Day: January 8, 2010

The atheist’s dilemma

There are essentially two broad lifestreams, ways or paths of being an atheist.  One is to define oneself in opposition to theists and purveyors of superstition.  The other is to define yourself in terms of reason and leave God out altogether.

Up until this point I’ve felt the need to define myself in opposition to God-wallopers, but more and more atheists are striking up a new tune.  There is no reason for superstitious people to expect to call us down to their level for the purpose of the argument they wish to win; it’s the job of the modern atheist to get free of the mire and muck of hatred and ignorance, however fancily garbed – and stay that way.

I believe in the power of the human mind, and sadly rue its limitations. I would rather live with those limitations than any imposed by any supernatural being, however benign.

I believe that an ounce of my experience is worth a pound of someone else’s prescription; but when I don’t have the experience, I will gladly fill the prescription.

I believe that from atoms I was constructed, in the shelter of my mother’s womb, and to atoms I will return, and that these atoms will never appear again in this orderly dance, no, never, even if the universe is eternal.

I believe that apes are my cousins and that we share a common ancestor not just with apes, but with every mammal; I believe that every cell in my body is a timeline of life on Earth, from the viruses my ancestors took into their bodies and bequeathed to me, to the DDT that’s lodged in my body fat.

I believe with a passion and anger that occasionally startles me, that every child born should be a longed for, welcomed member of my planetary family.

I believe that every person on earth has meaning, value and inherent dignity, even the ones who hate me and want to kill me.  I believe that if I cannot look at a good and productive person and an violent malefactor without seeing myself mirrored there, I am likely lying to myself and losing a lesson.

I believe that the power of intelligent consensus will replace the clunky and meanspirited political engines running amok in the world today, and to the extent I can, I run my life by consensus.

I believe that corporations should not be legal persons.  Until a corporation could be jailed, it cannot be a person.

Family, love, learning, work and service to others are the five pillars of my life, and each day is an opportunity to give myself to these things.

I believe I am responsible for my own health, mental and otherwise, and that part of that responsibility is looking out for others so that they will see some benefit in looking out for me.

I believe in drinking beer from the bottle to avoid dirtying dishes unnecessarily; that games and sports are to be played first and watched only a distant second; that self-sufficiency and generosity co-exist in a balanced life, and that although no good deed goes unpunished, it’s the badly thought through good deeds that tend to cause the most trouble.

I believe it’s possible to think about things too much.  As much as I like words, I cannot express all I think I know, and all I know I feel.  I believe I must spend a part of every day deconstructing myself, my biases, my weaknesses and my strengths; part of every day laughing; part of every day working; but I am happiest when I don’t seem to be thinking at all.

I believe that science, inquiry, observation and intuition all have their place in coming up with solutions to human problems.  I believe that I will never fully understand how my mind, my senses and my body work, or don’t work, together, and that’s okay.

I believe in the power of individuals and families and whole civilizations to change, both for the better and for the worse, and that change for the better takes love and work, and change for the worse takes hate and destructiveness. We may never tire of war; the uniforms are too cool.

I believe in the healing power of nature; the grandeur of space; our cosmic good fortune in dwelling on our green blue world.

I believe that the moon belongs to everybody, and the earth does too.  But I don’t believe that anybody else will necessarily agree with me, and I believe it would be a terrible world if everybody agreed with me and was just like me.  I believe in variety, I believe in mongrels, and I believe in life.

nautilus3 is going to upload herself into an AI and keep working

….because her list of shizz to do before she dies is TOO LONG

Here’s the list as edited by me. I’m leaving the family names off.

Cousin’s letter (which I have stolen as an idea for an SF story).  A cousin’s letter goes around to all the cousins and they add something to it and send it to the next person on the list.  This has been a ten year project.

She does a family calendar (with Loki) and has done for a dozen years – one each for both sides of the family.

She has a family history site and blog.

She maintains a genealogical database.  Note to self… if Alex is going to catch the family history next, what the hell is going to happen when the database needs to be switched from PC to Mac?

Two other family letters.

Activities around a once-every-three-years family reunion.

Family tree, third edition due soon.

Completed projects include Aunt Mary’s diary, my paternal granny’s life story, a Dresden plate quilt worked on by five generations of women (gives me chills to think about it, which, thankfully, a quilt can fix),  a dozen life stories of family members and their life partners, my dad’s stories, my grandad’s stories, transcriptions of diaries, letters, and papers of yet more rellies, in profusion, picture her hacking her way through flabby sentences and questionable spelling with her Editrix Machete of Coherence, her dad’s stories (a two volume opus of such merit and wonder that I am baffled as to how to describe it).

And there’s more.

Coming up …MORE THAN TWENTY PROJECTS.  I went through the list but I started to feel chest pain at the notion of retyping it.  I exaggerate, barely.

All I meant to say about this is that, just in case nobody had noticed, my mother is completely awesome.  In addition to all that she quilts, knits, keeps my dad fed and happy, puts up hordes of relatives and is a meeting point for many friends and family coming through town (she recently entertained both Bonnie and Rani when Bonnie visited her sister in Victoria), is a two time cancer survivor and is intimately involved in the eldercare of her 98 year old mom-in-law, reads non-fiction, keeps up with contemporary movies and TV on DVD, gardens, bird watches, clears about thirty to sixty email messages a day, and keeps her temper while being pestered for her ‘prayers’ for ministry by relatives in furrin lands civilizin’ the heathens. She is currently in the market for atheist tracts to send to relatives.  No luck so far.  I may have to write one for her.

To recap.  Awesome, and a good person, too.  I’m not going to say that everybody who meets her loves her, but the fans outnumber the detractors by a very wide margin.

So I hope nautilus3 lives until the singularity and uploads herself, because I’d like to think that she’ll be giving her attention to her family members for another thousand years.  In my universe, she is grandmother spider, holding the family together with a skein of light and powerful threads.