This is supposed to be a post about The Flight of Peter Fromm, the latest selection of Nonbelieving Literati. And I will eventually get to a very short discussion of the book. But first, I need to tell readers a few facts about myself.

I’ve been an atheist for as long as I can remember. When I was four or five years old, it dawned on me that the concept of a god was ridiculous. It didn’t make any sense. I had no need of any deep philosophical or scientific arguments to help me arrive at that position, though; I wouldn’t have been capable of following them if I had. I just felt – “knew,” really – that the idea was silly.

As I grew to adulthood, I learned something about science, something about history, something about sociology, something about comparative mythology. I studied philosophy, even though, as I’ve said dozens of times, I think it’s mostly mental masturbation. I read the bible as a historico-mythical tract, from cover to cover a few times. I can now argue against the existence of god about as well as anyone can.

But, within myself, I don’t need to do that. The skepticism that first bloomed back when I was a sprout is still my primary reason for dismissing supernatural claims. They don’t make any sense.

So it should come as no surprise that I see the “study” of theology as a lot of pseudo-intellectual babble. Yes, it’s occasionally fun to read so-called “literary” exegeses of the bible, but the truth is: I don’t accept most of the bible as having any merit as great writing. Did you ever struggle through Leviticus or Deuteronomy? Or either book of Chronicles, f’Chrissake? From a literary standpoint, quite a few of the epistles are sheer crap. The writing in the Gospel of Mark is comparable to that of a simple-minded sixth-grader. And who can wade through the minor prophets without admitting to himself: This is junk compared to the works of Homer or the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Eddas or the Mahabharata.

But the study of theology is not about literary merit. It’s about ... what the hell is it about? Ostensibly it’s the study of god’s ways, of the relationship between humans and their deity. It’s loaded with nonsense masquerading as logic, twaddle pretending to be deep thinking, baloney passing as critical analysis. Theology is the justification of claptrap in the guise of rational discourse. It's bullshit dressed up. The child in me flips through a few pages of “theological” philosophy and whispers: This doesn’t make any sense.

And that brings me to The Flight of Peter Fromm. The author is Martin Gardner, whose writings I’ve been devouring since I was a teenager. Throughout my life, I’ve joyfully read dozens of Gardner’s volumes on mathematical recreations, science vs. superstition, even his entertaining annotations of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books.

But this Peter Fromm novel has no “soul.” Yeah, there are characters, or at least two-dimensional figures with characters’ names. But the book is mostly what, if it weren’t about theology, I’d call a novel of ideas. (How about: a novel of stupid ideas?) The title character seems to study every branch and sub-branch of 20th century theology he can, and Gardner describes them with varying degrees of insight and success.

After about 100 pages, I’d had enough. I just didn’t care at all about why Peter Fromm had had a fit while preaching an Easter sermon in 1948. Why bother wading through pages and pages of theological hogwash? Not having finished the book, I still don’t know why he had his breakdown; nor am I curious. Maybe the guy got pissed off at himself for having wasted so much time studying a non-subject. Whatever. I saw no reason why I should join him.

[Note: The next book we will be discussing, beginning on November 1, is Remembering Hypatia. See my sidebar for a link to the appropriate Amazon page.]

All the political talk about abstinence education reminds me of something that happened when I was thirteen years old. After my mother and younger sister had left the kitchen table one night, going off to struggle once again with the Problem of Evil Homework, my father lobbed a three-pack of Trojans into my lap.

“You know what those are?” he asked.

Schoolboys didn’t use the word “condoms” in those days. “Yeah. They’re ... um ... scumbags, right?”

“Exactly. Carry those with you wherever you go,” he said.

“I don’t think I need them yet.”

He rolled his eyes. “F’chrissake,” he said. “By the time I was your age, I’d been laid, relayed and parleyed.”

“Did Mom say it’s OK for me to have these?”

“What are you, a sissy? Why would I ask your mother?”

That made me laugh, because I remembered how he’d acted five years before. Here’s the story.

* * * * *
I was about halfway through third grade, and I had come to the realization that my parents were never going to show me where the seed store was.

Mom had repeated the story to me dozens of times: Dad had planted a seed in her belly. Eventually, that seed, which I envisioned as a kind of pink and slimy Chocolate Baby, became me.

We lived in an apartment in the Bronx, so I knew very little about gardening. The only flora we had in the house were Mom's snake plants, about ten of them, which migrated from one knickknack shelf to another every few weeks. Mom called it "redecorating" every time she moved a snake plant and rotated her figurines. Sometimes the snake plants were surrounded by dancing porcelain elves; at other times they formed the background for a Bo-Peep scene. I once cajoled her into letting me use one as a cactus in a mini-drama that I was acting out for myself with plastic cowboys. The idea was that the bad guys would keep shooting the cactus instead of the hero hiding behind it. Bang, blam, p-shoing! The cactus would fall over dead. After its third demise, my mother confiscated it, and placed it back where Nature intended it to be, between Madame Pompadour and Neptune.

What I did know about gardening, I had learned from a children's record popular in the '50s. An unctuous boy's voice sang: "Carrots grow from carrot seeds." I couldn't imagine a child that I identified with less than this gooey paragon of stick-to-it-iveness. His story took up two sides of a big orange 78, but the gist of it was that he insisted on planting a seed even though his whole family told him he was full of crap. I often wondered why he would go to all that trouble for one lousy carrot, when he easily could have bought a whole can at the grocery. Still, he bragged: "I watered it; I pulled the weeds."

But who watered me and pulled my weeds?

Certainly not Dad, despite what Mom told me. He just wasn't a planting kind of guy. I tried to picture him as a farmer, in overalls and a straw hat. I'd see him standing in the middle of a field of corn, removing a piece of straw from his mouth, and, with the other hand, taking a puff of the Pall Mall that he always held between his index and middle fingers. The rest of his cigarette hand would be balled up in a half-fist, carrying a few seeds, about 20 Green Giant niblets drenched in butter. That's what corn seeds looked like in my mind. Every now and then, Dad would bend over and dig a little hole, move his pinky to let loose one of the niblets, and cover it up again, stray ashes and all. He'd pull a green plastic drinking glass full of water from his back pocket, and dribble a few drops on the seed the way Mom watered her snake plants at home. Then he'd stand up and scratch the back of one leg with the toe of his opposite foot, as he frequently did when he was trying to get his bearings. After a few seconds, he'd replace the glass in his pocket, take a drag on his cigarette, and then put the straw back in his mouth and chew it the same way he worked a toothpick.

"How come Dad never planted anything else?" I asked Mom.

"Well, he also planted your sister."

"No, I mean flowers. Where did Dad learn to plant seeds?"

"I think when he was in the army."

If Dad was in earshot of this conversation, he would call out, "A lot before that." But he was always suspiciously noncommittal about the rest of the story.

"Where'd you get the seed for me, Dad?"

"Ask your mother."

"I thought you planted it."

"Well, we kind of did it together. But she remembers better. Ask her."

"Did you get the seed for my sister at the same store where you got me? Who cost more?"

"I think you might have been on sale. Your mother remembers."

But my mother's recollection was hazy, too.

"Where's the seed store? Is it on Fordham Road near Alexander's? Can you show me it next time we go shopping?"

"You know, I must have forgotten where the store is. Isn't that funny? I just ... I just can't think of it."

Yeah, right. This was beyond credibility. Mom never forgot anything. She knew the words to almost every song ever written.

It was clearly time for eight-year-old sarcasm."Oh, right," I said. "You got your kids there, and you can't remember? Come on, Ma. Where is it? What's such a big deal about a store? Just tell me where it is. I promise I won't buy any seeds. "

Finally, in desperation one evening when I was particularly determined, Mom and Dad waited until my sister had gone to sleep. Then they went and powwowed in a corner of the kitchen while I half-heartedly watched Father Knows Best and sulked. I knew that they knew that I was trying to listen to their conversation because they were speaking in Yiddish. Yiddish had been Dad's only language until he was six years old, and he was completely fluent. Mom's Yiddish, on the other hand, consisted of only about a hundred words, most of them either names of foods or synonyms for "shmuck." I could tell whenever she started having language difficulties, because she'd suddenly resort to whispered English. Then Dad would say, emphatically, "Sha, Honey. Sha. Die kinder! Shvubb'm hubb'm tsubb'm." At least that's what it sounded like to me.

The next thing I knew, Mom was rushing upstairs to a neighbor. "I'm going up to Barb's to borrow a book for you. We'll read it together when your program is over. Did you finish your math?"

"What kind of book?"

"We'll read it together when your program is over."

"You just said that. What's the book about?"

"You'll see."

Dad retired to the living-room couch. In his own way, my father knew best, too, and what was best for him was to lie there making believe he was taking a nap. Many years later, he confessed that he’d spent the next hour staring into the armrest, listening and giggling.

It wasn't long before Mom burst back through the door, carrying a thin book against her chest. Her arms were crossed around it, shielding it from my vision. The message was clear: something in that book was dynamite. She summoned me from the television and led me into the bathroom. She lowered the toilet seat lid, and sat on it, gesturing for me to sit on the edge of the bathtub.

This was not as odd a place for an intimate chat as it sounds, because it was the only private area in the entire apartment. In the one bedroom, my sister was already snuggled in for the night, snoring contentedly. In the living-room, where Mom and Dad slept on a fold-out high-rise, Dad was supposedly taking his undisturbable snooze on the couch. The uncleaned detritus from dinner still filled the kitchen, and, anyway, the room's acoustics made noises echo throughout the house; we didn't want to disturb Dad while he was feigning sleep and having a giddy panic.

Mom opened the book. I suppose it was something like What to Tell Your Precocious Nuisance About Sex. But I never knew, because she didn't show me the cover. Nor did she read it directly to me, or even hold up any of the pictures. Instead, she silently skimmed each page, and translated it into Idiotese. After every few pages, she'd add: "Remember, you can only do this if you're married."

I didn't see why I'd want to do it at all. The whole thing struck me as pretty messy. The book — or Mom's rendition of it — suppressed discussion of pleasure or love or emotional gratification of any kind. And that's not the only thing I didn't get. For a long time thereafter, I was under the impression that the man peed into the woman. I suppose the surroundings in which I had learned the information subliminally planted that seed in my head. In any case, the entire procedure sounded pretty inconvenient for both parties.

"You and Dad did that?"

"Yes."

"There's no seed store?"

"No. The seed was in his body."

"So are you telling me there's no seed store anywhere? Anywhere? In the whole world?"

"Uh-huh. This is what married people do here, and in Europe, and in Africa, and all over."

That sounded like baloney to me. "Nanny did it, too?"

"Yeah, Nanny, too. Everybody. But remember, you have to be married." The skeptic in me kicked into high gear. There was no way that Nanny ever did that. "I can't believe there's no seed store. Are you positive?"

"Uh-huh."

"What a gyp."

But it wasn't enough of a gyp to keep me from passing it on to all my friends. The very next day, I began holding forth to any kid who would listen. "Hey, guess what? There's no seed store." For a while, I had the reputation among my friends' mothers as the worst influence in the entire neighborhood, the pervert of the playground.

Most of the kids didn't believe me; about six of them grabbed each other's hands to form a circle, and danced around me, chanting "penis and vagina, penis and vagina." Jerry reached into his pants, felt himself carefully, and screamed at me, "You're lying. There's no seeds in it." Shelley’s mother never forgave me. She’s convinced to this day that he still wouldn’t know the facts of life if I hadn’t spilled the beans to him while we were riding on the seesaw.

Weeks went by, and Dad didn't say anything at all to me about my lesson. Then one night, out of the blue, he asked, "So Mom wised you up? About the seeds?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"There's more," he said, and winked. "Remind me to tell you when you're older."

"After I'm married?" I asked.

"Maybe a little bit before," he replied.

"When?"

"Not today, OK? I need to take a nap."

Even on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a cynic can’t help but be cynical. In fact, I can still remember my cynicism, glowing like a beacon of reality through my tears and fears on that surreal day itself.

As was everyone else in the country, my wife and I were glued to the television all day. We watched the towers fall, again and again and again. Frantically, we tried and tried to reach my sister on the phone; she worked just a short distance away from the World Trade Center. I attempted to call some good friends, who lived or worked only slightly further away. No luck there either.

So we watched TV. What else could we do? In the evening, briefly, the cameras left the devastation of lower New York City and the Pentagon, and focused on the steps of the Capitol, where U.S. Senators and Representatives had gathered together to show solidarity in the face of ... what? We didn’t know yet, although most of us suspected that Islamic extremists were the perpetrators. My wife and I had spent a lot of the day spouting off about the evils of religion. We had no evidence, of course, but we needed to rant about something.

Spokesmen for both major parties (Hastert for the Republicans, Daschle for the Democrats) tried to reassure Americans by promising that we’d identify and find those responsible for the heinous acts of that morning, and make them “pay the price.” As if reparations were possible.

Then, in a seemingly spontaneous act of unity, the congressional crowd began to sing “God Bless America.” I’m sure for most of the country it was a moving moment.

For me, though, a transplanted New Yorker, who had spent many, many hours working and playing in the buildings so recently destroyed, the song was a disgusting display. My wife and I looked at each other, and shook our heads in astonishment.

“Perfect solution,” she said. “Let’s ask Jesus for help. If they'd only known, they could have given him a buzz yesterday.”

“Yeah,” I added, “maybe next they’ll sing ‘If You Believe in Fairies, Then Clap Your Hands.’”

Then we both laughed at nothing funny, as I dialed the phone again.

Isaiah 26:19
Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

1 Corinthians 15:52
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

A few atheist bloggers seem to think it's clever to post famous poems, as if the rest of us would never deign to look at literature unless it's transmitted on a freethinker's Web site. I decided that I'd join in their fun, and publish a well-known masterpiece for my readers to learn. However, my memory not being what it used to be, I couldn't manage to recite an entire poem, no matter how hard I tried. All I managed to wind up with was a brand new example of doggerel, cobbled together from lines that originally appeared in other pieces of verse. Your simple job is to identify, by line, each work and its author.

Christian Zombie Poem

1. The grave’s a fine and private place,
2. all by all and deep by deep,
3. And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
4. Tossing their heads in sprightly dance,
5. That sleepen al the night with open ye —
6. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight,
7. In the forests of the night,
8. Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
9. They took some honey, and plenty of money,
10. For ever warm, and still to be enjoy’d,
11. And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
12. “Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
13. Food, glorious food!”
14. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world,
15. “Surely the the Second Coming is at hand!
16. I’m afraid you must wait and have dinner tomorrow."
17. Because I could not stop for Death,
18. I go, I go; look how I go.
19. Run, run, run, run, runaway.
20. I doubted if I should ever come back.
21. You might as well live.

Please identify only one line and its author per comment. And no cheating by resorting to Google; you're on your honor.

[Update: Correct answers (as of 09/11/08, 3:15 a.m. EDT) — 1. Gareth McCaughan; 2. Lynet (title), yunshui (author); 3. Evo (title), Gareth McCaughan (author); 4. Gareth McCaughan; 5. yunshui; 6. Lynet; 7. Eric Haas; 8. yunshui; 9. Lynet; 10. Lynet; 12. Eric Haas; 13. chappy; 14. yunshui; 15. yunshui; 16. Lynet; 17. Gareth McCaughan; 18. yunshui; 19. Eric Haas; 20. yunshui (title), Lynet (author); 21. Gareth McCaughan (author only)]

Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has gone on record as saying that she believes public schools should “teach the controversy.” Normally, most people would understand that phrase as referring to the bogus debate between Scientists and Creationists. But the press has so far failed to uncover an amazing fact: Palin believes that there are other disputes in which the theories of Fundamentalist Christians have been unfairly banned from the classroom. Because of my skill and dedication, I’ve managed to dig up some important news for my readers. Believe it or not, I’ve learned of eight other controversies Governor Palin would like to see addressed in the schools.

Controversy One: The Light Bulb
Atheists say: Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb.
Fundamentalists say: God invented the light bulb.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: The history books say that Edison purchased the patent for the light bulb from one Henry Woodward, and then perfected it. However, Edison was a well-known fraud who falsified records. It wasn’t Woodward or Edison who said “Let there be light!” — it was God! Therefore, He’s responsible for all indoor and outdoor illumination, including light bulbs, the sun, and fireflies.

Controversy Two: The Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Atheists say: Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Fundamentalists say: God painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: No human since Biblical Times has seen the face of God. Yet, the portrait on the ceiling is a perfect likeness of the Lord. Only God himself could have painted that, because He’s the only one who knows what He looks like. Plus, do you know how high up that thing is? It’s impossible that Michelangelo could have reached it.

Controversy Three: The English Dictionary
Atheists say: There are many versions of dictionaries in English. Some of the earliest ones were compiled in the 17^th century. As the language evolves, dictionaries change, adding new words, and omitting old ones.
Fundamentalists say: There is only one True English Dictionary and God compiled it.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: The Gospel of John tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So even as far back as a few days before Man was created, God knew English. When He gave language to His beloved Children, He must have already known beforehand what every single word meant. It stands to reason, then, that He presented Adam and Eve with a dictionary. Since He gave Man free will, He allowed Adam to name the animals. But because Adam believed so sincerely in Jesus, the Lord spoke to him, and whispered the correct names. That’s how dictionaries are still compiled today. God speaks to the faithful, and they add new words that have existed since the Beginning of Time.

Controversy Four: The Calculus
Atheists say: Either Isaac Newton or Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, or both, “discovered” the Calculus. But it could also have been developed by Indian, or Islamic, or Japanese mathematicians.
Fundamentalists say: God discovered the Calculus.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: The atheists’ explanation involves too many variables, and it’s impossible to prove whether Newton or Leibniz came up with this great mathematical advancement. However, one well-known fact about Newton and Leibniz is usually ignored: Each one of them loved God with all his heart and soul. Therefore, God created the Calculus, and gave it to these two loyal servants. The claims of Indians, Muslims, and Japanese are obviously erroneous.

Controversy Five: “Casey at the Bat”
Atheists say: Ernest Lawrence Thayer wrote “Casey at the Bat” in 1888 as a column for the San Francisco Examiner.
Fundamentalists say: God wrote “Casey at the Bat” and dictated it to Ernest Lawrence Thayer as a lesson for potential sinners.
Rational for Teaching the Controversy: It’s not commonly known, but Mudville was a small town in liberal Massachusetts, populated by secularists, feminists, and homosexuals. God tested the local fans by allowing Flynn and Blake to reach base, and gave the populace ample opportunity to pray to Him for a win. Instead, they pinned their hopes on Casey, a famous agnostic of the period. At the end of the poem [Spoiler Alert: Casey struck out], “there is no joy in Mudville.” This is because the people there had failed to be saved, and they realized that they would shortly be watching losing game after losing game in Hell.

Controversy Six: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
Atheists say: Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony.
Fundamentalists say: God composed “Beethoven’s” Ninth Symphony.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: Everyone who has any familiarity at all with classical music has heard that Beethoven was deaf for many years of his life. How could a deaf person compose music? That’s just absurd. Could a deaf person have written “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” or “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”? Think about how ridiculous that idea sounds. So imagine how much harder it would have been for Beethoven, who wrote for about a zillion instruments and a gigantic chorus and four soloists. God must have sung into Beethoven’s ear, and the man just wrote down what he heard. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Controversy Seven: Cookies
Atheists say: Elves make Keebler cookies.
Fundamentalists say: Jesus makes Keebler cookies.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: There’s absolutely no evidence that the Keebler Elves exist. But the Bible tells us how great Jesus was at preparing food. In the Gospel of Mark 6:30-44, we learn that the Savior fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes. Not only that, but John 2:3-10 tells us how Jesus turned water into wine. Compared to those great miracles, baking up a batch of cookies would be a snap. Clearly, Jesus makes Keebler cookies.

Controversy Eight: This Post
Atheists say: The Exterminator wrote this post.
Fundamentalists say: Satan wrote this post.
Rationale for Teaching the Controversy: In the Name of All That’s Holy, it’s obvious, isn’t it?