Sunday Funnies: Five Favorite Comic Strips

When I was a kid, I always grabbed the Sunday comics page.

Ah, memories of youth! Few things were as pleasurable to me as waking up early Sunday morning to retrieve the newspaper and devour the comics. I read everything, but I had favorites.

Here are five of them:

1) Calvin and Hobbes. I started to read Calvin and Hobbes in 10th grade (1985-6), and was immediately taken with it. Calvin was the quintessential wise-ass kid. Hobbes was an equal, not a sidekick or gimmick. Together, their observations and adventures were a first everyday encounter with beauty for me. Creator Bill Watterson's Sunday layouts were gorgeously drawn. Even today I see some of those pictures in my mind. And of course, I still have some of the books in my home.

2) Doonesbury. I loved the political subject of Doonesbury, but what hit me--and many other readers too, I suspect--was that the strip really told the story of a group of friends. It was the story of their lives. Garry Trudeau showed that their lives, like our own, were deeply political.

3) Garfield. Don't give me crap about this one. Garfield was somewhat new when I was a kid. The Garfield I remember was a hilarious character--shrewd, grumpy, insistent, sometimes just mean. Jon, Garfield's owner, wasn't such a goofball. The strip began to suck for me when it became more of an ensemble piece, but it was grand once. It helped that I had a cat at home that seemed kind of like Garfield.

4) Bloom County. For a while, Bloom County was a big deal. It was like Doonesbury but edgier and more outrageous. For me, the strip was at its best when Opus and Steve Dallas were more like bit players and not the focus. Opus was always an engaging character, both naive and intrepid, but I liked Binkley, Binkley's Dad, Cutter John, Milo, and the other woodland creatures. That's when it was a strip about growing up in Reagan-era America--when it was OK to act as though pretty lies were true.

5) The Far Side. The Far Side was always a popular comic. It always seemed to capture the strangeness of modern life. The balance of image and caption was always flawless.

I have some books of my favorite strips, but otherwise I don't think my children will ever engage comics in print. That's a little sad, isn't it?

I May Have to Go to a Movie Theater (Wednesday Comedy)

I have not been in a movie theater since 2001, but The Three Stooges might bring me back. Seriously. I love the Stooges. Here's the trailer:



I do hope the movie includes a pie fight.

Basically an Underachiever: Five Great Films by Woody Allen

"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

I watched part one of the Woody Allen documentary last night on my local PBS station. It was very good, and though I had not planned to see it, it was quite compelling.

Many of Allen's films are special to me. Here are the standouts:

1) Manhattan (1979): My all-time favorite, not only because Mariel Hemingway is beautiful.

2) Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989): Great plot, great actors.

3) Zelig (1983): I love this movie! The PBS documentary had some moments that reminded me of the opening of Zelig.

4) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986): Another great 1980s film with an ensemble cast.

5) Sleeper (1973): Lots of smart gags.

The notable omission is Annie Hall (1976), which is unnecessary to put on a list. I have seen virtually no 1990s and beyond films by Allen (or anyone else, for that matter--in fact, I have not set foot in a movie theater since 2001).

I have a CD set of Allen's stand up act. It's the best stand up of all time, if you want my opinion.

Wednesday Comedy: From the Pre-9/11 World

A gem of a video from The Carol Burnett Show.

If You Build It, He Will Come -- And You Better Not Disagree with Me

Look! The logicians are coming out of the cornfield!

From a person going by the moniker "Ilion." His logic here, like his blog, requires little comment from me:

[W]e “theists” don’t have to rely on the proposition “God is” as a premise; we can, in fact, derive it as a conclusion of purely ‘natural’ reasoning.

Reason itself shows any intellectually honest person that both atheism (the explicit denial that God is) and agnosticism (the mealy-mouthed denial that anything at all can be known, as being the “best” way to deny that God is) are false and untenable positions. Reason itself shows any intellectually honest person that, at a minimum:

1) there is a God, who is the Creator;
1a) he is uncaused and is the cause of all that is not-God;

2) he is personal (he is not an impersonal “force” or “principle”);
2a) he is an agent: he knows, and wills, and he acts freely;

3) he is good;
3a) the goodness we grasp comes from, and has its meaning in, his character and being;

4) he intentionally caused/causes “the universe” to be;
4a) he is “outside” time-and-space;

Reason itself shows any intellectually honest person that even if the specifically Christian doctrines about God were false, atheism always was and always will be false. [Re-formatted for clarity.]

I said before that Ilion's logic required little comment from me, but I have some reactions I must share:

• Pity Ilion apparently feels his claims are already supported and require no further defense, for reason itself does not in fact show atheism or theism to be false or untenable.
  
  • Evidently, one must already have read and agreed with the oh-so-sophisticated philosophers and theologians Ilion has in mind. One who hasn't is shit-out-of-luck, I guess.
  • Now, I have passing familiarity with Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Ockham, Plantinga and others. I find their arguments fascinating but finally too flawed and detached to be convincing.
  • I don't know what specific grounds Ilion has for stating that reason itself shows the falsity of atheism and agnosticism.
• Reason itself does not "show" Ilion's #1-#4. Ilion's just making assertions descended from the beautiful but ultimately wrongheaded ranting of folks such as Thomas Aquinas and C.S. Lewis. Lewis in particular is the arch-sophist. One day, I'll need to post on why I think this is so.
• Ilion's qualifying "intellectually honest" (used twice!) tells us all we really need to know. If you disagree with his assertions then you are intellectually dishonest. If you agree with them, you are intellectually honest. Calling all true Scotsmen, calling all true Scotsmen!
• Ilion's fetish with reason itself indicates he doesn't understand atheism. The atheist position is that reason, or reason itself, is wonderful. But reason carries little weight outside of evidence and a consistent methodology for gathering, assessing, and incorporating evidence. Ilion makes what I call the metaphysician's fallacy, the error that logical assertions alone somehow trump evidence, conflicting evidence, and lack of evidence. The metaphysical apologist says: "I think it, it's logical, and I don't need no stinkin' verification of it!"
• If Ilion really wants to be intellectually courageous, perhaps he will explain how to verify his four main claims empirically.

So, more unassailable logic from our moral and philosophical superiors.

*  *  *  *  *

In fairness, I should provide the following link (I just became aware of it) to a post where Ilion elaborates on his views of atheism and irrationality:

The reality of minds in a material world (thus, every human being who has ever existed) is proof that atheism is false. If atheism were indeed the truth about the nature of reality, then we would not -- because we could not -- exist. But we do exist. Therefore, atheism is not the truth about the nature of reality.

This is the general form of the argument to support the prior claim --

GIVEN the reality of the natural/physical/material world, IF atheism were indeed the truth about the nature of reality, THEN everything which exists and/or transpires must be wholely (sic) reducible, without remainder, to purely physical/material states and causes.

The explanation/proof is as follows --

This "everything" (which exists and must be wholely (sic) reducible, without remainder, to purely physical/material states and causes) includes our minds and all the functions and capabilities of our minds -- including reason (and, really, not just the individual acts of reasoning that we all engage in, but big-r 'Reason').

Now, specifically with respect to reasoning, what inescapably follows from atheism is that it is impossible for anything existing in reality (that included us) to reason.

When an entity reasons, it chooses to move from one thought or concept to another based on (its understanding of) the content of the concepts and of the logical relationship between them.

But, IF atheism were indeed the truth about the nature of reality, THEN this movement from (what we call) thought to though (which activity or change-of-mental-state we call 'reasoning') *has* to be caused by, and must be wholely (sic) explicable in terms of, state-changes of matter. That is, it is not the content of, and logical relationship between, two thoughts which prompts a reasoning entity to move from the one thought to the other, but rather it is some change-of-state of some matter which determines that an entity "thinks" any particular "thought" when it does.

I leave it to the reader to dwell on the further implications.

This logical implication/consequence of atheism (the one I have explicated) directly denies what we all know to be true about the "cause" of all acts of reasoning. This logical implication/consequence of atheism states an absurdity, namely that we do not, and cannot, reason. Since the stated absurdity is a logical implication/consequence of atheism, therefore atheism is shown to be absurd. Which is to say, necessarily false.

Oh, dear. This will not do at all. My notes below:

• The top-level claim is: If there were no God, we would not exist. No God, no universe, no us.
• Before this claim, Ilion makes a telling error: "The reality of minds in a material world (thus, every human being who has ever existed) is proof that atheism is false."
• The error lies in conflating minds--a human concept, an invention of the imagination--with the brain--a material organ with working parts and effects.
• There is no reality of minds, only a reality of brains.
• The reality of minds, therefore, counts nothing against the truth or untruth of atheism.
• What's missing? The explanation of why the universe needs (needs, in the philosophical sense) God specifically, and how the explanation can be verified by people.

Ilion later remarks, "What I expect is to be called greatly mistaken about the reasoning I've explicated. Or too stupid to see that it's incorrect. Or a liar for asserting it."

Surely I have shown exactly how Ilion is mistaken. I leave it to the reader to dwell on the further implications.

At the Funeral

This is not the funeral I attended, but it gives an idea of the placement of people and props.

My last few days have been wrapped up in the funeral services for an in-law, a lovely woman whose final years were marked by Alzheimer's Disease.

The woman was a Roman Catholic, and I guess a fairly devout one. The service in the church was nice enough. The church itself was lovely. The pulpit stage area was vast, white, and decked with red Poinsettias. They had a huge crucifix, almost life size, featuring a slight but muscular Jesus hanging in death. The cantor, organist, and priest worked together nicely. The readings, eulogy, and priestly remarks were moving.

Yet, to me the funeral mass seemed preoccupied with the Catholic narrative, at the expense of genuinely celebrating the life and person of the recently departed. The priest talked about reading the obituary (he knew the deceased's daughter well, but not the dead woman) and seeing in her life a reflection of Jesus's ministry, taken from a passage in John.

I understood the rhetorical move the priest was making, something like "See, her life was very Christ-like. She was an emissary of Jesus on earth." That's a feel-good message. Yet it also voids the woman's real life, struggles, and triumphs: her life is reduced to a metaphor of an alleged life from two-thousand years ago.

We focused all too little on the actual woman who had died. Outside of the eulogy, which was delivered beautifully, we learned almost nothing of her personality, her wisdom, her dreams, her ideas. We avoided much of the changes and challenges she saw around her in 86-or-so years.

Several times, however, we were enjoined to petition God and Jesus to spare the dead woman's immortal soul and grant it everlasting admittance in heaven. Along with these petitions were those for other Catholic believers. One got the distinct impression that Jesus arrived and died for the benefit of Catholic believers. One also got the clear impression that the dead woman's final destination was not a slam-dunk. Maybe she was up in heaven, but maybe not. We were called to pray because we weren't really sure.

I nearly laughed out loud at the trans-substantiation bit. I don't mean to be insensitive or disrespectful, but I was tickled by the sight of the priest gravely raising a wafer into the air and uttering the ritual incantation to transform it into "the body of Christ." Plus, the hymn accompanying communion was called "Taste and See":

Taste and see, taste and see
the goodness of the Lord.

O taste and see, taste and see
the goodness of the Lord, of the Lord.

The Lord seemed full of crispy goodness that morning.

When I die--which will not be for a long, long time, I hope--I would like my surviving family to talk about me and them. I would like them to share stories of times we had, jokes we traded, problems we solved. I would like people to walk away from my funeral thinking, "That guy lived. He had an impact. He was here and made an impression." I really don't care to have people comparing me to someone else, living or dead. And I don't really care to have folks pining after the welfare of my soul.

The Catholic funeral is, no question, an artful way for families to rally together and acknowledge the significance of a loved one's death. It's a time-tested method for expressing grief in a controlled, stable environment and in ways that affirm both the community and its values. But a good deal of it is also gratuitous, self-serving, and industrialized. The dead are cars traveling on an assembly line: focus on the one right in front of us. It'll go on, and we'll deal with the next one, in turn.

Wednesday Comedy: Lisa Lampanelli

In honor of poor offended GEM, I give you insult comic par excellence, Lisa Lampanelli:

Wednesday Comedy: Dave Attell

Dave Attell represents the style of comedy I like best: non sequitur, raunchy, spontaneous, sometimes goof-ball.

I think Attell drinks as much as we all suspect.



And one more for good measure.

Wednesday Comedy: Mike Birbiglia

Mike Birbiglia is one of my favorite working comics. His jokes and delivery have both intelligence and quirkiness, which often go so well together.

Here's Mike on religious music:

Here's one on hypochondria and genuine illness:

My Goal's Beyond

John Milton, we all know, wrote Paradise Lost "to justify the ways of God to men." My goals in Textuality are slightly more modest than Milton's but exponentially more important: I write to explain my ideas and opinions to my children. I write to my wife, my brothers, my parents, my friends, and to anyone else who may be interested.

How many of us know what our mothers and fathers truly feel and think? How many get the chance to see the world through their eyes and approach ideas the way they do?

My goal for this blog is to make this knowledge and sight available to my loved ones, should they ever want to explore. I want them to know what I think and why. I want them to understand what I think, even if they do not agree with the thoughts. I want them to know that I think. I want them to realize that I am most comfortable writing and considering ideas.

I started Textuality in 2005, following the painful but necessary abandonment (temporary, it now seems) of my dissertation and my aspirations for doctorate in English. At that time, my aims for the blog were to to continue working, informally, in textuality:

This blog has been initiated and inaugurated to serve as a forum on textuality. Specifically, it is intended to support the analysis and understanding of current events, issues, and debates from the standpoint of textuality.

As I understand textuality, it is the quality possessed by a tangible thing of being a text. To proceed further, a text is a tangible thing – such as a piece of paper, a book, a Web page or Internet site, an onstage or onscreen performance, a painting, a sculpture, a building, a location in nature, and so on – that is understood to be or to be comprised of one or more signs. Signs may contain one or more signifying elements, but their referents are conceived of as statements of thought intended to be communicated.

I had hoped to build a site that would become the foremost authority on textuality. In practice, however, I used the blog as a diary. The personal and rather whiny nature of the blog during these early days was one reason (there were others) I took the pseudonym "Larry Tanner," a nickname someone gave me in college. Recently I have flirted with the idea of "coming out" and using my real name, but I already have other blogs under my real name. "Larry Tanner" has become like a separate identity, and I enjoy playing this role. So for now, the pseudonym stays.

Early on in the life of the blog, I seemed to lose interest. In 2006, I posted only one entry, and it was a personal disclosure:

It's almost been one year since I last posted here. Let's see: one child, two marathons, and some marital beauty and ugliness later, now I'm posting again.

I don't know why, exactly, I would even think of coming back. I'm struggling with something. I'm just not satisfied. I'm losing confidence and feel like I'm running out of time.

Hmm ... isn't this kind of what I said last year too?

The post above sounds rather bleak and self-chastising. I do that much less now, for whatever reasons. I remember some of the days of 2006. Our family was strapped for cash, stressed with the new baby, dissatisfied with my workplace, bewildered by my wife's depression, and dealing with my dislike of the wife's new church. We had issues, then, but we also had lots of happiness and love, too. In any case, I suppose my attention was best directed elsewhere than the blog.

Although I posted intermittently in 2007, the great change for Textuality came in 2008. Precipitating the change was my accepting a ghostwriting gig. As I began the gig and the writing involved, I did not foresee any shifts in my personal views but I did sense trouble between my author friend/employer and myself:

In the writing, I am finding a lot of passion and struggle in myself. It's good, I'm learning a lot and swaying between almost complete atheism and firm religious belief. It's interesting. There are just so many great perspectives available online. I am glad that I am able to be swayed. I am not an easy sway, but my openness is partly what makes it all work. Now, it could be that my author is not happy with what I have drafted. If that's the case, then we surely will not be able to work together.

Partly as a result of this gig, I took sides in the larger cultural squabbles concerning atheism and religion. I posted a big admission in November of 2008:

Do I believe in G-d? The answer is no, but it’s not an unequivocal no. It is a no of belief: I do not feel sure enough to have the scales tipped toward faith. I have little confidence that I ever will...and I am OK with this.

The character of my posts changed slowly. Throughout 2008 and into 2009, I was writing reactive stuff: I'd read an article or another blog post and then respond. I don't think I struck upon a clearer identity for Textuality until October 2009, with one post on Bob Dylan and another on the debates of atheists and religious believers.

With these essays, I brought out (at last) my full voice. I sought to make my points personal, original, unambiguous, and unfiltered. I tried to quote liberally and in context. I wanted to work through quotes slowly, patiently, and in detail. I aimed to have posts work as part of a larger, ongoing conversation between myself and the world.

In July of this year, I thought I'd exhausted my thoughts on atheism and religion. I intended to post mostly on Walt Whitman to find other topics of interest. I said then:

I have interests in addition to Atheism that deserve fuller and more sustained expression by me. I want to explore other aspects of this wonderful world, such as the poetry of its people, the conflicts of its nations and civilizations, and the endeavors of its animal inhabitants.

This statement remains true, even if I have not done as much about it (so far) as I might like. Indeed, recently I've been quite focused on topics in and around atheism and religion. Yet I've been generally pleased about the posts on the Kuzari Principle and on ultimate meaning.

One day, I hope to gather maybe 25-50 posts, organize them, and self -publish a book of the best and most enduring posts in Textuality.This book will be for the kids, mainly, not for sale or money. My focus today is on addressing topics that interest me but that also allow me to express ideas and opinions I haven't said before.

I have much, much more to write in this blog--about atheism, religion, family, aging, poetry, jokes, work, politics, and more. I anticipate the days and years ahead. Perhaps a post already written or yet to come will serve as pre-text for one or more face-to-face discussions with my children and/or with my wife.

This is a core element of my thinking: anything I write should have an application in real life. My blog life as "Larry Tanner" is a reflection and premonition of the life where I am interacting with actual human beings in real space-time. I would never want a blog that was all and only "in" the blogosphere.

I expect that if I keep up with Textuality, it will continue to morph. After all, I am still growing as an intellect and as a person, and I have much to explain and share. I cannot say whether the future will be good or bad. I hope it's more of the good, but who knows? The writing is part of what I can do. Textuality is part of my pro-activity.

The Autumn of Our Content

Harvest: Picking apples and pumpkins.

WARNING: This will be a personal post.

I love Autumn in New England, especially with my family. We all recently spent a fantastic morning in our backyard. Our neighbors' kids were over, and we all (the wife and I, too) played at catching wind-blown leaves before they landed on the lawn. The morning sunshine, the colors of trees and grass and sky, the laughter of children at play with one another, the unbridled joy of living without worry for anything but this moment: at one point, I counseled myself to remember the day and what it was like to be present then and there.

Fall is often taken as a season of decline, and understandably so. Autumn's eternal place is between the free fullness of Summer and the powerful austerity of Winter. John Keats takes it upon himself to console sad Autumn:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
        Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
    While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
        And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
    Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
        Among the river sallows, borne aloft
            Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
    And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
        Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
        The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Keats' Autumn is a downtrodden sibling, the one who never quite measures up to the other. Keats turns the lamentations of the Fall--presumably, for the dying of the year and so then for our own dying--into a sweet and self-possessed song. The poem redeems Autumn as a melange of sounds.

But what redeems my Autumn song, which emerges from the depths of happiness? Keats approaches Autumn one-on-one, the solitary man and the somber season. Yet my Fall season is more populated. Keats heard sounds; I hear those and also a human chorus.

I recall sitting on the grass recently with my two-year-old son. We watched the chickadees, robins and blue jays dart to the bird feeder for seed. I remember another Fall, back in 2005. I was recovering from Sarcoidosis. My oldest daughter and I walked together down to the lake. We held hands, and I became choked up inside at how glad I was that we had this time. I have a picture in my mind of my younger daughter, in pink hat and pink coat, chasing after her sister through the leaves. Later, I took an actual picture of her smiling face, one cheek reddened and the other with a fading painting that she had received on the town common. These moments are all a happy song that I cannot save.

Cherished moments float in and then fly away: optima dies...prima fugit. They'll never be back, so enjoy them and be immersed in them while it's possible. Today, I struggle to lift my oldest girl up above my shoulders, and one day I'll no longer be able to wrestle my boy. Soon, my younger daughter will outgrow her lisp and get her f's and th's straightened out. The children mature, and I am aware that I am aging. How many more Fall seasons will I get? How many Autumn days will I have with my kids?

Robert Frost faces this kind of question in his usual way, dramatizing a very human dilemma in terms of work:

Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

None of us knows the final fruits of our labors, Frost says. Our big-man work and big-man tools count for less than we think. All our efforts, a shed full of leaves, and "next to nothing" for weight or color. Yet, "a crop is a crop," suggesting the results of our efforts may indeed have value, even if we cannot recognize it at the moment.

I wonder what my children and I will reap from these happy Fall days. It's a nearly constant thought. I want them to remember. I want them to draw comfort, strength, and compassion from what we've done and the memories of what has passed. I want them to enjoy their own spouses and children.

For me, well, I want to remember it all. I don't want to forget the features of youth in my children. I want constant access to the feelings of being a father of young children. Mostly, however, I want my kids to know that because of them--that through them--their father knew joy in his life.

Joy commands the hardy mainspring
Of the universe eterne.
Joy, oh joy the wheel is driving
Which the worlds’ great clock doth turn.
Flowers from the buds she coaxes,
Suns from out the hyaline,
Spheres she rotates through expanses,
Which the seer can’t divine.

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.

Comedy Favorites: Woody Allen and Mel Brooks

No big ideas today. I'm a fan of comedy, and Woody Allen and Mel Brooks are two favorites.

Here's the wonderful opening to Annie Hall:


I like several aspects of Woody's bit. I especially like how the second joke--the Groucho Marx/Sigmund Freud one--expresses a condition that seems so human to me. Think about it: why wouldn't someone want to be part of a club that would have him as a member? It's a joke about doubt and self-esteem. It's also a joke about the communities and granfalloons to which we belong--and those to which we think we might want to belong. I wonder if other animals besides humans have similar thoughts that our group isn't so cool as that one.

Woody's brilliance is to make the joke personal and intimate. I hear in the joke the echoes of something that might be  true for people generally: that many of our "wounds"-- our troubles and worries--are self-inflicted and not nearly so significant as we make them out to be. Not that these wounds don't deserve attention and care, but they could perhaps not be accompanied by so much drama. The irony, of course, is that the drama accompanying the wounds of Woody's character wind up being the substance of a classic movie, a movie that ends with Woody's character having written a play about his experiences.

Here's a terrific interview with Mel Brooks, though it's more like a monologue:


Mel so obviously loves being in front of an audience. He wants to talk with them and perform for them. He tells stories and sings songs; he's not just firing off jokes. And he's tangential: it seems he could go to almost any subject or mode from wherever he is at the moment. I love how he talks over the interviewer, not out of rudeness but rather out of just being excited to say whatever it is that's come into his mind. Mel is simply a treasure.

Growing in Reason: Talking to Children About Unbelief

One thing in my life that excites me is the native intelligence of my children. For example, just this weekend my older daughter lost a tooth, her third or fourth. That night, she put her tooth under her pillow for the tooth fairy. Next morning, she found one dollar. Later on, she suggested that she thought maybe Mommy or me had been giving her money for the teeth. I told her the truth, and she seemed happy to have figured it out first.

One day, maybe soon, she'll want to talk to me about God. She'll ask why I don't believe in God. What will I tell her?

(1) "Believe in God" is the wrong expression. I believe in you. I don't believe that God exists.

(2) You've gone to temple/church/whatever. You have seen people you know and love who pray to God as if He really existed. You have been told stories that are presented as true, as if they really happened. But the fact is that no one knows whether God truly exists. The stories started a long time ago and they have undergone many changes. Many people believe the stories because they believe what they are told by others whom they love and respect. Many people like all the friends they have in the group of believers. Many people like the idea that even when they are alone, they can have someone who sees them and is interested in what they do. But what people like and what's true are not always the same thing. People may want the stories to be true, but that does not mean they are true.

(3) There are many, many religions. There are also many, many gods. Most every group that's ever been has tried to explain the world by using gods to be responsible for the things that came before. Our planet and our universe are wonderful things, and it's not easy to discover how they got to be the way they are. Every religion thinks that its god is the answer and that all the other religions are wrong.

(4) We are learning so much about the universe, the world, and humanity. We use scientific methods to help us separate what might really be true from what we think might be true. And the more we learn, the more wonderful it all seems. On the other hand, with everything we learn, it becomes less likely that God really exists. No God and no heaven, but no devil and no hell either.

(5) We have each other. We have our lives together. We have our minds. We have our dreams. All of this is real enough. We talk to each other and we talk to ourselves. We laugh and we share. We sing and we learn. Why wonder about God when our lives are already filled with wonder?

(6) You are my child and I am your father. This is always true, no matter what you or I believe about God/no-God. As we live, learn, change, and move on, we'll think many things. We'll believe many things. We'll settle matters and then later overturn them. But you are always my child and I am always your father. This is one true thing, and that's all we need to build happy lives.

I Do Celebrate Passover

The flight of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt into the desert, as reported in the Torah, probably did not happen. At least, there is no archaeological or historical evidence that allows us to claim with confidence that the extraordinary events relayed in Exodus actually occurred. And even if one or more elements in the report are factual, I highly doubt that God played any part in the events -- this because I reject the hypothesis of God's existence.

Nevertheless, I will sit down with my family this year and conduct the seder. We'll set up the table as instructed by the haggadah, and we'll perform the rituals associated with Passover observance. I fully intend not to eat unleavened bread during the Passover time.

It's been hinted to me that as an Atheist I should not celebrate Passover or observe any of its rituals. Yet, I enjoy the seder and the week-long diet of matzah. Why deny myself of this? Why deprive my children of an annual marker of the heritage into which we were born? The seder is but dinner theater and only serves as the backdrop for storytelling, supper, games and song. The matzah restriction is but a diet, same as any other diet I might try for a week.

Holding seder and eating matzah do not constitute agreement with any truth claims made by the Bible or Jewish theology. I can celebrate this discrimination in and through the seder.

And irreverence? Of course, there must be irreverence.



Happy Pesach!

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.

Man and Video Game Character Wed (Plus, Sex with Robots)

Apparently, this is not a joke. The man in the video, Sal9000, sets up a real wedding to marry Nene Anegasaki, a character in a game called Love Plus.

As a textuist, this odd event raises a host of questions. What, for example, would we say about a person marrying the figure of the Mona Lisa? What of a person who marries Ophelia from Hamlet? What of a person who falls in love with Otter from the movie Animal House?

On the surface it all seems a little ridiculous, yet this wedding seems to mark a (temporary? representative?) of the (imaginary?) boundary between fantasy and reality, between the fictional world and the real world, between the text and life. As my parenthetical questions indicate, while we may conventionally distinguish between our real world and that world of the game/painting/movie/text, sometimes that distinction gets violated and we're left to wonder whether the convention is inaccurate, whether the distinction is unstable, or whether the distinction is porous by nature.

Speaking of the integration of fantasy and reality, a recent story suggests that by 2011, people will be able to have sex with robots. Great sex.

All of this also casts an interesting light over recent social wrangles with the definition of "marriage." Consider also the potential ramifications in areas of insurance, health care, death benefits, and so on.

2009: Year in Review

No way to deny that 2009 has been a busy year in many ways. I've posted much here in the past few months, which is a little ironic because at one point I thought about retiring the blog. This has generally been a good year, too. I'm especially happy to report this because in January 2009 I was probably as much on edge about the state of the world as anyone else:

These projects make me pretty excited about the year ahead and all that is to come. Perhaps I should acknowledge the general gloom and doom that surrounds everyone right now. Yes, the economy is dreadful and getting worse. War seems everywhere and endless. The environment seems not only to be transforming in front of us but exacting revenge. Heartache and head-shaking inanity – not to mention insanity – seem to underlie the behavior of ordinary people everywhere. I recognize this, but I don’t care. I can only do what I do, and that must be enough.

The projects I am referring to above include training for a marathon, two book projects, and a series of music retrospectives.

I never ran that marathon. I am in somewhat better shape now, but I can do better. I never got those book projects off the ground, but that was because I became involved in a few new ghostwriting efforts and also had to get my new dissertation work established.

Fortunately, I did manage to post a few articles on music, which I think came out well. I wrote about the Beatles, the Rolling Stones (first, second), Keith Jarrett (first, second), and Bob Dylan.

The kids and the family are doing well. We've had our share of health flare-ups, most recently with my mother in the hospital, but I think we'll come through OK. About health and about everything, there's not much to be except optimistic and positive - and resolved to work hard to create situations that foster these outlooks.

To all who read and follow along: I wish you good health, optimism, positivity, resolve, laughter, reason, and pleasant music. We live in great potential, and I think of humans as machines for converting potential into reality.

Reject Science? At Your Peril....

A religionist made the following insane comment online about my article on biblical falsehood:

If we are going to reject any body of literature because it contains impossible things then we are going to have to reject science.

What a silly statement! I am pleased, however, that the commenter apparently concedes that the Bible contains impossible things.

Nevertheless, science is not - or not only - a body of literature. Science makes observations and hypotheses that can be reviewed, criticized, tested, confirmed, falsified, and modified.

The commenter brings out the old saw that science tells us the universe came from nothing. This line of argument is supposed to show that the claims of science are as strange as anything religion says. I agree with this, at least. From multiverses to apprent fine-tuning to dark matter and black holes, science presents a much weirder view of the universe than religion ever has been able to imagine. But science has something that religion does not: evidence. We don't take stock in the weird claims of science because they are weird or because some cool scientists has said it. We take such claims seriously because we have multiple lines of positive evidence behind them. For example, it is perfectly consistent with known laws of physics for the universe to have come from nothing. To illustrate, here is a video lecture from a researcher whose area of study is this very question of "something from nothing."

Of course with this view of science making wierd claims, the religious show once again that they are unwilling to accept scientific hypotheses for what they are, hypotheses. Rather, they want to transform science into another religion, which means they can either believe in it or not. They are unwilling to discuss the mathematical, physical, logical and philosophical bases of the apparently strange ideas that scientists will sometimes propose.

Yet they so arrogantly declare themselves and their narrow beliefs correct. They reject science (which they clearly avoid studying in an unbiased fashion) even though they rely on it every day. They reject the claims of other religions (do they believe Jesus appeared on the iron? what about the recent report of the Koran being written on a little child's skin?) even though they have no less reason to believe these other claims than they do to believe the claims they actually accept.

They uncritically accept a six-day complete creation, men living for 1000 years, the sun and moon 'stopping,' the sea suddenly parting and then returning to normal, earthquakes on demand, the ability of the dead to return to live, the existence of a realm in another dimension where immortal souls go to spend eternity, the ability of people to heal the sick with magic, the ability of people to levitate, a man-made boat containing all gazillions of kinds of life-forms on earth floating alone in a global flood that mercilessly killed everyone else, and so on.

All of this Bible stuff, they are fine with. That stuff is no problem at all.

Heck, they don't mind that most of humanity and land-based life would have died in the flood. They consider it a virtue that Abraham raised not a peep to have his son saved. They say nothing about Jacob's treachery against his own brother or about God's injustice against Adam and Eve. I suspect it's because deep down they know these are but fairy tales.

Yet, they utterly reject out of hand any observation from history, archaeology, textual analysis or anthropology that points toward the idea that the Bible was written by men, collected by men, interpreted and re-interpreted by men, and codified into a religion by men who quite naturally would have theorized that a god "out there, somewhere" was the author of everything, including their personal and national destines.

So, they reject everything except their own parochial vision of the world. The rest of us reject the Bible because it lies. The rest of us accept that the scientific method is the best tool we have to determine a true picture of our origins and our past. Science is the best way we know to generate explanations of the universe and how it works. Science offers the best methods we have ever devised to predict consequences of natural events and of human actions.

Religion offers nothing but institutionalized and socially funded fantasy. It lies about our past and our origins, it explains nothing about how the universe works, and it allows for no predictions of any useful sort.

If they really want to reject science, I wonder why they don't then go live in a cave with Osama bin Laden and stay there. Otherwise, I suspect they do accept science despite their explicit protests and tactily reject religion, which they adopt only as an egocentric tool for propping up a vain vision of themselves as righteous and special individuals.

In the end, my point is that we have a much stronger case for approaching the Bible as literature than for considering it a reliable source of information on the physical world, on human origins, and on human history. If your strongest counter-argument to my point is "You don't believe in miracles, you jerk," then reason is surely against you.

We Are All Connected

I wish I'd watched more Cosmos when I was a kid.



"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it. But the way those atoms are put together."