Life and Faith

In The Calendar of Wisdom for today, Tolstoy states that "The life of a person without faith is the life of an animal." I am inclined to agree, though that raises the question: What is faith?

In the broadest sense, I think that faith is the acknowledgement by the individual that there is more to life than that which is natural and observable. To put it more succinctly: that essence precedes existence. Faith means accepting the truth that what lies at the heart and origin of life is something that is not itself alive; that existence arises from that which does not exist, yet which gives rise to existence. It is the willingness to admit that our existence is founded on, and depends upon, that which does not itself exist. Yet this non-existence is the essential nature of all that exists.

It is at this point that logic and reason must give way to faith. For any logician or scientist will tell you that something cannot be generated by nothing, and that non-existence cannot give rise to existence. In an attempt to accommodate this apparent truth, theologians and philosophers have long posited the concept of the First Cause. Most of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of god, for example, depend on the proposition that if things exist and are in motion, then something must have originally put them in existence and motion. This "something" becomes the first principle in a long chain of causation, of which the reality we experience is the direct result. In short, it becomes god.

That this cannot be so should be self-evident. If the First Cause is merely the original link in the chain of existence, then, while it may be a motive force, it cannot be qualitatively different than the existence which it puts into being and motion. This primal cause is, therefore, of the same, or at least of similar, character as the effects it generates. God thus becomes nothing more than the first principle of existence, and yet, if god exists, then something must have put god into existence, by the subsequent logic of the proposition. The god which is said to create existence must be embedded in existence and share its nature, which subjects that god to the inconsistencies and vicissitudes of existence; to its qualities and characteristics, with all their contradictions and shortfalls. Thus god is portrayed as jealous, angry, loving, forgiving, and at once the source of all good and of all evil. God is, in effect, superman, possessed of all of man's faults and virtues.

It is for this reason that I argue that any concept of god, as a generative cause or primal principle, must inevitably lead to contradictions which cancel out the concept itself. God cannot be both loving and vengeful, cannot be the origin of both goodness and evil, and, at the source of the concept, god cannot logically be a form of existence that was not brought into existence by something else.

For this reason, the concept of god becomes itself a contradiction which cannot be sustained by the very process of logic which coaxed it into being. Such a concept of god must, therefore, be rejected, not least of all because the conceptual god makes faith unnecessary. This is ironic, to say the least, but it is, nonetheless, inescapable. For if you posit god as the First Cause, or as the primal link in the chain of existence, then reality can be traced logically back to god, and no faith is needed to accept god's existence.

No, oddly, what is required is an acceptance of the illogical proposition (in conventional terms) that existence arises out of non-existence - that everything, in effect, comes from nothing. Only in this way can we find a ground for the exercise of faith. Anything less is merely musing on an idea, regardless of how complex it may be, that negates the possibility of faith. To put it simply: It is necessary to reject the concept of god in order to discover the possibililty of faith.

The Cliff vs. the Abyss

At some point over the holidays, I stopped watching the news. I simply could no longer stomach the frantic reports on the "fiscal cliff," combined with fatuous commercials and the customary idol worship of news anchors who have achieved positions of importance in our culture with, apparently, no qualifications whatsoever.

Now a purported deal has been reached, within hours of the deadline, to postpone, though not to avoid, our great national falling-off. Leaving aside the fact that the president and the congress have behaved in a manner which we would not permit our children - Don't wait till the last minute to do your book report! - they have, yet again, utterly failed to address, or even to acknowledge, the real problem facing the nation; namely, that we are spending ourselves to death. The raw fact remains that every day the federal government takes in one billion dollars in revenue, and spends three.

The president, in his unrelenting socialist ideology, has demagogued the current crisis as one not of spending, but of revenue - specifically, that the rich are not paying enough in taxes. This kind of cynical class warfare may play well with the masses (most of whom pay no taxes), but it utterly ignores the truth that even if the federal government were to confiscate all of the wealth of the wealthiest Americans, doing so would pay not even two weeks' worth of the debt. But as with everything else leftist, punishing success makes the "progressives" feel good about themselves, the facts be damned. Liberalism is narcissism, pure and simple.

We are broke. To paraphrase Walter Mondale: The president won't tell you that - I just did. The national debt so far outstrips the gross national product that it will take generations of sacrifice to begin to put our fiscal house in order. The media farce about the "fiscal cliff" was meant merely to distract us from the fact that we face a fiscal abyss. The left will do anything to obfuscate in the face of this reality, and the Republicans are too tongue-tied by years of failure even to object in a coherent fashion.

Now the debt ceiling crisis looms again in sixty days, and the buffoons in congress and the amiable incompetent in the White House will burble at one another again for our entertainment, and to the further detriment of the nation.  And what will be accomplished? Nothing of any substance.

What is needed, first of all, is a national figure who will tell the truth to the American people - the truth about the crisis we face and the sacrifices we will have to make in order to fix it.  Such a one does not, and dare not, exist at the moment. Beyond that, certain structural reforms are essential. We must impose terms limits on elected federal government officials: four terms for House members, two for senators. We must cap federal spending at a fixed percentage of GDP - certainly no more than 20, I should think. We must adopt a flat income tax, again, fixed at a reasonable rate (I would say a maximum of 17%). And we must have a constitutional amendment requiring the congress to balance the federal budget. Only then, I think, can we begin even to hope for a resolution of a crisis in the history of the nation that threatens its very life.

Six-toed Health Care

I watched with amusement and dismay a report today concerning the cats of the Hemingway House. My son and I visited the house in Key West on our vacation last summer, and he was charmed and fascinated by the population of felines, many of whom had six toes on their paws, and some, even seven. These cats were a special favorite of Hemingway, and he mandated their care and the maintenance of their kind in his will. Now, his house, which is a museum open to the public, is a haven for them - dozens of them.

Today Fox News reported that a federal government agency has been sending undercover agents to the house disguised as tourists to follow and photograph the felines. This was done, the government declared, in order to enforce a 1966 animal protection law which it is alleged the Hemingway estate is violating by, the bureaucrats argued before a court, using the cats to lure tourists to a commercial enterprise.

Now, as I understand it, the 1966 statute was intended to protect animals that might be in danger of exploitation. Specifically, it was meant to ensure that animals used for commercial purposes such as circuses, petting zoos, television commercials and movies, are not mistreated. But in this case, the law was stretched by anonymous and officious government bureaucrats to include a historical museum, where no less than People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals examiners found the cats "fat, happy and relaxed." (My son and I saw this ourselves: They just about run the place, and seem perfectly comfortable, even in the presence of gangs of tourists, who wonder at them and dote on them.) Not so the purveyors of big government and more official intrusion. They went to court and secured an order that would require that the Hemingway cats be rounded up every night and put in cages, rather than being given the run of the house, which they have had for decades.

This is pernicious nonsense, of course. But what is really disturbing about it is that at no point in this process of government meddling and spying (on cats!), did any bureaucrat in the hierarchy ask: Are you kidding? The cats own the house (as all cats do), they are well fed, lovingly cared for, allowed their liberty, and even PETA has given its blessing to the Hemingway estate for the quality of their care.

But we are not dealing with care or reason or even reality here: We are dealing with government bureaucracy. And that means that nothing - not facts or truth or humanity - can be allowed to interfere with the enforcement of regulations. And so, unless the court order is overturned, Hemingway's beloved cats will become wards of the state, which means, among other things, they will be rounded up routinely and caged for their own good.

You can, I suppose, see where I am going with this. These are the same kinds of people who have just been given responsibility for the nation's health care system. And if these brainless bureaucrats, secure in their anonymity and freedom from firing, will do this to cats, what do you think they will do to human beings? We will, no doubt, be rounded up and caged (metaphorically) for our own good by functionaries who are accountable to no one, and for whom regulations trump reason, and compliance substitutes for conscience.

Congratulations, America: You are about to get the "free" health care you so eagerly desired. I just hope that the cats survive.

Whore of B

I remember as a young man listening occasionally to fundamentalist Protestant ministers on television who referred to the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon. I thought at the time that it was a hysterical and scabrous characterization; the result of years of indoctrination in fringe theology, driven by a crass profit motive. But now, after decades of reflection and realization, I believe I understand what those canting poseurs meant.

It has taken me nearly fifty years of thought and soul-searching and life experience to come to the following conclusion: The Roman Catholic Church is an evil institution. Let me say it again: By its very nature, reinforced by its traditions and institutional behavior, the Catholic Church is a force for evil in the world.

I no longer see how any right-minded or well-intentioned person can subscribe to its teachings, nor how any earnest searcher after truth or the divine in man can succumb to its authority. The Church is a vile corruption of the teachings of Jesus, on whom it claims to be founded. That vague and illiterate man (if we can judge by how little we know of his origins and the fact that he committed nothing to writing), seems to have preached the virtues of poverty, self-neglect, absolute love and universal peace and tolerance, all concepts inimical to the Catholic Church as we know it. That the Church should claim its authorship from such a character is nothing more than farce at best, and blasphemy at worst. The Catholic Church has no more to do with the nature and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than does the current federal government with the principles of the Founding Fathers.

The Church has, over the centuries, been the purveyor of violence, intolerance, ignorance and injustice. And throughout most of its institutional history, it has been a haven to criminals of the worst sort, including thieves, liars, corrupt politicians, murderers and pedophiles. On this last point I have much to say, and have tried to say it in these pages. But suffice it to say that the abetting and cover-up of the crimes of child molesters has gone on throughout the entire history of the Church, and continues to this very evening, when the Los Angeles Archdiocese has compelled the records of hierarchical protectors of pedophiles to remain sealed from public scrutiny.

Beyond that, for generations, the Church, through its system of Catholic education, has been guilty of myriad crimes against children. By this I mean the systematic indoctrination of innocent little boys and girls in a body of dogma that makes no sense, and, more seriously, that rationalizes superstition and religious intolerance, enforced by the most vile threats of corporal punishment and eternal damnation. I was, myself, the victim of such browbeating from the ages of seven to eighteen. I and my fellow child-students were routinely beaten, terrorized, and solemnly threatened with an eternity of fire and torment if we did not submit ourselves absolutely to the authority of Holy Mother Church. That any mother would terrorize and abuse her children so is beyond my comprehension.

We were told, on a daily basis from the age of seven (the age of reason, as the Church terms it), that if we did not comply with every jot and iota of its teachings, we were destined to rot in hell fire for all eternity. What sane adult, with even the scarcest solicitude for children, would impose such terror on innocents? Who,  claiming any form of humanity, would abuse the children in their care in such a fashion? We were ritually herded into church three of four times a week, forced to confess (and often to invent) sins which we whispered in the dark to anonymous priests, begging for forgiveness, subjected to regular humiliation and corporal punishment, including, screaming, slapping, whippings and beatings. And all of this was elevated to the level of divine intent by a sexually confused and criminal clergy, represented to us as God's vicars on Earth.

I have stated here before, and I repeat again: The Catholic Church is a conspiracy against the innocence of children. The number of confessed pedophiles, and those who have enabled and protected them, is but a shadow of the actual number of violators of children. I have no hesitation in going so far as to state that every member of the Catholic clergy is complicit in those crimes, for those who did not commit them knew about them, and those who did not know about them did not want to know. All are guilty, either directly or indirectly, and the ones who are guilty by silence are not less so than those whose consecrated fingers raped and molested children.

There is a long and unbroken history in the Church of crimes against children, and against humanity at large. Founded on the poor shepherd of Palestine as it claims to be, the Church's own wealth, crimes  and arrogance condemn it far beyond my power to do so. But the worst of its sins remain those against the most harmless and innocent in its care: the children of the Church, who could neither understand nor resist the brutality and inhumanity perpetrated against them. Coldly, cunningly and calculatedly by men and women who wore the black mantel of righteousness, which was nothing more nor less than the black shirts of the fascists with whom they conspired so cravenly in the century past.

Bad to verse...

Midnight

When the last bell-struck
Hour of the night
Has flicked its tongue
Into the ear of sleep
We waken if we dare
To see the dark,
Reach out to fold
Its slender flanks
And kiss its cheek
And hide our face
Within its velvet seams
And give it thanks
That it has put an end
At last to dreams



Dawn

What is that pallor
On the brow of night?
Is darkness dying,
Infected by the light?
There must be a remedy
To cure this bright decay,
Quench this inflammation
And put an end to day



What is it that fringes
On the shore of this
Unsleeping night?
Flotsam
Jetsam
Remnants of intent.
Here a bottle there a page
Wood and cloth and
Tailings indistinct
Stained with oil
Choked with weed
Too obstinate to sink.
The sea beyond
Is vast and heaving
But I cannot resist the spell
Of this its leaving,
For every sodden portion
Tells a tale an epitaph
Of passengers and crew
Of motor and of sail
Of trash and treasure
Tumbled into blue
Horizoned deep
To find its resting here
In jumbled aimless sleep.
This bright glass is laughter
That broken frame despair
A book begun
But never read
A brush that busked
A new bride’s hair;
That which held such promise
Now lies fallow --
All that's sown in depth
Will die in shallow.
As we journey hence
From calm to storm
From breeze to rising wind
Our vessels leave behind
A spall from where we had begun:
A puzzle for another time and mind,
Another sleepless night awaiting sun.

Benghazi

I have hesitated to write about the events in Libya until, as the President has continually suggested, all the facts are in. We have enough, now, and the picture they form is disgraceful. An American ambassador and three other Americans were murdered, and the Administration did nothing to help them. The real question, beyond the details, is why?

We now know that the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi had been attacked twice before the fatal raid, and that the ambassador and staff had repeatedly asked for increased security. We know that the Administration and the State Department had denied those requests because they did not wish to offend the sensibilities of the government (such as it is) in Libya. We know that other foreign authorities, such as the British Embassy and the Red Cross had pulled out of Benghazi because of the severe security threat, and that the American legation was the only one left, and that it was left virtually unprotected.

We know that the President's and the U.N. Ambassador's repeated claims that the fatal attack was the result of a demonstration gone bad were false. There was no demonstration, and the idea that protesters would bring automatic weapons, a mortar and rocket propelled grenades to a demonstration was, in any case, absurd. We now know that the existence of the video that Obama repeatedly claimed provoked the attack was not even known in Libya (the Libyan leader himself said so), and that the President knew that was the case, and still went on national television and before the U.N. claiming that the video was the cause.

We know that the attack, rather than the spontaneous outbreak of violence the President claimed it to be, was a concerted seven-hour-long assault, and that Administration officials watched it in real time on video sent by two drones overhead. We know that the ambassador requested increased security on the very day of the attack, and that three urgent requests for assistance during the attack were denied.

We know that two Navy Seals defied orders not to assist the staff at the consulate and in the nearby safe house and went to their defense, losing their lives as a result. We also know that they managed to save some American lives before they were killed. We know that these two men were heroes - honest-to-god heroes just like in the movies - and that their requests for assistance were denied. We know that the U.S. possessed security assets in nearby areas which could have been sent to rescue them, but they were withheld.

And we know that the U.N. Ambassador, the Secretary of State and the President lied about all of this.

We also know that, after the tragedy, the President referred to the murder of the Ambassador as being "not optimal," and that at the memorial service for one of the Seals, the Vice-President commented to the hero's father in a stage whisper about the size of his son's balls, and that when the President shook the father's hand, he could not look him in the eyes. It was, the father has said, "like shaking hands with a dead fish."

It becomes tedious to point out that if anything remotely like this had occurred under a Republican administration, the mainstream press would be howling it from every front page, website and cable channel. There would be strident demands for investigations, resignations and impeachment. We recall that when the Bush Administration was accused of leaking the name of a CIA officer (a case in which no one was injured or killed), the media demanded that people be sent to jail, and, indeed, one administration official was tried and imprisoned. Yet in this instance, in which American territory was attacked and American officials were murdered, the mainstream media has chosen largely to ignore what now appears as a disgusting and pathetic lack of leadership and panoply of lies.

All this brings us back to my initial question: Why? Why did the Obama Administration, that is to say, the President, choose to ignore the appeals for security from Libya, and even on the day of the attack and during the murderous assault, still refused to save the lives of an American ambassador and American citizens? And why, having failed to do so, did he and his officials lie so ardently and repeatedly about it?

The answer, of course, is that we are in the middle of an election campaign, and nothing is more important than getting Barack Obama re-elected. Nothing. Not the nation's security, not the truth, not the lives of our citizens. Nothing.

I remember when Chuck Colson, one of Richard Nixon's re-election campaign thugs, said that he would run over his own grandmother to get Nixon re-elected. Nixon was re-elected in a landslide, and eighteen months later forced to resign, and Colson and many other people (not including Nixon) went to prison.

Barack Obama has done worse than that: He, it now appears, allowed an American ambassador and three other Americans to die while his people literally watched on video. Then, by all accounts, he went to bed, and the next day, to a fundraising event in Las Vegas.

With regard to the coming election, nothing more needs to be said. Nothing.

Random thoughts

--I was thinking today about kindness. Tolstoy said that kindness can be added to anything, and that is correct. Kindness can enhance any gesture; it can even be added to criticism and punishment. Jesus told us to treat others as we would wish them to treat us; he did not say to treat others well in order that they will reciprocate. We are kind not because of expectation of reciprocity, but, rather, because kindness nourishes the soul and affirms and deepens our humanity. This is illustrated most clearly by kindness to animals, which seems simply natural, even instinctual, to human beings. We do not treat animals with kindness in expectation that they will respond in kind; in most cases, in fact, they will not. Not abusing bears or poisonous snakes does not make them them kinder to us. They will continue to pursue their natures whether we treat them kindly or no. We do so, nonetheless, because it is an expression and extension of our humanity. Kindness is, therefore, rooted in humanity, not in calculation or in the nature of the recipient or our relation to him, or in expectation of reward; it is rooted in our souls.

--If god is love, why does life hurt so much?

--The lesson of birth is that we will never make a move of any importance in this life without hurting someone we love.

--Death remains a problem no matter what we do with it. Tolstoy wrote that if life is good, then death, which is a necessary part of life, must also be good. This is not the case. Rather, one could argue that if life is good, then death, which puts an end to life, must be evil, since it cancels out good. What Tolstoy was failing to realize is that, faced with the problem of death, he was seeking a way to think about it which would make it appear good. This is like a man, faced with a defect in his beloved's face, squints or seeks a light in which the defect will not appear, or will appear beautiful. To conceive of death as good is self-delusion. What, then, do we do with it?

Death is inevitable; that is, it is tied to time. Hamlet said 'If it be not now, then 'twill come; if it is not to come, then 'twill be now; and if it be not now, then surely it will come. The readiness is all.' But what readiness? What does readiness for death mean? What does it consist of? Does it mean resignation, putting one's affairs in order, making peace with one's fate? If readiness is merely acceptance, and actions and attitudes based on acceptance, then we remain victims of death; its servants and not its masters. That is why I wrote in my Crusade novel that death teaches us we are nothing - nothing but the slaves of time.

If the alternative to this view is, as Tolstoy often argued, to focus on and live in the present, and to do as much kindness as we can, then the question arises: Why? Ultimately, doing so will make no difference in our lives. Yet it will in the lives of others. And so we are left with the forlorn hope that our behavior in this life will make better the lives of others, and the even more forlorn realization that it will make no difference to our own fate. What this suggests is that we live for others; yet, what is the point of that?

All of this is true only if there is no form of accounting after death. For those who accept this idea, there is no point to life. At best it is altruism, and, at worst, idle entertainment and time marking; rather like those long hours we spend in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists to whom we take our children for care. We may chat cordially or read or play games to pass the time, in the knowledge that we are doing what is best for another whom we love - and that has intrinsic value. This, it seems to me, is as close to an understanding of the meaning of life as I can come. But it is scant consolation in the face of extinction. And so I return to the idea that, unless one conceives of some form of accouting after death, the experience of life is shallow at best.

Now, as I have written before, I reject utterly the juvenile Christian concept of an afterlife of eternal punishment or reward, which is nothing more than a fairy tale intended to scare unreflecting minds into submission to dogma. It is, of course, posited on the idea that we will be in the body after death, which is nonsense when one thinks of it. Corporeal beings such as we cannot exist outside of time - there is no eternity for those who live within the confines of the body. And so, what is one to make of the necessity of an accounting after death? What vision of it makes sense in terms of what we know and what we can believe?

As I have also written before, I tend toward the Buddhist conception of a cycle of lives through which the soul passes in its quest to liberate itself from time and suffering. And yet, I continue to bump up against what appears to me a contradiction; namely, the idea of the individuation of the soul. To believe that a soul persists through many incarnations, intact as it were, is, I think, to confuses the soul with the personality. It is the personality which is individuated, and that individual personality, it seems to me, dissolves at death.

And so what of the postmortem accounting, which, I think, alone makes sense of suffering and kindness and the whole personal history of each human life? An afterlife alone renders personality meaningful, in that it extends the consequences of personal choice out beyond the temporal. But of such an afterlife I can find no conception that makes sense to me.

--Formerly I had thought of death as a threshold; as a sort of temporal-spatial doorway through which we pass into another dimension of existence. But this rather conventional view has given way in my mind to a less structural and more fluid one. I now tend to think of the experience of dying as passing through a membrane; a fluid transition from one degree of pressure, as it were, to another. We know that fluids always migrate from areas of higher pressure to those of lower. May it not be so with the soul, which is confined - pressurized, if I may so put it - within the body, and then, through a process of osmosis, returns to its natural state outside the body? And, if this is so, what are the implications for the soul and the afterlife?

--I continue to reflect on the idea that consciousness is the nature of the spiritual force which animates all things. Formerly I had though that consciousness was the product of the soul's intersection with the corporeal. But, more and more, it seems to me that consciousness precedes the corporeal, and is merely limited by it. Therefore, after death, the soul regains or returns to its true form, which transcends the human experience of it in the body. 'We see now as through a glass darkly, but then, face to face.' And the face we will see is our own true face.