Getting my fix on a Sunday night

By Anders Loven-Holt

Late last Sunday, as my roommate was getting ready to walk over to Mass and the butt of my last cigarette sparked off the pavement, I was presented with a conundrum: Should I walk over to the Mission Church, or head to 7-Eleven for a fresh pack of smokes?

Given the serious implications of this decision, I thought that it would be prudent to weigh my options in several different ways.

Economically speaking, it turns out that spiritual replenishment is approximately six dollars less than nicotine per pack.

Convenience, however, was also a significant factor, and I estimated that church takes place more than twice as far away from my apartment than the sale of cigarettes.

Furthermore, Mass demands a level of piety that is difficult for me to achieve, so the strain involved is more taxing than the guilt elicited by filling my lungs with tar.

Even so, as a free service, Mass definitely seemed like the more fiscally responsible choice, and the Mission Church certainly boasts more physical accoutrements than 7-Eleven.

I had almost decided that I would go to church, when I began to ponder the long-term consequences.

Cigarettes could shorten my life by 12 years, but attending church could convince me to relinquish ideological control of my own thoughts for the rest of my life, including those 12 bonus years I get to keep.

On the one hand, I would be surrounded by a community that would shape and reinforce my opinions and help me judge other people, which is something I've often yearned for when I'm tired of the intellectual discomfort caused by thinking individually.

On the other hand, I was a little skeptical of the religious method for creating doctrine.

Usually, I make judgments using the empirical method: I continually observe all sorts of different situations, and based on my experiences, I come to some kind of understanding. This method also appears to work for scientists.

Oddly, the religious method is exactly the opposite: It seems as though a conclusion is established first, and then that conclusion is contrived to judge everything else.

But I reasoned that while this might lead to an inflexible world view, my thoughtless habit of always buying the same brand of cigarettes was also a form of blithe acceptance. The credulity of brand loyalty, it seems, might have the same propensity to become an entrenched, mindless habit.

Again, I started to lean toward church and away from cigarettes. I realized how dangerous it could be to wholeheartedly accept something so significant and potentially life-altering without giving it serious consideration. I wanted to be absolutely certain of the relative danger of smoking, however, so I consulted the Internet.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Web site, www.cdc.gov, told me that cigarette smoking killed more than 400,000 Americans in 2006.

Wow! I wondered how this number compared with my chances of being killed by God (or someone acting on His behalf) if I picked the wrong faith.

Unfortunately, occurrences of smiting were not comprehensively compiled and delineated by any of the Web sites on the first page of my Google search, leaving me to guess at the number.

So in lieu of hard data, I was left with only my own speculation: It seemed as though I was choosing between a lifestyle that compelled others to self-righteously judge me, and perhaps the opposite. And in either case, I might die young. So what did I do?

I made some coffee. No recorded fatalities, and it still gave me that artificial sense of comfort I was looking for.

Anders Loven-Holt is the sports copy editor for The Santa Clara and a sophomore economics major.