Wanted: Committed Christians to pray for stupid lowdown atheist bastard

In summarizing his thoughts about religion at the end of the movie Religulous, Bill Maher said something that is seconded by the so-called New Atheists. Namely, that to support any theistic religion is to support all theistic religions. Well, there’s quite a gulf between pacifistic Quakerism and fundamentalist terrorism, but the point of the New Atheists is that to support theism is to give intellectual respectability to theism. According to this theory, the more religion is rejected, the less it will appear as a viable worldview.

I wrote the following dialogue some weeks ago. When I later re-read it, I was shocked by its harshness, yet it fairly represents my viewpoint. If you disliked my previous posts on the subject of religion, you will loathe this one. I publish it for no better reason than that it’s true for me, and that I wasn’t done with the subject even though many of you were past being done with it. If no one who is religious reads it, I won’t care. In fact, I had just as soon you not read it because I hate to disappoint people. But, if you do read it, and you feel inclined to respond, would you please respond to the actual issues I raised rather than simply criticizing me for raising them? I just told you why I raise them, and if you’re not satisfied with that, I have nothing more to say to you on the subject. If you were more inclined to address my issues with religion, I might be more inclined to address your issues with me. As it is, I’ve written a great deal that I put a lot of thought into, yet the only person who bothered to address any of my points only did so by saying that they demonstrate my ignorance and naiveté. Great. Thanks a lot.


What are you doing? You said you weren’t going to write about religion again.

I said I wasn’t going to write about it for the foreseeable future. Well, that ended about 10:30 this morning when I started reading your responses to my last post about religion.

Okay, what do you want?

I want to talk to you about two things. One is your self-satisfied ignorance, and the second is your announcement that you’re going to pray for me. I’ll start by saying that I was shocked to discover that I know a hundred times more about your religion than you do—or at least about the arguments for and against it. If you agree, could you tell me why this might be so?

Jesus died for my sins—right? So, all I have to do is to accept him as my Lord and Savior and ask forgiveness for my mistakes every now and then. That is unless I’m a Catholic in which case I have to ask forgiveness of a priest and do an occasional good deed.

Well, I sorta knew that, but does this mean you don’t care if you’re ignorant?

If we’re saved by faith and not knowledge, ignorance isn’t an obstacle. No one ever went to hell because of something he didn’t know; he only went to hell because of something he didn’t believe.

But doesn’t the Bible saying you’re supposed to study so that you might give an answer for your belief?

Yes, that’s why we go to Sunday School. We study a different chapter a week—except that we take summers and special Sundays off. This way, we make it through the entire Bible every few years. As for why we Christians don’t want to talk more to you about our beliefs, you’re a special case. You accepted the Good News and then turned your back on it, so there’s not much we can say that you don’t already know and haven’t already rejected. You’re an infidel, an apostate. “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)

Still, other people read this blog, and, besides, I should think you would WANT to know about the intellectual basis for your faith, and that’s not something you’re likely to learn in church. I mean, your faith is WHAT YOU LIVE FOR, right?

I probably know more than you think, and I did say I would pray for you. What more do you want?

Isn’t telling an atheist you’re going to pray for him a little empty, maybe even passive aggressive? Jesus instructed his followers to PRAY IN SECRET, after all.

You really need to lighten up. If I’m happy with my relationship with God, then why should you give me a hard time?

Because I don’t understand how you can, in theory, be ready to die for your faith when you don’t know squat about it. I want to respect you, and this is a real problem for me. You act like you don’t even have a brain.

Look at where all your learning got you. I’m ignorant but saved, whereas you seem to think that you know enough to write a book, yet you’re going to hell. What IS your problem?

Let me put it this way. When you consider unsubstantiated faith to be a path to knowledge, you move yourself out of the realm of rationality. If you’re born in Saudi Arabia, you’re going to believe in Allah. If you’re born in Arkansas, your faith is going to be in Jesus. This means that if you and a Muslim debate religion, what are you going to tell him—that he should abandon his own brand of unsubstantiated belief and come over to yours? He’s going to ask you why he should do that, and all you’re going to be able to say is to quote from a book he doesn’t believe in. And he’s going to be saying the same thing to you. And what if he’s thinking about becoming a suicide bomber—what are you going to tell him, that Jesus wouldn’t approve?

Except that my faith isn’t unsubstantiated. I know that Jesus is real because he lives within my heart. Sometimes when I pray, I feel him beside me, telling me what I should do, and assuring me that he will make everything okay in the world to come.

Exactly my point. Your feelings are the ONLY evidence any of you Christians have offered in defense of your religion. Beyond that and Psalms 14:1 (The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God) you’re speechless. A Muslim is going to say the same thing though, and whereas you don’t know for sure that you would die for Jesus, those guys are dying for Allah everyday. It’s going to come down to what you feel in your heart versus what he feels in his heart, and no one is going to win because no one gives a flip about the actual evidence.

You know, of course, that I’ve never even met a Muslim.

That doesn’t matter. You and those guys on 9/11 are alike in that you both hold faith not just as one source of knowledge about God and morality but as the supreme source of knowledge about God and morality. This makes you irrational in those areas of your lives, and THAT SCARES ME. When you take public stands on important issues, NO ONE CAN REACH YOU because you don’t care about reason or evidence. I have the feeling that if Pat Robinson’s crowd took over the government and started killing off everyone who wasn’t a Christian, that you would keep quiet when they came for me. They would read this blog, and they would murder me, and when you were forced to side with either them or me, you would side with them. You would keep your mouth shut, and I would die. Later, you would pray for me. That’s what you would do, and it wouldn’t mean squat.

No one is going to kill you. You are going completely off the deep end here.

You’re right. Unless I start performing abortions or criticizing Jesus—or Allah—too publicly, I am probably more likely to be killed by lightning than by someone who is acting in the name of the savior of his choice. I will be oppressed in other ways, but I won’t be killed.

I will be praying for you, that you might know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior the way I know Jesus.

If you must pray for me, I had really rather you KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.

It’s just my way of telling you that I care.

Then how about saying, “I care,” or, “I think of you with affection”? “I love you,” also works.

I can’t promise.

But why?

Because Jesus said, “Whosoever denies me on earth, I will deny him in heaven.”

What is it with Christians? They think they’re being discriminated against if they aren’t allowed to talk about Jesus whenever and wherever they please no matter whose wishes are violated. I’ll tell you what. THIS IS MY BLOG. If you want to pray for me, do it on your own blog, and I’ll still visit you, and I won’t give you a hard time about it. You can even put it in a sidebar: “Please pray for that stupid lowlife atheist bastard, Snowbrush.”

Just don’t pray for me here because it’s like praying for me in my own home. If you are unwilling to allow me even this small space without your religion, how intolerant does that make you? I mean, really, if you refuse to honor my request here, then there’s no way I can trust you to not do everything in your power to force your religion down my throat in the larger world. When you knew less about how I felt, I could excuse your prayers, but now you know, and that changes things.

The Peggy Series: Everything I know about going to the doctor, I learned from my dog

Peggy is a nurse; Peggy hates doctors. If I hadn’t coerced her into going to one after months of pain and immobility, she still wouldn’t know that she has De Quervain’s tenosynovitis.

Dogs hate doctors too. Peggy and the world’s dog population are alike in this. I’ve gotten many emails about all the things that people learn from their dogs. If I were a space alien and read these emails, I would conclude that dogs are smarter and more virtuous than people. This would be because none of the emails focus on their negative behaviors. If I were to write such an email, I would make it about doctor visits, and here is what I would say. It applies to Peggy almost as much as it does to dogs.

Only go to the doctor under extreme coercion.

Enjoy the ride until the car turns onto the doctor’s street—then whine a little. As the car approaches the doctor’s office, whine a lot. Also, pace back and forth, and jump repetitively from the front seat to the back seat and from the back seat to the front seat.

When the car pulls into the doctor’s parking lot, whine a whole, whole lot. Also, throw yourself violently against the car’s doors, windows, and even the ceiling. If you’re too sick to reach the ceiling, just throw yourself as high as possible. Give the phrase “bouncing off the walls” a whole new meaning.

Force the family member by whom you are being betrayed to pry you from the car.

Whine, tremble, and hyperventilate as you are being dragged into the waiting room. Make sure that everyone within a ten-block radius knows that the Spanish Inquisition has you in its clutches.

Each time a new patient enters the waiting room, make a break for the door. Do the same when a patient leaves. Also do it when no one is around.

If you can’t escape from the building, hide under a chair and hope your tormenters won’t find you.

When called to the examination room, increase all previous resistance measures by a factor of a ten.

Leave a trail of urine that a potential rescuer might follow.

Pray to Saint Lassie to save you. Promise Saint Lassie anything if she will only help you.

Show the doctor your teeth. Do this even if he is trying to examine your ass.

If you’re too frightened to show the doctor your teeth, focus on becoming so small that he can no longer see you.

If he examines you ass, turn your head around and look at him as if to say, “I knew you were a perverted bastard, but I never dreamed you were THIS perverted.”

See how high you can make your fur stand-up.

Growl like five wounded wildebeests and twelve angry grizzly bears who are being tortured in front of the world’s loudest sound system while nuclear bombs explode in the background. Don’t worry about staying in key; you’re not auditioning for The Lettermen.

Continually attempt to jump from the examining table. Do this even if you have three broken legs, have been poisoned, and your throat is cut.

Throw yourself from a window if possible. Don’t worry about whether it is open or how far you will fall.

If the doctor attempts to bribe you with food, take it if you wish, but then return to all out resistance.

When—after ten minutes or ten days—you hear your betrayer say, “It’s time to go home,” run from the building before he changes his mind.

Wag your tail and snuggle during the drive home so that he will know you forgive him. With luck, this will so instill him with guilt that he will never take you to the doctor again.


Footnote: You have just completed the first post in “The Peggy Series.” The following is a partial list of future chapters.

What is wrong with Peggy—an overview.
Life with Peggy—one man’s path to sainthood.
Peggy’s problems—what other people have to say.
How many shoes does a female biped really need?
Peggy’s cookie addiction—is there reason to hope?
Why does Peggy take so long getting ready to go somewhere?
What is this hang-up Peggy has about wanting the toilet flushed?
Why do the best men always seem to end up with the worst women?
Peggy’s spider phobia—do stupid phobias in women prove male superiority?
Why can’t Peggy find her way around a town in which she has lived since 1986?
Why does Peggy try to make me look bad by remaining calm when we’re having a fight?
Why should I have to help out around the house just because Peggy is the only one with a job?
Is Peggy’s hang-up about me slobbering over other women due to selfishness, insecurity, or both?
Why must Peggy clutter the house with knickknacks that have to be dusted and could fall on people’s heads during an earthquake?
When driving, is it really necessary that Peggy wait until the last possible second to apply the brakes, only to laugh at me for pushing my feet through the floorboard?

Stay tuned: there’s much more to come.

A tripping we will go

Peggy and I camped this week for the first time in two years, which was when my shoulders started hurting so bad that I had to sleep in a chair. Before then, we camped for a couple of nights a week. Camping and hiking was practically our life until bad knees eliminated the one and bad shoulders the other.

I knew I would have to take narcotics to sleep, only they could have killed me because I suffer from sleep apnea. This meant that I had to take my CPAP (a machine that keeps me breathing), but to take my CPAP, I had to buy some big and noisy equipment to power it. Not good, especially in the confines of a van.

We camped atop 2,130' Saddle Mountain in the Coast Range. The summit is at the end of a deeply rutted dead-end road, and we’ve camped there many times. It’s the kind of place we like because it has a good view, and we never see anyone.

Narcotics work best when you take them before you need them, so, at bedtime, I took a 50 mg Demerol. Well, wouldn’t you know it, my legs started flopping around like balloons in a windstorm while the rest of my body was trying to go to sleep, so I took an anti-seizure drug called Requip a half hour later. I had never mixed the two, but I had never been told that I shouldn’t either. An hour later, my legs were still flopping, so I took a second Requip. An hour after that, the pain was getting pretty bad, so I took a second Demerol.

I was tired of lying awake while the battery that was powering my CPAP expended its energy, so I let this one dissolve under my tongue for fast results. I got them. KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM! The sweat poured off me in buckets. I felt weak. I felt shit-faced. I was a mess. I hate it when these things happen. I especially hate it when they happen on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. And I really and truly and especially hate it when, at the very moment these things happen, I realize that I’m going to have diarrhea.

What I most wanted NOT to do despite my sorry condition was to awaken Peggy because, nurse though she is, Peggy is prone to freak out when she thinks her husband is dying, and I MUCH prefer to freak out alone. But, and it was a big BUT, I had no idea if I could walk, or, if I could walk, if I could walk without staggering right off the top of Saddle Mountain. YES, I COULD walk, I discovered. Ooops, I forgot my glasses I realized halfway to the pot. Oh, well, I knew I could find my way without them—I just couldn’t see the stars.

What an effort! At home, it would have been a three flusher or even a four. I emitted everything short of a pyroclastic flow. You should have seen it. You would have cheered; you would have applauded; you would have never thought of me in the same mundane way again.

I felt MUCH better after I was done—much, much better. I lay back down with a feeling of accomplishment, of peace, of enlightenment even. Then, like a big heavy hand, the Demerol covered me, and I couldn’t have crawled out from under it had I tried. I almost dozed before the sweat awakened me again—and again, all night long. At 3:00 a.m., the ants arrived. The damn things tickled me as they crawled up my legs, but I knew better than to think they were real despite the fact that some HUGE ants HAD gotten into the van.

I had to admit, given this fact, that MY ants could have been real, but there was something about the WAY they crawled they make me think otherwise, and I really, really didn’t want to wake Peggy up looking for them. It was a long night. An ant would be there, and then it wouldn’t. Sometimes, there would be a lot of them—a whole herd almost—and I would remember stories about the screams of white men whom the Indians staked out on top of anthills. I really didn’t like those ants on my legs, but then you probably knew that already.

The worst drug experiences I’ve ever had were on Demerol, yet there’s something about it that intrigues me. I guess I’m a little—maybe a lot—like the guy in the old Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers cartoon who quipped—about LSD—“2,130 bad trips, but I’m not giving up yet.” I don’t think LSD ever killed anyone though (directly, anyway), whereas I KNOW Demerol has. Its dangers are why it’s not much prescribed anymore, but I’ve got A LOT of it, and “waste not, want not,” I always say.

“Does ‘waste not, want not’ mean you eat rotten food, your silly boy?” my mother would have asked. “Well, yes, Mom, of course, it does, which I especially hate when something is so far gone that that the dogs won’t eat it.” I would say stuff like that to my mother, and she would believe me. You might think she would have caught on after being bull-shitted for decades, but she lived her whole life like a naïve fourteen year old. Maybe this was because she equated being good with not seeing things that she considered bad, and she considered a lot of things bad—men, for example.

Demerol isn’t an opiate. It’s 100% human made. What kind of a person comes up with a thing like that, do you suppose? I mean, opiates came to us in the same way as aspirin. Something in nature was found to work, so scientists set about trying to figure out which chemical in the natural substance (willow bark in the case of aspirin) was the active one. But Demerol was thought up by some dude sitting around a lab in a white coat. Why did he do that? To drive me crazy, no doubt. But he won’t, ha, ha, ha, ha. He’ll never get me, that psychopathic lab dude with the evil dribble on his chin. I am WAY too normal.

My worst experience with Demerol happened when I double-dosed after my first shoulder surgery. I was in bad shape for several days in the middle of winter. I felt like I was DYING for several days in the middle of winter. THAT’S the kind of bad shape I was in—like the life was draining out of me—but it never occurred to me to ask for help. I was all alone—Peggy being in North Carolina—and, because I had been reading the Old Testament before I took the Demerol, I just kept right on reading. Freaked me out bigtime. I mean, the horror of ants eating your eyeballs is NOTHING compared to the horrors inflicted by the Old Testament God, and the Demerol had left me excruciatingly vulnerable to his malevolence. It had made me like my mother. But, what I said about God—that’s just my opinion. I know that a lot of you think he’s really quite sweet.

All Right Brain All the Time

Today. Partly cloudy with occasional showers. Temps almost chilly (low 46F, high 67F). That’s what I like about Western Oregon. NO HOT WEATHER almost hardly ever.

We went to the Old Cascades yesterday and hiked six miles. We used to hike and camp twelve or more miles in the High Cascades every week, but thanks to one knee surgery and two shoulder surgeries, yesterday was only our second trip in two years to any deep woods. I love places where a person could die and rot and no one ever know what happened to him. Every time someone gets lost in the woods near Eugene and is NEVER found, I think, “YAY! I LOVE living here.”

Today, like most days, I am sipping vodka. Two ounces is my limit, so sometimes I will drink on an empty stomach to get a little higher. I’m also—as you probably noticed—writing. I am most purposefully NOT writing a left-brain essay this time because, like a dog, I learn what people like, and that’s what I give them. Ha! Sometimes—for about two seconds—I AM tempted to write to please other people, but I do it so badly anyway that it’s useless. ME always leaks out, and most people aren’t going to like me no matter what, and I’m rather proud of that, actually, although I do make a studied effort to avoid alienating people unnecessarily.

In a few minutes, I’m going to go out and dig a hole. I only have once a month garbage pickup (a single small can), and I have no yard debris pickup, so I bury grass trimmings and compost, and, when they’re done rotting, I dig them up and put them in the garden or scatter them around the yard. Recycling and composting aren’t just about frugality; they’re about respect.

Anyway, digging a hole is something else I haven’t done in two years, and I shouldn’t do it now either because I’m probably not healed enough. Ah, but any day that I work with a shovel is a happy day; I have dug holes for the sheer joy of it.

Climbing way high up in my Ponderosa Pine and pruning limbs that could fall on the house during an ice storm is another bad idea that I’m planning to undertake (a neighbor took photo at top in 2003). Peggy protests it adamantly, but I am SICK of being a pain-wracked invalid. I’ll wait a few months though, until the sap is down, and I’m stronger.

I visited my friend, Doyd, this week. He’s 92, and in a nursing home, and breathes like a fish out of water even on oxygen. He’s also nearly blind, and his TV is broken, and his neighbor NEVER turns his own TV off, and the place is ALWAYS noisy, and the nursing home staff lost his dentures, and the place smells like shit, urine, and Pine Sol. Doyd is screwed. Doyd should die today. If I were Doyd, I would want to die today.

I have a big problem with trimming big trees because I’m afraid of heights. I used to fly an airplane, but even that didn’t make me like high places. The thing is, I always worry that I’ll jump off, which is kind of funny because the VERY LAST THING I want to do is to fall to my death. This incongruity used to make me think I was crazy, but then I learned that it’s a symptom of acrophobia, and I felt better about it. It’s like when I’m tempted to throw hot coffee in someone’s face, not because I want to, but because I so very much don’t want to that I’m afraid I might. I’ll think, “Wow, wouldn’t it be just the most horrible thing in the world to suddenly throw this cup of hot coffee in my friend’s face,” and then I’ll think, “Uh, oh, how do I know I won’t DO IT?” Then, I take my hand off the cup and sit back in my chair.

I’ve trimmed this tree before, and I’m hell-bent on doing it again because I’M the kind of person who does things FOR HIMSELF, and that’s the ONLY kind of person I want to be. When I have to give that up, what’s the use? Watching other people do my work is NOT ME, and sitting around in a nursing home is definitely NOT ME.

Years ago, when I was an undertaker, I went to pick a corpse up at a nursing home late one night. “She’s in room twelve,” the attendant said, but the attendant didn’t say that there were two women in room twelve. I stood looking at them for several minutes in the dim light trying to figure out which one was dead. I guessed wrong. No, no, no, I don’t want to be in one of those beds spending money like there’s no tomorrow for NOTHING that is of the least value to anyone—except to the people who are getting the money.

In closing

The last respondent to my last post wrote: “I don’t know how you could present your theories…in greater detail.”

Believe me, Dana, I could, but I sense a readiness on the part of many readers to move on, so I’m going to content myself with one last post on the subject for the foreseeable future.

My previous efforts occasioned a great many responses but none of them in regard to the points I raised. I’m not sure what to make of this, but I’m not easily discouraged, so I will close with two other objections to theism. First is the logical contradiction. It arises from God’s commonly supposed attributes such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, and examples can be thought of by the dozen. Here are a few.

Can God create a stone so heavy that he can’t lift it?
Can he do evil?
Can he will himself to die?
Can he choose to not know something?
Can he create a being greater than himself?
Can he be somewhere that he isn’t?

A final, somewhat related, objection to the type of God whom most people worship concerns suffering, and has inspired its own branch of theology—theodicy. It was an early concern of mine, and I have never found an explanation that made sense to me. I’ll present it in three parts.

(1) If God is omniscient, he knows exactly where, when, and how much every creature suffers. (2) If God is omnibenevolent, he doesn’t want any creature to suffer. (3) If God is omnipotent, he has the power to eliminate suffering without eliminating any benefit that suffering might bring.

Why, then, doesn’t he? All of the answers I have seen denied one of these three attributes. Of course, some people seek to avoid the problem altogether by throwing up their hands and claiming that God is inscrutable, but this approach has problems too. For one thing, it amounts to an admission that the case against God looks awfully bad. For another, it raises the question of whether moral behavior is whatever God says it is, or whether it exists independently of God. If morality is whatever God says it is, then it would be perfectly moral for him to tell you to lie, cheat, and murder your children (all of which are things he has actually done, according to the Bible at least).

Indeed, it is this second way of thinking about God that enables people to do absolutely horrific things in his name everyday of the week. Suicide bombers think they doing God’s will. Men who murder their daughters for “honor crimes” are likewise trying to please God. All of the people who shunned me when I lost my faith thought that turning their backs on me was what God wanted them to do, as did the people who threw my brother out of the church for playing music in a place that served liquor.

There is nothing that so angers nonreligious people as the observation that those who worship God often stand ready to throw compassion and justice out the window in a heartbeat if they think it will please him. For example, the opposition to abortion regardless of the circumstances; the cover-up of pedophilia by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church; George Bush’s willingness to violate the law in order to route taxpayer money to religious charities that discriminated and proselytized; and families that disown their children for marrying outside “the faith.” Slavery, genocide, religious intolerance, discrimination against women and the disabled, the murder of nonbelievers and homosexuals, and so on and so on, are all solidly rooted in Jewish, Moslem, and Christian scriptures. And, no, nothing that Christ said changed that. So it is that people who seek to excuse God by virtue of his “inscrutability” as also excusing the crimes done in his name.

I have tried to be fair in my criticisms throughout these posts, yet this is a subject that is as emotional to me as it is to many of you who stand, as it were, on the opposite side of the fence. I therefore apologize for whatever ways I might have failed. I have likewise generalized my comments to only apply to the supernatural deity in whom I once believed, and in whom most Americans appear to believe. In closing, I can but thank those of you who have hung in there with me despite the offense I have surely occasioned.

Everyone says that talking to yourself isn't a problem, but answering yourself is. What do they know?

So, what’s it like being an atheist in a country that prides itself on its Christian religiosity?

Some people don’t take me seriously, and they say things like, “You’re too nice to be a REAL atheist.” They mean it as a compliment, like when a racist tells a black person that he’s too smart to be all black. When people do take me seriously, that’s not usually so good either because they look at me as if my hobby was strangling puppies. A majority of Americans say that, if one presidential candidate was eminently qualified but was an atheist, whereas the other was appallingly unqualified but was a Christian, they would vote for the Christian.

If another pollster were to ask people who they hated more: atheists, child molesters, or serial killers; I’m not sure I would fare better than the other two. Ironically, atheists are typically (note that I'm emphasizing this word) better educated and have higher IQs than theists. They are also more likely to oppose war and torture, support universal healthcare, favor stem cell research, and work to defend civil liberties. The same holds true for religious liberals compared to religious conservatives. I surmise from this that the prejudice against atheists comes partly from America’s hatred of intellectuals. A country that elevates the common man is just naturally suspicious of uncommon people. Sarah Palin isn’t popular because she’s brilliant and learned.

What do you think made you an atheist?

When I was a boy in the South, I went to church three to four times a week and listened to preachers bash atheists, Communists, liberals, secular humanists, and godless professors, all to congregations in which most people left school after the eighth grade to work on the family farm. Such denouncements left me exceedingly intrigued by the ungodly, the moreso since I had never laid eyes on one or even knew where to look—preachers said they mostly lived up North. Preachers also opposed sending kids to “godless universities” (state run schools) because they might be converted to atheism. “Better to remain ignorant and save your soul than to become learned and be sent to the lake of fire that burns forever and ever.”

I thought that such statements contradicted the concept of a wise and loving God, but what really set me on the sliding board to hell occurred when I was eleven. Women weren’t allowed to teach Sunday school, and none of the men wanted to because they considered it unmanly, so the preacher taught Saturday school instead. On this particular Saturday, we were reading a section of the Old Testament in which God ordered the Jews to take away another people’s land. He told them to kill every man, woman, child, and animal who lived on that land, except for the virgins whom they could keep for themselves. I was devastated, and I asked the preacher how God could do such a thing. He seemed perturbed by my question, and suggested that I ask God when I got to heaven.

I thought this was an unconscionable copout, and I spent most of the following two decades trying desperately to find answers to an ever-growing list of questions that first led me to doubt God’s goodness and then his very existence. Sometimes, I would go into the woods and absolutely rail against God for ignoring my search for answers. Other times, I would try to make it easy for him by opening my Bible and pointing to a verse with my eyes closed in the hope that he would guide me that way. When the verse was so far off that there was no possibility of it being a message (something like, “Samson smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter…”), I would try again. Even after becoming an atheist, I still wanted desperately to believe because I had been told from my earliest childhood that the life of a man who didn’t believe in God is miserable and pointless. It’s hard to get beyond that kind of indoctrination.

Did you ever?

I still feel a great deal of what you might call existential angst. I mean, life is scary. It comes, and, after a few short decades, it goes. I have trouble accepting the fact that all I am and all I love will soon perish. I want there to be more. Compared to the fundamentalist Christianity of my childhood, atheism is bleak. Yet, I simply can’t believe, and even if I could, the God of the Bible would still seem every bit as evil to me as Satan himself. I don’t think anyone really loves that God. What they do is to pick out verses that make him look far better than the Bible as a whole makes him look, and they cling to those verses and ignore the rest. Either that or they simply pretend to love him because they’re afraid of hell. As a small child, I would literally come home from church and hide under the bed for fear of the “righteous wrath of God.” One Sunday, my father and I stayed home and played checkers during a rainstorm, and I was scared out of my mind that God was going to drown us because we missed church.

Could it be then that it’s not really God you don’t believe in, but the fundamentalist version of God?

After age eleven, I just wanted to believe in God, period. At age fifteen, I started studying other religions with the hope they had information that would justify a belief in a benevolent deity. I literally visited every Christian denomination and every non-Christian worship service I could find, whether near home or sixty miles away in Jackson.

How does Peggy feel about you being an atheist?

Peggy doesn’t care what I am short of becoming a Moslem and trying to make her wear a burka. She grew up in a devout Southern Baptist household, but the day she left home at age 18 was the day she left church (she literally flunked chapel at the Baptist college her parents sent her too because she failed to show up once a week). Whereas I have been obsessed with religion in one way or another for my entire life, I can’t even get Peggy to talk about it. If I do bring it up, her eyes glaze over. I just know she doesn’t believe in the supernatural, yet she doesn’t consider herself an atheist. I think she might qualify as a pantheist, but she refuses to be labeled.

I don’t understand people like Peggy, but I’ll tell you something that might surprise you if you think nonbelievers are unethical. Peggy might very well be the most ethical person I’ve ever known. For example, after years of being shorted on her paycheck almost every single pay period, she was overpaid $1,400. I would have pocketed that money in a heartbeat to make up for the hours I had spent fighting for what was rightfully mine, but she returned it.

Have you ever felt personally persecuted for your atheism?

I lost the friendship of everyone I went to church with for my first eighteen years, and the way I was treated by religious people in general was a major reason that I left a home in Mississippi that I built and loved and moved to Oregon. I was also dismissed from jury duty once, but I can’t say whether it was because I told the judge I was unwilling to say, “So help me God,” when I took the juror’s oath, or because I told him I was unwilling to follow his instructions in reaching a verdict if they violated my conscience. Another time when I had jury duty, the woman behind me struck me on the back of the head because I refused to stand while the district attorney led the jury in prayer.

What did you do when the woman hit you?

I stayed in my seat until the same woman said, “You had BETTER stand up!” I stood up. I still lived in rural Mississippi at the time, and fear and paranoia had become such a big part of my life that I didn’t have the guts to remain true to my convictions. I would now. The more hostility I’ve experienced over the years, the more courage I’ve gained.

When someone wrote in response to my last post that’s it’s important to act in a godly manner even though I don’t believe in god, I remembered the woman who struck me. The person who wrote no doubt equates godly behavior with ethical behavior, whereas I think of godly people as arrogant, intolerant, hypocritical, and often downright mean.

That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?

I speak the truth as I see it based upon how I have been treated as a nonbeliever. If you are a person of faith, your experience will be very different—as was mine. It’s like the difference between how blacks were treated by whites in the South of my boyhood versus how whites were treated by whites. When I see a religious person being loving, generous, compassionate, and so forth, I assume it’s despite their religion rather than because of it. Religious people are mostly clueless about how they appear to other people because they’re accustomed to thinking of themselves as the good guys and everyone else as the bad guys. If dividing people into sheep and goats—the way Christ did—isn’t the whole point of religion, it’s certainly a major point.

I mean, think about it. For most of its 2,000-year history Christians—Catholics and Protestants—tortured and murdered everyone they could get their hands on who disagreed with them. The pope didn’t decide that torturing people was wrong until the 1800’s, and even in the 1900’s at least one pope sent gifts to those who murdered his enemies. Of course, Christians today don’t seem the least bit bothered by all that. They’re like Moslems who see no irony in calling Islam “The Religion of Peace” despite the fact that people are murdered in the name of Allah everyday of the week. What religious people say they believe is often the exact opposite of how they behave.

How did your life change when you decided you really were an atheist?

I started looking around for like-minded people, and this led me to join American Atheists in 1982. I was thrilled to learn that there was both a North Mississippi Chapter and a South Mississippi Chapter until I discovered that Madalyn Murray O’Hair had padded the books somewhat, and that each of these chapters only contained one person. Paul Tirmenstein was a fit looking man in his eighties, and John Marthaler was obese and in his fifties (see photo). They were forever writing letters to their local newspapers slamming Christians about one thing or the other, and they both had pro-atheist bumper stickers all over the backs of their cars. People occasionally vandalized their cars—and John was even assaulted on a few occasions—but that just inspired them to add more stickers. It also inspired John to carry a cane with a brass handle.

I soon started writing my own letters to the newspaper, and was often amused by the responses. For example, I had people tell me that they supported my stand on school prayer. This surprised the hell out of me since I was totally opposed to it. I finally realized that they had completely misinterpreted my letter because they just naturally assumed I was in favor of school prayer like everyone else they knew.

I attended a couple of atheist conventions with John and Paul. The first one was held in Lexington, Kentucky, and we drove up in John’s old Toyota that leaned toward the driver’s side from the strain of carrying him around for 200,000 miles. I was sick with a cold during the trip, so I spent most of the drive trying to sleep in the back seat. I say trying because people were forever leaning out their windows and screaming profanities at us. This scared me pretty good, but it just made John and Paul laugh.

Kentucky was also a part of the Bible Belt, so we were stared at and cursed even inside the hotel where the convention was held. I couldn’t even enjoy my food because I didn’t trust the staff to not put filth in it. I still had a great time though because there were atheists there from all over the country, and this enabled me to regain a little of the fellowship that I lost when I stopped going to church.

I was warmly received by Madalyn O’Hair (see photo) because she was fond of something I had written for her magazine (I was later made a non-resident editor). In fact, she asked me to call her Grandma, and I got a real kick out of that, what with her being the “Most Hated Woman in America.” I was very sad when Madalyn, her son, Jon, and her granddaughter, Robin, were murdered. I had asked Robin at one point how she was able to handle being hated and even threatened by thousands of people, and she said she tried to not take it personally.

Paul and I drove to the next convention—in Austin, Texas—without John because John had gone early for some reason. It was after that convention that Paul killed himself. He had told me he was going to do it because (a) he was nearing the point that he could no longer live independently, and (b) he wanted his money to go to American Atheists instead of being spent on healthcare. He ended up using carbon monoxide because he didn’t have anything else. He had asked me to get pills for him, and I could have, but he had asked for them over the telephone, and I worried that my line was tapped. I later realized that this was unlikely, but it’s easy to become paranoid when you’re convinced that everyone hates you. Never one to waste anything, Paul donated his body to a medical school.

I came to have the deepest respect for the “evil atheists” that I had been warned against all my life. It’s easy to be true to your Christian beliefs when everyone around you validates them, but it takes real courage to uphold your values when you’re a reviled and isolated atheist who doesn’t imagine himself to be under divine protection or have heaven as his reward. When Christ said “wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction,” he sure wasn’t talking about atheists. In fact, the only people whom Christ consistently reviled were religious people, and the only people he consistently befriended were sinners. Of course, most of the religious people I know don’t appear to read too much into that.

2 down, 141 to go

I see that I just lost two long-term and devoutly religious followers, presumably due to my response to Just_because_today following my last post. I would have softened that response had I done as I often do, which is to go away and get myself into a better mood after writing something but before publishing it. I didn't though, and rewriting such things after they're published is of questionable benefit to those who have already received my first response in their email.

My goal in writing posts about controversial topics is not simply to preach to the choir. It is also to promote understanding among those who disagree with me. I am painfully aware that such people might very well hang in there—however tenuously—through several posts on a subject, and then leave because I expressed myself poorly in just one sentence in the response column. This leaves me feeling as if I'm walking on eggshells.

I'm sure some of you will wonder why the hell I even bother, and you might advise me to write whatever I please and let the chips fall where they may. My answer is that I find it far more interesting and constructive to communicate in a way that is true to my best thinking and that causes no more offense than I can avoid. It's a challenge that I mostly enjoy and from which I derive tremendous benefit, but because I work so very hard at it, I naturally feel badly when I fail. Of course, I also recognize that losing followers is inevitable. We all do it no matter what we write or how well we write it.

I would just ask those of you who disagree with me to cut me as much slack as you can. I am quite possibly familiar with your orientation in regard to religion, at least, because I have walked on both sides of the fence, but odds are that you know little if anything about mine. To this end, my next post on the subject won't contain rational arguments but personal experiences.

Does God exist? Why I think the answer is no.

If God does not exist, where did the universe come from?

It came from previously existing matter and energy in what’s called the Big Bang. Now, let me ask you, if God does exist, where did God come from?

God is eternal. This is part of what it means to be God.

You are saying that the universe had to come from somewhere, therefore God must have created it. Yet, you are also saying that God didn’t have to come from somewhere because he always existed. Why is it impossible for you to believe that energy and matter always existed, yet you have no trouble believing that God always existed? Wouldn’t God have to be far more complex than energy and matter and therefore in greater need of an explanation?

But there is also the problem of design. No machine that we can create is nearly so complicated as the human body, yet if you found so much as a watch on a deserted beach, you would know that someone HAD to have created it. Yet, you look at your own body, and insist that it just happened.

I don’t believe my body “just happened.” I believe it is the product of eons of organic evolution by natural selection. We can actually see organic natural selection in process and in the geological record, yet no one has found the least evidence that watches evolve through natural selection. Indeed, this is how we know that a found watch was created.

Does it not worry you that, even if you are right, it would be morally disastrous for society if everyone embraced atheism?

If atheists are immoral, why are there far more of them in universities than in prisons (93% of National Academy of Science members are atheists versus one-fifth of 1% of federal prison inmates), and why are those times and places where religion had its greatest influence infamous for ignorance and cruelty?

Even so, it would seem at least plausible that the fear of eternal punishment would lead many people to behave better than they otherwise would.

I am unaware of any evidence to support the belief that vast numbers of people would suddenly go out and commit crimes were they to become atheists. In fact, I don’t know of even one person who was ever harmed in the name of atheism. It’s the people who act in God’s name that scare me. Look at the Middle East today, and you will get a pretty good idea of how Christians behaved for most of their 2,000-year history.

But why wouldn’t atheists be more likely to behave badly?

They would risk being sent to prison for one thing. I also suspect that much of our morality evolved right alongside our other characteristics. For example, I would be astounded to learn that many of us harbor a secret desire to hit people over the head and steal their money. Whenever someone tells me that the only thing that keeps us all from running amuck is that we’re afraid of hell, I wonder if he’s telling me that he would run amuck if he wasn’t afraid of hell. If he is, then I’m glad he’s afraid. As for most people, I think it is their nature to behave well more often than not. Unfortunately, it’s bad behavior that makes the news. Can you imagine a newscaster saying, “937,000 Americans let another motorist change lanes in heavy traffic today”?

If God does not exist, why do so many people believe in him?

People generally believe whatever they were taught from their earliest childhood. This is why most Americans are Christians and most Indians are Hindus.

But if most people in every part of the world have always believed in God, doesn’t that in itself prove his existence?

Prior to the blossoming of scientific knowledge, a belief in God wasn’t logically justified, but it was readily understandable. Now that science has explained many of nature’s more obvious mysteries, I suspect that there are more atheists. However, people’s belief in God goes beyond an attempt to understand nature. It also offers emotional comfort in time of sickness, death, or other loss, and this is why it is harder to give up than, for example, the belief that the sun revolves around the earth.

Even so, science can’t explain everything.

That is true. Maybe someday it can, but I doubt it.

Doesn’t this leave the door open to a belief in God?

“God did it,” has always been what people said about a phenomenon that they didn’t understand. Take lightning, for example. Now that we know that lightning is caused by the attraction between positive and negative electrical charges, we give that as the answer when a child asks what causes lightning. If everyone who came before us had settled for “God did it” as an explanation for natural phenomena, we would know little more than we did thousands of years ago.

But you can’t prove God doesn’t exist.

No, but neither can I prove that invisible Martians don’t inhabit my clothes dryer or that my schnauzer doesn’t speak German when he’s alone with other schnauzers. The person who claims that something is true is the one who is obligated to prove it.

If there was no God, there could be no guarantee of justice. People could do horrible things and get away with them.

If there is a God, there can still be no justice. Take the story of Job. His family was killed, his wealth was taken away, and his body was afflicted with boils. His family and wealth were later replaced, and his body was made whole again. Do you imagine that this made up for the injustice he suffered? The only way that justice could really be served would be for injustice to never exist.

You spoke of the emotional comfort that a belief in God brings. Do you not feel a lack of this in your own life?

Yes. Not all atheists do, but I do. Believers often speak of belief as if it were a choice, but I see no evidence that this is true. Certainly, it has not been true in my own life. I grew up believing, and I struggled desperately to hold onto my belief when it began to slip away at age eleven or twelve. But no matter how much comfort I thought it would bring me, I was unable to accept with my heart that which seemed absurd to my mind.

Without God, for what possible purpose do any of us exist?

Without God, there can be no ordained purpose. This is not to say that our lives can have no purpose but that it is up to us to give them a purpose.

Yes, but any purpose we find will be transitory.

This is true, but then our lives and the lives of all those for whom we might do good are also transitory. This means that whatever good I do can be extremely beneficial when measured by the scale of human, animal, or even plant life. It also means that the evil I do can be extremely harmful. I know of no stronger argument for doing good than that our lives are but a flicker against the darkness of eternity.

The Wait

Monday, April 5: I see my internist (Kirk) for my yearly physical and tell him about the sunburn-like pain in my lower leg bones. He thinks it’s the early stage of a rare and devastating disease called CRPS (chronic regional pain syndrome), and orders a bone scan. I know someone with CRPS, and have often comforted myself with the thought that, as bad off as I am, at least I don’t have THAT. I learn from the Internet that the disease is progressive and incurable in the absence of early treatment or spontaneous remission. I also read:

“At an advanced stage of the illness, all patients develop significant psychiatric problems and narcotic dependency, and are left completely incapacitated. Some commit suicide.”

Deborah M. Shanley
Executive Director
International Research Foundation for RSD/CRPS

I’m scared shitless.

Thursday, April 8: The bone scan people haven’t called to schedule an appointment, so I call Kirk’s office. Trinity tells me that the paperwork is in process.

Friday, April 9: I call again, and again Trinity tells me that the paperwork is in process. I ask to speak to whoever is handling “the paperwork,” and I get Casey’s voice mail. I leave a message, but she never calls back.

Monday April 12: Trinity tells me the same thing, so again I ask to speak to Casey. I leave a second message on her voice mail. Becky calls back, and repeats the line about paperwork in process. When I ask “what paperwork?” she says Kirk’s signature. “When will he sign it?” I ask. She says she doesn’t know, that Casey is in charge.

Tuesday April 13: I call a fourth time and am told the same thing.

Wednesday April 14: I set my alarm so I can be there when Kirk’s receptionist opens the door at 7:00. I hand her a letter marked “please deliver immediately.” In it, I remind Kirk that this is a very serious disease, that treatment within the first three months is vital, and that my symptoms appeared two months ago. When I don’t hear anything by noon, I call the bone scan office and make an un-referred appointment for the next afternoon, which I anticipate having to pay for myself.

That night, I read on the Internet that a special kind of bone scan (called a triphasic) is the diagnostic test of choice, but my appointment is for a Dexascan, which is the only kind I knew existed. I call Kirk’s office the next morning to ask what kind he ordered. Becky says he ordered a Dexascan. I ask if she is certain, and she says yes. “Why has it taken so long for an urgent referral to go through that I had to order my own test?” I ask. She says that Kirk didn’t mark it as urgent and implies that, as a result, all my efforts to speed things along were wasted. The pain has now spread into my thighs.

Thursday, April 15: I get my Dexascan, and learn from the technician that it is almost certainly the wrong test. I anticipate changing doctors, but I’ve been with Kirk fifteen years and have always considered him a caring doctor and an excellent diagnostician, albeit one with a sometimes difficult staff. Also, it’s a sorry-ass time to start with someone else, so I make an appointment to see him the next day.

Friday, April 16: I ask Kirk if he got my letter. He says he didn’t, so I tell him that I gave it to the receptionist who, as I had since learned, gave it to Becky who gave it to Casey. He apologizes repeatedly and effusively, promises that such a thing will never happen again, and goes looking for the letter. Casey has it.

He reads the letter in my presence, and notices that Casey had me down for the wrong test. I WAS supposed to get a triphasic scan. I ask how soon he can arrange the test, and he says he will shoot for Monday. He calls the nuclear imaging department at the hospital, and they tell him that I will have to wait until late next week at the earliest because the radioactive isotopes used for the test have to be ordered fresh from Iceland. I ask him if I can get it done sooner at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. He says no, that they would still have to order the isotopes fresh.

I point out that the isotope test is inaccurate 55% of the time, and suggest that he go ahead and start treatment based upon his tentative but confident diagnosis. He says the treatment might foul up the test results. He also disputes the idea that there exists a three-month window.

I tell him that I got my physical therapist to send a referral to a pain management specialist since I anticipated an anesthesiologist or a neurologist overseeing my CRPS treatment anyway, and that I had already made an appointment. He approves of the clinic to which my physical therapist referred me.

I say that I would prefer a disease that would kill me to one that might force me to kill myself. He advises that I not focus on the worse-case scenario.

Eleven days after I first saw Kirk, the wait for the right bone scan begins again.

Aussie women do it like dingoes

The following is a quote I included in my last post regarding my sorry situation. Following it are questions from my readers, which I have ever so thoughtfully answered.

“At an advanced stage of the illness, all patients develop significant psychiatric problems and narcotic dependency, and are left completely incapacitated. Some commit suicide.”

Reader one wants to know: Which of these things are you looking forward to most?

My response: I’ve always heard that there are no dumb questions, but you’re skirting the cliff edge. You might as well ask kids at a birthday party to choose between cake and ice cream.

Reader two asks: How will we be able to tell when you develop psychiatric problems—you already act pretty weird?

My response: If you’re normal, and you go crazy, people can tell it pretty easily. If you’re crazy and you go crazy, the two crazies cancel one another out, and you become normal. But, if you add another crazy to the two you already have, you’re back to where you started.

Reader three is wondering: It says you become a druggie, and then you become completely incapacitated. Do the drugs make you incapacitated, or does the pain make you incapacitated?

My response: The pain makes you roll around on the floor and scream a lot. The drugs knock you on your bum so that you don’t move or make a sound. Either way, you’re not going to be out training for the Olympics.

Reader four: Are you going to commit suicide now or wait a few days?

I’m not going to do it for quite some time. Instead of focusing on how much I hurt, I’m going to focus on booze, cigars, dark chocolate, and cream-filled donuts—all at the same time. I’ve indulged in these things all too little, and I’ll be making up for lost time.

Reader one again: Do you think you’ll die recanting your infidelity and begging Jesus to forgive you like most stupid atheists?

I don’t think so unless I’m running a really high fever on a really hot day, and the air conditioner breaks. In such a situation, I might think my feet are hanging over “the lake of fire that burns forever and ever,” and start recanting. Of course, if I come to my senses in the midst of recanting, I would naturally have to de-recant. Then if I became delirious all over again, I would probably re-de-recant. By the time I finally died, even Jesus wouldn’t know where I was supposed to end up.

Reader five: Have you heard the rumors that having sex with a different woman everyday for only a month (six at most) will bring about a complete remission?

Yes, I started them. Women are forever telling me how much they want to help and how badly they feel because they can’t help, so this was my way of cheering them up. Then I remembered my lesbian and male friends, so I started another rumor to the effect that large gifts of money would cause a remission. So far, I haven’t gotten my first screw or my first dollar, and I’m starting to think that my friends didn’t really mean what they said. I’m really bummed about this, especially in the case of Australian women who are said to screw like dingoes. I’ve seen dingoes screw, and they’re even more athletic than Arctic Foxes (Canucks) or coyotes (Yanks). Of course, given my condition, maybe an old and arthritic daschund would be about all I could safely handle.

Reader six: Do you think that maybe the woman who wrote that thing at the top of the page was maybe just funning people—like for a really bad April Fool’s joke or something?

Well, you never know. I always thought World War II was an April Fool’s joke that went a little overboard, so it’s certainly possible.

Reader two again: Have you considered giving up your constant bitching and whining, and trying to be an inspiration and a role model to other sufferers and to the world at large?

I hadn’t thought about it—is there money to be made for that sort of thing, or a Nobel Prize even? Since it would be hard for me to work at an ordinary job, being brave for money might be a great career move. I could even be on reality TV, where I would grimace a lot so people would know I was in horrible pain, but then I would smile through the grimace so they would know I was bearing up bravely. I could also say soul-wrenching things like:

“Take it from one who is dying, one who’s only remaining dream is that you might learn from my misery and suffering so that you will be better able to enjoy the kind of rich and rewarding life that I’m getting screwed out of for no good reason. So, my friends, here are today’s words to live by: Don’t forget to turn the compost every few weeks if you think of it, and be sure to give the dog extra water on hot days unless you’re too busy getting drunk. That’s all for today, but I’ll be back tomorrow, if I’m still alive. Until then, keep remembering that you’ve got youth, health, looks, and money, and all I’ve got is old age and misery, so I hope you’re awfully, awfully, awfully happy.”

Things could be worse—I could be in the end stage of this disease.

I study the causes of pain because after two shoulder surgeries in one year, my pain is far worse than it was—and spreading—and my surgeon doesn’t know why. During my studies, I have occasionally come across RSD/CRPS (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/ Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). I’ve found strange comfort in its nightmarish nature because when my own hurting was at its worst, I could always tell myself, “I might be bad-off, but at least I don’t have that.”

Well, it looks like I do. At least, my internist thinks so. Usually talkative, he articulated the dreaded acronym and walked out without another word. I have no idea what he was thinking. I'm now awaiting a bone scan.

“At an advanced stage of the illness, all patients develop significant psychiatric problems and narcotic dependency, and are left completely incapacitated. Some commit suicide.”
Deborah M. Shanley
Executive Director
International Research Foundation for RSD/CRPS

I don’t see suicide in my future, although I think about it all the time—you might even say I’m obsessed with it. I don’t even see narcotics in my future unless my doctors can give me something that works a whole lot better than Demerol, Dilaudid, Percocet, Vicodin, and Norco, none of which helps enough to justify the side-effects.

But what DO I see in my future? Sometimes, the most cheering thought that I can come up with is that I’ll probably be dead in another couple of decades if I can but hang in there. It’s not a sunshine and lollipops sort of thought certainly, except in a “jump off a skyscraper to avoid being burned to death” kind of way.

So far at least, the pain is not so overwhelming, but what I can often enjoy my time with Peggy, and nothing means more than that. I get support from two places—her and my fellow bloggers. A few local friends try to be helpful, but they truly don’t have a clue, and when we’re together, it’s ever in my mind that I still look healthy. If I were they, I might very well be saying to myself that, surely, the problem just can’t be THAT bad.

Does the US deserve to survive?

The question arose as I wondered if America could do its part to win another war like WWII. Well, no. Then, we were lean and Depression hardened. Now, we’re waddling diabetics with telephone earrings. Then, we were physical laborers. Now, we’re clerks and service representatives. Then, we could convert heavy industry to making the weapons of war. Now, we have little heavy industry to convert. As the realization of our inadequacies came to me, the question changed from whether we could survive another such war to whether we would deserve to survive.

Americans commonly describe their nation as “number one,” “favored by God,” “leader of the free world,” and “greatest nation on earth.” All this is, of course, true. No nation comes close to us in conspicuous consumption, and no nation can match us in waste (many a Third World family would be the envy of their neighbors if they were allowed to clean out just one of our dormitory dumpsters at the end of the school year). We’re also the fattest nation on the face of the whole entire worldwide world—yay! What’s more, American ingenuity enables us to lead every other developed nation in poor health while also leading them in the cost of health care! Beat that, you smart alecky foreigners.

Then, of course, there is the matter of our moral authority. YES, we lead the world in that too. That’s why our secretary of state is constantly having to travel around the globe to chide other countries for their ethical shortcomings. Oh, I almost forgot bankruptcies caused by medical bills—yet again, we’re number one. Gratuitously violent films? “USA! USA!” Church attendance? But, of course, we’re the leaders, at least of the developed world. That’s where we get our moral authority, and that’s why we’re “favored by God,” and you’re not.

“Ah, ha,” you say. “How about torturing prisoners or at least locking them up without a trial and throwing away the key? You don’t lead the world in that.” Well, no, not if you compare us to the whole world, but our last president was making great strides in that direction until another guy took his job. However, we do lead the world in the percentage of our population that is behind bars—prison maintenance and construction stocks are major traders on Wall Street. And don’t forget that we’ve started two completely unnecessary wars in just eight years, and that George Bush even intimidated a few other countries into joining us with his post 9/11 threat: “…it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You’re either with us or against us.”

Talk about leadership—what other world leader can compete with that? And if our presidents weren’t effective enough all on their own, our Congresscritters would fill the gap. Even though they are unwilling to provide government healthcare benefits to any but the poorest of their fellow Americans, they themselves enjoy premium benefits for life after serving a single two-year term.

We might very well lead the world in other ways too, but we don’t brag about them because we also lead the world in modesty. For instance, we spend tons of money on scientific research, and then tell everyone what we found out for free. And despite the fact that our educational standards drop lower every year, we still lead the world in the number of foreign students who attend our universities. And even if we don’t have the world’s highest standard of living for our average citizen, we still do pretty good; after all, thanks to government subsidized Big Macs, the poorest Americans are the fattest Americans. In fact, if every poor American were able to donate 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of his body fat to starving foreigners, there would be no starving foreigners, and most poor Americans could easily donate more than that, many of them 250 pounds (113 kilograms) more than that.

We also give a lot of money to you foreigners (although it’s rather oddly distributed, some might say), and it’s not money we actually have either; it’s money we borrow from China. We now owe so much to China, and they now own so much of us, that they don’t dare nuke us, so at least we don’t have to worry about that anymore. If we didn’t give so much to you guys, and if you didn’t force us into all these stupid wars, and if our government wasn’t bought and paid for by the super rich, we might be able to pay our medical bills, or at least fill our potholes.

So, would we deserve to triumph in another WWII? What do you think?


Footnote: When I wrote that Big Macs are government subsidized, I meant indirectly. Because my country’s minimum wage is not enough to live on, and because McDonalds—and many other companies—doesn’t provide health insurance to its rank and file workers, the government has to support these people. This enables such companies to sell their products far below the actual cost of producing them.

Ghosts I have known and sometimes had the hots for

I made one of Julia Jackson’s pictures (Julia Jackson was Virginia Woolf's mother) into my computer background, and even started talking to her. Peggy didn’t exactly insist that I get rid of, “that awful picture of that depressed looking dead woman,” but I nonetheless replaced it with one of Peggy smiling broadly. When I turned my computer off for the night, Julia Jackson reappeared just before the screen went blank. I was considerably taken aback, but didn’t really believe—despite my desire to do so—that Julia Jackson was inhabiting my monitor.

I remembered a walk I took in the desert ten years ago during which I heard the ghost of Katherine Mansfield talking to me. I challenged the voice to present me with a gift to prove that I wasn’t hallucinating, and I immediately found a large, jeweled, feathered, brightly painted stick in the sagebrush. If the object had been a gaily wrapped first edition of one of her books with the inscription, “Best wishes to Snow from your dead friend Katherine,” I would have been more impressed, but I couldn’t connect the stick with anything I knew about her, and since I was at the bottom of a mile wide volcanic crater during an era when small groups of New Age men were running about the desert trying to get in touch with their primitive selves, I suspected coincidence.

Several observations keep me from believing in ghosts despite my very great desire to do so. For starters, they are seldom said to do anything worthwhile unless moaning, rattling chains, knocking over lamps, and otherwise scaring the hell out of the living, can be considered worthwhile. Secondly, on those rare occasions when they decide to actually say something, they don’t say it to the person it is intended for, but to a stranger who charges money to repeat it.

When I was a teenager, I used to visit country cemeteries hoping to see a ghost. One night I saw a red light slowly arise from my Granny’s grave and move in my direction. I ran like a dog with its tail on fire. I went back the next day, but didn’t see anything to account for the light. I even returned several times after dark, but never saw it again.

Granny died when I was eleven, and I was afterwards afraid of the room in which she spent her last years. It was separated from the rest of our large old house by a long hallway, and I wouldn’t venture into the back portion of that hallway in the daytime much less after dark. Yet, I had a very great curiosity about whether ghosts were real. One night, my mother sent me to the store on my bike. I had two routes by which I could return. One was by a path that ran alongside the house, and the other was around the block.

I chose the first because it would take me directly beneath the window behind which my Granny sat rocking for her last few years. When I passed under her window, I looked up, half hoping and half dreading to see her looking back at me. At that very instant, my bike stopped. It didn’t veer, it didn’t fall over, it didn’t slide, it didn’t tumble; it just stopped. I somersaulted over the handlebars and got up running. Fortunately, I was carrying the bread in a backpack, because I don’t know how I could have found the courage to go back for it.

The next day, my bike was still standing there, a sight that spooked me considerably until I realized that a horseshoe stake had become wedged between the chain and the back wheel.

Peggy’s grandmother was a great believer in ghosts. She told of hearing her bedroom door open one night, and footsteps crossing the room. She anxiously poked her head out from under the covers and saw a sallow figure in antique clothes standing at the foot of her bed staring at her. She drew her head back in, and spent the rest of the night saying, “Help me Jesus. Help me Jesus. Help me Jesus…”

And, of course, there was my dear demented, departed father who became convinced that he was being haunted by my mother’s ghost. He was notoriously forgetful about where he put things, and she had been able to point him in the right direction. When she died and could no longer do this, he became convinced that she had returned from the grave, and was hiding important papers, stealing money, and even rearranging the furniture.

He went from being annoyed to becoming absolutely livid, and the situation climaxed one night when he felt her pull back the covers and sit on the bed as if to join him. He said, “Kathryn, you’re dead, and I expect you to start acting the way someone in your situation is supposed to act.” She left the room, never to return. Since his death—in this house—Peggy and I often have a good laugh when we can’t find something. “Tom must have taken it,” we say.

If I really were to see my father’s ghost, I would only be worried if he should be as crazy dead as he was alive. Oh, I know, I just admitted to talking to not just one but two women who died long ago, but surely there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that, now is there?

An update offered in lieu of anything better

I’m still unable to write anything creative or thoughtful, but I will at least check-in. The pain is no better on the shoulder that was operated on in December, and it’s significantly worse on the other, presumably due to continued arthritic deterioration. I don’t sleep well because of the pain, and the longer I stay in my chair, the worse it hurts. Narcotics have become all but useless for pain relief, but they still get me stoned, and if I’m having an especially bad night, I had rather lie awake stoned than sober.

My lower leg bones are now giving me fits, as if they had been burned. Shin splints feel that way; only my pain is higher up. I finally connected it to the recliner I sleep in. Peggy bought the chair years ago, and it’s a little short for me, so I tend to lie with my legs bowed. When I finally realized that this had to be the cause of my leg pain, I tried forcing myself to keep my legs straight. This didn’t work, so now I’ve taken to fastening a belt snugly around my lower thighs.

Sleeping is complicated. I tie a blanket to the footrest to cushion my heels; place my pharmaceutical stash and toothguard (I grind my teeth when I sleep) within reach; fill my CPAP tank with distilled water (a CPAP is a machine for sleep apnea); hook the mask and the tank to the CPAP; and get one or two ice packs and a heating pad. I drape one towel over the chair back to protect it and another towel around my neck and over my shoulders so I won’t get frostbite from the ice packs. Now, I’m ready to sit down.

I fasten the belt around my thighs to keep my legs straight; unfold my afghan; lay the ice packs over my shoulders, lean back in the chair while trying to keep the ice packs from falling off; lay towels over the ice packs to keep the cold in; put the heating pad on my chest so I won’t shiver from the ice packs; take off my glasses; put in my toothguard; put on the CPAP mask; and, finally, adjust the mask ten or more times until I get a tight seal. One to two hours later, the pain wakes me up, and I have to go to the kitchen for fresh ice packs.

No one knows why the shoulder that I had operated on in December isn’t improving. My physical therapist suggested that I see an MD who specializes in chemical imbalances, but it would cost a lot, and since my yearly physical—which is paid for by insurance—is in a few weeks, I’m going to wait and see how that turns out. If nothing else, it will provide me with test results to take to the new doctor.

If I had only myself to think about, I don’t know how much more of this pain I would tolerate. I had years of it before surgery—although to a lesser degree—and when I had my first surgery a year ago this month, I figured that in twelve months, I would have both surgeries and most of my rehabilitation behind me. Now, here I am twelve months later, still in pain, partially disabled, and anticipating at least one more surgery on my right shoulder. The final outcome of the surgery on my left shoulder won’t be known until the end of the year.

In other news, I’ve been spending hours a day creating a synopsis of my writings. I started in February, and have completed eighteen months out of 30+ years—I don’t know the exact number because some of them are handwritten and unorganized. I had previously completed fifteen years, so the job isn’t quite so voluminous as it sounds. I enjoy the work but wish there were less of it. I also wish I could focus better. Unless you have been in pain hour after hour, day after day, for months or even years; you can’t imagine how tiring and distracting it becomes.

I have zero social life because I have no energy for it. I walk the dogs for a half hour each day, but the rest of my time is spent indoors, often close to despair. I’m not without hope however. I also have a bottle of Lexapro, but I’m not taking it because I’m on so many other pills, all of which are tough on the liver and kidneys—I’m in no mood for organ failure.

As for what efforts I’m making to actually help myself, I’m doing my prescribed stretching exercises—when I can tolerate them— eating sparingly, and taking various vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements. I stand 5’10” and weigh 168 pounds, so I’m already on the lean side. However, a minimal diet has been found helpful for many problems in animal testing even when the animals weren’t overweight. I’m also intrigued by such a diet because, years ago, I fasted one day a week and lived almost entirely on raw smoothies that I made from nuts, grains, fruits, berries, veggies, and soy milk. I found the combination of fasting and smoothies to be a tremendous boon to my general health, so it seems worth trying now. I haven’t started the smoothie part yet, but I lost three pounds this week.

I have contemplated such a regimen for the better part of a year, but because Peggy opposed it when I did it before, and because food is one of the few things I still enjoy, I only made half-hearted efforts. I kept hoping there would be another way to deal with my problems, or that time would work its magic, but neither has happened.

Some of you have suggested various alternative therapies, and I am grateful for those recommendations. However, I have sometimes been accused of preferring to wallow in self-pity when I didn’t do what you suggested. I never reject a suggestion without first learning something about it. I’m just not willing to spend time and money on things that—in my mind—make no sense whatever and lack even a smidgen of scientific validation.

Things that go flat

My air mattress went flat last night leaving me atop a sheet of plywood that probably wasn’t the worst bed in the world but wasn’t the best either. I took my pillow to Peggy’s room planning to spend the rest of the night with her, but when I opened her door, I saw that she was with a guy—a black guy. I’ve put up with her shenanigans too long to be surprised by much of anything, but I was vexed to note that he was in the middle of her bed. This left no room for me to sleep next to her, and I wasn’t about to sleep next to some s.o.b. who was in bed with my wife.

As I turned to leave, the floor squeaked, and he opened his eyes and looked at me in surprise. We glared at each other in silence for what seemed like a long time, but probably wasn’t more than a minute or two. I wondered what he was thinking, and I suspect that he was wondering the same thing about me. Maybe he thought I was going to hit him, but I was just trying to figure out what Peggy saw in him; what he could give her that I couldn’t. All I could think of was that he was younger than I by a lot of years. Okay, to be completely honest, I have to say that he was good looking too—at least for a black guy.

“Sleep with her, but don’t marry her,” I whispered, “or you’ll end up like me: standing in the dark with a pillow in your hand, a flat air mattress on your bed, and some other dude with your wife.” I don’t suppose a marriage between a woman and a schnauzer would be valid anyway, but I wasn’t sure he knew that, and I wanted to say something that would make me sound superior. I slept in Peggy’s recliner. It, at least, was available.

The three of us had breakfast together, but he didn’t talk much, and she didn’t either. I knew better than to ask questions because Peggy doesn’t like questions before mid-afternoon. Even then, she doesn’t like questions that are too personal. Years ago, I asked her about this, and she said, “Just because we’re married, it doesn’t give you the right to go snooping into my affairs.” I knew she was unaware of the pun, but I didn’t have the guts to point it out. The thing about making Peggy mad is that Bonnie Blue Heeler will help her beat me up. I don’t know why this is because the dog seems to like me better the rest of the time.

The black guy is still here—planning to spend another night, I suppose. I couldn’t find the leak in my mattress, so I’m looking at another night in a chair.