Updated reading progress...

I'm actually following through in a halfway coherent manner from my book list from earlier this year. I should probably try to write some semblance of a critical piece of at least one of these, but who knows how likely that is...

Finished:
Atonement - McEwan
Stealing Buddha's Dinner - Nguyen
1984 - come on (reread)
Why Orwell Matters - Hitchens
Consilience - E.O. Wilson (reread)
The End of Faith - Harris

Working On:
The Omnivore's Dilemma - Pollan
Love, Poverty, and War - Hitchens

On Deck:
The Untouchable - Banville (reread)
--- something by Updike.

I'm actually in a bit of a lull right now in planning ahead for reading. I normally have at least ten books that I know I'll never get to, but as of the moment I'm a bit light on this list. I know there are a few books out regarding Baltimore, and it's urban issues -- which after becoming hooked on the first four seasons of The Wire, I'm ready for some more from Baltimore.

Additionally, I should really try to watch the documentaries nominated for an Oscar for the year. I have admittedly been very unproductive on watching much of anything longer than an hour in the past few months, but I'll get there. If you are looking for something funnny to watch... try "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Funny stuff, and it isn't afraid of dealing with complex issues through the lens of a young person's social perspective. Many will find the show impolitic, but this is exactly what makes it great, since when you are in a group of real friends under the age of thirty --- things are never really politically correct (and isn't that refreshing).

Book list

as we approach hope and spring comes to bear... I make my overly ambitious reading list... (i'm actually almost done with Atonement already).

Atonement - McEwan
Stealing Buddha's Dinner - Nguyen
Love, Poverty, and War - Hitchens
1984 - come on (reread)
Why Orwell Matters - Hitchens
Consilience - E.O. Wilson (reread)
The End of Faith - Harris
The Omnivore's Dilemma - Pollan
The Untouchable - Banville (reread)
--- something by Updike.


The Atlantic -- featuring a cover story on Britney Spears... oh lord yes, I'm serious.

I'm also working through the World in 2008 from the Economist... which is quite good.

I also have to get on with my annual trek through the best doc nominees, which may not be as fun this year as last... but hey you gotta do what you gotta do to get some copy for this damn blog.

shameless plug for the movie Once, and it's fabulous soundtrack.

The National - "Slow Show"

The following video blends The National's Slow Show with Godard's Masculine-Feminine in a manner that should be applauded. Both the song and the film are searching for something to be committed too... an idea, a cause, another person...



Perhaps my favorite portion of the film clips here is the embedded title screen:

La Taupe Est Inconsciente
Mais elle creuse la terre
Dans une direction determinee

Roughly translated means: The mole is unthinking, but it digs the earth in a determined direction. The young always seem to fail in "thinking things through," but still seem to be determined in their pursuits.. not of finding themselves as much as making themselves. From the song lyrics:

Looking for somewhere to stand and stay
I leaned on the wall and the wall leaned away
Can I get a minute of not being nervous
and not thinking of my dick
My leg is sparkles, my leg is pins
I better get my shit together, better gather my shit in
You could drive a car through my head in five minutes
from one side of it to the other

I'm not sure that there is a better verse on the travails of youth...

* Kudos to my man on the music spot -- Mel-Anon for turning me on to The National.

Tool - 10,000 Days

I just popped in 10,000 days again after hearing about a concert my best friend attended in Vegas at the Pearl. I don't know if this is the appropriate venue to rant and rave given the supposed critical aspect of the blog, but Tool always offers the best counseling I can find. The energy packed behind the powerful percussion of Danny mixed with Adam's adept axe work make for beautiful music. Add in Maynard's ability to scream, sing, recite lyrics from each of our subconscious and well... it is beautiful. From Right In Two...

Angels on the sideline,
Puzzled and amused.
Why did Father give these humans free will?
Now they're all confused.....

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs they make a club,
And beat their brother down.
How they survive so misguided is a mystery.
Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability,
To lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here.

May peace and love find you, and if not may you come to understand how to get there.


** full lyrics available here.

Politics...

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms! - Yeats

The first four lines of this poem are featured in the 1964 edition of Crick's In Defence of Politics, which I am currently rereading. I don't have the knowledge to hash out a thorough critique of this piece, but I felt it was most appropriate to share as we enter a presidential election year. Let us not forget that politics is many things to many people, but as Yeats urges us -- Don't let it get in the way of love... sweet love.

Hitchens - god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything...

The true polemicist is most at home – and I dare argue successful - when taking on the nearly insurmountable presuppositions of society, and in the instant case of Christopher Hitchens and his new work god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, we find an exemplar. His career work has often focused on taking to task some of the most entrenched beliefs, assumptions and powerful actors in contemporary society. He has been banished from the Left apropos Iraq, and seems to be all the more contented for it. From Kissinger to the Queen, he has established himself as a contrarian who fears no person or issue. With god is not Great, Hitchens argues that religion is not dead, but dying more every day as science overtakes its place in the world.

“Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation to anything important. Where once it used to be able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard – or try to turn back – the measurable advances that we have made. Sometimes, true, it will artfully concede them. But this is to offer itself the choice between irrelevance and obstruction, impotence or outright reaction, and, given this choice, it is programmed to select the worse of the two.” (pg. 282).

This anti-religion / anti-theist viewpoint has been a part of Hitchens work for years. This being the case in many ways god is not Great, is a logical extension from the earlier The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice in which Hitchens argues passionately, if loosely, against Mother Teresa being a saintly figure. With god is not Great, however, Hitchens focuses on underlying tenets of his unbelief and lays out in poignant prose a narrative that forces, at a minimum, a glimmer of free thought in the imagination of the reader. The Missionary Position was much less thorough and distinctly shorter than god is not Great, which is related both to the subject matter and to the attention to detail offered in the latter. This is not to say that god is not Great is overly long. Weighing in at 284 pages, its brevity is remarkable, given the complexity of the topic. Hitchens is successful in keeping the work succinct by focusing the narrative, though inherently complex in subject matter, on the four central indictments against religion.

“There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.” (pg. 4).

These four objections to religion are important facets of the overarching argument made by Hitchens, which is that religion is inherently, and oftentimes violently, anti-modernity. No stronger indictment can be levied from a man who holds the Renaissance and its’ resultant confidence in science and reason so highly. The rejection of modernity and science by religion is well illustrated by the myths of creation promulgated by the various faiths. These myths needlessly create a set of complex and patently false explanations for things that are now at least partially explainable in much shorter order by science. Religion’s continued failure to offer a single succinct explanation to the creation and evolution areas of science are prime examples of how religious dogma violates Ockham’s Razor.

“We have come to the realization that we also know something about the future of our system, including the rate of its expansion and the notion of its eventual terminus. However, and crucially, we can now do this while dropping (or even, if you insist, retaining) the idea of god. But in either case, the theory works without that assumption. You can believe in a divine mover if you chose, but it makes no difference at all... Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.” (pg. 70).

Hitchens returns time and again to Ockham’s Razor as a method of debunking religious dogma from dinosaurs to human sexuality. I have to concur that my experience in life has yielded a basic belief that unnecessary complexity is often used as a ruse to cover up a weak argument. There are numerous examples to cite for this type of assault on reason by religion, but it brings back a memory I have of a Sunday school class where we were informed that fossils were put on Earth by god to test the faith of his followers. This type of disinformation being implanted in the minds of the young is an attempt to roll us back from modernity to a time when the church controlled the truth. This anti-modern behavior is, however unfortunately, not exclusive to the Abrahamic religions. Hitchens points out that nearly all religions make it a point to deny adherents the ability to reason and apply logical discussion to many issues.

“However wicked they may be – (religious statements are) almost always beyond criticism. They consist, like most professions of faith, in merely assuming what has to be proved. Thus, a bald assertion is then followed with the words ‘for this reason,’ as if all the logical work had been done by making the assertion... Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as ‘not even wrong.’ Most so-called spiritual discourse is of this type.” (pg. 202).

This type of blind faith is the root cause of many people’s disenchantment with religion. The inability to question and to reconcile one’s religion’s dogma with personal experience has created a painful rift in many people’s lives. Dogma dictates what is to be accepted and what is not, leaving little room for free expression or thought. This is not to say that the only groups of people whom stir the pot of oppression are religious, but the direct opposition to the furtherance of human knowledge has been a central tenet of too many religions for too much of the past millennia to ignore.

Hitchen’s advocates for a new Enlightenment, one that is open all of humanity. This new Enlightenment, similar to the one prior, would focus on reason, science and critical thought – with a goal of understanding more. This opportunity to understand who we are, and where we came from has never truly presented itself to so many before. We are the fortunate recipients of years of scientific inquiry by millions of researchers – and though we may not know all – we know and can understand more than we have at any point in history.

“Above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man, and woman. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry... The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry... the divorce between the sexual life and fear... all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not grasp of everyone.” (pg. 283).

In the end, Hitchens wants humanity to break the chains that are binding its ability to progress as a species. He argues that religion is forcibly trying to roll back the role of science and reason – the key tenets of modernity – in favor of a world defined, once again, by the religious clerics. This return to theocracy is being enabled by a post-modern relativism that fails to stand up against these anti-humanist beliefs and actions. Though I tend to disagree in many areas with the means promoted by Mr. Hitchens in promoting this Enlightenment – I feel little for the paternal methods of enlightenment by war – his views are thought out and impeccably well written. He may be a bit less pragmatic and willing to bend than I, but overall god is not Great offers an examination of religion that is rooted in historical fact (not a small feet) and through the lens of a true skeptic and contrarian. This should be a clear invitation to all avid believers – For if one is to truly believe, they should be able to read and critique those that criticize their beliefs. Belief should not shield the cerebral cortex from its highest power. Cogito ergo sum.

* The Economist pointed out in its recent special report on religion the irony in the fact that without the growth in the power of religion – Mr. Hitchens book probably wouldn’t have been publishable.
** A much deserved shout out to Mel-Anon, whose November 13th post finally got me to edit and post this review -- two weeks later than expected. I am making a firm commitment to get another review up by December 15th.

Hitchens takes the stage...

This weekend, I took the opportunity to attend a communal gathering of atheists, agnostics, unbelievers, world thinkers, reasoners, scientific determinists, and many more self-made labels at the Freedom From Religion Foundation's annual convention. Truthfully, I only registered - and paid - to hear the keynote speaker - Mr. Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens was not only the keynote speaker, but also received the "Emperor Has No Clothes" award - given to an outspoken freethinker in the world. Seem a little over the top to you? It did to me, but the pomp and circumstance was actually tolerable. The major focus of the convention, like all seem to be, was to glad hand and congratulate each other on being part of a wonderful group. Fortuitously, I am well versed attending group functions in which I do not have complete faith (2 puns, 1 sentence?). As I noted, I attended only the Hitchens talk and thus cannot offer a true critique of the convention as a whole (Nor do I think it best to get into that game). What I can do, is pass along some of the thoughts promoted by Hitchens and offer my perspective. Given the fact that my original intent was to review god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything as the initial post on this blog, I thought it appropriate to instead start straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. [I will hopefully finish the review of god is not Great prior to Nov. 1].


The introductory remarks were focused on his travels to and through the bible belt debating christian scholars. He speculated that he could not have been much more fortunate than to start his tour in North Carolina the same day that Falwell's body was found in his office - "unraptured, I might add." He added another statement with regards to Mr. Falwell that must be shared in the unadultered form, so I apologize to the sensitive minds out there, "If he were given an enema upon death, he could have been buried in a matchbox." He also mentioned a spot on Hannity and Colmes regarding Falwell, which can be accessed via YouTube. After this initial come together mantra, Hitchens began laying the groundwork for the schism in the group - pun intended. Hitchens discussed how religion has a totalitarian mindset, it has racist, sexist, and genocidal tendencies, and through to the point that despite the desires of many philosophers in the recent past - We cannot keep science and religion in separate realms anymore. He then shared his three questions that he has been posing in his debates with religious figures:

1. Can you think of an ethical action that was done by a religious believer, which could not have been done by a non-believer?


2. Conversely, can you think of an unethical action done by a religious believer, which could not have been done by a non-believer?


3. If equal time is to be given to Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Theory, would all religious groups receiving funding via the Faith Based Initiative have to offer equal time to Darwin and Jesus?

I admittedly could not think of an answer to number 1, and number 2 has numerous examples - though I'm not sure what premises must be accepted to answer in the affirmative - though, if as Hitchens claims we must, we take the historical perspective I can fathom significantly more. As to the third question, I cannot think that this is anything other than humor to bring back a perplexed audience following the rather detailed logical arguments from the first two - though imagining Darwin in Sunday school is amusing. It was at this point when the audience was at its highest level of glee when, always the polemicist, Hitchens wove the anti-religious into a discussion of Jihad, Islamo-Fascism, and the needed action from the West.

This same line of reasoning that, depending on whom you ask, caused Hitchens to leave the Left or the Left to boot Hitchens (My ex-fundamentalist convert friend, K.Wayne, likes to say that he was traded to the Left for Hitchens). For our purposes, the keys to this argument are that we are entering a period in which theocratic regimes, states, and non-state actors are all pursuing thermo-nuclear capabilities. These groups are not friendly to the modernity and its principal values of science, reason, equality, opportunity, and freedom. Hitchens argues that failure to act in a very assertive manner in support of the rights of man and values of modernity, will only delay the inevitable clash between Civilization and Theocracy. The arguments against this view abound in the world today, ranging from the moral relativism rooted in post-modern individualized thought to the complete pacifism espoused by anti-war groups. These arguments have merit and to variant degrees my support, but it is imperative that a reason based foreign policy take hold and like it or not - Hitchens raises some pertinent questions that need be addressed in any coherent foreign policy.

Overall, Hitchens offered a presentation that was to be seen. His wit, humor, intellect and British accent should be experienced in the flesh. His view that he is the smartest man in the room - though necessarily not always true - is not easily refuted after his successful outwitting and sometimes condemnatory remarks towards questioners. I truly believe that this man absolutely lives for debate - and is quite good at it. Agree or disagree with him, he will fight till the end. In the slight conversation I had with him afterwards, it was readily apparent that he is a man with convictions - not religious of course - but a conviction to the Jeffersonian America as a place where a truly free marketplace of ideas can be established and will lead to a refreshing re-Enlightenment where science and reason trump religion and superstition. It is this, above all else, that is holy to the anti-theist. Though the justification of the means can be debated, the ends of Hitchens are on firm and defensible - at least by himself - ground.