Truth! - Part 6
The following statements are true. Some of them are even double plus true (triple plus true while drinking victory gin):
Y'know what word you never hear anymore? Mercy. You'll occasionally hear it as an ironic expletive ("Mercy, me!"), but you never seem to hear it in its original meaning. I wonder if it's just an aesthetic/fashionable shift in language, or if it's because the concept is vanishing from our minds. Like how equatorial cultures don't have a word for snow. Have we stopped saying "mercy" because we've stopped practicing it?
If you approach so-called miracles logically, it says some pretty bad stuff about the deity you think is responsible. Say a seven year old child is in a hospital with leukemia. The outlook doesn't look good and the child is considered terminal. The leukemia suddenly goes into remission for no reason. Praise Jaysus, it's a miracle! There's another terminal child in the next bed. His leukemia doesn't go into remission. In fact, nobody else in the entire ward experiences a miracle. So God, omnipotent being, not just powerful, omnipotent, picks one person out of billions of sick people to grant health. Did the others do something wrong? Can a child of seven years old have done anything to either deserve a miracle or deserve a lack of a miracle resulting in agony at the core of his bones? Miracles are, by their very nature, rare. That rarity is the key to a very important concept. Either God is a cruel, torturing, insecure, childish motherfucker, and we are the ants caught in his magnifying glass, or (here we go again) HE DOESN'T EXIST!
My next point is in response to what you're thinking right now (Yes, I'm reading your mind.), if you are a big fan of God and the whole miracle concept. The standard response to this sort of criticism of the big guy is "God works in mysterious ways.". Catholics might also recognize this as one of those "Divine Mysteries" the priests talk about. That's a religious trick as old as religion. Mystery means something you don't know. Saying "God works in mysterious ways" means exactly the same as "I don't know." but it's phrased in a way that makes you sound like you know the answer. "I don't know." states a negative; "God works in mysterious ways." disguises this negative as a positive, and you get to act like you're wise and learned and have the inside track on the mind of your fictional daddy figure. The truth is, your story is not logical, is full of holes and inconsistencies, and no matter how pointy your hat is, you don't know anymore than the rest of us. However, I know one thing that you don't know: There is no such thing as...do I really need to say it again?
While we're at it, the very concept of God is the ultimate avoidance of saying "I don't know.", isn't it. Why is there something instead of nothing? I don't know. See how easy that was?
Okay, I'm on a roll here. Y'know what made me an atheist? MAD Magazine. I can remember the moment it happened. I was about 9 years old, reading MAD, and there was a cartoon with high schoolers where somebody said there are no atheists during finals. I had never heard that word before. I asked my mom what an atheist was and she said "somebody who doesn't believe in God". It hadn't even occurred to me that that was on the menu! That made so much more sense to me than anything I had been taught by parents, priests, or nuns. It took me another 2 years to say it out loud, but from then on, I was an atheist. Thanks, MAD.
Tarot cards work. They are also fake. Seems contradictory, but resolving the contradiction is where the "magic" lies. Skeptics would have you believe that tarot is completely bullshit, essentially because the reasons that most tarot readers give for it working ARE bullshit, or at least inaccurate. Here is how they work, and it's pretty cool: Tarot occasions deep, introspective conversation. It provides an excuse for this introspection to occur. I liken it to party games like Spin the Bottle, or Truth or Dare. Sexy talk and sexy actions are sometimes difficult for people and have a hard time occurring spontaneously. The purpose of Spin the Bottle of Truth or dare is to provide context within which the sexy stuff can easily occur. Tarot works the same way with intense self-evaluation. The cards themselves mean nothing, they're just paper and ink, but the act of the reading and the psychologically weighty imagery on the cards help trick your thoughts you into a mode of reflection. Examining your life is a good thing, and tarot can go a long way to lubricating that process.
Y'know what word you never hear anymore? Mercy. You'll occasionally hear it as an ironic expletive ("Mercy, me!"), but you never seem to hear it in its original meaning. I wonder if it's just an aesthetic/fashionable shift in language, or if it's because the concept is vanishing from our minds. Like how equatorial cultures don't have a word for snow. Have we stopped saying "mercy" because we've stopped practicing it?
If you approach so-called miracles logically, it says some pretty bad stuff about the deity you think is responsible. Say a seven year old child is in a hospital with leukemia. The outlook doesn't look good and the child is considered terminal. The leukemia suddenly goes into remission for no reason. Praise Jaysus, it's a miracle! There's another terminal child in the next bed. His leukemia doesn't go into remission. In fact, nobody else in the entire ward experiences a miracle. So God, omnipotent being, not just powerful, omnipotent, picks one person out of billions of sick people to grant health. Did the others do something wrong? Can a child of seven years old have done anything to either deserve a miracle or deserve a lack of a miracle resulting in agony at the core of his bones? Miracles are, by their very nature, rare. That rarity is the key to a very important concept. Either God is a cruel, torturing, insecure, childish motherfucker, and we are the ants caught in his magnifying glass, or (here we go again) HE DOESN'T EXIST!
My next point is in response to what you're thinking right now (Yes, I'm reading your mind.), if you are a big fan of God and the whole miracle concept. The standard response to this sort of criticism of the big guy is "God works in mysterious ways.". Catholics might also recognize this as one of those "Divine Mysteries" the priests talk about. That's a religious trick as old as religion. Mystery means something you don't know. Saying "God works in mysterious ways" means exactly the same as "I don't know." but it's phrased in a way that makes you sound like you know the answer. "I don't know." states a negative; "God works in mysterious ways." disguises this negative as a positive, and you get to act like you're wise and learned and have the inside track on the mind of your fictional daddy figure. The truth is, your story is not logical, is full of holes and inconsistencies, and no matter how pointy your hat is, you don't know anymore than the rest of us. However, I know one thing that you don't know: There is no such thing as...do I really need to say it again?
While we're at it, the very concept of God is the ultimate avoidance of saying "I don't know.", isn't it. Why is there something instead of nothing? I don't know. See how easy that was?
Okay, I'm on a roll here. Y'know what made me an atheist? MAD Magazine. I can remember the moment it happened. I was about 9 years old, reading MAD, and there was a cartoon with high schoolers where somebody said there are no atheists during finals. I had never heard that word before. I asked my mom what an atheist was and she said "somebody who doesn't believe in God". It hadn't even occurred to me that that was on the menu! That made so much more sense to me than anything I had been taught by parents, priests, or nuns. It took me another 2 years to say it out loud, but from then on, I was an atheist. Thanks, MAD.
Tarot cards work. They are also fake. Seems contradictory, but resolving the contradiction is where the "magic" lies. Skeptics would have you believe that tarot is completely bullshit, essentially because the reasons that most tarot readers give for it working ARE bullshit, or at least inaccurate. Here is how they work, and it's pretty cool: Tarot occasions deep, introspective conversation. It provides an excuse for this introspection to occur. I liken it to party games like Spin the Bottle, or Truth or Dare. Sexy talk and sexy actions are sometimes difficult for people and have a hard time occurring spontaneously. The purpose of Spin the Bottle of Truth or dare is to provide context within which the sexy stuff can easily occur. Tarot works the same way with intense self-evaluation. The cards themselves mean nothing, they're just paper and ink, but the act of the reading and the psychologically weighty imagery on the cards help trick your thoughts you into a mode of reflection. Examining your life is a good thing, and tarot can go a long way to lubricating that process.
posted by John McKenna at 4:22 PM
1 Comments:
Right there with ya, John. Tarot cards, runes, tea leaves, etc. are all devices with which we can probe our psyches. This process is even easier with another person.
On the atheism front, I realized a while ago that when confronted with both "a" words (atheist and agnostic) I tend a bit towards agnostic -- the ultimate "I don't know."
Given the size and complexity of the universe (go browse through the Astronomy Picture of the Day archives), I'm not willing to absolutely rule out the existence of a higher power, whatever anyone chooses to name it. I don't think it's likely or even plausible, but I can't absolutely banish it from my thinking. For all that, I certainly don't think there's any particular god smiling down on the activities of any favored group (eg. USA = "God's country" or middle-eastern suicide bombers claiming it's "Allah's will").
Taking up a deity's name for any issue more specific and tangible than personal faith seems to me like the ultimate in willful ignorance.
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