During my recent trip to New York, I was stopped by a particularly insistent religious group on the street who wanted to persuade me to join their church. I was in a bad mood, having just fended off some pan-handlers, and so I snapped at them - "Look", I said - "Your religion is objectively false. It couldn't even possibly explain the world. So leave me alone".

This kind of thing is completely out of character for me. Generally, my assumption is that all other religious faiths are wrong but plausible. They're wrong because if I thought they were right, I would discard my current faith and join that new one. As Stuart Buck explains, believing in one faith implies the belief that all others are somehow wrong. But though I don't believe in those other faiths, I do think they're plausible. If catholics believe that Jesus turned water to wine, then Mohammed could be the voice of God. I just don't think that he was.

But the religion that accosted me on the street is on a very short list that I think is obviously untrue. I've discussed my position with friends who say I'm wrong to make such divisions - if some faiths can be clearly untrue, then why isn't their faith next on the list? But I think that a line can be drawn between the rare exceptions and my general policy that all faiths or lacks thereof are plausible. I wonder, however, whether I'm completely off base, and so I've opened comments for discussion of whether other people also make such distinctions between religions, and what those distinctions could be based on.

I should note that I'm not advocating any change in first amendment jurisprudence. I think the Supreme Court is quite right to test only the sincerity of believers rather than the truth of their faiths when determining whether a set of beliefs qualifies as a religion or not. And I don't believe that atheists are disqualified from the questions I raise by virtue of the fact that they disbelieve in all religions - my understanding of most atheists is that they've looked at the evidence and have decided that god doesn't exist, but that few claim that god is implausible. Surely, they too can jump in on the larger question.

I'd obviously rather we didn't begin a religious war in the comments, so I'm hoping the general question can be discussed without scapegoating particular sects. Let's see whether that works out.

I will be out of contact for the next 48 hours.

I have blogged before about the Wal-Mart class action, and why I would prefer medium-scale litigation to this attempt at really really large-scale litigation. Via How Appealling, I now see that you can download Monday's oral arguments (link) on class-certification in front of the 9th Circuit judges Hawkins, Pregerson, and Kleinfeld. Although oral arguments can be misleading, I am willing to bet that Kleinfeld votes not to certify the class-action and that Pregerson votes to uphold the certification. I have no idea about Judge Hawkins.

Of added interest, you can listen to Judge Pregerson repeatedly scold Wal-Mart's lawyer for the allegedly intemperate and unprofessional language in their brief. I believe he went so far as to order the lawyer to apologize.

Anyway, Wal-Mart's lawyer also raised the point that the modern class action violates the Rules Enabling Act, which is quite true.

I don't mind stating publicly that my love life is in shambles.

Deliciously tantalizing details aside, it's this fact that tossed me to the first in Horace's fourth book of Odes, the famous Intermissa Venus diu rursus bella moves? Horace, at the age of about fifty, finds himself in love, and doesn't seem to like it much. It's one of my favorite odes, especially for the last few stanzas:

[...]sed cur heu, Ligurine, cur
manat rara meas lacrima per genas?
cur facunda parum decoro
inter uerba cadit lingua silentio?

nocturnis ego somniis
iam captum teneo, iam uolucrem sequor
te per gramina Martii
campi, te per aquas, dure, uolubilis.

But why, ay, Ligurinus--why this infrequent tear streaking my face? Why does my tounge leave the company of elegant words into unbecoming silence? In my night's sleep, I hold you, my cruel love, captive: now, even as you are flying over the grasses of the Martial fields, now the crashing waves.

Maybe I'm missing the entire point (clearly--don't I know it--I am), but it's a concern: here we see poor Ligurinus, bound, bare and mute, open for our, the readers', moral scrutiny, and, what's worse, Horace does little to help. In fact, he does a lot to hurt: Ligurinus is cold and unfeeling, a marble statue of a man fleeing Horace's grasp. Were Ligurinus given words, one could probably imagine hearing a very different story of a creepy old man stalking the public baths and lingering late nights at the forum.

But that's sort of the point, I guess, of the love poem--that the loved doesn't influence the author's report of the situation. That this is the ultimate in perfection of these sorts of moments, unsullied by the loved's opinions on the matter. Imagine, instead, what I would like to happen: that Catullus's serene, mysterious, Lesbia were to flee his constrictive dactyls and were, instead, given words. That when Catullus prays they live and love, Lesbia simply retorts "No." Or that Cynthia had editorial rights when Propertius immortalizes her as the woman who seized him (miserable!) with her eyes, and taught him to hate chaste girls. She may or may not have had something very different to say about being represented as a lady of loose virtue to God, her mother, and AE Housman for the remainder of Propertius's time on this planet. She recieved somewhat of a repreive--Propertius's remaing texts are, at times, hopelessly corrupt.

It's not like I'd necessarily mind being immortalized in poetry. It's just that I'd like to have a word about how it works out in the end: that I not be forever remembered as the archetype of loose morals, or of extraordinary cruelty, that I somehow be able to defend myself against the throngs of people who will ever read the poetry and grimace at how some poor lover felt about me one morning when I didn't necessarily have the time to comb my hair just right, or was cranky because I ran out of Cheerios. There are, after all, some people in posterity I'd like to make a good impression on.