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The Rhubarb Patch: God and the problem of evil

Mystery novelist William F. Love and I have corresponded off and on over the years about many topics, most often religion.  Below is a correspondence that began on Sept. 14, 2001 three days after the  attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left nearly 3,000 people dead.  Love, a former Benedictine monk, believes in what he calls “benignity”  –that the creator and creation are benign or fundamentally, intrinsically good.

 A Metaphor: Our lives are lived on a giant conveyor-belt. From the moment of our birth we are on that belt, inexorably carried by it toward a cliff (called “death”), over which everyone eventually disappears–with no clue as to their fate after they go over. Isn’t it interesting that in the world in which we live, the overwhelming assumption–everyone makes it, so no one can deny it–is that going over the edge is (1) bad, & therefore (2) to be avoided at all costs.

But is it…really? No one knows! Yet, by a seemingly perverse “act of faith” we all join in the assumption that … it is bad! And because everyone accepts this, it is virtually impossible for anyone to assume otherwise. The fact that the so-called “knowledge” (that death is evil) is in fact not true knowledge at all, but rather an act of faith (since no one actually knows what lies over that cliff) isn’t even considered.

This assumption, shared by all, has resulted, or so it seems to me, in most of, if not all the evil in our world. Examine any action describable as “evil”. It will be seen to result from an individual or group acting so as to avoid, or at least postpone, going over that cliff
called Death.

Example: The universal & irrational human drive for revenge, a drive which defies logic. It’s not biological; doesn’t stem from evolution. So why this universal thirst for revenge? Surely it stems from the fear of death I describe. Someone has intentionally done something to nudge me closer to the edge of that conveyer-belt; so I do my best to return
the “favor.” Ever notice how people refer to revenge as “getting even”?

Possible objections: Don’t the religions of the world believe in a Creator of All? And therefore haven’t at least religionists avoided this “universal” assumption of non-benignity? Don’t they in fact teach the existence of a benign Creator?

Well…no. Examine any of the world’s religions closely & you’ll see that each (at least in some of its manifestations) suffers from the fear of death that stems from the universal paradigm of non-benignity. The problem with religion is that all religions probably arose AFTER the initial human decision to assume the world is unfriendly.

Therefore, when religion began, with its assumption of a Creator, that Creator was “contaminated” with the lust for revenge found in all human societies. Since all humans are vengeful (so the implicit reasoning of the early religionists must have gone) God must be vengeful. And since humans become more vengeful in direct proportion to the degree of their power & since God must be more powerful than even the most powerful human, God must also be supremely vengeful.

Jesus, I believe, saw through this. Jesus somehow came to understand that God was his (& our) Father, that God was therefore a Lover, not a revenge-freak, & thus the world could be seen as friendly. Unfortunately, Christianity, while professing (& no doubt genuinely attempting) to follow Jesus’ lead, has not understood the nature of Jesus’ teaching, & has fallen into the same (or worse) vengeful practices as everyone else.

When Jesus spoke (as he did frequently) of “the Kingdom”, this is what he was talking about: the future time when his followers, trusting in God’s love the way he did, would therefore love each other in imitation of God’s love for all. That this goal of his has never been achieved is not his fault, but ours, for not listening to him. But maybe 2000 years
isn’t long enough for that message to sink in.

Thank God for Christianity. For all its failures it has, at least, kept the words of Jesus from falling into oblivion. There is still hope.

I call my outlook “indifferent agnosticism” — I don’t know whether God exists and I don’t think it matters either way in terms of how we should live our lives.  A speech in which I elaborated on this outlook is here.  After my dialogue with Love you can read excerpts of my correspondence with readers. 

To Bill Love:

God  sure is mysterious, eh?

To Eric Zorn:

Not only one of the more laconic notes I’ve ever received   but also the one most dripping with irony, and possibly bitterness…unless I’m totally misreading it.

In any case,  misreading or not, I feel compelled to respond to, not the sentence itself, but the sentiments I think underlie its brevity.

Because those five words express a whole world of difference between the way you see the world and the way I see it.  The fact that such a horrible disaster is even possible gives you (as I gather you see it) abundant — and  perhaps superabundant — evidence for the non-existence of God.  At least of any God which would be worth worshipping–a good and beneficent God.

Such an occurrence (I seem to hear you saying between the lines [though I have to admit, it’s strange to say “between the lines” when speaking of a one-line note!]) ought to send the likes of me scurrying back to my drawing board–or whatever workspace  it is wherein I dream up such fantasies–to reconsider my conception of God.

But I ask: Why?  The happening of Sept.11 was not something the possible existence of which was unknown to me beforehand.  Nothing happened Sept. 11 that  (1) hadn’t already happened, in other various forms & ways, many times & in many other guises, throughout history [consider Hiroshima, Aug. 9,1945…was NYC worse than that?] ;  (2) wasn’t predictable beforehand, at least in theory.  Nothing’s changed!
You may say, So much the worse for you!  You haven’t just been nuts for four days, you’ve ALWAYS been nuts!

Possibly.

Or possibly you are.

It all depends on whose presuppositions are correct.  Start with one presupposition, and you reach one set of conclusions; start with a radically different one, and you reach a totally different set.

What I’m saying to you is this: it seems to me that the obviousness of your conclusion (that anyone who, in the face of the Sept. 11 disaster, continues to believe in a loving God is nuts) depends heavily on your very starting point (there is no God).

This makes it appear to you that I must be nuts.  If you were willing to test–only by way of thought experiment, I’m not looking for converts!–the frame of mind of one who does believe we are the product of a loving Creator…you would see that it’s not in fact necessary that such a tragedy disproves my starting point.

At least I think that’s what you’d conclude, cause it’s what I’ve concluded, having given the matter serious thought for the past 4 days.  You think you know the fate of those people who died.

But I don’t think you do.  I don’t believe any of us does.  I certainly don’t believe in the kind of heaven, hell or purgatory some of my fellow religionists believe in, but I do believe in one thing (“two” things?) : that God exists, & that God loves all God’s creatures.  Which means, those nearly 7000 people are OK.

Not alive, in the sense we know it.   But OK.

You would (I’m thinking) say I’ve got it exactly backwards.  They are, very clearly, not OK, therefore this loving God I presuppose does not exist.  I question — and disagree with — your initial hypothesis.  You do not “know” that they’re not OK.  That they’re dead, yes.  But not that they’re not OK.  That dead people are not OK is part of the way you see reality.  It’s not the way I see reality.  That that fact makes me nuts…?  may be true, but it’s only true if your presupposition is correct, & we don’t know whether it’s correct or not.

To Bill Love:

You have, of course, read the spirit of my remark correctly.

But your answer reinforces my central theological point, that there is really nothing in experience or in creation to suggest that we have any idea whether God is good, bad or indifferent. All we know is that by our standards, God is inscrutable.

Yeah, we don’t know the “fate” of these 7,000 people, though we can be sure that a great percentage of them went through a horrifying emotional torment and perhaps seconds or minutes of hellish pain before dying, and that their families–the survivors–are feeling intense emotional pain.
Is this bad?

Well, gosh, by our standards, yes, it’s bad.

We avoid it, we punish and even kill those human beings who inflict such on others. Did God know it was going to happen?  That’s for you to answer, and either answer puts you into a trick bag.

But let me take you down the  free-will alley. God  knew, but he gave us free will and so had to let it happen. Therefore the abstract idea of free-will is far higher than the abstract value of 7,000 human lives (stop me if I get ahead of the thinking).  And I’ll accept that, if you want, because it leads me to my indifferent agnosticism. If God is going to let the world spin like a top that he started spinning eons ago and not intervene, what possible purpose is there in dwelling on God, appealing to God, praying to God, trying to read God’s will in between the lines and forming your behavior thus?

If God wouldn’t  do any one of a thousand little things that would have stopped the tragedy Tuesday— if he wouldn’t keep the two towers standing long enough for  the people inside to escape, etc. etc., then what is there to do other than live your life as best you can based on human values and hope for the best;  hope that there really is some far greater thing going on here in which all of our standards—death, pain, violence, disease, starvation, suffering are bad, for instance–are shallow and shortsighted?

Now, of course, you have no evidence for your belief other than faith, which seems to me to be based primarily on a combination of hope and vanity,  but since by the definition of the problem no one can prove otherwise, your faith can remain impervious to the sorts of analysis by which we usually make judgments.  All of which may seem harmless enough, even beneficial in some cases, but it also has a dark side. Because you really have no footing on which to gainsay the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist who says God will reward those who lose their lives killing the American infidels.

Maybe, in fact , this carnage does please God….maybe there’s some Grand Benign Plan– that,though it has seemed to play out for us over great expanses of time has happened for eternal God in a short time– to bring about Christianity and the rise of essentially Christian capitalist nations simply in order to lay them waste for the greater glory of those who follow a certain extreme form of Islam.

There are, I think, an infinite number of possible truths.  You have seized upon one and you believe it. I cannot chose, and in my humility can accept that I’ll never know and so must do only what I can do, which is to do right here on earth by those creatures and situations I encounter ,  and trust that if God exists and wants me to do anything, that’s what he wants me to do.
 
To Eric Zorn

As I see it, it’s YOU who’s in the trickbag.  The trickbag, in your case, being the unthinking and unconscious acquiescence in the typical religious person’s (Christian’s) mode of thought.  The very way you state the puzzle (why doesn’t God save the people in the tower?) betrays your acceptance of the mode of thought you reject as the correct way to pose the problem.  And given that mode of thought, you’re absolutely right to reject it.  It IS incoherent.  It’s the wrong way to view it.

Both you and the Christians have unthinkingly “bought into” the all-enveloping cultural paradigm of non-benignity.  Christians attempt to rescue God from the dilemma that this forces God into, by speculating about free will or whatnot.  Useless!…as you correctly note.  Their problem is (as I see it) that they’ve unconsciously adopted the Culture’s viewpoint–that the world is not benign–and then attempted to fit God into that picture.  It won’t fit.  Thus, the way in which they pose the problem places them neatly into your “trickbag”, and you can delightfully have your way with them.

My feeling is that Jesus (as well as we can tell, given the basic unreliability of the documents which speak of him) did indeed see thru that, at least to a limited extent.  In any case, whether he did or not, it is thru reading about him, & thinking long & hard for many years about what I read, that I’ve come to my present way of thinking.  Of course there’s always the possibility that my thinking derives from something quite different.  E.g.: what if Paul the Apostle dreamed this stuff up and the evangelists (unconsciously?) followed his lead in the way they described Jesus & his mode of thought?  Or maybe it’s just something I dreamed up on my own.

Maybe I’m nuts.  (I have to grant that possibility)  But whether it comes from Jesus or not, I trust in a loving Creator…and don’t see the need for abandoning that trust, simply because of Sept.11.

I can’t really blame you for shaking your head & dismissing me as someone impervious to logic.  But it doesn’t seem that way to me.  You seem to  (Hell!  you don’t SEEM to!  You DO!) regard your position as the prima facie correct position…in such a way that the onus probandi rests on me.  I dispute that.  Yes, you’ve got the majority on your side (the OVERWHELMING majority!!!) but that proves nothing, since (by my reckoning) that unanimity is based, not on logic or experience, but on a prior assumption which managed to gain cultural sway (for reasons I don’t pretend to understand).  You will admit (at least I take your words that way) that my position, as stated, does no particular harm.  (The advantage you seem to claim to gain in dealing with religious fanatics of whatever stripe, I frankly don’t understand.

Seems to me I’m as separated from them as you are, and as capable–operating from within my mental framework–of dealing with them as you are from within yours)  By my lights, my position–if universally adopted–would be even more (you’ll pardon the expression) “benign”, in its social effects, than yours.  (Either, of course, being preferable to the typical bigoted religious position)  I think the Culture’s acceptance of Benignity, by contrast with the present system of non-benignity leading to hatred, revenge, etc., would only be a “BENIGN” one.

But there’s really no use discussing, since our two  starting points, neither of which is based on either logic or experience, are incompatible.  There’s no real way to argue, since logic demands a starting point which, being a “:Given “, is intrinsically non-discussable.  Of course, one could argue from the EFFECTS of one’s position, but since mine is totally hypothetical, and my “thought experiments” don’t seem to resonate with you, that’s moot also.

To Bill Love: 

I don’t accept at all that my starting point isn’t based on logic or experience. It says, I don’t know the answer to these Ultimate Questions because they are unanswerable and logic and observation and experience shows that they are unknowable. And from that flow some imperatives or rather lack of imperatives.

It is as though you and I were walking in the woods and found Walkman radio by the path. We are free to speculate about the person who lost it or left it there–what he’s like, why he left it there–but it seem to me the honors for intellectual honesty, logic and probative caution go to the one of us who acknowledges and is comfortable with the idea that we don’t know; that the one of us who offers lots of speculation  (this was a good person, he worked hard for the money to buy this Walkman, he was…) cannot say our viewpoints are such that the matter is not discussable.

To Eric Zorn:

Believe it or not, you said one of the most encouraging things anyone has ever said to me. I quote:  “[you] cannot say our differences are not discussable.”  Since discussion of  such issues is what I greatly desire, your words are manna in my desert!  (that’s a biblical reference, in case you were wondering!)

I LOVE the Walkman analogy.  Let me take it & attempt to run with it.  You prefer, in terms of intellectual integrity, the man who says “We can know nothing about the former owner of this Walkman.”  But may I try to fine-tune the analogy?  What if the other guy says, “I agree, we can know nothing for sure about the man who owned this.  But here we are, stuck in this wilderness, no apparent way out.

And we find this Walkman.  So, while I agree, any speculation about the man who lost it is vain in one sense, still, it may be that such speculation could save our lives.  Is it possible that we can, without jeopardizing anything else which can save us, assume it was left here recently?  And that the man who left it (1) knows more about this wilderness than we do; (2) has more equipment to deal with it than we do; (3) [the most important assumption of all] has not moved too far away since he dropped this Walkman?  I’ll grant that those are all assumptions, they might be wrong…but what does it hurt to test them?”

So I start screaming my head off.  My companion might turn away in disgust, saying, “You have no justification for such screaming.  We don’t KNOW whether any of your assumptions are correct.  The intellectually honest thing would be to admit our ignorance & SHUT UP!”

Which of the two is more likely to come out of the wilderness alive?

I rest my case.

To Bill Love:

You rest your case? Bill, Bill, Bill…. You will want a rebuttal after this:

You’ve added some wrinkles to my tale–that we are lost in the wilderness, not just walking in the woods. So let me amplify. You and I are lost in the wilderness and we come upon a group of very tattered people standing around a Walkman screaming their heads off.

“How long have you been here?” we ask.

“A long long time,” they say. “We think that whoever dropped this Walkman can lead us to safety, so we’ve been screaming and yelling for him for many, many days.”

” Have you heard anything back? ”

“No, but we put our trust and faith in whomever dropped this Walkman and will follow his guidance.”

I suggest to the group that we forget about the Walkman owner  and try to put our human intelligence and reason together to try to solve this human problem.  Never mind about this Walkman owner—who may wish to help us or may wish to kill and eat us for all we know. Let’s focus on the here and now.

You, in contrast, start screaming and yelling along with the others.
Is there a chance that this long unreached and unavailable Walkman owner will hear, will return, will show us the way out?  Sure, anything’s possible.

Is there a greater chance, though, that our energy time and focus spend calling him distracts us from what we really must do to save ourselves?
I do not rest my case, but send it instead back over to you.

To Eric Zorn

Let me suggest that your description of our varying philosophical positions is not entirely fair.  I honestly don’t think I claim more “knowability” for my set of assumptions than you do for yours.  I THINK I am as tentative & uncertain about those ultimate realities as you are.
But it seems to me that the very existence of the world (& ourselves) creates a certain wonder within (most of) us.  Where did all this come from?  Is there any answer?

I’m in agreement with you (as I think you know) when you say that all the claims by all the religions which pretend to have “special knowledge” about this “as revealed by God”, are not to be trusted.  And, indeed, the deeper one studies such claims, the more illusory they become. The conclusion that NO ONE has an inside track to the truth about where (if anywhere) we came from, is (in my opinion) a sound one.

But I (like you) have to live my life.  I both accept & appreciate the way you live yours.  You find meaning in using your intelligence to “solve the human problem”….& seem to feel that I am NOT doing that.

{Parenthetically, I’m not too sure what you mean by “solving the human problem”; perhaps a little elucidation of that would be helpful.)
My own, personal, problem is: I feel so alone.  No one in the world really understands me.  (Not even I do!)  Nor CAN anyone understand me.  To do that, they would have to BE me in some sense–& they can’t be me.  I, on the other hand, am me…but I don’t really feel that I have a full understanding of myself.  In my wishful imaginings, I conjure up an “imaginary playmate” who DOES understand me in every respect.

So I speculate that my Creator–if there were such–might understand me in the way that I desire.  Since there’s no reason NOT to believe in such a Creator, I choose to do so.  I must be willing to grant that such a conception could be an illusion; but thus far I’ve been presented with no proof (not even by the redoubtable Eric Zorn) that it is.

I may have stolen my concept of this from Feuerbach (I believe it was) who said that all religion is a matter of wishful thinking.  What Feuerbach didn’t seem to take into account was (is) that SOME wishes DO come true.
Does this, as you seem to imply–nay, state!–make me less capable of living in the real world & “solving the human problem”?  I don’t see that it does–even on your terms.  For one thing, it causes me to love everyone (something I doubt you oppose), since I see all creatures, equally with me, being beloved creatures of God.  I think, in fact, that even strictly by your standards, were you to observe me living my life & “solving the human problem”, you would approve.  So where’s the harm?

Must I have “proof” before adopting such a position?  You seem to feel that my position demands proof, whereas yours (since it professes ignorance) does not.  But I don’t see why it should.  It seems to me that both of us, inevitably, operate on the basis of certain, deeply held, presuppositions.  You approve of yours; you don’t approve of mine.  Why?

{It’s really hard dealing with such deep matters.  I’m probably not putting my — or your! — position very clearly, or even correctly.  Perhaps we can make some progress if you can describe what it means to “solve the human problem.”}

To Bill Love

Of course existence itself is a wonder and a puzzle. Where did it come from and why? Life and the universe are bottomless for the riddles they pose, and I don’t mean to deny you or anyone else the challenge and excitement  of thinking about these matters nor the pleasure of imagining that all was created for a good purpose by a good creator.

What I mean by “the human problem” are those dilemmas and those imperatives that we face here on Earth. What do we do, what do we say, how do we behave?  What compass or compasses (compi?) do we follow when we confront the thousands of choices that confront us even on the most boring days we have?

You say there’s no reason not to believe in a creator who understands you in every respect and I suppose that’s true, or at least as true as me saying there’s no reason for me not to believe that all of history since the big bang and all of humankind were created with me as the final product and main character,  or to believe that we are all simply highly programmed robots being run by enormous computers on the dark side of Mars.

There are an infinite number of speculative positions–vain ones, neutral ones, nihilistic ones– for which no one could present you with a proof that it is an illusion.  As I’m pretty sure I’ve said, whatever gives you comfort and a sense of well being and purpose is just fine with me. If I have suggested otherwise during our correspondence I withdraw it.

The question, though, becomes how this belief–true or not–influences your behavior and your socio-politics.  In your case it seems to motivate good behavior and does not impel you to force your beliefs on them, much less kill them and take their land if they don’t share your belief system. I give you a lot of credit for that….seriously.  I would say that the history of organized religion is one of a different outlook altogether, and that certainly this horror in New York seems to have been abetted to a great extent by what I contend is the pernicious religious delusion that the Almighty rewards those in there hereafter who murder perceived infidels while on Earth.

Are people in general “less capable of living in the real world”   when they look to the idea of a creator for moral guidance? It all depends on their interpretation of what their creator tells them to do. And I agree with the observation of others that those interpretations have, over time, at the very least, had the notable quality of reflecting almost exactly the prejudices and moral notions of the leaders of the society that has done the interpretation.  While this does not tell us that any one system is false, it does rather strongly indicate that much of what passes for religious or spiritual insight is, in fact, the product of human thought and desire.

The only time you will catch me demanding proof of anyone is when they attempt to move their interpretation of God’s will and God’s plan out of the strictly private realm and ask me to endorse it or sponsor it or pass laws based upon it. So in your case I don’t demand any proof except in the spirit of our philosophical discussion where I ask you “How can you square the world as it is with your idea of a loving God? How under these circumstances in particular can you look to God for comfort, solace and so on when God has apparently disappointed us so?”

You ask why your outlook requires proof and mine does not, and I can only fall back on analogy. Imagine that in our walk in the woods we spy what appears to be a playing card, face down. I say I’ll bet that’s a 4 of hearts.

You say, you know, it might be, it might not be, and it might be a Pokemon card or a rectangular scrap of paper that looks like a card, you just don’t know. Then the wind kicks up and blows the card into a campfire.

So we’ll never know. But to state that our previously expressed positions share equal burdens of proof is, I think, ludicrous.

You say you operate “on the  basis of certain, deeply held, presuppositions,” but I’m not sure I can define them anymore for you.

What, exactly, do you believe and how does it influence your life?  Without those presuppositions would you abandon your love and respect for all God’s creatures and, I don’t know, do something hedonistic and reckless like cheat on the I-Pass lane?

To Eric Zorn:

CHEAT ON THE I-PASS LANE???!!!  Of all the many insults you’ve hurled my way, that one hurts the worst.  Not that you accused me of it, but even to IMAGINE that I would sink to such depths of depravity…well, my only response is (gulp!) to call you a (gasp!) “Liberal.”

To your letter & the philosophical points made therein.  Picking up both on that letter & on the final paragraph of your piece on Nostradamus, I’d like to express what might be a surprising (to you) opinion.  Namely, that what you say in answering my question as to what you mean by the “human problem”, & in the marvelous final words of today’s column—-…”the future still & now most urgently belongs to us; …it’s a blank slate, unknown & unknowable, upon which humankind must muster its collective decency & intelligence to write a story of peace…” —    I am in almost total agreement with you.

Because I have to correct one misunderstanding you have regarding my view of life.  (This is not a complaint, merely a clarification)  I do NOT share with other religionists the opinion that God “has a plan” for each life.  Or that “morality” means that I should be about the discovery, then the execution of “God’s will”.

In the novel  “Mariette in Ecstasy,”  author Ron Hansen said something (rather, had God say something) that was sorta life-changing for me.  (Certainly thought-changing!)  In the novel, this Christian saint, Mariette, a middle-aged spinster with a very active prayer life, is beseeching her God to please let her know His will.  She prays for this, day after day.  “Just teach me your will, Lord, & I’ll do it!”  A very anguished lady.  Finally (in exasperation?) God grants her a vision, & effectively answers her prayer.  “Mariette,” God says, “just surprise me!”

Over the years since I read that novel, that response has come to serve for me as an excellent metaphor for God & God’s creation.  I.e.: the most useful metaphor to study the question of “What should I do?” is NOT to reply “Do God’s Will!”  But rather, “Do what is ‘best’–for you!”

Granted, that answer could be used to justify all manner of selfish (in the Randian OR the non-Randian sense) activity; in fact, all manner of very antisocial activity.  But it needn’t.  Because if one is enlightened (I believe), one will realize that harming others, in a very real way, harms oneself.  Since “We’re all in this together” in some sense.  So that acting “selfishly” (ie: putting one’s own immediate gratification in front of someone else’s long-term, genuine need) is, in reality, to harm oneself.

I mention this, because a couple of offhand remarks in your letter(s) has led me to think that you see me as conceiving of morality in the way that traditional Christians do: detecting the will of God, then trying to obey it.  I think that that can be a useful metaphor, & even a socially useful one.  But it’s no longer helpful for me.

As to the four of hearts analogy, I think you’re putting it unfairly.  It seems to me that there aren’t 52 playing cards out of which I arbitrarily choose to say the one card must be the four of hearts, so that my chance of being right is (at best!) one out of fifty-two.  (You make it even worse, since we’re not even sure the scrap of paper is even a playing card at all!)  I would suggest, on the other hand, that my choice is more like this: a choice, NOT that this is the four of hearts, but simply that it’s a red card.

Furthermore, it’s a choice I HAVE to make.  Thus,  not totally arbitrary.
Because, from my perspective, I see only two true options.  Either the world is here arbitrarily, a result of mindless randomness, a stunning piece of absurdity…or else it is created.

Aliis verbis: it’s either the result of chance or of intelligence.  As I see it, those are the only 2 options.

Everything else is a variation of one of those 2 choices.  And, as I would see it, there’s absolutely no evidence in favor of one or the other.  Thus, with nothing more to guide me, I have to assume the choices are 50-50.

In a certain sense, I find myself in the position of “having” to choose.  I mean, here I am, in the world, no choice about that.  (What did Heidegger call it?  “Thrownness”?  I forget the German word)  I’m here.  How did I get here?  What should I do, now that I’m here? Seems to me important to know how this all came about.  Well, I can’t “know”.  Ergo, I must hypothesize.

I might avoid the issue, go thru life mindlessly, just putting one foot in front of the other, till I die, but that approach doesn’t appeal.  I gotta choose one of the 2 hypotheses.  Then I can decide what to do with my life (insofar as what to do with my life lies under my control).

Each option has its own attractiveness.  You’ve outlined the pleasures of the second, so I need not treat them.  What are the advantages of the first?  Well, to dispose of the negatives first, there are certain obvious DISadvantages, certainly.  One being, the very unattractive nature of so many who have chose the first option.

But fortunately for me, I have had the advantage of being able to read the works of Rene Girard, from whom I gleaned enough info to understand that most of the world’s religions are an admixture of belief in God & (what I can only describe as) disbelief in God.  Because their gods (in almost all cases, maybe all cases) have been infected by a spirit of vengefulness which MUST, in the very nature of things, be absent from the true God.

As to the latter assertion, I realize I’m entering dangerous territory, because I can’t really prove what I’m claiming.  Oh, I’m absolutely convinced it’s true.  My thinking about the subject has enabled me to see this so clearly…but it’s nearly impossible to put my “proof” into words.  My fundamental belief (a Truth which is blindingly clear to me) is that IF God exists, God MUST be a loving, forgiving type of entity.  No other god makes any sense.  At least, any sense to me.

So how do I know this?  (Sigh!) Let me count the ways.  First of all, if God were NOT that way, we’d have no way of ever knowing it. Good would be bad, right would be wrong, & our brains wouldn’t even begin to be able to tell us anything about any of it.  I guess what I’m saying is, the very fact we have a brain at all, the fact that we’re able to think… would seem to show that, if we come from a god, this god must be good.

Because (this may be the 2nd of what I’m going laughingly to call my “arguments”) the very fact that we have the word “good” in our vocabulary is itself an argument that God must be good.

(Please note: I do not say, as Kant famously–& I believe wrongly–said, that this in any way “proves” God’s existence.  I don’t say or think that at all, in fact I think it’s ridiculous.  What I do say is that our sense of goodness, our conscience, constitutes an argument that — if there be a God — this God must be good.  Otherwise where does the concept of “goodness” come from?

{Note: for those opting for the option that no god exists, this argument has no force. Under that option, goodness, like everything else in the world, is simply a part of the whole mess, & no one knows where it comes from.  Or cares. — I hope you more or less agree with that. I’m not attempting to put words in your mouth, or to denigrate your position. If that’s a misstatement, I apologize.

All I’m saying is, the argument from goodness only applies AFTER one has made the option to believe in God).

Thus, all the other options you attempt to foist upon me–various conceptions of God as alternatives to mine–I dismiss as false options,  They may appeal to some people, but they’re not “live” options for me.  For me, there are only 2 possible choices: belief in God (which, in my terms, means a loving, forgiving, gentle Creator) or nonbelief     (which means the acceptance of ignorance about our ultimate origin).

Aliis verbis:  before I’d become a Christian in the traditional sense (with its eternal hell, etc.) I would join your ragtag army of conscripts & march to the beat of absurdity.  There’s a certain appeal to that &, let’s face it, it’s at least as likely as the option I’ve chosen.  The “Christian” option is no option at all–for me.  (nor is any other “religious” option)
I’ll grant, I may be wrong, & you may be right.  We could even BOTH be wrong, & those religionists (like Jerry Falwell) who somehow manage to believe in a god who’d create an eternal hell to punish His creatures who didn’t do what He told ’em to, … yes, they might be right.

But that
latter possibility is so tiny, I don’t have to spend much time considering it.  Your position…now that’s one I can take seriously.  I’d regard it as just as likely as the one I’ve opted for.  But the one I’ve chosen is (for me) far more congenial.

“And that has made all the difference”  (is that an accurate quote?)

To Bill Love: 

Maybe it is my little brain, but I’ve never understood the argument that says because we know what goodness is, God is good.  It strikes me as totally circular, and could just as easily be employed to aver that God is evil. Or fat. Or insane. Because we grasp these concepts, too.

Again, where we kick-started our episodic correspondence was on the very point of this massive exhibition of human suffering and death in New York City and Washington, the horrors of which I still find impossible to fathom.

It would strike me that any entity that conforms to any form of morality that we human beings can grasp that had any advance knowledge of this event and the power to stop it yet did neither is, if not evil then arbitrary and untrustworthy or, as I have allowed, utterly unfathomable.

And, as I’ve also said, I’m comfortable with the idea of the perfect inscrutability of God (indeed, were I feeling churlish, I might say that because we as humans grasp the fundamental concept of inscrutability, then God must be inscrutable. And churlish, for that matter).  There is some method to what looks like random madness, some far greater thing going on. That’d be nice, especially if it turned out to be a good thing.

I’m also comfortable with the idea of creation as a chance event. Or with the idea of a God or gods who are far less than all powerful who nonetheless had the ability to create us. Or with the idea that the intelligent creator of the universe is dead or has moved on to something else and has just left the machine plugged in.

I’m comfortable with it because I find in each conception the identical moral imperative—to do right by what we’ve got, what we can see, what our feeble little minds can grasp. We follow the Golden Rule because that works, long term, biologically and socially—the source of morality is pretty clearly biological, as it would be a pretty sorry society that had moral precepts that actually impeded its long term survival.  This would be a universal constant…if we lived in a society where there were 50 women to every one man, polygamy would be moral, as indeed has been considered moral in some cultures.

Anyway, it seems that, day in and day out, you and I both arrive at the same place, paying our tolls, living decent law abiding lives. So our difference becomes far larger, how we regard the universe and creation—with a sense of understanding (you) or a sense of cheerful befuddlement and indifference (me).

Fortunately neither of us are zealots who will attempt to murder one another over our differences on these matters. But I am not the first to notice how many in the bloody history of our world have committed just such murder.

So when it comes down to it, doesn’t this speculation based on hope that turns into a form of smug certitude a pretty pernicious and destructive thing, overall?  Doesn’t it needlessly, foolishly divide the human family?  Especially when it’s possible for one to develop a consistent and powerful moral system without resorting to polarizing speculation (that almost always—marvelous coincidence!–involves the particular favor God has found with your people)?

To us this dispute is an idle recreation. To others it deadly serious business.

And who the hell is this Aliis Verbis to whom you keep referring? Was she one of those contestants  on “Temptation Island?”

To Eric Zorn:

Aliis Verbis” (as the most illiterate fool should easily know) was the Sanskrit name for the 1st human.  I mention this name frequently because, clearly, the existence of such an individual is apodictic proof of the existence of God.  Now I hope I won’t have to answer any MORE stupid questions.

On a more serious note, I’m a little at a loss how to deal with the objections you make.

For openers, I would note that it is not the fact that I have a concept of the “good” which causes me to opine that God is good, but rather the fact that I (& you, & everyone) judge (seemingly inevitably, tho I don’t quite know why) all other concepts by that one.  Thus…you mentioned “churlishness”.  I judge churlishness by whether it’s “good” or not, arriving at the conclusion that it’s usually “bad”, tho circumstances may perhaps change that judgment (as when some guy casts aspersions on one’s beliefs, in which case churlishness might be not only justified, but demanded!).

Whereas we don’t use “churlishness” (or any of the other qualities you mention) to judge other qualities.  Thus, it would seem that “goodness” occupies a special niche in our list of observed “Qualities” (for want of a better term).

Furthermore, whether God (if there be such) ought to be viewed good or not has (in my mind) a lot to do with pragmatism.  Frankly, a non-good God doesn’t do me any (you’ll pardon the expression) GOOD!  I get no benefit from it.  To put it bluntly: since I’m free (in the absence of evidence either way) to believe in a God or not, then, IF I’m gonna opt for the first (i.e.: belief), then believing in anything other than a GOOD God…would be foolish!

I’d be better off as an atheist!

Believing in any of the various gods you mention–capricious, uncaring, angry, etc.–would be smart ONLY if I had some proof, some slight indication, of the existence of such.  As such fellows as Eric Zorn have shown (at least to my satisfaction) all such proofs are vain  (in the biblical sense–i.e.: nonexistent).  Thus, you & I are free to opt to believe or not.  My option to believe would, truly be nonsensical, if it were directed at any of those “false” gods you cite.  Stupid.

The question of foreknowledge is important to you (based on your frequent citations of same).  Because it is clear to you that my concept of a good & loving God must also include the quality of foreknowledge.  And foreknowledge of Sept.11 combined with (as observed) doing nothing about it, should prove that this God I believe in, if She existed, must be lacking in either (a) omnipotence, or (b) love, or both.

I would note two  things here.

1. As I’ve said before (with no effect–so why am I even bringing it up again?  I dunno), your horror of that event (a horror I share) is due primarily to what you (& I) have been taught by your (& my) Culture, from our very earliest days on the earth.

Namely, that the world is NOT a benign place, & that death is BAD.  In saying this, I must of necessity come across as arrogant, since my claim puts me into the category of the fish who discovered water!  All the other fishes are swimming in the stuff & don’t know it, but only this fish realizes it’s there.  I’m sorry, but that’s how I see myself.

I’m definitely either crazy, or else I’ve caught onto something that very few other people have ever caught onto.  All I can say is, it has become so clear to me that this (people’s being so strongly influenced by the Culture surrounding us) is true, that it’s no longer possible for me to imagine otherwise.

Thus, I’m either crazy…or right.   I don’t even view the WTC disaster as a true tragedy. Because those 7000 people who perished were & are loved by God.

In response to your rage-induced reply (which I think I can imagine), I would urge an analogy, if you’re willing to hear it.  5-year old child is taken to the doctor for a shot, thus “proving” to the child APODICTICALLY that his parents do not, could not, love him.  They either (1) do not understand how much the shot pains him, or (2) don’t care.  In either case, they don’t love him.  That’s absolutely, irrefutably clear….to him.

That child is wrong…but there’s no way to prove it to him–at least not at that moment.

2. To  speak of “foreknowledge” in God is, as always when speaking of God, to employ a metaphor.  I’m certain that foreknowledge in God is not the same as our knowing something is gonna happen.  We can’t speak of God without using metaphors.  The only reason I think of God having foreknowledge (& I do) is that it emphasizes that I need not worry.  I WANT God to be–somehow–in control.

Without God being, in some sense, “in control”, my anxiety would be too great.  And without foreknowledge it’s difficult to comprehend how God could be in control.

I’m like my daughter Karen.  A very striking thing happened to me one time, that you (with your kids–much younger than our 30- & 27-year-olds) might find of interest.  At the time Karen was probably about 6.  I closed the door on her finger (still pains me to think of it) & she screamed.  I quickly released her finger from the door, took her in my arms, apologizing profusely–God, I felt so ashamed!  Thru her tears she INSISTED it wasn’t my fault–it was hers!  SHE had been careless, not me! That touched me deeply at the time.  In fact it still touches me, but my thoughts about it aren’t the same as they were then.  Then I saw it as her willingness to reassure me, even in the midst of her pain.  SHE was comforting ME!  That was so touching!  But was it really what was going on?

What I think was going on within her was the need to keep the image for herself–of a daddy who was both mighty & loving.  Someone who could see her thru thick & thin.  And IF that door closing on her finger was MY fault…where did that leave HER?  With a daddy who either didn’t care, or who couldn’t back up his care with deeds.  Either unloving or impotent.  Better (in her mind) that it had been HER fault.  That would leave her a klutz (an injured klutz!) but at least a klutz with an all-powerful, loving daddy.

I guess I have to admit, that’s me w/God.  I don’t have the guts to live the way you do.  Or rather, dammit, I think I DO have the guts–but why live that way if I don’t have to?  Why  put myself thru that, when there’s an out?  Till you (or someone) can prove to me that no benign God exists–& the WTC horror doesn’t even come close–I will go on living my life as tho God is.  Then when both of us die, neither of us will be surprised, cause there won’t be anything left of us to BE surprised.  On the other hand, if my wild-ass guess turns out to be correct, I’ll not be surprised, but you will be–very pleasantly, too.

Finally, all the evil things you point out that religious people have done are due–according to the “Lovian Gospel”–to their false notions about the gods they worship.  I refuse to be tarred with their brush since my doctrine is a lot closer to yours than to theirs.

To Bill Love: 

I just can’t let you get away with using the word “apodictically” or variants twice in one letter. As you know, since the time of Alice Verbis,  that is considered a technical foul and I get two free throws.

The first:    I think you are rather cynically confusing proof with evidence.  You bemoan, ” If only I had some proof, some slight indication, of the existence of  (a God who is  capricious, uncaring, angry),” yet such proof (evidence) is “non-existent.”    How, though, I would ask, do you judge any entity — any man or machine — save for its performance over time measured against your hopes and expectations?    How, for instance, would you judge a parent whom you observe sometimes hugging but sometimes flogging his child?  Would you say “I have no proof that his person is anything other that good, and so I choose to believe that he is?”
The second: You seem to be all but conceding that your belief is based upon what you wish or hope is true…some might call this “faith,” but that to me always brings up the question “faith in WHAT?” I mean, I suppose there is some abstract faith that things will work out OK for my soul in the end. It cannot, it seems to me, be the faith that things will turn out OK for us here on Earth OK for us thanks to this divine entity….That,  demonstrably (or apodictically, as you prefer) is false.

We may die a sudden, tragic death or a lingering awful one, or such fates may or may not strike our loved ones. There is tellingly little correlation between one’s belief system or lack of same and one’s fortunes and health on Earth. The wicked prosper. Innocent, loving children suffer and die.  Some  7,000 people in our country were murdered in roughly an hour’s time.

You are absolutely right when you say that the ultimate fate of these people and of we ourselves is a total mystery.  Their souls might be transported to some grand reward, some eternal damnation or some other-worldly waiting room. They might become ghosts. They might be reincarnated as lower life forms. They might just cease to be.

And, really, again, if it makes anybody happy to believe strongly in any one of these options or others I’ve not thought of, it really is of no never mind to me. Not only can’t I gainsay such beliefs, I really wouldn’t want to.
I’ve been annoyed  in the last ten days or so to read some of the theological taunting believers are engaging in—one letter to the Tribune noted snidely that atheists and non-believers have nothing to offer at a time like this.  As though we judged belief systems on the quantity of comfort and rewards described by its adherents; as though utterly improvable and in many cases highly implausible platitudes and assurances  are something, and a confidence in the capacity of humans to address human issues on human terms is “nothing.”

Now back to the game:  You say you don’t view 9/11 as a true tragedy because those murdered people are/were loved by God.  At that, of course, there can be no tragedies whatsoever. Half the population of the U.S. could be killed in a germ warfare attack or series of nuclear detonations and to logically extend your argument, that wouldn’t be necessarily a Bad Thing. Yet, for some reason,  you say you share my “horror” at the events of 9/11.  On what ground could you possibly feel horror? It seems to me your belief system leaves room only for serenity.

My belief system–humanism, I guess, is what you’d call it; indifferent agnosticism being a tough concept to toss around—allows for a fully horrified reaction.

That was Bad. Unremittingly Bad.

I believe 7,000 sentient human beings were suddenly and utterly exterminated for a totally insane purpose and there is no upside. Why would you hold yourself to a different standard than God? If God believes it is OK to allow such carnage, to abet it, even — if we believe in foreknowledge — as we would hold criminally accountable any human being who knew of the imminence of the plot to  hijack and crash those airplanes — then by what standards can we judge harshly or negatively the actions of others that result in outcomes that are, no matter what, good?

Those who committed this malign deed believed they were following the will of God and that God was pleased with the outcome.

Do you think they’re wrong? If so, by what lights? Or is their view of God and God’s will just as plausible as yours?  And if that’s the case, do you see where and why we humanists might be very wary of the whole notion of people living out their lives based upon their thinly to non-supported interpretations of God’s will?
P.S. — What’s your reaction to this “e-mail from God” now going around the web?
I know you’re mad at me right now. That’s all right. People have been  mad at me before and will be again. Being mad is part of being human. My  son got mad, too. It’s right to be mad: at injustice, for example, or at the  lack of charity.
You probably think that I am unjust and uncharitable when an  airplane goes down like that. All those people lost. The children,  gone.
It doesn’t seem right; it can’t be loving. You ask, “Where was God? Why  would He allow that to happen? ”
I allow it to happen because I allow you freedom. I could have kept  you on a string and made you dance all day without getting tired. I could  have moved your mouth for you and made you sing all night without growing  hoarse. I could have pulled a wire that would have let you soar skyward and  never fall.
I could have but I didn’t because I love you too much. I want you to  be free to decide when to dance and sing. Free to determine when you will  come to me in faith and hope.
Because you are free, some of you choose not to dance or  sing. Some of you select hatred over love, revenge over forgiveness,  bombs over a helping hand. As you choose, I watch. I do not disappear. I  listen for both the songs and the bombs. And I remember.
“WHERE WAS GOD?”, you wonder.
I was there. I whispered in the ear of a little girl, “Don’t be afraid,  I am with you.”  I held the hand of a businesswoman as tightly as she  clutched mine. I cradled a pilot against my shoulder as if he were a baby  again.
Amid the paralyzing fear I was there, as I was with my son in the garden.  Amid the unbearable pain, I was there, as I was with him when he was  whipped. Amid the terrible realization that life was ending too soon, I  was there, as I was when he was hung on the cross and asked, like you,  “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
I had not forsaken him. I did not forsake those on the plane. I was  there as they fell and as they arose to eternal joy. I listened to their  anger, answered their questions and showed them why they had been created—  Not to end that way, but to live forever with me. In an instant, they came  into existence. As you did. In an instant, they left this world. As you  will.
But beyond that last instant, I kept my promise: a little girl dances…a  businesswoman sings and a pilot keeps his wings. Forever.- :
Love always, God

To Eric Zorn:

I find it hard to decide which I disagree more,  your thesis, or the thesis of that treacly “letter from God.”  And yet I respect the good intentions of both.

Look, dammit, what you’re failing to see is how predetermined you are by your own set of presuppositions…your own domination by that everlasting Great Paradigm of non-benignity. That’s where we differ–right down at the bottom.  A certain feeling of despair comes over me. We can’t even communicate (& I do so LOVE to argue!) because our starting points are so far apart.

But I can at least clarify a thing (or two).  You are absolutely right in saying that I shouldn’t (based on my presuppositions) use words like “horror”.  Goes against my whole theory. Right on.  But, don’t you see?…part of my problem is that, in my gut, I share your presuppositions!  I absorbed them (almost literally) with my mother’s milk.  I’ve fairly well, at least partially, managed to expunge them from my head.  But in my gut they live on.  I’m crippled.

Oliver Sacks did a piece for The New Yorker a few years ago, on a man born blind (I seem to recall, he lived in Tulsa–tho that has nothing to do with anything, beyond the fact that he’s an Okie like me) who had his sight surgically repaired.  His was an interesting experience.  Since he’d already developed firm concepts about the way things “looked”, he “saw” things in a different way from other people.  All in all, his gaining of “sight” turned out to be more unpleasant than pleasurable.  (He was about 50 when he had the surgery)  Eventually he returned to almost total blindness.  Sacks doesn’t say this, but it seems to have been, basically, his own choice.  For instance, eating.  Part of the sensual pleasure he got (had gotten all his life) from eating was “feeling” the food with his left hand–which he’d used before, to help “find” the food on his plate.  It wasn’t as much “fun” eating, without being able to touch the food with his left hand while his right hand handled the fork.

So I say–assuming I’m right in believing that a good God exists & that this good God created a good world–that I’m as fatally crippled as that poor blind guy who had his “sight” granted to him after 40 years of blindness.  I don’t know HOW to live in the world that God actually created, since my fellow humans have opted not to live in that world, but in their own illusory world & have indoctrinated me w/ their fears & misconceptions.
Did you ever see Durang’s play, “Actor’s Nightmare”?  (It’s a companion play to his more famous, “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All”)  In it, an actor comes out costumed for, & prepped to do, “Hamlet,”  only to discover that the play he’s in is “Private Lives”!  Great concept, funny
play.

As I see it, the world was created (by God) as a comedy, but is being performed (by humans) as a tragedy.  And, like the poor bastard in “Actor’s Nightmare” [nightmare, indeed!] ,  I’m forced to play the play that’s being done, rather than the one that was written.  Even tho I realize we’re doing the wrong play, I don’t have the power to swim against … (how DO I get myself so tangled up in metaphors?)

I’ve been struck, recently, by the similarity to my views, on one Adolph von Harnack.  (Know the name?  If not…) Briefly, he was a “liberal” bible critic of the 19th century, condemned by all good & righteous Christians as a horrible free thinker & ransacker of the holy bible.

I never knew much about him, but just happened recently to come across some of his writings.  Interestingly, as I read him, sounds as if he saw Jesus as teaching basically the same thing I’m saying here.  Which is, of course, how I myself read Jesus.  I’m fairly sure I’d never have come up with this cockamamie thesis had I not read about (& been impressed by) Jesus.

No, I can’t prove any of it (“apodictically”, or otherwise!).  Nor, actually, can YOU prove any of YOUR presuppositions.  But you’ve got a HUGE (unfair?) advantage over me: you’ve got the numbers!  You’ve got the whole world.  Whereas I’ve got…Jesus.  Period.  And even that comes with a huge “maybe”!  namely, only if my reading–contrary to the entire tradition of the entire Christian church–happens to be the correct one!!!!  So, (Jesus!), I don’t blame you for spurning my thinking.

Number one, how could you do otherwise, given your entire training & background, & your membership in good standing as a “human being” with all the built-in presuppositions which attend that lordly title.  Number two, how could I ever expect anyone to abandon THE WHOLE WORLD & come join my ragtag band of…one!

But there’s an interesting distinction between what I hold & that which you’re thinking–paranoia. (Oh, hell, don’t deny it!  “Paranoia” was EXACTLY what you were thinking!)  Because, unlike the paranoiac, I DON’T believe the whole world is against me.  Au contraire, the whole world is on MY side (they just don’t know it), because we’re all children of the one loving Father who created & loves us all.  That’s why I wouldn’t harm a fly (literally!); cause the fly was also created by God.

So what (you want to know) about the death & suffering that this “good” God obviously created?  Well, those are two very different things.  Death is real, it’s part of life, it’s the way creation is, you can’t have one without the other.  Death is real, but it ain’t bad.

Suffering, on the other hand, is an illusion.  It’s simply the result of human beings being so afraid of death.  They shouldn’t be afraid of it, cause (1) God created it, (2) without it, they wouldn’t have come into existence in the first place, & (3) it’s part of who they are.  Within their very cells–the very life-cells that make them up–are the seeds of death.  It’s who they are!  From the moment they’re conceived they are–by their very constitution–fated for death!  How can you hate–or fear–that which makes you what you are?

Anyway, ALL human suffering stems from an illusion: the illusion that death is bad & should be avoided at all cost.

So your very question (How can a good God have created suffering?) is perverse! Because suffering is your own choice!  You choose to have that illusion.  Fine.  But don’t ask me to explain why you have it!  You have it cause you choose it!

It’s like the illusion about revenge most humans seem to suffer from.  Guy hits you, you HAVE to hit him back!  No choice about it!  You GOTTA DO IT!!!  What?!  You believe you have a CHOICE???  That you don’t have to hit back?  Hey, who could do that?  The other guy is in control!  By the very act of hitting me, he FORCES me to hit him back!  Gotta have my revenge.  It’s not as tho I had any choice in the matter, right?  Gotta do it!
It’s the same with suffering.  It’s learned behavior, not biological.
I must be nuts!  (But you already knew that)

To Bill Love:

A couple of things in the papers caught my eye today.

The first was an article in the Trib via the Boston Globe about how St. Paul’s Chapel near the World Trade Centers in Manhattan was spared much damage from the cascading debris of 9/11. The writer, somewhat approvingly, quotes a church official saying “It’s hard to say this isn’t a miracle; the fruit of some divine intervention.”

The story notes almost as an aside that St. Michaels’ Greek Orthodox Church, also near the WTC, was virtually pulverized. Of course no one is tasteless enough to make what might be a similarly logical observation,.that St. Michael’s was damned by God.

Nor is anyone tasteless enough to ask,  hey,  if God were performing miracles that day, couldn’t he have saved a few mommies and daddies who were crushed to death instead of some building?

This strikes me as illustrative of how most people and perhaps you view God–giving God credit for things you apprehend as good; assigning him no blame for things you apprehend as bad.  We thank God for the cure, but we disassociate God from the disease.

The second, somewhat related, was a rant from syndicated columnist Dan Savage, whose sex advice column in the Reader occasionally strays into social topics. After the tragedy he wrote an angry passage asking in effect where was God that day. This week, responding to numerous angry readers he wrote this:

    “Confidential to all folks who are mad at me for doubting the existence of a loving God who hears our prayers and gets off His ass every once in a while and helps us out down here: Did you see the picture of the sobbing eight-year-old boy bent over his mother’s casket in the Tuesday, September 18, 2001, issue of The New York Times? The boy’s mother was a single parent, and he’s an only child. I challenge everyone who wrote in to tell me that “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle” (especially the dozens of you who sent me that infuriating one-set-of-footprints story) to sit and stare at that picture for an hour and then tell me there’s a loving God up there somewhere. Oh, I’ll grant you that there might be a God or a higher power or something. But a loving God/higher power/something? Don’t make me puke.”

Do you think such sentiments are lightly dismissed? I really don’t, obviously. And when you write that “Suffering…is an illusion.  It’s simply the result of human beings being so afraid of death.”  I think of that orphaned child and so many others for whom suffering sure doesn’t SEEM like any form of an illusion and who might react somewhat negatively  to your assertion that “suffering is your own choice!  You choose to have that illusion.”

See, that, to me, reduces our life experiences and observations to absurdities, mere illusions. If bad and good, suffering and pleasure, are all illusions or choices, then life itself is truly absurd, a sick and strange joke, a big fun house.

Which, whether you reject this or not,  leads me to the question of why. For what purpose did God create any of this? Any ideas?  I, of course, am stumped.

To Eric Zorn:

I don’t scant your taking seriously the anguish of that 8-year old boy. And I honestly don’t think I fall into the trap of giving God credit for all the good things, & excusing the evil. I –& I’m sure you–have always enjoyed very much the chapter in “The Brothers Karamazov”  wherein Ivan famously “returns [his] ticket”. Serious stuff.

Which is why I reject the single-set-of-footprints types of story. They DON’T express things the way I see them. Rather, I think they suffer from the same false set of presuppositions which “Ivan” suffered from.

They start out with the presupposition that the world is NOT benign–tho that presupposition is somewhat hidden from them. What exposes it, in most cases, is when you ask them if God “punishes”. Almost everyone (every religious person) will answer “yes”. Which exposes the falsity (in my view) of their opinion of who & what God is.

“Suffering is an illusion,” you say, implies that life is a “fun house”.  No, I don’t think so, tho the “funhouse” idea does, strangely, border on the way I see things.

Let me take the argument up in the following way. First of all, one mistake I find in the way BOTH sides (theists & atheists) approach the issue is that they (you) bring God into the equation at the wrong level.

When something like the WTC disaster happens, people try to fit God into it. I think that’s wrong. There’s no place for God to fit! We KNOW what caused the disaster! We can trace causes back as far as we like, and THERE’S NO MYSTERY THERE! Oil burns, steel melts, people do bad things–for certain reasons that satisfy them, even persuade them that the “bad” things are in fact “good” things. All these elements in the disaster can be investigated, their causes determined & (if one so judges) appropriate action taken. There’s no room for God in any of this. (Who was the scientist who told Napoleon (in equivalent words) “I have no need for a God in my theory”?) We don’t NEED God to explain any of this. Nature explains all. God only comes in if you decide (for your own good & sufficient reasons) that Nature itself requires an explanation.
Possible objection: If nature is going to do (or “permit”) things like this, then nature could not possibly be the product of a benign Creator.  Now THAT, I would suggest, is a better way of stating the dilemma than
the way it’s usually stated. I.e.: I think it’s important to realize that our beef–if beef there be–is only indirectly a beef with the Deity; it’s primarily a beef with nature. Could one say that a Nature which does such things must be evil, ergo the God Who created it must also be Evil–or at least not benign? I answer “No!” And suggest a possible analogy to understand why.

This analogy also, I think, applies to your above-referenced objection that my theory of Benignity (“All things are good; suffering is only an illusion”) makes all human life illusory, nonsensical, a joke–in fact, a “funhouse”. At least, I hope you ‘ll see that it deals with the problem. Anyway, here’s the analogy :

{In what follows, please avoid the impulse to push the analogy unfairly, & make it say something beyond what it can say. The analogy limps, & will fall if too much weight be placed on its delicate crutches. But, if not pushed too far, I think it will illustrate nicely.}

The analogy is one of sports–appropriately enough, since people have been saying how sports events have recently been put “back into perspective”. What I’m saying is, the world in which we live, with its Culture of Nonbenignity, is like a “game” people play. Imagine, if you will, a sports event in which both participants & spectators have lost
all that above-referenced “perspective”. (Easy for me to do, cause I come from Oklahoma & am a BIG–a HUGE–Sooner fan!) Let us say that “our team” has blown a 2-touchdown lead in the final 3 minutes, & lost in overtime! To our most hated rival! And suppose that our rage & sorrow over the loss is so great that we don’t want to hear any talk of “Well, it’s only a game, fellas!” Dammit, it’s NOT a game! It’s life-&-death!
Now here we have a group illusion, a mutually shared illusion–the illusion that the game is all-important. Fortunately for us fanatics, there IS an outside world, ready to assure us that, yes, fellas, it really is … only a game. The illusion is broken. But suppose there WERE no outside world. I.e.: that EVERYONE was a football fanatic. At that point (or so it would seem to us) the illusion has BECOME reality.  It really ISN’T a game, cause none of us is capable of recognizing that it’s “only a game.”

Then, if some Martian (some “Bill Love”) were to come along & tell us, “Hey, fellas, it’s only a game”…we’d have a hard time understanding him. So that when he told us, “Look, fellas, this suffering you’re going thru? Actually, it’s YOUR choice! You’re only suffering because you choose to embrace an illusion: the illusion that the game has some sort of cosmic significance,” why, that wouldn’t sit well AT ALL!!! We sure wdn’t want to hear THAT! Surely, we’d tell him something like…oh, I don’t know, maybe something like, “See, that, to me, reduces our life experiences & observations to absurdities, mere illusions. If bad & good, suffering & pleasure are all illusions or choices, then life itself is truly absurd, a sick & strange joke, a big funhouse.” Or something like that. But wouldn’t the Martian (or Bill Love) be right? It in fact IS just a game, isn’t it? Surely, the Martian need not be accused of denigrating our game–or even our very real suffering. Sure it’s real.  But it’s also illusory, in the sense that it exists only because we voluntarily CHOSE to live that illusion–the illusion that the game is all-important & life-altering. We, of course CHOSE to view it that way; & have therefore accepted the “agony of defeat” as it’s called. But it’s still a choice. Very real suffering, VOLUNTARILY chosen.

As indicated in the parenthetical paragraph leading into this analogy, the analogy limps badly, & can’t be applied too vigorously. But up to a point, I think it makes the point I’m seeking. Or at least I hope so.

To Bill Love:

It is totally absurd and offensive to equate matters of life and death with Oklahoma University football. All right-thinking people know that it is University of Michigan football that’s applicable when we are discussing the Highest Matters.

Now. With that adjustment in mind, I see your point and suggest that it may apply to my broader suggestion that we mere mortals are as limited as a mouse  who might poke his head out of a hole in the sideline turf at a football game. Lots of stuff is going on, some of it is clearly giving pleasure to the participants, some clearly giving agony and we have no overarching idea why or for what purpose; whether this spectacle has been mounted for the benefit of denizens of the subterranean rodent world, whether it’s good or bad and under whose aegis and auspices it’s all going on.

We are the highest life form out of what, millions?, on one tiny orb in an unthinkably vast universe. We may in fact be the point of the whole apparatus. We may be an afterthought or a peripheral development. Such a thought does not appeal to our vanity, granted, but it does suggest a certain humility is called for.

I think you’re absolutely right that we are in some ways analogous to football fans who have never been outside the stadium.  Our sense of good and bad is limited by what we have seen and what we know.  But that’s all we’ve got to go on and, more importantly, to act on.  And to put on a theist’s hat for a moment, it doesn’t seem that farfetched to me to posit that, for whatever reason, God does not want us to see or even think “outside the stadium.”

Otherwise, God would be more manifest, more obvious, more insistent about his own existence and the existence and importance of what’s beyond the stadium gates.  This gives me great confidence, actually. As it should give to a believer as well. One not need worry, as Homer Simpson famously worried, “What if I’m going to the wrong church and every Sunday God is just getting madder and madder?”

My guess is that, if there’s a God, he doesn’t worry about who or which group is worshipping and addressing him directly at the greatest volume or most frequently.  If our souls are judged–which, for the record, I doubt–then I’ll stake eternity on the idea that they are judged on how we treated one another and the planet onto which we were born, not how often we prayed and to whom or what.

And if so, then we have all the tools we need right here in the stadium, as it were, to figure out how to live that good life and then to live it.   That, again, is why I’m indifferent to the question of whether God exists.

To Eric Zorn:

Whew! If I’d known you were a Wolverine, how different all my communiques would have been! The “Big House,” memories of epic struggles with OSU, Tommy Harmon–the whole enchilada!   Anyway, I withdraw any perceived slur. I didn’t know!!!

To cases. I’m happy my analogy grabbed you. (I thought it might)
As a preliminary: it appears that I am not getting thru to you (though I believe I’ve tried) that it’s unimportant, in my theology, whether or not the human species is the pinnacle of creation. In fact, I think that’s HIGHLY unlikely. (About as likely as the possibility that God created us in order to test, then judge, us!) In fact, my view of God is that, assuming God exists, God is plenty big enough to know INTIMATELY every detail in all the lives of ALL of God’s creatures. In fact, tho it blows my mind to imagine it, I don’t see it as inconceivable that the number of universes is, in some sense, infinite–each universe perhaps teeming with trillions of species equal to, or exceeding, humankind in every way…while at the same time God finds absolutely no difficulty in understanding deeply each & every one of these countless (countless by me, though perhaps not by God) creatures. And not only understanding each one, but loving each one. To make God’s love for humankind dependent on our being the pinnacle of creation is to make a manifold error–underselling both God, & God’s creation. Worst of all, to believe that is the ultimate act of anthropocentric hubris.

But, leaving that aside (& I hope that’s now settled, once & for all!) let me take you up on your added fillip to my football game–the mouse who pokes his head out. There’s an important element missing (How DARE you leave out any element in an allegory!). Namely, that we, unlike that mouse, are self-aware. Conscious, that is to say, not only of the world around us, but of ourselves. We have “intentionality”. And that, I suspect, is a crucial element in our discussion. I’m reminded of Sartre’s description of a man peering through a keyhole.

His whole being (in Sartre’s description) is focussed on that room he’s studying thru the keyhole. For a time he has lost all awareness of himself: he’s become totally concentrated on what’s going on in that room within: he IS that room within. Then suddenly … he becomes aware of the fact that, not only is HE watching someone (someone who’s unaware he’s even being watched)…but he ALSO is being watched! He becomes aware that he’s not alone in the hallway outside the room; someone is behind him, watching HIM! The sudden shock of (as we say) “coming to himself”! He’s no longer a “watcher” but a “watched watcher”.

So I suggest that that mouse MIGHT, were he so inclined, perhaps begin to wonder, not only what’s going on on that football field, but where HE fits into the overall picture–if anywhere. It’s not, please note (anent the above paragraph), necessary that the mouse, in order to attain this self-awareness, see himself as the “Center of Attraction” in all that’s going on. Rather, he need only be aware of the POSSIBILITY that he is not only a SUBJECT of “watchfulness” but also a possible OBJECT of the same thing.
Tied in with this might be the mouse’s wonder at his own existence & a certain curiosity as to whether this existence of his was “planned” or not. His mouse-friends might consider this curiosity an overweening hubris–but surely he could argue back that this need not be the case.  That his sense of being watched, of being created, of being loved…need not be hubris, but simply an exploring of possibilities. And he could add that he is by no means claiming that he is something special. If, as he suspects, he is both the creature & the object of the love of, some intelligent Creator, he does not consider himself to be, in any sense, in a uniquely privileged position. Rather, as he sees it, his fellow-mice are equally blessed (better, MIGHT BE equally blessed).

If a fellow-mouse were to argue, “You’re wasting both your time, & your life, pondering such non-issues! Forget such speculations, & get on with your life!”, this God-imagining mouse could well reply (couldn’t he?), that he is very possibly doing EXACTLY that! Because, if he’s right in his speculations, awareness of a Creator is that which can give the most meaning to his life! I.e.: the atheistic mouse’s denunciation only has teeth IF the atheistic hypothesis is true!

And if the atheistic mouse (atheistic mice, as you may have noticed, are very slick customers) argues that the theist is opting for that which is such a tiny possibility (like arbitrarily choosing to believe that the unseen card one has been dealt is the four of diamonds in total absence of any indication that that’s the case), the theist could validly throw the accusation back into the other mouse’s face.

The atheist claims he’s making no choice: choosing, rather, in humility, to accept his lack of knowledge, & live with that ignorance. The theist could answer that he (the theist) is not so much making an intellectual judgment as an act of trust (a better word than “faith”). The act of trust is not without its intellectual component. For instance, if the atheist could somehow “prove” the non-viability of any Creator by the rules of logic, the theist would give up his position. But in the absence of any such disproof, & given that the theist is not claiming any certitude for his position of trust, it is not intellectually dishonest or disreputable for the theist to hold onto that trust in an unseen & unperceived Creator.

The atheistic mouse (atheistic mice are also very persistent) likes to suggest that one reason NOT to believe is that it would seem that IF a God existed, & IF this God truly loved the little mice, surely God would reveal Him/Herself to them. In absence of any such revelation, belief is unwarranted. “No,” says the equally persistent theist. “Because it
seems probable to me that IF God exists, it would be impossible for God to reveal Godself in any better way than that contained in the act of creation itself. One, in fact, could argue that the atheist is setting up a trap for God! ‘Reveal yourself!’ the atheist says. But little mice have such limited abilities to understand (since they are creatures, not Creator), any such ‘showing’ would have to be limited to the understanding of the mice. And, if I’m right that God created all this world we inhabit, the world ITSELF is precisely calibrated to the understanding of mice. Creation IS the revelation of God! At least for those willing to look at it!”

Dastardly clever, these mice! I’m glad you brought ’em up.

To Bill Love: 

The  mouse analogy (they are cartoon mice and, as such, imbued with  intentionality as well as an absurd indestructibility ) is certainly inadequate for describing the proportionality of our relation to the Subject of this Discussion, as I’d guess you’d agree.  If God exists as you posit, a couple of Chicago area writers are to God as a couple of self-aware dust mites on a barren island are to us.  I’d add that you ought not infer from anything I’ve written that I consider the position of the theistic person or theistic mouse intellectually dishonest. Hope, which is the word I would use to describe faith or trust in this sense, is not intellectually dishonest nor absurd as a philosophical stance.

Seeing as this dreadful month in our history is almost over–I write this to you early in the morning of its last day–and I‘ve outed us both in my column, I propose suspending the back-and-forth for a while and giving us both an opportunity to respond to some of the e-mail that’s pouring in. Here is a selection:

Correspondence concerning Love Letters

I understand your point about the relative virtues in having a humanist perspective, over not having any world view. I think most people, Christian, non-Christian, would agree with that, so to the extent that a column was devoted to it seems to be overly elaborating a point that could be summed up with a simple sentence or two.

So, forgive me for believing that there was more of an agenda at work besides for rooting for the underdog. I think it a bit reaching to fly-fish a news item from another part of the country, the Deep South no less, to shepherd passages of the Humanist Manifesto into print .

If I may appeal to the value of fairplay, surely embraced by secular humanism, I ask you to consider if it would be appropriate for a columnist-who-happens-to-be-Christian to use a similarly devised opportunity to present passages from the Gospel of John that urge the need for salvation through Jesus. Hmm As you bear with me on that, I also ask you to consider the fairplay of a newspaper that employs two prominent columnists who seem to have a heart for humanism and new-age beliefs, while casting aspersions on a Christian faith shared by what I would guess to be a majority of its readers. One could conclude that the supposed superiority of perspective that comes from detached journalistic cynicism does not actually result in fairplay but in a self-seeking justification of its own cynicism. I don’t read all your columns, so your own conscience would indicate if this is a fair rendering of the situation. Is it?

Suppose there is absolute truth. On every decision to be made that affects the lives of millions of individuals. A decision that in its essence is morally superior. But if a religious group, devoted to the idea of absolute truth, can’t even come to agreement within its own on certain aspects of superior behavior, what hope would you give to unrelated human beings embracing a relative rationalism? Who would have the privilege of defining the superior value, in a world of human experience which leads people down different paths that seem right to them? If secular humanism is to somehow be seen as leading to absolute truth through rationalism, then we might as well create a faceless idol of a human body and paint it gold.

For then that is what we would end up worshipping. Islamic fundamentalism notwithstanding, there is greater possibilities of peace and mutual understanding between the great religions of the world, all embracing some notion of absolute truth, then there are between the myriad racial, ethnic, economic, cultural groups of the world all seeking to justify their own personal truths through their own relatively narrow perspectives. (anonymous)

Zorn response–I’m astonished at the idea that you think the religious presumption has not received fair play in our nation’s media or even in the Tribune. Matter-of-fact references to God and prayer and the validity and even truth behind religious faith are everywhere. Go back and read the religion pages of the major papers for the past, oh, ten years or so and count the number of times that skeptical voices are featured or even consulted. I think you’ll find that the balance runs at least as heavily toward belief as it does in public opinion polls that show some 90 percent of Americans profess religious beliefs. That’s why it’s so easy for a town to take a big public whack at non-believers and provoke hardly a peep, and why the town of Rocklin, Calif. Has been the subject of numerous cable TV and talk radio segments about the complaints of non-believers there that “God Bless America” is not an appropriate sign to put out in front of a school.

I agree that the tenets of secular humanism are not “nothing,” as you stated in your October 13 Tribune column. Of particular interest is the one stating that “critical intelligence … is the best method that humanity has for solving problems.” One who followed this approach was British lawyer Frank Morison, an agnostic who set out to write a book disproving Christianity. In his research, he carefully examined all the alternatives that had been proposed to explain away the resurrection: the body was removed to a more suitable location, the body was removed by the Romans, the body was removed by the Jews, Jesus never really died, the women went to the wrong grave, and the grave was not visited at all. By looking at the evidence from a lawyer’s point of view, he determined that none of these theories held up under close scrutiny. His conclusion, therefore, was that a man did indeed rise from the dead, and he titled the first chapter of his book, “Who Moved the Stone?”, “The Book that Refused to be Written.” S.S.

Zorn response–I get quite a few of these “have you read THIS?” mail on religious topic. My response is that most of these works have been rebutted by other scholars, writers and thinkers. Whether these rebuttals hold up I leave up to the open-minded reader with a web browser. Regarding Morison, have you read this? More generally, have you read this? Have you ever seriously browsed as such sites as this one? And, as referenced below, there’s always the perhaps aptly named infidels.org where one can link to an extensive rebuttal of Strobel’s “Case for Christ and a skeptical analysis of alleged Biblical prophecy among other documents. Yes, skeptics have been converted. No doubt. Believers have also becomes skeptics—notably Dan Barker, the former minister who heads the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

I have struggled for years with my mother, a “devout” C & E (Christmas and Easter) Catholic, about my husband’s and my method of instilling a moral code into our children. After doing a dutiful daughter thing and
having my children baptized Catholic, we proceeded to raise them by discussing all sorts of religions and theories, including Buddha, Jesus Christ, a Great Spirit and others. However, finding a religious community that embodied our thinking we found impossible, so we simply did not attend a church. My mother insists that they needed to learn about “God”. I insist that they learn about living a decent and moral life, respecting themselves, all other people and the physical world they live in simply because we are humans and we should know better.
In 1999, my husband’s best friend succumbed to a lengthy and indescribably painful battle with bone cancer at the age of 39. Michael had literally hundreds of friends and family praying every day in churches and homes and bedsides for his recovery. And “God” chose to take this man, someone whom one of his friends described as “the only person I’ve never heard anyone call an a******? I lost so very much faith in a god then and on September 11, I lost the rest.
While America and Americans are not perfect, we try so very hard. Why would the deity of murderous fanatics be more powerful than the forgiving, loving god of most Americans? And since that was a stunning
victory for that evil god, does that mean they are right? Did those suicidal pilots go to a glorious reward as they so unwaveringly believed, or are they burning in a fiery pit of flame for all eternity? Who are we to belittle their beliefs and say they are wrong just because it hurt Americans so awfully? No, I prefer the oh-so-comforting thought that a “God” had nothing to do with that act of 9-11 and has nothing to do with the bombings going on right now. I believe that people are responsible at the beginning, the middle and in the very end. R.P.

The Humanist manifesto removes the improvable God-concept and replaces it with a “polytheism” of equally improvable concepts. From a reductionist standpoint, what is the basis for “humility, wisdom, virtue, caring, cultural diversity, achievement, peace, prosperity, pride, intelligence, reason, etc.” or their supposed opposites? Do they have independent existence like the element argon? Are they based on agreement? But humans, religious or otherwise, seem to disagree on a lot of things. And even if agreement is the basis, is it evolutionarily useful? Does it aid human survival? Is human survival of any more significance than the extinction of the dinosaurs of the gradual winking out of some distant and unseen star?
It has long seemed to me that humanist and religious people equally assume the truth or independent existence of improvable concepts whether they be God, Zeus, or “truth” itself. For myself, I base my own worldview soley on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. From that comes my belief in God, and from that my belief that all the concepts listed off above have their source in God. God doesn’t simply abide by humility or truth. God is humility and truth. Of course, whether my beliefs aid in making me a more moral person, that is not for me to judge. S.E. Chesterton, IN

Zorn response–Do those concepts have an independent existence like the element argon? My view? No. We measure them against other concepts and against their utility for human survival, which, like all successful species we strive for both logically and instinctively.

S.E. Replies: I have trouble with the “logically” part. While humans may have a sense of logic, I wonder if such knowledge is necessary for species survival. According to science, cockroaches, which seem to lack a sense of logic, have been around longer than many other animal species and may be around long after our own has gone the way of the dinosaur (who also appeared to lack “logic” despite millions of years of their own “staying power”.)
Besides that, to me “logic” assumes “order”. And “Order” is on my list of un-provable concepts. And, for that matter, so is “logic”. If there is no objective measure for order, then what is it? What if my “order differs from yours? If mutual agreement is the basis, does natural selection select for what “is” or “what works?”.
Finally, if these concepts (truth, beauty, order, freedom, etc.) have no independent basis, then, to me at least, measuring one against another has a “nothing times nothing equals nothing” ring to it.

Zorn response–I misplaced my modifier, sorry. “Logically” was meant to modify the reasoning process of the person who realized that all successful species strive instinctively to survive. I will note again that the notion that because we can identify a concept that therefore must mean there is some Great Divine Standard of that concept against which we measure it is pure conjecture, an exceedingly abstract premise from which you cheerfully draw a thunderous conclusion….therefore…God! Your proposition defines itself. But even if it didn’t, you’d still be left trying to figure out what this divine source of all concepts wants out of you. And to say that there have been disagreements among believers through the ages certainly understates the matters. They’ve spilled a lot of blood trying to settle it, and from where I sit they’re no closer than they’ve ever been.
I suppose I could berate you on your beliefs, or lack of them, but I suspect that would be a futile gesture, as it usually is with most who think as you do P.G.

Zorn response– Well, yes, as opposed to how it is with open-minded people such as yourself.

The second tenet of secular humanism from 1973 may be the one that is most relevant today and which the 9/11 tragic events best illustrate: ” Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful.” D.M.

Zorn response– There are parts of the Humanist Manifesto that are more aggressive and more dismissive of religion than the passages I excerpted, to be sure. My purpose was not to attack or dismiss, though, but to defend…offer more of the positive and agreeable tenets. I’m hoping to keep the discussion above the “you’re going hell!” “you are deluded and superstitious!” level. How’s it going?

As a Christian (practicing till I get it right) I believe that God is necessary to complete an individual’s life. But translating that into social policy in a pluralistic democracy is slippery business indeed. We’d all be better off if more of us remembered that a belief in God isn’t necessary for a polite, responsible, law-abiding (I’ll even take just “responsible”) society, only a belief that the common good inures to the benefit of all. Thanks for the column. Please keep them coming! J.M. , Evanston

Thought you might appreciate the quote (on a shirt) I have that was attributed to Socrates “The only universal sin is ignorance. The only true salvation is knowledge.” K.J.

I happen to be a believer, and I think a reasonably intelligent one. My belief system reinforces my patriotism, but is not essential for it. Of course you don’t have to be a believer to be patriotic, but too many believers don’t engage their brain before putting their mouth into gear. Let those who believe in God use their faith to reinforce their love of Country. Let them have God and country hand in hand. You be patriotic your way. It’s perfectly valid. But don’t expect “true believers” to be rational or fair in their criticism of you. If you like the heat, keep taking on the believers, but I don’t think it will constitute the best use of your talents, and it could divert you from hitting the nail squarely on the head as you so often do! P.K.

Humanism is a religion with as much dependency on faith as any theist based religion, just faith in man versus a creator God …. Nine times the “Humanist Manifesto I” plainly calls the beliefs it espouses a religion. For example, “Humanism is a philosophical, religious and moral point of view as old as human civilization itself.” (Introduction to the Humanist Manifesto I and II, 1977, Prometheus Press) The reason your “Humanistic” text will not be on the “Blank” panel in Georgia is that the panel is reserved for those who believe in ‘nothing’. It is certainly silly to have to put up a blank panel, but it seems that certain social forces have made it necessary to wrap public displays of theistic faith into a larger package in order to get a hearing. A true free society would let theistic faith be heard openly, but for now that is not allowed in this country.
S.B.

Zorn response– My online reference dictionary offers these first two definitions of religion: 1. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe. 2.. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship. Belief in the supernatural seems to me to be at the core of the meaning of “religion” though I can certainly understand why some people would at various times wish to include various other ethical systems under the rubric of religion, either to afford them Constitutional protection and a sheen of acceptability or, as in your case, to try to blur the definitions enough to allow public institutions to promote actual religion–as it is commonly understood–in the name of “fairness.” Of course under such a construct there is no such thing as neutrality toward religion by public bodies–by not endorsing or sponsoring views that incorporate the supernatural they inexorably endorse or sponsor an anti-supernatural view. It won’t surprise you that I don’t see it that way. I see no reason for our public institutions to take a position about the ultimate source of morality or about what God really says about this activity or that, but to leave the question formally and officially open.: “It’s wrong to murder. Maybe that’s because God says so. Maybe that’s because our common sense and overall survival instinct tells us it’s wrong to murder. Maybe God gave us that sense and that instinct. Maybe the brute unfeeling force of nature through evolution gave us that. Your government doesn’t care, but it will make and enforce laws against murder.” Our public institutions should further do nothing either to impede or to promote the open expression and private practice of religious faith in ways that comport with other laws. There are so many hours in the day, so many places to pray and evangelize, I always wonder why it is that those who are denied the opportunity to broadcast theistic faith on public address systems at public schools and lead school children in ritual expressions of a belief in God feel that their freedoms are unfairly curtailed. I also wonder why you don’t see the wisdom, the beauty, of strict government neutrality in theistic matters. The hands-off approach works, politically and socially. We have greater religious freedom in this country than in any society in history, I believe, and some of the highest rates of conventional religious practice Drop the persecution act. (Another reader sent along this article on what the Founders really thought about all this.)

You chose to align yourself with the Americans for Separation of Church and State. Making such a choice is your prerogative as a columnist for a major newspaper. I want to point out some potential implications that your recent choice may have on your less-than-critical readers.
· By engaging in a offensive and defensive battle with those on the religious right, it seems to me that you
are falling into the very trap that these ‘marginalized believers’ are luring you into. You either naively or knowingly swallowed their bait. Nothing is ever accomplished in ideologically battles; ideologues usually become more entrenched in their views and the innocent unknowingly gravitate to either end of the perspective, based upon their mediocre sense perceptions.
· In pitting the ‘Godless Civil Libertarians’ against ‘marginalized believers’ you have actually increased intolerance, by perpetuating ideological dualisms. Every time I hear President Bush speak about good vs.
evil, right vs. wrong I am reminded of the time the European settlers spoke of ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ people. Just as the Europeans eventually stripped the indigenous people from their culture and spirituality, so too can today’s over-zealous journalist assist in creating atmospheres of intolerance with their imbalanced commentaries.
My recommendation to you is to avoid the temptation in being so defensive when the opposition employs dirty tactics. Your counter offensive article does not encourage healthy dialogue….
I agree with you and other journalist who have called for the need to go far beyond sectarianism, religious traditionalism and patriotism to achieve our true destiny as an interconnected, global people (this is
what we Catholics call communion). I encourage your writing to continue be a beacon of hope for those who are contaminated by hostilities and resentments. The role of the media has never been more crucial in
helping to refine and fashion a new social ethic.
Furthermore I hope that you can continue to call each of your readers to become hungry for intellectual excellence. In this quest I encourage you to respect the creative tension that the religious traditional
community can share with the secular world when they respectfully articulate their dogmas and creeds with
modern world. Openness to hearing these perspectives can allow for the world to heal. TMH, Chicago

Zorn Response–At some point, however, it becomes irresponsible and cowardly not to mention as at least an oh-by-the-way that although our leaders are calling on everyone to pray and sing God Bless America and so on, that there are perfectly respectable, perfectly normal, perfectly intelligent people who don’t happen to subscribe to those notions, the common suggestions notwithstanding. At some point, again, silence implies assent, and if responding to a slight by explaining another point of view means falling into a trap or swallowing bait, so be it.

Hitler, a brilliant man, with no shortage of critical intelligence, notes that society is burdened by caring for the infirm and mentally retarded.
He makes the reasonable proposition that society stop caring for those who cannot care for themselves, to the material benefit of all productive members of society. If critical intelligence is the “best method,” who are you to argue with Hitler’s reasonable observation and solution? The notion that every human life is sacred is fueled by religion, not critical intelligence (which probably cannot even find a non-religious definition for “sacred.”)
In India, where (live) widows used to be burned on their husbands’ funeral pyres, their experience told them that this was the best way to go, and pleased the pagan Gods. How do you argue with their human experience, and the resultant immoral values? The world cries out for a universal moral code, and yet a specific one–one that forbids the willful taking of innocent life. The mainstream adherents of all three of the world’s great monotheistic religions, and their offshoots, share this value.
Faith alone can be deadly, but so, certainly, can reason and intelligence, as in the Hitler example above, or in the cruel results of Marx’s dialectical (and hyper-rational) materialism.
A lot of individual autonomy, as exercised, does violate the spirit of ocial responsibility. That’s why we need a higher standard than the individual will, and the cruel streak, that inhabits so many of our fellow men and women.
Note the sterling achievements of the three great 20th Century civilizations that shunned God and a universal (divine) morality, and pursued the realization of their golden ideal, the world of their dreams: Communist China, Communist USSR, and Nazi Germany. Throw in the Khmer Rouge and it’s an even four. J.P.

Zorn response– If we were to have a contest to see how many buckets of human blood have been spilled by religious crusaders in their various holy wars and purges throughout history and how many buckets have been spilled by armies under the control of ardent non-believers, which side do you think would have more buckets? My guess is the religious crusaders have out murdered the ardent non-believers, but then again, as others have pointed out, more hospitals and schools have been built in the name of God than in the name of Human Reason. And while it’s true that certain God-shunning movements have dismal records in pursuit of their ideals, I’d argue that the finest experiment in civilization in history–our nation–has succeeded in large part because of its hands-off policy regarding religious matters. This is part of an interesting discussion of whether religion “works” for social improvement, social control, human comfort and so on, but not part of the discussion of whether one must rely on some divine force to achieve morality. Hitler is no more relevant than bin Laden or Torquemada to that discussion, as individual humans and groups of humans will ALWAYS go off the rails no matter what their professed faith or lack of faith. The world may cry out for a universal moral code, but who gets to write it and what’s the reference point? Whose holy books and prophets do we consult? Do you look to the Old Testament or to nature for proof that God finds individual human life sacred? Look again. Read the Passover story and tell me how you can extract from the slaughter of innocent first-born babies by God himself–God’s solution to Pharaoh’s intransigence–this moral precept. Then hopscotch through the rest of the ancient and divinely approved slaughters of infidels; or just look to nature, take a walk through a kids’ cancer ward or read news accounts after hurricanes and tidal waves.
My point: We’re better off using our collective reason and experience to hash out our universal standard than we are whacking each other over the head with scriptures.

It is very obvious that you don’t have any idea of what Christianity is based on. If you could gain any distinct message out of the Bible it would be that entrance to eternity is not based on how good you are, or how much you pray, or which religion fits your style. Entrance into heaven is based on a person’s faith in the belief that Jesus died for all the wrong things that have been done and will be done. It is by faith and then good works. Faith precedes good works. I urge you to get the information right before you stone the messenger. A truly perfect and holy God can not accept our sinful dispositions. The Old Testament shows God trying to correct us at every step, but we are too arrogant. He wants us to be humble. We won’t have that. We are too good for that. Good in the uppity sense. This is why Jesus paid the price for all of our sins. God had to have a way to accept and love His children, us. We cannot even fathom His goodness and grace. And, I believe that for a perfect God to accept an imperfect world, He sent Jesus to die for all of our sins. Therefore, entrance into Heaven is through the belief that Jesus died for your sins. If you are looking for proof or prophesy, look to the Old Testament. It points very directly to the coming of Jesus Christ and the purpose for His coming. I will agree with many that there are definitely gray areas in the Bible. Things we are unable to either comprehend or interpret correctly. This is where many religions loose ground with people because of the inconsistency of their report. The basics are very clear though. I urge you to explore them. Your soul is at stake. I respect your opinions but fear for your eternal life. What are your beliefs? What do you know from you own experience or don’t know for that matter? M.N.

Zorn response: Letters such as this, and there have been many, exhibit why I prefer to discuss these matters with people who are not wedded to a particular scripture. They wish to jump right over the fundamental questions and start dealing with assertions based upon declamations in ancient texts. Fact is that it’s not just me, but most of the world does not believe that one must accept Jesus in order to please God. Mighty belief systems with their own scripture do not believe it. And yes, to all who have asked, I have read Josh McDowell and I’ve read Lee Strobel and I’ve explored many websites purporting to prove how true the Christian Bible is. I’ve also read extensively at skeptical sites such as infidels.org To repeat myself, I will note again that it links to an extensive rebuttal of Strobel’s “Case for Christ” and a skeptical analysis of alleged Biblical prophecy among other documents.

M.N. replies: Your discussion on these matters is not based on a solid understanding of the Bible. This was evident. Why you are so willing to defame something you know little about? I am not trying to convert you. I am merely asking for you to understand what it is you are not choosing to believe. Truth is not created, but discovered.
——–
Thanks for getting in that point about we atheists not complaining while people prayed in the Sept. 11 aftermath not because we’re hypocrites–in other words, we’re all really praying too because we’ve finally been scared into our senses!–but because we don’t see any point in disturbing the people who need religion to get through hard times. C.P. Hyde Park

I am particularly taken aback by the religionists and others…who are making hay over the silence of atheists and humanists with regards to religion and this tragedy. I thought we were being considerate by keeping a respectful silence in the face of all of the religious blathering (I differentiate between using religion to aid in the grieving process and all the irrational analysis and interpretation). Don’t they have enough on their minds without baiting us to point out the error of their ways? A.T.

Please spare us your disbelief vs. belief at a time of international crisis. J. F. Mt. Prospect.

I spent a good many years refuting the existence of God and arguing to anyone who’d listen the absence or –better yet — the irrelevance of God in the modern world. Later, after marriage and children (now 3 and 6), I tried to make some peace with God, although the Jesus thing was really too much to swallow.
Then two things happened — I asked someone whom I’ve admired all my life and consider one of the most intelligent people around (the other most intelligent person I know is an atheist, . . .), whether or not they believe in a God who appeared to human beings in human form. His answer was simple: if God is God, He can reveal Himself in whatever way He chooses. I don’t have a problem with that. There are plenty of other problems to deal with. . .”. He then went on to outline a few, including the audacity of people to call themselves “disciples” and “Christians”, when most of us will never have what it takes to truly go out in the world and serve as Christ did. By what right do we call ourselves Christians? Racism, poverty, abuse, etc. –these are the things that God calls us to care about.
Whether or not He exists? Why should God care at all about that debate, when –if He does exist– we’ll find out in a cosmic blink of the eye. We have more to prove to God, I think, than He to us. And most of us haven’t even begun to try.
The second influential factor in choosing — point blank — to believe in God was greater awareness of my grandfather’s life. He was a preacher in East Germany, twice jailed for preaching under a Communist regime. He could have left the country, but he felt that his presence there was needed. Earlier, he preached against the Nazi regime and remained faithful and friendly with his Jewish brethren, despite the danger it may have posed to him and his family. He was one of the founding members of the Confessing church, begun by the Christian “martyr” Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Now, at the age of 90, he still wonders what more he could have done, and suffers “survivor’s guilt” for the fact of having made it through that time alive. I do know of him that he would have risked his life many times over for the life of another being.
Still, because I like to think of myself as an intellectual of sorts, it was my grandfather’s writing (two books translated into English) that helped clinch the deal. This is a man who mastered ancient Greek, Hebrew and Latin and who had such a quick mind. He wasn’t a retiring sort of thinker, but one who flew into action when the situation called for it. And he was a believer. How, I once wondered, could anyone with a good college education or its equivalent be a believer? But he was, and I needed to come to terms with that. So, having decided that his life was at least 1000X better lived than mine, and probably always would be, how then could I look upon his beliefs as naive?
Once I went out from a different assumption, things started to look very different. The whole “is there or isn’t there a God” debate seemed awfully silly. Nonetheless, it’s sometimes said that you can’t find God, He finds you. So, far be it from me to think I could convince anyone else.
Anyway, my Grandfather had–as you say– great “human values”. But what are human values, if not values that have developed over the entire course of human evolution, most of which has been dominated by God-fearing human beings? Our human values were developed out of religious values. Otherwise, I suspect we’d all be out for only ourselves and our families (but that’s hypothetical speculation).
Yet, we live in a society that provides for nearly all our needs. Even the most religious in America don’t stake their lives on what God will provide them. Give us this day our daily bread. . . but, if not, we’ve got a whole pantry full of food for emergencies. Most people on the planet don’t have the luxury to not believe. They’re living hand to mouth, and, I think if some kind of poll were taken, we’d find that believing helped them survive better than non-believing. I. O’C

Zorn Response: The goodness of certain believers in God acting in God’s name is certainly admirable but no more or less a proof of anything than the unconscionable wickedness of certain believers in God acting in God’s name. The terrorists come to mind, as do, say, the Crusaders. Similarly one finds very wonderful, very giving non-believers whose lives and good works may well measure up to your grandfather’s. The only point where I take issue with you is where you say that because our values are formed by people and most people believe in God, therefore human values are religious values. I’d say roughly the opposite, which is that certain core values–the more secular of the Commandments–are exactly the values that lead to self-preservation of the species…that they are in fact virtually biological values.

I. O’C. Replies: You misread my letter. . I was addressing what you seem to think is a great deal of naiveté, if not stupidity on the part of believers. Given my grandfather’s experience, I chose to change my attitude from that to something more like: here is a person who knows something I do not know. I became less cynical, more curious.
Again, I’m not trying to convince you of God. Faith is unarguable, by definition not based on rationality or proof.
About human values you mentioned (yechh–“values” is such a messy word)–my stepfather (the atheist) spent 9 years in a Russian concentration camp under Stalin. He was taken prisoner at the age of 15. He has talked about how this was humanity at its most animalistic and cruel. You just can’t count on human beings being humane in any but the most sunny of circumstances, and even then… Thus, human values are no more reliable than Christian values (which is usually an extension of the same –believers do like to interpret scripture, be it Bible, Koran, etc., to find justification for preexisting values and convictions–so, like you, I’m naturally suspicious when people use that term “Christian values”). Why blame either for what happened?
I fully respect my stepfather’s choice to be an atheist, not just because his goodness has long since been proven to me. But even my stepfather acknowledges the many advantages of religion for both individuals and society. Many do require the help of faith to rise above adversity. Perhaps without it, they would simply despair, or take the path of revenge and hatred. Most religions do discourage revenge (even though they do not succeed all the time–by the way, a phrase we are hearing plenty these days, “an eye for an eye”, was advised in order to LIMIT revenge, not encourage it; we tend to read the phrase exactly opposite).
I do think my (step)father’s views are, like yours, somewhat condescending. But I’m not offended by him or by you. I know where I’m at and why. Maybe I’m being the condescending one. I can’t explain the terrorist attacks any more than you can. I’m puzzled, yes, and I’m even a bit angry at God. But I’m not pulling my faith, anymore than I’m pulling all my money out of the stock market. I still thank God for His many gifts.
I believe in the God-given laws of physics, which give me daily reassurance that there are things I can count on in this world (the sun rising in the East, the seasons, the fact that I can toss my child in the air and she won’t continue to fly away from me). We take it all for granted, but I don’t think we can really underestimate how good the sheer consistency of the world is for us most of the time. It’s a pretty firm foundation on which we can build just about anything. I also understand that these same laws of physics (in the hands of imperfect humanity) sometimes lead to terrible things. It’s a trade-off that seems pretty good to me on balance. I will try not to whine too loudly when it doesn’t go my way.

Zorn Response– It’s interesting to me how you and many others read into my views condescension or insult. It is tricky, obviously, to have any point of view on an important matter because in having it you necessarily suggest that those who hold other points of view are, in your opinion, not correct or misguided. This is why I prefer to wrestle in print with people like Bill Love who don’t take a difference of opinion quite so personally. I’ve said I don’t know. I think it’s not only a defensible position, but also the soundest position under the circumstances. And I think people of good will can differ on such matters without condescending to one another. I invite you to read some of the letters from religionists on this page and tell me if you don’t sniff condescension from them with a greater odor than my own.
I don’t deny that faith gives a lot of people comfort and purpose and I know you don’t deny that it inspires some people to a lot of wickedness. How this all balances out in the scales of history I’m not sure, but I’ve read what I consider to be disingenuous arguments from both sides on the point. Religion is clearly a mixed blessing, pardon the expression, and the practical utility of any belief system says nothing about its fundamental truth or falsity.

Final word to L. O’C: I clearly acknowledged my own condescension. It seems to be part and parcel of this whole debate and therefore an unavoidable presence therein.But did I not profess to have respect for that special atheist in my life? And disdain for a number of self-proclaimed Christians. I only try to “do right”, even though–most of the time–I fail at that ideal. From this discussion Humility shines forth as one of the qualities you hold dear. Good. That’s a quality we can all share, regardless of our beliefs. That and mutual respect. Sorry if I came across otherwise.

————
Oh Boy, Eric! Now you’ve done it! Weren’t you attending when wrath was brought down on Bill Maher for stating his disagreement with the opinion that “the terrorists” were cowards? Don’t you know how little tolerance we really have for radical minority positions?
But, thank you for giving voice to your (our) position. Like you, I’m pleased that many people find comfort and even answers in their beliefs. But…
I’ve repeated often during the past several years, the following quote from poet-politician Vaclav Havel: Seek the company of those who are looking for the truth, but run from those who have found it. I fear that
so many of us truly believe that we’ve found TRUTH.
Here are a few other unpopular views currently occupying space in my thoughts.
The plethora of billboards and signs saying such things as: “Proud to Be American” (I find it strange to be proud of a matter of luck. I might as well be proud to have been born a white male rather than a Rawandan peasant.)
“Pray for America” (Prayers, if of value outside the person praying, might better be directed toward “Pray for the World” or “Pray for Mankind.”)
And isn’t it interesting how corporate and private America is in the midst of raising millions (billions?) of dollars for relief at home while we continue to ignore the staggering numbers of people around the world who are starving today, were starving yesterday and will be starving tomorrow?
Obviously, I don’t condone the horrendous acts of September 11, 2001 and feel sadness for those who lost their lives or the lives of loved ones, but my hope is that somehow more of us will learn from that act that
this world is in it together and no one yet has truly “found the truth.”
R.C.

I am a member of a church (Unitarian) that encourages each individual to search for answers, so at least I have a place to be with people who are also not content to be given answers. Still, at the service on the Sunday after the attack there was a record number of congregants who felt the need to be with other people. I didn’t attend because I apparently had no interest in being with other people,
I guess. In any case, I find no solace in religion. And that’s ok. I’m 73 years old so I haven’t come to
this point suddenly. It’s been a long and interesting journey and I intend to keep asking questions as long
as I can. But I have no interest in questioning anyone else’s faith.
In any case, it seems to me the obvious response to the question, “Do you believe in God?” should be, ”
What do you mean by god?” Have you ever tried that? I’ve gotten some scary answers. L. C.

May I add to your collection of “Love” letters a sentence from William F. Buckley: “God does not shield His creatures from the malevolent exercise of free will.” C H

Zorn response: Sure. And may I add, “To say the least.”

I am nearly 60, but in my 30s and 40s spent all my time at bookstores and libraries looking for answers to questions that plagued me on this very subject. I read Hugh Schoenfield’s “Those Incredible Christians” five times and spent a year looking for an out-of-print book by Grant Allen called “The Evolution of the Idea of God” — which, thankfully, I finally found in an unbound and stapled-together pile-of-paper version. I give everyone I know a copy of Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian” if they tell me they are going to pray for me.
I have raised my three kids to THINK, to do only that which is good according to the laws of physics and human nature and to tolerate all and respect all religion and philosophies — that the purpose of life is to have one, and that responsibility is the highest form of ethics. They are outstanding human beings. C.W.

Zorn response: Others have found much wisdom in Mark Twain’s Letters From the Earth.

Here is what I believe, stripping away as much of my own Christian worldview as I can and attempting to view things as objectively and non-religiously as I can: I do not believe that “good” and “evil” (or even
“love” for that matter) can be explained by pure science alone. They are concepts as metaphysical, immaterial, and physically improvable as our ideas of God. If there is no God (whether sentient entity or insentient principle governing the universe), I truly believe that the hijack attack is no more “evil” than Mother Theresa’s work with the dying and the poor was “good.” How do the actions of “desperate” men differ from the actions of a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado? The currents of the brain are as
much a storm as the winds of the hurricane. But isn’t it hard to get philosophical and objective when something horrible like the hijackings occurred? Isn’t our gut reaction often: “this is horrible; this is evil”?
For myself, try as I might, I can no longer separate “good” from “God” and “evil” from “those actions freely taken by thinking people which is not in the direction of God.” It’s either God (as being or simply “principle” [like gravity or magnetism]) or nihilism (the disbelief in the objectivity of good and evil). I have met and known of very few, if any, true nihilists (except maybe some religious people — see next paragraph). Did you have a feeling of the evilness of the attack on the World Trade Center? Were you warmed by the actions of what we call heroism by the firefighters and the policemen who sacrificed their lives to save others? If so, you may actually believe in God. In contrast, the hijackers, and anyone else willing to knowingly and unfeelingly kill innocent people in the name of God may be the actual atheists. They may be dying for a mental concept no more real than the being represented by a stone idol.To me, and this is just my own odd opinion, anyone who has a strong sense of good and who tries to reject evil (in whatever small or large degree) actually believes in God whether they mentally or rhetorically “believe” in God or not. They just simply don’t believe in the image of God handed to them by contemporary or past interpreters and practitioners of organized religion. When they seek this image they only feel its absence and non-existence. Or they reject the image of god as being immoral itself (as in “why would a good god allow such evil to occur …”). And they may be correct in this rejection and non-belief. What they seek is what is “real,” and so few of us are willing to make this attempt and instead stick with
our mental idols. In your agnosticism, you may be closer to what is “real” than many so-called religious people. If you are serious in your striving for good and if you continue to believe that “… the natures and desires of God, if any, are so impenetrable that trying to puzzle it all out is futile”, and continue to be tolerant of others and their own beliefs, your path may lead you in fruitful and unexpected directions.
Let me just back off and simply try to figure out what the “core question” might be. Your own question, if I am reading it right, appears to be: if there is an all knowing all loving god, how could he allow such evil as the terrorist attack? My own question is: what is evil? S.E.

I have my own Zorn vs Love debate going, me having the viewpoint of Mr. Love, which has been going on now for four years via email. Jerry, I dare say, is a clone of yourself, and I’ve enjoyed too much pointing out the inconsistencies of his scientific-based argument. Nonetheless your discussion was refreshing in that our circular lock may have taken a right turn. So I like that part. But it is amazing how the same discussion is happening in millions of camps, which just might suggest there is more to this pesky religion thing than most of us would like to admit? No? P.C.

Zorn response–No. The mere fact that this is an intriguing topic (“pesky”) and not easily resolved doesn’t add weight to either side. Your closing statement is as nonsensical as if I were to amend it …”just might suggest that there is more to this pesky skepticism thing than most of us would like to admit.”

P.C. Response: The responsibility of thinking people is not to prove or disprove the existence of God. Rather, our job is to choose which path to follow. If we’re choosing to trust God, then trust him already and quit trying to understand infinite wisdom because you’ll never understand it regardless of the effort you put into it. Conversely, if you choose not to follow it, then you owe it to yourself to live life recklessly with no consideration of Biblical advice, living only by the wisdom you can manage to accumulate as you go. P.C.

Zorn Response: I can’t tell you sick I am of this insinuation, usually hurled by Christians, that those of us who don’t believe as they do have no basis for morality. It’s offensive and unpersuasive and ahistorical, just for starters.

P.C. Response: First of all, I never said or suggested anything about morality. I know plenty of atheists who I consider more moral (from what I can tell on the outside) than some who call themselves Christians. Furthermore I’m not sure I understand your comment on my “insinuation”? Insinuation to what?? And as one who holds a BA in History, I would dispute your claim it is ahistorical. Like it or not, following Jesus Christ does come down to a rational decision, and I find your strong reaction quite revealing. It suggests you know I’m right about this, no? Call me an agnostic who made the choice to follow if you will even with the doubts. Not making a choice IS a choice, and like you, most agnostics get really ticked off when someone suggests it time to quit pussyfooting around and make a choice already.

Zorn Response: If you don’t see the insinuation in this sentence of yours — “if you choose not to follow (God)), then you owe it to yourself to live life recklessly with no consideration of Biblical advice, living only by the wisdom you can manage to accumulate as you go”–I can’t help you. What’s ahistorical is the idea that those who don’t think like you don’t have any basis for a moral system and are consequently less moral people. Your desperate suggestion that my strong reaction suggests I know you’re right is as silly as if I were to assert that your impulse to write to me in the first place suggests you know I’m right. What ticks me off is the sanctimony of people who think they’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe and feel free to patronize those who don’t think anybody has unlocked those secrets. To call that “pussyfooting” is, again, offensive and unpersuasive. I have made a choice, already, and it’s arrogant of you to tell me what I or anyone else who rejects your theology owe to ourselves.

P.C. Response: This concept of agnosticism, or the inability or unwillingness to make a decision on the God question, I would argue is the typical American response to an age-old question that has more to do with our culture than anything else. We Americans have this very inaccurate view that not making a choice is someone a choice onto itself that delays the inevitable. As if that makes us more tolerant to diversity. It does not. It merely makes us intellectual wimps.
Many have tried to use the analogy of the marriage question which I think fails for a number of reasons. True that like Christianity, rarely are both parties entirely convinced one way or the other that they are in-fact making the wisest choice when they make the choice to get to get married. True that instead of making a choice at all, we now have the third option of “just living together.” And yet the problem of “just living together” is that although it may make us feel a temporary marriage, it does not deal with the real question of what marriage is supposed to be; that of a lifetime commitment. So the entire concept of the third choice is a fraud. And to further cloud the issue, sometimes those who enter legal marriages do not ever consider it a lifetime commitment, so one could argue that a legal marriage is sometimes more fraudulent than others who live together without paper but are indeed committed for a lifetime. So for those reasons, I will not use the marriage analogy in comparison to making a decision on Jesus. It doesn’t work.
I will spare you all the sappy Christian sayings and bad arguments and rather argue my point in very simplistic means that is more effective. If a speeding train passes down the tracks, and you are a potential passenger, you are either on the train or off it. There is not a third position that admires the train from afar as an agnostic often admires Christianity and other religions. You are either on the train or off it. If you sit on the sidelines and don’t make the decision to get on the train, but admire the train, or debate to yourself that “well I think it is speeding but it could be special effects,” or “how do I know where this train is going?” or “is it a train at all?”, the result remains that you are not on the train until you decide to get on it. Furthermore, you can still get on the train while you hold doubts. But if you don’t make the actual rational decision to get on the damn train, you won’t be on it, and no amount of self-justification will change that fact.
So my argument is that all these other hesitancies and arguments and excuses based on one’s own so-called agnosticism, is intellectual nonsense when it comes to the real question of following Jesus or not following him. It takes a lifetime commitment unlike some marriages, and the decision is made once. Not 26 times like many church-goers try to make it. Jesus never asked us to understand all theology before we make a decision. Nor did he ask us to agree with all of it. The question is far more simple. Are you on the train or not? That is the question, stunningly similar to the question Jesus asked the disciples two millennium ago, and one you are unwittingly answering with your claims of agnosticism.

Zorn Response: OK, your train is the only train and either I’m on it or I’m off it. Well if that’s the case, I’m off it. You don’t or can’t see any of the other possible “trains” one can ride toward understanding, morality, truth, etc. etc. You’re on your train and you think it’s the only train going the right direction. Fine. Far be it from me to try to derail you. I realize that the noise of this train clickity clacking along makes it impossible for you to hear what you sound like, but take it from me, the “intellectual wimps” line is odious. I don’t believe you detected me impugning Bill Love’s sincerity or intellectual integrity. Enjoy your train ride, but please, don’t insult those who don’t choose to hop aboard. You can have the last word in our mini-debate if you’d like. Try not to be patronizing.

Final Word to P.C. The issues you bring up certainly are not unique to agnostics or atheists, although I find that I don’t tend to respect the agnostic viewpoint much because of unfinished intelligentsia. From what I can tell, most religious ask and struggle deeply with the same complex issues, and the suggestion that they are somehow shallow because they’ve made a decision on what to follow or believe seems absurd.
To quote CS Lewis, the agnostic viewpoint is what he termed “childish theology,” because the thinker is not forced to complete the process of making a decision. Rather it is constant thinking and pondering without a decision. That is not to suggest that I disagree with your own viewpoint on encouraging our kids to ponder all issues while keeping open minds, which we could use more of. But there is a point where a decision must be made, similar to the decision a jury makes after hearing the arguments. The argument phase comes to an end. With the Agnostics I speak with, what I hear is the argument phase never comes to end, as if that’s an excuse to never decide. The entire position is based on a continued lifetime of studying the arguments, which gets to a point of absurdity. I appreciate the fact that you can’t make an educated decision until you can quote back the opposing viewpoint with all the evidence backing each viewpoint. But enough already. To me it seems like an excuse to NOT make a decision.

———
To quote from a Jim Berry cartoon illustrating a church, a mosque, a temple and whizzing bullets: “We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” — Jonathan Swift (1711). “Pat”

The introduction of your skepticism (Love Letters..) is very important, and welcome. Not because I do or don’t agree with what you say, but because of the way you do it. You do not appear to be trying to convert anyone to your position; you merely open the lid and let us peer inside, and each of us, alternately enticed or repelled by what we see, scurry to rally others to our respective camps.
C.S. Lewis once remarked that “there are no ordinary people, it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit…” He felt that once we recognized this, it would not be long until we discovered that what we are here to do, our only reason for existence, was to reveal God to one another.
Challenging the questions of faith and religion in a newspaper column is, in my opinion, a very brave thing to do. No doubt you will receive many letters damning your sanity, beliefs, etc. People don’t like to have their shaky ground jiggled, not even a little bit. And the ones on the edge, they are likely to be the most forceful in their criticisms. But this is one of the main reasons why organized religions manage to maintain a stranglehold on “faith” and “God.” People just don’t want to talk about it. The trouble is, things that don’t get addressed tend to age more rapidly, they wither from disuse, and are often dead before we realize it.
Personally, I have my own ideas about God. I am a retired firefighter/paramedic, and I have been in situations, both where my faith was called into question, and where it sustained me. I have no doubt that
the majority of the rescue workers who died in the World Trade Center died with God on their lips. He was on mine often enough, and not just at work, either.
My idea of God, though, is far different from yours or from that of most people. Yes, you have an idea of God, which you reject, because you spell it out in your thinking in your column. Most people view God the same way: He’s a big slot machine somewhere in the sky, and if I just drop in the right coins, and often enough, I’ll get what I want.
What if God is not the benevolent being we think He is? Just the vision of some big guy sitting on a throne somewhere, waiting for me to make a mistake so he can jot in down in the Book of Life, seems comical to me, but sacred to others. What if we are God? There is plenty of indication that God and man are one – we are made in His image, etc.
If so, then I am as much a part of God as He is of me. As you are also. This would perhaps explain why we live our lives as we do, in the service of others. You could take your columns on an entirely different course, but so far you seem to be as confused as the rest of us. You just seem to be more motivated to want to see man succeed rather than fail. T.D.

The question I have for believers is this: If the Supreme Being were to discontinue controlling events tomorrow, what on earth would change? B.F.

If the ACLU is so much for the separation of church and state why is there no public criticism of the fundamentalist theocracies of the Middle East? Is it simply because it’s the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union so they don’t care what happens in the rest of the world? Is that it? C.F.

Zorn Response: The C.L.U. is stretched to its budgetary breaking point fighting for C.L.s in A.. I suppose if it had the resources it might team up with, say, Amnesty International and become the W.C.L.U.

Consider this: how many of the poor victims last week were brought to atheist hospitals? (Should I capitalize atheist?… Naw.) For that matter, how many atheists have built schools? (We can forget about churches, natch.) I think you must believe in something. The two comments I heard on the videos taped when the planes struck were “Oh my God” and “Holy s###”. (Hey, if people incinerate 7000 people in an instant because they hate Democracy, and an American can’t say “s***”, then something is really, really wrong here). Either statement puts you on the side of holiness, right? So, what did you say? “In the name of Freidrich Engles, what are they doing?” Or was it “Truman Capote, save us”? Perhaps you invoked Camus or Freud, Huxley or Burroughs, or Madelyn O’Hare.
It’s a great country that gives you the luxury of dissent. Hey, you can even burn the flag. But I’d suggest you do it on videotape rather than “live” at this point.
You are puzzled at the entire nation, sans you, the schmarte, embracing (without your [see it as you will] patronizing and intellectually superior criticism) religious faith in the face of mass carnage.
Hey, Eric! Put your stones where your keyboard is. Build a hospital, build a school, get “folks” to staff them. Do right for having a superior job, in the superior nation in the world at this time. (Yeah, Right!)
Hey, Ericccccc! Where do you seek comfort in the face of horror? BTW what horror have you seen? (Gee, I read that it was bad… over there. I empathize.)
Hey, it’s a matter of free will, dude. If you can figure out the best way to get by, so be it. Mike.

We are told not to discuss religion because it always (if those participating in the discussion disagree) leads to hard feelings. Your and Mr. Love’s correspondence, however, demonstrates how stimulating and civil such a debate can be. Both of you have given me “food for thought” this morning, and I thank you.
Like you, I consider myself a secular humanist and quite moral/honorable; yet I feel no urge to condemn people who find comfort in their faith. At the same time, I wonder why humanists are so rarely reciprocally tolerated–don’t all religions include the concepts of the brotherhood of man and “love your neighbor?” I’m not even sure I could keep my teaching position if it became known that I do not believe in God.
This intolerance of non-believers can be, in my view, just as evil as the rivalry among religions that leads to actions like those on September 11th. History shows that a great deal more suffering and evil have roots in religion convictions than in humanism–so why are people like us made fearful of exposing our opinions? N.G.

Zorn Response: I think because, too often, humanists or non-believers are seen as simply anti something, and people such as Mike, letter just above yours, feel threatened and patronized by anyone who disagrees with them. Never mind how patronizing most proselytization is…that, you see, is done with some allegedly positive goal, whereas the humanist is seen as only wanting to tear down the beliefs of others without putting something equally comforting in its place. But, in truth, nothing is more comforting than religion. It does offer more. Much more. Those of us who don’t believe it ultimately delivers–the ultimate consumer advocates!–are asked so shut up because of, say, the schools and hospitals built by those who do believe. Utility, of course, is not the same thing as truth.

Religion and a person’s beliefs should be individual, and everyone should think for himself. I’m glad the Tribune lets you write what you feel and think because you’re a) a good writer and b) able to articulate many of the same ideas many people have but can’t organize them as well as you. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your column and thoughts. M. McP.

I saw this quote on the Arlington Street Unitarian Universalist Church in Boston this summer and thought you might like it. The author is unknown: “Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers.” P.M.

I find that my non-religious friends generally display more Christian values, like tolerance and nonviolence, than my so-called religious acquaintances. I find it to be pretty ironic. I think it is because we don’t feel the same sort of entitlement that most religions preach, so we feel we need to collaborate more to live a successful life. J.M.

Zorn response: I haven’t noticed a correlation either way. I know some great people who profess devotion, and I know some people who behave dishonorably though they say they have faith in God. And vice versa.

No matter how obvious the evidence that you marshaled, it did not matter to Mr. Love. His God is a benign God. What happened 9/11 has nothing to do with his belief in God. He kept coming back to you and others as being bound by presuppositions. Those presuppositions were not prejudices or opinions, but rather common sense observations that Mr. Love seemed not want to deal with. And when he did take a stab at dealing with them, he was downright offensive ( “I don’t even view the WTC disaster as a true
tragedy. Because those 7000 people who perished were & are loved by God.” and “suffering is an illusion”).
His arguments seem to be based on what feels good to him. If positing a benign God and ignoring the consequences of such a belief makes him feel good, so be it. In reality, as you obliquely pointed out there is just life, where good and bad things occur, and that is what the evidence shows, no more.
Mr. Love’s arguments for his “Culture of Benignity” came across as absolutely repellent. B.P.

The only honest position is a struggle between belief and disbelief. I was so excited to read (in the Trib!) recently that Mother Teresa spent her whole life in such a struggle. As much as I loved her before, that made her all the better – she was real! Not just blindly faithful, but pushing through against doubt and loneliness.
I was wondering if you had ever heard of the Unbeliever’s Prayer? I thought you would enjoy it. I am giving it to you from memory, so I could be off by a word or two, but here it is:
Almighty God,
Please forgive me for my agnosticism,
For I shall try to keep it gentle, not cynical,
Nor a bad influence.
And, oh!
If thou art truly in the heavens,
Accept my gratitude for all thy gifts,
And I shall fight the good fight. J.G.

Sometimes I like to think that our pursuits of truth and understanding of our perceptions makes us cute in God’s eyes like dogs are so cute to us. Maybe it’s like that guy on “We’re geniuses in France” said,”God is to people as an eight-year-old boy is to Sea Monkeys” Thank you, Eric and Bill, for making me think. J.B.

First let me state that I think that you follow the religion of secular humanism. This totally unsupported (through logic, history, experience and observation) belief in the inherent goodness and value of human life. Using pure logic, I am unable to reach any other result but might makes right, Machiavelli is the way to go and human beings by sole virtue of being human have no value. There are infinite number of humans to be produced and most exist to kill/beat those perceived as “them” as opposed to “us”. All persons live in competition with each other. This is where the usefulness of morality comes in.
Please note that none of the following argument posits the existence of God. I also accept the possibility that there may be no meaningful morality in the world. I agree that those who are atheists are not negative, destructive by nature and are not hopeless by virtue of their atheism. However, atheists are certainly amoral if there is to be any meaningful sense to morality. Morality comes from one of two places people (family, you, society) or a higher power (Budha, the force, Yaweh, God, allah, etc.) People cannot be their own source of any meaningful morality. Every person is moral to themselves. Thus, in this case, the statement I am moral = I act in agreement with whatever I think is right. If it comes from a group of people, the statement I am moral means: I act in agreement with whatever the group thinks is right. You should agree that these are both equally meaningless sources of morality. Groups cannot be the ultimate authority of their own morality. Nazis and the Crusaders were moral in this way. Note that most organized religions are groups. As an erstwhile Catholic, I am supposed to accept what the church says and not question it. However, the church is not God and they are not infallible regardless of whatever doctrines they promulgate to the contrary. A better guideline was stated by Aquinas: “the truths of faith and the truths of reason can never be opposed.” The thinking is that God, if He exists, gave us reason to distinguish right from wrong. When reason contradicts faith, the beliefs about God must be wrong.
To reach a meaningful morality, it must have an external objective source that sets the rules. A is right, B is not right, period end of story, no discussion needed. It must have general guidelines for behavior. Each major faith in a higher power has more or less the same virtues. In Christianity for instance:
The Seven Contrary Virtues: humility, kindness, abstinence, chastity, patience, liberality, diligence
The Seven Heavenly Virtues: faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence
This way of looking at the world answers two important questions 1) Why be moral? Because there is a God and eternal consequences. 2) What is moral? What God wills, which is not subject to popular opinion or consensus.
The only problem that stems from this approach is also its main virtue, absolutism. Osama bin Laden is conceivably moral under this scheme. It all depends on whether his conception of higher power is True. Bin Laden is either right absolutely or wrong absolutely. I think from my religious viewpoint that he is wrong. This does not mean that its morality is relative in fact. There is a truth of the matter or there is no truth at all. The problem is not solvable by removing that absolutism. If there is no higher power, that removes the logical possibility of justice, right, moral etc. having any objective meaning whatsoever.
I was somewhat surprised that Mr. Love did not resort to Socrates for his defense of death as a OK thing for the dead. Socrates said when contemplating his execution that there were two possibilities. Either he would go to heaven because he had led a moral life or he would enjoy a dreamless sleep. Either way, dying is only hard on the living.(anonymous)

Zorn response– The “only” problem you outline with your line of thinking is also its fatal problem, literally and polemically. Many faiths and cultures throughout history have interpreted divine morality, almost always to the advantage of those in power in that culture. (to quote from the 10-2-01 Leonard Pitts column: So many times what you discover is that people have created God in their own image. That they interpret him according to their petty biases and predispositions, attribute to him their political party and ball team, their motivations and hatreds, their timetable and comprehension. “) This does not mean that all of them are wrong, of course, but it is highly suggestive. And it leaves the person who would gainsay Osama bin Ladin’s theology only his own scriptural interpretation as ammunition. And I of course reject utterly the self-serving circularity of your argument about “morality,” in which your definition is its own proof. I deal with this whole matter pretty extensively in this speech, if you’re really interested..

I admire your courage in exposing yourself to the wrath of the believers. At least you’re not running for any office. Can you imagine any candidate for a state or national office being able to win without calling upon God to bless the voters and the nation at the end of every political speech? What absolutely horrifies me is the picture of millions of people around the world turning to prayer in response to the events of September 11, rather than understanding that this irrational belief in a “creator” and life after death is the root cause for what happened. Would these idiots have committed suicide if they didn’t believe to an absolute certainty that they were on their way to paradise and their reward of 70 virgins apiece?? I think not J.S.

I enjoyed your column regarding your beliefs as an indifferent agnostic. I was wondering if I was the only one around. With a Greek Orthodox wife, I guess you could say I have a mixed marriage. I was very relieved to know of someone whom I respect who shares my religious views. Thanks for letting me know I’m not alone. Maybe we should form a support group like your SIN group D.J.

Zorn Response–Thanks. I think we’ll have to think of another name, though, to avoid raised eyebrows.

I have never viewed being silent as a weakness, just a necessary/cautious posture. Your column may be my trigger to cease this silence. J.S, South Bend

Your own personal decision “to do right” is simply that Mr. Zorn, your own decision. Your hoping that that if God exists, then that is what God wants you to do, is to put it frankly, making yourself out to be a god. I don’t mean to slam you, only to point out that your desire to do what “you think” God wants means that you are presupposing yourself as God or as you would like God to be.
That is no different than the suicide bombers who presupposed their god wanted them to destroy America.
Living your life hoping that you are pleasing a god that you think you can never know, but want to have your bases covered just in case is futile at best. N.M.

Zorn Response–Interesting bit of theological judo there, turning my professed humility into supreme arrogance. Then lumping me in with the suicide “bombers” who believe in their scripture at least as ardently as you believe in yours!

(One of the above letters) brings to mind an old quote that goes something like this: “Looking at history, God forbid we should treat each other like the Christians did!” T.D.

While I believe there is a God up in heaven whose heart breaks over the evil in this world, I can see how good has come out of Him not lifting a finger. There are so many organizations that are founded by someone who has encountered pain and anger that they vent into a worthy cause. Ever heard of MADD? What about the organization John Walsh set up? What about the way this nation has rallied around each other? When did you think you would ever hear the statement that there are “no crabby New Yorkers to be found?”
I’m just one of a few people who can see the hope and the good beyond the pain. Personally, I think agnostics are just lazy. If they really wanted to go beyond “indifferent”, they would take the time to investigate spiritual matters, investigating different religions and holy books, sifting through what they believe to be false until they settle upon something that they believe to be true, if anything. And if in the end, they find no proof that a God exists, at least they gave it their best shot. It’s an easy job to argue with folks you don’t agree with, but it’s a far more difficult endeavor to seek answers L.N.

Zorn Response — What makes you imagine that agnostics are any less well read or curious about matters of faith than believers? In fact, my guess is that many people who are raised in a particular faith never take the time to “investigate different religions and holy books” and “give it their best shot” to decide what objectively sounds right to them. Agnosticism–the belief that one cannot know if there is a God–is hardly a lazy stance compared to, say, simply buying into whatever your folks tell you to believe.
The idea that a sentient, moral, all- good being would allow the murder of 6,000 people in New York City all at once in order to promote an anti-crabbiness agenda speaks for itself.

I participated in a debate this weekend, and my opponent used those same weasel words that Love is using: “you can’t prove God doesn’t have a mysterious higher purpose,” and “human minds are too limited to understand,” and so on. I told my opponent that if this is true, then it shows that God really doesn’t care about human suffering at all. He cares more about his “higher reasons” than he does about precious children and human tragedy. Or he cares more about the “free will” of terrorists than the lives of victims and their families, many of whom were praying desperately for God’s blessing and help. Either way, such a being is not worthy of my admiration. Dan Barker, Freedom From Religion Foundation

I’m a 29 year old atheist and I believe that people — without the force of religion — can live good and principled lives even if people who believe in God think we are heathens (look that one up in the dictionary!). Atheists
can cry and sing, give blood and donations too. If others find comfort in God during this time I have no problem with that. It would just be nice if more people recognized that not EVERYONE believes in God and that *even* atheists can live good and loving lives. I still can’t figure out how I was supposed to respond to the several people who turned to me at the end of the Daley Plaza moment and said “God bless you”. J.S.

Zorn Response–You say “thank you,” because it is a profoundly sincere wish from them to you. Good manners are always important.

I don’t get your logic, (should I call it that?). Its you contra mundum in your comment:
“I don’t know whether God exists, but is doesn’t matter either way in terms of how we should live our lives.”
Two out of three people on the face of this planet disagree with you sir…they at least have humbly conceded (I don’t think you’ve yet grasped humility as it is…only as you think it is) along with the greater majority of the dead (i.e. those who have died…most people have you know!) that the “should-ness” of life loses all of its “should” if severed from a supernatural cause to direct it.
I understand your meaning to be that “you” are your own “cause” regarding the “should-ness” of your life. By definition then, you think you’re a god. Not to worry though…lots of men in history came to that conclusion…remember…Alexander,….Antiochus,…Octavius,….Diocletian?
Your statement, “I think there are an infinite number of possible truths.”, is troubling to your indifferent agnosticism. You are very interested in your truth — or your existential imperative.
To suggest you’re reviving a debate (i.e a mutual search for truth) is like the terrorists’ suggestion they made on Sept. 11th. Like you, they weren’t interested in debate. They’re interested in being heard! Well they were…and you have been too.
And you — like them — need to be heard because you believe deeply in your religion.
If indifferent agnosticism really is just two guys hashing things out then do humanity a favor and refrain from flying your ideas into the established structures of public discourse and debate…that is only until you’re really convinced you have something to contribute.
Gosh Eric…you make me think you’re a religious believer the way you push your views…..hmmm now there’s a revelation! R.H.

Zorn response–Let me get this straight: Truth is a popularity contest and the Love letters and mailbag/love sites notwithstanding, I’m not interested in airing this issue only in pushing my point of view which I shouldn’t espouse because not believing in supernatural phenomena is arrogant, strips all meaning from life and violates the established structure of public discourse and debate. Does that about sum it up, o logical one?

R.H. replies: In your speech you say: “So what label for me? Skeptic? Freethinker? Perhaps agnostic– someone who says he doesn’t know or that the answers to these questions are fundamentally unknowable? But I go a step further–I call myself an “indifferent agnostic”–and I say that whether God exists is not just unknowable but irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. Look: If there is a living God who created and cares about this world, I think the best one can say about him and his moral sense is: that it is utterly impenetrable. Take a walk around a children’s hospital. Look at the videos of starvation in the Sudan. Read the stories about the just-passed 100th anniversary of the hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas. Six thousand…some say 10,000 people…dead. Or visit the holocaust museum. The moral code of an almighty power that allegedly created and presides over such horror is, to put it charitably, ambiguous.”
If God’s moral code is “ambiguous” as you argue then what is your solution to humanity’s “ambiguity” regarding right and wrong…or your own? I concede Christendom doesn’t have a great track record here (but it can critique itself) but Humanistic philosophy hasn’t got a good one either (those slain in the French revolutions and advance of socialism were done in the name of improving humanity).
Where do you anchor your beliefs about right and wrong? My earlier letter to you meant to ask if you had anchored it in your “self” (ie. your own experience). That’s important to think about when you address potent experiences like the ones you mentioned above.
Why do you call things like the “holocaust” a “horror”? I believe it was a horror because I’ve anchored my view in the belief that God has spoken: “don’t murder”.
“Horror” is a word/symbol that begs for something greater than your (or collective) human experience/preference to define it.
If not, then horror becomes anything “we” (i.e. people/governments/societies) say it is (or is not). We fought World War II (in part) because another government disagreed with us about whether the holocaust really was a “horror”. So where’s “your” anchor?

Zorn response–Since you read my speech you recognize how vast my impatience is with the philosophical abdication of the flimsy “We have no way of defining `good’ without referencing God” argument; the idea that because we understand the notion of “good” there must be some ultimate source of the concept of goodness. I’m impatient with it on two counts.
The first is that I don’t believe it for a second. Try this analogy: What is “big?” What is bigness? Because we as humans have a sense of the concept of bigness, does this meant there is some ultimate big thing that we can consult as our guiding star of bigness? Or, in fact, do we define bigness in context related to our experiences and our lives and the situation? The answer is clearly the latter. The Sears Tower is big– compared to other buildings and in the context of a discussion of man-made structures. It is small compared to mountains or the earth or universe itself. I could go on and on in this vein but that’s the basic point. Similarly evil, good and so on are always terms that we understand in human context. You say “don’t murder” is the rule that the contravention of which in one definition of evil. But any time you get into the definition of “murder” you fall into what critics howl is “moral relativism.” Are there situations in which it is NOT evil to take the life of a human being who poses no immediate threat to you? Think here of certain acts of war or of the death penalty, which is so gratefully embraced by so many people who profess religious faith even though the leaders of those faiths denounce it. Think, specifically, of Hiroshima–how evil was it or was it evil at all for us to nuke so many Japanese civilians in the service of ultimately saving the lives of our own soldiers? Does the ultimate purpose of such a slaughter matter?
The second is that mankind does not agree on these anchor definitions and, with all due respect to those who produce scriptures at this point in the discussion, there’s no way of accessing such definitions that doesn’t just seem to cause additional strife. You say you know God’s will and his definition of goodness. The other guy in the other country says he knows God’s will and his definition of goodness. So all we’ve done is add an impenetrable layer between you and he and some sort of sensible resolution: Whose rituals and observances and religiously enshrined prejudices are pleasing to God, and whose are offensive?
My anchor is the golden rule, by the way, which is enshrined not only in nearly every religion but also in ethical humanist philosophy. It’s no more or less true because Jesus said it, it appears in the Torah, it appears in the Koran etc. etc. It works.

——
You wrote “…if (God)  wouldn’t keep the two towers standing long enough for the people inside to escape, etc. etc…..”
But….they stood long enough for many thousands to escape and they fell straight down… far worse if they had fallen sideways.
It doesn’t make it ‘better’. It does make a difference in how I deal with it. I tend to try to find the pony in the room of horse-manure. I think it’s partly a result of the realization that things are, and I can either be depressed about them or not. I can’t control life, but I can control how I think about it.
I don’t believe in God. But I went to synagogue last week. I believe in community, and culture, family, friends.
A story, as far as I can remember it, about why God lets bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people:
A student went walking with a wise and great Rabbi. They traveled all day, and at night came to the house of a well-to-do but evil-hearted man. When they knocked on the door, the evil-hearted man swore at them
and turned them away, refusing them food or drink and sending them to sleep in the barn. The next morning, they awoke to sounds of exultations. During the night, an old, falling-down stone wall in front of the
evil-hearted man’s house had miraculously been repaired, and he was overjoyed. The student and the Rabbi walked on. That night they came to a poor but good-hearted man’s house. Honored and overjoyed at a visit from the great Rabbi, the good-hearted man welcomed them graciously. He and his wife shared their meager meal with them, and gave the Rabbi and student their own bed while the good-hearted couple went to sleep in the barn. The next morning the Rabbi and student awoke to sounds of wailing and mourning. During the night, the poor man’s only cow had died. The student asked, “Rebbe, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people and good things to happen to bad people?” The Rabbi replied: “You cannot judge just by what you can see. Under a stone in the evil-hearted man’s wall was a great treasure. If he had repaired it himself as he had planned, he would have found that treasure. And last night, the good-hearted man’s wife was supposed to die. God took his cow instead.”
Not believing in God, I suppose I can’t really say “God works in mysterious ways”, but I can hope that some good will come even from such evil. I can hope that the Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire will hold, and a new will to work towards a solution prevail. I can hope that the tens of thousands of Americans who give money to the IRA or other violent groups will stop. I can hope that the Loyalist supporters who threw rocks and worse at Irish schoolchildren will go back inside their houses and stay there. I can hope that the ‘cultural self-loathing’ I sense from so many of my peers against the ‘evils’ of US foreign policy will fade as our leaders, hopefully, show wisdom and restraint in their responses. I can hope that when the next attack comes, because it will, it will claim fewer lives than it would have without the added precautions and preparations and heightened awareness that has followed 9/11.
There’s probably no pony in all that manure. But at least I’m gonna shovel some of it out of the way
while I’m hunting. M.G.-R.

Zorn response–I have similar hopes, I guess, but I fear that this will embolden terrorists and terrorism and I fear that the U.S. will take a defiant rather than ameliorative approach to foreign policy reform. Which, I contend, is needed.
My thought about God working in mysterious ways is, fine, agreed, if he exists, obviously. So mysterious, in fact, that not even the most astonishing mythologies devised by man can really explain it. So why not be kind and generous to one another, respect the earth and figure that if that ain’t good enough, well, there ain’t no eternal justice nohow.

There were no atheists in the WTC when it started to collapse. Bad things do happen to good people. Always have, always will. A crucifixion comes to mind some 2,000 years ago.
Ringgold, Georgia, now has a notable distinction, discovering how to bridge the non sequitur of the “free exercise” of atheism — as the town council decided, in response to the terror attacks, to post in public buildings a display of the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and some empty picture frames. Calling for a return to moral values, Councilman Bill McMillon explained that the blank frames were included to acknowledge the “faith” of “those who believe in nothing.” S.H.

Zorn response–The “there are no atheists in foxholes” argument, of which your point is a variant, seems totally irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of any underlying religious claim. . The value of such faith for the individual, yes. I’ve never questioned that. This story out of Georgia, which I verified through the Associated Press, illustrates a contemptible form of arrogance and bigotry as well as an appalling lack of understanding of humanist values. Anyone who passes it along approvingly speaks volumes about himself.

Many people have been asking similar questions. If God exists, why didn’t He stop the terrorists’ attack?
My family attends St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Waukegan, and one of our pastors spoke very eloquently to that issue yesterday. She said that God has given us a free will, and that he could not take away the terrorists’ right to choose evil without also taking away our right to choose good. To do so would be to reduce us to zombies – simply doing whatever was commanded of us.
If the technology were available, would you want to put a microchip in your children’s brains so that they would do only as you pleased? No, I think you would hope that through your teachings, they would grow up to be free-thinking individuals who would choose the right path. So it is with God. We have the ability to make our own decisions, and He hopes, just as any parent would, that we will choose good over evil. D.F.

Zorn response– It seems to me that believers want it both ways. They want God to an active force that is addressable, approachable and otherwise responsive to their entreaties, yet at the same time they want to say that God is hands off, for his intervention would remove our free will. They ask God for favors–for protection, for health, for love, for, in some cases, riches–yet at the same time argue that God cannot and should not protect us either from the wickedness of other men or from the ravages of nature.
The analogy between an alleged heavenly father an a human father is a curious one. I would not want to turn my children into puppets, no, but if there were anything I could do to, say, prevent one of them from killing another one of them I would certainly find a way to do that. I would not simply sit back and remain distant and enigmatic as I hoped for my children to choose good over evil. That would be negligent, don’t you agree? And so if God knows, as surely he must, that these men boarding airplanes are about to commit acts that will cause horrific suffering and death to–what is the number now?–more than 6,000 of his children and in the interests of not making us zombies he does nothing to stop them, what kind of father is he? The strict preservation of free-will, this strict policy of non-intervention, is more important than the lives of those human beings and the blighted lives of their families? I can grant you that, but I can’t then understand what “faith” in this being is supposed to mean. Faith that he will protect you? Help you out? Not on this Earth, it seems. In there hereafter? Seems like wishful thinking, but who knows? But does it really make sense, then, that such a creator would demand any worship or praise outside of good, decent generalized moral behavior? I think not, and I’d direct you back to your human parent/child analogy. Will you stop loving your children and write them out of your will if they don’t tell you they love you in a variety of ways? Or is your love closer to the unconditional love a parent has for his child?

You define “indifferent agnosticism” as “you do not know whether God exists, but it does not matter either way in terms of how we should live our lives”. The first part of your belief, that “you do not know whether God exists”, is answered by the world itself and how it works, and second by your (and everyone else’s) consciences through which a yearning for God is expressed silently but persistently and powerfully.
The second part of your belief, that “it does not matter either way in terms of how we should live our lives” is blatantly contradictory to the first part of the belief. Only if you believe that God does not exist
would it make sense that it would not matter “how we should live our lives”. If, alternatively, someone believes that God does exist then it will matter very much to that person “how we should live our lives” since
the belief in God would naturally involve that person wanting to live their life in accordance with the character of the God they believe in. It would make no sense for someone to believe that “God exists” and also believe that “it does not matter to God how I live my life”. This is the same as saying that “God exists” but is “irrelevant”. If that belief is held, then it would make no sense for someone to believe in that type of God for why would anyone believe in something they consider irrelevant?
Given this, I believe your spiritual beliefs would be more accurately described as “active atheism” (a belief that God does not exist) rather than “agnosticism”. You are obviously not indifferent or uncertain as to
whether or not God exists– it is clear that you believe the vast weight of the evidence indicates that God does not exist….
You make the assertion in one of your letters to Mr. Love that “there is nothing in experience or in creation to suggest that we have any IDEA whether God is good, bad, or indifferent. All we know is that by our standards, God is inscrutable”. I respectfully disagree with this assertion and I would find it hard for anyone to hold such a non-committal belief on this topic. You state that “by our standards, God is inscrutable.” However, by God’s standards, he is far from inscrutable. Every religion founded on the belief in God includes a sophisticated network of doctrines and foundational beliefs in the character and abilities of God. In order to understand the character of God, it is a simple matter to review these doctrines and beliefs to determine what God considers “good”, “bad”, or things he is “indifferent” about. All organized religions are greatly concerned about people “understanding” whether God is “good”, “bad”, or “indifferent” and make great efforts to make this clear through books, personal teaching, speeches, etc.
Your statement that “there is nothing in…creation, to suggest that we have any IDEA whether God is good, bad, or indifferent” can only follow from a predisposition that there can be no God therefore any evidence presented by things in the world that indicates that only the character, power, and abilities typically ascribed to a transcendent “God” has no merit. The fact is that many thoughtful, intelligent people throughout history have clearly seen much in “creation” that indicates that God is very good and is not indifferent between things that are “good” and “bad”.
Your statement, “All we know is that by our standards, God is inscrutable.”, is a “truism” that says nothing about God. This is because of your pre-condition, “by our standards”, God must be “inscrutable” (i.e., cannot be understood) because your standards clearly start with the premise that “God” does not exist, or, if he exists, he is irrelevant (this follows from the foundation of your “indifferent agnosticism” spiritual belief). If, according to a set of “belief standards”, something does not exist or is irrelevant then that “something” will naturally be “inscrutable”.
A statement you make in your notes with Mr. Love that said “Now, of course, you have no evidence for your belief other than faith, which seems to me to be based primarily on a combination of hope and vanity…(emphasis added)”.
I beg to differ with your statement that “…you have no evidence for your belief other than faith,…”. The Judeo/Christian explanation of how the world works and how and why people behave the way they do is founded on documented historical events. You may discredit and not believe some of the sources documenting these events, but nevertheless, their belief system is based entirely on their claim that the events presented in their report on the world actually occurred. The stories are presented as fact and have always been available to be disproved by contrary evidence.
Whether or not you, or anyone else, believes the historical facts upon which their explanations are based, is matter for personal inspection. There are numerous archeological and sociological studies available that
look into these matters that could be reviewed. In addition, much of the uncovered physical evidence of the societies and events exist in the middle east and are available for personal inspection if someone desired
to do so. Similarly, scholars who study these matters also have access to whatever “sociological” information that exists, such as preserved documents, the Dead Sea Scrolls, papyrus records, public records,
historical records, and inscriptions on public buildings from various historical periods.
The point is that there is a vast array of historical and physical information that can be reviewed and compared with the factual information upon which the Judeo/Christian explanation of how the world works is based.
In response to your statement quoted above, I would say that “faith” results from experiencing and understanding the clear evidence of God that exists in the everyday world and that “hope” naturally follows from the “faith” in God, once his loving, merciful, and righteous character is understood. In your statement, you have the relationship backwards: “faith” cannot be founded on “hopes” and “vanities” that have no basis in
the natural world. Such a belief system would be silly and ridiculous to follow and I will hazard to say that no person would make the rational decision to follow such an ungrounded, impractical belief system.
The second point in your note to Mr. Love I would like to respond to is your statement “Because you really have no footing on which to gainsay the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist view that says God will reward those who lose their lives killing the American infidels.”
I beg to strongly differ with you on this point as well. The Judeo/Christian explanation for the moral basis for how the world should work and how people should treat each other is based on the following two
principles:
1) Love your God with all your heart, and all your strength, and with all your mind, and
2) Love your neighbor as yourself.
Based on the reference in your letter (as well as numerous explanations of the terrorists’ interpretation of the Islamic faith published in numerous sources over the past two weeks), the Islamic explanation for the moral
basis for how the world should work and how people should treat each other appears to be based on the following two principles:
1) Love your God with all your heart, and all your strength, and with all your mind, and
2) Love your neighbor as yourself, except if he does not believe in God in the manner taught by Islam,
you must kill them.
The Judeo/Christian and Islamic views agree completely on the first principle, that is to “Love your God with all your heart.., etc.”.
However, they differ completely on the second principle. The Judeo/Christian faith is founded on a belief in God (Principle #1), however, the character of God leads to the requirement that we unconditionally “love each other as ourselves”. I use the word “unconditionally” in my explanation because this requirement is presented very directly and simply without any “qualifications” or “conditions” attached to it. In contrast, the Islamic fundamentalist’s interpretation of the Islamic faith obviously places a very significant qualification on the basic requirement to “love each other as ourselves”; the obvious “condition” or “qualification” being that if others do not believe in Principle #1 in the same manner as taught by the Islamic faith, then they must be killed.
Both the Judeo/Christian and Islamic views of how people are to treat one another (Principle #2) follow directly from their foundational belief in Principle # 1 (i.e., their belief in God) and from their unstated understanding of the character of God. The Judeo/Christian view of the character of God is that of a good, loving, merciful, holy, and righteous God who takes an active interest in every person. Despite the righteousness of God’s character that requires that “good” be rewarded and “wrong” be punished, his love for his people is greater leading to the extension of “mercy” and “grace” to people who technically do not deserve it.
The Islamic terrorists’ view of the character of God apparently differs from the Judeo/Christian view in many important respects. The Judeo/Christian view is that God cares for, loves, and extends his mercy and grace to all persons, regardless of “religious affiliation”, “gender”, “racial background”, or “economic status”. The terrorists’ interpretation of God’s character, however, clearly differs in this respect in that God’s judgement rather than his love and grace must be extended to any “infidels” who do not believe in God in the manner that the terrorists understand the Islamic faith.
The point of this discussion, Eric, is that your statement “Because you really have no footing on which to gainsay the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist view that says God will reward those who lose their lives killing the American infidels.” is completely wrong. The Judeo/Christian belief in God and understanding of God’s character as revealed through history provides both the moral foundation and the factual basis to “gainsay” that the “fundamentalist terrorist view that God will reward those who lose their lives killing..infidels” is not only wrong in the objective, absolute meaning of the word but that this incorrect view must be opposed for the protection of the lives of all people of every “religious affiliation”, “gender”, “racial background”, or “economic status”.
These opposing views of the Judeo/Christian and the Islamic terrorist understanding of the character of God lead directly to how each group chooses to react to people who do not share their fundamental beliefs in
the character of God. The basic Judeo/Christian response is to “convert” the “unbeliever” through education and “witnessing” based on the lifestyle of the “believer”. The real work of “conversion” is done by God through the “heart” of the “unbeliever” so that, of their own free will, they will come to believe in God. Therefore it is against Principle #2 (love your others as yourself) to compel by force (or legislation, or other form of coercion) non-believers to the Judeo/Christian faith. The entire Judeo/Christian belief system hinges on individual persons making the personal choice of their own free will to believe in God, or, alternatively, making the personal choice to rebel against God and his character. All of the terrible events recounted in the Old Testament and the spiritual challenges that are the foundation of the New Testament revolve around this concept of personal “faith” of individual persons in a loving, righteous personal God contrasted against the choice of not believing in such a God.
In contrast, the Islamic terrorists clearly believe that “conversion” is either not called for or is unnecessary, but what is called for is “cleansing” the “faith” by eliminating the “unbeliever” from existence.
This approach hardly recognizes the ability of each person to exercise their free will to make moral choices between “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “evil”, and “to hurt” or “to help”. Rather, this approach applies the dictator’s traditional tools of “terror”, “repression”, “thought control”, “coercion”, and “violence” to impose a small group’s values on a much larger group. Therefore, if through your own life experiences as well as those of everyone you know, you recognize that people do, in fact have free will and can recognize the difference and choose between “good” and “evil”, then it can be concluded that God will not reward those [Islamic terrorists] who lose their lives killing American infidels. This is because such a blanket principle violates God’s character and assumes that each person who does not believe in the terrorist’s view of the Islamic character of God will not exercise their “free will” and choose to believe in their manner. This obviously contradicts the whole concept of “free will”– people can and do have the ability to choose. P.G.

Zorn response– I have a favor to ask all believers who written attempting to correct the error of my ways: Stop telling me what I believe and what I don’t believe, what I must therefore believe and so on. I’ve been quite clear about it. Indifferent agnosticism says that the moral relationship between human beings and between the human race and the rest of our surroundings does not change whether there is or isn’t a supernatural creator behind it–a “God” behind the scenes doesn’t change things, and I believe there is ample evidence (or lack of evidence) that if God exists, this is just how God wants it. Whether God exists or not, we should look to our experience and to our world to figure out how to live a just, moral and good life. And I think it’s a perilous path indeed–just as history suggests–to abdicate this imperative and look instead toward supposed interpreters of God for answers.
It’s perfectly possible, by the way, to believe that God exists yet is not particularly concerned with how any one individual comports himself. It may not be in line with your scriptures or beliefs, but it is certainly possible that we creatures who exist for the blink of an eternal eye on a tiny moist orb in a immeasurably vast universe the purpose of which, if any, we cannot begin to fathom may not be of the most profound concern of the creator of this universe. Just a thought, sobering though it is.
Man clearly has a strong desire to find meaning in his existence and the existence of the world all around him. Hence the prevalence of religious thought in virtually every society. Religion has always and will always fill in the inexplicable gaps–primitive people read all sorts of nonsense into thunderstorms and rainbows–which doesn’t mean that it’s inherently wrong or right, just that one would naturally expect societies and cultures to produce such explanations, even as one would expect (and one finds) that the religious constructs of societies and cultures tend in the long run to reinforce the values of those in power in those societies and cultures. To adduce the common features of several great religions and argue that this commonality is evidence of fundamental theological truth is totally errant and circular.
A lot has been written about the historical “proofs” of certain supernatural events in the New Testament, and this page is not about that (though, again, I direct those who are interested to read an extensive rebuttal of Strobel’s “Case for Christ” ) . My remark about “no evidence…” was directed to Bill Love, the former Benedictine monk who does not rely on Christian scripture for his belief. To clarify, those statements would not apply to those who rely on scriptural evidence–they do have evidence. To clarify further, however, evidence is not synonymous with proof, nor is there necessarily a value judgment attached to the word evidence either way. One can have powerful evidence and very weak evidence. Bill Love does not rely on any evidence when he ventures his guesses about the nature of God.
You have done a disservice to Islam with your selective quotations and interpretations of the Koran. Cynics can and do quote the most ghastly verses and incidents from the Judeo Christian Bible, and there is simply no question that many terrible things have been done to human beings by those who believe they are relying on the words and instructions of the Bible. Where was this idea of loving your neighbor as yourself as for some 1,700 years Christians remained all but silent on the matter of human slavery?
My overall point is that we can tell good from evil, right from wrong without looking to the inclinations or opinions of any supernatural force, alive or dead; that it is a consistent point of view to say that if God exists, his will is expressed in the world we live in and the imperative to keep that world going harmoniously; and if God doesn’t exist, we owe it to ourselves to do exactly the same.