Monthly Archives: May 2009

Late-term abortion doctor murdered–How should we feel?

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The Associated Press is reporting that a late-term abortion doctor, George Tiller, has been shot to death at his church, Sunday, May 31, 2009.

See article.

The doctor was 67 years old and had survived at least one other attempt on his life. No suspect is yet in custody.

Wow! Where to start? Death and murder are all around us, so it shouldn’t be surprising that a controvertial doctor would be murdered, especially an abortion doctor who practices late-term abortions. The doctor obviously believed in the right of a woman to have an abortion and had the courage of his convictions. But the alleged assailant also had the courage of his convictions, and will be regarded as a hero by many.

This is one situation where the theists and the atheists might not necessarily agree or get along. The fundamentalist Christian believes in the sanctity of human life. Moreover, the fundamentalist Christian believes that human life begins at conception. The atheist doesn’t believe in the sanctity of human life, to the extent that something can only be sanctified by God.

That doesn’t mean that atheists don’t value human life. We do. And I can’t speak for all atheists, nor do I want to. But the atheist is maybe a little more willing to allow the woman the choice of whether to terminate her pregnancy at any stage, for any reason.

Both are strongly held beliefs, and when murder seems to be the only way to express one’s strongly held belief, then I think it’s the result of frustration, born of a lack of common ground.

Sure, we can mostly get along, maybe dine together, even call each other friend. But when it comes to the core of our beliefs, the sanctity of human life or the rights of a woman to choose, it seems that for some people there can be no common ground between these beliefs.

Maybe there is, in fact, no common ground between these beliefs. Maybe there is nothing good for each side to find in the other. Can the fundamentalist Christian find anything good in the aborting of late-term fetuses? Can the liberal atheist find anything good in restricting the freedoms of a woman’s choice?

I would like to make a personal comment here. Although I am an atheist, I am also strongly against abortion in almost all situations. My journey toward spirituality has taken me along the road toward believing more in the sanctity of human life. Yes, there is something sacred about it, sacred in the sense that it is special and rare, deserving of all our will to protect it. Human life, as is possibly all life, is mysterious. And while I’m not ready to attribute this mystery to God, I acknowledge its mystery.

Maybe the common ground is this: We should be able to do away with all abortions. As a society, we should be able to provide for the “unwanted” baby. The girl (and boy) who have sex and get pregnant should at least make the sacrifice to carry the baby to full term and deliver the baby. If at that point the baby is still “unwanted”, then the mother should have the right to give up the baby to someone who will love it and provide for it. That is the minimum we should expect regarding our behavior toward “unwanted” babies.

And I won’t apologize for believing this.

A Christian taught me the vacuum law of prosperity.

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It’s strange how a dusty old 1962 edition of a book with its pages cracked and falling out of their binding can change your life. I still have the book on my shelf. It has a strange title, “The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity”, and it was written by a Christian woman, Catherine Ponder.

I first saw the book covered in dust in a garage belonging to the mother of my girlfriend Lynn in early 1992. Lynn’s mother had used the book to press flowers, and there were still petals between its stained pages. I was drawn by the title, at once appealing to my systems engineering background and my desire for prosperity. Lynn’s mother asked if I wanted the book and I took it and threw it into the back seat of my convertible. That night I began reading it.

Catherine Ponder told the story of how she turned poverty to riches by following the secrets she shared. There was no “science” among those secrets. She spouted a lot of scripture passages from the bible, and her interpretation of the bible passages seemed far fetched at best. For example, she talked about “gold dust in the air” waiting to be collected by anyone willing to believe as she believed. It was ridiculous!

But by the end of the third chapter, “The Vacuum Law of Prosperity”, I was hooked. In that chapter she was saying that you have to get rid of what you don’t want in order to attract what you do want. I know, I know, this sounds a lot like “The Secret”, and we now know that it is nothing more than the Law of Attraction. But keep in mind that I had discovered this 1962 edition of the book in a garage in 1992, many years before “The Secret” was published and the ideas in it became well known.

The first vaccum technique was to practice Forgiveness, an idea straight out of the bible. Though I was initially dismissive of the technique, reading that section gave me my first glimpse at why Christianity might have caught on, and why it might be of value to those who believe in it. It was the first time I had seen the technique of Forgiveness used for something other than overtly religious purposes. And I thought I would give it a try. We all have people in our lives we need to forgive, and so I tried it then. I don’t remember the details, and I might not share them now even if I did remember. But there I was, an atheist reading a book written by a Christian, performing a religious (or at least I had always thought of it as a religious) technique, and feeling better because of it.

My next step in the process of creating a vacuum in my life was to put my house up for sale. I had loved that house. It was costing me an arm and a leg at an interest rate from the early 1980s, 13+%, and I had been unable to refinance the loan because I had been underwater in the mortgage for years. I loved that house. However, after reading chapter 3 of the book, something inside me told me the house had to go, that it was holding me back. I called a realtor and got an appraisal. I was told that I was no longer under water. The house went on the market in April 1992 and sold within a month.

The next step was to forsake all other women. For all practical purposes, I was seeing only Lynn already. But by acknowledging the vacuum, Lynn was there to fill it, and it strengthened my commitment to her.

The final vacuum came when I informed my employer that I would be gone in a year to return to graduate school. I asked Lynn to join me, and together we applied to graduate schools and got accepted.

At the end of the next summer, 1993, with Lynn at my side, we moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to pursue graduate school.

Why should we find common ground?–reply to comment

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In a comment on my last blog post on miracles, the commenter, Stephen Parrish, wrote the following:

What is the common ground between the occurrence and the impossibility of miracles?  If a religion were based on the flatness of the Earth, or the geocentric theory, would you seek common ground with its followers?

You’re trying to find a path to something you don’t believe exists.  I don’t get it.

The issue is important enough that I want to devote an entire blog post to it.

I want to emphasize that I appreciate Mr. Parrish’s comment.  Comments such as his are exactly the kind of comments I seek from readers.  If everyone agreed with me, then this blogging would get very boring very quickly.  And in the spirit of finding common ground, I want to avoid the temptation of engaging in counterattack.  So I will use a parable (something I’m borrowing from the bible, by the way).

Let’s assume that there are flat earth believers and that we disagree with them, in particular we believe in a spherical earth revolving around the sun.  (Call us the “copernicans”, after Copernicus the scientist who gave us the current heliocentric view of the solar system, which by the way isn’t exactly correct either, given our solar system’s trajectory about the galaxy; but anyway…)

I argue that we should want to find a common ground between the flat-earth believers and the copernicans.

What is the alternative to finding a common ground?  Well, we could kill them all, and that would solve the problem of our differences.  But maybe they outnumber us significantly and would fight back.  Okay, then maybe we can wait until they all die off, perhaps a generation or two.  But they teach their children that the earth is flat, and so, as a culture, they’re not likely to die off.  Okay, maybe we can educate them in our public schools, or unleash people like Carl Sagan on them.  But we find that that doesn’t work.  We’ve aimed our telescopes skyward and have “proven” that the earth isn’t flat, and we’ve written books detailing those proofs, and Carl Sagan said, “billions and billions,” so many times that he was hoarse, but still they believe that the earth is flat.  We can write a zillion books on the subject, teach the heliocentric theory in our schools, and the flat earth believers will simply home-school their children.  They congregate in their flat earth buildings with their steeples.  And then we learn that they are plotting to do away with the non-believers, the copernicans!

We have failed miserably.

Who wins in the end?  Some might say that the truth will win out, that whoever holds the correct view will emerge as the winner.  I wonder whether that is really true.  People believe what they want to believe, sometimes irrespective of the truth.  And in any case, it could take a thousand years.

I argue that we must find a common ground with the flat earth believers.  Maybe there’s something good about believing in a flat earth.  The earth is locally flat anyway, right?  Maybe there’s a value in seeing the earth as flat.  Maybe in finding a common ground, we can overlook the superficial differences between us and rejoice in something higher.  I’m not sure what that is right now, but maybe it’s LOVE.

How can we love each other if we are hating each other’s beliefs?  Maybe LOVE is a good enough reason to overlook the details of each other’s beliefs as we move toward that common ground.

Why attempt to find a common ground?  Ultimately, we must find a common ground because there is value in each side’s position, and because, as a civilization, we cannot survive if either side is erradicated.  Science serves a useful purpose, and so does religion.  So rather than continue sniping back and forth, let’s figure out how to come together.

Why are there no more miracles?

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On my high school debate team we learned to argue both sides of an issue.  As an example, we once practiced arguing both sides of the proposition: “The federal government should pave all highways with bubble gum.”  It was a ridiculous proposition, to be sure, and we knew it would be wrong to use bubble gum to pave roads.  But it was a debating exercise that we took seriously.  Now I’m glad I learned to argue both sides.  It comes in handy when occupying the middle ground between theists and atheists.

Why are there no more miracles?

As an atheist, it is tempting to argue along the following lines: Miracles are impossible, by definition.  Therefore, there never were any miracles.  Any miracles described in the bible are there because of literary license taken by the all-too-human authors of the bible.  If someone is raised from the dead, then it is either a fictional event or the person raised was never really dead to begin with.  If a loaf of bread feeds five thousand people, then it must be a VERY large loaf or it is an exaggeration, or maybe someone miscounted.  If a statue sheds a tear in today’s world, then it must be a particularly humid day, or someone accidentally dropped some lemonade on the face of the statue.

But in arguing so, we risk alienating billions of followers of Jesus Christ.  In being dismissive of miracles, we scoff at the basis of Christianity and the other major religions of the world.  While it is tempting, we gain nothing from it, and lose an opportunity to find common ground.

I want to find that common ground.  I want to find the good in Faith, the truth in the Bible, the value in belief in God.  I think I’m not alone in this desire.  If you feel the same way, then join me in this quest.

Christians believe that Jesus performed miracles.  If the God that Christians believe in exists, if the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God of the bible really is somewhere out there or in here, then of course miracles are possible.  The all-powerful God can do anything.  If this God exists and created the universe in seven days (or even seven billion years), then this God can cause a few fishes and loaves of bread to feed five thousand people.  That seems like a simple enough logical conclusion which I can’t deny.

So atheist who say that miracles can’t happen are merely assuming that God doesn’t exist and are jumping to the conclusion that, without God, miracles are impossible.  This is not necessarily illogical, but it diverts attention away from questions about the existence of God to the existence of miracles, and only confuses the real issue.

By the way, I’ve never found anyone who could successfully prove that God doesn’t exist.  (To be fair, I’ve never found anyone who could successfully prove that God *does* exist, but that’s a conversation for another day.)

And if God *might* exist, then miracles are possible, even if we don’t see them on a daily basis anymore.

And I’m not talking about a liberal interpretation of “miracle”, like an ex-girlfriend contacting me out of the blue 31 years after our breakup.  That’s pretty amazing, but it doesn’t rise to the level of miracle.  Not like the feeding of five thousand people from a handful of food, or the raising of someone from the dead, who was actually, really, dead.

I have lost a friend

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A man dies too young, unexpectedly.

His wife grieves.  His three daughters are without a father.  His parents wonder how he could have left this earth ahead of them.

And I have lost a friend.

Cold-hearted atheistic commentary: Man dies.  Population decreased by one.  There is no soul, so that’s the end.  There is no afterlife.  Get a grip and move on.

The reality: Friend and loved one passes away.  Tortured emotions.  Tears for him, for his wife, for his daughters and parents, … for his friends.  Not sure how to move on without closure because it was so sudden.  Couldn’t say goodbye.  Couldn’t reassure him that all would be well with everyone he’s leaving behind.

Makes me wonder about this whole atheist thing.  The cold-hearted approach works when it’s somebody else, when I don’t know him, when there is no emotional attachment.  It is emotions which give life its meaning, my emotions, other people’s emotions.  The meaning of life is in the joy of life, in the heart-felt hellos and goodbyes, in the shared meals, in the laughter, in a gentle touch.  The intellect is a tool to be used to advance the joy of life.  Life should NOT be a tool to advance intellect.  I can use my intellect to dispassionately analyze the passing of my friend, but that cannot bring anyone any joy.  I can remark upon the evolutionary necessity of death, but that is intellect talking.  If that is the sole extent of one’s reaction to a death, then it might as well be that of a robot’s, not of a living human being.

And how can someone such as myself, an avowed atheist with the reputation of being an atheist, bring peace to the wife of the dead man?  My words will ring hollow.  “He goes to a better place.”  The words are a lie and she knows it.  For the atheist believes that there is no heaven, nothing beyond the physical world, no soul, nothing to distinguish the living body from the dead body except biochemical function, the struggle of a living organism against thermodynamic heat death fought every second, until the fight is lost and the inevitable heat death finally occurs.

Or I could say, “He was a good man.” Was?  She’s thinking that he *is* a good man, that he still exists …  somewhere.  We play tricks with time, with tense.  To the atheist, he “was” and can never be again.  But how do I know for sure?  What of his essence survives forever?  Nothing?  I don’t believe that.  The atheist is a fool who does.

What would give his life meaning, even to an atheist?  That he lived, that he raised a family and made a woman happy for many years, that he influenced the world, that he taught students and helped to create a better future for everyone, that he will be remembered by everyone who ever came into contact with him, including me.

How does an atheist reconcile with those truths?  By believing that his “soul” is, was, and always will be within me and within every person he came into contact with.  Maybe there isn’t a God, and maybe there is.  I don’t want to argue about it now.  I just want to remember my friend, and wish for the best for his wife and children.  Some might call that prayer, but I resist use of that term.

His name is Nisim.  He is Jewish.  He lived in Israel.  He is my friend.