WITHER

Sifted winter across blank fields, found
wheat stalks in piles against the floor, the small Ruths
& the small Boazes
& a draught

of something nourishing.

*

Not far from here’s a town.

Antler.

Population: unforgiven.

*

Multiplication tables cornered
in a Pee-Chee folder holding over
middle-aged debris—

transcript in Sanskrit of a tiny hand,
a spring day, a broken wheel.

DESTINATION

Some fog in all this dense is part of parts
of a believable world—

human coloring flaking off
under lamps: green lamps: two comets
collide us up super.


*


Kept falling up on the page of mud, my lips
combed felt & children smiling
all over the walls

were your perfection, your forgetting.



*


Build a lean-to
for instance for gravitational heft,
a place with a tree & a home a stupid word

inside all real lives beginning
with the letter.


*


A sad place held up.


*


Turning a fairway into a causeway
where a freeway runs through it—

Mayan Face

Some years ago, I don't know, a half-dozen or so, on the eve of the eve of my leave-taking of my apartment of six or so years, a man and a woman I'd never met knocked on my door and when I bid them enter, entered bearing beers.

I don't remember their names but the woman lived directly below me and told me she was teaching a geography class that my friend was taking. She was drunk and began to tell me that she knew the schedule I kept, my comings and goings. She knew when I woke in the morning, when I left the building, when I came home, and she knew when I had sex: the building was turn of the last century and the walls were thin. But she told me this. You don't tell strangers this unless you are sure you'll never see them again. Not knowing what to say, I said, strangely, "I guess I've had a good year."

Her man friend handed me a beer and studied my bookcases. He stared at me for longer than is appropriate to stare at anyone you're not planning on beating up or making love to or scolding. He took a swig of his beer and said, reaching out, almost but not touching me--"You have a Mayan face."

They left as suddenly as they had arrived. Outside it was snowing.

Doxology

There is no God & so
god settles down around like so

some more goes.

*

Foraging for rocks & food
has dried up.

Late season, late fire.

*

God is “no”& the small
part splaying out sophistries:

four more months’ cant.

A RULE OF THREES

A mean wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public.
He suggests she pick some flowers.

*

The theme also appears in the story of the life of St. Margaret,
in which the saint emerges unharmed from the belly of a dragon.

*

A grandmother, a huntsman, a red Gap hoodie.

*

Very common in the European folk tale is the rule of threes.

*

"I think the wolf that wants to eat the girl and the wolf that wants to eat the three pigs is the same mean wolf."

*

You're right but you'll forget that by the time you're seven.

Once upon a time, I lived on a diet of baked goods, ice cream, strong coffee, and popsicles. I was thin then, too. And happy in the way a man living with someone who no longer loved him could be. The small human taking up our space helped us forget that until trying to forget was more difficult than simply severing ties. When I moved the couch as I was evacuating that old house on Orchard St.--a December day much like this one except that it was 20 degrees F. and wild turkeys pranced about the front lawn--I found a pile of popsicle sticks, dozens of them.

Details matter. The smallest the most.

Rule of Threes

A mean wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public.
He suggests she pick some flowers.

*

The theme also appears in the story of the life of St. Margaret,
in which the saint emerges unharmed from the belly of a dragon.

*

A grandmother, a huntsman.

*

Very common in the European folk tale is the rule of threes.

*

"Daddy, I think the wolf that wants to eat the girl and the wolf that wants to eat the three pigs is the same mean wolf."

LAKE EFFECT

It is a calm lake & lake

falls ... the ... field

*

A paper hay mewing a heard

against that which is milled

*

//


A deed we flounder toward--

this bus unassembled into the lungs

of twice-fired, last week's arrows

*

To be a noun in this Wide American West.

I am, she says, the 51st state.

Some comeuppance chemical: some fog.

//


Look @ the horse who

writes a fucking horse

*

Stop.

Signs muddle perceptions: quick

-brain tactics

askanced into mortal combat.

*

From this point fwd, I'll simply

scan the pages of this mess

directly into the .doc

as imgs. I'm reading a lot lately

from a station not supposedly

to understate: this causes frictional.

*

Notation on self. Christmas trees.

Lines on St. Lucy's Day

The bicycle has ridden itself away

into a storm cloud

just off the horizon line

*

The new ways adopt the old style

to appear stylish

crushed felt. daisy. black modest skirt. white blouse.

*

Camphor dulls the effects of the ether.

*

Chalk dust & a surplus

of unused digits; in my country

we say "friend" but mean "accountant."

*

She asked about white balance

but what could I tell her.

*

So much coffee in these veins

the vessels

crack, fatigue.

*

She has a whiff of 2004 about her.

*

Summer's incandescent glow was something

less than expected. Insouciant gloss, reverie.

*

"Do you miss me & want me to come to Oregon & hug you."

A few thoughts on my birthday, written last month on my birthday.

I woke early on the morning of my 18th birthday and went for a ten-mile run, down the street past the old school, out of town, up the road that lead to the airport, and back again. I hadn’t run in the months since graduating from high school the previous June. I’m not really sure what prompted me out the door that morning but maybe it was because I was 18. I was now and adult, and I wanted to mark the occasion somehow. And it worked, I suppose, because I still remember it 22 years later. Other things I remember about that day: my mother took me out for dinner at the Chinese restaurant ( I don’t remember the actual name of the restaurant—it was the only Chinese restaurant in town, and hence, “The Chinese Restaurant.”), and my mother bought me a six-pack of beer: Bud Light. I hadn’t asked for the beer and if I had, I probably wouldn’t have requested Bud Light. But there it was. So that evening I sat on the couch, inches from where I sit now, drinking my birthday gift, my mother on the other couch, my younger brother either on the floor watching television or in his bedroom playing computer games.

My father wasn’t here for a reason I don’t remember. He has, over the years, proved himself very able at not being around during certain life events. And maybe this is simply the way my brain has processed the past. Maybe it has something to do with his leaving our home when I was in 4th grade, moving an hour away to take over an A&W Family Restaurant. If there is one event that marks the transition, in my memory, from him being an active father to him being the guy I called “Dad,” that’s it. He wasn’t at my college graduation (golf tournament), and I don’t remember him at my high school graduation. The morning after my daughter was born I was surprised that he made the hour drive to my then-home to see his first-born grandchild. He didn’t say much. I just remember him saying, “Son, she may be cute now, but just wait about 12 or 13 years.” She’s been away for me now for 16 months. I am the absent father, and she not even four years old.

My 18th birthday came and went. So did 21 birthdays after. In between these two days, 22 years apart, I joined the Navy. I went to college. I quit college to work in a furniture mill. I quit working in a mill to work for two booksellers. I went back to college and began writing poetry, began studying religion, began reading for the first time in a disciplined way. I had an incredible manic episode in there—it lasted nearly a month and I had no idea that it was anything medical. I simply thought I was undergoing a religious transformation. I don’t tell this story to anyone because those who know me now will just take it as confirmation that not only am I crazy, but that I’ve always been crazy. Where were we? I graduated college with honors. I applied to and was accepted to an MFA program. I was kicked out of the program for the crime of having a “cavalier attitude.” I was accepted into an MA program. I began teaching. I received my MA and went on to pursue a PhD. I grew bored with PhD studies. I got a teaching job that I loved and I stalled on my dissertation. I quit my dissertation altogether. I met a woman and became involved in a very unhealthy relationship. I lost my job. I had a child. Now I’m 40 years old with no job, no income at all, ruined credit, and a daughter 2000 miles away.

It’s been a long 22 years. And it’s gone very quickly. If I’m to be completely truthful about my resume these past two decades, I should mention that I drank a lot too. In the early years I did my share of illegal drugs. I had sex with a few strangers. I was reckless with credit cards and loans. I made a ton of bad decisions. My wit and luck, though, always pulled me through. Or, at least most of the time they did. The depression and the mania came and went. I drank to self-medicate and was aware of what I was doing but desperately didn’t want to admit that I might have a mental disorder. I had no problem admitting that I might have a drinking problem—but that was far preferable to having to deal with the notion that I might be crazy. Of course, I imagined I probably was. But only for brief intervals. I drank. I immersed myself in the “poetry world.” Sometimes I got caught up in frantic exercise—running again. Running, maybe, to regain some bit of control.

These last three years, things have just fallen apart. I lost my job due to budget cuts (which I knew were coming and should have been planning for), my partner and I grew apart, though by that point we were probably only trying to stay together for our child. Before long I was living in a tiny apartment, but my kid and my ex lived just down the road and I saw them almost daily. But I still wasn’t working. The freelance jobs I had been working dried up. The savings accounts dried up. Paying bills was a challenge.

At this point in my story I want to stop because I can hear a voice—maybe a voice out there in the internet wilds, maybe a voice that sounds a lot like my mother, telling me “So what! Pick yourself up. Move on! Walk it off.” This, my friends, is perhaps what scares me most—that I am simply not capable of holding it together much longer. But something happened a few months ago. I won’t go into details but it was a change in medications. A very simple change. Almost overnight I began to feel stronger, no longer overcome by fatigue, indifference, non-specific anxiety and inexplicable fear. I don’t what this means for me or my future. I miss my kid. I miss having an adult life.

5-Minute Poem for Gregory Crosby

MATERIAL COMPONENTS

He is a “man
of substance”
they say but what
substance:
ichor, sluice,
& bitumen,
Trammeled, pilloried
slicks of …

*

Reflect
something un
toward, master
of no art,

holder, to some
degree, a handy
bit o’ something
human. Sounds
so dirty.

We have an inter
section, a vow I’ll meet
you at the second
staple, buried head-
down in the fold.

from The Burnside Review

Another Five-Minute Poem

Here's another Five-Minute Poem, written for my friend, Jess H. I met Jess about 15 years ago. We were fast friends for several months. Then we had a falling out of sorts, a falling out that neither of us really remembers. Details are foggy and undetailed. No matter. We've recently reconnected. She's a single mom living in Memphis, and she sent me some Memphis coffee beans. I sent her this poem.


The South (ern California girl) Remembers

You are not a memory
but the realization

of a lapse some century
in the making, a bottle-
red explosion,

like a Chinese finger
trap, my song-filled trial
& error come back to haunt.

Some field makes a BBQ pit
you standing next & over
a page behind the stand-still.

Your child is crawling inside
the television not to escape
but to find a place to sit.

The world sings a fine motion
without words, smoke rings
making haloes around

the people over there, everyday
messengers who dress like us.

Collaborative Poem

This is a poem Joe Massey and I wrote. I've known Joe since 2005 or so, and he's become my best friend in poetry. Not the poetry world, not po-biz, not academia, but just my best friend in poetry. Anyway, up until last night, we'd never collaborated on anything before. So now we have. It's here.

Words on God and Poetry for Felecia because she asked.

If being a Christian requires a belief in the supernatural, I am probably not a Christian. I have no mystical experiences to share—or none, at least, that propel me toward belief of a magic man in the sky or a magic hippie wordworker in ancient Palestine who drove demons out of pigs and slummed with whores and tax-collectors. Christianity is not really a pretty story, but the churches tilt toward opulence. I respect the smoke, the glass, the genuflections. I admire the hard-drinking priest.

Most of what I know about Medieval and pre-Medieval Christianity in England, I know through the French, by way of Middle English. The Breton Lays and the Arthurian tales and such—little inventions made to be recited alongside a lute, while ladies dumped chamberpots on the cobbled streets below. We're in the city now, understand, a few centuries past Lancelot and his comrades. They say the idea, the modern idea, of love originated in places like these; a fascinating tale it is and, of course, hogwash. I don't put much faith in truth, though. So perhaps I'm a Christian after all. What I have learned from the Lays, though, is this: if you are a beautiful high-born lass, do not, under any circumstances, take a nap underneath a tree. This I know.

The garden is teeming with cucumbers this year and some very hot chiles that grow upward, pointing at the sky. They are very spicy. The tomatoes are still green. The wildflowers are so wild, they've refused to show their faces. When I survey the backyard I am most afraid that the gigantic oak tree will be wrenched from the ground by an unseasonable gust and smash the shit out of my parents' house, the only house I've ever really been emotionally involved with. Maybe then, post-destruction, I could believe in God. Maybe if the house is smashed, my mother will be forced to re-decorate. I think in a former life I could have been one of those smartly dressed gay men who have home makeover shows on the DIY channel. My own apartment, though, is spartanly decorated. A few pictures of my daughter, a photo of the Clash on the fridge. A small print of a Greek statue of Odysseus' elephantine blue stone ass, placed at eye level next to the toilet.

I believe in poetry at least as much or as little as I believe in God. I don't like poetry that most people are supposed to like. At least not in this part of the forest. I find the idea of “beauty” and the notion of beauty as achievable through language both coarse and arrogant. If I ever have to read another Li-Young Li poem, I'd advise onlookers and passersby to find something to do that involves not being in my presence. Poetry, like God, is best when it is inscrutable. Once, several summers ago, I awoke mid-dream and stumbled out the back door. I was in the country and the sky was inky black. Crickets played their legs in the not-so-distant distance. I stood there for a long time. And then a glow emerged. Faint halos appeared around the oak tree, the rosemary bush, an ancient roto-tiller atop a mound of dirt. Then I turned. It was just the porch light.

"The Moral Logic of Assholism"

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg has a new book called Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years.

On Slate's recently re-booted, or returned from hiatus, Lexicon Valley podcast, hosts Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield examine the A-Word with help from the author. Among other things, they discuss the curiosity that is the gendered use of "asshole." We almost always use it to refer to men. I won't go into the (rather provocative and interesting) analysis here, but this quote stuck with me:

"We will know who women have achieved some measure of gender equity when asshole women can be called assholes right along with asshole men."

*

When S. and I were careening toward break up, we had a few near-fights. By near-fights, I mean to clarify that we never really argued like I imagined other couples argued. There was no throwing objects and screaming, no dramatic Hollywood wailing and implications of violence or simmering tensions just about to bubble over. No. We didn't argue all that much. But twice, twice, I called her an asshole. I honestly don't recall what she had said to me to provoke me, but I remember feeling as if she was being mean, not being fair, and I told her to stop being an asshole.

That was maybe our biggest "fight" because I had never called her a name before. And she didn't forget it. A few weeks or months later, right before the split--or maybe it was months after--we had another very different argument during which S told me that I didn't love our child. I wish I remembered the details.

Visibly shaken, I sat down. Trembling, I sat down. Nobody, up until that point in my 37 years on the planet, had ever said anything to me that hurt that much. I don't remember if I spoke then or if I just walked out. But it came up again and I said "you told me I didn't love my daughter. You deliberately hurt me." She countered that I had been hurtful to her and cited the time, months earlier when I had called her an asshole.

And I then understood that she either didn't understand or didn't care. That was nearly three years ago and I don't blame her for reacting rashly. I am still puzzled though by the response. I answered her. I told her that the world is full of assholes. Lots of people can act like assholes. I've been an asshole plenty of times and I'm sure I will be an asshole in the future. I can live with that. I can live with being an asshole. And sure, there are a lot of people who probably don't care for their children, even people who don't love them.

"What would you rather be, S?" I asked. "An asshole or someone who doesn't love your little girl?"

*

I'm probably an asshole for posting this. That's all right. This was all what now seems like a long time ago. I've still got a long way to go.

Anxiety and the Five-Minute Poem

In February of 2011 I was living a pretty sad, besotted existence. Big surprise there, I know.

I hadn't written, really written, in a few years. Post-baby, post-breakup, post-job loss.

I "met" a girl. On the internet. We talked nightly for about two weeks. We gushed and were icky in fake love. Then one day she stopped calling.

But during one of our first conversations I wrote a poem about Tang and the Space Shuttle Challenger. After that, I wrote a couple dozen more, nearly all occasional poems for particular people.

Last night I attempted to revive that, and wrote a poem for David Wright. He, in turn, wrote one for me. His is here:


David Wright's poem for Anthony Robinson.

He used an actual postcard and is sending it to me via post, like in the olden days.

*

Here's my poem for him:


CHAIN
For David Wright

Between the backlit woman & the backboard
in the last gym for miles,

past 5773 years of a nothing we painted

an up smudge

of dodge & burn;

past the knowing & not
knowing, the filters of apple & honey;

there is a caustic unraveling, between us, poet of Midwest

Landscape, Polaroid &

me the endpoint of a horizon of errors—

Ours is a marriage of silences. Two trees.
the ranging forest floor, the small tomorrows.

The Outsider's Field Guide to Real-World Trolls: The Evangelical Atheist.

I'll admit it: I spend way too much time engaging with various forms of "social media." There's an old saying in these parts (by "old," I mean, at least a few weeks old): Twitter will make you love people you don't know and Facebook will make you hate people you do know. I'm not entirely sure if this is true for anyone, but I get the point. Twitter is too small to do much damage, especially to strangers. Give me twenty minutes and a FB wall, though, and I can cause a lot of trouble.

Don't get me wrong--I don't mean to cause problems. I don't mean to be provocative. But I guess I sometimes piss people off. At the very least it sure seems like I do sometimes. The following is an expansion, revision of something I posted on FB this morning. Nobody got really angry or cursed each other (much). Still, I left the discussion feeling slightly less than satisfied, as if nobody (or at least the somebodies whose opinions I was interested in) seemed to be interested in listening, or at least attempting to answer some pretty basic questions. Let me explain.

I run with a fairly liberal crowd; by "fairly liberal" I mean that at least 60% of my FB friends (and a roughly equal number of my Real World friends)find themselves standing considerably to the left of our President Obama. Certain things are not just accepted in this circle but expected: pro-gun control, pro-abortion rights, pro-union, pro-gay marriage, pro-higher taxes for rich people, and so forth. Coming in just behind these tenets of our political and intellectual faith is a wide acceptance, and often embrace of "atheism."

I could write a lengthy treatise on why I've put the word in quotes, the difference between an Atheist and an atheist, and other fiddly things, but I'll try to be brief and clear: in this post, I'm not talking about the dictionary definition of atheist: "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings." If that's you, you're not my problem.

Hell, I'm just such an atheist. I don't believe there is a god. Or gods. I don't. But for reasons which should become clear, I usually don't call myself an atheist, as I believe that the term carries with it certain assumptions absent from the pure denotative meaning. As I see it, atheism has, in some respects, been co-opted by a particular brand of atheist I will call here the Evangelical Atheist (EA). Not simply content to not believe in God, the EA insists on actively pushing his non-belief system of beliefs on others. There are famous EAs and then there are my FB friends who call themselves atheists, post and repost spaghetti monster and yay science! memes, and who I'm guessing don't really think much about what being an atheist means or doesn't mean. I mean, aside from that god stuff. If you are one of those non-celebrity, non-evangelical atheists, let me be clear--I don't hate you. I don't wish ill will toward your family. I don't spend my days wringing my hands and my nights sleepless with rage and indignation over you. You're a lot like me.

It may seem that I'm spending a lot of time on definition here; this is a response to folks who read an earlier version of this post and accused me of being a "self-hating atheist" or of being unduly upset with atheists, or being a pseudo-intellectual with an ax to grind. To those detractors, and to you, the reader, I say this: I do not have a problem with people who don't believe in god. I simply dislike those who would take their atheist belief or position and foist it upon others in the spirit of combativeness while appealing to their own authority and who refuse to tolerate belief that falls outside the parameters of an empirical true/false binary. I think the good-intentioned EA fails to realize that a humane ethics cannot be derived solely from empirical observation and slavish adherence to that which can or cannot be "proved" with the scientific method. To assume otherwise is to rob human beings of a lot of their humanity, their creativity, and what Keats called "Negative Capability."

Once we move beyond our FB news ticker or our family and friends, the next place we are likely to encounter EAs is in traditional media outlets. I'll call these folks famous atheists. Famous atheists come in two varieties: the "Intellectual" and the "Celebrity." The intellectual atheists are well-known for their achievements in science (Richard Dawkins) or witty rhetoric in the realms of politics and culture (Christopher Hitchens). The celebrity atheist is a public figure, generally recognized in his or her capacity as an entertainer. Many of these celebrities also tend to straddle the line between politics and entertainment. Bill Maher and Penn Jillette are two especially vocal celebrity atheists. What celebrity atheists and intellectual atheists have in common is their reliance on a certain brand of specious and reductivist rhetoric that paints the Other (in this case, "believers") with such broad strokes as to render any meaningful engagement with them practically unnecessary. The believer, in the eyes of the EA is either a dolt, a wicked person or somebody who needs to be saved from their own woeful ignorance. Not a lot of wiggle room there.

So what's my problem with EAs? Why not simply ignore them? Well, I try to. But something about crusading under the auspices of "truth" and "critical thinking" while denying the potential for a multivalent concept of truth, and while consciously subverting or ignoring actual critical thinking tends to get under my skin. The careful reader may have noticed by now that I'm not opposed to atheists so much as I have low tolerance for sloppy thinking or, alternately, sharp thinking packaged as witty takedowns or cloaked in logical fallacy so as to make the "message" clear. In having to reduce their arguments to fallacious rhetoric and/or witticisms, the EAs show little respect for or trust in those whom they would wish to convince or affirm. Most EAs can quite handily and convincingly make an argument for the non-existence of God. What is often overlooked, though, is that in discussions of "atheism" the question being asked is rarely, "Is there a God." The question driving the rhetoric is "Should an intelligent person believe in a God or practice a religion?"

If EAs simply ended the conversation where the non-existence of God is either proved, or the existence of God can not be proved, then I'd have no disagreement.
The EA, though, is not merely content to maintain that there is no god; he or she insists on proselytizing a belief system dedicated to demonstrating (emphatically!) the wrong-headedness of believers, and to attributing most or all societal ills to the existence of religion, which they consider 100% folly and, if they are to believed, dangerous.

Of course the above formulation, with minor tinkering, (read "non-believers" for "believers" and "absence" for "existence" and you have a sentence that with fair accuracy describes most Fundamentalist believers, be they Christians, Muslims, or Jews. (Though, in all fairness, Jews don't actively proselytize.) My point is that when you reach beyond "this is what I know to be true" and extend the personal outward, that is, to insist that others either know it to be true or be branded as either heretics or idiots, you have stepped outside the realm of critical thinking and rational discussion and into the coliseum. We know who the Lions and Christians are, right?

In the realm of more or less academic or "formal" rhetoric, we are taught to avoid what the late rhetorician Wayne Booth called "motivism." Simply put, motivism is the practice of launching an argument against not what an opponent says, but rather what you believe to be the opponent's "secret motivation." The "secret" part here means what they're not telling you, what you believe they are withholding. (For some reason.) Booth's admonishment to avoid motivism does not deny the existence of secret motives, only that the best arguments are made against what we know or can expect to be true or reasonable about our opponent's position. Speculation regarding motives, then, is to be avoided in formal argument. I offer this disclaimer because I'm going to engage in some motivism in what follows. You've been warned.

If the individual atheist is secure and happy in his knowledge of "the truth," happy and capable and completely assured that "science" and "truth" are both sides of the same coin, and in fact are not simply better than "faith" and "religion" but completely obliterate the need for these concepts, then so be it. I don't have a problem with that. The EA oversteps his bounds when he projects his atheism at others.

Why pick on those who do believe? Why do your Dawkinses and your Hitchenses and comedy magicians go on television to proclaim the superiority of science and the infantilism of religion as if these two things are always and unequivocally in opposition, as if one can only be a believer in empirical scientific truth or a believer in superstitious religious mumbo-jumbo and never the twain shall meet?

(These questions I ask throughout are not strictly rhetorical, by the way. I'd love to entertain a thoughtful answer. I'm not simply trying to make a point but am actively seeking a response.)

To ask these questions almost requires that we speculate about motivation. So excuse me while I don my Motivist Hat. We'll start with the EA's enemy, the Evangelical Religious Person.

Though I don't agree with the fire-and-brimstone ERP, I can more easily understand what moves him than I can understand what moves the EA. The religious fundamentalist ACTUALLY THINKS that if you don't believe as he does, you are GOING TO HELL. No matter how misguided, he actually believes this and is, in his way, trying to help. What drives the evangelical atheist then? If he is happy and secure in his knowledge, in his superiority, then why does the existence of the very belief in a god so offend him? Is he also offended by Santa Claus? The Tooth Fairy? Hanukkah Harry?

The primary motivation of the evangelical atheist, as far as I can tell, is hubris. (That was the motivism part! And to my detractor who accused me of name-calling, I guess this is about as close as I get in this post to name-calling, though strictly speaking, I'm not calling anybody names, I'm simply assigning a motive without citing specific supporting evidence.) While some EAs claim to preach atheism in order to save lives, or improve lives, or make the world better place, just as many do not. There is a lot of talk of critical thinking, of questioning accepted norms, of truth, of science. What's missing from these discussions is the sense that there is a compelling reason for atheism. How does it make the world a better place? My take on this is that it's a question that's avoided because it cannot be answered without making sweeping assumptions about what it means to be a believer, how religious belief plays out in the real world. It would also require the EA to acknowledge that religious people are not all the same. Doing so would expose the straw-man argument that paints ALL believers as fanatics for what it is--a logical fallacy. In other words, being forced to acknowledge the diversity of belief and opinion among a wide swath of religious people also forces the EA to venture out of his box of binary truth-value, and this is HARD. This, it seems, is why so many public EAs sidestep the real issue altogether, and instead revert to equating intelligence and reason with atheism, and faith or religious practice with superstition, simple-mindedness, and lack of critical thinking ability. Because it's easier than admitting that things are, you know, complicated.


[WHILE EDITING THIS POST, I LOST A FEW HUNDRED WORDS THAT WENT HERE. I'M ONLY DRAWING ATTENTION TO THIS TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE ABSENCE AND MY OWN ERROR. I DIDN'T REMOVE THESE PARAGRAPHS ON PURPOSE. I RECALL THE GENERAL GIST OF THEM, THOUGH, AND MAY REWORK THE IDEAS FOR A FUTURE POST.]


To end, for now, I have no problem with the non-belief in God. I am a non-believer. I am irritated by sloppy thinking, specious logic, and disingenuous arguments that seem to do little more than aggrandize their inventors. If there are thoughtful EAs out there who truly are driven by a desire to teach, to have dialogue, to do more than demonstrate hubris and smugness, then please come out of hiding! Let's talk.

*

post-post question for self-described atheists:

Why is it important to you that others discard religion and/or embrace atheism?

"Old Girlfriends and Other Horrible Memories" revisited

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Who is the person

who keeps +1-ing my posts?


Thank you,
Tony

writing through

A sensation fit for a backyard,

this way of being unlike a mellotron

& making it past the barricades

the incongruencies of barely living

is what I like about you & why

I give this small thing

like a piece of cake or a 3x5

gravely outlined, embossed someplace

in a room where one can strain a bit

to hear the background vocal &

this is safety, smooth, college-ruled.