Life, Science

Is God the Answer?

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Anthony Gottlieb has a very interesting article on the New Yorker website.  His article, Atheists with Attitude, is about the recent “flood” of books that defend an atheist view of the world, some being fairly hostile to religion.  (I tried to begin Richard Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene, which is one of his most famous books, and had a hard time getting past his hostile attitude, even though I’m not a very religious person.)

But, it isn’t so much his review of this series of books that I found so interesting.  Rather, it was his paraphrasing of David Hume I found so intriguing:   God is merely the answer that you get if you do not ask enough questions.

When I was younger, I found solice in this view of the world.  Believing in God meant that everything had an answer.  Why does the universe exist?  God created it.  Why are we here?  God put us here.  Why didn’t I get a hit in that game?  God willed it so.  Believing in God meant that there was an answer to every question, every question but one: where did God come from?

I guess that is a question that isn’t supposed to be asked.  But, when I did ask it, I realized that, in not having an answer, it meant I didn’t have a real answer to any of my other questions.  Why does the universe exist?  God created it.  But who created God?  Where did God come from?  In the end, the answer I took so much comfort in didn’t really answer anything for me.

I find that the scientific method is much more fullfilling for me, intellectually and “spiritually”.  I hesitate to use that word, as it isn’t so much a spiritual thing, but rather it just feels better to me.  Science doesn’t have all the answers and there is no scientist that would claim it does.  But, what science does offer is an approach to search for the answers to the questions we pose.  Why does the universe exist?  Well, we don’t know, but science keeps getting a little closer to understanding the earliest moments of the universe.  Why are we here?  It might be just a random bit of luck that life was right on Earth to lead to our existence.  Why didn’t I get a hit in that game?  I just suck at baseball.

Seriously, many more questions go unanswered for me now.  But, I also know that by investigating the questions, I will have a better understanding of the world around me than if I just ascribed everything to God.  I might “know” less than if I relied upon God as the answer for everything, but I definitely understand more.

Books, Comics

The Amazing Aventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

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Started reading: ~09/01/01
Finished reading: 10/26/01
Notes written: 10/26/01

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Warning! Spoilers follow!

The story in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is about two cousins – Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier – both of whom are Jewish. Sammy was born and raised in NY, Joe in Prague. The book starts off in World War II, and Joe has escaped from a Prague that is about to come under the control of Hitler. He is the only one of his family who escapes. The rest of his family is first interned and then each dies, first his father, then his brother (in an attempt to sail across the Atlantic to freedom) and his mother and grandfather as well. Joe escapes by travelling in a box with the Golem of Prague. He makes his way to NY, where he meets his cousin Sammy.

Sammy is a comic book fan and Joe is an artist, so they create a comic book character, the Escapist. They sell it to Sammy’s boss and it becomes hugely successful. During the time of working on the Escapist, Sammy meets Tracy Bacon, who plays the Escapist on the radio, and Joe meets Rosa Saks. They both fall in love. Sammy eventually develops a relationship with Tracy and they are later busted in a party of several homosexual couples, after which Sammy is forced to service an FBI agent in order to avoid being charged. At the same time, Rosa has become pregnant with Joe’s child. Joe learns that his brother, Tommy, has died on the boat that was supposed to bring him to America and he joins the navy to help fight the Germans, leaving Rosa alone and not telling anyone that he has gone. Sammy wants to avoid a life of being a homosexual, he doesn’t want the stigma. Rosa thinks of having an abortion, but they decide that the best thing is to get married and raise Joe’s child together. They name him Tommy, after Joe’s brother.

Meanwhile, Joe is in Antartica, where he has many travails (his entire company dies, except for one, he nearly goes mad, he finally finds a German base and he and the other man go to kill the lone German there. Joe gets there, after his companion has died, and he accidentally kills the German.) Eventually, Joe is found and he makes it back to NY, but doesn’t reveal himself to his family, not until Tommy sees him once and Joe recognizes him. Joe reveals himself to Tommy and they become friends. Eventually, Tommy gets Joe to reveal himself to the rest of the family, where his feelings for Rosa surface again.

The final main event of the story is Sammy’s testimony before a Senate committee dealing with the delinquent effects of comics on kids. Sammy’s past creations, often boy side-kicks to male heroes, is brought to light, and the inference that he has done so because of his own homosexuality is made. Sammy decides that he is now finally free of his secret, of his life of lies, and he goes to LA.

The book is very complex, with many levels and many investigations of Sammy, Rosa and Joe and their feelings and how they deal with their situations. I don’t think I’ve digested the book on all levels and I’m sure that I would have to reread it several times to get everything in there. There is much about the building of Golems, of superheroes, of escaping from reality. Joe escaped from war, from death, but lost his entire family in the process. Sammy escaped from a life of what he felt would be shame, but had to live a lie in order to do so. Joe then escaped from his second family, ran from them, because he couldn’t bear being with them. Joe both couldn’t give up hope that his first family might return, but couldn’t believe that they would.

The role of comics is central to the story, in that they symbolize the need for escape from reality that most of us have. Sammy’s life was not as bad as Joe’s during the war, but his life before was worse. He didn’t have a father that was there for him, he didn’t have a complete home. He didn’t have the opportunities to learn and to explore that Joe did: music, magic, escapism. He didn’t have the full family life that Joe did. Sammy was also lame, and he needed to escape from his life, more than Joe did. Joe needed to fight back, but Sammy needed to escape, needed to escape almost all aspects of his life, even later on, when he was an adult. He felt he had to escape his natural feelings, his homosexuality, because it was not viewed well by the public. He had to hide everything, and sacraficed his only chance for love to do so.

All of the characters are strong and well developed. I connected with all of them. The book had a little of everything, even a little bit of sex. The story felt like we were growing with these characters, learning with them, there with them as they experienced life. It felt like maybe I was learning something about life as they did. That I experienced things that I would never have experienced myself. Sammy’s homosexuality felt like a natural thing for him. You could tell that he was scared and nervous about exploring this side of himself. He never fully let himself experience it, never fully let himself love Tracy. And, he regretted it forever.

I think that this book will be the kind that I get more out of with each successive rereading. I feel that, right now, I haven’t gotten much more than just the plot and the things that Chabon directly tells us. There is a lot more levels, I think, that I’m not fully digesting, not fully realizing. Chabon does try to tell us directly the main points of his message, by having the characters realize certain things for themselves.

It is interesting that Sammy’s homosexuality is revealed because of his habit of teaming heroes with boy side kicks, but, as he points out, the heroes are playing more of a father role than a corrupting role, much as he is to Tommy. Tommy is his ward, just as Robin is to Batman and so forth. Sammy never felt more than as a father to Tommy, and it is interesting that the same kind of relationship in his comic book characters is what brings his homosexuality to light.

I will definitely have to reread this book and think about it more to try to get more understanding of the book. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Books

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

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Read: April 28, 2007

One of my favorite authors as a kid was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though I have to admit, I only read his Sherlock Holmes work (which might have come as a bit of a disappointment to Doyle, as he wanted to be known for something besides Holmes). So, when I first learned of Michael Chabon’s novel featuring Sherlock Holmes, The Final Solution, I was definitely intrigued.

The story is short: it took me only maybe 2 to 3 hours to read it. While it is well written, it uses grammatical constructions that were, at least for me, sometimes hard to get around. But, in the end, it was a very pleasant story that I greatly enjoyed. The mystery, while not overly complex, is enough to keep the book moving.

The real story, though, is not about the mystery that the old man finds himself drawn into. Rather, it is about the old man himself in his later years, when his body has failed him and his mind is beginning to as well. This is his last case and, while not as taxing as many he found himself dealing with as a younger man, considering his physical condition, it is about all he can handle. As such, it isn’t a traditional Sherlock Holmes story in that sense. It isn’t a Sherlock Holmes mystery, but rather a story about Sherlock Holmes the man. And, as such, I rather enjoyed it. But, as a Sherlock Holmes mystery, it wasn’t quite what I had hoped.

The mystery involves a murder and a missing parrot. It is the old man’s task to find the parrot and, in doing so, the murderer. The biggest disappointment for me is that the solution of the mystery doesn’t really involve any great insight into the case by the old man, the kind of piercing insight that is the hallmark of Sherlock Holmes. It is rather the help of a little boy that leads to the solution. The one time when the old man offers some great insight into the case (dealing with the motivations of one of the suspects), it comes entirely out of the blue. There is no reason for him to know what he does. He attributes it to his bees. But, unless he has a network of “spies” in the town, which is unlikely given his living arrangement, I don’t see how he would have that insight, unless it was a blind guess. And the Holmes I remember didn’t do blind guesswork.

So, as a Holmes mystery, I was disappointed in the story. But, as a story about Holmes in his final years, it was very enjoyable. Seeing the old man’s reactions to his difficulty to move around was very interesting. And his fear, not of death, but of an ignoble death — of dying with his face in his porridge — seemed to me to be in character.

One thing that struck me as odd and out of place. One chapter is from the point of view of the parrot. I found this particularly odd in a Holmes story, as nothing of the sort ever occurs in Doyle’s tales. I’m also always perplexed by these sorts of approaches since it seems we have no idea how a parrot looks at the world. How can anyone know how to write anything from a parrot’s point of view.

Finally, we never learn the true value of the parrot. There is obviously great interest in him, but we never learn why. A number of reasons are put forth, but no definitive one is stated. I’m sure this is intentional, but I would have liked to know something about what the meaning of the bird’s ramblings really was.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel, just not so much as a Holmes story. For someone expecting a mystery in the Doyle style, this isn’t that story. But, as a story about the man himself, it is very good and I highly recommend it.

Rant

Mass Consumerism

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In his article The snob appeal of tap water, Daniel Gross describes how elite restaurants and consumers are now turning on bottled water and returning to tap water.  The motivation is that bottled water is bad for the environment, both in that water is shipped 1000s of miles, using petroleum for shipping, as well as the bottling of the water itself.  Gross calls this shift an elitist, snob thing.  The implication is that much of the reason that those-who-have are switching to tap water is because everyone can do bottled water and it no longer is special.  It is too pedestrian.  He also argues that it is often the case that the elites start blaming products they once considered theirs as bad e.g. for the environment once the masses start to consume them.  Bottled water is not the exception, but one more example in a long line of products that have been demonized once they became popular.

It seems to me, however, that this has nothing to do with the elites versus the masses.  Sure, the elites have their attitude and I’m sure they lament whenever something they thought was special and theirs becomes part of mass culture.  But, that the elites start demonizing the product when it becomes consumed by the masses is rooted in more than just some snobbish attitude.  It is a real cause for concern.

This is because any human activity is of relatively no consequence in the global scheme if only a few people do it (there are exceptions; maybe testing a nuclear bomb would be one).  If just myself and my good buddy next door drink bottled water, it won’t hurt the environment.  It won’t cause any ecological disaster.  It won’t force jobs to be moved overseas.  And this is true for just about anything we could do: have glorious water fountains in our back yards even in our drought conditions here in Santa Fe; be the first to have high-energy usage appliances; use riding lawn mowers for our small patch of grass; have a gas guzzling SUV.  The problems start happening when everyone starts doing these things.  It is the consumption habits of a society, of a large group of people, that begin to impact the economy and the environment.

The converse is true too, of course.  If just me and my neighbor switch out our incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents, it won’t make much of a difference at all.  But if everyone in our town, our state, or our country do so, then we will see a dramatic change.

So, it isn’t so much an issue of who is doing the consuming in terms of elites versus masses; it isn’t that, once the masses start consuming a product it becomes demonized.  Rather, it is the scale of consumption which matters.  That is when it becomes a potential problem.  The role the elites play in all of this is that they are often the ones that can first afford the novelty of bottled water or SUVs.  However, once the masses get wind of these new products, they naturally demand access to the same products.  This is how a democratic society works.  In a democracy, we can’t limit the use of certain resources and products to a special class (except via price), so unless price stays prohibitive for a long time, the masses will demand access to those products just to reduce the divide between them and the elites.

Maybe the role of the elites in this needs to be modified so that they are more responsible with their own consumption, but that isn’t happening right now.  The elites who can use carbon offsets to keep polluting at a large rate are doing something that simply cannot be done on a nation-wide scale.  And neither can the space rides that some billionaires are taking right now.  The environment cannot sustain an economy in which everyone can take such rides.  The fuel usage and damage to the atmosphere won’t allow it.

The graphic is from Wage Peace and really has nothing much to do with the posting; I just thought it looked cool and was semi-relevant. 

Basque

70th Anniversary of the Bombing of Gernika

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I wrote this on my Basque site, but feel it is important enough to post here as well.

Today, April 26, marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika. Occuring during the Spanish Civil War, the civilian town of Gernika was bombed on a Monday, traditionally a market day for the village, by the German Luftwaffe “Condor Legion” as well as Italian forces, working with Franco’s army. At the time, the Basque government claimed that over 1600 people died in the attacks. More recent estimates put the figure between 250 and 300.

Gernika is most famous as being the center of Basque democracy. The Tree of Gernika is famous as the spot that local Basque law makers would gather from all over the province and decide on laws. The kings of Spain would pledge, under the Tree of Gernika, to protect Basque liberties and old laws, or fueros. These practices were inspirations to the founding fathers of both France and the United States, in particular John Adams.

The bombing of Gernika inspired Picasso to paint one of his most famous paintings, Guernica. Originally made for the World’s Fair hosted by Paris, the piece now resides in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. A reproduction of the painting hangs in the United Nations to remind the delegates there of the horrors of war.

Gernika was not the only Basque city bombed in this way. Earlier in the same day, the town of Gerrikaitz was also bombed. Gerrikaitz is at the crossroads between Gernika, Durango, and Lekeitio. It is also my dad’s home town. About one month earlier, on March 31, the town of Durango had been bombed. Between 350 and 500 people were killed in those attacks.

For more information about the bombing, see this Wikipedia article. It is in there that I first read about the bombing of Gerrikaitz. I would like to know more about it. If anyone has more information about that attack, please let me know.

EDIT: Here is an article in the LA Times about the bombing of Gernika by Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World. And here is an article about how Gernika is marking the anniversary. Finally, EiTB24, the Basque media site, has a multimedia presentation on the bombing.

EDIT number 2: This article has some photographs and some other interesting information. In particular, it quotes Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of the Condor Legion: “Guernica, city with 5,000 residents, has been literally razed to the ground. Bomb craters can be seen in the streets. Simply wonderful.”

EDIT number 3: Astero has a nice article, including a PDF outline, on the bombing.

Blah, blah, blah… I've got the blahs.