In the wake of the tragic Colorado shootings, this is most certainly a time for prayer and reflection in America. But these days, with our busy hectic lifestyles, who has time to pray AND reflect?
That's why I propose that we combine prayer and reflection into a single act, "pray-flection." Now, the problem with prayer and reflection separately is that they might actually get something done. Reflection means thinking deeply about a topic, to the point that you may reach new insights and possibly form new opinions. And prayer, well, obviously sending out prayer waves from your head will reorganize the particles of the universe into one where gun violence is a thing of the past. And since this is America, neither of those things is any good.
The beauty about pray-flection is that in terms of actually getting something done, the prayer part and the reflection part cancel each other out. When you pray-flect, you empty your mind of any possible thought or impulse that could have any consequence whatsoever on yourself or on the world. At the same time, though, you give yourself the idea that you actually are doing something — which of course is that you are pray-flecting! See how it works?
Think about how nice it will be to tell everyone that you pray-flected about the shootings for a half hour today. It’s both easier and less effective than praying for a half-hour and then reflecting for a half-hour.
And doesn’t that just make it more American?
Showing posts with label agnostic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agnostic. Show all posts
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Lose Weight, Know Death
Last fall I uploaded the video for my song “Constipation,” after being inactive on YouTube for several months, and a bunch of people commented, “You’ve gotten fat!” Turns out I had gained about ten pounds since I last weighed myself (and I wasn’t exactly skinny before). A check of the body mass index chart showed that for the first time in my life, I was in the “overweight” category. I immediately put myself on a weight-loss program. It’s been about four months, and although I am no longer crash-dieting, I’ve lost 27 pounds. It feels great, and it’s satisfying to pick up three gallon-jugs of water and realize that this is the amount of me that’s no longer “me.”
My body is now some 15% less of a body than it was when I started. I am still the same person; it’s just that about one-seventh of me has gone away. That one-seventh is now dead. It has transitioned from being a part of my living tissue, to being entirely nonliving. It is now like all ordinary matter — molecules and atoms freely wandering in the world, unconstrained by cell membranes and the processes of life, broadly scattered about the environment in the form of metabolic by-products and residual heat. This 27 pounds is not conscious; it is not experiencing anything whatsoever.
I realized that since the 15% of me is now dead, that means that when I as an individual die, I will be effectively losing 100% of my weight. Death is the simple transition of living matter to nonliving matter; this can happen equally effectively to cells, organs, or an entire person. So when I die, 100% of my body will undergo this transition, and that 100% of me will feel exactly the same as the departed 15% of me feels right now: nothing.
Of course, this is an imperfect analogy; I lost little or no weight from my brain, and molecular fat within fat cells does not participate in consciousness. But this doesn’t really matter, because pretty much the same thing would happen if I lost one-seventh of my brain in a grisly accident. A decomposing chunk of brain tissue doesn’t experience consciousness, either; the lost one-seventh portion would be exactly as unconscious as the 27 pounds of fat that I’ve lost. And if one-seventh of my brain died, I don’t think part of me would go to Heaven … would it?
This is an area where I feel that even moderate people of faith are living in pre-scientific times. There is no localized “seat” of consciousness, no specific location of the soul, in the body. We all know that if we lost one-seventh of our brain tissue, our consciousness would suffer — consciousness deteriorates readily just when we have a high fever. The many bizarre cases written about by Oliver Sacks are proof positive that our sense of the world (including the self) is tied to the physical condition of the brain. How does the idea of an eternal soul work with a person like Terri Schiavo? Do Christians feel that she was actually fully conscious in some manner as she lay in her waking but vegetative state? Or, when she died, did her healthy consciousness reconstitute itself before going to heaven? And which consciousness was that — as it was just before she suffered brain damage at age 26, or a younger, more naïve consciousness? Do persons born with severe developmental disabilities become normal after death? Do those with minor learning disabilities, or traumatic memories, lose them before they go to Heaven? Do sufferers of obsessive-compulsive disorder learn to chill out after they die? What if certain people’s disorders or flaws actually helped them to achieve great things on Earth?
I suppose if I were a believer, I’d say something like, everyone has a perfect soul or spirit which can be trapped inside a flawed body, but which becomes free upon death. To me, though, if a person’s soul in Heaven is different from his or her waking self on Earth, then it isn’t the same person — any more than someone is the same person after they’ve been given a lobotomy, or developed Alzheimer’s.
The problem is, the idea of an eternal soul is logically incompatible with the idea of an organic body that hosts consciousness organically. There could be no self-consistent “theory of the eternal soul” that explained how that soul relates to an individual’s personality, memories, and experience on Earth. Life after death is fine as a bedtime story, but when scrutinized with any logical rigor at all, none of it makes sense.
Now if you’ll excuse me, the remaining six-sevenths of me has a life to enjoy.
My body is now some 15% less of a body than it was when I started. I am still the same person; it’s just that about one-seventh of me has gone away. That one-seventh is now dead. It has transitioned from being a part of my living tissue, to being entirely nonliving. It is now like all ordinary matter — molecules and atoms freely wandering in the world, unconstrained by cell membranes and the processes of life, broadly scattered about the environment in the form of metabolic by-products and residual heat. This 27 pounds is not conscious; it is not experiencing anything whatsoever.
I realized that since the 15% of me is now dead, that means that when I as an individual die, I will be effectively losing 100% of my weight. Death is the simple transition of living matter to nonliving matter; this can happen equally effectively to cells, organs, or an entire person. So when I die, 100% of my body will undergo this transition, and that 100% of me will feel exactly the same as the departed 15% of me feels right now: nothing.
Of course, this is an imperfect analogy; I lost little or no weight from my brain, and molecular fat within fat cells does not participate in consciousness. But this doesn’t really matter, because pretty much the same thing would happen if I lost one-seventh of my brain in a grisly accident. A decomposing chunk of brain tissue doesn’t experience consciousness, either; the lost one-seventh portion would be exactly as unconscious as the 27 pounds of fat that I’ve lost. And if one-seventh of my brain died, I don’t think part of me would go to Heaven … would it?
This is an area where I feel that even moderate people of faith are living in pre-scientific times. There is no localized “seat” of consciousness, no specific location of the soul, in the body. We all know that if we lost one-seventh of our brain tissue, our consciousness would suffer — consciousness deteriorates readily just when we have a high fever. The many bizarre cases written about by Oliver Sacks are proof positive that our sense of the world (including the self) is tied to the physical condition of the brain. How does the idea of an eternal soul work with a person like Terri Schiavo? Do Christians feel that she was actually fully conscious in some manner as she lay in her waking but vegetative state? Or, when she died, did her healthy consciousness reconstitute itself before going to heaven? And which consciousness was that — as it was just before she suffered brain damage at age 26, or a younger, more naïve consciousness? Do persons born with severe developmental disabilities become normal after death? Do those with minor learning disabilities, or traumatic memories, lose them before they go to Heaven? Do sufferers of obsessive-compulsive disorder learn to chill out after they die? What if certain people’s disorders or flaws actually helped them to achieve great things on Earth?
I suppose if I were a believer, I’d say something like, everyone has a perfect soul or spirit which can be trapped inside a flawed body, but which becomes free upon death. To me, though, if a person’s soul in Heaven is different from his or her waking self on Earth, then it isn’t the same person — any more than someone is the same person after they’ve been given a lobotomy, or developed Alzheimer’s.
The problem is, the idea of an eternal soul is logically incompatible with the idea of an organic body that hosts consciousness organically. There could be no self-consistent “theory of the eternal soul” that explained how that soul relates to an individual’s personality, memories, and experience on Earth. Life after death is fine as a bedtime story, but when scrutinized with any logical rigor at all, none of it makes sense.
Now if you’ll excuse me, the remaining six-sevenths of me has a life to enjoy.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Kill "God Bless America" NOW (10/19/2010)
This was originally posted on a horrible site called Myspace. When Myspace underwent a redesign in Fall 2010, hundreds of insightful reader comments that had been left over the years were lost. I have since deleted my account there.
I find it incredible that more than nine years after 9/11, Major League Baseball teams still have to perform "God Bless America" during the 7th-inning stretch of all postseason games, as well as certain other games. Fans are asked to please stand and remove their caps for the song, just like the National Anthem. (Even though GBA isn't the National Anthem.) And prior to a civil-liberties lawsuit a couple of years ago, the New York Yankees' security guards famously kept fans from leaving their seats during the singing of said song. No, this isn't North Korea. Yet.
Here's my beef with "God Bless America." First of all, it is without question a patently religious song. Consider the introduction, rarely sung today except sometimes at Yankee Stadium:
While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.
"God Bless America" is intended to be sung as a prayer for the well-being of America. (Of course, not necessarily for anyone else in the world, even though a huge proportion of MLB players were not American-born.) People from other countries are amazed that the phrase "God bless America" is even a thing here in this country; I can't count the number of times a person from Europe or Asia has left a comment on a video of mine saying, "Why not God bless the world?" Yet this is the message we send out every time 50,000 baseball fans are asked to stand and sing.
Even worse, "God Bless America," since its resurgence after 9/11, has taken on a more sinister subtext: May God watch over America as we fight those godless Muslims overseas. It has a Crusade ring to it. I have to ask, given all of the other nonreligious, non-jingoistic, non-divisive, beautiful patriotic songs out there — "America the Beautiful" is my personal favorite — is GBA really the best choice, if only in the interests of not fomenting more terrorism?
To anyone who says get over it, it's just a patriotic song, one that celebrates our freedom — let us not forget the prophetic words attributed to Sinclair Lewis:
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
I find it incredible that more than nine years after 9/11, Major League Baseball teams still have to perform "God Bless America" during the 7th-inning stretch of all postseason games, as well as certain other games. Fans are asked to please stand and remove their caps for the song, just like the National Anthem. (Even though GBA isn't the National Anthem.) And prior to a civil-liberties lawsuit a couple of years ago, the New York Yankees' security guards famously kept fans from leaving their seats during the singing of said song. No, this isn't North Korea. Yet.
Here's my beef with "God Bless America." First of all, it is without question a patently religious song. Consider the introduction, rarely sung today except sometimes at Yankee Stadium:
While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.
"God Bless America" is intended to be sung as a prayer for the well-being of America. (Of course, not necessarily for anyone else in the world, even though a huge proportion of MLB players were not American-born.) People from other countries are amazed that the phrase "God bless America" is even a thing here in this country; I can't count the number of times a person from Europe or Asia has left a comment on a video of mine saying, "Why not God bless the world?" Yet this is the message we send out every time 50,000 baseball fans are asked to stand and sing.
Even worse, "God Bless America," since its resurgence after 9/11, has taken on a more sinister subtext: May God watch over America as we fight those godless Muslims overseas. It has a Crusade ring to it. I have to ask, given all of the other nonreligious, non-jingoistic, non-divisive, beautiful patriotic songs out there — "America the Beautiful" is my personal favorite — is GBA really the best choice, if only in the interests of not fomenting more terrorism?
To anyone who says get over it, it's just a patriotic song, one that celebrates our freedom — let us not forget the prophetic words attributed to Sinclair Lewis:
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
Another "Proof of God," Refuted (5/15/2009)
This was originally posted on a horrible site called Myspace. When Myspace underwent a redesign in Fall 2010, hundreds of insightful reader comments that had been left over the years were lost. I have since deleted my account there.
A couple of people have sent me a fictional story about two Christians in a philosophy class confronting their atheist professor. (Maybe you've seen it; apparently it's been circulating by e-mail for years. A version can be found here.*) The story, which frankly is an embarrassment to anyone who has sat in a philosophy class or studied science, is an elaborate take on one argument for theism that I see over and over. Basically: "Yes, it may be true that we cannot see God, but what about magnetism, or electrons, or the wind? We can't see those, either. And what about love, or hope, or compassion, or any kind of thought -- not only can we not see them, but in addition science can't detect them, can't explain exactly what they are or how they work. If God doesn't exist, then the wind, hope, and love all must not exist, either."
This idea was touched on in the film "Contact," in the scene where Ellie Arroway demands proof of God, and Palmer Joss responds by asking her to prove that she loved her father.
If you're inclined to believe, it's fairly convincing. Surely, there are intangible things that actually do exist, so of course God is like that, too. But the argument introduces two classes of entities: merely invisible things, and states of mind, and it conflates the two classes into one class, the assumption being that God must be in that class as well.
Let's think of some merely invisible things: Air. Wind. Magnetism. Radiation. Low-voltage electricity. Hydrogen gas. "You can't see any of them, right?" Perhaps, but why the sudden emphasis on human vision? All of those things, and any other real-but-invisible thing you can think of, have effects that can be directly observed. Air, when it circulates as wind, makes leaves move. Magnetism affects a compass. Radiation can be picked up with a Geiger counter, electricity with a voltmeter. Hydrogen burns when ignited along with oxygen. Unlike acts of God, these things are all 100% predictable, testable, and repeatable; there is no case where hydrogen is not flammable or a magnetic field doesn't affect a compass. Basically, for all real-but-invisible things we know about, we have some kind of device or process that will reliably detect their presence. So, could we come up with a device that detects the presence of an invisible "God field"? Perhaps -- but if we do, atheists will no longer have much of a defensible position. To date, such a device hasn't been invented, so atheists remain atheists.
The other class in the argument comprises human states of mind: emotions, feelings, thoughts. I'm prepared to say that hope and compassion didn't exist on Earth in, say, the Devonian period 350 million years ago. Are theists prepared to say God didn't, either? I doubt it. But if they are, then we are in complete agreement. To me God seems to be a state of the human mind in the same way as love, anger, or hope are: a subjective phenomenon confined exclusively to the self. I have no issue with that kind of God whatsoever. (Just don't tell me He caused the Steelers to beat the Cardinals.)
The most likely counter-objection to what I'm saying would be something like, "God is more like a state of mind than a mere invisible thing, except that He exists independent of humans, existed before humans, and will exist after humans." Well, fine, but that kind of destroys the analogy between God and fleeting, human states of mind, doesn't it?
If God exists, then He exists in His own class separate from merely invisible things and states of mind. That's the God that the theist must argue for.
* The most egregious misstatement in the story is, "According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist." There's a subtle but critical distinction between having a position (saying something) and not having a position (saying nothing). "Science" -- and by the way it's quite a stretch to identify science in such singular, authoritarian terms, as in "the Vatican" or "the White House" -- is unable to take any position whatsoever on the existence of God.
A couple of people have sent me a fictional story about two Christians in a philosophy class confronting their atheist professor. (Maybe you've seen it; apparently it's been circulating by e-mail for years. A version can be found here.*) The story, which frankly is an embarrassment to anyone who has sat in a philosophy class or studied science, is an elaborate take on one argument for theism that I see over and over. Basically: "Yes, it may be true that we cannot see God, but what about magnetism, or electrons, or the wind? We can't see those, either. And what about love, or hope, or compassion, or any kind of thought -- not only can we not see them, but in addition science can't detect them, can't explain exactly what they are or how they work. If God doesn't exist, then the wind, hope, and love all must not exist, either."
This idea was touched on in the film "Contact," in the scene where Ellie Arroway demands proof of God, and Palmer Joss responds by asking her to prove that she loved her father.
If you're inclined to believe, it's fairly convincing. Surely, there are intangible things that actually do exist, so of course God is like that, too. But the argument introduces two classes of entities: merely invisible things, and states of mind, and it conflates the two classes into one class, the assumption being that God must be in that class as well.
Let's think of some merely invisible things: Air. Wind. Magnetism. Radiation. Low-voltage electricity. Hydrogen gas. "You can't see any of them, right?" Perhaps, but why the sudden emphasis on human vision? All of those things, and any other real-but-invisible thing you can think of, have effects that can be directly observed. Air, when it circulates as wind, makes leaves move. Magnetism affects a compass. Radiation can be picked up with a Geiger counter, electricity with a voltmeter. Hydrogen burns when ignited along with oxygen. Unlike acts of God, these things are all 100% predictable, testable, and repeatable; there is no case where hydrogen is not flammable or a magnetic field doesn't affect a compass. Basically, for all real-but-invisible things we know about, we have some kind of device or process that will reliably detect their presence. So, could we come up with a device that detects the presence of an invisible "God field"? Perhaps -- but if we do, atheists will no longer have much of a defensible position. To date, such a device hasn't been invented, so atheists remain atheists.
The other class in the argument comprises human states of mind: emotions, feelings, thoughts. I'm prepared to say that hope and compassion didn't exist on Earth in, say, the Devonian period 350 million years ago. Are theists prepared to say God didn't, either? I doubt it. But if they are, then we are in complete agreement. To me God seems to be a state of the human mind in the same way as love, anger, or hope are: a subjective phenomenon confined exclusively to the self. I have no issue with that kind of God whatsoever. (Just don't tell me He caused the Steelers to beat the Cardinals.)
The most likely counter-objection to what I'm saying would be something like, "God is more like a state of mind than a mere invisible thing, except that He exists independent of humans, existed before humans, and will exist after humans." Well, fine, but that kind of destroys the analogy between God and fleeting, human states of mind, doesn't it?
If God exists, then He exists in His own class separate from merely invisible things and states of mind. That's the God that the theist must argue for.
* The most egregious misstatement in the story is, "According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist." There's a subtle but critical distinction between having a position (saying something) and not having a position (saying nothing). "Science" -- and by the way it's quite a stretch to identify science in such singular, authoritarian terms, as in "the Vatican" or "the White House" -- is unable to take any position whatsoever on the existence of God.
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