The Pageless Book

Photo Above by Cory Doctorow. Photo Below by Tom Conder. Final Photo by Kyle Flood.

If you couldn’t tell, I have been on a bit of a D&D kick as of late. I guess the passing of Gary Gygax has awakened a bit of my nostalgia for the game - I grew up on this stuff, after all. Looking back, I can tell that the game influenced my spiritual beliefs along with broadening my mind and my imagination. The life lessons I’ve learned playing D&D might have been learned through other avenues of experience, but perhaps not as soon and perhaps not while having so much fun.

Life Is About Gaining Experience

D&D was the first game ever developed that used experience points and levels to measure the growth in power of the player’s “piece.” Most people don’t seem to grasp how revolutionary that idea truly is. In poker, your growth as a player depended entirely on your own mastery of the game. With chess, each player started the game on a level playing field. While in playing Monopoly, your piece gained more monetary capital and real estate, your control over the game always remained dependent on the roll of two dice. Only in Dungeons & Dragons did your playing piece, your character, have the chance to develop separately from your own experience. Of course video games have now made the concept of character levels and constant improvement through game play more popular than ever, but they all owe a dept of gratitude to D&D.

The reason why experience and levels were introduced into the D&D game in the first place was to simulate the personal growth of each individual person. For me, this provided the first and most important lesson - life is about gaining experience. While in real life I don’t have to hack up monsters to grow and to becoming a stronger person, there is little doubt in my mind that the human experience is about learning more about how to better live. With each step that we take in life, we gain the experience necessary to take the next.

Potential Failure Makes Life Worth Living

I’ve been through my fair share of characters. I’ve seen their triumphant mistakes land them six feet under more than a few times. However, if D&D did not allow for the chance of failure, than it would not be as interesting to play. In fact, if I knew the outcome of every die roll, I don’t think I would be as much of a fan of this game as I am today.

The same goes for life; if we all knew exactly what to expect, I doubt that life would be as rich and vibrant. Can I handle a new management level position at my place of employment? I’m not entirely sure, to be perfectly honest. Am I going to shoot for a management level position? Yes, if only because I want that experience. I am sure I will stumble along the way, but it is worth trying if only because I don’t know what to expect.

We Each Decide Our Own Conditions For Success

As a Dungeon Master (the referee of a D&D game), I’ve seen a number of fair maidens go un-rescued due to my players deciding that the kingdom is better without her anyway. Sometimes, the goal which I had set out for the players is ignored completely and the game goes in a completely different direction than what I originally intended. I have even ran a game where the players have taken over a town which they originally had pledged to save. I may have been a little disappointed at these turn of events, but my players felt triumphant. Why? Because they have set their own condition for success and have achieved it.

In a similar manner, we can decide for ourselves the conditions for what we consider a successful life. I don’t need to be married with two children, making a six figure salary, owning a home I can barely afford filled with the newest technological gadgets to be successful in this life. That is someone else’s definition of success. My definition of success could be to live without answering to anyone, to make my own schedule, and to roam where ever my heart leads me without the tethers of responsibility. The definition of what society believes to be success is just a suggestion - a suggestion based purely on material things. I, as well as you, can make up our own minds as to what constitutes a successful life.

You Can Change Who You Become

One of the more challenging aspects of Dungeons & Dragons is wrapping your head around all the choices you have in terms of creating your character. Sure, I could make it easy on yourself and choose one of the standard classes and standard races, but what if I change my mind latter on? That is where multi-classing comes in; I can choose to alter or tweak the role of my character as I advance in levels. I may not be able to alter who that character was formally but I can change who he becomes. For example, if my brutish dwarven warrior later tires of battle and instead finds new interests and challenges in healing, he will still know everything he knew as a warrior but begin learning how to best mend wounds instead of how best to create them.

Like my dwarven warrior, you too can change who you are becoming. This is a life lesson that not many people until their later years - I’m just glad that I’ve learned it early. It may be hard to see a way out of your current circumstances, especially if you find yourself destitute. However, there is always one thing that you do control; your own personal development. Who you become as a person is still completely up to you, even if the necessary education seems out of reach. All you need to do is to put yourselves in situations which expose you to the skills you need, and challenges you in the areas you need to develop. It isn’t easy, and it will never change who you were, but we should never be lead to believe that we cannot change who we become.

Morality & Ethics Are Not Simple

The way in which Dungeons & Dragons simulate morality is through a system of “alignments” which dictate the way in which a character views the world. There are nine of these alignments, these being Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic on one axis, and Good, Neutral and Evil on the other axis. Even with the possibility of neutrality as an alignment choice, it has never been an easy task deciphering what exactly constitutes good and evil, law and chaos. These moral and ethical presumptions that are injected into the game have spawned an ongoing discussion that almost every gaming group has.

For being a dysfunctional mechanic in an otherwise fun game, alignment has taught me much about right and wrong. It is never a simple matter of one or the other. There are no absolutes when it comes to morality and ethics, and to assume to know those absolutes does not some how show more integrity, but instead points to the laziness of the one who makes that assumption. Despite the decrying of moral relativism from some, I do not see it as a downward spiral of loosening ethics and morality. Quite to the contrary, moral relativism demands constant inquiry into the nature of our deeds and their impact on those around us, for good or bad. Moral absolutism judges a thing by its name, while moral relativism judges that thing by its fruits.

It may seems strange to attribute so many virtues to something as silly as a fantasy role playing game. Perhaps it could be argued that I learned these lessons elsewhere in life which were later reinforced by the game… but there is a great deal to be said about reinforcing what is learned. For this I own a dept of gratitude to Mr. Gygax, as well as for the time spent in the presence of friends both in the past and in the future.

Photo Above by Franco Folini. Photo Below by Aidan Jones.

Early last week, I was told a friend of mine was in the hospital with a serious lung infection. He had a felt a very sharp pain in his chest when he breathed and, believing that it might be serious, checked himself in to the hospital. Due to the infection, he has fluid and growths on his lungs, causing his breathing to become labored. In an attempt to drain off the fluids and slow the infection, he underwent a number of surgeries to have drainage tubes inserted into his lungs.

Since I’ve heard of his illness, I have of made it a point to try visiting every few days - first time this past Wednesday and again just Sunday. This was a man who was in my wedding party and was the one who made me realize that I wanted a relationship with the woman who became my wife. While we don’t see much of each other, I consider him an important part of my life.

I want you to understand the type of guy he is; the man’s had a hard life. It’s not my place to divulge the details of his past, but I will say he’s had the hardest life out of anybody I’ve ever known. For this reason, he’s very guarded and difficult for most people to gauge. This friend is brutally honest, unusually curt, and always sarcastic. For someone like myself who thrives on open communication and regular validation, it is easy to be intimidated by him whether he means to be intimidating or not. Yet, somehow, I managed to gain his trust and friendship.

On Sunday, I saw him at his most vulnerable. I saw tubing snaking out of him limply like vines, his head nodding due to the morphine drip, and heard the shallow rasp of his breathing. He couldn’t say much, or even move much of his own volition. Seeing him reduced from being hard as nails to practically helpless is heart breaking and painful.

As I left that day I realized something; being a minister could mean seeing people such as my friend at their absolute weakest on a regular basis. Not only that, but it would be my job to console family members, be fully present to help them with their grief, and yet not show my own weakness in front of them. I asked myself if I could be that person, and I wasn’t so sure. Then I asked myself if I wanted to be that person. I immediately answered that I did.

At this point in my life and with my current financial difficulties, I am at least eight or ten years away from becoming a minister - perhaps longer. I’ve often taken the easiest path in life and yet had never been truly satisfied. I guess I grew up a little bit last Sunday. I’m not sure if I would be a successful minister or not, but that isn’t the point; I want to make this world a better place. This is one way in which I can make a career out of making the world a better place. I can’t let go of that.

Am I afraid for my friend? Yes, I’m scared for his life. But this situation has also taught me a valuable lesson, and I would be a fool to ignore what I have learned. Regardless of what happens, I should hold on to that lesson, because it makes me a better person and because all suffering should have a meaning.

Photo by Andrew Kuchling.

On Wednesday, The Pageless Book had its one hundredth entry. If you deduct the two guest articles I have had, today’s entry would be the one hundredth. Regardless of how you choose to look at it, the blog has reached a milestone. It is is time to take a good look around and ask myself if this blog is progressing as it should.

Do I have the readership I have hoped for? Is the writing quality consistent? Can I say that this blog is efficiently organized? Am I happy with this blog over all? Almost every question I can think of, I would have to answer negatively. I see a lot of room for improvement, both in my own performance and in the quality of my blog.

However, there is also a lot of which I am proud. I love writing and being apart of this community. After six months of blogging, I still enjoy doing this. I’m hoping to expand on this blog and continue to grow. I’m not going to be giving up on The Pageless Book any time soon, despite what my recent actions might indicate.

Over the next few weeks, I will be making several improvements to The Pageless Book, the first of which is to make sure that new material is available Monday through Friday every week. You can also look forward to the continuation of the Friday Vibes and Site In Focus series. I’ve realized the value that they add to this blog, and need to re-institute them. I also need to go through my older entries, rewrite and resubmit them on the weekends. Finally, this site needs to be reorganized so that each post fits into one or two categories, rather than the four or five categories that each post currently falls into.

My hope is that these changes will invigorate this website and bring in new readers. Whether I am successful or not depends entirely on me and my ability to be consistent. I hope to deliver on the promise that this blog represents.

Recently, it has become abundantly clear to me that there just isn’t enough hours in the day to do everything that I want to do. I want to post new articles on a regular basis, I want to continue to promote my fellow bloggers, and I want get to know my readers better. On the other hand, circumstances in my off-line life must come first. It would be irresponsible for me to let issues of family, work, finances, and life in general to be dominated by my love of blogging.

Unfortunately, I have bitten off more than I can chew in regards to this blog. I need to cut back down to posting five times a week. I may even go so far as to posting new articles only four times a week, if circumstances dictates. One of my three article series had to be let go. After much consideration, I felt that the UUU Project Updates were the best choice.

The past month or so has been really awesome in regards to the growth of this blog, and much of it has to with the community of which I am apart. One of the things that has really made me appreciate this community is the response to my Unknown Unitarian Universalist article and the subsequent UUU Project Updates I post on Sunday. I enjoy helping this community grow through the use of social media and will continue to work towards this end. However, I can no longer be the man with the plan in this regard.

If anyone else would like to pick up where I left off, I welcome you to do so. Nothing would make me happier to see someone else take the ball from me and run with it. Unitarian Universalism has a voice that needs to be heard the world over, and I can think of no better way of being heard than here, online. Let’s continue to work in making ourselves known.

Namaste.

DNA rendering by Ynse

I believe that there is no contradiction between science and spirituality; both speak of different truths. Science speaks in regards to the verifiable truth of empirical research, while spirituality speaks in regards to the truth of the human condition which we can only know in our hearts. Yet many people find the two incompatible, based upon literal interpretation of religious scripture or practice, and it’s conflict with scientific discoveries.Like myself, Dr. Francis S. Collins sees no contradiction between science and spirituality and attempts to show those on both sides of the argument why. Unlike myself, Dr. Collins has an advantage in that he himself is a former atheist who converted to Christianity and was the head of the Human Genome Project. With having been on both sides of the argument, as well as being one of the world’s most prestigious scientists, one would think that his reasoning would be sound and solid. Unfortunately, I found this not to be so in his book The Language of God.

While I liked The Language of God, I found it lacking in several areas. Most important of these, as it is central to the book’s theme, is his use of apologetics to explain his belief in God. The very first chapter of the book, which attempts to show the reason he came to believing in God, argues that altruism could not be the result of evolution and so must be considered evidence of God’s Moral Law inherent within humanity. However, this argument is based upon what I would call soft logic - that is logic that has no basis in concrete physical reality.

Altruistic behavior has to be defined and quantified, observed and studied in order for even the suggestion to be taken seriously. What you might define as altruistic may not be strictly without evolutionary benefit. Those examples of altruism that cannot be explained as being evolutionary could possibly be explained as psychological anomalies or the result of social conditioning. There are simply too many variables to make that claim; if I were an atheist, I wouldn’t accept this argument.

The failure of Dr. Collins’s “Moral Law” argument puts a large dent in his other arguments, as he repeatedly refers back to this throughout the book. In addition to that issue, Dr. Collins relies far too much on C.S. Lewis and not enough on his own understanding or experiences to promote his views. I hate to say it, but if I wanted to read C.S. Lewis, I would have picked a book authored by him. I did say that I like this book, didn’t I?

I do like The Language of God… but not for it’s intended purpose. His personal stories and explanation of the current struggle between science and religion is where this book truly shines. His disarming demeanor serves him well in bringing a better understanding of science to the religious community, which all too often looks upon the scientific community with suspicion. As it is the religious community that is instigating the argument over evolution, his goal of ending the disagreement would better be served by concentrating his efforts on that audience.

So while I feel that The Language of God is worth reading, the chances of an atheist reading this book and having doubts over their non-belief in God is very slim indeed. If you are going to read this book, read it for one man’s story from atheism to Christianity, his growth as a human being, and to understand the science behind the controversies. Don’t look here for irrefutable proof of God’s existence - you won’t find it.

Photo by Pedro Simões

Last week, I wrote concerning the Unitarian Universalist and the Liberal Religion blog community’s issues with traffic and readership. My argument was that we, as a community, are not doing enough to attract new readers and build our community. A strong online presence can be instrumental in the growth of our faith; for proof you need look no further than the rise of Wicca as a world religion and, more recently, the growth of the atheist community.

Then I proposed that we, as a community, focus more on utilizing social media sites in an effort to boost our traffic and readership. I recommended that liberal religion blog authors write a post about social media on their own sites and that liberal religion blog readers use social media to promote other liberal religion blogs. StumbleUpon was given as an example of a social media site and I made the commitment to utilize StumbleUpon to promote my fellow bloggers.

It turns out that the week between Christmas and New Years was not the best week to start an initiative. Even though I had contacted a number of bloggers regarding this idea and received a positive response, only Rev. Christine Robinson of iMinister had a moment to write about social media. In addition, because this week was in between two major holidays, readership in general was not very strong.

I blame myself for the poor timing of this initiative. In addition to the poor timing, I hadn’t been entirely clear as to how I want to proceed. This is a learning process for me; I’ve never tried to rally people around a cause before. Regardless, I want to forge ahead with this project because I feel that it is worth the effort. Next week, I plan to continue to stumble the articles of my fellow bloggers in an effort to grow our community. I’m also going to look into Digg, and will be posting an article on how best to use that website next week.

Remember that the purpose of this is to raise awareness of Unitarian Universalism and Liberal Religion in general, which would lead to larger congregations and a stronger voice in the world at large. If you have any ideas on how we can encourage each other in our efforts to grow our on-line community, I would love to hear from you. Also, if you have noticed an increase of traffic on your website, or have posted a social media article, let me know so I can share it here! I want to promote you and your blog!