Wrestling with Religion

In The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1997), Carl Sagan imagines that he has offered to show me a fire-breathing dragon in his garage, and, when I get there, I see only "a ladder, empty paint cans, and an old tricycle." He'd neglected, it seems, to mention that the dragon is invisible. This thought experiment imagines my proposing a series of ways to detect the dragon. They are good ideas, he imagines replying, but unfortunately won't work. Flour on the floor won't because dragons levitate, infrared won't because dragon fire is heatless, and spray paint won't because dragons are incorporeal. If Sagan insists on countering every test I propose with an evasive redefinition, it's clearly silly for him to then shift the burden of proof onto me and suggest that, since I can't prove the dragon is absent, it may very well be present. There's no practical difference between an undetectable dragon and no dragon at all. ...

Why was Christianity so transparently bogus--or, at least, without substance--to me as a young adult--and to some of my intelligent, well-read friends but not to others ? It's easy to say that people believe whatever makes them feel good, to dismiss faith as mindless conformity and intellectual shoddiness.  As social media makes clear, people often read a sentence as meaning how they feel when they read it, not as what the grammar and definitions factually add up to. The mainstream media make everything into a crisis , a friend wrote yesterday. Everything ? I missed CNN coverage of my afternoon nap. OK, my forty years as a comp teacher are showing. Climbing off my pedagogical high horse, I'll note that two kinds of reading, his and mine, yield two distinct meanings, one absurd and the other reasonable. One is nonsensical, the other merely a hyperbole--a figure of speech. Seeming credulity may be this kind of difference: reading religious language, not as word-for-word m...

Decades ago, after I turned forty and one of my sons left home for college, I suddenly felt old and found comfort (or cover at least) in the quip: “Growing old ain’t bad when you consider the alternative.” This assumes growing old to be better than dying, and most people would agree. Otherwise, seniors would be immune to death threats and impossible to hold at gunpoint.  I remember when I was a teenager, alive in the fresh horror of realizing that personal immortality was no Kalashnikov Truth--not a thing objectively verifiable or universally accepted--that for all I could ever know, death is oblivion. I was flying on my bike down a steep incline one afternoon and suddenly reflected that a blowout and crushed skull might instantly snuff out, not just Billy Green, past and present, but (as far as that Billy was concerned) the earth, sun, moon, and stars—and even the absence of these spheres. Not only light would vanish, but darkness. Not only existence, but nonexisence. Not ...

Imagine that you and I are in the living room of an American suburban neighborhood and you are by a front window looking out, but I am not. You report that a neighbor is walking her dog. I may not look even up from my book. I believe you because dog walking is common on our cul-de-sac. Your word is all the evidence I need. Now, let's suppose you tell me she is walking a greyhound, which is far less common but happens. A family two blocks away owned a rescue greyhound last year, but it apparently died. They have a short life expectancy. I may lower my book to look, but, unless you are a terrible liar, I'll take your word for it even if the dog is out of sight by the time I reach the window. The event is interesting but ordinary. Now, suppose that you say that a cowboy is riding a pony down the street. I have seen riders in rodeos and on country roads but never in the neighborhood. I don’t doubt that a cowboy is possible, but he is far less ordinary than a dog-walker, so I ...

The 2001 film cartoon Monsters, Inc . imagines a corporation of monsters that feed off scaring children through doors that are portals to their bedroom closets. This is a variant on the motif of the monster under the bed. In both cases, a presence is felt but never seen. It’s the opposite of the refrigerator light that seems to be always lit. Just as we never see the light off, children in the cartoon world never see the monsters. They can never confirm or disconfirm the existence of beings who exit through magic portals whenever closet doors are  opened. Despite their ontological indeterminacy, the monsters do frighten children. They power Monstopolis with juvenile screams, so there's clearly a psychic drain caused by the children’s belief in monsters. But if monsters are unfalsifiable, why should children believe in them at all? Why scream needlessly? Shouldn't they imagine more pleasant unfalsifiable creatures in their closets? Shouldn't they imagine, say, magica...

Until late in WWII, infantry firearms fell into three categories: heavy machine guns requiring two operators; long-range rifles, either bolt-action or semi-automatic, with offset stocks requiring re-aiming between shots; and pistols or light machine guns spitting out light rounds with limited range. One of Nazi Germany’s many military innovations was the first assault rifle, the StG 44. It was lighter than previous rifles and incorporated three innovations: a select-fire switch converting it to a machine gun, an in-line barrel limiting barrel rise, and a mid-size round with medium range. A single weapon that could pinch-hit for all three categories. A young Soviet inventor named Mikail Kalashnikov combined these innovations with features from the American M1 and created the Automatic Kalashnikov rifle, or AK-47, named for the year it was adopted by the Soviets. In the more than 70 years since its invention, this rifle and its upgrades have been wildly successful. Kalashnikovs ...