Just Wondering...

Why is it that when the death of a loved one is said, by the grieving, to be part of God's plan, we are moved by and admire that depth of faith; and yet when someone murders another and claims to have heard the voice of God telling him to do it, we call him crazy?

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And, since it's the Lord's day, consider this recent event, which happened not far from home. Whenever and wherever it occurs, and no matter to whom, stuff like this literally turns my stomach:

Washington's only Jewish high school was defaced Thursday night by anti-semitic graffiti, including swastikas and references to gas chambers.

Members of a congregation that meets at Northwest Yeshiva High School on Mercer Island discovered the vandalism Friday morning, said Rabbi Bernie Fox, head of the school.

Fox suspects the vandals were aware that this evening marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement when Jews pray and seek forgiveness for wrongdoings.

Question for creationists: Is humankind really the best God could do, as small-minded and nasty as we are? Companies that put out crap that breaks down or doesn't perform as advertised, go out of business, and well they should. If homo sapiens is God's finest work, what does that say of his craftsmanship? Shouldn't he be let go? Retrained, at least? Shouldn't his work be recalled and the defects repaired? If Toyota, why not God? Why hasn't Consumer Reports weighed in? Where the hell is the CPSC?

What a miserable, sad, frightened, weak, hateful, ignorant, and altogether wanting lot are we. If we are created, someone severely messed up the blueprint. Bad architect, bad engineer.

The Day of Atonement just passed. Who should be apologizing to whom?

Study Guide

Couple of interesting data points on the endless and ever more pocked path to truth. I like these studies, naturally, because they confirm what I believe. And what has politics become, if not the reinforcement of one's beliefs? (Mine however, as distinct from those of the RWS™ and the teabaggers who horde what they hawk, have the support of facts, of course. Like these:)

First, from a non-profit organization in Iowa supporting "public affairs journalism." (The weakness of the study is only the short time-frame over which it was carried out.) Guess what? Same-sex marriage hasn't destroyed "opposite marriage." The article is titled, unconfusingly enough, "Gay Marriage Causes No Harm To Traditional Marriage, Study Finds." If anything, you might conclude it strengthens it:

The angst over marriage in Iowa comes after a year in which the state of marriage has made a turn toward statistical bliss: more people got married and fewer split up. Divorces declined to 7,286, to lowest per capita level since 1968, according to 2009 provisional and historical data from the Iowa Department of Public Health.

Also from the article:

The IowaWatch.org study found similarities range from the way men and women often view marriage to the more mundane tasks of married life, such as doing yard work. Like people in traditional marriages, same-sex couples also talk about raising children and shielding them from the verbal slings of peers, the stability and unit-strength of a family and the value of loving relationships among parents and children, as well as legal necessities and financial security.

‘We live pretty boring lives’

The Iowa Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized gay marriage was unanimous, but the opposition has persisted, because it is fueled by fears that that the family, the bedrock of American society, is at stake.

[...] In sharp contrast, married gays often depict a lifestyle and relationship that seems suburban stable, only now they have a marriage license like other couples.

“Not much has changed,” said Ledon Sweeney of Iowa City, who married his partner of 12 years. “We live pretty boring lives. We go to work; we mow our lawn, we pay our mortgage, and we go on vacation if we can save enough money.”

How could anyone who actually thought with their brains instead of their holy books be surprised?

Now comes the one sure to give paws. If it didn't originate from some sort of online dating service, I'd compare it to stone tablets on Mount Sinai. Ready? Check out this chart:

Okay, it's a little challenging to interpret (not to mention see), with those triangly things and all. But here's the deal: it's about reading and writing skills as compared to various religions. The "opacity" of the triangles indicates "seriousness" of the beliefs. So. The reader may discern for her/himself what it says. To me, there are no surprises.

On the other hand, I don't suppose people filling out personal data for online dating are necessarily a representative cross section, or even honorable in the biblical way (most don't, one assumes, stone disobedient children to death, for one thing.) So, never mind. Try this one:

What this research underlines is that we push back against threats to our world-views by reasserting structures of meaning with which we are comfortable.

Maybe it explains teabaggers and the non-stop conspiracy theories of the right wing. So flummoxed are they over the fact that "their" country would have elected a black guy as president; so discordant is it to see a whole family of them in the White House; so horrible is the concept that to get the things we need from government we have to pay for them; all of these blows to their most central idea, handed to them on tablets by Lord Ronnie, that the less we do for others, the less we pay in taxes, the more rewarded we'll be -- it's all but emptied their minds. With what to fill it? Comfort: There's nothing wrong with what we've believed. It's them guys that are wrong. There's a plot against us, a very very nefarious plot. God is on our side. We love America, so they must hate it.

Don't you love science?

Sing, Choir Of Angels!

Profound questions, humorously posed. It's Sunday.

To Infinity And Beyond

It's Sunday, so why not consider the infinite, and death.

Erasing fear of death is the main reason for religious belief. Death is a fact known universally among us sentient beings, and it's disquieting. As such, and given our environmental diversity, it's unsurprising that religion has popped up everywhere, and that it varies enormously other than in the universality of some sort of concept of life after (and, sometimes, before) death. It's what we need. That billions of people believe, equally fervently, in wildly differing mythology doesn't whatsoever deter whatever belief in whomever it is whatever they use to comfort themselves. They are, after all, only human.

So, fine.

Awareness of, and concerns about death are not absent from non-believers. Speaking, at least, for myself. I'm not particularly pleased about death; on the other hand, I find myself unable to make the leap of belief, just because it might make me feel better. To me, it feels like a copout. Like cheating. I guess it's like dancing; or playing the piano. Some things come easy and some things don't. On some level I envy the certitude of believers; on another, and mostly, I see at as a surprising (if entirely understandable, given our frailties) level of self-deception. Nevertheless, it's not as if the thought of death doesn't occur to me from time to time; so I've found it comforting to consider this: it'll be just like it was before I was born, and, as far as I can tell, that wasn't so bad. In other words, I've been dead before, for as long as I will be this time around, and I seem to have survived it. As it were.

So I was intrigued, in a very abstract way, by something I read this morning on Andrew Sullivan, who got it from somewhere else:

If time is infinite on both ends, then we have infinite rolls of the dice of probability. That means, however infinitesimally small the probabilities that brought “you” into existence, with enough rolls of dice, “you” will come into existence again, and again and again forever. And if time is infinite in reverse, “now” isn’t the only time “you” existed.

Accordingly, “you” have always existed and always will.

Sophistry? Maybe. Yet it's the sort of thing one can ponder (as did commenters on the original post) without the need to make anything up. Which, to me, is worthy. I don't find it any more comforting (less, maybe) than my own previous little "infinity" thought; and, certainly, not as comforting as -- were it possible -- giving in to the displeasure of discordance and doing that throwing in of the mental towel called religious belief.

But, as Dave and Paul might say, it's something.

Religion And Morality

One of the most commonly heard and, in my view, most easily dismissed claims from the religious is that without (most especially but not necessarily exclusively) the Bible, there is no basis for good behavior. My response has always been that humans have empathy. They know what things make them feel bad or do them harm, and it's easy therefore to know the same about behavior toward others. Not to mention that from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to have developed the tendency to band together for the common good. (Would that right-wingers hadn't devolved so, recently.) Good and bad are not concepts exclusive to religion.

Anyhow, I came across a couple of bits on everyone's favorite science/atheism site, namely Pharyngula. Naturally, I pass them on to my open-minded readers. Here's a link to a study from everyone's favorite elitist liberal den of iniquity. It shows that atheists are as ethical as church goers. And here's one that goes even further:

I guess I'll have to look the guy up and read what he wrote.

Okay, I did. And I also saw articles claiming to have debunked him. But the thing is, I don't think they succeeded at all. What they did was to come up with a beautiful hedge: lots of people claim to be religious but they really aren't "highly spiritually committed." Hmm. How does one quantify that? In fact, the proposition is self-contradicting: spirituality (whatever that is) is very much claimed by atheists.

To feel connected in some way to one's fellow mankind and to the planet* is, in fact, something anyone can experience, with or without religion. Those of us that do -- for its own sake, I might add, and not for fear of fiery punishment or expectation of eternal reward -- are pretty likely to do the right thing, or so one would intuit. More so, in fact, than those that claim the righteousness of whatever their religious belief might be, as they fly into buildings, strap on vests, kill doctors, burn crosses on people's lawns, murder homosexuals and hang the bodies on fences, or throw rocks at Haitians.

Is how I see it.

[Addendum: In response to Timmyson's comment, below: I should have linked directly to the article, which is linked from here only via another link. I've corrected that above. Meanwhile, the title of the article answers Timmyson's concern: "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies." It didn't look at impoverished nations. Sorry for my laxity.]

[Addendum #2, 2/25: a favorite relative has pointed out that the Matthew Shepard murder (to which I referred in the "fence" reference) might not have been a hate crime. An example of later reporting is here. In that article, though, it mentions the attack came after Matthew grabbed the attacker's leg while sitting next to him... In any case, it's also true that there were people at his funeral chanting anti-gay slurs, loudly, in the name of their god.]

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*That's about as far as I can go. I like looking at stars; the cold clear nights we've had of late give spectacular skies and I'm glad they're there. But, for now, I'm more concerned about what we're doing to our earth than what the cosmos is doing to us. Astrology- or other-wise.

Namaste

The "TED" series of talks is one of my favorites; always thought-provoking, always enlightening in some way. This one reflects much of what I've tried to convey, in my posts on religion, as to why the idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving god makes no sense. The difference is that in this video the ideas are wrestled by a man of the cloth, with a soothing voice and a British accent (which, in my mind anyway, always denotes intelligence.)

That a man of faith struggles so openly and deeply is touching. I like it, even though, in the end, what he concludes -- which is eminently sensible -- requires no faith at all, and yet he needs to call it a sort of faith. What he concludes -- that there is a center of spirituality in all of us and that if we relate to each other from that center we'd be better off -- is perfect; and perfectly absent the need to invoke some sort of sky person to live it. Having thought hard about the contradictions inherent in the biblical view of god, he comes to the only thoughtful conclusion: it makes no sense. He even repeats a thing I've said in both of my blogs: if that's the way god is, I want no part of him.

But, as do I, he concludes that while there are things we can't know, we do know we are capable of love and reason and pain and that acting toward one another and the world in acknowledgment of that ought to be enough. Why addle it all up with a bunch of contradictory rules and beliefs that make no sense, and add nothing to that basic truth, that inarguable basis for dealing with one another?

Perhaps the Vicar wouldn't approve of my synthesis of his talk. If not, it wouldn't be by much that we disagree.

Winds

When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Until now I'd thought the US had a corner on the self-destructive make-ourselves-stupid market. But darned if our neighbors to the north, whom I've always considered pretty civilized and practical, don't also have their share. In Alberta, anyway, where the weather's said to be good in the fall. Don't like science contradicting your religious beliefs in your public schools? Opt out. No sense having to think, or having your prejudices challenged. Extrapolate that!

Meanwhile, in an interesting temporal juxtaposition, a poll is released correlating attitudes toward torture with religious belief. Among the categories, evangelicals of the regular church-going variety were the most in favor of its use. Posted without comment.
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Example

This is why it's impossible for me to reconcile the god of the Bible with the world as I know it. If anyone can explain, I'd be happy to hear it.

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Said With Straight Face

Faith healing good; Reiki bad.

Glad they cleared it up.
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Copilot

I'm still thinking about the airplane incident to which I just referred. It says so much about certain types of religious belief, and about the god of the Bible. There's something really sinister about it.

To refresh: an article in some Christian news outlet suggests god had a hand in crashing a plane full of kids, including one yet unborn, into a Catholic cemetery. A celestial message pitch, as it were, to the patriarch of some of the victims, who runs women's health clinics, which include abortion services. Even though he happened not to be on the plane.

Well, it's not unprecedented, biblically. After all, god chose to slaughter a bunch of innocent Egyptian baby boys, rather than directly influencing the Pharaoh. I mean, geez, later he parted the damn Red Sea. Why couldn't he have parted the guy's scalp, or burned a Mogen David into his forehead?

But no. We're told he's the sort of guy who picks up an airplane full of innocents, flings it like a javelin into a cemetery, in what might be called an Olympian act. The thing is, other than to the lady writer and those who share her brand of "thought," it's sort of an ambiguous act; surely in an arena of such import, clarity is called for. A guy who can do that has limitless options. For example, there'd have been no mistaking the source and the intent, were god to have set all women's clinics ablaze, and let them crackle without being consumed, like the burning bush. In this, of all things, why speak in a code that only the already-converted will understand? Who, given unlimited options available to none but him, would choose to communicate by hurling innocents to their death? More important: who would consider one who'd do such a thing worthy of worship?

Whoever else it might be, it's NOT a loving person. Not, you'd think, a follower of Jesus.

The fact is, it's completely insane for people both to believe that their god did this (or the Egypt thing, for that matter) while claiming he's all-powerful, perfect, and loving. It's as if I were to punish my child by killing his puppies -- throwing them to their death and then setting them on fire. (In fact, we know there are people who've done such things. The kids are removed from the household, and the parents go to jail; witnesses are sick with revulsion.) Like the puppy-killer, a god who acts in this way is perverse and evil; there's no other proper description. Well, there's "mysterious," but given the context it seems a little lame. Would that doer of doggie deaths be let off on grounds of mystery?

What's appalling is that some people love the idea, rejoice in it. Take abiding and soulful pleasure in it, like the writer of the article. What should we call such pathology? Schadenfreude on cosmic levels? Oh yeah: it's called Christianity. (Well, no, not completely: I have Christian friends who think very differently, and I admire them.)

Well, some might respond, that lady isn't really a Christian. Nor does god act in that way. Really? Is the Bible true, or not? Is God all-powerful, or not? Does he ever intervene in our lives? Because if he does, it's ALL intervention. If he can pick and choose, then in every event, every outcome, he picked, he chose. He made it happen, or let it happen. Everything is intended by god, or nothing is. There's no sensible middle ground, unless you posit he doesn't always pay attention, in which case he is capricious and incompetent.

If I were to die and discover that the writer's version of the Christian god is in fact the way it is, I'd like to believe I'd have the moral courage to reject it, and opt for Hell. Because that view of god is unworthy of us. We should demand more of a god; and, most certainly, of ourselves. Maybe it takes a non-believer to see it.

The good news is that in my non-belief, I don't really worry about such a revelation. If there is a higher power -- an idea I find internally inconsistent, if for no other reason than that I can't figure out who created him/her/them/it -- I reject, for its obvious self-contradiction, that such a power lobs planes into cemeteries to send messages. The bad news is that the planet -- and most especially the USA -- is full of people who not only don't reject such belief, but want to make it the guiding principle of the world. That is not subject to speculation. That is undeniable. And that scares the crap out of me.

Left to their own, they'll be the death of the rest of us. And then, evidently, they'll dance on our graves.
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That God!!

What a merry prankster is he!

The tragic plane crash that occurred in Montana, killing several adults and children was, we've been informed, an act of god to warn us against abortions. Old news. But here's the wondrous part, praised be he: in his effort to get his message out that we should value life, god not only bumped off a bunch of adorable kids, but a pediatrician (who saves the lives of kids) and a woman five months pregnant. Saves the unborn by killing the unborn, is how he worketh his wonders. In mysterious ways.

Abortion is rightly a very controversial subject, into which it's not my intent to get, at least not now. But this much is obvious: when you start attributing these sorts of tragedies to your god, when you project your prejudices onto the world in such a way as to see your god confirming them by causing the deaths of others (see: Falwell, bin Laden, Robertson, Ahmedinijad), you show yourself to be hate-filled, paranoid (by the actual psychiatric definition), vengeful, and, most certainly, immoral. The lady who wrote the article in question is a despicable human being. But you'll never convince her of that. God is on her side. The one that kills babies to make a point, anyway.

She can have that one. I'd prefer one that isn't a criminal.
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Devil In The Details

Well, well. Satan is coming to a street near me. Or, at least, a nationally televised discussion about his existence will be taped at a nearby church. And what a line-up they'll have!! Deepak Chopra M.D, that gifted purveyor of medical bullsh*t and raker-in of millions; a local mega-church pastor (think he'll say something that would put him out of a job?); the founder of "Hookers for Jesus"; and a preacher who was branded a heretic for saying you don't have to be Christian to get to heaven.

I think this is a subject about which it takes a non-"expert" to point out the stupidity. Someone from the outside, free of indoctrination, unmuddled of head, to drop by and say, as respectfully as possible, "You people are nuts!! Why are you even talking about this?"

See, this is what happens when you start with an impossible premise; namely, that we got us an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect, and loving god. And then you take a look around and see how screwed-up everything is. Greeks and Romans came up with a bunch of gods, a-feudin' and a-fightin' with each other. Animists -- probably the original believers -- had similar ideas; so did Hindus. Frankly, they all are more consistent with reality than the Bible: at least they recognized the capriciousness of world and sort of threw their hands up. But then along came monotheism, the self-proclaimed one true faith, perfected by Christianity. None of that frivolous stuff, all those gods and spirits and obviously erroneous explanations. We got us one god here, perfect and powerful in all things. No need for the extraneous. Unless you count all those saints and apostles. Oh, and Satan. There's gotta be a guy named Satan. But there's only one god.

It's not as if I don't understand: far from perfect, the world is full of pain and bad guys. Could a loving and omnipotent god be doing all of that, or letting it slip through his fingers? There must be another actor out there, an evil-doer living in the center of the earth. Yeah, that's it. Makes perfect sense. God could have made everything perfect. But since he didn't, we need an explanation. So let's make one up. (Well, until that damn girl screwed it up, I guess he did. One bite of an apple, and that loving perfect god decides to invent disease and defects [warning: don't click the link. It could cause permanent brain damage] and rain them down upon all of mankind forever more, a bazillion generations hence. Talk about losing that loving feeling.)

And so it goes. Once you begin on the path of inconsistent thinking there's no end to it. First you reject the most sensible option, that there is no god. Then -- because what's the point of it all if not to make yourself feel good (and to enrich the purveyors) -- you most certainly must avoid cutting yourself on Occam's razor by admitting the best reconciliation of the idea of god with the reality of our world is that he/she/it/they is/are either incompetent or brutally perverse. So you start plugging and patching the holes. God is great, but there's that devil out there. Never mind that a loving and omnipotent god could have chosen another way (which makes him, to put it mildly, kinda devilish). Ignore the fact that the whole idea of heaven and hell, of eternal reward and permanent punishment entirely negates the idea of a perfect and loving god. Rather, believe in a red guy with horns poking around and messing things up. Like Froggy the Gremlin.

Disasters happen; people are nasty and stupid and horrible; beautiful babies get sick or starve and die. Can't be god. The devil made it happen. But doesn't it all just collapse under its own weight at some point? Isn't it self-contradictory to blame the absence of perfection on some devil thingy? In accepting such an explanation, isn't a fundamental internal inconsistency revealed in the Christian god-premise?

I know I'm not going to change any minds. To the extent that it would make people feel lost without their beliefs, I wouldn't even want to (although, if it'd make them agree to keep their religion to themselves and out of our schools and politics and civil rights, I'd be delighted). We have our human needs, and for most that includes not having to live with certain unanswered questions. I'd have an easier time letting it be, were it not also the case that there seems to be a direct connection with that sort of fact-lacked thinking and the sort of paranoid, obstructionist, and dishonest demagoguery we're seeing from the right side of the political spectrum of late. Those devils!

[Too perfect: as I'm finishing this post, there appears in my local paper the story of a woman who embezzled $70K from a church. Her defense: the devil made her do it. Wonder if she can get him to talk to the jury.]

[Geez, it must be a sign: now this was in Thursday's paper:]



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Final Exam

Ready to take the ultimate religion test? Here it is. Sharpen your number twos.

I find it pretty amusing, particularly since it gets at much of what I've pointed out in several posts on this blog.

No cheating.

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Two Worlds?

On the concept that by some sort of definition, science can have no opinion about religion, this says it about as well as it can be said.

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On Your Face

So I'm driving home the other day behind a car with the above stuck on its bumper, and I'm all like, WTF? What lesson are we to learn from this?

The need to poster one's religion on the backside of one's car has never been something out which I could figure. In whatever iteration, it lies somewhere on the spectrum between smug and insecure; which, when you think about it, are probably both pretty close together at the left end of that long line that runs between inadequate and exemplary. But this one seems to be broadcasting simultaneously on several channels, canceling each other out. Like on a road trip, picking up a new FM even as the one falling into the distance remains audible.

What it mostly screams is "Somehow I sort of think this religious stuff makes me suspect, so, just in case you can't tell how manly I am, I'm saying it. How is it working? Do these clothes make me look fat?" On another level, it says "All you guys out there that make me feel inadequate? Well, how about this, you scary monuments to masculinity: I believe in Jesus. So there!"

But it's all of a holier-than-thou piece, which says the exact opposite of what you'd think the truly religious would be saying. It says, "Look at me! Oh, and Jesus? If you happen to be in the car behind me, check it out: I'm holy. Because without this stuff, maybe you wouldn't know. But oh yeah, you know everything, huh? So maybe you see what I do with the rest of my time. This makes up for it, right? Right??"

Reason I'm bringing it up: I watched the BCS finale last night, and there was Tim Tebow, wearing his religion under his eyeballs:

(If you can't read 'em, they say "John 3:16.)

I just don't get it. (First of all, John 3:16 -- said to be the whole gospel in a nutshell -- contains a lie and something unprovable. Not that that's not the whole deal in a nutshell, all right; but God didn't "give" his only begotten son. He loaned him, and took him back. Neither of them sacrificed a damn thing, right? They knew he wasn't going to die. So it's all a guilt trip, probably the most successful of all time, even more than when your mother pointed out the starving kids in China; it sure has enriched the Church over the eons. [Bernie's a piker]... Second, the life everlasting thing: the existential essence. True? Who knows?) Tim Tebow seems, indeed, an exemplary kid. I take nothing away from him. Fairly good quarterback, excellent human being. Far better than me, and I mean that sincerely. But why the broadcast? What would Jesus say?

Well, inveterate searcher and purveyor of knowledge that I am, I may have found the answer. His girlfriend:





As an unapologetic admirer of the female form, I can relate. I can even hear him hollering "Thank you, Jesus," and meaning it like crazy.

And if that's not enough, here's another view:


No doubt about it. He is risen.

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Says It All

[Image snipped from Pharyngula. Too good to pass up.]

Impossible

The more I read about India and Pakistan, the less I understand. And, more importantly, the less I think there's any hope for that region, or for the world. This opinion piece in yesterday's NYT did nothing to help; nor did this one. (And here's a none-too-reassuring piece from today, by the president of Pakistan.) The unifying theme, both there and in the Middle East, is misery being conscripted by religion; most particularly by intransigent and zealous haters, unyielding in their own certainty. It takes a lot to hate that much, and to believe that much. And whereas it seems there is no religion you can name (with the possible exception of Buddhism) that is free of the guilt of fanning the flames of hatred, the common thread within the worst violence is that of radical Islam. Many Muslims -- those in India, it seems clear -- deplore the trend. But it seems to take only a few to propel the hatred to suicidal levels: enough to threaten the entire world. All-consuming conflagration seems inevitable.

The solution -- if there were one -- would require the end of those who teach, and those who accept, the kind of hatred that leads to suicidal (literal and figurative) behavior. The "liberal" answer, I think, is addressing the cesspool: the poverty and hopelessness of those regions. I doubt it. Mankind, in its frailty, is destined to kill itself off. If there weren't radical Islam, there'd be something else. The inevitability is tied directly to need for religious belief, irrespective of one's station in life.

That our inadequate and fragile brains need to construct religions is proof of our imperfection. No surprise there. There's such an overwhelming and intrinsic need for belief that faiths pop up like flora, everywhere: in isolation, in jungles, in riches, all around the world. The one and only thread connecting them is the eventual evolution of devotion so strong that it leads to hatred and violence toward the others. That, to me, is proof that it's about hapless human need and not about any sort of deities actually existing, behind it all. Our overwhelming impulse is to believe, sprouting an array of forms differing wildly one from the other but holding in common that need to hate: it's a thing which disproves itself. A THING WHICH DISPROVES ITSELF! What more potent argument against the existence of god/gods is there, than our demonstrable need to believe in them? If he/she/they existed, why would there be such a variety of beliefs, and such a need to destroy the others? Clearly, it springs from within us, not without.

Which is why there's no hope for us as a species. There's simply no way to put an end to the sort of insanity that we see in the Middle East and South Asia. It's who we are! If we're still evolving, it ain't nearly fast enough.

That in "our" corner of the world the dysfunction seems milder -- Prop 8, Newt Gingrich, James Hagee, etc., ad nauseum -- is only a matter of degree.

And of time.

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Truth-Tellers?

It's my opinion that among the clergy is a disproportionate number of people (men, it seems, nearly exclusively) who are sincerely screwed up, compensating in some weird way for their less-than-honorable proclivities. For them, taking up the cloth is a kind of reaction formation. How else to explain the regular revelations of the very behavior (sexual, generally) against which they rail? Youth pastors seem, often enough to be newsworthy, to see their flock (and flockettes) as personal playground. The bigger the church, the more prominent their proclamations, the more likely it is (unscientific assessment, but this is a blog) the preacher has something to hide. The more lavishly they spend on themselves. And, of course, all the more amusing when it all comes out.

But that's not my point. This is.

From there, I hardly know which direction to choose: the bizarre theology, the fact that people like these are given political -- or ANY -- credence, that politicians make pilgrimages to their doorsteps; or that people by the uncountable tens of thousands flock to hear what they have to say. Some guy, basically, who has a mammothly inflated view of his own rectitude, of his own righteousness (to the extent that he's managed to subvert his real desires), who has the good business sense to put together a megamillion dollar enterprise and use it as a platform to promote whatever the hell comes into his head. And people eat it up; give him time on their talk shows, consider his concurrence a blessing for their own inadequacies. (For is there a more inadequate personality than Sean Hannity?)

I've said it before, because I mean it: I have nothing but respect for a person's individual beliefs, insofar as they allow that person to manage in this strange world. And insofar as they don't try to force their beliefs into our schools, and onto me. I recognize and honor the personal need, and the personal purpose. But it's this wholly undeserved national stage...

It's self-evident that the Bible (I'm talking Christianity here, as usual, but only because it's the driving religious force in our politics; I feel the same about all organized and proselytized religions) is a mirror of oneself. Vague, internally contradictory, translated, edited and revised to the point that there's literally no way to know the original meaning or intent of its various authors, the reading of and response to it is entirely individual. It means to you what it means to you, and you are quite free to find your own way into and out of it. Which is, I suppose, a significant part of its attraction. Once again: I bear no ill towards those who find solace in it. I envy their certitude.

Where I entirely part company is with the idea of imparting to some (possibly quite damaged) individual primacy of pronouncement. Why is Rick Warren's view, or Pat Robertson's, or Billy Graham's, any more noteworthy than yours? Why cede to these people the power of persuasion? What do they know that you don't? In what way are they closer to God than you are? And, for that matter, other than better clothes and more soap, what do they have that the guy on the street corner doesn't?

Of all the mysteries of religion, near the top for me is the willingess -- or whatever it is -- of those who flock to a given minister, to accept his interpretations and imprecations as gospel (as it were) when not very far down the street is another, with quite different views on those same fungible and willowy words. Why the one's, and not the other's? Why, in fact, the need to rely on another's at all over one's own?

And why, why, why, choose self-important power-mongerers like Warren, and Robertson, and Hagee? What's wrong with the humble little church down the road, with the pastor who drives a beater car and has a flock of a hundred or two? Why the need to be part of some sort of movement of millions? What's up with that?

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On Religion (Three)

It's neither my expectation nor intent to change minds. But since some things simply make no sense to me, I feel like saying why. If it were possible, at minimum, to encourage a person or two who didn't already, to recognize the right of people to believe differently and, therefore, to pull pack a click from trying to politicize their beliefs, I'd be more than happy. Not counting on it.

Today's topic: miracles.

For all I know each religion has its own clear definition. Mine is an event that indicates the hand of god, or gods, at work: something the occurrence of which can't be explained except as such. Which, if I understand omniscience and omnipotence and perfection, ought to include everything, all the time.

When you think about it, that there can be no middle ground: If God is all knowing and all powerful, either he is in control of every single thing that occurs, everywhere, to everyone, or he's checked out entirely and no longer has his finger in the pie. Theologicians, ministers, believers can argue but there's no logical basis for concluding otherwise. In the universe of an omniperfect god, we're marionettes with minimal if any free will, or we're entirely on our own. To believe in miracles as an extraordinary event -- and in the power of prayer, for that matter -- you must reject the idea of a perfect god who is omniscient and omnipotent.

School bus drives off a cliff, carrying eighty kids. One lives. It's a miracle, say his parents, the press, and everyone who hears the story. God was watching over him. A woman is diagnosed with incurable cancer, "given" (as a doctor I always hated that term/concept) six months to live. Five years later, she's still alive. Miraculous.

But think about it: how can you call the survival of that child an act of god, without also saying the death of the seventy-nine was god's idea as well? If he chose to save the one, mustn't he also -- in his perfection -- have chosen to kill the others? Because, after all, he could have saved them; or what the heck -- not pushed the bus off the cliff in the first place.

We can't know the mind of God, people will say. He has his reasons; a plan for us all. Okay, fine. But since we know he arranged the death of the seventy-nine, and since we consider miracles an event that shows the hand of God, why don't we rejoice over the dead ones, and call them a miracle as well? Or is it that since we know God is at work in all these things, the miracle is when he does something nice? What does that say?

God is at work, or he isn't. If he chooses to (fill in the blank) and if he has (by accepted doctrine) the power and knowledge to do it, then when (fill in the blank) doesn't happen, it's also his choice. Right? How can it be otherwise? Unless sometimes he's not paying attention. In which case he's not perfect; certainly not omniattentive. Oops, he says. Didn't see that cliff. Well, there's still time to grab the one kid...

The death of the other kids is no less the work of God -- no less a miracle, therefore -- than the saving of the one. There are no miracles, or everything is a miracle, which sort of dilutes the significance. If God can choose to intervene sometimes, then he's also choosing NOT to intervene in the others, unless he's not fully engaged. But by the doctrine of perfection, power, knowledge, he must be. So there it is: he's doing it all, or he's doing nothing. Made us, intelligently designed us, then left us completely alone, like a terrarium in a sixth-grade science project, to see what would happen. Stayed overnight at a friend's house.

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On Religion (Two)

Like most kids, I had a religious upbringing, albeit in a family of generationally diminishing fervor. Great grandparents were founders of temples, rabbis; grandparents lit the Sabbath candles more often than not, insisted on Holy Day get-togethers, trips to the Temple, and following the proper rituals. Once in a while my mom tried valiantly and mostly in vain to get us to services on Friday nights; my dad had an abiding dislike of all men of the cloth except for the priest (later Bishop, then Archbishop) who presided over the University of Portland. I attended Sunday School until I graduated high school, took a certain amount of pride in my heritage, went through the usual adolescent period of religiosity, even imagining what it would be like to give moving and soul-expanding sermons to my future flock. At about age fourteen, I received a scholarship to a religious camp in California, where I had what some might describe as an experience of the divine, one evening in the woods, away from the bonfire, with a girl from Piedmont...

But that's another story.

I have a clear recollection -- clear enough almost to be able to re-conjure the feeling -- of asking my mom about death, probably around age six or eight. "Will I die," I asked. Her affirmative answer included nothing about afterlife, no heaven: Jews are pretty silent on that subject, especially we of the Reform variety. I recall feeling the numbing and transfixing coldness of terror, deep and abiding, palpably physical. It was the foreverness of it, the infinitude: less the idea of death itself but that there was no end to it, I'd be dead always and evermore, millions of billions of years. That feeling has stayed with me, lessened with time by the realization that it must be like it was for the infinity in the other direction, before I was born. And that seems to have been all right.

In that moment, whether I fully apprehended it or not, was the existential engine of belief: even a little boy could feel the terrifying certainty of death and the panic it engenders. That's an (if not the) essence of us: before there is belief, there is dread. Enough to drive us to the certainty and peacefulness of ignorance, in the "ignoring" sense of the word. The need is too great to resist.

And yet, I do; and I can only wonder what it is that separates those that do from those that don't. It's not intelligence or even inquisitiveness. Is one, or the other, more evolved? Is one, or the other, more felicitous for the future of man? I don't know, and I won't live to find out.

At some point it just stopped making sense.

I guess belief, by definition, isn't supposed to make sense. I'm okay with fantasy books and movies, but there has to be internal consistency. In my single-digit youth, Saturday morning serials pissed me off when the next episode showed King of the Rocket Men free of his impossible predicament without ever explaining how it happened. I like good science fiction that creates improbable worlds with imaginative rules that make a sort of sense of their own and that plays within them. And so I think it should be with belief: even if unrooted from reality, it ought to follow a sort of esoteric logic. I can't -- nobody really can, convincingly -- reconcile an omniscient, omnipotent god who has a plan for us, loves us, with what we see around us every day. Or with free will. Or miracles. Or the power of prayer. Or, for that matter, with the idea of eternal reward and eternal punishment. It takes theologians to do that, which is to say people willing to suspend reason and call it scholarship.

That's why I said, in post one on this subject, "The fact that I'm no theological expert makes my thoughts particularly worthy, because since there's no true religion, there can be no true experts. The world needs a little input from that perspective." There's much to say, lots of fascinating subjects; in the name of brevity, let's start with the biggest -- and easiest -- one: who created God?

Contemplating the Universe, one has to accept the idea of existence without creation. Either of stuff, or of God. Or gods. People look at the complexity of our world, of life, of nephrons and nucleotides and say it can't just have happened: such intricacy implies a creator. And yet what could be more complex than that creator: a tinkerer with tryptophane, a meddler with mitochondria? It's a lot easier, for me anyway, to accept the primordial existence of atoms and rocks than of a big guy with jewelers' forceps and loupes. Who sat around for an infinite number of eons with nothing to do until twelve-thousand (or is it six-?) years ago, when it occurred to him to create something.

So that's the first thing: if you can get your mind around the idea of the most complex, powerful, brilliant and perfect being imaginable existing forever with no creator, why not protons and electrons? If neither is explainable, isn't the latter a hell of a lot simpler? More sensible, even? Occam's razor.

Given a little more time, I intend to spout off on those other issues, too.

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