Month: June 2010

A reader writes:

In reading the recent comments on this subject I've noticed that we, as atheists, are often using the language of the gay rights movement to describe what it's like to be an atheist in a largely theistic society– particularly the desire to 'come out' as atheists.  While sexual orientation and religious belief are by no means equivalent, and I think it remains harder to come out as a homosexual than as an atheist, the metaphor is interesting and helps us understand the appeal of the 'New Atheists.'

 

Hitchens and Dawkins are the gay pride parade of Atheism.  They are marching straight down the middle of main street and declaring, apologetically, "We're here, we don't believe in god, get used to it."  I wish someone would come up with something that rhymes.  In a country where coming to realize you don't believe in god often means revealing this fact to disappointed family members and friends and being ostracized as amoral or even evil– there is something viscerally satisfying and exciting about the courage of Hitchens and Dawkins to state their beliefs publicly and defend them so strongly.  The flip side of that is, of course, that there is something slightly cowardly about being a completely closeted Atheist. 

Like a gay pride parade the New Atheists overreach. 

I cringe when I hear them make blanket dismissals of people with any religious convictions as ignorant, bigoted, or just plain stupid– just as many of my gay friends cringe when they see… lets say 'breaks of decorum' at gay pride parades that many of us find unacceptable in anyone, gay or straight.  But, without those people who are willing to overreach, come out of the closet, and let people know "yes, you probably know an atheist or two and they are not evil or amoral people" we will continue to be quietly marginalized. 

 

Discussions about homosexual equality, marriage, the end of DADT would not have been possible without the LOUD homosexuals who broke out of the closet.  Likewise the real interesting questions about the nature of morality, and where we come from, and why we are here, and what constitutes a good and meaningful life cannot happen without Loud Atheists coming out of the closet and declaring that they live moral, meaningful, and fulfilling lives without turning to the supernatural.

São Paulo, Brazil, 2.44 pm

A reader writes:

I sent my son to a 'Christian' school because it was the only school in our area specifically for children with severe learning disabilities. They had classes of 9 children each and a lot of 'one on one' as well as a high level of supervision. There were definitely a lot of "shalt nots" and not much nurturing. Not wanting to risk his placement, we walked a careful line, only stepping in when certain boundaries were crossed.

Like when they told him he couldn't draw any more because his pictures contained the devil with horns. (Our son was severely abused and adopted by us when he was 3. These drawings were used for therapeutic purposes. He was non-verbal and the drawings provided us and our family psychiatrist some limited insight into how he was doing.) Anyway.

Despite never saying anything negative about the school in front of him, when he was 8 he insisted on going to the public school. Shortly afterwards he said: "Christians don't like kids, do they mom. They don't seem to care about us and they are always telling us we're doing the wrong thing." He is now 29, on a disability pension, rarely employed and still believes "Christians don't like children". Attempting to talk to him about it is futile. He is thoroughly convinced.

Heart-breaking.

.

Mockingbirds

This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing

better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story–
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive–
but for this alone
the gods loved them

and blessed them–
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water

from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,

and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down–
but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.

Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning–
whatever it was I said

I would be doing–
I was standing
at the edge of the field–
I was hurrying

through my own soul,
opening its dark doors–
I was leaning out;
I was listening.

— Mary Oliver.

(Photo: Northern Mockingbird.)

Daniel Byman and Christine Fair make the case:

Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks. In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last July after one such embrace in Paktika.

Photographer Brian Skerry looks beneath the waves:

A reader writes:

In an otherwise thoughtful post, you say: "It was radically utopian, an almost text book example of imposing an abstract concept – a settled Jewish nation after so long a diaspora – on a land already embedded with an existing geographic, demographic, religious and cultural reality."

This was no more radical than what happened in Europe after WWI and WWII when political borders were re-drawn, dramatically in some cases, with no regard for populations.  In fact, I would argue that Israel's founding was less radical because there was no political entity being displaced.

For centuries the area called "Palestine" – in fact most of the Middle East – was a backwoods section of the Ottoman Empire.  Britain and France simply took over after WWI.  There was a sizable population of Jews who wanted an independent homeland.  It was Britain who divided the geographic area "Palestine" into two by chopping off 2/3 as Trans-Jordan and installing the Hashemite monarchy. The remaining 1/3 was intended to be split into Jewish and Arab entities and we all know how well the Arabs accepted that.

If you recall, all the way up to the Reagan administration, the West Bank was still recognized as Jordanian territory occupied by Israel.  King Hussein should have just made his peace with Israel in the 1980s and taken the territory back. Instead, he decided to give it up for a "Palestinian" state.  Why does no one ever question what Egypt and Jordan did with Gaza and the West Bank respectfully between 1948 and 1967?

A new Palestinian state, even within the pre-1967 borders, is not going to be very viable. It makes more sense for Israel and Jordan to negotiate a new border by splitting the West Bank between them.  Until the 1980s the West Bank Arabs had Jordanian citizenship and a majority of Jordan's population is "Palestinian-origin" (meaning from west of the Jordan River) anyway.  Gaza would still be an issue.  Maybe it reverts back to Egypt or becomes a small state called Gaza.  After 60+ years it is high time all of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria were disbanded and its residents absorbed as citizens of those fellow Arab states.  If Hitler had conquered Britain and made it part of Germany in 1945, would you be clammering to reclaim your grandparents or great-grandparents home in England? 

My point is, if you are going to perform the intellectual exercise of whether the creation of Israel was a mistake, it seems only logical that you should include the creation of Jordan and the creation of a specific Arab nationality called "Palestinians" (which was only done in the 1960s) as part of the debate.

Another writes:

It is true that Israel was, in 1948, primarily a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims. But few people, in talking about the Israeli-Arab conflict, or the Israeli-Muslim conflict, pause to consider that the exodus of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in an Israeli Jewish population that was 50% indigenous to the Middle East, up until the time of the Russian migration in the 1990s.

Most westerners are unaware of this, and the Muslim countries are even more ignorant/in denial about it. They act as if Muslim countries were a paradise for Jews and other religious minorities in comparison to Europe. This may have been true at some points in history, but it is largely a self-congratulatory fantasy.

To the extent the Jewish exodus from Muslim lands is acknowledged (and it’s important to note that upwards of 98 percent of the Jews left places such as Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and other countries, where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years, and where they were part of the landscape prior to the existence of Islam), the party line is that they left voluntarily because they were Zionists. This is about as true as the allegation that most of the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily. Since when does 98 percent plus of a population leave a place their family has been for generations when they feel safe in their homes?

My husband comes from a large family of Jews who fled Morocco in the middle of the night, leaving their house and everything else behind, because they were tipped off that his grandfather was about to be arrested and killed. My husband’s aunts and uncles in Israel all married Jews from other parts of the Middle East, so I have relatives who originally hailed from every one of those countries mentioned above. Arabic is their mother tongue. When we go to family gatherings, our relatives are constantly laughing uproariously at jokes that fall flat in translation, and some great aunt or uncle will say to me, apologetically, “It’s much funnier in Arabic.”

Move over, Beam and Friedersdorf. Andrew Sprung remembers this Woody Allen classic:

Dear Theo 

Will life never treat me decently? I am wracked by despair! My head is pounding. Mrs Sol Schwimmer is suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit her ridiculous mouth. That's right! I can't work to order like a common tradesman. I decided her bridge should be enormous and billowing and wild, explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire! Now she is upset because it won't fit in her mouth! She is so bourgeois and stupid, I want to smash her. I tried forcing the false plate in but it sticks out like a star burst chandelier. Still, I find it beautiful. She claims she can't chew! What do I care whether she can chew or not! Theo, I can't go on like this much longer! I asked Cezanne if he would share an office with me but he is old and infirm and unable to hold the instruments and they must be tied to his wrists but then he lacks accuracy and once inside a mouth, he knocks out more teeth than he saves. What to do?

Vincent