15 Years Ago Today: “I don’t believe that x” ≠ “I believe that not-x”

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 4, 2006.]

Last night I sliced open that one Fuyu persimmon from this year’s harvest [on Ironwood Place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina], preparing twenty or thirty thin slices for our dessert. (There was only the one fruit because, after last year’s Fuyu harvest of over 300, I apparently pruned the tree more severely than I should have. I won’t go into the theory of persimmon cultivation; anyway, my imperfect practice of it tends to disqualify me from stating it.)

Three Years Ago Today

A Christian-atheist conversation, Part 1: About animal rights

By Morris Dean 
& Kyle Garza

[Originally published on June 22, 2014, not one word different.]

Morris: In my Thor’s Day post of June 5 (“Value experience for its own sake: It’s an art”), I not only stated positively my view of the sacred art of living in a way that values life and respects one’s own and others’ experience for its own sake, but also outlined six areas in which I found the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam wanting:

Movie Review: The Most Hated Woman in America

Who is Madalyn Murray O’Hair

By Moristotle

Netflix’s latest streaming release, The Most Hated Woman in America, doesn’t flatter Madalyn Murray O’Hair, nor does it flatter the religious people who hated her for “standing up” (as she put it) for the First Amendment of the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom, including freedom not only to believe, but also not to believe. Her lawsuit, Murray v. Curlett, led to the landmark 1963 Supreme Court ruling that ended official Bible-reading in American public schools.

A history not of God, but of the idea of God

By Moristotle

[Originally published on March 19, 2008]

Karen Armstrong’s 1993 book, subtitled “The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” has the misleading but catchier title A History of God. She herself refers in the Introduction to “this history of the idea and experience of [emphasis mine] God in the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” [p. xix]. She admits that God might not really exist and that she wished, “when I was starting out in the religious life” [in the 1960’s], that she had been told to “deliberately create a sense of him for myself.”

Thor's Day: Alternative terms for "atheist" and "theist"

From "Can an Atheist Be a Fundamentalist?" by Anthony Grayling

Edited by Morris Dean

[British moral philosopher Anthony Grayling's essay is the 46th selection in Christopher Hitchens's 2007 book, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. In the course of answering the question, "Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?" Grayling proposes more appropriate terms for "atheist" and "theist."]

Thor's Day: Are you an atheist?

Do you believe in fewer gods than someone else?

By Morris Dean

The definition shown to the right probably should say believes "in fewer gods" rather than "in one fewer god," but never mind. It would appear, if we looked at it strictly logically, that the only person who isn't an atheist – aside from agnostics, of course – is the one who believes in more gods than anyone else.

Ask Wednesday: Are there as many odd numbers as even?

No...but... yes...but....

By Morris Dean

[Originally published, under the title "More even than odd," on January 10, 2011.]

I was amazed one morning to discover a "proof" for something that is quite counter-intuitive. I mean, there are as many odd numbers as even numbers, right?

Thor's Day: A Christian-atheist conversation, Part 2

About Christianity’s non-“holy days”

By Kyle Garza & Morris Dean

[Sequel to “About animal rights”]

Kyle: Morris, you claimed in this column on June 5 (“Value experience for its own sake: It’s an art”) that a second flaw of Christianity is that it devalues experience that doesn’t occur on the “holy days.” You wrote that it implicitly demotes days that aren’t sabbaths (or Saint’s days, or other religious holidays) to a lesser status.

Thor's Day: A Christian-atheist conversation, Part 1

About animal rights

By Morris Dean 
& Kyle Garza

Morris: In my Thor’s Day post of June 5 (“Value experience for its own sake: It’s an art”), I not only stated positively my view of the sacred art of living in a way that values life and respects one’s own and others’ experience for its own sake, but also outlined six areas in which I found the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam wanting:

Thor's Day

“Did Zeus Exist?”

By Chuck Smythe

I stumbled on to the above headline in the New York Times Opinionator. Thinking it a natural for “Thor’s Day,” I sent it on to Morris. He asked me to write about it, so after some foot-dragging, here goes.
    The article is by Gary Gutting, Notre Dame Philosopher. He argues that we have no evidence that the Classical Greeks did not have supernatural experiences denied to most of us. Maybe we’ve forgotten how. Maybe different Gods were active then, in different ways. Maybe almost anything. In any case, a high civilization believed in Zeus with no apparent dissent for centuries. Gutting argues, therefore, that atheism regarding Zeus cannot be defended, and only agnosticism is justified.

Thor's Day: The belief of an unbeliever

From "Why I Am an Unbeliever"

Carl Van Doren (1885-1950)

Let us be honest. There have always been men and women without the gift of faith. They lack it, do not desire it, and would not know what to do with it if they had it. They are apparently no less intelligent than the faithful, and apparently no less virtuous. How great the number of them is it would be difficult to say, but they exist in all communities and are most numerous where there is most enlightenment. As they have no organization and no creed, they can of course have no official spokesman. Nevertheless, any one of them who speaks out can be trusted to speak, in a way, for all of them. Like the mystics, the unbelievers, wherever found, are essentially of one spirit and one language. I cannot, however, pretend to represent more than a single complexion of unbelief.

Thor's Day: Which days are holy?

By Morris Dean

Which day or days do you think are holidays—in the literal sense of holy days?
    My own answer to the question has been settled for a number of years, and has served me well. I'll say more about that in the concluding paragraph.
    Two books nicely epitomize two contrasting ways of answering the question. The first is Yann Martel's 2001 novel, Life of Pi, which I reviewed on Monday. The other is a book mentioned recently in a local newspaper; I'll identify it later. For now, consider the following passage from Life of Pi:

Pricklings of thought from yesterday

"Time unremembered," I said. It's time unremembered and unrememberable, but not entirely temps perdu. A century ago Proust searched his memory and largely found his own lost time, and yesterday we imagined our lost time before our history began to be recorded. We imagined that animal sacrifice predated history's recording. And, of course, there are archaeological records.

"Their God," I said, referring to the god of Arab Muslims. I realized overnight that the monotheistic god of the Abrahamic religions isn't the same "one God" for each of them. The idea that they all three have the same god had always been seductive. "I mean," one explains, "they're monotheistic religions. One god. So, of course, the same god."
    Seductive it may be, but not so.
    The original "God of Abraham" was the tribal god of a wandering people, his chosen. Yahweh (or Jehovah) was fierce and jealous and vengeful.
    The three-in-one god who emerged from all of the theological and pastoral intrigue of the early Christians was benevolent and forgiving (except of the Jews, of course, for whom the case was made that they were the murderers of Christ and deserved everything they would have coming to them).
    And Allah is..., well, a god to whom his people still sacrifice other people.

The number of possibilities when it comes to the number of gods is huge. One? Two? Three? Poly, poly? Or...zero?

"Thank God" I was an ID Boy?

Some years ago I participated in a musical performance at an all-hands meeting where I worked. Many large companies have such meetings, to inform and indoctrinate employees and try to improve the mood of their ever-changing, ever-vulnerable morale. To the tune of John Denver's classic hit, "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," the Information Development department sang lyrics specially written for it by one of the ensemble's members.
    You can see their performance on YouTube. That's me, fourth from the right, wearing suspenders to hold up my pants:

Below are the lyrics, written by my colleague in Cary Information Development, Bruce Korn (as indicated on YouTube). I found them printed in the January 1992 issue of What's Up?, the department's newsletter (of which I was the proud editor).

Well I write all day and I try to make a living
Developers are here and they're looking kind of coy
My wife never sees me; still she's loving and she's giving
Thank God I'm an ID Boy!

[refrain] Well I got me a pen, and I got my Xedit
Got a great big draft, but no one's ever read it
The pressure tries to get me but I'm never gonna let it
Thank God I'm an ID Boy!

The books are never done cause the code is always changing
My editor is here and he's eating Almond Joys
He says don't stop--you must keep on rearranging
Thank God I'm an ID Boy!

[refrain]

I'm working real hard but I'm never getting finished
My manager is here and she's working on a ploy
She assigns more people but the work just won't diminish
Thank God I'm an ID Boy!

[refrain]

The pubs are finally done, though I really don't believe it
Some customers are here and are filling up with joy
The work starts again though it's hard to just conceive it
Thank God I'm an ID Boy!

[refrain]

To review a rendition by John Denver, to try to decide which you prefer:

An aside was prompted by the comment of a friend who watched our YouTube performance:
    She emailed me, "Guess you weren’t always an atheist...," seeming to imply that an atheist (one acting with intellectual integrity, anyway) would not participate in singing a song that includes the phrase, "Thank God."
    First, of course, if she's right, atheists would have to find an alternative to United States currency. I haven't checked all of the denominations lately, but I believe that at least one of them has "In God We Trust" engraved on it.
    Second, it isn't relevant that when "ID Boy" was performed, I hadn't yet summoned the courage to face up to the more than adequate evidence that God does not exist. (I finally did so in the months leading up to September 9, 2007.)
    Third and finally, of course, we can read or utter any phrase we can decipher or wrap our mouth around, since we're capable of distinguishing between art, science, philosophy, history, journalism, and politics, on the one hand, and personal beliefs about what it's all about on the other. Well, "anyone" perhaps but religious fanatics who commit real crimes like burning down buildings or beheading other human beings to protest a fantasy crime like a cartoonist's or a novelist's lampooning the Prophet Muhammad or a thinking person's subjecting religion to rational and moral scrutiny.

More even than odd

I was amazed this morning to discover a "proof"¹ for something that is quite counter-intuitive. I mean, there are as many odd numbers as even numbers, right?
    Wrong. There are actually more even numbers than odd numbers. Here's the proof that came to me while I was eating my grapefruit half:
    If you add an even number of even numbers, you get an even number.
    But you also get an even number if you add an even number of odd numbers! And you don't conversely get any extra odd numbers when you add an odd number of even numbers. Rather, you seem to gain some even numbers—or lose some odd numbers, depending on how you look at.
    Therefore, there are apparently more even numbers than odd ones. And I haven't even tried to find other ways we might gain even numbers or lose odd ones.
    Isn't that amazing!

How can that be? Can that possibly be right?
    If true, it is so astounding, do you think maybe this might be a clue toward discovering a proof for the existence of God? Or maybe for the existence of two of them (God even rather than odd)? Or for their nonexistence? Wow.
    What if duotheism is the True Way, rather than monotheism? Or if atheists have to deny the existence of two Gods in order to be atheists? "Aduotheists" is hard to pronounce.

An odd God limerick

More even than odd...the truth about God?
Then let's swell the ranks of Their Squad,
    Double Their pronouns,
    Use King and Queen crowns,
And on Fridays eat twice as much cod.

Notes for further analysis:

1. The operator "even number of" is equivalent to "multiplied by two" (or "the numerical result made even").
2. The operator "odd number of" is not equivalent to "the numerical result made odd" (if the things there are an odd number of are even numbers).

    Further disquisition
_______________

1. Note: This post is labeled "humor." I only added this note later when I suspected that some readers had not detected the post's parody of wishful or theological thinking, possibly because they'd noticed that I'd lately been taking myself so very seriously.

Afloat on the face of the deep

Writing yesterday's essay led me to the realization that, in a fundamental sense, believer and non-believer are in the same boat, their only essential difference being the paddle they use to stay afloat.
    "The long, distant cry" didn't initially end with "In my own way, I too am troubled by all this suffering. Its mewing and keening continually haunt my hearing." I added that paragraph (and continued to revise it) after realizing that my continual awareness of suffering and its profound unfairness seems to amount to my being one of those "troubled people" my friend referred to. I have to admit that for some time I have been aware of a sense of underlying existential pathos. A dissonant chord continually troubles the melodic line of my life and disturbs its harmony.
    And who can say that Castaneda was free of existential anxiety¹ even when that "normal" photograph² was made?

One person's response to suffering and injustice is to believe that God exists and will put it all right. And he prays continually that it be so. Amen, he says.
    Put it all right. That is, something is wrong for the believer too. For him too it's a dog eat dog world. He feels the world's suffering and is appalled and unsettled by it. He seeks an antidote for it (or for the fact of his own future annihilation) through believing that suffering (or his coming annihilation) is just an illusion or, if not an illusion, will nevertheless be righted in the hereafter.
    Yes, something is wrong, and the believer too is troubled and suffers, however able he usually is to plug his ears against the tragic discord that would otherwise trouble the harmony of his life too.

I want to remember this. I want to remember compassion for those who stoutly resist giving up the palliative paddle labeled "God." For I seem to have been clutching a sort of paddle myself. Rather than pray and shout amen, I beat the waters and decry. And my song lately has only repeated slight variations of the same lament.
_______________

1. From Wikipedia's entry on existential anxiety:

   The theologian Paul Tillich characterized existential anxiety as "the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing" and he listed three categories for the nonbeing and resulting anxiety: ontic (fate and death), moral (guilt and condemnation), and spiritual (emptiness and meaninglessness). According to Tillich, the last of these three types of existential anxiety, i.e. spiritual anxiety, is predominant in modern times while the others were predominant in earlier periods. Tillich argues that this anxiety can be accepted as part of the human condition or it can be resisted but with negative consequences. In its pathological form, spiritual anxiety may tend to "drive the person toward the creation of certitude in systems of meaning which are supported by tradition and authority" even though such "undoubted certitude is not built on the rock of reality."

2. My friend who read my paper on mentoring had said, "Carlos Castaneda's picture looks normal. Why did Thom Green say that he looked troubled?"

George W. Bush remains certain

On June 2, 2006, I wrote to the president of Yale University:

I believe that Bush was so far from deserving the [honorary] degree [that Yale conferred on him at the 2001 commencement] that in the years to come Yale alumni familiar with Bush’s “accomplishments” will be as amazed as I was chagrined and embarrassed that in the year 2001 our alma mater conferred such an honor on such a man.

President Lewin didn't contradict that assessment¹.

And neither, apparently, does George W. Bush himself, if his recent book is any evidence. I of course haven't read Decision Points, but my wife had told me, "There's a review of Bush's book in The New Yorker, I think you need to read it." She added, "The review, not the book."
    I said, "I understood what you meant."
    She said, "I would never read anything by that man. But I think you'll like the review."
    The review is "Dead Certain," by George Packer. He writes:

What's remarkable about Decision Points is how frequently and casually it leaves out facts, large and small, whose absence draws more attention than their inclusion would have. In his account of the 2000 election, Bush neglects to mention that he lost the popular vote. He refers to the firing, in 2002, of his top economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, but not to the fact that it came immediately after Lindsey violated the Administration's optimistic line by saying that the Iraq war could cost as much as two hundred billion dollars....

Packer says "what's remarkable" as though there's nothing else remarkable about Decision Points, but I attribute that to a momentary lapse by both the writer and his editor at The New Yorker. There's at least one thing even more remarkable than that:

The structure of Decision Points, with each chapter centered on a key issue...reveals the essential qualities of the Decider. There are hardly any decision points at all....
    In Bush's telling, the non-decision decision is a constant feature of his Presidential policymaking....
    ...Bush immediately caricatured opposing views and impugned the motives of those who held them. If there was an honest and legitimate argument on the other side, then the President would have to defend his non-decision, taking it out of the redoubt of personal belief and into the messy empirical realm of contingency and uncertainty. So critics of his stem-cell ban are dismissed as scientists eager for more government cash, or advocacy groups looking to "raise large amounts of money," or Democrats who saw "a political winner."
    ...
    Bush ends Decision Points with the sanguine thought that history's verdict on his Presidency will come only after his death. During his years in office, two wars turned into needless disasters, and the freedom agenda created such deep cynicism around the world that the word itself was spoiled. In America, the gap between the rich few and the vast majority widened dramatically, contributing to a historic financial crisis and an ongoing recession; the poisoning of the atmosphere continued unabated; and the Constitution had less and less say over the exercise of executive power. Whatever the judgments of historians, these will remain foregone conclusions.

I probably didn't "need" to read the review, but at least it served to remind me that I should be grateful that George W. Bush's uncritical evangelism played a helpful role in the progress of my thought from uncertainly theistic to confidently atheistic.
_______________

1. Of course, in President Lewin's need not to offend anyone who might donate money to Yale, he didn't indicate whether he agreed or didn't agree with my assessment of Bush.

Jané's diary

How strange, that conversation at Costco. Who says it so straight-out like that? There is no God. I never saw that coming. They usually say how true or nod their heads or at least say hmm. But to just come back with No, there is no God, God doesn't exist. And to say it so matter of factly, without heat, reasonably.
    And so, am I wrong, and God didn't plan things? How do I think I know that? Or how did I think I knew it? And did I believe it anyway, really? I wanted to believe, maybe. But why? Anyway, if God planned for younger people to take care of their parents when they get old, then why are fewer and fewer doing it?
    And can I say for sure that God has ever answered even a single one of my prayers?

I wish I could remember that man's name. He said it very clearly, but then he asked me what my name was and how was Jané spelled, and my husband's curiously pronounced last name. I should have asked him again after the restroom.
    But isn't the fact that he was still there when I came back, eating his yogurt, somehow a sign that maybe God does exist, after all? But why would God send someone with the message that he doesn't exist?
    Maybe I'll see him at Costco another time. I have so many questions.

God comes up at Costco

I pushed my cart to the back of the shortest checkout line. I didn't notice that the couple ahead of me had a child in a stroller until its mother said to me, "We're going to purchase him."
    I dutifully looked the child over and said, "You can't afford him."
    "No, actually, we can't."
    "Well, maybe if you can hang in there with him for a few decades, he can help support you when you get old."
    The boy's mother thought for a moment and said,"Yes, that's the way God planned things, isn't it?"

Testimony of a nonbeliever

The several dozen statements of nonbelievers collected in Christopher Hitchens's Portable Atheist just keep on being rationally inspirational. Here's an excerpt from the next-to-most recent I've read, by Elizabeth Anderson, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor:

Surveying the religious booths every year at the Ann Arbor art fair, I am always struck by the fact that they are staffed by people who are convinced of their own revelations and miracles, while most so readily disparage the revelations and miracles of other faiths. To a mainstream Christian, Jew, or Muslim, nothing is more obvious than that the founders and prophets of other religions, such as Joseph Smith, the Rev. Moon, Mary Baker Eddy, and L. Ron Hubbard, are either frauds or delusional, their purported miracles or cures are tricks played upon a credulous audience (or worse, exercises of black magic), their prophecies false, their metaphysics absurd. To me, nothing is more obvious than that the evidence cited on behalf of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is of exactly the same type and quality as that cited on behalf of such despised religions. Indeed, it is on a par with the evidence for Zeus, Baal, Thor, and other long-abandoned gods, who are now considered ridiculous by nearly everyone. –If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted? [no], pp. 345-346 in Hitchens

What's inspirational about Professor Anderson's testimony is that we have reason to hope that religion will fade away eventually. Two problems with this, however: (1) Religion isn't rational and doesn't listen to reason very well. (2) Everyone alive on the planet now, and for some time to come, will die long before religion does.¹
_______________

1. As my friend Ken privately wrote me recently:

   ...when religious institutions begin to fragment and wither. We still need several more centuries for that. [emphasis mine]

   I quote Ken, not because he is my friend, but, like Professor Anderson, he is an astute, critical thinker.