Saturday 16 December 2006

Pic of the day: "One must admire how well the laws of physics were written." For some people this may be a perfectly valid reason for their religion. I prefer a more direct approach myself, but for the intellectual approach, I have another site to recommend. With a big fair warning.

Half a cosmos under God

When we look at the moon, it is often part bright and part dark. Half of it may be illuminated by the sun and shining brightly, while the other is so dark as to be barely visible at all. When it comes to people, however, we expect it to be all or nothing. Either they are enlightened, or they are still in the dark. Perhaps this really is so in matters of the deepest spirit, but it certainly is not so in any other sense, in any sense that we can verify by observation. I was vividly reminded of this just these days.

A few months ago, the magazine What Is Enlightenment pointed us in the direction of the blog One Cosmos by Robert W Godwin, who has also written a book called One Cosmos Under God. There was also an interview with him in the latest issue of the magazine, which happened to reach my humble abode just this week.

As you can surmise from the name of his book, Godwin is a "theist", a person who believes in some kind of deity. He is in fact a monotheist in the Judeo-Christian tradition, though like me he doesn't feel the need to shrug off all the knowledge we have acquired since the early iron age and use the myths from back then as science textbooks. He is well read in western mysticism and well acquainted with eastern religion as well. A psychiatrist by trade, he clearly has quite a bit of IQ. Even in the USA, you don't get a job like that just by wishing for it. Also there are frequently some crisp and clear insights in what he writes. With a certain exception. And one that comes out a lot, alas.

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Whenever it comes to "leftism", the whole spectrum from Marx to the Democratic Party, he is fully convinced that it is irredeemably evil. By extension, this also includes all European countries, since they are all more leftist than he. Now you'd think that if their guiding ideologies were pure evil, these places would be pretty hellish to live. The opposite is true, as we know. But he doesn't know. Whenever the USA is on the table, his lucid intellect is reduced to a flag-saluting first-grader with his mind fully focused on the Pledge of Allegiance. It is a fascinating sight.

You may wonder what the difference is between me and him, given that I too am a modern Christian, I too believe in personal responsibility and personal freedom, and I too relentlessly mock socialism for its stupidity and lack of realism. Well, the difference is that I wasn't raised in the USA. I don't have a knee-jerk pledge of allegiance programmed into me. I see that there is preciously little difference between the USA and western Europe these days, and the difference is not necessarily in America's favor. With a prison population several times that of our countries, even compared to the population, and homicide rates only found elsewhere in developing countries and areas of civil war, you'd think they'd at least briefly consider some social engineering, European style. But no. This is Not A Problem. Taxes are a problem, death is not a problem? Huh?

The prosaic fact is that European nations also practice realpolitik. We don't just implement any crazy idea that comes out of the faculties (and on that note, I dare say American faculties are at least as crazy as ours, which in all honesty Mr Godwin depicts in all its gory.) It is more a matter of nuance. The French, for instance, earn less money than their American counterparts... but they also work less. Less hours a week and less years of their lives. Of course they earn less, but they have more time to live. This is hardly a matter of socialism vs liberty. They have just taken other liberties. The Swiss are workaholics like the Americans, and also earn comparable amounts of money. (And of course we Norwegians earn more than the Americans, while having the cozy security net, low crime and lots of unspoiled nature too. Then again, my countrymen tend to think that we are born superior, too. The fools.)

But all these are things he could easily find out for himself if he wanted to. The thing is, because it cannot be true, it isn't true to him. Because his worldview requires the USA to be God's chosen people, he is utterly serious when he mocks the countries that America needs to borrow large amounts of money from day by day to even keep up its current lifestyle.

In all fairness, when this guy was small (he is just slightly older than I), the USA really was a bastion of liberty and prosperity in a struggling world. But things have changed. Not always for the better. Whether America's current problems come from too much socialism or not, I'd be happy to look into any day. But they are there. If the USA was God's Own Country, I'm afraid the candelabra has been moved. If anyone can find it now, feel free to tell me.

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That said, I cautiously recommend the blog, at least unless you are allergic to even modern, tolerant religion. There is a lot of good stuff, very well written. Then again there are the days when some leftist has ticked him off and the acid is out in full force. In all fairness, I have occasionally read the Huffington Post and associated leftist sites, and they are over the top polemic every day. American political debate is a lot like strong booze: If you have a little of it, you get amused. A little more, you get hot and agitated. If you keep taking in the stuff, you start getting sick and crosseyed. Hopefully you fall asleep before it can actually kill you, and you wake up the next day and think "never again... at least until next weekend."