I am an egotistical lover of beauty who hungers for truth and change

Last week I read Stephen Jay Gould's essay, "The Median is not the Message" and in it the author says,

"Heart and head are focal points of one body, one personality,"

which made me come away with a new understanding of how my compromises to the average can be unhealthy or, to speak in statistical language, a desire to regress to the mean keeps me from imagining the infinite.

I thought about this and how I've too often worried about fitting safely into the bulbous part of a womb-like normal distribution.

Doing so has kept me from appreciating my unique variations. And as Gould points out, in an empirical sense, variation is the only constant.

My worry has led me to shut up, not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I was afraid that all I wanted to say would alienate the larger group.

I weighed the trade-off between uniqueness and popularity and found deviation from the norm unattractive. Sharing one's thoughts is unhealthy when looking to hide within the crowd.

I feared I'd piss you off because whenever I sought after my unique perspective it seemed to violate the notion we should be seeing things the same way.

But eventually for me the pain of comformity had to give birth to something more vital.

George Orwell writes in "Why I Write";

"From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer."

When I was young I felt the same, not because I thought I was good at it (in fact I often think I am very bad at it which paradoxically keeps me at it, slavishly sado-masochistic) but when engaging words to render meaning from my anxiety I found my anxiety transformed into meaning. And Orwell makes sense of this wonder better than I,

". . . there are four great motives for writing . . . they exist in
different degrees in every writer . . .

1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc. etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one . . . Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose on the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not be missed . . .
3. Historical Impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
4. Political Purpose - using the word 'political' in the widest sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that should strive after."

They all make sense to me and they are all hard to admit.

I am an egotistical lover of beauty who hungers for truth and change.

I'm sorry if that means I will never share a safe bubble with you.

Gould wrote his essay when he was diagnosed in 1982 with abdominal mesothelioma, a rare and very deadly form of cancer, which technically speaking offered him, a "median mortality of eight months" to live. He took the time to understand who he was relative to the average and lived for 12 years.

His quote above is the resolution of the conflict between "what is" versus "what's possible" and, he postulates, a death sentence is only accurate if a person fails to appreciate, with head and heart, the unique variations s/he carries within. He concludes with sage advice,

"It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die - and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light."

Makes sense to me.

Learning a new fallacy

My favorite blog is "Debunking Christianity" it has unseated the MLive MSU Football Forum as my Internet diversion of choice. I like it because it has introduced me to the idea of fallacies and how they operate. Watching atheist skeptics and Christian apologists debate God's reality has helped me realize how faulty my reasoning skills are.

An example of this is my new appreciation for the fallacy of equivocation. I appreciate this fallacy because I love words and their precise use. The fallacy demands one define terms if they are making a challenging argument. I like paradox also so, in the past a phrase such as, "One should be skeptical of a skepticism" would delight me.

I am a skeptic and therefore of course am skeptical of skepticism but that doesn't make me doubt my skepticism because I now understand the importance of fallacy.

You can read why I can say that here.

The Rounding Influence of Storytelling

Insight is a story. It goes beyond an agreed upon fact and uncovers paradox.

There really isn’t any formula for insight because it depends on the ability to see beyond the data and consider context.

For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been pursuing insight, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. The archive is one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.

An article from last June’s Atlantic entitled “What Makes us Happy” focused on this study.

Amidst the data collected, the enduring lessons of the men studied were paradoxical and the scientific output needed, “the rounding influence of story-telling."

Insight is a story. How something is told affects its meaning. What to tell?

The Mendacity of Measurability

Albert Einstein once observed, "Not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that can be measured matters.” This is a tricky aphorism to comprehend because on the surface it would seem to be a celebration of intuition over empiricism.

That observation would deny history however because the good physicist demanded his “General Relativity” be corroborated by a total eclipse before it could be Nobel-worthy.

The insight is useful though if we consider that it offers clarity around the potential for equivocation when we automatically assume quantification as thought. Ideation can be compromised when we seek the right answer in the face of complexity rather than being comfortable accepting complexity itself. A prior formula can mistake the nature of variables and deliver an outcome that fails to recognize the functional relationship of those variables.

The author Mark Slouka exposes the fallacy of quantification further in his essay “Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School” when he discusses the current trend in scholastics towards standardized testing. He paraphrases David Brooks on the importance of data capture skills and education;

“all we need to do is make a modest in- vestment in ‘delayed gratification skills.’ Young people who can delay gratification can master the sort of self-control that leads to success; they can sit through sometimes boring classes and perform rote tasks. As a result, they tend to get higher SAT scores, gain acceptance to better colleges, and have, on average, better adult outcomes.”

But Mr. Slouka exposes the fallacy of this thinking by observing,

“There’s something almost sublime about this level of foolishness. By giving his argument a measured, mathematical air (the students only achieve better adult out- comes ‘on average’), Brooks hopes that we will overlook both the fact that his constant (success) is a variable and that his terms are ‘way unequal’, as the kids might say. One is reminded of the scene in the movie ‘Proof’ in which the mathematician played by Anthony Hopkins, sliding into madness, begins a proof with ‘Let X equal the cold.’ Let higher SAT scores equal better adult outcomes.”

Foolish arguments can seem logical as long as they are internally consistent but what reasoned truth demands is a credible premise. We live in a world swamped by data. We engage the fallacy of numbers but fail to recognize the premise behind the numbers we believe author reality. In the face of the data over-load there is an opportunity to embrace good old critical thinking. We have an opportunity to sharpen our thinking by challenging the logic of agreed upon premises. And we are living in a very complex time when logic is necessary but critically assessing the premise driving that logic is imperative.

When we are faced with a challenge that chases a specific outcome are we allowing our desire for success to impact our premise in a way where we embrace the appearance of logic as an honest attempt to reconcile complexity? Or are we assessing our options in a way that better understands complexity? Are we looking for what seems to be the right answer or do we consider what is real, albeit messy?

The danger we face is allowing our comfort with logic to leave us vulnerable to unquestioned premises because to question an agreed upon premise may seem inefficient (or, Heaven forbid make us look simple). But by giving an argument a measured, mathematical air we overlook the reasoned truth that the constant we all presume is a necessary variable may not be equal to what is real. Sometimes to avoid the formulaic answer one has to become comfortable with the complexity of the question.

Of accountability and car-jacking

The "man" in Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" soothes his son's bad dreams in the midst of a post-apocalyptic living nightmare by telling him,

"When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up. I won't let you."

This week Detroit parents demanded that public school teachers and officials meet jail time and civil law-suits for their failure to teach basic math. Their outrage however seems ironic because it begs the question of accountability. These parents, unlike the man in the road, seemed to assume a dream-world where a passive approach to their children's educational possibilities is sufficient. Did they think that learning is a fast-food transaction where little money and less time can be spent to fill immediate needs? Did they think they could just send their hungry child's mind to seek processed gratification trading sustainable nutrition for salty goodness? Or did they try to satisfy the hunger for learning with some home-cooked lessons? If these parents are looking for culpability (and my personal understanding of the DPS would seem to indicate a high probability assigned to teachers and administrators) they need to consider themselves co-conspirators to these crimes.

I say this in the wake of my parents getting car-jacked yesterday. The criminals were, according to my Dad, between the ages of 15 and 18. They made a dash for my parent's Taurus as it was running in the driveway when my Dad went back into the house to see why my Mom was dawdling. My Dad looked to get control of the car from the teen driving it who, in an attempt to get away fast, gunned it down the drive-way hitting my Mom and shattering her legs. My Mom had surgery last night while my Dad did not sleep because his guilty imagination would not allow him to forget my mother tumbling and broken.

My parents are victims of a crime but my Dad's first response was to question his judgment in protecting his car rather than my Mom. His willingness to pose questions of himself in the midst of a tragic circumstance will sustain him but, his level of accountability seems lacking within Detroit's parents who too easily blame. The failure of Detroit's students is first their own; followed by the parents of these students and then by extension the teachers, administrators, and city, state, and federal officials but, when accountability begins with blame, an infinite regress from reality is practiced for the sake of fantasies that are neither true nor sustainable.

My siblings are pressuring my Dad to move from Detroit and he is struggling to fight them off. He wants to stay in his home. He doesn't want to give up.

I don't know what's best for him or my Mom. I don't live in Detroit so those closer to the situation have better information. I won't pretend to trade my 41 years for my Dad's 70+ and assume wisdom I have yet to earn but, I do fear for him and my Mom. I fear they will be victims again. I fear my Mom's long rehab on surgically repaired legs. My fears for my folks however are far fewer than those for the children of my hometown.

My Mom will heal and the pride that led her to confront hostile teenagers will sustain her recovery. My Dad's inventory of his failings will provide deeper wisdom and caution. But, what lessons will those teenagers learn? Will they be considered the criminals they are by their community and their parents? Or will they continue to dwindle in an apocalyptic half-light where parents' aversion to accountability ensures that persecution complexes lead to victimizing pain.

I'm not the praying type but I ask for your prayers. Please keep my Mom and my Dad in your thoughts. May their sense of responsibility keep them looking forward and struggling to find accountability in the midst of tragedy. Pray too for those boys who are now felons charged with larceny and attempted murder. May they not imagine righteousness in their actions but only dread for the pain and the hurt they've invited.

I don't like Buddy Jesus

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

(B. Dylan "With God On Our Side")

A friend recently confided in me that he thought my writing here is bullying and hypocritical. He suggested that my examination of faith is cruel. His theory is that deep down, no matter how mature we may be, we are all essentially children needing a Santa Claus to help buoy our hopes. He told me that my analysis of faith amounts to a mean-spirited "Humbug".

I concede that my ideas regarding belief are blunt but, I find the psychology of faith fascinating and often wonder what 14 years of Catholic education combined with 7 years of Evangelical Christianity have done to me. I like to slice open my mind and probe.

I'm not a delicate surgeon and have little bed-side manner.

This is all done because as I grow and view the world, I find I am changing my mind when it comes to belief.

I still believe in belief or, that our brains find solace in it and I think my friend is correct; we all desire to imagine a transcendent possibility beyond ourselves. And most would say this demands theology, doctrine, orthodoxy but, I don't.

I guess I am unorthodox because I don't know what I believe but admit I am awed by the love I feel for my wife as she sighs her way into consciousness every morning.

Is that God? I don't know.

I've heard the term "Agnostic Christian". Maybe that is me.

My theology was once intricate and arcane but now it is simple - to love and be loved. I no longer wish to defend exclusive claims to universal truth based upon shared cultural stories. I find that type of truth divisive. It seems stupid to me.

I admit now that the stories I claimed as truth are incoherent to me and the only reason I agreed to them was because it afforded me popularity, today I crave authenticity.

The stories of the faith I was given demand a level of self-hatred that I no longer consider sane or useful. The theological concepts of Original Sin and Atonement seem products of primitive minds living in a bloody and dangerous world. I don't know how the insistence that I am corrupt and depraved and worthy of an eternity of torture is an animating idea towards mature awareness. And I really don't want to accept that it is my fault that god sacrificed himself to himself so that I might be able to know Heaven and be released from the generational crime perpetrated by mindless innocents in a garden 6,000 years ago.

None of that makes sense and all of that is what the faithful have sought to convince me of with religion and theology.

I do believe the stories we share can help us deal with the mysteries of life but, this past year I've seen that the stories people tell can often times contradict the morality they claim. I've experienced arrogant and ugly attitudes and behaviors supported by exclusive and presupposed truth. I was afraid of it at first, then disgusted, now I am just tired.

That's not to say I don't enjoy the company of my believing friends and for the most part find them incredibly good people. I count many Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Observant Jews and at least one Buddhist as good and trusted people. They are part of my network of "go to" folks.

Unfortunately some of their doctrine is also upheld by another segment that embodies hate, and fear. These are old acquaintances who embrace a "Buddy Jesus"; a tough god with wrath in his hip-pocket; a thick muscled deity who assures them the hatred they harbor against the disobedient is a revelation into his Godhead. They are the ones who are certain that God is on their side. I fear these folks because I believe that, without our secular protections, they'd become drunk on their religious fervor and, like the Calvinists they are, would enjoy burning me, my liberal friends, and the loving homosexual couples I admire. To these people, Christ is not the Prince of Peace but is the Ultimate Fighter ready to kick the tail of those who defy inerrant Biblical theology. They anxiously await his re-arrival clothed in bloody robes at the end times slicing in half those that are disagreeable.

They are the "Prayer Warriors" who told me they were certain Barack Obama was a Muslim because in their scrupulosity God told them so.

They are the Christian Right who whooped it up with Rush Limbaugh's endorsement of Sarah Palin because she humbly upheld the sixth commandment and boldly violated the ninth.

They are the ones who lie for Jesus to ensure the supernatural trumps natural science with their endorsement of Creationism masked as Intelligent Design because it is essential to an open education that all sides are considered; all the while claiming ignorance of Howard Ahmanson, RJ Rushdooney and Dominionism.

And they are the ones who, for the sake of tradition, demand their First Amendment rights extend into every area of society including depriving homosexuals their 14th Amendment rights.

I'm stuck. I like my civilized friends who happen to hold storied faith beliefs but, I can no longer honestly identify with the darker members of their body who allow belief to justify unexamined righteousness.

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in his essay, "The Christian Witness in a Secular Age" that the church,

" . . .must be embarrassed when it calls attention to itself as a proof of the powers of God. For the very pretension of virtue is yet another mark of the sin in the life of the redeemed,"

but I fear the believers in "Buddy Jesus" would discount the good theologian's admonition as evidence to his sinful Marxist politics and support of the UN. Professor Niebuhr, Dean of Union Theological Seminary and author of The Serenity Prayer, wouldn't be on the side of the righteous. "Buddy Jesus" would consider his pacifism disgusting when he claimed in his wise and paradoxical Christian Realism,

"religiously inspired good will, without an intelligent analysis of the factors in a moral situation and of the proper means to gain desirable ends, is unavailing."

I am looking to avail myself of desirable ends. I have come to doubt it will be found in religiously inspired good will and if that makes me a bully well, please just don't burn me at the stake.

To the brain, faith is fact

Sam Harris of the Reason Project has completed a study that shows people of faith take their "belief without evidence" as fact.

You can read commentary on the study here:

And the study details here:

This seems to offer a hypothesis that supernatural claims of knowing are not what they appear to be. To put it more bluntly, there is no such thing as a Holy Spirit. Victor Stenger in his new book The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason argues for the material manifestation of mind. Harris' study offers confirmation for material reality over supernatural claims and shows that faith as belief without evidence may feel like fact to the person comprehending it but, it does not mean that it is fact.

I find this science fascinating because it supports my understanding of faith and the availability heuristic.

It's amazing that people of faith will activate their brain in such a way to endorse as fact untestable claims. I understand now how people can fly planes into buildings or why James Dobson can shamelessly compare concensual homosexual relationships to some kind of mental illness.

To their brains their faith is a fact and they will do whatever is necessary to animate these facts into righteous action.

It doesn't make faith any more noble but it does explain the power of self-righteous delusions.