Atheism

The worst thing is when people try to talk me out of it, as if it’s just something soft I’ve gotten stuck in. "Stalin was an atheist," they say. Okay. And? What do they expect to me say? "Stalin was an atheist? I had no idea. In that case, I do believe in God." And yes, I’ve heard of Pascal's Wager, and Paley’s pocket watch on the heath, and every other variation of the argument from design. These things do tend to enter your consciousness after three decades of daily study and reflection.

And yet my personal progress towards disbelief involved no turning points, revelations, or eureka moments. It simply began with a gradual realization, in boyhood, that my school’s daily prayers and Bible readings were just white noise to me. I stopped believing in God by the time I was about twelve and this early, intuitive disbelief has been buttressed by three subsequent decades of study, all of which has deepened my conviction that there isn’t enough evidence to support the God hypothesis.

There’s no reason to get all uppity about it, but people tend to. This was the second or third column I wrote for Measure of Doubt, nearly five years ago, but it’s the 109th that I’ve actually posted. I keep hesitating for a simple reason. I've found it’s best to keep quiet about my disbelief because it’s a stigma. I'll say that again: disbelief is a stigma. I almost never discuss it with family or friends. This is the first time I’ve unequivocally professed my atheism in public, and I raise the issue now with serious trepidation. 

Oh, I know that some believers think of themselves as the persecuted minority, huddled around the flickering candle of faith in the encroaching darkness.  Well, maybe. But it must be crowded around that candle, what with ninety percent of the population elbowing for room. The assertion, made by some conservative believers, that atheists aggressively dominate the public discourse on religion is based on the worst sort of hyperbolic selection bias. 

And I really don’t see what the problem is. Why would anyone be bothered by my skepticism, let alone offended by it? I don’t think believers are delusional, I think they’re wrong. Why would anyone be offended by this? It's precisely what they think about me.  Moreover, I assume that most Christians reject most non-Christian beliefs. Presumably they don’t believe that God has taken human form on many occasions, that First Nations have occupied the Great Plains since the beginning of time, that we’re bound to an endless cycle of reincarnation unless we follow the Eightfold Noble Path, or that the Qu'ran is the final and perfect revelation of God. That being the case, they too are atheists – about other peoples' religions. Again, I fail to see what the problem is.

Admittedly some people are faithful in a more amorphous way, arguing that all religions are just different versions of the same truth. When they consider such things at all, they say that they believe in some sort of "divine spirit" a warm and fuzzy though sometimes disapproving God: a celestial Oprah. Confess your sins. Jump on the living room set sofa forever and ever.

 "Maybe God is just the word we give to love," I heard a liberal theologian say on TV one time.  "Oh, please!" I shouted. I nearly dropped my copy of The Satanic Verses. And yet the amazing thing was that this purveyor superficially conceived, cloyingly sophomoric ooze got a free pass from the fundamentalist on the same show. "At least she believes in something," he said. By contrast, the atheist on the panel, who professed a thoroughly considered, rigorously examined, and continuously re-evaluated disbelief was told he was going to Hell. The fundamentalist described how he himself had always suffered persecution for his faith. Incredible: he goes around telling people they’re going to be tortured for eternity but says he’s being persecuted when they defend themselves. Incredible.

Well, I don’t think anybody’s going to Hell. In fact, nothing follows automatically from my atheism, and certainly not any conclusions about religion as a social institution. I don’t believe that it "poisons everything" as the title of a recent book put it. Personally, as I’ve grown older, I’ve taken far more interest in religious studies and my respect for certain aspects of religious institutions has grown, even as my atheistic convictions have solidified. I was very irritated not long ago to hear someone remark with pride, "I’m an atheist and I’ve never been in a church in my life." That’s a shame: he’s missed out on some great architecture and a pile of history. Comparative religion is one of the cornerstones of a good liberal education and I insist that my students know something about it. But people often mistake the meaning of all this.  A few years ago, on a teaching evaluation, one student wrote, "Prof. Broad seems very religious." I should have framed it.

Moreover, I teach at an institution with a religious affiliation.  Why?  Well, for many reasons, not the least of which is because it is an excellent liberal arts college with a superb faculty.  But it is also because that institution is actually far more amendable to the serious discussion of religion than the secular university I graduated from, where legions of the self-righteously politically correct maintain that the critical discussion of religion is the exact equivalent of racism. Their position – that ideas have rights – is both insipid and insidious, and is one that, moreover, they do not themselves believe, as they are perfectly willing to hurl stones in the direction of the Catholic Church, for example, when its precepts on matters concerning abortion, the ordination of women, and same sex marriage differ from their own.  Let us be very clear about this: you hear that academe is dominated by atheists. It isn’t. I can count on my fingers the number of real ones I’ve met. It’s dominated by moderately secular liberals, most of them positively popping with New Age spiritual beliefs. They're just mad about organized Christianity. Criticize other religions and they’ll haul you before a human rights tribunal. I tremble slightly to type those words.

Friends among the faithful, it's not the nonbelievers you should worry about. They just think you’re wrong. It's the devout of certain other religions and denominations that should concern you. They think you're wrong and that you're going to Hell for it. Some of them even believe that they are retribution's earthly instruments.  And since even the largest single denomination can claim no more than a fifth of the world's population as even nominal adherents, it is undeniably the case that, regardless of what faith you profess, the majority of the world's population thinks you’re wrong, that you’re guilty of some degree of theological or liturgical malpractice, and indeed from countless thousands of temples, mosques, and churches there emerges an even stronger claim from millions of truly devout believers.  They know in their hearts that you are not just wrong, but are wicked, sinful, and destined to spend eternity in damnation.

 So I'll see you there. 

Leadership

The really absorbing spectacle in Toronto news over the last few days has not been the revelations regarding Rob Ford, as anyone who has been paying attention knew that was coming. No, it has been truly epic meltdown of Canada’s worst journalists at Canada’s worst newspaper, the Toronto Sun, where they have in the past seventy-two hours revealed hitherto undiscovered ways of back-pedalling, equivocating, deflecting, denying, and dissembling. What remains is a quivering pile of populist goo, oozing about the ankles of the “sunshine girl” du jour.

I try not to read this stuff for the same reason I try not hit myself on the head with a hammer. But it has the morbid appeal of a car wreck and ambulances by the side of the road – can’t look at it, can’t look away.

Anyway, they had a good run. Apart from elected office, journalism is about the only profession where you can be paid to spew at the mouth once a week on matters about which you have no expertise, so they’ll always have their memories of that, at least. And one or two of them have shown real integrity in the past few days, by which I mean, they’ve at least been consistent in their lack of integrity where Toronto’s absurd mayor is concerned. At least one continues to insist that the whole thing is a “left” conspiracy (how they love to throw that word "left" around), while another,  Anthony Furey – I confess to never having heard of him before – rose to the occasion and condemned not so much the mayor, but his critics.  “The left,” (there’s that word again), he wrote, "is not outraged that Ford might be using hard drugs...no, the bottom line is they don’t like that a fat, red-faced football coach with a working-class way about him is mayor. They don’t like that he’s not “people like us.” That’s all it’s ever been about.”
 
Guilty as charged. Well, sort of. I actually don't want "people like me" as my leaders. I want people who are better than me. I don't want just plain ordinary good-ole aw shucks folks to be Prime Minister, Premier, and Mayor. I want the best and brightest in political office. I want people who are smarter than me. Better informed than me. More articulate than me. More literate and better read than me. I want leaders with vision. I want leaders who are people who set examples in all things – including moral behaviour. I want leaders who are truly exceptional, the kind of people who can inspire us and who we can aspire to emulate. And my question for people who want “joe average” as their leader, who want crude, crass, mean, mendacious, slovenly, stupid, rude, racist, and reactionary boors as their leaders is...why? What happened to our country, to our polity – and this question goes out to Americans, too  – that “elite” became a pejorative term and mediocrity became the measure of a man or woman aspiring to political office? 

As a society, we are faced with real and complex problems. We need serious people with serious answers if those problems are going to be solved. Electing populist hooligans who make you feel good about your own inferiority complex isn't the solution.

Death

I'm thinking about death because today is my birthday, and birthdays are days for reflection. I have now undeniably used more than half of the upper extremity of years granted me by the 90th Psalm and must face the real prospect that, by the pure mathematical progress of years, there are fewer ahead of me than behind.

Death. It happens to the best of us. I’m not particularly afraid of it — the prospect is more disappointing than anything else — but most deaths these days are drawn out, painful, and personally degrading. Consequently, I want the event to be as brief and trouble-free for me and everyone else when the moment comes, and indeed I’m trying to avoid it, if at all possible. Douglas Adams wrote that the “trick” to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. When the moment comes, I intend to hurl myself, unflinching, at death. And hope to miss.


Many Christians say that life must be considered sacred from “conception to natural death”, although polls show that most of them are willing to make exceptions in cases where they have something personally invested in the matter. I’ll leave the argument about my views on fetal life for another time. Let me instead observe that in our society there is very rarely such a thing as “natural death.”  Most dying patients receive highly unnatural forms of palliative care, which often involves essentially stupefying them for their last few days. But there is far more to it than that, even. In the modern western world, even before we are born, we begin to receive the most radical and decidedly unnatural forms of medical treatment and intervention to extend our lives for as long as possible. Any pregnant woman who has had an ultrasound, teenager who has had symptomatic wisdom teeth removed, middle-aged man who has a prescription for blood-pressure; anyone at all who has had antibiotics for a serious infection, stitches to close a wound, a suspicious mole removed, or his tonsils taken out, simply cannot believe in the concept of a “natural death.”  If we allowed “nature” to take its course the majority of us would have gone down to the same fate as the majority of people throughout history: we would have died in childhood.

Now, to the moment of death.  If we are of sound mind we have a right, of course, to refuse treatment, and when we are incapable of making it for ourselves our family usually is permitted to make it for us. The decision to “pull the plug” is made by thousands of people every day when it is a clear that their brain-dead loved ones are being kept alive only in the sense of having a machine respirate for them. No one serious denies this right, as theoretically machines could keep us all respirating indefinitely, long after the brain has ceased to function. This is non-controversial.

Now, let me put another case to you. Supposing I have been diagnosed with a terminal disease and, at some late point in the disease’s progress, only pain, misery, and total loss of dignity lies ahead.  I have an undeniable right to refuse treatment, of course, but with the consequent and probably quite unbearable pain that would accompany such a decision; I have the right to receive large doses of painkillers and spend my last days or weeks in a narcotic haze, which is the standard method of passing for most people nowadays.  However, I do not have the right, not even in the clearest of mental states, to ask a physician to give me a lethal dose of drugs to end my life as quickly as possible.

Well, not quite. I can ask, but as matters stand no physician in Canada legally can fulfill my request. He or she can leave me dead to the world but not actually dead. But why not? There are, of course, serious concerns about the administration of such treatments, were they to be legal. There would have to be careful safeguards to ensure that people with reasonable prospects for recovery don’t end their lives prematurely. We mustn’t have angst-ridden teenagers showing up at our hospitals, asking for lethal injections because they can’t go on after their most recent breakup. But if I am in the later phases of a terminal illness, with no reasonable prospect of recovery and – most crucially – I have been professionally determined to be of sound mind, I see no grounds on which I ought not be permitted to choose to dispossess myself of the one thing that is most my own: my life. The easiest method for doing so would be to ask for the assistance of a willing physician to administer a lethal dose of painkillers.

And why can’t I? There is one answer. Because of opposition on religious grounds, by those who maintain that even fully consensual, physician-assisted suicide that meets precise criteria is a violation of the principle that life is sacred until “natural” death, even though very few of them really believe in the concept of “natural death” at all. In this regard, the only people who are being consistent are those members of certain religious minorities who refuse nearly all medical treatments on the grounds that it is a violation of God’s will. I regard this as perverse, but at least it has the virtue of consistency.

Canada’s constitution guarantees me religious freedom — a freedom which must necessarily include the freedom to be free from the religiously motivated dictates of others. I therefore regard my inability to secure a physician assisted suicide as a violation of my constitutional rights. Some will attempt to make the argument that all of our laws have religious antecedents, and that therefore my argument applies equally to laws against murder, rape, theft, and the like.  But there are many grounds for opposing such crimes quite apart from the fact that there are religious proscriptions against them. The conditions of human solidarity and of maintaining human society require them whether your particular god wants them or not. By contrast, secular objections to fulfilling the wish of a terminally ill and clear-minded individual to expedite the process are harder to locate. 
 
It goes without saying, of course, that no physician should ever be forced against his or her conscience or under threat of professional sanction to terminate someone’s life; we all recognize that the decision to end a life is, from both sacred and secular perspectives, a momentous one. The suggestion will be made, of course, that to permit physician assisted suicide will serve to further the secular society’s cruelest failing of all: the supposed devaluation of human existence.  But as a historian of war and conflict, I am not at all convinced that, in proportional terms, the century recently concluded was any more violent than others that preceded it nor indeed that it valued life less.   Indeed, allow me to suggest that it is possible that from a secular perspective the value of life is even greater – it has an inherent and intrinsic value, because it is the only life that we will ever have.

Charlie

The catastrophe that befell Japan late last week came on the very anniversary of another: the March 1945 bombing of Tokyo, in which perhaps 100,000 people perished by fire. I had intended the raid to be the subject of this week’s column — complete with a sober assessment of the realities of wartime Japanese imperialism — but when the earthquake, tsunami and now, it appears, partial meltdown of at least two nuclear reactors occurred in the past three days, I recalled something George Orwell said during the London Blitz: that there was much to criticize about England and its history, but now was not the best time to do it.

As of now, the official death toll in Japan is approaching two thousand and many thousands more are missing. The horrific images of the tsunami sweeping remorselessly over towns and fields, devastating everything in its path would, one would think, be enough to move even the most cold hearted reactionary to tears. But a quick perusal of message boards on CNN and Youtube suggests that a great many people are positively busting at the seams to sign up the next time the Brown Shirts role around. A small sample, shall we? (Brace yourself.)

xstongue
Theres a meltdown going on in America, can you news people focus on that instead of other countries news, we need to think about U.S. FOR A CHANGE....

primerib
What goes around comes around nips! Remember, Pearl Harbor, nips? Yeah....

BIG RED 1
Hasnt been that long ago old Tojo and his slaant eye folks were trying to killl all us Americans. They killed a whole lot of our grandparents. Please think before you start praising these people. BY THE WAY . . . THE BIG RED 1 WAS THE HONORED FIRTS ARMORED DIVISION. AMERICAN HEROES.

THEY DESERVE TO BE HIT BY QUAKE AND TSUNAMI,THEY ARE VERRY CRUEL AND HEARTHLESS,I HOPE THAT THEY WILL BE HIT AGAIN (JAPAN,JAPANESE) BY MUCH MORE POWERFULL MAGNITUDE 11 QUAKE AND TSUNAMI 100 METERS HIGH,,FUCK YOU ALL JAPANESE PEOPLE,GO TO HELL!!!
TheCityhunter08 1 hour ago

Who cares about the Japs and their bastard kids!!! They all deserve to die and the ones that r still alive need to melt from those reactors! Whoever does not die, we need to Nuke them to rid these Japs from the world. Justice for Pearl Harbor Baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
notre2010 4 hours ago

And so forth. Need I even get into the immense number of replies that contained the words “God” and “Jesus” “wrath” “revelation” “end times”, etc? Oh, what the heck:

i dont know much about japan but our preacher says they must have done many bad things for God to smite them in this manner. he says that many Japanese are atheists it is no wonder God would eventually take notice this should be a warning to all unbelievers. i pray for the japan people and that they will accept Jesus Christ.
ptl8888 7 hours ago

saudisRbest
Until Japan becomes an Islamic nation, it will continue to experience the wrath of Allah

We are living in a time of history like no other. We are living right at the very end of time. We are that last generation. Every time that God has brought judgment, he has warned the believers (1 Thess 5: 1-5). God is warning the entire human race that the Rapture of the true believers is going to occur on May 21, 2011. That will be followed by what the Bible calls the Day of Judgment after which, on October 21, 2011 God Himself will destroy this entire cosmos. (more info at familyradio,com 
horseandhisrider 5 hours ago

As Jesus approached the boat where the disciples were, Peter said, "Lord, if it's really you, tell me to come to you, walking on water." Jesus said, "Yes, come." Peter than walked toward Jesus on the water, but started to sink when he was frightened by the large waves. "Save me, Lord!" He shouted. Jesus grabbed him. "You have so little faith..."
racenuke 8 hours ago

this is only the start of it, earthquaqe, tsunami, earth axis change, vulcan eruption, nuclear plant explosion, and more too come :( the peple are greedy and fill they pockets with money, but what cann you doo with money now ? man kind doesent concentrate on the future :( the power and welth drives us twords selfdestructin :( 2012.12.21 is aproching :( god take care of all japanese victims who didnt hade a chance. PEACE

Now, stay with me. A very large number of postings argued that the real truth is being concealed by the main-steam media, with its corporate (or socialist, take your pick) agenda. In response to a terrifying Youtube video, one poster commented:

In a world full of lies few seem to know the truth. And the truth is simple - this video is fake.
Antikrew 1 hour ago

While others grafted their own social concerns onto the catastrophe since the corporate fat-cats who pull the news-anchors' strings wouldn’t:

glennsky
These are the Great Revenge of WHALES' AND DOLPHINS' HOME. Don't forget THE COVE movie. If Japan won't stop killing these animals there will be another GREAT REVENGE AHEAD.

And don't get me started with the numerologists, who found all sorts of associations using variations on the date of the earthquake and other catastrophic events. For example:

If you add 9/11/01 and 3/11/11 you get 12/22/12!

December 22nd, 2011 being the supposed date of the end of the world. Or, rather, the day after. But never mind.

One idea that many, many posters alleged (try Googling it) is that the earthquake was the result of secret military testing, probably the HAARP program. Officially, this unclassified program involves research of the ionosphere, but, as everyone in the tinfoil hat brigade knows, HAARP is responsible for the earthquakes in Haiti, New Zealand, and now off the coast of Japan, as part of an evil experiment being conducted by the CIA. I'm not sure why they're doing it. Just because they're evil, I guess.

Luckily, the world’s celebrities took to Twitter to solve this whole earthquake business — whatever its real cause — overnight. For example, in British Columbia, the cast and crew of the forthcoming Twilight movie were relocated a little further inland as a precaution, as elevated sea-levels might pose a mild risk to the west coast when the waves arrived in a few hours’ time. Thinking fast, an actress from the film Tweeted that, if this was to be her last Tweet, she wanted her family, friends, and fans to know that she loves them. Confronted apparently, with the paranoia, self-absorption, and absurdity of this shout-out — did she really want what she apparently thought might be her last message to be a Tweet? — she replied, in another Tweet, that she was just “speaking her peace.” No doubt this gave her piece of mind. Or peace of mind. Like, whatever, LOL. Who has time for correct spelling when the cold, steely embrace of Death itself is closing in?

Well, at least the news of the earthquake did something that even the emerging civil war in Libya could not: keep the most appalling and most boring of Hollywood stars – Charlie Sheen — off the front page. For two or three weeks the antics of this raving conspiracy theorist, who starred in two overblown Oliver Stone epics in the 1980s and nothing of worth since, made headlines everywhere. But, no wonder. Read the message boards. He has a potential audience of millions who think just like him. He’s the most famous Internet troll in the world, and gaining greater and greater fame not for the quality of his mind but for having completely lost it.

Some day, I fear, all of this internet chatter will make fodder for a thousand PhD dissertations about the collapse of Western Civilization. They will tell the story of how the healthiest, wealthiest, most educated people in the history of the world decided to make a howling wasteland out of a garden, and all because of their incapacity to stop and think.

Incidentally, one very popular HAARP conspiracy video making the rounds on Youtube is narrated by one Martin Sheen. I admonish my students not to use cliches, but here it seems inevitable.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Heaven

A parable.

So there’s Gordon. In Heaven. Why? He has no idea - he’s a religious dissenter, after all. He’s holding a tray and is in a short, fast moving line in Heaven’s Cafeteria, which queues past a breathtaking waterfall. The day is sunny and a positively blissful 24 degrees centigrade. A live string quintet is playing a new composition by Mozart and Beethoven. As he approaches the counter, Gordon notices a small sign, written in gold. “Tomorrow’s special: Simon Peter’s catch of the day.” It’s an old joke, but everybody gets a good chuckle out of it.

Time has no meaning here, but Gordon keeps a day-planner anyway, because he’s always been a day-planner sort of guy. For today, it says:

8 AM Continental breakfast
9 AM Stroll on the beach
10 AM Ecstatic reunion with lost loved ones
12 PM Lunch
1 PM John Lennon and Elvis Presley in concert
2 PM Pedicure and foot massage
3 PM Nap
4 PM High Tea with Queen Victoria
5 PM New episodes of Firefly on Heaven-on-Demand
6 PM Dinner

He makes a mental note to get High Tea with Queen Victoria changed to burning.

Gordon gets to the front of the line to discover that God himself is serving today, which explains why things have been moving even more quickly than usual.
“What can I get you?” God asks. He’s wearing a big apron that says “Kiss the Cook!” and he sounds like Humphrey Bogart.
“What’s on for today?”
“Anything you want. Name it.”
“Whew...so many choices. Ummm...Pad Thai. And a side of McDonald’s French Fries. Oh, and a Cherry Coke.”
“I knew you’d say that. Coming right up.”
“God?”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure. Drop by my office later.”

Later, Gordon takes the cable car up to God’s office, which is at the snowy peak of an immense but gracefully curved mountain. God’s secretary (an in-her-prime Grace Kelly) presses the button on her intercom. “Gordon is here to see you.”
“I know. Send him in.”
God is sitting on a blue exercise ball at a big Ikea desk. Behind him there’s a poster of a kitten holding onto a rope. It says, “Hang in there.” On the desk is an iMac, a name plate that says “God”, and a Magic 8 Ball.
“Got a minute?” Gordon asks.
“All the time in the world. Take a load off.” He waves Gordon towards a chair. “So, how you liking it so far?”
“I’m not sure about this whole bliss thing,” Gordon begins. “I mean, struggle was one of the things that gave my life meaning. I enjoyed it.”
“Uh-huh,” says God, who is finishing up deleting spam from his e-mail. “There’s a book you should read. All about struggle. Guy named Hitler wrote it.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean that it was the expectation of serious effort now in return for future satiety that was motivating in life. Here, everything’s handed to me on a silver platter. Literally. Lunch was on a silver platter.”
“Look, it’s your Heaven. You want some struggle, you can have struggle. Have an argument with Socrates. Talk politics with Machiavelli. Play chess with Morphy. Box a few rounds with Rocky Marciano. Try to figure out season six of Lost. Whatever. You could even go back, if you want. The Buddhists do. Oh, how they love to go back.”
“Okay. Fair enough. But there’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask. I assume you know already-“
“Of course.”
“Exactly. That’s the problem. Omnipotence.”
“Oh, Me. Here we go,” says God.
“It’s self-contradicting, isn’t it?”
“Not to me.”
“I mean, if you’re all-powerful and all-knowing, you must be the cause of evil. At the very least, you either can’t prevent it or won’t. If you can’t prevent it, you’re not omnipotent. If you won’t, you’re malicious. No offense.”
“None taken. Ever heard of free will?”
“Of course, but can we even have free will if your omnipotence includes omniscience, which it must? And, moreover, tidal waves aren’t a matter of free will. Plague isn’t free will. And what about the innocent victims of the acts of free will committed by others? Jews in the Holocaust, that sort of thing.”
God bounces a bit on the exercise ball and says, “I see things long term. Trust me, there’s a good reason for those things. Your puny monkey brain couldn’t understand it. No offense.”
“I have a PhD, you know,” Gordon says, rather indignantly.
“Well, I don’t have a PhD, I admit. But I created created space and time. I invented the physical constants of the universe. I directed biological evolution to ensure the developmental of higher-order intelligence. I solved the Rubic’s Cube in, like, two minutes flat. Two minutes. The first time I laid eyes on it. It took you six years to write your dissertation and half your committee didn’t even read it.”
“They didn’t?”
“Of course they didn’t, pea brain. Didn’t you notice the one guy’s proofreading comments stopped at about page fifty?”
“Oh, wow.”
Gordon reflects for a moment and then says, “So...why am I here? In Heaven? A non-believer like me? All kinds of people said I’d end up in Hell.”
“Meh,” God shrugs. “You seem like a good guy.”
“Okay. But there was this philosopher, Pascal...”
“Speak of the Devil," God interjects. "I’m hitting the links with him tomorrow afternoon. You should come.”
“...and he said it was the best bet to believe in God. But he didn’t say which God. And he didn’t distinguish between the idea that you should believe and actually believing. I mean, it’s not like I could believe in something for which there wasn’t sufficient evidence, even if belief is the best bet.”
“Me knows. Look, you don’t need to explain yourself. We get all sorts up here, and we do our best to make everyone feel at home. But not everyone expected it to be like this. Some wanted virgins, for example. Virgins! What’s up with that?”
“You should talk.”
“Don’t be a wise guy.” He really does sound like Humphrey Bogart. “Anyway, I’m a softy, basically. I’ve got a generally salvic disposition. I let in all sorts. Pagans, Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jainists, Scientologists, Wiccans, Secularists, Agnostics, Atheists, Theological Noncognitivists. Nearly everybody gets in. You’ve got to be a real A-Hole not to get in. Some people bug me. Every day I meet Biblical literalists, and I say to them, ‘Really? Seriously? You thought there was a big boat with two of every animal on it? How the hell do you think the koala bears made it from Australia? Did they swim?’ But then I get all soft and let them in anyway.”
“But they believed. I didn’t.”
“So what? It’s not like I gave you guys much proof, and it tends to be the smart ones who picked up on that. I like smart people being around. Smart by your tiny little monkey brain standards, that is. You used your God given intelligence for a purpose other than devotion. Bonus marks in my book. Not that book, though. I mean ‘book’ metaphorically.”
Gordon is about to speak when the phone rings.
“I gotta take this,” God says. “They want to know if I’m interested in saving money on long distance. I am. Really, you have no idea. Could we pick this up later? And don’t forget golf tomorrow. We tee off at 11. Einstein will be there, too, but he’s always running behind.”

That evening, Gordon is back in line in the cafeteria. Ahead of him is the Reverend Pat Robertson. Gordon knows perfectly well who he is, and so decides not to strike up a conversation. But Robertson looks over his shoulder at Gordon and examines him rather dubiously. “So...what are you here for?” he asks.
“Skepticism,” Gordon replies. “And you?”

Hell

A parable.

So, there ’s Gordon. In Hell. His crime? Religious dissent. On Earth, we call governments that punish religious dissenters totalitarian, but he has long since learned to let that go — eons of torture and burning tend to take your mind off of things.

Gordon is holding a tray and is in a long, long line in Hell’s Cafeteria. The air conditioning is on the fritz again, and it's hot as Hell. Over the speakers, they're playing Muzak arrangements of Barry Manilow ("Mandy", 24/7, for eternity) and they're serving fish-sticks, again, for the hundred-trillionth day in a row. As he approaches the counter Gordon notices a small sign, written in blood. His blood. "Tomorrow’s special: fish sticks." Bastards: they think of everything.

Time has no meaning here, but Gordon keeps a day-planner anyway, because he’s always been a planner sort of guy. For today, it says:

8 AM burning
9 AM drawing-and-quartering
10 AM hanging
11 AM dismemberment
12 PM lunch (poisoned)
1 PM the rack
2 PM root canal
3 PM drowning
4 PM re-runs of The Golden Girls
5 PM buried alive
6 PM beating
6:30 PM dinner (fish sticks - poisoned)
etc.

He flips forward a few pages. More of the same, although on Thursday he has an hour of cardio-kickboxing. He makes a mental note to get that changed to burning.

Gordon looks up. Ahead of and behind him, queuing with their trays, are the teeming billions of the damned. They are of every race, ethnicity, social station, and period in human history. Some are warlords, murders, rapists, and thieves; some are adulterers, some are liars, some liked the new Star Wars movies better than the old ones. But the majority are quite ordinary people who never hurt anybody. The ones from Gordon’s time lived their lives, went to school, read a few books, watched TV, cooked meals, raised their families, drove their kids to soccer practice, gave some bucks to charity, some even went to church now and again, but, wouldn’t you know it, they were improperly religious and consigned to Hellfire for eternity. There are also countless millions of truly, deeply, sincerely devout followers of literally thousands of different faiths that turned out to be false, and even devout followers of the Right Religion who were guilty of theological or liturgical misconduct.

Gordon hears different things about what the Right Religion is, about what he should have believed or how he should have behaved. Some say faith in a certain prophet alone. Some say sacraments. Some say accepting that a particular iron-age book was the final and perfect revelation. Some say that there are four truths and an eightfold noble path, and they can’t quite figure out what this eternal damnation business has to do with them. Some even say there was nothing to be done – that the game was rigged from the get-go. There are all sorts of ideas. He even heard that the correct answer was a life led in conformance to the will of the Goddess Maat, which would explain why pretty much everybody except ancient Egyptians seem well represented here. Who knows? Inwardly, Gordon shrugs. What does it matter now? There’s no reprieve. There are billions of people here who knew in their hearts that they were right and then — poof — fire, brimstone, perpetual torture, fish sticks, and Barry Manilow. Sucks to be you. Forever and ever. Amen.

Anyway, directly ahead of Gordon in line is Adolf Hitler. But Gordon has been in hell for a million trillion billion years already— that’s zero percent of his sentence, incidentally — and his memories of Earth mostly have faded. So while Hitler seems somehow familiar, especially with his postage stamp of a moustache and swastika armband, Gordon can’t quite place him. He’s about to ask him if they’ve ever met when Hitler looks over his shoulder and decides to strike up a conversation first.

"Gootentag," Hitler says. "So: what are you in for?"
"Skepticism," Gordon replies. "And you?"

Elitism

Let me put a case to you. Here are two athletes. One is measurably faster, higher scoring, has fewer injuries, and brings out the best in his team-mates. The other is demonstrably slower, lower scoring, has more injuries, and is a well known prima-donna on the playing field. Which of the two would you rather sign for your team? It’s not even a question, of course. In sports we take elitism, which is to say, a regard for excellence, for granted. Would it were so in things that actually matter.

Let me put a further case to you. Here is a political candidate. He speaks five languages, is interested and indeed well read in art, architecture, botany, biology, chemistry, classical music, comparative religion, constitutional law, engineering, geography, geology, history, literature, mathematics, the philosophies of ethics, mind, and religion, political science, physics, and zoology. He is a noted author, political theorist, and can correspond on more-or-less equal terms with some of the greatest minds of his generation.

But none of this, of course, would count in Thomas Jefferson’s favour were he running for political office today, and his enthusiastic Francophilia, his lack of military service, his irreligion, together with the certain-to-be-revealed scandal of an extramarital, interracial coupling that produced a child would sink him altogether. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter would tell him to take his Godless, liberal, family-hating elitist butt back to France and to the stay there with the other book-readin’ peaceniks. We don’t like yer kind ‘round here, Jefferson.

Here is another political candidate. She speaks one language, but is famously inarticulate. Her books are ghost-written. She has never been to France. She thinks that that the world is six thousand years old. She claims to be Christian but demonstrates no knowledge of theology or scripture. She routinely condemns judges for misinterpreting the United States Constitution, but seems to have little conception of what the Constitution actually says, nor can she name a ruling she opposes except one. And yet she wishes to occupy the same office as the aforementioned Mr. Jefferson, and there are millions of people, including the three named above, who would like to make it so.

The problem, of course, isn’t with Sarah Palin, or indeed with any of hundreds of politicians like her. The problem is with the progressive diminution of the intellectual qualities of our political culture. For a great many reasons, expertly unraveled in a recent book by Susan Jacoby called The Age of American Unreason, even the merest hint of higher-order intelligence on the part of a candidate is now labeled as “elitist”, sometimes even by journalists who by any standard are card-carrying members of the elite themselves.

The fundamental problem facing our society is that most of our societal problems are too complicated for people to understand without considerable effort. Climate change, the rising costs of health care, global economic transformation – understanding such issues requires effort and careful weighing of evidence. The obvious response, that people are too busy to think about such issues, misses the point. The point is that most people aren’t even trying — polls demonstrate this very clearly — and there’s little excuse for that when nearly all of us have at our immediate disposal access to vastly more information than any generation before us. If you can find an hour per week for the hockey pool or Call of Duty or re-runs of The Simpsons, is it really impossible to find an hour per week to study issues that are of actual importance?

My own position is that, if it is, it is probably best to abstain from voting. Voting is a responsibility one has to one’s fellow citizens, and voting from a position of ignorance – or voting strictly on the basis of longstanding and unexamined party allegiances – is an abuse of that responsibility. Unfortunately, as it stands, a large percentage of our political leaders are elected on the basis of their ability to mobilize unexamined or pre-existing beliefs. You can go a long way beating the podium about “tax and spend liberals” even when you fully intend to tax and spend like mad yourself, because you count on the fact that a large percentage of people won’t bother to do any independent fact-checking. You can also go a long way in trying to convince voters that your opponent is an “elitist”: somebody who, by virtue of being thoughtful and reflective, can be said to not represent the “values” of most people out there. That claim, at least, would have the virtue of being true.

I’m not a big fan of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, but there’s no denying he’s a serious intellectual with scholarly credentials that would put most academics to shame. So there’s something very sad about seeing the man reduced to wearing cowboy hats and chomping down hot dogs and calling people “folks” at rallies, all in an effort to solve what dozens of commentators have called his “image problem” – which is to say, his inability to “communicate” with the “common man.” Just once, I’d like to hear a politician say what’s demonstrably true: that it’s the “common man” who’s the problem. It’s his inability to put down the remote (or the video game controller) long enough to learn and think about issues that are of actual importance that’s the reason our democratic political process has now been reduced to the most debased and vulgar pandering populism.

Is education the solution? Certainly not: the progressive dumbing down of our societal discourse is occurring at precisely the moment when more and more people are going to school for longer than ever before. The issue isn't "education" as our school-system defines it (education as the accumulation of facts) but thinking. Above all, more than anything else, we need people to stop and think. This means acknowledging that problems of real complexity require careful consideration before we reach conclusions about them. But our political system is geared to go in to the opposite direction, and appeals instead to the basest and crassest gut instincts of people who prefer to have others do their thinking for them. Any candidate who tries to do otherwise is denounced as a spineless elitist, suitable only for the “ivory tower” and not the “real world”.

A professor of mine, recently departed, used to wander the aisles during final exams and quietly admonish his students, “More thinking. Less writing.” In other words, when you don’t know what you’re talking about, stop talking.