Dan Barker’s Book Godless: my reaction

(see here)

In some sense, Dan Barker’s book Godless is a standard: “what I was like, what happened, and what I am like now” kind of story. He started out steeped in fundamentalist Christianity, developed doubts, became an atheist and then became involved in atheist/free thinker/freedom from religion causes.

What is different though is that he devotes the first part of his book to describing what he was like when he was a “believer”.
I could relate, in a sense, as I was a “cradle Catholic” who grew up following Notre Dame football, going to Sunday school and church, going to confession, etc. In fact, I seriously thought about becoming a priest (though my friends told me that I lacked the patience/people skills; they said that I ought to be a religion professor instead).

But this is where the commonality is: Mr. Barker and I were/are both seekers; it was important for us to keep seeking “the truth”. And yes, when we were in our religion, we both thought that we had found it.

But as we learned more (history, science, natural history, etc.) the inconsistencies began to gnaw at us. Doubts grew…”how could THAT be possible”; “if this miracle is false…well…why believe any miracle”, etc.

I am convinced that is why I ended up an atheist instead of ending up as a religious liberal; my mind simply wouldn’t permit some sort of “ration of miracles”. A belief in miracles is inconsistent with scientific principles and I am unwilling to live with cognitive dissonance.

As Barker said, our stop at our respective religions was due to the same journey that lead us to atheism; it isn’t as if we had changed personalities but rather it was a matter of learning more.

But back to the book: the book features a standard rebuttal on most religious claims (not much new here) but it also has an interesting chapter on Jesus and gives a wide variety of arguments, including those arguments which claim that Jesus was never a single historical figure!

Barker notes that there are no contemporary writings about Jesus; the first ones that appear are the writings of Paul, and Paul says nothing about the details of his life. There are other gospels but these were written around the same time (or later) than the canonical gospels, which were written about 70-90 C. E. Secular writings about Jesus were non-existent, save a very brief passage from the work of Josephus called Jewish Antiquities. There was a somewhat longer fraudulent addition to this work and many historians think that the brief mention wasn’t in the original.

Of course, that might mean that Jesus simply wasn’t popular and famous during his lifetime and therefore unworthy of being written about at that time.

Sure there are other mentions of Jesus oriented groups forming and mentions that they believed stuff about him, but there is no contemporary mention of him or his deeds.

Of course, the gospels do draw on the literature of the day to tell their story, (see: Gospel Fictions by Randal Helms ) but that in and of itself doesn’t infer that Jesus wasn’t historical. After all, fictional narratives are often used to describe current figures.

In short: I am glad that I bought the book. I learned some facts and I enjoyed the story. But mostly I came to understand why I ended up as an atheist (or at least, as someone who understood that he was an atheist) ; I wouldn’t have had I not had this “seeker” drive.

For many of my last years as a self proclaimed Christian, I said that I believed in a deity, but in reality I believed that the events of this universe were all completely naturalistic.

Review: The Man Who Haunted Himself (film with Roger Moore)

It starts with a very proper, very, well…meticulous Roger Moore (playing the part of a young, overworks, hard charging and sexually repressed executive of a technology firm) getting into his car, putting every thing in its place and obeying the letter of the law.

But on the drive home….a different personality takes over and there is a crash…..and it is very touch and go in the operating room. He eventually pulls out and recovers….or does he?

There seems to be a double of him who is causing him trouble (no, not in the Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is he Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? manner). But is it really a double and if so, why? Or is this a descent into Schizophrenia? Or, is there another possibility?

I won’t tell you; but if you like Roger Moore, or if you like fantasy thrillers with a psychological theme then you will enjoy this. I got the idea to watch this film from reading Roger Moore’s book My Word is My Bond (which I did enjoy; it has interesting tidbits about his life and shows his sense of humor). In My Word is My Bond, Moore states that this was the one film in which he was really “permitted to act” and, in my opinion, he did an excellent job.

Rotten Tomatoes has a review here.

23 January 2010 (PM)

Workout notes 4000 yard swim; 10 x 100 on the 2 to warm up, gradually moving from the high 1:40′s to the high 1:30′s with little effort. Then 10 x 200 on the 3:30: 3:15, 13, 12, 12, 11, 13, 14, 12, 12, 11, then 1000 of cool-down strokes.

Then weights; I was able to handle 45 pound dumbbells for military presses and 70 pound dumbbells for the bench press. I am getting stronger.

I finished with yoga leg lifts (20) and a headstand.

Interestingly enough, running or doing the elliptical prior to swimming slows me down. Go figure.

Afterward, we had lunch with Lynn (a friend) and then I tutored her about facebook.

Football
I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s NFL games. My picks:

Spread: Jets + 8, Saints – 3.
To win: Colts and Saints.

Jets: rookie quarterback, though the defense might keep it close. Vikings: not a great road team, but their recent road woes have been on grass, outdoors. The Superdome is more to their liking, in terms of turf.

Keith Olbermann Apologizes For Scott Brown Comment: ‘I Have Been A Little Over The Top Lately’ (VIDEO)

Keith Olbermann apologized for his comments about Massachusetts Senator-Elect Scott Brown Friday night just one day after being called out by Jon Stewart over the remarks. Monday night, Olbermann described Brown as “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”

more about "Keith Olbermann Apologizes For Scott …", posted with vodpod

Time For President Obama to Renege on a Campaign Promise?

I admit that I backed then Senator Obama from the beginning, when he announced in Springfield. In fact, I was there.

I loved the fact that he is intellectual and doesn’t try to hide it. I still think that he is a brilliant, classy man of excellent deportment. But I have to admit that he has struggled with some of the “high profile” items in his agenda and that I share some of the frustration that other liberals have, though I am not close to giving up on him. (Now if you talk about the Senate…I am very close to giving up on that stupid institution).

But one of the things that gave Obama the most popularity bothered me:

When I head this, I found myself saying “BS”; I have nothing in common with a large swath of “red America”; those people live in a different universe than I do.

Obama flat out said that we could work with Republicans:

(see about 1:00 to 1:20)

Well, the fact is that some differences are so great that they cannot be bridged; for example, you can’t work with a creationist to design a competent science class!

E. J. Dionne weighs in on this:

Washington will remain the object of scorn as a dysfunctional capital, and absent a new Obama approach, the GOP can act with the confidence that only Democrats will pay a price for the failure of comity.

This problem goes directly to the tensions in Obamaism. As a candidate, Obama pledged to change the tone in Washington and restore amicable relations between the parties. But he also promised to accomplish large things, including a substantial reform of the health-care system, major action to ease global warming and a reshaped and more responsible financial system.

At some point, Obama’s ambitions were destined to collide with the views of a Republican Party fundamentally opposed to almost everything he wants to do. Obama could try to get big things done or he could work easily with Republicans, but he could not do both.

As a result, he found himself leaning entirely on support from his own party, forcing a strategy of inside deal-making. This alienated the many rank-and-file Americans who don’t like the looks of such arrangements, however necessary they are.

A related contradiction was between Obama’s commitment to sweeping change and his soothing pragmatism that disdains public fights. In the campaign, this allowed him to unite a left that believed in his promises of transformation with a center that appreciated his conciliatory style.

You know, some things are impossible to do; it is almost as if I made a commitment this year to both get back up to 300 pounds in the bench press (which would require that I gain muscle) AND to walk 100 miles in 24 hours (which would require that I remain light or even get lighter).

Today’s daily address:

Special notes

Watch airline pilots tackle cross winds on landings (from 3 quarks daily)

Spot the Dork! (Steve Foster Memorial Run)

(click the image to see a larger version)

Last Saturday, some of Steve’s friends got together to honor his memory.

Can you “spot the dork”?

(big white beard). In this photo: Front: Lou McMurray (triathlete) and right in front of me: Beth Haynes (iron woman; 12 hour ish).
To the left of me: Bill Holmes. To the right: Bob Corbett (3:17 marathoner, over 300 pound bench press…he IS a nice guy, thank heavens!)

End of the Week Amusement (22 January 2010)

I took a bet with some department members.

I told them that many (if not most) of my business calculus class didn’t know the Pythagorean Theorem “off of the top of their heads” and two colleagues disagreed; they claimed that 90-95 percent would know.

So I gave them (a class of 25) a quiz which asked “what is the Pythagorean Theorem”?
The results:
7 (28 percent) stated it correctly.
1 (4 percent) was “oh-so-close” to being correct.
12 (48 percent) knew it had something to do with triangles or with the relation but wrote nothing else down.
5 (20 percent) had no clue; 2 admitted that they didn’t and 3 just wrote down random gibberish.

Scott W. Brown Fits in Well with the Republicans

From here

[Brown's] prior visits to Washington, he explained, were mostly to watch his daughter Ayla, a college basketball player, play against American University, or to visit the monuments “as a tourist.”

“I’m a history buff,” he said. “I love the Museum of Natural History.”

— Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-MA), as quoted by the Washington Post.

After Lunch 22 January 2010

see more Epic Fails

Health Care Reform

The voice of sanity on things like earthquakes:

Question: Many have criticized Pat Robertson’s suggestion that the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti was the work of the devil or a form of divine punishment. But if one believes God is good and intervenes in the world, why does God allow innocents to suffer? Why does God allow Haiti to suffer so much? What is the best scriptural text or explanation of that problem you’ve ever read?

Surf to the article for the answer. In short: the people who wrote the Bible really didn’t know anything about science. But we do, hence we have no excuse for thinking in such a superstitious manner. True, Paula Kirby says it more gently than I did…

Oh yes, here is where I say “please, for the love of God The Flying Spaghetti Monster, no!

Mr. President: Time to Show Some Leadership!

Man up, no excuses. Get together with Rep. Pelosi and get it done.