the 37th week

Celebrating Tazza Mia's "Sweet Beard Espresso"

Monday. Work was a breeze, and after hanging out with Blake and Ams for a while at home, I fell into my ritualistic nap. I woke with a growling tummy and the smell of Blake's crock-pot dinner filling the house: tacos! C. Isaac and Amos returned from North Carolina, sporting fresh tattoos and carrying fudge from somewhere in Kentucky. Brandy and John joined the party, and we filled Blake's room and watched The Walking Dead. People filtered out, and I spent the rest of my evening writing and listening to Damien Jurado (I may be seeing him in Nashville this May).

Tuesday. Anna couldn't come into work, so I scrambled in to cover her shift, and Cat took my closing responsibilities. The day started off cold but grew rather warm, and after work I took a nap. I woke sad from a nostalgic dream and took the edge off with a cigarette on the front porch. I went to the grocery for cereal and such. Amos didn't get home till pretty late: looks like Bob is giving him 600. 

Wednesday. Work went well. The weather was beautiful, in the sixties. Andy and I spent the evening playing video games - Black Ops and Fallout - and we smoked pipes on the front porch, taking in the first breaths of spring (I still fear a winter storm in late March; we'll see if history's cycle breaks this year). When Amos got home we ordered pizza and watched episodes of Archer. Ams and I hung out pretty late, and then I clunked upstairs and passed out in bed.

My 25th birthday! I hit up The Anchor and started reading The Dawkins Delusion by Alister McGrath: a short and precise book, it ought to be a quick read. Work was quite chaotic, and we didn't get out until 6:30. We were going to grab birthday drinks at Rock Bottom with Cat, but she fell asleep around 4:00 and slept till 2:00 the following morning, so that didn't happen. My birthday evening consisted of heading over to Brandy's place in Over the Rhine; Ams drove, and Andy and I attempted to navigate. John, Andy and I drank beers in the kitchen and then took the party upstairs to play Call of Duty and hang out with Brandy and her roommates. Brandy was pretty mellow: she had her wisdom teeth taken out this morning and was all drugged up. Ams, Andy and I left around 10:30, and I listened to Damien Jurado's "Caught in the Trees" album before calling it a night.

Friday. Cat brought in donuts and Tiffany - a.k.a. "Tibbles & Bits" - brought in banana bread. The morning crew threw on beards to celebrate our new "Sweet Beard Espresso" (see picture at the top of this post). The bag  has Amos' face all over it. Tyler came down when I got off work, and we went to 600 to get drinks and wait for Andy and Isaac, and once they showed up we went across the street to the brewery. I had an espresso IPA and Cod Fish & Chips. I tried to use my gift card (for the third time) and was unable to do so (again: for the third time). They comped the bill yet again. Hot damn, I'm starting to *sorta* feel guilty. Tyler and I spent the night playing Black Ops with Andy, singing aloud to folk music, and hanging out with Ams and Josh for a while. "Who would've thought," Ams mused, "that we'd end up living together after college in a house filled with our friends, doing our own thing and watching the world burn." Or, in my case, watching the world LEARN. Ams fell in love with Damien Jurado's "Sheets," which is precisely what everyone does when they actually Pay Attention to it. See the bandwagon? "Get on the bus!" Oh: and I got to Skype with Mandy in Portland for a hot minute, and it was nothing short of classic and heartwarming. 

Saturday. Tyler left early as he always does, and Andy, Amos and I grabbed Dusmesh, and then I passed out for my ritualistic "after-Indian nap" (as I've come to call it; and as an aside, I'm finding that I have quite the array of 'ritualistic naps' throughout my week). Mandy and I were going to Skype yet again, but she got called into work and couldn't say No. I was bummed, but it was understandable: I'd go in, too, if only due to a misplaced sense of duty and the promise of an overactive guilt complex were I to say No. "Thanks for describing my thought processes on the situation," she mused; to which I replied, "We live the same life." It's become our--well, my--motto. Ams and I hung out for a while, and I was up till 4:00 A.M. (inadvertently, I might add: D.S.T. sneaks up on you) hanging out with Blake, Andy and Amos. Before all this, I spent much of the evening quietly reading at The Anchor: I'm halfway through McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion: it's a succinct, clear, and excellent read, critiquing many of Dawkins' main points in The God Delusion. McGrath is attempting, I think, some sort of ripple-down effect: critique the foundational tenets of Dawkins' arguments and philosophy, and from there the argument will topple in a spiraling downward cascade. 

Sunday. I woke early and went to The Anchor for coffee, and I finished The Dawkins Delusion. No big feat, it was only four chapters and not even 100 pages long. A short read indeed. I went by Carew to get my paycheck (since they didn't come on Friday and were supposed to be delivered Saturday), but as grammar might tell you, they hadn't come in. Instead I just grabbed an iced latte for my drive up to Dayton to go to Southwest Church with Mom and Dad. During the sermon I filled an entire legal pad with notes covering why, I believe, Christianity [and other global religions as well] would survive a zombie apocalypse (albeit in a modified form). I'll post it up here soon, for shits and giggles. The new church building is finished, and nicer than I expected. They even have a little cafe with mochas (or their versions of them). Ams came up after church, and we got lunch with Mom and Dad at The Olive Garden. I got the seafood portifino, per usual. I spent the afternoon in Dayton working on the car: cleaned it out, reorganized the trunk, topped off the fluids, fixed a flat from last month and put air in all the tires. I bid farewell to Mom and Dad (and Sky, of course) and headed home. Andy, Blake and Amos were out back with a fire going, the scratch-disk playing, the hookah going, and topping it all off, everyone had their tops off (except Blake). I grabbed a beer from the fridge and joined them, taking off my button-up in the sexiest way possible (dribbling beer on my chest to up the sensuality). Sitting there on the back porch hanging with my buddies, it felt like spring-time last year all over again, and I could almost close my eyes and be back on the old front porch in the rocking chair drinking Killian's and smoking cigarettes with Dylan and Tyler. Those times will soon be relived... Isaac came over, and we hung out in Blake's room for a good long while. I showed Ams how to play Black Ops, and she loves it. 'Round the end of the night I went out to the smoldering fire-pit and smoked cigarettes while listening to The Black Keys.

as promised...

Seriously, I can't get enough of Damien Jurado.
Please, someone introduce me to someone better.
If only so I don't wear out all his songs.

the 36th week

Never, EVER, forget.

Monday. Work was good, and the evening even better. After my nap I hung out with the housemates, and then Brandy, John and C. Isaac came over. We had a free growler from Rock Bottom - "Queen of Hops" - and Ams made brownies, and we crowded Blake's room and watched The Walking Dead.

Tuesday. I hit up The Anchor before my closing shift with Amos. We got out at a decent time, and I went back to The Anchor to meet Jobst, smoke pipes, and catch up. As I pulled into the lot, I saw a man standing in the shadows underneath The Anchor's mural. I parked and readied to go inside, and he approached me, drunk off his rocker, begging me for money. I gave him some change and he dropped his phone, and he was too drunk to know what to do, so I was helping him get it back together when a cop pulled up with his lights flashing, got out, and yelled at us to get down. We sat down against the building, and for the next thirty-five minutes we were grilled about what we were doing out there, and the belligerent drunk beside me couldn't stop himself from trying to jump up off the ground, so one of the cops kept almost drawing his weapon and I was just sitting there thinking Wtf? Once they spread us up against the wall and searched us, I was cleared but he was taken in for having just bought some drugs or something. The cops apologized, were making all sorts of jokes about it with me afterwards. Apparently they'd gotten a call regarding two white males in the parking lot being suspicious, and by the time they got there it was just me and this drunk fellow. It certainly made my night a bit more interesting. 

Wednesday. Last night I finished Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. It was just okay. And I got to talk to Mandy, who called when she found out about last night's shenanigans. This morning Cat called in sick, and I ran into her out on Vine after work and she looked something awful, poor thing. Later into the night John came over for a while, and then Blake and Andy went to The Anchor but I declined going to clean my room and get laundry done. When they got back we hung out and listened to The National. 

Thursday. Amos had to go in at 7:30 to pull shots for Rock Bottom. I didn't have to be in 'till 10:45, so I went to The Anchor and did some writing. The waitress asked if I was the one stopped by the cops outside two nights ago. "Yup!" I beamed. Work was chaotic; we were slammed all afternoon, at one point doing three pour-overs and three siphon-pots at the same time, plus espresso drinks. We got home around 7:00 and chilled out after the rough (and, for Amos, long) day: Black Ops in the basement, hanging out with Josh and Ams upstairs, and listening to a lot of Damien Jurado. Amos and Isaac are going to North Carolina tomorrow for a long weekend. Thus it will most likely be a quiet and uneventful weekend here at the house. *knock on wood*

Friday. I woke Andy on my way out for my morning cigarette, and a good thing too--poor guy was running pretty late. Work went well, with Cat closing since Amos jetted off to North Carolina. I napped when I got home: fell asleep to Damien Jurado and woke to a thunderstorm and pelting rains. The tornado sirens were throbbing and hail pecked at the windows. Andy went to see The Black Keys at US Bank Arena and Ams worked, so Blake and I spent the evening watching The Walking Dead. 

Saturday. I went to The Anchor for coffee and writing, and another waitress asked if I was almost arrested outside a few days ago. "Yup!" I beamed (for the second time). Mom came down this evening, and we grabbed dinner at Rock Bottom. A Mom-Son Date, if you will. It was an hour and fifteen minute wait, but Keith saw us and grabbed us the next table (and even comped our $50 bill). For dessert we got milkshakes at Chic-Fil-A for free, courtesy of some of Ams' old coupons. Mom headed home, and I spent the evening hanging out with Blake and Andy. Andrew and Megan came over, and we crowded the living room and smoked hookah: Code 69, it tasted like cherry coke.

Sunday. I hit up The Anchor this morning and did a good deal of writing. I got home around noon, and everyone was still asleep. People started rolling out: Ams went to Josh's, I wager, and Blake went out with some people. I did some writing and hung out with Andy. I watched The Dark Knight and had Subway for dinner. Andy and I were poisoned by restlessness and sought to overcome it at The Anchor, and overcome it we did: we drank a pot of coffee between the two of us and chain-smoked nasty cigarettes, swapping war stories in our histories with women, laughing at how our histories (with various girls) seem to overlap. When we got back, Blake was home and so was Ams. I called Mandy K. and talked to her about "the drama" in my "quest for truth" (sketched in recent posts), and she was super supportive and very encouraging, just what I needed. 

best dress

The last several posts have been rather serious, and since I like to think of myself as a light-hearted person (whether or not that's true, who can say?), I feel compelled to exercise a bit of tension-relief (by turning, strangely enough, to zombies & Damien Jurado). "How do the two go together?" Well, not really that well, so far as I'm aware. But as I told Blake, if I had the knowledge, expertise, finances, and ability to make a legitimate zombie movie, I'd probably try and get Damien Jurado to do the soundtrack for it. Many of his songs capture what I think best fits the zombie universe: tragedy. Much of his song-writing is melancholic and Shakespearean, hauntingly heart-breaking. The song below is called "Best Dress," and it's got a sort of "Southern Alabama feel" to it. It'd fit perfectly with an outbreak in the tropics, methinks.

And regarding the "heavier" topics we've seen, we'll get back to that in due time.

But enjoy this video, and imagine it, Stan: zombies in the Everglades!

Coming up next with Damien Jurado: one of the best NPR Radio sets you'll ever see.
"Koala out."

what the [bleep] do we know?

Note the brutal dismemberment
of the Greek alphabet.

With my parents’ house all to myself a few weeks ago, I spent the evening playing with Sky and watching documentaries. One of these—“What the bleep do we know?”—is, to put it in a nutshell, centered on quantum mysticism: New Age ideals seeking validation by plucking science as if out of a hat. The overwhelming majority of physicists and scientists shake their heads at such mysticism, calling it pseudoscience and the like. It’s the secularized, hip-hop version of what we evangelicals have been doing for the last several decades with the whole “Creation Science” and “Answers in Genesis” shenanigans: taking bits of science from here and over there, reinterpreting it through our own prefabricated set of lens, and then marketing it off as proof that we’re right. But, as an aside, let’s not be too hard on people who do this, because everyone does this all the time with matters of personal belief, be they religious or otherwise; some are just more forthcoming about it.

The documentary started off well enough, touching the surface of quantum mechanics by delving into the ideas of multiple universes and the appearance and disappearance of electrons between such universes. That’s all fine and well, but not far into the movie things got a little weird, and somehow the narrator found it to be no difficult step to go from quantum physics to orchestrating reality not around the physical laws as we know them but by our conscious thought, and from there on to changing our lives in such a way that there’s no need for antidepressant medicine, and somehow along the way we find we can channel the 35,000 year-old Lemurian warrior Ramtha (the three writers are members of a cult focused around such a figure, so it’s not surprising they wiggled that in there). Despite the brutal twisting of facts, the manipulation of scientific experiments, and the blatant logical fallacies (such as “Because we know we’re right, everyone else must be wrong, because we have the truth.”), not to mention the absolute absurdity of the whole “Ramtha” ordeal, this film’s become increasingly popular and can be watched streaming from Netflix.

The film calls traditional monotheistic religions outmoded and “backwards”, and that the entire way of looking at the idea of God throughout human history is archaic and needs to be replaced with a different concept of God, a more uniform and all-encompassing form of God, of which we are a part. A grievous error, the film said, is to assume that God is distinct and apart from us. Thus what we have here is just more New Age thinking, a pantheism located at the subatomic level of all things. As an interesting aside, pantheism (and its counterpart panentheism) have been making a steady comeback in the recent years, and most adherents scorn the triumvirate of monotheistic religions. Interestingly, however, the very premise of pantheism falls apart under the weight of reality, and thus pantheism seems to become popular and then fizzle out for a while in historical and undulating currents. Monotheism, however, works far better with reality, and thus the major world religions remain monotheistic. By incorporating quantum science (or, rather, their version of it) into the equation, New Age “quantum mysticists” can escape one of pantheism’s biggest problems (reality) by subjugating reality not to the material world but to the conscious and existential world, which (according to them) holds the universe together (and even, in a sense, guides it).

This independent documentary went from being a no-namer to an international phenomenon, and the question is, “Why?” The documentary’s fallen under heavy criticism all across the board, not least because of the swathes of inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and pseudoscience littering the film. With glaringly obvious discrepancies and logical fallacies, how has the film become so popular, even to the point of being cornerstones in peoples’ spiritual vaults? Human beings are, quite particularly, religious. It’s in the fabric of who we are, and you can’t get around that. As much as the world might seem to be a battleground between faith and skepticism, between those who believe in a higher power and those who do not, and while it may seem that traditional religion is fading away, two things ought to be noted.

1. In the modern world, the decline of traditional religion isn’t something that can so easily be charted. While traditional institutionalized religion has certainly declined significantly in different times and places, those very religions continue albeit in altered form, sometimes even growing in manners not easily charted. This isn’t surprising, since religion itself is continually evolving in both theology and praxis. At the same time, stereotyping the modern world as a whole in such a fashion doesn’t do justice to the fact that in many places in the western world, traditional religion is on the upswing. In second and third world countries, traditional religion hasn’t been declining but swelling. While the western world is embroiled in the debate about (and even against) religion, the rest of the world continues to grow more and more religious.
2. Even when traditional religions—or religion in general—is rejected, there’s no vacuum left in its place. Everyone is religious in the sense that we need an overarching story, a grand meta-narrative, a worldview. Most religions come stocked with all of these, and this definitely lends to their popularity. But those without any real religion must fill in the gaps, must construct reality in such a way to answer the pertinent questions. Bearing in mind that worldviews and beliefs are not the same thing, it’d be good to point out that atheism, agnosticism, and anti-theism, while being beliefs, are often incorporated into over-arching narratives that, while not being religious in the “theistic” sense, nevertheless do what religion has done and continues to do: answer the big questions. Those who mock the idea of God must answer the same questions as the backwoods-church fundamentalist, and all worldviews—regardless their disposition towards a Higher Power—provide both answers to the questions and a framework by which one can and should order and operate his life.

Point being, religion itself is integral to the human experience, and it cannot be simply tossed out the window. If it’s rejected, it must be replaced. It seems, then, that our “religious intuition”—the necessity to be part of something bigger, to be wedged into an overarching story—isn’t some evolutionary handicap as has been suggested, something that can be discarded in light of Logic and Reason. Paradoxically, in our desire to strangle religion with logic and reason, the end result has been logic and reason becoming a new religion. Logic and reason become slaves to just another way of looking at the world. It’s inescapable: we need answers, we need to know what’s going on around us, we need to know where we fit in, and we need to know just what the hell we’re “supposed to do” (if anything).

And that, I think, is why this documentary has become so popular. It gives answers, and the best kind of answers: the ones we like. Often, what we believe has more to do with what we want to believe than what we’ve actually come to believe through our own rational abilities. When faced with two opposing viewpoints, our gut instinct is to latch onto the one that resonates with us, the one we prefer; and if we are the stubborn and arrogant sort not to be wavered by conflicting arguments, and if we’re not the type to try and think through what we believe to ascertain its reliability, then we will defend our beliefs just like a politician running his campaign: we’ll lie, we’ll twist facts, we’ll discolor and condemn our opponents, and we’ll become so blind in our lust to be right that we can’t for a moment begin to reasonably evaluate not only our beliefs but the beliefs of others. We prefer easy answers, and when these answers are easy and simple enough, we latch onto them like leeches, drawing sustenance and durability from their portraits of the world.

We need religion. We need a grid-work through which we can perceive the world and operate within it. If, for whatever reason, we discard what we have available to us now, then we’ll need to fill that space up with something else. When it comes to finding a framework for life, there’s a lot of options out there, a mixed-bag and melting-pot of worldviews, philosophies, and religions. If none of these will do, then we’ve got to find something else. In our western world that’s been condemning traditional and organized religion for decades, those who have abandoned religion have to find something else to fill the void, and I think that’s why there’s been a swell in the different worldviews (not to mention religions) that have become resplendent within Western culture.

It’s naïve to picture our current cultural climate as so static and black-and-white that it’s one worldview pitted against another, but yet this is often how we Christians picture it: there’s “us” and there’s “them”. It’s not just Christians; it’s the same on the other side of the picture. The reality isn’t some Great Divide tearing the nation apart; no, our world is far more akin to the Greco-Roman Empire in the days of Caesar Augustus: a melting-pot of worldviews, philosophies, and religions. Everyone has one; not all are thought out, not all are even cognitively acknowledged, most are more like chaotic seas than placid, pristine lakes; nevertheless, everyone has a guiding framework for the way they operate in the world. Some—like those embraced by religious people, especially those of the monotheistic religions—are forward and obvious; others are more subtle, working deep inside our minds without a whisper they our actions and decisions. The way we view the world is constantly changing, even if our overarching meta-narrative remains significantly unhindered; we’re constantly tweaking and updating our worldviews as we accumulate more information through the interpretation of our knowledge and experiences. Sometimes there are dramatic shifts in our worldviews, and these can happen suddenly and without warning, or steadily over a long period of time. These are, in the technical sense, “conversions” (changing from one worldview to another), and oftentimes we don’t know we’ve undergone a conversion ‘till after the fact. While many people go throughout their lives without ever really considering the way they look at the world as a whole and questioning—in a healthy way—its validity, many people do get to the point where it becomes apparent that a new framework must be written. After rejecting one’s former worldview, as I said before, one must replace it with something else.

A few months ago at Barnes & Noble I came across a bestselling handbook to creating your own religion. I skimmed through it and found a brief step-by-step bulleted list on how to do just that, and it included many good points (such as studying up on contemporary religions and visiting various places of worship, such as temples, churches, synagogues, etc.), but the ultimate point of such exploration wasn’t to ascertain truth but, simply, to figure out what you like and dislike so that you can incorporate the likes into a single batch, do a little tidying up here-and-there, and voila! you’ve got your own religion by which to organize your life. The problem with this (if it isn’t obvious) is that the desire for truth is trumped by one’s peripheral desires. The question about how one should organize and conduct his or her life goes from being one about ascertaining reality appropriately and living in accordance with it (or “Find the truth, and follow it wherever it goes”) to one about how to best perceive reality so that reality is conducive to our own wants and desires.

The quest for truth is far more difficult and daunting, with no destination promised on the horizon; the latter is easy, and even fun. But when we’re looking for those things religion is supposed to answer—the answers to riddles about human life, human meaning, human purpose, and our place in the cosmos—the pursuit becomes, in a sense, invalidated if we’re going to choose a guiding framework for our lives based solely on what we want. Sure, we may develop some sort of coherent framework; but we’ll be unable to answer the question, “Is it true?” When we shape and mold reality around a frame of our own fabrication, the result isn’t truth but a portrait of what we wish truth to be. It tells us more about our hearts and minds than it does about the way the world works. The questions it answers are those about our desires, intentions, and motivations rather than the questions about meaning and purpose, the questions about where we are in history and where we’re going. If you wish to mock those who embrace monotheistic religions as people clinging to tribal and archaic relics to cope with a harsh world, then you’d better have something better to offer than just your own version of what it looks like to cope. Knock the monotheistic religions all you want, but there’s a reason they’re still around while the hilltop shrines of Ba’al and those like him are just archaeological guilty pleasures. 

worldviews & marriage

It isn’t wrong to question and analyze our worldviews. It’s appropriate since worldviews frame our lives. We don’t go into a marriage without questioning whether or not it’d be a good idea with such-&-such a person (unless, of course, you go to bible college). We feel things out by dating, we come to our conclusions with a (hopefully) humble confidence, and if we are convinced that it’s a good idea, we go ahead and get married. Sure, sometimes we may find ourselves less confident as the journey unravels, often spawning divorce or separation or a miserable stuck-in-a-rut existence; but as with marriages it is with worldviews: when disillusionment or disenchantment comes along, it’s wise to question the validity of the worldview and work from there. This doesn’t mean being rash and leaping for divorce, but it at the least means talking things through and trying to get a better angle on the situation; there may very well be some fine-tuning needed in the marriage, not a hasty rejection of it.

There are many lessons in this, not least, If we’re willing to invest so much time, energy, and money into something so life-changing as marriage, why not likewise invest our time and energies into ascertaining not only our worldview but its legitimacy?

Like it is in marriage, we may become less confident about our decision as we gather more information about the person and new experiences within that marriage; we may come to the point of saying either, “To hell with it,” and just going along miserable and disenchanted because, well, this is what you’ve got and it’s too late to change it now; or we may “divorce” ourselves from the worldview, and put in its place something different. But second marriages aren’t necessarily better than the first, and third marriages aren’t intrinsically better than the second. The evolution of our worldview into different stages doesn’t imply that our current worldview is by necessity any better than those preceding it. The ultimate aim, of course, in marriage as well as with worldviews, is finding something that works, and in the best way possible. But how do we know something works? Does it “work” if it’s something we enjoy? Does it “work” if it makes sense of the world around us? Does it “work” if it gives us hope and comfort and purpose? Does it “work” if it promotes goodness in the world? What is it that makes a worldview work in the best possible way? The answer, I believe, remains truth ("Is it real? Or just some elaborate hoax or fantasy?"); but as to how we ascertain this truth, there remains that cold and milky fog hung like a veil over our eyes.

a "koala-t" post

To put it quite simply, I’ve been having concerns regarding the authenticity of the Christian faith, and these concerns have been developing—“fermenting”, if you will—over the last couple years as I’ve sought to reconcile preconceived notions with post-perceived reality, and in the conflict between them I’ve been seeking to be a more mature and balanced Christian, but in the process I’ve become aware of some things that make me doubt the worldview altogether. I’ve talked to a lot of doubting Christians over the years, and time and again I’ve found that a majority of the time it’s an emotional doubt: bothered by this or that about the Christian faith and how it makes them feel, or bothered by some sort of “hole” in their lives that Jesus won’t fill, emotional doubts that require lots of prayer and bible reading (apparently) but hardly ever any rational thought (unless it’s rational thought by a Christian writer or teacher; don’t you dare go to someone who could sway you away from the truth). I don’t knock these doubts but mention them only to point out that, for the most part, they’re not mine. My doubts aren’t “simplistic” doubts with classic Sunday School answers, either. I’m not agonizing over the fact of evolution; I’m not bothered by the biblical conceptions of hell; I’m not fazed in the least by a God who sends lions on rebellious youth. Rather, these doubts focus (primarily) on two things: (1) the dark nature of epistemology, and (b) the improbability of cascading assumptions. It goes something like this:

On Epistemology. Epistemology is the scientific word for the study of how we know things. I want to know the truth, and I want to commit my life to it. I believe that we should, to the best of our abilities, ascertain the nature of reality and live in accordance with it. Philosophies, religions, and worldviews all offer a framework to understanding reality and the consequential modus vivendi demanded in light of that understanding. As thinking creatures, it’s both a privilege and a responsibility to ask questions and seek answers, and this is, perhaps, the greatest enterprise available to human beings: the study of reality and the question of how to live in accordance with it. Some people go through life without asking these questions and having not a care in the world. But these questions plague me, and the necessity of the search compels me, and I can’t in good conscience push this aside for any reason. What keeps me up at night is the dark nature of epistemology, and that I can never really KNOW—for sure—that my perception of reality is correct. How we perceive the world isn’t pulled from a vacuum; and though we may be born blank slates, by the time we can ask these questions and try to answer them, we’ve already got a shit ton of baggage affecting the exploration. Our culture, our family, our education and experiences, our upbringing, our own inward drives and motivations and deepest desires, our biases and prejudices and fears, all this goes into the way we see the world and interpret our experiences. Our understanding is subjective, subjected to so many things we’re so often unaware of, and thus we cannot claim, 100%, that we know our convictions to be correct: to do so is a step away from humility and into arrogance, and it’s these type of people that make my skin crawl. Just because we think it’s right doesn’t make it right. The confident, devoted, and humblest evangelical has his match in the Islamic Middle East. We’re all confident we have the answers, the inside scoop, that we’ve got it figured out and have the duty to enlighten others. What egotism! How foolish it must look: a bunch of stupid, ape-like creatures running around spouting off God-knows-what, bloated with arrogant self-importance. But amidst all this talk of subjectivity, don’t think I disbelieve in Truth. I firmly believe in it. But I realize that our inabilities to ascertain truth may thwart the quest from the get-go. Maybe truth lies high overhead, and the most we can do is brush it with our fingertips when we stretch far enough. I’m trapped in my own subjective mind: though I may have a coherent perspective on reality that makes sense of the data, I can never been 100% sure, and that scares me, ‘cause when it comes to wrapping your life around something, uncertainty is far from optimal.

On Cascading Assumptions. I’m sure there’s an actual name for this, but this is just something that’s kinda formulated in my head over the past couple months, and I’m deeming it “The Improbability of Cascading Assumptions.” A simple principle of logic and reason (so far as I can tell) is that the truth will most likely lie in the simplest explanation; and a simple explanation, by default, is the explanation that has the least amount of assumptions built into it. Say I have a problem: one of my best friends is sick with a sore throat, has discoloring around the eyes, and can’t stop moaning. A simple explanation is that she really does have a sore throat, forgot to take off her mascara and it smeared, and she’s moaning ‘cause she’s sick or either having a really good dream. There are assumptions built into that: the assumption that she does have a sore throat (which could be verified by a doctor’s visit), the assumption that she wore mascara that day (a likely assumption), and the assumption that the noises do not imply anything other than what they would on any other given day. Now, let’s say I immediately jump to the conclusion that she’s been bitten by a zombie and is turning into a zombie, and I have to kill her by driving the shards of a flower vase into the back of her skull through the soft of her eye. This scenario is possible just like the first, but this one’s less likely because of the amount of assumptions (zombies are real, zombies bite to spread their sickness, she’s been bitten, and the way to kill a zombie is by piercing its brain, etc.). If all those assumptions turn out to be true, then that would be the correct explanation; but it wouldn’t be the most logical explanation because the amount of assumptions—both in quantity and quality—are astronomically higher than the first explanation, making the second highly improbable and thus illogical. My fear—a better word would be concern—is that embracing the Christian worldview is akin to leaping to the second scenario, calling out sickness as zombification, and then staking your life on it. That’s one hell of a mistake to make, especially for my friend with the smeared mascara. When examining our world, when trying to ascertain which framework works best to explain what’s going on, who we are, where we’re going, what’s wrong with us, and what the hell we’re supposed to do about it, it’d be wise to look at the amount of assumptions (again both in quality and quantity) that are required to be embraced in order to make the worldview work.

Am I fearful being in this place, doubting the authenticity of that worldview which I’ve staked my life upon? Yes, I’d be lying if there wasn’t some fear. It’s a scary thing. Think about it: you have a framework for your life, and you build everything around it; and then you start questioning that framework, wondering if it’s not the best framework after all, and then you realize that if you’re to “turn tables” you’ve got quite a mess on your hands, in both the personal and social spheres. But at the same time, I’m not frightened, because I believe that such good, honest thinking is something to be commended. I dare say that God would cherish such things; I’d like to think he’d prefer serious and honest questioning to blind and accepting faith. Puzzled minotaurs are always trendier than dumb sheep. Do I consider myself a Christian at this point? I certainly do, no less than Thomas who doubted Jesus’ resurrection. He was honest and critical about this doubt, and he wasn’t scolded for it; he wasn’t told to stuff out the doubt, to “just believe,” to “take it on faith” or “have faith like a child.” He was invited to seek, encouraged to explore his doubts, to get really hands-on with it (no pun intended). For quite a while I’ve been sweeping these concerns under the bed or stuffing them in the closet; but there’s no more room to hide them, they’re just growing, and it’s time to do laundry, if you get my meaning. It’s time to face these doubts and concerns and tackle them head-on, determined to follow the quest wherever it might lead.

But how do you move forward from a place like this? How do you begin to try and figure out if the Christian worldview really does make the most sense of our world and give the most coherent answers within the scope of plausibility? I’ve come up with a plan that’s really there more to give me guidance for starting off on this journey than anything else, a plan that will undoubtedly change but that is designed to examine some of the most hefty assumptions in the Christian worldview and to answer the question, “Is this a reliable and plausible assumption?” Granted the cascading nature of assumptions, I’m starting at the ground-up with the most obvious question (“Is it plausible that God exists?”) and then moving on from there; if he does, then the next assumption to look at would be (for instance), “Is God a good God?” We assume he’s good, and our holy writings tell us he is good, but is that a plausible assumption given the data we can gather from the world? And if that assumption seems genuine, then move on. I can allow assumptions, to be sure, because even the most rationalistic worldviews (like philosophical naturalism, the biggest opponent to theism and all its spin-offs) have them. But what happens when, in order to be embraced, the host of required assumptions are of such a magnitude to warrant unbelief? I’ve already started with the first assumption—“Is it plausible that God exists?”—and have a decent game-plan: I’ve collected a series of popular books written by the world’s leading members of “The New Atheism” (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett) and am going through them to see the points they make. I’m trying to be open to their points as well as trying to be aware of the assumptions that undergird their points. I am a firm believer that the best way to ascertain the reliability of your beliefs isn’t to read stuff that people who agree with you write, but to look at the other side. Christians would wish doubting atheists to read Christian apologetics; let’s do them the favor the other way around. Iron sharpens iron, but iron can only be proved in conflict. The conflict of worldviews, the earthquakes aroused in the friction, these things sharpen and hone and widen our perspective, and it’s a good and necessary thing if we want to advance in our understanding of the world. But in any quest there ought to be balance, and if I were to simply cling to “The New Atheists”, that would be foolish. So I’ve also got books written on the same subject from the other (theist, though not necessarily Judeo-Christian) point-of-view. It’ll be interesting, to say the least, to see what they have to say about one another. A few good and mild-mannered crack-shots always do the psyche good.

This place, it’s both scary and exciting. I don’t have any guilt over these doubts: I believe that, if we truly are created, then rationality is something God has endowed us with. How strange would it be if he gave us such a tool and then criticized and scorned the use of that tool? These doubts don’t stem, let me add, from a desire for the gospel to be untrue. I want it to be true more than anything. I like the answers it gives, the purpose, the guidance in life, the hope amidst life’s trials. I want it to be true. But I can’t shy away from the conviction that staking my life on something simply because I want it to be true is an awful way to do things. How would I be any different from the hip-hop whore shooting heroin with a community needle, staking her life on a twisted postmodern version of Epicurean philosophy because it is, simply, what she wants to be true? My own desire for the gospel to be true says nothing about the gospel but a lot about me. Our own arrogant certainty regarding the truthfulness of our beliefs, again, means nothing: it says nothing but about the belief and, again, a lot about us. A delusional man believes he is Napoleon Bonaparte; we say that belief reveals much about him, but nothing about the truthfulness of the delusion. But yet when it comes to ourselves, we give our own personal certainty the upper-hand, trumping the same logic we apply to the beliefs of others. Just because a worldview works to frame our lives, just because it makes sense, or we feel it to be true, or if it’s comforting and gives us purpose, none of that says anything about the validity of the belief. It may empower us to be better people, but that doesn’t mean anything, either. Take your stock from a variety of worldviews and meta-narratives out there, and each one can do all of the above and more. The popularity of a worldview or our respect and admiration of those holding it means nothing. A worldview embraced may bring us much happiness and joy, but George Bernard Shaw’s quip might prove useful: “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."