No More Hornets

An Atheist's Christmas in the Bronx

2008-12-20T11:58:00.004-05:00

Even though my relatives and I were atheist Jews in a predominantly Christian country, I rarely felt as if I was out of the mainstream. Mom, Dad, and Nanny were just as American as anybody else, although maybe just a little louder. OK, a lot louder.

Up until the time I was six, I even imagined that I believed — as much as any fundy kid did — in Santa Claus. I had already dismissed the idea of god, because it just didn’t make any sense. But Santa Claus was different. I mean, the guy was all over the TV screen. He prattled on and on about good conduct with Pinky Lee and Rootie Kazootie, paid surprise visits on cowboys and spacemen and cartoon animals, and even joked snidely about Mrs. Claus with Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason. From the comfort of my living-room, I'd actually seen him ride down Broadway in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; every kid in New York knew that he was on the way to his big throne in the world's most famous department store. And he never said, "Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas — except for atheist Jews." He greeted us all, boys and girls of every persuasion. Santa's sole criterion for toy-distribution was a kid's behavior, not his heritage.

Mom, who was always a sucker for family togetherness as depicted in Norman Rockwell illustrations, encouraged my belief. She made a small bow to Chanukah by giving us chocolate gelt, pieces of candy money wrapped in "gold;" sometimes we even lit the menorah. But her obvious opinion, one which we kids shared, was that Chanukah couldn't hold a candle to Christmas. If it had been entirely up to her, we would have all gathered together like a perfect television family, to sing carols and drink eggnog under the mistletoe. Santa Claus was coming to town, and our household was on his itinerary.

Dad went along with her, but only because he didn't have the energy to fight. As a mailman, he worked particularly hard during the holidays when the post office was flooded with thousands of cards from those “meshuga goyim.” I think he reluctantly enjoyed the message of peace on earth, goodwill to men: "Do me something, but that Jesus must have been a real mensch. He was a Jew, d'ja know that?"

Still, Dad could never resist reminding us that we were strangers in a strange land.

"If some fat Christian in a red suit ever snuck up on my grandparents during the night, they would have thought it was a pogrom. But go ahead and believe what you wanna believe. Just remember, Santa Claus is poor this year."

In our house, we never had a Christmas tree. A few families in the community had Chanukah bushes, but not us. Dad hated Nature, and complained constantly that Mom's snake plants were stealing his air. He was sure that bringing a whole tree into the apartment would make it impossible for us to breathe. His main objection, though, was that it would be too much trouble.

"And who's gonna put it together? You?"

"There's nothing to put together, Dad. It's a tree."

"Listen, Sonny Boy, I work hard all day. I don't need to be monkeying around with all those momzer lights and doodads and that shiny stringy stuff—what do the goyim call it?—and having to remember to water the damn thing and not knock it over when I wake up in the middle of the night to pish. You want a tree, move to the forest."

Mom, who took on more and more of a "Babes in Toyland" persona the closer we got to the holidays, who walked around the apartment singing Hit Parade carols like "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," would have loved having a Christmas tree. And she probably could have prevailed easily over Dad if she'd insisted. But she worried about how she could smuggle it in without the neighbors seeing.

"Mom," I'd reason, "who cares? You buy ham and bacon at the store all the time, and we never go to shul."

"A Christmas tree is different."

"What's different about it?"

"Well, bacon is not about Jesus. But a Christmas tree ... that's a very, very Christian thing. It's a whole big megillah about stuff we don't believe in. Mrs. Tannenbaum downstairs would have a conniption if she saw us. I'll hang a stocking and we'll put out a little table for Santa to leave toys on. Nobody has to know."

And that's what she always did. On Christmas Eve, she'd tape two of her nylons, one for Risa and one for me, to the window of our bedroom. We had no chimneys in our project, which worried me. But Mom swore that Santa would ring the doorbell once we kids were asleep, and that he'd give all our toys to her. It never occurred to me to ask why we bothered going through the whole rigmarole with the stocking if he was just going to show up with the stuff at our door like an overweight version of the Seltzer Man.

What I did think to challenge, however, was the plethora of Santas. Everywhere I looked, there he was. He chatted with millions of children in every single department store in New York City. Mom's explanation, which worked for a few years, was that the guy kept running back and forth across the street between Macy's and Gimbel's, stopping this relay only occasionally to take the subway uptown to the Bronx for a stint at Alexander's. And, she added, when he wasn't holding court in some toy department, he was hopping from street corner to street corner to ring a bell for the Salvation Army, or racing to a TV studio to sit for a few minutes with Arthur Godfrey.

But by the time I was six, I was already well on the road to skepticism. I tallied up all the Clauses and thought: How can this be?

It was Nanny who came up with an intricate Santa Claus Classification System, an organizational hierarchy that sounded reasonable. She explained that the real, honest-to-goodness Santa Claus was the one at Macy's, except during the week she had a falling-out with the store because it had run out of My Sin perfume, during which time the Genuine Article had moved briefly to Gimbel's. He was also the one who appeared on prime-time television shows, as long as the star was somebody she liked.

"Oh, yeah," Nanny said, "the Jack Benny Santa Claus is definitely the real one."

"But who's at Macy's while he's on TV?"

"He puts up a sign: Out to Dinner. What, you don't think he has a nice supper every night, with that belly?"

"But if he was on with Jack Benny," I asked, "when did he eat?"

"Always with you it's questions. Listen, they gave him a tongue sandwich and a cup of red Jell-O backstage."

"So that's what happened when he visited Ed Sullivan, too?"

"No, no, use your head. That was an Actor. The real Santa Claus is gonna go on with that shmo? What are you talking?"

"What about the Santa Claus at Alexander's?"

"A Substitute. Santa has a big family, they all look like him. Y'know, like me and my sisters. His brothers go to all the stores, the managers never know the difference."

"Oh, so the one at Klein's is also a substitute, right?"

"Klein's? Feh? That one's a Faker. You'll sit on his lap, he'll try to sell you some shmatta. They're gonna get the real Santa Claus when they can't even clean their bathrooms properly? Who fills your head with such nonsense?"

"So what about the guys who ring the bells?"

"Helpers. Santa gives them a couple of bucks and they work for him."

"But they all look just like him."

"Yeah, so what? Santa's dumb? He advertises to hire, and it says they have to be fat. Except that skinny zhlub standing there by the subway entrance with his beard falling off. Listen, stop hocking me with Santa Claus and help me pick out a Chanukah present for your cousin Marty."

It was a lot of work using Nanny's elaborate taxonomy, and sorting each Santa into his proper slot nearly drove me nuts. But I was good at puzzles and games, and enjoyed the challenge of figuring out who was who. The Santa who had posed for the Coke ad in Life Magazine was, obviously, the Genuine Article; the one who had posed for Pepsi was an Actor. Canada Dry Ginger Ale's Santa was an acceptable Substitute, particularly when I'd had an upset stomach one day, but 7-Up's was a blatant Faker if I ever saw one. * * *Regardless of who stood in for Santa on other occasions, I knew that he, himself, was gonna be the one to show up with the loot. That Christmas Eve when I was six, my sister and I were ushered to sleep in a state of near-delirium. Mom had been unusually Christmas-y all night, coyly crooning a medley of the great Yuletide standards written by Jews: "White Christmas," "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire," and her own version of a Jerome Kern classic:

They asked me how I knew
Santa Claus was true.
I of course replied,
"Santa has to hide —
Toys get in your eyes."

Even Dad joined in the festive spirit, using a lit cigarette to conduct Mom. My sister, who was only a year and a half old, had caught the excitement, and kept screaming "Santa Claus, Santa Claus," a mantra that eventually conked her out in mid-shout. Shortly thereafter, she was nestled all snug in her bed, dreaming, no doubt, of sugar plums, even though no one in my family had any idea what they were.

But I stayed wide awake, now and then ducking under the covers to check my glow-in-the-dark watch, a practical Chanukah gift I had received from an uncle with connections in the jewelry business. A half-hour eternity must have passed while I waited and waited and waited for the sound of the doorbell announcing Santa's arrival.

Mom peeked her head into our room. "You kids asleep?" she whispered.

I had recently learned that my fake snoring fooled no one, so I just lay there, perfectly still. Mom and Dad tiptoed quietly in. Mom was frequently subject to fits of giddiness, and was evidently in the throes of one. She couldn't stop tittering. Dad banged his knee on the little table they'd put in the center of the room, dropped what sounded like a 20-megaton toy, and yelled out

"Sonuvvabitch!"

Stifled snickering from Mom, who tried unsuccessfully to turn serious. "Did it break, Hon?"

"How the hell do I know? It's wrapped."

"I mean the table. It sounded like it went flying."

"Nah. It just slid along the floor a little."

"Do you think it scratched the wood?"

"It scratched my leg, I'll tell you that."

"You're not bleeding on the toys, are you?"

"Who cares about the goddamn toys, f'cryinoutloud? I'm wounded here. You and your farkockteh Christmas."

"Sha. Die kinder."

The next thing Dad did was to pull down a curtain rod on the window when he went to fill the stocking.

"Agghhh. Shit."

"Sha." Uncontrollable giggling. "What happened?"

"I got caught on the drapes."

"Don't break the window."

"Do you wanna do this, Babe? Do you wanna do this?"

Mom made a noise that sounded like she was being tickled unmercifully.

"Don't put a run in my stocking."

"Just tell me if you wanna do this. What are you, some secret shikseh, the Christmas maven? Owww. Goddamn radiator. It's hot, f'Chrissake! These chocolate cigarettes are gonna melt before the kids wake up."

"Gimme them. I'll put them on the table."

"What else goes in here?"

"The yo-yos and the sock puppets. Can you squoosh the puppets in?"

A ripping sound revealed that he couldn't.

"What'd you rip?"

"Your stocking. Relax."

Hysterical cackling. "That's a good stocking."

"Oh, and my knee wasn't a good knee?"

"Your knee, you can cover up. My stocking, everybody sees."

"So do me something. Next time we go out, you can wear the sock puppets. Are we done with this mishegoss?"

“I think the kids are up. Are you up?”

Aha! A trap. Mom expected me to say “no,” like I usually did. But I just lay there. Miraculously, I had managed to keep totally quiet through all the mayhem. I hoped I could resist the urge to get up right away and check whether all my new toys were still intact.

Mom whispered, "Well, I guess they’re sleeping. Gut yontif" — "Happy holiday" — and I could hear kissing. I hoped it was happening far enough way from my toys that they didn’t get any lovey-dovey cooties on them. I knew that in the morning, the room was going to look like it had been attacked by an army of Subs and Zhlubs, Helpers and Actors and Fakers. But as my parents walked through the door, both chuckling now, I lay there in my bed, a real atheist at last, proud of my discovery: Mom and Dad, and they alone, were the Genuine Article.

Puzzling Atheists #8: You Are Not Alone

2008-11-22T14:33:00.014-05:00

Some alleged humanists have been whining that "agnostics, atheists, and other types of nontheists" feel "a little alone" during "the holiday." Why? "Because of its association with traditional religion." (Read this dumb story, if you don't believe me.)

Duh. It's fucking Christmas. It's not "associated" with traditional religion, it's a holiday rooted in religion. That holds true whether one celebrates Christ's birth, the coming of Mithra, a visit from a fat saint, the barbaric Maccabees' victory over civilized Hellenistic culture, the hedonistic pleasures of Saturn's rule, or the rebirth of the sun. Religion, religion, religion. Accept it, you numnuts.

In any case, most of the atheists I know don't need any excuse for having a damned good time. So I'm jumping the gun a little on Christmas to prove my point.

The following pictures can be combined, in groups of three, to form the names of eight characters whom we'll either hear from or about this Yuletide. The images are scattered around. Your job is to figure out which ones go with which. Some of the combinations are straightforward. For example: a picture of (1) a knee, (2) Tim Russert, and (3) a necktie could be combined to form: tie+knee+Tim = Tiny Tim. Other combinations require both your indulgence and your ability to hear yourself as you read aloud. For example: A picture of (1) a gull, (2) a can of Crisco, and (3) a wedding band could be combined to form Crisco+ring+gull = Criscoringull = Kris Kringle.

Please do NOT put your answers in a comment. Send them to me via email. Show your work. Anyone identifying six or more of the clued personae will get an honorable mention. That ought to make you feel less alone, huh?

[Honorable Mentions:
The team of Oobie Doobies - Ubi Dubium & Ubi Dubius (8 correct)
Laurie (8 correct)]

Forget Remembering Hypatia

2008-11-02T00:19:00.007-04:00

I love reading about history, but I hate most historical fiction.

For me, fictionalizing history is justified only under three circumstances:

The book, story, or play is terrifically written, and great art in and of itself. It’s full of memorable characters, vivid scenes, and lip-smacking language. Examples: Shakespeare’s “History” and “Roman” plays, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
The fictional work is set in a past time as an excuse for the author to examine universal ideas. Examples: The Name of the Rose, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
The fictional work shines a new light on allegedly “familiar” history. Examples: Gore Vidal’s “Narratives of Empire” series, Philip Kerr’s “Berlin Noir” trilogy, Doctorow’s Ragtime.

Obviously, there’s quite a bit of overlap among those categories. All the works I mentioned could easily fit into any of the three. I have no idea where to place T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, or Scott’s Ivanhoe, or even the spy novels of Alan Furst. But I like them.

Remembering Hypatia, on the other hand, is a book best forgotten. It’s written in such a lackluster fashion, by an author (Brian Trent) with a tin ear for language, no sense of drama, nary a deep thought, and, basically, a clear disrespect for the intelligent reader. I’m not going to justify my broad assertions with details here; I don’t have time to waste on that drivel. You can either trust me on this, or you can say “fuck you” and vote for four more years of the same illiterate Bush literary policies.

Now a word about the future of Nonbelieving Literati. I’ve tried to nurture this “club” for about a year and a half, and I’ve enjoyed doing so. We’ve had some interesting inter-blog discussions, and some of us have read books that we might not have otherwise picked up. But I’m unable – and unwilling – to continue being the energy source behind the scenes. It would be great if one of the members could take the initiative and choose the next book, bearing in mind that it should be a work of real literature that will have wide interest, rather than a simple atheist screed. If it were up to me, which it’s most definitely not, I’d pick Huckleberry Finn, the title character of which is a real free thinker whose ideas soar above those of so-called “civilized” society. But perhaps the new leader will have a better idea; I’m game to start reading anything, although I can’t promise I’ll finish it.

As far as No More Hornets is concerned, I will continue to post, but only sporadically. Economic exigencies have made it impossible for me to spend as much time writing for my own – and, I hope, your – entertainment. I, for one, have never needed any convincing to be an atheist, and I’m no longer interested in reading, writing, or commenting on poorly limned arguments against the existence of any gods. We’ve heard them all, dozens of times. The concept of gods is so stupid as to be beneath contempt; I’m tired of pretending to have rational “debates” with idiots who think there’s a higher power somewhere. My little blog is not going to convince the smug theo-thugs that they’re wrong. I’m hoping that my writing ability, however good or bad it may be, can be put to better use than spewing nonsense to flit around the ether.

Thanks for visiting here. I look forward to amusing you again soon.

A Cynic's Endorsement of Obama

2008-10-19T14:18:00.005-04:00

I don’t mean to upstage Colin Powell or Warren Buffett or Matt Damon, but Barack Obama has now earned perhaps the most important endorsement of his political career. After a long and agonizing debate with myself, in which I’ve employed every dirty trick in the book to win me over, I’ve decided to end my campaign for the presidency. I’m releasing all my delegates as soon as I can find the key to their leg irons. In addition, I’ve decided to stop urging my readers to vote for a third-party candidate or, for those who can spell, to write in their own names. I hope that, like me, they’ll lend their support to Barack Obama.

I’m not completely happy about this decision. Obama strikes me as a spineless Machiavellian liar, not unlike almost every other person in Congress, particularly the current breed of Democrats who, for political expediency, chose not to try to impeach a pair of known dangerous criminals. As I’ve written here often, many of Obama’s ideas and policies make me gag. I’m disgusted by his intertwining of religion and politics, and I’m dead-set against faith-based initiatives, which he gleefully supports in flagrant disregard of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. I’m still pissed off about his vote giving telecoms immunity against prosecutions for the spying they did on American citizens, acts which flout the Fourth Amendment. I’m frightened by his saber-rattling against Pakistan, an alleged “friend” of the United States, and his knee-jerk support, without any substantive explanation, of Georgia against Russia. I’m uncomfortable with his wishy-washy stands on abortion, gun control, and the death penalty. And I hate that he was one of the loudest voices in favor of the sucker-punch known as the “bailout.”

But, in the total picture, I think that Obama is at a moral level so far above John McCain as to make it imperative that he win. For one thing, a world increasingly at odds with – and afraid of – America will breathe a sigh of relief if the “Country First” candidates fail. The McCain/Palin campaign, with its constant thuggish chant of “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.,” has been exploiting the worst crypto-fascist instincts in the jingoistic portion of our citizenry. And, while Obama’s overwhelming support among blacks is an indication of a kind of racism, it’s definitely not the same kind to which the Republicans have been playing. With its demonization of Obama, right-wing speechifying often sounds, to my ears anyway, like a veiled encouragement of lynch-mob mentality: He’s not one of us. They can throw hundreds of cute winks, adorable smiles, and thumbs-up gestures into that rhetoric; they can intone, over and over again, the falsely amiable my friends and the phonily homespun doggonit, youbetcha all they want; they still convey one message: He’s not one of us. The implication? Run him out of the neighborhood.

After eight years of monkey government, we clearly need a leader now. One of the best yardsticks we have for measuring a candidate’s ability to lead is the kind of campaign that he or she runs. McCain’s campaign seems as if it’s being conducted by people who have ADD; it lacks focus, and constantly shifts its tactics in reaction to the polls. Obama’s campaign, on the other hand, has stayed on-target since the first: It’s my time, now. That was the strategy when he announced his candidacy, and it hasn’t wavered. His people have been throwing around that extremely effective bullshit for almost two years, and it has resulted in unheard-of contributions – both from the usual favor-shoppers and the so-called “little guys.” A seeming nobody has successfully taken on the power brokers in both parties; can anyone doubt that he knows how to lead?

Normally, that kind of leadership, built on empty promises, would be chilling. Under usual circumstances, I’d look at it as potentially dangerous, the bedrock of a tyranny. But Obama’s calculatedly anti-divisive speeches have taken off some of the edge. With the exception of the Democrats’ usual bugbear, big business – and, of course, the obviously crooked and incompetent Bush administration – he singles out no group for scorn, blames no one for our two wars (three if you count the bogus “war on terror”), our economic fiasco, our catastrophic energy policies, and our infrastructure disasters. In America, big business can always take care of itself; it needs no help from presidents, or the congress, or my wallet. I don’t have to protect it through my vote. And the Bushies, as far as I’m concerned, should be brought to justice for their crimes against the state and humanity.

My final reason for throwing my admittedly trivial support behind Obama is the specter of a Sarah Palin presidency. John McCain’s age, in and of itself, doesn’t put me off. But, clearly, he has health issues; anyone who has watched his performances during the entire campaigning process can’t fail to be aware that he’s not as well as he should be. He dodders, hems and haws, spouts words that he has to weasel out of sometimes only hours later, exhibits an impatience that may well be generated by the slowly failing workings of his body. If he’s elected, and if he dies or becomes unable to perform the duties of his office (two possibilities that seem unnervingly likely to me), a proudly ignorant, unworldly, religious fundamentalist hockey mom will take over in the White House. She’ll bring her “go team” sports mindset with her. Everything she does will be filtered through her glib us-against-them vision. When issues arise that can’t be divided simplistically into two sides, she’ll do so anyway, and take one of them quicker than you can say “Joe Sixpack.” She wouldn’t be a president to inspire national trust at a time when we so badly need to feel that; she’d be a hometeam fanatic, rooting unreasonably for Americans who are “one of us.” I’m not – and neither are you. By definition, no freethinker is.

Do I agree with everything Obama says? Nope, not by a long shot. Do I believe that he’s honest? Hardly. Do I think that he’ll solve all our problems – or even most of them – in four years? Give me some credit for not being a moron.

But the alternative is so horrific, so unthinkable to me, that I will vote for him. I hope you will, too.

Solutions to Non-Existent Puzzles

2008-10-16T19:08:00.005-04:00

The Hindu drank the chai, the Christian had the iced tea, the Wiccan purchased the pumpkin frappuccino, the Muslim ordered the nonpork vanilla latte, and the Jew asked for just a free glass of water. Therefore, it was the atheist who stole the caramel macchiato.

The two words are “numnuts” and “fuckwad.”

666 [number of hypostases of God (3) x total number of episodes of Highway to Heaven (111) x number of brachiosauruses that Noah invited onto the ark (2)]

Graham, Robertson, and Warren are the liars.

Buchanan = c. (homosexual); George W. Bush = b. (moron); Jefferson = f. (atheist); Kennedy = a. (womanizer); Madison = e. (midget); Obama = d. (Muslim terrorist liberal)

SNEEZUS has a runny nose, PLEASUS is winking his left eye, TWEEZUS has no eyebrows, BREEZUS has unkempt hair, FREEZUS has an icicle hanging from his right earlobe, and CHEESUS is grinning. So, SQUEEZUS and JESUS are the two who are exactly the same.

God [Note: Other solutions may be possible.]

seven [one to notice that it’s dark, one to ask the Lord to show them the way to the light, one to collect donations to buy supplies for doing the Lord’s work, one to drive the truck that says “Jesus Loves You” to WalMart, one to preach the gospel to other shoppers, one to change the lightbulb, and one to shout “Hallelujah.”]

In order, from left to right: Deuteronomy, Revelation, Leviticus, 1 Chronicles, Casey at the Bat, 2 Chronicles, Bambi, and Wasilla

a. (none of the above)

Do Words Matter?

2008-10-11T04:33:00.010-04:00

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

George W. Bush
The only thing we have to fear is ... you know ... being scared. In other words, don’t be scared.

Nancy Pelosi
I've said it before and I'll say it again. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, fear will be off the table.

Barack Obama
Well, so here’s. What I would say. The only thing we have to fear. Is four more years. Of the same. Failed. Uh. Economic policy. And fear. Uh. Itself.

John McCain
The point is, the only thing we have to fear, my friends, is — as I found out years ago in a prison cell — fear itself.

Joe Biden
When I walked through the streets of Scranton, a senior citizen, an ex-millworker named Bob Pastaverde, living on social security and a small pension, he stopped me and he asked, “Senator Biden,” he asked, “do we have anything to fear?” And I told him, “No, Bob, nothing. The only thing we have to fear, you and me, is, as my mother would say, God bless her, fear itself.”

Sarah Palin
With a team of mavericks like John McCain and me, and also the strong American workers in those small towns just like Wasilla all over this great country of ours, also, well, doggone it, the only thing we have to be afraid of is just plain ol’ bein’ afraid, youbetcha.

Questions for Obama – or His Cheerleaders

2008-10-08T18:15:00.009-04:00

Although, I would never even consider voting for the intolerable and untenable McCain/Palin ticket, I’m finding it extremely difficult to work up any enthusiasm for – or trust in – Obama/Biden. I’m trying to do so, though, because I live in Florida, where my vote will matter much more than it would if I still lived in New York.

Yes, the Democrats’ platitudes are articulated better than the Republicans’, and, superficially, sound far more appealing. But even a cursory reading of the transcript of last night’s tea party (only an idiot would refer to it as a “debate”) demonstrates that Obama’s words are just as meaningless and empty as McCain’s.

So the following, organized by category, are some questions that I’d like to hear Barack Obama answer. I even invite any reader who's a member of the "We Love Obama" fan club to stand in as his proxy, as long as you can provide some cogent evidence that you're speaking for him. Please don't waste your time telling me how bad McCain would be; I already know that.

Economic Policy

You’ve spoken a lot about wanting to “fix” our energy system. Can you tell us about five specific actions toward such an end that you would either take directly as president or push Congress to adopt? Can you give us an estimate of the cost of these actions, and give us particulars about where the money and manpower would come from? If any of these actions would require a degree of government administration and/or oversight, can you explain in detail how that would work?

Same questions about fixing our health care system. Again, please be specific rather than speaking in generalities.

Same questions about our educational system, with the same requirement for details.

How, exactly, do you plan to prevent lobbyists from influencing government actions? What do you mean when you refer to “special interests,” and can you name any interests that aren’t special?

You’ve said over and over again that you would cut taxes for the middle class, and raise taxes for those making more than $250,000. Are you talking about gross or net income, and how would you specially ensure that there isn’t a huge loophole disparity between those amounts? What kind of dollar figures are you talking about for those cuts and those raises, and what will be the end result in total revenues collected each year through federal taxes?

Constitutional Issues

How will you go about deciding whom to appoint as a Supreme Court justice, should a vacancy occur. Without speaking in vagaries, what criteria will you use?

Assuming that a pregnant woman is healthy both mentally and physically, at what point does her fetus’s potential future trump her right to choose? How would you justify, constitutionally, ever denying a woman the right to make decisions about processes occurring within her own body?

Can you explain, exactly, how the faith-based initiatives you’d propose would work? Can you also explain how such initiatives would not conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment?

You voted to give telecoms immunity from prosecution after they had colluded in spying on American citizens. Can you explain how you justify that vote? If your answer is related in any way to realpolitik, can you clarify why that should take precedence over the Fourth Amendment?

Foreign Policy

What specific advantages in “the war on terror” do you think will be gained today by killing bin Laden? What specific advantages will be gained by capturing him and not killing him? Are there any other persons whom you would like to kill or capture? Why or why not?

Which countries do you currently consider America’s friends? Explain. Which countries would you like to bring into America’s circle of friends, and how would you do that? Explain. Which countries are most dangerous today to America, and how would you make them less dangerous? Using specific details, please explain that answer as well.

How do you envision an Iraqi democracy working? Can you support your ideas with examples drawn from Iraqi history, culture, or religious beliefs.

The Palestinians democratically empowered Hamas. Is that OK with you? Why or why not? Should the United States be more committed to worldwide democracy or worldwide freedom? Can you elaborate on the distinction between democracy and freedom?

Do you believe that all Jews worldwide are represented by Israel? If so, how? If not, then given that Israel is a quasi-theocratic state and not representative of an entire ethnic or religious group, how can you justify using the loaded phrases “never again” and “Holocaust” in statements supporting that country?

Do you agree that many of the problems in the 21st century world are caused by religious extremists? Why or why not? In what way are the beliefs of religious extremists different from the beliefs of other theists? What steps would you take to curb religious extremism around the world and in our own country?

Other Relevant Matters

Using as an example at least 25 votes during your years in the Senate, in what ways have you personally stood up to the Bush Administration? What was your own reasoning for casting those votes? Again, using as an example at least 10 votes during your years in the Senate, in what ways have you personally stood up to the majority of your own party? What was your own reasoning for casting those votes?

Under what circumstances would it be all right for a president to lie to, or mislead, the American public? If you answer “never,” then under what circumstances would it be all right for a presidential candidate to lie to, or mislead, the American public? If again you answer “never,” then can you explain your pro-FISA vote and your decision to bow out of the public campaign financing system, both of which you'd promised not to do.

As president, will you represent atheists as well as theists? If you agree to get advice from, and/or speak privately to, religious leaders, will you also seek advice from, and/or speak privately to, avowed atheists? Have you consulted on public policy with any representatives of atheist groups, or appeared at any atheist functions? If so, with whom, where, and when? What was your rationale for agreeing to appear at a public circus sponsored by Saddleback Church and hosted by its pastor, Rick Warren?

Whom are you thinking about for various cabinet and advisory positions, and whom are you considering for your presidential staff? Again, without speaking in vagaries, what criteria will you use to select these men and women?

Under what circumstances should a president seek evidence from experts rather than consulting opinion polls? Do you think the majority of the American people have ever held "wrong" opinions? What opinions are those, and why, in your view, were they wrong?

Those are 20 straight-talk opportunities. I’d be satisfied if Obama addressed himself to any four of these items — a mere 20% — in the next month. But I’ll bet he won’t. Any takers?

Sarah Palin Haiku

2008-10-05T13:34:00.003-04:00

Sarah’s running against the Democrat’s highfalutin eloquence by speakin’ in homespun haikus.

Maureen Dowd, "Sarah's Pompom Palaver"
The New York Times, October 5, 2008

So nice ta meetcha.
I heard a lot aboutcha.
Can I call ya “Joe”?

Are things bad or good?
I went to a soccer game
to find out from moms.

You know what I heard?
Fear about their investments.
“Goshdarnit,” I said.

Did I mention yet:
John McCain is a mav’rick.
I’m a mav’rick, too.

I’m from Wasilla,
in middle America!
It's right near Russia.

Some of my best friends
Are homos or Democrats.
Don’t let ‘em marry.

Global warming’s bad,
but don’t blame Americans.
It's Roe v. Wade's fault.

Corruption, darn it.
I saw that in the paper.
Don’t ask me which one.

Our third-grade students
are the strongest in the world.
Too bad they can’t vote.

Two years ago, there,
John McCain sounded a bell.
What a mav’rick, hey?

He carries that bell,
ringin’ it real loud for change
wherever he goes.

May I say something
more about bells and taxes?
Is that all right, Gwen?

If I had a bell,
I would never ring it for
Ahmadinejad!

And we must make sure
Eye-ran doesn't get a bell,
'cause they're not mav'ricks.

As for Israel?
I won’t second-guess my friends.
Jesus will do that.

Gen'ral Petraeus.
Have you ever heard of him?
Well, I have also.

I’ll say it again:
We are a team of mav’ricks.
I’m from Wasilla!

Just remember that.
Youbetcha, America.
Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Sometimes my eye hurts
from all this winkin’ I do.
Mav’rickin’ is hard.

Lend Me Your Earmarks: A Quiz

2008-10-04T15:42:00.021-04:00

The 451-page bailout bill is loaded with earmarks. Earmarks are governmental gifts, either through the direct dispersal of funds or the granting of tax exemptions. Even our simplest bills are chock full of these little presents to companies, states, and groups of people.

In a more honest country, the insertion of earmarks would be seen for what it is: blackmail. A senator or representative says to his or her colleagues: “Gee, I’d really like to vote for the bill authorizing the funds needed to explode that asteroid hurtling towards Earth. But, golly, I can’t do so unless you let my friends in the toilet bowl industry get a tax break on their kids’ Halloween costumes.”

All of our congresspeople claim to despise earmarks. But the extortion continues. Why?

I think it's because references to earmarks permeate our culture. In the following quiz, for example, I’ve isolated ten products, services, places, or groups for whom earmarks were sneakily entered into the bailout bill. Your job is to correctly identify the earmark recipient in each quote. As an extra help, I’ve given the source of each item, plus the page number on which the earmark appears in the bill. (Warning: not all the earmarks in the bill are referred to in the exact same words I’ve used.)

Just one answer per comment, please. And no more than two answers in total per commenter.

Bring me my earmarks of desire!
(William Blake – p. 300. Sec. 503)

If such as came for earmark, sir, went home shorn,
Where is the wrong I did them?
(Robert Browning – p. 295, Sec. 325)

De Camptown earmark five miles long
Oh doo dah day.
(Stephen Foster – p. 290, Sec. 317)

There’s nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As earmark and true religion.
(George Gordon, Lord Byron – p. 279, Sec. 308)

No one ever went broke in earmark underestimating the intelligence of the public.
(Elsa Maxwell – p. 298, Sec. 502)

In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating for a earmark
(Traditional – p. 280, Sec. 310 & 311)

The earmark [2 words] is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking
(Edna St. Vincent Millay – p. 289, Sec. 316)

I could never tell for sure whether I was in America or Earmark.
(Paul Theroux – p. 279, Sec. 309)

One little, two little, three little earmarks
(Traditional Children’s Song – p. 288, Sec. 314 & 315)

She stood in tears among the alien earmark
(John Keats – p. 182, Sec. 202)

I'm hoping you don't bail out on this quiz. So, I'm promising all correct answerers a tax exemption — as soon as I'm elected to Congress.

[Update (as of 10/06/08, 1:15 p.m. EDT): Fictional Treats from the Federal Treasury for — Gareth McCaughan (#1); DB (#3); yinyang (#4); yunshui (#5); Chicken Girl (#6); yinyang (#8); 1minionsopinion (#9); Gareth McCaughan (#10)]

Not-So-Live Blogging the Debate

2008-09-27T17:27:00.006-04:00

9:00 p.m.
Jim Lehrer greets the audience and explains the rules of the debate. Basically, he will ask questions and the candidates will then be free to talk about anything they choose in response. They lose points if they actually refer to the question posed. Obama and McCain step to their respective podiums. Jim Lehrer calls out “Hey, Exterminator, where are you?” The Exterminator enters with a mouthful of Good ‘n’ Plenty and says “Mffff mfffnfm mffn.”

9:01 p.m.:
Lehrer asks about the financial recovery plan. Both Obama and McCain are for and against it. The Exterminator pledges to help Main Street through this crisis, and also gives a shout-out to Elm Street, Oak Street, and Chestnut Drive. He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet, and shows the audience its contents: $5.67 and a snapshot of his cat who died in 1983. When asked to explain, he offers to split his funds with the American people and urges Obama and McCain to show “What’s in your wallet?” When neither of the other candidates take him up on his magnanimous offer, he looks at Lehrer through a piece of Saran Wrap and says “I’m for transparency.”

9:07 p.m.:
Lehrer urges the candidates to talk to one another about the recovery plan. Obama pulls up a chair and begins to chat with McCain, who rudely takes a phone call on his cell. The Exterminator tells a few jokes to himself and laughs uproariously.

9:13 p.m.:
Jim Lehrer asks the candidates if there are any “fundamental” differences between them on their reactions to the bailout plan. McCain points out that Obama is black, and Obama retaliates by stating that McCain is old. Then they trade made-up figures. The Exterminator demonstrates conclusively that he’s the only one on stage who’s wearing a Bugs Bunny tie.

9:16 p.m.:
Lehrer reminds the candidates that there’s a fiscal disaster happening and asks them what programs they would be willing to give up if they’re elected. The Exterminator unhesitatingly vows to stop spending the taxpayer’s money on repeats of The King of Queens. Obama says he’s willing to give up some programs, and then proves it by rattling off a string of initiatives that will apparently be paid for only by the richest 5% of Americans. McCain promises to cut wasteful spending, and immediately calls his real estate broker to put Obama’s and the Exterminator’s houses on the market.

9:40 p.m.:
The economic portion of the debate is over. Both Obama and McCain rush to get in touch with their accountants. The Exterminator bends over to pick up a dime he dropped. Lehrer polls the audience to see which candidate should be given the Miss Congeniality award, and McCain loses.

9:41 p.m.:
Lehrer asks the candidates about the “lessons of Iraq.” McCain praises the surge and sings “You Light Up My Life” to David Petreus. Obama wonders why we haven’t yet killed bin Laden, and carefully avoids saying “Osama.” The Exterminator calls for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from the United States.

9:44 p.m.:
McCain raises a number of points and Obama responds by praising Joe Biden and the surge. McCain and Obama get into an argument about the difference between strategy and tactics, and Lehrer suggests that they play a game of chess while millions of Americans watch. The Exterminator counts his money again.

9:48 p.m.:
Lehrer asks about Afghanistan, so the candidates retire briefly to watch a screening of The Man Who Would Be King. Obama talks smack about Pakistan and worries about the exploding flower trade in that part of the world. McCain reviews the entire history of the region, and pronounces “Waziristan” correctly. He also urges Obama to keep his mouth shut about U.S. plans to invade Pakistan. The Exterminator does a pretty good Sean Connery impression, but can’t seem to master Michael Caine.

9:55 p.m.:
McCain points out that he voted against James K. Polk’s war with Mexico. Then both McCain and Obama show off their jewelry. The Exterminator explains why bracelets give him a rash.

9:56 p.m.:
Lehrer tells the candidates that they’ve both wasted exactly the same amount of time, but laughingly chastises them for taking too long not to answer the questions. The Exterminator wonders aloud whether that’s a strategy or a tactic.

9:58 p.m.:
Obama and McCain are both worried about an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, and they both enunciate “nuclear” perfectly to distinguish themselves from George Bush. The Exterminator suggests that we start calling the country “Persia” again, and fuck ‘em if they don’t like it. McCain would not sit down at the table with Ahmadinejad. Obama, on the other hand is willing to send someone to sit down at a different table with a different person, but acknowledges that he doesn’t expect anyone to serve matzo ball soup. The Exterminator reserves judgment until he sees what the meal is, and hints that he might be willing to eat standing up.

10:09 p.m.:
McCain and Obama argue about what Henry Kissinger said when he was drunk the other night. The Exterminator amuses no one by speaking in a thick German accent.

10:16 p.m.:
Lehrer asks the candidates about Russia. All of them know where it is. The Exterminator volunteers that he once read The Brothers Karamazov and has eaten borscht many times. Henry Kissinger calls Lehrer and asks him to come over for some caviar and infused vodka after the debates.

10:22 p.m.:
For the 147th time, Obama says that McCain is absolutely right about everything and then calls him a liar. McCain accuses Obama of not understanding anything, and to be fair, demonstrates his own lack of understanding. The Exterminator tallies his change one more time.

10:27 p.m.:
Obama informs America that his father was from Kenya. McCain reminds viewers of his own history: apparently, he was once a P.O.W. The Exterminator tells a long, pointless anecdote about Nanny.

10:30 p.m.:
Obama and McCain hug their wives. The Exterminator searches the audience in vain for Mrs. Ex, who has fled the premises in embarrassment after noticing that her husband’s fly was open throughout the entire debate. Lehrer calls Kissinger to accept his invitation, but only on condition that Ahmadinejad will not be there.

A Comment Thread from Hamlet's Blog

2008-09-22T23:53:00.004-04:00

Confused said ...
I don’t really get what you’re asking here. To be WHAT? Or not to be WHAT?

Englishteacher said ...
I hate to be a punctuation nazi, Hamlet, but if you’re asking a question, it should end in a question mark.

Sirsleepsalot said ...
Are you saying that dying and sleeping are THE SAME THING???? Sheesh!

Hamlet said ...
@sleepsy:
No, I’m just saying that in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffel’d off this mortal coil must give us pause. Dying and sleeping are alike, but clearly they’re not the same. You wake up from sleeping but you don’t wake up from dying.

Sirsleepsalot said ...
Unless you die IN YOUR SLEEP!!!! LOL.

happy dane said ...
i do’nt think you shoud worry so much about being nobel in the mind. you sound like a graet princ. just go with what feels rite :)

Scienceprude said ...
We don’t sleep or dream when we’re dead. Learn some biology, jerkoff.

Horatio said ...
IMHO, this whole “to be or not to be” thing sounds like a big whine. Are you crazy, or are you just making believe?

Hamlet said ...
What ho, Horatio! LTNS! Listen, how strange or odd I bear myself — as I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on — don’t ask me about it, OK?

Rich3 said ...
I know this is a little off-topic, but does anybody have a horse for sale?

Grumble Bunny said ...
Great post! You’re soooo right! Fortune IS outrageous! The guy up the street won the lottery twice and I never won it at all! How is that fair?!!!!!

Zeen0f0Be said ...
Anybody who goes to an undiscovered country doesn’t deserve to return from its “bourn,” as you put it. I’m willing to bet that you haven’t even seen all of Denmark, but you’re in a big hurry to go elsewhere and spend good kroner in other places. How about supporting our workers here?

Hamlet said ...
@ Zee:
A friend of mine thinks that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but I also don’t mind picking up decent products from foreign manufacturers once in a while.

Wide Awake said ...
I have read your blog and find it both entertaining and informative. If you have problems waking up with that fresh and rested feeling, click the link below to learn about the personal benefits of YawnAway™.

Zeen0f0be said ...
@ Hammy:
Yeah, try buying some of that poisoned toothpaste in Sweden.

Hamlet said ...
@ Zee:
Well, the Swedes say the same thing about stuff made here. They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase soil our addition.

Englishteacher said ...
Sorry to nitpick again, H, but, honestly, who says “clepe” any more? What are you, like 50 years old?

Grumble Bunny said ...
Hamlet, I’m reading more of your fantastic post and you’re soooo right again! How’s this for the proud man’s contumely?! My brother is a English teacher and he keeps correcting my grammer! Between you and I, I could care less!!!!!!

Trollonius said ...
Can you provide any evidence whatsoever that conscience makes cowards of us all? I’ve got a conscience, and I’m not afraid of anything. I think you’re just talking out of your behind.

Zeen0f0be said ...
@Hammy, you said: Well, the Swedes say the same thing about stuff made here.
Is that why they keep crossing our borders illegally to look for better toothpaste? Get your facts straight.

Hamlet said ...
@Zee:
Well, I do have my facts straight. You can read any magazine and find out how corrupt Denmark is. This three years I have took note of it: the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe.

Englishteacher said ...
I don’t mean to be a pain, H, but it’s not “I have took note of it.” It’s “I have taken note of it.” When using the present perfect tense, “have” should always be followed by the past participle. Also, did you realize that the antecendents are unclear for both “he” and “his”?

Grumble Bunny said ...
Hamlet, this is the best post you’ve ever written! And you’re soooo right about the insolence of offices! Yesterday, I made a simple mistake and filed an email from Rosencrantz in the Guildenstern folder! My boss called me a rogue and peasant &#^%*! Now that’s insolent!!!!!

happy dane said ...
did you decide what to do yet? i know its nun of my busness but heres my too sense. i think you shoud “be” :)

Hamlet said ...
I’m cutting off all comments on this post. Sorry, you guys, but the rest is silence.

Haven't I Read This Somewhere Before?

2008-09-21T20:36:00.008-04:00

Having been a denizen of the Atheosphere for nearly two years, I’ve learned a lot of things. Some of those things I’ve been told over and over and over, as if I’m in the dumb class. But I finally think I understand them now.

I’ve also accumulated a shitload of old posts which I’d like to urge my newer readers to check out. You'll find that the ideas expressed in them, as is so often the case with posts written in the Atheosphere, are all completely original. I know you won’t want to miss any of the great things I’ve written. (Sorry, but I haven’t yet completed my promised posting of all my high school compositions.)

So here’s a list of stuff I’ve learned, along with the titles of relevant posts of mine that you might have missed.

All atheists are always rational. When an atheist forms an opinion about anything, he or she weighs the facts carefully. That’s why we all walk around with scales in our pockets. If challenged, we atheists can even provide irrefutable evidence for our preferences in politics, sports, pop culture, and cuisine. (See my previous post: “French-Cut Canned Stringbeans Are Creationist Bullshit.”)

Everything important in life can be subjected to the scientific method. Great music, art, and literature can’t be analyzed or proven, so atheists don’t need to know anything about those subjects. Sorry, but the beginning of the universe affects us much more than some trivial Beethoven tune, Monet sculpture, or Shakespeare novel. Being educated about history is commendable, but only insofar as we can use our knowledge to disprove religious interpretations of past events. (See my previous post: “Ancient Mesopotamia was not a Christian nation.”)

Electing Democrats will change America for the better. Here’s the proof: Republicans will not change America for the better. That’s why Barack Obama has stronger qualifications to be president than those of any other person who has ever lived, except, perhaps, for Abraham Lincoln. I say “perhaps” because we can’t know for sure; Lincoln’s looks were never judged by the women of “The View.” (See my previous post: “Whoopi and Joy Go Ga-ga Over Abe’s Beard ... but Elisabeth Hates His Wart.”)

It’s crucial for us atheists to keep reminding one another that creationism is not only stupid, but a big lie. If we don’t keep telling each other about this, some of us will forget, and start believing in Genesis. (See my previous post: “Creationism is Creationist Bullshit.”)

Any atheist who criticizes other atheists about anything is not a true atheist. He or she hurts the cause. (See my previous post: “The Cause Says Ouch.”)

If elected vice president, Sarah Palin will bide her time until John McCain dies (or is killed by her secret minions), and then turn the country into a theocracy. It’s fair to judge her by her church affiliation, which is obviously a strong indication of her beliefs. But woe betide theocrats under an Obama/Biden administration. The Democrats’ god-pushing is merely for political expediency; those secularists who are sharp enough to read their minds know that both Obama and Biden are totally commited to separation of church and state. It’s unfair to each of them to judge him by his church affiliation, which is obviously no indication of his beliefs. In any case, Obama’s and Biden’s personal beliefs can be easily distinguished from their non-personal ones. (See my previous post: “Personal Beliefs Are Clearly Different from Just Plain Ol’ Beliefs.”)

Anything that’s written or video-ed from a freethinking point of view is extremely interesting, and must be passed along to as many other freethinkers as possible. (See my previous post: “You’re an Idiot if You Don’t Watch This.”)

No one ever blogs just for the hell of it. We’re all on a mission to spread only the most credible information, and to refute ridiculous claims perpetrated by those who don’t agree with us. There’s something noble and important about that, even though most of us are way too humble to come right out and say so. Instead, we keep trying to change the mind of that poor, wishy-washy “one person in a thousand” who reads every single blog every single day. (See my previous post: “One Person in a Thousand Now Hates French-Cut Canned Stringbeans and Creationism.”)

Most skeptics have great senses of humor. Spelling “the” as “teh” is the height of wit. Any picture of Jesus, Mohammad, or John McCain is also hilarious. But poking fun at other skeptics is frowned on, because we’re all in “this” together and should be respectful of one another. Otherwise, we hurt the cause. (See my previous post: “It’s Not Funny When the Cause Says Ouch.”)

People who read and/or write liberal blogs are extremely well-informed about current events. If they also watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, their political acumen is unquestionable. When you read the same fact on more than one progressive blog, it must be true, so you can feel free to repeat it without seeking out any corroborating evidence. (See my previous post: “You’ll Never Guess What I Heard.”)

The only reasons that an atheist blogger might choose not to publish new posts are (1) he has died or is gravely ill; (2) worse, he has suddenly started believing in a god, or (3) worst of all, his computer has broken down. In any case, no one will ever read his blog again unless he publishes a long post explaining why he’d spent more than 72 hours without stating his opinion of (1) creationism, (2) Sarah Palin, or (3) French-cut canned stringbeans. (See my forthcoming post: “Creationism, Sarah Palin, and French-Cut Canned Stringbeans Are Responsible for the Current Fiscal Crisis.”)

Lurkers are the blue-collar workers of the Internet, waiting to hear the most intelligent argument to help them decide whom to support. They’re the impulse shoppers in the free market of ideas. Atheists and theists know that it’s worthwhile debating one another because you never know whose mind you might change. (See my previous post: “Are You There Lurkers? It’s Me, Exterminator.”)

Lurkers and others are invited to comment.

Bullshit Dressed Up

2008-09-15T00:08:00.009-04:00

This is supposed to be a post about The Flight of Peter Fromm, the latest selection of Nonbelieving Literati. And I will eventually get to a very short discussion of the book. But first, I need to tell readers a few facts about myself.

I’ve been an atheist for as long as I can remember. When I was four or five years old, it dawned on me that the concept of a god was ridiculous. It didn’t make any sense. I had no need of any deep philosophical or scientific arguments to help me arrive at that position, though; I wouldn’t have been capable of following them if I had. I just felt – “knew,” really – that the idea was silly.

As I grew to adulthood, I learned something about science, something about history, something about sociology, something about comparative mythology. I studied philosophy, even though, as I’ve said dozens of times, I think it’s mostly mental masturbation. I read the bible as a historico-mythical tract, from cover to cover a few times. I can now argue against the existence of god about as well as anyone can.

But, within myself, I don’t need to do that. The skepticism that first bloomed back when I was a sprout is still my primary reason for dismissing supernatural claims. They don’t make any sense.

So it should come as no surprise that I see the “study” of theology as a lot of pseudo-intellectual babble. Yes, it’s occasionally fun to read so-called “literary” exegeses of the bible, but the truth is: I don’t accept most of the bible as having any merit as great writing. Did you ever struggle through Leviticus or Deuteronomy? Or either book of Chronicles, f’Chrissake? From a literary standpoint, quite a few of the epistles are sheer crap. The writing in the Gospel of Mark is comparable to that of a simple-minded sixth-grader. And who can wade through the minor prophets without admitting to himself: This is junk compared to the works of Homer or the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Eddas or the Mahabharata.

But the study of theology is not about literary merit. It’s about ... what the hell is it about? Ostensibly it’s the study of god’s ways, of the relationship between humans and their deity. It’s loaded with nonsense masquerading as logic, twaddle pretending to be deep thinking, baloney passing as critical analysis. Theology is the justification of claptrap in the guise of rational discourse. It's bullshit dressed up. The child in me flips through a few pages of “theological” philosophy and whispers: This doesn’t make any sense.

And that brings me to The Flight of Peter Fromm. The author is Martin Gardner, whose writings I’ve been devouring since I was a teenager. Throughout my life, I’ve joyfully read dozens of Gardner’s volumes on mathematical recreations, science vs. superstition, even his entertaining annotations of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books.

But this Peter Fromm novel has no “soul.” Yeah, there are characters, or at least two-dimensional figures with characters’ names. But the book is mostly what, if it weren’t about theology, I’d call a novel of ideas. (How about: a novel of stupid ideas?) The title character seems to study every branch and sub-branch of 20th century theology he can, and Gardner describes them with varying degrees of insight and success.

After about 100 pages, I’d had enough. I just didn’t care at all about why Peter Fromm had had a fit while preaching an Easter sermon in 1948. Why bother wading through pages and pages of theological hogwash? Not having finished the book, I still don’t know why he had his breakdown; nor am I curious. Maybe the guy got pissed off at himself for having wasted so much time studying a non-subject. Whatever. I saw no reason why I should join him.

[Note: The next book we will be discussing, beginning on November 1, is Remembering Hypatia. See my sidebar for a link to the appropriate Amazon page.]

Seeds

2008-09-13T08:00:00.005-04:00

All the political talk about abstinence education reminds me of something that happened when I was thirteen years old. After my mother and younger sister had left the kitchen table one night, going off to struggle once again with the Problem of Evil Homework, my father lobbed a three-pack of Trojans into my lap.

“You know what those are?” he asked.

Schoolboys didn’t use the word “condoms” in those days. “Yeah. They’re ... um ... scumbags, right?”

“Exactly. Carry those with you wherever you go,” he said.

“I don’t think I need them yet.”

He rolled his eyes. “F’chrissake,” he said. “By the time I was your age, I’d been laid, relayed and parleyed.”

“Did Mom say it’s OK for me to have these?”

“What are you, a sissy? Why would I ask your mother?”

That made me laugh, because I remembered how he’d acted five years before. Here’s the story.

* * * * *
I was about halfway through third grade, and I had come to the realization that my parents were never going to show me where the seed store was.

Mom had repeated the story to me dozens of times: Dad had planted a seed in her belly. Eventually, that seed, which I envisioned as a kind of pink and slimy Chocolate Baby, became me.

We lived in an apartment in the Bronx, so I knew very little about gardening. The only flora we had in the house were Mom's snake plants, about ten of them, which migrated from one knickknack shelf to another every few weeks. Mom called it "redecorating" every time she moved a snake plant and rotated her figurines. Sometimes the snake plants were surrounded by dancing porcelain elves; at other times they formed the background for a Bo-Peep scene. I once cajoled her into letting me use one as a cactus in a mini-drama that I was acting out for myself with plastic cowboys. The idea was that the bad guys would keep shooting the cactus instead of the hero hiding behind it. Bang, blam, p-shoing! The cactus would fall over dead. After its third demise, my mother confiscated it, and placed it back where Nature intended it to be, between Madame Pompadour and Neptune.

What I did know about gardening, I had learned from a children's record popular in the '50s. An unctuous boy's voice sang: "Carrots grow from carrot seeds." I couldn't imagine a child that I identified with less than this gooey paragon of stick-to-it-iveness. His story took up two sides of a big orange 78, but the gist of it was that he insisted on planting a seed even though his whole family told him he was full of crap. I often wondered why he would go to all that trouble for one lousy carrot, when he easily could have bought a whole can at the grocery. Still, he bragged: "I watered it; I pulled the weeds."

But who watered me and pulled my weeds?

Certainly not Dad, despite what Mom told me. He just wasn't a planting kind of guy. I tried to picture him as a farmer, in overalls and a straw hat. I'd see him standing in the middle of a field of corn, removing a piece of straw from his mouth, and, with the other hand, taking a puff of the Pall Mall that he always held between his index and middle fingers. The rest of his cigarette hand would be balled up in a half-fist, carrying a few seeds, about 20 Green Giant niblets drenched in butter. That's what corn seeds looked like in my mind. Every now and then, Dad would bend over and dig a little hole, move his pinky to let loose one of the niblets, and cover it up again, stray ashes and all. He'd pull a green plastic drinking glass full of water from his back pocket, and dribble a few drops on the seed the way Mom watered her snake plants at home. Then he'd stand up and scratch the back of one leg with the toe of his opposite foot, as he frequently did when he was trying to get his bearings. After a few seconds, he'd replace the glass in his pocket, take a drag on his cigarette, and then put the straw back in his mouth and chew it the same way he worked a toothpick.

"How come Dad never planted anything else?" I asked Mom.

"Well, he also planted your sister."

"No, I mean flowers. Where did Dad learn to plant seeds?"

"I think when he was in the army."

If Dad was in earshot of this conversation, he would call out, "A lot before that." But he was always suspiciously noncommittal about the rest of the story.

"Where'd you get the seed for me, Dad?"

"Ask your mother."

"I thought you planted it."

"Well, we kind of did it together. But she remembers better. Ask her."

"Did you get the seed for my sister at the same store where you got me? Who cost more?"

"I think you might have been on sale. Your mother remembers."

But my mother's recollection was hazy, too.

"Where's the seed store? Is it on Fordham Road near Alexander's? Can you show me it next time we go shopping?"

"You know, I must have forgotten where the store is. Isn't that funny? I just ... I just can't think of it."

Yeah, right. This was beyond credibility. Mom never forgot anything. She knew the words to almost every song ever written.

It was clearly time for eight-year-old sarcasm."Oh, right," I said. "You got your kids there, and you can't remember? Come on, Ma. Where is it? What's such a big deal about a store? Just tell me where it is. I promise I won't buy any seeds. "

Finally, in desperation one evening when I was particularly determined, Mom and Dad waited until my sister had gone to sleep. Then they went and powwowed in a corner of the kitchen while I half-heartedly watched Father Knows Best and sulked. I knew that they knew that I was trying to listen to their conversation because they were speaking in Yiddish. Yiddish had been Dad's only language until he was six years old, and he was completely fluent. Mom's Yiddish, on the other hand, consisted of only about a hundred words, most of them either names of foods or synonyms for "shmuck." I could tell whenever she started having language difficulties, because she'd suddenly resort to whispered English. Then Dad would say, emphatically, "Sha, Honey. Sha. Die kinder! Shvubb'm hubb'm tsubb'm." At least that's what it sounded like to me.

The next thing I knew, Mom was rushing upstairs to a neighbor. "I'm going up to Barb's to borrow a book for you. We'll read it together when your program is over. Did you finish your math?"

"What kind of book?"

"We'll read it together when your program is over."

"You just said that. What's the book about?"

"You'll see."

Dad retired to the living-room couch. In his own way, my father knew best, too, and what was best for him was to lie there making believe he was taking a nap. Many years later, he confessed that he’d spent the next hour staring into the armrest, listening and giggling.

It wasn't long before Mom burst back through the door, carrying a thin book against her chest. Her arms were crossed around it, shielding it from my vision. The message was clear: something in that book was dynamite. She summoned me from the television and led me into the bathroom. She lowered the toilet seat lid, and sat on it, gesturing for me to sit on the edge of the bathtub.

This was not as odd a place for an intimate chat as it sounds, because it was the only private area in the entire apartment. In the one bedroom, my sister was already snuggled in for the night, snoring contentedly. In the living-room, where Mom and Dad slept on a fold-out high-rise, Dad was supposedly taking his undisturbable snooze on the couch. The uncleaned detritus from dinner still filled the kitchen, and, anyway, the room's acoustics made noises echo throughout the house; we didn't want to disturb Dad while he was feigning sleep and having a giddy panic.

Mom opened the book. I suppose it was something like What to Tell Your Precocious Nuisance About Sex. But I never knew, because she didn't show me the cover. Nor did she read it directly to me, or even hold up any of the pictures. Instead, she silently skimmed each page, and translated it into Idiotese. After every few pages, she'd add: "Remember, you can only do this if you're married."

I didn't see why I'd want to do it at all. The whole thing struck me as pretty messy. The book — or Mom's rendition of it — suppressed discussion of pleasure or love or emotional gratification of any kind. And that's not the only thing I didn't get. For a long time thereafter, I was under the impression that the man peed into the woman. I suppose the surroundings in which I had learned the information subliminally planted that seed in my head. In any case, the entire procedure sounded pretty inconvenient for both parties.

"You and Dad did that?"

"Yes."

"There's no seed store?"

"No. The seed was in his body."

"So are you telling me there's no seed store anywhere? Anywhere? In the whole world?"

"Uh-huh. This is what married people do here, and in Europe, and in Africa, and all over."

That sounded like baloney to me. "Nanny did it, too?"

"Yeah, Nanny, too. Everybody. But remember, you have to be married." The skeptic in me kicked into high gear. There was no way that Nanny ever did that. "I can't believe there's no seed store. Are you positive?"

"Uh-huh."

"What a gyp."

But it wasn't enough of a gyp to keep me from passing it on to all my friends. The very next day, I began holding forth to any kid who would listen. "Hey, guess what? There's no seed store." For a while, I had the reputation among my friends' mothers as the worst influence in the entire neighborhood, the pervert of the playground.

Most of the kids didn't believe me; about six of them grabbed each other's hands to form a circle, and danced around me, chanting "penis and vagina, penis and vagina." Jerry reached into his pants, felt himself carefully, and screamed at me, "You're lying. There's no seeds in it." Shelley’s mother never forgave me. She’s convinced to this day that he still wouldn’t know the facts of life if I hadn’t spilled the beans to him while we were riding on the seesaw.

Weeks went by, and Dad didn't say anything at all to me about my lesson. Then one night, out of the blue, he asked, "So Mom wised you up? About the seeds?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"There's more," he said, and winked. "Remind me to tell you when you're older."

"After I'm married?" I asked.

"Maybe a little bit before," he replied.

"When?"

"Not today, OK? I need to take a nap."

Thru the Night with a Blight from Above

2008-09-11T02:41:00.003-04:00

Even on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a cynic can’t help but be cynical. In fact, I can still remember my cynicism, glowing like a beacon of reality through my tears and fears on that surreal day itself.

As was everyone else in the country, my wife and I were glued to the television all day. We watched the towers fall, again and again and again. Frantically, we tried and tried to reach my sister on the phone; she worked just a short distance away from the World Trade Center. I attempted to call some good friends, who lived or worked only slightly further away. No luck there either.

So we watched TV. What else could we do? In the evening, briefly, the cameras left the devastation of lower New York City and the Pentagon, and focused on the steps of the Capitol, where U.S. Senators and Representatives had gathered together to show solidarity in the face of ... what? We didn’t know yet, although most of us suspected that Islamic extremists were the perpetrators. My wife and I had spent a lot of the day spouting off about the evils of religion. We had no evidence, of course, but we needed to rant about something.

Spokesmen for both major parties (Hastert for the Republicans, Daschle for the Democrats) tried to reassure Americans by promising that we’d identify and find those responsible for the heinous acts of that morning, and make them “pay the price.” As if reparations were possible.

Then, in a seemingly spontaneous act of unity, the congressional crowd began to sing “God Bless America.” I’m sure for most of the country it was a moving moment.

For me, though, a transplanted New Yorker, who had spent many, many hours working and playing in the buildings so recently destroyed, the song was a disgusting display. My wife and I looked at each other, and shook our heads in astonishment.

“Perfect solution,” she said. “Let’s ask Jesus for help. If they'd only known, they could have given him a buzz yesterday.”

“Yeah,” I added, “maybe next they’ll sing ‘If You Believe in Fairies, Then Clap Your Hands.’”

Then we both laughed at nothing funny, as I dialed the phone again.

Puzzling Atheists #7: Christian Zombie Poem

2008-09-07T15:57:00.022-04:00

Isaiah 26:19
Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

1 Corinthians 15:52
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

A few atheist bloggers seem to think it's clever to post famous poems, as if the rest of us would never deign to look at literature unless it's transmitted on a freethinker's Web site. I decided that I'd join in their fun, and publish a well-known masterpiece for my readers to learn. However, my memory not being what it used to be, I couldn't manage to recite an entire poem, no matter how hard I tried. All I managed to wind up with was a brand new example of doggerel, cobbled together from lines that originally appeared in other pieces of verse. Your simple job is to identify, by line, each work and its author.

Christian Zombie Poem

The grave’s a fine and private place,
all by all and deep by deep,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance,
That sleepen al the night with open ye —

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight,
In the forests of the night,
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
For ever warm, and still to be enjoy’d,

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
“Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Food, glorious food!”

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world,
“Surely the the Second Coming is at hand!
I’m afraid you must wait and have dinner tomorrow."

Because I could not stop for Death,
I go, I go; look how I go.
Run, run, run, run, runaway.
I doubted if I should ever come back.
You might as well live.

Please identify only one line and its author per comment. And no cheating by resorting to Google; you're on your honor.

[Update: Correct answers (as of 09/11/08, 3:15 a.m. EDT) — 1. Gareth McCaughan; 2. Lynet (title), yunshui (author); 3. Evo (title), Gareth McCaughan (author); 4. Gareth McCaughan; 5. yunshui; 6. Lynet; 7. Eric Haas; 8. yunshui; 9. Lynet; 10. Lynet; 12. Eric Haas; 13. chappy; 14. yunshui; 15. yunshui; 16. Lynet; 17. Gareth McCaughan; 18. yunshui; 19. Eric Haas; 20. yunshui (title), Lynet (author); 21. Gareth McCaughan (author only)]

Teach the Controversies

2008-09-06T00:17:00.006-04:00

Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has gone on record as saying that she believes public schools should “teach the controversy.” Normally, most people would understand that phrase as referring to the bogus debate between Scientists and Creationists. But the press has so far failed to uncover an amazing fact: Palin believes that there are other disputes in which the theories of Fundamentalist Christians have been unfairly banned from the classroom. Because of my skill and dedication, I’ve managed to dig up some important news for my readers. Believe it or not, I’ve learned of eight other controversies Governor Palin would like to see addressed in the schools.

Controversy One: The Light Bulb
Atheists say: Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb.
Fundamentalists say: God invented the light bulb.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: The history books say that Edison purchased the patent for the light bulb from one Henry Woodward, and then perfected it. However, Edison was a well-known fraud who falsified records. It wasn’t Woodward or Edison who said “Let there be light!” — it was God! Therefore, He’s responsible for all indoor and outdoor illumination, including light bulbs, the sun, and fireflies.

Controversy Two: The Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Atheists say: Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Fundamentalists say: God painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: No human since Biblical Times has seen the face of God. Yet, the portrait on the ceiling is a perfect likeness of the Lord. Only God himself could have painted that, because He’s the only one who knows what He looks like. Plus, do you know how high up that thing is? It’s impossible that Michelangelo could have reached it.

Controversy Three: The English Dictionary
Atheists say: There are many versions of dictionaries in English. Some of the earliest ones were compiled in the 17^th century. As the language evolves, dictionaries change, adding new words, and omitting old ones.
Fundamentalists say: There is only one True English Dictionary and God compiled it.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: The Gospel of John tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So even as far back as a few days before Man was created, God knew English. When He gave language to His beloved Children, He must have already known beforehand what every single word meant. It stands to reason, then, that He presented Adam and Eve with a dictionary. Since He gave Man free will, He allowed Adam to name the animals. But because Adam believed so sincerely in Jesus, the Lord spoke to him, and whispered the correct names. That’s how dictionaries are still compiled today. God speaks to the faithful, and they add new words that have existed since the Beginning of Time.

Controversy Four: The Calculus
Atheists say: Either Isaac Newton or Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, or both, “discovered” the Calculus. But it could also have been developed by Indian, or Islamic, or Japanese mathematicians.
Fundamentalists say: God discovered the Calculus.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: The atheists’ explanation involves too many variables, and it’s impossible to prove whether Newton or Leibniz came up with this great mathematical advancement. However, one well-known fact about Newton and Leibniz is usually ignored: Each one of them loved God with all his heart and soul. Therefore, God created the Calculus, and gave it to these two loyal servants. The claims of Indians, Muslims, and Japanese are obviously erroneous.

Controversy Five: “Casey at the Bat”
Atheists say: Ernest Lawrence Thayer wrote “Casey at the Bat” in 1888 as a column for the San Francisco Examiner.
Fundamentalists say: God wrote “Casey at the Bat” and dictated it to Ernest Lawrence Thayer as a lesson for potential sinners.
Rational for Teaching the Controversy: It’s not commonly known, but Mudville was a small town in liberal Massachusetts, populated by secularists, feminists, and homosexuals. God tested the local fans by allowing Flynn and Blake to reach base, and gave the populace ample opportunity to pray to Him for a win. Instead, they pinned their hopes on Casey, a famous agnostic of the period. At the end of the poem [Spoiler Alert: Casey struck out], “there is no joy in Mudville.” This is because the people there had failed to be saved, and they realized that they would shortly be watching losing game after losing game in Hell.

Controversy Six: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
Atheists say: Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony.
Fundamentalists say: God composed “Beethoven’s” Ninth Symphony.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: Everyone who has any familiarity at all with classical music has heard that Beethoven was deaf for many years of his life. How could a deaf person compose music? That’s just absurd. Could a deaf person have written “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” or “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”? Think about how ridiculous that idea sounds. So imagine how much harder it would have been for Beethoven, who wrote for about a zillion instruments and a gigantic chorus and four soloists. God must have sung into Beethoven’s ear, and the man just wrote down what he heard. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Controversy Seven: Cookies
Atheists say: Elves make Keebler cookies.
Fundamentalists say: Jesus makes Keebler cookies.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: There’s absolutely no evidence that the Keebler Elves exist. But the Bible tells us how great Jesus was at preparing food. In the Gospel of Mark 6:30-44, we learn that the Savior fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes. Not only that, but John 2:3-10 tells us how Jesus turned water into wine. Compared to those great miracles, baking up a batch of cookies would be a snap. Clearly, Jesus makes Keebler cookies.

Controversy Eight: This Post
Atheists say: The Exterminator wrote this post.
Fundamentalists say: Satan wrote this post.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: In the Name of All That’s Holy, it’s obvious, isn’t it?

McCain's Hate Speech

2008-09-05T04:43:00.007-04:00

In case you didn't get a chance to see it, and because I'm always willing to take one for the team, I watched the entire "acceptance" speech of John McCain. The words from beginning to end were repugnant. The crowd was bellicose and mean-spirited, and if McCain had told them to go out and beat up fags or evil atheists or kikes or niggers or whatever, they would have goose-stepped out of the hall and done it. The assembled Republicans were like a small ugly army of belligerents who wore their hatred on their sleeves, and the "U.S.A." they kept shouting about is a completely different place than the America I inhabit. When McCain grudgingly talked about Obama's achievement, and how he admired it, the crowd applauded limply; but they were in "fuck them" mode from the very first words to the final chantings by their candidate of "fight for" this, "fight for" that, "fight for" the other. That's what they wanted: to go out and knock someone's block off.

Of course, there was plenty of god, god, god. At one point, McCain mentioned that he had been a servant — ostensibly to the country — but as I learned from Evo yesterday, that word "servant" is code for "servant to god." And sure enough, when he said "servant" the second time, the camera zeroed in on a face in the crowd, lifted to the ceiling and mouthing the word "god," as if he actually saw somebody waving to him from overhead and urging him to go kick the shit out of a liberal.

Early in the speech, a couple of female protestors in the crowd — how the fuck did they get in? — were physically dragged from the premises, all of which was caught on camera. McCain asked the crowd: "Please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static." That may have been a good thing, because some strong macho war-machine otherwise might have decided to save America right there.

At one of the many times that McCain was crowing about what a reformer he'll be, one person in the hall held up a sign that said: "Mavrick." That misspelled word sums up exactly what I thought of the crowd's intellect.

I also learned something I hadn't been aware of before. McCain was once a Prisoner Of War. Did any of my readers know that?

The one thing to be optimistic about is how ineptly the speech was delivered. Obviously reading from a teleprompter, the Mavrick stumbled over words, misphrased a few sentences, and even skipped something he started to say when the crowd interrupted him with applause; either he or the teleprompter or both couldn't figure out where he'd left off. Some of the time, he didn't seem to know where the beginning of a sentence was leading. Once or twice, he paused for what he must have thought would be applause, although there was none. A few other times, he seemed to be surprised when the audience did hoot and holler.

Obama seemed so much more like a leader in his speech. I'm not sure he can translate that on the stump and in the debates, but if he can, the race is over. If not, he probably deserves to lose.

You Can't Tell the Players Without a Scorecard

2008-09-04T02:29:00.003-04:00

Sarah Palin is a dangerous and crazy right-wing creationist fundy, who believes in abstinence education, opposes abortion rights, and thinks the “controversy” should be taught in public schools.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, is a liberal Roman Catholic with alleged respect for the non-religious, who believes in real sex education, supports abortion rights, and — while not on the record in the bogus creationism-evolution debate — most likely supports the teaching of only science in the science classroom.

So here’s the tally, in their vice presidential acceptance speeches:

Mentions of “God”
Palin – 2; Biden – 8

Mention of “religion”
Palin – 1; Biden – 0

Mention of “faith”
in its specifically religious sense:
Palin – 0; Biden – 1
in its sneaky, subliminally religious sense (viz., “faith in the troops”)
Palin – 1; Biden – 0

Mention of a “cross”
Palin – 0; Biden – 1

Clearly, the Palin speechwriters decided to play down her rabid religiosity, to make her more palatable. But ... ummm ... What the fuck is going on here?

What Obama Must Do

2008-08-29T16:19:00.009-04:00

Sarah Palin is a very bad choice — for Democrats. The Obama campaign needs to reevaluate their stupid strategy and tactics immediately. Here are some reasons why Palin should be making Republicans salivate.

She's hardcore pro-forced-maternity. She’s anti-gay. She’s got that whole Christian thing imbuing her with a godly glow. That will mobilize the fundies and give "undecided" woo-ists a good reason to abandon Obama.
She can say, over and over again, something along the lines of: “The Democratic candidates talk a lot about what they've done in the past for women. But the Republican party is the one that really empowers women today." I predict that she'll mention Hillary's "18,000,000 cracks in the glass ceiling” many, many times throughout the campaign.
She nullifies Biden. Because of his age and potential "chivalrousness," he will not be comfortable attacking her with full vigor. Or else, he'll look like an asshole, and probably put his foot in his mouth. She, on the other hand, can lace into him freely — and, no doubt, will.
As a former beauty queen and sports anchor, she won't be too threatening to Republican sexists, who will be able to dismiss her — privately of course — as "window dressing," all the while talking publicly about how egalitarian their party is.
She'll be able to play on the just-below-the-surface justifiable anger of middle-of-the-road white women, who feel as if their gender issues have once again been forced to take a back seat to African-American issues. This has been going on since shortly after the Civil War, when the word "male" was added to Section 2 (which addressed voting rights) of the Fourteenth Amendment.
She's young enough for Republicans to fantasize about her running for president eight years (or only four!) from now, after she has raised her national profile in the vice presidency.
She's a fisherwoman and hunter, and her husband is a sportsman. She has been a member of the NRA all her life, and her husband is a longtime union member. Those blue-collar workers, the electoral base that, apparently, must be pandered to, will eat that up.
She really can call herself a maverick because she stood up to Republican insiders in Alaska, and raised hell about corruption within her own party. Pat Buchanan characterized her as "a reformer with guts." In fact, she ran her gubernatorial campaign as an agent of change. So the Democrats can no longer claim sole ownership of that word. (Biden, on the other hand, is clearly a Washington insider, no matter how many times he took the train back and forth during the last thirty-six years.)
She cut property taxes when she was mayor of Bumfuk ... excuse me, Wasilla. Americans hate property taxes.
She has a son going to Iraq in September, just as Biden does. So all the before-the-fact presumptive heroism of Beau Biden is moot now. On top of which, the Biden kid is a privileged captain, while her son is an enlistee first private.

So here are some things the Democrats must do if they want to win:

Immediately give up on pandering to the evangelical fascists, and start trying to excite freethinkers and other secularists, who are embittered by the constant god-pushing of the primaries and the convention.
Cede the gun-lovers to the Republicans. Advocate, loudly and proudly, for gun control.
Stop being so wishy-washy about abortion and categorizing women’s rights by how many months have elapsed in a pregnancy. Say Roe v. Wade as often as possible.
Don’t keep telling us what a good man John McCain is, and how he served his country heroically. He’s not a particularly good man; he’s a fucking hustler. And it doesn’t take any courage — or military savvy — to get shot down.
Resist the temptation to praise Hillary at every goddamned opportunity. Mentioning her over and over merely pours salt on the wounds of her supporters. She and Bill know that. Instead of singling her out, talk about how women will be empowered in an Obama administration. Maybe even make a promise to appoint women to the Cabinet and/or the Supreme Court.
Avoid characterizing Michelle as a wife and mother, and give her free rein to open her effective mouth and speak out strongly on the issues.
Don’t fall into lockstep with the Republicans on the Russia/Georgia situation. Point out how the Bush White House helped to instigate a world crisis.
Refer as often as possible to the Bush family’s friendship with the ruling Saudi theocrats. If necessary, trot out some photos of their mutual hugfests.
Come up with a substantive alternative energy plan, and explain how that will ultimately help Americans save money.
Talk about an education plan that will keep our public schools out of the hands of fundamentalists, who discourage children’s interest in science, and by so doing, may hinder future scientific advancements. Excoriate states that propose bills or amendments (like Florida 7 and 9) that will publicly finance religious teaching at the expense of secular education.
Drop all support for faith-based initiatives, reading aloud, if necessary, the First Amendment to the Constitution and appropriate passages from the writings of the Founding Fathers (for example: Thomas Jefferson's "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" and James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance”). Remind Americans, again and again and again, that one of the things that makes our country great — and separates us from the Muslim world — is our absolute refusal to bow to the authority of religious extremists.

I don't know how the rest of you feel about my suggestions. But if Obama does all those things, he might actually earn my vote.

Carnival of Gaggy Songs

2008-08-28T19:58:00.015-04:00

OK, I’ve been so involved thinking about religion and/or politics lately, that I’ve forgotten about the music that always sings in my heart. (Mrs. Ex might say that it sings in a different body part, especially after I’ve eaten beans.) Anyway, I’ve decided to share with my friends some songs that always make me gag. For your reading, listening, and viewing pleasure, they’re organized by category, and I’ve included short commentaries to explain my choices. I hope you don't lose your lunch when you click on the links.

Gaggiest Woo Song
Oh, there are so many songs in this category, where do I begin? Hardly anything can beat "Onward, Christian Soldiers" for militant Christian disgustingness or "Rock of Ages" for that old time self-righteous glow. When it comes to mixing patriotism and woo, it's impossible to top "God Bless America." But my all-time gaggiest Woo Song has to be When You Wish Upon a Star, for its crypto-religious message. In the version linked here, the "crypto" is elevated to "quasi." Or "Quazy," depending on your worldview.

Gaggiest Commercial Jingle
I first heard this tune in the 1950s, but it still goes through my head every time I’m ambivalent in the cereal aisle. So many crunchable treats, so few earworms. By the way, I blame The Betty Crocker Pick-a-Pack Package Song for my lifelong love of lousy alliteration. Bonus: If you listen closely to the commercial, you'll find out which cereal is gay.

Gaggiest Love Song by a Sperm Donor
I'm not convinced that every woman would find it endearing to know that some man interpreted her pregnancy as a sign of love for him. Having My Baby is clearly anti-abortion propaganda, but most people don't know that the voice of the person singing along with Paul Anka is a young Antonin Scalia. If you watch the linked video, you can see the result of a wild night the two guys had after recording the tune.

Gaggiest Hymnlike TV Theme Song
Whenever anybody asks me "Why," I'm always tempted to respond: "Why? Because we like you!" The Mickey Mouse Club Closing Theme is so simple-mindedly contagious that it's been elbowing far more important stuff out of my brain ever since I was a little boy. Why? Because I'm a fucking idiot.

Gaggiest "Everything’ll Be All Right, You’ll See" Song
Every song in this particular category is nauseating, but there's only one with a tune so sappy-catchy that it keeps ringing and ringing and ringing in my ears until I want to move into a cave just so I'll never have to see any sunlight again: Tomorrow.

Gaggiest "Well, That Really Fucked Up My Life" Song
Teenagers and young adults don't seem to melodize about personal tragedies any more the way my generation did. We had quite a few hit tunes about dying young lovers: in a plane crash, a motorcycle wreck, a drowning, and even from leukemia. Where do I begin to tell the story of how sick these ditties make me? But how can you beat a car crash during a stock car race for pathos? If it were up to me, Tell Laura I Love Her would be played before every NASCAR event. The cartoonist who created the linked video must have no soul. Hey, he's just like me!

Gaggiest Song That Mentions Both Kittens and Strudel
I don't know if there are any other songs in this category, but this number is definitely one of the most stomach-turning music-and-lyrics combos ever written. As most of my regular readers know, I don't tend to go gaga over kittens. However, I've never revealed before that crisp apple strudel is also not one of My Favorite Things. As far as I know, the linked version is the only performance featuring a woman who was found guilty of negligent homicide, and not just for killing the song.

Gaggiest Non-Children’s Song in Which a Word Is Spelled Out
I have very little R-E-S-P-E-C-T for any lyricist, even if she's a W-O-M-A-N named G-L-O-R-I-A or L-O-L-A, who thinks it's clever to resort to spelling; it’s really just a cheap trick for creating doggerel. Nine letters (no prizes for identifying them) rhyme with "me," "knee," and "chimpanzee." The worst of these songs, though, is the treacly D-I-V-O-R-C-E, even if it's used — as it is in the linked version — to help people learn English.

Gaggiest Song About Something Appetizing to Eat
You might think that I would love any song about food, perhaps with the exception of The French-Cut Canned Stringbeans Polka. But you may have forgotten this saccharine sweet ditty that my wife and I sing whenever we’re trying to resist dessert (which, to be honest, is rarely to never). This may be the only version of The Candy Man that doesn't put me into insulin shock.

Gaggiest Song Ever
Let's face it. Kumbaya is the sine qua non of gaggiosity. Someone's retching, my Lord.

I Think, Therefore I Am Orange

2008-08-27T04:00:00.007-04:00

Twenty Things I Was Thinking About While I Watched the Second Night of the Democratic Convention

I wonder if there are any more Cheetos in this house.

Why don’t Hillary and Bill start a third party?

When is someone gonna talk about torture, and invasions of privacy, and politicizing the justice department, and falsifying scientific data, and lying to Congress, and the government’s failure to help disaster victims, and ...?

Whatever happened to Walter Mondale?

Why should I care if Barack Obama is good at doing laundry and making beds?

Do the speakers get those bathrooms where the toilets flush automatically?

I wonder if Mrs. Ex remembered to buy more beer.

Why does every speech have to end with God bless America?

Did I just see Judy Tenuta in the crowd? Whatever happened to her?

If one more person talks about Kennedy and going to the moon, I’m gonna start singing “That’s Amore.”

When are they going to show the number to call to vote for Obama?

Are all those signs really good for the environment?

Everybody says that Bush was such a disaster for America during the last eight years, so why didn’t any of the speakers call for his impeachment?

Since the convention is held at the Pepsi Center, do people who prefer Coke have to smuggle it in?

Hey, isn’t that delegate a girl I used to date in high school? Whatever happened to her?

What's the point of all that waving?

If Jimmy Carter is at the convention, who’s out building houses for poor people?

Wow, Chelsea looks good!

There’s gotta be Cheetos and beer somewhere in this fucking house.

How come no one mentioned the Constitution?

An Excerpt from My Narrative

2008-08-26T01:43:00.010-04:00

As we all know, nowadays it’s not sufficient for a presidential candidate to stand on the right side of all the issues. He has to have a narrative, a story of a life dedicated, from infancy, to the themes that appear in his present-day speeches. His campaign staff must produce a stirring, motivational documentary, intoned by a rich and resonant voice, showing how the candidate’s childhood helped shape the youngster into the dynamic adult force he is today.

Unfortunately, in my case, I’m afraid that the filmmakers would have to resort to a heavy dose of fabrication. I didn’t have any themes as a kid, except for maybe wangling to get my mother to buy Sugar Pops instead of Shredded Wheat. Still, I know that if The Exterminator/Chaplain ticket is going to be a viable one, the audience at our convention deserves to see an inspirational movie. We’ve already invested in plenty of buttered popcorn, so what the hell, huh?

OK, then. It’s your lucky day, because here’s a short excerpt from The Man From “Bullshit”: A Word We Can Believe In.

Imagine, if you will, a Gregory Peck type reading the following rousing script, as a montage of appropriate Bronx childhood pictures, bathed in a warm and surreal glow, flickers on the screen.

When that young boy's mother, struggling, as all American mothers did, to make sure her children grew up happy and healthy in a world that cared about everyone, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual preference, or sports affiliation ...

... when that mother looked up at her inexpensive clock, the only clock the family could afford, with a second hand that took more than a minute and a half to make its poor but proud circuit ...

... when she looked and saw that it was time for her son to get his much needed, life-enhancing rest in his humble, but red, fireman pajamas ...

... pajamas which were made by American workers toiling in American factories on American soil with American needles and American thread, and paid for with American credit that accumulated American interest ...

... when that young boy’s mother would see him in those pajamas, rather than his street clothes, she’d know in her heart, even then, how well she had impressed upon him the crucial need for change ...

... and when she would summon up the meager energy she had left after a grueling day of working in an office for an uncaring boss who actually made her work in that office, although he never did manage to pronounce her name correctly ...

... when that mother would whisper, "Ex, it's time for you to go to bed" ...

... then ...

... then that young boy, with the spark of greatness already deep in his non-soul, would say, "Ma" ...

... and that word “Ma” would be imbued with the lovely loving love and the hopeful hoping hope that all boys in this beautiful and free land of beauty and freedom feel when they speak their mother’s name ...

... "Ma," he would say, in the same strong and ringing tones, and in the very same straight-talking phrase he might still use today when faced with a similarly difficult problem ...

... “Ma,” he would say. "I'm not convinced."

You'll See I'm the Guy (with Biden)

2008-08-23T14:25:00.008-04:00

[from Fox News:
August 14, 2007 – NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE
White House hopeful Joe Biden said Monday that Democrats lost the last two presidential elections in part because they let themselves be portrayed as anti-God.]

[from a DNC Press Release:
Senator Obama is a committed Christian, and he believes that people of all faiths have an important place in American life,” said Joshua Dubois, Obama For America Director of Religious Affairs. “He's proud to work with the Democratic National Convention Committee on a Convention that fully engages people of faith in dialogue, celebration and prayer. We are honored that so many religious leaders are reaching across partisan and ideological lines in this Convention to address the values that matter to Americans."

“Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith – and this Convention will demonstrate that in an unprecedented way,” said Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the DNCC. “As Convention CEO and a pastor myself, I am incredibly proud that so many esteemed leaders from the faith community will be with us to celebrate this historic occasion and honor the diverse faith traditions inside the Democratic Party.”

Each night of the Convention, the official program will begin with an invocation and end with a benediction delivered by a national faith leader or an individual who is active in their local faith community. Among the group selected to deliver these opening and closing prayers are a Republican pastor of a leading Evangelical church in central Florida, a major young Evangelical leader, a nun from a diocese in Cleveland and a Methodist couple, both ordained ministers from Arvada, CO.]

You’ll See I’m the Guy (with Biden).
(Sung by Barack Obama to the tune of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds")
Try it as a karaoke!

(VERSE 1)
Picture myself in the polls as a winner,
By pandering, please the Warren-oid guys.
Somebody calls me, I answer quite slowly,
The man with the Delaware ayes.

Sellin’ change hourly, yellin’ my dream.
How come those workers still dread?
Look for the man with the nuns on his side,
And I’ve won!

(REFRAIN)
You’ll See I’m the Guy (with Biden)!
You’ll See I’m the Guy (with Biden)!
You’ll See I’m the Guy (with Biden)!
Ah...

(VERSE 2)
Follow his frown on our policy foreign.
Democracy needs him – ‘cause God’s in the sky.
Everyone smiles as we Christianize voting
And mention that Jesus says “hi.”

Newspaper columnists beg us for more,
Waiting to see if we’ll pray.
Biden’s in church with his head in the clouds,
And I’ve won!

(REFRAIN)

(VERSE 3)
Picture myself with my faith through the nation
With plasticine horseshit with biblical ties.
Suddenly someone is here with my church style,
The man with the Delaware ayes.

(REFRAIN)
(PLEASE REFRAIN ...)
(... FROM VOTING FOR THEOCRATS!)

(For getting me pissed off enough to bother writing on the weasel-y Democrats yet again:
H/Ts to KC, vjack, and PZ Myers)

Quazy Quistian Question # 8

2008-08-21T01:51:00.008-04:00

Mrs. Ex and I have some friends who love going on cruises. Every year, when these folks plan their vacation, they toss out the same annoying suggestion.

Mrs. Friend: Why don’t you join us this time?

Us: No fucking way.

Mr. Friend: There’s tons of free food. And not a French-cut canned stringbean to be seen.

Us: No fucking way.

Mrs. Friend: Twenty-three different bars. There must be at least one that doesn’t have country music or sports on a giant TV. Last year, I did karaoke!

Us: No fucking way.

Mr. Friend: You won’t believe the shops. The last boat we were on had at least seven different book stores.

Me: Really? Do they sell ...?

Mrs. Ex: No fucking way.

Mrs. Friend: You won’t believe the interesting people you meet!

Us: No fucking way.

Both friends: Are you sure?

I don’t want to accuse my friends of being proselytizers, but they’re more stubborn than Jehovah’s Witlesses. And they’re not just preaching about some fantasy afterlife with 144,000 inhabitants; they’re talking about that many residents on a real-life boat. We’d be surrounded by water, with no way for my wife and me to exchange secret glances, make a big show of looking at our watches, and say, “Oh, shit, look at how late it is. We’ve got a big day tomorrow, so we’d better get home. Too bad, because we were having such a great time.”

What our friends can’t get through their heads is that for both my wife and me, a cruise is the ultimate nightmare scenario. What happens if we’re stuck with a shipload of bores? Or, worse, cheery people? Yikes.

Invariably one of our friends, says “It’s not like it’s forever. It’s only a 10-day cruise.”

Which gets me to wondering: What if it were forever? Even the friendliest, most bubbly idiot knows someone whose company he or she doesn’t enjoy. There’s no one who gets along with everybody. Will Rogers was full of shit: If he “never met a man I didn’t like,” as he claimed, I’m pretty sure he stayed locked in his bathroom most of the time.

Anyway, Mrs. Ex and I are both atheists, so we don’t have to worry about being button-holed over and over again by glad-handers in paradise. Or people who want to show us pictures of their grandkids. But what if we were believers? I’m fairly certain that we wouldn’t be eternally happy unless we had complete veto power over the souls with whom we had to associate. Of course, there are thousands of men and women that we would find fascinating, but, to tell the truth, they’d probably want to steer clear of us. Believe it or not, some people think my wife and I are unsociable.

So what goes on in heaven? Does everybody suddenly become a Friendly Theist? Are you so thrilled to finally be in the presence of your god that you forget how tedious most conversations are? Do you have to spend eternity making stupid chit-chat with dull strangers, or can you join special-interest groups like the ones at Atheist Navel? Do you actually get to choose your neighbors, or are you just dumped into the next available room? What if the couple next-door likes to wake up early in the morning and mow their Edenic lawn while yelling a chipper “hello” to every car that drives by?

We’re talking about a long, long, long time. No fucking way.

Quazy Quistian Question #8
When you die and go to heaven, what happens if your table assignment is with people you find boring? Can you ask god for another seat? Explain your response.

Mrs. Numbeh Faw

2008-08-19T01:00:00.007-04:00

[Yeah, this is an atheist blog, but sometimes I get so tired of the same old head-banging topics: religion sucks, fundies are stupid, creationism is nonsense, American politicians have sold out to ignorance. Yadda, yadda, yadda, and blah, blah, blah. When I feel that way, I like to clear my brain by publishing a post that’s apropos of absolutely nothing. Now it so happens that, since my wife and I are atheists, we didn’t join the rest of the people in Central Florida today, all of whom are praying that God will prevent Hurricane Fay from blowing their houses away. Instead, we did the most reasonable thing we could think of; we went out for Chinese food. And because going out for Chinese food always reminds me of my grandmother, I thought I’d share the following story.]

All young boys get embarrassed easily by their relatives. For an eight-year-old male, just acknowledging the existence of parents or grandparents is emasculating. But Nanny was a special case. Being with her was like having one of those dreams where you suddenly discover that you've got no clothes on — only I was awake and fully dressed. To me, that was the worst kind of naked.

The most serious humiliations always seemed to occur when we went to Nanny's favorite torture-site, her personal Chinese place. The Canton Dragon was an overcrowded mama-papa joint under the elevated on Jerome Avenue. Sometimes the restaurant would get so busy that a line of people would extend out the door. Waiting families would stand outside and scream conversation at each other as the trains clattered overhead.

But mere human bodies could not deter Nanny. She always managed to shove her way indoors, using me as a battering ram. Every time she'd push into someone, she'd shrug at the person and say, "Sorry. My grandson has no manners when he's hungry."

If a member of the immigrant family who owned and worked in the restaurant wasn't immediately available to seat us, Nanny would take offence. "Boy," she'd say, shaking her head. "This is some way to run a business. Maybe that’s how they do it in China, but in America people’s feet have corns."

Complaining, Nanny would head to the little couch next to the cashier's booth. She'd lower herself with a sigh that could be heard for miles, and explain to everyone within earshot: "My girdle is killing me." The word "girdle" would send me racing over to study the fish tank in the window. There were never any fish in it, but the plastic palm tree reminded me of China. I wished I was there.

All the waiters knew my grandmother. Whoever noticed her first would come and greet her with a slight bow and a joking "Ah, Mrs. Numbeh Faw." They called her Mrs. Numbeh Faw because, after spending an hour grumbling about the small type on the menu, she always wound up ordering the same combination platter.

"Mrs. Numbeh Faw. You eating with nephew again?"

"Don't you remember? I thought you people were so smart. He's my grandson."

"No. You not ode enough to have so big gran son. Mus' be nephew, Mrs. Numbeh Faw. You not ode enough to be bubba."

Before "Bubba" was co-opted by Southern good-ol' boys, it was the Yiddish word for grandmother. To Nanny, it conjured up a picture of a stooped, gray-haired old crone in a babushka, who smelled of chicken fat and could hardly speak English. Dad's mother, when she was alive, had been a bubba. But Nanny felt that this was in stark contrast to herself. Did a bubba put on costume jewelry earrings and a nice hat with a veil every day, and fight for a subway seat on her way to work? Nanny had spent her life climbing uphill, away from her forebears, to achieve the heights from which she felt free to bitch in a restaurant. Unlike a bubba, she was in control.

Still, she couldn't imagine how a Chinese waiter knew anything in Jewish.

"You understand 'bubba'?"

"Oy, Mrs. Numbeh Faw, you tink we have no Juicy people here but you? Come. I put you at best table."

Nanny prided herself on getting personalized service, even though, to me, all the tables looked exactly the same. We'd sit with our six-page menus and scan the choices.

Nanny would make a big deal of moving her menu back and forth in front of her eyes. If she captured an audience, she'd turn the menu upside-down, too. "What do they have, a deal with an optometrist? Can you read these chicken scratches? No wonder they all need glasses."

Eventually, she'd select her combo plate. Everything I wanted would be vetoed.

"You don't like that."

"Yes I do."

"You like moo goo gai pan? Since when?"

"Since always. That's what I want."

"Listen, believe me. You don't like that. Nobody likes it. I'm not gonna waste my money and have you leave over. Get a number four. It's the best thing here. They make it special for me."

For an appetizer, she'd insist that I ask for either the won-ton or egg-drop soup, because it came free with your meal.

"I don't want soup. I don't like soup."

"Of course you like soup. What are you talking nonsense for? Who doesn't like soup? I'm paying for soup, and you're gonna eat it."

She'd lean over to the nearby strangers at their inferior table. "Ever hear of a boy who doesn't like soup? Meet my grandson."

Eventually, the waiter would show up at our table to take our orders. "Let me guess, OK? Two numbeh faw?"

Nanny would light a Winston as we waited. She'd hold it in her mouth long enough to dye the filter bright red with lipstick, all the while puffing hard enough to send smoke signals throughout the Bronx. Then she'd set the cigarette down.

"This is what they call an ashtray?" she'd say, not so much to me as to the walls.

"What's wrong with it?" I'd ask.

"Lookit! This skimpy thing, by you it’s an ashtray? What is there, suddenly a shortage of glass?"

"Your cigarette fits."

"And what if I want another one later? Where am I gonna put it, in my hat?" She'd turn in her seat to address the people at the next table again.

"Excuse me." Then she'd point to me and say to one of our neighbors, "Tell my grandson. Tell him what you think of the ashtray. It's for midgets, right?"

"Well," her confidant would whisper to me, talking to an obvious idiot, "it is a little small."

Nanny would turn back to me in triumph. "Y'see? Y'see? A perfect stranger" -- and here my grandmother would poke her finger toward the person as if she were pointing at an inanimate object -- "agrees with me."

That was about the time our soup would arrive. The waiter would place our bowls in front of us. "Ready faw too code soup now?" I'd immediately try running avoidance plays. "Mmmmmm," I'd say, blowing on the won ton in my spoon to cool it off. "This is good." Nanny would take one taste and signal for the waiter, who, in anticipation, would be lurking nearby.

"What are you talking?" she'd say to me. "It's freezing. Send it back."

"It's hot enough for me. Really."

"Since when are you a snowman? Don't eat that won ton. Send it back."

"I like it this way. Please let me keep it."

"I don't understand kids today with their rock 'n' roll and their cold soup. No wonder they can't keep their shirt tucked into their pants."

Of course the soup would be returned to the fire, along with our tea. If Nanny was really on a roll, she might even complain to the waiter when our shrimps and lobster sauce arrived.

"Where's the shrimps? I see three. They should call this lobster sauce and lobster sauce. And it's cold. What, is the stove is on strike? My grandson is very disappointed."

Eventually our food would return, still steaming enough to form a cloud. The inferior table next to us would be using their napkins as gas masks. But Nanny always dug right in. I'd take one bite and fan my mouth.

"Stop monkeying around. I paid for hot food, not ice cubes. Eat!"

Our neighbors would watch in disbelief. Leaning over to them, Nanny always had to explain. "Did you ever see such faces? He's some comedian, my grandson."

“Nanny, how come there’s no lobster in lobster sauce?”

“What kind of question is that? Is there any mane in chow mein? Or a cow in moo goo gai pan? This is Chinese food. They call it funny things.”

Fifteen excruciating minutes later, we'd weigh the desert options. Nanny loved Jell-O, but the only flavor she would eat was "red." Anything in the berry group was fine; all other flavors, according to her, were "goyish." Orange and lemon were abominations. Lime, in particular, was known as "Ugh, that Hitler kind."

"Why lime?" I'd ask. "How can a flavor be anti-Semitic?"

"Listen, smart guy. If you can't figure it out, don't ask. Believe me, lime is plenty goyish. And on top of that, it's gassy. They should cook it with a Tum mixed in. Don't hock me with lime. I'll stick to red."

After determining that the Jell-O was "not our kind," we'd settle for pineapple and fortune cookies. Nanny would break open her cookie, remove the paper, and hold it as far as her arm would extend. Twisting around in her seat for "better light," she'd intrude into the air space of her new friends next door. She'd squint at the writing for a few seconds and then drop the paper in front of me.

"I guess they're trying to keep my fortune a big secret," she'd say to everyone. Then to me: "Read it. Loud, so we can all hear."

It was invariably something like: "A penny saved is money well spent." Or: "All work and no play makes busy unhappiness."

"That's no fortune. That's a saying. Why don't they just call them 'saying cookies'? Is yours a fortune? Lemme see. Wait. Read it out loud. I forgot that I forgot my glasses."

After having calculated our waiter's tip (10% to the penny, but generously rounded up if it came out to be a fraction), Nanny would excuse herself to go to the bathroom.

"I have to fix my face," she'd say.

"What's broken?" I'd ask.

"Very funny. Remind me to laugh later. Meanwhile, just sit here and behave for a few minutes. Don't embarrass me."

She'd fold her napkin on the table, and rise with a disparaging remark about her girdle. But as she walked toward the restroom, she'd hold her head up proudly, and smile at the patrons that she passed. Another dinner had been conquered. While she was gone, I'd sheepishly sneak a sip of my tea, which — after having had an hour to cool off — would finally be drinkable.

Atheist Nexus Sexus Plexus

2008-08-16T17:20:00.004-04:00

Well, I decided to join that bastion of rationality, Atheist Nexus. Maybe because I’m happily married and an old fart to boot, I blithely assumed that AN was going to be a place for a lively exchange of freethinking ideas. Turns out I was wrong. It’s mostly a site for people who want to write comments without bothering to read the previous ones on the same thread. It also gives folks a rare and wonderful opportunity to share their favorite songs, if anyone cares (which they don't). It provides each member with an excellent excuse to pimp his or her blog or podcast, except that hardly anyone clicks on the links because they're all too busy pimping their own blogs or podcasts. In the sidebar, it features informative blurbs, courtesy of Google Ads, about religious Web sites; this doesn’t bother anyone, of course, because we all understand that AN has to make a buck to keep providing us with such a fantastic service.

The bottom line is, though: Atheist Nexus is primarily a fantasy dating site. About half the members are looking to hook up. Perhaps one or two couples actually will.

Anyway, I did an informal poll among the oh-so-rational community at Atheist Nexus to determine what qualities they were looking for in potential skeptical partners. Here’s what I discovered:

Responses by Men/Boys

Big boobs
Likes loud rock bands that no one has ever heard of
Avidly reads sci-fi, but only if it's written by guys
Finds geeks attractive
Eager to listen to pointless rants
Did I mention big boobs?
Thinks it’s hilarious to spell “the” as TEH
Will sleep with anyone who accepts evolution
Ummm... I included big boobs already, right?
Not too religious

Responses by Women/Girls

Loves kittens
Respects woman for there brians
Well hung, but not outrageously so
Is able to shut up once in a while during quiet walks on the beach
Loves children (but not that way)
Is willing to watch depressing documentaries and/or chick flicks
Well, a little outrageously would be OK
Won’t mind that my BBF is a gay male Baptist
Enjoys cuddling before and after sex, and sometimes instead of
Not too religious

For the record, both my wife and I are not too religious.

Thirteen Worst Reasons for Believing in a God

2008-08-14T18:39:00.005-04:00

I've heard every one of these arguments, and so have you. I think these versions may be slightly exaggerated. But only slightly.

If there were no god, there would be no bible. And if there were no bible, there would be no god. There’s definitely a bible, because I saw one at WalMart. So there must be a god at WalMart, too.

If I pray hard enough, my French-cut canned stringbeans will turn into Jesus’s body. Then, if I eat them, I’ll go to heaven, as long as I don’t chew.

Somebody must love me, because I feel loved. But everybody who knows me thinks I’m a creep. So there must be a god.

My Islamic terrorist neighbor says I should.

Everybody throughout history believed in a god. Except Hitler. Doesn’t that tell you something?

Since there's no logic unless there's a god, you can't prove to me logically that there's no god. Ergo, there is a god. Q.E.D. & R.O.F.L.M.A.O.

If there’s no god, how do you explain this voice in my head, huh? Did you ever think of that, you wacko atheists?

I can imagine a god. Therefore, he must exist. But I wish he didn’t look exactly like my Uncle Sid.

How else can you explain the fact that there are exactly 60 seconds in a minute, and exactly sixty minutes in an hour, and exactly 6o hours in two and a half days, and exactly 60 days in two months (except for the weird ones like January, February, March, May, July, August, October, and December)? That didn't happen just by accident.

Where would human morals come from if there was no god eager to torture us eternally for not believing in him?

Without a god, what a poor, pathetic, pointless place Sheboygan would be.

According to your stupid theories, I would still be a monkey if there was no god. Obviously, I’m not a monkey. Right? Right?

Since Nature is perfect, it must be god’s creation. I thought of that today while I was fertilizing my begonias and spraying for aphids.

Let's Face It: Yunshui Is a Pain in the Ass

2008-08-12T17:56:00.012-04:00

Yunshui created a meme and challenged me to take part. I’m not crazy about memes, but he’s a pal, and I love having the excuse to write about books. Unlike he did, though, I’m not including any links, because I’m not a goddamned bookmobile; you can go look them up for yourselves if you’re curious. I’m also not tagging anyone, because, holy shit, this took me a long time to write.

Basically, Yunshui asked meme-too-ers to write down the book they "most appreciate" in each of the following categories, and to "give a brief reason as to why you do so (and maybe what you think your choice says about you)." Here are my answers, but without any Popular Psychology crap. Sorry, but I don't think of my personal library as a Rorschach test. So, as you read this, please don't get any blots on the books.

The Classic — The Complete Works of Shakespeare by ???

OK, that’s a little bit of a cheat, since it’s really a collection, not a single work. Also, it’s not a Classic in the Greco-Roman sense. However, where would English be today without those plays and poems? Whether they were, in fact, written by someone actually named Shakespeare or not, the author expanded and enlivened the language as no one else has ever done. In addition, Shakespeare (or whoever) was the first English writer to delve into character in a way that made his creations transcend the page (and/or stage) and take on lives of their own. And, wow. Just think of the great quotes — far better and richer than anything in the silly bible — filled with wit and wisdom and the deliciousness of speech.

The Biography — Tie: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King and A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin

I hate biographies, and rarely read them. However, Florence King’s is hilarious and nasty, so how could I resist? Kazin’s short book is more of a memoir than a biography, but it’s so vivid in its sensory details that it deserves mention.

The Science Book — The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner

I’ve never read a better introduction to evolutionary biology than this. And the information is all wrapped up in the fascinating story of a married couple of Princeton University scientists who spent years on the island of Daphne Major (one of the Galápagos) studying real-time evolutionary changes in finches.

The Short Story Collection — Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

Ooooh, brilliant. You can read more about it here.

The Foreign Novel — Tie: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I assume that Yunshui means by “foreign” anything not originally written in English. As far as the Calvino goes: Ooooh, brilliant. Again. You, the reader, are the main character in this novel, which is written, largely, in the second person. In the course of this witty metaphysical tale, which is really a long philosophical ramble on the act of reading itself, you somehow manage to begin ten other works, each of which is interrupted, for one reason or another, after the last page of the first chapter. I don’t remember much about The Karamazov Boys, since my Dostoyevsky period was way before most of my readers were born. Basically, I threw this one in for snob appeal. But I do recall drinking a lot of vodka while reading his novels, and dining at least three or four times at the Russian Tea Room. So I think of those books as quite tasty.

The Play — Tie: Harvey by Mary Chase and The Norman Conquests by Alan Ayckborn

I didn’t think it was fair to single out Hamlet or Macbeth or As You Like It or Much Ado About Nothing or ... any other Shakespeare play. I enjoy reading Shaw, but I think his works are enormously dull in the theater. It took the songs of Lerner and Loewe to make Pygmalion entertaining. Harvey on the other hand, features a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit. How can you beat that? The Norman Conquests is actually a trilogy of full-length plays: Table Manners, Living Together, and Round and Round the Garden. All three plays are set in a different area of the very same house at the very same times. Characters enter and exit from the kitchen, living-room, and garden, only to appear in a different play — which you’ve either seen earlier or will see later. In the theater, it’s best to attend these on three consecutive nights. Although each work stands perfectly well on its own, the humorous effect is cumulative. Reading the trilogy in your armchair, you can flip back and forth to be astounded by the playwright’s cleverness.

The Children’s Book — Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

I was tempted to write “The Bible by God,” but that would have just been a cheap joke. I don’t think the desert anthology is written up to the standards of a bright child. Aside from the bible, though, the Lewis Carroll books are probably the best examples of logic in the service of nonsense that we have. They’re charming and extremely funny, and contain some of the greatest wordplay in literature. If you really want a treat, pick up “The Definitive Version” of Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice.

The Philosophy Book — The Federalist Papers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay

I think philosophy is mostly a waste of time, as anyone who visits this blog regularly knows. Plato’s works are great fun to read; Hume’s skepticism is immensely appealing; and Descartes’ Meditations are noteworthy for pointing out that if you’re thinking, you’re alive. But so what? Political philosophy, on the other hand, fascinates me, and can actually have practical consequences. I always get choked up when I turn to The Federalist. It demonstrates clearly how the Founding Fathers (not just the three writers) thought long and hard about what it means to be free, and how to create a government to best embody liberty. The Anti-Federalist Papers, by a variety of authors, are also required reading. Although they don’t agree with the solution, those writers had similar ideals. How fortunate for us in America that such an admirable group of guys battled it out intellectually just when the country was being born.

The Poem — The Complete Poems of e e cummings

I cheated again. Tough shit. You try to single out any one of these little jewels as being better than the others. If I had to pick a single favorite poem, it would probably be either “Ozymandias” by Shelley, “The Second Coming” by Yeats, or “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer. As a side note, apropos of nothing: I love Ogden Nash but hate Emily Dickinson.

The Travelogue — Tie: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift and Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Yeah, they’re fiction. So what? Find me better travel writing.

The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novel — The Once and Future King by T.H. White

I hate these categories of books and never read them. When I was a child, I devoured Isaac Asimov’s works, but they suck as literature. In general, sci-fi is far too impressed with itself and the writing is overblown. Fantasy as a genre is, for the most part, stupid. On the other hand, I love the legends of King Arthur, and White’s retelling is the best in modern English.

Mystery Novel — Tie: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Even though Yunshui included the ridiculous genres of sci-fi and fantasy, he omitted this important one. Hammett wrote as if he were a great journalist with a limited number of column inches. True to his real-life Pinkerton background, he saw and heard everything around him. But his “reports” had to be concise and to the point. I far prefer him to Hemingway, who did the same thing, but not as well. Chandler was a poet working through the medium of hard-boiled detective fiction. He invented a style that has been imitated and parodied ever since, but no one can work it anywhere near as well as he did. The Long Goodbye is his longest and, arguably, most cynical work, filled with social commentary. By the way, for you cheaters: The movie version, although interesting in its way, is not really a faithful adaptation of Chandler’s plot or his worldview.

The All-Time Favorite — Bleak House by Charles Dickens

What can I say? For me, Dickens is the greatest writer of all time, and this is his greatest book. Although David Copperfield and Great Expectations are close. But you’ve got to be willing to read these works as if you're living in the 19^th century. Go slowly. Savor the words; maybe even read aloud. See the scenes Dickens paints so lovingly, and hear his characters speak. Smell, touch, feel. If you’re interested only in finding out what happens, you’ll miss most of what makes his novels great. My recommendation to those whose idea of fiction is a good clippety-clip plot: Perhaps you should limit yourselves to watching Law and Order.

So that’s it. I didn’t even get to include Mark Twain or Jane Austen or Philip Roth or Dorothy Parker or Gore Vidal or Tom Wolfe or Richard Dawkins or ... dozens of other writers with whom I’ve spent many pleasurable hours.

I guess Yunshui’s point — and mine — is: Pick up a fucking book once in a while.

I Am Sooooo Sorry

2008-08-10T00:19:00.009-04:00

Yesterday, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core disbeliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had eaten the last of her fat-free ersatz peanut butter and chocolate-flavored goo ice cream, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. (For example, I did not bury my face in the carton and lick it out; I merely used my fingers and elbows.) But being 99% fat-free and honest is no longer enough.

I was and am ashamed of my conduct and choices, and I had hoped that it would never become public. With my family, I took responsibility for my actions yesterday, and today I take full responsibility publicly. But that misconduct took place for a short period last night, probably no more than two or three minutes of frenzied gorging. It ended then. I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I did not actually bite into the carton itself, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established. I only know that the apparent culprit, who has meowed publicly that he batted the carton around the living-room when I neglected to throw it in the garbage, is the one who, in fact, left toothmarks on it. I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to or supported payments of any kind to my local sanitation workers or to that cat.

It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry. In the course of hundreds of blog posts, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric, narcissistic, and hungry. If you want to beat me up – feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have a self-inflicted bloody nose and several small cuts on my left knee. I have been stripped bare and, believe me, it was not a pretty sight, particularly since I had chocolate droppings still remaining in my navel. But I will now work with everything I have to help my family and other ice cream lovers who need my help.

I have given a complete interview to my vet on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.

Addendum: Well, I do have something more to say, after all. Not that this justifies my actions in any way, but my wife was temporarily off her diet when I stole her ice cream.

Christian Misadventures

2008-08-08T15:13:00.006-04:00

I live in Florida, where 99% of the people are old farts waiting to die, and the other 1% of the people are members of some old fart’s family, also waiting for him or her to die. So it’s no surprise that at least once a week I get a solicitation phone call from one of the area funeral homes.

Last night at around 8:30, my phone rang and the Caller ID flashed the information: “Christian Adventures.” Naturally, I took the call. The woman on the other end was pukily perky in that TV weathergirl kind of way.

TV Weathergirl: Hello. Is this [the formal version of my name, a version I haven’t used since I was in the 5^th grade, and which appears on no official records except my Federal Income Tax returns and my driver’s license, and which, for purposes of this dialogue, will henceforth be written as “Eximundo”]?

Me: Who’s calling?

TV Weathergirl: Is this Eximundo?

Me: Who’s calling?

TV Weathergirl: Eximundo?

Me: I’ve asked you twice to identify yourself.

TV Weathergirl: This is [I forget, but let’s call her Mindy, because she sounded exactly like a Mindy].

Me: What do you want, Mindy?

Mindy: I’m calling on behalf of Death-Wish Funeral Homes.

Me: Oh, my god! Who died?

Mindy: Well, nobody died, Eximundo.

Me: Things must be slow over there.

Mindy: Well, of course people died. But not anybody you know.

Me: Do you have a list of everyone I know? How’d you get that?

Mindy: I’m not calling you about anyone who died.

Me: So, what are you doing? Trying to drum up some business? Why are you calling me? I don’t know anybody who died recently.

Mindy: No, I was calling about you. You are Eximundo, right?

Me: I didn’t die.

Mindy: Well, sometimes the unexpected ...

Me: It says on my Caller ID that your name is Christian Adventures. But you told me Mindy. Is Christian Adventures your last name?

Mindy: No, that’s just my business.

Me: I thought you said you were working for Death-Wish Funeral Homes.

Mindy: Yes, uh-huh, Eximundo, I am. But this is my home phone.

Me: So somebody in your home is named Christian Adventures?

Mindy: No, that’s my business.

Me: Let me get this straight, Mindy, because I’m a little confused. You’re calling for one business, using a phone belonging to another business, but you’re really home?

Mindy: Yes.

Me: Well, I’m not interested in getting calls advertising Christianity.

Mindy: Oh, I’m not advertising ...

Me: See, here’s the thing, Mindy. When I notice “Christian Adventures” on my Caller ID, I get the feeling – don’t ask me why – that either your name is Christian Adventures or you work for some group called Christian Adventures. Isn’t that a reasonable assumption on my part?

Mindy: No, I’m just ...

Me: But that’s your home phone, right?

Mindy: Yes. I’m not calling for ...

Me: Well, here’s my problem. Whether it’s your home phone or your business phone or somebody else’s business phone or maybe even Jesus’s iPhone, I see “Christian Adventures” and right away I think you’re shilling for god.

Mindy: No, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m just ...

Me: So could you please tell Death-Wish Funeral Homes that I’m not interested in getting any more calls from them if they’re a front for a Christian organization?

Mindy: No, they’re not a front ...

Me: Because they must be, since my caller ID says it in plain English. “Christian Adventures.” That’s not a Muslim group, is it?

Mindy: No, you don’t understand. You’re just seeing my ...

Me: Shall I spell “Christian Adventures” for you, Mindy? Maybe I’m reading it wrong.

Mindy: Wait. You don’t understand.

Me: Yeah, I think I do. Goodbye, Mindy.

Today, I called my local branch of Death-Wish Funeral Homes. I began, without saying who I was, by blurting out a question: “Do you folks cater specifically to Christians? I mean, would you call yourselves a Christian funeral home?”

The woman who answered the phone sounded horrified – even though she didn’t know whether I was an overzealous fundy, a Jew, or a heathen. She probably knew I wasn’t a Muslim, because if I were, why would I call a business that I didn’t want to threaten?

Anyway, she immediately volunteered the information that DWFH was non-denominational. She said it twice. I found that oddly endearing, because there was no way she could know whether she was gaining a sale or losing one.

So I identified myself, although not as Eximundo, and told her about the gaggingly cheerful evangelist who was calling on DWFH’s behalf. The woman at the funeral home, sounding sincerely concerned, apologized profusely, and said that they’d track down the caller and take immediate action. Because of her tone of voice, I believed her.

So perhaps Mindy will actually have a Christian Adventure, herself.

Who Cares If the Parallel Bars Are Uneven?

2008-08-07T01:13:00.003-04:00

The Olympics haven’t even started yet, but I’m already tired of them.

I’m tired of being told that wrestlers, weight-lifters, and synchronized swimmers are among our nation’s best and brightest and I’m tired of hearing how proud we should be of our young athletes. Why should we be proud of them? What does their skill prove? What about the rare young person who can actually read a book with comprehension and insight, or write an email that successfully communicates an original idea, or speak articulately about science or literature or history? That’s who I’m proud of.

I’m tired of cute news segments about what a wonderful accomplishment it was for a repressive country like China to build a world-class sporting venue. And I’m tired of watching poor, deluded Chinese citizens airing their justifiable grievances to American news media under the impression that our inept and indifferent reporters will make the world take notice. That won’t happen unless the entire populace of an oppressed province fucks Paris Hilton and it’s captured on video.

I’m tired of mawkish “background” stories about young people with a “dream.” I don’t see why anyone should be celebrated for spending his or her youth working toward being the world’s best at putting the shot or running hurdles or going back and forth in a pool.

I’m tired of the assumption that I give a shit if an American kid can spike a volleyball better than a Brazilian kid can.

I’m tired of George W. Bush’s preparations to go to China, and I’m tired of seeing old footage promo-ing how he waves goodbye as he boards a plane, and I’m really tired of him spending my hard-earned money on a grand-scale photo op.

I’m tired of jokes about eating dog meat. Just once I’d like to hear a joke about eating some good old-fashioned American fare like squirrel or possum or, in a pinch, other humans.

I’m tired of schedules being rammed down my throat by the media so I won’t miss any of the action. I’ve got a newsflash for a really enterprising reporter: I’ll probably miss all of the action. Voluntarily. I can’t think of anything duller than watching people row or ride a bicycle or jump for distance and/or height. Oh, wait a minute. I’m wrong. There is something duller: watching the president wave.

I’m tired of seeing interviews with former Olympic athletes. Unless they’ve recently opened a restaurant within driving distance from my house.

I’m tired of hearing “spokespersons” complain about sports that are recognized by the International Olympics Committee but not part of the competition schedule. There’s no fucking way that bridge and chess are sports, OK? And, really: Underwater orienteering? Roller-skating? Dance sport? I think that running with an egg balanced on a spoon in the athlete’s mouth might be fun to watch, and I’d probably tune in for boxing with kangaroos. But, frankly, as far as I’m concerned, TV already has far too many sports and far too little Jeopardy.

I’m tired of speculation about which competitors are cheating. Nobody says or does anything about the lying, thieving, murdering governments that the athletes represent, so why should anyone be bothered when the zeitgeist manifests itself in a musclebound teenager who merely uses steroids?

And, lastly, I’m already tired of complaining about how tired I am of the Olympics. I guess I’ll just go back to being tired of the endless presidential election.

Quazy Quistian Puzzle

2008-08-03T17:58:00.005-04:00

I spend a lot of hours in the Atheosphere, and I visit a lot of blogs. Almost every day, I find writing here that makes me laugh, or spurs my anger, or gets me seeing something in a new way.

But like many atheists, I have a touch of ADD. So I must admit that – although the posts themselves are often unique – I’m getting tired of the same old titles, over and over again. On the other hand, the name of each blog I read is a clue to the personality of its author and the kind of content on which he or she focuses. Hmmm, what to do?

Because I’m such a super-creative, but nice, guy, I’ve come up with alternate names for some of my favorite blogs. You can solve these as if they were items in a puzzle, if you care to. But I’m not giving any points to my co-nonreligionists because I have to save up those precious commodities to award to Christians who beat me in debates. (If you’re keeping score, so far the tally is: Exterminator — an infinite number of points; Religionists — zero.)

Hey, that gives me an idea. If a god-deluded commenter can identify the original name of any blog below, as well as the name of its writer(s), he or she will receive a point to log into god’s record book. I'm talking about one whole point for each correctly identified blog and blogger. Wow! That’ll sock it to us, atheists, huh? However, once a blog and its writer are officially recognized, no one else will be awarded points for it. Please include only one answer per comment, to show courtesy to other Christians who are trying to score big with Jesus. You may, of course, comment as often as you wish.

A Renouncer’s Shul
Torquemada, the Elitist Cross-Examiner
It’s Me Writing About You ... or Maybe It’s You Writing About Me ... or Maybe It’s Both of Us Writing About Each Other ... or Maybe I’m on a Break
Tentacles, Not Biscuits
Some Fucking Asshat Fundy Fucking Forced Me to Fucking Write This
Sun-spots from an Average Woman
Godless Grinner
Notes from an Ex-Mormon Chick Living in ... Look, Just Read My Novel, OK?
Cranky Ol’ Sabertooth
Profundities about Pedophiliac Pastors
Stop Stinging Me, You Assholes, and Answer the Fucken Question!
The Verdant Waistband
Doctor Doggie’s Droppings
It Means “Bullshit,” OK?
Southern Skeptic’s Rebel Yell
Left (Behind?) to Ponder
(((((I Hate Woo ((((and So Does ((My Wife (((and My Kids))))))))))))))
The Shoeless Smartass
Is That a Pencil in My Pocket or Just My Badly Tailored Trousers?
Extreme Economy of Expression ... AND I Love Boys!
Why Don’t You Get a Life?
Sorry, but the Argument Was Unavoidable
Unmelodious Missing Link
A Trollop In the Photo Gallery of Rationality
No, That Doesn’t Stand for “Blow Job”

Atheists, don't ruin the fun for the prayerful, but feel free to make wisecracks. And, of course, spread the good news.

The Unending "Ooooh"

2008-08-01T23:42:00.009-04:00

Is it possible to write a series of stories without any characters, even a main character —yet with characters, even a main character? Can a subatomic particle be a character? Can a nascent planet, or an evolutionary “moment” stuck in time forever be a character? How about an early shell-less mollusk, or an equation curving through space? A creature in the process of evolving from a fish to a land animal, or an indefinable something looking up at galaxies a hundred million light years away?

In Italo Calvino’s hilarious and poetic Cosmicomics, the main character, Qfwfq, is all of those things, yet none of them. He’s the very idea of cosmological and evolutionary “developments,” strung out over hundreds of millions of years. In each of the twelve stories that make up this book, Qfwfq lives essentially unchanged through processes that have been occurring since the beginning of time.

These are “folktales” for people who believe in science rather than gods. No supernatural beings cause things to happen; they just do. Qfwfq watches and comments and gets caught up, sometimes gleefully, more often against his will. He’s a different scientific “concept” in every story, yet somehow always the same Qfwfq, living through infinite developments that he can’t control.

Each episode, rooted however loosely in science, is actually about loneliness and longing, about the enormity of the universe and how small we all are in it. Qfwfq, whatever he is, is stymied time after time. He has attacks of jealousy, bouts of paranoia, moments (eons?) of spitefulness and mean-spiritedness. And the ever-present, unconquerable yearning. He’s the eternal — literally — loser in everyman. In only a few of the tales does he accept his “fate” with an insightful and peaceful resignation.

Calvino is one of my favorite authors, and Cosmicomics is one of my favorites of his books. Yet, there's something about his writing that awes me nearly into speechlessness; I can't really put into words how I feel about it, beyond saying "Ooooh, brilliant." For all I know, Qfwfq is that “Ooooh,” a sentiment as old as life itself, which emerges suddenly and fully formed from the meeting of my fingers and a keyboard, travels from computer screen to computer screen at the whim of those who choose to read this post, and then bounces around forever and forever and forever, essentially unchanged, and trapped in the ether.

[Note to Nonbelieving Literati: Our next book, selected by C.L. Hanson, is The Flight of Peter Fromm by Martin Gardner. (Yes, that Martin Gardner.) The target date is September 15.]

Miley Cyrus, Christians, and the Death of English

2008-07-30T16:04:00.008-04:00

Enough with spreading the word on atheism, because I’ve got a new mission now: saving the English language. So if you’re here looking for some snark about religionists, you’ve come to the wrong ... well, OK, just skip to the last few paragraphs.

But let’s begin by boarding my train of thought, shall we?

Yesterday, my local rag saw fit to devote nearly a page and a half to an article about Miley Cyrus, a teenage superstar and the envy of every prepubescent girl in America. Apparently, if the hype is to be believed, when those young women are not obsessing over boys or whether their tits will ever grow, they’re fixated on every detail of Miley’s life. Of course, you may know her better as Hannah Montana, the character she plays on her Disney-produced TV show. Or, if you’re like me, you may not know her at all.

Now, had I been the editor-in-chief of the paper, I might not have opted to devote so much room to that article and its huge accompanying pictures. I mean, y’know, what with all the, like, stuff that’s, you know what I mean?, like, happening all over the ... um ... world and places like that. But, hey, everyone knows that the newspaper audience in a smallish city filled with retirees is made up mostly of tweenage girls, so I guess it was a sound editorial choice to run that story.

Miley's answers to questions reflect the glib talk of someone who has no idea that words are supposed to have meanings. And reading what Miley said has me wondering whether we as a country have already started devolving in our ability to communicate verbally. Granted, Miley Cyrus is no orator; but she is the trend-setter for millions of kids who want to be like her. Here are some sample answers she gave.

When asked about her new “adult” CD, recorded under her own name rather than that of her character’s:

To be played on these radio stations is awesome, to be able to rock out to it in your car without planning it, without it being just a kids’ channel.... I’m making it a little more fun and edgy, and I think being able to step out of the “Hannah Montana” thing — not in a way where I’m forgetting her completely, but as my fans grow up, me growing up, too, and kind of having my own person.

When asked about “mistakes” she has made:

It’s kind of hard to let someone that was so young when they started kind of grow up. You just have to realize that people make mistakes and that makes you almost a little more relatable.

When asked about the songs that she, herself, wrote:

I hope I get respected a little bit more as a writer. I want them to respect me and know that I have a lot to say. I have a lot for the world to know and take away from what my life experiences have been.

When asked about allowing the character Hannah Montana to age along with her:

There’s some things that I want to reinvent with her look, and not make it all sparkles and butterflies, you know? Some stars, and some black rock ‘n’ roll stuff. I did want it to grow up a little bit.

When asked about touring as Hannah Montana:

I’m kind of past that stuff. But I definitely wanna keep doing my show. I love doing it and I wouldn’t wanna give it up quite yet.

OK, so why am I clogging up the intertubes ranting about a semi-literate young lady?

Here’s part of a Christian’s comment that I’ve lifted from chappy’s blog, with her kind permission. I’ve combined paragraphs, but otherwise the quote is verbatim:

If all existence is nothing more than the interaction of matter and energy, then there can be no knowledge, no science. Practical science is predicated on the philosophy of science, but that philosophy is itself not physical. Ideas, reason, logic… are all held to be a part of reality, but they deny any sort of physical description. In fact they require some semblance of personhood to exist, and personhood itself resists a reductionist, naturalist description. The concept that metaphysical concepts such as logic and persons are as fundamental to existence as empirical things is why I remain a theist.

Here’s another Christian’s writing, from the same comment thread. Again, I’ve sewn the paragraphs together, but left the language intact:

The narratives of the Bible have a deeper complexity of meaning then meets the eye. The human race is in intellectual obscurity as to the nature of the Holy Word’s expanded meanings within its literal sense. This is why the Lord has promised to return “with the clouds.” One may take this literally and believe that the Second Coming will take place on an overcast day, or elevate the natural meaning of these words to their psycho-spiritual equivalent, and understand that the Lord’s return is not a physical event, but His clearing up the obscure ideas we have about ultimate reality and the divine scheme. These new ideas are now being made available to the world.

Both Miley Cyrus’s interview and those comments by Christians are evidence of the debasement of our language. Words readily flow, but they have no relationship to one another. Vague ideas are presented by piling on what are essentially nonsense phrases in “Jabberwocky” style. Compare:

... kind of having my own person
they require some semblance of personhood to exist ...

I have a lot for the world to know and take away from what my life experiences have been.
These new ideas are now being made available to the world.

I love doing it and I wouldn’t wanna give it up quite yet.
The concept that metaphysical concepts such as logic and persons are as fundamental to existence as empirical things is why I remain a theist.

You just have to realize that people make mistakes and that makes you almost a little more relatable.
The human race is in intellectual obscurity as to the nature of the Holy Word’s expanded meanings within its literal sense.

Please do your part to help keep English alive. Do NOT speak or write like Miley Cyrus or like Christians. Thanks.

Puzzling Atheists #6: Crunchy Gods

2008-07-25T15:02:00.018-04:00

We’ve all been reading about PZ Myers and his desecration of the “Host,” which is basically a cracker with Jesus in it. Or is it a cracker that (who?) IS Jesus. In either case, Jesus and the cracker are definitely intermingled into one unitary entity that (who?) can send you to hell if you bite it or feed it to your dog.

It turns out that our pal the Christ isn’t the only god who uses a crunchable for camouflage. As a matter of fact, twenty such gods appear below. Since the gods and the snacks are wholly holy, none of the names have been fucked around with; the letters appear in the correct order for both omnipotence and maximum crispiness.

For example, if you look closely at ORJESEUOS you may find Jesus inhabiting an Oreo: ORJESEUOS. You might also be able to see Thor peeking out from a piece of Papadum: TPAHOPADRUM.

Each deity and snackable is written as one word, without punctuation. Some of the gods are, admittedly, a little obscure. Crackers, cookies, and other crunchables, are always written in the singular. They may be generic (like TACO), a specific type (like GRAHAM), or even a brand or trade name (like RUFFLE or KITKAT). I’ve tried to be a good scout, but I do apologize to my non-American readers for any particular treat they may not have heard of. Note: The use of an edible in this puzzle does not necessarily mean that I endorse it as delicious. In fact, some of the following items, both foods and gods, are pretty vile.

Your challenge is to separate the gods from the crunchies. The first correct solver of each item will have his or her name listed, although not in a cracker. To give solvers maximum opportunity, please limit each comment to ONE answer only. You may, however, submit multiple comments. Thanks.

TATRIMSMCUIUTZ
PRITATHZ
SAMLINTERINVEA
AMHUATRAMZAZODA
ANAUNBIMAILS
GFORLIDGFIGSH
CQUHEIPSTAZAHLCOATOLY
ASTHATGOARLOENGTH
CZHEUEEZIST
TAPOLOLHLOULOSE
NANUNTTAEBURBUTSTHER
SHORBATBARELAD
SYAMAHOWEHA
RYMEAKRDRIUSKP
WWEHENACTHTHANING
BOIGSMCOTITOSO
GIPONSGEIERSDNOANP
HYSDRHIOVAX
CKRORUISTHONAN
DOKOUSNINIDUSOHI

Good luck and happy chomping. But be careful not to ruin your appetite – or your intellect – on this junk.

[Update: All crunchies and gods have now been safely disunited, so no deities were desecrated in the making of this puzzle. I'm not listing the answers, though, in case some of you latecomers want to give these a try. You can look through the comments to find the solutions.]
[Puzzle-crackers: 1. yinyang; 2. iambilly; 3. yinyang; 4. yinyang; 5. yinyang; 6. John Evo; 7. yinyang; 8. the chaplain; 9. iambilly; 10. yinyang; 11. the chaplain; 12. iambilly; 13. yinyang; 14. iambilly; 15. John Evo; 16. the chaplain; 17. the chaplain; 18. iambilly; 19. Kira; 20. Kira]

The "God" Deletions

2008-07-23T17:52:00.009-04:00

That’s a purposely ambiguous title up there. Is this post about deletions of the word “God”? Or is it about deletions by “God” or — given the quotation marks — people who claim to represent some supernatural character whom they call “God”?

Well, it’s about both.

Deletions OF “God”

If I had my way, which is not really my way but, rather, the way of the framers of the Constitution, the word “God” would be removed from all enterprises sponsored, directly or indirectly, by the American government. Article VI and The First Amendment are quite clear on that point: “God” has no official business here. Let’s take that silly, but loaded, word off our money and out of our pledge. Let’s banish it from our courts, from our legislative chambers, and from the mouths of our elected representatives. And, since, according to the third clause of Article VI, religion can’t be used as a test for official office or “public trust,” let’s keep those fucking spiritual advisers away from the president. The views of religious leaders who counsel our elected officials are selected, weighed, vetted for conformity to America’s alleged Christianity. That’s a religious test, folks.

There’s nothing more unAmerican, more anti-patriotic, than elected and appointed governmental office-holders intoning the word “God.” Why? Because the wise men who drew up our Constitution and its Bill of Rights consciously and purposefully chose to leave that word out of their formula, and to take steps to make sure it would never be included in any future activities done specifically under the auspices of the government they created.

Perhaps the writers of the Constitution didn’t foresee the loopholes. They mistakenly thought that all our laws would be passed by the legislature, instead of many “laws” being enacted by the executive branch and by governmental agencies. With that erroneous thought in mind, they voted to include the First Amendment, which specifically banned our legislature from pandering to the superstitious: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Notice that they didn’t write “an establishment of a religion,” which would argue against elevating a specific belief system over others. No, what they said was “an establishment of religion,” with no article, no qualifier. Religion, itself, cannot be established by the legislature. The spirit, if not the letter, of their ideas should be extended to the Oval Office and the Supreme Court, and, therefore, to every executive office and courtroom under the titular jurisdiction of either.

Stop forcing “God” on me, you tyrants.

Deletions BY “God”

OK, let’s start by admitting the obvious: There are many reasons for blogging. Not everyone is interested in sharing ideas, discussing their own and opposing views, or debating with passion and at least some degree of coherence.

In this neck of the Atheosphere, though, we all seem to enjoy doing those things. If you check out my list of frequent commenters, you’ll see the names of lots of people with whom I’ve engaged in intellectual smack-downs, people who have eagerly and effectively jabbed me back. Almost everyone on that list has argued with others in that “honor” roll, although many of us consider one another to be friends. We may get nasty, satirical, or just plain silly. Sometimes, we even piss each other off. A lot. Yet, when we cool down, we can acknowledge that the attacks aren’t personal, they’re back-and-forth thrusts about ideas. To me, taking part in a vehement verbal dispute is a way of showing that I respect another person, although not necessarily his or her opinions about a particular subject. You’ll never see me (and most of us, I think) whining — as one commenter did here: “Obviously you don’t like me.” How stupid and irrelevant is that?

One thing most of us don’t do is delete comments. We may refuse to engage in debate with some people who do write ridiculous remarks, even urge our readers to avoid feeding the “trolls.” But we don’t ban anybody’s ideas from our premises. Most faithfreeists champion Freedom of Speech. In our opinion, it may well be the most valuable right we possess.

But go take a look at some religious blogs. I’m not giving you any links; just pick a few sites at random. What you’ll find, for the most part, are “moderated” threads. If the blog-owner doesn’t care for what someone says, if it offends “God,” then, bam!, it’s gone. Back to the ether. Deleted. The attitude seems to be:

Hey, I have an idea. Let’s have a debate. Only I’ll remove most of the things you say because they’re offensive and they’re aimed at me personally.

I win!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!

Whether you agree or disagree with anything I've written here, feel free to leave a comment. I promise: I will not delete it.

Barack Obama Jokes. And Some McCain Jokes, Too.

2008-07-20T21:02:00.007-04:00

Comedians have already begun complaining that they can’t come up with jokes about Barack Obama. But that may just be because of misplaced political correctness.

Still, when The New Yorker published its satirical cover of the Obamas last week, many folks on the Left — including the Obama campaign staff — raised a stink about the alleged inappropriateness of the gag. So perhaps we humorists do need to be careful about inadvertently insulting the candidate.

I recently wrote six great jokes about Barack Obama, but because I’m always scrupulously careful not to offend anyone, I submitted them to the Obama people for vetting before publishing them here. A few minor changes were suggested, which I wasn’t too happy about, but the upside is that now no one can accuse me of insensitivity. Here are the edited versions of those jokes.

Why did Barack Obama cross the road?
Because he’s the candidate of Change.

Why does Barack Obama wear red suspenders?
Because he’s the candidate of Change.

Why did Barack Obama throw the clock out the window
Because he’s the candidate of Change.

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Barack Obama.
Barack Obama who?
Barack Obama, the candidate of Change.

A rabbi, a priest, and Barack Obama are drinking American-made beer (not too many bottles though) in a bar together. Obama turns to the others and says, “I’ll bet you guys don’t know who I am.” The rabbi says, “You’re right. It says nothing about you in the Talmud.” The priest says, “You’re right. The Pope didn’t issue an encyclical about you.” The bartender, listening in on the conversation, finally asks, “OK, who are you?” “Well,” says Obama, “I’m the candidate of Change.”

How many Barack Obamas does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one, because he’s the candidate of Change.

The McCain staff, on the other hand, said that their targeted electorate doesn’t get jokes anyway, so whatever I said wouldn’t matter. Here then, for your chuckle-hungry enjoyment, are my original knee-slappers.

Why did John McCain cross the road?
Because George Bush was on the other side.

Why does John McCain wear red suspenders?
Because the bright color distracts Americans from looking at his wrinkles.

Why did John McCain throw the clock out the window
Because he was angry that people were making jokes about how old he was.

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
John McCain.
John McCain who?
I told you. John McCain. Could you let me in, you cunt? I forgot where I put my keys.

A rabbi, a priest, and John McCain are drinking Iraqi democratically made beer (produced only as a result of the surge’s success) in a bar together. McCain turns to the others and says, “I’ll bet you guys don’t know who I am.” The rabbi says, “You’re right. It says nothing about you in the Talmud.” The priest says, “You’re right. The Pope didn’t issue an encyclical about you.” The bartender, listening in on the conversation, finally asks, “OK, who are you?” “Well,” says McCain, “I was hoping one of you could tell me. I can’t remember.”

How many John McCains does it take to change a light bulb?
None, because he outsourced the job to India.

Ahhh, now that’s comedy, eh? The presidential contest promises to be hilarious, doesn’t it?

But maybe the joke’s on us.

Quazy Quistian Question # 7

2008-07-19T15:20:00.005-04:00

Whenever my wife and I have an argument – which, given our confrontational natures and unpleasant personalities, is fairly often – one of us usually winds up saying, “I’m not convinced.”

Ex: You know I can’t mow the lawn. I’ve got allergies.

Mrs. Ex: How come your allergies only kick in when there’s yard work to do?

Ex: It must be something about disturbing the greenery. All the crap flies up my nose.

Mrs. Ex: I’m not convinced.

Ex: Well, I’m not convinced you’re not convinced. I’ve told you hundreds of times that I’m allergic. How many more times do I have to say it before you’ll get it through your head?

Mrs. Ex: You’ll never convince me. I think you’re making it up.

Mrs. Ex: I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time on your stupid blog.

Ex: It’s not stupid. I’m changing the world through humor.

Mrs. Ex: I’m not convinced.

Ex: You’re not convinced that I’m changing the world?

Mrs. Ex: Yeah. And I’m also not convinced that there’s any humor.

Ex: What if I could offer you evidence?

Mrs. Ex: I wouldn’t believe it.

Ex: I’m not eating those French-cut canned stringbeans.

Mrs. Ex: OK.

Ex: You’re not gonna get all pissed off if I don’t enjoy the vegetables you’re trying to push?

Mrs. Ex: I just opened the can. Why would I care if you eat them or not?

Ex: I’m not convinced.

Mrs. Ex: OK, if you care so much, I don’t see why you couldn’t open a can yourself. It’s a well-known fact: Everybody needs vegetables. What do you have to offer?

Ex: I wasn’t able to find any canned vegetables I like.

Mrs. Ex: I’m not convinced. Did you look?

Ex: I know what we have.

Mrs. Ex: I’m not convinced. Did you know we have creamed corn?

Ex: Really? I’m not convinced.

Mrs. Ex: It’s in the cupboard, under the fruit cocktail.

Ex: I didn’t notice it.

Mrs. Ex: I’m not convinced. You didn’t look, did you?

Ex: Well, I looked but I didn’t dig around.

Mrs. Ex: I’m not convinced.

Ex: What would it take to convince you that I looked?

Mrs. Ex: You couldn’t convince me, because I know you didn’t.

So there you have it. You couldn’t convince me, because I know ... whatever.

Change a few details in the dialogues above, and you’ve got three so-called debates between an atheist and a religionist. (Note: In real life, neither my wife nor I is a believer; we just play one on this blog. Don’t struggle to figure out which one of us represents whom in what scene. In our fictional personae, we’re not consistent. I have the authority to write that way because I’ve just renewed my literary license. For any Christians interested in obtaining one: You will be tested in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. So if I was yourself, Id practiss, pracktis, PRACITCE!!!!!!!!!)

A few weeks ago, a quintet of atheists discussed what evidence we’d need to believe in a god. The stars spelling out “Jesus says ‘howdy’”? The sun turning into a big, sad bunny face? A burning bush suddenly singing back-up for Johnny Evo? Our conclusion: It’s not entirely out of the question that there’s some evidence for a god somewhere, but we’d be skeptical. Really skeptical. All other possible explanations would have to be absolutely disposed of. Most atheists are open to accepting irrefutable evidence for the existence of a god, even though we’re 99.9999999999...% confident that no such evidence exists.

On the other hand, lots of us here in the Atheosphere waste our time laying out our case for freedom from faith. We debate, discuss, and argue — often civilly, but sometimes sarcastically or in a broadly comic way — with theists. We point out inconsistencies in the bible. We cite similarities of biblical stories with other ancient myths that preceded them. We offer science and explain the scientific method. We discuss historical events, as recorded by reliable sources. We attack flawed logic and bogus philosophical reasoning. We appeal to the common laws and moral traditions of many cultures and societies. Most of all, we insist on evidence. The religionists, ultimately, dismiss our rants with a mere I’m not convinced.

Now, there may be the odd Christian/Jew/Muslim/Hindu/tree-worshipper who waters his or her seed of doubt with the spray from our scattershot hose of reason. But for the most part, the great majority of theists try to sell their beliefs with: How many more times do I have to say it before you’ll get it through your head? When atheists ask What if I could offer you evidence?, religionists respond— without having heard that evidence — I wouldn’t believe it.

You couldn’t convince me, because I know ...

Many Christians, claim to be “open-minded,” even though they’ve got the most tightly shut brains in the universe. Some won’t accept evolution, despite a century’s worth of biological discoveries and data. Why? Because the science conflicts with the ideas of a tribe of primitive, ignorant desert-dwellers living more than three millennia ago. That’s like rejecting the advice of a good lawyer for the counsel of your neighbor’s five-year-old. Other Christians accept evolution, but only if they can add the extraneous hypothesis: “God started it.” Those people don’t have open minds; at best, their minds are slightly ajar. Their ideas make no more sense than the premise that Jamie Leigh Curtis controls your bowel movements.

Is America a Christian nation? The evidence, in the form of our Constitution, cries out a resounding NO. There’s not a word about any gods or Jesi in it. It doesn’t even refer to the Twelve Commandments. The Founding Fathers left that stuff out because they specifically did not want the new country to be established on religious principles; they wanted it to be a governmental embodiment of the Enlightenment. The most ignorant Christians respond, “Yes, but we know what those men believed; we understand what was in their hearts.” With such an assertion, I might be able to prove that the words to “God Bless America” are secretly buried somewhere in King Lear; I understand what was in Shakespeare’s heart. And besides, he told me so himself.

Hurricane? God did it? Deaths of innocents? God didn’t do it. Survival of some people? God did it. Destroyed churches and Christian businesses? God didn’t do it. Economic benefits reaped by exploitive but prayerful construction companies? God did it. Financial ruin for the local citizenry? God didn’t do it. Or else: Man cannot understand or explain God’s mysterious ways. But everything happens for a reason. The storm was part of his plan. How many more times do I have to say it before you’ll get it through your head? And anyway, everyone secretly believes in a god, particularly in extreme situations. I’m not convinced you’re not convinced.

All of which leads me to wonder: Despite the continuing lack of evidence for the existence of god, as well as the implied evidence against his existence, why do religionists continue to believe? Are they actually faithful, as they claim? Or are they merely smug, stubborn, and stupid?

Quazy Quistian Question #7
What arguments might convince you to even question the existence of your god? What evidence would you need to decide that your god’s existence is highly unlikely? Explain your response.

If It's Adultery, Of Course It's Not Marriage

2008-07-15T01:36:00.011-04:00

Ah, the Ten Commandments. Christians and Jews would have us believe that they're universal, so I decided to test that hypothesis.

I had a little difficulty at the very beginning, because actually there are Twelve Commandments. Different religious traditions organize them in various ways. But in the simple English version of Wik-sodus, these Twelve Commandments are:

I am the Lord your God.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God.
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Honor your father and mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.

OK, I'd gotten my Commandments in a format easy enough for a child to understand, and I wanted to see how they'd make their way around the world. How could I do that?

Only one way: Google Translate.

So I carefully entered the Twelve Commandments in Wikinglish, and then I sent that text flying all over the linguistic globe. Here's the route: English to Arabic to Bulgarian to traditional Chinese to Croatian to Czech to Danish to Dutch to Finnish to French to German to Greek to Hindi to Italian to Japanese to Korean to Norwegian to Polish to Portuguese to Romanian to Russian to Spanish to Swedish. Those are the 23 languages that Google has made available. From Swedish, I made the final translation back to English, since — as any American fundamentalist can tell you — that's the actual language of Jesus.

The final result is the True and Authentic Universal Version of the Twelve Commandments, just as God meant them to be:

I am your God weeks.
Also from all other sins.
"The presence of the image.
In order to combat violence in the name of God.
Do not forget, Saturday, in order to protect a sacred animal.
His father and mother.
Sueopseup dead.
This is not marriage.
If the state.
It is perjury and neighbors.
This should be away from home sueopseup people.
In May a woman was approaching.

Forgive me for not knowing exactly how to pronounce the character " in the Third Commandment; I think it may be a variant of the click sound found in Xhosa, although I have no idea how it made its way into the translation. My guess is: the Bulgarians snuck it in.

I should also point out that we learn, from the final translated version of the Fifth Commandment, the name of the person to whom God was speaking. It was not Moses, as commonly believed; it was Saturday.

I'm sorry that I can't identify exactly who the Sueopseup people are, but I suspect that they may be the Hittites. In any case, they're either dead or away from home, so don't expect them to protect your sacred animal.

Even though I have no evidence, I'd like to believe that the approaching woman was beautiful. But I do wish she had chosen to wear something other than traditional Sueopseup garb.

Polls That Make You Say "Pew"

2008-07-12T18:08:00.007-04:00

You may not have read about all the following recent polls. Here's the way the yes answers were further classified.

Are you an atheist?

Yes, I don’t believe in any gods (79% of atheists)
Yes, but I believe in one or more gods (21% of atheists)

Do you accept the theory of evolution?

Yes, I believe in natural selection without any supernatural “intelligence” involved (19%)
Yes, but not without a god hypothesis (76%)
Only until I get my Ph.D. so I can go to work for the Discovery Institute (5%)

Are you a vegetarian?

Yes, I never eat meat of any kind (54%)
Yes, but I have a steak sandwich twice a week (27%)
Yes, unless my spouse makes that terrific meat loaf (11%)
Yes, but only if you count veal, pork, beef, possum, and squirrel as vegetables (8%)

Are you pro-life?

Yes, I don’t think we should kill any person, animal, or plant, including fetuses and seeds (1%)
Yes, but I don’t mind pulling weeds (22%)
Yes, but I believe in experimenting on animals to test cosmetics (13%)
Yes, but I think it’s OK to bomb non-Americans (38%)
Yes, but I’ve been known to snipe into crowds of infidels (10%)
Yes, and I’d gladly kill anyone who isn’t (16%)

Would you vote for a woman for president?

Yes, it’s about fucking time, regardless of her political views (Knee-jerk feminists)
Yes, but only if she’s hot (Sports Illustrated readers)
Yes, but only over my dead body (He-Man Woman Haters Club)
Yes, but only if my wife insisted (Hen-pecked husbands)
Yes, but only if her bowel movements are regular (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Would you vote for an atheist for president?

Yes, but only if he or she weren’t some asshat neo-con (Chappy, Evo, Ex, OG, Philly, SI)
Yes, but only if he or she were a person of faith (the Democratic Party)
Yes, but only if he or she were one of the 21% who believe in God (Pew Forum staff)
Yes, but only if he were a guy (He-Man Woman Haters Freethinking Club)

Are you a supporter of the U.S. Constitution?

Yes, I think the Constitution is the Law of the Land (0.5%)
Yes, but not the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (Barack Obama)
Yes, but not the Fourth Amendment (Barack Obama)
Yes, but not the parts about how to run the government (Republicans)
Yes, but only when I can tell you what it really means (The Supreme Court)

Have you read any books other than the Bible this year?

Yes, I’ve read many books this year (3%)
Yes, but only the ones advertised on TV (most Americans)
Yes, but only if the BIBLE COUNTS!!!!!!! (Fundagelicals)
Yes, if you include text messages ROFLMAO (Milliennials)
Yes, I’ve straightened up hundreds of them on our shelves (Barnes & Noble employees)

Do you vote? If so, which is more important to you: Who wins American Idol or who wins the U.S. Presidential Election?

American Idol (Your neighbor)
U.S. Presidential Election (the Founding Fathers)
They’re equally important (John McCain)
Neither is important (Oil companies)

Have you ever lied to a pollster?

Yes, but not to you (43%)
Yes, but only to you (56%)
Yes, I can’t stand people from Poland (George W. Bush)

Breaking Obama News: Read It Here First

2008-07-08T02:11:00.006-04:00

Barack Obama’s campaign staff announced today that he would be giving his acceptance speech during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. The fact that he will not yet have been formally nominated does not deter him. “Formally shmormally,” an Obama supporter of unknown ethnicity told the AP.

Previously, the Democratic nominee had intended to give his speech at Denver’s Invesco Field, but plans fell through when a number of NFL All-Stars refused to take part in a mock Super Bowl beforehand. Said one unnamed source, “We felt that there was too much danger of getting stabbed if we had to wear those official Barack Obama flag lapel pins.”

A number of major musical acts will travel with the candidate to perform at his ceremony in China. Among these will be the reunited Beatles.

“He’s more popular right now than Jesus Christ,” John Lennon’s ghost said of the Democratic mega-star. “And more powerful, too. George and I have been trying to get Jesus to give us one more chance, but he kept saying he couldn’t. Obama got the job done.”

When questioned about the wisdom of the venue, Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee Chairman, said, “Look. The guy is running for the biggest job in showbiz. It’s only fitting that the entire planet be able to see the big changes we have in store. Barack Obama will definitely not be your father’s King of the World.”

Dean warned the globe’s populace to wear protective sunglasses during the speech. “Believe me,” he said, “when you see that giant Obama head projected onto the sun, it’ll knock your eyes out. But I don’t mean that literally. We want to make sure that no one stares directly into his face without taking the proper precautions.”

Since the candidate hopes to appeal to everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, or geographic location, plans are also underway to beam his image onto the moon. Dean said, “Barack Obama wanted to make sure that even those unfortunates who are experiencing night-time during the speech can bask in his light. He’s that kind of caring person.”

Obama’s appearance will be preceded by seventy-two hours of prayer led by leaders of thousands of religious denominations. Even atheists will be included, Obama promised, as long as they’re people of faith.

John McCain, not to be outdone, has also changed the venue of his acceptance speech. He will now speak in the solarium of Dr. Olfarts Senior Center in Babbitt City, Minnesota. Tickets are free for anyone presenting a Depends box-top.

Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and Socialist candidate Brian Moore could be reached for comment, but we didn’t feel like printing anything they said.

The Same Ol' Fucken Political Story

2008-07-05T19:03:00.006-04:00

This will get political, eventually; I promise. But just bear with me while I think with my typing fingers for a while.

To start with, I’d like once again to discuss, this time briefly, the word fuck here. Aside from the pleasurable physical sensation (which I described in this previous post) of saying it, there’s something about fuck — the “outlaw” nature of it, maybe — that tickles me.

I'm going to give examples of (1) a person who was recently embarrassed (unjustifiably, I think) by fuck, and (2) a person who wasn't.

Example 1: Mojoey laments that he said fuck in the presence of a child, albeit one he didn’t know was nearby. I think his ruefulness is wrong. Apart from in elementary school classrooms and at Disneyland, fuck should be perfectly acceptable. It’s a signal from one adult to another that he or she is taboo-free and refuses to be a prisoner of prevailing social mores.

Example 2: I’ve always enjoyed listening to Cyndi Lauper. Any woman who can record an entire song about female masturbation rates pretty high in my book. On her latest album, Bring Ya to the Brink, there’s a number called “Same Ol’ Story.” The powers-that-be have chosen to let the public know that the cut is “explicit.” So, of course, I was curious. Well, it turns out that the title is not exactly a verbatim quote of what Lauper says over and over again in her lyric. Here’s what she does say:

It’s the same ol’ fucken story.

Don’t you get a much better sense of what the song is about when I include the term omitted from the title? Am I wrong to find the singer’s anti-conventional attitude appealing?

Enough about fuck. There’s also Jesus Christ as an expletive, which many atheists, including myself, use freely. Again, we’re talking about a societal proscription: It’s bad to take the alleged lord’s name in vain, particularly when you yell it after you’ve stubbed your toe. But shouting JC's name has no more to do with believing in him than saying “it’s the same ol’ fucken story” has to do with asserting that the previous speaker’s tale was about sex.

I’m troubled by self-censorship. My attitude is: If people don’t like the way I fucking write, then Jesus Christ, they can stay away from my blog. That goes especially for you, kids!

I also hate it when someone says fudge, or intones Jiminy Cricket or Jeepers Crow, instead of what he or she really means. We all know what you’re thinking, pal; just come out with it.

There’s something slightly dishonest about saying fudge or Jiminy Cricket. But, really, it’s only mildly annoying, not terrible. What would be terrible would be to hear someone say, without a tone of irony, hooray when he dropped his ice cream cone, or fantastic when she banged her shin. Children, bereft of the power of expletives, cry when these things happen. Adults “curse.” A person who speaks a positive phrase in the light of either of these happenings would immediately be branded as a lunatic, or, at best, a liar.

Which brings me to my political point. We used to be able to depend on Barack Obama to say fuck and Jesus Christ — maybe not in so many words, but we knew what he meant — if someone had accused him of:

being untrue to his commitment to public campaign financing;
accepting the passage of FISA without a built-in telecom-immunity provision;
wanting to propagate George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives;
tolerating handguns;
allowing anyone to take away a woman's right to obtain an abortion if her well-being, either physical or mental, is threatened;
expanding the circumstances under which the death penalty can be applied;
reneging on his vow that, if elected, he would set a timetable for the removal of all American troops from Iraq;
practicing exclusionary politics by, say, banning from his photo ops any women who showed up in Muslim regalia.

In the last few weeks, though, we’ve learned that he no longer says even fudge or Jeepers Crow about those things.

He says hooray.

The Course of Human Events: A Quiz

2008-07-03T04:15:00.006-04:00

What better way to celebrate Independence Day — OK, this is a few hours early, so sue me — than by taking a quiz? Forget the fireworks and the patriotic band concert, put down that hot dog and bottle of tasteless American beer, turn off your Mel Gibson double-feature (The Patriot and The Passion of the Christ), and don your thinking caps. (Note: Yarmulkes and bishops' mitres don't count.)

If you believe that America is a Christian nation, you might not do very well on this little test. All others ought to get most, if not all, of the questions correct. You earn no extra points for wearing a flag lapel pin, so don't feel obliged. I haven't provided the answers, but will do so if commenters need them.

1. Which of these terms for a deity did Jefferson not use in the Declaration of Independence?

A. Divine Providence
B. Jesus Christ
C. Nature's God
D. Creator

2. Before the Declaration was edited by the Continental Congress, Jefferson wrote scathingly of the King who had

waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thereto.

Which entirely capitalized adjective did Jefferson use negatively to describe this King?

A. HEATHEN
B. INFIDEL
C. GODLESS
D. CHRISTIAN

3. In the Declaration of Independence, how many times are the Ten Commandments referred to as a source of Law?

A. none
B. one
C. four
D. ten

4. According to the Declaration, governments draw their powers from the __

A. "Bible"
B. "Word of the Lord"
C. "Consent of the Governed"
D. "Religious Heritage so Beloved of all True Christian Men"

5. Fill in the blank:

[We] … solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, _______ FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES …

A. by the Grace of Him Who Died for Our Sins,
B. by the Blessings Bestowed unto Us by the Author of the Universe,
C. and of Right ought to be,
D. in Accordance with the Wishes of our Heavenly, not Earthly, King

6. Which of the following was a self-evident Truth to the signers of the Declaration?

A. Abortion is Murder
B. All Men are created equal
C. Homosexuality causes Hurricanes
D. Scientists hate American Values

7. One of the colonists' grievances against the King of Great Britain was that

A. he prevented immigrants from coming to the colonies.
B. he refused to provide funds for religious charities.
C. he allowed doctors to perform abortions.
D. he approved of homosexuals marrying one another.

8. Which of the following grievances against King George, equally applicable to George W. Bush, is NOT mentioned in the Declaration of Independence?

A. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws.
B. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
C. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
D. He has held persons captive without charging them with crimes and empowered his representatives to commit the most egregious acts of torture upon them.

9. How many of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were, in 1776, active clergymen?

A. none
B. one
C. two
D. three

10. Thomas Jefferson, main author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote all of the following quotes EXCEPT:

A. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
B. The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Miverva in the brain of Jupiter.
C. I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and hope to God Almighty that our country be recognized as a Christian nation.
D. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Bonus Question:
Of the following people, who is LEAST likely to understand the religious ideas that led to the Declaration of Independence?

A. a historian recognized among her peers as one of the foremost experts on the American Revolution
B. a scholar who has made an extensive study of Enlightenment philosophy and how it influenced America's founders
C. an academically well-respected authority on eighteenth-century deists' attitudes about the role of religion in government
D. televangelist and Christian shill Pat Robertson

Now that you've answered the questions, you might want to take a few minutes and actually read or reread The Declaration of Independence. (My British friends are invited to do so, as well. No hard feelings, eh?)

Logical? Maybe Not. Educational? You Bet!

2008-06-29T11:06:00.004-04:00

OK, I confess. The whole Death Penalty Logic post was a hose, aimed primarily at my friend (maybe my ex-friend, after this admission) PhillyChief, who had been blowing loud and hard about his superior logical ability in death penalty debates. Unfortunately, he bowed out early at No More Hornets. He has now rejoined the fray over at You Made Me Say It, though. If he wants to continue, I’ll joust with him there – because I think his “demonstration” of the flaws in my argument is itself extremely flawed. I did love the graphic, though. Anyway, I recommend that you head over there and judge his logic for yourself.

You might also want to take a look at Barefoot Bum's devastating commentary on my "astoundingly bad argument." (I'm not exactly sure what criterion he uses to distinguish between an argument that's just garden-variety bad and one that's astoundingly bad, but his premise seems correct.)

The truth is: The long-winded argument in my post was cobbled together in about as long as it took to type it. I actually have no idea if it’s logically sound or not, but I can’t imagine how it could be. I’m pretty good with slinging words, though, and I was aware of some “tricks.” Many other seemingly planned authorial manipulations, like that sophomoric affirming the consequent, were just fuck-ups on my part.

There was one other person in the Atheosphere who knew I was going to do this before I’d actually done it, but that person bears no responsibility for anything in the post — or even for the fact that it became a post. I’ll amend this paragraph to give that person a link if he or she (seriously, I can’t decide) wants his or her (still can’t) identity known. I also briefly told my wife what I planned to do, but she never listens to me anyway (could you blame her?), and wouldn’t have cared even if she had listened.

I don’t know shit about formal logic much beyond what I learned in 1966 in my Freshman Course in the Symbolic Logic of Lewis Carroll. In that course, we proved all kinds of important stuff on the level of “a dormouse who dunks crumpets in his tea will never amount to anything.” (My memory isn’t what it once was, but I could probably still derive that if I could duplicate the set of premises.) I also own a book called Thinking From A to Z, but I usually get to more than one Z just a few minutes after opening it. I think I've actually read as far as D-and-a-half.

Interestingly, some atheists and theists alike showed that their primary method of fighting faulty logic is to yell “bullshit,” make ad hominem wisecracks, and resort to other forms of semantic thuggery. I’ve been guilty, myself, of using that technique. Hundreds of times. It’s fun. And it gets your rocks off. And you feel so self-righteous when you’re done. But it doesn’t win debates against someone who refuses to get rattled. Very early in the thread, commenter yunshui noticed that.

Finally, John Morales (who, alas, has no blog to link to) stepped into the arena with some real skill at deflating a logical argument just by using the tools of logic. I’m not certain what his plan was, but I think he hoped to give me just enough rope to slowly hang myself with my tendentious definitions and unsupportable premises. I’m going to assume that was it; he’ll have to demonstrate to me formally that my assumption is incorrect. (Note to JM: I’d still love to see how you skewer me, so let’s continue over there — or here, if you’d like. I’ll pretend I never wrote this, and defend my argument against you as best I can. I wasn’t kidding about how much I was learning from watching you build up a solid case, even though I have no idea yet what that case is.)

There's a blatant lesson in the comment thread. In future, I think all of us atheists should refrain, when “debating” with theists of the pseudo-logical variety, from immediately reaching for “this sucks” or “you’re a moron.” That goes for me, too. When we do that, we heat up the interchange without accomplishing anything. Now, obviously, there are plenty of morons out there, making sucky arguments, who can’t respond to anything other than insults. If you find one like that, and you’ve lost your patience, knock yourself out. But do try to be witty about it for the entertainment of the rest of us. Saying “your ideas are fucked-up” is so dull.

As far as the death penalty, I am adamantly against it. But I don’t think either side can get anywhere in expressing its position by going through the rigmarole of a silly logical puzzle. The best way to exchange views on that issue is probably to have just a regular old-fashioned discussion, featuring, on both sides, some logic, some emotions, some references to authority, gut feelings, preconceptions, etc. — as if we’re normal people (not bloggers) having a conversation, instead of engaging in a debate or a formalized exercise.

If anyone gets angry enough to murder me for my little hoax, know that my friends and relatives will do everything in their power to make sure you’re executed. I won't approve, but I'll be dead.

Looney-ku

2008-06-28T15:50:00.005-04:00

[Note: The Wall Street Journal of June 28-29 features an article with some free verse by Billy Collins, former U.S. poet laureate. The poems are about Looney Tunes characters. Since I’ve been writing drivel my entire life, and also since I identify closely with Daffy Duck, I feel as if I have the authority to challenge Collins at his own game. However, I thought I’d add some rules: all poems must be haiku. That is: they must have three lines of, respectively, 5-syllables, 7-syllables, and 5-syllables.

So, come on, Billy Collins: Let's slam.]

Bugs:
Just wanting carrots,
but the hunter is stalking
so you must crack wise.

Daffy:
Lisping and zany,
you may be irrational,
but so is the world.

Elmer Fudd:
Armed with a shotgun,
always dreaming of success;
creatures know better.

Yosemite Sam:
Big mouth on small guy,
guns drawn, ready for varmints,
you can't beat the hare.

The Roadrunner:
Racing through your life,
overcoming obstacles
produced by Acme.

Wile E. Coyote:
Life is too cruel
when all that careful planning
ends with a big boom.

Tweety:
You thought you saw what?
Don’t worry about the puss:
You can outsmart him.

Sylvester:
He looks so tasty
swinging blithely in his cage,
but eat something else.

Pepe Le Pew:
Sorry, mon ami,
you may think you’re a lover
but your technique stinks.

Porky:
Three words -- “That’s all, folks” --
it comes rolling off one’s tongue:
but never for you.

Is the Death Penalty Logical?

2008-06-26T17:50:00.013-04:00

One of my very best friends in the Atheosphere is a guy who prides himself on always being logical. I can picture him constructing syllogisms while at the butcher's, deciding which cut of meat to buy for barbecuing.

Recently, in light of yesterday's decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, my pal made a claim that he could use his razor-sharp logic to defend the death penalty, a punishment which, apparently, he finds just peachy. I don't think it's possible for a reasonable atheist to do that.

The following proof of my statement is not elegant. It relies on far too many definitions, premises, and conclusions, but it is, I believe, logically sound.

Definitions

Definition 1: Murder is the willful killing of another human being.
Definition 2: Self-defense is the use of physical force to stave of violence against oneself only (1) while such violence is being perpetrated or (2) at the moment when the threat of violence is imminent.
Definition 3: An execution is the willful killing of another human being, performed by an official body, such as the government.
Definition 4: Revenge is the infliction of harm on a person who has, or is perceived to have, done a harm.
Definition 5: A primal urge is an unthinking, instinctual action, most likely the result of evolutionary development.
Definition 6: An atheist is a person who does not believe in the existence of any gods.
Definition 7: A reasonable person is an individual who does not rely on conclusions that can’t be drawn logically.

Premises

Premise 1: Murder is morally wrong.
Premise 2: Murder is justifiable when done in self-defense.
Premise 3: Murder is “worst” when done with pre-meditation and malice aforethought.
Premise 4: Executions are pre-meditated and performed with malice aforethought.
Premise 5: An incarcerated person is not actually perpetrating violence, nor does he or she pose an imminent threat.
Premise 6: Revenge is a passionate act, driven by a primal urge, not reason.
Premise 7: Humans, both individually and within groups, have the ability to resist primal urges.
Premise 8: Executions in the United States are performed “dispassionately,” after much consideration; they are cold and calculating.
Premise 9: It is impossible to put a specific monetary valuation on a human life.
Premise 10: There is no way to bring a dead person back to life or to unrape a person.
Premise 11: There is no evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent on others from perpetrating crimes.
Premise 12: Reasonable people should not use bullshit as an authority to justify their opinions.
Premise 13: Atheists think the bible is bullshit.
Premise 14: Judaeo-Christian religious societies have used the biblical verse “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” as the accepted standard for punishment, including the death penalty.
Premise 15: Society ought not itself perpetrate acts that it finds morally wrong unless it can find some rationale for such acts.
Premise 16: There are no rational arguments for the death penalty that do not rely in some way on one or more of the following concepts: (1) it's a deterrent; (2) it's a societally acceptable form of revenge; (3) it's a societal method of self-defense; (4) it's an accepted standard of punishment and/or (5) it's the "price" a criminal must "pay" for his or her crimes.

Conclusions

Conclusion 1: It follows from Premises 1 and 2 that murder may be justifiable in self-defense, but it is still morally wrong.
Conclusion 2: It follows from Premise 1 and Definition 3 that executions are murder.
Conclusion 3: It follows from Conclusion 2 and Premises 3-4 that executions are among the “worst” form of murder.
Conclusion 4: It follows from Definition 2 and Premise 5 that executions performed by the government are not self-defense.
Conclusion 5: It follows from Definitions 4-5 and Premises 6-8 that in executions the government has resisted the primal urge for revenge.
Conclusion 6: It follows from Premises 9 and 10 that the murder or rape of a person cannot be compensated financially. There is no specific “price” that can be paid to make the victim “whole,” since he or she stays dead or raped.
Conclusion 7: It follows from Conclusion 6 that executions cannot be rationally justified by saying that the criminal must “pay” for his or her crime.
Conclusion 8: It follows from Definitions 6-7 and Premises 12-13 that a reasonable atheist should not quote the bible as an authority to justify his or her opinions.
Conclusion 9: It follows from Definition 7 and Premise 11 that if a reasonable atheist wishes to defend the death penalty, he or she must find a rationale other than deterrence.
Conclusion 10: It follows from Definition 7 and Conclusion 5 that if a reasonable atheist wishes to defend the death penalty, he or she must find a rationale different from “the primal urge for revenge.”
Conclusion 11: It follows from Definition 7 and Conclusion 4 that if a reasonable atheist wishes to defend the death penalty, he or she must find a rationale different from self-defense.
Conclusion 12: It follows from Conclusion 8 and Premise 14 that if a reasonable atheist wishes to defend the death penalty, he or she must find a rationale different from the standard set in the bible.
Conclusion 13: It follows from Definition 7 and Conclusion 7 that if a reasonable atheist wishes to defend the death penalty, he or she must find a rationale different from the wish to make a perpetrator “pay” for a crime.
Conclusion 14: It follows from Premises 1 and 15 that society should not commit murder unless it can find some way to defend such acts.
Conclusion 15: It follows from Conclusion 2 and Conclusion 14 that society should not perform executions unless it can find some way to defend such acts.
Conclusion 16: It follows from Conclusions 9-13 and Conclusion 15 that a reasonable atheist, speaking for society, cannot defend executions on the grounds that they (1) act as a deterrent on others, (2) create an acceptable outlet for revenge, (3) are a method of self-defense, (4) conform to the accepted standard for punishment, or (5) ensure that a criminal "pays" for his or her crime.

THEREFORE

It follows from Premise 16 and Conclusion 16 that a reasonable atheist cannot argue for the death penalty.

So, all you ultra-rational, death-penalty-loving atheists out there (religionists are welcome to take part as well, but you must respond to my argument using only the tools of logic) make your case for "disproving" my final conclusion. Remember, in a logical argument you may not simply challenge my premises by asserting that they’re incorrect. You must show that they’re incorrect, either by presenting facts to refute them, or by demonstrating that they lead to logical fallacies within the argument itself. Also, you may not ask questions that are irrelevant (e.g., What else should society do with its murderers and rapists?) to the argument I made.

Let the debate begin.

Thank You for Your Bushiness

2008-06-22T17:36:00.008-04:00

In my town, there isn’t much culture, unless your idea of sophistication is barbecuing in your driveway. So it’s not unusual, on a Sunday, for me to make the ten-mile trip to Barnes & Noble, there to commune with civilization.

When I approached that store today, though, I was greeted by the following sign, which I’ve reproduced verbatim:

WE ARE CLOSED
DUE TO POWER ISSUES.
SORRY FOR THE
INCONVIENENCE.

The first sentence seems to imply that the clerks have rebelled against management. “You can’t come in because there’s a mutiny going on.” But, no. It’s 21^st-century shrink-speak for: The fucking electricity isn’t working.

Nobody in America today — except maybe for bloggers — wants to make a definite statement, commit himself or herself to a clearly defined position on what’s right and what’s wrong. Instead, parents have issues with their children, and children have issues with their parents. Workers have issues with bosses, and bosses have issues with workers. Teachers have issues with students, students have issues with teachers, and everybody has issues with the principal. Conservatives have issues with liberals, and liberals have issues with conservatives. Christians have issues with Muslims, Muslims have issues with Jews, Jews have issues with Christians, and who doesn’t have issues with atheists?

“Having issues” is a weasel phrase. It’s not the same as “taking issue,” which at least means “disagreeing.” No, “having issues” is about viewpoint, based on the idea that all opinions are equal. It was born on the psychologist’s couch, where having strong ideas is often considered a sign of mental aberration. It was reared in a relativistic society, in which we all must "respect" one another, whether we've earned that respect or not. And it flourishes in media-driven politics where candidates strive to be the most inoffensive product for sale.

"Having issues" leads to rubbish like “Teach the controversy.” That’s why creationists have issues with so-called evolutionists, and why real, but apologetic, scientists have issues with the army of ignorati who are largely responsible for teaching our kids nonsense.

But, often, there are no issues, f’cryinoutloud. There’s a right side and a wrong side; opinions are not necessarily co-equal. I, myself, do not “have issues” with fundamentalist thugs who want to shove religion down the throats of impressionable youngsters. Instead, I argue, vehemently, for what’s objectively right. If you’re an atheist blogger, chances are that you do, too.

OK, returning to the sign, let’s look at the second sentence. You may not have noticed that “inconvenience” is misspelled, so take another look. Now remember: That sign was written by a person surrounded by English dictionaries. There are at least a dozen different editions scattered over the Reference shelves in my local branch. Does an employee have issues with orthography? Or with Noah Webster, maybe? What does it say about the Barnes & Noble staff if the combined skill of all the clerks can’t manage to spell a fairly common word correctly? Do they read anything they sell, or are they too busy slurping caramel macchiatos to look at the store’s main product? Follow-up question: Are books still the main product of Barnes & Noble Booksellers? Or should the company be renamed to “Barnes & Noble Latte Pushers”?

But idiotic behavior was not limited to those powerless few in the store. I sat for about ten minutes watching customers walk up to the doors. Singly or in groups they stood at the entrance and carefully read the posted message. Then ... they pulled on the handles of the doors. Not one person shrugged and turned around to head back to his or her car. Nope, every potential customer decided to try to get in, as if the “We’re Closed” sign were some kind of hoax. Even when one person or group failed to gain entry, the next in line thought that maybe he or she would have the magic touch.

Call me an old curmudgeon, but I have issues with that kind of stupidity.

Pardon My French, Voltaire

2008-06-15T02:41:00.009-04:00

So. Zadig, eh?

Ummm.

Well, here’s the odd thing. I’m one of those people who never lack an opinion. If I’m in a conversation and I genuinely have no viewpoint, I just make one up. Then I defend it passionately until I believe it.

Similarly, I’ve read very few books from start to finish that haven’t “hit” me in one way or another. Yes, I’ve begun my share of novels that I tossed aside after 50 pages because I was bored. But when I go through an entire volume from cover to cover, I expect to have something to say about it when I’m done. And — surprise! — I always do. Not that my literary pronouncements are necessarily of value to anyone, but they do keep me off the streets. In any case, I can't remember ever resorting to just a shrug (French: un shrug).

Until now.

Zadig is a pleasant enough story, set in some screwball Orient of the author’s imagination, although really it’s just a series of parodistically exotic episodes loosely strung together in a style that’s not exactly a fairy tale, not exactly an Arabian Nights tale, and not exactly a folk tale. But it has a definite tale-ish-ness, only without the charm. Maybe you’ve gotta be French. Or perhaps you need to have a hunk of crispy bread and some decent Bordeaux handy. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned ahead, so the closest things I had in the house were a stale hot dog roll (pain éventé de hot dog) and half a glass of unbubbly Lite beer (moitié par en verre unbubbly de bière de Lite.)

Anyway, the whole book has a spontaneously knocked-off quality, as if it were made up by someone who had never actually told a coherent story before. I can imagine Voltaire, sitting down at his desk, setting his pocket watch (watch de poche) for an hour (soixante minutes), and saying to himself: “Today, I’m going to write exactly 1,000 words.” (Aujourd'hui, je vais écrire exactement 1.000 mots, give au take dix mots.) And that’s apparently what he did. Some of those words were shaped into blasphemous or satiric sentences, which no doubt made him chuckle. Me, too, in a bland sort of way. An example of his irreligious wit: Is there anything more worthy of respect than an abuse dating from ancient times? Cute. I won’t cite any more here, because I’m going to leave the best quotes for the other Nonbelieving Literati to steal; there aren’t really enough to go around. Still, I do identify with someone using that kind of automatic-writing authorship style, and can easily picture Voltaire slapping himself in the knee: “I think this stuff is very funny.” (Je pense que cette substance est très drôle. Ouch. Mon knee.)

Now, to be fair, I’m sure that Zadig was a hoot in its time. The people who read it when it was hot off the presses (chaud outre des presses) were probably able to catch every topical allusion, understand all the in-jokes, recognize each of the sardonic portraits. Me, I’m not that up on French 18^th-century history. I know there was some kind of revolution near the end of that period, and before that, a couple of kings and cardinals and musketeers. Truthfully, though, I’m pretty much indifferent to almost everything from France except for its cheese, its wine, and the Brigitte Bardot of 50 years ago. So all the passages for which I would have needed a reference flew way over my head (flew au-dessus de ma tête avec la plume de ma tante).

I neither liked Zadig, nor hated it. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I also wouldn’t warn anyone to steer clear of it. Voltaire was a cool dude (dude frais), and he certainly deserves to be remembered. I think his reputation is neither enhanced nor damaged (fucked vers le haut) by this book. However, if you want to see the kind of irreverence that helped give the Enlightenment its name — an irreverence that we could use a lot more of here in Bush’n’Bible-Land (terre de la brousse et l'Evangile) — you might find Zadig mildly entertaining (divertissant de ho-hum).

In short, it’s worth un shrug. Maybe deux shrugs.

Our Next Book:
Well, we had a wonderful nonbelieving and literate member who was going to pick our next selection, but, unfortunately, she’s still deciding. This may not be such a bad thing, since we’ve had a very female-heavy selection process for the last few installments. There are only a few of us guys, though, so I took the liberty of appointing myself to choose the next book. My original thought was that we’d read something a little more male-oriented for a change, and, naturally, I immediately zeroed in on my copy of Two-Fisted, Gun-Totin’, Ballsy Adventure Stories: The Car Chase Edition. But the thing seemed a little sissyish to me.

Seriously, I decided not to burden anyone with having to fill in with a decision at the last minute, and, fortunately, without wracking my brain, I happened to think of an unusual book that might be of interest to atheists, particularly (but not limited to) science-lovers: Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. I’ll warn everyone that although this appears to be a short book of simple science-fiction stories, looks can be deceiving. You may not want to put it off until the very last minute before the target date of August 1.

By the way, thanks to all you Nonbelieving Literati — both old and new members — for continuing to support the group.

Notable Deaths This Week

2008-06-14T16:28:00.011-04:00

Here are some notable deaths this week. If you care to, you can find the names, listed in order of their appearance here, at the bottom of the page.

A medical researcher who was one of the first to find a link between tobacco and cancer.

A woman who fought a battle against hospitals, doctors, and societal taboos to champion nautral breast-feeding; one of the founders of La Leche League.

A former Vietnamese reformer and eventual prime minister who helped to lift his country from a war-torn, Soviet-style regime back into a place on the world stage.

An Italian film director who pioneered a new style of cinema that helped give citizens a newfound self-confidence after the trauma of Mussolini’s Fascism.

A researcher who discovered important information on organ transplant rejections and was one of the first blacks to be granted tenure at New York University Medical School.

An Egyptian politician and ex-prime minister who helped negotiate the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

A man who, as NATO ambassador under Johnson, repeatedly urged a halt to nuclear proliferation and urged “a world structure in which” weaker nations “will have assurances that existing nuclear powers will come to their rescue.”

A famous philanthropist who supported dozens of progressive causes, gave monetary assistance to candidates who otherwise might not have had a political voice, helped to finance the lawsuit that ultimately led Spiro Agnew to resign from the vice presidency, and was a prominent name on Nixon’s “enemies list.”

A guy who read the news on television, chatted with people who actually said and did important things, and helped to foster the idea that the mainstream media was worthless at presenting unbiased information.

So who got the most news coverage BY FAR?

Their Names
George E. Moore
Edwina Froehlich
Vo Van Kiet
Dino Risi
Randolph M. Chase, Jr.
Mustafa Khalil
Harlan Cleveland
Stewart R. Mott
Tim Russert

Unlucky Atheists

2008-06-13T17:48:00.007-04:00

Atheists don’t actually believe in luck, but it’s possible that they can, in fact, be unlucky. Today being Friday the 13^th, I thought I’d perform a service and list an appropriate number of ways that atheists could find themselves to be the victims of misfortune.

Not voting for George W. Bush but having him be your president anyway and then the party you did vote for doesn’t have enough balls and/or scruples to impeach him.

Living next-door to a hard-of-hearing family that enjoys Contemporary Christian music.

Having a crush on an attractive coworker and taking months to summon up the courage to ask her out on a date and then the day you finally do feel confident enough to approach her she shows you her new “Jesus Saves” tattoo.

Being so dimwitted that even though you can speak intelligently about the dangers to the food supply brought about by a combination of climate change, pollution, and corporate greed you still need Charlton Heston to clue you in that Soylent Green is people.

Taking a home-study cartooning course in Holland and having as your first assignment: Draw a picture of Mohammed with a bomb on his head.

Hearing your atheist wife telling an old friend of hers that she thinks your marriage has been successful because the two of you are both Capricorns.

Tuning into a TV program announced in your local newspaper as “Richard Dawkins hosts a discussion on the evolutionary development of family morality,” but actually the editors didn’t catch a minor typo in a blurb that really should have said, “Richard Dawson hosts Family Feud.”

Being awakened early on a Sunday morning by a knock on your door and gearing up for a fun confrontation but it’s just a Jehovah’s Witness who wants to let you know that your car is on fire.

Inventing a great atheist game in which the object is to acquire as many areas of knowledge — science, history, math, philosophy, literature, etc — as possible and then build on your knowledge to make it even more effective but somebody points out that the rules are almost exactly the same as Monopoly.

Having a priest ask you how atheists can claim to have any morals and then after you get all smug in preparation for a devastating answer it turns out that he’s the only Roman Catholic clergyman in the entire world who goes for grown-up women.

Smiling sheepishly when asked to say grace at a family dinner, you finally reveal that you’re an atheist and everybody says, “Really? I’m an atheist, also!” but it’s still tuna casserole.

Wearing your A T-shirt to an atheist convention at a big hotel and accidentally wandering into a suite where there’s a meeting of the Assholes Club.

Getting into a blog argument with a Christian about the Problem of Evil and scoring dozens of “killer” points that leave him or her totally whipped and then you notice that you’ve been typing “evli” in all your comments.

Anyway, good luck, folks.

What Problem of Evil?

2008-06-10T03:02:00.006-04:00

I can’t get anywhere near cut grass without sneezing. Perhaps because of that, I’ve developed an overly fine sense of smell when it comes to newly mown lawns. Their odor is strong and repulsive to me; it literally punches me in the nose. The scent of recently chopped blades is an entity to me: I experience it in the present, I can recall it from the past, and I can conjure it up in my brain as a dire prediction for the future. Often, it assails my nostrils when I merely look at a grassy field, when the smell isn’t even there. But it’s very real to me, a constant threat.

My wife, who is normally far more sensitive to aromas, both good and bad, than I am, gets little or no nasal stimulus from cut grass. When she actually does smell it, she finds it, at most, mildly pleasant.

I’ve tried arguing about that smell. I can call it repulsive, nauseating over and over, but she doesn’t get it. She can tell me that I’m imagining things again and again, but I know that my nostrils don’t lie. It’s just not normal for her not to share my difficulty with that blatant stink. Why can’t she acknowledge the truth? It's a terrible smell and it exists in and of itself.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to this corner of the Atheosphere, in which we’ve been spinning our wheels for about a week at SI’s blog over the Problem of Evil, specifically Epicurus’s series of questions:

Is god willing to prevent Evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh Evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him “God”?

It’s a very cute riddle, and loads of fun to trot out when having a discussion with theists who believe in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being. Question: Why does god wear evil? Answer: To keep his pants up.

In such arguments, atheists often label suffering as a subset of Evil, apparently to make the solution even more difficult. We call on theists to answer for natural disasters and illnesses as well as the wicked doings of fellow humans. How do they account for Hitler, Hurricane Katrina, malaria, the Bush administration, Earth-threatening comets, and the squirrels who keep eating the birdseed? Evil exists; hence, there's no god.

Of course, given the rhetorical nature of Epicurus’s epigram, there is no answer. Religionists are stumped. “God works in mysterious ways,” they’ll say. They try to weasel out of the difficulty by claiming that there can be no Evil, that everything is, ultimately, for the best in their deity’s plan, that Evil is actually Good, its opposite. Or they may posit that Evil is necessary to test humans’ faith, to give us lowly critters an opportunity to use our free will for the greater glory of their insecure, egomaniacal king of kings. Or, perhaps, Jesus is wrestling with Evil even as we speak, but he hasn’t beaten it yet.

The thing is: atheists don’t actually believe in a Platonic Form known as Evil. There are evil people, yes, but there’s no embodiment of that quality. Evil is not an entity in and of itself. In a world lacking a divine plan, suffering is morally neutral. Tsunamis, tornadoes, tuberculosis, drought, dry rot, and the dove who casually shits on your car — these things can’t be plotted on a morality graph; they’re neither good nor evil. They just are.

For an atheist to assume the premise that Evil does exist — even when he or she finds it a convenient tool for one-upping an ignorant Christian — is nonsense. There’s no such thing as capital E Evil. There’s no Problem of Evil because capital E Evil doesn’t exist, any more than capital G God exists.

In actuality, the smell of mown grass is neither revolting nor mildly pleasant; it just is. Because of my psycho-somatic reaction to that smell, it’s disgusting to me: Evil. I have a problem with it. For my wife, who accepts it as part of the natural world, the fragrance is there, but it doesn’t need to be weighed on a scale of morality.

I’m the one with the sickness, the one with the unreasonable reaction, the one obsessed. I’m the one who dreads that scent, who can call it into existence in my own mind whenever I want to make myself feel ill. I’m the one who insists that the smell is caused by the actions of my neighbors — or my own wife! The propagation of that noxious smell may or may not be part of their plan, but when they mow their yards, they spread the Evil.

My wife, wisely, doesn’t accept that premise. She refuses to argue whether the odor is either good or bad. She just tells me to shut up and blow my nose.

Socrates in the Atheosphere

2008-06-04T21:35:00.016-04:00

[Note: Some historians have claimed that Socrates was born on June 4. Oddly enough, on his birthday, I discovered this unheard-of dialogue in an old jar of stuffed grape leaves I had sitting on my shelf.]

Socrates: Greetings, Evo. What brings you to the marketplace today?
Evo: My feet do Socrates.
Socrates: LOL, Evo. But, nay. I mean why do you come here?
Evo: It’s another day in paradise, my friend. The sun is shining, and so I thought to betake myself outdoors.
Socrates: I agree with you, Evo. The sun is indeed shining. But does it not also shine when there are clouds? Or does the sun cease to shine on such a day? Does the sun disappear when we cannot see it?
Evo: No, of course not. The sun never disappears.
Socrates: Then it always shines?
Evo: Yes, scientifically that is true.
Socrates: And yet, you make a distinction between a clear day on which the sun shines and a nasty day on which the sun shines. Is that not the case?
Evo: Well, maybe I should have said it was a beautiful day.
Socrates: And can you then, Evo, tell me what beauty is? How can I know that this day is a beautiful one? By what standards am I to judge?
Evo: I can tell you only my own standards, Socrates. Yours might be different.
Socrates: So are you saying that there is no way of judging beauty? Your idea of beauty is different from mine?
Evo: Well, of course, Socrates.
Socrates: I win this round, Evo. * * *But wait a moment. Who is that with you? It is Sigho, if I’m not mistaken.
Sigho: Yes, Socrates, it is indeed I. I’m glad I found you.
Socrates: I assume you have a question for me, then?
Sigho: I would like to change the look of my blog, Socrates. What do you recommend?
Socrates: You have tried Popeye already?
Sigho: Yes, Socrates. But I tired of him.
Socrates: And ghouls? Have you tried them?
Sigho: I did indeed, Socrates. Even before Popeye.
Socrates: And a naked woman?
Sigho: That’s what I have now, Socrates. A good-looking naked woman.
Socrates: And do good-looking naked women not please you, Sigho? For if they do not, there’s plenty of guy-on-guy action in the agora.
Sigho: I am sufficiently pleased by good-looking naked women.
Socrates: But you would like to get rid of this particular naked woman?
Sigho: Yes.
Socrates: Is she beautiful by your standards?
Sigho: I think so.
Socrates: Is she more or less beautiful than Evo’s day?
Sigho: I think she might make Evo’s day even more beautiful.
Socrates: And yet, you would remove this beautiful image?
Sigho: As I said, Socrates, I’m tired of it.
Socrates: So you are tired of beauty then?
Sigho: No, Socrates, not beauty in general. Just this particular beauty.
Socrates: And yet you would like your blog to look beautiful?
Sigho: Certainly.
Socrates: Before picking another beauty, would you consult with Evo to find out his standard?
Sigho: I might.
Socrates: And you know, don’t you, that Evo thinks a sunny day is beautiful?
Sigho: Yes.
Socrates: So should you not use the image of a sunny day on your blog?
Sigho: I had something else in mind.
Socrates: And what was that?
Sigho: I’m not sure.
Socrates: But it will be beautiful?
Sigho: To me.
Socrates: But you won’t know whether it’s beautiful to your readers, because everyone has a different standard of beauty. Is that right?
Sigho: What you say is so, Socrates.
Socrates: And yet, it is to attract readers that you’d have a beautiful image at all. Am I correct?
Sigho: Yes.
Socrates: And at least one of your readers has declared that he thinks a sunny day is beautiful?
Sigho: Evo has, yes.
Socrates: Well, I win that one, too.
* * *But, look. That’s Phillitus, if my eyes deceive me not. I recognize the headdress and the red hair and the general oversized appearance.
Phillitus: Just so, Socrates. It is I.
Socrates: And you, Phillitus? For what reason have you come to this place?
Phillitus: Why, to seek you out, Socrates.
Socrates: Me?
Phillitus: Yes, Socrates. I was hoping you could answer a question I have. Why is it that when I barbecue chicken my team always loses?
Socrates: Do you have a particular chicken in mind?
Phillitus: No, Socrates. I mean any chicken.
Socrates: The idea of “chicken” then.
Phillitus: Exactly.
Socrates: But surely, Phillitus, you do not barbecue an idea. For that would not be sustenance enough for an ant.
Phillitus: No, Socrates, I barbecue particular chickens.
Socrates: And are these chickens beautiful?
Phillitus: Not to my standard of beauty, Socrates.
Socrates: And when you have barbecued these particular non-beautiful chickens, your team has lost?
Phillitus: Yes.
Socrates: But there may, may there not, be some beautiful chicken that you might barbecue which would not result in a loss by your team. Do you agree?
Phillitus: That has not been my experience with chickens, Socrates.
Socrates: Are you saying, then, that you have barbecued every single chicken there is?
Phillitus: Certainly not.
Socrates: Well, I would suggest that you try some beautiful chickens to see if your hypothesis stands.
Phillitus: But I don’t want my team to lose, Socrates.
Socrates: You don’t get what I’m saying, do you? Well, I win this round. Three points for me so far. * * *But, say. Who is that sourpuss skulking around in the distance? Can it be Owlas?
Owlas: Socrates, as you know, Obammas is running for the council.
Socrates: Yes, I’ve been told that.
Owlas: I do not want to vote for him. He speaks nonsense sometimes.
Socrates: What kind of nonsense.
Owlas: Why, religious nonsense, Socrates.
Socrates: Then why not vote for his opponent.
Owlas: I believe his opponent speaks even more nonsense, which is not merely religious in nature.
Socrates: So, according to you, both Obammas and his opponent speak nonsense, but Obammas less so. And only in one area.
Owlas: Yes. But it’s still too much nonsense for me.
Socrates: Are either of the candidates beautiful?
Owlas: I do not vote on the basis of beauty, Socrates.
Socrates: But you must make a choice for the good of Athens, mustn’t you?
Owlas: I shall vote for myself.
Socrates: And by doing so, you hope to win?
Owlas: No, Socrates, my vote will be a protest against two poor choices.
Socrates: Will anyone know that you have protested?
Owlas: I, myself, will know that I have protested.
Socrates: And your protest which only you will know about, is that sufficient to get your message across?
Owlas: I sincerely doubt it, Socrates. But I refuse to put up with nonsense. I think if enough people knew my position, they would, indeed, vote for me.
Socrates: Are you beautiful?
Owlas: I don’t believe so, Socrates.
Socrates: Assuming that you are not beautiful, what kind of barbecue does your team prefer?
Owlas: I don’t have a team, Socrates. I don’t follow sports.
Socrates: If you did follow sports, what kind of barbecue do you think your team would prefer?
Owlas: I have no opinion about that, Socrates. I don’t usually eat barbecue.
Socrates: Well, if you did follow sports, and if you did eat barbecue, what kind of barbecue do you think your team would prefer?
Owlas: I can’t say, Socrates. I lack knowledge of teams and I lack knowledge of barbecue.
Socrates: So white male workers are not likely to vote for you, are they Owlas?
Owlas: Probably not.
Socrates: That’s another point for me, wouldn’t you say?

In One's Own Words

2008-06-01T15:55:00.003-04:00

Anyone who reads this blog regularly is aware of my frequent commenters, all of whom I’d like to think are friends — not just of mine, but, for the most part, of one another’s. Yet, we argue about ideas all the time. We do it in our blog posts, in our comments, in our emails to one another. Some of us do it weekly on Another Goddamned Podcast (shameless plug), or even on the telephone. In fact, I can’t think of any two atheists I know, in the Atheosphere or in real life, who haven’t disagreed with each other about philosophy at least once.

Interestingly, though, we all employ the same simple skill when arguing for our particular views: We state our positions in our own words.

Now, this should not be a remarkable situation. Every state in the union has educational standards for its public school students requiring that kids as young as 3rd-graders be able to paraphrase and/or summarize written and heard material in their own words. Being able to restate concepts, facts, and details in your own words shows that you actually understand what you’re talking about. On the other hand, not being able to put someone else’s thought into your own words shows that you really don’t get it.

An interesting phenomenon that comes up again and again, over and over, on the Web and in the world, is the incapability of many Christians to say, plainly, clearly, and in their own words exactly what they believe about this or that. To be absolutely fair, I’ll assert right here that I’m not talking about all Christians. I’m not even comfortable saying that my observation applies to most Christians, although I think it does. But it certainly fits many Christians that I’ve come across. When pinned down, they just can’t articulate their beliefs.

Their inability is indicative of an intellectual emptiness in the religious world view. The thin ice upon which religious beliefs are built will crack when put under the weight of any extra words needed to clarify them. So theists, unable or unwilling to add to the load (of whatever you choose to call it) retreat into using those words that are already available to them, i.e., quotations from the bible and citations of religious “thinkers” throughout history.

Most believers have never been challenged to explain in their own words how their faith works and what it means. I’m not talking about meaning in the emotional sense, as in “what it means to me.” I’m talking about meaning in the pure dictionary sense: Explain this idea, define it, describe it in your own words.

By and large, they can’t do it. Take away their ability to parrot phrases from the bible and other “authorities,” and they’re left speechless. They retreat hastily from a conversation or debate whenever they’re put on the spot to dig into their store of language and find their own words to elucidate what they “know.”

It’s not unreasonable to infer that those who can’t explain what they claim to know, actually know nothing.

Quazy Quistian Question # 6

2008-05-30T20:19:00.004-04:00

The other night, Mrs. Ex and I sat down to a hot-weather dinner: a little chicken salad, a couple of dollops of potato salad, some green salad, three or four tablespoons of fruit salad, and even a few fistfuls of our beloved Crunchy Cheetos. She said, “When the weather’s like this, I love a big salad.”

“Well,” I said, “technically it’s not one big salad. It’s actually four different salads, all on one plate.” In case you didn’t already know this, I can be a tremendous pain-in-the-ass.

My wife can’t ever resist taking the bait. “It’s one big fucking salad,” she said.

“Ummm, no it’s not,” I insisted. “First of all, the stuff isn’t all mushed together. It’s separate, like the compartments in a TV dinner. There’s a chicken salad compartment, a potato salad ...”

“I can see what’s there.”

“And secondly, no one in his or her right mind would ever refer to Cheetos as salad. So why can’t you admit that it’s a bunch of different salads and some crunchies on the side? While we’re at it, there’s not enough of the potato kind, if you want my opinion.”

Anyway, we went back and forth a few times, at least until we’d both finished cleaning our plates, refilling them, and cleaning them again. Then we stopped arguing while we finished our meal with a sweets course: ice cream on top of baked apple pieces and pastry, which my wife unreasonably claimed was only one dessert called “pie a la mode.” I understand that traditionally this is considered a unitary dish; but since ice cream, baked apples, and pastry are all separable, and since their essences don’t change when combined, I’m fairly comfortable insisting that it’s actually a trio of different things, acting as a team, that's merely masquerading as a single entity. But I wisely kept my mouth shut while I chewed.

I thought of that dinner today when I became engaged in kind of a silly interchange over at You Made Me Say It. A Christian was claiming that his religion is monotheistic. That, of course, is ridiculous.

Here are some reasons why Christianity is, clearly, polytheistic.

1. Dad, Junior, and the Cosmic Goo
That’s three gods. If you challenge Christians to explain how 3 = 1, they’ll usually start spouting some nonsense about the “trinity”: The bible says this, Christian apologists say that. These explanations are, of course, a weasel-y cop-out on a grand scale. Atheists don’t believe in what the bible says, nor do we put any credence in the long, tedious, lying tradition of Christian apologetics.

We’ve got three entities here, not one. For Christians, though, it’s “pie-in-the-sky a la mode.”

But, look. Even according to the bible, when Jesus was on the cross, he cried out to his papa. So god and Jesus, at least, must be different beings — unless the “savior” was just talking to himself like a crazy man. Was the “savior” a lunatic? Are his followers?

And that third god is some vague entity used conveniently to plug the gaps into which neither Jesus nor the Big Guy fit: the “hole-y spirit.” Either he/she/it is an unnecessary concept, or we’re talking about another divine presence here.

2. Satan
Most reasonable people would call the Satan character a god. He may not be the king of the particular gods that the Christians believe in, but he’s clearly got the powers of a deity — albeit an evil one.

There’s no point in Christians arguing that a god can be a god only if he’s omnibenevolent, because even their guy doesn’t fit the bill. He condones ethnic cleansing, the murder of innocents, slavery, the subjugation of women — the list of atrocities goes on and on. And he’s egomaniacal, not a nice trait.

But let’s, for the moment, say that God and Satan are opposites in some way. In Christian belief, Satan has the power to challenge the divine personage they call “God” for people’s souls. He’s either immortal, or, if vanquishable at some future date, at very least unusually long-lived. He’s omnipresent, almost omnipotent, and omnimalevolent. If he were a member of some ancient pantheon, we’d all recognize him as the embodiment of wickedness, a “dark” god. And that’s what he is in the Christian scheme: a fellow god.
3. The Demigods of Christianity
Some Christians —Orthodox and Roman Catholics, for example — address prayers to Mary and/or saints. These heavenly folks may not be full-fledged gods, but they’re certainly demigods. Some of them are acknowledged by scholars of all persuasions as being spin-offs of pagan deities. So if we were talking about a mythology other than Christianity, everyone would acknowledge that these characters are superhuman enough to be classed in the “gods” category.
But not certain Christians. For them, Mary is kind of a real woman, except kind of not. The saints are sort of dead people, but sort of not. But how can you pray to a corpse who isn’t a god; what’s the point? You might as well pray to a cat, or a tree, or a meteor. They’re just more gods.

So it sure looks as if Christianity is a polytheistic religion. Christians may not put any other gods before the leader of the club, but they sure throw in plenty of lesser gods as part of the holistic picture. Most of us would call that “polytheism.”

Now, I’m going to diverge slightly from convention before I ask the following question. Usually, in this series, I’ve been freewheeling about accepting answers — even though no satisfactory ones have ever been provided. For this particular entry, though, I’m going to have to insist that no quotes, links, or historical references be used. I’m interested in responses that are phrased only in your very own words.

Quazy Quistian Question #6
Isn’t Christianity a polytheistic religion? If not, how do you account for all those super-beings running around? Explain your response.

Ten Things I Believe That May Be Wrong

2008-05-28T01:54:00.003-04:00

Atheosphere memes are stupid, boring, and annoying. I believe that, but I may be wrong.

So, in case I am, here’s a meme.

Think of some things you believe that may be wrong. Write them on your blog. Don’t tag anyone, but drop the hint that if your friends really care about your feelings, they’ll follow through with their own lists.

A really intelligent person can’t be religious.
Corollary: If you write in English without knowing the most basic mechanics of the language — spelling, punctuation, grammar, capitalization — chances are very good that you’re either a first-grader or a Christian.

Spectators go to car races mainly hoping to see crashes.
Corollary: There’s no fucking way that driving is a sport.

You can get almost any household chore accomplished with a Swiss Army Knife and a roll of paper towels.

Most bloggers, including me, are nuts in some way.
Corollary: I only threw myself in there so the rest of you don't get insulted.

When the word “adorable” is injected into a conversation, it’s time to change the subject.
Corollary: Neither your cats nor your kids are interesting to the rest of us.

Anyone who can’t finish The New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle in half an hour or less is inferior to me.

One can live a full life without ever watching American Idol.
Corollary: One can live a full life without ever listening to country music.

People who shlep their belongings to Antiques Road Show are a little creepy.
Corollary: Antiques Road Show is a covert arm of the yard-sale industry.

If someone says he’s “for the people,” he’s hardly ever for me.

Raisin Bran tastes better than plain bran flakes to which you’ve added raisins.
Corollary: Cocoa Crispies taste better than plain Rice Crispies on which you’ve poured cocoa.

Ummm ... You Didn't Make Me Say It

2008-05-27T11:26:00.008-04:00

This is my 200th entry here at No More Hornets and so I thought it might be a good time to answer a question posed today by my friend Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist.

Hemant asks: Why Do You Blog?

Here's the answer I left him:

The reason I blog is so that those of us who don’t blog for any reason have a voice in the Atheosphere.

I think that may be a version of Russell's paradox, but I'm not a philosopher so I can't be sure.

(H/T to PhillyChief, whose blog has my favorite title. And thanks for the surprise graphic.)

The Pussycat of the Atheosphere

2008-05-25T14:20:00.007-04:00

I received an email from an apparently nice guy with whom I’d been “exchanging views" over at Spanish Inquisitor. He senses a hostility from me. From me! The pussycat of the Atheosphere.

In a comment, he wrote: I'm really, sincerely interested in trying to understand your point of view.

So, because I’m all about educating my readers, here’s my response. This is my “point of view” in a nutshell:

I don’t believe in any gods. I don’t believe in a god of vengeance and I don’t believe in a god of love. I don’t believe in the god of the bible, both the old and the new testament, or in the god of the koran, or in the gods of the vedas, or in the gods of any book of the dead. I don’t believe in any gods that have ever been written about anywhere by anyone. I also don’t believe in the individually concocted god who conveniently resides in a commenter’s heart. I don’t believe in a god who made man out of mud six thousand years ago and I don’t believe in a god who set the entire evolutionary ball rolling, possibly more than four billion years ago. I don’t believe in a god who blesses America or one who damns America. I don’t believe in the god whose name appears on my money or in my pledge. I don’t believe in the god of the Republicans and I don’t believe in the god of the Democrats, the god of John McCain or the god of Barack Obama. I don’t believe in the god of Pat Robertson and I also don’t believe in the god of Barry Lynn. I don’t believe in the tinker-toy god of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the criminal god of the minions and yes-men, both right and left, of this crooked administration. I don’t believe in the state god of Hitler’s Nazis or the people’s god of Stalin’s Communists; I don’t believe in the gods of any totalitarian regimes. I believe neither in the god of Hamas nor in the god of the Knesset. I don’t believe in the god of Osama bin Laden; I don’t believe in the god of Timothy McVeigh. I don’t believe in any god that historically has condoned — and/or continues to condone — the slaughter of whole peoples, the enslavement of the weak, the subjugation of women, and the demonization of homosexuals. I don’t believe in the god who urges his or her believers to attack violently or threaten psychologically those who believe in other gods, in whom I also don’t believe. I don’t believe in a god who discourages learning and encourages committed ignorance. I don’t believe in a god who causes hurricanes and floods and famines; nor do I believe in a god who is not personally responsible for those disasters. I don’t believe in a god who enjoys watching humanity suffer, but I also don’t believe in one who suffered for humanity. I don’t believe in a god who commands the most odious human acts of savagery, or even a god who condemns such acts. I don’t believe in ANY gods.

Here’s what I do believe in: human potential for good — and for ill. Here’s what I’d like to see: far more good, far less ill.

Puzzling Atheists #5: Some Woo

2008-05-23T18:20:00.016-04:00

This is a puzzle to test your knowledge of woo.

Each numbered item leads to a term that’s related to woo in some fashion. All you have to do is supply the term. They’re clearly spelled out, so you can consider the numbered tidbits of woo as a gift from WWW.

Unfortunately, since this is a Woo Puzzle, I've had to acknowledge that God works in mysterious ways. So every consonant has been replaced with a W, and every vowel has been replaced with an O. That is, except for the letters W and O, which have been replaced by one another. For the purposes of this puzzle, Y is always considered a consonant. Thus, the word WOO would be written as OWW and the word WOW would be written as OWO. GOD, by the way, would be written as WWW. For ease of reading, if a term contains more than one word, the words are separated by an underline: _.

As an extra help — because we’re all atheists here, aren’t we? — all As have been left alone. So the word HALLELUJAH would be written as WAWWOWOWAW. Leave your solutions in the comments section. To give everyone a chance, though, please post no more than four answers at a time. I’ll give credit to the first person who identifies each term.

Some Woo

You’ll be a black sheep if you mix this with linen: OWWW
A Roman’s dad: WWWO
He was given the laws on which the Constitution is based: WWWOW
She’ll fuck up the whole world, not just Babylon: OWWWO
God's not a comedian, but this is a pretty good rib: OWWAW
You can babble forever, but this won’t get you to heaven: WWOOW
His witnesses don’t call him this: WAWOOW
He never goes commando: WWWWWW
Pasco County can teach a lesson to this guy, but not vice versa: OOWAWW
Try this stuff even if you’re not thirsty: WWWW-AOW
Don’t do this to anybody except God: OWWWWOW
He was designed, but not with a Phillip’s head screwdriver: WWWWWWW
This really kills a person: AWWWWOWW
Israel — or America: WWWW_WAWW
Oh, you, it makes no difference. Don’t dare to draw him out: WWWAWWAW
Maybe not now, but this uprising is coming soon: AWWWAWWWWO
A committed Christian or Muslim: WAWAWW _WWAWA
We can conceive of God having this kind of an argument: WWWWWWWOWAW
All Americans should believe in him: WOWWWO_O._WOWW
Half a dozen of these could surely make our world today: WWWOWAWW_WOAWW

One non-woo tip: Prayer won't help you solve these.

[Update: All items have been de-wooed, but I'm not listing the answers here in case any of you latecomers want to give these a try. You can look through the comments to find the solutions.]
[The A-List: 1. Renacier; 2. Paul; 3. Renacier; 4. Renacier; 5. SI; 6. Renacier; 7. Ubi Dubium; 8. nowoo; 9. nowoo; 10. SI; 11. SI; 12. nowoo; 13. Sesquipedal; 14. Ubi Dubium; 15. nowoo; 16. Ubi Dubium; 17. nowoo; 18. Sesquipedal; 19. Ubi Dubium; 20. Sesquipedal]

Barefootin'

2008-05-22T17:50:00.008-04:00

People whose ancestors were Jews don’t usually feel fully comfortable complaining to governmental officials. There’s a famous picture of a Jew being forced to walk barefoot through the streets during the early years of Nazi Germany. He’s surrounded by mocking polizei. A sign has been hung from his neck, and it says something to the effect of: “I complained to the authorities, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

But this is America, right? And yesterday I wrote that I would take some action about the genuine Jesus Christ paper prayer rug scam. Remember that the thick envelope containing that sacred relic arrived in my mailbox under the no-stamp-required guise of a message from a nonprofit organization.

I neglected to mention in my previous post that I was supposed to return the prayer rug — along with my “seed” money — to Saint Matthew’s Churches. “It is a must that you get this unusual blessing Church Prayer Rug out of this house and back to us, here at the church’s chapel prayer room, in faith.” Why? So that the very same scrap of paper can be rushed to “another family that’s in need of a blessing.”

Essentially, we’re talking about a bogus chain letter here. The urgent plea for me to return the prayer rug is clearly made to encourage an immediate response. It’s a taxpayer-financed get-rich-quick scheme.

So, I made some phone calls: the post office, my U.S. senators, and the IRS.

After introducing myself, here’s how I opened each conversation.

There’s a group of con artists that have apparently been given tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organization. They’re doing a mass mailing of a fraudulent chain letter asking me to send them money to a post office box. The group is posing as a church, but they’re criminals; the whole thing is clearly a scam. I object to using my hard-earned tax money to finance a crooked scheme.

I emphasized "my hard-earned tax money." If I could have spoken in red, boldface, italic, capitalized, underlined type, I would have. In lieu of that, I reached into my linguistic arsenal and found my pissed-off voice. That's the one I've borrowed from Donald Duck.

The Response at the Post Office

The woman at the post office took my name, address, and phone number. Then she asked for the name and address of the bogus church. After she got this information entered into “the system,” she apologized for my inconvenience. I told her that I accepted her apology but that, really, she wasn’t responsible.

“I don’t believe in killing the messenger,” I joked.

She didn’t understand what I meant, so she apologized again. I’m hoping that the Feds don’t show up to arrest me for making threats over the telephone.

The Response at (titular Democrat) Bill Nelson’s Office

I’m not a fan of either political party, but I tend to lean a bit more toward the Democrats’ line of bullshit these days. So first, I called Senator Bill Nelson’s office in Washington.

A too chipper guy answered the phone, and I rattled off my introductory paragraph.

He said, “Thanks for calling. I’ll pass that information along.”

I said, “Wait a minute. I didn’t give you any information.”

He said, “Oh, OK. Give me the information.”

I asked, “Will you pass it along?”

He said, “Mmm-hmmm. Yes. Definitely.”

I said, “No you won’t.” Then I hung up.

The Response at (Republican) Mel Martinez’s Office

The man who answered in Mel’s Washington office listened to my spiel and said I’d better call the senator’s local office in Florida. He gave me the number and told me to say I was phoning about “case work.”

I did so. A very charming woman listened carefully to my gripe and asked whom the letter came from. I told her and she said, “Well, obviously the IRS has given them tax-exempt status because they’re a church.”

I went into detail about the contents of the envelope. She chuckled a few times.

“Doesn’t that sound like a con to you?” I asked.

She laughed again. “I can’t really say,” she replied. “Lots of people have faith in different things. I go to church every Sunday and tithe, so I can understand when someone sends money to a church. But let me look this one up for you to see if there are any other complaints.”

I didn’t know where she was searching, but my astute Sherlock Holmes mind interpreted the tapping and I assumed it was somewhere on the Internet. I waited patiently for a few seconds. “Well,” she said, “you’re not the first person to make a charge against them.”

Then I heard the tapping again. She said, “I went to their Web site. It looks like they actually do have a church building. So it’s not just a post office box.”

“But, tell the truth. It looks kind of fishy, doesn’t it?”

She repeated: “Lots of people have faith in different things. I’ve heard of churches that sell water that’s supposed to be from the Sea of Galilee.”

“Yeah, other crooks. I mean, have you ever heard of a Christian prayer rug? Does that sound kosher to you?”

She tittered ever so slightly. “Well, I can’t say. But you might want to report this to the IRS and have them look into it.”

More tapping. “OK,” she said, “I’m at the IRS Web site and it looks like there’s a form you can fill out to complain about tax fraud.”

“Yes,” I said, “but isn’t that only if you’re trying to report a person or company who’s cheating on taxes? Like Al Capone.”

She giggled. I mentally gave her some points for recognizing my reference. “All right, I’ve got it. Here’s instructions about how to write a personal letter to them. That’s probably what you should do.”

She also gave me a phone number to call. I thanked her and told her that I was impressed with how non-commital she could be. She laughed yet again and wished me good luck.

The Response at the IRS

By now I felt like just some old crank, but I decided to finish what I’d started. After dialing the number and pushing the right buttons to get to the department I wanted, I was placed on hold. The music I heard was from “The Nutcracker Suite.” I checked my calendar to make sure it’s the middle of May. We old cranks sometimes forget stuff.

An agent finally answered and identified himself by name and official number. I went through my intro.

He told me I could either write a letter and mail it, fax a note with the appropriate details, or send an email. I said an email would be great, and he gave me the address. Then I asked him if it would be worth my time and effort. He said, “Yes. Give us as much information about the organization as you can. We like to investigate these things.”

So now, having spent a few hours mostly on hold, I’ll follow through. Tomorrow. By that time, I'll have recranked my crank.

More — if I actually get a response — in the future. In the meantime, watch for my barefoot photo in your local newspaper.

My Friends Call Me "Rezz"

2008-05-21T19:54:00.006-04:00

Well, I guess Jesus is all-seeing after all. Even though I’m clearly identified here on No More Hornets as “The Exterminator,” the Christ has figured out that I don’t usually go by that title in my day-to-day life. I got a piece of mail from his representatives today, and it was addressed to me by the actual name I use in my non-blogging existence: RESIDENT. (Confession: It used to be RESIDENTOWITZ, but my grandparents changed it to make it sound more American.)

The envelope was dated “Sunday — May 2008.” I was under the mistaken impression that there were four Sundays in May 2008, but I guess I was wrong. However, I did wonder: If Jesus is so magical, how come I received the letter on a Wednesday? I guess we all know that the lord works in mysterious ways. As god always says: “Sunday, Shmunday. What am I, a watchmaker?”

Also on the envelope, there was a lot of red type and underlining and double-underlining and italics and boldface and BOLDFACE CAPS. And, of course, what would a note from Jesus be without at least one exclamation point! Not only is he omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient, but he's also omnifonted. In the beginning was the MS Word.

Contained inside the package was some hoopla about an accompanying paper prayer rug, and how the closed eyes on the Jesus face would open if I stared "into" them hard enough. They didn’t, but I was briefly able to see the messiah's face in complementary colors when I quickly looked up at my white wall. There was also the text of some mumbo-jumbo I was supposed to repeat while kneeling on the rug or holding it over my knees, as well as some instructions for where I should stick the thing overnight. No, not there. And of course I was asked — gently — to make a contribution to St. Matthew’s 57-year-old Church (not to be confused with St. Matthew’s 58-year-old Church), the institutional sender of this First Epistle to Residentians.

The prayer rug was a folded piece of 11 x 17 paper, tinted in lavender and orange, which is certainly the most holy color combination. Near the bottom, it was conveniently labeled "Church Prayer Rug," so I wouldn't mistakenly think it was just some run-of-the-mill unfolded picture of Jesus. The thorn-crowned savior's face sat smack in the center and some ersatz Persian-ruggish design surrounded him as a border. On the back of this treasure, a short text informed me that it had been “Soaked with the Power of Prayer.” It didn’t feel moist, but maybe that’s because I’m an atheist. Anyway, I was ordered to use it immediately, and return it because “Timing is important to God.” (That's probably why he's such a great comedian.)

So I had in my hands:

a very personal letter (Dear ... Someone Connected with This Address);
a genuine paper prayer rug with Jesus's authentic face, complete with a pathetic, solitary tear streaming down from his closed left eye;
testimonials from women who had received financial windfalls from J.C., but neither of whom, judging from their pictures, saw fit to use the cash for a much needed makeover;
an offer for a “FREE, DEUTERONOMY 8:18 PROSPERITY CROSS, BLESSED BY THE CHURCH (Look it up, you lazy bastards);
special Christian fortune-cookie prophecies personally meant for me, RESIDENT (apparently, I may feel my inner power growing);
a checklist designating exactly how I’d like the church to use their power of prayer for my family and myself (e.g., A New Car, A Money Blessing, or A Closer Walk With Jesus);
an important shilling notice reminding me that I should “Pray about sowing a seed gift to the Lord’s work,” and asking me to “give God your best seed and believe Him for His best blessing" (yeah, I was tempted to do what you’re thinking of);
and an enclosed return envelope (addressed to “PRAYER BY LETTERS”).

All this had been stuffed into a business envelope that had a printed notice in place of a stamp:

NONPROFIT ORG.
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
PERMIT No.
636

So our tax dollars, yours and mine, are being used to pay mailing fees for a scamming CHRISTIAN CHAIN LETTER!!!

I’ll be calling the postal authorities tomorrow. I’ll also be contacting my congressman and both senators. More later.

Wait Until She Tells Them About Buridan's Talking Ass!

2008-05-14T15:46:00.008-04:00

Today, I want to talk about words and their meanings.

A fourth-grade teacher is reading the story of “Sleeping Beauty” to her class. She comes to the section in which the villainess decides to poison a spindle with a sleeping potion.

The teacher reads:

“Ha. Ha,” said the evil witch. “The princess will fall into a deep sleep with just the tiniest prick.”

The class, naturally, erupts in laughter. You and I would, too.

The teacher goes to great pains to explain to her students that, in old-fashioned English, “prick” means a small puncture by a needle. The students nod their heads, seemingly in understanding, so the teacher continues reading until she comes to:

And sure enough, the poisoned needle did its work. Sleeping Beauty didn’t even feel the small prick.

The next day, the teacher is called into the principal’s office because of a parent’s complaint that she used inappropriate language in class.

At that point, a practical teacher would think long and hard about her precious "prick," and emend the text. She’d change the word to “puncture.” End of story.

But a teacher who was stubborn would say: “Look, this is perfectly acceptable English. In order to be educated, the students have to understand that common words can have different meanings in different contexts. That story has always said ‘prick,’ and I’m going to continue to use it.”

Not a good strategy, right?

So, scientists: Find another fucking word for “theory.”

(H/T to Evo and SI)

Blame

2008-05-13T00:23:00.003-04:00

When my wife gets a cold, she tries to identify the culprit who gave it to her. Was it that teenage bagboy who sneezed at the grocery? Or, perhaps, the irresponsible co-worker who coughed without covering her mouth. Maybe it was the old geezer with the sniffles in the bookstore, who was browsing through the same magazines my wife was looking at.

Someone must be blamed. The villain must be found.

I’ve been thinking about blame today because we here in Central Florida are experiencing a fiery spring. Throughout the area, dangerous brushfires are raging, and there’s no rain in sight for at least four or five days. About twenty miles from my house, 500 people were mandatorily evacuated from their homes; 300 more were asked to leave voluntarily. Other cities nearby are battling their own conflagrations.

Looked at in the greater scheme of things, a relatively small number of displaced persons can’t compete in the disaster olympics with the thousands killed, hurt, or rendered homeless by the cyclone in Myanmar, or the earthquake in China. Anyone with a shred of humanity, who doesn’t see the world as a collection of ethnic teams, feels for those people. But I have to confess that, one-worlder though I be, there’s a level of “reality” to the disaster here that those others lack. I smell the smoke in the air, hear the pleadings of local newscasters urging their listeners to flee, see the scared looks on the faces of neighbors. Yes, I feel great sympathy toward those poor people in Asia, and will contribute what I can to help them. But they don’t shop at the very same stores that I do; they don’t eat in the very same restaurants; they don’t put up with the very same governmental incompetence. Their misfortunes don’t — as illogical as I know this sounds — enrage me.

Fires are actually necessary for the environment. A number of plants, some of our native Florida pawpaws and orchids among them, get a competitive advantage only when other flora are cleared away. Longleaf pine, with its fire-resistant bark, will not flourish except in areas that have frequent low-intensity burns. Scrub habitats, filled with all those messy, eyesore plants, would wind up being hardwood oak forests if it weren’t for frequent fires; the huge trees would shade out the understory. All the critters who depend on these environments would have a tough time, if it weren’t for the flames.

But, of course, eco-friendliness is no comfort to a family watching their home getting enveloped in a blaze.

Apparently, a few of the fires — not those in my immediate vicinity, but others in bordering counties — were set by humans: arsonists or just plain idiots. There’s almost a tone of relief in the TV announcements that, just as we all suspected, some of those fires were started by human agency. There will be persons to blame, villains on whom to vent our community anger.

Being an atheist during a natural disaster is an existential experience. Despite scientific advancements undreamt of by past generations, there are some things in this world that can’t be controlled, that have to be accepted with reluctant resignation. It’s a sad and scary feeling; I’m not the master of my fate. Yes, I’d love to be justifiably infuriated, but at whom, at what? Only “nature” is the culprit, and, not being an actual entity, it’s blameless. All living things are both victims and victors in its endless cycle; that family in the $2 million house is no more “worthy” of sympathy for getting displaced by the fire than the scrub jay who would be displaced without it.

On the other hand, the theists amongst us do feel that there’s a causative entity, a super-intellect, a maker of cyclones, earthquakes, and fires. The blame is not, of course, his; he’s all good. The homosexuals, the libertines, the infidels, the “others” are responsible for the catastrophe. Even those who don’t take an accusatory position have to admit that “God works in mysterious ways.” Somehow, their supernatural sneezing bagboy is behind the calamity.

To think that some intelligent force is accountable for the tragedies that beset humanity, is, to me, a far sadder and an infinitely scarier explanation than knowing we’re each of us alone in a wild and seemingly random world.

Sunday Drivelers

2008-05-11T14:50:00.008-04:00

OK, now to reveal the answers to my musical drivel quiz. I've listed the first commenter to get each answer correct.

A-wha a-wha
"Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes" by Paul Simon

Ayyyyyy-hey. Oh, yeah, baby
"Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours" by Stevie Wonder

Bomp-b-b-bomp
"Blue Moon" by The Marcels
Title: Evo; Artists: VforVirginia

Bang bang shoot ‘em up
"Spaceman" by Harry Nilsson
Title & Artist: VforVirginia

Botch-a-me I’ll botch-a-you
"Botch-a-Me" by Rosemary Clooney

Deh dum ah-tah dum ah-tah dum ah doot-doo
"Why Do Fools Fall in Love" by Frankie Lyman & the Teenagers
Title & Artists: Evo

Dig, man [HINT: spoken, not sung]
"Mack the Knife" by Louis Armstrong

Don don-don don
"Come Go With Me" by the Del Vikings

Doo doo-dee-oot doot doo doo-dee-oot
"Hot Toddy" by Julie London

Ee-ee-ee-yee
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by the Tokens

Fee-fee fie-fie fo-fo fum
"Charlie Brown" by the Coasters
Title: Tina; Artists: VforVirginia

Gadji beri bimba clandridi
"I Zimbra" by Talking Heads

Hey-ey-ey hey-ey-ey
"Sisters of Avalon" by Cyndi Lauper

Iko Iko
"Iko Iko" by Dr. John
Title: SI; Artist: bullet

I wonder wonder who who-oo-oo who
"The Book of Love" by the Monotones
Title: Ridger

Ohhh oh-oh oh wha-ah-ah
"Earth Angel" by the Penguins

Oh-oh-oh yes
"The Great Pretender" by the Platters

Ooga chaka ooga ooga
"Hooked on a Feeling" by Jonathan King
Title: Evo

Oo yeah-eh-eh-eh yeah
"Punky Reggae Party" by Bob Marley

Salt peanuts, salt peanuts
"Salt Peanuts" by Dizzy Gillespie
Title & Artist: Chappy

Splish splash
"Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin
Title & Artist: Chappy

Uh-heyyyyyyyyyy do it now
"Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry

Uh-weh-ell
"You Might Think" by the Cars

Whoa-oh-oh I
"When I Get Home" by the Beatles
Artist: Evo

Yip-yip yip-yip yip-yip yip-yip
"Get a Job" by the Silhouettes
Title & Artists SI

Perhaps not surprisingly, the big winner is Evo, who has earned a two-hour Sing-Whatever-You-Want free pass at the blog and/or podcast of his choice. He may use his 120 minutes all at once and in one place, or allot his time and space as he sees fit.

By the way, the challenge question asked for the phony line, included on the page, that was actually made up of two different real lines. Readers were asked to figure out what those actual lines were, the names of the songs, and the artists. My challenge wasn't phrased as well as it could have been; I should have asked for the phony line that was reminiscent of two different real lines. In any case, no one got it wrong. Kudos.

Phony Line: A Bop Bop a Loola
Real Line: Be-bop-a-lula
Song: "Be-Bop-A-Lula"
Artist: This song was recorded by dozens of artist. I can't remember which version I remember remembering, but it's probably either the one by Elvis Presley or the one by Jerry Lee Lewis. I know it wasn't the recording by David Cassidy.
Real Line: A-wop bop a-loo-bop
Song: "Tutti Frutti"
Artist: Little Richard. There are some other versions, too, including the vanilla-est vanilla Pat Boone recording. Of course, if anyone had identified that one, I would have subtracted points.

An Atheist Goes to a Wedding

2008-05-06T19:58:00.004-04:00

On Sunday, I went to a wedding.

Intellectually, I’m a cynic when it comes to weddings. Not marriages, necessarily — but weddings. I believe that neither a god nor a government should have a role to play in announcing that two people love one another and have decided to make a mutual commitment. In the United States, as in many other countries, there are certain legal ramifications to being married, but I don’t see why families should spend thousands and thousands of dollars to declare, in essence, that a man and a woman have decided to pool their property. It’s a contract, is what it is.

Emotionally, I’m not such a cynic. Weddings are symbolic rituals that go back to the beginnings of civilization. When a couple gets married, they’re joining hands with their ancestors, with all of our ancestors. They’re enrolling in a very non-exclusive club of humans who have recognized that life, in one way or another, is more livable with a partner. They’re making the same kinds of promises that their great-great-grandparents made, promises that may be kept or broken, but promises that are as old as history. Time stops. The couple reaches backward to the past and forward to the future to carve out their own traditional but complex relationship that we need only two words to define: “They’re married.”

The wedding that I went to on Sunday was held on a large projecting balcony area of a hotel. Beyond it lay the ocean, a beautiful and natural backdrop. As the guests seated themselves, the waves, timeless but ruled by time, pleaded again and again with the shore: Let us stop moving; let us stay here. Give us a break.

Pelicans, whose faces resemble the flying lizards from whom they’ve evolved, soared in formation overhead. They flapped their wings infrequently and — to my thinking — reluctantly: Let us stop moving; give us a break.

In the distance, someone on the beach was listening to rap music with a bass beat we could feel in our shoes, music that tried to propel us up out of our seats (and onto an imaginary dance floor) as it competed with the Bach, Vivaldi, and Pachelbel played so solemnly by the string quartet. Our bodies cried out to the faraway sounds: Let us stop moving; give us a break. Wedding marchers walked slowly and awkwardly in time to the strings, pausing every few steps so as not to get too close to those who preceded them. Their nervous eyes and pasted-on smiles said to one another: Let us stop moving; give the people in front of us a break.

So here’s what the preliminaries of the wedding made me think of. In all the crazy motion of life, a wedding is an attempt to fix a certain moment in time: If only for a few minutes, let us stop moving; give us a break. We humans, for whatever evolutionary reason, require our ritual occasions to put us back in touch with the rest of our species, both living and dead. Some of us may even choose to reflect for a short time, to revel briefly in our commonality. Let differences be forgotten for this instant; give our reciprocated animosities a break.

But, of course, that was not to be. The fatheaded officiant brought her god into the proceedings and made the whole thing trivial and silly. She rattled on and on and on: Jesus wants the couple to do this, Christ wants the couple to be that. Her ADHD deity, who never takes a break to smell the roses that he allegedly created, after who-knows-how-many failed attempts, had hand-selected this pair to be “one.” He was deliriously happy that they’d come together in front of relatives and friends to build their futures on the rock of his Christianity. Despite all the crap that’s going on in the world, he managed to put other concerns aside to come to this insignificant small-time wedding on a beach in the middle of nowhere. He smiled on the bride and on the groom and gave them their marching orders; get busy leading a holy life. In Jesus’s name amen.

Meanwhile, the sea — carrying countless lifeforms as it has done, without any supernatural commands, for well over three billion years — kept saying to the priestess: Give them a break. Shut up, and give them a break.

A Bop Bop a Loola

2008-05-04T15:32:00.018-04:00

All right, I stole the following meme idea from Ordinary Girl and Ridger:

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike through when someone gets them right. I'll put it in italics if the title has been gotten, but not the artist.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING.

Unfortunately, right now I’ve got only Latin Jazz on my iPod. No words whatsoever.

So I decided that I would go through my iTunes library and select songs. Since I’ve been accused by some in the Atheosphere of being elitist and snobbish, I wanted everyone to see the kind of musical drivel I sometimes enjoy. Here are the first lines, although I use the word “lines” loosely.

A-wha a-wha
Ayyyyyy-hey. Oh, yeah, baby
~~Bomp-b-b-bomp~~
~~Bang bang shoot ‘em up~~
Botch-a-me I’ll botch-a-you
~~Deh dum ah-tah dum ah-tah dum ah doot-doo~~
Dig, man [HINT: spoken, not sung]
Don don-don don
Doo doo-dee-oot doot doo doo-dee-oot
Ee-ee-ee-yee
~~Fee-fee fie-fie fo-fo fum~~
Gadji beri bimba clandridi
Hey-ey-ey hey-ey-ey
~~Iko Iko~~
I wonder wonder who who-oo-oo who
Ohhh oh-oh oh wha-ah-ah
Oh-oh-oh yes
Ooga chaka ooga ooga
Oo yeah-eh-eh-eh yeah
~~Salt peanuts, salt peanuts~~
~~Splish splash~~
Uh-heyyyyyyyyyy do it now
Uh-weh-ell
Whoa-oh-oh I
~~Yip-yip yip-yip yip-yip yip-yip~~

Good luck!

[NOTE: Italics didn't show up so well with these nonsense syllables, so for clarity's sake I've added red as well. Evo came up with a novel twist: right artist(s), wrong song. That's what the blue is for.]

[CHALLENGE: Somewhere on this page is a nonsense line that never existed, but it's made from two different nonsense lines that did. I thought some wiseass would call me on it, but nope. So: (1) What's the line that never was, and what are the two lines that it's made from? (2) What are the names of the songs? (3) Name the artists that recorded them. Question 3 is ambiguous, since one of those lines was recorded by many artists. But since I have neither of those songs in my iTunes library, I'll accept any artist that recorded either of them.]

Nonbelieving Literati Update for May 3, 2008

2008-05-03T17:07:00.004-04:00

Lynet has been kind enough to pick our next selection: Zadig by Voltaire. It has two things to recommend it highly to our group: (1) It’s very short, and (2) it’s by Voltaire, f’cryinoutloud.

Evo has suggested that I add to the Nonbelieving Literati feature in my sidebar the names of the people responsible for picking each book. I'll do that if enough members would like me to.

If it were up to me — which it’s not — I’d rather have each book just stand for itself, rather than as an indication of a specific member's taste. There’s a slight danger in associating a book with one of us, rather than just reading every new selection in a "vacuum." None of us wants fellow members to ever feel like, for instance: "Gee, last time I really hated OG's book, but I like OG a lot. So I'll try to say something nice about this one."

I think listing the members with their selections can potentially inhibit free discussion. What does everybody else think?

A Blog of One's Own

2008-05-01T05:46:00.007-04:00

It’s always a pleasure for me to read a book in which the ideas come rushing onto the page almost as if they had lives of their own and were eager to escape the confines of the author’s brain to run about freely in the world. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is a good example of what I’m talking about. If one had to answer the question “What’s the main idea?” it would be easy enough to say that it’s a long essay about Women and Fiction, the place of women in the literary sphere, the place of women in society as a whole, and the role of fiction in the life of the mind. It can be thought of as a proto-feminist call to arms, as an introspective examination of the historical plight of the mass of women for whom a literary calling was out of the question, even as a self-justification for the writer’s own passion about putting pen to paper.

But for me, it was a collection of rich nuggets of almost perfect prose, all of which got me thinking about something or other, topics that were not necessarily related except insofar as they sprang from my reading of Woolf’s book. When I originally conceived of Nonbelieving Literati, I hoped that some of our posts, at least, would be “essayistic rambles, ruminations triggered by ideas the book suggested to each blogger.” For me, this is the first book the club has read that has actually engendered such a ramble — or rather, a series of rambles. Some of them, not all, are responses to Woolf’s specific words. Others are notions that struck me as I paused to digest what I was reading.

When I opened to the first page, and saw the words “women and fiction,” I thought: Oh, how tedious and dated. People don’t care about the gender of writers nowadays; I certainly never think of novels in terms of the author’s sex. I just buy whatever I want to read. To prove that to myself, I looked through my fiction bookcases. I was amazed to discover that almost every single novel, story collection, play, or book of poetry that I owned had been written by a man. Yes, there was a smattering of females who were represented. Every work by Jane Austen. A few Dorothy Parker anthologies. A stack of Agatha Christie mysteries. Edith Hamilton’s retelling of Greek myths. Various single examples of work by Alison Lurie, P.D. James, Edith Wharton, Patricia Highsmith. The Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti volumes in the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poetry series.

I turned to essays and nonfiction next. A few more women there, but not enough to strike a balance. A couple of books by Florence King. Three volumes of Sarah Vowell’s essays, two of Nora Ephron’s. Four nature books by Diane Ackerman, one science book by Natalie Angier. Eight or nine tomes on history, law, and atheism. Five memoirs.

I think of myself as a non-sexist person. I have as many female friends as male friends, maybe more. But I own somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 books, and not even 100 of them are by women.

iii

... [A] woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction...

And a man? What must a man have? I’d argue: money and a room of his own. Of course, for Woolf those requisites were symbolic of the entire history of the subjugation of women by men, decades, centuries, millennia in which women had neither money nor rooms of their own. But Woolf means her words to be taken literally as well. And, on that level, all I could think was: me, too!

Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority — it may be wealth, or rank, or a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney — for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination — over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half of the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself.

Many of us in the Atheosphere — myself included — if we’re honest with ourselves, admit that we feel superior, at least intellectually, to theists. Even writing that sentence, I can’t keep myself from chuckling over how ironic it is that I seem to be critical of that feeling. Because aren’t we, in fact, superior? Or am I just being sarcastic?

The crux of Woolf’s paragraph, of course, is that every individual and every group likes to think that he or she or it is better than others. We atheists, for all our own feelings of superiority, encounter the tremendous “superiority” of religionists every single day. We’re outnumbered and, usually, outmaneuvered. They’re going to heaven; we’re not. They’ve got god on their side; we don’t. They control the political dialogue in this country; we can’t get a word in edgewise. The only thing we can do, as Woolf points out, is to bolster up our own self-confidence, to refuse to accept being treated by the vast quasi-theocratic establishment as if we’re godless babes in the spiritual cradle.

Perhaps that’s why we blog, why we argue about our own individual approaches to living a faith-free life, why we see the news through skeptical glasses and discuss it incessantly, why we philosophize compulsively. It’s all about bolstering our own atheistic self-confidence by reaching out to others of like minds. We want to feel that we’re members of a community. And not just any old community, but one that’s superior.

And one gathers from this enormous modern literature of confession and self-analysis that to write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Generally, material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them.

Sometimes, in dark, introspective hours, that’s how I feel about writing these little posts. Why do I bother? Isn’t the world indifferent to my blogging? Who needs it?

One answer is: I bother because I’m bothered. As PhillyChief’s title notes: “You made me say it.”

Another answer is: I bother because I can’t not write. My words are who I am.

Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for. It might still be well to sneer at “blue stockings with an itch for scribbling,” but it could not be denied that they could put money in their purses.

Well, having written both for pay and, allegedly, for sheer pleasure, I can say from experience that I share Woolf’s sentiments. Samuel Johnson said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Years ago, I was chugging out essays like these in my job as a newspaper columnist, and being paid rather well. Nowadays, I sling the language much better than I did then, but often I feel that I’ve become a blockhead. In fact, once in a while I wonder whether all of us in the Atheosphere are blockheads. We spend hours and hours composing, commenting, replying, and earn no financial reward.

But Johnson also said, “The purpose of a writer is to be read.” So as long as we have readers, we’ve fulfilled our purpose, whether we’re blockheads or not.

vii

[B]ooks continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

I agree with that. Everything we read is filtered through our previous reading. And that’s doubly true of everything we write. To quote Johnson once more, “When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

By the way, you can reread Woolf’s sentence and substitute the word “blogs” for “books.” Maybe the statement is even more appropriate in that case. All of us in blogworld are part of the ongoing buzz of humanity. We may have thousands of readers or only just a handful, but we do continue each other every time we publish anew.

viii

It was tempting, after all this reading, to look out of the window and see what London was doing on the morning of the twenty-sixth of October 1928. And what was London doing? Nobody, it seemed, was reading Antony and Cleopatra. London was wholly indifferent, it appeared, to Shakespeare’s plays. Nobody cared a straw — and I do not blame them — for the future of fiction, the death of poetry or the development by the average woman of a prose style completely expressive of her mind. If opinions upon any of these matters had been chalked on the pavement, nobody would have stooped to read them. The nonchalance of the hurrying feet would have rubbed them out in half an hour.

I like to think of myself as the chalker, the one who always has opinions on literary matters and who cares deeply about writing. But in my daily life, if truth be told, I’m frequently the hurrier. There are so many things to read, so little time to do it. On my bookshelves, I have four stacks of five or six books apiece. Each one of those stacks is the next one I’ll “attack.” I move the stacks from one place to another, and re-arrange the individual volumes within each pile, in order of their priority. That order changes from day to day, and sometimes within the same hour. And I’m not even counting the newspapers and magazines that I “have to” go through, the dozens of blogs and online journals I “need” to keep up with.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m controlled by the billions of words waiting for me on pages and screens. And, as I do whenever I want to re-assert my freedom in any arena, I rebel. Occasionally, therefore, I wake up and declare a publication-free day, a short vacation from written material.

But then I shortly find myself reading the back of my cereal box. Those proclamations of non-literate bliss never work.

Now and then I wonder: if I forced myself to read less, would I be able to write less, too. Or is writing a compulsion. Maybe I’d write more, to fill the time with the words I’m not reading. I’m sure, and everyone who knows me can confirm this, that I’d never be able to talk less.

I use language, therefore I am.

Are not reviews of current literature a perpetual illustration of the difficulty of judgment? “This great book,” “this worthless book,” the same book is called by both names. Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

I can say, almost with certainty, that our blogs, if they matter at all, matter only for hours. But I doubt that they matter even for that long, except to ourselves and our comparatively few loyal readers. And, at least in my own case, I’m not always convinced that I’m writing what I wish to write. Frankly, I’d rather be creating quality fiction, even though I doubt that I have the skill or the patience to do that.

But for me, using language, reveling in the way words can be selected and organized on the screen to communicate ideas, or to make people laugh, or to express anger and frustration about the seemingly arbitrary way the human part of the world works ... for me, that’s reason enough to write.

Here I would stop, but the pressure of convention decrees that every speech must end with a peroration.

This essay breaks one of my cardinal rules of blogging: Keep it short, if not always sweet. In my personal aesthetic, a good post should be only as long as a newspaper column, about 750 words. Anything over that, I feel, asks too much of a casual reader. Who am I to require such an investment of time?

However, I’ve already gone over 2,000 words, and obviously I’m not quite done. Are you still with me? (Happily for me, if you’ve actually read all the way up to that question, there’s no honest way for you to answer “no.”)

So do I have a peroration, as “the pressure of convention decrees” that I must? Not really. Instead, I’ll end with an observation about reading and writing.

There are times when I fear that reading and writing are becoming things of the past. Talk to average Americans today and ask if they read or write for pleasure, if they take some indescribable enjoyment out of seeing words marching before their eyes.

RU 8-}?

According to an AP-Ipsos poll, more than one out of every four Americans read no books at all last year. Literature — and maybe literacy, too — is slowly disappearing.

As literacy slowly disappears (or at least as I perceive that it does), I sometimes feel that my essence, my word-core, my entire conception of myself as, primarily, a reading and writing being, is threatened. However, in a small way, my own blogging and my reading of others’ blogs keeps my pessimism from overwhelming me.

As I’ve said: I use language, therefore I am. I think that was how Virginia Woolf felt, too. I was happy to spend some time with her; she’s a kindred spirit.