Disappointment

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 How God Became King (2012)

  The gospels are, and were written to be, fresh tellings of the story of Jesus designed to be the charter of the community of Jesus’s first followers and those who, through their witness, then and subsequently, have joined in and have learned to hear, see, and know Jesus in word and sacrament. 8 Where We Get Stuck Enlightenment, Power, and Empire W E ARE NOW APPROACHING the heart of the four gospels, the dense and complex center of their world of meaning. We should allow ourselves, on a regular basis, to be struck anew by the thick, rich, multilayered nature of these four documents, so full of vivid human scenes, but so evocative in their resonance of meaning about the world, God, life and death, and pretty much everything else. As I read the gospels and think what the church has done (and hasn’t done) with them, I am reminded of a wonderful scene in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus. There, the cynical old court composer Salieri contrasts his own operas, telling and retelling great tales of legendary heroes but through stale and tedious music, with Mozart’s astonishing ability to take characters off the street and create something truly magical. “He has taken ordinary people,” says Salieri, “ordinary people—barbers and chambermaids—and he has made them gods and heroes. I have taken gods and heroes… and made them ordinary . ” Making the Gospels Ordinary Near the heart of my purpose in this book is to suggest that not only have we misread the gospels, but that we have made them ordinary, have cut them down to size, have allowed them only to speak about the few concerns that happened to occupy our minds already, rather than setting them free to generate an entire world of meaning in all directions, a new world in which we would discover not only new life, but new vocation. It is not easy to escape the trap of “making the gospels ordinary.” There are habits of thought and of the practice of the church (some lectionaries, for instance) that are so ingrained that we don’t realize they’re there. But habits of thought, especially when we are not aware of them, have the capacity to keep us imprisoned in small-minded readings unless we name them, smoke them out of their hiding places, set them aside, and take steps to prevent their return. This chapter is, in one sense, a digression, because in it we turn aside to examine these habits, these patterns of thought and imagination, so that we can at least reduce their powerful influence. Only then can we return to the gospels themselves with some hope of seeing more clearly what they are actually saying. The gospels are telling us that the whole story belongs together: the kingdom and the cross are part of one another (and both, together, are part of the larger whole that includes incarnation, on the one hand, and resurrection, on the other).

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Galileo was right to argue that poetical remarks in the Bible should not be read as definitive scientific observations; this had been standard exegetical practice in the West since the time of Augustine, and in failing to recognize this, Bellarmine was theologically at fault. But Galileo had not been able to meet his own high standards of scientific verification and had not fully appreciated the importance of hypothetical and probable reasoning in science. In mixing science and religion, he had violated his own principles and entered the now dangerous minefield of scriptural interpretation.82 If he had presented his view as the probable theory it actually was, he could have remained at peace with the Church. Instead, he insisted that he was in possession of a proof that he had not achieved. In 1616, Copernicus’s De revolutionibus and Foscarini’s treatise were put on the Index. Galileo himself was not threatened, and Bellarmine even gave him a certificate stating that he had not been asked to recant any of his theories.83 But in 1623, Galileo entered the lists again when his old friend Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII. When they met in Rome, Urban feted Galileo and agreed that he could write what he chose about heliocentric theory, as long as he presented his theories as hypothetical in the usual way. Galileo returned to Florence to work on his Dialogues on the Two World Systems. But after this promising beginning, two of Galileo’s patrons were implicated in Spanish political intrigues at the papal court and were disgraced, and Galileo was damaged by association.84 To make matters worse, he had added a final paragraph to the Dialogues. “Simplicio,” the character who represented the new Aristotelian orthodoxy and performed throughout the dialogue as the “fall guy,” argued that Copernican theory was “neither true nor conclusive” and that it “would be excessive boldness for anyone to limit and restrict the divine power and wisdom to one particular fancy of his own.”85 These words were a direct quotation of published remarks by Urban himself, who would not have been pleased to see them on the lips of Simplicio, whose name was an insult in itself. On April 12, 1633, Galileo was summoned to the Holy Office and was judged guilty of disobedience. On June 22, he was forced to recant on his knees, and returned to Florence, where he was confined to his country estate.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  He did not return till six in the evening, to take me away to my new lodgings; and my moveables being soon packed, and conveyed into a hackney coach, it cost me but little regret to take my leave of a landlady whom I thought I had so much reason not to be over pleased with; and as for her part, she made no other difference to my staying or going, but what that of the profit created. We soon got to the house appointed for me, which was that of a plain tradesman, who, on the score of interest, was entirely at Mr. H...’s devotion, and who let him the first floor, very genteelly furnished, for two guineas a week, of which I was instated mistress, with a maid to attend me. He stayed with me that evening, and we had a supper from a neighbouring tavern, after which, and a gay glass or two, the maid put me to bed. Mr. H.... soon followed, and notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding night, I found no quarter nor remission from him: he piquet himself, as he told me, on doing the honours of my new apartment. The morning being pretty well advanced, we got to breakfast; and the ice now broke, my heart, no longer engrossed by love, began to take ease, and to please itself with such trifles Mr. H....’s liberal liking led him to make his court to the usual vanity of our sex. Silks, laces: ear rings, pearl necklace, gold watch, in sort, all the trinkets and articles of dress were lavishly heaped upon me; the sence of which, if it did not create returns of love, forced a kind of grateful fondness, something like love: a distinction which it would be spoiling the pleasure of nine tenths of the keepers in the town to make, and is, I suppose, the very good reason why so few of them ever do make it. I was now established the kept mistress in form, well lodged, with a very sufficient allowance, and lighted up with all the lustre of dress. Mr. H.... continued kind and tender to me; yet, with all this, I was far from happy: for, besides my regrets for my dear youth, which, though often suspended or diverted, still returned upon me in certain melancholic moments with redoubled violence, I wanted more society, more dissipation. As to Mr. H.... he was so much my superior in every sense, that I felt it too much to the disadvantage of the gratitude I owed him. Thus he gained my esteem, though he could not raise my taste; I was qualified for no sort of conversation with him, except one sort, and that is a satisfaction which leaves tiresome intervals, if not filled up by love, or other amusements.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  If there were, it would be a different matter: “Then we would have to use great care in explaining the passages of scripture that seem contrary. ... But I cannot believe that there is such a demonstration until someone shows it to me.” 79 Galileo immediately pointed out that the Council of Trent upheld the authority of the Bible only in matters of faith and morals and that heliocentric theory fell under neither category. It did not seem to have occurred to him that it was probably unwise to correct Bellarmine, the principal spokesman of reformed Catholicism, about the Council’s rulings. He then further muddied the waters by overstating his case, arguing that his experiments had provided the definitive proof that Bellarmine declared to be missing. 80 But this was not the case: Galileo’s observations on sunspots, the phases of Venus, and the tides were suggestive but not conclusive. On both sides, there was a clash of misplaced certainty. 81 Galileo was right to argue that poetical remarks in the Bible should not be read as definitive scientific observations; this had been standard exegetical practice in the West since the time of Augustine, and in failing to recognize this, Bellarmine was theologically at fault. But Galileo had not been able to meet his own high standards of scientific verification and had not fully appreciated the importance of hypothetical and probable reasoning in science. In mixing science and religion, he had violated his own principles and entered the now dangerous minefield of scriptural interpretation. 82 If he had presented his view as the probable theory it actually was, he could have remained at peace with the Church. Instead, he insisted that he was in possession of a proof that he had not achieved. In 1616, Copernicus’s De revolutionibus and Foscarini’s treatise were put on the Index. Galileo himself was not threatened, and Bellarmine even gave him a certificate stating that he had not been asked to recant any of his theories. 83 But in 1623, Galileo entered the lists again when his old friend Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII. When they met in Rome, Urban feted Galileo and agreed that he could write what he chose about heliocentric theory, as long as he presented his theories as hypothetical in the usual way.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Shes looking for you,” I said, perversely amused at how this put Buddy on. He shakes his head regretfully. “I hocked her dam drag-clothes again. Hell, I had to, I was busted real low....” And he adds, echoing Skipper—Im sure—trying to sound Tough: “Im tired of these small fucking scores, Im gonna knock me over a big one. A liquor store—or a bank!” It sounds almost ludicrous; he looks like a little boy.... And yet others like him would shoot into the frontpage unexpectedly: and one day a picture of a familiar face—the lost-boy look coming through the rehearsed tough-mug look—would greet you from the stacks of newspapers at the corner. “Not me,” says Chuck. “Too much hassle.” “I sure would hate ole Darling Dolly making a scene right here,” said Buddy, “and she told me she would. She means it, too. She said she’d start screaming at me wherever she saw me. And that sure would embarrass me.... Hell, I aint gonna hang around queens any more.... The only reason Im here is: Im looking for this score that digs watching me make out with a chick.” He indicates the girl still standing by the faucet “Oh, oh,” he said, moving away. “I think I see Darling Dolly over there.” With the girl, he dodged hurriedly through the crowds. “That chick hes with,” said Chuck, “man, I got the crabs jes standing next to her once.” 3 A woman in her late 30s walks past us. I had seen her many times before, usually about the men’s head. She had a pale white ghostface, her eyes outlined starkly in black. She never smiled. She would stand before some youngman—the rattiest looking and the youngest—then she’d whisper to him.... She was the only female score I knew of in the park. “She sure looks tired,” Chuck said as she passed by. Carried by the wave of the woman’s apparent lonesomeness, I asked Chuck abruptly: “Dont you ever get tired of this scene?” “Me? Uh—well—... Hell, yeah, man,” he said, “I am always tired.” He had misunderstood me. “Thats huccome I jes sit aroun.... But you wanna know somethin—? I sure wouldda dug being a cowboy.... An I was—once.” “In Georgia?” I couldn’t help saying.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  I was not taught to take the next step and see that God is not a spirit; that “he” has no gender; and that we have no idea what we mean when we say that a being “exists” who is “infinite in all perfections.” The process that should have led to a stunned appreciation of an “otherness” beyond the competence of language ended prematurely. The result is that many of us have been left stranded with an incoherent concept of God. We learned about God at about the same time as we were told about Santa Claus. But while our understanding of the Santa Claus phenomenon evolved and matured, our theology remained somewhat infantile. Not surprisingly, when we attained intellectual maturity, many of us rejected the God we had inherited and denied that he existed. Paul Tillich pointed out that it is difficult to speak about God these days, because people immediately ask you if a God exists . This means that the symbol of God is no longer working. Instead of pointing beyond itself to an ineffable reality, the humanly conceived construct that we call “God” has become the end of the story. We have seen that during the early modern period the idea of God was reduced to a scientific hypothesis and God became the ultimate explanation of the universe. Instead of symbolizing the ineffable, God was in effect reduced to a mere deva , a lowercase god that was a member of the cosmos with a precise function and location. When that happened, it was only a matter of time before atheism became a viable proposition, because scientists were soon able to find alternative explanatory hypotheses that rendered “God” redundant. This would not have been a disaster had not the churches come to rely on scientific proof. Other paths to knowledge had been downgraded in the modern world, and scientific rationality was now regarded as the only acceptable path to truth. People had grown accustomed to thinking of God as a “clear,” “distinct,” and self-evident idea. Had not Descartes, founder of modern philosophy, told them that the existence of God was even clearer and more obvious than one of Euclid’s theorems? Did not the great Newton insist that religion should be “easy”? Above all, many of us forgot that religious teaching was what the rabbis called miqra . It was essentially and crucially a program for action. You had to engage with a symbol imaginatively, become ritually and ethically involved with it, and allow it to effect a profound change in you. That was the original meaning of the words “faith” and “belief.” If you held aloof, a symbol would remain opaque and implausible. Many people today can work with the symbolism of the modern God in this way; backed up by ritual and compassionate, self-emptying practice, it still introduces them to the transcendence that gives meaning to their lives. But not everybody is able to do this.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The religious traditions have done something similar with altruism. As Confucius pointed out, they have found that when they practiced it “all day and every day,” it elevated human life to the realm of holiness and gave practitioners intimations of transcendence. In the past, theologians have found it useful to have an exchange of views with atheists. The ideas of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) were enhanced by the writings of Feuerbach; Bultmann, Tillich, and Rahner were all influenced by Heidegger. 43 But it is difficult to see how theologians could dialogue fruitfully with Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens because their theology is so rudimentary. We should, however, take careful note of what we might call the Dawkins phenomenon. The fact that these intemperate antireligious tracts have won such wide readership not only in secular Europe but also in religious America suggests that many people who have little theological training have problems with the modern God. Some believers are still able to work creatively with this symbol, but others are obviously not. They get little help from their clergy, who may not have had an advanced theological training and whose worldview may still be bounded by the modern God. Modern theology is not always easy reading. Theologians should try to present it in an attractive, accessible way to enable congregants to keep up with the latest discussions and the new insights of biblical scholarship, which rarely reach the pews. Our world is already dangerously polarized, and we do not need another divisive ideology. The history of fundamentalism shows that when these movements are attacked, they nearly always become more extreme. The atheist assault is likely to drive the fundamentalists to even greater commitment to creationism, and their contemptuous dismissal of Islam is a gift to Muslim extremists, who can use it to argue that the West is indeed intent on a new Crusade. 44 Typical of the fundamentalist mind-set is the belief that there is only one way of interpreting reality. For the new atheists, scientism alone can lead us to truth. But science depends upon faith, intuition, and aesthetic vision as well as on reason. The physicist Paul Dirac has argued that “it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.” 45 The mathematician Roger Penrose believes that the creative mind “breaks through” into a Platonic realm of mathematical and aesthetic forms: “Rigorous argument is usually the last step! Before that, one has to make many guesses, and for these aesthetic convictions are enormously important.”

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

  In those days shoe boxes were either white or blue, period, but I’d wanted something that would stand out, that would pop on the shelves of sporting goods stores. So I’d asked Nippon Rubber for boxes of bright neon orange, figuring it was the boldest color in the rainbow. Johnson and Woodell loved the orange, and loved the lowercase “nike,” lettered in white on the side of the box. But as they opened the boxes and examined the shoes themselves, both men were shaken up. These shoes, the first wave produced by Nippon Rubber, didn’t have the quality of Tigers, nor of the samples we’d seen earlier. The leather was shiny, and not in a good way. The Wet-Flyte looked literally wet, as if covered with cheap paint or lacquer that hadn’t dried. The upper was coated with polyurethane, but apparently Nippon was no more proficient than Bowerman at working with that tricky, mercurial substance. The logo on the side, Carolyn’s wing-whoosh thingamajig, which we’d taken to calling a swoosh, was crooked. I sat down and put my head in my hands. I looked at our orange pyramids. My mind went to the pyramids of Giza. Only ten years before I’d been there, riding a camel like Lawrence of Arabia across the sands, free as a man could be. Now I was in Chicago, saddled with debt, head of a teetering shoe company, rolling out a new brand with shoddy workmanship and crooked swooshes. All is vanity. I gazed around the convention center, at the thousands of sales reps swarming the booths, the other booths. I heard them oohing and aahing at all the other shoes being introduced for the first time. I was that boy at the science fair who didn’t work hard enough on his project, who didn’t start until the night before. The other kids had built erupting volcanoes, and lightning machines, and all I had was a mobile of the solar system made with mothballs stuck to my mother’s coat hangers. Darn it, this was no time to be introducing flawed shoes. Worse, we had to push these flawed shoes on people who weren’t our kind of people. They were salesmen . They talked like salesmen, walked like salesmen, and they dressed like salesmen—tight polyester shirts, Sansabelt slacks. They were extroverts, we were introverts. They didn’t get us, we didn’t get them, and yet our future depended on them. And now we’d have to persuade them somehow that this Nike thing was worth their time and trust—and money. I was on the verge of losing it, right on the verge. Then I saw that Johnson and Woodell were already losing it, and I realized that I couldn’t afford to. Like Penny, they beat me to the panic attack punch. “Look,” I said, “fellas, this is the worst the shoes will ever be. They’ll get better. So if we can just sell these… we’ll be on our way.” Each gave a resigned shake of the head.

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

  Also, the previous year I’d been flanked by Jaqua and Bowerman; this year both men were busy. I was alone. Half an hour into my pitch, with thirty horrified faces staring at me, I suggested we break for lunch. The previous year I’d handed out Blue Ribbon’s financial statements before lunch. This year I decided to wait until after. It didn’t help. Even on a full stomach, with a chocolate chip cookie, the numbers looked bad. Despite $3.2 million in sales, we showed a net loss of $57,000. Several clusters of investors now began private conversations while I was trying to talk. They were pointing at this troubling number—$57,000—and repeating it, over and over. At some point I mentioned that Anne Caris, a young runner, had just made the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing Nikes. We’re breaking through, people! No one heard. No one cared. They cared only about the bottom line. Not even the bottom line, but their bottom line. I came to the end of my presentation. I asked if anyone had a question. Thirty hands went up. “I’m very disappointed in this,” said one older man, rising to his feet. “Any more questions?” Twenty-nine hands went up. Another man called out, “I’m not happy .” I said I sympathized. My sympathy only served to annoy them. They had every right. They’d put their confidence in Bowerman and me, and we’d failed. We never could have anticipated Tiger’s betrayal, but nonetheless, these people were hurting, I saw it in their faces, and I needed to take responsibility. To make it right. I decided it was only fair to offer them a concession. Their stock had a conversion rate, which went up every year. In the first year the rate was $1.00 a share, in the second year it was $1.50, and so on. In light of all this bad news, I told them, I’ll keep the conversion rate the same for the full five years you own your stock. They were placated, mildly. But I left Eugene that day knowing they had a low opinion of me, and Nike. I also left thinking I’d never, ever, ever take this company public. If thirty people could cause this kind of acid stomach, I couldn’t imagine being answerable to thousands of stockholders. We were better off financing through Nissho and the bank. THAT IS, IF there was anything to finance. As feared, Onitsuka had filed suit against us in Japan. So now we had to file quickly against them in the United States, for breach of contract and trademark infringement. I put the case in the hands of Cousin Houser. It wasn’t a tough call. There was the trust factor, of course. Kinship, blood, so on. Also, there was the confidence factor. Though he was only two years older, Cousin Houser seemed vastly more mature. He carried himself with remarkable assurance. Especially before a judge and jury.

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

  I was transitioning him from legal to marketing, moving him out of his comfort zone, as I liked to do with everyone now and then, to prevent them from growing stale. Tailwind was Strasser’s first big project, so he felt like Midas. “Nailed it,” he kept saying, and who could begrudge him a bit of chest-thumping. After its wildly successful debut, Tailwind became a sales monster. Within ten days we thought it might have a chance of eclipsing the waffle trainer. Then the reports began to trickle in. Customers were returning the shoe to stores, in droves, complaining that the thing was blowing up, falling apart. Autopsies on the returned shoes revealed a fatal design flaw. Bits of metal in the silver paint were rubbing against the shoe’s upper, acting like microscopic razors, slicing and shredding the fabric. We issued a recall, of sorts, and offered full refunds, and half of the first generation of Tailwinds ended up in recycling bins. What began as a morale booster ended up being a body blow to everyone’s confidence. Each person reacted in his own way. Hayes drove in frantic circles on a bulldozer. Woodell stayed longer each day at the office. I toggled dazedly between my baseball mitt and my recliner. In time we all agreed to pretend it was no big deal. We’d learned a valuable lesson. Don’t put twelve innovations into one shoe. It asks too much of the shoe, to say nothing of the design team. We reminded each other that there was honor in saying, “Back to the drawing board.” We reminded each other of the many waffle irons Bowerman had ruined. Next year, we all said. You’ll see. Next year. The dwarf is going to get Snow White. But Strasser couldn’t get past it. He started drinking, showing up late to work. His mode of dress was now the least of my problems. This might have been his first real failure, ever, and I’ll always remember those dreary winter mornings, seeing him shamble into my office with the latest bad news about his Tailwind. I recognized the signs. He, too, was approaching burnout. The only person who wasn’t depressed about the Tailwind was Bowerman. In fact, its catastrophic debut helped pull him out of the slump in which he’d been mired since retiring. How he loved being able to tell me, to tell us all, “Told you so.” OUR FACTORIES IN Taiwan and Korea were humming along, and we opened new ones that year in Heckmondwike, England, and Ireland. Industry watchers pointed to our new factories, and our sales, and said we were unstoppable. Few imagined we were broke. Or that our head of marketing was wallowing in a depression. Or that our founder and president was sitting in a giant baseball mitt with a long face. The burnout spread around the office like mono. And while we were all burning out, our man in Washington was flaming out. Werschkul had done everything we’d asked of him.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Galileo returned to Florence to work on his Dialogues on the Two World Systems. But after this promising beginning, two of Galileo’s patrons were implicated in Spanish political intrigues at the papal court and were disgraced, and Galileo was damaged by association. 84 To make matters worse, he had added a final paragraph to the Dialogues. “Simplicio,” the character who represented the new Aristotelian orthodoxy and performed throughout the dialogue as the “fall guy,” argued that Copernican theory was “neither true nor conclusive” and that it “would be excessive boldness for anyone to limit and restrict the divine power and wisdom to one particular fancy of his own.” 85 These words were a direct quotation of published remarks by Urban himself, who would not have been pleased to see them on the lips of Simplicio, whose name was an insult in itself. On April 12, 1633, Galileo was summoned to the Holy Office and was judged guilty of disobedience. On June 22, he was forced to recant on his knees, and returned to Florence, where he was confined to his country estate. When Copernicus had presented his ideas in the Vatican, the pope had given his approval; ninety years later, De revolutionibus was placed on the Index. In 1605, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), counselor to King James I of England, had declared that there could be no conflict between science and religion. But that openness was giving way to dogmatism and suspicion. There would soon be no place in the new Europe for the skepticism of Montaigne or the psychological agnosticism of Shakespeare. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the notion of truth had begun to change. Thomas Aquinas would not have recognized his theology in its post-Tridentine guise. His apophatic delight in unknowing was being replaced by a strident lust for certainty and a harsh dogmatic intolerance. The spirituality of silence was giving way to wordy debate; the refusal to define (a word that literally means “to set limits upon”) was being superseded by aggressive definitions of ineffable dogma. Faith was beginning to be identified with “belief” in man-made opinions—and that would, eventually, make faith itself difficult to maintain. The first modern Western atheists, however, were not Christians who had been alienated by the terrible convictions of their clergy but Jews living in the most liberal country in Europe. Their experience tells us a good deal about our current religious predicament. By the early seventeenth century, while the rest of Europe was in the grip of severe economic recession, the Dutch were enjoying a golden age of prosperity and expansion. They did not share the new sectarian dogmatism. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, some of the Marrano Jews had been permitted to leave Portugal and migrated to Venice, Hamburg, London, and, above all, Amsterdam, which became their New Jerusalem.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  79. Bellarmine to Foscarini, 12 April 1615, ibid., 12:171–72; Shea, “Galileo and the Church,” pp. 120–21. 80. Galileo, Opere , 5:668–70; Shea, “Galileo and the Church,” p. 122. 81. Ernan McMullin, “Galileo on Science and Scripture,” in Peter Machamer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Galileo (Cambridge, U.K., 1998), p. 285; Buckley, “The New Science,” pp. 9–10. 82. McMullin, “Galileo on Science and Scripture,” p. 317. 83. Shea, “Galileo and the Church,” p. 127. 84. Ibid., pp. 128–30. 85. Galileo, Opere, 1 :489; Shea, “Galileo and the Church,” pp. 130–31. 86. Yovel, Marrano of Reason , pp. 54–57. 87. Ibid., p. 53. 88. Isaac Orobio de Castro, prologue, Epistola invecta contra Prado , ibid., pp. 51–52. 89. Yovel, Marrano of Reason , pp. 42–51. 90. Ibid., pp. 57–73. EIGHT Scientific Religion 1. John Donne, An Anatomie of the World , “The First Anniversary,” lines 213–14, in Sir Herbert Grierson, ed., Donne: Poetical Works (Oxford, 1933). 2. Ibid., lines 212, 251–60. 3. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York, 1990), pp. 47–55. 4. Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1987), pp. 40–56; Michael J. Buckley, “A Dialectical Pattern in the Emergence of Atheism,” in Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism (New Haven, Conn., and London, 2004), pp. 30–32. 5. De providentia numinis et animi immortalitate 1 .2.16–19, translated into English as Rawleigh His Ghost, Or, A Feigned Apparition of Syr Walter Rawleigh, to a friend of his, for the translating into English, the Booke of Leonard Lessius (that most learned man) entitled De providentia numinis, et animi immortalitate: written against Atheists, Polititians of these days (hereafter RG) , trans. “A. B.” (1631), in vol. 349 of English Recusant Literature, 1558-1640 , ed. D. M. Rogers (London, 1977), pp. 325–28. 6. Donne, “The First Anniversary,” line 213. 7. RG , pp. 328–29. 8. P. J. S. Whitmore, The Order of Minims in Seventeenth-Century France (The Hague, 1967), pp. 71–72; Ira O. Wade, The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton, N.J., 1971), p. 165. 9. Buckley, Origins of Modern Atheism , pp. 56–66; Buckley, “A Dialectical Pattern,” pp. 32–33; William B. Ashworth Jr., “Catholicism and Early Modern Science,” in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1986), pp. 138–39. 10. Robert Lenoble, Mersenne ou la naissance du mechanisme (Paris, 1971), pp. 380–82; Whitmore, The Order of Minims , pp. 144–47. 11. Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method 2.18. All quotations from Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy are taken from Elizabeth J. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, trans., ed., and with an introduction by Enrique Chávez-Arvizo, Descartes: Key Philosophical Writings (Ware, U.K., 1997). 12. Buckley, Origins of Modern Atheism , p. 73. 13. Descartes, Discourse on Method , 4.32. 14. Buckley, Origins of Modern Atheism , pp. 85–87. 15.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  By the middle of the twentieth century, many found it impossible to imagine that getting rid of God would lead to a brave new world; there was no serene Enlightenment optimism in the rationality of human existence. Camus had embraced the state of unknowing. He did not know for certain that God did not exist; he simply chose to believe this. We have to live with our ignorance in a universe that is silent in the face of our questioning. Within a decade of Camus’ death, though, the world had drastically changed. There was a rebellion against the ethos of modernity; new forms of religiosity, a different kind of atheism, and, despite the fact that unknowing seemed built into our condition, a strident lust for certainty. [image file=image_rsrc4V1.jpg] Death of God?During the 1960s, Europe experienced a dramatic loss of faith. After a rise in religious observance during the austerity years immediately after the Second World War, for example, British people stopped going to church in unprecedented numbers and the decline has steadily continued.1 A recent poll has estimated that only about 6 percent of Britons attend a religious service regularly. In both Europe and the United States, sociologists proclaimed the triumph of secularism. In 1965, The Secular City, a best seller by the American theologian Harvey Cox, claimed that God was dead and that henceforth religion must center on humanity rather than a transcendent deity; if Christianity failed to absorb these new values, the churches would perish. The decline of religion was just one sign of major cultural change during this decade, when many of the institutional structures of modernity were pulled down: censorship was relaxed, abortion and homosexuality were legalized, divorce became easier, the women’s movement campaigned for gender equality, and the young railed against the modern ethos of their parents. They called for a more just and equal society, protested against the materialism of their governments, and refused to fight in their nation’s wars or to study in its universities. They created an “alternative society” in revolt against the mainstream. Some saw the new wave of secularism as the fulfillment of the rational ethos of the Enlightenment. Others saw the 1960s as the beginning of the end of the Enlightenment project and the start of “postmodernity.”2 Truths hitherto regarded as self-evident were called into question: the teachings of Christianity, the subordination of women, and the structures of social and moral authority. There was a new skepticism about the role of science, the modern expectation of continuous progress, and the Enlightenment ideal of rationality. The modern dualities of mind/body; spirit/matter, and reason/emotion were challenged. Finally, the “lower orders,” who had been marginalized and even subjugated during the modern period— women, homosexuals, blacks, indigenous populations, colonized peoples—were demanding and beginning to achieve liberation.

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

  One of Puma’s sales reps even got thrown in jail. (There were rumors that Adidas had framed him.) He was married to a female sprinter, and Bowerman joked that he’d only married her to secure her endorsement. Worse, it didn’t stop at mere payouts. Puma had smuggled truckloads of shoes into Mexico City, while Adidas cleverly managed to evade Mexico’s stiff import tariffs. I heard through the grapevine they did it by making a nominal number of shoes at a factory in Guadalajara. Bowerman and I didn’t feel morally offended; we felt left out. Blue Ribbon had no money for payouts, and therefore no presence at the Games. We’d had one meager booth in the Olympic Village, and one guy working it—Bork. I didn’t know if Bork had been sitting there reading comic books, or just hadn’t been able to compete with the massive presence of Adidas and Puma, but either way his booth generated zero business, zero buzz. No one stopped by. Actually, one person did stop by. Bill Toomey, a brilliant American decathlete, asked for some Tigers, so he could show the world that he couldn’t be bought. But Bork didn’t have his size. Nor the right shoes for any of his events. Plenty of athletes were training in Tigers, Bowerman reported. We just didn’t have anybody actually competing in them. Part of the reason was quality; Tigers just weren’t good enough yet. The main reason, however, was money. We had not a penny for endorsement deals. “We’re not broke,” I told Bowerman, “we just don’t have any money.” He grunted. “Either way,” he said, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to pay athletes? Legally?” Lastly, Bowerman told me he’d bumped into Kitami at the Games. He didn’t much care for the man. “Doesn’t know a damn thing about shoes,” Bowerman grumbled. “And he’s a little too slick. Little too full of himself.” I was starting to have the same inklings. I’d gotten a sense from Kitami’s last few wires and letters that he might not be the man he’d seemed, and that he wasn’t the fan of Blue Ribbon he’d appeared to be when I was last in Japan. I had a bad feeling in my bones. Maybe he was getting ready to jack up our prices. I mentioned this to Bowerman, and told him I was taking measures to protect us. Before hanging up I boasted that, though I didn’t have enough cash or cachet to pay athletes, I did have enough to buy someone at Onitsuka. I had a man on the inside, I said, a man acting as my eyes and ears and keeping tabs on Kitami. I sent out a memo saying as much to all Blue Ribbon employees. (By now we had around forty.) Though I’d fallen in love with Japanese culture—I kept my souvenir samurai sword beside my desk—I also warned them that Japanese business practices were thoroughly perplexing.

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

  1973 Like his coach, Pre just wasn’t himself after the 1972 Olympics. He was haunted and enraged by the terrorist attacks. And by his performance. He felt he’d let everyone down. He’d finished fourth. No shame in being the world’s fourth-best at your distance, we told him. But Pre knew he was better than that. And he knew he’d have done better if he hadn’t been so stubborn. He showed no patience, no guile. He could have slipped behind the front runner, coasted in his wake, stolen silver. That, however, would have gone against Pre’s religion. So he’d run all out, as always, holding nothing back, and in the final hundred yards he tired. Worse, the man he considered his archrival, Lasse Viren, of Finland, once more took the gold. We tried to lift Pre’s spirits. We assured him that Oregon still loved him. City officials in Eugene were even planning to name a street after him. “Great,” Pre said, “what’re they gonna call it—Fourth Street?” He locked himself in his metal trailer on the banks of the Willamette and he didn’t come out for weeks. In time, after pacing a lot, after playing with his German shepherd puppy, Lobo, and after large quantities of cold beer, Pre emerged. One day I heard that he’d been seen again around town, at dawn, doing his daily ten miles, Lobo trotting at his heels. It took a full six months, but the fire in Pre’s belly came back. In his final races for Oregon he shone. He won the NCAA three-mile for a fourth straight year, posting a gaudy 13:05.3. He also went to Scandinavia and crushed the field in the 5,000, setting an American record: 13:22.4. Better yet, he did it in Nikes. Bowerman finally had him wearing our shoes. (Months into his retirement, Bowerman was still coaching Pre, still polishing the final designs for the waffle shoe, which was about to go on sale to the general public. He’d never been busier.) And our shoes were finally worthy of Pre. It was a perfect symbiotic match. He was generating thousands of dollars of publicity, making our brand a symbol of rebellion and iconoclasm—and we were helping his recovery. Pre began to talk warily with Bowerman about the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. He told Bowerman, and a few close friends, that he wanted redemption. He was determined to capture that gold medal that eluded him in Munich. Several scary stumbling blocks stood in his path, however. Vietnam, for one. Pre, whose life, like mine, like everyone’s, was governed by numbers, drew a horrible number in the draft lottery. He was going to be drafted, there was little doubt, as soon as he graduated. In a year’s time he’d be sitting in some fetid jungle, taking heavy machine-gun fire. He might have his legs, his godlike legs, blown out from under him. Also, there was Bowerman.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  It made the idea of God as “easy” as Newton believed that it should be: it was not difficult to understand; it gave a clear, rational explanation; and the vision of a universe operating as regularly as clockwork was a comforting antidote to the terrifying tales of the French Revolution. Throughout the nineteenth century, Natural Theology was required reading for Cambridge undergraduates and was accepted as normative by leading British and American scientists for over fifty years. The young Charles Darwin (1809–82) found it deeply persuasive. But it did not please everybody. The Romantic movement had already started to rebel against Enlightenment rationalism. The English poet, mystic, and engraver William Blake (1757–1827) believed that human beings had been damaged during the Age of Reason. Even religion had gone over to the side of a science that alienated people from nature and from themselves. Newtonian science had been exploited by the establishment, who used it to support a social hierarchy that suppressed the “lower orders,” and in Blake’s poetry Newton, albeit unfairly, became a symbol of the oppression, aggressive capitalism, industrialization, and exploitation of the modern state. 62 The true prophet of the industrial age was the poet, not the scientist. He alone could recall human beings to values that had been lost during the scientific age, which had tried to master and control the whole of reality: Calling the lapsed Soul And weeping in the evening dew That might controll The starry pole And fallen, fallen light renew. 63 The Enlightenment had created a God of “fearful symmetry,” like the Tyger, remote from the world in “distant deeps and skies.” 64 The God of Newton must undergo a kenosis , return to earth, die a symbolic death in the person of Jesus, 65 and become one with humanity. 66 In 1812, the revolutionary young aristocrat Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was expelled from University College, Oxford, for writing an atheistic tract, but “The Necessity of Atheism” simply argued that God was not a necessary consequence of the material world. Shelley did not want to get rid of the divine altogether. Like his older contemporary William Wordsworth (1770–1850), he had a strong sense of a “Spirit,” an “unseen Power” that was integral to nature and inherent in all its forms. 67 Unlike the philosophes, the Romantics were not averse to the mysterious and indefinable.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Desearía estar más enfadada con él. Mayormente, solo estoy decepcionada. —¿Ha estado sucediendo durante un tiempo? —pregunto. Baja sus ojos y asiente con solemnidad. —Desde tu fiesta de cumpleaños. ¿Quieres decir a la que no fui? Respira profundamente y cuadra los hombros, saliendo de la piscina y envolviendo una toalla alrededor de su cintura. —Te he conocido durante un largo tiempo —dice—, y ambos nos necesitábamos mucho el uno del otro cuando esto comenzó, pero tú ibas a seguir adelante. Lo sabes. —¿Entonces por qué vine aquí? —le pregunto—. ¿Por qué mantenerme cerca? Podría hacerme las mismas preguntas. Ambos éramos débiles, aferrándonos a lo único bueno que teníamos. E ignoramos cómo al estar juntos lo estábamos arruinando. Lo quiero. Era mi amigo. ¿Cómo pudo humillarme de esta manera? —No se suponía que fueras como él —le digo, mis ojos se llenan de lágrimas de nuevo. Levanta la mirada, sabiendo exactamente de quién estoy hablando. Jay era un pedazo de mierda. Cole no. Cole sabía por lo que pasé. ¿Estaba intentando hacerme daño? —Fuiste mi amigo primero —continúo. Se supone que un amigo sea bueno contigo. Pero no dice nada. No hay nada que decir. No es culpa suya que terminara. Solo es su culpa terminarlo de una forma tan mala. —¿También en nuestra cama? —pregunto—. ¿En las noches que estaba trabajando? Su silencio me dice que tengo razón y una ola de furia se apodera repentinamente de mí. ¿Pike sabía que Cole la traía aquí? ¿O tal vez a otras chicas? Pero no... me detengo, los nudos en mi estómago se deshacen un poco. Parecía tan sorprendido como yo en este momento. Asiento, también dándome cuenta de que Cole tampoco se encontraba con Elena a solas. Se veía con ella en las fiestas, sin duda. —Y todos tus amigos lo sabían —digo, la traición volviéndose perfectamente clara. Ahora estoy por mi cuenta. Aparte de Cam y las chicas en el bar, he perdido a mi último amigo. Se acerca, deteniéndose frente a mí. —Voy a quedarme con Elena por un tiempo —dice—. Quédate aquí hasta que puedas... —Vete a la mierda. —Levanto mis ojos, diciéndolo con la misma indiferencia como “de nada”. Volviendo a la casa, no me detengo para comprobar si Elena se ha ido o si está esperando fuera junto al auto de Cole. Tomo mi bolsa y me dirijo al dormitorio, sacando mi teléfono y deslizándome hasta el suelo contra la puerta cerrada. Llamo, responden al cuarto tono y limpio una lágrima silenciosa mientras endurezco mi voz: —Hola, papá.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  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. As one of their critics has remarked, in any military strategy it is essential to confront the enemy at its strongest point; failure to do so means that their polemic remains shallow and lacks intellectual depth. 41 It is also morally and intellectually conservative. Unlike Feuerbach, Marx, Ingersoll, or Mill, these new atheists show little concern about the poverty, injustice, and humiliation that have inspired many of the atrocities they deplore; they show no yearning for a better world. Nor, like Nietzsche, Sartre, or Camus, do they compel their readers to face up to the pointlessness and futility that ensue when people lack the means of creating a sense of meaning. They do not appear to consider the effect of such nihilism on people who do not have privileged lives and absorbing work. Dawkins argues that we are moral beings because the virtuous behavior of our ancestors probably helped to ensure their survival. Altruism was, therefore, not divinely inspired but simply the result of an accidental genetic mutation that programmed our forebears to behave more generously and cooperatively than others. But, he continues, there are many such “blessed” evolutionary misfirings in human behavior, one of which is “the urge to kindness—to altruism, to generosity, to empathy, to pity.” 42 Many theologians would have no difficulty with this view. It is surely characteristic of our humanity to take something basic and instinctual and transform it in such a way that it transcends the purely pragmatic. Cooking, for example, probably began as a useful survival skill, but we have gone on to develop haute cuisine. We acquired the ability to run and jump in order to get away from predators, and now we have ballet and athletics. We cultivated language as a useful means of communication and have created poetry.

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

  At the same time Pre was smashing American records in Nikes, the best tennis player in the world was smashing rackets in them. His name was Jimmy Connors, and his biggest fan was Jeff Johnson. Connors, Johnson told me, was the tennis version of Pre. Rebellious. Iconoclastic. He urged me to reach out to Connors, sign him to an endorsement deal, fast. Thus, in the summer of 1974 I phoned Connors’s agent and made my pitch. We’d signed Nastase for ten thousand dollars, I said, and we were willing to offer his boy half that. The agent jumped at the deal. Before Connors could sign the papers, however, he left the country for Wimbledon. Then, against all odds, he won Wimbledon. In our shoes. Next, he came home and shocked the world by winning the U.S. Open. I was giddy. I phoned the agent and asked if Connors had signed those papers yet. We wanted to get started promoting him. “What papers?” the agent said. “Uh, the papers. We had a deal, remember?” “Yeah, I don’t remember any deal. We’ve already got a deal three times better than your deal, which I don’t remember.” Disappointing, we all agreed. But oh well. Besides, we all said, we’ve still got Pre. We’ll always have Pre.

• From City of Night (1963)

  A few of the people I had known were gone—even in that short time—back to the Midwest or to Times Square, or had been busted, or moved to Coffee Andy’s in Hollywood, or gone to Golden Miami. They had disappeared, one day: One day youre here and thats fine, and the next day your gone and thats fine too, and someone has that very day come in to take your place whatever it might have been. Chuck was still here, boots and widehat. And Skipper... And Trudi still blaming it on the beads... I asked Chuck about Miss Destiny, one night, when we were again at the 1-2-3, but this time it was quiet. Not even the jukebox was playing. Everyone was broke. Not a single score. Even the pushers hung dismally inside the bar. Chuck said he hadnt seen Miss Destiny in a long time, she had just disappeared. Somewhere. “Man, she was a gone queen,” he said, pushing his cowboy hat back in a kind of tribute to Miss Destiny. I asked him did she have her Fabulous Wedding. “Oh, sure, man, I did not go though—someone tole me about it, she had it out in Hollywood, man, in this real Fine pad, an I heard she akchoolly dressed like a bride, man—she married some studhustler from See-a-dal, and it musta been a real Fine bash, if I re-call Miss Destinée right....” Then he went on to tell me he had a job washing dishes for a few days but he quit and how some score has promised to put him in some malehouse in Hollywood where hell make at least $50 a day. Later I saw Pauline (and now the jukebox was playing the song which I will always think of as part of LA.: For Your Love —and the sad throaty sounds of Ed Townsend meaning it), whom (Pauline) I had met before I left, having found Miss Destiny’s warning that first night in the park was justified: Pauline coming on Big with how she would have her own beautyshop in a few weeks and whoever she dug would have it Made and Made Big. “Let me tell you about Destiny —” Pauline said. “You left before she got married —well, she had her wedding all right, she didnt invite me, but I heard , and it was Hor-ri-ble . It was A-tro-cee-ous . She had her winding staircase all right, too, and she stumbled on her train and ripped her veil and came face down! Then the place was raided . And thats where Miss Destiny the college co-ed is now, busted! —in the joint — again! —for masquerading —and this is not the first time she gets knocked over so she will be cooling it there for quite a while! And can you imagine the sight? Miss Destiny in bridal drag sitting crying in the paddywagon this is her wedding day? ...”