Atheists are loveable? Of course we are!

I’ve never even heard of The Ball and the Cross so it’s great that revelife provides a rundown of the plot of G.K. Chesterton’s story. It sounds interesting enough to seek out.

It involves an atheist journalist and a Catholic who’s angry enough over what the atheist has written that he insists a duel needs doing. The atheist is simply tickled someone’s even bothered to get bothered by his articles (sounds like me, har!) and enthusiastically agrees. From revelife:

The two men are hampered in their efforts to fight their duel, however–firstly because duels are illegal, but also because every person they encounter tries to talk them out of it. “Religion is–a–too personal a matter… The most religious people are not those who talk about it,” says one. “…You ought to be more broadminded,” says another. And (while I won’t spoil the ending for you), as the two men flee from place to place throughout England searching for a quiet place to have their duel, they find that they are quite coming to like each other.

It is that which I love about atheists. They think that these questions of reality or existence are worth fighting for, worth arguing over. They think that it matters whether God is or is not.

I guess what ultimately gets me down is the fact that matters. Why? Why can’t a person just say, “I’m a Christian,” and another person say, “I’m an atheist,” and then both just get down to the business of living to the best of their abilities? Why does god-belief have to enter into any of it as a reason to get fired up and hotheaded? Let’s just play cards or something. I mean really. Do you have any eights? No? I’ll go fish then…

I guess I will have to read the story to see if I agree more with the passionate duelists or the apathetic public. My library doesn’t have a book by this name listed but I put holds on a couple Chesterton collections so hopefully it’ll be in one of those. If it’s not there maybe something else will be worth writing about instead. All is shiny and bright regardless.

I keep a blog not because I want to knock down religions like dominoes. I just want to be a voice and offer a viewpoint. Nobody has to agree with me. I’m not going to force anyone to dump years worth of (wasted?) devotion if they aren’t seriously prepared for the fallout that kind of decision can create. Don’t look to me for suggestions on how to do that. I’ve always been an atheist, unlike others.

I don’t think it should matter what people think about mortality and immortality and all that stuff so long as nobody’s getting physically hurt by it. Hurt feelings and offended hearts can heal, given patience and time and loved ones (and sometimes psychologists). But whether one buys the tales of heaven and hell or not, death is forever.

Death is forever.

Is the hope of winning this centuries old argument worth it? To either side?

I fervently hope not.

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edit 6:44am: Just found Black Sun Journal’s take on beliefs and rituals and look what got written:

Humans have performed rituals for all sorts of nonsensical reasons throughout history. Believe it or not, I’m OK with that so long as no one gets hurt…

The similarity just caught my eye while I was reading. Now I’ll finish reading that article. It looks like a good one.

Boasting a little pre-success

The province is gearing up for a whole new library system. The new format for the library catalogue comes online at the start of December in some parts of Saskatchewan (new library cards will be necessary) but cataloguers and aquisitions and my part of the job (processing/materials linking) are getting something of a head start now.

Ideally, we’ll have templates set up for many of the things we’d be doing every day, but even if not, I have at least found a workable solution to a little problem I was going to face.

With our old setup, I could link multiple copies of a book to the catalogue record quite quickly. A few item specific tweaks may have been necessary for the first copy (price, volume, requestable or not) but after the first item, all I had to do was zap a barcode and key in what library would own it, then zap and key and zap and key until I’d done all forty copies in less than five minutes. Easy peasy.

Prior to today, it was looking like I’d have to tweak an item in every necessary way, add the call number, zap the barcode and save that record before starting from scratch with the next. Time consuming is the politest way to describe that nonsense. But, I found what might be an easier shortcut where I can choose a field and copy/paste the info down from item #1 to #45 and then switch fields and do the same routine. Not ideal, but certainly better than the horrible chore I was anticipating.

Obviously Millennium is designed for a radically different workflow than what our library does. It appears to be set up so the catalogue work (including the location info and barcode linking) could be accomplished before any labels are printed for those materials. Linking is the last step we do here before we send the stuff out.

The “automatic label” making seemed like a great idea when we first heard we’d be switching, but now it looks like I’ll have to do them all with Word like before anyway. Millennium is not designed to print 50 spine labels on an Avery sheet like we do. It’s built for universities and other setups that use the Library of Congress call numbering system instead of the Dewey, and will also print labels to stick on cards/pockets like back in the day when people physically stamped books when lending them out. How many libraries still do that? Seems like such an archaic thing now.

But enough job related stuff. I’m just glad I sorted out a minor worry. Let the big job worries sit on someone else’s shoulders. Like the fact that since we’re ready to catalogue before the patron side of this is online, the cataloguers will have to do their work twice, as will Aquisitions – once in the old system (so patrons can still see what’s new and put holds on it all) and once in Millenium (because they can’t search for stuff in there yet). As of yet, I don’t know if I’ll even start linking any of the stuff ready to go out. I don’t really want to wait a month to start shuffling this stuff out of here, but whatever. We have enough work waiting on carts and boxes without a bunch of last-step stuff waiting around, too. Will see later how that works out, I guess.

Chuck chuck bo buck bananafana fo fu…

…nny article Bore Me to Tears linked to today, from last November. Chuck Colson, a guest columnist for The Christian Post, wrote one of those wonderful Can We Be Good Without God? (Heck no!) articles. Bore Me To Tears focused on the amusing angle that without a god we may as well eat our own children like guppies do. Can’t be wrong if no god says it is, right? Yeesh.

Apart from God, we have no reason to take morality seriously.

Of course we do. We all have to live in our societies, we all have to agree to abide by societal laws. Many of those laws come from moral codes, codes of ethics, and laws that have proven throughout history to be decent, sensible laws that help societies maintain some sense of order. Are there flaws? Sure, but it’s not because atheists exist. Flaws in education systems have nothing to do with whether or not atheists pray. Rampant drug use and gang related violence doesn’t exist simply because atheists aren’t in church on Sundays.

Sure, we can do a few good things here and there without God. In fact, it would be great if atheists this Christmas were to give gifts to poor children or the children of prisoners like we do with Angel Tree.

I don’t have any stats to back up this statement, but I’m sure atheists/humanists wouldn’t feel compelled to wait until Christmas to donate time, food, or money to a good cause. There are secular groups available if people don’t want to help religious groups pass out their beliefs with a loaf of bread, though. Do some hunting.

But to think we can be good, that we can build a good and humane society without God, is pure folly. And it’s a folly with catastrophic consequences, as the untold millions of victims of the atheistic utopianisms of the 20th century bear witness.

I wonder who on earth he could mean there. I don’t recall any atheist catastrophes being studied in school. A lot of faulty Marxism, but no faulty atheism. Ever see much in the news about Estonia or Sweden? I don’t. Both of those countries record very little in the way of religious leanings and so far I haven’t heard of any attempts to take over the world.

Or as we see today in our depleted savings accounts—the result of a subprime crisis caused by immoral actions on the part of mortgage lenders.

Bankers never go to church? Seriously? None of them believe in god? That’s the argument for why people got sucked in and lost everything? Spare me.

So if those ads make news in your town, or if you happen to see one plastered on a local bus, why not start a conversation with an unsaved friend about the impossibility of being “good for goodness’ sake”—that is, without God.

Yes, why not? That’s way better than vandalizing the billboards just because you don’t agree with them. Maybe that unsaved person will laugh in your face because the assumption that people can’t be good without god is completely worth laughing about for as long and as loud as we can manage. It’s so funny that people can still think such things in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Oh, the human condition. What a joke we are, every day. Funny funny funny.

And then offer your friend rational arguments for the existence of our Heavenly Father—the kind offered by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. You might even send a copy to your local humanist society as a Christmas present.

And then they may pass you a copy of Letter to a Christian Nation or some other worthwhile reading.

Who knows? They might develop rational doubts about why they are so obsessed with a God they believe doesn’t exist.

We’re not obsessed with god. If anything, we’re obsessed with demonstrating how unnecessary belief in god is in order to have a good, productive, moral and ethical life. But even that isn’t quite right. I don’t wander around shouting about my atheism while I do my good deeds. That’s right, sir. An atheist just held this door open for you and your cane. What do you have to say now? Nyer nyer! No god’s better than your god! Ha ha, sucks to be you, you believer!

Hardly. I just work, live, and do. If people assume I’m religiously motivated and god-fearing for why I do what’s right, should I be correcting them or holding my tongue? I don’t think I need to get into a debate about goodness sans god every time I’m in the mall or something. That’s silly, isn’t it? Or does it need to be done?

Watched “Lost in Austen” last night

What a sweet little mini series. As one who can barely wade through a Jane Austen novel, I’d much rather watch it on television and this version was completely delightful.

Amanda Price adores Pride and Prejudice to the point where she’d forgo a night with her long-term boyfriend to read the classic romance and dream of Mr. Darcy. One night, after an abysmal drunken marriage proposal goes awry, Amanda dives into her favourite tale again, only to be interrupted by Elizabeth Bennett herself, who has suddenly found herself floundering in Amanda’s bathtub. It turns out there’s a little door between our world and Elizabeth’s fictional one and she suggests they swap places for a while. Amanda thinks it’s all a bit of a joke at first, but when she cannot return and starts meeting all her favourite characters in the flesh, the desire to go home fades a little. At least until the story starts going horribly wrong…

I can think of so many books I’d love to fall into. There’s a series of novels and short stories by Charles De Lint that take place in a fictional town called Newford where buskers and artists rub elbows with Fair Folk and alternate realms and ghosts and paintings come to life. Every time I sit down with one of those books I wish I could be friends with everyone in them.

There are several titles by William Sleator that set my imagination on fire when I first read them. I’ll just highlight a couple.

The Boy Who Reversed Himself is about a girl who discovers a classmate holds the key to traveling between dimensions and cajoles him into showing her how it’s done. She only wants to learn so she can dazzle the boy she really likes, though, and is ill prepared for what they find once they get there, and what finds them. I used to imagine what it would be like to actually find a way in there myself.

In Interstellar Pig, a strange group of tourists arrive at the lake house Barney’s folks have rented for the season. They’re looking for the piece to an intergalactic war game that got dropped by a player a hundred years earlier (he used a time travel card). The three rivals have teamed up on Earth, but Barney is the one who finds the prize and winds up part of the game himself. I wanted that game so bad. I hoped someone somewhere would make a board game version, but no such luck. I see the rules are available if anyone wants to build one, though.

I can’t even get anyone to play Cripple Mr. Onion with me so I think I’ll pass.

This is not why I’m fat…

But I can think of a few recipes I’ve come across that belong in this book, and on this site. My mother is known for some marshmallow confetti thing that requires a whole jar of peanut butter, a whole bag of caramel chips, and a whole bag of baby marshmallows to be heated up and swirled together into rock solid rich sweetness. It’s hard core. I can handle one little piece about an inch square and then I’m good for at least a year.

I think I should put a request in for the library to buy this book…

The cost of doing book business

I see via Time Magazine there’s some bizarre price war going on at several consumer websites that offer books; Wal-mart, Target, and Amazon.com have been setting new titles at lower and lower prices in the hopes of outselling the competition. Great news for book buyers, not so great for book publishers.

I’ve ordered and received books for my library. There was a big deal a couple years ago when the Canadian dollar finally hit parity with the American and then took a deep breath and climbed on top of it to shake the party maker for another day or two. Canadian editions of books tend to be a few dollars higher than the States, so when our dollar was a fair match to theirs, book buyers were freaking out over needing to pay more and some stores caved and sold them at the American cover price instead.

Big deal.

Well, yes, it is, in a way. Bookstores buy them at a certain price and need to sell them at a higher price in order to make profits and pay staff and rent and whatever. They can suck up a low cost on a few new titles for promotional purposes, but all of them? Less money made means less money to put into purchasing more, as well. Publishers can’t react to price changes as fast as the public will. I’ve already noticed a noticeable difference in book quality over the past couple years. I don’t mean writing – I mean the making of. Many publishers have gone to a thinner, lighter dust jacket for their new titles. It must be cheaper paper than the sturdy stuff they used to use. Never mind the loose bindings and shoddy glue jobs.

People want cheap books, they’ll get cheap books.

Quotable bible

Isn’t this a nice quote I’ve found here?

Mark 9:42

“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.

Other versions insert “sin” for “stumble” but I suppose that’s neither here nor there. Why am I quoting it? A blogger at WORLDMag.com used it as part of a heads-up over Dawkins’ upcoming book aimed at teenagers, called What Is a Rainbow Really? The author of the piece includes a link to a National Post article about it.

The author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, is penning a new book which will target his most impressionable audience: teens. The controversial atheist, scientist and avid Darwin supporter, is planning to write, What is a Rainbow, Really?, an illustrated book which will take a myth-busting approach to questions about the natural world. The scientific reasoning behind topics such as: who the first man and woman were, why there are seasons, what the sun is and how old the world is, will be presented with perspectives from opposing camps- myth and legend, and “lucid scientific explanation.”

Dawkins’ most popular novel, The God Delusion, described the god of the Old Testament as “a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Perhaps the language will be toned down in this next book which is aimed for an audience of young adults 12 and up. But on second thought, maybe not.

Notice how Elyse Goody refers to Dawkins’ book? Novels are fiction books, sweetheart. The God Delusion is not a novel.

The fear here seems to be that teenagers might actually learn something about the world if the temptation to open the book is too strong. It’s innocent Adam and Eve and the fruit all over again, with Dawkins cast as the snake. Better the publisher kill the tree of knowledge now so it doesn’t all happen again?

Sheesh.

I’ve started plugging my way through Greatest Show on Earth and I’m thinking I probably should buy it. I’ll never wade through it all before its due date. And, if I have my own copy, I’ll be able to scribble in the margins when I find something worth remembering.

Quotable new hero

I’ve only read Blindness, but now I feel compelled to check out more of Jose Saramago’s books. Why?

A row broke out in Portugal on Monday after a Nobel Prize-winning author denounced the Bible as a “handbook of bad morals”.

Speaking at the launch of his new book “Cain”, Jose Saramago, who won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, said society would probably be better off without the Bible.

Roman Catholic Church leaders accused the 86-year-old of a publicity stunt.

The book is an ironic retelling of the Biblical story of Cain, Adam and Eve’s son who killed his younger brother Abel.

At the launch event in the northern Portuguese town of Penafiel on Sunday, Saramago said he did not think the book would offend Catholics “because they do not read the Bible”.

“The Bible is a manual of bad morals (which) has a powerful influence on our culture and even our way of life. Without the Bible, we would be different, and probably better people,” he was quoted as saying by the news agency Lusa.

Saramago attacked “a cruel, jealous and unbearable God (who) exists only in our heads” and said he did not think his book would cause problems for the Catholic Church “because Catholics do not read the Bible.

“It might offend Jews, but that doesn’t really matter to me,” he added.

At least in Portugal, the critics have a grain of sense. Father Manuel Marujao, who speaks on behalf of the Bishops stated, “A writer of Jose Saramago’s standing can criticise, (but) insults do no-one any good, particularly a Nobel Prize winner,” but at least no one’s calling to burn the man’s books for heresy, so that’s good.

On the Jewish side, a little pity maybe?

Rabbi Elieze Martino, spokesman for the Jewish community in Lisbon, said the Jewish world would not be shocked by the writings of Saramago or anyone else.

“Saramago does not know the Bible,” the rabbi said, “he has only superficial understanding of it.”

Cain doesn’t appear to be available in English yet but keep the title in mind for future wish lists.

Quotable comparison

This is an impromptu part two related to the previous quote. This from Helium.com comparing the differences between Jules Verne and H.G. Wells:

Verne is one of the more optimistic science fiction writers of all time and despite the drama of his writing, books like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon and Journey to the Center of the earth all used science as a method of empowering the characters. He looked at science and saw a blossoming of wondrous possibilities, this most evidenced in Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Whereas with Verne it was about romance and character driven dramas, Wells would use the medium to make a point about mankind itself. He criticizes the stratification in English society in his book the time Machine and in The War of the Worlds he seems to imply our technology will destroy us. Before it was even thought of he predicted the splitting of the atom. When this happened he was horrified… he encouraged governments not to pursue the technology but they did anyway… he died a bitter man.

So it’s not like the debate between futuristic formats is a new one. And I think it was Robert J. Sawyer who’d mentioned in a talk that Wells is better known (better liked?) specifically because he didn’t throw so much technical jargon into his books. Verne’s tech-specific accuracies are all well and good, but the science in them is somewhat dated now and a description of every exact measurement of the 20,000 Leagues vessel’s every gear and knob shouldn’t be the reason people want to read the book, unless they’re really into victorian steampunk and want to build the thing.

There will always be ones who are in it for the science, and others who’ll be in it for the plot and the people. I don’t think one way is more right than the other.

Saskatoon Freethinkers meet up

I found their group through Facebook and figured it was worth joining that for updates about meetings and things. They’re having a general meeting next Sunday so I RSVP’d myself. I suspect it’ll be worthwhile to get involved and meet other like-minded folks in the area. I could use an improved social network, as well.

I finally got a copy of Connected from the library and it’s depressing the hell out of me.

The book is by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler and it’s all about social networking and how that evolves and influences everything from marriage chances to emotions to obesity of all things.

As near as I can figure, my ability to get a date rests in the lap of my friends’ friends. If my friends don’t have any eligible friends they feel like dropping my name on, I’m less likely to meet anyone. Not that two strangers can’t meet randomly and hit it off, but these researchers have followed the stories of numerous people (and looked through reams of data on human habits going back decades) and have hit on something a bit different than Six Degrees of Separation. They call it the Three Degrees Rule. What we do affects our friends (one degree) who affect their friends (2 degrees) which kind of will affect friends of theirs. Word of mouth style communication and even work related success can travel this network but it’s usually limited to three degrees. Another ripple out from the original person and there’s very little original influence to be had. They call this the network-instability explanation

There’s also intrinsic decay where the usefulness of the information will fade over time (who to vote for etc.) especially since passing the information takes time, too. Or, if you’re like me and rarely check email, all kinds of intrinsic decay crap goes on. Sometimes I don’t find out things have happened with friends until it’s too late to enjoy the party or whatever. Assuming friends even bothered to email me, knowing what I’m like…

They also considered an evolutionary-purpose explanation for this, too. Since humans evolved to exist in relatively small social groups, it was likely everyone knew everybody (or at least knew someone who knew someone else). We’ve developed this three degree existence because it worked well enough to never need a wider circle of influence. Maybe this will change in time, too.

This winds up being a great argument to toss as those silly goosies who think atheists suddenly become amoral without a god. How could we, given how connected we are to everyone around us, how we’re influenced by so many people whether we’ve met them or not? How could we suddenly stop being influenced by the socially healthy construct of our communities? Avoiding violence and theft and rotten behaviour helps everyone. It’s flat out impossible to avoid being influenced by people unless you can hermit yourself somewhere and avoid all communication with everyone in every way. That includes body language. We get just as much from facial expression and posture as we do from speech. We just process it differently.

Every experience you have will affect someone else. Everyone you talk to today has already talked to so many other people who may have said something nice or done something mean in return. Their emotional feelings when you see them will automatically rub off on you. And you, in turn, will pass it to the next person who sees or speaks to you.

I’ll probably find something else to write about in regards to this book before I have to return it. It’s fascinating reading.