I went to see Bill Maher’s documentary last night, on a balmy Miami night. Afterwards the rains came down in Biblical proportions, thus announcing God’s displeasure at the film and my attendance (I thwarted His wrath under a convenient restaurant umbrella). It’s an enjoyable and instructive film, especially if you enjoy groaning at people’s amazing credulity and nastiness, not the mention the silly outfits. What the film conveys better than any book is the sheer nuttiness of it all: the weird fantastical beliefs, the mental contortions, the verbal slipperiness, the flickering wild eyes. Each religion seems determined to outdo the others for sheer bizarreness—the less credible the better. The Mormon religion took the grand prize for me, with God relaxing on his nearby planet and Missouri the site of the Second Coming. But there was plenty to root for in the realms of the Higher Charlatanry, e.g. the portly Hispanic guy who fancies he is Jesus Christ (and thousands agree with him). My question afterwards was who was the most repulsive of the religious fanatics on display: Christians, Moslems and orthodox Jews had their strong contenders. This was equal-opportunity religion-bashing; except that Maher didn’t do much bashing, leaving that to the proponents of the various sects themselves. What a gallery of pious rogues! A book almost inevitably takes its subject seriously, but a film like this can simply let the camera record the gaudy tapestry of human delusion and manipulation. What they all had in common was that when testing questions were raised so were their hackles--and the whiff of violence was suddenly in the air. We knew all this before, of course, but seeing and hearing so much of it brought the whole terrible farce home.

I also learned something interesting: the remarkable parallels between the lives of Horus the mythical Egyptian falcon-god and our very own Jesus Christ—virgin birth, desert test, crucifixion, water-walking, dead-raising, light-giving, resurrected, three wise men, the whole shebang. I just looked this up on the internet and found a long list of strikingly exact parallels (I suggest you do the same). But when you think about it, this isn’t all that surprising: the gospels were penned long after Jesus’ death and the writers had to get their narrative from somewhere, especially for the early bits about his birth, childhood and so on—before he’d made his mark as a 30 year old. So they just copied the old story of Horus, evidently—which makes you wonder how much of the story of Jesus’ life in the Bible is really true. Perhaps hardly anything; maybe nothing. I used to think it must have some basis in historical fact, but the Horus-Jesus coincidence rather undermines that assumption.

My only serious objection to Maher is his insistence that we just don’t know the answers to the Big Questions, such as whether a god exists or where we go when we die. This is far too concessive. We certainly do know that Santa Klaus does not exist, or goblins, or three-legged giants who live in the fridge; it would be daft to be “agnostic” about such questions—and even dafter to remain “open-minded” about them. And we have every reason to believe that death is the end of the self, since we know that the mind depends on the brain. If you get brain damage a part of your mind goes out of existence; it would be absurd to think that it slides into an immortal limbo, waiting for the rest of your mind to join it when your brain goes totally kaput. Saying that such questions do not admit of rational answers simply invites the kind of superstitious nonsense Maher rightly ridicules. We indeed don’t know everything, but some things we know quite well—and the complete falsity of religious doctrine is one of them.

I'm thinking seriously about play and games in preparation for my forthcoming seminar on sports and philosophy (which will include actual physical activity). I've just read three books related to this. First is Mark Rowlands' new book The Philosopher and the Wolf, a stunningly good narrative about the author's relationship with his "pet" wolf. Among many wonderful and poignant moments, the book talks about the wolf's style of play and its style of life. This reinforced my view that play connects us with our animal heritage, which is a good (not a bad!) thing. Then there is Johan Huizinga's old (1938) Homo Ludens, a learned anthropological treatise on the role of play in shaping civilisation, in which game-playing comes to seem the dominant feature of human life. Finally, Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper, a minor masterpiece, strangely neglected by mainstream philosophy, in which the author defines the notion of a game with great insight and sophistication--the main point being that a game always proceeds by erecting obstacles to achieving its goal, instead of adopting the most direct means possible. This book also puts play at the centre of human (and animal) life, declaring games the highest form of human activity. All in all, we need to get serious about our game-playing and stop thinking it's peripheral or somehow inferior to "work". My own recent book, Sport, argues much the same, but I'm glad to have found three such ringing ensdorsements of this ludic point of view.

People don't just believe that there exists a god; they also believe that there is only one. Disbelievers understandably focus on the existence claim, but the uniqueness claim can also be subjected to critical scrutiny. Why are believers so convinced there is only one God? What reason is there to make this assumption? Polytheism was the common opinion for much of human history--what with all the conflicting forces that seem to exist in the world. Now uniqueness is the dogma, with little or no supporting argument. Creationism certainly doesn't require monotheism. In fact, of course, the uniqueness dogma is traditionally somewhat wavering, because of the doctrine of the trinity and the angels and whatnot--various godlike entities distinct from the Head Honcho. I really don't know why theists cleave to the one-god hypothesis, unless to rule out rival gods from alien peoples. Is it just psychologically more comfortable? Is it because you only have one dad? And what are the identity conditions for gods anyway? When do you have one or many? How are gods to be individuated?

The writers and editors at the New York Times evidently need to feel a lot more linguistic insecurity than they do. On the editorial page of today's paper (August 30th) I was appalled to read the following, in a discussion of McCain's choice of Palin as his VP: "That really is the only criteria for judging a candidate for vice president." Don't they know that "criteria" is the plural and "criterion" the singular? It should (of course) be "that...criterion"; it can only be "those...criteria". You hear the mistake in conversation fairly often--but on the editorial page of the NY Times! Deplorable. Pathetic. Contemptible. And obviously it's not just one person who doesn't get it; a lot of people must have let that pass. Some serious knuckle-rapping needs to be done there--or firing. And while I'm on the subject, people have to stop saying "phenomena" when they mean "phenomenon"--using the plural when they mean the singular. But I bet there won't even be any embarrassment in the editorial offices of the Times over this "criteria" fuck-up--as if only the most pedantic of pedants would even notice it. I threw the paper across the room when I read it.

Speech carries various anxieties. Fear of asserting what is false should count as the most serious--inadvertent falsehood, as opposed to plain lying. The philosophical skeptic taps into this fear, making assertion seem perilous. In the 20th century fear of meaningless utterance became acute: it was all too easy to confuse the grammatical with the meaningful and end up spouting nonsense (the positivists tapped into this fear). This is more disturbing than the skeptical insinuation, because while truth is not transparent we feel that meaningfulness should be. Another linguistic fear, though, is the fear of cliche, of saying the hackneyed and over-used. I've always had a dread of this form of linguistic calamity and will go to almost any verbal lengths to avoid cliche--and yet the fear of it still dogs me. How can anyone still permit themselves to utter the phrases "emotional roller-coaster", "voracious reader", "like a deer caught in the headlights", etc? I wouldn't be caught dead with that stuff coming out of my mouth. What other linguistic fears are there? It would be interesting to compile a list and then impose a taxonomy. Speech is always an arena of anxiety, is it not?

The other day I was on the tennis court alone, practicing my serve. From nowhere I heard a sudden loud noise, like an explosive. I couldn't make out the source but then I noticed a flattened can on the other side of the court, about fifteen feet way. I went over to investigate and found a squashed can of corn beef hash, full, heavy. It had evidently been dropped from above the court, at least twenty floors up (the building has 44 floors and faces the tennis court). The act of dropping it had clearly been intentional and the purpose was presumably to scare me. If it had hit me on the head, it would certainly have killed me, such was the power of the impact. Reflecting on the incident later, it occurred to me that this was a minor act of terrorism: the purpose was to infuse an ordinary, peaceful activity--playing tennis--with fear and anxiety. And it worked: since that day I am always looking up and the calm of my tennis has been replaced with a kind of dread. Terrorists have made even the quotidian and tranquil into a zone of fear. Boy, would I like catch the person who did it. There is something nauseatingly sinister about the terrorist intention: to remove peace of mind.

How well understood is motion, really? Physics is supposed to be the science that predicts and explains all motions of matter; it describes the laws that govern the forces that move things. But there are some big gaps. The motions of particles are notoriously unpredictable and inexplicable at the quantum level, but at the cosmic level we have the problem of explaining galaxy acceleration--the universe is expanding more slowly than the calculated amount of matter in it would make us expect, given the accepted rules of gravity. Physicists have taken to speaking of "dark matter" a what accounts for the extra pull, but there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of such a thing--and isn't the idea of intrinsically invisible matter an oxymoron? It's just sheer handwaving. So we don't know why the cosmos is movingas it is. Do we know why animal bodies move as they do? Doesn't the mind play a role in "determining" these movements? But physics has nothing to say about the forces that govern the mind and its capacity to induce motion. I sometimes wonder if any motion has really been explained.

I recall reading somewhere that Keynes criticized Russell for saying that the problem with the world is that people are irrational and that the solution is that they should become rational. It seems a fair comment on Russell--but why is it a criticism? Because Russell's observation is a datum not an explanation: we want to know why people are irrational and how to improve their rationality. It's obvious what the problem is and also what the solution would be--but we need to know what causes irrationality and what we can do to fix it. Freud had a kind of theory of this but nowadays it looks pretty wacky. There seems to be a big theoretical gap here, urgently needing to be filled. (Of course, we won't recognize it if we start doubting that rationality is a robust matter.) I don't have a theory myself--human irrationality can seem the oddest and least adaptive trait of the species--but I do think we need to work on it. Why do people go around believing silly things and acting idiotically?

The New York Times (as well as AOL) today ran a picture of a lesbian couple getting married in California: Del Martin, 87, Phyllis Lyon, 84. They are holding hands and looking into each other's eyes, lined and grey and not long for this world; they have been together for 50 years. Doesn't it make you feel embarrassed that discrimination and prejudice have prevented them by law from getting married all these years? Doesn't it seem just utterly ridiculous? All this stuff about marriage being between a man and a woman: it's just complete whooey. I really wonder what all those anti-gay-marriage twits out there think and feel when they see a picture like that. Do they feel their own marriages under threat because these two old ladies are finally able to tie the knot? I think we owe them an apology myself.

Despite my many misgivings about our prized political system, it did manage to elect Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee. I'm pleasantly surpised at my fellow man. It's not just his color, but also his calm, measured style, and obvious moral quality. But his color is, of course, highly significant. I can hardly think of a better thing for this country, and the world, than that he should be elected president. Political and moral progress is possible. Many blacks reported tears in their eyes when the announcement of his nomination was made; mine were damp too. This is a Big One. There's nothing quite so gratifying as seeing a horrible prejudice smashed to pieces.

I am struck by this passage from Tocqueville: "I have previously stated that the principle of the sovereignty of the people hovers over the whole political system of the Anglo-Americans. Every page of this book will reflect certain fresh instances of this doctrine. In nations were it exists, every individual takes an equal share in sovereign power and participates equally in the government of the state. Thus he is considered as enlightened, virtuous, strong as any of his fellow men." Toqueville's point is that democracy presupposes that each person is as competent and virtuous as any other. But of course this is false: people differ widely in intelligence and virtue. Note that he says "considered" not "really". So democracy rests on a lie. How, then, to defend democracy? Well, if truth, reason, virtue, etc are not objective qualities that people exemplify to varying degrees, but are rather relative to each person, we have a way out: everyone is as smart and good as anyone else to himself. Then democracy rests on no lie, since everyone really is cognitively and morally equal. Relativism steps in to save democracy from its noble lie. Thus relativism finds a foothold. But relativism is rubbish; so where does that leave democracy?

I watch how tennis players serve with great concentration. They all do it pretty much in the same way. And this way is quite different from the way amateur players serve, even quite decent amateur players. Claudio taught me the finer points of serving a few months ago (now, alas, he is back in Germany). High toss, long reach, bring the feet together, use a throwing action, backhand grip, snap the wrist down, plenty of side and top spin. It was incredibly awkward for me at first (backhand grip?!), but I took to practicing it almost every day for several months--not just on the court with a hopper of balls but also in my living room (no ball, just air). Gradually, the pieces came together, with some striking breakthroughs. Now what seemed alien feels natural. I can't serve any other way. It feels good to hit it just the way the pros do. There's a moral here--but I think it's too obvious for me to want to spell it out. Main point is: instead of fearing to serve, now I love to serve. Indeed, I can't wait to get down to the court and hit some serves.

My son Bruno told me yesterday that he'd just been watching a video of me on Youtube. Eventually it became clear what this video was of: a discussion I participated in a few years ago at the Philoctetes Centre in New York about evolution, consciousness, and the meaning of it all. I hadn't even remembered that it was being filmed, but it's a mark of our digital times that it has now shown up on the internet to be accessed by my son 3000 miles away. But that's not the point I'm most interested in making here; because Bruno observed that the scientists present were generally disagreeable and closed-minded (he actually used a much stronger word to describe them). And he's a scientist himself--a doctor (ENT). This prompted me to ponder who is more deplorable among us: the superstitious zealots who limit their knowledge to what the Bible tells them or the scientists who are unable or unwilling to take any question seriously which has no scientific answer--which includes most of the questions I as a philosopher spend my time on. Specifically, several of those present hated my bringing up the point that we have no good scientific theory of how consciousness evolved in the first place (or how it arises in the brain of every human being at some point or another--and not just human brains). Why are people so incapable of stepping outside the narrow world-view of their specific range of expertise--either the Bible or their particular scientific discipline? Is it fear, narcissism, laziness, bloody-mindedness?

Just when you think that, just conceivably, you might be overdoing the anti-religious diatribes, you read something like the article I came across last Saturday in the New York Times, about a chap called Specialist Jeremy Hall who was systematically persecuted by his army superiors and fellow soldiers for his atheist views. Particularly odious was the pressure to pray with others when he declared his lack of belief (not to mention the physical threats he endured). Such, apparently, is the military mind (excuse the oxymoron). We know they are a conformist lot, but I had no idea that religious conformity is rigorously enforced, though not officially. Anyway, it made me think of yet another reason to deny God's existence: surely if he did exist he'd come forward to denounce the actions performed in his name. I would, wouldn't you? At least he'd send some sort of emissary, if not his son then at least some high-ranking celestial colleague or other--the angel Gabriel doesn't seem to have been up to much for a while, lolling away up there. Send someone important to earth, put people straight about right and wrong, about what God really wants from us. But oh no, God just lets it all happen--even atrocities on a vast scale. A few words from him, convincingly stated, and we would know what's what, but apparently he just can't be bothered. More likely, the lack of divine corrective indicates a lack of divine existence. Specialist Hall, I'm with you.

As the Obama/Clinton wars drag on, I think of the malign effects of elections. We don't have a pure participatory democracy, such as once obtained in Athens, no doubt for good reasons of practicality. We have a so-called representative democracy, which requires that we elect our leaders by something like popular vote. This requires those things dignified by the word "election": money-driven, ad hominem, gotcha-loving, manipulative, mindfucking, demeaning, grotesque, corrupt, vicious, boring, fake, and so on. The candidates have to persuade the electorate to vote for them, and from this simple fact all the evils flow (combined with a full-blown capitalist-media complex). Imagine having to make yourself popular with everyone in order to be promoted in your job! I would never have got anywhere. I rather despise popularity, seeing it as the sure mark of a lack of integrity. Democracy is bad enough, but to combine it with the hunger for mass popularity is ten times worse. Down with elections!