Translation by Richard le Gallienne


The bird of life is singing on the bough
His two eternal notes of "I and Thou"—
O! hearken well, for soon the song sings through,
And, would we hear it, we must hear it now.

The bird of life is singing in the sun,
Short is his song, nor only just begun,—
A call, a trill, a rapture, then—so soon!—
A silence, and the song is done—is done.

Yea! What is man that deems himself divine?
Man is a flagon, and his soul the wine;
Man is a reed, his soul the sound therein;
Man is a lantern, and his soul the shine.

Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way:
Heed not To-morrow, heed not Yesterday;
The magic words of life are Here and Now—
O fools, that after some to-morrow stray!

Were I a Sultan, say what greater bliss
Were mine to summon to my side than this,—
Dear gleaming face, far brighter than the moon!
O Love! and this immortalizing kiss.

To all of us the thought of heaven is dear—
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
No doubt there is a heaven yonder too,
But 'tis so far away—and you are near.

Men talk of heaven,—there is no heaven but here;
Men talk of hell,—there is no hell but here;
Men of hereafters talk, and future lives,—
O love, there is no other life—but here.

Look not above, there is no answer there;
Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer;
Near is as near to God as any Far,
And Here is just the same deceit as There.

But here are wine and beautiful young girls,
Be wise and hide your sorrows in their curls,
Dive as you will in life's mysterious sea,
You shall not bring us any better pearls.

Allah, perchance, the secret word might spell;
If Allah be, He keeps His secret well;
What He hath hidden, who shall hope to find?
Shall God His secret to a maggot tell?

So since with all my passion and my skill,
The world's mysterious meaning mocks me still,
Shall I not piously believe that I
Am kept in darkness by the heavenly will?

The Koran! well, come put me to the test—
Lovely old book in hideous error drest—
Believe me, I can quote the Koran too,
The unbeliever knows his Koran best.

And do you think that unto such as you,
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,
God gave the Secret, and denied it me?—
Well, well, what matters it! believe that too.

Old Khayyám, say you, is a debauchee;
If only you were half so good as he!
He sins no sins but gentle drunkenness,
Great-hearted mirth, and kind adultery.

But yours the cold heart, and the murderous tongue,
The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,
The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,
And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.

So I be written in the Book of Love,
I have no care about that book above;
Erase my name, or write it, as you please—
So I be written in the Book of Love.

PRIEST - Come to this the fatal hour when at last from the eyes of deluded man the scales must fall away, and be shown the cruel picture of his errors and his vices - say, my son, do you not repent the host of sins unto which you were led by weakness and human frailty?

DYING MAN - Yes, my friend, I do repent.

PRIEST - Rejoice then in these pangs of remorse, during the brief space remaining to you profit therefrom to obtain Heaven's general absolution for your sins, and be mindful of it, only through the mediation of the Most Holy Sacrament of penance will you be granted it by the Eternal.

DYING MAN - I do not understand you, any more than you have understood me.

PRIEST - What's that?

DYING MAN - I told you that I repented.

PRIEST - I heard you say it.

DYING MAN - Yes, but without understanding it.

PRIEST - My interpretation -

DYING MAN - Hold. I shall give you mine. By Nature created, created with very keen tastes, with very strong passions; placed on this earth for the sole purpose of yielding to them and satisfying them, and these effects of my creation being naught but necessities directly relating to Nature's fundamental designs or, if you prefer, naught but essential derivatives proceeding from her intentions in my regard, all in accordance with her laws, I repent not having acknowledged her omnipotence as fully as I might have done, I am only sorry for the modest use I made of the faculties (criminal in your view, perfectly ordinary in mine) she gave me to serve her; I did sometimes resist her, I repent it. Misled by your absurd doctrines, with them for arms I mindlessly challenged the desires instilled in me by a much diviner inspiration, and thereof do I repent: I only plucked an occasional flower when I might have gathered an ample harvest of fruit - such are the just grounds for the regrets I have, do me the honor of considering me incapable of harboring any others.

PRIEST - Lo! where your fallacies take you, to what pass are you brought by your sophistries! To created being you ascribe all the Creator's power, and those unlucky penchants which have led you astray, ah! do you not see they are merely the products of corrupted nature, to which you attribute omnipotence?

DYING MAN - Friend - it looks to me as though your dialectic were as false as your thinking. Pray straighten your arguing or else leave me to die in peace. What do you mean by Creator, and what do you mean by corrupted nature?

PRIEST - The Creator is the master of the universe, 'tis He who has wrought everything, everything created, and who maintains it all through the mere fact of His omnipotence.

DYING MAN - An impressive figure indeed. Tell me now why this so very formidable fellow did nevertheless, as you would have it, create a corrupted nature?

PRIEST - What glory would men ever have, had not God left them free will; and in the enjoyment thereof, what merit could come to them, were there not on earth the possibility of doing good and that of avoiding evil?

DYING MAN - And so your god bungled his work deliberately, in order to tempt or test his creature - did he then not know, did he then not doubt what the result would be?

PRIEST - He knew it undoubtedly but, once again, he wished to leave man the merit of choice.

DYING MAN - And to what purpose, since from the outset he knew the course affairs would take and since, all-mighty as you tell me he is, he had but to make his creature choose as suited him?

PRIEST - Who is there can penetrate God's vast and infinite designs regarding man, and who can grasp all that makes up the universal scheme?

DYING MAN - Anyone who simplifies matters, my friend, anyone, above all, who refrains from multiplying causes in order to confuse effects all the more. What need have you of a second difficulty when you are unable to resolve the first, and once it is possible that Nature may have all alone done what you attribute to your god, why must you go looking for someone to be her overlord? The cause and explanation of what you do not understand may perhaps be the simplest thing in the world. Perfect your physics and you will understand Nature better, refine your reason, banish your prejudices and you'll have no further need of your god.

PRIEST - Wretched man! I took you for no worse than a Socinian - arms I had to combat you. But 'tis clear you are an atheist, and seeing that your heart is shut to the authentic and innumerable proofs we receive every day of our lives of the Creator's existence - I have no more to say to you. There is no restoring the blind to the light.

DYING MAN - Softly, my friend, own that between the two, he who blindfolds himself must surely see less of the light than he who snatches the blindfold away from his eyes. You compose, you construct, you dream, you magnify and complicate; I sift, I simplify. You accumulate errors, pile one atop the other; I combat them all. Which one of us is blind?

PRIEST - Then you do not believe in God at all?

DYING MAN - No. And for one very sound reason: it is perfectly impossible to believe in what one does not understand. Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist; understanding is the very lifeblood of faith; where understanding has ceased, faith is dead; and when they who are in such a case proclaim they have faith, they deceive. You yourself, preacher, I defy you to believe in the god you predicate to me - you must fail because you cannot demonstrate him to me, because it is not in you to define him to me, because consequently you do not understand him - because as of the moment you do not understand him, you can no longer furnish me any reasonable argument concerning him, and because, in sum, anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be mad to believe in him, in the second a fool.
    My friend, prove to me that matter is inert and I will grant you a creator, prove to me that Nature does not suffice to herself and I'll let you imagine her ruled by a higher force; until then, expect nothing from me, I bow to evidence only, and evidence I perceive only through my senses: my belief goes no farther than they, beyond that point my faith collapses. I believe in the sun because I see it, I conceive it as the focal center of all the inflammable matter in Nature, its periodic movement pleases but does not amaze me. 'Tis a mechanical operation, perhaps as simple as the workings of electricity, but which we are unable to understand. Need I bother more about it? when you have roofed everything over with your god, will I be any the better off? and shall I still not have to make an effort at least as great to understand the artisan as to define his handiwork?
    By edifying your chimera it is thus no service you have rendered me, you have made me uneasy in my mind but you have not enlightened it, and instead of gratitude I owe you resentment. You god is a machine you fabricated in your passions' behalf, you manipulated it to their liking; but the day it interfered with mine, I kicked it out of my way, deem it fitting that I did so; and now, at this moment when I sink and my soul stands in need of calm and philosophy, belabor it not with your riddles and your cant, which alarm but will not convince it, which will irritate without improving it; good friends and on the best terms have we ever been, this soul and I, so Nature wished it to be; as it is, so she expressly modeled it, for my soul is the result of the dispositions she formed in me pursuant to her own ends and needs; and as she has an equal need of vices and virtues, whenever she was pleased to move me to evil, she did so, whenever she wanted a good deed from me, she roused in me the desire to perform one, and even so I did as I was bid. Look nowhere but to her workings for the unique cause of our fickle human behavior, and in her laws hope to find no other springs than her will and her requirements.

PRIEST - And so whatever is in this world, is necessary.

DYING MAN - Exactly.

PRIEST - But is everything is necessary - then the whole is regulated.

DYING MAN - I am not the one to deny it.

PRIEST - And what can regulate the whole save it be an all-powerful and all-knowing hand?

DYING MAN - Say, is it not necessary that gunpowder ignite when you set a spark to it?

PRIEST - Yes.

DYING MAN - And do you find any presence of wisdom in that?

PRIEST - None.

DYING MAN - It is then possible that things necessarily come about without being determined by a superior intelligence, and possible hence that everything derive logically from a primary cause, without there being either reason or wisdom in that primary cause.

PRIEST - What are you aiming at?

DYING MAN - At proving to you that the world and all therein may be what it is and as you see it to be, without any wise and reasoning cause directing it, and that natural effects must have natural causes: natural causes sufficing, there is no need to invent any such unnatural ones as your god who himself, as I have told you already, would require to be explained and who would at the same time be the explanation of nothing; and that once 'tis plain your god is superfluous, he is perfectly useless; that what is useless would greatly appear to be imaginary only, null and therefore non-existent; thus, to conclude that your god is a fiction I need no other argument than that which furnishes me the certitude of his inutility.

PRIEST - At that rate there is no great need for me to talk to you about religion.

DYING MAN - True, but why not anyhow? Nothing so much amuses me as this sign of the extent to which human beings have been carried away by fanaticism and stupidity; although the prodigious spectacle of folly we are facing here may be horrible, it is always interesting. Answer me honestly, and endeavor to set personal considerations aside: were I weak enough to fall victim to your silly theories concerning the fabulous existence of the being who renders religion necessary, under what form would you advise me to worship him? Would you have me adopt the daydreams of Confucius rather than the absurdities of Brahma, should I kneel before the great snake to which the blacks pray, invoke the Peruvian's sun or Moses' Lord of Hosts, to which Mohammedan sect should I rally, or which Christian heresy would be preferable in your view? Be careful how you reply.

PRIEST - Can it be doubtful?

DYING MAN - Then 'tis egotistical.

PRIEST - No, my son, 'tis as much out of love for thee as for myself I urge thee to embrace my creed.

DYING MAN - And I wonder how the one or the other of us can have much love for himself, to deign to listen to such degrading nonsense.

PRIEST - But who can be mistaken about the miracles wrought by our Divine Redeemer?

DYING MAN - He who sees in him anything else than the most vulgar of all tricksters and the most arrent of all imposters.

PRIEST - O God, you hear him and your wrath thunders not forth!

DYING MAN - No my friend, all is peace and quiet around us, because your god, be it from impotence or from reason or from whatever you please, is a being whose existence I shall momentarily concede out of condescension for you or, if you prefer, in order to accommodate myself to your sorry little perspective; because this god, I say, were he to exist, as you are mad enough to believe, could not have selected as means to persuade us, anything more ridiculous than those your Jesus incarnates.

PRIEST - What! the prophecies, the miracles, the martyrs - are they not so many proofs?

DYING MAN - How, so long as I abide by the rules of logic, how would you have me accept as proof anything which itself is lacking proof? Before a prophecy could constitute proof I should first have to be completely certain it was ever pronounced; the prophecies history tells us of belong to history and for me they can only have the force of other historical facts, whereof three out of four are exceedingly dubious; if to this I add the strong probability that they have been transmitted to us by not very objective historians, who recorded what they preferred to have us read, I shall be quite within my rights if I am Skeptical. And furthermore, who is there to assure me that this prophecy was not made after the fact, that it was not a stratagem of everyday political scheming, like that which predicts a happy reign under a just king, or frost in wintertime?
    As for your miracles, I am not any readier to be taken in by such rubbish. All rascals have performed them, all fools have believed in them; before I'd be persuaded of the truth of a miracle I would have to be very sure the event so called by you was absolutely contrary to the laws of Nature, for only what is outside of Nature can pass for miraculous; and who is so deeply learned in Nature that he can affirm the precise point where it is infringed upon? Only two things are needed to accredit an alleged miracle, a mountebank and a few simpletons; tush, there's the whole origin of your prodigies; all new adherents to a religious sect have wrought some; and more extraordinary still, all have found imbeciles around to believe them. Your Jesus' feats do not surpass those of Apollonius of Tyana, yet nobody thinks to take the latter for a god; and when we come to your martyrs, assuredly, these are the feeblest of all your arguments. To produce martyrs you need but to have enthusiasm on the one hand, resistance on the other; and so long as an opposed cause offers me as many of them as does yours, I shall never be sufficiently authorized to believe one better than the other, but rather very much inclined to consider all of them pitiable.
    Ah my friend! were it true that the god you preach did exist, would he need miracle, martyr, or prophecy to secure recognition? and if, as you declare, the human heart were of his making, would he not have chosen it for the repository of his law? Then would this law, impartial for all mankind because emanating from a just god, then would it be found graved deep and writ clear in all men alike, and from one end of the world to the other, all men, having this delicate and sensitive organ in common, would also resemble each other through the homage they would render the god whence they had got it; all would adore and serve him in one identical manner, and they would be as incapable of disregarding this god as of resisting the inward impulse to worship him. Instead of that, what do I behold throughout this world? As many gods as there are countries; as many different cults as there are different minds or different imaginations; and this swarm of opinions among which it physically impossible for me to choose, say now, is this a just god's doing?
    Fie upon you, preacher, you outrage your god when you present him to me thus; rather let me deny him completely, for if he exists then I outrage him far less by my incredulity than do you through your blasphemies. Return to your senses, preacher, your Jesus is no better than Mohammed, Mohammed no better than Moses, and the three of them combined no better than Confucius, who did after all have some wise things to say while the others did naught but rave; in general, though, such people are all mere frauds: philosophers laughed at them, the mob believed them, and justice ought to have hanged them.

PRIEST - Alas, justice dealt only too harshly with one of the four.

DYING MAN - If he alone got what he deserved it was he who deserved it most richly; seditious, turbulent, calumniating, dishonest, libertine, a clumsy buffoon, and very mischievous; he had the art of overawing common folk and stirring up the rabble; and hence came in line for punishment in a kingdom where the state of affairs was what it was in Jerusalem then. They were very wise indeed to get rid of him, and this perhaps is one case in which my extremely lenient and also extremely tolerant maxims are able to allow the severity of Themis; I excuse any misbehavior save that which may endanger the government one lives under, kings and their majesties are the only thing I respect; and whoever does not love his country and his king were better dead than alive.

PRIEST - But you do surely believe something awaits us after this life, you must at some time or another have sought to pierce the dark shadows enshrouding our mortal fate, and what other theory could have satisfied your anxious spirit, than that of the numberless woes that betide him who has lived wickedly, and an eternity of rewards for him whose life has been good?

DYING MAN - What other, my friend? that of nothingness, it has never held terrors for me, in it I see naught but what is consoling and unpretentious; all other theories are of pride's composition, this one alone is of reason's. Moreover, 'tis neither dreadful nor absolute, this nothingness. Before my eyes have I not the example of Nature's perpetual generations and regenerations? Nothing perishes in the world, my friend, nothing is lost; man today, worm tomorrow, the day after tomorrow a fly; is it not to keep steadily on existing? And what entitles me to be rewarded for virtues which are in me through no fault of my own, or again punished for crimes wherefore the ultimate responsibility is not mine? how are you to put your alleged god's goodness into tune with this system, and can he have wished to create me in order to reap pleasure from punishing me, and that solely on account of a choice he does not leave me free will to determine?

PRIEST - You are free.

DYING MAN - Yes, in terms of your prejudices; but reason puts them to rout, and the theory of human freedom was never devised except to fabricate that of grace, which was to acquire such importance in your reveries. What man on earth, seeing the scaffold a step beyond the crime, would commit it were he free not to commit it? We are the pawns of an irresistible force, and never for an instant is it within our power to do anything but make the best of our lot and forge ahead along the path that has been traced for us. There is not a single virtue which is not necessary to Nature and conversely not a single crime which she does not need and it is in the perfect balance she maintains between the one and the other that her immense science consists; but can we be guilty for adding our weight to this side or that when it is she who tosses us onto the scales? no more so than the hornet who thrusts his dart into your skin.

PRIEST - Then we should not shrink from the worst of all crimes.

DYING MAN - I say nothing of the kind. Let the evil deed be proscribed by law, let justice smite the criminal, that will be deterrent enough; but if by misfortune we do commit it even so, let's not cry over spilled milk; remorse is inefficacious, since it does not stay us from crime, futile since it does not repair it, therefore it is absurd to beat one's breast, more absurd still to dread being punished in another world if we have been lucky to escape it in this. God forbid that this be construed as encouragement to crime, no, we should avoid it as much as we can, but one must learn to shun it through reason and not through false fears which lead to naught and whose effects are so quickly overcome in any moderately steadfast soul. Reason, sir - yes, our reason alone should warn us that harm done our fellows can never bring happiness to us; and our heart, that contributing to their felicity is the greatest joy Nature has accorded us on earth; the entirety of human morals is contained in this one phrase: Render others as happy as one desires oneself to be, and never inflict more pain upon them than one would like to receive at their hands. There you are, my friend, those are the only principles we should observe, and you need neither god nor religion to appreciate and subscribe to them, you need only have a good heart.
    But I feel my strength ebbing away; preacher, put away your prejudices, unbend, be a man, be human, without fear and without hope forget your gods and your religions too: they are none of them good for anything but to set man at odds with man, and the mere name of these horrors has caused greater loss of life on earth than all other wars and all other plagues combined. Renounce the idea of another world; there is none, but do not renounce the pleasure of being happy and of making for happiness in this. Nature offers you no other way of doubling your existence, of extending it. - My friend, lewd pleasures were ever dearer to me than anything else, I have idolized them all my life and my wish has been to end it in their bosom; my end draws near, six women lovelier than the light of day are waiting in the chamber adjoining, I have reserved them for this moment, partake of the feast with me, following my example embrace them instead of the vain sophistries of superstition, under their caresses strive for a little while to forget your hypocritical beliefs.

NOTE

The dying man rang, the women entered; and after he had been a little while in their arms the preacher became one whom Nature had corrupted, all because he had not succeeded in explaining what a corrupt nature is.

It appears that I've some materialistic proclivities.  If you feel like being generous or something, you can always look at my Amazon wishlist.

Nohari.  Because no one cares about Johari.

(xanga port)

Universal Skepticism is the idea that we can never really "know" anything for certain, that reality is not necessarily perceived accurately through our sensory organs.  While skepticism expresses doubt over a given claim, Universal Skepticism expresses doubt over everything; that man's fallibility makes it impossible to ever acquire knowledge with complete certainty.  Consequently, when we make assumptions about the external world through our senses, we are placing "faith" in them.  In other words, it is through "faith" that we acquire knowledge about reality.  From this notion of Universal Skepticism, the Christian will then move to explain how faith can further be used to know God.

George H. Smith, in his book, "Atheism: The Case Against God," chapter 5, Section V, addresses the folly of this philosophical argument using a dialogue between a (universal) skeptic, and an antiskeptic.  At the end of the dialogue, the antiskeptic then addresses faith in perception as employed by Christians.

---

Skeptic: "You claim that man gains knowledge of reality through his senses, but I submit that our sense are deceptive.  Since we cannot rationally defend the reliability of sensory evidence, we must place trust in them as a matter of faith."

Antiskeptic: "Why do you say that?"

Skeptic: "Because our senses give us contradictory testimony, and even you stress that contradictions cannot exist.  Look, I'll prove it to you by taking this pencil and placing it in..."

Antiskeptic: "Excuse me for a moment. If I understand correctly, you are going to demonstrate that our senses do not give us accurate knowledge of reality.  Is this correct?"

Skeptic: "Yes."

Antiskeptic: "Then you cannot start from the prior assumption that our senses do give us accurate knowledge of reality, because this would entail accepting the truth of the very proposition which you wish to disprove.  Do you agree?"

Skeptic: "Of course."

Antiskeptic: "Then you won't mind if, from this point on, I don't grant you this assumption."

Skeptic: "Naturally.  Now may I proceed with my demonstration?"

Antiskeptic: (staring in opposite direction - no answer).

Skeptic: "I said, may I proceed?"

Antiskeptic: (startled). "Did I hear something?"

Skeptic: (irritated). "I'm talking to you."

Antiskeptic: "I beg your pardon."

Skeptic: "Are you going to be serious or not?  Here I am trying to carry on an intelligent philosophical conversation, and you're acting silly."

Antiskeptic: (squinting his eyes). "It looks and sounds like you are talking to me, but then I can't be certain, since I never trust what I see and hear.  In fact, I can't be sure that you are actually sitting there."

Skeptic: "I insist that you behave reasonably!"

Antiskeptic: "If I could only trust what I see and hear, I might be able to reply - assuming of course that I could trust you, if you're really there, to hear what I actually say.  But, then, I couldn't be sure that what I hear myself saying is what I've said, because..."

Skeptic: "All right, you've made your point.  Have it your way.  Assume, for the sake of argument, that we are communicating accurately.  I admit that it cannot be proven, but assume it for now."

Antiskeptic: "Why?"

Skeptic: "So I can make my point."

Antiskeptic: "I must assume, in other words, that my senses are not deceptive - at least as they pertain to this conversation - so that you can get your argument off the ground to 'prove' that this entire assumption is unfounded.  If your argument is correct, you don't have the means with which to make your point.  Through your attempt at communication and argument, you are admitting the validity of sense perception - and, therefore, by arguing that sense perception is deceptive, you cut the ground from under your own feet and become mired in a hopeless absurdity."

Skeptic: "I'll restate my argument somewhat.  I don't deny that, for practical purposes, we act on the assumption that our senses enable us to perceive without deception.  Language, as you have pointed out, depends on this assumption.  What I wish to argue is that our naive trust in our senses is without logical foundations.  Although we may have faith in our senses from day to day, they are not as reliable as the average person thinks - and I can demonstrate this by showing you an example where our senses are unreliable, because they give us contradictory information.  If this is true, then we have no way of ascertaining when we are being deceived and when we are not."

Antiskeptic: "Your argument hasn't changed any; you have merely elaborated it.  Like all skeptics, you seem to think that you can assume as true the very thing you are trying to disprove, and you attempt to skirt this problem by stipulating that you are doing so for practical purposes because we make these assumptions in everyday life.  You claim that, as a philosopher, you have discovered reasons to doubt the validity of sense perception.  My point is this: regardless of whether you call your use of language 'practical' or whatever, by attempting to communicate you commit yourself to a certain philosophic context, namely, the context that makes communication possible.  Once you are working within this context, it is completely irrational to turn around and declare that the foundations of that context are rationally unfounded. If the premise that our senses give us accurate knowledge of reality has no basis in reason, then any argument that occurs within that
context has no basis in reason either - which includes your argument."

Skeptic: "I see your point, but I think I can convince you if you will only watch my demonstration."

Antiskeptic: "Any attempted proof will itself depend on the prior validity of sensory evidence, so you are again attempting the absurd."

Skeptic: "But there are such obvious cases of deceptive sensory appearance, it seems absurd to me to deny their existence.  As I was about to demonstrate before, if I take this straight pencil and place it in..."

Antiskeptic: "Straight pencil?  How did you ascertain that it is straight and that it is a pencil?"

Skeptic: "It's quite obvious."

Antiskeptic: "I agree, but you must presuppose the ability of your senses to give you accurate knowledge of reality."

Skeptic: "I'll rephrase my argument.  Here we have what appears to be a straight pencil, although I'll admit that I cannot prove it.  Mind you, I'm not saying that it really is a straight pencil, but only that it appears to be so.  Now when I place what appears to be a straight pencil in this glass of water..."

Antiskeptic: "You mean, when you place what appears to be a straight pencil in what appears to be a glass of water...."

Skeptic: "Have it your way.  Anyway, as you can now witness, the pencil appears to be bent."

Antiskeptic: "Does it?"

Skeptic: "Well, you're not at a very good angle.  Get down more level with the water line."

Antiskeptic: "Do you mean to say that your monumental disproof of the senses requires a certain angle?"

Skeptic: "Don't be smart, just look.  You must admit that it now looks bent."

Antiskeptic: "Yes, although a better description would be 'disjointed.' "

(Long pause.)

Skeptic: "Well?"

Antiskeptic: "Well what?"

Skeptic: "What do you think now?"

Antiskeptic: "I told you what I think - the pencil does look 'bent' in water."

Skeptic: "Yes, go on."

Antiskeptic: "With what?"

Skeptic: "With the conclusion, of course."

Antiskeptic: "But I already gave you my conclusion: the pencil does appear to be bent under water."

Skeptic: "But what about the contradiction?"

Antiskeptic: "A contradiction?"

Skeptic: "Yes.  The pencil appeared to be straight, and now it appears to be bent.  If I remove it from the water, it once again appears straight."

Antiskeptic: "I agree with you on that point."

Skeptic: "But that's a contradiction!"

Antiskeptic: "It is?"

Skeptic: "Of course!  How can the same pencil be straight and bent?"

Antiskeptic: "We didn't say that it is straight and bent; we merely said that it looks straight out of water and looks bent in water.  Where is the contradiction?"

Skeptic: "But that must be a contradiction."

Antiskeptic: "The Law of Contradiction - which is one of the basic laws of logic states that an object cannot be A and non-A at the same time and in the same respect.  You're showing me a pencil that looks straight at one time and in one respect (out of water), but that looks bent at another time and in another respect (in water).  You must remember the context.  We are perceiving the pencil through two different mediums, air and water.  Since light travels more slowly through water than through air, it takes longer for the light waves to reach our eyes from the submerged portion.  What we are perceiving is not a contradiction, but simply a straight pencil that appears bent in a specific context, i.e., in water.  No defender of sensory experience would claim that an object must appear the same in every situation, but this has no effect whatsoever on the validity of the senses.  For example, if I placed the pencil in a glass of tar, would you then express surprise because part of the pencil had 'disappeared'?  Would this show that we cannot trust our senses?  On the contrary, it is through our senses that we understand that the pencil is submerged in tar, and it is through our senses that we discover that light will not penetrate tar.  In other words, it is through our senses that we gather the information with which to explain why the same object appears differently under different conditions.  We solve the alleged instances of 'sensory deception' through a further appeal to sensory evidence - just as you must presuppose the validity of the senses in the very attempt to disprove the validity of the senses."

Skeptic: "Since you claim that I have not presented you with a legitimate instance of a contradiction, I will appeal to another version of this argument which will fulfill your requirements.  If we feel the pencil while it is in water, it will feel straight. The pencil looks bent but feels straight at the same time and in the same respect, i.e., while it is in water.  That should cinch my argument."

Antiskeptic: "No, because we are dealing with two different sense modalities, which again changes the context. Also, this demonstration, like all others, presupposes the validity of sense perception - which renders your conclusion invalid. For example, in order for your alleged contradiction to be a contradiction, it must be true that we are seeing and feeling the same object. After all, if we were seeing and feeling different objects, you would not even raise the possibility of a contradiction. Now I must ask you how you know that you are seeing and feeling the same object?"

Skeptic: "It's very simple to see that we are dealing with the same pencil."

Antiskeptic: "Of course, but you must establish that you are seeing and feeling the same object without recourse to the senses.  And this, I submit, is impossible.  Furthermore, in order for you to maintain that we are receiving contradictory evidence, you must assume that two different sense modalities - sight and touch - can furnish us with information concerning the same aspect of the same object.  This raises the question: On what basis do you claim that there is a contradiction between 'feeling straight' and 'looking bent'?"

Skeptic: "I must say again that it seems quite obvious."

Antiskeptic: "If it seems obvious, it is only because our past experience has permitted us to make the correlation between what we see and how an object feels.  Without this previous sensory evidence, no such correlation would be possible.  Thus, your argument is unintelligible without presupposing the validity of sensory evidence."

Skeptic: "I don't understand what you're saying here.  Are you claiming that there is no problem whatsoever in the example I have presented?"

Antiskeptic: "It depends on what you mean by a 'problem.'  There is a kind of problem here, but it is scientific, not philosophical.  Because there is a change in perception when the pencil is submerged in water, it calls for an explanation - but this explanation, as I have pointed out, consists of appealing to more sensory evidence in order to establish why the pencil appears bent in water.  A primitive man with no knowledge of light refraction may be genuinely puzzled by our phenomenon, but if he wishes to arrive at a solution, he can do so only through more research.  For him to blame his senses, aside from being unjustified, would not solve or explain his dilemma.

"I would like to emphasize a major source of confusion in your argument against sense perception.  To speak of our senses 'deceiving' us is, at best, a sloppy metaphor.  Philosophically, it is nonsense. Our senses are simply physical organs with no will of their own.  To say that they 'deceive' us makes no more sense than to claim that our hearts or our lungs 'deceive' us.  Sense organs respond to physical stimuli from the external world; they have no capacity to deceive or misrepresent. They simply transmit sensations according to their physiological characteristics, which our brains then automatically integrate into percepts.  We may misinterpret the basic data given to us, but there can be no question about the validity of the data per se.  For example, a man may see what he believes to be a lake in the middle of a desert, whereas what he actually sees is only a reflection of light waves off the sand, or, in other words, a mirage.  The man is mistaken in his identification of the sensory evidence - he has not properly interpreted the data given to him - but his senses have not somehow 'deceived' him.  The light waves that reach his eyes actually do exist, but the man's interpretation as to the causal origin of these waves is mistaken."

Skeptic: "It seems that you have opened the door for an entirely new set of objections against the senses.  Even if our senses, properly speaking, do not 'deceive' us, how can we be sure that our interpretation of sensory evidence is correct?  To use your example, how could the man in a desert decide if what he perceives is a real lake or merely a mirage?"

Antiskeptic: "By appealing to more sensory evidence.  In this case, he may not be able to decide with certainty until he approaches the area where the lake is supposed to be and sees that there isn't one."

Skeptic: "But isn't it possible for me to doubt my interpretation of sensory evidence in every instance?  How can I ever be certain that what I identify as the object of my perception is in fact the actual object and not merely a mirage, illusion, or hallucination?  Is it not possible to doubt that you are really sitting there, even though I am presented with the perception of a man?  After all, you may be a mirage as well."

Antiskeptic: "This throws us into the problem of universal skepticism, which was refuted in the preceding section^*.  Can you doubt every instance of sense perception?  On a practical level, this is impossible - but even if you were an exceptional person with the psychological capacity to doubt everything, your universal doubt would be blatantly irrational and self-contradictory.  To doubt every interpretation of sensory evidence is logically absurd.

"You must realize that to talk of deception, whether in the form of a mirage, illusion or hallucination, makes sense only in contrast to a wider context of non-deception.  In order to say that one's interpretation of sensory evidence is incorrect, one must be able to distinguish incorrect from correct interpretations.  Otherwise, what would it mean to speak of mistaken identification?  Mistaken as opposed to what?  What would it mean, for example, to speak of counterfeit coins, unless in contradistinction to genuine coins?

Skeptic: "I understand your objection and I think I can respond to it.  I won't deny that in order for us to identify incorrect interpretations of sensory evidence, we must be able to recognize, in principle, a case of genuine interpretation.  But my point is this: how, in any specific instance, can we be sure that we are correct?  The man in the desert, after all, may have felt absolutely certain that he was perceiving a lake, but he was wrong anyway.  I may feel absolutely certain that I am perceiving you right now, but isn't it possible that I too am mistaken? It is perfectly conceivable that you are a figment of my imagination.  Can you demonstrate to me that you are real and not merely a hallucination, or must I accept my interpretations on faith?"

Antiskeptic: "Your demand that I somehow prove to you that I am not an hallucination is totally inappropriate and unjustified.  First of all, since you admit that you must be able to identify correct interpretations in order to distinguish incorrect interpretations, simply apply your criteria to this specific instance.  Here I am sitting next to you in plain view.  You can see me, hear me, and even touch me if you wish.  If these conditions do not qualify this as a case of genuine perception, I fail to see what conditions could possibly satisfy you.

"Doubt is not justified merely on the grounds that you can somehow 'imagine' that you are mistaken.  If in the face of such overwhelming evidence you wish to doubt the correctness of your judgment, then you must provide reasons for your doubt.  If your skepticism is to be more than empty rambling, you must justify your doubt.  This must consist of specifying why, in our particular circumstance, there is reason to suppose that our perceptual judgment is in error.  Doubt cannot be applied indiscriminately; it arises contextually in specific circumstances when there is reason to suppose that we may be mistaken.

"To illustrate the contextual nature of doubt, consider the case of the mirage.  If we are in the middle of a desert on a very hot day, and if we see what appears to be a lake in the distance, I may say, 'There is a lake,' and you may reply, 'Perhaps not; you may be mistaken. It may be a mirage.'  If I ask why you doubt that it is a lake, you may reply: 'Because light waves often reflect off of the desert sand and give the appearance of water.  We are in a situation where this occurs quite frequently, so I have reason to doubt.'  Or perhaps you are very familiar with the area and know for a fact that there is no lake, in which case you would not simply doubt my assertion, but would claim that I am positively mistaken.  In either case, there is something about our specific situation that causes you to doubt the veracity of my perceptual identification.

"Now suppose that we are in the middle of a forest and we stumble across a lake.  We decide to take a swim and after an hour of splashing around, you suddenly declare, 'I doubt if this is a real lake.'  Your doubt in this context would be utter nonsense.  If I ask you why you doubt, and you reply, 'It's conceivable that I am having a hallucination,' I will press you further by asking, 'But what reasons do you have for supposing that you are hallucinating at this particular moment?'  If you fail to offer reasons and merely assert that a hallucination is con conceivable, I will reply (without going into a detailed criticism of your use of 'conceivable' here) that you are uttering an unsupported, arbitrary proposition - and you do not deserve serious consideration until such time as you are prepared to offer arguments in support of your claim.

"You see, then, that doubt is appropriate in some circumstances and inappropriate in others.  It should be quite clear that your doubt of my existence is unfounded, and it must therefore be discarded as irrational.  Our context is such that there is no reason to doubt our interpretations of sensory material.  If you wish to cling to your doubt, you must offer reasons - reasons that pertain to this specific context - to why doubt is necessary.  If you fail to do so, then there is no reason why anyone should listen to you."

Skeptic: "You've covered this ground thoroughly, so I want to move to another (and in my opinion) more serious objection.  You mentioned earlier that our senses operate according to a physiological process.  Is this correct?"

Antiskeptic: "Yes, perception involves a causal chain of physiological events."

Skeptic: "Precisely.  But all that we are immediately aware of is the end link of that causal chain.  We are aware of percepts, but only as they present themselves to our consciousness, i.e., only as they interact with our sense organs.  There is, for example, no such thing as sound existing independently of consciousness; it is simply the product of waves interacting with our ears.  All of external reality is filtered through our senses before it reaches us, and this prevents us from ever perceiving reality accurately."

Antiskeptic: "There are two major flaws in your argument.  First, it involves the original stolen concept of depending on communication which would be impossible if not for the assumption that we do perceive reality correctly.  Second, I would like to ask you how we came to know of the causal chain involved in perception.  After all, it is not self-evident."

Skeptic: "It was a scientific discovery."

Antiskeptic: "You mean to say, then, that it is an accurate, true discovery that describes the actual nature of sense perception?"

Skeptic: "Yes, of course."

Antiskeptic: "Then your use of the causal chain in perception commits you to the position that we perceive reality accurately, since you are claiming that this causal chain is objective fact and not merely an idea in your mind."

Skeptic: "But don't you agree that all we ever have direct awareness of is immediate sense data?"

Antiskeptic: "No.  What we have direct awareness of is reality, and we are given this awareness through perception.  Perception is our means of awareness, not the object of awareness.  Every perception is perception of something.

"You want to argue that we are aware only of ideas or perceptions in the mind rather than external reality.  You then claim that we need to infer the existence of the external world using these perceptions as a starting point.  I am arguing that no such inference is necessary.  We have direct and immediate contact with reality through sense perception.

"All that the causal nature of perception tells us is that perception necessarily entails a means of perception; certain causal conditions must be present before perception is possible, and once these conditions are satisfied, we have perception.  Perception of what?  There is only one possible answer: of reality.  There is no other alternative.  If your perceptions are not of reality, just what are they perceptions of?"

Skeptic: "They are perceptions of the interaction between the external world and my senses."

Antiskeptic: "No.  The interaction causes the perception; the interaction is not the object of perception, but simply that which makes perception possible.  Again, I must ask you, what is it that you are perceiving, if not reality?"

Skeptic: "I don't think I understand this argument."

Antiskeptic: "I'll rephrase it somewhat.  You claim that our senses, because of the physiological process involved in per perception, distort reality in some way.  Correct?"

Skeptic: "Yes."

Antiskeptic: "Now is this distortion caused by our particular sense organs - I mean, is there something peculiar about the sensory apparatus of man? - or will there be distortion whenever there is perception, regardless of the nature of the organism involved?"

Skeptic: "Since all perception would involve a causal chain, there would doubtless be distortion regardless of the nature of the sense organs involved."

Antiskeptic: "So what you are actually telling me is this: While there may be a reality out there, unfortunately we can never see it because we have eyes, or we can never hear it because we have ears, or we can never smell it because we have noses.  In other words, you consider sense organs to be an obstacle to perception, rather than the means of perception.

"You must remember that man is a physical organism who perceives through physical sense organs.  These sense organs operate according to specific physiological processes determined by their nature - and this must be true of any sensory apparatus, regardless of the organism involved.  Where you have perception, there must be a means of perception.  This is what makes perception possible.  What you wish to claim, however, is that our means of perception is what invalidates perception - that any act of perceiving, by its very nature, is not really perception but distortion.  Aside from the many stolen concepts in this line of thought, it strikes me as a blatantly absurd argument."

Skeptic: "Even if you are correct, there are other arguments against the senses."

Antiskeptic: "Yes, but they differ only in details, not in essentials.  No man can escape the fact that his knowledge is gained through sensory experience; all of his concepts, words and arguments depend on and presuppose this fact.  Whenever a man opens his mouth to speak - assuming that he intends to communicate intelligibly - he is admitting the validity of sensory experience.  All of the so-called arguments against the senses would not be possible without the prior assumption that our senses are reliable.  The skeptic cannot avoid self-contradiction."

Skeptic: "Even if I accept what you say, there is yet another problem - and this one is raised quite frequently by Christians.  I'll agree, as will many Christians, that we gain knowledge of reality through our senses, and that this knowledge is accurate.  This does not prove, however, that our senses are our only method of perception.  You want to limit knowledge to that which is gained through sensory experience, but this seems unjustifiably dogmatic.  After all, the Christian claims that he gains knowledge of God, not through his senses, but through direct experience with the divine nature.  As an atheist, you will not grant credence to his claim.  But why?  How do you know that we are limited to perception through our senses?"

Antiskeptic: "If the Christian has discovered a new means of perception, I am perfectly willing to listen to his claim, provided that he is willing to argue for his assertion.  Perhaps man possesses perceptual powers of which he is presently unaware.  I don't see any evidence for this, but I'll grant the possibility for the sake of argument.  My argument with the Christian is that he claims to have experienced God, but he refuses to explain the process by which he, a physical organism, experienced this supernatural being.  I won't limit him arbitrarily to the traditional five senses, but I will demand that he present evidence for his new perceptual powers.  Has he discovered a new sense?  Fine, then let him tell us about it so we can test it.

"No Christian has ever succeeded in explaining just how he perceives his mysterious God.  He claims to have knowledge edge of a mysterious, unknowable being, having gained this knowledge in some mysterious, unknowable manner.  This is totally unacceptable.

"If the Christian wishes to be taken seriously, he must explain, not only what he claims to know, but how he claims to know it.  If he did not acquire his knowledge through the senses, by what means did he acquire it?  The burden of explanation lies with him.  If he upholds his belief in the absence of rational grounds, then he is the dogmatist, not the atheist.  The atheist simply wants to know what the theist believes in and how he acquired his knowledge.  If explanations are not forthcoming, the atheist will remain an atheist."

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^* This dialogue does not do justice to the arguments Smith makes earlier in his chapter, but it makes a fair encapsulation.

George H. Smith.  Atheism: The Case Against God, pp. 147-162.  New York: Prometheus Books, 1979.

Link on Amazon

Original port: Xanga, also on LiveJournal.

The following article was written by Dmitri Vassilaros, an opinion columnist at the Tribune-Review, a local newspaper in Pittsburgh.  It quite accurately sums up how I feel about politics and elections.

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In commonwealth elections, Pennsylvanians (or at least those registered to vote) usually seem to vote for the lesser of two evils -- or for just one evil if an entrenched incumbent is not challenged by a sacrificial lamb from the other party.

It's hardly a surprise that voter apathy is a given in the electoral process, especially if the disenchanted disenfranchised are unaware that the last word in the first sentence should be the plural of "party."

The so-called two-party system really is a duopoly since the Republican and Democrat parties have a virtual monopoly on local, state and federal government. But there are other political parties such as the Libertarian (my favorite), Constitution and Green. And who knows how many more could have flourished if the state Constitution requirement had been heeded that elections be free and equal.

And that is one more reason why the state Legislature is being forced by so-called third parties to look at ballot-access laws.

Making ballot access extremely difficult for their competitors ensures that the duopoly seldom is challenged. The race for governor between Gov. Ed Rendell and Lynn Swann, his Republican opponent -- two miserable choices for governor -- probably will not include independent candidate Russ Diamond.

To be on this year's ballot Mr. Diamond needs more than 100,000 signatures on his petitions to ensure that there will be roughly 67,000 valid ones mandated by the state law.

Rendell and Swann each need to collect 2,000 signatures to be on the ballot. Diamond believes he can get the 100,000 by the Aug. 1 deadline even though he now has only about 5,000.

"It is draconian," Diamond says. "It's really high."

And that's why Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks County and chairman of the House State Government Committee, is getting an earful from frustrated members of third parties to do something about the laws that are anything but free and equal.

"The complaint was a fair one," Mr. Clymer said. He and his staff discussed a wide range of alternatives without specific recommendations other than a proposed ceiling of 45,000 of needed signatures. Clymer is planning to introduce his reform bill on Wednesday. "We are looking for further ideas and recommendations," he said.

Libertarian Ken Krawchuck, the party candidate in the last gubernatorial election, is not very optimistic. "We are looking for fair and equal, what the Constitution says," says Mr. Krawchuck. "Capping us (third parties and independent candidates) at 23 times the number of signatures they need is not equal."

The ballot access laws in neighboring Delaware are pretty close to fair and equal. A few hundred signatures on your petition and ballot access you have. "If it's OK for Delaware, it's OK for Pennsylvania," Krawchuck says.

Clymer says he welcomes input about the ballot-access bill he will introduce. Letters, phone calls, e-mail, smoke signals and whatever else Pennsylvanians need to make the point should be sent to him.

But don't think the entire Legislature is as open-minded as Clymer seems to be. There is a bill floating around the House that would shorten by a month the time needed for candidates to gather signatures.

Fair and equal ballot access will mean that someday Pennsylvanians could vote for the greater, and maybe the greatest, good.

Dimitri Vassilaros is a Trib editorial page columnist. His column appears Sundays, Mondays and Fridays. Call him at 412-380-5637. E-mail him at dvassilaros@tribweb.com.

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As much as I appreciate capitalism, it presents an interesting problem.  While it is the closest thing we have to a meritocracy (in which people will ascend in society according to their own merits), it is also the closest thing to a plutocracy (in which the wealthy have the greatest power).  This is precisely how our elections seem to pan out: the candidate that has the largest war chest of campaign funds will be the most successful at guaranteeing a victory.  Essentially, in the primaries, parties will generally select their candidates based on how well known they are.  Since the most established politicians will already have a large campaigning war chest, it will be that person who will most likely win their party's endorsement.  What we end up with is one Republican and one Democrat with a vast domain of wealth to ultimately be used on advertising and campaigning.  Third party candidates, who have a difficult enough time garnering support as it is, generally languish in the realm of funding (as per an email I recently received from the LP, they are in debt, versus the wealthy and wasteful GOP and Dems).  Since they can scarcely afford a great deal of paid advertising, most voters will pass an election completely unaware of these candidates.  This leaves us with a choice between individuals representing the policies of two very dismal parties: The GOP, plagued by religious influence and poor social policies, and the Democrats, representing the pretentious and elitist employers of pathos who often make poor fiscal decisions.  Obviously, those generalizations are not always true of either party, but it is true that these parties have made countless unkept promises.  This kind of behavior, which has merited the attention of people like me (people who pay attention to what their government is doing), leaves a very bad impression about the kind of policies both the Left and the Right represent.

So that leaves us with the issue of finding a remedy to this situation.  How can we end this plutocratic duopoly?  My answer, it would seem, lies outside the boundaries of reality and lies solely in idealism, as I cannot expect everyone to partake of this kind of involvement.  What I wish is that people would actually open their eyes, and pay attention to what their government is doing.  Stop showing undying fealty toward whatever party or affiliation you represent, and observe it objectively, duly noting whatever strengths of weaknesses they portray.  Whatever media you pay attention to, be it FOX, CNN, or anything else in the MSM, try not to limit your sources of information to those channels.  They are indeed as biased as people say they are.  Try to get your information from other places, including sources that represent other sides of the spectrum that you don't already find pleasing.  Check out the printed press.  Read political weblogs.  Listen to various radio channels.  Whatever.  Just so you know what your government is up to.  If you don't know what the policies that are passed ultimately end up doing, pay attention to opinions of commentators to better understand the impact that these policies have.  From there, it shouldn't be much harder to use your own rational scrutiny to see how good or bad those policies are.

What I want is people to pay attention to the people who are governing their lives.  I want them to understand what certain policies do, and how negatively or positively those actions affect us.  I want people to pay close attention to the platforms of other candidates, and analyze proposed deeds of those to-be politicians.  Perhaps then we can be much more certain that we will elect responsible individuals.

In my personal bias, of course, I think that a Libertarian government is ideal.  Libertarians strive for minarchy, which seeks to reduce government size.  By eliminating superfluous and unnecessary policies, programs, rules, and rulers, we will have far more resources at hand to use for accomplishing more important tasks.  Currently, we squander entirely too many funds on the salaries of those currently in political office and on government programs that ultimately accomplish very little (especially while privatizing many of these gov't funded services would make a far more economical and sensible alternative).  By doing this, we can avoid a great deal of deficit, ensure that many programs to not languish in an under funded state (i.e., rehab programs for drug abusers, or medical research for certain diseases), and help address many issues that also suffer in the face of poor fiscal policy.  Libertarians also strive for the greatest amount of freedom within the bounds of protecting the liberties of other citizens.  By eliminating the notion of victimless crimes (prostitution, marijuana use, and, to an extent, the potential marketing of organs), not only can we free up our law enforcement resources (especially the funds saved by not engaging in a meaningless war on drugs), we also give people the freedom that our forefathers intended for them to have without legislating our personal morality.

I personally think that both the Republican and Democratic parties represent many good intentions, but their execution is poor.  Republicans nobly strive for many of the same ideals that Libertarians seek, but their conservatism is plagued to a point where they compromise their own values by pandering to greed, power, and religious influence (this can be seen in the way they legislate morality because the religious vote will put them in power).  The Republican party no longer represents true conservatism.  The Democratic party sees the horrible failings of the Republicans, and addresses them with what they feel rectifies those problems.  They also crave personal freedom (hence their liberal connotation), but their policy fails to heed several practical shortcomings, and often squander resources to solve a problem that cannot be addressed in the way that they attempt (affirmative action is a prime example: it seeks to correct past wrongs, but ultimately creates more problems than it solves).  Again, these are mere generalizations, not always exclusive to either party, but I think I've made my point.

So.  Let us please look at things objectively.  Forget your own personal biases, and be very honest with yourself.  What you may learn is that what you have always believed may not necessarily be what is best for everyone's well being.

(original post here)

A man is plotting to himself one night....

"Aaah, yes, that vile, wretched woman at the office... she must pay for humiliating me, she was most unkind sort.  And the man at the grocery store who gave me an unsettling look... he must be scheming for my demise!  I know it!  I'll show him who's in charge!  Yes... and that little girl, Lucy, nextdoor, I must do something about her, she called me an ugly, scary man, and I know she means me harm.  This cannot be allowed to pass.  And... and, yes.... ooooh yes, that despicable Landlady who threatens to evict me... I cannot simply allow her to do this to me!  I must hurt her as well... kill her... I'll teach her to threaten me!  And the mailman, who brought me frightening words!  He must not be allowed to do this!  I shall get him as well!"

It is later found that a secretary, a grocery store employee, a 9-year-old girl, an old landlady, and a mailman were taken to a man's basement, tortured, and killed.

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Sound disturbing?  It should.  These are the ramblings of a psychopath.  It really takes someone who is severely mentally ill to seriously plot something like this.  He is indeed paranoid, but these people have only made the most minor of infractions against him, probably not even realizing that it offended him.  Some threats were greater than others, perhaps, but to this man, they all merited the same punishment: abduction, physical torment, and death.  Simply looking at him funny was enough for the man to mark you as dead.  To us, this man is completely insane... outside of his mind... disproportionately cruel, violent, and a threat to society.  Our population simply does not tolerate, much less respect, individuals who think like this.  It simply does not make sense that the insignificant faults made by his victims were enough to visit torture and death upon them.

But... this all seems oddly familiar, doesn't it?

Why... yes, it does!  It sounds exactly like God!  I mean, the wages of sin is death isn't it?  I mean, according to God, all sins are the same - they are of equal magnitude to him.  So it doesn't matter if you're a serial murderer rapist, a petty thief, pothead, or someone who sneaks into your parents room to take some candy, these are all sins that merit one thing: eternal death in Hell, where you will experience an everlasting darkness of fire and brimstone, weeping and gnashing of teeth.  After all, this is God's justice.  You sin, you die.  It is, of course, understood that the whole Jesus clause gets us a get-out-of-jail free card, thus letting anyone, from the vandal to the child rapist, escape this extreme punishment.  However, I'm not entirely sure we're appreciating exactly what God's justice is entailing here - this exception that everyone focuses on makes it so easy to overlook just how God thinks in the first place.  I mean, the aforementioned murderer thinks that anyone who does even the slightest thing against him is worthy of misery and death.  We all label this person as a psycho, and consequently lock him away.  However, God seems to think exactly the same way, and we all revere him.  Of course, unlike the psychopath, he grants us a way out via a Christ-like thrall.

Ok, so God's exception provides some comfort... but is no one honestly disturbed by the way God views pure, holy, and true justice?  By sentencing everyone who does anything even remotely wrong to an eternity of horror?  A God who thinks like this is certainly not one I would be inclined to bow down to.  Oh, and please don't tell me that God's justice is incomprehensible.  That sort of thing incites me to lose all civility.  If this is how your God views justice, and how he deals with sinners, I honestly believe that you worship a psycho.

-God's judgment is ever righteous!  Who are you to question Him!?
-Why, a skeptic, quite naturally.

Something I forgot to include in this discussion that I had intended to earlier. There is a very good reason we do not impose the same crime-punishment system in our own government. In a civil society, our punishments are aimed to scale with the magnitude of the crime committed. It is simply unfair to impose a death penalty upon each individual who finds themselves at any sort of odds with the law. However, this is precisely how God's justice system functions, and Christians revere him as being a just being. I fail to see how this does not indicate symptoms of mental illness.

Update: Apparantly, someone found my LJ port of this post, and forwarded it to a MySpace forum.  There's already a bit of discussion there, so if you'd rather, here's the forum.  A warning, however... MySpace has an awfully shitty interface, and the forum is terribly inflexible (you cannot delete or edit posts that you make).

Some of you already know this, but I generally do not like placing ports of xanga entries on my MySpace blog, as it scatters the responses to my debate in several places (not that I get many responses on LJ or MySpace in the first place). However, as much as I'd prefer for readers to refer to my Xanga to leave comments, not all of you have an account with which to do so. I will (reluctantly) past my lengthy post here as a result. I still wish you to go there, read the post, and leave comments, but, of course, there's nothing really compelling you to do so other than the enticing prospect of a juicy intellectual debate. Much thanks.

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In the midst of several debates on morality, there seems to have been quite a division on what it actually entails. On my opposing side, there appears to be quite a heavy defense on the notion that there is, in fact, an absolute, objective form of morality that we all abide by. From this statement, the assertation has been made that the source of this objective morality is from God. While no claims have yet been made about what this God is like, it is clear that when once opponents establish this, they intend to subsequently proclaim this deity to be that of Christian doctrine. My primary problem is with the morality of that very god and that very doctrine. My stance entails that there is no objectively existing morality (though, if there is, it is so infinitely abstruse that we cannot truly know what it is in its entirety), and that morality is in fact subjective, and completely contingent upon cultural and individual contexts. This is known as moral relativism. While this ideology outlines my view of the nature of morality, it does not itself conjure its own system of morality. One colleague of mine (Duncan, aka Sandy_Shovel), has written an essay on his stance of the nature of morality (published in two ports: one on his own site, and another on ArgumentsFromtheLeft, a popular debate site that I frequent). In his essay, he proposes that morality was developed much like humans have in terms of evolution, gradually growing more complex into societal law. While it makes sense, it did appear to lack many explanations, as was pointed out by Daniel Cervera, in an essay that he composed on ArgumentsFromtheRight, another debate site I frequent, more often than the former debate site, as I tend to find greater dissent, and more intelligent discussion on the latter. In his essay, he points out the shortcomings in Duncan's argument, and appears to propose a notion of theistic morality, where one could potentially lay an absolute morality.

Because of my problems with religious doctrine and its history of morality, I have deep qualms about accepting the notion that Cervera could have been correct about his claim of morality's nature. While my stance is different than both Duncan's and Cervera's, it, surprisingly, more closely resembles that of Cervera's. While Duncan argued that morality is only subjective, something I agreed with, Cervera argued the opposite. I, however, argue that there is a separate entity that is absolute, one which we could functionally acquire our morality from. It is called ethics. Ethics differ from morality in that they solely deal with how we treat other individuals. Morality, however, is simply its own code of conduct; instructing us on a manner on how we behave. Ethics and morality may not necessarily coincide; actually, they have been shown to have a history of direct opposition! Religious "morality" has been responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the Witch Trials, and even Islamic suicide bombing. While these are clearly ethical failures, to the people who have committed those atrocities, what they have done was not only moral, but righteous. Thus the notion of an absolute morality coming from god becomes more dubious when you ascribe religious claims to God's nature.

Ethics, however, do not require any exercise of faith to follow. Ethics, unlike morality in its subjective nature, exists objectively, much like physics, chemistry, or mathematics (actually, it would more closely resemble mathematics, as both rely on rationalism to understand, versus the empiricism used to construct the sciences of physics and chemistry). To put it very loosely, ethics can be understood in terms of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Now despite the religious origins of this famous dictum, it has no metaphysical properties. It is quite rational, and its applications are quite empirical. If you treat other people with dignity, you will likely witness them doing the same to you. Likewise, if you treat them with disrespect or harm, you can expect a reciprocal form of punishment. So long as you do not infringe upon the liberties or self-ownership of other individuals, you are free to exercise your own liberty and self-ownership to any extent you wish - and you can still be ethical.

To place the terms of "morality" and "ethics" into an analogy that can be well understood, one can say that morality equates to "law," whereas ethics equates to "justice." Both are not necessarily the same. Most often, the purpose of law (morality) is to uphold that of justice (ethics). However, we can clearly see that there have existed (and still exist) unjust laws that disrespect human rights. There have been many unjust laws throughout human history, exemplifying where morality and ethics clash. It is here that I have no qualms about denouncing the notion of absolute morality entirely: if there existed an unjust law in my country, I could only hold to it for fear of suffering legal consequences, not because I feel it upholds justice. One of my great fears is that we must fear a world where our liberties are unjustly stripped and intruded upon for the sake of "morality."

What follows below is an excerpt from Sam Harris's recent book, The End of Faith (see Amazon link above). In it, he details many of the rational problems with religious morality, and how it directly contrasts what is perfectly reasonable (including that which is perfectly ethical).

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The War on Sin

In the United States, and in much of the rest of the world, it is currently illegal to seek certain experiences of pleasure. Seek pleasure by a forbidden means, even in the privacy of your own home, and men with guns may kick in the door and carry you away to prison for it. One of the most surprising things about this situation is how unsurprising most of us find it. As in most dreams, the very faculty of reason that would otherwise notice the strangeness of these events seems to have succumbed to sleep.

Behaviors like drug use, prostitution, sodomy, and the viewing of obscene materials have been categorized as "victimless crimes." Of course, society is the tangible victim of almost everything human beings do- from making noise to manufacturing chemical waste- but we have not made it a crime to do such things within certain limits. Setting these limits is invariably a matter of assessing risk. One could argue that it is at the very least, conceivable that certain activities engaged in private, like the viewing of sexually violent pornography might incline some people to commit genuine crimes against others.²¹ There is a tension, therefore, between private freedom and public risk. If there were a drug, or a book, or a film, or a sexual position that led 90 percent of its users to rush into the street and begin killing people at random, concerns over private pleasure would surely yield to those of public safety. We can also stipulate that no one is eager to see generations of children raised on a steady diet of methamphetamine and Marquis de Sade. Society as a whole has an interest in how its children develop, and the private behavior of parents, along with the contents of our media, clearly play a role in this.

But we must ask ourselves, why would anyone want to punish people for engaging in behavior that brings no significant risk of harm to anyone? Indeed, what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it. It is in such cases that the true genius lurking behind many of our laws stands revealed. The idea of a victimless crime is nothing more than a judicial reprise of the Christian notion of sin.

It is no accident that people of faith often want to curtail the private freedoms of others. This impulse has less to do with the history of religion and more to do with its logic, because the very idea of privacy is incompatible with the existence of God. If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the brain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith.²²

A variety of religious notions of wrongdoing can be seen converging here- concerns over nonprocreative sexuality and idolatry especially- and these seem to have given many of us the sense that it is ethical to punish people, often severely, for engaging in private behavior that harms no one. Like most costly examples of irrationality, in which human happiness has been blindly subverted for generations, the role of religion here is both explicit and foundational. To see that our laws against ''vice'' have actually nothing to do with keeping people from coming to physical or psychological harm, and everything to do with not angering God, we need only consider that oral or anal sex between consenting adults remains a criminal offense in thirteen states. Four of the states (Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) prohibit these acts between same-sex couples and, therefore, effectively prohibit homosexuality. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone (these places of equity are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia).²³ One does not have to be a demographer to grasp that the impulse to prosecute consenting adults for nonprocreative sexual behavior will correlate rather strongly with religious faith.

The influence of faith on our criminal laws comes at a remarkable price. Consider the case of drugs. As it happens, there are many substances- many of them naturally occurring- the consumption of which leads to transient states of inordinate pleasure. Occasionally, it is true, they lead to transient states of misery as well, but there is no doubt that pleasure is the norm, otherwise human beings would not have felt the continual desire to take such substances for millennia. Of course, pleasure is precisely the problem with these substances, since pleasure and piety have always had an uneasy relationship.

When one looks at our drug laws- indeed, at our vice laws altogether- the only organizing principle that appears to make sense of them is that anything which might radically eclipse prayer or pro-creative sexuality as a source of pleasure has been outlawed. In particular, any drug (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, marijuana, etc.) to which spiritual or religious significance has been ascribed by its users has been prohibited. Concerns about the health of our citizens, or about their productivity, are red herrings in this debate, as the legality of alcohol and cigarettes attests.

The fact that people are being prosecuted and imprisoned for using marijuana, while alcohol remains a staple commodity, is surely the reductio ad absurdum of any notion that our drug laws are designed to keep people from harming themselves or others.²⁴ Alcohol is by any measure the more dangerous substance. It has no approved medical use, and its lethal dose is rather easily achieved. Its role in causing automobile accidents is beyond dispute. The manner in which alcohol relieves people of their inhibitions contributes to human violence, personal injury, unplanned pregnancy, and the spread of sexual disease. Alcohol is also well known to be addictive. When consumed in large quantities over many years, it can lead to devastating neurological impairments, to cirrhosis of the liver, and to death. In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people annually die from its use. It is also more toxic to a developing fetus than any other drug of abuse. (Indeed, "crack babies'' appear to have been really suffering from fetal-alcohol syndrome.)²⁵ None of these charges can be leveled at marijuana. As a drug, marijuana is nearly unique in having several medical applications and no known lethal dosage. While adverse reactions to drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen account for an estimated 7,600 deaths (and 76,000 hospitalizations) each year in the United States alone, marijuana kills no one.²⁶ Its role as a "gateway drug" now seems less plausible than ever (and it was never plausible).²⁷ In fact, nearly everything human beings do- driving cars, flying planes, hitting golf balls- is more dangerous than smoking marijuana in the privacy of one's own home. Anyone who would seriously attempt to argue that marijuana is worthy of prohibition because of the risk it poses to human beings will find that the powers of the human brain are simply insufficient for the job.

And yet, we are so far from the shady groves of reason now that people are still receiving life sentences without the possibility of parole for growing, selling, possessing, or buying what is, in fact, a naturally occurring plant.²⁸ Cancer patients and paraplegics have been sentenced to decades in prison for marijuana possession. Owners of garden-supply stores have received similar sentences because some of their customers were caught growing marijuana. What explains this astonishing wastage of human life and material resources? The only explanation is that our discourse on this subject has never been obliged to function within the bounds of rationality. Under our current laws, it is safe to say, if a drug were invented that posed no risk of physical harm or addiction to its users but produced a brief feeling of spiritual bliss and epiphany in 100 percent of those who tried it, this drug would be illegal, and people would be punished mercilessly for its use. Only anxiety about the biblical crime of idolatry would appear to make sense of this retributive impulse. Because we are a people of faith, taught to concern ourselves with the sinfulness of our neighbors, we have grown tolerant of irrational uses of state power.

Our prohibition of certain substances has led thousands of otherwise productive and law-abiding men and women to be locked away for decades at a stretch, sometimes for life. Their children have become wards of the state. As if such cascading horror were not disturbing enough, violent criminals- murderers, rapists, and child molesters- are regularly paroled to make room for them.²⁹ Here we appear to have overstepped the banality of evil and plunged to the absurdity at its depths.³⁰

The consequences of our irrationality on this front are so egregious that they bear closer examination. Each year, over 1.5 million men and women are arrested in the United States because of our drug laws. At this moment, somewhere on the order of 400,000 men and women languish in U.S. prisons for nonviolent drug offenses. One million others are currently on probation.³¹ More people are imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses in the United States than are incarcerated, for any reason, in all of Western Europe (which has a larger population). The cost of these efforts, at the federal level alone, is nearly $20 billion dollars annually.³² The total cost of our drug laws- when one factors in the expense to state and local governments and the tax revenue lost by our failure to regulate the sale of drugs- could easily be in excess of $100 billion dollars each year.³³ Our war on drugs consumes an estimated 50 percent of the trial time of our courts and the full-time energies of over 400,000 police officers.³⁴ These are resources that might otherwise be used to fight violent crime and terrorism.

In historical terms, there was every reason to expect that such a policy of prohibition would fail. It is well known, for instance, that the experiment with the prohibition of alcohol in the United States did little more than precipitate a terrible comedy of increased drinking, organized crime, and police corruption. What is not generally remembered is that Prohibition was an explicitly religious exercise, being the joint product of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the pious lobbying of certain Protestant missionary societies.

The problem with the prohibition of any desirable commodity is money. The United Nations values the drug trade at $400 billion a year. This exceeds the annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense. If this figure is correct, the trade in illegal drugs constitutes 8 percent of all international commerce (while the sale of textiles makes up 7.5 percent and motor vehicles just 5.3 percent).³⁵ And yet, prohibition itself is what makes the manufacture and sale of drugs so extraordinarily profitable. Those who earn their living in this way enjoy a 5,000 to 20,000 percent return on their investment, tax-free. Every relevant indicator of the drug trade- rates of drug use and interdiction, estimates of production, the purity of drugs on the street, etc.- shows that the government can do nothing to stop it as long as such profits exist (indeed, these profits are highly corrupting of law enforcement in any case). The crimes of the addict, to finance the stratospheric cost of his lifestyle, and the crimes of the dealer, to protect both his territory and his goods, are likewise the result of prohibition.³⁶ A final irony, which seems good enough to be the work of Satan himself, is that the market we have created by our drug laws has become a steady source of revenue for terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Shining Path, and others.³⁷

Even if we acknowledge that stopping drug use is a justifiable social goal, how does the financial cost of our war on drugs appear in light of the other challenges we face? Consider that it would require only a onetime expenditure of $2 billion to secure our commercial seaports against smuggled nuclear weapons. At present we have allocated a mere $93 million for this purpose.³⁸ How will our prohibition of marijuana use look (this comes at a cost of $4 billion annually) if a new sun ever dawns over the port of Los Angeles? Or consider that the U.S. government can afford to spend only $2.3 billion each year on the reconstruction of Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are now regrouping. Warlords rule the countryside beyond the city limits of Kabul. Which is more important to us, reclaiming this part of the world for the forces of civilization or keeping cancer patients in Berkeley from relieving their nausea with marijuana? Our present use of government funds suggests an uncanny skewing- we might even say derangement- of our national priorities. Such a bizarre allocation of resources is sure to keep Afghanistan in ruins for many years to come. It will also leave Afghan farmers with no alternative but to grow opium. Happily for them, our drug laws still render this a highly profitable enterprise.³⁹

Anyone who believes that God is watching us from beyond the stars will feel that punishing peaceful men and women for their private pleasure is perfectly reasonable. We are now in the twenty-first century. Perhaps we should have better reasons for depriving our neighbors of their liberty at gunpoint. Given the magnitude of the real problems that confront us-terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the spread of infectious disease, failing infrastructure, lack of adequate funds for education and health care, etc.- our war on sin is so outrageously unwise as to almost defy rational comment. How have we grown so blind to our deeper interests? And how have we managed to enact such policies with so little substantive debate?

The God of Medicine

While there is surely an opposition between reason and faith, we will see that there is none between reason and love or reason and spirituality. The basis for this claim is simple. Every experience that a human being can have admits of rational discussion about its causes and consequences (or about our ignorance thereof). Although this leaves considerable room for the exotic, it leaves none at all for faith. There may yet be good reasons to believe in psychic phenomena, alien life, the doctrine of rebirth, the healing power of prayer, or anything else--but our credulity must scale with the evidence. The doctrine of faith denies this. From the perspective of faith, it is better to ape the behavior of one's ancestors than to find creative ways to uncover new truths in the present.

There are sources of irrationality other than religious faith, of course, but none of them are celebrated for their role in shaping public policy. Supreme Court justices are not in the habit of praising our nation for its reliance upon astrology, or for its wealth of UFO sightings, or for exemplifying the various reasoning biases that psychologists have found to be more or less endemic to our species.⁴⁰ Only mainstream religious dogmatism receives the unqualified support of government. And yet, religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty manifestly exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the patently false to achieve primacy over the facts.

Consider the present debate over research on human embryonic stem cells. The problem with this research, from the religious point of view, is simple: it entails the destruction of human embryos. The embryos in question will have been cultured in vitro (not removed from a woman's body) and permitted to grow for three to five days. At this stage of development, an embryo is called a blastocyst and consists of about 150 cells arranged in a microscopic sphere. Interior to the blastocyst is a small group of about 30 embryonic stem cells. These cells have two properties that make them of such abiding interest to scientists: as stem cells, they can remain in an unspecialized state, reproducing themselves through cell division for long periods of time (a population of such cells living in culture is known as a cell line); stem cells are also pluripotent, which means they have the potential to become any specialized cell in the human body--neurons of the brain and spinal cord, muscle cells of the heart, and so forth.

Here is what we know. We know that much can be learned from research on embryonic stem cells. In particular, such research may give us further insight into the processes of cell division and cell differentiation. This would almost certainly shed new light on those medical conditions, like cancer and birth defects, that seem to be merely a matter of these processes gone awry. We also know that research on embryonic stem cells requires the destruction of human embryos at the 150-cell stage. There is not the slightest reason to believe, however, that such embryos have the capacity to sense pain, to suffer, or to experience the loss of life in any way at all. What is indisputable is that there are millions of human beings who do have these capacities, and who currently suffer from traumatic injuries to the brain and spinal cord. Millions more suffer from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Millions more suffer from stroke and heart disease, from burns, from diabetes, from rheumatoid arthritis, from Purkinje cell degeneration, from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and from vision and hearing loss. We know that embryonic stem cells promise to be a renewable source of tissues and organs that might alleviate such suffering in the not too distant future.

Enter faith: we now find ourselves living in a world in which college-educated politicians will hurl impediments in the way of such research because they are concerned about the fate of single cells. Their concern is not merely that a collection of 150 cells may suffer its destruction. Rather, they believe that even a human zygote (a fertilized egg) should be accorded all the protections of a fully developed human being. Such a cell, after all, has the potential to become a fully developed human being. But given our recent advances in the biology of cloning, as much can be said of almost every cell in the human body. By the measure of a cell's potential, whenever the president scratches his nose he is now engages in a diabolical culling of souls.

Out of deference to some rather poorly specified tenets of Christian doctrine (after all, nothing in the Bible suggests that killing human embryos, or even human fetuses, is the equivalent of killing a human being), the U.S. House of Representatives voted effectively to ban embryonic stem-cell research of February 27, 2003.

No rational approach to ethics would have led us to such an impasse. Our present policy on human stem cells has been shaped by beliefs that are divorced from every reasonable intuition we might form about the possible experience of living systems. In neurological terms, we surely visit more suffering upon this earth by killing a fly than by killing a human blastocyst, to say nothing of a human zygote (flies, after all, have 100,000 cells in their brains alone). Of course, the point at which we fully acquire our humanity, and our capacity to suffer, remains an open question. But anyone who would dogmatically insist that these traits must arise coincident with the moment of conception has nothing to contribute, apart from his ignorance, to this debate, Those opposed to therapeutic stem-cell research on religious grounds constitute the biological and ethical equivalent of a flat-earth society. Our discourse on the subject should reflect this. In this area of public policy alone, the accommodations that we have made to faith will do nothing but enshrine a perfect immensity of human suffering for decades to come.

But the tendrils of unreason creep further. President Bush recently decided to cut off funding to any overseas family-planning group that provides information on abortion. According to the New York Times, this "has effectively stopped condom provision to 16 countries and reduced it in 13 others, including some with the world's highest rates of AIDS infection."⁴¹ Under the influence of Christian notions of the sinfulness of sex outside of marriage, the U.S. government has required that one-third of its AIDS prevention funds allocated to Africa be squandered on teaching abstinence rather than condom use. It is no exaggeration to say that millions could die as a direct result of this single efflorescence of religious dogmatism. As Nicholas Kristof points out, "sex kills, and so does this kind of blushing prudishness."⁴²

And yet, even those who see the problem in all its horror find it impossible to criticize faith itself. Take Kristof as an example: in the very act of exposing the medievalism that prevails in the U.S. government, and its likely consequences abroad, he goes on to chastise anyone who would demand that the faithful be held fully accountable for their beliefs:

I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence. For example, evangelicals' discomfort with condoms and sex education has led the administration to policies that are likely to lead to more people dying of AIDS at home and abroad, not to mention more pregnancies and abortion.
But liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable. And liberals sometimes show more intellectual curiosity about the religion of Afghanistan than that of Alabama, and more interest in reading the Upanishads than in reading the Book of Revelation.⁴³

This is reason in ruins. Kristof condemns the "dismal consequences" of faith while honoring their cause.⁴⁴ It is true that the rules of civil discourse currently demand that Reason wear a veil whenever she ventures out in public. But the rules of civil discourse must change.

Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worthy of punishment (sodomy, marijuana use, homosexuality, the killing of blastocysts, etc.). And yet, where suffering and death are found in abundance their causes are often deemed to be good (withholding funds for family planning in the third world, prosecuting nonviolent drug offenders, preventing stem-cell research, etc). This inversion of priorities not only victimizes innocent people and squanders scarce resources; it completely falsifies our ethics. It is time we found a more reasonable approach to answering questions of right and wrong.

21. Ted Bundy claimed, on the eve of his execution, that violent pornography had inscribed certain terrible ideas indelibly into his head. See R. Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), for a discussion of this.


22. There is a distinction between public and private freedoms that I have glossed over here. Clearly there are innumerable behaviors that are blameless in private that we ban in most public spaces, simply because they pose a nuisance to others. Cooking food on a public sidewalk, cutting one's hair on a commercial aircraft, or taking one's pet snake to the movies are among the countless examples of private freedoms that do not translate into public virtues.


23. Happily, the ruling by the Supreme Court in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas seems to have rendered these laws unconditional (see www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/26/scotus.sodomy).


24. Viewing the drug problem from the perspective of health care is instructive: our laws against providing addicts with clean needles have increased the spread of AIDS, hepatitis C, and other blood-borne diseases. Since the purity and dosage of illegal drugs remains a matter of guesswork for the user, the rates of poisoning and overdose from drug use are unnecessarily high (as they were for alcohol during Prohibition). Perversely, the criminal prohibition of drugs has actually made it easier for minors to get them, because the market for them has been driven underground. The laws limiting the medical use of opiate painkillers do little more than keep the terminally ill suffering unnecessarily during their last months of life,


25. L. Carroll, ''Fetal Brains Suffer Badly from the Effects of Alcohol,'' New York Times, Nov. 4, 2003.


26. www.drugwarfacts.com.


27. www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB6010/.


28. These events are described in E. Schlosser, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).


29. Some 51 percent of all violent offenders are released from jail after serving two years or less, and 76 percent were released after serving four years or less (www.lp.org). At the federal level, the average sentence for a drug offense in the U.S. is 6< years (from the Office of National Drug Control Policy [ONDCP] Drug Data Summary, www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov).


30. And yet, this mountain of imponderables reaches higher still. In many states, a person who has been merely accused of a drug crime can have his property seized, and those who informed against him can be rewarded with up to 25 percent of its value. The rest of these spoils go to police departments, which now rely upon such property seizures to meet their budgets. This is precisely the arrangement of incentives that led to this sort of corruption during the Inquisition (if one can even speak of such a process being "corrupted"). Like the heretic, the accused drug offender has no hope but to trade information for a reduced sentence. The person who can't (or won't) implicate others inevitably faces punishments of fantastical severity. Information has grown so valuable, in fact, that a black market for it has emerged. Defendants who have no information to trade can actually buy drug leads from professional informers (and they do not come cheap). The net result of all this is that police departments have learned to target property rather than crime. Property can be seized and forfeited even if a defendant is ultimately found innocent of any criminal offense. One national survey found that 80 percent of property seizures occur without any criminal prosecution whatsoever (www.drugwarfacts.com). Under these enlightened laws, couples in their eighties have permanently lost their homes because a grandchild was caught with marijuana. For more facts of this sort see Schlosser, Reefer Madness.
    The war on drugs has clearly done much to erode our civil liberties. In particular, the standards for search and seizure, pretrial release, and judicial discretion in sentencing have all been revised in an attempt to make this unwinnable war easier to prosecute. Since drug offenses are covered by local, state, and federal jurisdictions, people can be tried multiple times for the same crime- some have been found not guilty at one level, only to receive life sentences upon subsequent prosecution. On more than one occasion, members of Congress have introduced legislation seeking to apply the death penalty to anyone caught selling drugs. Unsurprisingly, our attempts to eradicate the supply of drugs in other countries have been even more detrimental to the liberties of others. In Latin America, we have become a tireless benefactor of human rights violators. (See, for example, the Human Rights Watch website: www.hrw.org.)
    In environmental terms, the war on drugs has been no more auspicious. The aerial spraying of herbicides has hastened the destruction of the rainforest as well as contaminated water supplies, staple crops, and people. The U.S. government has recently sought approval to use a genetically engineered ''killer fungus,'' designed to attack marijuana crops domestically and coca and opium plants abroad. For the moment, some rather obvious environmental concerns have prevented its use. (See www.lindesmith.org.)


31. From the ONDCP Drug Data Summary (March 2003). The war on drugs has also become a great engine of racial inequity for while blacks constitute only 12 percent of the U.S. population and 13 percent of U.S. drug users, 38 percent of those arrested and 59 percent of those convicted for drug crimes are black. Our drug laws have contributed to the epidemic of fatherlessness in the black community and this along with the profits and resultant criminality of the drug trade has devastated our inner cities. (See www.drugwarfacts.com.)


32. Ibid.


33. M. S. Gazzaniga, ''Legalizing Drugs: Just Say Yes,'' National Review, July 10 1995, pp. 26-37, makes a similar estimate. Needless to say, the cost has only grown with time.


34. W. F. Buckley Jr., "The War on Drugs Is Lost," National Review, Feb. 12, 1996


35. www.lindesmith.org.


36. When was the last time someone was killed over an alcohol or tobacco deal gone awry? We can be confident that the same normalcy would be achieved if drugs were regulated by the government. At the inception of the modern ''war on drugs,'' the economist Milton Friedman observed that ''legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement.'' He then invited the reader to "conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order'' (Friedman, ''Prohibition and Drugs,'' Newsweek, May 1, 1972). What was true then remains true after three decades of pious misrule; the criminality associated with the drug trade is the inescapable consequence of our drug laws themselves.


37. According to the U.S. government, twelve of the twenty-eight groups that have been officially classed as terrorist organizations finance their activities, in whole or in part, by the drug trade. (See www.theantidrug.com/drugs_terror/terrorgroups.html.)


38. S. Weinberg, "What Price Glory,'' New York Review of Books, Nov. 6, 2003, pp. 55-60.


39. All of this folly persists, even though the legalized and regulated sale of drugs would most effectively keep them out of the hands of minors (when was the last time someone was caught selling vodka in a school-yard?), eradicate organized crime, reduce the annual cost of law enforcement by tens of billions of dollars, raise billions more in new sales taxes and free hundreds of thousands of police officers for the job of fighting violent crime and terrorism. Against these remarkable benefits stands the fear that the legalization of drugs would lead to an epidemic of drug abuse and addiction. Common sense, as well as comparisons between the United States and places like Holland, reveals this fear to be unfounded. As more than 100 million of the estimated 108 million Americans who have used illegal drugs can attest, addiction is a phenomenon distinct from mere use, and users merely require good information to keep from becoming addicts. Addicts require treatment, of course- for which there are at present insufficient funds.
    This is not to deny that a small percentage of people who use drugs (both legal and illegal) have their lives powerfully disrupted by them. We generally think of this problem as having two stages of severity: ''abuse'' and ''addiction.'' It remains true, however, that most people who use drugs do not abuse them, and many illegal drugs do not readily become sources of addiction even in the hands of abusers (marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, etc.). To say that a drug is addictive is to say that people develop both tolerance to it (and therefore require progressively bigger doses to achieve the same effect) and withdrawal symptoms upon stoppage. It is not hard to see why well-intentioned people would worry that others might become inadvertent slaves of such biochemistry. While opium and its derivatives (like heroin and morphine) are the classic examples of drugs of this sort, nicotine and alcohol can fall into this category as well (depending on usage). Given our laws, however, all users of illicit drugs- whether dysfunctional or not, addicted or not- are considered criminals and subject to arrest, imprisonment, property seizure, and other punishments by the state.
    Our drug policy has created arbitrary and illusory distinctions between biologically active substances, while obscuring valid ones. No one doubts that the use of certain drugs can destroy the lives of certain people. But the same can be said of almost any commodity. People destroy their lives and the lives of their dependents by simply overeating. In 2003 the Centers for Disease Control declared obesity to be the greatest public health problem in the United States, and yet few of us imagine that new criminal laws should be written to control the use of cheeseburgers. Where drugs are a problem, they are a problem whose remedy is better education and better health care, not incarceration. Simply observe the people in public life who are incapable of having a rational discussion on these matters (start with John Ashcroft and work your way down), and you will find that religious faith does much to inform their view of the world.


40. See, e.g., D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, On the Reality of Cognitive Illusions, Psychological Review 103 (1996):582-91


41. Misguided Faith on AIDS (editorial), New York Times, Oct. 15, 2003.


42. N. Kristof, When Prudery Kills, New York Times, Oct. 8, 2003.


43. Ibid.


44. Kristof also misinterprets Einsteins famous statement, Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind, suggesting that Einstein was voicing respect for religious credulity. Science without religion is lame, merely because science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. Whereas religion without science is blind because religion has no access to the truthit was, to Einsteins mind, nothing other than this source of feeling, this striving for something greater that cannot itself be scientifically justified. Faith, therefore, is hunger only; while reason is its food.
    Einstein seemed to consider faith nothing more than a eunuch left to guard the harem while the intellect was away solving the problems of the world. By pretending that it could proceed without any epistemic aspirations whatsoever, Einstein robbed religion of the truth of its doctrine. In so doing, he also relieved it of its capacity to err. This is not the faith that evangelicals, or any other religious believers, have ever practiced. See Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Wings Books, 1954), 41-49.

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Citation:

Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason -1st ed. (Hardcover) pp. 158-169, 257-262. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004

Mouse over for image titles.

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From the new camera:

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From the old camera:

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From others' cameras:

I wrote a new xanga entry, and it's both interesting and quite humorous.  And also, I don't feel like making port of it here, which means you all have to follow the link.  Sucks for you.

Original entry here

What bothers me about many Christians is that they do not want to listen to you unless they think you're one of them. It's like... "don't associate with the enemy, lest Satan corrupts you."

And now since I no longer consider myself a Christian, I notice fewer and fewer people even bothering to listen to what I have to say. Yeah, it's like... they'll hear what I have to say to a point, but if I being to speak my mind, they cover their ears because my words are somehow unsanitary. Now it's as though I'm not even there. No one bothers to speak to me anymore. I'm not complaining... the fact that I have few friends shows I now know whom I can really rely on and whom I can't.

I speak out of frustration of what I know Christians are like. I used to be one of them. I've seen what Christians are like, and what non-Christians are like from both seeing them and being one of them.

Maybe I'm making too harsh of a generalization. To be honest, I was thinking about my experiences with Dr. Jordan today (oh yeah, right now, I'm also thinking... screw the protection of anonymity. His name is Dr. Bruce Fowler, who works under Peace Ministries in Greensburg Pennsylvania. By my experience, I can never recommend entrusting this man to counsel you). I remember what he did and how much damage it really did. It's not so much blame as it is a series of actions... a series of causes and results. But he also forever marred my respect for Christians. He was indeed a very intelligent, learned man. He knew the bible quite well. I question his thinking. And I still wonder to this day what he thinks of me. The reason is after I made the decision not to see him again, I sent him an email calling to cancel the upcoming appointment. However, I decided that out of respect, and to avoid an unnecessary argument, I would not explain why. For some reason, I felt I should just have kept it civil. This is completely contrary to what I would have done, and what I would like to have done, and yet, for some reason that I don't even understand, that's what I did. He simply expressed regret, saying there were some things therapeutically unaddressed, but that he wished the best for me. And that was the last I spoke of him.

If he is like most Christians, he currently sees me as a failure among his patients. Not me being his failure, but me being my failure. I was just a kid who was without hope and lost of God. There was no helping me, not even from a great, wise, conscientious Christian like himself. Poor Kevin. He can only pray for me, and nothing more. He hopes that one day I will see the light of God, and let him be Lord of my life.

If he is not like most Christians, he will see that the onus is upon him. He would not tell himself his own little story to make him forget his own ethical breach. He would realize that he used religion on me to suit his own goals. He will know that he wasn't trying to treat me from a psychological perspective, but change me to be something that he thinks is better. Sure, it may have been out of good intention, but it is not helping, it is meddling.

But I doubt that will ever happen. To him, I will just be "what a shame" and life goes on.

And honestly, that's how I feel many of my Christian friends have reacted toward me ever since I've begun to question my faith. And I've been asking valid questions with surprising answers... answers that I want to share with my friends... and yet, my words fall on deaf ears. It's just, "how can he think that? How can he believe that?" even when they're just questions. At that point, the listening ends. "Sorry, I have to go. I'll talk to you later." And that was the last time I've ever spoken to him/her again. Sure, they're in my friends list of whatever online blogging/networking community there is, but I don't actually correspond with them.

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Forgive my ranting. It is indeed late, and as usual, I cannot word myself as concisely as I'd like to. I'm just sick of superfluous people. I know this seems like attention whoring, but I just want to ask a simple question.

Who of you that read this can I consider real friends? By that, I mean someone who will listen to what I have to say. Not just someone who gets along with me, finds me funny/interesting/attractive/cool/whatever... not just someone who knows me from such and such activity. Who of you can I trust? Who can I trust to really tell everything I believe, everything I feel, everything I am, without fear that suddenly, you will discover that I'm just not the person you want to be talking to, and will suddenly cease contact?

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Edit: I want to include something that a friend of mine left on the LJ port of this post.

The thing about questions of faith is that they are personally asked and personally answered.  Faith can be shaken from the outside, but has to be steaded from the inside.  It can be hard to stand up against strong pressure like that, but you'll be a healthier person for it.

Thanks to sonatanator.

This is the very embodiment of the way of thinking I utterly despise with every ounce of my being.  This country literally does have its own Taliban trying to erect itself atop the would-be grave of the US Constitution.

Stolen from Lindsey.  Random stuff.

1. Your name spelled backwards? gnik nivek

2. Where were your parents born? Iowa, most likely DeMoines.

3. What's the last thing you downloaded to you computer? I think a sample playlist for a Russian music album

4. What's your favorite restaurant? Hunan Kitchen in Murrysville

5. Last time you swam in a pool? Probably at Chad's sister's birthday party.

6. Have you ever been in a school play? Probably.  I honestly don't remember, but I've been in a musical once.

7. How many kids do you want? I'm not sure if I want any yet, but maybe a few.

8. Type of music you dislike most? Country, despite its exceptions.

9. What is your favorite, random , thing to do? Well, you make it so much more difficult when you add in the word, "random."  Probably reading the newspaper.

10. Do you have cable? Nope, never have (other than college or when staying in hotels)

11. If you had all the time in the world what would you do? Read, accumulate knowledge.  Gain as much wisdom as humanly possible then make a great, comprehensive, biblically proportioned book of intelligence so people would no longer be idiots.

12. Ever prank-called anybody? Only once to my knowledge.  It was hilarious, because I called my one roommate from my freshman year, and I pretended to be my friend Veronica (who was with me when I did this), and I imitated her voice (albeit horribly) and syntax (which I did quite well with), and he was like, "You can't fool me.  I know it's you, Veronica."

13. Best friend? Good question.  It depends on what you mean by friend, and I mean that more seriously than you think.

14. Would you go bungee jumping or sky diving? Sky diving, and I intend to do this at least once before I die.

15. Furthest place you ever traveled? Ecuador

16. Do you have a garden? Not my own.

17. What's your favorite comic(strip)? My favorite comicstrips from the papers are (in order), Dilbert, Pearls before Swine, Bizarro.  My favorite webcomics are Dominic Deegan, 8-bit Theater, Aikida, and the discontinued Mall Monkeys.

18. Do you really know all the words to your national anthem? Yes, but not the other verses

19. Bath or Shower, morning or night? I shower whenever I have time and whenever I need to.  This often happens after work, as I work at a factory.

20. Best movie you've seen in the past month? I haven't seen many movies lately, so probably the Corpse Bride

21. Favorite pizza toppings? Meat lovers: Pepperoni, sausage and bacon

22. Chips or popcorn? Chips.  Sadly, in my freshman year of college I ate popcorn so much that I grew sick of it.

23. What color shirt do you usually wear? Black.  Just as Lindsey said, it's not because I'm depressing, it's just highly available and matches everything easily.

24. Have you ever smoked peanut shells? What?

25. Have you ever been in a beauty pageant? No.

26. Orange Juice or apple? Orange Juice.

27. Who was the last person you went out to dinner with and where? I believe it was when I took Grace and Charles to Bella Luna.  Good eatin'.

28. Favorite type chocolate bar? Toblerone, if you can consider those "bars."

29. When was the last time you voted at the polls? I've never voted at the polls, only through absentee ballots.

30. Last time you ate a homegrown tomato? I don't know, but my mom does grow her own tomatoes.

31. Have you ever won a trophy? Probably.

32. Are you a good cook? I don't cook often, but when I do, I can manage.

33. Do you know how to pump your own gas? Of course.

34. Ever ordered from an infomercial? No, but I order stuff from the internet all the time.

35. Sprite or 7-up? I have not tried both of them within close enough of a time proximity to fairly judge and decide.

36. Have you ever had to wear a uniform to work? I've had to wear the shirt and tie for some jobs, or at my gas station job, just the standard t-shirt with "Buy n Fly" on it.

37. Last thing you bought at a Walgreens? I've heard of that place, but I don't think I've ever been to one.

38. Ever thrown up in public? Not that I can recall.

39. Would you prefer being a millionaire or finding true love? Well, I'm pretty sure I've already found love as well as a small amount of opulence, but I think I'd rather be a millionaire because it has more utility and is more difficult to achieve than finding love (from where I stand).

40. Do you believe in love at first site? I tend to doubt it, but occasionally I think it's possible.

41. Can ex's be just friends? Yes.

42. Who was the last person you visited in a hospital? I don't remember.

43. Did you have a lot of hair as a baby? I don't know.

44. What message is on your answering machine? Uh, I'll have to check because I don't exactly remember how it goes on either the home machine or the cell's voicemail.

45. Where would you like to go? Russia

46. What was the name of your first pet? Sammy

47. What kinda backpack do u have, and what's in it? A normal black one, currently nothing.

48. Where is your second home? Buy n Fly

49. What is one thing you are grateful for today? That I'm done with work for the day.

50. What do you think about most. I'm pretty certain my thoughts are rather evenly dispersed, topically.

_____________________________________________________

 
1} Last thing you burned while attempting to cook? Just the onion and garlic in this stir fry I was trying to make.

2} Describe yourself in three "s" - Sarcastic, smart, senile.

3} How long does it take you to get ready for your day? If I'm in a hurry, two minutes.  If normal, 15-30.  If I have time, and I'm about to go somewhere or do something important, 45.

4} Favorite place to blow $50? Online.  But if I'm at NewEgg, it certainly exceeds $50.

5} How many people have you thought were "the one"? I never make such conclusions so easily.

6} What is something that turns you off from the opposite sex? Airheadedness and superficiality, but that goes for both genders.

7} What kind of car do you drive? None.  I'm carless and car insuranceless.

8} What's in your CD player/ipod right now? I don't have a cd player, and in my mp3 player... just random music.

9} What celebrity would you have coffee with? I don't know, because I don't know which celebrities I'd want to spend time with.  Maybe Margaret Cho.

10} What celebrity would you NOT have coffee with? Probably the majority of them.

11} What kind of toothpaste do you use? Colgate Total Whitening.

12} What time do you go to bed? Whenever the head hits the pillow.  This could mean immediately after I get home from work, or at 3am.

13} Last movie you saw? Not sure, probably The Corpse Bride.

14} Last TV show you watched? I almost never watch tv.  Probably some Daria episodes that were downloaded.

15} Who is your best friend? Well, I know I already gave an ambiguous answer, but if I had to give an answer on the spot, I'd say Charles.

16} Who in your family do you best get along with? I get along with all of them pretty nicely.

17} Who do you have a crush on? I'm impervious to crushes.

18} What time is it right now? 5:42pm

19} Are you planning a vacation/travel? No, but there are a few places I intend to go to within the next year.

20} When/Where was the last time you traveled? Harrisburg to see college friends, and New York/New Jersey before that, and Ecuador before that.

22} How old will you be in 10 years? 30

23} Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I honestly couldn't even venture a guess.  So I'll just say that I'll be dead or that the apocalypse has ensued by then.

24} Sinful snacking weakness? Whatever tastes good, nothing specifically.

25) Do you like roller coasters? Yes.

26} Ever run out of gas? Nope.

27} Ever been on a train? Amtrak has been getting quite a bit of my money lately.

28} Ever been on a blind date? Not really.

29} Ever been to Europe? No, but I want to go.

30} What would you do if you could be the opposite sex for one day? I would have sex with me to see if I was any good.

31} Would you tell anyone it was really you? Hell yes.

32} Ever been arrested? No.

33} Have a crush on anyone you work with? Excluding the fact that I never get crushes, no.  There has never been a single person in all of my five (or so) jobs that I've even been remotely interested in or attracted to.

34} What is something you believe in? Now's not a good time to ask me.

35} What is something you fear? I do not have any fears, I generally only become afraid at moments of shock (ie, car wreck incidents)

36} Big or small? For..?

37} What is the worst physical or emotional pain you have ever experienced? Physical: A tossup between Scarlett Fever when I was five (it was bad enough to retain the memory), and the physical shock I felt when waking up from the car wreck in April.  Emotional: general depression spurred from utter hopelessness.

38} What is your favorite television show? Daria

39} Ever Photoshopped yourself to look better in a picture? Are you kidding? Why do you think I never have blemishes or acne?

40} Tell us something about your childhood. I was a nerd, annoying, obnoxious, and had very few friends.

41} What would it cost for you to flash the person next to you? Well, there's no one next to me.

42} Best time to catch you in a good mood? When I get good news of plans to spend time with friends I rarely see.

43} If you could be anything for one day, what would it be? Dead; in the afterlife, to see what it entails.

44} Most prized possession? Material?  Probably my computer.  Immaterial?  My thoughts.

45} Would you ever sell it/how much? Well, I can't sell my thoughts (unless I do so in that aforementioned book of comprehensiveness), but my computer would need several hundred dollars, considering I just bought a bunch of hardware for it.

46} What is one of your pet peeves? Ignorance.

47} Favorite kind of ice cream? Probably cookie dough.

48} Coolest thing that happened today? I hit my thumb with a rubber hammer and got a blood blister.

I'm sorry to disappoint everyone, but the fact is that I'm still alive.

And I shall prove it by exemplifying this dastardly display of activity!

Actually, I rather like this survey because it analyzes your playlist. Let's see...

How many total songs?
1250

Sort by Song Title
First: "A Better Son/Daughter" - Rilo Kiley
Last: "Zvoni" - Russkiy Razmer (Interestingly, none of my song titles that begin with "Z" are in English)

Sort by Artist Name, then Song Title
First: "Panihida" - Archangel'skiy [performed by] Afanasiev's Choir
Last: "Wannabe" - Zeromancer

Sort by time:
Shortest: "End!" - Russkiy Razmer - 0:05
Longest: "Sarasiruha" - Palaiyur Doraismy Ayyar - 22:29

Sort by Album:
First track: "Symphony of the Dead" - Therion - A'arab Zaraq - Lucid Dreaming
Last track: "Glaza" - Del'fin - Zvezda

TopTen Most Played: [this will be difficult considering that I justreinstalled Windows, and much of this data has been lost - I'll referto my Last.fm profile for this one.  And yes, I'm not actually doing it accuratelybecause some songs are redundant - three different mp3s can have thesame ID3 title, so I'm skipping that]
1) "Zaupokoynaya ekteniya" - Kalinin [performed by] The choir of St. John the Forerunner Church
2) "Schwarze Sonne" - E Nomine
3) "Dnes' spaseniye" - Alexandra Govorova's Choir
4) "Opus Magnum" - E Nomine
5) "Padre Nuestro" - E Nomine
6) "Lagoon" - Nightwish
7) "The Shining Path" - Tristania
8) "Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan" - Nightwish
9) "Dnes' visit na drevye" - Sergei Trubachev
10) "Vater Unser" - E Nomine

10 Most Recently Played [I can only offer my best guesses with this, so it won't be in order]
1) "Kheruvimskaya" - Afanasiev's Choir
2) "Path vol. II" - Apocalyptica
3) "Day Eleven: Love" - Ayreon
4) "Nezhnost'" - Del'fin
5) "Mea Culpa" - Enigma
6) "Schwarze Sonne" - E Nomine
7) "March of Mephisto" - Kamelot
8) "Sirenian Shores" - Sirenia
9) "O Magnum Mysterium" [ the remainder of the mass] - Tomás Luis de Victoria
10) "Saturnine" - Tristania

Find "sex", how many songs show up? Zero... I wasn't expecting that.

Find "death", how many songs show up? 3, but 10 if the word is "dead"

Find "love", how many songs show up? 21

Yeah, so I think I'll perhaps use this thing now.  And what shall I use it for?   A survey.  That's right.  Another one of those damned surveys.  If you were hoping for something profound, you've searched the wrong locations.  I'm not going to post anything interesting here simply because MySpace = a shit.  Just like LiveJournal.  I'm only going to use them to post meaningless garbage like this, and so I can view others' profiles.  If you want to read something I wrote that's borderline meaningful, refer to my xanga.

Now.

1. What time is it in one hour?: 1:54am
2. Name as it appears on birth certificate?: Kevin Michael King
3. Height? 5'9"
4. Do You Drive?: I make no guarantees about my aptitude of driving.
5. Chicken or Beef?: Chicken
6. Chinese zodiac: Ox.  My astrological zodiac is also bovine, however: Taurus.
7. All hair colors: Dark brown normally, occasionally I'll dye it black.
8. Eyelash color: brown
9. weight? Usually between 135 and 140.  I'm a scrawny kid.
10. Shoe size: 13
11. Glasses, contacts or neither?: Contacts, but I'm about to get LASIK surgery
12. Braces?: I had them.
13. Wished Piercing/tattoos?: I'm not interested in them right now, but I might consider them later.
14. From: Murrysville, PA
15. Current residence: See above
16. Siblings name and age: Alyssa 26, Lauren 18, Stephanie 15, Jeffrey 13, Jacob 11 (I think), Michaela 8 (I think), Alana 5.

******HAVE YOU EVER******
17. Gotten super wasted?: Heh... I kinda can't.
18. Gotten so drunk you don't remember what happend? No
19. Drank 5 liters of beer in 2 hours? no, and I don't like beer.
20. Had an Irish carbomb: what? no, not that I know what that is.
21. Skipped school by peer pressure? the only time I've ever skipped school was because I was ill.
22. Bungee jumped?: No, and I'd rather try skydiving.
23. Kissed someone not related to you 30 years older than you?: no.  I'm not into the age difference.
24. Kissed someone of the same sex not related to you?: yes
25. Made out with more than two people in one day: no
26.Hit your head somewhere and been knocked out?: The only time I've everbeen knocked out by merit of shock was my one car wreck.
27. TP'd someone's house?: no, that's kinda lame.
28.Won something of value?: A GameCube.  Only I never play it. Actually, one of my friends has it and I really don't care whether ornot I ever see it again.
29. Asked a stranger out?: no
30. Been rejected by someone?: No
31. Been in love with someone who didnt know it?: Based on experience, I'm impervious to crushes
32. Been to over 5 funerals? : no
33. Used a lighter?: Yeah
34. Been on stage?: Yes

****FAVORITE******
35. Pasta: I don't know... lasagna I suppose
36. Ice cream flavor: Cookie dough is always good.
37. Store for clothes: The thrift store.
38. School subject(s): Science (to be extremely broad), philosophy, and theology.
39. Breakfast cereal: Crispix all the way, man.
40. Number and why: Four, because it is in this sentence.
41. Book and why: I can't say I have a particularly favorite one, but I like books.  Yep.
42. Horror Movie: I've seen some horror movies, but none of them really impressed me.
43. Candy: I.. actually don't know.
44. Black Soda: Probably Barq's root beer.
45. Color: black, then gray.
46. Vacation spot(s): I don't know, but not the beach.  Too much sun and human life.
47. Sport to watch on tv: I don't watch sports that much, but I'd have to say football if at all.
48. Sport to play: I don't normally play sports, but I enjoy them all equally.
49. Fruit: Oranges and bananas.
50. Sound: Rain and thunder.
51. Fast food restaraunt: No thanks.
52. Cartoon Character: Daria
53. Holiday the first half of the year: I don't have any interest in holidays.
54. Name for a boy: Vincent
55. Name for a girl: Aya

******DO YOU PREFER******
56. Chocolate, strawberry or vanilla?: Vanilla tastes better, but chocolate is more addictive
57. Boys or girls?: For...?
58. Long relationships or one night stands: The former.
59.Dogs or cats or horses?: I like dogs because they will always beinterested in seeing you (unlike cats), but I like cats too.  Youcan't exactly cuddle with horses, though.
60. comedies or scary movies: Comedies.
61. Silver or gold?: Silver
62 Croutons or bacon bits?: Well, bacon bits are really good if you have them on pizzas.

******THINGS THAT COME TO MIND******
63. Potato: Versatile vegetable.
64. Tomato: Necessity to any sandwich
65. School: Enlightenment
66. Grass: ground photosynthetic.
67. Cow: [new idiom]: Singing to cows.
68. Canada: It needs to annex the United States.
69. Mouse: Lab
70. Hand: Tool

******THE PAST 48 HOURS, HAVE YOU******
71. Watched a movie? no
72. Talked on the phone?: Probably
73. Cried?: no
74. Threw up?: No, but I saw some images of certain people and had a gag reflex.
75. Drank a glass of water?: no
76. Gone to the bathroom?: yes
77. Read a book or magazine?: yes
78. Watched tv?: I almost never watch television
79. Looked in the mirror?: yes
80. Taken a shower?: yes
81.Taken a picture?: I'm pretty sure I left my new digital camera on thetrain.  I'd be distraught, but instead I'm just thinking that it'sreplacable.
82. Listened to music? Of course.  New Concert Choir cd from college.  It's most excellent.
83. Hugged or kissed someone?: Yes.
84. Done your hw?: I don't have homework, but I do have some things I need to get done.
85. Told someone you loved them? I do this all the time.

***DO YOU BELIEVE IN....******
86.Heaven?: I'm not making any uninformed decisions of beliefcurrently.  Even if I did, I'd still be unsure about its nature.
87.A one true love?: You can truly love any number of people in yourlifetime.  It's just a matter of how time (or fate, if you're intothat) plays out.
88. Aliens? Refer to question 86.
89. Fun for the entire family? uh, sure.  was that supposed to be profound or something?
90. Freedom of speech?: Damned straight.
91. Love?: yes
92. Magic?: No.  Even the seemingly explicable can be defeated with empiricism.

*******SOME RANDOM STUFF******
93. Last movie you saw in theatres? The Corpse Bride
94. Are you listening to music right now?: No.
95. What color shirt are you wearing?: Black
96. Do you like your middle name? It's not interesting, but I'm really apathetic considering my middle name is never used.
97. What is the best thing since sliced bread: Contact lenses.
98. What color is your backpack?: The one I use when I pack for trips is black.
99. What time is it now? 2:15am