It's Easy If You Try

-by 'tamerlane'

Define "Normal"
In his essay 'Imagine No Religion', Edgar Dahl confirms John Lennon's observation that imagining a world without religion "isn't hard to do." It's especially easy for Dahl, who was born & raised in communist East Germany, where religious belief was virtually non-existent.

Dahl begins his essay, which is one of several in 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, by having his fellow ex-DDR citizens responding to a German census question, "Do you believe in God" with "No, I’m normal." And, while Dahl's pejorative use of the word "normal" may raise hackles, it does expose the hubris of believers who assume their way of thinking is inherently "normal".

How to Kill God in One Easy Step
For half a century, the Warsaw Bloc served as one, giant social experiment. Generations of eastern Europeans were raised and lived in a society devoid of religion. Those ancient pagan traditions, once reworked into the Christian Nativity, were reworked yet again into the secular "Winterfest". Most importantly, children were not indoctrinated in religious belief or ritual. In Dahl's world, only a very tiny, fringe minority claimed "to be in contact with gods, demons, and other beings no one has ever seen." Dahl and the other 98.7% of the population lived perfectly normal, fulfilling lives that did not include a god.

Although church activities were constrained, and atheism proclaimed, religious practice was never forbidden in the East. Even if you faced a certain amount of derision and ostracism, you were free to openly worship. Yet conversion was virtually nil in the East. In a society where the existence of God was not a given, and worship not an integral part of culture, practically nobody experienced Road to Damascus moments.

Nor has twenty years under the completely free, officially "Christian state" of the German Federal Republic changed anything. As the census numbers show, former East Germans are still perfectly content to remain god-free. Herein lies a dirty little secret the communist leaders understood well. To get religion to fade away, you don't need to ban it, you only need to stop propping it up.

Conversion of the majority is vital for a religion to survive. Christianity would still be a minor Jewish sect had it not been for Paul’s "infectious" zeal for proselytizing the entire world. No religion can perpetuate without coopting the workings of society and assimilating everyone into its status quo.

Expand or Die
This fact is borne out by cults, which must isolate themselves to survive. Had the Mormons remained in upstate New York, or made it out to San Francisco as planned, instead of getting stuck in the desert, they'd be an historical footnote today. The LDS, whose beliefs and practices strike standard Christians as decidedly "abnormal", can only thrive where three-quarters of the population are adherents.

The grand social experiment of the Warsaw Bloc proved that, unless a society pro-actively imposes religious belief on its members, most crucially on its children, and establishes religious practice as the norm, people do not, on the whole, spontaneously find belief in deities.

For any social behavior, there's a tipping point beyond which it cannot long exist. In Europe, religion is well past the point of no return. The levels there of "irreligion", defined as including atheism, deism, nontheism and agnosticism, are striking:

Country Irreligious

Sweden 83%
Denmark 80
Norway 78
Czech 74
France 73
UK 71
Finland 69
Netherlands 66
Albania 63
Belgium 61
Hungary 59
Slovenia 59
Spain 59
Germany 57
Switzerland 56
Slovakia 51

Serbia 45
Austria 42
Ireland 42
Croatia 30
Greece 30
Portugal 27
Italy 26
Poland 23
Romania 18

The real story may be more pronounced, as in many countries, people give only lip service to God. Spain, where four decades of fascist/catholic oppression was lifted in 1975, has exhibited the most dramatic apostasy. Today, barely 19% of Spaniards are practicing Christians, with an average age of 50 for supplicants. Ireland, not surprisingly, lags behind the rest of Western Europe. But even there, the loosening of religious orthodoxy portends that nation's inevitable loss of religious sentiment.

God on the Run
These trends conflict with a central tenet of belief. If God, through an assortment of tangible or metaphysical channels, makes His presence known to each individual, why does He do so exclusively in cultures where His existence has already been declared by mortal authorities? If belief in God was somehow the "norm" for a human being, then believers would have popped up like mushrooms in Eastern Europe once anti-church regimes had been overthrown. Similarly, the removal of the oppressive Franco regime in Spain, with its enforced state Catholicism, should not have precipitated a drastic drop-off in worship.

The standard rejoinder is that conventional theist practice is metamorphosing into a nuanced, and ultimately more profound, deism. Which to a certain extent is undeniably true, and, all in all, is an improvement for individuals and societies alike. Whether this trend will stabilize at deism, or will continue to plummet into general non-belief, is a question that won't be fully answered for decades.

One factor that reflects unfavorably on the prospects for a sustainable & robust deism is the tendency for deists to raise agnostic children, who in turn tend to raise atheists. This slippery slope is recognized by the traditional churches, who fight mightily to stop the slightest drift from orthodoxy.

Yet deism truly is the last resort for belief in a god. Ever since we first created them, we've had to continually relocate our gods, as our expanding understanding of our world exposed their former abodes to scrutiny. From Mount Olympus or a strange box inside a temple, then to (the) heaven(s), our deities were repeatedly uprooted, driven to increasingly ethereal homes. God has now arrived at His last stop, a non-physical dimension which, because it is unobservable, immeasurable and completely undetectable, offers Him eternal sanctuary from the prying eyes of Science and Reason.

Common Ground - For Now
For much of this ongoing divine exodus, the Deist, the Agnostic and the Atheist can travel in reasonably harmonious company-if we resist the urge either to convert or to marginalize the other. "Official" religion, whatever its irrefutable value to early civilization, is of no further use to any of us. In ever greater numbers-in modern societies-former practitioners of the public religion are turning to a private, personal deity for meaning and sustenance. In ever greater numbers-in modern societies-people are discovering they can lead perfectly happy and meaningful lives without resort to any deity at all. These trends can only be reversed through stifling Science and Reason, and by reimposing an official religion. Such desperate counterattacks, which are but the death spasms of orthodoxy, can be observed today.

I'm Normal...err...Okay, You're Okay
Whether, in the aftermath of the demise of traditional religion, the majority of people will embrace deism or atheism, remains to be seen. If the former, then it will continue to be normal (sic) for a person to believe in a god. Indeed, the believer usually claims that belief truly is the "natural" state for a person-that belief in a god is a prerequisite to a purposeful and ethical existence. That claim is belied, however, by the steadily growing ranks of nonbelievers, like Dahl and yours truly, who find it very easy to lead purposeful, ethical lives without a god. And we feel perfectly normal doing so.


(c) 2009 by 'tamerlane.' All rights reserved.

The Jingo Channel

The Jingo Channel

Why is the History Channel Resurrecting Wartime Propaganda?

- by 'tamerlane'

I must confess to a life-long obsession with fighter planes. As a kid, I'd lay in my bedroom, staring at my ceiling--which I'd painted azure with white clouds--and imagine the hordes of model aircraft, hung from sewing thread, engaged in battle.

So when I recently found the History Channel's Dogfights series on Netflix, you can appreciate my boyish glee. An entire series dedicated to my passion for the machines and tactics of air combat! Let me say that the CGI on Dogfights is stunning. Sometimes you'd swear it was actual footage. The action is exhilarating, the episodes evenly paced. Technical data is briefly but accurately glossed. Interviews with the actual pilots lend vibrancy and poignancy to the accounts. I should love this series, but I'm beginning to hate it.

The problem is the editorial.

For motives that elude me, the History Channel feels the need to inject the angry, jingoist sentiments of wartime propaganda. The viewer is constantly reminded that we, the 'Good Guys' (USA, UK, Israel), are morally and technologically superior, not to mention braver and more clever, than the 'Bad Guys' (Germany, Japan, North Vietnam, Egypt.) Enemy aircraft and pilots are called "Nazi" or "Communist", loaded terminology largely abandoned by modern historians. We'd never hear of "Democrat" Mustangs or "Likkud" Mirages.

I am an ecumenical fighter plane junkie. I get goose bumps equally from contemplating the Russian MiG-29, the American Corsair or the German Albatross. I'm fascinated by the exploits of pilots of all eras and countries. I've personally talked shop with both a WWII US carrier pilot and a Luftwaffe veteran. Dogfights only gives us the Good Guys, Americans mostly. One episode, "The First Jet Ace" was really about the first American to reach five victories in a jet over Korea. The Germans had at least 23 jet aces in WWII. The famous Red Baron, with 80 kills in WWI? Neither hide nor hair of him. Hans-Joachim Marseille, who shot down 17 RAF fighters in one day over North Africa? Or Erich Hartmann, with 352 victories on the Eastern Front? I bet you never even heard of those two.

An odd thing--the Good Guys never get shot down in this show. Based on the astounding success of the USAF depicted on Dogfights, it's easy to see how we won the Korean and Vietnam wars. I'm well into Season Two, and my count so far is a total of three, including two British downed in 1917 by a lone Fokker, before the other eight Brits "got revenge."

That's the most disturbing aspect of the series--the narration is peppered with phrases like "avenge," "out for blood" and "payback time." Make no mistake, a good fighter pilot must exhibit audacity, aggressiveness, and yes, a "killer instinct." Getting shot at also tends to make one angry. Yet the former pilots express open admiration and empathy for their foes. From the first air duels of 1914, fighter pilots have embraced their opponents as fellow members of a chivalric warrior caste. Often staring each other right in the eye, the humanity of the enemy is never easily forgotten by the fighter pilot. One Israeli ace interviewed lamented over the Jordanian he'd fatally shot shot down: "with his skill and courage, he deserved to have ejected safely." If the pilots themselves can take an objective view of their mortal combat, why does the History Channel need to cast these bygone battles as an ongoing struggle between Good and Evil?

Like fish, the stench of jingoism lingers. Only gradually over the past quarter century have most historians eliminated partisan bias in their works. In doing so, one can still catch a lot of FLAK for a perceived lack of patriotism. In 1980, the prolific military author, Kenneth Macksey, published Invasion, a fictional account of a successful 1940 German conquest of England. Some wondered whether the retired British army major and combat veteran was a Nazi sympathizer. Others felt Macksey had impunged the legend of Churchill's wisdom.

As recently as 1999, eminent Oxford economic historian, Niall Ferguson, was vilified for suggesting in his The Pity of War that much of the blame for WWI lay at Britain’s feet. Ferguson's compelling argument, that war in 1914 was far from inevitable, but that England's ill-advised, secret military pact with France precipitated hostilities, was attacked not on scholarly grounds, but for its temerity to question the myths of Versailles.

si vis pacem, para bellum. We need Top Gun School to study the dogfights of the past. We need experts like Macksey to figure out when we did well, as opposed to when we just got lucky. We also need scholars like Ferguson to dispel old myths, to analyze policies & decisions that dragged reluctant nations into war. But we all need to remember that when we kill the enemy, we're killing another person.

The History Channel is doing the opposite. It's perpetuating the myths of our righteousness and our invincibility. It's glorifying killing, demonizing the enemy, and stoking hatred & revenge. It's making us crave war.

(c) 2009, by 'tamerlane' All rights reserved.

9 books

If it's Tuesday it must be Tamerlane.



Nine Books

- by 'tamerlane


To amuse each other, my sister and I come up with silly get-rich schemes. One was to run an ad that said, "Guaranteed Way to Make Money. Send $1 for Instructions." The instructions would read, "Run an ad that says, 'Guaranteed Way to...'"

Another of our schemes was to open "Livre Neuf", a hyper-trendy bookstore with only nine single books for sale at any one time. Located on some chic thoroughfare in LA or NY, Livre Neuf would be set up like an art gallery, all track lighting and exposed brick, with the books displayed on pedestals.

Typical offerings might include: a 13th century manuscript cookbook, featuring 800-year old food stains ($17,000); Lenny Bruce's childhood copy of Winnie the Pooh ($39,600), a partially-burned, paperback edition of Fahrenheit 451, found in a dumpster out back ($723,000).

Hours would be by appointment only. Celebrities like Johnny Depp and Melinda Gates would contemplate the books, arms crossed, lips pursed, while our obsequious staff made the soft sell.

Well, all that has practically nothing to do with my real reason for this post. I wish to survey all of you for your list of the nine most valuable books. Not the rarest, nor necessarily your personal favorites. Rather, the nine books you feel are most valuable for a person to read, or that have made the greatest contributions to civilization. If you can't think of nine, chime in with just one or two titles.


(c) 2009 by 'tamerlane'. All rights reserved.

Don't Even Think About It

If it's Tuesday it must be Tamerlane.


Don't Even Think About It

- by 'tamerlane'


Most states now have "hate crime" statutes on the books. If, in the court's opinion, at least partial motivation for the crime was the perpetrator's hatred of the victim's race, creed, or sexual identity, extra punishment is meted out. Since there are no 'love crimes', what exactly are we punishing? Hate is an emotion. Prejudice is a way of thinking. We are punishing Thought Crime. That is wrong, and sets a dangerous precedent.

No one but an anarchist would disagree that societies have a right and obligation to: 1) often regulate the actions of its members, and ; 2) sometimes regulate their words. But should regulation of thought ever be permissible?


Regulation of Action
Our society tells us how fast we may drive. We might quarrel over the ideal speed, but not the principle of a speed limit. Society tells us which dried leaves we may smoke or not. We debate both which leaves to ban, and the very principle of banning leaves at all. With the striking down of anti-sodomy laws, we finally agree that society has no business telling consenting adults what they may do with each other.


Regulation of Speech
Two instances exist when this is acceptable: when the words constitute an obscenity, or a threat.

The rule for obscenity is simply what the "general consensus" in a given community finds unacceptable to say or depict. That's a pretty good rule, even if it is maddingly subjective, and prone to hijacking by a vocal minority. I personally have no qualms about wet-nursing in public, but find lip-piercings revolting. Until more folks feel as I do, the piercings stay visible, but the dugs must be covered. In my lifetime, "sucks" has gone from obscene to acceptable. "C*nt" was once perfectly fine, but general consensus now finds it obscene. If you think the one should be banned, or the other permitted, persuade the rest of us.

We all know it's a crime to actually hurt someone. It's also a crime to encourage others to do it, even as a vague wish. Claiming you speak in jest is not a defense. Following the botched assassination attempt on Reagan, a USPS employee faced charges for commenting at work, "I hope the next one has better aim." Dry wit indeed, but society must err on the side of caution in proscribing these kinds of public statements.

So suggesting a crime is itself a crime. But should thoughts and sentiments ever be crimes in and of themselves?


Regulation of Thought
Every society harbors Dream Police who try to regulate what goes in inside our heads. "Think Crime" features prominently in the crushing mind-tyranny of Orwell's 1984, and in real-life dictatorships. Religions are traditionally tough on thought crime. Big Brother can merely spy on what you do and say; God has direct access to every sin you've ever imagined.

For the sake of argument, let's say I really, truly hate milkmen. Is that a crime? What if I want to beat them up for their milkiness, but don't - is that a crime? If not, why should my (hypothetical) hatred be an extra, separately punishable offense when I do (hypothetically) beat them up?


Separating the Crime from the Chaff
If someone stands on the street with a placard reading "God Hates Fags", that's their rude opinion, and they're free to express it. Displaying a "Kill All Fags" sign is not OK. But is it inherently worse than a sign that reads "Kill All Milkmen"?

If I wear a T-shirt that says "Randi Rhodes is a F*cking Wh*re", that's my opinion, but it's also obscene, so I don't get to wear the shirt in public. If I wear a shirt that reads "Somebody Please Put Randi Rhodes Out of My Misery!", it's not obscene, might be considered a jest, but it's an exhortation to commit a crime nevertheless. "Randi Rhodes is a Broom-Riding W*tch” is acceptable.


We"d all like everyone else to think as we do. But we need to persuade, not force them. Opinions, sentiments & thoughts should never be treated as crimes.


(c) 2009 by 'tamerlane'. All rights reserved.

Let's not be too cowardly to have the conversation, even if it gets ugly.

My take.

I want to take a moment to post my thoughts on the recent conversation about PUMAs here. I work best with lists so here goes.

1. I support the PUMA movement in general. I never got fully involved last summer for a number of reasons:

A. I listened in on a few conference calls and felt I did not have much to add, and further felt there was no particular focus.

B. My hunch was then that Obama was all but assured of both the nomination and the election. Not 100% - things could have broken another way. But the PUMA movement did not seem to be aware of the real power involved in anointing Obama. There was a lot of rat a tat tat about writing super delegates etc (which may not have come directly from PUMAs but it was out there.). This was - to me - self evidently a waste of time. The system did not "fail to work and demand correction" it was over run and blown up. Donna B. said it: "We don't need you" The cold truth is, come November, she was right. Because of the lack of focus, PUMAs either sucked it up and voted for Obama or, voted for Palin but not in numbers that made a difference.

Obama was decided on a long, long time ago and, frankly, the plan to install him, in retrospect, was only hampered by Clinton's refusal to leave the race. For this, and almost this alone, I went from being a supporter to a deeply loyal follower. She became a hero of mine by refusing to roll over. This refusal has worked out very well for her. It made her a political leader and raised her standing with all Americans. Though the powers that be refused to let her have the prize she clearly earned - she did, in fact, win in some ways.

At any rate, the PUMAs never seemed to come to terms with the actions that might have made a difference. That being: start a third party, or focus on states they might have swung, or create a concerted effort to go after the core problem: the media - which as we know pushed the myth of Obama at every turn and trashed Palin with the same sexist glee it had Hillary. By "going after" I mean protests. In the streets. Not letter writing or blogging.

So I supported the PUMAs from a distance. With some hope, but not much expectation.

2. My unsentimental education in 2008 was all about sexism. I knew it was real. I knew it to be a core problem. What I did not understand was its depth in American culture. I am sure many women did. I did not. It did not occur to me that Clinton being female was an issue before MSNBC and the rest visibly came unhinged. Naive, I know. Uppity posted a comment here last year I shall never forget. It was something to the effect that it is not that women can't have some jobs men do - it is that a woman can't have THAT job. It strips all the mediocre men who've been elevated unfairly of their cover. I pondered that for a long while - and began to see the coverage of Clinton - mostly by men - but not always - through that lens and much more made sense. Mathews and Olbermann were only the most obvious in their female terror.

I make this point about sexism because it was new to me. I did not learn anything new about power in 2008. I have always assumed we get a few choices that are limited and the game is to get behind the best of the predetermined choices. There is a reason why some people of equal intelligence are dismissed out of hand before they open their mouths. They are not in the pre chosen circle. (Ron Paul has very interesting ideas that many more people would agree with if he was ever heard. He's not. There is a reason he's not.) I sincerely thought - at the outset - that Clinton was the best of these and did not care about her gender and stupidly thought most others did not either. Wow, was I wrong. The Daily Kos was a cavalcade of misogyny for months.

The powers behind Obama did not become evident until later. Though Obama had a base, it was nowhere near the majority of Democrats until the power players kicked in. False racism accusations removed a large chunk of Clinton's natural base with Black voters. Florida, Michigan, etc. Even then, he did not win. Caucus fraud and the media pushed him to the finish. The subtext of most negative reporting on Clinton was sexism. And "liberals" were the lead dogs. Ambition for a man: good and strong. Ambition for a woman: bitchy. Etc. Etc. An unsentimental education for this liberal indeed.

What I came to understand is that sexism is potent. Much more potent that I understood. Sadly, sometimes it was women who offended the most. Randi "fucking whore" Rhodes for example. But the "liberal" males who joined in or stood by are the biggest moral criminals in my book. By October is was self evident that mainstream Conservatives were more open to strong women than left wing alleged feminists.

With that I'll say: I'd put myself on the line as a feminist any day. I blogged repeatedly about how interesting the Palin phenom was - though I disagreed with most of her politics. Far from being an outlier - she was and is a superb example of feminism in action. No money, no family name - just determination and ambition.

3. And this is not contradictory in my book: I do not want PUMAs to become solely a "women's movement". I DO want it to focus a substantial amount of energy on the promotion of women's rights and to take the lead in addressing issues that many women are concerned with. But not to the exclusion of others.

I thought Tamerlane had some harsh but good points to make and I welcomed them. I also welcome a rebuttal. I am not of big fan of allegedly "polite society". Getting a bit rough is okay by me. Esp in the safe forum of a blog. We are not in a bar. No one can throw a real punch. One person's opinion that PUMAs may have become too focused in a certain direction should not scare anyone.

Yell back.

The "N" word, the "C" word, and death threats are off limits for ethical reasons. The drippiest pro Obama comments are too- but that is just my personal preference - it is my blog after all.

I did have some discomfort about the word "coven". In the end I found it no more insulting than my attacks on Olbermann's "mommy issues". It is insulting. I am insulting sometimes. This blog is not a tea party.

Tamerlane did start a conversation. A pretty unpleasant one apparently. But "pleasant" is not the goal. I am glad to report that people here are not cowards about sexism or racism.

I sincerely hope the PUMA movement becomes a large spring board. We are in trouble. Real trouble. Another way must be found. But it is not required. We could just sink. Country's do it rather often. Dems are taking us for a wild ride that I suspect we will live to regret. Soon. The GOP is utterly lost - and if they do revive I shudder at the prospect of their "ideas" and their leaders (except Palin, believe it or not. I don't agree with her, but I trust her). The prospect of a very negative "movement" erupting in the next few years is painfully real. We are not immune from demagogues that would make Obi's prancing and primping look quaint.

There is still an opportunity here. The PUMAs who are, lets be honest, cast offs, could - COULD be a group that emerges to lead. But if PUMAs get stuck in any victimology, all is lost.

Being rudely untethered from our "home" in the Democratic party is not a problem. It is an opportunity. Turns out the home was dysfunctional with a capital dys.

If we yell at each other along the way. So be it.