Here's An Atheist Strategy: BE A MENSCH

I for one am actually tired of people assuming I'm an asshole as soon as they learn I'm as atheist. I am an asshole, but I'm not an asshole because I'm an atheist.

And what good does it possibly do us to be dicks in the name of atheism?

What am I talking about? you may be wondering. Well for instance:

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." -- Stephen Fry

Well, I would love to sit down with Stephen Fry and talk about that or whatever else he'd like to talk about, I think he's very wonderful in very many ways. I don't think that the quote above was the most brilliant think he ever wrote or said. Not even in the top 5,000. And it disturbs me how many atheists quote that as if it were the pinnacle of Fry's brilliant career.



It irks me how many atheists brag about how unpleasant they are to Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious people who knock on their door. Some of them have begun an undeclared contest (For all I know the competition may actually have been explicitly declared in some circles, but I haven't actually seen that yet.) to see who can be the most unpleasant in such situations. Some of them can think of nothing to do vis a vis religion but verbally abuse it and waste everybody's time in court having the Ten Commandments removed from public places and/or gaining permission to add gruesome atheist billboards and would-be artworks to the public world.

Conversely, it pleases me that I am far from the only one to whom it has occurred that there may actually be something to gain for the cause of atheism and of tolerance for those with different worldviews in being known as an atheist and being nice -- like Stephen Fry is, though you wouldn't know it if you only know him from the... (I'm being nice now, the whole point of this goddam post is being nice.) ...the people who only quote that one... thing from him.

I Sometimes Do A Sort Of Reverse Walter Mitty

That is to say, instead of imagining feats of great boldness like the timid Walter Mitty does, I daydream about how my life might have turned out if I had been much less bold and much more sensible: talked back less to teachers and professors and bosses, for example, or become an accountant, or consumed much, much less alcohol and recreational drugs, or just in general not been so incredibly stupid so very often.



Once in an interview Jack Nicholson said: "I want everything to be exactly the way it is." I think that's wise. Because everything is exactly the way it is. And how better to be able to cope with everything than to eagerly embrace its reality? Maybe it's not wise, but... insubstantial to the point of nothingness. Or perhaps it's simultaneously both. Maybe it's the sort of point those Zen guys are trying to make. You may ask, But how can you make yourself want anything other than what you actually do want?

And at this point, generally, I want to just get away from the Zen guru and get on with my life. Am I rejecting his wisdom, or enacting it quite well?



I don't know, but it does seem that I still barge ahead recklessly in some ways. Several times on this blog I've quoted bob Dylan to the effect that "I try my best to be just like I am." Everything: that includes me, of course, and wanting everything to be exactly the way it is... Hm. Hopelfully I barge more effectively in some ways than decades ago. I don't get drunk all the time any more. I haven't had a drop of booze in 2015. And I don't miss it. I'm barging recklessly onward into the Anonymi Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum at the moment. Recklessly attempting to more accurately memorize the chronology and picture the topology of the first Crusade. Okay, I guess I have calmed down a bit in some ways. Hagenmeyer's edition



contains maybe 5 words of apparatus for every word of text, and in the past I've verbally abused critical editions which seem to entirely lose track of the text about which all of the fuss supposedly is -- but Hagenmeyer's introduction and footnotes and indices are actually not completely useless. (They're in German except for long citations from various Latin works, so get multilingual already and get with the program.)

As you can see, I'm still not an accountant, and no, I don't currently have a university job or a fellowship, I haven't had either in 23 years. Still hopelessly reckless and impractical, from some people's point of view. But you see, I'm trying to be just like I am, and to convince you that that's a very good thing. Nobody else is going to do it, nobody else in the whole wide world ever could. Is it reckless? Or is it the only thing I possibly can do?

Chess Log: This Win Was More Luck Than Skill

I played Black. White was rated about 50 points higher than I was, and played like it, pushing me around for most of the game.

1. e4 c5 2. ♘f3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. ♘xd4 ♘f6 5. ♘c3 a6 6. ♗d3 e5 7. ♘f3 h6 8. ♗d2 b5 9. ♘d5 ♗b7 10. ♘xf6 ♕xf6 11. ♗c3 ♘c6 12. ♕e2 b4 13. ♗d2 ♗e7 14. c3 a5 15. O-O O-O 16. ♗b5 ♘b8 17. cxb4 axb4 18. ♗xb4 ♗a6 19. ♗xa6 ♘xa6 20. ♗c3 ♘c5 21. ♖fe1 ♕g6 22. a3 ♖a4 23. ♗b4 ♘e6 24. ♖ad1 ♘f4 25. ♕f1 ♖e8 26. g3 d5 27. exd5 ♗xb4 28. axb4 ♖xb4 29. ♖xe5 ♖xb2 30. ♖xe8 ♔h7 31. ♔h1 ♕g4 32. gxf4 ♕xf3 33. ♕g2 ♕xd1 34. ♕g1 ♕f3 35. ♕g2 ♖b1 36. ♖e1 ♖xe1 0-1 {White checkmated}

After I blundered and went a Rook down with 29. ... ♖xb2?? 30. ♖xe8, I thought for a second about resigning, but I have this principle: "Don't resign." With players around my low skill level, you really never know what we're going to do, ergo, a position which would be hopeless in a grandmaster game can still result in a win. Shortly after my blunder, White blundered with 32. gxf4?? , allowing me to checkmate a few moves later. (Notice how White also did not resign -- quite reasonable, after my 29th move.)

The Salon Capital-G "God" Fake Outrage

"jeeberz! wee awl hav t start ritin 'God' sted uh 'god' cause sum dweeb at salon sez so."

"No we don't."

"o thatz rite, wee dont."

"Nope. We can write His name however we want to, the same way everybody else in the Western world can, ever since the Inquisition closed up in the early 19th century, if not for much longer than that."

"so whyz so mennie peeple so upset bout this?"

"That's a darn good question, Sparky. I think maybe sometimes people who have no real problems like to pretend that they do."

"i meen -- in sum partz uv th whirled, atheists actually R persekyootid!"

"That's right, Sparky."

"i meen - whut if sum atheist iz n jale n packastan jest fr bein a atheist, n mabee sheez gunna face eksuhkyootion jest fr bein a atheist, n what if shee heres bout theez doofuses ovr heer screemin bluddy merder n nobody DID nothn tue thm? howz shee gunna feel?"

"I wouldn't blame her a bit if she felt disgusted, Sparky."

"i mite start ritn 'God' jest to spight sum a theez doofusuhz with no reel problums!"

'Again -- you and I are free to rite Gawd however we feel like writing it. Just as free as we were before Salon's grammar Nazis stirred up all these dweebs. The other day I decided to started capitalizing 'He' and 'His' and so forth, when referring to God and Jeebus. I stopped capitalizing those pronouns a couple of years ago because I felt peer pressure from dweebs just like these ones."

"good fr yu, perfessr! yu no, uv kors, whut most peepl uv dun t grammr notsees az long az thair hav bin grammr notsees."

"What's that?"

"ugnor um! yu nu that, perfessr!"

"Oh, yes. Yes, of course. This dweeb at Salon must be elated. He probably hasn't gotten this much attention in -- ever."

"i NO, perfessr!"

And Now, I'm Gonna Act Sorta Weird

yr verr nice person. i like yu verr much. thnk yu verr much, pleez.

yu know that i like kittiez verr much. i thnk they arr verr nice. that is jest my opinyun. but yu du not evr skrach me. the kittiez cant hlp it, no kittiez are rilly tame. wen yu tuch uh kittie verr gentlee on top uv the hed it iz verr nice fr yu an th kittie both.

that iz all for now. we both like kittiez verr much. thnk yu verr much, pleez.

ps: now i will sho yu how 2 rite. i almos frgot:

More Self-Criticism

A couple of days ago, in the blog post Signs That There's Something Seriously Wrong With Me, I attempted to begin a course of rigorous self-criticism. Now I'll attempt to continue that criticism and get more in-depth:

Earlier today I blogged about a popular talking point among movement atheists, the assertion that they know the Bible better than Christians do, that many of them have read it all the way through. I... Uh... Well I flat-out called that assertion horseshit. So in the post about bible-reading, it seems I did pretty much exactly what I criticized myself for a couple of days ago: I was harshly unpleasant, I delivered more or less a verbal slap in the face.

Well... that's what I do here, in a lot of posts anyway: criticize others without a lot of restraint. But I'm actually not going to criticize the harsh blog post about Bible-reading right now; rather, I'm going to examine some of my actions following the publishing of that post. Maybe I need to critique such posts, maybe I very badly need to do so, but facing that possibility is more than I can handle right now. Crawl before you can walk.

I linked the Bible-reading post in a few online discussion groups, and right away I got some negative responses from atheists claiming to know the Bible very well. Today's self-criticism will consist of examining my responses to some of those comments:

One person claimed that I could open a Bible to any page and he'd be able to tell me exactly how the text had been altered. My response to that was: "Ah, more bullshit, right on cue!" Last I checked there had been no response to that, neither by the person I was addressing nor from a third party.

Another person asked what was my evidence that movement atheists didn't know the Bible well? I told him that I had already answered that question in the link to the blog post, which mentioned how movement atheists' discussion of the Bible tended to revolve around the same 12 verses from Genesis and Leviticus and 5 snarky quotes about the Bible from famous people. He said that wasn't an answer. I felt it was an answer, but I didn't respond, nothing to say occurring to me which I felt would be productive. (Insulting responses occurred to me but I kept them to myself.) After we had exchanged a few more comments, some having to do with the Flood, I said that I was unsure whether Moses or Jesus had existed, much less Noah; he said he doubted if any of them existed; by "all of them" I understood him to mean "all of the people mentioned in the Bible," and I said: "That's exactly the kind of statement that makes me doubt you've read the Bible at all." Perhaps a minute later, I commented: "Sorry, maybe I misunderstood you: if by 'all of them' you just mean 'Noah, Moses and Jesus,' that's certainly completely different than if you meant 'all of the people mentioned in the Bible.'" This guy had been sending a pretty steady of stream of comments, and I waited a while for more, but no more came, and that's when it occurred to me that he might have broken off the conversation, perhaps un-subscribed from the thread, because I was being rude and insulting.

Perhaps other people looking on both of those threads un-subscribed because I was being rude.

Maybe people stop communicating with me all the time because I'm being rude.

I want to be an extremely rich and famous writer. But if I became rich and famous, and got invited to be a guest on "Conan," and Conan and I were chatting about, oh, let's say, the Bible, and at a certain point the crowd responded to something which Conan or I had said with enthusiastic applause, and I turned to the audience, or should I say turned on them, and interrupted the applause by saying something like, for instance, "Applauding that just demonstrates that you're all uneducated and ignorant," well, I suppose it's possible that one single such comment at such a place and time might suddenly make me much less popular. I can imagine Conan, and other talk-show hosts, not inviting me back to their shows because of one single remark like that. And the thing is: I can easily imagine myself saying something like that at such a time and place, saying it spontaneously, without a thought.

And the thing is -- I've said a lot of things like that to a lot of different people over the years. In fact, I've said a lot of things which were much harsher than that to perfect strangers, for no reason at all other than that I thought it would be funny to be mean.

Okay. Getting clearer and clearer: I have a problem. It's especially a problem if I want millions of people to love me.

Up until that other post a couple of days ago I tended to agree with my Mom's opinion of me: that I'm a sensitive angel and a misunderstood genius. Can't really go 100% with that assessment any more. (Thinking about this reminded me of Marge Simpson looking at each member of her family in turn and saying what she admired about them, and coming to Bart, and saying: "I like Bart's... [long pause] ...I like Bart.") Whaddayagonnado, she's my Mom. I love you, Mom. But if I continue in this new habit of looking mercilessly at myself, maybe I can become a little less of an unbearable asshole. And maybe that will lead to some good changes in my life. I would like a whole bunch of good changes in my life, please.

One thing I'm not going to do is to start lying, and saying positive things I don't mean. For example: I stand by what I said about movement atheists/New Atheists not being the Biblical scholars they claim to be. It may be a harsh truth, but it's the truth. But maybe I can change the way I phrase things, change my choice of words. Maybe in some situations, for example, "I call bullshit" is a less constructive choice of words than, oh, I don't know... "I think we may have been living with an illusion here." I will give all of this some serious thought.

As always, I wonder how many Facebook groups I've been banned from today.

Atheists Who Claim, Among Other Things, That They've Read The Entire Bible

You ever wonder why so many atheists who claim they've read the entire Bible only ever talk about 12 verses from Genesis and Leviticus, plus 5 snarky quotes about the Bible from famous people? If you have, I certainly hope it didn't take you too long to figure out that it's because they're actually only ever read those 12 verses and 5 quotes.

Now let me be clear -- some atheists actually have read the entire Bible.



For example, a lot of academic Biblical scholars are atheists. I wouldn't be surprised if you're surprised to hear this: those academics don't tend to announce loud and proud that they're atheists, the way that New Atheists, aka movement atheists, tend to do. In fact, they tend to suck up to the huge rich religious institutions which butter their bread much too much to suit me. (NO ONE ESCAPES MY WRATH! NOT EVEN ME!)

Back to the movement atheists: who are they kidding? Each other, that's who. The nonsense about how they've all studied the entire Bible AND the Koran AND the Epic of Gilgamesh is a familiar example to anyone who's familiar with this movement. I came across another example today, a particularly striking example of an atheist kidding him- or herself: someone asking rhetorically why religious believers are so so desperate to gain the approval of atheists. I'll tell you why, Sparky: because they're not. Because you made that up.



But how do I know that so many movement atheists/New Atheists are making up that bit about having read the entire Bible? It's not just that they only mention those 12 verses and 5 snarky quotes over and over and over and over, and never mention Moses' confrontations of Pharaoh, or Ezra, and how it seems pretty clear now that it was Ezra and not Moses who collected and edited the Pentateuch, or Saul and Jonathon and David and Goliath and Solomon and Bathsheeba, or Job, or any of the particularly dramatic aspects of Revelation, or anything. If you've read all 2000 pages you've noticed more than those 12 verses. But over and above that, if there really was a community of Bible readers here, then people like Michael Paulkovich would get laughed out of that community long before being published in its leading periodicals. I'm not saying that Paulkovich hasn't read the entire Bible, it's just possible that he has. But it seems pretty likely that he's somehow managed to avoid any knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics which were written around the same time. That sort of avoidance is possible with one individual who's already gone to the trouble of reading the entire Bible, but extremely unlikely impossible in an entire close-knit community full of people thoroughly familiar with the Bible.

On the contrary, what we have here is a bubble, people sealing themselves off from those who actually have studied these ancients texts. Sealing themselves off and creating a fictional world in which religious believers are desperate for their approval and the entire Bible is like Leviticus and ancient Judea and Galilee were swarming with historians and there were newspapers and detailed court records so that anyone remotely resembling Jesus would have been mentioned in numerous non-Biblical written sources, a fictional world in which Muslims are either terrorists or approve of terrorism, and Obama is secretly an atheist because no Christians are as progressive politically as he is, and only religious believers teach Biblical studies in universities, and so forth.

Obviously, not all movement atheists/New Atheists are that wrong about all of the above. The point is that none of the above is immediately laughed out of the room, and all of it should be. All of the above is directly at odds with common knowledge. (Again -- maybe except for the part about the religious beliefs of academic Biblical scholars. Again, that may not be common knowledge, because the scholars tend to suck up too much to the religious institutions who give them all those fat grants and fellowships, and so they don't want to rock the boat by making their lack of belief too plain. The same way that almost none of the academics dare to rock the boat by voicing less than full certainty that Jesus existed. NO ONE ESCAPES MY WRATH!)

What's the point of shaking off nonsensical religious beliefs only to turn around and either constantly spout other nonsense, or act as if that other nonsense is fine because it's atheists who are spouting it? Sorry guys, but I'm not having it. The main point here is making sense. The existence or non-existence of God is just one of very many topics upon which we can make sense or not. You don't get a free pass from me on all those other topics just because we agree on that one.