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Introducing Path Pebbles Series

By on June 6, 2013 in Path Pebbles Series, Ruminations

What’s the Path Pebbles Series?PathPebblesCover

Sometimes I try to fit my life story into a single blog post, especially when I talk about things like why I’m an atheist or why I lean libertarian or whatever I am. I have a tendency to want to share every aspect of the story, which really would be more of a book than a post. My new Path Pebbles Series will be an attempt to not only break big topics like that down by discussing some of the “pebbles” I’ve encountered along my path to becoming the person I am now, but it will also be an exercise in writing succinctly (one of my great challenges). I won’t have specific length requirements or goals. Some posts will still be long, some may be very short. I just hope to focus on one aspect of a topic instead of all aspects at once. So keep in mind when you see a post with the header of “Path Pebbles Series: Why I’m…” you understand that I’m only tackling a small piece of the whole puzzle. You may have to take a look back at the other Path Pebbles posts, or wait for posts in the future to learn more.

I hope you enjoy!

Cheers,

PersephoneK

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How Gay Rights Influenced my Deconversion

By on May 20, 2013 in Atheism & Skepticism, Liberty & Freedom

Last week Minnesota became the 12th state to legalize gay marriage. The law will go into effect on August 1, 2013. As you probably have surmised from my post last November on the vote to ban gay marriage and immortalize it in the Minnesota Constitution (which obviously did not pass), this decision makes me very happy. This momentous event has caused me to reflect on how important the issue of gay rights has been in my deconversion from Christianity, and ultimately from all religion.

To summarize, it has been very important.

I should start by setting the stage and let you know that I am not gay. Perhaps that shouldn’t be relevant, but I feel that it helps you to understand my perspective a little more fully. I do however have many gay family members and friends. I will not specify any further out of respect for their privacy except to say that many of these people have meant a lot to me throughout my entire life. I mention this not because I want you to let me off the hook for what I’m about to admit, but because it’s a pivotal fact in this story.

Hate the Sin; Love the Sinner and other Crap I Believed

It was during middle school that I began my journey into a very strong Christian faith. At some point along the way, I adopted a fairly common evangelical Christian mentality towards homosexuality which is to “hate the sin, but love the sinner.” At first, this seemed perfectly reasonable, loving, and in line with my understanding of what I believed the bible taught on the subject. I believed that god made man and woman, and that they (one man, one woman) should be together for the primary purpose of having children, and to create a perfect holy union within the trinity. I believed that within those boundaries were the only acceptable ways of expressing sexuality.

Prior to my path to devout Christian, my religious training was more general. I have discussed in other posts that my parents are believers, but not overtly dogmatic towards any denomination of Christianity. We attended a Lutheran Church, but frequently missed services, and I was a hit and miss Sunday school student. I cannot think of any discussions on the morality of homosexuality prior to my middle school years. And although I cannot remember the specific timeline, at some point I went from not having any memorable opinion about homosexuality, to believing it was a sinful lifestyle condemned by god.

In short, and to be clear, I now believe my religious understanding entirely shaped any opinion I later adopted regarding homosexuals and the immorality of homosexual behavior during the years of my faith.

I Think I Love Ya

At the same time, I still truly loved (in my mind) those in my life who were gay. But god’s message had put me into conflict with how I felt about my gay friends and family members. So to justify this belief, I likened homosexuality to alcoholism. I told myself it was the behavior — the physical acts of love — that offended god, not merely being gay. For, a recovering alcoholic can lead a healthy and moral life. It is only when they fall off the wagon that the downward spiral begins. And although at the time, I did not know any of the science surrounding the topic, I believed that a homosexual lifestyle was a choice, at least to some degree. Even if an inclination towards homosexuality is innate and inherited, it didn’t mean indulging in that behavior was ok. This too, I likened to alcoholism, and separated it from the idea of racial identity, and civil rights, where a person is born a certain way. We all had been given free will, I reasoned, and were empowered by god to push aside our base instincts and urges. We all have burdens to bear, and some were given the burden of being gay. This tactic worked for me for a long time. I had never felt hatred or anger towards gays. The emotion was closer to pity. I felt terrible that they had been afflicted by this demonic tendency and hunger for someone of the same gender. I prayed for them. I truly wanted them to find salvation in the house of god, and be able to live free from sinful behavior. I believed I was righteous, and I believed this was what god expected me to believe.

I look back on this way of thinking with extreme shame and humility. I now see clearly that I was wrong.

Over time, the thorny contradiction between god’s will and how I wanted to treat the people I loved poked at me. Some of the gay people I loved came out of the closet (none of those revelations were truly surprising frankly), and I began to feel conflicted between what I believed god wanted from me and what I felt was moral behavior towards a fellow human being who I loved and who loved others in return. I learned a little bit about the science of homosexuality as well, and came to the (true) conclusion that there is a strong biological component, and that even if the trait is not born in a person (which I believe it is), then it develops from an early enough age that it might as well be from birth. I began to question how a loving and just god could afflict his children (a fairly large total number of them at around 3% to 8%) in nearly every culture, yet condemn them for acting on their natural impulses. It would have been one thing if those impulses hurt others, but how is it hurting anyone if one person physically loves another person who consents to that love?

Why Does a Loving God Condemn Those Who Love and Are Loved in Return?

This single idea — that absent the word of god saying homosexuality is a sin, there is nothing else that makes it so – was a significant factor in my ultimate deconversion. After realizing the cruelty in god’s condemnation of such a victimless “sin”, in fact, of a behavior that actually promotes love towards other humans, I began to see other similar disconnects between the morality of Yahweh and the more evolved morality of modernity. I will not go into all of those here, but it’s not a small list.

After I made this leap in my own moral intuitions, it still took me some time to completely shed the baggage I had purchased during my religious obsession. For a while, I held onto the idea that civil unions would be a good alternative. That preserving tradition was a worthy goal. Or that keeping marriage between a man and a woman would prevent the slippery slope argument eventually leading to polygamy and goat marriage. I realized several years ago, even after I had begun to call myself an atheist, and truly believed that homosexuality was completely normal and moral, that even those arguments were deeply rooted in religion. They were reflexive beliefs more than well-thought out. It took more self-education in many areas of philosophy and science before I was able to articulate for myself a cogent world view that did not require a god for morality.

But it was this single issue that first revealed the Christian god (as I knew him) to be truly ancient, outdated, and immoral. It frustrates me today when I hear strains of “hate the sin, love the sinner” being expressed regarding this issue, even as I understand where it comes from. One reason I wanted to write this post is to explain that I do not believe most religious people who share that belief are haters or bigots, though they are often portrayed that way, even by other Christians. I think reality is more complicated than that. I do not doubt that many faithful Christians have grappled with the conflict I felt. It is a difficult choice to make between one’s all powerful god who controls your immortal soul’s destiny, and family and friends. Indoctrination is a powerful drug. Many who adopt an anti-homosexuality position tend to be regular people trying to live a good life, and trying to be a positive force in the world. Very few out there come even close to the level of vitriol spewed by the despicable Westboro Baptist Church. Regardless, of that, I do not fully give them (or my former self) a pass. If your god is forcing you to make a choice between him, and your treatment of other humans merely for behavior that has absolutely no impact on you or other sentient creatures whatsoever, I beg you to reconsider whether or not your god deserves that love and respect.

Photo Credit: http://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5583029/il_fullxfull.175325241.jpg

But They’re Not True Christians…

Some Christians get around this by claiming that anyone condemning homosexuality or homosexuals is not a “True Christian.” To those who say I have misunderstood the bible’s teaching in this respect, I would say, that is free for you to believe, but I believed and still believe there is more than adequate justification within the pages of the bible to support a position that gay love is morally repugnant. The notion is immortalized in the word “sodomy.” That said, if you must choose between being a fundamentalist Christian who condemns homosexuality, and a believer who cherry picks the parts you support and throws out the parts that offend you, I would rather you are the latter. I applaud your decision to ignore morally despicable teachings in favor of love for your fellow man, but not all of your brethren have been fortunate enough to grow up with that liberty in their faith. That is one thing I love about being an atheist. Unlike when I was a believer, and I felt that I had to find the truth in the whole bible, I can now choose any part of any world philosophy I want, and throw out others I have no use for without having to call myself a “true” anything.

For me, it all comes down to what are the things that improve human well-being and what are the things that destroy it? That is where my line of morality and immorality is drawn, and where the difficult discussions of right and wrong begin. I have yet to hear any reasonable argument that puts homosexual behavior of consenting adults remotely close to the “destroy well-being” category of behaviors. How can mutual love ever destroy the happiness of those who are in love, or those who live amongst them? If you can articulate an argument without invoking god (directly or indirectly), I’d be curious to entertain it, but I’d be surprised if you can.

A Path Towards Moral Maturity

As I think back to my former self, I am saddened by her and for her. I am saddened that she ever felt like she had to choose between her friends and family and her god, and I am horrified at the thought that she might have made anyone feel like a sinner. I am glad that I was able to shed my religious veil of self-righteousness relatively early in my life, and before I had met as many people as I have now, or will as my life continues. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” has its place in the world. There are many situations in life where we can deplore a loved one’s behavior, but still love them as a person. Homosexuality should never be included in that category, because at its heart, there is nothing inherently wrong with it. It’s a natural behavior that hurts no one any more than heterosexual behavior does among consenting individuals. As a result, although it’s under the guise of reasonability, the mantra to condemn the behavior but love the individual falls flat. If you have ever judged someone for their homosexual behavior while purporting to love them, you should know you have probably hurt them deeply, because the only way they can ever gain your acceptance is by suppressing something within them that is perfectly normal and good. If you find condemnation to be a moral way of treating your fellow human beings, then I feel sad for you, as I did for myself. I can only hope you may one day reconsider. 

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

As a Christian apostate, I have gotten a taste of what it is like for gays and lesbians to come out of the closet. In fact, the atheist community has adopted many of the tactics used by the LGBT community, and it has begun to pay real dividends in society’s acceptance of us. They bravely paved the way, often under real threat of violence and harm. I am thankful for that. I feel a little bookend of solidarity with them in their fight to change hearts and minds. I know from personal experience, that we all are capable of changing our thoughts, even on such emotionally charged topics as homosexuality and religion. I’m inspired by their willingness to be themselves in the face of hateful speech (even if inspired by misguided good intentions), and ancient ideologies still looming large in our culture. The tide is turning, and I am confident that in fifty years, or so, people will wonder what all the fuss was about, both when it comes to gay marriage, and atheists walking among the masses. Maybe by then atheists will also be able to hold office and serve on juries in all fifty states. But it is because of the LGBT community in part that I speak out about atheism, and my personal experiences as a former Christian. It is why I celebrate the new law in Minnesota and the previous states. The times they are a changin’.  Thank the stars!

Peace and love,

PersephoneK

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Unrealistic Expectations: Security vs Freedom

By on April 23, 2013 in Everything Else, Government Reform, Liberty & Freedom, US & International Affairs

AP Photo

As Americans, we must decide whether or not we prize security over freedom. We cannot have it both ways. It’s time for us to understand that. The bombing on April 15th at the Boston Marathon re-enforced that point for me, although it’s a topic I have thought about a lot over the past years since September 11, 2001. After the 9/11 attacks, our nation changed significantly, both in our psyche and our structure. Preventing such a horrendous event from ever happening again became a personal mission for me as well, leading to a new career path. I applied to, and got a job with, a certain federal agency charged with protecting America from future terrorist attacks. Over the course of my nearly 8 years there, and in the time since I left it, my view point has changed from being fairly strongly “hawkish,” to one that is much more Libertarian (though I prefer “Classically Liberal”). In short, I don’t believe we can truly protect our nation from attack while also preserving civil liberties to the level we should expect, that is, to the level preserved in the Constitution.

I once decried the foreign policy of Libertarian Guru Ron Paul as “terrifying,” but now, while perhaps not completely in agreement with his isolationist ideals, I have shifted significantly towards the non-aggressionist end of the spectrum. I don’t know that I will ever be “dovish”, the usual opposite of “hawkish,” because I believe in using force as retribution when attacked. However, I believe our Nation’s foreign policy needs a significant change to a non-interference mantra. We cannot, and should not, try to push our agenda upon the entire world.

This shift in my thinking has been formed over time, from many influences, but is based upon two primary principals:

  1. I believe that by valuing individual liberty (here and abroad) above the wishes of the collective (or government), we have a better chance of achieving world peace in the most moral way possible, and
  2. I do not believe the government has the ability (both in resources and competence), nor the moral authority to protect us from all threats, perceived and real.

If I added an unofficial third principal, it would be that the law of unintended consequences often rears its head in horrifying ways.

How does this relate to security vs liberty? I do not believe perfect (or near-perfect) security is possible, regardless of the laws or policies we enact. Even the most totalitarian states are vulnerable to terrorism, and violent crime. A person intent on causing harm to one or more individuals, will find a way to do so. But in the process of trying to prevent as much carnage as possible, we as a society, tend to readily acquiesce our freedom as a surprisingly fast pace. And as we try to impose our will on each other and other nations, we stir a hornets nest of unintended responses and attitudes, not only because violence towards our enemies inevitably hurts innocents, but because in doing so, we become hypocritical of our moral imperative to protect individual life, liberty, and property, thus denying the right to pursue happiness.

After 9/11, Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon attacks, and countless other atrocities, the natural inclination from terrified and horrified citizens, and politicians is to rush to DO SOMETHING! OR BLAME SOMEONE! OR DO SOMETHING BY BLAMING SOMEONE! Make laws and shame those that disagree! The choices we make immediately following something as horrific as these events highlight our emotional natures, and suppress our rational sides. Politicians throw barbs with the objective of trying to demonize the other side by playing off our natural emotional responses to feel revulsion, and our inability to put them into proper historical context. Inevitably, rash responses follow, and all too often get enshrined into law, further diluting our free society.

I’m currently reading Steven Pinker’s “[easyazon-link asin=”B0052REUW0″ locale=”us”]The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined[/easyazon-link]”. This book should be required reading (if I believed in such a thing, which I do not) for all Americans. With astounding amounts of evidence, Pinker proves his thesis that the world is a much less violent place right now than in all of human history. It can be hard to believe such a statement when faced with the 24/7 news cycle bombarding us with images of bomb victims, or the latest school shooting. And of course, nothing can truly heal the wounds of victims and family members whose lives have been irrevocably changed, or snuffed out. Their suffering deserves attention. They deserve our compassion. But they do not deserve us changing the fundamentals of why this country exists. Ironically, even as we have become safer, we have become less free, mostly by our own submission. This is a trend I hope we can reverse.

It’s easy to forget what the Americans who fought the Revolution risked in order to create a state ruled by the people, yet one that protected the minority and majority alike by recognizing certain fundamental, and pre-existing rights. It’s easy for us to forget what an amazing goal and ultimate achievement this was, during a time when monarchies and empires controlled their citizens with absolute authority the world over. As American students, we learn about Patrick Henry’s cry to “Give me liberty or give me death!”http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-liberty-image26285626 and we think, oh, that’s nice, but that doesn’t apply to my life right now. Or we think of it in a detached way, as if the Patriots were not real people fighting for real ideals in a life or death situation of winner take all. They were willing to die so that a new experiment could take shape to form a society that valued the liberty of individuals over the whims of the King or the collective. They believed that through individual liberty, the society as a whole could be one of maximum peace, tolerance, and prosperity. It’s a gamble that has been proven to work over and over again since then. The freer a society, the more peaceful and prosperous its citizens are in general.

But with the quest for liberty, we inevitably must accept a significant risk in our safety. Often in politics we hear the mantra, “if it saves one life, we should” enact that law, or restrict this freedom. My response to that particular use of our emotions as a political plaything: Of course we should try to protect lives. Of course we shouldn’t disregard the human toll. But we need to do so in a reasonable and effective way that doesn’t make this life undesirable to live, (if not for us today, but for future generations), in a way that preserves our diverse sub-cultures, and does not trample on the pre-ordained rights of individuals to live their lives as they see fit. We drift further and further from those ideals as time goes by. We have allowed fear to drive us into a collectivist way of thinking about how to improve society.

So, this brings me to my original point. Preventing terrorism is not really possible. The fact of the matter is, it is not possible to predict any future event, no matter how much money we throw at the terrorism leviathan, no matter how well trained our intelligence services are (and I’m not saying they are). There will always be a way to punch a hole in the security measures we implement. What our preventative measures almost exclusively do is make life more burdensome for law abiding individuals, while doing almost nothing to curb the violent ones. The burdens we’ve imposed on ourselves may seem worth it at the moment, but how often do we see laws being repealed, or softened? Nearly never. The call is almost always for MORE MORE MORE! And we the people allow this to continue. We are complicit because we do not value liberty any more. We are not taught to value liberty. We are taught to think of “society” as a single organism. We do not understand the unintended consequences of blessing the government with greater control over our movements and privacy. We somehow have been convinced that only through strong, central government intervention can we achieve some sort of Utopian society. We’ve been led to believe that individuality is wrong, and instead we are one people with the exact same thoughts and dreams. That we are there to serve our government, rather than our government being there to serve us.

Unlike many Libertarians, I do not believe the government is overwhelmingly corrupt. I think corruption undoubtedly exists. And I believe strongly in the axiom that “power corrupts”, but I think overall the abuses we see within government are the usually result of incompetence, and/or misaligned incentives. That is not to say that there is something inherently incompetent in people who work for the government. In my experience, some of the most amazingly talented and intelligent people work for the government. They care deeply about your life and your security. Many of them risk their lives to keep you safe. But as bureaucracy grows, so do incentives that are out of whack. Only through competition can individuals and organizations be held accountable in a truly democratic way. That system is simply not possible within government on any kind of large or adequate scale, which is one reason why I believe we need to limit the government’s authority in most aspects of our lives, especially when it comes to laws or policy designed to prevent something bad. Ultimately, government is made up of humans who are just as imperfect as you and I. To expect “it” to solve our problems is like tilting at windmills.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-windmills-kinderdijk-image26564171

The FBI is the best in the world at solving a crime that has occurred and bringing the perpetrator(s) to justice. But to ask it to prevent a crime as if it has the power of the pre-cogs from Minority Report is ludicrous. There is currently much discussion in the media about the report that the FBI had interviewed the Boston bombing’s deceased Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years ago, yet allowed him to carry out the attack. Senator Lindsey Graham is quoted as saying, “So maybe it’s the system failed, didn’t provide the FBI with the tools, or maybe they didn’t use it properly,” he added. “That’s why maybe we need to find out what happened.”

Without getting mired in the minutia of how the laws of the land work, I will just summarize by saying, the expectation that the FBI could have prevented the bombing based on this earlier interview of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is absurd unless you also accept the idea that your personal liberty is meaningless. Tsarnaev was a US Person, a description that brings with it certain rights and requirements pertaining to investigations by law enforcement or intelligence agencies. Absent any specific information that this guy was plotting an attack, (not to mention the sheer volume of these types of interviews the FBI does), it is beyond silly to suggest the FBI could have done anything to prevent the bombings, unless of course, you would prefer the FBI trample on the rights of US Persons. The same could be said of almost every single terrorist attack that has ever occurred. Misusing the benefit of hindsight knowledge to criticize an agency for something it has no power to stop is vile.

According to Daniel Kahneman in his brilliant [easyazon-link asin=”B00555X8OA” locale=”us”]Thinking, Fast and Slow[/easyazon-link], the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, individuals, even experts, are terrible at prediction. Even financial advisors, people trained through the incentive of making money for personal benefit, do a terrible job at predicting markets. And in order to attempt to analyze a trend, you need data. The more data, the better the analysis. All kinds of data are needed, and in the case of intelligence, you don’t really know what data you need to find a trend. It’s not like investigating an event that has occurred in the past, where you know how it ends, and can track the evidence backwards. The thirst for data means that data must be collected. And when you don’t know what you’re looking for, you want it all. In the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, it appears the information the FBI was given was that he had become more radicalized and had changed. I don’t mean to point out the obvious, but becoming radicalized is not actually a crime. We have something called the 1st Amendment in this country, and you are allowed to say and believe some pretty hateful things. That is not evidence of a crime, nor should it be used to put you under suspicion absent additional information that points elsewhere. In this case, the FBI was protecting your rights, and is getting trampled for it in the media and by grandstanding politicians. Yet, we as citizens are culpable in that theater.

We cannot ask the US Intelligence Community to analyze data that is paradoxically too voluminous and yet inadequate in detail, and expect it to predict impossible future violent events while simultaneously protecting our right to privacy and free speech, among other rights. You simply cannot have it both ways. Not only is predicting future terrorist attacks (or other crime) with any level of certainty or specificity an impossible goal (even if our current USIC model was perfectly structured, which it isn’t), but it is certainly not possible without giving up our fundamentals of liberty. So by trying to force that impossible mission upon the government, we make both failure, and (usually unintentional) abuse of civil liberties probable.

As I’ve thought more and more about this basic truth, I have decided that the mission of US law enforcement needs to be explicitly changed back to serving justice rather than crime/terrorism prevention, both in the letter of the law and in the American people’s minds. Justice and prevention are not the same. In a free society, we grant human beings the right to live their lives in any way they see fit so long as they do not infringe the rights of others to do the same. Put another way, my rights end only where yours begin. I cannot hurt you physically. I cannot steal your property. I cannot infringe on your fundamental individual rights, many of which are stated explicitly in the Constitution, many of which are not. Any law that restricts my freedom is not justified unless it supports that notion of equal rights. Any law that prevents my equal freedom is not a just law. Unfortunately, our legal system is riddled with these laws. Take for example the rash of anti-texting laws sweeping the nation. If I text and drive, am I more likely to get into an accident? Yes. Without question. But will 100% of individuals who text and drive get into an accident? Absolutely not. So, if I text and drive, and a police officer cites me for it despite me never having hurt a single person, how is that a just law? He is citing me based on the mere possibility that I may hurt someone or someone’s property in the future, even though I may never do so. That is the definition of pre-crime. The federal government, in particular its law enforcement agencies, should exist to provide me justice when my rights to live freely are trampled by other individuals, and that is it. A law that says I cannot text and drive even though I have not hurt anyone else is a law that suggests I have hurt the state in some way by not hurting someone else (after all, how can I be restricted when I have not hurt anyone or anything)? When the state becomes the injured party, we have a problem. How is it just to hold me accountable for a crime I may commit? A law is not just, just because it’s a law.

Our mindsets as a society should not be to first assume the government will protect us from everything, from things like our abuse of food, to the dangers of texting while driving, to the huge things like terrorist bombings. http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-freedom-way-image18974409A focus on prevention should not be, and cannot be, the role of government. Government’s responsibility should be to seek justice for us when we are harmed and our rights are abused by other individuals (or sadly by the state). It is our responsibility as individuals who seek peaceful coexistence with other individuals who think differently than we do, and who value different things than we do, to find a way to live together, and influence one another in non-coercive ways.

Are we really making gains as a society if the only way we can force our neighbors to act in ways we prefer is to make laws, which are backed by government’s monopoly of force? I say we are not. I do not believe we can ever rid our world of violence or evil people, but I especially do not believe we will ever do so by expecting the government to protect us from evil. It cannot do so to perfection, nor can it do so without restricting privacy, abusing rights (however inadvertently), and using force. My dream is for a world where the government is there to help me seek justice against those who have harmed me, and to help me enforce voluntary contracts, but that otherwise leaves me alone to work with my fellow citizens to make the world a better place by using the power of words, and actions that promote human well-being.

Justice versus security? I choose justice. I choose freedom. How about you?

 

Cheers,

PersephoneK

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My Leap of Un-Faith

By on April 9, 2013 in Atheism & Skepticism

Leap from the precipice

April 1st is always an important anniversary for me. I privately celebrate it each year. I had originally planned to post this on 4/1, but life got in the way.  I usually refer to April 1st as my Epiphany Day, but this year I’ve decided to rename it Precipice Day, or maybe co-name it, because I feel precipice is a more descriptive word for why it’s such an important day to me.  Precipice also has a less religulous ring to it. After reading this, I know that many of you will find it fitting that I have deemed April Fool’s Day as one of the more significant days in my escape from faith, and that is your prerogative. If it gives you joy to see it that way, so be it. The irony hasn’t been lost on me, though I would prefer to think of it as my escape from foolish thinking day, because if I must pick one single day, April 1, 2002 was possibly the most important single day in my deconversion from Christianity to atheism, even more so than 9/11, which I’ve discussed before. This is the story of why.

In an earlier post, I talked briefly about 4/1/2002 and its role in my deconversion, but I want to go a little more in depth, and try to explain a little more clearly what it meant to me. I had recently quit my unfulfilling job, and decided to take a little trip alone before I started the next job a week later. I settled on Lake Tahoe due to the combination of beauty, lots of stuff to do alone (gambling, hiking, etc), and good travel deals. I’d never traveled alone before, and I was looking forward to my four days away in a beautiful place I’d never been before. And I actually hoped it might be a good place to do some soul searching. Little did I know, the searching would begin in my own airport before I even took flight.

As random luck would have it, I was scheduled to fly out of Minneapolis on April 1st. On this particular April 1st, luck decided to throw in a little something extra, a lovely Spring-in-the-Upper-Midwest-Blizzard. Minnesotans this turbulent, and lingering Spring can identify. I ended up stranded at my own airport for twelve hours as I watched my flight keep getting delayed a couple of hours at a time, and finally canceled, forcing me to catch a different flight at around 1 am. This was the recent post-9/11 world of airport security. Even without the snow, leaving the airport would have been a colossal pain. A friend of mine nearly visited me, but the weather and security made it too difficult. So, I had a lot of down time to wander around the (actually pretty awesome) Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport to try to keep myself entertained. This was, after all, the pre-Smart Phone era.

I had been wrestling with my waning faith for quite some time by this point. I was certainly still a Christian*, but the terrorist attacks on 9/11 had rocked my religious world in a pivotal and unimaginable way. 9/11 hadn’t been the first thing to make me question my faith, but I think it was the first event to make me seriously question God’s existence, if only for a fleeting moment. By the time of my Tahoe trip in April 2002, I had not allowed that thought to germinate. It seemed too awful to really consider. Whenever it surfaced, I quickly shoved it aside, as something beyond comprehension. I had tried to never be blindly dogmatic in my religious beliefs. I have always found it important to seek the truth, and had usually found that truth within the pages of the bible, and in the fellowship of church. I believed the humans within the church were not infallible, so despite being raised Lutheran, I considered myself a Christian first. My goal in life had been to understand what God’s purpose for me was, and I took that mission seriously. It was because of that mission and constant learning that I eventually found myself in a crisis of faith. As I grew older, and educated myself more, the threads of the bible were pulled apart more and more by evidence, critical thinking, and science. Yet I was still not able to truly consider the idea that either God may not exist, or he may not be the god I worshiped, namely the Judeo-Christian god of the Old and New Testaments. To me, to do so bordered — and occasionally crossed — the boundaries of blasphemy.

I had hoped this solitary trip might help to clarify for me what exactly had been missing in my faith. I was even hopeful the trip might help me knit the threads of faith back together. Instead, sometime that evening as I wandered through the airport, I stumbled upon a discarded copy of Harper’s Magazine, and my world changed forever.

I noticed the cover of the magazine immediately. It highlighted an article about the Jewish Exodus from Egypt and raised questions about the existence of the Bible’s King David. I’ve always loved archaeology (majored in it for a time at college), so the fact that this was also an article about Biblical archaeology made it ripe for the picking. I devoured the article, and as I sat there absorbing all that I had read, I had a moment of clarity that I have never had before or since.Exodus_Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea

It was not the content of the article that convinced me of anything. I think it had some very interesting points, some of which could be highly debatable, some of which are more than likely truth. But it had questioned the existence of David, which caused a thought in me to click: If David may not have been real… Jesus’ lineage, ergo his divine legitimacy, would also be in question. The Bible had become a House of Cards in seconds. I had believed I was a fairly open-minded Christian, and I still believe I was as open minded as I could be within the boundaries of the faith. I wanted to hear other opinions. I believed it was important to question my faith, and consider other possibilities. I took Paul’s advice to be like the Bereans, to continuously ask questions, and check the scriptures rather than blindly follow.  But until that moment in the airport, I had not realized how limited I was in my endeavor to explore all possibilities. It was as if I was able to go as far as the edge of a high precipice. At the bottom of the cliff was the fiery pit of Hell. If I leaned over, I could feel its warmth, but I couldn’t see the flames. I knew it was there, but didn’t know how far down it was, or if there were any safe places to land – perhaps an outcropping to stand on, or a branch jutting from the rock to grab — before I was consumed by the fire. Prior to finding that Harpers article, I only dared peek over the edge of the precipice, crawling on hands and knees, never really getting close to the edge. After reading it, I took a few steps back, took a deep breath, ran towards the edge…

… and I leaped.

From that moment on, as gravity pushed me toward the bottom of the unknown abyss, I was in complete peace knowing I was free to explore any and all possibilities of our existence and purpose. It’s a cliché, but it’s true: I felt as though a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I felt like I was floating, drifting on the air like a feather with the wholly comforting thought that god may exist, or god may not exist, but I am now free to fully question his existence, and go wherever the truth leads me.

Come what may.

In that moment, I did not become an atheist. I still believed in “god” in the most abstract sense. But I was fairly certain that the Bible’s many versions of god were not accurate. My church’s version of god was not accurate. My version of god was not accurate. Along with these new confidences, I felt sure that if the god I had loved throughout my faith did in fact exist, and I was wrong, that he would be able to see into my heart and know that all I did was use the tools of reason and critical thinking that he gave me to arrive at whatever conclusion I came to. That I never sought to leave him. At one point, I would have died for him. That he would see that I am a good person who only wants to understand the truth. If at the end, I decided, that honesty gets me a final trip into Hell, then the god I loved is not the real god anyway, and there was nothing I could have done to change the outcome. For the god I loved, would not allow a good person to suffer an eternity in torture and despair.

Fire_iStock_000020144064_ExtraSmallAfter I took the leap off of the precipice, it was a relatively short trip from non-Christian, to agnostic, to agnostic-atheist. I even flirted with Buddhism for a microsecond, and then let that go for the same reasons I let Yahweh go. I could no longer un-see reality. Once you’re freed of dogma, (and the threat of eternal suffering), it’s amazing how reality constantly bangs you over the head. There’s no need to create elaborate explanations to make sense of events in nature, to conform them to what my church, or bible, or spiritual leaders have taught me. There is only the truth (and that’s truth, not Truth). It exists whether I believe in it or not. Occam’s Razor wins.

I’m still learning every day, but I’m no longer hindered by fear of eternal damnation in my pursuit of the truth. That has made all the difference. And I believe I am not alone. It’s a terrifying thing to let go of faith, even when your powers of reason tell you it’s the correct path. Our brains are wired to believe things that aren’t here. To believe that the things that go bump in the night will find us. To believe that the way to survive into a mythical next life is by latching onto a more powerful magical thing in the sky. To believe in supernatural agency, according to Dr. Michael Shermer, may be an evolutionary byproduct of patternicity, a thing that kept us from being eaten by lions in the tall African grasses. Fighting innate traits developed over millions of years is a difficult thing. It’s not easy to take that leap. But not doing so holds us back. Believing the lie is comforting. Believing in reality can be terrifying, but it’s also exhilarating, and freeing, and ultimately, the only way I want to live.

Cheers,

PersephoneK

*In my 9/11 10 Year Anniversary blog where I discussed 4/1/2002, I said that 9/11 was the day I became an atheist. I still believe that is true, from a metaphorical, or symbolic, point of view, but I only realized it much later. Strictly speaking though, I believed in god in some form or another, for quite some time following 9/11. Apologies if that was, or is, confusing.

 

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Slow vs Fast Zombies: A Roman Holiday Tale

By on March 30, 2013 in Entertainment & Pop Culture, Ruminations, Science & History

BigPosterIn honor of this year’s Easter holiday and (hopefully not coincidental) AMC’s The Walking Dead’s third season finale falling on the same day, I wanted to take this opportunity to explain why slow zombies are better than fast zombies.

This may be my most important blog to date.

Zombies represent many things to many people.  Our rampant consumerism.  Mindlessness of pop culture.  Anxiety about national security and terrorism.  I’ve even heard them compared to Nazi’s and the Holocaust.  All of these may be perfectly reasonable interpretations of the popularity, especially recently, of such a savage monster that devours our brains and bodies without remorse.  Zombies are everywhere from film to TV to comic books to novels.  Even [easyazon-link asin=”B004HW7E6U” locale=”us”]Jane Austin’s classic Pride and Prejudice got a zombie makeover[/easyazon-link].

But for me, zombie stories are not really about zombies at all.  They appeal to me because they are entirely about how humans respond to what I consider the worst case scenario event:  The end of the world as we know it… with zombies.

The answer to the question how do humans living comfortable, modern lives cope with being thrown into a world where most people they’ve ever known are dead, and the structure of civilization has collapsed, is a compelling mystery to ponder.  For this reason, I love most apocalyptic and dystopian stories.  But zombie stories are the ultimate cause of the apocalypse, and the most fearful antagonist because the added element of the dead rising to eat us, and subsequently turning us into the very monsters we fear, makes it nearly impossible for humanity to fully recover.  Or at recovery will be delayed for a very long time, possibly until the world has changed dramatically in the process, and we have lost specialized talent, knowledge and expertise along the way plunging us back into a simpler time, and into a more brutal existence.

Zombies add an extreme element that goes unmatched by other causes of the apocalypse, such as “normal” plagues, asteroids, global warming, nuclear war, or even the Rapture.  As a student of history with a particular interest in ancient Rome and how its fall lead to the Dark Ages, the zombie tale is a modern allegory for what it may have been like to live in those centuries following the immediate aftermath of the sacking of Rome in 410 through the centuries as civilization became fractured, knowledge was lost, literacy declined, and Rome itself crumbled to ruins.  Roman aqueduct in Segovia, SpainI’ve often wondered what it was like for a peasant living in the 9th century–  to pick an arbitrary moment in time — to see ancient Roman monuments, wondrous feats of engineering, and ask what magic must these men have had within their power?  What stories with supernatural explanations that peasant must have told his friends and family to make those mysteries make sense in the context of their vastly different world, where technologies like steam power, and running water would not be rediscovered for another several hundred, even a thousand, more years.  Would he have called the ancient people mystical, or imbued them with godlike powers?  What might a Roman of Julius Caesar’s time, have thought of society’s interpretation if he’d been transported through time a thousand years?  “It’s not magic!  Its math!”

Zombie stories also help us imagine what it might have been like to live through the Black Death, when one third of Europe was felled by plague.  That’s as if more than 2 billion people in the world, or 115 million Americans, were to die.  Now imagine those 115 million rising from the dead to eat you, adding even more victims to the rolls!

Worst. Case. Scenario. Ever.

So, back to my original thesis that slow zombies are better than fast zombies… In movies like the remake of Dawn of the Dead, the upcoming World War Z, and 28 Days Later (though not really about zombies), the zombies become the focus point.  The movies become just another monster tale, action flick, showing how the humans eventually prevail (or are completely destroyed).  That’s fine and all, but you can tell that story with any monster.  You don’t need zombies.

What I have loved about The Walking Dead is that it gets that.  The show’s title itself refers to the living more than the dead who are trying to eat them.  The creator of the comic book the television show is based on, Robert Kirkman, has said he turned down many offers to bring his stories to the small and big screen because nobody understood that the show was about the survivors more than the zombies.  They wanted fast, “exciting” action, for what they perceived was a mindless audience.  I’m so glad he held out, and that finally Frank Darabont came along and understood Kirkman’s vision.  The show’s third season has been especially fun because more than any previous season we see the humans coping with the zombies almost as if they’re the background.  maggie-walker-760_595_slogoThey’re still enough of a threat that the survivors can’t truly rest, and rebuild, forced to always be on the  run, but the real stories have been told about how the new world will be organized.  How do humans interact with each other?  How do our innate inclinations of tribalism and distrust of strangers contradict our more enlightened sensibilities of justice and peace?  That struggle has been highlighted by the different strategies between the two faction’s human leaders, former Sheriff Rick Grimes and his band holed up at a weakened prison, and heavily fortified, Dystopian Woodbury’s sociopathic, meglomaniac The Governor.  You can’t tell those tales with fast zombies, because they always demand to be front and center.  The Walking Dead hasn’t been perfect in its three year run, but my favorite moments have hinged around these ideas of dealing with a changed world.

Thank goodness they kept those zombies nice and slow.  Happy Zombie Day to all!

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My Sphere of Power Theory

By on March 14, 2013 in Ruminations

Sphere of Power_persephonespath.comSeveral years ago, I began thinking about an idea I eventually dubbed the “Sphere of Power.” I had recently moved to Washington, DC to begin working for the federal government. Power is in the air in that city. I worked within a few square miles of many of the world’s most powerful people and their henchmen. I worked in a bureaucracy that exerted its power in various ways over its employees and citizens. Every day I came into contact with other people working for other agencies, or contracted by other agencies, or working with the military who were all touched by power in a multitude of ways. And I observed tourists mesmerized by that power as it took the solid shapes of monuments, buildings, and historic points of interest.

At the time, I felt like a powerless, invisible speck of sand on a sprawling beach. I was just starting out in my career, trying to figure out my role, and wanting to make a difference. I began to feel my eagerness butt heads with established ways of doing business, impressing some, and grating on others who didn’t like my meritocratic approach to government work. So it was within that framework that I began thinking about the Sphere of Power.

First things first. What is a Sphere of Power? Simply, it encompasses any living creature over which a person has control, and by extension the items or organizations manipulated or needed by those creatures. For example, if you are a parent, your Sphere of Power includes your children, presumably your house, your lawn, and your pets, if you have them. Depending on your neighborhood, it could include your neighbors. You control some aspect of the fate and welfare of everything within your Sphere’s figurative borders. Your Sphere can be static, or dynamic.

It’s my hypothesis that every human has at least one Sphere of Power, and most people work to expand those they have, and gain new ones. We take pride in cultivating our Spheres. They provide us with intrinsic happiness. Some of us are benevolent in our leadership; some of us are not. Some of us are benevolent some of the time, but not always. Most of us wish to be benevolent, but a few people will use that desire against us to further their own Spheres. As the number of Spheres increases, the greater the likelihood there will be conflict, which may or may be externalized. It is from these conflicts of interest between Spheres that clashes are spawned. Clashes can be with other people or within ourselves, and are more likely to occur when we are not aware of all Spheres surrounding us. Spheres come in different magnitudes, depending on how many entities are under our control, and the impact of that power. Some people are content to be the head of the household (which could just be their own body); others want to rule the world. Most of us fall somewhere in between. We all have at least one Sphere.

When I worked in DC, I used to ride the commuter bus. To ride the bus, you needed to buy tokens. To make things easier, riders could buy tokens on the bus instead of schlepping to the bus depot. So, the buses would ordain some frequent regular riders with the power to sell the tokens. One such person was a woman I remember with whimsical fondness. She was talkative, and based on conversations I’d heard her have with others in our bus line, she worked at another government agency. She also liked horses, which is not relevant to the story except that I learned a lot about her because, well, she talked a lot. She probably had low to medium power in her job at a not very sexy agency. She was a tad overweight, and a bit past mid-life, but you could tell how much pride she took in her power to bequeath tokens upon the masses. I renamed her “Token Goddess.”

Through my observations of Token Goddess, the concept of a Sphere of Power began to germinate. As human beings, even the least ambitious among us, we generally want our lives to mean something, and we want to matter to someone, or something. How we learn to relate to each other socially is wrapped up in our understanding of our Sphere’s of Power, even though it’s largely subconscious. By learning what motivates us, drives us, and what we take pride in, and in turn learning those things about other people we interact with, our speech craft skills improve. As much as I believe rational discourse must drive us forward as a species, the fact is we are both rational and emotional creatures. In understanding the Sphere of Power, we can better frame both aspects of our nature.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on what I call my Code of Life. I plan on constantly updating it as I grow and learn. I do not want it to become stagnant or unchangeable. Some ideas on the list may never change, or change slightly, but in my endeavor to improve myself, the items on this list will serve as guideposts of my world view, and help to succinctly inform readers of my highest values. Today I added a guidepost about the Sphere of Power, which is why I decided to write this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts either here or there! What do you think are some of your Spheres of Power? Are you happy with them? Why or why not?

Cheers,
PersephoneK

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