Phillip the Infidel

A Short Story of Banishment

2008-05-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

Having read some interesting texts concerning a practice that was performed some time ago, I wish now to attempt to pursue it here.

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I had been walking through the field to the south of Mr. Miller's cottage for about an hour, giving myself entirely to my thoughts, when the incident took place. I shall do as best I can to transcribe it here in a manner that preserves both the consequences of the revelation and the horror I felt as I beheld it.

There is a large set of boulders amongst the unused fields of Mr. Miller's more extensive properties. Some have speculated that the rocks were once a mill. Some children in town fancy it to be the ruins of an ancient castle. Indeed, I was wont to fantasy concerning its nature on nights like that of my experience. But something was different about the stones on that evening. A sound like a crying child emanated from amongst them.

The moon was fully out and so I believed that it would be no trouble for me to spot the injured child. After searching amongst the rocks I was dismayed to find nothing but frustration and bafflement. The sounds faded, dodging this way and that, seeping like air from one space into another, and never remaining stationary for long enough to be connected with anything physical in my vicinity. No child was to be found among the boulders.

I looked up into the ghastly and horrified lunar face as it stared its thousand-yard stare into me. Nearly all members of my race had beheld those eyes, the rocky tears streaming from the deadened face. But did they hear sounds emanating from the thing as I did?

I closed my eyes and imagined the moon. What would it be like were it the source of the mournful emanations that permeated my surroundings? What child could it be? I envisioned the hands of the child covering and obscuring the rounded face, the long hair of a little girl falling upon the shoulders of the body wracked by sobs. And words? What words would the moon speak?

"I am sorry," the voice intoned, broken by sighs.

Below the girl were masses of men. There was Abraham, staring up into the teary face and drawing his dagger to strike his son. There was Noah, building his ship to avoid the consequences of deforestation and excessive farming. I looked closer, toward the meek who hid in the shadows. One demanded that those around him change and become as children. He even threatened that it would be better that they drown with millstones tied around their necks than that they should cause a child to do wrong. And yet, that, it seems, was exactly what the child before me had done.

"I am so sorry," the whimpering resumed. "That I made you and turned you loose into this."

Chaos below continued. Wars lashed this way and that, all for want of the favour of the saddened and insatiable child above. When the weeping subsided and I looked again around myself I still found nothing. The moon had, by this time, been obscured behind the passing clouds and so I decided to proceed back home to my house in town.

I had not finished opening the door to my bedroom when I noticed something odd in the darkness, a thing that was quite out of place. I thought I could hear the unmistakable sighing, the occasional soft patter of tears against the wooden floor.

With morbid trepidation at the specter of my home invaded by my whimsical imagination, I reached for the light switch. Flicking the light on, I caught a brief glimpse of a child now standing before me. But at the blink of my eye the apparition was gone. I stepped into my room, believing the matter concluded only to stub my toe against a large rock dropped on the floor in front of me.

I Lost a Pound!

2008-03-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

I have just lost one pound of body weight. Perhaps I should rephrase that. Over the past week, I lost one pound. I cannot say that I have been eating very healthily, but perhaps eating even better still will enable me to lose the weight even more quickly.

Of Self Sufficiency

2008-03-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

I am an obese man. I am an atheist. I claim that the atheist, or more generally the person who lacks any belief in an entity which has conferred upon him a purpose, may engender that purpose for himself or seek it in others. It is at the former fountainhead that I shall drink now. Or perhaps I should say that I will drink in moderation.

It is my intention to confer upon myself the purpose of losing weight. In doing so, I wish to contend that a person able and willing to take care of himself has also the potential to do so for others. More on that later.

I have an autistic friend who recently lost weight. I chatted with him about it and he said that all he really did was to cut down on the total calories he consumed each day. Then he proceeded to rattle off a plethora of mathematical formulae and rhetoric about negative energy balances. In any case, I told him that what he was describing constituted a diet. Diets for me are stupid because they cause people to regain the weight after they've lost it. "But what other option do you have?" he asked me. Touche.

Right now I weigh 230 pounds. I want to get down to 200. Can I do it? Can I confer upon myself the mission of shedding those 30 pounds? If I can do that, can I then seek greater purposes without recourse to some supernatural deity?

A Short List of Reasons I became an Atheist

2008-02-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

1. The God I experienced was a mere emotional complex rather than a relational being.
2. There are a plethora of religions other than Christianity
3. Needed to pick and choose from the Bible in order to maintain my respect for science and my respect for God
4. Multiple interpretations of scripture, suggesting an ambiguity of meaning where a relational being like God ought to have taken more care in ensuring such a cacophony of interpretations didn't arise in the first place
5. The progressive churches like the Meeting House propped up the absolutist claims of Christianity on a language of a rejection of religion. Those other faiths are religions, but we followers of Christ are irreligious. This is both dishonest and downright insulting to the intelligence of the audience.

And this list is by no means complete.

Thanking Goodness

2008-02-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

I must say that I appreciated Daniel Dennet's short essay "Thank Goodness", as found in CHristopher HItchens' anthology "The Portable Atheist." What I liked most about it was Denne's suggestion that repaying "goodness" as an abstract notion is not so much paying tribute to an abstract entity (a la God) as continuing to propagate actions which might are themselves good. "If you want to express your gratitude to goodness, you can plant a tree, feed an orphan" or do any number of other things which might benefit humanity as a whole (Daniel Dennet reproduced in Christopher Hitchens. "The Portable Atheist" Philidelphia: Da Capo Press, 2007, 281).

More from Thomas Cleary's Translation of Liu I-Ming

2008-01-29T16:27:00.000-08:00

p. 29 Further similarity to platonic dualism in the author's description of the mind as master of the body.

p. 31 Discussions of humility similar to those of Christianity: "...the more elevated the path the humbler the mind." Also on this page, interesting ideas about responding to events and situations as they are, rather than according to how you hope them to be.

p. 32 Miraculous effects ensuing over time as people worship effigies/idols. Could this be a description of the kind of thing that happens in some worship services today?

The text talks a lot of concentrating on the real while getting rid of the artificial. I wonder if the writer would have thought the same of some of the philosophical dilemmas presented in modern western philosophy. For example, would this philosophy of being bothered only with the real have had any patience for such problems as those of demonstrating the reality of things in and of themselves? See, for example p. 29, 32-33

p. 35f Paradoxical statements of what is desirable in human behaviour. For example, "...tranquil and unstirring yet sensitive and effective, sensitive and effective yet tranquil and unstirring..." One wonders if the author is trying to capture the often nonsensical nature of the real world and then write a manual for how to act like the world out there.

My Readings: Awakening to the Tao

2008-01-26T20:01:00.000-08:00

As I read books I often like to note the pages of good ideas. I think I'll start putting them here so that I or others can read them.

Right now, I'm reading Thomas Cleary's translation of "Awakening to the Tao", by "Liu I-Ming." Here's the exact information in case you'd like to create a citation:

Liu I-Ming, Thomas Cleary, trans. "Awakening to the Tao." Boston: Shambhala, 2006

pp 8,9 This text often uses the following construction:
Note a phenomenon of nature
Describe how this is like "the tao of...."
example on pp 8,9

p.10 Similar to Christianity's reaping of what you sow

9f Mental stabilization compared with the interaction between murcury ("quicksilver") and lead. I wonder, is there a chemical basis behind this?

11f A good passage for those people who are made weary by life's trials. I've met a few myself. Any kind of nice sounding idea you might have they beat down and try to use to infect you with negative and cynical views of the world. What an awful and defeatist way of living!

p.13 Always keeping yourself humble with few ambitions as a way of having long life. But what's the difference between this and stagnation? Also, could this contradict p.5, and the thunder and the wind? If one makes up one's mind for a plan of action (perhaps a personal project?) but then proceeds to tamper and lower ambition how can she get anywhere with it?

p. 17 Seeing the body as an affliction. This is similar to Plato and also to the Christian reformed theology preached by such thinkers as Calvin. Liu I-Ming talks of a "true self" as opposed to the body, which he calls "the other."

Cognitive Dissonance

2007-12-01T16:39:00.000-08:00

Recently, a friend of mine lost a large amount of weight. I've often wondered, being overweight myself, what it must take to lose weight. How does one decide to diet and to stick to it? Whenever I've tried to lose weight I've run into issues with cognitive dissonance. That is, I start controlling what I eat, but then the minute I eat something out of line with this control, I fall back into my old habbits.

Faith and Low Self Esteem

2007-08-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

I am a member of a certain online community of mostly atheists who take to debating with Christians regarding the existence of God, the validity of religion, and other such expected things. One day I posted a question to that group. Could it be, I asked, that faith acts as an excuse or a cover for an individual's low self esteem?

At the time I did not have more than a few short reasons for my connecting the two. So I decided that it might be a good idea to make use of my blog to flesh out the idea a little more.

Suppose I were to approach a Christian millionaire and ask him what was the source of his riches. I would not be surprised if he responded that in fact they were a blessing from God. Suppose I were to ask him then what he would do were he to lose all of his money one day and end up a bum on the street. I think - and there is no shortage of Biblical wisdom to back my assertion - that he would respond that in fact God was either punishing him or trying to teach him a lesson about some charitable idea or another.

What if the bum soon were to regain his riches and still more through hard work? A blessing from God! he would refrain. And if I asked him if he might be in possession of an industrious spirit? No, he would answer, because pride in one's self comes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18).

My point is that the meek whom we are told will inherit the earth are probably stronger than they realize if they are successful in whatever ventures they pursue. I suspect that in fact they are projecting whatever strengths they might have upon God above. It could not be they who are the authors of their own fortunes. That would avail them of the terrifying prospect that in fact God is not needed in order to explain a lot of what happens in this world.

My Infidelity

2007-08-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am not wont to discuss my personal life story very often, but as doing so will provide some insight into the purpose behind this blog I will give a brief explanation.

I am Phillip Montgomery. I had been a Christian throughout most of my youth. That is not to say that I never had doubts. For example, during my early childhood I dabbled in atheism insofar as I held little of the Bible's creation stories to be anything other than allegory, defending that thesis with a knowledge of evolution. It was during high school that my lack of social skills compelled me to seek friends in the otherworldly realm of Heaven. That was in 1996.

In 2000 the first seeds of doubt were sewn when I picked up Richard Brodie's "Virus of the Mind" and learned that my faith was nothing more than a memetic virus. Also during that time the cost of being a Christian soon became more apparent as I met people who interpreted the Bible literally to the point of actually trying to construct scientific arguments to defend stupid notions such one which posits a 6000-year-old earth! I attended a Christian university and profited greatly from what I thought were divine experiences of God. Ironically, however, such experiences would later lead to the downfall of my faith as a Christian.

When I entered the working world I soon realized that the positive emotions associated with worshiping God communally were in fact merely highs akin to those experienced by drug addicts. The flashes of spiritual illumination I felt on Sunday had quickly disappeared by Monday morning when it was time to return to work. Where was this God who comforted me? The answer is in fact that God is no more real than the positive rush one might experience when being taken in by a self help book. He (rather I should use the word it) is just a set of feelings that can, under the correct circumstances, be aroused and then experienced as though they emanated from a separate person.

So why do I bother to keep a blog? One reason is that it is often claimed that atheists don't have a sense of purpose in life because such a purpose could only be conferred upon a person, not engendered within her own mind. I want to dispel that myth here by means of example (from my life, naturally). Another reason is that I want to help other struggling Christians to kick the addiction and to join the human race.

First Post

2007-07-28T00:56:00.001-07:00

I am rather tired unfortunately, and so I don't have much to say. I hope to give some explanation as to the reason behind this blog soon enough. I suspect there are already many atheist-oriented blogs on the internet, and so the addition of mine will have little effect. So in the coming posts I will try to rectify that by giving some account of who I am and how I came to be an atheist.