SubscribeMay 10th, 2012
snork/giggle_Mayan’s didn’t predict the end of the world
In case you missed the newsflash, the end of days will not be December 21 of this year. You will need to buy holiday gifts after all.
gosh, really? I guess I’m OK because either way I won’t spend money buying shit other people don’t need.
“That is correct, the world will not end,” says William Saturno, the Boston University archaeologist behind a new paper that could help put to rest the long-held myth that the ancient Mayans predicted a 2012 apocalypse—a belief still held by 10 percent of the world’s population, according to Reuters. “A cycle is ending, but a new one begins, according to the Mayans, who regard their calendar as a series of infinite cycles,” he says.
Huh, infinite? I suppose some idiot is now going to use this “new” fact and say that the big bang must be wrong because the Mayans predicted an infinite future.
What remains fascinating about the Mayans, Houston says, is their endless passage of cycles. Their culture “is really about renewal and continuity—and not about the ending of all days.”
Surprise! Another non-Christian civilization.
March 8th, 2012
why ask me about god?
Recently someone asked me why atheists couldn’t just let religion alone. To be honest I felt a bit like I’d been asked why the other kids on the playground couldn’t just leave the querent alone to play with his truck. I suppose it was the distinct whining quality to the question that did it.
My first verbal response was to say I could no more speak for all atheists than he could speak for all men. All I could do, I told him, was talk about why I spoke about religion, or about experience as a non-supernatural thing, when and how I did.
First, I asked him why he felt it necessary to broach religion with a person he knew was an atheist because left alone, I’d never talk to him about it.
The question of conversion is a bust. He knows that since he has tried to “offer me the comfort of Jesus” in the past.
He didn’t really have an answer for me, but based on the conversation that followed, it seemed that he thinks of me as a coherent thinker, and he really did want to understand what atheists have against religion.
That’s just so funny. The fact that he comes to me because I am a coherent thinker and he can’t seem to understand that the incoherence of religion is the reason I don’t take solace in “Jesus”__gawd, hilarious.
A bit like “‘arguing” for the literal truth of the Bible by use of empirical evidence. About as incoherent as one can get.
One of the things I told him was that I never approached those that believe in some form of the supernatural to speak about religion. So, I told him, I suspect that if many atheists were left alone to dwell in the secular world and allowed to make use of empirical evidence to run their societies, I suspect he’d never have to discuss religious incoherence ever again. That is, I said, you approached me not the other way around.
I try rather hard to avoid such conversations because they are almost never really desired – conversations that is. What is often wanted is some form of acceptance, or reassurance. Reason must be its own source of reassurance; one cannot argue one’s way to emotional stability. In other words, you either take empirical evidence as the basic tool of human life or you don’t. In the case of someone who makes decisions based on story, or faith or some other non-empirical structure, no amount of empirical evidence is going effect the system. Not to say the system can’t be effected, of course change is possible. There are plenty of people who give up the supernatural. The question is what causes that shift? I don’t think it’s empirical evidence. It might be the story the evidence makes, but I doubt it is the evidence itself.
Still, if this man wants to live by faith as his primary decision-making rubric, OK. I don’t care. The problem arises when that is not enough for him. Why come to me? Why?
I’ve questioned it in my self, since he doesn’t have an answer when I ask him. There is the hilarity of my “clear” mind, but I think he comes to me because he is not reassured by his own faith. There’s something missing for him. Which leads me to believe it isn’t doing the job emotionally.
Why I wonder?
I’ve heard a good deal about the difficulties of faith, about living with doubt. I wonder at that because I don’t have to do that with empirical evidence. I can know that some “fact” may be wrong, that what we count as knowledge will change over time, but I never have to question evidence itself. I can stand on the ground (to put this in earthly terms) and know that what I understand the ground to be will change as I discover more in geology and chemistry, but I don’t ever have to seriously question whether there is ground under my feet. That, my friend is comforting in a way, apparently, your faith never achieves.
To go back to the little truck…there could be any number of reasons why the other “kids” won’t let you alone to play with your “truck”. One might me that it is the only truck and there are dozens of kids who want to play. One might be that it isn’t your truck. One might be that flattening it with big rocks isn’t really playing. There are others.
February 12th, 2012
Tony Tost, poetry
I’m reading Tony Tost‘s first published book of poetry (and winner of the Walt Whitman Award) invisible bride.
From Story South here is a brief selection from that work.
It’s like waking up and kissing a mirror good morning. The challenge is finding a reason. One approach is holding onto the ball, staying in bounds, waiting for the clock to run out. There are lots of reasons strutting around, flapping their wings, but they are often stupid reasons. Entire towns sell their souls for any number of reasons; people die for one, maybe two reasons. I had a pet chicken. Echo. He was my favorite chicken. Had him when I was a child (first chicken best chicken). Tonight the night is a black moth. A spoon grazing my lips. Tonight the night is a black mouth. They killed my favorite chicken. Tonight the night is a black month or a red month. It’s December. A man passes a door three or four times before he realizes it’s the way out.
There’s more over at the site.
The whole book forms a kind of narrative and frankly that’s what interests me about it. The opening sequence, as much as I recognize the masterful handling of image and feeling, also irritates me because of its conceptual foundations. (I’m a bit touchy about idea, I think).
It starts like this:
The Man's Vision begins with the child's Sob.
Who shall say what one's Vision has to offer another? Yet, in many cases, Vision's pat h is presented with such singular exactness of fidelity that we are perfectly safe in submitting the minds of even the youngest children to its influence: the gatehouse will hold firm and keep out the invaders, and the fires shall illuminate the archers manning the battlements. Fire is indeed a sweet and proper vision for children; it is most instruc- tive and fascinating, and forms a realistic preparation for the afterlife, with a more serene and thoughtful appreciation of its meaning. We might fan our flames by a thousand and one simple observations; for instance, that the same sun which ripens by beans illumines an inner ward with is a nightmare of smoke and flames and the screams of horses and men.
And now post “afterlife” I have to work at it. It has stopped being emotionally intelligible to me.
As it happens I was reading about “new materialism” today. Partly that’s because I am seeking an ordering principle for a developing poetry manuscript. Tost’s work reminds me of William Blake, or some cross between an Alchemical Mystic and Shaman. There is undeniable power there yet I would rather be allowed to find my “path” on the actual earth, the one we really inhabit.
Where are the narratives based on the relationships between levels of chemical and biological functioning systems? Where are those stories? Those hero ones, the Visions, and Archetypes, they are all based on the relationship between the real and the unreal and so cannot guide us out of the miasma we have made of our species and environment. For that we need an actual road, one we can actually walk.
Bah.
February 6th, 2012
some wet fantasy of a grateful dead…
that’s the phrase that I woke to.
Been dreaming_don’t remember most of it_but that phrase_felt rather nauseous in waking moments
What it refers to is the Mormon penchant for baptizing the dead. I wrote about it in relation to the Romney disrespect of Ann’s father but clearly (since I was dreaming about it) it bothered me at some even deeper level. So I’ve been thinking about it since I woke up.
I did the dishes and thought about it. I finished the laundry and thought about it. I fed the animals, swept the floor, took the dog out for a walk.
Here’s where I am with it now.
You can’t get other people to fall inline with your ideas of psyche, spirit, soul, or other narrative of self that you have going in your life. At some level it pisses you off, and probably frightens you. The tension that creates amongst the living further deepens the fear. We all want to live a relatively tension free life and so we seek ways to untie those knots. What the Mormons do is develop this fantasy that it will all be fixed after death, since it is clear it can’t be fixed in life.
Since their version of the after-life story says that no person can get into heaven without being baptized into the faith, in the fantasy there are all these souls out there awaiting the living superhero to pave a verbal path through the gates. That’s silly I suppose and not something that stirs my ire. What does is how I imagine a person like that feels when they imagine saving the soul of someone who can no longer irritate them by disagreeing or refusing to join in with the particular mythology.
The core of this story, and how it fixes the tension problem, is that they imagine that after death everyone realizes they were right. And the nausea is back. How frakking rude.
It’s like wanking to some enemy’s picture.
It’s a kind of rape — but let’s be clear here — since death is rather final, the purpose is to fix a problem the living have. It’s a way of easing personal tension at the cost of the larger community. Look at how the Jewish community took to having their dead baptized. Were they grateful? Oh no. The social harm is enormous when we as individuals cannot help giving in to our wet fantasies of being some superhero and gaining the love, adoration and respect of the entire universe, but it’s childish. Stop it. Learn to live with the fact that the vast majority of the human universe will always think you’re wrong. Live with it like an adult and stop wanking off to some little vid in your head that paints the picture of someone kneeling to you in gratitude.
Try respecting otherness instead. There are greater benefits to the living.
February 4th, 2012
Romney deeply uncivil
I’m sure you all know that Mitt Romney had his atheist father-in-law baptized some 14 months after the man’s death. There’s an interesting report that talks about this as “cuckoo-for-cocopuffs” which is true I suppose, but I think not the real point.
Bill Maher comes closer to my main disagreement with such acts as Romney perpetrated on the dead guy in this “unbaptism” video clip.
I can imagine the outrage from the various religious pundits should a reddit crowd call a flashmob to ritually unbaptize the whole populace of city after city in the US.
Personally, I’d think it was hilarious but that’s because the dead don’t give a shit, and neither baptisms nor unbaptism have any effect on something that doesn’t exist. Their true effect is on the living.
And this is the root of my disgust with Romney and the kinds of religious people who are so deeply uncivil as to frack with other people’s choices.
Romney wants to be the leader of a democratic nation. It is a nation built on the idea that we as individuals have the right to make choices, and the obligation to live by those choices in a manner in accordance with civil law. This means Romney and his wife had a choice about becoming Mormons. They still have a choice to stay Mormon, or to desist. Edward Davies, Romney’s father-in-law, also had a choice. And he made it. He was an atheist.
What Romney did by having the man baptized was declare that Davies’ choice did not matter and should not be considered sacrosanct. This is not a man I would like to see ruling a government that says it holds choice sacrosanct. I mean if he can so disrespect his own father-in-law, imagine what he might do to people he “rules”?
Of course since Davies’ is dead it doesn’t matter at all to him, but were he alive, I suspect he would be deeply ashamed of his daughter. I know I would be. Shame on you Ann. You had the right to choose and expect that choice to be honoured. You should do the same.
So perhaps we should all just follow Bill Maher’s example, organize a flash mob and unbaptize all those people who were added (against their wishes) to the Mormon rolls in what is a very uncivil act against democracy. The dead don’t care, but the living do. And I expect it might stir up some interesting “conversation.” What such an unbaptism flash mob would declare is that choices do matter and that even if we do not agree with a specific choice, as long as it accords with the civil law by which we all must be guided, we will respect the right to choose and that we will act against those that do not respect the legal choices made by others.
December 1st, 2011
perceived trustworthiness and the religious mind
Here’s a funny for ya:
The researchers found that religious believers thought that descriptions of untrustworthy people — people who steal or cheat — were more likely to be atheists than Christians, Muslims, Jews, gays or feminists.
Cackle. I mean magical thinking really screws with reality doesn’t it. But I suppose all the money laundering in mega churches, the lies in court by those trying to defend intelligent design, the problems with pedophilia in Catholic culture (etc, etc) should have been a clue that the real “other”, that real person behind the projected mask, might not be too visible to the religious mind.
“If you believe your behaviour is being watched [by God] you are going to be on your best behaviour,” said Gervais. “But that wouldn’t apply for an atheist. That would allow people to use religious belief as a signal for how trustworthy a person is.”
Problem is that that sense of being watched doesn’t actually seem to work all that well. It’s almost as if they secretly know no one is there and just pull out the divine when needed for instant forgiveness for that which they did when—what—god blinked?
And the reverse?
The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.
“Atheists don’t necessarily favour other atheists over Christians or anyone else,” he said. “They seem to think that religion is not an important signal for who you can trust.”
Huh! Gee! Say no more!
October 10th, 2011
US Atheism circa 1903, answer to a religious correspondent
Yesterday I posted a letter published in the Blue Grass Blade on October 11, 1903 from an atheist man who recounted why he had become an atheist. Today I’m posting an answer to a letter (also published in the same edition) that came in to the newspaper’s publisher (C. C. Moore) from Rev. Shearer. It appears to be the product of an ongoing conversation about religion, atheism and (sort of) related subjects.
I posted this in addition to the earlier letter because it is clear to me that the arguments have not progressed. Apart from some terminology specific to the time (i.e. prohibition), this could easily be some post on a site dedicated to atheism. I find that a little depressing. Still, it took 100 odd years from the Civil War to get to the civil rights of the people brought to this continent to labour in our fields and (later) factories and more than 50 years after that before Black people really saw an opening to equality (I’m talking about Obama, of course) and the Tea Party and related Republicans have shown us that Emancipation Proclamation or not, Blacks are still scary, scary shit to some of us and to be destroyed if at all possible. So I’m not really surprised that at 115 years after the death of the “father of American atheism” that we have not resolved the atheist/religious problem.
Answer.– I indicate your bad spelling to support my contention that a scholarly man is not apt to believe in a God.
It has been said of spelling that it is a thing which it is no credit to know, but a disgrace not to know.
The “burden of proof” in this instance rests upon you. You affirm that there is a God. I deny that there is a God.
Greenleaf says, “To this general rule that the burden of proof is on the party holding the affirmative, there are some exceptions.” Greenleaf on Evidence, vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 3. p. 105—L. B. & Co. ’52).
You offer no reason why your case should be an “exception” to the general rule and I see no such reason. I think you will find that “Jefferson’s Manual” will decide that the burden of proof is upon you.
The Bible and Sir William Blackstone and the courts of Salem Massachusetts affirmed that there were witches. The consensus of the competent said that the burden of proof rested upon those three, and that contention never having been sustained by any of the three, modern intelligence has decided that there are no witches. I do not have to account for any phenomena of nature, “leaving God out,” or leaving him or it, in. That is the graft of the natural scientist, I don’t have to account for anything. All I have to do is hear your argument and answer I, if I can. You say to me: “If you say you can do this, the burden of proof is upon you.”
Your statement is correct, but I do not say, “I can do this,” and therefore the burden of proof is not upon me. You say it would be foolish for you to try to prove to me that there is a God when I decline to accept your “testamony.” If you knew in advance, as you probably did, that I would not accept the testimony that you would offer, you were certainly “foolish” to offer it.
The testimony that you offer is the Bible and nature. If I accepted the Bible as a “competent” witness in this case, it would be “foolish” in me to discuss the question with you, for the Bible certainly says there is a God. But the competency of the Bible is a matter in issue, and, of course, I can not accept the Bible as competent testimony. You argue that the Bible is true because God wrote it, and then you argue that there is a God because the Bible says so.
That is what is called, in logic, “reasoning in a circle,” and it is recognized by all logicians as a common fallacy.
If it be true that the Bible, “for four thousand years has furnished indubitable evidence” that there is a God, why are you still arguing that there is a God? The very fact that you are making this argument shows that you do not regard the argument for the existence of a God as being “indubitable.” The multiplication table is indubitably correct.
If any man would say the multiplication table is not correct, you would not write him a long letter to show him that the multiplication table is correct. We do not argue about indubitable things. You would regard a man who thought the multiplication table incorrect as being an ignoramus or a fool, and you would wast no time on him, or would make an ass of yourself if you did.
The Bible says that man is a fool who says there is no God, and that goes with people who think the Bible knows it all, but it does not cut any ice with people who don’t believe the Bible any more than they do “Arabian Nights.” You say that beside this indubitable evidence we have in the Bible, we have the “book or nature” bearing the same testimony.”
If the Bible’s testimony that there is a God is indubitable why mention the additional book of nature?
If Euclid proves a certain mathematical proposition to be true, what is the use of saying that some other man, or some other book, also proved it to be true? Granting that nature is a book, there certainly is quite a diversity of opinion as to what it says, and your mere assertion that it says there is a God does not count.
I think it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to offer the Bible book and the “book of nature” to me as evidence that there is a God, and you say it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to do so, then why do you do it?
You certainly must have known that that same old racket had been offered to Atheists million of times, and as often rejected by them, then what was the good sense in asking me to fill up my columns with a long rigamarole that you evidently knew in advance would not amount to a hill of beans to me?
What was the use of your saying anything to the 15,000 hell-bent Atheists that “blow” themselves in my paper unless you had some new argument?
You answer my question by saying that the testimony you offer is “the only testimony that can be brought to bear in this matter.”
Then what are you kicking about? The evidence is all in, and it’s a hung jury and we will go to the presiding judge and tell him we can’t agree on a verdict.
All that you say about what I would do or would not do if an angel were to come from heaven to Lexington is poppycock. You certainly cannot know what I would do under such circumstances, for I don’t know myself. You are merely talking through your hat. It will be time enough for me to consider what I would do under such circumstances when the angel gets here. I do not think it is commonly recognized as being dead certain that angels come to this country at all these times, and I don’t think an angel that had any sense would come to Lexington. He wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in Lexington. The “cops” would run him in for wearing woman’s clothes on the streets, or some Lexington fellow would shoot him because he would not come into Gus Jaubert’s and set up the beer, or, if he did go into Gus’s he would get drunk and the “cops” would get him anyhow. But I believe you are mistaken, or worse—lying.
Old man Bell, the manager of the cemetery, reported the other day that a man was buried in that cemetery who made just 15,000 people buried there in all.
If some fellow would come along and resurrect all of those 15,000 people buried, and they should come marching into Lexington, including some hundreds of old boys that I believed whisky killed forty years ago, and my precious little curly headed girl, whose death brought the first gray hairs to my head, I think it would shake my present opinions about the resurrection from the dead. If anybody will come to Lexington and even clear the whisky out of the town, by any means, natural or supernatural, I will give anything he has to say, on any subject, a very respectful hearing. I think you got that up wrong pard. I say “pard” because I think you are a Campbellite preacher. They are hell on “shearing Baptists and Methodists,” and they make the wool fly. I’ve been there.
I have nothing to say in defense of those fellows over in Jerusalem. I’ve been there, too. O, no, that’s not “mud-slinging”— nothing of the kind, all fair so far as decency is concerned. What does all that dissertation on the subject of “mind” amount to in this connection? That is the province of mental philosophy, in which Upham and Abercrombie are authorities, but you and I are discussing theology in which you and Moses, and the “book of nature,” are your authorities. Mind certainly “plays a very conspicuous part in everything with which man has to do” (unless it is preaching), but your remark is just as true of muscle and bread and butter and money and a million other things and so what is the occasion of a remark so self-evidently true?
We don’t look “within” us except with an X-ray and you’d better leave that out.
Your statements about the hop and the bean stalk would be well enough in a lecture on botany or horticulture, but are irrelevant here. We are discussing whether or not there is a God. As a “sky-buster,” you ought to stick to your text.
As a good Prohibitionist, I may recognize some relationship between the hop and lager beer to prove the existence of a devil, but I can’t see how a hop testifies for any brand of a God that is against liquor.
You say a great mind has had to do with the framing of this universe. The Standard Dictionary defines “mind” to be “the entire psychical being of man.” Webster defines “mind” to be “the intellectual, or intelligent, power of man.”
These dictionaries agree that “mind” is a part of man, and if “mind” had anything to do with “the framing of this universe,” then man must have had something to do with “the framing of this universe,” and I reckon he didn’t. Guess you are in water over your head and you had better try to get ashore.
The opinion of Mr. B.A. Wright, in the Blade may B. Wright, or it may B. Wrong, but even if man does stand at the head of the animal creation instead of the tail of the animal creation, as there seems some reason to believe, I don’t see how that proves that there is a God. All that about “mechanical arrangement” sounds well enough if we were discussing natural philosophy or dynamics, but we are trying to find out if there is any God. You ask me: “What is it that leaves the brain at death that renders it unable to think?” I give it up; ask me something easy. But what about it? We are discussing the existence of a God, and I am a theologian and not an physiologist. Same about the origin of life. I don’t have to know or even to have an opinion on that subject. We are not discussing biology. We are talking about the existence of a God.
You talk funny. You say: “If it is a fact (and a fact it certainly is),” etc. Why say, “If it is a fact,” which expresses doubt, when you say it certainly is a fact.” which affirms that there is no doubt?
They say that death and taxes are “certain,” but the domain of the certain is very limited, and you ought to go slow in asserting the “certain.” You want to know how an idea is carried over from the mind to the nervous system.
Not my graft; didn’t even know it was carried over; thought may be it just walked over. Ask some doctor. You ask me the same question a second time, but I don’t know any more about it that I did the first time.
Same about the pumpkin—give it up. Ditto about the pig and the lamb and the goose. I used to know that one about the fox and the goose and the corn that a mans had to take over in a boat, but I am not specially good on riddles. Same way about the oak and the acorn—which was first? I can’t give my 15,000 readers the origin of a single think in this universe, even with the “God idea” in, and you say I can’t do it with the “God idea” out, so why do you keep on asking me so many hard questions? Ask me an easy one.
You say I know that this world is made up of little things, but I don’t. I didn’t even know that it was made up at all—thought may be it had been here always.
I haven’t specially “limited” myself—could write this whole paper full if I wanted to, (missing text) I think five Blades full (missing text) be a little too much of a muchness. If you are going to write any more on this subject, I would be obliged to you if you would “limit” yourself some, unless you have some argument to prove the existence of a God. Please confine yourself to that subject and discuss pigs and geese in an article to some farm journal. This is a religious paper.
That joke about my hair and whiskers is pretty good—only trouble about it is that we old Blade readers had worn it out years ago, and had let up on it; but you are probably a new beginner on the Blade and didn’t know about that. But if I were you I wouldn’t say it any more.
October 9th, 2011
US atheism, circa 1903
Upon reading about the new book Letters from an Atheist Nation I took it upon myself to go look at the original documentation from which these letters come. OMG, what a delight! This letter is from Sunday, October 11, 1903.
(From the Blue-grass blade (Lexington, Ky) Sunday, October 11, 1903, p.4)
ATHEISTIC MASONS
To the Editor:
In your editorial of 13th discoursing on the above subject you say: “Whether or not a Mason who becomes an Atheist after becoming a Mason must get out of Masonry we do not know. Information is requested.”
Being one of those Atheistical bipeds “reverting to quadrupeds,” as you say and a Mason in good standing for over forty years, I will answer:
It is true that in the United States an Atheist cannot, according to Masonic laws, become a Mason, but a Mason may consistently become an Atheist. Masonry assures the religious and political liberty and respects the conscientious convictions of its members.
Now as to Atheists: I was made a Mason soon after I was “confirmed” in the old school of Lutheran faith, and being verdant and ignorant of the facts of nature, I cheerfully subscribed to the Masonic obligation.
But soon after a book of the elementary facts of astronomy radically changed my conceptions of the celestial aspect and the mansions in the sky, a golden throne, fiery lake and good and evil spirits all vanished from view, and the realistic conception of nature as revealed by astronomy took their place. I could not ignore facts and these inexorably disproved my theism.
The facts of nature irrefutably prove that a God is not a fact.
The Atheist, with Tindall, Huxley, Mills, Spencer, Haeckle, von Humboldt and many other of our greatest scientists, finds in the physical and chemical potencies of science, matter, phenomena and life.
Science, with its great lenses, sweeps boundless expanse and finds countless incandescent suns and minor bodies, all moving within their…(missing text)…
An omnipresent being cannot exist within an omnipresent universe. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. The universe preoccupies all space—where, then, is God?
Astronomers, aided by the camera have photographed the skies, revealing many bodies not heretofore covered by our telescopes. Thousands of the plates have been produced. Unite them in one great map then search for the God you worship—the infinite being, said to extend from star to star and greater than all—you cannot find him. Said to everywhere, he is nowhere.
This God corresponds with nothing but vacuum.
The ether, air, electricity and other inorganic forces and fluids of nature do not possess personal attributes and cannot be a God and all it implies.
A God has never caused an observation or an eclipse of a solitary comic body—positive proof that such a being does not exist.
Has God a brain, then how can he be infinite? If no brain, how can He be a God?
The Atheist is not negative to a solitary established fact and truth: on the contrary, he has the universe—the sum total of all existence—as the basis for his belief. He is negative only towards spooks, myths and an absurd superstition, acknowledged by most eminent churchmen to be inscrutable and utterly beyond human comprehension. Define your God and I will show you how childish your conception.
Theists explain (missing text) existence by assuming a gigantic necromancer or miracle worker said (missing text) and to operate, everywhere simultaneously. But biology affirms that conditions must be favorable or life is impossible. Conditions within interstellar space absolutely exclude life, hence a God of any kind cannot exist there.
Mind, wisdom and physical activity of any kind are ever associated with the physical organism. Without organic structure for a basis, mind is not known to science nor is it conceivably divested of organism. God, then must be possessed of organic animal structure or he cannot exist. Can you conceive of an infinite animal?
The materialist (incidentally an Atheist) believes infinite phenomena necessitate infinite causes to produce them. These he finds in the matter constituting all phenomena, which matter is force, ever pregnant with life, eternal and omnipresent. What ever is, is matter; when science deals with causes it discovers them in the matter which constitutes the object of of its research and its environments—never in a God.
And lastly: Mind is a result of environment. In vacuum mind cannot evolve. Hence mind of any kind could not exist prior to creation.
OTTO WETTSTEIN
La Grange, Illinois.
So much for the idea of a Christian Nation and rock on Otto!
“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency! (E. Dickinson)
The society that resulted from the European invasion of the Americas seems prone to periods of alternating despair and certainty. The periods of certainty result in territorial and cultural expansion; despair results in upsurges of religiosity and (mental and social) isolationism. The first comes with that awful taste of American-style surety of superiority, that rather hubristic idea that we are the vanguard of human civilization. The second comes when that state crashes – as it inevitably does – against the facts, and falls like a mirror shattered in rage and fear.
My question is how to navigate a society that refuses an even keel?
I was brought to this query by an article on the Daily Beast about religious and anti-religious films written by Marlow Stern.
From superchurch satire ‘Salvation Boulevard’ to the atheist film ‘The Ledge’ and Sundance fave ‘Higher Ground,’ an abnormal number of movies this summer rail against evangelicalism. Marlow Stern speaks with filmmakers and experts from both sides of the debate, including Vera Farmiga of ‘Higher Ground’ and Kirk Cameron of ‘Fireproof.’
Wrestling with it, I found myself thinking about the cycles of religious evangelicism in the US often talked about as the Great Awakenings. (If you’re interested in the topic you might try Jon Butler’s Awash in a Sea of Faith.) It also led me to think about Emily Dickinson and her experience of her community’s salvation.
There is a rather fine short article about E.D. and the complex nature of her faith.
In Dickinson’s teen years, a wave of religious revivals moved through New England. One by one, her friends and family members made the public profession of belief in Christ that was necessary to become a full member of the church. Although she agonized over her relationship to God, Dickinson ultimately did not join the church–not out of defiance but in order to remain true to herself: “I feel that the world holds a predominant place in my affections. I do not feel that I could give up all for Christ, were I called to die” (L13). By the time the First Congregational Church moved to a site near the Homestead on Main Street in 1868, Emily Dickinson had stopped attending services altogether.
Dickinson’s attitude toward spiritual matters was more complex than her poem “Some keep the Sabbath going to church / I keep it staying at home” (Fr236) implies. While her poems are saturated with the language, ritual, and expectation of traditional religious experience, her tone varies tremendously. Some poems affirm the need for faith: “Faith – is the Pierless Bridge / Supporting what We see / Unto the Scene that We do not – ” (Fr978). Irreverence underlies other aspects of her work: “The Bible is an antique Volume – / Written by faded Men / At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -” (Fr1577). At times Dickinson’s poetry expresses outright anger with an absent God:
Of Course – I prayed -
And did God care?
He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird – had stamped her foot -
And cried “Give Me” -
(Fr581)
That’s, I think, the way to handle this current shattered mirror and consequent upswing of despairing faith. The fact that the mirror is broken does not mean what you glimpsed there is no longer true. As best as one can, question, refuse the comfort of simple faith and its feelings of release, refuse the assumptions involved in giving over to the “Gentlemen who see”. Keep formulating alternative responses, but never settle for one; always question, always ask for worldly evidence, for the bird’s perspective on your beliefs.
There’s no way out of the pain of course, no real way to avoid what the mirror reflected. We all have assumptions and we cannot simply leave them all behind, but we can refuse comfort in order to allow questioning. Dickinson remained someone who spoke of gods and the afterlife. That was the basis of her entire world, but her stubborn hold on the world allowed her to remain brilliant, unconventional, a poet.
I mean, who do we remember now? Not those who took hold of the comfort, but those who refused it. There is a reason for that. Not that being remembered is the end-all of desire, but it does point to a lively spot in human awareness, a place where mental sleep has not yet claimed its toll.
This period of upcoming history will be difficult I suspect. No huge wave of desire for comfort, for sleep ever comes without a violent hand for the alarm clocks and a sleeping drug for the awkward pain of living. There will be Emilys of this time, and that voice will be a record of dissent against the coming/ongoing “revival”. I don’t envy her life though, just as I don’t envy Emily’s. So alone, our Amherst Emily must have been with no one who could think as she could, no one who could stand with her in the pain of continual appraisal, constant questioning. So in advance of your life and death, our dearest future unknown Emily, kudos.
In an earlier post I was telling you about the argumentative warning bells that Why God Won’t Go Away set off.
When you come across a passage that unsettles your faith in an author’s veracity or capacity to think past his or her personal biases, one can do two basic things. One can put the book down or one can keep reading, however warily.
I chose the second option because I wanted to get to their information on the neurological position with respect to myth making in humans. Then I hit another of those icky-think places. There were a number but here’s one.
The authors are talking about the Neanderthal people and the finds that have been made where some Neanderthal dead appear to have been buried with grave goods and positioned in such a way as to suggest symbolic thought.
Evidence of Neanderthal mortuary rituals has been discovered at Paleolithic grave sites scattered across Europe and Asia, and while anthropologists know very little about the specifics of Neanderthal myth, these early humans had clearly devised a system of belief that assured them that in some sense, death could be survived.
Jeez Lousie, it so does not. Let’s take this apart just a bit. There is evidence from a number of Neanderthal burials (and other sites) that suggest symbolic thought as well as suggests some intent behind burial that we would describe as ritualistic. But what is true is that we know nothing really of the specifics. In fact, without the assumption that their symbolic system is basically the same as ours, we cannot say anything about what the apparent ritual means. I mean if I make a small pile of stones and a Taliban man makes a similar pile, you think we necessarily did it for the same reason? And the Taliban dude and I are of the same species and same era. Fuck man, what a dumb-shit, patently false set of assumptions and “logical” connections.
It turns out that this book is an extension of The Transmitter to God: The Limbic System, the Soul, and Spirituality by Rhawn Joseph. Here is what a customer had to say about this book.
Joseph’s book contains abundant promise and abundant disappointment. Its bookends–the start and finish–provide provide reasonable interpretations of data from neurological and fossil research. The center, unfortunately, merely affords a bully pulpit for the author’s unsubstantiated rants about religious literature, especially the Koran and the Bible. This juxtaposition of authority and speculation is paralleled by displays of scholarly writing (e.g., citing sources for stated views) at the outset and junior high writing (e.g., missing citations and bizarre interpretations of religious writ) in the middle. Joseph is to be commended for his imagination, but misrepresents his book as a scholarly contribution.
A huh. Yep. Yessiree. You could say the same thing about Why God Won’t Go Away.
Anyway, based on the slim evidence of possible Neanderthal ritual burials and the massive assumption of their cognitive and cultural similarity to us, the authors of Why God say:
The Neanderthals, it seems, had also come to believe that their world was not chaotic, but was instead governed by powerful orderly forces that they could come to know. They believed they could appeal to these forces through proper practices and, to some extent, control them. We know this because Neanderthal shrines have been found in high mountain caves where bear skulls had been ritualistically stacked in pyramids and small crude altars still show the charred evidence of animal sacrifices carried out as long ago as two hundred thousand years.
Can you believe they think of themselves as scientists at all? I know fantasy writers with less vivid imaginations.
Finally, the evidence they cite to support these two paragraphs? Joseph’s The Transmitter to God. That’s like Glen Beck citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to prove his impartial stance with regard to Judaism.
So the book goes back to the library unfinished. This is why I pre-read most books before I buy them. I’ll just have to try and find a better source for the information I want.