Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Case for God (2009)

  Ingersoll (1833–99), lawyer, orator, and state attorney general who became a leading spokesman of American agnosticism, humanity would soon outgrow God: one day everybody would recognize that religion was an extinct species. 64 For the American poet and novelist Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908), “the loss of religious faith among the most civilized portions of the race is a step from childishness to maturity.” 65 By the 1870s, this conviction had hardened into a new myth that saw religion and science as locked in eternal and inevitable conflict. The champions of science constructed a revisionist history of the relations between the two, floridly told, that cast the heroes of “progress”— Bruno, Galileo, Luther—as the hapless victims of evil cardinals and fanatical puritans. For the American propagandist Joel Moody, religion was the “science of evil.” Men of generous culture or of great learning and women of eminent piety and virtue from the humble cottage to the throne have been led out for matters of conscience or butchered before a mindless rabble lusting after God. The limbs of men and women have been torn from their bodies, their eyes gouged out, their flesh mangled and slowly roasted, their children barbarously tortured before their eyes, because of religious opinion. 66 For Ingersoll, human history had been scarred by “a deadly conflict” in which the brave, lonely champions of truth, “straining against fear and mental slavery, prejudice and martyrdom,” had dragged humanity “inch by inch” closer to the truth. 6 7 In 1871, John William Draper (1811–82), head of the department of medicine at New York University, published The History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science , which went through fifty printings and was translated into ten languages. While Religion clung timidly to the unchangeable truths of revelation, Science forged expansively ahead, giving us telescopes, barometers, canals, hospitals, sanitation, schools, the telegraph, calculus, sewing machines, rifles, and warships. Only Science could liberate us from the tyranny of Religion (Draper habitually capitalized these terms so that they seemed like characters in a morality play). “The ecclesiastic must learn to keep himself within the domain he has chosen, and cease to tyrannize over the philosopher, who, conscious of his own strength and the purity of his motives, will bear such interference no longer.” 68 Ultimately, however, Draper’s polemic was marred by his blatantly anti-Catholic prejudice. Less immediately popular but more influential long-term was A History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom (1896) by the ardent secularist Andrew Dixon White (1832–1918), first president of Cornell University. In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science—and invariably. And, on the other hand, all untrammelled scientific investigations no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, for the time, has invariably resulted in the highest good of religion and of science. 69 The two were implacably opposed.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And because this is such a big thing in That life, youll hear untrue stories from almost everyone whos paid someone about the person hes paid. It’s a kind of petty vindication, to put down the hustler’s masculinity—whether correctly or not—at the same time that they seek it out. Standing on the street, Pete would always come on about the young girls that would breeze by like flowers, the wind lapping at their skirts coyly.... I found out Pete can be vengeful. I saw him in Bryant Park and he was fuming. The manager of a moviehouse one block away had refused to let him in. (I had seen the manager—a skinny, tall, nervous, gaunt, pale-faced man. The theater is one of the gayest in New York. Late at night men stand leaning along the stairways, waiting.) “Hes a queer,” Pete said angrily, “he dont give a fuck what goes on so long as it dont go on for money—thats why he wouldnt let me in.” Later, Pete tells everyone the place is crawling with plainclothes vice squad, ready to raid it: Stay Away! And the theater balcony was almost empty for weeks. He also told me that another hustler had taken a score from right under his nose in the park, and Pete went around telling people the other hustler had the clap.... “Make it anyway you can,” he said when he finished telling me that, “and when you cant make it, get even.” He knew almost everyone on the street who paid. He would point them out to me. “See that blond pale kid? He pimps for this old guy: real swank pad, too. And, man, what a weirdo that old guy is. Dig: he pays by the hour, and talks, talks, talks!—hes a teacher or something—laid up in bed from an accident. I used to fall asleep—I’d wear sunglasses—and he never knew the difference, just kept on talking....” At least once I regretted not listening to Pete’s advice. “See that one over there?” he said, pointing to a harmless-looking middle-aged man in a raincoat. “Stay away from him, spote, hes psycho.” But remembering what he had told everyone about the theater whose manager wouldnt let him in, and remembering what he’d done to the hustler whod taken his score in the park, I figured this may be some kind of revenge on the man for whatever reason. The man looked entirely harmless, and I went with him. After we had made a very ordinary scene—and I still hadnt got any money from him—his composure changed suddenly into savage rage. Before I knew it, he had pulled a knife on me. I dashed out, down the creaking steps. Like a demon—his shadow flung grotesquely down the stairs—he stands at the landing shouting: “God! Damn! You! God damn all of you!” 3 I also learned not always to trust Pete.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Even Monod acknowledged this. Dawkins’s hero Darwin admitted that he could not prove the evolutionary hypothesis but he had confidence in it nonetheless, and for decades, as we have seen, physicists were happy to have faith in Einstein’s theory of relativity, even though it had not been definitively verified. Even Harris makes a large act of faith in the ability of his own intelligence to arrive at objective truth—a claim that Hume or Kant would have found questionable. All three of these proselytizing atheists present religion at its absolute worst. It is very important to remember the evils committed in the name of religion, and they are right to bring them to our attention. All too often, people of faith like to enumerate the sins of other traditions while ignoring the stains on their own. Christians, for example, are often eager to criticize Islam for its intolerance, showing not only an embarrassing ignorance of Muslim history but total myopia toward the crusades, persecutions, and inquisitions conducted by their own coreligionists. But claiming that religion has only been evil is inaccurate. Science is the child of logos and we should, therefore, be able to rely on scientists, with their finely honed reasoning powers, to sift the evidence in a balanced, impartial way. But Harris, for example, finds it quite acceptable to assert emphatically that “most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith.” 39 This type of remark is just as biased and untrue as some of the religious rhetoric he condemns. It is also misleading to insist that all the problems of the modern world are entirely due to religion, if only because at this perilous moment in human history we need clear heads and accurate intelligence. At the beginning of his book, Dawkins asks us to imagine, with John Lennon, a world without religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as “Christ killers,” no Northern Ireland “troubles,” no “honour killings,” no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money. 40 But not all these conflicts are wholly due to religion. The new atheists show a disturbing lack of understanding of or concern about the complexity and ambiguity of modern experience, and their polemic entirely fails to mention the concern for justice and compassion that, despite their undeniable failings, has been espoused by all three of the monotheisms. Religious fundamentalists also develop an exaggerated view of their enemy as the epitome of evil. This makes the critique of the new atheists too easy. They never discuss the work of such theologians as Bultmann or Tillich, who offer a very different view of religion and are closer to mainstream tradition than any fundamentalist. Unlike Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud, the new atheists are not theologically literate.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Upon first meeting Eva, Davis makes certain assumptions that later inform his treatment of her: "A woman like you.' [...] He laughed. `A mean, tight mama, ain't you? A old woman got me started. [...] You a hard woman, too, ain't you? I know you got yourself started. [...] Have you been satisfied?"' (8). Davis's perceptions of Eva seem to suggest that he recognizes in her an intrinsic deviation from a particular type of womanhood: one not steeped in convention, especially where sexuality is concerned, but that is, more or less, in tandem with stereotypes of black women as licentious, the embodiment of excessive sexuality, and an insatiable libido, that-resisting masculine regulation-becomes the object of male sexual desire. His designation "a woman like you" situates her outside the "normative"-as uncustomary, atypical, aberrant-with her sexuality neither contained nor defined by anyone outside herself. His vocative, too, has masturbatory implications-"I know you got yourself started"-to which Eva, in an assertion both declarative and corrective, asserts, "`I got started like everyone else does, [...] I opened my legs" (8). Eva reveals that her sexuality is marked by not only a "normativity" (like "everyone else"), but, concomitantly, by a sexual agency in that she, in opening her legs, regulates the terms of her sexuality. She resists being categorized or, contrastingly, situated within particular sexual loci that either obfuscate and mark her sexuality as anomalous or that seek to circumscribe it. Eva later shows the extent to which she is not so much outside conventionality when she analogizes her and Davis's intimate rendezvous to that of a married couple, to which Davis responds otherwise and reveals his own marital status: "It's like you were a husband," I said. He looked at me hard. He was frowning. "I mean you slept with me while I was bleeding, like a husband would, and didn't try to arouse me till I was ready." "What's a man for?" "Why you want me?" I asked. "Only to ride you." "You said you used to work with horses." "Yeah, that's how I got away from my... wife. Brought some horses up this way, and stayed." "You didn't tell me you were married." "I thought I told you." "No, you didn't tell me." (95)

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  Supplementary Reading: John Carroll, Constantine’s Sword. Bart Ehrman, After the New Testament, chapter 2. Questions to Consider: 1. What would the world be like today if the vast majority of religions were inclusivistic—as they were in the Roman world—rather than exclusivistic? Would this have any effect on social and political conflicts? 2. Try to mount arguments for Constantine’s conversion being (a) a good thing and (b) a bad thing for the future of Christianity. ©2004 The Teaching Company. 53 Lecture Eleven The Early Persecutions of the State Scope: This lecture is the first of four dealing with persecution and martyrdom in the early church. As Christianity spread, it was widely opposed, first, on the local level by antagonistic mobs and, later, officially by Roman imperial authorities. Why were Christians seen as problematic and singled out for punishment? In this lecture, we will examine a graphic account of Christian persecution from the mid-second century (the martyrdom of Christians in Lyons and Vienne) and move from there to consider both why Christians were persecuted and what their reactions to opposition were. En route, we will unravel several “myths” about early Christian persecution (for example, that Christianity was “illegal” and that Christians were always in hiding). The lecture will conclude by considering the scattered evidence for the emperors’ involvement in early persecution (under Nero, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius). Outline I. In the previous two lectures, we saw how Christianity spread throughout the Roman world. A. In those lectures, I argued that the religion spread by word of mouth and proved attractive to some pagans because the Christian God appeared to be so powerful, that is, capable of doing great miracles for his people. B. Moreover, the exclusive claim of the Christians—that their God alone was true and all other gods were false, that their views alone were right and all others, wrong—was unique in that world and facilitated the spread of Christianity, because it necessarily destroyed the other religions when pagans converted. C. It would be a mistake to think that the conversion of the empire happened quickly and unproblematically. In fact, there were major obstacles, seen in the circumstance that most pagans rejected the Christian message, finding it offensive and worthy of violent opposition.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  lived and died so recently? They argued that their religion was the true fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures; that Moses and the prophets had predicted Christ; that from the foundations of the Earth, it was the Christians and the Christians alone who had the truth. 4. This naturally led to heightened antagonisms with Jews, who maintained their own laws and customs based on these Scriptures, and who could point out that Christians refused to do so. To protect themselves, Christians attacked the Jews as representing a false religion. The result was some of the comments we have already seen in Justin and Barnabas. IV. A further result was the even more exaggerated and vitriolic polemic we find in the writings of a later figure significant for the conflict between Jews and Christians, Melito of Sardis. A. B. Melito was a Christian bishop in Asia Minor in the late second century. For years, we had none of his major writings, but in the 1940s, a sermon was discovered that he had written and delivered. It is a sermon that was preached on Easter during the Jewish feast of the Passover, which uses the Passover (Exodus) story of the Old Testament to show that the entire account prefigured none other than Jesus. Melito then uses the occasion to bemoan the fact that this one who had been predicted in the Jewish Scriptures had come to be rejected by the Jewish people. The Jews, in fact, rejected their own Messiah. More than that, for Melito, because Jesus is God, the Jews have rejected God. In fact, because they were responsible for executing Jesus, the Jews are guilty of killing God. This is the first instance we have of the charge of deicide in the conflicts of Christians against Jews. At this point of the history of Jewish-Christian relations (late second century), such polemic was little more than a defensive posturing by a tiny minority splinter group with no real power. Christians were scattered and politically innocuous. A. That was to change over time, as numbers of pagans began to join the fold, and eventually, Christians began to assume positions of authority. I will give a fuller account of how that happened in a later lecture. For now, I can simply give some figures. 1. Christians made up maybe two to three percent of the empire near the end of the second century; by the beginning of the fourth century, maybe five to seven percent. 2. But then the Roman emperor Constantine converted (as we will see more fully later), and that changed everything. Massive conversions transpired, including of the elite classes in the empire; thus, by the end of the fourth century, nearly half the empire was Christian. 119 3. Constantine made Christianity a legal, even favored religion. One of his later successors, Theodosius, made it the official state religion at the end of the fourth century.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Carl came back. Neil finished tactfully: “In the middle of summer I usually go to Los Angeles to see how things are going. Ive bought many fine items there.” Now he turned to Carl, baiting him like this, perhaps to drive him away: “I heard something hilarious, Carl. You know what that little chorus-boy queen told me?— you know the one I mean.” Carl blanched. Neil continued: “She told me that the height of sadism is the sadist who lets the masochist win! Ho, ho, ho!” He laughed raucously like a department store Santa Claus. Carl, of course, wasnt amused. “Have you heard anything more about your stolen guns, Neil?” he asked. Neil winced. Carl apparently had aimed directly. “No!” Neil said curtly. Making himself at home—and smiling for having wounded Neil back in a way which I did not understand—Carl goes to a cabinet and brings out a decanter of wine, begins immediately to drink from if thirstily; and as he drinks, he becomes more pugnacious toward Neil—and his voice will become progressively more highpitched, his gestures airier—hinting, shockingly, because of his masculine appearance, at girlishness. Turning toward me, Carl startled me by saying this: “You may have discovered this yourself (I dont know how long youve known Mr Neil), but hes insulated himself with his costumes, the way other old men insulate themselves with money—or dirty pictures.” It is more than the previous embarrassing reference, by Neil, to the interlude between Carl and the chorus boy—more than the liquor—that is making Carl abandon so swiftly even the barest trace of civility between him and Neil, as though a years-long tacitly undeclared war had at last flared into open conflict. “Thats how youve prepared for your old age, isnt it, darling?” he asked Neil. Sensing the direction of the conversation, Neil tried to remove the wine, but Carl reached for it quickly, poured out another glass. Resigned to the fact that Carl was staying, Neil said: “Lets take more pictures. I have a good idea for one!... And dont call me nelly affectionate names, Carl—Ive warned you before! And dont call them ‘costumes’!” Carl ignores him, goes on flaunting his deeply rooted anger. “Anyway,” he says, “Neil lures people with his fantastic make-believe—and in a world—...” Neil: “Why dont you tell us instead about your experiences—like with the chorus boy.” “—and in a world like ours that deals, from the beginning, largely in repressed sexdreams,” Carl goes on, “Neil fills his sexual needs by attracting others with his—... Collection. Look at those boots—the belt—...” He shook his head, smiling wryly. “Has he shown you his collection in the basement?” he asks me. “Carl, Im going to have to ask you to leave,” Neil said angrily.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He wrote, “I’m sure you realize we don’t work quite as hard out here as you do; with only three hours in the working day it is hard to get everything done. Still, I make time to place you in all sorts of embarrassing situations with customers and the business community. Whenever you need money desperately to pay bills, I send only a tiny fraction of what you need so that you’ll have to deal with bill collectors and lawsuits. I take the destruction of your reputation as a personal compliment.” And so on. Johnson answered back: “Finally someone out there understands me.” What I was getting ready to propose wasn’t going to help. I approached Johnson first. I chose my moment carefully—a trip we made to Japan, to visit Nippon Rubber and discuss the Pre Montreal. Over dinner I laid it all out for him. We were in a ferocious battle, a siege. Day by day, we were doing everything we could to keep the troops fed and the enemy at bay. For the sake of victory, for the sake of survival, everything else needed to be sacrificed, subordinated. “And so, at this crucial moment in the evolution of Blue Ribbon, in the rollout of Nike… I’m sorry, but, well… you two dummies need to switch cities.” He groaned. Of course. It was Santa Monica all over again. But slowly, agonizingly, he came around. As did Woodell. Around the close of 1972 each man handed his house keys to the other, and now in early 1973 they switched places. Talk about team players. It was an enormous sacrifice, and I was deeply grateful. But in keeping with my personality, and Blue Ribbon tradition, I expressed no gratitude. I spoke not a word of thanks or praise. In fact, in several office memos I referred to the switch as “Operation Dummy Reversal.” IN THE LATE spring of 1973 I met with our recent investors, the debenture holders, for a second time. The first time they’d loved me. How could they not? Sales were booming, celebrity athletes were promoting our shoes. Sure, we’d lost Onitsuka, and we were facing a legal fight down the road, but we were on the right track. This time, however, it was my duty to inform the investors that, one year after launching Nike, for the first time in Blue Ribbon history… we’d lost money. The meeting took place at the Valley River Inn in Eugene. It was thirty men and women crammed into the conference room, with me at the head of a long conference table. I wore a dark suit and tried to project an air of confidence as I delivered the bad news. I gave them the same speech I’d given Blue Ribbon employees a year before. We’ve got them right where we want them. But this group wasn’t buying any pep talks. These were widows and widowers, retirees and pensioners.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Second, theorizing black women's transgressive behavior, while simultaneously examining various manifestations of transgression-or what I often refer to as racialized gender transgression-this book challenges "mainstream" discourses and theories of transgression, whereby the nexus of race and transgression, especially where black (female) subjects are concerned, typically falls into an abyss of critical inattention.' This book analyzes and elucidates black female transgressive behavior and sexuality-while paying particular attention to periodization, politics, and aesthetics of the (late) mid-twentieth century-to expand understandings of the nexus of gender, sexuality, race, and transgression. In its analysis of postmodern characterizations of black womanhood, black female sexuality, and the ways that both feminism and nationalism imposed constructions of black womanhood that inform post-civil rights authors' characterizations of them as transgressive, this book diverges from previous scholarship in this regard and in its utilization of sexuality as a trope and axis of interrogation of hegemonic power, politics of passion, and female (subversive) erotic pleasure. I deploy the term "transgressive" (and by extension "transgressive behavior" and "transgression") to indicate the ways these black women characters operate out of a particular and strategic politics, agency, and deliberateness that challenge or, at the very least, call into question what constitutes "normativity," while simultaneously destabilizing conventional paradigms governing race, gender, and sexuality. In this regard, political scientist Cathy Cohen's notion of "deviance" resonates as particularly salient. In her landmark essay "Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics," Cohen argues for an analysis and paradigmatic shift that, building upon discourses and frameworks in African American studies and queer theory, centers those vulnerable and marginalized subjects who-in their deliberate refusal to conform to established "normativity"-embody a deviance that resists socially and sociocommunally prescribed "heterogendered" and "`normalized' understandings and behaviors."9 Such individuals embody this subjectivity, complicating power relations, regulation/regulatory processes, and "normativity"; and, their deliberate agency in opting out of conformity to the "fundamental concepts/ behaviors" governing "desire, pleasure, and sex" provides the basis for transformative politics and the very paradigmatic shift Cohen proposes. Like Cohen's, my work on transgressive behavior and representations foregrounds those (black women) subjects who unapologetically subvert the established sociosexual "norms." While I recognize that multiple valences of representations of black womanhood and blackness operate as transgressive-with blackness signifying, within the literary and sociocultural imagination, anomaly, debasement, resistance, or excess-I do not present black women's transgressive behavior and racialized (gender) transgression as indicative of or coterminous with aberrance, abjection, deviance, or perversion. Nor do I situate them as pathological in ways that fortify or reaffirm heteronormativity, black debasement, or the purported norm. Rather, I read the manifestations of transgressive behavior as grounded in black (female) subjectivity that not only challenges putative normative modalities governing race, gender, and sexuality, but, as stated previously, as also emblematic of desire for and gestures toward a black postmodern moment.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  As I have argued previously, transgressive behavior, as well as racialized gender transgression, and sexuality serve pivotal roles in post-civil rights novels. Eva's Man is, of course, no exception. If transgression "is not sexual license," but, rather, "concerns knowledge and power, which are expressed in the conditions of sexuality," then the regulation of sexuality or "prohibition" becomes a source of power that not only restrains the body but also controls "knowledge and social action."" In Eva's Man, these very sensibilities manifest, taking shape in her sexual interactions with Davis. While she engages in sex with him, and sex that is consensual, it is simultaneously accompanied by restraint and prohibition. Even as she engages freely, she is, all the while, confined to the room in a way that marks her sexual exchange, paradoxically, with consent and constraint, freedom and suppression. If sexuality emblematizes and serves as a means of power that "restrains" when regulated, Eva's killing Davis-especially in a sexualized act that, literally, attacks the phallus and masculinist hegemonybecomes symbolic of agency, the demise of (cumulative) sexual aggression and restraint, and a subversion of patriarchal sexual control. Liberating sexuality, and in this case black sexuality, from regulatory practices-whether historically racist and sexually criminal acts or communally inflicted violations, strategic dissemblance, and regulations-rectifies a past, offers possibilities, and shifts the dynamics where power, agency, and autonomy are concerned. Given this correlation between transgression and sexuality, as well as how they interface with social power and the political, sexuality-in its various enactments and instantiations in Eva's Man and other post-civil rights novels analyzed in this studyfunctions not merely as a trope. As elucidated previously, it also serves as a signifier of desire and efforts toward a more complex "blackness" or black identity ungoverned by outmoded racial politics and its attendant conventions regarding gender and sexuality. Black women's transgressive behavior, like transgression itself, functions in Eva's Man as a strategy by which to destabilize and disrupt a particular politics governing race: one based on essentialist constructions of "blackness" that circumscribe black womanhood, black female sexuality, and black sexuality at large. As such, the violence that accompanies sexual intimacy is metaphoric: first, it is emblematic of the historical brutalities and sexualized crimes against black bodies-entrenched and exacerbated by a communal silence-that result in an infliction (a re-infliction of sorts) of violence upon itself. Second, it is also indicative of the ways in which race and sexuality imbricate in not only the sexualizing effects of racism but also in the racialization of sex(uality). For, as Sharon Holland notes, the "first sexual revolution" transpired during slavery, wherein black bodies and black sexuality were accessible to whites whose command over blacks took shape in all forms, sexually, corporeally, and otherwise.12 Sex in slavery entailed, and might indeed be conflated with, atrocities against the body, with the sexual violation of black bodies representative of the wide-ranging dehumanization, historical conquest, and desire to conquer "blackness" that, concomitantly, involves conquering/controlling black sexuality.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  ©2004 The Teaching Company. 59 A. The Martyrdom of Polycarp comes to us, again, in the form of a letter, this time from the Christians of Smyrna to those of another town, Philomelium. B. The author of the letter indicates that he wants to show how Polycarp’s martyrdom was “in conformity with the Gospel.” 1. Even though this is an eyewitness account, it is difficult to separate historical fact from theological fiction here. 2. This is principally because the story is told in a way to emphasize the similarities of Polycarp’s death to the death of Jesus in many of its details. For example, Polycarp predicts his death, he is betrayed by one of his own, the officer opposed to him is named Herod, he rides into town on a donkey, and so on. C. Still, there is a historical kernel to this intriguing account, and it can be used to help us understand a bit more about why and how non-Christians opposed the followers of Christ in the early centuries of the church. 1. The account stresses that others were tortured to death before Polycarp. 2. It then goes on to detail the burning desire of the pagan crowds to have the leader of the Christians arrested and put on trial. 3. The arresting officials try to persuade Polycarp to acknowledge the divinity of the Roman gods, but he refuses. 4. When brought into the arena before the Roman proconsul, Polycarp is again urged to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor and to reject the “atheists” (that is, the Christians, who are “atheists” in that they do not accept the worship of the gods). 5. When Polycarp steadfastly refuses, the proconsul urges him to persuade the masses. 6. But Polycarp remains firm, despite threats of torture, because, as he says, the brief sufferings awaiting him pale in comparison with the eternal torments reserved for those who reject Christ. 7. The crowds are incensed and urge his death. Polycarp is then burned at the stake. The narrator indicates that before his

• From The Case for God (2009)

  15 Americans were wary of intellectualism and, appalled by the French Revolution, had used Christianity to promote social reform. But Germans were inspired by the French Revolution, which had translated the intellectual ideals of the Enlightenment into a program for justice and equity. The social and political situation in Germany ruled out revolutionary activity, and after the experience of France, it seemed better to try to change the way people thought than resort to violence and terror, so during the 1830s, an anti-establishment intellectual cadre had emerged in the universities. Many of these revolutionary intellectuals were theologically literate. In Germany, theology was an advanced and progressive discipline: two out of every five graduates had a theological degree and knew that they were in the vanguard of religious change. At the end of the eighteenth century, German scholars such as Johann Eichhorn (1752-1827), Johann Vater (1771-1826), and Wilhelm DeWette (17801849) had pioneered a new method of reading the Bible, applying to scripture the modern historical-critical methodology used to study classical texts. As a result, they had discovered that the Pentateuch had not been authored by Moses but was composed of at least four different sources, and were beginning to look at revelation and religious truth in an entirely different way. Other young men became disciples of Schleiermacher and Hegel and were eager to accelerate the dialectical progress that Hegel had described by abolishing reactionary ideologies and institutions. They were particularly incensed by the social privileges of the clergy and regarded the Lutheran Church as a bastion of conservatism. The new European atheism was a product of this hunger for radical social and political change. As part of the corrupt old regime, the churches had to go, together with the God who had supported the system. 16 As modernization intensified, rapid industrialization and population growth during the 1840s led to severe social deprivation. Food riots were brutally suppressed. It was in this climate that Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), pupil of Schleiermacher and Hegel, published The Essence of Christianity (1841), which was avidly read, not simply as a theological statement but as a revolutionary tract. Feuerbach had taken Hegel’s call for a God and religion of this world to its logical conclusion. 17 If the idea of a remote, external God was so alienating, why not get rid of him altogether? God, Feuerbach argued, was simply an oppressive human construct. People had projected their own human qualities onto an imaginary being that was merely a reflection of themselves. So “man’s belief in God is nothing other than his belief in himself. … In his God he reveres and loves nothing other than his own being.” 18 Hegel had been right.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  anything like ancient tradition if it was a recent innovation? Well, Christians were compelled to argue that, in fact, the religion was ancient. In fact, that it was older than any of the pagan religions, and that it was older, even, than Judaism. How can they possibly claim, though, that Christianity was older than anything in paganism, and older than anything in Judaism, if it had just started? Well, Christians had an argument, and they pushed it quite hard. Christians argued that their religion, in fact, was the true fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures, that Moses and the prophets had predicted Christ; that from the foundations of the Earth, it was the Christians, and the Christians alone who had the truth. We asked earlier: Why would the Christians want to claim the Jewish Bible as their own if they didn’t keep its laws? Because by claiming that they were the true fulfillment of the Jewish Bible, they, in fact, had traditions supporting their religion to go back all way to Moses. Moses, by the way, lived 400 years before Homer, the author of the //iad and the Odyssey. He lived 800 years before Plato, the great Greek philosopher. If you want to claim antiquity for your religion, and you can claim hold of Moses, then, in fact, you have antiquity. That’s one of the reasons why Christians held onto the Jewish Scriptures, because it provided them witha means of legitimation in the face of opposition. At the same time, this stance toward the Old Testament, the stance that we saw, for example, in both Justin Martyr and the Epistle of Barnabas, in which Christianity claims it as its own, naturally led to heightened antagonisms with Jews, who were still around, and who still claimed the Scriptures as their own, and who actually kept the laws and customs outlined in the Scriptures. They could also point out that the Christians, in fact, did not do so. In order to protect themselves from these attacks from Jews, who would say, “You don’t even keep the Laws, so how can you claim these are your Scriptures?”, Christians went on the counterattack and portrayed Jews as advocating a false religion. Therefore, we have seen some of the comments already in Justin and in Barnabas. The kinds of comments we saw in Justin and Barnabas were obviously inflammatory toward Jews. We find it even more exaggerated in vitriolic polemic, when we come to the writings of a later figure in the conflict between Jews and Christians, a Christian bishop whose name was Melito. He was the bishop of a town in Asia Minor called Sardis, and so this person is commonly known as Melito of Sardis.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “I’ll give you an example of what weakness can do!” he shouts as if to blot out his own guilty thoughts. “The Example! My own father!... He was weak!... But my—... mother!” He flung the word out with infinite revulsion. “—that—woman!—that loathsome despicable woman with her hatred of the body—... I couldnt go barefoot! I even had to take a bath in the dark!... That woman!— she knew. She was strong—and she used that strength, and she used my father’s weakness—” He twisted his hands as if wringing out a piece of cloth. “—and she twisted and drained and twisted. And then he—my father—that weak man—would take it out on me—hit me. ” He flayed himself with the thick belt he had removed from the dark pants. “But I showed him I was a Man! I wouldnt run away from him!... And he hit me and hit me and hit me with his belt—until I'd pass out.” Whack! —again the belt against his thigh. He didn’t flinch. “And then I wouldnt even faint any more,” he said. “I’d just—... let him.... And yet,” he whispered as if in a trance, “and yet—do you know?—that weak, dreadful man—my father—he—... He wore boots! Boots! —a symbol of the strength he’d given away so easily, without a fight! That pitiful man — dominated by my mother — had the guts to wear Boots! ... And then I found the Answer—Strength!... And when I found that out, I—... You want to know what my first gesture of—of Freedom!—from him and that woman—was?” He threw back his head and roared with pained laughter. He continued as if hypnotized by the remembrance of that ugly past: “I had gone to the movies—secretly because I wasnt even allowed to do that! It was a period picture.... And the hero—a strong, handsome, masculine man (everything my father wasnt!)—he was wearing Boots too. But on him they were Right: No woman would have dominated him! ... I sat through that movie several times especially for a scene in which that magnificent man was sitting in bed, putting on his Boots! He looped his fingers about the inside straps—and he slipped the boots on! I held my breath.... That night, when my father was asleep, I went into his bedroom. I stood looking at him: Even asleep he looked weak and dominated.... And staring at my—... father!—asleep—I hated him more than ever. I found his boots under the bed. I took them to my room. I got my mother’s scissors. And I snipped the straps off the insides of his boots!” He formed two fingers into a V and closed them with finality. He looked worn out. The studded costume he wore seemed like a ponderous burden on him. His face dropped toward his hands. Dispassionately, lifelessly, he echoed: “I snipped those straps from the insides of his boots. I cut them off, I stamped on them, I spit on them, I—I—...” And then he shouted:

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Like Lazarius, Jerome is highly intolerant of individuals, especially black ones, who transgress established (hetero)sexual boundaries. Upon discovering that Renay has left him, not for another black man but for a white lesbian, he confronts her derisively, even referring to her and Terry in derogatory sexual terms. His reaction to Renay's same-gender loving relationship illustrates not only his extremely heterosexist and homophobic attitude, but also his intensely violent condemnation of homosexuality. Rather than accept same-gender loving within a black context, he articulates a willingness even to resort to murder as an extreme corrective for black sexual difference. In this case, Jerome, as the author intends, typifies the sexuality-based fears and hostilities of some nationalists and the general American public, as well as castigatory stances toward individuals whose "infractions" threaten established communal standards and cultural norms. Jerome's reaction-as well as his subsequent assertion that he will "whip the pure black shit out of [Renay's] yellow ass"-reflects his insecurities and inadequacies as a man, and problematically suggests that Renay is not "pure" or authentically black (131). For, Renay's having left him in general, and for a woman (and a white one at that), not only emasculates him but, far worse in his estimation, undermines his role as a (black) man since, within the nationalist project, women's sexuality is regulated through men who have orchestrated control over female bodies and sexuality.48 Jerome's desire to beat Renay evidences, then, his need to recover both dominion over Renay and his "lost" manhood. Renay's response to Jerome's violent reaction evidences the ways black women refuse to capitulate or subscribe to marginalizing nationalist and larger societal proscriptions for women. In challenging heterosexist relationships privileged in nationalist constructions of family-and dictates of women having to "inspire" their men on multiple levels-these women delegitimize the function of the "black man" as they resolutely assert themselves. Renay, aware of Jerome's false sense of security and feelings of masculinity, boldly challenges Jerome's threats: Yes.... You want to beat me, to trample on me, see me grovel because you despise what you can't change. A man should be able to control his woman-especially a black man who can't control anything else. But do you really want to know why you hate me? Because I've survived your male deterioration. [...] Survived. Through the muck and slime you've [...] put me through, I've come out of itour battle of wills. But, you, you're in it and can't get out because you're stuck! You're too weak to struggle. It's easier to stay in. And you can't stand the idea that I've left the dirt and you, and you can't push me back. (131-32)

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Similarly, during the 2004 Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, a "wardrobe malfunction" accounted for the exposure of Jackson's breast at the precise moment Timberlake sang, "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song." Responses to the singers' performance, whether incidental or a calculated choreographed gesture, inevitably diverged. While there are various factors to consider, such as the performers' obvious age difference, most transparent were their racial and gender differences: Jackson, an African American female pop icon (and sister of the global pop sensation-the "King of Pop"-Michael Jackson), and Justin Timberlake, a former "boy band" group member and breakout white male performance artist. The singers' performance and the public's response to it revealed a particular vulnerability of both an intimate and public nature. Jackson experienced castigation and a lack of sympathy not at all commensurate with her sexualized exposure. Conversely, Timberlake was considered, by and large, a relatively innocent "bystander" who was simply unaware or duped. As such, he, though having actively pulled on Jackson's clothing, did not encounter the same degree of criticism or suffer ramifications to the extent that Jackson did.26 These instances are not, however, limited to the interracial realm but also occur in intraracial contexts, as the controversy surrounding Nelly, rapper and music entertainer, reveals. In his highly contentious and controversial video Tip Drill, black women appear partially nude, especially in comparison to the fully clothed male rappers donning athletic jerseys. Nelly's swiping of a credit card in between the "posterior" (a.k.a. buttocks) of a woman caused an uproar of enormous magnitude, as did his obtuse and degrading misogynist lyrics. Not only did students at Spelman College plan a boycott of his charity performance, but he was scathingly excoriated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In some ways, Nelly's career still suffers from this incident. What his video and its subsequent public condemnation expose is the extent to which perceptions and stereotypes of black women, womanhood, and blackness generally are entrenched in various segments, including the black community, and perpetuated in troublesome ways. Disseminated are constructions of black masculinity and manhood as regulatory-dictating the terms of their sexuality and desires through women, whose bodies and sexualities are governed by and accessible to (multiple) men. Some rappers, in turn, become representative of or conflated with an "authentically" black (male) subject whose masculinity is constituted, if not governed, by his sexuality-virility, sexual domination, and prowess-in relation to the female body, exploitation, and capital, as evidenced by the title ("Tip" Drill) and Nelly's dashing money toward women for sexual exchanges and accommodations.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Essays and Reviews caused a sensation. It sold twenty-two thousand copies in two years (more than Origin in the first twenty years of its publication), went through thirteen editions in five years, and inspired some four hundred books and articles in response. 48 Three of the authors belonged to a circle of progressive clergymen and scientists at Oxford and Cambridge who kept one another abreast of developments in their fields: 49 Baden Powell, Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford; Benjamin Jowett, classicist and later master of Balliol College; and Mark Pattison, rector of Lincoln College. The essays were of variable quality: they discussed the nature of predictive prophecy, the interpretation of miracle stories, and the authorship of Genesis. But by the far the most important article was Jowett’s essay “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” which argued that the Bible should be subjected to the same rigorous scholarship as any other ancient text. Evangelical Protestants, who had been taught to look for the plain sense of scripture and had in the process lost any understanding of the nature of mythology, found these ideas deeply disturbing. In 1888, the English novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward published Robert Elsmere , which told the story of a clergyman whose faith was destroyed by the Higher Criticism. At one point his wife complains: “If the Gospels are not true in fact, as history, I cannot see how they are true at all, or of any value.” 50 The novel became a best seller, indicating that many readers shared her dilemma. The hierarchy was equally disturbed by these new theories. Immediately after the publication of Essays and Reviews , a letter to The Times , cosigned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and twenty-five other bishops, threatened to bring the authors to the ecclesiastical courts. Two were indeed tried for heresy, convicted (though the ruling was later overturned), and lost their posts, and Jowett was temporarily suspended from clerical duties. Bishops, theologians, and professors collaborated on major symposia to counter Essays and Reviews , and, in an unlikely alliance, Anglo-Catholics joined forces with Evangelicals in a statement that affirmed the divine inspiration of the Bible. Seven hundred seventeen scientists (of minor status) also signed a strongly worded protest, and some of the signatories established the Victoria Institute to defend the literal truth of scripture. 51 The more progressive theologians who adopted the new historical-critical method often found that their staunchest supporters were scientists who, like themselves, were at the cutting edge of their field.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The new atheists all equate faith with mindless credulity. Harris wrote The End of Faith immediately after 9/11, insisting that the only way to rid our world of terrorism was to abolish all faith. Like Dawkins and Hitchens, he defines faith as “Belief without Evidence,” 34 an attitude that he regards as morally reprehensible. It is not surprising, perhaps, that he should confuse “faith” with “belief” (meaning the intellectual acceptance of a proposition) because the two have become unfortunately fused in modern consciousness. But like other atheists and agnostics before him, Harris goes on to declare that faith is the root of all evil. A belief might seem innocent enough, but once you have blindly accepted the dogma that Jesus “can be eaten in the form of a cracker,” 35 you have made a space in your mind for other monstrous fictions: that God desires the destruction of Israel, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or the 9 /11 massacres. Everybody must stop believing in anything that cannot be verified by the empirical methods of science. It is not enough to get rid of extremists, fundamentalists, and terrorists. “Moderate” believers are equally guilty of the “inherently dangerous” crime of faith and must share responsibility for the terrorist atrocities. 36 Our civic toleration of faith must therefore be eliminated. “As long as we respect the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is real faith,” Dawkins insists, “it is hard to withhold respect for Usama bin Laden and the suicide bombers.” The obvious and self-evident alternative is to “abandon the principle of automatic respect for religious faith,” because “the teachings of ‘moderate religion,’ though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism.” 37 This rejection of the Enlightenment principle of toleration is new. It is, surely, itself extremist. “The very idea of religious tolerance,” Harris maintains, “is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss.” 38 In this lack of tolerance, they are again at one with the religious fundamentalists, even though they must be aware that the absence of respect for difference has led to some of the worst atrocities in modern times. It is hard to hear talk of elimination without recalling the Nazi camp and the Gulag. As its critics have already pointed out, there is an inherent contradiction in the new atheism, especially in its emphasis on the importance of “evidence” and the claim that science always proves its theories empirically. As Popper, Kuhn, and Polyani have argued, science itself has to rely on an act of faith.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  angry and wounded as I was, I needed to accept that Blue Ribbon would be lost without Onitsuka. I needed, Hayes said, to stick with the devil I knew, and persuade him to stick with the devil he knew. Later that week, when the devil returned, I invited him out to Tigard for one more visit before his flight home. Again I tried to rise above it all. I brought him into the conference room and with Woodell and I on one side of the table, and Kitami and his assistant, Iwano, on the other, I screwed a big smile onto my face and said that we hoped he’d enjoyed his visit to our country. He said yet again that he was disappointed in the performance of Blue Ribbon. This time, however, he said he had a solution. “Shoot,” I said. “Sell us your company.” He said it so very softly. The thought crossed my mind that some of the hardest things ever said in our lifetimes are said softly. “Excuse me?” I said. “Onitsuka Co. Ltd. will buy controlling interest in Blue Ribbon, fifty-one percent. It is best deal for your company. And you. You would be wise to accept.” A takeover. A hostile freaking takeover. I looked at the ceiling. You gotta be kidding, I thought. Of all the arrogant, underhanded, ungrateful, bullying— “And if we do not?” “We will have no choice but to set up superior distributors.” “Superior. Uh-huh. I see. And what about our written agreement?” He shrugged. So much for agreements. I couldn’t let my mind go to any of those places it was trying to go. I couldn’t tell Kitami what I thought of him, or where to stick his offer, because Hayes was right, I still needed him. I had no backup, no plan B, no exit strategy. If I was going to save Blue Ribbon, I needed to do it slowly, on my own schedule, so as not to spook customers and retailers. I needed time, and therefore I needed Onitsuka to keep sending me shoes for as long as possible. “Well,” I said, fighting to control my voice, “I have a partner, of course. Coach Bowerman. I’ll have to discuss your offer with him.” I was certain Kitami would see through this amateurish stall. But he rose, hitched his pants, and smiled. “Talk it over with Dr. Bowerman. Get back to me.” I wanted to hit him. Instead I shook his hand. He and Iwano walked out. In the suddenly Kitami-less conference room, Woodell and I stared into the grain of the conference table and let the stillness settle over us. I SENT MY budget and forecast for the coming year to First National, with my standard credit request. I wanted to send a note of apology, begging forgiveness for the Kitami debacle, but I knew White would roll with it. And besides, Wallace hadn’t been there.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Our civic toleration of faith must therefore be eliminated. “As long as we respect the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is real faith,” Dawkins insists, “it is hard to withhold respect for Usama bin Laden and the suicide bombers.” The obvious and self-evident alternative is to “abandon the principle of automatic respect for religious faith,” because “the teachings of ‘moderate religion,’ though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism.”37 This rejection of the Enlightenment principle of toleration is new. It is, surely, itself extremist. “The very idea of religious tolerance,” Harris maintains, “is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss.”38 In this lack of tolerance, they are again at one with the religious fundamentalists, even though they must be aware that the absence of respect for difference has led to some of the worst atrocities in modern times. It is hard to hear talk of elimination without recalling the Nazi camp and the Gulag. As its critics have already pointed out, there is an inherent contradiction in the new atheism, especially in its emphasis on the importance of “evidence” and the claim that science always proves its theories empirically. As Popper, Kuhn, and Polyani have argued, science itself has to rely on an act of faith. Even Monod acknowledged this. Dawkins’s hero Darwin admitted that he could not prove the evolutionary hypothesis but he had confidence in it nonetheless, and for decades, as we have seen, physicists were happy to have faith in Einstein’s theory of relativity, even though it had not been definitively verified. Even Harris makes a large act of faith in the ability of his own intelligence to arrive at objective truth—a claim that Hume or Kant would have found questionable. All three of these proselytizing atheists present religion at its absolute worst. It is very important to remember the evils committed in the name of religion, and they are right to bring them to our attention. All too often, people of faith like to enumerate the sins of other traditions while ignoring the stains on their own. Christians, for example, are often eager to criticize Islam for its intolerance, showing not only an embarrassing ignorance of Muslim history but total myopia toward the crusades, persecutions, and inquisitions conducted by their own coreligionists. But claiming that religion has only been evil is inaccurate. Science is the child of logos and we should, therefore, be able to rely on scientists, with their finely honed reasoning powers, to sift the evidence in a balanced, impartial way. But Harris, for example, finds it quite acceptable to assert emphatically that “most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith.”39 This type of remark is just as biased and untrue as some of the religious rhetoric he condemns.