Carnival of the Godless

Carnival of the Godless Number 129 is up at the Nonreligious Nerd.

There is no Way I Could Make This Up

This is from Politico (but I found it via Crooks & Liars):

Red States Erik Erickson does not like the idea that there are cracks in the conservative facade.  He really does not like that idea that Republicans are actually objecting to the dreck spilling from the mouths of such ‘main-stream’ conservatives as Limbaugh, Beck and Cheney (both, I presume). 

Fear of an Idea Redux

I am, I must admit, afraid:  I fear disability, accident, death, normal things.  I fear natural occurrences which happen randomly to all humans (and all animals and plants but that’s somewhat outside my bailiwick).  I know that I will die — that does not actually frighten me.  Well, death doesn’t.  Dying does.  I don’t fear the idea of death.  I fear the actual death itself.

Many (not all) of the Christians I know, or have known, though, have a whole new level of fear:  fear of ideas (I guest blogged this almost  a year-and-a-half ago at VJack’s Atheist Revolution (but I am not rewriting that blog, just revisiting the same idea from a different angle)).  Why would true believer Christians fear ideas?

Why Do Authoritarians Show Up In Authority Positions?

When I was in high school, I had some odd friends.  Actually, considering how odd I was (and still am), maybe they were pretty normal compared to me.  One of my friends was a kid with whom I carpooled my senior year while taking calculus (the class started an hour before regular classes).

His family belonged to an independent Bible church (which, I guess, differentiates it from those independent “Gone With the Wind” churches).  I picked him up early one morning, and I remember walking into the kitchen (I had been there enough that I was no longer company and, according to his mother, I no longer needed to knock) and being quite surprised. 

A Trip With (((Wife)))

Living with (((Wife))) is a trip.  Sometimes, however, we actually get to go on a trip.  Our days off clash.  The price of gas is up.  Tuition for (((Boy))) is up.  (((Girl))) wants clothes and shoes.  And shoes.  Did I mention shoes?  Today, thanks to Columbus Day, we shared a day off and, thanks to burning trees in Oregon, we could afford a day trip.

Those Who Live In Glass Houses . . . .

A phrase I heard quite often as a child was, “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”  Of course, being a kid, I figured it had to do with one of the times (or all of the times) I put a baseball (or a rock) through a window.  As I matured (yes, I really did!), I came to understand it was a modernized version of John 8:7:

So when they continued asking him [to stone the woman to death], he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

When dealing with the modern Republican party, I wonder whether any of McCain’s seven or eight houses have any windows left unbroken.

An Overheard Conversation

(((Wife))) and I had some business to take care of this morning.  To the bank (transfer some dough to (((Boy)))’s account to pay for his back ground checks), the bakery (gluten free cinnamon rolls, cookies, and almond biscotti) and the grocery store.  One of the many nice things about living in a city is choices.  We have three different grocery stores which we frequent;  each one has a different specialty.  Today, we stopped at Sunshine.

Sunshine is an independent and is absolutely huge.  It gives them plenty of shelf space to carry odd items (such as Campbell’s Pepper Pot and Scotch Broth soups).  The store also carries the best ham shanks I’ve ever had.  These aren’t the itty-bitty little hamhocks with a thick skin and a morsel of meat.  The hame shanks at this store are about a pound-and-a-half of meat with two relatively small bones.  Anyway, decided to get the ham shanks because it has gotten cold (a front came through and tonight’s low will be in the mid-40s) so a good bean soup will be delicious.

One minor problem at Sunshine is that, no matter how many people work the deli counter, it’s never enough.  I had ticket 946.  The wall display showed 36.  I knew I had a good wait, so (((Wife))) went off to find cheese (for the manioc rolls to go with the soup), celery, and iced tea jugs.

While waiting, I couldn’t help but notice a family waiting for their turn.  Mom, Dad, and four kids.  I’ve been trying to find a way to describe them without insulting West Virginia (I did live in West Virginia for a while) or Oklahoma, but I can’t.  Their clothing had that overwashed look — not dirty, but faded into a gray sameness which bespoke poverty.  All (except the dad) had gold crosses hanging from their neck by a piece of rough twine.  I have to assume the kids are home schooled as today is Tuesday and it was 10:30am. 

I heard a shout (well, not really a shout, but it rose above the normal background rumble).  Dad turned and swatted a magazine out of the hand of the oldest girl (she looked about 10 to 12).  He then told her, “Pick it up.”  She did.  “Give it to me.”  She did.  “Why are you reading this?”

“Sir.  I was bored, sir,” the girl answered.  (Throughout the conversation, I kept flashing back to basic training.)

“Are you supposed to be reading this?” he asked.

“No, sir.” 

“Are you allowed to read this?”

“No, sir.”

“Is this the good book?”

“No, sir.”

“This will be discussed at home.”

“Yes, sir.”

Their number came up.  Mom bought a pound of American Cheese, two pounds of bologna, and a pound of scrapple.

I sidled over to the bench and glanced at the magazine:  Time.  From three months ago.

I have to wonder.  What books are appropriate in that home?  My guess would be the Bible.  Apparently, this is not all that uncommon.  I also have to wonder (and I am assuming that these kids are being home schooled) whether the education they are recieving will equip them to become productive members of society?  My guess would be no.

I realize I am reading quite a bit into one short conversation.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe the kids are getting a good, well-rounded education based on critical thinking and analysis.  Maybe the Bible is NOT the only book in the house.  Maybe the kids will step out of poverty and into middle-class America.  And maybe giant winged porcupines will fly backwards out of my ass. 

Hey. It could happen, right?

Hopelessness and Death: I Have No Problem With It

Had an interesting conversation with a friend over the last few weeks regarding atheism and death.  His comments (condensed version here (and he agrees with my condensed version)) echo what I have read on the internet:  “With no eternal life, you must feel hopeless.  If you aren’t living your life for God, what’s the point?”  I’m not going to repeat the entire conversation (I don’t think I can even remember the whole conversation), but I am going to riff off of it.

Four points in those two short sentences:

1.  “With no eternal life.”

I am now 42 years old (okay, plus 8 months).  Everything that happened before January, 1966, is before my time.  I expect to live another 30 to 50 years (longer, hopefully).  Everything that happens after my death is after my time. 

Eternity is infinite time, a duration of time without beginning or end.  Given that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old, and the earth is about 4.54 billion years, that’s a long time.   Humanity evolved to its present form, Homo Sapiens sapiens, around 80 to 100,000 years ago.  Prior to that time, we did not, as a species, exist.  The earliest human burials date to around 35,000 years ago (burials would tend to suggest a belief of an afterlife). Christianity, in a recognizable modern form, is only about 1,700 years old.

Seventeen billion years is a long time.  So is (to a human lifespan) 1,700 years.  But it still is not infinite.  For any human, living in the 21st century of the Common Era, to have a magic eternal life, that human would have to not only predate Christianity, but also predate belief in the afterlife, humanity, mammals, the earth, and the universe.  My friend’s claim to an eternal soul which will live on in heaven brings up an interesting point:  he claims to have already lived an eternity prior to his birth. 

What was he doing all that time?  I would tend to think he was drinking beer (invented about 5,000 years ago) and eating chicken wings (chickens were probably domesticated around 8,000 years ago in Thailand).  The math works if he is a Young Earth Creationist;  but he’s not.  He accepts evolution and, though he confesses to not understanding the math, accepts the Big Bang Theory as an acceptable (and probable) explanation for the beginning of the universe. 

So he has lived an eternity.  But is about my age.  And doesn’t have the wisdom (sorry, X) which an eternity of life before birth could have given him.  He agreed to think about the absurdity of eternal life.

2.  “You must feel hopeless.”

I’ve always found this one of the more interesting theist views about atheists:  that we have no hope.  Theists (and I mean primarily Christians (because that’s who I have the most contact with)) seem to think that, without an afterlife, there is no hope, no point, in life itself. 

So why should belief in an afterlife give hope?  It’s always seemed to me that, given the impossibility of actually following all of the rules in the Bible, Christianity itself is hopeless.  It is a game which is impossible to win.  Stone someone to death for working on God’s day and you seem to run up against ‘Thou shalt not kill.’  Try finding clothing which doesn’t mix threads.  Does the right-wing worship of Ronald Reagan count as a violation of ‘Thou shalt have no gods before me’?

I discussed with him, at length, the impossibility of living up to the standards set forth.  We also discussed the contradictions.  We both agree that the Bible is muddled.  His take on this now:  “The Bible was translated by man, so it has mistakes.”  My take is:  “The Bible was created by man, so it has mistakes.”  I view this as progress.

3.  If you aren’t living your life for God.

 Who actually lives their life for god(s)?  A priest, nun, pastor, hermit, the crazy guy with the signs?  Someone who goes to church daily?  A couple who have decided that ‘be fruitful and multiply’ is the most important teaching?

One of the most useful things my father ever said to me was:  “The key to happiness in life is find something you like to do and then find someone stupid enough to pay you for doing it.”  In America, people really can choose what makes them happy and pursue that happiness.  I love history and have found a job in public history. 

So what about people who are devoting their lives to god(s)?  Dobson enjoys telling people what they can and cannot do, telling people how to vote, telling people who to hate, and he has found a way to do that and get rich.  Many people find happiness in church — it tells them they are the good people, they are the saved, the elect.  Admittedly the payment for all that church time will come later (if at all), but it makes them happy now.

I would submit that people who are (in their own mind) living their life for god(s) are pursuing happiness the same way that I pursue happiness in my history books.  The same way Ric pursues happiness through writing, cats and vermouth.  The same way PhillyChief pursues happiness through sports and art.  The same way the Ordinary Girl pursues happiness through sunrises, and the Exterminator through wordplay and his wife.

People try to do what makes them happy.  A person living their life for god(s) is just as selfish as anyone else on earth.  A minister has found his calling?  Bullshit.  A minister has found an occupation in which he or she is paid for doing something he or she enjoys.

If you are doing something you dislike because you think that it is god(s) plan for you, that you are living your life for god(s), you have my sympathy.  Find something you enjoy and do it.  My friend likes the idea (and he said “I’m good at drinking beer and eating wings.  Who’ll pay me for doing that?).

4.  What’s the point?

As I’m sure most of you know, I am a naturalistic atheist.  If I do not understand a process, I look for the answer in the natural world.  I do not insert god(s) into the gaps of my knowledge.  For me, as for any other life form on the planet, the point of life is simple:  procreate.  Yes, folks, I just said that fucking (or whatever sexual activity creates the young’uns) is the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.

From the smallest prion (which may or may not be alive (last I checked, the jury was still out  on these self-replicating proteins)) to protozoa to plankton to flobberworms to planeria to earthworms to squid to elephants to me, (((Wife))), (((Boy))) and (((Girl))), our biological purpose, the point of our life, is to create the next generation ((((Boy))) and (((Girl))) — it doesn’t have to be (and better not be) right away!).  (((Wife))) and I have already done our duty to the gene pool.  We have inflicted the next generation upon the world.  We can die now.  We are (along with rats, mice and other rodents) the most successful mammals on the planet at procreating.

But humanity has evolved a brain which is able to learn, remember, and plan.  So what is the point of living past my reproductive years (which were artificially limited after (((Girl))))?  My point in living, my goals, are goals which make me happy (see number 3 above). 

I want to leave the world a better place than it was when I arrived.  I know that all I can do is nibble around the edges of the world’s problems — I have no illusions about that.  But through my job, my writing, and my firefighting, I am able to make small, yet useful, improvements to the world as a whole.

My friend still insists that his only goal in life is to make it to heaven.  To him, improvement on earth — better medical care, better food and food storage, clean energy, wliminating poverty – do not matter.  None of these will get him into heaven.  But prayer, attending church, and believing will.

I view his life (and I have told him so) as pointless.  He is willing to ignore the problems of the world, the problems of his neighbors, because it does not help him get to heaven.   I have told him so, and he disagrees.

He lives his life for god(s).  It makes him happy to do so.  Fine.

I view his life as selfish.  He is so wrapped up in trying to get to heaven that he is willing to leave the world worse-off than when he was born.  And he considers atheists selfish because we deny ourselves to god(s).

My friend and I disagree on the basics of reality.  I see a natural world explainable through natural means.  He sees a godly world with natural processes explainable through god-created natural means.  I see atheism as a natural position.  He sees atheism as hopelessness — a living death.  I see his beliefs as absurd and self-contradictory.  He will create excuse after excuse to explain away the contradictions and absurdities.  I view his life as inherently selfish, living his life for the greater glory of god(s).  He views my life as inherently selfish, living my life for immediate pleasure and screwing god(s). Dying scares me, but death does not.  I did not exist before I was born, and will not exist after I die. He is not scared of dying, but I think death scares the shit out of him because the idea of eternity is just so large it intimidates him. 

He is my friend.  I will continue to try to guide him to rationality, reality and naturalism.  He is my friend.  He will continue to try to guide me to a god(s) centred life. 

The only reason it works is that we both have a sense of humour about it.

And They Shall Fail to See Reality

I had an odd upbringing.  I grew up in the National Park Service.  My father has a BS in geology, and spent his career as a Park Ranger.  Any car trip, anywhere throughout the southwest United States, became, for at least part of the journey, a geologic travelogue.

His moving lectures covered erosion processes, faults and earthquakes, volcanism, deposition, and even the evidence of life throught the colours of the rocks.  I learned quickly that, despite the seeming permanence of geologic features, when one looked beyond a human life span, the rocks, mountains, canyons, and arches are impermanent.  And his explanations about uniformitarianism — the idea that the same processes at work today have been at work since the planet was formed — set my imagination free.  I pictured dinosaurs walking through the mudstones.  I saw crocodylians roaming the land.  I saw the past.

Growing up in desert areas, I was fascinated by water (still am (my favourite roads are ones which parallel rivers and creeks)).  I looked forward to the monsoon season of Northern Arizona.  I watched the skies for the thunderheads and tried to calculate the chances of a cloud providing rain and, more important, doing it over me.  I loved the gully-washers and flash floods.  I would imagine a miniature me in a kayak or raft, riding the muddy waves.

I could also watch, on a small scale, how much one storm could change the landscape.  Small rocks moved.  Oxbows formed, or were cut off.  Steep areas moved upstream.  Slow areas became wider as sediment accumulated.

Through my father’s teaching (which never seemed like teaching to me), I was able to make the cognitive adjustment from microgeology to macrogeology.  I could look at the Grand Canyon, or Walnut Canyon, or Titus Canyon, or Canyon de Chelly and see exactly the same processes, just in a larger scale.  And the idea that what I was seeing was billions of years in the making awoke a love for nature which my study of human history never extinguished.

Of course, to a creationist (young-earth variety), those previous paragraphs just prove how deluded and secular I am.  After all, god(s) created the earth and all the heavens in six days, 6,000 years ago.  The earth is designed for us, his greatest creation.  The agricultural belts of China, Europe, and North and South America were created to feed us.  The mountains to give us adventure and wonder.  The seas to feed us.  The arches, buttes, and canyons of the American Southwest to provide beauty.  The Earth exists today as it has always been, as it always will be (of course, there was the great flood, which BLs and YECs use to explain ALL geology (not to mention palaeontology)).

To a YEC, the very idea of Uniformitarianism is anathema.  The idea that the soils in which we grow wheat are a product of the glaciations of the last 10,000 to 100,000 years is heresy.  The thought that mountains are still growing (and the continents are moving) denies the permanence of the deity’s creation.  The idea that god(s) handiwork is impermanent would call into question the Biblical story of creation.

The Biblical literalists, the Young Earth Creationists, fail to see what is happening every day, in every corner of our world.  They deny reality.  Reality does not agree with their faith, so they deny reality.  At Arches National Park in Utah, reality happened on the night of August 4th, 2008.

Arches National Park consists of mesas, buttes and canyons carved into late Triassic (early Jurassic?) sandstones.  The dry, high desert means that erosion happens slower and faster — slower because there is so little rain, faster because, when it does rain, it creates flash floods.  Little vegetation grows, there is little soil, so the rocks are visible.  The action of freezing and thawing, the flash floods, and the wind has created over 2,000 arches (which explains the name of the park, neh?). 

Arches is now one arch short.  Wall Arch, along one of the more popular trails, collapsed (gravity sucks, right?).  To a comitted theist, a Biblical Literalist who believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old, this must be an example of man’s destructiveness, man’s imperfection, as a result of Eve’s decision to listen to a snake and eat an apple.  To a naturalist, one who is willing to comprehend what the evidence shows, is willing to open the mind to reality, the collapse of the arch is a striking example of the reality of geologic processes.

The reality of Uniformitarianism stares us in the face daily.  Every landform that we see will disappear.  Just because it does not happen in our lifetime, does not mean it won’t happen.  The Old Man of the Mountain has already collapsed.  The Grand Canyon will disappear.  Yosemite Valley will fill in as the mountains around it erode.  The geysers of Yellowstone will have a short life. The Great Lakes are filling in as you read this. 

Every landform (other than the continents), including mountains, plains, seas, oceans, lakes, hills, canyons, and waterfalls, will destroyed by the same processes which created them.  And new landforms, just as wonderful, just as original, will be created.  Not through the capricious idiocy of a bronze-age deity, but through the wonders of reality.

Biblical literalists and Young Earth Creationists, may reason find you and may you accept the reality of the world.  Meanwhile, I will continue to watch the world change before my very eyes.  Naturally.

The Skywriter and the Prophet

(((Wife))) went down to Florida for a week to visit her family.  Ahhh.  Florida in July.  Sounds refreshing, eh?  The revolting part is, it was cooler in Florida than it was up here in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Knowing that I am constantly on the lookout for inspiration for my blog, she kept her eyes open.  She saw an American Swallow Tail Kite :

 

 

 

She also saw a sign outside of a church (by the time she allowed her stunned mind to accept what she was reading, she had passed the church without noting the denomination) with the usual message board:  Sunday School at thus-and-such time, service at thus-and-such time, etc.  Down at the bottom, it read, “Steve [somethingorother], Prophet.”  Prophet? 

Now I know that I don’t know everything about all the hundreds of different versions of the one true religion, but Prophet?  Do they mean someone like Warren Jeffs?   I was under the illusion that the early church (say about 300 or so) had declared the age of the prophet over.  After all, if each generation had their own prophet who could invent  (sorry, have revealed to them) new prophecies, new teachings, new rules, then the Christian unity would be fractured.  What kind of church has its own prophet?  Or (vice Chappie) did they just mispell profit?  Maybe Steve is just profitting from the church, not propheting for the church.

She also got to see a skywriter.  The message writ across the beautiful blue skies of central Florida?  “Jesus Loves You.”  She was offended.  Not by the message, that was just the normal fundogelical nonsense which frequently slides, like diarrhea from a sick toddler, from the Chrisian right into the rest of reality.  No.  She was offended by the amount of money being wasted.  Renting an airplane, with the proper equipment to burn oil and leave the proper smudges in the sky, and the pilot, ain’t cheap.  The environmental impact, the amount of fuel used, just drives up prices for the rest of us.  Maybe it was payed for by the same asshat who buys the paint for the people who write religious drivel on the highway overpasses.  Or maybe it was an Hispanic gentleman named Jesus expressing his love for his girlfriend?  That would, to (((Wife)), be a little more palatable.

Does the person paying for the skywriting really believe that they will actually convince a non-believer?  Do they expect the atheist to look up, see the skywriting, and say, “Oh.  Letters in the sky.  A miracle.  Now I believe.  Now I am saved?”  Or is this just an easy way to earn points with God — I witnessed Jesus’ love to hundred’s of thousands of people in one day.   Either way, you gotta wonder at the vaccuousness of the Christian mind.