TuttleTree.com

Alternate Title: OMFG!

It's no secret that Bill Bryson is my favorite author. Recently I got the idea that it would be amazing if I could get an autograph from him — ideally on one of my own copies of one of his books. I set about scouring the internet for a P.O. Box or a contact through one of his publishers, and much to my surprise I found his email address listed plain as day on a Bill Bryson forum. I was cautiously optimistic, because it was posted on that forum in mid 2008, and on top of that, it was being posted second- or possibly third-hand by someone who said it was shared with him in December of 2006; and considering the short-lived nature of things on the internet these days, there was a good chance it would be long outdated. But it was worth a shot!

I spent a long hour composing a short message to Bill, proofreading, rewriting, proofreading, and ultimately rewriting again. Eventually this is what I decided to send:

Subject: A humble request

Hello Bill,

I hope this finds you in good spirits, or at least finds you at all. I found this email address posted on the Bill Bryson forum, second- or third-handed by someone who said you had shared it at a talk in Buxton in 2006 and welcomed email from anyone on any matter.

As the subject suggests I do have a very humble request, but first I would like to explain why. You are my favorite author, and in addition to that you cured my complete distaste for reading. I believe it was some time in 2005 that a good friend of mine told me about an amazing book he was reading, and he was compelled to read me a passage he had recently completed — something about bowling balls and the density of the sun, if memory serves. I was excited by his enthusiasm and went out the next day to buy my own copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything, and promptly devoured it, after having done quite literally zero recreational reading since grade school. I loved it so much that I bought a few more of your books and continue to read them and share them with my friends with the same zeal my friend originally shared with me.

I have decided that the sign that you are my favorite author is that if I were sure nobody would ever find out, I would plagiarize your entire catalog of work. In fact, I often find myself channeling your wit and style when writing my own works. I hope that is a good thing.

So with that said, here is my humble request: If I were to mail you my copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything, would you do me the honor of signing it? I understand that you live in England again, and I live outside of Philadelphia, but I would be happy to include return postage.

My warmest regards,
Adam Tuttle

Several days went by with no response, and I started to feel as though the address actually was outdated and that Bill never received my email. Then, this morning, I checked my email and found a wonderful surprise: A response! Again with cautious optimism I opened the message, half expecting to see a form letter from a publishing company intern or an "Inbox full" type of error. As luck would have it, I was wrong. Bill had taken a moment to reply to me, and I hope he won't mind if I share that with you.

Dear Adam,

Many thanks for your letter and kind words. I am delighted you have enjoyed my work. I'm so sorry to tell you that I can't sign and return a book. The number of requests I receive to do various things like sign and mail books or birthday cards, provide advice or endorsements, etc., is way beyond what I can manage. (It was about 3,500 requests last year.) I am truly sorry, but I would spend my life doing little else, so I just can't. But I do wish you a very happy new year and far beyond.

Forgive my haste now, but thanks again and best wishes.

Yours sincerely,
Bill Bryson

So while this was obviously not the response I was hoping for, it has definitely made my day, possibly even my week, just to hear back from him. I can only hope that he will continue to write books and possibly go on a book tour, and do a signing, so I can stand in line like one of those people I've never been able to understand and wait for an hour for the pleasure of a moment of his time and a signature on my tattered copy of one of his books.

Republicans have blocked both windfall tax on oil companies and tax incentives for alternative energy. Whose side are they on anyway?

This post is going to be about religion, and it's no secret that I'm what you might call a steadfast Atheist. So if you're not interested in such discussion, or easily offended, it would be best to skip this one. Last January, I asked you to post comments with questions and I would answer them — no topic, within reason, was off limits. For the most part, this resulted in a lengthy discussion on my spiritual beliefs and understanding of the historic aspects of the Bible with my sister in law, Susan (who for the record is [correct me if I'm wrong!] an Evangelical Christian). Despite what you might read on that page, and what conclusions you might draw based on that, I think that this discussion has not only NOT driven us apart, but brought us closer, in that we have both come to understand more of what the other believes, and why. We both think the other is wrong, by definition, but respect their right to believe what they see fit. The conversation shifted from back and forth comments on that blog post to email, and eventually we decided that it would be best if we left the explaining to the experts and each suggested a book for the other to read, and then sat down to discuss our thoughts on the books. I suggested The God Delusion, and she suggested The Case for Christ. However, I found it difficult to get and stay interested in this book, so we've since switched to I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, which I'm finding to be more my style and despite my frequent disagreement, I would even call it "a real page-turner," if that makes any sense at all. I've come to my beliefs over the course of the last 8 years or so through my personal experience with church (mostly Presbyterian and Catholic), a Christian youth group, and friends who were believers; and on the flip side of the coin, a lot of credit goes to the teachers and professors that cultivated my critical thinking skills. Prior to ~8 years ago, I had attended church occasionally and even did some community service with my local church, but at the time I was more or less ignorant on the matter and happy to be so. At some point, I started to realize that I had never been shown a reason to believe the things I had been told were true. So I decided not to, and to see where that would take me. (Here I am! Tada!) But let's not get too far off course — what I really want to write about is a particular passage from I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist.

Perhaps more than any other person, David Hume is responsible for the skepticism prevalent today. As an empiricist, Hume believed that all meaningful ideas were either true by definition or must be based on sense experience? Hume asserted that propositions can be meaningful only if they meet one of the following two conditions:

• the truth claim is abstract reasoning, such as a mathematical equation or a definition (e.g., "2+2=4" or "all triangles have three sides"); or
• the truth claim can be verified empirically through one or more of the five senses

While he claimed to be a skeptic, Hume certainly wasn?t skeptical about these two conditions?he was absolutely convinced he had the truth.

In a nutshell, this is the core of my belief system as I understand it. The authors then go on to explain how in a college course, one of them did a report on this topic:

At the beginning of the next class, the professor said, "Mr. Geisler, we'll hear from you first. Keep it to no more than twenty minutes so we can have ample time for discussion." Well, since I was using the lightning-fast Road Runner tactic [being mindful of self-contradictory statements], I had absolutely no trouble with the time constraints. I stood up and simply said, "The principle of empirical verifiability states that there are only two kinds of meaningful propositions: 1) those that are true by definition and 2) those that are empirically verifiable. Since the principle of empirical verifiability itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, it cannot be meaningful."

Setting aside for just a moment the fact that he hadn't given any justification for his claim that the principle cannot be empirically verified, this terrified me. I almost wet my pants when I read it. And you have to admit, when you think about it briefly, the principle does sound a tad self-defeating. Was it that simple? Did my whole world just crumble in on itself? It sure felt that way, and that's precisely what I wrote in my notes. This was something that required more research. I do believe that a simple mistake has a simple resolution, but this just didn't sit right with me. I had some pretty great help in checking this out; Google be thy name. As it turns out, the principle isn't a proposition. It is the definition of a meaningful proposition. If you wanted to empirically verify the principle itself you'd have to derive it from the definitions of the constituent words, which leads to an infinite series of definition. This is, of course, the short answer. Once I realized that the dismissal of the principle was bullocks (whew!), I started to realize that it wasn't so much what the authors were attempting to explain, but why. Left intact, the Principle of Empirical Verifiability can be applied to any religious discussion to render the issue of faith irrelevant. This leads to inner turmoil along the lines of, "If that's true, then my beliefs are false, so it must not be true!" This is a logical fallacy known as Appeal to Consequences, and is likely what caused the authors to be so dismissive without exhaustive research. I said that this was the short version. The long version is something I found on a blog called Evangelical Realism. This author goes into great detail of exactly why the Principle is not self-defeating, and does so with sound reasoning, even if he does come off as a bit sanctimonious. (Maybe intentional irony?) But if you still feel that the Principle of Empirical Verifiability is self-defeating, I suggest you read that entire post. He does a much better job explaining it than I could hope to. This is obviously something I feel strongly about, and given some of the awful things done in the name of this religion or that, I think it merits the effort. I should end by saying that I am not through reading the book. I'm only up to chapter 4. In all honesty, it is possible that I will believe in God at the end of the book, because I am reading it with as objective a viewpoint as I'm capable of, and if the evidence supports it, then it will be an easy decision to make. (Though I've yet to see any such evidence.) So did anyone actually read all of that? Does anyone disagree?