Prophecy as Post-modern Adventure

I enjoyed a new novel over Christmas Break.

"Confessions of God: The Gospel According to St. JohnThomas Didymus" is a post-modern romp that is 1/3 mystery, 1/3 conspiracy theory and 1/3 Joycean epiphany.

It isn't an easy read but one that enchanted me.

The novel is broken into eight books with a prologue and epilogue and centers on the ruminations of JohnThomas Didymus who operates as hero and pseudonymous author.

It begins with the hero's stay in a mental hospital travels through an alternative Christian resurrection story down to various theories on the unification of reality and finally lands on an apocalyptic first-person perspective wrought with subjective meaning.

The novel reads like post-modern scripture and renders an implicit argument to the effect that deep religious certainty is best held within advanced autism and solipsism.

The choice of the author (who shall remain nameless here but for disclosure's sake is a colleague and friend) to attribute the authorship to his hero is an essential creative device in amplifying the novel's theme.

The theme is best stated by the author in Book 5 "The Temptations",

"Life and existence are a riddle

But a good riddle

Is a good fiddle

You may want to play to any tune which suits your fancy."

The nature of religious conviction is exposed as the hero journeys by way of religious epiphany towards ontological certainty. Didymus embodies hints of St. Paul in his sense of glorified persecution, Mohammad and Joseph Smith in their revelatory convictions and St. John of Patmos in his yearning apocalyptic.

There is even a hint to the technical Christian philosophy of men like Alvin Plantinga or Richard Swinburne and New Age theoretician Deepak Chopra in the author/hero's insistence that his scientific scholarship while non-falsifiable remains valid due to its inner conviction to its personal meaning. Our hero/author explains while speaking of himself as both observer and reporter,

"He lived dangerously on the edge of mental chaos at which he was free to expand unlimitedly beyond mere synthesis; explore new conceptual approaches to old problems, armed with a magicians hat which imposed no binding pre-conditions of logic in the divergence of his mind to infinity."

Men like Swinburne and Plantinga misuse the mathematics of Bayesian theory to argue from probability the likelihood of miracles without giving assent to the necessary zero-probability of miraculous priors. Chopra speaks of Quantum events as if small-scale physics is related to the numinous feelings he packages. "Confessions of God" uses the musings of its hero to contextualize the category of serious modern theologies and exposes them all as a complicated self-deference.

I enjoyed this book and if you are given to choose fantastic entertainments that conceal their ideological arguments in technical craftsmanship like David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"; the magical realism of Salman Rushdie; or the films of Darren Aronofsky then I think you will enjoy this book too.

Strong recommendations for "Confessions of God" as an intelligent expose on how religious certainty begins and ends with self-centered conviction.

What Conservative Rage?

I think it is time to be honest about the violent rhetoric and rage that masquerades as patriotic feeling in light of yesterday's murder of Judge Roll and 5 others including a 9-year-old girl. The Tea Party is to tax policy as Joseph McCarthy was to national security.

It is a phony political entity projecting its paranoia to force fear buttressed by violence.

It simplifies the complexity of a social phenomena and asserts the answer lies in the exertion of power and force.

I'm not saying the Tea Party ordered yesterday's shooting but what I am arguing is that the Tea Party made threats to the effect that shooting Rep. Giffords (albeit behind a symbolic smoke-screen) would be a good thing.

Sarah Palin placed a rifle scope over Representative Giffords district as a symbol of the derelict Governor's political passion in helping the conservative candidate win the Arizona 8th congressional seat from Giffords. Representative Gifford's opponent raised money by offering an M-16 target practice session as a viable political action rally. 6 people are dead as collateral damage in the wake of an assassination attempt that targeted Representative Giffords. I think one can infer the beliefs of these "Patriots" as an input to real behavior without mistaking correlation for causation. Tea Party patriots have raged with superficial machismo behind their 2nd Amendment rights as if they were people seeking liberty in the wake of an invading army occupying their land.

The psychology of the 2nd Amendment was based in the need to avoid the type of forced obedience the colonial territories suffered under the Crown and the British armed forces. It was not written so white people afraid of difference could gather and assert violence as some American heritage when difficult times demand we think.

The current mood of the American Conservative and the G.O.P. bullied by Tea Party rhetoric is violent and to deny that is to be naive. Then when a sick individual acts consonant with the empty originalist libertarian rhetoric the Tea Party asserts, conservatives try to walk it back as if there is no connection between the two events. To not consider the recent past pronouncements of self-asserted "Patriots" as an input into yesterday's events is silly. The kid was mentally ill but resided in Arizona where heated Tea Party rhetoric to the shooting of Rep. Giffords was given approval as legitimate political language. What more evidence do we need? But the idea that it is simply heated language that killed Judge Roll and the others yesterdays seems to me to ignore real cause.

We don't have humane policy positions in this country in regards to health-care or gun control and to ignore that when responding to this event seems to be planting the seeds for the same ugly fruit to flower later. This happened not just because of inflammatory language. It happened because one of our major political parties thinks that government should not regulate our freedom in responsible ways. If Loughner had been given proper medical care when he was kicked out of Pima Community College and if he was not allowed to buy a Glock, conceal it and carry it then a nine-year-old girl would still be alive. You will not hear mea culpas from the Right. They are already using this event as an excuse to argue for more lax gun control (e.g. "If more people were able to carry concealed weapons at the event then they could have shot Loughner before he shot others.") Watch, this will become about the necessity of Libertarian freedom (as if a 22 year old boy with bi-polar disorder has Libertarian freedom). I think it is foolish to allow McCarthyite bullying to define the American experience and it needs to be opposed. I'm all for avoiding the post hoc fallacy but am done giving assent to the violence espoused by Tea Party "Patriots" after the fact that violence has happened. Rep. Giffords was targeted by the Tea Party with intimations of violence against her. She is recovering from a head wound today.

Seems like a logical inference can be made.

The GOP Rhetorical Shocks

We have all just lived through another round of political rhetoric that says "free markets = free people" and tax cuts will hamper the governments ability to interfere with our lives.

I recommend all those interested in this issue read Naomi Wolf's fine work "The Shock Doctrine" and give context to the philosophical desire of post-Reagan republicans to erase the Keynesian policies of FDR and institute a pure free market based on the economic theories of Milton Friedman.

There is a specific aim within this philosophy which is to have financial power gravitate to a specific class so as to mitigate the social variability that occurs when free people elect leaders who advocate for political systems that sometimes oppose capital markets (e.g. see Pinochet and the Chilean Coup).

This is not some high school rift where the GOP are simply playground bullies looking to beat up the poorer classes nor is it a virtuous strategy to "trickle down" wealth.

It is a considered policy position with a philosophy that says capital markets will be more stable and advantageous to a small investing class of people IF government is made impotent.

It is true of economics and a case can be made for this with economic theory but our political philosophy is not consonant with it.

We are a country that grew out of the virtues set forth by the enlightenment. Enlightenment principles protect the individual against unquestioned, superstitious authority (then, it was Divine Command religion, today it is the presumed benevolent hand of Free Markets) and the only goal and aim of Republicans wanting an "American Dream" is plutocracy, not democracy.

Democracy is messy and does not help pro-forma estimates.

If you study history what you have today (in very broad terms) is the GOP as Alexander Hamilton and his desire to contain decision right within a Federalist frame and Jefferson's Republicans as the current Democrats seeking the will of the people.

Who are you going to trust to make your decisions for you, a mindless institution known as the corporation (which has already been given civil rights protection by The Supreme Court) or the self-determination of your vote? That's what it comes down to.

If one sides with the GOP then you side with the superstition that there is an external agency which will grant you all the freedom your comfort desires (e.g. "We get another $1000, yipee") but if you oppose their corporatist agenda then you live the promise our self-determined constitution offers, a free mind to think of what you wish to be.

I'm so sick and tired of the GOP rhetoric that asserts prosperity will be distributed to all if we seek de-regulation for corporations and increased barriers to working people's ownership of their labor. It hasn't worked. We've become less stable, less equitable and less intelligent over the last 30 years.

The middle class was a creation of FDR's progressive policies. The only consequence of Free Market principles is a ruling class and an oppressed class.

And before you slip into ad hominem and consider my perspective that of some Marxist hippie, I am an MBA who is a Vice President of a corporation.

I will be quite comfortable and provided for within a plutocracy but the idea of democratic freedom will become obsolete.

That is what we are living in and I'm sick of the rhetoric.

Christmas is Pagan Fun

My friend Pat Foltz asked me recently how I am navigating Christmas now that I am a full-fledged apostate and my wife still enjoys belief.

We are doing well. We haven't put up or decorated our tree because Jackie and Griffin will be heading down to Richmond, VA this weekend to assist Jackie's mom who is receiving treatment for cancer and needs help to remind her to rest. I will be following on the 23rd so the effort to decorate seemed lost on us.

The heart of Pat's question however is not concerned with secular obligations but rather religious significance.

I don't know how to answer because even when I was a believer I never took Christmas as serious Christianity. It didn't feel like the rest of what being a Roman Catholic Christian felt like. The distraction of gifts, Rankin-Bass specials and school-breaks drained the occasion of the guilt thrust upon us at weekly Mass and monthly Penance.

I don't know when it was when I decided that the manger story wasn't true but I think it must have been when I was about 13 because it was that time I started to think about what I might be when I grew up.

Being "grown up" was when people were out of college and were around thirty years old so I thought it strange that when Jesus was about that age the Kings that came to honor him at his birth wouldn't get ticked off at Pontius Pilate and come back to keep the savior from being crucified. Why shouldn't they come sweeping down from the hills like Han Solo at the end of Star Wars and rescue Jesus unless the "Away in the Manger" story was not really real.

I mean they gave him gold right so why wouldn't they step in and tell Pilate to back off.

When I was about 13 I also started thinking about sex, a lot, and the idea of Mary being a virgin seemed stupid. It seemed like a bad punishment that not only did she have to give birth but she would never be able to have sex afterward because she gave birth and we as good Catholics should find this mutilation somehow good.

I also knew that when I grew up I wanted to be a comic book writer and when I considered the baby Jesus story it seemed more like one of the comic book origin stories I knew rather than anything we might have learned in history class.

Christmas has never been as serious or real as it's seasonal counterpart, the Easter story, and the rational narrative forced by Good Friday's Stations of the Cross. Noel is a gauzy holiday that allows for fantasy and desire.

I think the religiosity of this time never seems to have lost the essence of the pagan holiday Saturnalia it appropriated and that tradition's aim to force lawlessness as celebration. Saturnalia was the winter break the pagans practiced with unashamed gluttony and when the early Christians were making their pitch to get converts they enticed the masses by telling them they could keep this holiday due to the fact the savior was born at the same time (you can almost here Sarah Palin interrupting an orgy with her patented "dontcha know" as punctuation to this fabrication).

I think the spirits of Saturnalia still live in Christmas and why the holy day distances itself from the either/or tribalism associated with Christianity's central themes of sin, death and Hell. No matter how much Bill O'Reilly jeers at the war against Christmas what he doesn't get is that the season's essence is pagan, not Christian, and any overt focus on Christianity diminishes the holiday's purpose. And its why I think I still enjoy going to church during this time and singing all of the religious songs ("Do you Hear what I Hear" is fun because of the echo effect in it and "The Little Drummer Boy" has a cool melody against a rhythmic friction).

Christian theology is of course immoral. The idea that we are born sick and need to take responsibility for a human sacrifice to be cured is incoherent. But Christmas exempts itself from these themes. It tells us that we should celebrate our lives amidst the death of the deep winter (especially those of us who dwell in the American Mid-west) and that it is more than okay to indulge our appetites and wants.

Christmas as a profound anti-Christian tradition can be evidenced by the fact the New England Puritans rejected Christmas and refused to celebrate it because the day was a threat to the biblical traditions they embraced. They saw no scriptural justification for it and defined it as idolatry. I think they were correct. Christmas isn't about Christianity and it's why I find the holiday joyful.

This year we get to introduce Griffin to Christmas while we celebrate his Mom Mom's gradual recovery from cancer and these things seem consonant with the feeling of life I've always equated with the holiday.

So, this Christmas I will sing in full-throat the joy of the season while possibly being defined a hypocrite by my more pure Christian friends. The pagan in me however will be in harmony with the pre-Christian seasonal belief that life matters because of the living and it can't be enhanced by dwelling on death.

The Gratitude of Apostasy: A Testimony

I never intended this blog to become another atheist report from the culture war front. And I never intended to piss anyone off. It has become a first-person report on belief and I've hurt the sensibilities of old friends and colleagues. I'm not disappointed with these consequences. I find them invigorating and I've taught myself that popularity is less sustainable than being skeptical when truth claims are asserted.

And I hoped to start writing as a way of showing my ability to think with expectation that future employers might consider me a good idea guy.

What has happened is that I've lost my faith and I think most employers would read this and be afraid that talking to me would resemble a journalistic interview with Bob Dylan from "Don't Look Back".

My original intention was to write as a way of reporting on my confusion. My hope was that if I expose my inner life on the 'net I would wrestle with it myself and become more conscious. I've discovered that much of my confusion has been driven by my willingness to compartmentalize my mind as a way of keeping popular truth commitments a "live option".

The most shocking thing I discovered is the evidence for my default arguments were thin yet my instinct would default to them. Inviting evidence has humbled me and made me change my mind.

I started writing as a professing Christian and free-market capitalist but challenging my preconceptions has led me to obtain with comfort a Christian Atheist theology in the Altzizer/Price tradition and Democratic Socialism in the European tradition.

Owning up to these ideas frightens me because I can hear the shouts of friends and family (and my instinctive former self) but the evidence I've examined thus far makes them more reasonable. I might change my mind again if new evidence is presented. What I experience with believers in god or free-markets however are not evidence based arguments but appeals to outrage or emotion. And I don't like those choices. They are manipulative and bullying.

I have been told I seem fickle, crazy or mean.

Many friends who wish to assert intimacy announce to me that, "I don't read your blog because it angers me," and I'm amazed that they don't comprehend the consequence of that statement. If you don't like what I write here then you don't like my honest ideas and if that is the case then it might be more honest to admit that we have little in common. While we might be friendly with one another we don't have the mutual respect to assert intimacy with anything other than nostalgia and good-will.

I find, now that popularity is not my ambition, basing my free time in nostalgia and good-will is unsatisfying.

The good news is that humans have evolved to be social animals where ideas are sustenance and many psychological ecosystems exist to feed the mind.

While old friends wrestle with their own ideas and battle with their own confusion relative to my desire to be expressive and have announced their disappointment with me or have drifted away, I've found new friendships.

Some smart men and women have read my comments here or on sites like Common Sense Atheism and Debunking Christianity and have introduced themselves.

They've shown kindness and empathy. It feels good just like kindness and empathy felt good when I would "go along to get along" in my MBA or Mega-church but now the good feeling is founded on a commitment to reason, not popularity.

Yesterday one of these folks extended his hand in friendship and since we live in the same metropolitan area we are hoping to meet up.

I'd like to share here what I wrote to him. It is not meant as argument but rather exposition in the tradition of Christian testimony. It seems honest and a necessary piece of information to provide context with my direct criticisms of religion and the American exceptional philosophy bound by Capitalism.

So as a Thanksgiving post I provide my apostate testimony as an act of gratitude that I've come to like myself by knowing my mind.

AN APOSTATE'S TESTIMONY

I was raised Roman Catholic but left the faith in my early twenties and started seeking a more satisfying spirituality. I experienced a bit of Buddhism, 12-step-recovery (both for my drinking and the abuse I suffered at the hands of my parents' drinking) finally drifting into the Mega-church movement in 2003. I was taken by the contemporary nature of the Willow Creek style service and loved the people. I also began using my creativity within the church, leading drama ministry and teaching acting techniques to lay-people so we could put on dramatic pieces as augmentation to the Gospel message.

I never investigated the truth claims made in Church and instead used Christianity as a more universal form of "self-help". I didn't care if the historical assertions, ontological arguments or biblical criticism were sound and true, my loneliness was lifted and people were nice so, I started to tip-toe towards an Evangelical apologetic disposition.

I met my wife on-line and our shared Christianity motivated our courtship. She's beautiful, smart, kind and courageous so, I thought this was more miraculous evidence that I was "saved" (because I am not all that handsome and can be kind of a jerk).

Once married, we attended her church, an Evangelical Free denomination that practices expository preaching.

I had never surrendered to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy until then and had never read the bible in context with a narrative exegesis.

The fundamental presentation made me start questioning if the the book was inspired or if it was just myth.

The inanity of the scripture and the inability to confront these oddities by the small group we attended frightened me that I had duped myself into believing that a good feeling equaled a verifiable truth.

I also went through a job crisis around this time and suffered a depressive break which landed me in the hospital and diagnosed me with an anxiety disorder/depressive disorder leading to medication.

As I started dealing with my mood disorder I started seeing the placebo effect religion had in helping me navigate it earlier.

I also saw how this was a choice to modulate my biology and therefore I questioned the spiritual presuppositions I took away from the experiences I had.

I was concerned that Christianity was no different than other cultural artifacts that can engender feeling but were not evidence of anything other than our ability to think about a material world (e.g. theater, music, sports).

This concern coincided with behavior I faced that left me confused.

I had a former bible-study leader assert to me after election day 2008 she knew Barack Obama was a Muslim terrorist because "Jesus, told her in her morning quiet time."

I had another leader from a church I once attended and the father of a good friend of mine send me a word document via email exposing Barack Obama as the anti-Christ with detailed descriptions how President Obama has broken each of the Ten Commandments.

I engaged in an intense conversation with an Elder from our E-Free Church and his wife regarding the Intelligent Design conspiracy (they both are ID supporters) and was encouraged to investigate the literature on ID and the arguments of William Lane Craig.

I did both.

I discovered that the Discovery Institute is a theocratic organization whose aim is not science but politics and I was disgusted by the self-serving nature Judeo-Christian belief could engender.

My bias towards religion as delusion was deepened when I read Craig's debates and found his culture insular and his scholarship arrogant.

His debate with Bart Ehrman led me to investigate Dr. Ehrman's writing which led me to Debunking Christianity, Common Sense Atheism, Robert Price, The New Atheists and now a desire for critical thought and honest discourse.

I empathize with what sounds like loneliness in your journey. I've felt it too. It has made me angry and my anger has been complicated by the frustration that who I thought were my friends may have only earned that title due to a shallow definition of friendship I embraced as a way of elevating the endorphins Christian worship produced.

Peace to you and thanks for reaching out. I don't feel so alone.

Be good to yourself.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Agora: Skeptical Inquiry murdered by Religious Certainty

I watched Agora last night per the recommendation of Lukeprog at Common Sense Atheism and John Loftus at Debunking Christianity and loved it. It was cool that the film-maker showed Hypatia's failed attempts at a theory of celestial movement against the certainty of the religious. Her scholarship led to personal accountability and private inquiry while the religious assertions and need for power led to her murder. And yes Christian, this is a true story and was the way Christianity spread; by violence and anti-intellectual authority. There is no humility in the holy's assertions but their piety is a pretense to it.

The steady honesty of Atheists

My blog roll features blogs I read on a daily basis. One of them, Why Evolution is True is written by University of Chicago Professor Jerry Coyne. His honesty in laying out the debate between faith and atheism relative to science and evidence has helped inform my atheism. A noted Christian who happens to be a scientist (Karl Giberson) has devoted most his time criticizing Dr. Coyne at BioLogos (the alternative to the Discovery Institute established to ameliorate the tension between Francis Collins' scientific and Evangelical Christian sides) and The Huffington Post.

Dr. Coyne does not shy away from the criticisms and I love his intelligence and spunk. His latest blog response to Dr. Giberson's work and what seems like the continued practice of accent fallacies is quite good.

The money quote from Dr. Coyne,

"But to many atheists, the middle ground is not a “reasonable” position. It enables superstition, thereby denigrating or watering down true science (example: the fine-tuning and humans-are-inevitable arguments, and the NCSE’s refusal to admit that evolution is “unguided”). And accommodationism provides tacit approval and support for all the bad stuff that’s done in the name of faith"