Kill 'Em All: God's Prerogative

The Biblical World notes an interesting discussion over Israel's capture of Jericho.

The story is well-known for the part where Joshua and the Israelite circle Jericho, blowing trumpets until the city's walls come tumbling down. My kids used to have a Veggie Tales video that framed the story as one of "doing it God's way, not your own." The vegetable Israelites trusted God by obeying the bizarre orders of Joshua. They brought down veggie Jericho and immediately made their way to the Promised Land.

Not recounted in the kid vid, and hardly ever in polite company, is the actual Biblical story. For example, here's Joshua 6:20-21:

20. And the people shouted, and (the priests) blew with the trumpets; and it was when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, that the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down in its place and the people went up into the city, every man opposite him, and they took the city.

21. And they completely destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

This is, of course, an orgy of genocide and slaughter. It's indiscriminate--excepting the household of Rahab the harlot, whose aid of Israel is rewarded by their being spared. And it's all God-sanctioned: consider that what arouses God's anger is the later actions of one Achan, who does some looting in Jericho and sets back Israel's army. Achan pays for the crime with his life.

Now, some apologists bleat that Jericho had been warned beforehand. The city foolishly decided to oppose Israel; therefore, God was moral and Joshua was moral and Israel was moral to fuck up absolutely everyone and everything in Jericho.

Today, however, we can hardly accept such a feeble excuse. We know it's unfair to expect a city to surrender to an invading force. There's no way to reconcile the specific events recounted in the this chapter with an all-powerful, all-smart, human-loving deity. Surely such a God could have found a safer, saner method for achieving his divine purpose? For example, why not whip up a wall of sand--Exodus-style--on either side of Israel as they simply pass through Jericho unharmed?

But no, the God-apologists need to protect their idea of God by blaming the victims. Or, as John Piper does, the divine defenders just say genocide is fine...when God does it:

It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.

God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God's hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs.

So God is God! He rules and governs everything. And everything he does is just and right and good. God owes us nothing.

"May I have another?"

Hallelujah, John! God can fucking kill anyone, anytime. He can stomp and maim until he's satisfied that He's killed enough. Heck, he can juggle the freakin' corpses and gargle their bones, and by definition it would be morally good and right.

And what's more, whatever the hell he decides to do to you, me, your little baby, your dear Aunt Sally, or whomever: we all should just thank him. He owes us nothing.

Piper's demented view is not far off from that of the odious Jewish convert, Jacob Stein. Stein believes that the Holocaust was essentially God's response to the Jewish Enlightenment in Europe.

It is true that I am implying that generally the victims of the Holocaust were sinners who were deserving of their fate however I believe that this is in fact obviously true and we will honor their deaths by learning from this.

In my opinion, the Holocaust is one of the strongest proofs of the truth of Judaism.

Stein has nothing to say about what the other millions of Nazi victims did to deserve their fate. Neither does he explain why American Jews, hardly known for orthodoxy, were spared. All he knows for sure is Haskalah-therefore-Holocaust. Bravo, Stein!

Piper and Stein agree that God uses human brutality to make his holy will known and to achieve his divine design in the world.

It's easy enough to dismiss abhorrent views such as those of Piper and Stein. Most of us, however, are unprepared to tolerate indiscriminate killing, genocide, and wanton violence. This is a good thing.

But come back to the Veggie Tales video I mentioned before. Remember what the decent little tomato and funny cucumber say: the right thing to do is what God tells you to do.

What they don't say is that God has sometimes told people to do some pretty awful and wrong things, if you believe there is a God to tell anybody anything.

Let me close with a modest proposal to leave vegetables for cooking and eating, leave God and the Bible in the fiction bin where they belong, leave moral decisions to rational minds, and leave genocide and slaughter altogether.

Happy Birthday, Dad

My father, a strapping young 17-year-old in 1954, South Philadelphia.

My father is 76 years old today.

To me, he is the epitome of a mensch. He is a good man, one of integrity and goodwill. Like my mother, he is a person with many qualities and values that I hope will stay in my children as they grow up. I hope, too, that I live up to the model he has given me.

Thanks, Dad! Good health and happiness to you today and always.

Book of Love

Family fun: We write our own book.

My middle child turned six years old this week. She's a very bright and sweet girl, self-assured and quiet. Like me, she's a homebody and an introvert. I have looked  closely at her this week. Her growing up fills me with more emotion than I think I can handle.

I get nearly as emotional concerning my two other children, but our relationships are different. The older girl is, by virtue of being first-born, the one whose growing up is most comfortable for me. As she grows, so do I: it's like we are on an adventure together. My boy, now four, is a wonder because of his autism. Although he's the baby of the family, I think of him as a little man and see his growth as just filling into what I know he will be.

Then there's the wife. She and I are getting older. We feel middle age coming on. Our lives are not monotonous or boring, but rather stable and muted. This is good. In her, I still see the girl who used to link arms with me when we walk, the girl who got a certain twinkle in her eye whenever she saw a baby. She's come a long way in managing her depression and setting herself up for a transition from stay-at-home mom to working woman. She's as beautiful as ever.

I've become all meh on religion. There's too much God and Jesus stuff in the house, but I have more important matters to think about than the biblical blah-blah. I know everyone in the family but me is a believer and a Christian, but I won't be surprised if the religiosity slowly tones down to nothing in the coming years. My presence in the house must pose questions everyone has either to ignore or face:

• Why isn't there any evidence in favor of God's existence?
• Why don't facts about the world/universe lend themselves to God as an explanation?
• Why is there no good evidence of miracles?
• Why is there no good evidence of the extraordinary events concerning Jesus, such as his birth, miracles, and resurrection?
• Why do the so-called proofs of God's existence and the apologies for Jewish and Christian doctrines fail to complete what ought to be clear slam-dunks?

Besides, all the "God loves you" and "Jesus wants you to bleh" stuff butts up against the reality of Christian doctrine: You are a sinner who better beg for forgiveness. The more polite expression of the doctrine is that humanity is fallen and needs grace to be reconciled, but my formulation is no less accurate and may be the truer representation of attitude.

In short, I have the luxury of being meh about religion. Eventually, everyone will have a WTF moment on this. If anyone cares to share the WTF with me, I'll be ready to listen.

Summer Reading

Among my goals for the summertime is to read and finish several books. In no particular order, here are the ones I most want to tackle:

1. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clay Christensen et al. A book on principles of success in business, ethics, and life from a highly regarded Harvard Business School lecturer.
2. The Art of Strategy by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff. Game Theory in real life.
3. Britain BC by Francis Pryor. An expert surveys what we know about ancient Britain and Ireland.
4. Sublime Dreams of Living Machines by Minsoo Kang. A scholarly account of the automaton in the Western imagination.
5. The Information by James Gleick. The story of Information Theory.
6. Good and Real by Gary Drescher. Reconciling a mechanical view of the world with observations and issues in physics, ethics, and more. 
7. The Obligation toward the Difficult Whole by Brian McHale. A former instructor of mine on postmodernist long poems.
8. Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory. King Arthur's life, court, and death.
9. Paterson by William Carlos Williams. A book-length poem on Paterson, New Jersey.
10. Retrieving the Ancients: An Introduction to Greek Philosophy by David Roochnik. More than just Plato and Aristotle.

DOMA Unconstitutional

If you know and respect the US Constitution, then of course DOMA is unconstitutional.

Saw this news item earlier today:

An appeals court ruled Thursday that the heart of a law that denies a host of federal benefits to gay married couples is unconstitutional.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, discriminates against married same-sex couples by denying them federal benefits.

The law was passed in 1996 at a time when it appeared Hawaii would legalize gay marriage. Since then, many states have instituted their own bans on gay marriage, while eight states have approved it, led by Massachusetts in 2004.

The appeals court agreed with a lower court judge who ruled in 2010 that the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and denies married gay couples federal benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including the ability to file joint tax returns.

Yes, arbitrarily denying federal benefits to some married couples and not others is unconstitutional and immoral.

Eventually, all US states will either come to recognize "gay marriage" (and it will just be "marriage") or they will be forced to. I hope for the former but I'm comfortable with the latter.

To a Student in My Composition and Rhetoric Class (Introduction to Literature)

Dear Student,

I was very happy you recently emailed me about a research essay topic you want to pursue. That you felt strongly enough to ask a question is gratifying. You wouldn't know this, but I begin every semester hoping that students find plays, poems, and stories that move them profoundly, or at least profoundly enough to ask such questions as you have.

Unfortunately, after fifteen weeks of class this term, you alone have fulfilled this hope. Your classmates, though nice people and smart enough, have rarely shown the desire or self-motivation to vigorously explore the literary texts in our course. They have read, or skimmed. They have glibly opined. They have written papers. However, I feel they have not been taken by any of our texts. They were unimpressed by Hamlet's grief and by how severely he reckoned every possible course of action. They eschewed, or seemed to, the lonely and noble reflection of Jane Kenyon's "Let Evening Come." They saw no kinship between themselves and proud Sylvia in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson." 

It takes passion to read anything, but especially drama, poetry, and fiction. It takes conviction to write, but especially to write an academic essay. What I have really been trying to tell and teach all of you is to be passionate, assertive, bold, and confident. If you can muster these attitudes for a class, you can muster them in your life. As much as any knowledge, skill, or wisdom that you take from school, these attitudes will serve you well in life and carry you far.

But there is more than utility to these attitudes. They have more value than getting you a job and helping you succeed in a career. No, these attitudes are the formula of emotional depth and perspective. The happiness literature offers is understanding happiness. From our best writing we learn that happiness is complex, fleeting, easily unrecognized, and surprisingly connected to outlook and effort. And the wisdom literature offers is that of adventure, for the worlds created in literature lead out to reality and to knowledge that spans centuries of human endeavor.

Just two examples of the happiness and wisdom I mean, and then I will close. Think on the rich, lasting happiness from the end of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind":

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Shelley describes a happiness greater, if less pure, than a child's. It's a lasting, hopeful happiness. It's the happiness of knowing life continues inexorably. To Shelley, we are instruments of a powerful universe in motion. Such happiness comes from being bound sonically and temperamentally to that universe. We readers, too, joyfully recognize the intertwining rhyme Shelley uses. We see it and connect with him, and his world. We hear the trumpet tones and know this sound calls just as well in our world.

We take from Shelley a wise happiness, a kind of knowledge not found in movies, television, games, or other activities--all of which possess their own wisdom. Yet we talk about wisdom and knowledge as if they were only about having facts and being able to recall them. Consider, then, the wisdom of the speaker in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues":

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. I just watched Sonny's face. His face was troubled, he was working hard, but he wasn't with it. And I had the feeling that, in a way, everyone on the bandstand was waiting for him, both waiting for him and pushing him along. But as I began to watch Creole, I realized that it was Creole who held them all back. He had them on a short rein. Up there, keeping the beat with his whole body, wailing on the fiddle, with his eyes half closed, he was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing -- he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water.

The man admits at the outset he is limited in his knowledge about music. Yet, like the improvising musicians he observes and hears, he builds on what he knows and tries to expand it. Baldwin's writing here focuses on hearing and watching--listening to Sonny play and watching him expend effort. Baldwin searches and finds in the music a dialogue between Creole and Sonny, a dialogue that turns into Sonny's musical exodus or perhaps a musical baptism.

This is the wisdom of hearing and observing, yes, but more the wisdom of sharing and connecting. What sings in this prose is how the speaker voices--attempts to articulate on the fly--how he understands Sonny and Creole. He wants to partake of their interplay. He learns by doing and by actively being.

The happiness and wisdom of literature are unfathomably rich. My student, I wanted you and all your classmates to learn this. Excepting you alone, I failed this semester. I failed because your classmates did not want to be reached and did not think it was worth their energy. I failed because I was not focused or skilled or apt enough to overcome their extraordinary apathy and complacence.

I will retire as a college teacher at the end of this semester. I cannot foresee teaching an Introduction to Literature course again. After 17 years of teaching, I have lost the drive to lead any more classes on the perilous journey through the language and stories of the past, and through the struggle of writing now. I have ceased to be an effective teacher, if ever I was one.

My student, your letter is a comfort to me as I depart. As you go your own way in life, I hope some of what we have read this term stays with you and grows with you. I bid you, as Tennyson's "Ulysses," to seek newer worlds beyond the sunset. That is my intent. Perhaps we will meet again.

Larry Tanner, a teacher

Open Letter to the Spiritually Unequal/Unequally Yoked Communities

Dear Christian married to a non-Christian, agnostic, or atheist:

I'm writing this letter to try and explain what's going on with us, that is, with those of us who don't share your passion and devotion for Christianity. I can draw only upon my specific experience and attitudes, but I hope to shed light on what many of us actually think and how we all can move forward together...happily.

The first thing you should know is that, yes, we are hostile to religion, and Christianity in particular. One reason for this is your immersion in Christianity tells us you want more than us and more than our relationship. Your adoption of Christianity and injection of it into every facet of your life seems a clear message that our love is not enough. We don't make you happy, in other words. Our marriage doesn't fulfill you.

And there's an asymmetry here: we love you, just you. We're fine with only you. We don't need to love God or to love Jesus in order to love you. We don't need anything to enhance our love for you. Yet you need help to love us. You need strength to be with us. Now, you can talk about how much better your love for us is because you've found Jesus, but we know that we have become second place. Frankly, we don't get why this should be so. We didn't marry you to be second place in your life.

We're also hostile to Christianity because, honestly, you can be rather oppressive with it. Your declaration of KNOWING (in all caps) that God is real and Jesus died for your sins is made too confidently. The truth is you feel strongly, not that you know.

You believe. You really, really believe. But belief doesn't make facts. Every time you talk about what God really wants and what Jesus's true message is, we think you are acting arrogant and unfair. If God is who you say he is, then you cannot know his desires or will. His desires and will are beyond your ability to fathom. And if Jesus is who you say he is, then his message really could have been made more clearly. Surely, one part of the triune God could have made it so that his very important message was understood by all people in the way he intended. Yet, Christianity is fractured into tens of thousands of denominations, each claiming to have the authoritative reading of Jesus.

So yeah, we're a bit hostile because we feel hurt and we feel attacked.

What's more, you don't seem to treat our view seriously. You pray for us to find God or to have our hearts turned, which is insulting. You don't accept our non-religiousness, yet you demand that we accept your religiousness. You don't grant that skepticism of Christianity is reasonable and legitimate. You are as hostile toward our skepticism, maybe more so, as we are toward your Christianity.

We need you to accept and understand our skepticism as being our idea, as belonging to us. It's not the influence of the evil one. It's not our vanity or a desire to worship ourselves. It's not running away from a truth in our hearts. It's not rebellion, immorality, or parroting atheist blogs. It's what we actually think, and it's what we have learned after a long period of trying to understand these topics. We have read the Bible, and we know what it says. We understand the Bible no less than you do, and to us it appears to be a man-made book.

Please, understand that we are skeptical because we have studied and considered the relevant matters seriously, and we think atheism is probably correct. Please, understand that it's possible to know the Bible as you do and still conclude that Christianity probably isn't true.

If you can understand this, then we can certainly talk about religion without attacking each other. We can do other things, too. You can ask us to come with you to church as your companion. And we hope you will be willing to take some Sundays "off" and do things together with us.

We understand that your religion is important to you. We want to support you, and we want to be part of things that make you happy. We also want you to support us and to be part of things that make us happy. We're sorry that we don't agree with each other about religion. Maybe our lives would be a little happier or a little easier if we both believed exactly the same thing in exactly the same degree. Maybe not.

We love you, and the life we have with you. We want to spend the time making life better and better. Our differing views of religion don't have to be a cancer in our marriage. We already have differences: we like different activities, different foods, different movies, different political candidates, and so on.

Let's not just co-exist with different religious views. Let's flourish. We'll enjoy how happy your religious activities make you, and you can enjoy how happy our skeptical and non-religious activities make us. We can both embrace the fact of our difference.

Yes, we are still growing. Our views are never static and final. Who knows how our minds will change and grow? But let's agree not to try to change each other. Let's agree not even to want that. Let's agree to enjoy the people we are now, the people who are married and building something unique together.

Love,

Your non-Christian, agnostic, or atheist spouses

And so this is Pesach, and what have you done?

Arguing together. It's enough.

I look forward to holding a small Passover seder with my wife and children tonight. Tomorrow, we will all go to my parents' condo and have a larger seder with my brothers and their families.

I love the seder. I like that we always have to think about the order of events as well as how to execute them properly. Performing the seder is never rote. Indeed, I always appreciated this in synagogue, say at Shabbat: there was always checking and double-checking at the bimah to make sure sure the service was going off correctly, even f everyone there had done 1,000 Shabbat services apiece.

I love the food of the seder, but I enjoy the songs most of all. The kids always get a kick out of "Dayenu." I cannot decide whether I like "Adir Hu" or "Chad Gadya" better. Mostly, I love the sound of my Dad's voice, and the knowledge that my Mom is happy to hear us all.

That the Exodus story is fictional matters not so much. If it comes up, we can discuss it. The Passover table is meant for serious discussion. Many households prohibit politics and/or religion at the dinner table. But at the Passover table, no subject is off-limits and no argument can get too heated.

Let's have at it, then. However you give meaning to Pesach, even if you give no meaning, I wish that you make it happy and get happiness in return.

Alpha Course: Week 9, Why and How Should I Tell Others?

This is the ninth official installment in the Alpha course series, in which I recall my experiences as a Jewish-raised dude and now a Gnu Atheist who took the Alpha course with his Christian wife. Names have been changed to protect privacy.

At this point in the course, people are supposed to feel confident in their Jesus love and in Christianity. So much so that they may be ready to invite family and friends to join them at church. The focus of tonight's session, then, is to get people thinking about bringing their circle of associations into Jesus world. In other words, the message is "don't bring God into your home, bring your home to God."

Screw that. My notes for tonight's session:

• We started with dinner, a meaty lasagna and salad. Brownies for dessert.
• A few people in our group were missing. One man and his wife were not there, which was significant because the week before, the woman had said she was about to go for a biopsy. Those of us in attendance were concerned to know how the test went for her. 
• Two of our group leaders were absent, both attending to very ill mothers.
• Two songs, “Amazing Grace,” with “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” brought in, and another familiar tune whose name escapes me.
• Tonight's DVD talk opened with Gumbel talking about his first attempts to share his new-found Christianity with others. 
• He talked about going from over-zealous to fearful in talking about Jesus to people he wanted to bring into the church.
• The rest of the lecture covered how to present the Christian message to others without seeming to pressure them. 
• He talked about being personal rather than intellectual or argumentative. 
• People don’t convert or get won through debates, he said. 
• They open up to Christianity through personal connection and testimony. 
• They may not be open to the resurrection, but they will not be able to dispute your showing how you are now much better and better off as a Christian. 
• They will not be able to dismiss your claim to have felt the Holy Spirit fill you. 
• In addition to being personal, Gumbel recommended being persuasive. 
• People will have questions and maybe even objections. 
• Have answers, but don’t be afraid to say you don’t know and will get back to the person. 
• The key, Gumbel says, is love. 
• The Christian wants, in love, to persuade others to Christianity. 
• Next, Gumbel talked about inviting people to come to church or to a Christian event or to an Alpha course. 
• The line of thinking here is that many people will be touched by seeing others engaged in joyous worship of God/Jesus or by participating in discussions of God/Jesus.
• I stated to drift away at this point. 
• The last argument I remember is Gumbel’s advice to pray for people to become Christians. 
• He related a story of a kind of daisy chain of praying for people to become Christian--and those people later converted!
• I would not be very comfortable for people to pray for me specifically to become Christian. 
• It’s their right, of course, but I wonder if they would mind if I expressed a daily wish that they became atheists. 
• The reciprocity I’m identifying here indicates the larger problem I have with the whole approach to tonight’s topic. 
• While it’s good and loving and proper for people to share their Christianity, and to seek to bring more people into the church, it’s not clear that they consider it equally good and loving and proper for others to try “converting” them. 
• For example, I have a personal testimony and experience on becoming an atheist. 
• May I share it with them? 
• May I lead them to the atheist blogosphere, the Atheists’ Alliance, the Secular Coalition of America, and the local meet-up groups? 
• In other words, are they OK with doing unto them what they say is OK for them to do to others?
• This problem of everybody proselytizing everyone else all the time is, I think, the real and best reason for religion to be a private affair. 
• In a society that values individual liberty, one set of religious beliefs cannot be granted special privilege to occupy public space. 
• One group cannot promote their religion at city hall while another group is prohibited from doing the same thing. 
• So...the most peaceful solution is to have people come to their own conclusions on religion and to limit public displays of worship and evangelism.
• None of this came up in small group. 
• Instead we talked about an end-of-Alpha event in which we are asked to bring a friend. 
• Get it? Tonight’s topic is perfectly suited to what Alpha’s about: making Christians. 
• Otherwise, discussion was unremarkable--even thought there was probably more discussion from everyone tonight than at any other time before. 
• The one idea that occurred to me, particularly as I heard the “new” Christians speak, was that people seemed to feel some relief at having made a decision that they could live with. 
• I imagine that my new atheism gave me the same glow that the new Christians have. 
• It’s nice to have come to a point where you say, “Yes, this is right. I know what this is about and I can now move forward.” 
• I think “Is there a God” is an important question, and one must either determine whether it’s “yes” or “no” and then go with it. 
• One cannot handle “I don’t know” indefinitely.
• We closed with some personal thoughts on thankfulness--it being Thanksgiving week. 
•  I offered no praise nor any thanks to God/Jesus.
• Instead, I noted the maturation of my young children, the elderization of my parents, and the middle aging of me--and I declared myself bittersweetly thankful for change.

Related:

Dear Believers: Embrace Your Doubts

No gurus.

You like your religious beliefs and your religion. You like the stories--most of them, anyway--in the holy texts. You admire the central characters. You enjoy hearing and singing the devotional songs. You have a nice time at your place of worship, and the people there are very nice. You relate to them. You know the clergyman is pretty smart. He explains so clearly where the religious doctrines come from, and how they apply to the live we lead today. It is amazing, that the wisdom of old can resonate with each one of us. What's more, the sayings and the stories apply differently to such a variety of situations.

But you also have doubts. You pray, and you believe, but you have a twinge. How is God actually working in your life, how does that happen? When you look at your life, at the day by day of it, at the way the world works, how is it that God is so absent?

You have doubts. You wonder whether the religion's doctrines on gods and heaven and sins...are wrong. Maybe God didn't send Joseph down to Egypt or speak to Israel at Sinai or grant them victory over Jericho. Maybe Jesus wasn't the Son of God or the savior of humanity's sins or the conqueror of death. Maybe Mohammed wasn't a prophet. Maybe Joseph Smith made a mistake. Maybe Paul of Tarsus was a zealot. Maybe L. Ron Hubbard was only kidding. Maybe Mary was a regular mother.

My message to you, believers, is to embrace your doubts. I am not saying you should become an agnostic or an atheist. I am not saying to doubt everything or to believe everything. That's not at all what I want. Instead, I want for you to accept that it is right and good to have doubts. It is right and good to explore them, to understand them, to seek answers to them from various sources.  It's not a bad thing to enjoy doubt because doubt helps you to look for more information, and the more you look the more you will see.

I'm saying it's OK that your religion does not have all the answers, and I'm saying that your life is fine. Life can be a struggle. It can be unfair. It can be maddening. It can be lonely. It can be scary. Your life has all sorts of stresses, setbacks, and sonofabitches.

But your life also has greatness. It has you, first of all. You're pretty neat. It has a sun, a sky, and stars. It has the most amazing animal and plants all around. It has color, sound, and texture. It has friendly people, wacky people, kind people, generous people, smart people, and super people. Your life has its own story and possibilities. Your life has love, laughter, interest, music, value, potential, significance, and consequence. It has all these things, just by virtue that you are here.

Embrace your doubts. Don't think that doubts are bad or shameful. Don't be afraid or embarrassed about them. Don't ignore them, but explore them.

Investigate your unbelief as much as you have investigated your belief. Give yourself permission to follow every question.

Dear believers, this is my message. What is yours?

How I'm Writing the Dissertation

People may be interested to know how I intend to go about writing my dissertation this year. My topic is medieval English literature, and I will write a software program to do a special sort of parsing for several texts in the corpus. I have three different types of parsing I want to do, and most of the dissertation will concern recording and analyzing the results generated by the program.

The project is pretty exciting, which is not an unimportant point because one reason I didn't finish my first dissertation back in 2001 was that I fell out of love with the topic. Back then, I had written two decent chapters but couldn't do the research or find a focus for the remaining chapters. My prospectus and plan were hardly helpful and I eventually had to resign myself to the idea that the project was untenable.

As I see it, once the software program is sufficiently developed, the dissertation itself should be relatively easy to complete. Of course, herein lies the major technical challenge: my ability to write the program. Software developing has been much more difficult than I imagined, but I'm working it. My hope is to have the program ready for trial by the end of this month or middle of next month.

Another challenge is my lifestyle. After all, I am a professional with a full-time salaried position. I'm not a graduate student with a few classes to teach and chunks of time that can be dedicated to library work and writing. I also have a household to care for, which means my family and my home. My kids want attention from me. My wife needs me to help out around the house. Bills need to be paid, errands need to be run, neighbors and friends need to be connected with. Finally, I need to manage my health and fitness.

Given my technical and time constraints, here is how I have game-planned the dissertation:

• At least 15 minutes per day learning and doing software development.
• At least 15 minutes per day planning dissertation content.

Fifteen minutes may not sound like a lot of time, but it can be. Besides, I often work for much longer than that. The main thing is to dedicate some time every day to being productive on the main elements of the project. In this way, I'm approaching the project similarly to how I conduct an exercise program or business project.

Indeed, the formal 15 minutes are "executive sessions" and not necessarily the execution work of programming or writing. These execution activities can take place throughout the day, even while I'm at my day job. Although I am at work during the day and have a full schedule of meetings and tasks, I also have pockets of time where I can focus exclusively on some part of the dissertation. What's more, I often have opportunities to work the dissertation as part of a multi-task scenario. In fact, that's how I blog as much as I do. Beyond the execution work, the 15-minute executive sessions will allow me to develop and refine the big picture of the dissertation, its important arguments, lines of support and evidence, critical background and objections, and paths forward.

The innovation (for me) of my approach lies in how I'll actually write the chapters. In short: I won't write. Instead, I am going to spend most of my time, at least in the early stage, using a storyboard process. Storyboarding is a technique I use in my job to help our technical teams develop proposal content. It's like a very robust outline that accounts for what information customers have asked for, what knowledge we bring to the subject, and what features and benefits distinguish our offering from other companies competing for the same business.

The advantage of storyboarding for the dissertation is that it allows for capturing a lot of data in individual sections while also making it possible to find places in the large-scale outline for new information and arguments. My dissertation writing plan, to make it basic, is to storyboard the dissertation so completely that it's practically written when I put everything together.

I have a high degree of confidence in this process because I've used it dozens of times at work. Nevertheless, it doesn't make completing the dissertation any easier or less labor intensive. But it will help me work on all of the dissertation instead of on individual chapters in sequence.

I'm excited about the project and about how I intend to conduct it. All that's left is to do it!

An Embarrasment of Riches: Best Posts of 2011

Motivation kitteh will push me to finish the dissertation in 2012.

The more I post on this blog, the more rewarding I find it. 

To those who read and considered what I wrote this year: thank you. To those who read and were moved to comment on posts: thanks a lot. I have appreciated and enjoyed the dialogue.

Proceeding month-by-month, here are my selections for best posts of 2011:

January: Mystical and fuzzy thinking appears not only in the domain of religion. In Can Science Explain Art, Music, and Literature? I discussed some woo-laden points of art and music made by philosopher Roger Scruton. Another good post was the review of specious claims made in the Bible: I Don't Believe in Bibles: The A-Bible-ist. Since we still see the bogus idea that atheism is incompatible with common decency, I was happy with my take-down of intelligent design philosophy guy V.J. Torley in Torley: Atheists Don't Know When Not to Kill.

February: An Uncommon Descent regular, BA77, was taken on in It Takes More Than Just Having an Explanation, which examines the creationist appropriation of concepts and terms from quantum mechanics. Personal changes and happenings were at the forefront of my thinking in Autistic Son, Artistic Daughter. Finally, I challenged the long-winded and repetitive GEM (aka Kairosfocus) in Signs, Signs, Everywhere There's Signs and The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Descent and. Like many in the Uncommon Descent crowd, GEM mixes bias, hasty conclusions, selective evidence, and an overweening sense of personal offense to dress up his creationism as science.

March: March was a funny month, I guess. In Pay Down Debt or Build Up Savings?, I championed savings over debt--although I really meant that both should be done--and thus far it seems I have both more savings and more debt. So, I dunno. I like Where's the 'Ski?, which is about the failure of chief ID guy and mathematician William Dembski to respond on his own site to legitimate questions.

April: Exhibiting a little frustration at the sheer volume of woo in our culture, I wrote How About We Promote the Good with Discussion Rather than with Pleasant Fictions? I said then what I feel now, that the ideas we want to pass along to our children "can be conveyed without bunnies, false friends, and warrior kings of the future." I then considered the Christian holiday of Easter in Good Friday, Depending on Perspective. I also looked at a central claim of the ID movement in The Medieval Castle of Intelligent Design.

May: In May, I argued on behalf of teachers in Teachers Deserve Competitive Salaries and Benefits. The topic of the Kuzari Principle was back in Kuzari Returns! and Kuzari: Belief and Evidence (and Bias, Oh My!). I thought I was being controversial with They Did Not Die For Our Freedom.

June: June was all about Kuzari, and four posts stand out: Deuteronomy Doesn't Validate the Sinai Revelation, Three Sinai Stories, Why Aren't There More Sinai-Like Stories? and A Reply to Dovid Kornreich on Evidence and Hypotheses. Dovid Kornreich, my dialogue partner at this time, bowed out and to this date has made no reply to posts he asked me to make.

July: Theology became the hot topic with Theodicy Is an End to Theology and Dear Theology: Show Me the Money! A final Kuzari post was made with How the Sinai Story Originated and Developed. No immodesty: I think this post, and the series, is devastating to any suggestion that Kuzari justifies Judaism.

August: A good month of posts. The immoral atheist meme was addressed again in a post appropriately titled Immoral Atheists. Then, a trollish amateur philosopher was corrected in his bizarre ontology in If You Build It, He Will Come -- And You Better Not Disagree with Me. Next, philosopher Roger Scruton was again taken on in Can Science Explain Art, Music, and Literature? (Part 2). I examined "just war theory" in Wednesday Comedy: Jesus Loves Nukes. Finally, I marveled at the poor reasoning of the highly regarded C.S. Lewis in A Bad Argument by C.S. Lewis.

September: I think We Belly Full but They Hungry, a commentary and prediction on changing American class dynamics, is an important post. I considered Edward Feser's smarmy taxonomy of atheist attitudes in Hardline Atheism Is Intellectually Productive. In With Prayer, the Medium Is the Message, I recalled my own experience with prayer brought in examples of prayer across several religious traditions. I brought Feser back for another beating, this time on the doctrine of "original sin," in Original Sin, Faith, and the Limits of Reason.

October: I talked about Jesus in The Sacrifice of Jesus as a Left Turn from Judaism. The important point here is:

The sacrifice of Jesus is not really a sacrifice but a buy out. It kicks people from being ransomed to God to being ransomed to Jesus, and it does so without people's knowledge. In both the Jewish and Christian world orders, people are chattel. The only question is who you think is your master, El or his son.

In Enjoy Your Freedom? Thank a Protester, I again tried to be controversial, although I think the main idea of the post has true merit. I attempted to defend cultural criticism and its postmodern pretensions in Attempted Witty Title: A Reply To Jerry Coyne. I agreed with Jerry on most everything, but felt the topic of Jersey Shore could have some academic and intellectual merit.

November: I was ecstatic to see that Jerry Coyne replied to a point I had made, and I sought to clarify and extend the point in He Noticed! Deuteronomy 2013-17 became topical this month and my contribution was The Moral Deity That Commands "You Shall Not Allow Any Soul to Live." Next, I stood flummoxed before the brazen demand to believe without evidence represented by the idea of the Holy Spirit. The post was called, appropriately, Holy Spirit, Holy Bullshit. This month saw me increasingly wanting to talk about my experiences in the Alpha course, and that desire motivated Prepare to Lose, which is about arguing to learn rather than arguing to declaim. Finally, I wrote In the Humanities, We Too Want to Find Things Out because the humanities share this goal with the sciences; however, we focus on squishy terms and ideas--such as "identity."

December: This has been an extremely busy month. I began my series on what happened when I tool the Alpha Course, A Jewish-Born Atheist Does the Alpha Course. I am also glad I talked about my family in Why My Children Go to Church (and Why I Occasionally Go Too). I like what I said at the end:

Science and religion don't mix, in my opinion. Atheism and religion don't mix, either. But they can co-exist, and they can even fall in love with each other.

The month's big controversy came when I argued for moral relativism in In Defense of Moral Relativism, Moral Relativism and What Christian Moralists Really Want, and Moar on Moral Relativism.

Let me give special mention to the series on James Kugel's How to Read the Bible. I should have finished the series this year but I did not. I can't imagine that it will remain unfinished through next year. Nevertheless, I like the work that's been done, and I am eager to get to the final installments.

On a personal note, I want to announce that 2012 must be the year to complete or near-complete my dissertation. I expect that blog posting will necessarily have to be cut back to allow time for dissertation writing. My wrap-up piece next year will hopefully include the good news that I am finished or on the precipice of doing so.

Happy New Year!

Leftovers

I have pre-scheduled two posts for the end of the year, so this is probably the last post I will write and publish in 2011. At work, I am winding down for the year and have vacation coming up in less than two hours.

Notes and thoughts:

• I never got around to finishing my thoughts on moral relativism, as I'd said I would. I tried writing up something earlier in the week, but I had trouble organizing the thing. Basically, I couldn't see how one could finally make the idea of an objective moral fact stick. When I think of objective, I think of something like nature: nature exists independently, whether people exist or not. Information, I have recently come to understand, can also be said to exist independently from people. I don't see how anything like a moral fact can exist independently of people, and if it cannot exist apart from us I don't see how it can be called anything but subjective. I also don't see why subjectivity is such a big negative for some folks. But maybe my little mind has just reached the end of its capacity. I'm willing to be educated if someone has an argument to make.
• My vacation plans include lots of reading. I am especially looking forward to three books: The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Rameau's Nephew, by Denis Diderot; and In the Valley of the Shadow, by James Kugel.
• I marvel at what a tumultuous year 2011 has been. When I was younger, the years seemed more like adventures. I felt as though I had time to absorb the things that were happening in and around me. Now, life seems too eventful, too fast. I would prefer a slower, less eventful year in 2012 (I think!).
• My "best of" post on December 31 will announce this also, but I plan to scale back my posting activity dramatically in 2012. Not only because of what I write above, but also because I have a dissertation to complete. I'll be 42 years old next year, and I have some new horizons to travel toward, so I want to finish up the one big project (i.e., the doctorate) that consumed my thoughts from early adulthood.
• On the other hand, I have ideas for new series and new directions for this blog. Stay tuned....
• I am excited to go with my older brother to see the New England Patriots play the Buffalo Bills on January 1.

The last two posts of the years will be short of extended, original content. They will be review and link pieces. Let me use this space, therefore, to wish you and the world the very best of this time. If you are vacationing or visiting family, be safe, be peaceful, be happy and joyous, be helpful, be smart, be free, be honest, be yourself, and be strong.

The War on the War on Christmas Begins Early

A Facebook contact posted the above image, which gathered several "like" votes quickly.

Honestly, though, who says it's not OK to say "Merry Christmas" and "God Bless America"? For fuck's sake, people, say what you have to say.

Of course, it is no less OK to say "Happy Holidays." It is no less OK to wish people well without limiting the greeting either to Christmas or to the various religious holidays this time of year. It's no less OK to point out that not everyone is Christian, not everyone observes Christmas, not everyone agrees that Christmas generally is a good thing, and not everyone expresses patriotism in with "God Bless America."

You want people to see that you are a Christian and a good patriot, too. You don't beat your wife and you don't kick your dog. You drive a pickup truck and you go to parades. Bully for you, pal, bully for you.

What a Rosh!

What am I doing for Rosh Hashanah? Eating a meal with my family (yay) and avoiding shul (yay yay).

But I wish all a happy day and the sweetest of life always.

Moment of Silence

The Eagle Nebula Messier 16 (M16), a region of active star formation situated in Serpens Cauda. The starforming nebula, a giant cloud of interstellar gas and dust, has already created a considerable cluster of young stars.

Larry the Nighthawk

Very excited to have purchased tickets to see The Bad Plus at the Regattabar in Boston. I'll be at the 28 October late show--10:00 PM!--along with my father and my brothers.

If you are in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello! Tickets are only $25.00.

US Budget Deficit: I'm Emailing My Representatives Today

Why do our expenses exceed our revenues? Over the past decade or so, the main factors have been tax cuts, wars, recessions, and expanded spending for health care.

A few thoughts on President Obama's and House Speaker Boehner's separate addresses to the nation last night on the budget debate and the debt crisis:

• Obama came off much better than Boehner. The president explained the situation, summarized the main points of disagreement, advocated for the plan he wants, and exhorted Congress (Congress, not a particular party) to compromise for the greater good. Boehner, on the other hand, was eager to blame Obama and Obama alone. He appeared stern and resigned: this did not seem like a person willing to compromise. His position seemed to be that Obama either had to join him or to lump it.
• On the plans outlined by the two men: I prefer the plan described by Obama, yet I don't entirely trust the president or the Government to close tax and entitlement loopholes for "the richest Americans" and corporations. I also suspect Boehner's program would most affect and hurt America's poor and needy.
• What will happen: I have no idea. We are essentially locked into a prisoner's dilemma for gargantuan stakes. I can't see the Tea Party wing approaching anything like a compromise. Congress is so polarized right now. The whole country is. But there's also big, big money at stake for everyone. I'm at a loss to see if anyone will act rationally.
• What I'll do: I am going to email my representatives and senators. 

Some interesting graphs from the New York Times illustrate the recent history of the deficit:

The accompanying text to the graphs:

The first graph shows the difference between budget projections and budget reality. In 2001, President George W. Bush inherited a surplus, with projections by the Congressional Budget Office for ever-increasing surpluses, assuming continuation of the good economy and President Bill Clinton’s policies. But every year starting in 2002, the budget fell into deficit. In January 2009, just before President Obama took office, the budget office projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession. Mr. Obama’s policies in 2009 and 2010, including the stimulus package, added to the deficits in those years but are largely temporary.

The second graph shows that under Mr. Bush, tax cuts and war spending were the biggest policy drivers of the swing from projected surpluses to deficits from 2002 to 2009. Budget estimates that didn’t foresee the recessions in 2001 and in 2008 and 2009 also contributed to deficits. Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much.

A few lessons can be drawn from the numbers. First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels. Second, a healthy budget requires a healthy economy; recessions wreak havoc by reducing tax revenue. Government has to spur demand and create jobs in a deep downturn, even though doing so worsens the deficit in the short run. Third, spending cuts alone will not close the gap. The chronic revenue shortfalls from serial tax cuts are simply too deep to fill with spending cuts alone. Taxes have to go up.

In future decades, when rising health costs with an aging population hit the budget in full force, deficits are projected to be far deeper than they are now. Effective health care reform, and a willingness to pay more taxes, will be the biggest factors in controlling those deficits.

I hope our political representatives start to live in the world of reality very soon.

ABD Again!

"ABD again, Just can't wait to be ABD again...."

I am elated to report that I have passed my Ph.D. candidacy exams. I am now, once again, all but dissertation (ABD). In 2000, I took and passed the earlier incarnation of the same exams, but I never completed a dissertation. Now I have the opportunity to make good on all the time and money I had spent so long ago.

I am especially gratified at passing because my work life was so busy that finding time and ways to prepare for the exam was extremely challenging. I broke down my strategy to its core--study only the most important parts of the most important texts. It worked.

However, passing the exam and giving myself pats on the back will be meaningless if I don't finish the dissertation. Fortunately, I have a good topic and the resources to do the job. One reason I was unable to complete the dissertation the first time around was lack of access to the texts I needed.

And so, I'll humbly go where I had once gone before...and then I'll hope to travel beyond.

I'm Going Away

Moving right along.

I am not only traveling this week, but I am taking my book list exams today, tomorrow, and Wednesday. To top it off, on Wednesday evening I am giving a talk to undergraduates and graduates on my job experiences.