discovered they don't like going to Sabbath services. This is because of their 21st century opinions, and not because they are playing 17th century folk authentically. Apparently they don't mind a physical reenactment of colonial life, but the mental aspect is just too much for them.

You might be surprised to hear that I am disappointed in these revolting atheists. I think it's stupid and petty of them to refuse to play along with Puritan religion. They are, after all, participating in a "living history" experiment, and part of living history is thinking history, too. Religion, particularly Christianity, has been an integral part of American history. It's not just intellectually dishonest to deny that, but it can be instructive to think within it, just as it can be instructive to take away modern technology and see what physical life was like in 1628.

I may believe the content of religion is bunk, but the practice of religion is very real, and ought not be ignored. Ditto for the practitioners of religion, some of whom, here in the 21st century, are very, very dear to me. Wherever there is religion, there will be differences, and wherever there are differences, there will be pain, and wherever there is pain, compassion is required.

Militant Islam

2004-07-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I mentioned Osama bin Ladin's "letter to the American people," because the authors of The 9/11 Commission Report cited this document in their explanation of the roots of Islamic terrorism. In his book The Crisis of Islam Bernard Lewis also discusses bin Ladin's letter. Here is a paragraph from the introduction of that book:

To most Americans, bin Ladin's declaration is a travesty, a gross distortion of the nature and purpose of the U.S. presence in Arabia. They should also be aware that for many, perhaps most muslims, the declaration is an equally grotesque travesty of the nature of Islam, and even of its doctrine of jihad. The Qur'an speaks of peace as well as of war. The hundreds of thousands of traditions and sayings attributed, with varying reliability, to the Prophet and interpreted in sometimes very diverse ways, offer a wide range of guidance, of which the militant and violent interpretation of religion is one among many.

This dovetails nicely with proclamations by President Bush and others that Islam is a "religion of peace." However, as an atheist, I am not comforted by this perspective. Perhaps "the militant and violent interpretation" is only "one among many," but the fact that it can be one at all is worrisome. (Christianity has a similar problem.) So long as militance and violence can be culled from the Muslim scriptures, these groups will be out there, somewhere, sometime, either acting or planning to act. What is the solution? Well, I'm an atheist. You know what I think. Are there other solutions? Leave a comment, tell me what you think.

9/11 Commission Report, Part 2

2004-07-27T16:19:00.000-07:00

I have now finished reading the first two chapters of The 9/11 Commission Report. The first chapter describes in detail the events of the morning of September 11, 2001; the second chapter provides a brief history of Bin Laden and al Qaeda. The first chapter was much harder to read than the second, because it brought back the anger and sadness I felt on the morning of September 11.

Early in the second chapter, the report's authors highlight two common questions Americans have been asking themselves for almost three years: "Why do 'they' hate us?" and "What can we do to stop these attacks?" (p. 51) Answers to the first question have generally fallen into two categories. Conservatives claim we are hated for our democratic values, while Liberals claim we are hated for our foreign policies. However, the report makes clear that neither of these simplistic answers is complete.

Bin Ladin's grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper. To the second question, what America could do, al Qaeda's answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture: "It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind." If the United States did not comply, it would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda's leaders said "desires death more than you desire life" (pp. 51-52).

(Those remarks come from Bin Laden's "letter to the American people," available here.)

Clearly, American foreign policy is not the sole instigator of Islamic anti-Americanism. If the goal of al Qaeda is not simply the end of American influence in the Middle East, but the beginning of Islamic influence in the United States, we are not dealing with people who are legitimately torqued off by our policies. We are dealing with an aggressive, militant religious sect that intends to destroy our way of life. These people have no qualms about using and abusing our infrastructure, either. One of the people who pops up in the second chapter of the report is Ali Mohamed, who was instrumental in planning the African Embassy attacks in 1998. Here is how the report describes him: "a former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and became an instructor at Fort Bragg" (p. 68). Personally, I find that chilling.

Religion on "Colonial House"

2004-07-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

When Colonial House first aired on PBS, I missed it. But my local affiliate is airing it again, so I'm on board this time. It's an interesting show, not so much for its history, but for the way its participants are engaging with history, particularly concerning religion.

You can't go back to colonial America without religion, so here in the second episode, the "colonists" are going to church. Some of them are atheists and some of them are Christians (of both liberal and conservative flavors), which is fascinating. But, as in 1628 Puritan New England, all are bound by law to attend Sabbath services. The atheist man appears to be okay with this, but his wife is not too thrilled. Most interesting, however, is the teary confession of one of the conservative Christian girls that she finds it really hard to be living with people who believe differently (or, in this case, not at all). I can see how, for the daughter of a Baptist minister, close, continuous contact with atheists might be difficult. However, I think more Christians ought to put themselves in that kind of situation. It might give them a better perspective on how we atheists feel in a world where most people are Christians. Nope, not too much fun. But living with our differences is what makes us compassionate human beings.

Next episode promises more religious strife. I'm looking forward to it. Welcome to American history, were we all oppress each other and discover equality in the process.

9/11 Commission Report

2004-07-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

Just picked up my copy of the 9/11 Commission Report. Paranoid liberal bookstore coworker was unimpressed: "It's censored bullsh*t!" she told me. What, you were hoping for nationwide publication and sale of classified documents? Come off it.

I have only read the first few pages, in which the actions of the hijackers on the morning of September 11, 2001 are recounted in clinical detail where possible (airports in Newark and Boston did not have closed-circuit cameras monitoring security checkpoints, so there are fewer nitty-gritties from those locations). Already I've come to my first heave of emotion with the following passage:

The 19 men were aboard four transcontinental flights. They were planning to hijack these planes and turn them into large guided missiles, loaded with up to 11,400 gallons of jet fuel. By 8:00 A.M. on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, they had defeated all the security layers that America's civil aviation security system then had in place to prevent a hijacking. [emphasis added]

How am I to feel? Proud that the United States was such an open, forgiving land? Embarrassed that we let these terrorists into our parlor so easily? Unfortunately, I feel both. This, I think, is the paradox that has wracked our nation for nearly three years now. How can peaceful, open people defend themselves against an enemy who has no qualms exploiting as weakness what we value as civility? I cannot answer that question now.

Love, Trapped in the Throes Of

2004-07-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
            Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, sighing cries
            Heigh Ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full, nor fasting.
            Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, sighing cries
            Heigh Ho!

Samuel Daniel

Samuel Daniel was an English poet who lived from 1562 to 1619. Despite the nearly 400 years that separate his birth from mine, I resonate with his words. (Excuse the cynical intrusion, but it annoys the hell out of me that the bookstore where I work can sell copy after copy of tripe from Tupac Shakur, while Mr. Daniel and his ilk are perennially overlooked. When the 15-year-old girls come in and tell me how profound are Tupac's desolate verses, only salesmanship keeps me from educating them: "Did you know history is filled with great, suffering poets of superlative eloquence who actually know how to use the words 'to' and 'for' without substituting Arabic numerals?" This new movement called "urban" has only taken the great palette of human experience and reduced it to scratches in concrete and stark scribblings in spray paint. Alas, the decline of civilization.)

But love. Samuel Daniel knew it well, I think. At least, he knew what I know (or I know what he knew): Love is a sickness better than its cure. Shakespeare (who may have been a woman) as well knew this, giving Hamlet that famous soliloquy, in which the melancholy Dane considers the solution of mortality to end "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks / that flesh is heir to," including, but not limited to, "the pangs of despised love." Hamlet may have rejected the suicidal version of his cure, but the mortal solution presented itself anyway. (Incidentally, Daniel and the Bard were contemporaries.)

The Beatles claimed that "all you need is love," but still found themselves begging "love, love me do." Apparently, while love may indeed be all you need, need alone is not enough to get it. (Hence that "sickness" and those "pangs.")

Now I am looking at a book called Why We Love, subtitled "The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love." Having consulted the poets, I turn to science. The author of this tome is Helen Fisher, identified on the dust jacket flap as "one of this country's most prominent anthropologists." Scholar though she may be, she is human, too, and most scholars are driven to their fields by personal circumstances. So I must admit to my curiosity about someone whose dissertation was on "the evolution of human female sexuality and the origin of the nuclear family," and whose books include Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce, and The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior. Myself the child of a broken marriage and a guy perennially unsuccessful in love, I can understand the kind of persistent questioning that might lead a person to study these things. But I shall not presume to deduce Dr. Fisher's personal details from her field of study. For all I know, her life has been free from pain and controversy. (May it be so!) [Further perusal of the book revealed this statement: "I have loved and won and loved and lost; I have certainly experienced the joy and agony of romantic love."]

On page 170, Fisher begins a short section with the title Depression as an Adaptation? Being intimately familiar with depression as the result of love lost and an eager student of evolutionary psychology, I was intrigued by the idea that perhaps those "pangs of love despised" are more helpful than they feel. After a couple paragraphs of introduction, Fisher says this:

Despair is such a debilitating experience that it must have evolved for many good reasons. A related purpose I particularly like is proposed by anthropologist Edward Hagen, biologist Paul Watson, and psychiatrist Andy Thomson. These scientists believe that the very high metabolic and social cost of depression is actually its benefit: one's depression is an honest, believable signal to others that something is desperately wrong. Hence depression evolved, they say, to enable stressed ancestors to signal for and acquire social support in times of intense need, particularly when they were unable to verbally persuade or use force to get friends and relatives to support their cause.

Sounds reasonable enough, though I still recall the many times depression has done the opposite for me, driving away friends and family who apparently would prefer that I put on a happy face to alleviate their need to care about how I feel. Many people treat depression in others not as a valid biological and social mechanism, but as conscious manipulation on the part of the depressed person. Telling him or her to "just stop" being depressed only has the devastating effect of obfuscating a natural chemical and biological process that, according to Hagen, Watson, and Thomson, has evolved specifically to communicate where the conscious, rational part of the individual has failed. This obfuscation isolates the depressed person even more. (I know from experience.)

Fisher continues with a quote from Agamemnon by Aeschylus, the brilliant playwright of classical Athens: "He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of god." Depression is not only a means to acquire social support, but an avenue to insight. Fisher says,

Scientists can now explain why. Mildly depressed people make clearer assessments of themselves and others. As psychologist Jeffrey Zeig puts it, "They suffer a failure of denial." Even severe and prolonged depression can push a person to accept unhappy facts, make decisions, and resolve conflicts that will ultimately promote their survival and capacity to reproduce.

Happy news indeed, if true, although sometimes I am more concerned about my capacity to reproduce than about my own survival. So the despair of rejection might help me? One can only hope.

Of course, there is much more to be read, thought, and written about love. For instance, why do we fall in love at all? Why do we pair-bond? Why are some women irresistible to me while others could fly to Mars and still not be far enough away? (Or, perhaps more importantly, why does it seem that I could fly to Mars and still not be far enough away for so many women?) But despite all these questions, I shall stop here. Recent remarks from bibliotaph and dipped in chocolate--both lovely females, I might add--have put foremost in my mind the sometimes excessive length of my posts. Yes, like most males, I cave easily to female criticism. ;-)

Stupid, selfish hair.

2004-07-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

My brother and I have decided that our hair must be really curious, in an exploratory sense. While good hair is happy with its station in life, glorifying our otherwise boring scalps, bad hair is dissatisfied. It refuses to recognize the commonwealth of the head and spreads its sails to the wind. Too much of my hair is the bad kind. It might see a comb, a drain, or a computer keyboard and think to itself, "I would really like to leave my friends and family, and set out to seek my fortune with that thing!" Another one bites the dust. Stupid, selfish hair. Don't you know your home is where you are loved best? So cruel, so cruel.

(Dipped in chocolate will probably keel over dead. Two posts in a row with less than 500 words.)

Bibliotaph Bonanza!

2004-07-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

Yes, yesterday was the anniversary of my birth. And bibliotaph did such a good job of making it a great day, she deserves recognition! Check out her two birthday tributes here and here. Thanks bibliotaph!

Partisan Paradigms

2004-07-22T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post is running an interesting article about liberal documentarians. It's a good read, and I recommend it, but I'm only going to comment on one small passage, reproduced here:

"I think it's pretty meaningless for a documentary filmmaker to put six years of his life into a film that reinforces the dominant paradigm," explained Mark Achbar, co-director of "The Corporation," a treatise on the evolution of corporate power that opened last week in Washington. "By default, documentary filmmakers are put in a dissident position because we are being critical of what's happening in the world."

Here is the problem with leftist social criticism: It's built on the philosophical model of paradigms. The paradigmatic model works pretty well for a highly structured, constrained system like science (see here), but fails completely when addressing something like a human society, which is far more complex, chaotic, and uncontrolled. Assigning a paradigm to a social system is always a dangerous oversimplification. However, it is still a beloved method of the Left.

What Mark Achbar fails to understand is that documentary films can be critical without addressing any "dominant paradigm." What is the dominant paradigm in American society, anyway? (Hint: There is none.) Criticizing paradigms is shoddy workmanship for anyone who aspires to the standards of journalism or scholarship. Good journalists and good scholars will tell you that the best, most meaningful work deals with specific individuals and events, and not with "paradigms," which are philosophically imposed abstractions and not reality.

American society is and always has been defined by competing perspectives and opinions. However, because we operate by winner-take-all majority elections, we have lulled ourselves into believing that there are such things as "dominant paradigms" in our society. There are only dominant players, not dominant paradigms. There was no paradigm that led to the election of George W. Bush in 2000--the popular vote was split down the middle. However, there were players, including officials in Florida and the United States Supreme Court (and perhaps Ralph Nader), who contributed to the outcome of that election. That does not constitute a paradigm; it constitutes power. Furthermore, power is not entrenched by ideologies, but by power players. These power players do not act according to paradigms, but according to their own wills and desires.

Responsible social criticism does not deal in paradigms, but in identifiable individuals and events. There are always dissenting voices, in every movement, conservative or liberal. For instance, there were conservatives who opposed the war in Iraq, and liberals who supported it. Those two links are instructive, because they reveal that people from both of the alleged American paradigms do in fact think independently. It is acceptable to criticize their internal logic, but not to dismiss them simply because they represent a "paradigm" one dislikes (see, for instance, "Moore, Michael").

Americans and their popular historians are sadly prone to ignore the complexity of any era. Partisan interpretations are popular, but one-sided. I have a favorite whipping boy on this issue: Howard Zinn and his People's History of the United States, which is a decent history of leftist movements in the United States, but is not a history of American "people," or of the "United States," because those categories encompass far more than Zinn covers in his book. To his credit, I don't think Zinn claims to tell the whole story in his book, though he does manage to maintain the image of telling the "real" story, which is utter bunk. There is no "real" story of the United States or its people. The facts and events are too numerous and the individual players too diverse to fit a singular narrative. (For instance, conflict over wealth and labor may have been part of the Civil War, as Zinn claims, but so were slavery, tariff disputes, philosophical ideas about liberty and the preservation of the union, states rights, abolitionism, national pride, and differing economic theories.)

So, down with "dominant paradigms," because they don't exist anyway.

Nazi Mythology and Thinking Historically

2004-07-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Nazi Germany was not just about racial superiority over Jews. Hitler believed that Berlin would be the cultural center of the world. His Nazi government gave sweeping financial support to artists, architects, playwrights, and musicians, partly to help achieve his vision of Germany as the new Rome, and partly to assuage his own pain at having been a starving artist himself when he was a young man in Vienna. Hitler wanted the German people to rise again and assume their place as an important nation. This was a popular ideology amongst the German people (sometimes called "Volkism"), especially after the first World War, when Germany had been devastated by France and England. Less than a century before, Germany had been powerfully (if briefly) united under Otto von Bismarck, and their postwar fall was a major blow to that legacy.

But Hitler's ideology looked back even further and tried to situate the German people within an epic story of global domination. Central to Hitler's Reich was a spurious mythology about the Aryan race. Not only should the German race become the foremost bringers of culture to the rest of the world, but they would be assuming a position they deserved as the most direct descendants of the Indo-Europeans, or Aryans ("Aryan" comes from the Sanskrit word "arya" which means "noble person"). Hitler believed that Germans were a noble people who had been dispossessed of their heritage. The way to a brighter future was unification and racial purity. Only these would allow them the political and cultural power that would put Germany back on top. In his infamous book Mein Kampf, Hitler called the German people to a "herd unity" which, "If the German people in its historical development had possessed..., the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of the globe."

According to Hitler, Germans had a right to rule, because they were bred to rule. These Indo-Europeans, or Aryans, the race they claimed for themselves, were the people who allegedly populated an immense band of territory stretching from Europe all the way out to India. Where did the Indo-Europeans come from? In 1935 Hitler set up the Ahnenerbe (a "scholarly" organization for the study of "Ancestral Heritage") to prove the superiority of the German race via history, archaeology, and anthropology. Conveniently, these scholars (who also searched for Atlantis and the Holy Grail) argued that the Indo-Europeans originated in Germany. Hence, Germans were the master race from whom all the greatest cultural achievements from Europe to India had come. Or so said the Ahnenerbe. In reality, the Indo-Europeans probably came from the Inner Asian Steppes. However, as far as the Nazis were concerned, the Germans were the originators of an important culture, and they needed to reclaim that status. In that sense, the Nazi ideology was a "Golden Age" ideology, because it looked back to an idealized, mythical past and sought to recreate a cultural zenith.

Why am I thinking about this? Because I've been pondering "thinking historically" lately, and Hitler and the Nazis are a prime example of how not to think historically. First, don't make up your own history. Second, don't buy into Golden Age mythology; if you are great, you are great on your own merits, not the presumed merits of your ancestors. Third, and most importantly, thinking historically does not guide or constrain; it illuminates the present and informs your decisions. Thinking historically tells you where you are, not where you should be. Nazi ideology was more religious than historical, putting the Germans into a metanarrative that not only ignored facts, but fabricated them, too. Unfortunately, most metanarratives do that. History, as I wrote yesterday, is deeply and fundamentally non-narrative as a whole. We can only highlight strands of causality, which intersect at every point with other strands, none of which tells the whole story. Hitler's Third Reich oversimplified German history, took little heed of reality, and drove the German people into a nightmare of racism and xenophobia.

There is a fine line between using the past for your own purposes, and letting the past inform your purposes. We are not bound by history, as though it were a deterministic process, but neither are we free from our past. Thinking historically is always a conundrum.

Plutarch, Pocahontas, and Thinking Historically

2004-07-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

A while ago I had the pleasure of listening to a little girl recount a portion of the movie Pocahontas. I was in a bookstore cafe perusing a copy of Plutarch's Lives and reflecting on the uses of history when the girl, who could not have been more than five, launched into her story for the adults at her table.

I have not seen Pocahontas, so I was a little confused by her retelling. She was most concerned with a scene involving "all the girls wishing." Is that in the movie? Was her account a childish misperception? I have no idea, because I have not seen the movie. Besides, I was busy wondering why people tell stories at all. That may seem silly to you, but it is fascinating and important to me.

Plutarch was a Roman who wrote in the early second century C.E. His legacy to the world is his great work, the Parallel Lives, which is a series of biographies comparing famous Greeks with famous Romans. Historians like to point out that Plutarch was more concerned with delving into matters of character than with writing accurate history, and they're probably right. Plutarch was a storyteller whose source material was the lives of public men and whose purpose was an explication of virtue. He used the past and its people to craft a goal for the future. Having been pondering the uses of the past, and the purpose of history, I decided to take a fresh look at Plutarch, perhaps for inspiration.

So there I was, hunched over my paperback Plutarch and listening to an adorable, wiggly girl tell her version of an animated Disney movie, thinking about the connection between the two, and what it meant to me. Storytelling is weird, when you think about it. We put together words about people and events that are either imaginary or beyond our own experience, then feed them to each other. We love this stuff! We devour jokes and anecdotes and novels and histories and movies and plays at an amazing rate. Why?

One of my relatives is a professor of biblical literature and we have had many interesting conversations about "narratives" and "metanarratives" and "mythologies" and so on. He believes that all people live within a metanarrative (i.e., an overarching story that gives meaning to their life) and that storytelling is our way of expressing complex ideas without the difficulty of abstraction. Because he is a Christian, I can understand why he would think that. Christianity is the metanarrative par excellence. But I think he overstates his case when he insists (as he does) that everyone lives in a narrative, including atheists. I certainly don't see myself in a metanarrative. However, I do find narratives inspiring, and I agree with him that they are excellent tools for expressing ideas.

So what was the little girl trying to express? Did she have some complex, subconscious meaning to convey? Was she looking for attention? Or was she simply acting out the natural human tendency to tell a story? Plutarch claimed to be telling his stories as a way to impart the knowledge of virtue and folly as learned from prominent citizens, and people still read them for inspiration today, almost two millennia later. Did he begin telling stories as a child, by imitating the stories of adults? Where did he learn the virtues and follies of narration? There must be a deep human impulse to tell stories, something that has been with us since the paintings Lasceaux, that has appeared in every generation, and which appears in children still today.

As I study history, and ponder the possibility of a career in historical study, storytelling is prominent in my thoughts. History cannot exist without narrative. There are quantitative methods, and "scientific" modes of historical research, but without the structure of a story, the data remain cold and meaningless. You may think I have just contradicted myself, first claiming to live outside a metanarrative, then saying that history requires a narrative structure. But I believe human history is fundamentally non-narrative. It is deeply complex, without direction or meaning outside the structures derived by historians and archaeologists, driven not by a concern for meaning and resolution (nor by a Hegelian dialectic) but by unconscious causation at every level. Hence the same event can be part of multiple intersecting narratives as reconstructed (and re-construed) by historians. What, then, is the meaning of an event? It has many meanings and no meaning at all: Many meanings because it can function within several narratives; no meaning because it clearly has no singular purpose, the way a plot point in a fictional narrative does. Rather, an event is both the product of multiple, converging causal factors, and the cause, along with other causes, of future events. Plutarch's subjects had no idea their lives would one day be interpreted by a writer, then read about for millennia. Did their lives really have this meaning? Were their wisdom and folly a matter of consciousness, the practice of "virtue" or "foolishness," or were their actions merely responses to and causes of the other events in their context? I suspect that none of us comprehend the significance of our lives and actions, and furthermore that our significance, if it exists, cannot exist without the help of some future historians. Hence, the practice of history and the telling of stories are our only ways of maintaining the significance of those who came before. We may exist at the pleasure of our ancestors and their circumstances, but unless we seek them out, their significance is lost to the realm of unconscious and rationally meaningless causality. They become, in effect, subhuman cogs in a mindless, meaningless causal machine.

People at Disney used the historical figure of Pocahontas to fabricate a story that impressed the little girl I saw today. They played fast and loose with the facts, but built a narrative that appeals to children. After watching the movie, this little girl came away with a singular focus on a particular part of the story, which she then retold. For some reason, "all the girls wishing" and making a difference resonated with her young mind. Perhaps she saw power there, something to spark her imagination and desires. Pocahontas and this spurious Disney version of the story became significant for this girl, if only for a moment, and if only to fill her mouth with words that make her seem civilized and conversation. The story and the language are what make her distinctly human. This is the essence of the intuitive narrative thinking at the root of our sense of history. Certain facts become important to us, and with those facts we fashion stories to explain them, to explain ourselves, to justify ourselves. There is no meaning or narrative aside from the one we create for ourselves. This is what it means to think historically, to be a storytelling species. One day, the girl will put this impulse to use and make use of the past to explain herself, to build meaning for her life, or to exhume and reanimate the people who came before.

And that is what I thought, sitting in the cafe, hunched over my Plutarch, and watching an adorable little girl participate in one of the most profound aspects of her species' culture. Think long and hard, read lots of books, and you too may become so twisted and weird. (You might even enjoy it!)

I, Human

2004-07-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick told the story of an artificial intelligence--the "HAL 9000" computer--misbehaving unexpectedly. Instead of aiding and protecting his human wards on the spacecraft Discovery, HAL turned against them.

In Blade Runner (1982), Ridley Scott told the story of several artificial intelligences--this time called "replicants"--misbehaving unexpectedly. Instead of working for humans on an "off-world" colony, as they were designed to do, a gang of replicants comes back to Earth and wreaks impressive havoc.

In AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), Steven Spielberg (and the influence of the late Kubrick) told the story of another artificial intelligence--a robot boy named David--misbehaving unexpectedly. Instead of acting like a robot and doing what he is told, David becomes obsessed by the story of Pinocchio and goes on his own quest to become "a real boy."

Now, in I, Robot (2004), Alex Proyas (and the "suggestion" of Isaac Asimov) tell the story of yet another artificial intelligence--this time a robot named Sonny--misbehaving unexpectedly. Instead of following the "Three Laws of Robotics," which would make him unable to harm humans, he runs wild and scares Will Smith half to death.

While 2001, Blade Runner, and AI are all far better films than I, Robot, the conceptual continuity is hard to miss. (And there are plenty of other movies I've not yet mentioned in which the same theme is present: The Terminator trilogy, The Matrix trilogy, and Short Circuit are seven.) Why are we so fascinated by the thought of supposedly mechanistic entities behaving unpredictably? To date, none of our technology has achieved the sinister initiative of Skynet or Agent Smith, and we can't even make convincing software simulations of a human personality--much less put them into humanoid robots. Nor have we created machines that love, or hate, or feel anything at all. Meanwhile, experts in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence consistently push back their predictions for when we will see anything approximating the machine intelligences of the movies. (The notable exception is Ray Kurzweil, who not only sticks with his predictions, but argues a method to make more of them and more accurately. Time will tell if he is right.)

But I don't think these movies are really about technology. They are not about artificial intelligence, but about real intelligence, and about the nature of being human. We are mechanistic entities who behave unpredictably. The science fiction bugaboo of artificial intelligence gone wild has nothing to do with our technological prowess, and everything to do with our persistent lack of understanding about ourselves.

Watch out now, because here come the anti-determinists and the anti-reductionists, poised to strike me down for daring to insist that human beings are both mechanistic and unpredictable! But it's true. We are, in essence, really, really complicated robots. Yes, reductionism works. Biology is lots of chemistry, and chemistry is lots of physics. Don't like that? Find a scientist who has observed anything but chemistry in biology, and anything but physics in chemistry. Scientists who have observed intractable problems in these fields and then inserted an unobserved deus ex machina do not count. Sorry, those are the rules, take 'em or leave 'em. If you want to run your science as an enterprise where the insertion of unobserved and unsubstantiated hypotheses like "God did it" are considered respectable answers, then don't bother with expensive or detailed research. If it rains, don't mind those clouds; God did it. If you drop your coffee and it falls on the ground, don't mind gravity; God did it. Why not? If unobserved and unsubstantiated hypothesis like an Invisible, Undetectable God are cool with you, then why bother searching for observable, substantiated mechanisms? Honestly. Don't bother. You're just fooling yourself.

Now, with that out of the way, let me suggest that even if we could fully understand the internal workings of a human being, there is still that pesky problem of how to understand many human beings, all of which happen to live within a complex environment, parts of which they can influence, parts of which influence them, and other parts where the influence appears to run in both directions at the same time. The thing that makes these mechanistic robots called "humans" so difficult to understand is not just their internal workings, but their social and environmental configurations. There are so many feedback loops involved in the human experience, we cannot reasonably predict the future of any given individual or group of individuals. We can guess. We can hope. But not much more.

We are fascinated by "consciousness," though I suspect that words like "fascinated" and "consciousness" do more to obscure the facts of human existence than to explicate them. One of the rules of good writing is "show, don't tell." In other words, don't apply an abstract noun where a description with verbs and adjectives could do the job. For example, instead of writing

"Timmy was angry."

you should write something like

"Timmy slammed his fists on the table."

Not the best example, but you should get the idea. "Angry" is a vague word. What is anger? Think about it. Hard to pin down, isn't it? Now try to think of angry behaviors (like slamming your fists on a table). Much easier! "Anger," you might have now discovered, is just an abstract noun applied to a group of behaviors, many of which require a particular context in order to be considered truly "angry." (For instance, yelling at someone who is across the field is not usually anger, but yelling at someone a few feet away usually is.)

Unfortunately, we get wrapped up in the same problems when we talk about the nature of being human. What is consciousness? Sorry, but consciousness isn't really anything. It's just another abstract noun applied to a group of behaviors. We may never explain "consciousness," but someday we will probably explain most (if not all) of those behaviors. The idea of "consciousness" as something special and mystical, I'm afraid, is only an artifact of the imperfection and vagueness of our language. Look at it that way and "conscious" machines don't seem so strange. All they need to do is exhibit particular behaviors so that others will believe their consciousness. (Yeah, Alan Turing thought of this, too.)

There are scads of pitfalls here, so I won't go any further for now. (Plus, it's just a blog entry, not a book, and I have other things to do.) Suffice it to say I don't accept the standard rejections of the anti-reductionists and the anti-determinists. Nor do I think consciousness is mystical or supernatural. On the contrary, I think it's perfectly ordinary, though extremely complex, and dressed up in vague terminology.

Science fiction is a good way to explore the problem of being human. What is essential to our humanity? Science fiction writers and filmmakers explore possible answers to this question by taking inanimate material and giving it various "human" characteristics. How much or how little do they need to add before the inanimate material takes on a recognizable "humanity"? It's a good way to go, I think, because we too are just conglomerations of inanimate material. Which means that there is another way to ask the question: Does it matter what human beings are made of? Welcome to the realm philosophy.

Human Being, Being Human

2004-07-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

I started to answer a question in "Atheistic Societies"? by explaining what I think the moniker "atheistic society" ought to mean. Now, after two days of willfully neglecting my blog for the sake of my sanity, I'll get to the other part of the question:

"I would like to know what basis an atheist has for excusing (or not excusing) the crimes of atheistic societies?"

We have the same basis as anyone else. Sympathy for victims, moral outrage, and so on. (See also my comment in response to Joe on this post.) I'm not going to do any Stupid Atheist Tricks™ and pretend that atheists have some wholly other basis for morality. The fact is, we respond to things pretty much the same way Christians do--according to our personal preferences, our upbringing, and the opinions we develop by our reading, talking, and life experience.

(I'm going to shift the direction of this discussion now, because that's what I do, but if you're one of the good people who has been reading, commenting, emailing, or blogging in this discussion with me, feel free to pull me back in whatever direction if you're not satisfied. I'm amicable with that sort of thing.)

Trying to derive a "moral compass" from Christianity is like trying to get every key on the piano to play the same note. Except there are a lot more than 88 different kinds of Christians. The same is true of atheists. People are diverse. I feel like I've been harping on this for ages here (even though the age of the blog is still measured in months). But I'll say it again:

The diversity of people and their opinions within large categories like "Christian" and "atheist" precludes the possibility of discerning much that is meaningful from the categorical definitions except for the most basic criteria:

Christians all believe, in some way or another, that Jesus is central to human history.

Atheists all subtract theological beliefs from their conceptions of the universe.

That's really all you can extract, because from there everyone diverges. Some Christians are Baptists, others are Orthodox. Some atheists are Marxists, others are Republicans. Clearly, we do not derive our specific ideological, moral, and behavior affiliations from our belief systems the way we think we do. From what I have seen and done and read, I think people use their belief systems rather like canvases on which to paint themselves.

Most people, including atheists, do not follow this method of analysis. Most people are too busy trying to prove that one or the other side can not or should not exist, that those who disagree with them are somehow stupid, dishonest, or misguided. But my method takes the diversity of humanity as a given and starts from there. Yes, there are Christians. Yes, there are Atheists. Yes, there are Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Wiccans, Marxists, Republicans, Democrats, Tories, Evangelicals, Catholics, Communists, Socialists, Fascists, Nazis, Native Americans, Methodists, Sikhs, Shamans, Witch Doctors, Voodooists, Anarchists, and about a zillion other categories into which we put ourselves. And those are just religious and ideological categories. There are racial categories, regional categories, tribal categories, national categories, cultural categories, economic categories, linguistic categories, sexual-preference categories, social categories, professional categories, right- or left-handed categories, and so on, approaching infinity. But somehow, it is still possible to take people from diverse categories--even people who might prefer to kill each other--and sit them down together to discover common ground. In the end, despite the categorical differences we wear, all of us are human.

What does that mean for the question at hand? It means that people display a kind of category-provincialism who express doubt, surprise, or skepticism that another person from another category can behave like a human being . I know that Christians (especially with the help of one C.S. Lewis) like to argue that basic humanness equals basic Christianity (er, "mere" Christianity), that the existence of good and decent behavior as approximately described in parts of the Bible is evidence that the Bible must be true, and hence so must Christianity. E.g., if the Bible says "thou shalt not lie," and we discover that unchurched Hindus don't like being lied to, then the Bible must have some kind of divine origin. But Lewis (and his throng of readers) apparently never stopped to think that perhaps the biblical writers and my hypothetical unchurched Hindus by sharing a dislike for dishonesty could also have been proving the truth of Hindu beliefs. (Substitute whatever non-Christian group you want to compare.) More likely, though, is that both groups were simply Being Human. That is, they were both responding to the human social experience. Others more able than I have demolished the Lewisian defense of Christianity, though.

Christianity is not the only religious category on the scene, nor was it the first. When Christians act surprised or puzzled that other people do in fact have moral codes, normal feelings, and a similar sense of outrage, it betrays a condescension that wavers between offensiveness and humor. Most people are "decent" people, and some kinds of Christians too often forget this. (Unfortunately for all of us, they are the loudest kind.) Sure, the world is filled with weirdos, too, but all those weirdos also require the same things you or I require: air, water, food, shelter, sex, and so on. They also deal with the same emotional problems: feeling happy or sad, lonely or stifled, in or out of love, etc. We ought not be marveling, as our dear Mr. Lewis did, over the common sensibilities we humans share, but over the fact that we manage to disagree about so many things. Why do we categorize ourselves into provincialism and near-isolation? If everyone shares a common moral sensibility, why do we have so many different beliefs about where it came from?

In case it isn't obvious yet, I happen to think that human beings are far more interesting and complex than most people admit, atheists included. We are a bizarre bunch of animals, spread across a planet, divided in so many different ways, hating, loving, killing, and caring for each other, pretending to be more different than we actually are. (Interesting scientific factoid: There is more genetic variation within human populations than between them. Check it out.) Don't get me wrong--I'm not one of those bleeding-heart "why can't we all just get along?" kinds of people. Differences may be superficial or imagined, but conflicts are real, and convincing people to humanize their opponents and enemies is no simple task. Nor is it particularly easy when your enemies refuse to humanize you.

At any rate, that may or may not answer the original question to the satisfaction of the questioner, but there it is. Feel free to comment.

"Atheistic Societies"?

2004-07-14T07:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a question from Lee Anne at such small hands:
"I would like to know what basis an atheist has for excusing (or not excusing) the crimes of atheistic societies?"

That's an odd question. What is an "atheistic society"?

Is it a society where most people are atheists? Sorry, but that has never happened. Atheists have never comprised more than a small percentage of any population.

Is it a society where the leaders are atheists? This maybe has happened, but most leaders who don't follow traditional religion still subscribe to some warped, quasi-religious and/or pseudo-historical mythology (e.g., Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, or any of the military dictators in small, otherwise insignificant nations around the world). That doesn't qualify as atheism, because it just removes traditional theology and replaces it with a leader-theology. Atheism isn't about replacing theology, but about doing away with it altogether.

Or is an atheistic society simply a society that does not derive its power and sovereignty from a theological system?

In my opinion, all Americans are living in an atheistic society. We are a constitutional republican democracy whose constitution derives its sovereignty from the citizens, not from any god(s). Read it again. Now let's compare.

Here is the preamble to the Constitution of the United States:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Here is the opening of the Ten Commandments:

"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments..."

Which one is the atheistic society? Well, the first one derives all its authority from the people and their pragmatic concerns. The second one derives its authority from a show of power by a god named Yahweh--"Hey, I saved your butts! Now listen to me!" You decide.

The United States is explicitly built on a non-theological system. For my money, that makes it an "atheistic society." However, atheists themselves still comprise only a small percentage of the population. Most Americans are religious. In fact, the United States is generally understood to be one of the most religious modernized societies in the world--something many people see as an aberration. But American religiosity is split among an astounding proliferation of conflicting sects, and it has always been this way. Right from the beginning, this land was colonized by competing versions of Christianity, including Puritans, Mennonites, Quakers, Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Huguenots, Baptists, Moravians, and probably more I'm not remembering at the moment. How were all these people to get along and "form a more perfect union"? By removing religion from the official framework that bound them together in that union. That was the only way to retain religious freedom for all those competing groups. If they had made the Constitution into a theological document (as some wanted to do), the ensuing theological disagreement would have made the Union impossible. Many of these people came from places where their religious consciences were violated by state established religions, or religiously established states. They did not want to repeat the mistakes of the European nations from whence they came; they wanted to continue being religious according to their consciences.

(Perhaps not surprisingly, during this period of national formation the biggest proponents of an established state religion were members of those sects who expected to receive financial support from the taxpayers. I.e., they wanted an established religion because they wanted to be the established religion.)

Since the United States was not formed according to theological unity, the only other common factors were "justice," "domestic tranquility," "common defense," "general welfare," and "liberty." Notice that each of these is quite pragmatic and earthbound, especially in the way that Americans have since interpreted them. We are quite happy to allow diversity and disagreement, so long as no one's rights are infringed by anyone else's. As my grandpa says, "Your right to throw a punch stops at the end of my nose." Or, as Thomas Jefferson said, religious belief is just fine "so long as it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket." This is self-interest at its best, when we all get together and say that, for the sake of each individual conscience, we will refrain from imposing a religion on each other. How do we mediate our disputes then? On the neutral ground of our a-theistic (and hence, uncontroversial and religiously neutral) judicial system. Unfortunately, however, many modern Christians in the United States have come to see a lack of active support for their particular religion as an infringement of their right to believe.

Yes, there are more "Christians" (if you count all the different sects) in the United States than members of any other religion. But the ground upon which all the different religions and diverse Christian sects are allowed to coexist is itself, by necessity, irreligious. I.e., atheistic.

Now that I have spent so much time ruminating on the terms of that question up there, I must unfortunately put off the rest of my answer until later. Life awaits.

Annoyed Rant

2004-07-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

One of my coworkers has been out of town for a week, visiting San Francisco. She came back today and one of the first things she told me was that she had seen Fahrenheit 9/11. "It was so great!" she gushed. (She gets excited over leftist causes--a fan not just of Michael Moore, but of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and even Howard Stern lately, because he has become a "champion" of free speech, I guess. I still think he's just a loudmouthed jerk, regardless of how correct he is about free speech.)

"You probably already know about all the stuff in the movie," she says, correctly, "But you should see it anyway. It's great the way it condenses all this stuff about Bush so people can finally know the truth!"

Really. So people can finally know the truth, huh?

Well, guess what. I work in a bookstore, where we have been shelving and selling books about George Bush, Osama bin Laden, and the Saudi family for, um, about as long as George W. Bush has been president. We have had numerous leftist books for much longer. We're a small store, too. You can find everything we have and more if you go down to your local Borders or Barnes & Noble. On top of that, I have been reading this information and these kinds of critiques in magazines and newspapers and on the web for quite some time now. What I'm getting at is that there is nothing in Michael Moore's Big New Thing that hasn't been freely available for a long, long time.

This is what rubs me the wrong way. Moore's thesis is that the American people have been "deceived." Ditto for the rest of the leftist crowd. They all think that if Americans just had access to The Truth™ then we wouldn't have elected George W. Bush, we wouldn't have gone to Iraq, and we might not have even been attacked on September 11, because, gosh darn it, that was our fault, too (you know, poor policy maneuvers and such). But the American people have a wealth of information at their fingertips. We probably have more information available to us than any people on the planet. We have our "mainstream" news sources, we have books from presses both large and small, we have magazines both glossy and underground, we have radio, we have television, and we have the internet (which is just about boundless). You might even say Americans are drowning in an information glut. The problem is not that Americans have been deceived with missing information. They haven't! They just haven't had that information packaged for them in ways that leftists approve. That's not deceit. That's not misinformation. That's not even propaganda. That's just a fact of life.

And it's the apathy of the American people, too. See, anybody who wants a different perspective is free to walk into a bookstore, even the little independent one where I work, and pick up a book that has all kinds of nitty gritty information about world events. You can even find books with non-mainstream perspectives. You can find books with flat out treasonous perspectives. And yes, here in America, we not only allow this stuff, we just about encourage it! Free speech is everywhere. But Americans don't care. Americans aren't seeking this stuff out in droves. Instead, Americans are sitting at home in droves (or, rather, sitting in their SUVs in droves) and not paying attention.

This isn't deception. This is apathy. Americans are more concerned about getting loads of cheap credit, about keeping high-paying jobs they don't deserve, about sending their kids to universities where they won't learn much of anything useful, about keeping retirement benefits without paying anything into them, about getting cheap healthcare, and about keeping all the problems of the world safely outside the sanctity of their homes and SUVs. Americans don't care about world politics or geopolitical strategy, or what might be involved in maintaining that standard of life they so love. Americans just want to feel happy and isolated, so they can get fat in peace. They are just as greedy as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but on a smaller scale. All those "elite" tycoons are living the American Dream. They're not qualitatively different, they're quantitatively different. That's it.

And that's the problem with leftist mythology. They work from a perspective that says rich and powerful people are fundamentally selfish and ruthless, but poor people are fundamentally noble. Newsflash to the Left: We are all selfish and ruthless, just some of us are less successful at acquisition.

Michael Moore made the wrong movie. Instead of going to powerful people and making them look like idiots, he should have gone to average Americans and quizzed them on facts, history, and geography. He should have asked them about geopolitics. He should have pressed them on what they believe and why. He should have seen where they get their information about the world. He should have gone to bookstores and hung out in the political and history sections to see what people bought and why. Instead of exposing the idiocy of our elites, which we take for granted anyway, he should have exposed the idiocy of the average American and then shown how much we have in common with our leaders. We like to say that power corrupts, but we always mean somebody else when we say that. The Average American is just as corrupt as any leader, and we ought to admit it.

The media haven't deceived us. We have voted with our feet and chosen to hear what we wanted to hear.

Kill the Straw Men

2004-07-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

Did you know that I "[fail] to grasp that Christians don't believe in an arbitrary God who sets rules for his own enjoyment, but one who loves us and sets rules for our own protection, like any loving parent"?

Neither did I. This comes as a great surprise to me, as I myself was once a Christian who believed in "an arbitrary God," so I have a pretty good insider view on this one.

(If you're wondering where this came from, Adam over at Kingdom Come made that comment above in a post this morning.)

Granted, the quality of my posts has fallen off in the last few days, owing to my overall stress level, but I'm gonna have to stick by my guns on this one. So let's just forget the silly straw man bit about the dense Christian. Usually I despise that kind of stuff, but it slipped past my quality control this time. The argument really should have run something like this:

Morality is either functional or arbitrary. That is, there are tangible benefits to behaving morally, or there are not. If there are tangible benefits to behaving morally, if moral behavior is socially stabilizing and beneficial to your self-interest, then we should expect moral behavior to emerge naturally from social life. Hence, morality as functional and beneficial has no need for divine decree. God does not need to come down from on high and say, "Don't kill your neighbor," because we will naturally discover the benefits of not killing our neighbors.

(Things are not quite that simple, though--being animals who have survived precisely because our ancestors were good at defending their interests via killing, we have still inherited the inclination and ability to kill. So we are stuck with the violent urges of "nature, red in tooth and claw," which brought our species to the kind of prominence that allows for such massive social communities as we have, but our social history has led us to understand that within those communities, different behaviors are necessary. We are a complicated animal.)

Back to my original point, though: Functional morality needs no divine decree. If you are willing to say that morality is functional (as Adam does when he remarks that I "obviously [don't] understand just how pragmatic, yet challenging, many of Christ's teaching[s] are"), or that it confers benefits that are clearly visible without recourse to a theological perspective, then the theological aspect of morality is superfluous. (For instance, Confucius also gave "pragmatic, yet challenging" teachings, and without the benefit of a theological system.) Either we espouse morality because it is useful, or because God decrees it. That is not a false dichotomy. If God is decreeing something that is already clearly useful without his decree, then why is he bothering to decree it?

The meat of the argument: What good is a God who declares as truth what would be true even if he hadn't declared it? Put slightly differently, is moral behavior good because God independently decrees it, or does God decree moral behavior because it is independently good? (If that sounds familiar, read this.) If moral behavior is functional, and not just arbitrary, then the answer is clearly the latter: God decrees moral behavior because it is independently good. Again, why does anyone need a God who simply observes what is already true, and then says so? It doesn't matter how "parental" or "loving" that proclamation is alleged to be, it is superfluous unless God merely a helpful observer, and not a creator and teleological guide (as most Christians believe him to be). The argument here is not that morality makes the existence of God impossible, but that morality is not positive evidence for the existence of the Christian God, especially if you are going to admit that morality is indeed functional and pragmatic.

When I remarked above that I once believed in an arbitrary God, I was referring to my recognition as a Christian that God was either necessary or unnecessary to morality. Because I wanted to be a Christian, I insisted for a long time that God was necessary to morality (i.e, that morality outside of Christianity was meaningless). The only way to do that is to insist that God is arbitrary about morality, because otherwise morality can exist without him. This was not the issue that brought the system crashing down for me, but it was certainly one of the numerous points of entry. (See Answers to Questions for more info on my deconversion.)

The idea behind the "straw man" in the previous post was that Christians who want to retain the idea that morality is positive proof for their religion will be in trouble if they entertain the possibility of morality as a functional, pragmatic aspect of human experience. This I know because I was once a Christian who did just that.

Sunday Morning Cartoons

2004-07-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning, and here I am in front of the television watching the Fresno First Baptist Church. What a bizarre crowd. They look like normal people, and I'm sure they are as soon as they walk out the doors of the church (despite all their efforts to the contrary), but nothing can make ordinary folks look like complete weirdos like a church service can.

Especially good for creating a Weirdening Moment™ is putting a difficult key change in the middle of a heartfelt song. Suddenly all that praise and devotion is transformed into a conspicuously uncomfortable musical struggle. They're spitting out these pious words, but you know they're really more concerned with trying to figure out what notes to sing, and the piety is ruined. Except nobody is going to say so until after the service, when they all shuffle out the door and start to deconstruct their "worship."

Protestants love doing this; their worship services are like broken down cars that need a lot of tinkering to keep them running, so constant deconstruction is necessary. They're always trying to shift things around to keep it fresh. Clearly, the service is more about them than about their God, because they are very concerned with the service makes them feel. Having been in committee meetings where this kind of thing is discussed, I know that contemporary Protestants are secretly terrified that one day they will gather in church to worship and none of their little tricks to get them in the mood will work. Oh, but the party line they maintain is always that God can pump them up no matter what they do. So I wonder, why do they need "worship bands" and big video screens and endless amounts of cheesy music?

Nothing reinforces my belief that Christianity is a scam like watching actual Christians in action. They're not fooling me--they're fooling themselves.

Pragmatism! Aaarrrggghhh!!! Run away!

2004-07-10T13:29:00.000-07:00

Over at such small hands, the blogger has posted something called The Intellectual Dishonesty of Atheism, in which she says the following:

The atheist cannot tell you why man has dignity, yet does cruel things. He looks around and sees man is the highest order of animal and that is all there is. Man is valuable because he is smarter than the other animals. And morality becomes a matter of pragmatism, what works best for the greatest number in society.

. . .

Atheists simply have no basis, on the face of what can be observed in the universe, that man has dignity, that morality can have any foundation other than pragmatism, and that the form and nature of the universe can be known with any degree of certainty.

Christians are terrified of pragmatism. I do not know why, though I have seen the terror on many occasions. Apparently, there is something Really Scary about the thought that we behave well because good behavior actually benefits us, instead of because certain behaviors have been decreed Good by something Other, that our sense or morality is just a byproduct of our being social. Maybe the ethical problem is similar to the biological problem, in which Christians look at the human organism (i.e., themselves in the mirror), feel a certain sense of awe at its complexity, and then declare that such a thing could not have simply emerged as a byproduct of some other process. Maybe the Christian ego can't handle being a byproduct. I don't know.

(Never mind, I suppose, that a great many people are clearly and explicitly unplanned byproducts of their parents' amorous indiscretion, and somehow they manage to get over it and live perfectly happy lives without needing to feel that they are here for a Reason™. Why? Because they understand that they are not robots with someone else's intentions programmed into them, and that the meaning of their lives comes from their own intentions, and not from their parents'. Why we can't have the same kind of disregard for other-intentionality as a giver of meaning to our lives on the level of the species, or for the universe in general, I don't know. It's as if Christians think it's some kind of horrible, fearful thing that they should have to exist without someone else first telling them why.)

The funny thing about these comments from "such small hands" is that she first says atheists cannot tell you why people do cruel things, but then she says atheists cannot tell you why people have morality or dignity. Apparently, atheists have no idea why anyone does anything at all, good or bad, while Christians understand all aspects of human behavior. Except the Christian explanation basically boils down to, "God said this is Good, and that is Bad," which is no explanation at all. For example:

Christian: God says lying is bad.

Atheist: Why?

Christian: Because God said so.

Atheist: But why would God say so? There must be a reason.

Christian: Because God is God.

Meanwhile, the atheist tries to come up with a real explanation. But the moment he does, the Christian ridicules it because it doesn't acknowledge this unreasoning, impenetrable God who decrees morality for no apparent reason.

Atheist: I have discovered why lying is bad!

Christian: Oh?

Atheist: Yes! Lying is bad because it creates a circumstance of distrust that destabilizes the community. While a lie from one person may benefit that person, if lying were taken as a general principle of acceptable behavior, then the helpful fabric of the community would be destroyed and no one would benefit.

Christian: That's ridiculous. It's just pragmatism. What about God?

Atheist: What about God?

Christian: You haven't explained anything at all if you ignore God! That's just pragmatism!

Atheist: What, you mean people don't act in their own interest?

Christian: That's just pragmatism!

Atheist: [throws up hands in exasperation]

Christian: [to the audience] See? Atheists are just angry jerks who deny God!

So the atheist goes back to think some more, this time on a new question: Why do Christians persistently reject explanations for morality that involve mundane causes and effects? Why do they reject any explanation of morality as something that regards all human behaviors as functional? Many Christians will say that we have free will, that we can choose to be good or bad, but why would we choose one or the other? There must be come kind of situational costs or benefits that come into our minds at the point of decision. Otherwise, we're just behaving completely randomly. But the moment we try to figure out what those situational costs or benefits are, they loudly decry the whole basis of our operation. Why? Back to thinking...

Rerun from an "Intellectual Gimp"

2004-07-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

After posting Note from an "Intellectual Gimp" earlier today, I kept thinking about the problem of Christians (like Joe Carter) denying the full cognitive abilities of atheists. That attitude, in my opinion, is not too far removed from denying human rights. When you start arguing against the imagined quality of the mind that disagrees with you (by, say, labeling your opponent an "intellectual gimp") instead of dealing directly with the ideas that mind is producing, you are effectively devaluing that person, which is dangerous.

But I digress. As I continued pondering Christian denigration of atheists (and to be sure, the same behavior flows in the other direction, too, but I try to avoid it myself, not always successfully), I remembered something I wrote about a week and a half ago, in the post called Being Human vs. Being Christian, which was not as incendiary as it sounds. The idea was that "human" and "Christian" are two categories for people, one of which is narrow, exclusive, and potentially hurtful, while the other is broad, inclusive, and potentially healing. In that post, I described Christianity as a "linguistic and philosophical system," calling it "essentially a shared linguistic interface." In order to satisfy Christians like Carter, "All I have to do is address my existential concerns to this being called 'God,' and express the events in my life in terms of the Christian metanarrative. Nobody would be the wiser. Except me."

Then I continued,

Why should I have to perform these vocal and linguistic patterns, adjust my language to have a theological slant, and participate in rituals, ceremonies, and traditions designed to reinforce and perpetuate these patterns? Further more, why should you as a Christian see me as an outsider, or even less as a person (as I know some Christians do, even ones who are related to me), simply because I refuse to be complicit in your linguistic and philosophical system?

You may argue that the linguistic and philosophical system I describe is just a man-made superstructure over the deeper, more natural state of humans as creatures fundamentally connected to God, as many Christians have. But if that's the case, then why isn't my existence as a human who refuses to have a theological, linguistic, philosophical, metaphysical structure recognized as the more natural way to live? Why am I chastised, ostracized, or otherwise alienated because I don't want to participate in what I see as a silly, made-up falsehood? [Recall that Protestant Reformers saw the papal Roman church in pretty much the same light.] Ultimately, if reality is the same for everyone, I am living under the same divinity that you call "God," except I choose not to address that divinity as anything other than the entities by which it manifests itself to me in the natural, tangible experience of my day-to-day life. Perhaps the only difference between you and I is that you project a human-like personality on whatever is "out there," while I do not. An atheist denies theism, which is theology, which is a human attempt to put a human face on what is fundamentally not human. What is offensive to me about Christianity (and about any other religion that bothers to look down on me for being an atheist) is that most Christians refuse to recognize that my perception of my own existence is not that I am fundamentally disconnected from ultimate reality because I have no theology, but that I am more closely connected to ultimate reality by having removed theology from my life. This is how I see things, and how I most comfortably exist.

This is one of the basic principles to which I continually return. Reality is the same for Christians and for atheists, and what defines a Christian is merely theology. If different theological systems can be rejected--and every Christian rejects somebody else's theology--what is the difference between that and rejecting theology altogether? No one can reject the nature of reality, and regardless of what you call it, reality is still there, in one form or another. So it is not just rude and crass, but inaccurate to assert that atheists are somehow "intellectual gimps" for denying what is obvious. Atheists do not deny what is obvious (i.e., "reality")--they deny the linguistic and philosophical patterns devised by religious people to communicate their experience with what is obvious.

This is not intellectual gimpery (if you'll permit me to be playful with an already silly-sounding word) but just as honorable an activity as any skeptical or reforming theologian has ever performed. Atheism is really just a matter of cleansing anthropomorphism from our thinking about the universe and its workings, something that theologians have never been able to do. In other words, the atheistic mindset is continuous with the theistic one, not discontinuous, as some Christians would like to think.

Note from an "Intellectual Gimp"

2004-07-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost has put me in a rather foul mood this morning. I do my best to be accepting of Christians as people, to take their perspectives seriously, and to listen to them honestly and openly, even when I disagree with them strenuously. But then somebody like Carter always has to come along and write things like this.

First he calls Robert Reich "an intellectually crippled man" for being an atheist--an "intellectual gimp." But then he says Reich "deserves our [Christians'] mercy and compassion rather than our scorn." Furthermore, "atheism is a form of (self-imposed) intellectual dysfunction," and atheists do not possess "properly functioning cognitive faculties." "By ignoring [atheists'] epistemic and metaphysical brokenness," Carter says, "we are shirking our Christian duty to truly show love for our neighbor."

Sorry, but it's hardly merciful, compassionate, or loving to go heaping that kind of arrogant scorn upon people. Carter's attitude is on par with Michael Moore's: If people don't agree with me, it's only because they're not as smart as I am. You won't win any converts that way. I'd like to see Carter go call Robert Reich an "intellectual gimp" to his face, instead of through his blog. In fact, I'd like to see Carter's ideology catch on with Christians, and see how long they can get away with ridiculing the "cognitive faculties" of atheists before they start getting hit with lawsuits for libel and slander.

But then, on top of that, Carter drags out that tired old Christian theory that modern Western society is somehow covert Christianity. He starts by suggesting that Reich (and by extension, all atheists who agree with him, I suppose) "didn't pay much attention during history class." (Another merciful, compassionate, loving way to start a discussion.) Carter then goes on to make some broad, unspecific, and vague statements that basically boil down to the following: Before there was the modern West, there was the Christian West. Therefore, the modern West is a creation of the Christian West, and hence, Christianity in disguise. Or something to that effect.

Except none of the things I love about modern Western society makes an appearance in the Bible. Natural rights? Representative government? Equality? Scientific investigation? Chapter and verse please. Show them to me. Where did these ideas come from? Did they come from the Bible?

The only "natural right" in the Bible is your right to be a depraved sinner. The only government in the Bible is the kind where one leader talks to God and tells everybody else what to do. There's certainly no equality in the Bible, except for that brief moment when Jesus is friendly with women, lepers, the allegedly demon-possessed, and other outcasts. But nobody follows his example, and the moment he's gone they're back to dividing people into categories--male/female, Jew/gentile, believer/heretic, Christian/Roman, etc. Science isn't even worth mentioning, as the biblical cosmology has no place for predictable, material cause-and-effect.

Christians are stuck with a Bible that predicted almost two-thousand years ago that Jesus would be coming back any moment. So what were they supposed to do? Care for each other, bide their time, convert other people, and meet regularly to encourage each other. There was no place for natural rights, representative government, equality, or scientific investigation because Christianity was, from the very beginning, an eschatological religion that believed the end was near. No need for any of those things. Except Jesus didn't come back. What do we do now?

Build a massive institution and use it to bring down the Roman empire, take control of the European continent, and rule the culture for a thousand years, apparently. All while claiming that your every action is inspired by God.

But people invented the great things about the modern West, not God. All those foundational ideas emerged in the struggle to get out from underneath the burdensome institution Christianity had become. People invented things like rights and representative government because they needed new principles by which to organize themselves. Most of those people were Protestants looking to get out from under the thumb of Catholics, but they weren't taking their political theories from the Bible. They were thinking and reasoning and innovating on their own.

Modern society is built on constitutionalism, which puts reasoned, pragmatic documents at the root of our social organization, and which traces back to the Magna Carta (1215), not to the Bible or the Ten Commandments. When English nobility pushed the Magna Carta on King John, they demanded rights and freedoms and powers for themselves. When early Americans signed the Declaration of Independence, and later the Constitution, they demanded rights and freedoms and powers for themselves. In the biblical world, however, demanding rights and freedoms and powers for yourself is tantamount to blasphemy. There is no basis for constitutionalism in the Bible. There is no basis for reason and rationalism in the Bible (but there's lots of places where it says to just do what God says, to stop thinking for yourself, and to "lean not on your own understanding").

Christianity is our historical heritage, not the basis of our society. There is a difference. I live in a country whose sovereignty comes from "We the People," not from "The Lord your God who has brought you out of Britain."

Christians used to recognize that the U.S. Constitution is not a Christian or theistic document. In 1863, a group of Christians organized the National Reform Association to petition Congress for an amendment inserting God into the Constitution. Their idea was to pad the preamble with explicit language to that effect:

We, the People of the United States [recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior and Lord of all], in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

While it was only a small group that made this particular petition, during the 1860s it was a relatively common belief amongst Christians, especially in the Northern states, that the Civil War was God's punishment to the nation for not acknowledging him, for daring to be a secular state (See also the post-9/11 comments by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.) Christian views have certainly changed, haven't they?

Christians seem to have a love-hate relationship with history. When it suits them to be straightforward about the facts, they are. When that tack fails, they go right back to mythology. Consistent honesty would be better.

Life in the Real World

2004-07-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

With all the horrid news these days, and because of the unfortunate way that we interact with our news providers (i.e., we can't help but follow the scandals and the violence, so they can't help but focus on those things--after all, they need stories that will keep our eyes on the advertisements), it is hard to get a decent perspective.

So let's look at a couple statistics about the world's new favorite place, Iraq. This is a country with an estimated population of around 25 million people (according to the CIA World Factbook). The violence there is tragic; I will not say otherwise. Any country that finds itself host to an ongoing conflict is going to suffer. To hear the news media, including people like Michael Moore, the documentary I watched on PBS the other night, and the people at Iraq Body Count, you would think that civilians are being killed left and right over there. But let's just take the IBC numbers at face value right now, and assume that about 12,000 civilians in Iraq have in fact been killed during every stage of this conflict. (Never mind, for the moment, that probably most of those deaths are the responsibility of terrorists and "insurgents," and not American troops.) Even with 12,000 people dead, in a nation with a population of about 25 million, that makes a percentage of--are you ready?--0.048%. Sure, 12,000 is a big number, especially when you're counting bodies. It doesn't make me feel happy. Doesn't make me feel anything positive at all. But the fact is that the vast majority of Iraqis are not dead. They are, in fact, just fine.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to sugarcoat a war. But I am trying to engage what I think is a better, more holistic perspective. Wars have costs and wars have devastation, but they are rarely as destructive overall as some people would have us think. Certainly, American news coverage of the war in Iraq has been on the tame side. Yes, people have a right to know that Iraqis are indeed dying over there. (Although I must admit that when I hear folks getting uptight about Americans not seeing these things, and arguing that seeing the violence would destroy American support for our actions there, I start to wonder how exactly Americans became so naive that they need to be reminded that, Yes, people die in war. Furthermore, why do they think that knowing this Awful Truth about violence--yes, it hurts and kills people!--would somehow usher in a blissful state of peace? People are not stupid.) However, we seem to forget that when the cameras are framing up the suffering in Iraq, they're also leaving out all the people who are not suffering (which is most of them).

There are two different ways to think about war, in my opinion. You can focus on the combat, on the hot spots of conflict, and on the suffering. Or you can focus on the greater context, on the whole society, in which the combat, conflict, and suffering are only a part. Most Iraqis are not being killed. Most Iraqis are not in combat. Most Iraqis are going about their daily lives. Are they thinking about the violence? Yes. Does it affect them? Yes. But are the disturbing images you see in the news media truly representative of the situation there? No. No more than your local news, which is probably dominated by extremes of violence and extraordinary human interest stories, is representative of how truly uneventful your life probably is in the grand scheme.

Personally, I am tired of bad news from all over the world. Most people are just like me: struggling to get by in a big, mostly uncaring world. Most people are not terrorists. Most people are not dying in wars. Most people are living in a relative state of peace.

So, in recognition of the fact that Life Goes On, here are some interesting stories about people who aren't killing, dying, or running for office:

Saturn's rings in ultraviolet light

Longer Lives Made Civilization Possible

Software Piracy Declined in 2003 . . . maybe

UPN to Launch Amish Reality Show

Prince Charles Shouldn't Promote Unproven Treatments

Chinese Men Sentenced for Eating Tiger

German Police Imitate Ducks

There, feel better now? Life goes on. Maybe there are a lot of bad things going on in the world, but there are a lot of pretty interesting things, too. Life is not so bad as it seems. Don't listen to Michael Moore. Maybe he thinks Americans are trapped in a culture of fear, but he isn't doing much to give them a better perspective. Try the internet. Dig up your own information. Look for facts on your own. Find out what's really out there. It isn't so bleak as you might expect.

South Korea Lays an Egg

2004-07-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

This morning I found the following letter in my email. It comes from a reader of this blog (who, apparently, has not been able to read it recently, because his government is stuck in the dark ages):

I just found out (2004 July 7th) that a wing of the South Korean government, the Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC), is currently clamping down on a variety of blogging service providers (including Blogger and Typepad) and other websites. The government is attempting to control access to video of the recent Kim Sun-il beheading, ostensibly because the video will have a destabilizing influence. (I haven't seen the video.)

Many expat bloggers in Korea are in an uproar: South Korea has not come far out of the shadow of its military dictatorship past.

I am writing this letter not primarily to criticize all Koreans as many expats in Korea are fond of doing (I'm Korean American), nor to express a generalized condemnation of Korean culture. No, my purpose is more specific: to cause the South Korean government as much embarrassment as possible, and perhaps to motivate Korean citizens to engage in some much-needed introspection.

To this end, I need the blogosphere's help, and this letter needs wide distribution (you may receive other letters from different bloggers, so be prepared!). I hope you'll see fit to publish this letter on your site, and/or to distribute it to concerned parties: censorship in a supposedly democratic society simply cannot stand. The best and quickest way to persuade the South Korean government to back down from its current position is to make it lose face in the eyes of the world. This can only happen through a determined (and civilized!) campaign to expose the government's hypocrisy and to cause Korean citizens to rethink their own narrow-mindedness.

We can debate all we want about "root causes" with regard to Islamic terrorism, Muslim rage, and all the rest, but for me, it's much more constructive to proceed empirically and with an eye to the future. Like it or not, what we see today is that Korea is inextricably linked with Iraq issues, and with issues of Islamic fundamentalism. Koreans, however, may need some persuading that this is in fact the case--that we all need to stand together as allies against a common enemy.

If you are interested in giving the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture a piece of your mind (or if you're a reporter who would like to contact them for further information), please email the MIC at: webmaster@mic.go.kr.

First, let me say that the actions South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture are unacceptable. Depriving people of information will not stabilize anything. It will only increase their anxiety and, in this case, anger.

Second, I would like to take this opportunity to point out to American Leftists that South Korea has real suppression of information. Anyone who thinks that we here in the United States suffer from some kind of Orwellian, informationally-suppressed police state needs to take a good look around.

Best of luck to those in South Korea, and here's to the reopening of the blog lockdown.

Resurrection, Intellectual Honesty, and Christianity

2004-07-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

[Note: This began as a comment in reply to Joe Missionary, but it got so long I figured it might as well become a real post, Pinocchio-like. Read the comment in question here. Enjoy.]

Regarding Paul and the "bodily resurrection," yes, I'm aware that Paul talks about Jesus being "raised." You would have done better to suggest I Corinthians 15:3-7, though, in which he lists alleged witnesses of the bodily resurrected Jesus. Paul is still a secondary advocate, though--despite being the earliest writer in the New Testament. This is one of the curious problems of early Christianity, that there was supposedly this amazing, spectacular, impossible, implausible, allegedly real event at the center of their religion, but none of the eyewitnesses managed to record it until decades later (if the authors of the gospels are indeed the eyewitnesses three of them claim to be), no outside witnesses managed to see it (Jesus only appeared to believers), and the closest we can come to contemporaneous documentation is a secondary source. One could easily question the wisdom of a God who decided to jump start a religion that claims to be the only one based on a historical event by giving this historical event to a group of people who were just about the worst historians we could have asked for.

As for Luke and his "careful investigation," remember that the author of Luke himself was not an eyewitness, nor does he claim to be, which is why I said that there are no eyewitness accounts from people who were converted by experiencing the bodily resurrected Jesus. Also, just because the author couches his narrative as the result of a "careful investigation" does not make it so. I know the tendency in Christian circles is to assume that the authors of the gospels were all honest, data-driven people, but I have a hard time using that principle with a piece of writing that displays not an iota of skepticism or criticism toward its subject. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about some wacky things, but was always sure to point out that it was only hearsay, that he could not himself verify the content of the reports. There is no such candor in the gospels.

However, regardless of whether Luke is actually a "careful investigation," or whether the author was simply using a rhetorical technique to lend authority to his (or her, as the case may be) narrative, there is still the fact that Luke is admittedly a secondary source. I know that primary/secondary distinction is annoying (just ask any history undergrad learning how to write papers), but it's there for a reason. Secondary sources are just not as reliable as primary sources.

Your comment that low-ranking documents still rank is true enough, but that in itself is not enough to redeem them for the purposes of proving the resurrection. Every historical document ranks somewhere. However, what many students of history and amateur historians are often frustrated to discover is that a document may be valuable for reasons that have little to do with its explicit content, and more to do with what it reveals about its author. The gospels fit neatly into this category, as they reveal more about late first and early second century Christianity than they do about the alleged origins of the faith in the early first century. From the historian's perspective, it is extremely problematic for Christians to claim the occurrence of an event for which no documentation exists until decades after the fact.

Unfortunately, Christians have always been more concerned with their own theological interpretations of events than with questions over whether the events did in fact transpire in a way that supports those theological interpretations. The way Christians do history is similar to the way most undergraduates and amateurs do it: form a thesis, then find some documentation to back it up, ignoring anything that contradicts, and bending facts if necessary.

Even more unfortunate is the counter-accusation from Christians that secular historians do the same thing. And, all too often, their claim is true--e.g., Howard Zinn's enormously popular A People's History of the United States which is about as partisan as it gets. However, a good historian must be open to the possibility that the facts will not play into his preconceived ideological hand.

Interestingly, there is an excellent example of a Biblical scholar who opened himself to this kind of intellectual honesty. He decided that he would go where the facts led him, and that he would not hamper his research by a priori fidelity to a theological tradition. I speak of Gerd Ludemann, whose personal website (follow the link for it) includes the following statement:

The Confederation of Protestant Churches in Lower Saxony has objected to my teaching because in my publications and in my scholarly work I have engaged in critical discussions of the Protestant confession and the results of my research are not acceptable to the Protestant Churches in Lower Saxony and the Administration of the University of Göttingen. Therefore although I am an accredited New Testament scholar the President of the University of Göttingen has forbidden my chair to be designated a Chair of New Testament Studies.

While only a single, anecdotal example, I think Ludemann's case is a sad indictment of the intellectual atmosphere in biblical and theological studies. Religious scholars too often are bound by fealty to a particular conclusion. That is, no matter what facts or documents the Christian scholar examines, he or she is ultimately required to come to the same conclusion as the church who funds his or her position, or face the kind of treatment Ludemann has received. Hence the proliferation of radical and liberal theologians whose work points toward skepticism, but who, for the sake of professional preservation, are required to say things like "I don't believe in the trinity, I don't believe in the bodily resurrection, and I don't believe in the virgin birth, but I still believe I am a Christian."

There are whole churches filled with people like this. I have visited several of them, and spoken with pastors, questioned them about their beliefs, and so on. After asking one pastor why his congregation even bothers with theology anymore, since they clearly don't seem to need it, being nearly indistinguishable from friendly, liberal secularists, except for the fact that they (occasionally) use Christian lingo, he replied with an honest, "I don't know." It was a rather shocking moment. These were people who called themselves "Baptists."

Over the last few years, I have been acquainted with several Christians who no longer really believe in all the things set out in the standard creeds. The strange thing is how hard it is to get them to admit this. They speak and write and act as though the entire system is a Dawkinsian "memeplex," but they still believe in church attendance and membership, prayer, Bible studies, potlucks, and so on. However, if you press them, they almost invariably return to the idea that the "truth" of the "narrative" is ultimately more important than whether it "really happened." I.e., they like the idea of Christianity, they like the stories, they like the symbols, they like the rituals, they like the liturgical cycle (even the Protestants, who have basically gutted it down to Christmas and Easter), and (perhaps most importantly) they like having a friendly and supportive group of people they see every week. Can't say I blame them on that last one. Atheism, unlike Christianity, does not come with a built-in social network.

Could the resurrection have happened? I suppose so. Nothing is truly impossible--there are only diminishing degrees of probability. Did the resurrection happen? There is no way to know, and Christians usually play this into their hand. "What good is a faith that requires proof?" they ask. Indeed. But from my perspective, what good is a religion that requires me to believe something precisely because it is unbelievable? Meanwhile, I can look to the materialist "worldview" where the books are laid open for anyone to read, doubts are acceptable, skepticism is encouraged, and professional researchers are allowed the intellectual freedom to challenge and even to change the prevailing paradigms of understanding. (By the way, for anyone who still believes that science is an exclusive "conspiracy," I recommend Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything, which recounts numerous instances of scientific disagreement and infighting, and several "paradigm shifts." It's also just witty writing and darned good fun to read.)

Paul was right. Without the resurrection, Christianity is nothing. So I am not surprised when Christians ignore the difficulties in the lack of historical documentation and insist that what they have is good enough. To do otherwise would betray their entire belief system. Those Christians who are honest about the limitations of their literature quickly find themselves in an uncomfortable position: Keep your skepticism private, but behave in public as though you believe unconditionally. Some of them seem to thrive on this contradiction, and even incorporate it into their theology. I suppose that's fine for them, but I'm not interested.

Document Difficulties

2004-07-05T22:22:00.000-07:00

Joe Missionary has correctly noted that my arguments against theism "have to do primarily with internal reasons." That is, I tend to focus on the internal consistency and coherence of religion. Joe, however, is curious what I think about the resurrection. He says, "One of the main reasons I am a Christian ... is because I cannot explain away the resurrection." It's a good question. What do I think of the resurrection?

A lot of people disregard the resurrection on the grounds that it's impossible, or at least implausible. "People just don't come back from the dead," they say. "It's unscientific." But the impossibility of the resurrection doesn't stop Christians, because as far as they're concerned, that is precisely what makes the resurrection worthwhile. Of course a resurrection is impossible! Why would God use a resurrection to save all mankind if it was just some ordinary, everyday thing that anyone could see or do? So while I do think a resurrection is impossible or implausible, I find it imprudent to try and argue that with Christians.

For me, the main problem with the resurrection is not the science, but the history. Historians use documents in accordance with their credibility, and certain factors can significantly lower the credibility of a document. For instance, documents that are works of advocacy rank low on the credibility scale. These are often things like memoirs or autobiographies, which are usually written to put the author in a favorable light. This gives those documents a built-in bias that hampers their credibility when it comes to the facts and events they recount. Credibility is also affected by how long after an event the document was composed. Journals and diaries are far more credible than after-the-fact recollections, because human memory just isn't that good. Unfortunately, there is not a single document regarding the resurrection that is not afflicted by both of these factors.

If there were unbiased, contemporaneous accounts of the resurrection, we would be in a different situation. But every account of the resurrection comes from someone who was an advocate for the cause a resurrection would support. Not only that, but they were all written many years after the resurrection is purported to have taken place. Furthermore, the earliest documents in the New Testament, the letters of Paul, say nothing of a bodily resurrection, and speak of the event only in spiritual terms. None of this bodes well for the case for resurrection.

But Christians, despite their allegedly progressive, non-cyclical view of history (which is supposed to make them unique and special), have tended to be extremely poor historians, blatantly interpreting everything through their own theological and ideological lens, with no pretense to objectivity, and apparently oblivious to the fact that all the pertinent documents regarding their defining historical event are internal to their own theological tradition.

On top of that, we get Christians using this bizarre courtroom metaphor, and referring to the gospels as independent "witnesses," as though having four of them saying that Jesus rose from the dead is somehow unassailable proof that it actually happened. Never mind the fact that all the gospel writers were advocates of the same cause (gaining converts to their religious sect), which makes them highly suspicious as "witnesses." It would be like a trial that happened recently near me, where a member of a gang was accused of killing someone, and all his buddies from the gang were brought on the witness stand to say (surprise, surprise!) that their buddy was innocent. You need to have more diversity in your witnesses for them to be credible. It also helps that they not have a vested interest in the outcome of the decision they're influencing. If we had accounts of the resurrection from some neutral bystanders, a diary of a witness, or something more immediate to the event, things would be different. Enormously helpful would be something from from a couple Roman historians, but alas, nothing of note (there are problems with the blurb in Josephus--not only does it read like vague, third-hand information, but there is evidence that it was added later by a sly Christian who understood the problem of the dearth of good historical source material, but who was still not above dishonesty himself).

Of course, the counter-argument from Christians can run that there are no "outside" witnesses to the resurrection because everyone who witnessed it became an insider. Hence, anyone who would have seen Jesus resurrected would have become a Christian, and then I would just disregard that account, too, for the reasons given above. But none of the accounts of the resurrection that purport to be from eyewitnesses are from people who did not previously associate with Jesus in some way. It would be much more impressive if we had an account from one of the Romans who participated in the execution, then witnessed a resurrected Jesus. But we don't.

So regarding the resurrection, I don't think there's anything to "explain away." There isn't even enough evidence for us to be sure that the thing happened in the first place. The only real historical facts we can derive from the biblical literature is that there were some people in the late first and early second centuries who developed a religion based on a resurrection, and they wrote down stories about that resurrection. Was it real? Did it happen like they said? We have no way of knowing, aside from just assuming that we like these people and that we're going to take them at their word. But that would be in contradiction of the basic principles of interpreting historical documents. Hence, the resurrection is still a matter of faith, and there are really no "theories" for or against it.

Declaration of Independence

2004-07-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

My local newspaper printed the Declaration of Independence on the Opinion page today. Sort of a tradition, I guess. Remind The People™ what this "Independence Day" thing was all about. Of course, being a person with above average reading and comprehension skills, and an above average knowledge of history, reading the Declaration was like a delightful little romp through a rather tense moment in the story of our nation. But I couldn't help wondering how many Americans can successfully navigate the vocabulary and syntax of this 228 year old document. Just look at the first sentence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Already I can imagine the hip-hop version: "When tha time come dat we wanna be free, we gots ta tell tha world why!" I hope you're shuddering, too. Maybe I'm just being tongue-in-cheek, or maybe the world is actually coming to this. Already in the bookstore where I work we have "Shakur, Tupac" shelved dust-jacket-to-dust-jacket with "Shakespeare, William," and I would love to find a poet whose last name falls between SHAKE and SHAKU, to put a little distance between these two. If you can think of one, please let me know.

Another thing I noticed (not for the first time) was the perfunctory nature of the famous theism in the Declaration. Here is the extent of it: we have "Nature's God," "endowed by their Creator," and "divine Providence." Those are only in the opening and the closing of the document, and neither God nor any theological principle rears its head in the meat of the Declaration, which is the list of reasons why the colonies ought to be freed from British control. Furthermore, any of those references could be deleted without harm to the meaning or power of the Declaration. Watch and see:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

. . .

And for the support of this Declaration we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

See? Painless. Don't get me wrong--I'm not for a moment suggesting some kind of Orwelling revision of historical documents. The perfunctory theism of 1776 is as much a part of the story as anything else. But here in 2004, when I heard people arguing that this nation was founded on Christian principles, I can't help but wonder what exactly those principles are. When I look in the Bible, I don't see any such thing as the idea that a "people" is entitled to a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. Instead I see a God who insists that he is the only power around, and who resists the desires of his "chosen" people to have a king of their own. When the Israelites do get their king, and their own separate and equal station among the powers of the earth, thus begins a long decline that ends in captivity, and a God sitting up there somewhere using his prophets to say "I told you so."

Nor do I see in the Bible any nod to this self-evident "truth" that "all men are created equal," much less that they are "endowed with certain unalienable Rights." There are just competing tribes and civilizations, and if the folks in one group aren't doing what God wants, well then they just lost the right to live. Things maybe get a little better in the New Testament, for a while, but then the whole thing ends up in Revelation where God is back to burning and destroying all the people who aren't doing what he wants them to do. Unalienable Rights indeed. You have the right to remain silent before God. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the Court of Yahweh. You have the right to a Savior, but only one Savior, of Yahweh's appointing. Otherwise, you fry. Too bad.

No, the Declaration of Independence does not derive its power from God or from the Bible or from Christianity, but from the force of its rational argument. In effect, the colonists were laying out their dispute with King George III in accordance with British law, and proclaiming to the world exactly why they thought they had the right to secede from the mother country. If they had wanted to make a theological argument, they would have done so. Instead, they focused on their shocking exploitation by the Crown, and declared, in effect, "We don't have to take it anymore."

Eleven years later, the newly free and victorious colonists penned another document, this time unmistakably secular. No mention of a God, a Creator, or of Providence. Instead, they decided that the power of the new American government would come from We the People.

That Christians today can take the Constitution and see a Christian nation is beyond me. God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden when they tried to call their own shots. He destroyed the Tower of Babel when the people wanted to cooperate and run on their own steam. Jesus chastised the Pharisees (called them snakes and vipers, even) because they had tried to usurp God's authority for themselves. What about Proverbs 3:5, which tells people not to lean on their own understanding? How does "We the People" fit into that? If anything, I would expect God to strike down the United States for having the gall to stand up and dare to form a government on their own authority, instead of on his.

That, by the way, is pretty much what al Qaeda thinks, too. Good thing I'm an atheist. And an American.

My country,' tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride,
from every mountainside let freedom ring!

Monka Monka Burnin' Insight

2004-07-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

Over at The Evangelical Outpost, Joe Carter has a post with a link to an interesting piece by someone called Michael Spencer called " how we sound to those who don't believe." The "we" being Christians and the "those who don't believe" being, well, self-explanatory I guess.

I've heard about this Spencer guy before. A friend of mine ran across his website some months ago and told me he'd found an interesting guy. Basically, he characterized Spencer as an atheist waiting to happen, but that he's invested so much of his life (and employment) in Christianity that the chances of such are slim to nil. (We atheists who used to be Christians are always on the lookout for these kinds, sort of like firemen scanning the windows of a burning building for people who need a ladder.) But I had forgotten about this, and was intrigued to stumble again across this self-styled "Internet Monk."

Spencer has some excellent points. Here's an excerpt:

The speaker say[s] that you need Jesus more than he says anything else. Over and over. We need Jesus. If you are awake to what's going on, you know that it's likely to prove true that anything and everything will be said until you finally admit you need Jesus. Does this seem like trying to get you to "break?" Yes.

There is, behind this appeal, a kind of crass sales pitch that really can make you angry. It's like being told by the guy in your living room that you need a vacuum cleaner or Tupperware. You can't help but feel that your "need" is really about this guy's need to be right, or to make the sale. What you "need" is hardly his business, especially standing up there without really knowing you at all.

It must be insulting to constantly be told you need Jesus by someone who doesn't know you. Even if you DO need Jesus, how about getting to know me at least as well as a telemarketer?

Well, I don't know that I'd call it "insulting," exactly, but it's incredibly inept, which I think is what Spencer is getting at anyway.

See, the whole theological structure of Christianity is entirely self-contained. You can tell me all day long that I need Jesus, but the whole point of Jesus is that he died for my sins, and the only way I would believe I was a sinner is if I was already a theist of some kind (because sin makes no sense unless it's about the relationship between a creator and its creations), and I would probably have to be a Christian specifically for that to have any kind of effect on me. In other words, trying to "save" me by throwing Jesus at me isn't going to work. Mostly, it's just going to make me laugh at how little you understand your own religion. The whole thing is circular. It's the Christian religion that makes me a sinner, and the Christian religion that saves me. Out here in the real world, we'd call that a confidence scam, or at least a conflict of interest.

Christians don't seem to understand that we who are wholly outside--the atheists, the post-Christians, the full-on unbelievers--are not like your ordinary, garden variety "Christian nation" sinners, who basically buy the Christian cosmology and "worldview," but have consciously rebelled against it. We real outsiders are operating on a whole other plane of existence where Christianity is hopelessly ineffective. But I've gone too far with that metaphor, because Christians and atheists do in fact operate within the exact same universe, strangely enough. One could never tell by the way they talk.

For further reading on this topic, see some of my previous posts: Being Human vs. Being Christian, Chronos & Chiros, The Christian Man's Burden, No Faith for Atheists, and Answers to Questions.

Morals, Ethics, Blah, Blah, Blah

2004-07-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

Just discovered somebody linking to me. That's always a blast. (You mean people actually read this stuff?) Here's the perpetrator: The Recovering Cynic. Interesting guy.

In this post, he compares Michael Moore's propaganda film Fahrenheit 9/11 with the "Two Minutes of Hate" in George Orwell's 1984. Not a bad comparison.

But then I scroll down a bit to this post and find him saying that promoting Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is fundamentally inimical to "the world view of the atheist." Here's the explanation:

Lets explore: what is the foundation that atheists propose for creation and society? Evolution. What is the primary driving force of life in Darwinian thought? The survival of the fittest (the belief that some species thrive and go on to evolve to a higher form, while lesser beings falter and die). The better life forms devour the lesser: that is the rule of nature. Because atheists believe that matter is the only eternal object (and that God cannot exist), the only value that they can consistantly derive from life is that of dominance and subversion.

Whoa, buddy, slow down. That's a pretty big Flying-Leap-o-Logic™ you're taking there. Who says atheists derive their values from evolution? Atheists derive their values from their circumstances as human beings in a human society, not by looking to furry animals with bloody teeth and claws as models for behavior.

All behaviors, even those of animals, are conditioned by circumstances. If a lion is hungry and the only food available is that zebra bounding past, the lion kills the zebra and eats it. But if the lion is not hungry, the zebra lives. Why is that? Because the lion doesn't need to kill the zebra. The lion isn't rationalizing its needs this way, but its behavior is entirely functional. If the violent behavior of the lion were a moral principle from which we poor, lost atheists were trying to derive our own code of ethics, then we should expect to see the lion treating it as a moral principle and killing zebras all the time, just for fun, because "dominance and subversion" are its ways. But killing zebras, or using force and violence, are not moral principles. They are functional or utilitarian principles, and it would be silly to derive a moral system for humans from a wholly other, nonhuman circumstance. The lion uses its dominance as a tool to get what it needs, nothing more, nothing less. People use "dominance and subversion" when they are useful, but they also use other means when they are useful, too. For instance, altruism. (Yes, it exists naturally. In other species even.)

Let's look at the Marquis de Sade. He was a nutball. His philosophy was that if you're going to throw out God, then you not only can do whatever you want, but you should do whatever you want. If that means you derive satisfaction from killing someone, by all means, step forward and do the deed. Unfortunately, too many Christians (like our Recovering Cynic, apparently) seem to think this is how atheists ought to behave. That would be convenient for them, because then they could point the finger at us and say, "Look at those evil atheists, running around like bloodthirsty animals! They're clearly in the wrong!" But, alas, we atheists are hardly running around like madmen.

However, the Christians think they have us cornered anyway, because even when we do behave, they claim that we're only usurping their moral principles while refusing to give credit. Like we're moral plagiarists or something. According to the RC, "their fundamental premises are flawed because they borrow from Christianity's conceptual framework." Apparently, no matter how you behave, it's being an atheist that's the real problem. Which makes me wonder why Christians like the RC even bother arguing in terms of morality at all, because they're just stacking the deck anyway.

Maybe you're thinking, "Well, theomorph, just try not to 'borrow from Christianity's conceptual framework.' Seems like that would get you off the hook."

There's a halfway decent idea, I suppose. Let's see what the RC has to say about that one:

[M]ost Athiests argue that the reason human beings desire to help others is due to the "herd instinct" - that subconscious drive that makes human beings desire to protect one another so societies don't immediately wither and die. However, within a Darwinian system, there in no rationalization for what C.S. Lewis called the "moral instinct"--the intrinsic desire of people to want what is good and right even when their animal instincts pull them another way.

Ah, well, here's a decent chink in the armor. Several, in fact.

First, this "herd instinct" thing is dubious. Saying it's a "subconscious drive that makes [us] desire to protect one another so societies don't ... wither and die" betrays a lack of understanding. There are certainly altruistic tendencies in human beings that have evolved for a reason. For instance, with close relatives, altruism makes sense because you share more genetic material with those people than with more distant relatives. But the subconscious part does not extend to humans in general or to our societies. If it did, laws and enforcement would be unnecessary, because everyone would naturally be as protective as mothers and their children. Clearly, this isn't the case. History instructs us that human beings (even the Christians!) are quite willing to brutally murder each other over the slightest differences. ("What? You don't believe the body and blood of Jesus are physically present in the eucharist? Die, Protestant pig!" Try this on for size.) Hence, there is no "herd instinct" that induces "morality" in humans.

Second, this "moral instinct" posited by C.S. Lewis is also on shaky ground. Here's how Lewis describes it:

Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires - one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them.

Actually, that "third thing" is just whatever social and ethical training you've been raised with. When that kicks in, you suddenly start rationalizing about different emotional tendencies, and you have to decide. That you can decide is not evidence of anything other than the fact that if you didn't, every ethical dilemma would leave another paralyzed person twitching in the street. I have seen plenty of people pass up a chance to "do the right thing," because they clearly didn't think it was right. The fact that we can disagree about which thing is right ought to be evidence enough against Lewis's naive theory. But why not go for the big guns?

Since the time of C.S. Lewis, scientists have actually done some research on how people decide between right and wrong. There is in fact a part of the brain--the anterior cingulate cortex--that goes into action when two other parts of the brain have a conflict over what to do. Scientists have also discovered that impersonalizing an act makes people more likely to make a decision that, in a more personal setting, they would object to on the grounds of morality.

For instance, in the famous trolley experiment, people are directed to imagine themselves on a bridge over a trolley track. A trolley is approaching, and five people are standing on the track. The only way to save them is to throw the switch that will divert the trolley. Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to push someone off the bridge and onto the switch--thus sacrificing one person for the sake of five. In an alternate version, the switch is on the bridge, and the trolley can go on one of two tracks: one track with five people on it, and another track with only one person on it. Which will you choose? It turns out that people are more likely to say they'll kill someone by simply throwing a switch than they will by physically pushing that person off a bridge. Why is that? One would expect that a universal morality like that of C.S. Lewis would not show a difference.

According to the research, apparently we make ethical decisions regarding life and death in close quarters with other humans using emotions, which are beyond rational control, and we make more impersonal decisions with more rational parts of our brain. This makes sense, as our emotions have evolved to help us make snap decisions, and evolution hasn't had enough time to evolve snap decisions involving technological interposition. That is, we're less likely to kill someone ourselves, but more likely to commit an act that directly (or indirectly) leads to another person's death. So the "moral instinct" is less universal that Mr. Lewis supposed, and dependent on things like proximity and the level of technological (or, in the case of the military, hierarchical) separation. (Unfortunately, he did not have access to the latest research in neuroscience or anthropology.)

But returning to the "herd instinct," I think the RC doesn't quite understand. We have morals and laws and codes of ethics and behavioral controls of all kinds because of how we have developed historically. In small kinship groups, people tend to manage without making their laws explicit. The subconscious thing works. But as different groups come into conflict, people fight, people get tired of fighting, people learn to communicate with each other, people discover that cooperation is actually more beneficial than conflict (gasp), and people have to develop ways of codifying which behaviors are acceptable and why in order for these ever-larger communities and societies to function without breaking down into smaller, warring groups again. In other words, it isn't an instinct, but a conscious, protracted rationalization on the part of every participating member of the society.

It's the moral theory of C.S. Lewis that sounds like an instinct. Except people don't behave morally by instinct. They behave morally by rationalization, by cold calculation, and by analysis--sometimes conscious, sometimes not--of costs and benefits. Countless evangelicals I've talked to seem to think this view is distasteful, because morality doesn't seem cold and calculating to them. It seems warm and fuzzy. Hence, in their minds, there's no way morality could actually be cold and calculating. So they just assume that morality is some kind of spiritual thing. Meanwhile, neuroscientists are studying people, and discovering mechanisms and explanations for why we behave the way we do. We can even prescribe drugs to alter people's behavior favorably. I have witnessed this firsthand, with a young relative who, without medication, has been known to literally act like an animal. But give him his pills and he is downright civilized, courteous, thoughtful, and ethical. I.e., the scientists have actually devised something useful with their evil, materialist "worldview."

No doubt you'll argue that just certain behaviors being "favorable" is evidence of the truth of your Christian "worldview." Why do we prefer people behave ethically and morally? Because that makes them predictable and easy to deal with. Put yourself in a room full of uncivilized, unethical, immoral people and see how high your stress level goes. Then hang with a bunch of civilized, ethical, and moral people and see how you feel. Notice the distinct utility, then, of encouraging people to behave a certain way. Feels good, doesn't it?

If it seems unlikely to you that humans, at the end of a long evolutionary train that is ostensibly dominated by bloody conflict, have managed to develop an ethic of cooperation, then you need to take a longer look at evolution, because it's also unlikely that we're here at all.

Introducing bibliotaph

2004-07-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

If you read enough of my blog, sooner or later your eyes will glaze over and you'll find yourself thinking, "Is this guy determined to drive everything into the ground?" The unfortunate answer is, Yes, I am.

However, there is a remedy!

My dear friend bibliotaph has a blog where that joie de vivre so often missing here at theomorph can be rediscovered. She loves books and learning, and it shows. Do drop in and get yourself a cup o' bibliotaph cheer. (Leave a comment, too, as she particularly enjoys those!)

Humanism Ascendant

2004-07-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

Over at The Evangelical Outpost, Joe Carter has a post about fascism and homosexuality. Apparently homosexuals have historically had a penchant for fascism, or vice versa, or something. Yawn. The Big Idea, that I can tell, is that homosexuality and fascism are about "fantasy ideology" in which other people are used as props instead of being treated like real humans.

Can't say I really disagree, so long as by "homosexuality" you mean the idea that people who are physically and romantically attracted to other people of the same sex are required to live in other social and cultural roles that extend far beyond their sexuality. (E.g., the lunacy epitomized Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which we are led to believe that gay men are somehow more adept than straight men fashion-wise. Sorry, that isn't a matter of sexuality, but of how shallow and simple-minded you are, and whether you can succeed in life without focusing on your appearance.) If that's the case, then yes, homosexuality (of the Queer Eye sort) and fascism are "fantasy ideology."

Unfortunately, I read the whole post and came away nonplused. So what? Who cares? The world is full of idiots, and they are in every social category you can imagine. I just have a hard time being shocked, shocked! at the diversity of human behavior these days.

However, something did catch my eye at the end of the post. See, after writing about two controversial subjects, Carter appended this notice:

This post deals with an obviously controversial topic. While I welcome all opinions, if you want to make claims that I am homophobic you can do it somewhere else; I don’t have to tolerate such libel on my own blog. Likewise, any comments that I deem disrespectful to the dignity of other people will be deleted. Criticizing a particular form of human behavior is acceptable. Demeaning the humanity of others is not.

Bravo! No doubt Carter just sees this as his own iteration of "love the sinner, hate the sin," but I see it as evidence of the ascendancy of humanism. When you put "the humanity of others" at the root of your social interactions and interpersonal relationships, you are going lower than the level of religion. You are accepting people on the basis that they are fundamentally the same as you (i.e., a member of the species Homo sapiens, and sharing so much DNA that you're almost indistinguishable) instead of categorizing them by whatever is emanating from their brains and mouths. Furthermore, when you are willing to chastise others who are "disrespectful to the dignity of other people," you are making an effective statement against religious categorization as acceptable behavior for anyone.

Now, I know evangelicals like to think this kind of thing comes straight out of their Christian belief-system, but I disagree. If broad humanism really were a fundamental characteristic of Christianity, then we should be able to look back through Western history and see a flowering of this ideal before the Enlightenment. But it wasn't until the last few centuries that the West did things like establish secular governments with religious freedom for citizens (17th & 18th centuries), abolish slavery (19th century), give equal rights to women (20th century), and accept homosexuals (21st century). Christians like to argue that Christians were the ones who accomplished all these things, but if it was their Christianity and not their social circumstances that drove these changes, why did Christians take so long to get anything done? Why weren't they jumping on these things when Rome fell?

Anyway, I really don't care what motivates people to do the right thing. If Joe Carter wants to think his faith makes him such an awesome human being, then so be it. So long as he keeps acting like one.

Introducing ruby slippers

2004-07-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

My pal dipped in chocolate has a fun little blog called ruby slippers, in a nod to one of her favorite flicks. (She'll probably question why I used the adjective "little" in describing her blog, but the simple answer is that "fun little blog" seemed to flow better than "fun blog," which sounds downright mucky.)

If you get tired of reading all my long posts, as dipped in chocolate often does (and never fails to tell me), I suggest you click on over to ruby slippers. It's lots of fun. I guarantee.

Happy Canada Day

2004-07-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

Today Canadians remember July 1, 1867, when the first British North America Act (passed by the British Parliament) united the Province of Canada (comprised of Ontario and those Frenchies in Quebec) with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to create the "self-governing" Canadian Confederation, mainly because the Brits were tired of paying for the military defense of Canadians who could just as well defend themselves. Originally called "Dominion Day," July 1st was renamed "Canada Day" in 1982, after Canada severed constitutional and legislative ties with Britain via the Canada Act.

Canada Day is similar to Independence Day in the U.S., because it's a celebration centered on a document (ours is the Declaration of Independence), except we did our own paperwork, and then fought a war over it.

Interestingly, the Canadian theme song--er, national anthem--"O Canada" was made the official anthem in 1980, two years before the nation itself was official. This, perhaps, is understandable, as the song itself was written in 1880, and the Canadians no doubt felt it was merely a fitting tribute to proclaim the song their national anthem in celebration of its centennial. Too bad they weren't actually an independent nation yet.

Clearly, Canadians have never been particularly gung-ho about their official sovereignty though, considering that they allowed 115 years to pass between the first British North America Act (which brought them together as self-governing Canadians) and the Canada Act (which set them apart as self-governing Canadians). In that sense, Canadian history offers an interesting parallel to U.S. history. While we "Yanks," as they call us, felt the need to fight a Revolution and a Civil War to hammer out our legal and political identity, the "Canucks," as we call them, were quite content to let these things work themselves out in Parliament. Some of this difference probably comes from greater aggression on the part of the Americans, but a lot of it comes from the decline of British Imperial power.

In the 18th century, when the American colonies declared their independence, the British empire had recently defeated France in the Seven Years' War (known to the colonists as the "French and Indian War," even though that was only one theater in a much larger war), and was looking to reassert and reorganize its strength in the colonies. After all, these colonies, most of which began as business ventures, had become quite profitable and Parliament was keen on getting its cut. Hence the taxation portion of the famous "cause" of our Revolution, "taxation without representation." (It's all coming back to you now, right?) At the same time, the population center of the British Empire was shifting. By 1700, the colonies hosted fully one-fifth the population of Britain and Ireland combined. Naturally, this led the colonists--who came from the same tradition of self-government as their self-governing overlords back in Parliament--to believe they had a say in things. Hence, the "representation" portion of "taxation without representation." Furthermore, in its attempts to exert greater control over its assets in the region, the British government was not afraid to flex its military muscle. But the colonists, you see, were not too keen on all those Redcoats tromping across their territory. So they declared their independence and fought a war to keep it.

But by 1867, when Canada became self-governing, the British Empire had been on a downhill slide since, well since the American colonies whooped them back in 1776-1783. Had the British been able to hang onto those colonies, and to keep their resources for themselves, the Empire might have lasted longer. Then, in 1867, if the Canadians had gotten antsy under the British thumb, they might have actually had to fight a war, which they probably would have lost. By the time 1982 rolled around, the Brits were only too happy to let the Canadians go. After all, they had lost America, they had lost India, they had lost Australia (even though the Australians still recognize the British crown as their head of state), they had lost their holdings in Africa, they had fared none too well in the World Wars, and frankly, they just were not in the mood to hang onto anything anymore.

So the next time you hear a Canadian gloating about the peaceful history of Canada, just remind that impetuous Canuck that the difference between us and them has more to do with geography, natural resources, and the rise and fall of the British empire than it has to do with them being nicer people.

Dear Ms. Kidman

2004-06-30T16:47:00.000-07:00

[Apparently, eligible men are not beating down Nicole Kidman's door. She seems to think that maybe her two children (9 and 11 years old) are part of the problem.]

Well, Ms. Kidman, I may be poor, unfamous (or perhaps infamous, depending on who you ask), and about a decade younger than you are, but I have always thought you were pretty darned wonderful. What's cooler than a lady with brains and looks (not to mention a stellar career)? I don't know exactly how celebrity life works. Is it like fairy tales where you have to be a prince to marry a princess? Or can unknowns like me find love with famous folk like yourself? Do I have to be, in the words of Derek Zoolander, "really, really ridiculously good-looking"? Because--sorry to let you down--I'm actually just really, really ridiculously average-looking. However, I do have a brain between my ears, and I'm a pretty interesting guy. And I find really intelligent women just about irresistible.

So... I may not be beating down your door Ms. Kidman, but that's only because I don't know where your door is, and I'm not the stalking type. Drop a line sometime.

Being Human vs. Being Christian

2004-06-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

Glenn of Fully Devoted has commented on my post The Final Authority. Here's what he says:

For me the question is this -- where is the offensiveness in your relationships with those who do not accept Christianity coming from? Is it the "offense of the gospel" IE: people just refuse to accept that Jesus is in fact the only way to God -- or is it your approach? What I believe may offend you -- how I live out my faith and try to share it doesn't need to.

Well, the point of that post was this: If you are a Christian, what you believe and how you live are inseparable. Your scriptures and historical creeds beseech you to put the concerns of your gospel foremost in your lives, and part of that means putting the concerns of your gospel foremost in my life, too.

You may not personally be a jerk (in fact, a lot of the Christians I know are very nice people), but your faith requires you (1) to view me through a particular filter (i.e., as an outsider--a catch-all term I'll use to encompass terms so various as "heretic," "sinner," and "unsaved," among others), and (2) to do everything you can to neutralize my outsider status, mainly by working, with whatever methods, to fit me with a similar filter (i.e., "convert" me, "win" my soul, or whatever your preferred terminology is). That's just your Great Commission. You are allegedly an emissary of God, as well as a missionary of your gospel (which means, as I once explained to some fourth graders, that your job is to make more Christians).

There are lots of techniques for doing this. One of the popular ones these days is being a "living witness," or something along those lines. (Correct me if my terminology is wrong or out of date.) This does not involve active proselytization, but means you're just supposed to live in such a way that I will look at your life and say, in effect, "I wants to get me some o' dat!" (As an Important Person reminded me recently, this is an old technique. Francis of Assisi said, "Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.") A lot of Christians seem to think this passive, living witness kind of thing will win them personality points with we outsiders. Well, so long as being a living witness just means that you're friendly, responsible, reliable, and a good citizen, that's all well and good. But that's problematic, because as far as I'm concerned, if you're just behaving well, you're no testament to your faith or your God. You're just a great person. Unfortunately, Francis seems to have forgotten, or never realized in the first place, that the Christian faith is a thing that is utterly dependent on words and ideas. You cannot express your faith without words or ideas. These things are absolutely necessary. No matter how much you think that living according to the precepts of your gospel is going to portray to me the content of those precepts (which is essentially logos, or words and ideas), it just isn't gonna happen. But you and I will get along splendidly.

So, sooner or later, the explicit content of your religion has to be presented to me, the outsider. If not, you are not doing as your God has commanded. This is bound to irk me, because despite the fact that you and I have been getting along splendidly as just plain human beings, this revelation of your gospel will also be a revelation to me that perhaps you really don't care so much for me as a human being as you care for me as a potential carrier of your religion (i.e., another insider). For those of us on the outside, this is one of the creepiest things about Christianity. Here are these people who are by all appearances completely normal. They eat, sleep, and shop just like we do. But there will always be that moment when apparently it isn't good enough for us to simply be another person to them; we must also have the same metaphysical outlook. To be quite honest, having a Christian suddenly reveal this odd barrier can be quite disconcerting. It's like they're putting up a glass wall between us and telling us that the only way we can really connect is if we will agree to recite this weird string of words (either a "sinner's prayer" or a "creed"). Worse, when someone you love does this, the emotional pain can be almost unbearable.

The weird thing about Christianity is that it mainly exists as words, ideas, text, and philosophical abstractions. I don't mean things like churches, Christian stores, or Christian literature, and all those tangible trappings. I mean the essence of the faith. Christianity is words. This makes sense, of course, considering that you believe in a God who created the universe with words, and your fourth gospel equates your savior with logos, or words and ideas. But here in the everyday world, it's weird. Because people can recite words without actually meaning them. Lots of people do, in fact, especially in the more liturgical branches of the church. Some people just say the words because they always have, or to appease a spouse or loved one, or because they reap some benefit from the poetic cadences. What I'm getting at is that Christianity is essentially a shared linguistic interface. I could break down that imaginary glass wall just by talking like a Christian. All I have to do is address my existential concerns to this being called "God," and express the events in my life in terms of the Christian metanarrative. Nobody would be the wiser. Except me.

This is where the "offense" part comes in. Why should I have to perform these vocal and linguistic patterns, adjust my language to have a theological slant, and participate in rituals, ceremonies, and traditions designed to reinforce and perpetuate these patterns? Further more, why should you as a Christian see me as an outsider, or even less as a person (as I know some Christians do, even ones who are related to me), simply because I refuse to be complicit in your linguistic and philosophical system?

You may argue that the linguistic and philosophical system I describe is just a man-made superstructure over the deeper, more natural state of humans as creatures fundamentally connected to God, as many Christians have. But if that's the case, then why isn't my existence as a human who refuses to have a theological, linguistic, philosophical, metaphysical structure recognized as the more natural way to live? Why am I chastised, ostracized, or otherwise alienated because I don't want to participate in what I see as a silly, made-up falsehood? Ultimately, if reality is the same for everyone, I am living under the same divinity that you call "God," except I choose not to address that divinity as anything other than the entities by which it manifests itself to me in the natural, tangible experience of my day-to-day life. Perhaps the only difference between you and I is that you project a human-like personality on whatever is "out there," while I do not. An atheist denies theism, which is theology, which is a human attempt to put a human face on what is fundamentally not human. What is offensive to me about Christianity (and about any other religion that bothers to look down on me for being an atheist) is that most Christians refuse to recognize that my perception of my own existence is not that I am fundamentally disconnected from ultimate reality because I have no theology, but that I am more closely connected to ultimate reality by having removed theology from my life. This is how I see things, and how I most comfortably exist.

In my opinion, religious and theological belief systems are nothing more than self-perpetuating idea systems (or "memeplexes," as Richard Dawkins calls them) that prey on the tendency of the human mind to find patterns in its environment. People want to see simplified order. They want to see something that makes sense. "God" is an anthropomorphized simplification of a reality so complex that it is beyond our ability to comprehend. Would I like the universe to be as simple as a personality to which I might appeal regarding my existential concerns? Certainly! But I don't believe the universe is quite that simple. Hence, I am an atheist.

Unfortunately, however, Christianity, as a category, is not built on shared humanity, but on shared theology. So even though we all have to live within the same universe, and relate and respond to the same existential circumstances, Christianity asserts that only those people who have the proper ideas about that universe are in the correct relationship with it, while the rest of us are not. That is what offends me. No other animals are expected to uphold a particular theology--simply living is enough for them. But people, according to Christianity, are expected not only to live, but to assent to certain mental propositions that are, on the whole, unnecessary to existence. (I know this because I do not make such assent, and yet I continue to exist quite normally.)

This is the paradox in Francis of Assisi, and in Christians who assume they are being Christians as "living witnesses," without actually pushing the logical content of their religion. Yes, simply living rightly is the best you can do. However, that does not make you a Christian, because it does not clearly delineate your theological category. It only makes you a human being. And that, after all, is not so bad. It just isn't Christianity.

Music, to Soothe the Wild Beasts

2004-06-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, I stepped off a platform with a degree in music. Worthless piece of paper, really, because I have no desire to be a professional musician, to teach music, or to do anything besides play the piano for myself in the wee hours of the morning. By all accounts, I am a very talented musician, and even a pretty good teacher. But I'm just not interested in that line of work. Must be crazy.

However, I am a big proponent of music education, especially for elementary students. I think singing, reading music, and playing at least one musical instrument (even if it's just the recorder) ought to be requirements for all kids. Not only do these skills enhance basic thinking skills, especially in math and logical reasoning, but they offer emotional and psychological benefits, too. Singing in choirs and playing in ensembles also give students an opportunity to experience team participation without the violence, high-strung emotions, and sheer competitiveness of sports. (And, as they get older, music students can even participate in things like marching bands which, despite their bad reputation as nerd farms, are actually pretty darned physical, and good exercise, to boot.) Anybody who has been part of a music program, done the work, participated, and been through tense rehearsals with stressed out friends and directors can tell you that music will create social bonds that last a lifetime. To this day I have many fond memories of scores of people with whom I have rehearsed and performed. Occasionally I meet them, and the old bond is still there. Music is great that way.

But living in a society of idiots, as we do, music often seems to hit the chopping block much too prematurely. Nobody ever thinks about cutting expensive sports programs and funneling those kids into choirs or dance groups (you may laugh, but even the most macho and hard-nosed have been known to really enjoy these "sissy" activities). Nobody ever seems to notice how parents at sporting events are easily riled, while parents at musical events, on the whole, are far more peaceful and civilized. Sure, those are generalizations, but I think it's more valid to come to those particular conclusions than it would be to say that music parents are more boisterous than sports parents. Just think about it, please.

So it is in Fresno, the lame city down the road from my own humble domicile. ("Don't trash Fresno. Fresno es tu casa." No lie. They have signs everywhere that say that. When you have to remind people not to trash their own city, things are getting pretty bad. I won't even comment on the bilingual thing. Compare with the state of Pennsylvania, which I recently visited, where the corresponding adverts said something like "Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful." World of difference.) Recently, the Fresno Unified School District decided that their elementary music program is just too expensive. Hence, it has been eliminated for the 2004-5 school year. Naturally, there has been much public outrage, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and a consistent trickle of letters to the editor in the Fresno Bee.

In fact, there's one today. (How's that for a pretty long lead-in to the thing that actually inspired a blog post?)

Here is the letter by Sandra Bolster, an elementary music teacher in Fresno:

The chief financial officer of the Fresno Unified School District, Paul Disario, says that filling vacant administrative positions is essential, while at the same time recommending the layoff of countless teachers and the elimination of the elementary music program.

This sort of thinking exemplifies what is wrong with the current budget fiasco that demonstrates that Fresno Unified administrators are deemed essential when teachers are expendable. Mr. Disario and Superintendent Santiago Wood need to come to my schools and explain this to my students, who are confused about why they cannot come to my music classes next year, because they just don't understand why I won't be there to teach them.

Well, Ms. Bolster is absolutely right about one thing: maintaining a whole bunch of administrators at the expense of teachers in the trenches is educationally irresponsible. It may make business sense, and it may make administrative sense, considering all the paperwork educators have to do these days. (Find some teachers and ask them how much time they actually get to teach, and to explore their own curiosity in order to improve themselves as teachers.) But it does not make educational sense to fire teachers in order to keep some expensive desk jockeys down at the central office.

However, there is something in Ms. Bolster's letter that really, really irks me. Here it is:

[These administrators] need to come to my schools and explain this to my students, who are confused about why they cannot come to my music classes next year, because they just don't understand why I won't be there to teach them. [emphasis added]

Did you see that? Did you catch it? That's what I call a Pathetic Emotional Appeal™. What she's basically saying, if you take her words at face value, is that if little children can't understand the machinations of the district, then the district shouldn't do that. This, of course, is not what she means (I hope), because that kind of thinking is ridiculous.

Unfortunately, this kind of ridiculous thinking is rampant amongst educators. Everything is always "for the children." But let me clarify something for you, and for the educators: Sometimes children are wonderful, and sometimes they are beastly little monsters. Either way, most of them are going to grow up and be put in charge of our society. We have a responsibility as adults to care for them, to protect them, to raise them up to be good citizens, and to educate them with the knowledge they will need to succeed. I love children. I think they are some of the most amazing things on the planet. I love to watch children learn, and see those imaginary light bulbs blink on over their heads when they have an epiphany. I remember some of those epiphanies from my own childhood. Children are great.

But we need to be honest with ourselves. Childhood cannot and should not be romanticized. Many (if not most) children have difficult lives. Unfortunately, we adults like to assume that children's problems are not very important. In some sense, this is true. Kids' problems are usually things that we adults have solved and long since stopped worrying about. But we forget what it was like to be six years old and terrified that mommy might die at any moment! Regardless of how silly that kind of thought sounds to your adult mind, it can have substantial gravity in the mind of a six-year-old. Most adults, though, would rather just ignore the inner lives of children, and then pander to whatever activities will make the little ones seem happy and content, so that we can go on with our own lives. That kind of thinking, I believe, is at the root of a lot of these "for the children" kinds of appeals. We need to keep music education "for the children" because they like it, and because we don't feel like explaining politics and economics to them. That would just be too hard for our busy, adult brains.

No, education is not "for the children." Education is for all of us. Education is for the health of our society, our very civilization! Education is not about "empowering" children, or about giving them "skills." Education is about taking little Homo sapiens, which are genetically equivalent to creatures who lived tens of thousands of years ago, and figuring out how to integrate them into a complicated, modern, technological society where almost nothing comes naturally. If children don't understand something, it is our fault, as a society, as a civilization. We cannot motivate ourselves by what we perceive as the emotional needs of children. If cutting music education is a bad thing (and it most certainly is), then we have a responsibility to articulate why that is without falling back on Pathetic Emotional Appeals™. And I have a feeling that a lot of music teachers are more concerned about their own employment than they are about the children, which is perfectly natural and acceptable, in my opinion. They should just admit it openly, though. (For instance, why can't Ms. Bolster go down to her schools and explain this issue to the students herself? Why is she trying to pass that responsibility to the administrators? Oh, I see, because she's no longer employed to deal with the students. See how much she cares?)

But then we need to sit down with children and explain to them this strange adult world where we can't always get what we want. Where sometimes children don't get to have music teachers, and sometimes music teachers don't get to have the jobs they want, and sometimes money takes precedence over desires and emotions. Everything can (and should) be a learning experience for children, even when we cut their music programs.

Finally, we need to admit that while it may be nice for everyone to moan and complain that the children are getting the raw end of the deal, the real reason their music program has been cut is because we adults, all of us, collectively, as a society, a civilization even, are too lazy and too concerned with our own petty lives to provide them with an education that will leave them as enriched as we ourselves are when they march across that platform someday to shake the hand of some smarmy administrator and receive that long-sought high school diploma, all to the pathetic strains of an electronically reproduced recording of some long-lost musicians playing Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance"--because the district wouldn't fork over the money to teach the kids to play it themselves.

By the Numbers

2004-06-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

(Author's Note: Considering the amount of Serious Pontificating that goes on here, I thought I'd lighten the load today with some frivolity. Enjoy.)

I have just escaped from my local Borders. Luckily, I'm only $1.78 poorer than I was this morning. Yes, that's what it costs for 12 ounces (or, if you take your free refill--I didn't--24 ounces) of dark, delicious Italian roast coffee. Lovely. Could have brewed it cheaper myself at home of course, but it's always more fun to have your coffee handed to you by a pretty girl. Even when you're so poor that $1.78 sounds like a lot of money. (Hooray for hormones, those thieving little beggars.)

Most of my time there was spent reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, in which I covered a scant seventy pages over the course of two hours. I say "scant" because the book is 478 pages long, which means I only read about 14.6% of it at the dismal rate of 7.3%, or 35 pages, per hour. Since I am exactly halfway finished, that means I'll need to find about seven more hours to finish this one up, or quit reading it so slowly. (Trust me, if you had several stacks of extremely interesting but nevertheless unread books lying around your house, you would be just as coldly calculating as I am.)

The problem (or perhaps joy) with Bryson's book is that it's chock full of interesting tidbits. For instance, here's one that struck me this morning. It comes from page 182 (hardback edition--paperback comes out in August, I think):

Thanks to Global Positioning Systems we can see that Europe and North America are parting at about the speed a fingernail grows--roughly two yards in a human lifetime.

Strangely enough, the thing in that sentence that made me stop reading and ponder its significance (while using the opportunity of looking up from my book to take a gander at the various females arrayed around the cafe) was not the fact that we humans have devised a technology that can measure the movement of continents down to the speed at which fingernails grow. That's all well and good, but sitting there in Borders I found myself staring at my thumbnail and thinking, "Two yards? Just two yards? That's all I get?"

Two yards are equal to 72 inches. My thumbnail is 5/8 of an inch long and, according to my observations last year as I watched an injury grow out, it takes about six months to fully re-grow itself. If the two-yard estimate is accurate, then I only get about 115 cycles for that thumbnail. If each one of those cycles takes six months, I'm looking at about 57 and a half years on this earth!

This, of course, is the problem with applying averages and estimates to individuals. Who knows, though? Maybe I will actually die halfway through my 57th year. Maybe I have finally stumbled onto the one infallible way to predict the length of one's life--measure the growth rate of your fingernails. Remember, there's no getting past two yards!

But getting back to Bryson's book, this is just the sort of thing a person like myself is wont to do: Stop at every odd fact and process it for a while (which is also a good opportunity, like I said, to take my eyes off the book and apply them to the charms of a female). Then, in further wastage of time, I find myself blogging on these insignificant details. Here is where the Life of the Mind is not so cool. With only 24 hours in a day, six to eight of them spent sleeping, and another six to eight spent working, that only leaves eight to twelve hours every day to read, write, and think. This, of course, does not count things like driving (during which one may think, but not read or write), eating (during which one may read or think, but not write), or watching The Simpsons (during which one may laugh). Life is hard, isn't it?

Which reminds me of that cup of coffee. Here I am complaining about handing over $1.78 (which, where I live, would take at last 15.8 minutes of work at a minimum wage job to finance--and that's not counting taxes or other paycheck withholdings, so you're looking at probably 20 minutes doing whatever you get paid to do at your lame minimum wage job, just so you can sit down with a bunch of other overworked, overweight, and highly-indebted SUV-driving Americans to drink a beverage whose raw ingredient was picked by a bunch of scandalously poor brown-skinned people in some country you couldn't even find on a map--fortunately, I get paid more than minimum wage), and moaning over having only 24 hours in a day (and perhaps only 57.6 years in my life, which comes to 504,888 hours, including a few leap days, depending on how fast my fingernails are growing) even though nobody gets any more or less than that (unless they're traveling near the speed of light, which is impossible anyway), and pouring all these thoughts into an expensive piece of luxuriously brilliant Apple hardware that was purchased on credit (and still languishing on the credit card, I might add), so that they can be published on a vast, worldwide computer network so people as far away as perhaps Korea (I'm in California) can read them.

On second thought, life isn't hard. It's just ridiculous.

Like the Horse and Carriage?

2004-06-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

Marriage has been in the news lately, mostly concerning the movement for legalizing homosexual marriage. This morning on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, I heard Scott Simon discuss the issue with American University law professor Nancy Polikoff.

After establishing the issues in good journalistic fashion, Scott Simon kicked off the meat of the discussion with this statement:

"Some people believe the marital relationship is the building block of society."

That's really the core of this issue, for both sides of the debate. People have evolved in an odd way. We tend to mate for life, though some of us have more of a proclivity for this kind of behavior than others. (The difference might be genetic.) So these monogamous relationships are very important to us, and constitute a major portion of our individual experiences in the social sphere. Building blocks of society? Perhaps.

However, about marriage, Polikoff says, "I would eliminate the word," and replace it with something like "economically intertwined relationship." Sounds like fun. (This is one of the problems of trying to be progressive in a world where all our common language and rhetoric was established by a previous age, whose views and ideals don't exactly coincide with our own. When we want to change or adjust something, we're stuck with these cumbersome phrases.) What she's getting at, I think, is the fact that those relationships I called "monogamous" in the previous paragraph are not necessarily marital relationships in the traditional sense. People might derive love and companionship and comfort from all manner of relationships, and Polikoff gives examples: sibling/sibling, parent/child, grandparent/grandchild, friend/friend, and so on. All of these pairings can be found in our society, where people live together and are dependent on one another, both psychologically and economically, without being marital or sexual.

In other words, Polikoff is arguing that marriage itself is the problem, and not whether it's between one man and one woman, or one man and one man, or one woman and one woman. Polikoff is hoping to shift our views so that we can recognize the human practice of pair-bonding from outside the narrow realm of simply sexual or procreative relationships, and see that people do in fact engage in "economically intertwined relationships" by many different means. Those people, she contends, should all be subject to the same benefits and recognition from the government (which is to say, we the people), so far as taxes and social security and insurance and all those goodies are concerned.

It's not that there's no place for old fashioned heterosexual marriage. There is. (I hope to find myself in it someday, regardless of how bleak and lame are my prospects just this moment.) Rather, says Polikoff,

"My quarrel is not with commitment and it's not with religion, it's with the state saying that one type of relationship gets all the benefits and obligations that society wishes to confer on it and no other type of relationship is able to do that. The statement to unmarried people that they live inferior lives, that the kind of families they have, that what matters to them in their life is not as valuable as those people who are married is a bad social statement."

Absolutely. Single people, how many of you have ever felt--even just a little bit--that your community values you less than married people? Okay, you can put down your hands and get down off your chairs. Stay single too long in our society and people look at you funny. First they berate you for not finding that special someone. Then they get quiet for a while. And then, when you get close to thirty, they start hinting that maybe you've got some psychological problems. "Maybe you're just not cut out for marriage," they say, perhaps not realizing how condescending that sounds. Not cut out? Trust me, I know what it's like to be single, and I know what it's like to love and yearn and long for a companion. But just because it's something I really want does not mean it's something I am incomplete without.

The homosexual marriage issue has annoyed me right from the start. First I thought, Why should the heterosexuals care what the homosexuals do? Then I thought, Why should the homosexuals want to get themselves married? They'll just get divorced like all the heterosexuals, and leave broken families in their wake. But this morning, listening to NPR, it hit me what's really been annoying me: Why should marriage be some kind of special status anyway? Why should married people get benefits? Why should the marriage relationship be treated so special, socially and economically? Certainly, a marriage is a precious thing, but it ought to be precious at the level of the people involved. Marriage, The Abstract Idea™ is not what makes a relationship valuable--it's the people involved. Those people are valuable and special before they get married, and that's what brings value to their marriage. Marriage itself does not confer value on the people who get married.

So I say let marriage fall by the wayside, politically. You want to get married? Get married. Do it on your own terms, get it blessed by your religious leaders, or by your family, or by Mickey Mouse. I don't care. But the government shouldn't be in the marriage business. The government should be in the people business. Which people? We the people.

No Choice?

2004-06-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

Jin at What If I Stumble has posted Ragamuffin Gospel in response to my treatise, The Final Authority. Here is his summary of the latter:

theomorph seems to be saying that, "If you don't want to be a jerk about your beliefs, you have to give up the belief that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that nobody can come to the Father except through him."

Well then. It seems that, by theomorph's definition of "jerk," orthodox Christians have no choice but to be "jerks about [their] beliefs."

Well, sorta. Christians have plenty of choice about whether they're going to be jerks. The point was that if they're not being "jerks" about their faith (i.e., pushing it on the world like we're all on a sinking ship and they have the only lifeboat), then they ought to be honest with themselves and admit one of two things: either (1) they are not being true to their religion, or (2) they are significantly altering the nature of their faith as has been received in their scriptures and historical creeds.

Would that keep them from being "orthodox Christians" (small o)? Depends on who you ask. I have known lots of Christians who have no problem with the kind of faith I described in The Final Authority: one "that is decidedly immanent, human-centered, and outward-reaching, rather than transcendent and god-centered." To them, this is "orthodox," and they will defend that perspective quite vigorously. But ask your average evangelical and they'll probably say that kind of Christianity is "liberal," "watered down," or even "false."

There are many different kinds of Christians. Some of them are extraordinarily intolerant, and others of them are almost indistinguishable from the most liberal atheists. There was even a "death of god" movement amongst Christian theologians in the 1960s and 1970s. This movement first hit the popular consciousness in 1963 with the release of Bishop John Robinson's book Honest to God, in which he spoke of moving beyond theism while remaining Christian. How exactly that works, I'm still not sure. When I moved beyond theism, I wasn't really interested in remaining Christian, as the rituals and scriptures of Christianity were designed to uphold a theistic view of the world.

Meanwhile, since the late 1970s there has been an upsurge in conservative Christianity, especially here in the United States. At the same time in the southern hemisphere, an extremely conservative and pentecostal form of Christianity has been on the rise, and many in the church predict that before this century is out, the power structure of Christianity will have shifted away from the West and into Africa.

My point in mentioning all of these is that the kind of evangelical Christianity espoused by middle class Americans is not the only version of Christianity, and Christians have lots of choices for how they want to believe and behave, and theology seems to be almost infinitely mutable to suit their desires. What does it mean to be an "orthodox Christian"? From the global perspective, almost nothing. The only thing that links many Christians is simply the fact that they call themselves "Christian."

As for me, however, when I discovered the almost ludicrous breadth of Christianity, I decided it would be much simpler to just be honest and be myself. How do I align myself now? I am a human being, member of the species Homo sapiens, resident of planet Earth. Hi there, how are ya?

The Final Authority

2004-06-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

In his comment on my post Only One World, Jin said, "I'd like to think that I, myself, gave up The Final Authority posturing a while ago."

Well, Jin, I commend your sentiments. Giving up the hyper-authoritative posture is an admirable goal. However, I'm not sure it's possible to do that and remain Christian according to most of your religion's traditional history.

Lots of people disagree with me on this (and vehemently so), but I don't see how one can subscribe to the Christian worldview without feeling some kind of security in the authority of that position. Furthermore, so long as you feel security in the authority and veracity of your belief system, I don't know how you're going to give up that "Final Authority" posture without giving up the core tenets of that system.

The Christian religion is structured around a simple proposition: God created the universe and rules everything in it. Everything else comes from or is connected to that core belief. You can quibble about predestination or freewill, argue over the nature of salvation, and debate the trinity, but if you are a Christian, there is no questioning the centrality and sovereignty of your God.

Once you have that sovereign God idea, the next thing you have to do is establish the relationship between humans and God. This is where you're going to hit a major snag if you don't want to sound like some hyper-authoritative jerk. If you truly believe, along with the Westminster Shorter Catechism that "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever," then you consequently must believe that those people who, like me, do not glorify God and enjoy him must be in some kind of faulty relationship with God. The catechism says nothing about "The Christian's chief end," but is quite clear about Man's chief end. (Apologies for the sexist language--I'm just working with the source material as-is.)

Or, if instead of the WSC you prefer the Nicene creed, then you "believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen," and that he, as incarnated in Jesus, "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end." Again, your beliefs necessarily encompass not just yourself, but everyone else, too. That is, you are basically required to believe that people like me still fall under the judgment of God, even if we don't believe in him. That's pretty authoritative.

On top of all that, as a Christian, you are required to let me know about all of this:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Not that I'm trying to push you into being a jerk about your faith. I just mean to point out that Christianity is by nature authoritative, and its adherents are required to be emissaries of that authority. So there's a problem with being a tolerant Christian, because tolerance of other beliefs is not built in to Christianity. Once you become tolerant, you are really dethroning the authority of your religion, and you are either no longer a Christian as Christianity has long been intended, or you have drastically altered the shape of your religion. Of course, theology has always been historically conditioned, responding to the challenges of each different age, so I won't fault you if you choose the route of theological innovator. There's a long and glorious tradition there. (Recall, however, that theological innovation is the reason why we have Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant branches of the church.)

However, if you decide to become a tolerant Christian, then you can no longer really buy into all the old dogmas about God being sovereign over the entire universe. You must accept Buddhists and Hindus and Atheists, too. Then you are left with a faith that is decidedly immanent, human-centered, and outward-reaching, rather than transcendent and god-centered. Religious tolerance requires that you see all human beings on an equal footing in the same universe, each of us answering the same questions in different ways. Surely you know these famous three questions: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Every person grapples with these questions to some degree, even atheists. If you are going to be tolerant, then the people and their questions are central to your religion, and "God" must be whatever they find in the answers. This is sometimes called the "all roads lead to god" theory.

Ultimately, however, we must be honest and admit to ourselves that the purpose of tolerance is that we, as human beings, the silly monkeys who have to live together, prefer peaceable relations to conflicting ones. Most of us would rather live in harmony with our neighbors than in strife. I know I certainly would.

The interesting thing about religious tolerance is that it tends to show up in places where religious diversity is greatest. For instance, in the colonial United States. Early on, different religious groups clustered together in mostly homogenous communities. There were Puritans, Quakers, Baptists, Anglicans, Mennonites, Huguenots, Moravians, and others. At first, they mostly kept to themselves. But as commerce spread between them, and people migrated, and communities became more diverse, tensions arose, especially when states had "established" religions. For instance, in Massachusetts, the Congregational church was the "established" church, meaning it received financial support from the public coffers. Naturally, other groups weren't too fond of this idea, especially the Baptists (who were often instrumental in establishing early forms of the religious freedoms we enjoy today in the United States). Eventually, people decided that they would prefer to get along with one another and live in harmony, while still disagreeing about religious matters, rather than maintain established state religions. Hence, our Constitution makes it illegal for the federal government to establish a religion.

Establishing religious freedom and tolerance is a very pragmatic move. It demonstrates that people, even when they are deeply concerned with their religious beliefs, are still willing to work together and compromise when it comes to day-to-day life. To me, that's a powerful statement about the potential of the human race.

Is it possible to believe that your religion is The Be All and End All of metaphysical systems, while still accepting that other people have different beliefs you will not forcibly infringe? I don't think so. I think that religious tolerance requires the breaking down of the universally authoritative aspect of belief. Hence, if you want to be tolerant, and you don't want to be a jerk about your beliefs, and you don't want to have that annoying Final Authority posture, you really do have to give up something central to your religion.

Terminal Existentialism

2004-06-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

On NPR's Wait Wait--Don't Tell Me! there is an occasional gag that, so far as I can tell, began when Roger Ebert was a guest, here awhile back. During his appearance (can one really have an "appearance" on radio?), Ebert complained about how many movie trailer narrations begin with the words "In a world..." Of course, after hearing that, I couldn't help but notice all those trailers. Meanwhile, it seems that Peter Sagal can't help but sneak those three magical words into Wait Wait whenever he can.

Hence, with so many movies allegedly happening in some kind of a world, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Spielberg's latest, The Terminal, is decidedly not "in a world." Rather, it is stridently out of a world. Sure, there's a "setting" and a fabulous airport set, but none of that really matters, because The Terminal isn't about the terminal--it's about the silly monkeys who inhabit the terminal, the ones we call "human."

See, throughout The Terminal the world keeps trying to poke into the narrative, but it never manages to succeed. Instead, we get a fantastical scenario that isn't quite real (even though it's based on a true story) because it refuses to let the world drag it down. Here are people effectively stripped of history and context (even while history and context are ever present in their lives--at least through television news and jokes about the Department of Homeland Security), but retaining their barriers, their differences, and their opposing goals. Laws fail, language fails, love fails, but somehow the silly monkeys keep on keepin' on. Ultimately, they aren't really going anywhere, and nothing really changes, and the whole thing winds up a lot like that other big Tom Hanks picture, Castaway: Man is stranded, Man waits, Man is released, and somewhere in the stranding, waiting, and releasing, Man improves himself toward an uncertain and perhaps frivolous end. These are existentialist movies, meditations on the meaning of humanity as a thing that, despite all reason, seems to float above the terrestrial plane, entirely lacking in any real purpose outside of that we give it ourselves.

The Terminal offers only the most tenuous backstory for Viktor Navorski. He is a foreigner. He speaks very little English. He loves his homeland. He isn't married. He seems to have a talent for manual labor and construction. He falls in love with a beautiful woman. He has an odd motivation that carries him through the story, but it's ultimately just a MacGuffin. (Do follow that link to see what a MacGuffin is, if you don't already know.)

I'm a big fan of MacGuffin-driven films. The MacGuffin is a fictional narrative technique that, simply and systematically, brings a level of verisimilitude that can't otherwise be achieved by artificial inventiveness. That's because life itself is a MacGuffin, a drive for survival that makes our existence possible and brings it fatal tension at the same time. Why are we here? To survive. But that isn't the real meaning of our lives. Meaning is what we create in the finite burst that comes between birth and death, just as Viktor Navorski builds meaning for himself in The Terminal. What else can one do while waiting? What else is there besides waiting? Paradoxically, we create meaning for ourselves precisely because our lives have no meaning, because all we're really doing is just waiting. The meaning is the MacGuffin. It is everything and nothing all at once. Wrap your brain around that. Trust me, it really isn't depressing.

The "human experience" is weird. Here we are, these sentient monkeys, basically just riding along on a jumble of DNA, a collection of genes that really only care about replicating themselves. But somehow, in the process, we wound up in this byproduct bubble of consciousness that really doesn't mean anything. No one intended this, but here we are, stuck in the course of human events, just like Viktor Navorski is stuck in the terminal at JFK International Airport. Every day, like Sisyphus rolling his boulder over hill after hill, he fills out forms and hopes that just maybe he'll get a favorable result. No luck. But while Viktor is stuck in the terminal, he does other things, too. He creates something beautiful, he falls in love, he saves a man's life, he helps his friends, and he ends up beloved by almost all. Admirable achievements for someone stuck in a meaningless feedback loop.

Viktor's situation is not so different from our own. He is pulled out of the world, out of a story, out of a context, out of reality, out of everything--and still he goes on! This is where the true nature of humanity shows itself, when we are divorced from narrative, when we are left to our own designs, when all the forward thrust of our lives is taken away. Human life is not a story. There is no "metanarrative" to guide us. The world is not a stage, and we are not players, and there is no playwright. We are just intelligent, sentient, hairless monkeys, trapped not "In a world" but out of it, the only creatures on the planet to watch television and read books and paint paintings, the only ones who dream up "metanarratives" and religions for ourselves. Face it--we are the weirdos of Earth. We are free agents, culture machines, conducting ridiculously silly transactions of art and beauty and love and aesthetics. The universe is our cave, and we have endless amounts of paint to splash around. We might as well have a good time while we're at it.

Only One World

2004-06-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Howdy, Christians. I know you're out there, reading this blog. Some of you are even commenting on it. So far I have been called "thought-provoking" and even "pleasant." Thank you, really. I do try. The thought-provoking part comes pretty easily, as I have always had a rather twisted view of the world, but the pleasant part is harder, of course, but just as important. Plenty of people on both sides of the fence, believers or not, spend way too much time posturing themselves as The Final Authority on whatever matter. The result looks something like gang warfare, with people puffing their chests at each other like animals, then hurling, instead of rocks or bullets, "logical" formulations regarding this or that highly emotionally charged issue.

Certainly, I think religious belief is misdirected and a tragic misuse of resources. Yes, I think a whole lot of religious people are just plain jerks. Absolutely, I am an atheist with no interest in reclaiming the Christian heritage into which I was born and by which I was raised. But even as I shake my head at religion, I cannot ignore all the people who perpetuate it. Here is where things get tricky, my Christian friends, so try to hang with what I'm saying. Maybe I think your beliefs are totally looney, but I cannot and will not deny your right to have them, because I know that inside those praying, worshipping, Bible-toting bodies, you're basically just like me. We live in the same world, with the same basic needs (as the California 4th grade science curriculum puts it, the five basic needs of animals are oxygen, water, food, shelter, and an environment).

Having atheists and theists in the same world--as neighbors and coworkers and friends and fellow community members--can be tricky. Sometimes it seems like we're in different worlds. But we're all responding to the same stimuli. We all need each other, we all have to worry about our inner lives and about our behavior around others, and we all have to learn how to exist in a world where we would like nothing more than to relax and take it easy, but where circumstances just won't allow it. We all have emotions and stress, we all fall in love and get angry. Most of us enjoy ice cream now and then, and time with (well-behaved) children. But some of us believe that the whole scheme of life locks into a theological over-story (or "metanarrative," if you prefer), while others of us have no such belief, and take the world and our lives in it as accidents of the most glorious kind.

Then there's the afterlife. Some people think I am going to hell. I know that for a fact. It's a curious thing to me, since, as a non-believer, I am not afraid of hell or any other afterlife, so the stress is all on their side. They can worry all they want about my eternal soul, but I don't even believe I have one, so I don't see what good it does them. I guess they could try to convince me that I have a soul, but that's going to be pretty tough, as no one has yet devised a way to detect souls and thereby prove their existence.

Some people have claimed that people like me don't even exist. That's a fun one, when some smart-guy Joe Christian comes up to me and tries to prove that I don't really think what I say I think, and must be some kind of liar. "You're not an atheist, because by throwing out god as your ultimate authority, you replace him yourself and become your own god, so you don't really not believe in god, because you believe yourself to be like god." Well, there is some level of truth in that, from a purely immanent perspective. When I tossed out my faith in god, all those functions that god once allegedly performed for me--giving love and comfort and guidance all that jazz--I had to start doing for myself. (Turns out it was easier to be my own god than to keep weeping on my knees for some other god to get his act together and help me out. Moral of the story: get your own act together.) However, even as an atheist, I do not see myself at the top of existence, as the final authority or arbiter on anything. Just like you Christians, I am subject to powers greater than myself, from the federal government to the weather and beyond.

We really have a lot in common, actually, believers and non-believers. Nobody wants to say it, though, because if we did that, then everyone would have to pull back from the conflict and admit that we're really just perpetuating a false dichotomy in the human experience. Yes, a false dichotomy. We all get sick, we all pay bills, we all eat food, we all get horny, we all get sad sometimes, we all have problems, we all make problems, and so on, ad infinitum. There is no measurable difference of humanity between believers and non-believers.

Sure, we disagree on stuff. I think "under God" doesn't belong in the Pledge of Allegiance, that abortion ought to be legal and regulated (to keep it safe, because people are going to do it anyway), that human cloning is not evil, that stem cells are not human beings (look at the pictures, people--they're just clumps of cells), that prayer does not belong in schools or in civic rituals, that homosexuals should be allowed to get married, and that religion is a massive waste of time and money.

But that's just politics. In the real world, if my Christian neighbor needs help, I'm not an atheist and he's not a Christian--we're just people. Sometimes I think Christians forget that, especially when they're trying extra hard not to. You know, when they go out doing good deeds for people, and trying to help in the community--except they just can't manage to do it without adding a promo spot for their god or their denomination or their particular take on the metaphysics of existence. A good deed is nice, and helping people is wonderful, but when you come to me with kindness and then take the opportunity to remind me that you're some kind of emissary from your god, you only drive home the fact that you're not acting out of goodwill for humanity, but out of service to the Idea of your religion. You aren't serving me--you're serving your beliefs. Somehow, I don't think that's what Jesus meant by the foot washing thing.

So, Christian friends. Let the dialogue continue.

Chuck on the Run

2004-06-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

Chuck Colson is terrified by homosexual marriage. Over the last several days, he has tried to make a case for why letting gays and lesbians marry each other can only lead to doom and destruction for American society.

First, he brought up the Netherlands, where homosexual marriage is legal. But now, apparently, people just aren't getting married at all. He calls this "the Dutch Disaster," and claims that when "People stop getting married, ... children suffer." How does that work exactly? He doesn't say. So far as I can tell, it's just another use of that lame and disingenuous technique that opposes something "for the children." Because if you put children in the middle of a problem, you can pull at people's heartstrings and make them do whatever you want--even if it's irrational--"for the children." People do this all the time. Don't clean up the environment because it's the right thing to do--do it for the children. Don't enforce traffic laws because it's the right thing to do--do it for the children. Don't lift sanctions against Saddam's Iraq when proper conditions have been met--do it for the children. Et cetera. It's an argumentative technique that completely avoids the issues by appealing to people's emotions. In short, it's pathetic. If Mr. Colson doesn't like homosexual marriage, then he needs to attack it on its own terms, and not as yet another problem "for the children." He needs to explain what exactly is so horrible about letting homosexuals choose partners, stay with them the rest of their lives, and receive the same political recognition as heterosexual life partners.

But that's not what he wants to do, because after lamenting "the Dutch Disaster," Colson decided to link homosexual marriage with terrorism, saying "If we legitimize same-sex unions, we will make ourselves even more of a target for terrorists." Well, sure, radical Islam hates homosexuality, but it also hates capitalism and our secular form of government. Are we going to give up capitalism and secular government, too, just because they make us targets of terrorism? If Colson was being honest, he wouldn't be opposing homosexual marriage on the grounds that radical Islam hates it, but on the grounds that he himself hates it. He doesn't really want us to capitulate to the demands of the terrorists, and he doesn't really want to admit that their goals are pretty darn similar to his goals: destroy all secular government and set up a theocracy. Except he isn't blowing anybody up or cutting off any heads.

Continuing with the ridiculous arguments, Colson today compares his struggle against homosexual marriage with the abolitionists' struggle against slavery. This is another pathetic persuasive technique: align yourself with a historical movement, even if the comparison is spurious, and let the moral weight of that movement lend itself to your own.

Gay marriage is not slavery. Gay marriage is nothing like slavery. Gay marriage is, quite simply, an equal political recognition for all pairs of people who have chosen for themselves to so entwine their lives that they prefer to be seen for some purposes in the eyes of the law as a single unit. That's all marriage is for anyone, even heterosexuals. People who love each other want their love to be communally recognized. That's why marriage exists. If there was no marriage, humans would still pair-bond for life, I am quite sure. But marriage offers them the opportunity to have their relationships officially recognized by the rest of the community. Slavery, however, is a system whereby human beings are held in absolute bondage by other human beings, utterly destroying the lives of the slaves by removing their dignity. Homosexual marriage doesn't remove dignity. It does precisely the opposite and confers dignity (although against the wishes of people like Mr. Colson, who would rather confer indignity on gays and lesbians). The two things could not be more different.

I personally think homosexuality is weird. I can't imagine wanting to spend my life pair-bonded and married with another person of my sex. But I see no reason why people shouldn't be allowed to build long-term, monogamous relationships with whomever they choose, regardless of their sex.

Will allowing homosexual marriage make me less likely to marry someone? No! There are plenty of other factors that make me less likely to marry someone, but the fact that other people engage in homosexual marriage is not one of them.

Do I fear that allowing homosexual marriage will make us a greater target of terrorists? That is just ridiculous. Weren't we already a big enough target on September 11, 2001? There's no going back.

Is homosexual marriage analogous to slavery? Only in that Christians claim to hate them both (even though plenty of Christians throughout history have actively supported slavery). But Christians have done a poor job of explaining why homosexuality is evil. All they've managed to do is make the viability marriage contingent on the ability of the partners to reproduce sexually, which not only makes homosexual marriage undesirable, but doesn't exactly get me all hot and heavy over heterosexual marriage, either. You mean if I get married, I have to have kids, simply because the plumbing is in place? And if the plumbing is not in place, I'm not allowed to get married? By that logic, people who are incapable of reproducing should not be allowed to marry, even if they're heterosexuals.

Yes, to most heterosexuals, homosexuality is weird and strange and a little disgusting. But that doesn't mean we can't admit that homosexuals still prefer their way of life, and it certainly doesn't mean we can't allow them to have it. Homosexuality is not going to destroy our civilization. People who no longer think or read or discuss important ideas will destroy our civilization. You want to save civilization? Stop fighting the homosexuals and start fighting the entertainment industry (which is not interested in thinking about anything), the hip-hop movement (which is only interested in the activities of the autonomic nervous system, sometimes called the "Three F's"--fight, flight, and reproduction), the gang movement (which is violent, tribal, and territorial by nature and utterly antithetical to the ideals of civilization), the high levels of racism in our society (and not just in "whites"). Saving civilization is a difficult job, and Christians are fighting all the wrong battles.

"Thought-Provoking Criticism"

2004-06-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning and discovered that I have been linked by a Christian blog. Of course, I am honored. It's all part of my insidious plan, you know--get Christians reading my blog as an attempt to enhance the dialogue between the religious and the irreligious, and maybe everybody will finally admit that we have much more to gain from embracing our shared humanity than from playing metaphysical war games with each other.

So this Christian blogger says of my blog that it "provide[s] some thought-provoking criticism of Christians." I would certainly hope so! I do my best to be a thoughtful atheist, rather than a knee-jerk one. For instance, after writing last night's post on Chronos & Chiros, I spoke a little with the Important Person who inspired that post, and commented that I refuse to let religious people and their ideas be steamrolled, simply because they are religious. I am nearly certain that most other atheists reading this will be annoyed or offended by that idea, and that most Christians will find it intriguing, if not wholly affirming. But that's the price I pay for trying to be a decent human being who puts his humanity ahead of his atheism, and tries to do the same for everybody else. If I don't want to be steamrolled by Christians simply because I happen to not believe in god, then it's hardly fair for me to go steamrolling Christians simply because they do believe in god.

You may have gotten that impression from last night's post, where I hinted at the idea that theology isn't all that exciting, and that god-talk is just human-talk dressed up in religious jargon. Theological talk, in my opinion, is not much different from any other jargon that comes from a minority group that's trying to maintain its distinctiveness. If some people use the language of the Bible and of theology to express themselves, that does not make their self-expression any less valid. (Just makes it harder to understand sometimes.)

Since I don't maintain a list of links (just too difficult and capricious a task to be worthwhile), reciprocating with a permanent link to What If I Stumble? is not something I'll be doing. However, check back for some "thought-provoking criticism" from time to time.

Chronos & Chiros

2004-06-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

A while ago, an Important Person reminded me of a concept I'd long forgotten: Chronos time versus Chiros time. These are Greek words, by the way, and the concept is theological, at least as I learned it, and as my Important Person has refreshed me: Chronos is human time, counted in minutes and seconds, while Chiros is "God's time," counted (or not) in value and quality.

Of course, if you have read much of this blog, you have figured out that I am not a theological, theistic kind of person. (If you look at the parallel construction in the description of this blog above, you'll notice that "Christianity" and "religion in general" are listed next to "cultural silliness.") However, while I am not a firm believer in the value of theology, I am a firm believer that all theology is rooted in the fundamental, non-theological experience of everyday life, as defined by the woefully unpoetic machinations of physics and chemistry. In other words, theology is just a way of bathing the mundane in the mysterious. Or, to put it another way, I think theology is like math, in that it can always be translated back in to regular English (or whatever your language is), sans all the fancy doodads.

Sometimes when people try to bring theology into the realm of natural language, they end up with a kind of pseudo-religious blather. If they write it into a book, we shelve it in the "New Age" section. But I'm not interested in that, so I'll try to avoid going New Age-y.

Chronos. Despite what you may have read about modern physics, the world of human experience clicks by at a pretty regular rate. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia. It all adds up, goes forward but not backward, and we cannot avoid it. We all experience Chronos time when we are late for appointments and when we celebrate birthdays. Nothing we can do will speed or slow the inexorable progress of the clock.

Chiros. "A watched kettle never boils." Of course, this is not true, but doesn't it always seem to take longer when you're staring at the teapot and yearning for a hot cup of tea? "Time flies when you're having fun." Of course, this is not true either, but the fun times always seem to end prematurely. Chiros time has less to do with the tick-tock of our timepieces, and more to do with the chemical reactions in our brains. I do not always think at the same rate. Sometimes, I can find myself having sat through fifteen minutes without thinking anything. Other times--for instance, when I am driving--it becomes necessary to have a whole chain of complicated thoughts in an extremely short period of time. This is the essence of Chiros.

What is the practical difference between the two? Well, Chronos and Chiros are rooted in two different aspects of human experience. In the case of the former, it is social experience, and for the latter it is the life of the individual. If you have ever thought hard about individual versus social life, you have realized what a difficult balance we must maintain. If you let the worries of Chronos overtake your internal Chiros you'll be a stress-ridden wreck. But if your Chiros time never gives way to the ways of the world and its Chronos, you will sacrifice your ability to succeed amongst other people, to be appreciated and well-liked.

It is important to recognize the difference between Chronos and Chiros in everyday life, and to live in each of them. Having an inner life (Chiros) will help you succeed in the tasks before you (Chronos).

My Important Person reminded me that Chronos is "man's time," while Chiros is "God's time." Maybe I am an atheist, but I can still see the wisdom in that delineation, and the real aspects of human experience that led to the theology. In your own mind, your inner life, a moment can be stretched into almost an eternity, if you can bring that value to that moment. But if you relinquish your inner life to the relentless tick of the clock, the time will pass you by, and all the thoughts you might have thought will be lost.

Certain things have to be done--we need to work, to eat, to rest, and so on. Without those things, we die, quite simply. But being human comes with other needs, too. We need to think, to love, to experience beauty, to create beauty. Without those things, we might as well be dead. Why is that? Why do humans need these other things, above and beyond their basic survival? I am tempted to say the answer to that question does not matter. But it does. Answering that question is part of those things we humans need to do, to stay human. We should all take some Chronos ponder that question.

Dr. Newdow's Quest

2004-06-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

You know by now, unless you haven't been paying attention, that the Supreme Court has thrown out Michael Newdow's contentious case against the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States. Some people are relieved, some people are angry, some people are confused, and a lot of people, it seems, are taking this as an opportunity to be just plain apathetic. "Well, that's over," I can almost hear from the collective American psyche.

Except it isn't over. People still care about this issue, on both sides. I am one of them. Personally, I think the words "under God" have no place in a daily, civic pledge that is about patriotism and citizenship in the here-and-now. We can talk about the religious and Christian heritage in American history all day long, and I don't mind. Those things are undeniable facts (just like it's an undeniable fact that scientists have discovered mounds and mounds of fossils from millions of years ago). We need to recognize and talk about the religious aspect of American history, otherwise we are just lying to ourselves. However, day to day citizenship and patriotism should not be encumbered by partisan historical perspectives. If you believe you live "under God," then believe it, and say it, but don't make anyone else say it. Personally, I believe we live under a gaseous atmosphere and a whole bunch of stars. But I'm not ever going to suggest that we put that in the Pledge. Nor would I expect anyone to pledge their allegiance to "one nation, without god," which would be equally ridiculous.

No, unfortunately, patriotism and citizenship are things that need to be defined in only the most sparing terms for our day-to-day lives. This is not the place to go saying "what it really means to be an American" and so on. A pledge of allegiance is a way for people of all stripes to come together and say, "Yes, I am an individual, I am different, I disagree with a lot of things the other different individuals here are saying, but I too am and American!" No particular ideology ought to hold sway in the pledge, except for the basic sentiment of patriotism itself.

So I find the non-decision of the Court annoying, but I recognize their legal grounds. Michael Newdow, as a non-custodial parent of a religious child, really had no business bringing a case based on his authority and desire as a non-religious father. That much is reasonable. However, I believe the Court only used that technicality to skirt the real constitutional issue: Does theological language belong in our civic rituals?

When the issue is finally decided, what will happen? Will it be as contentious as gay marriage in Massachusetts? Will there be protesters? Will there be some people who insist on reciting the Pledge one way or the other, despite whatever ruling emerges? Our nation has always been a place of religious conflict, from its earliest days, and we have survived this far. One more battle won't kill us, even if we drop "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. A lot of the Christians will cry and moan and act like the end of the world has arrived, but I suspect that should such a decision eventually be made, after a few years, life will continue as normal, and it will become a piece of odd trivia, that for a few decades, Americans pledge their allegiance to a nation "under God." Remember that, grandpa?

And, lo and behold, people will still be going to church. Ministers will still be preaching. Christians will still have sway in politics and elsewhere. Everything will be... normal.

Why study history? (Part II)

2004-06-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

(Read the first installment of "Why study history?" here.)

Here I am, on my continuing quest to explore strange new ideas, to seek out new thoughts and new perspectives, to boldly think where millions have not thought before. Why do we study history? (Or, more honestly, why do I study history?) In a previous post, I looked at two reasons to study history. First, because it gives us a better understanding of our world, and second, because it allows us to evaluate philosophies and belief systems. Just a while ago, though, while reading another essay that attempts to answer this question of why we study history, I have stumbled onto another reason. This one is by William H. McNeill, author of The Rise of the West. Here's the pertinent excerpt:

This value of historical knowledge obviously justifies teaching and learning about what happened in recent times, for the way things are descends from the way they were yesterday and the day before that. But in fact, institutions that govern a great deal of our everyday behavior took shape hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Having preserved and altered across the generations to our own time, they are sure to continue into the future. The United States government is such an institution; so is the world market, armies and the Christian church. Skills like writing, and devices like bureaucracy are even older than Christianity, and concerns that bother us still can be read into the cave paintings left behind by Stone Age hunters as much as twenty thousand years ago. Only an acquaintance with the entire human adventure on earth allows us to understand these dimensions of contemporary reality.

The thing that is important to me is only implied in that paragraph. It's this idea that various institutions and traditions have been around for different lengths of time. That can be interesting when we think about something like the Christian church. Here is an institution that makes some rather grandiose claims about its relationship to ultimate reality and so on. Yet most of the smaller traditions and institutions that constitute "the Christian church" in fact pre-date it. Dr. McNeill gives some examples--writing, bureaucracy, and cave paintings are all older than Christianity, and each of them has been in some way absorbed by the Christian church. Even many of the beliefs of the church were around long before they had been arranged into that particular configuration that is recognizable today as Christianity. We do well to remember that about Christianity, and about most institutions and traditions, because keeps us from seeing the institution as an inspired whole, instead of as it is--a collection of many ideas and practices.

It is important to remember that institutions, especially ones like Christianity, have not always existed. Furthermore, their existence today has often been the product of long development. That means that when we study history, we can look back to times when these institutions either did not exist, or looked markedly different. It is a good question to ask in our times, What was life like before the Christian church? Or, What was life like in the infancy of the Christian church? People did not always believe as modern Christians believe (despite their claims), and if that it the case, how should that affect our beliefs and policies today? Personally, I find such knowledge liberating, because it returns to me a freedom of thought that I would not otherwise have if I had to contend with the Christian church as it sees itself. How does one question an organization that claims ties with eternity? By exposing the history of the institution and the progress of its development.

A similar process may be used on the United States government. It, too, is the product of long development, stretching back hundreds, if not thousands of years. There is no arbitrary law from on high that created the systems by which Americans live. Each aspect of our government was created in response to a particular historical problem. For instance, because we began as a collection of colonies, each of which desired distinction for itself, we formed a confederate government, in which there are both state and federal governments whose relationship has not always been clear or friendly. However, since the creation of that government, the states have become progressively weaker, to the point of being little more than administrative districts. Some people advocate a return to stronger "states rights," while others support the current trend. How can one decide between perspectives? Only by understand the history of why the choice exists in the first place.

History allows us to see the institutions of our lives as shifting conglomerations of smaller components, and not indivisible units that must rise or fall as a whole. Institutions can be taken apart and rearranged. Few things are inextricably linked. Understanding history can give us the knowledge of that freedom and enable us to innovate in ways we might not have realized otherwise.

Why study history?

2004-06-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

History is an odd field of study. Here we are, seeking information about the past, things that are finished, people who are dead and gone. We say that it enriches us, or that it guides us, but at the same time we believe in our own freedom to buck the trends, be creative, and change the world (or at least send it in a new direction). Something about the past piques most people's curiosity. Who were those people who came before, and what did they do? How do they affect me? These are strange questions, coming as they so often do (especially here in the United States) from people who consider themselves unleashed from the confines of the past.

So why do we study history? As someone who actually does study history, I contemplate this question almost every day. So a while ago, I decided to run a Google search on the question "Why study history?" Here are some of the things I found.

At Hanover College, in Hanover, Indiana, the history department has a page titled Why Study History? Here is an excerpt of some comments there, attributed to Frank Luttmer, an associate professor of history there:

It is commonly acknowledged that an understanding of the past is fundamental to an understanding of the present. The analysis and interpretation of history provide an essential context for evaluating contemporary institutions, politics, and cultures. Understanding the present configuration of society is not the only reason to study the past; history also provides unique insight into human nature and human civilization. By demanding that we see the world through the eyes of others, that we develop a sense of context and coherence while recognizing complexity and ambiguity, and that we confront the record not only of human achievement but also of human failure, cruelty, and barbarity, the study of history provides us with a richly-textured, substantive framework for understanding the human condition and grappling with moral questions and problems. History is essential to the traditional objectives of the liberal arts, the quest for wisdom and virtue.

There is another reason to study history: it's fun. History combines the excitement of exploration and discovery with the sense of reward born of successfully confronting and making sense of complex and challenging problems.

I agree with Dr. Luttmer. History is an excellent way to give us a better understanding of our world. But do we really need the kind of understanding that history offers? I have asked myself this question many times, and have always found it difficult to answer. How many times have people made great leaps forward, or contributed great things to civilization by disregarding history? But then I might ask the converse question: How many times have people committed great atrocities by disregarding history? If history is so important, why are people often so quick to abandon it in favor of dogma, mythology, or unsubstantiated ideological hopes?

Let's continue and see what someone else has to say.

Over at The History Guide, a site that appears to be the creation of someone named Steven Kreis, there is another essay to answer the question "Why study history?" Here is an excerpt:

I first began to appreciate the study of history as an undergraduate studying political philosophy at Boston University. I was pretty keen on Plato, Aquinas, Dante, Hobbes, Locke, Godwin, Marx, Mill and a host of other "greats." But what I soon discovered was that my lack of understanding of history, i.e. the actual historical context in which these writers conceived and executed their theoretical work, made my understanding of their philosophy one-sided. Sure, I knew what they had to say about liberty, or the proletariat, or monarchy or the franchise. But what was the historical environment that gave rise to their ideas? Ideas are not akin to balloons hanging from the ceiling of Clio's den, waiting to be retrieved by a Marx, a Mill or a Plato. Ideas have a history. They undergo a process of development. They change, are modified, are distributed or are forgotten only to reappear years, decades or perhaps even centuries later.

Again I agree. But this time I think the perspective is more useful. If ideas like those of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, and Marx are conditioned by their historical context, then we ought to be more careful when adopting them for use today. Here is the kind of thing I meant when I spoke of "dogma, mythology, or unsubstantiated ideological hopes" above. There are plenty of Platonists, Hobbesians, Lockeans, and Marxists around today. But are those philosophies appropriate in our world? I won't attempt to answer that question right now, because it probably deserves a book or six, but perhaps you can see what I mean. If Locke, for instance, was formulating his political philosophy in response to a particular milieu, can his philosophy continue to function when that milieu has passed?

This question of why we study history can't be answered quickly or easily, so I'll stop here today. But expect to see more on this matter.

Government and Christianity

2004-06-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

While driving on Friday morning, I caught a little of President Reagan's funeral on NPR. It was strange to me, but not at all surprising, that the service was sopping with Christianity. Of course, if President Reagan considered himself a Christian, that is entirely appropriate. However, I was struck a little off by the recognition that this was still a national ceremony, in the National Cathedral, and at least in part a civic ritual (owing to the personage being laid to rest).

At the very moments I listened to the service, I happened also to be driving past a local church, where the flagstaff displayed an American flag at half mast. That, too, is appropriate, if a bit incongruous. Christians running a U.S. flag on their grounds at all seems strange to me. Who exactly are they representing?

Perhaps you're wondering what's wrong with me, thinking that a Christian funeral for a dead president and a church flying a national flag at half mast in his honor are phenomena somehow out-of-place with reality. The simple answer to that question is that I am an atheist, which, statistically, you are likely to see as a failure of character on my part, since most people are not atheists, and have little desire to consort with we who are. If you think atheists are automatically fouled-up, then you will easily explain away and shrug off my annoyance. But my answer is different.

What business has Christianity in politics? There, above most other places, are Christians brought into the light and forced to deal with a world that is not Christian by nature, that does not operate by Christian principles, and that does not generally tolerate metaphysical dogmatism as a guiding ideology. More than anything, politics are pragmatic, and politicians--if they want to be successful--are quite often forced to do things that violate their beliefs. What is Christian about raising taxes, sending soldiers into battle, or negotiating with leaders whose personal beliefs are antithetical to one's own? Yet each of these actions is often required from heads of state.

At the same time, what business have Christians flying the U.S. flag in front of their churches? Flags are symbols that mark territory, authority, and governance. It is odd, then, for Christians to fly a national flag when they clearly hold a higher allegiance. This has always been a problem for Christians, even to biblical times, when Jesus was allegedly questioned on the authority of the Roman government, prompting his famous answer, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's." His cryptic words have been broadly interpreted to mean, frankly, anything their readers want them to. However, the same problem cropped up in the second century, when the Roman government persecuted Christians on the grounds that their allegiance to their god was a liability against their Roman citizenship. Christians insisted that they were good citizens, of course, but I have always been puzzled at how a people who believe in the primacy of an invisible, "heavenly" kingdom over the powers of the earth can manage to respect a secular government. Here in the United States, they clearly have problems with this, too, because they are constantly insisting that this is either already a Christian nation, or that it ought to be. I.e., they really don't want to live under a secular government anyway. So what are they doing flying our flag? Schools, government buildings, and military installations fly the flag. But churches?

Christianity and politics have a checkered history together. That they insist on maintaining this is odd to me. But I can understand why many Christians would object to a strict separation of church and state. If Christians had to recognize themselves as only one religion among many, and not the paramount faith of the world, the pluralism would melt away their authority, and their own confidence in that authority. Christianity would become little more than a culture-bearer, or just another attempt to find the divine, as has happened to Judaism.

But as for me and my household, we will continue to insist that the blending of faith and politics is a recipe for disaster.

One Nation, Two Worlds

2004-06-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I watched Ronald Reagan's state funeral on TV, beginning with the long procession down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., and ending with the ceremony in the capitol rotunda. It was a beautiful ceremony, infused with meaning and pageantry by flags, historical symbols, and hundreds of precisely choreographed soldiers. It was, I thought, one of the most civilized things I have ever witnessed.

But from the room in home of my mom and her husband, where I watched all this, I could see out the windows and into the streets of the neighborhood, and things were not so civilized. During the ceremony, we watched as an eviction notice was placed on the house across the street, where some of the local riff-raff have been squatting for over a year. The property is a mess, as the squatters had consistently abused it. Recently, my mother's husband watched as these people stood around in the front yard in broad daylight passing around a bong, with children present. He called the police, who informed him they were able to do nothing. Over the last few months, my mom and her husband have watched loud, angry, and sometimes violent fights between the couple who has been living illegally in this house. Last week the man almost threw a brick at the woman. But now they're gone, legally evicted.

Except shortly after the deputies, realtor, and locksmith left, some of these illegal tenants came walking by--two women with a little girl and a baby in a stroller--to look at the house and read the eviction notice on the door. They looked angry, and waved their arms and yelled, expressing, we suppose, their indignation at being thrown out of the house where they had lived illegal for over a year, and expelled from the property they had abused. Eventually, they went on their way.

But it was striking to see the difference in cultures between the Reagan funeral and the scummy people across the street. On the television, Dan Rather and other commentators waxed eloquently on the supposed unity of the nation in remembrance of President Reagan. Yet I expect that the people across the street have little care for Ronald Reagan--if they even knew who he was--or for the ceremony and ritual of memorializing and remembering a former head of state. Nor would they see much beauty, I think, in the pageantry of the procession, in the symbols at play, in the music of our many military ensembles. This was a slow and solemn ceremony, elegant and contemplative. But the virtues of slowness, solemnity, elegance, and contemplation are losing out in America today. They are losing to hurriedness, irreverence, crassness, and disdain for the contemplative attitude.

There have always been "high" and "low" aspects of our culture, even from the earliest days of the colonies that would become our great republic. But I wonder how close the lower culture has come to defeating the higher. Sometimes it seems perilously close, as I watched the funeral this afternoon, and saw the footage of the thousands of Americans lined up to pay their respects when the rotunda where the President's casket lay was opened to the public. Perhaps those thousands are solid citizens, who still have civic pride and care when a president passes, but so many more Americans would rather ignore, or even denigrate, the traditions and history, the symbolism and the ideology upon which our nation is built. Instead they would prefer to worship celebrities--actors, athletes, reality TV contestants. Rather than clothing their minds in the great ideas that have shaped our nation and its great values, they would clothe their bodies in faux athletic gear, the better to idolize people who, while admirable in their achievements, are still only athletes, and not shapers of society or makers of the policies and systems that enable the luxuries we all enjoy.

We are a great and prosperous nation, but so many of us seem to have forgotten the history that brought us here. Many of us have indeed come together in remembrance of a dead American President, but too many others have little knowledge or respect of the people and ideas that have made their lives possible. That, in my opinion, is far more tragic than the death of Ronald Reagan. Presidents are human and susceptible to death, but nations can survive and thrive indefinitely when their people do not fail to carry the torch of history into the future. We cannot falter in the face of modern comforts and conceits. We must press on. Freedom and liberty have only expanded since the genesis of our nation, and those can only go on when the people who enjoy them do not take them for granted. We have a duty to remember, to participate, to ponder and think on our National Idea. Only then will we succeed in the task of securing our lives, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness.

Some Thoughts on Mr. Reagan

2004-06-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

When I was in second grade, the space shuttle Challenger exploded. We were watching on TV in my class, because our teacher (who was actually a long-term sub, Mr. Gibson) was using the shuttle mission, with teacher Christa McAuliffe on board, to teach us about space exploration. It was a strange experience, watching the shuttle explode on TV. When I was a second grader, I still trusted the world of adults to be predictable, so even when the disaster happened, I had a tendency to believe that perhaps the space shuttle was supposed to blow up. Maybe that was part of the plan.

So it took a while for the tragedy to set in.

But I remember coming home from school that day, and beginning to understand that something was wrong. When I turned on the TV to watch cartoons, there was the President. That is my first memory of an American President, Mr. Reagan sitting there at his desk, looking like a sad, noble grandpa. He said, "they slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God." He assured us that everything would be okay. In a few moments, my image of a President was formed.

Of course, I was still too young to understand things like scandals, and the idea that adults could be bad people, even if they looked nice. (Now it seems I have come to the opposite extreme, and have a hard time believing that adults can be good people.) President Reagan was a Big Man to me. He reminded me of my grandpa, who was also a Big Man. To this day, even when I hear negative things about the Reagan administration, they tend to bounce off my image of the Big Man.

I have not yet had the same fondness for a President as I had for Ronald Reagan, and probably never will again. Cynicism has bitten me hard in growing up. So I will miss Mr. Reagan, but I am glad that he was finally able to slip the surly bonds of earth himself.

Hark, the herald blogger sings!

2004-06-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

There is a new blog on the scene. Check it out.

Racist Morons

2004-06-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of The Nation of Aztlan? They're a Mexican-ish group that wants to reclaim all the lands acquired by the United States at the close of the the Mexican War in 1848. I say "Mexican-ish" because they're not Mexican nationalists, but "Aztlan" nationalists, based on a spurious mythology that posits the existence of "La Raza," comprised, apparently, of descendants of pre-Columbian mesoamericans. But most of them would probably rather align themselves with Mexico than with the United States, and most of them probably have recent heritage in Mexico. The whole thing is rather convoluted, actually (because it's entirely mythological and irrational).

Like any racist organization, their core identity is built on racial concepts (rather than on humanism, which allows people to define themselves by their ideas and behavior, instead of by their biological descent). Take, for instance, this choice phrase from their website: "We live in Aztlan under Anglo domination as the Palestinians live under Jewish domination." Notice that nothing is said regarding the comparative ideas and behaviors of "La Raza," "Anglos," Palestinians, or Jews, but the problem is just that there are these people of different races who are in some kind of conflict involving "domination." It's all quite vague. (If you're thinking I've skimped on the details for the sake of rhetoric, check out their site yourself, and try to find something like a fact, or a set of facts, existing naturally and untainted by a haze of racist ideology.)

But what's really annoyed me today is a recent article I ran across this afternoon. It begins like this:

"Those nefarious Jews are at it again!"

No lie. This passes for "news" in the Aztlan crowd, which is prominent in California and the American Southwest. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you think you were living in a world where this kind of anti-semitic idiocy died with Hitler? Consider your bubble burst.

It gets better, too. See, these Aztlan people are also big on Catholicism (at least, their brand of Catholicism). So what we have are Spanish-speaking Catholics militating against one former European colonial government for the sake of something lost by another former European colonial government, and they are, on a level approaching that of Hitler, racists and anti-semites to boot! How much more "Western" can you get?

However, I have not a doubt in my mind that should a member of the Aztlan crowd stumble across this humble blog entry, he or she would immediately peg me as an imperialist, racist hate-monger, because I dare to suggest that the Aztlan movement is ridiculous. Never mind that I support human rights for all humans, including the stupid and misguided ones, even if they're card-carrying members of "La Raza." See, that's the problem with being a Westerner—your conscience dictates benevolence even to those who probably don't deserve it. Meanwhile, "La Raza" folks have no benevolence in mind for anyone except the members of their own, ill-defined racial clique. But I'm supposed to sit back and tolerate them. And if I don't, they'll jump on me for oppression.

Like I said, this is the weakness of being an "enlightened" Westerner. It manifests itself in a lot of ways. Back in 1993 when U.S. troops were pinned down for a day or so in Mogadishu, Somalia, some of the Somalis got it in their heads that a good way to make themselves invincible while fighting the U.S. troops in the streets would be to surround themselves with women and children. The gambit of course being that Americans would not dare to hurt women or children, thus providing perfect safety for the gunmen. That is, they played against the good will of American troops, who were expected to fire only on "combatants." The justice of such maneuvers is questionable, and it is easy to emerge from deliberation of the matter with a hearty sense of loathing.

While the Aztlan-ites have yet to go Somali on Americans, their social rhetoric occupies the same strategic sphere. So long as Americans are tolerant people, the racist crowd will insist on being treated with tolerance, which means Americans will continue to sit idly by—annoyed, frustrated, confused, and angry—while their tolerant culture is trumped by racist ideology.

It is a sad state of things, but judging by the history of the world thus far, we could hardly have hoped for anything better.

On Pacifism, Conquest, and Ultimate Peace

2004-06-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

During my final years in Christianity, peace theology and pacifism were pretty important to me. I almost completely bought into the pacifist ideology that led its adherents to revere people like the anabaptist martyrs of 16th century Europe and Mahatma Ghandi in 20th century India. Toward the end, however, it struck me rather forcefully that extreme pacifism is a bankrupt mythology. I had been taught that the selfless sacrifice of Jesus, who went to the cross without fighting back, was the source of my salvation, and the pacifist triumph par excellence. But I came to see that as a problematic reading.

First, the theological structure behind "salvation" is odd, especially in the pacifist tradition. Are we to believe that a God who desires peace nevertheless requires blood for reconciliation? What of the need for salvation in the first place? There is something strange about a God who will condemn all humans to hell on the basis of a single, symbolic act (this would be "original sin" theology—I am aware that other perspectives exist). It is not as though, according to the story in Genesis, Adam and Eve committed an act with repercussions intrinsically detrimental to God, to humanity, or to the relationship between the two—except for the fact that they did something God told them not to do. What did they do? They followed their curiosity, the very same that was presumably bestowed upon them by God himself. Where was God in all of this? Apparently shivering in his metaphorical boots at the thought of human beings who could tell the difference between good and evil on their own. (Meanwhile, here in the 21st century, Christians are railing against the ostensible inability of people to discern between good and evil. What a turnaround.)

Second, it is odd that a God who desires for all people to be saved, and that all people live in peace, can only manage to bring such an end by having some of those people brutally murder another one of those people (who is not really a person anyway, but God himself, masquerading as a person). I would expect that a God who desires peace would be ingenious enough to devise a peaceful solution to his manufactured problem. The pacifists seem to think they can surmount any violent conflict with enough creativity, and I would hope that a God who purportedly created the universe could do at least as well. But such is not the case, apparently. Hence, it seems rather incongruous to be a Christian and a pacifist.

Peace is admirable, enjoyable, and a worthy aspiration. Unfortunately, however, it lacks an internal means of propagation. That is, peaceful people who are wholly peaceful and entirely unwilling to fight for anything, are also incapable of fighting to defend their own peace. Furthermore, they are incapable of fighting to defend the peace of others, and must stand by and watch as friends or allies are massacred. (In fact, I have heard a second-hand report of a pacifist seminary professor who declared that he would not use violence even to defend his wife or children from mortal danger. This, he apparently supposes, is the paragon of virtue. One must wonder what his wife and children would think.) In other words, peace cannot take care of itself. We ought not be surprised by that, as nearly everything in human experience is a mix of contrasting values. Freedom requires restraint; success requires sacrifice; leisure requires work, etc. Peace requires war. It may sound like an Orwellian paradox, but it is also a fact of life.

Unfortunately, pacifism is a popular ideology in America today. It is unfortunate not because Americans are, by and large, a peaceful and moral people—for that we ought to be glad!—but because our nation is beset by opponents who are not opposed to or afraid of violence and killing. If your enemy is willing to kill and to be killed for his cause, but you are not, your enemy has the advantage, because he has less to lose. But Americans, despite having more than anyone else in the world, are unwilling to lose anything. We are spoiled, and made docile by the luxury of peace within our borders. So deluded are we that even when violence rears its ugly head (as in Columbine High School, Oklahoma City, or the World Trade Center), we would rather decry the incident as an aberration than recognize the threat and deal with it as such. Instead of asking ourselves the difficult questions, we prefer to whine, to engage in futile theodicy (wondering why god allows "bad" things happen to "good" people), or to wave flags and thump our patriotic chests. But when it comes time to criticize ourselves, to tighten the belt of liberty, or to sacrifice our soldiers in the fight against tyranny, we protest and hide. This is the negative side of pacifism, and something of which we ought to be wary.

Even the mythically "peaceful" Native Americans understood this. Consider the following provision from the "constitution" of the famous "Iroquois League" (the entire document may be found here):

When peace shall have been established by the termination of the war against a foreign nation, then the War Chief shall cause all the weapons of war to be taken from the nation. Then shall the Great Peace be established and that nation shall observe all the rules of the Great Peace for all time to come.

Whenever a foreign nation is conquered or has by their own will accepted the Great Peace their own system of internal government may continue, but they must cease all warfare against other nations.

Whenever a war against a foreign nation is pushed until that nation is about exterminated because of its refusal to accept the Great Peace and if that nation shall by its obstinacy become exterminated, all their rights, property and territory shall become the property of the Five Nations.

Whenever a foreign nation is conquered and the survivors are brought into the territory of the Five Nations' Confederacy and placed under the Great Peace the two shall be known as the Conqueror and the Conquered. A symbolic relationship shall be devised and be placed in some symbolic position. The conquered nation shall have no voice in the councils of the Confederacy in the body of the Lords.

First, note the recognition that peace is established by the termination of war. The League clearly understood that conflict and fighting (and consequently violence and death) were inevitable, so much so that they made a provision for this in their constitution. They were no starry-eyed pacifists.

Second, see that conquered nations were required to "cease all warfare against other nations." That is, the goal of war is pacification (not, as modern leftists would have us believe, to create more wars).

Third, notice the expectation that some nations will be "exterminated," not because they are enemies or because their exterminators are racists or imperialists, but because they refuse to accept peace. It is worthwhile to note as well that the acceptance of peace would allow their internal government to continue. The drawback, of course, is that they lack "a voice in the councils of the Confederacy in the body of the Lords."

It is popular to assume that the "Native" Americans (they migrated to North America just like the Europeans did, so they're not really native, like they claim) were a bunch of peaceful, nature-harmonizing woodland folk that were viciously steamrolled by bloodthirsty, industrial Europeans. Instead, the Europeans happened onto a land already rife with conflicts, and simply joined the fight. Unfortunately for the Indians, the Europeans were more powerful. However, where once the territory of the United States was fought over by various groups of Indians, it is now a huge tract of peaceable land, inhabited by people diverse enough that they probably could fight, if they wanted to, but who choose not to. Much as guilt-mongering liberals and their faux native cohorts hate to admit it, this was only made possible by the violent conquest of North America, and the resulting pacification of previously hostile peoples. It was a terrible price to pay, and we ought to remember all the lives our freedom cost—on both sides.

But while it would be irresponsible to fail in our remembrance and honor of those many fallen in battle, it would be even more irresponsible to delude ourselves into believing that the peace we enjoy today can be perpetuated without consistent, vigilant defense. Unfortunately, that often means violence, no matter how hypocritical it may seem. Human life is tragic and paradoxical, and we must admit it if we want to survive.

Christian Activist Hypocrisy

2004-06-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

Chuck Colson is not happy about the current state of the Pledge of Allegiance in our legal system. Although the Supreme Court will hand down a ruling on the matter this month (likely in favor of the Christians, because we wouldn't want to offend those folks, would we?), Chuck is still annoyed at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which passed the original verdict against theological language in a civic pledge:

Americans have democratically debated the role of religion in public life since the founding of the republic. And within these debates they have found some balance between the rights of religious minorities and acknowledging the religious ideas that underlie our common life. Well, they did work, that is, until courts like the Ninth Circuit cut off debate.

See that? First Chuck says that after a long, historical process, we had finally found the right solution to religion in public life. (I.e., it belongs there, and anybody who doesn't like that can go jump in a well.) Then he says that the 9th Circuit, in saying the opposite has "cut off debate." Huh? Seems to me like Chuck isn't so much upset that the 9th Circuit has cut off debate as that it has reopened debate, and at a time when there are probably more people than ever who are willing to consider the possibility that believing in God is not a prerequisite to being a good citizen, or even a good person.

This is the consistent hypocrisy of Christian activism that seeks to keep the Christian religion on the top. So long as Christianity is bolstered and defended in the places of power, they believe we're living in unparalleled freedom. But the moment Christianity is questioned or criticized, suddenly we have rampant thought-policing and persecution on our hands. Why is it okay for the government to be Christian, but not okay for the government to be neutral on religion (i.e, secular, which just means "not religious")?

Personally, I hope the Supreme Court sees the light on this one and upholds the 9th Circuit's ruling. Theological language does not belong in our civic pledges. (Nor does it belong on our money or in our institutional rituals.) But that will not erase religion from public life, because there will always be religious people participating in government. The conflict and debate will still continue, but on a level playing field, where Christianity doesn't have all the advantages. Christians, of course, are terrified of this, because every time they've ever been put on a level playing field, they've lost.