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‘Well, sir, some would say it depends upon what you mean. All things which follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of God must always exist and be infinite, or, in other words, are eternal and infinite through the said attribute. Spinoza.’
‘Thank you, Jarvis, I don’t mind if I do. Not one I’ve heard of, but anything from your shaker, Jarvis, always hits the spot and reaches the parts other cocktails can’t. I’ll have a large Spinoza, shaken not stirred.’
‘No, sir, my allusion was to the philosopher Spinoza, the father of pantheism, although some prefer to speak of panentheism.’
‘Oh, that Spinoza. Yes, I remember he was a friend of yours. Seen much of him lately?’
‘No, sir, I was not present in the seventeenth century. Spinoza was a great favourite of Einstein, sir.’
‘Einstein, Jarvis? You mean the one with the hair and no socks?’
‘Yes, sir, arguably the greatest physicist of all time.’
‘Well, Jarvis, you can’t do better than that. Did Einstein believe in God?’
‘Not in the conventional sense of a personal God, sir, he was most emphatic on the point. Einstein believed in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.’
‘Gosh, Jarvis, bit of a googly there, but I think I get your drift. God’s just another word for the great outdoors, so we’re wasting our time lobbing prayers and worship in his general direction, what?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘If, indeed, he has a general direction,’ I added moodily, for I can spot a deep paradox as well as the next man, ask anyone at the Dregs. ‘But, Jarvis,’ I resumed, struck by a disturbing thought. ‘Does this mean I was also wasting my time when I won that prize for scripture knowledge at school? The one and only time I elicited so much as a murmur of praise from that prince of stinkers, the Rev. Aubrey Upcock? The high spot of my academic career, and it turns out to have been a dud, a washout, scrapped at the starting gate?’
‘Not entirely, sir. Parts of holy writ have great poetic merit, especially in the English translation known as the King James or Authorised Version of 1611. The cadences of the Book of Ecclesiastes and some of the prophets have seldom been surpassed, sir.’
‘You’ve said a mouthful there, Jarvis. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. Who was the preacher, by the way, Jarvis?‘
‘That is not known, sir, but informed opinion agrees that he was wise. “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.” He also evinced a haunting melancholy, sir. “When the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.” The New Testament too, sir, is not without its admirers. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…”’
‘Funny you should mention that, Jarvis. The passage was the very one I raised with the Rev. Aubrey, and it provoked a goodish bit of throat-clearing and shuffling of the trotters.’
‘Indeed, sir. What was the precise nature of the late headmaster’s discomfort?’
‘All that stuff about dying for our sins, redemption and atonement, Jarvis. All that “and with his stripes we are healed” carry-on. Being, in a modest way, no stranger to stripes administered by old Upcock, I put it to him straight: “When I’ve performed some misdemeanour”—or malfeasance, Jarvis?’
‘Either might be preferred, sir, depending on the gravity of the offence.’
‘So, as I was saying, when I was caught perpetrating some malfeasance or misdemeanour, I expected the swift retribution to land fairly and squarely on the Woofter trouser seat, not some other poor sap’s innocent derrière, if you get my meaning, Jarvis?’
‘Certainly, sir. The principle of the scapegoat has always been of dubious ethical and jurisprudential validity. Modern penal theory casts doubt on the very idea of retribution, even where it is the malefactor himself who is punished. It is correspondingly harder to justify vicarious punishment of an innocent substitute. I am pleased to hear that you received proper chastisement, sir.’
‘Quite, Jarvis.’
‘I am so sorry sir, I did not intend…’
‘Enough, Jarvis. This is not dudgeon. Umbrage has not been taken. We Woofters know when to move swiftly on. There’s more, Jarvis. I hadn’t finished my train of thought. Where was I?’
‘Your disquisition had just touched upon the injustice of vicarious punishment, sir.’
‘Yes, Jarvis, you put it very well. Injustice is right. Injustice hits the coconut with a crack that resounds around the shires. And it gets worse. Now, follow me like a puma here, Jarvis. Jesus was God, am I right?’
‘According to the Trinitarian doctrine promulgated by the early Church Fathers, sir, Jesus was the second person of the Triune God.’
‘Just as I thought, Jarvis. So God—the same God who made the world and was kitted out with enough nous to dive in and leave Einstein gasping at the shallow end, God the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of everything that opens and shuts, this paragon above the collarbone, this fount of wisdom and power—couldn’t think of a better way to forgive our sins than to turn himself over to the gendarmerie and have himself served up on toast. Jarvis, answer me this. If God wanted to forgive us, why didn’t he just forgive us? Why the torture, Jarvis? Whence the whips and scorpions, the nails and the agony? Why not just forgive us? Try that on your Victrola, Jarvis.’
‘Really, sir, you surpass yourself. That is most eloquently put. And if I might take the liberty, sir, you could even have gone further. According to many highly esteemed passages of traditional theological writing, the primary sin for which Jesus was atoning was the Original Sin of Adam.’
‘Dash it, Jarvis, you’re right. I remember making the point with some vim and élan. In fact, I rather think that may have been what tipped the scales in my favour and handed me the jackpot in that scripture knowledge fixture. But do go on, Jarvis, you interest me strangely. What was Adam’s sin? Something pretty fruity, I imagine. Something calculated to shake hell’s foundations?’
‘Tradition has it that he was apprehended eating an apple, sir.’
‘Scrumping, Jarvis? That was it? That was the sin that Jesus had to redeem—or atone according to choice? I’ve heard of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but a crucifixion for a scrumping? Jarvis, you’ve been at the cooking sherry. You are not serious, of course?’
‘Genesis does not specify the precise species of the purloined comestible, sir, but tradition has long held it to have been an apple. The point is academic, however, since modern science tells us that Adam did not in fact exist, and therefore was presumably in no position to sin.’
‘Jarvis, this takes the chocolate digestive, not to say the mottled oyster. It was bad enough that Jesus was tortured to atone for the sins of lots of other fellows. It got worse when you told me it was only one other fellow. It got worse still when that one fellow’s sin turned out to be nothing worse than half-inching a D’Arcy Spice. And now you tell me the blighter never existed in the first place. Jarvis, I am not known for my size in hats, but even I can see that this is completely doolally.’
‘I would not have ventured to use the epithet myself, sir, but there is much in what you say. Perhaps in mitigation I should mention that modern theologians regard the story of Adam, and his sin, as symbolic rather than literal.’
‘Symbolic, Jarvis? Symbolic? But the whips weren’t symbolic. The nails in the cross weren’t symbolic. If, Jarvis, when I was bending over that chair in the Rev. Aubrey’s study, I had protested that my misdemeanour, or malfeasance if you prefer, had been merely symbolic, what do you think he would have said?’
‘I can readily imagine that a pedagogue of his experience would have treated such a defensive plea with a generous measure of scepticism, sir.’
‘Indeed you are right, Jarvis. Upcock was a tough bimbo. I can still feel the twinges in damp weather. But perhaps I didn’t quite skewer the point, or nub, in re the symbolism?’
‘Well, sir, some might consider you a trifle hasty in your judgement. A theologian would probably aver that Adam’s symbolic sin was not so very negligible, since what it symbolised was all the sins of mankind, including those yet to be committed.’
‘Jarvis, this is pure apple sauce. “Yet to be committed”? Let me ask you to cast your mind back, yet again Jarvis, to that doom-laden scene in the beak’s study. Suppose I had said, from my vantage point doubled up over the armchair, “Headmaster, when you have administered the statutory six of the juiciest, may I respectfully request another six in consideration of all the other misdemeanours, or peccadilloes, which I may or may not decide to commit at any time into the indefinite future? Oh, and make that all future misdemeanours committed not just by me but by any of my pals.” Jarvis, it doesn’t add up. It doesn’t float the boat or ring the bell.’
‘I hope you will not take it as a liberty, sir, if I say that I am inclined to agree with you. And now, if you will excuse me, sir, I would like to resume decorating the room with holly and mistletoe, in preparation for the annual Yuletide festivities.’
‘Decorate if you insist, Jarvis, but I must say I hardly see the point any more. I expect the next thing you’ll tell me is that Jesus wasn’t really born in Bethlehem, and there never was a stable or shepherds or wise men following a star in the East.’
‘Oh no, sir, informed scholars from the nineteenth century onwards have dismissed those as legends, often invented to fulfil Old Testament prophecies. Charming legends but without historical verisimilitude.’
‘I feared as much. Well, come on, Jarvis, out with it. Do you believe in God?’
‘No, sir. Oh, I should have mentioned it before, sir, but Mrs Gregstead telephoned.’
I paled beneath the t. ‘Aunt Augusta? She isn’t coming here?’
‘She did intimate some such intention, sir. I gathered that she proposes to prevail upon you to accompany her to church on Christmas Day. She took the view that it might improve you, although she expressed a doubt that anything could. I rather fancy that is her footstep on the stairs now. If I might make the suggestion, sir…’
‘Anything, Jarvis, and be quick about it.’
‘I have unlocked the fire escape door in readiness, sir.’
‘Jarvis, you were wrong. There is a God.’
‘Thank you very much, sir. I endeavour to give satisfaction.’
Starry, Starry Night (#ulink_119d6589-82fb-561a-9f5e-5c52c3114883)
PHIL PLAIT
When I was a kid, I used to have a real problem with Christmas.
It’s true. These feelings took root in those deep, dark recesses of childhood where my memory is now dimmed, but I suspect it all started because I was raised Jewish. No doubt some jealousy was involved—I do remember trying to tell my friends how much better Hanukkah was than Christmas because it lasted eight days and not just one—but I suspect it was also just getting sick and tired of constantly hearing about something in which I wasn’t participating.
I’m also pretty sure Christmas music had something to do with it. Man, I still hate Christmas music.
So of course I was teased a lot by the other kids. I grew up in a suburb of Washington, DC, and while there were many Jewish families, we were definitely a minority. Most of my friends were Christian, and in the days leading up to the end of December, Christmas was all they could talk about. I never believed in Santa no matter how much they tried to persuade me of his existence. That made me a bit of an outcast, of course, but I took some consolation in being right.
Over time, things—as they tend to do—changed. I was never that big on anything in the Jewish religion, even when I was very young. By middle school I was for all practical purposes an atheist…and I suppose that has never changed since, come to think of it. But despite that, my attitude towards the holiday season evolved.
In secondary school, my best friend was Marc. His family was kinda sorta Jewish (the father) and some flavour of Christian (the mother), and they had long since decided to celebrate Christmas every year as a family event. Marc and I were pretty close, so I was over at their house a lot, including at Christmas time. When the holiday approached I would help them get their tree, set it up, string the beads or fake cranberries or whatever the heck they were—I remember one year we tried popcorn, but were less than successful getting it to stay on the fishing line—and then we’d decorate the tree.
On the night before Christmas, my non-Christian house would be business as usual—dinner, fool around, read, whatever. Even then I was the budding astronomer, so I might take out my telescope for some relaxing, but frigid, sky viewing. But eventually I’d go to bed, unhappy that every freaking TV and radio station (this was long before the web, kiddies) was either playing the dreaded jingles or was simply off the air.
Once I was up in the morning the long wait would begin. I knew Marc and his brother Dave would have been up early, opening presents, getting all kinds of awesome gifts. One year they both got Nikon cameras; we were heavily into photography then, with my bathroom at home being a makeshift darkroom complete with noxious chemicals that my mom was always giving me grief over. The Nikon camera Marc got was really nice, much better than my crappy Konica…but no, jealousy wasn’t an issue then. Of course not.
Finally, after a tortuous wait, Marc would call and invite me over, and I honestly had fun sharing in their celebration. His mom would make a Yule log cake, and we’d eat tons of chocolate and then go outside in the snow and have fun.
So for a while Christmas was really cool. Of course, in high school I was a band dork, and that meant every December concert I played Christmas music. So the barely restrained murderous impulse was still there, but mollified a bit.
In college, things died down somewhat because all the other students left to go home and be with their families for the holiday. It was great for me because I could stay behind and make good use of all the fallow computers. My software written to analyse and model astronomical data ran scads faster since the machines were otherwise idle. I always got a huge amount done during those weeks.
But it was lonely.
With one exception, for a few years Christmas was neither a joy nor a drag. The holiday was just something that happened, a few weeks of sales at the stores, barely tolerable jingles over half-shot speakers at the malls, and half-price chocolate bars the day after the holiday. The one exception that stands out was spent studying for my PhD qualifying exams. I was home with my parents but I hardly saw them; I was up every night until 2 or 3 a.m. studying and doing endless exercises in calculus, physics, and astronomy. That particular holiday is now blurry in my memory, difficult to distinguish from fiercely complicated equations, dozens of pages of algebraic computations and notes, and endlessly having to sharpen my pencils.
But this too did pass. As did I, as far as my exams went. But it wouldn’t be the last time I would associate Christmas and astronomy.
To me, when I was younger, winter months always meant crisp, clean air, the sharp pinpoints of stars in the sky undimmed by the East Coast’s summer haze. In December especially, while my friends were dreaming of gifts and fun, my thoughts would turn to the brilliant colours of the stars in Orion as the constellation stood solidly over my southern horizon. I read everything I could about astronomy, and also practised what I read: I would haul my 80-kilo telescope to the end of the driveway and, shivering in the sub-freezing temperatures, patiently aim it at various objects in the sky. Jupiter, Venus, the Orion Nebula…these all became my friends as I spotted and studied them.
It was around that time of my life when it dawned on me that people generally misunderstood astronomy. I myself was a victim of this; when I was of a certain age I believed in all manner of nonsense, including UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle and astral projection (well, I didn’t actually believe in that last one, as even then I was a budding skeptic and decided to do some experimental testing; I tried to project my mind using a book I found at the library, but, sadly, the girl I had a crush on showed no signs the next day that I had spent an hour trying to communicate with her from a higher plane).
The more I read about astronomy, the more instances I found of people misapplying it. Horoscopes were hugely popular, of course, as was the idea of aliens having visited humans, teaching us how to draw really long straight lines in the desert and paint confusing imagery on our stone walls.
And, of course, every year in December, the newspapers would have articles about the Christmas Star. You know the story: a star appears in the sky to guide the three wise men to the birthplace of Jesus. From the King James Version:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
A lot of folks in America like to interpret the Bible literally, so this passage is clear enough: an actual new Star appeared in the sky that guided the wise men to Jesus. Ignoring for a moment that if they lived to the east, and followed the Star to the east, they’d get further from Bethlehem rather than closer, and that while Matthew makes a big deal of the Star, Luke doesn’t even mention it—which already makes a literal interpretation of the Bible somewhat dicey—what we have here is an obvious astronomical tie-in with Christmas.
It’s a star, after all.
Even as a lad I could see the implications of this story, and certainly every Christmas special on TV has some variation of a brilliant star in the sky as a symbol for Christmas. Really, my getting involved once again with Christmas was unavoidable.
So I thought this legend over. Was the Star real? A lot of people thought so. That meant I had to look at the evidence.
It’s thought that the wise men were astrologers, so they would’ve had some familiarity with the sky; back then astronomy and astrology were pretty much the same thing, even if today they are as different as real medicine and homeopathy, or stage magicians and psychics, or…well, you get the point.
The point is, these guys would know the sky pretty well. If we take the Star at face value, then it must’ve been something amazing, because these three guys wouldn’t have dropped everything to make a long trek over some mundane star. The obvious conclusion is that it must have been very bright.
What astronomical objects are bright, can appear in the east, and disappear after some amount of time?
While there are lots of potential candidates, to an astronomer the answer is obvious: a supernova—a star that explodes at the end of its lifetime—is a perfect fit. So all we need to do for proof of this idea is to look for a 2,000-year-old supernova remnant, the expanding gas from such an explosion.
And lo, some do exist! But it turns out they wouldn’t have been in the east, or wouldn’t have been bright enough.
Certainly none fit the story well enough, and it’s doubtful any would’ve been enough to suddenly inspire a trio of men to get a hankering for a road trip in the desert.
If it wasn’t a supernova, then what was it? Another bright astronomical event is a conjunction, when two planets pass near each other in the sky. Jupiter and Venus are both astonishingly bright, and when they pass very close to each other would make a spectacular scene. And they can also both be in the east!
Were there any conjunctions like that around that time?
In fact, there were. Recently, an astronomer, using computer programs to map the positions of the planets in the sky, discovered that in 2 BC Venus and Jupiter passed very close to each other; so close in fact that to the eye they would have appeared as a single star! So have we found the Star?
Not so fast. First off, the planets move relative to each other, so even two days earlier or later they would’ve been seen as two separate objects. The wise men would never have mistaken that for a single star.
And oh, did I mention this apparition occurred in June? The wise men certainly took their time getting to Bethlehem!
Okay, so a planetary alignment doesn’t fit our Biblical bill either. And you can keep looking for other objects that might represent what the wise men are claimed to have seen, but at some point I think you have to realise that you’re grasping at cosmic straws. No real cosmic event matches the description in the Bible well enough to inspire the story.
And yet, people keep looking. In December every year, without fail, some newspaper article breathlessly reports some astronomer has found another candidate for the Star, yet another as-it-turns-out weak explanation for a Biblical passage of dubious reality.
And every year I read these articles and wonder, why do they try so? What are these people really searching for?
In 1992, as I could just start to spy the PhD lurking murkily at the end of my graduate career, I started dating Marcella. Two years later I had my degree and a job, and the next year Marcella and I were married. After a decade or more of no real religious involvement, I found myself with a Catholic family, one that really celebrated Christmas every year. Food, the tree, midnight mass, reading ‘The Night Before Christmas’, and yes (sigh), singing the dreaded carols. A year after Marcella and I married, our daughter was born, and that cemented the celebrations; in my family Christmas is absolutely for kids.
Now, it’s not like I jumped right into this. Thirty years of secular winters is more than just a habit. At first I was reluctant to participate much. And in some ways this new rekindling reawakened the reasons I didn’t like it all those years before.
But then something funny happened: one year, I decided I liked the tree.
It was cool. I had a tree in my house. Pine trees smell good. They’re pretty. Hanging ornaments and lights, if done properly, is actually rather festive. And I found I liked going out and physically getting the tree. We even once went to a huge farm where trees were grown specifically for the purpose, and I cut one down for us using a bow saw and everything. It was very macho.
Ironically, my wife—raised with this holiday—prefers fake trees. But maybe that’s because she always winds up doing the decorating (I’m hopeless at it, and likely to set fire to something) and it takes her all day. However, I won’t stand for an ersatz tree. Every year we get a real tree and let it make our house smell piney and arboreal.
And, yes, Christmassy.
Now, after many years of celebrating this holiday, I’ve come to really enjoy it. I know my in-laws well enough to know what kinds of gifts to get, and my own daughter makes it clear what she wants (somehow, the video games we get for her are always the kind Marcella wants to play). I always get the same sort of gift from them: a big Toblerone bar (400 grams!), thermal socks (my office is cold even in the summer) and various computer doodads and gizmos.
And every year I’m happy. I mean, honestly happy. Some people say the gifts are not the reason for the holiday, but they’re wrong: of course it’s about the gifts. They’re the centre-piece of the holiday; it’s about giving them, and having fun getting them, and then playing with them (or wearing or eating them) afterwards. And not to be all TV Christmas special here, but it’s about being with family while you’re doing all that.
So here I sit. An atheist, a skeptic, a guy raised Jewish who hated Christmas has found the meaning of the holiday, and he wasn’t even searching for it.
