The Road to Atheism V: Moral Certainty

Nine years of Catholic elementary school, then it was on toward the Catholic highschool. I’m not sure what the public school students took instead of religion class, but we had it. Everyday for thirty nine minutes, for four years we were in our Catholic Religion class. The first year, I have mentioned, was bible class. For me, having gone to the elementary school, it was pretty boring and I spent most of the time flipping through the bible looking for stories of war and sex (there are a few). I don’t exactly remember what the second year religion class covered. A quick visit to Google tells me that the first year wasn’t just the bible, it was the Old Testament. Sophomore year, was the New testament and the seven sacraments. These two years are merely historical in nature, with the end of the second being more theological but not delving entirely into theology. Neither of these classes contributed much into my current status. It would be nice for me, now, to say that I somehow noticed the contradictions in the story–but that would be dishonest. I grew up with the stories, I believed them because I grew up with them. I had no reason to think that such contradictions mattered. Especially, because, Catholics are not bible literalists.

The third year was where things got heated. Third year religion began inquiries into morality, specifically Catholic morality for obvious reasons. I couldn’t really explain what my morality was prior to this class, I had some of my own ideas but for the most part I subscribed to the idea that a person was immoral if they harmed other people purposefully. For other issues I just conceded to the religious ideas that I was taught. This class was susposed to explain how the Catholic church arrived at their moral compass, and how they handled certain issues that did not appear in the bible (like abortion for instance).

I may consider the conclusions that the Catholic church arrives at to be incorrect, but I will not fault them on method. Being a Catholic priest means that the man has gone to many many classes. The people they gather to consider issues of moral worth have long debates about the topics, they even have advocates for the opposing position. Famously, the church hired super atheist Christopher Hitchens, to argue against the beautification of Mother Theresa. They do consider all points of view on these things to their great credit. This was instructed to us, I felt that this meant we were free to disagree with their ideas. This was an error.

As I must honestly credit them, I must also criticize. One thing that always stuck in my mind was the idea of infallibility. The Holy See, has this attribute that once it decrees something that decree is universally true for all people in the view of the Church. It can’t be argued with for any reason other than as an exercise in intellecutal debate. That debate must always end with agreement. This is one of the lasting contributions that the Roman Empire gave to Roman Catholicism, once the emperor has made a declaration it might as well have been coming from god himself. Upon learning this I thought it was odd that anyone could hang a cross in the same room as the American flag. Didn’t my history class down the hall teach me that this country was founded on the idea that such royal edicts wouldn’t be tolerated?

The issue we were discussing was Euthanasia, “the good death.” The Church opposes it. I disagreed. Now, I disagreed because I didn’t see the difference between refusing treatment and overdosing on pain medication, if every other circumstance was the same. To me, it seemed like the Church was splitting hairs. You can let them die on their own but you can’t do something that kills them? Letting them die was the same thing to me, it was mere rationalization to say that it was different. An act of ommission was still an “act” and to say otherwise was ridiculous. I said as much to the priest and was promptly sent out of the room. The only difference was that this time I was being sent to his office, rather than to linger in the hall. I knew I was in trouble, but again all I had done in my mind was state an objection.

I sat in his office waiting for the bell that signaled the end of class. It would be nice to write about the fear and dread of what was coming. However I possessed that youthful defiance that teenagers possessed. I knew two things: that I hadn’t done anything wrong as in breaking the code of conduct in the class. We were engaged in a debate, so that much was simple. The second thing was that he could only give me detention. Sure he could give me a week if he felt necessary but I didn’t warrant the dreaded Saturday detention, I knew the rule book enough to know that. He walked in, and the first thing I did was apologize for the manner of my position.

My reflection during that period of time, did lead me to one realization: I had yelled the part about splitting hairs. I had also called the rationalization “crap.” Bad form indeed.

The first thing he said was that it may be hard to accept a theory that conflicts with some personal event.

“Personal event.” In his view, the only way that I could be disagreeing is because I had a relative or friend that this happened to. This was not the case. I was disagreeing with the idea because it was a terrible idea. Infallibility isn’t just the notion that you were never wrong but that you are incapable of being wrong. This is of course wrong. I knew that you couldn’t split this hair, although the church wasn’t just saying that it could but that I must. This was the first moral disagreement I had and it was based entirely on theory. The person who decided that an incurable painful disease shouldn’t have to endure suffering just to postpone the inevitable wasn’t immoral. He wasn’t hurting anyone, if anything he was reducing the amount of pain in the world. To say that otherwise was objectionable to me. Not only did the morality of the church now come into question, but the whole authority of the Pope himself was now suspect. I disagreed and while that gave me a bit of trepidation it quickly passed. This was also the first time I ever seriously questioned a teacher, and came out knowing that I was right.

I realized that ecclesiastical authority was based on my consent and this time I wasn’t giving it. I was certainly on the path to freedom from religion at this point.

 

Oh, and I didn’t get detention either. I was just told to keep it down.

Designing an Argument (my non-Academic version of the Stoicism paper)

Every now and again it crops back up in the news where some group tries to make sure that biology isn’t taught in biology class. That’s what the story actually is, we can get into some discussion that’s about whether or not god exists, or whether the schools are trying to make sure that their students become atheists, or however it gets spun. The real story is that Christian Fundamentalists, who take their revised edition of the bible literally, want to make sure that no one learns that the bible could not be taken literally, and thus biology cannot be taken as biology. So they come up with the idea that controversial ideas should not be taught in schools. Tennessee has recently passed a law that forbids the teachings of scientific ideas in science classes, this from the birthplace of Al Gore (as it also contains global warming–another “controversial” issue to those who make up controversy).

As readers well know, I’m an atheist, but I try really hard to not be a dick about it. It doesn’t help to be that way as it just feeds into the stereotype that already exists. The first mistake that ID people make is conflating two different definitions of the word “theory.” Scientifically a theory is a tested hypothesis that has been thus far confirmed, like gravity. Sure there may be some questions about how it works, or more importantly why, but its been tested and retested and labelled confirmed. I don’t know when the scientific community decided to do away with the word “law” but its gone. The more common use of the word theory is like “thought” or “idea.” As in “I have a theory that my pen is in my car.” The more apt word would be “hypothesis” since it can be tested.

To call a thought scientific, is to subject it to one of two standards (this is a matter of some philosophical controversy), one is to say that the idea is verifiable while the other is to say that it is falsifiable. The former means that the idea can be objectively verified, this is the standard of Wittgenstein. If I say that all crows are black, we have to come up with the process by which it could be verified–by, say, looking at crows and seeing whether they are black or not. It does not matter whether the crows are black, but that we have a standard by which we could test the truth or falsity of the statement. The latter, that of falsifiability, is to figure out if it is possible that the idea could be proven wrong. While this seems counter-intuitive it, in my opinion, is the stronger idea. The question, more succicntly put, is what would it take to show that the idea is wrong. Evolution is an idea that passes both criteria. ID or creationism does not.

The point is that one of biggest, and best, arguments for the existence of god is related to this controversy. This is the design argument which is commonly associated with what is known as Paley’s Watch. Briefly, this idea is that if the world appears to operate according to some design, and no design exists without a designer (law of causality) then there must be a universal designer. William Paley used the analogy of a watch to drive it home. He claimed that if we found a watch we would assume that someone made it and dropped it where we found it. Only a fool would think that it just randomly generated on its own. If we look at a rock, we would not make the same assumption–but why not? A rock is formed according to certain laws, it has a pattern that is seemingly not generated randomly. Almost every ID/Creationist argument I have read has alluded to Paley’s Watch in some manner, a good number have stated it outright.

It’s compelling, but is not without its errors. The irony is that in trying to prove the biblical notion of the created universe the Creationists have latched on to a pagan argument. Cicero makes this exact claim long before the bible was compiled. The only difference is that he didn’t use the example of a watch, he used an example of an armillary sphere (or orrery sphere). This device was a mechanical model of the earth, sun, and the five known planets that showed their movements. Cicero states that even a Briton or a Scythian could not look at the sphere and think that it wasn’t made (his racism not mine). So far, this is the same argument. Anti-evolutionists usually stop there, but Cicero’s argument goes on and in fact is much superior.

He continues that if we are saying that the Armilary sphere was designed, then it was the product of reason. As opposed to the randomly formed universe, which would not then be the product of reason. This would entail that the mockery of the universe, the sphere in question, is superior to the thing that it mocks. i.e. a statue would be superior to the person that it was modeled after (to use anothe analogy). Therefore the universe is a designed thing. Cicero uses the armillary sphere because it was the most complex mechanical instrument at the time, just as the watch was for Paley. The advantage of Cicero’s version is that it rests on something tangible, the heavens, as opposed to time which precludes Paley from continuing on in the same manner. You couldn’t say that it would be foolish to claim that a watch is greater than time–they are too entirely different things. Yet Paley’s watch is still asserted with little to no nod toward its Pagan ancestor.

What’s even more ironic is that the development of the idea is similar to evolution given the increased complexity of a watch over the armillary sphere.

Ultimately, no matter which argument that you subscribe to, it fails. The shortcomings of the arguments are probably what forced contemporary philosopher Van Inwagen to offer his own version. He argues that because the laws of the universe are just so, there is life. And that to claim such things are done so randomly would be like getting hit by a lightening bolt, while winning the lottery, while being eaten by a Great White Shark, in Iowa (my simile not his–because he’s not as awesome at generating random occurrances). For instance if we took the gravitational constant: 6.67300 x 10^-11m³kg^-1s^-2 and were to change any one of those numbers, mass falls apart. If the earth were in any one of the orbits of the other nine planets it would either be too cold or too hot to sustain human life, if you….get the idea.

Van Inwagen’s argument is that these numbers are too specific to be random. Just as spherical implosion atomic weapons have to be calibrated a specifc way to ensure critical mass, the universe only exists because of a specific calibration and that calibration needs a calibrator.

Three instantiations of the same basic argument. The same basic, faulty argument. Each of these are mere appeals to common belief, argument from anecdote. Sure a watch was designed, the armillary sphere was designed, the machine was calibrated; those can all be granted. Is it impossible, however that they were not? Unlikely, but not impossible. It might not pass the judicial test of reasonable doubt, but this isn’t a court of law–it’s metaphysics and the gulf between possible and probable is as vast as that between probable and improbable. Sure I will agree that a watch was designed, but that doesn’t mean that the solar system was, in fact there is no reason to think that it was at all. The measurements that we have which give us the impression that things were designed, are measurements we created based on arbitrary numbers. For Van Inwagen’s argument to be correct it would be the same to say that since there are 1000 meters in a kilometer, that relationship is too coincidental to be random therefore there must be a god.

Sure, if gravity was slightly different there would be no matter, but also, there would be no gravity. The cart is put before the horse in this case. We already exist so the design arguers are claiming a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument. We exist therefore the world was created so that we could exist. While I can’t prove that the universe was randomly generated, I can’t accept these arguments from design either.

The Road to Atheism Part IV: No More Conspiracies

I’ve talked about conspiracies before, confessing that I used to be one of those people that believed in them. That belief waned long before my faith in religion did, but there was an odd intersection between the two that I know led me to my conversion. Every other week, it seems, I’ll hear someone on the news or someone being lampooned on the Daily Show talking about a war on religion. This was more in the news a few months ago with the contraception debate and the unbelievable acceptance of Rick Santorum as a possible candidate for president. I don’t buy it, I won’t until I actually see a ban on some religious practice that doesn’t produce direct harm (although North Dakota did pass a law banning Sharia from their state, so I guess that counts).

Anyway this isn’t about now it’s about then. I’m about 20, still attending weekly mass in a very tentative manner. Faith, for me, was dying quickly. I was home from school on winter break working at a movie theater. The priest was giving his homily, in case you don’t know this is where a member of the clergy lecture the room on some aspect of what we had just listened to from the scripture. He’s at the lecturn and I’m trying to pay attention, when he tells a story of his recent attempt to see a movie. It had to be my theater. There was no other one that he could have gone to and I was a bit concerned. I wasn’t exactly on my best behavior at the movie theater, especially during the holiday season. If you don’t know how it works, the December-January season is the Oscar bait season, and the studios release the big draws worthy of contending during this period. Usually they slip in a release for a week in December then pull it, to re-release it in January. The reason is that a movie cannot be considered for an Oscar in a particular year unless it has played for at least a week. It gets pulled then rereleased because they want to be fresh in the minds of the judges when decision time comes up. Keep that in mind for a second…

The Priest begins to describe how he went to a movie, sat down, watched the twenty minutes of previews (it’s actually 12–or it was at the time) and the movie began. Everything was going swimmingly and then about ten minutes in he became so offended that he and his friend walked out and popped in a different movie (this, by the way, is technically stealing). Whereupon they became so offended again that they popped into a third movie which they decided was more to their liking, it was a sci-movie. Sitting in the church I mentally went through the movies that he had rejected and the one that they had settled on. From my recollections I put the order of the movies together along with what he had said about wanting to see the one that “everyone was talking about.”

Everyone was talking about the first offensive movie mainly because one of the stars was alleged to have a great performance, this had to be Tom Cruise in Magnolia. I was so sure because of the amount of time he said he spent in the movie before walking out. Everyone talked about Magnolia because its a crazy movie. It’s well acted, it has a decent story, until you get to the end where it rains frogs…seriously that happens. The movie is based on a series of coincidences and the opening is great. When Cruise hits the screen, he is playing a dating advice guru that basically teaches men how to use women as sex objects, that’s his schtick. Offensive sure, but well done offensive, Cruise nails it and if you can get passed the type of person he’s playing the performance is really well done. Apparently the two couldn’t get passed it. Fine, whatever. The second movie was a bit of a guess but I figured that they left Magnolia and popped into “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

This is a boring movie with a great cast. It is strongly implied that the young Mr. Ripley (Matt Damon) is a homosexual, and I think that the books the movie was based on just come out with it. He’s also a bit of a serial killer, and in one particularly horrific scene he brutally murders another character. I figured that this was the second movie and they had walked in on the sexually tense scene between Damon and Jude Law (nothing happens but if you leave before the scene ends you might think that they were going to share a bathtub). It was either this movie or the Cider House Rules, in which Michael Caine plays a doctor who secretly performs abortions before they were legal. The reason for my doubt is that I can’t remember which movie was playing at our theater, I am writing more than ten years after the fact, but it was definitely one of those two as along with Toy Story 2, The Green Mile, and Anna and the King; they are the only two movies that could offend. Unless you hate shitty movies then I suppose Anna and the King could do the trick if only for its squandering of actor Chow Yun Fat. The movie they settled on: Supernova with James Spader.

He capped off his tale of being offended and stealing movies with a line about how he believed there was a conspiracy against catholics and these movies were proof. Remember, I was still religious at the time but this didn’t sit right with me. I was the victim of a conspiracy. That’s what he was saying up there, but it didn’t feel like it. I had seen all of the movies in my theater, Magnolia suffered from the Godfather/Seven Samurai effect. I was bored out of my mind the first time I saw it, but the more I thought about the movie the more I liked it. It was a genuinely well done movie save that crazy ending, but everyone was entitled to their opinion. I didn’t much care for either of the other movie they could have walked out on. Not that they were terrible but Ripley had pacing issues and Cider House was just, meh.

What bothered me was that the movies were being touted as a conspiracy against Catholicism. Somehow the existence of these movies, the plots of them were supposed to be evidence of a forcible indoctrination of ideals against the belief system of the Roman Church. The character Cruise plays isn’t supposed to be a role model, no one should come away from that movie and think to themselves: I should be that guy, he’s a good guy. His character’s entire arc is about his lost relationship with his father and how that twisted him into the womanizer that he became. One would think that it actually shows the consequences of the loss of family.

The Epicurean Vellus, in Cicero’s “On the Nature of the Gods,” talks about how Epicurus freed him from the terror and misery of superstition, from fearing the wrath of the gods when we transgress their commands. Atheism gives us one more advantage as well, it frees us from the belief that we are persecuted. Which is odd because the Fundamentalists claim that the unbelievers are devoid of all morality and are inherently bad people. This idea, that these two movies that he and his friend saw, are somehow anti-religious is ridiculous. There is some need for devout followers of the monotheisms to feel that there exists a conspiracy against them. I don’t get it now, I certainly didn’t get it then; but there it was standing at the lecturn stating exactly that.

This behavior is cultish. I’m not one of those people that believe all religions are cults, but cults and religions have common ground. One of them is the sense of persecution. Cults just take it one step further viewing all outsiders as being against them. That’s one of the tipping points (the other major one is secrecy–ahem, Scientology) to cult-ism. If the movie offends your morals, that’s one thing, but being told that it is a movie that is out to get you is completely another. If you think I’m exaggerating about the sense of persecution, think of the alleged “War on Christmas.” Should we reject art because it represents something we don’t like? Biagio De Cesina wanted to censor Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment” because he thought it offended the Catholic sensibilities (luckily the Pope disagreed), but was that evidence of a conspiracy?

No. What bothered me about this is that it trades on fear. We must band together because there are those out there who will destroy our faith if we don’t. To believe in this is to put as much faith in the conspiracy that they do in the religion. Positing an imaginary force that is out to get you? Come on, further this conspiracy is going about things in the worst way. Why not place the anti-religious ideas into a movie that everyone is going to see, one that targets kids–like Toy Story 2?

It would be false to say that this was a major contributing factor to my current state. I had my disagreements in the past with religious authorities, I always just felt that it was going to be somethign that was going to happen, that I had to rectify in my head somehow. Yet the past disagreements were always about doctrine or ethics. This time I was realizing that what he spoke of when doing the homily was just an opinion. Moreover that this time it was his opinion based on an idea that was false. I was now free of having to listen to it if I didn’t want to. I also realized for the first time how dangerous speech could be. If he could stand their and convince a group of people that seeing two movies would corrupt them into anti-Catholicism was there a limit to what he could say? No one could stand up and say ‘No.’ I wanted to, I decided that I would wait until afterwards. The chance never came though. I didn’t feel like waiting to say, “you should have stayed until the end, it was a pretty good movie.”

I don’t want to be persecuted, and I sure as hell don’t want to feel persecuted when it isn’t happening either. How can there be a conspiracy against a religion that a significant majority of people believe in? That it’s almost impossible to be a member of the government unless you are also a member of the religion? None of it makes sense, but come November we’ll start hearing about it regularly and not just from the loons on the fringes either. Yes, being free from these terrors is a good thing.

The Road To Atheism: Part III After Life

I thought and thought about whether or not to do one of these posts on the Saturday before Easter. The objection was that why crap on someone’s weekend? Two religions have big holidays this time of year, the Jewish people have yesterday’s pass over while the Christian’s–my former religion have Easter. The temptation on this day is to trash the holidays by analyzing them to show that their absurdity. I’m sure that the Egyptian Army’s chariot engineer didn’t deserve to have his first born son murdered by a vengeful god nor is it reasonable to assume the whole resurrection story is true when the four principle sources for that story do not agree on a solid majority of the details. (So, I succumbed a little). I don’t want to get into those small details.

Instead I want to fast forward from the last two posts’ general time of grade school toward highschool. I, again, attended a religious school, which was again run by Franciscans only this time they were men. There were two nuns, one was the librarian who had Narcolepsy while the other was an English teacher who was a bit quirky. If the teachers were “of the cloth” that meant they were either priests or friars. Yet aside from a head on collision with the morality classes (later post on that) most of the religion classes were rehashings of what I had learned in grade school. I don’t know how it worked in the past, but you didn’t have to be Catholic to get into the school. Being in the school meant that you had to take religion classes. Again, I’m not going to bash them for this, it’s their school they can do what they want.

Freshman year was a course called “Religion I.” The course text book was a red hard bound copy of the bible–I still have it. I want to say it’s the King James but it could also be the New International, it doesn’t matter really I have both on my Nook. Since most of the class covered things I already knew I just kind of flipped through the book. The teacher wasn’t offering anything interesting as far as an in depth study, but I read from different sections seemingly at random, but my mind always drifted toward the book of John the Revelator, Revelations.

Despite what you probably have seen on the “History” Channel, the book of Revelations is not a literal prophecy. Despite what La Haye and Jenkins, and their pile of money, would have you believe there isn’t going to be an “anti-Christ” who stalks the earth. As a side note: those who read the Book of Daniel in the same way are missing that little thing called context.

If Revelations is about the end of the world, and not about the fall of the Roman Empire, it led me to several questions. I understood the metaphor angle that the book was working toward, that made sense. But I knew that people took it literally. What I wanted to know is what a person did after the world ended.

To borrow from the PBS show “Dinosaur Train” point of fact: the concept of Rapture never appears in the bible.

The book ends with the coming of a new heaven and a new earth. A third (fourth?) temple is built with walls made of gold that are clear as glass, etc. Then, however, the people just kind of mill around? I never understood this. What was heaven, at the time I was sure as any Catholic that I was going there, so what I was I going to do?

Initially the answer from family/clergy was that you would be in the presence of god. The same God whose presence was in church, so that meant that I was going to spend eternity in church? That’s not heaven, that’s hell. Remember two posts ago that I was devout, but that didn’t mean that I liked going to church. Church was that thing I did once a week (in high school we had service in school once a month so on those occassions it was twice a week) that I was thankful only lasted an hour. An eternity listening to some guy tell me about doctrine that at the point of being in heaven really didn’t matter anymore? No thanks, I’ll hang out in Purgatory for a bit.

What was heaven? No major religion really gets into the details…except our stereotypical Muslim brothers they get sex. Which, to a teenage boy in highschool, would have been good enough. Remember though it’s not every Muslim that gets it, only the martyrs. And even then, only the men (I assume, virginity means something different to men than it does to women). Even that, though isn’t a good description of heaven. It’s a promise of sex, which is really base and it’s also why I don’t buy into the story at all. I mean c’mon, why would a religion that allows its males to engage in polygamy punish them in heaven by giving them more wives (Zing!!!).

In all seriousness, only the Eastern religions have this really thought out. They simply dissolve the notion of the self into the divine, then demonize the ego while in life which actually makes worrying about the afterlife sinful in itself. It’s, at least an answer.

Still I can remember sitting in those classes reading the end of the Bible wondering what was after it. Wouldn’t it get boring after awhile? Wouldn’t I long to get back to earth? It’s the only home I know after all. The other thing is that the heaven at the end of the bible has specific measurements what if there isn’t enough room for everyone I want to hang out with? These were all questions that would go unanswered of course. At this point I would be able to predict which were answered and which weren’t. I knew though that the concept of the afterlife wasn’t sufficient for me in Christianity. It needed to be spelled out or maybe something could have been tossed my way.

In the “Bible According to Mark Twain” Satan laments for man that for all his imagination it seems to be only confined to hell. The writing of all of the religions offer us detailed punishments in both the how and the why of the punishemnt. Yet for heaven we are just left to hang with god. Yes the punishment is more interesting, Dante’s Inferno is much more engaging than Paradiso, but isn’t the latter more important than the former?

Eternity is a long time. In fact it’s so long that the word “time” doesn’t apply to it. Our entire existence is predicated on the fact that at one time in the future there has to be a shift. For me, it’s the end, for others it’s a new story. Yet for those others they only answer I ever get for what happens when you die is, “you get to be with god.” I’ll take Twain’s Deism over that anyday.

Which brings me to the final point. As an atheist I get asked two questions: the first is a moral one (later post) the second regards the after life. It’s usually framed like this, “Oh, so what do you think happens after we die?” but sometimes it’s this, “So you’d rather there be no afterlife?”

I prefer being asked the second question because that person is an idiot who needs the trouncing that he’s going to get (it’s usually a male). No of course I would rather there was an after life with a wine river and 72 virgins, but the thing about reality is that it doesn’t change based on wishful thinking. Which is what the latter person is doing. They are asking me the question in that manner because they want to force me to share their beliefs based on an undesirable consequence. That’s not faith, that’s fear.

To the first person I just answer honestly, “I don’t know.” Maybe something, maybe nothing, we will all find out eventually. That much is certain. Unless I’m right, and we won’t find out because there is nothing. All we can do then is stare into the abyss of time and say “goodbye and thanks for all the oxygen.”

The Road to Atheism Pt. 2: The Questioning (Part 2…I guess)

Let’s just face it, religion doesn’t tolerate a lot of questioning. I don’t care how open the religion is, or how much a person may think their priest, Rabbi, Imam, Abbot, etc. is really cool there is always a certain line that cannot be crossed. There has to be, because if that line can be crossed the whole thing falls apart. For a Muslim, you can’t question whether or not Mohammed is the true Prophet, a Mormon can’t really ask if there were really Golden Tablets, a Buddhist can’t question the divinity of the Bhudda. These are the core essences of each respective faith, you either accept these or you don’t. If you don’t you can’t really be held as a member of that faith.

I mentioned last post, and throughout the history of this blog, that I was raised Catholic. I also attended Catholic school. Part of that education was attending religion classes, that weren’t really religion classes. More accurately they ought to be titled, “Catholicism: History and Doctrine.” I want to be perfectly clear here, I’m not knocking them for this, it’s their school they have every right to teach their lessons along with their beliefs. However, in these classes, there are some odd lessons that didn’t serve to help me in my devotion to the religion.

Catholicism being a branch of Christianity, most people reading this ought to be familiar with. If you aren’t learn something, it’s the largest religion in the world knowing something about it, like knowing some Chinese history, is just important. The basic story, amongst all of the branches of Christendom is the same. You have the first sin, that of disobedience by Adam and Eve in the Garden then thousands of years go by, God who apparently tires of the sin decides to send down Jesus, his son, who is crucified under dubious pretenses to cleanse the world of that sin. Three days later he is alive again and then some time after that (specifics vary) he ascends back to heaven.

That’s the basic, Christians will have to excuse me for being glib, I’m just not going to go through the entire bible for this blog. Believing in that thread thin story will make you a Christian, you can go further than that of course–Mormons tack on some more to the story. However that is the basic of the Christian belief. Catholics believe in that and more. You’ve got to accept the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope, the rule of the Vatican, the Mystery of the Trinity, Transubstantiation, etc. I limited that list to those four things because those were the four that I could never accept even as a kid.

Not to say I was some super genius who could see through the story or anything like that. As I said last post, I was a believer. Sure bread turns to meat, wine to blood, that makes perfect sense. After first Communion I thought I had done something special, people were so happy and proud that I couldn’t help feeling the same. Those feelings overroad the nagging doubt that I had in the back of my brain.

Perhaps my atheism is a result of weakness. I know about ten people who will clap their hands in joy of that speculation…on the other hand I know about ten others who need to pick up their jaws and wipe the coffee off the table and floor as well. Let me explain, I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t overcome the feeling that I was lying to myself about the so-called mysteries. Accepting them whole-heatedly wasn’t something that I could do, but I really wanted to, there was always the block in my brain. The wall that could not be overcome, that of what I knew first versus what I was supposed to believe.

Ironically it was the religion classes that caused this. They had the opposite of their intended effect. To argue from analogy: if you had a friend who always talked about his skill in fixing computers but could never explain how he was able to do it, you would begin to think that perhaps he was lying. Or more accutely, if this friend only explained his fixing of computers by likening it to tightening a bolt you would probably not accept his skill. The same went for me.

One of the first “Mysteries” of the Catholic religion is that of the Trinity. The Trinity, bearing a suspicious resemblence to the Roman Triumverate, is that the Universe is rules by God which has three parts but is really one. There is the Father which is the Old Testament Creater God, the Son as Jesus, and the Spirit which shows up in the Bible from time to time plays an important but minor role. These three are not individuals because they exist as one, but are also not merely parts of a whole. They are the whole and they are one. It’s a divinity thing, all religions have one of these things.

As a kid I just used to think of it as a triangle, which to this day I don’t get why that isn’t the symbol of the church. You have three points and one shape, take away one of the points and its no longer a triangle, and the triangle cannot exist without all of the points. I was always told that this was the wrong interpretation. If I remember correctly, we are going to back several years, it’s because the corners of a triangle cannot exist independently. Now, I would merely toss the law of non-contradiction at one of the teachers explaining that a thing cannot not be and be at the same time, even William of Okham (a monk) believed that god couldn’t violate that law. As a youngster we were just told to accept the mystery and move on.

Getting older, they correctly realized that the, “be quiet and nod your head” explanation wouldn’t float anymore. So in one grade, it had to be later than sixth but earlier than my freshman year in high school, the water metaphor was used. For my part, I never accepted the water metaphor on scientific grounds. Again, not that I was a genius but because it’s a shitty metaphor.

The water metaphor explaining the trinity works like this. Water is one substance, but can exist in three different phases: gas, liquid, and solid. Of course all elements exist in one of these three, water is used because it is the one that we are the most familiar with. No matter which phase water is in it is still water. So it goes with god, whether it is the father, the son, or the spirit it is still god. You can also float an ice cube in liquid water while having evaporate in minute amounts (on a hot day for instance) simultaneously. This is supposed to explain how three different natures of the divine can exist at the same time but be three distinct entities. The trouble for me then was that I it didn’t make a bit of sense.

Skipping two later learned facts: that of the fourth phase of matter being plasma, and how the only atomic difference between a solid, gas, liquid, is the motion of the atoms…it’s a bad metaphor. In order for the metaphor to work, and I recently explained this in class, you would need an identitical amount of water to exist as solid, liquid, and gas at the exact same time. Water is either gas, liquid, or solid but never all three coincidentally. Point this out got me sent into the hallway.

It was the first of a long line of being excused from religion classes for my impertinence. Let me remind the reader once again, that I wasn’t pointing out the hole in the argument to be a smart ass. At that time I legitimately wanted to know. Being sent out for that was the worst thing that could have happened to me as far as religious development could have been. Being sent out into the hall, first off isn’t that much of a punishment in the first place. I could be bored in the hall just as much as I was in class, only now I could stand up pace around a little bit. The point is to shame you if other people walked by, or if the principle did. What didn’t work for them, was that it really gave me time to think.

My thought was that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was being thrown out for asking what I felt was a legitimate question to a member of the clerical orders, a nun in this case. I thought I was helping. It was in the mere disagreement with established authority that I was being punished, at the time I didn’t realize that was the case. It was a mystery to me why I was in trouble. Sitting out in that hallway I suppose that I merely just did my time and waited to be let in pondering over the fact of my punishment.

I get that there are going to be articles of faith in every religion, things that cannot be explained or that have to explained by seemingly arbitrary explanations. Yet they should be left at that. Teaching kids religion, I feel is a bad idea anyway, but if you are going to do so don’t call something a mystery and then try to explain how it works. That just invites the type of questioning that I got in trouble for. Blurring the line between the unexplainable with an attempt at explanation isn’t practical and the smarter of the population will point out that it’s approaching an ontological contradiction (although I doubt those words would be used).

Being sent in the hall for asking questions embittered me. That was certainly not helpful at all.

Shell Game

Remember several months ago when everyone was in an uproar about a private land transaction in New York City? It seemed that someone wanted to buy an old Burlington Coat Factory and turn it into a community center for Muslims that would include a prayer room, which by the definition of the religion, would be called a “Mosque.” This was an issue so apparently important to our national culture that it dominated 24 hour cable “news” channels, papers, appearing as a cover story in Time Magazine, and even caused candidates running for office to feel the need to weigh in on the issue. Then weeks after it broke everyone seemed to forget about the issue.

Over and over again the rationale for the seeming need to prevent this abomination to our free country was that we can’t allow Islam to plant a flag of victory so close to the site of the former World Trade Center which we all know was attacked by Islam at large because we all know that Islam is practiced by its followers in participation of one organization and not various sects and denominations. I believe it was Sarah Palin that called the Ground Zero, “hallowed ground” and thus could not be defiled by the presence of a Mosque. Even though the building in question was not actually in Ground Zero but two city blocks away.

My question at the time was how close is too close? The Right Wing argument was always that two blocks is insensitive. This statement is made without qualification and thus is to the point of being meaningless since the actual question has never been answered. If too close is two blocks then where is not “too close?” Comments were made on my initial post on the subject, to the extent that the lefties (and by association, myself) were too stupid to see that this is allowing victory for Islam more so than the giant hole in the ground that still exists.

In all of this one interesting fact has been overlooked: at 30 Cliff St, in New York city, about five blocks from the “sacred” site of Ground Zero a Mosque has just been opened. Not only that, but this building disproves entirely the Right Wing sentiment regarding the other Mosque, no Al-Qaeda propaganda has talked about it, not one person seems to be crying because it offends them, none of the effects which were predicted as being so offensive to Americans have actually happened. It is still within site of Ground Zero and our national image hasn’t suffered because of it.

The best part: the place opened in September, while the “outrage” was still strong. So when the new Trade Center is built it will have to build in the shadow of 30 cliff st’s, and possibly Park Place’s Mosques obviously showing that Islam has indeed won. The whole thing was probably just a shell game anyway, the devious Muslims. They generate the controversy on Park Place so they can slip in Cliff St without anyone noticing. Bravo my Muslim friends, bravo.

Odd Religious Rules

Obviously there are many religious rules that I find odd, but some are more odd than others. I don’t mean odd in that why do they do that kind of way, but more in a “why do they STILL do that?” way. For instance, today must be a Jewish holiday as the synagogue across the street from me has cars parked in front of it from yesterday* adding to that is that my Wed. night class let out early, and the neigborhood is full of men walking up and down the sidewalks in Jewish religious clothing. It is this clothing that I want to monologue about.

Specifically it is the tzitzit. It’s easy enough to spot, a white cloth draped over the front and back of a man (usually) with tassles hanging off of it and a blue thread at each corner. If you aren’t paying attention it looks the person is wearing an apron underneath their suit as the tassels can look like the ties depending on how the person is walking.

The justification for wearing them, or the command depending on your point of view, derives from Numbers 15:38 and Deuteronomy 22:12: “Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them that they shall make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments, throughout their generations, and they shall affix a thread of blue on the fringe of each corner” and “You shall make yourself twisted threads, on the four corners of your garment with which you cover yourself” respectively.

Obviously this is God’s command to the Jewish people so that they will separate themselves by dress from the other desert people and their gods. Similar in origin to the prohibition against eating pork which was a popular food in the Semitic regions of the middle east. In that region, then as well as now, garments were/are one long sheet of cloth with a head hole in it. The cloth had four corners as it was a large rectangle. So the Jewish people were told to not hem the corners of their garment and to twist off the threads hanging thereof.

Alright, I don’t agree with the idea behind it as it seems both exclusionary and arbitrary, but I get why. What I don’t understand is why they still do it. Since typical garments nowadays don’t have four corners (a typical male dress shirt has two at the bottom, two at the collar and two at the wrists) why are the men who are currently passing my window even bothering. A strict reading of the Testament provides them with a legal way out of wearing the tzitzit altogether. Some of them are even wearing the tallit, which is a scarf whose significance is that it holds the fringes of the tzitzit. Meaning that they are putting one another article of clothing so that they can follow the law of the tzitzit which only applies to four cornered clothing which they wouldn’t normally have in the first place.

It seems like some extra work to follow a law that wouldn’t normally apply to begin with. It seems like this would akin to a Catholic committing a sin just so that they could be absolved of it. If you aren’t wearing a four cornered garment than why  put one on just to attach fringes to it? Why not just avoid four cornered garments altogether?

Furthermore it seems oddly pedantic to think that just because you have attached some tassels to a garment means that you are following the rule laid down in Numbers. It seems to me that splitting hairs isn’t unique to just Christians.

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*Because their days begin at 6pm and end at 6pm the following, which we ought to adopt for St. Patrick’s Day. It makes a great deal more sense for a drinking holiday.

On Divination

“On Divination” occupies an interesting place in Cicero’s writings making it very tricky to properly classify it. On the one hand it deals with a unique topic, divination, but on the other it reads more like the second half of his book “On the Nature of the Gods” or “De Natura Deorum.” For example read the following quote:

“If we were disposed to take any notice of you, this would overwhelm us with superstition, impelling us to cultivate soothsayers, augurs, fortune-tellers, seers, and dream-interpreters. Epicurus has delivered us from these terrors. now that we are liberated, we have no fear of the gods, for we realize that they neither create trouble for themselves, nor seek to impose it on another. We venerate with devoted reverence their pre-eminent and outstanding nature.”–De Natura Deorum 1.55,56

The idea of divination is so intertwined with Cicero’s first book that the two are complementary. “On The Nature of the Gods” was a dialogue concerning two questions: do the gods exist, and if so, of what kind are they? This book makes the assumption that the gods do exist since without them divination would be impossible, “My own opinion is that, if the kinds of divination which we have inherited from our forefathers and now practice is trustworthy, then there are gods, and, conversely if there are gods then there are men who practice divination.” (1.5)

Being that the prime evidence for the existence of the gods in the first book was the example that so many people from all over the known world at that time believed in them (despite how weak that proof actually is). The same occurs here. Cicero writes this book, as he does most of his philosophy, in the form of a dialogue between himself and his older brother Quintus. Quintus taking the pro-divination position lays out his argument that divination does in fact exist because there is ample evidence of it being successful. The first half of the book is laden with evidence of proper divination of varying types.

His argument though is circular and not only that it is also an incomplete circle. Cicero makes a mistake between his two books, in the first book he is claiming that belief in the gods and belief in divination proves that the gods exist. In the second book he is claiming that because the gods exist there is divination. That’s reasoning that symbolically doesn’t pan out: a->b, b->a= b & a. It’s an all or nothing argument but there is no reason to logically accept either a or b. Secondly, the problem is that if we accept that the gods exist there is no reason to accept that there must be divination.

Does this then mean that the practice of Divination is false? Not necessarily, just that the proof offered so far isn’t as convincing as Cicero would have us believe. Cicero’s ample supply of evidence works better here than it did for proving the existence of the gods, “I will urge only this much, however in defense: the oracle at Delphi never would have been so much frequented, so famous, and so crowded with offerings from peoples and kings of every land, if all ages had not tested the truth of its prophecies.” (1.19)

Bringing out the Delphic Oracle as his prime piece of evidence is a shrewd move. The importance of the Oracle cannot be overstated in the ancient world. No major moves in the bronze age were made without a consultation to the Oracle. Herodotus records numerous examples of the prophecies uttered by the Oracle and how they all panned out to be true from King Croesus,* to King Leonidas**, and Athens.*** It is the most famous of the ancient sites and Quintus is astute in bringing it out.

The problem with the Oracle is also two-fold. The first is that while we know of the successful prophecies there are not any examples of the prophetess failing. Not one. This, in itself proves nothing as it could very well be that the vapors were compelling true divination. Yet, the second problem, is that the Delphic Oracle falls victim to the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. This fallacy is completed when you find a desired result and then draw the bullseye around it, it’s post hoc ergo propter hoc all over again.

This is how Nostradamus is always so accurate. The only time that the Frenchmen ever gave a specific date he was completely wrong, “In the year 1999 and seven months…” It is addressed by Cicero directly, “For it was clever in the author to take care that whatever happened should be foretold because all references to persons or time had been omitted.” (2.54) It’s quite too bad that no one on those many many history channel specials ever explains that one time when the old physician was not only clear but specific. After all, why should they? It would collapse the entire cottage industry.

Adding to that the often cryptic nature of the Oracle nothing can really be told beforehand. The famous example of King Croesus is obvious, either one kingdom will die or the other, it’s not like there was a middle ground in the old days.

Cicero’s problem also lies in the fact that he is a victim of his time. Astronomy and Astrology is roughly the same discipline but the division is beginning. He points correctly to the Miltean Philosopher Thales who accurately predicted an Eclipse, while this might be foresight it’s not anything supernatural.

Ultimately though Cicero will defeat his brother in the argument. Astrology is dispensed with by showing that not everyone born on the same day is the same as the planets’ and stars’ influence would have to be the same. Yet it is logic that defeats the process. If divination is the foreseeing of chance events then we have an ontological issue.

If something can be predicted with certainty than that something is not a chance event it is a necessary event. Chance by definition is something that occurs randomly it cannot be predicted. The very nature of divination is such that it is to predict random chance events. Anything that can predicted can not, by definition, be claimed to be “random.”

Only the Stoics can readily accept this Ontological quandary and still be consistent in claiming that there is divination. The only problem is that while Stoicism was an accepted school at the time they are not represented in the dialogue as they were in “The Nature of the Gods.”

At the end, it seems that Cicero rejects divination just as it seemed he did reject the interference of the gods in the day to day affairs of people. No type of divination is reliable enough or consistent enough to be considered trustworthy. If all of the civilizations who relied on it so greatly really did have the voices of the gods warning them about mistakes, why did they all fall?

The fault lies in the gullible swindled by fortune tellers into believing that a bird’s liver means one thing, or that a thunderbolt arcing to the west means another. The masses would fall for such tricks as long as it pays off once in awhile, Guillermo Savonarola in Renaissance Florence used such thunderbolt omens in ranting against the church. The masses were utterly convinced. “But,’ you say, ‘all kings, peoples, and nations employ auspices. As if there were anything so absolutely common as want of sense, or as if you yourself in deciding anything would accept the opinion of the mob!” (2.39)

The final question on the subject has to do with the fortune tellers themselves, do they admit to themselves? If the James Randi Foundation prize is any example, then no they do not. What about each other? Does John Edwards (the psychic not the politician) laugh at Sylvia Brown…or as Cicero puts it himself, “But indeed, that was quite a clever remark which Cato (the Younger) made many years ago: ‘I wonder,’ said he, ‘that a soothsayer doesn’t laugh when he sees another soothsayer.” (2.23)

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* “The winner of this battle shall destroy a great kingdom.” [Croesus of Lydia misinterpreted the oracle and was defeated losing his kingdom]
** “Either a king of Sparta shall die or all of Greece will.” [referring to the Persian War]
*** “Flee to a bulwark of wood…” [The Athenians abandoned the city and relied on their wooden Navy to defeat the Persians at Salamis]

Bullshit.

There are many things in this world that I don’t understand. Mysteries of the universe and the untold depths of the sea hide things that boogie the mind, so as much as some people may claim I’m closed minded I contend quite the opposite. However, I’m going to make a stand right here and call this man’s claim bullshit.

No water or food for over 70 years? No.

Sure I could just sit back and agree with the medical doctors who state that without replenishing water in the body his blood would literally thicken and his heart would fail trying to pump something the consistency of gravy through it’s veins. I don’t however have to do that, because for some reason the enlightened Prahlad Jani still needs to gargle. For what possible reason does he need to gargle unless it be to take in liquid, no matter how minute that amount could be.

I also enjoy the fact that he is bathing too, it’s almost as if the observers could not conceive of a person urinating in a bath tub either. There’s a lot to work with here, such as the 14 day study. Why not make it a month? If he were to live a month that would be something IRA member Sean McKenna once lasted 53 days without food…of course he lapsed in and out of a coma during that time and also was able to ingest both water and salt but that seems to be the record.

Despite the fact that most people want to believe in the sincerity and innocence of the Eastern Religions there’s is no different than ours. They have as many shysters, con men, and frauds over there as we do over here. His claim of deriving his ability from a goddess at a young age is no different than Marjoe Gortner who was claimed to conduct miracles and inspiration from God at a young age (it turned out to be a fraud, by his own omission). Don’t let the exotic aspect of the Indian subcontinent fool you, this guy will be found out and exposed.

De Natura Deorum

“On the Nature of the Gods” is Cicero’s discourse on religion. Like the previous writings of Cicero that I have covered it takes the form of a dialogue between three individuals representing the three most popular views on religion prevalent in the Roman Republic at the time, the Epicurean, Stoic, and Scholastic positions. I should note that there is a substantial bias in the book as Cicero himself was a member of the Pontificate overseeing the Augers and that he has a political reason for proving the veracity of the existence of the gods.

This is important because the Epicurean argument, that either there are no gods or that the gods have nothing to do with the day to day affairs of the mortals, is presented in the first chapter but is misrepresented and derided. Cicero doesn’t get the position wrong as it is accurately summed up here, “If we were disposed to take any notice of you, this would overwhelm us with superstition, impelling us to cultivate soothsayers, augurs, fortune-tellers, seers, and dream-interpreters. Epicurus has delivered us from these terrors. Now that we are liberated, we have no fear of the gods, for we realize that they neither create trouble for themselves, nor seek to impose it on another. We venerate with devoted reverence their pre-eminent and outstanding nature.”–1.55,1.56

The argument against is thus presented. Albeit briefly, but is done so with the smugness of modern day atheists like Dawkins, Maher, and Hitchens. The case is presented that if the gods demand piety and sacrifice they are nothing more than “a prying busybody, who forsees and reflects and observes all things, believing that everything is his business.” (1.54) I have experienced and read the rehashings of this argument numerous times, each time the person delivering it seemed to think that it was something new. Which is what makes the book such an interesting read, Cicero’s arguments both for and against have laid the foundation for the same debate thousands of years later.

It’s a weak argument that appeals more to a person’s sense of self-dictation than it does to reason. Even if we assume that the nature of god is one of being a meddling, jealous, busybody it doesn’t prove anything.

Chapter 2 deals with the Stoic counter argument. This takes up the largest portion of the book as Cicero put himself in this school. What follows in chapter 2 are two primary arguments, still repeated today: an argument Ad Populum and the ever popular Texas text book “Argument from Design.”

It gets a bit tedious as the Stoic repeats himself with example after example. “Ad Populum” is the argument from popularity. It is represented here as because a great majority of the people encountered both within and without the Roman Republic believe in the gods therefore there must truly be gods otherwise all of these people would be wrong. Many examples taken from Herodotus are given from the Ethiopians to the Egyptians and various Asian societies all talking about various temples dedicated to Zeus/Jupiter, Athena/Minerva, and Hercules/Herakles which no doubt prove that the people are worshiping something.

There are two things wrong with this argument. The first is that Herodotus co-opted the belief in the regional gods as belief in the Greek gods. So whoever the Scythians of Asia were worshiping, their chief God was called “Zeus.” It didn’t matter if they had never heard the name “Zeus” because in the end it was still the same deity to Herodotus. It was both a remarkable acceptance of foreign beliefs and an indication of the Hellenic-Centric nature of his writings. The second is the far more general argument against ad populum. Just because a great number of people believe in something doesn’t mean that said belief is correct. At this point in history, Aristotle had proved the Earth to be spherical (in his book De Caleo [On the Heavens]) but the majority of the population believed the Earth to be the center of the universe. This of course is incorrect.

The design argument is laboriously explained. It is full of wonderful examples, especially if you take it as a survey of the astronomy, biology, and zoology of the day (which was limited in its accuracy but still very instructive), however after a certain point in the reading it just seems as though Cicero is beating a dead horse. The point is made but he continues to hammer the reader with more examples. The design argument is also buttressed with what will later be known as one of the “Cosmological Arguments;” “Take an example: if someone were to say that teeth and hair were the products of nature, but that the man who owned them was not that would be a failure to understand that things which are productive possess natures more perfect than the things which they produce.” (2.86)

The implication is that something has to come from somewhere and that there are degrees by which they are produced. The greater the product the even greater the producer. After all the greater machine produces parts not vice-versa.

Some lesser arguments come into account as well, this isn’t to say they are worse arguments but just that they are more counters to objections only making sense in regard to what the Epicurean offers as proof. One question that plagues all religions is the matter of what is called Theodicy. This is the question of how an all-good, all-powerful god(s) can allow bad things to happen if they are to be so compassionate towards their creation. The Stoic offers this as rebuttal, “We are not to reject this thesis just because a storm has damaged someone’s cornfields or vineyards, or because misfortune has deprived a person of one of life’s benefits, inducing us to consider the recipient of misfortune as the victim of divine hatred or neglect. The gods attend to important issues, and disregard the minor things.” (2.167)

It’s little comfort to the victims of such chance events like earthquakes and hurricanes. However the answer is a good one. That in light of the scope of the earth, its population, and the vault of the heavens that the plight of one person is dwarfed in comparison. I haven’t read this response before and it’s a better answer than the one supplied by the Eastern religions that postulate a necessity of bad things in order for the good things to exist. Only Process Theodicy seems to rival it as a sufficient response.

What about a sense of justice? Sure natural events can be taken care of with such a response but surely the gods must pay attention to people that cause misfortune or commit crimes against them. This argument is a bit more difficult to get around. Admittedly even Cicero does not seem to have a handle on it. Several examples are given of various rogues and brigands who were successful in being bad without any divine punishment. Cicero ends the debate with this, “The fact is that one’s character and the kind of life which one has lived has no bearing on one’s good or evil fortune.” (3.89)

A troubling conclusion for a religion that is so steeped in the life of the state as it was in the days of the great Republic. The group in question talks about keeping their argument a secret because impiety could lead to anarchy even if the atheist position is taken in jest, yet there is no reason for this based on the prior example that bad people often times get away with it. There isn’t even a recourse to divine punishment which would be the familiar response from the monotheistic religions today.

In its entirety this work comprises the totality of the arguments both for and against the existence of the gods. The fact that it was written in 45 b.c. makes it all the more interesting considering the audience for the debate now.