Let Me Be Frank

An Odd Post: Science Advocacy

2012-01-22T20:18:00.000-06:00

If you play The Sims 2, I may have a treat for you in the form of a custom career, Science Advocacy. I wrote it in part to pay homage to the important role of science popularizers like Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Phil Plait. I attempted to create a logical progression of jobs, being guided sometimes by the aforementioned gentlemen's own careers. As I haven't learned to use the necessary software yet, another user (lientebollemeis) and I collaborated to insert this track into the game. I included quotations which stress the beauty and importance of science and science education at the end of every job description; you may recognize many of them if you've listened to "The Poetry of Reality", my favorite Symphony of Science production. If you would like to download the career, it is available at ModtheSims.com.

For those who play the game: the skills most needed are Charisma, Creativity, Cleaning, and Logic. Chance cards are currently being added. Here are the job descriptions.

Gift Shop Employee
Motivated by both the need for money and an interest in science, you've taken a job at a science museum's gift shop. Along with the usual retail duties of working the register and stocking shelves, the gift shop provides the more interesting challenge of explaining some of the items sold (including science experiment kits for children) to the families who enter. Your enthusiasm and communicative skills could very well ignite a spark of wonder that changes a life.

"Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works." - Michael Shermer

Student Worker
Now pursuing a degree in the scientific field of your choice, you've begun working for the school's science department. Duties include assisting the departmental secretary when not aiding professors during their lab classes. Sometimes you may earn some extra cash on the side as a tutor. Keep an eye on students mishandling microscopes or 'sharing experimental data' with their classmates, and remember -- if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

"Science is a very human form of knowledge; we are always at the brink of the known." - Jacob Bronowski

Teaching Assistant
Now a graduate student beginning work on a thesis, your work keeps you in the classroom where you have taken on greater responsibilities. These include grading papers and preparing for the afternoon lab sessions. You'll be expected to take a more active role there, teaching in addition to checking student work. When class isn't in session, you can also expect to help your docent with his own research experiments.

"Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. We remember those who prepared the way -- seeing for them, also." - Carl Sagan

Museum Guide
Though still a PhD candidate, your classroom studies are over: all that remains is thesis work. Moving away from the university requires a more steady paycheck, and so you've returned to where you began -- the science museum, where now you give guided tours, play movie presentations, and assist in the preparation of exhibits. Being able to explain concepts to a lay audience will be a boon here, so practice your communication skills.

"If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you -- and that understanding empowers you." - Neil deGrasse Tyson
Assistant Professor
Congratulations, doctor: your thesis completed and successfully defended, you are now a scientist and an educator. Chiefly you are responsible for freshman-level introductory courses in your field, so bear in mind the audience is largely disinterested in science and hostile given that they are taking your class only as per the requirements. It may be discouraging at times, but put in a few productive years and you may be hired on as a full-time instructor with license to teach your specialties.

"There's real poetry in the real world; science is the poetry of reality." - Richard Dawkins

Scientific Journalist
After a letter to a newspaper editor addressing careless scientific reporting on their part, you have been given the opportunity to write a weekly science column explaining to lay readers various new developments in science and outlining their potential. Introducing science to the public and interesting new minds in the field excites you, and so building on that you've begun to establish a web presence via a blog. Continue to work on those creative-writing skills if you really wish to shine.

"We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster." - Carl Sagan

Author
A publishing firm saw the material on your blog and offered you a book deal, one which has proven to be a surprising success. The university is beginning to realize what an asset you are; look forward to a promotion in your near future. In the meantime, the public interaction you've achieved with your blog is quite satisfying and picking up traffic. If you attain enough name recognition, more book deals may be yours for the asking.

"The quest for the truth, in and of itself, is a story that is filled with insights." - Carolyn Porco

Associate Professor
Ah, tenure. The university has officially accepted you as one of its own. While still teaching the odd freshman course, the majority of your course load now consists of classes of particular interest to yourself, and which attract only serious students. Teaching like spirits is much more fulfilling than attempting to reach annoyed freshmen, but at the same time you find contributing articles to magazines and to your own blog even more exciting.

"I think that science changes the way your mind works, to make you think a little bit more deeply about things." - PZ Myers

Professor
At last you've reached the esteemed rank of full professor, a badge of honor which indicates expertise in your field, an esteemed reputation among your colleagues, and years of experience in helping succeeding generations understand and marvel at the world. Your blog is a roaring success, and you've started a twice-monthly podcast that has caught the attention of the national media -- and two more book contracts.

"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it." - Carl Sagan

Celebrity Scholar
Host of an award-winning educational television show, author of no less than eleven books, and the news media's go-to expert for all science-related questions: you are The Face of science in the nation. People of all ages know your voice, and you've never been more popular. Through your work, adults have discovered a newfound appreciation for the world around them, and parents love your show for its ability to stimulate their children's imagination. More than a few young people have written to tell you that you were their inspiration for going into science. You're fulfilling your greatest ambition -- isn't life marvelous?

"The story of humans is the story of ideas -- ideas which shine a light into dark corners." - Jill Tarte

Freethought Friday: the Measure of a Man

2012-01-20T10:44:00.000-06:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833-1899)

From "Civil Rights", since we in the United States observed Martin Luther King's birthday this week.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart -- the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

Freethought Friday: A Candle in the Dark

2012-01-13T07:58:00.001-06:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833-1899)

From "Has Freethought a Constructive Side?"

It is charged by the worshipers of the Jewish myth, that we destroy, that we do not build.
What have we destroyed? We have destroyed the idea that a monster created and governs this world -- the declaration that a God of infinite mercy and compassion upheld slavery and polygamy and commanded the destruction of men, women, and babes. We have destroyed the idea that this monster created a few of his children for eternal joy, and the vast majority for everlasting pain. We have destroyed the infinite absurdity that salvation depends upon belief, that investigation is dangerous, and that the torch of reason lights only the way to hell. We have taken a grinning devil from every grave, and the curse from death -- and in the place of these dogmas, of these infamies, we have put that which is natural and that which commends itself to the heart and brain.

Instead of loving God, we love each other. Instead of the religion of the sky -- the religion of this world -- the religion of the family -- the love of husband for wife, of wife for husband -- the love of all for children. So that now the real religion is: Let us live for each other; let us live for this world, without regard for the past and without fear for the future. Let us use our faculties and our powers for the benefit of ourselves and others, knowing that if there be another world, the same philosophy that gives us joy here will make us happy there.

Nothing can be more absurd than the idea that we can do something to please or displease an infinite Being. If our thoughts and actions can lessen or increase the happiness of God, then to that extent God is the slave and victim of man. [...] Freethought has given us all we have of value. It has been the great constructive force. It is the only discoverer, and every science is its child. --

Saturday Snapshot

2012-01-07T10:58:00.001-06:00

I've missed the last couple of Saturday Snapshots because of general holiday busy-ness, which is unfortunate because I had been meaning to share a photo from a tree-trimming party. And then I realized: by the Julian Calender, today is Christmas, so I can still get away with it! Merry Christmas!

Lighting the tree was the climax of a lovely tree-trimming and caroling party I attended the Sunday before Christmas. My appreciation for the season grows with every year; the magic is no longer to be found in Santa and gifts, but in the holiday's traditional sentiments of cheer and goodwill. I absolutely loved decorating this magnificent tree and singing Christmas songs with friends and fellow citizens.

View more Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books!

A Reading on Selfish Genes

2012-01-06T10:16:00.000-06:00

From Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, p. 44

The confusion between our goals and our genes' goals has spawned one muddle after another. A reviewer of a book about the evolution of sexuality protests that adultery, unlike the animal equivalent, cannot be a strategy to spread the genes because adulterers take steps to prevent pregnancy. But whose strategy are we talking about? Sexual desire is not people's strategy to propagate their genes. It's people's strategy to attain the pleasures of sex, and the pleasures of sex are the genes' strategy to propagate themselves. If the genes don't get propagated, it's because we are smarter than they are. [...] Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is to build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.

Freethought Friday:

2011-12-23T10:33:00.000-06:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833-1899)

From "How to Reform Mankind".

Let each human being, within the limits of the possible be self-supporting; let every one take intelligent thought for the morrow; and if a human being supports himself and acquires a surplus, let him use a part of that surplus for the unfortunate; and let each one to the extent of his ability help his fellow-men. Let him do what he can in the circle of his own acquaintance to rescue the fallen, to help those who are trying to help themselves, to give work to the idle. Let him distribute kind words, words of wisdom, of cheerfulness and hope. In other words, let every human being do all the good he can, and let him bind up the wounds of his fellow-creatures, and at the same time put forth every effort, to hasten the coming of a better day.

This, in my judgment, is real religion. To do all the good you can is to be a saint in the highest and in the noblest sense. To do all the good you can; this is to be really and truly spiritual. To relieve suffering, to put the star of hope in the midnight of despair, this is true holiness. This is the religion of science. The old creeds are too narrow, they are not for the world in which we live. The old dogmas lack breadth and tenderness; they are too cruel, too merciless, too savage. We are growing grander and nobler.

The firmament inlaid with suns is the dome of the real cathedral. The interpreters of nature are the true and only priests. In the great creed are all the truths that lips have uttered, and in the real litany will be found all the ecstasies and aspirations of the soul, all dreams of joy, all hopes for nobler, fuller life. The real church, the real edifice, is adorned and glorified with all that Art has done. In the real choir is all the thrilling music of the world, and in the star-lit aisles have been, and are, the grandest souls of every land and clime.

"There is no darkness but ignorance."
Let us flood the world with intellectual light.

A Reading on Cities

2011-12-19T13:11:00.001-06:00

Last week, while reading David Byrne's The Bicycle Diaries, I encountered two passages that seemed to be straight out of The Geography of Nowhere. Byrne is a musician who has traveled the world and enjoys exploring the cities he lands in on his folding bicycle.

"Cities, it occurred to me, are physical manifestations of our deepest beliefs and our often unconscious thoughts, not so much as individuals, but as the social animals we are. A cognitive scientist need only look at what we have made -- the hives we have created -- to know what we think and what we believe to be important, as well as how we structure those thoughts and beliefs. It's all there, in plain view, right out in the open; you don't need CAT scans and cultural anthropologists to show you what's going on inside the human mind; its inner workings are manifested in three dimensions, all around us. They're right there -- in the storefronts, museums, temples, shops, and office buildings and in how these structures interrelate, or sometimes don't. They say, in their unique visual language, 'This is what we think matters, this is how we live and how we play.'" (p.2)

"I try to explore some of these towns -- Dallas, Detroit, Phoenix, Atlanta -- by bike, and it's frustrating. The various parts of town are often 'connected' -- if one can call it that -- mainly by freeways, massive awe-inspiring concrete ribbons that usually kill the neighborhoods they pass through, and often the ones they are supposed to connect as well. The areas bordering expressways inevitably become dead zones. There may be, near the edges of town, an exit ramp leading to a KFC or a Red Lobster, but that's not a neighborhood. What remains of these severed communities is eventually replaced by shopping malls and big-box stores isolated in vast deserts of parking. These are strung along the highways that have killed the towns that the highways were meant to connect. The roads, housing developments with no focus, and shopping centers eventually sprawl as far as the eye can see as the highways inch farther and farther out. Monotonous, tedious, exhausting...and soon to be gone, I suspect." (p.8)

Saturday Snapshot

2011-12-17T10:41:00.000-06:00

(Click to enlarge)

I took this photograph during Christmas week 2010. What you're seeing is the side of the public library, which looks much less elegant from this angle than any other. I do like this photo, though...it captures the look of autumn in Selma.

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I also took this photograph during Christmas week last year. This is Carter Drug Store, in Selma Al. There are several drug stores on Selma's main downtown thoroughfare, but I tend to come to this one because it is across the street from the library. In the last year or so I've started coming here instead of the chain stores, in order to support the local community. I've found the decision most rewarding.

View more Saturday Snapshots at At Home with Books!

Re: Sinews

2011-12-12T17:22:00.000-06:00

A few months ago I mentioned here that I've committed myself to a more active lifestyle. Motivated by a health scare, I started walking every morning and eventually added an evening jaunt to my routine as well. I'm happy to report, many weeks later, that the committment endures.

Physically, the results are striking. My legs are stronger than they've ever been, as is my lung performance judging by how steadily the pace of my walk has quickened as the months have passed. Most of my clothes no longer fit, and I have more energy so I'm constantly looking for ways to get in more activity. I'd like to get my bicycle fixed so that I can start touring the countryside on the weekends, for instance, and begin commuting into town on two wheels instead of driving.

In "Sinews" I wrote that I viewed my walks as not just physical exercise, but spiritual exercise: in introducing myself to physical disicpline, I hoped to improve my mind's mastery over the body. The fact that I'm still going on a daily basis, having overcome a great many mornings of discomfort and outright pain, testifies to my success, I suppose. In the beginning I had to stress endurance and persistance to myself, as my feet were still adjusting to the routine. Now they typically no longer pain me, and the aches and soreness come from my legs, protesting at the ever-quickening pace that I speed down the road with. Some mornings are effortless, and I come home feeling exhilerated from the action and not tired in the least -- but there are mornings when I struggle for every step, when my mind constantly chatters distraction. I must work to keep my focus and maintain my stride, knowing that most of the time this discomfort is temporary and the barrier it represents a phantom: if I push, if I persist, I can make it all the way and marvel that I contemplating giving it a rest earlier. I suspect the physical results of my exercise are much more noticable than the mental effects: as I read the thoughts of those who have made exercise a daily part of their lives, I can't help but note that everyone admits to days where they have to force themselves to get out there, no matter how long they've been at it.

The walking has been good for me in other ways. The quiet time to myself gives me space and energy to think, and sometimes to muse. It gives me opportunities to appreciate nature. I'm able to practice Stoic nonjudgment every day, especially as we head deeper into winter and I find myself feeling frustrated that the weather is denying me tolerable walking conditions. I can walk when it is freezing out, but when it is freezing, windy, and raining? I'm not that good at feeling indifferent to physical discomfort! The most noticable physical result is weight loss, something that I'm quite happy about. That, too, is an opportunity to practice nonjudgment; while I was able to maintain a losing streak for a couple of months,during the last week of November that ended when I gained an ounce. The next week I lost it and much more, but I had to remember that my focus is not losing weight but staying active.

Aside from the physical gains (or losses), the greatest boon of my walking is that it gets me active in my neighborhood. My neighbors have become accustomed to seeing me: I recognize their cars as they drive by me, and I wave cheerfully at everyone. I'm able to talk with someone almost every day -- kids riding bikes after school, a man raking leaves from his yard, an elderly fellow watching the ducks in the pond behind his yard in the morning. I know most every dog in the neighborhood. There are friendly dogs and hostile dogs, dogs that bark from behind fences but which are cowards outside of them, dogs that are friendly when I walk but who chase me when I jog. I feel like part of the neighborhood; my life is daily connected to the lives of others. I have even had people join me on walks.

And so, I look forward to many more future walks and my increasing good health.

Saturday Snapshot

2011-12-10T10:33:00.001-06:00

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From last week's downtown Christmas parade...don't walk, canter!

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Again, from last week. Tigers and karate? Why not?

View more Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books!

Saturday Snapshot

2011-12-03T12:28:00.001-06:00

Today was the annual Christmas parade in downtown Selma! I arrive early to get a good spot in front of City Hall. I'd also hoped to bump into some friends, but turns out they were further up the street. Still, between the festive costumes, high school bands, and Christmas spirit, I had a great time. I'm sharing some 70 odd photos online, but here are just three..

The Selma High School band in front of City Hall. Click to enlarge.

The big man himself...(Click to enlarge.)

I popped into the library (next door to City Hall) to continue in my Harry Potter Christmas Re-read, and decided to take advantage of my having a camera on me to take a shot of some of the decor in the kid's department. (You may click to enlarge.)

View more Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books!

Curiosity

2011-11-27T19:11:00.001-06:00

Human spaceflight seems to have entered a lull at the moment, but recently NASA launched the Curiosity rover toward Mars. Just think of the academic and technical understanding it took to construct this large robot, hurl it beyond the tug of Earth's gravity, and then arrange -- from hundreds of millions of kilometers away -- its multi-staged landing onto another world. It is easy to look at the state of the world and bemoan human frailty, but the discoveries and power of science never fail to lift my spirits...and I know of no more dramatic example of either than the exploration of the Cosmos. I wish the likes of Carl Sagan were here to witness Curiosity make landfall next year.

From Space.com: 10 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do

Saturday Snapshot

2011-11-26T08:01:00.003-06:00

(Click to enlarge! Go on, don't be squeamish.)

This Thanksgiving, while my niece, nephew, and I were sitting on my grandparents' porch winding down after a game of frisbee, my niece spotted a strange bug clinging to the side of the wall. I took a stick and gently maneuvered them to a spot where I could get a better look. From the original angle I thought it was a stick insect with an odd tail, but once they were moved I could see clearly that we were dealing with two beings. A friend (Neurovore of N^4) identified them as Anisomorpha buprestoides, a species of stick insect common to the southeastern United States. From Wiki:

The species is particularly well known for its very potent chemical defense spray which it deploys from a pair of glands which open at the front of its thorax. The "Devil rider" name for this insect likely comes from this defense, as well as the fact that they are most frequently encountered in the late summer and fall when they are active adults at a time when almost all of them are found in mating pairs, with the smaller male riding on the back of the larger female."

Considering my probing, and how close I came to them, I suppose I should count myself lucky that I was not sprayed...but, as my friend suggested, perhaps they were "too distracted by their current activity".

See more Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books!

Saturday Snapshot

2011-11-19T08:00:00.001-06:00

Last Saturday morning I again had plans which had me rising early and kept me occupied for the better part of the day. I spent it with friends in a tornado-ravaged area of the state, clearing land covered with fallen trees and other debris. Underneath one tree we found some curious growth...

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The spines were young and soft, and curiosity invited us to take a peek inside.

No one at the site had any idea what they were called, but the fellow who owned the land said that he had heard rumors to effect that they were poisonous and used as hallucinogens by teenagers. When I returned home I shared pictures of the plant online and discovered it to be "Datura", which Wikipedia confirms to have toxic and mentally disturbing effects when consumed.

View more Saturday Snapshots at At Home With Books!

Armistice Day

2011-11-11T11:00:00.002-06:00

11.11.1918

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, one of the most destructive wars in human history finally ended. At the time, people were so shaken by its length, horror, and cost that they simply referred to it as the Great War. We know it now as the 'First World War'. It holds a special meaning for me, effectively ending the period of human history I concentrate most on, and for me the Great War is war at its basest. It schooled me in the cost of patriotism and nationalism; it taught me the virtue of pacifism. In a war as ugly and purposeless as the Great War, the only moral option was to refuse to participate. Today we honor the millions of young men who were butchered for their government's greed, pride, and vanity. It happened then; it happened again; it will continue to happen unless we resist, and until we stop honoring propaganda's idea of the 'cause'.

Normally on this date I post a specific song in tribute to the fallen, called "The Green Fields of France". It honors the victims of the war without honoring the war, which I like. Since last year I have heard another appropriate song, and while it may be more appropriate for ANZAC Day, I think its message serves just as well here.

When I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in 1915 my country said: Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When the ship pulled away from the quay
And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers
We sailed off for Gallipoli

It well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well
He rained us with bullets, and he showered us with shell
And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell
He nearly blew us back home to Australia

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
Well we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then it started all over again

Oh those that were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
I never knew there was worse things than dying

Oh no more I'll go Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

They collected the wounded, the crippled, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind and the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

And the Band played Waltzing Matilda
When they carried us down the gangway
Oh nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared
Then they turned all their faces away

Now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Renewing their dreams of past glories
I see the old men all tired, stiff and worn
Those weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But year after year, their numbers get fewer
Someday, no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong
So who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

The KunstlerCast

2011-11-09T15:55:00.000-06:00

The KunstlerCast: Conversations with James Howard Kunstler
...the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl.
© 2011 Duncan Crary, James Howard Kunstler
300 pages

James Howard Kunstler is a journalist turned social critic and the author of numerous books, most prominently The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century. These two books address the seemingly disparate topics of urban planning and the global oil economy, but to Kunstler and like-minded readers, they are troublesomely knit together, intensifying the problems that each causes. For the past three years, Kunstler has talked each week with on these and connected topics with his co-host, Duncan Crary, who has now produced a partial record of their discussions -- a collection which will no doubt please Kunstler's fans, while offering those unfamiliar with his work their first taste of it.

Although his modern work ties to his predictions for the post-oil future, most of Kunstler's nonfiction works fall within the realm of urban criticism. Americans who have never encountered his ire may be staggered by how much of their world he holds in scorn. Just what is it about the modern city and suburban sprawl that he finds so appalling? In a word, everything. The opening sentence of The Geography of Nowhere, in which Kunstler attempts to summarize why he wrote the book, is a paragraph long. The growth of American cities and later, the 'edge' cities that grew out of suburbian sprawl, has centered on the automobile, and the result is the decline of public transit like rail lines in favor of highways -- infrastructure built on the promise of cheap gasoline, and frightfully ugly to behold. Its decentralization destroys the integrity of human communities and is in part responsible for the rising obesity problem in the U.S: our automobile-fixated culture gives people few opportunities to incorporate activity like walking into their everyday life, for now every trip anywhere demands the car. The results are hideous: compare an eight-line commercial strip lined with box stores, oceans of pavement, and offensive, neon-colored signs the size of trucks to the charm of what once was, to the tree-lined American Main Street with its cozy stores and pedestrian focus. The good news, for Kunstler and those who sympathize, is that this horror cannot long remain: it is doomed by its dependency on oil.

The second half of Kunstler's legacy, originating in The Long Emergency and a source of constant chatter among the author and his co-host, is the idea of peak oil and its ramifications. The cancerous growth of urban sprawl has been enabled by the abundance of cheap oil, but that era is drawing to a close. The United States' oil reserves have already dwindled, and soon enough the oil wells of the middle east and Russia will dry, too. The consequences for a global economy built on oil -- oil to run the ships and trucks that connect manufacturing and distribution, oil to process food -- for food is an industrial, not an agricultural product these days -- are dire. Kunstler sees the fabric of globalization partially disintegrating, and local economies reviving. Everything, including the cities, will shrink to a smaller scale -- a human-sized scale. The unviable sprawl will die, and authentic human communities will prosper once more, while bemoaning the amount of resources that were wasted in the "cheap oil fiesta".

KunstlerCast's conversations tend to focus more on Kunstlers' urban critiques than the peak oil scenario, though the two are connected to the point that the whole of the book flows together well, aside from some small deviations wherein Kunstler takes time to grouch about tattoos. I found these breaks more amusing than anything, and the book as a whole a positive delight, one which prompted me to begin re-reading The Geography of Nowhere. While Kunstlers' arguments as a whole are more thoroughly presented in the two books previously mentioned, the format of KunstlerCast allows the author and his host to discuss contemporary, related, and specific issues not mentioned in the 1993 book, or only mentioned in passing, like the health consequences of an automobile-centered society or the work of other critics like Jane Jacobs. They also cover ground visited in its lesser-known books, like Home from Nowhere and The City in Mind. I especially enjoyed these sections, as I've not been able to get my hands on these books despite my interest in them. Thus, while covering familiar ground the conversations also introduce new material, making them of interest to Kunstler fans. Newcomers may appreciate a less formal introduction to these issues, especially given how easy it is to "listen" to the banter-filled conversation between these two intelligent and thoughtful men.

Given the present economics of the world, Kunstler's work has never been more relevant, and is now all the more accessible. This is a hit for old fans and the newly interested alike. The KunstlerCast may be found at KunstlerCast.com, with archives as far back as 2008. Duncan Crary was once co-host of The Humanist Network News (now known as The Humanist Hour) and in fact interviewed him there before the start of their mutual project together.

Singing History's Song

2011-11-07T21:35:00.000-06:00

Tonight an odd video appeared in my facebook newsfeed, the tale of the Norman conquest set to a pop song from the 90s. The same artist-historian has recorded dozens of these songs, and I'm still relishing them. Behold!

There are dozens of more!

Saturday Snapshot

2011-11-05T10:58:00.001-05:00

"You go in first."

"No, YOU go in first."

I love zoos. I usually go alone ,because there are few people (aside from my father) who will tolerate my preference for finding a good spot to sit and then just watching a select group of animals for a long time. Alas, many zoo attendees approach the experience rather cavalierly, acting as though the place were a drive-through restaurant and expecting the animals to be immediately entertaining -- losing interest within seconds and then moving on. The summer before last I attended the Montgomery Zoo in Montgomery, Alabama, which I believe is the largest zoo in the state -- even surpassing the Birmingham Zoo in acreage and exhibit numbers, which is odd given that Birmingham is a far larger city. This was taken in a large walk-in aviary filled with birds and turtles, and it is one of my favorite parts of the zoo.

View more Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books!

Old Age

2011-10-31T09:50:00.004-05:00

Spotted at SciForums.com

Saturday Snapshot

2011-10-29T10:09:00.000-05:00

(Click to enlarge.)

Throughout the month of October, downtown Selma is enlivened by the presence of the Pumpkin Patch at the local Episcopal church (St. Paul's, Selma). Volunteers worked one morning to unload over five hundred pumpkins (not counting the smaller ones!), and since then the courtyard has been receiving visitors - -both families interested in a nice, big pumpkin to decorate their porches with, as well as schoolchildren who are entertained by stories and have their faces painted.

A few more pictures...

View more Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books!

The Good Fight

2011-10-24T09:12:00.001-05:00

While on YouTube a few months back I encountered a beautiful song by activist-singer Evan Greer. I couldn't find lyrics, so I transcribed them myself.

Well, I've written many songs
about the things that have gone wrong
The wars, and the killings, and the lies
This world is full of hate and there is so much at stake
We must fight for our rights and for our lives
We've gotta raise a fist for our right to exist
in a world where freedom is a lie (alive?)
Strikes they will rage, black flags we'll wave
The rich will have fear in their eyes
But when the fight is done,
The revolution won,
We'll burn the final flag and walk on.

And if we close our eyes and hold each others' hands
And if we sing boldly in the night
We will watch the sun rise through the tears in our eyes
Knowing that we fought the good fight.

Behind our black bandanas
There's a love so strong it can't be stayed
For every living thing in every song that we can sing
Each garden and each house that we have made
We know that in the end we can count upon our friends
To have a love stronger than the state
'Cause the tear gas makes us cry, the bullets make us die
But in the end, we will push beyond that gate --
Save the world and save the trees, set our comrades free
Rejoice though the coming was so late

And if we close our eyes and hold each others' hands
And if we sing out boldly in the night
We will watch the sun rise through the tears in our eyes
Knowing that we fought the good fight.

I met an old man outside an ice-cream stand
And in an old voice, he said to me
"You are young and you are strong, and you will find where you belong --
But remember that no man is your enemy.
It's the borders and the nations and the giant corporations,
But not a single living being."
So we struggle not for chaos, but for harmony
And we would rather fight instead of die
We struggle for the dawn, whose side are you on?
You'll know when we raise our voices high.

And if we close our eyes and hold each others' hands
And if we sing boldly in the night
We will watch the sun rise through the tears in our eyes
Knowing that we fought the good fight.

Saturday Snapshot

2011-10-22T10:18:00.000-05:00

Click to enlarge.

I wasn't able to post last Saturday because I woke up at four a.m. to accompany my parents to Tannehill Ironworks Historical Park in Alabama. My parents were not attending to savor the history of the foundry there, though: they were there for Trade Days, a junk sale that attracts a bewildering huge amount of people from all over the region all day. My father and I got away from the crowds and took a train downhill to visit the actual historic areas of the park, including the site of the old foundry itself. This is part of the remains, and to give you some perspective my father is standing to the left of it. This foundry was important during the American Civil War because it furnished most of the raw materials used in Selma's weapons factories -- and they were crucial to the southern war effort.

View more Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books.

Freethought Friday #29

2011-10-14T11:52:00.000-05:00

From Will Durant's The Age of Reason Begins, "The Summons to Reason", quoting Francis Bacon:

And as Descartes seventeen years later in the Discourse on Method, would propose to begin philosophy by doubting everything, so Bacon here demands an 'expurgation of the intellect' as the first step in the Renewal. 'Human knowledge as we have it is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which are at first imbibed.' Therefore we must, at the start, clear our minds, so far as we can, of all preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions, and theories; we must turn away even from Plato and Aristotle; we must sweep out of our thought the 'idols', or time-honored illusions and fallacies, born of our personal idiosyncrasies of judgment or the traditional beliefs and dogmas of our group; we must banish all logical tricks of wishful thinking, all verbal absurdities of obscure thought. We must put behind us all those majestic deductive systems of philosophy, which proposed to draw a thousand eternal verities out of a few axioms and principles. There is no magic hat in science; everything taken from the hat in works must first be put into it by observation by experiment. And not by mere casual observation, nor by "simple enumeration" of data", but by "experience....sought for, experiment."

Saturday Snapshot

2011-10-08T10:44:00.000-05:00

Back in June or July I saw a little notice that the Mayor of Selma was giving a walking tour of the downtown area. I usually go for a stroll downtown when I visit the library, but I thought the tour would be a fun idea. As we gathered in front of City Hall, a bird lit upon a historical marker and I snapped a quick shot. It's the only time I've managed to take a picture of a bird that wasn't in a zoo. The marker is for a Brooke rifled canon from the American Civil War period, which the sign claims is "the" first cannon to have created in Selma's foundries.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The rifle itself, if you are curious: this shot was taken on 22 December, 2010. View more Saturday Snapshors over at At Home with Books.

Lunacy

2011-10-02T17:56:00.000-05:00

Dawn moon, taken by me on 13 September 2011.

The moon became more real for me today, and as it became real it pushed me to consider my own chauvinism and ignorance. I am in the process of switching from a sedentary to an active lifestyle, and as such take walks immediately after dawn and during dusk. The dusk-time walks have given me the chance to observe the moon night by night as it goes through its mysterious phases. I know why (in general terms) the moon goes through phases: the sun only illuminates half of the moon at any given time, but that half isn't always the half viewable from Earth. Even so, I cannot visualize the relationships of the three bodies in space to fully understand the phases just yet, the way I can visually the Earth's changing seasons from space. Like most 21st century persons living in the developed world, I don't spend a lot of time looking into the skies: at night, I am generally inside. Thus, I am not conscious of the moon's affairs. At any time of the month (before this month) you could ask me, what phase the moon is in, and I would not have a clue. That has changed, and so has my appreciation of it.

Tonight, I looked up the official sunset time for my neighborhood so I would know about when I would be leaving for my walk, and noticed a link to a moonrise/moonset table. I clicked over to it, out of curiosity. I've often noticed the moon hanging in the sky in the morning, or throughout the day, and observed it being oddly absent when a new moon is weeks away -- but I never considered WHY. Incredibly, I have mostly maintained the Biblical view of the moon, as a "second light to rule the night". (Genesis 1:16) I counted the daytime moon as an exception, an astronomical quirk -- and assumed that generally speaking, the moon would rise as night fell, and as night gave way to day the moon would fade. Until this week I didn't LOOK at the sky on a regular basis, but thanks to my walks I now spend a lot of time admiring the spectacle of light at dawn and dusk. I realized, studying the lunar table, how really "real" the moon is. It ISN'T a light in the sky: it WASN'T created for we humans. It is a vast body in space, orbiting ours, and it just so happens that its orbit often takes place during nighttime cycles at various portions of Earth. I've been entering in different locations into the moonrise calculator and noting that sometimes the moon "rises" in the early afternoon, and sets not long after dark. So much for the moon "ruling the night!"

In addition to this realization giving me a smack on the head for being so provincial -- despite my five years of being more scientifically minded -- it was a moment of wonder-filled clarity. one which awed me in my place as a little dot crawling on this vast globe, with another vast globe moving around it, and tantalized me with the prospect of being able to understand the relationship between the two. We take the moon so much for granted, and yet the cosmic spectacle still manages to enthrall me.

Saturday Snapshot

2011-10-01T11:47:00.000-05:00

Click to enlarge.

Taken just this Wednesday, in downtown Selma. The flower bed is part of a courtyard area I love:

View more snapshots over at At Home with Books.

Freethought Friday #28: Beauty of Understanding

2011-09-30T13:20:00.000-05:00

View a picture of a rainbow at sunset here.

To those who value the vision of the human mind organizing observations into natural law and then using natural law to grasp the workings of what had until then been mysterious, the rainbow has gained added significance and beauty through Newton's discovery, because, to a far greater extent than before, it can be understood and truly appreciated. To those of a more limited fancy, who prefer mindless staring to understanding, and simple-minded fairy tales of gods crossing bridges to the dancing changes of light in accordance with a system that can be written as an elegant mathematical expression, I suppose it is a loss.

Isaac Asimov, "The Bridge of the Gods".

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot.

Saturday Snapshot

2011-09-24T11:12:00.000-05:00

(Click to enlarge.)

I took this as recently as Tuesday, while visiting downtown Montgomery. The approach was covered by luxurious homes, and downtown is populated by massive churches and government buildings, for Montgomery is Alabama's state capital. This was taken in the rear hallway of St. John's Episcopal, looking out into gardens and then a parking lot.

View other Saturday Snapshots over at At Home with Books.

Sinews

2011-09-23T10:48:00.002-05:00

Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? "What sinews are those?" - A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised, careful resolutions; unerring decisions.

(Epictetus; the Discourses, book two.)

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?

(Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, book five.)

Such were the words that compelled me to rise from my bed a few weeks ago and, after dressing, make my way outside to begin walking my way toward a healthier lifestyle. Throughout the summer I thought to myself that I would like to begin such a morning exercise, but I never engaged in "zerizus*": I never converted that will into action. Even though I began studying Stoicism in 2008, up until now I have only applied discipline toward the easy things, matters of the mind -- emotions, thoughts. As an introspective person, maintaining control over mind comes naturally. My lifestyle has been sedentary since middle school, though, and pushing myself to be physically active is much more difficult. I am unpracticed at it: my commands are weak. But I must develop the physical sinews of a philosopher: not only does my future health demand it, but I need those sinews to continue growing into the person I want to be -- 'a man in full'.

A bit over a month ago, I was taken to the doctor's office after weeks of deteriorating health: my appetite had dwindled, I often went days without sleeping, and I could not walk more than short distances without being reduced to gagging and retching. I tend to take a "this, too, shall pass" attitude toward illness, but my family members were not quite as content to watch me circle the drain. At their urging, I grudgingly visited the doctor -- who diagnosed me with high blood pressure, hypertension enough to threaten stroke. I walked out of the doctor's office with pills and orders to avoid pork and minimize salt intake. The medicine had an immediate effect: my restless legs quietened and gave me sleep, and I began breathing much easier. Determined to make the most of this opportunity I'd been given to reclaim my life, I walked out of the door that brisk morning a few weeks ago and I have been exercising the muscles of physical discipline ever since. I have been ever-more mindful of my eating habits, and increased the length of my morning walk steadily to two miles (at present). It is my hope that a healthier diet and a daily habit of exercise will eventually make medication unnecessary, for what Stoic wants to be dependent on an external like that?

Just as a stalled train is an opportunity to practice patience, and a broken friendship a time to meditate on grace and learn serenity, so to was this medical crisis an impetus for me to put into effect something I had wanted to do for a while. I do not wish to be sedentary: I have worked this month not to help lower my blood pressure, or to lose wight, but to begin a habit which will flower into an active lifestyle. For me, sitting for hours at a time reading a thick book and musing and writing on ideas is a joy -- but I also know the pleasures to be had in prolonged physical exertion, the joy of action, of movement. I enjoy activities like basketball and hiking, and I wish to do them all the more. I never feel better all day than I do in the moments after that morning walk, when the steady sound of my shoes on the pavement stops dominating my mind and I realize how good I feel.

So far I have kept my practice up for a month: I do not anticipate changing it for the seasons or weather, although I suppose if there is a tornado meandering through the neighborhood I would wait in safety, and give the cyclone its privacy. I see this physical activity as contributing to the whole of my life -- not just in allowing me to enjoy more activities, but in other areas as well. I delight in seeing my neighborhood so early in the morning; the sun is still rising, and often there's a mist that hangs over the road and lawns. I've seen sublimely beautiful scenes while out and about. I've talked more with my neighbors in the past two weeks than I have for the past ten years of my life preceding them. Further, in addition to losing weight and strengthening my limbs, I am strengthening those philosopher's sinews: there are mornings when I am tired, and wish to stop early -- but I take command, and I push myself to keep walking. My body tires, and slows down -- I push it to regain its productive pace. My feet ache; I walk through them. Day by day, I strengthen my mind's command over the body: with every step, my will gains mastery: I have learned from Buddha and Epictetus that great results lie in consistently taking the right actions, small as they may be -- just as as a steady supply of water drops eventually fills a pot. It is no accident to that Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus often made allusions to physical training when counseling themselves and others. I found the walk to be a way to practice meditation: indeed, it seems the best way to make it to the end, as when I am meditating I am not mindful of any aches, and the time slips by quickly so that I have gone half and mile and cannot recall walking it. Yet walk it I did, and walk I will continue to do. I am growing in the direction of my ideals: not only growing in my ability to be physically active, but assuming total (mental and physical) command of myself.

* A word I heard from a rabbi named Zelig Pliskin, who teaches mindfulness in a Jewish context and describes it as "the joyful art of taking action".

Saturday Snapshot

2011-09-17T00:53:00.003-05:00

Chelydra serpentina

In February I spotted a snapping turtle wandering through my yard and escorted him across the road and into a field until he had a clear road to the swamp he was plodding his way to with such determination. According to a book on turtles I read back in 2006, the shell of turtles has its origins in the vertebrate rib-cage, though we don't know which half developed first.

I took a series of photographs while following him (at a respective distance), but because of their size I did not post them here. You can view some of them below, though. These were shots I uploaded to share at a web forum when trying to find out the exact species of snapper.

Thumbnails

An Essay on Man

2011-09-16T11:50:00.000-05:00

In lieu of a quotation...some of my favorite verses from Alexander Pope. This is only the first: the second begins, "Go, wondrous creature, mount where Science guides!". I first discovered it in The Ascent of Science.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;
In doubt his mind and body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks to little, or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself, abus'd or disabus'd;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all,
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Science!

2011-09-13T17:00:00.000-05:00

This could be the beginning of a beautiful storm.

The question remains

2011-09-11T07:46:00.002-05:00

I always scowl at the media buildup to September 11th anniversaries, and this year has been especially obnoxious because we heap so much importance on the fact that it has been "ten" years. It seems a national exercise in indulgent attention-seeking and self-pity, instead of solemn or appropriate. But this clip has been..one committed to my memory for five+ years now, and so I share it.

Forgive me if this is more for me than it is for people watching, I'm sorry -- I have to go through this. The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead -- these people are missing and dead, they weren't doing anything wrong, they were going to work, they were traveling, they were doing what they normally do -- as I understand it, and my understanding of this is vague at best, another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings. And we're told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervor... religious fervor... and if you live to be a thousand years old will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense?

Saturday Snapshot

2011-09-10T00:00:00.002-05:00

In part because I want this blog to be more about celebrating the beauty of the human experience, and in part because for a while I've been wanting to share various photographs online, I present..the first in a weekly series of posts which will run from here on out, where I will be posting photographs of buildings, flora, and fauna which I have taken. I live in a historic town (by American standards, anyway: I'm sure there are older pubs in Britain), and have taken many photographs of it during the past few summers. I will be sharing from them as well as taking new pictures in the future.

Apparently other bloggers also post photographs on Saturday, so...I dub this forthcoming series, "Saturday Snapshot".

Hemerocallis

This photograph is of a day-lily: there are a multitude of cultivars popular in my area of the United States. This photograph was taken in June 2010, by me, upon the grounds of the Sturdivant Museum in Selma, Alabama.

Freethought Friday #27: The High Road

2011-09-09T03:11:00.000-05:00

Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899

From "Individuality".

In my judgment, every human being should take a road of his own. Every mind should be true to itself -- should think, investigate and conclude for itself. This is a duty alike incumbent upon pauper and prince. Every soul should repel dictation and tyranny no matter from what source they come -- from earth or heaven from men or gods. Besides, every traveler upon this vast plain should give to every other traveler his best idea as to the road that should be taken. Each is entitled to the honest opinion of all. And there is but one way to get an honest opinion upon any subject whatever. The person giving the opinion must be free from fear. The merchant must not fear to lose his custom, the doctor his practice, nor the preacher his pulpit. There can he no advance without liberty. Suppression of honest inquiry is retrogression, and must end in intellectual night.

Freethought Friday #26: Worth Fighting For

2011-09-02T17:20:00.000-05:00

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

(East of Eden)

Strictly speaking, I don't know anything about John Steinbeck's approach to truth and values. He could have been a skeptic or the devoutest of Christians. Regardless of what he believed, though, what has been quoted is certainly a statement worthy of any healthy individual, and perfectly in line with skeptical values. It has been seen at this blog before, as part of "My Worldview in Quotations".

Freethought Friday #25: The Burden of Proof

2011-08-19T00:00:00.002-05:00

Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970

From "Is There a God?"

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

How TV Ruined Your Life

2011-08-15T11:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I enjoyed a six-part series on the deleterious effects of television by a British comedian, Charlie Booker. The episodes are as follows:

1. "Fear"

In the first episode, Booker takes television to task for its longstanding reliance on stimulating the brain's fear-response centers, beginning with government public safety programs and then moving on to the constant use of violence in drama and the news.

2. "The Life Cycle"

Booker examines the portrayal and targeting of various age groups -- from the depiction of married men as hapless idiots to the way older people are pushed into the periphery.

3. "Aspiration"

Neil Postman, known for Amusing Ourselves to Death, once commented that commercials advocate a way of life and standards of normalcy more than they do actual products. In this third episode, Booker notes the way commercials and some programs (like Dallas) encourage mindless consumerism that keeps people on a hedonic treadmill, forever chasing the carrot and forever failing.

4. "Love"

The depiction of love and romance in movies and in television have given people unreasonable and unhealthy expectations from what to expect of relationships, as they ignore the substance of companionate love and the work of relationships in favor of stories of soul mates meeting and making Big Gestures to impress one another.

5. "Progress"

Here, Booker rages against the notion that people can find everything they want inside a glowing blue green -- from televisions to iPads.

6. "Knowledge"

In this final segment, the host tracks the decline of educational programming from the heights (The Ascent of Man, Civilization), to the gutter -- ghost-hunting shows hunted by idiot celebrities.

Visions of Desire

2011-08-11T19:58:00.000-05:00

When we examine these miraculous claims, the first thing that is obvious is that there are high levels of acculturated content present in what people assert they have experience. No one has any idea what either Jesus or the Virgin Mary actually looked like, since we have no photographs or portraits from the first century. However, we could surmise that the Jesus of Nazareth who lived in the first century was in all probability a brown-skinned Middle Easterner with cropped black hair, standing no more than 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing no more than 120 to 140 pounds. That, at least, describes the norm for males who inhabited that region of the world at Jesus' time in history. Yet if a figure looking like the real Jesus of history appeared to any westerner in a vision, no one would have the slightest idea of who he was, since he would not fit into our culturally created images. The same would be true of the mother of Jesus. Yet in all visions reported by westerners Jesus and Mary are always seen as if they had just stepped out of a medieval portrait with the features and coloring of northern Europeans. Does that fact not suggest that we are the authors of our own visions and that these supernatural phenomena are not objectively real?* It is also a fact that Jesus and his mother seldom if ever appear to people in Hindu or Islamic cultures. High levels of subjectivity, of seeing both what we want to see and what we are programmed to see, color our talk about religiously oriented visions.

p. 50, Jesus for the Non-Religious. John Shelby Spong. * Emphasis added.

Absolutes, Morality, God, and Individuals

2011-08-05T17:45:00.002-05:00

"Without god, everything is permissible."

A common criticism of atheism in my experience is that the nonreligious have no basis for morality given that we reject its supposedly source, god. This is nonsense on multiple levels, given the obvious fact that we humans create moral codes based on our own experiences and desires. A given religious person might accept that we sometimes create moral codes, but deem them still inferior to God's -- for we are fickle creatures of ambition and base desires, and God is the ultimate, the Absolute, whose moral laws are not self-serving but utterly objective. This is a laughable claim, and it destroys itself as soon as the Bible or Koran are opened.

I assume most of my audience is more familiar with the Jewish-Christian bible than the Koran, so I'll use it for an example. In the Bible, God orders people to violate what we consider basic moral laws again and again -- commanding murder, theft, and rape. He does not do this out of necessity, or even reluctance. Indeed, judging from the Hebrew scripture, the thought of setting the Hebrews upon a given city fills him with delight. Today, Christians and Jews hem and haw attempting to make excuses for this barbarity, but the fact remains that if their god were truly Absolute, they wouldn't need to. An Absolute god would be utterly consistent throughout history, and a society built on its laws remarkable for its quality. Such a society would be a shining city upon a hill.

This emergence of quality has not happened. The Hebrews were savages and the Christians no better, aside from some improvements made to the moral zeitgeist (the death of slavery, for instance) as the centuries ticked away. Christianity cannot claim responsibility for these improvements, given that they occurred in other societies. The study of European and middle-eastern history makes it plain that religious societies worship not an absolute god, but traditions and beliefs created by mostly corrupt societies built on power and control. They worship a god, but everything self-serving remains permissible. They may forbid trivial behavior like eating pork, but those hands that pray are never far from being fists that prey. Religion is the stuff of chimpanzees.

There have been remarkable figures throughout history who were attached to this religion or that, but given that these individuals have occurred in multiple religions and outside it altogether, I believe that remarkableness is rooted not in religion, but in the human capacity to rise to magnificence. We have natural empathy which can draw us to help one another, and the reason to see that 'moral' behaviors are better for us to pursue than immoral ones -- and that reason, with will, can help override other natural instincts, like hostility toward outsiders or laziness. All human beings share these attributes, and thus all can rise -- but it seems to me that this magnificence only occurs in a minority of people. Excellence is the mark of an individual, not a society. I think this is because societies tend to encourage passivity -- acceptance of old belief, submission to outside authority -- and thus superior qualities of conscience and strength are not generally encouraged. I do not know all the factors which put a person into the place of pursuing a higher path. For my own part, I am attracted to goodness because throughout my life I have been hurt by the alternative. As Kahlil Gibran noted, I have learned silence from the talkative, kindness from the unkind, and toleration from the intolerant.

Freethought Friday: Freedom and Progress

2011-07-29T08:47:00.001-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899)

From "The Ghosts".

Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the dominion of ghosts he has advanced. Just to the extent that he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation he has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investigated for himself he has lost confidence in superstition.
With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent acquiescence -- it is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the understood -- in the known -- is the act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It ennobles, it does not degrade.

Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a slave; -- that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that governments should be founded and administered by man and for man; that the rights of all are equal; that the powers that be are not ordained by God; that woman is at least the equal of man; that men existed before books; that religion is one of the phases of thought through which the world is passing; that all creeds were made by man; that everything is natural; that a miracle is an impossibility; that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concerning the unknown we are all equally ignorant; that the pew has the right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man is responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that all have a right to think.

True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of the mind there can he no true religion. Without liberty the brain is a dungeon -- the mind a convict. The slave may bow and cringe and crawl. but he cannot adore -- he cannot love.

True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart. True religion is a subordination of the passions to the perceptions of the intellect. True religion is not a theory -- it is a practice. It is not a creed -- it is a life.

A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a place in the human mind.

"Nothing learned, and everything forgotten!"

2011-07-23T23:18:00.000-05:00

"Tragic failures become moral sins only if one should have known better from the outset. In that regard there are two big differences between us and eleventh-century Anasazi Indians: scientific understanding, and literacy. We know, and they didn't know, how to draw graphs that plot sustainable resource population as a function of resource harvesting rate. We can read about all the ecological disasters of the past; the Anasazi couldn't. Yet our generation continues to hunt whales and clear tropical rain forest as if no one had never hunted moas or cleared pinyon-juniper woodlands. The past was still a Golden Age of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful blindness.

From this point of view it's beyond understanding to see modern societies repeating the past's suicidal ecological mismanagment, with much more powerful tools of destruction in the hands of far more people. It's as if we hadn't already run that particular film many times before in human history, and as if we didn't know the inevitable outcome. Shelley's sonnet "Ozymandias" evokes Persepolis, Tikal, and Easter island equally well; perhaps it will someday evoke to others the ruins of our own civilization."

Freethought Friday: Heresy's Grace

2011-07-14T23:52:00.001-05:00

Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899

From "Heretics and Heresies".

Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power. Why should the church pity a man whom her God hates? Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic whom her God will burn in eternal fire? Why should a Christian be better than his God? It is impossible for the imagination to conceive of a greater atrocity than has been perpetrated by the church. Every nerve in the human body capable of pain has been sought out and touched.
Let it be remembered that all churches have persecuted heretics to the fullest extent of their power. Toleration has increased only when and where the power of the church has diminished. From Augustine until now the spirit of the Christians has remained the same. There has been the same intolerance, the same undying hatred of all who think for themselves, and the same determination to crush out of the human brain all knowledge inconsistent with an ignorant creed.
Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation -- not from God -- but from the church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one church, and that church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think or investigate in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no progress.

In Which I Tongue-Talk

2011-07-12T19:42:00.000-05:00

glos·so·la·li·a/ˌgläsəˈlālēə/

Noun: The speaking of unintelligible sounds, esp. in religious worship

Example.

The tongue-talking Pentecostal church claimed me from the moment of my birth until the age of 21, when I declared myself independent. In that time, although I submitted to Pentecostal beliefs, I never had the Pentecostal experience of "feeling god" or speaking in tongues. The latter, tongue-talking, precipitated my exit from the church: I knew without it I was not truly saved, and was thus consigned to Hell. Being threatened with hell-torture year after year nearly broke my spirit, but eventually fear and despair turned to anger, and it was on the basis of that anger that I found freedom. Yesterday, however, I spoke in tongues.

I'd taken my nephew to the park, where together he and I wiled away the hours throwing a frisbee, rolling down a steep hill, sliding, and playing on a swingset. He kept nagging me about the time (being eight), and I grew tired of telling him it every five minutes so I decided to start speaking gibberish instead, in hopes of confusing and distracting him. I realized I could tell my brain to produce sounds in general -- and it did. I spoke nonsense for the better part of a half-hour, responding to his every question with a string of sounds bubbling up from my brain, largely undirected. I had no idea I could do this. I noticed that the sounds were a mix: I heard some pronunciations from Zulu in there, as well as some Chinese intonations. It may be worth noting that my father's "tongues" sound Chinese, and that I listen to the artist Johnny Clegg a great deal and so am familiar with the sounds of sung and spoken Zulu. I noted, too, that some sounds -- like "P-" sounds -- did not come up automatically. I had to send another little order to my brain, "use something with P", and it did. Sometimes I purposely threw in a sound from German (the Ö, in particular).

I played around with this for some time, and realized I could make the gibberish sound real: I sang to myself in nonsense, and I performed epic poetry as though reciting Beowulf. I murmured sad things and shouted exultation This had the effect of mystifying my nephew. I noted, too, that I could surrender control and step on the gas, and the gibberish would flow out increasingly of its own accord as though I had been riding a bicycle, and was now flying downhill and subject to the whims of gravity. Here I had to step in forcefully to stop it.

I imagine that if I attended a Pentecostal service, I can now pass for speaking in tongues. Context is important -- how would I interpret this experience if I started speaking gibberish while "worshipping god"? I did not have to think much to do it, just make the faintest...suggestion.

See that fire in the sky...

2011-07-08T11:04:00.000-05:00

As I write, the space shuttle Atlantis is speeding at 6500 miles per hour through the Earth's atmosphere. Moments ago I watched it launch, using a high-definition feed from NASA. Today marked the last flight of NASA's space shuttle program, and I for one will miss it. I think myself privileged to have grown up in the 1990s, at a time when human spaceflight was an accomplished fact and the future of it seemed bright. I visited space centers and saw the presence of the International Space Station as a comforting promise of a brighter tomorrow -- a tomorrow in which Earth was united and at peace. Shuttle launches were a regular event, so ordinary that the news media largely ignored them except in the case of disasters like Columbia. The destruction of Columbia bothered me: how could I have not known that this ship was taking off from Earth, entering space, docking with a space station, and then landing again? How could such an astounding technical accomplishment go by unremarked by everyone until something went wrong?

Ever since then I have followed the shuttles' launches, sometimes changing my desktop background on the day of an actual shuttle launch. I have also followed the accomplishments of Europe's space program, and to a lesser degree the operations of China, Japan, and Russia. Russia deserves more notice, especially given that their Soyuz craft will be solely responsible for transporting astronauts to the ISS. I've known for some time now that the shuttle program was scheduled to cease in 2010, but took some comfort in the idea that this was necessary to retool the shuttle bays and yards for the next generation of spacecraft. Given the economic downturn, that seems unlikely. I am not distressed, however, for I view the future with a historian's eyes. I know progress is not an unbroken road, that sometimes there are bumps and we must pause to collect ourselves before proceeding. This may be one of those times, but in the decades to come humanity will continue its exploration of the cosmos. In fact, it won't stop even with the loss of the shuttles, for there are other space agencies -- like the European Space Agency, which has landed probes on Titan. I tend to relate to the shuttles more easily, though, given their size and appearance, which spoke to the potential for actual space ships more effectively than probes or the Soyuz craft.

Prometheus, they say, brought God's fire down to man
And we've caught it, tamed it, trained it, since our history began
And now we're going back to heaven, just to look him in the eye
And there's a thunder cross the land, and a fire in the sky

Gagarin was the first, back in 1961, when like Icarus undaunted, he climbed to reach the sun
And he knew he might not make it, for it's never hard to die,
But he lifted off the pad
And rode a fire in the sky

Yet a higher goal was calling, and we vowed we'd reach it soon
And we gave ourselves a decade
To put fire on the moon
And Apollo told the world,
We Can Do It If We Try
There was One Small Step, and a fire in the sky!

I dreamed last night of a little boy's first spaceflight
It turned into me watching a black and white TV
There was a fire in the sky...
I'll remember until I die
A fire in the sky! A fire in the sky!

Then two decades from Gagarin, twenty years to the day
Came a shuttle named Columbia to open up the way
And they say she's just a truck, but she's a truck that's aimin' high
See her big jets burning! See her fire in the sky!

Yet the gods do not give lightly of the powers they have made
And with Challenger and seven, once again the price was paid
Though a nation watched her falling
Yet a world could only cry..
As they passed from us to glory, riding fire in the sky!

Now the rest is up to us,
And there's a future to be one
We must turn our faces outward
We will do what must be done
For no cradle lasts forever,
Every bird must learn to fly
And we're going to the stars, see our fire in the sky!
Yes, we're going to the stars -- see our fire in the sky
I'll remember 'til I die, a fire in the sky....

Skeptical Saturday: The Age of Reason

2011-07-02T20:14:00.000-05:00

This being the weekend prior to Independence Day, I've been reading from Thomas Paine. Today I also read Robert Ingersoll's tribute to Paine, and quote from it below.

Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899

The "Age of Reason" has liberalized us all. It put arguments in the mouths of the people; it put the church on the defensive; it enabled somebody in every village to corner the parson; it made the world wiser, and the church better; it took power from the pulpit and divided it among the pews.
Just in proportion that the human race has advanced, the church has lost power. There is no exception to this rule. No nation ever materially advanced that held strictly to the religion of its founders. No nation ever gave itself wholly to the control of the church without losing its power, its honor, and existence.
Every church pretends to have found the exact truth. This is the end of progress. Why pursue that which you have? Why investigate when you know? Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bullying the enlightened Present.

A Musical History of Ignorance

2011-06-26T18:06:00.000-05:00

What's that big thing in the sky, watching over us?

It must know things that we don't know, we give it all our trust!

I have no food, our caves are bare, life sucks we all agree!

I guess that big thing in the sky is freaking mad at me!

Soooo let's build a fire and kill a goat and burn some virgins too!

And then good luck will come to us, our Sun will see us through!

Recently Neurovore shared this piece with me, a history of ignorance (mythology, astrology, the four humors, spiritualism, red scares, etc) set to a history of music, beginning with a stone age chant and...'progressing' to autotuned homeopathic techno-rap.

Visiting Episcopalians

2011-06-26T14:03:00.000-05:00

Photo taken a few weeks ago.

For a few weeks now I have wanted to attend a morning service at my local Episcopalian church (St. Paul's) for various reasons. It's a beautiful building, and strangely enough part of me wants to associate with it. The Episcopalians I've met have all been so kind, and the church's stances so liberal and progressive, that I thought I might feel at home. I knew it would be an altogether strange experience for me, seeing as the only kind of church service I've ever attended has been Pentecostal.

Also taken a few weeks ago.

I arrived early to ensure I had a parking space, and met one of the rectors in the courtyard, who I recognized from the church website. St. Paul's has two rectors: a bearded man in his late fifties or sixties, and a woman in her forties. I met the man, who represented his tradition well -- being an altogether friendly fellow who sounded like Mr. Rogers and who answered all my questions. After giving me a bulletin, he left to get ready for service. The sanctuary was only then being unlocked, so I was privy to some of the dedicatory ritual.

Photo taken last summer, though my viewfinder was not functioning at the time so it's a bit off-center.

The interior is crossed shaped, the majority of the sanctuary being a great long shaft where the rows of pews are arranged. Beautiful stained-glass windows representing scenes from Jesus' life ran down the walls. The aisle-shaft ends at the entrance doors on one end, and at the altar at another. The altar was made of stone, though covered by cloth, and had a large golden cross upon it. On either side of the cross were candles, which robed individuals solemnly lit as the organ played. Before tending to this, the robed individuals stopped in front of the cross and bowed gently to it.

Also taken last summer.

While the Pentecostal churches I attended in my earlier years consisted of loud, active sound services following by a screaming sermon, the Episcopalians were decidedly more low-key and 'reverent'. As the rector told me, Episcopalians have a liturgical service in which Bible readings, creeds, and prayers (interspersed with hymns played on an organ) are central. The readings and prayers vary from service to service and from season to season, but since they're all from the same Book of Common Prayer, everybody following it will have the same essential service. The sermon, or homily, appears to be prepared to complement the verses and prayers for that day
.
As I sat reading the order of service in my bulletin and attempting to find the readings and such in the Book of Common Prayer people filtered in silently. While a few shook hands with friends, they maintained an atmosphere of reverence. Some stopped before entering their pews to bow gently toward the cross, while others sat and knelt in their pews. Among them was my old history professor, a beloved old retired Marine and professional curmudgeon who reminds me of Mark Twain. I thought him a strict rationalist, so it surprised me to see him enter, take a pew a row or so ahead of me, and kneel. "Bless his cynical old soul," I thought, "Is he praying?"

The service began at ten o'clock, where a procession appeared behind my shoulders singing beautifully. They were all robed: the man in front carried a large golden cross on a pole, and behind him another man held a golden book in his white gloves They sang as they marched up the aisle toward the altar, and I enjoyed the spectacle while keeping a solemn look on my face. The clergy appeared to be dressed in green, and there were other members in the processing wearing white robes and green sashes. It reminded me of university graduation processions, where a man in medieval costume escorts graduates while holding a golden miter proudly in his hands.

The opening service consisted of music (played on an organ, which the audience sometimes sang along with and sometimes didn't), Bible readings, and back-and-forth prayers in which the rector read half of a bible verse or prayer and the congregation read the other. While I looked through the Book of Common Prayer I could not make sense of the table of contents, so I just remained silent throughout the service, sitting and standing on cue by following the lead of others before me. (I messed up once, when we were told to pray: three people on the other side stood up, and I stood up with them -- but the rest of the church entered a kneel, so I swore quietly and found a more prayerful position.) A man from the audience read a passage of the Bible in which Abraham is told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, and nearly does but God sends him a sheep. This is one of my least favorite bible stories: if you have enough faith to kill at God's command, you have too much faith. The cross-and-golden book procession appeared from the altar and moved into the center of the congregation while more prayers were said.

Presently, one of the rectors -- a female, which pleased me -- gave a short sermon or homily on the topic, "Give it Up". This was based off of the earlier lay reading, but she spoke on the acceptance of loss and the need to give up some habits and attachments which diminish us. After this they said a blessing, and some people stood up to leave. I though service was over, but after people talked and shook hands for a few minutes the other rector stood up and I scurried back to my seat. My professor was one of the ones who left, and I realized we were about to go into the Communion part of the service.

After a few more readings and songs (among the ritual, the Nicene Creed and Our Father prayer), they took up offering. I gave a few dollars out of thanks to the Episcopal church for its progressive stances on various things, and my professor -- let's call him Mr. Twain -- reappeared and suggested I fill out a visitor's card. Another procession went up the aisle, this time carrying a golden bowl of purple fluid (wine, I assume) and another dish, which I think might have been the host for Eucharist. I started filling out a card as soon as we sat down, which I think was a mistake because people went utterly silent while the rectors or priests were blessing the communion articles.

Both the professor and the lead rector told me I was welcome to take Communion despite not being Episcopalian, but it seemed inappropriate to me so I decided I would sit in my pew. The itch to see what happened up there overrode that, though. I knew from the rector and a Catholic deacon that I could cross my arms once I got up there and have a blessing said over me instead, so I chose to do that instead.

I stood in line at the altar platform, ascending the steps as the line moved. In front of the altar was a long, golden rail, and a place for people to kneel in front of it. Behind the rail, clergy officials -- the rectors and a few others -- gave pieces of the host, or crackers (this was a very serious moment and I was trying to be respectful, so I didn't ogle much, and couldn't confirm what kind of bread it was) to people who were kneeling. As soon as space cleared up, I carefully knelt down. The female rector came to me, and I crossed my arms as instructed. She asked my name, and I whispered, "Stephen", then played my hands in a prayer position upon the rail as she made the sign of the cross upon my forehead and told me, among other things, that I was a special creation of God. I closed my eyes and bowed my head as seemed appropriate, so I didn't see how the wine was administered to others. I then took my place in the pews again.

After another prayer and song (a prayer which somehow incorporated astronomy and evolution into the Christian story), we began to get ready for dismissal. The cross-and-golden-book procession moved into the back again, singing beautifully as they had done the first time, and soon the grand old doors opened and everyone was coming by to say hello. They were friendly, and afterwards I had lemonade while Mr. Twain gave me a tour of the church's innards.

I promised to come back, and I will. Although I can't say things like the Nicene Creed, I enjoyed witnessing the ceremonies. The people were very friendly, and I'd love to spend more time with my old mentor.

Photo taken last year.

Skeptical Saturday: On Religion

2011-06-25T07:31:00.000-05:00

I was very tired yesterday and forgot (along with running to the bank and accomplishing other errands) to post Freethought Friday. The quotation I am sharing today is from an as-yet unfeatured thinker, though I thought for sure I posted it last week or the week prior. Jawaharlal Nehru helped lead India to independence, becoming its first prime minister -- one who attempted to create in India a secular, democratic, and progressive state. I find much to admire in him. I'd like to quote from his writings directly instead of from Wikiquote, but alas they are out of print and hard to acquire.

(Jawaharlal Nehru, 1889 - 1964)

Organised religion allying itself to theology and often more concerned with its vested interests than with the things of the spirit encourages a temper which is the very opposite of science. It produces narrowness and intolerance, credulity and superstition, emotionalism and irrationalism. It tends to close and limit the mind of man and to produce a temper of a dependent, unfree person. Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, so Voltaire, said ... perhaps that is true, and indeed the mind of man has always been trying to fashion some such mental image or conception which grew with the mind's growth. But there is something also in the reverse proposition: even if God exist, it may be desirable not to look up to Him or to rely upon Him. Too much dependence on supernatural forces may lead, and has often led, to loss of self-reliance in man, and to a blunting of his capacity and creative ability.

Book Review: God is not One

2011-06-24T21:16:00.002-05:00

Back in late 2007, while thinking on what direction this blog might take once I'd hammered out my basic philosophical worldview, I thought about posting movie- and book- reviews on subjects skeptics, humanists, et. al would find of interest. By that time I'd already started a book blog (This Week at the Library), and I decided not to go through with the book reviews here as I assumed it would be redundant. I reconsider almost every time I read a book on religion or skepticism, though, and tonight I've decided to cross-post for the first time. For those who follow TWATL, the review is exactly the same, though future reviews might be somewhat different: I write to a more general crowd over there. I can see editing reviews for an audience I assume to be mostly skeptical here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Rule the World and Why Their Differences Matter

400 pages

Despite the promises of modernity to drive religion out of the human mind, the New York City skyline bears witness to its continuing relevance. While religion can serve as a force for good, it’s a master at nurturing the darker sides of human nature, and the good religions have achieved is often a testament to the moral courage of humans who have fought to push these systems of thought beyond their origins. Some have gone so far as to say that the differences between religions are unimportant, that they are merely different paths up the same broad mountain which arrive at the same place. Stephen Prothero says different. None of this tearing-down-the-walls-that-divide-us nonsense for Prothero, he intends to prove that religions are all rigidly disconnected boxes, and that while we may choose to shake hands with or shake fists at the fellows in the other boxes, we can only do it through tight little windows.

I looked forward to grappling with this book, largely because my own mind is so divided on the subject: while I believe that all religions were created by human beings to understand the world and perhaps to better themselves, I also know that some religions are so defined by their aggressive assertions that they cannot easily find peace with other. I found God is not One to be an unsatisfactory sparring partner, however, being frustratingly simplistic, and ultimately disappointing. In the first eight chapters, Prothero analyzes eight of the the world’s major religion’s through four-points:

a problem
a solution
a technique
an exemplar

He believes each of these religions (Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Yoruba, Taoism, Hinduism) attempts to address one of eight different problems in human nature, and offers eight fundamentally different approaches to life based on that problem. This analysis is entirely too simplistic for the problem at hand, however. While it’s possible to identify characteristics within a religion that make them unique, those characteristics do notconstitute the religion. This eight religions, eight boxes organization ignores the more fundamental similarities religions might have: the constant cycle of life/death/rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, and the hateful split between the material and spiritual worlds that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so keen on convincing us of.

A second problem with this is one Prothero tip-toes around: although the eight religions he identifies here do have many varied differences, they are not necessarily hostile. Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism have all existed in China together for centuries, for instance: they each have different offerings, and people happily sample beliefs and practices from each table, cafeteria-style, arriving at a worldview that meets their needs. Prothero speaks of religions ruling the world like hostile nation-states, but not all religions are as imperialistic (and therefore, conflict-prone) as the dominant forms of Christianity and Islam. The Asian triplets point out the greatest problem with this book, Prothero’s sinister attitude about the relationship between humans and religion. He would have us owned by religion, forced to live within that particular religion’s box. In the beginning, he snorts that attempts at interfaith dialogue which ignore the walls of differences are “disrespectful” of religion. I say poppycock. Why should we be respectful of religion and let it lie like a dusty rug? We should pick it up, bring it into the sunlight, and then beat it vigorously until all the dirt has fallen away and nothing but beauty remains. Why should we, the living, be content to breathe the dust of our ancestors?

Although Prothero’s thesis never grows legs to stand on here, the book may have some use for those interested in learning about other religions. He shows no bias toward one religion over another, though I advise nonreligious readers to steer well clear. He is bizarrely hostile toward humanists and atheists, dedicating an entire chapter to calling the ‘New Atheism’ a religion and its advocates hypocrites and plagiarists. This is stupidity, of course: religions are organized systems of beliefs, while atheism is a single belief -- and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are no more plagiarists for making the same criticisms of religious assertions that Bertrand Russell did than is the second man in the crowd who dared to say the emperor had no clothes on.

I’m ultimately disappointed with this book: while it has its uses for comparative religion readers, there are assuredly superior books out there on that subject. I daresay even The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religion or some similar work would be better. I despise the spirit that sees the integrity of religions as more
important than the good we might do by overcoming our differences.

Related:

The Evolution of God, Robert Wright
A History of God, Karen Armstrong
The Faith Club, Ranya Indliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
The Great Transformation: the Beginnings of our Religious Traditions, Karen Armstrong

Stoic Flowchart

2011-06-15T15:13:00.000-05:00

As spotted in "Epicurus's Photos" on Facebook.

To your health --

2011-06-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

A year or so ago a member of my parents' sect confronted me about my perception of good and evil, believing that the manifest existence of evil proved that God existed on the same reasoning that cold exists as the absence of heat. "An adult raping a little girl -- that's evil, right?", she said. I was reluctant to confirm the existence of "evil", for I knew her perception of it and my own were not the same. Evangelicals or proselytizers intent on converting others force their marks to play by their rules: the most successful ones among their ranks succeed because they have a talent for controlling conversations. I suppose the same strength is an asset to salespeople.

I said that I believed there are things we judge as evil, but that this judgement was not necessarily subjective. Our judgment, I believe, stems from a natural source -- our ability to reason, and an biologically-based ability to perceive "healthy behavior". This conversation took place at the sect's meeting place on mother's day, and while I had come with Plato's Podcasts to read during the preacher's rant, a philosophical conversation with theological elements was not something I'd prepared for. The conversation forced me to think on my feet, but I could not take too long or she would say more and direct the course of the conversation. I liked what I came up with, though: this was the first time to my knowledge that I'd ever described evil behavior as "unhealthy".

As a humanist, my worldview is decidedly naturalistic and the vocabulary I use to discuss the human condition reflects that. I think of personal 'growth', of cultivating goodness within myself and around me as a gardener tends to his blooms, quietly snip-snipping away the weeds that would choke them. Analyzing goodness, or "quality", on the basis of health is simply an extension of this. Healthy behavior is rational and moral: unhealthy behavior is foolish and 'immoral', though I hesitate to use that word in judgment of other people. I think this desire for health, for abundant life, drives higher human impulses to morality and idealism. All my life, I have sought to do "right", yearning for greater civility, decency, and justice. I want both myself and the world in which I live to be better, healthier.

The only solid ground I can find for judging an idea or action's worth is in terms of health: if I pursue this kind of behavior, will I flourish or struggle? When I practice mindfulness, I pay attention to behaviors which seem to be detracting from my quality of life. The same approach applies toward politics: if society adopts this system, how will it fare? I have to balance short-term effects with long-term ones, too, and I note there's always an exchange. I am thus somewhat utilitarian.

This belief in health is also why I do not grow too cynical, why I'm tempted to agree with Martin Luther King Jr. when he quotes, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." -- and with Gandhi, who held faith in the idea that in the end, the ways of truth and justice always prevail, that tyrants always fall. I believe the truth of this lies in the fact that over the long run, only healthy -- rational, moral, 'good' -- behavior is sustainable. Foolish behavior leads to the undoing of the person or state who does it, and societies built upon our baser impulses are doomed to fall. Even if they are not defeated by those they oppress, they will destroy themselves from within through power struggles and the like. Unfortunately, we cannot always choose the wisest path because our choices have unpredictable consequences. All we can ask of ourselves is that we do the best we can and continue to learn from our mistakes.

Freethought Friday #20: Arête

2011-06-10T05:55:00.000-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1830 - 1890)

From "Civil Rights". Bear in mind, this man is condemning segregation in the late 19th century. I believe those who forge their ethics with reason and empathy, who turn their backs on culture as a source of the same, stand tall among the the great mass of people who have lived throughout history. They stand out because their backs are not bent before tradition.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart -- the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

Freethought Friday #19: A Worthy Creed

2011-05-27T08:26:00.000-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1830 - 1890)

From "The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child". r

There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken -- until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom -- until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the death -- until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers -- until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.

In this creed there will but one word -- Liberty. Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon -- remain not forever in the dream of the enthusiast, the philanthropist and poet, but come and make thy home among the children of men!

Draw Muhammad Day, Old-School

2011-05-21T12:35:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was 'Everybody Draw Muhammed' day, an occasion to fight for freedom of speech and spite petty minds all in one stroke. While reading through a collection of art with some commentary last night, I was shocked to see a painting called "Muhammad Placing the Black Stone Upon his Cloak". Though no author was given, the book dates it to 1315. The copyright suggests that the original document is held by the University of Edinburgh. I have not been able to find this painting online, however.

Freethought Friday #18: Depart from the Faith of Your Fathers

2011-05-20T00:06:00.000-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1830 - 1890)

From "Why Am I Agnostic".

Heredity is on the side of superstition. All our ignorance pleads for the old. In most men there is a feeling that their ancestors were exceedingly good and brave and wise, and that in all things pertaining to religion their conclusions should be followed. They believe that their fathers and mothers were of the best, and that that which satisfied them should satisfy their children. With a feeling of reverence they say that the religion of their mother is good enough and pure enough and reasonable enough for them. In this way the love of parents and the reverence for ancestors have unconsciously bribed the reason and put out, or rendered exceedingly dim, the eyes of the mind.
There is a kind of longing in the heart of the old to live and die where their parents lived and died -- a tendency to go back to the homes of their youth. Around the old oak of manhood grow and cling these vines. Yet it will hardly do to say that the religion of my mother is good enough for me, any more than to say the geology or the astronomy or the philosophy of my mother is good enough for me. Every human being is entitled to the best he can obtain; and if there has been the slightest improvement on the religion of the mother, the son is entitled to that improvement, and he should not deprive himself of that advantage by the mistaken idea that he owes it to his mother to perpetuate, in a reverential way, her ignorant mistakes.
If we are to follow the religion of our fathers and mothers, our fathers and mothers should have followed the religion of theirs. Had this been done, there could have been no improvement in the world of thought. The first religion would have been the last, and the child would have died as ignorant as the mother. Progress would have been impossible, and on the graves of ancestors would have been sacrificed the intelligence of mankind.

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T01:58:00.000-05:00

Today in the United States we celebrate the miracle of childbirth and importance of motherhood by buying things. Back during the spring equinox, I watched a series of childbirth videos from various mammals. (It seemed appropriate.) It's certainly an interesting process, more dignified in some animals than in others. The elephants just fell out like large...droppings. I tried to find a video that made human childbirth look beautiful, but the only clips I could find which didn't leave me staring at the screen in horror were those which involved water birth. Out of curiosity, I wondered how chimpanzees managed things, and learned that this one at least tried giving birth while upside down.

A Man in Full

2011-05-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

As a kid I took the future for granted. I assumed that I would grow up, go to college, and find my place, or at least a place, inside society. I grew up in the late eighties and early nineties, though, when the economy was roaring and gas stayed below $1.40, sometimes even dipping below a dollar. Even though my parents were thoroughly working class and didn't have much use for intellectual arts, the world of the intellect and high culture appealed to me. I had no interest in learning a trade, and certainly not my father's vocation of automobile repair. My future didn't involve work coveralls and a day of dirty labor: I would wear clean clothes, have soft, clean hands, and would work in an office somewhere. I thought this was the way things should be for everyone, except for people who wanted to work on cars for whatever unfathomable reason.

That has changed. Part of it, surely, is simply the aging process. That complacency belongs in the mind of a sheltered child, but as we grow older and learn from experience, we realize that the future does not drop into place for us. We have to apply to colleges, apply for jobs -- we have to be active about our futures. But I've also been influenced by my studies these past five years -- freethought, social criticism, Stoicism, anarchism -- and their combined effect in enriching my sense of humanism. I don't mean humanism in the most modern sense, this excellent belief in ethics based on reason and compassion and emphasis on improving and enjoying the here and now. I mean it as in humanitas, as Cicero would have used it -- as the cultivation of the best in myself, in my humanity. I wish to live gloriously -- not to be gloried, but to fulfill in part what I find so wonderful about human potential, to lose myself in the ecstasy of being human.

I can no longer be content playing a normal role in society, in being so dependent on the system. The universe is change, and I want to be quick-footed enough to respond to those changes. I want to be able to roll with the punches that life will surely send my way, to spring up time and again ready to engage. In recent years, and most particularly in the past few months, I have experienced a growing desire to be potent. I want to be capable of doing things. I want to be able to cook, and cook well: I want to be able to repair an automobile, to use weapons, to fix and even create furniture, to effect household repairs, to take care of a garden and create both beauty and food. I'm pretty good at being an intellectual, but I feel as though I have pursued only half my potential up until now. There are a great many people who have the skills I desire, but scorn intellectual liberties. We are both impoverished. I want to be a Renaissance human -- developed intellectually, physically, philosophically, morally -- a man in full.

The Discus Thrower, Myron.

I am enraptured by human potential, by the beauty of action. I want to be self-reliant not only because it's the wise thing to do, but because the idea of self-reliance resonates so strongly with my perception of what humanity is capable of. We're such versatile creatures. While we may admire a cheetah for its speed or a bear for its strength, our hands and brains make us beings of near-unlimited potential. I take pleasure when I explore that potential.

I have a recurring vision of a man in deep emotional distress who has lost everything, but he holds his two hands up before him and weeps. "With these two hands," he cries, "I made all which I lost -- and with these two hands, I shall make it again." I do not know where this image comes from -- whether I read something like it in a book, or if I simply dreamed it up. But I want to be able to say that of my own two hands.

Freethought Friday #17:

2011-05-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

(Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996)

"Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the world with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

I've heard this quotation in a couple of slightly different forms, the variation occurring in the third sentence. This version comes from a video here, shortly after the six-minute mark. The video consists of clips from Cosmos and television interviews in which Sagan lectures on the importance of skepticism and scientific literacy in an increasingly technologically potent world. He also debates economics with Ted Turner and criticizes the US for devoting billions into weapons systems like Star Wars instead of social infrastructure.

May Day

2011-05-01T03:30:00.001-05:00

May Day is an international holiday created to celebrate the accomplishments and trials of the men and women who have, throughout history, made the modern world possible. I celebrate this day not because of my own personal politics, but because of my basic moral outlook. When we celebrate the worker, we celebrate the majority of humanity -- for most of the world belongs to the working class.

On this day, I invite you to consider that most everything you can see and touch around you was created by the labor of another human being not unlike yourself. We live in a world created by one another, and virtually everything in our lives has been touched by the lives of countless men and women across the world. The food you eat, for instance, was planted, tended to, harvested, inspected, cleaned, packaged, transported, unloaded, and stocked in the store by people. We are constantly connected to one another. This is worth being mindful of.

We should also be mindful of the widening gap etween those who create the wealth and those who horde it, between the working poor and the idle rich. It is more present now than at any time in history, for the strength of the few has been increased against the many upon whose backs they are perched. The reasons for this are many, but the solution is the same. We must stand together and work -- organize, protest, and defy. We do not enjoy the civil rights and political liberties that we do because the powerful kings of the past thought it was the right thing to do: we enjoy them because men and women of the past asserted those rights, demanded those liberties. They used the one weapon which can never be taken away -- strength of numbers -- to force reaction. Human progress is the story of courage's advance and tradition's retreat.

While there are many appropriate songs I could share today, the song below has the most meaning for me. Back in 2007, as a self-described social democrat, I searched for 'democratic socialism' out of curiosity. I heard Billy Bragg singing the Internationale, and I listened to it again and again that weekend. It spoke to my humanist morals, to my idealism, and has taken on a powerful significance. Translated throughout the world into various languages, it may be the most sung song in history.

Other suggestions:

1. "Power in a Union", Billy Bragg

2. "Ludlow Massacre", Woody Guthrie

3. "Solidarity Forever", Pete Seeger

4. "The Internationale", Alistar Hulett (traditional English lyrics)

No savior from on high delivers

No faith have we in prince or peer

Our own right hands the chains must shiver

Chains of hatred, greed, and fear.

5. "Internationale 2000", Maxx Klaxon (even more modern lyrics with more of an electronic than a folk sound.)

Turn off their televised illusions

Stand up and look them in the eyes

Declare your mental liberation

Shake off the dust, and claim the prize.

Stand up, O victims of oppression

For the tyrants fear your might

Don't cling so heard to your possessions --

You have nothing if you have no Rights.

Let racist ignorance be ended,

For respect makes the Empires fall

Freedom is merely privilege extended

Unless enjoyed by One and All

So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on

The Internationale unites the world in song!

So comrades, come rally --

For this is the time and place

The International ideal

Unites the human race.

Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9 November 1989

Let no one build walls to divide us,

Walls of hatred nor walls of stone

Come greet the Dawn and stand beside us

We'll live together, or we'll die alone

Earthrise

In our world poisoned by exploitation

Those who have taken, now they must give

And end the vanity of nations --

We've but Earth on which to live

So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on

The Internationale unites the world in song!

So comrades, come rally --

For this is the time and place

The International ideal

Unites the human race.

"Tank Man". Tiananmen Square. 4 June 1989.

And so begins the final drama,

In the streets and in the fields

We stand unbowed before their armor

We defy! their guns and shields

When we fight, provoked by their aggression

Let us be inspired by like and love

For though they offer us concessions,

Change will not come from above!

So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on

The Internationale unites the world in song!

So comrades, come rally --

For this is the time and place

The International ideal

Unites the human race.

Freethought Friday #16: Intellectual Liberty

2011-04-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1830 - 1890)

From "Individuality":

In my judgment, every human being should take a road of his own. Every mind should be true to itself -- should think, investigate and conclude for itself. This is a duty alike incumbent upon pauper and prince. Every soul should repel dictation and tyranny no matter from what source they come -- from earth or heaven from men or gods. Besides, every traveler upon this vast plain should give to every other traveler his best idea as to the road that should be taken. Each is entitled to the honest opinion of all. And there is but one way to get an honest opinion upon any subject whatever. The person giving the opinion must be free from fear. The merchant must not fear to lose his custom, the doctor his practice, nor the preacher his pulpit. There can he no advance without liberty. Suppression of honest inquiry is retrogression, and must end in intellectual night. The tendency of orthodox religion to-day is toward mental slavery and barbarism.

All Is Well

2011-04-28T19:32:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was a dreadful day in my home state of Alabama. Tornado watches and warnings covered the state for most of the day as system after system passed over, spawning hundreds of tornadoes. Tornadoes aren't an altogether unusual phenomenon in the western and southern parts of the US, but they are usually isolated events. Tuscaloosa, home to the University of Alabama, was hardest hit. I watched the news with concern given how many friends of mine attend there, and had to seek shelter myself after dark. (My own county was bypassed, though tornadoes spawned in the counties to our immediate west, east, and north -- and I returned home safe at eleven PM.)

I took shelter in a private house with an attached storm shelter, and spent the evening with a few very religious people watching the news. "And people say there's no god!" said one. I said nothing, seeing no point in trying to argue against someone so easily impressed. A storm system is a great noisy mess of electric math, as natural as an earthquake or a flood.

4-27-11 Tornado Tuscaloosa, Al from Crimson Tide Productions on Vimeo.

Upon seeing this video, however, I could only gasp in awe and murmur, "Magnificent". Though I have lived through a couple of disasters -- an immense flood early in my childhood, and several hurricanes including Hurricane Ivan -- I have never been able to appreciate one quite like this. I have never seen a volcano pluming upwards, or watched a wall of water approaching from the beach. Most disasters are too big, or are too sudden, to be examined in full.

As I read the news to better appreciate the extent of the destruction in the light of day, I saw more comments online and on facebook that claimed this disaster proves God and should encourage people to go to church. This manages to amuse, annoy, and enrage me all at the same time. To think that the ordinary processes of nature are deliberately guided by some deity is rank superstition, and I would hope we are no longer so easily impressed. But there's more to this.

If believers wish to impress us with their deities' power and call yesterday's tornadoes the work of God, they must also accept the consequences of that power. If your God created yesterday's tornadoes, then he or she is Directly Responsible for all the deaths, all the ruin, all the horror, and all the fear yesterday. He is responsible for homeless people, for orphans. He is responsible in the same way that a man who created a robot which then destroyed a town is responsible for the actions of the robot. He made it, he controlled it, and he is a monster for it. And if you tell me that the correct response to your god's tornadoes is to go to church and worship your god, to plead forgiveness, then I may I say as kindly as possible fuck you and your god. If you believe your deity is responsible for yesterday and your response is anything short of "What the fuck, Mr. Deity?" then you are a whipped dog and displaying the same spirit that has kept humanity lowered for centuries, whimpering before tyrants and ignorance. Turn round, bare your teeth, and lunge at the throats of tyrants. Better to be destroyed than pay worship to a monster.

If you are interested in helping the hurt and homeless, there is a link of local charities here. As Robert Ingersoll noted, "hands that help are better than lips that pray".

Atheist Tabernacle Choir

2011-04-26T23:37:00.000-05:00

I recently found this on YouTube. I'm not altogether sure what its intent is, possibly satire, but it amuses me despite the fact that I don't find the idea of mortality depressing in the least. I have always considered the finality of death to be appropriate, and something that makes life all the more sweeter to enjoy.

If you don't believe in God, clap your hands!
If you don't trust the lord, clap your hands!
if you reject the possibility of a deity, then clap your hands!
And join the Atheist Tabernacle Choir!

We're not going to cross that... Jordan River!
It don't even exist, that...Jordan River!
To be honest, it's an outmoded religious metaphor,
That Jordan river, yes
We're the Atheist Tabernacle Choir!

Sing six feet deep, that's where I'm goin'
Six feet deep, no after-livin'
Six feet deep, yup it's depressin'

We're not going to reach the...Promised land!
There's no such thing as the....Promised land!
It's a cynical notion dreamed up by priests in collaboration with landed interests in order to subjugate the masses, that...Promised Land!
It's the Atheist Tabernacle Choir!

Sing, in a wooden box! That's where I'm headin'!
A wooden box! Forever deaden!
A wooden box! No resurrectin'!
A wooden box! Yep, it's depressing

If you believe in nothing, sing out loud!
If you think it's a cobblers, sing out loud!
If you find the whole idea of personal freedom circumscribed by the seemingly-arbitrary activities of a supreme being, then! ...sing out loud!
(And join the Church of England!)
Or the Atheist Tabernacle Choir....

Not Halleuluah!
Don't praise the lord!

Easter with Pentecostals

2011-04-25T00:59:00.002-05:00

On Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate the gospel story of Jesus rising from the dead, to them a symbol of the triumph of God over sin and the grave. I would think this result a foregone conclusion, but then I have never been troubled by sin nor made afraid by death, so I never connected emotionally to a lot of the Christian experience. I usually visit my parents' church once or twice a year as a favor or a kindness, and while this was surreal at first I'm getting used to my annual experience as a wolf among sheep. I never look forward to it, though, and not because the noise level and beliefs are so obnoxious: it's the personal element, the fact that in their eye I am a backslider, a lost sheep, a reprobate.

Although I have never talked with anyone there about my nonreligious status -- as far as they SHOULD know, I attended faithfully until I moved away to college, then didn't return -- I have been the subject of much gossip, and so everyone seems to know my business. I find their presumption more amusing than insulting, though. I am fascinated by the emotions which play over people's faces as they see me: sincere happiness in some, generic christian lovebombing in others, and in some...honest uncomfortableness. This is the first year I have witnessed people seeming uncomfortable in my presence: I am not altogether sure why. I only minded it in one instance, when the pastor's youngest daughter (in her early twenties) said hello to me and seemed...sad. Her reaction is one of the few I would trust, because I remember her fondly: once, during a long winter's walk during a youth function, she walked with me so that in my ambling pace I would not walk alone. I thought it kind, and have regarded her more warmly ever since. She could've just been distracted by having to take care of a score of little children, though.

I endured the service with my usual aplomb, sitting outside in the foyer to mitigate the noise. I was joined at first by my favorite Sunday school teacher, a man who ignored the standard lesson texts and instead taught on issues that mattered to teens -- like depression. I actually used some of his notes in a high school mental health paper. He was dressed in silvery robes and a purple sash, waiting to perform in a special presentation and smiling uncomfortably. I came late to avoid some of the noise, but Pentecostal worship services are as lengthy as they are loud. People alternate between singing choruses again and again and yelling at God, working their emotions ("feeling god") until they start running around in circles, rolling on the floors, spasming in the aisles, or enjoying other such merriment. I just sip my coffee, read from a Catholic bible (appropriate, yet subversive), and listen to jazz and Symphony of Science music on my discrete little mp3 player.

Things get more interesting after service. My sister (also ex-Pentecostal, but far less hostile to it than me) bails early because as usual, the preacher is failing to observe any kind of time limit or courtesy. The clock is drawing close to one PM, he keeps insisting he's coming to a close and yet never ties thingss up. This is not unusual: Pentecostal preachers only use their notes as a starting point. "Led by God", or in reality worked up by emotions and talking about anything that comes into mind, they ramble for minutes on end and deviate further and further from the original point. The original point was, I assume, some variation on his usual Easter message of the power of resurrection, but I tuned him out after he started yelling about how glad he was not to worship a dead god like the Hindus, Buddhists, and everyone else. I ran an errand for the elderly church secretary, who needs to take a message upstairs: I haven't been upstairs since 2007, since I handed over the keys to the soundroom to my successor and started spending services in a locked classroom reading books like The Stand and the Harry Potter novels. (I noted that the soundroom has a computer now: it's a good thing they didn't have that in there during my five-year stint as a soundman, or I would have never gotten any reading done!)

After the preacher stopped, people started exiting the auditorium. I quietly tucked in my mp3 player and put my Catholic book in the car and took to watching wasps. Three people came up to me: the oldest deacon, who commented that once a year isn't enough for church (I responded amiably with "Why, I came twice last year!"); my best friend from my Pentecostal days, who I would talk with more after he'd seen to a couple of administrative duties (he's an assistant or associate pastor there now), and the senior deacon's wife. This was by far the most uncomfortable interaction.

The senior deacon's wife is an elderly lady, very aggressive and fulfilling most negative stereotypes about church ladies. While I was raised to regard her as an elderly aunt figure, the older I got the less I liked her, and the more guilty I felt for not thinking on her kindly, because she is an elderly woman and hostility seems...uncouth. She said she wanted to talk to me away from the others, and proceeded to tell me how she'd been raised in the church and decided to rebel against it, hurt by it. She told me she'd broken all the commandments, all of them, and that I could not imagine how bad she was. (I couldn't. The best I could come up with was her sitting on a Harley firing a shotgun at pursuing police and cackling madly. I have no idea what shenanigans she was up in her youth. I like to think she ran bootleg liquor during Prohibition and rode shotgun in the literal sense of the word, though.)

This was an intensely uncomfortable experience. When she started out by telling me she knew how it was to feel hurt by the church, I had a moment of weakness and almost felt a tear, which irritated me and so I secured things properly. The reason I have had to develop emotional control is that I'm so easily manipulated by emotions. My resulting face would have been neutral and wary, which I felt was inappropriately defensive, so I tried to convey...sincere and thankful, yet cautious, attention. This was not a facade, but a spirit I tried to channel. She told me of how she raised her children outside of Pentecost, and how they'd all gone bad, and expressed how worried she was for me and her hope that I would return. I wanted to pat on her on the shoulder and say "All will be well," because I do feel that way. I was..quite relieved she shot her bolt and went away. I still feel like an ass for not being more emotionally...responsive, but it's not like she knows me, and despite being an elderly lady who is supposed to inspire "Aww, Grandma" feelings, she makes me feel "Ahh, mean church lady!".

Usually I leave from these visits right after seeing my parents, but today I stood around to see what our lunch plans were. I wound up talking to my former best friend some more. He used to be this skinny, tall kid -- and now he has muscles and a bit of a paunch, so he looks like an actual adult. Standing next to him makes me think of how the years are passing, and I think on the fact that most everyone in our youth group is now married -- with the excepts of myself and another 'lost child -- and that several of us have kids now. I help him unload some stuff from his car, and we carry it upstairs while talking, and I remember how much I miss this. Growing up as teens, we never really had much in common aside from church, and so in 2005-2006 we grew apart as he became a pastor and I became a Humanist. I've been trying for months now to get together with him, because I do miss his company and now as adults we can do more stuff. Used to we'd just hang out at a gas station cafe drinking coffee and talking about church and girls, but now we're adults! We can sit around and play the X-box all day without parents telling us we have school tomorrow. I ask him if he's off work anytime this week, and we arrange a lunch date for next Monday. That'll be interesting. When I'm about to leave, he says he'll see me tonight -- meaning, he expects to see me in church -- and I try to laugh it off.

Do I miss being Pentecostal? No. But I do miss some of my friends from this church, and I do miss that old sense of belonging here. I'm wary, though, because in five years as an ex-pentecostal and an ex-christian, I've seen people bolt free of tradition only to be lured back in because it's where their friends are...because they can't shake off the ghosts of the past. Given my hostility toward Pentecostalism, though, and my savvy when it comes to emotions playing tricks on my mind, I think I'm safe -- which is why, when I left the church and slipped in my earbuds, I laughed to hear the song playing: First Aid Kit's "You're Not Coming Home Tonight", a song about a woman who leaves an abusive relationship of her own accord and never looks back.

You just took the train, and you left without a wave
Figured he'd never let you leave, anyway
And now you're sitting on the train, seeing life in a new way
And every forest sings a song...

Bernard Cornwell on Thinking for One's Self

2011-04-23T00:22:00.002-05:00

Increasingly, one of my favorite authors is Bernard Cornwell, creator of several historical fiction series and a scattering of standalone novels. He boasts many strengths, among them irreverence toward politics and religion. I often search YouTube for interviews with authors I enjoy reading, and tonight I found this commencement address with message that will be appreciated by the kind of people whom I assume constitute this blog's audience. A partial transcription follows: I omitted some asides and (regrettably) a somewhat humorous but lengthy aside in the interests of reducing the 'wall of text' as much as possible.

"I asked those same friends, and I said -- 'You all graduated, some of you a long time ago; what advice did you get at your graduation?' Eighty-seven percent could not remember. They had absolutely no idea, which suggests that my presence here is as of much use as an ashtray on a motorbike, but -- we have to push on, don't we? [...] "But anyway, I thought to give you useful advice. Something really concrete, something that will keep you out of trouble -- something that will really stand you in good stead. Never play poker with a man called 'Doc'. It works! But my wife, who knows about these things, tell me I have got to be more useful than that. I've got to 'uplift you', she says, and so I shall try.

It's quite possible that one of this graduating class will fail; you'll become a politician. And maybe what you have learned here will equip you to such an extent that you'll become President of the United States. I hope when that happens she will come back to Emerson College, but even if she does, or whatever you do, whatever success you have -- I wish you all success - -whatever dreams you have that come true, none of that is going to guarantee your happiness. Success doesn't guarantee happiness. Selling thirty-seven million books doesn't guarantee happiness. It helps! -- but it doesn't guarantee it.

What will guarantee your happiness is that you think for yourselves, and become decent, honorable people. And that's my second piece of advice, the one you're going to forget -- think for yourself. Think for a moment what people have believed in the past. Astrology was reckoned to control our fates! -- some people still believe that. [...] In the 12th century, they thought that celery was poisonous! (I think that may well be true; I'm not sure...) We all know that Galileo -- what trouble he incurred when he suggested that the Earth went round the sun and not the other way around: did you also know that Murillo, the painter, was arrested by the Inquisition for daring to suggest that the Madonna had toes? In the 19th century, at the beginning, it was believed that traveling greater than 30 miles per hour could be dangerous to your health; it could even kill you! ...I must say the Chatham police on Cape Cod still believe that.

Less than a hundred years ago, a textbook that was widely used in colleges throughout the United States and for all I know, Europe, too...it was called Applied Eugenics. It sold hundreds of thousands. It claimed that educating girls at college was tending towards 'race suicide'. And why? I want you to listen to this, girls. 'Many a college girl of the finest innate qualities, who sincerely desires to enter matrimony, is unable to find a husband of her own class, simply because she has been rendered so cold and so unattractive, so overstuffed intellectually, and starved emotionally, that a typical man does not wish to spend the rest of his life in her company. "

And if you think that eugenics was a crank science, that people didn't really believe in it, then consider that in 1927, the Supreme Court of the United States by a vote of eight to one, found it constitutional to sterilize people who were deemed mentally subnormal. In the name of eugenics. We have held beliefs -- I don't need to tell you of the more egregious ones -- but we have all been guilty. We have all held beliefs we assumed were true. Your job is to challenge everything, to think for yourself. All those ideas and thousands more were preposterous, were reprehensible -- they were not held because our ancestors were evil. Women were not burned as witches because man is intrinsically bad, but because man wanted to do good. Those ideas were the accepted ideas of their times, and all I am trying to suggest to you is, think for yourself. Think for yourself. I don't care what your opinion is, but think it through. [...]

I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to advice -- you should listen to advice! [...] Listen to advice, but think for yourself. There are horrible dangers out there -- there are even....lawyers waiting for you. Well done, all of you. Really, well done. You've been to one of the great colleges in one of the most blessed states in what is certainly the most blessed country in the world; you are well-launched. I leave you with this advice from somebody who knew how to give it: "This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!"* Thank you; good luck.

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* http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=1&Scene=3&Scope=scene

Freethought Friday #15: Non Serviam

2011-04-21T11:41:00.000-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1830 - 1890)

From "Individuality":

The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness. Tyranny likes courtiers, flatterers, followers, fawners, and superstition wants believers, disciples, zealots, hypocrites, and subscribers. The church demands worship -- the very thing that man should give to no being, human or divine. To worship another is to degrade yourself. Worship is awe and dread and vague fear and blind hope. It is the spirit of worship that elevates the one and degrades the many; that builds palaces for robbers, erects monuments to crime, and forges manacles even for its own hands. The spirit of worship is the spirit of tyranny. The worshiper always regrets that he is not the worshiped. We should all remember that the intellect has no knees, and that whatever the attitude of the body may be, the brave soul is always found erect. Whoever worships, abdicates. Whoever believes at the command of power, tramples his own individuality beneath his feet, and voluntarily robs himself of all that renders man superior to the brute.

Freethought Friday #14 An Unholy Bible

2011-04-08T13:59:00.000-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1830 - 1890)

From "Orthodoxy"

If the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which side would he have taken? Let every minister answer. If you knew the devil had written a work on human slavery, in your judgment, would he uphold slavery, or denounce it? Would you regard it as any evidence that he ever wrote it, if it upheld slavery? And yet, here you have a work upholding slavery, and you say that it was written by an infinitely good God! If the devil upheld polygamy, would you be surprised? If the devil wanted to kill men for differing with him would you be astonished? If the devil told a man to kill his wife, would you be shocked? And yet, you say, that is exactly what God did. If there be a God, then that creed is blasphemy. That creed is a libel upon him who sits on heaven's throne.

Freethought Friday #13: Loving...God?

2011-03-25T13:41:00.003-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1830 - 1890)

From "Orthodoxy":

I do not believe that anybody ever did love God, because nobody ever knew anything about him. We love each other. We love something that we know. We love something that our experience tells us is good and great and beautiful. We cannot by any possibility love the unknown. We can love truth, because truth adds to human happiness. We can love justice, because it preserves human joy. We can love charity. We can love every form of goodness that we know, or of which we can conceive, but we cannot love the infinitely unknown. And how can we be made in the image of something that has neither body, parts, nor passions?

Freethought Friday #12: The Measure of Wealth

2011-03-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1890)

From "The Liberty of All".

Some people tell me, "Your doctrine about loving, and wives, and all that, is splendid for the rich, but it won't do for the poor." I tell you to-night there is more love in the homes of the poor than in the palaces of the rich. The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. That is my doctrine! You cannot be so poor that you cannot help somebody. Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; and love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent to borrower and lender both. Do not tell me that you have got to be rich! We have a false standard of greatness in the United States. We think here that a man must be great, that he must be notorious; that he must be extremely wealthy, or that his name must be upon the putrid lips of rumor. It is all a mistake. It is not necessary to be rich or to be great, or to be powerful, to be happy. The happy man is the successful man.

Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. Joy is wealth.

The Collected Sins of Jehovah (Part 2)

2011-03-10T08:55:00.000-06:00

The Collected Sins of Jehovah in Exodus

29. After encouraging the Hebrews to settle in Egypt, allows them to be subjugated by the Egyptians rather than warning them to exit beforehand. (Exodus 1: 8-22)
30. Threatens to smite Egypt's people with plagues if their king does not allow the Hebrews to go, knowing full well the king won't. (3: 19-23)
31. Plans to let the Hebrews sack Egypt whenever they finally do exit. (3:22)
32. Encourages Moses to do magic tricks as a means of impressing the Pharaoh with letting the Hebrews leave. (Chapter 4)
33. Tried to kill Moses to force him into keeping Abraham's oath of genital mutilation. (4:24)
34. Decides to "harden Pharaoh's heart" and make him refuse to let the Hebrews go. (7:3-4)
34. Plans to assault Egypt as a whole for the 'crimes' of a single individual. (7:4)
35. Turns the life-giving river of Egypt into blood, killing multitudes of fish and assumedly destroying much agriculture in addition to denying the Egyptians water for drinking or hygiene purposes. The many are assaulted for the crimes of the one. (7: 17-18; 19-22)
36. Plagued the people of Egypt with frogs, frogs, everywhere -- climbing constantly upon them and infesting their homes. (8: 1-7)
37.Killed all the frogs after Pharaoh pleaded for a pardon: allowed the stench of decay to cover the land, again attacking the many for the crimes of one. (8: 13-14)
38. Assaulted the people of Egypt with a multitude of lice, punishing the people and animals of Egypt for the crimes of one man. (8: 16-19)
39. Plagued the land nd people of Egypt with swarms of flies. (8:24)
40. Killed all the livestock of Egypt to punish Pharoah, which would have led to mass starvation and a completely inability to do work -- assuming the crops had not all died after being drenched by blood. (9: 1-7)
41. Sent boils to pain all the people of Egypt for the crimes of a single man. (9: 11-13)
42. Violated Pharaoh's free will by making him stubborn, refusing to let the Hebrews go. (9:12)
43. Attacked the people and land of Egypt with hailstorms to destroy crops and kill all those who were outside. Again, mass punishment for the crimes of one man. (9: 14-26)
44: Violates Pharoah's free will again, just so he can keep attacking Egypt with plagues. (10:1)
45. Sends locusts to eat up what crops haven't been killed by blood and destroyed by hail, thus ensuring starvation among the masses for the crimes of one man. (10: 12-15)
46. Though Pharaoh continually repents and begs pardon, God continually violates his free will and makes Pharaoh stubborn once more so that he might continue to assault the people. (10:20)
47. Actively murders a child from every household in Egypt to punish one man. (And this Jews celebrate with their "Passover", because God so graciously refrained from murdering their children.) Genesis 12: 29-33
48. Instituted a passover festival to celebrate his murder and selective mercy. (12: 1-24)
49. Allowed the Hebrews to steal from the Egyptians -- whose food had been destroyed, whose crops had been eaten up, whose homes had been filled with rotting frogs, whose bodies had been tortured by boils and lice, whose children had been cold-bloodedly murdered. (12: 35-36)
50.Claims dibs on every Hebrew household's firstborn child and animals. (13:1)
51. Violates Pharaoh's free will and makes the poor bastard decide to chase the Hebrews down. (14:4)
52: Murders Pharaoh and all those he forced to serve him in this great chase. (14: 26-28)
53. Decides to eradicate the Amalek clan and all their descendants because a few warriors harassed the Hebrews at a drinking-hole. (17: 13-16)
54. Issues a list of Commandments, most of which are self-serving. In addition, a few others -- laws against theft and murder -- have already been violated by God and by the Hebrews at his command. They are thus founded in hypocrisy and useless. (20: 1-7)
55. Sanctions slavery and emotional blackmail. (21: 1-6)
56. Sanctions perpetual female slavery. (21: 7)
57. Orders death for:
- assault ending in death
- (58) regular ol' murder
- (59) patricide
- (60) theft of persons and the sale of such person into slavery
- (61) "cursing one's father or mother") (21: 12-18)
62. Says beating slaves is A-OK, so long as they don't die within two days. (21: 20-21)
63. Establishes hypocritical justice, in which servants' lives do not count for much. (21: 23-27)
64. Orders death for animals which gore human beings. (21: 28)
65. Orders marriage if a young woman is seduced having sex with a man. (22: 16)
66. Orders the murder of 'witches'. (22:18)
67: Makes Jehovah-worship the ONLY worship by ordering the death of anyone who sacrifices to another god. (22:20)
68. Orders sacrifice of fruit and animals to himself. (22:29)
69. Plans the genocide of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites. (23: 23)
70. Imposes a flat tax on the rich and poor for the upkeeping of the temple, which is unjust given that the poor have so little. (30:15)
71. Orders the murder of three thousand men for daring to worship a golden calf. (32: 27-28)
72. Sends a plague upon the people for the golden-calf worship, mass murder apparently not being sufficient. (32: 35)
73. Decides to punish families for 4 generations if one man annoys him. (34: 6-7)
74. Orders Hebrews to destroy other tribes' religious centers. (34: 13)

The Collected Sins of Jehovah (Part 1)

2011-03-08T20:54:00.002-06:00

Though the Judeo-Christian god is touted as being endlessly good and virtuous beyond corruption, those who have read the Bible know better. I was raised to be familiar with all of the 'Old Testament', not just the Christian standbys -- and so I am well acquainted with the many grievous actions this biblical character has perpetuated. I've decided to go through an old copy of the King James version, line by line, and log all this creature's misdeeds as a reference. Because the Bible is such a large collection of books, and its principle character so busy, I will be doing this on a book-by-book basis. I will give very little quarter to the accused. Murder, slavery, and oppression are not acceptable.

I am starting with Genesis, which contains the Hebrew creation stories and some of their early historical legends.

The Collected Sins of Jehovah in Genesis

1. Created a single human being with little knowledge or experience, then set him up to fail (Genesis 2: 16-17)

2. Created females expressly to be subordinate to males. (Genesis 2:20 - 25)

3. Created a talking snake knowing it would act to deceive the ignorant, inexperienced humans. (Genesis 3:1)

4. Made the splendor of childbirth sorrowful and expressly painful (and assumedly, dangerous). (Genesis 3: 16)

5. Forced women to be subordinate to men. (3:16)

6. Forced men to dishonor themselves by assuming lordship over women. (3:16)

7. Forced Adam to become a tiller of the soil without any previous experience, to contend with drought and pestilence as well as overbearingly hard work. (3:18)

8. Allowed or asked Adam's sons to surrender some of the products of their toil, even though their lives were already hard enough. (4:3)

9. Expressed a preference for a gift that required pain and death. (Genes 4:4)

10. Allowed his "sons" to bed mortal women, with no thought given to how difficult it would be for human males to meet the moral women's now-increased expectations. Irresponsible much? (6:2)

11. Decided to murder the entire population of earth because their behavior bothered him. (6:5)

12: Showed favoritism to one man's family, even though he could have tried to teach people to behave better rather than kill them. (6:8 - onward)

13. Murdered every living thing on the planet, including countless animals which had done nothing untoward, as well as many children, babies, and other helpless innocents. (Genesis 7)

14. Allowed Noah to destroy some of the few animals preserved from his murder as an offering. (8:20)

15. Was pleased at the smell of murder. (8:21)

16. Ordered Noah and his descendants to be carnivores. (9:3)

17. Hypocritically determines that murder is bad even though his bodycount already exceeds that of Hitler's. (9:5)

18. Joins Noah in condemning one of Noah's sons and his descendants to slavery. (9:25-27)

19. Attacked Egypt with 'great plagues' after the Pharoah developed the hots for Abraham's "sister" and asked for her hand in marriage. Abraham lied to Pharaoh about his "sister", for she was truly his WIFE. (12:17)

20. Orders genital mutilation as a sign of fealty. (17:11)

21. Decides to destroy the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah and murder everyone inside for being 'exceedingly wicked'. Again, no warning. He's like a guy with road-rage who decides to fire a shotgun at anyone who annoys him. (18:20)

22. Shows favoritism by warning only a relative of Abraham about the planned mass murder. (19: 1 -- onward)

22: Destroys the aforementioned towns and murders most everyone inside with fire. Such a pleasant way to deal with those who displease you -- burn them alive. (19: 24)

23: Kills Lot's wife for daring to look back at her adopted home. (19: 26)

24. Threatens Abimelech for lusting after Abraham's wife, even though Abraham was lying about her being his sister and not his wife (again). Abimelech gives a great deal of tribute to Abraham in repentance. (20 -- onward.)

25. Made all of Abimelech's women barren for lusting after Abraham's wife. (20:18)

26. Ordered Abraham to butcher his own son as an act of fealty, despite knowing in advance Abraham's zealous faithfulness. Did not back-hand Abraham for agreeing to butcher said son. (22 -- onward)

27. Murders two men for ambiguous crimes, one of which was "pulling out". (38: 2 - 10)

28. Encouraged Joseph and his brothers (descendants of Abraham) to populate Egypt, knowing they would be enslaved later on. (46:4)

Freethought Friday #11: Church and State

2011-03-04T00:00:00.005-06:00

(Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826.)

From "Report on the Commissioners for the University of Virginia", quoted in The Portable Thomas Jefferson.

This doctrine ['that the condition of man cannot be ameliorated, that what has been must ever be, and that to secure ourselves where we are we must tread with awful reverence in the footsteps of our fathers'] is the genuine fruit of the alliance between Church and State, the tenants of which finding themselves but too well in their present condition, oppose all advances which might unmask their usurpations and monopolies of honors, wealth and power, and fear every change as endangering the comforts they now hold."

I paused before including Jefferson here: though certainly one of history's more commendable figures and notable for rejecting orthodoxy, I don't know much of a 'freethinker' he was. It seems he's worthy of honorary membership at the very least. He's one of my two favorite founding fathers, the other being Benjamin Franklin.

Freethought Friday #10: Strength in Freedom

2011-02-25T02:53:00.000-06:00

(Technically, this was supposed to have been #11. I scheduled a quotation from Thomas Jefferson last week, but I saved it as a draft while looking for an appropriate portrait and forgot that the post wasn't actually submitted.)

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1890)

From "The Truth".

The world must think. Speech must be free. The world must learn that credulity is not a virtue and that no question is settled until reason is fully satisfied.

By these means man will overcome many of the obstructions of nature. He will cure or avoid many diseases. He will lessen pain. He will lengthen, ennoble and enrich life. In every direction he will increase his power. He will satisfy his wants, gratify his tastes. He will put roof and raiment, food and fuel, home and happiness within the reach of all.

He will drive want and crime from the world. He will destroy the serpents of fear, the monsters of superstition. He will become intelligent and free, honest and serene.

The monarch of the skies will be dethroned -- the flames of hell will be extinguished. Pious beggars will become honest and useful men. Hypocrisy will collect no tolls from fear, lies will not be regarded as sacred, this life will not be sacrificed for another, human beings will love each other instead of gods, men will do right, not for the sake of reward in some other world, but for the sake of happiness here. Man will find that Nature is the only revelation, and that he, by his own efforts, must learn to read the stories told by star and cloud, by rock and soil, by sea and stream, by rain and fire, by plant and flower, by life in all its curious forms, and all the things and forces of the world.

Despair, Ye Mighty

2011-02-22T13:38:00.000-06:00

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818. "Ozymandias".)

Elementary, My Dear Watson...

2011-02-18T14:13:00.002-06:00

After hearing that a supercomputer named Watson beat two of Jeopardy!'s champions, I turned to YouTube to look for footage of the show and found instead this PBS Newshour story that focuses on how Watson's software, a new approach in "machine learning", allows it to understand human speech.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reporter Miles O'Brien: It amazed me how Watson gets all the jokes, wordplay, and puns that are hallmarks of Jeopardy! -- and Watson gets smarter with each answer.
David Ferrucci, lead designer: It learns, based on the right answers, how to adjust its interpretations. And now, from not being confident, it starts to get more confident in the right answers, and then it can truly jump in.
O'Brien: So, Watson surprises you?
Ferrucci: Oh, yeah, absolutely! In fact, people say, "Oh, why did he get that one wrong?" I don't know. "Why did he get that one right?" I don't know.
O'Brien: Computers that learn, understand, and even surprise us? What could go wrong with that?

...
"Hello, Hal, do you read me? Do you read me, Hal?"
"Affirmative, Dave. I read you."
"Hal, open the pod bay doors, please, Hal."
"I'm sorry, Dave; I can't do that."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I did finally find coverage of the match, though. First part is here. The first part of the challenge has Trebek showing the audience footage of his visit to the computer.

The 21st century will be a very interesting one, I think.

Isaac Asimov on Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T08:59:00.002-06:00

Last year I chanced to read an essay by famed author and humanist Isaac Asimov about Valentine's Day around the appropriate date and decided to share portions of it. I'm reposting it now, because frankly, Lupercalia is too much fun to ignore.

-------------------

The essay begins with Asimov explaining the etymology of Valentine:

The Latin word valere means "to be strong", and from it we get such words as "valiant" and "valor", since one expects a strong person to be brave. We also get words such as "value" and "valid", since strength can refer not only to muscular power but also to something that finds its strength in being worth a great deal or in being true. In naming children, we can make use of words that imply the kind of character or virtue that we hope to find or instill in him or her. [...] The ancient Romans, by the same reasoning, might use the name "Valens", which means "strength". By the irony of history, such a name became particularly popular in the latter days of the Empire, when Rome had grown weak.

He then introduces a Roman emperor named Valens, a poor general who died while fighting the Goths at Adrianople. Valens had a brother who held the diminutive form of the name, "Valentiniatus". This diminutive form was popular, and is now shortened by English-speaking people to "Valentine". One martyr of the Catholic church, his feast day being 14 February, was St. Valentine. Having said all this, Asimov turns to the Roman holiday of Lupercalia -- celebrated on 15 February.

The ancient Romans had a holy spot where (according to legend) the wolf had suckled the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, the former of whom eventually founded Rome. The spot was called "the Lupercal", from the Latin word lupus, meaning "wolf".

On that spot, every February 15, there was a festival held called the Lupercalia, during which animals were sacrificed. Thongs were prepared from the bloody strips of animal hide, and priests ran through the crowd striking out with those thongs. Those who were struck were considered to be cured of sterility. Naturally, those who wanted children flocked to the festival. Afterwards, I imagine, they engaged in those activities that were expecting to give rise to children -- striking while the iron was hot, so to speak. Consequently, the lupercalian festivities were associated with love and sex.

In 494, Pope Gelasius I forbade this pagan festival, but that sort of thing does no good. The festival simply continues under another name. For example, the celebration of the winter solstice was forbidden, but it still continues with almost all the pagan customs of the ancient Romans -- under the name of "Christmas". To the celebration of the vernal equinox was added the Christian feast of the resurrection, which became "Easter", and so on.

The Lupercalian festival of February 15 simply became St. Valentine's Day of February 14. Legends arose later to the effect that St. Valentine had been kindly to lovers, but that is undoubtedly just a cover for the good old fertility rites that have always been popular (and, I strongly suspect, always will be).

He ends the essay by commenting on the trivialization of the holiday by the greeting card industry. You can find the full essay in The Tyrannosaurus Prescription by Asimov, or in the forward to Fourteen Vicious Valentines.

Spock Thoughts

2011-02-11T12:05:00.000-06:00

Last night while listening to an eclectic group of recordings by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (including straight-to-campy covers of various songs, a few original novelty songs, and oddly enough Shatner reciting Shakespeare with GREAT! enthusiasm!), I heard a piece I'd always somehow missed: Leonard Nimoy reading a collection of aphorisms that sounded as thought they were pulled from Seneca's letters. I found out this morning that Nimoy read from a poem called "Desiderata", originally published in 1927 by Max Ehrmann.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain or bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many Small textInsert non-formatted text herepersons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be careful.

Strive to be happy.

Freethought Friday #9: The Paradox of Wealth

2011-02-11T01:16:00.000-06:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1890)

Usually I share a quotation regarding skepticism, 'the good life', or other such things...but tonight a bit of societal observation from "A Lay Sermon" caught my eye.

And now there is another trouble. Just as life becomes complex and as everyone is trying to accomplish certain objects, all the ingenuity of the brain is at work to get there by a shorter way, and, in consequence, this has become an age of invention. Myriads of machines have been invented -- every one of them to save labor. If these machines helped the laborer, what a blessing they would be! But the laborer does not own the machine; the machine owns him. That is the trouble. In the olden time, when I was a boy, even, you know how it was in the little towns. There was a shoemaker -- two of them -- a tailor or two, a blacksmith, a wheelwright. I remember just how the shops used to look. I used to go to the blacksmith shop at night, get up on the forge, and hear them talk about turning horse-shoes. Many a night have I seen the sparks fly and heard the stories that were told. There was a great deal of human nature in those days! Everybody was known. If times got hard, the poor little shoemakers made a living mending, half-soling, straightening up the heels. The same with the blacksmith; the same with the tailor. They could get credit -- they did not have to pay till the next January, and if they could not pay then, they took another year, and they were happy enough. Now one man is not a shoemaker. There is a great building -- several hundred thousand dollars' worth of machinery, three or four thousand people -- not a single mechanic in the whole building. One sews on straps, another greases the machines, cuts out soles, waxes threads. And what is the result? When the machines stop, three thousand men are out of employment, credit goes. Then come want and famine, and if they happen to have a little child die, it would take them years to save enough of their earnings to pay the expense of putting away that little sacred piece of flesh. And yet, by this machinery we can produce enough to flood the world. By the inventions in agricultural machinery the United States can feed all the mouths upon the earth. There is not a thing that man uses that can not instantly be over-produced to such an extent as to become almost worthless; and yet, with all this production, with all this power to create, there are millions and millions in abject want. Granaries bursting, and famine looking into the doors of the poor! Millions of everything, and yet millions wanting everything and having substantially nothing!

Now, there is something wrong there. We have got into that contest between machines and men, and if extravagance does not keep pace with ingenuity, it is going to be the most terrible question that man has ever settled. I tell you, to-night, that these things are worth thinking about. Nothing that touches the future of our race, nothing that touches the happiness of ourselves or our children, should be beneath our notice. We should think of these things -- must think of them -- and we should endeavor to see that justice is finally done between man and man.

If you read the 'sermon' in full, you'll see Ingersoll condemn strikes and attempts at collectivization: I don't know if I've used the description before, but he's a man living in the 19th century and who tries to realize the "24th century" through 18th century means. Though a raging liberal for his time, Ingersoll was cut from the same clothe as Thomas Jefferson and so on -- he believed the Republic was best served by a nation of family farmers and small business owners, curious given that much of his living came from drawing documents for corporations -- including the railroads that took advantage of all those family farmers and led to the Grange movement. He seems to want people to behave and accomplish change in an orderly manner, through the ballot box....but even in his era machine politics had already taken over.

Musical Dharma

2011-02-09T02:32:00.000-06:00

I never fail to feel heartened when this group of young Buddhist monks*, marching solemnly through the countryside in their habits, suddenly breaks forth into a silly, lovable English song.

*According to a documentary I watched recently, it is not uncommon for poorer people in places like Tibet to offer children they cannot afford to feed to the monastery. I think that happened in Europe, as well...

So You Say You Want an Evolution?

2011-02-05T18:14:00.000-06:00

Spotted on Facebook moments ago, attributed to 'darwin2009'...and here's a similar design that I first spotted as a CafePress T-shirt.

Groundhog Day and Existentialism

2011-02-02T03:06:00.000-06:00

Back in 2006, I checked out Groundhog Day from the local Blockbuster and enjoyed it so much I decided to buy it from the store. I've since watched it a half-dozen times and never fail to be amused and touched. It's a fantasy comedy of sorts, in which an egotistic, crotchety middle-aged weatherman (Phil Conners, played by Bill Murray) is forced to drive to Punxustawney, Pennyslyvania with his annoyingly perky boss and their cameraman to do their news station's annual Groundhog Day segment. Conners is a generally unpleasant fellow whose primary occupations are complaining and ridiculing others. After spending the night in Punxustawney, the crew do their segment, but are trapped in town by a blizzard. The next morning, Phil wakes up to find it's Groundhog Day -- again. The same events which transpired the day before occur here: Phil hears the same jokes, the same banal comments, crosses through the same traffic, and is stranded by the same blizzard. Only when his behavior forces alterations do they occur.

Phil is stuck in Groundhog Day -- again and again. He has no idea what is causing this time loop, and his elation at being able to get away with anything (in a world of no consequences) quickly turns to despair when he realizes nothing he does or says will ever matter. No money stolen or friendships earned will endure. He tries to kill himself, only to wake up again and again at 6:00 a.m, Groundhog Day. His greatest disappointment, though, is his inability to win the affections of his boss, Rita. Though seemingly annoyed by her relentless cheerfulness, Phil is attracted to her and genuinely wants to be seen as something other than who he is: a jerk. He tries to become the kind of man she could love, but finds in the process that virtue and self-improvement are their own rewards. He comes to see the endless winter of Groundhog Day as a kind of gift, and uses it to learn to play the piano, to speak French, to create art. He makes the most of every moment and devotes himself to the people of Punxustawney, delighting in ordinary little kindnesses. In the process, he learns how to love something other than himself, and finally wakes up on February 3rd.

Groundhog Day is a genuinely funny movie, but I respond so favorably to because it has a philosophical point -- particularly to naturalistic sorts like humanists. While religions tend to make people participants in great psycho-dramas in which their actions play parts in a vast struggle between good and evil, to the naturalistic mind our actions have no real consequences in the long term. Hitler and Gandhi go to the same end, and oblivion will claim us all one day. Humanity may survive to expand throughout the galaxy, but eventually our clock will be punched for the last time. Like Phil, we are in an ultimately meaningless situation, but there is no reason to be miserable about it. We are alive, whereas billions of others are not. We can breathe in sweet oxygen, stare at the stars in wonder, enjoy the many pleasures of life. Reality may be Puxustawney, P.A., and not the glitzy dramatic metropolis we think we'd prefer, but there's plenty to enjoy. We can improve ourselves, find meaning in art and science, glory in little accomplishments, and find solace and joy in the company of friends and loved ones.

I know this from personal experience, for I was once a Pentecostal who believed in a great drama. That drama still excites Christians, Muslims, and Jews around the world, but as I aged that drama depressed and angered me. I felt damned, and in my darkest hours decided to spite "God" and his twisted universe. I declared that I was going to enjoy life and do something with mine to help others. I took possession of my life and infused it with meaning and purpose of my own making. I pushed myself to be sociable, and made friends. I determined what I wanted a meaningful occupation, and left the factory for the university. I matured as a human being, and my self-empowerment has lasted for five years so far. When I read my old journals from that pre-humanist period -- with titles like "Jetsam's Course" -- I cannot identify with the person who I once was. I have found the joys of spring in the depths of winter, just as Phil did, and just as anyone can. Life is too short not to enjoy .

Freethought Friday #8: Science

2011-01-28T01:43:00.002-06:00

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899)

From "Myth and Miracle". People of the 19th century put such great stock in science: they truly believed it would conquer the world, for it had already made much such headway. The oceans shrank as ships became faster: rail lines and telegraphs tied continents together, and cities roared with industry to the sound of steam engines. Such was their confidence in the scientific approach that Karl Marx applied it to history and sociology, referring to his approach as 'scientific socialism'. I thought adding a little historical context might help those wondering why Ingersoll is so very excited.

Science is the providence of man, the worker of true miracles, of real wonders. Science has "read a little in Nature's infinite book of secrecy." Science knows the circuits of the winds, the courses of the stars. Fire is his servant, and lightning his messenger. Science freed the slaves and gave liberty to their masters. Science taught man to enchain, not his fellows, but the forces of nature, forces that have no backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill and eat, forces that have no hearts to break, forces that never know fatigue, forces that shed no tears. Science is the great physician. His touch has given sight. He has made the lame to leap, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and in the pallid face his hand has set the rose of health. Science has given his beloved sleep and wrapped in happy dreams the throbbing nerves of pain. Science is the destroyer of disease, builder of happy homes, the preserver of life and love. Science is the teacher of every virtue, the enemy of every vice. Science has given the true basis of morals, the origin and office of conscience, revealed the nature of obligation, of duty, of virtue in its highest, noblest forms, and has demonstrated that true happiness is the only possible good. Science has slain the monsters of superstition, and destroyed the authority of inspired books. Science has read the records of the rocks, records that priestcraft cannot change. and on his wondrous scales has weighed the atom and the star.

Science has founded the only true religion. Science is the only Savior of this world.

Stand Up for Judas

2011-01-27T16:27:00.000-06:00

In the western mythos, 'Judas' is synonymous with 'traitor'. This comes from the Christian gospels, in which a man named Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus after being his student and servant for three years of ministry. According to the gospels, Judas led soldiers into the garden in which Jesus was praying and distinguished him among his followers by kissing Jesus on the cheek -- betraying his friend for thirty shekels of currency. Jesus was then taken by the Romans, interrogated, beaten, and condemned to death. Judas later expressed shame for his actions and died, either by hanging himself or by tripping and disemboweling himself in a field of broken pottery.

There have been various attempts to redeem Judas' name. Since most Christians believe that Jesus's essential task on Earth was to die, Judas' role in arranging that death seems necessary. Indeed, when The Gospel of Judas began attracting attention in the media, he was represented as Jesus' dearest friend, specially chosen for the task of leading Jesus to his death. Yesterday, I discovered a song called "Stand Up For Judas", which paints the story of Jesus and Judas in a different story, rooting itself in one of the Christian text's more questionable stories.

In the story, Jesus and his disciples are resting at a supporters' home at the end of a long journey. A woman named Mary enters, carrying an 'alabaster box' full of valuable ointment. Breaking the box, she proceeds to wash Jesus' feet -- presumably dirt-caked from a day of walking -- with it, using her hair to scrub his feet clean. Some of the disciples -- Judas is named explicitly in the other gospels -- objects to this on the grounds that her actions were wasteful. That ointment could have been sold, he says, and the proceeds given to the poor. Jesus' reply was that the poor will always be around but he would not, so it was better that she was able to appreciate him with this sacrifice. Disgusted, Judas leaves and proceeds directly to sell Jesus out. With that in mind, the song.

Essentially, it portrays Judas as a populist revolutionary who feels betrayed by Jesus turning himself into a religious icon rather than leading the people to freedom.Transcribed lyrics follow underneath the video.

The Romans were the Masters, when Jesus walked the land

In Judea, and in Galilee, they ruled with an iron hand

And the poor were sick with hunger, and the rich were clothed in splendor --

And the rebels, whipped and crucified, hung rotting as a warning.

And Jesus? Knew the answer.

Said, 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar's. '

Said, 'Love your enemies.'

But Judas was a Zealot, and he wanted to be Free --

"Resist!" he said, "the Romans's tyranny!"

So stand up, stand up for Judas!

And the cause that Judas served --

It was Jesus who betrayed the poor with his words.

Jesus was a conjurer, miracles were his game

And he fed the hungry thousands, and they glorified his name

He cured the lame and the lepers,

He calmed the wind and the weather,

And the wretched flocked to touch him,

So their troubles would be taken..

And Jesus? Knew the answer.

"All you who labor, all you who suffer --

"Only believe in me."

But Judas sought a world in where no one starved or begged for bread.

'The poor are always with us,' Jesus said.

So stand up, stand up for Judas!

And the cause that Judas served --

It was Jesus who betrayed the poor with his words.

No Jesus brought Division where none had been before

Not the slaves against their masters, but the poor against the poor.

Set the son to rise up against father, and brother to fight against brother,

For 'He who is not with me is against me,' was his teaching.

Said Jesus, "I am the answer".

"You unbelievers shall burn forever --

Shall die in your sins."

'Not sheep and goats', said Judas, but 'together we may dare!'

'Shake off the chains of misery we share!'

So stand up, stand up for Judas!

And the cause that Judas served --

It was Jesus who betrayed the poor with his words.

Jesus stood upon the mountain with the distance in his eyes

"I am the Way, the Light," he cried, "the Life that never dies!

"So renounce all earthly treasures, and pray to your heavenly father."

And he pacified the hopeless with the hope of life eternal.

Said Jesus, "I am the answer, and you who hunger, only remember --

".. your reward's in heaven"

So Jesus preached the other world,

but Judas wanted This -- and he betrayed his master with a kiss.

So stand up, stand up for Judas!

And the cause that Judas served --
It was Jesus who betrayed the poor with his words.

By sword, and gun, and crucifix, Christ's gospel has been spread!
And two thousand cruel years have shown the Way that Jesus led
The Heretic burned and tortured, and the butchering, bloody Crusaders
The bombs and rockets sanctified, that rain down death from heaven
They followed Jesus! -- they knew the Answer.
All nonbelievers must be believers -- or else be Broken.

"So place no trust in Saviours,"
Judas said, "for everyone
Must be to his or her own self...a Sun."

It's an interesting song, I think. While I've never seen Jesus as a Saviour, for time I dearly wished to regard him well. I wanted to see him the same way I see Siddhartha Gautama, as a teacher of wisdom. In part I still do, if only to find common ground with Christians, but since he never wrote a thing we cannot say with certainty who he was -- or who he thought he was. The song leaves me with mixed feelings, for I hate injustice and applaud anyone who fights against it with swords or through nonviolent means. I despise the Platonic-Christian contempt for the natural world, and have no use for those who want to be worshiped. I rather like this song's Judas, and would indeed stand up for him -- though I don't know if any uprising could defeat the Romans in the time of Augustus. When the Jews did revolt in 70 CE, they were broken fairly quickly.

References:

I had to look at three different accounts of the alabaster box stories, since every author had different details.Relevant chapters are Luke 7, Matthew 26, and Mark 14.

Freethought Friday #7: The Corruption of the Multitude

2011-01-21T00:52:00.000-06:00

(Emma Goldman, 1869-1940)

From "Minorities Versus Majorities".

The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, as long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome, led by the colossal figures of Huss, Calvin, and Luther, was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night. But so soon as Luther and Calvin turned politicians and began catering to the small potentates, the nobility, and the mob spirit, they jeopardized the great possibilities of the Reformation., They won success and the majority, but that majority proved no less cruel and bloodthirsty in the persecution of thought and reason that was the Catholic monster. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age.

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. Compiled and edited by Alix Kates Shulman.

Freethought Friday #6: Spirituality

2011-01-14T03:37:00.000-06:00

Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899

From "Spirituality", which I would recommend reading -- it pained me to post only part of Ingersoll's description of what he or I might call authentically human spirituality. The full text is rather short in comparison to the longer speeches and essays.

It may be well enough to ask: What is it to be really spiritual?

The spiritual man lives to his ideal. He endeavors to make others happy. He does not despise the passions that have filled the world with art and glory. He loves his wife and children -- home and fireside. He cultivates the amenities and refinements of life. He is the friend and champion of the oppressed. His sympathies are with the poor and the suffering. He attacks what he believes to be wrong, though defended by the many, and he is willing to stand for the right against the world. He enjoys the beautiful. In the presence of the highest creations of Art his eyes are suffused with tears. When he listens to the great melodies, the divine harmonies,he feels the sorrows and the raptures of death and love. He is intensely human*. He carries in his heart the burdens of the world. He searches for the deeper meanings. He appreciates the harmonies of conduct, the melody of a perfect life.

He loves his wife and children better than any god. He cares more for the world he lives in than for any other. He tries to discharge the duties of this life, to help those that he can reach. He believes in being useful -- in making money to feed and clothe and educate the ones he loves -- to assist the deserving and to support himself. He does not wish to be a burden on others. He is just, generous and sincere.

Spirituality is all of this world. It is a child of this earth, born and cradled here. It comes from no heaven, but it makes a heaven where it is.

* Emphasis added by me.

Imagine

2011-01-07T01:52:00.000-06:00

I have shared music from Playing for Change before, not so much for the exquisite music as the beautiful dream it represents by bringing people from all over the world to make music together. Instruments from varied cultures join in harmony together, and the result...is astonishing. This particular song shares that same vision, uniting humanity -- abandoning narrow dreams and fruitless obsessions for a cosmopolitan spirit.

Freethought Friday #5: Individuality

2011-01-07T00:00:00.000-06:00

Note: Although I began this series as a way of sharing the words of Robert Ingersoll, I may eventually expand it to include individuals like Emma Goldman, Thomas Paine, and other such stalwarts.

From "Individuality":

The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long time. They think the fathers of their nation were the greatest and best of all mankind. All these things they implicitly believe because it is popular and patriotic, and because they were told so when they were very small, and remember distinctly of hearing mother read it out of a book. It is hard to over-estimate the influence of early training in the direction of superstition. You first teach children that a certain book is true -- that it was written by God himself -- that to question its truth is a sin, that to deny it is a crime, and that should they die without believing that book they will be forever damned without benefit of clergy. The consequence is, that long before they read that book, they believe it to be true. When they do read it their minds are wholly unfitted to investigate its claims. They accept it as a matter of course.

In this way the reason is overcome, the sweet instincts of humanity are blotted from the heart, and while reading its infamous pages even justice throws aside her scales, shrieking for revenge, and charity, with bloody hands, applauds a deed of murder. In this way we are taught that the revenge of man is the justice of God; that mercy is not the same everywhere. In this way the ideas of our race have been subverted. In this way we have made tyrants, bigots, and inquisitors. In this way the brain of man has become a kind of palimpsest upon which, and over the writings of nature, superstition has scrawled her countless lies. One great trouble is that most teachers are dishonest. They teach as certainties those things concerning which they entertain doubts. They do not say, "we think this is so." but "we know this is so." They do not appeal to the reason of the pupil, but they command his faith. They keep all doubts to themselves; they do not explain, they assert. All this is infamous. In this way you may make Christians, but you cannot make men; you cannot make women. You can make followers, but no leaders; disciples, but no Christs. You may promise power, honor, and happiness to all those who will blindly follow, but you cannot keep your promise.

Renewed Greetings

2010-12-30T14:32:00.001-06:00

I created this blog a bit over four years ago to store some philosophical essays and musings of mine that I created while attempting to sort out my worldview following my exit from Pentecostalism and my discovery of humanism, freethought, and naturalism. I've since maintained the same essential look, though the sites and blogs I link to have continued to change. I've wanted to change the background look for a while now, so I finally decided to take the leap and upgrade to the new template. Most of my links and blogs from the old look have carried over, though I did finally get around to updating their names and links instead of relying on redirects to do that for me. I also added a blog I've been enjoying for a few weeks now, "The Little Book of Humanity".

The background image is the Stoa of Attalos. This is not the porch from which Zeno taught, but it conveys to me a sense of serenity and peace all the same. The pillars of the Stoa have stood tall in my life for several years now, both literally and philosophically: I used this same image as my personal desktop wallpaper for nearly two years. Stoicism has made me more mindful and free, though I think I may have overdone it at one point. Its focus on the individual as sovereign over his or her own mind has influenced other parts of my worldview, including my growing interest in anarchism. I've been working on an essay called "From Freethought to Anarchism" that will explore the transition more.

I cannot predict what this blog will look like in the next four years, though I intend to continue philosophical musings and celebrate life and the human spirit. I may continue to explore blogger's template customizer.

Christmastime All Over the World

2010-12-25T01:11:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas, belated Solstice, Fröhliche Weihnachten, Joyeux Noel, and Feliz Navidad!

It’s Christmas Time all over the world

It’s Christmas here at home
The church bells chime wherever we roam
Så riktig god jul [Norwegian]
Feliz natal [Portuguese]
Shenoraavor Nor Dari (Dari) [Armenian]
To you

The snow is thick in most of the world
Children's eyes are wide
As old Saint Nick gets ready to ride
So Feliz Navidad !
Sretan Bozic! (Croatian)
And Happy New Year
To you!

Though the customs might change
And the language is strange
This appeal we feel is real
In Holland or Hong Kong

It's Christmastime all over the world
In places near and far
And so my friend wherever you are
Ein fröhliches Weihnachten! (German)
Kala Christougenna ! (Greek)
Yoi kurisumasu! (Japanese)
This means a very merry Christmas (Christmas, Christmas)
To you

Freethought Friday #4: Christmas

2010-12-24T00:53:00.000-06:00

From "A Christmas Sermon":

Long before Christ was born the Sun-God triumphed over the powers of Darkness. About the time that we call Christmas the days begin perceptibly to lengthen. Our barbarian ancestors were worshipers of the sun, and they celebrated his victory over the hosts of night. Such a festival was natural and beautiful. The most natural of all religions is the worship of the sun. Christianity adopted this festival. It borrowed from the Pagans the best it has.

I believe in Christmas and in every day that has been set apart for joy. We in America have too much work and not enough play. We are too much like the English.

I think it was Heinrich Heine who said that he thought a blaspheming Frenchman was a more pleasing object to God than a praying Englishman. We take our joys too sadly. I am in favor of all the good free days -- the more the better.

Christmas is a good day to forgive and forget -- a good day to throw away prejudices and hatreds -- a good day to fill your heart and your house, and the hearts and houses of others, with sunshine.

From "What I Want For Christmas", which I posted a few years ago:

If I had the power to produce exactly what I want for next Christmas, I would have all the kings and emperors resign and allow the people to govern themselves.

I would have all the nobility crop their titles and give their lands back to the people. I would have the Pope throw away his tiara, take off his sacred vestments, and admit that he is not acting for God -- is not infallible -- but is just an ordinary Italian. I would have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and clergymen admit that they know nothing about theology, nothing about hell or heaven, nothing about the destiny of the human race, nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels. I would have them tell all their "flocks" to think for themselves, to be manly men and womanly women, and to do all in their power toincrease the sum of human happiness.

I would have all the professors in colleges, all the teachers in schools of every kind, including those in Sunday schools, agree that they would teach only what they know, that they would not palm off guesses as demonstrated truths.

I would like to see all the politicians changed to statesmen -- to men who long to make their country great and free, -- to men who care more for public good than private gain -- men who long to be of use.

I would like to see all the editors of papers and magazines agree to print the truth and nothing but the truth, to avoid all slander and misrepresentation, and to let the private affairs of the people alone.

I would like to see drunkenness and prohibition both abolished.

I would like to see corporal punishment done away with in every home, in every school, in every asylum, reformatory, and prison. Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.

I would like to see the millionaires unite and form a trust for the public good.

I would like to see a fair division of profits between capital and labor, so that the toiler could save enough to mingle a little June with the December of his life.

I would like to see an international court established in which to settle disputes between nations, so that armies could be disbanded and the great navies allowed to rust and rot in perfect peace.

I would like to see the whole world free -- free from injustice -- free from superstition.

This will do for next Christmas. The following Christmas, I may want more.

The Arena, Boston, December 1897.

Winter Solstice

2010-12-21T03:26:00.003-06:00

Uncountable cultures for thousands of generations have looked to this day with anticipation in the northern hemisphere, for it marks the turning-point in a celestial battle between the light and warmth of the sun and the darkness of winter. For months now the Sun has been retreating -- the days have grown shorter, the nights longer, the air chillier. Today, though, marks the turning of the tide. The long retreat has ended: the Sun is once again on the march.It is months from winning, and in this season of increasing cold, mounting snow, and bare trees, those who depend on its gifts of warmth and energy may despair. Those with keen eyes, though, will note that every day is just a little longer: the winter Solstice marks the beginning of his revived reign. It is invictus, forever unconquerable, and will soon call to the Earth once more to release her bounty.

This is, of course, great drama. The sun is a great ball of gas, its light the product of an ongoing nuclear reaction -- but that great ball of gas contains the majority of mass in the solar system, and that reaction produces the light, warmth, and energy that few lives on earth can go without. Almost every life on Earth is dependent on the sun: plants convert directly into energy, animals and such prey on the plants, and even when the plants die of old age they may leave behind stored energy in the form of coal, provided they're properly preserved.

The constant barrage of energy from the sun has driven the history of life on Earth; as grand as our planet may be, it would be barren and cold without that gleaming life-giver in the sky. Little wonder human beings have regarded it as a god for so long. At least since the advent of agriculture, human beings have watched its course in the sky, fixated: without the sun, their crops would not grow. They would perish. We developed calendars to track its progress: we recorded and began to predict its variations. Today we understand this not as the result of an exiled sun-goddess emerging from her prison-cave, or the the fight between a sun-god and his nemesis, or as the result of fair Demeter neglecting the Earth while she mourned for her daughter Persephone, kidnapped by Hades. We understand the sun's annual rise and fall now as the result of a mathematical certainty.

You and I live on the surface of Earth, a solid-body planet whose axis is tilted: Earth sits unevenly, and the light which shines upon its surface does so unequally. Those parts that are tilted away from the sun are insulated and removed from much of the Sun's light; those parts tilted toward it are more exposed to such warmth. This is why we have seasons, for as the Earth moves through space in its oval-shaped course around to the other side of the sun, the tilt's effects reverse. In July, the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, but by December, it is tilted away. The southern hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun in July, resulting in winter, but towards the Sun in December -- resulting in summer. It is important to realize that our own experiences are not the sum experiences of humanity.

December 21st marks the period in Earth's annual solar run in which the northern hemisphere is most distant from the sun. It doesn't matter that the days will continue to be bitterly cold. Starting on the morning of December 22nd, every succeeding morning will come earlier, and the day will surrender to the night increasingly more reluctantly. Earth continues to move through space, and as it crosses to the 'other' side of the sun, the axial tilt exposes those of us in North America and Eurasia to more and more light. The winter solstice is our darkest hour, but it is a turning point. Think of it as the northern hemisphere's Midway -- from this point on, we march towards spring, and Earth has the promise of renewed life.

For this reason, every known agricultural society in the northern hemisphere has paid special attention to the advent of the Solstice. In the darkest part of winter, they knew the Solstice was a day of hope. No matter how solid the rivers grew with ice, no matter how cold the wind blew, the winter solstice promised that the Sun would return to reclaim its own -- that it was only a matter of time before Earth erupted with life again and the long winter was ended. For as long as there have been farmers, there have been Solstice celebrations, and even today when the majority of north-hemisphere dwellers do not live within sight of fields, the memory of the day lives in our calenders. The winter solstice is a universal human holiday, recognized in many varied ways and names. Yuletide and Saturnalia are two names it has carried in the west; Christmas is another.

Christmas derives from 'Christ's Mass', a special service ordered by the Roman Catholic church to commemorate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, called Christ by those who have faith in him as the savior of humankind. There is no reason to believe he was born in late December, and given the Roman church's habit of appropriating holidays from other cultures (there's a reason why Easter involves bunnies and eggs), we can look on that presumed date with suspicion. Regardless of its accuracy, the Catholic feast day has grown into a larger holiday, celebrated by Protestants as well as more traditional creeds.

It is a...discredit to Christian charity that so many Christians are not keen on sharing. Christians in the United States today stand against the forlorn sun, in the shadow of trees glittering with tinsel while carolers sing in the distance and declare that the Solstice is all about Jesus -- by which they mean it's all about them, all about their beliefs. Surrounded by the elements of dozens of other solstice traditions, they declare it is theirs and theirs alone. This is a situation somewhat kin to the Protestant invasion of north America. They shared the day and the land for as long as long as it pleased them, and then when they grew in power they claimed imperium. They silenced the non-christians with the sword, stealing land and festivity alike. As mean-spirited as that was, it's positively asinine in light of the fact that Christmas originated as a Catholic feast day -- from the institution that Protestantism was formed in reaction against.

This sort of imperialism, aside from running counter to ideas like charity and humility, is also rubbish. The Solstice was around before the first bishop wearing the first pointy hat decided to declare December 25 as the official observance of Jesus' death. It was around before the first Protestant sold the first Christmas card and realized there was a racket to be had. For all the posturing of Bellow Reilly and others who endlessly kvetch about the 'war on Christmas', no one can claim imperium on the Solstice. It is a universal human holiday. It has existed for as long as we have farmed, and it will exist for as long as the Sun rises and falls. In a thousand years, Christmas as a name could be nothing more than a memory, like Yuletide or Saturnalia -- but the Solstice will endure.

I delight in the universality of Solstice. I adore Christmas trees, and when I gaze upon them I think of the Germans who brought greenery into their homes to liven them during the bleak days of winter. I sing carols with gusto, thinking of the Romans who reveled on Saturnalia. I think of how it was a day for masters to serve their servants. I watch a Christmas Carol and think of what the birth of Jesus means to people, how the promise of peace and joy persuades them to crawl out of their little Scrooge-office and think of people other than themselves for a change. When I eat ham this year, I will smile privately to myself, thinking of the Danes who nailed a boar's head to their doors in honor of Frey, in hopes of a good growing season. I do this not because I am a Saxon or a Roman, or a Catholic or a Dane, but because I'm Human, and nothing human is alien to me. In partaking of Solstice's vast banquet of traditions, I am eating with a great host -- the family of humankind.

May the Sun and its triumph endure forever.

Sol Invictus!

Science Saved my Soul

2010-12-15T00:41:00.000-06:00

The Apprentice Philosopher recently sent me a video recently and after three viewings I realized I had to share it. At the beginning of the video, its author recounts an experience he had encountering the Milky Way -- stepping out into the night, struck by the grandeur and majesty of the Cosmos but being able to appreciate it all the more because of his understanding of modern cosmology. He then compares this moment of soul-stirring clarity to the feelings religions attempt to reproduce and gain a monopoly on. As he talks, beautiful imagery and subtle, but effective music plays in the background. It's in the spirit of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow. Selected quotations are below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Milky way itself contains 200 billion stars, give or take. These numbers are essential to understanding what a galaxy is, but when contemplating them some part of the human mind protests that 'it cannot be so'. Yet an examination of the evidence brings you to the conclusion that it is, and if you take that conclusion out on a clear dark night and look up, you might see something that will change your life. This is what a galaxy looks like from the inside -- from the surburbs of our sun. Through binoculars, for every star you can see with your naked eye, you can see a hundred around it, all suspended in a grey-blue mist. But through a modest telescope, if you wait for your eyes to adjust to the dark, and get the focus just right, you will see that mist for what it really is -- more stars, like dust, fading into what tastes like infinity. But you've got to have the knowledge -- seeing is only half of it.

That night, three years ago, I knew a small part of what's out there -- the kinds of things, the scale of things, the age of things. The violence and destruction, appalling energy, hopeless gravity, and the despair of distance -- but I feel safe, because I know my world is protected by the very distance that others fear. It's like the universe screams in your face: Do you know what I am? How grand I am? How old I am? Can you even comprehend what I am? What are you, compared to me? And when you know enough science, you can just smile up at the universe and reply, "Dude -- I am you."

When I looked at the galaxy that night, I knew the faintest twinkle of starlight was a real connection between my comprehending eye along a narrow beam of light to the surface of another sun. The photons my eyes detect, the light I see, the energy with which my nerves interact came frm that star. I thought I could never touch it, yet something from it crosses the void and touches me. I might never have known. My eyes saw only a tiny point of light, but my mind saw so much more.

There's no word for such experiences that come through scientific and not mystical revelation. The reason for that is that every time someone has such a mind-gasm, religion steals it -- simply by saying, "Ah, you've had a religious experience."

To even partially comprehend the scale of a single galaxy is to almost disappear -- and when you remember all the other galaxies, you shrink one hundred billion times smaller still. But then you realize what you are -- the same facts that made you feel so insignificant also tell you how you got here. It's like you become more real, or maybe the universe becomes more real. You suddenly fit. You suddenly belong. You do not have to bow down -- you do not have to look away. In such moments, all you have to do is remember to keep breathing.

The body of a newborn baby is as old as the Cosmos. The form is new and unique, but the materials are 13.7 billion years old -- processed by nuclear fusion in stars, fashioned by electromagnetism. Cold words for amazing processes -- and that baby was you, is you. You're amazing -- not only alive, but with a mind. What fool would exchange this for every winning lottery ticket ever drawn?

When I compare what scientific knowledge has done for me, and what religion tried to do to me, I sometimes literally shiver. Religions tell children they might go to hell and they must believe -- while science tells children that they came from the stars and presents reasoning they can believe. I've told plenty of young kids about stars, atoms, galaxies and the Big Bang, and I have never seen fear in their eyes -- only amazement and curiosity. They want more. Why do kids swim in it, and adults drown in it? What happens to reality between our youngest years and adulthood? Could it be that someone promised us something so beautiful that our universe seems dull, empty, even frightening by comparison? It might still be made by a creator of some kind, but religion has made it look ugly -- religion paints everything not of itself as unholy, and sinful, while it beautifies and dignifies its errors, lies, and bigotry like a pig wearing the finest robes. In its efforts to stop us facing reality, religion has become the reality we cannot face.

Look at what religion has made us to -- to ourselves, and to each other. Religion stole our love and our loyalty and gave it to a book, to a telepathic father who tells his children that love means kneeling before him.

There might yet be a heaven -- but it isn't going to be perfect, and we're going to have to build it ourselves.

Thanks for Nothing

2010-12-13T12:33:00.000-06:00

Jimmy Stewart: Lord, we cleared this land; we plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it; we cooked the harvest. It wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be eatin' it if we hadn't done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thankyouanywayjustthesamelord for the food we're about to eat.

I've not seen the movie this was from (Shenandoah) for quite some time now, but thinking on this scene and others makes me realize the movie promoted simpler human values over those of government and religion. Stewart plays as the patriarch of a large farming family who are caught in the middle of the Civil War, who despise slavery but who don't particularly trust the motives of the government, either. They are self-supporting and generally wish to be left alone, but the war destroys them anyway.

On Being Frank

2010-12-12T12:17:00.001-06:00

Back in 2006 I titled this blog 'Let Me Be Frank' in part because I wanted to speak my mind earnestly, but also as a tip of the hat to an inspiration of mine, Frank Sinatra. I started listening to Sinatra in the summer of 2004 after picking up a CD of his ("The Very Good Years"), and he immediately rose to become one of my favorite artists. I liked Sinatra not for politics or philanthropy, but because he embodied traits I wanted to posses. Religious-wise, I was already in a downhill spiral. With every passing week, I felt more depressed, angry, and helpless. That dissipated when I listened to Frank. When I hear him sing, I heard courage, bravado, exulting joy, and strength. I read numerous biographies and found myself wanting to emulate him. When I listened to Frank Sinatra, I walked a little taller, was a little happier.

Eventually I told religion to get lost and determined that gods or no, I was going to live my life, enjoy it, and do something with it to help other people. I made this declaration and defended it with nothing but will. Certainly part of that came from Sinatra's willfulness rubbing off on me. In the years that have passed, I've become far happier. In seeking peace, though, I've...wandered too deep into the monastery of contemplation. Studying Stoicism has given me much to be thankful for -- mindfulness, for instance -- but I've been too much self-absorbed, too focused on being 'right' instead of LIVING. This was brought to a head when I started reading Augustine's Confessions and a biography of Sinatra in the same week and realized whose spirit I'd rather mine be more kin to. When it comes to looking for the balance between Stoic serenity and humanist passion, I will err on the side of exhultive pleasure. Life's too short to wear a monk's habit.

Anyway, being as this is Frank Sinatra's birthday, here's one of my favorite 'brassy' numbers. Transcribed lyrics are below.

I'm gonna live -- until I die!

I'm gonna laugh, instead of cry!

I'm gonna take the town and turn it upside town,

I'm gonna live, live, live until I die.

They're gonna say, "What a guy!"

I'm gonna play for the sky

Ain't gonna miss a thing,

I'm gonna have my fling,

I'm gonna live, live, live until I die.

The blues I lay low, I make `em stay low

They'll never let `em trail over my head.

I'll be a devil 'til I'm an angel, but until then --

HALLELUJAH! Gonna dance! Gonna fly!

I'll take a chance, ridin' high

Before my number's up, I'm gonna fill my cup

I'm gonna live, live, live! until I die.

The blues I lay low, I'll make `em stay low --

They'll never trail over my head.

I'll be a devil 'til I'm an angel, but until then --

HALLELUJAH! Gonna dance, gonna fly

I'll take a chance ridin' high

Before my number's up, I'm gonna fill my cup

I'm gonna live! Live! Live until I die!

Freethought Friday #3: From "Orthodoxy"

2010-12-10T02:01:00.000-06:00

Do away with human love and what are we? What would we be in another world, and what would we be here? Can any one conceive of music without human love? Of art, or joy? Human love builds every home. Human love is the author of all beauty. Love paints every picture, and chisels every statue. Love builds every fireside. What could heaven be without human love? And yet that is what we are promised -- a heaven with your wife lost, your mother lost, some of your children gone. And you expect to be made happy by falling in with some angel! Such a religion is infamous. Christianity holds human love for naught; and yet --

Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart -- builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody -- for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume ofthat wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The second portion of this quotation is a personal favorite of mine: I have it memorized, and if I ever chance to marry I will insist on it being read.

On Being Politically In/Correct

2010-12-05T21:08:00.002-06:00

Abraham Lincoln: What a charming Negress! Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know in my time some used that term as a description of property."
Uhura: But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words.
(Star Trek, "The Savage Curtain")

What is political correctness?

In middle school I thought it was the practice of altering one's language or remaining quiet about some beliefs to avoid engendering offense. In seventh grade I remember kids making a game of inventing 'politically correct' descriptions: essentially, we attempted to find the most convoluted way of describing people and things we could. "Short" became "vertically challenged", and "fat", "horizontally enhanced". In a less juvenile context, the motivation to avoid being offensive is why accepted terminologies for minorities change through time: 'cripple' has become 'disabled' or 'handicapped', and "Negro" has eventually developed into African-American, though "colored" and "black" were intermediaries.

While it is understandable that people would resist changing the way they speak to please someone else, there are also reasons why certain words and phrases have become 'n-words', and why we perhaps ought to rethink our use of them. Language is constantly changing: as time passes, words are separated from their original meanings and intents. "Retarded" may have once been a clinical description indicating that a patient's mental abilities were impaired or inhibited, but people now use it to attack those who they believe are acting foolishly, or simply to demean those whom they disagree with or dislike. They thus corrupt the word: their base intention has turned a once objective description into a mean and contemptuous term. Those who prefer their language to be civil are right to to avoid such vulgarity. Politically correct terms also sometimes make more sense than those which they replace: 'native American' may be lengthsome, but 'Indian' is ignorant.

Political correctness in language has its shortcomings as well: politically correct descriptions tend toward the ungainly (it being much harder to shout "Hey, person with a higher-than-normal body-mass index!" than "Hey, fatty!"), and some phrases simply do not work. "Differently-abled" is an example of this: it says nothing, for we all have 'different' abilities. The full use of arms and legs is considered a normal, typical ability of human beings, (thus the appropriateness of 'disabled') but it is not an insult to be abnormal despite the fact that there are those who take pleasure in mocking others for being different. I understand why people who are sensitive about being different in some way would prefer that people didn't draw attention to their difference, but insisting that others use ungainly phrases will attract more hostility than the proposed phrase deflects.

I believe political correctness exists more as an imagined object of hostility than as a monolithic force in itself. There is no language commission in the United States which ruthlessly seeks out every indecorous word and sends it to a speech-gulag somewhere. Instead, people attack particular words linked to particular minorities as the minorities, the people themselves, begin asserting themselves. The titular "n-word" has been sent to a speech-gulag by people who stood up for themselves and forced the majority to consider: why are you using that word to attack us? Why are you keeping us segregated, denied equal rights and opportunities?

The reactionary mentality does not like being forced to consider its actions and beliefs. It does not want to consider that it was in the wrong, that it remains in the wrong by protesting instead of admitting to having acted poorly or having been ignorant. They thus invent the phrase 'politically correct' as an insult to approve their own actions. Suddenly, they are not the oppressors: they are the victims. Behold, the great white majority are being persecuted because they can no longer call a wop a wop and a chink a chink! Politically correct language doesn't allow them to justify their distrust or contempt of others with a blow-rendering label.

Imperial Christians are especially bad about this during Christmas. Christmas in the United States is only partly Christian: it carries the Catholic title "Christ's Mass" in its name, but I daresay most people don't darken the door of a church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. They certainly don't hear a mass. Many of the practices stem from sources other than Paulinism: Christmas trees and yule logs are German, caroling and reveling Roman, and shameless consumerism oh-so-very modern. The date of the holiday itself comes from the winter solstice, acknowledged by most cultures in the northern hemisphere -- and yet Christians will claim the holiday is all theirs, that every thing about it is the exclusive property of Jesus Christ Incorporated. If anyone dares acknowledge that the Roman church's mass isn't the only religious or festive ceremony held in late December, this is a source of great umbrage to the Christians, who construe "Happy Holidays" as an insult to their beliefs and every utterance of "Solstice" is an assault on the body of Christ.

I believe this reactionary mentality is why those who take pride in being politically incorrect tend to be aggressively rude and insufferably opinionated: they like being jackasses, by god, and how dare you judge them for acting like a jackass? Being proud of being politically incorrect is tantamount to seeking a license to be a jackass, and doing it in the name of free speech, yet. There's irony here, it seems: people rail against their actions being judged as rude or uninformed, even though their actions themselves were judgment of other people.

For my own part, I don't think the labels themselves are the problem: they are merely a symptom of the tendecy of people to attack and demean others. Judge the intent of language: once that is known, the expression is mostly garnish.

Freethought Friday #2: From "A Lay Sermon"

2010-12-03T00:00:00.002-06:00

If you want to be happy yourself, if you are truly civilized, you want others to be happy. Every man ought, to the extent of his ability, to increase the happiness of mankind, for the reason that that will increase his own. No one can be really prosperous unless those with whom he lives share the sunshine and the joy.

The first thing a man wants to know and be sure of is when he has got enough. Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but, as a rule, it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of New York with genius enough, with brains enough, to own five millions of dollars. Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe. That money will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He cannot own it. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity. No one is happier in a palace than in a cabin. I love to see a log house. It is associated in my mind always with pure, unalloyed happiness. It is the only house in the world that looks as though it had no mortgage on it. It looks as if you could spend there long, tranquil autumn days; the air filled with serenity; no trouble, no thoughts about notes, about interest -- nothing of the kind; just breathing free air, watching the hollyhocks, listening to the birds and to the music of the spring that comes like a poem from the earth.

It is an insanity to get more than you want. Imagine a man in this city, an intelligent man, say with two or three millions of coats, eight or ten millions of hats, vast warehouses full of shoes, billions of neckties, and imagine that man getting up at four o'clock in the morning, in the rain and snow and sleet, working like a dog all day to get another necktie! Is not that exactly what the man of twenty or thirty millions, or of five millions, does to-day? Wearing his life out that somebody may say, "How rich he is!" What can he do with the surplus? Nothing. Can he eat it? No. Make friends? No. Purchase flattery and lies? Yes. Make all his poor relations hate him? Yes. And then, what worry! Annoyed, nervous, tormented, until his poor little brain becomes inflamed, and you see in the morning paper, "Died of apoplexy." This man finally began to worry for fear he would not have enough neckties to last him through.

So we ought to teach our children that great wealth is a curse.

Freethought Friday #1: From "The Improved Man"

2010-11-26T22:45:00.000-06:00

For a few weeks now I've wanted to start a series of weekly posts in which I share a quotation from the works of Robert Ingersoll. When I registered an account at blogger to start saving philosophical musings, I chose a portrait of Robert Ingersoll because his works continue to inspire me, and because I wanted to contribute something to his name recognition. In my mind I anticipated people asking me, "Say! Who's that stern fellow in your profile picture?" to which I would reply, "Why, that's Robert Green Ingersoll! Champion of humanism, liberty, freethought, and human creativity against the evils of tradition, superstition, and organized religion, of course!"

This has not yet happened, but I live in hope. The series will also give me an opportunity to read Ingersoll every week, which is a habit I used to enjoy. My source in general will be the Secular Web Library, though I also have a The Best of Robert Ingersoll collection of quotations to draw from.

"The Improved Man"

The Improved Man will believe only in the religion of this world. He will have nothing to do with the miraculous and supernatural. He will find that there is no room in the universe for these things. He will know that happiness is the only good, and that everything that tends to the happiness of sentient beings is good, and that to do the things -- and no other -- that add to the happiness of man is to practice the highest possible religion. His motto will be: "Sufficient unto each world is the evil thereof." He will know that each man should be his own priest, and that the brain is the real cathedral. He will know that in the realm of maid there is no authority -- that majorities in this mental world can settle nothing -- that each soul is the sovereign of its own world, and that it cannot abdicate without degrading itself. He will not bow to numbers or force; to antiquity or custom. He, standing under the flag of nature, under the blue and stars, will decide for himself. He will not endeavor by prayers and supplication, by fastings and genuflections, to change the mind of the "Infinite" or alter the course of nature, neither will he employ others to do those things in his place. He will have no confidence in the religion of idleness, and will give no part of what he earns to support parson or priest, archbishop or pope. He will know that honest labor is the highest form of prayer. He will spend no time in ringing bells or swinging sensers, or in chanting the litanies of barbarism, but he will appreciate all that is artistic -- that is beautiful -- that tends to refine and ennoble the human race. He will not live a life of fear. He will stand in awe neither of man nor ghosts. He will enjoy not only the sunshine of life, but will bear with fortitude the darkest days. He will have no fear of death. About the grave, there will be no terrors, and his life will end as serenely as the sun rises.

Welcome to Hell

2010-11-24T16:28:00.001-06:00

Spotted this at an old blog I used to visit. A new mother tells her baby about God and Pauline Christianity. (And boy, does it look depressed.)

Related Ingersoll excerpt:

The orthodox God, when clothed in human flesh, told his disciples not to resist evil, to love their enemies, and when smitten on one cheek to turn the other, and yet we are told that this same God, with the same loving lips, uttered these heartless, these fiendish words; "Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

These are the words of "eternal love." No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this infinite horror. All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in pestilence and famine, in fire and flood, -- all the pangs and pains of every disease and every death -- all this is as nothing compared with the agonies to be endured by one lost soul.

This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the justice of God -- the mercy of Christ.

This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the Inquisition, forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain.

Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox creed.

It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge. Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God.

While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.

Extracted from Robert Ingersoll's "Why I Am Agnostic".

Let Me Be Frank

An Odd Post: Science Advocacy

Freethought Friday: the Measure of a Man

Freethought Friday: A Candle in the Dark

Saturday Snapshot

A Reading on Selfish Genes

Freethought Friday:

A Reading on Cities

Saturday Snapshot

Re: Sinews

Saturday Snapshot

Recommended Reading

Saturday Snapshot

Curiosity

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Saturday Snapshot

Armistice Day

The KunstlerCast

Singing History's Song

Saturday Snapshot

Old Age

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The Good Fight

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Freethought Friday #29

Saturday Snapshot

Lunacy

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Freethought Friday #28: Beauty of Understanding

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Sinews

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An Essay on Man

Science!

The question remains

Saturday Snapshot

Freethought Friday #27: The High Road

Freethought Friday #26: Worth Fighting For

Freethought Friday #25: The Burden of Proof

How TV Ruined Your Life

Visions of Desire

Absolutes, Morality, God, and Individuals

Freethought Friday: Freedom and Progress

"Nothing learned, and everything forgotten!"

Freethought Friday: Heresy's Grace

In Which I Tongue-Talk

glos·so·la·li·a/ˌgläsəˈlālēə/

See that fire in the sky...

Skeptical Saturday: The Age of Reason

A Musical History of Ignorance

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Skeptical Saturday: On Religion

Book Review: God is not One

Stoic Flowchart

To your health --

Freethought Friday #20: Arête

Freethought Friday #19: A Worthy Creed

Draw Muhammad Day, Old-School

Freethought Friday #18: Depart from the Faith of Your Fathers

Mother's Day

A Man in Full

Freethought Friday #17:

May Day

Freethought Friday #16: Intellectual Liberty

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Atheist Tabernacle Choir

Easter with Pentecostals

Bernard Cornwell on Thinking for One's Self

Freethought Friday #15: Non Serviam

Freethought Friday #14 An Unholy Bible

Freethought Friday #13: Loving...God?

Freethought Friday #12: The Measure of Wealth

The Collected Sins of Jehovah (Part 2)

The Collected Sins of Jehovah (Part 1)

Freethought Friday #11: Church and State

Freethought Friday #10: Strength in Freedom

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