Does Life Have A Purpose?

What does it mean to be alive?
What is life’s purpose, if any?
Material stuff that wants, that strives,
To turn its one self into many

What does it mean to have an urge?
What does it mean to struggle?
Must we ensure that our gametes merge,
Or is it ok just to snuggle?

What does it mean to have purpose or plan?
Who choreographs for the dancer?
These questions have plagued generations of man…
Most of all, cos we don’t like the answer.

This was just a bit of musing in response to a piece (Does Life Have A Purpose?) by Marcelo Gleiser at NPR’s 13.7 Cosmos & Culture blog. In particular, my verse is inspired by this bit:

The essential difference between the living and the non-living is the urge for preservation. Life is a form of material organization that strives to perpetuate itself.

For those who don’t click through, my comment from there:

In my opinion, the vocabulary of the article is a bit misleading, albeit clearly not intentionally so. In the same sense that “design” in nature leads creationists to infer a “designer” (when in actuality, the process of natural selection suffices), terms like “want”, “urge”, and “strive” perpetuate the notion of a functionally dualistic “self” that drives the process of life. When the larger view (across time and environment) is taken, natural selection discards those individuals whose actions were less conducive to survival and reproduction in their particular environments; those whose behavior matches what we now call “purposeful”–wanting, striving, urge-driven–were the ones more likely to live long enough to reproduce.

“Purpose” is imposed on us from outside. Our mentalistic vocabulary claims this purpose as our own–even when we expand “us” from just humans to all living things. The struggle for life is not always a “struggle” in any meaningful sense, but the phrase we have chosen to describe it.

William Lane Craig’s Wrong Number

The door to God is open, and the path is straight and true;
A child’s faith is more than faith enough.
But should you choose to leave God’s side (as many people do)
There are obstacles that make your leaving tough.

When the God that you believe in, ever since you were a kid,
Is consistent in His absence when you call
When you can’t believe He’s always there, the way that once you did,
Why, that’s not enough for disbelief at all!

Religion has its guardians, whose job is to protect it
Though a child or a fool may be devout
There is serious theology, which won’t let you reject it,
Which you have to know, before they’ll let you out!

Now the godless have a hotline for the doubtful or confused
Those with questions about life without a God
But the faithful think it’s dangerous, and hope it won’t be used,
Though the arguments they make are rather odd:

Why, the godless are ignoring all the new theistic thought—
Metaphysical philosophy and such—
They’re not offering religion all the deference they ought;
So the hotline can’t be helping people much

If they’re calling in a quandary, for a sympathetic ear,
When their relatives or neighbors give them grief
The advice they might be getting is inadequate, they fear,
If it lacks the modern logic of belief

Or some local church encroaches on the actions of the schools
And they’re looking for the proper place to turn—
Why distract them with minutia over first amendment rules?
There’s theology aplenty we must learn!

When a person leaves religion, who can better ease the friction
Than an expert from the flock you want to quit?
Cos, you know, the perfect person who can help you with addiction
Is the dealer who’s been selling you the shit.
[Read more…]

Well, Damn.

What’s the problem? I haven’t a clue
And I’m hoping the man will pull through
But he’s eight states away
There’s not much I can say
And there’s nothing at all I can do.

CuttleFatherInLaw is, unexpectedly, not in a good way. I am hopeful–the man has been healthier than I am for as long as I have known him–but at cuttlehouse, there are tears tonight.

And yeah, there is nothing at all I can do. So, in desperation, I do what I do when I don’t pray. I remind people to do what they can to help out their local hospitals–blood donations are a start, of course. Or, you know, bone marrow, stem cells, a kidney, whatever. My father-in-law is a believer, so if you are the type to pray for him, go ahead… but since this is my blog, I’ll ask you to do something a bit more tangible as well before you are allowed to feel good about yourself.

Me, I don’t much feel good about myself. There is nothing I can do to make everything better for Cuttlespouse. Or for my mother in law. Or, hell, for me. CuttleFatherInLaw is where he needs to be, getting the best help he can, so I am hopeful that this is all just an excuse to remind you all to donate blood. But damn, it’s really not helping.

So, yeah… hug your loved ones. Donate blood. Support research. We’ll be ok here. You be ok there.

UPDATE: It appears (things are still in flux) that this may be more a case of Mother-in-law anxiety and hypochondria by proxy than actual dire emergency. Yes, FiL is under care, but this is not quite the big deal, as they are in an assisted living facility where such care is readily available and already paid for. I am hopeful that this was much ado about very little, and that he’s back on track to outlive me by decades.

Thank you, all of you, for your kind words and thoughts. It was a brief roller coaster ride in Cuttlehouse, with emergency travel plans being made and tears being shed and blotted up, but three cheers for modern medicine, and here’s hoping the good news continues.

Oh, but you’re not off the hook for blood donations.

Privacy? Nevermore!

Once upon a conversation, I received a revelation—
Just a tiny aberration in the phone line could be heard
It was near too faint for hearing, all too quickly disappearing,
And it surely had me fearing they had listened to my word
But of course, there is no reason to be snooping for my word
Such a notion is absurd!

With the conversation ending, and my paranoia pending—
Was some listening ear attending? Had a wiretap occurred?
My suspicions were implying what I’d rather be denying;
That the government was spying, and the lines had all been blurred
There had formerly been limits, but those lines have all been blurred—
Ah, but surely that’s absurd!

Could my phone call now be quoted? My associations noted?
Are there data banks devoted, at the mercy of some nerd?
All the data they can hack up, with more copies just for backup
In some cave where servers stack up with the info there interred?
They will long outlast my body, which will rot when I’m interred
This is far beyond absurd!

In a time that seems chaotic, is my worrying neurotic?
Maybe spying’s patriotic—it’s what 9/11 spurred.
Sure, the citizens are frightened, but security is heightened
With the leaky borders tightened and some terrorists deterred
Why, the means are surely justified if terror is deterred
Or they’re not… cos it’s absurd.

On Availability

Artificial dichotomies bother some people;
With only two options to choose,
But sometimes, two choices are all that you need—
Like which do, and which don’t, make the news

The killings we see on the six o’clock news
Are the killings that happen in bunches
They frighten the viewers, and panic the anchors,
And inundate “experts” with hunches.

The killings that don’t make the news are the ones
That are filling the morgues and statistics;
By ones or by twos, these homicides hide
Their unfortunate characteristics

We focus on killings that catch our attention—
The ones that stand out from the noise;
Ignoring the killings that don’t make the headlines,
With just one or two girls or boys.

A gun that goes off that I swear wasn’t loaded—
It’s kept in the house for defense—
It’s always kept loaded, in case we might need it;
Unloaded just wouldn’t make sense

The pistol that still had a round in the chamber
The shotgun up high on a shelf
The piece being shown to a friend or a neighbor:
“It’s empty—I checked it myself!”

One by one, they add up, while we mostly don’t notice,
A Newtown or so every day
The solution, we hear, is more good guys with guns,
Because that’s the American way.

“On Availability”… not the availability of guns, but the availability heuristic. Mass killings make the front pages, or the lead story on the nightly news, so those horrible events are what spring to mind when we think about gun issues. The points made (or attempted) by both sides are by now completely predictable, a well choreographed dance of “if only”s–if only a teacher had been armed; if only a bystander had been packing, if only if only if only. As I’ve said before, all the best examples are hypothetical.

But even if we take it as granted that a good guy with a gun could have stopped this or that mass shooting (not at all an assured thing, but let’s run with it), the trick is that mass shootings are not the big problem. The big problem is the relative trickle of gun deaths and injuries, the incidents and accidents in ones and twos, across the country, reported in the local news but not reaching wider audience. These numbers add up–take a look at the tally as reported at Slate Magazine. The graphic is sobering. Or take a look at the Daily Kos feature GunFAIL, for details on each week’s gun accidents.

These accidents and incidents are the inevitable result of large numbers of people with guns. It seems surprising, but really should not be, that we get a pretty substantial number of trained police officers accidentally shooting themselves or others–the simple fact is that they are around guns more often than other people, so even their trained handling results in a lower accident rate per hour of gun exposure, but significantly more gun exposure, and thus they end up on the list.

The rhetoric of gun control dependably focuses on the big headlines. We don’t want another Newtown, or another Columbine, or another this or that. And of course, we don’t. But the solutions that put more guns into teachers’ hands, however well intentioned, are almost certain to add to this far larger source of death and injury.

Bottom-Up Vs Top-Down Morality

The pope is opposed, as of course are the bishops;
The church says they’re living in sin.
But the priest gave his blessing; their parents approve,
And St Christopher calls it a win.

The position, long held by the Catholic Church
Is incredibly bitter to swallow—
But as Gandhi has said, when the people do lead,
The leaders are forced, then, to follow!

Their supporters are Catholics—family and friends—
And God works in mysterious ways
Their trials have drawn the two closer to God…
I just hope he approves of the gays.

A fairly sad (to me, anyway) story from NPR, in which two married (to each other) women are awaiting a Supreme Court decision to determine whether they will be able to stay in the US.

Ok, the first thing is, they are a wonderful couple with a fantastic story, well worth reading. Really. Their families accept them, their clergy have blessed their union… they have twins on the way. It’s really beautiful.

Oh, yeah… Fabiola is Peruvian. If they were heterosexual, this would not be a problem, but since both are women, Kelly cannot sponsor her spouse for permanent residency status. So, they might have to have the twins in Peru.

Ok… at this point, I had begun a verse telling their story. The above is not that verse. See, I was thrown for a bit of a loss with this bit:

“She’s my best friend, she’s the love of my life,” Morales says of Costello. “We knew that we were going to be together forever — always together, we could do anything, and guided by God.”

The women say they are sustained in times of vulnerability, including Morales’ struggle with multiple sclerosis, by family and their strong Catholic faith. They attend Mass weekly at a nearby church, and a priest gave a blessing at their wedding.

They wear matching gold St. Christopher medals on necklaces, and pray together daily.

“We understand that the Catholic Church maybe still has to change a little bit more to love everybody, like people like us,” Morales says. “But we have found support from the Catholic Church. Not everybody is against gay people.”

Costello, who says she has become more devout since meeting Morales, adds: “As my Dad always says, we are all God’s children.”

Bully for them, I say! But… but, damn. Their parent, their families, their local clergy, and of course themselves… are all supportive of their situation, while the larger Catholic Church is not. Nor is the US government, at least not yet.

Once again, it is not the individuals within the church who are the problem. Individuals are human, and as such, make exceptions (well, sometimes. Maybe even often) when they are called for. It’s the institution that is sick.

Against that nagging voice deep within me, I am hopeful. I am hopeful that some day I will see the institution itself dragged kicking and screaming into a position with which a great number of its members are already comfortable. Failing that, I suspect that the institution will die, shedding good people like Kelly and Fabiola, their friends, their family, and their clergy.

The folks at the ground level have got it right. Their own priest blessed their same sex wedding. Their family and friends approve. I suspect that they don’t care that I wish them well, but I do. The higher levels of the Catholic Church, though, disapprove.

From the bottom up, people are people, and they are good. From the top down, the Catholic Church is inhuman, and does not recognize love, nor happiness, nor family.

I can only hope the US government sides with reality and not with the church.

“All Religions Are Made Up (Except Mine)!”

Yes, the Catholic Church is absurd,
And its story the daftest I’ve heard
A tale hard to swallow,
Not easy to follow—
Of course, I believe every word.

Now, it’s not that I’m simply naïve
But a worse church, I cannot conceive
The incompetence, sin,
And corruption within,
Are the reasons I choose to believe!

See, the story that’s clearly the worst,
In the world, is most widely dispersed
Which would surely be odd—
So it’s evidence, God
Must have chosen the Catholics first

My conclusion must not be debated
Though religions are somewhat related
Mine alone must be real,
While the others, I feel
Are just something that mankind created.

They are quite simply far too believable
And their aims, while mundane, are achievable
Mine alone are insane—
Why, they boggle the brain!—
It’s the Truth cos it’s all inconceivable!

So, yeah, on my aggregator a post pops up, from the Catholic channel at Patheos, which actually made me laugh. It begins with a bit of special pleading:

The other day I tweeted a wisecrack: “If a Protestant says religion is just a man made institution, agree with him. His religion is a man made institution. The tweet elicited a reply from an atheist saying, “All religions are man made. Otherwise, why are there so many of them?”
It raises a good question. To answer it we first have to distinguish between the phenomenon of religion as it exists across the span of human history–and particular religions and then individual denominations. Are they all man made?

Turns out, the author argues, that pretty much all religions appear man-made. We seem to have a natural tendency to believe–from animism to polytheism to monotheism… But then, Christianity adds (uniquely, the author claims) Special Revelation–not just natural revelation, the evidence of gods found in the natural world, but Special Revelation, where God Himself reveals Himself. (Biology, chemistry, and physics can render natural revelation obsolete; it takes psychology to call Special Revelation into question. How one distinguishes Special Revelation from hallucination and delusion is never quite specified.)

What shall we do then, about the different Christian denominations? The fact of the matter is that none of them claim to be part of God’s revelation. My quip about the Protestants is correct, and they would agree. The individual churches are man made institutions. There is only one church that claims otherwise: the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church–comprised of both Eastern Orthodoxy, the Eastern Rite Churches and all other groups in full communion with the successor of Peter.

Here is the astounding claim of the Catholic Church: that we really do believe not only that God has revealed himself within the history of the Jewish people, and that this revelation culminates in the person of Jesus Christ, but we also believe that Jesus Christ founded a church on the rock that is Peter, and that he handed to Peter his own authority to teach the truth, forgive sins and take authority over evil. Furthermore, that this authority lives in the church today and that Peter’s successor is called Francis and that he lives just a few hundred yards from the site of Peter’s death and burial two thousand years ago.

Did we make it up? I contend that the claim is too audacious to have been made up. If I were going to make up a religion I would devise one that was easier to swallow. Nevertheless, the audacious claim is supported by history and by the existence and strength today of the Catholic Church. When you really know the Catholic Church and the human incompetence, sin, corruption and weakness within her you must conclude with many observers that she must be inspired and upheld by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing else can explain her continued existence.

Sorry for the lengthy quote, but you needed the full flavor of the argument. It’s a dusty old argument, sometimes phrased in Latin, certum est, quia impossibile (I turned it into a campfire song, here). It’s a wonderful defense mechanism–the more absurd it is, the more you know it is true. Pedophile priests are, absurdly, part of what convinces the author that Catholicism is the one true religion.

Why, to deny it would be absurd!

So absurd, it must be true.

National Doughnut Day, 2013

Let us raise our voice in chorus
For that deep-fried, doughy torus
Though it’s not the best thing for us
It’s a super special treat
Found in bakeries or delis,
Dipped in sugars, filled with jellies,
We can stuff them in our bellies
Just as fast as we can eat

And it’s Donuts, Donuts, Donuts, and Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
So let’s all go out and go nuts, saying Happy Donut Day!

Surely, nothing could be duller
Than a day without a cruller
In that toasted-almond color
So you know it’s cooked just right
I love fritters and berliners
Some say Boston Cremes are winners
Cider donuts for beginners
So you’re hooked at just one bite!

And it’s Donuts, Donuts, Donuts, and Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
So let’s all go out and go nuts, saying Happy Donut Day!

In the US, the first Friday in June is, as you all know, National Doughnut Day (or National Donut Day), and has been since 1938 (I would never have guessed it’s that old!). ABCNews reports that free donuts (or doughnuts) are available at Krispy Kreme, Dunkin’ Donuts, Tim Hortons, and more. Sadly, the best donut in the known universe (as determined by me, but objectively true nonetheless) is no longer being made. It was the apple fritter (don’t complain that it is not technically a donut–it is the perfection that every donut would want to be if were able to choose) made by a small bakery one town over from Cuttletown. I lived next door to that bakery 27 years ago, and never tired of those fritters. We moved away, and when I went back to visit over a decade later, they had discontinued their fritters! Customers just weren’t buying deep-fried pastries, so they got rid of the equipment (gasp!) and the recipe (horror!).

So, you can have your National Donut Day (or National Doughnut Day); for me, it is a day of mourning, for what was, for its time in the universe, the best possible argument for Platonic Ideals.

(Yes, the verse is a re-run; you aren’t losing your mind.) (well, maybe)

GOP Congressmen Debate Atheist Chaplaincy, Display Incredible Ignorance

Shockingly, Mockingly,
Ignorant congressmen
Pandered to Christians, and
Put on a show;

“Atheist chaplains? That’s
Incomprehensible!”
Members then voted
Resoundingly, “NO!”

Via the huffpo, video of the House Armed Services Committee, debating an amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment was quite simple:

Sec. 502. Inclusion in the Chaplain Corps of Persons Available to provide guidance and counsel to members of the armed forces who are atheist, agnostic, or belong to no organized faith group.
The Secretary of Defense shall provide for the appointment, as officers in the Chaplain Corps of the Armed Forces, of persons who are certified or ordained by non-theistic organizations and institutions, such as humanist, ethical culturalist, or atheist.

But not quite as simple as the Republican members of the committee. The video is brief, but you’ll want to watch to the end, for the loud and self-satisfied chorus of “no!”

Why Can’t You Just Meet Me Halfway?

I love to start fires; it’s just what I do—
I’ve started them all over town—
But recently, folks have begun to complain,
And they’re working on shutting me down.

I’m just having fun, but they say that it’s wrong;
I’m a danger, or that’s what they say
I want lots of fires; they’re screaming for none:
Why can’t they just meet me half way?

I’ve asked them to sit and negotiate terms
But they’ll call me “extremist”, I’ll bet—
They’re ranting and raving; I’m asking politely…
Just how many fires can I set?

Cuttlecap tip to Dana, under the radar.