Doug Savage Is My Hero

Savage Chicken is just too much fun. I can't help but plug it from time to time. This is hilarious!

Loss In A Godless World

Loss is the only human constant. It's the only thing that every person on the planet can say they've experienced, to one degree or another. From the moment of our birth, we start losing time. Through our lives we lose family, friends, opportunities, possessions, positions, reputations, illusions and hair. Eventually, we all lose our lives. Nothing is permanent.

This can create a bleak view of the world, especially for the lucky few that are godless. How do you handle loss when there's no one to turn to for comfort? How do you deal with loved ones gone forever when there's no shoulder to cry on? These are some of the first questions I get when someone learns that I don't believe in a deity. The godridden just can't conceptualize a universe where there's no one to hand them strength of character in times of trouble. But the western world views strength of character as a virtue, and there's a reason for it. Our society depends on people who are rocks during a crisis.

So, where do the godless turn when loss threatens to overwhelm them? Where do we find our strength of character during crisis? These are hard questions to answer, and I can't even begin to answer them for others, but I know where I go.

What strength of character I have comes from my own experiences, the lessons I've learned the hard way in life. My father once told me that it was okay to panic, but that I had to wait until it was safe to do so. That was my first lesson in how to "deal". It wouldn't be my last, but I can't even begin to estimate it's worth. There have been others, of course. Mostly, it's just practice, though. This "Don't Panic" philosophy gets plenty of opportunities to shine in my life, and the lives of those around me.

From the death of family members all the way down to the breaking a favored toy, we all experience moments of "Why me?". It's a normal kind of question to ask. Why has this awful/dreadful/insignificant-but-annoying thing happened to me, and not someone else? Humans are pattern-seeking animals, and we are amazingly good at it. A purpose to all things is the ultimate pattern, and it comforts our pattern-seeking monkey-brains to believe that everything happens for a reason, that every loss is an act of will, that every missed opportunity is just a setup for something better down the road.

But the godless mind knows that rationalizations are just that, and nothing more. An honest mind has to 'fess up to wanting these comforting stavers-off of mourning, grief and frustration. But like eating sweets, just because it feels good doesn't make it right. A little bit of emotional self-blinkering is probably alright, and an argument could be made that it's even necessary, just like the occasional Almond Joy isn't hurtful, and has at least of bit of goodness in it. But delusional, chronic self-deception serves no one.

Humans lose things. Entropy increases. These are facts of life. The godless don't have the same tools for dealing with loss that the godridden do. We can't tell ourselves that there's a plan, that it happened for a reason, that Sky Daddy loves us or any of the other deceits that help to float religious belief. All we have is ourselves. Our inner strength is all that allows us to accept reality as it is, not as we want it to be.

We deal with loss because we must. It's the flip side of every good thing in the world: the smile of a child, the caress of a lover, the joy of good food and good company, the rush of triumph, the glory of invention. Loss is a fact of life, and the godless should always strive to face facts. That's why we're godless in the first place.

Previous entries in the Godless World series: Flexibility, Purpose and Reason.

God's Omnipotence Problem

This is probably one of the most succinct summing'-up of the Yahweh omnipotence problem that I've ever seen:

The Bible clearly indicates that God has foreknowledge, but what that does
to all of this is render it completely incoherent (at least to me). That means
that God created the world and human beings and gave us the choice to sin or
not, knowing that we would choose to sin and that the world would become filled
with sinful people. And he knew, of course, that this would lead him to drown
the entire world to put an end to sin - but again, he knew that wouldn't
actually rid the world of sin. And he knew that eventually he would have to send
himself as a sacrifice to himself to satisfy his own sense of divine anger over
the behavior he knew we would exhibit before he created us.

If you're interested, the original post can be found here, and the comment that spawned the above response by Ed Brayton can be found here. It's all compelling stuff.

President Al Gore on SNL

This is a great bit of political satire. This may be the funniest I've ever seen Al Gore be.