Death, Rebirth, and the skeptic (metaphorically speaking)

I've got a full blown case of Halloweenitis now. Damn, but I love this time of year.

Mostly, I love the symbolism of this time of year, and of the whole holiday, especially in its pagan roots. Death! Rebirth! Renewal! A time of transition, of liminality. In-betweenness. Which, really, for humans can be scary stuff. We like things nice and settled, mostly. Only life doesn't quite work that way, does it? We always get hit with those unsettled times. The transition moments, when for a bit it's hard to say whether we are this or that, or maybe something else entirely.

Those transitions, that's the stuff of horror and other scary stories. Maybe why we like it so much. It's not just the meditation on death and all that -- it's the dealing with moments of change and transformation.

Watching the atheist community, you get to see a lot of that. I'm one of those members who never did the religion thing much. But many, of course, did. They had to grapple with something that was a huge part of their life. Let go of it, or maybe even have it torn away. And often enough thrust...nowhere. Into Limbo, an in-betweeny place with no sense of whether there is something to be had on the other side, or if there is even an other side.

I have so much respect for people in that boat, the ones who have made that journey. Because that's some scary shit. It takes courage. And it strikes me that this is what lies at the heart of skepticism -- embracing that liminality. Refusing the easy answers, the certainty, the solid ground, and setting out into the unknown, never knowing for sure if there is another shore. Or, really, not seeking a shore. Just seeking. A journey with no end point. No enlightenment, only the promise of always being enlightened.

And Halloween, Autumn, this whole topsy-turvy time of year, it's a good time to meditate on that. Embrace it. Let the wildness of the season sink in and embrace the change. Knowing that even as things die -- our certainties and beliefs and safe little thoughts -- new things will be born. Scary shit, but fun. Me, I've been embracing it a bit the last week or so. Doing some writing like I haven't been doing for a while, thinking and planning, finding ways to upend my life and kill a few things so that new things can grow.

The Last Temptation of Christ: thoughts on Blasphemy Day

I thought I'd take time on Blasphemy Day to remember one particular work of art that has often been declared blasphemous, both as a book and a movie:  The Last Temptation of Christ.

I find it, frankly, a telling indictment of modern Christianity that Scorsese's movie, flawed as it was, was pretty much a box office flop --

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it grossed a bit over 8 million domestic (even by 1988 standards, that's not too hot). The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's snuff porn flick? 370 million.
The Last Temptation, both as a novel and a movie, attempted to show a very human Christ coming to terms with his mission. He's real. He has doubts; he's afraid. He's a guy who farts, and has bad moods, and feels pain. He's called to save humanity, and mostly he just wants to kiss the girl. He rebels, running from his mission for as long as he can, until it catches up and he can't escape. His discussions with his friend and eventual betrayer, the Zealot Judas, alone make the book and the movie worth one's time.

He's intensely human, and that makes the whole story beautiful and moving. Even as an atheist, and even as someone who isn't impressed on some levels with the Jesus myth, the story gets me every time. I feel this guy's agony. And no, Mel, it isn't the agony of whips and chains and the cross. He is human, and knows the pain that can come from that. He is more human than the body that Mel Gibson fantasy-beats to shreds could ever hope to be.

Back when the Last Temptation came out, I had a classmate who simply noted that, if it truly represented what Christianity was, she might be tempted to believe. I didn't quite agree, but I understood the feeling.

The book? Frequently banned for its blasphemy. After all, it shows Jesus having carnal thoughts! It's wicked! It suggests Our Lord might have had a hard-on or two!

The movie? Protested. In fact, the anger against the movie was so intense that it actually led to a terrorist attack -- a molotov cocktail attack on a theater in Paris. The movie is still banned in some countries.

I'm tempted to point to that attack and say, "Thus the price of the idea of blasphemy." But mostly I think about how a beautiful story has been reviled and smashed down, and a far uglier one has succeeded on a huge scale. Blasphemy as a concept, and as a subject of laws, is an ugly, thuggish tactic to silence. It's probably not a coincidence that, so often, it serves to uphold ugly, thuggish ideas.

Bill Donohue, Ignorant Bigot

via Pharyngula comes this little gem of Bill Donohue's:

The Center for Inquiry is factually incorrect to say that "Free speech is the foundation on which other liberties rest." Freedom of conscience is the first liberty, and it is inextricably linked to freedom of religion. Moreover, the whole concept of inalienable rights presupposes a belief in the Creator. In other words, atheists have the right to mock religion because our Christian Founding Fathers afforded them human rights.

Hmmm. Still sputtering, frankly, after reading this. But let's pick this apart, shall we?

Freedom of conscience is the first liberty, and it is inextricably linked to freedom of religion.

Freedom of conscience is useless if one is not free to speak one's conscience. As for freedom of religion, sure, that's one manifestation of freedom of conscience. So is having no religion. Because, Bill, there is no "freedom of conscience" if you are told that certain kinds of "conscience" are off limits.

Moreover, the whole concept of inalienable rights presupposes a belief in the Creator. 

"Creator," of course, does not imply in any way, shape or form YOUR god. Maybe Buddha gave you those rights. Also, and more importantly -- "inalienable rights" is a very complex topic, one with a rich history of philosophic controversy, and is most important to understand it as a political tool. But, of course, even if we

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dismiss the idea as too hard to quantify in practice or as something that is nothing more than flowery political point making, it is still certainly possible for to have an entirely rational basis for those rights that were called "inalienable." John Stuart Mill, famously, gave an excellent defense for freedom of speech without resorting to the idea of "inalienable rights."
Or, to put it another way, Bill:  try to have a grasp of the topic that is more sophisticated than a 4th grader's.

In other words, atheists have the right to mock religion because our Christian Founding Fathers afforded them human rights.

WTF?! Okay, first off, our Founding Fathers were a diverse bunch -- Christians of various sects, Deists, "Theistic rationalists" (as some, like Ed Bryant, have dubbed people like Thomas Jefferson). They ran the gamut, with a significant number that weren't Christian -- some, like Jefferson, positively despised the Christian churches.

Second off, what's with this "afforded them human rights?" Excuse me? Did you just come out and say that non-Christians only have rights insofar as Christians let them? Are you that afraid of the Other that you can only imagine a world where your folk, Catholics, get to lord it over everyone else, perhaps throwing them a few bones in your kinder moments? Are you that ready and willing to piss all over the ideals that this country was founded on?

For the record, those Founding Fathers, Christian and otherwise, did not "afford" anyone rights -- most of them believed, quite strongly, that they were merely recognizing rights that all people already have. Some of them were even self-aware enough to recognize where they were being hypocritical and not fully recognizing those rights for some people. And again, to reiterate the point that should not have to be made to an adult with any kind of decent education:  they were a diverse lot. I'm sure, if you look across all our Founding Fathers, you'll find a fair bit of variety on exactly how they viewed this "rights" business.

You'd do us all a favor, Bill, if you just shut up about American History until you actually learn some.

No Gods, No Masters vs. Submission to the Will of God

A morning thought, or at least a morning ponder over coffee, induced by remembering a line from U2: "If you wanna touch the sky better learn how to kneel/ on your knees boy!":

There's ways, when talking religion, that you come up against fundamental differences in thought. For instance, atheists often hear the charge that we are rebellious -- that our beef with God is that we don't want to bow our heads and submit ourselves to His Will.  We're prideful, and Pride Goeth Before the Fall and all that.

Which is one of those true/not true kind of things. I mean, it's not true because really, our beef with "God" is that we honestly don't think "God" exists. It's really nothing more than that, at least for the vast majority of us. But it's also true, because you know what? Damn straight we don't want to submit. We hold that Freedom is the most important thing, that to bow your head is to open yourself up to the chance someone will take it off. No Gods, No Masters.

This isn't just an atheist thing, either. It's a rationalist position, one that holds that we should stand on our own two feet and get to work. Paine, as sure a believer as any Christian, didn't believe in a God who demanded or needed submission. Paine would've grumbled at the "No Gods" part of the famous slogan, but he would've been right there with the "No Masters" part. His God was no Master, but a Creator looking for new creators, beings who'd dare to unravel the mysteries of His Creation and stand proud...

So on one side we have atheists, agnostics and some believers who think that humans should stand on our own two feet and trust in our own abilities; and on the other side we have those who believe that humans should submit totally to the Will of God. It's a divide between those who choose Freedom versus those who choose Slavery. It's hard to imagine how to bridge that divide.

Fidelity vs. Faith, or Nonbelievers at the holidays

The Guardian has a short article about The Atheist's Guide to Christmas, a book coming out about, well, atheists and Christmas. It served to remind me that soon we will be mired in another dismal round of the ol' War Against Christmas nonsense.

I mean, sure, there's atheists who don't do Christmas. People, after all, vary in their tastes. For some, it just isn't their thing. Maybe they were Christian once and now feel weird about the holiday. Maybe they have family-induced issues that turn them off from the holiday. Maybe -- gadzooks! -- they come from a background where Christmas wasn't really a part.

Whatever. Fact is, though, that most atheists and other nonbelievers continue to celebrate the holiday, often with great gusto. And some Christians choose to get mad, because after all Jesus is the Reason for the Season, and the secularization of Christmas has led to consumerism and selfishness and gay marriage and who knows what other horrors.

Of course, Jesus isn't the Reason for the Season, and never was. As we nonbelievers like to point out, over and over, our words falling on largely deaf ears, Christmas is way older than the particular body of myths that adhered to the Man from Judea. People playing the Evil Secularist Misappropriation of Christmas card might want to pull out those huge planks of wood stuck in their eyes, first. To rework a line from Bono, Christians stole Christmas from the pagans, and we're stealing it back.

But all that, really, misses the point. The point, actually, as to do with something from the last post -- the things people hear when they hear words. Many people hear "atheist" and they don't just hear "person who doesn't believe in a god or gods." They hear, instead, something like "someone who utterly rejects every thing that is good and decent, like kindness and ordered society and puppies."

Comte-Sponville makes, in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, a distinction between Faith and Fidelity. Faith is, well, faith -- a blind, unreasoned acceptance of something as being true. Fidelity is a adherence to a tradition or set of traditions -- think of it as membership in a culture. You agree to certain principles, values, you name it. You have fidelity towards them. It isn't faith, because of course it can be a reasoned thing -- heck, the American Revolution was founded on the notion that people could withdraw fidelity, in a fashion, and bestow it on something else. They rejected the King -- they didn't reject society. Their values, and the values of the English back home, were pretty similar. They didn't reject any of that, just one little piece.

For many people, they hear "atheist" and they don't just hear a rejection of Faith -- they hear a rejection of Fidelity to the culture as a whole. The two are conflated, and in most cultures, have long been so in popular thinking. To question God was to question the King. Heck, in ancient cultures they often made it more direct, and made the King a god! But it is conflation -- the two don't have to go hand in hand. Fidelity can exist without Faith (and vis versa -- Comte-Sponville notes that Faith without Fidelity is a very, very scary thing. But that's another post).

Why do so many atheists celebrate Christmas with such gusto and cheer? Or, for

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that matter, celebrate other holidays like, say, Halloween, or Thanksgiving in the U.S.? Because we may not have Faith, but we do have Fidelity. We like our culture. We grew up in it, we're attached to it. Celebrating Christmas is one of the ways that we celebrate that fact. Christmas is part of who we are -- the carols, the food, the pretty lights and the Christmas trees. So we celebrate, and have fun. We may have thrown out the baby Jesus -- except for the carols, many of us love those -- but we haven't thrown out the bath water.

There's something lurking behind that word

Greta Christina has a nice piece up, "Atheism and Self-Definition," which got me thinking about words and definitions and battles over same. She's talking about something every atheist has probably experienced -- having the word defined for us, despite our protestations to the contrary.

Mostly, I find myself fascinated by how words can have so much lurking behind

Image by jovike via Flickr

them.

As Greta notes, one of the most powerful acts an individual or movement can make is self-definition, and we've been hard at work at it with the word "atheist." Any look at the history of the word will send you down a rabbit hole of confusion and head-spinning. What did people in earlier times mean by the word? It can be hard to say, but I can say this:  it was a lot more than the spartan definition of "no belief in a god or gods." In fact, it seems like it has often meant something like "a wholesale denial and repudiation of everything that we value and hold to be true." It meant Evil and Anarchism, dogs and cats sleeping together... I mean, people back in the day called Thomas Paine an atheist!

So one side of the conversation has really weighed this word down. And we are trying to redefine it. Now, many times we will do that by whittling it down. We proclaim the most basic definition, a lack of belief in a god or gods, and say "no more than that!" Not a positive declaration that there is no God, but rather simply a statement that we just don't believe.

But honestly, we're also adding to the word, too. Go read those New Atheist bestsellers. Go take a peek at the atheist blogosphere. Modern Atheism has some definite features that go beyond "No belief in a god or gods." There's Humanism. There's Skepticism. There's Philosophical and Practical Naturalism.

The real battle, in a sense, isn't just the definition of the word -- it's all that stuff lurking behind it. We have our set of lurking ideas; they have theirs.

Or, to put it another way:  for us, atheism is a funny ol' thing these days, because it's really -- if we take that simple, stripped down definition we talk about -- such a very small part of who we are. That other stuff is where we're at. It's what we're about. Atheism? It's just a description for our stance on a particular idea that many folk seem to think is Very Important. It's not where we start from; it's just one of the places we end up. Just a description, folks. I'm male, I'm a sexy dude, I'm an atheist...

I kinda think, though, that many theists think the God issue is where they start from. It certainly seems as if many folk hang pretty much everything on the notion: Morality, meaning, love, you name it.  So they tend to think of atheism in those terms. We must think it's really damn important, too! Only, funny thing is, we're often not quite on the same page with them on that one. Because of all that lurking stuff behind the word.

I guess someone could say that we shouldn't use the word, precisely because of all the lurking stuff and the problems it creates. But to me it seems like we're pretty much stuck with it. So we redefine it, and keep at it, and hopefully, eventually, we get folks to see all that other stuff.

Thinking Aloud About The Animistic Urge

It's Autumn. Not so's you'd completely notice in my parts, since it can still be a tad hot this time of year -- but yes, even here in the Sonoran Desert, you can feel the change in the air. The nights are cooler, and even the days feel...softer. With Autumn comes my inevitable loves of this time of year:  dark fantasy and horror, mythic landscapes composed of Frankensteins and vampires and werewolves, oh my!

Which gets me thinking about the human tendency towards animism. I feel, I think, the most at this time of year. I go for long walks and get caught up in vivid fantasies. The air seems alive. The trees seem -- well, more alive than usual. Shadows seem to have wills of their own. Not really, of course. I may jump headlong into metaphor and not come up for air for a few months, but it's always firmly metaphor in my head. It's more like it's the only way I can think to express the thoughts and emotions that come up at this time.

Some of it is the Topic of the Season -- Death. In Halloween, in the Day of the Dead, and in the whole general tendency of the season, the focus is on death and

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change and endings. Which, for me, also firmly focuses me on Life, that wondrous thing, so prosaic and yet so mysterious at the same time. So the world around me seems in sharper focus, dancing with Life, and that ol' animistic urge takes hold...
Is it coincidence that, just as traditional religion lost a bit of its privileged place in modern societies, fantasy and its ilk grew as genres? I often wonder if there's been studies done of the fans of fantasy and horror and SF -- I wonder, for instance, if there isn't a larger percentage of  nonbelievers and the like in those groups. Like maybe in these Let's Pretends we let our animistic urge out a bit, let it play, knowing the whole time it's play and nothing else, so it's fun and useful and doesn't carry the dangers that believing our animistic imaginings can cause.

I like the thought, I have to say. Maybe, as we have lost Belief, we have gained Play. That's a pretty damnfine trade in my book, if you ask me. Werewolves would be terrifying things to believe in! But they make delicious fun in stories that explore the darker sides of human nature.

Which leads me to a final thought:  thinking skeptically, using our reason as carefully as we can, doesn't necessarily mean some terrible death match against the irrational parts of our minds. On the contrary, it can give those parts a place to play safely that makes them sources of fun and inspiration, rather than sources of terror and worry. We're always contending against that old stereotype that skeptics are wet blankets -- maybe we need to show, more often, how it can deepen and enrich our experiences. Ghosts are so much more fun when they aren't real.

A better wager than Pascal's

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
-- Thomas Jefferson

=-=-=


Let's make a wager!

We're all familiar with Pascal's Wager, I

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assume. Atheists surely are, since there's always that Certain Kind of Theist who likes to trot it out, always with something of an "Aha! I got ya now, you atheist!" air. The poor fools never know, I think, why we laugh.
Many theists, of course, do know why we laugh, and they laugh right along with us. Pascal was a brilliant man, but the Wager was his great Moment of Monumental Stupidity. It's an argument that appeals to fear rather than reason, that makes our conscience nothing more than chips on the table, and makes God a chump to boot. There's nothing likeable about Pascal's Wager -- it's just sad. The fact that many people still reference it in all apparent seriousness -- and think it's such a slam dunk argument -- is even sadder.

Now, I think it can be safely said that most atheists, like me, admit to the possibility that we are, in fact, wrong. We may not think it very likely, but we can admit that -- there's so much we humans don't know, after all, that in the end knowledge is always a matter of certainties that can never really be 100%. Modern Atheism, in short, tends to use a scientific definition of the word "truth." And that means there's always the possibility of being wrong. We believe the evidence makes the existence of God highly unlikely, and so we don't believe. We are willing to change if, and only if, real evidence comes to light.

So, like Pascal, we make a wager. Only ours is different from the one he proposes. Ours is, well -- that God isn't a dick. That this God would prefer that we explore and learn and question and think and challenge. That this God isn't the sorry bugger seen in so much of the Abrahamic tradition -- needy, abusive, insecure, violent, a sullen bully needing to be constantly placated by supplication, praise, and obedience to arbitrary and cruel commands. We're betting, in short, that if we're wrong, it's more likely that God would be something like Paine's God -- the loving, nurturing parent who says, "Grow, baby, grow, dazzle and shine and show me what you can do." Who laughs with delight when we question yes, even His/Her/Its existence, because we're questioning and thinking, which is why He/She/It gave us these brains in the first place. Who doesn't consign people to Hell simply because they didn't play the lick spittle well enough.

It's a better bet, I think. And, oddly, it's a bet that shows more respect for the Hypothetical Creator than Pascal, a believer, showed with his.

It's a Mystery

Life, that is. Being. Existence.

I'm rereading Andre Comté-Sponville's The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. There's so much in that little book, it's going to take a few careful readings, I think, to fully engage with it. Which, really, is a wonderful thing. I don't go all the way with this guy's thinking, but I'm finding it challenging and inspiring.

When he lays out his reasons that he doesn't believe in God, one of them is one familiar to many atheists:  the idea that as an explanation, God is incomprehensible. That is, if we take a fairly standard definition of God, God is literally supposed to be beyond human understanding, and thus is useless as an explanation -- but gets used as one anyway. God made Man, God made the Universe. God has a Plan for us, and this is it! This is the meaning of your life. Etc, etc, etc.

For something that is supposed to be beyond human understanding, lots of folks seem to have a pretty clear idea in their head of what the dude is about.

What I find interesting is that for Comté-Sponville, it almost seems as if this problem is emotionally, as well as intellectually, unsatisfying. He notes that we are continuously confronted with Mystery, including that big bugaboo, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" That is, why Being itself? There's an amusing part where Comté-Sponville mentions a painter friend who declared that he wasn't an atheist because there was a mystery in life and the universe. "Ha! No kidding!," Comté-Sponville writes, "I, too, believe there is a mystery! In fact, I believe there is not much else!"

We are finite creatures. No matter how much we learn, we are are always going to be confronted with that most basic of mysteries -- why the hell there is something rather than nothing. I personally find that quite glorious, and it's that basic mystery that invokes the awe that can sweep over me when I really let the Cosmos impinge on my consciousness in some real way -- losing myself in a landscape, or in the night stars, or the simple joy and wonder in personal relationships.

The idea of God not only doesn't explain anything -- it doesn't even, really, add to the awe quotient. Staring up at the night sky, we are still faced with the same unanswerable question. We exist, and Universe exists. There is Being instead of Nonbeing. And it is glorious.

Right there is one of the reasons I'm an atheist. It isn't just that God is an incomprehensible explanation for reality or for questions of how to live our lives -- there's a, well, poetic level, I guess you could say, where God seems just as useless. There's so much to be staggered by just by looking around. You don't need to make up anything.

We Need Reason: A Health Care Rant

I thought, really, that I had seen it all during the election. The weird spectacle of madness that was put on:  the people at McCain/Palin rallies; that freaky old lady McCain had to admonish. People seriously paying attention to a guy called "Joe the Plumber" who wasn't named Joe and wasn't a plumber. The racist comments. The conspiracy theories.

And then came Healthcare Reform, and my head exploded.

Seriously. Everyone remember back in the day, when "apeshit" was those nutters who tried to spread the story that the Clintons had had people killed to hide their shady business dealings? Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster, but those days seem sane now.

Watching Obama's speech tonight, I just got so pissed. I mean, at this moment, giving this speech, dealing with this issue, the President of the United States shouldn't have to spend time refuting claims that are so apeshit that apeshit won't go near them. The President actually had to call out the "Death Panels" lies. If that fact doesn't make you wet your pants, doesn't make you think that we are heading towards a national loony bin, I don't know what will. Think what it means:  enough people are worried about that, think it might be true -- this statement that is nothing more than the evil, twisted, fucked up, wicked, asinine ravings of an ignorant quitter from Alaska -- that the President has to waste a few minutes slamming it down. Instead of laying out more concrete details of his plan in the context of a spirited, but cordial, debate, he had to spend time to say, "Hey, Jimmy, don't worry. I'm not going to gas your gramma."

And we keep treating this stuff as if it's rational. We keep letting those voices get microphones, as if they are a serious part of the debate. They aren't. They're con artists or lunatics, or so mentally lazy that they have trouble forming enough of a thought to open a bag of potato chips. Or, to be more succinct:  they're Fox

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News's audience. A minority, I think, in this country, but a big one, and worrying, because they hold ignorance as the highest ideal, truth as anything that is spoken -- or, preferably, screamed -- over and over, and spitting as public discourse.

Of course, there are those who benefit from this debate being nothing more than frothing at the lips. Right wing radio, Fox News (go figure!), the insurance companies, you name it, there's folks that are making money off this whole damn mess, and don't care much if the country lurches into dangerous lunacy in the process. As long as they get theirs, right? Bahamas, here we come! And meanwhile, this "debate," this discussion that is being snowed under by all this anti-rational bs, is about something really, really simple:

In the richest nation on Earth, there are people who die because they can't afford health care.

It's not an academic debate. It's a debate about a tragedy in the real world. It's about suffering. It's about lives ruined and dreams forever deferred because of illness and because of a screwed up system that too often grinds people under instead of helping them.

It's a topic that desperately needs reason. It needs serious, informed conversation, creative problem-solving, intelligence, team-work. It needs all of that and more so we can end this tragedy once and for all.

At this point, I just have to end with a quote from Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy:

If I sound angry, then, yeah, I am. I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.
 
It’s killing any real debate in this country, where the system of government depends utterly on a well-informed public. When rampant idiocy is presented as reasonable discourse without any rebuttal, then we all suffer.

What we need are government officials not afraid to talk like Barney Frank did to such a voice of lunacy. To reiterate, crackpots have a right to air their diseased notions, just as we have the right to tear those ideas to shred when they do. More than that, the news media have a responsibility to do so.

(And while you're at it, read the whole article. And also read what John Scalzi has to say in his post "That Obama Speech," which is, like Plait's, about Obama's evil speech to the nation's school children.)

NonStampCollector reveals the shocking truth about God's Design

*snerk* "Oh, I love being reminded that I exist!"

The Baptists come a'knockin'

For the last year, I've been treated to a sight that was, I admit it, rather sweet to

Not Coronado Baptist Church in Tucson, which is kinda ugly. Image by J. Stephen Conn via Flickr

my atheist eyes:  a For Sale sign on the Baptist church across the street from my apartment complex. It's one of those small jobs, the ones that always seem to have pastors with Ph.D.'s (from what kind of school, one can only shudder to imagine) and promise on their signs to Preach Christ Risen. It even had a school. But bad times hit -- apparently a not uncommon phenomena in Church Land at the moment -- and they went away. And so the building sat, forlorn and empty, with only a little For Sale sign for company.
Alas, all good things must come to an end. A few weeks ago, the sign disappeared, and distressingly churchy activities could be seen, right down to the arrival of one of those old white school buses you only seem to see at churches. What, did the Christians go and buy up every old white school bus in the country?

Yesterday was, I guess, their coming out party. Which meant that Saturday, I was treated to a visit from some Baptists lookin' for butts to fill the pews.

First, let me say this: they were perfectly polite and friendly, left quickly when I told them I wasn't interested, didn't even press literature into my hands, and it wasn't heinously early. But.

I just don't know how to deal with this stuff anymore. Or, rather, I guess I should say, I don't know, exactly, how I feel about it. I mean, on one hand, just get out of my face, right? I don't go knocking on your door to tell you the Good News of the Godless Universe. It seems a bit rude. I think that may have to do with the fact that it is in this kind of evangelism -- the door to door, out in the streets talking to strangers kind of thing -- that we are confronted with the fact that, however nice these people are, they are doing this because they think I'm going to hell. And yeah, there's part of me, especially on a Saturday morning, that's pretty much "Right back at ya, buddy!"

But then again, they honestly care about complete strangers. They may be deluded, but they think other folks are in danger from Big Bad Consequences, and they try to reach out to help. And I think Penn Jillette is right about this kind of thing -- if you honestly think that, say, people are doomed to Hell unless they convert, you had damn well better evangelize, or else you're a bit of a hypocrite.

All in all, I'm glad I wasn't mean and left it at "I'm not interested." Because they do mean well. But I admit -- I miss that For Sale sign.

Remember: Insurance Companies care. They really, really care*

*about their money. Not, you know, about babies.





via Greg Laden's Blog

Madness and Witchcraft

Sometimes, you find yourself staring madness right in the face. I don't mean the metaphorical kind. I mean the honest to goodness mind off kilter kind.

The short form of the story:  sometime ago, back on skin hunger, some of you may recall that I posted a video by a young Christian woman that was...odd. She responded to my post, which in turn led to an exchange of emails. Then she facebooked me. Haven't had much of a chance to chat since. Couldn't really get the heart up to, because I had already seen the pattern in the "conversation" -- there wasn't going to be much of one, frankly.

I knew, from her Youtube videos, that, er, her experience of the world was different than, well, most everyone's. Whether that qualified as some kind of mental illness was not going to be something that I was going to pretend to be qualified to judge. She seems a rather sweet person, really. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But.

Yeah, there's a 'but.'

I've unfriended her on Facebook, largely because, well, she scares the heck out of

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me, especially after this week. Because there's a kind of belief that is so medieval, and so dangerous, that it chills me completely to see a person actually holding it:  she believes in demons. And witches. And Satanists (with real, demonic powers, not just the silly pretenders of the Church of Satan). To wit:  she thinks she is under attack from all of the above.
Really. Honestly. I've never honestly met someone like this, someone with a persecution complex so extreme. Witches working magic against her! Dark Satanic prayers being leveled at her! Demons in the house! Desperate calls for a "prayer shield." It's a simple world view:  people who don't believe what she believes are demon-controlled. Or Satanists and Witches, ie active agents of Evil.


Harmless crackpot? Some of you may also recall a video that made the rounds a bit -- I posted it myself at one point -- that showed people in Africa being burned alive as witches. Those kinds of beliefs have had devastating consequences far too often for me to dismiss her as just another harmless crackpot.

When a person's beliefs are so deeply delusional, who knows where they will lead? We do know where they have led in the past -- to fires and stonings and pogroms. Magical thinking is dangerous, dangerous stuff. It's a floodgate that can devastate everything when it's opened. I can't really hem and haw and say, well, maybe she isn't too scary, maybe she's harmless, maybe she's just a bit odd and all. She's delusional. And delusional people can do a lot of damage.


It's also hard not to notice how her particular religion can reinforce and strengthen her delusional thinking. The persecution complex, the infantile ordering of the world into Good and Evil, Dark and Light, with our Mary Sue as the Stalwart Hero fighting the dark forces. And, of course, being heavily persecuted for doing so. I think we all know how that kind of thinking often turns out in the real world.


Definitely a learning experience. There's always part of me that thinks that everyone is reachable. But. Yeah. There's always a 'but.'

(And, of course, since I wrote this, I am now persecuting her. Or so she'd probably read it. Probably I'm possessed by a demon. Or maybe I'm a Warlock. *tries to cast spell, accidentally sets hair on fire*)

It's time to draw the line in the sand: No on Prop. 1!

When we talk about reaching further than our ancestors -- by learning about the universe, pushing ourselves, expanding that "comfortable proscenium of our ancestors" -- it isn't just a matter of realizing that the universe is bigger, and older, and weirder, than anything humans could've imagined. The notion encompasses other ideas as well -- pushing ourselves ethically, for instance. One of the most brilliant parts of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion was the chapter on how we don't get our morals from the Bible. Ethics and morals, instead, have been a topic of constant discussion and exploration and progress. The Moral Zeitgeist, as he puts it, has grown over time. A progressive thinker of the 19th century, like Darwin, held many ideas that we find outrageous today -- on race, on gender, you name it.

As for the ancients, they were in most respects quite barbaric by our standards. The cosmopolitan Romans, for all their grandeur and advances, engaged in cruelties that shock us today. And the ancient Hebrews, whether in earlier times or in the time of Christ? Yeah. Barbarians is quite a good term for them. So I'm always a bit concerned with folks that try to claim their ethics are based in the Bible. Or try to make modern ethics more so. It seems like stepping backwards to me.

Case in point:  gay marriage. Modern ethics is actively engaged in an expansion here, right down to expanding the meaning of the word "marriage" beyond traditional usages. Because that is the great journey that we take in ethics when we dare. In Renaissance times, there were spirited debates on whether the natives of the New World were even people. We justifiably look at those views now as being absurd, and indeed evil. But the fight was fought, and slowly the ideas and definitions changed. We have advanced enough in our ethics that the very idea that people would even ask such questions amazes us. Likewise, I believe there will be a time when people will look at the debate over homosexuality, and rights for homosexuality, as equally absurd. Heck, many of us already do, and honestly have trouble even understanding why people get so worked up about it. But they do get worked up about it, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

In the U.S., we will see the latest round in the fight this fall, in Maine, when

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Proposition 1 goes before the voters. Prop. 1 will, if passed, override the Maine legislature's legalization of gay marriage. The Religious Right really, really wants to win this one, because it would be another brutal defeat for progressive forces.

The fight for gay rights has slowly been gaining steam of the last ten years. This fall, we have one of those points in history that could decide a lot of the future course of the fight. Greta Christina has an excellent post on why this one is so important. Go read, then get active. It's time to take the fight to the bastards. It's time to make the big push to expand our ethical proscenium just a little more. Let us fight this one so that the generations following us will be utterly and completely perplexed by how anyone could have questioned gay rights. Let's push humanity forward just a little bit more. Let's win Maine, and then the nation.

Robert Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice

Funny thing about Gregory the SF fanatic:  it wasn't until a few years ago that I

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really started reading a lot of Robert Heinlein (other than some short stories, and Stranger in a Strange Land in high school, because it was one of those books that all the cool geeks read). And until now I haven't read any of his later stuff. So it was new territory when I sat down with Job: A Comedy of Justice. It was one of his last works, and I've got to say that it was pretty darn nifty. It's definitely something that all godless folk will want to take a gander at.

I have a love-hate relationship with Heinlein's work. On the one hand, he can be highly entertaining and thought-provoking as all get out -- he was never afraid to ask any question in his work, and you always come away with Cool Thoughts when you read him. The other hand is his sexism -- and it's a weird sexism, because he'll write about sexual liberation and women as equals even as he revels in those same women being submissive and dominated. The dude had some issues, let me tell you. Job has some of that -- there's moments where you want to scream or shake your head in disbelief. But the rest, oh the rest..

A quick plot summary:  fundamentalist minister Alec Hergensheimer, a member of a particularly fire and brimstone sect in an alternate America/Earth, is on a Polynesian cruise and goes fire-walking. After the walk, people are calling him Alec Graham, his ship -- and indeed, the whole world -- has changed, and everything he knows is gone. It also turns out Alec Graham has been shacking up with his stewardess, Margrethe, whom our Alec quickly falls for, despite being married.

Then things get weird. A iceberg hits the ship, he and Margrethe find themselves in still another world, and they are off on a journey to America and Kansas through a stream of Earths that keep changing faster and faster. Alec thinks the End Times are on, and worries that Margrethe -- a dedicated heathen -- is doomed to hellfire. By the end of the book, we have seen the Rapture, Heaven (it is pretty but boring, and angels are assholes), Hell, and met Saint Peter, Yahweh, Lucifer, Loki and Odin -- oh, and their boss, too.

It's not a book that will make the deeply religious very happy. This is Heinlein, after all, the man who once said, "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh." And this book is very definitely critiquing the Judeo-Christian world view. It's gentle -- Heinlein knew very well how silly all people are to be too bitchy towards one particular brand of human silliness -- but pointed nonetheless. There's some good one liners that will make the godless chuckle ("Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything."). But it's the heart of the book that interests me most -- the use of the Job story.

Alec, needless to say, is our Job. Lucifer is, however, the good guy, greatly regretting his role in the earlier Job affair. Yahweh is a dick, really, and you really see that when we finally see Heaven, a place where Rank Hath its Privileges, as the angels constantly remind the "creatures."  It's through Lucifer that we get to the core idea of the book, namely that the whole basis of the Judeo-Christian system is based on injustice:

"Alec, Justice is not a divine concept: it is a human illusion. The very basis of the Judeo-Christian code is injustice, the scapegoat system. The scapegoat sacrifice runs all through the Old Testament, then it reaches its height in the New Testament with the notion of the Martyred Redeemer. How can justice possibly be served by loading your sins on another? Whether it be the lamb having its throat cut ritually, or a Messiah nailed to a cross and 'dying for your sins.'"

(I think Richard Dawkins would love that bit) And Lucifer notes how the Lord's Prayer gives up the game:

"Stop. Stop right there. 'Thy will be done--' no Muslim claiming to be a 'slave of God' ever gave a more sweeping consent than that. In that prayer you invite Him to do His worst. The perfect masochist. That's the test of Job, boy. Job was treated unjustly in every way day after day for years -- I know, I know, I was there, I did it -- and My dear Brother stood by and let Me do it. Let Me? He urged Me, He connived it, accessory ahead of the fact."

It's a very Heinlein moment, with Lucifer challenging Alec:  will he be a lickspittle and take Yahweh's abuse, or will he stand up for himself?

Alec does stand up against the ill-treatment, with the help of Lucifer. Lucifer's reasons for helping him are wonderful -- sure, there's the desire to stick it to Yahweh, his brother, but there's something more. Earlier in the book, in the midst of his endless tribulations, Alec had encountered Lucifer in disguise -- and worried that this nice man was hell-bound, tried to save him. It doesn't matter to Lucifer that Alec was deluded in his ideas -- he's only interested in the fact that, despite his own very real and huge troubles, Alec thought of him and his family and tried to save them from the danger he thought they were in.

It's a sweet and thoughtful moment, and serves to note that the basic keys to human happiness -- freedom, love, kindness -- can get obscured by the silliness and arbitrariness of religion. But Heinlein is an optimist -- even Alec, as perfect a follower of the biblical Yahweh as you can imagine, comes through in the end.

A good read, over all, funny and sweet and wise. With, you know, the occasional Heinleinism. But this is definitely a book where I can forgive him that.

A worldview that says "yes"

The theme of this here little blog covers a bit of territory. The proscenium in question can be that of humanity -- the way we as a species view ourselves and the Cosmos. It can also be a lot more personal. I've been thinking a lot about that aspect -- about the lens that I view the world through, and myself. If I had to summarize the downside of my life so far, it has been that my personal proscenium has been far too small. My stage is tiny and encompasses little. That is one of the results, I think, of the depression I suffered from for years. Depression makes your world small -- it collapses inwards until it seems like you are stuck in your head. In the last few years, as I've taken good, strong steps to conquer that old nemesis, I've had to learn whole new ways of looking at the world. Heck, I've had to learn to really look at the world!

The best way to make your worldview small, to collapse that proscenium into the tiniest size possible, is to say "no." On a personal level, it can be "no, I can't do this" and "no, I'm certainly not capable of that." Or "no, I should not be like that" or "no, what I am is wrong." There's countless ways to formulate it, countless ways to commit suicide by a thousand tiny cuts.

What's sad is that, if you want to live like that, society will give you a lot of help. Societies have always found it easier to control through prohibition than through inspiration. Don't do this, don't do that, certainly don't do THAT.  Religion is often the willing accomplice, making up prohibitions that have no possible logical reason for existing. Prohibitions against homosexuality? Any logic there? No. Against certain kinds of dress? Nope, not there either. But logic is never the point -- having an arbitrary rule is. A litany of no's. No to this, no to that, don't do that.

On the personal level, the no's a person comes up with for themselves can be every bit as arbitrary and stupid. And, of course, they often take forms created by the culture at large.

Which brings me to Humanism, and what makes it special to me. It is a worldview that is founded in the word "yes." It's about possibility. It's about growing and encouraging growth, about celebrating difference and individuality as strengths rather than as threats. Instead of "no," it says "yes" and "why not?" Being an atheist, being a humanist, has not created any sort of deep, existential crisis for me. I don't think, wow, how depressing. I find it liberating and full of hope. Because at the end of the day, it says, "yes." It's a nice way to beat down the sad litany that I drummed into my own head for so many years.

Miracles would be proof?

Over at Unreasonable Faith, Daniel Florien has a nice post on "Why We Should Trust Reason Over Emotion." Mostly, I just want to chime in and say, yeah, what he said -- but with one "but."

It's that last part of the post: Miracles would be proof. Daniel writes,

Jennifer says that it is “ignorant” to dismiss miracles. And if there were real miracles, I would agree — why would someone dismiss amazing things that really happened?

I've got to disagree. I've got Paine too much on the mind right now, I guess. What I'd like to argue is that the very notion of miracles is somewhat incoherent. As Paine noted, the idea of calling something a miracle involves a truly stupendous claim -- namely, that one knows, absolutely and totally, what is and is not possible. Something may be inexplicable by current human understanding, but that does not, in any way, mean it's a miracle. It is far more likely that it just means there's something we don't understand yet. To establish that something is a "miracle," you'd have to know a heck of a lot more than we do now. Or will ever likely know, quite possibly.

But there's another point, and I'll illustrate it with an example: let's say that tomorrow, every single person on the planet hears a big, booming voice, saying (in the language of every hearer) "I am the Lord God. Bow before me, humans, lest you be doomed to hellfire!" That would, I think you'll all admit, be pretty amazing. It would be a singular event in human history, and come as close as one can to the notion of "miracle." So, wow! God spoke to us! Right?

Says who?.How would you know that the voice is God? Just because the event is amazing? Just because the voice says so? That's a pretty big leap. Maybe it's some weird alien. Maybe it's a being from another universe having some fun. The leap -- from the event to the explanation -- is huge, however "miraculous" the event appears to be. What would this miracle truly be proof of? Not much. Just of itself, really. We could say, wow, something amazing happened. But going beyond that, well, you get into pure speculation. In science, you extrapolate from your data to make a claim -- but it's important not to extrapolate any further than the data allows (that, incidentally, is one of the biggest differences between science and pseudoscience).

And that's the problem with miracles. As Paine noted, even if they did happen, it wouldn't matter -- they explain nothing. They teach us nothing. They establish nothing. They wouldn't prove anything. At most, you could say, wow, something really interesting happened. Anything else would be nothing more than speculation and wild guessing.

Thomas Paine pwns organized religion, part 2: Prophecy

Before the Great Death Plague '09 hit me, you may recall that I had a post on Thomas Paine's discussion of the three tools that organized religion uses to bamboozle people: Mystery, Miracles and Prophecy. Mystery he dispensed with quick contempt; Miracles he spent a bit more time on. He finishes his discussion with the notion of Prophecy.

Paine basically has two points to make about Prophecy:

First, if God did choose to communicate future events to chosen "prophets," one would expect that those communications would be a lot clearer than the ones we see in the Bible. Instead of clarity, we have confusion; instead of easily comprehensible meaning, we have obscure statements that can be twisted to fit most anything. "It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty," Paine says, "to suppose he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the things called prophecies in the book called the Bible come under this description."

But secondly, and more devastatingly, Paine simply notes this:  it ain't no never mind, kids. It's exactly the same situation as with Miracles -- say you get a Prophecy from God. Fine. How do the rest of us know you did? We don't. We can't. We can't tell if you are lying, or telling the truth. Imagine if Isiah, say, was in fact given important facts about the life of Jesus -- none of the people around him would have any ability to tell whether he was telling the truth or not, because those events lay far in the future. And even if he were to speak of things in the near future and get them right, how do we know he did so because God spoke to him? We can't. He could be a savvy observer of events; he could've guessed and gotten lucky. He could've read something from a savvy observer. Prophecy is personal experience, and thus can't be considered in any kind of rational thought process. It's like expecting other people to believe you saw a ghost just because you're sure you did.


What I find most interesting, though, is the attitude that Paine shows in all of this. It's contained in that quote I used above. "It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty..." Paine is a believer. He believed in God. He believed God to be powerful, an Beneficent Creator who had showered mankind with gifts. When push comes to shove, Paine's beef is simply this:  Christianity, and indeed all organized religion, spits in the face of God, hacks away at Him until he is a small and puny thing fit to sit in the confines of weak human imagination. A God who would use such tricks as Mystery, Miracle and Prophecy is worse than a clown, and simply not something worthy of worship.

As an atheist, I sympathize with Paine here. My biggest complaint with religion

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has always been just that -- it is so small, so limited, putting up images that don't challenge our small imaginations in any way. It's easy to laugh at people who, say, see Jesus in a tortilla or a dog's butt -- but really, that's pretty much what organized religion does. It creates small, tiny plays, with small, tiny actors, played out on small, tiny stages. The "religious imagination" is so easily pleased! The vaguest statement can be accepted as a stirring Prophecy. The silliest, flimsiest events can be declared a Miracle. And when in doubt, simply declare something to be a Mystery. Paine, as you may recall from the last post, titled this chapter "Of the Means Employed in All Time, and Almost Universally, to Deceive the Peoples." He forgot, perhaps, to note that they are as much the ways that "the Peoples" deceive themselves. This priestly tricks work because people are so willing to let them work.

Healthcare madness

I'm still recovering from Death Plague '09. It has royally sucked, let me tell you, folks. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe it's having been this sick these past 2 weeks, and without insurance, that has focused my brain, insofar as it can focus on anything, on the whole health care reform debate. I can't say I have anything particularly brilliant to say about it. Mostly what I feel is a simmering anger -- an anger that I had to make choices these past 2 weeks that probably prolonged my agony, simply because of simple issues of money. Probably because I was, and am, well aware of just how sick I was, and how bad it was that I wasn't going to a doctor. I take this issue very personally. I work my ass off, and yet I can't get the most basic of health care in this country.

Mostly, though, I've been half-watching this whole town hall thing, and the utter madness engulfing the conservative elements in our culture, and despairing. This whole debate is showing so clearly how little rational thought is used in American politics. It's showing how divided and extreme things are getting. We're not talking minor divisions here -- we're talking the kind of divisions that back in the day ended up with people being tied to stakes and lit on fire. The rhetoric is mad. The lies are outrageous. The willingness to believe the lies, to not even question them, that is the real kicker, though. A whole segment of the population is proving how little they actively engage their brains.

Not that the other side gets off easily, though. One thing that has been striking me, listening to the fear-mongering from the right, is how much is sounds like the extreme liberal fear-mongering from during the Bush years. Internment camps! Nazis! Death panels!

I have no answers here. We're at a perilous point here -- a government in huge financial trouble, facing real issues of importance, including Health Care Reform (an important part of getting the financial problems under control). We have wars to be dealt with. We have infrastructure problems, international crises, and more. Perhaps more than at any point in U.S. history, we need to be stepping back and engaging our brains. Making decisions based on careful analysis and reason, instead of fear. Instead -- madness.

Maybe it's the last remnants of the sickness speaking, but right now I fear for my country. It feels like we are sliding into an abyss of hatred and fear and division.

Atheist Blogroll, and an update

Expanding the Proscenium is now, like it's predecessor, on the Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. To join, or for more information, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts.

In other news, there has been a lack of posting here because, well, I contracted the

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plague. I mean, not to be melodramatic or anything, but I swear it was the plague, the whole Black Death thing. My whole village got knocked out, and I was found in a ditch. I'm currently being chased by folks who think I only survived because I used witchcraft.

Okay, maybe it was just a bad cold or virus or infection. Whatever it was, this week has been a blur -- it started with fever, then moved on to various other Fun Things. I'm actually feeling quite a bit better, but still feel very weak, and, err, have no voice. I can whisper a bit, but can only get out anything really audible with a lot of concentration and a lot of pain and for about two seconds. It's good fun. That's pretty much my take on it -- I've decided to be amused by this. I mean, I've never really ever "lost" my voice before. I've had times that talking has been difficult, but I've never really had it just plain give out. So new experience and all.



So. Updating will resume...soon. Not going to push myself too hard. Have to get well. Because as amusing as the voice thing is, this mostly just bites royally.

Skepticism and Freethought as a Lifestyle

Here's the thing I always have to remind myself of: this freethinking thing, this rationalism and skepticism, it isn't a hat to put on and take off as I like. It doesn't work like that.

We see it all the time. Think of your Francis Collins types, who play the skeptical thought game as a matter of course in their jobs as scientists, but find ways to shove it aside in other matters. Atoms shall be questioned, the resurrection of Jesus shall not. I mention Collins because he has been a topic of conversation i

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n the atheist, skeptical and scientific blogospheres since his nomination for the NIH post. While his professional credentials are impeccable, his naive pronouncements on his religion are baffling when seen through the light of his day job and the mindset it demands. It's all a bit Jekyll and Hyde, really, only without the bloody murders. One moment he is Mr. Science, and the next he is Mr. Evangelical.
What's important though, I think, is that we are all Francis Collins to one extent or another. No matter how hard we try to be rational, to "freethink," to engage our skepticism in all things, we fail. And that's okay, really. We're human, it's going to happen. It's the larger process that's important. It's part of the permanent learning curve. If you ever think you have it figured it out, that you've "arrived," you really, really haven't.


I can't rag on Collins too hard, because really, I'm not much better. In my case it isn't a matter of setting aside skepticism to protect my religion -- it's setting aside skepticism to protect my bloody little illusions about myself. I've struggled, for years, with depression, anxiety. General screwed-upness. I've made bad choices, set up bad patterns of behavior. I hurt myself really, really badly in the process.

The last few years, I've been piecing it all back together, finding a way past the stupid thinking. That, let me tell you, is some hard work. Those stupid thoughts are habits, burned into your brain, and getting rid of them is a long, torturous process. It takes constant skepticism -- asking yourself questions all the time: is this right, is this true, is this real? Is this what I really want?  And sometimes, frankly, I slack off and go into a minor nosedive. I turn off the skepticism, don't question the assumptions I make about myself and my life, and usually end up the worse for wear.

I've been in one of those recently -- nothing major, nothing that will involve needless melodrama. But enough that over the weekend -- confronted with one small but frustrating problem created by it all -- I hit a minor funk, followed quickly by a flurry of thinking and planning and changing things to get back on track.

It's hard to make the skepticism a habit. Our brains just aren't designed that way, at least not completely. But it's nice to know that I've succeeded, in a small way. That I can apply it to all the areas of my life, not just to academic questions of science and social policy. Not all the time. Not completely. Not always with great success. But I'm working on it.

Thomas Paine pwns organized religion, part 1: Miracles

I've finished Part I of The Age of Reason. It's full of excellent, but it's the last chapter, Chapter XVII, that really shines. You know it's going to be good with a title like this: Of the Means Employed in All Times, And Almost Universally, To Deceive the Peoples.

Paine identifies three things that are used as means of deception: Mystery,

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Miracle, and Prophecy. Mystery he dispenses with in a prefunctory manner. Anyone who has heard George Carlin's old routines about growing up Catholic will be familiar with it -- it's a dodge, nothing else, something with which to shove uncomfortable questions away.


Miracles, though, that he spends some time on. I loved his discussion of miracles, not only because of the devastating fusillade that he levels against the notion, but because it exposes an aspect of belief in miracles I had never really considered before: the incredible arrogance it betrays.

His main attack on the idea of miracles is that the whole idea is presaged on knowing what is possible and what is not:

Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting.

Essentially, we don't know all the laws of nature, and unless we do, it is premature to declare an event as being beyond their power, not to mention a bit presumptuous. Paine goes on illustrate with example (how a man floating high in the air would've seemed "miraculous" to people, but then balloons were invented) and then moves on to the second objection, namely Art: it is possible to create the appearance of a thing. He notes a performance in Paris wherein "ghosts" were shown, not to bamboozle, but for entertainment. The effect, he says, was quite astonishing. So, you have to not only know the full extent of natural law, but you have to know how far Art can go in creating illusion, before you can make a claim that something is a miracle.

It really strikes me, mulling over his argument, the arrogance that belief in miracles entails. To claim such knowledge! To claim to know what exactly is possible and impossible, not only in nature, but in art! What amazes me, over two centuries later, is that people still make that kind of claim. Science has been sitting us on our asses again and again. At each stage we find new marvels, new things we didn't even know could exist, and we also learn about whole new realms of knowledge in which we are ignorant. And Art? Could the performers of Paine's day even dream of the kinds of illusion that are created in today's movies, or that magicians like Penn and Teller perform in Vegas?

And they call rationalists arrogant. Hah!

Coming up soon: Prophecy, and the other line of attack that Paine uses on Miracles. Or, why Paine, as a believer in God, is really a bit perturbed the very notion.

Reality's simple joys

Sometimes, working weekends really, really sucks. Friday and Saturday nights gone, or at least mostly so. Missed opportunities for socializing, having fun. Last night, for instance, I could've been at my sister's, hanging out with cool people. Instead, work, noon to 9:30pm. Gah.

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I can perhaps be forgiven if, while I was biking home, I was feeling a bit cranky and dissolute. The weather didn't help -- the whole day had been a big build up to a storm that didn't happen, the air always tingling with suppressed energy waiting to be released, and...nothing.

So, I'm biking home, and on the western horizon is a sight you can't claim to see too often -- a huge, and I mean huge, crescent Moon, burning through a wisp of cloud above the Tucson Mountains. I've always had this weird thing with the Moon -- seeing it relaxes me, awakens that sense of awe that can sometimes get pummelled down by the relentless march of the mundane in our everyday lives. The Moon is so amazing. Earth's companion, one that has shaped this world and the life on it. A big dose of beauty in our night sky. Something that 12 of us have voyaged to and stood upon.

The Moon is a constant presence in our lives, and so we are always imbuing it with meaning. From ancient mythologies to modern Moon races, it's a focus of a lot of human thought. Maybe that's why it's so comforting to me -- it's not only an amazing natural phenomena, but it makes me think of some of the important things in human life.

So I stopped, and gazed at the Moon for a while, and some of that ick feeling faded away, and I remembered my day and all the little interactions with people that were fun and sweet and nice, and it all didn't seem so bad.

Of course, I got home and into my apartment, and some of the icky angsty feeling came back. The moments of quiet sanity can be so short. But it's nice to have them. No supernatural, no Big Man in the Sky saying he loves me -- just a quiet moment with a bit of reality. It's a healing thing.