I recently discovered dark chocolate. To celebrate this milestone, Lisa threw together a dark chocolate tasting party. Friday night, Mr. P and I drove to Pasadena for the occasion.
our gracious host, Ying.
Lisa bought 15 different varieties of high quality, plain dark chocolate and broke them into pieces. They were arranged anonymously in these lovely little dishes with accompanying numbers.
All my life, I have hated dark chocolate. Abhorred it. After a childhood Halloween candy spree, I would carefully remove each and every dark chocolate Hershey’s from my pile and toss them out. Through all my 23-odd years, I have avoided every bit of it in favor of creamy white chocolate or sweet milk chocolate. My primary complaint was that dark chocolate left a vile bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
Then, this weekend, I Mr. P bought a bar of Chocolove Raspberries in Dark Chocolate to sneak into a showing of Hot Fuzz (fine movie by the way). I broke off a corner of it and lo–! Angels did sing on high! It was so, so good. I went back to the store and purchased just a high quality organic plain dark chocolate bar for myself.
Now I’m hooked. How could this be? I feel like such a hypocrite for the years of lashing out at dark chocolate aficionados. Could it be that my taste in chocolate all these years have been perverted by low quality Hershey’s chocolates? Or even See’s? I felt unsure about spending $3 on a bar of chocolate, but dang…the pay off is good.
*key to this article is that I simply don’t care if Christianity is true. Or if atheism is true. I don’t care if the idea of “Jesus” is true or not true. I’m not interested in debating the dogmatic value of one or the other.
I keep reading stuff in the news about atheism rising up against the evil of religion. Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, et al. I’m puzzled by their assertions that religion is on its way out. (And also by their assertion that the danger of religion is greater than ever, which seems to clash with the idea that it’s fading. Perhaps they mean that religion is on its way out among Western intellectuals, but increasing among the irrational masses. Elitism?).
Let me provide a historian’s perspective on faith vs. reason, or whatever you want to call the battle. Religion is not going away. It has perhaps drifted off for varying portions of the intelligentsia, but for regular Joes and Janes, it never left. It will never leave. People have been predicting the end of faith for a couple of centuries now, and it’s only grown in the United States (91%, last I checked, which is an increase due in great part to immigration). As my 19th century history prof said last term: “academics always think that ‘oh, this happened; now religion will go away and people will be nice and secular.’ But it’s never gone away.”
It just keeps changing. Faith is a moving target, whereas atheism depends on a fairly static concept of what religion/faith is. You want to talk Darwin? Religion mutates far faster than atheism possibly can. Atheism is forced to define itself in the negative, against that which religion is. Survival of the fittest, yo.
Now the flip side of that is I think there have always been unbelievers. Historically speaking they’ve been silenced, but now they are free (at least in the Western world) to voice their opinions. And what do they do? Go after religion with all the rhetorical zeal of the Spanish Inquisition. This current burst of atheist attacks are just so deadly boring, vindictive, and unoriginal.
Moreover the idea that atheism ought to be enforced from the top down (preventing parents from passing on their religious beliefs, which Dawkins considers a form of child abuse) is a dangerous idea. This is the exercise of force, and a violation of the private sphere. I have yet to see an instance in which forced un-belief has worked. Christianity has come back to Eastern Europe and Russia in a big way, and I know from my childhood in China (last atheist Communist bastion?) that many Chinese are not rational atheists. There was always some quiet variety of Buddhism, ancestor worship, even Christianity. I emphasize that these are common people–farmers, shopkeepers, laborers, etc, not intellectuals.
I’m interested in reading E.O. Wilson’s Creation, which is meant to appeal to religious people to join with scientists to save the earth. I bet it’s a worthy approach. However, if scientists like Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett keep spewing vitriol and preaching damnation against the faithful, how can they expect the religious to fall in line with them? It’s like beating the shit out of a stranger and then asking him to help you move next Saturday.
As for where I stand, I’m constantly reassessing my position. At this point I’m not a believer, but I’m certainly not an atheist or a non-believer. I don’t see myself joining any religious group. But I do believe that there are people who do want to attend church or temple, who do want to believe in something that sparks their imaginations, and also that there are people who don’t want to do these things. Fine. The idea of a democracy is that we can and ought to allow all these worldviews to exist.
The troubling thing is the militancy of these atheists, which is just as troubling as the militancy of evangelicals (Haggard etc). If you want to convince people to be atheists, go for it. That’s free speech. Atheists should definitely be allowed to send missionaries around to annoy people while they’re trying to have dinner. During said missions, it would be much more productive to talk to prospective converts with respect for their intelligence and integrity as human beings, and not to ridicule them and advocate the seizure of their children. (Or even suggest murder, because “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them,” in the words of Sam Harris. Yes, kill the infidels).
p.s. an interesting article showing that belief in the paranormal increases with education. Though I agree with the suggestion that it’s probably just that education makes students better at justifying their previously held beliefs. I would also add that belief in the paranormal does not necessarily make anyone a believer in God or religion per se.
I opened the fridge the other day and was blasted with a scent of…well, it smelled like a burp. My fridge burps. Such that even when I am lying in bed in the opposite side of the apartment, and Mr. P gets up for a drink of water, that a waft of fridge burp will wash over me.
I have been unable to ascertain the problem, even though nothing is rotten and there are no odd drippings that I’m aware of. I installed a box of baking soda in there yesterday, though it has yet to have any noticeable effect. Le sigh.
Also, the ants are back. Bigtime. I am slowly growing to appreciate how amazing they are; I will happily watch an ant heave-ho a crumb 5x her size and carry it across the kitchen floor. However, I still do not like stepping on them and squashing their productive little lives. So now, if I want to snack, I eat over the sink. OVER THE SINK YOU GUYS. It is the very height of foodie humiliation. In my new let-live philosophy, of course, I won’t be laying any ant traps or poison. They keep me company when they’re crawling around on my desk, but I’d like to shoo them away from the kitchen eventually.
Mr. P recommended plugging up their holes with gum, but I suspect this won’t work. I like sugar based gum. More fuel on the fire. Suggestions?
Here’s an interesting article by a sociologist in the Chronicle about the psychology of shooters like Seung Cho. It discusses some of the reasons these kids murder. One excerpt:
School shooters are problem solvers. They are trying to turn the reputations they live with as losers into something more glamorous, more notorious. Seung-Hui Cho, a student of creative writing, probably didn’t get a lot of “street cred” for his artistic side. Young men reap more social benefits from being successful on the football field. When their daily social experience — created by their own ineptness, and often by the rejection of their peers — is one of disappointment and friction, they want to reverse their social identities. How do they go about it? Sadly, becoming violent, going out in a blaze of glory, and ending it all by taking other people with them is one script that plays out in popular culture and provides a road map for notoriety.
So, going back to the first discussion on the Virginia shootings–I affirm that there is nothing we can do about the fact that there are crazy mofos out there. Yet I do believe something about popular culture amplifies this aggression and directs it in negative ways. Legislation is, I think, necessary but only part of the solution.
Now I’m a wee bit scared to be a TA or a professor–God forbid there should be such a tragedy on my watch! I’m not sure if I have the courage exhibited by some–blocking the door, shielding students, etc; I guess I can only hope I do.
