Prayer

There is more than one definition, or type, of prayer. One website lists seven different categories, but for the purpose of this blog post I will narrow it down to two: (1) Prayer thanking, worshipping or praising a god or (2) Asking for something, either for yourself or on behalf of others. I'm going to  address #2 exclusively in this blog post.

People ask God for things all the time. Sometimes it's fairly petty, like finding a parking spot, or praying that the new recipe for Chicken Bonfiglio came out all right. Other times the stakes are bigger, like petitioning God for that promotion at work or that you submitted a successful bid for that house you so wanted. And then there's the really big items: that the line of tornadoes miraculously misses your town, or at least, your house, or begging God for that pesky cancer to go away. But does all this praying do any good? By "any good" I mean does the thing that is prayed for actually come to pass? 

I think that the honest answer is a resounding "NO".

Sure, you can find people who will tell you that they prayed for a specific outcome that subsequently came to pass. I have no doubt that they're right. After all, tornadoes don't hit every town, or every house in a town that they hit. Cancer often does go into remission, never to return. (And we sometimes get the parking spot, the Chicken Bonfiglio is a success, and we get the promotion). But the ugly truth is that there are myriad examples where houses are destroyed by tornadoes and cancer patient die painful, drawn-out deaths. It stretches the bounds of credulity to suppose that none of those who suffered various catastrophes prayed, that they were all atheists, or God-deniers of one type or another. And I'm sure that we can all think of examples of God-believing, religious people, who led exemplary lives, whose prayers were for naught. 

Believers address this in different ways. For those who have avoided the more horrible of circumstances, they can smugly assert that their continued health, safety and prosperity is due to their godliness and the frequent utilization of prayer. The more realistically-minded (including theologians) devise explanations to explain why prayer obviously doesn't "work" 100% of the time. One explanation I'll broadly call the "mysterious ways" or the inshalla explanation. This umbrella category includes the belief that God, no matter what the situation looks like, has a plan, and that the disaster that you are experiencing is part of a greater plan that you just don't understand - you not being God after all. A subset of this belief is the theory that there is a benefit to suffering, and that you will be a better person in some undefined way by enduring. A different theology holds that it's not God's decision at all. Since it says in the Bible that "whatever you ask in prayer, believing you will receive", then it's the fault of the individual, not God, when bad things happen. This theory insists that there are numerous "promises" in the Bible that are guaranteed as long as you believe them, and when you don't receive these promises, then obviously you didn't believe. Points to you if you recognized the circular reasoning of the latter theology. 

If you don't recognize the frustration inherent in both of these theologies, then you have a high tolerance for frustration indeed. If you accept the "God has a plan" view, you're going to be praying for things, with no assurance that God is going to comply. In fact, the God being described here is capricious and arbitrary. You have no way of knowing what actions are going to keep you healthy and safe, because God ain't gonna tell you! Why bother praying? If God is going to do whatever his mysterious plan entails, prayer has no affect! The other way isn't any better. God, at least, isn't described as the black hole that the former theory describes him, but it's a blame the victim theology. And, just like "God has a plan", there's no way determine what works and what doesn't. I was part of a group that subscribed to the "law of believing". Many times we thought we were believing God's promises but were convinced that some tiny sliver of doubt had crept in...it must have, or else we would have received, right?

Something I told a family member some years ago was "Maybe God isn't who (or what) you think he is". This was in response to her telling me about prayer fervently in a situation and the polar opposite coming to pass. Evaluating why you think prayer works, or why God is obliged to do what you think he should do, is as something I recommend that believers do. Despite there being a books written that allegedly describe God's attributes, most people create God in their own image, ignoring inconvenient parts of their holy books. Why do you believe God is an entity who is required to answer your prayers, rather than the God of the Deists who created the world, but then headed off to a warm, sunny beach with a good book and a cocktail with an umbrella in it. 

The other thing that I heartily recommend to anyone who is convinced that God answers prayers (in the affirmative) and believes that their prayers are answered without exception, or at least consistently) is to keep a log. Write down everything that they pray for, in detail no matter how insignificant or petty. Then, log the results. Honestly. Without editorializing on why it didn't come to pass or rationalizing why a non-result could be actually be a positive result, or how you got what you needed rather than what you asked for. I predict that the statistics will be disappointing. 

However, if anyone can honestly document a year of 90% or greater positive prayer results, I just may change my mind about the efficacy of prayer.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - Newbie Primer

This month The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuted on Prime TV. Here's a short primer on Middle Earth for the uninitiated -

The Beginning

God creates a bunch of gods and goddesses. They in turn create the world & everything in it. One of them, Morgoth, is an asshole, and tries to break everything. The rest of the gods and goddesses (known collectively as The Valar) defeat him and lock him up for a while. The Valar create a paradise to live in. There is no sun or moon, so one of the Valar creates two magical trees that give light to paradise.

The Elves

After a while the immortal Elves "wake up". One of the Valar finds them and they (The Valar) decide that for their own protection the Elves should be invited to come live in paradise. Some go, some don't. Elf culture thrives in paradise until the gods decide to let asshole Morgoth out of captivity. An Elf named Fëanor creates three jewels (The Silmarils) that glow with light from the Two magic trees. Morgoth steals the Silmarils, kills Fëanor's dad, destroys the light-giving trees and escapes out of paradise and sets himself up as a "Dark Lord" in Middle Earth. 

The First Age

Fëanor leads a large group of Elves out of paradise into Middle Earth to recover the Silmarils. One of the leaders is the family of Galadriel (who we meet in the movies and the series) On the way out he steals some ships from another group of Elves and kills a bunch of them. Then he burns the ships, stranding a rival group of Elves. Fëanor is also an asshole, but he is killed almost immediately. A 500 year war ensues. 

Once in Middle Earth, the Elf refugees discover Elves who never migrated to paradise, Dwarves, and Men, some of whom ally with the Elves in the war against Morgoth and his Orcs (who are Orcs? Long story) and evil Men. Lots of people die. Eventually Eärendil, who is descended from both Elves and Men with the help of one of the Silmarils that had been taken from Morgoth (long story), sails his ship to paradise to ask the gods for help. They give it, and an army led by the gods defeats asshole Morgoth. Surviving Elves are invited to come back to paradise. Some go, some don't. One prominent, high ranking Elf who stays is Galadriel. Oh, and a big chunk of the continent of Middle-Earth is submerged under the sea. 

Second Age

This is the time period in which The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power takes place. A remnant of the Elves set up a kingdom ruled by King Gil-Galad in the northwest of Middle Earth. There are other Elf kingdoms or cities scattered around. The Men who were loyal to the Elves (the Edain) are given the island of Numenor, halfway between Middle Earth and Paradise (which we will start calling the Undying Lands). Their first king is Elros, the son of the previously mentioned Eärendil. The twin brother of Elros is Elrond, who we are going to see a lot of. (Elrond and Elros, being half Elf and half Man were given the choice of living their lives as either - Elros chose to be mortal, Elrond chose Elven immortality.)

Sauron

During the Second Age Sauron, the right-hand man of Morgoth during the First Age, works toward accumulating power himself. In the books, he disguises himself as Annatar (Lord of Gifts) and works with Celebrimbor, an Elven smith, to create magical rings of power. The Elves think that these rings will be used to preserve what is good in the world, hold off the ravages of time and change, and enhance the natural magical powers of those who use them. Sauron wants to use them via one master ring  to dominate Elves, Men and Dwarves. The Elves figure it out and centuries of war ensue. 

Numenor

While all that is going on, Numenor starts out as the perfect place for Mortal Men. Eventually though, its kings and people begin to be jealous of the Elves and their immortality and the island kingdom starts to morph into a dictatorship and breaks off contact with the Elves. The last king of Numenor, Ar-Pharazôn, declares war against Sauron and defeats him, bringing him to Numenor as a hostage. Sauron weasels his way into the king's confidence and convinces the king to invade the Undying Lands. In response, God (the original, head God that we haven't heard from since creation) sinks Numenor (think Atlantis). Numenorean survivors escape to establish kingdoms in exile in Middle Earth. They defeat Sauron's army, seemingly kill Sauron and take the One Master Ring and almost immediately lose it. 

Third Age

The exile kingdoms thrive for a while, but eventually diminish. At the end of around 3000 years Sauron is back (he's basically a fallen angel, really hard to kill), and it looks like he's going to win until the One master Ring is thrown in the volcano. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings tell the story of the last years of the Third Age. 

What's Different in "Rings of Power"

There's a lot of room for non-canon storytelling in the Second Age. Galadriel is not portrayed in the books as a military leader, inspired by the death of her brother. In fact, all her brothers and male cousins, as well as her uncle and other assorted kin are killed in the 500 year war in the First Age. It's certainly possible for her to have been a military commander, but it's nowhere stated. There's around 6000 years between the beginnings of the Second Age and her appearance as a wise and magically powerful queen of the forest in The Lord of the Rings, plenty of time for her to change. One thing is certain, there is no evidence that passage to the Undying Lands was given as a reward for service, and especially wasn't forced on anyone. Galadriel specifically decided against returning there and founded Lothlorien with her husband Celeborn. In an unpublished manuscript she, as virtually the only survivor of those who led the exodus from paradise, is banned from returning to the Undying Lands. 

There's no mention in any published or unpublished sources of hobbits or of their precursors, the Harfoots. Tolkien spent very little time discussing the origins of hobbits. He does mention that they first came to anyone else's notice in the Third Age and that they descended from three different "tribes", the Fallohides, the Stoors, and the Harfoots. Gollum/Sméagol is said to belong to a group that were "...akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors", which lived around 500 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. So the Harfoots could have been around in the Second Age, it's just not stated anywhere. 

Nobody magically arrives by meteor in any of the books. 

The timeline is very compressed. As I stated earlier, the Second Age last around 3000 years. One review stated that the writers did not want to keep killing off the main human characters, so everything seems to be happening in one generation. The rise and fall of Numenor, for example stretches over the entire age. The forging of the rings by Celebrimbor takes place about halfway through the age, yet he is alive at the same time as Elendil and Pharazôn, who both were around at the end of the Second Age. 

The only really ridiculous things I have seen so far are:

1. Meteor Man - who arrives via a meteor. We have no idea who he is or if he is someone who appears in Tolkien's published works
2. Mithril - in Tolkien's books mithril is a metal that looks like silver and is stronger than steel. It is the strongest and most beautiful metal known. Bilbo's mail shirt is made of this metal. In the series, mithril has magical properties that come from it's supposed connection to a "lost Silmaril". The Elves need mithril (in the show) to avoid either returning to paradise across the sea or "fading". 

I'm sure more ridiculous things will present themselves. 

More to come as I watch more episodes. 

Was Jesus a Real Guy?

Okay, if you pay any attention to what I post on social media, you know that I'm not a Christian. Not an atheist either, but that's a discussion for another day. What I want to ramble on about today is the question of whether Jesus really existed. 

First, let's look at whether or not the gospels and epistles can be considered historical documents. A common misconception about historical documents is that "historical" = "true". Many of the sources for our information about historical are considered unreliable. I'm currently listening to series of podcasts on the history of Rome - it's instructive to hear how many sources either contradict themselves or are obviously biased accounts. A significant number of accounts of important periods in Roman history were written a century or more after the events that they describe. Historians compare the different accounts, sifting through them to attempt to ascertain the probable truth amid...everything else. One of the  criticisms of the Bible as a reliable source is that none of the New Testament was written contemporaneously with the events that they describe. But this was not unusual. The historical records are full of information that was compiled after years or decades of word of mouth stories being passed down. 

Another criticism is that the Bible is just one source. Christian dogma asserts that all the various books of the Bible were inspired by God, but from a neutral perspective, they are all separate books, written for different reasons with different points of view. Biblical historians are of the opinion that Mark was written first, with Matthew and Luke, influenced by Mark and a hypothetical source they call "Q", were next, and John last. Thus, for the gospels alone there are five distinct authors, and five distinct sources for any information about an historical Jesus. There are also other documents besides what made it into the Bible, the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha also contain accounts of Jesus' life. Then there's the epistles written by Paul, which predate the earliest gospel by about 20 years. In my opinion, and the opinion of many Biblical historians, Jesus did exist.

Not so fast there! I'm not saying that  the historical Jesus is identical to the Jesus described in the Bible, I'm merely saying that I think it likely that there was someone around 30 C.E. in the Roman province of Judea upon whom the Jesus of the Bible was based. I also think that it's likely that he actually said a lot of what the Bible said he said, at least in broad terms. Do I also think that after his death stories, myths and legends arose regarding his birth, his life and his ministry? I would be astounded, knowing human nature, if this had not happened. How many times have you heard of a politician or other public figure exaggerate the facts of his own life, or the events surrounding the founding of a large company blown up with the bad bits erased? Given that the very first written references to Jesus (Pauline Epistles) had almost 20 years (and a further 20 for the first gospel) of oral history to develop before being committed to pen and paper, it would be surprising if accretions of myth and legend hadn't attached themselves to him. 

Read from the perspective a disbeliever, many parts of the New Testament are clearly written to address and debunk what came to be regarded as heresies. Christianity, unlike just about every other major religion, was very concerned with the minutia of doctrine, with what people believed, rather than what they did. The history of the first few centuries of Christianity, before coalescing into an organized "church" was one after the other of intra-Christian disputes that most people today wouldn't think important, let alone understand. For example, one of the major divisions in the 300's C.E. was called the Arian Controversy. At one time I was taught that Arius believed that Jesus was not, as many believed, God. But the difference between the Arians and the Niceans (adherents to the Nicene Creed) was more subtle than that. Arius and his followers still believed that Jesus was God the Son, part of the Triune God, but that the Son was subordinate to the Father. That's it. There was no practical difference, just this one nitpicky thing. The controversy over whether Jesus' mother's title should be "God-bearer" or "Christ-bearer" was another bare knuckle brawl. And the New Testament is full of references to these intra-Church fights, worded in such a way that you'd hardly know there were serious debates over what made a "real" Christian behind them. So, what's the point of this whole previous paragraph? The very real possibility that not only were the gospel writers putting words in Jesus' mouth to bolster their own opinions, but that later copyists were altering the text for the same reason. If you don't buy into the belief that the Bible is a seamless whole inspired by the Almighty, then it's just people's opinions. As far as that goes, the words of Jesus are just Jesus' opinions. 

In the main, I think Jesus' gospel message as reported in the Bible is probably pretty close to what the person whom the Biblical Jesus is based upon said. There's little things here and there that were probably added in order to advance somebody's doctrinal position, or their opinion of who Jesus was. What's problematic are the supernatural aspects. Everything mundane that's written about an historical Jesus could be 100% true, which does nothing to confirm that the miracles were as well. The big difference is that the words of Jesus, while they can't be verified with complete confidence, are at least plausible - people talk all the time, charismatic preachers gather followers all the time, prominent people have an influence beyond their lifetimes all the time. What doesn't happen all the time is dudes getting up after being dead, raising other people from the dead, miraculous healing, transmutation of matter (e.g. water into wine) or the used-to-be-dead dude levitating through the clouds into what was purportedly Heaven, which can be confirmed isn't anywhere close if it exists at all. If any of that happened, it can't be confirmed, and despite claims from religious leaders (not just Christians) none of it has been replicated under controlled conditions. 

So if you believe Jesus lived, I agree with you. If you follow the broad outlines of what he is recorded to have said, it's not a bad way to live, though I feel no compulsion to do so myself. I also have no problem if you believe the supernatural aspects, just don't talk to me like it's indisputable. 

White Jesus

Do White people really believe that Jesus was White? As a person of European extraction I certainly pictured him as having White European features back when I was a Christian, but I don't think I ever would have made his whiteness a hill that I'd die on. Surely there are people would though. I was also aware that other cultures pictured him in ways that reflected the way they looked. I saw more than one depiction of a Black Jesus. I've seen Asian Jesuses. I think that anyone who gave it any thought would suspect that he resembled the people who inhabit that part of the world, i.e. Arabs, Iranians - dark complexion, dark hair, dark eyes. 

There is no physical description of Jesus given in the Gospels, which would indicate that his appearance wasn't unusual for his time. There is a description in Revelation of a apocalyptic Jesus that gives him hair white as lamb's wool and feet like brass. I've heard some people say the "wool" describes a Black person's hair, and the brass indicates a dark color. I don't know. Maybe. It's the Book of Revelation; everything's weird in that book. 

A couple of things that come to mind when I hear the two extremes: (1) Jesus was white and (2) There are no white people in the Bible:

One is that the concept of "whiteness" is a fairly recent invention. During the European age of colonization and conquest Europeans used it to distinguish between themselves and the people that they needed to dehumanize in order to subjugate them. While skin color was definitely a factor in the whiteness scheme, it was not the only consideration. For example, the Irish, as far as skin color goes, one of the palest ethnicities around, were for a long time not considered White. In the United States, which had been dominated by Northern European nationalities, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, Italians, Greeks, and other Mediterranean people were not considered White. A lawsuit in the early 1900's established that Arabs were White (in order to claim the societal benefits of Whiteness). 

So "Were there White people in the Bible?" is a meaningless question. If one is seriously curious, one might want to know if there were people in the Bible who, based on current understanding of who is considered White, would be considered White if you saw them on a 21st Century street. Again, hard to say. Rome, for example, was not a homogenous empire comprised of one ethnic group. At its greatest extent it included North Africa and the Middle East, surely some of the people identified as Romans in the Bible were what today we would call White, but just as surely there would be some with typical African features, or dark hair and "olive" skin. Without detailed physical descriptions, we just don't know. Recently I've been following a "History of Rome" podcast and have been looking up images of some of the emperors. While some of them appear stereotypically White, one or two look like they could be part African. 

Finally, why do we assume that everyone in the Biblical era looked like people from that region today? And why do we assume that everyone from that region today looks the same? There are indigenous fair skinned, blond, blue-eyed people in that region today, and images from that era are notoriously ambiguous about things like eye, skin, and hair color. (There are also dark haired, dark eyed, swarthy people native to Northern Europe) Modern Jews, who are descended from people in that region, have a wide variety of physical types among them. 

So was Jesus White? No. Maybe. What's White mean? Who cares?

The Persian Empire and Biblical Literalism

This might be completely boring to the usual readers of this blog, but I've always been interested in history. Specifically American and European history and the cultures that preceded them. Sure, I know that Africa and Asia had flourishing civilizations too, but as someone primarily descended (as far as I know) from Europeans, that's where my interest lies. Occasionally intersecting with Biblical history, as Christianity, and the world from which it sprung, inarguably created the template for European civilization from the Roman Empire onwards. I've been listening to a series of podcasts about the empires in what we now refer to as the Near East that existed in what is now Iran, Iraq, Syria and environs. I just finished one focused on the Persian Empire during the time of Cyrus the Great and his immediate successors, Cambyses II and Darius I (also called The Great). This was an area where I got most of my knowledge (or what passed for it) from an English Biblical scholar from the late 1800s, E.W. Bullinger. 

Now some might find it odd that I would depend on this source, but 20 years ago I was involved with a religious group that used Bullinger as a source for much of its doctrine. In addition to numerous books covering subjects such as figures of speech and the word of God encoded in the constellations, Bullinger produced The Companion Bible. The Companion Bible took the King James Version of the Bible and annotated virtually every verse, and added over a hundred appendices further cataloging word usage, Greek word definitions and customs of the Biblical era. One appendix dealt with the genealogy of the Persian kings, included in an effort to tie the kings mentioned in various books of the Old Testament with historical records. In the Bible, several kings are mentioned: Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, Darius the Mede and Darius the Persian. While there are several Artaxerxeses and Dariuses, there is no Ahasuerus in the historical record. Bullinger, in the snip from his appendix pictured here, took information from the Greek historian Herodotus, and records left by Cyrus and Darius themselves and tied it all in a neat bow. Here's a link to some of his assumptions:

http://www.posterite-d-abraham.org/BULLINGER/append57.html One of the things that we know about Cyrus the Great was that, rather than slaughtering conquered people and killing their rulers, he allowed a measure of self-rule, including underwriting the cost of rebuilding their temples. The temple in Jerusalem was one of these, for which he is called, in the Bible, messiah.  In Bullinger's calculation, Cyrus' solicitude toward the Jews was because of his parentage. He claims that the Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther was Astyages, the historical ruler of Media and that after the events laid out in Esther he married Esther and by her fathered Cyrus. Furthermore, he believed that Darius' father Hystaspes was also a son of Astyages by a different mother, Vashti, the deposed queen of the Book of Esther. For 20 years this was as good an explanation as any in my mind. 

Until recently when I started listening to and reading real historians. 

According the available records, Astyages was the ruler of Media and the overlord of the smaller territory of Anshan, where Cyrus' father Cambyses I was king. Cyrus may or may not have been the grandson of Astyages by way of Astyages' daughter. At any rate, once Cyrus inherited the throne of Anshan he revolted against his over-king, Astyages, and replaced him, eventually conquering most of the region, including the former regional super-power, Babylon. Not only was he not the son of Astyages, but the Book of Esther describes a time several generations after Cyrus. Cyrus left behind a document now called "The Cyrus Cylinder" where he describes his many victories, as well as his genealogy. Just as in the image above, he lists his genealogy as son of Cambyses, who was the son of Cyrus (I) who in turn was the son of Teispes. So far so good. Now we come to Darius. 

Darius was a high-ranking military officer in the army of Cambyses II, the son and heir of Cyrus the Great. He may have assassinated Cambyses, but he certainly assassinated Bardiya, the second son of Cyrus and the legitimate successor to his brother Cambyses. Darius justified this assassination by claiming that Bardiya had actually been secretly killed by Cambyses, and that the man he killed was an imposter posing as Bardiya. When the dust had settled, Darius was the new King of Kings. He handled the question of his legitimacy by calming to descended from the same Teispes that Cyrus was descended from; if this was true Darius' father Hystaspes would have been the second cousin of Cyrus. There is some disagreement among historians about whether Darius' genealogy (which he had inscribed on the side of a mountain) was completely invented, if it was true up through his great-grandfather and only the descent from Teispes was invented, or it was completely true. I lean toward some combination of invention, since there is no indication previous to his assassination of Bardiya that he was of the royal house. 

All of this is documented in ancient documents, but the temptation for Biblical literalists to make parts of the Bible fit together, not only with each other, but with historical records, leads to some silly conclusions. Bullinger, in addition to making Cyrus the son and legitimate heir to Astyages when he actually revolted and defeated him, and Hystaspes, Darius' father another son of Astyages, decided that since Cyrus and Darius, in their respective royal genealogies, list Teispes as a common ancestor, then the fathers and grandfathers in their genealogies must be referring to the same people. This is really jamming it all together with a shoehorn to make it all fit when there is every indication that it will never fit and the Biblical records are just stories to teach a lesson and not historical documents. 

All in all, interesting stuff...to me anyway

Christmas: Then and Now

We always celebrated Christmas when I was a boy. To be honest, a lot of the details are kind of hazy, but if memory serves we would either have one of the grandmothers over, or we'd go over there - I'm sure there was some kind of schedule involved that I didn't have to be concerned about. My parents were religious, and back in those days so was I, so attending Mass on Christmas morning was always part of the holiday ritual. One Christmas memory that is very clear involves a visit from Santa Claus. I don't remember how old I was, but I was in that transitionary time when I hadn't given up believing in Santa Claus yet, but was developing some skepticism. My brothers and I were already in bed on Christmas Eve when my parents opened the bedroom door, turned on the lights and came in...accompanied by Santa Claus. I'm sure that this extended the duration of my belief, but to this day my mother has not revealed which neighbor or friend had donned the Santa suit to visit us kids. 

As a young adult I was involved in a group that had some non-mainstream and often contradictory beliefs about Christmas and how to observe it, if at all. There's a verse in the Bible which tells Christians to not be observers of times or seasons, so this group told us that we shouldn't be celebrating Christmas (or any other holiday), but they did anyway, changing the name, but putting up Christmas trees and exchanging gifts, while pretending that they weren't celebrating Christmas. The leader of the group had also published a book wherein he claimed to have calculated the birth of Jesus down to an around 90 minute window on September 11, 3BC. So, not only were we supposedly not supposed to observe Christmas, but Jesus wasn't even born in December according to them. It made for a lot of confusion, but mainly they just gave lip service to the "not observing" and observed anyway. It was around this time that I moved to Nebraska, away from my family and ceased to be involved in family Christmas gatherings. 

After getting married and starting a family I wasn't so involved with my former group, and celebrated Christmas in a more or less traditional manner, although on a small scale. My income was pretty small, so we couldn't afford anything lavish, but we always had a tree and gifts, assisted by my parents who always sent a box with small presents and a check to purchase other stuff. But since we weren't involved in any church and my only family were my in-laws who were very unsociable, I really missed the big family gatherings of my childhood. After being married around 10 years we got back involved in my former religious group. We sometimes did group things - one year we got a few hotel rooms on Christmas Eve and hosted a pool party for our local home Bible fellowship. My kids were also, after hearing Adam Sandler's Chanukah song, became curious about that holiday. Having grown up in New York around many Jewish families, I knew what Chanukah was and for a few years we celebrated, in addition to Christmas, the Festival of Lights. We also had a Christmas ornament tradition for many years. One year, after one of my children complained that our tree had no star, I cut out a photo of Bob Dylan and put it atop the tree. Every year we had a different "star". 

Things changed quite a bit in 2001 when my wife and I separated and then divorced. She had convinced most of my children that I was a bad guy and pressured them to not spend time with me. I spent Christmas 2001 friendless and alone, living in a dingy apartment that I called "The Hovel". On Christmas Eve, after closing the store where I worked, I went back to my apartment, ate dinner and got drunk on eggnog spiked with Jack Daniels. At midnight I went to the nearby Catholic Church where the highlight of the evening was me enthusiastically hugging people who I didn't know at "the sign of peace". On Christmas Day, as I took an afternoon walk, I discovered that movie theaters were open on Christmas Day and I stopped in for a viewing of The Fellowship of the Ring which had just come out. For the next several years that was my Christmas ritual: close the store on Christmas Eve, go to a movie and eat dinner at a buffet on Christmas Day. After a few years I met my second wife, Susie, and we continued the tradition, spending time with Susie's daughter Sami on Christmas Eve. 

This tradition lasted for a few years until, one by one, my children saw through their mother's propaganda and started spending time with me again. We started inviting all the kids over on Christmas Eve and continued our movie and buffet tradition on Christmas Day. Most years we put up a tree and outdoor lights and sent out cards. I was so excited to have my kids as part of my life again, and having put my former religious group behind me, I was also excited to be able to reanimate the family-oriented Christmases that I membered from my childhood. This also lasted a few years, but began to peter out as marriages and jobs and different interests began to interfere. I became a bit jaded about the planning and work I'd put into a family gathering only to have several no-shows. Probably the last Christmas Eve gathering was 2018. We had left town for Thanksgiving, and had a small open house on Christmas Eve. The year before, 2017 we drove to New York to spend Christmas with my mother (whose birthday is Christmas) and siblings. For Christmas 2019 we got together for a movie on Christmas Day with some snacks afterward. The pandemic pretty much killed off any Christmas gatherings - I think the momentum is gone. 

Now, as the second Covid Christmas is almost upon us, I reflect on my expectations for the holiday. The local family just doesn't seem interested in doing anything for Christmas. So we're not. I still put up Christmas decorations (no tree), watch Christmas movies and listen to jazz, blues and rock versions of Christmas songs, but we're not even attempting to organize a family Christmas. And that's okay. I've gotten comfortable with not beating myself up over not conforming to societal expectations for the holiday, and accepting that the warm and fuzzy memories of Christmases past don't necessarily paste onto the present. 

This doesn't mean that I'm sad about it. Quite the opposite. I'm happy and thankful that I am in regular contact with family, both local and far-flung, and that we all can do what makes us happy on the holidays and any other day.

Happy Hogswatch!
 

Hypothesis Contrary to Fact

What is a logical fallacy?

In philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy or non sequitur is a patter of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure.

Some logical fallacies are pretty easy to explain. 

• 'Ad Hominem' is when, instead of addressing, attacking or arguing against a person's position, the person himself is attacked. For example, claiming that a person's position on Medicaid for All is wrong because she once got a DUI
• A 'Straw Man' is when a weaker (or sometimes an imaginary) version of an argument is attacked rather than the argument itself
• A 'False Dilemma' supposes that there are only two alternatives, for instance "We either pass this bill or we are no longer a Democracy", when there are in reality multiple intervening positions. 
• An 'Appeal to Authority' is when a person's intelligence, credentials or background are substituted for actual evidence, like when the opinion of Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Steven Hawking, eminent physicists, is treated as valid in the realm of economics or public health. 

In any logical fallacy, the person resorting to its use isn't necessarily wrong, just that they have not presented facts or evidence sufficient to back up their position. A person who says that Donald Trump was a bad president because he was a New York real estate developer may have been 100% correct about him being a bad president, but the fact that he was a New York real estate developer had nothing to do with it. That would be the ad hominem fallacy. 

The fallacy 'Hypothesis Contrary to Fact' gets used a lot, but the casual  participant in social media arguments may be unfamiliar with it. Simply put, the premise is something that didn't actually happen, which is used to support the conclusion. The fictional literature subgenre called "alternate history", or sometimes "contrafactual history" uses this fallacy. We've all likely heard of, if not read, the "If The South Won the Civil War" books. "The Man in the High Castle" by Phillip Dick builds upon the premise that the Allies lost World War II. (In a neat twist, the book references a fictional account of how the Allies won World War II). All of these stories are extended version of 'Hypothesis Contrary to Fact'.

How does this relate to current events? Many of us reacted to the news that the killer of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year by making statements that started with "If the killer was Black..." and drawing various conclusions about the outcome if this was true. I recently saw these types of statements described as "flawed and worthless" since the "if" portion of the statement, the premise, was false. I will concede two points: (1) The premise is not factual, the killer isn't Black and (2) We can't prove that the conclusion based on the contrafactual premise would have come to pass if the premise were true. 

So what?

No one who makes statements or shares opinions about what they think would have happened if the murderer of two people in Kenosha were Black thinks that they are proving anything. We'll never know for certain how the verdict would have been different, or even if he would have gotten past the police alive, if he had been Black...not with 100% certainty, but we can make a pretty good guess based on the difference between how armed White people and armed (or even unarmed) Black people are treated by law enforcement and by the courts. The lack of certainty is only a technicality within the laws of logic, which don't always align with the real world. There's certainly examples where, despite the presence of this particular fallacy, we can speculate pretty accurately how things would have turned out. I can state with a high degree of confidence that if I had begun contributing to a retirement account when I was 25, instead of when I actually did, at age 45, that my financial situation would be much better. Technically and logically, I don't know that, but...c'mon. 

There have been enough examples, enough of a trend, about how White and Black people have been treated and how they're viewed differently to come to reasonable conclusions. I think we can reasonably extend our suppositions to the difference in how progressive/left wing protesters are treated versus right wing protesters. There hadn't been a lot of shootings at last year's protests, but we have one example of Michael Reinoehl, a self-described Antifa activist, who allegedly shot and killed a right wing counter-protester in Seattle. Reinoehl never had the opportunity to plead self-defense at his trial because he didn't have a trial. He was shot and killed by police. We can also look at, specifically in Kenosha, how Black Lives Matter activists were viewed as a threat, while armed counter-protesters were allowed to roam freely, despite there being a curfew that the police were attempting to enforce on the BLM protesters. Of course, unless you have been hiding under the proverbial rock for the last few years we see how quick police are to shoot first, ask questions later when it comes to Black men. Right next to you under that same rock will be people who deny that there is racial bias in our legal system despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. 

So, even though, according to the rules of logic, a hypothesis contrary to fact is a logical fallacy, that doesn't mean that the conclusion is wrong, just that it can't be proven logically. Based on the long history of unequal justice in this country it's certainly reasonable to conclude that if the killer who roamed the streets of Kenosha with a deadly weapon, who had killed two people and wounded a third in plain sight, had been Black, he would not have been allowed to walk away, and likely would have been shot as a threat. And if he had survived that night, it's also reasonable to presume that he would have had a less friendly judge and spent time in jail. 

Not everything can be neatly tied up in a logician's bow.