Saint Cynic

Update

2012-02-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

While St. Cynic will remain closed, I have moved my efforts here: Kane's Eye View. The new blog is much more broad-based, less cynical, and attempts to be more informative.

Take care,
Kane

2011-06-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

It pains me to say that Saint Cynic cannot continue any longer. My life has become far too busy, and my values and perspectives have shifted so radically in the past couple of years that I would be disingenuous to continue posting articles here.

The past 3 years have been quite fun, overall, and I thank you for reading the scattered, sometimes random, scribblings I've set out. Now, though, it is time to aim higher than a blog. It is time to shoot for actual publication. Given that, I need to focus my energy on meeting that goal.

I will keep checking in on your blogs, and this blog will remain up for a while, if only for nostalgia's sake.

Take care,
Kane

World Destruction!

2011-05-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

Happy end of the world everyone! Total annihilation never felt better.

I'm going to go get a drink now. Perhaps toast Harold Camping on his next apocalyptic miscalculation.

Parsing Original Sin P. II

2011-05-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

In part I of this essay, I concluded that I couldn't bring myself to believe the doctrine of original sin. It is contradictory to hold that man is inherently evil, expect that he will be good by accepting the grace of God that his 'evilness' prevents him from receiving, and then consider him condemned for his inability to do the very thing he was predisposed not to be able to do.

From this it is argued that such a contradiction is resolved by God's enabling a person to receive his grace, for such is the nature of grace that it brings about what cannot be accomplished by a person's will. To begin with then, a person is created predisposed against God's grace, but then by God's grace is favourably inclined to God again. It should strike the reader as suspicious that God's initial activity toward his highest creation -- people -- is, as original sin shows, lowly and capricious: he sets the conditions by which to manipulate a person's will while declaring the most extreme results for the outcomes of his own manipulations. That is if a person's original state of separation -- the one that he creates people in -- is not reconciled, that person is condemned eternally to hell. If that same person is enabled by God's grace to reconcile to God, that person is eternally saved.

What is interesting to realise in this scenario is that despite the efforts of apologists to place a person's "eternal address" (Victor Hugo) on their own shoulders, people never had free choice to begin with. For if it is true that people are born in original sin (that is, they have inherited an inclination to sin and evil), the their moral tendencies have already been weighted in a certain direction. So saying, people are not so much freely choosing as they are struggling to beat the odds of a choice already made from them. Thus the reason for Ayn Rand's words:

"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality... Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear the responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he has no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, he is not free."

People are either free or they are not. A is A, and not ~A. If people are free-willing creatures, then original sin is a damnable doctrine because it is unapologetically damaging to a sense of human wholeness. If people are not free-willing creatures, the original sin makes God responsible for, and accountable to humanity's depredations; God would, in effect, be a devil.

All this talk about free will, however, begs definition. In short, free will is the capacity of a conscious creature to choose between alternatives. In a negative sense, if there are no alternatives, then no choice exists. Add to that , that the notion of original sin implies the alternatives are morally laden; they are between the "knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2:17).

Since the alternatives within the doctrine of original sin are between those things we understand or perceive as 'good' and 'evil,' we are forced to conclude that having a knowledge of good and evil (i.e., having a moral awareness) is the essential sin in original sin. Apologists would take umbrage with that assertion, citing instead that the original sin was the choice to do what God commanded them not to do: eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17). But this does not advance their opposition at all because it fails to recognise that by making an alternative choice available (eat from the tree vs. do not eat from the tree), God had initiated the process of knowing good from evil, of having a moral choice. So to command a prohibition from action, God had first to initiate a knowledge of good and evil in order to prohibit a knowledge of good and evil, which apparently eating from a forbidden tree would bring about.

Such a contradictory premise is hardly worthwhile to any thinking person: bring about an awareness of good and evil in order to prohibit an awareness of good and evil. Not put too fine a point on it, but such utter and nonsensical (un)thinking is beneath human dignity and reasonableness.

One further point should serve to finish digging the grave for original sin: though man is guilty of making a choice to become morally aware, even though God's prohibition brought about that awareness (not the forbidden tree), the questioned doctrine ascribes the full weight of man's guilt to man. It is worth asking the question at this point, "what is the nature of man's guilt? That is, what is man guilty of?" For the answer to that question, I quote Ayn Rand again:

"What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge--he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil--he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor--he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire--he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy--all the cardinal values of this existence."

Because man became morally aware, a rational being; because man became a creative and productive creature; because man learned of desire and sexual fulfilment, man was therefore damnable. In other words, an understanding of the human condition and how to fulfil it is what made man worthy of hellfire. Now, I ask you, does this doctrine sound like the inspirations of an ominpotent, omniscient, and all-good God? Or does it sound like the evil and controlling manipulations of demented leaders who needed some way to enforce their religious headship over the masses?

Clearly the guilt man experience for his existence has nothing to do with an all-good God, and everything to do with a malicious psychological manipulation perpetrated on otherwise rational, good people in an effort to control their lives, and make them somehow obligated to a tyrranical system of bigoted piety. To date, that doctrine has served its purpose well, but it is a doctrine that deserves a special place in the fictional hell it condemns people to.

My Apologies

2011-04-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Absenteeism

Please accept my apologies for not posting for this past while. Work, the advent of spring and all the work that entails, renovations, and an injured back have all conspired to keep me from getting any new posts up.

I will, however, in the next couple of days (hopefully tonight), have part 2 of my series on Original Sin up for you to read.

In the meanwhile, I hope you're doing well.

Masters and Slaves

2011-04-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post is going to be harsh and offensive. If you're disinterested in raw emotions coupled with stinging invectives, stop reading now. If you can keep a dispassionate view and recognise this entry as what it is--an explosion of stressful feelings not directed at anyone in particular--then keep reading.

Who are the masters among us?

They seem to be those who manipulate and weasel their way into positions of power, thinking themselves suited for directing the lives of others. They seem to be curdled souls tortured by unresolved psychological issues, who, in a sadistic twist, see fit to inflict their misery on others. They seem to be the kinds of people who trip a macabre dance through the web of society, warts covering their eyes, and pestilential ideals burning the light of their days. They seem to be the man or woman who thinks nothing of passing a regulation, bill, or expectation that indentures others to false pretenses, moral dissonance, and self-abasement.

Who are the slaves among us?

These passive souls lack the courage to block the passage of those who would purposefully dominate them. They can't--sometimes won't-- see their own personal sovereignty as a human being, a member of the natural world. They kowtow to the masters for fear of being ruled too harshly; as if by cowering blindly under a self-proclaimed dominator their life will go easier for them; as if by denying the freedom inherent to their existence they will be able to gain the approval of those who seat themselves in places of authority. They are willlingly blind, purposefully silent, self-abnegating, falsely humble, arrogantly immoral about their own self-worth, given to humourless self-deprecation, and easy to turn against their own kind. They are sickly, weak, tepid personalities forced ever deeper into their own concentric shells by the force of their own untamed illusions and the violent machinations of those who presume the place of a master.

But the master doesn't need to be a maniacal fuckwit stamping about the earth in some sophisticated temper-tantrum; he doesn't have to be the person who gains his titular superiority by seeing how many people he can manipulate into bending over. He can give those things up for a more reasonable, more mindful way of being. He can change his negative self-limitations into positive self-sovereignty.

Similarly, the slave doesn't have to be a slave. The alternative is blindingly simple: he can choose to be free. He can shed his snake-oiled false humility, straighten his shoulders and recognise that he belongs: he belongs inherently to a class of creatures that have a unique freedom. Why should anyone, let alone a slave, limit himself by his own preconceptions of useless servility? Why serve something "greater" while touting the contradictory message that you are "unique"? Doesn't that uniqueness assume the greater? Doesn't being unique mean, definitionally, that you are greater? What can be greater than the singular essence of your unique self? There has never been a you before you, and there never will be another you after you: that makes you the "greatest," doesn't it?

If you fit the abject cowardliness of the modern slave, if you understand that your limitations are self-imposed (e.g., you can't do such-and-such because you haven't gone to university to get your letters), if you're the person who sneers at mainstream social impositions (e.g., getting an English degree to prove you can refer to others who write well), then bloody-well get off your ass and start doing it! You don't need to modify your desires, your ambitions, your passions, to fit anyone else's expectations of how you should be. Stop listening to the message of the masters, the slave-drivers. See your uniqueness as your evidence of your sovereignty.

If the fact that no-one else is you doesn't convince you that you are, definitively, "the greatest," then you will always be the slave, the milquetoast personality that aspires to mediocrity, that lives under the bar as if it was a roof instead of raising it or removing it; if you cannot break free of the master-slave mentality that so predominates our cultural mechanisms, if you cannot declare your own personal freedom and sovereignty, then you are a slave and you will be ruled. You will be ruled by the same self-limiting assholes that have made it profitable to thrive off of your weakness, your lack of creativity, your refusal to be a self-actuating personality.

Your uniqueness is proof of your greatness; it is the evidence of your personal sovereignty. Stop feasting on the blandishments of mediocrity, of commonplace social expectations. Start self-directing, self-dictating. In essense, start being rationally selfish. Or to put it less controversially, don't be afraid of self-referencing decisions: you are not required to sacrifice your personhood for the predeterminations of others who are no more fit to rule you than a camel is to play a guitar. Be free. Rule yourself.

The Art of Choice P. I

2011-03-31T23:48:00.000-07:00

What choice will you make?

It occurs to me that everybody is an anarchist. There isn't a person alive who doesn't freely exercise choice between alternatives. Even those within the most oppressive political climates make choices every day, choices that compel them toward whatever is in their best interest in the moment. And those of us who live in freer political situations have no more freedom than the oppressed: we simply have less to fear from the consequences of our choices.

Anarchy, when distilled to its most sedimentary concept, simply means "rulerless," or "leaderless." This is a way of being that all of us accept in our day-to-day, mundane lives. You don't have to go to work: you choose to go to work. You don't have to research your paper for university; you choose to. You don't have to scoop your dog's droppings from the lawn; you choose to. You rule your own life on your own terms. You, as an agent of action, choose between the alternatives available to you. Even when things are chosen for you, you compel yourself to accept or reject the choice made for you.

So why do people feel so beholden to have their choices made for them? I'm thinking specifically of churches now. The religious person, it seems, accepts the choices of her predecessors--no! she chooses the choices of her predecessors when she chooses the particular brand of Christianity she will participate in. The Catholic convert can only be accepted by her socio-ecclesial circle if, like the rest of them, she chooses to accept the doctrinal choices chosen (often) 1600+ before her existence.

She may choose trinitarianism, but quietly nod at Arianism. Yet to air her innermost, her truest choice, she would be summarily forced to decide between alternative punishments for her free-thinking assent: recant or be excommunicated. So while she thinks she may be making a choice for Catholicism, by choosing a certain expression of Christianity, her mind has been decided for her long before she arrived at confirmation class. She is anarchist essentially, and Catholic positionally.

This is the juggernaut we are all (in a bitter irony) forced to face when we consider our participation in society and social infrastructure: to get along, we must go along. In order to be, we must be ordered. But we are not to order ourselves; we are not to freely compel ourselves. In religion, as in politics, we are late on the scene; we are to content ourselves in the same pasture, not choose the pasture we know we will feel most content in. Doing so, naturally, makes one anarchistic (leaderless) and heretical (literally, "able to choose").

And since we freely choose between alternatives in mundane ways all day (every day), we must certainly be incapable of choosing in extraordinary ways on any day, yes? The logic doesn't follow, I know. But before I explore this topic any further, ask yourself this question: are you choosing the life you want, or wanting to choose a life that is you?

I'm interested in thinking through this with you, if you're willing.

38% of Americans Are Insane

2011-03-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

What happened in Japan recently was terrible. The aftermath, and continued crisis is devastating. But is it "divine retribution," as one Japanese official put it? 38% of Americans seem to think so. So, with a well-deserved leap over the middle (the excluded one, that is), I have concluded that of those Americans polled, 38% of them are utterly insane.

What causes an earthquake is pretty basic: shifting of tectonic plates. It is a natural occurence not needing divine prompting. If God sees fit to dip his hand into the Sisyphean burden of pushing giant rocks, well then whatever. Who's going to argue? In the meanwhile, until we have some evidence of that reality, I'm content to take the operations of the planet on an evidentiary, naturalistic basis. Because I'm not insane.

*Thank you Atheist Media Blog for this gem.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

2011-03-24T08:29:00.000-07:00


Jiddu Krishnamurti

This morning, a friend of mine inadvertently tipped-me-off to an Eastern philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti. I had encountered his theosophical writings when I was in bible college in 1996. In particular, I was launched into many years of socio-cultural reflection by this one quote: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

Having been reminded of this sage this morning, I sifted through some other material I could find on the net, and came across this quote. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to comment on it.

"Truth is a pathless land." Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a sense of security – religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man's thinking, relationships and his daily life. These are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man in every relationship.

Souls of Black

2011-03-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

I ended up with a song stuck in my head for most of the day, today. I thought I'd share it with you. Enjoy!

An oldie, but a goodie!

Review: The Atheist's Way

2011-03-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

Since I can't seem to stop saturating myself in books to do with religion, irreligion and philosophy, I have found myself racing through a wonderful little tome by Eric Maisel. It is called, The Atheist's Way: Living Well Without Gods (pictured left). Maisel also has a blog -- though it seems a little inactive -- dedicated to the subject matter in the book.

Where Maisel's book differs from the spate of recent atheist literature (e.g., Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, et al) is in his focus: where a thick brace of literature has been dedicated to showing the poverty of the religious life, Maisel has written to draw attention to the richness, beauty, and meaningfulness of the non-religious life. Hitchens writes to highlight the toxicity of religious thinking; Maisel writes to encourage meaning-making in the atheist's approach. Dennett writes to convince the reader that religion is a mental spell, a collective notion that gods influence nature therefore we worship them; Maisel writes to spur the religious into letting go of their assumptions of beneficient gods and face an indifferent universe open to innumerable possibilities for self-actualisation. Dawkins writes to dispell delusions and rationalisations about the supernatural; Maisel writes to reassure the disbelieving that making your meaning is better than adopting an already prescribed religious meaning. Harris writes to discourage adherence to any religious systems, and to shun the moderates for their cowardly, yet inadvertant support of extremists; Maisel writes to enliven a sense of life in the irreligious, and to move on bravely toward a whole sense of selfhood--a quality he suggests cannot be had in the religious life.

I'm sure you already see that Maisel is taking a positive approach to an often overly negative subject: disbelief. And by negative, I don't mean to say that authors like Hitchens and Dawkins are a bad influence, or inappropriately dark and cynical. They're not. Still, Maisel has gone in a direction the so-called New Atheists have not: rather than tearing down gods, God, and the religions that attest to gods and God, he has taken the opportunity to outline the positive side of disbelief.

Super-Christian

So, what are the positive net gains (if I can word it that way) of disbelief? In a nutshell, Maisel argues that the disbeliever makes his own meaning. He does not adopt, or super-impose over his own life the meaning that religious traditions have on offer, as if fitting himself into a body-suit with the symbol for a religion splashed across his chest.

Instead, the disbeliever chooses what he values, recognises the ultimate subjectivity of participation in life, and makes his own meaning. This bears some similarity to Ayn Rand's stance on selfishness: people always act in such a way as to keep what they value; they are therefore "selfish" or self-interested. The man who values personal freedom acts in such a way as to keep his freedom; he develops the virtue of productivity. He does not allow others to hand him the value of freedom because it was never anyone else's to give to him in the first place. And the mentality that suggests meaning needs to be earned by other's approval or permissions is the very same mentality that is on display in religion: your values, your meaning, your personal actualisation is imposed on you by an already established system, and that system gives approval or not to your worth.

The evidence for this is ample. Consider, for example, the Catholic teaching that the use of condoms is immoral. This article suggests that the Catholic laity is in disagreement with the current pope about the immorality of condoms; but does that change anything? It might in private practice, but in public religious life, a lot of these same Catholics who disagree with their pope will still buckle under his imposed ruling: condoms should not be used (spare, of course, if your are interested in the propositions of male prostitutes infected with AIDS). More, those Catholics who do sheathe their swords, as it were, will struggle uselessly (and infuriatingly, if you ask me) with guilt and shame for their choice to shag in latex. They may even go so far as to confess their wicked deed, feel better, then repeat their "sin" and be told, after multiple confessions that their values are disorderly, not in line with the teachings of the church, or that their salvation is in danger because of habitual mortal sin.

The example above illustrates rather graphically that the struggling Catholic condomite is deriving his value from the teachings and constructed meanings of his chosen church. Maisel, if I have understood him right, would suggest that that Catholic individual is allowing some of his meaning to be chosen for him, instead of making his own meaning. Sadly, billions of people allow themselves to be bullied by clergy that tells them they have to seek their meaning in the teachings of the church, rather than make their meaning by the act of choosing and self-actualising on their own terms, and with their own resources.

And that, it seems, is Maisel's chief point: meaning is not something you need to seek. It is not beneficial to you simply because it is prepackaged in the guise of religion. It is not helpful because it can be easily accessed by the ministrations of clergy who tell you what to believe and how to believe it. That is the structure those religious people choose, and in return, because of the structure they choose, their meaning is determined for them. They are part of the overall meaning of that religion; they do not have a self-actualised meaning of their own.

You don't have to "find" meaning. You have to make meaning. In other words, you have to invest yourself into your own passions, your own interests, your own wants, and then you have to do what only you can do--because you're the only one who is you--to achieve your passions, maintain your interests, and gain what you want. You have to choose your values, not piggy-back the values of others or use stand-in values such as those enforced by religions. Maisel, in fact, goes so far as to state that religion itself is a stand-in for meaning; that is, religion takes the rightful place of personal meaning by imposing itself as over above self-chosen meaning.

Maisel's writing is clear, gentle, and inviting. That last qualifier, however, sometimes serves to be a detractor from his efforts, as if by writing in an inviting style he is luring or tempting the reader to try on the religionless life. I don't think I'd mind that so much if it weren't for the fact that I appreciate much more the blunt approach of Harris or Hitchens when it comes to addressing the moral necessity for atheism. I'm not appreciative of saccharine, or glad-handed tones regarding major life decisions. As minor a criticism as that is, I think Maisel's book adds a much needed, and excellent view of the areligious life, and how to self-actualise even after the experience of deconversion and the confusions such a switch can make.

Nicely Stated

2011-03-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

Paul Cooijmans

"Modesty is the worst form of bragging. It is the vanity of the dishonest; the arrogance of cowards." -- Paul Cooijmans

Love it!

Shame and Catholicism: Bedmates

2011-03-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

Denial, shame: Catholic.

First, read this (it's not long, and is quite interesting).

Second, my response to the article linked above:

I personally think that the Catholic heirarchy, were they allowed to legitimately indulge their sexual desires, would have a very different view of sexual intimacy. I really don't hear tale of the Eastern Orthodox church having sexual scandals or legalisms surrounding sexual pleasure between consenting couples. Their priests are allowed to get married, and allowed to enjoy the benefits that confers.

In Catholic quarters, their psycho-social and sexual development is stunted by the blunt force of useless prohibitions on sexual exploration between couples, masturbation, and other harmless hedonisms. Predictably, some Catholic clergy therefore have unacceptable deviances, and Catholic couples are demeaned and disempowered by imposed guilts and harmful preachments about how they should use their body (bawdy!) parts.

I find it a supremely interesting observation that Catholicism stands against legalisms in devotional life (i.e., the notion that one can effect favour with God through efforts at purity) but sets in place a massive legalistic social framework for its adherents (e.g., Canon Law). Is it any wonder that people feel horrible when they come to the instinctual understanding that their devotion to God has resulted in a shame-based identity with their church? This confusion around sexually acceptable practice is one among many, many, many crimes against sanity.

What are your thoughts about this issue?

Rot and Stink

2011-03-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

"In a criminal society, goodness is a crime. We have no moral obligation to tell the truth to the devil. To do so is likely to be actually immoral." --Dee

I was in a conversation with a well-spoken activist--at least, that's what I'll label him for the purpose of ease--and we were enjoying an exchange about the principles of anarchy (see quote above). For example, anarchic philosophy calls for non-violence; anarchic philosophy emphasizes the sovereignty of the individual over above the collective; the responsibility of the individual is to provide for his own needs by the work of his own mind and hands, not by leeching off of the handouts of infrastructure when he is capable of doing otherwise.

However, our current socio-political climate does not allow for non-violence. Consider our nation's involvement in wars that have nothing to do with us (e.g., Iraq). Consider, also, that in Canada each person is in a holding pattern so far down in the lattice-work of control that considering yourself a 'sovereign' (solely over your own life, mind, and no-one else's) comes across as "eccentric" or "idiotic" or "crazy." Or, consider that taxes are enforced: you earn your living, your country takes money from you it didn't earned, puts it towards ends you may not support, and then threatens you with fines and possibly jail-time if you don't give over a portion of your money. This last example has the same rot and stink about it that the medieval church's enforced tithing did.

Whether or not I agree with these principles, I was given pause to think about who I am in contrast to the larger collective (society), and what the nature of our present collective is: are we living in an actual democracy? Is democracy defined simply by being able to vote at elections? Or is there something more to it that isn't being effected in Canadian culture? If I were to consider myself a sovereign, how would that effect my participation in the common-place infrastructure of society? Is it "criminal" to not give your money to a bigger group of people (the government) when they haven't earned it, and simply because they declare it criminal to not give money to them? Should the government be re-labeled Big Vinny, and considered a sophisticated leg-breaker?

I don't know. At the very least, I was forced to think of some very interesting alternate points of view. And, being the curious person that I am, I appreciated the mental exercise said activist gave me.

Recommendation: A Place Called Freedom

2011-03-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

Ken Follett, author of international best-sellers The Pillars of the Earth (also a TV mini-series) and World Without End has stormed into my mind and heart with his totally enthralling, relentlessly visceral yet beautiful story A Place Called Freedom.

It is the story of a coal-miner, Malachi McAsh--affectionately known as 'Mack'--who wants nothing more than his freedom, his definition and right as a dignified human being. His slave-masters, the Jamisson's, however, consider him a dangerous upstart, and set themselves against Mack and his desire for freedom. Mack is eventually sentenced to death but, by a fortuitous twist, is shipped to America. Once there though, he continues to fight for the only thing he's ever wanted: freedom.

I cannot heap enough praise on this book. If you have enough room in your life to fill it with 437 pages of intense and gorgeous story-telling, you will not go wrong reading this book. It is, quite simply, one of the best fictions I have ever read.

Ken Follett gets the Saint Cynic Award of Awesomeness, and in spades!

I can't wait to read Follett's other two novels I listed! But first, The Fountainhead.

Birthday

2011-03-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday to me!

37 and still rockin'!

Unending Love

2011-03-03T06:47:00.000-08:00


Rabindranath Tagore

I came across this poem this morning while I was waiting for my van to warm up. Apparently it was Audrey Hepburn's favourite. I can understand why: it's beautiful.

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

~Rabindranath Tagore

We The Living

2011-03-02T22:21:00.000-08:00

As some of you already know, I'm on an Ayn Rand binge right now. At first, I was a little reluctant to jump in to her fictions because the scenery is just so different from the usual English hillsides or fantasy settings I'm used to. The stark black and white of the 1917 Revolution in modern-day Russia, the hollow cities, the sickly and oppressed peoples of Petrograd (present-day St. Petersburg), food lines and the G.P.U. -- these were all new story-settings to me.

I've read Dostoevsky before, and some of Turgnev. I have a deep fondness for Russian authors. But when I set-out to read Rand's works, I knew I was in for something different. I wasn't sure if I would like her writings because there are so many bipolar opinions about her style, her philosophy, her narrative, her intentions, etc. So from the get-go, I was hesitant. It's quite easy to enjoy universally acclaimed authors such as Dickens, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Collins, Eliot, et al. because they are enjoyed by almost everyone. Rand's writings, however, are generally classed to either ends of the extremes "Hate it" or "Love it."

Well, after taking the plunge with Rand's novella, Anthem, I fed my curiosity a little more with her first full-length novel, We The Living. Published in 1936, We The Living enjoyed limited success (3000 copies). After Rand's international sensation, Atlas Shrugged (which is presently being made into a movie), We The Living was republished and sold 3-million copies. And after having just read We The Living, I can understand why it skyrocketed to best-seller levels.

Without giving too much away about the story, it is a vivid capture of life in Bolshevik Russia, after the October Revolution of 1917. Kira Argounova, the story's heroine, struggles as an individual against the machinations of the Soviet state. Her brave and iron-cast ideals give her the strength to persist in the face of a deep romance with a handsome maverick, Leo Kovalensky, and the constant dangers of being close friends with a young officer of the G.P.U., Andrei Taganov.

That is as much of the story as I'm willing to write about because I think it is a story that has to be read. Parsing the details anymore than I already have would have the infelicitous effect of giving too much away. And believe me, with the way the story moves and grows, it would be a pity to give it away in a mild review, such as this one.

In the end, between the extremes noted earlier, I have so far landed on "Love it." It is my understanding that Rand's particular views on philosophy, politics, human nature, art, sex, and many other hot-button issues becomes more articulated in her later novels, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. For now, however, for fear of saturating my enjoyment of Rand, I have moved on to Ken Follett's classic, A Place Called Freedom. I'm already 50+ pages into the book and absolutely enthralled!

Simply Incredible!

2011-02-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous and soulful collaborative effort of the classic Ben E. King hit, Stand By Me. This international version of the song is, simply said, incredible.

Thank you to fellow local Yukon blogger, Lindsay Dobbin of The Dreaming for such an awesome link!

Gregory W. Lester: Bad Beliefs

2011-02-24T10:04:00.000-08:00

Gregory W. Lester, Ph.D

The abovementioned (pictured left) is a Ph.D in Psychology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He has written an article hosted on The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) called, "Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die." I found the excerpt quoted below at John Loftus's site, Debunking Christianity, and thought it was very thought-provoking.

Because senses and beliefs are both tools for survival and have evolved to augment one another, our brain considers them to be separate but equally important purveyors of survival information....This means that beliefs are designed to operate independent of sensory data. In fact, the whole survival value of beliefs is based on their ability to persist in the face of contradictory evidence. Beliefs are not supposed to change easily or simply in response to disconfirming evidence. If they did, they would be virtually useless as tools for survival....Skeptical thinkers must realize that because of the survival value of beliefs, disconfirming evidence will rarely, if ever, be sufficient to change beliefs, even in “otherwise intelligent” people....[S]keptics must always appreciate how hard it is for people to have their beliefs challenged. It is, quite literally, a threat to their brain’s sense of survival. It is entirely normal for people to be defensive in such situations. The brain feels it is fighting for its life....it should be comforting to all skeptics to remember that the truly amazing part of all of this is not that so few beliefs change or that people can be so irrational, but that anyone’s beliefs ever change at all. Skeptics’ ability to alter their own beliefs in response to data is a true gift; a unique, powerful, and precious ability. It is genuinely a “higher brain function” in that it goes against some of the most natural and fundamental biological urges.

What are your thoughts?

Questioning God

2011-02-22T15:28:00.000-08:00

At some point in almost everyone's life, the question of the existence of God moves from a rosy sentiment to an intellectual briar patch. The shiny world of youth makes it easy to rely on the claims of one's parents that God is real, personable, and knowable. Or the equal, yet opposite simplicity that God is a quaint mythology fit for a pre-scientific world, but no more real than Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny.

Soon, however, maturity intrudes on our winsome innocence. We start asking harder questions. For example, just what kind of God is it that looks on as countless millions are slaughtered in religio-political pograms? Wouldn't God be just the right arbiter in human affairs to help us avoid senseless killings? Or, if God isn't real, how do we account for morality, conscience, or the seeming uniformity of nature? Given our moral inclinations, why haven't we come up with a solution to the horrors we perpetrate on ourselves? And what are the empirical sciences doing to advance our moral status in the alleged absence of deity?

On the other hand, it would be easy, even practical to dismiss the question of God altogether. Afterall, neither religious nor secular metanarratives can ultimately prove their claims regarding the divine. So why be bothered with something that cannot be proven conclusively, or conclusively disproven? Why pursue a subject that, given its ultimate non-conclusion, will require faith in either the propositions of the world's religions, or faith in the evolving world of the sciences?

But how practical is it to dismiss questions that help us – individually, and collectively – form a sense of our place in the universe? Is it practical to eschew religious claims when many of those claims have helped shape the cultures, and perceptions we participate in today? Is it practical to disregard the findings of the sciences? Would gravity be less binding if we were unconcerned to pay attention to its effect in our lives? Would God be less of a question if we found it practical to disregard the effects of religion around the world? Would this kind of practicality even be honest?

Parsing Original Sin P. 1

2011-02-22T10:14:00.000-08:00

Ayn Rand rocked the literary world with her anti-altruist writings. In particular, her epic novel Atlas Shrugged gave full berth to her philosophy, Objectivism. In said novel, the ultimate protagonist, John Galt--a figure who is intitially so enigmatic his name becomes a byword--questions, indicts, and redefines the very nature of humanity. Galt's soliloquy toward the end of the book drives a proverbial knife into the heart of modern Western values; he attacks their religious root, specifically located in the doctrine of original sin.

As quoted from Galt's speech, original sin is an impossible reality that "begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice." Original sin, as set out by the first Christians, however, suggests that human beings are deprived of their natural connection to God because Adam and Eve, humanity's representative couple, disobeyed God thereby setting all people forever at a distance from their Creator. Thus Adam and Eve, and everyone after them, suffer the burden of godlessness--the void between God and man--which is hopelessly incurable except by the movement of God across that void. And, as Christians claim, God spanned that void in the person of Jesus Christ.

Everyone born into the world then, according to classic Christian formulations, inherits the burden of being simultaneously in God's image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-27) and also separated from God by original sin. Rand's vicarious observation that the Christian "code" damns man for his godlessness and then demands man be good--which is to say that man is to be godly--points at a fatal flaw in Christian conceptions of the nature of man. Namely, if by original sin man is unable to be godly because of his godlessness, why condemn man for living in the condition he was predisposed to?

More alarmingly, the demand of the Christian believer is that he recognise how damnable he is without proof, or even a shred of evidence to firm-up the case. Virtue is not allotted man until he confesses not only his vice, but also his utter inability to extricate himself from a condition he cannot point to but is guilty of anyway.

That man was created 'good,' even 'very good' (Gen. 1:31) is simply a nod to a time well behind him. The post-Edenic reality is that man is "evil" (Matt. 7:11) and exists in a subordinated position; a position that does not act on his innate inclinations of being a free, noble creature but binds itself to the self-deprecating notion of being "depraved," or "distorted," or "disordered." Man, to be 'good,' must first lie to himself that he is, in fact 'bad,' will himself to believe his lie, and then plead the pity of the Creator who would save him from himself.

From the start, man is damned, if not by his own belief that he has to lie to himself to set up the conditions for salvation, then by the inheritance of representative man's sin (through Adam and Eve) which places him at odds with God. In essence, man is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

How could anyone get on with such of wave of contradiction and catch-22's? How could anyone understand their place in reality, their identity as a human being, given such misfit logic? Clearly,

"It does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence ato any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man."

According to such a "monstrous absurdity," original sin means man is not 'good,' he is evil (cf. Matt. 7:11). Since a double-bind is placed on man--inherit a sinful condition and/or commit evil by lying to oneself and therefore make yourself evil--his whole moral condition, the opportunity for will, his very freedom is predetermined for him. Man has been deemed guilty without his choice even before he exists.

There is no sense in that conclusion, obviously, but that is what the doctrine of original sin requires a person to believe for it to have any psychological hold. A person cannot be bound to a creed that has no discernable impact on his psyche. No-one is passionate about the banal. No-one is driven to deliver themselves from ineffectual and meaningless propositions. Such things are easily discarded by the very act of choosing to.

For a concept to lay hold of a person fully, and to generate enough fervor that he is irrevocably compelled to seek salvation from the subjective realities of that concept it has to strike hard and deep at the core doubts, fears, and needs of a person; it must demean a person's sense of life and moral confidence.

Original sin does just that.

Review: Roadtrip Nation

2011-02-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

Roadtrip Nation, 2003

Roadtrip Nation is a book about discovering who you are, what you love, what drives you, what your passions are, and how to find the "open road" to your dreams.

The book's format is simple:

1) Introduction to the authors, and defining their aims and methods of achieving them;
2) A series of interviews with some of America's most successful industry leaders;
3) Exhortation to start talking to the people you admire, find out how they got to where they're at, and then set your own goals for getting to where you want to go.

Stylistically, the book is very casual, the way you'd estimate it would be written by a couple of surfers and newly minted university graduates. That is, written simply but well, unreserved, inviting and open, and given to the odd surf-culture-specific flourishes. Having occupied myself with more than a few years with academic texts and more "highbrow" literature (whatever that actually means), I found the simpler style of Roadtrip Nation refreshing and alive. In fact, it put me in mind to do some private writing that focuses on simple but effective expression.

While I was reading through Roadtrip Nation, I was caught off-guard by the overall genuineness of the authors, and the people the authors interviewed. Everyone involved in the contents of the book showed a high degree of realistic humility (i.e., not self-deprecation masquerading as humility, but honest self-appraisal), and an unblushing recognition of their strengths and talents. Yes, it is possible to edit out events and statements that may have given me a different impression. But since I only have the book as evidence of the contents, and the book itself states that the interviews were verbatim (though specific things said were re-arranged to make a more consistent flow), I am willing to believe my first-blush impressions.

There is a lot to learn about yourself in this book, if you pay close attention. It seems to me that when you come in contact with genuine people--even if vicariously through the medium of a book--you can't help but reflect on your own self, and have an impression of your own genuineness. And if there's one thing that I can point to that affected me the most throughout the interview section, it is that all the people interviewed were leaders in their chosen fields because what they do is who they are.

All of the people interviewed had the common thread of being involved in a way of life that built on their deepest passions; they worked their way into a place they could not do without in their life not because it sustains their life, but because it is their life. They work at the very things that bubble and froth in the centre of who they are. The external results--what we would blithely call "products"--are undeniably a manifestation of their inner world. In short, the leaders interviewed work who they are. If anything can be admirable, that certainly is.

Bill Murray said it, so it must be true.

Would I recommend this book to anyone? Absolutely. While the book really doesn't lend itself to an in-depth examination of any sort, I think that is on purpose: it sets up the possibility for you, the reader, to do your own in-depth examination of yourself by interviewing people who did the same, and found their "open road" to success and satisfaction.

Roadtrip Nation most definitely gets the Saint Cynic award of awesomeness (pictured left).

What I'm Reading

2011-02-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

I posted a reading list for 2011 back in January. I had hoped at that point to set-out a reading track for this year. I was taking a chance that reality would treat me with the same static indifference as I treat it. As it turns out, I should've listened to my better instincts that more pressing issues in my life would change the coarse of my reading this year; my gawkish auto-didacticism enjoyed the pulse of my good intentions, but inevitably collided with reality. The result is a write-off of the old list, and a new list that is smaller, unfixed, and deals more precisely with where my mind is focused right now.

Rather than list any projected books, I will simply give space to the ones I am currently reading.

Undefended Love is an exploration of the human being, and how a person can be whole. Many people are weighed-down by the pressure of wanting and needing to give and receive love; they want to have an unguarded, vulnerable and safe relationship. Few people understand how such a relationship can be achieved. Psychology, anthropology, transactional analysis, real-life anecdotes, all these areas mix and mingle together to bring about a book that elegantly sets forth a manifesto for personal wholeness, and relational intimacy at the deepest levels.

Roadtrip Nation. I picked this book up at the local Liquidation World (now re-dubbed 'LW'). Initially, the book was more of an interest to my wife; she's interested in other people's successes and how they achieved what they did. Since I've become disaffected with my own employment and have been sussing-out creative ways to self-employ, I thought I'd have a boo at this book. The premise is simple: drive around the country and interview successful people about how they got to where they are. The content is inspirational. And if you like a casual, passionate look at the qualities of successful people, this book is perfect.

We The Living was Ayn Rand's first full-length novel, and is a tragic romance that depicts the bitter struggles of the individual against the state in Soviet Russia. Rand's later novels (Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged) more directly explore her philosophy of Objectivism, but We The Living sets a background for why Rand was so abjectly against statism, and philosophies that purposefully manipulate and oppress people's inherent dignity and autonomy. Like the other Russian authors I've read--and thoroughly enjoyed--Rand brings a sweep of practical majesty, and uncompromising strength to her narration; I've been left shocked and raw many times throughout this novel, so far.

I will update this post in the next few days when I'm done Roadtrip Nation and We The Living. From there, I'll be starting another Ayn Rand novel, and pushing my way into a volume on some counter-cultural understandings of child-rearing.

Until then, stay well, and play hard!

Family Guy on Religion and Violence

2011-02-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

I normally don't care at all for Family Guy, an adult animated comedy that--I think--cheaply satirizes popular culture, and blitzes people with fast-paced one-liners and scene transitions in horribly irreverent ways. Okay, admittedly, I do enjoy a little irreverent humour: for example, George Carlin, Ed Byrne, Keith Lowell Jensen, and Billy Connolly. But from what I've seen of Family Guy, it's usually vapid and principally uncouth.

Enough of my assessments, however. I just watched a 19-second clip from Family Guy that had me chuckling and chortling quite loudly. And now I present it to you:

Obviously the video is not historically accurate. It is an entertaining mockery of religious people's predilections to violence, though.

Thanks to Atheist Media Blog for tipping me off to this clip.

Original Sin

2011-02-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

Ayn Rand

I cannot get away from the forcefulness of Ayn Rand's argument against the concept of original sin. Read it and, if you're willing, tell me what you think.

"Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.

"It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him—it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.

"The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.

"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

"Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a “tendency” to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

"What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge—he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil—he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor—he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire—he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy—all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was—that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love—he was not man.

"Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.

"They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."

The quote above was extracted from For the New Intellectual, "Galt's Speech", Signet Edition.

On Immorality & Atheism

2011-02-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

Click for larger picture.

The notion that atheists are immoral because they claim godlessness is tripe. There is no reason to suggest that a person is immoral because they don't believe a certain god, or any gods exist. Such a conclusion is hopelessly illogical: where's the connective tissue between the propositions "I don't believe in God/gods" and "disbelievers are immoral"? Something has to fit between those two propositions, otherwise concluding disbelief equals immorality is a categorical confusion and a lackluster syllogism, at best.

At worst, the implication that people can only be moral if they believe in a God/gods makes believers terribly dangerous people to associate with: are they suggesting that it's only their belief that restrains them from psychopathic rampages, and all manner of hideous crimes?

And what are we to make of pre-Judaic times, before the alleged giving of the 10 Commandments? Were people just given to their impulses with no thought to consequences? Were human beings wantonly viscious with no capacity for restraint until God burned a few words in stone? The fact is: people are moral despite their beliefs, and even without beliefs, because morality is part of our organising instincts and our efforts to promote the survival of ourselves and others.

Your morality is not a cape you are given by some God; it is part of your human composition and does not depend a whit on what brand of religion you choose to adopt.

A History of God: Reflections & Review P. II

2011-02-06T21:26:00.000-08:00

In Part 1 of this series, I provided a brief overview of the purpose behind Armstrong's book: to examine the evolution of the idea of God within the three major monotheistic religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I also noted that Armstrong's historical scrutiny of the monotheistic conceptions of God comes by way of the documentary hypothesis, a source theory of biblical interpretation that seeks to arrange chronologically the inconsistent and independently authored texts of the earliest books of the bible. Given the seemingly independent perspectives within the books of the Torah--and subsequent Old Testament books--the documentary hypothesis suggests that a series of redactors (editors) prepared the disparate documents into the forms we've come to know as the Pentateuch.

Citing Armstrong's interpretive tools goes a long way in helping to understand why she comes to some of the conclusions she does. If it is true that the Pentateuch is a patchwork of originally independent narratives that have endured (who knows how many) redactions, then the traditional Christian perspective that the bible is wholly reliable can reasonably be questioned: reliable in its original, unedited form? Reliable because of its redactions? And how do we know that those who undertook to edit the original manuscripts were reliable people? What constitutes 'reliability' in a religious context when dealing with scripture? At what point does having 'faith' that the scriptures are reliable cease to be an acceptable premise? And further to those questions, if the writings of the major world religions can be questioned as to their reliability, can those religions themselves be questioned as to their reliability on the whole? That is, if the religions of the book are questionable on a literary level, what aspects of that religion are reliable at all?

I won't be pursuing answers to those questions in this series, but suffice it to say that they are reasonably important questions, and the content of Armstrong's book certainly gives me pause to consider searching out reasonable answers.

But enough of my preamble! On to the reflections and review.

Introduction (pp. xvii - xxiii)
I have read Armstrong's introduction to A History of God a few times before reading the actual book. There are several instances within those (roughly) 7 pages that resonated very deeply with me. For example, Armstrong, right out of the gates, admits to her childhood belief in God as an implicit or "unquestioned" assumption, but because of the arid pomposity of the religious definitions that surround the notion of 'God' she cannot meaningfully state she had faith in God:

"There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them. I believed implicitly in the existence of God; I also believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of eternal damnation and the objective reality of Purgatory... God, on the other hand, was a somewhat shadowy figure, defined in intellectual abstractions rather than images."

Like Armstrong, I had my own implicit belief in God when I was a child. I recall demanding I be brought to church when I was eight. At the same age, I was baptised, though I know I had no real understanding of the religious significance of that event. A few years later, I sat in the back of my dad's car reading my bible while he and his girlfriend ran errands at a local plaza. When they returned to the car, I plucked up my courage and asked my dad what he would think if I became a priest and taught people about God. His response was disheartening to a child of 12: "Do what you want. Just don't talk to me about it." This was the same response I received from him when I was 16 and told him that I had become a "born again" Christian.

All this is to say that, like Armstrong,

"As I grew up... I began to be moved by the beauty of the liturgy and, though God remained distant, I felt that it was possible to break through to him and that the vision would transfigure the whole of created reality."

Disappointment is germane to most people's lives, however, and Armstrong did not experience that transfigured reality. "Eventually, with regret," Armstrong writes, "I left the religious life..." As did I, and with many, bitter, emotional struggles. But having pursued her religious studies as much as she did, Armstrong was unwilling to put away her passion to understand religious reality:

"My interest in religion continued... and I made a number of television programs about the early history of Christianity and the nature of the religious experience."

And having scoured the depths of religious history, Armstrong came to an unoriginal, yet beautifully expressed conclusion about the nature of religious experience and activity:

"Like art, religion has been an attempt to find meaning and value in life, despite the suffering that flesh is heir to. Like any other human activity, religion can be abused, but it seems to have been something that we have always done. It was not tacked on to a primordially secular nature by manipulative kings and priests but was natural to humanity... Throughout history, men and women have experienced a dimension of the spirit that seems to transcend the mundane world. Indeed it is an arresting characteristic of the human mind to be able to conceive concepts that go beyond it in this way."

It must be said, however, that although religion has been, and probably will continue to be an activity integral to human participation in the world, the rise of scientific savvy is a formidable challenge to the religious-minded. For if "meaning and value in life" can come from ancestral liturgies and ancient doctrines, then the continual increase in understanding and factual comprehension science continuously provides may overtake religious devotion. Certainly knowing the factual details of reality does not detract from life's meaning and value, but should reinforce it if those meanings and values are true. Certainly deriving one's meaning and value from what is actual and demonstrable will grip people's minds with at least as much fervour as the meaning and value in life that non-demonstrable, non-natural claims have traditionally held.

Whatever the case may end up being, there is no historical precedent that even remotely recommends a religionless future.

"...religion is highly pragmatic... it is far more important for a particular idea of God to work than for it to be logically or scientifically sound. As soon as it ceases to be effective it will be changed--sometimes for something radically different."

Thus notions of God are entirely provisional: they evolve just as much as people and their cultures do. The success of monotheisms such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has not been in having precise knowledge of the divine so much as it has been that the monotheistic religions have been able to adapt culture to their creeds. Previous to monotheism religious motifs were subject to the suasions of culture. And indeed, so-called "pagan" religions continue to develop along the lines of the cultures and people-groups practicing them. Monotheism, however, dictates culture by enforcement of creeds: you cannot be a 21st century Christian without holding dear certain creeds. You can, however, be a raging pagan, polytheist, or religious pluralist in the 21st century even while brushing-off ancient dictates.

This, of course, makes me wonder why people prefer to be directed in their beliefs, rather than choosing what to believe. The cafeteria Catholic (pejorative, but apt term that that is) is still beholden to certain essentials, or he isn't a Catholic. Period. The smorgasbord pagan is really only expected to choose what he will. And both the Catholic monotheist and the pagan pluralist enjoy an absolutist sense of reality: they both believe that they are wonderfully right, and that others are woefully wrong.

Be that as it may, such concerns are somewhat allayed by Armstrong's right observation that

"Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration."

The import derived from conversations about God seems to be purely personal. Given that, it really doesn't surprise me that somewhere along the historical line, the concomitant notion of a "personal God" was recognised in the fact that people conclude their notions of God wholly subjectively: no two people have the same experience of the same idea. 'God', the abstract, is concretized differently in each person. Thus God-talk is strained at best, and tests credulity not only at worst, but inevitably.

As is proper, Armstrong should have the last word here:

"All talk about God staggers under impossible difficulties. Yet monotheists have all been very positive about language at the same time as they have denied its capacity to express the transcendent reality. The God of Jews, Christians and Muslims is a God who--in some sense--speaks. His Word is crucial in all three faiths. The Word of God has shaped the history of our culture. We have to decide whether the word "God" has any meaning for us today."

Senecca and Religion

2011-02-03T21:16:00.000-08:00


Senecca the Younger

Seneca the Younger penned these famous and portentous words:

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

Being a contemporary of Christ, it seems significant to me that he would have such a perspective.

What are your thoughts?

Campingatology

2011-02-02T13:31:00.000-08:00

Harold Camping. False toothy prophet.

Remember Harold Camping? Apparently he's littered the earth, and wasted donations on a campaign sounding a clarion-call for the end of the world.

May 21, 2011. Mark it on your calendars, folks. Make sure to love much, and have all sorts of ludicrous fun because when you wake up on May 22, 2011 and you're still alive, and the rapture hasn't happened, you will at least not have wasted your time.

Oh, and keep up the hard work at living life to the fullest, even beyond May 22, 2011 because we have another end-of-the-world to get through on December 21, 2012.

Here's another look at the same silliness, but with a tad more detail. Enjoy!

Sometime in the future, you're going to die. Get over it. But if Harold Camping is right, you're going to die a whole lot sooner than you think. Isn't Camping such a comforting messenger? Don't you just want to invite him into your home and let him tell you all about how godless your existence is, and how you're going to burn in hell forever? Such a nice old man.

I wonder if he'll shut-up about this nonsense when he's wrong for the second time...

Thank you to The Thinking Atheist for this video.

Omnipotence and Omniscience

2011-01-31T15:44:00.000-08:00

Stefan Molyneux

From an essay entitled, "Against the Gods", by Stefen Molyneux we have the following quote:

...omniscience cannot coexist with omnipotence, since if a god knows what will happen tomorrow, said god will be unable to change it without invalidating its knowledge. If this god retains the power to change what will happen tomorrow, then it cannot know with exact certainty what will happen tomorrow.

What are your thoughts?

Big Words

2011-01-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

I have been accused of using too many "big" words more than the total word-count of Marcel Proust's collected works. That is, of course, an exaggeration. Still, the number of times I have endured the crassness of being told "you use too many big words," or "why don't you just speak in English," or "would it hurt you to speak a little more simply" has become a source of silent irritation for me.

So now I'm going to write about it. And I may just use sesquipedalian verbiage to spurn any familiar detractors.

To start, Ayn Rand wrote "words are a lens to focus one's mind." If that is true, then the larger the lens the greater the focus. Which really stands to reason since the proper use of a bigger word is not an easily accomplishable feat for the neophytic philologist. Can I say that my use of larger words has always been clear, and well executed? Heavens no! I amassed an admirable storehouse of "big" words at a very young age simply by listening to the adults around me. I didn't really know how to use those words properly, however, until I was more mature.

That's when I entered highschool. In highschool, I was practically battered with small-worded accusations by friends and classmates alike for using words outside of their ken. The same unthinking trend followed me through college and seminary, too. It was really quite demoralizing.

Who of us would arrange the courage in ourselves to accuse an excellent musician of being too quick at trills? What right-minded individuals would upset themsevles for a gymnast's greater agility and balance? It would seem to me that having a decent capacity for expression is no greater a crime than being able to run faster than others, or tickle out a frenzy of notes on the ivories with more finesse than the typical church pianist.

Now, I could go ahead and estimate the kind of distorted psychology that prompts such ill-reasoned attempts at censoring another's self-expression, but that would be too much of a meandering speculation for me to feel comfortable with. Instead, what I've boiled things down to, in my own mind, is a more generous perspective.

I think it's simply a matter of "jargon." That is, people have environmentally prescribed jargon-sets that help them navigate their way through assumed common experiences. And depending on the variety and intensity of those experiences, the amount and use of jargon changes. But when faced with someone who can work with jargon across varied and diverse fields, communication can become a little intimidating.

So, what about jargon?

Well, everybody speaks it. Some more than others. It's especially rampant amongst chattering intellectuals, the back offices of medical centres, and the austere corridors of academia. But it happens on the street, too, where the “huddled masses” spin their cant in an ever-evolving dance of gritty descriptions and colourful metaphors.

When people speak their jargon on the streets we call it “slang.” When people pour out the lingo in cloistered meeting halls, sipping coffee and polishing their chins, we dignify it by labelling it “terminology.” And it may very well be that. But the only difference between the terminology of the person on the street, and the slang built in to certain fields of study is the environment in which they're used.

Who hasn't had the common experience of meeting-up with a co-worker at the coffee maker and spending the next several minutes listening intently to a subject that seems distant, foreign, even arcane? Who hasn't had the experience of being that person at the coffee maker percolating stories in strange terms while your co-worker squints on, earnestly attempting to relate to what you're saying?

It's something that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein described very well when he wrote, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922). The words people use give an indication of the personal world of their experiences. A person used to living in the harsh backwoods of the Yukon wilderness may very well seem like a different creature to the savvy urbanite used to a steady diet of posh trends, and fashionable mannerisms. The point remains though: however they choose to talk about their experiences, they bring their worlds to each other by the very words they use.

So to argue by accusation that another uses too many "big" words can (as it did in my case) have the effect not only of diminishing one's own world by sneering at expansion, but demeaning another's world by snidely implying it is 'wrong' or 'difficult' because it is too big. Having given some thought to this subject, it seems obvious to me that the best course of action when dealing with someone who has a demonstrably wide grasp of the English language (or any language, for that matter), would be to ask for definitions and explanations when fronted with a word one doesn't know. The residuals may just be that your own world is given greater scope and colour, and that the other's world is appreciated and made more enjoyable.

Not a bad trade-off, really. Wouldn't you agree?

A Bit of Whimsy

2011-01-28T12:04:00.000-08:00

I just had a fast and invigorating experience. There was nothing to it, really. I just had a rush of happy energy, got to my feet and began to run about and jump here-and-there with my kids.

Now they're all sitting placidly in front of their paper and pens, drawing happily, and using their uber-creative craniums for all manner of new sword designs. Well, all except for the eldest and youngest who are satiating their morning with Finding Nemo.

Perhaps it's a beatific rush due to post-traumatic stress. There's been a lot of stress in the past while. Maybe it's because I'm eating a lot of awesome foods and my body is having a welcome endorphine spike. Or maybe--and this is more likely Occam's case--it's because I'm with my family, and I love them, and things just feel great today.

Anyway, I just thought I'd put that out there. A bit of whimsy, you could say.

Cheers!

Defending Ricky Gervais

2011-01-27T13:42:00.000-08:00

Ricky Gervais, comedian extrodinaire.

I haven't written an interactive snark-piece in quite a while. I suppose I lost my enthusiasm for it and tried my hand at new forms of literary scrutiny. Tonight I find myself somewhat riled and inspired to lay a curmudgeonly type-lashing to a one Josephine Vivaldo of the Christian Post.

Aside from being exceptionally poorly written, Vivaldo's comatic awareness of her subject material reads as an insult to her own intelligence. But to spare you from my own nitpicky appraisals of Vivaldo's technical abilities, let's just jump right into the slaughter, shall we?

In her piece, Vivaldo has singled-out Ricky Gervais, a public atheist, brilliant comic, and first-class actor (see: Ghost Town, The Invention of Lying) who, during the Golden Globe Awards, made a playful remark: "Thank you to God for making me an atheist."

Vivaldo's ignorant little scribble can't even be bothered to quote Gervais properly, let alone take the comedian's jibe in context:

"During the Golden Globe Awards, host and professed atheist Ricky Gervais said, “Thanks to God for making me an atheist,” but in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, he says he was not mocking Christians."

The conspicuous absence of the personal pronoun "you" in Gervais's joke let's us know that Vivaldo's reporting is lackadaisical at best. I wouldn't usually take interest in such a triffling detail, but let's face it: Gervais's comment wasn't so long as to make missing words a strong possibility. But then to cite Gervais's rebuttal to the ridiculous allegation that he was mocking Christians only shows that Vivaldo is pedaling mealy-mouthed tripe fed to her by other jaded, evangelical alarmists.

Half a second of thought would illuminate to Vivaldo and any of her like-minded and equally addled co-conspirators that Gervais was taking a playful poke at the untold scores of actors who, year after year, curry favour with the wider public by tossing out superficial homages to 'God'. This fact is made startlingly clear when Vivaldo goes on to report that CNN reporter Piers Morgan challenged Gervais with a note on the American Christian population:

Morgan began by pointing out to the British comedian and actor that millions of Americans are in fact Christian and it seemed obvious that he was poking fun at that particular religion. In response Gervais negated the assumption of offending American Christians, especially when he personally doesn’t find it offensive when people say “thank God” all the time.

Notwithstanding the fact that the use of the word 'God' is not exclusive to Christians, it really doesn't help Morgan's case to make such blunders when Gervais openly admits that he doesn't find people's use of the phrase "thank God" in any way offensive. This highlights a strange irony: the demand for religious tolerance is openly upheld as long as no-one is irreligious.

In North American countries, a Christian can careen headlong into a blowhard speech about evil, gay Teletubbies, or the insidious, creeping poison of condoms; and in doing so, write off a whole culture of people as godless, sinning, reprobates who will never be whole without their particular brand of Christianity, and the God they envision. But because Ricky Gervais took a harmless poke at a customary exit quip made during celebrity galas ("thank God"), he must be mocking Christians, and should damn-well be dragged through the media's kangaroo court.

Having turned his pedestal upside-down so he can more assuredly stick to it, Morgan pressed the issue further by "rephrasing" his original question:

Morgan continued on by rephrasing his question and Gervais, 49, said “no no, I’m not mocking them, people’s beliefs aren’t my concern at all, I certainly don’t differentiate religions either, I look at all religions the same, unlike religious people I look at all religions equally.”

American Christian Jesus

Gervais's response further emphasizes my point that the amorphous title 'God' is not the exclusive property of Christians, much less "American Christians" (as if their nationality makes their spirituality somehow a purer pedigree). The fact that Gervais considers all supernatural views as part of a homogenous batter called 'religion' rips the stuffing right out of Morgan's juvenile insistence, and any other puerile attempts at directing Gervais's remark to any specific religion at all. And good for Gervais for pointing out that segregating between religions is the practice of religions, not the areligious.

Gervais also pointed out that the religious don't have a monopoly on what is 'good', and that,

“Some people say who says what good is but you know what I say ‘I do’ I’m good to people because it’s the way I want to be treated and I don’t believe I’ll be rewarded in heaven, I will be rewarded now.”

Despite the awkward wording of Gervais's remark, he brings up a good point: what is 'good' is not good because certain people, or religions say it is. What is good is 'good' on its own, and if you practice those things that are evidentially good (e.g., treating people the way you'd like to be treated), then that goodness will be its own reward now. If you're religious, you may also believe that you'll have some kind of reward for your present goodness when you're in heaven. But the point remains that by practicing what is evidentially good now, that goodness will be rewarded or enjoyed now, in the present.

Not to be undone too easily, however, Morgan moved on to suggest that atheists, in their dotage, must feel a sense of waste if this life is all they have.

Morgan expressed his sentiment about how “the problem for atheist it must be doom and gloom when you get to like at 70 or 80, to think that’s it, that’s the end of everything, so you must fear death ten times more than Christians”.

Morgan's intensely ignorant segue, notwithstanding, Gervais responded eloquently by noting that there are many different conceptions of 'God' and that, by implication, if the aggregate number of gods in the world has still not reasonably assured people of their present and future states, why should anyone think atheism is on the deficient end of the spectrum? Says Gervais:

“I can’t help what I believe anymore than you can, it’s up to you what you believe in. This thing about not believing in God, there are 2,780-odd gods, and if you’re a Christian you believe in one of them and you don't believe in all the others.”

Far from being a "dispute" as Vivaldo mislabelled it, the exchange was a simple exchange between two people with contrasting points of view. Gervais, I think, came out on top of the intelligible end of things. And as far as I'm concerned, reviewing Gervais as a tasteless air-pounder with a preachment up his sleeve is the kind of moronic ignorance Morgan and Vivaldo should be repenting of. Gervias was who he is: a comedian with an observation and ironic comment to make, not to Christians in specific, but for the sole purpose of a joke. Besides, if celebrities can rig galas for the singular focus of "roasting" each other, why should Gervais be harangued for telling a joke when that is what he was specifically employed to do?

Religion and Teapots

2011-01-24T10:52:00.000-08:00

Bertrand Russell

It's certainly no secret that people do horrific and absolutely insane things as an expression of devotion to their particular religion. Christians conjured up regrettable notions of witchcraft and slaughtered thousands, sometimes purely on suspicion and without a shred of evidence. Muslims have had their historical share of swinging the sword and tossing rocks. And there seems to be no end to the number of fringe-group religions and eccentric cults enacting wanton violence on others simply because they think they're under some mysterious, divine fiat that only they know about, and that only they can confirm comes from their god/gods.

Whatever the peculiars of the case, one underlying question, in particular, undergirds any helpful criticism of such fanatical religious stupidities: how can the God/gods purported be proven to be in any way real?

One philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), proposed that, in matters of the supernatural, the person who states there is a divine super-reality (including divine beings) has the responsibility to prove their statement(s) are evidentially true.

Russell used the analogy of a teapot in orbit around the moon: anyone can say there is a teapot encircling the moon, but the person who states such a thing has the burden of proving that their statement is true by showing the evidence for their claim. This responsibility for furnishing a positive position or proposition with accomodating evidence has become known as the "burden of proof."

In matters of religion, it is the person who states that God exists who has the burden of proof and give evidence for their claim. The non-believer is under no such responsibility to give evidence for their non-position. Or, to put it another way: person X claims God exists and offers evidence to prove their case; person Y makes no claim on the existence of God and therefore has no burden to prove a non-claim.

So where does this leave us? Well, here is a clever little presentation (2 minutes) that illustrates not only the absurdity of some religious mindsets, but also incites the necessity for proving that the celestial teapot exists but only having the fanaticism of religious teapotists to point to. Enjoy!

Thank you to Atheist Media Blog for this clever little video.

Turning Primal

2011-01-23T23:56:00.000-08:00

Part of this article is extracted from a comment I made to a fellow blogger, SkeptiGirl. We have been enjoying some small conversation about dietary committments. And since I have dedicated some of my blogging time to fitness and nutrition, I thought it worthwhile to reproduce part of my contribution to SkeptiGirl's blog here at Saint Cynic.

As some of you might know, I have disowned the standard Western diet, which consists of a good deal of grains, and a long list of corn-derived ingredients infiltrating and polluting almost anything available at the local grocery store. The Canada Food Guide recently decreased its suggested grains intake to 8 servings a day for 19-30 year olds (in the new food guide, servings are based on age). But what some of you might not know is that some research suggests grains are, in fact, not good for you at all. At any age.

So discovering that a large part of my diet relied specifically on grains and grain-fed animals, I resolved to alter my eating habits: I turned primal.

What does it mean to "turn primal"? The answer to this question is part of the contents of my latest exchange with SkeptiGirl, in fact. Here is what I wrote:.

The Paleo diet does have an underlying philosophy, absolutely. That's, of course, part of its overall value. But in essense, eating paleo is an attempt at maximizing gene expressions by eating more like our primal ancestors. You see, the agricultural revolution is a very recent advent in human history; too recent, as some scientific opinion goes, for the human body to become an effective grain machine. Thus our bodies, in their present evolutionary situation, are not adapted to properly digesting grains and the anti-nutrients they contain.

By going primal/paleo, the focus is to eat in such a manner as best befits the present state of our genetic make-up. Such a dietary shift requires eliminating grains. And for some, it also means giving up dairy.

Another issue is that because people literally are what they eat (on a physiological level), intake of dairy that has been sourced from grain-fed animals means that the dairy being received is made-up of deficient nutrients. As such, that dairy is incompatible with a lot of people's natural bodily expression and results in a good many deliterious results: e.g., insulin disregulation. So, for some people, like myself, I have eliminated dairy and replaced the fats I would usually receive from it with coconut oil. Mid-chain fatty acids do wonders for me, as they do most people.

Now obviously "turning primal" isn't simply about altering eating habits, though that is a large part of it. It's also not a cultism demanding you chase down your meals and otherwise grow them for the harvest. Eating and living primal does require though, that an effort is made to alter your current perspectives on nutrition and commercial wisdom.* Hence the reason for stating in my letter to SkeptiGirl (above) that there is an underlying philosophy to the primal diet: that switching to a primal diet requires a paradigmatic shift in the way we view our evolutionary development, our interactions with nature, and how food effects our genetic make-up and stability.

The other part of "turning primal" deals with movement. That's right: movement. With respect to how we use our bodies to accomplish workaday tasks, there is a prescription within primal living that flies in the face of--again--commercial wisdom. Essentially, we are taught that in order to keep our bodies strong, we have to pile on vast amounts of hours doing cardiovascular activities (e.g., jogging, running, aerobics). It's not for wrongheaded reasons that a top-level runner like Mark Sisson can re-label the fanaticism surrounding cardiovascular training "chronic cardio," and disparage it as a bad thing. The upshot (one among many) of "turning primal" is that a person can maintain a strong body with moderate committments to cardiovascular exercise, and a respectable, regular dose of heavy lifting.

The difference, it seems, is that by accepting and trusting our bodies to do their ominivorous tasks, we maximize our physical and mental potentials. But that difference can really only be made by plucking up the courage to question typical received information about diet and fitness. If it is true that our present evolutionary make-up is not so far removed from our primal ancestors that a reasonable imitation of their basic living habits will dramatically improve our health, then it behooves us to become a little more primal. Doesn't it?

__________________
* By "commerical wisdom," I mean the medical platitudes that are pumped into us via mainstream media outlets; e.g., the blanket notion that cholesterol is bad, or that saturated fats are the bane of a healthy diet. Such clichés do not stand up under closer scrutiny, and there is a bevy of information to sharpen anyone's perspectives if they take the time to read, say, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

Unjobbing

2011-01-23T20:27:00.000-08:00

Does unjobbing lead to freedom?

The talk around my home of late has been almost entirely about how to initiate and sustain one's life without recourse to employment. This doesn't translate to self-employment, as is commonly suspected. It does equal-out to a fancy new term I've recently become familiar with: unjobbing.

Essentially, by unjobbing, a person is taking the initiative to motivate their own income through multi-streaming, and a constant evolution of creative efforts as they align with personal values. Perhaps one day you go out and wash windows, and another day you accept cash to do clean-up at a construction site. And in the meanwhile, you're plugging away at that article for a local publication while querying an editor for yet another spot in a different press. It doesn't really matter so long as you're investing your time and effort into things that make a return on your terms, and that keep in step with your values.

The essential difference between unjobbing and self-employment, as I've been able to figure out, is that self-employment is (generally) a single-focus, self-styled business that doesn't necessarily rely on creativity so much as networking and resource savvy, and takes more time from you than it can reasonably give back to you.

This is not to decry self-employment. Not by any means. I, personally, would much prefer self-employment to the job I presently do. On the other hand, I would much prefer living by my wits and creativity. However, since I'm in a job, and I'm not unjobbing, I'm starting to question my creativity. As for my wits: they've always been a question.

Reading List for 2011

2011-01-20T21:08:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of books. In the past I have listed some of the books I am reading, and others that I will be reading. Admittedly, I wasn't able to finish some of those books for various reasons. Nevertheless, I have composed a reading list for myself for the year of 2011.

In total, I have listed 30 books, and divided them evenly between academia and fiction (15 in each category). What follows is my list, and the category titles before the genre. Enjoy!

Academic

As can already be seen from one of my recent posts, I am already reading A History of God by Karen Armstrong, and enjoying it immensely. Part II of my review will be coming in the next couple of days, so look for it!

Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter put together this slim volume, Rich Dad Poor Dad, to help people understand paradigms for money-making and money management in a modern world. I'm reading it because I have a lot of difficulty understanding how to manage money, and it is doubtlessly one of those things that must be understood well if a person wishes to meet with even moderate material success.

This book, The Evolution of God, is a book that I've been itching to read for quite a while now. My wife bought it for me for my birthday last year, and I've been waiting for the right moment to get started. Robert Wright is an excellent writer, and froma cursory breeze through the first few pages of this book, I know I'm in for an intellectual feast.

This massive book (1216 pages), Christianity: The First 3000 Years, is a tour de force through Christian religious history by the internationally acclaimed theologian and historian Diarmaid MacCulloch. I sold my outdated and horribly biased 8-volume history set by Philip Schaff just to purchase MacCulloch's 2009 publication. Personally, I think it was a wise decision.

Sally Fallon's critically acclaimed cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, promotes whole, organic foods, and offers-up a veritable cornucopia of information about food composition, traditional preparations, and health information. A treasure waiting to be mined!

Good Calories, Bad Calories is Gary Taubes's seminal book on the fat-cholesterol myth handed down from the "experts" since the 1970's. It is an examination of the current Western diet, and evolutionary nutrition. Having begun this book just before Christmas '10, I can say it is an information-dense, critical examination of everything you might think you know about food and nutrition.

In 1859 Charles Darwin published a single book that, like the bible, shook the world. That book was On The Origin of Species, and has formed the basis for the biological explanation of perrenial questions like 'How did we get here?' and 'Who am I?' I'm very much looking forward to steeping myself in the original thesis for our gradual evolutionary development.

In Praise of Slow is Carl Honoré's discussion on the "cult of speed" exemplified in American culture, and fast becoming the societal norm for most of the rest of the world. Honoré endorses the Slow Movement and calls for people at large to slow down and live life, instead of just getting through it as quick as possible.

I could not find a suitable icon for David Suzuki's book, The Sacred Balance, so I substituted with a picture of the Canadian celebrity scholar, and environmentalist activist instead. On my wife's recommendation, I will be diving into Suzuki's much lauded and sensitive view of living responsibly on this planet.

Frederick Copleston's masterpiece, A History of Philosophy, is unrivaled in the Western world. The 9-volume set was originally published between 1946-1974, and covers all the major philosophers from the pre-Socratics to 20th century existentialists. I have all 9 volumes, but recently found out that two more volumes were included in the British publication covering Russian philosophy, logical positivism and existentialism. When money permits, I shall have to order the missing two books.

There is no question that Bart Ehrman's groundbreaking book, Misquoting Jesus, will jar me and force me to face questions I've been slow in asking. Ehrman is a formidable scholar, and those who have read Misquoting Jesus have been illuminated by the hard work of slogging through a long and obscure history of biblical redactions.

I encountered Elaine Pagels's academics when I was in seminary in 2004. Since then, I have been intensely interested in reading more than selections from her most famous book The Gnostic Gospels. So, last year, in a rare moment of serendipity, I came across her book Adam, Eve and the Serpent and bought it straightaway. Now I will be embarking on a wonderfully complex analysis of how Christian theology and politics had a widespread and damaging effect on human sexuality, especially via St. Augustine.

The Empathic Civilization is Jeremy Rifkin's manifesto to the world to harness our empathy on a global level as a foil to the global entropy we're currently witnessing. Rifkin is a senior lecturer for the European Union, and is an internationally respected scholar and cultural commentator. I'm sure his book will be a hard-going challenge, and that I'll learn more than I'm presently anticipating.

Fiction and Literature

Fool's Fate is the sixth book of six dealing with a reluctant assassin who finds himself embroiled in a world of conspiracy, intrigue, and unwanted conflict. I have read the other five books in the series, and am a third of the way through the 900 page final volume. I highly recommend anything by Robin Hobb; she is a master fantasist of the highest order.

Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is best expressed in her fictional books. The Fountainhead was the first of her fictions to attempt an encapsulation of her view on life, morality, and rationalism. Rand, as I understand it, is a challenge for even the most studious reader, so I'm anticipating a paradigm shift or two in this fiction.

Hermann Hesse is one of my all-time favourite authors. Yet, I've never tackled his magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game. Well, such a literary travesty cannot continue for me any longer. 2011 will see me lost in the raptures of Hesse's brilliance once more. I can't wait!

If you have ever read Stephen R. Donaldson's epic fantasy, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever and The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever then you understand entirely why I would be very excited to read his duology The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through. Donaldson is easily equal to Tolkien in his ability to absorb his readers in a story, and unrivaled in the world of fantasy literature in weaving together so many different strands of plot so seamlessly, and effectively.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is recognised the world over for his intense psychological dramas, and unforgettable characters. Once a person starts in on one of Dostoevsky's works, there is no turning away. To do so is a sin. I am going to relish every moment between the pages of The Brothers Karamazov.

Charles Dickens. Enough said.

Bleak House. Enough said.

Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged in 1957, and since then the only book that has out-sold it is the Bible. Atlas Shrugged is the consumate outline of Objectivism. This is considered Ayn Rand's finest moment, her most clearly expressed philosophy on life, and it is wrapped up into one of the finest pieces of fiction ever written.

The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake consists of the titles "Titus Groan", "Gormenghast", and "Titus Alone." It is classed as gothic and surrealistic writing and details the lives and events of Titus and Steerpike, the main characters, as they grow-up in Gormenghast Castle.

It wasn't until I had read Christopher Hitchens's brilliant memoir, Hitch-22, that I came across the name of Herman Wouk. Hitchens gives Wouk a few favourable words, which I took as instructive to look him up. So while I was at a local thrift store, I came across the very edition of Wouk's book Marjorie Morningstar pictured on the left. So I bought it for $0.25 and will cast my lot in with Hitchens's brief but favourable recommendation, and read Wouk's fiction at some point this year.

Robin Hobb is one of the best-loved fantasy writers on the market today. And from having read a number of her books before (as I mentioned above with Fool's Fate), I have no trouble understanding why: she is absolutely brilliant in all the ways a first-class author ought to be. With that in mind, I will venture gladly into the world of one of her latest trilogies, The Soldier Son Trilogy. Three titles comprise the set: Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade's Magic.

All told, I will be attempting a 30-book year. In the past, I have been able to handle 30 books a year with no difficulty. I was less busy then than I am now. Still, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to shore away some time over the next 11 months to continue reading through the list I've already started. As I progress, I will drop an occasional note onto the blog with some opinions, criticisms or reflections, as the urge hits me.

John Paul II: Saintish Update

2011-01-19T08:23:00.000-08:00

This blood's for you!

Apparently a vial of the pope's blood drawn from him shortly before his death will be installed in the alter at a Polish church. This "relic," as it is being described, will serve as a vampiric reminder of John Paul II's something-or-another. I think it's really rather creepy, to be frank. But I suppose Catholics will come up with all sorts of theologies surrounding veneration (of the dulia variety, mind), and defend their adoration of a dead man's blood come hell or high water.

Maybe the pope's second miracle will be that he prevents the blood from turning brown. Or maybe the church will employ a bit of scientific know-how to prevent that from happening. Personally, I think they should leave it alone and see if this pope is one of the necrotic superheroes, The Incorruptibles.

John Paul II: Saintish

2011-01-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

Pope John Paul II

Beatification is the first step in making someone a saint in the Catholic tradition. The late John Paul II, who was pope for almost 27 years (1978 - 2005), will be beatified on May 1st, 2011. The beatification of John Paul II was approved by the present pope, Benedict XVI, as this BBC article makes clear.

And from the same article, it appears as if a devout nun, who, suffering from the same disease John Paul II suffered himself, prayed to John Paul II two months after the patriarch's death and was miraculously cured. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre now attributes the remission of her parkinson's disease to the direct intervention of John Paul II, who, being the saintly chap that he is, had God zap her with a cure from beyond the grave.

Of course, such a reductionist and cynical look at the seeming cure of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre really doesn't fall within the official view of the Catholic church, whose envisioning of the activity of the saints is a tad more austere.

For Catholics, because the saints and beati (those who are not canonized, but nevertheless closer to God in death) are in the presense of God they can attendend to the prayers of the living, and act as intercessors or intermediaries between God and people. A fulcrum serves the same purpose as a pivoting point between both ends of a teeter-totter. In short, because of their proximity between God and people, they can run interference. The point is that the saints continue to serve those left on earth by petitioning God on behalf of the living. This increases the likelihood of God answering the prayers of the living faithful. It's kind of like spiritual nepotism, really.

Click to see larger image.

Still, this is only John Paul II's first miracle, so he's not quite good enough to qualify as one of heaven's sanctified élite. To date, John Paul II, despite being instrumental in more material and explicable miracles like overthrowing Poland's communism, is not quite as awesome as St. Francis of Assisi, whose claims to divine fame were his overweening sentimentality for animals, and his alleged stigmata. St. Franis did also set up a cluster of cloisters meant to harbour the pious poor, and set out orders for those poor that they had to remain poor if they wanted to be closer to God. Apparently repressing the human instinct to increase personal security and social mobility is a loftier act of devotion to God than John Paul II's tireless efforts to improve social and religious relationships between Christians, Jews, and Muslims--an improvement the world continues to need rather desperately. I wonder where we'd be without John Paul II's efforts?

In any case, John Paul II is on track for canonization. Soon, he'll be part of the rank-and-file of the heavenly élite, schmoozing it up with the likes of Aquinas, Augustine, Mary, Ambrose, Benedict, Patrick, et al. Though only after he pays his 'Saints Union' fees with one more miracle.

Whatever that miracle might end up being, the one he has apparently effected shortly after his death has the suspicious stamp of having been certified--pay attention now--purely by church sources. From the BBC article linked above, we read that "Church officials believe that the Polish pope... interceded for the miraculous cure of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre" and that "Church-appointed doctors agreed that there was no medical explanation for the curing of the nun" (italics mine). Such being the case, I wonder what would've happened with Simon-Pierre's case had purely secular sources investigated the nun's claims?

Doubtless there would be a lot more controversy than the slight ripples caused by a Polish doctor who suggests that Simon-Pierre wasn't suffering from Parkinson's disease but may have found temporary alleviation from a nervous disorder.

"A Polish newspaper said that a doctor who scrutinised the nun's case had concluded that she might have been suffering not from Parkinson's, but from a nervous disorder from which temporary recovery is medically possible."

Everyone and their dog will be praying.

Humbug! There is no room for scrutiny when the Catholic church has investigated with its own self-interested and self-appointed sources. Using critical medical counter-explanations could possibly dent the metallic sheen of John Paul II's church-approved miracle. Such anti-Catholic rhetoric cannot be accepted or allowed to interefere in any way with the gradual additions to the cult of saints.

Nevertheless, John Paul II is, I'm sure, daily being petitioned by faithful Catholics everywhere, who by dint of their prayers, may be able to spur the nigh-sainted pope on to just one more miracle. Can you imagine being that special person who finally experiences, or at the very least identifies John Paul II at the apogee of his postmortem handiwork? I'm glad we have living Catholics around to tell us what certain individuals are doing in the afterlife, and that we have big gold stars that read 'saint' to pin to their memories.

A History of God: Reflections & Review P. I

2011-01-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

I've taken the plunge into Karen Armstrong's magnum opus A History of God (Knopf, 1993). It is a book that any serious reader of religion and history would be well-advised to read. The book aims to give an account of the development of the three major monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and their respective evolving ideas about God (e.g., who and what God is, how God has acted in history, and how God has -- interestingly -- taken on competing perspectives despite the same Abrahamic roots). Finally, Armstrong examines some modern philosophies concerning God, such as the 'death of God movement' and post-modern conceptions of God.

Armstrong is no friend to ignorance, so anyone investigating the perrenial question of 'God' had better come to this volume with an open mind to learn, or an already firm grasp of the issues attending the monotheistic religions and their notions of God. This is not to say that Armstrong has written a compendium of arcana, or some arid piece of abstracted academia. It does mean, however, that she has taken an angle not popular to the usual considerations of religious history.

More specifically, Armstrong's work on the Judeo-Christian heritage draws from a particular source theory called the Wellhausen Hypothesis, or the Documentary Hypothesis. Such a theory of biblical origins is minority opinion, absolutely, when contrasted with the classic circles of literal-historical method. Though it isn't without merit, the literal-historical method takes too much advantage of the willingness and (sometimes) unintentional ignorance of the well-meaning believer.

For example, it is clearly the case that there are two different creation accounts in Genesis, but the literal-historical method, while it may recognise this, eventually relies on the willingness of the believer to accept on faith the discrepancies in the biblical narrative. The documentary hypothesis, while not unsympathetic to the demands of faith to believe the claims of the biblical narrative charts, dates, rearranges and makes a fair-minded attempt at explaining oddities in scripture by examining the historical-cultural events attendant to Christian holy writ. Once that is done, the reader has a more thorough working knowledge of what the biblical authors were writing, and how they were communicating age-old stories in new symbols. Granted, literal-historical method includes some of the same rigorous examinations of history and culture, but the difference is usually split between which hermeneutic is going to source evidence to support an already established outcome (literal-historical) and which explanation will review the evidence with an eye to assembling a scientific and irrespective account (documentary hypothesis).

Because Armstrong's account draws on the documentary hypothesis, she is bound to be discarded as 'confused' or 'godless' or what-have-you by the vast majority of Christians. Despite this automatic anethema in the majority Christian world, Armstrong has still managed to pen one of the most dramatically successful historical theology texts in the Western world. And the reason for this is not hard to see.

Certainly the boldly ambitious title A History of God claims people's attention right away. But more, the gentle eloquence in Armstrong's recounting of the details of otherwise dead, dusty, and dilapidated eras gives the reader a personal sense of the events she relays. Such an ability to suffuse historical academics with life, light, and occasional nostalgia enlivens the mind to the subject matter, and that is what I personally think owes to the massive success of Armstrong's book.

Alongside Armstrong's easy but penetrating academics, she is not afraid to call a spade a spade. So while she examines the topics at hand, she sees the relevance of addressing contemporary issues that arise out of the mindsets of the religious history being examined. For example, there are very few people in the televised Western world unfamiliar with the cultural tactic of claiming God for partisan motives. Presidents and Primeministers in times of war, call God out as if he were a super-soldier destined to ordain the victory of whoever has enough public pious pomp. Or, as bequeathed to Jews and Christians everywhere, God has culled certain people to himself as a preferred group: the elect. Such notions of holier-than-others, or pre-ordained preferential peoples wins no sympathy from Armstrong. In a memorable quote, she highlights the dangers of such ugly and banal concepts as 'election theology':

The dangers of such theologies of election, which were not qualified by the transcendent perspective of an Isaiah, are clearly shown in the holy wars that have scarred the history of monotheism. Instead of making God a symbol to challenge our prejudice and force us to contemplate our own shortcomings, it can be used to endorse our egotistic hatred and make it absolute. It makes God behave exactly like us, as though he were simply another human being (p. 54-55).

Whose side is God on?

Believing yourself more special than everybody else certainly runs one adrift of reality and sets one up to be a potential danger. Being unafraid to reach out for a moment of sagacity, Armstrong drives home a practical and helpful point to highlight the difference in thinking of some of the ancient peoples and a more morally advanced perspective on the inherent equality of all people.

Still, Armstrong is not preachy, even if she does drop a pearl of wisdom here-and-there throughout her book. It befits someone of her unusual erudition to address some of the more troubling aspects of humanity's sickly dogmas. And carefully coddled as those admontions are in a lucid recounting of historical religion, nothing is lost in Armstrong's collisions with cheap theologies.

A Cup of Tea: Clarifications

2011-01-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

Chinese Gunpowder Green Tea

The underlying assumption of my last article, A Cup of Tea, was that people are preparing for themselves standard bagged tea (usually a black tea). In such a case, Christopher Hitchens's advice holds true: pour boiling water over an already present teabag; don't dunk your teabag into boiling, or even tepid water.

There are other teas, though. And those teas require more tenderness than the standard fare. For example, Chinese Gunpowder Green Tea (green tea leaves rolled into small tight balls that unfurl during the infusion process) would almost assuredly go unpalatably bitter were you to pour boiling water over it. In the case of the aforementioned tea, portioning out the amount of leaves you want in your cup, then giving them a quick rinse in room-temperature water before pouring fish eyes over your infusion maximises the delicate flavour of Chinese green tea.

Or, in another case, the age and production of peppermint tea may adversely affect the way the tea reacts to different temperatures of water. The peppermint tea that I'm currently enjoying requires that I pour the water over the bags just before the boiling point, at a heating point known as rope of pearls. If I let it go beyond that point, as my wife describes it, "it tastes more grassy and green than peppermint." And if what you're anticipating is peppermint but you get a grassy flavour, you're probably not going to be satisfied.

All this to say that if you're going involve yourself in the proper preparation of tea, then there are certain teas that simply don't follow the universal rule of "boiling water poured over the bag." However, in all cases, as far as I know, the tea must be present in the cup or pot before the introduction of the water -- and in some cases, the tea tastes better if is given a rinse in tepid water first.

There is a reason why the Asian countries are famous for their teas, and for tea ceremonies: because there is an entire culture and art surrounding the use and preparation of tea. So, while Christopher Hitchens and I agree enitrely on the particulars of his article, that agreement comes with -- I think -- an underlying assumption that the kind of tea we're discussing is a standard black fare, an English breakfast tea, say. There is quite a bit more to the intricate world of tea, however, than boiling water over an already present teabag.

A Cup of Tea

2011-01-02T23:29:00.000-08:00

The business of making tea can be, and sometimes is, irksome and unsavoury. Here at home, I have the beatific delight of a partner who understands how to make a fabulous tea. And, should there ever be an occasion, she also knows how to brew a sturdy cup of coffee. I think after 8 years of marriage, we have understood the tea-making world, and had enough exposure to the swill that passes as coffee, that we know a good spot of tea, or a good cup 'o' joe when we have one. Almost invariably, my wife and I make the perfect green or peppermint tea. And the odd time that coffee comes about, we have mastered the necessary proficiencies to dazzle our taste-buds to satisfaction.

Critic and Author, Christopher Hitchens

So why all this talk about tea? Because I just finished reading a witty, and very personable reflection on How to Make a Decent Cup of Tea by Christopher Hitchens, one of my literary heroes. His unabashed insistence that the tea-bag be present when the boiling water is poured into the cup, and not added afterward, is 100% correct. It isn't ice fishing: you're not trying to plunge something into the water to pull it out again. It is tea: you are trying to extract the nutritive properties from the dried leaves by a process of infusion. Frankly, the dunkin' tea-bag method is woefully egregious. Mr. Hitchens, in an effort to save the ignorant from themselves, has linked to George Orwell's brief essay A Nice Cup of Tea. It is a shining example of a man who understood how to get the most from a cup.

Enjoy your reading and, most of all, thank you to Christopher Hitchens, enjoy your tea!

2011: A Year of New Directions

2011-01-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

It's 2011: How will you change your life this year?

Welcome to 2011!

Saint Cynic will be broadening its scope in 2011. As many of you already know, Saint Cynic tackles religio-philosophical issues oftentimes by reducing them to the absurdities they are, and then lampooning those issues with some critical, or snarky remarks. That won't stop. It's good fun, and I enjoy it.

However, I will be concentrating on writing some more serious essays and presenting them as a series. My topics will include the philosophical and religious issues I've always examined, but I will also be jumping face-forward into natural, fully concious living; something some people call "wholistic living", or even the "primal lifestyle." The point of these articles will be to contrast the way modern Western society lives now with the way our ancestors lived eons ago, and to highlight the evolutionary biology that supports a return to some of the dietary and fitness dispositions of the non-agricultural ancients. It's a topic I'm quite excited about and eager to share with you. (New links to do with this subject will also be appearing in the sidebars, too.)

More, I'm planning on taking Saint Cynic to the streets. That is, I'm going to be looking into making this site an actual physical entity by scouting out possible regular meeting places for fellow culture-observers, and even sussing-out means to publish a magazine that will include articles from guest-writers. My goal is to see if I can make my venture here profitable in the offline world. To that end, I will also be searching for domain providers so I can make Saint Cynic an exclusive name, independent of the usual blogging format.


Lift heavy things

As a personal goal, I will be continuing with semi-regular P90X routines, but combining them with two other elements: The Primal Blueprint, and FitDeck. These dietary and fitness switches will drive me further into better health, maximize my body's potential, and improve my overall enjoyment of living. Join me if you'd like to take on a healthy, wholesome challenge.

And on a more personal note, I will be pushing myself to leave my present employment and begin the journey of unjobbing. This is a scary decision for me since it means divesting myself of the usual, predictable method of giving some faceless entity my time so it can give me money, and I can fuel a minimum number of my interests and passions. I want to work to live not live to work, as the saying goes. But I have to go about it wisely: I have wee'uns depending on me, and I'm not willing to let them be diminished in any way by my quest for self-realised income and autonomy.

Thankfully, I have a partner who is topped full of incredible talent in visual arts, communication, music, and intellectual capacity. I think that together, we can take our lives by storm and start living in such a way that we are both happy, productive, and satistfied.

Those are some of my ambitions this year. What are yours? Please comment. I would love to interact with you more!

A Candid Reflection on Myself

2010-12-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

Know thyself, in ancient Greek

I'm going to venture out into a little more personal territory tonight. I'm feeling emotional, and I want to capture some thoughts. Please bear with me.

Most people have come across the maxim "know thyself" at some point in their life. The saying was inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (pictured left), and it is probably one of the most important, sagely bits of information ever spelled out for humankind. Afterall, what more helpful piece of information can there be than to understand your place in the world, how you fit, who you are, who others are in relation to you, what enlivens you to the world around you, what feeds your passions and snares your hopes; simply stated, what makes you who you are?

In the end, I cannot think of another more insightful charge than to get to know myself. By doing so, I wonder how much of who I am would change? I mean, part of knowing who you are is knowing who you're not, and then being brave enough to jettison those falsities. Nevertheless -- and I'm certainly not the only one who does this -- I hold on to what I know is false about myself; I hold on to who I'm not. And the end result of such a morbid practice is manifold: I don't get to know myself truly, others are forced to look past the veneer I unintentionally present them with, my values become blurred, and I act in ways that are disingenuous.

So why would I, and all the others who undertake to obscure themselves from themselves, do such a thing?

First, I think that it is partly unintentional. There isn't a soul alive who isn't conditioned by their experiences along the way to adulthood. No-one lives in a vacuum. And because we are all influenced by the contexts under which we experience life, we are forced to endure many untruths that we unwittingly take on. For example, a person growing up in a well-meaning family may experience a lot of sarcastic humour from their parents. While this in itself is not intended for bad, the long-term side-effect of sarcasm may be that a person develops a pattern of self-demeaning. That is, when he achieves something, or recognise something about himself, he may automatically and unintentionally detract from his accomplishment by telling himself things like, "you could've done better," or "why didn't I do this sooner?" or "I've seen better."

The sarcasm of the well-meaning family helped condition a negative response in a family member who, for all intents and purposes, means to treat himself respectfully and kindly. Nevertheless, the wholeness and intimate awareness of that person's actual selfhood is obscured by a needless and detrimental tendency to self-demean. Such a person, while he may know himself quite well is, sadly, not in possession of his full selfhood.

Shame-based identity

Second, I think people obscure themselves from themselves because they are afraid they may end up disliking who they actually are. That is, people are afraid of who they may actually be so they go to great lengths to hide behind preferred projections of who they'd like to be.

I'll use myself as an example: when I was roughly 12 years old, I had enough self-awareness to understand that I constantly felt ashamed of myself. To protect myself from the growing depression my sense of shame was engendering, I pictured myself as a strong, handsome, nigh omni-capable man bent on battling the forces of evil and preserving precious antiquities for the rest of the world. And if you read between the lines of that last description, yes, I fancied myself a budding Indiana Jones. I even went so far as to steal my uncle's cream-coloured leather gloves, and convince my grandmother to purchase a genuine fedora at the Stetson warehouse near where we lived. In order to save myself from myself, I pretended to be someone else.

I didn't like me because I wasn't capable of seeing myself soberly. What I saw when I looked into myself (usually at night when I was alone in the dark of my room) was a scared, disappointed, hurt, and lonely person. I saw the negative remarks I heard around me, and the resulting shame I thought I should feel for being dissatisfactory to others. I wasn't a carpenter like the rest of the men in my family, and I wasn't a regimented and orderly engineer-type like I thought my mother's family was. I was too different to be acceptable, therefore I didn't accept myself, and that resulted in a shame-based identity. And that shame came out in fear-based searches for an identity that modelled who I'd like to be, ideally: Indiana Jones. I didn't like me, but I really liked Indiana Jones.

All these years later, however, I still haven't completely shed the shame-based identity of that little boy. I still haven't been able to make a coherent picture of who I actually am. The difference now is that I'm eager to know myself because, at bottom, I really have no other recourse than to come face-to-face with myself if I want to actually live, if I want to be a genuine person, if I want to embrace the moral complusion that "Know thyself" implies on a person to be fearlessly real.

Who I am

I am not Indiana Jones. I am not a carpenter like the men in my family. Being twenty-four years in advance of my 12 year-old perceptions, I have come to understand that I am not a regimented and orderly engineer-type like I thought my mother's family was, and neither are they! Still, who I am is a little murky to me at this point. A lot has happened in my life to muddy the waters, as it were, which makes self-reflection that much more difficult again. But mud settles, and ripples eventually steady, and what should be left, if I am patient enough to wait and see, is a loveable, enjoyable, and whole person staring back at me; a person I can call 'me'.

What Has Not Yet Killed Us

2010-12-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

If you recall, I posted that Saint Cynic will be taking on an additional subject: Fitness and Nutrition. To that end, I have been shoring up some titles of books that I will be borrowing from the local library so that I can read, learn, and inwardly digest.

My purpose behind tackling the field of fitness and nutrition is not to set myself up as any form of authority on the subject; I'm certainly not that. However, because I was gifted with a modicum of brain-power, and a rational self-interest in my own well-being; because I'm not getting younger and I've frittered away many years of valuable time poking about in areas of interest that have done nothing to stabilize really any area of my life; because I have a swelling interest in improving the quality of my life as a whole; and because I would rather widen the margins for avoiding any possible heritable disorders in my family, I am going to journal my findings as a personal catalogue that others can (hopefully) benefit from.

If nobody besides myself benefits, so be it. But because I will personally benefit from this new journey then that's one more person who has stepped beyond the pale of faulty "conventional wisdom" and into the light of proper self-actualization, and a more refined sense of actual autonomy.

To begin with, it is true that you are what you eat. What you take into you, in part, logically comprises aspects of the physical self. For example, if you habituate yourself to a diet of fast-foods, rancid vegetable oils (which are the oils found in most store-bought food products), and multitudinous forms of sugar then you'll ride out your days on unnecessary insulin spikes that overtax your liver with harmful carbohydrates and result in unhealthy weight gain. Thus if you eat unhealthy, you will grow into a robust example of ill-health. What you eat helps determine what you become.

We apply the same principle to how we think ("think positive and you'll be positive", etc.), so why would the same not hold true for your bodily intake? The simple answer is that it does. This is incontrovertibly true as borne out by evolutionary history. And the human body, simply said, cannot adapt to those things that, in effect, weaken it, damage the gene pool, and eventually kill it off. So, despite Neitzsche's famous quote, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," it simply does not equal out that poor food intake, while it does not kill you quick enough to pique other's awareness, makes you any stronger, or that our present state of (un)health as a human race will make us any stronger in the future.

The facts are continuing to roll in: we are not dead, but what has not killed us is, in fact, weakening us and, sadly, fattening us up for the eventual slaughter.

With that in mind, I plan to bolster my awareness of proper fitness and nutrition, and change the trajectory of my life overall by improving my understanding of the issues that attend to our culture's declining health. To begin with, I will be reading Gary Taubes's famous and perrenial volume Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Taubes's credentials are impressive (this blogger has noted them), and he has shaken the dietary world to its core with his über-well-researched essay. I am looking forward to gleaning everything I can from Taube's work, and then applying his conclusions in their proper directions.

I will offer my reflections on Taubes's work as I go, and hopefully generate some fruitful discussion for everyone involved. So keep watching Saint Cynic for my reflections on Taubes's book and, of course, for my usual stock-and-trade articles criticising the religio-philosophical world around us.

Normal

2010-12-26T23:26:00.000-08:00

I don't like the word 'normal.' It's one of the most overused, thoughtless, and empty words in the English vocabulary. Mathematics defines normal as 90°. After that, normal gets weird, dodgy, connotative and, well, abnormal.

You see, there is no normal in philosophy -- that strange application every one of us does to varying degrees in our lives. Science really has no normal beyond importing the mathematical definition of the word. Social sciences harbour freakish political mindsets abstracted from reality and imposed on fledgling minds; their 'normal' is the particular partisan persuasion of the institute teaching the social sciences. And most often that persuasion happens to be in conflict with reality.

Economics doesn't have a 'normal'. There's no 'normal' in environmental sciences. There's no 'normal' in music. Really, 'normal' just doesn't exist beyond being a sentiment that reinforces the guilt we're taught we should feel if we don't quite "fit in." Add to the injury of that guilt the insult that mainstream media chats into our ears: be an individual. So while it is that we should be concerned about 'fitting in', so that we don't appear abnormal, we should also be individuals (just like everyone else!), which is a message to stand in stark contrast to the status quo (i.e., the normal expectations around us).

Well, having explained my bafflement with the uncouth concept of normality, I will leave off this article with Ellen Goodman's famous quotation about what constitutes 'normal'.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Yeah. There's nothing like aspiring to mediocrity. How pathetic is that?

Boxing Day and Circumcision

2010-12-26T12:14:00.000-08:00

The two topics don't really meet up in any meaningful way, aside from the fact that I've been debating with someone about 'circumcision' today, on Boxing Day. That being said, I will state flat-out that I think circumcision is 99.9% of the time a horrific and immoral practice.

Yes, the Abrahamic covenant in Scripture compels those of the Judeo-Christian persuasion to consider whitling the phallus down as a godly action, one that marks a person as God's chosen. Yes, the argument can be made that baptism replaces circumcision because circumscribing the heart (i.e., cutting one's self off from the debauchery of the world) is far nobler. And I will agree that the metaphysic of baptism is far more laudable than the partial emasculation set out in the Old Testament as a means of currying favour with Yahweh.

Nevertheless, I am four-square against the practice of circumcision, and consider anyone who elects to have their children mutilated in such a fashion to be unthinking, inconsiderate, brutish and immoral. Harsh words, I know. And perhaps you may know me, and now understand what I think if you have had your child ravaged by such an invasive, and insidiously injurious barbarism (sometimes referred to vapidly as a "common surgical procedure"). I'm not concerned. I welcome conversation.

That said, I have been debating a woman about circumcision. Her position is essentially this: if you do it, or believe its fine, then it is. She believes, as a Christian, that it is a matter of faith. That is, she has faith in circumcision. I think her position entirely ridiculous. I responded by saying as much, but in more words.

...that you would say, "[my] faith tells me that it’s NOT a harmful or damaging thing" is really what concerns me about your thinking. Why? Because 'faith', definitionally, is not a content-rich position. That is, faith is not an information-filled premise upon which to base your conclusion that circumcision is not harmful. The basic facts bear this out quite well.

First, faith is, definitionally, a 'hope' or 'basic trust' in a proposition (in this case, God). The Greek word for 'faith' used in NT scripture is pistis (noun, used 244 times). It is the name/noun given to the quality of a person that can 'hope' or place a 'basic trust' in the claims of the apostles, Jesus, and scripture.

Second, because 'faith' is essentially a compulsive quality that enables a person to believe certain truth-claims, it does not follow therefore that a person can utilise faith for whatever topic, issue, or subject they fancy. Faith is not a scapegoat that allows you to place all your reasoning on hold for the simple expedient of relaxing your responsibility to reason things out.

Third, because you are not excused from reasoning just because you have faith, you are in the position of having to consider that the first action of circumcision is to harm the male phallus by slicing off its foreskin. This involves inordinate amounts of pain, long-term suffering, and possible pain in the future if the foreskin is cut back too far (e.g., it hurts some men to have a full errection because they were cut back too far).

The point is this: whenever the human body is somehow harmed, depleted, altered, or even augmented (e.g., deviant piercings), it is mutilated. Plain and simple. Therefore, circumcision, because it involves harming the male phallus in a way that disfigures it from its natural state, is abjectly immoral and wrong. This is basic logic informed by simple observation, irrespective of a contentless position like 'faith'.

If the first action of circumcision is injurious to the male phallus, and therefore the male who undergoes it, it is undebateably harmful. And where harm is inflicted against another's will and natural sanctity; where harm is inflicted without the utilitarian measure of doing harm to save a life; where harm is invited on a person in such a way that potentializes long-term psychological, emotional, and physical effects (which circumcision does do), it is therefore wrong, immoral, evil, and ungodly.

That some Bronze-age agrarian polytheists took a fancy to Yahweh, one of the Canaanite gods, and lopped off the dangly bit of their penis to show him contrition does not make such a stupid act respectable, healthy, or worthy of propagation. Abraham's story is just that: a story. It is an embellishment protracted through centuries of oral repetition, and enforced upon untold millions of people all in an effort to appease their vengeful god. They may as well have thrown the most beautiful virgins into a volcano. The mentality would've been the same: hurt people to please God. It's patently irrational and not worthy of being a faith-issue. Faith has a certain dignity that is smudged, distorted and sullied when measured against such ruthless and insipid practices as circumcision.

I'm interested in this lady's response, but since this debate has been rambling out over the coarse of the past week, and her rebuttals have been far from inspiring or persuasive, I'm not counting on much. Perhaps her ability to reason has been circumcised by her faith.

Christo-Solstice

2010-12-23T07:28:00.000-08:00

Christmas will be happening a little late for the Saint Cynic household; I am scheduled to work the holidays. In any case, for the rest of you who have somewhat normal lives, Merry Christmas!

And for those of you who are of a different mind concerning Christmas, I hope you have a superb Solstice Season!

Steven Wright and A New Pope

2010-12-18T22:10:00.000-08:00

One of my all time favourite comedians is Steven Wright. I find myself in stitches almost every time I see one of his shows, or read some of his quips. So, in an effort to push some of you readers into a fit of raucous laughter, I have embedded a wee clip of his Comic Relief appearance. Enjoy!

And since this blog really wouldn't be complete without a little stab at institutional religion, I present you with the following brilliant little mock-up called, "A New Pope".

Saint Cynic Tackles Fitness and Nutrition

2010-12-17T12:10:00.000-08:00

This blog will be taking on a new subject, along with keeping to religio-philosophical criticism. Saint Cynic will now also be tackling fitness and nutrition. I have been participating in P90X and in a nutritional lifestyle called the Primal Blueprint, and I can say that both fitness models in combination have done wonderfully for me, so far.

Briefly stated, P90X proposes to "shred" fat off your body and help you build lean muscle mass within 90 days. But to do this, a person has to follow the nutritional guide provided by Team Beachbody, the manufacturers of said program. After leafing through their nutrition guide, my wife and I decided that it was not suitable to our physical needs. Essentially, there is too much emphasis on carbohydrates in the P90X dietary guide, to the point where one could legitimately wonder, "isn't this the kind of diet that would be better suited to fattening up cattle?"

Well, the argument certainly could be made that by taking on P90X's dietary advice you would have to make your whole lifestyle about working out. Incidentally, that's also one of the criticisms about P90X in general: that it requires an overall lifestyle change such that everything you do has to revolve around working out, and finding the time to work out. For those people who have that kind of leisure, that's fine. However, there are those of us -- myself, for example -- who just don't have the kind of time that P90X demands. Nor do I have any interest in eating in such a way that I'm constantly having to monitor my caloric intake, or working out to burn more calories than I take in (a poor bit of advice that I'll dispell at a later date).

So, to deal with both the nutritional end of things and the issue of time, I've taken on the Primal Blueprint for Fitness and for Nutrition. In a nutshell, the Primal Blueprint draws attention to the harmful effects of "cereal" grains, and emphasizes the overarching importance of a fat-burning metabolism. Thus, a person should not be eating grains, which sap the body of its mineral and vitamin stores, but should be eating whole foods, fermented vegetables, good fats, lots of protein from healthy meats, and discarding as much sugary intake as possible to avoid insulin spikes (which are correlated to an increasing rise in diabetes).

More though, Primal Blueprint speaks to fitness in a way that legitimizes an easy-going fitness routine that still maximises physical benefits. Says Mark Sisson, the creator of Primal Blueprint:

Our exercises should make us stronger, faster, and more capable of accomplishing just about any physical feat the world throws at us. They should be enjoyable (pleasure-giving), brief (without sacrificing effectiveness), sustainable (lifelong), immediately accessible (to young, old, and untrained), and infinitely scalable (from beginners to elites). A fitness program, then, should meet these benchmarks.

So while it is that P90X will kick your ass and make you burn, ache, and sweat -- which is all very useful when getting fit -- it does not propose the fluidity of Primal Blueprint as described in the quote above. Nevertheless, P90X can be used in conjunction with Primal Blueprint on certain days. For example, if you're needing to "lift heavy things" (a category familiar to primal-goers), you could easily sub in one of the lift routines from P90X, or even just a portion of a lift routine. Also, in the winter months, when it's really not easy on your body to run around outside, you could do one of the cardio routines from P90X, or, again, just a portion of one.

However you chose to approach the Primal Blueprint, P90X, if utilised appropriately, can be of great benefit. As a stand-alone, however, I found P90X to be a little tedious and overly time-consuming. In turn, the harsh time commitment of P90X nags a certain point: can I sustain such a rigorous routine in the face of everyday life from now until old-age? My answer is "no". And I suspect that may be the answer for a large number of people who would like to reap the benefits of P90X but just can't afford the time.

There is a solution, however, and it consists in making a hybrid of the Primal Blueprint for Fitness and Nutrition, and P90X. And in my opinion, the relaxed pace of primal fitness is better adapted to the actualities of human living in the modern world where so much of our time is at a high premium, and where coping with even a minimal fitness and nutrition routine can rub us up against the demands of work, family, and other pursuits.

More to come...

Richard Lynn: Disbelief and IQ

2010-12-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

The Telegraph, a newspaper out of the UK, has put out an article detailing the findings of emeritus psychology professor Richard Lynn. Lynn teaches out of Ulster University and has recently suggested that people with better than average IQs are less likely to believe in God.

Lynn's critics have labelled the findings "simplistic", and based on what I've read so far, I'd have to agree.

According to Lynn, the decline in religious affliation and belief in God dropped dramatically in the 20th century because people have become more intelligent. A quick glance at the basic evolution of the human being, however, suggests that we may not have been as smart as our neanderthalic ancestors. If that is true, then Lynn's findings are not only "simplistic", as his critics have charged, but inevitably wrong.

Neaderthals were highly religious (though not in an organised sense), even superstitious people, yet their overall cranial capacity suggests a larger brain, and therefore a possible better overall cerebral capability. Mind you, as the documentary Battle of the Brains indicates, the jury's still out on whether a bigger brain means more potential capacity. For some, smaller regions of the brain are more efficient than others who have larger regions, and visa versa.

So, while it is that neanderthals may have been smarter and people with better-than-average IQs may be less inclined to believe in God, there is no clear-cut link between belief in a set of propositions and the overall intellectual horsepower of a person's brain.

And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that the world's major educational institutions are anything shy of nonreligious to begin with. Hence people who flourish in academic settings are going to be much more highly influenced by the philosophical climate of the institutes they attend. In our youth, we usually call that kind of exemplification "peer pressure", but somehow, when we peer into the upper-eschelons of academia the notion of that same "peer pressure" is overlooked, and people start exculpating themselves with unfounded excuses such as 'people are just smarter now.' Nonsense! People are able to access much more information now and, consequently, they are better equipped to meet the demands of reality face-on.

In any case, being better informed and having more ready access to information doesn't make a person smarter, and really doesn't show a link into disbelief. The familiar logician's addage "correlation is not causation" is instructive here: while there may be an argument to suggest that readily available information can persuade people not to believe in God, that accessibility is not definitively the cause of a person's unbelief. And let's not forget that there are many sincere, highly intelligent religious folk who have access to the same information that most other people do -- and they keep believing.

Arken Counter (It's a Copyright thing...)

2010-12-08T20:47:00.000-08:00

World famous young earth creationist, Ken Ham -- of Answers In Genesis fame -- has stepped up and asked for donations of $24.5 million dollars to make an amusement park out of Noah's Ark. Said distraction is, thus far, banally labelled, "Ark Encounter".

Yes, that's right, Mr. Ham is set to dazzle the world by recreating a big boat. And he wants everyone else to pay for it. Isn't that nice of him?

Well, in the spirit of charity, I decided to pop over to his blog and feed him a reflection. However, because my response there was not immediately supportive but more probative, I have been placed in 'moderation' while others after me (because they're enthusiasts) have been permitted their breezy remarks. Here is what I wrote:

If people are willing to donate multiple thousands of dollars to contribute a peg, plank, or beam would they also be willing to contribute the same kind of money to something more practical, like hosting a dinner for homeless people? Or, perhaps, renting an apartment for a struggling university student?

Why not do something more useful for God’s people? If the biblical stories are true, then we’ve already had an ark. Why do we need another one; especially one that’s just meant to impress viewers and serves essentially as vainglory?

And has anyone realised the contribution to deforestation this project entails?

I think my comments and questions are fair. Why do we need what would essentially amount to a theme park attraction imaginatively abstracted from the pages of a 5000 year-old book? And while the U.S. economy rides the waves of recession and depression, is it really essential to anchor otherwise useful funds into a boat-shaped playground?

And why build the bloody thing inland? What kind of a stupid waste is it to have a giant, brand new boat sitting inland? At least make the damn thing funtional! Ooo! I know: load on board the young earth creationists two-by-two and let them float away somewhere where we don't have to listen to their illiterate twaddle about the earth being 6000 years old.

And on that point (about the earth being 6000 years old), I think Sam Harris summed it up best when he wrote in Letter To A Christian Nation, "This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue" (Vintage, paperback ed., p. x - xi). But, if you're going to beat a dead horse, you may as well have glue as an end-goal. Then maybe the young-earthers will have a little something-something to seal their planks and beams against the unfloods and inland breakers.

I Don't Believe In Hell

2010-12-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

I don't believe in Hell. I think the whole idea is contemptible nonsense. If someone does believe in Hell, they must agree to some version of the following paradigm:

God created everything, including people;
People did stuff they shouldn't have and that made God upset;
God set-up a place for people who make him miffed, and it is called 'Hell' (there's all sorts of unimaginably horrific torture that goes on without end in Hell);
God wants to forgive everyone for not only doing irksome things themselves, but also for inheriting the irksomeness of the first people to ruffle God's feathers, as it were;

Conclusion: If you exist, you've been created sick, commanded to be well by asking forgiveness for sins you didn't commit but inherited, and if you don't ask forgiveness for those sins, then you'll suffer unmitigated torture forever and ever. Amen.

Nope. Sorry. I don't buy it. If the Christian message holds true, then Christ shouldered the burden of everyone else's sins. That leaves everyone else standing on their own two feet, not taking on myriad generations of others misgivings. That also means that if God created everyone sick, and demands that they be well, then there's no point in condemning them for the state he created them in. Why bother creating anyone in the first place just to condemn them if they don't recognise their malady?

That is the message of a capricious and malevolent deity.

I think God's a little better than that. If I can think of a more moral outcome to being a little spiritually daft, then I'm sure God must be slightly ahead of regular human morality, no?

Book Review Suggestions

2010-11-29T12:51:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking of doing some book reviews for my blog. Trouble is, I'm tossed as to which books to review. Here are a few I'm interested in.

Still, I wonder, which books would you like me to review? Keep in mind your suggestions are just that: suggestions. I may not take them up, but I'm willing to look into them, absolutely.

Having Their Cake And Eating It, Too

2010-11-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

I don't really know anymore if it is morally acceptable for me to pick on such unwitting targets. However, the Catholic Church really does provide a limitless storehouse of stupidity to whittle away at. For example, I just learned that the Catholic Church has listed the "attempted ordination of women" amongst their roster of horribly horrible crimes.

The Catholic News Service notes that,

the "attempted ordination of women" will be listed among those crimes, as a serious violation of the sacrament of holy orders, informed sources said. As such, it will be handled under the procedures set up for investigating "delicta graviora" under the control of the doctrinal congregation.

And let's not forget that the delicta graviora is also the same description pinned to such base crimes as "sexual abuse." So, while it is that the Catholic Church and I can agree that there are a good many actions and states that are horribly immoral, we certainly must part ways when it comes to whether a woman can chant the mass and preach a sermon. And just for those technically-minded Catholics out there, we can still part ways on whether it is immoral to give a spiritual appointment (ordination) that sets a woman up as an authority in the assemblies of God. Because while I really see no problem with dashing the hopes of an oudated and repressive patriarchy, those technically-minded Catholic parrots who just put-up with whatever's tossed at them are just as immoral, in my mind, as those people who are actually committing crimes against humanity.

How? They've decided to jettison their reason in favour of allowing someone else -- namely the pope and his posse of misogynistic cronies -- determine their morality in opposition to observable reality. In general, this sort of misguided acceptance of a single ruler's decrees is understood as a dictatorship, which most of the world considers immoral and inhumane. But as long as suppressing and oppressing women is considered acceptable because such actions are declared under the banner of a "religion", then it's fine. Because once religion is appended to a dictatorship, what is instinctively understood to be really fucking evil, is suddenly moral.

To sum:

1. The Catholic Church and I agree that sexual abuse is wrong, even evil;
2. The Catholic Church and I strongly disagree that attempting to ordain women is just as evil as other crimes against humanity.

Mind you, as an independent entity, Catholics can set up their own rules for self-governance and internal expectations, and women wanting to become priests really ought to look elsewhere. But when the threat of damnation is extended to people who are not part of "the true Church", why would a sincere believing woman who has all the giftings of a priest not want to be a Catholic priest? If by not being a Catholic you risk your salvation, then an intensely devout woman who wants to be a priest has to make the decision: forget her dreams and self-identified personhood, or risk her soul. So, essentially, the priestly woman is damned if she does, and damned if she doesn't. Looks like the Catholics can have their cake and eat it, too.

But don't worry: that same woman can just go home and have 12 babies, like a good little Catholic. She can be "saved through childbearing" (1 Tim. 2:15). You know, where she can find true fulfillment.

Here's another source on the same issue.

Muzzle the Man, Please

2010-11-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

Darth Benedict, head of the Catholic Empire, has used his force to publish a book. Again. This time, in Light of the World, one of the topics he tackles is the subject of condom use -- something he and his other spindly-fingered, virgin Sith Lords know a lot about. I suppose when we want advice, we're all be beholden to the experts, right?

Anyway, Catholicism's chief mouth-breather has announced it to the Empire, and to the scattered remnants of the Rebel Alliance (i.e., Protestants and Non-Catholics alike) that people can hereby use condoms in exceptional circumstances; e.g., if you're going to have sex with a male prostitute. Or perhaps he should add "if you're going to have sex with a priest."

In any case, people are going to hit the sheets. There's no exception to that reality. So, just what kind of "exceptional circumstance" warrants capping one's John-Thomas? Why, if one's John-Thomas is going to potentially threaten the life of another, of course! But if you just want to have an hour well-spent with your partner, and not be given over 9 months later to an 18-20 year responsibility, well that's just wrong, evil, sinful, and damnably ungodly.

So are condoms valid in AIDS-riven Africa?

"The Pope made clear in his view condoms were no answer to the Aids pandemic."

So there you have it, commmoners, Darth Benedict has indicated that despite the exceptional circumstances of sexually transmitted diseases that will kill you, they are not the kind of exceptional circumstances that warrant a latex moment. But if you're an African male prostitute, perhaps with AIDS, well that's fine. Go ahead. It's exceptional only when it's exceptional, and not all exceptions are the same. Excepting exceptional circumstances, your circumstances are only exceptional if they're exceptionally exceptional. Then you can put a cap on it. But don't do it if you're just out for some fun. That would make you an evildoer.

Rational Warrant: A Critique, P. I

2010-11-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

An argument for belief in God attempts to establish credible evidence for a divine overseer orchestrating, or being aback of, the universe. The direction of all argumentation concerning God's existence is to start with what we do know and extrapolate outward to the best possible conclusion concerning things we don't know.

For example, the Cosmological Argument proposes that from matter we can extrapolate that there must have been a designer because all of what is, is contingent (i.e., dependent on other material things). That everything material is contingent necessitates that there must have been one non-contingent, or wholly independent beginning to everything else. This wholly independent thing is often referred to as "God."

From the example of the Cosmological Argument, it can be seen that the argument progresses from what is known (the existence and characteristics of the material world) to what is unknown (God). A note on that point: by 'God as an unknown', I simply mean that the argument itself does not prove the existence of a super-being so much as it illustrates a logical correlation; namely, that the material world seems to exist in such a way that it must have derived its existence from a point not dependent on it. However, correlation is not causality, so the Cosmological Argument cannot be used as a proof proper for God's existence; it can, however, be used as a reduction to a possible conclusion; a "rational warrant", as it were.

Which brings us to the point of this article: I do not consider rational warrant to be anything more than begging the question (circular reasoning), or a cheap rhetorical trick that ends in relativism.

First, anyone reasoning along the lines of a classic proof such as the Cosmological Argument already has in mind the inevitable conclusion, which is fine if you are attempting to defend the cosmological proposition for God. As a friend recently reminded me, all debate happens that way: the opposing sides know what their conclusions are, and they argue accordingly toward those conclusions. But notice that the conclusions are already assumed. Philosophically speaking then, arguments for and against the existence of God already assume the conclusion to the proofs they offer. This is wholesale question-begging: X is true, this is how X is true, therefore X is true; or, God is real, the cosmological argument shows that, therefore God is real.

Now, as my friend stated, and I agreed, such reasoning is fine in a debate setting because it would be a little improper to go into a debate not knowing your position on the resolution. However, for a philosophical proof and a didactic aide, such reasoning only gives a person logical permission to assume a plausible conclusion; that is, "rational warrant." And rational warrant, is not proof. Rational warrant cannot firm up the link between correlation and causality, therefore it is not conclusive proof. Rational warrant is only a fancy way of giving yourself permission to believe a given plausibility clause when the hard work of reasoning through a syllogism is over.

That brings us to my second point: "rational warrant" is a cheap rhetorical trick. Suppose I was to say to you, "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room," and you realised there was no door between you and the hungry tiger. You would suddenly have a swell of emotions that correlate to your inward ideas of a hungry tiger, what that tiger is capable of doing to a person, and your own need for safety. You would, in fact, have what Kant described as a noumenal experience.

Even before you encountered the hungry tiger, you would start experiencing that tiger as if it were real, and as if your life were in danger because of it. Then you would take whatever measures you had to to ensure your personal safety. All very logical, and all quite appreciable. However, you still haven't received any proof of a hungry tiger in the next room, so you have effectively believed my proposition that "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room" because it was reasonable for you to believe me (at least for the purpose of this illustration!). In effect, you had "rational warrant" to believe my claim.

Now let's say that two days later, you learned that I was just tricking you. You would be right to be irritated, but you would also recognise the falsity of your "rationally warranted" beliefs concerning the 900 lbs. tiger. And this is where the notion of "rational warrant" really breaks down: simply reasoning to a plausible conclusion is not proof, and that's all "rational warrant" is: reasoning to a plausible conclusion. It is a stylised flash of rhetoric that gives a veneer of reason to a belief-claim.

Because "rational warrant" is a catch-phrase or byword indicating the right of every person to believe whatever they'd like based on their subjective experience of a thing, or a proposition, it reduces even further to relativism. That is, the notion that what I believe is just as true and valid as what you believe, even if we disagree. Objective reality (A is A) is thrown out the window, so to speak, in favour of a solipsistic encounter with the world. Which is fine if you're a solipsist, but for those of us who don't simply assimilate external realities into our self-projections on the world, the relativism of "rational warrant" simply doesn't supply a useful tool to interacting with the world.

The idea of "rational warrant", as I recently learned, can only apply to those beliefs which are actually true. In effect, this means that a vast majority of beliefs held through history have not been rationally warranted. But that can only be known in retrospect because once a belief is shown to be false, it is no longer rationally warranted, and it can only be shown to be false after people have already believed a certain belief and thought themselves rationally warranted in doing so -- that was a mouthful, I know.

So for a believing Christian, say, they would consider their beliefs "rationally warranted" because they are able to determine correlations between what they experience (mysticism), the contingencies in nature, and what they already assume about supernatural realities (e.g., that God exists). Oddly though, a believing Christian would disagree with the beliefs derived of a Muslim experience, and visa versa, even though they may agree on a good number of things, too. And both the Christians and the Muslims would be "rationally warranted" for both their agreements and disagreements surrounding their particular metaphysic.

Given the clash between competing belief systems, how can "rational warrant" be rationally claimed? Simple answer: it cannot. As I stated before, it is a cheap rhetorical trick used to prop-up the arguments of one set of beliefs, sometimes in the face of a competing set of beliefs. And if competing beliefs cannot both be true (see: law of non-contradiction), then anyone claiming rational warrant for their beliefs has also to claim a relativistic mindset concerning reality.

In part II, I will discuss how a relativistic mindset toward reality not only denies reality but also reduces belief-sets (e.g., Christianity, Islam, religion in general) to agnosticism.

***Thank-you to AgnosticInnocence for the picture.***

ADD & Me

2010-10-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

I've recently learned that I have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). And while it is that knowing what afflicts you is helpful -- it certainly brings to light some of the reasons that I have chronically underachieved my whole life -- it is also, to my addled way of thinking, a tad bit detrimental.

For example, I now have the added pressure of realising that so much of what has gone wrong in my life has been directly as a result of my scrambled brain. So, not only do I have to make up for what I messed up, but I also have to correct my neuro-inheritance; i.e., the way my brain turned out because of my undesirable upbringing.

Then, when I have accomplished that much, I have to set to work correcting my most important relationships: my marriage, and my fatherhood.

I feel dragged out, and beaten down by all of this. I'm sure some of you out there can relate.

Something interesting has come of this for me, however. Specifically, my wife commented to me a couple of weeks ago that "if [I'm] not thoroughly repulsed by the reasons why [my] brain has ended up the way it is, then [I'm] not ready to change."

I'll admit that, at first, I was a little confused by what she said. Why would I need to tread back over old feelings: anger, confusion, depression, etc. just so I could change my brain chemistry. It didn't make sense. However, as she explained more of what she meant, it became abundantly clear that she was right: I have to purposefully determine to reject any and all notions or behaviours that contributed to the reason why my brain has been disordered. Until I do so, I'm not individuating from those occurences (e.g., childhood abuse), and I'm allowing myself the discomfort of keeping company with past shames. Essentially, I'm living a shame-based identity.

Once my wife had explained this more, I felt a strange sense of liberty: it's okay for me to be really angry, to be pissed-off, unremittingly maddened about what contributed to my neurosynaptic misfirings, and deeply disgusted by how that has contributed to some fairly self-destructive patterns and underachievement. It's not even unChristian of me to do so. In fact, it would be entirely unChristian of me to deny myself and wish my condition away on a fanciful prayer or two.

No, no. I have the work ahead of me. And dammit! I'm going to fix the problem and not leave this as another area where I've underachieved and self-destructed.

I love my wife.

Starting Again, Soon

2010-10-12T16:54:00.000-07:00

After a bit of a pause, I will be starting this blog up again. Thank you for your patience, and I hope the wait wasn't too long for you.

Take care,
Kane

Happy Trails

2010-07-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

And so, without notice or further ado, I will be taking a hiatus from this blog. I don't know how long my departure will be, but I will be concentrating on writing my book, and some stories for my children over the next while.

I must follow my urgeo ut scriptor (urge to scribble).

Take care. I'll see you in a while.

Things That Make You Go, "Hmm."

2010-07-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm not saying I agree, but it is certainly a thoughtful presentation. It has me thinking, that's for sure.

By way of The Thinking Atheist.

Logic Goes A-Walking

2010-07-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

The Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC) and the fallacy of False Dichotomy (FD) were out walking one day.

Turning his syllogism to regard FD, LNC quipped, "I've been thinking about you lately, and it occurs to me that you're either a false dichotomy, or you're not."

Slowing from a brisk modus ponens to a casual modus tollens, FD regarded LNC. Smirking FD returned with, "According to our mutual friend, the Law of Identity, it would be contradictory to state that I'm anything other than what I am. I am only that that I am, nothing else."

LNC, cooly calculating his next thought, spoke up, "Of course. Come on! We're going to be late meeting with Begging the Question, and you know how she gets when she spends too much time with Ad Hoc. Anything could happen!"

Picking up their cumulative case, the pair sped along their path to Deduction-ville.

The end.

Two Rabbits

2010-07-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Tid-Bits

2010-06-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

Well, here's a tid-bit to get you thinking about some of the common slang slung about in religious-speak. It turns out that the etymology of the word "testimony" comes from the Latin word, testis, which means "witness". The same word, testis, provides the root for what we commonly call "testicles".

The original meaning of the word 'testis' referred to the credibility of a man due to his evident virility. Thus a man who had 12 children was more credible than a man who had, say, 3. So, if man with more children were called upon to present a case for something-or-another, he would testify. That is, he would speak out knowing that because his balls work well, people would believe him.

I suppose Christians have something else to consider now when they give their testimonies.

Pascal's Wager: Rejected

2010-06-26T00:09:00.000-07:00

Pascal's Wager. The notion of wagering on God's existence occurs at note 233 of Pascal's Pensées (literally, 'Thoughts').

And as one reader noted last year, the idea is that "It is better to believe in God and find out that he doesn't exist, than to not believe and find out he does." That is not a direct quote from Pascal, but it is the best summation of his famous Wager that I have heard, to date.

I'm not a fan of the Wager, personally, for a number of reasons, one of which is that citing the options of polar opposites (belief and unbelief) is not a reasonable premise for me to choose either of those polarities. I already know as much.

On top of that, however, I question the relevance of determining whether this-or-that thing is 'better' than another without having any real content to demonstrate such a claim. For example, simply stating that cheese is better than non-cheese tells me nothing about cheese that I should consider it 'better'. Similarly, telling me belief is better than unbelief tells me nothing about the content of 'belief' or 'unbelief' that I would consider one or the other 'better'.

As a conclusion to a well defined argument, the Wager can have its place. Still, Pascal's Wager is wholly dependent on having a rational, well-placed argument to render any meaning or purpose to wagering at all. And, incidentally, Pascal was not attempting an argument when he penned his famous wager, nor did he consider his Wager to be a sufficient premise to bring about salvific understanding. Pascal simply intended the Wager as an observation of the fact that people ultimately make choices; and the existence of God is just another choice about which someone can be right or wrong. Thus it is a wager, and not an apologetic.

Unfortunately, the Wager has been used as an apologetic in and of itself to coerce people into making a decision for or against Christ. Sadly, the few times I've seen this tactic used one of two results occur:

The person feels anxious and afraid that they may choose wrong and suffer some terrible consequence -- hell, or some other uncertainty about death and after-death.
The person becomes riled and considers Christians to be a batch of noisy idiots.

So, as a tool for evangelism, I've yet to see Pascal's Wager have a postitive net effect. It's simply too confrontational on a deeply instinctual level, and people feel deeply insulted to find themselves in the position where they have to gamble on eternity without any real understanding of why they're gambling. As a finishing pen-stroke for a well-honed apologetic, it can be used, but it does beg certain philosophical questions that weaken its seeming strength.

Quip

2010-06-26T00:07:00.001-07:00

Semantics assures we're up to the same antics.

Nostalgia

2010-06-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

The photograph below was taken 162 years ago, in 1848.

It's a picture of New York.

My, how times have changed...

I like the old New York much better.

Work, Pray, and Lager

2010-06-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

On one of the chat-boards I participate on, a member was concerned that his job was in danger. The situation is simply that his two bosses -- one an evangelical Christian, the other an orthodox Jew -- were requiring that each work-day start in prayer. To add, the employees were informed that they would be required to lead prayer.

Being as the concerned board-member is an atheist, he wanted to seek out advice for how to handle the situation.

The most creative response so far has been the following:

Recite this prayer:

"Our lager, Which art in barrels, Hallowed be thy drink. Thy will be drunk, I will be drunk, At home as it is in the tavern. Give us this day our foamy head, And forgive us our spillages, As we forgive those who spill against us. And lead us not to incarceration, But deliver us from hangovers. For thine is the beer, The bitter, The lager.

Ramen."

My abdomen now hurts from laughing too hard.

What would you suggest this atheist do?

Yeah. Okay.

2010-06-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

Don't you wish we could have some more 80's spandex-metal bands again? Don't you miss them?

Martin Luther King Jr. on Science and Religion

2010-06-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."

Mary and Nepotism

2010-06-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

I participate on a theology board on occasion. Tonight, a concerned question was raised by a poster named Nightingale. What follows below is Nightingale's question, and my tendency to be cheeky while attempting a playful point.

In researching the development of Marian dogma, I've found that most of the first Protestants held a very high opinion of Mary. Both Luther and Calvin believed in her perpetual virginity and divine maternity, Luther believed in her immaculate conception, and Oecolampadius even taught that she was the Mediatrix of all graces! Why has this switched around to the point where I've heard many Protestants discourage even talking about Mary?

Remember the context of the time: Luther and Calvin were both Catholic priests before they reacted against Rome. Those things that were relevant to worship, they kept. Those things that they deemed hinderances, they tossed.

That same tradition continued post-Luther, post-Calvin. Even more than the Reformers, however, were the Radicals (sometimes known as the Anabaptists) and their maniacal fervour to reduce Christianity to some basic sediments, and dispense with the froth and foam. They considered Luther heroic, yes; but they also thought he didn't go far enough. Hence they set in motion a type of puritanism that acted as a distilate to anything beyond the pale of scripture, preaching, and symbolic sacraments. Thus Mary, while respectable, really was only instrumental insofar as she birthed Jesus. After that, she's little more than a biblical after-thought.

Carry that same creeping puritanism forward to the present day, and you have some memetic tendencies in Protestant circles to dispense with Mary altogether because she seems to get in the way of Jesus by being part of a grammar people are afraid will lead to Catholicism.

Despite my hearty agreeance that Catholicism is a frightening thing, for most Prostestants it is an evil thing. And if Mary is going to have the dogmatic fortitude to be mediating between Jesus and the rest of the world, then the misgivings of Protestants will no doubt exculpate her from such a nepotistic scheme, and set her where she belongs: in a manger, and at the foot of the cross, and no more.

Christendom: A House Divided

2010-06-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

In Christian theology there are three main theories of the atonement:

Jesus's crucifixion was to appease the wrath of God. God cannot countenance sin, and in his holiness must obliterate sin. Therefore Jesus, as a representative of the human race, was nailed to the cross as a sacrifice for all of humanity's sins -- past, present, and future. That is, Christ voluntarily assumed the sins of humanity on himself and died in place of the rest of humanity. This theory, crudely summarised as it is, is known as the penal substitutionary atonement.
Christ came to conquer death by dying on the cross. Effectively, Christ acted as 'bait' to draw the devil away from humanity, and in so doing removed the devil's hold on humanity. It's a compliment to the words Christ uttered early in his ministry, "I have called you to be fishers of men." This theory is known as the "Ransom theory", or more recently the Christus Victor atonement.
Jesus acted as the ultimate exemplar, and when we take heed of his sacrificial love our moral intentions are influenced christward. In short, Christ's life and sacrifice inclines our morals godward, thereby sanctifying us to be in his presence. This is known as the moral influence theory of atonement.

In the past few years, there has been a re-visitation of these theories. Theologians from different loyalties have bandied about their prefered vision of Christ's soteriological efforts. One book in particular has risen to the top of the academic list, Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ (2007). The book explores the various reasons for the necessity of certain theories, why the authors believe the theories they do, and how those theories are applied to everyday life.

It's editor and contributing author, Brad Jersak, admits his preference for the penal substitution theory. Nevertheless, in this article, professor and author Hans Boersma cautions against placing all one's philosophical capital in a single theory of the atonement. "The problem, said Boersma, is to take any one of these approaches and insist it is right and the others are wrong." This is sensible because prizing one theory exclusively excludes the beneficial points of the other theories.

The same holds true in other Christian academic applications. The novice theologian will place great import on a certain 'proof' of the existence of God. I had a fondness for the Ontological Argument back in my college days, but turned a snooty nose up at Kalam's version of the Cosmological Argument, for example. It wasn't until a good friend of mine, the late Hugh Hill (1958 - 2007) turned my head to the notion of a cumulative case for God's existence that I recognised it wasn't necessary to remain beholden to this-or-that particular 'proof' for the existence of God.

It's in that respect that I think it inane to cite a particular view of the atonement as the exclusively right view of Christ's death: it is the place of a novice or dilettante to throw one's lot in with a singular theory of the atonement.

To press this point a little further, it is instructive to note Boersma's final contribution to the article noted above:

Therefore, it is important to "bring humility to the table" and try to understand each other. We can "never say we have explained it all," said Boersma, since human language is "always inadequate to fully define the divine mystery."

True: human language cannot adequately define either the 'divine' or 'mystery'. Which is why I think Boersma would've done well to admit more by saying less. If Boersma had said in regards to the atonement that we can "never say we have explained it" and that human language is "always inadequate" we may have had a better rendering of the case. We would also have cause to graduate beyond the useless amateur quibblings of exclusivist atonement theory loyalties.

On a much grander scale, this is the same issue I have with Christian communities as a whole, if I can say that and make any sense. Let me explain. No-one is surprised when presented with the fact that Christianity is divided into many houses: Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Congregationalists, Pentecostals, Anglicans, the Emergent Church, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, ad-seemingly-infinitum.

Each grouping considers itself the model of unvarnished and inviolate orthodoxy alive today. I like to call this peculiarity of Christendom "local orthodoxy by attrition". That is, if it's said long enough and loud enough, eventually everyone will concede that "that's what so-and-so thinks about itself, so just let them have their illusions; we know that we're really the true orthodoxy." The same psychology, quite interestingly, holds true for liars, too: if they repeat their falsehoods long enough, they eventually believe them to be true.

Such self-exculpating tactics only reinforce what they're trying to avoid. That is, by denying the notion of orthodoxy to other Christian communities while remaining loyal to another one, a person can only be left with patronising concessions to faith-traditions not their own. This means that one believes their own particular faith-community to be the purest expression of biblical community above and beyond all others. This is a mark of superficiality, specious reasoning, and religious snobbery adopted by most Christians very quickly after conversion. Catholics and Lutherans, especially with their notion that they are the "one true church", are quite masterful at perpetuating such insidious sophistries.

It is much more sensible to regard the Christian communities of the world as part of a cumulative culture for Christ than a "house divided against itself", to borrow Christ's portentous words. But as long as Christians bark and bellow over which atonement theory is better and more right, which 'proof' is more accurate, which faith-tradition is purer, more orthodox, and therefore more fully in the faith -- as long as the house of Christianity remains divided against itself, we can reasonably speculate on Christ's conclusion that that house "will surely fall".

High On Jesus

2010-06-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Well, here's an interesting one. Enjoy.

(Via Unreasonable Faith)

What if...

2010-05-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

...Christianity isn't true? What would change? I mean, what practical, visible, hands-on realities would change?

People would feel a loss. A tremendous loss, no doubt. I imagine it might be like an unbearable funeral where everyone is gathered at the six-foot plot weeping and gnashing their teeth, but with nothing to bury. The anxiety, the angst and confusion fixing everyone to their spots would seem at once tragic and amusing. Like watching a mime.

Would anyone feel relief after they buried their mistaken beliefs? I know I've never felt relieved when I've found out I've been horribly mistaken. I've felt awkward, socially spent, emotionally void, confused; I've wanted to hang on to my denial.

So, what if Christianity isn't true? Then what?

Alright...

2010-05-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

...I've put some of my philosophical readings on hold to concentrate on fictional literature. Admittedly, I'm feeling the pangs of withrawal. I absolutely love reading philosophy, social commentary, and religious history. But I also love reading fictional literature. In fact, I think that Christopher Hitchens is entirely right when he notes that philosophical themes, and morality are best meted out in fiction.

So, because I am a nerd, and because I don't want to stray from my healthier habits (philosophy) and immerse myself entirely in fiction (which can be a negative form of escapism for me), I have settled on some philosophical fiction. Specifically, I am going to embark on two modern classics by the wonderfully innovative and insightful philosopher, Ayn Rand.

To begin with, I will tackle the massive story (1070 pages), Atlas Shrugged.

From there, I will read The Fountainhead.

And finally, I will take on a much shorter novel by Rand, Anthem.

This should be quite a trip down Philosophy Lane, while at the same time being a purposeful break from heady academics. At the same time, I'll be learning about Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, and growing in my understanding and appreciation of how other's look at the world around them.

I'll leave you with this penetrating quote from Ms. Rand.

"Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accepts his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.

It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some explicable claim upon him - it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man.

Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."

Thank you to Atheist Media Blog for bringing this to my attention.

Now off to reading...

Saturday Quote

2010-05-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

"Only religion could suppose an unjustified certainty to be an improvement on ignorance." ~Victor Stenger, Philosophy Now, Issue 78, What's New About the New Atheism?

Catholic Collusion

2010-05-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

The Catholic “Declaration on the Production and the Scientific and Therapeutic Use of Human Embryonic Stem Cells,” makes a fitting irony alongside its other inclinations, wouldn't you agree?

Yes, that's right: they're fine with covering-up the rape and torture of children, but you damn-well better leave those stem-cells alone.

Religious Oppression

2010-05-16T22:12:00.001-07:00

PZ Myers is usually a little too terse for my tastes, but I found myself really enjoying this particular article.

Caveat: If your religious beliefs are sensitive and delicate, read at your own risk. You have been warned.

Belting Ford In The Head

2010-05-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago, I picked up a copy of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) magazine called, Acts & Facts (v. 38, no. 5, May 2009). I was interested in finding out what is being said at the forefront of evangelical culture as regards evolution, that maniacally controversial hypothesis.

The opening article was a letter from the editor, Lawrence E. Ford, called “Time to Tighten Our Belt”. Ford's premise is that religion and politics have strayed from the conservatism of yesteryears. He disparages of the reality that in Texas, the 'buckle' of the Bible Belt, Christians have become more liberal. Ford identifies this drift away from religious and political conservatism as “battles raging against truth,” the antidote to which is to have a “commitment to truth – uncompromising biblical truth.”

And just what are these battles “raging against truth”? First, Ford states that Christians are accepting a diluted worldview that is a result of how scripture is read and interpreted. But that speculation stops with a deferal to Dr. Henry Morris III who has furnished Acts & Facts with an article dealing with the “Conflicts Between Text and Theology”. Morris's ½ page précis of classic Christian hermeneutics does nothing to validate Ford's deferal; it clarifies even less. What Morris's article does do, however, is admit that, “Interpretation places a filter on the words of Scripture so that one can 'rightly divide' (according to one's theology)” [italics mine].

So when Morris's article is taken alongside Ford's concern for the dilution of the biblical worldview in Christian culture today, we are left with two results: the interpretation of scripture is necessarily a free act done by individuals, which warrants liberalism in religion and politics; and, a justification to pick freely which side of the battle one will fight on. For if scriptural interpretation is a free act that every individual can do, then the interpretation that individual accepts may, or may not bolster the cause of evangelicals for or against evolution.

Second, Ford identifies the nature of 'science' as another battle. Says Ford, “'Science' is the critical word in this fight. Who has the right to define science and how it should be conducted and taught?” At this point, Ford unwittingly reinforces Sam Harris's crucial point that there is a “social disorder, a conversational disorder” between religionists and secularists. There will necessarily have to be disagreement on the scope and definition of certain fields of study like 'science' if the starting points of meaning are fundamentally opposed. Science does not start with religious assumptions; religion does not start with scientific assumptions. So saying, secularists are not beholden to religious definitions of science, nor are religionists bound to secularist definitions of science.

This really should come as no surprise to Ford, since he more than likely swears by a certain denominational creed. At the same time, he probably tips his hat in a warm and loving hypocritical nod to other Christian traditions not his own. Ford begins his religious definitions with the assumption that his current loyalties are correct and – in true missionary fashion – other's religious convictions are either incorrect, or somehow misguided. The point is that Ford has a different definition for his religion than others of the same faith. How much more the difference in definition between the religious and non-religious?

To see this as a battle, however, is really just blustering and propagandism. Ford has deliberately used the word 'battle' to muster the emotions of his religious cohorts and “spur [them] on to love and good deeds” (Heb. 10:24). By trumpetting out the battle-cry, as it were, Ford has bypassed the human intellect and relied solely on the reactionary emotionalism of others sympathetic to his cause. Ford does his readers a great disservice at this point by rendering conversation mute; who can levy definitions when they're too busy shouting to listen? How are secularists and religionists going to come to a place of agreement, even on such paltry items as definitions, if at least one of the two camps is stuffing the air with empty-headed emotionalism?

Nevertheless, Ford's blowhard rhetoric does put his point across, even if that point is blunt and ineffectual: Christians need to counter the claims of the non-religious scientists. There is no point of contact between creationists and evolutionists, and the sooner evolutionists admit their dunderheadedness the sooner we can get on with some real 'science'. You know, the kind of science that starts with a literal reading of Genesis, that doesn't blush at the notion of talking snakes, and willingly accepts that the earth only appears to be old, but it's actually young. The kind of science that betrays its own principles of verification by faithfully accepting a non-empirical god who currates the minutiae of the universe. The kind of science that disregards what is relentlessly provable (in this case, evolution) in favour of speculative gaps (i.e., intelligent design). The kind of science that is, in fact, religion.

Despite Ford's congenial triumphalism, his shameless plugs for ICR would read just as disingenuously if he were editing Skeptic Magazine. The fact of the matter is that Ford's whole premise rests on his presumption, nay, his faith that his religious perspectives are more science-minded than that of non-religious scientists. Because he can double-distill his scientific knowledge through his religion and his position as a spin-doctor/editor, he thinks he can afford the luxury of writing as though the irreligious are a pack of petulant bias-mongers out to stunt and stilt human growth. It does seem somewhat non compos mentus, however, to believe that evolutionists are out to harm or destroy the intellectual health of our species, when the whole point of their publications is to illuminate about the mechanisms of health and survival.

This point is lost on Ford, unfortunately. He's not interested in intellectual expansion, or socio-philosophical health and survival; he's interested in preserving his campy religious ideologies, receiving blind support from the emotionally volitile, and waging a war against evolutionists. He's interested in survival at any cost. Which is funny, overall, since that's exactly what the people he's fighting against are trying to teach, and what he's actively denying.

It Speaks For Itself

2010-05-08T21:13:00.000-07:00

Karen Armstrong: What Is Religion?

2010-05-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

Here is a presentation by Karen Armstrong -- perhaps the most respected historian on religion alive today -- on the topic of What Is Religion?

Shameless Plug: If you're still interested, I wrote on this topic not too long ago. I don't have the same level of erudition as Armstrong, but I'm working at it.

Demotivational Poster: Blasphemy

2010-05-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Totally Me

2010-05-03T23:32:00.001-07:00

That's exactly what I would've done if I was given that question! Glad to know I'm not alone.

In Christ(ianese)

2010-05-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

Self-actualization is a long process. Maslow was well-aware of the difficulty in achieving an individuated selfhood. One must climb, as it were, "up" the eschelons of self-awareness until, by degrees, one is a fully realised, fully actuated person with all personal potentials being utilised. It is an existential reality everyone must grind through, and it is often fraught with vast pains, remorseless joys, and common experiences between those extremes.

More, our interactions with others add to, or detract from our self-actualization. However, our self-realization and self-actualization happens, on a fundamental level, alone. No-one else self-actualizes for another.

With that in mind, I cannot help but call into question the teachings I was attendant to at a Pentecostal church recently. The subject was, essentially, identifying who you are and becoming fully you. The catch was that in order to be who you fully are, you have to be that person "in Christ".

Well, far from being a religious critic, I must admit that this phrase put me off straightaway. I was ripped out of my nostalgia by a sudden sense of urgency; urgency that perhaps I had just listened to an interesting preamble about self-identifying and self-actualizing, but that such a disposition could only take place "in Christ".

What does the phrase "in Christ" even mean? Are we somehow enwombed in this man, Jesus, people call "the Christ"? And given that last question, how can we relate to the preposition in Christ, when what is being suggested is that we are included in his title of 'Christ', or 'Messiah'? Linguistically, the phrase simply doesn't make sense. What does it mean to be "in Christ"? No-one really knows, but we acknowledge it on a notional level, we give the connotation a favourable nod; we feel all soft inside, as if we've been rolled in a giant warm-fuzzy. But the phrase means literally nothing on a practical level. It is wanton Christianese.

Particular idioms like "in Christ" should be expected in Christian assemblies, however. In-groups have their own fashionable expressions, their own method of meaning that out-groups simply cannot partake in. And it's not as if the inability to partake of in-group lingo is forced on out-groups; I'm sure this particular Pentecostal church would like nothing more than to swell its ranks. The difficulty is that in-group lingo is fixed against the sensible notion of making what one says intelligible. Or, as Paul put it in 1 Cor. 14:10-11,

"Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me."

So while it is that in-group lingo is fashionable and expected, I can't help but wonder why any church would allow it if the net result is that outsiders feel alien? The church's mandate, as far as I've been educated, is to make Jesus the Christ understandable, convincing, persuasive, graspable, intimately familiar, not vague, imperceptible, elitist, and contradictory. And it is phrases like "in Christ" that do just that: remove understanding from outsiders and render communication bleak.

Another catch-phrase was thrown at me when I asked a couple questions of the leaders. The phrase "prayed-up". I was struck by the overt insincerity of this nugget. In essence, the phrase "prayed-up" implied that one can simply go to the prayer-bar, in much the same way one would go to a gas-bar, and fill their spiritual tank. Simply drop to your knees, pump the spiritual sagacity in, and then carry on your merry little evangelistic way. Rubbish and poppycock!

Look, if the context of a lesson is going to be about how a person can self-realize and self-actualize, then importing confusing mumbo-jumbo about how that can happen in somebody else as long as they are filling up on prayer (spiritual gas, that is) is contradictory and inane. There's no sense trying to convey large concepts like self-realization and self-actualization by speaking about them in connotative language that means literally nothing to outsiders, and is internally contradictory, even when examined from the perspective of an insider. Why add confusion if what you're trying to do is bring clarification? Lingo should never trump the content of the lesson. When it does, as it did in the case of my experience with this Pentecostal group, all that's left is to state firmly, "do not speak unless you can improve upon the silence." In other words, shut-up.

Responses to the New Atheism: Like It or Not

2010-04-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

While reading literature on Atheism, I also fed myself a steady diet of books responding to the New Atheists. As in the last listing of books I posted, I will drop a picture of the dust-jacket on the left, state my 'Like' or 'Like It Not' in bold, sum the book up, and then give a small evaluation.

Like: It is reasonable to have faith. The Bible is a reasonable book that conveys reasonable truths that we can reasonably believe. Science has not disproven the Bible or discredited its moral teachings. There is no reason to accept the half-truths of the 'New Atheists', and every reason to re-visit the truths of biblical revelation.

Dinesh D'Sousa is clear, straightforward, and enjoyable to read. He meets the New Atheists on their own grounds, and uses their own sources to foil their attacks on religion, and on Christianity in particular. For the most part, his arguments are reasonable. However, just like the New Atheists, D'Souza often earmarks one side of the argument instead of presenting a wholistic look at the issue he is contending. To his credit, D'Souza is a wonderful rhetoritician and a persuasive writer. A certain lack of savvy follows from his inability to grasp the irony of arguing for a logical basis for faith, however. All-in-all though, D'Souza has produced a fine volume to add to the cultural conversation between religionists and anti-religionists.

Like It Not: A full-on counter-attack to Sam Harris' two landbreaking volumes 'The End of Faith' and 'Letter to a Christian Nation'. The worldview Harris presents in his infamous essays is utterly bankrupt, underscored by a vast ignorance, and nothing more than a charlatan's attempt at pedaling snake-oil metaphysics on a largely ignorant, unobservant culture.

Ravi Zacharias is a prolific writer, and a compelling speaker. A former atheist himself, Zacharias has built up a large ministry to people of differing faiths, and non-faiths alike. His principle aim in this book, it seems, is to dispell the accusations Sam Harris has set out against religious people in general, and Christians specifically. Unfortunately for Zacharias, his book never gets off the ground. It stinks of reactionary emoting, not reasoned, and considerate truth-seeking. Oftentimes, Zacharias moves toward a point but suddenly drops off, leaving the reader attempting to estimate his conclusion, and never returns to finish his idea. He accuses Harris of being fundamentalist in his outlook, but does nothing to soften or diminish Harris' equal accusation that American evangelicalism, and radical Islam are dangerously fundamentalist themselves. More to the point, Zacharias' book, being from a former atheist, falls ironically short of showing why atheism is an illegitimate worldview. One wonders why a scholar of Zacharias' renown and intimate understanding of atheism could not offer a coherent rebuttal of atheism in a book that expressly sets out to do so. Sadly, Zacharias' book is a poor, poor read, and will most likely find its way to a used book store in the near future with a small inscription detailing the impoverished material inside. Caveat emptor, indeed!

Like: The so-called New Atheists have saddled themselves with the same burden as literalist Christians: they're both fundamentalists. Calling for the end of faith and religion while trumpetting utopian overtures about human moral progress is bipolar thinking at best, and does nothing to promote civil dialogue between atheists and theists. What is needed is not an end to faith, not an end to religion, not a new injection of Enlightenment utopian ideologies but the courage to engage reason where it leads, and embrace religion where it benefits humankind.

Chris Hedge s is a poignant writer. In fact, I found myself elated, disturbed, frightened, and relieved by Hedges's critical appraisal of the New Atheists. And as much as the New Atheists want to balk at the notion of their position being fundamentalist, when their writings are distilled to their lowest elements, they come out just as fundamentalist as any typical literalist Christian group. Be that as it may, however, Hedges does not give quarter to religiosity, but attacks it just as fiercely as neo-atheism. So, all-in-all, Hedges's book is a hard-hitting attack on unthinking faith-heads, just as much as it is an attack on unthinking unfaith-heads. In that respect, it is a fair and balanced read.

Like It Not: Faith and belief in God have come under attack. Skepticism is undermining believer's confidence in the Word of God. People would do well to understand exactly what is being said about their faith, and exactly how to respond to it so that Christian faith can continue to flourish and nurture not just the believers, but the skeptics, too.

Timothy Keller, while he has a wide-open and compassionate heart, comes across far too pedagogical, even cheaply condescending in this epistle. While some of the resources he has mined from are quite creative, they are dulled by the beige use of information he rambles out. More, while Keller seems to have a wide-ranging grasp of literature, philosophy, history, theology, and contemporary music, there is nothing in Keller's presentation of the Christian agenda that would give pause to even the most simple-minded literary atheist. His greatest strength in this book is that he can reduce large concepts into easily accessible and graspable ideas. Unfortunately, that same strength is also his weakness and his undoing: such simple presentations of Christian ideas leaves far too much opportunity to cut against the grain of his logic and undo his conclusions in ways that work against his evangelistic efforts.

Like: All religions have at their core one essential message: compassion. The expressions we use to convey that compassion are what are known as 'religion'. We can class religion into two distinct spheres: mythos (what is believed and practiced) and logos (what is reasoned and taught). To write-off religion on the basis that it doesn't conform to modern concepts of science and reason is to give-up a great swath of rich cultural heritage, learning, and useful metaphysics that not only inform our deepest human yearnings, but provide the substance that recent skeptics have been parasitically feeding from.

Karen Armstrong has done the world a favour with this her latest book. Her writing is clear, sagely, incisive, profound, and beautifully informed. The occasional bursts of dry humour to break the weight of vast historical data are well-placed and drive the reader forward on to new insights and discoveries. After wading through thousands of years of philosophical and religious concepts, Armstrong finally cracks the whip on the New Atheists in her epilogue, giving them a solid scourging for their purposeful ignorance, but at the same time applying salves to their wounds by informing the reader that their perspectives help the religious ask necessary and important questions. There is no shortage of delight to be found in Armstrong's latest book, and I hope every serious student of religion and the philosophy of religion makes use of it to deepen their understandings of the strange creature homo religiosus.

New Book!

2010-04-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

Bought a new book today. Very excited about it! Here's a picture of the cover.

The book is by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford historian renowned for his relentlessly balanced perspective. The book, Christianity: The First 3000 Years, traces the development of the Christian church beginning at 1000 years BCE (before the common era) to present day.

Here are a couple of reviews.

Argument from Historical Proximity: Invalid

2010-04-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

I've been writing about my migivings with Catholicism lately. I've also been semi-debating an aspiring Catholic philosopher. Why the sudden focus on Catholic thought? I'm not sure. However, something occured to me today, and I'd like to share it.

Getting into academic jousting matches with Catholic apologists (and a good many Protestant Evangelicals, too, just to be clear) over differences in doctrine, or even just the sensibility of this-or-that doctrine has highlighted a tactic often used against me. I'd like to call the tactic in question, "The Argument from Historical Proximity."

The argument is as follows: historical figures closer to the time of Jesus have a greater, more precise understanding of the details attending Jesus's life, and the lives of people close to Jesus (e.g., the Apostles, Mary, the first Christians, etc.). So, if I were to argue that recent historical research casts reasonable doubt on the perpetual virginity of Mary, the argument from historical proximity would counter that Mary was most definitely ever-virgin because the writings of the early church fathers state as much. And because the early church fathers lived closer to the time of Mary, they would have more reliable claims on the status of Mary's bedroom activities than today's historians. The assumption is essentially that the less the passage of time, the more accurate the claim, and the less chance of distortions to confuse the claim.

On the surface, the argument seems to carry with it some validity: it seems reasonable to think that people in the second century would have less confusions to work through than people in the twenty-first century concerning church beliefs. But given a moment's thought, the argument breaks down on a crucial point.

If we reason from historical proximity, then we have to be willing to accept opposing claims as valid, too. The Roman historian Tacitus (AD 56 - 117) wrote extremely close to the time of Jesus and the first Christians, and was a contemporary of the early church fathers. Tacitus considered Christianity a "deadly superstition"; i.e., it was a grave error, and a falsehood. Emperor Domitian (AD 51 - 96) claimed that Christians were 'atheists' and slaughtered them. Pliny the Younger (AD 61 - ca. 112) commissioned the murder of Christians because he considered them hedonists and cannibals.

So, if we take claims opposing Christianity on equal footing with Catholic arguments from historical proximity, then we can reasonably say that Christians believed falsehoods, and were orgiastic cannibals who believed in an untrue God.

Clearly, the argument from historical proximity is groundless; just as groundless as it would be to argue for the falsehood of Christianity by claiming Tacitus, Domitian, or Pliny the Younger as truth-measures. Christians, and Catholics especially, need to move on to better methods of truth-seeking than quixotic claims to historical proximity.

Arresting the Pope: Good

2010-04-11T09:32:00.001-07:00

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are planning on arresting the pope. Here is the article.

Good!

He should be arrested. Anyone else doing what he's done would be charged with conspiring, and aiding and enabling criminal activity. Oh, but because he's religious, he's beyond justice. *cough, cough* Bullshit!

Disbelief ≠ Pro-Government

2010-04-10T16:22:00.000-07:00

Says Landon Oakes:

"So-called skeptics claim that they no longer believe in the superstitions and vain ideas of old; but this is only partly true: the more skeptical one becomes of God the less skeptical he becomes of government. Of all the tried ideas, including religious belief, none has been disproved so thoroughly as a large government."

See article here.

See my response here: false. Many a skeptic are anarchists, and apolitical. They really couldn't give a whit about governmental ideas and systems. Freethinking libertarians are necessarily disinterested in government, and avoid the titles 'anarchist' or 'minarchist' because they don't want to answer to the governments that would hold them in suspicion because of their philosophical anarchism.

More, the above quote is post hoc ergo propter hoc, and a prime example of the missing middle. Exactly how does the disbelief in God entail the support of government? More, what are the steps between disbelief in God that lead to endorsing governmental structures.

Perhaps the cracked lense of American politics breeds this kind of black-and-white thinking. Especially on the right-wing diet. Too bad black-and-white thinking forgets the spectrum of colours outside of its self-imposed limitations.