Goines On: Who’s minding?

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[An adaptation, with updated ending, of “Thor's Day: Wrong number,” July 18, 2013]

The Goineses were at their dining table when Mrs. Goines’ phone rang. She answered it. Whoever it was, she didn’t recognize them. “You have the wrong number ... That’s okay. No problem.”
    Her phone rang again within seconds. Goines waited to see what Mrs. Goines would do.
    Without speaking, she hung up.

Goines On: Previous Jessica experiments

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On his walk the morning after imagining the Jessica experiments, Goines realized that, in a way, they had been conducted many times already, by religions other than Christianity that indoctrinated their followers in the same sorts of ways to believe that if they did or believed thus and so, they would be recompensed for whatever suffering, pain, injustice, or other injury afflicted them, and saved from death in the end.

On fanciful ideas

Reflections over the kitchen sink

By Moristotle

Spellbound at its revelations, my wife and I have been watching Ken Burns’s Vietnam War. Watching it is tearing at my heart, and hers too, I think. The war’s stupidity, our leaders’ pathological need to “save face,” the hundreds of thousands of deaths, square miles of beautiful land burned and bombed, the angst of soldiers, their families, their fellow citizens torn asunder by opposed stances on the war….

Thor's Day: Doubts

Of belief & disbelief

By Morris Dean






Apprehensive atheists agonize:
What if what Christians say believing buys
    is true? I'd miss their salvation,
    suffer vexatious damnation,
and miss partying with believing guys.

Thor's Day: Believing what makes us feel good

We're not free to do it

By Morris Dean

Something I said last week has been on my mind a lot since. I mentioned that I come from a large family of true Christian believers, and that's a big reason religion has played a pivotal role in my own life, going right back to Mother's knee, where I was schooled in emotional Pentecostal religion.

Thor's Day: Faith and more

By Morris Dean

Some newspapers have a section they call “Faith and More,”
where they stuff church stuff and words designed to shore
    their readers up
    and hand them a cup
of courage to believe all the things they believe about “Thor.”
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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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Thor's Day: Faith in faith

Personal wish-fulfillment

By Morris Dean

When we believe in things that are but wraith
(resurrection, heaven), we must have faith in faith;
    with nothing to evidence
    our beliefs, we reference
our head's own wish-fulfilling lathe.
_______________
Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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Thor's Day: Faith's one big fear

By Morris Dean

A few people have quoted Mark 9:24 to me in an attempt to bolster their faith, or maybe just convince me that they are right to be concerned about losing their faith. I'm not sure which. Anyway, Mark 9:24 says [in the King James Version]:

Thor's Day: Wrong number

By Morris Dean

My wife answered the phone when it rang the first time. Whoever it was, she didn't recognize them. "You have the wrong number...That's okay. No problem."
    It rang again within seconds. Without speaking, my wife hung up. "The same woman. She might be drunk."

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: The Virgin Mary's great trauma

Half-listening to the radio as I was driving my wife to her first doctor's appointment after knee surgery, I heard a headline on National Public Radio something about how Mary, the mother of Jesus, had suffered great trauma in her life.

Georgia on my mind

A recent study has set me to thinking that maybe I should change the font used for Moristotle's posts.
    The study—by New York Times Opinionator Errol Morris [no relation] and described in his piece "Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth (Part One)"—found that the fonts used to render the information we read influences our attitude toward the information, however blissfully unaware we may be of the influence. Morris writes that

We are more inclined to believe that gold has an atomic number 79 if we read it in Georgia, the font of The New York Times online, rather than in Helvetica.

    In order for me to decide whether to go to the effort of changing Moristotle's font to Georgia (as I did for yesterday's post and have again for today's), please be so kind as to let me know whether you think my credibility would be enhanced by using the Georgia font. If you feel no difference as to credibility between the Georgia font and the other one (the one without serifs), then do you just like one of the two fonts more than the other?
    Thanks in advance for your help. I'm here to try to satisfy your preference (and to be believed when I say so).

1:40 p.m.. After reading Motomynd's comment (which you may read also; click "Comments," below), I decided to provide a sample of fonts, which I selected from within a Microsoft Word document and copied into this post's WYSIWYG editor in order for the samples' font characteristics to be preserved—so far as possible with Blogger and with whatever browser you may be using to look at this:

(Adobe Garamond Pro) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?
    (Times New Roman) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Cambria) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Georgia) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Book Antigua) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Byington) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Bookman Old Style) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Candara) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Tahoma) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Arial/Helvetica) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

    (Verdana) This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it? This is a sample of text to judge legibility and appeal; how do you like it?

   

Thor's Day: Who and what is the supreme lama?

Thursday of the week is devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day."

Last Thor's Day, I quoted the Dalai Lama (and also Saint Paul and Jesus).

Thor's Day: Suffer the little children

Thursday of the week is devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day."

The Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians (about 1,950 years ago):

Thor's Day: God, une belle hypothèse

Joseph-Louis Lagrange
(1736-1816)

Thursday of the week is devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day."

Thor's Day: God's existence proved

Rene Descartes famously said,
"Cogito ergo sum."

Thursday of the week is devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day."

Announcing: Thor's Day

Thursday of the week will be devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes of course from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day." In Norse mythology, Thor (from Old Norse Þórr) was a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility. [Characterization from Wikipedia.]

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?"

Have a blessed day

I said on Saturday that while in Atlanta last week I had a couple of times slipped and "created god" by uttering formulas like "Thank god" and "What a godsend." I of course made no believing reference to "god"; the utterances were habitual in the same way a person might automatically say "Fine" in response to a "How are you?" The interesting thing about my slips was that they didn't bother me. That's a good thing. It seems to indicate that I'm becoming at least somewhat desensitized to the possibility that someone might infer I'm a believer, even though it's important to me both that I am not and that the people I care about know it.

But anyway, this morning, as I stepped out of my commute van in Chapel Hill, I intentionally said to my fellow passengers, "Have a blessed day." That blessing (for it's literally a blessing, a good wish for another person) doesn't involve the word "god" but I think it's fair to say that it's more often than not taken as invoking "god's blessing."

I of course didn't mean it that way, given that I believe there is no god to bless anybody. People who depend on god to take care of them are routinely disappointed. When things turn out their way there are always more reliable explanations, if only the laws of chance. I meant something more like, "Be lucky today" or "May good things happen to you today." In that regard, perhaps my favorite saying (blessing) is "Good on you," or even "Good on you to overrunning cup" (a reference to the Twenty-third Psalm¹, for which I don't apologize, nonbeliever or no, the image is so poetically inspired).

In choosing to say "Have a blessed day," I consciously (and deliberately) used a formula that resonates with my audience. If you read me here consistently, you may remember that most of the members of my commute van pool are believers, even regular church-goers.

It strikes me that in using their language, I made a step toward reconciliation. Without compromising my nonbelief, but also without flaunting it.
_______________

1. "my cup runneth over." –Psalm 23:5

"Well, no, I don't believe that"

During lunch yesterday with a friend of my own age, I mentioned that I am reading Bertrand Russell's 1945 A History of Western Philosophy, and he in turn mentioned having read Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. I asked whether the book had influenced him, and he said he had long been an agnostic. I asked what "agnostic" meant to him, and he said "just not knowing, one way or the other, whether 'God' exists. I don't know. But," he added, "I do not believe that there's a personal god. If 'it' exists, it hasn't any interest in human affairs."

I said that perhaps he's atheist with respect to that particular brand of god? He didn't acknowledge it, which I took as an indication that he might need to think about that for a while to become comfortable with the label. (It didn't occur to me until later that I might have told him Dawkins's remark that we are all atheists when it comes to most of the gods mankind has believed in.)

Then we got to talking about whether or not our children "believe in god." I told him that my daughter recently wrote me (in a comment on my blog) that she had concluded as a kid that there's no god. And my friend told me a little story about his own daughter:

When she was three years old she had a friend whose family belonged to a fundamentalist church. One day she told us that her friend had invited her to go to church with them. She wanted to know what we thought. We told her fine, go ahead if she wanted to. So she did and went pretty regularly. She seemed to enjoy going.
    But came the time (three years later) when her friend's mother asked her whether she would like to join the church.
    Our daughter said, "I thought I was already a member."
    "No," they said, "there's a requirement for membership."
    "What's that?"
    "You have to believe."
    "Believe...what?"
    "You have to believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Personal Savior."
    Our daughter hesitated not a moment before answering, "Well, no, I don't believe that."
    She never went back.

This six-year-old knew what she believed—or didn't believe, at any rate. I didn't ask my own daughter what "as a kid" meant in her case, but when I read her comment I imagined her when she wore a pair of fairly large-rimmed eyeglasses and seemed particularly independent and inner-directed. That might have been about sixth or seventh grade, but I'm not sure. I hope she'll read this post and let me know!