Author: Andrew Sullivan

Almeria 2008 from Vicente + Sara on Vimeo.

Jonah Lehrer looks inside fMRI machines:

Time and time again, an experimental gadget gets introduced — it doesn’t matter if it’s a supercollider or a gene chip or an fMRI machine — and we’re told it will allow us to glimpse the underlying logic of everything. But the tool always disappoints, doesn’t it? We soon realize that those pretty pictures are incomplete and that we can’t reduce our complex subject to a few colorful spots. So here’s a pitch: Scientists should learn to expect this cycle — to anticipate that the universe is always more networked and complicated than reductionist approaches can reveal.

…Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, once divided the world into two categories: clocks and clouds. Clocks are neat, orderly systems that can be solved through reduction; clouds are an epistemic mess, “highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable.” The mistake of modern science is to pretend that everything is a clock, which is why we get seduced again and again by the false promises of brain scanners and gene sequencers. We want to believe we will understand nature if we find the exact right tool to cut its joints. But that approach is doomed to failure. We live in a universe not of clocks but of clouds.

Sent by a reader back in January. You have till noon Tuesday to guess it. Country first, then city and/or state. If we have a tie, the time will count. And remember to put “VFYW Contest” in the content line of the email. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

Does it change with age?:

Whereas younger people are more likely to associate happiness with excitement, older people are more likely to associate happiness with feeling peaceful—a change driven by increasing feelings of connectedness (to others and to the present moment) as one ages.

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: