a letter from a young atheist: god ain’t so Great part 1-the preliminary matters

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 Dear B—–,

Let me begin by apologizing.  Before you protest that I’m always apologizing you’re right but this one does need some explanation.  You see over the last few months I wasn’t in a good place.  In fact I was in a rotten one, a fucking rotten one.  Graduating college wasn’t the entrance into some new golden world as I had thought or dreamt it would be because I discovered the institution I had attended and hoped to teach at wouldn’t hire me.  That resulted in a long period of joblessness which, while it saw a blossoming of writing, didn’t see anything in the realm of actual employment.  Add to that my wife was bouncing between jobs and encouraging me to consider teaching high school.  Now I hated high school and I hated being a teenager so imagine B spending the rest of my life in such an environment.  It didn’t get better after that despite the fact I was offered a teaching job at a local college.  I was lobbying to teach there but as always no positions were available until one of the professors had a family emergency and needed someone to cover her classes till the end of the semester.  I hopped into the gig thinking that I would be teaching college students, when in fact, I wounded up teaching college students who were really just high school students.  The students didn’t want to be there and after just a few weeks I realized I didn’t want to be there either.  I realized day by day that I was miserable.  And then the depression kicked in.  Finding yourself huddled up in a ball and crying in a shower twice a week for eight weeks is a hell of a thing B—–, but it gives you some perspective.  It was near the end of the that semester that several of my friends, unbeknownst to me, had begun to lobby for me at the Tyler Public Library.  One of my friends is a full time employee there, and two others are part time, and because people tend to see something in me that I don’t they continued to lobby for me while I day-by-day began to realize that I actually wanted to work there.  I was ready to leave college behind and start a new path.  And when a temp job opened up I knew, for my own health that I had to take the library job.

This is a long fucking opening B—–, I know that, but I just wanted to offer explanation as to why I haven’t been writing back, and also why I decided to begin this enterprise that I’m starting with this letter.

You see you’d be surprised how many atheists and agonistics work at the library.  One of them is one of the friends I spoke of, and one night while we were closing we were discussing being atheists, the end of our faith, secular humanist mommy groups (that’s a thing, they exist) and of course Christopher Hitchens.  We briefly discussed the book god is not Great, because both of us had read the book and credited it as the document which helped us realize we were atheists.  I say realize because I distrust people who say they “became” atheists, it reeks of false conviction.  But as I was heading up the stairs towards the employee exit, I thought about our talk and I thought about our letters.  The first letter I ever sent you B—–, included a quote from god is not Great, and I recommended that you read the book.

What I’m offering now B—–, is the chance to read the book and talk about it chapter by chapter.  This could take a year, it could take only a few months, but I like the idea and I want to give it a shot.  So this first letter will address the first chapter of Hitchens’s book.

Although before we begin I have to tell you that your current girlfriend looks remarkably similar to Gal Gadot.  The Halloween party picture you sent where you were both Wonder Woman was just eerily similar and on an entirely unrelated note I cannot wait for the new Wonder Woman movie.  Wonder Woman, World War I, AND Gal Gadot.  Jammer be happy.

Picking up god is not Great has been a fascinating reminder of how much I have actually grown in my personal belief B—–, or lack of belief if you want to be specific.  I noticed myself reading the opening chapter and feeling somewhat stalled.  I feel lousy admitting that, especially about Old Hitch, but I think, to his credit, it’s because I’ve read so much about atheism because of him and so his initial arguments seem, to quote Aerosmith, like the Same Old Song and Dance. 

Still if you’re reading this book for the first time, these ideas and declarations are bold and unsparing.  The first chapter, if you’ve read it already, starts off with a declaration of his beliefs that he titles “Putting it Mildly.”  What I love, from the start, is how Hitch recognizes that he’s going to be attacked the moment he hits the ground running.  If you don’t believe me watch how he starts the book:

If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who—presumably—opted to make me this way.  They will be defiling the memory of a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and decent faith, named Mrs. Jean Watts.  (1)

There’s a lot to get into in this first chapter B—–, and I can’t possibly cover all of it, but I wanted to start off with this quote because it provides insight to the reality facing out and about public atheists.  I’ve been fortunate in my life that I’ve avoided such treatment by supposed “believers” but that’s usually because I only inform people about my lack of faith to people I know and trust.  If a random Christian asks me about my faith I’ll usually just say something like “I was raised in the Episcopal church.”  I’ve found though sometimes that when I out myself as an atheist those people who are bothered by it will usually just ignore me and quietly pray for my soul.  But just because I’ve had it easy doesn’t mean that other people have.  Atheists are some of the most distrusted people on this planet, and I suspect the only reason I don’t have people writing me angry letters telling me to suck dicks in hell is because I’m just some shit-for-shit nobody with a shit-for-shit blog.

How many shits was that by the way, I lost count.  Must have been thinking about Gal Gadot again.  There’s this one picture of her wearing glasses and this nice hat…

Focus man!

What I like about this opening however is that, while it does acknowledge the tendency of many people of faith to demonize atheists it also reinforces an observation I’ve had, which is that real atheists tend to be those who’ve experienced real religious instruction.  Hitchens describes his early teacher Mrs. Jean Watts, as a sweet and kind woman who taught the children about nature and spirituality.  Hitchens was raised in this environment and one moment was eventually attributed to his early skepticism:

However, there came a day when poor, dear Mrs. Watts overreached herself.  Seeking ambitiously to fuse her two roles as nature instructor and Bible teacher, she said, “So you see, children, how powerful and generous God is.  He has made all the trees and grass to be green, which is exactly the color that is most restful to our eyes.  Imagine if instead, the vegetation was all purple, or orange, how awful that would be.”  (2)

I suspect B—-, that every atheist has a moment like this.  I sometimes refer to it as the “aha” moment, but really it’s probably more accurate to call it the “really, oh for fuck’s sake” moment, because honestly that what you feel when it happens.  Or at least that’s what I felt when I experienced mine.  Unlike some atheists that will profess having some kind of dramatic realization, real mature atheism occurs, much like religious instruction.  It takes time, real study, introspection, and finally just one moment of initial skepticism.  I’ll never forget mine.

A preacher from the local Baptist church in town came by to deliver the sermon, and given the fact that I attended an “Episcopal” school I failed to really observe the fascinating dynamic of a Protestant sermonizing at a Catholic-Light institution.  He was a charming character and boomed rather than softly spoke, and the lingering sensation of him is the fact that I was wrapped up in his story.  It was the Loaves and Fishes tale retold from the position of a boy who happened to be at the scene retelling the event to his mother.  I was about twelve years old at the time, but I was transfixed by this man and his ability.  I wondered where the story would go, or how it would end, and even after I realized this was the loaves and fishes story I’ll never forget the moment when the man raised a finger in the air and spoke:

“And do you know who that man was Momma?  That man’s name?  It was Jesus Mama.  Jesus Christ.”

Something dropped into my stomach and I suspect it was the angels because that’s what it felt like.  It felt like I had finally woken up and seen Christianity for what it was, or at least what it had always been: a cheap sell using a piss-poor story.

Faith and belief was shown for what it was B—-, a club ticket rather than a spiritual tool.  It didn’t stop right there, and in fact it wouldn’t truly diminish until I read Hitchens’s god is not Great a year after graduating high school, but that moment of initial skepticism I believe is crucial and one of the reasons Hitchens makes it the start of his book.

Christianity is an institution, one that is wrapped up in almost every level of our culture.  I won’t compare the skeptics and atheists and agnostics to Neo in The Matrix because that seems too dramatic a metaphor, but the first moment sometimes does resemble that scene when he wakes up in the gel and looks around the world.  You begin to see how the power structure is embedded at every level.  It’s important B—-, to have a social network so that one doesn’t feel alone in the world, and while there is Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Blogs, T.V. shows, and the internet in general, books can go a long way in helping someone reassess their beliefs or even just feel validated.

Reading this first chapter again I always remember that preacher and so there is an identification.  Christopher Hitchens and I went through the same experience and that makes me recognize that my skepticism isn’t something unnatural, it’s common.  That banalization is important for arguments I’ll try to get into later.

But this opening chapter is the first in what can really and should be called a kind of Manifesto.  The readers who pick up god is not Great are reading the work of a new generation of atheists who feel free enough to openly declare their sentiments, opinions, and belief without (much) fear of the societal rebuttal.  And Hitch, being the man that he was, decides to not spare anything and simply declare his sentiments to his reader:

There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.  (4).

These four points perfectly sum up my own position for why I believe religion is a dangerous institution.  You’ll note B—-, that I said religion and not god.  I’ve told you before B—– that the reason I don’t believe in god is not because of religion but from my own observations of reality.  Because there is no empirical evidence for the existence of a divine being I cannot in good conscience profess belief or even pretend to believe in one.  Likewise talking about the possibilities of such a being, or philosophy about that being’s intentions, from my perspective, is absurd.

It doesn’t matter the extent of god’s power because until there’s evidence for god’s existence there’s no point asking such questions.  To put it another way, it’s useless arguing how many angle could fit on the head of a pin, or what is the molecular make-up of a unicorn’s horn.  Neither have any solid proof of their existence so there’s no point having the conversation.

I take that back.  Unicorns exist.  They’re called Rhinos and they’re awesome.

This quote is vital however because it lays the foundation for everything that’s going to follow in Hitchens’s book.  He lays out his ideas in the form of a thesis and statement of belief so that the reader can determine what is his ultimate position.  Religion, and by extension god, are pollutants because they distract human beings from reality.  They make man the focal point, the prime locus of the entirety of creation, and that allows human beings the opportunity to perform vile actions because they are the chosen creation.  And, of course, this spawns dickish behavior ranging from murder, torture, rape, pedophilia, genocide, and wearing sandals with socks. (#Never Forget #Never Forgive).

I know the objection B—–, and I’m getting rather tired of it to be honest, but I’ll indulge it in the spirit of fairness.  The charge, by the casual believer, is that atheism is a religion too.  That atheists turn their godlessness into a kind of faith and that this in turn makes them just as much of self-centered assholes as religious people.

And you know, my problem B—–, is that most public atheists don’t really help me much here.  Bill Maher regularly turns his atheism into a merit badge, Richard Dawkins actually has little merit badge pins that are large red “A’s,” and David Silverman has tried to establish an atheist television channel, and Sam Harris is the textbook definition of a giant douche-bag.  The real problem is that most of the men I’ve just cited aren’t in fact atheists, but really more of anti-theists.  And even Old-Hitch himself fell into this category.

If I can save the man though, at least a little in your eyes, let me offer the second most important quote from this chapter:

And here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.  We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Steen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning “punctuated evolution” and the unfilled gaps in the post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication.  (5).

In short B—– it goes back to a point I’ve made before in these letters.  Atheism, by it’s very definition, cannot be a religion.  It can most certainly be called an “ism,” and therefore should be looked on with skepticism.  But anyone who would argue that a lifestyle and philosophy can emerge from this position is fooling themselves.  Atheism is simply, or at least the way I’ve executed it in my lifetime, an absence of belief and faith in god.  That’s it.

I place whatever “faith” I have in this life, not with a god, but with facts, knowledge, data, and information.  I trust these because they are not determinant purely upon faith, but by real material reality.  A fact is determined by the collection of humanity observing the same phenomena and recording it, doubting it, testing it, and finally resolving it into reality.  That’s the way knowledge is produced, coallated, and recorded for posterity.

I live my life now in the absence of god and there’s a lovely freedom to it that I’ll explore in later letters.  I just wanted to start here B—– with an understanding of what Hitchens believes atheism is and how he’ll go about arguing it, and whether or not I agree with his points.  I agree that Hitch can be abrasive, and there are certain elements of the text that I disagree with, but the quotes I’ve provided here  are used because they seem to perfectly reflect my position.  They did when I was a nineteen year old kid who had known nothing but the church, and spent most of his time reading with a heavy lump in his chest and crying while turning the pages.  It felt like I had finally found the voice I had been waiting for.  The person who had made the exact arguments I had been making in my head for years.

Which leads me to the final argument in this letter.  There’s a temptation to make the lack of belief and faith into some kind of dramatic affair.  It shouldn’t be.  And that’s the point.  Belief in the foundation of reality is difficult B—–, obviously, and unfortunately the arguments surrounding it have become wrapped up in emotion, politics, and power structures, so much so that, when a man decides to write a book criticizing religion he has to start the book by predicting a pushback.  I don’t ever want our letters to be as such, because I know you are a believer.  And so let’s hope in this correspondence for further dialogue rather than mutual excommunication.

Besides, even if we disagree about god we can both agree Gal Gadot’s going to be the best part of the new Wonder Woman and Justice League movie.  As if there was any doubt of that.

It may be a while till my next letter, but keep writing, I enjoy your responses.

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

 

 

P.S.

A while ago Cracked.com got into a bit of trouble because they posted an article about the way atheists communicate in public and why their methods were flawed.  This, to no one’s real surprise, created a bit of a tizzy by atheists themselves who proceeded to shit all over Cracked.  I haven’t gotten a chance to read it myself, but whenever people are offended or bothered by a piece of writing I immediately pick it up and read it because people always get upset for the wrong reasons.  Plus, discourse is important.  Enjoy:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-atheist-community-hurting-itself/

 

P.P.S.

I’ve also attached a link to a newspaper article from my alma matter UT Tyler.  A friend of mine was writing a piece about religion and college students and he wanted to get some of my insight about being an atheist.  It is, as far as I know, the only time my name has appeared in newsprint.  The article ends on a positive note about faith, which is rather annoying, but it’s still a well written article.  If you’re at all interested B—–, simply follow the link below.

http://www.patriottalon.com/pulse/college-a-transitioning-time-for-many-religious-students/article_e3411564-e7a7-11e4-b913-dfe2cfd828e9.html

 

P.P.P.S.

I don’t really have anything to add here B—–, I just wanted to gush about the fact that Gal Gadot is playing Wonder Woman again.  I’m not obsessed, I promise, there’s just something….something….

Well shit I can’t remember.  What ridiculous fool I am.  At least I’m cute.

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Between Pages We Find Bodies of Discourse Electric

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Action from Principle, Thoreau Says Fight the Power!

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No, his mind is not for rent

To any God or government

Always hopeful yet discontent

He knows changes aren’t permanent

–Tom Sawyer, RUSH

 

Fight the Power!

–Fight the power, Public Enemy

 

I’m determined to prove in some form or capacity that the band Rage Against the Machine, was on some level influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and that the song Killing in the Name is actually a call to abrasive Civil Disobedience.  It’s a hard sell, but I think I can make it, if not in this essay then perhaps at a later date.  Just to push this idea a little further, I think if you could convince Tom Morello to produce it, you might be able to do a fascinating remix of the entire collected works, with bits of Thoreau’s writings and letters dispersed throughout the songs, but after looking back over my proposition I think I’ll just have to stick with noting the man’s influence on Transcendentalism and Dr. Martin Luther King.

In my own mind Henry David Thoreau as a philosopher and social activist is not nearly praised enough, though I admit as a writer he can sometimes be unbearable.  Some would argue with me about his strength in terms of prose and content, and I would completely agree with them.  The problem I’ve always had with the man is that his passion is buried beneath his craft, his ethos, and his theses.  It’s not that the man can’t write, he’s a damn good writer, it’s just that it took multiple readings of his work before I began to see he was a great mind of his generation.

Like many people in the United States my first encounter with Thoreau was the essay, and actual speech, Civil Disobedience.  The transcendentalist exposure in American education usually boils down to Because I Could not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson, maybe The American Scholar by Emerson, a few passages from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, and then depending on the teacher the student will probably receive either a bit of Frederick Douglass or Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  Granted all of these do tend exemplify the best parts of the period but each of these writers produced a significant amount of work, but semesters tend to be small and grade school is more about wrangling students than educating them sometimes.  I read Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience in High School, forgetting it and Thoreau almost immediately holding only his tenuous bond to Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Nelson Mandela.  The idea of peaceful protest was an idea, not a fascinating philosophy by a strange man I would eventually come to respect as a writer and thinker.

In the last three months I’ve taken to listening to Great Courses Audio lectures while I drive rather than my music CDs.  The reason for this is that I don’t own an iPod, but also because I find I’m less stressed or annoyed during traffic.  If I’m stuck behind an eighteen wheeler while Sulfur or Pulse of the Maggots is on I tend to become aggravated rather quickly and driving feels like a waste of time.  Having a PhD explain Nietzsche or Dickinson to me while I wait four cars from the light actually keeps me calm and focused on the drive.  I finished No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life, and in the vacuum of space I did return briefly to my metal records, and like old friends they refreshed and nourished my spirt, but I missed the learning and so I went to Amazon and bought up the cheapest one I could get.  While I was listening to Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement, the lecturer Ashton Nichols eventually brought up Civil Disobedience and its Transcendentalist ethos in a way that I had never actually observed in the speech before.  I processed the lecture and sat down to read the essay again finding a new spirit and energy in Thoreau I hadn’t before.

Civil Disobedience begins with a quote by Reagan:

I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.  (125).

That part about Reagan was a joke, but it should be noted that Regan took the time to actually express this sentiment in his first inaugural address.  What it’s important to note in this first line is not that Thoreau is bashing the government, though that it the main focus of the speech, in fact his central goal is to reassert in the mind of his reader the idea that they possess an individual will, and this will constitutes far more than any government could possibly aspire to.  If one goes on to a later passage this idea of the individual becomes more and more distinct.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.  They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, possee comitatus, etc.  In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement if the moral sense; but they put themselves on a label with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.  Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.  They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.  (127).

The only thing missing from this description is a plump Marlon Brando reading The Hollow Men and Dennis Hopper giggling in the background.

Civil Disobedience is a work that has endured but in hindsight I notice that my education concerning the speech was lacking in certain nuances.  For a start I was never taught that the speech came about because of Thoreau’s fierce abolition.  Reading the speech there is a note that is easy to miss if one isn’t looking for it:

Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.  (125).

A war with Mexico may not seem terribly important, although given contemporary politics it may not be that far away given certain politicians seeking office, but the United States at this time was feeling more and more the growing certainty that war was on the horizon.  As there was more push westward into the territories of the United States tension emerged because once enough citizens were in a territory the populace could vote on statehood, and along with statehood came the decision about whether or not to declare the new state a slave-state.  This would have massive implications concerning government because already the United States Congress was becoming a battle ground, in one case quite literally, between pro-slavery and abolition senators and representatives.  The state of Kansas alone became a clusterfuck between pro-slavery and abolitionist people scrambling to acquire more power in the new territory, and Thoreau, like a fair amount during his time period, saw the war as nothing more than an attempt to create another slave territory for Texas which was a new acquisition to the union only three years earlier.

The speech was in fact originally titled Resistance to Civil Government, and was spoken around the time after Thoreau had spent his two years at Walden pond.  This latter fact is also significant because that period profoundly altered Thoreau, particularly in his approach to Transcendentalism as well as his own spirituality.

If the reader should observe the “Sucking the Marrow” passage from Walden they might be able to observe more than just a pretty gathering of words that girls name Crystal tattoo on their abdomen.  They might in fact observe a man possessed by a kind of profound passion:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meaness to the world; or, if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.  (88).

Most quotes from this passage that I find online tend to end on the phrase “lowest terms,” and this is unfortunate because it stops the reader from recognizing that passion alone isn’t important.  The way other people can become inspired by such a feeling is by reading someone else’s account and trying for themselves.  Bbut this passage assumes a pressing significance because the two years that Thoreau spent in the wildness permanently changed him.  Finding inspiration in books like The Bhagavad Gita, the Walden Experiment was more than just a chance to escape from society and chill in the woods, the work was an effort to find his self and then, in a way, distance himself from it in order to achieve a kind of spiritual enlightenment.  This background is important when looking at Civil Disobedience, because often the speech is taught simply as a blue print for political activism.

Politics is most certainly the focus of the speech, but Thoreau as a creative and political being was so much more than simple politics, and this is found in the title Transcendentalism.  It is to transcend the normal being and recognize a new state.  It’s not enough to simply live life as an individual, if one is to even transcend the normal state one must “suck out all the marrow of life” in order to attain directly the source of all life.

My contester may object then, how exactly does any of that philosophy possess any relevance to an essay about abolitionism?  By the sounds of it Civil Disobedience is just an esoteric gas bag of a speech.

This is a fair point, but only because I haven’t gotten to the man’s demonstration of this fact.  Thoreau explains in his speech the reason for the night he spent in jail:

I have paid no poll-tax for six years.  I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light I could not help being stuck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.  […]  I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.  I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.  (137).

I’m tempted at this point to quote the old poem “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage” but it seems too easy.  Then again I’ve already bothered to type it out so I might as well use what I’ve got.  This passage is where Thoreau appears the victorious hero, the little citizen who stood up to his big bad government, but alas I’m a realist more than an idealist and it’s important to note that Thoreau only spent one night in jail because his aunt supposedly bailed his ass out of jail.  After hearing this I briefly imagine Thoreau shouting “thug life” before his aunt pops him upside the head, but this fact is an important point that, while it somewhat lessens the man’s political integrity, does not necessarily destroy his philosophical point.

Just a few pages before this, before even his famous quote concerning “a majority of one,” there’s a brief passage that illuminates, what I believe anyway, constitutes a real substantial argument for what Civil Disobedience is at its core.  He writes:

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essential revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was.  It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.  (132).

The last two years seem to be one of near constant political upheaval (though as I write that I’m sure every political writer in history has written that sentiment at some point in their careers so that might not mean much), and because of this certain conversation between family and friends are now largely off limits.  To wit, I will never discuss Black Lives Matter with friends or family, nor will I discuss Political Correctness unless I am inebriated or held under threat of torture.  The reason for this conclusion is that, as Facebook and individual opinion has become increasingly political I’ve observed a desire or impulse to escalate my rhetoric, but likewise I’ve observed that I do not possess the rhetorical ability in conversation to explain my individual position on certain issues.

That’s all a fancy-pants way of saying that when friends or family share a meme that has glaring factual errors I don’t know how to respond quickly enough, or else I haven’t memorized the facts of individuals cases to eloquently explain that Barack Obama is not responsible for hurricanes made out of sharks.

Politics doesn’t often accompany the word philosophy, because philosophy is largely a dirty word.  Philosophy is discussing whether or not we’re all brains in jars being fed electrical impulses, and so many people look at it as if it possesses no real world value, but this is a conflict because politics embodies philosophy in almost every level.  Action from Principle is a philosophic concept, for not only does it assert that the world’s real, it argues that human beings are real and that by exercising their individual morals and ethics they possess a spirit which can alter the reality around them permanently.  This can be as simple as unfollowing Grandma Josie on Facebook, or as complex as leading a civil rights campaign for African Americans.

Perhaps the best example of this is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Civil Disobedience is almost always taught in relation to King, Gandhi, and sometimes even Nelson Mandela.  The reason for this is that all of these men advocated and implemented non-violent political protest in their movements, and history and time have tended to validate them for this effort (granted Gandhi had one or two questionable actions with young women and Mandela’s personal life is a bit of clusterfuck, but that doesn’t negate the ideology and results of their movement).  King himself actually read Thoreau and used the idea of Civil Disobedience in his lectures, speeches, sermons, and also his actual political actions and organizations.  This appreciation becomes especially clear in his essay Letter from Birmingham Jail.

While protesting in Birmingham, King was arrested and the Letter serves as his testimony, much as Civil Disobedience did, to demonstrate that being locked away did nothing to affect his resolve.  From here I could point out the parallels between the details of his work and Thoreau, but truly I wanted to instead focus on King’s demonstration of Action from Principle.  King addresses in his essay the obvious and violent racism that he and many African Americans have faced, and while he addresses that concern he notes that there is a larger more nuanced issue and that is concerning political apathy:

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.  (282).

Many contemporary movements suffer from what is known as “Facebook activism,” and while there are touching stories about real political change coming about because a group of people made a push of social media, in real life I find myself rather deflated by my own lack of affairs.  I’m part of several sex education groups of Facebook but I rarely get around to actually reading many of the comments or essays people post, likewise I support at least two local LGBTQ Facebook groups, and while there are often invitations to parties, meetings, or events, I’ve gone to only one pride parade in the last year.

The real fact is that I’m a slave to comfort.  I would much prefer to simply sit on my back porch in my rocker and reads my stacks of books before cooking dinner and then spending most of the evening writing.  I’m not alone in this way, for almost every human being suffers from this impulse in some form or capacity.  Once we’ve acquired our cave we like to sit in it, and as King points out the problem of individuals trying to enact change is that people don’t like to be annoyed, which is why Civil Disobedience works so terribly well.  When movements disrupt the rhythms of life, they affect reality in profound ways.

And so King observes the conflict facing his own movement:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride towards freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Kulx Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternistcally feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advised the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”  (286)

Nothing will erase the images of police officers sicking German shepherds on demonstrators or beating them with clubs, and while this pernicious behavior has been, and should continue to be condemned, it’s important to note the philosophical implications of telling people to “wait” for change.  Beneath this suggestion is a command, because as long as people are “waiting” they’re not doing anything to change their world.  Whites who, while they didn’t violently react to civil protesters, told blacks to simply “wait” until the system was better for them may not seem as bad as the big bad police force in Birmingham, but that call to wait was just as pernicious.  In effect telling someone to “wait” is telling them to negate their Action from Principle, which is, ultimately, what makes them an individual and by extension a human being in the first place.

Waiting is as much an action as acting, the only difference is that change can only come about by acting.

Action from Principle is more than just a pretty combination of words (say it out loud and you’ll agree, it’s a lot like the words Grackle or Flamingo, it’s just fun to say) is the stamp of civic religion.  Regardless of nationality, democracy, race, ethnicity, history, or political affiliation, when the individual acts from a position of principle it’s not just an issue of acquiring civil liberties and that’s where many readers of Thoreau’s now canonical speech tend to fall flat.  Reading Civil Disobedience simply as a blue print for acquiring political rights diminishes the real beauty of the text, for while Thoreau is advocating a contemporary and timeless political structure, the man is in fact demonstrating that political activism can serve as a kind of philosophy of the self.  As an individual I have to believe in my world, myself, and my integrity before I can ever perform any kind of action, and so by participating in Civil Disobedience I am not just trying to get a law passed, I am in effect transcending my individual being to engage and face the large forces of government and society that are attempting to corrupt that self.

Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience continues to impact human society not only because it provides an important lesson about enacting political change, but because it also echoes in the deep of the human soul that action is what makes men and women who and what they are.

Am I the man I want to be?  If not, how many Rage Against the Machine Albums do I have to buy before I have a satisfying sense of self.

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

I’ve included a link to video that shows the marchers of what is known in the United States History as “Bloody Sunday.”  It was a civil rights march that was stopped by Alabama police who beat marchers on television.  This moment, alongside the police brutality of Birmingham, is important because the video of said brutality helped begin to change many Americans attitudes to Civil Rights because they could actually see it and be confronted by it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7vrrYVyN3g

 

**Writer’s Note**

I didn’t mention it in the essay but in case the reader didn’t know or was curious, a Poll-Tax is a tax usually based on Census data, a.k.a. population figures taken by the government.  Thoreau didn’t pay his for six years and so he was arrested and spent the night in jail.

 

***Writer’s Note***

You might have observed that one image of the three girls in bikinis while you were reading about philosophy and political action.  The internet is an odd, strange, and even dark place at times, but often my experience with it is one of constant puzzlement for the objects, images, and goods sold and advertised in such close proximity.  I was searching for images of Civil Disobedience in relation to Henry David Thoreau and the image popped up.

I’ll show it again.

No real explanation for this, and as far as I can tell it’s not connected to any Thoreau porn themed websites, nevertheless I couldn’t resist.  How often do you get the statement Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience and three women in Bikinis.  And you thought literature was dull.

 

****Writer’s Note****

All Quotes from Civil Disobedience came from The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau edited by Lewis Hyde.  All passages from Walden came from the Yale University Press edition edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer

 

a letter from a young atheist: Preacher, Preacher, can’t you see?

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Abscence of god, Anti-theism, artistic integrity, Atheism, Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Black Humor, Black Sabbath, Blasphemy, Blasphemy for the Sake of Blasphemy, Book Review, Catch-22, Disasterpeice, Ego, Garth Ennis, graphic novel, Heavy Metal, Individual Will, John Wayne, Judith, Left Behind, letter, Lex Luthor, Margot Robbie, mortality, Narcissism, Negative Review, People = Shit, Philosophy, Preacher, Pulsifer, Punk Rock Jesus, religion, Shock Rock, Shock Value, Slipknot, Steve Dillon, Texas

You’re such an inspiration for the ways,

That I’ll never ever choose to be,

Oh so many ways for me to show you,

How the savior has abandoned you, Fuck your God!

–Judith,Pulsifer

 

Dear B——,

Blasphemy is a bit of an acquired taste, and it’s a lot like salt: in small doses it can bring flavor, in large doses it just leaves you dry and wanting desperately for water as you gag on it.  For the record that last bit is actually true.  I once emptied half a salt shaker on an egg roll when I was around five and after biting into it I went into a shock before trying to rub the salt off my tongue on the sleeve of my mother’s dress.  It’s not a terribly fond memory since we were in a group and most of the other people in attendance got a little chuckle at my expense, but the visual metaphor I think retains its poignancy as I decided I would write to you about the graphic novel Preacher by Garth Ennis.

Before I continue B—- I just wanted to make sure that you and Charlie are okay.  In your previous letter you sounded like you and Charlie were having some problems.  Now it is my first philosophy in life to stay out of other people’s relationships; people who offer advice freely about how to handle other people’s relationship problems are suspect to me and tend to be emotional leeches.  If you ever want to talk about it know that I’m here and that I’m a listener first when it comes to people’s problems.  Far too many people don’t realize that, when it comes to shit like that, all you really need to be is a listener.

Getting back to Preacher though, I recommended it to you because the last graphic novel we discussed was Punk Rock Jesus.  To be honest with you I feel that that book succeeds far better than Preacher in terms of understanding and exploring the complexity of the theology and philosophy of Christianity in society.  Whereas that book had a point to make about the mixing of capitalism and religion, Preacher seems, for the most part, to be blasphemy for the sake of blasphemy.

Since you told me you haven’t read it I’ll give you a brief synopsis of the plot.  A minister by the name of Jesse Custer is giving a sermon in his church the day after a drunken outburst at the bar and in the middle of the service a being of color and light bursts through the window, occupies Jeese’s body, and creates an explosion that kills everyone in the church.  The creature is called “Genesis” and it’s revealed later that it is the love child conceived when an angel from heaven and a demon from hell fell in love and made love.  Genesis gives Jesse the “power of god,” allowing him to command people to perform actions against their own freewill.  While he’s wandering he runs into a vampire named Cassidy and a woman named Tulip.  The first volume follows Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy through the first part as they make their way to New York City to figure out what Genesis is, in the second half Jesse and Tulip are captured by Jesse’s grandmother and her servants.  Jesse’s past is revealed as the reader observes that Jesse was raised in an emotionally, physically, and psychologically abusive household which is putting it mildly.  Jesse watches his grandmother’s servants shoot his father in the head, shoot his best friend, drag his mother away, and he himself is placed in a coffin which is sunk into a river and left there for weeks at a time.  All the while Jesse is searching for god because, as it’s revealed in the book, god has abandoned his position in heaven and Jesse wants to know why.

Just describing the plot, I recognize that it sounds outlandish or crazy, but so is the plot of Catch-22 and that book is not only required reading but also one of the most influential books in the American literary canon.  Preacher is unlikely to ever attain such status for like I said above Blasphemy for the sake of blasphemy is like too much salt, and at times Preacher is like taking a deep swallow of it.

Now to be fair be I’m not immune to this impulse.  While I detest anti-theism there is at times an impulse to roll my eyes and make easy pot-shots at religion when my Christian friends wax philosophical about their faith and their beliefs.  There is the impulse when, after a friend has explained why they believe in god and the afterlife and heaven and why they’re happy with the life they’ve chosen I do wish sometimes that I could yell:

“It’s a bunch of self-absorbing bullshit.  You believe in god because you still buy into the idea that the universe gives a shit about you, and the outdated geocentric, human centered reality that man is the center of ALL creation.  If you weren’t such a narcissist you might be able to get your head out of your ass and realize that human life, when set against the enormity of creation, basically amounts to the dick lint of infinity and no amount of ancient texts are going to change that.”

I would like to say that sometimes, but what holds me back is the fact that responding like that only clouds up the discourse with nasty rhetoric and I would come across as self-righteous and, even worse, “the typical all-knowing egomaniacal atheist.”  I distrust the impulse to say these words B——, because they feel too cathartic.  There’s nothing wrong with releasing emotion from time to time, but in conversations, especially philosophical ones, emotions should be contained as much as possible lest you dissolve the conversation into pathos and ad hominem attacks.  What matters most in discussing whether or not god exists is not the arguments themselves but the way people express the arguments.

Looking at Preacher then there is a real problem because Garth Ennis doesn’t try to make a fair conversation about theism, he’s just pushing religious buttons hoping somebody somewhere will crack and try to yell at him.  It’s shock value, and the problem with shock value is, over time, people become inured to it, and when they become inured they become bored.  The reason why Marilyn Manson isn’t shocking anymore, the reason while Alice Cooper is a cartoon character, the reason why Black Sabbath now has fans that span at least three generations is that people eventually stop being shocked.  I would argue though that the difference between Marilyn Mansion, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, and Garth Ennis is that the previous three actually make art that’s worth your time.

Also for the record B—— you should totally look up IOWA by Slipknot.  It’s their Death Metal record so it’s going to be intense, but if you can survive through it you’ll love Slipknot till the day you die.  People = Shit and Disasterpeice and Left Behind.  Listen to those first.

Ennis’s book abounds with scene after scene of horrible people doing horrible things in the name of god or divine will and by the end if becomes difficult to find any sympathetic figure.  By the end I did find myself liking the character of Jesse, but not because he was a good person, but because he was able to survive a living hell and find faith, not in god per say, but in himself.  At this point though B—-, I imagine that I can predict your question.

The answer is yes Margot Robbie was a great Harley Quinn, and those lame critics on Rotten Tomatoes be damned, I fucking loved Suicide Squad.  Definitely see it, if only to make fun of Charlie when Margot Robbie’s bodacious bootie wiggles around in those ridiculous hotpants.  Seriously after leaving the film even my sister said they should have called the film “Margot Robbie’s Bodacious Ass Wiggles in Hot Pants…The Movie.”

The answer to your second question B——, is how exactly does one find any kind of redeemable reason to read a book like Preacher?  This is a conflict because I don’t at first glance have an answer besides the fact that it is legitimately entertaining and does offer some opportunity for reflection about faith and blasphemy.  For myself B——, the point of reading Preacher is about four pages in the book that allow the reader to be both shocked and reflective about the nature of faith.

Tulip is shot in the head in front of Jesse and is brought back to life by god who asks only that she have faith.  She refuses, and reading this passage I think about my own position.

Here’s the point B—–.  Even if god exists I would not have faith.  Some people are able to balance the idea of a god with the “problem of evil,” but I cannot for that doesn’t absolve a creator.  The reason I’m an atheist is because I do not recognize any empirical evidence for the existence of a divine being or creator, and even if there was, all that would change is my belief that god exists.  My high school biology teacher, still one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, once held a religious conversation with some of his students.  Dr. Bradford held a doctorate in biology but also had a Master’s in theology and so he asked them “What is faith?”  a few of them began their arguments with “the belief in god,” but he would interrupt them with a solid “no” and finally they got frustrated and asked him what faith was.  His response has never left me: “faith is trust.  You trust in god.  Even if you believe in god that doesn’t mean you trust him.”  This to me is and always shall be everything.  Even if god exists, and proof appears to validate this possible fact, I cannot in good conscience trust this god.

Some might say that this is unfair or me, or claim that I simply cannot see the bigger picture.  This may be true, but neither do my contesters.  Like me they are limited by their humanity, their faults and bias, and so when they come to me speaking about the infinite wisdom of the creator and his unfailing love for them all I can do is roll my eyes.  It’s not out of condescension, it’s more out of the recognition of cognitive dissonance.  Man wants his god to be above him, to possess more wisdom than himself, but the opposite is true.  Men make god after their own image and I have to fall back upon Lex Luthor for this in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice:

Lex Luthor: The problem of you on top of everything else. You above all. Ah. ‘Cause that’s what God is. Horus. Apollo. Jehovah. Kal-El. Clark Joseph Kent. See. What we call God depends upon our tribe, Clark Jo. Because God is tribal. God take sides. No man in the sky intervened when I was a boy to deliver me from Daddy’s fist and abominations. Mm mm. I’ve figured it out way back, if God is all powerful, he cannot be all good. And if he’s all good then he cannot be all powerful. And neither can you be. They need to see the fraud you are. With their eyes. The blood on your hands.

The moment I referred to earlier in Preacher when god himself has appeared bathed in divine light after bringing Tulip back to light and he begs her to beseech Jesse to give him his trust and Tulips response is incredible, for it’s the exact same response I’ve had to the notion of god in my own life:

Growing up in the environment I did I desperately wanted to say, actually scream out often to god to “cut the shit.”  In fairness, due mostly to retrospect, my problem was not with god but with Christians themselves.  It was always a sell, it was always a dogma, it was always the call to blindly follow and wholly trust, and the problem was often that thus trust involved some sacrifice of my principles because “trust” meant bashing gay people, voting republican, being prejudiced against Mexicans and blacks (though this was always hinted at or suggested without ever being outright spoken, you know “those people”), and burning copies of Harry Potter.

That last one’s important because you don’t fuck with Harry Potter.  Period.

If Preacher achieves any kind of artistic statement, it’s in these two pages because it affords a new reality for readers and individual thinkers.  I know this may sound like pathos B——, but reading does open up new worlds and often times I feel like I’m living in a different world now that I don’t believe or trust in god.  This doesn’t always make life easy, in fact sometimes it makes it far more difficult.  My life has become painfully shorter for the benefit of an afterlife is gone, but this only places me in a position in which I have to “cut the shit” and really recognize my problems because there isn’t someone looking out for me.  What I do with my time isn’t just a sentence, it’s a real reality.  Living without god, or faith in god, is stepping out of narcissism because it reduces the ego.  Once mankind steps away from god they step out of the center of all creation, and while life in this new space isn’t always pleasant, as Preacher clearly demonstrates, it does make you see the world in a new way.

Reading Preacher is not easy if you are easily offended or unused to having your religious or moral convictions challenged.  It’s important to remember that challenges are different than outright assault, and being fair to the book, Preacher is a book designed to push buttons far more than it is about challenging the reader.  Ennis’s book is about showing all the negative sides to Christianity, while also squeezing in some blasphemy for fun, and the problem with this is that it doesn’t really encourage reflection or growth.  Reading this book becomes an exercise in “allright what blasphemous shit is he gonna write next?”  The three pages cited earlier though do redeem the book B——, at least so far as to ask yourself: if there was a god, would you trust him?

You know where I stand.

Blasphemy for the sake of blasphemy becomes tiresome and repugnant, because long after the shock of blasphemy is over there’s precious little, if any, art worth mentioning.  The conflict then is that if an artist doesn’t have anything better to do than shock his reader, then he really hasn’t produced anything worth reading.  But at least there’s the spirit of John Wayne reminding Jesse to be strong, so it ain’t all bad.

 

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

 

 

P.S.

You may have noted that I sound a little bitter.  I can assure you that only appears when I listen to poor arguments, or spot a Joel Olsteen book in a pile of “Local Favorites” at Barnes & Noble.  It’s not that I’m a bitter man, I just can’t stand Joel Olstean.  And to be fair is there any thinking person who doesn’t?

 

P.P.S.

Waited till the end for this.  I loved Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn but I hated those hot pants and those heels.  Harley Quinn is a gymnast and she’s expected to do all those crazy stunts in heels?  Bullshit.  I’ve tried running in boots with a one-inch heel and I damned near fell and busted my ass, and Harley Quinn is supposed to be able to flips and kicks in stiletto heels?  I’m willing to suspend my disbelief in super hero films only so far.

Now as for the hot pants I have to say…say…

Never mind.

A Letter From a Young Existentialist: New Starts and Sartre’s Atheism

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"God is Dead", Atheism, Basic Writings of Existentialism, Bob Dylan, Christianity, Communism, Essay, existentialism, Existentialism and Human Emotions, free will, Great Courses, Individual Will, Jean-Paul Sartre, Kapital, Karl Marx, letter, Literary and Philosophical Essays, Margot Robbie, Marxism, No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life, Philosophy, religion, Robert C. Solomon, Totalitarianism, Wolf of WallStreet

Dear B——-,

I’m am greatly tempted to call myself an existentialist but I’ve never read Kapital by Karl Marx all the way through.  I’ve never read Being and Nothingness either though so perhaps my desire for identity is just egomaniacal.  This is all an overly distracting way of saying I’m thinking about adding another identity to myself alongside atheist, feminist, bisexual, and democrat, but the angry mob that chases me from place to place is already large enough and I don’t think adding angry philosophy professors and Marxists is really the best idea for this stage of life.  Angry mobs are starting to unionize now and I can’t afford to pay for any more benefits, you understand of course.

I’m glad that you found the Nietzsche essay enjoyable, I’m positive that’s the first time that statement’s ever appeared in print, and I’m glad Charlie agrees with me that Margot Robbie is…is…

Ahem.  I was uh…saying something.

I was happy to receive your letter, and in fact it was part of my motivation for beginning a new series of letters that we can share.  If I understood, you correctly from a previous essay you have some questions about Existentialism.  Let me be clear then.  As with the atheist letters I am not placing myself as an authority of Existentialism as a movement for as of this writing I’m still learning the implications, ethos, methodology, and overall idea of the movement along with familiarizing myself with the writers who contributed the most to it.  Like you, and I’m going off of your letter here, I was mostly taught that Existentialism was about meaninglessness of existence and how life was hollow and pointless and we were all going to die and there was no afterlife and so existence was pointless, the end.

Such is the cartoon character that is existentialism but not the reality.  My little sister received the Great Courses audio lecture No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life taught by Robert C. Solomon, and I’m positive that my regular readers are getting sick of hearing his name because I’ve mentioned it in like five to six essays in the last two months.  I keep returning to these lectures however B—– because they’ve had a profound, and I don’t use that word lightly here, impact upon me.  It’s been a lovely experience for me because despite the popular image of Existentialists flipping coins next to dead horses and screaming “why” to the heavens with a clenched fist, the philosophy I’ve been studying is actually positive and life affirming.  The reason I’ve warmed up to Existentialism is because I finally understand what the Philosophy is about and I find a lot of the ideas since with my worldview already.

From this lecture, along with my other readings, I’ve come to the conclusion that Existentialism places responsibility above everything else, upon the individual and the choices they make.

Existentialism can be a bit brusque concerning institutions like Christianity, but the lecturer Robert C. Solomon does an excellent job demonstrating that many of the writings of these philosophers really pushes towards this idea that human life is its own and that people can and should embrace their choices for there is not only their mettle but also their character.  This idea of choice is fascinating, and also validating since I have no choice but to believe in free will.

That’s a philosophy joke in case you missed it.

While the series covered Camus, Kierkegaurd, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, the last philosopher that Dr. Solomon discusses is Jean-Paul Sartre and, it should be noted, Solomon dedicates the last three tapes out of twelve to the man and his work.  This is understandable seeing as how Sartre was essentially the champion of the Existentialist movement, giving it not only its name but also scores of writings and arguments to support it and, at times, apologize for it.  Sartre as a man and writer is interesting, for not only was he awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature he refused the award becoming one of the first, and possibly only writer, to have done so.  He spent most of his life writing, and it has been said that he supposedly wrote 20 pages of text a day, and when you remember that he wrote literature, philosophy, newspaper articles, magazine articles this becomes understandable but also incredibly incredible.

It also reminds that I really need to stop getting distracted while I write.  I mean I start a review of a biography about Jim Henson or a sermon by Johnathan Edwards, and half an hour later I find myself drooling onto my keyboard while Google has pulled up somewhere around 100-200 pictures of Margot Robbie, and those are just the Harley Quinn Suicide Squad photos. 

Solomon’s lecture wasn’t my first encounter with Sartre however.  I stumbled across Sartre originally when my wife and I moved into her parents’ garage in a small apartment that had shower and A/C.  Along with that was a filing cabinet filled with many of my mother-in-law’s books ranging from The Annals of Imperial Rome to Leaves of Grass to a small yellowed book titled Literary and Philosophical Essays.  This was my first taste of Sartre, and while I recognized his talents I was pushed that summer towards Camus’s The Stranger instead and so Sartre went back on the bookshelf.  It wasn’t until a few weeks back when my friend Christie mentioned that she and her girlfriend were moving and needed to get rid of some books…and honestly I can’t remember what happened next because I heard the word books and I began to growl and beat my chest making a “hungry” gesture.  In the pile was a Modern Library copy titled Basic Writings of Existentialism, and opening the book I spotted the name Sartre again and turned to a passage simply titled Existentialism.

The essay was in fact an excerpt from one of Sartre’s longer works, Existentialism and Human Emotions, and was nothing but an apology, in the more historical sense, for the school of thought.  From the beginning he makes his intention and concern clear:

First, it has been charged with inviting people to remain in a kind of desperate quietism because since no solutions are possible, we should have to consider action in this world as quite impossible.  We should then end up in a philosophy of contemplation; and since contemplation is a luxury, we come in the end to a bourgeois philosophy.  The communists in particular have made these charges.  (341).

Sartre is working against a multi-fold front, and not just that dude in your history class who laughs when you tell him you’re majoring in philosophy.  That ass-clown aside, Sartre is in a position where he has to defend his philosophical movement from those who either misunderstand his argument, or else his harshest critics which in this moment happen to be the Marxists.  From afar it’s easy to understand why someone would look upon Existentialism with its calls to the freedom of the individual and the vital necessary role it places upon the idea of choice, as an elitist philosophy.  If you’re working three jobs just to make ends meet, if you have four or five kids to take care of, if you tend to a sick parents or spouse your time is being constantly spent managing and satisfying the needs of others and so contemplation really isn’t a concrete reality.  The people who have “time” tend to be rich people and so communists, who tend to despise rich people, would look upon a philosophy that seems to be nothing but air-headed contemplation with contempt.

Sartre however is calling bullshit on this and continuing. By addressing the criticism of his second set of critics, Christians.  Once he has he makes the following claim:

In any case, what can be said from the very beginning is that by existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in addition, declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting and a human subjectivity.  (343).

On the next page follows this with:

Can it be that what really scares them in the doctrine I shall try to present here is that it leaves to man a possibility of choice?  To answer this question, we must re-examine it on a strictly philosophical plane.  What is meant by the term existentialism?  (343).

Before I get to that I should probably answer the immediate question put forth by my seasoned contester B——-: who the hell cares?  It’s philosophy.  It’s a bunch of bullshit that doesn’t really matter except to a few hipsters who listen to Dylan on Vinyl, smoke a hookah, and complain that Camus is so yesterday man.

First of all, kudos to my contester for finally nailing hipsters who smoke hookahs.  Seriously puffing one of those is apparently worse than smoking cigarettes yet for some reason people do it.  Second, unfortunately you’re wrong, both about philosophy and Dylan on Vinyl.  Dylan is sick on Vinyl, and philosophy has more relevance to human existence than most people really recognize.  Existentialism is not about Metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the nature of reality.  Existentialism relies on the fact that there is a reality and that human beings occupy space within it.  From there the life of man is about choices, but a second philosophic concern needs to be addressed.

Jean-Paul Sartre was an atheist, and apart from the Marxists who criticize the philosophy, Sartre spends a fair amount of the essay addressing the concerns of Christians who argue that Existentialism is inherently atheistic.  Sartre doesn’t attempt to defend those existentialists who may be Christian, however it important to note B——– that Sartre does try to make sure that Existentialism is not declared nihilism.

In one passage he notes:

The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would like to abolish God with the least possible expense.  About 1880, some French teachers tried to set up a secular ethics which went something like this: God is useless and costly hypothesis; we are discarding it; but, meanwhile, in order for there to be an ethics, a society, a civilization, it is essential that certain values be taken seriously and that they be considered as having a priori existence.

[…]

The existentialist, on the contrary, think is it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can be no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.  Nowhere is it written that good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men.  Dostoievsky[sic] said, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.” That is the very starting point of existentialism.  Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.  He can’t start making excuses for himself.  (349).

The first paragraph bothers me terribly and the second paragraph is painfully familiar.  I’ll address the first part B—–.  I distinctly remember one moment from my Intro to Philosophy class, and not just Dr. Krebs’s Hawaiin shirts and cowboy boots.  We were discussing Ethics and at one point, after I had confessed to the class that I was an atheist, I argued that solipsism was a ridiculous position because it violated the basic principle that you should try to avoid being a dick to people.  I argued that morality, or at least basic virtue towards other human beings was important.  One of the students who I regularly talked to in class immediately asked, “Well what do you care, you’re an atheist.”  This comment leads me to the second paragraph.  When I was struggling with recognizing that I was an atheist my first thought was “if there’s no god then why should I be a good person?”  This idea is not original for the very fact that Dostoyevsky wrote it and he lived at least a hundred years before I did.

Human beings look to god to find morality because god is beyond mortal understanding, as such he is ideal and beyond mortal constraints.  The conflict however is that often the model of god that many Christians worship is not a philosophical god, but a purely benevolent creature that is static and does work well with moral grey area.  As such whenever Christians hear phrases like “God is Dead,” or “You Don’t need god to be moral,” there is usually a violent reaction.  I can attest to this for when I still had my faith I clung to the idea that it because of god that humans, and by extension myself, had to be moral or else all chaos would ensue.  The conflict with this is that it is bullshit and reveals painful weakness.

If the reason human beings are moral is because they believe god exists it says a great deal about their so-called morality.  I do believe however that Sartre makes a mistake arguing that the absence of god is the start of existentialism for there were some existentialists who believe in god.  Despite naysayers Nietzsche believed in some kind of divinity, and Søren Kierkegaard wrote many essays and tracts on Christianity.  Sartre pushes atheism because he himself is an atheist, and anyone who assumes that they cannot be an existentialist and someone who believes in god is simply trying to apply a particular brand of existentialism.

Sartre finishes his essay by addressing the absence of god by pointing out that it really doesn’t matter:

It isn’t trying to plunge man into despair at all.  But if one calls every attitude of unbelief despair, like the Christians, then the word is not being used in its original sense.  Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist.  Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.  There you’ve got our point of view.  Not that we believe God exists, but we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue.  (366-7).

Looking at this B—– I return to the image of the man lying in a ditch beside the dead horse and screaming “why” with clenched fist towards the heavens.  While this letter has focused mostly on Sartre’s atheism in the essay Existentialism, I do want it to serve as a kind of starting point.  Sartre points out that it doesn’t matter ultimately whether or not god exists because it isn’t god that will make an individual person’s life.  Existentialism is first and foremost a philosophy that argues that choices are what makes human beings who they are, and in fact those choices create our reality.  Living in the age that we do Existentialism seems all the more important to consider since our life is made up of choices:

• Do I vote for Hillary or Trump?
• Do I buy eggs this week or should I try yogurt?
• Should I watch the Deadpool or Labyrynth Honest Trailer?
• Should I watch Pound the Alarm or Telephone?
• Should I look for a job today or help my mother move?
• Should I vacuum or have a beer and watch a movie?
• Should I write, or should I do the dishes?
• Should I pick up cat food now or just wait till Sunday?
• Should I read The Hunger Games, or should I read that essay by Sartre that dude on that website wrote about?
• Should I watch CNN or FOX News?
• Should I be at all?

It may seem trivial or cliché from afar B——, but these little choices assume meaning for who we are, and what we make our life.  Sartre’s essay is largely a defense, but it’s also a reminder that free will, or more importantly what we do with free will, is what makes our species unique.  By adopting philosophies like Marxism or Christianity, both institutions that tend to usurp individual will, humans are rejecting the most important facet of their reality.

This is just a start B—-, and I’ll continue to try to answer any and all questions you have, and I’ll continue recommending books and essays for you to read.  Just remember that personal ideologies and philosophies are never static.  They are constantly being updated and altered and changed, and so right now Existentialism is young and flexible.  Just keep writing and we’ll keep talking it out.

As the last part of your letter all I can say is, I told you so.  Girls like it when you do stuff for them and don’t expect anything in return.  For the record it’s kind of sad when you’re the woman I have to be telling you this stuff, but that’s reinforcing bad stereotypes.  As per your second question, yes Margot Robbie is in Wolf of Wallstreet so it’s more than likely your girlfriend wants to watch it so she can see her naked, or else lounging seductively in a couch wearing nothing but her underwear and….and…

Anyway, have fun.  I’m told it’s a good movie, then again it’s Scorsese so how could it not be?  Until next time.

 

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

P.S.

If you were at all interested B—-, I found a blogpost about Sartre refusing the Nobel Prize.  If you’re interested follow the link below:

Jean-Paul Sartre On The Nobel Prize and His Refusal

 

PPS.

I know I’ve mentioned Margot Robbie a lot in this essay B—–, but here’s a bit of a secret, I actually think Kate Micucci is a lot cuter, but then again I’m a sucker for brunette’s with a sharp sense of humor.

 

a letter from a young atheist: can you find the real antichrist?

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"God is Dead", Atheism, Basic Writings of Existentialism, Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Christianity, Essay, existentialism, flowers, Friedrich Nietzsche, Individual Will, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jenna Jameson, Lesbian Porn, letter, Lex Luthor, Margot Robbie, Masturbation, Modernity, Nietzsche is NOT an atheist, Philosophy, religion, religious corruption, The AntiChrist, The Gay Science, The Portable Nietzsche

Dear B——,

To be honest with you, living where I do in this country, I thought that Obama was supposed to be the Anti-Christ, or at least that’s what bumper-stickers tell me.  I suppose it’s a fair mistake to make given the fact that misunderstood Philosophical masterpieces by German Philosophers tend to get filed on the shortlist of required reading in East Texas schools, and Nietzsche himself tends to be blacklisted more than Maya Angelou in this particular territory but only because he doesn’t include enough pictures of Margot Robbie.

I’ll stop trying to be being clever now and actually get to it

It was lovely to receive your letter and I so apologize for not having written for some time.  Ending Graduate School has left me in an odd “limbo” where I have no idea what is next, what to do, or even what to think or read sometimes.  I’ve jumped into philosophy for the most part, specifically existentialism, and while some would immediately say “huh boy” and prepare for the black turtleneck ensembles and Poetry slams with bongos about meaninglessness about existence, I’ve discovered a real purpose and drive in the philosophy.  Life begins to make a little more sense as an existentialist because once you’re able to not worry about god and the afterlife, the choices you make really matter more because they’re all you’ve got.  That’s part of what lead me to Nietzsche.

Before I get into it though I’m glad to hear about you and Charlie.  Moving in together is a big step, and it can be rocky, but trust me once the two of you have your rhythms down it’s actually quite lovely having somebody waiting for you at home.  It just gets frustrating when you’ve had a long day at work, and you come home from heavy traffic and you’re tired and frustrated at Barry from work, and when you drop your shit your partner walks up and says “we need groceries.”  Apart from that, just remember that it’s fun and worth it over the long term.  Also remember to occasionally buy her flowers or her favorite candy for no reason.  It makes her feel loved, and you’ll find that it actually makes you feel like you’ve actually done something really nice.

Now as to Nietzsche what first needs to be resolved is the fact that his book The AntiChrist is not about atheism, and in fact Nietzsche was not an atheist himself.  Many half-assed theologians and priests like to damn the man for his largely misunderstood comment in The Gay Science that “God is Dead.”  By labeling him an atheist though it’s important to recognize that these particular theologians and priests are not only half-assed in their methodology, they’re also bad readers.  Nietzsche doesn’t end the sentence on “dead,” he says “God is dead, and Man has killed him” and this has implications for the reader because it questions what many people, at least people in the United States, are raised to believe.  When Nietzsche wrote this line more contemporary scientific methods and innovations were coming into being, and the notion of Modernity was becoming something relevant and important.  In this atmosphere the Abrahamic god was becoming an anachronism to Nietzsche, yet still Christianity was adapting to it, or really fighting through it, and in this struggle the man found something to detest.

At first glance B——, and by that I mean simply looking at the title, many would assume that The AntiChrist is a book about God and Satan.  In fact, the book is about the institution of Christianity and the modern man, particularly its effect upon him.

After arguing that mankind has not “progressed” in his new age he points to Christianity and says:

Christianity has sided with all that is weak and base, with all failures; it has made an ideal of whatever contradicts in spirit by teaching men to consider the supreme values of the spirit as something sinful, as something that leads into error as temptations.  (571-2).

It may look B—– that I have in fact only confirmed the bias of many steadfast Christians who detest or distrust Friedrich Nietzsche because he is a godless contemptible atheist, but a closer inspection of this thesis and the rest of the book yields a different fact.  It’s impossible to say that The AntiChrist doesn’t criticize Christianity, but it’s important to note that Nietzsche is not criticizing god.  Nietzsche is often listed among the Existentialists, even though the man and his work was more of a precursor to that philosophical movement, and one of the largest misunderstandings of the general public is what Existentialism actually is.  For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to finish an essay about another essay by the French hyper-intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre (that dude who wrote No Exit that weird play you had to read in High School about the three people in hell, and one of them was a lesbian or something).  The essay is literally titled Existentialism, and in it Sartre lays out the ideas of the movement.

Explaining what is the goal of existentialism he says:

Thus, Existentialism’s first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.  And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.  (346).

The latter part of that quote goes into one of Sartre’s idea which is referred to as “being for others” but that’s for another essay.  Sartre, like Camus and Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche, places all of man’s life into his own hands, and that B—- is largely why Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity is seen as atheistic or satanic.  People are missing the fact that he’s attacking the human institution and not the divine.

He demonstrates this clearly in one later passages when he discusses priests:

The priest devalues, desecrates nature: this is the price of his existence.  Disobedience of God, that is, of the priest, of “the Law,” is not called “sin”; the means for “reconciliation with God” are, as is meet, means that merely guarantee still more through submission to the priest: the priest alone “redeems.”

Psychologically considered, “sins” become indispensable in any society organized by priests: they are the real handles of power.  The priest lives on sins, it is essential for him that people “sin.”  Supreme principle: “God forgives those who repent”—in plain language” those who submit to the priest.  (597-8).

I do wonder B—–, whether philosophers were fun to hang out with at parties sometimes, but right now my aim is philosophy and not the bottle (that’s for when I finish this letter).  It’s easy B—-, to mistake Nietzsche’s criticism of priests in this passage as attacks upon the individual members of Christianity.  After all, the priest does serve as either the conduit or else a spiritual guide to the divine, and by attacking the priests as spiritual leeches he implicates individual Christians as falling for the deception.  I can’t in good conscience say though that this is Nietzsche suggesting that mankind doesn’t possess intelligence, but looking to Sartre’s point in Existentialism, there seems to be a more important idea here.

Nietzsche is noting that the modern man, the creature who has founded industry, nations, and scientific advancement it not fashioning a god that should give him strength or inspire new innovation.  Rather the god that exists is either an antique of the infancy of the species that is holding mankind back, or else it is duplicitous lie fashioned by corrupt individuals who derive some kind of pleasure over having power over others.  This isn’t an unfounded idea because in my youth I struggled with the concept of sin, and I know this being rather personal B—-, but my sin was masturbation.

As I wrote in recent essay I eventually discovered pornography when I was a young teenager, and while my parents had taught me about honestly and freely about sex ever since I was a kid, I have no real explanation for the religious struggle I experienced at first watching this.  Like many young men I became fascinated/horrified by “lesbian porn” (which really isn’t an honest presentation of lesbianism since most of the women in those videos are perfectly willing to sleep with men too).  The thought that two women, and by implication two men, could be attracted to each other sexually was something that my mind, and my environment at school, taught me was a sin, yet despite this it was a core sexual fantasy that I engaged in.  Masturbation should have been something fun and enjoyable, but instead I compartmentalized it as a sin because the visiting priests, football coaches, and teachers would say it was, and so not knowing any better I cursed myself as I indulged in fantasies and self-abuse.  I eventually got over this, though when the girls in my imagination eventually started becoming men too that started me on a long arduous path that I’ve explored in other essays, but I wanted to use this example B—– because it demonstrates a facet of Nietzsche’s argument.

It was through Priests (Baptist priests though, the Episcopal Priests never damned masturbation or homosexuality, and in fact they were some of the few who argued there was nothing wrong with it) that I saw masturbation as a sin, and this corruption of “thought crime” was implanted because the priests wanted to make sure nothing got between me and god.  If a young boy is masturbating rather than praying or reading the Bible then he will begin to see no relevance of Christianity, and if he eventually drops his religion then there is no control.  This was the attitude that I eventually began to observe in priests, and why I tend to distrust their supposed motivations.  They always came with smiles B—–, and soft voices, and careful guarded warnings, but beneath that was always a power move.

That is contemporary Christianity, but even so in Nietzsche’s time this is still relevant for the “Modern Man” who was a cog in the wheel of machinery had only a finite amount of free time.  A worker worked, and that remaining time was when he was afforded some freedom.  Realistically the man would most often spend his wages on beer which would lead to temperance movements later on, but that space of time afforded man either some leisure or contemplation.  As such the Church sought to dominate that time, however rather than recreate a god that would fit with contemporary innovation and progress, the Church held dogmatically to the old god as Nietzsche explains:

The Christian conception of God—God as god of the sick, God as a spider, God as a spirit—is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever attained on earth.  It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of divine types.  God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes!  God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live!  God—the formula for every slander against “this world,” for every lie about the “beyond”!  God—the deification of nothingness, the will to nothingness pronounced holy!  (585-6).

This is another one of those quotes B—– that, while I’ve marked it in my copy of The AntiChrist with several stars, will probably only confirm a Christian’s bias against Nietzsche.  It’s no longer acceptable to challenge faith because people don’t like to be challenged.  They don’t like to grow.  It may be my religious background, but I was always taught that the only way to grow faith, or lack-thereof, is to have your position challenged so that you can re-assess what it is that you actually believe.

Looking at this presentation of god I feel validated for Nietzsche perfectly explains what has always been my criticism of the divine that exists in mass Christianity.  The god that exists is not a god that is to be understood and reconciled, it just is.  Therefore, the Christian has only to accept god and then enter a state of eternal bliss.

To this, I respond bullshit.

The god that Nietzsche is criticizing is this perfect being but as Lex Luthor explained in Superman Vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice:

Lex Luthor: See, what we call God depends upon our tribe, Clark Joe, ’cause God is tribal; God takes sides! No man in the sky intervened when I was a boy to deliver me from daddy’s fist and abominations. I figured out way back if God is all-powerful, He cannot be all good. And if He is all good, then He cannot be all-powerful. And neither can you be.

For the record B—– I hated the movie in theatres, but loved the extended cut.  Definitely see it.  And for the record I am counting the days down until I can see Suicide Squad.  Before you say anything it’s because the movie looks awesome and not just Margot Robbie is playing…playing…playing…

 

Ahem.  Where was I?  Uh…Harley Quinn wasn’t it?

Oh no, sorry Nietzsche Nietzsche.  Sorry.

Anyway B—–, the point I’m trying to demonstrate is that the god Nietzsche is criticizing really hasn’t altered all that much and that in itself is damning.  Religion is part of human culture, and while it tries to conform or adapt to contemporary settings, the real problem with this is that it’s nature shows more and more with each passing decade.  The printing of “Teen Study Bibles” that exorcise lengthy and disturbing passages for the sake of winning over youth reveals this.  The seducing of Lot by his daughters was never brought up in Sunday school because the god who was lax on incest was the same god who inspired the Psalms.  Nietzsche is trying to argue that the god that exists does not challenge human beings to consider the real morality of his being, or the complexities of his universe.  Rather than realizing that if god is all powerful he’s responsible for rape, murder, and torture, many choose to simply embrace an all loving god and drop the subject there.

For Nietzsche, and myself B——, this is a problem because it is painfully solipsistic, and while I could continue B—–, providing example after example, I just want to add one more quote before I end. Nietzsche remarks:

At this point I do not suppress a sigh.  There are days when I am afflicted with a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—contempt of man.  And to leave no doubt concerning what I despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man with whom I am fatefully contemporaneous.  […]  I go through the madhouse world of whole millennia, whether it be called “Christianity,” “Christian faith,” or “Christian church”—I am careful not to hold mankind responsible for its mental orders.  But my feeling changes, breaks down, as soon as I enter modern times, our time.  Our time knows better. (610-11).

I’ve said a lot here B—-, and I worry some of it was incoherent, but ultimately my concern was not to explain out an atheistic concept, but rather to defend Nietzsche from the title I so happily embrace.  Many point to Nietzsche, and his rather bushy moustache, as a champion of godlessness, but those fools who try and hurl such mud only wind up looking like fools themselves.

In life Nietzsche felt there was nothing so contemptible as a man who lives without passions, and looking at the Church, not god, he saw an institution that drained and sapped passion from a grand source of ideas.  Whether or not there is a god is one of the most important aspects of our reality, but simply believing in god does not make life simple, and Nietzsche’s The AntiChrist is a fight against those who would drain god of his unique philosophical position.  Christianity becomes a vice rather than a source of inspiration because for many it is either a social club, a crutch from which to avoid discomfort, or else the source of a disturbing masochism rooted in the thought-crime of “sin” and Nietzsche is criticizing that.

His aim is to attack the church because man has entered into a new world, and rather than allow his notion of the divine to change he has become a slave to history and outdated philosophy.  The question becomes B—–, shall Christianity adapt to the new stage of human evolution and society, or will it desperately cling to the idea that the source of all life and being honestly gives a flippin fuck about whether or not somebody masturbates to a Jenna Jameson video.

I’ll leave you to figure that out.

And seriously, buy your girl some flowers, she’ll appreciate it.  Just make sure you get her favorite type or else that will get awkward, and she won’t want to hurt your feelings and so she’ll lie and then you’ll keep buying those and then ten years in she’ll confess she hates that type of flower and your feelings will get hurt and then…well you get it.  Start with Roses and work your way from there.

 

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

 

 

P.S.

All my quotes from Existentialism were taken from The Modern Library edition of Basic Writings of Existentialism.  All quotes from The AntiChrist were cited from the Penguin edition of The Portable Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann.

 

P.P.S.

For the record I did nothing but listen to Allison Kraus on Pandora while writing this letter B—-, which I find hysterical since most of her songs are either spiritual in nature, or else outright hymns and Christian folk-songs.  This B—–, is what is sometimes referred to as Cognitive Dissonance, but I’ll accept that because every now and then the O, Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack will come on and you know I love me some Soggy Bottom Boys.

 

P.P.P.S

One last note, as for your question about your girlfriend’s folder on her computer full of photos of Margot Robbie, I really don’t have anything for you except the sentiment: can you really blame her? I mean I…I…I…what was I saying?

a letter from a young atheist: what’s with all these damn letters anyway?

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Argument, Atheism, Blue Shell, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Franz Xaver Kappus, letter, Letter to a Christian Nation, letters to a young contrarian, Letters to a Young Poet, logos, Mario Kart, pathos, questions, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ronald Reagan, Sam Harris, Sir Rowland Hill, Stamps, The Iliad, The Odyssey, United states Postal Service Did NOT pay for this Letter

 

Dear B——,

What is it with atheists and letters? Seriously it’s like we don’t even know what twitter or emails are. I mean I’m just as guilty as the lot of these guys. Is it pretentiousness? Is it a fear of modern technology? Perhaps atheism is really just well hidden propaganda campaign by the United States Postal Service to get people writing real letters again. On an entirely different matter, did you know you can now buy Batman stamps for only 25 cents apiece? What a bargain! Talk to your post office today.

It’s been a while B—–, and I do apologize for the lateness of this letter. For whatever reason grad school decided, well, let me put it like this. There are semesters in which the gates of hell open up, and a wretched demon spawned from the loins of Beelzebub himself grabs you by the ankle and drags you down into the fiery pit…this was one of those semesters, for almost every person I met. As such I wasn’t able to continue our correspondence and offer up my support. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between you and Charlie, but by the sounds of it this new girl Kim seems like a good match for you, and the fact that she can kick your ass in Mario Kart…just get used to that, it happens.

But I wanted to address this matter of letters because it’s something I’ve noticed myself, but more importantly it’s also been observed by a friend on Facebook. The man in question is a former student, I think he’s working as a nurse right now and making me hate my body with every picture he posts of himself, but I love the guy because he’s one of my regular contester’s whenever I share these letters. I’ve spent a few nights chatting back and forth with him about Christianity and religion in general because he is a believer and also because I understand no matter how heated the conversations become there is always a mutual respect as well as the understanding between the two of us that neither is going to convert the other. When I posted the C.S. Lewis letter, the first one, his response stuck with me. I can’t remember verbatim, my genes didn’t code for an eidetic memory sad-for-me-oh-well but I do remember this remark, “these ‘letters from’ series are the most pretentious things I’ve ever read, and I can’t stop reading them.” The word pretentious got stuck in my head and whenever words or sentences stand out to you it’s usually because there’s some meaning or truth to them.

I know of at least two atheist authors that have used the “letter” format to critique religion, Joseph Harris and Christopher Hitchens, though I note moving forward that only the latter really excelled in this particular category.

Before I go any further B——-, do you like Ronald Reagan, because not long ago the united States Postal Service released the Ronald Reagan postage stamp, now only $10 for twenty of these collectables. Go in today and you can catch the Christmas times special, only $15 for forty stamps. What a bargain!

Joseph Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation is a letter, but it’s often the kind of letter one receives from a spiteful ex-girlfriend or from collections agencies hospitals hire to find the bums who can’t afford the treatment they provide. Harris’s little book, which is not a derogatory statement it’s literally only 91 pages long and I read it in an hour and a half, is a point by point assault on the institution of Christianity, specifically how it infects the political realities of the United States. In one passage he observes:

Can you prove that Zeus does not exist? Of course not. And yet, just imagine if we lived in a society where people spent tens of billions of dollars of their personal income each year propitiating the gods of Mount Olympus, where the government spent billions more in tax dollars to support institutions devoted to these gods, where untold billions more in tax subsidies were given to pagan temples, where elected officials did their best to impede medical research out of deference to The Iliad and The Odyssey, and where every debate about public policy was subverted to the whims of ancient authors who wrote well, but who didn’t know enough about the nature of reality to keep their excrement out of their food. This would be a horrific misappropriation of out material, moral, and intellectual resources. And yet that is exactly the society we are living in. This is the woeful and irrational world that you and your fellow Christians are working so tirelessly to create. (56).

I recognize that the preceding passage will probably have a few Christian readers steamed, and that’s his point, but the literature major in me is kinda geeking out and picturing what that society would look like. What would Presidential debates be like? Would Republicans accuse Democrats on being soft on sacrifices to Ares, and would Democrats make snide sarcastic remarks when Republicans make wise-cracks about Apollo? Maybe instead of Christmas we would celebrate Zeusmas and read passages from The Odyssey while wearing togas. Instead of Christian rock bands we would have groups with names like Medea’s Love, Ajax’s Hammer, Hades Spawn. That would be epic right?…right?…oh whatever,, buy stamps.

The problem I have with Harris is that his approach lacks a real eloquence. The man is far more concerned it seems with knowing more than his reader than actually arranging out a real criticism and his “letter” suffers for it. Looking back at this passage if he had simply ended with “and yet that is exactly…” then his argument would have been a solid sting to the influence of Christianity in American politics. But Harris can’t just leave a good paragraph be, and the final line “This is the woeful and irrational world…” comes across as the minister pointing his finger at the crowd and shouting “shame.” I have expected Johnathan Edwards to appear telling Harris to “tone it down bro” before copying so notes down for his next sermon.

I won’t shit on Harris completely B——–, and isn’t that a lovely image (someone should put that on a stamp, no they shouldn’t actually), because within his book is an important passage. Earlier in the book he refutes the idea atheism as a kind of religion by explaining the identity outright:

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a “non-astrologer” or a “non-alchemist.” We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people male in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 Americans (87% of the population) claiming to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence—and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. (51-2).

I’ll tell you B—–, when I read that passage I was incredibly happy and sad. I was happy because at that moment Harris had explained perfectly my stance whenever people ask me why I am an atheist. It’s not out of anger, or some pompous elitism driven by my desire to prove I’m better than everyone else (*cough cough*David Silverman*cough cough*), it’s because I recognize that whenever the matter of “proof of existence” occurs in our society it comes down to the person asserting the existence to provide evidence. That’s the reality of any philosophic question, and when it comes to the existence of god you cannot get more philosophical. Whether god exists is the ultimate question because it determines the foundation of our understanding of our reality and that’s probably why Christians and Atheists can become so cross when having this debate with one another. We’re not arguing just about whether a god exists, we’re arguing about the narrative of our reality and all of the sub-narratives found within each. Along with this Harris is able to nail the most important point which leads me to why I was sad when I read this passage.

Harris’s paragraph here actually comes after a lead-in to this point. Think about kittens, or the fact that the new STAR WARS movie has Han Solo and Chewbacca for a moment. Or think about stamps, stamps are cool, and CHEAP. Boy are they cheap. Okay. Here’s what came before this:

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe—as you believe—that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? (50-1).

Imagine my heartbreak B—— at reading the following passage after this one. Harris talks a great game about the logic and reason of atheism and then slings pathos ridden passages like this at his reader. It’s not so much the situation that disturbs me however, because I recognize this shit actually happens. No matter how much we want to believe about the good in people we should never forget that fuckers live amongst the, for-the-most-part, benevolent masses and pretending like rape, pedophilia, and torture doesn’t exist is just foolish. But Harris uses a fictional and hypothetical example, all the while pointing his finger at the Christian reader, and his argument becomes pathos, pathetic emotional diatribe that could have been substantiated by researching for a real instance rather than letting his reader simply imagine an event. Tragedy is not novel and this example leads me to the more successful example of the “letter” model.

But first:

In 1837 Sir Rowland Hill, the British Postmaster General, introduced the “Post Office Reforms” whereby the mail could go anywhere in the British Isles at the same rate (a penny a half-ounce); the postage was to be paid by the sender — not the addressee; and payment was receipted by placing a small piece of colored paper on the outside of the letter — THE STAMP! Of course Hill’s proposal was heavily debated for a few years, but after serious discussion the change was enacted and instituted in 1840. Thus on May 6, 1840 (first date of valid use) the first government-printed postage stamps were born (The American Philatelic Society, follow this link to learn more about stamps http://stamps.org/Stamp-History)

I’ve written a fair amount about letters to a young contrarian before B——, at least three times now, and each time I’m reminded why Hitchens was such a force and nightmare to people of faith. The man was, to quote a friend of mine, a beast. For me it is the inspiration for his book that demonstrates the superior rhetoric of Hitchens, for his book was partly inspired by several of the students that he taught at The New School in New York, as well as a the book Letters to a Young Poet. It should be noted that this book is a slim collection of only ten letters from Rainer Maria Rilke to the young poet Franz Xaver Kappus who was serving in the Thereiasn Military Academy in Austria at the time and was sending Rilke his work between the years 1902 to 1908. Typical Hitchens, the reference was vague, European in origin, and something only two or three people probably read in their lifetime, but the fact remains that the man decided he would follow the pattern set by a literary tradition, as well as a correspondence to encourage and guide young writers rather than preaching at them.

Midway through letters he begins his criticism of religion, for the book is in fact more designed to discuss being a public contrarian (someone who works against the grain of society for the purposes of education of the larger populace). After noting his obvious atheism he remarks:

You write to remind me that many exemplary people have been sustained by their faith. (Actually if I may be slightly strict with you, you don’t remind me of the fact. I was already quite aware of it. And I have read, and read of, Dr. Martin Luther King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others whom you mention). But let me ask you in turn: Are you saying that they’re religious belief was sufficient or a necessary condition for their moral actions? In other words, that without such faith they would not have opposed racism or Nazisim? (61).

This argument would come to be Hitchens’s mantra and ultimate rhetorical weapon when he was debating on his book tour for his later work god is not Great, and it remained a consistent strategy because there were few that ever attempted, or at least successfully, to answer this question. But more important B——- than the lack of a solid answer is the actual question itself. While Harris talked at his reader Hitchens asked a question of the faithful, and asking question is always a superior strategy. A friend and I discussed the current level of discourse and we both agreed the problem with religious, sexual, and political discussions is always the assault upon the “other.” People like to place themselves above others immediately and then try to change somebody’s mind and the problem is if you call someone an idiot and then try to change their mind you’ll just be met with emotion and ego.

I know you’re immediate challenge B——-: Doesn’t Hitchens talk down to his reader?

No.

Hitchens from the very beginning of his book, much as Rilke did in his, establishes his letters as challenges designed to get his young writer/reader to think. Rather than employing pathos simply to attack his reader he employs real examples to get his young reader to question their perceptions.   Take a later passage:

As the great Eugene Debs used to tell his socialist voters in the 1912 election campaign, he would not lead them into the Promised Land even if he could, because if they were trusting enough to be led in, they would be trusting enough to be led out again. He urged them, in other words, to do their own thinking. (63).

This of course is followed by my favorite line, and probably the best sentence Hitchens ever wrote during his life:

I repeat: What really matters about any individual is not what he thinks, but how he thinks. (63).

This has been a long letter be, which means I’ll have to spend more money on postage, but hey the Post Office is offering great holiday rates on their Christmas Time #343 Christmas stamps so it won’t be too bad. But I wanted to make up for the long gap and also to understand why atheists are always writing letters, whether or not that format is really affective in establishing real challenges to religion, and whether the trend is really, to quote my Christian friend, pretentious. As so often happens in life, the hippie English teacher from high school who drove a Chevy nova with only half a paintjob was right: it just depends on the situation.

I read Harris and I realize his concern is not so much to challenge religion, but to call people idiots and enjoy being the “smart one.” I read Hitchens and I am engaged in a real conversation, and while he demonstrates knowledge and asks tough questions, there is still the understanding that the reader is allowed to make up their own mind, and it’s this model that I’ve tried to fashion in our own correspondence B——. Your mind is your own and you need to figure out for yourself what you believe. As for how to keep your girlfriend from using a blue tortoise shell against you when playing Mario-kart…there is the struggle of man in the twenty-first century my friend.

 

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

P.S. I was just kidding about the whole United States Postal service secretly paying atheists for promotion, and I definitely, DEFINITELY, am not receiving kickbacks for promoting the Charlie Brown Christmas Forever stamps, now only 49 cents apiece. Just put that out of your mind. Follow the link below.

 

https://store.usps.com/store/browse/category.jsp?categoryId=buy-stamps

a letter from a young atheist: delusions of grandeur and a love letter to science

Tags

Alan Turing, Atheism, Benedict Cumberbatch, Blaise Pascal, Carl Sagan, Cheese, Ellen Page, Ellen Page is awesome just in case you didn't know and if you didn't know you really need to know because seriously she's fucking cool as fuck, letter, religion, Richard Dawkins, Science, swiss cheese, T.H. Huxley, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candlelight in the Dark, The God Delusion

Dear B——-,

Let me begin by stating I have never been a fan of Richard Dawkins. It’s not that I don’t agree with the man or his ideas, it’s the fact that he behaves like a pompous ass to just about everyone who disagrees with him. When he speaks in public there’s an air about his person that he is in a position in the know and that those who disagree with him must either be idiots or zealots. Perhaps I was just watching the wrong YouTube videos and CNN specials, but Dawkins for me, is everything that is wrong with atheism. I think what did it the most was an interview he did several years ago in Playboy (yes I read the interviews in Playboy, it’s the last respectable part of that magazine) where he was wearing a little red “A” on his lapel. When he was asked about he stated that it was a symbol for atheism and that the pin was part of a “National Coming Out Day” for atheists. Two points. One, while I do recognize that atheists are some of the most misunderstood social groups and there is severe prejudice against us, appropriating “Coming out” offends me as an ally to LGBTQ individuals as it should to anyone with half a brain. Two, wearing a symbol for your ideology and criticizing Christians for their revering of the cross is not only ludicrous it’s detestably hypocritical. Atheists don’t need symbols to tell them who they are. That’s the point. You can’t create an ideology around negating another. But that’s where I stand.

As you can see I don’t have much to say in favor of Dawkins, or at least I did until I began the book I sent you along with the last which of course brings me to my next point.

I’m sorry B—–. I’m sorry that your friend rejected you because of our relationship. As I said in the last letter, if you need to sever all contact with me I understand. Your Christian friends sound like, and apparently are the kind of people, that would automatically distrust someone who is friends with an atheist. Though if I may come to your self defense, if that girl is going to say that the two of you can’t be together because you admit doubt about god, she’s probably not right for you in the long run. That isn’t me giving you advice, I would never be so presumptuous, all I can say is that, when it comes to relationships, you need to find someone who respects you, not someone who agrees with everything you believe in. Keep trying with her, because from what you’ve told me about her, she sounds like a lovely person, and the fact that she’s openly gay as well probably doesn’t hurt. Loved the picture you sent by the way, you two are so cute.

But let’s get back to Dawkins because this book was incredibly important, at least for me. I picked up The God Delusion in the clearance shelf at Hastings because I had heard about it frequently whenever listening to Christopher Hitchens and his public debates. I knew that, if you are an atheist, or if you debate them regularly, The God Delusion is canonical. It’s just one of those books that you have to read at some point in your life. I bought the book and started it, but, like many of the great books in my life, placed it down and forgot about it. The start of the summer arrived, and the open schedule allowed me the chance to begin reading the book again.

It’s hard to truly describe how important this book is B—–. Not just for society, but to myself. This book was an eye opener.

I had read Hitchens often before picking up Dawkins, because Hitchens was steeped in literature and philosophy, and not just a few beautiful lines of Emily Dickenson. Hitchens would be able to quote obscure Anglican bishops from the thirteenth century and then quote direct passages from the Bible. Dawkins approach is more scientific, in that he employs his experience and knowledge of how the scientific community thinks and behaves for his argument:

Contrary to Huxley, I shall suggest that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other. Even if hard to test in practice, it belongs in the same TAP or temporary agnosticism box as the controversies over the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions. God’s existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice. If he existed and chose to reveal it, God himself would clinch the argument, noisily and unequivocally, in his favor. And even if God’s existence is never proved or disproved with certainty one way of the other, available evidence and reasoning may yield an estimate of probability far from 50 per cent. (50).

Now B—–, you can probably hear your girlfriend’s voice nagging in your head already. Why do atheists always have to challenge our faith this way? Why do they ask us to prove god exists when all we need is faith? Well B—-‘s girlfriend, the reason for this is stated above. The god question is a question about reality making it a philosophical debate., Philosophy is more than stuff your stoner friend always blabbers about while listening to Stone Temple Pilots and talking about worlds in drops of Coca-Cola on butterfly wings, philosophy is human being’s attempt to rationally come to terms with his existence. There’s a reason men have driven themselves mad over Ontological and epistemological arguments. If the world we live in has a plan what is it? How will we ever be completely sure we have discovered its meaning? Once we find such meaning how do we live in this world? What happened to Arya’s eyes at the end of Games of Thrones? All of these questions are answered, rather easily, by religion.

The narrative goes there is a being of supreme power, who has a dick, and controls all of reality because he, remember that dick, made it. He also has a firm moral compass but does not mind sending you to eternal misery if, in the short expanse of your life, you commit sin or don’t believe in him or if you voted for Barack Obama in the last election. A deity is the answer to the philosophical argument.

The conflict however, is that many people in this world are not completely convinced because, in any philosophical argument, if you argue for something’s existence, then it falls to you to provide evidence. That’s why so many atheists challenge Christians, because we’re not convinced by the evidence given to us.

Dawkins’s argument is rooted in science, and every aspect of his argument is rooted in this idea that god is superstition and a distraction from the more philosophically profound universe that scientists attempt to understand every day.

Dawkins doesn’t just praise science in The God Delusion, he pursues, point-by-point the fallacies and arguments of religion. One such idea is Pascal’s Wager:

The great French mathematician Blaise Pascal reckoned that, however long the odds against God’s existence might be, there is an even larger asymmetry in the penalty fir guessing wrong. You’d better believe in God, because if you are right you stand to gain eternal bliss and if you are wrong it won’t make any difference anyway. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God and you turn out to be wrong you get eternal damnation, whereas, if you are right it makes no difference. On the face of it the decision is a no-brainer. Believe in God. (103).

You’ve probably heard this argument in some form or fashion B—–, there’s always that one seemingly intelligent Christian figure in your life, often a camp counselor or youth administrator who argues with your criticism by saying “Well, even if god doesn’t exist, I still believe in him because there’s still the possibility that I could be wrong, in which case I couldn’t go to heaven.” This argument is so full of holes it’s being sold as Swiss cheese….

Did I really just write that joke? Wow.

My argument, counter-argument, to this B—-, is that this is attitude is not only self deceiving, it’s rude to a potential creator. This argument is like someone walking up to you and saying, “Hey I came to your birthday party. I don’t really like you or care about you but I heard there was cake.” The Christians that follow Pascal’s Wager, though many of them probably don’t even know that’s the argument they’re employing, or who Pascal was, are using a weak argument and Dawkins argues it proficiently:

There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word in them. But none of that can actually make me believe it if I don’t. Pascal’s wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not the omniscient kind of he’d see through your deception. (103-4).

By deconstructing many people’s faith, Dawkins is able to get at the heart of what religion offers people, but too often, what it attempts to sap from people. He cites one example of a man by the name of Alan Turing:

In 1954 the British mathmetician, a candidate along with John Von Neumann for the title of father of the computer, committed suicide after being convicted of the criminal offense of homosexual behavior in private. Admittedly Turing was offered a choice between two years in prison you can imagine how the other prisoners would have treated him) and a course of hormone injections which could be said to amount to chemical castration, and would have caused him to grow breasts. His final, private choice was an apple that he had injected with cyanide.

As the pivotal intellect in the breaking of the German Enigma codes, Turing arguably made a great contribution to defeating the Nazi’s than Eisenhower or Churchill. Thanks to Turing and his ‘Ultra’ colleagues at Bletchly park, Allied generals in the field were consistently, over long periods of the war, privy to detailed German plans before the German generals had time to implement them. After the war, when Turing’s role was no longer top secret, he should have been knighted and feted as a savior of his nation. Instead this gentle, stammering, eccentric genius was destroyed, for a ‘crime,’ committed in private, which harmed nobody. Once again, the unmistakable trademark of the faith-based moralizer is to care passionately about what other people do (or even think) in private. (289).

I won’t quote much more B—– because, as I stated in my last letter, I could quote the entire book if you let me. I just want to give you my impression of why this book is important, not just for an atheist to read, but for every human being to read. Recently I started Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candlelight in the Dark, and a quote from the book seems to mirror Dawkins’s concern:

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” (6)

And thus I return to Dawkins who argues that The God Delusion is:

This book is a personal statement, reflecting my lifelong love affair with science. […] Think about it. On one planet, and possibly only one planet in the entire universe, molecules that would normally make nothing more complicated than a chunk of rocks, gather themselves together into chunks of rock sized matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of running, jumping, swimming, flying, seeing, hearing, capturing and eating other such animated chunks of complexity; capable in some cases of thinking and feeling, and falling in love with yet other chunks of complex matter. We now understand essentially how the trick is done, but only since 1859. Before 1859 it would have seemed very odd indeed. Now, thanks to Darwin, it is merely odd. Darwin seized the window of the burka and wrenched it open, letting in a flood of understanding whose dazzling novelty, and power to uplift the human spirit, perhaps had no precedent—unless it was the Copernican realization that the Earth was not the centre[sic] of the universe. (367).

While I am not a scientist, I do respect the philosophers that have gathered to that school of thought, and try everyday to increase our knowledge of our universe rather than submit to blind trust. My wife, my best friend, and several of my relatives day by day practice and live science, and the results of their endeavors is true knowledge and not empty superstition. The God Delusion is a love letter to science as well as a dissection of the bloated corpse of theism.

While I still do not like Dawkins as an orator, I can no longer criticize the man’s ideas. In short B—–, respect Dawkins the writer. And read the book when you get the chance, it’s worth it.

Now, as for your girl troubles, see if she likes Ellen Page. If she does, then you’ve got a keeper.

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

 

 

P.S. I forgot to mention this, but it’s important. One of the best parts of Dawkins’s book is that it comes with a list in the back of other books, and while he includes a work by Ann Coulter, blech, he does give a wide variety of books you ought to look up. You know I’m a sucker for lists.

P.P.S. Did you notice I didn’t use Benedict Cumberbatch when I quoted the Alan Turing passage? Huh? Even though he did that movie. I could have totally posted a photo of Benedict Cumberbatch but I didn’t, because I’m a grown up with self control and…and…

Damn it.

a letter from a young atheist: Jesus was a rockin dude, but Christ was a wet blanket

Tags

Atheism, history, Homosexuality, Jesus, letter, Pilate, religion, Reza Aslan, Roman Empire, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Dear B—–,

I’m glad that you learned something from the last letter. I do honestly believe that if my career as a writer doesn’t take off I should become a sex-Ed teacher. Apart from insects and literature, human sexuality is the only thing in this world that interests me. Bugs, Books, and Sex…my my what a strange man I am. I hope your mission trip is going better, I could tell from your last letter that things are a little uneasy between you and the rest of your group. Let me remind you that if our correspondence is getting in the way I can stop writing you these letters. I don’t want to burden you.

Now, as for the book I sent you I do hope you get the chance to read because it has left a deep impression on me, not only because I’m an atheist, but also because I was raised in the Christian church. Now I’ve told you once or twice, that many of my good friends are Christians, one of whom recommended me an excellent book about god’s love for atheists. I always love my interactions with the Christians I call friends because they tend to be intelligent people first and foremost and we can get into some fantastic conversations. One of them in particular recommended the book that I sent you; after we discussed religion one day and he suggested I would like the book due to my interest in history.

I asked for the book for Christmas, and I had every intention of reading it, but life, that greater fucker of plans, interceded, and so it rested there between Julius Caser and Rushdie for close to a year before I picked the book up and began it back in January.

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan is a book every Christian, Atheist, Jew, and Muslim should read because it s the first honest historical interpretations of the historical figure of Christ I have ever seen. Let me be clear B——, there are many theologians in existence that cite the gospels and then write about the life of Christ, but few people ever seem to try and place Jesus in the historical context from which he existed. Jesus as a man has typically been placed into a sacred bubble of pure faith, and should any attempt to poke at that bubble to poke and prod at the man within it, well, my god who the hell do you think you are?

Reza Aslan has a bachelor’s degree in religious studies, a Masters in Theology, an M.F.A. in creative Writing, and finally holds a PhD in Sociology. These credentials all point to a scholar interested in how human beings create meaning through holy narratives, and then how those narratives affect their day to day lifestyle including decisions about the meaning of reality. No one can contest that Aslan is an idiot without looking like one himself, though there are some who have tried only proving themselves to be one. You’re welcome to look the man up B—-, in fact I’ve included a link to, without a doubt, the stupidest interview FOX News has ever done. And given the fact this is the channel that decided to give Glen Beck his own show, that’s saying something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt1cOnNrY5s

One of the largest concerns about Aslan and this book was not whether he painted Jesus in an unholy light, but because Aslan was a Muslim writing about Jesus. Let that sink in for a moment and then remember how many Christian authors, spokesmen, politicians, and television personalities have written and spoken about Muhammad and Islam.

Now I have to write this B—–, before I go any further. I’m going to have to include only so many quotes to prove this books merit. The reason for that last sentence is simple; I would quote the entire goddamn book if I didn’t stop myself.

Let me begin with one the many passages that awakened me to the man of Jesus, and separated me from the bearded baby sitter I learned about in Sunday school:

“If one knew nothing else about Jesus of Nazareth save that he was crucified by Rome, one would know practically all that was needed to uncover who he was, what he was, and why he ended up nailed to a cross. His offense, in the eyes of Rome, is self evident. It was etched upon a plaque and placed above his head for all to see: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. His crime was daring to assume Kingly ambitions.

The gospels testify that Jesus was crucified alongside other lestai, or bandits: revolutionaries, just like him. Luke, obviously uncomfortable with the implications of the term, changes lestai to karkourgoi, or “evildoers.” But Try as he might, Luke cannot avoid the most basic fact about his messiah: Jesus was executed by the Roman state for the crime of sedition. Everything else about the days of Jesus of Nazareth must be interpreted through this singular, stubborn fact.” (155-6).

You can imagine how this fact alters the perception of Jesus. The lessons of Jesus’ life are never portrayed in political terms for Jesus isn’t a political figure. His concern, in terms of the rhetoric you usually receive as a Christian is that the man is concerned with the poor, with the needy, and then of course salvation. None of those lessons really afford people the chance to see Jesus as a political figure, a man with an ambition to oust the Romans from the Holy Land and help the Jews regain their freedom. Aslan’s success is bringing this new idea of Jesus into focus without sounding condemning or condescending.

For example, another charming story you receive in church is the story of Jesus coming before Pilate. Every child who remembers going to Church on Easter (seriously how lame was that? What’s the point of having the goddamn Easter bunny leaving eggs if you have to get up and go to church first? You know there’s chocolate at home, and that you can find it, and that if you don’t hurry you’re older brother’s gonna grab it all before you do and…I’m getting off topic). Now we’re told that Pilate was a good and somewhat wavy fellow who didn’t enjoy sending people to death. Aslan manages in one paragraph to flip this on its ear:

“The gospels present Pilate as a righteous yet weak-willed man so overcome with doubt about putting Jesus of Nazareth to death that he does everything in his power to save his life, finally washing his hands of the entire episode when the Jews demand his blood. That is pure fiction. What Pilate was best known for was his extreme depravity, his total disregard for Jewish law and tradition, and his barely concealed aversion to the Jewish nation as a whole. During his tenure in Jerusalem he so eagerly, and without trial, sent thousands upon thousands of Jews to the cross that the people of Jerusalem felt obliged to lodge a formal complaint with the Roman emperor.” (47).

Now if you are at all like myself B—–, this short passage should shock you and then hopefully make you laugh at your own ignorance. The character of the Romans has always existed alongside Jesus Christ, but there’s always been a divide. The Roman Empire is history, that’s old professors reading books in libraries and telling each other knock knock jokes in Latin while smoking pipes. Jesus is church, old priests giving sermons about fishing and friendship and telling awful puns about the Holy Spirit. What I found most fascinating what Aslan’s ability to contextualize and reveal the inaccuracy in contemporary religion without being condescending.

You’ll note in my last letter I was obviously lashing out at many contemporary Christian’s attitudes towards sexual education, and unless you’re a very open minded Christian, you were probably pissed off. Aslan’s book avoids such a pitfall, and the book is so wonderful in the way it recreates Jesus as, not a divine being, but a historical figure that’s interesting for his actions and belief. Jesus is no longer the son of god, but a working class Jew tired of the oppression and hypocrisy of the Jewish elders and physical domination by a foreign people. Jesus is a man who wants to see his people liberated from the totalitarian system which subjugates and tortures them. In short, he’s my kind of dude.

Now I will tell anyone I know that I despise Paul and his letters, and that’s why the third part of the book is so crucial towards Aslan’s thesis. The conception of Jesus as Christ, a perfect being that is one and the same with god is largely due to the writing of Paul and his influence and Aslan notes how this happens:

Christianity after the destruction of Jerusalem was almost exclusively a gentile religion; it needed a gentile theology. And that is precisely what Paul provided. The choice between James’s version of a Jewish religion anchored in the Law of Moses and derived from a Jewish nationalist who fought against Rome, and Paul’s vision of a Roman religion that divorced itself from Jewish provincialism and required nothing for salvation save belief in Christ, was not difficult one for the second and third generations of Jesus’ followers to make.

Two thousand years later, the Christ of Paul’s creation has utterly subsumed the Jesus of History.” (215).

Perhaps the reason then that I despise Paul is because he keeps Jesus from being an interesting person. He strips Jesus of his humanity, his human ambitions and concerns for the Jewish people, and instead lifts Jesus up beside the Lord turning him into an ideal and thereby stripping identification from his audience. There’s a reason why “idealism” can be dangerous, it’s impossible to attain an ideal because it is without concrete form and therefore can never be attained. Now this is not me being an armchair atheist B—–, I’ve just never understood why no one seems interested in the details of Jesus’ life. When I was going to school I had a Christian education class in middle school. Our teacher was the baseball coach and quite possibly the biggest fat-headed idiot in the history of western society. To put it in perspective he once beat an armadillo to death in front of his athletes, and was fired from his job for teaching students that Dinosaurs were a conspiracy against Religion to disprove Jesus. Yeah…let that sink in.

The Reader may ask, what does this have to do with Paul?  My Christian education was never the gospels, but only, ONLY, the letters of Paul. It wasn’t just the fact Paul’s letter were supposed to be saying that pornography and drinking were sins (especially when you’re Episcopal and drink wine at the dinner table that’s made by your priest) it was the fact that Paul was more interested in giving commands than actually talking about Jesus the man.

There are lots of little moments where Christ as a man becomes someone fascinating. For example, whether or not Jesus was a bastard. Whether his outrage in the temple was him defending god’s honor or else a rebellion against the Jewish priests who had been culled by the Roman Empire and essentially bought. Was Jesus alone in being a supposed “prophet” in the holy land? Whether John the Baptist held more political and spiritual power than Jesus himself did. Was Jesus really magical healer? Well, I would love to address all of these points, but I promised I wouldn’t quote the entire book. I guess B—- you’ll have to read for yourself of the man and determine for yourself who you would rather believe in.

I hope this book opens your eyes to the man of Christ, a man I know better now than I did after being in the Christian church for almost a decade. This letter, like all of my letters, isn’t designed to shake you of your faith, but just to challenge it. I believe in Jesus of Nazareth and reject Jesus the Christ. One is a man I would like to know more about, the other is a boring cartoon character.

Aslan himself notes of the man in the last lines of the book:

“Because the one thing any comprehensive study of the historical Jesus should hopefully reveal is that Jesus of Nazareth—Jesus the man—is every bit as compelling, charismatic, and praiseworthy as Jesus the Christ. He is, in short, someone worth believing in.” (216).

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

P.S. I wish you had told me Charlie was a girl B—–. If I’d known that I would have posted more pictures of Keira Knightly. I’m happy for you, and I really hope she likes you back. Let me know what your family says. I’m here for you. And cheer up, remember gay originally means happy. This makes you a happy person!

a letter from a young atheist: Lewis and sex, the body ain’t THAT bad

Tags

abstinence and why it's shit, Atheism, Benedict Cumberbatch, biological arguments, C.S. Lewis, Christian Rhetoric, Keira Knightly, letter, Mere Christianity, sexual Education, Sexual politics, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality

Dear B——,

No Mr. Cumberbatch is not returning my phone calls, in fact the man has actually threatened to sue me if I continue our correspondence. Despite what you said in your last letter I do NOT have an unhealthy obsession with the man, because I find Keira Knightly just as…just as…

What was I saying? I can’t remember now.

I got your letter and I am sorry that your brother was offended by my remarks about religion, but I won’t apologize for what I said. I know it’s easy to write and publish words on the internet and not have the fortitude to back them up with real honest conviction, but I stand by what I wrote. While I saw firsthand in my life the benefits that religion can bring to people, it was too often outweighed by feigned interest of malevolent intent to sell me on it. I think what it did was school prayer. Now I went to a private school ( like I’ve mentioned, like, omg, a billion-billion times already, nobody cares) where it was legal to not only pray in the classroom but also to hold a weekly chapel service where we wore chapel dress, said the Apostles Creed, the Lord’s prayer, sang gospel songs, and listened to Sermons. This activity disturbed me at the time, because I honestly cared, a little, about the practice of worship, but to my surprise nobody else did. Girls were supposed to wear dresses or tasteful skirts, but instead they wore porn star skirts with leggings, as if that helped, while the boys forgot ties, or didn’t wear ties, and would be slapped with a detentions. It wasn’t just the dress-code though B——, in the middle of worship I would look at my fellow students and they were all so apathetic, they couldn’t give three shits why they were there. And after all that, when we would return to the classroom, they would discuss getting drunk and gossiping about who was sleeping with who. It was the most pathetic display I’ve yet to actually witness, and quickly learned me up good to the fact that many Christians liked to wear their Christianity on their sleeves.

Which brings me to C.S. Lewis and Sex.

I really tried B——–. Lord help me I tried to appreciate Lewis a second time around, but no matter how hard I fought, no matter how diligent I remained in swimming through Lewis’s never ending sea of metaphors and colorful war-analogies, I just couldn’t find much redeemable or worthwhile passages. But even that didn’t bother me so much as two fundamental flaws with Lewis’s work. First off, the man could have at least thrown out a joke every now and then to keep things light. I’m not talking about dirty limericks or “yo mamas” but at least one fucking knock knock joke so I could tell the man was human, or at least NOT so English.

The second troubling part for me was a chapter in the third part entitled Sexual Morality, and you probably can guess where this is going. That’s why, before I continue, here’s a photo of myself wearing a joke glasses and a mustache. Don’t I look ridiculous?

…well I tried.

Lewis’s argument is pretty much what you would expect, though I note in fairness the man is not condemning sex like many contemporary Christian voices seem to be, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Lewis did impress me for a moment of pragmatic awareness when he said:

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.

If he had stopped there, I might have been able to allow the man some breathing room. But alas he didn’t and carried on with:

There is no getting aware from it; the Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.’ Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong.

But I have other reasons for thinking so. The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. […] But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. The appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function. (95-6).

Only an English person could take the fun out of sex. Actually that’s not fair Keira Knightly’s English and she…she…     

Damn, forgot myself again.

I know this argument has been made time and time and time again, but it’s an important one dammit, and we need to talk about it. Contemporary Christianity is afraid of ducking. Fucking. Shit. Let me try that again. Contemporary Christianity is afraid of Bonegs. Boners. SHIT! Okay, one last time. Contemporary Penis-.

You know what, I’m just gonna move on.

Now it would be a mistake to attack Lewis for this opinion given his time period, and I’m only going to attack him for his method of argument. He cites “the biological argument” a strategy commonly used by both Christians and atheists to defend their particular point of view. I note that both parties use this argument, though I will note I’ve seen atheists carry it off better than Christians. Now when he cites the horny young boy constantly following his biological urges he suggests that “the appetite is ludicrous” in its “excess” but is it really? Any real study of biology demonstrates that this urge is actually pretty leveled out by the actual chance to mate. A young boy may want to procreate with every woman in sight, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to. Ask any man(except Lemmy Killmister or Gene Simmons, or any Rock Star for that matter) and they’ll tell you their record is nowhere near that much. Okay, he’s gonna fluff it up a bit, but a single man is expected to have around 11 sexual partners in a given year, that is hardly a small village. That drive exists in proportion to the actual expectancy to have sex.

Let’s take it a step further and talk about bugs. I know B—-, I know. Just listen. My dad was an exterminator so I learned a lot about insects and arachnoids, and when it comes to mating strategies there’s usually a pretty consistent fate for the males. They respond to pheromones, mate with the female, and either die naturally or else are devoured by the females. The male’s job is simply to fuck, and then die.

But perhaps a conscientious Christian reader will object to my suggestion using insects for evidence, but I’m following a biological argument. Time and time and time again Christians will attempt to employ biology, all the while denouncing evolution as garbage, (Biology as a science is dependent on evolution by the way) and every time they miss the implication of following such an argument it just makes them look intellectually weak.

They’re willing to accept one aspect of a biological principle without accepting other established facts or concerns.

But it’s not just that Lewis is at fault here, it’s the fact that Lewis’s work is praised by many contemporary Christians as an important Christian apologist. Lewis is the theologian, if you can really call him that, I won’t, but some might, that has his words plastered on cheap mass produced goods sold at Hobby Lobby and awful memes your grandmother shares every time President Obama is on the news, that gives many Christians validation of their opinions concerning sexuality. Which of course leads into characters like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who open their mouths and say crap like earthquakes and tornados are god’s curse for being lax on homosexuality.

Poster after poster, novel after novel, associate the idea o sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humor. Now this association is a lie. (100).

Lewis was a product of his time, and so this attitude towards sex is understandable, but those of us living in a different time are living by different standards, different paradigms. Lewis moves from this point to argue that following every and all passions should not be indulged, and while I agree with that sentiment, the rhetoric being crafted is too close minded for those of us living in today’s society because there’s too much evidence against Lewis.

Regular masturbation isn’t just fun, it’s healthy. Studies have shown that men who masturbate or have sex on a regular basis lower the chance of forming prostate cancer. Orgasms have been shown to actually help people suffering from illness, because blood shifts to the genitals it has a chance to move back through the heart oxygenating it more effectively. Couples indulging in sex regularly deepen their intimacy and strengthen their psychological bonds which are crucial for the creation of a healthy atmosphere for raising children. Obviously it’s ridiculous to make our lives a non-stop fuck-fest, but no sane person is asking for that.

I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable B—–, I’m just addressing Lewis’s points, and the consequence many have taken by trying to live this way of life. The only reason I’ve attained any confidence in my sexuality is by studying it, by reading books about sex, by listening to testimony from sexual educators, by asking my parents about sex, by buying several books dedicated to sex jokes, by actually having sex (that one was kind of important), and getting over the fact that desire is something dangerous because that is bullshit. The only real danger comes when desire is stymied creating unnatural behavior, and here’s where, I’m gonna have to stop holding back.

Maybe before we continue we could see Benedict Cumberbatch radiant blue eyes as he lounges on a chair, the first few buttons of his shirt open…oh my…

What? Oh right. Now Keira Knightly…she…she…

Okay for real now.

The most recent Christian sexual scandal (they have their own category and that says everything right there) was the Duggar Family incident and their son Josh. Why are Fart-faced-Dick-bags always named Josh. Seriously! It’s like every douchebag in the 90s was named Josh. Go back and check. You just checked right, you see what I mean?

I’ll be honest I didn’t follow the Duggar family scandal very closely because it was old news. A Christian fundamentalist family that operates like a cult has a sex scandal. The only part of it that surprised me was that it wasn’t the father secretly having sex with a male prostitute. Josh Duggar molested his sisters and I took note during the FOX interview with Megan something-or-other, that when the father described the attacks he made especial note of the language, “He touched them over the bra. You know, it wasn’t rape.”

Let me clear this up.

If there is no consent, IT’S RAPE.

Do you know how I know that? Because I’m educated about sex.

The tragedy is many people in this country are not due to religious upbringing which encourages not just chastity but abstinence, a method of birth control that has been proven time and time and time again to fail miserably. It’s not just this attitude however which is the problem, it’s the inability, in fact it’s the adamant desire to remain ignorant about sexual health and education that is not rooted in Christianity that is bothersome, and not for the reason you think B—–. Even Lewis himself notes Chastity is not a deal breaker:

Finally, though I have had to speak at some length about sex, I want to make it clear as I possibly can that the center of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred. (102-3).

Now I could list all the instances of Christians failing miserably in chastity and the corruption that has been wracked upon civilization for it. But I won’t. Instead I’ll tell two small stories.

In my school there was no sex-ed although there was a puberty day. The boys and girls were divided and we were given a book about our bodies. This created some conflict later as boys and girls would swap books to leer at the pictures. It was a fun day from what I remember of it. There was pizza and most of the people who talked to us were male teachers. The best memory I have is of Coach Francis coming in to talk to us about erections and he made us play a game where we could come up with  all the fun names for them. Boner. Woody. Hard-on. One Eyed Monster. But the second memory I recall is of the school priest coming in to give us the abstinence talk. Father Tom was a nice man from what I remember of him, most of the priests were (they were Episcopal so I guess that helped). Father Tom was going to get married in about three weeks and so his lecture to us was about the expectation of sex. He told us how he was happy that he was waiting and that how that waiting would only make the union between him and his then-fiance more meaningful. Now while this was a beautiful sentiment I only remember the embarrassment and pity I felt for the man. All I could think was, why are you talking like you’re about to have surgery to remove something?

  The second story took place a few years later. I told you before B—-that chapel was mandatory at my high school. Well one week our high school principle/Football Coach (it’s East Texas after all) came in and decided he was going to give the sermon for the week. And of course what better place to talk about sex than chapel? I don’t remember much except the embarrassment and pity again, for the man confessed to us that he had had pre-marital sex. This confession was followed by tears and light crying. Now to high school boy who thinks about boobs every three seconds, this story and reaction was asinine and has only become more so after years or reflection.

It doesn’t matter three fucks who your partner fucked before they met you. The only thing that matters, that should matter, is that you are honest about what you want, who you are, and that you maintain a mutual honor system. That does NOT mean exclusive rights necessarily. There are many couples that practice poly-amory, where you may date/seduce/sleep with people while still maintaining a central relationship. Some couples have open marriages where they bring other people into the bedroom or else don’t mind it when their spouse sleeps with somebody else. And then there are some couples are exclusively monogamous, and let me be clear, THAT’S PERFECTLY FINE.

This has been a long letter B——, and I apologize for making it so, but my intellectual reaction to Lewis was frustration and annoyance rather than introspection. Lewis makes plenty of little points that are relevant to a Christian soul, but he all he offers is little points.

And as for sex, I wish someone besides my parents, had taken the time to teach me that human sexuality is not a vice that is a corruption of Christian oligarchy. I don’t know if your experience has been different from mine, it probably has, but let me at least caution you to this and share a sexual lesson my father taught me:

As long as your fantasies aren’t about hurting other people, and as long as you wrap that rascal, you’re fine.

I do not and can not understand why so many Christian voices and minds are terrified by this small lesson.

Anyway, always lovely hearing from you B——. Please write back when you return from your mission trip, and kiss that guy for crying out loud. Seriously a third of your last letter was just you debating about whether to do it. That sweet story about him drawing a butterfly for you. I wept. You think if Benedict Cumberbatch and Kierra Knightly would…would…

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

 

 

P.S. You’ll note B——, I included plenty of pictures of two people in this letter, that’s only because I’m not sexy. If you’re going to talk about sex, it’s best to have sexy people around. Like Benedict Cumber….Damn it!