Tigers 1, Humans 1

The San Francisco Christmas classic ended in a draw this year, with the Tigers unable to maintain their early lead.

God

Can we speak frankly?

Belief in God is dangerously deluded and wishful thinking, a collective hallucination hazardous to our health and happiness.

Isn't it?

I know belief is so ubiquitous that it's hard to think rationally about, and always has been. Consider, though, your reaction if I told you that I am in contact with extraterrestrials, according to whose precepts I order my life. At a minimum, you would view my sanity as open to question. (You wouldn't? Stop reading right here. Scientology is calling you.)

Let's think about belief in God in the same way.

Like many forms of delusion, belief in God is perceived by the afflicted to convey certain benefits. The history of humanity's seduction by those benefits is the history of religion.

First among them was relief from ignorance. Ignorance, when you have no choice but to acknowledge it, can be scary. Don't know where fire comes from? Don't understand why it doesn't rain? Don't know why your children die, or how to help them? The answer to each of these questions, and the millions that came after, was God. Ignorance lingers; even today, unresolved complexity is proffered as proof of God's existence.

Why are we here? Akin to ignorance of the natural world is ignorance of our purpose in it. Like other kinds of ignorance, the notion that there may be no answer to this question is scary. Invention of a God whom we are here to serve ends the search for meaning, and obviates the possibility that there may be none.

What happens when we die? How could creatures as beautiful as we are simply cease to be? Nothing is scarier than this. Belief in God makes acceptance of mortality unnecessary. Of course! We just go to Heaven.

Or to Hell. It's not easy to be good. Belief in God fosters the creation of a behavioral envelope only tangentially related to our natural understanding of right and wrong. Belief in a vengeful God inclines us to act within that envelope. This lesson has been lost neither on organized religion nor on the state. God offers a reason to control ourselves, and for them another means to do so if we fail.

And God is solace. Life can be hard. It's so much easier to endure injustice now when you've been promised a kingdom to come. Another fact not lost on those with a stake in earthly inequity.

But, as with all forms of delusion, the apparent benefits of belief in God are illusory, no matter how frightening it may be to give them up. And the delusion itself is pernicious.

We know this. It's impossible to be sentient in the world and not be aware of the millions upon millions who have died, and continue to die, for competing ideas of God. Nor is it possible to ignore the perpetuation of ignorance, tyranny, and discrimination in God's name. Nor to overlook the billions who suffer without resisting in the hope of a better life when they're dead.

Of all the damage caused by belief, this willingness to forgo a good life on earth may be the saddest. But the easiest in which to acquiesce. How comforting to believe that misery, disaster, and oppression are part of God's plan. Everything has a purpose. Species dying all around us? The oceans starting to rise? Nothing we can do. If God wanted those polar bears to live, he'd save them himself. But in that calculus, we're next.

In God We Trust? We should trust in ourselves, instead.

From the Diary

What if it works the same with us? Is that what cancer is? Small errors slipping in? Cellular entropy? I can’t stop thinking about it. The other thing. I’m really not very comfortable driving anymore. It all seems solid. But you know it’s not.



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From the Diary

Retrofits are a gift. Everything gets one eventually. Especially here, in California. Even things that were built right in the first place. And through that door entropy slips.



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From the Diary

Dinner with D at X’s last night. Do you have reservations, sir, the guy asks. Of course, I tell him. Who wouldn’t.


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From the Diary

I love the idea that metal gets tired. I mean, why wouldn’t it? I wonder about stone. I bet it gets tired too. All these natural things conscripted into an unnatural world. They’re sick of us.



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From the Diary

Naturally, we weren’t surprised when they fell down. They were supposed to fall down. People said it was the gasoline or whatnot. It wasn’t. They would have fallen anyway. Just not right then.


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From the Diary

My mother called. Three weeks after my father died, there’s no money. Appears they spent it all. Tawdry as it is, I have to admire his timing. I told her I’d call her back.


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From the Diary

Went down to R’s lab to meet him the other night and who do I see but the guy from Gem Spa. Don’t know if he recognized me. He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. When I asked R about it he said oh yeah, we put him in charge of rounding. I couldn’t really tell if he was joking.


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From the Diary

When you’re a kid, all you want is to be somebody. Then you wake up one day and you are. Maybe not how you imagined, though.


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From the Diary

Guy R is doing his thesis for is some French computer guru. One thing they’re working on is this structural integrity program. Supposedly tells you whether your building’s going to fall down. Or your bridge. They think it might become the architectural engineering standard. Way better than anything you could do with a slide rule, R says. Or those CRC tables. Got a whole team assembled for it.


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From the Diary

Spent some time with my brother last week. We get high, and he gets himself a bowl of ice cream from the fridge. Doesn’t offer me any, though. Thinks I’ve had too many good things already. Or maybe he’s remembering that day I pushed him off the roof. I get my own.


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From the Diary

Hanging at T’s, watching the news in Spanish last night when the guy next to me says you know he’s on drugs, right? Reagan? I say. No doubt. No, seriously, the guy says. I used to sell to Nancy when they were in Santa Barbara. PCP mostly. A little acid when the Bushes came to visit. I cleaned the pool. The SS guys knew me. Let me come and go. The guy finishes his drink and gets up. Don’t believe me? he says. Guy named Hinkley’s going to take a shot at him next week. Except not really. Just an opportunity for a little detox. Stay tuned.


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