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 atheist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheist. Show all posts
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Bad Atheism
Even though I’ve found no reason to believe in God, I don’t claim to have any definitive knowledge on the matter. We are pretty sure that evolution happens, and that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old, but questions about “God” — starting with how one even goes about defining that term — are far subtler. That hasn’t stopped many atheists from rejecting the idea of God so fiercely, I kind of get what people mean when they say that atheism is a religion. They’re talking about bad atheism, a rigid view of the world that’s impoverished of deep curiosity. Bad atheists present current scientific theory as absolute truth, even though some scientific facts considered true now will almost certainly be revised by future theories. I think that atheism should be about humility regarding what we know (which is less than bad atheists think), and a desire to seek out what we don’t know. Unfortunately for some, atheism is just about being right.
It’s great to identify with our fellow atheists and exchange ideas. But when this identification turns into a battle and a desire to win, it becomes bad. The bad atheist seeks out believers with the goal of defeating them. (“I will destroy you!”) Bad atheists would say they are skeptics, but actually, they are pseudoskeptical. Truly skeptical persons keep their minds open but are unswayed by unconvincing arguments. Pseudoskeptics, on the other hand, fancy themselves to be open-minded, when actually they have long since settled their opinion and now their heels are dug in. More than being merely unconvinced, the pseudoskeptic spends effort disproving his chosen foes’ beliefs rather than listening to them. Complicating matters, the more unbiased a person views himself to be, the less likely he is to notice himself dismissing new ideas in a prejudiced manner.
The bad atheist has no problem exchanging one untestable proposition for another. While a Christian would say that the universe is fine-tuned for life because God created it to be that way, the bad atheist addresses this point matter-of-factly by invoking a multiverse and/or eternal inflation. (That is, if he doesn’t reject fine-tuning altogether, perhaps because he can’t disentangle the notion of physical fine-tuning and a supernatural fine-tuner.) The multiverse and inflation are legitimate scientific ideas, but they are merely hypothetical models, a “best guess to date.” For the bad atheist, though, who perhaps has watched too many science shows on the History Channel, they simply are the explanation. Of course, unobservable universes beyond our cosmic horizon are at present no more testable or predictive than saying “God did it.” To declare that fine-tuning is a consequence of an eternally inflating multiverse — not God — you might as well declare that leprechauns don’t steal pots of gold under rainbows, gnomes do.
To the bad atheist, philosophy and metaphysics are useless at best, and flat-out wrong at worst. The irony of this position is that it is inescapably a metaphysical one. But this truth is lost even on some of the world’s top thinkers. “The philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” Richard Feynman famously said — but as philosophers have since pointed out, such knowledge would be useful to birds, if they could possess it! The fact is, physicists answer questions about how the world works, but that’s only because the natural philosophers of the preceding centuries (and some more recent ones) have taught us what questions we should be asking.
For bad atheists, there is no mystery in the world. There are unknowns, such as details on the Higgs boson or quantum gravity, but these will be learned through current lines of research using familiar methodologies. “We’ve got it all under control; nothing to see here” is a common attitude toward the deeper questions. The graduate student head-down studying pi-mesons may have no interest in the measurement problem, the fascinating question of what’s really going on when we measure a particle. He might brush it off, say that there is no problem. The world in its totality consists of particles, fields, and forces, and eventually we’ll figure out everything on those hard terms and those terms alone. So deal with it.
Now, when I say “mystery,” I am not implying anything supernatural. All signs point to the world as operating under thoroughly self-consistent laws, with no external intervention whatsoever. But, in trying to understand the emergence of reality, time, and space at the deepest levels, we’re missing some key insight — most likely, because we are embedded inside of the very same world we’re trying to explain. It’s all terribly fascinating; we are truly at a “blind men and the elephant” moment in history. And we need to put the pieces together and get, at last, a coherent picture of an elephant. What we don’t need are bad atheists holding the trunk and saying, “It’s obviously a fire hose, dumbass. Go home now.”
It’s great to identify with our fellow atheists and exchange ideas. But when this identification turns into a battle and a desire to win, it becomes bad. The bad atheist seeks out believers with the goal of defeating them. (“I will destroy you!”) Bad atheists would say they are skeptics, but actually, they are pseudoskeptical. Truly skeptical persons keep their minds open but are unswayed by unconvincing arguments. Pseudoskeptics, on the other hand, fancy themselves to be open-minded, when actually they have long since settled their opinion and now their heels are dug in. More than being merely unconvinced, the pseudoskeptic spends effort disproving his chosen foes’ beliefs rather than listening to them. Complicating matters, the more unbiased a person views himself to be, the less likely he is to notice himself dismissing new ideas in a prejudiced manner.
The bad atheist has no problem exchanging one untestable proposition for another. While a Christian would say that the universe is fine-tuned for life because God created it to be that way, the bad atheist addresses this point matter-of-factly by invoking a multiverse and/or eternal inflation. (That is, if he doesn’t reject fine-tuning altogether, perhaps because he can’t disentangle the notion of physical fine-tuning and a supernatural fine-tuner.) The multiverse and inflation are legitimate scientific ideas, but they are merely hypothetical models, a “best guess to date.” For the bad atheist, though, who perhaps has watched too many science shows on the History Channel, they simply are the explanation. Of course, unobservable universes beyond our cosmic horizon are at present no more testable or predictive than saying “God did it.” To declare that fine-tuning is a consequence of an eternally inflating multiverse — not God — you might as well declare that leprechauns don’t steal pots of gold under rainbows, gnomes do.
To the bad atheist, philosophy and metaphysics are useless at best, and flat-out wrong at worst. The irony of this position is that it is inescapably a metaphysical one. But this truth is lost even on some of the world’s top thinkers. “The philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” Richard Feynman famously said — but as philosophers have since pointed out, such knowledge would be useful to birds, if they could possess it! The fact is, physicists answer questions about how the world works, but that’s only because the natural philosophers of the preceding centuries (and some more recent ones) have taught us what questions we should be asking.
For bad atheists, there is no mystery in the world. There are unknowns, such as details on the Higgs boson or quantum gravity, but these will be learned through current lines of research using familiar methodologies. “We’ve got it all under control; nothing to see here” is a common attitude toward the deeper questions. The graduate student head-down studying pi-mesons may have no interest in the measurement problem, the fascinating question of what’s really going on when we measure a particle. He might brush it off, say that there is no problem. The world in its totality consists of particles, fields, and forces, and eventually we’ll figure out everything on those hard terms and those terms alone. So deal with it.
Now, when I say “mystery,” I am not implying anything supernatural. All signs point to the world as operating under thoroughly self-consistent laws, with no external intervention whatsoever. But, in trying to understand the emergence of reality, time, and space at the deepest levels, we’re missing some key insight — most likely, because we are embedded inside of the very same world we’re trying to explain. It’s all terribly fascinating; we are truly at a “blind men and the elephant” moment in history. And we need to put the pieces together and get, at last, a coherent picture of an elephant. What we don’t need are bad atheists holding the trunk and saying, “It’s obviously a fire hose, dumbass. Go home now.”
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
Do You Live in Real Life or Fake Life? (10/22/2010)
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.
In my recent post "Yes, You Imagined It", I mentioned how unreliable the human memory is in recalling events from our life. A reader commented, "With that in mind, don't you doubt yourself? If you can't rely on your own memory, what can you rely on?"
Your memory is unreliable. That's a fact that has been experimentally documented. You can accept that fact, or you can choose to go through life with the notion that everything that has happened to you occurred just the way you remembered it. But in doing so, you are remembering a fake life, as every one of your memories, upon recall, is subject to associations, suggestions, and other errors that get reinforced every time you recall it.
I know that this is a little troubling. But I prefer to live a life that is troubling but real, as opposed to comforting but fake.
This desire to live a comforting life, even if it forces us to deny certain aspects of reality, is rampant in the human race. Religion (and related worldviews that suggest life after death) is the most obvious example. To the believer, it is a huge bummer to imagine that when your life is over, it's over — that one's consciousness and self-awareness is totally finite in duration, and that being dead feels exactly the same as not yet having been conceived. Yet, religious faith notwithstanding, it certainly appears to be the case that death is the end. And I choose to live my life acknowledging this, even though theists are constantly telling me, "It must be so depressing to believe that when you die, it's over."
My fellow atheists know it isn't depressing for a person who has accepted this as fact. It is thoroughly eye-opening and exhilarating to accept that life is finite, let's make the most of what we've got here on Earth, because this is it!
I don't exactly know why it rubs me so wrong when I see people choosing comforting self-delusion over difficult reality. I feel as if they're cheating themselves somehow. I value my own life so much, and I find reality so interesting and challenging as it is, that I am downright offended when someone puts themselves in a delusional bubble. It's the same feeling that I might have if I were attending an incredible Stravinsky concert, and then learned that the guy sitting next to me is wearing headphones and listening to elevator music, because that's more comforting to hear than Stravinsky. I would want to yank off those headphones and force the guy to listen to some real music for a change.
Here are some other realities I choose to acknowledge. I sometimes find myself fighting people online because of these (largely unpopular) viewpoints.
• No, kids cannot be "anything they want to be" when they grow up, or achieve any dream they may have if they "believe" or "try" hard enough. There are such things as talent and circumstance. Sorry, moms and dads.
• No, if you ran for public office and won, you would do exactly the same things that all elected politicians do to stay in office.
• No, you would not be immune to abuse of power or moral decay if you found yourself in a position of absolute power. See the Stanford Prison Experiment.
• No, those corporate "ribbon campaigns for the cure" aren't all sweetness and goodness. There is a huge, self-sustaining industry behind every major cause, with thousands of people gainfully employed (no, many of them are not doing any research), and all kinds of tax-writeoff and PR motives going on for the sponsors. "Cause marketing" is not without controversy. I know it feels wonderful to buy a pink box of cereal and everything — but how about giving directly to a charity, rather than tossing in a few cents by way of the cereal company? What's that, you just wanted a box of cereal, but couldn't resist the opportunity to pretend that you're actually a charitable person? Oh. (Update: Here's a blog post on pink-ribbon saturation.)
• No, your thoughts, beliefs, or trivial actions will not impact events in ways that you desire. The outcome of the game does not revolve around whether or not you put on your lucky hat — there are other people in the world besides yourself, and they have lucky hats, too. This especially applies if you're at home and watching the game on TiVo. See also: Prayer.
• No, your pet conspiracy theory is almost certainly false. Conspiracy theories are like movie scripts: They dress up reality to make it more interesting and exciting. They also deny the uncomfortable reality that sometimes, a few random piss-ants with a mission, like the 9/11 hijackers, can cause a huge world-changing event. (Typically these theories put the control in the hands of a far more deliberate and powerful entity, like the CIA — which in an odd way is more comforting.)
• Speaking of 9/11, no, the Al Qaeda hijackers were not cowards. I don't exactly approve of mass murder or terrorism, but the hard reality is those hijackers gave their lives for what they believed in, as warped as those beliefs may have been. Objectively speaking, that means they were acts of courage. (Of course, part of their motivation was a reward in the afterlife, but I'm talking strictly about the acts themselves.) The moment President Bush called the hijackers cowards, I knew he was wrong. People wanted to think of 9/11 as a cowardly act because the hijackers were so vilified. But from a neutral viewpoint, a suicide mission is anything but cowardly! Is it so wrong for an American who denounces mass-murder terrorism simply to acknowledge this one hard fact? Bill Maher tried, by saying about a week later, "We're the cowardly ones, launching missiles from 2,000 miles away" — but people didn't want to hear that, and his ABC show was canceled as result. So much for acknowledging reality.
• And finally, no, an intrusive, expensive safety measure is not worth it "if it saves just one single innocent life." This is another feel-good platitude that has no basis in reality. Banning cars in America would save tens of thousands of innocent lives per year. Do we do that? Why not? People are used to chalking up car-crash deaths as "accidents," a consequence of living in a free society. Terrorist attacks really are accidents; contrary to popular belief, they almost never happen, and that's not because of the TSA, which has yet to intercept a single explosive device some 90+ million flights (and counting!) after 9/11/01. If only we had treated that event as an accidental failure of the imagination — remember, airport security allowed passengers to carry boxcutters back then — the terrorists would not have defeated America, which they most certainly have, as any stroll through an airport today will indicate.
What are some hard realities that you accept, even though your viewpoint is less comforting than the more popular view? What difficult facts do you choose to acknowledge, simply because that's how the world actually is?
In my recent post "Yes, You Imagined It", I mentioned how unreliable the human memory is in recalling events from our life. A reader commented, "With that in mind, don't you doubt yourself? If you can't rely on your own memory, what can you rely on?"
Your memory is unreliable. That's a fact that has been experimentally documented. You can accept that fact, or you can choose to go through life with the notion that everything that has happened to you occurred just the way you remembered it. But in doing so, you are remembering a fake life, as every one of your memories, upon recall, is subject to associations, suggestions, and other errors that get reinforced every time you recall it.
I know that this is a little troubling. But I prefer to live a life that is troubling but real, as opposed to comforting but fake.
This desire to live a comforting life, even if it forces us to deny certain aspects of reality, is rampant in the human race. Religion (and related worldviews that suggest life after death) is the most obvious example. To the believer, it is a huge bummer to imagine that when your life is over, it's over — that one's consciousness and self-awareness is totally finite in duration, and that being dead feels exactly the same as not yet having been conceived. Yet, religious faith notwithstanding, it certainly appears to be the case that death is the end. And I choose to live my life acknowledging this, even though theists are constantly telling me, "It must be so depressing to believe that when you die, it's over."
My fellow atheists know it isn't depressing for a person who has accepted this as fact. It is thoroughly eye-opening and exhilarating to accept that life is finite, let's make the most of what we've got here on Earth, because this is it!
I don't exactly know why it rubs me so wrong when I see people choosing comforting self-delusion over difficult reality. I feel as if they're cheating themselves somehow. I value my own life so much, and I find reality so interesting and challenging as it is, that I am downright offended when someone puts themselves in a delusional bubble. It's the same feeling that I might have if I were attending an incredible Stravinsky concert, and then learned that the guy sitting next to me is wearing headphones and listening to elevator music, because that's more comforting to hear than Stravinsky. I would want to yank off those headphones and force the guy to listen to some real music for a change.
Here are some other realities I choose to acknowledge. I sometimes find myself fighting people online because of these (largely unpopular) viewpoints.
• No, kids cannot be "anything they want to be" when they grow up, or achieve any dream they may have if they "believe" or "try" hard enough. There are such things as talent and circumstance. Sorry, moms and dads.
• No, if you ran for public office and won, you would do exactly the same things that all elected politicians do to stay in office.
• No, you would not be immune to abuse of power or moral decay if you found yourself in a position of absolute power. See the Stanford Prison Experiment.
• No, those corporate "ribbon campaigns for the cure" aren't all sweetness and goodness. There is a huge, self-sustaining industry behind every major cause, with thousands of people gainfully employed (no, many of them are not doing any research), and all kinds of tax-writeoff and PR motives going on for the sponsors. "Cause marketing" is not without controversy. I know it feels wonderful to buy a pink box of cereal and everything — but how about giving directly to a charity, rather than tossing in a few cents by way of the cereal company? What's that, you just wanted a box of cereal, but couldn't resist the opportunity to pretend that you're actually a charitable person? Oh. (Update: Here's a blog post on pink-ribbon saturation.)
• No, your thoughts, beliefs, or trivial actions will not impact events in ways that you desire. The outcome of the game does not revolve around whether or not you put on your lucky hat — there are other people in the world besides yourself, and they have lucky hats, too. This especially applies if you're at home and watching the game on TiVo. See also: Prayer.
• No, your pet conspiracy theory is almost certainly false. Conspiracy theories are like movie scripts: They dress up reality to make it more interesting and exciting. They also deny the uncomfortable reality that sometimes, a few random piss-ants with a mission, like the 9/11 hijackers, can cause a huge world-changing event. (Typically these theories put the control in the hands of a far more deliberate and powerful entity, like the CIA — which in an odd way is more comforting.)
• Speaking of 9/11, no, the Al Qaeda hijackers were not cowards. I don't exactly approve of mass murder or terrorism, but the hard reality is those hijackers gave their lives for what they believed in, as warped as those beliefs may have been. Objectively speaking, that means they were acts of courage. (Of course, part of their motivation was a reward in the afterlife, but I'm talking strictly about the acts themselves.) The moment President Bush called the hijackers cowards, I knew he was wrong. People wanted to think of 9/11 as a cowardly act because the hijackers were so vilified. But from a neutral viewpoint, a suicide mission is anything but cowardly! Is it so wrong for an American who denounces mass-murder terrorism simply to acknowledge this one hard fact? Bill Maher tried, by saying about a week later, "We're the cowardly ones, launching missiles from 2,000 miles away" — but people didn't want to hear that, and his ABC show was canceled as result. So much for acknowledging reality.
• And finally, no, an intrusive, expensive safety measure is not worth it "if it saves just one single innocent life." This is another feel-good platitude that has no basis in reality. Banning cars in America would save tens of thousands of innocent lives per year. Do we do that? Why not? People are used to chalking up car-crash deaths as "accidents," a consequence of living in a free society. Terrorist attacks really are accidents; contrary to popular belief, they almost never happen, and that's not because of the TSA, which has yet to intercept a single explosive device some 90+ million flights (and counting!) after 9/11/01. If only we had treated that event as an accidental failure of the imagination — remember, airport security allowed passengers to carry boxcutters back then — the terrorists would not have defeated America, which they most certainly have, as any stroll through an airport today will indicate.
What are some hard realities that you accept, even though your viewpoint is less comforting than the more popular view? What difficult facts do you choose to acknowledge, simply because that's how the world actually is?
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."
What Are You Doing Here? (7/5/2009)
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.
Several months ago I came across a quote from the geneticist and author Richard Dawkins that I found incredibly profound: "Not a single one of your ancestors died young. They all copulated at least once." (New Yorker magazine, 9/9/96)
Think about this for a second. Assuming that you believe life really did evolve over millions of years (and I think we're pretty sure it did), what does that mean? It means that thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions even -- indeed, many tens of millions of generations IN A ROW absolutely, positively must have survived at least to reproductive age in order for you to be here today reading this blog.
Have you ever watched a nature program? It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Sea-turtle eggs hatch in the sand, and the young crawl toward the water, only to be snatched up in large numbers by waiting gulls. And it wasn't that different for our distant ancestors. By any stretch of the imagination, it's an unfathomable, freakish "accident" for any given person to exist. Think of the odds: Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak of 56 consecutive games may never be broken -- and decent players have something like a 70% chance of getting at least one hit in each game. How does one of the greatest feats in sports stack up to the odds of tens of millions of consecutive surviving generations preceding you, me, and billions of other people on the planet?
A religious person (who doesn't reject evolution) might say this proves that a loving God had a plan to bring you into this world. It's a good argument, as theistic arguments go, although of course it ignores the 99.99999+% of lineages that didn't make it. Instead, this incredible "accident" only shows how silly it is to argue that Earth must have been set up by God to be a fertile place for life, that the favorable conditions are too much of a coincidence. Whatever the odds are that a planet would have water, moderate temperatures, a protective magnetic field, oxygen (eventually), etc. -- I'm sorry, but all of that is much, much more likely to occur than for tens of millions of consecutive generations of animal ancestors to dodge eons' worth of predators, diseases, and hazards (no healthcare, ever, mind you) and survive to maturity. And yet, we're all here, aren't we?
Another argument a theist might make: How did all of those species survive, through millions of years of evolution and countless extinctions (including several massive ones), such that the human lineage as a whole is around today? And an atheist would counter by pointing out that if they didn't, we wouldn't be around to notice that we didn't make it (see: the anthropic principle).
Several months ago I came across a quote from the geneticist and author Richard Dawkins that I found incredibly profound: "Not a single one of your ancestors died young. They all copulated at least once." (New Yorker magazine, 9/9/96)
Think about this for a second. Assuming that you believe life really did evolve over millions of years (and I think we're pretty sure it did), what does that mean? It means that thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions even -- indeed, many tens of millions of generations IN A ROW absolutely, positively must have survived at least to reproductive age in order for you to be here today reading this blog.
Have you ever watched a nature program? It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Sea-turtle eggs hatch in the sand, and the young crawl toward the water, only to be snatched up in large numbers by waiting gulls. And it wasn't that different for our distant ancestors. By any stretch of the imagination, it's an unfathomable, freakish "accident" for any given person to exist. Think of the odds: Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak of 56 consecutive games may never be broken -- and decent players have something like a 70% chance of getting at least one hit in each game. How does one of the greatest feats in sports stack up to the odds of tens of millions of consecutive surviving generations preceding you, me, and billions of other people on the planet?
A religious person (who doesn't reject evolution) might say this proves that a loving God had a plan to bring you into this world. It's a good argument, as theistic arguments go, although of course it ignores the 99.99999+% of lineages that didn't make it. Instead, this incredible "accident" only shows how silly it is to argue that Earth must have been set up by God to be a fertile place for life, that the favorable conditions are too much of a coincidence. Whatever the odds are that a planet would have water, moderate temperatures, a protective magnetic field, oxygen (eventually), etc. -- I'm sorry, but all of that is much, much more likely to occur than for tens of millions of consecutive generations of animal ancestors to dodge eons' worth of predators, diseases, and hazards (no healthcare, ever, mind you) and survive to maturity. And yet, we're all here, aren't we?
Another argument a theist might make: How did all of those species survive, through millions of years of evolution and countless extinctions (including several massive ones), such that the human lineage as a whole is around today? And an atheist would counter by pointing out that if they didn't, we wouldn't be around to notice that we didn't make it (see: the anthropic principle).
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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