Second scene from "Flatus"

The following fragment of the play, which is generally thought to have been a work in progress by William Shakespeare, The Passing of Flatus, appeared only yesterday in the Camelot Omelet. In this scene, Slappy is trying to make Flatus interested in love and romance, but why he is doing this cannot be determined by the material that has surfaced so far. The dialogue is interesting in that obviously they are both talking mostly to themselves. What a Clever-Dick that Shakespeare was!

As for the objections over the name "Slappy", Matthew Ferherdermer, of Cambridge University, has published an interesting article in the Hamlet Amulet which brings to light the fact that Slappy was actually a popular name in Rome around the time of Christ, a familiar form of Slaphicus, as well as in Medieval England, where it was an extremely common nickname for Euoweyr or Bertrand. It was also commonplace for people in both time periods to refer to their subordinates as "Slappy", because of the instant and stinging humiliation that appellation caused.

***

Act two. Scene three. A field.


SLAPPY:
In sober celebration of the flesh,
In frequent venting of conscupiscence,
Make sportive tricks, lascivious caperings;
To truncate suffering, to kill desire,
To turn the cold valves of hard chastity,
To flush the chilled-fast vein with amorous fever,
Fill eyes with ardor, lips with wantonness;
To linger kissing at the coronet
That crowns with pink the sweet unsettled fat
Soft-covered in white silk: to lift, to weigh
The supple globes, to bring an agitation,
To set them dancing, pendulously bellied;
To brace the rider as she sits a' saddle
Rocking moist in fever, eyes full-lustered
As if made bright with wine: but ne'er have spirits
Kindled those orbs to blaze with such wild fire,
Nay, but thy johnson, Flatus, doth the trick,
That tickler of a lady's nether parts,
That prickling rogue, that bold up-popping jack,
That meddling serpent: he it is that maketh
Etnas of those soft-tufted mounds of Venus.


FLATUS:
Of all the fancies which a god constructs
And plants within the gardens of men's brains
Can any be less sensible than love?
Pernicious little elf! No viler cherub
Did from Olympus like foul weather come!


SLAPPY:
Equestrienne, she vaunts her cloven haunches
And ruts upon the rigid post: she slides
And tugs and urges with her slippery cleft.
Her lips she bites, and through hard-clenched teeth
Makes a licentious and unsyllabled moan.
A moment's pause: her opulent rump she rests,
Now richly radiant with damp scented musk.
Anon she chomps the bit, is fain to ride.
Cry "tally-ho!" and beat the bushes, liege; but whither
Goest Raynard? He hast hied him to that furrow,
That steeped cravase, that gorge of living blood,
And butts his nose in darkness, like a mole,
And tunnels further in the teeming trench.


FLATUS:
Of all the mad dreams which a man invents
And sows among the pastures of his heart
There can be none of greater detriment
Than that obnoxious malady called 'Love'.
'Tis a disease which thrives upon his blood
And rages in his veins like potent drink.
It makes a man a fool with tongue unloosed
Who in the street cries nightly like an owl,
"Tu-whit! To-whoo!", who in full wretchedness
Leans under ladies' windows, eyes uprolled,
His hands upon a full wide-bottomed lute,
Who with rude breath, wrought of the stench of love,
Sings some cracked tune to win him but a kiss!


SLAPPY:
Our rider, perched high in her wonted seat,
She gallops on apace, now all unkempt
And covered with a sheen of salty sweats;
Her breasts, like fruits grown soft and over-ripe,
Tumescent, turgid with excess of juice,
Depend and sway. Now in thy fetching fingers
Gather good harvest, hold, palpate, and press;
Stretch toes to the horizon. Hot purgation
Cleanseth the vein: froth of the seeded spate,
Spat foam of expiation, pulsed expulsion
Of lecherous lust. From such brief violence
Is wrung a season of tranquility,
Of tender-taken breath, of mellowed blood,
That tempers now the chambers of the heart.
Now johnson nods his head; he curleth up
And slips into the coverlet of sleep.


FLATUS:
I say love doth engender silliness
And drives a man to ponder strange designs;
Makes him to lie supine upon a hill
And then discern wild creatures in the clouds.
Love makes a man a coward: he will leave
His sword upon his hip and bends him low
To pluck a rose, and there he stands and grins,
Comparing leaves to lips, and dreams a sonnet!


SLAPPY:
Nay, but thou wilt not hear me, liege. Wilt hear?
Nay, but thou wilt not. Liege, if it so please thee,
I'll take my leave. There is some trouble yonder,
Some noise or other.


FLATUS:
I hear nothing. Wither?


SLAPPY:
(points distractedly) Thither. (runs off, rubbing hands together)

The Passing of Flatus

In England recently, fragments of an Elizabethan-period drama have been discovered which many scholars believe to be the work of William Shakespeare. I would say that this is a fair guess, though no one can possibly be sure at this point. Some scholars have scoffed at the suggestion that the work could possibly have been authored by Stratford-on-Avon's beloved Bard, pointing to the many anacronisms and glaring mix-ups which appear in the fragments, such as the co-existence of Roman soldiers and a feudal king, the mention of Valhalla, etc.

Most accredited scholars have pooh-poohed these pooh-poohers, reminding them that Shakespeare's works often contain inaccurate historical or geographical references. Only a handful of pages have turned up so far and since there are no markings other than neatly written text these fragments are thought to be by the hand of a copyist; and the pages themselves were found among documents which are known to be copied texts.

These fragments have been tentatively titled The Passing Of Flatus. So far only the following fragment has been released for public perusal. It appeared in the Oxford Oxcart January, 2005. Spelling has been modernized and pasteurized.


****

Act one. Scene one. A field.

TREMENS:
He is most foul. Behind our noxious general
Have I in battle marched, in discipline
Unmatched, in loyalty uncompromised;
Most honored of our Roman soldiery;
Yet would I spill my blood upon a sword hilt
Than stand as his lieutenant in Valhalla.

SLAPPY:
We like two paddles wielded by an oarsmen
In sweet concordance jointly wend one way.
Here in these shadows let us like two thieves
Concur in means by which to dispossess
Our legion of this windy general.
Tremens, we must incite some mutiny,
And it be lawless and unmilitant:
Some crafty and satanic subterfuge
Wherewith to weaken Flatus and to change
Him from his armor to the less applauded
Costume of a rude civilian.
Let's have a blacksmith's apron round his paunch,
Or sullied vestment of a scullery knave.
He is too noisome and malodorous
To don the raiment of a general.

TREMENS:
Your words have weight to make the burden light
That like a stone hath lain upon my heart
Since first these machinations of revolt
Were whispered here betwixt thy lips and mine.
Slappy, let none have wisdom of our words
Lest our ignoble and unkind designs
Bring disarray or disrepute to Rome.
For we are Rome. Our lips and tongues are Rome;
Our hearts flush with the civil blood of Rome;
Our swords are honed upon the plinths of Rome.
Flatus, albeit of prolific scents,
Of sickly smells and sour obnoxious stinks,
I say, this fuming, this effusive Flatus,
Is also Rome; his bairns, his wife, are Rome.
Therefore let Caution join us. We are Roman...

SLAPPY:
Tremens, the horse you beat unmercifully
Now runs upon the sunny plains of Heaven.
Drive not thy boot against the dormant flesh
That lifeless draws the fly into the ditch.
Caution shall be our sole conspirator.
Upon this point we stand in such accord
As needs no poetry to give it strength.
In darkness like two devils in Abaddon
We whisper, making shadows lisp demonic.
The night has sympathy and brings soft winds
To mute our sibilant serpentine connivings. (Rubs hands together)


****


I will post more fragments when and if they become available.

Denial

Do atheists actually deny God?

It's difficult to imagine being able to deny something which has never been sufficiently defined with any degree of consistency, especially when the multitudes of widely varying definitions up for offer are all clearly lacking in any connection to reality as it is perceived and experienced by human beings.

In regard to atheism, many religionists are motivated by one simple prejudice, which is that the non-believer is actually acting against his deeper conscience, that he is guilty of some sort of insidious self-deception. But only according to the believer's views is non-belief an outright denial of God. Such a term only makes sense to him and his particular beliefs. I would suggest that the atheist should in no way whatsoever feel compelled to consider the proposition that he is denying God: he is only denying particular beliefs which have precious little acquaintance with the world around him or life as it is lived from day to day.

No Christian would admit to denying Brahma, hating Brahma, wanting to be Brahma, or claiming to be greater than Brahma. He would simply say that Brahma is not the definition of God which he accepts. To say that he denies Brahma would be giving credit to the idea that Brahma is in a position to be denied or accepted, when he obviously doesn't believe that to be the case; and yet the same Christian can't seem to grasp that when an atheist claims that he doesn't believe in the Biblical Jehovah he is not therefore denying Jehovah any more than the Christian is denying Brahma; the atheist doesn't hate Jehovah any more than the Christian hates Brahma; the atheist doesn't want to be Jehovah anymore than the Christian wants to be Brahma, and so on.

In regard to the god-concept, a good deal of atheists, myself included, are merely stating a lack of belief in any definition of God up for offer. Should one be presented that seems plausible, I am perfectly willing to consider altering my views.** This is why I call myself a weak atheist. Some would prefer the term agnostic, but I choose atheist because I know how offensive it is to certain Christians, or radical theists of all stripes, who quite frankly deserve to be offended.

What really bothers the Christian isn't that the atheist denies Jehovah, it's that he denies any and all god-concepts. The Christian disbelieves 99% of all proposed gods, but because he accepts one God out of thousands he is relieved of having to feel any guilt over waving away all the others, even though the theist holds the atheist in suspicion for rejecting those other 99% as well as the one in which the theist has faith. To believe in a god of any kind is the priority, not believing in the right one.


****


I was inspired to write this, as usual, as a response to a particular poster at Internet Infidels who is a member of AA and who admits that his conception of God merely borrows what it finds acceptable from the Christian belief system and rejects the rest, so that he winds up with a God he can live with. He readily admits to finding fundamentalism unacceptable, and wishes atheists wouldn't focus so much on the Old Testament. He claims that naturally a person will formulate a concept of a tyrannical, oppressive God if they focus on the OT. Meanwhile he visits thread after thread and essentially treats everyone as if they were sitting in a chair across the room from him having a cup of coffee and a donut. He offers nothing but the AA party line, as if atheism were a disease itself and not just a common characteristic among practicing alcoholics. It isn't the rejection of any particular God which this person finds offensive, it's the rejection of the god-idea itself.

This is fairly common with religious people in general, from what I've observed. The simple and rational rejection of the god-idea is seen as some extreme form of egotism. Rather than simply being the absence of belief in a supernatural god-like entity, atheism is regarded as an effort to hold one's self as God, or at the very least an obstinate refusal to acknowledge a "higher power" than one's self. This view is absurdly incorrect and does not follow at all from atheism in and of itself. Atheism is, by definition, passive and negative, in that it merely rejects a positive claim made by someone else. The actual beliefs that atheists hold are widely varied and sometimes vastly disparate: take for instance the difference between an Objectivist and a nihilist. Both are (usually) atheistic and yet their worldviews are polar opposites.

I think it's fair to say (though it won't seem so at all) that in general the arguments that take place between atheists and theists are abortive from the start due to prejudice on the part of the theist in regard to the atheist. For instance, theists seem to think that any argument against materialism, Darwinism, Objectivism, naturalism, or communism is equal to an argument against atheism. For instance: If you can find holes in the theory of evolution, you have found holes in atheism; if you can undermine the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of Objectivism, you have undermined atheism; if you can point to the atrocities of Stalin and Soviet Russia, you have dealt a deathblow to the credibility of atheism.

Religionists either forget or don't realize that one can be an atheist without subscribing to any of those abovementioned systems of thought. One might agree with certain aspects of each of them without embracing any of them, or one might simply reject all of them and feel more closely aligned to something like deep ecology, utilitarianism, pragmatism, or libertarianism; or something else entirely with no "ism" attached and with no formal or systematic structure.

But isn't the atheist prejudiced against the theist? Sure, sometimes, but not nearly as often. Taking just Christians, since they are the only religionists I typically engage with, it's never in doubt as to what positive beliefs these people hold since their beliefs are the subject of the debate and as such are right on the table. The only thing the atheist brings to the table necessarily is his absence of belief in what the theist is proposing. What the atheist's beliefs, his worldview, his philosophical orientations actually are need not be disclosed in order for the discussion to get underway.

I don't need my own concept of God to compete with the theist's concept, and this "if you don't believe in God it's because you want to become God" is the result of the refusal to accept this fact. "It isn't that you don't believe in God, it's that you want to be God!" is a statement of pure stupidity, and I'm tired of hearing it. A corollary to this is the common accusation that the atheist hates God. People are standing up in the audience at academic debates and asking atheists why they hate God so much. And these are college students.

Apologists, mainly the hardcore Calvinistic presuppositionalists, make the same ludicrous claim: It isn't that the atheist doesn't believe God exists, it's just that he refuses to acknowledge it because of his inherently sinful, defiant nature. The atheist ignores the truth of God written on his heart out of pride and self-love, and he is not much more than a liar. Other presuppers have taken a slightly different tack: they just say that if a person can't see the truth of Scripture when it's so damned obvious then that person must be a moron.

What I love about this is how these two approaches to atheism contradict one another, even though they come from the same ultra-fundy Calvinist cuckoo-clutch. On one hand they claim the atheist knows that the Bible is true and that Jehovah is real but refuses to acknowledge it due to his insolent nature as a sinner, and on the other hand he's an atheist simply because he's a moron.

Notice these crackpots don't call orthodox Jews morons, or Hindus morons, or Muslims morons, even though these people must obviously be dense since they can't see the blatantly obvious truth of the Christian faith. It's only the atheist who gets labeled a moron, because, again, it isn't the rejection of any particular God which is offensive, it's the rejection of the god-idea itself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


** I'm thinking about coining a new term: Waitheist, being someone who is waiting for a believable concept of God to be brought to the table, a concept which might actually do some sort of justice to such a magnificent Entity.

The Devil made me do it

My father and I agree on a lot more things now than we did twenty years ago, but sometimes we still disagree. Since he and my Mom currently live only a half-mile or so away from me I get to talk with him at least once a week. Our main topics of discussion always seem to center on computers or religion. Even though we are both atheists we have a strong difference of opinion as to the current role religion plays in peoples' lives, in politics, and in the world in general.

Dad doesn't participate in discussion forums online as far as I know, or even lurk in them. I suppose my take on the world around me is colored by these forums, particularly Internet Infidels, a website which caters to non-believers of every stripe, but which also welcomes people of faith and does so with such a catholic generosity that a very good percentage of veteran members there, and even at least one moderator I know of, are theists. I believe this is a good thing and speaks well of the secular humanist mindset which, in general, is much more tolerant than the religious or fundamentalist mindset to which it stands in opposition, and whose own discussion forums, while ostensibly allowing non-theists to participate, will only tolerate a modicum of dissent and are prone to delete posts or ban certain members at the drop of a hat, or a gauntlet, as it happens.

My father is of the opinion that religious faith is dying out and nothing any religious fruitcake says or does bothers him to any great extent. It isn't that the sheer stupidity doesn't irritate him, he just doesn't think it's anything to worry about in the long run. I don't imagine he thinks that there are any less people percentage-wise who claim to be believers, because clearly that isn't the case; what he thinks perhaps is that among people who claim to believe there is an ever-larger portion of those who, deep down, really don't believe at all. While I'm sure it's true that a good deal of people who claim to believe actually don't, I fear that this number is actually decreasing, at least nationwide. One of the reasons for this is clearly the silly holy war we're currently involved in and the even sillier crusader who currently presides in the White House; but another reason, and a much more dangerous reason in fact, is because of the increasing unwillingness on the part of those who defend reason and good sense to speak with any kind of conviction at all.

I understand the necessity of being disciplined and cautious in regard to what we regard as certain knowledge, and I understand the need for a healthy distinction between theory and fact, particularly in regard to complex philosophical and scientific issues, but if the people at Internet Infidels are fairly representative of the current secular/humanist worldview in general, I would venture to say that an imprudent infatuation with doubt and uncertainty is the most obvious aspect of that worldview, and that what is intended to come across as an educated respect for reason and rational thought is actually coming across as precisely the opposite, and especially to people who are desperately looking for ways to avoid having to come to terms with that worldview. If intelligent, educated people insist on claiming that the only thing they know is that they don't know anything, which seems more than ever to be the fashionable position to hold, then this gives the average person all the more reason to join with the religious fundies in denouncing science and skepticism altogether, which apparently offers nothing but a wishy-washy and groundless ambivalence in regard to just about everything.

When it comes to skeptics, it's usually easy to see what they are speaking against but often very difficult to determine why they even bother to do so, since some of them don't seem to believe in much of anything at all. For instance, most of the non-theists at Internet Infidels are determinists, and are as rabidly opposed to the notion of free-will as they are to any religious notions. These people will talk of human behavior with constant references to "synapses" and "neurons firing", as if a human being were little more than a machine with virtually no control over its own actions. In my opinion there is nothing more appealing or convincing in this view than in the idea of Original Sin. In fact, I believe that the two views amount to the same thing: that a human being is not truly an active agent but a passive entity who merely reacts to forces and influences beyond his control.

Oddly enough, the skeptical determinist and the bible-thumping fundamentalist both believe that people are to be held morally accountable for their actions despite their similar belief that people do not make free choices or act freely. The fundies actually reconcile the concept of free will with Original Sin, which is ludicrous but which is done as a way of keeping their god-figment blameless for all the evil in the world. Exactly why the determinists should hold a person morally accountable for his actions when he has almost no real control of his actions is a bit of a mystery, but I suspect it's because they know that no alternative to holding individuals accountable for their actions is possible in any civil society.

I think that sometimes people oppose the idea of free-will because they don't really understand what it means. I have seen more than one person at Internet Infidels, for example, claim that free will cannot be possible because if it were then that would mean people could do whatever the hell they wished: that they would be able to fly or sleep with Salma Hayek, for example. Obviously that's not what free will means. Free-will doesn't mean a will that transcends ordinary boundaries or natural limitations, it just means one which is governed autonomously, one which acts on the ability to distinguish between various options and in light of the variety of consequences that such actions might incur, and under the wildly unpredictable auspices of human whims and desires.

There seems to be a major disagreement as far as the distinction between an action being influenced and an action being determined. No free-willer believes that his actions are uncaused, or uninfluenced, either from without or from within. No free-willer believes that his actions or decisions come about in a vacuum; but because our actions are caused by prior states of affairs, and influenced by them, this doesn't mean that our actions are therefore "determined".

Determinism seems credible to some mainly because of 20-20 hindsight. At any point in time we can look back and see a chain of events, a causal chain wherein each action is caused by the one prior to it, and decide that the chain of events that did take place is the only one that could have taken place, or that it somehow had to take place; but at any point in time the state of affairs that exists is only one of a multitude of states-of-affairs that were possible at some prior point in time. The fact that the world is as it is currently is no reason to believe that it had to be so. At various points in the past, any number of possibilities and potentialities were in play, and if different people had chosen different actions, we might now have a drastically different state of affairs than that which we actually have.

What I'm getting at is that our political freedom is what is at stake here. The fundamentalist strain of American religious belief is dead set on wiping out the very idea of political freedom itself. Talk to a fundy and ask him his opinion on the concepts of freedom and autonomy. These are essentially evil concepts to the mind of a fundy, particularly one of the Calvinistic variety who firmly believes that our eternal fate was decided by God eons before we were even born. There are some fundies who believe that our concepts of freedom and autonomy apply only to man and his relationship to his fellow man, that God wills us to grant these things to our brothers but with the understanding that He is under no obligation to do the same. With these people I have no quarrel whatsoever. I'm only concerned with those who wish to undermine my political freedom, not with those who would merely advise me to fear God's judgment but prefer to leave that judgment to God.

There are people active in the world today who believe that it is their responsibility to establish "God's kingdom on earth". In other words, they do not believe that the eventual torment of sinners in Hell is adequate. They want to make sure that these sinners suffer accordingly in this life as well as in the one that is to come. They refuse to acknowledge any ideas of political freedom or autonomy in regard to civil relationships among men. It isn't enough for them that a homosexual will endure an eternity of punishment for his offense to God. These particular fanatics want a hand in causing some pain and torment themselves, and are not content in their belief that God will eventually get around to it.

It's these people who need to be confronted in no uncertain terms whatsoever. We cannot afford to remain infatuated with the blithe Socratic notion that the only thing we know is that we know nothing. Now isn't the time to play semantic games or to treat philosophical issues as if they were relevant only in the austere and antiseptic halls of the Ivory Tower. This allergy to convictions of any kind is fine and dandy in the abstract world of academic debate, where intellectual integrity is measured according to how noncommittal a person can be while still presumably supporting a position; but unless we hold the conviction that human liberty is something worth fighting for we will lose our liberty by default. And how the concept of liberty can be shown to be something worth fighting for in the context of a human mind being a mechanical mass of "synapses" and "firing neurons" is beyond me.

It seems to me that if determinism is true, the concept of political freedom becomes irrelevant. In fact, I can't even imagine how freedom would be possible given the absence of free will.

I got more than a little side-tracked with that free-will versus determinism thing, but I think it's an extremely relevant argument in today's world. The bottom line is, if the radical right sees that the secular/humanist left is by and large a group of people who aren't sure of anything, have no sound epistemological foundation for their ideas, and can't even grant to their fellow man that he is an active, self-motivated, self-reliant, autonomous free agent who is competely responsible and therefore completely accountable for his actions, these crusading mystics will gain more confidence, will be more aggressive and cocksure than they already are, and will increase in number. I think it's already happening.

William Henry and Karl Wilhelm Baurle

I love this picture of my father's father (photo on the right), taken just before going off to fight for Germany, the country of his birth, in 1915. He was all of fifteen himself, and yet he looks much older to me in the photograph. He was fourty-three when my father was born in January of 1944.

My latest memories of my grandfather are of him telling stories of his experiences in the war. Like when he arrived somewhere in Europe by train and immediately had to jump underneath it with his mates because as soon as they had disembarked they fell under fire. I remember Grandpa laughing when he described the sound of bullets whizzing by and the sound they made against the side of the train. When he got home after his service in the war his mother wouldn't let him in the house because he had lice.

I have only the most pleasant memories of my grandfather. We used to go and visit him and my grandmother on Long Island where they owned a tiny house and a small piece of property. The grass was always neatly kept. There were several fruit trees in front, and a few tall spruce trees as well. In the back was a garden where they both spent a good deal of their time. My grandfather also spent a good deal of time working on his paintings, some of which now grace the halls of several Baurle-family homes. My grandpa died in 1980.

I also like this picture of my Dad (photo on the left), William Henry Baurle, taken when he was a strapping young lad in the United States Air Force. He's 61 now.

What I can't understand is: how in the hell did I wind up so damn ugly?

The checks are in the mail

A few days ago a friend of mine from PFFA informed me that there was a poll going on which was intended to determine the better-known internet poets: or, people who are better known because of their presence on the net rather than in print (or web) publications. Of course, there are scads of people posting poems online, people who have poetry blogs, or personal web-pages. I suppose there must be something on the order of several thousand. Colin Ward, from firesides.net, initiated the poll. 133 people voted, and nominated 162 candidates.

I don't think there were any restrictions as far as who could be nominated, but I presumed it to be implied that anyone with a considerable degree of publishing success ought to be excluded. Still, there were some notables who made the list. Robert Sward and Frank Bidart were there, probably as someone's idea of a joke. Both are very widely published and famous in the poetry-world. Oswald LeWinter was on the list, who is also very widely published and acclaimed. Someone apparently nominated A.E. Stallings under the moniker A.R. Stallings. Also appearing was David Anthony, who is beginning to attain some serious stature outside the electric fantasyland of the net.

To my astonishment, I turned up 75th, with three votes. If my name was William Zaurle instead of Baurle, I would have been 96th. Someone with a big heart must have nominated me, and I have a pretty good idea who it was. As for the other two votes, I have no idea, but bless their kind souls. Naturally, I know that polls like this don't amount to much more than a popularity contest. The prominent poetry boards did well: Gazebo, Eratosphere, PFFA, QED, as did Usenet, and a few other boards made a showing. There are hundreds of boards across the net, and most likely only a small percentage of these boards knew of the poll; but in fairness, the far greater majority of these boards are completely useless as far as critique or any serious dedication to craft. They function as showcases for people in dire need of ego gratification and ill-deserved boosts of self-esteem.

Due to the vast number of people who post poems for review, in the serious poetry forums alone, obviously the key to making a showing in such a poll is simply being thought of at just the right time. There are many poets at PFFA, for instance, which is where I post, who are much better at writing poetry than I am but who didn't make the list. The reason is just that their names weren't called to mind at precisely the right moment. As an example of what I mean: I nominated two people from PFFA who were not on the list when I first checked. I just happened to notice their absence because they have been more active on the board recently than others I might have thought of. After making my two nominations, I went and used the rest of my ten votes on people who were already on the list, mostly PFFAers but also a few others, notably Richard Epstein, who posts prolifically at QED. I voted for him not only because I think he's a good poet, but because I had a brief email exchange with him a while back and shocked him out of his shoes by recalling that he had published a few poems in some journals back in the late eightees/early ninetees: journals where I had also placed some poems, which, as it happens, is the only reason I remembered his name. I also voted for Mike Farmer because I think his poem "Brownseed", which was panned in short order when he posted it at PFFA, really kicks ass.

Later on I realized that there were a few people who I would have voted for over the ones I actually did vote for if only their names had been there already or if I had remembered them at the time and nominated them. These people are all fine poets and quite significantly better than me, some ridiculously better than me: James Flick, Nanphi, Debi Zathan (who recently passed away and who will eventually be very well known for her excellent work), Rob Yateman, Monique, Howard Miller, Donner, Toklas......

And here's where my memory fails me again. These are people who either haven't posted in a long while, post very rarely, or are known more by their user names, which apparently presented a problem in the nomination process. Luckily for me I have been very active at PFFA recently, though I've posted only one poem there in the last two to three years; but that one poem happened to go on the boards only last month. I am lucky also that the kind soul who nominated me knew my real name. This person also included my username, which is Urizen.

I'm not just trying to be humble. I know that my nomination was an act of kindness, and that even appearing on such a poll is due to my long association and sometimes ubiquitous involvement with a popular (though frequently maligned) and highly trafficked board, not to mention good old fashioned luck. I do believe, though, that for the people who garnered a significantly larger number of votes it's probably a fair indication that their work is of finer quality than that of the average bear. And I do hope people were by and large honest enough to keep some personal prejudices out of the picture. I voted for someone I don't like all that much on a personal level but whose work is definitely quite a few notches above average. By the same token, even though I have been frequenting poetry boards for upwards of four years, most of the names on the list are complete strangers to me. That has to mean something.

Still, as silly as it all is, you gotta take what you can get. Especially when you're a numbnuts.

Lemminghood: the art of fashionable self-contempt

First, check out these people.

I think the group is silly for a number of reasons: first, it's easy to join a group like this when you know that the ultimate objective, even if it were possible, is hundreds if not thousands of years off. All you're really doing is electing to not have offspring, which is a pretty good idea and which a number of people choose without actually wanting to let the species become extinct. Second, it comes off as a selfless act when it's actually sort of cruel. Being the forerunners of the group, they don't have to worry about what living conditions would be like for people as the human race dwindles. Governments die out, civilization in general dies out, animal populations increase. What is life like for these last remnants of the human species? Do they have electricity, medicine? Will they be farmers? Will they be able to protect themselves and their food from predators? How much suffering will these last traces of people have to endure because of this silly dream their comfortable ancestors concocted?

What sort of societies are they going to have? Will they be able to maintain some semblance of order as their numbers decrease? What do you do with criminals? What do you do about the inevitable insurrections, the occasional hotshot who will pop up here and there and let them know in no uncertain terms that he thinks they're out of their minds? I know they say they will never enforce their ideals on anyone, that any person involved in the movement would be so strictly on a voluntary basis. But how exactly does that happen, I mean when human population reaches lower and lower levels worldwide? At some point, even if they were to succeed for a good while, they will be forced either to give up or defend their ideal against opposition, and maybe not only of the verbal kind. The smaller the population gets, the easier it will be for various factions to rise up and take their little dream away from them. And those factions will always exist. And they'll be stronger, because the will to survive is stronger than the will to run like lemmings off the cliff of good conscience. I'm not saying they will be superior, or better people, just stronger. And I don't admire strength in and of itself, or a cut-throat mentality, or sheer brute self-interest, like that of a wild animal. I'm just throwing out possible concerns, concerns for people who are only distant and vague abstractions at these cozy little voluntary-extinction meet-ups.

But it won't work anyway, which they know, because it flies in the face of that which they pretend to love more than anything: Nature. All the good will and altruistic dreams in the world won't change how nature works. Even all the widespread indoctrination and brainwashing that would be necessary to make their vision succeed won't amount to a pile of compost against the brute fact that living things are ingrained with the will to survive and propogate. Not only that, surviving happens to be something which humans have excelled at since they made their appearance millions of years ago. And very often the way they've done it has been ugly and bloody and violent. You'll get no argument from me on that. One thing I know is this: I'm not a tough guy. Put my ass in a cave somewhere and I'm bear-meat. But that doesn't stop me from acknowledging facts. And it doesn't stop me from becoming as indignant as hell at the suggestion that I should agree to letting the human race die out. I'm a human, and it's my natural right to want my species to survive, no matter how fucked up they are, and no matter how much they fuck things up. More than that, I'm not responsible for every nasty thing any human ever did or will do. I'm not going to feel ashamed of myself for being a human being. I despise the idea of Original Sin in every single one of its nasty little guises.

The environmentalist extremists remind me of religious extremists, and I sometimes can't decide which group is more dangerous or just more downright silly. Your religious loonies think we're all born in sin and can't do a damn thing right of our own accord, and the only answer is a total surrender to God, to whom we must apologize and confess our unworthiness before we can get His help and guidance; and the religious loonies are committed to visiting their shame and hostility towards humanity on everyone else, by making us all live one day according to a set of tribal laws suited for nomadic sheep herders, a moral code all tied up in bizarre rituals and superstitious claptrap.

The environmentalist loonies think humanity is a mistake also, an aberration that does nothing good of its own accord, but merely infects and destroys everything in its path, like an alien parasite that just dropped out of the clouds onto the planet, guns blazing, steamrollers rolling, smokestacks billowing. The only answer is a total surrender to Nature, to whom we must kneel and confess our unworthiness as a species. But instead of Nature saving a few: her own ecologically-conscious, humanity-hating "elect", She won't settle for anything but wholesale extinction. And these fruitcakes get just as excited over the idea of a world without people as religious loonies do when they ecstatically contemplate a Heaven without sin.

I know I'm exaggerating, and by religious loonies I am refering to a small percentage of people of faith, the greater majority of whom are loving and decent people with excellent values. I'm refering to the kind of nutball who advocates public stonings, who wants to execute homosexuals and blasphemers, or the less extreme nutball who doesn't say he advocates those things but waxes all doe-eyed and romantic over the idea of people burning in Hellfire for all of eternity. I don't believe that it's in anyone's interest to be polite to such views anymore. I think we have a President here in the U.S. who is far more to the loony side than he is to the average decent person-of-faith side, and we have people who believe that atheism is actually a negation of everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for, who want to rewrite history and change laws so that atheists are not treated as full-blown American citizens. I believe that some people are pushing to make it so atheists can't give testimony in court. I might seem like I'm getting off course, but all this scary garbage comes from the same thing: a fashionable, deeply-ingrained contempt for humanity itself. Read some apologetics, particularly any from the Reformed Theology school. It's people-hating at it's most revolting.

What I think we need to do is remind ourselves constantly of all the good that we've done. Take a look around where you're sitting. I'm sure everyone appreciates their creature comforts. We all like that our silly race managed to figure out how to make a house, how to make it cool or warm; I'm sure we all like clean running water, electricity, medicine, language; not to mention legal and moral systems which let us live in relative safety, because big Joe over there and his buddies can't get away with knocking us over the head and raping our wives and eating all our food. Well, at least not most of the time, though shit can always happen.

I like civilization, and I'm glad I was born in the technological age. But that doesn't mean I'm not conscientious or that I necessarily don't care about what happens to the Andalusian Hoppy Frog or the Great Nubian Black Beetle. And it doesn't mean that I don't feel terrible for poor and starving children around the world, to whom I am more than happy to occasionally send money, when I am able. I say when I'm able, because according to Arizona State, I am officially poor. My total wages for last year still put me at about three thousand dollars below the poverty level as a single wage earner in a family of four. And now things are considerably worse because I recently lost my job of seven years and am currently working in a shithole until I can find another job in my "field", which is so mundane I don't even want to mention it. I was happy to give money for the Tsunami relief fund in my area, because I realize how good I have it compared to millions around the world. I care about the environment, as well as the many non-human species that dwell therein. It just so happens that I care more for human beings than I do for alligators and frogs. And one of the reasons I care more for humans is because of their capacity to care for alligators and frogs. Show me one Bolivian Zebra-striped Marmoset who gives a damn about the plight of the Burmese Flying Purplegilled Moosefish.

We've progressed so rapidly over the last half-century that we got ahead of ourselves, and I have no doubt that we're screwing some things up that ought not to be messed with. But I also know that some really bright people are on the case, working hard at finding solutions to all of these environmental and ecological problems. Conservation seems to be ligitimately at the forefront of our public concerns as a race, and maybe some good things will start happening to turn things around a bit. Or maybe not. But I'm not heading for the cliff any time soon.

Once upon a time....

I wrote a long response to a statement made by a Christian on a discussion forum I frequent. I decided not to post my response in that forum, since it contains a great deal of speculation and theorizing, and I'm no philosopher. I'll post my reply here, though, mostly just because I can. I owe a debt to Carl Sagan for some of the ideas on the genesis of the God-concept presented herein, and to Ayn Rand for a great deal of the other stuff. I know that there are some rough spots, which I hope to iron out in time.

********


A Christian says, refering to the Fall of Man: "The tree was put there for one reason. To allow Adam and Eve to have the ability to follow their own will instead of God's. By giving a commandment against eating that tree, God allowed Adam and Eve to choose whether to obey Him or not. This would be the creation of free will."



True, the tree was put there for a reason: because the story of creation in Genesis is a story, the story of Man's fall, the tree, the fruit, the snake, the first man and woman, are all parts of a story. They are literary devices, metaphors, symbols. In a poem you might hear mention of a rose. Since you are reading a poem you already know that it's probably not just a rose. You know that the rose is more than likely a symbol for something greater, something more abstract, like beauty, fidelity, romance, love. You know that in a poem a dove might symbolize peace, that an eagle might symbolize freedom, and so on.

You also know that in a work of fiction, particularly poems, fables, or myths, frequently things don't operate the way they do in the real world. Animals often have human characteristics, they think, talk, feel, wear clothing, even walk upright. Sometimes plants and inanimate objects are personified to achieve a desired effect. Anything is possible in a work of fiction. If the author wishes he can draw from his imagination and invent his own creatures, even his own worlds for them to inhabit. He can invent monsters, extra-terrestrial beings, even gods, to suit his purposes. Or he can take real animals and real people and invest them will any type of supernatural ability or power. Anything goes.

When we encounter a narrative which contains behaviors and actions which do not correspond in any way with what we know of reality: when we encounter a being who creates a universe from nothing, who creates another living being from the dust, and still another being from the rib of the first being, who can invest trees with magical properties, who can make fruit which is able to impart the capacity for greater wisdom and understanding---we know that we are in a made-up world, a world which is fabricated with the intent of telling a story with a message that pertains to reality, a message which may, or may not, have some lesson for real people in a real world.

When we encounter in any narrative a snake that can speak, we know that we are in a made-up world; when we hear that two of every animal species on earth can be contained in an ark constructed by human hands, we know that we are in a made-up world; when we hear of a woman being turned to a pillar of salt, when we hear a fanciful and poetic reason for the appearance of rainbows, particularly in this modern age when we have discovered the real reasons rainbows appear, we know that we are in a made-up world, a world where all things are possible, where any explanation for any sort of phenomena whatsoever is acceptable, even expected: the world of imaginative fiction, the world of fable, of allegory, of myth.

When we read a story we willingly suspend our disbelief (Coleridge) and accept the story on its own terms in order to enjoy it and take meaning from it. If I were to read the Genesis story today for the first time, and if I had no idea that millions of people actually regard it as a factual account of real events, I would probably enjoy it somewhat and take various meanings away from it, though I would certainly disagree with what I presumed to be the author's intentions. I understand the theme of Genesis, which essentially boils down to Might makes Right. People cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Knowledge is power. An ignorant people are a governable people. The common man's only necessary virtue is obedience.

But while I understand this as the intended theme, I have the advantage of being born into the modern age and am able to determine the actual meaning, or purpose, behind that theme. History has demonstrated that such political ideas cannot work on a large scale. Human beings are a thinking, rational, deductive species. They will not be kept in the dark for long. They will discover the hidden agendas of their leaders and set about exposing them. The climax of Genesis--- the Fall of Man, his expulsion from Paradise, his supposedly corrupt nature--- is a literary device, a fictional contraption which attempts to make irrational and immoral ideas seem plausible by fabricating imaginary punishments for wrongdoings which in reality are nothing less than virtues: the desire for freedom and autonomy, the desire for knowledge, the desire for strength and self-reliance.

In a very definite sense, however, given the time when Genesis was composed, there is a certain degree of practicality in the creation/fall of Man myth. The author(s) of Genesis were of a tribal people, and the security of any tribe depends on maintaining and increasing its numbers, and, more importantly, on strong leadership. The problem I have today is why on earth people would feel that the same sort of fear-mongering, self-mistrust, self-contempt, the same sort of backwards reverence for an invisible deity who has never been observed by any of the five senses in the last two thousand years (and who has probably never been observed, period), is necessary for the continued welfare of the human species? Why do we persist in cultivating this us-versus-them mentality? Why do we continue to labor under the fear of being punished by an ancient tribal deity for our actions? Why do we persist in our futile hope that this mystical being will save us from the inevitability of death and oblivion? Why do we continue to wage war with one another over the various ways we choose to recognize and pay tribute to our imaginary supernatural benefactors and saviors? What has religion ever done except to cause division and hatred among people? Do religious people possess a greater moral character than those who are non-religious? History and day-to-day experience tells us that the answer is No.

But be that as it may. As I was saying, the prosperity of any tribe is largely dependent upon strong leadership; but there are always the proud and ambitious upstarts, the young bucks who are naturally driven to challenge their leaders. The best way to keep this constant threat in check is to make the leader seem invincible. He's immeasurably strong as well as being a paragon of virtue. He has only your best interests at heart. Then it naturally follows that any opposition to this incarnation of the Good must necessarily spring from Evil. Convince the Sheep that any suspicion or mistrust toward their leader is either the result of external influence (enter Talking Snakes, demons), or an internal fault or sickness (enter Sin). To ensure that the sheep will accept this as the truth, make certain that wrongdoers are punished, rebellions crushed, subversive murmurs and seditious whispers silenced (enter Standard Issued, Black Booted, Iron Fisted Force).

Let me indulge in some pure speculation for a moment. Let's say the Tribal Leader suddenly dies, and his successor has not yet established any depth of trust in the members of the Tribe. Anarchy and disorder seems inevitable. The leader's wife or mate, let us imagine, has a clever idea, since she's having a difficult time keeping the young bucks in line: Your leader is dead, but he isn't gone. In fact, he came to me last night in a dream and told me that he is living in the sky, invisible, yet a thousand times stronger (enter god, or gods). He is watching us. He is watching You. He sees everything. He can even see into your mind, into your thoughts. Stay in line. Obey the new leader (enter Divine Right of Kings) as you would obey Him. Keep the tribe together and increase. You can't run from Him. If you resist His will He will punish you. He will punish you with certain death. If you obey Him, you will go and live in the skies with Him forever and always.

The crux of the problem, however, for Authority, is how to ensure that the flock will remain ignorant enough to accept this pack of lies and hence be content to remain sheep. People are a curious lot. They want to learn things, find out how things work, gain knowledge; and eventually they could conceivably gain enough knowledge to instruct themselves that the lies they hear from the Authorities (enter priests, clergy) are just that: lies. Solution? That's simple: just lie to them some more, and not only that, tell them such grand and rotten lies that they will eventually hold themselves in such contempt they won't care about seeking knowledge or understanding things. All they will want to do is survive, obey the rules of the game, and go to the sky when it's all over.

Teach them that their virtues are sins. If they feel pride in themselves, tell them that pride comes from Evil. If they wish to grow, learn, attain a higher understanding of the world around them,---fill that world with demons first, and if the demons don't keep them in check, tell them that they don't have to go out in the world to encounter a demon. A demon has come to them and saved them the effort. A demon who turns everything upside down: pride, ambition, desire, curiosity, enterprise, all of man's essential virtues, are in fact manifestations of the evil planted inside him by a meddling demon, a gremlin, a chimera. If a man feels good about himself, about his life, this is a sure sign that he is infested with evil. Demon, or Original Sin: they amount to the same thing.

It's an unforgivable psychological trick that worked then and continues to work now, a mind game that makes perfectly decent human beings proudly confess to an inner corruption, a corruption that is complete and absolute. It's a vulgar lie that needs to be strangled, killed, and forgotten.

********

God is a metaphor for Authority. Adam and Eve, for Sheep. Authority wants to stay in charge, enjoys the power and prestige, the acclamations, the praise, the glory. Knowledge is power. Deny access to knowledge, deny access to power. The Talking Snake is portrayed as a liar, but in reality (meaning, how the Snake's words pertain to and/or reflect real circumstances in the real world) he is telling the truth; or at the very least, a truth, which is: the Big Kahuna fears you and wants to keep you down. He is actually working for God (not from the God character's perspective in the context of the story, but from Authority's POV in reality): In the story, God wants A&E to make the right choice so that they may live with him forever and always in blissful ignorance; in reality, the Authority needs for the Sheep (A&E) to make the wrong choice, so that Authority is spared any guilt over keeping the Sheep under his heel.

Remember: this is a story, a fable, a literary contrivance intended to cosmetize certain political, ethical and moral ideas. Adam and Eve didn't make the choice. The author(s) of the story made the choice, and naturally, since the purpose of the story is to cast blame on all of Man's (Sheep's) virtues and portray them as grievous faults so that they learn to hate and mistrust themselves and therefore become more easily duped and led by the nose, the choice made by Man (Sheep) (represented by the fictional characters, Adam and Eve) is.....you guessed it: the wrong choice . Thus they get evicted from their idyllic environment (intended to instill the fear of being ostracized by one's peers, thereby losing the security of the tribe) and lose that one-on-one, in-the-flesh relationship with God (intended to instill the fear of disappointing, and therefore being estranged from, the Leader (living or dead-but-not-quite-dead).

Knowledge is good. Knowledge is power. There is nothing evil about enjoying your life. There is nothing wrong with saving your mind for a conception of God that might actually make sense, that doesn't require you to hate and mistrust yourself; a conception of God without all those human foibles like jealousy, wrath, vengeance, or those all-too-human desires like the appetite for praise, glory, power, and Dominion.

Tom

The old Lie

Suicide bombings, on average, probably aren't acts of desperation or self-sacrifice. A good deal of these people are religious fanatics, and to willingly die in the act of taking out a few infidels is really an act of cool-headed self-promotion. I would even go so far as to call some of these bombings purely selfish acts, with nothing glorious or heroic about them, though they are no doubt tragic. I'd also say that there is probably something of the suicide bomber in any soldier who truly believes, deep down, that he is risking his life for the glory of God, and that such an act will be pleasing to his God.

I was born at West Point, raised in the area, and all my life held military people in high esteem, and in some way, I suppose, I still do, though my feelings and thoughts on the matter have changed somewhat over the past two years. To speak ill of American soldiers, or any soldiers really, still makes a part of me feel ashamed and ungrateful. I've had an easy life. But wait, saying something like that, without doing at least a little explaining, could give people a picture of me which is highly inaccurate, so here goes: I don't mean that I have been sheltered, spoiled, over-privileged, or anything remotely like that. I come from pretty humble origins and I'm a blue-collar guy straight down the line.

What I mean by "easy" is that I have never been in any serious financial difficulty, I have not had to literally struggle to survive, though like anyone else I have my share of burdens and challenges. I've had to work, and I consider that a fair deal; but I've never had more than one job at any given time. I am also good at living within my means, and maybe that's partly because I'm a bit of a homebody and don't have any expensive hobbies or interests. My most prized possessions are my books and my music collection.

By easy I also mean that I was lucky enough to be born in a country where a workingman can survive and even live in relative comfort. Despite all the assertions to the contrary, this is still possible in the US. The fact of the matter is that a great many people simply don't know how to handle money, they don't know how to live within their means. And I'm sure that a significant percentage of people who become "down and out" are either lazy or just plain irresponsible: they can't hold a job for an extended period of time, or they squander their money on any number of frivolous activities, material extravagances (like paying nearly half their monthly wages on car payments), or mind-altering amusements.

And a great many people in general need to realize that there is no obligation to reproduce. If you can barely sustain your own existence without undue stress and worry, don't have children. Or, limit the number of children you have. I find it difficult to sympathize with people who have four or five children, and in many cases a great deal more than that, and then complain that they cannot makes ends meet. Child-bearing is an enormous responsibility, and it's plain that to some people it's not only that but a largely unrewarding burden, financially and emotionally.

I also have it easy as far as a general sense of safety and security: I live in a country where war is a thing people get on planes and fly off to. I was never in the military myself, and I realize how presumptuous it is of me to judge the purpose or behavior of any person who has been in combat, or even anyone who has done military service. I'm not a mind reader. I don't know for sure what compels the average G.I. or the suicide bomber. I can only go on the information I have and come to very general conclusions.

What is almost certain is that the idea of God is a major impetus behind some acts of patriotism or nationalism. In the US it is blatantly obvious that a great many people cannot make any real distinction between their faith and their love of country, which I consider to be an extremely dangerous state of affairs. Because of the general prosperity in the US, and because most Americans are Christian, it is naturally assumed that there is an obvious connection between the two, and in my opinion this is the most dangerous and disturbing thing about the United States.

Take a President like Bush, who is routinely and shamelessly careless with the seriousness of his office, who uses religious rhetoric at every opportunity, who seems to have no understanding of and/or no respect for the separation of Church and State, you mix that with a population which is not only notoriously nationalistic but which has suddenly been awakened to the reality of being vulnerable to the rest of the world, and consider that the greater majority of these people are steeped in their religious traditions already: you've got a giant, nervous and volatile herd on your hands.

That isn't to say that religious faith is bad and atheism is good. Recent history has shown that atheists can be dangerous idealogues too, and can wreak their own brand of bloody havoc on the world; and certainly there are religious people who are not highly nationalistic or patriotic, don't act like sheep, are intelligent and civil and humane. Probably, most religious people are decent and humane and only want what's best for everyone. What bothers me about American Christians, particularly the right-leaning, church/Jesus/family oriented folks who are out in force everywhere, if an informal poll of bumper stickers is any indication, is the fact that they refuse to acknowledge that the political philosophies which influenced the founding fathers had precious little, if anything really, to do with Christianity.

We are a secular nation in that our goverment is secular. Whatever we are in private is our own business. And "secular", despite the lies perpetuated by Christian Americans, does not mean opposed to religion, it just means that the goverment will make no formal recognition of any one particular faith, nor in any way endorse or denounce any particular faith, and by formal I mean "official", not private. Nor does "secular" automatically endorse atheism, which is another lie from the Christian camp. The goverment cannot officially endorse atheism any more than it can officially endorse Christianity. Christians argue that by not officially endorsing a particular faith they are therefore endorsing atheism, which is false. Neutral is neutral. The relatively recent concessions made to the religiously-minded, such as the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance, or the phrase "in God we trust" incribed on American currency, still do not concede to Christianity in any way whatsoever. God is God for the Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, the Twelve-stepper, even the Sub-genius. If Christians do not wish to acknowledge that fact, that's their own problem.

I think we might progress a wee bit as a people, and by that I mean a world-people, if this invisible means of support is recognized for what it really is: a non-existent means of support. We're all we've got. And, like Frank Zappa said, maybe this really is a one-shot deal. Maybe we don't fly into the arms of our sky-daddy when we die. Maybe he doesn't pat our heads and tell us what good boys and girls we've been. Maybe there are no virgins waiting for us, or golden cities with golden streets. No rivers of milk and honey. No wings, no harps, no cloud-hopping, no angels, no happy forever and evers. I notice a lot of talk from religious folks about death, but hey, come on, the majority of Christians don't believe in death. A lot of hot air about death, but most of them don't believe it exists. On the one hand they tell me that Jesus died for me, and on the other they say that he rose up three days later. Hint: that's not death. It's a nap. And why all this talk of death when the majority of Christians believe in some form of Heaven and Hell: that all souls exist forever in some indescribable but undeniably conscious state, either in bliss or in torment?

Death is permanent. It isn't the wages of sin, it isn't what we get because of our inherently depraved natures. We don't die because we have done something wrong. Death is not a punishment, dealt out by some deathless being whose main function is to remind us of how undeserving we are of life, of happiness, of pleasure. Death is natural. It's as natural as it gets, but it's also permanent. It isn't a point of transition between life and eternal life, it isn't a dreamless sleep that is trivially short, it isn't a three day nap behind a big rock. It's oblivion, non-existence, non-consciousness. It's a permanent return to the condition we were in before we were born, which was nothingness. Death is easy to understand. All you have to do is think about what you were doing when the Pyramids were built. You weren't doing anything, you were dead. You've already been dead.

If we're going to harp on the Muslims for their willingness to go to extremes for their religion, then let's remember that a lot of American Christians are driven by the same purpose, and by beliefs which are disturbingly similar. There are certain groups of Christians, not all American but largely American, who call themselves Dominionists, or Christian Reconstructionists. The driving force behind these groups is not a respect for human rights or political freedom, but a focused and purposeful desire to turn America (and the rest of the world, if they can) toward a Christian theocracy whose sole authority would be the Bible. These groups believe that their mission is to establish God's Kingdom here on earth, and they believe that Jesus will not return until far in the future when this Kingdom has been realized. We are talking about a society under strict Mosaic Law: Old Testament law. We are talking about executions for homosexuality, blasphemy, even wayward and uncontrollable youths. Some of these warped individuals have even advocated public stonings.

I don't want to sound like an alarmist, though I suppose that's inevitable. I realize that these groups are relatively small and are considered crazy even by most mainstream Christians, but there are certain disturbing connections between the mainstream religious right in America and the core issues that drive the Dominionists/Reconstructionists: the deliberate insistence that Judeo-Christian values and/or ethics are the necessary foundation for the concepts of political freedom and human rights, which is sheer nonsense, and the equally nonsensical attempt to curtail the freedoms of American citizens by citing the supposed desires of an ancient tribal deity. The United States cannot be run by appealing to the Bible: ultimately, it will only be destroyed by such an appeal. Mosaic, or Old Testament Law, if taken literally, would be like a deadly poison if it were consistently administered in the US, or in any civilized country.

The truly scary thing is that when I talk to some Christians, they don't understand why living under Old Testament law would be a bad thing. They don't even know what would change. These dummies will deserve what they get.

Suicidal tendencies

"I think this shows that the problem is primarily emotional, not intellectual. People just don't like the idea of a God who might send them to hell, and so they choose not to believe in Him. But that kind of attitude is just suicidal. Imagine you're standing in the middle of the street, and suddenly a friend on the curb says, "Look out! Here comes a car!" Now what do you do? Do you stand there and close your eyes real tight and say, "anybody who would run over me can't be a very nice person! If I don't believe in him, then it won't affect me! I just won't believe that he exists!" And then it is too late. A lot of people look at God that way. They think that just because they don't like the idea of God sending them to hell, if they close their eyes real tight and pretend that He doesn't exist, then it doesn't affect them. And that kind of attitude is just fatal."

This paragraph comes near the end of William Lane Craig's closing statements in a debate with an atheist, the whole of which is transcribed and published online, as are many such debates. Craig is one of the leading apologists for the Reformed Christian worldview, and he is obviously extremely smart and educated. No statement I make should be regarded as an attempt to cast doubt on the man's intelligence. I make this dislcaimer because I want to be clear on the fact that I believe most theist/atheist disagreements are the result of political, and therefore moral and ethical, differences, rather than merely intellectual ones. Certainly, there are stupid atheists and stupid theists, just as there are geniuses on both sides of the theological fence. Craig could well be a genius, though it's certain that I am not.

What bothers me most about Craig's analogy of God as the Reckless Driver (besides the fact that his description of an atheist's attitude toward god-belief is actually precisely that of the theist's denial of the reality of death) is the fact that he compares God, who is in no way whatsoever available for empirical analysis, with an obviously visible speeding car and its obviously dangerous operator. The non-believer, who can in no manner at all sense God as a metaphysical reality, is nonetheless portrayed as someone whose primary fault is the ability to ignore certain data he receives through his senses, for the sake of emotional security. The analogy is completely backwards and inept, and fails absolutely. Craig might have said something like this:

Imagine you're standing in the middle of the street and suddenly a friend on the curb shouts:

"Hey, you better move. I read somewhere that any second now a car is going to come thundering around that corner, and if you're standing there you'll be turned into road-pizza!"

Imagine that you look up ahead and see nothing. You hear nothing, you feel nothing. It's just an empty street. Sure, a car could come along at any time, but at the moment you see no point in scrambling over to the curb like an idiot just because your friend read somewhere that a car would come thundering and blundering along on this very street at any time. After all, your friend has been saying this for years, every day in fact since you and he started to walk down this street together on your way to work. But the car never comes.

"Besides," you point out, "wouldn't the driver have time to see me and put on the brakes? Is he drunk? Or is he just a reckless driver and a menace to the road?"

Your friend says, "No, you don't understand. The driver is extremely powerful, wise and merciful, and in fact loves you very much; but if you don't move out of the way, he'll run you right over. And not only that, you won't die. You'll actually have to experience the pain of being run over by someone who loves you forever and ever, for the simple fact that you played chicken with him and refused to get out of the way."

At this point you look hard at your friend and say, "Well, that doesn't sound very loving and merciful to me. But that's beside the point, because if I really did see a car coming, naturally I would get out of the way. I have no desire to play chicken with reckless drivers, no matter how much they love me. The reason I'm standing here is to let you know that your fear-mongering isn't going to work on me. The more you warn me about the possibility of becoming eternal road-pizza because I pissed off some reckless driver, the more I'm going to stand here, just to let you know that you can't manipulate your fellow men through this kind of psychological intimidation. If the car comes, I'll do the wise thing and get out of the way. But I don't see a car."

"That's just suicidal!" your friend shouts, teetering on the curb, not daring to step foot into the street. "Maybe the car will be coming so fast and furiously you won't have time to move! Isn't it much safer just to stay off the street? Why take chances?"

"Well, for two reasons." you say, "First, as I mentioned, I'm gonna stay here as a constant reminder to you that I will not be motivated by irrational fear. I will not take your word, or the word of someone who wrote something about this mysterious car and driver. Second, if this driver is truly loving and merciful, as you say, then I have nothing to worry about. No wise and merciful person would run down someone they loved. Your story makes no sense."

"It makes no sense to you because you don't understand the nature of the driver. He is very wise and powerful, and he is indeed very loving; but he doesn't demonstrate those attributes in the way that a normal person would. He lets all of us know that he is coming, at any time, without warning, and leaves it up to us whether to stand in the street like suicidal fools or to stay out of the way. If we believe in him and stay off the street, he will recognize our faith and reward us with incomprehensible bliss forever and ever; but if we doubt him and remain standing in the street, he will run us over as surely as the sun shines, because we dared to trust ourselves rather than the word of his messengers."

"And how do we know we can trust these messengers?"

"Because the driver tells us their words are true."

"And where does the driver tell us this?"

"In the words of the messengers!"

"Farewell, friend. Have a nice journey down the safe and comfortable curb of life..."

Reformed morons

The more I read stuff from these reformed apologists, the more suspicious of them I become. For instance, when they ask questions like, "why is it immoral or wrong to hurt someone," or, "how do you know that it's immoral or wrong to hurt someone else for no reason," or questions to that effect, could it be that they are truly, genuinely in the dark on this? Could it be that these people are actually lacking in sympathy, empathy, or what we call a "conscience"?

Based on a passage from his "Professional Morons" (which is in a pdf document and I couldn't figure out how to quote from it, but I can link to it), I gather that Mr. Vincent Cheung really doesn't have any idea why a non-believer might consider it to be morally wrong to hurt another person for no reason. Cheung, and people like him, cannot seem to fathom why an atheist would be compelled to treat his fellow human being with decency and care, because the atheist isn't getting anything out of the deal, at least nothing that the religious fanatic can see or understand.

Maybe it doesn't bother the religious fanatic to observe a fellow human being in pain, causes him no unease whatsoever? This would go a long way in explaining why some of the extremely zealous theists, such as the Dominionists or Christian Reconstructionists, have no problem whatsoever with biblical atrocities. It doesn't bother them to think of millions of people being drowned in a flood, or of God's armies ruthlessly slaughtering their enemies, or of babies' heads being dashed against the stones, or of people having excrement spread on their faces, or of millions of people being damned for eternity; and it could also explain why some of these extremists would have no problem with executing people for various infractions, or why a few of them even advocate stonings.

What rational person with a healthy conscience could condone lobbing rocks at human beings until they die? For whatever reason? I wouldn't be able to kill someone by throwing rocks at them even if they had murdered my wife and children. I might want them to die, but not that way. I wouldn't even kill a toad that way, let alone a human being.

I think that maybe we need to come to terms with what we might be dealing with: intelligent people with no conscience, people who do not intuitively or instinctively know right from wrong, but whose idea of right and wrong, or moral and immoral, comes purely from a book. Maybe for this kind of religious zealot, killing an innocent person isn't wrong because it's repugnant to his conscience, to his basic sensitivities as a human being, it's wrong because it's an offense to God, and that's the only reason he needs; moreover, it's the only reason he feels entitled to have.

It's really no wonder, in light of this, that religious fanatics through out the ages have been capable of such brutality and cruelty. Perhaps because, in large part, they have no moral sense, they have no conscience? Because all they understand is obedience and force? And perhaps all of of their arguments are essentially grounded in one simple, scriptural premise: that everyone else is just as morally bankrupt as they are?

Requiescat in pace

I never thought I'd hear myself say this to myself, but I'm actually glad to see that there are so many Catholics in the world, for these vast droves of people will eventually prove to be instrumental in stemming the tide of Theonomy which at present is not a tsunami in force, rather a creepy little wavelet, which will grow.

And I therefore hereby this electronic digital transcription whereby I stand hereabouts do solemnly proclaim this thing verily, even a prophecy, which have come forth from my mouth, even from my tongue on this day: the God-botherers will grow mightier, yea, but not unto mightiness wherein they shall wreak their rigid Rightness upon us,

but unto forthwith and sooth a large body of sycophantic psychopathic mules or fowls of the air that droppeth stuff nor cheweth their cud, or them from which we reap our share of wool sheared, the sheep; and this body of some but not nigh unto mighty might shall fuck with freedom at every turn.

So let us be pleased that the old church is still kicking, and I think apologetic in a good way, and sincere, in the main. The heavier pots that are damaged lurk on the other side. Reformation my ask you this: as a rebellion it was wonderful, for like what, five minutes? Luther and Calvin were both knucking phuts.

I wish the Pope a very restful sleep, and peace, sincerely.

Ex-Christian.net

Last night as I was doing my usual reading online, occupied as I very often am in looking up information regarding the Christian Reconstructionist movement, or Dominionism, or Theonomy (these labels are commonly used interchangeably, but there are distinctions between them which I haven't quite worked out), and I wound up at a site called Ex-Christian net.

The site is run by an Ex-Christian named Dave Van Allen. It started small, but has grown considerably. Being inspired by Mr. Allen's testimony regarding his deconversion from the Christian faith, I wrote him a small letter of appreciation. Mr. Allen graciously responded, and quite promptly I might add, given the high rate of traffic at his website, and given that he must receive quite a large volume of personal messages and email. He thanked me for my message and asked to post it on his site in a letters-to-webmaster section, which he says consists predominantly of negative messages from Christians seeking to re-convert him. I was happy to ask him to go ahead and post my letter.

I also responded to a letter from a Christian posted recently at ExChristian.net, which prompted a rather lengthy thread. This person had coyly introduced the TAG into one of his posts. This argument will rear its ugly head everywhere, and it won't only be used by Christians arguing from a Reformed perspective. The best refutation I've read so far is this one, by Objectivist Anton Thorn. I know that many people, probably even most people, think of Objectivists as secular cultists, no better, and in fact similar in many ways, to fundamentalist theists. I will say that Objectivism has indeed generated a certain number of block-headed sycophants and "fundies". I encountered a few at more than one Objectivist forum, and I even met one Objectivist author via email whose responses to me were such that I immediately discontinued correspondence with him; but there are also those who are extremely bright and fiercely independent, and I believe that Anton Thorn is one of those.

One should consider that the biggest gun in the TAGist's arsenal is the fact that modern philosophy offers precious little by way of any firmly grounded epistemological standpoint, with Objectivism being one of the few, and certainly the most noticeable, exception. TAGists love to pick on people like Bertrand Russell, for example, first for his famous book on why he was not a Christian (guess the title?), and second, because his epistemological views changed through-out his career. Now, most people would say that that was a good thing, because, and I'm paraphrasing Nietzsche here, 'convictions are a no-no.'

Just don't be too sure of that.

waiting for echoes, archy

Was it Don Marquis, the journalist slash poet who said something like:

"Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a [??] into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." ?

It was either him or someone else, of that I'm sure. As for what goes between the brackets, it could be a feather, or a penny. I don't remember. I could look it up, but I don't feel like it, and neither will anyone else. I've been saying that a lot in this blog, haven't I, he asked himself. And no one was watching, and no one pointed his finger and laughed.

And it was all the same to him, he thought, examining the underside of the left side of his chin as he faced himself. I was reminded today of a line from a poem I've always liked: which went something like, "his carnation preceded him like a small explosion...". Does one need a full stop (period, he said, adjusting his glasses) after an ellipsis? Are there two ells in ellipsis? Well naturally there were two that time.

Well, archy, having looked through a sickeningly narrow yet noisy slice of Blogdom, I see that Andy Warhol was dead wrong. We cannot possibly all have fifteen minutes, each. And that wouldn't make us happy anyway. So God has rendered unto us all an infinity for the splatterings of our vanity. He has given every fool, including myself, his own mountain, her own village square, her own shiny and dazzling printing press of many-colors. We will hoist ourselves up and over our own petards, show ourselves naked (some of us quite literally) in front of the entire world, free of charge.

God has seen Andy's bluff and raised him a trillionfold, archy. The greatest libraries in the world pale to this blinking box next to my socks. The poet Kenneth Patchen once wrote, with a pen, presumably: "The impatient explorer invents a box in which all journeys may be kept."

That box is this box. Windows are boxes. Morrison was right, too, we're all voyeurs. The really sickening thing is, though, the person whose private parts we peer at through our little windows on the world is us, is you, is me, he said.

But no one was listening.