Life, the universe, and atheism

I met my friend J. for a pint last night, and at one point he asked me how central to my identity atheism is. It's a good question, and one I didn't have a ready answer for. I was raised Catholic, and stopped practicing more than 10 years ago, but didn't really think of myself as an atheist until the past few years. J. was raised more or less without religion, so I did say that, basically, having been raised with religion, atheism is a bigger deal to me than it is to him. He agreed with this, and the conversation then moved on to other things. But the question has been on my mind, so I thought it might be worth blog post to look at how central being an atheist is to my identity.

I became an atheist over time - there was no eureka moment of sudden clarity. It had been years since I stopped believing in God or going to church (except with family on holidays) when I started considering myself an atheist. Looking back, I'd say there were a few things that converged in a relatively brief period of time, like starting to read science books, the appearance of the New Atheists, the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and, not long after, the build up to and birth of my own daughter. These are all things that combined to force me to think about what it is I really believe and know, and why.

Reading more science books filled in enormous gaps in my knowledge of nature and the universe, and that really didn't leave much for God to do in the universe, as far as I can see. But it was the birth of my daughter that really focused my thinking about religion. My wife is Jewish, and with overall a positive experience of being raised Catholic (though not practicing for several years), I tried to find ways to keep Catholicism as a part of my cultural identity. Being Jewish is an advantage here in that Jews can be atheists and still be Jewish. As Paul Giamatti said, "there are no better atheists in the world than the Jews".

Before conceiving, and during the pregnancy, we had several conversations about how to raise our child, and while trying to decide whether or not to baptize her (before I knew it was a her) I came to the conclusion that there is absolutely no way to have a cultural baptism that is not also an expression of religious belief. I realized that I want to be honest with my daughter about the world, I want to be able to justify my decisions regarding both her life and my own, and it is easier to justify to myself and to her not having her baptized than making her a member of an organization with whose raison d'être I fundamentally disagree. So, in that way, in the sense that atheism colours and informs real life decisions that I make, I do have to say that atheism is a big part of my life and, probably, a big part of my sense of identity.

Of course, being an atheist is just a starting point - recognizing that God does not exist is essentially a matter of overcoming an inhereted cultural belief, but it's no more a statement about the universe itself than (to bring Richard Dawkins into it) recognizing that goblins and fairies don't exist. So while atheism, and my opinions on religion and science and all that, are a big part of my life, they don't exactly come up in conversation everyday. I think that's one important distinction to explain - calling yourself an atheist only tells people what you don't believe, and it says very little about what you actually do believe, or like, or enjoy doing in your free time.

To sum up, because being an atheist is something I'd say I've accomplished, through reading, thinking, and looking at the world, and being convinced of a godless universe after a religious upbringing (I'd say I'm symapthetic to Douglas Adams' "radical atheist" position) it's a small, personal intellectual accomplishment that I can even say I'm proud of.

Hitchens

"When he was admitted to the hospital for the last time, we thought it would be for a brief stay. He thought — we all thought — he’d have the chance to write the longer book that was forming in his mind. His intellectual curiosity was sparked by genomics and the cutting-edge proton radiation treatments he underwent, and he was encouraged by the prospect that his case could contribute to future medical breakthroughs. He told an editor friend waiting for an article, “Sorry for the delay, I’ll be back home soon.” He told me he couldn’t wait to catch up on all the movies he had missed and to see the King Tut exhibition in Houston, our temporary residence.

The end was unexpected"

These words are from Carol Blue, Christopher Hitchens' wife, which she wrote in the afterword to his final book, Mortality. The paragraph amazes me because it shows a desire to continue living in the face of an inevitable death. Not a desire as in the wish to deny death, or a tearful grasping on in the hopes death will suddenly change its mind and leave you alone, but a desire to squeeze the most out of the last few days of life knowing that the end is soon. 

It's difficult for me to read this without relating it to my own life. Unlike Christopher Hitchens I don't have the knowledge (advantage?) of knowing when I'll die, even approximately. So what prevents me from living my remaining decades with as much curiosity and energy (mental if not physical) as he intended to live his last days? Is it the ambiguity of the end that holds me back? I wonder if it's similar to having a new roll of toilet paper - when you first use it, you're not afraid to use a few extra squares to wipe your ass, but as it nears the end of the roll the possibility of being caught without suddenly becomes more real, and you start conserving, even preparing a new roll before it runs out. 

So, to sum up, maybe life is just one big roll of toilet paper. 

I could use Carol Blue's words about her husband's vitality in the face of death as a call to arms to carpe my own diem and all that, but it's too clichéd and ridiculous and besides, it's not going to happen. But hopefully thinking about the death of someone like Hitchens will do me some good by at least reminding me that death is inevitable, if not tomorrow, and that, as Hitchens also once wrote, "the grave will supply plenty of time for silence."

I originally wrote this back in August 2011, but it still seems pertinent, if unorganized and un-edited:

I just had a thought. I was thinking about how the City of Toronto is currently privatizing some services, and I wondered if the workers for those companies were to interact on some work assignment with city workers, who are presumably better paid and with better benefits, would there likely be some resentment? Sure there would, which is natural. So why wouldn't they just go to their employer and demand the same pay and benefits city workers are getting? Because the employer would just tell them - there are plenty of people out of work in this city who'd be happy to have your job at your current level of pay. And I bet the guys working for the private company know this if they haven't been explicitly told to be grateful for their jobs. And continuing this thought, I'm realizing just how much businesses are benefiting, long-term, from the current economic situation. The longer the unemployment rate stays high, the more reluctant workers will be to fight for better conditions, the less popular support there will be for unions, and the cheaper labour in general will become. Once the economy does pick up and the unemployment rate goes down, wages will be lower than they were before the recession or whatever began, and it will take years for workers to make up those losses. And keeping in mind a lot of the unemployed workers have been laid off from governments cutting back on the public service, whose former jobs will no longer be available, the problem of low wages and poor conditions will be exacerbated even further by no longer having that strong pull of unionized public employees that private employers have to compete with. I keep reading about American companies holding onto money, afraid to hire, though they obviously have the money to do so now if they wanted. So what are they really waiting for? I don't know, but it's hard to imagine they haven't overlooked the fact that the longer people remain unemployed, the more grateful they'll be for any work, and the less they'll agree to work for. So basically, if I'm understanding things correctly, economic crises benefit business and hurt workers of all kinds. And once you figure who benefits from a situation, you have to re-think the cause of it. Anyway, it's Friday afternoon, and I'm on my way out in a few minutes. I just had to write that thought before I forgot it.

Christopher Hitchens, on death (written about 9 months before his actual death):


Discussing mortality, Hitchens and a friend used to muse that there would come a day when the newspapers would come out and they wouldn’t be there to read them. 'And on that day, I’ve realised recently, I’ll probably be in the newspapers, or quite a lot of them. And etiquette being what it is, generally speaking, rather nice things being said about me.’ He shrugs. 'Just typical that will be the edition I miss. But it’s not so much that; it’s more that you’re at the party and you’re tapped on the shoulder and told you have to leave. The party is still going on, but it’s going on without you. And even people who swear to remember you are not really going to do so.
Source: "Godless in Tumourville", The Independent - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8388695/Godless-in-Tumourville-Christopher-Hitchens-interview.html

When the magazine was finally organized, and when George Plimpton was selected as its editor instead of Humes, Humes was disappointed. He refused to leave the cafés to sell advertising or negotiate with French printers. And in the summer of 1952 he did not hestitate to leave Paris with William Styron, accepting an invitation from a French actress, Madame Nénot, to go down to Cap Myrt, near Saint-Tropez, and visit her fifty-room villa that had been designed by her father, a leading architect. The villa had been occupied by the Germans early in the war. And so when Styron and Humes arrived they found holes in its walls, through which they could look out to the sea, and the grass was so high and the trees so thick with grapes that Humes’s little Volkswagen became tangled in the grass.

So they went on foot toward the villa, but suddenly stopped when they saw, rushing past them, a young, half-naked girl, very brown from the sun, wearing only handkerchiefs tied bikini-style, her mouth spilling with grapes. Screaming behind her was a lecherous-looking old French farmer whose grape arbor she obviously had raided.

“Styron,” Humes cried, gleefully, “we have arrived!”

“Yes,” he said, “we are here!”

More nymphets came out of the trees in bikinis later, carrying grapes and also half cantaloupes the size of cart-wheels, and they offered some to Styron and Humes. The next day they all went swimming and fishing and, in the evening, they sat in the bombed-out villa, a breathtaking site of beauty and destruction, drinking wine with the young girls, who seemed to belong only to the beach. It was an electric summer, with the nymphets batting around like moths against the screen. Styron remembers it as a scene out of Ovid, Humes as the high point of his career as an epicurean and scholar.

- Gay Talese, Looking for Hemingway

Some quotes from Aleksandar Hemon's Love and Obstacles:

"...a trembling voice that opened the worlds of permanent dusk, where sorrow reigned and the mere sight of a woman's neck caused maddening bouts of desire."

- 'The conductor', page 64

"One builds one's life on consistency; one invests it with the belief, however unsupported by reality, that one has always been what one is now, that even in one's distant past one could recognize the seed from which this doomed flower has bloomed. Now I could not understand the devout thoroughness of my childhood obsessions, the myriad origins of my overactive imagination - I could not quite summon who I used to be."

- 'American Commando', page 155

"When he was young, like me, he said, he used to think that all the great writers knew something he didn't. He thought that if he read their books they would teach him something, make him better; he thought he would acquire what they had: the wisdom, the truth, the wholeness, the real shit. He was burning to write, he wanted to break through to that fancy knowledge, he was hungry for it. But now he knew that that hunger was vainglorious; now he knew that writers knew nothing, really; most of them were just faking it. He knew nothing. There was nothing to know, nothing on the other side. There was no walker, no path, just walking. This was it, whoever you were, wherever you were, whatever it was, and you had to make peace with that fact."

- 'The noble truths of suffering', page 194

"A compact with one woman puts beyond reach what others might give us to enjoy; the soft blondes and the dark, aphrodisiacal women of our imaginations are set aside. Shall we leave life not knowing them? Must we?"

- Saul Bellow, Dangling Man

Bill O'Reilly proves the existence of his god. How humbling.

http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/full-episodes/the-colbert-report---january-6-2011/#clip396324

Another great quote to tide you over while I struggle to come up with my own material:

"If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days."

-Dorothy Canfield Fisher

It's possible I may get back to blogging in the near future. It's looking like I may have something to say. But for now, I'll just post this quote:

"There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student, feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain."

- Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

While it would be dishonest to say I know much about the history of philosophy, this quote does a pretty good job of summing up my feelings on work.

More from Brodsky:

"In an anthropological respect, let me reiterate, a human being is an aesthetic creature before he is an ethical one. Therefore, it is not that art, particularly literature, is a by-product of our species' development, but just the reverse. If what distinguishes us from other members of the animal kingdom is speech, then literature - and poetry in particular, being the highest form of locution - is, to put it bluntly, the goal of our species."

- ibid., p. 50

"Nowadays, for example, there exists a rather widely held view, postulating that in his work a writer, in particular a poet, should make use of the language of the street, the language of the crowd. For all its democratic appearance, and its palpable advantages for a writer, this assertion is quite absurd, and represents an attempt to subordinate art, in this case literature, to history. It is only if we have resolved that it is time for Homo sapiens to come to a halt in his development that literature should speak the language of the people. Otherwise it is the people who should speak the language of literature."

- Joseph Brodsky, "Uncommon Visage," in On Grief and Reason, p. 48-9

Digital romances

I just read this article about the 75th anniversary of Penguin, and as it discussed new technologies like e-readers, comparing industry of books to that of CDs, it got me thinking. With music becoming digital, CDs have largely disappeared (or are in the process of doing so), and a large part of the emotional attachment to owning a physical CD has been abandoned in favour of the greater convenience of being able to download (legally or not) an individual song. The ability to purchase individual songs for $0.99 can be preferable to shelling out $15 or more for an entire CD just for the sake of one or two songs. The effect on the music itself is debatable, as it most likely helps smaller, lesser-known artists make their music just as accessible, and in the same format, as any bigger starts. But is has fundamentally changed the way fans purchase or access music, even if it hasn't changed the fundamental experience of listening to it.

Even with the growth of e-readers and e-books, I don't see the same think happening to paper books. For one, the experience of reading a physical book is different to reading on an e-reader. While digital ink may recreate the look and comfort of the text, there is a difference to holding a book vs. holding a plastic, metal and glass digital device. Also, a book's artwork and design can be appreciated by a reader while in the process of reading it, and that is one aspect of reading that is lost with digital books. Of course, CDs have artwork too, but because the case does not need to be held while listening to the music, it's not as integral a part of the experience as is the design, look and feel of a book (both inside and out). In other words, whereas music is an aural experience that can be re-created with digital files, reading is more tactile and visual and so more difficult to imitate with electronic books.

I'm still very emotionally and nostalgically attached to books, though, and I think this is where the biggest difference between the digitization of the two media comes in. Whereas people may be emotionally attached to compact discs, CDs have not been around for long enough to have the same mythic appeal of books. Until the 1980s LPs were dominant, and before the 20th century, the idea of storing music at home (excepting musical scores, of course) would have seemed absurd. So the format of purchased music, as well as the very concept of even purchasing music, has been a recent - and fluid - phenomenon.

Books, on the other hand, have existed, in one form or another, for a few thousand years. 'Bound' books, I think, date to roughly the early middle ages/end of antiquity. Before the 19th century books themselves were rare and expensive, and only the wealthy would have any kind of personal library or collection. Earlier than this, when literacy was relatively rare, books took on a mythic role in society, with knowledge of a mysterious code required to unlock the knowledge and wisdom they contained within. I think the adoration of holy books like the Bible or Koran are leftovers from a time when the written word was not something most people could interpret without some kind of educated and seemingly-powerful intermediary. And while with literacy pretty much universal (in North America and Europe, at least) this is no longer the case, I do think that several hundred generations of books, paper and written text are going to be able to hold out against digital convenience much better than 30 years of compact discs have. E-readers may continue to improve and their sales may even rival books (hardcover, at least, according to Amazon - though I'm skeptical of the claim) - I may even get an e-reader myself at some point - but I don't see a digital dominance of reading and publishing happening anytime soon.*

(There are other aspects of paper books that I think make them superior to e-books, such as their durability, accessibility, the fact that there's no need for the initial investment in an expensive electronic device just to access them, but I think this post is already long enough and I really don't feel like getting into that right now. Besides, I'm sure it's been covered sufficiently elsewhere so I wouldn't really have anything new to offer on the topic. I also didn't mention my own preference for reading news online, or the obvious superiority of reference and research materials being electronic, but considering my focus was on culture and experience I didn't feel the need to cover every topic on the digital vs. paper question.)

Incidentally, while writing this post, I spilled coffee on my desk, so if anyone has any ideas for coming up with a digital coffee, I'm all ears.

*Of course, there is always the possibility that this is wishful thinking on my part. Also, younger people who grow up accustomed to getting all of their entertainment from a screen may see a text-only experience as less-compelling and pointless, so perhaps my opinions would only apply to people born before, say, 1990. But that'll require some more thought. And research. And waiting and seeing. But for now, I think it's safe to say that people still like books. A lot.

This week in religion: "We are against the internet"

Some happy news to remind us all of the wisdom and moral guidance that can be found in religious belief.

From Israel:
"There is a set of rules (in the ultra-Orthodox community). We don't want televisions in the home, there are rules of modesty, we are against the internet," Mr Litzman was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

"I don't want my daughter to be educated with a girl who has a TV at home."

And this from Toronto, where a teenager died for her right to wear jeans and t-shirts. Her father's reason for killing her:

“My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.”

Yeah, I'd say she deserved to die for that. At least now her father will find a special place in heaven, right? Is that how this works?

I just wish people would abandon religion in favour of serious science in an attempt to understand the world.

One of these days I'll put up a real post, once I've got something to say. But for now I'm going to contend myself with sharing quotes and articles I don't want to forget.

"If a philosopher is not a man," he wrote, "he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man."
- Miguel de Unamuno

I wasn't sure if I should file this one under Science or Right to Privacy.

Wildlife documentaries infringe animals' privacy, says report

"We have an assumption that humans have some right to privacy, so why do we not assume that for other species, particularly when they are engaging in behaviour that suggests they don't want to be seen?"

[Quite frankly, with all the monkey porn I've bee watching lately, I'm not so sure animals do mind if we watch them having sex.]

This week in Science:

Iranian cleric 'blames quakes on promiscuous women'

Now, I'm no geologist, but this seems to me like a reasonable way to prevent earthquakes:

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble? There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes," he said.

Now where did I put that hijab?

A poem by evolutionary geneticist JBS Haldane, about his experience with rectal cancer.

Cancer’s a Funny Thing

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,
Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked.

Yet, thanks to modern surgeon’s skills,
It can be killed before it kills
Upon a scientific basis
In nineteen out of twenty cases.

I noticed I was passing blood
(Only a few drops, not a flood).
So pausing on my homeward way
From Tallahassee to Bombay
I asked a doctor, now my friend,
To peer into my hinder end,
To prove or to disprove the rumour
That I had a malignant tumour.
They pumped in BaS04.
Till I could really stand no more,
And, when sufficient had been pressed in,
They photographed my large intestine,
In order to decide the issue
They next scraped out some bits of tissue.
(Before they did so, some good pal
Had knocked me out with pentothal,
Whose action is extremely quick,
And does not leave me feeling sick.)
The microscope returned the answer
That I had certainly got cancer,
So I was wheeled into the theatre
Where holes were made to make me better.
One set is in my perineurn
Where I can feel, but can’t yet see ‘em.
Another made me like a kipper
Or female prey of Jack the Ripper,
Through this incision, I don’t doubt,
The neoplasm was taken out,
Along with colon, and lymph nodes
Where cancer cells might find abodes.
A third much smaller hole is meant
To function as a ventral vent:
So now I am like two-faced Janus
The only* god who sees his anus.

*In India there are several more
With extra faces, up to four,
But both in Brahma and in Shiva
I own myself an unbeliever.

I’ll swear, without the risk of perjury,
It was a snappy bit of surgery.
My rectum is a serious loss to me,
But I’ve a very neat colostomy,
And hope, as soon as I am able,
To make it keep a fixed time-table.
So do not wait for aches and pains
To have a surgeon mend your drains;
If he says “cancer” you’re a dunce
Unless you have it out at once,
For if you wait it’s sure to swell,
And may have progeny as well.
My final word, before I’m done,
Is “Cancer can be rather fun”.
Thanks to the nurses and Nye Bevan
The NHS is quite like heaven
Provided one confronts the tumour
With a sufficient sense of humour.
I know that cancer often kills,
But so do cars and sleeping pills;
And it can hurt one till one sweats,
So can bad teeth and unpaid debts.
A spot of laughter, I am sure,
Often accelerates one’s cure;
So let us patients do our bit
To help the surgeons make us fit.

J. B. S. Haldane (1964)

A rare political post

The United States is going through some hard times, I know, but lately I've been getting the feeling that it is on the edge of true insanity. I don't really have much to add to the 'debate' but there are a few things I've been reading about that I thought I'd collect in one place, with a few profound yet amusing comments interspersed.

The nicest thing I can say about the tone of the right's opposition to the health care bill is that it has been one of childish anger based on ignorance, and I'm sure you've read about the racist, anti-gay insults shouted at Democratic Congressmen. That's all covered here.

But now I'm reading about multiple death threats against Democrats who voted for the bill. Is this some kind of joke? I can't judge how much this is typical of the mood in the Republican party or among conservatives, or if it truly is a fringe group, but it's certainly out there, even among prominent conservatives. Such as this, from one of the party's rising stars:

A Sarah Palin page on Facebook incorporated gun imagery in urging people to organize against 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill but represent districts where the John McCain-Palin ticket won two years ago. Palin's post featured a U.S. map with circles and cross-hairs over the 20 districts.

There are also, of course, threats from your ordinary anti-abortion fuckhead against an anti-abortion Congressman. I don't know which of these is worse. This one:

"I hope you bleed ... [get] cancer and die," one male caller told the congressman between curses.

Or this one:

A fax with the title "Defecating on Stupak" carried a picture of a gallows with "Bart (SS) Stupak" on it and a noose attached. It was captioned, "All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand of God."

(You can read more here.)

Are people really looking at violence in response to a new law that, while it will eventually make health care moderately more accessible, is business friendly, does not fundamentally change the current system, and completely abandons any pretense of a government-run health care system? As IOZ so eloquently puts it:

I won't spend a lot of time reiterating old arguments, but it does bear repeating that the US House of Representatives just based a bill universally mandating that individuals purchase a private commodity--a commodity, let's be clear, that the same bill goes to great lengths to keep private. A so-called "public plan" is exactly the opposite of what this bill is, and the idea that public insurance will somehow flow naturally from its own nemesis is either crazy, a lie, or a crazy lie.

This is what conservatives are saying is infringing on their freedom. Has the concept of freedom been reduced to the right to do what we want with out money, without obligation, responsibility or concern for the consequences. Have Americans allowed themselves to be reduced from citizens to consumers? There is a saying along the lines of, "I don't mind paying taxes - it buys me civilization." The consequences of failing to do so have never been more frighteningly clear than now, as the United States show signs of moving further and further away from what I could consider "civilized."

(For more criticism of the bill from the left, take a look at this conversation with Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. Or this from Chris Hedges.)

On a slightly less dangerous note, New York City is making significant cuts to its transit system. There is talk of raising the base cost of a ride to (gasp!) $2.50. Well, it's $3 in Toronto, so you still have some catching up to do - and NYC's system is actually efficient! But I saw a quote from Michael Bloomberg that made me wonder how much worse things are going to get there:

At a news conference, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg warned New Yorkers to “save your anger” for the authority’s next set of cuts. “This is just the beginning,” the mayor said. “The next round, I would think, would be much worse.”

There is violent anger against a moderate change in health care while American cities and states make cuts to services like transit, libraries, and schools. Taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize Wall St. banks while essential government services are reduced. Is it just me, or is the anger slightly misplaced? I've never been accused of having too much faith in people's intelligence but there are people in the United States who seem to want some kind of bizarro revolution, in which the people rise up to fight for the rights of the aristocrats.

Update: In fairness, I should point out this article I just saw, which reports that tea party organizers are attempting to distance themselves from some of the less sophisticated opposition to whatever it is they oppose.

Like I said at the beginning, I don't have a big conclusion or philosophical statement to put out there, so I'm going to have to end without a flourish, if that's OK.

Poetry

"Let's move up and down, like strippers' booties do."

- Song lyric heard from a passing car.