The Four Horsemen Speak

** On September 30, 2007, my favorite modern authors - Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens - sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion.

All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion - some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public's reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face to world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.

Click here to watch the video. HOUR 1
HOUR 2

Audio only Hour 1
Audio only Hour 2

The phantom limb

**"Brother Crow "makes a good point about the "cost" of evolving to atheism. I often feel that old hankering for my Imaginary Friend, the "easy believism" that eases fear and provides a measure of courage. During some of the scarier and painful moments of my recent physical problems, I could feel that old twitch, the turning to a "comforter," like a phantom limb.

In a recent poem, The Hole, I note that simply having an experience isn't proof of the reality of what seems to prompt it:

Calling it good doesn't make it real.
Every conned victim believes, for a time,
in value received from the predation;
every junkie's jiggered brain
runs movies indistinguishable from reality;
every drug is a prayer,
every prayer a drug.
Every delusion works
awhile.

Here are some excerpts from Crow's recent blog:

But - actually - I am not thinking of that kind of thing when I talk about the cost of agnosticism/atheism. I am talking about something else, possibly a spiritual dynamic (and certainly psycho-social) that resists the notion of denying or questioning the reality of God. It's really a question of the head versus the heart. My head has always doubted the reality of God - my heart yearns for his reality. Rationally, reasonably, I can question (at least) and deny (at most) the existence of a Divine Being. But my heart wants magic, mystery, and the sense of wonder that can be part of the journey of faith and belief.

I don't have much respect for those on either side of the God debate who deny the role of the aching heart in the agnositic/atheist community. Of course, I admit that not all have the emotional resonance with Christianity that I have as a former Christian. But anyone who denies the role of emotion in the formation of faith and belief is a liar and a fool. We are not just thinking animals...we feel, and our feelings are often a far more powerful reality than our reason.

I miss God. I often want to fall back on easy believism. A recent commenter on this site reminded me of the rules of "easy believism" - God says it, I believe it, that settles it. No questions asked. I wish! My heart wants - indeed, aches - for a trust in a Heavenly Daddy who loves me, desires the best for me, has a plan for me, and will help me accomplish that plan if I put my trust in him (and give his church my money)!

A few days ago, I saw a guy wearing a religious tee-shirt. It showed a knight in armor, kneeling, with his sword in front of him. Over the picture were these words" "The difficulty of what you face is not as great as the Power behind you." It nearly brought me to tears. How I yearn to believe - simply, as a child - that there is God who stood behind me, held me up, helped me through. Alas...and forsooth.

Remember the movie "Pitch Black" - the sci-fi movie that introduced us to Vin Diesel as Riddick, the space cowboy? In that movie, a mullah challenges Riddick, saying "you don't believe in God." Riddick responds - "No, I absolutely do believe in God. And I absolutely hate the M---F---er!"

It's hard to believe. It's harder to choose not to, especially when your heart - your emotional life - yearns to believe.

But there is a reason I choose not to believe...and the cost of atheism is high.

The godphone in your head

**A friend concerned about my evolution to atheism sent me the following link. The article is: "The atheists who came in from the cold" by that modern apologist for theism Dinesh D'Souza. In its rationale against atheism the article refers to a hypothetical

example of a child raised on a remote island who finds a satellite phone. Voices come out of the machine. The child recognizes these voices as human and is thrilled by the discovery that she has found a way to interact with other humans. Perhaps there is life outside the island!

Then the elders of the tribe (if I may embellish Flew's account, let's call them Big Chief Dawkins, Grand Pooh Bah Dennett, and Witch Doctor Pinker) scorn the child and say, "Look, when we damage the instrument, the voices stop. So they're obviously nothing more than sounds produced by the unique combination of metals and circuit boards. Forget about learning about other humans. From all the evidence we have, we are the only living creatures on earth. So go back to making sandcastles." Who are the real dummies here?

The answer is obvious. It's the ignorant "elders," who don't understand phones, or metaphor. A sat (or any other kind of) phone is designed to link two speakers. If there's no one speaking at the one end, there's no sound at the other. A phone isn't designed to produce voices if there's no one speaking.

The brain, on the other hand, has the ability to conjure voices and images and all sorts of things that don't really exist outside the brain. It's called imagination, which is a condition precedent to delusion (as well as to art and empathy and all sorts of good things.) A person who "hears" god's voice is not an authority as to the existence of god. Only rigorous research and experiment can determine the probability or improbability of such a being's existence. And so far, the only authorities for that claim are the imaginative claims other deluded people and the books they write and the churches they organize to maintain their baseless belief.

Again, in order to be up to date and informed on these matters, the books to read are:

• The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

• Breaking the Spell - Daniel Dennett

• The End of Faith - Sam Harris

• God is not Great - Christopher Hitchens

• God: the Failed Hypothesis - Victor Stenger
  

Christianity less dangerous than Islam

** John Loftus runs a blog called Debunking Christianity, and has written a book, Why I Rejected Christianity. The site often has interesting items, such as "de-conversion" stories that I sometimes post here. His book is very uneven, needs strong editing (and cutting) but is interesting as a chronicle of a former apologist's emergence from religious/spiritual delusion. In a recent blog, he cites some reasons why we should be more paranoid about Islam than Christianity:

There are four things that make Christianity less dangerous than Islam in my opinion.

One) Christianity has a Virgin Mary who helped bring in the redeeming Messiah. The Catholics have even made Mary a co-redeemer. This feminine Biblical example exalts women to some degree. Women aren’t entirely worthless chattel. Islam only has an Eve, who is known for being a temptress to Adam. She is weak, needing to be ruled over, who can be blamed for bringing upon the earth such misery.

Two) Christianity has its Jesus, who is basically seen as non-violent and who laid down his life for humankind. Islam has no corresponding figure. Mohammed was a political ruler, whereas Jesus had no earthly political power. So the Koran reflects the political goals of religion, whereas in Christianity it’s merely implicit.

Three) Christianity has gone through an Enlightenment beginning in the 16th century with the rise of science and modern philosophy. The only version of Christianity we see in today’s world is one reflecting various degrees of this enlightenment. As a result the only Christians we see are “cherry-picking” from the Bible based upon their modern experiences and understandings. They do not take the Bible literally. They do not think it honors God to stone adulterers, kill witches, or keep women in submissive silence at home. By contrast, Islam has had no Enlightenment. Muslims still take the Koran at face value, and there are some pretty hateful things said in it about infidels, Jews, and women, along with some barbaric ways to punish criminals.

Four) Christianity does not have the same political power that Islam has within any country in the world today. There are whole countries ruled by Islamic law. There are no countries ruled by Christian law, although there is a heavy influence of Christianity in America, the most powerful nation in the world. Even many Christians think it’s best to have the separation of church and state. But in this nuclear age with WWD's, all it would take to destroy millions of lives is a rogue Muslim state or a small group of militant Muslims who gained access to them.

The evolution of evolution

**In this Salon interview, the renowned physicist Freeman Dyson sketches the three stages of evolution. In the first, genes skipped from cell to cell and evolution was very fast. In the second, the resulting creatures kept the genes to themselves and established species, slowing evolution down. Once humans came along, gene transfer is once again going on, deliberately, and this means evolution will speed up again. He believes this speedup will spur technological progress, especially in biology, that will help us to avert some of the looming problems of our time.

NOTE: This is a small part of an interview in which Dyson also condemns the new atheism. By his own admission he has been wrong before (he advised Crick to do something other than study DNA). I believe he is wrong about atheism, but I agree with most of everything else in this interview.

You write that cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the main driving force of change. What do you mean?

---

This is an idea that I borrowed from Carl Woese, who is a very famous biologist. The idea is that you can divide the history of life into three periods. First, the early period where all genes were freely exchanged between different cells, so that the living world consisted of primitive cells and genes, which are really the same thing as viruses, traveling around exchanged from cell to cell. That's what we call horizontal gene transfer. Evolution was then collective. Anything useful that was invented by one cell could be shared wit h all the others, so evolution went very fast.

---

Sometime about half a billion years later, things changed because the creatures started to become selfish and refused to share their genes with their neighbors. They kept the genes for themselves, and that's what we call the invention of species. A species is a collection of creatures that does not breed outside the species. As soon as life became divided up into species, evolution became Darwinian. It was then competition between species. Each invention only benefited the species that invented it. Everybody else had to compete separately. Evolution then went much slower for a couple of billion years. That's what I call the Darwinian interlude.

---

Now, since humans came along, that has changed again. Now we're back in an epoch when genes c an be horizontally transferred. We learned how to move genes around from one creature to another. That's what we call gene splicing. So humans can easily take genes from one animal, put them into a virus or a bacterium and multiply them into a large population, and then put them back into another creature. You can very easily spread desirable qualities from one species to another. That's now the new era of what I call open-source genetics, an analogy to open-source software in the computer business. It means that genes are shared between species. Species in the end will fade out. They will become merged. I think that's a hopeful future, but it's also going to be dangerous, of course. And all sorts of unintended consequences will no doubt come to plague us. But it seems to be happening anyway.

So, it isn't just burnt out religionists like me!

** After 60+ years of carrying the torch for religion in one form or another, it might not be so remarkable that I would choose to spend my final years as a contented atheist. But new research from The Barna Group, which specializes in studying the religious beliefs and behavior of Americans, and the intersection of faith and culture, shows that the thrill is also gone for most younger Americans. Here are some highlights of the report (via DC)

As the nation’s culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is the declining reputation of Christianity, especially among young Americans. A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.

The study of Christianity’s slipping image is explored in a new book, entitled unChristian, by David Kinnaman, the president of The Barna Group. The study is a result of collaboration between Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons of the Fermi Project.

The study shows that 16- to 29-year-olds exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade, many of the Barna measures of the Christian image have shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people. For instance, a decade ago the vast majority of Americans outside the Christian faith, including young people, felt favorably toward Christianity’s role in society. Currently, however, just 16% of non-Christians in their late teens and twenties said they have a "good impression" of Christianity.

One of the groups hit hardest by the criticism is evangelicals. Such believers have always been viewed with skepticism in the broader culture. However, those negative views are crystallizing and intensifying among young non-Christians. The new study shows that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals. This means that today’s young non-Christians are eight times less likely to experience positive associations toward evangelicals than were non-Christians of the Boomer generation (25%)...

First in a series of "deconversion" stories

** Now that I'm looking for them, I find that many people have had experiences similar to mine, even though I used to believe the religion I practiced was so very different from all the others that there could be no comparison. But theology is theology no matter what the stripe, and once one understands that there is no "theos" then all the "logy" is just academic hair splitting. I will share, from time to time, selected stories that at least remind me of my own, and may serve as a platform for others to appraise what it is they are living and dying for. Here is the beginning of an account by "Brother Crow:"

I was a minister for over 25 years, very serious about thoughtful Christianity, a graduate of Emory University with undergrad study in psychology and grad study in religion/theology. Studied anthropology and mythology along the way, because I was fascinated with origins, and because I had a lingering suspicion even in those days that much of what I believed was probably myth. I was a person who chose to believe in the face of dogged unbelief. I struggled with intellectual concerns with Christianity from the day I was "born again" - but my conversion experience was so emotionally gratifying and gave me such acceptance in a tight-knit community that I chose to turn off or "closet" my reasonable objections and simply believe the unbelievable.

And, that is one of the reasons I actually "deconverted" or came out of the closet...I grew tired, after 25 years - of seeing emotion and acceptance be awarded to the converted for choosing to believe something that has no basis in reality. I could no longer live with my own sense of compromised integrity and intellectual dishonesty.

READ THE REST BY CLICKING HERE

What I Now Believe

** Someone recently asked me to explain “how someone can see what Christian Science is and then unsee it.” What follows is a set of conclusions arrived at over a couple of years of careful investigation of alternatives to the ideas I deeply studied, professed and taught over the course of thirty years.

First let me say that I believe Christian Science makes the best sense of all the religions. But the realization I came to is that the issue isn't which theology is the most correct, but that none of them are. Until recently I had always assumed that there was a divine agent that created and maintains the universe and that having a clear insight of this fact could positively alter events and conditions in my life (aka healing.) But now I do not feel this is correct. Phenomena attributable to this divine agent can be explained in other, more rational and verifiable ways. My departure from Christian Science has to do with its very basis, not certain people or the Church itself. Most of the Christian Scientists I've known are fine people and I'm always happy to count them as friends even though we may not agree on what constitutes ultimate reality. Christian Scientists, like most sincere religionists, are among the nicest people in the world even if they believe their goodness rests on spiritual or divine principle. Also, I have no quarrel with the Church or its administrations, present and past, other than its theology. I do not believe in so-called spiritual healing, again because I feel that these phenomena can be explained in other, more convincing ways. Beyond that, I can no longer believe in the various doctrines of Christianity, including the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the divine nature (or possibly even the existence) of Jesus, and the afterlife, among others. I believe death is the end of an individual's existence and so we should strive to improve ourselves and the world through good deeds, cooperation, kindness, patience and the other virtues often ascribed to Christianity, but which are simply wise ways of behaving that everyone instinctually knows. I also believe that much of conventional health care is useful and should be employed when necessary for the alleviation of physical problems, the maintenance of health and enhanced longevity.

Obviously, this puts me completely outside the belief system, and community, of Christian Science. I have done a lot of reading on the subject, and some of my favorite books are by the DDHH quartet: Dennett, Dawkins,Harris and Hitchens, links to which have been posted here earlier.

• Breaking the Spell - Dennett
• Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Dennett
• The God Delusion - Dawkins
• The End of Faith - Harris
• God is Not Great - Hitchens

There have been many others, but these books were most influential. Very well documented, very well written and very persuasive. I feel freer now than I ever thought possible. Everything is a wonder and fascinating.

Comment on MT from "the nicest atheist"

**If it were conceivable that there be a patron saint of atheism, it would undoubtedly be Dan Dennett. A very humane, brilliant thinker and engaging writer, he gently demolishes the unchallenged assumptions of most religionists, while introducing his readers to a wondrous world view made even more so by its lack of a deity. Here's an excerpt from his latest comment in the Washington Post on the recent revelations of Mother Teresa's silent atheism.

Mother Teresa’s agonies of doubt are surely not all that unusual. What is unusual is that she put them in writing and now they are being revealed to the world, in spite of her explicit wish that they be destroyed. I get mail all the time from religious leaders who admit to me in private that they do not believe in God but think that the best way to continue their lives is to swallow hard and get on with their ministries, concentrating on bringing more good than evil into the lives of their parishioners and those for whom their churches provide care. I would never divulge their names without their consent, but I do wonder: How many millions of priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, nuns and monks around the world are living lives of similar duplicity? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the outing of Mother Teresa inspired a few thousand of them to come out of the closet and acknowledge their atheism! Then it might start being obvious not only that faith in God is not a requirement for morality, but that the loss of faith in God often goads people into living more strenuously helpful lives, as seems to be the case with Mother Teresa. Of course, such honesty carries a price: you have to change your mission in a way Mother Teresa never did. She could have devoted herself more single-mindedly to helping the poor instead of trying to convert them. Perhaps it was her guilt at being unable to convert herself that drove her to work so hard to convert others to take her place among the believers.

Books by Dennet that I have read:

• Breaking the Spell (read this twice)
• Darwin's Dangerous Idea
• Freedom Evolves
• Consciousness Explained (Still reading)

Free ticket to hell

** I have to go to Boston. I'm allergic to Boston. Because of its chaotic layout, noise and bad memories, there are only three or four people I'd actually try to connect with if I were forced to go there. One of them is George Kay, the intellectual dentist, inventor, world traveler and general bon vivant with whom I have spent many actually enjoyable hours when I lived there. (Also thousands of dollars and some pain.) It's choosing to let George do it that promises to make my Bosto-phobia all worthwhile.

And all because I have a free ticket on United.

How I came to have a free ticket on United is for another story, another time. Upshot for this entry is that I am betting this ticket on the skin of my teeth. Translation: there's a chance that George can resolve a dental issue that could cost me thousands if done in CA. I can also use the time between my Thursday appointment and my Tuesday departure to connect with that handful of people. But more deliciously, to hang out with my favorite daughter, Clare, who lives in Maine, a pleasant "Downeaster" train ride away.

So I've booked the redeye out of SFO, flight 180 scheduled to depart 11:50PM, arriving at 8:22 the next morning - non stop 5-hr trip. I hate cross country flights - and all airline travel actually – because of the security circus everywhere, the stockyard ambiance and the financial crises that have forced the carriers to downgrade the whole experience and openly not give a shit. But I've been blessed with an iPod that allows me to listen to audio books, and I had a couple that have engrossed me of late ("Pattern Recognition" and "Spook Country" by William Gibson). So in meticulous preparation for the ordeal I had loaded up the iPod with the books, made disc copies of the files, added some chatter-blocker white noise in case the crying baby (inevitable when I'm traveling) gets too distracting and I want to sleep.

13E was the seat assigned to me - a middle seat. The worst for a 5-hr night flight. So I decide to get to the airport waaay early - like around 8:15 – so I could get the seat changed. I even put in for a first class upgrade, using miles, in case coach was full.

Well, they don't allow seat changes until one hour before the flight. OK, I'll just go have a drink and call Dick to see how's he's recovering from his shoulder surgery. Did that. Got back to the departure lounge and pulled out the iPod to listen to the five hours I have left on "Pattern Recognition."

And that's when I realize I am in some kind of Kafka-MarxBrothers movie.

Clicking on "AudioBooks" on the iPod got me a completely blank screen. In fact, none of my music was there either, including the chatter-blocker. What the hell? After countless retries, reinstallations, re-syncings, re-everythings trying to get my life-saving audio back I place a call to audible.com. Kafka replies: "we're not going to help you because we're not open. "

I lose it. Call Joan to spoil her evening with a rant whose expletive-laced outbursts must be louder than I think because I notice several people in the lounge looking at me - some with sympathetic expressions, others with "oh crap, crazy man on board" looks.

Ticket agents appear at the desk. I'm first in line - my rant post. One tells me there are absolutely no aisle or window seats. Furthermore, they've changed the equipment and this plane is smaller than the one originally scheduled so now everything is oversubscribed. Nope, nothing in first class either - they're overbooked there by two and everyone has checked in.

I go back to my seat and fume silently for the next half hour. Boarding - last group of course. Plane jammed. Ahead of me is a family of 5. Two restless chattering little girls and a 7- or 8-month old babe in arms. I hear the mom deliver another Kafka line to one of the girls: "Honey just watch for row 13."

Joan had cautioned me to grab a blanket and pillow because planes can get cold overnight. So I arrive at lucky row 13 looking like a refugee – or someone checking into a prison cell. I have a blanket and TWO pillows in addition to my inflatable, all in my arms, with a heavy backpack in one hand. I can get into my middle seat because the aisle passenger hasn't arrived yet. But I've got this pile of blankets and pillows on my lap and no place to put anything. The blindfolded (why didn't I think of that?) MIT student on my right wants to sleep so that's OK - but I don't want to wake her by squirming around. And besides, there's really no place to put the pile. In addition, I've worn a t-shirt under a long-sleeved heavy shirt with two pockets, which I like to have handy when I travel so I can stuff iPods, cell phones, etc. And because Clare had said it would be "coolish" in Maine I am also wearing my Sleeping Bear Lake hooded parka. The only thing coming out of the overhead nozzle is ... breath. Weak, warmish breath. Like a failing convection oven.

Before I can figure out what to do with my pile, my aisle seat mate arrives. As she bends over to put her bag on the floor, water pours from the glass she's carrying - onto my left sleeve. Inwardly, I start to laugh - no I mean laff - a kind of maniacal mental paroxysm as it sinks in that I am totally screwed the rest of this trip.

Confirmation - and another laff riot - comes a few minutes later. The plane has been towed out to the taxi-way. As we sit there, the sound of a dog being whipped a dozen or so times tears up though the floorboards. ERRRROWWWWEEEE! Then silence. Then Kaptain Kafka again: "This is your captain. You may have noticed us trying to start the left engine. It won't start. So we're going to wait until they tow us back to the gate. You see, the engine is started with compressed air, using the same compressor that provides our air-conditioning. [TMI, and besides, what air conditioning?] We're going to detach that compressor and have an external emergency starter try to get the engine going. It'll be just a few more minutes."

Yeah, sure.

Actually it is. A few more whipped dogs and then the roar of the engine. The baby doesn't like it. But we're off. I decide to try to become very small in my seat - scrunch up and just see if I will doze off. Lean forward a bit - a good angle, propped on my lap-full of cloth.

BLAM!

Guy in seat ahead launches the back of it into my forehead.

Pathetic giggle.

Movie time. Little 9-inch flat screens drop down. They're showing "Shrek" tonight. Boring.

Lady on left squirming. I offer her one of my pillows. Gives me an idea. I offload the blanket by dropping it on the floor between my legs. Another layer gone.

I decide to set my watch to eastern time. But I don't want to turn on the overhead light for fear my two blindfolded seat-mates will awake. But the watch has a backlight. Three seconds to figure out what the other 3 buttons do. Ten minutes of that and I decide to go with the default Pacific time, plus or minus whatever changed while I fiddled with it.

By now the baby has mercifully settled down and I decide to try the on board audio system. I had remembered to bring my ear-muff headset with the big, pouffy cushions that will shut out ambient noises. Oh, and I've already plugged my ears with expanding foam. The only trouble with this system is that my ears sweat after a while, compounded by the airplane breath above me.

On United flights you get to listen to the radio transmissions going on in the cockpit on Channel 9. The captain has told us we could do that if we just wanted to relax. This is definitely not the relaxation channel. (Nothing much this time, but I'll never forget an earlier flight when I heard the word you don't want to hear on that channel: "OOPS!" Tower had instructed pilot to turn right at a certain intersection of taxi-ways. As he got there the pilot said, "You mean left, don't you?" Tower: "Oops, yeah.")

Everything else on the audio menu unappetizing, not what I want to hear when needing to become unconscious. Even the classical channel is "Pops!" Too up for this kind of flight. Also, the selections are too short, which gives the hyper DJ a chance to plug Sirius radio, this United channel and jabber from the liner notes of the recordings he's spinning. I unplug, and take off the headphones. It's kinda quiet at last. And a bit cooler, at least around my ears. I take out the orange foam plugs. Hmmmm...people, including baby ones, are asleep.

I am confined to staring straight ahead. And besides, if I had been interested in Shrek I couldn't see it no matter what I did. Though there is a screen above and just 2.5 feet in front of me, it's a LCD so the viewing angle turns everything dark and negative (not what the makers of Shrek had in mind, I'm sure). Normally, I could watch the screen three rows ahead, but the guy in front of me is about 8 feet tall, so his head comes between me and the screen. Which would be OK as long as he sits still. Which he does. But he's wearing outsize pouffy headphones, like mine, so his head is now effectively about a foot wide.

I've taken two melatonin but I'm still not sleepy. Must be all the excitement. Eventually, another hour drags by and another movie starts up. From the few opening scenes, this one looks interesting. I can't tell which movie it is because the titles are too small to read from ten feet away. But it stars Anthony Hopkins, appropriate companion on this flight. A murder mystery definitely. I don my headgear and tune to channel 1, the movie sound channel.

Enter, Franz Kafka, projectionist. No one on the flight crews seems to have noticed that the tape has been damaged so that not only does a horizontal line dribble slowly down the screen, but the sound track cuts out EVERY FIVE SECONDS. Not easy to follow dialog, you think? I jiggle the headphone plug but no change. I sneak onto my right seat mate's jack and change to channel 1. She stirs. Audio interruptus as before.

Some time later, seat-mate to the left gets up to pee. I take the opportunity to do the same - and exercise my legs. I hang around in the rear galley and start to do toe lifts and other calf stretches. A guy comes in with a baby bottle and asks to have it filled. So I have to get out of the way. After I come out of the can I saunter down the aisle (on therapeutic tiptoe) to my seat, where seat mate is standing waiting for me. Guy in front still has his seat reclined so it's one of those Twister moves to get re-installed into my cage. But at least I've been able to take off the goddam parka and shirt and wet down my head to get the momentary cooling effect of evaporation. Aisle seat sighs. I say: "It's not easy." She agrees and curls up with her/my extra pillow. She's a lot shorter than I so bends quite easily to put her head on the tray table - and the guy in front of her isn't taking target practice on her head.

Another hour goes by and something must have happened to my brain because I don't remember anything about it. I may have slept or blacked out with boredom. When I look out one of the windows on the other side of the plane I see creamsicle sky and know that we're heading into dawn.

Eventually, we land and we're only 15 minutes late. No problem because I've got nowhere to go yet. I head into the handicap stall of the men's room to change out of my sweat pants and t-shirt and put on something more suitable to be seen in in daylight. While I'm in the luxurious quarters of the handicap stall I think about the crazy night I've just had, when just about anything wrong that could happen has happened. I hear a noise outside the stall. I laff again and think: bring it on, baby! I just KNOW it's some guy in a wheelchair or crutches, rocking back and forth or side-to-side, waiting to get in – and give me the evil eye as I slink out. I never see anyone in these spacious stalls but I know this will be just another scene in my long nightmare. And though I know I'll never see him again, I still care - a little - but plan to avert my gaze as I drag my suitcase and backpack and criminal ass out of there. Surprise: no handicapped guy there. Just me playing Kafka.

Mother Teresa: atheist

** Mother Teresa’s revelations have thrown fresh fuel on the debate between atheism and theism. In the following excerpt from the TV program, Hardball, Chris Matthews tries to moderate a debate between atheist Christopher Hitches and theist Bill Donohue. The following excerpts are taken from the blog of Jason Rosenhouse, and include his comments.

Hitchens and Donohue on Hardball

Category: Religion
Posted on: August 29, 2007 6:04 PM, by Jason Rosenhouse

God is Not Great author Christopher Hitchens and Catholic League president Bill Donohue showed up on Hardball yesterday to mull over the issues raised by the Time article. I'd write some commentary, but some things simply defy comment. I have taken the liberty of putting certain choice nuggets in bold:

MATTHEWS: I want to go to Christopher Hitchens. Christopher, you have been tough. You say this is a profound revelation, that this woman did not believe.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, AUTHOR, “GOD IS NOT GREAT”: Yes, and a very moving one, actually, and a very honest one, I have to add. She tried her best to believe. Her atheism was not like mine. I can't believe it and I am glad to think that it is not true, that there is a dictator in the heavens. So the fact that there is no evidence for it pleases me. She really wished it was true. She tried to live her life as if it was true.

She failed. And she was encouraged by cynical old men to carry on doing so because she was a great marketing tool for her church, and I think that they should answer for what they did to her and what they have been doing to us. I think it has been fraud and exploitation yet again.

MATTHEWS: Bill Donohue, your reaction?

BILL DONOHUE, THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE: This is laughable. I suppose next week we will find that Mother Teresa considered herself to be a sinner as well. The fact of the matter is the Vatican is standing behind this book. If this is such an embarrassment to the Catholic church, why in the world is the Vatican proud of this book? I am proud of it too. You have to understand, give me a quick anecdote--when she was in the United States, a professor came up to her and said, are you married?

Mother Teresa said, yes. I am married to a spouse who sometimes makes it difficult for me to smile. His name is Jesus. And that's because he is very demanding.

Look, any person of faith understands what I have just said, but if you are a dogmatic atheist, then you would have a very difficult time trying to understand this. Quite frankly, I'm not sure if I have enough time to educate Mr. Hitchens.

HITCHENS: I agree. That does sound like white noise, nonsense, to me, and I think to almost everyone else. If I told you last month--actually, you probably do know that this. All these letters were published in 2002. but if I told you in 2001 that Mother Teresa did not believe that Jesus was present in the Eucharist and couldn't feel--

DONOHUE: She never said that.

HITCHENS: Yes, she did. And father can tell you, has been very clever and honest in saying so, could not feel it in her heart, could feel it in the real presence, so called, of mass of the Eucharist. If I told you that, you would accuse me of slandering your so-called faith.

DONOHUE: Let me ask you this, Christopher, a number of years ago you wrote the thing against her, five and a half inches by eight and a half inches long, 98 pages, not a single endnote, not a single footnote, not a single citation. I have told you before, I'm going to tell you it again tonight, buddy, if you handed that in to me in an undergraduate class, you would get an F.

HITCHENS: You are not likely to be anybody's professor.

DONOHUE: When you make a serious charge against a--an Englishman has to be quiet when an Irishman talks. When you make a serious charge against a serious person, a public person like Mother Teresa, and you have no evidence, whatsoever, what in the world do you expect? You have to get an F.

HITCHENS: This is well below the F level. In my book I say that she took money from the Duvalier family in Haiti, not denied. She took money from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan in exchange for an olive wood crucifix. Not denied.

None of the factual assertions made in my book have ever been challenged. It actually got very respectable views in the Catholic press. For this reason, Mr. Donohue--the reason I got respectful reviews in the Catholic press was this; as Lord McCauley (ph) once brilliantly put it, the great strength of the Catholic Church used to be that it knew how to discipline fanatics and enthusiasts and zealots. It knew how to keep under control people who were too hungry, too fanatical.

Because of the opportunist chance that Mother Teresa offered them for publicity, they failed to restrain someone who really should have been seeking proper help that she never got. Instead, they exploited her to the very end and even gave her an exorcism, as you know. The archbishop of Calcutta has admitted it. He even had to give her an exorcism in 1997, because they had so much despair of her state of mind. It's a cruel exploitation of a simple and honest woman.

DONOHUE: At the end of the day, this is a woman who received 124 awards, who set up hospitals for AIDS patients.

(CROSS TALK)

DONOHUE: Listen--

MATTHEWS: Bill needs some time here. Bill, take 30 seconds.

(CROSS TALK)

MATTHEWS: Christopher, we have to give him 30 seconds, please.

DONOHUE: She set up hospices, the first one for AIDS victims here in Greenwich Village. She opened up 500 hospitals, hospices, homeless centers, health clinics, orphanages. That is why she is loved all over the world. In India, when they surveyed the people, next to Gandhi, she is regarded as the most revered person.

Now, all the whole world is wrong, and you, with your 98 page book, five and a half by eight and a half inches long--you have no citations. You have no evidence. Who is the world going to believe? Me or you?

HITCHENS: I turned out to be right though, don't I? I do not believe a word of it, and neither did she. I never expected that it would be just the two of us.

(CROSS TALK)

MATTHEWS: Let me end the citation with a citation that is relevant to this discourse, Jesus has a very special love for you, she wrote to someone. But as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and I do not see. I listen and I do not hear. The tongue moves in prayer, but does not speak. I want you to pray for me. Then I let him have a free hand.

So she must believe in something to ask somebody to pray for her or was that just rhetorical, Christopher?

HITCHENS: He was trying and failing to say that his church, in fact, an answer for everything. If you can't believe it, if it all seems to be radically untrue, nonetheless, faith will square that settle for you. She was trying for that. But as we now know, she failed. It can't be done. You can't make people believe in the impossible. All you can do is make people feel very guilty that they can't make themselves believe it.

DONOHUE: The only people that do not have doubts today are dogmatic atheists, people like you, Chris.

The MT life - me and Mother T

**Daniel Dennett in his latest book Breaking the Spell makes the distinction between belief in god and belief in the belief in god. The former accepts the existence of an actual being who controls the universe and with whom one can interact through prayer, worship and obedience to that being’s commands. The latter indicates a frame of mind that holds that it is right, practical or otherwise necessary to profess and/or act as though such a being exists.

It’s obvious that much good has been done by those who profess belief either way. But Mother Teresa appears to be one of those in the latter camp. Her just released journals "Come Be My Light" chronicle deep inner conflicts, many of which were expressed to her superiors or confessors over the course of fifty years.

Some may see her angst as an indication of faith, as does this writer for the Christian Science Monitor:

Mother Teresa may have believed she had no faith, but was not her persistence an act of extreme faith? And is it not faith in something greater than themselves that sustained leaders, such as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. King, as they carried out their missions?

The answer has to be: NO. Faith, according to the Bible, is "the evidence of things not seen." Mother Teresa worked on without evidence. People can persist with actions because they believe the actions are worth the darkness of doubt. Obviously she cared deeply about suffering humanity and tried to do something tangible about it. But none of it indicates faith in the existence of something for which there is no evidence, whether external or internal. The goodness of the work itself supplies enough motivation in people of strong will and deep dedication.

The revelations of Mother Teresa’s lonely journey resonate with some of my own experiences. Though I never accomplished anything on the magnitude of her achievements, I tried to help people who were suffering, and I thought I could best do it through the practice of Christian Science. In that microscopically small community I was regarded as someone who had achieved a certain success. I was a spiritual healing practitioner, a teacher of same, a frequently published writer in the denomination's magazines and websites, and a somewhat popular (in the church community) lecturer on the subject. I was considered to be a person of some deep understanding of that belief system.

I persisted in that belief and work for over thirty years. I was a proponent, defender and exemplar of its truth and effectiveness because I believed it supplied the most reasonable explanation of reality. What I hadn’t realized all that time, however, is that I had never actually questioned the basis of all religions: belief in the existence of a supreme being. This was a belief that went all the way back to my upbringing in the Catholic community. Once I had the opportunity and occasion to reflect on what I had committed a good chunk of my life to, I investigated the subject with the help of Messrs. Dennett, Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, et. al. Over the course of about a year, I saw that the existence of a spiritual dimension and spiritual beings, supreme and otherwise, is entirely unnecessary. While I am happy and satisfied with the world as it now appears to me without the veil of “faith,” probably like Mother Teresa I will die knowing that whatever good I accomplished was in spite of and not because my faith. No hospitals, no clinics, no interesting memoirs - just a nice guy trying to do good while a baseless metaphysics got the credit.

Sam Harris challenges scientists to be scientific about religion

** By now it should be no secret that I am a fan of Sam Harris - even though in my opinion he wanders uncomfortably close to Buddhist spirituality. His book, "The End of Faith," helped pry me away from a lifelong delusion. Yes, it's an angry screed that gets him branded as islamophobic by the ecumenically minded, but he well expresses the pent up frustration of those who have had to live politely under the sway of believers and their institutions.

In this letter to the editor of the prestigious scientific journal Nature, he exhibits the perspicacity and razor sharp tongue that makes him a formidable foe of institutionalized irrationality, and the feeble "tolerance" mentality that coddles it.

---

Scientists should unite against threat from religion

email: author@samharris.org

web: http://www.samharris.org/

Sir

It was genuinely alarming to encounter Ziauddin Sardar's whitewash of Islam in the pages of your journal ('Beyond the troubled relationship' Nature 448, 131–133; 2007). Here, as elsewhere, Nature's coverage of religion has been unfailingly tactful — to the point of obscurantism.

In his Commentary, Sardar seems to accept, at face value, the claim that Islam constitutes an "intrinsically rational world view". Perhaps there are occasions where public intellectuals must proclaim the teachings of Islam to be perfectly in harmony with scientific naturalism. But let us not do so, just yet, in the world's foremost scientific journal.

Under the basic teachings of Islam, the Koran cannot be challenged or contradicted, being the perfect word of the creator of the Universe. To speak of the compatibility of science and Islam in 2007 is rather like speaking of the compatibility of science and Christianity in the year 1633, just as Galileo was being forced, under threat of death, to recant his understanding of the Earth's motion.

An Editorial announcing the publication of Francis Collins's book, The Language of God ('Building bridges' Nature 442, 110; doi:10.1038/442110a 2006) represents another instance of high-minded squeamishness in addressing the incompatibility of faith and reason. Nature praises Collins, a devout Christian, for engaging "with people of faith to explore how science — both in its mode of thought and its results — is consistent with their religious beliefs".

But here is Collins on how he, as a scientist, finally became convinced of the divinity of Jesus Christ: "On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains... the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ."

What does the "mode of thought" displayed by Collins have in common with science? The Language of God should have sparked gasping outrage from the editors at Nature. Instead, they deemed Collins's efforts "moving" and "laudable", commending him for building a "bridge across the social and intellectual divide that exists between most of US academia and the so-called heartlands."

At a time when Muslim doctors and engineers stand accused of attempting atrocities in the expectation of supernatural reward, when the Catholic Church still preaches the sinfulness of condom use in villages devastated by AIDS, when the president of the United States repeatedly vetoes the most promising medical research for religious reasons, much depends on the scientific community presenting a united front against the forces of unreason.

There are bridges and there are gangplanks, and it is the business of journals such as Nature to know the difference.

Right you WERE, Dick!

** No one else could say it better.




https://pol.moveon.org/donate/cheneyvideo.html?r=2879&id=10983-6585567-Ztj_GB

Time and a bandanna

** NOTE: For the past six or seven years, this blog has been mostly about the "current events" that engage my attention, and so it generally presents public issues. But nowadays I am freer to share some important private issues and changes that have been going on in my thinking the past couple of years. To that end, I present this initial entry:

On August 10 I presented four original songs, singing and playing guitar and keyboards at the “Songwriter’s Café,” an event held a couple times a month at Red House in Walnut Creek. It was a slow night as these things go, according to Peter Avery, the Red House coordinator. They usually have six acts, but only five signed up. And of that a couple didn’t even show up. Ryan, the RH host took the first set and paired me with Walty for the second set of four songs each. Walty is a great guitarist and singer who instantly contributed an excellent guitar solo when I happened to muse while singing that this would be a good spot for a nice guitar solo. He asked, “What key?” I told him “C” and he launched right in. It was so good I had him repeat it. This is the wonderful kind of magic that happens during live music that gives me such special joy. Now that this “debut” is over, and I didn’t get de-butted, I hope to become a regular at the Café, which will help me get through my catalog of songs written in the 70s, and may encourage me to write some new ones.

This experience only roughly approximates the public appearances I made over the course of over 30 years as a Christian Scientist, both as a “Reader” in the churches and as a lecturer. The content is decidedly different! So is the audience. In my previous appearances, as well as in over 150 written articles, I’ve only represented that religion, even while trying to rehabilitate its culture with a touch of contemporaneity. This time I'm representing only myself – albeit a self of the 70s. Back then I had considered myself a songwriter and generated a few dozen songs, which were quietly shelved once I became a practitioner and representative of the Christian Science point of view. There’s nothing specifically against artistic expression in that system, but the more public you become – as a practitioner, teacher, writer, lecturer, etc – the more constrained you can feel about displaying emotion, doubt, ambivalence, or anything too "personal." You’re supposed to represent the absolute and fixed verities, which admit of none of that “human” roughness.

I was 36 when I first thought of myself as a Christian Scientist. Since 2005 – and now that I think about it, probably before – I have evolved away from that set of beliefs and have found myself mentally (but certainly not physically!) back to where I might have been if that 30-year detour hadn't happened. I'm creatively alive again, if not entirely free of the kinds of problems that at the time probably induced me to take up a religion that eschewed the kind of world view that would be characterized as “sensual.” For example, the opening line of the first song I performed at Red House went:

Here I sit smoking my last cigarette, it’s been a long, low night and it ain’t over yet.

I don’t smoke anymore, not cigarettes anyway, but I’ve had plenty of long, low nights in the past 30 years. The difference this time is that I'm not ashamed to admit it in public, since I don’t consider myself an example of the kind of idealized human being that is supposed to result from believing in the absolute perfection of the true “spiritual man." Once in a while, when confronted by something scary, I do detect a mental twitch that in the past would have been called “prayer,” a desire to turn to some Agent above and beyond the present challenging situation that could lift me out of trouble. It’s the “skyhook” mentality that Dennett so clearly demolishes in “Breaking the Spell.” I now believe in what he calls, in “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, “cranes,” as opposed to skyhooks – in other words, progress built step by little step, adding to work that has already been done. The way evolution does it.

It’s what led me to my present state – a label for which still eludes me. I am not an “atheist” in the narrow sense of someone who eschews the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god. I eschew all divine agents. So "non-theist" might better characterize me. But that states it negatively. Maybe better would be “naturalistic humanist.” But that sounds overblown. And the term "Bright" seems a bit contrived, although I would align with their description of a person with:

• a naturalistic worldview
• free of supernatural and mystical elements
• ethics and actions based on a naturalistic world view

What I want to make clear is that I am not on some kind of “spiritual quest,” not finding my way back to god by some other “path.” I think of myself as unwrapping possibilities. Yes, self-discovery, but not in the sense of ascending toward an already set identity – especially not one set by a “Creator.” It’s more like just fooling around. For example, I used to love to watch Avner Eisnberg, a clown/mime, standing on a stage with no other prop than a bandanna around his neck. He would just stand there and look around until he eventually found the bandanna and started fooling with it, twisting it into various shapes, stretching, waving, pulling, throwing it and so forth until he was thoroughly occupied with it and had made the most of it. Just fooling around, playing with the possibilities in the here and now – that’s more like what I'm doing these days. My work now represents no one else but me, advances no cause but to unfold the joys of existence. Even then it’s work, and sometimes difficult work – like preparing to get up on stage and singing. It takes a lot of time, and I go through a lot of emotions and tension. But in the end, it’s over and it is what it is and that’s enough.

I heard Steve Shapiro speak once on the subject of “goal-free” living. That’s probably what I am doing these days. I have no goal, lead no movement, pick no fights, and bear only a grudge or two – the pain of which is receding more every day. And yet I feel open to explain to anyone what I am discovering since breaking free of the spell that there is something more than what exists here and now, or what can come into existence by just fooling around with it. This is sufficient. Just give me time and a bandanna, especially time.

Out of the closet

** A Borders bookstore has just set up a free-standing display on what they're calling "atheism." I've read all but the Joshi book. They have been instrumental in guiding me away from a life-long delusion.

via Pharyngula

SiCKO - Just See It

** I say I want a revolution - get everyone you know to see it. And then start clamoring for fundamental change in this country. Really.

CLICK HEREfor info.

Freakonomics in Nigeria

** Can peace and the free machete be far behind?

From Al Jazeera

Machete prices chopped in Nigeria

The price of machetes has halved in Nigeria since the end of general elections after a fall in demand for thugs sponsored by politicians, state-owned News Agency of Nigeria said.

The NAN survey found that a good quality machete in the northeastern state of Gombe was now selling for 400 naira ($3) as against 800 naira before the elections.

"A price survey on machetes, which served as a popular weapon among political thugs in the state, indicated ... a drop in the price of the implement," NAN reported.

Machetes are primarily used as a tool for farming in Nigeria but they are also popular among political gangsters.

Usman Masi, a trader quoted by NAN, said: "Before the conduct of the general elections, I was selling a minimum of seven machetes daily but can hardly sell one a day now."

Africa's most populous country returned to civilian rule in 1999 after three decades of almost continuous army rule. Violence remains a feature of politics, especially during the build-up to elections.

Olbermann to Bush/Cheney: RESIGN DAMMIT!

** I used to think that we could accomplish more by being meek and patient. But that just encourages the scoundrels. There needs to be more intelligent screamers like Keith Olbermann to keep the nation's attention on the truth and not on the shifting shell game that has become the new form of governance in this country. THE PRESIDENT HAS NO CLOTHES!!

clipped from www.alternet.org

Olbermann: "Mr. Bush, You've ceased to be the President" [VIDEO]
Posted by Adam Howard at 8:00 PM on July 3, 2007.
In an edition of his "Special Comment", Keith Olbermann pleads with Bush and Cheney to do the noble thing and resign, since they're incapable of putting partisan politics aside.

Besides characteristically obliterating the Bush Administration verbally, Olbermann makes a key distinction. We the people of the United States are always forced to accept and live with and even in some cases support presidents who don't represent our own political beliefs or party. Our presidents should be able to do the same for us, but instead Bush has allowed partisan politics to invade literally every aspect of what he does. Even Richard Nixon had the decency to resign for the good of the country but Bush has never, ever, put the country ahead of his cronies, pet projects and ego. Check out the video to your right to hear more of Olbermann's special comment of the Libby commutation, the possibility of impeachment and the parallels to Richard Nixon.

VIEW VIDEO

In defense of "witchcraft"

Sam Harris craftily turns his critics' arguments on themselves in this entry from his blog on The Huffington Post. He exposes the bland and ludicrous assumption that religion has a basis in reality, and that delusions are on an equal plane with facts just because they are ancient and widespread, and are promulgated by revered "authorities."

In Defense of Witchcraft)
Posted June 26, 2007 | 03:40 PM (EST)

Imagine that the year is 1507, and life is difficult. Crops fail, good people suffer instantaneous and horrifying turns of bad luck, and even the children of royalty regularly die before they have taken their first steps. As it turns out, everyone understands the cause of these calamities: it is witchcraft. Not all witchcraft is at fault, of course -- there are "white" witches who use their powers to heal -- but there is no question that some witches have formed an alliance with the Devil. Happily, the Church has produced many learned and energetic men who are equal to this challenge, and each year hundreds of women are put to death for casting spells upon their innocent neighbors.

Imagine being among the tiny percentage of people -- the 5 percent, or 10 percent at most -- who think that a belief in witchcraft is nothing more than a malignant fantasy. Imagine writing a book arguing that magic spells do no real work in the world, that the confessions of bad witches are delusional or coerced, that the claims of good witches are self-serving and unempirical. You argue further that a belief in magic offers false hope of benefits that are best sought elsewhere, like from scientific medicine, and lays the ground for false accusations of imaginary crimes, leading to the misery and death of innocent people. If your name is Sam Harris, you may produce two fatuous volumes entitled The End of Magic and Letter to a Wiccan Nation. Daniel Dennett would then grapple helplessly with the origins of sorcery in his aptly named, Breaking the Spell. Richard Dawkins -- whose bias against witches, warlocks, and even alchemists has long been known -- will follow these books with an arrogant screed entitled, The Witch Delusion. And finally Christopher Hitchens will deliver a poisonous eructation at book-length in The Devil is Not Great.

What sort of criticism would these misguided authors likely encounter? In the following essay, I present excerpts from actual reviews of recent atheist bestsellers, replacing terms like "religion," "God," and "atheist" with terms like "witchcraft," "the Devil," and "skeptic." Observe how much intellectual progress we have made in the last five hundred years:

Complete article

Mark Twain's War Prayer

His family begged him not to publish it, his friends advised him to bury it, and his publisher rejected it, thinking it too inflammatory for the times. Twain agreed, but instructed that it be published after his death, saying famously: "None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth."

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Mike Gravel's honesty - shocking and refreshing

Watch the video

A Tenet of Disbelief

** George Tenet's new book kicks back at Cheney/Bush for blaming the Iraq war on his "slam dunk" remark. (See reactions at end)

WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

Complete article here, but may require subscription.

COMMENTARIES
Arianna Huffington: Why didn't he just resign?
From former colleagues at the CIA

The fall of Tom Friedman - to me

**I must confess I have been a fan of Tom Friedman for many years. I read both The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The Earth is Flat and thought they were both insightful and prescient about the new world order powered primarily by the internet and technology. I had casually accepted the premise that it would be a good thing for the Middle East to become democratic. Shame on me. It's easy to assume that what one is used to is easily accepted by people who don't share your background or preferences. But in recent months I've come across commentaries about Friedman that suggest that he isn't the visionary I thought he was. His unqualified promotion of "globalism" seems to ignore the real human costs in favor of unrestrained corporate expansion. The following critique by "Hunter" at dailykos.com strikes me as perceptive and is certainly thought-provoking. But judge for yourself:

Think Progress presents the comedy stylings of Iraq War advocate Tom Friedman:

FRIEDMAN: I’m really sorry. Next time — Next time Ishwar [caller], I promise, I really promise, I’ll be a better liberal. I’ll not in any way support any effort to bring democracy to a country ruled by an oil-backed tyranny. I promise I will never do that again. I promise I’ll be a better liberal. I will view the prospect of Arabs forging a democracy as utterly impossible. They’re incapable of democracy. I agree with you on that now.

Estimates put the number of Iraqi dead above half a million people. Even the most conservative (cough) estimates confess the number to be in the multiple tens of thousands.

That's more people than Thomas Friedman will ever shake hands with in his entire life. That's more people than he will ever exchange direct eye contact with. That's more people than will ever serve him a drink or take his plate away in every speaking arrangement he's ever done and billed for. And every six months (or "Friedman Unit") the number of dead again increases by five figures.

They're dead because Thomas Friedman and people like him thought they had a great idea, and wouldn't listen to any of the experts telling them they were wrong. He was convinced that reforming the Middle East via American military attack would be a brilliant and necessary strategy, convinced by his own goddamn notions of what the Middle East should look like and how many bullets it would take to get it there.

And now he hides behind the notion that the only problem, in all of this, was that the damn liberals wouldn't clap hard enough for the transparently puerile "plan". He doesn't have a problem with any of it, except for the criticism he personally gets as a result of the chaos. No, the whole problem was either that the damn Arabs didn't sufficiently greet us as liberators and get on with reshaping their country according to his plan, or that the liberals had the audacity to point out that his "plan" was idiotic.

What does a naturalist do with "a moment of silence?"

** A thoughtful comment on the Virginia Tech shootings by DagoodS:

Out of respect for the variety of beliefs, we will hear requests for “a moment of silence.” A politically correct notion to allow people to pray to their particular God, or reflect on what has happened. Infuriatingly, I have already seen complaints that a “moment of silence” is a useless acronym, as “silence” does nothing to help.

Yet, in some light, that is true. What benefit does it have for a grieving parent whether I take a moment from my schedule and set it aside just to think about what they experienced? Will this take away an ounce of their grief? Will they gain a gram of comfort, merely because I stopped typing for 60 seconds and reflect? What do I, as a naturalist, think about in that moment of silence?

Equally--will prayer help, either? I am not trying to diminish the effect of prayer, or bring out some statistical study as to whether it helps/does not help. But if there was a God that is so actively involved in the day-to-day events of planet earth that it would modify its intention at the request of a single human—such a God is well aware of yesterday’s tragedies in Virginia, Michigan and around the world. The harsh reality is that a person giving a five minute prayer from Topeka, Kansas will not give new insight to God that people elsewhere need comforting.

The moment of silence; the hour of prayer is primarily for us. It benefits us. It is a comfort for us. Perhaps, in small measure, it will ease some of the burden of those struck hardest, simply to know the rest of the world is taking time of their busy schedule to come together as humans and say two simple words, “We know.” Clearly we have not all experienced the same pain, nor have many of us lost children at such a young age. But we have all had tragedies—friends die, loved ones go astray, relatives become sick and pass away. While we may not ever experience the tremendous amount of agony others are experiencing today, we can share in a small portion, realizing that we have had miseries, and may in the future.

When we might want others to pause for a moment and say, “We know.”

Therefore, I will take time out of my schedule and observe a designated moment of silence. A moment to simply say, “I know.” And within that moment vow to do the best I can to alleviate the pain I see in the world. The pains from yesterday are too large, and too far away for me to help. However there are plenty nearby that I can reduce.

I know that may be of no use to those affected by yesterday. But as a human, it is the best I can offer today.

Doubt and Uncertainty: "It doesn't frighten me"

**I used to think the most important thing in life is finding "ultimates," the absolute truth - as though there's a hidden world that we can crack into and thereby get the answers to all our doubts and fears, and somehow be relieved and happy forever after. Though I tried to live that way a long time, I must also admit that I am an inveterate explorer who accepts no limits on what should be explored. I don't even need to know what's at the end of the line - the journey itself is worth it. In recent years I've come to accept this state of uncertainty and realize that though it can sometimes be stressful, I am not really afraid of being "lost." I know that as long as I'm conscious I'll just work with whatever I have at hand and try to understand it, or at least do something interesting with it.

Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research in quantum electrodynamics. He was also a raconteur, artist, bongo player and safe cracker. A collection of his short works, "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out," is a constant source of inspiration for me - and I've quoted from it frequently in this blog. Here's another one about "Doubt and Uncertainty." I don't have Feynman's brain but I have at least a small portion of his spirit:

People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not, I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover...

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.

Saint George?

**Not sure this actually happened, but it sure is funny - and at least 99% factual.

President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Episcopal Church
outside Washington as part of his campaign to restore his poll
standings.

Bush's campaign manager made a visit to the Bishop, and said to him,
"We've been getting a lot of bad publicity because of the president's
position on stem cell research, the Iraq war, Katrina, and the like.
We'd gladly make a contribution to the church of $100,000 if during
your sermon you'd say the President is a saint."

The Bishop thought it over for a few moments and finally said, "The
Church is in desperate need of funds and I will agree to do it."

Bush showed up for the sermon and the Bishop began:

"I'd like to speak to you all this morning about our President.
George Bush is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence weasel.

He took the tragedy of September 11 and used it to frighten and
manipulate the American people. He lied about weapons of mass
destruction and invaded Iraq for oil and money, causing the deaths of
tens of thousands and making the United States the most hated country
on Earth.

"He appointed cronies to positions of power and influence, leading to
widespread death and destruction during Hurricane Katrina. He awarded
contracts and tax cuts to his rich friends so that we now have more
poverty in this country, and a greater gap between rich and poor, than
we've had since the Depression. He instituted illegal wiretaps when
getting a warrant from a secret court would have been a mere
administrative detail, had his henchmen lie to Congress about it, then
claimed he is above the law.

"He has headed the most corrupt, bribe-inducing political party since
Teapot Dome. The national surplus has turned into a staggering
national debt of 7.6 trillion dollars, gas prices are up 85%, and
vital research into global warming and stem cells is stopped cold
because he's afraid to lose votes from some religious kooks.

"He is the worst example of a true Christian I've ever known.

But compared to Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, George Bush is a saint."

(Thanks to Monty Gaither in Arizona for this)

Musings on music

**An update for myself in the future and for anyone who cares:

In September 2006 I took part in a poetry workshop at Berkeley led by Richard Silberg, did ten weeks there and then joined another workshop, led by Kim Addonizio at her home in Oakland. They were both good experiences for different reasons, and forced me to hack out some bits of poetry, meet some interesting fellow poets and give myself a hell of an editing assignment. Most of those poems aren’t ready for even late night time, so they will undergo revisions, rewritings and scrapping before I venture to make them “public” – if this, the most microscopic audience in the world, can be considered “public.” What I consider done for now appear on my poetry site, couldbeverse.

Toward the end of my second poetry workshop I got involved with the RPM Challenge project, about which I’ve blogged here before. This opened up the long-closed gate of my interest in music. I wrote my first song in high school and had it performed at the Spring Concert, probably in 1957 or 1958. I remember being shoved out on the stage to play the piano by Sister Mary Whoever because Dur Daggett, the school genius pianist, was a no-show. Funnily, the song was called “Memories,” but I can hardly remember it now.

Songwriting remained pretty much dormant until long after college, poetry being my muse in the intervening years. Bought my first guitar from a guy at work who had a music store. Paid $40 and it was worth almost every penny. But I started to learn some Bob Dylan and Beatles on it. In 1968 my wife bought me a real guitar, the one I still have, and about which I wrote the poem “Attachments.” Soon after, I began writing songs and that continued for several years into the 1970s, producing dozens until I got religion in 1976 or 1977. Suddenly all that artistic stuff looked crass and unholy compared with the lofty goals and mission I had taken on. So songwriting remained more or less dormant for the next thirty years and the songs, typed or scrawled on yellow paper mostly, lived in the back of the lowest draw of the least used file cabinet. I had also recorded most of them on some reel-to-reel tape machines I owned at various times. I have boxes of these and until February of 2007 hadn’t listened to them. But I still had an old Wollensak kicking around and got it working well enough to listen to some of those songs. That led quickly into the RPM Challenge project.

But my interest in songwriting has flared up and I am involved with music again as in the old days. These days I’m concentrating for the most part on recording some of my oldies, using the wonderful technology available to the layman today. Some of them are just tunes, so now and then I take a crack at writing lyrics to them.

ENTER RED HOUSE

I met John Cunningham at Fitness 19 where I had been working with him as a personal trainer. We discovered our mutual interest in music and began jamming on Friday nights at my place. John laid down awesome lead guitar tracks to two songs I was producing for the RPM project.

Then one day he told me about a place in Walnut Creek, just 8 or 9 miles from here, where guys like us could go and jam. It’s called Red House. We visited it one Saturday and a week later joined. It has been a great experience for me. John and I meet there instead at my place and have a couple hours to jam in a beautifully equipped studio. I made a brief video last Friday, which you can see here.

But the big breakthrough for me has come from playing in a group, something I have always wanted to do, but the logistics posed formidable obstacles – and excuses. Now, with Red House providing a gathering place for musicians I find I’m playing a lot more. Apparently most of the members play blues lead guitar, and there seems to be few keyboard players. There are several “Players Clubs” where members can jam on the Red House stage. Next to guitarists there are several drummers and bass players so there’s always a core rhythm section and people take turns paling a couple songs on stage. I have found myself expanding that rhythm section on keyboards. And the neat part is that I get to sit in on all the sessions! So I’m getting more experience playing, and having the fun of interacting with the other players.

Will this lead to a whole new career? No. Being now of a certain age, I can do this sort of thing for the sheer pleasure of it without the slightest trace of guilt. Being “retired” means not only never having to say “hello Boss,” but not having to defer doing what really resonates for the sake of earning a buck. I didn’t feel this way when I was first let go from my job. I felt I had been cut off from the most satisfying work I’ve every had. It took about a year to realize that I had been handed one huge favor and, useless as it is, I am loving my life.

Where I go from here is completely unknown to me. More of the same, something new or all of the above? No plans other than to stay healthy, appreciate what I have and look for new opportunities.