So I was going to write a big ranty blogpost about how this article is totally dumb and they’re all wrong. But they’re not. I mean, sure, they generalize about things that are too ill-defined to be usefully discussed in a three-page Newsweek article — that “faith” and “reason” can’t go hand in hand, or the supposition that Christians are all creationists, or Biblical fundamentalists, or any number of other things.

On the other hand, I have to call bullshit on two of the “arguments” used against religion in general, and specifically in this article.

1) “So much evil has been done in the name of religion!” Okay, yes: religion has been used as a scapegoat for war, racism, and any number of hateful evils. But so have many other things: conflicting desires for land, drugs, alcohol, oil… So don’t you get it? People — all people — have the capacity for great evils, and for corrupting instruments of good to ill purposes. That’s the nature of mankind. Furthermore, this can’t be used as an argument against religion and FOR science. Look at what science has given us: nuclear war, teratogens, pollution, and oh yeah, drugs! Heroin was invented as a way to get people off of morphine addiction, but wow, that was throwing the baby out with the bath water, wasn’t it? Religion as institution is dangerous, but so are cars, and we still drive them. It’s dangerous because it’s powerful, and that’s also why it’s useful at all.

2) There is a discussion of how many Americans believe in God, and how many would elect an Atheist president, and so on. As if that is an argument against Harris! Whatever your idea of God may be, he cannot be reduced to numbers, and he is not Tinkerbell: if he exists, it is not because we believe in him, but because he simply… exists. The only thing that has value because we think it does is money.

All that said, I sympathize with y’all Atheists. There is a ravenous horde of Bible-thumping, intellect-devouring Christians out there, and they’re not just dreamt up by the media, they do exist. But please bear with us in the knowledge, or at least the hope, that not all Christians are that way. Some of us try very hard to make this world make sense in the light of a belief that we cannot refute because it would be as fruitless as a gay man trying to be straight.

To pretend we do not see that which has been present in our daily world our whole lives long would be hypocrisy; troubles arise, though, when we assume (and who does not, when they are so familiar with such a thing) that others can see it or be made to see it. It is like trying to teach someone from a foreign country your language: frustrating, utterly useless when you have no common ground to work with, and so much more difficult when you don’t give the slightest attempt to learn theirs.

I quit Facebook.

Not because of the new features. I have no beef with the features, except that they are the peak of the less and less appealing Facebook attitude, which goes over the top of “I like to meet new people” all the way into “I have no life of my own, and can thus afford to spend all my handily-free time living vicariously through my friends and watching them poke and friend each other.” *

Yeah. Sorry, Facebook. More free time for me = time to devour my shelf-fulls of books. Between you and the books, you lose.

All the grousing about violated privacy, though, is such bunk! Come on, people. It’s the INTERNET. Nothing that you’d put on Facebook was private before — a person just has to be able to log on to the site to see it. It’s not even as secure as LiveJournal’s Friends-Only posts, which some newsreader or another proved, long ago, are not at all secure.

I actually think the new features are pretty cool, from a practical and coding perspective. As the geniuses at Techcrunch pointed out, the feed tool both makes finding recent information on your friends easier and vastly reduces page-hits, which eases the burdens on bandwidth and servers. This is totally useful, if what you want to do is stalk your friends ALL THE TIME.

Alternatively, you could invite them to your house and spend time with them in person. But that might be too much effort, and, like, expending energy on people to their faces is totally not cool.

* This could be compared to reading friends’ blogs, but the comparison is unfair. A blog (and this is entirely dependent on the blogger) can be a place of expression, opinion, discovery, art, exploration, entertainment, urgent-news-delivering, fascinating-link-sharing, and any other number of things. Facebook offers no such possibilities: instead, people are invited to break down their lives into mobile-phone-accessible modules of information, blocks into which to squeeze ourselves, and onto which we happily place labels: interested in dating, friendship, random play…? Libertarian, democrat, republican, “other”…?

Not that these are distinctions without value: they play a vital role in identifying, in our society, who is Friend and who Enemy, who we should ask out, and who we should stifle our hopeless crushes on because, hey, they’re already taken. If you’re Christian and you see a fellow who is cute, well, it might be better to know that the fellow is a Satanist before you ask him out, rather than a half hour into the most awkward date you will ever have. Problematically, though, labels always encourage stereotypes: there is no way for me to select “libertarian” (which I am) and “pro-life” (which I am, also). By contrast, on my blog, I can say exactly what I mean to say about these matters (or as much as my eloquence will allow) — to whit:

The official website of the Libertarian Party states in the Statement of Principles,

“We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.” (Bolds added by me.)

Of course, the only question lying therein is whether or not an unborn fetus is an “individual” or not. I think that putting aside all manner of religion and philosophy, it can easily be so asserted scientifically, inasmuch as he or she has the recombined DNA of both the mother and the father, and is therefore a part or clone of neither of them, but an individual entity. This is also basically a political statement of part of the Wiccan credo, which is: “An it harm none, do as thou wilt.” I am not sure that this is a statement with religious viability (because it is not certain, to my mind, that a harmless action is necessarily not-wrong, though it is possible), but it certainly makes sense politically. Nonetheless, if the Statement of Principles is taken at face value and on those terms, it not only upholds a child’s right to life, but condemns the interference in said right by anyone else. So although they adopt a pro-choice platform, I think it is fundamentally at odds with the basis for their principles (although these principles are well-upheld in most of their stands on other issues, particularly in matters of religious freedoms, gun control, and drugs).

And so endeth the rambling post.

Friends tell me it’s spring
My window shows the same
Without you here the seasons pass me by [1]
I know you were not new [2]
That loved like me and you
All the same I miss you [3]
Today has been ok
Today has been ok
The preacher lost his son
He’s known by all in town
He found him with another son of God
Feeding on the prayer [4]
Nevermind what God said [5]
But love had lost its cause
And I thought today had been ok
Today has been ok
Today has been ok
Wind has burned your skin [6]
The lovely air so thin
The salty water’s underneath your feet [7]
No one’s gone in vain
Here is where you’ll stay
‘Cause life has been insane but
Today has been ok
Today has been ok
Today has been ok
Today has been ok

Which mostly sums up my current mood — this week was insane with the start of classes, too much work, and so on — and today, well, it’s been OK.

[1] It’s the start of school, and definitely the start of fall. The weather is already taking a turn for the chilly, and the AC is going off. Still, it’s only the start, there are no turning leaves… yet.

[2] I went to the dining hall for perhaps the first time in a year, and there had a conversation with a friend of mine about how people in the freshman class look, to us, like other friends of ours, particularly those who have already graduated. We watched them pass by, pointing out who was the analog of whom, and really, it was more frightening than entertaining. I wonder if I will run into my own analog and have a Back-to-the-Future-style fainting episode.

[3] Too many people are too far away, and the people who are close are too close. This always seems to be the case, but still, it is disturbing me. I am not the sort of person who ordinarily makes enemies, but all the same, after four years, I have built up a small number of people that, for whatever reason, I will cross the street to avoid. Why can I not just be an adult, already?

[4] This well-sums-up the way that I have been thinking about morality lately:

When asked about spirituality, a Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner:

“Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.”

When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, “The one I feed more.”

I think all human beings are born and made and die with the same basic desires, and it is only habit, environment, and so on that get us into one thing rather than another. (Science has got my back on this, too. The neural pathways we use more are stronger and healthier than the ones we use less. Thus, habit.) I wish I could see a map of my brain, sometimes, to see what is strong and what is weak. The best I can do instead is meditate.

[5] I haven’t been going to church, still. I can’t seem to find myself happy there, and I don’t think it’s something I should force — church always was a community and a fun thing when I was growing up, and I think that it should not be a punishment or, perhaps, even a duty. The journey of faith, if seriously undertaken, is too fluid to chain oneself to a single group of individuals, and though I still consider myself an Episcopalian in many of my beliefs, I borrow things from other religions, too. Still, I miss it, but it’s not “church,” it’s just my church, at home.

[6] The moon was red tonight: probably because the air is haze and dust and ash from wildfires which are nearby. I kept thinking of Practical Magic — blood on the moon is a sign of trouble, not far behind.

[7] And some things, I just need to let go. Some dreams come true, and others don’t. Most days I feel crippled by my desires rather than freed. And maybe that’s realistic, but I can’t convince myself that that is how things should be. I still wonder, though, how to change my own desires in a way that will reflect practical reality. Maybe it’s not possible.

I’m not sure why, but in the past month, I have been confronted with one rather awkward/unfortunate date, numerous friends trying to set me up or suggesting, “I know someone you should hook up with…”, one practically yelling at me for not wanting to date Person X, and talking to high school friends (four of them!) who are my age or even younger but already married.

It’s annoying. I can’t simply brush it off and say, “Well, I’m not really interested in dating.” Of course I’m interested. I live alone, and sometimes I’m lonely. It’d be great to find someone I really connect with. One day I’d love to get married, have children. I’ve even recently realized (with a bit of shock) that that day feels closer than I always thought it would be. I’m going to be done with school in the next year, and I would like to start a home. It seems to be a wonderful gift to be able to create a place where my friends and family can feel safe and loved.

But there are several things I can’t seem to get over. One of them is what one of my (male) friends harps on as “feminine wiles.” Problematically, I never considered until recently that I might actually possess these long-glorified wiles in any useful quantities. I’m not skinny and gorgeous, I’m not rich enough to afford bright plumage, and my social skills sometimes lack to the degree where I have put my foot so far in my mouth that someone needs to give me the Heimlich maneuver. Still, some of my man-friends have frequently suggested that if I simply bat my eyes and put a little wiggle in my step, the dating game would be a much easier play for me. Learn the rules, play the game, and you’ll win.

Problem! I don’t want to play games. I would like nothing more than to be perfectly honest, though for something that is fully within my control, that seems so hard sometimes. Fear and awkwardness and the desire to be entertaining or engaging or charming or just not be the last one left out in what seems like a lifelong game of musical chairs — all these things get in the way. Still, although I am aware that sex appeal is part of human interaction, it doesn’t seem like something I want clouding my judgment or anyone I’m with. I’d rather be un-liked than trick someone into liking me, and it seems absolutely horrendous to me to use sex or the idea of sex to manipulate someone when I have no intention of fulfilling any such promises.

Furthermore, there is no material difference in my mind between a Date and a dinner with a friend — both can involve conversation (shallow or intimate), joking, and even flirting (most of my friends, it seems, are men). The only difference between the two is the expectation of where a thing will lead to — and the pressure of that expectation is something that is horrifying and, ultimately, useless to me. I have very specific limits for myself, which I intend to honor, and I would rather not mislead someone into thinking that they’re going to get anything (besides my sparkling wit) by taking me out to a fancy dinner. For the same reason, I feel a lot of awkwardness receiving gifts except from very close friends, and although I appreciate the chivalric gesture, I don’t like it when a man pays for my meal, even if we are obviously on a Date. (Though the holding doors? Gentlemanly. Same with pulling out chairs. Make me melt into a puddle, why don’t you?)

It is probably some extensive fallout from my early exposure to Jane Austen, or a lifetime spent witnessing my parents’ successful marriage, but the idea does seem to be pretty obvious that a person should marry his or her best friend (of whichever gender is appropriate). Now, it may just be my current situation (liberal arts colleges being, as they are reputed, a breeding ground for neuroses, sexual reorientation, and all manner of romantic incompatibilities), but amongst the still-keeping-their-eyes-open set, the line between “friend” and “more than friend” seems to have gotten blurred. Of course, we could go right up to it, were it drawn clearly in chalk, and then take a moment when we saw where we’d come to and say, “Hmmm, check this out. Large yellow line, never noticed that before. Should we step over it and see what’s over there, or maybe just leave things where they are?”

But it’s blurred. Probably mostly because it’s no longer a problem in our society to wait until you’re married to have sex or live together, and this used to be the indicator: engaged, then married, then living together and sex. Now these things can happen in practically any order, although I suppose that an engagement still occurs before marriage — at least for now. And maybe the Old Way isn’t the ideal way, but it’s the system that I was raised in, and it seems to have worked out pretty well for the people I know who have taken it seriously.

So instead of going up to the line, people tend to paddle around in the shallow end of the “more than friend” area without making things clear or communicating. This results in the wonderful world of People Getting Led On, or the Dating Multiple People at Once, or any number of other problems, one of the least successful and ickiest of which is probably Friends With Benefits. Of course, if they are like me, they shriek in horror and run in the other direction the very second they get a whiff of the malodorous “more than friend” world.

I’m not proposing a solution. I don’t think I’ve got one. But I plan to say “screw you!” to this “feminine wiles” business. The man-harpy is right: women who use the fact that they’re women to get things that they want are really. annoying. I see it happen all the time, and I try to avoid doing it, though I expect most women do subconsciously. (To a similar degree and in the same manner in which white privilege operates, though more license is afforded to women.) But I’ve never received clothes, jewelry, or flowers from a young man-fellow, and I think that the reason is probably because I simply don’t expect these things, and don’t give any ideas that I will do anything I wouldn’t otherwise do in order to get them. And no, thank you kindly, I won’t play games. (Didn’t I tell you that, in just so many words, years ago? — you know who you are!) Far better to keep my self-respect and sanity, as much as I can.

End result: I don’t want to win a husband like a prize at the county fair. Of course I want the home, children, security, lovin‘, a shoulder on which to rest my head, someone to eat my cookin‘, to have and to hold and so on and so forth ’til death do us part — I want the whole package. But all that is is an elaborate and poetic way to say that what I really want is a best friend.