Blog-shaped hole

Beyond "Dear God": the humanist lyrics of XTC

2011-08-19T11:31:00.000-06:00

If you listened to the radio back in the 80s, you probably knew about "Dear God", the song by XTC that was infamous for lyrics that were highly condemnatory of the Big Guy. If you were religious, like me, you probably hated the song. If you were a fan of the band, also like me, you probably loved it.

Andy Partridge is a man who knows how to write lyrics. As great as "Dear God" is, I love many of their other, less screed-like songs more—songs with lyrics that are a bit more subtle, and more humanistic than atheistic. Here are some examples.

Excerpt from "The Wheel and the Maypole" (Wasp Star)

Maypole
Maypole you've spun me round and knocked me off my axis mundi
Maypole
Maypole
Maypole the ties that bind you will unwind to free me one day
And everything decays

Yes, everything decays
Forest tumbles down to make the soil
Planets fall apart
Just to feed the stars and stuff their larders

And what made me think we're any better
And what made me think we'd last forever
Was I so naive?
Of course it all unweaves

Pyramids and palaces to dust
Empires crumble in
Wedding cake begins to must and molder

And what made me think we're any better
And what made me think we'd last forever
Was I so naive?
Failing to perceive

Holy cow, am I ever in love with this song! What I take from it is probably pretty obvious. I too wonder how I ever accepted that I was somehow an exception to the rule we can easily perceive by looking around: everything breaks down eventually. Everything except me? It's a nice thought (maybe), but if you believe that extraordinary claims require proportionally extraordinary evidence, then what a stretch it is to wantonly believe it!

Reading these lyrics, you might assume the song is sad, but it's some of the happiest-sounding music I've ever heard; I love that he is singing about the dissolution of all things in such a carefree tone, almost as if to say, "Yeah, we die, isn't it great!" To me, this song is full of rejoicing—not about death, but about the fact of having come to terms with the reality of death.

Excerpt from "Season Cycle" (Skylarking)

Darling, don't you ever sit and ponder
darling did you ever think
About the building of the hills a yonder
all this life stuff's closely linked
Where we're going in this verdant spiral
Who's pushing the pedals on the season cycle?
Round and round and round and round

I really get confused on who would make all this
is there a God in Heaven
Everybody says join our religion get to Heaven
I say no thanks why bless my soul
I'm already there!

What I take from this one: yeah, it's amazing that all this stuff exists, isn't it? But every author of religious dogma tries to take that wonder and twist it to his own ends. I'll just take the wonder itself please, with no added dogmas or sweeteners. You can keep all the extra trappings that try to adorn that basic sense of appreciation with rules, or demands for donations, or any other such lily-gildings...as if the sheer beauty of existence is somehow lessened for being ultimately unexplained. I don't buy it.

Excerpt from "Garden of Earthly Delights" (Oranges & Lemons)

Welcome to the Garden of Earthly Delights.
Welcome to a billion Arabian nights.
This is your life and you do what you want to do,
This is your life and you spend it all.
This is your life and you do what you want to do,
Just don't hurt nobody,
And the big reward's here,
In the Garden of Earthly Delights.

What I take from this one: Life itself is its own reward. Live it well and fully while you've got it, and be as free as you can while still respecting the freedom of others.

Excerpt from "Merely a Man" (Oranges & Lemons)

I'm all religious figures rolled into one,
Gaddafy Duck propelled from Jimmy Swaggart's tommy gun.
Don't promise rainbows with some golden pot,
In fact what I can offer I know you've already got.

I'm merely a man,
And I bring nothing but love for you.
I'm merely a man,
And I want nothing that you can't do.

And you know it's true.
That with logic and love we'll have power enough,
To raise consciousness up and for lifting humanity higher.
Higher!

And you know it's true.
We should chase superstition and fear from our hearts,
If we're going to survive and take levels of sanity higher.
Kick it up... Higher.

What I take from it: I'm a man, and contrary to what you might have been told, that's a great thing to be. I'm full of potential, and basically good. Many religions deny this.

Most religions have a core of truth, encrusted with often-illogical teachings that have to be repeatedly force-fed. These are mostly worthless; they engender a lot of superstition (which is an enemy of truth) and they often use fear as a power source. That core of truth composes most of what we actually need to be happy, and it is so simple and intuitive we can often instinctively grasp it. For example: "treat people kindly".

On the other hand, I believe that for finding real truth (which is crucial for our future), logic and reason are our only hope, and they do take some learning. So we have a lot of work to do.

Wrapped in Grey (Nonsuch)

Some folks see the world as a stone
Concrete daubed in dull monotone
Your heart is the big box of paints
And others, the canvas we're dealt
Your heart is the big box of paints
How coloured the flowers all smelled
As they huddled there, in petalled prayer
They told me this, as I knelt there
Awaken you dreamers
Adrift in your beds
Balloons and streamers
Decorate the inside of your heads
Please let some out
Do it today
But don't let the loveless ones sell you
A world wrapped in grey
Some folks pull this life like a weight
Drab and dragging dreams made of slate
Your heart is the big box of paints
And others, the canvas we're dealt
Your heart is the big box of paints
Just think how the old masters felt, they call...
Awaken you dreamers
Asleep at your desks
Parrots and lemurs
Populate your unconscious grotesques
Please let some out
Do it today
Don't let the loveless ones sell you
A world wrapped in grey
And in the very least you can
Stand up naked and
Grin

What it means: being a human is awesome. You aren't a born sinner. Shrug off the grey shackles of drab doctrine that others may have given you before you could think to protest, and fill your life with color. Don't spend it kneeling in front of a stylized torture device, begging forgiveness from no one for evils you never committed. Do some good, create some beauty, and then you can spend it naked and unashamed!

Rain

2011-05-29T13:09:00.000-06:00

If there’s a heaven full of bliss, I imagine

featured in full-page prominence

on its slick catalog of prepaid shore excursions

such a day:

You’ll sit simply on a chair full of softness, in a house full of wood and wide windows, friendly with the warm wet breath of the world, while the sky throws itself down in a fury of murmurs.

Your skin the thermostat of all nature, you will lie solid and still, except that when you choose you can suck up a double lungful of that wild perfect smell: the one that even poetry cannot name, but that is surely born of the purest rejoicing anything mineral ever makes as it moves through vegetable ways.

If you care to glimpse you’ll witness the ghostly tapestry loom and quaver all around. But we recommend ears to hear each drop dig its soft sonorous pit in summer ground. Threads of sound, spun into the sum of a silken blanket, may threaten sweetly to slide around the mind and drag it down to idle depths.

But your safety is guaranteed: if ever in any of these viscous moments you slip too far, another long low skyward sigh will soon erupt high above in counterpoint, to perfectly reconstitute the present, and remind you of storm.

And there you will hover in thrall, thunder-punctuated, forever or for a day. Afterlife, afterlived your way.

(Pay in full upon reservation.

No refunds given, no liability claimed.

Void where prohibited,

terms subject to change.)

Vasectomy ZOMG

2011-02-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

The church strongly discourages surgical sterilization as an elective form of birth control. Surgical sterilization should be considered only if (1) medical conditions seriously jeopardize life or health or (2) birth defects or serious trauma have rendered a person mentally incompetent and not responsible for his or her actions. Such conditions must be determined by competent medical judgment and in accordance with law. Even then, the persons responsible for this decision should consult with each other and with their bishop and should receive divine confirmation of their decision through prayer.
Source: Handbook 2: Adminstering the Church

So now we know: vasectomies are evil! But...why?

As you probably know if you know me, I can't stand any organization that expects its members to obey without question. Church, government and company alike. I loathe a command given without a second thought for explaining the reasons behind it. Why shouldn't that couple raising ten kids on $40,000 a year (who have finally decided they just could not afford that eleventh child and continue to pay the church's salvation tax) have the freedom to pursue whatever birth control means they find most applicable?

This stance is especially surprising when considering that in the church's new handbook they appear to have actually finally made an official statement with regard to birth control that borders on the sane. Decades ago, birth control was openly decried from the pulpit. But in recent years it has been hovering in the "don't talk about it for a while" phase of the church's long and drawn-out doctrine-change process. Now they've apparently felt the time is right for that first tentative reacknowledgement, and their new handbook states that the number of children a couple decides to have is “extremely intimate and private and should be left between the couple and the Lord.”

It's strange: if I had been made to guess which one birth control method the LDS church would forbid, I'd have pegged the IUD, given that it actually allows union of sperm and egg. But no, when personhood begins still seems to be one of those questions on which they are as yet unwilling to take an official stand. Instead, it's the vasectomy that gets the condemnation.

So why the hate for surgical contraception? One reason I can imagine is that perhaps they disapprove of its permanence? A man who undergoes the procedure is permanently giving up his ability to impregnate a woman. Well, so? Given that they finally seem almost willing to acknowledge that the earth is good and "replenished" and that (maybe) making as many babies as possible isn't universally a couple's only mode of righteous existence, why not allow a couple this option? If they truly do recognize that each couple needs to choose what they can handle, shouldn't they realize that some couples are better off never reproducing and allow surgical sterilization? Instead it is roundly condemned with nary an explanation as to what's so dangerous about it.

Perhaps they don't like that it alters the body, akin to the prohibition of tattoos? Well then, why not say so?

If not altering the body to prevent conception, or avoiding permanently preventing conception, or whatever theological motive they have for this policy is so important, why not disclose the reasons to the members so they know God's will for certain and can more effectively follow it? But no, the Mormon's lot is simply to follow when commanded.

I don't know, maybe the reasons for this are talked about in church these days and therefore a mystery to no one who still attends. If so, why not tell the world? The church has not traditionally been shy about broadcasting its views on morality (see Missionary Work; also, Proposition 8). So tell me, LDS church, why should I be ashamed of my vasectomy?

A resolution

2011-01-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why (since they’re usually worthless), but I decided to make a New Year’s Resolution, and this is what it is: I want to care less what random people think of me. Specifically, I want to stop tailoring my actions around how I imagine they will be perceived by people I don’t really care all that much about.

For instance, any time I think about posting something like “Glenn Beck is a douche” or “atheists can be moral” on Facebook, I get all jumpy and spend a while cowering in fear at the thought of some idiot from my past life thinking unflattering thoughts about me. Then I either back down and don’t post anything, or I post it and studiously avoid visiting Facebook for the rest of the day, to give myself a while to calm down before dealing with the reaction.

I know it’s good to care about your image, but...I think I need to care less. Obviously it matters what my family and closest friends think of me, but does it really matter so much? If they’re worth caring about, they can adjust to a world in which I exist as something different that what they would prefer. Most of the time I’m probably deluding myself in believing that they don’t already mostly know who I really am. In the cases when they don’t, and are actually in for a shock at what they discover (“You’re an atheist?! I’m so sorry to hear that!”), well...I just need to man up. Who will stand up for unbelief if not the unbelievers?

Does it matter at all how offended some bitchy-then, bitchier-now right-wing nutjob I knew in Italy can get about the damaging effect my lack of superstitious beliefs has on her right to deny reality? It has an effect on my wellbeing only insofar as I let it affect my mental state. It has no effect on the relationships that actually enrich my life.

It’s true that I don’t really understand social media and the desire many people have to broadcast their every though to the world. I’m just a more private person than that. But it’s also true that there are occasionally musings I feel like sharing but don’t, because of the fear of reactions I’ll never experience. So here’s my resolution: if Richard Dawkins says something edifying and burgeoning with truth, I will share it. I will do my best not to care that I have inconvenienced my former colleague by stressing his tenuous grasp on his precious facile worldview, and go about my day. I may still wait a while until I calm down before looking at any social media again, but hey, I can’t change who I am. Hopefully in the sharing I will become more comfortable not caring.

Staring at a dead friend's Facebook page.

2010-08-16T16:42:00.000-06:00

So, he's gone, despite all everyone hoped. Medicine, for all its victories, is still fumbling in the dark and could not keep his body from ruining itself.

He was really an acquaintance, but this tear-refracted page names him "friend". I guess we're all friends at a time like this, so I'll gladly proclaim I knew enough to know him as noble, a seeker unashamed of truth, a well-ordered mind full of brilliant ideas.

Do I post "farewell?" Do I say I'm glad to have met him, years ago on a common journey? I truly am. Others have done, are doing so. Talk of prayers to inactive gods spills down the page, mingled with the flailing laments of those who shared his admitted lack of supernatural comforts.

But those which strike me the most say: "I enjoyed knowing you" with the same tone one uses when a neighbor moves away, only now there is no exchange of addresses and no offer to keep in touch. This is so incredibly final.

Do I leave a bouquet of my own, RIPs by this virtual tombstone? Evidence declares that wherever he's gone to now has no internet access and likely not even an imagination can serve up content there. He wouldn't see the gesture so it's one I would make to myself.

Or if he finds himself suprised to find himself somewhere where thought lives on outside a sloppy, oxygen-fueled engine...if he actually could read my awkward message, posted too late, then experience decrees that he must be download-only and could leave no replies.

But how can a pipe with no upload even "GET /lifes/last/goodbyes"?

She'd see it, when she finds the courage to look. Maybe it will mean something as she eventually peels herself of the impossible floor, harder than cement, where this absurd mess of life has placed her. She'll see page after page of powerless people sharing sorrow, cowering as they type to know their time will come. She'll know they loved her husband despite what he was and because of it.

But still I cannot bring myself to attempt to offer solace. What do I know of what was between them, other than to assume it was as good as young life ever EVER gets and now it is wickedly interrupted? I presume she is every kind of lost.

My tongue is impotent. This is what my heart screams but I cannot say: Imagine him as you will, dear bereaved friend. This once in life I think I advocate the dulling of reason's cold razor, for those who can achieve it. See him in your mind if you will, happy in a coder's heaven, considering new linguistical oddities. Exploring worlds on Sagan's intrepid starship. Unfurling streams of syntax to the stars, building forevermore.

Moving day

2010-08-03T11:50:00.001-06:00

On the day before the move
I sent Aaron out into the world
to empty the basement of old water jugs
(stored up, proof against thirst)
into the most parched of the grass.
Shy and queasy with uncertain future
he ventured out on the adult side
of his sometimes rational, sometimes
mouth-open squeaking yearning
ten-year-old mind.

In the backyard, his doomed domain,
he found that our birdhouse construction project,
perched askance in the tree that had grown
parallel with him
had finally filled with tweets and twitters.
Just in time to mourn the emptiness
that would fill our old familiar places soon!
I supposed, though I doubt he
thinks in such convoluted ways.

But there on the perpendicular ground he found
the cruel back of an escaping cat
and a baby bird, mangled and red
heaving with the effort of more young life.
It had a yellow mouth and broken brown body
and shuddered in agony.

Maybe it was that he felt some kinship,
torn from his life for reasons understood
but not accepted,
or maybe compassion just runs rich in him.
But he latched onto that small drama
and chose to defy its course.

I saw the writing on the wall
of the shoebox that became its intensive care unit,
carpeted and padded with yesterday’s news
to ease its travail.
Doc Marten had written there for some frivolity,
“broad short wings can escape trouble
with a rocketlike departure
but have low flying endurance,”
and the irony was like a knife in my
already tenderized heart.

I spoke to him of nature’s way, and a billion-year’s
litany of suffering and cycling,
and change, so unavoidable, the only
thing unchanging. I revealed that sometimes
a human helps a deeply broken animal die,
and how a rocketlike combustion might
furnish a poison to help his strange little friend
with the yellow mouth and crooked brown wing
escape into needed, though endless sleep.

He balked to see kindness wear a killer’s mask.
I held him as he lamented the injustice of this
world in which he’s stuck,
and the feeling of falling from the nest,
and losing his home.

To myself I added further thoughts on these hard,
hardening acts inflicted upon loved ones for their good,
despite insistent protestations, despite fear,
for impermanence like cats will always be near
and cried a big wet tear, though never did I let it
betray decorum or cross the threshold of my lid.

Our bird ate a few crumbs and a moth
(complicit with nature’s ritual to the end)
and though he seemed about to mend
and sang a lonesome evening song,
by moving day’s dawn he was gone
without ever a need for
my fumbling human intervention.

We gave the precious body to the soil,
though Aaron retreated from the task.
I was all too glad to take up his shovel.
Then we got busy, heaving and hauling.
Moving, always moving.
Vacating the past for the long slow tumble
into future.

On a hill far away stood an old burgled cross

2010-05-18T12:59:00.001-06:00

In quieter, more universally god-fearing times, a cross was put on a hill to honor some soldiers killed in a war. Were the soldiers in question Christian? Probably, but it doesn't really matter because this is 1934 America, where everyone is either Christian or assumed to be.

Problem is, the cross was on federal land. If you don't understand why this is a problem, do a search for "Establisment clause" and get to reading.

The ACLU cried fowl (as they are wont to do), so the government pulled a dirty trick (likewise) and swapped that patch of land with some other patch of land belonging to a private organization. Tsk, tsk.

A lawsuit was filed. As lawsuits do, it languished for years on lawyers' desks, or judges' libraries, or wherever it is lawsuits go to spend years going nowhere. Finally, in 2010, the shamefully Catholic-stacked SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that the cross is not a violation of church/state separation.

From my point of view, this is a disgusting ruling showcasing religion at its worst heights of mind control. The arguments given (e.g. the cross is a very old and therefore non-sectarian symbol and this monument was never intended to be taken as a religious icon) contrast sharply with the facts (people held Easter services there every year).

The Court has ruled: the cross can stay. (After years' worth of appeals and whatever other legal constipation must still ensue). But then, lo! Suddenly the cross vanishes overnight, stolen!

A letter is eventually sent by the guy to blame. He claims he is a veteran and states that the cross is alive and well, but being hostage until the powers that be decided to honor the Constitution.

Clearly he broke the law. But the question I'm wrestling with is: is he in the right? Especially given his tone and clear rationality, this looks a lot like noble civil disobedience to me. When the lawmaker's ruling is just wrong, do you do the right thing anyway in defiance of it? This kind of thing has a sacred tradition in our country, after all. You may think that this fellow is clearly a radical reactionary who needs to be found and jailed, but it's all about perspective. King George thought the same about Washington and Jefferson.

Day 12523

2010-04-15T19:47:00.002-06:00

Slam, I exist. I am again, suspended
between some somewhere I’ve long forgotten
and some other strange place I’ve never yet been

as the remnant of some billion-year lust story
with some someone impossible and nameless
is pulled along past with yesterday into that void.

Shake off sleep. Here I am in the future, rebooting,
Growing louder, reassessing the state of this place
and this planet, and oh yes, that was me.

Seems my boy has plied his parting zest on the door
as that’s how you make your every human transition
when wending through your eleventh year.

Courtesy for the cares of one unseen to him
ranks among his only occasional virtues;
maybe consistency comes at eleven?

He’s marvelous. A mind for cogs and pistons
and optimized tail recursions and starry truth.
Beloved human child of my left hemisphere.

He’s the arrow leaving my bow
sharp and straight but I don’t yet know
if I shot true to some worthy target.

And downstairs now my girl is weeping softly,
over some finger-pinch clash with a chair
for that’s how you brook such pain in your fifth year.

So the fuzz of morning cleared and I’m stirring
but now she’s pulling through, talking through;
seems a new private courage comes at five?

She’s wondrous. A yellow flower blooming music
booming color, and secret chatter among friends.
Beloved human child of my right hemisphere.

She’s the arrow leaving my quiver
round and smooth but I don’t know whether
I’ll pull the string right, or strong.

And there’s a woman in my bed but she’s warm
and sheened with sleep and so familiar
and by now it’s safe to leave her for later.

She more than all is my life. Has she always been here?
Have I always been lost in the middle of this
old slow push of pleasant existence?

Lie resplendent and let resolve rise at its pace
until time trips alarms and she wakes,
claims my glance yet again across pillowed moments.

Ready to do it all again, my love? Ready to care
and tweak and bargain and follow all demands?
Hang in there, I know you know it too. I know you.

And what metaphor for you, the bow and the quiver?
Or the finger, the feathered hat, or all of that?
Yawn once for yes and it’s yours. I’m yours.

And there’s just time for one kiss, because barking
and mowing, rushing and building and blowing
are already leaking in at the window.

Theodicy and chainmail

2010-03-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

Kimberly and I are both playing and loving Dragon Age: Origins. Last night as I was running to kill some werewolves, I was amused and surprised to hear Leliana (she's spiritual, not religious) start a religious debate with apostate (yes, the game calls her that) Morrigan about the existence of The Maker. Some very familiar arguments made a showing. Morrigan doesn't easily tolerate people or ideas she finds absurd, so she ends the discussion a bit too brusquely for my tastes, but...well, she's a sarcastic witch, not a lawyer.

Was Leliana convinced? I doubt it. She's had her visions, after all. She believes fervently in the Maker's love, even in a world where Darkspawn routinely raze entire villages to the ground. And besides, if you found a magic watch lying on the beach, would you assume it just magicked itself into existence?!

What do I think? Don't ask me; I'm just a simply Grey Warden completely occupied with saving the world.

Joss Whedon on faith

2009-12-31T11:14:00.001-07:00

I feel ever more and more these days that faith is a well-camouflaged parasite among virtues. It sits enthroned as one of most religions' cherished commandments, yet to me it always just looks like fear in a pretty mask and is therefore wholly undeserving of the adulation it receives. Yet maybe I don't really understand. Joss Whedon made me think I probably don't.

Joss says humanists have more faith than the religious, because while religions advocate faith in gods despite a lack of evidence, humanism advocates faith in humanity's worth despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. I'm trying to decide what I think about this statement.

I would actually adjust his statement a bit, because I do feel there is evidence against the existence of the gods the major religions posit. But still that would only put humanists on even footing with theists in the faith department. So do we have faith?

At first I was surprised that I was not immediately repulsed by sound of a man I respect telling me I have more faith than a religious person--especially given my continual struggle to figure out if faith is a word or concept with any merit. Hearing him say that made me uneasy, but I also felt a swell of pride. Was it the tortured remnant of my religious upbringing that I heard, crying triumphantly from exile in my mental dungeon? I once cherished belief despite evidence because I had been taught it was a noble method of attaining truth. Then I rejected it because I came to believe that it is unreliable and dishonest, and now Joss Whedon is telling me it is actually noble, and that I practice it after all...and I rejoice?! How can this inexplicable sense of victory at his words well from somewhere deep inside this staunchly agnostic brain?

Perhaps he's right that I "have faith" in humanity despite the obvious truth that a large sampling of the members of my species are either contemptibly incurious (if not downright stupid), or disgustingly mean-spirited and violent, or both. And maybe he's even right that this is a Good Thing.
I've been learning a bit about World War II lately. I particularly enjoyed Dan Carlin's series of podcasts on the German/Soviet conflicts and the incredible, unfathomable destruction of human life by human idiocy that took place at St. Petersburg. If I am really capable of knowing that my race routinely executes perversions of this nature, yet persist in believing that humanity can succeed and overcome its bad habits and maybe end up seeding futuristic Wild West colonies on habitable planets, surely I practice some degree of faith?

Nihilists and cynics might conclude that there is no hope for our race, but I must admit I fervently nurture a kernel of hope that we'll one day achieve Roddenberry-style peace and unity. It's probably irrational to do so. I therefore feel disingenuous, as if I'm attempting to have it both ways. Belief in something despite evidence against it in hopes of making it real is either a corrupt falsehood of a notion, or it is one with some value. If I insist (as humanism seems to) that dogged belief in humanity's worth is a vital part of ensuring it eventually comes to deserve preserving, then I must admit the latter.

I want to have a rational basis for everything I believe, and my inclination lately has been to dismiss what I see as theistic fabrications about life after death as the blind gropings of minds that feel they have no other option. But is their desperate grab at personal meaning any less grounded than the humanistic axiom that humanity is worth saving? The alternative of either belief to its holder is seen as too depressing to be useful, and so it is rejected without question in order to make true its opposite. For a religious believer that is faith. For a humanist, maybe that is faith also.

If that's the case, then faith isn't an intrinsically useless endeavor, and if I wish to be a humanist instead of a nihilist I need to find some other criterion by which to judge the worth of a faith-belief.

Control

2009-11-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

Our four-year-old daughter has really begun to display her stubborn streak. We hope it's temporary and not a fundamental part of her nature, but currently all signs indicate we've got one defiant little blonde goblin on our hands.

She decides what she wants (according to some arcane logic, perhaps involving wind speeds, moon phases and I think she might have a d20 hidden somewhere) and fights for it, despite all rationality, tooth and nail.

Tooth: it took an epic struggle involving at least four round trips and several nightmares' worth of banshee-grade screams to finally convince her to permit a dentist a look inside her mouth. He discovered four cavities that probably partially result from the fact that that inner oral sanctum was a longtime No Toothbrushing Zone for us as well.

Nail: she slashed her finger on her friend's door. After the trauma and melodrama of the stitches (the noise of which I'm sure requires no description) the wound healed and then the real war began. Any suggestion that it might be time to remove the decrepit bandage covering the stitches, let alone the stitches themselves, was met with a kind of furious contempt reminiscent of caged starving dogs. We ended up conducting two midnight stealth campaigns and finally succeeded at the delicate labor of cutting the stitches out while she slept.

The dentist surmised that she seems to be motivated by extreme distaste for feeling like she's not in control. Even an irrational choice that works to her detriment but puts her back in control may often seem the better option to her. It shouldn't be surprising that she's this way; if this kind of predisposition is transmissible by gene then I'm surely the source.

My company holds a campaign every October to get employees to contribute to United Way (with one of their incentives being a very impressive contribution match). I'd been planning on contributing, but when a coworker all but crowned himself Charity Czar and made the rounds informing us that he wanted 100% people contributing from the department, I bristled and almost didn't contribute, purely out of rage at being pressured into it.

I guess it's true that I too hate being pressured or forced into circumstances, even when they are clearly ones that I should accept. Luckily for our little imp of a girl, it appears this tendency can be overcome; eventually I decided that my indignation did no good for the needy people who could have used my dollars instead, and I sent them along.

But I won't claim I wasn't pleased to learn that, even with my contribution, he still didn't meet his extortionary goal of universal compliance.

I believe I know what you believe I believe I know

2009-11-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

My dad once asked if I'm an atheist. He hoped, I think, that I would deny the horrible accusation and claim the label "agnostic" instead (since in his mind it implies only questioning and a lack of willingness to commit to a viewpoint he cannot approve).

I do fit "agnostic" as Huxley originally intended it, because I don't claim to know (gnos) anything on the topic of gods. But I don't accept it as a standalone descriptor for my viewpoint. (Perhaps I'm wary of the word "know" because of decades spent seeing it misused and abused by people willing to do almost anything to keep believing what they want to believe.) I'm aware that to the general populace, "agnostic" implies a reluctance to answer yes or no on the question; this is a reluctance that I just don't suffer. I think the truth on most matters is ultimately knowable, and I think I have a chance of knowing it piece by piece (rather than as all or nothing). I don't have a problem claiming a provisional position on any question once I have a reasonable grasp on the available evidence pertaining to it.

I told my dad to define the word "atheist" first. There's so much confusion over the meaning of the term, even in the minds of non-believers and dictionary writers, that I've long been reluctant to use it until the definitions are all made clear.

Imagine a box representing all people. This is box A.

Now imagine that box A is split in two sections, B and C. B represents people who can honestly claim to believe in the existence of one or more deities. C, obviously, is all people in A who aren't also in B, or in other words people who cannot honestly make that claim.

Box C is further split in two, containing box D which represents people willing to claim, "I believe there is no god", and box E (everyone in C who is not willing to make that claim).

And within D, imagine box F which represents, "I know there is no god."

Now, I think if you ask most religious people to define "atheist", they'll probably offer a definition looking a lot like box F. There is a widespread and often ironic misconception among the supernaturally-inclined that atheism involves an inappropriate level of surety and pride. "The atheist says 'I know there is no god,'" goes the argument, "but can't prove there isn't so his position is untenable." Usually the implication is that he should stop being arrogant and fall back to agnosticism.

This is just wrong. I know of no atheist who claims to know there is no god. In fact, most people like me are incredibly wary of the word "know" when it comes to matters theological. Doubtless there are some who would claim to know, but I would fault such an unbeliever for harboring a level of surety just an undeserved as that displayed by the believer who claims he knows a god exists. (And I'm sure we all know several of those.)

Atheism actually resides in box D or even box C, though I'm never sure which. The definition most accepted by atheists these days seems to be simply "lacking belief in a god"; this is box C and implies that everyone starts out atheist as a baby and remains so until they are either indoctrinated with a particular religion or create one of their own. By this definition, the countless throngs who never spend even a minute per year thinking about theology also qualify (though most of them would be surprised to find out such).

Some don't accept this claim, and insist that not until you enter box D and are willing to claim that evidence points to the complete lack of gods do you really deserve the label.

I don't really have a strong opinion on the D/C debate. It's often just a semantics argument. There have been attempts to introduce qualifiers like "positive/negative" or "hard/soft" to separate the more conviction-based atheistic viewpoints from the more passive. I haven't found any of these truly useful. Mostly I've just fondly wished we could all agree on a terminology so I know what to call myself.

But in the meantime, I've come to realize that I should just accept the label "atheist" into my label collection, because I actually do feel the evidence points to a lack of any meaningful gods in the universe. I reside in box D, so either way I fit the description, even though I see that fact as more as a byproduct of what I believe than the focus thereof. If you ask if I believe in ghosts, the answer might be "no, I believe in a naturalistic universe and am therefore aghostist." Ask the same about gods, and I'll reply that no, because of that same naturalistic viewpoint, on this question I am an atheist.

The box D atheist doesn't have to say, "I know there's no god," although he may say so if he desires (and it would put him box F as well). All he claims is that he has examined and found unbelievable enough god-claims that, for now, he feels warranted in approaching life as if there is no god looking down. I feel this is one of those questions in life for which the evidence is always piling up, and while it may never be complete, at some point there is enough to justify a change in direction toward what looks like the more likely outcome. There is no claim that the question is closed, or that he has come to know anything for certain.

If everyone understood these points, I'd have no problem answering yes to the question, "Are you an atheist?" As it stands, I still find in myself a reluctance to claim it, even though I know the only way to change the public's perception is for people like me to boldly do so.

So I suppose I should do so. Yes, world, I'm here. I'm mostly happy, mostly ethical. I love asking questions honestly. I have done a fair bit of research, and currently I do not feel the evidence points to the existence of any god ever proposed to me. I don't claim to know it, but I do reserve the right to some degree of earned confidence in my position. Given the obscene degree of confidence most believers place in their own worldviews, they should be willing to afford me some paltry allowance of pride in mine. Especially since (unlike most of them) I also reserve the right to change that position, should evidence require.

Yeah Dad, I'm agnostic. But I'm deeply interested in Big Questions approached from a rational, naturalistic, evidence-based viewpoint, and therefore am also an atheist, no matter how you may hate the word. There are millions more like me and our numbers are growing. Get used to it.

Fatherhood as it goes

2009-09-28T13:45:00.005-06:00

I worry constantly about how to be a good father. I'm sure most fathers are concerned to some degree with the amount of undeserved control they have over the kind of monstrous or magnificent people their children will become; however, I reckon I take the art of paternal hand-wringing more seriously than the majority of even the non-deadbeat dads out there.

I have very specific ideas on the thinking abilities I want to engender in my offspring, and I obsess daily over whether my current approach is the right one. I want them to be naturally skeptical so they can be insulated from all the stupid crap the brainwashed will try to sell them. I want them deeply ethical and fiercely compassionate, two droplets in the bucket that will tip humanity away from deserving its own destruction. I want curiosity and integrity to power them, yet somehow I have to resist the urge to get in and build that beautiful machine by my own tinkering. It has to build itself.

Impossible task? It gets worse. I want to teach them to be shamelessly unbending in their devotion to honoring the truth, yet also humble about their own fallibility in understanding it. Take a moment to digest that: Kimberly and I must teach our children to be both proud and humble. What kind of precarious tight-rope act is this?!

So you see, I worry. The worry expresses itself in many ways: I read, I write, I teach, I yell. I give up, I recommit. One thing I ponder is that not only do we have to influence them positively, we must try also as much as possible to keep ourselves from influencing them negatively. I am a lazy and impatient man trying to defeat laziness and impatience in two children.

Yet, I suspect that despite all we do or attempt to do or mean to do, eventually they'll mostly just be some version of who they basically are, colored to some degree by our unwitting examples for good or bad...with maybe a bit of our valiant efforts thrown in for flavor. I probably need to learn to be content to work on improving that little bit over which I have control. In the end, I think the hard truth is that the best way to make your children better people is to improve the environment in which the person grows, and unfortunately that environment is more than just your house. Your children spend hours each day steeping in the alternately noxious and nourishing morass of your own personality.

Yesterday I realized that for all my worrying over how to raise my son to be a skeptical, confident, adaptable and functional lover of life, I have forgotten to teach him how to throw a ball. We went outside and practiced throwing and catching. At first, I caught myself trying to meddle him into not throwing "like a girl", attempting to remember how I learned to throw and find a way to instruct him into compliance. But then something told me to just let it go, turn on my best self up to full power and let simmer. And meanwhile, simply enjoy the time. Probably, that's a cog in his machine best left to grow itself, with nothing needed from his father but an example to follow.

It's hard to express the kind of fervent hope-charged devotion I feel for him in any kind of muted manner, but I resolve to try more often. Just shut up, and throw, and catch. Spend less time fathering and more time being a father. I suspect that half-hour was truly nourishing for the unseen roots of his nascent personality, and more beneficial than days of pruning away on the parts of his makeup I can see--those parts I delude myself into believing I can control. And if he doesn't turn out exactly like I hoped...well, what kind of fool of a parent would expect that anyway?

Dream

2009-08-31T13:23:00.003-06:00

A week ago I had a dream (whose details have now mostly gone fuzzy) wherein I discovered that ghosts actually exist. I saw one myself (he was blue like Obi-wan), and I remember my reaction. It included surprise, but was mostly curiousity and wonder and featured no shame. I didn't entertain any thought of hiding from the truth or covering up the fact that I'd been wrong in my skepticism. What mostly consumed my musing was the overriding knowledge that my worldview must now change to support the new personal experience.

Granted, people don't always act like themselves in dreams. But sometimes they do, and I like to think that this would be my approximate reaction if something similar were to occur in real life. If I did discover irrefutable proof that somehow, despite all my study on religion, I had come to the wrong conclusion about spirits and their non-existence, I hope my reaction would still be a scientifically-minded one despite the apparent contradiction to the scientific worldview that the discovery would entail. I hope I would be curious, humble and elated at the addition of such meaningful knowledge to my life, with minimal concern for the fact that I had been proven wrong (and so much religious arrogance finally vindicated).

I would, of course, be constrained by skepticism to weed out all the possible explanations that make naturalistic sense. I would probably even doubt my own sanity, and would seek a corroborating opinion from someone else. But in the end, with doubts removed and spectral evidence still staring me smugly in the face, I hope that I would waste no time in trying to create apologetics to protect years of mental investment in my erstwhile opinion. Library upon sorry library of theological musings exist as the result of centuries of human slavery for that foolish master.

No matter how sure I am of my convictions I will always leave room for the idea that I am completely mistaken.

Misconceptions III

2009-08-20T14:56:00.002-06:00

Once Steve told me that there must be a soul inside us, because our emotions cannot possibly be explained purely by processes that occur in the brain. I guess he's fine with memory and motor function taking place in our neurons, but he seemed to be unwilling to accept that the love he feels for his family is also the effect of the interplay of electrons in brain cells.

This assertion was made in the context of another conversation wherein he attempted to understand my conversion to a completely naturalistic worldview. He had given the love he feels for his children as proof that there must be something more than what we can observe with science. I was confused by this claim, and as we dug down it became clear that my understanding of neurology differed drastically from his; while I am no expert, I'm convinced that the brain (the most complex object we're aware of in the universe) is sufficient hardware to encompass everything we do as software.

He assumes that, because it's so difficult to conceive of a machine (for that's really what the brain is when looked at this way) thinking and feeling the things we do, there must be a further component to who we are that is hidden from us, created by a higher power, and therefore he takes the easily proven spirit as proof of its creator.

I call that an argument from ignorance. "I can't understand how this might work, therefore it cannot work." But examine the way the brain behaves when it is injured, whether by old age or physical trauma. Often there ensue drastic changes the personality of the person it defines. Memory and motor skills, yes, but also emotions. A stroke can severely alter the emotional well-being of its victim. In order to permit this in the theory that emotions live in spirit, you must posit some mechanism whereby the expression of the spirit is somehow inhibited by the injured brain.

Luckily for him and his religious proclivities, science has so far been unable to find any physical means by which the brain might be interfacing with this unapproachable spirit. Science is still incomplete, which leaves a gap for the spirit to hide in. But I find the very claim that a stroke sufferer's spirit is hindered by his brain an ironic bit of evidence that a person's physiology (in this case a blood clot) actually can influence the way he acts. People's emotions come from their spirits, except when the injured brain gets in the way and changes those emotions? Then why can't the emotions just be coming from the brain in the first place?

To admit that the changes in the brain produced by a stroke or chemical imbalance can create new aspects of personality, while insisting that the personality itself cannot ultimately seated in that physiology, seems to me to involve an unwarranted leap of logic.

Since spirit is in the realm of the supernatural, it is by definition outside the reach of science. But the brain is describable by science. So this must mean that, as our knowledge of the brain's inner workings improves, if there really are spirits we're going to run into them at some point. Some apparatus or organ or some pathway for spiritual/physical interfacing must exist in the brain, just as a tunnel between two caves must manifest itself as a hole of some kind in both caves.

If we do find such a thing, it will be an incredible discovery and a wonderful boon to both science and religion. But what if we never do? What if we close all the gaps and find nothing but busy neurons...just ganglia coursing with the great amazing wonder that is a person's self? By that time will people mostly be willing to accept that it's not so bad if there's not some part of them that exists outside the universe and therefore outside the grasp of death? Or will people still cling to fading irrational hope and wanton disdain for the growing and ever more accessible truth?

Or by then will we have made ourselves immortal and the question mostly moot?

When an Angry Gorilla cries

2009-08-14T12:02:00.006-06:00

Proof that libruls are wrong about health care being an unalienable right, as expressed by Angry Gorilla Glenn Beck on AM radio yesterday, August 13 (my commentary in parentheses):

1) As everyone knows (duh) unalienable rights come from GOD!

2) If healthcare was a GOD!-given right, we'd see Jesus down here healing people.
(Remember Jesus, the guy who supposedly said "do it to the least of these poor suckers, do it to me" and all that hippie librul crap?)

3) We don't see Jesus healing people. (Well, most of us don't.)

4) Therefore healthcare is not a right from GOD! (At least we agree on something.)

5) Therefore healthcare is not an unalienable right. (Q.E.D.)

6) Also, Obama is a racist.

Proof by god-stick to the head. Religion at its worst is visible in Glenn Beck. It subverts his reason and fuels his hate.

Now pay attention!

2009-08-13T11:49:00.003-06:00

I made a pact that I would finish what I started
I admit the fact I was distracted and outsmarted

I'd say an ounce of prevention
Is worth a pound of attention span
- Barenaked Ladies

Modern life is ruining my attention span.

I've been noticing it for a while now. Maybe it's the result of years of multitasking. I think I've been changed for the worse by days spent in front of a Windows taskbar or a Macintosh dock full of little demands on my mental focus. Each task only a finger's flick away, and each seemingly either more interesting or more pressing than the one I'm currently serving. Some of them even interrupt me now and then to demand ten seconds or ten minutes of my time.

It's made it harder to code. My programming is best and most rewarding when I can enter the "flow" and become wholly absorbed in the assembly of abstracts. Sure, I can shut down the instant messenger and email and focus on my work, but the problem is that my mind has now been trained to prefer a fragmented existence. It's always harder to do something that your brain says shouldn't be done.

The damage now manifests itself in meatspace as well as cyberspace. Time-honored methods of relaxation such as settling down to read a book have lost their ability to cut through the hundred demands on my mental taskbar. Have I become addicted to the multitasking way of thinking? I do it all day at work, then come home and usually log back into virtual spaces where I have to do it again. Video games often demand the splicing of attention: why not carry on a conversation with your virtual friends while you kill that orc?

I rarely do just one thing anymore, and when I do I wish I weren't. I code while watching TV. I read while brushing my teeth. I listen to podcasts while I drive. And eat. And exercise. And kill orcs. I can't even get to sleep without music or speech playing so my mind has something else besides its attempt to shut down on which to focus.

As a result of this thoughtstyle, I often find my trains of thought ever more frayed and broken. More and more I lose thoughts permanently if I abandon them for a few seconds. (What did I just pull up Wikipedia to learn about?) I have always been capable of intense concentration on anything that interests me, but less capable of such focus when the task at hand is boring or rote. I'd like to improve in that regard, but I feel that recent years have taken me in the opposite direction. With so many things to do and learn, the temptation to fit them all in has warped my consciousness so that it now expects and prefers to be attempting them all at once.

I've sometimes thought about learning to meditate. But I can't even handle doing one thing anymore. How could I accept doing zero?!

"Socialism"

2009-07-29T11:48:00.004-06:00

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The problem with arguing about politics is that everyone and his sister thinks they're a first-class economist. How often, while tussling online about anything political, do you actually hear a phrase of the pattern: "I don't know enough about X to determine whether politician Y's policies on Z will work."

NEVER.

Instead it's like everyone just waits for the outcome of the election and then assumes their expected roles. If the Dems win, the Reps take up the role of outraged and put-upon minority. Then when the Reps win the Dems slink back to their hole and prepare for the inevitable winter of whinging marginalization.

Currently, Obama is in power and the "liberal" side of the nation's schizophrenic pendulum is on the upswing. And, as an inseparable part of the whole spectacle, witness the expected gleeful vitriol dribbling from the mouths of Limbaugh and his ilk. Make no mistake, Glenn Beck and his fellow Angry Gorillas prefer it this way because this is their time to shine! Their poison is eagerly lapped by their devoted hordes and re-spewed in the form of confident assurances that our country is most assuredly headed down the crapper of socialism.

Socialism! they cry aghast, very few of them even having a clue what the word really means or having ever even taken (let alone passed) Econ 101 down at the local community college.

That is what I currently see. And lest you think this is simply black-kettle betrayal of my blind spot by expression of an equal-yet-opposite unthinking liberal bias, listen up: I don't claim to know Obama's policies will work and am in fact completely agnostic on matters such as deficit, taxation and even health care. The reason is simple: I don't understand economics. And chances are, neither do you. Come talk to me when you've finished that PhD!

If you are a supporter or decrier of Obama's plan, and you feel you truly have well-supported evidence to support your stance whose intricacies you actually understand and whose downsides you are able to consider, then good for you. Get out there and evangelize! But all the evidence I've encountered so far on the question of nationalized health care has left me undecided and unsure. And that's okay, as long as what I do next is shut my mouth. I'm not going to jump to support Obama's plan just because I've already declared that I like him. I'm going to keep learning, and maybe someday I'll have some thoughts to contribute.

Americans largely approach economic issues the same way they seem to approach every issue: find someone charismatic to believe in, subscribe to his ideas, and follow him unquestioningly. Elevate the chosen dogma to the level of unassailable truth and proceed with an ongoing regimen of fortification of that dogma by any means necessary: chain-mail anecdotes work well, as does an insular group of friends who frown upon unaccepted ideas.

In other words, we treat politics like just another religion or sports team.

Absence, and its related cardiological effects

2009-07-23T13:51:00.004-06:00

When absence makes the heart fonder, as it truly does, it manages this by helping us forget the flaws and accentuating our favorite qualities in the ones we miss.

Aaron went to camp on a Sunday. I wondered before how long I would need to be away from him before I started to miss him. How many days to dissolve the crust of familiarity and find the juicy center of fondness? By Thursday I knew: the answer seems to be three.

Lately I've had, I confess, trouble liking him. What that really means is liking being around him. Like inquisitive children everywhere, Aaron has no idea when NOT to ask questions. Whether presented in the form of the incessant "why?" barrage, or the constant tendency to butt into conversations that don't concern him, this overweaning curiosity eventually grates on even the most loving parent. Parents are adults, and adults are used to living in a world where people mostly know when information is likely theirs for the asking. Children seem to have to learn it, and it seems to take a long time.

I know this, and I know that this fact makes me crazy sometimes. Yet, three days into an absence of Aaron, I found I could no longer feel annoyance at the thought of it. The frustration I know I felt in dealing daily with him had melted away, leaving only fond memories of his fine mind and infectious love of whatever interests him. And I was aware anew of the cameraderie that has built up in the places where our interests intersect. I recognized again the simple warmth that emanates from the practice of caring, further deepened by the presence within myself of that portion of his own well-being which he is not yet able to shoulder, and for which I am currently steward.

It was a constructive separation, a useful reminder to reflect upon when I need to remember that the love of a father is strongly there underneath, even in tedium-coated times when I can't imagine what it feels like. Tomorrow, as we sit around the campfire and fight over whether it's a worthwhile pursuit to consign every visible woodchip to the flames, I will try to remember.

Alien vessel in delicate orbit

2009-06-08T00:02:00.000-06:00

Alien vessel in delicate orbit
perpetually pinched between ice-night
and distant looming inferno
carving rivulets of unheeded miracle
over infinity's dark blanket it slips,
hissing for its own listening
not much unlike a misplaced teapot
filled brimwise with strange confident beings
or a self-absorbed ladleful
of cream of amino soup.

How fortunate for its crew
who buzz and blather important litanies
on proper navigational procedure
for shrinking galactic enormity
and the heroic taming of eons,
that their ship is a speck of sand
as good for the hiding of heads
as for the sifting of naked digits
in search of pleasure or the barest
morsel of mere continuation.

I like science

2009-05-28T11:27:00.005-06:00

"Science be praised!" - some snooty atheist on South Park

As I sit in the doctor's office my gaze falls upon an old children's book about the Bible. Examination proves it's exactly what I expected: the result of a judicious cherry-picking of the Bible's (allegedly) good parts, assembled together and illustrated for the indoctrination of young Christians-to-be. I pick it up and read:

"Most likely Adam never had a cold, measles, mumps, chicken pox or even a toothache."

Mental snort. How nice that since the 70s when the book was created, the same medical science practiced here in this very office has banished the worst three of these ailments and made the other two far more bearable. If the book were re-written today, that sentence would have to be completely gutted, and it's likely that the diseases substituted would either be far more tame or have far less chance of being instantly recognized by its young readers because of their rarity.

Science advances, religion retreats. It's been this way for centuries because of one simple fact: science just works, while religion is just work. The brainpower going into building up our science is creating an entity that produces results measured in units of human wellbeing. But the brainpower spent on religion mostly ends up shoring up religion itself against the ever-increasing erosion inflicted by reality. As the scientific picture of the universe's causes and correlations grows, it has nowhere to go but into the territory religion so long ago claimed, and so religion gets pushed back.

It goes fighting all the way, naturally. People don't want to give up their long-held and precious explanations for why the world behaves as it does. Those who rally to religion's defense extoll the peace it can bring believers and its supposed mastery over moral concerns, while invoking Hiroshima and similar misuses of science as what can happen when mankind gets too acquainted with the way the world really works.

Yes, science comes with inherent dangers. But I think religion's dangers are just as pressing, probably moreso. I appreciate Gene Roddenberry's vision of a glorious future in which science has finally deposed religion, for the good of all sentient beings. I just don't know if I share his optimism.

And yes, religion can offer peace of mind to the troubled believer, but at the price of complete devotion. Science can cure my headache for a few cents. No, it can't (yet) offer me the surety that I'll never die...but then, religion can't really do that either.

As for religion's supposed dominion over morality...well, that's so dumb as to either require no rebuttal or an entire post's worth.

In short, I like science. Because it works, because it fills me with hope and comfort, and because it's beautiful in the way that only true things are.

Being right is so important

2009-04-17T22:16:00.003-06:00

I just got done posting a measured response on Facebook to an acquaintance of mine who is a right-wing reactionary, in response to her response to the rantings of a Jeneane Garofalo, a left-wing reactionary. Why is everyone so reactionary?

We humans are so, SO inclined by nature to find an opinion, fall in love with it and make it our own for ever and ever. Sometimes we don't even find it ourselves, but find it bestowed upon us, a dubious gift, the moment we slip out of the womb into 360 degrees of noisy opinion. Once we have secured a beloved opinion we proceed to nestle it closely and protect it from all and any opposition. Hey, changing an opinion is difficult and it's worth a lot to avoid the ordeal!

This acquaintance of mine, for instance, seems to be one of the ranks of Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck zombies who feed solely upon the dire rantings of the conservative punditry machine like so many Koalas on a bitter eucalyptus. A little reasoned liberal thought would probably do most of them a bit of good, not necessarily to convert them to the Left Side with its Darth Olbermann, but merely to pull them back from the precipice of right-wing insanity, over which they are teetering on a beach ball of irrationality and constantly threatening to fall.

But no. The opinion is insulated and protected. The words of the prophet-pundit are infallible and therefore must not be allowed to fail!

I vow to always attempt to keep an oppositional viewpoint in my incoming media. What better way to ensure you're right than to have your opinions constantly tested by others to prove they're sound? Survival of the fittest works for ideas too.

Side note: This is why I love the Apologia podcast. It's proof that people of drastically opposite viewpoints can come together and talk for the sake of the ideas, without the hate that you always get when the interface happens on Fox News or MSNBC. If opposite ideas on religion (of all things) can coexist like this, I have to believe any subject can fare as well! Theists and atheists, together and talking, and no one is insulting anyone else. No one is hiding his idea under the chair. If you're one of the brave few whose ideas about religion are unsheltered and open then check it out.

Complex persecution

2009-03-10T14:53:00.002-06:00

I've been interested to witness from a now-outsider's perspective a little of the brouhaha (ha!) surrounding HBO's decision to air accurate scenes from the Mormon temple in an episode of Big Love. Coming, as I do, from a Mormon background and remembering (vaguely) what it was like to believe (with Herculean effort) that the ceremony in question was holy and sacred, I understand the feelings behind the uproar. Yes, it's a storm in a tea kettle in the grand scheme of things, but I happen to live in that particular tea kettle so it's impossible to avoid.

From my point of view, through which all my thoughts are colored, there is naturally nothing sacred about that ordinance, so given that I already like Big Love and feel they've been mostly accurate and kind to the LDS so far, I'm willing to give them a chance.

But from the believer's point of view as I see it, there is no more than one concern: these guys are dragging the most precious and holy and secret of things out into the open for display on the town square. This is, naturally, so offensive to them that finding the true the motivations of the perpetrators means nothing. Neither do any considerations they might be planning to take to ensure that the portrayal is respectful. They are opening up what should be closed, and must therefore be silenced at any cost (even sacrifice the integrity of the principle of free speech, be it considered at all in the rush to condemn).

Other believers in different mythologies aren't quite as upset, but I see a lot of them expressing sympathy and probably imagining how it would be if their own holy bits were exposed to the world, and therefore joining in the getting-shocked and being-appalled. If speech is free to talk about your secrets, it could someday talk about mine too! This is an outrage!

Some have speculated that HBO (or more generically, that evil and ill-considerate entity known as "Hollywood") are doing this purely out of spite for the LDS church's hand in CA Proposition 8's passage. While there is probably some fraction of truth to this idea, I don't think it can really be known until the show is aired just how vengeful they're feeling. If even then.

Friends and family, the world is not out to get you. Yes, the church invoked some real hatred in California, so perhaps it's true that Dustin Black et al have a bone to pick this time around...but overall, I still think they're far more interested in telling a story within the context of this religion than in beating it down. I imagine that they know how important the temple is to its goers, so naturally they want to feature it to make their story authentic.

This is just the next step in what these people have been doing for several years now: trying to create an interesting and reasonably believable story about some people who happen to be tangentially-related to Mormonism. You couldn't have a story that focused much on Catholicism without eventually showing a confession or a Eucharist, and this isn't really much different to them even though you consider it the most sacred secret. Granted, they're probably loving every minute of the uproar, but I believe they're doing it for the art nonetheless.

By far though, the most amazing thing about the fiasco has been just how eager nearly all the bandwagon-jumpers are to assume evil motivations. It's taken as axiomatic that HBO's desire is to "drag our beliefs through the mud" or humiliate Mormonism in any way possible. All this, and no one has even seen the episode yet! (Most of them have never even seen the show.) The constant drone makes it pretty hard to disbelieve the claim that Mormons just love being persecuted. All it takes is the statement that they're showing your temple ceremony on TV and you're instantly convinced there's a complex campaign already underfoot to persecute and denigrate your beliefs? Slow down and take a deeper look at things, maybe learn a few facts before you ascribe unsavory motives.

There has always been a certain perverse delight in Mormonism at being picked on. I remember the flavor of it. It was prophesied that we would be a peculiar people who would fit uncomfortably in the world because of our holiness, and would therefore be mocked and derided for standing up for what's right. These days religion is all but unassailable in the public square, so the foretold mocking and looked-for derision are actually pretty scarce. Therefore when they do come, it seems too-accepted Mormons often crave and relish it like thirsty drops from the belly of a cactus. See? They dohate us because we're right!

The fact of the matter in the opinion of me, a fair-minded person who has actually watched two seasons, is that Big Love has been reasonably kind to Mormonism up until now. Any embarrassment a Mormon would percieve while watching it is probably channelled directly from the history of the LDS sects rather than invented by HBO for persecution's sake. And maybe that's the real issue. I suspect that many of those who bristle at this ritual (a long-since divulged secret) taking a turn on TV are actually fueled by a healthy quantity of quiet embarrassement at the ritual itself, hiding behind the loud indignation on its behalf.

The sky is purple pie

2009-03-09T22:34:00.004-06:00

The sky is purple pie
incredibly berry
whipped and billowed
this tree a zealous fork
adapted to love the task of
digging in at my approach
lapping with all its branching
tongs the orange cream.

By the time I reach the highway
the meal is a cloud of crumbs
who drop as I drive off the
empty slate grey dish
and so the sky is cleaned
and claimed by black till morning
slips up, spilling
cappuccino in the east.

Test, disregard

2009-03-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

This is a test of:

Trying to blog from my iPod.

If this works, maybe I'll start blogging again!

Mobile Blogging from here.

Perfect fulfillment

2008-11-19T19:55:00.005-07:00

Humbly triumphant
an autistic boy on field trip
joins the ranks of the victors
at the crest of the wall
unmindful now of trustable rope
unmoved by yards of peril
and sets to on the horn
as if it were the button
on the very lid of joy

unstoppable force for a time
he fulfills its measure of creation
with fervent dedication.

But now beckoned down
his legs begin to betray
retracing the holds but still
powerless to stop the honking
till at last torn by inches
from perfect fulfillment his hands
make of their glee a plea
wrest from those two a coup
and seize control for the space

of one more stolen squeeze,
one short longing lunge,
one last esctatic squelch.

One man's trash

2008-11-13T16:11:00.002-07:00

A while back I found a website that lets you trade your old video games. You enter what you have and what you want, and the site hooks up the trade with another user. It's cool.

Today I went to the post office and mailed away my copy of Unreal Tournament 2004, and a letter.

The game was fun while I played it, but I've moved on. It just doesn't interest me at this point, and has actually been sitting on the metaphorical shelf gathering up dust. I paid full price for it, but that was okay because I enjoyed experiencing it with friends, and that made it worth the money. Some people still enjoy it and I don't fault them for that, but it's no longer for me. Now I'm lucky to be able to get a little credit toward something new by getting rid of it.

Hm, I guess that whole paragraph applies to UT2004, too.

The letter was our resignation from the LDS church. We've been detached from and disgusted with it and its policies for years. Now we've finally got around to leaving it completely behind. Hopefully nobody close to us will take this move personally or begin to make untrue assumptions about us. This is really just the nasty marascino on a years-deep sundae of discontent.

The whole Proposition 8 thing was just the push we needed, so we're resigning in hopes that our names can add some acceleration to a great big, concerted slap on the face for Monson and the boys. Hopefully it'll at least make them stop and doubt for a nanosecond their chosen course of meddling in the happiness of people who have nothing to do with them.

The problem with humans who think they know the mind of God is that quite often they also think they're his hands and mouth.

All science is just opinions of men

2008-11-12T15:27:00.003-07:00

The other day I had a debate online about global warming with a person who, it seemed, had read my recent blog entry and decided to play along. It was frustrating trying to cut through the thick veil of wanton ignorance and conspiracy theory and make my point seen.

Then on Friday I repeated the debate with my coworker, after which I went home sick and spent much of last weekend with a fever and extreme muscle aches, along with that tingly-skin thing that so often comes with the experience.

As I lay shivering with fever, my thoughts descended into delusional disarray:

I can't believe people just buy at face value the completely absurd idea that there are animals so small they can't be seen, and that these get inside us and cause such symptoms. I mean seriously, how could a supposed "microbe" (that's so small I can't even see it) not only exist, but cause my entire body to feel cold and shake?

The sheep cite "scientific consensus" and "experimentation" as reasons for believing the lies. But they don't see that the whole idea is just a conspiracy by Big Science and Big Pharma to sell medicine. They conveniently ignore the many scientists who don't accept this absurd explanation, and are bravely speaking out but forever silenced on their observations.

Germ theory just doesn't make sense and doesn't jive with what we see around us. Also, I'm not aware of any religious text that talks about germs. How convenient that these supposed "germs" just happen to be so small we can't see them, and have to accept the word of the scientists in their ivory towers that their medicine is what we need to get better. And why is it that they can't make a medicine that keeps us from getting sick! Instead, we get sick over and over, and have to keep coming back for more medicine.

There are other theories that need to be heard! This "consensus" is a cruel decision by the elite scientists to block out any other idea and protect their "truth". People like Pasteur and Koch were frauds and shills who ruthlessly suppressed the truth for the sake of their own fame and fortunes. Truly open-minded scientists are finding new information all the time; for instance, I heard a guy near Princeton found evidence that these small animals called germs actually help us fight the true causes of disease, which makes it even more tragic that people kill them with medicine.

This has got to stop! WAKE UP SHEEPLE! Stop blindly following the opinions of scientists, who are just fallible men. Their teachings are just opinions. There's just not enough evidence yet to decide either way.

Don't worry, my fever didn't last long. I took some Nyquil and now feel just peachy.

Ignorant savages

2008-10-27T16:52:00.003-06:00

I've published a new document on Google Docs. It's just something I wrote a while ago and is probably some kind of a parable about thoughtful humanism and secular ethics.

Inflation

2008-10-21T11:59:00.003-06:00

My family enjoys the occasional trip to the Nickelcade, which is just as it sounds: an arcade where you pay with nickels. Well, today I saw my first mention of a dimecade. Is this a harbinger of the inexorable march of the same process of inflation that will eventually make a mockery of Dollar Cuts, Five Buck Pizza, and anyone else foolish enough to name their business after a unit of currency?

At what point does the owner of such a business feel compelled to brave a name change? Just how much does a pizza have to cost before "Five Buck" sounds as ridiculous as "Five Cent Pizza" would today? For a business named after the nickel, it surely will happen before the point when nickels go the way of the long-forgotten penny in 20X6 and fall out of production.

But the real burning question is this: when inflation rises to the point that the quarter is the new nickel, will the Nickelcade become the Quartercade, or once again just...the arcade?

The Thinker's Curse

2008-10-20T13:12:00.004-06:00

One of my irreligious friends recently expressed frustration at the exercise of trying to make her views on abortion understood to a religious family member. I've done similar. It's enough to drive a man to think.

There are two methods of seeking knowledge: the method that the religious and other true believers enjoy (which involves holding one idea as the Right One and seeking new and better methods to extract its secrets) and that of the skeptics (which prefers the sifting, sorting and breaking of ideas in search of one that's better than whatever is currently held). Thirsty desert-wanderers as we all are, the believers (and I'm being purposefully magnanimous here) are those who stay at the first patch of cactus they see and dig it out completely and squeeze out its every last drop, while the skeptics take what they can carry from it and set out on a journey to find the oasis.

The obvious advantage to their method is that while we're out wandering in the sand, they have water. Any explanation we might try to give them about palm tree-bordered paradises just seems ridiculous, because they have water now. And for that reason it's hard for a wanderer to reason with a believer.

The universe and all that goes on in it are comprised of layers upon infinitely deeper layers of unclaimed knowledge. It's often said that the more we learn the more we find we don't know. I think most people envision this phenomenon as an expanding bubble whose surface only gets larger the more it grows, and maybe envision big events like Darwin or Newton discovering something truly new and grand. But those events are rare; most of the ground we gain in our conquest of the unknown comes as we discover the tinier truths within the phenomena we already understand on a larger scale.

Because the universe is so often driven by unseen forces, the conclusions that take meaningful thought to achieve (also known as the ones that are usually right) are always harder to express in pithy sound bites than the "obvious" conclusions people settle on when they're emotionally disinclined to examine their assumptions. True believers in any cause are thus insulated from attacks on their chosen stance.

Cries of "babykiller" instantly kill by shock of emotion any reasoned talk of blastocysts. The folk wisdom behind healing methods like homeopathy and reiki looks good enough to some that they feel no need for discussion of trials and studies. Gay marriage is quite often dismissed outright before talk of what "tolerance" really means can ever begin because God said it's bad in his best-seller, and anyway ew yuck, two guys boning! And, of course, scientists lose debates to creationists because their claims take education to understand, while the opposition's millennia-old "wisdom" just makes more sense to the common yokel.

I certainly won't claim that people don't think long and deep about issues and then arrive at conclusions opposite mine. People who do that are probably wanderers just like me, though they happen to be headed into some different part of the wilderness. The problem is that they and we together amassed still seem to be quite few compared to the legions of the Complacents, whose thirst is bearable enough that we can't explain to them why we scorn their scant patch of prickly refreshment to look for something better.

It's the Thinker's Curse.

Thoughts on Religulous

2008-10-07T16:53:00.005-06:00

I saw Bill Maher's "Religulous" on its opening night with some friends, and since then I've been reading reviews of it. It's intensely interesting to me to see the spectrum of reactions.

Being, as I am, a confidently irreligious heathen, I inevitably enjoyed the show and agreed (for the most part, I think) with his message. I can overlook the obviously selective editing and unfair interview ambushing techniques he used, because it's mostly done in the name of the funny. And, though he's 100% wack on some issues, with religion I admire his spunk and envy his stainless steel cojones. But, surprise: not everyone agrees.

The movie's message is, of course, "Religion is universally childish, stupid and dangerous and it's time we grew up and abandoned it before it destroys us." In addition, it's easy to see how a religious viewer could sense the accusation of stupidity as also being directed at them, given how many truly stupid-sounding people Maher interviews in the movie. The most common complaint from religious movie critics has been that Maher is too dim to see the obvious difference between fundamental religion and the liberal, tolerant religion of the more enlightened. They cry that it isn't fair to conflate all religious viewpoints into one big ball of prickly danger, when it's the fundies who've been giving religion a bad name while the moderates look on, just as horrified as the atheists.

They have something of a point. Maher never really established a link of shared culpability between those who murder because their holy book told them to, and those who don't really read said book but continue to profess belief in it so that they have somewhere to go after they die. He simply showed the worst of religion and proclaimed, "See how bad this religion stuff is!" which does seem unfair to the vast majority of the world's peaceful religious practitioners.

But his point isn't new and has been discussed at length by the likes of Sam Harris, who claimed that the moderates do indeed share blame for the destructiveness of the fundamentalists because they act as a shield for them. By believing the same absurdities and/or revering the same books/leaders that the bad guys do, they create a cloak of faith that shields the hateful from having to examine their hate.

Sure, most people who believe in and look forward to an impending apocalypse aren't willing to do anything to further its arrival. But some are! So wouldn't it be better for all of us if the moderate believers who crave the end of the world wised up and did their part to prevent the truly insane from bringing it about? They can't do so while holding irrational beliefs that delude them into the ridiculous notion that World War III is something to be desired because it will help their particular religious mind virus rule the world.

Religious believers: Yes, I know you believe fervently, with all your unthinking heart, that the firestorm will prepare the way for your glorious leader (whom you've never seen nor heard in real life) to come from outer space and use his magic powers to shape the whole planet into the world you think you want it to be. But reflect, backward upon some point in your life when you were dead certain of something and were eventually forced to admit you had been wrong. It happens to everyone. So what, JUST WHAT if your view of the apocalypse suffers from the same human tendency for error?! What a price to pay to find out you were mistaken. The price is far too high to justify the risk that you're wrong. The risk is too great to entertain a ridiculous, religulous notion that the end of everything will be a blessing. Wake up and stop shielding the crazies from the cold cleansing light of rationality; you're giving them a nice, dank shadow in which to fester in horrendous ways.

So yeah, I guess I agree with Maher on that point. Now, if only he knew what the word "atheist" means.

AM lunacy

2008-10-03T11:21:00.004-06:00

What is it about AM radio that really brings out the crazies? Pushing SCAN during the morning is like taking a ride through a lame spook alley in some pitiful amusement park that is unaware of how much it sucks. Queasy embarrassment in ten-second bursts, punctuated by the occasional enthusiastic mariachi band.

I went slummin' on the good ol' band yesterday morning, and actually heard some lady express outrage that (Democrat) activists were helping homeless people vote by taking them to polls. Then some very angry person named Michael Savage had this nugget of wisdom to propound:

"The people who believe in God, guns and the Bible always end up coming to the rescue of the people who don't believe in God, guns and the Bible."

One could ask him to justify this kind of grandiose claim with evidence but...I don't think he's much interested in evidence. He's probably not even aware that those three wonderful things can be separated into distinct entities to be considered apiece.

(Oh also, Barack Obama is a fraud, and Congress is composed of marauding barbarians. And sooner rather than later, Jesus is gonna come and clean up all the mess. But you already knew that last one.)

I live in the reddest state in the nation, but I have only marginal contact with these kind of people on a day-to-day basis. It's good to expose myself to these people and their hate-disguised-as-love once in a while, so I don't forget they exist. Especially in October, when 'tis the season for getting the hell scared out of you.

Rules: sometimes they don't

2008-10-02T14:54:00.001-06:00

I told the guy at work who walked back five paces to badge out before leaving the building that "it doesn't matter if you badge out if you're badging in at the other building in a few seconds. The time tracking system can figure it out." He answered, as if triumphantly, "Well, the Security guys said they want us to always badge out when we leave."

Another time, I told him that I wear earphones while driving on the freeway. He looked at me incredulously and declared, "I was always taught that you don't do that." I replied that yes, I think we all were, but I decided to figure out if it's really all that important and realized I couldn't come up with a good reason to refrain that would outweigh the benefit gained in peace of mind.

This is a man with an approach towards life fundamentally different from mine, so much so that I repeatedly find it jarring. He's the kind of guy who votes for the party his parents chose simply because it's unthinkable not to do so. He's the guy who takes great satisfaction in sixty obedient seconds spent at a lonely 2:00am traffic light. I would guess that he thinks status as a law lends a precept some kind of inherent value.

As for me: a law is only as good as the good it produces. I'm the guy who finds a victory in running the light as a demonstration to no one of disgust at the inadequacy of its programming.

Rules for the sake of rules, appeals to authority, and mindless conservatism do not appear on my list of worthwhile pursuits. When your reason for doing something is "because the guys in charge said to" or "because that's how it's done" ... just show me the door. But give me reasons for doing so that I can understand and respect, and you'll have my devotion. Demonstrate to me that my life or the lives of others will genuinely be improved if I follow a course of action, and I'll commit. Show me your guideline has been thought out, improved, examined and examined again, and I'll hold to it lovingly for the rest of my days...always, of course, eyeing it suspiciously for any sign of betrayal.

Obedience must be given intelligently, never blindly.

I know a guy who's terror with gum

2008-09-25T19:11:00.000-06:00

the slaughter of innocent silence
began when he reached for the Wrigley's
and unsheathed a cruel stick

teeth now crash with raucous mouthlust
to make of its mass a weapon
to shard and shatter the air

tongue now darts and colludes with gum
and rude lip to bruise the drum
assaulted by sneering plosive spears

jaws work such swift molestations
profane though wholly wordless
that peace buckles under the lash

On being incurably thin

2008-08-20T12:33:00.010-06:00

When you're fat, polite society knows it's delicate business. Laws of cultural decorum hath declared that only the rude and insensitive and very old are likely to call out your obesity in your presence, and therefore you're generally left with only one critic who dares to openly confront your body's imperfections: the one who lives inside your own head, subject to all the censorship you choose to apply.

Or so I imagine. I have the opposite problem in that I seem to be incapable--despite all previous effort--of gaining a pound over 140, and believe me that on this side of the fat fence things aren't quite so touchy. For some reason it's apparently okay to comment openly on any perceived unacceptable trend toward the other slope of the bell curve.

The other day during a show we were watching a girl took off her shirt, exposing her thinnish torso. Kimberly fired off some kind of insult about visible ribs, and I was amazed by sudden sense of anger and betrayal that forced me to pause the show and offer a few choice words that had apparently been quite explosively pent up. (Et tu?) Out streamed a complaint about the seeming acceptability of insulting someone's skinniness with no knowledge of how they got that way. I berated her for assuming that the girl must practice self-starvation, when she may just have the speed-demon metabolism I "enjoy". Yeah, if I was fat I'd get mad about fat people being insulted, but I'm thin so I empathize with the plight of the unjustly-judged stickly.

Practically every time I see my mother-in-law she finds the opportunity to inform me that I'm thin, as if I were unaware of the fact. As if it were some amazing state of being. I can't eat a piece of cake without my boss declaring his jealousy and drooling all over his plate as he watches. And if anyone else tells me I'm thin because I don't eat enough, they just might end up with a small-boned fist in their face.

While I don't obsess over my weight, I would like to weigh more. But much like that poor denizen of sitcom cliché who finds refuge in diet after unsuccessful dieting ploy as he struggles to lessen his mass, and then eventually gives up, concluding that he'll never succeed...I too have almost reached the point where I wonder if it's worth trying at all. Even when I lift weights regularly for a while and begin to feel like my arms and legs are pleasantly bulkier than usual, the scale never budges.

Assuming I even can gain weight, it's clear by now that to do so will require a lot more weightlifting than I want to have time for, as well as an absurdly high and protein-overloaded caloric intake that would both expensive and annoying to maintain. And apparently (according to a blog I read by Some Guy with a similar metabolism), if I ever once slacken in my vigilance and go a few days without stuffing absurd amounts of food into myself, I risk instantly losing all the mass I gained. My body just wants to be thinly constructed, with amazingly low body fat content and minimal musclature.

I don't feel that I'm weak. At a couple of points in my life I was able to bench press 160% of my body weight, which I don't think is too shabby. I can whip out respectable numbers of pushups and pull-ups and could excel at rock climbing if I tried. (These are the advantages of no fat!) Also, I think I could be a very good long-distance runner, but I confess that part of the reason I never ran extensively is that I'm afraid of too much aerobic exercise. Every calorie is precious!

...I'm just thin, and incurably so. My body is convinced that it can get by with less, and if you think about it rationally I guess it's right. In this day and age what use is a bulging belly? What use would I make with my sedentary lifestyle of an extra 40 pounds of...whatever it is a 180-pound computer programmer is made of? Why build more stuff to haul around, when you can just be smaller and spend less constructing that which does the hauling? I guess that line of reasoning works up until the point where I attempt to guess just where the hell the energy packed into all the calories I eat is actually going. (It can't just disappear. Shouldn't it have to end up as heat or movement or some other detectable phenomenon?)

Yeah, maybe I'm just looking for a few of those legendary vanity pounds.

I read an interview in my internet wanderings with Kiera Knightley. She is naturally thin and tired of unfounded accusations of anorexia. Anyway, next time you feel like deriding some hot starlet for her lack of flab by boldly claiming that she looks that way for unnatural reasons, maybe refrain. Even if it would have soothed your envy.

Alien

2008-08-15T17:16:00.003-06:00

Somewhere deeply alien
out beyond all influence of our vain sun
and imaginings:
streaming ripples against a viscous lakeshore
twilit to steaming by long midday.

Wing casings cocked, gas bladders filled
with anticipation it shudders up
elation-soaked sultry splashes
to break the forbidden life-given barrier:
to resurface.

Warm, methane rain shelters again
a glory reflected through spectra
sublime on summer's soft-pocked ice:
the thrill of a still-frozen world
yet untouched above the loving purple sea.

Why did the chicken laugh as she crossed the road?

2008-08-06T11:40:00.000-06:00

Read this. And this.

I laughed out loud at both of these comics. But why? What is it about the unexpectedness of the situation that creates in me a desire to vocalize while exhaling in rapid spurts?

I think unexpectedness may be a common element in all humor. The other day my brother told me that he'd been thinking about the most famous joke of all time (why did the chicken...) and determined that it's actually pretty funny if you place aside all the baggage associated with it and re-examine it from a purely humorous perspective. I have to agree, and the only reason why is that it contains (or would contain, if I had somehow never heard the joke) an element of the unexpected. I expect something elaborate and are rewarded instead with something simple and foregone, and for some reason that involves unexpectedness, it makes me laugh. Yet there's nothing funny about many, equally-unexpected possible answers: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get a pilot's license! Ha ha ha!

Though, I'm quite sure that many people I know would do nothing but stare blankly at both of those comics. (These same people usually commit the egregious sin of failing to appreciate the fine humor of the Simpsons.) The second comic because it is only truly funny if you get the science fiction reference at play, and the first because it's completely absurd. I find absurdity in the right situation and quantity completely hilarious, but not everyone does.

I've been wondering a lot about humor lately. How does it work? What determines what is funny? It's commonly stated that entire countries share a common humor sense--for instance the famous disconnect between British and American humor. But I wonder how much of this impression actually stems from missed cultural references, rather than a truly mismatched sense of what is funny. For instance, jokes about enmity between New Yorkers and New Jerseyers would probably be funnier to inhabitants of those places than to me, and even less funny to a British person; however this doesn't imply that a rivalry between neighboring geographic areas is something they just don't appreciate across the pond.

Age, of course, also plays a difference in what's funny. But is this because people's senses of humor migrate as they age, or are people staying the same while the culture's sense of what's funny shifts around them? Were puns--which tend to leave me cold but are the bread and butter of my dad's humor sense--all the rage back in the '50s when he was learning how to laugh?

And then there's the inside joke, not genuinely funny in itself but able to inspire laughter because of strong social ties. Sometimes I think genuine humor and this stuff get tangled together...and those are the times when people not in the in-group just shake their heads and roll their eyes as you roll on the floor with shaking chest.

One thing I'd like to do is compile a small collection of humorous articles from sites like the Onion and give them to a few people, including my father and other old people (LOL, Dad) and some foreigners, and see if any detectable pattern emerges in the way they rank the articles by funniness. I suspect that my brothers' ratings would be most similar to mine, then my wife's with my sister's somewhere close by.

Misconceptions II

2008-07-29T17:31:00.000-06:00

My friend Steve once informed me that, as far as he could see, if you don't believe in a god then there's absolutely no reason that you won't go out murdering anyone who offends you and stealing anything you feel like you want.

This is such a tired and trite and obviously unsupportable assertion that I actually spent a few brow-furrowed moments fervently wishing he hadn't said it before attempting to respond. It completely amazes me that anyone could actually imagine another human being holding to such a position. Nevertheless, it's obviously true that people believe this, probably without thinking too hard about it, so it bears discussion.

The basic idea here is that, since all moral laws are supposedly ultimately traceable to God, if you remove God you remove the laws that he gave. You know, like how if the guy who sold you his car dies, the car stops working?

No but seriously, imagine an ethical person who has lived several decades following such principles as the Golden Rule and respecting the personhood of everyone around him, even when it meant some detriment to himself. Now suppose that this person suddenly finds himself without the faith he knew for so many years, and which he always assumed was the unassailable basis for the way he treated others.

What does he do? According to this absurd theory, his first course of action would be to run to the store and steal everything he ever wanted. If anyone gets in his way, he'll simply murder them (since he's now able to do so without compunction nor remorse) and continue on his way.

It should only take a few moments of thought to realize, through a simple application of a technique called "common sense", that this is an absurd situation that almost never takes place in real life. Otherwise, the nightly news would be filled with stories of atrocities and arrests related to newly deconverted atheists.

Now, the argment here usually goes that the only thing keeping such people in line is the religious upbringing they had, but don't forget that many unbelievers (including whole nations like Sweden which are 60%+ atheistic) grow up with no religious training at all, yet somehow we don't hear about the threat from unstable atheist hordes waiting to undermine society. (Well, except in the context of communism, which is another absurd mind-barf unto itself and really has nothing to do with the topic at hand.)

No, the simple fact (easily supported by actually reading the Bible or Koran and paying attention to what they say, as a whole, about how to treat others) is that religion is no supreme basis for morality. Some religions have some good things to say, but I'm unaware of any religious principle of value that isn't also present outside religion, in ethics and philosophy. While religion is good at telling you what meat to avoid, moral ideals that work and contribute to society are, by now, usually pretty universally recognized by cultures and evenly distributed amongst humanity. That is because they work. Societies that follow them thrive, so they're selected for. Additionally, many principles--such as the Golden Rule--seem to actually be instinctual in the majority of humanity. Think about how good it feels to do good to others. Then think about a person who never does any good to others, and try to guess how happy such a person will typically be. The occasionaly sociopath aside, most of us would become more miserable the more we were ruining the happiness of others.

People mostly treat each other well. We do so because we've learned that it works better for everyone that way, and we do so because we have been selected to do so for precisely the reason that good behavior does work. While some people probably do good partially out of fear of punishment, isn't it far more noble to do good for good's sake? I think even most religious people would agree with that. Yet the theory that belief in no god leads to unethical behavior implies that fear of punishment is the only motivation for following principles of charity and kindness, and I don't think most people's main motiations lie there. Luckily, that theory isn't proved out in practice, as I mentioned above.

The Gardener

2008-07-22T09:53:00.000-06:00

"The gardener too is a butcher"
I confess to the ants who dance,
leave nest and flee
and I think they agree
as dirt is cut and lifted,
shifted, flung fanning out and down
in brown and formic arcs to rain
the dead and dying grist of seasons
on bits of loamy old millennia.

"The gardener too is a hunter"
I admit to the ants who stray
death-sentenced to wander
and I sense that they ponder
slashed and shovelrent tunnels
where rock sprouts pores
and bleeds out the hivemind
egg by spout-doomed egg
drop by refugee drop,
too many too frantic to stop.

"The gardener too is a killer"
I confide to the ants who turn
to life-giving land
and I think they understand.

Lunch with my father

2008-07-14T19:10:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I had lunch with my father and we discussed my stance on religion. I have to admit that the experience had a somewhat extinguishing effect on my burning desire to be understood by my family. It was a painfully cathartic hour or so which left me feeling both relieved and spent. I felt, once again, some regret about the unfortuate fact that my views have drifted so far from his.

Thing is, the matters on which our views are now polarly opposite are not that many, and not the ones that really matter; they just seem to be the ones that cause us the most worry. For instance, nothing has changed in the way I treat people. Ethics are more important to me than ever. I still want to be a good parent and citizen despite all the gnarly theological details that have been tripping me up for years.

But it's these details that really separate us now. Perhaps simply because they're so visible?

We talked about his belief in god and I confessed that I don't believe in him. He asked if I'm an atheist. I told him what I think about the question and let him decide what to call me; he settled on agnostic. We talked about belief in general and the idea of the leap of faith, and it was here that the rift was widest, because I just could not get on board with his claim that I need to start by willing myself to believe, yet he couldn't dispense with the importance of this step. He recognizes that I refuse to believe anything without evidence, and I'm sure he thinks I'm wrong on that point even though there probably aren't many aspects of his life in which he acts any differently. There's just one, in fact, but it's the one that really matters.

I said that sometimes it feels like I've learned a different language that none of my family knows, a language that can explain things theirs can't, and that I'm frustrated because I'm always trying to explain concepts their language doesn't support. I think he found it condescending, but when I explained that I feel that way because I've been what they are while they've never been what I am, he understood. Eventually he agreed it was a good analogy.

It got uncomfortable at times. I guess that's inevitable given how hard it is to insult someone's closely-held views without insulting them. I can't deny that I hold a lot of contempt for the tendency many religious have of navigating life like walking through a dark room without turning on the light. I wanted to make it clear to him why I refuse to participate in that, so I explained how I got there. I explained the problem of evil and the problem of infinite regress when imagining a creator. I offered technology and medicine of proofs of the method of science in discovering truth and asked why I shouldn't be allowed to employ that proven method on epistemological questions too. But how to say all this without the implicit assumption that I don't think his approach (which he taught me as a vulnerable child) is valid? Of course it risks making him feel inferior in my eyes, though of course he isn't. But how to convincingly convey that...

He did a great job listening, but at one point he got frustrated and blurted that I must think religion is nothing but an opiate for the masses. I paused, taken aback by this question seemingly out of the blue. Then I remembered again how different our ways of thinking on these matters are, despite the 99% of topics. Maybe he's used to more black and white conceptions of human behavior than I tend to prefer now, which would explain the assumption that if religion isn't for me, I must instantly write it off as nothing but a tool for dictators to control peasants.

Maybe he projected his own way of thought onto me. Maybe when you're so accustomed to thinking of things as handed down from above, or menacing from below, the default way of digesting new problems is to attempt to frame them in one of these extremes. I used to think this way, but now I see most of the entities that walk the landscapes of Earth or human conception as much more organic, formed in the forming and loaded with internal conflict, shades of grey. Nearly everything has its good and its bad; almost nothing ever exhibits just one of these properties. Nearly everything exists because long years of gradual change on simpler forms pushed its existence slowly up the ramp of tangled complexity.

I tried to express this to him. Words, of course, failed as they do. In the end we hugged and departed. I was left with a deep sense of regret. I know this regret is an age-old tradition between conservative fathers and their change-hungry sons, but it's still poignant enough to feel pioneering. I also know that there's really no balm for this particular sting other than to suppress it under happier topics until something changes, or one of us stops living. So I guess the wisdom I gained was in the form of some amount of lessening of the burning desire to be understood at all costs.

I have a feeling that desire will only ever get in the way of what truly matters, like enjoying my dad for all the time we have together. If that's the case, I will have to give it up as an unattainable goal.

New guitar

2008-07-06T00:18:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago I bought a new Ibanez. Having it has reinvigorated my desire to beef up my classical guitar skills, especially since it has a built-in mic I easily figured out how to hook up to GarageBand, which means I can now make a recording of myself that doesn't sound like it came through an underwater telephone..

I decided a good way to help myself improve would be to record a song and put it here, then work on it for a few weeks and re-record. The idea goes: the visibility and promise of improvement (to the at least three readers of this blog) will spur me to actually practice instead of just playing.

I plan to listen closely to the recording and analyze it for ways I can improve. I also plan to actually memorize the song! This is a monumental task, as my brain seems completely retarded when it comes to memorizing music. I'll also see if I can get my guitar to record bass notes better. (Or maybe I just need to pluck them harder? I'm mostly self-taught and therefore clueless about what's probably a lot of really fundamental stuff.)

So, here it is, the best first attempt at Fernando Sor, opus 35 number 4 that I could muster. Enjoy it, warts and all, with the promise of improvement. (I'm hosting it on my crappy server with crappy Comcast upload speed, so please be gentle and patient.)

Oenology, biology. Bioenology?

2008-07-02T20:07:00.003-06:00

Visiting California's Sonoma Valley was an occasion to learn a little more about grapes and wine. I've been interested in the science of fermentation for a while now, and have as-of-yet unfulfilled plans to give it a try.

When we got back I spent some time on Wikipedia reading up on vitis vinifera and all its many varieties. The page on Cabernet Sauvignon was particularly interesting. I learned that there is a truly dizzying array of grape varietals numbering in the hundreds--far more than the well-known names we've heard of like Chardonnay and Merlot--and most of these are actually members of the same species, not each a different species as I had previously assumed. This brings to mind the question of whether or not these grape varieties are ever bred in interesting ways...and of course they are. I found this interesting:

While not as prolific in mutating as Pinot noir or as widely used in production of offspring, Cabernet Sauvignon has been linked to other grape varieties. In 1961, a cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache produced the French wine grape Marselan.^[4] In 1977 a vine producing 'bronze' grapes was found in the vineyards of Cleggett Wines in Australia. They propagated this mutant, registered it under the name of Malian and have sold pale red wines under that name.

So cool! Not only are these grapes being cross-bred to interesting effect, but they're spontaneously mutating into new and interesting kinds of grape all the time and people are taking advantage of useful mutations to create new kinds of wine.

This is also the way some of the best-known varietals came to be, such as Cabernet Sauvignon. The page talked about the origins of that grape which were previously lost in antiquity and myth. While there were some clues to its parentage in its characteristics, as well as its name (implying it sprang from Sauvignon blanc and/or Cabernet franc), origins were unprovable. But recently, DNA testing proved that it is indeed the offspring of those two grapes.

Something about this--new light shed on ancient, time-old tradition by the powerful youth of mankind's recent science--is very, very intriguing to me. Men have been planting, harvesting and enjoying these grapes so long that we forgot where they came from...until we got smart enough to look inside them and remember.

Raise a glass to science.

Propositional fallacies and you

2008-06-28T19:39:00.000-06:00

Propositional logic: opening doors in love lives since Aristotle first seduced a fine young lady with conditionals and kisses.

Today's lesson in propositional logic: the fallacies we commit when we're too lazy with our implications.

Hey, come back here! It's simple, really, and I promise to forego the Latin. Once you know the formal fallacies that can be committed, they're easy to spot and sarcastically point out in the amateruish arguments of your friends!

Say you have an if-then relationship which is given to always hold true. "If it is raining, water is falling from the sky." And further propose you also know that the antecedent, or the if-clause of this statement, is true. It is raining. It follows, then, that the then-clause is also true and water must be falling from the sky. Here we have "affirmed the antecedent", and thusly we deduce.

Furthermore, we can work in reverse by "denying the consequent". The consequent is the then-clause, and when we deny it by observing that water is not falling from the sky, we can be assured that the antecedent is also false and it is indeed not raining.

But problems arise when we people start affirming and denying the wrong things. I think you can see where this is going. The formal propositional fallacies include denying the antecedent (in which no rain disallows any water from falling out of the sky) and affirming the consequent (in which water falling from the sky is taken as proof of rain). These fallacies are easy to commit when you assume that you're free to take logical inferences in reverse, but the roads of philosophy are littered with tire spikes.

These fallacies are particularly effective in lopsided cases like rain, for it's certainly true the vast majority of water droplets falling from the sky in throughout all history have indeed been rain. This lends a bit of bias in favor of the assumption that drops are rain, and certainly in many situations, ideas which are not actually equal are routinely assumed so out of sheer overwhelming...

Hey, wake up! I think the point has been made insofar as it concerns rain. But beware of the more complex arguments, hairier ones laden with burdens like ethics and religion, where fallacies like these can easily be made to sound true to the unrigorous ear. For instance, see the evolution-related example at denying the antecedent [fallacyfiles.org], made by a real person attempting to prove real nonsense.

Now, that wasn't so hard! Thanks for sticking around. People who like my blog completely read my posts, and you got this far, so you must love my blog.

My grandpa weren't no sock monkey!

2008-06-22T23:58:00.000-06:00

Kimberly and I were driving home from dinner the other day. Given that I actually have enough etiquette to (usually) refrain from hiding in my iPod when other people are in the car, and given the surprising abundance of people trying to sell me their crap on our usual FM haunts, I proposed we spend a while slumming in that good old band where it's the Amplitude that's Modulated and everything sounds like your speakers are underwater. I was feeling feisty and hoping to stumble across a wingnut with a talk show.

Well, we ended up listening to Doug Wright on KSL, who isn't actually a wingnut and has been quite fair and mostly rational all the times I've listened to him. It was okay, though, because his guest was more than enough of a nutball for one evening.

It was a guy who's recently come under fire for creating and contracting with a company to produce thousands of Obama monkey sock-puppets. Naturally, the guy is under a lot of fire for the racist undertones this apparently includes for many people. And naturally, he was completely amazed anyone could think he'd ever mean anything racist by it.

His argument was basically that he had been completely unaware of the racist connotations when calling a black man a monkey. I bought his argument because, like him I'm also a Utah-reared yokel. We don't have a lot black people here, which means we also don't have a lot of racism, at least since Brigham Young moved on to claim his eternal reward. So a lot of racist phrases and ideas are simply never seen or considered in places like the town where I grew up. I think the idea would never have occurred to me--if I was dumb enough to feel my calling in life was to manufacture an entire line of sockpuppet monkeybamas--that it was offensive enough to doom my important contribution to political art from the outset. (Though I do like to think I'd be smart enough to figure this out before my scheme got very far.)

Okay, so sock puppet guy is just ignorant, not malicious. But then Doug Wright asked him why, after learning of the racist message behind his besmirched masterpiece of primate puppetry, he went on producing them. His answer was breathtakingly absurd. To paraphrase:

"Well the way I see it you either believe that we evolved from monkeys, or you believe we were all created by a God with a specific plan in mind. We hold to the latter view."

It took a second to sink in that he was holding up his lack of trust in science as an excuse to keep producing racist puppets. "I don't believe we evolved from monkeys, therefore calling Obama a monkey couldn't possibly mean I think he's less evolved than whites. Therefore there's absolutely nothing wrong with me selling socks painted to look like monkeys and labelled 'Barack Obama'." Which, to the ears of someone who respects science, sounds an awful lot like, "I'm completely and willfully uninformed on a different topic, therefore I shouldn't be held accountable for any of the stupid things I blurt out. Also, I am a moron." If pressed on the issue, I expected his first argument to be that classic hallmark of an underused brain: "If we evolved from monkeys, how come there's still monkeys!" Unfortunately Doug's freak-meter went off and he changed the subject. Which is a shame because, of course, we didn't evolve from monkeys so it's always an entertaining freakshow to stand back and watch creationists tear down that particular strawman.

Now, I seriously wonder whether his secret plan wasn't to send out a secret coded righteousness-beacon to placate all his compatriots in dumb. Oh, he's a good, religious man; all is forgiven and where do I buy this puppet! Even if he didn't do it purposefully, I still think the whole statement stinks of wink-wink pandering, and he needs to go stick his head first into a toilet, then a book not written by Joseph Smith. Or even watch a damn five-minute Youtube video about evolution, for crying out loud. This willful denial of uncomfortable truths is a piece of the scenery around here that I could gratefully do without.

Parenthood is

2008-06-17T13:49:00.000-06:00

cries for food from mouths well-fed
cracker crumbs in a marital bed
kisses crowned on a miniature head

cracks in a smile in a glass picture frame
bland repetition, re-anointed a game
undeserved love, unimpeachable fame

What has to stop is is

2008-06-16T12:20:00.000-06:00

What has to stop is, is this tendency some people have to double "is". A friend of mine is guilty and continues to offend in this regard, despite my having set him straight and made him aware of his habit.

"The problem is, is that we can't find it."

I assume it stems from the unholy union of two gramatically valid constructions:

"The problem is that we can't find it."
"What the problem is, is that we can't find it."

The brain gets confused and invents a hybrid, and somehow a rogue neural pathway forms and is fed, until this is basically the way my friend talks. But it's not just him; I've heard a lot of people make the same mistake over and over. It's like a mental virus which completely infects the host. If you have it, your errors are egregious and excessive.

It seems like every day this friend of mine grows ever more fond of "is". I think I've even heard him triple it on occasion.

Step away from the verb and put your hands in the air!

Completely unspoilerladen reaction to tonight's asskickingly momentous episode of Battlestar Galactica

2008-06-13T22:34:00.001-06:00

Holy. Frakking. Frak!

So say we all.

Steve's Misconceptions

2008-06-13T12:25:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I had a conversation with my friend Steve about my religious views. It's good to talk to him because he's frank and open even though he's a pretty typically believing Mormon. That's not a common combination, in my experience. He's willing to hear about my views without feeling too threatened by them. It gives me a chance to get back to my roots and remember what it was like to think that way...which can have the effect of helping me come to a bit of that much-needed understanding that I so often crave from the religious in my life.

I decided I'd start a new recurring theme on his misconceptions about my and my mindset. Maybe my answers to his questions will be useful to someone who has the same questions but isn't willing to ask them (I know you're out there!)

Misconception #1: Atheism is a worldview.

I found that Steve was assuming I had replaced Mormonism with atheism. In fact, atheism is not a complete worldview like Mormonism. It's really only an answer to one question: whether or not one thinks there exists more than zero gods. Mormonism, like most religions, is an entire package that tells you what to believe and do. It gives you common ties with all other Mormons. Atheism is just one component of my worldview, which says that of all the god-conceptions yet encountered, none of them has yet proven itself worthy of belief.

So what has filled the space vacated by religion? Well, that's the problem with this topic. Because Mormonism or Christianity or whatever is (usually) well-defined entity that is easily referred to and understood by its name, people who adhere to one of those viewpoints often expect the same ease of understanding when learning about someone else's views. But it's just not that simple with people like me. Religious people are given a pre-defined truth and instructed to do whatever necessary in order to believe it. But I believe what my mind finds believable as I journey through modes of thought. In one case the beliefs are the result of the journey; in the other the journey is for the purpose of upholding the beliefs.

That said, my current worldview is probably best defined as humanist. Humanism is "A doctrine or ethical point of view that emphasizes the dignity and worth of individual people, rejects claims of supernatural influences on humans, and stresses the need for people to achieve improvement of society and self-fulfillment through reason and to develop human-oriented ethical values without theism."

In which we vacate

2008-06-10T21:18:00.000-06:00

Just got back from a wonderful five-day vacation to San Francisco with my beloved wife. Everything went swimmingly: perfect weather, no real hitches in our plans that weren't caused by our own stupidity. And even the stupidity-caused hitches didn't turn out all bad themselves.

It was good to get away and reclaim a little of the lost couple-time we never had enough of before we went and had kids. The romantic and marital benefits go without saying.

But what I found most amazing was the fondess a little absence can engender. After three days I began lusting for the sight and sound and touch of my children. I'm sure Kimberly wouldn't agree, as she gets to spend a lot more time with them than I do. Not sure if she reached that point at all, in fact. But the point is, it's amazing what a little well-placed separation can do to strengthen a relationship. It seems the faults of a loved one are forgotten sooner than the good features.

So now it's back to grind, and I'm sure after a week I'll be asking myself how I ever thought reproducing would be a good idea. But for now, the batteries are fully recharged.

In honor of my travelling companion here's a sappy love poem I wrote a few months ago:

Stirs,
Slumbering, a memory-soaked kiss
And this:

Bliss!
Not long ago half-forsaken...
Retaken.

Awaken,
Tangled in soft arms and purrs:
Hers.

Maple syrup

2008-06-04T11:41:00.000-06:00

Pleasure and some small remorse
that breakfast when we discovered
maple syrup among life's axioms.

Not the brown insistent falsehood,
impostor undeserving drizzled thick
through jingle and woman-shaped glass;

But the simple lifeblood of stately trees
sweetness sublime not subliminal
unapologetic and dear...

Find the thin and good and difficult things
Behind the easy ways they scream at you
then clutch them. This is life best lived.

The Mind's Appendix

2008-06-03T12:49:00.001-06:00

Thinking about faith, and reason, and the conflict that arises between them in the minds of people like me, I came to wonder:

Is there any benefit that faith-based mindsets have provided, or ever could provide to the world, that isn't also attainable through reason-based thinking?

Given the successes of science, it's clear that reason-based thinking has garnered incredible benefits for humanity that were unequaled in the millennia before the scientific revolution. The examples are too obvious and numerous to merit naming.

But, on the other side of the coin, what does faith-based thinking give us? The only examples I can think of right now are the happiness and peace of mind that religious people enjoy, and perhaps the fact that it sometimes spurs people to be more charitable. Religion "saves" us from death, which understandably relieves one of the chief human anxieties in believers (setting aside the question of the new anxieties it induces). And, fortunately, many religions use at least part of the control they have over their adherents' minds to impress them toward good works. (Let's just ignore for now the evil works religions sometimes inspire.)

But is either of these things exclusive to faith? The study of science and ethics has definitely afforded me joy. And the renewed awareness that comes with an open and tolerant approach toward learning about the world can definitely inspire one to want to help fix the world's problems. As a humanist, I'm quite certain that everything we need to save ourselves (if it's even possible) is inside us.

Do we need faith? I've been wondering for years if the word even has any merit at all. Should I just give in to the cynical whispering that's been nagging at me for years and accept the truth that faith is nothing more than a useful application of the gullibility of some for the benefit of others? Or, at best, an evolutionary relic, our mind's appendix? Left over, always useless, sometimes malignant.

Blog-shaped hole

2008-05-23T16:40:00.000-06:00

Is the hole blog-shaped because it's rigid, and its purpose is to form into blog-shape the liquid thoughts that will come to fill it?

Or is it simply blog-shaped because it is both flexible, and currently completely filled a shapely blog whose purpose is the shaping of holes?

Or, are the blog and the hole just meant for each other, as destined to fit together as the north and south poles of a magnet?

None of the above, and all of the above. Yes, as in the first scenario the hole is a hole with a defined shape, and the thoughts that fill it are liquid. And yes, as in the second, the hole would not be blog-shaped without the concrete concept of "blog" to define it.

But because the hole imposes a shape onto its contents that fits a recognizable pattern, we have come to know that shape, and labelled it "blog". And because we recognize and can name it, it becomes the important element in the picture. So yes, as in the third scenario the blog and hole are a kind of yin and yang, one the receptacle meant to receive the other.

The blog, shaped by the hole, has become the defined shape that imposes its definition back on the hole. So now, when we look at an ordinary hole holding a blog, it's too easy to assume that the blog is the reason for the hole, which must exist to hold nothing but blogs.

But it's just a hole, holding some thoughts...which to you, probably look a lot like a blog.