This month's Poetry Sunday features another classic by a famous poet who's already made an appearance: Robert Frost, the skeptical New Englander whose work has become iconic of the American experience.

Frost's views on God are complex. In some of his letters, he calls himself "an old dissenter", "secular till the last go down", and said there were "no vampires, no ghouls, no demons, nothing but me". In others, he expresses belief in and even fear of God, whom he usually identifies as the wrathful Old Testament deity Jehovah. Still, after twenty years of marriage, his wife said he was an atheist, and he did not deny it. (See Robert Frost: Old Testament Christian or Atheist? for a fuller exploration of Frost's religious beliefs.)

What I find remarkable is that so many of Frost's poems, when speaking of people and their relationships, are warm, welcoming, thoroughly humanist. Only when he turns to the subject of God does his poetry become dark and terrifying. Consider poems like "Once by the Pacific", Frost's famous vision of the apocalypse, or "A Loose Mountain", which envisions God as a cosmic destroyer waiting to hurl a meteor at the Earth like a stone thrown from a sling. I think the best way to describe Frost is as a frustrated freethinker, one who never fully shook off the religious indoctrination of his past.

Today's poem, simply titled "Design", explores some of Frost's own beliefs about God and nature. It comes from his 1936 collection A Further Range. In it, the poet muses on the experience of witnessing a camouflaged spider capture a helpless moth, and poses a version of the same question that has stymied philosophers since antiquity: why would a benevolent deity create a world where predation and death were integral parts of the natural order? If God oversees the course of events, then must not the evil be part of his will, as well as the good?

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth —
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth —
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.

Other posts in this series:

• Poetry Sunday

I just have to boast: I'm on TV!

Well, sort of, anyway. Daylight Atheism commenter RiddleOfSteel has brought to my attention this clip, in which Richard Dawkins is interviewed for the Canadian TV program The Agenda. As we all know by now, my essay "The New Ten Commandments" is quoted in Dr. Dawkins' book The God Delusion, and about halfway through the clip (at around 4:10), the interviewer reads one of my ten commandments verbatim.

That being said, I have to raise a substantial objection to the way my work is actually used. The interviewer's line of questioning for Dawkins is the standard, tired "why are you atheists so disrespectful of other people's faith" strategy. To my dismay, he quotes my third commandment - "Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect" - and uses it to attack Dawkins in furtherance of this canard!

This is a serious misrepresentation of my views. I categorically did not mean by this that we should refrain from ever criticizing others or saying things that offend people's sensibilities. On the contrary, my ten commandments also include injunctions such as "Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you", and especially, "Question everything".

In fact, in my third commandment, I define precisely what I mean by "respect":

"Respect" mandates treating others as inherently valuable, not using them as tools or means to an end that may be cast aside and discarded once they have made their contribution.

There is nothing in there about not criticizing other people's beliefs, nor should there be. In fact, I would argue that it shows more respect for others - respect for their intelligence and their ability for independent thought - to speak our minds freely to them and let them evaluate our arguments, rather than censor ourselves out of some spurious idea of politeness.

Richard Dawkins is dead-on when he states that religious beliefs have historically been surrounded by an abnormally and unjustifiably thick wall of respect. We atheists ought to make it our mission to demolish that wall: to raise people's consciousness and cause them to realize that religious beliefs, no less than any other category of beliefs, should be open to inquiry and criticism.

For whatever reason, I don't get as much entertaining e-mail from religious nuts as some other atheist bloggers I know of. If I were inclined to flatter myself, I'd say it's because they're silenced by the devastating power of my arguments. More likely, it's just because most of the notorious crazies haven't come across my site.

In either case, crackpot e-mail in my inbox is sufficiently rare that when I do get e-mail from genuine kooks, I can't keep it to myself. I just have to share it with you all. Following is a message I received the other night from a person whose hatred of atheists is evident, whose hold on reality is debatable, and who holds a unique interpretation of the death of Jesus. All spelling and grammar is as in the original. Enjoy!

To: ebonmusings@gmail.com
Date: 16 May 2008 11:22
Subject: Feedback: An Easter Blessing

One thing is sure. The devil has his ring in your nose and is controlling your every thought and action.

He has you convinced that there is no proof of Jesus. As with all of his other lies he is wrong.

I have proven the reality of Jesus for years. I live in perfect health because of Him. I live a life of miracles including divine protection.

I have seen Him as He hung on the cross. Because He had suffered the worst case of every sickness and disease that would ever touch a human body, His body was so grotesque rhat if the people had been able to see it, they could not have handled seeing it.

I have seen Him seated at the roght hand of the Father in heaven.

The devil has you so deluded that you are arrogant and condescending, thinking you are smarter than we who know Jesus.

Unless you rejest the lies of the devil you will spend eternity in hell with your father, rhe devil.

May God have mercy on your pitiful soul.

As a rule, I don't make fun of people who are clearly mentally ill (although I consider anyone who attracts a substantial following to be fair game). On the other hand, the line between excessive religiosity and psychosis is a blurry one. This writer's soteriology is a bit unorthodox, but his religious visions and his claims to be the beneficiary of miracles would not be out of place in many large, conventional churches. Nor, for that matter, would his denunciations of atheists.

Unfortunately, the way that religious belief exalts irrationality means that genuine mental disorders can go unnoticed. Primordial Blog tells the sad story of Blair Donnelly, a man whose untreated psychosis resulted in him murdering his daughter because he believed God had told him to do so. This tragedy might have been averted if Donnelly had received psychiatric treatment, but he was a member of a Pentecostal sect that viewed his constant claims of hearing voices and seeing demons not as symptoms of illness, but great spiritual gifts. I have no reason to believe that my correspondent suffers from any similar disorder, but the possibility cannot be completely dismissed.

I've put up a new post on Dangerous Intersection, "The traditional media is dying".

This is an open thread. Comments and discussion are welcome.

I've posted a new essay over on Dangerous Intersection, a review of Glenn Greenwald's latest book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

This is an open thread. Comments and discussion are welcome.

This is an open thread to address the comment below left by a Christian visitor. Replies are welcome; as always, let's have a civil discussion.

Today's Poetry Sunday features a few selections from the American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Wilcox was born in 1850 in Wisconsin and soon acquired renown as a poet, becoming well-known for her writing by the time she graduated high school. Her poems were resolutely plain and optimistic, and though her simple, sometimes singsong verse was often scorned by critics, during her lifetime she was immensely popular among the public. Among the best-known quotes from her poetry are "Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes" and the well-known line, "Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone" (from "Solitude"). Some of her many published works include Drops of Water (1872 - written in support of the temperance movement), Poems of Passion (1883), Poems of Pleasure (1888), and Poems of Sentiment (1906).

Though no friend of religious orthodoxy, Wilcox was not an atheist - she flirted with spiritualism, Theosophy, New Thought, and other New Age-like beliefs throughout her life, and grew distressingly attached to them after the death of her husband Robert, whom she repeatedly tried to contact from beyond the grave. Nevertheless, I think she deserves to be considered an honorary freethinker on the strength of poems such as "The World's Need", reprinted below.

The World's Need

So many gods, so many creeds;
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.

Protest

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God's soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.

From "Here and Now"

Stand not aloof nor apart,
Plunge in the thick of the fight.
There in the street and the mart,
That is the place to do right.
Not in some cloister or cave,
Not in some kingdom above,
Here, on this side of the grave,
Here, should we labor and love.

From "Settle the Question Right"

However the battle is ended,
Though proudly the victor comes,
With flaunting flags and neighing nags
And echoing roll of drums;
Still truth proclaims this motto
In letters of living light,
No question is ever settled
Until it is settled right.

...Let those who have failed take courage,
Though the enemy seem to have won;
If he be in the wrong, though his ranks are strong,
The battle is not yet done.
For sure as the morning follows
The darkest hour of night,
No question is ever settled
Until it is settled right.

Other posts in this series:

• Poetry Sunday

If you're seeing this post, then you've made it back! This is Daylight Atheism at its new, and hopefully much faster, host. Thanks for your patience. Regular updates will resume shortly.

I do have a request to make of my readers. Until the move, I hadn't upgraded WordPress since I first set up Daylight Atheism in 2006. I figured, since the move was happening anyway, it was about time I got around to doing that long-overdue software update.

As it turns out, the designers had introduced just enough interesting database incompatibilities in the intervening two years to make that job interesting. Nevertheless, after much grumbling and occasional cursing, I think I've gotten it all sorted out. (No thanks to God, but many thanks to the designers of Perl.) Posts, comments, and all the other data should be here, and commenting and other site functions should be working properly. But to be sure, I'd like to ask you, readers, to be my beta testers. If you have the inclination, please explore the site and kick the tires - check out some old posts, the archives, the search function, and make sure everything is present and working as you expect. If you find anything that's missing, broken, or odd, please drop me an e-mail and let me know. Thanks!

Given the patently unsatisfactory response of my hosting company to the recent slowness issue, I've begun preparations for moving Daylight Atheism to a new host. The DNS transfer will begin soon, and while it's in progress, my domain name may not function for a day or two. If this happens, don't fret. The site will be back up (and hopefully much faster), probably by the end of the week. I'll post updates in this thread for as long as the domain name still works.

Survey time: Has the slowness problem of the past two weeks gone away or are you still experiencing it?

After some back-and-forth, my hosting company claims to have fixed the problem, and it does seem substantially better on my end. Have you all noticed the same?