Review: When Bad Things Happen To Good People

 I was, in November 2004, the victim of attempted murder. You might very well say God tried to kill me. (After all, not even a sparrow falls dead without God being there, the Bible says. And for those who would argue that it was the man's free will and was therefore out of God's hands: the Biblical God, the Bible says, created this man knowing he would try to kill me. And there is no free will, but not because of God's omniscience -- Boethius's argument is convincing to me. And I don't believe there is a God, so of course I'm just having a little fun at the expense of the religious.) I was being hacked to pieces by a man using a knife, and a family of Christians came down the trail and scared off my assailant. It was an act of random violence.

 One of my teachers, an instructor who taught my oil-painting class, gave me a book soon after he heard what had happened. It is called When Bad Things Happen To Good People. I read it once. It was given to me with humble good will and was written in good faith for the most part at least. The author, Harold S. Kushner and his wife (and his late son), experienced personal tragedy. They lost him to progeria, a disease that causes premature aging (among other things), when he was barely fourteen years old. In the book, Kushner comes to the conclusion that God must not be all-powerful. This is the death of the "Theistic God" -- or at least his emasculation.

Nietzsche was an Über-Skeptic

Nietzsche, nIetzsche, NIEtZschE, nieTZSCHe, nietzsche, and NIETZSCHE. Can you tell which is which?

  Young Nietzsche was a skeptic, in the full spirit of what is called "the skeptical movement." He was an advocate of science and was skeptical of religion, of superstition, of non-scientists who professed to knowledge, of morality, of the doctrine of freedom of the will, of the reasons we give for doing things and of our ability to know anything with absolute certainty. He saw science as tearing religion’s foundations out from under it. He was a powerful, creative thinker and asserted that schools should teach critical thinking and that science as a method is valuable to scientists and non-scientists alike. Nietzsche was an über-skeptic.

  I have chosen not to address the concerns many people have with Nietzsche’s thought, beyond this little disclaimer. I am not a philosopher, nor have I read many of his books. What I have read I've found completely fascinating. Being an iconic and radical thinker, he attracts lightning that lesser, more moderate or less known thinkers escape. Many factions claim or have claimed him as their own, whether it’s postmodernists, the Nazis, feminists, Ayn Rand, or others. Though he has been accused of much, there are Nietzsche scholars and other philosophers who defend him from accusations of wrong-doing (such as Walter Kaufmann). If you, dear reader, disagree with Nietzsche on some point or other -- and I do -- do not forget that it would be wrong to assert that the man had nothing worthwhile to say because of the point on which you differ. Of course, you can still say he had nothing worthwhile to say; but I hope to show that Nietzsche said some things, true and worthwhile, that are relevant to the skeptical community today and anticipated many of the ideas in circulation there.

Welcome to The Hyporheic Zone

The hyporheic zone is the region around a stream or river, both below and beside it, where water flows. Even if there is no water in the stream channel, there may still be water flowing beneath the surface. This water may churn and may not follow the river meander.

Water exchange between the channel and hyporheic zone (http://susa.stonedahl.com/research.html)

This blog will deal with matters that may be of interest to members of what is referred to by insiders as "the skeptical community," which I believe exists in the hyporheic zone, and the arrows in the diagram show possible interactions with the main currents of culture. It's just a metaphor! :)