Journal of No. 118

So I mentioned the Poe 'anthology' that included other anthologies with a single Poe story and a mass of others. Here are some other notes...

A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS By Oliver Wendell Holmes: The only way this could be better is if it was OWH Junior, the Supreme Court Justice. It's really a terrible thing, with terrible puns. And yet, here are the gems I have unearthed so that you need not slog away in the mines yourself:

"Do you know"—he broke out all at once—"why they don't take steppes [get it? take steppes? -es] in Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals?" We both confessed ignorance. "Because there are nomad people to be found there," he said, with a dignified smile.
...
"Why is Douglas like the earth?" We tried, but couldn't guess. "Because he was flattened out at the polls!" said Mr. Riggles.
...
"Followed the sea," he replied to the question put by one of us. "Went as mate in a fishing-schooner." "Why did you give it up?" "Because I didn't like working for two mast-ers," he replied.

Just some etymological studies here...

"The gable-end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eavesdroppings flapped against the wall."

(Wiki notes: "The verb eavesdrop was originally a back-formation of the noun eavesdropper ("a person who eavesdrops") which was formed from the unrelated noun eavesdrop ("the dripping of water from the eaves of a house; the ground on which such water falls"). An eavesdropper was one who stood at the eavesdrop")

""I have a pencil," I answered; "but I have no paper. Would my cuff do, do you think?"   "Oh, yes!" replied Miss Lammas, with alacrity; "men often do that."   I wrote on my cuff:"

Aha, the origin (most probably) of off-the-cuff remarks.

"and a rugged tarpaulin[1] dictating from his elbow chair, hectoring the patriarchs"

The gloss identifies it as a sailor. I always thought a tar for a sailor came from using tar to make nautical gear waterproof. In a sense, it does, since tarpaulin "originated as a compound of the words tar and palling, referring to a tarred canvas pall used to cover objects on ships. Sailors often tarred their own overclothes in the same manner as the sheets or palls. By association, sailors became known as Jack Tars." So whether it went straight from tar to sailor, or via tarpaulin (or both), there was some tar in there somewhere.

Society Without God presents the results of Zuckerman's yearlong stay in Denmark, interviewing Danes (and a few Swedes, and a couple miscellaneous) about their religious beliefs and the religious culture of Scandinavia. Although Zuckerman is a trained sociologist, he's also a secular person himself, and admits here and there that he has an axe to grind. Nevertheless, the result provides some great straight-from-the-horse's-mouth information on a culture that is overwhelmingly secular, and ranks highly on any number of socioeconomic factors that contribute to happiness and stability.

He spends some time discussing why the Scandinavian countries have turned out so secular. I think the most convincing to me is the idea that these societies take care of their people so well, that this stability and support obviates not only material needs, but spiritual ones as well. Another more interesting idea that gets explored a little bit is the idea that the Scandinavians were just never very religious in the first place. With Christianity being largely imposed from above for political reasons by kings or arbitration, one can wonder about the depth and sincerity of belief in the countries, even after 1000 years.

In any event, belief in one or more gods is a minority position. However, many of his subjects profess a belief in 'something'. And it's also clear that many of the subjects just don't want to talk about it. Possibly they are 'hiding' the unpopular view that they actually believe in god. Or possibly it's just that their culture seems to be very reticent to talk about religous matters. I think one subject said it would be much easier to talk about sex with his grandparents than gods. Here's another example:
"Q - If I were to ask you, “Do you believe in God?"—and I‘m not going to say what that means, just that question—how would you respond?
A - It’s none of your business. [laughter] No, I would be polite, but I would kind of want to talk about something else."

It's also interesting that, although belief in gods or an afterlife is very rare, Danes typically still consider themselves Christian, and I think about 80% of them belong to the national church (which collects taxes from them). Zuckerman makes a very apposite analogy with modern American Judaism. Many American Jews are very secular, but nevertheless carry out the various rituals. Many have bar (and bat) mitzvahs, despite a lack of actual belief; the Danes are similarly Confirmed in the church.

But it is so interesting to see what 'being Christian' means to them:
"From Annelise, a 47-year-old manager at a telecommunications company: Being an okay person, being nice to people, not hurting anyone, helping when help is needed, that sort of thing. But nothing spectacular, you know. Just being nice."
"From Anika, a 36-year-old stay-at-home mom: Being Christian means to look out for the poor and the challenged in our society . . . to feel compassion, to be able to think of other people than yourself . . . to look out for the weak, the poor . . . to not discriminate . . . but to think that everybody has the same value."

There's precious little mention of Jesus, or sins, or redemption.

There's a lengthy, but not very insightful, interview with a believer in Asatru.

But the most interesting interview is with a guy who at first identified as a Christian and a (somewhat tepid) believer in God. Then he was interviewed again after having lived in the US for several months...
"And that puzzled me because I thought the United States would be more like Denmark—believing in, you know, rationality."
"And I was just like, what is Hillary Clinton praying?! I don’t know. It’s just scary—that even the Democrats are so religious. So if I was to live here I would have a problem voting for a president, because I don’t want a religious leader."

Ultimately, the experience of bumping into American-style Christianity destroyed his belief in God:
"Yeah, because when I came here I believed in God and I was Christian—but in a Danish way. So there’s a lot of stuff in the Bible that just doesn’t make sense, but—you know—sure, I thought God was up there and he helped us, he tried to make a book and we tried to behave according to the book, and you know, humans make errors so maybe the book isn’t 100 percent correct, but you can kind of do it. But when I came here and saw all the people being so—explicit—like Jesus died and he was the Son of God and he was born by a virgin. And I added it all up and said, okay if I need to say I‘m a Christian, then I need to believe in all this stuff. Because there’s so much that you have to buy into in order to be Christian. And I didn’t buy into it. I don’t believe it."

And what will he tell the people back home?

"I think I would say to them, maybe you don’t believe me, but the American society is—all politics and media discussions—is based on that everybody is very devoted Christians. Meaning that you cannot hold an office, you cannot be a president, you cannot be whatever, if you don’t publicly say that you believe in God and all of your sentences end with God bless America or whatever. That we, as Danes, have to be very, very careful with joining the United States when they want us to go to war or they want us to join them in whatever endeavors they want us to join with them, because the religious fanatics in the United States have a very, very high influence on what’s going to happen in the United States, and I don’t think Danes know that. I think that if Danes knew that, they would be very—I don’t think they would be afraid—but I think they would say, “No, no, we don’t want to be a part of that.” And I don’t think they know. But I‘m going to tell them."

In Among the Creationists: Dispatches from the Anti-Evolutionist Front Line, mathematician Jason Rosenhouse describes his experiences at a number of creationist and intelligent design conferences he attended over the past few years. I had heard that he had had some interesting experiences, and thought this might offer an interesting sociological view of American creationism. Although there is some of that, there is not as much as I hoped or expected, given the title. But there's some good stuff concerning his direct interactions at conference sessions (primarily in somewhat adversarial Q&A sessions) and more casual (and generally positive and polite) interactions at the lunch counter. If I were to over-summarize, he found teenage creationists to be curious but misinformed, while older ones were incurious and misinformed. On the whole, I think Rosenhouse does a good job presenting the best foot of creationism, being fair to (albeit unpersuaded by) their arguments, and only occasionally getting exasperated to the point of ridicule.

Interspersed amongst the chapters detailing his dispatches from the other side are other chapters that lay out a lot of the basic facts about evolution, the legal history of the creationist response in public schools, and other matters in science and philosophy of science as they relate to the creation evolution controversy. A lot of this was old hat for me, but sometimes there were refreshing takes on things. Perhaps the most interesting and challenging was his discussion of How to Read Genesis...


Obviously, most young-earth creationists view the Genesis account through a lens that is both inerrantist and literal. a Universe created by God in six literal 24 hour days, and adding up genealogies gets you an age of 6000 years or so. But as Rosenhouse points out, their literalism is somewhat selective. When the Bible speaks of God establishing a firmament, or the vault of the sky, YEC's don't (so far as I know) consider the sky to be a solid dome or canopy stretched over the face of the Earth (though this is indeed what the Hebrew etymology and ancient Hebrew 'cosmology' indicate was their belief (however, cf. Canopy Theory)).
So if the 'literal' response to "The best scientific evidence suggests that life on earth is billions of years old, and it developed over time in a process outlined by the modern theory of evolution." is "The Bible says otherwise." THEN the 'literal' response to "The best scientific evidence suggests the sky is not a solid vault suspended over the earth." should be "The Bible says otherwise."
Nevertheless, I think he has a certain respect for those who accept a 'plain reading' interpretation of Genesis. It just so happens that it's all wrong. Because he doesn't think much of various less literal ways to interpret Genesis while still adhering to its divine inspiration. If God had intended us to figure out that the 'days of creation' were actually long periods of time, why didn't he say so? Was going on about mornings and evenings the best a divine author could do to impart the truth to his followers?
His solution (for the Christian) is to dismiss the divine inspiration of Genesis:

Marcus Borg is even more succinct: “They are not God’s stories of the world’s beginnings; rather, they are ancient Israel’s stories of the world’s beginnings” (Borg 2001, 62). From the perspective of Christianity, I would think this model is entirely plausible. More plausible, in fact, than familiar notions of verbal, plenary inspiration. Of course, following Gilkey requires discarding certain traditional teachings, but perhaps that is good riddance to bad rubbish.

And as for any supposed 'dialogue' between science and religion, and the attempts to really use metaphor to interpret the Bible in light of scientific discoveries, he is even more harsh:

If you want to redefine original sin, or summon forth strained interpretations of Genesis to reconcile evolution with Adam and Eve, then go right ahead. But please do not pretend that this represents some convergence of ancient wisdom with modern understandings. This is not science and religion in conversation. This is science telling it like it is, and religion trying desperately to catch up. After science has dutifully applied its methods, over the course of centuries and frequently in the face of religious objections, you do not get to redefine your words and pretend that religion had the answers all along.

So the choices offered to the various People of the Book is to:

A) Insist on literalism. Honest, but flawed due to being factually wrong.
B) Keep inspiration, but stray from literalism. Not so honest... this is not so much an exercise in exegesis as it is a method of making Genesis 'come out with the right answer' -- an answer derived from other knowledge.
C) Acknowledge that Genesis is a human work. There is no need to reconcile modern knowledge with ancient myth. Although uncomfortable, dispensing with Genesis in this way doesn't necessarily harm the Good News.

I guess I'm more generous in allowing metaphorical interpretations of Genesis, particularly since Augustine and Origen and other early fathers did so. Not that I lose a lot of sleep thinking about this. Rosenhouse takes evolution-friendly peoples to task for trying to convince creationists that 'Genesis isn't supposed to be taken literally.' Usually what I try to tell people is that 'Genesis isn't supposed to be a science textbook,' which is slightly different. Actually, I generally try to stick to the science and ignore the Bible, because if and when I quote it, someone will invariably say that the Devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose. Though this stokes my pride, it does little to foster conversation.

Twisty Little Passages is "an approach to interactive fiction" (aka IF, i.e. Infocom-style text adventures). I remember when the book came out, thinking, "Cool idea. I need to get this book. Er, $30? Maybe I can wait." Well, a pb exists, and cheaper still is the electronic text, which I read on my kindle.
( YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING )