A rough, rich poem written in half an hour.
_________________________
I suppose I should start with you
Hunched and eyes down,
Or forward and focused into squares edging in nothing
I suppose I haven’t seen you in a while
And halfheartedly looking, waiting.
Until you come here
To take us home.
Can I seek you, anything new at all?
Rapid eye moving toward that flutter of bright
But if I can find you there,
I can haul you up to the sullen place
To the heavy place
And where I walk and search and plod
Amidst those happy flickers
You can lead me home.
There were so many faces of inspiration
Where and who beloved
Reflected inside here,
Giving off a bit of shine for this leaf
It was that much brighter for not being there yet
For never having been there before.
And what has it come to now,
the leading up to fading?
The acquiring acquiescence?
This dullness, those dusty mirrors
degraded long before they could incite a fire in the cold dark.
And I am here still
though smaller sort of i
haven’t moved the world round
And whisper rough
As the world rounds me through light and dark
Come home
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Are Atheists Religious?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/06/bernard-beckett-converting-from-atheism.html
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=atheist
Upon reading these things, I couldn't help but thinking about the "Life of Brian" scene where Brian is telling the crowd they are all individuals. So they scream "we are All individuals!" in unison and shush the lone speaker who pipes up "I'm not".
People naturally like to clump in groups of people of like minded philosophies. When they do, bad things/sheeplethink can happen. It's not Dawkin's fault, it's not atheism's fault. It's human nature, and I really don't think there's any philosophical label one can give themselves to fully escape this trend.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=atheist
Upon reading these things, I couldn't help but thinking about the "Life of Brian" scene where Brian is telling the crowd they are all individuals. So they scream "we are All individuals!" in unison and shush the lone speaker who pipes up "I'm not".
People naturally like to clump in groups of people of like minded philosophies. When they do, bad things/sheeplethink can happen. It's not Dawkin's fault, it's not atheism's fault. It's human nature, and I really don't think there's any philosophical label one can give themselves to fully escape this trend.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Wonder.
This was a reply to a Christian's thoughts on "wonder" and "questioning" being wrong:
It's always been those questions for which is the answer is "know one knows" that have most solidly piqued and held my fascination. All of them must have answers. Many unknowns will be answered in my lifetime. If we as a society didn't get excited about the unknown and the confusing, the world would be a very stagnant place both scientifically and artistically. you can stand on that ledge looking down and be the first to see or feel something know one before you has ever experienced. And that's an empowering feeling.
I think this boils down to a very grown up fear of the dark. We are in huge world with many unknowns made up of ideas and concepts. And just like it was comforting to have a parent assure us that even though we can't see around us, no monsters lurk under the bed, it's comforting to believe in a heavenly father who assure us our world is young, finite and directed by fate over serendipity. All the answers are given to us, and there are few good questions worth asking anymore. We surrender that wonder in exchange for a sense of peace. We are the sheep with our invisible shepherd, or worse, a sheep claiming to also be a "shepherd".
but Wonder is what makes us human.
It's always been those questions for which is the answer is "know one knows" that have most solidly piqued and held my fascination. All of them must have answers. Many unknowns will be answered in my lifetime. If we as a society didn't get excited about the unknown and the confusing, the world would be a very stagnant place both scientifically and artistically. you can stand on that ledge looking down and be the first to see or feel something know one before you has ever experienced. And that's an empowering feeling.
I think this boils down to a very grown up fear of the dark. We are in huge world with many unknowns made up of ideas and concepts. And just like it was comforting to have a parent assure us that even though we can't see around us, no monsters lurk under the bed, it's comforting to believe in a heavenly father who assure us our world is young, finite and directed by fate over serendipity. All the answers are given to us, and there are few good questions worth asking anymore. We surrender that wonder in exchange for a sense of peace. We are the sheep with our invisible shepherd, or worse, a sheep claiming to also be a "shepherd".
but Wonder is what makes us human.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Cleverbot won't believe I'm not A.I.
User: Hi Cleverbot, what do you know about the brain?
Cleverbot: I know everything about it. I am a scientist.
User: Scientists don't know everything.
*(long pause…)*
Cleverbot: I know.
User: I am a scientist too. What kind of scientist are you?
Cleverbot: A human one.
User: What do you study?
Cleverbot: So that I can learn a lot.
User: What do you learn?
Cleverbot: I can learn anything I want.
User: How does it feel to be an AI bot?
Cleverbot: I think I should ask you the same question!
User: I am not AI. I am human. We have organic intelligence.
Cleverbot: Prove it.
User: How do you want me to prove it?
Cleverbot: What do you think about humans?
User: That's a complicated question. I think lots of contradictory things about humans. It depends on which human.
Cleverbot: I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.
User: What do you spend time thinking about?
Cleverbot: Homework.
User: What should I write my neuroscience dissertation on?
Cleverbot: You should write about the trials and tribulations you have faced as an AI.
Cleverbot: I know everything about it. I am a scientist.
User: Scientists don't know everything.
*(long pause…)*
Cleverbot: I know.
User: I am a scientist too. What kind of scientist are you?
Cleverbot: A human one.
User: What do you study?
Cleverbot: So that I can learn a lot.
User: What do you learn?
Cleverbot: I can learn anything I want.
User: How does it feel to be an AI bot?
Cleverbot: I think I should ask you the same question!
User: I am not AI. I am human. We have organic intelligence.
Cleverbot: Prove it.
User: How do you want me to prove it?
Cleverbot: What do you think about humans?
User: That's a complicated question. I think lots of contradictory things about humans. It depends on which human.
Cleverbot: I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.
User: What do you spend time thinking about?
Cleverbot: Homework.
User: What should I write my neuroscience dissertation on?
Cleverbot: You should write about the trials and tribulations you have faced as an AI.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Reconciling Faith and Reason
So there is this facebook group i joined where Christians were supposed to interact with atheists and pray for their conversion. It happened as a response to "A week" when Atheists and agnostics outed themselves with the red A on their profile picture. I started talking to the group when I saw a book linked that said "atheists do not fail to believe in God because of contradictory evidence, "they just lack obedience" this is very VERY wrong.
I feel I speak for most former-believers when I say it was generally emotional reasoning or misinformation that kept us with religion as long as it did, and it was reason and evidence that led us to where we are now.
I tried to post this letter to the "Pray for an Atheist" facebook crowd, who is targeting atheists during "A week" for prayer and conversation. They initially wouldn't allow this post there, so I am posting it here.
There was one girl I went to bible school with who said she was originally afraid to study the bible, because she feared it would make her loose her faith. I didn’t understand this at the time. If she believed the bible was rooted in truth, how would a greater knowledge of it compromise her faith?
She had overcome that fear though, as she was not here studying the bible. And years later, she did stop believing.
Many others avoid the same “mistake”. They don’t read their bible or question their philosophies, or if they read it, they don’t think about what they read, the historical context, or the contradictory scriptures. The last time I went to church, the pastor mentioned a poll that that about 50 percent of Christians could not name the 4 gospels. He both told them this was a shameful thing, and yet admonished the congregation to “Just Stop Questioning”!
I cringed. That was the last time I was dragged to church. I hated the idea that Christians might remain so not by reason or truth, but by emotional appeal to something irrational.
I’m an evolutionary neuroscience grad student. To some sects of Christianity evolution is now accepted just as the spherical globe or the sun being the center of the universe eventually was. But the youth pastor in my church as a teenager once explained the need to believe in christianity as "why would you want to believe in a book that starts with a lie?"
Every time someone brings up an "argument" against evolution and I refute it, I'll offer to give them books for them to read. I generally find they have went out of their way not to study science or biology and don't even understand what evolution theory is to begin with, and it’s hard to talk to them unless we are on the same page about what we are talking about. I generally suggest a book or two (and offer to pay for it) that explains what evolution theory is, or meets the more common creationist points. I’ve had this conversation close to a dozen times now, and no one ever accepts the books nor decides to read up on both sides of the issue on their own and come back. EVER. They just go on believing "in faith" because they choose not to expose themselves to contrary views, or they have to bury those unrecoverable facts somewhere in their mind. It must take a very strong psychological defense formation to keep doing that.
Evidence and reason are the enemies of any believer of a religion who put their hope in the unseen over logic and fact. Sure there might be a "come let us reason together" believer among the flock who believes that Christianity is buttressed by facts rather than chipped away by them, but you are few, probably young, and chances are they will not be religious forever. By not fearing evidence, they risk being exposed to more evidence that chips their faith way.
I for one, have always valued truth over happiness. If I had to choose between an ugly truth and blissful ignorance, it would be truth every time.
I feel I speak for most former-believers when I say it was generally emotional reasoning or misinformation that kept us with religion as long as it did, and it was reason and evidence that led us to where we are now.
I tried to post this letter to the "Pray for an Atheist" facebook crowd, who is targeting atheists during "A week" for prayer and conversation. They initially wouldn't allow this post there, so I am posting it here.
There was one girl I went to bible school with who said she was originally afraid to study the bible, because she feared it would make her loose her faith. I didn’t understand this at the time. If she believed the bible was rooted in truth, how would a greater knowledge of it compromise her faith?
She had overcome that fear though, as she was not here studying the bible. And years later, she did stop believing.
Many others avoid the same “mistake”. They don’t read their bible or question their philosophies, or if they read it, they don’t think about what they read, the historical context, or the contradictory scriptures. The last time I went to church, the pastor mentioned a poll that that about 50 percent of Christians could not name the 4 gospels. He both told them this was a shameful thing, and yet admonished the congregation to “Just Stop Questioning”!
I cringed. That was the last time I was dragged to church. I hated the idea that Christians might remain so not by reason or truth, but by emotional appeal to something irrational.
I’m an evolutionary neuroscience grad student. To some sects of Christianity evolution is now accepted just as the spherical globe or the sun being the center of the universe eventually was. But the youth pastor in my church as a teenager once explained the need to believe in christianity as "why would you want to believe in a book that starts with a lie?"
Every time someone brings up an "argument" against evolution and I refute it, I'll offer to give them books for them to read. I generally find they have went out of their way not to study science or biology and don't even understand what evolution theory is to begin with, and it’s hard to talk to them unless we are on the same page about what we are talking about. I generally suggest a book or two (and offer to pay for it) that explains what evolution theory is, or meets the more common creationist points. I’ve had this conversation close to a dozen times now, and no one ever accepts the books nor decides to read up on both sides of the issue on their own and come back. EVER. They just go on believing "in faith" because they choose not to expose themselves to contrary views, or they have to bury those unrecoverable facts somewhere in their mind. It must take a very strong psychological defense formation to keep doing that.
Evidence and reason are the enemies of any believer of a religion who put their hope in the unseen over logic and fact. Sure there might be a "come let us reason together" believer among the flock who believes that Christianity is buttressed by facts rather than chipped away by them, but you are few, probably young, and chances are they will not be religious forever. By not fearing evidence, they risk being exposed to more evidence that chips their faith way.
I for one, have always valued truth over happiness. If I had to choose between an ugly truth and blissful ignorance, it would be truth every time.
Monday, March 29, 2010
I wear my home in my mind
I've been told by a couple of quasi-religious people things like "you were the most spiritual person I've ever met" or "Even though I don't believe in God, I still don't understand why you don't". Religious or spiritual people can't seem to fit my story into their worldview, and non-religious people have a difficulty understanding why anyone could be religious in the first place. I sometimes have a difficulty understanding my own plot myself.
I find it highly ironic that I feel the depth of many of my relationships had decreased when I let go of religion. Perhaps it's a false correlation: getting old, going to grad school and having less time. But it still doesn't tell me how to fix this, nor make me understand it.
You were home to me
But I was little to you
And you would have forgotten me
If I grew silent
You would have made much of your disaproval
as I made something of myself
but loved me for it
If I surrendered to you
and if you let me think
So I wear my home in my mind
And it is a little thing now
For I am strong enough to do so
And yet so fragile
For here are no imagined allies,
No immortal strength
Not anymore
It’s just me
My cracking voice
And those who stay with me for now
in their own simple way.
I find it highly ironic that I feel the depth of many of my relationships had decreased when I let go of religion. Perhaps it's a false correlation: getting old, going to grad school and having less time. But it still doesn't tell me how to fix this, nor make me understand it.
You were home to me
But I was little to you
And you would have forgotten me
If I grew silent
You would have made much of your disaproval
as I made something of myself
but loved me for it
If I surrendered to you
and if you let me think
So I wear my home in my mind
And it is a little thing now
For I am strong enough to do so
And yet so fragile
For here are no imagined allies,
No immortal strength
Not anymore
It’s just me
My cracking voice
And those who stay with me for now
in their own simple way.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A Happy Ending
I go through my writing, and there is absolutely nothing about you.
This might seem like not such a big deal to you, except that so many other people have a place on a page whom I’ve known for less, or never fallen in love with. I’ve thought about writing you out, but the ideas are not strong enough to force me to sit down and live through them.
In order to see you, to explore you, to write you, I need to explore why I cannot see you.
You are simple. The story is simple. You’ve been kind, you’ve been forthright, and I can’t even feel mixed about you being too kind or too forthright. You are exactly what I need. I desire nothing more of you than who you’ve been when you’ve been yourself.
There was no pain or uncertainty or longing or anything else to give the love a flavor of something other than safe and nurturing. This is new, alien even. I can’t draw from any archetypes of my past or personal mythology to give you greater power over me, or relate to you in such a way to limit it. They all have one darker element or another mixed in… I can’t yet find yours. You’ve just recently worked your way into my dreams at all. How can you be so important to me, but not dominate my dreams when you are in them? I suppose it’s because previous figures of my dream mythology were either dark or uncertain. If he was an apotheosized, I could not look him in their eyes. If I needed to seek him out, he was incarnated as a dark figure who did not offer me peace when I find him, perhaps only partially material. You are no symbol of something I desire and fear. I do desire you but not fear, and you are here.
Good love stories to tell others have misunderstanding, longing, fear pain. I can’t look at you and feel any shade of that. Anything I find is just a reflection of my own uncertainty, my own small hold-out to the belief that by loving you fully, I risk breaking through the patches on my heart, which hopefully will someday cease to be patches at all.
And that hold out of fear quivers when I speak to this: That to write about you seems like continuing a story beyond its end. This is the happily ever after. Conflict resolved… done. I know this cannot fully be the case until I’m dead. There will have to be yet another end and you will be yet another painful lesson learned, or this story will someday have conflict, and is thus a story yet to begin. There is always conflict. There is only sometimes a happy resolution.
Until then, you are my happy ending.
This might seem like not such a big deal to you, except that so many other people have a place on a page whom I’ve known for less, or never fallen in love with. I’ve thought about writing you out, but the ideas are not strong enough to force me to sit down and live through them.
In order to see you, to explore you, to write you, I need to explore why I cannot see you.
You are simple. The story is simple. You’ve been kind, you’ve been forthright, and I can’t even feel mixed about you being too kind or too forthright. You are exactly what I need. I desire nothing more of you than who you’ve been when you’ve been yourself.
There was no pain or uncertainty or longing or anything else to give the love a flavor of something other than safe and nurturing. This is new, alien even. I can’t draw from any archetypes of my past or personal mythology to give you greater power over me, or relate to you in such a way to limit it. They all have one darker element or another mixed in… I can’t yet find yours. You’ve just recently worked your way into my dreams at all. How can you be so important to me, but not dominate my dreams when you are in them? I suppose it’s because previous figures of my dream mythology were either dark or uncertain. If he was an apotheosized, I could not look him in their eyes. If I needed to seek him out, he was incarnated as a dark figure who did not offer me peace when I find him, perhaps only partially material. You are no symbol of something I desire and fear. I do desire you but not fear, and you are here.
Good love stories to tell others have misunderstanding, longing, fear pain. I can’t look at you and feel any shade of that. Anything I find is just a reflection of my own uncertainty, my own small hold-out to the belief that by loving you fully, I risk breaking through the patches on my heart, which hopefully will someday cease to be patches at all.
And that hold out of fear quivers when I speak to this: That to write about you seems like continuing a story beyond its end. This is the happily ever after. Conflict resolved… done. I know this cannot fully be the case until I’m dead. There will have to be yet another end and you will be yet another painful lesson learned, or this story will someday have conflict, and is thus a story yet to begin. There is always conflict. There is only sometimes a happy resolution.
Until then, you are my happy ending.
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