Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 6

If I have failed to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

Surely most national news sources have picked up the item in New Orleans when a 17 year old kid got beat up in a fight with another kid, and when he went home, his mother gave him a gun, which he used to kill the other kid. Fueling this story, some news source found and printed a photo of the 17 year old kid in a celebratory pose holding a pistol in one hand and a wad of money in the other. The front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune carried a photo of the 17 year old kid in custody and cuffed. What the national news will probably not pick up is a letter to the editor which appeared later in the local New Orleans newspaper. The letter writer objected to the front page photo of the kid in custody, because…it would be prejudicial to his case? No. Because you should not publish a photo of a minor in custody? No. It was because other kids would see that he made the front page, and would think it was “cool”. Do we have Andy Warhol to thank for this?
Homeless sex offenders are housed in rolling concentration camps. The NIMBY issue is huge everywhere when it comes to where to house sex offenders, but Suffolk County NY is obligated by law to give them housing and also keep them away from “temptation and trouble”. So the county, using a “let’s all share the pain approach” puts 5 to 8 sex offenders each in FEMAish travel trailers, and then moves the trailers every two weeks to a new location on public land away from “temptation and trouble”. This almost insures they can’t get and hold jobs, but then, maybe Suffolk Co doesn’t want sex offenders working there. After all, Suffolk County is part of Long Island.

LOON MINI-BOOK REPORT (IF YOU WANT TO READ THIS THING; PRINT IT OUT; PUT IT IN THE BATHROOM OR ON YOUR BEDSIDE TABLE, OR YOU WILL NEVER FINISH IT.)

As promised, the book is “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” by Daniel C. Dennett. The Loon reads a newspaper everyday, and so, he has taken a renewed interest in religion.

Brace yourselves, this is a monster mini-book report, and since the Loon has no cherished dawg in Dennett’s fight, it is best to let Dennett do most of his own talking. The Loon will add, in and out of brackets, both pithy and pithless comments, as is his want, and if he dares. The 389 pages in this book took over 2 months read. The writing style is not easy, either that, or Dennett is so intelligent he is incapable of writing down to the Loon level. Or, to cut the Loon some slack; since we each lose 14 thousand neurons everyday due to wear and tear, at age 20 the Loon might have understood everything in the book, which is ridiculous since the book was published in 2006, and no one in their right mind would have had the nerve to publish a book like this in 1952.

Let’s get this out early, Dennett is an atheist, so if you are a believer, and don’t want to read any further, no problem, but the book is interesting, informative and fun, and this mini book report is even more fun, and it won’t take you 2 months to read it. If unusual ideas ring your chimes, read on.

The book is stuffed with heavy and beguiling ideas—love that—ideas that made the Loon’s synapses spark and sizzle. The book is also full of great quotes—also love that. I have viciously marked-up my copy with underlining and marginalia. This made me wonder what differences would there be between the markings-up in this book and those in a new clean copy read a year from now. Would there be more mark-upable passages because the Loon would be deeper into the ideas of the book, or different mark-upable passages because he had spaced-out while reading parts of the book the first time? Does anyone else ever do this--read a page, and then, wake up and realize that your eyeballs had been temporarily disconnected from your brain? Anyway, all passages in quotation marks are from the book.

Dennett is a philosopher. Scary? You betcha, ‘cause all philosophers, like all kids in Lake Wobegon, are above average, and some of them have brains which throb in resonance with celestial sine waves not felt by the likes of the Loon. Dennett is an American writing for American because “…America is strikingly different from other First World nations in its attitudes to religion.” He is using contemporary American Christianity as an example of religion because he is not a religion historian nor conversant enough with other religions.

Why did he write this book? In so far as the Loon can tell, there are two reasons. 1. To examine why religion* is a universal characteristic of all human cultures. Where did religion come from, why does it persist, and what evolutionary advantage can it provide?** 2. To plead that religions be studied with the same rigor used to study all other universal aspects of human culture, e.g. language, music, ancestor reverence, a taste for sweet stuff, visual art, and that triad of seemingly incompatible human behaviors; “cooperation” with and “altruism” toward non-kin, and, of course, that eternal bogeyman, “aggression”.

*“Religion” in this report and in Dennett’s book includes all aspects of spiritual belief found in humans, and is not limited to formal organized religions, large or small.

** WOW! Is that ever a third-rail idea; touch it and you die.

Dennett quotes others to make points. To the question that scientific study might be the ruination of religion, he quotes a fictitious character from The Simpsons, Ned Flanders “Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends?” Dennett avers that science will not ruin religion, but it is a worrisome thing to rob humans of some of their dearest allusions, when they are thrown out along with delusionary bathwater. He objects to taboos against philosophical inquiry into religion with this. “Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. --Anon”. And, central to the theme, “As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two question in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature. –-David Hume in ‘The Natural History of Religion.’”

As a philosopher, Dennett is duty-bound to explore every side of every feasible argument and since music, like religion, is a human universal, he asks us to share with him this thought experiment. “Might music be bad for you?” (now a paraphrase of Dennett) “How would we feel if Caltech scientists found indisputable evidence that music caused an increase in Alzheimer’s and heart disease, and that teaching music to young children knocked 10 points off their IQs? How would you feel if the government recommended that you restrict your intake of music (including elevator and mall music) to no more than one hour a day, and music instruction for children be curtailed immediately?” “Can you imagine the visceral defensive surge, ‘What does Caltech know about music?” “I don’t care if it is true! Anyone who takes away my music is in for a fight, because a life without music isn’t worth living” “I don’t care if it hurts others—we’re going to have music, and that is all there is to it.’” Now please substitute “religion” for “music” in the thought experiment to see what dangerous emotional ground he is advising we tread upon, but if you cannot even imagine that music is anything other than an unalloyed good, maybe you are likewise locked into a similar conclusion about religion.

(An Aside) Scientists (most notably Daniel Levitan’s “This is your Brain on Music”.) have postulated that the human tabula rasa for language and for music are similar, in that human infants are proto-wired to accept the grammar and syntax of any language as well as the cadence and sounds of any particular style of music. Children imprint on language and music by hearing it, and in so doing, they complete the wiring schematic in the brain, but the wiring for either language or music does not rely, in any way, upon the wiring for the other.

Inevitably, Dennett poses the question, what evolutionary value can be found in religion? If one could find that belief in a religion would allow the believers a greater ability to procreate, then that would genetically account for the widespread presence and persistence of religion. On the other hand, as Karl Marx put it, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” and perhaps we have retained genes for a taste for sweet stuff and religion because both make us feel good.

Dennett draws a comparison between large formal religions and the modern business mode; it is an unflattering one. He also lists, “The three favorite…raisons d’etre for religion, (1) to comfort us in our suffering and allay our fear of death; (2) to explain things we can’t otherwise explain; and (3) to encourage group cooperation in the face of trials and enemies.” Dennett discounts them as characteristic of writings in the humanities and social sciences which offer “premature curiosity satisfaction.” Is it unfair to say that “ignorance is bliss”, when it might be shown that it is? The Loon believes that the big three pragmatic reasons for religion are more than just useful mental salve.

With respect to the history of religion, Dennett raises the possibility (if I understand him correctly) that religion grew out of an “ancestor reverence” meme***. And of course, the human invention of language and the concurrent cerebral hard-wiring for grammar, gave man, as distinct from other animals, as best we can determine, the ability to construct abstractions. Unlike Chimpanzees, humans can imagine a walking tree or an invisible banana, as well as “a menagerie of mythical creatures and demons. Since the monsters themselves have never existed, they had to be ‘invented’ either deliberately or inadvertently (the way languages were invented).”

*** a “meme” is an identifiable unit of human behavior which acts like a contagious virus, e.g. one teenager starts using the word “like” as an interjection, and before you know it, every teenager in the United States is infected with the “like” meme.

What is appealing about a benevolent omnipotent all-knowing God? Well, “all plots of all the great sagas, tragedies and novels, but also all the situation comedies and comic books, hinge on the tensions and complexities that arise because agents in the world don’t all share the same strategic information.” and so, only a nice guy who knows every thing and has the wherewithal to do anything, can work through the complications to fix things, and properly dispense justice and punishment.

The Loon wonders if there ever was, in fact, the storied wolf-boy, a child raised by wolves, and, if so, could such a child devoid of language ever imagine or know God?

“Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdmancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrifice animals (hepatoscopy), or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceromancy). Then there is moleoscophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites (still commonly used today) numerology and astrology.” Incidentally, the Loon noticed more artists and less quackers (palmists and tarot readers) in New Orleans’ St. Louis Square last week. Have we turned the corner from Nonsense Avenue onto Rational Boulevard? May we all hope so.

Under the heading “Shamans as hypnotists” Dennett quotes one of Hollywood’s foremost philistines, Samuel Goldwyn, who said, “Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.”

“…just as some of the features of written languages are clearly vestigial traces of their purely oral ancestors, some of the features of organized religion will turn out to be vestigial traces of the folk religions from which they are descended.” “Every folk religion has rituals—they are expensive, energy and time consuming, they often waste food, and may even be dangerous. And so the question become, for what purpose? The explanation might be that divination or shamanic healing requires them, and, “Once they are established on the scene for these purposes, they would be available to be adapted--exapted (Stephan Jay Gould’s term) for other uses.” Hmmmm! an interesting concept.

At this point, we are at page152. Only 237 pages to go. Remember the admonition that this was going to be a monster mini-book report?

Toxoplasma gondi is the causative organism of the disease Toxoplamosis. It is a single celled parasite which infects the brains of mice to makes them change their behavior from being afraid of cats to taunting cats. This, of course, gets the mice eaten by cats, which is what the parasite needs, so it can infect the gut of the cat, and then be spread in cat poop to other mice. Thus, by example, it is explained why behavior may not always be under personal rational and willful control. It may be an unlikely leap of logic, but Dennett poses the following. “Languages have enslaved our poor brains and made us eager accomplices in their own propagation!” Exclamation point? I should say. The Loon is disturbed by this, but unlikely to fall mute, or start watching TV with the sound turned off, but I have unsuccessfully threatened, on occasion, to declare a talk-free day.

About the birth of secrecy in religion, Dennett quotes a modern seer, Andy Rooney,” Those to whom his word was revealed were always alone in some remote place, like Moses. There wasn’t anyone around when Mohammed got the word, either. Mormon Joseph Smith, and Christian Scientist, Mary Baker Eddy had exclusive audiences with God. We have to trust them as reporters—and you know how reporters are. They’ll do anything for a story.” Hey Andy, who demands that God has to draw a crowd before he speaks?

Under “Domestication of Religions” Dennett quotes Elaine Pagels, in “The Gnostic Gospels”. “We now begin to see that what we call Christianity---and what we identify as Christian tradition—actually represents only a small selection of specific sources chosen from among dozens of others. Who made that selection and for what reasons? Why were these other writings excluded and banned as ‘heresy’? What made them so dangerous?” The Loon sez that three contentious questions in a row are way too many, and evidence of a contentious mind at work.

“Domesticated animals are less intelligent than their wild counterparts—because they can be. Their brains are smaller.” Does this mean that humans do their thinking for them, in exchange for their milk and their muscle for labor and food? “Ten thousand years ago, (at the dawn of animal domestication), humans and their domesticated animals were 1% of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass. Today they comprise 98 percent.” Hey! the Loons sez that humans are doing pretty good for primates which have been domesticated by dogs, cats, sheep, goats, swine, cattle, poultry and horses. It seems like a commensural win-win deal. Domesticated non-humans animals get to proliferate and become more stupid, and we humans can proliferate and become less hardy….and maybe more stupid too, because we can be…we don’t have to go out and hunt, gather and scavenge. Hmmmm!

Dennett seems to draw a loose analogy between large religions and kleptocracies (governments run by thieves) but to do so he cleverly quotes Jarred Diamond, who writes about chiefdoms. “At best, they do good by providing expensive services impossible to contract for on an individual basis. At worst, they function unabashedly as kleptocracies….transferring net wealth from commoners to upper classes…Why do commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats?” Now back to Dennett in quotes “There are four ways that kleptocrats maintain power. 1. Disarm the populace and arm the elite. 2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute. 3. Use force to promote happiness by maintaining public order and curbing violence. 4. Construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy.” This is a dim, but perhaps realistic, view of organized society.

About the effect of prayer on God, Dennett, shamelessly, again goes for another Andy Rooneyism, “the Pope traditionally prays for peace every Easter and the fact that it has never had any effect whatsoever in preventing or ending a war never deters him. What goes through the Pope’s mind about being rejected all the time? Does God have it in for him?”

Dennett makes a distinction between people who believe in belief and those who truly believe, and he claims that many more believe that the belief in God exists than really believe in the presence of God. Further, he makes a distinction between people who believe “free will” exists and those who believe in the belief that “free will“ exists. He quotes physicist Paul Davies who defended the view that belief of “free will” is so important that it may be ‘a fiction worth maintaining.’”

About a certain type of religious hard-core he writes. “If anybody ever raises questions or objections about our religion that you cannot answer, that person is almost certainly Satan. In fact, the more reasonable the person is, the more eager to engage you in open-minded and congenial discussion, the more sure you can be that you’re talking to Satan in disguise! Turn away! Do not listen! It’s a trap!” Der Loon sez, it goes both ways, many atheists will quickly aver that religion is nothing but a conspiracy, a spell cast into the minds of the people by church leaders.

About the phenomenon of mega-churches, Dennett quotes Alan Wolf from “The Transformation of American Religion; How we actually live our lives” Wolf writes “…those who fear the consequences of a return to strong religious belief should not be fooled by evangelicalism’s rapid growth. On the contrary, evangelicalism’s popularity is due as much to its populism and democratic urges—its determination to find out exactly what believers want and to offer it to them—as it is to certainties of the faith.” The Loon stands mute, because he never been to a mega-church, but my daughter goes to one because she is lost in the crowd and if she misses church, no one will ask her where she was. This is a form of church lite, religion without fellowship.

About the mystery in religion. Dennett quote Rappaport “If postulates are to be unquestionable, it is important that they be incomprehensible.”

(Comment) this books suffers mightily from the absence of footnotes.

Under the heading “Does God exist?” Dennett quotes Voltaire, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent him.”

“What can religion do for you” Dennett has a quartet of quotes.
Religion in the shape of a mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness and prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better in a certain class of persons.” William James. The Loon stands in awe of William James, but is wary of a sentence twice containing the word “certain”.
“No one dares suggest that neon signs blinking messages that ‘Jesus Saves’ may be false advertising.” R. Lawrence Moore
“Pray—to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in the behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.” A definition provided by Ambrose Bierce
“In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.” Nicholas Humphrey

About research on Religion, “One strand in the current wave of research on religion raises a fundamental issue, in undeniable terms Studies are now underway on the efficacy of intercessonary prayer, (Dennett now quotes Robert Longman) ‘praying with the real hope and real intent that God would step in and act for the good of some specific other person(s) or other entity.’” The Loon would like to read that study, especially about how it was constructed and how it was objectively measured, and did those who were being prayed for know they were being prayed for and was there a control group who got no prayer but knew they could have been included in the group to be prayed for, and were there two other groups of people neither of which knew anything about the study but only half of which were prayed for, and was this a double-blind study, one with assessors of prayer effectiveness blind about which people where in which study group.

Under the heading “Morality and Religion” Dennett is cagy by relying on an utterly simplistic quote from Steven Weinberg, “Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion.” The Loon detects no closing of the loop with a discussion of why bad people do good things. Anyway, it appears to be a cheap shot against religion. Another cheap shot is “(Many religions) are impressed with the truth-finding power of science when it supports what they already believe.”

Under sacred values, Dennett quotes W. H. Auden wry comment. “We are here on Earth to do good to others, What the others are here for, I don’t know.”

In an obvious plea for rationality, Dennett writes, “No God that was pleased by displays of unreasoning love would be worthy of worship.” Further he quotes Emerson who wrote. “The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.” Emerson, it must be noted, was opinionated to a fault.

About the relative worth of people, Dennett offers this. ‘Consider for instance the example of contemplative monks who devote most of their lives to the purification of their souls and the rest to the maintenance of the contemplative life-style to which they have become accustomed. In what way, exactly, are they morally superior to those people who devote their lives to improving their stamp collection or golf swing? It seems to me that best that can be said of them is that they stay out of trouble, which is not nothing.”

In response to Cobb County GA putting stickers in textbooks that evolution is a theory, Dennett objects with the following. “Nobody put stickers in chemistry or geology books saying that the theories they contain are theories, not facts.”

About defense of the faith, Dennett (who is obviously a quoting maniac) quotes Avery Cardinal Dulles, (the Loon paraphrases) “Apologetics” is the rational defense of the faith….in the past it was supposed to rigorously prove that God exists, Jesus was divine and born of a virgin, and so forth, but it fell into disrepute…(because) it was under suspicion that it promised more than it could deliver and manipulated evidence to support the desired conclusions.” It did not always escape the vice that Paul Tillich called “sacred dishonesty” The Loon knows it is a stretch between belief that there are 12 foot long alligators in the New York City sewers, to belief that Jesus is a genetic haploid (with only one set of maternal genes), but you can find people who are vociferous in their defense of both premises. .

About the eternal turmoil found in science, Dennett writes, “…the cutting edge of science up close looks ragged and chaotic, a bunch of big egos engaging in shouting matches, their judgment distorted by jealousy, ambition, and greed, but behind them, agreed upon by all the disputants, is the massive routine weight of accumulated result, the facts that gives science its power.”

In this age of non-judgmental relativism and a plethora of available religious belief, at what age, the Loon would like to know, should it be permissible to expose a child to a single religion?

Whew! The Loon is exhausted, but there you have it; as disjointed a book as I have ever read, but gefult mitt ideas; a mixed bag of rageous, outrageous, deniable and undeniable ideas. If you have read this whole mini (Ha!) book review, let the Loon know, and he will send you a golden hero’s star for your calendar.

BOOKS-A-PLENTY

The Loon cashed in Christmas present gift certificates at Barnes and Nobel and Amazon, to restock his book larder. He is now well-fixed with reading. The list of a dozen books in waiting follows, not in the order of preference—the books alone will determine their order, and, indeed, if they will be read at all.

“Stranger in the Forest: On foot across Borneo”. By Eric Hanson (a gift from friend, Ron)
“From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas L. Friedman, (a gift from friend, Pat). The Loon is underway in this book, and now he understands why Friedman is one of only a few columnists who writes anything worth reading about the Middle East. Friedman lived there long enough to know and understand the ferocious political, religious and social tensions found there.
(Comment: listing the two previous books as gifts is not a sub-liminal plea to send me books, but if you do, (Hint! Hint!) Each one will have a chance to enchant me. They will be read or not read based entirely each one’s merits. The Loon is not an “equal opportunity” reader.
“The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools since 1940), by Robert Hampel, This is a 1986 book gleaned out of a two buck bookstore box. It too has been started, and since the Loon was in high school for some time* between 1946 and 1950, Hampel’s description of early high schools seems “on the money”. FYI, other books of interest about high schools are “The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace”, by Powell, Farrar, and Cohen.

* The Loon didn’t graduate from high school; the minor offenses of juvenile delinquency plus repeated truancy and smoking in the locker room made him a three time loser. Later, when his mind underwent rational reorganization and reformation, he got hisself a GED. “Government Equivalent Diploma”, but he can’t prove it ‘cause he done lost the paper some’ers.

4. “David Brinkley: A Memoir” by (who else?) David Brinkley.
5. “Seal Team Seven”, a paperback novel about good guys in rubber suits riding in rubber boats and killing bad people, by Kieth Douglass. The Loon is going to save this for when he gets depressed; war seems to buoy the Loon’s spirits.
6. “The Lyre of Orpheus”, a novel by Robertson Davies, who is a fine Canadian writer, but this book always seems to settle to the bottom of the pile as others I fancy more percolate to the top—The Loon will give it one more year, and then, if not read, it becomes a gift to a library somewhere. Do others share revulsion at tossing books in the trash?
7. “Generation of Vipers;” a 1942 book written by Philip Wylie with the longest book sub-title I have ever seen. “A survey of Moral Want; a Philosophical Discourse suitable only for the Strong; a Study of American Types and Archetypes and a Signpost on the two Thoroughfares of Man, the Via Dolorosa and Descensus Averano, together with sundry Preachments, Epithets, Moodal Adventures, Political Impertinence, Allegories, Aspirations, Visions and Jokes, as well as certain Homely Hints for the care of the Human Soul.” Oh yes! The Loon could use some hints for care during those long dark nights of the soul. Anyway, see, the Loon wasn’t kidding about a humungous sub-title.
8. “50 Things You Are Not Supposed To Know” by Russ Kick (I finished it in one night, and it is not worth reading)
9. “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. This is a new controversial book creating both steam and the stench of brimstone.
10, “The Undercover Economist: Exposing why the Rich are Rich, the Poor are Poor, and why you can never buy a decent used car” by Tim Harford
11. “Culture Warrior” by Bill O’Reilly, another of today’s hot tomes. I hope he writes well, as the Loon suffers ideologues poorly.
12. “Body and Soul” by J. P. Smith, a bookstore freebie-bin novel about jazz and murder in France (I think). Letchaknow later.

LEXICOLOGY

Which is the proper term “Starter Castles” or “Mini Mansions”?

Allen Hall, the Loon
February 22, 2007, in warm sunny Dallas.