Ross Douthat Would Make A Fine Atheist

Ross Douthat goes after what he calls “Hollywood’s religion of choice” in the Times today: “Avatar is [James] Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism-a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.” Describing pantheism as “a form of religion that even atheists can support,” he argues that it doesn’t offer humans the “escape upward” into immortality that he believes is the reason religion exists.

He writes:

“The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its ‘circle of life’ is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short.”

I think he’s right. But I also think that Douthat, whose religious views have flummoxed his arguments before, has actually written a nice apologia for atheism. The same societies that hew closest to the natural order-less scientifically, technologically and medically developed societies-tend to be far more religious than the more “modern” ones where God was so famously declared “dead” in the 20th century. The less prominent religion is in society, the less nasty, brutish and short is human life.

“Except as dust and ashes, Nature cannot take us back,” says Douthat. Yes! Ross! Let’s not go back! Let’s accept the reality of mortality. Let’s ditch backwards thinking-of the kind that has you opposing gay marriage even when you clearly know better. Here’s to more pleasant, civilized and longer life.

The socialist takeover of the airline industry has begun (again): “The Transportation Department is ordering airlines to let passengers stuck in stranded airplanes to deplane after three hours.” The new guidelines begin in 120 days, so you know, enjoy Christmas in the cabin.

If you go by the New York Post’s selection of its best front pages of the decade, we ushered in The Nads with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and ushered them out with the revelation that an illustrious linksman banged a bunch of broads. Unnoted in the review of the past ten years: the bit of prognostication to your left, and the classic “Benedict Jeffords,” which brought us all so much hope for new EIC Col Allan’s tenure. Going over this list, a couple of things stand out: 1) It’s weird to think that it was only in this decade that full-color front pages became standard, and 2) Wow, what an absolutely horrible ten years it has been.

“Tumbling temperatures prompted emergency measures to help South Florida’s homeless” this weekend, is the lead story in today’s Miami Herald. Just how cold did it get? “The chilliest of the weekend’s cold snap came Sunday, with temperatures hovering around the low 60s throughout the day. At night, the temperature dropped into the upper 40s in Miami-Dade.” Oh noes? The terror! “A woman called 911 in Palm Beach County to let them know she was too cold.”

“What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.”
-Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), offering up what was widely interpreted as a plea to the Almighty that He prevent ailing nonagenarian Robert Byrd (D-WV) from being the 60th Senator to vote ‘aye’ for health care reform early this morning. It’s funny; the decade began with Trent Lott (R-MS) hoping that lightning would strike Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to keep her from taking her seat in the Senate. It’s nice to see that these guys still believe in the power of prayer, in spite of everything.

“We’re going to take the same 3D technology James Cameron used in AVATAR and stick it up Steve O’s butt.” -Johnny Knoxville, explaining Jackass 3 and also what most of 2010 threatens to be like.

The great Yuletide consumer potlatch has been a distinctly muted affair in our understimulated, recession-battered economy. The Elmos and Wiis of flusher times seem to mock us, in that garish mechanical way of theirs, from across the chasm that we created, when all that was solid-not least the multileveraged roofs over our heads-melted into air. And all that’s to say nothing, of course, of the high-end dosh that, in a perfect world, would punctuate another productive year of giddy pelf-procuring. So how best to honor the complex holiday mandates of pecuniary display in such a chastened new order? High-end-shopping Financial Times blogger Lucia Van der Post has just the thing: Culture-shopping!

To be sure, like all decent flaunting these days, culture shopping is a Euro-affectation. Discernment, after all, is arguably the last distinguishing trait of the British aristocracy, and happily, the hard-pressed lead institutions of the Sceptered Isle’s culture industry have long been hawking their wares in the mass consumer marketplace, following the lead of the lavish country estates boxed up and auctioned off in the Thatcher age.

In fact, as Van der Post notes, the market’s become so clogged with worthy dispensaries of cultural artifacts that “few of us could ever manage to visit a few of them.” Enter, of course, the Internet, with a nimble, aggregating site called CultureLabel, which “does the visiting, the curating, and the editing for us,” van der Post writes. “Tap into it and you’ll find a host of possible presents, each one with some real connection to the institution it comes from.”

Sure enough, once you toggle over and start tapping, you find the site boasts the kind of brute efficiency that would send Walter Benjamin into a far deeper funk than those he was already prone to-briskly laying out all the cultural institutions in question under a “Brands” menu heading. Fittingly, the “Keep Calm and Carry On” wartime poster that enjoyed a faddish revival during the global meltdown has its own perch here, as do a host of more venerable franchises, from the Royal Academy of the Arts, the Tate Gallery and the British Museum.

And of course there are edgier outlets like the Baltic Gallery and the reliably evil Saatchi concession, depending on how high the tolerance for self-deconstructing gift statements may run among your family and friends. Sadly, the icon for the Imperial War Museum only carries a “Coming Soon” logo, so your jingoist uncle will once again have to hunt his own souvenirs somewhere in the provinces.

Really, though, it’s the individual shopping entries that capture the culture hoarder’s imagination. It’s puzzling to reflect, for instance, that the British Museum offers a “Hermes foot” for £35, but in a disappointing lapse of irony-minded marketing, has apparently yet to produce a facsimile of the chair where that poor excitable sop Karl Marx famously composed Das Kapital. The Bodleian Library at Oxford does have its own chair for sale (at a fairly steep £725), but the rest of the catalog seems like a cheesy afterthought, from the “Music for Book Lovers CD” to something called the “High Jinks! Handy Bag”-which, being British and all, is far less dirty than it sounds. You have your choice of a child’s chain-mail vest (£9.85) or Charles Darwin cufflinks (£12.85) at the shabby-genteel English Heritage portal, but wouldn’t the real money be in carving out some more discreet market share in landed estates, or at least O.B.E. titles? How much can they set you back, after all, if Elton John’s got one?

And in the tradition of status-aspirational publications everywhere, let us leave you with that warming thought for the 2009 holiday season. Merry Christmas to Awl, and to Awl a good knight.

Good news! The stolen Auschwitz sign has been recovered! “Police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo told The Associated Press that the sign was found in northern Poland. She said police also detained five men aged between 25 and 39 who are being transported to Krakow for questioning.” It’s a Christmas miracle!

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Heat Nor Gloom Of Night Stays Jay-Z From The Swift Completion Of His Appointed Sounds

You don’t see Jay-Z pulling a gun on a crowd in a snowstorm. Rather, he controls them through rap. Here he is, during Saturday night’s blizzard, taping a performance of “Run This Town” with Rihanna for New Year’s Eve With Carson Daly. Even when it’s cold, he remains cool.

And How Was Your Snowball Fight?

Well, at least one cop’s getting fired for Christmas, we figure. More video here.