Why I am not an agnostic

The short answer is that I consider the possibility of the existence of a supernatural deity to be zilch. I could be wrong about this, but I could also be wrong about Bigfoot, although I very much doubt it. This leads me to ask what percentage of certainty a person needs to call himself a theist, an agnostic or an atheist. Would 51% do? 

I don't recall spending any time as an agnostic on my way to atheism. Until age 11, I was a believer, and I remained a believer even after I came to hold the God of the Bible in contempt. I proceeded to atheism in my mid-twenties because I found it harder to envision God as a weakling or an asshole (all supernatural versions of God paint him as one or the other) than to renounce his existence.

Emotionally, I would still like to believe that I am immortal, protected, guided, and that my life has an ordained purpose, but intellectually, I no longer try because I’ve examined all the supposed evidence and found it fanciful. Only a personal experience would touch my unbelief in the least, although I wouldn’t necessarily accept that as valid. After all, I’m capable of hallucinating, so if I were to hear or see an entity that my investigations had determined to be imaginary, my impulse would be to doubt the experience rather than to doubt my investigations.

In some countries, the hands of God-worshippers are dripping in blood. In the U.S., the Christian community generally stops at insults, threats, and social, economic, and legal discrimination, but vandalism and physical violence also occur (I was rapped on the head for not standing for prayer while on jury duty). Given Christianity’s bloody past and its widespread meanness even today, I believe that the only difference between the dominant face of Christianity in America and that of Islam in the Middle East is that America’s laws provide significant protection for a diversity of believers and nonbelievers. Unfortunately, this protection must be endlessly safeguarded by lawsuits against those who would make America a theocracy. As I see it, there are three kinds of Christians: those who are clueness regarding religious oppression, those who carry out the oppression, and those whose silence implies that they consent to the oppression. Because it would be a small step from making Christianity our state religion to enacting restrictive laws against unpopular forms of Christianity, I’m at a loss to understand the certainty on the part of believers that a Christianized America would only present a problem for non-Christians.

The sign in the photo (from the Freedom from Religion Foundation website) was one of four erected at taxpayer expense by the city officials of Sylvania, Alabama. Government-sponsored, Christian-specific displays and observances are commonplace in America despite the fact that they violate the law. If any Christians object to them, they do a good job of letting nonbelievers take the heat for speaking out.

A welcome outing

The pain has let up enough lately that Peggy and I took a two-night camping trip to the nearby Willamette National Forest, a tract of land the size of New Jersey. We had planned to stay in the vicinity of Elephant Rock, but one lane of the road had fallen off the mountainside a mile from our destination (the road is shown in the first photo—note the horsetails growing in the nearly vertical slide area), so we walked to it instead. That night, as always, we slept in the van on an abandoned logging road. The next day, we set out for Windy Pass, but snow turned us back at 4,100 feet (1,250 meters), so we decided to drive to the top of a small mountain for the night. Near the summit, a crosswise section of the road had sunk considerably (photo two—the gray area at the top of the photo is where the sinkhole reappears), and Peggy had to hit the brakes hard to keep from running into it.

We are accustomed to deteriorating roadways along with other backcountry travel hazards. For example, I frequently have to clear the road of rocks, and I carry a bucksaw and loppers for fallen trees and branches. Yet, our most common challenge is that the downhill side of a road will have slumped in preparation for collapsing altogether. Logging roads are often too narrow to avoid driving over slumps, so since Peggy prefers to drive (leaving me free to navigate and to remove obstacles), I will sometimes get out and guide her. If she’s worried that the road might collapse while she's on it, she’ll have the dog get out too. As she drove over one such slump on this trip, the van was so tilted that the rear wheels slid sideways. I would prefer that she be the one to get out when there's danger, but Peggy's unwilling to give up the driver’s seat unless there's much maneuvering to do. I tell her that I will never live down the embarrassment of headlines that say, "Local Man Saves Self, Allows Wife to Perish in Horrific Fall from Mountainside," but Peggy is nothing if not obstinate.

 

Our 3/4-ton van only has two-wheel drive, but it’s high off the ground and will take us down some hellacious roads if there’s not much mud or snow. We learned early on that it’s worthless in slippery conditions due the fact that there’s not enough weight on its backend to give it adequate traction. On one occasion, we made it most of the way up a long icy hill only to slide nearly to the bottom. As we slid, the van started to leave the roadway in the direction of a precipice making it necessary for me to jump out and push it sideways to keep it from going over. I don't know how much good I actually accomplished, but it was all I could do. Peggy kidded me about abandoning her and the dogs, but if the van had fallen, it would have taken me with it.

You might wonder why we drive such bad roads. It’s because we value solitude. On our recent trip, we didn’t see or hear anyone from the time we left the paved road on Wednesday until we regained it on Friday, yet we were never more than 35 miles (56 km), as the crow flies, from town. In fact, we could sometimes look back and see town with its metro area of 352,000. I spent most of my life in the country before I realized that I’m a city boy at heart. Even so, I need wilderness, and Oregon gives me that. Of course, in real wilderness, there are no roads, but my days of faring hard and liking it are over. In fact, we came back from this trip so sore and tired that I’m wondering how much longer we can continue to camp. It’ll be a sad day when we have to give that up.

All photos are from this trip, and were taken in the Old Cascades, a 40-million year old chain of igneous mountains that parallels the younger High Cascades, several volcanos of which are expected to erupt again (Mt. Saint Helens being a recent example). The columnar basalt rock formation and the waterfall in the bottom two photos are unnamed because such beauty is so commonplace in Oregon that it's considered unworthy of note. Waterfalls in particular often number several per mile, although most of them are seasonal. The flowers in front of the one pictured are coltsfoot. 

Cancer testing, the tale continues

Peggy had a migraine and was exhausted when we left the urologist's office (see photo), so when we got home, I rubbed her back until she went to sleep, but as I was tiptoeing from the room, I broke a piece of pottery and had to rub her back a second time. She couldn’t return to sleep, so we talked about her fears of me having cancer—if I have cancer—and possibly dying. I like it when Peggy shares her fears, but she worries that they will scare me, although I don’t remember a time when this was so—I can anticipate problems as well as she can. I tend to focus on percentages, so the better they are, the less scared I am. Peggy is so afraid of cancer that this doesn’t work for her. Some other disease might be easier.

I’ve had two previous cancer scares, but Peggy is more afraid this time, maybe because it’s the first time that I too thought I might have cancer. In fact, I wouldn’t have had my last two biopsies if she hadn’t insisted. They were both big deal biopsies that just scared the shit out of me—especially the one where the neurologist cut through the front of my throat to get a piece of bone from the back of my neck. Those two times, I just knew I didn’t have cancer. Feelings don’t constitute proof, so I recognized that I still might have it, but my natural confidence was such that I couldn’t get beyond seeing cancer as a remote possibility not worth the risk of a biopsy.

The more I learn about doctors and hospitals and the bad things they can do to a person, the more I try to make sure their proposals are necessary. Of course, when a book, the Internet, or a government panel’s report (like the one this week), tells you that a PSA-based biopsy (a PSA is a blood test) puts you at greater risk of harm than of good, and your doctor (along with two different urological organizations) tells you the opposite, whom do you believe? I should think the government panel would at least be objective in interpreting the data, whereas the urologists have a financial incentive to be biased--note that I said "biased," not dishonest. It’s also true that a person just naturally tends to believe in what he does all day. For example, Peggy is a nurse, and if the government had also announced that some standard nursing procedure did more harm than good, I’ve no doubt but what the nurses would be as enraged as the urologists. It’s hard to admit to yourself that you’ve been hurting people for years while trying to help them. Yet, none of this necessarily means that the government is right and the urologists wrong, nor does it take away my own doctor's power to influence my decision making. If I trust a doctor, I will generally do what he says—I just might not do it right away.

I’ve grown accustomed to orthopedists and neurologists, but this was my first urologist. Peggy went with me to the doctor as she always does (I do the same for her). She usually sits in the corner and says little, but today she sat between the doctor and me and read from a list of questions she had prepared and had me type. My first observation was that the waiting room was filled with old men, some with their wives, and I felt like I had walked into my next new club—Old Fuckers Who Dribble. I had known for some time that age would bring increased pain (even children know that it brings increased disability), but I hadn’t considered the indignities of aging. Old people have the kind of problems that gross out young people who are themselves certain that they will never have them. I reflect upon the fact that these indignities come to everyone if they live long enough, and this enables me to better accept them. Then too, death seems so near at times that nothing much matters to me anymore other than the fact that I have to fight to stay alive because I don’t want to leave Peggy alone.

I was prepared to mistrust Doug because statistics go against me trusting any new doctor (which is why I cling to the ones I do trust). He also works in a clinic with lots of other urologists, and I expect large clinics to be impersonal, rigid, and take a one-size-fits-all approach. As it turned out, I’ve never had a better first impression of a doctor. Changing doctors is a pain in the butt, so this meant a lot to me. He said that my odds of having cancer are 25-35% and suggested that I either go ahead and have a biopsy or, if I’m on the fence about the biopsy (prostate biopsies are another big deal kind of biopsy), that I have a blood test called a “free PSA” and base my decision upon the results. I jumped at the PSA. I don’t need government reports to tell me that I live in a test-happy/surgery-happy society in which I don’t dare subject myself to risk without doing what I can to avoid it or at least mitigate it.

Peggy and I have long agreed that it would be better for me to have cancer than for her to have it because she's so terribly afraid of it. She also fears death more than I. Yet as I see it, the one who dies has things relatively easy because the survivor will have suffered with him or her until the end at which time the survivor will embark upon an an even worse period of suffering while alone. I’ve always had doubts that I would survive without Peggy, but I always thought she would pull it together without me. To my surprise, things right now are so hard for her that I’m unable to console her. Yet, I’ve seen her handle loss before, and she always pulled herself together, so I think it likely that she will get her sea legs under her this time too.

It’s interesting how unpredictable Peggy is to me even after 41 years. Of course, none of us really know how strong we will be until we’ve been tested, and that’s mostly hindsight. Each new bad situation is never quite what I expected. There’s always fear, pain, anger, despair, and so forth, but it’s never the same fear, pain, anger, and despair because no two situations are ever the same. I’m not the same either, but at least I’m tougher than I used to be. Now, I just try to sit quietly and watch it all go by. 33,000 Americans die of prostate cancer each year, and another one is diagnosed every two minutes. I think of each of those men as being all alone in his own movie theater, just as I am all alone in mine. It’s the human condition. We can never feel another person’s life from the inside, so we are forever separate.

I’ve already gone through so much that a little more isn’t likely to hurt me unless there’s some unfortunate medical outcome. With every new ailment, there are new and interesting things to learn, and the tests and surgeries are often quite interesting too once you get past the fact that you might bleed a lot, will probably be in pain, will be exposed to noxious substances, and might very well die. I have grown increasingly able to make the best decision I can and to let it go at that, although I’ve lost faith that everything will go right because it's usually the case that so many things can go wrong, that there’s a pretty good chance that one or more of them will go wrong.

I panicked when I realized what a crapshoot modern medicine is even when everyone performs at their peak, but I’ve gradually grown fatalistic. The worst part is when I’m having trouble deciding what to do. For now, I know. If the free PSA test comes back bad, I’ll have the biopsy. That’s as far as it makes sense to plan right now. Yet, it’s emotionally hard to stop studying, and the subject is interesting if wearisome.