Barack Obama for President in '09

I've got some news for you, and you may be shocked. You see, Barack Obama's our President.

No, really.

I'm not sure whether you heard it or not, since it was hard to make it out over all the shouts and sounds of celebration. It may have been an election of epic proportions, as it seems a large portion of the population would be gathering along Pennsylvania Avenue to spread palm branches in his path as he rode to his inauguration on a donkey's colt. Meanwhile, in other locations, there would be a weeping and gnashing of teeth as people stood by to witness the abomination of desolation.

See, this is exactly the sort of thing that's been bothering me for so long, and I'm afraid it's not going to stop now that the election's over. It's been so long since we had a "normal" election, that I think we forgot what it was like. John McCain's concession speech was quite moving and humble, but a speech like that should be the norm. Politicians like McCain and Obama must live in the eye of the storm, where there is calm enough that they can actually graciously bow out of a race or accept victory. How many people were surprised and disappointed when John Kerry conceded after only a day of waiting, rather than fighting it out over weeks like we did in 2000? In the age we live in of electronic counting of votes, there should rarely be a reason that elections take more than 24 hours. This Election Day went satisfyingly smoothly, like that refreshing beer that most people would probably enjoy sharing with their candidate, but not the other. (Side note for those who still think Barack Obama is a Muslim: I thought he should have dispelled rumors by being photographed eating pork, but he was photographed drinking alcohol, which wasn't enough for some. No matter.)

I myself would probably enjoy sharing a beer with either candidate, or even President Bush, despite our differences in politics. Maybe that's my problem; that I don't try and divide people into who I'd enjoy being around and who I wouldn't. I've commented many times before actually that while I strongly despise what Osama bin Laden stands for, I suspect he's rather friendly and personable on a one-on-one basis, since he's only human. All of these people are only human. They're just people. To quote from C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian:

"You come from Lord Adam and Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content."

Whether you believe in the story of Adam and Eve, whether or not you're of any particular religious persuasion, I think this is a deep truth, and one we need to apply to all of our leaders, as well as our aspiring leaders. We're all just human beings.

There's a lot of talk about the fact that Obama is now our first black President, and what an historic moment it is. This is definitely true, but I think there's something to be said about it after we savor the moment as simply a moment. A pundit on television election night made an interesting observation as he was talking with an elderly black gentleman who had been involved with the struggles for racial equality in the '50s and '60s. I don't remember his exact words, and not being connected to the Internet as I write this, I can't look them up, but he said something like, "The really great thing about this transition point in history is that unlike similar transitions in the past, there was not so much of a struggle, but simply an acceptance of it. This was the act of approval by the whole country." Yes, unlike the desegregation of our schools, our places of business, and our professional sports, which largely had to be forced, the desegregation of that exclusive 44-member club came about with about as much conflict as any other inauguration (although the actual inauguration is still two months to come).

Really, this should be no surprise on at least one level. Sure, if you want to make sure there are people of certain races in the local school, you can endeavor to force them to go there, and force those who don't want them there to accept them, albeit begrudgingly. It is, however, the nature of a democratically-elected office that you can't force this one, so of course it happened peacefully. There may indeed have been people who voted for Obama because he's black, but I doubt the number that voted for him specifically for that reason was high. Speaking for myself, I would never vote for Al Sharpton, nor would I vote for Clarence Thomas (were he to run), but it has nothing to do with their race and everything to do with their politics. It's simply the case that given the current political climate, Obama was more palatable than McCain to a majority of voters.

In some ways, it's this matter-of-fact-ness that I see as the reason we have to let this moment pass. Yes, it's a great day in our history, but it still has potential to be a dismal four years. Obama is still just another politician; I have high hopes for his term in office, but like everyone who has gone before, he will disappoint us. Not all the time; hopefully not even much of the time; but certainly some of the time.

See, that feeling so many of us feel that is seen as a moment of triumph has great potential to become a moment of sorrow. Every time we look at Obama and say, "Look at how great our President is doing...and he's black!" we give an open invitation for his detractors to say at other times "Look at how terrible our President is doing...and he's black!" Is that what we want?

I'll mention Asimov's biography again, as I've been doing ever since I read it. A Jewish friend once came to Asimov (who is likewise from a Jewish background) and said, "I'm really proud that an inordinately large number of Nobel laureates are Jewish!" Asimov replied, "Did you know that an inordinately large number of pornographic film producers and directors are Jewish?" The man was stunned. "Is that true?" he asked. Asimov replied, "I made it up, but it could be true. How would you feel if it was?"

The point here is, if you're going to take everything Obama does in his life and put it in the mental sorting bin of "African-American achievements", then you're going to have to put his failures there, too, and he will have them. George W. Bush has left behind more than a few messes to clean up that simply won't be pretty no matter what the resolution. In inheriting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, history will put part of the blame for the aftermath of those wars on Obama's shoulders. Do you think a really happy ending is likely there? Do you think it's unthinkable that yet another war might begin while Obama is in office? Contrary to the beliefs of some (and such beliefs I find offensive, even as a Democrat who is no fan of the Bush presidency), the 9/11 attacks were on our country as a whole, not on any particular administration. If al-Qaeda strikes again in the next four years, don't think Obama will fail to respond with some sort of military action.

But I'm getting off track. I think Obama is going to be a good President, maybe the best we've had since Kennedy, but we really can't know how things will turn out, can we? As a T-shirt slogan I saw on the Internet said in reference to Obama, "Dare to hope. Prepare to be disappointed." I think it was referring to the election, but really, we should have an attitude like that about the next four years.

Barack Obama is just another President, and compared to some people it makes me a pessimist (compared to many others, it makes me an optimist, of course) to believe that the next four years will just be a fairly run-of-the-mill time period. But think about it, all you Obama true believers and hopers: in comparison to the last eight years, wouldn't "run-of-the-mill" be a great improvement? I, for one, welcome it.

Lactose intolerance

In one chapter of Isaac Asimov's autobiography, he talked at length about the sorts of letters he gets from readers, and in particular, there was one type of letter that he always thought strange. As a life-long atheist, he often would get letters from people who had something to say about his spiritual state. Some would inform him that they would be praying for him, to which he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, okay, if it makes them feel better. Another type though, the one that was the really strange one, was letters from readers denouncing him for his atheism, and telling him what a terrible person he was for not believing in God, and how much they despised him. He said he wrote one of these people back and said, "I am sure you believe I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"

Asimov apparently lived a very happy life. Throughout his autobiography, he repeatedly reports that he has had nothing to complain about, having spent his life largely doing the thing he loved most: writing. There were a few regrets (a failed first marriage), but he had the sense to try always to look on the bright side of those (two wonderful children that brought him much joy). Despite the fact that obviously, as a Christian I disagree with his theological views, I have a lot of respect for the man, who seems to at least have been true to himself in his life, if not to any sort of higher power which he didn't believe in anyway.

I'm glad Asimov had a happy life. As a Christian, I have to believe it highly likely that yes, in fact, Asimov is in Hell now. Knowing that, why would anyone endeavor to make someone's life miserable because of their belief in greater misery to come? It's a very good question, and one to which Asimov never got an answer.

This is not an essay on Asimov, nor on Proposition 8, which will come up as a big part of the inspiration for my writing of this. It's not even an essay on salvation, although that's obviously important. This is an essay about hatefulness.

The other day, I saw... Well, I've told this story to a few people, and I realized that the best way to tell it is to leave out details that might give away anything to reveal the identities of the parties involved, so as not to bias it. After all, the story is about the event, not the political positions of the persons involved. The other day, I saw a person standing on a street corner holding up a sign that espoused their view on Proposition 8. A car came by, and did not slow down, but somebody leaned out the passenger window with a sign espousing their support for the opposing view, and waved it in the face of the person on the corner, shaking their fist. I was appalled. It seemed to me that this was an incredibly stupid and dangerous action on the part of the passenger (probably illegal, too). They were making a fool of themselves and potentially endangering themselves, the person on the corner, the driver, and various others in the vicinity, just so they could put on a public display of hatred for a political position.

If the pro-8 people believe they're going to win, what purpose does it serve to make the lives of homosexuals (and gay-friendly heteros) miserable on the way to taking away the rights they think they deserve? If the anti-8 people think they're going to win, what's the point of rubbing the noses of homophobes in it and making them miserable? Is hate doing anything to make the world a better place? Why are people getting so worked up about this law that in the end will pretty much stop nobody from doing anything? If it passes, the pro-homosexual activists will just keep pushing until it's taken out of the constitution. If it fails, the proponents will bring it back next year. Anna Quindlen was so wrong about the debate over same-sex marriage being over that it's scary. This is a debate and a fight that will never end.

We human beings are very good at hating. We hate people who have different philosophical views, we hate people who have different sexual orientations, we hate people who have different political positions, we hate people who have the wrong color skin, we even hate ourselves sometimes. What good does it do to hate, though? I'm certainly not hate-free. I'm human, but at the same time, I recognize that on those occasions wherein I experience hate, my hate is doing nothing to make the world--or even my own personal experience of the world--any better. I can hold it in and fume over it, damaging my own sense of peace, or I can lash out and become the villain. Neither one is going to improve my happiness. Why do we do it?

It seems like everyone I know either hates Barack Obama or hates John McCain. Some people hate both of them. They're just a couple politicians, both of which are doing the best they can in their own belief to make the country a better place. They're not bad people, neither one of them, no matter what you believe about them. I only wish it were that simple to convince people of this fact. I know who I'm voting for, but I also know that whoever wins, people are going to be angry and disappointed. People are going to view the losing of their candidate as an earth-shattering event. I don't get it. How many Presidents have really made changes that have deeply, radically changed the country as we know it? Abraham Lincoln? Franklin Roosevelt? Ronald Reagan? They steer the country, but we're a country so large that, like an aircraft carrier, turning around is a slow and laborious process. If the next President is headed the wrong way, then simply wait four years and get a new one. Meanwhile the Supreme Court legalizes abortions, desegregates schools, and makes the real changes in the country while Justices keep their positions for life.

Darnit, this is all so fleeting! Why do we get so caught up in this? Politics are important, but they're temporary. If the average person lives 80 years, then a Presidential term is just five percent of a lifetime. Raising a child is a task that will stretch through five terms, but will have an impact that potentially reaches for generations. On the national level, my political opinion is just one among half a million, but at home, my influence on my kids is about 50%. Do I want to teach them to hate, or do I want to teach them to stand up for what's right with love and compassion? However I express myself, they will pick it up and emulate it.

That goes for politics, yes, but it also goes for spiritual matters. Going back to my original line of thought, what good does it do to hate non-Christians? Hatred is not going to save a single soul, is it? Hatred is the sort of emotion that consigns people to Hell, not the sort of emotion that draws them out of it. I fear that Christians are caught up in the pop-culture theology that says, "Bad people go to Hell." Not that they truly believe this heresy, but that they draw on this concept to prove to themselves that since non-Christians are going to Hell, they must be bad people, and deserve to be punished. Funny, I don't see that in the Bible; I see the statement that God wants to see everyone saved. I see the statement that Christians who can't live in peace are severely lacking in spiritual maturity.

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? (ICor. 3:1-3)

How can anyone think that hate can be the foundation of anything good?

Let's talk about what to so many Christians is their pet topic: abortion. Where in the Bible does God say that people who are "pro-choice" are going to Hell? Where does it even say they are bad? If abortion is murder, then we're faced with a challenge: If people don't believe abortion is murder, then they'll never agree that it's something bad that should be made illegal. In order to change abortion, we supposedly need to change the law, but the law is made by people. You won't change the law unless you change people's minds. You won't change people's minds unless you change their hearts. You won't change their hearts unless you convince them to let God into their lives. If you want to save all those unborn babies, you could spend some time barricading clinics or protesting Planned Parenthood, but in my opinion, the best way to really make the situation better is to show some love and share the Gospel with people. Do you really believe that all Christians will be against abortion? Then you'd better figure out how to make this a nation of Christians.

I'll give you a clue: you're not going to make converts through hate.

The masters of science fiction

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

I think I've finally figured out the problem with science. That is to say, I think I know what the real issue is with the public perception of science, and what it is about it that makes the average layman surprisingly loath to trust it. Let's face it; every day we're going to open the newspaper and find another story along the lines of some school board refusing to teach evolution, and the more "enlightened" among us will shake their heads and mumble something along the lines of, "Are we living in the dark ages or something?" Well, I've decided that in the end, the problem surprisingly lies with science itself, and the manner in which science by its very nature generates its own bad press.

I don't remember what it was that was simmering somewhere on the back-burners of my mind the other day as I was perusing some essays by Isaac Asimov, but maybe it will come back to me, as it had become a thought suddenly boiled over when I hit a particular sentence in one of his essays. Just in case you're not familiar with Asimov--and actually, you're probably not as familiar as you think you are even if you do know something about him--he's probably best known as a science fiction writer, but also carried on his resume a number of works of fiction in the genres of mystery and fantasy, as well as a certain amount of writing on science fact, history, and Biblical commentary. Asimov was probably my favorite author as a child, and I'd always wanted to write as well as he did, but never thought it likely. Turns out my wish may have come true: while his storytelling is superb, his essays are pretty crappy. I am in good company after all.

It's probably actually not his essay writing overall, but this particular subset. I picked up a copy of Magic: The final fantasy collection, which is a gathering together of all Asimov's "fantasy stories that have never before appeared in book form." Truth be told, even the fiction is not quite as good as his sci-fi works elsewhere, but the section of essays dissecting the nature of the fantasy genre seem to really fall short. Maybe it's just me. Actually, one of the hard things in evaluating the fiction is that not too much of it falls into the standard sort of format that one thinks of as "fantasy"; one story, a mystery involving Batman, actually has no supernatural element to it at all, so go figure.

What does all of this have to do with science, though? Well, as Asimov works his way through essay after essay of reflection on the subject of magic, faeries, mythical creatures and dashing knights riding off to slay dragons, he ends up--as a firm believer in science, and an author with a strong preference for science fiction over fantasy--taking many of these thematic concepts and relating them back to scientific principles. Science fiction and fantasy both generally involve the use of extraordinary means of meeting the protagonist's ends, but there tends to be a divergence in the nature of the means that is sometimes hard to describe precisely due to the fact that, as Clarke has said, technology can sometimes appear to be magical. Asimov points out that the real difference is that technology is something that always comes with limits, but magic much less so.

An excellent example is to think about the worlds of "Star Trek" vs. "Harry Potter". Both involve fictional means of teleportation, but there are few similarities in the workings of each. In the Trek world, teleportation is made possible through the employment of technology that requires a very large amount of energy and powerful supercomputers. Those attempting to teleport with these devices need to program these powerful computers with the particular coordinates of departure and arrival, the subjects of teleportation cannot be in motion, the teleportation device must be fully-powered and within a certain distance, and (for some unstated reason that has never made much sense to me) the operator of the device needs to know the number of people being teleported. In Potter's world on the other hand, all one needs to teleport is to be a wizard who really wants to go to a location in mind. I'm sure there are Potter fans who would take issue with such a simplification of the process, but really, I've simplified the process from both worlds.

So who is the winner? Maybe it seems like Potter is, as he needs no power source or help from a computer, has no limits on distance of travel, and can disappear at will in mid-stride while running from the hot pursuit of Voldemort. Not so, however. There are, and will always be, people who have a preference for the theoretically possible over the fantastic. After all, what good is Potter-style teleportation to "muggles" like you and me? Computers and technology, on the other hand, make amazing strides daily, and who knows? While physicists haven't yet invented the warp drive, it has been suspected that the principles of relativity actually do allow for travel faster than light speed if we could find a way to manipulate the space-time continuum. Sci-fi has a lot of big "ifs", but they're not the ridiculous imaginings of magic and fantasy, at least.

That sort of thinking is actually the smaller part of the problem of science: it's sort of a killjoy. On page 143 of "Magic", Asimov points out that the old fairy tale staple of "seven-league boots" are something for which science can't really produce an analogue. Seven-league boots are magical pieces of footwear that allow the wearer to move seven leagues (21 miles) in a single step. Asimov points out that such boots would cause the wearer to, at the pace of a brisk walk, achieve escape velocity and therefore be launched into space in a stride or two. Sheesh, Asimov, you're no fun. I'm not personally a big fan of the fantasy genre, but I think it's clear enough that we're meant to understand that magic boots, by the very fact of their being magic, don't have to concern the wearer with mundane factors such as escape velocity and wind resistance (I'm sure someone could give some very good reason why travelling at escape velocity with no protective gear would cause air friction enough to vaporize you, or at least severely chap your skin). Asimov is only trying to point out that science, unlike magic, has limits, but really the depressing thing about science is that really on the whole, science is all about telling us repeatedly that we are limited.

One of the best-known limits in science is the speed of light, but it's odd that it's so well-known. That is to say, it's not that people know what the speed of light is (I can seldom remember it off the top of my head), but they know it exists, and the one thing they really know about relativity theory is that things in the real world can't go faster than light. What does this really do for the layman, though? What possible purpose does it serve the non-physicist to know that the universe has a speed limit, especially since not a one of us will likely ever travel so much as 0.01% of that limit? It only reminds us that we do not have unlimited ability, and while this is true, it adds nothing to the human condition to know it to be so. Science doesn't care, nor should it, as it exists in a world of facts and not fantasy or feelings.

I've written before that science is not in the business of making people feel good or have a sense of self-worth, and that's why it makes for a lousy religion. "But wait," most readers will object, "science isn't a religion!" No, it's not. The bigger part of the problem of science is that despite that fact that it isn't a religion, there are an awful lot of people who treat it like one. Something else that I know I have written about many, many times is the fact that the world is full of skeptics who are more than happy to puff out their chests and declare, "We don't need God and religion to give us the answers, for science has all the answers we need!" But whatever you may feel about religion, the second part of that sentence is dreadfully wrong: science doesn't have answers, it only has theories. Wait! I'm probably not saying what you think I'm saying...

My imagination makes it hard to write this, as I know with almost every sentence I write, there is someone out there who will be reading this and saying, "What an idiot!" Maybe, but can you wait until I've had my say? I know there are a lot of creationists that love the catch phrase, "Evolution is just a theory," and of course, they're missing that in the realm of science, that word tends to mean something deeper than they give it credit. Granted. What I'm saying is that even giving it all the credit it truly deserves, it's still not the end-all and be-all of truth, because science is not a religion in very important ways that are actually its strength, but unfortunately its lesser-known strength.

The Asimov essay that boiled over that thought was one titled "Giants in the Earth", an essay on why he thinks so many cultures (including the Bible) have had myths concerning giants and other fantastic larger-than-life creatures. He gives a number of theories about why people would imagine giants, mainly focusing on people of lesser technology who marveled at achievements of more advanced societies such as the massive walls of Mycenae and the pyramids of Egypt and, not being able to fathom technology that could move such massive stones, imagine the employment of giant men or sorcerers for the purpose. In general, this is not an unreasonable theory, but I do have some issues with it, the main one being the assumption that every single example of stories about giants surely could not have simply been the result of actual, living giants. After all, Goliath was only said to be nine feet tall, and while that sounds pretty fantastical, I fail to see why there could not exist a man of that stature, or at least near that stature helped with a dash of exaggeration or rounding off to the nearest cubit. I think I may have made this exact analogy in a former piece of writing, but if a person who had never been to China or known anything about it ran into Yao Ming, he might be tempted to tell friends that China was a land populated with giants, and he would be sort of right, since there are at least a few of them.

Now, just shortly after denying that tales of mythical giants had anything to do with actual giants, and denying that tales of dragons could have anything to do with actual oversized lizards such as dinosaurs or who knows what, Asimov makes this startling statement:

"The elephant bird, or aepyornis, of Madagascar still survived in medieval times. It weighed half a ton and was the largest bird that ever existed. It must surely have been the inspiration for the flying bird-monster, the 'roc,' that we find in the Sinbad tales of The Arabian Nights."

"Surely"? Maybe Asimov had some backing for this statement, but from what I see here, it seems to be pure speculation. Why does one need to go to Madagascar to find such a large bird when fairly large birds such as ostriches and crowned eagles exist on the African mainland? The apparent assertion of a matter of speculation as bare fact is what disturbed me, and surprised me from Asimov as a supposed man of science.

Maybe it's a particular problem of Asimov's, being a writer of sci-fi and mystery, that he feels a need to see to it that loose ends are tied up into a neat little bundle. Fiction does that quite often, especially in the mystery genre. We expect when we close the book after reading the last page that even if the ending is not a happy one, we at least will have had everything explained to us, and everything will be understood. Religion (which atheists will gladly relegate to fictional status) also tends toward this sort of resolution. It tends to try to answer as many of the key philosophical questions of life as it can, and then blankets anything that wasn't covered with some panacea such as, "Well, God is working all things to the good, and He will triumph in the end." Everybody likes a happy ending.

Science may like to define limits, but has no end in itself, and never completely ties up all the loose ends. This is the true strength and power of science, but it's not a savory one. Those so-called skeptics who claim that science has all the answers are missing the true point of science: that it has no answers, only a better class of questions. The real problem of science is that people are looking for final answers, and science's disciples are more than happy to claim that they have them, despite the fact that they are (unintentionally, granted) misleading people with such a claim.

It is the nature of science's never-ending quest to question reality that what are today's scientific truths will be tomorrow's scientific misconceptions. We had nine planets, but then we only had eight. We were descended from homo erectus, but then we weren't. The smallest indivisible units in the universe were atoms, but then they were found to be made of protons, neutrons and electrons, which were later found to be made of quarks, which in turn are made of...what? To the average person, all of this sort of stuff looks like indecision: can't science make up its mind? I thought you said science had the answers? To the non-technical mind, the answers that science give look like so much magical hocus-pocus, and when Rowling tells us in book seven that wands only properly work for their true owners, yet book four is full of magicians getting along just fine with borrowed and/or stolen wands, we start to think it may all be a bunch of crap.

Science is suffering from bad press, and it's not bad press from those fools who do things like ban the teaching of evolution in schools, but from those people who say things like, "Science has given us the answer, and the answer is evolution." Such an attitude falls prey to those who object, "What happened to us being evolved from homo erectus?" or "Why do you think it is that Piltdown Man turned out to just be a hoax?" If "evolution is the answer", then like dogmatic religious zealots, the disciples of the religion of science will demand that asking more questions is inappropriate, never realizing that like Pharisees berating Christ for healing on the Sabbath, they're elevating tradition over deeper, more fundamental truths. Yes, science embraces evolutionary theory, among other theories, and as a "theory" it's actually something deeper and more well-established than just an idea of how the world might happen to work, but just as Christianity holds as an underlying tenet that "Love thy neighbor" is more important than any rules about how you run your church, science holds to an underlying tenet that above all, we must keep asking questions of our universe.

Evolutionary theory is a better theory than its detractors give it credit, and I expect it to be a part of science for quite some time, despite the fact that simpler concepts, like the number of planets we have, lasted for much shorter time than evolution has already enjoyed. But it is the nature of science that all theories are potentially only here for today, waiting for the time that they will be replaced by a better theory and discarded. The real failure of our educational system is not a failing to convince everyone that evolution or any other theory is true; after all, the greatest scientists have always been the ones who were willing to be the first to discard the failed theories of the past. No, the real failure is not teaching our children that the real strength of science and greatness of scientists was not in their determined acceptance of the status quo, but in the very willingness to go against it. Mendeleyev wasn't the first person to think of the concept of the periodic table of elements (a crude approach to modern understanding of the behavior of subatomic particles before anyone had even thought of subatomic particles), but he was one of the first people to be willing to keep pushing and questioning until scientists decided to take it seriously.

Yes, the problem with science is that we haughtily insist that people accept it as it is, forgetting that the state of science is always evolving. Religion is the one that often strives to be right without being questioned. Science? It only strives to be a little less wrong than it was yesterday, and there's nothing wrong with that.