Wet and wildness

Titmuss Regained, John Mortimer's 1990 sequel to Paradise Postpone [1985], begins with the concluding lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, "Inversnaid":

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

And in her way, Lady Grace Fanner had been a wet and wild thing in her younger days [see the prequel], but in Chapter 2 of Titmuss Regained she's

a woman of eighty, her legs and arms shrunk as though from enforced starvation [and she] lay waiting, with growing impatience, for death. Grace Fanner was unaccustomed to being kept waiting for anything...She lay now, an unpaid-for and half-drunk bottle of champagne beside her, her diminutive body scarcely swelling the coverlet on the bed in which her husband Nicholas, over a decade before, had met death with the polite but puzzled smile with which he had greeted all his visitors.
    "I've been reading the Bible."
    The Rector of Rapstone, Kevin Bulstrode, known to many of his parishioners as Kev the Rev., looked at her as though this activity were a sign of mental weakness, like astrology or studying the measurements of the Great Pyramid.
    "Not the Old Testament?" he asked nervously.
    "Particularly the Old Testament. What a swine God was, most of the time." Lady Fanner said this with a tight smile of admiration. "Smiting people in a way I've hardly ever done. Right, left, and center...I read the Book of Job." She lifted the great weight of a half-filled glass to her lips and pecked at it in the manner of a blue tit at a bird-bath. "God certainly gave that poor bugger a hard time. Boils!"
    "I think you'll find that He has grown a little more civilized down the centuries. As, perhaps, we all have." Kevin Bulstrode did his best to sound reassuring. "I don't think the Old Testament God should be taken as a model of behaviour."
    "Oh, I do. I quite definitely do. I'd love to see my son-in-law afflicted with boils. That is, if the Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss hasn't got plenty of them already...." [pp. 9-11]

"The heathen followers of the god Baal"

When I referred in Tuesday's post to "the heathen followers of the god Baal," I didn't put "god" in quotation marks. I usually don't, even though I try to remember to put capitalized "God" in quotes. I think I've established well enough that I never mean to use either "god" or "God" to suggest that I believe there are gods or a God. (Nor, I think, did Tom Sheepandgoats mean to imply, when he said in his post "Elijah Crashes..." that the priests of Baal attempted "to persuade their god to consume the offering," that he believed Baal actually existed, for Tom is very much a monotheist.)

In the phrase "the heathen followers of the god Baal," "god" is clearly understood to refer to an entity (called "Baal") whom the said followers believed to exist (and to affect their lives in various ways, and even to deserve, if not demand—on some pain or other, to be worshiped)—even though we all agree now that such an entity did not exist (except in the imaginations of said followers). As Richard Dawkins reminds us,

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in.

But many still believe in the monotheistic god of the Abramaic religions, variously labeled "Yahweh," "Jehovah," "Allah," or simply "God." And non-denominational (or New Age) labels like "Creator" seem to have the same reference, but without most of the Talmudic, Biblical, and Koranic baggage. They're atheists too about some of the theological attributes, but theists about the imagined deity's active concern for the planet.

I guess there are still polytheists on the planet, but both notheists (atheists) and monotheists have in common that they are both atheists about Baal and other "heathen gods."

Moristotle and Sheepandgoats: A friendly set-to

Tom Sheepandgoats's February 4 post, "Elijah Crashes the Atheist Hall of Fame!," sparked an extended dialogue between him and Moristotle—all conducted in comments on that post and concluded yesterday by mutual consent.

The gist of "Elijah Crashes" is Tom's friendly contention that in the debate between atheists and theists, it's no contest, the theists (ably represented by Tom himself) will always win. The post wittily likens their debate to some ancients' pissing contests over whose god was the better. Tom rhetorically identifies the Biblical Elijah with the atheists in mocking the heathen followers of the god Baal. You might start by reading Tom's entertaining post. You can follow the debate either through the comments there or in what follows here:

[Posted by: Moristotle | February 5]:

Jesus Kitsch

A relative of my wife's who recently learned of my "loss of faith" (as I suppose he would term it) has sent me by attachment this Owings Mills image of Jesus. (Note the NEW ART annotation in the upper left-hand corner.)

I assume that my cousin-in-law hopes thereby to restore my "lost faith"—the faith that I finally found unsupportable by reason, evidence, or expectation. His e-mail includes the chain-mail text:

He arrived this morning, we had prayer, spent some time just talking, and then he was on his way to your house.

When he gets to your PC, escort him to the next stop. Please don't allow him to sleep on your PC. [Could I keep Jesus from sleeping if he wanted to sleep?] The message he is carrying is very important and needs to go round. May God bless you as you do this—Amen.

This image of Jesus is a piece of sentimental "art" in the class of other Owings Mills pieces, such as "Sunset Grandeur," "Evening's Promise," "A Little Piece of Heaven," and "Home of Plenty" (which I quickly found on the web):

Even their titles express the sentiment, as does "Softly Knocking Jesus," which might well be the title of the religious kitsch.

Such popular sentiment doesn't claim me. I can't muster the requisite faithful response.

"It's a life's work..."

From lawman Ed Tom Bell's monologue in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men:

It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong. [p. 416]

Reading this reminds me that for a long while this blog was billed as a "Journal of Self-Discovery." It reminds me even more that I abandoned that because I figured that in some way I had finally come to see myself for what I really am. And I thought I was moving on.

But mostly of course the statement reminds me that even now I might be wrong. Sobering thought, and at the moment not a stimulating one.

Celebrating evolved life and learning on Earth

Once again I've changed the billing on my masthead, which was for a few weeks "Celebrating our constitutional freedom from religion (while we still have it)." While I of course continue to celebrate that freedom, I celebrate many more things as well. This isn't an "atheist website." It was just that, when I wrote the previous billing, I was excited about that particular celebration and wanted to make a deal about it. Now that I've settled in, I can mellow out a little bit. (I notice that I've been using California—i.e., hippie—lingo after watching those documentaries on rock festivals.)

Of course, my inclusion of the word "evolved" does signal that I go along with Charles Darwin and the vast (or however large) majority of educated people on the planet. Planet Earth is over four billion years old, not the six or so thousand years some God-fearing, Bible-reading folks believe, even imagining that "God" just planted all the evidence to the contrary to fool our intelligence. I will from time to time of course be unable to contain myself from commenting on religion and various other extraordinary popular delusions¹.

But mainly (and even in that) I'll be celebrating life and learning on Earth.
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1. From Wikipedia:

   Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a popular history of popular folly by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles and vilifies its targets in three parts: "National Delusions," "Peculiar Follies," and "Philosophical Delusions.

Carl Jung wasn't the only one

In my February 9 post, "'Agnostic' = theistically neutral," I said that "'everybody' is agnostic in the root meaning of that term, not knowing whether or not god exists—notwithstanding Carl Jung's statement that he knew." The quotation marks around "everybody" and my facetious reference to Jung of course let you know that I realize there are people who claim to know that god exists.

In fact, there are likely millions who think that they know. I think of Maliha (of the blog "Lightness of Being"¹). In an e-mail last year, Maliha listed eight or ten "ways of knowing" that god exists—even of knowing god, including intuition, insight, and imagination. (If I can find the e-mail, I'll add the others.)

And my cousin Vera finds god's existence "obvious," although she hasn't told me by what privileged sixth sense she knows this, except that she hinted it might be female intuition. (She had told me that though my unbelief troubled her, she had noticed that many of the men in our family have had trouble "believing in god," whereas the women haven't.)

I suspect that there are literally millions of Muslims like Maliha and millions of Christians like my cousin who feel they know that god exists. (I suppose there are even a few such Jews as well.) I'm willing to accept that and classify them as "'knowing' theists," but with the quotation marks around "knowing" to express my skepticism.
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1. Maliha shut her blog down three days ago, explaining that "I need to discipline and allow myself to mature in some ways. I also hope that this move will quiet down the chatter within."

Faith-based support groups

In my Monday's post on "The miracle," I wrote that I think:

there's less of a possibility of Tom [Sheepandgoat]'s becoming an atheist than of my again becoming a theist. He has his Jehovah's Witness support group, people he sees (I think he indicated) three days a week down at Kingdom Hall, whereas I can't be said to have such a support group—unless a few authors I read can be counted as such.

And Tom supportively commented:

Many atheists find support groups within the blogging community. You could do that...I hope you don’t go that way, and I don’t foresee that you will. So far, you are a blogger who happens to be atheist rather than an atheist blogger. Even as I try to be a blogger who is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses rather than a JW blogger.

Right on, my friend!

No, as I commented back to Tom:

I don't feel the need for such a support group. I have the necessary life support of my wife, my dog, and my many friends (including yourself in your non-religious-affiliated moments).

In thinking about the concept of a support group, I realized that one of the practical uses of a church (or a temple or a mosque or a synagogue or a Kingdom Hall or, for Wiccans, I guess a wattle hut?) is to serve as a support group for its members. Perhaps that's the main reason for many of them. A place to go to have their faith and their faithful practice reinforced and perhaps reinvigorated.

But what about those "atheist...support groups within the blogging community"? What are they doing? They don't have any faith to enforce or invigorate. Maybe they're getting together to celebrate communally what I too celebrate (individually) of our constitutional freedom from religion? Or maybe they're political groups banding together to fight further encroachments on that freedom? After all, we only have it "while we still have it." And if we can take Harris and Hitchens and Dawkins at their words that religion is lethal and needs to be overcome, then I suppose some atheist groups might be plotting ways to achieve that....

And the religious houses of course serve other purposes than that of a support group. Some congregations have political agendas too. Support Bush! Don't pull the plug on Terry Schiavo! Down with gays and lesbians! Keep your women covered! Death to infidels! Some support charitable causes. Money for the starving people of Africa! Money for good Jack Abramoff's projects! Money for Jihad!

And of course they proselytize, which I guess is what the "plotting atheists" referred to above might be doing—in reverse!

By the way, by "life support" I was not referring to extraordinary measures' being taken should I become vegetative. No, my living will states that I'm strictly DNR. (And that might as well stand for Do Not Resurrect.)

"Don't ever marry a man with bishop potential...."

I've just read another John Mortimer. You know, the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, the author of the 2003 memoir, Where's There's A Will, in which he acknowledges his atheistic tendencies. In Quite Honestly, his 2005 "comic novel of middle-class do-gooding gone awry" (as the dust jacket has it), Lucy Purefoy is assigned by Social Carers, Reformers, and Praeceptors (SCRAP) to reform Terry Keegan, a career burglar recently released from prison. Lucy's father (Robert) is a bishop of the Church of England and her mother (Sylvia) an addict to G&T's (gin and tonics).

Lucy and Terry tell the story in alternating chapters. I won't spoil the story for you by saying why Lucy herself is in prison in the following scene, but I will share this snippet of conversation from when her mother comes to visit Lucy there:

"You know I met your father in Ronnie Scott's?"
    "Yes, Mum. I did know."
    Whenever Dad was writing a sermon the palace [the bishop's residence] still echoed to Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker, Sidney Bechet and Muddy Waters. I knew he'd met Mum at a jazz club.
    "When I took him home my parents were so pleased because they'd found out he was a vicar with bishop potential. I only liked him because I found him sexually attractive."
    This was wonderful. The prison atmosphere was clearly bringing out the best in my mother. I had never thought that we would have this conversation.
    "So you had a great sex life, did you, Mum?" This question, which I wouldn't have dreamed of asking my mother before this prison visit, didn't seem to worry her at all.
    "Oh yes. Two or three times a night. Even more some Sundays! When he was a vicar. That was when you were conceived and all that sort of thing. It was when he was a bishop that the trouble started. I suppose I shouldn't be telling you all this."
    "What was the trouble then, Mum?" She really didn't seem to mind telling me.
    "God."
    I looked round the room. Children were bored, eating sweets from the prison shop. Couples could no longer think of anything to say to each other. The screws were looking on and Mum was unexpectedly pouring out her heart.
    "How did God come into it?"
    "Well, he didn't really. Not when Robert was a vicar. In those days he seemed to take God for granted. But as soon as he became a bishop—I don't know, I suppose because it was a step up and Robert felt responsible for God and treated him more as an equal. Anyway, he began to find fault with him or question anything he did. Of course, it's got a lot worse since President Bush. He can't understand how God would have anything to do with the man."
    "But how did this affect you?" I knew a lot about Robert's troubles, but now my mum was opening her heart to me.
    "Well, he seemed to think much more about God than he did about me. And then he got so keen on gay and lesbian marriages."
    "You think that was a bad thing?"
    "Not in itself. I mean, I don't give tuppence for what they do among themselves. It's their world and they're welcome to it. But Robert seemed so interested in their sex lives that he forgot all about ours."
    "I'm sorry."
    "So am I. And I'm afraid there's even worse news ahead. Will London's about to retire. He's got something wrong with his brain. Robert's been strongly recommended as his successor."
    "Bishop of London?"
    "Of course the idea's ridiculous, but Robert's enormously excited about it. It'll be very controversial and there are already letters about him in the Daily Telegraph. Robert likes that, having letters against him in the Daily Telegraph."
    "Well, who's for him then?"
    "The Prime Minister apparently thinks he's a 'modernizer' who's prepared to draw a line under the old conservative Church of England. Oh, I do so hope it never happens."
    "Why, exactly?"
    "I've got used to the palace at Aldershot. I know the stairs. I love the peculiar little scullery. I don't want to go to London, Lucy. I prayed to God it doesn't happen."
    "Well then..."
    "But I'm not sure he was listening. I'm not sure he listens to people's prayers any more. Perhaps he's had enough of it by now. All the same, Lucy, what I can say to you is, don't ever marry a man with bishop potential." [pp. 184-185]

A number of things about this passage appeal to me, not least the reference to Bush. For I've been thinking about just what it is I don't believe when it comes to god and religion. And one of the things I don't believe in is whatever god whose advice George W. Bush has been taking.

But more on that anon.

Ardent images

The Ardenza Trio in concert, January 2008

To hear snippets of Ardenza Trio performances, visit their "Repertoire" page.

The miracle

In Saturday's post, I joked that "the twain shall never meet" between theist Tom and atheist me, unless a miracle occurs and one of us persuades the other to turn. Romulus Crowe read it in the standard way and reported:

I wasn't going to comment but I laughed out loud at the line; surely if a "miracle" occurs, the only winner can be Tom? [first comment on the post]

That is, the joke is on me.

But there's also the modernist (or post-modernist—I can never keep the terms straight), ironic reading that Tom's god performs the more difficult miracle¹ of turning Tom to become an atheist. In that case, the joke is surely on both of us!
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1. I really do think that there's less of a possibility of Tom's becoming an atheist than of my again becoming a theist. He has his Jehovah's Witness support group, people he sees (I think he indicated) three days a week down at Kingdom Hall, whereas I can't be said to have such a support group—unless a few authors I read can be counted as such.

38 years ago (when I was 27)

If you've looked lately at my list of recently viewed movies, you may have noticed the two items:

• Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival [1970 rock concert] (1997: Murray Lerner) [VG]
• Festival Express [1970 rock concert by train across Canada] (2003: Bob Smeaton & Frank Cvitanovich) [G]¹

What a nostalgia trip for someone of my generation! In 1970 my son was two and my daughter was in her first year. The decade of flower children was more background noise than reality for me as I embarked on marriage and family and <shudder to think of it> employment at the International Business Machines Corporation. But even without attending rock concerts I heard the music of Janis Joplin, The Band, Joni Mitchell, The Who, Grateful Dead...and a number of the other musicians represented in these two documentaries.

I watched "Festival Express" a few days ago and at the time rated it VG. But after watching "Message to Love" last night and seeing that it was a lot better produced, filmed, and edited, I lowered that to G and [initially²] rated the Wight festival E to emphasize the difference between the two documentaries. Besides, there are many more interesting British voices to be heard from Wight than from the country lying alongside my own country [an aside to Romulus Crowe and Tom Sheepandgoats].

Perhaps my favorite song from the two recordings was Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi." Her ecstatic performance of it on Wight affected me greatly, and I delighted in her apparently spontaneous drop to a lower register to deliver the final "And put up a parking lot," which caused her to chuckle at herself. A delightful child she was at that moment.
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1. From IMDb.com, a partial list of performers represented:
   • "Message to Love":
     Jethro Tull, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Donovan, Jim Morrison, The Doors, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jimi Hendrix, Kris Kristofferson, Joni Mitchell, The Moody Blues, Tiny Tim, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, The Who, Ten Years After
   • "Festival Express":
     Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy Blues Band, Ian & Sylvia & The Great Speckled Bird, Janis Joplin & The Full Tilt Boogie Band, Mashmakhan, Sha Na Na, Robbie Robertson, The Band, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends
2. But after again watching Martin Scorsese's movie about The Band's final road concert, "The Last Waltz" (1978), I had to demote "Message to Love's" E to VG, to make room for Scorsese's yet better film. A partial list of IMDb's list of performers in "The Last Waltz" [members of The Band in italics]:
   Robbie Robertson (Lead Guitar & Vocal), Rick Danko (Bass & Violin & Vocal), Richard Manuel (Piano / Keyboards / Drums / Vocal), Levon Helm (Drums / Mandolin / Vocal), Garth Hudson (Organ / Accordion / Saxophone / Synthesizers), Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John, Van Morrison, Ronnie Hawkins, Mavis Staples, Roebuck 'Pops' Staples, Muddy Waters, Ron Wood, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (poet)

"Agnostic" = theistically neutral

The pleasure has passed that I felt on Thursday at discovering that Mr. Sheepandgoats and I are both agnostics. It isn't that I mind having this in common with Tom, it's just that I realized today that "everybody" is agnostic in the root meaning of that term, not knowing [whether or not god exists]—notwithstanding Carl Jung's statement that he knew. (So far as I know, he never said how he knew, and—again, so far as I know—no one ever even asked him to.)

No, it just isn't helpful or particularly enlightening to say that we're both (or all of us) agnostic in that way. The main thing, theistically speaking, about Tom and me is that I don't believe in god, and he does. In fact, even if I don't know that god doesn't exists, I believe (for reasons I will address, but not today) that it does not exist (and I employ "it" to get away from associations with the masculine deity of the Abramaic religions). And the same, mutatis mutandis, for Tom: he believes, for his reasons, that "God" (capitalized and masculine) does exist.

Another thing I realized today is that when Tom says (and he does say this on occasion), "Agnostics are a dime a dozen," he doesn't use the word in the root sense. If he used that [inflated] sense (where everyone except Carl Jung is an agnostic), he'd say they're a dime a hundred or a thousand!

I propose that, theistically speaking, agnostic be used to mean neutral. Acceptable synonyms might include "undecided," "undeclared," or "indifferent" (or still others). These particular alternatives seem inferior to "neutral," however.

"Undecided" implies that the agnostic can't have decided to be neutral, but he can. Or if he or she hasn't decided, that a decision has to be made at some point, and I don't think it does (although sometimes it is on the deathbed).

"Undeclared" overlooks the fact that theists and atheists may be undeclared too; they don't have to tell anyone their position (it can just be between themselves and their "God"...or their no-god).

I would like "indifferent" (and most agnostics may, in fact, be indifferent to whether someone else is an atheist or a theist) except that agnostics need not be indifferent—may, in fact, object to what theists get up to "in the name of God." They may also object to people like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins (or me) getting in people's faces with anti-religious books or blogs.

So, in the theistically neutral sense of agnostic that I recommend, I am atheist and Tom Sheepandgoats is theist, and never the twain shall meet (unless a miracle occurs and one of us persuades the other to turn). And agnostics are neither theist nor atheist, although they may or may not have decided to be, may or may not have declared it, and may or may not be indifferent to what anyone else is or does because of it.
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February 16. Note:I have written a sort of footnote to this, published as "Carl Jung wasn't the only one."

"Apocalypto" demands viewing

Mel Gibson's 2006 movie, "Apocalypto," filmed in Mayan with subtitles and on location in Mexico, is an extraordinary, stunning movie. If, like me, you may have refrained from watching it because of what you'd heard about its being "dark" or "gorey," ignore all that and do as I did last night: overcome your reservations and watch the movie! My wife and I enjoyed it immensely.

On one level, it's the story of a nuclear family's being separated and reunited after a grueling ordeal for both the husband and the wife and their young son (and their child born during the ordeal). That may be a fairly common storyline, but we rarely or never see it set in a stone-age culture. This highly dramatic story is utterly compelling. I often nod off while watching a movie, but there wasn't a single moment when I drifted in that direction last night. The jungle setting (in Catemaco) is beautifully photographed. The costumes are awesome, their archaeological basis (claimed in the bonus material on the DVD to be) as authentic as possible. Ditto for the Mayan ways of living, hunting, playing, fighting, worshipping, and...yes, sacrificing to their god(s). (I have to admit I'm not sure whether they believed in one or many gods. It's tends to be pretty much all the same to me.)

No computer graphic imaging was used (the bonus material says) to achieve effects. All of those Mayans in the city scenes were actual human extras. (These scenes were not set in the same part of Mexico as the jungle scenes, however, but in Veracruz. It would have been very difficult to work in Catemaco with the huge crew of costumers, make-up artists, and others. Every extra required to be costumed and made-up, and both costumes and make-up were elaborate for the warriors and members of the upper classes.)

And the gore wasn't nearly so gorey as I had somehow gotten the idea it was. (The scourging of Christ in "The Passion of Christ" was much, much more "graphic" than anything that goes on in this movie, in my opinion.)

I wonder whether much of the criticism of the movie when it came out wasn't driven by the desire to put Gibson down; I sort of recall that he was going through one of his periods of being out of favor in Hollywood. Of course, when has he not been out of favor lately? Gibson's favor is completely irrelevant. This is a wonderful movie and you must see it!

On "agnostic theism"

In last Saturday's post," I wrote of a friend who "holds the view that it wasn't possible to be an atheist before [Darwin's discovery of evolution]." Before Darwin, he seemed to contend, "God" was unavoidable in order to explain the existence of seemingly designed creatures [and we cannot avoid giving some explanation or other]. He has denied that at least two of my examples of ancient atheists (Diagoras and Anaxagoras) were really atheists. They were more likely agnostics, he countered. (He didn't say this about Critias, but relied on the historical evidence that Critias was such a bad guy that I should have been embarrassed to offer him in evidence in the first place.)

It occurred to me this morning that my friend's counter move might not help him. After all, I was thinking, agnostics don't believe in god either. So, how was saying that Diagoras and Anaxagoras were agnostics going to help his case? (In fact, he's more than once said that "agnostics are a dime a dozen.") Was he now going to say that, before Darwin, they couldn't have been agnostics either?

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. Agnosticism is a position on knowing ("gnosis"), not on believing. Just because someone holds that it isn't possible to know either that god exists or doesn't, he can still believe either way. In fact, believing in the former (that god exists) is formally known as agnostic theism. An agnostic theist is someone who (to quote the handy Wikipedia), "views that the truth value of certain claims, in particular the existence of god(s), is unknown or inherently unknowable but chooses to believe in God(s) in spite of this." [emphasis mine]

And, you're likely thinking, isn't agnostic atheism also possible? Indeed it is. Back to Wikipedia for a handy, fairly respectable-looking discussion:

One of the earliest explanations of agnostic atheism is that of Robert Flint, in his Croall Lecture of 1887-1888 (published in 1903 under the title "Agnosticism"):

The atheist may, however, be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one....

If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist...if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist—an agnostic-atheist—an atheist because an agnostic...while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other....

This discovery on my part might be as good an example as I could quickly find of the possibility that my friend and I, in discussing religion without any real expectation of changing the other's mind, might nevertheless gain a better understanding of each other's and our own positions. For I'm now inclined to think that I may more accurately label myself an agnostic atheist than an out-and-out atheist, for I have never claimed that I know there is no god, even though I think that there isn't and am comfortable in saying so. The Wikipedia article just quoted concludes: "Individuals may identify as agnostic atheists based on their knowledge of the philosophical concepts of epistemology, theory of justification, and Occam's razor." Those considerations do indeed play a crucial role in my disbelieving in god.

At this point, I'd like to express my gratitude to Tom Sheepandgoats (aka "Sheepandgoaticus") for engaging me in this discussion, whatever his reply on the merits of my objection to his argument.

As to his reply, he is free, of course, to try to argue that, before Darwin, only "knowing" theism¹ and agnostic theism were possible; that is, that "knowing" atheism² and agnostic atheism were not. (It could be quite interesting to see how he would try to justify that!)

Tom, of course, might find in Flint's clause, "If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God," just the loophole through which to insert the supposed need to explain apparent design as the reason to believe that there is a god. But if he does so, he'll do it realizing that I'll come back once again with my question how deus ex machina is any more than "a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty"³ (to once again quote Webster's appropriate definition of the term).

I trust that we'll hear from Tom on this, and that he'll include an answer to the deus ex machina objection as well....
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1. By which I mean theism that thinks it knows that god exits. Carl Jung, for example, said, "I don't believe God exists; I know it."
2. Ditto, mutatis mutandis.
3. The way turtles were once suggested. One version of the story is given in Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which I read during the summer of 1989:

   A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Making an argument appear the better

The pre-eminent Sophist, Protagoras (circa 490-420 BCE), was up-front about the fact that the Sophist curriculum included instruction in making the "worse (or weaker) argument appear the better (or stronger)."¹ Their clientele included people who needed to bring or defend a suit in court (as reported in my post of January 11). We're quite familiar with that agenda, which is demonstrated every weekday in American courts, where the prosecutor argues that the defendant is guilty, and the defense attorney argues that he isn't, and each attempts to make his own argument appear the better without respect to the actual guilt or innocence of the defendant.

One of the informal charges against Socrates was, as he phrased it himself in answering the charge at trial (399 BCE), that he "makes the weaker argument the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example." Socrates of course countered that that wasn't what he had been doing. He said that he couldn't possibly be mistaken for a Sophist because they were wise and highly paid, and he was poor and knew absolutely nothing. Whether Socrates was ingenuous in saying this or slyly being sophistical, I leave to you to ponder.

We're also familiar with bloggers' trying to make their arguments appear stronger and their adversaries' weaker. We can see this demonstrated not only every weekday (but every weekend too), if we have the time and interest. Bloggers tend to be a contentious lot, even when they attempt to represent themselves as being engaged in a dispassionate search for the truth. I'm not above using "debating tactics" myself, insofar as I have the skill to do so. I believe that I have reason on my side when I say that god doesn't exist, and that a theist doesn't when he says the opposite. And the same theist is sure that "He" does exist and that I'm a fool. Each of us sets himself up to try to defeat the other. Because each knows he's right, each knows that the other cannot possibly demonstrate his position successfully.

And yet.

And yet, engaging in the somewhat (psychologically necessarily?) disingenuous activity of "discussing religion" on a blog can be fun, and not only fun but also instructive. I develop a better understanding of my own position by stating and defending it, and with effort I can learn a thing or two about an opposing position. By far my most dependable interlocuter is Sheepandgoaticus, with whom I have developed a genuinely respectful friendship. I look forward to his comments on my blog and (I think) he looks forward to mine on his. Though we may not really listen to what each other says, we seem to have learned how to pretend to do so with enough civility to continue the discussion.

I hope that I never think of him as my adversary, or of our interchanges as opportunities to defeat him. I also hope that I am open enough to the truth, however strongly I feel that I already have it, to be able to change my mind when a truly stronger case has been made for a different view.
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1. From a Wikipedia article on Plato's dialogue, "Apology," which portrays the trial of Socrates.

The roar of the crowd

While my wife was waiting for me to finish brewing coffee so we could watch an old psychological drama we had taped, she turned the TV on to a football game. From the kitchen I could hear its white-noise babble. I'd never realized before how desperate is the sound a huge football mob makes, a numbing cacaphony of insignificant tones, like the sound of the distant interstate, or the rumble of lemmings hurling themselves toward the sea, or the mindless chatter of atonishment bouncing about the ductwork of the insane asylum.

A little ancient history of atheism and evolution

A friend of mind (on the right, the taller one; yes, he purports to be a llama, albeit one that blogs) holds the view that it wasn't possible to be an atheist before Darwin discovered how species evolved by natural selection of the fittest. His reason seems to be simply that before Darwin the only explanation for the apparently designed creatures constituting nature was that a god had designed and created them. Humans had to account for that design and the only way to do it before the discovery of the law of evolution was to suppose a designer god. Quod erat demonstrandum. ("Designer god," by the way, is apt, seeing as how we've got the Yahweh brand, the Jehovah brand, the God brand, the Allah brand....)

However, there were some known atheists more than two thousand years before Darwin, and very likely others unknown, the survival rate of written documentation from those times being what it is. And of course there were those "fools" referred to at least once in the Bible and many, many times ad nauseum in the Qur'an. You know, the ones who said, "There is no god." Unfortunately, since they were fools and therefore of no account, the Bible writers and The Prophet Muhummad didn't provide their names. Mentioning them at all seemed to serve the purpose of putting the stick about to warn people away from immitating them.

Anyway, to get back to some known atheists, one, according to Bertrand Russell, in A History of Western Philosophy, was the Greek Anaxagoras [circa 500-428 BCE]:

Whenever he can, he gives a mechanical explanation. He rejected necessity and chance as giving the origins of things; nevertheless, there was no "Providence" in his cosmology. He does not seem to have thought much about ethics or religion; probably he was an atheist, as his prosecutors maintained. [p. 63]

I acknowledge the "probably."

Another possibility is Socrates [469-399], although I myself doubt it:

The indictment [Socrates was, remember, tried for impiety, convicted, and executed] had said that Socrates not only denied the gods of the State, but introduced other gods of his own; Meletus, however, says that Socrates is a complete atheist, and adds: "He says that the sun is stone and the moon earth." Socrates replies that Meletus seems to think he is prosecuting Anaxagoras, whose views may be heard in the theatre for one drachma (presumably in the plays of Euripides). Socrates of course points out that this new accusation of complete atheism contradicts the indictment, and then passes on to more general considerations. [p. 87]

Whether or not Socrates "believed in god," he didn't (from my readings of Plato's depiction of him in his dialogues) do so as an explanation of apparently designed nature.

Another is Diagoras, a Greek poet and Sophist "active in Athens in the last decades of the 5th century BCE" (that is, his life somewhat overlapped those of Anaxagoras and Socrates). (I found the photo of "The statue of Diagoras in Rhodes in the sunset light" on the web.) To quote the nearest source to hand (Wikipedia), "He became an atheist after an incident that happened against him went unpunished by the gods." What a refreshingly common, down-to-earth reason! So many people have doubts and some eventually lose their faith altogether out of considerations of all the injustice and cruelty in the world allegedly "created by god." Diagoras's story (at least as told by Wikipedia) is pretty interesting:

He once threw a wooden image of a god into a fire, remarking that the deity should perform another miracle and save itself....[Note the pronoun "it."]

The Roman philosopher Cicero, writing in the 1st century BCE, tells of how a friend of Diagoras tried to convince him of the existence of the gods, by pointing out how many votive pictures tell about people being saved from storms at sea by "dint of vows to the gods," to which Diagoras replied that "there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea." And Cicero goes on to give another example, where Diagoras was on a ship in hard weather, and the crew thought that they had brought it on themselves by taking this ungodly man onboard. He then wondered if the other boats out in the same storm also had a Diagoras onboard.

Like Socrates, "Diagoras was condemned to death at Athens and a price was put on his head." Unlike Socrates, however, "He fled to Corinth...."

....with reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there was no God at all. [emphasis mine]

Though the evidence is sparse, it doesn't appear that either Anaxagoras or Diagoras had discovered the law of evolution. Perhaps they'd read or heard about the Greek astronomer and philosopher Anaximander of Miletus [circa 611 to circa 547]. Russell again:

[Anaximander taught that] there was an eternal motion, in the course of which was brought about the origin of the worlds. The worlds were not created, as in Jewish or Christian theology, but evolved. There was evolution also in the animal kingdom. Living creatures arose from the moist element as it evaporated by the sun. Man, like every other animal, was descended from fishes. He must be derived from animals of a different sort, because, owing to his long infancy, he could not have survived, originally, as he is now. [p. 27²]

So, my friend might be right!
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1. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1996
2. Russell also says that "Anaximander was full of scientific curiosity. He is said to have been the first man who made a map...."

From the wild side

I recommend the article, "The Repeater," by evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson, published January 29, 2008 on the author's "Wild Side" column on the web. It addresses the question, "How evolution repeats—or, what we can learn from the itineraries of sticklebacks." (I've included here one of the photos that illustrate the article. Sticklebacks are small scaleless fish having two or more free spines in front of the dorsal fin.)

Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, is the author of Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex, which was made into a three-part television program. Ms. Judson has been a reporter for The Economist and has written for a number of other publications, including Nature, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Natural History. She is a research fellow in biology at Imperial College London.

The article opens:

Here’s an evolutionist’s dream: 10,000 planet Earths, starting from the same point at the same time, and left to their own devices for four and a half billion years. What would happen? Could you go on safari from one planet to the next seeing an endless procession of wildly different organisms? Or would many of the planets be home to life forms that are broadly similar?

The conventional answer to this question — the one championed by the late Stephen Jay Gould, for example — is that chance events, from mutations to asteroids, play such a large role in evolution that each of the planets would be totally different. And probably, after four and a half billion years, they would be. I wish we could do the experiment, though. It might hold some surprises.