Sex Writers, Drooling Horndogs, and the Suspectability of Male Sexuality

Wolf-man-poster
Why is the “sex writer” field so dominated by women?

I’ve been thinking about this question for many years. The publisher of this very blog brought it up in a conversation we were having, and it’s been on my mind off and on ever since. It came up again at a recent salon of sex writers and activists; it came up yet again, although more obliquely, in a conversation I was having with a porn writing friend of mine.

Why is the “sex writer” field so dominated by women?

There are exceptions, obviously. Arguably the most famous and influential sex writer right now is the sex advice columnist Dan Savage. And there are others, of course: David Steinberg, Dr. Marty Klein, Charlie Glickman, I could keep going. And of course, there’s plenty of dumb, generic, Maxim-magazine type sex writing from men; in some senses it’s silly to complain about sex writing as female-dominated, given how much of the dumb crap there is. But it does seem as if sex writing — serious, intellectual sex writing, at any rate — is one of those rare fields that’s largely taken up by women, and in which women are both more visible and more generally respected.

And thinking about this question is making me think about the suspectability of male sexuality.

I think that when women write about sex, we’re assumed, in some ways, to be dispassionate observers. Of course we get targeted as sluts and whores and whatnot. But we’re also seen as bringing a fresh perspective to the subject, and a cooler eye, and a more thoughtful point of view.

When men write about sex, on the other hand, they’re assumed to be drooling horndogs.

*

Thus begins my new piece on the Blowfish Blog, Sex Writers, Drooling Horndogs, and the Suspectability of Male Sexuality. To find out more about how treating sex as male-centered actually demeans and trivializes men’s sexuality as well as women’s, read the rest of the piece. (And if you’re inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog — they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

Sex Writers, Drooling Horndogs, and the Suspectability of Male Sexuality
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Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheism isn't the Easy Way Out

Scarlet letter
Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

It is simply not true that atheists are atheists because atheism is easier than following the rules of religion. Letting go of religion can be very difficult, and atheists face a substantial amount of bigotry and hostility. Most atheists are happy to have let go of religion — but it’s not an easy thing to do. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheism isn't the Easy Way Out

Weight Loss and Strange Emotional Stuff: The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet, Part 2

(This is Part 2 of a three-part series. You don’t have to read Part 1 to get this, but it helps.)

Fat_woman
When I first announced that I was losing weight, I got a series of comments and private emails from people in the fat positive movement, either chiding me for betraying the fat positive vision, or concern trolling about how weight loss was going to ruin my physical and psychological health. Somehow, these people believed that incidental weight loss from a “healthy at every size” eating and exercise program would be acceptable, but that a deliberate weight loss program would be physically and mentally toxic… even if my eating and exercise in these two programs were identical in every way. (I know. It doesn’t make sense to me, either — and the research doesn’t back it up. For the record, I do think the fat positive movement has some good and important ideas; I just think they’ve run off the rails with them.) And somehow, they believed that the emotional damage I would incur from conscious weight loss would be so staggering that it would completely outweigh any other considerations… including the emotional damage I’d incur from my bad knee crippling my mobility and cutting off major areas of pleasure, from dancing to fucking to just walking around in the city that I love.

Which I found not only baffling, but offensive.

Broken plate
I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got no neuroses and weird psychological shit associated with weight loss. I’ve become a mild control freak about food, and situations where I can’t control what food is available are somewhat distressing. Ingrid and I spend more time talking about this — venting, strategizing, planning meals, managing emotions — than I’d like anyone to know. Compliments on how good I look now are a seriously mixed blessing: there’s a big part of me that enjoys it, and that can accept praise for the accomplishment as well as for my fit body… but when the compliments are particularly effusive, a part of me angrily thinks, “So what did you think I was before — chopped liver?” Plus I hate how gender-normative losing weight makes me feel: I loved being a fat woman saying “fuck you” to body fascism and rigidly sexist standards of female beauty, and I really don’t love being just another of the hordes of dieting American women. (I avoid the “d” word like the plague, for that exact reason.) And while I feel more connected and present in my body now than I can ever remember feeling in my life, I feel weirdly disconnected with my body of the past… like I was an entirely different person. (Weight loss has also had some interesting effects on my sexuality; overall good, some not so much. But that’s a whole other piece, to come soon.)

Cakes
But you know what? I had neuroses and weird psychological shit about food and my body before I started losing weight. Some of it’s the same shit; some of it’s different. I fixated on food in a different way back then: using it for comfort, to relieve boredom, to distract myself from feelings I didn’t want to have. Yes, I’m hyper- conscious about my food choices now; when I was fat, I was whatever the opposite of hyper-conscious is, eating reflexively and mechanically and without thinking. (The way Ingrid puts it is, “I never eat mindlessly or joylessly any more” — and that’s true for me as well. I have some weird food neuroses now… but I always eat with consciousness and pleasure. And that was emphatically not true when I was fat.) When I was fat, I was just as fucked up about food at parties as I am now, if not more so: the difference between obsessively deciding which three hors d’oeuvres I’m going to eat, and obsessively making sure I got a taste of every single one, is less great than you might imagine. Social eating is complicated now… but it was complicated then, too, what with feeling self-conscious about what other people thought about how much I was eating, and then piling more onto my plate than I really wanted or needed, out of stupid, self-defeating, “Who cares what they think” defiance.

Cognitive dissonance
And I was in serious denial/ cognitive dissonance about how unhappy I was with my body, and how out of touch with it I felt. I’d tell myself that I was fine with how I looked; but I hated, hated, hated seeing pictures of myself. I couldn’t look at party or family photos without cringing… because looking at photos fucked with my cognitive dissonance about how big I really was, and how unhappy I really was about it. And getting dressed to go out was a minefield: I could never predict which evenings I was going to feel okay about how I looked, and which evenings I’d spend ripping through my closet for half an hour, near tears, because nothing I owned was going to make me feel beautiful, or even presentable.

So do I have some neuroses about food and my body now? Yes. Did I have neuroses about food and my body when I was fat? You betcha. And the overall effect of weight loss on my mental health has been enormously positive. I feel more present in my body; just walking around the city makes me feel exuberant and joyful and like I’m bursting out of my skin. I like looking at myself in mirrors. My energy and stamina are high. My libido is making me feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon.

Seared_tuna_steak
And very surprisingly, I find that I enjoy food more now. I pay more attention to it; I savor it; I take great relish in the occasional donuts and potato chips; I’m finding new pleasures in roasted vegetables and poached fish and Greek yogurt with warm fruit… and yes, even tofu. (The fact that Ingrid has always been a good cook and is becoming a spectacular one doesn’t hurt.) As Ingrid put it: It’s easier to enjoy your food when you’re not in a state of cognitive dissonance about it. Not to mention the overall effect on my physical health… which has been, as I described above, spectacular. And which can’t be divorced from my mental health.

Health-at-every-size
Now, I can hear the fat-positive advocates already, saying that they don’t support neurotic, unconscious, joyless eating. They advocate being healthy at every size, which includes mental health and a sane relationship with food. Yeah. That’s a beautiful dream. I tried “healthy at every size.” It wasn’t healthy. There is no math in the world that makes a bad knee just as healthy at 200 pounds as it is at 150. And while some people might be capable of maintaining a healthy relationship with food without keeping track of what they eat, I am not one of them. Besides, this idea that eating “naturally” is all we need to do to eat healthy? Total bullshit. Our appetites evolved on the African savannah 100,000 years ago, in an environment of scarcity, and our bodies evolved to eat as much food as is available, whenever it’s available. A strategy that obviously doesn’t work so well in 21st century America. If counting calories and keeping a food diary is what I need to do to keep my diet healthy and stay conscious and sane about how I eat, I fail to see how that’s a bad thing.

There’s an old saying that courage doesn’t mean not having fear — it means not letting fear get in the way. I’m come to feel that way about sanity. Sanity doesn’t mean not having neuroses. It means not letting neuroses get in the way.

Measuring_tape
And that’s just as true for being sane about food and my body. Food and bodies are fraught, emotional, heavily loaded issues, with feelings that are deeply ingrained by evolution, and feelings that are profoundly twisted by modern Western society. It’s hard for me to imagine ever being completely nonchalant about them. My emotional rollercoaster about food and my body is smoothing out a lot, as time goes on and I get accustomed to my new habits… but I’m always going to have some degree of neuroses about this stuff. And me being me, I’m always going to overthink it. So since I’m going to be neurotic and overthinking about food and my body anyway, I may as well be neurotic and overthinking… and in good health, and basically happy with how I look and feel, and not in a state of denial and cognitive dissonance about it.

I’m not going to be an evangelist about weight loss. I still believe — passionately — that the cost-benefit analysis of weight loss is different for different people, and that while it’s right for me, it isn’t necessarily right for everyone.

Scale 2
What’s more, I know that weight loss is hard, and that for reasons we don’t even come close to understanding, it’s harder for some people than others. Different people have different hunger triggers, different metabolisms, different rates of becoming satiated, etc. And I know that many of the things that are making weight loss easier for me are privileges not everyone has: things like being able to afford a gym membership, and living in a city where fresh, healthy food is widely available, and having a supportive partner who’s going through this process with me. Which, again, makes the cost-benefit analysis different for everybody. The cost is worth it to me… but the cost isn’t the same for me as it is for everyone else.

So I’m not going to evangelize about weight loss. What I am going to evangelize for is:

(a) Doing an honest, non-denialist, reality-based assessment of the costs and benefits of weight loss (including, and especially, the health costs and benefits);

and (b) Pursuing weight loss in a reality-based way if you think it would be right for you.

So to that end, for anyone who’s interested, I want to talk about what exactly I’ve been doing to lose weight — what techniques have been successful, what techniques haven’t been so much, what practical strategies and psychological tricks have made this go smoother.

Conversation
And if anyone else is dealing with this, I want to hear from you. I know that this process isn’t over: I still have another ten or fifteen pounds to go. And I know that the hardest part is yet to come. Everything I’ve read says that maintaining weight loss is tougher than losing the weight in the first place, and as good as I feel about all this, I’m not willing to call it a success until I’ve not only lost all the weight I want to, but have kept it off for at least a year. This is a work in progress, and it’s not like I have all the answers. I want to let you know what’s working and not working for me… and I want to find out what’s working and not working for you.

So let’s talk specifics. Let’s talk about how to do this.

Tomorrow.

(Tomorrow: The actual diet. Part 3 of a three-part series.)

Weight Loss and Strange Emotional Stuff: The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet, Part 2

Atheist Meme of the Day: Your Personal Spiritual Experience Is No More Accurate Than Anyone's

Scarlet letter
And the Atheist Memes of the Day are back! Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

If you get that other people’s spiritual experiences don’t make persuasive evidence for their religion, you should be willing to step back from your own experience and view it just like you would anybody’s. Otherwise, you’re assuming that your spiritual perceptions are more accurate than those of everyone else in the world. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Your Personal Spiritual Experience Is No More Accurate Than Anyone's

The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet: An Update

Doll tape measure
I promised I wouldn’t turn this into a diet blog, and I meant it. The thought of turning my beautiful atheist sex blog into a tedious daily update on what I’m eating and how much I weigh fills me with existential horror. It’s not going to happen.

But when I wrote my series a few months back about weight loss — and about the assorted issues it raises with feminism and skepticism and self-image and whatnot — a fair number of you seemed interested. And since I’ve recently hit a new milestone — as of this writing, I’ve lost 50 pounds — I thought I should give y’all an update.

*

Scale 1
I’ve been reading over the stuff I wrote when I was starting out with this. And I’m struck by how difficult this process was for me then… and how much easier it’s become. I actually feel bad that I might have frightened some people off from trying weight loss themselves, with all my talk of conflicted emotions and political battles and crying fits in grocery store parking lots. This has all gotten so much easier with time; when I read the stuff I wrote earlier on in the process, it seems almost alien.

I’m not going to say that this has been easy. But as I’ve gotten accustomed to it — as my body has adjusted, as my psychological strategies have become second nature, as calorie counting has become a habit — it’s gotten easier. It continues to get easier every week. And the benefits are greatly outweighing the costs — much more greatly than I’d anticipated — which makes sticking with it easier when it does get rough.

I don’t want to evangelize about weight loss, though, and I hope it doesn’t sound like I am. The cost- benefit analysis on this stuff is different for everybody, and what’s good for me isn’t good for the entire world. What I’m writing here — it’s all just what’s true for me. More on that in a bit.

Pear_on_a_diet
The thing is — it’s hard to speak honestly and accurately about both the difficulty and the ease of weight loss. In a strange way, this has been both easier and harder than I’d expected. On the one hand, weight loss has required a major reworking of the way I structure my life: not just food, but all the things associated with food, things like friends and family, time management and money. I have to plan most of my meals ahead of time, and forego almost all impulse eating that comes my way. I’ve had to let my friends and family know about my new eating regimen, and I’ve had to ask them to take it into consideration when we eat together. (And even then I have to budget and be careful, since other people’s ideas of “eating light” are often very different from mine.) I have to treat parties where lots of food is available with kid gloves and careful planning. I have to structure my life so that I can get a good amount of exercise virtually every day (and this in a life where time is an enemy, the demon dog constantly yapping at my heels). I have to eat out rarely. Not to mention all the major re-thinking I’ve had to do about the politics and psychology and emotions of food and body size… re-thinking that’s involved some painful realizations about how much denial I was in about my body, for years.

And I’m one of the lucky ones, someone with lots of external factors making this process easier: supportive friends and family; a supportive partner who’s participating in this with me; living in a part of the world where healthy food is readily available; enough money to afford a gym membership.

Whats_on_your_plate
On the other hand… once I got into a groove with this, it became so natural that I almost don’t have to think about it. The day to day of this has become no big deal. I count calories; I exercise a lot; I weigh myself regularly to make sure that what I’m doing is working. It’s second nature now. I’m almost embarrassed at how much of a stink I threw about it before I decided to just do it. And the difficult emotional stuff is smoothing out as time goes on.

This tricky balance — the weird balance of the difficulty and the ease of weight loss — is complicated by the fact that I’m talking to more than one demographic in this piece. To the people who are considering weight loss, or who’ve tried it and been discouraged, I think it’s important to say that this is do-able, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean a life of misery and deprivation and constant, depressing vigilance. And to the more extremist advocates of the fat-positive movement — the ones who insist that weight loss is never, ever, ever right for anybody — I want to get this message across even more clearly. This has not made my life a misery. This has made me neither neurotic nor physically ill. This has just not been that bad. (More on that in a bit.)

But to the people who deride fat people for being fat; to the people who dismissively say “Just eat less and exercise more — sheesh, how hard can it be?” without having any idea of just exactly how hard it is; to the people in the skeptical movement who fiercely battle (and rightly so, I’ll add) the fat-positive movement for their denialism of the health problems associated with being fat — but who don’t offer any acknowledgement of how difficult weight loss is, or any recognition of the social and economic factors that make it even harder than it has to be — it’s important to stress that this is not easy. This has been a hard row to hoe in many ways, both emotionally and practically. And again, I’m one of the lucky ones, with supportive circumstances that not everyone has.

Knee
But back to the update. By far the most important thing on my update: My knee is much, much better. I can’t even tell you. My bad knee is the main reason I decided to lose weight: I was having serious trouble climbing hills, and was having to haul myself up stairs by hanging onto banisters. I am now running up stairs. The improvement has been astonishing. (Physical therapy has helped immensely, too… but even before I started PT, the weight loss was improving my pain and my mobility by leaps and bounds.)

There’ve been other health benefits as well — benefits I hadn’t been expecting. My feet, for instance. I didn’t realize how much my feet hurt until I noticed that they weren’t hurting any more. I used to have to wear shoes all the time; I couldn’t go barefoot even for ten minutes without my feet hurting. And I couldn’t clean the house for more than an hour without having to sit down for ten minutes. No more. I can now go barefoot (yay!), and I can now clean the house for hours without stopping (less exciting, but at least I get it over with sooner, and my feet aren’t killing me at the end of it).

My asthma is better, too. I had no idea that was going to happen. It made sense once my doctor explained it — my lungs don’t have to work as hard just to get me around — but it was a lovely surprise. And my overall energy and stamina are way, way higher. I don’t know if that’s the weight loss per se and having less bulk to carry around, or whether it’s simply a result of exercising more and eating more nutritious food… but since the two are directly related, I’m not sure it matters.

Hand mirror
And I’ll admit that I’m happier with my appearance. That wasn’t the reason I started losing weight, and it’s still not the main reason… but I’m going to be honest here, and say that I do think I look better now. Healthier, mostly. More energetic, more libidinous. And more comfortable in my skin. For the record: I think plenty of fat women look great, I think there are fat women who look sexy and delicious and exactly the way they’re supposed to look. But looking back, and being as honest with myself as I can be? I don’t really think I was one of them. When I was younger, maybe… but not for some years now.

It’s not like I think there are objective abstract standards of attractiveness. Of course beauty is subjective, and of course a huge amount of attractiveness has to do with confidence and self-love. But even purely according to my own personal subjective standards, I don’t think I’ve been an attractive fat person for some years now. I had some degree of confidence and self-love… but it was interlaced with a sizable portion of unhappiness and ill health and disconnection from my body — and a great heaping portion of denial and cognitive dissonance about how unhappy and unhealthy and disconnected from my body I was. Some of my confidence and self-love was real… but a chunk of it was bravado, and me lying to myself. I now feel more like myself, more comfortable in my skin. And I’m happier now with how my clothes fit, and how many more options I have for what to wear. There were only so many kinds of clothes that looked good on me when I was fat… and that range got narrower and narrower as I got older. (I’m wearing jeans again, for the first time in over a decade. I love jeans.) This pleasure in my new appearance is complicated… but I’m not going to pretend that it’s not there.

All of which leads me to some of the stranger emotional stuff about this.

(Tomorrow: The stranger emotional stuff about this.)

The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet: An Update

Friday Cat Blogging: Lydia and Belly Rubs

And now, some cute pictures of our cat.

Lydia 1

Lydia 2

Lydia 3

As I’ve mentioned before, Lydia is a shameless tramp for belly-rubs. Anyone, anywhere, anytime: that’s her motto. I really like this series: in the first one it looks like she just landed on Ingrid’s lap out of the sky; in the second, she looks like she’s awkwardly adjusting from her landing, but is settling in; and in the third, she’s in full-on belly-rub mode, gazing up at Ingrid with that irresistible upside-down gaze of adoration. That’s Lydia at her most iconically Lydia-like.

Friday Cat Blogging: Lydia and Belly Rubs

New Fishnet Story: "Interview With A Porn Star"

Fishnet logo
I was used to having sex with women minutes after being introduced. As actors we tried to keep a sense of humor and fun about the situation. It was professional, not sexy. That’s why they call it acting. You’ve just got to sell it for the camera. But the interview with Daphne was sexy. She was beautiful and intelligent and I was seismically attracted her. I swear, if someone had said, “Decide right now, based on the little you know, if you want to marry her” I would have said Yes.

*

That’s a sample from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I’m editing: Interview With A Porn Star, by Daniel Burnell. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Interview With A Porn Star"

Greta Reading at Perverts Put Out, "He Is Risen" Edition, 3/13

Ppo
Hi, all! On Saturday March 13, I’m going to be reading at Perverts Put Out, the San Francisco sex reading series of song and story. This is the “He Is Risen” edition of PPO, celebrating sex and sacrilege, and I’m tickled pink to be part of it.

Perverts Put Out!, San Francisco’s long-running pansexual performance series, has featured stellar line-ups of truly twisted, mega-talented artistes… and even an occasional naked mayoral candidate.

For the He Is Risen edition, Perverts Put Out will celebrate all things religious, putting the erection back in resurrection. A splendid sex-and-spirituality time is guaranteed for all.

Performers will include Jane Cassell, Sherilyn Connelly, Gina de Vries, Thomas Roche, horehound stillpoint, Juba Kalamka, and Greta Christina, all presided over by Dr. Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard.

Perverts Put Out: The He Is Risen Edition
Saturday, March 13
7:30 pm
CounterPULSE
1310 Mission Street, San Francisco (at 9th St., near Civic Center BART)
$10-15 sliding scale, no-one turned away

Greta Reading at Perverts Put Out, "He Is Risen" Edition, 3/13

A Cornucopia of Climaxes

Important note: This piece, and the piece it links to, includes references to my personal sex life. Family members and others who don’t want to read about that stuff, please don’t read this one.

I-love-female-orgasm-lg
I’ve been thinking about orgasms.

Just for a change.

Orgasms, I think we can all agree, are great. (I know — what a controversial and groundbreaking assertion! Alert the media!) But lately, I’ve been thinking about the vast variety of climactic sexual experiences that aren’t, technically speaking, orgasms. I’ve been thinking about sexual experiences that feel, in some sense, like an orgasm, or like a second cousin of an orgasm — a shiver, an explosion of energy, a feeling of relaxation and release — but that probably wouldn’t register as “orgasm” if I was hooked up to a Masters and Johnson orgasm- measuring machine.

We have a poverty of language about sexual pleasure. And this includes a poverty of language about climactic sexual pleasure. Every time I read about the four stages of human sexual response cycle (excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution), I feel like I’m looking at a map of a forest that’s only mapping out the one path from the parking lot to the main lodge, without showing any of the trails and creeks and pastures. Technically, I suppose these not-quite-climactic climaxes fall into the “excitement” or “plateau” phase of the response cycle… but that language doesn’t capture the feeling of rich, complex satisfaction these other trails have to offer.

So here are some of the not-exactly-orgasmic sexual climaxes I’ve experienced, and the language I’ve come up with to describe them.

*

Thus begins my new piece on the Blowfish Blog, A Cornucopia of Climaxes. To find out more about some of these varieties of sexual climaxes — and to share your own with the rest of the class — read the rest of the piece. (And if you’re inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog — they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

A Cornucopia of Climaxes

Atheism and the Sweet Mystery of Life

Sweet mystery of life
“What does Dr. Bloody Bronowski know about it?”

“He knows everything!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like that. It’d take all the mystery out of life.”

It takes all the mystery out of life. This is an argument that sometimes gets made against the atheist/ materialist/ naturalist view of life. Naturalism is too reductionist, the argument goes. By seeking to explain the universe in terms of physical cause and effect, and in seeking to understand that physical cause and effect in increasingly greater breadth and detail, naturalism ultimately seeks to explain and understand everything. And that would be bad. We need some mystery. Mystery — unanswered and unanswerable questions — are a central part of what makes us human. Without it, our life would be bleak and empty, with a yearning that can never be satisfied… because there’s nothing left out there to satisfy it.

And religion, supposedly, offers that mystery. The belief in that which cannot be perceived by the senses; the belief in immaterial entities or forces that somehow affect the world but that nobody perceives in the same way; the belief in a life after this one that that nobody’s ever returned from and nobody really knows anything about… all of this fills the human need for mystery, the need for questions we don’t know the answer to.

Okay. Deep breath.

Wishful Thinking billboard
First, I feel compelled to point out: This not an argument for why the spiritual view of the world is correct. This is an argument for why the spiritual view would be nice. It’s not offering any evidence or reason for why the spiritual world is real and has a real effect on the physical one. It’s a classic case of the argument from wishful thinking: “It would suck if there were no God — therefore, there is a God.”

But let’s take this argument on its own terms. Let’s pretend, for a moment, that the argument from wishful thinking has some validity. Let’s say that, if it could be shown that religion serves some social or psychological utility that can’t be addressed by any secular means (religion in general and the mystery of religion in particular), it would therefore be right to perpetuate it… even if it’s mistaken.

“We need religion because we need mystery” is still a terrible argument.

Thinking
For starters: If you’re worried that we’re in danger of understanding everything about the universe, you can relax. We’re in no danger of that happening anytime soon. There’s an enormous number of unanswered questions remaining about the physical world — some of which are huge and profound. The two great ones of our era, in my opinion, are “What is the nature of consciousness?” and “Where did the universe come from?” (It’s one of the great frustrations of my life that I will most likely die before seeing these questions answered.) And there are thousands of other unanswered questions in every field of science: questions with answers that are closer to our grasp but that as yet still elude us.

What’s more, it’s in the nature of science that every answer we find seems to present more questions. For instance: We now understand the answer to a question that was unanswered for millennia: we now understand that the universe is not infinite, but is in fact finite in size (although pretty darned big). But the answer to that question inevitably leads to another question: Is there anything outside this universe? Are there more universes out there: are we just one universe in a multiverse, the way we’re just one planet in a star system, one star in a galaxy, one galaxy in a universe? (And if so — is that multiverse infinite, or is it limited in size as well?) Or when it comes to physical existence, is our universe the whole enchilada?

At the moment, we don’t have any way of even beginning to answer that question, or even of beginning to explore it. But we might someday. And when and if we do…. that’ll make for centuries, millennia probably, of further exploration, further unanswered questions for us to try to answer.

Dna
And it has been ever thus. When we figured out evolution and answered the question, “How did the vast and complex diversity of life come about?”, it led to thousands of new questions about how exactly evolution happens. When we discovered that our galaxy was only one of billions in the universe, it led to thousands of new questions about the nature of those galaxies. When we discovered atoms, it led to thousands of new questions about the nature of those atoms; ditto when we discovered the subatomic world. Some answers do eventually lead to dead ends — as I understand it, we have Newton’s Laws of Motion pretty well figured out — but it’s very common indeed for solved mysteries to open up still more unsolved ones.

But let’s pretend that we somehow come up with a Grand Unifying Theory of Everything. Let’s pretend that we somehow come up with perfect and complete explanations of the physical cause and effect of absolutely everything, from quarks to galaxies to the universe itself. Multiverse. Whatever.

Would this mean there’d be no mystery to life?

I say No.

Gray27
Consider this. We know, reasonably well, how babies are made. In even more detail than the basics of “sperm and egg combine to make baby.” We know that when a sperm and an egg combine, the DNA in the fertilized egg provides a recipe for how the proteins behave, how they fold and unfold and divide and combine to eventually form into a human being. And we’re learning more every day, in ever- greater detail, about exactly how this process happens.

Views_of_a_Foetus_in_the_Womb_detail
Yet the fact that this happens — the fact that entirely new people come into the world, people who once didn’t exist and now have their own consciousness and selfhood and personality and future and everything — is still enough to fill me with a gob-smacked sense of mystery and awe. In fact, the more I learn about genetics and the process of embryonic development, the more awestruck I become. Entire human beings, whose lives and selves are just as vivid to them as mine is to me — and they came out of nowhere! They didn’t exist — and now they do! DNA and Hox genes and all of that nifty embryonic development stuff… it made a person! Every time I look at my nieces and nephews and friends’ kids, the mere fact of their existence sends chills of amazement down my spine.

And that’s been true for every field of science I’ve learned about. The more I find out about the universe — the more I learn about matter that bends space, brains that produce thought, finches that evolve to drink blood, chemical bonds that create solidity out of mostly-empty matter, black holes that exist at the center of all spiral galaxies — the more I learn about all this, the more I’m left with my mouth hanging open in wonder at the bizarre, extraordinary, astronomically improbable coolness of it all. Understanding the world doesn’t remove the mystery of it, except in the most narrow and literal sense of the word. It enhances it.

And finally:

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that none of this is true. Let’s assume that the naturalist worldview someday manages to explain absolutely everything. And let’s assume that having everything explained would somehow be a terrible occurrence that sucked all the mystery and wonder out of life.

Brick Wall
Would deliberately blocking off some areas of inquiry — deliberately setting aside some questions that can never be answered — be a remotely appropriate way of preventing this tragedy?

Galileo telescope
Yes, unanswered questions are a crucial part of what makes us human. But that’s because we like to answer those questions. Humans are curious, restless, exploring animals. Mysteries are cool, not because ignorance is satisfying, but because solving those mysteries is satisfying.

So how would saying “We need to preserve some mysteries and unanswered questions” in any way solve this hypothetical calamity?

Doesn’t saying “This question can never have an answer” have the same effect as saying “This question now has an answer”? Doesn’t it have the effect of shutting off that yearning, that restless desire to look into the dark and wonder what’s out there? Doesn’t it cut off the sweet mystery of life, every bit as much as actually turning on the light? A closed door is a closed door: whether it’s closed because we opened it and looked inside and now know what’s there and don’t need to look again… or whether it’s closed because we choose not to open it.

If I’m wrong — if it turns out that atheism and materialism is mistaken, and that a supernatural view of the world is the right one — then that’s fine. If someone can demonstrate, with solid, carefully gathered, rigorously cross-checked evidence, that the Universe came into being by the hand of God, or that consciousness is animated by an immaterial soul — then I’ll admit I was wrong. And I’ll be as curious to explore the nature of the metaphysical world, its broad architecture and its fine details, as I am to explore the physical one.

But that’s not the conclusion the current evidence points to. The overwhelmingly obvious conclusion, pointed to by every good piece of evidence I’ve seen, is that the physical, natural world is all there is… and that all the things that seem immaterial, consciousness and selfhood and the ability to choose and so on, are really products of biological processes, physical cause and effect.

And I’m not going to reject that conclusion — and I’m not going to stop trying to persuade other people of it — just to preserve the sweet mystery of life. There is plenty of mystery in the natural world: mystery enough for a lifetime, for a trillion lifetimes. I’m not going to pretend that the world is not the way it really is — fascinating, awe-inspiring, profoundly bizarre, but ultimately a product of natural laws and of physical cause and effect — just because some people find it exciting to ponder the mystery of the darkness.

Atheism and the Sweet Mystery of Life