Who gets to live?

In debates and arguments about abortion and the value of human life, I have often pointed to hypothetical situations where people might be forced to make decisions that require a relative valuation of human lives. This morning I found a real one. A mother caught in the recent tsunami had to choose which of her two sons to hold onto. Regardless of what we like to think about all people being equally valuable, these kind of situations do come around and leave people with difficult dilemmas.

The woman gave an interesting rationale, too: she chose to protect the younger son, leaving the older one to fend for himself, expecting that he would die. For a while she did think he was dead. The older boy survived, but I wonder if this incident will resurface later in life. Siblings tend to complain about unfair treatment and this life or death situation has lots of potential for difficulties: “Why did you let go of me in the tsunami, mom?” I can only speculate, but I suppose she figured the older boy, who was 5, would have a better chance than the 2-year-old of surviving on his own. Beyond that, I doubt there was much rational thought, which is why the event is so revealing. When people act without having a chance to think and analyze and weigh their options, we get a chance to see human sentiments apart from any rationalization.

At any rate, when push came to shove, those two boys were not equal to their mother, heartbreaking as that can seem. I hope those brothers are able to avoid strife and resentment between themselves and their mother. Events like that can have psychological effects that rumble around for years without finding expression, only to explode in a fit of painful arguments and accusations.

Blast from the Past

Joe Missionary has posted responding to some stuff I wrote back in July (see it here and here). (To be honest, I had completely forgotten that I wrote those posts. This blog has been up since May and I think I’ve written nearly 200,000 words. Sometimes I dip into the archives and think, “Gosh, who wrote this stuff?”)

Joe has two main points. First, he argues that the lack of counterevidence, or contemporary documents that rebut the claims of the gospel writers, shows that the gospels were not “mere propaganda.” Second, he brings up early Christian martyrs and asks why they were willing to die for something if they knew it was a lie.

Before I say anything else, I would like to point readers to the essay Did a Historical Jesus Exist? by Jim Walker. I normally prefer to write all my own stuff instead of just sending people off to other authorities, but I’m pretty busy with work this week (I’m actually writing this from a work computer–naughty, naughty), so I thought I’d just supplement my own comments with someone else’s more extensive remarks. Walker doesn’t directly address either of Joe’s points, but he provides a lot of good background information.

Regarding the alleged lack of counterevidence, I am more worried about the lack of primary documentary evidence for the existence of Jesus and his resurrection. Although the New Testament depicts Jesus like some kind of celebrity, often followed and surrounded by “multitudes,” there’s not a single primary, contemporary document that refers to Jesus. None of the historians of the era write of him, nor any of the philosophers. For a guy with “multitudes” in the unruly land of Judea, this seems more than a little strange to me. The earliest NT author, Paul, did not even claim to know Jesus personally. The gospel writers claim to have been there, but their documents don’t enter the historical or archaeological record until well into the second century, which is a problem if you want to establish the veracity of their claims of first-person experience. In other words, none of the documents that refer to Jesus or his resurrection come from people whose presence at the actual events can be proven, or even reasonably inferred. Until there is solid evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, it seems a little silly to be complaining about the lack of evidence against him. But right now all we have are things written long after the events are alleged to have occurred, by people who either admit they did not personally know Jesus, or whose writings enter the historical record so long afterwards that both their dating and their authorship is debatable (and hotly debated).

In other words, if you’re looking for counterevidence, you’re looking in the same place the rest of us are looking for evidence: the strange void where we ought to find first century documentation of Jesus, one way or another. If people didn’t know Jesus to write about him when he was alive, how could they know about him to say that he wasn’t what the gospels claimed? Similarly, if the gospel writers couldn’t write about him when he was alive, how do we know they were telling the truth or remembering correctly after he died? We don’t even know who they were! There’s also the question of whether the gospels represent people’s initial knowledge of Jesus, or whether they were a codification of preexisting lore. There’s evidence that points toward the latter (e.g., the early Gospel of Thomas, which is little more than a disjointed collection of sayings and anecdotes). That would mean there was already a long oral tradition regarding Jesus that the gospel authors finally decided to write down. There was no doubt also a long tradition of people who were not converted to Christianity. Why not? And why was their tradition not codified? Probably because Christianity presented no threat to them. Why should they worry about fighting back the Christians by writing down their views and arguments? I’ll come back to that in a bit.

However, counterevidence aside, the burden of proof is ultimately on the Christian tradition and its claim that something happened, something for which there should be documentary and archaeological evidence. Unfortunately, that evidence still eludes us and the biblical story of Jesus is mired in historical difficulties.

So why did the story persevere? Because it was a powerful myth (by which I mean a narrative that inspires people and helps them find meaning for their lives, not necessarily an untrue story). There have been other popular figures who later turned out to be nonexistent or completely different from reality. For instance, the story of Prester John was widespread throughout Christendom for centuries. But Prester John provided no powerful myth, so when the debunking came down, there wasn’t resistance of the sort we see from the defenders and apologists of the Christian myth. Then there’s the odd case of Buffalo Bill, whose legendary exploits were first created as fiction in dime novels, and later came to represent the whole experience of the West in the late 19th century to many people in the Eastern United States. As it’s put on the website linked above “fact and fiction intertwined” to create the legend of Buffalo Bill. You might even argue that William Cody was taken in by his own myth. I think something similar happened with the early Christians, which is why they were willing to die.

However, I don’t think they were dying for the historicity of their account. It wasn’t like some 1984ish 2+2=5 kind of thing. Early Christian martyrs were dying for their story, for their community, and most of all for their freedom to worship in a non-Roman, non-pagan way. Personally, I think the Roman persecution of the Christians was foolish, perverse, and counterproductive. I also think that if the Romans had sensibly tolerated Christianity, it would not be the world faith it is today. When the Romans dug in against the Christians, they drove the Christians to do what most oppressed peoples do–ennoble themselves with their mythology. At the same time, when Roman persecution really kicked in, anti-Christian polemics and arguments start to enter the historical record. In other words, when people felt threatened by Christianity, they started writing about it. I suggest that’s why no one wrote against Christianity in the first century–because no one cared.

Anyway, that’s all I have time to do right now. Sorry if it seems a little roughshod.

The Faux Narrative of Natural Disaster

The earthquake and tsunamis in Southeast Asia are certainly disturbing. Once again the forces of nature display their disregard for human life.

And, as always, people want reasons. “Why did this happen to me?,” asks an Indonesian woman (in the story linked above). Asking the counter-question–”Why do you assume there is a reason?”–is probably insensitive or even offensive, but I ask it anyway. Earthquakes and tsunamis show no evidence of consciousness or intelligence, nor do they contain any internal mechanisms that might enable such phenomena. So why should they behave within the boundaries of reason?

I might also ask why reporters of such disasters always include one of these distraught individuals demanding reasons from natural forces. That, too, seems vaguely insensitive, as though a natural disaster report were some kind of narrative genre with component requirements, making a distraught individual the perfect fodder for journalistic exploitation in the job of assembling all the requisite pieces of the story. And if this were a series of hurricanes in Florida, the reporter would no doubt find a local minister willing to go on the record with a standard “God is punishing us” line. Thousands of corpses in the wake of a tsunami make a senseless tragedy; theological reasons for mass destruction make a tragic narrative. But why do death and destruction need always be fitted to narrative structure? Is it not an exploitation of the human loss and suffering to make narrative players of nature’s victims for the sake of profitable journalism?

[Update: A couple hours after writing this post, I followed the link above. The story had been changed, revising the death toll from 40,000 to 44,000 and deleting the woman's comment "Why did this happen to me?"]

Pomp and Ceremony

Finished wrapping all my Christmas gifts a while ago, then switched on the TV to see what’s playing at midnight on Christmas Eve. Lo and behold, it’s the Pope, in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Now there’s a guy I’d love to meet in Starbucks for a chat. Not that such a thing could ever happen. But, hey, when millions of people call the guy “Holy Father,” the bubble-popping, illusion/delusion destroyer in me just wants to know how he takes his coffee, what he thinks of the designated hitter, and if he has any good jokes. I’d also like to be a nosy visitor and take a peek into his medicine cabinet, see what kind of toothpaste he uses, and find out what kind of air freshener he has in his private bathroom. What’s his favorite movie? Does he like country western music? John Coltrane? How about cheeseburgers? What kind of candy does he prefer? What was his favorite game as a child? What would he do if he found himself trapped on a deserted island with a volleyball?

This is how I am. I couldn’t care less what the Pope or the Dalai Lama or any other Religious Bigwig thinks about war or international policy or AIDS or bioethics. Really. (Speaking of which, the Dalai Lama is another guy I’d love to chat with informally for a while. I could ask him things like, “So, Lama, what’s your favorite food?” He seems like a decent fellow, and I bet he’d humor me. I heard recently that he specifically requested some interviewers to ask him difficult, penetrating questions, because he gets tired of all that deference. Nifty. The Pope, however, well, I have my doubts, although he also seems like a decent, and quite interesting, fellow. So much mumbo jumbo, though. I tried to read his latest book a while back and felt like I was reading some kind of robotic chant of formulaic phrases. Blah.) See, I’m the kind of guy who, when he’s in religious services, is constantly fighting the urge to interrupt and say something like, “So, what are you all really thinking right now?” In college, when I had to attend mandatory chapel services, I would go with my brother, get coffee ahead of time, then go sit right up front and lackadaisically drink our coffee while standing and sitting through all the motions, without singing, bowing our heads for prayer, etc. Goofballs that we were. Call it quiet protest. Hey, it was mandatory. Not like they could kick us out or tell us not to show up.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. The main thing I’m thinking at 1 AM on Christmas morning, December 25, 2004, as I watch this Mass on television, is that religious pomp and ceremony are about the most pretentious and ridiculous things I can imagine. What person hasn’t been in a service somewhere and found his or her mind wandering all over the place? How many people catch themselves just “going through the motions” without really thinking? I mean, like, you watch these things with the Pope, and you notice that the assistants holding his book (containing what I like to call The Script) will sometimes have to move it a bit so the pontiff can see it better. Or his headgear will be removed for a time. Or he’ll shift in his seat. Or do other completely ordinary things like scratch his nose. And you have to wonder (if you’re like me) how often, during a mass, he gets thoughts like “Boy, this chair is hard” or “I wish I could see these written prayers better” or “My nose itches” or “I’m getting tired, I just can’t finish reading this thing; I need an assistant to finish for me” or “What I wouldn’t give to empty my bladder right now.” You know? I mean, the guy is human, after all. A regular joe underneath all those vestments and that ostentatious headgear. He gets hungry, goes to the bathroom, probably suffers from gas occasionally, and so on. (Yes, the Pope has a gastrointestinal tract!) I suppose what I mean is that the solemnity of ceremony is really a very thin veneer over we silly animals.

Ah, well, people love that veneer, eh? They like standing in rows, saying things in unison, burning incense, looking at colorful flags and banners, etc. (Come to think of it, Hitler understood that yearning for pomp and ceremony pretty well, didn’t he? He just used a silly Fatherland mythology instead of some other silly mythology. Boy, the Germans really dug that stuff, too. Nothing like lots of bright red banners, torchlight parades, huge rallies with anti-aircraft searchlights pointed into the sky, rousing music, rows and rows of marching soldiers lifting their feet to absurd heights but snapping them crisply nonetheless, etc.)

At any rate, if I had to point to make, it’s in there somewhere. I need some sleep. Also, the Mass is over and now they’re showing some schlock from the Crystal “We Drive Our Musicians to Suicide” Cathedral. Tell you what, the Pope is way more interesting than Reverend Schuller. (However, I must say that the Protestant-ish folks at the Crystal Cathedral seem a lot more exciting and celebratory than the Catholics at Saint Peter’s Basilica.)

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, or whatever you answer to. Ciao.

Little Things

I am one of those people who notices little things and gets annoyed. For instance yesterday I bought a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, chocolate mint flavored for the holidays. Delightful little candies. (Historical note: Hershey’s Kisses were introduced in 1907 and, surprisingly, not even the Hershey Foods Corporation knows why they were named Kisses. This is why corporations need to hire independent historians to keep track of what they do, because otherwise they inevitably, inexplicably forget. Or, as in the case of the Ford and IBM corporations and their relationships with Nazi Germany they, uh, de-emphasize.)

At any rate, being a conscientious person, I like to read those wonderful, standardized “Nutrition Facts” labels on food items. (Incidentally, those standardized labels were introduced in 1994. I’m just offering a wealth of historical tidbits today, aren’t I?) On these holiday-themed Hershey’s Kisses, the label says that one serving contains 230 calories, 120 of which are “from Fat.” Lovely. But how many Kisses make a single serving? Get this: Nine of them. Nine! Maybe I’m just out of step with our fatty world, but nine Hershey’s Kisses seems a little extreme to me.

I suppose there is some sense in labeling Hershey’s Kisses this way. If you’re watching what you eat and you look at the Nutrition Facts label, you’ll see that huge number 230 and think, “Wow! High calories! I better not eat too many of these puppies!” But if they made one candy a serving size and put the puny little number 26, people would probably be more likely to pop those little suckers with abandon. (It’s actually about 25.5 calories, for those who did the math independently, but they don’t put decimals on these government-mandated nutrition labels, probably because the government knows how lousy its own educational system is.) Food makers do make these kinds of decisions when they’re writing up their nutrition labels. Changing the serving size will change the perceived health value of a food.

So maybe the Hershey Food Corporation is doing us a favor by making nine pieces the serving size for its Kisses, thus inducing heightened sticker shock. Or maybe people really are chugging these things down at an average of nine pieces per gorging session. For all our sakes, I hope not. (Interestingly, of the different varieties of Hershey’s Kisses, all have a serving size of nine pieces except the caramel-filled and “Dulce de Leche” kinds, whose serving sizes are eight pieces. Oddly enough, these two varieties are also lower in calories and fat, so making their serving size the same as the other Kisses would still result in lower numbers on the nutrition labels. What’s the motivation?)

By the way, you can read all this information at the Hershey’s Kisses website.

And to You Your Christmas, Too

Well, Christmastime is here, and, as usual, it’s the hap-happiest season of all. Except yesterday I read this article, which was picked up from The Washington Post by a local newspaper. Apparently Christians are annoyed that some people dare to say things like “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” or protest when our governmental organizations display Christian nativity scenes on their lawns. So there is a battle brewing between Christians and secularists. (When is there not?) The Christians apparently want Christmas to be 100% Christian, or nothing at all, and they perceive the secularists as wanting it to be 100% non-Christian. (Secularists are rolling their eyes and shaking their heads.)

With this, as with most things, I am fed up. (See also this excellent editorial by E.J. Dionne, Jr.)

Christianity is part of our historical heritage. Just like colonialism, slavery, and endless warfare. Now Christian readers are going, “Say what? You’re putting our religion on a list with colonialism, slavery, and warfare?” Fear not, gentle readers. The point is that there are some things in our history we would rather not have there. Most people would rather not have those three things, and most atheists would rather not have Christianity. But my point is that we have to acknowledge history regardless of our personal preferences, not that Christianity is comparable to colonialism, slavery, and endless warfare. (Atheist readers are saying, “No, it’s much, much worse.”)

So when I turn on my television to watch The Simpsons in syndication (the only thing worth watching) and there is an advertising spot dedicated to retelling the biblical story of the birth of Jesus, my first thought is not “Oh no! The Christians are taking over!” but “Oh yeah, Christianity contributed to this huge holiday, and the Jesus-in-a-manger, born-of-a-virgin story is large in the minds of Christians these days.” Big deal. It’s just another symbol, like Santa Claus. Who, like Jesus, has meant many different things to many different people. Or the historical-mythical symbol of Plymouth Rock, on which the “Pilgrims” allegedly stepped as they disembarked from the Mayflower in 1620. Or the persistent myth that the suicide rate spikes at Christmas. None of those stories is particularly harmful, although most people prefer to know the truth, even if it isn’t glamorous or dramatic.

But the purpose of stories is not that they are literally true, but that they communicate, that they connect people. If we’re going to call it “Christmas,” we have to admit that the “Christ” in there came from somewhere. Specifically, it came from the Greek christos, which means something like “anointed one.” For the uninitiated, anointing something means pouring oil over it to consecrate or bless it. Jesus, being God-come-to-earth in Christian tradition (a fancy word you can use to impress your friends is “incarnation”), was consecrated or anointed, a sacred person. So he was called the Christ. Later, when Christians realized that Jesus was not coming back and that they were in for the long haul, they started organizing a yearly cycle called the liturgy, anchored on the Two Biggies, Christmas and Easter–the birth and death (or resurrection) of Jesus. Of course, no one knows the exact day that Jesus was born on. In fact, before the “Christ mass” was put on December 25, some Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus on January 6 (which is also known as “Epiphany,” and marks when the “three wise men” showed up), and I am told the Eastern Orthodox Church still keeps the 6th for its official celebration of the nativity, as well as of the baptism of Jesus. Whatever. The point is that these dates were chosen arbitrarily, not for their factual, literal relationship to any event (like our modern birthdays are), but for how they would shape the yearly cycle of feasting, fasting, worshiping, and praying in the lives of Christians–how they connected them with each other as the seasons changed.

Would we still celebrate a winter holiday on or around December 25 if the Christians hadn’t claimed it? Probably. One of the reasons Pope Julius I declared December 25 as the Official Birthday of Jesus™ was because the pagans already had celebrations on that day. Call it a slick PR move. “Hey, Pagans! Join up with us, the True Faith, and keep your December 25th feast! Convert within the next fifteen minutes and we’ll throw in this handy-dandy Slave Mentality for free!” (Okay, yeah, I made up that last part, with a little help from my buddy F.W. Nietzsche.) Why were people already celebrating in the dead of winter in the Northern Hemisphere? Because it’s cold and dark and they need something to keep their spirits up! Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, Persians, Scandinavians, and Celts were all thinking the same thing thousands of years ago: Baby, it’s cold outside! Perfect time to throw a big feast with lots of fires and bodies and heat and light and decorations.

All of this is old news, of course. You can look up this stuff on countless internet sites, mostly ones hosted by skeptics and atheists like me who are annoyed with all this “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” stuff. (I keep telling people that the tilt of the Earth’s axis is the real reason for the season, but nobody seems to get it.) But my point is that if we can take mistletoe from the Celts, Yule from the Scandinavians, gift-giving from the Romans, Santa Claus from the Dutch, and so on, why can’t we take a story about a Jewish Messiah from the Christians? Mix it in with all the rest! The birth of Jesus symbolizes the birth of a new hope. So maybe the Christ was A New Hope for people who would have been better off if they’d just capitulated to the Romans. So maybe the religion of this Christ breeds the kind of long-suffering nihilism that Nietzsche so abhorred. That doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t add the story to our list of holiday symbols, and find our own meaning in it.

The really goofy thing about the Christian push to keep Christmas religious is the way their quaint little story about angels appearing and there being no room at the inn and so on has been ripped completely out of its liturgical context. Protestants have no problem with this because if you go to a Protestant and say the word “liturgy” they look at you like you’re from outer space. “Huh? Whut’s that?” But the whole point of celebrating a holiday around a biblical story is for its liturgical shape and meaning. Otherwise, the Puritans, who were Protestants and who outlawed “keeping Christmas,” were absolutely right. Why should anybody use every 25th of December as an excuse to pick a man’s pocket (yes, I do love Dickens) just because some Roman Pope declared it to be the birthday of your Savior? After all, isn’t your faith supposed to have the same meaning every day of the year? Really, having one day to celebrate the birth of Jesus is more about the institution of Christianity than about the core meaning, which, I think most believers would agree, should stay pretty much the same day in and day out. But that institution is a liturgical one, and Protestants don’t do liturgy, for the most part. So why are they the ones making the big fuss about keeping the symbolic, ceremonial, religious meaning out in the public eye for the duration of December?

If you ask me (and nobody has), the story of Christmas as told in the Bible is just as decent as any other story. It’s a nice story, really, about a powerful child who comes to help people who can’t figure out how to do anything for themselves. He tells them not to fight (sorry, Zealots) or to fight back (sorry, other cheek), but to stop worrying about the rest of the world and live well amongst themselves. The people want a glorious king, but this guy gets himself executed like a criminal instead, as if to say, “Quit it with the personality cult already! Fix your own problems! You can do it!” Then he floats away and watches as these stiff-necked people still don’t get it right.

This is what I glean when I read the Christmas story for what it is, in the Bible, without attaching the rest of the liturgical structure to it. So there you have it. The Christian contribution to a modern Christmas. It was a rather tortuous process, actually. First there were pagan celebrations, then there was a Christian appropriation of seasonal feasts according to a theological cycle that was invented to make Christianity relevant to the daily lives of ordinary people. Finally, the Christian grip on the Western world slipped away and most of the liturgical calendar fell off with it, leaving us with Christmas and Easter that still get celebrated, the old anchors, The Two Biggies. But now when we go back to the Christmas story we’re reading it in a different context from the one that originally made it significant on the calendar. Instead of reading it within the liturgy, we’re reading it as a standalone “Bible story.” There are ad spots on TV telling us about the birth of Jesus, but there aren’t ads the rest of the year telling us about why that’s important. It’s a myth dislodged, and mixed into our modern, melting-pot culture. I, for one, have no problem with that. Let Christians keep Christmas in their context, and I shall keep it in mine. (Uh-oh, there comes Dickens again!)

And on earth peace and goodwill among all people. Even those dastardly terrorists, who know not what they do. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

A Long, Long Rant

I just finished reading David Brin’s essay The Real Culture War. (Brin, in case you didn’t know, is probably most famous for being an author of science fiction books and stories. I, voracious reader that I am, have still not managed to read one of his books. Shame on me.)

Life is annoying, y’know? Really, we all just want to live our lives as easily and happily as possible. We have dreams and goals, things we want to accomplish, places we want to go, things we don’t want to be bothered by. But then comes reality, smashing up that felicitous fantasy world with gleeful ease.

Boom. Oh, yeah. Culture war. This divided nation. Morality. Foreign policy. Same-sex marriage. Abortion. Separation of church and state. Secularism. Freedom. Ugh.

And that’s not to mention the real wars. Afghanistan. Iraq. “Terror.” (I tell you what, calling it the “War on Terror” is downright stupid. It’s not a war on terror; it’s a war on terrorists. Oh, and by the way, those terrorists all have something in common: radical, fanatical Islamic beliefs. In case you’re not catching my drift, it’s time we come clean and call this thing what it is: the “War on Radical, Fanatical Islam.” Catchy, eh?)

Of course, acknowledging reality and the conflicts that define our time and place is not a bad thing. On the whole I would rather be engaged with the controversies and making a difference (be it ever so small) than sitting alone in a beautiful cabin in the green, green forest, with lots of little animals scurrying around, and a creek running nearby, a fire on the hearth, reading many wonderful books, writing stories and essays, hiking in the wilderness now and then, chopping wood, using a Macintosh computer, and . . . wait, let’s not get sidetracked. Real world, real conflicts.

Just today I fired off a letter to the editor of a local newspaper because a few days ago some yahoo wrote in and said that Americans have “freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” Then he had the gall to badmouth theocracy. But when I think of a society where no one has freedom from religion, I don’t know what else to think but, well, Theocracy. It’s bad enough that this guy has such low regard for disbelievers, and worse that he wrote his ridiculous letter to air that disregard, but far worse that today’s newspaper had triumphant letter of agreement from another reader who thought his letter was wonderful. So I was compelled to write in and set the record straight.

Which brings me back to Brin’s essay. (Not really, but this is a Rant so structure and transitions be damned.) Basically, he’s saying what I’ve felt intuitively since my high school civics class, that our traditional Left-Right political alignment is, well, in the words of Monty Python, it’s passed on, it’s no more, it’s ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker, it’s a stiff, bereft of life, resting in peace, if it wasn’t nailed onto our ballots it’d be pushing up the daisies, it’s metabolic processes are now history, it’s off the twig, it’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. And so on. But I’m just going for a cheap laugh now. (Again, pushing away from the idiotic conflicts that Shape and Define Our Lives.)

Furthermore, Brin suggests that “Fear and loathing tend to encourage simplification and demonization, not re-evaluation.” The ridiculous polarization of the United States has certainly spawned a lot of fear and loathing. That’s a bad thing. (Nevertheless, what I’m about to say will no doubt be interpreted as only more fear and loathing, or at least more loathing.)

Personally, I’m sick and tired of demagoguery and fanaticism. But most people are, I think. So I’ll take it further. I am especially tired of theology masquerading as reason, of personal religion playing public governor, of the Leftist primitivist mysticism which is a revival of the old “noble savage” mythology, of our collective refusal to look to both the past and the future, and of the increasing disregard of consensus in the United States, both within our nation and with the rest of the world.

First, if you’re going to use theology to guide your policy, you must admit that you’re talking about a revelation from your own god, while millions of other people revere and worship other gods. That is, if you’re going to push for something, you’ll have to make it appealing in terms that are neutral and do not require adherence to your religion. Otherwise, you might as well just admit that you’re a religious crusader who is out to convert everyone else. In which case, the rest of us will rightly see you for what you are and refuse to let you advance. To put it another way, you can let your own decisions be guided by theology, but when you bring them into the public sphere, you’re going to have to offer rational, material defenses for them. If you can’t do that, you don’t have anything worthwhile to say in this diverse world. Your personal religion is not a public governor.

As for you Leftist-primitivist-mystics, the ones who think native and indigenous cultures around the world have all the answers in their “ancient wisdom,” think again. The solution to our problems is not to disregard modern scientific techniques, to call on shamans, or to return to emotionalism or spiritualism. You secularist Leftists who believe this stuff are no different from the fundamentalist Rightists you so despise. You’ve just replaced your lost Western religion with an intriguing, mysterious primitive one.

If you want to have a personal religion, if you want to follow the instructions of your religious leaders, if you like a spiritual authority over your life, if you want to believe what the shaman tells you, that’s fine. But when you come into the public sphere you must recognize that most of the people there have a religious perspective that differs from yours. What is the solution? Well, remember what I said, about everyone wanting to live their own lives. The trick of the modern world is the functional separation between our private lives and our public interactions. Lots of people think this is horrible. They label it with scary words like “alienation” or “otherness.” Whatever.

This is where history comes in: “The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and long before history began murderous strife was universal and unending.” Winston Churchill said that. He was right; read some history books and they will bear it out. So how do we fix this problem? The modern tack has been, like I said, that separation between our private lives and our public interactions. If we can keep our metaphysical views in private spheres where they are separated from the problems of collective decision-making, resource sharing, and peacekeeping, then we can discuss those problems rationally. (A classic example of irrational decision-making and resource sharing is the Arab-Israeli conflict. These are people who could sit down and say, “Yes, we’ll live as neighbors, share land and resources, practice different religions, elect governors and politicians who will behave as rational agents of our collective interests, instead of as fanatical ideologues, and stop killing each other.” But they don’t. Forgive me for loathing their perpetual non-solution. Individuals who behaved as they do would be called intransigent. But slap that label on a group of people and their continuing policies and suddenly you’re a very bad person.)

The way to a better future is by acknowledging the lessons of history (as that father of historians Thucydides once hoped), setting our goals for the future, and seeking rational, functional methods that will take us from the problems of yesterday and today to the solutions of tomorrow. As Churchill said, we are people of war. What have we fought over? Land? Resources? Political power? All correct answers. And how have we either divided ourselves our defined our groups within the conflicts? By religion or ideology. That is, humans have historically made their religions and their ideologies part and parcel with their material conflicts, exacerbating them by allowing them to see their enemies as monsters, simply because of the things they believed. Division by belief makes it much easier to dehumanize your opponent. Again, coming back to that modern solution, a rational method of decision-making, resource sharing, and peacekeeping requires that the participants check their religions and ideologies at the door.

Politics are a tool for finding rational solutions to material problems, not for imposing ideological dogmas on stubborn, disagreeing minds. Unfortunately, however, American politics have become religious and ideological tools, instead of problem-solving tools. Rather than being content to have their religious beliefs guide their own personal lives and decisions, too many Americans have decided that their religious beliefs ought to guide the personal lives and decisions of everyone else, too. We can have freedom from religion–both from the religion of our neighbors, and from all religion.

Anyway, now that I’ve ranted long enough (I’ve been writing for over an hour), I shall return to my happy little existence and read a novel for pleasure.

Evangelical Filtering and Censorship

Today, Chuck Colson offered his perspective on Tom Wolfe’s latest doorstop of a novel, I am Charlotte Simmons. Here is my favorite part of his comments:

Wolfe is one of the best and most insightful writers of our time. I don’t recommend you read this book, however, because it is graphic and vulgar — though, as expected, beautifully written.

In other words, those of us out here in the civitas diaboli can be insightful and write beautiful prose, but Christians still shouldn’t read what we write. If our writing includes “vulgar” language and graphic depictions of what actually goes on in many people’s lives, our insights are unacceptable, except in their filtered, reviewed form, after having been read by cloistered Christians somewhere, who are allowed to wallow in the ways of the world for the sole purpose of warning off those poor, innocent lambs who might otherwise wander into, say, the works of Tom Wolfe and find their salvation at stake. Or something.

There is this whole structure to the evangelical and fundamentalist Christian subculture where some of them are allowed to read freely and others are not. This seems bizarre to me, and always has. But then, I suppose I’m living proof of what happens when innocent Christians are allowed to read and think freely. I remember one day walking into the library intending to find books by people who were openly hostile to Christianity because you need to “know your enemy.” Yes, those very words went through my mind. (When approached by worried family members and people from church, I always offered the same response: If your faith is not strong enough to withstand any assault, it is not worth having. Strangely enough, not a single one of them rebutted my reasoning.)

Four years later I was an atheist. These days, I walk into libraries and bookstores (and surf the web) deliberately seeking out books and writings by people who are openly hostile to atheism. Funny thing, though, they aren’t nearly as convincing to me-as-an-atheist as the anti-Christians were convincing to me-as-a-Christian. Ah, well, I’m happy to be where I am now.

(By the way, if Wolfe’s novel really is as Colson portrays it–”a warning shot across the bow” for our culture where “excellence of character” is “neglected”–then I would have to agree with Wolfe’s criticism, as well as Colson’s affirmation of Wolfe. Ironic, eh? But then, when it comes to modern American cultural decline, I completely agree with Colson that our culture is almost completely bankrupt–we just disagree on why.)

Antony Flew the Coop?

Boy howdy, after you’ve licked a bunch of Christmas card envelopes, and you’ve got that sharp, gluey flavor on the tongue, nothing hits the spot like a mug o’ hot cocoa (with a whisper of brandy). I am a big fan of alcoholic holiday beverages, especially when they taste this good.

Anyway, enough with the chatty introductory remarks. In an attempt to “inspire” me (since I haven’t been writing much, of late), Funky Dung at Ales Rarus emailed me this link about the former atheist Antony Flew, who now believes in some kind of god. I guess that’s supposed to torque me off or annoy me or leave me feeling slightly ill at ease or something. But it doesn’t. (Sorry, Funky. That peaceful easy feeling just won’t go away.)

Flew explicitly says he does not believe in the God of Christianity or Islam, “because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins.” This comment, I would expect, should draw more ire from Christians and Muslims than from atheists. What should it matter to me if Flew wants to believe that there is some purposeful intelligence behind the universe? I’m open to that. But, like Flew, I don’t think any deity out there would be “actively involved in people’s lives.” Nor does Flew believe in an afterlife, and I am with him there, as well.

However, when Flew says that “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism,” and offers that as a reason for positing a god, he and I go our separate ways. First, I am wondering why he says it has “become” difficult to think about the evolution of the first reproducing organism. It has always been difficult to think about that. Theories abound, and none of them has yet achieved the status of, say, a theory like natural selection. But Flew seems to be using the Argument from Incredulity, which is not exactly evidence for the existence of God, just evidence for the difficulty of understanding how the universe might work.

To say that current theories of abiogenesis (how living organisms could have evolved from nonliving materials) are insufficient is one thing (and an honest thing, too), but to derive from that insufficiency the conclusion that it must have been the result of “intelligence” is unwarranted. It assumes that if no natural explanation can be found or understood, then the truth must be a supernatural explanation. But that seems a bit arrogant to me, because there is also an implicit assumption that if there is a natural explanation, then it must be within our power to find and comprehend it.

Furthermore, honesty forces us to admit that people don’t believe in a personal god because they can’t otherwise explain abiogenesis. People believe in personal gods who affect their everyday lives for ordinary, everyday reasons. They believe because they claim an experience, or because it “feels” right, or because, as William James observed, some people are just born with a couple bottles of champagne to their credit (i.e., belief is more suitable to them). People only bring up stuff like abiogenesis or “intelligent design” to explain and rationalize their belief in the face of criticism, not to ground it or center it. These things are a defense of belief, not a supporter of it.

At any rate, my own personal outlook has plenty of room for people like Flew. If I can tolerate the existence of religious people, and if religious people can tolerate the existence of formerly religious atheists like me, why can’t I tolerate the existence of an atheist-turned-deist? People have different perspectives. Flew’s perspective is especially acceptable to me because even if his “intelligent” deity exists, both Flew and I see no evidence that it makes a whit of difference to our daily lives. That is, he and I both are still functional atheists. That is, we live without orienting ourselves toward a supernatural personality who actively responds to that orientation.

Odds and Ends

Green tea and Gregorian chant. Lovely way to end an evening, especially when my apartment is clean.

My brother just left. We had ourselves a t-shirt-making session this afternoon. See, we have this silly dream of selling t-shirts with bizarre slogans on them. (For instance, I am currently wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “this is an irrevocable state of being.” Yes, that’s just a pretentious and slightly nonsensical way of saying “it is what it is,” but to us that’s the joke.) We have been using inkjet iron-on transfer paper to make them, but my brother recently bought some rudimentary silk screen equipment, so tonight we made our first shirt with that. Someday, we tell ourselves, we’ll make bunches of these things and sell them. The idea for now, though, is just to make shirts with slogans we like, wear them around, and see if people show interest in them. You know, the underground method. Yes, we know we’re geeks. It’s part of our charm.

Anyway, here I am now with a cup of (“naturally decaffeinated”) green tea and a Gregorian chant CD, hoping to slide into unconsciousness pretty soon, and wondering why I have not been blogging much for the last couple weeks.

See, it says over there in my profile description that I am “Just a guy with a lot to say.” Except lately I don’t feel that way. Instead I feel rather peaceful about things. Maybe it’s the holiday season. Who knows. I’m still an atheist. I still think metaphysical beliefs are bunk. I still think the churches ought to keep their hands and noses out of government and civic life. (I still get annoyed when I say the Pledge of Allegiance in class and the “under God” part comes along, during which I surreptitiously clear my throat.) I still think American consumerism is disgusting. I still think the best thing for the Middle East would be for our military to whomp those “insurgents” in Iraq and get the Iraqi civilians up and running with their very own elected government. I still think Christmas is my favorite holiday, and manage to maintain a purer view of it by not watching TV, keeping my head down during necessary trips into retail stores, and spending as much time as possible with family. I still think that abortion should be legal, that evolution should be taught as an extremely successful scientific theory that is an excellent explanation of many and diverse facts, and that, despite the warm-fuzzies we get from the high-flown rhetoric, all people are not created equal (although I wish they were).

I still think the Bible is not a friendly book to unbelievers like me, but I read it anyway, because it’s interesting. For instance, during the last week I have been reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as well as the book of Revelation. Also, on Sunday night I watched the TV movie The Five People You Meet in Heaven (which was far less cheesier than I expected, and quite a good flick, though it would probably work better as a stage play). I noticed something interesting about these three: they’re all apocalyptic stories. That is, they all involve a person taken out of time by a supernatural guide and given a different perspective (there’s the “apocalypse” part, the unveiling) in order to generate hope. For Scrooge, the hope comes from his reconnection with humanity. For Eddie in Five People, the hope comes from his new recognition that his life was not a waste (and the lesson for the rest of us is that we should never judge our lives wasted because we cannot see the full effects of our lives). But in Revelation, for John and the Christians, the hope comes from a vastly different direction: Someday God will destroy this rotten world, will destroy all the sinners and unbelievers, and will usher in a Christian utopia (i.e., the “New Jerusalem”). Where Charles Dickens and Mitch Albom sought to connect people with each other, because being social is perhaps the only way to be truly human, the author of Revelation makes human relationships almost pointless, setting the focus of every soul on God alone. While Christians find this wonderful, I find it bizarre and, as did Nietzsche, nihilistic. I would rather be subject to the unknowable web of human relationships from Mitch Albom’s Five People You Meet in Heaven than a minor player in Yahweh’s grand cosmic drama. In the former I matter (indeed all of us do), in the latter I do not, and neither do you, because all that matters is God and the rest of the world is just a mudhole from which we await our rescue (recall the ending of Revelation: “Come, Lord Jesus!” Get us out of here!).

Ultimately, I must stand with Ernest Hemingway, who once wrote that “The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for” (For Whom the Bell Tolls). The world has its problems, but they are our problems, and no escape will solve them.