Angel

photo by joeball

Theistic philosophers offer up the so-called “Fine-Tuning Design Argument” as evidence in favor of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Creator.  The basic idea is that the Universe is just too perfectly “fine-tuned” for the emergence of life to have happened without a Cosmic Designer. 

If, for example, the force of gravity had been even slightly less, then stars would never have formed, there wouldn’t be any planets, and no living things would ever have come into existence.  The odds are simply too long to have been beaten by chance; a Divine Hand had to have stacked the deck so that living things—and above all, human beings—could win the ontological sweepstakes.

The most important response to this is the “Objection from the Anthropic Principle.”  The thought here is that there’s nothing surprising about the fact that we observe a Universe that is fine-tuned for life as we know it, because, after all, if it weren’t, then we wouldn’t be here to observe it.

Same thing with Point83: as remarkable as it is to happen upon several score cyclists gyrating around a two-wheeler with a rack-mounted discotheque affixed to it, the undeniable fact that there you are, observing it and gyrating along yourself means you should hardly be amazed that it’s happening—amazing as it is.

Lazer Heather opined that it’s not a party if it happens every night, but what if it happens every Thursday night?

A different gambit assayed by theists is what’s called “The Argument from Miracles.”  Miraculous events happen; the best explanation for them is divine intervention; therefore, God exists.

K-Sep was there to bear witness: unbeknownst to me, my wallet apparently bounced from my bag coming down the steps into the Gasworks shelter. 

Suddenly, Hobo Angel Jacob was there at my side, handing it over, all the money and credit cards still inside.

Then, he sat me down and smoked me out!

God may not exist, but the evening sure was divine.

Wow

photo by altercator

Everyone was so excited by the music, they accidentally left the music behind.

TehJobies got catastrophically dropped on the way out even though his wheels were the source of all the commotion driving the congregation along.

Which just goes to show that a bigger part of everything is mainly the idea of it—although the actuality can be that much more flabbergasting when you stand slightly to the side and overview the panorama of it.

We inhabit the universe inside our heads, which is one reason why being out on two wheels doors of a spring evening so soft and fluffy that it could have been an etching of a watercolor or vice versa becomes so apt a reminder that on nights like this it’s almost impossible to believe what you see.

Still, you can tell that you’re catching up to the music bike by the beatific look on the faces of trail-walkers passing by, and so even though a few broke rule number one by following Derrick, there was never any question that reunion would be achieved.

Romance was certainly in the air as I think it was Monica who noted and Stephen who observed and pretty soon all the loneliness and quiet of the way out was forgotten and there arose more good old-fashioned SOC and PDC shimmying than anyone deserves to go along with everything else that plastered a smile to one’s mug.

I chalk it up to all the pollen in the air or something, the birds and the bees, and flowers and trees; we’re just animals, after all, albeit ones with a striking ability to convert alcohol molecules to conga lines at dusk.

One must have done something really good in a past life to enjoy something like this in this one; perhaps many of us were similar heroes bringing tunes and intoxicants to our own little kin groups or high courts; if ever left behind, we’re definitely all caught up now.

Benign

photo by Shahan

Human beings do all sorts of strange things: write poetry, build skyscrapers, come together in fifty-thousand seat arenas to watch men in tights throw themselves at one another in pursuit of a pig bladder, but pretty much all such endeavors pale in the weirdness department to the phenomenon of thirty or so putative adults riding bicycles some sixty-plus miles on rural highways and deserted logging roads just so they can stand under blue tarps in a downpour at a closed campground in order to drink heavily and, in some cases, consume psychedelic mushrooms, before rising at dawn, more or less, to pedal back home in near deluge conditions just for the sheer ridiculousness of it because, after all, why the hell not?

It was miraculous how the Olympic Rain Shadow kept casting its dry umbrage over things whole way out; as long as the ride kept moving, you never had to don your rain gear at all.  Returning, by contrast, was a different story: only the prospect of getting home to a warm shower made it possible to put up with the drenching spray from tractor-trailers and SUVs on the shrinking glass-strewn highway shoulder.

Crossing the Hood River Bridge on Saturday was spectacular; Sunday, however, not so much.  Day 1 was like a postcard for God’s handiwork; Day 2, you were praying to whatever deity suits your fancy to not be blown sideways into a motorhome.

But I wouldn’t have changed a thing—except maybe that part where I overdosed “Fat”(neé “Skinny”) Rob by letting him eat 7/8ths of the whole cookie.

Huddled together in the steady drizzle around our campfire, it occurred to me that, given the weather conditions and what we’d been through on the roads and trails all day, I ought to be miserable, but pretty much the exact opposite was the case: I couldn’t stop smiling and whooping and in every direction I looked, I saw humans just as strangely delighted as me.

Mayday

photo by Ajat

All those cops on horseback and in riot gear were no doubt, to paraphrase the words of former Chicago mayor, Richard Daley, “not there to create disorder, but to preserve disorder” and, from all accounts, they did a fine job, with scarcely a broken window reported, but had they followed several score bicycles from the downtown retail core of our fair city to its favored beachfront on this International Workers’ Day, they’d have been able to witness all the mayhem they could handle as the perfect combination of record-breaking warm temperatures and overflowing liberty, fraternity, and equality gave rise to some serious maypole-dancing that couldn’t possibly be legal given how deliriously delightful it was in all its many forms

Perfect trines formed in the sky between the moon, Jupiter, and a handful of lucky stars, depth charges of beer in the fire exploded not once, but twice, and sedate computer and engineering professionals morphed into pagan minotaurs, all of this well before the waxing crescent had even set in the western horizon.

Human beings everywhere acted human and while I felt a little bad for the quiet couple who had cuddled up under a blanket to share a romantic evening only to be descended upon by a scene from Fellini, it wasn’t a night for apologies, but rather, for embracing the sheer exuberance of it all no matter what you’d expected in the beginning.

I wonder what adaptive advantage the ability to perceive beauty has provided for us; did our hunter-gatherer ancestors who could stand out on the savannah and experience aesthetic awe at the colors and shapes around them do a better job of passing down their DNA than their less appreciative brethren?

Or perhaps it’s just an anomaly, and atavism like the appendix, there, but not really doing anything; if so, I take it as a miraculous gift, one Marx himself would endorse, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.