The Postmodernism Translator

James T. Kirk using the Postmodernism Translator to learn deep thoughts from the French.

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry was having trouble with a paragraph from postmodern scholar Bruno Latour. I happen to speak postmodern, so the table below gives Latour's sentences on the left and my liberal translation on the right.

Latour

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In religious talk, there is indeed a leap of faith, but this is not an acrobatic salto mortale in order to do even better than reference with more daring and risky means, it is a somersault yes, but one which aims at jumping, dancing toward the present and the close, to redirect attention away from indifference and habituation, to prepare oneself to be seized again by this presence that breaks the usual, habituated passage of time. As to knowledge, it is not a direct grasp of the plain and the visible against all beliefs in authority, but an extraordinarily daring, complex, and intricate confidence in chains of nested transformations of documents that, through many different types of proofs, lead toward new types of visions that force us to break away from the intuitions and prejudices of common sense. Belief is simply immaterial for any religious speech-act; knowledge is not an accurate way to characterize scientific activity. We might move forward a bit, if we were calling “faith” the movement that brings us to the close and to the present, and retaining the word “belief" for this necessary mixture of confidence and diffidence with which we need to assess all the things we cannot see directly. Then the difference between science and religion would not be found in the different mental competencies brought to bear on two different realms—“belief ” applied to vague spiritual matters, “knowledge” to directly observable things—but in the same broad set of competences applied to two chains of mediators going in two different directions. The first chain leads toward what is invisible because it is simply too far and too counterintuitive to be directly grasped—namely, science; the second chain, the religious one, also leads to the invisible but what it reaches is not invisible because it would be hidden, encrypted, and far, but simply because it is difficult to renew.

Religious people take "leaps of faith" [in talking about the substance of belief]. But it's not just fancy, meaningless talk, and it's not trying for mere poetry or emotion. Instead, it attempts to articulate the wonder and extra-ordinariness of the present moment, of its present-ness. Where the events of our lives could be seen indifferently and as mundane happenings, in a religious frame the events are grand and worthy of amazement. Religious knowledge--that is, feeling sure that God exists, is watching, and is at work--is not like knowing in everyday life. It is, rather, a heroic assertion and a point of view that finds new and beautiful ways, every day, to confirm that assertion. The assertion, perspective, and continual connecting of the two make the knower a supremely open-minded learner. Religious belief therefore transcends ordinary speech. Language cannot convey the complexity of what the religious seeker is actually doing and learning in active seeking. Neither is the word knowledge appropriate to the learning done by anyone who actively looks at and in the world. Current discussions of religion and science might progress if we all shared a more nuanced understanding of the difference between "faith" and "belief." The more nuanced understanding would help locate the real difference between science and religion: the different cognitive skills and ideological commitments each brings to bear in inquiry. Science and religion are, in other words, different ways of knowing and and of advocating for personally held values. Science orients the thinker to the invisible reality that only mathematics and high-powered instrumentation can access. That reality is far from us and behaves in ways we often find counter-intuitive. Religion also orients the thinker to the invisible, but this invisible reality is the now, the unique present. It's here and close, but only momentary and unrepeatable.

Latour's prose is dense, but not inscrutable. Unfortunately, it's hard to be overly impressed with the logic of his grand--and beautiful--claims for what religion is, does, and knows.

For Latour, to be religious, to think in the religious mode, is to elevate oneself and the now. One is introspective and amazed to be part of a singular narrative in time. Every facet of one's life now is imbued with higher meaning and purpose. And exercise of religious thinking is equally noble and equally important compared to the exercise of scientific techniques.

His aspirations and dancing prose notwithstanding, Latour ultimately fails to make his case. Religious thinking and talk, by his characterization, are little more than very deep navel gazing. They are solipsistic exercises, the dramatic cry of one unable to escape time, and thereby death. In Latour's ornamented formulation, religious introspection re-states William Saroyan's famous quote: "Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case." Religion is the fantasy invoked to come to grips with the fact that no exception will be made.

The Why Evolution Is True crowd notes, as I do, the rhetorical game Latour is playing: "science" is the standard, and Latour wants to bring religion up to or--even better--past the standard. Science has a presumed preeminence and authority he wants conferred also to religion.

It's a silly game, and unnecessary. Religion can be very beautiful. It can make one introspective, and it can yield breathtaking insights into one's life and one's moment. It can help one question common sense and one's own prejudices.

But religion really isn't like science and today bears no relation to it. There's no basis for comparing the two.

Religion is not about truth or knowledge, even self-knowledge. Rather, religion is about understanding, about feeling rationally justified to hold a certain view. The key here, as far as I can tell, is "feeling rational." We're not talking about pure rationality but emotional sanctification with the idea that one is intellectually attuned to forces at work in the universe.

Religion taps into an enticing fantasy, the fantasy of somehow knowing something. But it's just a fantasy. It isn't true, not in the sense of modelling, observing, or schematizing a phenomenon.

I wish people could be OK with that, with the fact that religion isn't true. After all, they can still go to church. They can still pray. They can still observe the rituals and special days. They can still read holy books and discuss teachings. They can still imagine heaven. They can still contemplate hell.They can still fantasize about knowing, all by themselves, deep secrets of the universe.

Religion does not need to be true for people to be interested in it, inspired by it, educated by it, moved by it. But it needs to be true if people are going to learn about the universe and about people.

And it's not true, so let's not ask it to be, and let's not try to extract knowledge where there is none to be had.

In the end, Latour's prose and point are ineffectual because they misguidedly inflate religion into areas it cannot influence. A reformed postmodernist myself, I hope my prose and my arguments are more compelling than his indulgent apology for the unsubstantive.

Rabbi Shmuley on the Disabled

A collage to illustrate a bit of the man.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is a celebrity clergyman, notable mainly for an ignominious association with pop-star Michael Jackson and for a best-selling advice book called Kosher Sex. His latest book, Kosher Jesus, is causing some undulations in the worldwide Orthodox Jewish community because the orthodox don't want to hear anything having to do with Jesus--and Boteach is apparently running as a Republican for a spot in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Recently, he wrote in the Huffington Post on why God allows some to be born with mental or physical disabilities. This seems to be the payoff paragraph:

I have no idea why G-d would allow any child to come into this world with severe mental or physical disability. What I do know, however, is that He shouldn't. Children deserve to be born with all their faculties and with all their abilities. All children deserve to be healthy. Those who come into the world with mental handicaps are, of course, beautiful children, the equal of every healthy child, deserving of infinite love, equality and rights. Indeed, given their special needs they require more of our love, more of our attention. What they do not deserve, however, and what they certainly have never earned, is our contemptuous effort to justify their suffering and their challenges by ascribing them to some unknown and lofty divine purpose.

This explanation is remarkable for several reasons:

1. "I have no idea." This line of thinking might be considered refreshingly honest. Nevertheless, the statement runs counter to what religion is fundamentally supposed to offer: resolution into a larger, purposeful order. This statement confesses total ignorance where many others would soften the admission to "The Lord works in mysterious ways." I cannot see how such a confession would satisfy many people, who generally want to think of their clergy as knowing the intentions of the supreme being. Perhaps Boteach thinks confessing ignorance allows him to relate better to a person in pain, but I imagine that one reason a person would consult a rabbi is to be led from pain to a better sense of normalcy.
2. "He shouldn't." I imagine that many Christians raise their eyebrows at this statement. They cannot handle criticizing the supreme being because it violates the celestial hierarchy. People have no standing and insufficient knowledge--allegedly--to challenge anything the Yahweh does. I find the audacity of the statement silly, mainly because it contradicts the earlier "I have no idea." You cannot claim that X is morally wrong while not knowing God's reasons for doing X--unless you care to admit that God can commit wrongs.

3. "Children deserve to be born with all their faculties and with all their abilities. All children deserve to be healthy." This is bullshit. When Boteach says "All children deserve to be healthy," I hear the response from Clint Eastwood's character in the movie Unforgiven: "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it!" None of us deserves health, just like none of us deserves tallness, a zit-free adolescence, natural gifts in music, or x-ray vision. We "get" health by a fortunate convergence of body development, mental and physical traits, and external social perception of normal health.
4. "Those who come into the world with mental handicaps are, of course, beautiful children, the equal of every healthy child, deserving of infinite love, equality and rights." I don't believe Boteach here. Maybe I'm unfair, but he comes across like the person who professes not to be racist--just before launching into a vicious black joke.
5. "What they do not deserve, however, and what they certainly have never earned, is our contemptuous effort to justify their suffering and their challenges by ascribing them to some unknown and lofty divine purpose." Boteach is just posturing here with trumped-up moral outrage. Trying to justify suffering--and I by no means grant that disabled people by and large experience life as suffering--can hardly be called contemptuous. Many people justify suffering as a way to cope: we sympathize with a person or their family but don't feel like it's enough. I have no idea by what right Boteach describes disabled children as "suffering." Surely, he's projecting, but he doesn't know what he's talking about. Disabled people and their families find and make happiness. It happens all the time. What's more, plenty of so-called "normal" people are very unhappy.

Boteach's is a muddled and ill-conceived article, and while the man tries to position himself as bringing religion's reason to modernity, what he delivers is essentially a secular ethics that retains reference to traditional religion:

Why does God allow the innocent to suffer? I have no idea. He shouldn't. But our job is to fill in the empty spaces G-d seemingly vacates in His universe and to act in G-d's stead, being as human and loving as we can.

The notion of God here ends up as a huge, unnecessary distraction. People need to step up and act, Boteach says. People must assume the role that otherwise would be reserved for God because God is apparently out of the picture. Boteach is but a scintilla away from jettisoning God altogether: God's not protecting innocents and not minding the store here on earth. Why keep the fucker?

Theology or atheology aside, Boteach's passage above shows the unfortunate fact that he focuses not on the disabled and the realities of their lives but rather on "normal" people like himself. He preaches to "normal" people, for "normal" people, teaching them how to sound properly enlightened. With this focus and armed with religious opinions, he wrote an article that he thought said something, maybe even something profound. The article actually added nothing but detritus.

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?

Postmodern Writing

Mathematician Jeffrey Shallit links to a 2004 paper titled “Cultural Topology: An Introduction to Postmodern Mathematics.” Written by Brent Blackwell, a professor of literature at Ball State, the essay exemplifies postmodern academic prose as unclear writing.

The paragraph below seems to be the thesis:

This essay develops a new way of thinking about the cultural relationships among and within the sciences and the arts through a new understanding of the term postmodernism that at once derives from literary theory and the mathematical discipline of topology. While topology forms the main vertebra of this connective approach in its capacity as the mathematics of connectivity, quantum mechanics and non-Euclidean geometry -- the atlas and axis of this spinal column -- form the context through which this “postmodern” approach will develop. However, in order to position topology as a “postmodern” branch of mathematics, some brief explanations are in order: first, regarding postmodernism, and finally regarding topology.

Only three sentences make up the paragraph; the first two each contain over 40 words, which is a lot. Sentence one promises “a new way of thinking about” the sciences and the arts, something to do with illuminating cultural relationships between them. Sentence one also introduces the essay’s sales hook, “a new understanding of the term postmodernism.” The source of the newness, Blackwell says, will come from his combining usage of the term in literary studies with ideas taken from the mathematical subject of topology. To re-cap: one sentence, 40-plus words, and two undefined topics. Topic one is the relationship of the arts and sciences; topic two is postmodernism infused with topology.

Sentence two confuses matters further. Blackwell uses “vertebra” as the metaphor for his argument. Topology, he explains, will be the argument’s main component. But then he abruptly brings in quantum mechanics and non-Euclidian geometry, fitting the two subjects into the metaphor without explaining how the whole argument relates to the initial point about the arts and sciences. In two sentences, we have come a long way. Sentence one starts with a new way to think about the arts and sciences. It ends with a new way to think about postmodernism. Then sentence two tells us our time will be spent on topology--and also quantum mechanics and non-Euclidian geometry.

Blackwell’s paragraph is a fucking mess. It’s subject is poorly defined and sprawling. It’s vague, verbose, and technical. The entire essay is the same way. In some circles, however, such prose remains perfectly acceptable. While postmodernism has largely died and been replaced by the digital humanities, it has influenced academic writing. Today’s academic writing tends toward clarity and away from stylistic excesses, at least from what I have seen in two years “back” in the academic world. Yet, postmodernism was never only about style; it opened subjects. An English major could focus on favorite novels and the practice of quilting, on poetry and feminism, on the teaching profession and politics. Postmodernism made everything the subject, and everything was subject to study, discussion, and critique.

I am sentimentally attached to postmodernism, even to its academic writing style. From the mid-1990s to 2002, when I was a full-time graduate student in a literary studies program, my writing style resembled Blackwell’s. I don’t have an example on hand of my worst writing offenses, but I have posted here part of what would have been the second chapter in my old dissertation:

To understand how different edited texts of the same literary work construct that work differently, we need a tool for capturing the structure and functions of literary language--that is, of literary language as it becomes represented in and through text. In The Literary Work of Art, first published in German in 1931, Roman Ingarden provides such a tool by demonstrating that the literary work has a heteronomous existence, existing both on its own and dependent upon the conscious activity of a reader. Ingarden gives us a sophisticated picture of the internal ontological constitution and articulation of the literary work and its world. Because edited texts result in part from the conscious, critical acts of editors, Ingarden’s model can be used to compare different edited texts and gauge the effects of their differences on our apprehension of them and their presented worlds.

Although I would love to make a few changes to this paragraph, I don’t think it's bad writing. I also see in it hallmarks of postmodern writing. For example, “literary language as it becomes represented in and through text” (emphasis added) is a postmodern formulation. Compare it with Blackwell’s “among and within the sciences and the arts.”

Blackwell and I also share a trope, a writing template in which the scholar uses terminology from another field to generate insights about fashionable or too familiar subjects. For instance, Blackwell adopts the language of topology to make points about academic animosity between the arts and sciences. For another instance, my paragraph tells readers I’ll apply literary critic Roman Ingarden’s concepts to a study of scholarly editions in medieval literature. The dissertation project I am working on now uses this trope, although not in quite the same way.

The point is that the literary scholar does more than simply read literature or argue a position in the arts-versus-sciences debate. This factor accounts for the appeal of postmodernism and the pretenses of its prose: we're doing more than reading books and making appeals. After all, at some point, one doesn't feel there's much else to say about "Young Goodman Brown" or "Ode on a Grecian Urn." To say something new about these works or about the world, one needs to set them in a new context. Postmodernism allowed for this, first by emphasizing that words held underlying assumptions and connotations and then by arguing that literary and non-literary words could be analyzed in the same way. One could deconstruct a political speech as well as a sonnet. One could rhetorically analyze any cultural feature--temples, malls, quilts, treatises, dissident movements, academic disciplines.

While postmodernism appealed to me because it laid open the world to language-based study, its obfuscating prose was difficult to emulate. I tried to write the way the big names did: Derrida, Spivak, Jameson, Lacan, Butler, Kristeva, Foucault, de Man, Deleuze and Guattari, and Zizek. To me, their way was erudite, playful, and complex. For example, here's Brian Massumi, a pretty good practitioner of the postmodern style, in a 2005 article:

In March 2002, with much pomp, the Bush administration’s new Department of Homeland Security introduced its color-coded terror alert system: green, “low”; blue, “guarded”; yellow, “elevated”; orange, “high”; red, “severe.” The nation has danced ever since between yellow and orange. Life has restlessly settled, to all appearances permanently, on the redward end of the spectrum, the blue-greens of tranquility a thing of the past. “Safe” doesn’t even merit a hue. Safe, it would seem, has fallen off the spectrum of perception. Insecurity, the spectrum says, is the new normal.

The alert system was introduced to calibrate the public’s anxiety. In the aftermath of 9/11, the public’s fearfulness had tended to swing out of control in response to dramatic, but maddeningly vague, government warnings of an impending follow-up attack. The alert system was designed to modulate that fear. It could raise it a pitch, then lower it before it became too intense, or even worse, before habituation dampened response. Timing was everything. Less fear itself than fear fatigue became an issue of public concern. Affective modulation of the populace was now an official, central function of an increasingly time-sensitive government.

The self-defensive reflex-response to perceptual cues that the system was designed to train into the population wirelessly jacked central government functioning directly into each individual’s nervous system. The whole population became a networked jumpiness, a distributed neuronal network registering en masse quantum shifts in the nation’s global state of discomfiture in rhythm with leaps between color levels. Across the geographical and social differentials dividing them, the population fell into affective attunement. That the shifts registered en masse did not necessarily mean that people began to act similarly, as in social imitation of each other, or of a model proposed for each and all. “Imitation renders form; attunement renders feeling.” Jacked into the same modulation of feeling, bodies reacted in unison without necessarily acting alike. Their responses could, and did, take many forms. What they shared was the central nervousness. How it translated somatically varied body by body.

Here, the prose gets denser as we go along. The beginning of the third paragraph is classic postmodernist academic writing, with blocks of phrases stacked after one another. Figurative language gets ever more elaborate, and the references of words become hard to discern. I was one person who wanted to write this way. The style spoke to how the ideas and scope of our work went way beyond "This poem represents man's inhumanity to man." Other academic disciplines used jargon and had their own prose conventions, so why not literary studies? Why were we supposed to remain the disheveled daydreamers in rumpled tweed jackets?

Even as a graduate student, however, I sensed that postmodern academic prose was overwrought. This was a product of my vanity. I thought I had good ideas, so I felt it was important for readers to understand them as I did. Later, when I joined the business world and led proposal teams, I largely abandoned the postmodern style, although I still use too many paratactic, polysyndetic, and preposition-conjunction-preposition constructions. Clear and relatively simple statements are prized in my current gig, which suits me fine. I am an inveterate editor and reviser who loves clear, punchy prose. I still hold the lessons of my graduate studies, that apparently straightforward prose sometimes contains nasty presuppositions. Indeed, the postmodern style emerged partly as an attempt make them explicit. Ideally, the postmodern writer wanted both to say something and to analyze the saying--at the same time.

It was a doomed wish; that's why postmodernism declined and the style receded.

Religion and Smallness

Checking in from dissertation land. As I get into the work, I tense up at how great the labor is, and how small I am before it. It's a multi-colored mountain of junk, trinkets, nuggets, knick-knacks, gems, and rotting fruit all piled higher than Babel. And I stand in front of it with slacked shoulders and bent knees, grabbing an item here to make a sort, walking around there to something else for a different sort. To say I'm daunted is way beneath understatement.

But continue on, I do. So Yoda has instructed.

My leisure thoughts turn to reflecting on 2011. My birthday approaches and I want to clarify one or two truths I've pulled from that other Babel pile, my life. More than anything else, the year was demanding. If last year I appealed to myself and to the blogosphere for peace, perhaps I sensed my desire to be--or at least feel--less put upon.

Didn't happen.

I was needed. My family needed my presence and engagement. My ambitions demanded my time and my mind. My work had its requirements, too.

Life is a wave passing by the center of the ocean, as far away from land as one can be. It has a force that I can't resist. I don't think anyone can. Some lucky folks keep their balance as the force moves them in the wave's direction. Some struggle in the sea for equilibrium. Others rotate around and around, unable to stop what the rushing wave caused for them.

In this image, I finally see what religion and religious experience really are. I don't mean the political religion of the popes and pastors and rabbis and mullahs and masters. I mean the private religion of people such as those I knew in my Chabad days and those I met at Alpha. I mean the faith of individual men and women trying to adjust to the wave.

Yes, religion involves community and stability. Yes, it feeds on family togetherness. Yes, it declares the believer's trust in what admired elders and righteous ancestors have openly, publicly shared. And yes, it helps one feel more certain that she is doing right.

These are all symptoms of a more basic awareness: that one is small and alone. When we get sick or scared, the awareness re-emerges. What drives religion more than anything else? What's the source of religion's symptoms and political fingerprints? It's not quite fear, as Bertrand Russell concluded, but both understanding the basic human situation and instinctively reacting to it.

It's a process. One slowly comes to grips with his smallness and solitude. One performs being small and alone, and one conjures a figure for the bigness and everythingness of the passing wave. One deals with oblivion by doing something, anything. It's something meaningless and pointless, but it orients one and directs his desire.

That's religion. Doing something for a release and for a wish. It might look like floating, or swimming, or surfing, or drowning. It might look like fun or fear or deference. But it's actually futility playing futility, an actor playing the part of herself. It's an undercover cop who actually is corrupt.

This is not a criticism of religion. How could it be?

The Medieval Castle of Intelligent Design

Château d’Angers

Lawyer and ID proponent Barry Arrington has recently taken to defending the ID fort with the standby accusation that opponents of ID fail to understand the theory properly.

What, then, is the proper understanding of ID? Arrington lays out the case:

ID is not, as its opponents suggest, a purely negative argument that material forces are insufficient to account for IC and FSCI. At its root ID is an abductive conclusion (i.e., inference to best explanation) concerning the data. This conclusion may be stated in summary as follows:

1. Living things display IC [irreducible complexity] and FSCI [functional specified complex information].

2. Material forces have never been shown to produce IC and FSCI.

3. Intelligent agents routinely produce IC and FSCI.

4. Therefore, based on the evidence that we have in front of us, the best explanation for the presence of IC and FSCI in living things is that they are the result of acts of an intelligent agent.

Sigh. Not very good reasoning, I'm afraid. It may look like a decent argument at first blush, but then look at each premise on its own.

Item #1 cannot be granted at all. IC is a highly dubious concept, as Kenneth Miller and many others have demonstrated amply. FSCI has not been defined in a mathematically rigorous way, either. So, we have no clear, testable understanding of IC and FSCI. Much less do we have clarity on how living things "display" them. Finally, it remains unclear whether living things necessarily display both or one or the other.

Item #2 just seems wrong factually. Were we to grant that all living things exhibit IC and FSCI, then surely some living things would reproduce and thereby generate offspring that also exhibit IC and FSCI. Reproduction is a material force, is it not?

Item #3 is irrelevant. We are not talking in #1 and #2 about artificial productions of IC and FSCI, whatever they are. We're talking about organic production, about producing IC and FSCI in living things. The term "produce" is left unexplained, so it's hard to get a good reading of the point here.

Item #4 flies in the face of careful reading, as item #2 (properly adjusted to match reality) actually gives the most cogent explanation. Material forces so far seem to be the only thing that produces IC and FSCI. But definition is all, and the language of the four items stinks, if we are being honest.

Beyond a very bad argument, what do we have here? I think Arrington's reasoning is best explained as a protective construct. It's a medieval castle. It's a Hummer H3. It defends against attack and asserts the self. It's a declaration that "I believe that God/Jesus is God and none o' you jackwagons is going to change my mind!"

I think that's it, actually. Folks like Arrington prefer their belief. In contemporary science and in the growing popular acceptance of New Atheism, they see an "intellectual elite" that has come to supplant the comfortable Cold War mentality that gave shape to their world. Arrington and company make, in other words, a political stand from a position that seems to lose ever more standing as the years go by.

If I am an ID opponent, then what I oppose is an incoherent argument. In principle, I have no objection to the idea of "design" for living things or for elements which constitute living things. But I don't like seeing a bad case made--such as what Arrington offers in his summary--for another view (i.e., natural evolution) having a bad case.

Stories the Witless Tell

I pity Joe Carter.

A Spanish proverb observes that "Wit without discretion is a sword in the hand of a fool."

Want an example? See the ill-advised and lame "When Nothing Created Everything." Joe Carter at First Things decides to riff on a mis-interpretation of a statement by Stephen Hawking, "the universe . . . create[d] itself from nothing." Carter turns this into a basis for a satirical creation myth. Here's a taste of it:

In the beginning was Nothing, and Nothing created Everything. When Nothing decided to create Everything, she filled a tiny dot with Time, Chance, and Everything and had it expand. The expansion spread Everything into Everywhere carrying Time and Chance with it to keep it company. The three stretched out together leaving bits of themselves wherever they went. One of those places was the planet Earth.

The misrepresentation lies in Carter's taking "Nothing" as the subject actor instead of what Hawking had stated, the universe. Had Carter wanted to do his mock myth right, he would have posted, "In the beginning, the universe created itself from an extremely dense and massive singularity." Instead, Carter combines the opening verses of Genesis and John with a narrative form akin to the creation myths of ancient and aboriginal cultures. Carter's is not a particularly clever piece, and it actually reflects poorly on the myths of Genesis and John.

Here, for one point of comparison, is Genesis 1:1-5:

In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated between the light and between the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and it was evening and it was morning, one day.

And here's John 1:1-5:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Both Genesis and John are unmistakably better crafted than Carter's new creation story. Yet their rhetorical superiority highlights that they are themselves tales borne from human imagination. The God of Genesis is a twiddler on earth. He lifts and separates here, gives other things names there. He's not so much creating as cooking and decorating. In contrast, the God of John is far away. John's myth is about the "Word," Jesus. He tells the legend of Jesus, the hero who rode into town to face down the local gang.

Carter's purpose in his pseudo-myth is further undermined by the fact that it obviously holds much greater knowledge and understanding about the universe than either Genesis or John. Carter's use of abstract concepts, references to inflationary cosmology and the composition of the far solar system, psychological and philosophical terms, and so on all show that Genesis and John knew relatively little (and perhaps cared little) about their larger world. Theirs was the most rudimentary understanding of the earth, its physical make-up, and its physical history.

More than this, however, Carter's piece is boring. Apart from allusions to the Scripture it truly vaunts, it draws upon little of actual myth and choose instead an allegorical bent (allegory, the refuge of the literary minded pedant). Carter surely stays away from the Genesis and John exemplars deliberately, away from the anonymous precursors who wrote the scriptural texts, because a well-wrought mock myth would have reminded us that Genesis and John are myths too. Had Carter followed his biblical models faithfully, he would have underscored their status as myths. And more jarringly, he would have focused attention on the unpleasant fact that they would surely be thought of as myths except for the efforts of tax-aided preachers, television pundits, and tradition-addled parents.

By the way, here's a fuller quote--no ellipses!--from Hawking, his statement as reported in many news outlets worldwide:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.

The verdict on Carter's effort? No points!

The argument that DISPROVES ATHEISM

Some of my Facebook friends have recently signaled that they “like” something called “The argument that DISPROVES ATHEISM” (Update: Just clicking on the link triggers a "like" in Facebook, whether one actually likes it or not). I tried to see what the argument was via Facebook, but the link seemed not to work. Maybe the system automatically detected I was an Atheist!

Thanks to Bypass Facebook Fan Pages, I went to a site called Sharefaith, which had a page called “Christian Arguments Against Atheism” (update: apparently, the site cycles new articles every day or so--or maybe they switched to a different article). I braced myself for a powerful shock to my Atheistic worldview and read on….

There are two major belief systems in the world: atheistic and theistic. The atheistic worldview presupposes the non-existence of any gods. Theists believe in the existence of a god or gods. In this article, we will critique the strong atheistic belief.

What the fuck? Atheism as a belief system? I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Atheists systematically disbelieve in gods. Do Christians systematically disbelieve in Zeus? Do Jews systematically disbelieve in Jesus? There's an important difference between an asserted set of co-dependent beliefs, a belief system, and rejection of the single argument that gods exist or have existed.Moreover, while theists enact their faith through contrived rituals and prescribed behaviors, Atheists enact their opinion in a more ad-hoc fashion: someone makes a stupid claim about religion and/or Atheism, for example, and we respond. The writer seems to confuse atheism with materialism, which in my opinion is more like a belief system.

The key error that begins the article is the idea of presumption on the part of the Atheist. To many theists, Atheists reject the existence of gods without proof that gods don’t actually exist. This statement is true in a simplistic way, yet it is more accurate to say that we accept naturalistic explanations because they do have verification, and these naturalistic explanations are often far and away superior to theistic ones, which are often either superfluous or without evidence.

So, Atheism as a belief system? No. Atheism as a presumption against your favorite god? Not really. But let’s move on.

Strong atheists completely deny any form of deity. The existence of true atheist beliefs has been debated over the years, and strong atheism has many inherent flaws in its argument. This kind of claim, called a "universal negative" is impossible to prove or disprove unless one has universal oversight. One who professes to be a strong atheist must first prove that he or she is omniscient (all knowing), and then proceed to assert the fact that there is no god (a universal negative), based on such universal knowledge. Epistemologists, axiologists, philosophers, and theologians concur that it is untenable and logically impossible for anyone to prove a universal negative.

The above makes a floppy paragraph, so we better take it slow.

• Sentence 1: OK, but I would make “deity” plural, since there are very many proposed deities and demigods. 
• Sentence 2, Part 1: It would be nice to get some substance around the idea of these debates over “true” Atheist beliefs. 
• Sentence 2, Part 2: Strong Atheism doesn’t just have flaws, but inherent flaws. I’d love to learn more about the innateness of Strong Atheism’s flaws, but I bet that the writer simply thought the word “inherent” made the text sound more authoritative. 
• Sentence 3: Refers to sentence 1, but the basic point is that Strong Atheists are too certain in their denial of gods. These Strong Atheists are making a universal negative claim without universal oversight! Unfortunately, most Strong Atheists I know very carefully distinguish between absolute knowledge—which we don’t claim, and yes, I consider myself a Strong Atheist—and virtual certainty. Our basic position often amounts to something like this: There are already so many naturalistic explanations that far exceed theistic explanations that we have no reason to value any theistic proposition especially. Until theistic explanations can marshal direct physical evidence in their favor, it’s unreasonable to prefer them over explanations that do have direct support. 
• Sentence 4: Theists must love this, since no one I know would ever claim publicly to have omniscience. 
• Sentence 5: Loosely translated, this says “No one can prove God doesn’t exist.” True enough, no one (yet) can prove this, but the Atheistic point is that it’s not necessary to prove God doesn’t exist.

Let’s continue. Can the argument get any worse?

Not only is the claim of no god impossible to prove, but it is also inherently contradictory. A strong atheist must deny divinity by attributing man with divine abilities. Common atheistic beliefs include that man is a finite being and can only obtain knowledge through personal experience and application, i.e., science. (Theists differ in this because knowledge can be revealed to man through acts of the divine, i.e. revelation.) The strong atheist must possess all the knowledge of the universe.

Well, there’s another “inherent” word—the writer really likes those! More serious is the abject stupidity of the paragraph. Those who have read my previous posts should know that I do not and would not use an expression like “abject stupidity” lightly. I have no idea why the author thinks a Strong Atheist “must” attribute man with divine abilities. This is a patently absurd claim, not least of all because a Strong Atheist rejects divine abilities as well as divinities. The next sentence reduces science to “personal experience and application,” with that oddly inserted word “application.” I suppose application covers experiment, methodology, consistent terminology, technology, quantification, and so on. Finally, we reach the high-water mark of malicious, dangerous stupidity with “The strong atheist must possess all the knowledge of the universe.” Huh? We must? How d’ya figure?

Thankfully, the article quickly gets to its conclusion.

It can be concluded that a strong atheistic worldview, no matter how eloquently explained, is impractical and illogical. Clinging to a strong atheistic view requires that one must reject scientific and philosophical evidence.

Unfortunately, these two statements are simply unsupported assertions. They are also incorrect, but I’m actually more irritated that the thrust of the claims remains unsubstantiated. Impractical—how? Illogical—in what way? “Clinging” to Strong Atheism requires no such rejection of scientific and philosophic evidence. Just the opposite, in fact. Strong Atheism is a perfectly reasonable inference from science and philosophy, and as substantiation I will offer some of my earlier posts that touch on matters of science and philosophy.

• Evolution's Gaps Versus Creationism's
• The Beginning of the Universe
• Historical Exodus: Probably Not
• Let the Dead Bury Jesus
• Why Russell's Teapot Still Serves
• Facepalm: Theism and Nihilism
• What Exactly Does Theism Explain?
• To Learn and Live and Yearn

And so we reach the final paragraph of this article. Please remember that the article was billed as “The argument that DISPROVES ATHEISM” and titled “Christian Arguments Against Atheism.”

Typical self-proclaimed atheists are truly unaware of what atheism really is. Few people do not realize that their professed disbelief in god is a belief that is fallacious, self-contradictory, and unprovable. When a Christian better understands the claims of the atheists, it provides the ability to better defend one's faith. Christians need not attempt to logically persuade others to become a Christian, but rather should attempt to explain their faith from the Bible. The act of regeneration is something that the Holy Spirit alone can do. We as Christians have the responsibility to boldly proclaim our faith and pray for nonbelievers.

Sentences 1 and 2 are simple name-calling. Sentence 3 is actually dangerous because it raises the possibility that the Christian seeking understanding of Atheist claims might actually go to Atheists to hear the claims. However, notice that the article has abruptly shifted from the Strong Atheist to the general Atheist, gliding over the nuances separating the positions. The other danger for the Christian is going to the Bible—not some of it but all of it. The Bible is one of the more effective “de-converters” of religious believers because a lot of what the good book says is bizarre, irrelevant, tyrannical, and evil.

See, for example:

• Why the Bible Is False
• Good Religious Values
• Inconsistencies in the New Testament
• The (Dubious) Authority of Scripture

Maybe I'm a "typical self-proclaimed" atheist, but I am aware of what Atheism and Theism truly are. Obviously, this poorly-written, un-researched, and un-reasoned article is written by believers for believers. In the end, the believers congregate together “to boldly proclaim our faith and pray for nonbelievers.” To them I say go and pray if it floats your boat. Pray for an amputee to grow a limb back. Proclaim your faith amongst yourselves, but don’t try to convince me what you’re doing is anything other than what it really is, a circle jerk.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the big argument that disproves Atheism was nothing more than a weak parry against Strong Atheism: Strong Atheists are not omniscient! This is a sad, sad argument. Sadder still is the time I wasted in reading the "disproof." Saddest of all is that people would actually give this article a "like." The joke's on them, I'm afraid.

Looking Back at One of My Theist Posts

Here's something I wrote almost five years ago. My, how things have changed.


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April 2005 -- In every Passover Seder, my family has debated that part of the service concerning the four different types of child. This is where we consider how to teach the meaning of Passover and its Seder to each type: wise, wicked, simple, and the one who does not know how to ask.

Each type is identified by the manner in which the child queries the leader about the Seder's meaning. The wise child asks, "What is the meaning of the testimonies, statutes and judgments commanded by G-d?" In contrast, the wicked child asks, "What is the meaning of this service to you?" Because the wicked child distances himself from the service, the leader's reply excludes him: "Because of what G-d did for me, in taking me out of Egypt."

My two brothers, it seems to me, dislike that one of the sons is called “wicked.” To get even a little more particular about it, they feel that the so-called “wicked child” is unfairly labeled and challenge whether he has truly done anything to merit such a strong condemnation as “wicked.” Again as it seems to me, they view him as a potentially spiritual individual whose inquiry from a place of independent thought brings down a harsh anti-intellectualism upon him.

There is much to admire in my brothers’ defense of the wicked child. If I have characterized their sentiments correctly, I share many impulses and thoughts with them. For example, we all understand that it is a disturbing and terrible thing to call a child “wicked.” At one time or another, all children behave wickedly, but this does not make them through-and-through wicked. It is hard to imagine any child as an essentially wicked being – as if a child were born evil, independent of his education and environment. In fact, this is such a strain on the imagination that I think my brothers and I agree that no child is born evil or wicked.

However, my brothers and I begin to part ways sharply when we consider a second point, whether the so-called wicked son’s behavior warrants being identified as wicked. What is the behavior that offends? It is a question, and it is question phrased in a way that communicates condescension and trivialization. In cruder, more colloquial terms, the child has stood up and asked the room, “What the hell are you all doing?” The form of the question implies the child’s ideas that the Seder ritual is beneath him and silly.

Is this behavior wicked? Certainly. To disdain and disrespect people, and to make them and their practices out to be inferior – these are evil acts because they attempt verbally to destroy the Seder, its origins, the current and past events that have made it possible, and the spirit of its participants.

2010 Note: This is an area where my viewpoint has probably changed. I now think I overstated the case. The wicked child's behavior may be impolite, but "wicked" is an inappropriate label for it.

However, if in his question the child has performed an act of profound wickedness, can it be said that the child himself is wicked? After all, we might resent the behavior but still be able to excuse the child. “He was just trying to be funny,” we might reason. “It was just an error of judgment,” we might conclude.

But at this point it’s critical to remember that “the wicked child” is not an actual child and does not refer to a particular person. The wicked child represents a personality type, just as the wise child, the simple child, and the child who does not know how to ask are personality types identified by the sages. At different points in a life, in different contexts, each one of us approaches a situation from the standpoint of wisdom, wickedness, simplemindedness or dumb silence. From earliest childhood and into adulthood, we hope to establish wisdom's standpoint as our default approach to the Seder, and also to Torah, Judaism, and living generally.

2010 Note: I still agree in principle with this. I might observe now that the wise child, as a personality type, need not be a believer. One can be an Atheist and ask the same questions. As an Atheist, I can still maintain a deep bond with the people at the Seder table and with all the Seder represents, even if I don't believe as the other people do and even if I have sharp disagreements with some or all of what the Seder represents.

This is partly why it is misguided to defend the wicked child. To advocate for the wicked child is not to protect a vulnerable innocent, it is to justify wicked deeds themselves. It is to legitimize and intellectually permit behavior that degrades other people and defiles their customs. It is to rationalize destructive actions and to refuse to take any kind of stand against them or their perpetrators.

So also is it misguided to suggest that the rebuke of the wicked child’s question intends to quell dissent and suppress a healthy community dialogue on different spiritual points of view. The response to the wicked child’s question makes explicit just what he had implied: the child implicitly removes himself from the Seder in the question, and the child is explicitly removed from the Seder in the response. The obvious intent in responding this way is to help the child realize on his own that the Seder does apply to him, but the application is not a mere given. It is fulfilled by one’s meeting the obligation to study the Seder and its "testimonies, statutes and judgments commanded by G-d."

What about multiple, different, and even conflicting spiritual views? If the wicked child or his question represents some alternative spiritual view, I do not see it. It certainly is not expressed in any positive sense. But make no mistake, the Seder – and Judaism too, I believe – fully supports inquiries, disagreements, and theories on "the testimonies, statutes and judgments commanded by G-d."

I fear that ideas that this is not so are becoming irrevocably entrenched in my brothers' hearts and minds. What's more, I detect a cancer in their offered and implied positions on the wicked child, a serious philosophical and spiritual issue that is turning them against Jewish observances, history and texts.

2010 Note: Although I am now certainly "against" much of religious observances, history and texts, I think some clarification is in order. I'm against the observance of religion as anything more than personal gratification and communal bonding. Observe if it makes you feel OK, but it doesn't make you or anyone "holy." It doesn't "sanctify" anyone or anything. It doesn't alter history or rehabilitate the nastier and inconsistent parts of the sacred texts. Having been raised in a family circumstance that made the Seder very enjoyable, I have no intention of giving it up. I will not pretend, however, that my Seder has any sort of real (in the sense of "reality") spiritual dimension.

I fear also that this stance is becoming more pervasive in Jewish families across America, and I believe that it is not a good thing. If my fears are true and this cancer is real, Seders of the future will be conducted without decent and intelligent Jews, those who passed over Judaism without recognizing that it always already explored and expressed their humanist ideals.

My brothers have a wisdom that makes them deserving of an appropriate reply to their questions. Have I given this reply? I don't know, but perhaps this, my expression of what I desire to understand, will help all of us have a new Seder next year. The Seder itself can be seen as wisdom asking a question. My family, and perhaps many Jewish families in America, can benefit from examining how we have responded to this question.

Repent While We Can!

[Not that there's anything wrong with that]

I am happy to have come across this gem from a person, Nick Duliakas, who clearly is not a fan of Richard Dawkins.

After the manner of "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick. 1591–1674 (Gather ye rosebuds while ye may)

With slight corrections ~

Gather, ye atheists, while ye may,
Do your heckling and high-fiving,
Ye may be laughing at us to-day,
But, to-morrow ye'll be crying.

The glorious Light of Heaven, the Son,
Tis soon that He'll be coming,
And days as ye know it will be done,
Into His arms ye should be running.

The age is best which will be last,
And that is fast approaching,
Put your unbelief in the past,
Upon His grace, ye've been encroaching.

Be not fools, but redeem the time,
Away from the pit of hell, He'll carry,
Into a place beautiful and devine,
Where ye may forever tarry.

March 21, 2010 ~ Composed and written by Nick Duliakas. If used, please give proper acknowledgment. May not be used for profit without permission. (nikosd99@hotmail.com)

How wonderful that Herrick's lusty lyric should be made to scold the bad, bad atheist who must repent or face the eternal fires and torments of the big realm of h-h-h-hell. Unfortunately, Nick has mangled Herrick's iambs -- I am a fan of versification, after all -- but let's focus on content.

Stanza 1 - Apparently we atheists are troublesome rabble who heckle the faithful (presumably the Christian faithful, even though Dawkins begins his piece describing a dialogue with a rabbi). I particularly like the image of atheists high-fiving. I can only wish the poet had been able to find a rhyme for "chest bumping." But the point is that we atheists will get our comeuppance for being so disagreeable. Question for Nick: Is the idea appealing to you that you will be proved right and that we unbelievers will roast in humiliation? Is this part of the attraction to the position you take?

Stanza 2 - Jesus, differentiated from God, is said to be returning to earth to open a can of whoop-ass. Things will apparently be different when this happens. Again, we atheists and non-Christians are told that we should have been seeking to worship God via Jesus or Jesus via Jesus or whatever. Question for Nick: Are all Christian denominations equally in good standing with mighty Jesus, or are some denominations better than others? Why?

Stanza 3 - My favorite, if for nothing else than its inclusion of the contraction "ye've." Usually the poets and preachers warn that our present age is the most corrupt and turbulent OF ALL TIME. Yeats warned of it. Arnold, too. The Anglo-Saxons thought the end was nigh for their corrupt age. Heck, the folks in the Gospels think that the return of Jesus is imminent. But in Nick's stanza, we are told that our age is best for being last. We happy happy few will get to greet the magic Hebrew when he comes back to collect his souvenirs. We are exhorted to put away our unbelief as if it were but childish obstinacy. Question for Nick: Do you think your tone here approaches the kind of heckling that atheists exhibit toward religion?

Stanza 4 - The fun ends here, as the ol' "fool in his heart" allusion comes up yet again. We are supposed to be made fearful of this pit of hell and instead yearn to be man-carried by our big, strong, ripply-muscled Jesus up to heaven. The misspelling of "devine" (for divine, obviously) redeems the stanza for me. Question for Nick: Seriously, and with no judgment whatsoever, is the homoeroticism surrounding the relationship of the male believer and Jesus part of what makes the religion attractive? I mean, does the scene of worship allow straight men to play out homoerotic impulses?

I must admit I prefer Herrick's original. Herrick advises the virgins to seize the day:

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry:
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.

Don't play a silly game of pretense, Herrick urges, but rather be open and industrious. Have a sense of urgency about finding love and living love. Herrick counsels that we live this very day with the very people around us. Herrick is a realist. I do not think it's very sporting of our Nick to have bent Herrick's happy verse. But I don't like to think of any poetry as bad, so I'll applaud Nick's effort.

March Madness

Sorry, no, this has nothing to do with college basketball. Instead, I want to make a bold -- bold, I tell ya -- prediction concerning an essay I recently submitted. I developed my little piece for the Share Your Secular Story Contest. Although I conceived, drafted and submitted the essay over the course of a day, I have some confidence that it's a winner.

This might sound boastful, but I am not predicting that the essay will win the contest. I just mean that it's a very good piece that has a reasonable chance of getting to the runner-up stage. I'm not naive, though. I know this contest will get a boatload of essays from REALLY REALLY smart people who are original, thoughtful, witty and great writers. I still think my submission will be able to stand with these others.

My story talks a bit about growing up Jewish and negotiating happiness in and out of religion. I was only allowed 800 words, so I had to keep things tight. The story's supposed to be true, and mine is, but I think I also told things "slant," to borrow from Emily Dickinson.

Since the winner gets the essay published in a place like the Washington Post, I am making a deal with myself. Should my essay be selected as a grand-prize winner and get published in the WaPo, I'll "out" myself by dropping the pseudonym.

If you hadn't guessed, my real name is not Larry Tanner. Larry Tanner was a stupid nickname given to me when I was an undergraduate, but it has nothing to do with my actual name. I started using the pseudonym when I thought just having a blog put at risk my professional life and aspirations. These days I also have blogs under my own name that relate to my research and studies.

Winners of the Share Your Secular Story contest will be announced after June 1.

Things Past, Things Pats, and Things Concerning the Future

My alarm was set for 5:00 am, but I was up before then and preparing to leave for Amherst. I was pretty nervous about my German language translation exam. The past few days had been rough: my practice tests didn't go well. I felt like I did not know enough vocabulary. I also thought I had a ways to go to master German syntax generally. I had even considered calling my friend Steve, who would be administering the exam, and delaying the test. However, I felt that it was too late to back off, so I went ahead.

I left the house at 6:00 am and headed west. Although I had brought several CDs, I couldn't stand to have anything playing on the ride up. I simply talked to myself, trying to keep up my pep, hoping to run through my strategy enough so that I'd be able to execute well in the mere hour I had to translate 250 words of modern German into reasonably sensible English.

I drove Route 2 into the Athol area and then headed south toward Amherst. The sun had come up by the time I arrived, and I appreciated getting to see the sun come up over some valley as I started to get into the area that had been my home so long ago.

When I got into Amherst, on Main Street and past Amherst college, everything suddenly seemed familiar to me. I went down the road and got onto Sunset Avenue, where the old house was. It looked just the same as when I lived there. I then went into Amherst center and had a bagel at Bruegger's. My plan had been to relax at Bruegger's, have some food and coffee, and study until it was time to leave for the test.

Then Bill Belichik, head coach of the New England Patriots, walked in. I recognized him instantly. I thought this was very exciting. After discreetly watching him order food and pay, I watched him get into his car and drive off. Then I called my wife to tell her.

Studying didn't go so well. I hadn't expected to be so happy to be back in Amherst. I left Bruegger's and drove to campus. I walked around, noting the place where I once met my first serious girlfriend, the place where I had taken so many of my classes, the library, the building where I learned Swedish, the building where I almost got into serious trouble, the building where I heard Louis Farrakhan speak, and others. What I felt while I was on campus again was deep and maybe even mysterious to me. I tried remembering what it felt like when I was 18 to be walking on these grounds. What would I have been thinking about? Sex, I supposed....

I made it to my friend Steve's house exactly on time. We said hello and caught up a little bit. Then I started on the exam. Before the time started, I chose one of the German passages that Steve had selected for me. My choice was a section on Early Middle High German literature. Soon after I had begun, I felt like I was in distress. The typeface and typesetting were so close that I couldn't easily identify difficult words and then insert glosses. Hyphenated line breaks gave me issues, too. The passage had long sentences and parenthetical inserts, which made it very hard for me to locate the main verb and start deeciphering sentences to be put into English. Oh, and there were so many words I did not know.

I did actually consider at one point that things were going so horribly that I should get up and terminate the exam. I felt overwhelmed and overloaded. Worst of all, I wasn't sure what to do about it. I decided to press on and just fail. At least I would have given it a shot. If I failed, I would probably have given up on finishing the dissertation. There was no way I could put Steve, my family, and me through the stress and inconvenience of my having to re-take an exam that I had had seven months to prepare for the first time.

I finished translating the passage. I was sullen and dispirited. I didn't proof it at all. I handed it to Steve, who saw that I was unhappy about the test. He generously offered to have me take another exam with one of the other texts, but I declined. My fate with this one test would be as it should be.

We reviewed a bit of my text, since I was worried about my penmanship. Wonder of wonders: Steve thought the translation was OK! We moved away from the review and talked about other things. Steve didn't know that UMass was my alma mater or the story behind my becoming unable to finish the first dissertation topic. We talked about folks we knew and ideas we shared. He's a great guy, that Steve: he has nice things to say - substantial things - about everyone, and he's sincere. When I left Steve's house, I felt like there was a decent chance I could pass the exam. I would know for sure in 24-48 hours, Steve had said.

I made it home by 2:15 pm. After a bite to eat and some time with the wife and kids, I went up to the computer because I wanted to post that I'd seen Bill Belichik up close and personal. There in my inbox was the note telling me and my dissertation director that I had taken and passed the translation exam. I was stunned at how soon the decision came in, but the explanation was clear: a few minor mistakes in syntax and word-forms but rated at a 96%.

I was too tired then - I'm too tired now - to appreciate this success properly. But it was a great feeling to say I stood in, took the test, kept on when things got rough, and made it through as a winner. This test was one important but early milestone in a long road that I must travel. On I go.

How I Became an Atheist

My journey to Atheism has been long and complicated. My title indicates that I "became" an Atheist, but the truth is that I always was an Atheist to some extent. I only needed to recognize and embrace it.

I grew up in a Jewish household, but my family was not particularly religious. We went to Conservative synagogues, which seemed plenty religious to me when I was a kid. At least, I thought we Conservatives were a religious cut above the Reform temples, which held services in English. In my Conservative household, though, we observed only the "big" holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Purim and Passover. I don't recall observing other Jewish holidays or even Shabbat.

From the time I was in third grade until I was bar mitzvahed, I went to Hebrew School. As with "regular" school, I wanted to do well in Hebrew school, so I worked at it. Nevertheless, my belief was not exactly iron-clad. One time, when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, I declared to my younger brother that I did not believe in God. On the other hand, around the time of my bar mitzvah, I had seemingly swung around the other way, as I considered going on with my Jewish education after the bar mitzvah. I even wondered whether being a rabbi was something that would suit me for a vocation.

To this day, however, I hold onto a fondness for Judaism that has little to do with religious belief or feeling and has everything to do with family. I remember being in synagogue on the High Holy Days during my youth and adolescence. I loved to pray in song alongside my father, so much did I enjoy hearing his beautiful tenor voice. Even a few weeks ago, I brought my family to my brother's home for Hanukkah. My father and mother, my brothers and their families -- we all sang together and had a delightful time. I associate these moments of family goodness and togetherness with Judaism. For me, being with my family is a Jewish thing.

However, along with my confessed soft spot for Judaism, I harbor great reservations about the religion. For example, I do not absolve Judaism of its tribalism, of its bastard children Christianity and Islam, and of its myriad hardships for those who have believed. This troubling side of Judaism is surely also part of my family heritage. Maybe because I have an indestructible core of love for Judaism, I realize now that, like all religions, Judaism must not be regarded as a statement of truth about the universe and its life forms, including people.

This realization about Judaism came slowly to me. For most of my adulthood, I regarded Judaism fondly but also harbored an unsure feeling about the existence of God and the reliability of the Bible. Why was God so present in the lives of Biblical people and so absent in the lives of modern people? Why were there so many different faiths that claimed to be the one true religion? If Judaism was true, why wasn't Christianity or Islam? Why did the Bible repeat itself in some places and contradict itself in others? Where and how were the 'books' of the Bible written? By whom were they written and for whom?

In graduate school, I learned about some of the analogues to stories in the Bible, such as the flood in Gilgamesh. I also learned about the problems of textual transmission: texts came in different versions. Some contained errors and corruptions that were preserved. Some were added to or revised. Some were re-cast in the cultural idiom of the new society. Religious doctrines appeared to me to be works in progress, the records of people trying to reconcile the incongruities of earlier texts. For all this, I never broke with Judaism.

As a matter of fact, in 2005, after I'd started this blog, I decided to become more Jewish. I wanted to live a more authentically Jewish life. I studied with Chabad rabbis. I davened every day, and donned tallit and tefillin. I read the weekly Torah portions. I lit candles on Shabbat and sought to refrain from working.

In 2007 or so, I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I wasn't impressed at first. On this very blog, I wrote this about the book:

I picked up a copy of Richard Dawkins’s The G-d Delusion. It’s a good way to test and define the faith I have been working to cultivate. I won’t give his precise argument – the title of his book does that, anyway. I appreciate the challenge offered by the book, even if the voice reminds me of everything that I associate, negatively, with British intellectualism. A kind of mean-spirited, elitist polemic presented to be wit.

Yet as a result of what I have read so far, I am more and more coming to conclude that, to twist a familiar saying, “The man who believes in G-d’s existence and the man who doesn’t are both right.” Maybe G-d, the One I hope will inhabit the place I am building in my heart, will exist only for me and only in the way I “construct” him. Hence, the “delusion” that Dawkins refers to, the self-reflecting belief, or fiction, that the constructed G-d preceded the constructor and, indeed, had constructed him instead.

Since I wrote this, I've come to find myself in close agreement with the main arguments Dawkins makes for evolution, for atheism, and against religious irrationality. Looking back, however, I see that I was struggling against reason to maintain belief in God. I wanted to believe, and Dawkins's book did not deter me from continuing in that desire. But I also see that I understood God as a personal projection, a concept useful for thinking about the world but of dubious existence in a genuine sense.

And I might have stayed in this mindset for a good long time except for what happened next: I became a ghostwriter and researcher for an Orthodox rabbi. He was looking for someone to help write his book, which would be a Jewish response to the "New Atheism." I was ambivalent about the project. Indeed, I was certain I wasn't the guy for the job. I knew some about religion but I wasn't as knowledgeable or passionate about it as I felt I needed to be. I knew even less about the natural sciences. I had read some science books, but that was it. Evolution was something I only knew in a two-sentence definition.

I wanted to do a good job for the rabbi, so I read and read and read and read. Everything I could get my hands on I devoured and annotated. At first, the rabbi wanted me simply to update material that he had used in previous debates. This material was -- no joke -- over 20 years old! I very quickly saw that the rabbi was using outdated information and arguments. I told him that everything needed to be re-done from scratch because the old arguments weren't going to cut it anymore. He wanted to use old quotes that were taken out of context. He wanted to use "gaps" reasoning. He wanted to blame Darwin for Hitler. It was bad material and, worse, it was bad reasoning.

On the other side, I found the scientists provocative, self-critical, careful in their reasoning, and measured in their words. I saw immediately the difference between people who write from direct, first-hand knowledge of the science they put forth and hacks (like me) who aren't scientists and don't do science day after day. Don't misunderstand: I am not talking about the "experience" of science or the "experience" of religion. I am talking about working closely with the primary sources of data, documenting the methodology and data, and using the findings to ask questions about the strengths and weaknesses of various relevant hypotheses about the world. In all the religious explanation of unsavory or incoherent passages in the Bible, I never saw the same level of intellectual rigor, methodological transparency, or questioning of presuppositions.

I should also mention that in the course of my research I was eager to learn about Intelligent Design (ID). However, I quickly discovered that ID was not going to help me develop what I thought would be a legitimate critique of the scientific side of the New Atheism. One big problem is that very, very few credible biologists and working scientists seem to be in the ID camp. Most of the staunch ID people seem to be lawyers, mathematicians, engineers and journalists. They focus a lot on denigrating evolution (which they call "Darwinism"). Sometimes they have critiques of science, but mostly they beef at the media presentation of scientific research and findings. The ID proponents don't seem to have any full-fledged research programs and findings that specifically advance their theory. However, my biggest problem with ID was that it was utterly superfluous. Touting intelligent design as a "best explanation" for the diversity of life earth seemed totally unnecessary in the face of the materialist phenomena which were the proper subject of science. Any preceding intention to such phenomena - whether from a super-human being or from a combination of natural factors - were actually irrelevant, so far as I could tell. In my estimation, while the New Atheists supported their rhetoric with evidence, logic and facts, the ID proponents supported their rhetoric with more rhetoric.

During the book project, I became ever more the religious skeptic. But I thought I could mount a new argument that posited the reasonableness of a certain kind of faith and that criticized the ideas of the New Atheists. The argument I eventually made for religion -- specifically about Judaism -- was that religion signified a particular way of seeking and achieving a comprehensive (cultural, moral, spiritual, etc.) personal fulfillment:

One can change affiliation, as one can switch political party affiliations. If one is born Jewish, however, one remains Jewish even if the choice is made not to exercise that inheritance. To me, choosing to be Jewish opens up many different ways to be personally fulfilled, beyond intellectual fulfillment and beyond social acceptance. To be Jewish is to be intensely curious about the universe, yet wanting more to learn from it than about it. To be Jewish is to experience real horror when people – any people, but especially Jewish people – behave barbarously, and to take some ownership and responsibility for not having fostered more peace in the world. If I am a Jew, it is not only because I say so, or because I pray and keep kosher. If I am a Jew, it is because every day, and throughout the day, I re-assert my belief that we will all make that connection with transcendence. When we do, and when we are all met together at that celestial place, these worldly identities won’t matter so much.

In the final manuscript, my critique of the New Atheism was that it over-valued science and scientific reasoning as freedom-protecting cultural forces: "Science is itself a blind watchmaker. Science theorizes nature and physical reality as a blind watchmaker because this is what science is. In essence, science projects itself onto the universe it seeks to describe." Richard Dawkins of course coined the term "blind watchmaker" to describe the way evolution worked. In applying the metaphor to science itself, I think I was getting at the idea that science was not a complete or totally consistent formal system: science needed to resist ideology and dogma, most especially from itself.

That book project was grueling for the writing, for the toll on other areas of my life, and for the stress of dealing with the person whose name would go on the published book. The project finished at the end of 2008. After this time, I kept reading the science and religion blogs that were part of the project. I continued studying the claims, reasoning, and evidence that people brought out. I began posting on some of these blogs as a commenter and debater. I kept learning, and I kept developing my positions. By summer of 2009, I realized that it was no longer rational for me to accept

• The claim of existence for God or for any divinity.
• The claim of existence for anything like the supernatural.
• The claim of divine inspiration for the scriptures of any religion.
• The claim of any sort of moral or social authority for any religious group. 

I determined that none of the religious faiths or their spokespeople were putting out anything other than fantasy. I decided that it was no longer responsible or honest for me to call myself anything other than an Atheist.

And so I say I am an Atheist.

The New Atheism as Seen from the Outside and the Inside

The so-called "New Atheists" include Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, P.Z. Myers, and others. They are supposedly "militant" in their criticism of religion and religiosity, which gets them millions of fans as well as detractors.

So far as I know, these people never call themselves New Atheists. This name has been bequeathed on them by those who are offended by them or shocked by them or who generally don't like them. Apparently, at some time in the past atheists were more mild mannered and not writing best-sellers or garnering so much attention in the media.

However, I am always amused when critics of the New Atheism try to use a "fight fire with fire" rhetorical strategy. These critics apparently see themselves as erudite folk who can out-do (and out-duel) any of the New Atheists in sharp, witty, and devastatingly clever ripostes. But the critics usually fail on two counts. One, they never write so well as their atheist counterparts, and two, they never fail to avoid the arguments actually made from the atheist side.

Case in point: Kathryn Lofton's recent piece, "So You Want to Be a New Atheist." Lofton opens the essay ploddingly with some gratuitous hand-waving about the New Atheists being just as fundamentalist as their religious adversaries (yawn). Fortunately, her companion point is how diverse a group of evangelists the New Atheists are, which is sooo fortunate because we readers at least know from the outset that what we'll get from this piece will be very carefully considered bullshit:

It is, by now, old hat to say that atheism is just another literalism, defined less by the content of its complaint than by the style of its conveyance. Writing of Richard Dawkins, literary critic Terry Eagleton remarked that he had more in common with American TV evangelists than the refereed scientists to whom he claimed frequent recourse. This is then to correct the caricaturist’s image of the atheist—new or old—as a nihilist. Atheism has long been described, as Julian Baggini has explained, as “by its very nature negative” and dependent “for its existence on the religious beliefs it rejects.” While the reliance on comparative religions is indisputable, the presumed inherent negativity of atheism needs some definitional fine-tuning. If the screeds, tracts, speeches and, today, documentary films demonstrate anything, it is that atheists are not bleak existentialists. They are and have been variously colored in their impulses, ranging from sweet naturalists and happy materialists to rabid idealists and polemical ideologues. Atheists are not mere merchants of the negative, but are posited—by themselves, by their fans—as knights of deliverance. As one reviewer in the Atlantic wrote, “For a man who is frequently labeled a misanthrope, Christopher Hitchens has an unexpected faith in humankind.”

Lofton at least does not here call Dawkins et al. "New Atheists." But her long-winded blah-blah finally amounts only to "today's atheism has a messianic component equal to that of any religion."

Of course, this falsehood is so very tired and, more importanly, peripheral. It completely misses the point of atheism, whether it's new atheism, old atheism, atheism 3.0 or whatever. What is the point of the new atheism? In my humble opinion, it is this:

Your religious beliefs are not above questioning and criticism, and they shouldn't be allowed to govern our personal lives and public policies.

Too bad Lofton chooses not to engage any of the atheist arguments against religion's truth claims or against religion's long history of ineluctable personal persecution and public repression. We can only wonder why she has made such a choice.

UPDATE, 12/14/2009: Apparently, Lofton's post has been removed.