a wolf angel is not a good angel

When I was out tonight, there was a longer lineup (by far) for the men’s washroom than the women’s. (But their line still moved a lot faster.)

Now that the leaves grew in, during a very brief respite from the three weeks of near constant rain.

My herbs and flowers bucket. I actually also want to grow some herbs separately, but I can’t decide which ones: basil, of course, and cilantro, but I have something which will hold *three* sets of herbs, so what will I use a lot of?

My breakfast, lunch, and dinner table. When it’s nice enough out. Sigh.

All it needs is a nice lounge so I can rest on it, if ever it’s sunny again.

I now have much less crap that I had hanging around, replaced with an ice cream maker! Oh, the joys I will have, if the weather here ever merits ice-cream-makery. Possibly only once, because I can get bored easily, but so what: it was free!

Poor baby, who has no better toys to play with, except all the other toys I’ve bought for her.

This is the actual reason tampons are scattered throughout my house.

But I made coffee, heard it beep, then *forgot about it* for a while! Forgot coffee!

Do you know what this means? This means I am no longer addicted to caffeine, for possibly the first time since I was 13. (I drank coffee really early. It was the one time in high school I was, vaguely, cool.)

A friend of mine chose a supervisor for her thesis, after being told that Dr. Unavailable would be around for the first half of the summer (by Dr. U). (It’s a summer-long project.) She just finds uot that Dr. U is not around at all in the summer, so mostly she’ll be working with Dr. TotalStranger. Dr. TS is supposed to be hard to work with, and they have never met. It may or may not be possible to change thesis advisors now. So, should my friend: try to change projects and advisors, go with Dr. TS, something else I cannot think of?

I am most of the way through Angel season 1, and I know why I stopped watching it the first time: it seriously sucks. People swear to me it gets better, which I suppose must be true, as it could hardly get *worse*. True, I have 4 and something more seasons to go — if it does get better in season 2 — but I am considering taking a break from it for Veronica Mars, which people swear I will like, and I will be Very Annoyed if it turns out to be otherwise.

Yes, I know it’s summer, but it’s rain for the next ever, so I’m not going outside much. I am barbecuing, anyhow, because nothing says fun like different spice and sauce mixtures. Next up: wood smoker chips thing: as good as I hope? After that: barbecued fruit: tasty or delicious?

The house next to my parents’ house is finally on mls, and we now have the price. And, without giving away the actual house, there’s no way in hell this is getting sold anytime soon. It’s not being sold as a tear-down, because the price is way too high. We know what they bought it for, and they’re selling it for about 2.5 times as much. And though they had people in to fix all the major problems with it, it’s still not *that* huge a house — they didn’t extend it, and we were over often enough with the previous owners that we know what it looks like. (It’s not small. It’s just not build-your-own-castle big.) We are hoping for an open house, but it is highly unlikely.

So, figuring that they expect maybe 80% of asking price, they’re still overpriced by 20-25%. Which is probably why the single visit anyone has seen has been single. No major construction soon — perhaps not until more restrictions are in place. Saved!

Via Canadian Cynic, an article about a Rabbi who is trying to understand why atheists are so darn angry all the time! (As may or may not be known, I am a Jewish atheist..)

The first paragraph is mostly pointless, you could put anything in there for atheists. For example:

I think I need to understand theists better. I bear them no ill will. I don’t think they need to be non-religious to be good, kind and charitable people, and I have no desire to debate or convert them. I do think they are wrong about the biggest question, “Are we alone?” and I will admit to occasionally viewing theists with the kind of patient sympathy often shown to me by Christians who can’t quite understand why the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection has not reached me or my people. However, there is something I am missing about theists: what I simply do not understand is why they are often so angry.

True. And totally contentfree.

Oh, there are nitpicks — “patient sympathy” is code for “obnoxious condescention”, and the “often” implies that they are angry as a cause or result of being atheists — that the two are somehow linked, anyhow, but overall, a sort of meaningless but not hugely offensive paragraph.

Much like, say, paragraph 2, slightly edited:

So we disagree about God. I’m sometimes at odds with Leafs fans, people who like rap music and people who don’t like animals, but I try to be civil. I don’t know many non-religious folk who wake up thinking of new ways to aggravate theists, but many people who do believe in God seem to find the religion of their neighbors terribly offensive or oppressive, particularly if the folks next door don’t actually have a religion. I just don’t get it.

See? Minor nitpicks again — but whatever, a sort of general “I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone”, why can’t we all be friends sort of thing. Silly, not well thought out, but ultimately not that annoying.

No, it gets annoying in the very next paragraph. When you start out “this sounds like it’s condescending and a generalisation, but I don’t mean it to be”, you know you’re starting out poorly.

This must sound condescending and a large generalization, and I don’t mean it that way, but I am tempted to believe that behind theist anger there are oftentimes uncomfortable personal histories. Perhaps their theism was the result of the tragic death of a loved one, or an angry degrading rant, or an insensitive eulogy, or an unfeeling castigation of lifestyle choices or perhaps something even worse.

First of all, I doubt anyone heard one insulting sermon and thought ‘That’s it! No more God for me!’ — this is way too simplistic. And also, too complex: at heart, atheists don’t think God exists, it’s not about willfully refusing to believe for some reason. I just don’t think that Nessie exists, either — I’m not stubbornly closing my mind to the knowledge.

Now, certainly it is the case that some atheists have had bad things happen to them, and I would not be surprised if this was a contributing factor in some cases: the fact that atrocity x happens means there can’t be an all-powerful good force out there, where x is some personal experience. But there are also people who become theists for this same reason: it is more comforting to imagine that whatever happened to you was for some sort of reason, even if it’s a reason you don’t yet understand. That it’s not due to stupid bad luck. (I ended up going with the oh-so-comforting notion that bad things happened to me because I was a shitty person who deserved them: that was a reason, anyhow. Anyways.)

But the point is this: lots of people have had bad things happen to them. It’s not just atheists, with theists magically saved from them. And these things change people in all sorts of important ways, sometimes turning you towards religion and God, sometimes turning you away from it (which is a bad image, since it suggests you’re leaving something that is there — and though of course religion is there, and atheists often — but not always! see me and most of my family — turn away from it, they aren’t turning away from something that doesn’t exist), and sometimes doing neither, but changing you in altogether different ways.

Finding causes for not believing is looking through haystacks for a needle that might not even exist. Why don’t you believe that Nessie exists? Because there’s no evidence for it; because there’s evidence against it. It’s not that you had a horrible dream about Loch Ness, or that someone mugged you in Scotland.

Now we get into the less editable ranges:

I would ask for forgiveness from the angry atheists who write to me if I thought it would help.

Well, it would certainly be nice if you apologised for being so condescending.

Religion must remain an audacious, daring and, yes, uncomfortable assault on our desires to do what we want when we want to do it. All religions must teach a way to discipline our animal urges, to overcome racism and materialism, selfishness and arrogance and the sinful oppression of the most vulnerable and the most innocent among us.

Shorter: You know how I said I thought atheists could be good people with all the same qualities theists have? Self-discipline, etc, etc? I totally lied, without religion you have no way to overcome selfishness and arrogance and all those other bad qualities.

Some religious leaders obviously betray the teachings of the faith they claim to represent, but their sacred scriptures remain a critique of them and also of every thing we do to betray the better angels of our nature.

No true Scotsman . . .

The thing is, the fact that the critiques are hidden in these scriptures is meaningless. When religious leaders betray their religions, it’s incumbent on other people of the same religion (everyone, but especially them), to say no, this is wrong, this is not what is taught. (And not to say “they’re not really a whatever”.) And to act upon it. Saying is nice: doing is important.

But our world is better and kinder and more hopeful because of the daily sacrifice and witness of millions of pious people over thousands of years.

Of course the good things that theists have done are important and have made the world better, just like the good things atheists have done have made the world better, though since we’re outnumbered a lot, there are fewer of them. People are people.

To be called to a level of goodness and sacrifice so constantly and so patiently by a loving but demanding God may seem like a naive demand to achieve what is only a remote human possibility. However, such a vision need not be seen as a red flag to those who believe nothing.

I believe many things.

As (I cannot believe I am quoting this) House says in my favourite episode:

House: I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see, visions this patient saw, they’re all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down
Foreman: You choose to believe that?
House: There’s no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting
Cameron: You find it more comforting to believe that this is it?
House: I find it more comforting to believe that all this isn’t simply a test.

This isn’t what every atheist believes, but the point is just: you can spin anything, any way. See what he says right next.

I can humbly ask whether my atheist brothers and sisters really believe that their lives are better, richer and more hopeful by clinging to Camus’s existential despair: “The purpose of life is that it ends.”

No, not since I was, what, 19? 20? I don’t cling to that phrase, it doesn’t mean that much to me. I think there is something to it, that we make meaning in our lives because they are finite, but not that it is the purpose — I don’t think there is a purpose. Is that more hopeful?

Atheism != existentialism.

I can agree to make peace with atheists whom I believe ask too little of life here on planet earth if they will agree to make peace with me and with other religious folk who perhaps have asked too much. I believe that the philosopher-rabbi Mordecai Kaplan was right when he said, “It is hell to live without hope, and religion saves people from hell.”

Ok. So I will take that as a given. Living without hope really sucks. And religion can give people hope. Fine. So can, for instance, antidepressants.

I urge my atheist brothers and sisters to see things as Spinoza urged, sub specie aeternitatis — under the perspective of eternity.

Yo, atheists! Imagine eternity and eternal life and stuff, and live as if it were true! Then you’d see you’re wrong!

And to try a little positivity. Last Sunday I took two high-school girls to Cold Spring Labs to meet Dr. James Watson. One of the girls wants to be a research scientist, and the other has no idea yet, but I think she will be a great writer. I think they also both want boyfriends. I want them to stay smart and not dumb down to get a boy. Watson spoke and listened to the girls, and they left, I hope, proud about being smart. I know that Jim believes way more in Darwin than in Deuteronomy, but he also believes that at Cold Spring Labs the most important thing is not whether you are a man or a woman, not whether you believe in God. The most important thing, as he says, is “to get something done.” Now there’s an atheist I can believe in.

Hey, some of my best friends are atheists!

But it ends on something I do believe. Intentions matter somewhat, especially among people I am close to. But what matters so much more than what you think or what you believe is what you *do*.

(Tags: atheism, atheist)

I love reading comments on old posts. I do not know how people come to them.

Dudes, although the machince can make some difference, it is the coffee ultimately that really matters. Stop buying Folgers and Maxwell House.

Safe! I never buy crappy coffee. Aren’t both of those instant coffee, anyhow? Who uses instant in a drip coffeemaker?