What to do with religious literature

The other day, I ate lunch at Apollo Burgers, my favorite burger place in the Salt Lake valley. When I went to use the restroom just before leaving, I saw that someone had left a bunch of Jehovah's Witness literature in the restroom. There was one copy of the Watchtower in English, and three copies of what looked like "Awake!" in Spanish, sitting on the toilet tank and draped over the handrail. I thought about throwing them out, but I'm generally a "leave it as you found it" kind of person, so I just left them. I'm curious, what would you have done?

Edward Current is too awesome for words

Give God Some More Credit!

Checkmate!

How religion (for me) is like Where's George

Although I think this story makes a nice parable for my experience with religion, it has the additional benefit of being entirely true.

About two years ago, I was rooming with a guy for a Scrabble tournament in Phoenix, Arizona. One night in the hotel room, I noticed him flipping through dollar bills and typing on his laptop. I asked him what he was doing, and he explained that he was entering his bills' serial numbers into Where's George, a web site that lets you track where your dollar bills end up throughout the nation or the world.

At first I was a little resistant to the idea. Part of my resistance was due to the fact that it seemed a little weird. But most of my resistance was due to the fact that I know myself pretty well, and I knew that I might get a little obsessed with Where's George if I started doing it myself. I am a completionist and a perfectionist by nature, and there is no limit to the amount of energy I can pour into any random inane task, if I put my mind to it. "Where's George is awesome," said my friend. "Well, okay, maybe I'll give it a try," said I.

And it was pretty awesome. Within a few days of entering some dollar bills on the web site, I had two hits (people who had found my bills) in a suburb of Pittsburgh! All the way across the country, and I had no idea how the bills got there! Where would my bills show up next? This was exciting stuff. Every time a bill showed up in a new state, it was thrilling.

I got a free Where's George stamp from a printing supplies web site, and I started stamping all my bills whenever I made a withdrawal from the bank. I started stamping not just dollar bills, but also fives, tens, and twenties. Whenever I went out to lunch with others who had unmarked cash, I would ask if they wanted to trade bills, so that I could stamp more money and enter it into Where's George. I chided my wife whenever she got change from the grocery store and re-spent it without letting me stamp it first. The world seemed filled with cash, just begging to be stamped and tracked. Sometimes I would daydream about tracking every dollar bill in the world.

I started noticing that my stamped dollar bills were a real conversation starter. Nearly every time I spent any cash, the cashier would look at the bills intently for several seconds, trying to figure out what the weird blue markings were for. Sometimes they would ask me why I had stamped the bills, and I would smile and give a one-sentence spiel about Where's George and how fun it was. They never seemed convinced. Most of the time they shrugged it off. Sometimes they rolled their eyes. A couple times, they joked that I might go to jail for defacing currency.

I also started noticing that some people didn't appreciate my stamped cash at all. A few times, the marked bills caused an actual confrontation. Most of the problems occurred when my bills had a hard time being accepted by automated machines that were designed to accept cash. More than a few times, a grocery store employee had to step in and accept my cash manually in the Self Checkout lane. This did not make them happy. My wife said she even had someone say they wouldn't accept the stamped cash at all. Of course, they had to accept it—it is legal tender, after all—but it seemed strange to me that someone would react so negatively to my Where's George markings. I couldn't understand why it would be a big deal at all.

I happily continued stamping my cash and entering it into the web site after every paycheck, which took between one and two hours each time. I continued getting hits in various states, but about 80% of the hits came from within 30 miles of my house. The thrill of Where's George notification emails was starting to wear off. A few times, I wondered whether it was worth my time to continue doing it, but each time I convinced myself that it was really interesting to see where the bills were going, even those that weren't going anywhere. And who could say when a bill might show up in Alaska or Hawaii? I got a hit in Okinawa once, and it kept me going. More than anything, I felt compelled to continue simply because I couldn't bear the thought of a dollar bill slipping through my fingers without being tracked. What a lost opportunity that would be! And besides, the Where's George web site told me that my George Score (I kid you not) was in the top 5% of all Where's George users. Why throw it all away just because I was a little bored?

I persisted out of inertia for at least a year. Then a few weeks ago, as I was stamping bills for what would turn out to be the last time, I came to the realization that it truly wasn't satisfying anymore. I had started doing Where's George because it was fun and interesting, but it had devolved to the point where it had become a monotonous, and not very important, chore. I didn't even know why I was doing it anymore. The words of a friend rang in my ears, "I have better things to do with my time." Wasn't my time valuable? Couldn't I be doing more fun or important things instead of stamping money, which only seemed to annoy people anyway? What was the point?

So I quit. It felt weird the first time I got a dollar bill as change, and I knew I was going to spend it without entering it into the Where's George web site. I had no idea where that bill was going to go. Once I spent it, I would never again have any way of knowing where it would end up. And that was okay. For the first time in a long time, I felt free to let the dollar bills find their own paths, without me. I could not track them all, and I no longer wanted to try. I spent the bill, purposefully and intentionally, without a stamp. It felt great.

Since then, I've come across a couple bills that others have stamped with their Where's George stamps. It makes me a little nostalgic. In fact, yesterday I hit someone else's bill just to be nice, and gave some details about where I got it and where I was planning to spend it. It was satisfying to type an individual message about a bill, instead of entering a single generic message for a stack of several hundred bills. And it felt good to give a hit to the anonymous person who had stamped the bill. I wish them the best, and I hope my message was encouraging to them as a Where's George user.

As for me, though, I think I'm done with it. I'm happy to hit other people's bills when they come my way, but I won't be stamping any more myself. I might occasionally enter a few bills if I have reason to think they're especially likely to go somewhere cool. But if so, that will be by choice and not by compulsion, not even self-compulsion. Where's George has been fun, and I don't regret having spent so much time doing it. But as someone once said to me, I have better things to do with my time.

Notes from a Unitarian Universalist service

My wife and kids are out of town for a week or so, and I thought today would be a good day to check out the local Unitarian Universalist congregation. I had heard good things about the Unitarians, and had been meaning to check them out for a long time. I'm not big on church these days, but I figured that if there were any church I might enjoy going to, UU would be it. I wasn't disappointed. Here is a synopsis, compiled from the notes I took on my PDA.

When I entered the chapel, I was astonished to find a room of laughing, smiling people loudly greeting and socializing with each other. It was like I had crashed a house party. Everyone seemed really happy to be there, and enjoying themselves immensely. Almost immediately I felt welcome, like these were my kind of people.

I found a seat, and someone rang a bell. Everyone quieted down and found their own seats. The first thing the minister said was something like, "Welcome to First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City, which is home not only to this church, but also to the undefeated Sugar Bowl champion Utah Utes!" That got a round of laughter and applause. Applause in church. It was awesome.

The minister was a witty guy who knew his stuff. I found myself interested and engaged by what he was saying. Before reading from the Book of Revelation, he said, "Unitarian ministers don't often read from the Bible unless they have a good excuse," which drew a laugh. After reading about the wrath of God and the devastation of the earth, he said, "Thus endeth the reading. And thus endeth the world." This was followed by ominous piano music and more chuckling from the congregation. Lest you think he was simply making fun of the Bible, he did actually have a point, which he eventually came around to making during the sermon.

Next, though, was a reading of the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to become immersed in the imagery. I actually felt like I was in high school again (in a good way). He talked about the poem for a while, and at one point, someone in the congregation shouted, "Amen!" The minister didn't miss a beat and responded with, "Amen! But! ... How do you follow an 'amen'? With a 'but'!" I found this highly amusing, and highly refreshing.

At one point, he talked about how scientists had believed until recently that gravity would overcome the expansion of the universe, and that the universe would end in a Big Crunch. He explained that more recent evidence indicates that the universe will continue to expand forever, eventually ending in proton decay and black holes evaporating into virtual nothingness "more than a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years from now. And the universe is only 14 billion years old. So we have some breathing room." I have never heard anything like this in a sermon, in any church. I just about wanted to jump out of my seat and shout "amen" myself.

Anyway, the main theme of the sermon seemed to be that despite the turmoil that always surrounds us in life, despite everyone who thinks that the Obama presidency (or the Middle East conflict, or whatever) will result in the end of the world, and despite the fact that the end of the world actually is coming someday, we should:

- Repent from the past.
- Live a good life in the present.
- Look with hope to the future.

It was a simple message, but I found it inspiring. It made me think of some specific ways in which I can do all three of these. We closed with a hymn that was about how thankful we are for life. It was very nice.

There were coffee, snacks, and mingling afterward, which was also nice. There were several stations with information about the various projects that church members can get involved in. And they had a mini bookstore, where I noticed that they were selling (among others) The Secular Conscience by Austin Dacey. Yeah, this is the kind of church I could get used to. I'm not putting my name on the membership rolls or anything just yet, but I think I'll definitely be going back.

Preferring the hard truth

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions; that is the heart of science.
– Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Today's Sagan quote is one of my favorites. One of the things I've been learning to let go of in the past couple years is the illusion that an idea is correct simply because I am the person who believes it. I remember back in Mr. Ferguson's journalism class in high school, when a student was vigorously questioning something he was teaching. I was shocked when Mr. Ferguson said something like, "The difference between my position and yours is that I am willing to admit I might be wrong." Wow! From a teacher! I think I learned more in that moment than in most of the rest of my high school career. Although I learned this lesson a long time ago, I kind of let myself forget it once I joined the Mormon church. After all, when you have the fullness of the restored gospel, the chance of being wrong is very low. Isn't it?

A few weeks ago, I came across an article that blew my mind. I found it on the de-conversion blog, and it's called The Psychology of Apologetics: Biblical Inerrancy. I was once a fundamentalist Christian, and so I know what it's like to believe that the Bible is inerrant. The mind-blowing idea from the article is illustrated in the following paragraph.

What does this have to do with apologetics? This model of belief-formation bears directly on how we resolve potential contradictions between evidence and belief, and between one set of evidence and another. If we are willing to sacrifice some simplicity, parsimony, and the like, we can always maintain a consistent web of belief while simultaneously holding on to any particular belief we wish. Creationists do this all the time. So do conspiracy theorists, end-times theorists, and radical ideologues of every stripe. These folks all have a strong commitment to a handful of central claims, and they are able to retro-fit the rest of the data in around them. They say they can answer every objection – and they can.

When I read this, I realized that this was something I had been doing for a long time. I believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and the LDS church was the true church of Jesus Christ. Whenever I encountered anything that seemed to undermine these beliefs, it could be explained away by creating a more contrived understanding of some other aspect of reality. And in fact, you can do this with just about any belief, which is why evidence is not always sufficient to convince someone that their beliefs are in error. Evidence can be explained away.

The Book of Abraham isn't anywhere close to an accurate translation of the Egyptian papyri Joseph Smith claimed to be translating? Well then, it must be a "spiritual translation", or we must have the wrong papyri (despite the evidence), or maybe the word "translate" means something else entirely. Joseph Smith married 33 women behind Emma's back, many of them teenagers or already married to other men? Well then, God must have commanded him to do so for mysterious reasons, or they must have been married to him only posthumously (despite the evidence), or maybe he was only acting as a man (prophets are only infallible when acting as such, after all). And so on. It doesn't matter how implausible and convoluted these explanations become; it's possible that everything happened exactly this way, and the cherished belief remains intact.

These days, I try to avoid having any cherished beliefs. I have been mistaken so many times in my life that I know I am always capable of being mistaken again. I try to approach knowledge from the standpoint of a skeptic who simply wants to know what is true, and how we know it is true. That is probably an unattainable goal, but I think it's worth striving for every day.

For example, I currently believe the existence of a god or gods is extremely unlikely. I come to this belief based on the lack of evidence for said gods, and my own life experience. But I do not hold this belief as sacred. I could be wrong. For that reason, I'm currently reading a few pro-theist books such as The Reason For God by Timothy Keller. So far I don't find his arguments convincing, but I love that it makes me think.

I would also love to believe that we can be reunited with our loved ones after death. I can see why this idea is so enticing to so many people. I would love for it to be true. I don't see any reason to believe it, except for my own desire for it to be true, which is all the more reason to be skeptical. Again, I would be extremely happy to be wrong. But as Sagan described Kepler, I prefer the hard truth to my dearest illusions.

Sometimes I miss belief

This morning, Runtu posted a link to this video. If you're a believing Mormon, you'll probably enjoy it. If you're not, you may find it strange, confusing, boring, or creepy. I actually kind of liked it.

As I watched the video, I found myself strangely emotional. Kind of in a good way, but not really. It was more of a sadness, a longing or a yearning for the days when I actually believed all this stuff. I can imagine my former bishop saying that this feeling is the Holy Ghost trying to tell me that the gospel is true. That's what he said to me about a year and a half ago, when my wife and I were first telling him about my unbelief, and I admitted that this is a painful process. But it's always painful when you find that the world isn't the way you thought it was. The pain itself is not evidence that changing your beliefs is good or bad, right or wrong.

It was nice to have a narrative in which the world could neatly fit. God loved me, Jesus was our Savior, and Joseph Smith restored the gospel so that we could all live eternally with God and our families if we had faith and lived right. It was a simple, encouraging story, and it came with an entire life framework. It had its quirks, but it was relatively straightforward. Follow the prophet and you'll be all right. I made my checklist of daily, weekly, or monthly tasks, and completing the checklist felt good, dammit. Like I'm getting something worthwhile done here! We're on the path to celestial happiness!

No matter how good it felt, watching this video reminded me why I just can't be a believer. I couldn't watch Joseph Smith kneeling in prayer in the Sacred Grove without remembering his many different versions of the story, each more grand and detailed than the last, and each coming at a time when he needed to bolster people's faith in him as a prophet. I couldn't watch him finding the golden plates without remembering his stories about a huge cave inside the Hill Cumorah, filled with books and treasures. I couldn't watch him translating the golden plates without remembering that he did so via a seer stone, with his face buried in a hat, often without the plates even being in the same room. I couldn't watch him receiving the priesthood from resurrected beings without remembering that he never mentioned this alleged event until years later. I couldn't watch him rocking babies with Emma without remembering that he married 33 other women, some of them teenagers, most of them secretly, and many of them already married to other men. And so on.

I actually knew all of this (and more - there's so much more) before I joined the church. But I found the feelings and the narrative so compelling that I shelved the cognitive dissonance and got baptized anyway. Apparently through sheer force of will, I got myself to a point where none of the discrepancies bothered me anymore. And why should they? I was happily married with kids, had a good job and a nice house, and church activity fit right into our happy little life. Everything was nice and simple, and we were filled with certainty. Until I met Carl Sagan and the shelf started to buckle. The weight of the evidence demanded my attention. Fortunately, we still have a happy little life, but of course it's not the same as it used to be.

I think that's what I miss most. Certainty. These days I am learning to be comfortable with ambiguity, probability, uncertainty, and unanswered questions. It's difficult for me to be uncertain, but in light of the evidence I have seen over my lifetime, I must admit that I am. As Carl Sagan correctly asserted, "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." I wouldn't trade where I am today for where I was then. My eyes are wide open, and shutting them doesn't make the world go away. But I still miss it.

Why we can't imagine death

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
— Carl Sagan, "In the Valley of the Shadow," Parade, March 10, 1996

I think about death almost every day. I remember once as a small child, I asked my grandmother why they buried people in the ground after they died. "If you're under the ground," I asked, "how do you breathe?" She told me that people no longer breathe after they die, and I was dumbfounded. The idea just made no sense. I'd never experienced not breathing. How would it be possible to not breathe, forever? If dead people stopped breathing, they would... well, die! It seemed absurd to me then, and it seems absurd to me now. And yet it is literally the most natural thing in the world. Death is something that happens to all of us, yet it is completely outside our experience. What a paradox!

I came across this Scientific American article a little while ago, and it really articulated this phenomenon well, complete with scientific studies to support the idea that all of us tend to perceive our own consciousness as persisting beyond death, even if we believe otherwise. The article is well worth reading.

There were two specific ideas that particularly resonated with me. The first is that our own immortality is unfalsifiable from a first-person perspective. In other words, if I believe myself to be immortal, no experience of mine will ever disprove this to me. I'm reminded of the wise words of Stephen Wright, who said, "I intend to live forever. So far, so good." I cannot experience my own non-existence. It's simply not possible. And yet, as Shaun Nichols is quoted in the article, "When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there's an obstacle!"

The second thing that struck me was the idea that even those who do not believe in an afterlife tend to instinctively think of consciousness as persisting after death. I know I do it. To pick a random example, I know that Carl Sagan died over ten years ago, and his body is presently... shall we say, not in working order. And yet, when I wished him a happy birthday last week, it felt like I was really talking to someone who could perceive my words. Like a mystical Carl is floating around somewhere in the cosmos. Intellectually, I know that makes no sense. And yet, the idea seems so intuitively hardwired that it's very difficult to shake.

I had a similar experience last year after my grandfather died, fairly soon after I had begun coming to terms with my skepticism. At the viewing, everyone was milling about, talking with each other, exchanging stories, laughing, and catching up on each others' lives. It was so surreal, like everyone was at a social party, but no one seemed to notice or mention the fact that there was a dead guy at the front of the room. Not that there's anything wrong with that; different people and different cultures deal with death in different ways, and this is how we do it where I'm from. I heard several family members say something like "it's not really him in there" or "he's in a better place now". Obviously, this may help us feel better, to imagine that the person we love is not truly dead and gone, and that someday we will see him again. I would love to see my grandfather again. He was a hard-working, honest man who loved his family and made the world a better place. He was a good person. But I have to accept that it really was him in the casket, and I will never see him again.

This is why I think about death. Not because I find it fun or satisfying to consciously ponder unconsciousness or to imagine my own non-existence (although I admit, that can sort of be fun). Not because I have no imagination or no compassion or no desire for eternal life. I would love to be surprised by an afterlife. Seriously, that would be wicked cool. But as Dr. Sagan pointed out in the quote above, there does not seem to be any evidence that it is more than wishful thinking. I think about death because life is precious, and I know how short it is. We find ourselves in an amazing, almost impossibly improbable situation, alive and aware, floating through space on a chunk of rock with only each other to hang onto. It may not make sense to us. It may in fact be the height of absurdity. But we need to make the most of life while we have it, because this is the only one we get.