Iran vs. Oscar

I’m not a fan of Sunday morning political shows on TV. The big-shot pundits on those shows don’t generally know substantially more about “the issues” than a person who has been giving a decent amount of attention to the news. Worse, they never manage to come to a conclusion, and the overall effect of the show is, “Here are a bunch of people talking about current events, and they’re ever so much smarter than you are, so you should pay attention.”

I woke up early this morning and discovered that I had fallen asleep with the TV on last night. There was Chris Matthews and a bunch of big-shots like Bob Woodward and David Brooks, among others. They were discussing whether or not the United States is going to invade Iran. After all the smoke cleared, they had basically said what anybody can say who has been paying attention to this issue. Here’s my paraphrase: “We don’t know what the President and his advisors are going to do, but it would be extraordinarily ill-advised to invade Iran at this time.” In other words, “You have been watching a bunch of big-shot pundits discuss this important issue, and they have nothing substantial to add to the debate. Now, please watch these commercials.”

It only got worse. When the show returned after the commercial break, the panel of big-shot political pundits was suddenly, inexplicably discussing, of all things, which movie deserves to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Huh? Iran is important; the Academy Awards are fluff. Best of all, not all of the panelists had seen all of the contenders. Then, in the middle of this pointless discussion, Chris Matthews interrupted, showed a clip from All the President’s Men and asked Bob Woodward what he thought of the movie that portrayed him as a hero. Huh? And this has what to do with what?

This is why I don’t usually watch TV. Too many idiots getting paid way too much money to fill way too much space by saying way too little.

Memetic Blog Virus from L

Because L said it was cool, so it must be.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

The nearest book was Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. In my edition (New York: Grove Press, 1962), the fifth sentence of page 123 actually ends on page 124, so these three sentences are from page 124. (I am assuming that when the instructions say to find the fifth sentence and then post the next three, they mean sentences six, seven, and eight, though I could be wrong.)

“The date of the first centenary of his death draws near; the circumstances of the crime are enigmatic; Ryan, engaged in compiling a biography of the hero, discovers that the enigma goes beyond the purely criminal. Kilpatrick was assassinated in a theater; the English police could find no trace of the killer; historians declare that the failure of the police does not in any way impugn their good intentions, for he was no doubt killed by order of this same police. Other phases of the enigma disquiet Ryan.”

Holy Hidden God, Batman!

Continuing the conversation with Brad:

[W]hy are we having this discussion? If supernatural possibilities are beyond your comprehension, no amount of convincing will ever prove anything to you.

Good question, good response. If I have not personally experienced God, there’s no way you can reason me into inferring God’s existence, especially since your God is alleged to be the creator of the universe and fundamental to all existence. Since I exist and live in the universe, yet do not experience this God of yours, it seems strange to me that he (and you) would want me to believe in him anyway, by way of philosophical inference instead of direct experience. Especially when you claim that not only is he fundamental to all existence, but that he wants a relationship with me. If God wants a relationship with me, and if God is fundamental to existence, God ought to make himself known to me–not to a bunch of people a couple thousand years ago, but to me. Otherwise, I can assuming nothing but that God is not really interested in me, or that he doesn’t actually exist.

Unless God reveals Himself to you, there will be no belief in Him. The only chance of my arguments making any sense to you is if God gives you some kind of physical experience to believe in Him.

Your phrasing is strange to me. “Some kind of physical experience to believe in Him?” Why would I want that? What I’m talking about is a real experience of God, not an experience that leads me to believe in God. Furthermore, like I implied above, why would you want anyone to believe in God based on arguments? Why would God want anyone to believe in him because of arguments? In the Old Testament, God identifies himself as “I Am,” not “I Whose Existence Can Be Inferred From A Series Of Logical Propositions Put Forth By Philosophers And Theologians But Not Directly Apprehended By Ordinary Folk Unless I Feel Like It And In Most Cases I Don’t.”

In my honest opinion, a conception of God as simply “I Am” with no further anthropomorphism is almost viable, but it’s also about as meaningful as “Buddha-nature” or “Dao” or “the Force” or “The Ultimate Ground of Being,” as Tillich put it. The kind of God you seem to be talking about is far from that, though.

But then, how would your belief be sustained? Would He have to continually provide you with physical experiences to prove He is still there?

Reality does not require a series of events to sustain our belief in it. Instead, for most people, the difficult and irrational move is to sustain a disbelief in reality. It’s one thing to doubt the veracity of our perceptions, but quite another to disbelieve the activity of perception and our ability to act upon it, which is why Descartes found himself alone with cogito, ergo sum. In other words, merely existing is so conducive to “believing” in reality, and so natural, that we don’t even think about it as “believing” at all, and rightly so, I think.

So if God is real, why isn’t the perception of God so easy, unmistakable, and natural as our perceptions of reality and existence itself? If we are created by God, if our existence is dependent on God, then it stands to reason that our experience of God should be every bit as fundamental as our experience of ourselves. Rather than “I think, therefore I am,” it should be, “God is, therefore I am.” Or so I would gather from Christian cosmology. Except nobody has that experience. We just philosophize it from the notion that God must be out there somewhere, a notion that Christians insist must be read from the scriptures. Strange, don’t you think, that this God who is proclaimed in the scriptures as being obvious in nature nevertheless requires a reading and understanding of those scriptures?

You could just as easily claim that what you experienced was merely a halucination.

No, because real things are never mistaken for hallucinations. Were William Lane Craig and Austin Dacey at Fresno State hallucinations? Or did you actually see them on a real stage? Do you doubt that experience in any way? An experience that you can viably call a hallucination probably is one. Otherwise, there’s no mistaking reality, because you can keep coming back to it day after day, and it is still there, still the same.

Now, God must come to you in bodily form and remain by your side at all times, all the while showing you that He is God, to prove to you that it was not a halucination. But then, how does He prove to you that He is God?

What God “in bodily form” would or could be recognized as a God? An individual who looks normal but has superpowers does not necessarily indicate the existence of some other, greater power occupying the body. That requires a belief in dualism, which I do not have.

Miracles, could be written off as some sort of slight-of-hand trick or mirrors and smoke. Miracles didn’t convince everyone who saw Jesus heal the sick that He was God, why would it be any different today?

Could they? Since I have never seen a miracle, or seen credible objective evidence of a miracle, I don’t even know if miracles can exist. When I am asked to both accept the existence of miracles and the veracity of a particular miracle based on the same story, there isn’t much traction to think about the problem. It would be like me coming to you and claiming I had seen a talking piano, that it was the only talking piano in existence, that you could not go see it yourself, but that you were expected to (1) believe that talking pianos exist and (2) believe that I saw one, both based simply on my saying so.

Or, imagine that four different people, all of whom know each other and who claim to be part of the same Cult of the Talking Piano. They all tell you that they have seen a Talking Piano, that it is the only one, and that you cannot go see it for yourself. Still, they expect you to (1) believe that talking pianos exist and (2) believe that they have seen one, both based simply on their saying so. When you say you don’t believe them, they insist that multiple witnesses make it true. How are you going to respond to them?

This is how the rest of us feel when Christians come to us and talk about multiple witnesses in the Gospels.

So what would it take for you to believe? I see you already responded to this question…you said “it wouldn’t take anything at all.” And then you go on to show how the physical universe proves its existence everyday by experience. It sounds like the above analogy I gave, is not too far from the truth of what it would take for you to believe. It would take the supernatural to become natural for you to accept it. Am I wrong?

Again, since I don’t believe in any differentiation between those things that some people call “supernatural” and “natural,” I don’t know how I could expect for the supernatural to become natural. From my perspective, it already is.

Like I said above, so long as I haven’t directly experienced God, since God is something that ought to be directly experienced, you’re going to have a hard time playing logical or philosophical games to get me to “believe.” God, if he exists, should not require mediation through any scriptures or traditions that require a shaping of my own mind and perceptions away from what comes naturally to them. As the Bible says, I am “without excuse” because God is “made plain” in nature, so I should be able to apprehend him naturally. But I don’t.

So here is an experiment you can try if you are feeling secure and think you can do it: Look at the world as though you have never read the Bible, as though you have never heard of Christianity or even religion or theism. Use only your own perceptions, because what can be known about God has been made plain throughout creation, right? (This is a direct contradiction of that “lean not on your own understanding” bit, too.) Do you see God? If you do, that’s fine with me. But I don’t, and I don’t understand why you’re so insistent that I should.

Or, perhaps more radically, we both see the same things, but give them different names.

But Only One

Finally, I have a reason to admire the President:

The tapes show that on marijuana use he had a more honorable motive than simply ducking awkward questions: “Do you want your little kid to say, ‘Hey, Daddy, President Bush tried marijuana; I think I will.’ … I wouldn’t answer the marijuana question. You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.”

Too bad he doesn’t think the same thing about his experimentation with religion and this idea that he’s been chosen by God to do whatever it is he’s doing.

Springfield is for Gay Lovers of Marriage

So The Simpsons did same sex marriage. Nice show. Probably torqued off lots of people. One can only hope. But the best line went something like this: “…the purest form of love: a legally binding contract.” That about sums it up for me, no matter which way you swing. Legal marriage has nothing to with religion; it’s a legally binding contract–until you get divorced–and love needs that like Iran needs nukes.

Skirmish with a Christian Soldier

This is part of the continuing conversation with Brad regarding the recent debate between Austin Dacey and William Lane Craig on the existence of God. I’ll go point by point through Brad’s most recent comments:

(1) Brad admits that he believes his faith is “more reasonable and logical” than atheism.

That’s all well and good, but again I have to ask: If your faith is more reasonable and logical than atheism, what do you say of the atheist? Is he or she ignorant of the facts, incapable of reason and logic, or willfully defiant in the face of the alleged reason and evidence for theism?

(2) Brad says, “I can’t imagine this world all being an accident or chance.”

Perhaps you can’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Your statement is just as worthwhile as if I were to say, “I can’t imagine this world being under the continuing maintenance of the Christian God.” Failure of imagination is not a valid argument against something. This is also known as the “argument from incredulity.”

Craig used this one a lot, by the way, he just used sly phrasing to cover it up. For instance, when he slid past selected propositions from his syllogisms by saying they were “obvious.” That was just another way of saying, for instance, “I can’t conceive of a universe without a beginning as I define it, therefore the universe must have a beginning as I define it.”

You might think that Dacey was also using the argument from incredulity in his series of propositions, “If God existed we would expect to see X; we do not see X, therefore God probably does not exist.” (I.e., “I cannot possibly imagine the existence of a God who is so brutal and cruel as the Christian God.”) But Dacey was careful to note that even if God exists (and he did allow that possibility), there is still the question of whether God is worthy of love, praise, and worship. (I.e., “I can imagine the existence of a God who is so brutal and cruel as the Christian God; I just see nothing worthwhile in loving, praising, or worshiping such a God.”) Dacey’s argument was then, in effect, “Since the world has all these problems that God, if he exists, refuses to do anything about, or even actively causes, God is not worthy of love, praise, and worship.” The only Christian refutation (that I have ever heard) is to say that God allows or even causes pain for some ultimate, greater good (Dacey pointed this out as well), but still, why should I want to worship a God who behaves like that?

(3) Brad laments an alleged lack of “missing links” and transitional fossils, says that “mutations have never been anything but negative,” and asserts that “microevolution can be proven, but macroevolution has never come close.”

Now you’re talking about evolution, but I’m talking about theism versus atheism. Don’t conflate atheism and evolution, because they are not the same. Atheism is a refutation of the assertion that there is a supernatural God (or gods) who interacts with with the world and people in it. Evolution is a theory for why life is so diverse. I am not an expert on evolution, so I suggest that if you are interested in that, try these links (which I use for reference) and books (which I have read):

EvoWiki. Lots of general information about evolution in the open source wiki format. Very cool site, and you can actually participate. See also the Talk.Origins Archive.

Examples of Beneficial Mutations. Just a compilation of real, experimental data where scientists have witnessed and recorded beneficial mutations. Interesting stuff. Includes references to other sources as well.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Not just because it’s one of the best explanations of evolution that I have ever read, but because it’s an extraordinarily important book that many thinkers and writers have referred to in the nearly thirty years since its initial publication. This book put Dawkins on the scene and he has stayed there ever since. It would be irresponsible to enter the discussion without reading this book.

The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins. This one is basically a sequel to The Selfish Gene. Incidentally, I’m recommending so much Dawkins because he is, in my opinion, the best science writer around, maybe the best ever. If only physicists had a Dawkins!

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould. This is the only book I’m listing that I have not yet read in its entirety, but I hope you can forgive me because it is 1,343 pages long! Gould is often held up as a theoretical arch-enemy of Dawkins, and this is his magnum opus. If you’re going to read Dawkins (and, by the way, I would also recommend Dawkins’ latest biggie, The Ancestor’s Tale, though I am not finished reading that one yet, either), then you really need to read Gould, too. Gould himself would probably say that if you’re going to read anything of his, read this. Too bad it’s so big, though.

Scientists Confront Creationism edited by Laurie Godfrey. This one I’m listing simply because it’s over twenty years old, but still its confrontation with creationists is prescient because, astonishingly, in the last twenty years creationists have not altered their arguments much (except to start calling them “intelligent design” and otherwise dress them up in different lingo)!

You would also find some profit in reading Carl Zimmer’s article on digital life in the latest Discover magazine. Particularly, note this passage:

The Avida team makes their software freely available on the Internet, and creationists have downloaded it over and over again in hopes of finding a fatal flaw. While they’ve uncovered a few minor glitches, Ofria says they have yet to find anything serious. “We literally have an army of thousands of unpaid bug testers,” he says. “What more could you want?”

However, again, I don’t think discussions of evolution are necessarily pertinent to the question of whether God exists (although the question of whether God exists may be pertinent to discussions of evolution). Just as I think it’s irresponsible and dishonest for people like William Lane Craig to rely on theories about whatever might have happened “before” the Big Bang, and on the alleged experiences of characters in the New Testament, instead of addressing the question from the Here-and-Now, I think it is irresponsible and dishonest to argue from the other direction that evolution proves the nonexistence of God. Evolution is a very successful theory designed to explain a wide assortment of observed and measured facts (i.e., there is a difference between the fact of evolution and the theory of evolution), but the existence of theologians who incorporate evolution into their theology is evidence that evolution alone does not invalidate theism. Many Christians are quite content to be theists and accept the theory. Richard Dawkins has famously said that evolution makes it possible to be an “intellectually satisfied” atheist, but that is much different from saying that evolution makes it impossible to be a theist.

(4) “For atheists who are always so skeptical about everything else, they seem to accept evolution with blind faith.”

Again you are conflating atheism with evolution, as well as conflating general skepticism with specific atheism, which, speaking stricktly, is only skepticism of theism. Atheists may accept the theory of evolution, and they may be general skeptics, but there is nothing about atheism that requires either of those two positions.

Second, I have never met anyone who “accept[s] evolution with blind faith,” and am not sure how one would go about doing so. It is certainly true that, for most people, the scientific problems that precipitated the formation of evolutionary theory are not part of their everyday experience. But that does not mean people who read about these things and come to their own reasoned conclusions are accepting anything on “blind faith” simply because they have not seen fossils, stratified layers of rock, genetic similarities, and archaeological evidence with their own eyes. Just as many people accept that flipping the light switch in their house will lead to illumination even though they have never seen the wiring with their own eyes. Are they accepting electricity with blind faith? I personally have read much about biology and evolution and fail to see how evolutionary theory is something anyone needs to accept by “blind faith.” Read the stuff yourself and see what you think. If you’re not convinced, just say you’re not convinced (a perfectly reasonable thing to say), but don’t go around saying that other people who are convinced are operating by “blind faith,” because then you’re (1) making assumptions about how and what other people think, and (2) ignoring the problem of explaining why exactly you are not convinced. These kinds of disputes can only honestly be addressed by speaking from your own perspective, not from someone else’s.

(5) “I realize that you don’t feel it is an atheists responsibility to prove our existence apart from the supernatural, but why live life simply questioning everyone else. Don’t you desire to know if an afterlife is possible? If there is a heaven and a hell? Supernatural things do not reveal themselves through natural science, as Craig pointed out when he urged scientists to not discount all of the anamolies that are swept under the rug when experimenting and looking for patterns. Dacey said he would need an audible voice from God to make him believe. In reality, he would write it off as a halucination – just like the biggest SIGN God has ever given has been written off by skeptics since the resurrection. “

It is not the atheist’s “responsibility to prove our existence apart from the supernatural.” It is nobody’s responsibility. However, if that is a problem or a question that interests you, then by all means, try to answer it. Personally, I don’t really care how or why we exist. I’m just glad to be here. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say, eh?

No, I don’t desire to know if an afterlife is possible. Simple as that. Maybe you do. Maybe other people do. But I do not. So why should I have to answer your personal questions about existence? You should try to answer them yourself. Then, if you find an answer, don’t go pushing it on people who don’t really care.

As for how Dacey would respond to an audible voice, again you’re making a statement and a very big assumption about how and what another person thinks, and that’s just not possible or honest or ethical or anything at all except smoke-blowing and hand-waving that removes the focus from where it ought to be: what do you think?

People Are Not Wearing Enough Hats

This evening I attended a debate between William Lane Craig and Austin Dacey on the question “Does God exist?” This was at California State University, Fresno, and put on by the Veritas Forum. I had never been to one of these things, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was fascinating.

Overall, I appreciated the gentle, laid-back tone of Dacey, as well as the substance of his remarks. He argued from observable evidence, both current and historical, including everyday experiences, that God does not exist. His overarching technique was to say “If God exists, we would expect to see X. We do not see X, therefore it is more likely that God does not exist.” This method of argument appeals to me because it puts human experience at the center of things. Ultimately, if we are arguing amongst ourselves whether God exists and has, or wants to have, a relationship with us, the only thing we can legitimately claim is what we ourselves see and understand. The only problem I had with Dacey is that some of his arguments seemed much weaker than they needed to be. For instance, when an audience member asked him about the meaning of life if there is no God, Dacey sugar-coated his answer, in my opinion. Instead of getting right down to the heart of the matter and admitting that there is no intrinsic meaning to life when the theistic narrative is excised, Dacey first made a joke about not knowing the meaning of life, then, “at the risk of sounding Clinton-esque,” he hemmed and hawed about different kinds of meaning, ultimately making his position look weak and wishy-washy.

Craig, on the other hand, seems to have a fetish for formal logic and the structure of an argument, rather than its content. (Dacey pointed this out in his final remarks, and argued that Craig’s insistence that belief in God can be internally logical does not necessarily mean that belief aligns with our experience of the world. Craig never addressed this criticism, except to say over and over that he had offered “specific examples” of his proofs, although I never caught them. Afterward I looked back through the many pages of notes I scribbled, just in case my memory was failing me, and they weren’t there, either.) Meanwhile, Craig was much louder than Dacey, had a more abrasive rhetorical style, and repeatedly said things like “Dr. Dacey doesn’t understand,” or “it’s clearly true,” or “that’s plainly false,” and so on. But claiming that something is clearly or plainly true doesn’t cut it. More explanation is needed. (This was especially annoying when, in his opening remarks, Craig presented a series of syllogisms in which he looked at the two propositions of each, chose only one as difficult or significant, and then completely ignored the other on the basis of its alleged self-evidence. Meanwhile, I was reading the syllogisms on his PowerPoint presentation and thinking that the propositions he ignored were exactly the ones I had the most questions about.)

Anyone who follows my adventures and travails in the blogosphere will know that I strenuously object to arguing by presuming the other person didn’t understand your point, and Craig this evening seemed to do nothing but argue in that manner. Worse, when a young lady came to the microphone during the Q&A part of the evening and pointed out this tendency in Craig’s technique, he began his answer with–you guessed it–”You don’t understand…” (Then, on top of that, when the young lady said that she doesn’t go to church because Christians often use this technique to question the intelligence of their critics, essentially judging them unfairly, and Craig said that she was judging Christians unfairly, the Christians in the audience cheered and applauded, making it very hard for me to stay in my seat and not leave the auditorium. That kind of behavior is disgusting, degrading, and utterly pathetic, and it astonishes me that Christians will do that sort of thing en masse and then expect the rest of us to take them seriously.)

At any rate, it should be clear by now that I was not at all fond of William Lane Craig’s personality or style of argument at the lectern this evening. His arguments weren’t too exciting, either. He went on and on about “Hilbert’s Hotel,” a mathematical oddity with some built-in paradoxes that he claimed as proof that the universe is not infinite, even though Dacey pointed out that mathematical paradoxes and oddities are not proof of anything in the physical world (at which point I wish he would have offered Zeno’s Paradox as a counterexample, but he did not). Craig also insisted that there is “overwhelming” evidence for the resurrection (as he has insisted for years), despite the fact that all that “evidence” comes straight from the gospels with no extrabiblical corroboration. On the scientific front, he first argued that God could have used evolution to create life (seeming to imply that he has no problem with evolutionary theory, since he also stated elsewhere that God gets involved in nature without breaking natural laws), but later argued that evolution is false because it uses an inefficient and wasteful method (natural selection), which is clearly not of God. However, he also argued that inefficiency is a quality God is allowed to have because efficiency is only valued by those who are limited, and God is unlimited. In other words, when it’s convenient for him to let evolution ride, he lets it ride, but when it’s convenient for him to cut it down, he cuts it down. That bait-and-switch technique got very old very quickly, especially when I saw how easily the Christians in the audience were duped, as they kept nodding vigorously while he made his way through these tortured machinations.

Speaking of the audience, I could have done without them, especially when it came time for the Q&A. Every question was a cliche. One person told Austin Dacey that life has no meaning without God and then asked him why he doesn’t live the life of “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.” The young lady I mentioned before asked Craig why Christians are judgmental. I also mentioned the person who asked about the meaning of life. Another guy persistently asked, “Why do they say we came from apes?” even after Dacey explained that evolution says nothing of the sort, but that we and apes have a common ancestor. Craig agreed with Dacey on this, and both of them seemed puzzled by the young man’s unbending, ignorant sensibility, which appeared to come straight from July 1925. The rest of the questioners basically just got up and hogged the microphones, offering rambling comments that led only to the vaguest of questions. It was disappointing to see this unfold.

The only reason I didn’t get up and ask a question myself was because I was so far from the microphone, I had no way to get in line quickly enough to get to ask my question. Most of the people who did get up there didn’t get to ask theirs, either, as time ran short (especially after the mic-hogs). In case you’re curious, though, my question would have been this:

Dr. Craig, you argue that belief in God is reasonable. Does it then follow that unbelief is unreasonable, and if so, what can you possibly say of the unbeliever but that he or she is ignorant, irrational, or willfully defiant?

However, I doubt he would have provided a satisfactory answer. He probably would have started off by saying, “You don’t understand…”

Ultimately, I think these kinds of debates are almost entirely pointless. I expect that most people went in expecting to have their preexisting views bolstered, and most people probably left, well, with their preexisting views bolstered. No debate on the existence of God will have a clear winner (unless one of the participants is just incompetent) because there is no clear, definitive, unimpeachable answer to the question. That is why it is debatable. It is also why you will not find debates on “Do humans exist?” or “Are we really having this debate?” or “What is 2 + 2?” Some things would just not make interesting debates.

(By the way, extra points for you if you can correctly identify the source of this post’s title. Even better if you can explain its relevance to the content!)

Leapin’ Lizards!

Well, not quite. More like “toddling robots.” (Check out the nifty viddy at this link, too.)

Oh, sure, it’s all good fun now, but just wait until we get robots that can walk and think. I’m sure religious people will find a way to make that into some kind of hideous evil, just like they’ve done with human cloning.

Meanwhile, researchers in Michigan have created a new form of digital life and are postulating that current definitions of “life” may be overly restrictive. Watch out “Culture of Life” people. The more we dig into cybernetics, artificial life and intelligence, genetics, and cloning, the less clear your position is going to be.

Valentine’s Day

I have never, not once, managed to pass a Valentine’s Day with a romantic attachment. Been close a couple times–within days–but, as they say, no cigar. Lucky in love I ain’t. In years past, that experience (or lack of experience, you might say) has put me securely in the cynical camp. You know the one: Single people who are not just single but also lonely, and not just lonely but angry about it, to boot. The ones who complain about all the red and pink heart-shaped paraphernalia, defiantly sit at home alone with their ice cream and their rented videos on the night of the 14th, and who, despite history, rail against V-Day for being cooked up by greeting card companies. (Really, it wasn’t. If you can stand lots of pink and lavender, visit this link for some interesting factoids about the centuries-long history of Valentine’s Day.) That kind of attitude is the short way to despair and depression on February 14th, though.

Maybe I’m more mature than I used to be, or maybe I’ve achieved enlightenment in this one tiny area, but somehow I’ve managed to pass through to the other side, so to speak. Maybe all these years of being alone on Valentine’s Day have made the aloneness commonplace and unremarkable. I feel nothing, and yet I feel satisfied. (Yes, truly a weirdo.)

So let it be, I guess. To paraphrase Rocky Balboa, it may be Valentine’s Day to you, but it’s just a Monday to me.

At any rate, lest you think I’m completely heartless, I’ll share with you a Valentine greeting I received a few days ago, one that I am particularly proud of, because it came from a second grader. Imagine these words scrawled in pink marker with big, uneven letters on a piece of paper torn from one of those spiral-bound books with a glossy pink cover, something a little girl would carry around in her pink backpack and keep close at hand for writing notes to her friends, or perhaps a teacher she likes (transcribed here with second-grade spelling intact and my last name removed) . . .

Dear mr. X your good at teaching happ Valentine’s bay

(Oh, and don’t forget the frilly little heart drawn at the bottom.)

That was from Katelyn. I like to think that you can’t fool a second grader, that when they like you it means they see clearly where adults have all sorts of pathological blockages. That’s probably not true, but it’s a pleasant fiction.

At any rate, I hope all you romantically entangled people have as good a Valentine’s Day as I expect to have by myself. Don’t forget that, even though Coca-Cola stopped saying it after September 11, 2001, life tastes good. Even if you’re by yourself.

Who Needs Children?

Bumming around Google News this morning and there were two (count ‘em, two!) stories about people going through bizarre motions to get rid of their own children.

In this story, a 26-year-old in Oregon was planning a “Suicide Party” on the front lawn of his parents’ house for Valentine’s Day, and one woman planned to participate by killing her two children before committing suicide.

In this story, a 38-year-old “barmaid” with “an arrest record including an aggravated battery charge” took her own baby to the police claiming she had seen someone throw it from a car and that she had rescued it.

It’s all just more evidence (1) that reproducing is a biological urge which doesn’t require rational thought (but probably should), and (2) that there is no universal innate tendency toward protecting or valuing one’s own offspring (it’s probably more like a bell curve, with the majority exhibiting this tendency to varying degrees, with a few extreme weirdoes at either end). The second story in particular also shows that even when rational solutions like adoption are available, some people will still manage to think outside the box (or beyond the pale, if you prefer) and find other “solutions” to the problem of an unwanted child. I.e., unless Christians and other anti-abortion types can come up with a cure for stupidity or irrationality, abortion, abandonment, and infanticide are here to stay, at least for the extremist minorities, if nothing else.

In other words, Christians and foes of abortion really ought to get over their utopianism and their (persistent but constantly denied) penchant for fascist-style “solutions” to the things they define as moral problems.