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. 

You're not likely to see me buying any lattes

I was born frugal. I was also born clean and orderly. My dedication to the last two items has sometimes left people speechless because, as I suppose, they consider me neurotic and don’t want to risk setting off a crazy man. But have people ever given me hell about my frugality! Some of my happiest childhood memories are of taking my 25-cent allowance down to the polished marble of State Bank where hot-looking tellers treated me like a man. What do my detractors remember? Throwing away money on crap they didn’t need and didn’t even want a week after they got it, and that's assuming they didn’t break it on the way home?

My father-in-law, Earl, overlooked my drinking, my atheism, and my hippie fro. Likewise, he said nary a word about my screwing around; was silent regarding my inability to hold a job; didn’t flinch when I put my marijuana pipe in the sink for his wife to wash (although he flinched a little when I played Back in the USSR just for him); and never complained about me being kicked out of the Air Force after he had pulled strings to get me the assignment I wanted; but he has harangued me for 42 years because I save money. He had another son-in-law who declared bankruptcy, and I sometimes wonder if Earl ever bitched at him. The last time he was on my case was the last time I saw him, naturally, when he looked at me quite somberly in the presence of four other people and suggested that a lead coffin wouldn’t protect my money from the fires of hell. Okaaay! He’s a Baptist deacon, and I’m pretty convinced that heaven isn’t where most of them are going, so I’ll just have to bow to his expertise.

Given her father’s attitude, you’re probably wondering how Peggy feels about my frugality. Well, she’s frugal too, which makes it a little odd that Earl never criticizes her. She makes noises every now and then about splurging on something, but she doesn’t have it in her to truly go overboard—knock on wood. Like me, if there’s something she really wants, she gets it. Also, like me, she buys better than average quality (it’s seldom sensible to buy the very best), but we’re people with simple tastes. We’re also people who tend to anticipate bad things happening and to prepare for them. Money is a great protector from much that can go wrong in life—it’s literally a lifesaver in America where the government and insurance companies have no problem with allowing people to die by the thousands in what politicians call, “the most generous nation on earth.” If Peggy and I weren’t frugal, she couldn’t have cut back to working part-time several years ago, and she sure couldn’t be planning to retire in two years.

The biggest difference between us regarding money is that Peggy is more likely to buy something on the spur of the moment (“I’m going to treat myself,” as she puts it), whereas I usually think about a purchase for anywhere from a few days to a few months. The usual result is that I lose interest in buying it. When I do buy something on the spur of the moment, I regret it more often than not. For example, I bought a scented oil diffuser last month. If I had thought the purchase over for a few days, I would have remembered that Peggy and I often have opposing scent preferences, but as I stood there in that shop, I made a decision to allow myself to ride a wave of emotion. I justified this by telling myself that I was being childlike when what I was really being was childish. Now, I’m sorry I abandoned my usual prudence, and I regret owning something I don’t want but don’t have a great way to get rid of. My country is facing bankruptcy and my species is burning through the earth’s resources like there’s no tomorrow (which might be true given how we behave) because most people are improvident, and my purchase, small though it was, exemplified that.

I suppose Earl must think I'm denying myself too much, but I actually have no desire to spend money on anything I don’t already own except for a few items that cost so much they’re no brainers. For instance, I wouldn’t mind having a new van to camp in and a new car for Peggy to go to work in simply because I would anticipate them being more dependable than our old ones, but our ’93 Chevy and’98 Camry look good, run fine, and have less than a hundred thousand miles on them. I would also like to build an addition onto the house so I could maintain a resident masseuse to massage me in the middle of the night when the pain wakes me up. Travel? No, it’s too much work; there's no place I want to go that I haven't already been to; and I would miss my house, my cat, and my dog. I wouldn’t mind an occasional train trip maybe, but there’s no place in the world I had rather be than the Oregon coast, mountains, and deserts, and each of those is within a two hour drive....

I just thought of someplace I would like to go. I would like to have a private pilot fly me to cities with world-class gardens, museums, and plant conservatories. A chauffeur would pick me up, take me to an elegant hotel, and then drive me back and forth until I had seen everything. Too bad I can’t afford a live-in a masseuse or luxurious trips to art museums. As for new cars, I wouldn’t pay what they cost. Other people do, and if they think a new car is worth a year’s labor not counting interest, that’s fine with me, but to put it out there in all its bluntness, I would feel like an idiot.

Something else that strikes me as so outrageous that I can’t imagine doing it is gambling. I drove through Vegas once and stopped long enough to take a look at the inside of a casino. While there, I thought, what the hell, I might as well gamble, so I put a quarter into a slot machine, cranked the handle, and lost my quarter. I grieved for that quarter all the way to Fresno because I violated my integrity by gambling with it. Of course, I’ve known quite a few responsible people (hi, KJ) who liked casinos, but they seriously weird me out. Gambling is sort of like paying someone to hit you over the head and then feeling like a winner whenever they happen to miss. That’s what happens in casinos; you lose, lose, lose; then you win a little; and then you brag about your winnings to all your friends as if to suggest that you outsmarted the bastards. Yeah, sure you did.

When I started taking money out of banks and putting it into mutual funds, Peggy, remembering how bummed I was over that quarter, worried that I would freak-out completely if we should lose thousands. Well, we’ve lost entire years of income a few times by now, but it wasn’t me who freaked out. I handled it better than Peggy simply because I’m less of a pessimist than she, which is really saying something. Anytime we lose money, I try to hold onto the thought that it’s a temporary glitch, whereas Peggy concludes that it’s the first day of The Great Depression II. Now that she’s planning to retire in 25 months—right when the nation, if not the world, seems poised to go down the drain financially—I must admit that losing money hurts more than it used to.

There’s no getting away from the fact that you can do the very best you know how and still get screwed simply because life isn’t fair. Like turtles crossing a road, some of us come to a much worse end than others, and it’s not always because we behaved worse. The advantage of frugality is simply that you better your odds (sort of like a turtle who crosses the road quickly versus one who takes his time). I’ve often been told that I can’t take it with me when I die, as if a person’s goal should be to spend his last dollar on the day he stops breathing. No thanks; I had rather leave a little to charity. I donate some money already to civil liberties, animal welfare, public broadcasting, and environmental groups, but hardly enough to hurt. Since it looks like charities will still be needing money when I’m gone, that’s when they’ll get the bulk of mine. Until then, I might need it myself.

I guess I've made it clear that Earl isn’t the only one who’s judgmental regarding money. It’s just too bad that the only thing he and I agree on is that it’s better not to gamble, although he would argue that the stock market IS gambling. Now that I've become convinced that this country is racing out of control atop a highway paved with greed and stupidity, it is starting to feel that way.

The photo is of me with my fourth most expensive possession (after the house and vehicles). It cost $1,900 several years ago, and that was money well spent.

“Cowardly little atheist finds God 20 minutes after being told he’s dying”

I know. You saw it coming, but you haven't heard the details, so here goes. I made the following to-do list when my second PSA came back:

1) Run in circles while screaming and flailing my chest with my fists.

2) Find God so I check item number one off the list.

While I was still on number one, Peggy said, “You’ve done this same stupid running amuck display for years now, but am I imagining it, or is this the enhanced version? Also, did it ever occur to you that the reason your shoulders hurt all the time is that you’re forever swinging your arms?”

So it was that with my dear wife's gentle encouragement, I moved on to item two—I found God. I found two gods in fact, one male and one female (the Wiccans taught me that deities come in the same genders as people). Their names are Aphelandra (top) and Aglaonema (bottom), and I can’t tell for sure, but I think Aphelandra is the goddess because she’s shorter and because Aglaonema's stem is big and erect.

My first houseplant was a Spathiphyllum (peace lily) that my father left when he died in 1994. I didn’t want a houseplant, but it was a living celebration of him, and it was also evidence of a love for beauty that he seldom displayed. I saw caring for it as an extension of caring for him. Besides, I asked myself, how long could a houseplant live anyway. It’s now 19, and I wouldn't be surprised but what it survives me--after which Peggy will probably kill it with love, aka too much water. 

My Aglaonema is simply too beautiful for words, and despite its look of fragility, we get along famously (I don't do high-maintenance plants). I’ve even been looking for another Aglaonema (one called Silver Queen) for a year now and am starting to think I might have to drive to Portland for it… 

If I were rich, I would live in a conservatory. The beauty of plants inspires in me the desire to make my own life beautiful, and their presence fills me with joy.