7 Quick Takes (XLII)

1. So we were at the Valley Zoo on Saturday. There were tigers and Arctic wolves and capybaras and an elephant and sea lions and wallabies and other things. It's not a terribly big zoo, but it's nice enough. I'm always concerned about caging animals at all, but in general these are animals that could not survive in the wild.

Oh, and did you know that once upon a time capybara were classified as fish by the Catholic Church? This means that they could be eaten during Lent; apparently large populations of South American peoples live primarily on capybara, and banning these delectable rodents would guarantee the starvation of whole indigenous peoples, or something like that. The RC Church was therefore under considerable pressure to declare that the world's largest rodent, being amphibious, was in fact a fish. I'm not sure what the status is now, other than that it's OBVIOUSLY a super-awesome adorable rodent.

2. Sunday was Mother's Day, but my own mother was at work. This means we did the mother's day stuff on Saturday, while at the zoo and in Edmonton.

I finished reading Paradise Lost and this edition's introduction, and then commenced The English Opium-Eater.

3. Due to basic workplace confidentiality, I can't really say any details or anything, but I got some bad news on Monday which made Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday rather miserable for me. At points throughout those three days I really felt like I couldn't trust my own memories and I was pretty eaten with shame and guilt. At other points I was incredible nervous, to the point of nauseau. It felt like I had a large sticky earthworm writhing in my stomach. But I got some sort of resolution on Wednesday, and it's been pretty much better from there.

4. I got some good writing done. I'm also finally liking the style or sound of the prose I'm writing, which has been so rare lately.

5. At work, we have a whole bunch of new summer students. I now have people to meet. That is always exciting. There may be more coming, too.

6. I'm supposedly supposed to be (read that out loud! such fun) writing another post about hope because I had the folly to mention that Kay and Jon have both recently written posts of that topic. I'd be lying, though, if I said I had any good ideas at the moment. I'm trying, though.

7. Somehow the people at work figured out that it's my birthday this weekend. Facebook likely told them. Anyway, there was cake, which I accidentally left at the Park. I hadn't thought they'd know, but, well, I suppose I was wrong on that one. I was out of the Admin building all day, so they did have lots of chances to scheme and plan and get cake.

I encourage you to visit Jen, host of this meme.

A Protestant Sort of Angst

I am titling this "Protestant" because it seems to me that this is a particularly Protestant conundrum... but perhaps Catholic people struggle with this, too. Please take no offense at any exclusion I may inadvertantly imply through the title, and also let me know of my error.

I also realize that not all Protestants will share this experience. It's a free will versus determinism sort of thing.

Angst, when used in English, is a term drawn from existentialism. It refers to the feeling (often of horror) that accompanies a person's realization that she is utterly free to self-destruct. Nothing is stopping her from leaping off of a metaphorical (or literal, for that matter) precipice. As much as we all seem to desire freedom, when coming face to face with full free will we experience this angst, a psychological shock. The fear is not that we might fall of the cliff's edge, but that we could leap off of it. This wasn't a feeling I was familiar with. I could imagine it, but I couldn't recall experiencing it.

Many people who were raised Christian, especially those who've had a falling out with the church, report that they feared damnation. This, too, is not something I'd ever felt. (I know. Lucky me.) I have, since I've known the concept of Heaven and Hell, felt fairly sure that I was bound Heavenward. Fearing damnation never made a whole lot of sense to me, since if you believed in such a thing as Hell (enough that fear of it would be worth reporting), you wouldn't have any reasn to think you'd be going there; if you didn't believe in Heaven and Hell, you may well be headed to the latter, but you wouldn't think you were, so why be afraid?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have news: I can now report firsthand the feelings of angst and the fear of damnation.

I was reading the Bible the other night (this was a few weeks ago; I've taken my time getting to this post) and I came upon one of the numerous difficult Old Testament passages. I don't mean "difficult" in the sense of being a cure for insomnia, though there are a few of those; I mean "difficult" in the sense of God-sponsored genocide. If you're not much of a Bible person, that's going to sound a little indicting. Unfortunately, mass murder does come up every so often. In reading, I was faced with the necessity of reconciling the God described here, who insists that every living thing in Town X be slaughtered without mercy (women, children, livestock, pets, pests, and infants all included), with the God I worship weekly, who built a wonderful world and endorses love so much that he underwent humiliation, torture, death, and damnation to redeem a bunch of ingrates. On the one hand, murder; on the other hand, love. How?

Theologians throughout Christendom have given explanations and reconciliations on this point, but that's not what I'm talking about here. The important thing is that the only reconciliation I knew of at the time was Bonhoeffer's, and I haven't found this one convincing. So I could believe that God did this thing, God sponsored hatred and destruction, or I could believe that the Bible is wrong on this count. Not wrong through and through, of course, but wrong about this. Maybe Joshua did kill a bunch of people, but in actual fact God was all like, "Dude, go easy on them, ok?" and Joshua just didn't listen. This last choice is a popular one.

It's also, apparently, a dangerous one. Because if the Bible is wrong about this, how do we know that it hasn't got the rest of it wrong? How do we know it isn't wrong about Jesus, too? How can we be sure?

I've said before and I'll say again that not many people come to Christ through the Bible; usually, they come to the Bible through Christ. It's because they believe in God and Jesus that they believe the Bible has authority. But then what this means is that we believe in Christ by hearsay and by faith alone. Which sounds good when we know that "faith" is invested with such high standing, but is that enough? Very quickly our whole support system begins to fall away. What can we rely on, after all?

So I believe in Jesus not for any reason, but merely because I do. If this is the case, then there's nothing stopping me, nothing at all, from going apostate. I could become an atheist in seconds. The possibility exists, the door is open, and all I need to do is step through. I suddenly recognized my freedom to become an atheist. This was angst.

It horrified me. I felt extremely uncomfortable. I could even see things on the other side of the door, see how life as an atheist would begin. I could see the gateway into that territory, and I already had quite a few of the maps in my back pocket (His Dark Materials, The God Delusion, and suchlike). To an extent it would seem like such a relief to walk through that door. It would be easier, for sure; I wouldn't have to constantly worry about the door being there. The decision would be over. But if I stayed on this side of the door, the temptation would always be there. It would never go away. Never.

But I didn't cross the door, and so I also saw--or at least suspected--the yawning throat of Hell lay that way, too. I'm not certain that Christ offers the only path to salvation, but I'm not certain that there are others, either. From this side of the door, I knew I didn't want to take that risk. But what if, years later or weeks later or minutes later, I went through anyway, a sort of spasm of the will? Could I come back? No longer believing in hell, would I come back? Does the door slam shut? What would happen to me? (You might note that at this point my sense of free will started ebbing away... I feared that I was not in control of my own will. I have to wonder whether this is an element in any feeling angst, this subtle, quiet suspicion of free will's existence even when our realization of that freedom is what brought us to this point.)

It was a fast slope to this point; I was reading the Bible, and bare minutes later I was on the naked edge of apostasy. Was it all this fragile? Was it all this frail?

A passage from Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life came to mind, one which I had previously had trouble with, one worth quoting in full: "In the early years of his ministry, Billy Graham went throuh a time when he struggled with doubts about the accuracy and authority of the Bible. One moonlit night he dropped to his knees in tears and told God that, in spite of confusing passages he didn't understand, from that point on he would completely trust the Bible as the sole authority for his life and ministry. From that day forward, Billy's life was blessed with unusual power and effectiveness." In the next paragraph, Warren writes, "Decide that regardless of culture, tradition, reason, or emotion, you choose the Bible as your final authority."

I could have tried something like this, but it didn't appeal to me at all. I've been skeptical too long to do something as (I thought) deliberately hamstringing as this. Why pray to God for blind belief in the Bible if the Bible does turn out to be ridden with errors after all? I don't think God would want that of me.

I did pray for help, though. I can't recall if I specified what kind of help I wanted. I don't think I did. I think I just asked for help. And, whether it was an act of God or my psychology's refusal to entertain cognitive dissonance, I suddenly felt peace. Free will or no, I realized, I would never give up belief in God. I may have to live forever with atheism a step away, but I would never cease to believe. This doesn't mean that I'll believe in any earthly authority at all, but God... no, God's here to stay. My faith might be lukewarm, too, which isn't a good thing, but it would always be there. Elizabeth Esther has observed of herself that she simply can't not believe, and I feel the same. To an extent, this unrootable belief bothered the skeptical corner of my mind almost as much as Warren's prescription did: was the sense that I couldn't disbelieve justification enough for belief? It's really poor apologetics, barely more than a tautology, but it's there nonetheless. Every a priori premise in philosophy is similarly a tautology, but somehow this is what makes them such reliable proofs.

So I believe, even though that door may always be open before me. I believe, even though I don't know why. I believe, even though I don't always know in what, exactly. What seems in the end to matter is that I believe.

Since that night, I've read more apologetics and am feeling more comfortable with belief. FYI. And I'm also aware that a number of these experiences argue for determinism of some degree... something to think about.

7 Quick Takes (XLI)

1. I can't remember what happened last Saturday. Odd. Likely nothing important. Which is a little sad, I think.

2. I didn't serve on Sunday, which I thought was strange, considering that I've been away so long. I do serve tomorrow, though. This means I won't be sitting with the sun in my eyes, which will be nice. The time of year has come around that the sun shines directly in the front upper window and hits you square in the face. I was holding my hand at my forehead to see the lyrics and responsive readings. (Which are on a projector screen, for those many folks for whom this set-up is unfamiliar.)

3. Then, Sunday afternoon, I went to see the African Children's Choir perform. They were quite good for how young they are, and absolutely full of energy. I'm too cynical, though, to give unreserved support for the organization, but not well-informed enough to know how to go about researching it. Anyone know anything about the ACC?

4. At work I've been with children again, which is a joy. Among other things, I have learned that the first people to live in Canada was God; that five-year olds weigh on average seven pounds; that penguins, gooses, crocodiles, fish, and cats all have waterproof fur; that your aunt's daughters are your children; that Aboriginal people used beaver claws as can openers; and that we skin skunks and platypi to make hats. Also, somewhere in Fort McMurray is a little girl from India who is likely now of the impression that her people were the first in Alberta, thanks to her classmate's patchy knowledge of political correctness. When she went home to explain this to her parents, I imagine her father said, "Stupid white people."

5. Furthermore, regarding children, if I had not already known that they have a very weak concept of personal space, I certainly would have learned it again this week.

6. I also learned a fair amount about river transportation in Alberta. Did you know that people lived in cabins in remote areas along the Athabasca River, north of the Grand Rapids, where they cut wood and stacked it along the riverbank for the woodburners (stermwheelers, paddlewheelers, riverboats, whatever you want to call them). There was a whole complex of people hired by the Hudson's Bay Company to do this. The craziness of the Canadian northwestern fronteir, I tell you. Like any region's history, it's exciting and fascinating once you know where to look.

I talk about this because for work I was reading Paddle-Wheels to Bucket Wheels, a book about the history of the Athabasca region, which is unfortunately out of print. My workplace has one of the few copies I know of.

7. We went to Edmonton again this weekend, this time to visit the Valley Zoo. I include it because we left of Friday (hence the post coming today), but I'll describe the trip in the next one.

Yo. Visit Conversion Diary, host of this fine meme.

Listening and That Kind of Atheist

Sorry. This is a long one.

Jon and I were sitting down in the Lazy Scholar. This was on my most recent--and final--trip to Ontario. We were talking about one hundred and one related things, and Jon brought up a girl I will call Sally Drew. (This protects her privacy a little bit, but Jon and Cait will recognize immediately who I'm talking about.) I've never to my knowledge met this Sally Drew. Jon implied that she is my intellectual match, and the thing about Jon is that he often and vocally overestimates how intelligent I am. It seemed as though he was suggesting that she is in a way my antithesis (or I suppose that we are antitheses of one another), in that she is a vociferous and evangelical atheist, frequently waxing upon the irrationality of religion. This is a girl who has committed a lot of her not insignificant mental resources to supporting atheism. She has the arguements all worked out, and she's honed them well (or as well as you can if you're under twenty-five). Jon in effect said that Sally Drew is certain of her atheism and tries to convince others to follow suit.

I said, "That makes me so sad."

Jon said, "That's what she says about you."

I was shocked by two things: the first was that Sally Drew knows of my existence and is judging me somewhere; the second was that I was judging her in exactly the same way that I did not want to be judged. To say we were antitheses was perhaps truer then than at any other point; we were mirror images, judging each other through Jon.

What does really make me sad, and I said this to Jon, is that while I am more than willing to try to see things from an atheist perspective, to understand why other people think what they do and to participate in our common humanity, I do not see atheists attempting the same. I quite literally cannot think of a single atheist who has done this. This is what makes me sad. I am sure that there are atheists who do. There must be. But those I have met do not, or at the very least I cannot tell that they do.

And I do try to understand things from an atheist perspective, in the same way that when I look at situations I sometimes think, "What would a Buddhist think of this?," or "Now, a Taoist would say such-and-such in this situation." I follow an atheist blog, I have read atheist books, and I do a smattering of research on-line. I try to listen when non-Christians talk about spiritual things (truth, meaning in death, morality, and so forth), and not just so I can make an articulate response. Trying on different perspectives--within an epistemological quarantine,* of course--is something I have trained myself to do. It's a very postmodern ability, of course, but it is an important one even to an absolutist like me.

(Of course I fail to practice it all the time. Such are we dusty creatures.)

It is perhaps this ability's postmodernism that makes it so unattractive to rational materialists. After all, most of these vocal atheists I encounter are not just atheists, but a specific kind of atheist. That is, they believe not just that there is no God (an atheist existentialist, a Buddhist, and a nihilist would all agree with that), but also that the world we experience is rationally understandable and can be understood strictly in material (ie. physical, scientific, empirical) terms. No existentialist, Buddhist, or nihilist would agree with rational materialism, however atheist they were. Rational materialism has little time for postmodernism because rational materialism requires reason and experience to be universal. Different perspectives do not matter because what is true is true for everyone. Maybe perspectives matter for social issues, politics, culture, and so on, but when it comes to what the universe looks like, there's no point wondering how other people see it. All that matters is logic and science.

(I find trying rational materialism on comparatively easy because I used to be a rational materialist. I was amateur status, and I tried to reconcile it with Christianity, but it's still a mindset that I'm familiar with.)

Whatever the cause, I have not found a vocal atheist willing to try on my perspective to the same degree that I am willing to try on theirs. This is clearly true of my antithesis, Sally Drew; this is clearly true of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the rest of the New Atheists; this is true of the atheists I encounter at http://www.atheistrev.com/. Perhaps it is untrue of those atheists who are quiet, whose atheism I do not encounter. The trouble is, I wouldn't know.

This is what makes me sad. If, of course, "sad" is defined as "scared, angry, and despairing." It's also true that I'm sad about her being an atheist, but that's not something you go around saying out loud. That sort of thing makes you sound arrogant and condescending, which are things Christians need to steer away from.** Also, how I feel about her being an atheist is beside the point; what is the point, at least to the conversation I was having with Jon and to this article, is that it upsets me when people like Sally Drew refuse to see things from another point of view.

Sally Drew likely has not met a Christian willing to see things from her point of view. Or, if she has, that Christian has not made it clear that he is trying to do so. I suspect that there are many atheists who do honestly try to understand how Christians and other non-atheists see the world. But, as I've said ad nauseaum, I have not recognized this in them. Which makes me wonder whether it is visible that I attempt to otherstand things from other people's points of view. Do people know that I try to do this? I have reason to suspect that they do not, and this is what really scares me.

I wondered for a while why religious-themed conversations I had with a certain agnostic former housemate tended to go sour. Each one seemed to end worse than the last, until some unkind words were spoken and we never had those conversations again. It wasn't until after that last conversation that I realized what was happening: he understood my justifications of my beliefs to by assaults on his beliefs. This was mainly my fault. I did not bother to explain that I see no reason for my experiences and philosophizing to make a difference to someone else's belief system. This is why I believe; it does not mean that I think you have to. But I never told him that, and so I think he felt threatened. In response he tried to "disprove" my justifications and beliefs, and then I felt defensive, and it turned into an argument. Somehow I never noticed it happening as it happened. It was only in retrospect that I could ever see what went wrong.

The thing about rational materialism, though, is that any justification must hold universally true. If I give reasons for believing, they must by necessity apply to whoever I'm speaking to (according to rational materialism). So giving an account of my belief is an attack on theirs, from their point of view. I wish I was better at communicating that that's not how I see it.

How is this important? Good question. It seems to me that we as a world need to get along a little better. One of the ways we might go about doing this is listening to each other. And I mean really listening, not getting down enough of the points to make a decent rebuttal. I am trying to get better at doing this. I want to hear your journey, and I will try not to take your experiences as a direct assault on the validity of my own. But I want the same from you. I want the same from everyone. (That I will not get this is likely one of the crosses I must bear.)

We cannot attempt peace without listening. We cannot love without listening. We cannot listen if we are unwilling to understand. From what I have seen, very few people of any worldview are willing.***

--------
* "Epistemological quarantine" refers to quarantining beliefs so that they don't interfere with the rest of your belief system; I try these ideas on without allowing them any sticking power. I do not really believe these things. I just pretend that I do so I can get a better idea of seeing what it's like.
** Not to throw stones or anything, but I'd like to tell atheists that arrogance and condescension look just as bad on you as they do on us.
*** Let me be clear that in order to listen we must be willing to understand. Successfully understanding is unnecessary. It must be so, for I doubt that full understanding is possible.

The Saturday Evening Blog Post, vol. 2, issue 4

As per Elizabeth Esther's blog carnival, I am choosing my favourite post from March and my favourite post from April.

For March I must pick Hope?, not because it was my favourite (for that I'd pick my Planaria sonnet), but because it seemed to engage the most people, or at least provoke a more vocal response (include some blog posts in response).

For April I pick the introduction to my foray into Postmodernism, largely because I haven't written much else this month. Eee. (If you read the Postmodernism post, make sure you read the second part, too. Especially if you're coming here from Elizabeth Esther's, as the second half will interest you most, I think.)

7 Quick Takes (XXXIX)

1. Kingston. Saturday, met with folks about town. Sunday, went to Bethel (school church), discerned that I like St. Thomas' better (ie. Tom's has responsive reading, prefer deacon Dave's oratory), headed to Oakville...

2. Airport, airplane. I get to Pearson very early because I discover while in the cab to the GO station that it would actually be cheaper to take the cab all the way to Pearson, so do that instead. It also takes far less time than getting the GO to Union, walking to the Royal York, and getting the Express bus. Buy Saturday at a bookstore because I wasn't feeling the Miltonic verse that morning. Get through most of it on the plane(s).

Also, assorted experiences on the plane and in the airports give me the germ of a short story idea...

I get home Monday afternoon.

3. I got a Flickr account. I'm not sure how I'm feeling about this Flickr account. While I like looking at other people's pictures, I feel like posting my own is a waste of time and bandwidth and server space. It's not like anyone looks at them. This blog sees far more traffic than my Flickr does. Then again, my Flickr account isn't even a week old yet.

4. I returned to work on Tuesday. It wasn't as bad as I feared. I was tired, but work's not bad if you're busy. Though of course there's stress if you're too busy...

5. I applied for residence at University. I think it's finally sunk in that I'm going to be a student again. Yay!

6. We were robbed at work. Technically, it wasn't robbery, because in Canadian law, robbery means that the perp was armed. Anyway, a guy driving a (stolen) taxi snatched the till, but the Mounties got him. For those American readers, you can stop picturing Mounties as wearing the red blazes. That's their dress uniform, yes, but when they're on the job they wear the regular blue-white-grey vested uniforms that most police wear. I'm sure I could make the story more interesting-sounding, but, let's be honest, I'm tired.

7. The folks and I went to see Gunless and How to Train Your Dragon last night. They were both excellent movies. I recommend strongly.

Go see the 7 Quick Takes host, y'hear?