Letters to the Editor
hontonoshijin
Published Letters: 113 Editor's Choice: 12
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belief
[Read the article: Is atheism dead?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I admire your clarity in pointing out that we cannot determine the nature of existence. Many religions say exactly this about God, that God is not definable (no graven images, beyond all understanding, et cetera). Nevertheless, humans continue to make the attempt.
What difference does it make whether we describe ourselves as atheists or believers? It does not change the nature of existence. What is important is not how we model the nature of existence, but how we behave.
Perhaps the most discouraging effect of the assumed atheism of contemporary life is the insistence that this life, this reality is all there is. One need not make that assumption, however. It is equally sensible to assume the existence we can be aware of is only the finitely perceivable portion of something that is, as I like to think, more real than what we call real.
An allied assumption is that the point of faith is its effect on this life. I would say that just the opposite is true: If there is a larger realm than this, then that realm does not exist for the benefit of this one. If anything, this one exists for our benefit in learning to live in the larger one.
Many contemporary cognitive scientists are fond of saying that awareness is "just" an emergent property of the human brain. For all its popularity, this is a difficult proposition to prove, perhaps an impossible one. For me, the startling irreducible fact is the fact of awareness. In order to come to know the holy, I feel, one must learn to pay attention to awareness.
I feel, that is, that the instruction to look inward is not mere metaphorical grandiloquence, but an utterly pragmatic description of what works.
Like you I grew up as a fundamentalist in the South (my father was a Southern Baptist preacher). I have studied zen for many years, practice yoga regularly, and am very far from fundamentalism now, but still trust the statements attributed to Christ about love, appearances, faith.
It is possible to practice faith and yet not deny the claims of reason or the evidences of science. I think the contemporary schism between science and religion is an artifact of the struggle of centuries ago, and has very little to do with the contemporary situation.
Many people are suffering grief and hopelessness today because of beliefs which, though superficially "realistic," are no more provable than the theologies of the past. One wishes them solace, peace, and wisdom, and I thank you for your kind and understanding reply to this correspondent.
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related poem
[Read the article: "The World Without Us"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I highly recommend to anyone interested in this book Richard Wilbur's fine poem, "Advice to a Prophet." Same theme, many years earlier.
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editors
[Read the article: Let us now praise editors]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for this timely article. It is not only the bloggers today, but also the people who bill themselves as writers, who have little comprehension of the very language they use. Basic grammatical errors foul almost every piece I read on the web, and no one seems able to write a coherent sentence.
I'm a writer who has published eight books (four novels), including a couple with Knopf. I've dealt with quite a few editors, and respect the tribe immensely (it's true that my editors have had almost no grammatical or stylistic work to do: Most of their recommendations dealt with storyline).
I find it difficult to conceive of a genuine writer who doesn't care for the accuracy and effect of his or her chosen medium. It would be like a painter who despises color or a musician who hates notes. If you don't have total command of your tools, you should at least respect those who are there to help you. Bravo!
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Moore's Law
[Read the article: The most dangerous metaphor]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At 220 angstroms there are beginning to be some pretty serious problems with interference and wavelength. That's right on the border of quantum fluctuation.
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The Company, Weeds, math
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Enjoyed the article. Strangely, perhaps, I had rather read about television than watch it. I tried five minutes of The Company, which I found more boring than (and a fairly exact copy of) the movie The Good Shepherd (which I managed to watch for 45 minutes before I gave up). Why ARE spies assumed to be inherently interesting? The hall-of-mirrors quality of the life should be warning enough even to fools to stay away. Feel that actual humans lead far more interesting lives, and that all the capers of all the secret agencies are mere folderol on the margins of existence.
My friend James Whitehead, now dead, novelist and poet at the U of Arkansas for many years, described (in his novel Joiner) the stuff between (in this case) the vagina and the asshole as "taint meat." I suspect he was recording an old (yes, sexist, and I like the turn on it you report from Weeds) Southernism: "Taint pussy and taint ass."
Delights me you use math as a background metaphor. Calculus can be fun, you know. Forget infinity (only forgetfulness is big enough to contain it--certainly memory isn't), and think of the limits of processes. In nature, no process proceeds to a perfect limit of course, but we are talking abstraction here.
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wall street
[Read the article: Panic on Wall Street]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Have said for a long time that the stock market is a giant casino, and you're a damned fool if you don't think the house has rigged the game to make money for itself. Why do we keep making heroes of these crooks?
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dem congress
[Read the article: Why is the Democratic Congress so unpopular?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because they're chickenshit. The Republicans are liars, but the Democrats, for whom I have voted in every election so far, are cowards.
It's a pitiful choice to have to make.