Atheism Not Built on Reason Alone

Atheists at a Cricket Match

They say there are no atheists in foxholes. The trouble is foxholes have become the perfect place for an atheist to set up shop, make himself comfortable. I don’t know when it happened but somewhere along the line the so-called Problem of Evil became the heart of the atheist rationale. For Christianity through the middle ages there was no such thing as the Problem of Evil. Sure, there was evil and it caused problems but it didn’t cause problems for God. It certainly would never be trundled out as proof that God did not exist. But nowadays if a person wants to shrug and show you just how stupid the idea of a Supreme Being is all she has to do is mention the Holocaust or tsunamis. With senseless shit like this going on, how can there be an all-powerful and all-loving God somewhere out there? It all seems so Q.E.D.
Not even a lack of miracles is taken to be as strong a defeater of theism. After all, maybe miracles hide from unbelievers. Maybe God averts disasters and heals undiagnosed tumors all the time. How would we know? There is nothing more convincing to us of the nonexistence of God than a senseless death. Children killed in earthquakes or wars – what sort of cosmic sadist would allow that? Who is really convinced that Job’s family being restored to him can make all of his suffering hunky-dory? Epicurus was aware that the existence of evil has serious implications on the nature of God. The result was that either God is evil or impotent since there very clearly is evil in the world.
If we accept that this reasoning is sound, what are we left with? Atheism seems to be an insistence on living rationally. We must deny the existence of God because we find evil in the world. We must accept that there is no meaning to our existence since this would demand a purpose behind existence, and how can there be a purpose to the chance existence of randomly acting matter?
An atheist in a foxhole makes a great deal of sense to me; especially if he has just seen one of his comrades liquefied by an exploding shell. This seems like a rationally justifiable position. What I can’t quite fathom is an atheist at a cricket match. A happy atheist has to be the strangest thing in the world. What is after all the meaning of a cricket match? Surely if there were ever an absurd thing it’s sports. All of those people cheering and shouting as if it all had some kind of eternal significance. In some heavenly future will we be able to look back on that day in the stands and at athletic play that meant so much? Not if atheism is true. So what is it that is going through the mind of the atheist sports enthusiast? My best guess is that the poor chap is acting against his own reasoning. He’s acting as though what he is doing somehow has lasting significance. He seems to be living as though he were in fact not an atheist and the universe is not a meaningless place. That he will never die and the memory of his life in all its numberless vivid details will never be obliterated from the universe.
Or consider it this way. Someone asks you, How’s your beer? Well given the fact that I will eventually die and stay dead forever I guess you could say that it is tinged with a great deal of bitterness.
Or, constantly staring death in the face, how can we be happy? How can we even go through the countless trivialities of life, to say nothing of enjoy ourselves at a cricket match?
Atheist existentialism is a crock if ever there were. When Camus opts against suicide he is rather arbitrarily acting optimistically. But why should he? Isn’t he simply choosing some rather bourgeois moral notion on which to construct his life? I know atheists who are almost religiously environmentalist, for instance. Every life is sacred. Every species matters. A world without a panda would be a terrible place. But why is this so? How do we know this is right? Isn’t the sun going to explode at some point and make all species on earth extinct? “He who dies this year is quit for the next.” Why should another billion years of tooth and claw existence be better than ending all this senseless suffering sooner rather than later?
I also had an atheist friend tell me I should suggest to my children that life never ends. Our bodies become the soil that grows into grass and that whole circle of life crap. Of course at some point the universe will become a very dark cold place and nothing much will be growing then. If current scientific models are correct. Talk about your cold comfort.
The point for me is simply that atheists don’t really live much differently from theists. They are optimistic about our situation in the cosmos. We can do things to make the world a better place. We don’t have to worry about death because we all live on. Life is eternal. Forget the fact that this is all built on fog and smoke.
We shouldn’t be too quick to say that the atheists ought not to live as they do. But what we really cannot escape suspecting is that the atheist really lives no more rationally than those religious fundamentalists he or she rails against. The religious person will talk about faith as though that speech makes some sort of sense, when in fact it may be as groundless as the atheist’s optimistic view of the value of biological life. But is one really in much of a stronger rational position? Does either offer good evidence for the way they conduct their lives being rational? I’m sorry if I can’t see it.
It seems to me that the atheist and the theist really don’t spend much time reflecting on why they feel the way they do about the universe and our place in it. Their sense of what it all means is assumed from the outset. It isn’t put into words. And Freud is no more convincing than Augustine about why we should do what we are supposedly called to do. We either owe it to our fellow human beings to try to make life better or we owe God obedience. Why? In short, don’t ask.
As far as I can see the atheist with his science really has no room to attack the fundamentalist. He who is without irrationality may cast the first stone. Perhaps this is why there have been so few true atheist philosophers in the history of the west. Philosophy keeps knocking up against the infinite. It is hard to be sure there could not be a God when you are convinced that there is something infinite. Giving trillions of minds and an infinite amount of time, couldn’t we human beings build a Supreme Being? It’s something to think about.
The fundamentalist should also be patient with the atheist when he turns out to be a bad philosopher. Richard Dawkins doesn’t think much of Anselm’s ontological argument, which he seems not to understand. He calls it a parlor trick. But he seems to think a great deal of Bertrand Russell’s actual parlor trick of the Orbital Teapot thought experiment. But if a person can’t tell the difference between the infinite and a finite teapot I don’t suppose I’ll be able to help them see the error of their ways. Suffice it to say that a God and a teapot are far from the same thing. The character Casaubon understood this in Foucault’s Pendulum, a book Umberto Eco wrote some twenty years before Dawkins decided to Rottweiler away at alleged delusions of God’s existence.
This is precisely what philosophy is for, though we have forgotten it: philosophy humbles us before what have proven perennially insoluble problems. How shall we live? What is the meaning of life? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the basis of knowledge? These questions are not parlor tricks. They have been worked on by some of the greatest minds the world has ever known. Only a fool could think he has all the answers or is free of all delusion.

David Hume

David Hume thought that we could never be sure of our knowledge of the world. It is just perception. We can't know that the sun will rise tomorrow just because it rose yesterday and the day before. That's an inductive fallacy. Thomas Reid tried to take Hume to task by asking, if we can't trust our senses, what can we trust? This doesn't get us far. The real answer is in how complex the universe is likely to be. To have everyone have vastly different perceptions to such a degree that we can't read a thermometer or clock, we would need one of two things: either a complex universe that can change how thermometers work from moment to moment, or we would need brains that have simultaneously evolved that can perceive in vastly different ways -- your blue is not my blue because you are actually seeing something different from what I am seeing when I see blue.

Hume also thought that there could not be a self that exists over time. The self clearly is a tricky thing. But modern brain science shows that memories are indeed stored in the neurons. False memories are not a problem here because they are anomalous. The point is that we do have memories and they do stay with us. I don't argue that Hume totally misses the mark. Again, the self is a dicey concept, but some sort of self does exist over time unless disease or damage occurs. Hume's contention that there is no self is the falsehood here, not that the self is not at all fungible. We should note that Hume's problems with induction seem a bit silly in the face of a universe that has light traveling steadily for tens of billions of years. Why should we have doubts about the future, in a Humean way, that don't seem to apply to the visible past? Hume would have to come up with some sort of vector for this sudden and inexplicable change he proposes is possible.

Also Hume says that there is no reason to prefer avoiding the destruction of the world over scratching his finger. The problems here are with the words reason and prefer. By reason does he mean a method of proof? Can we prove that the destruction of the world is less preferable to scratching an itch? We can prove that we would like it less. We would not want to see fear and pain in ourselves or others. Fear and pain are not things that we generally prefer. Can we prove that we should not? Is that necessary to show that Hume has tied himself in a knot? I doubt it. We could not make the vast majority of people prefer destroying the world over scratching one's own finger. Had Hume acknowledged this fact I feel that he would have been making some progress. As it is, he again is not accurately describing the world. He is forcing a needless skepticism on himself. I don't think in ethics we can know what all the wrong or right actions are. But that doesn't mean that we know nothing about right and wrong.

The Wren

The tiny wren is not too reticent.
Boldly, he claims his need to be content
With nothing less than his own mastery
Of song. The trills his urgency sets free,
Having surpassed their given form, outstrip
All reasoning, or parity. The grip
Exceeds the hand: the draft the cup or glass.
The height is not distance from the dewy grass.
Not greater is the wren than his brief song,
Its tune’s been sung by early wrens for long,
But this uncommon wren sings of our flight,
Fulfills its promise, mindful of the night.
No rubbish from a shrunken guilty thing
Whenever themes are given vital wing.
The virtuoso wren has song in spate.
Each April new if wren and song will mate.

prelude to a bliss

Prelude to a Bliss

Was Falstaff ever young and thin,
Or less addicted to his sin?

I would have had him on Bermuda’s shores,
Perhaps, retiring on the fat Azores,
Feasting on sweet Madeira’s ruby berries,
Or another of the warm Canaries –
Believed to be the Islands of the Blest,
Where Homer said Greek heroes take their rest.
Sertorius could have skipped the wars
And bloody Sulla, locked ambition’s doors
Upon these isles in anonymity,
Well-insulated by a tropic sea.
And thus Sertorius thought to do, to die
In peace. An t’were, like-tested, so would I.

Conspiracy Query

Porkchop: Things are going better than I coulda dreamed, GM. Phase Seven is complete. The LSD is working wonders on Harry Bloomy, just like you said it would, of course. All eyes are focused on the Goat Three Thousand. Ha! I've almost started to believe in it myself. I can't wait for Operation Sheer Bliss to start up next month. We've got the greedy bastards right where we want them. They all believe their broke but they can't live with anything less than paradise. GM, you are one great fucking genius. Before we teamed up I had my doubts. I thought you were just this spinach-smoking freak with a grudge against Archer Daniels Midland. Now you got me thinking maybe I oughta inhale some of those polyphenols too.

The Real End of History

No, I'm talking about the coming (yeah, right) utopia. Where's utopia? Nowhere. I'm talking about Americans not having a sense of history or any historical sense. It isn't that no Americans remember important dates. Some of us do. Some of us are big readers of, say, the Civil War. Some people know a great deal about Revolutionary America or about the fight for civil rights. But knowing about separate periods or historical events is not the same as having a historical sense.

If we did have historical sense we would not have gotten into the idiocy of McCarthyism in the fifties because we could have asked where Stalinists came from and what was the likelihood that anything like that was going to happen here. After all, was it happening in England or France in the fifties? Was it happening anywhere by consent of the people and without a great deal of bloodshed? (In case you don't know, no, it wasn't.) Had it happened anywhere where there was not a great deal of political backwardness and total absence of workable infrastructure? No. Did Marxism fill the vacuum anywhere besides Russia and China? No. And there it did so after long campaigns of widespread murder.

Marxism needed corruption. We were deathly afraid that the pinkos would overthrow our entire way of life for a big part of the last century. And all of it was to no point. Nowadays Newt Gingrich and Lush Rimbaugh are trying to scare the hell out of some Americans that European style socialism is again on the march. Will Americans be fooled twice? I doubt it.

But the Republicans are going to miss a good opportunity for soul searching and for figuring out what sort of real politics they can develop. I don't say that Republicans are going to go away. They aren't. There are too many people in this country who believe in Big Business No Matter What The Poison and live on Anti-Abortion Fervor. That is not likely to disappear. Republicans will get voted back in because they are the only option people have when it comes to punishing Democrats. Our two party system shows no signs of erosion. Half of Republicans are even willing to put all their chips on the likes of Sarah Palin, as improbable as that may seem.

But it isn't just the GOP that has no use for history. Obama is too much the man of graphs and flow charts. It's too bad that none of them came in history books. Oh, sure, he may know a lot of facts about constitutional issues or even something of economics -- or at least of more recent players in the field. But what does he know about presidential history or biography? He has no sense of biography or story in general. He's a facts and figures sort of guy. Like most folks of our stupid era his is big on analysis of discrete problems. He has no power of synthesis. No one with any real notion of narrative would attack the financial crisis in so muddled a manner. No natural storyteller would jump into the health care issue will he's deep into the economic plot. Nor would he have picked the cackhanded Clinton for Secretary of State when we are lousy with people who can sound sensible and fake sincerity (H Clinton is weakest on the latter, if you hadn't noticed). Although you can't argue with idiots, you can shake hands with the devil. Of course the devil is likely to test his new air-to-ground missile the next day but that's no major difficulty when you are filled with the audacity of rosy-glasses. You can talk all you want to sharks and maggots, but at the end of the talk they are still sharks and maggots and haven't understood a damn thing.

But see, this is what you get when all of your smartest people are thinking about theory instead of history. Put down thy Foucault and pick up thy Shakespeare. If Obama can't be bothered with Robert Caro or Richard Pipes, Simon Schama, that kind of thing, read some Plutarch for gods' sake.

Gnashing of Teeth

Reporter: What exactly is Mr. Obama doing about the health care problem?

Bob Gibbs: The president is currently hard at work on this huge problem. Fifty million Americans have no health insurance at all -- and who knows how many Americans have insurance that is so crappy they almost never use it! I mean, it's bad.

Reporter: Yes, but that wasn't the question.

Bob Gibbs: Oh, right. [Long pause] What was the question?

Reporter: What exactly is the president doing about the problem.

Bob Gibbs: Sure. He's doing all kinds of things. So many things I can't even keep up. But I can tell you that it is not just empty words and arm waving. It also includes lots and lots of bruxism.

Reporter: Really?

Bob Gibbs: Absolutely. Michelle can't sleep in the same room with him anymore. She says it sounds like someone trying to scratch out of their own coffin.

Reporter: Yeah, about that. Some guys in the Secret Service started a rumor that that's just Dick Cheney trying to freak them out.

Bob Gibbs: A rumor?

Reporter: It's unconfirmed but it could be true. Cheney's a bastard.

She Turned Him Into A Newt (And He Didn't Get Better) Gingrich

Here's dinosaur who is attempting to scrape and scratch up out of the slime-pit of political irrelevance: Newt. He's a lizard of very little difference. The short version is that these guys like RL and Rupert Murdoch's Foxpack and Newt Grime-Grinch want to tar the Democrats with anything dark and sticky -- the truth be damned. They will even pull out ideas that are sixty years old, like McCarthyism. This last week Newt has been marshaling the stupid troops and attempting to fire up the base (is there an election anywhere in sight?) with all kinds of hate toward his political opponents -- yeah, I know, that's what politicians tend to do. No big whoop.

Unless. . . unless what? Obama is a socialist after all, right? Right? Er, left? Unless there is a giant problem with this whole notion of their being a political left anywhere in America.

See, words ought to mean something. If Newt or anybody else wants to attack Obama for being a socialist, there really ought to be some content to the term.

What Newt is trying to say is exceedingly simple (go figure). Obama is Lenin, or Stalin, or Satan. It's a lot of fun that he can say this and not say it at the same time. (He'd have his cake and eat it too but Rush ain't sharing any of the cake. Just look at that fat bastard, I mean, really, this stuff writes itself!) Using the real words would make it easier for us all to see how stupid this rancid Republican rhetoric really is. If Newt and the other GOP guppies were to say that Obama is about to make us the United Soviets of America, people might start to think about the alleged reality of this statement. That might lead to, you know, reading history . . . Think of the carnage!

Is there any fact to this assertion that Obama is attempting to usher in European socialism? Well, first, we have to put a few more words in Newt's mouth so we can get some sense out of the big dope. Newt seems to be saying by European socialism that we should think Marxism. That's socialism as in one of the esses in U.S.S.R. So the implication is clear: hate Obama or there go all your rights. You think it's bad now? Well, we could be having the same situation as they have in France or the UK -- they're socialists, right? I mean, England is part of Mother Russia, no? Um, no. Or, they're about to become pals of Putin, no? Um, well. You know.

Anybody who knows anything about history, or who has perhaps read Richard Pipes monumental book on the Russian Revolution can tell you that there was never any threat that communists (it means the same thing as socialist, technically) were about to take over the United States. Yeah, there were spies, but there was about to be a revolution in America. It was all paranoia. A war with Russia was more likely and that wasn't very likely, as history demonstrated.

Communism only ever took root in Russia and China. These places had a lot in common with each other and very little in common with America of the 1950s. As far as European socialism, whatever we decide that is, that too is unlikely to be traipsed in by Mr. Obama or anybody else. It would require our tax structure to be completely overhauled, and that is not about to happen anytime soon.

Not in the next four years, anyway. That's about as close to a guarantee as you can get in politics.

Crush Limbaugh

Blush Lameballs is at it again. No, wait -- he's always at it. He's been doing the same shtick for thirty years. But at the moment more people are paying attention to him. These are people who have probably paid some attention to him in the past, but just now in this time of crisis are anxious to see if any Famous People have Answers.

It's for this very reason that more of my acquaintances are listening to RL (Republican Lush); i.e., that there is an economic crisis afoot. This is precisely what the Fat One paradoxically denies existing. There is no crisis. Crisis, what crisis? We don't need no stinking crisis! Or was that Chrylers?

There's no economic crisis because Lameballs ate it: Crunch, Smack, Gulp! Hey skipper, where's Gilligan? In fact, I think the Fat One may have eaten the Professor and Mary Ann and the rest of them.

Welcome Back, Carter?

Heckuva Job, Obammy!

Can we finally now say that Obama MAY be something less than a political genius? Hilary Clinton certainly is and doesn't have the temperament to be a secretary of state. Of course, Warren Christopher didn't have the personality to be much of anything but a bean-counter, but that's history. But at LEAST Bill Clinton could have fired Christopher, whereas Obama is given the impossible task of deciding when to fire HC. She called North Korea a "hermit kingdom." That's pithy but sub par for her role. Meanwhile Bubba is on TV saying that Obama needs to smile more. What will the president do once HC cuts a real stinker? May I suggest grin and bear it?

But Bubba gave Obammy the thumbs up just a couple of days ago, declaring (Ah duh-CLARE!) that the prez was off to a crackin' good start. REEALLY? How's that? Did he not fail to say (words are cheap -- free, in fact) that he wanted to see Israelis draw down from Gaza, and that two states is the only solution? Did he not fail to get real government oversight baked into the stimulus package? Did he not fail to communicate convincingly how his and Geithner's plan was going to fix things, while succeeding to look like he was waffling and dithering and lost at sea? Er, oh yeah, he actually did that last one. Has he not failed to get his cabinet appointments properly vetted before they waltz out in front of God and everybody? Or do no good Democrats pay their frigging taxes?

I hope, unlike Blush Lameballs, that Obama can pull out of his early nosedive. Let's imagine it as a very steep learning curve. Otherwise he will look like that other brainy president we had who decided to get all casual and talk stupidly about the "moral equivalent of war." Wearing a cardigan is equivalent to declaring war on Brooks Brothers. That's a good thing, right? Right?! Anybody there? Well, it turned out that Carter was right about our need to conserve energy. We should've had a Prius in 1979. But Carter didn't know how to pick his words. A crisis, to Americans, is not something that is coming but something that is already here. And moral equivalents are a little more abstract than most of us are willing to get or are capable of getting, for that matter.

In short, Obama better learn WHAT to say. He has no trouble with words. The trouble is WHICH words. I'm sure Obama is much smarter than me, but I don't trust his judgment. That's too bad since I really like his ideals.

My Bad

After checking some facts, light rail doesn't look all that great. It is rather inefficient, expensive to put in and unweildy. Buses aren't as sexy but they have much more flexible routs and actually make money for private companies even as we speak. When I lived in Detroit I rode buses frequently. They aren't convenient but they are reliable and would only be better if the government got involved with existing companies. Another thing that could be done is the government could order thousands of Priuses. These could be given to taxi companies in major cities at a reduced rate paid for over time. Let's consider how environmentally welcome these cars would be in Manhattan and LA. Hell, the government could raffle them off. The only catch is that Japan would have to build these in new plants in America. A last idea for those government billions Nancy Pelosi is going to fritter away: dedicated heavy rail lines could be set up for highspeed service between major hubs. Europe and Japan have this, we need it too. This would have all the benefits of employing thousands of Americans, improving infrastructure, and being cleaner than domestic airflight. I would ride one of these speedy things at least once a year. That is saying something since I don't fly ANYWHERE nearly that often. How could I afford it -- It's not like I work for the White House.
TL

Obama Fix

Obama can fix this economy (to some degree) by executive order. He needs to get federal money to build light rail lines in as many of the one hundred cities across the country that are currently looking into projects or already have plans laid out. The only thing missing from the equation is cash. This would accomplish too things relatively quickly. The first is that it would put many Americans back to work. We need to find jobs for about four million people right now. Light rail would not do all of that over the long term. Most of the work would be in construction. Maintenance and operation would employ far fewer people but if we could employ some for two or three years it would be great. And it would help get other people to work more economically once the lines are up and running than is possible now. Plus we should not underestimate how much this would do for the environment.

These people as they work would have the cash to buy cars. With some help from the federal government the Big Three could be propped up to stave off an economic crash in this country and around the world. The American auto industry is also going to have to restructure itself to be leaner and more efficient, more competitive.

Obama will probably not even flirt with such a big idea because of his own personality. Incrementalism has been bred into every cell of his body. He has hand-picked all these Clintonians because to his core he believes in the third way, triangulation-strangulation. In short, getting nothing done through being neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. I spew you out. If we want to change the world we are going to have to take SOME risks. I would love to be wrong about Obama but so far he has shown himself to be the guy who is not going to do anything foolish. That's too bad. I'm glad he isn't going to do any of the foolish stuff Bush did (it was ALL foolish, unless you happen to be a Kurd) but it would be cool if he would do some of the foolish things that FDR and TR did. Hell, I'd be cheered if he would try a couple of big foolish things. Instead we are going to get his kind eyes and firm handshake, his good heart and a heavy dose of Clintonian sticking to our knitting, which worked great in the Gay Nineties when we rode one bubble after another.

TL

Milton's Eve Speaks

That first sunrise of remembrance, you have those first inchoate visions,
Your nascent eyes lead you to believe you’re the horizon,
But slide outside the womb and I’m agoraphobic
And full of doubt and every morning I’m aphasic
Without my cuppa, full of doubt
Like Milton’s famous dreamawhile Eve.
Did she have that last noble and prelapsarian infirmity? Was she sick
Before she speechless swooned? Speech. Speaking again. Do we have to talk?
But talk is all we have – it’s our only tool. Speech the only analgesic. Narcotic words.
And yet descriptive power. How can you build a massive tower and bridge
Without good words? Inevitably, ineluctably the silent knight with lance will come
With arms and fire to sack the citadel and storm hallowed environs, laying waste beyond
And leaving hollow dunes. An ossuary and bony mausoleum. So Eve’s body is a temple. She sacrifices every child, she bears them up to death. There’s a bunch of nothing down in her no-matter and some panting. Mum and dad fuck you up awake. Already we are born out of the deep and lunched upon another. Lunging. We are launched without permission. Christened, godspeed, no matter what we think of christ. But Eve was made to fall. She’s the offered evve. You. Born, bearing, buried. You. Slay and slaughtered. Yes, she was made to fall. God the father slipped a satanic fancy In her sleeping ear. She did have Adam to talk to but he was just another babe in the woods. Will I be just like God? A god? How is that possible? There was silence and a bunch of nothing. Nothing and the rest was dead silence. Before I was there was nothing. But nothing comes from nothing. Am I already God and this is my creation? Is this only in my
Much deluded head? This dream is real, though. Things change here and stay that way. A fallen tree doesn’t right itself. These phrases don’t form themselves. But do I form them?
She wanted to know. All she seemed to know was like looking into a glinting pool. I’d make A very poor kind of God – waiting under weight for God only knows what. But how can he
Know? If he does know, is this the world he wants? He wants this dim confusion? If I were God, what would I say about this place and all the work of my creation? I’d have to say something, wouldn’t I? I mean, I’d be having thoughts about my thoughts so I’d have
To say something about something here since here is everything and I know all about it.
But what? I wouldn’t know where to begin. Did I see the beginning? This world was here
Before me, this world all before me, greater than me. So all I would say would be nothing,
really. No matter -- burp -- no mater -- no matter how many countless untrammeled attempts to tongue it out, all it would ever be is – north to south – some meaningless terms mouthed by a parrot. There are the parental patterns of repetition. I think I'm going to be sick. They start with me and that man but in reality they must start with God. I didn’t just come up with all of this on my own. God put them in our heads. So the kids will be repeatedly repeating. Just like cattle make cattle make mooing cattle. Old wood never becomes a tree. So all these reiterations to the point of idiotic imbecilic entropy ad infinitum. Ad nauseum. Odd. Eating and regurgitating. Burp. I’m choking on the serpent’s ruminated words. I’ll die of bellyache. Or hunger. Pass that apple. I’m talking God with you, snake. Ralph. I’m speaking of your God. Ralph. Ralph. Belch. Gurgle. Ralph. Gott.

Gay Reason?

Obama promised us the moon and other heavenly bodies. Then he started lowering his sites. He picked Biden (!) for Veep. Then he found all he wanted in H. Clinton for Secretary of State, a job which apparently anyone with no foreign affairs experience or training can do. (What exactly were Warren Christopher's credentials? He's dead now, right?) Then he picked Rick Warren for the convocation.



Pass the buck and give me the Change! Will all of Obama's nickles be made of lead?



Here's the thing with The Gays. If we can't be reasonable about Gay Marriage, what exactly can we be reasonable about? Or another way of putting it, how hard is Obama going to fight for the change he promised? Not too hard by the looks of it. That doof John Kerry seems to have him beat on The Gay Thing. This is what is surprising. Now that he is behind the big desk, it would really take so very little for Obama to get a big win on this issue. For starters he can avoid the Clinton mistake of 92 with The Gays in the military by not being Bill Clinton in 92. He doesn't need to come out of the oval closet and tell us he's all for gay marriage. All he has to do is not invite Rick Warren to Washington. Or any other gay hater.



He doesn't need to come out and say that he's for gay marriage at this time. A few winks will work. He can just use some code about ALL Americans deserving certain basic rights. Let's be reasonable, he could say. Where there is no harm, there should be legal recourse. Where is there harm with consenting adults to live in loving relationships? Should the government sign off on your straight marriage? Why should it be asked special permission to sanction your gay marriage? Obama should say, Those who mean us and do us no harm cannot be reasonably considered our enemies. Didn't Jesus say something like that to his disciples?

Gay marriage is not just an issue for gays. It is an issue for all reasonable people in a free society. Those who don't want us to take the counsel of our own consciences on gay marriage also fear our powers of reasoning in sundry other areas. These people want to call every human embryo a "baby." Every heartbeat is the sine qua non of life. This is the counsel of fearful people, people like James Dobson and Rick Warren. The world to them either makes sense to them or is the cruelest joke. Either conception is when we get our souls or Jesus is a liar and life meaningless. This is to the fundamentalist more fearful than an asteroid on collision course for Earth.

But are these fears reasonable?